Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is doubling down on support for the U.N.-backed government in Libya ahead of a Berlin conference aimed at ending the Libyan civil war.  Erdogan, who is set to attend the Sunday meeting, lashed out at Libyan rebel leader General Khalifa Haftar on Friday while announcing the deployment of Turkish forces to Libya.Libyan commander Khalifa Haftar meets Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis (not pictured) at the Parliament in Athens, Greece, Jan. 17, 2020.”Haftar is a man I do not trust. … He continued bombing Tripoli yesterday,” Erdogan said in a statement. Haftar is waging war against the Turkey-backed Government of National Accord.A day earlier, Erdogan announced additional military forces would be deployed in support of the GNA. Earlier this month, Ankara sent a few dozen military personnel and equipment to Tripoli as part of a military agreement with the GNA.Haftar infuriated Erdogan by refusing to sign a cease-fire agreement Wednesday brokered by Turkey and the Russian government. Russian mercenaries linked to the Kremlin are backing Haftar, although Russian President Vladimir Putin denies arming the militia.”With these new developments, Turkey is getting more and more in a losing position,” said international relations professor Huseyin Bagci of Ankara’s Middle East Technical University. “Probably Tayyip Erdogan will face much bigger problems in Berlin than he assumed before. He [Erdogan] thought he would be in a stronger position, but with no cease-fire, he is in a much more difficult position.”Haftar and GNA Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj are expected to attend the Berlin conference. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also confirmed his attendance.German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas met with Haftar on Thursday, claiming a breakthrough. Maas tweeted Haftar “has agreed to abide by the ongoing cease-fire” and that the Berlin meeting offered “the best chance in a long time” for peace.But Turkey is voicing skepticism about the prospects for peace and has criticized the conference for excluding Turkish allies Qatar and Tunisia.  “He [Erdogan] will be taking a very hard position in Berlin,” said Bagci. “I expect more, harsher words in Berlin — he is not going there to be soft, [he] is going there to be very hard.”FILE – In this photo taken on Oct. 30, 2018, Turkey’s oil and gas drillship Conquerer is seen off the coast of Antalya, southern Turkey.Turkish oil interestsAnkara says the survival of the GNA is a strategic priority. Along with a security deal, Erdogan also signed an agreement with Sarraj that gives Turkey control of a large swath of the eastern Mediterranean. The area is believed to have vast potential reserves of hydrocarbons.  “We will start search and drilling activities as soon as possible in 2020 after issuing licenses for the areas,” Erdogan said Friday, adding that a seismic exploration vessel would soon be deployed to this field.Turkey’s deal with the GNA is strongly condemned by Greece, which claims the contested region as part of its territorial waters.  The two countries are engaged in an increasingly bitter competition for resources in the eastern Mediterranean.  Analysts note Turkey is aware that if Haftar were to prevail in the Libyan civil war, all deals it made with the GNA likely would become null and void.FILE – Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis appears at a reception, at the State Department in Washington, Jan. 8, 2020.On Thursday, Haftar flew by private plane to Athens and was taken to a luxury hotel for two days of talks with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias.In a move that could further complicate the Berlin talks, Mitsotakis underlined his determination to annul Turkey’s Mediterranean deal with the GNA.  “Greece at the level of an [EU] summit meeting will never accept any political solution on Libya that does not include as a precondition the annulment of this agreement. To put it simply, we will use our veto,” Mitsotakis said Thursday in a television interview.EU officials are also set to attend the Berlin conference, and the EU is strongly opposed to Turkey’s agreement with the GNA on the Mediterranean, saying it violates international law.FILE – Former Turkish Ambassador Mithat Rende says personal chemistry can facilitate efforts to resolve escalating tensions. (Dorian Jones/VOA)Turkey insists it’s ready to negotiate. “The GNA deal aims to protect Turkish vital national interests and Turkey is not to remain isolated,” said former Turkish Ambassador Mithat Rende. “Turkey has made it clear it’s ready to talk.”In Cairo Thursday, the seven-member East Mediterranean Gas Forum pledged to strengthen cooperation, deepening Ankara’s isolation. Turkey views the move by Cyprus, Greece, Israel, Italy, Jordan, the Palestinian territories and Egypt as an attempt to deny what Ankara sees as its fair share of Mediterranean energy resources.Erdogan dismissed the Cairo agreement, saying, “They tried to implement a scenario to imprison our country in the Mediterranean Sea. We ended this game with the agreements we made with Turkish Cyprus and then with Libya.”Some analysts say Ankara’s stance ultimately may prove counterproductive.”Turkey wants to be in Syria, Libya and the eastern Mediterranean; it wants to be a player,” Bagci said. “Turkey wants to get more and more involved in this region. But the problem is Turkey is not wanted because it creates an atmosphere of hegemony. So this is what Turkey faces, and this is why Erdogan’s rhetoric is getting harsher.”
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More than 3,500 Central Americans had poured into Guatemala by Friday in U.S.-bound gatherings known as caravans, officials said, posing a headache for the leaders of Guatemala and Mexico amid fierce U.S. pressure to curb migration.President Donald Trump has repeatedly urged the region to prevent such groups of migrants reaching Mexico’s border with the United States, and the latest exodus from Honduras that began on Wednesday has been accompanied by U.S. border agents.The migrants, some traveling in groups as small as a dozen people while others formed caravans of more than 100, said they planned to unite at the Guatemalan border city of Tecun Uman before crossing together into Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico.Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said his government was monitoring the situation as the migrants approached, saying there were 4,000 jobs available on the southern border, as well as shelters and medical help.”We are keeping an eye on everything,” Lopez Obrador said during a regular press conference.Honduran migrants get a ride on the back of a truck as they travel north in hopes of reaching the United States, in Quezaltepeque, Guatemala, Jan. 17, 2020.Lopez Obrador did not say if Mexico would seek to keep the migrants in the southern part of the country. Most Central Americans who leave their countries escaping poverty and violence are eager to make their way towards the United States.Under U.S. pressure, Mexican security forces have increasingly broken up large groups as they head north.On Wednesday, Guatemala’s new President Alejandro Giammattei suggested Mexico would prevent any caravans from reaching the United States.About a thousand migrants entered Guatemala on Thursday, with local officials busing some of the migrants back to the Honduran border to fill out official paperwork, said Alejandra Mena, a spokeswoman for Guatemala’s migration institute.”We haven’t returned people from Guatemala and we have a total of about 3,543 people who have so far crossed the border,” Mena said.At least 600 Honduran migrants spent the night under tents in a shelter in Guatemala City on Thursday night, sleeping on mattresses.”Now we have more experience, and we know how to treat them,” said Father Mauro Verzeletti, director of the Migrant House shelter in Guatemala City.Guatemala’s former President Jimmy Morales agreed last July with the U.S. government to implement measures aimed at reducing the number of asylum claims made in the United States by migrants fleeing Honduras and El Salvador, averting Trump’s threat of economic sanctions.New leader Giammattei said a top priority would be reviewing the text of migration agreements made with the United States.
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More than two years after France promised to return colonial-era treasures to their African homes, Benin — ostensibly the first recipient of the groundbreaking policy — still awaits them. But on Friday, a small museum outside Cotonou celebrated the return of antique royal scepters gifted by a group of Paris gallery owners.In 2017, French President Emmanuel Macron sparked joy — and unease — when he announced colonial-era treasures from Africa would be returned, or shared through exhibitions and loans. The first gesture would be the speedy return to Benin of 26 objects looted by French colonial forces in 1892.But turning that promise into reality is not so easy. Only last December did France’s culture minister offer a concrete timetable, saying the objects now housed at Paris’ leading African art museum would be returned by 2021.Enter a group of Paris Left Bank gallery owners, whose private efforts are moving much more quickly than public ones. They have not only acquired and returned precious antiques to Benin for years, but raised funds to build a small museum outside Cotonou to house them.On Friday that institution, the Petit Musee de la Recade, welcomed one of its biggest troves to date: more than two dozen pieces, including 17 scepters, coming from the ancient Kingdom of Dahomey, located in parts of what is modern day Benin.Speaking by phone from Cotonou, Paris gallery owner Robert Vallois said the gesture doesn’t constitute restitution of ill-gotten art. Instead, he and his colleagues bought the antiques in France, with the specific intent of returning them to Benin.Macron’s restitution promise has been more complicated to realize. It means changing French laws and ensuring old and fragile pieces are properly housed.With French support, Benin is building a new museum in Abomey, once the capital of the Kingdom of Dahomey. Jose Pliya, head of Benin’s national agency for heritage promotion and tourism development, spoke to VOA about the process last year.”We really have to have the good condition — temperature, isolation, conservation — to welcome them … a lot of things have to be done. The training of all the conservators in Benin, how to protect the pieces,” Pliya said.Despite the roadblocks, Macron’s restitution vows add pressure on other European countries and museums with African collections.Vallois said he and his gallery group are not part of such debates. Instead, they’re following their own counsel — and what’s important to them is that the objects return to their countries of origin.
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A rare 1937 Edward VIII sovereign coin has been bought by a private collector for 1 million pounds ($1.31 million), making it the most expensive British coin ever. The coin was one of six prepared by the Royal Mint when Edward became king in 1936 and was due to be mass produced for general circulation from Jan. 1, 1937.But he abdicated in December 1936 — quitting his job as king — to marry American divorcee Wallis Simpson, meaning that production was canceled and coinage with his face never entered circulation.Edward VIII insisted that the portrait show his left side, which he preferred, breaking the tradition of each new monarch facing the opposite direction to their predecessor. He wanted to show his parting to break up an otherwise solid fringe of hair, the Royal Mint said.The coin is a sovereign: a type of gold coin with a face value of one pound. It is no longer in circulation but is still accepted as legal tender in Britain.Made from 22-carat gold, it is slightly smaller and lighter than a modern pound coin, measuring 22 millimeters in diameter and weighing 7.98 grams.”The Edward VIII Sovereign is one of the rarest and most collectible coins in the world, so it’s no surprise that it has set a new record for British coinage,” said Rebecca Morgan, head of collector services for the 1,100-year-old Royal Mint. Of the six originally struck, four are in museums and institutions and two are privately owned.Their existence was not widely known until 1970, as they were locked away and not treated as part of the Royal Mint museum’s collection, because of the sensitivity of Edward’s abdication.The Royal Mint sourced this particular coin from a collector in the United States to bring it back to Britain for the new buyer.
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Russia’s foreign policy chief on Friday blamed what he described as “aggressive” U.S. policies for growing global tensions, noting Washington’s reluctance to extend a key nuclear arms pact.Sergey Lavrov, who serves as acting foreign minister in the wake of Wednesday’s resignation of the Russian Cabinet, said this week’s meeting of top U.S. and Russian diplomats on strategic stability didn’t achieve any immediate results, adding that “dialogue is continuing.”Russia-U.S. relations have been at post-Cold War lows since Moscow’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea.Speaking at an annual news conference, Lavrov said that the U.S. has stonewalled Russia’s push for extending the New Start nuclear arms treaty that expires in 2021. The agreement is the last U.S.-Russian arms control deal still in place, and Moscow has argued that its demise will remove the final barrier stemming an arms race.”We will act strongly to avoid depriving the world of agreements that control and limit nuclear weapons,” said Lavrov, who has was appointed foreign minister in 2004.”We stand for the extension of the New Start treaty without any preconditions,” he said. “I hope that the Americans hear us, but we haven’t received any coherent signals from them.”ChinaU.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has pushed for China to join nuclear arms cuts, but Lavrov described the idea as unrealistic. He pointed at Beijing’s refusal to discuss reductions in its nuclear arsenal, which is much smaller than those of the U.S. or Russia.Lavrov emphasized that the U.S. push for Russia to encourage China to change its mind doesn’t make sense. “We respect the Chinese position and we won’t persuade China to change it,” he said.EuropeTurning to other issues, Lavrov criticized Britain, France and Germany for caving in to pressure from the U.S. over a nuclear deal with Iran.Earlier this week, the three countries reluctantly triggered the accord’s dispute mechanism to force Iran into discussions over its violations, starting the clock on a process that could result in the “snapback” of U.N. and EU sanctions on Iran.The three nations are being pressed on one side by Trump to abandon the agreement like he did unilaterally in 2018, and on the other side by Iran to provide enough economic incentives for it to continue honoring the deal.Lavrov noted that the European Union boasted about creating a mechanism for trade with Iran bypassing U.S. sanctions, but never put it into action.He described the move by Britain, France and Germany as a “dangerous turn,” arguing that the three nations used the moment of heightened tensions between the U.S. and Iran to “blame Iran for all what happened.”Middle EastFollowing the U.S. drone strike that killed Revolutionary Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani, Iran announced what it said was its fifth and final step in dropping its commitments under the 2015 deal. Iran said it would no longer abide by any limitations to its enrichment activities.Turning to Libya, Lavrov said he expects the warring parties in the North African nation to observe a lasting cease-fire after their talks in the Russian capital earlier this week.He explained that the talks in Moscow between Libya’s rival leaders focused on a document spelling out conditions of a cease-fire that could serve as a basis for Sunday’s Libya talks hosted by Germany.Lavrov said he plans to attend the talks in Berlin, which will be attended by both Fayez Sarraj, the head of Libya’s U.N.-recognized government in Tripoli, and his rival, Gen. Khalifa Hifter,Sarraj and Hifter attended Monday’s talks in Moscow, but didn’t meet directly.”Their relations are tense, and they don’t want to be in one room together, let alone talk to each other,” Lavrov said.He added even though Hifter refused to sign the cease-fire document that was signed by Sarraj, the most important outcome of the talks was that the truce was still holding.
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High on the wall of a German church where Martin Luther once preached, an ugly remnant of centuries of anti-Semitism is now at the center of a court battle.
    
The so-called “Judensau,” or “Jew pig,” sculpture on the Town Church in Wittenberg dates back to around 1300. It is perhaps the best-known of more than 20 such relics from the Middle Ages, in various forms and varying states of repair, that still adorn churches across Germany and elsewhere in Europe.
    
Located about 4 meters (13 feet) above the ground on a corner of the church, it depicts people identifiable by their headwear as Jews suckling on the teats of a sow, while a rabbi lifts the animal’s tail. In 1570, after the Protestant Reformation, an inscription referring to an anti-Jewish tract by Luther was added.
    
Judaism considers pigs impure, and no one disputes that the sculpture is deliberately offensive. But there is strong disagreement about what consequences that should have and what to do with the relief.
    
A court in the eastern city of Naumburg will consider on Tuesday a Jewish man’s bid to make the parish take it down.
    
It’s the second round in the legal dispute, which comes at a time of mounting concern about anti-Semitism in modern Germany. In May, a court ruled against plaintiff Michael Duellmann, who wants the relief put in the nearby Luther House museum.
    
Judges in Dessau rejected arguments that he has a right to have the sculpture removed because it formally constitutes slander and the parish is legally responsible for that. Duellmann appealed.
    
The relief “is a terrible falsification of Judaism, a defamation of and insult to the Jewish people,” Duellmann says, arguing that it has “a terrible effect up to this day.”
    
Duellmann, a former student of Protestant theology who converted to Judaism in the 1970s, became involved in the issue in 2017, the year Germany marked the 500th anniversary of the Reformation. He says he joined vigils in Wittenberg against the sculpture and was asked if he would be prepared to sue when it became clear that the church wasn’t prepared to take it down.’Culture of remembrance’
    
Luther is said to have nailed his 95 theses to the door of another church in Wittenberg in defiance of Roman Catholic authorities in 1517, starting the German Reformation. He also is known for anti-Jewish invective, from which Germany’s Lutheran church has distanced itself.
    
Luther preached at the Town Church, now a regular stop for tourists visiting Wittenberg.
 
When the church was renovated in the early 1980s, the parish decided to leave the sandstone sculpture in place, and it was also restored. In 1988, a memorial was built on the ground underneath it, referring to the persecution of Jews and the killing of 6 million in the Nazi Holocaust.
    
In addition, a cedar tree was planted nearby to signify peace, and a sign gives information on the sculpture in German and English.
    
Pastor Johannes Block says the church is “in the same boat” as the plaintiff and also considers the sculpture unacceptably insulting. The parish, he says, “also is not happy about this difficult inheritance.”
    
However, he argues that the sculpture “no longer speaks for itself as a solitary piece,” but is embedded in a “culture of remembrance” thanks to the memorial. “We don’t want to hide or abolish history, but take the path of reconciliation with and through history,” he says.
   
 “The majority of the Town Church parish doesn’t want this to become a museum piece, but to warn and ask people to remember history on the building, with the original,” Block says.
    
Duellmann isn’t impressed. “The ‘Jew pig’ is not weakened” by the memorial, he says. “It continues to have a terrible anti-Semitic effect in the church and in society.”World Heritage siteThere are mixed opinions in the church, too. Last year, the regional Lutheran bishop, Friedrich Kramer, said he favors taking down the sculpture from the church wall and exhibiting it in public at the site with an explanation. He doesn’t favor putting it in a museum. He praised the 1988 memorial but said it has weaknesses, including a failure to address Luther’s anti-Semitism.
    
If judges do order the sculpture removed, that may not be the end of the story. Block says the church would ask authorities to assess whether it is possible to remove it from a building that is under a preservation order, and more talks with the court would probably follow.
    
The church is a UNESCO World Heritage site, a status that it gained in 1996.
    
Plaintiff Duellmann has little sympathy with the church’s preservation order dilemma. He contends that authorities deliberately failed to mention the offending sculpture at the time of the application in order not to endanger it.
    
Whatever the outcome, Block says he regrets that the case went to court.
   
 ‘We are not advocates and initiators” of the sculpture, he says. “We are heirs and are trying to deal very conscientiously with this inheritance.”
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Ukraine’s prime minister offered his resignation on Friday after an audio recording was leaked in which he was heard making disparaging comments about president’s understanding of the economy.Oleksiy Honcharuk said in a Facebook post that he took the job of prime minister to fulfill the program of the president, calling him  “a model of openness and decency.”Referring to the leaked audio, Honcharuk said “in order to remove any doubts about our respect and trust in the president, I wrote a letter of resignation and submitted it to the president who can submit it to parliament.”President Volodymyr Zelenskiy will review the resignation letter and the decision will be announced separately his office said in a statement, according to Ukrainian news agency, UNIAN.
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Ukraine has asked the FBI in the United States for help  investigating a suspected cyberattack by Russian military hackers on Burisma, an energy company caught up in the impeachment of U.S. President Donald Trump.The Ukrainian interior ministry on Thursday also announced an investigation into the possible illegal surveillance of Marie Yovanovitch, formerly the American ambassador to Kiev, following the release of text messages this week by the U.S. Congress as part of the impeachment case.The FBI said it had visited the home and business of Robert Hyde, a Republican congressional candidate in Connecticut who sent the text messages to Lev Parnas, an associate of Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, that suggested Hyde had Yovanovitch under surveillance. The FBI declined to give further details.Hyde was not immediately available for comment but on Twitter he has said he has never been to Kiev and that he made up the story about keeping watch on Yovanovitch to fool Parnas.The FBI declined to comment on Ukraine’s request for help after California-based cybersecurity company Area 1 Security on Monday identified the hacking of Burisma Holdings and linked it to Russia’s Main Directorate of Military Intelligence, or GRU.Burisma was at the center of attempts by Trump in July to persuade Ukraine to announce an investigation into Joe Biden, a Democratic presidential contender, and his son, Hunter, who used to have a seat on the Ukrainian company’s board.There has been no evidence of wrongdoing by the Bidens, who reject Trump’s allegations of corruption.Trump’s efforts have led to him being impeached on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. The president, who denies wrongdoing, faces a trial in the U.S. Senate next week.The same hacking group, known as “Fancy Bear” or “APT28″ by cybersecurity researchers, breached the Democratic National Committee in 2016 in what U.S. investigators described as part of an operation to disrupt that year’s election.Russia’s defense ministry did not respond to a request for comment about Area 1 Security’s assertions.”It is noted that the hacking attack was probably committed by the Russian special services,” Ukrainian interior ministry official Artem Minyailo said at a briefing.Minyailo said Ukraine had asked the FBI and Area 1 Security for assistance regarding information that hackers stole personal employee data and emails from executives at Burisma and other companies. These other companies included the media production company of President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, he said.”The national police has initiated the creation of a joint  international investigation team, to which FBI representatives have already been invited by the ministry,” Minyailo said.Yovanovitch surveillance probeIt was not clear what data the hackers wanted to steal, Area 1 said. Breaching Burisma could yield communications from, to or about Hunter Biden, who served as a director between 2014 and 2019.A source close to Burisma told Reuters earlier this week the company’s website had been subject to multiple break-in attempts over the past six months but did not provide further details.Ukrainian officials said they were also probing allegations that Yovanovitch, the former ambassador to Ukraine, was subject to illegal surveillance before Trump fired her in May.U.S. Senator Robert Menendez, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told CNN on Thursday he had sent a letter to the State Department seeking an immediate briefing.A former senior security official with the U.S. State Department told Reuters he did not regard the Hyde text messages as constituting an actual threat to Yovanovitch.“I would have trouble going to a U.S. Attorney and saying, ‘I want an arrest warrant for this person or I want to open an investigation,’” said the former senior security official, who spoke on condition that he not be identified.“I might send somebody to talk with them and say, you know, ‘You have any intent to harm her?’ and if he says no and there’s no other evidence to the contrary … that’s probably as far as I would go.”
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President Vladimir Putin moved to consolidate plans for constitutional reform and name a new government Thursday — one day after the 20-year Russian leader altered the political landscape by hinting at plans to retain influence when his current and final presidential term ends in 2024.Yet, for Russians, the most immediate shift involved an unexpected new prime minister. Mikhail Mishustin, the little known chief of Russia’s Tax Service until being promoted by Putin late Wednesday, was approved by the Duma to head the government in a unanimous vote.He replaces longtime Putin ally Dmitry Medvedev, who submitted his entire Cabinet’s resignation in a surprise move Wednesday.Speaking before the lawmakers, Mishustin insisted his mission was to enact economic reforms laid out by Putin in an address to Russia’s Federal Assembly that largely highlighted Russians’ growing dissatisfaction — over low wages, poor health care services, and lack of opportunity among other issues.  “I want to … maintain dialogue with the people,” Mishustin said in a speech to lawmakers outlining the need to better enact Putin’s reforms. “It’s important that we hear what happened, and what didn’t.”  It was the first time most Russians had ever heard his voice.Constitutional changes  There was little question of who — and what — was driving the political shakeup in Moscow.In concluding his speech Wednesday, Putin proposed a series of major constitutional amendments that would move power away from the presidency to the parliament.Among the most consequential: Russia’s Duma would have a say over the Cabinet appointments,  including prime minister and other key posts.  Another would give the country’s Security Council — currently an advisory body to Putin — new constitutional powers.  The amendments were widely seen as Putin creating options for a new role to exert power after his current term ends in 2024.  “It’s a constitutional coup,” said analyst Fyodor Krasheninnikov, in an interview with VOA. “The constitution will now be sewn to fit Putin individually and with one purpose: so that Putin can further rule Russia,” he added.True or not, the Russian leader immediately appointed a 75-member delegation of Kremlin-loyal writers, actors, religious leaders and sports stars to oversee the proposed constitutional changes, painting the move as part of efforts to move government “closer to the people.”Meanwhile, the head of the Russian Central Election Commission, Ella Pamfilova, said her commission was ready to carry out a vote on the constitutional reforms.In a separate move that raised eyebrows given the uncertainty in Moscow, Ramzan Kadyrov, the strong-arm leader of Russia’s southern Chechen Republic and Putin ally, announced he would be handing over power to a deputy for a few days because he would be undergoing a procedure that would leave him “temporarily incapacitated.”A placeholder or future Kremlin leader?Kremlin watchers also debated Putin’s choice for new prime minister. Was Mikhail Mishustin an improvised choice or part of some larger Kremlin plan?“It seems highly likely that Mishustin is just a technocratic placeholder,” wrote Tatiana Stanovoya, an analyst with the Carnegie Moscow Center, in a post on Facebook. “Mishustin’s relative obscurity shouldn’t fool anyone,” wrote her colleague Alexander Baunov in a thread on Twitter that pointed to Putin’s own unexpected rise in government under then-President Boris Yeltsin in 1999.Mishustin’s relative obscurity shouldn’t fool anyone: Putin was also a little-known official until Yeltsin promoted him to 3 senior posts, one after the other, to everyone’s great surprise.— Alexander Baunov (@baunov) January 16, 2020“Putin was also a little-known official until Yeltsin promoted him to three senior posts, one after the other, to everyone’s great surprise,” he wrote.The rift reflected a central point of discussion: When it came to the prime minister — and Putin’s latest moves — everyone had an opinion.Indeed, the past 24 hours have sent Kremlinology — the Soviet-era science of reading Russia’s political tea leaves — into overdrive, with publications and blogs offering up theories over what would come next.“Putin will take over as head of the United Russia fraction in the parliament,” assured the daily Kommersant, a newspaper known for insight into Kremlin machinations.“Medvedev fired himself. It wasn’t planned,” claimed Biznes Online, while interviewing a political spin doctor.The daily Vedemosti offered a different scoop: Prime Minister Mishustin had penned several pop songs, including a hit called “A Real Woman.”More importantly, would Putin become a newly empowered prime minister?  Head of the new Security Council? Perhaps something else?  There was only one point of consensus. Vladimir Putin —  in one form or another — was here to stay. 
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On the day his Senate impeachment trial formally began, U.S. President Donald Trump scored a bipartisan victory Thursday as the Senate passed a North American trade pact, known as USMCA. The international accord replaces the 25-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, and governs trade between the United States, Canada and Mexico. VOA’s Ardita Dunellari looks at what this pact is expected to deliver both for the U.S. economy and for the president’s re-election campaign.
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A caravan of about 2,000 Honduran migrants crossed into Guatemala on Thursday, hoping to make it into the United States, but it is unclear how far they can get. The caravan left San Pedro Sula on Wednesday, with most of the migrants allowed to enter Guatemala after submitting their documents to Honduran police at the border. Guatemala’s newly inaugurated President Alejandro Giammattei says Mexico has told him it will not let the migrants enter. Migrants walk along a highway in hopes of reaching the United States, near Agua Caliente, Guatemala, Jan. 16, 2020, on the border with Honduras. Hundreds of Honduran migrants started walking and hitching rides the day before at San Pedro Sula.Guatemala signed an agreement with the United States last year requiring migrants looking to come to the United States to apply for asylum in the U.S. while staying in Guatemala. The dangerous trip to Guatemala and the possibility of a long wait there for entry into the U.S. are not deterring the migrants, who say they are escaping poverty, gangs, violence and hopelessness in Honduras. “We have children and we don’t want our children to live through what we lived through,” one migrant said Thursday. A woman summed up her reasons for fleeing Honduras when she said, “In our country, you can kill yourself working and you can’t buy anything. You can’t achieve anything, The salaries are very low. It’s barely enough to eat.” Thousands of Central Americans headed to the U.S. border with Mexico in 2018, prompting U.S. President Donald Trump to threaten sanctions against Latin American governments that did not try to stop the caravans. 
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Ukrainian authorities say they have opened an investigation into whether Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador to Kyiv, was illegally spied on before U.S. President Donald Trump abruptly recalled her from her post last year. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the State Department have not replied to repeated requests for comment on the alleged surveillance and potential physical threats to the 33-year career diplomat. VOA’s Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports from the State Department.
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Greece will block any European Union peace deal for Libya, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said Thursday, unless a maritime deal between Turkey and Libya is scrapped.”Greece at the level of a summit meeting will never accept any political solution on Libya that does not include as a precondition the annulment of this agreement,” Mitsotakis told Greek television on Thursday. “To put it simply, we will use our veto.”Greece says the deal setting border and energy exploration areas in the Mediterranean between Libya and Turkey is “unacceptable and illegal” because Greek claims in the Mediterranean are ignored.Mitsotakis is also upset Greece is excluded from a peace summit on Libya to be held Sunday in Berlin. He says it is wrong not to invite Greece and plans to complain about it to German Chancellor Angela Merkel.FILE PHOTO: Khalifa Haftar, the military commander who dominates eastern Libya, arrives to attend an international conference on Libya at the Elysee Palace in Paris, May 29, 2018.Greece expelled the Libyan ambassador from Athens because of the deal signed with Turkey. It has also taken steps to boost ties with General Khalifa Haftar, head of a rival Libyan government whose forces have been fighting with those of the U.N.-backed administration in Tripoli.Haftar is in Athens where he plans to meet with Mitsotakis on Friday.Before flying to Greece, Haftar met in Benghazi with German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, who tweeted that Haftar is willing to come to the Berlin conference and is committed to the cease-fire that took effect in Libya this week.In Washington, a senior State Department official said Secretary of State Mike Pompeo would also attend the Berlin conference on Libya. The official said Pompeo would push for three things — the cease-fire, a withdrawal of all foreign forces from Libya and a return to the political process.
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Seven people were killed in a bizarre religious ritual in a jungle community in Panama, in which indigenous residents were rounded up by about 10 lay preachers and tortured, beaten, burned and hacked with machetes to make them “repent their sins,” authorities said Thursday.Police freed 14 members of the Ngabe Bugle indigenous group who had been tied up and beaten with wooden cudgels and Bibles.Local prosecutor Rafael Baloyes described a chilling scene found by investigators when they made their way through the jungle-clad hills to the remote Ngabe Bugle indigenous community near the Caribbean coast Tuesday.Alerted by three villagers who escaped and made their way to a local hospital for treatment earlier, police were prepared for something bad, Baloyes said, but were still surprised by what they discovered at an improvised “church” at a ranch where a little-known religious sect known as “The New Light of God” was operating.”They were performing a ritual inside the structure. In that ritual, there were people being held against their will, being mistreated,” Baloyes said.Police and employees of the Public Ministry investigate near a mass grave with seven bodies at the indigenous region of Ngabe Bugle, Panama, Jan. 15, 2020, in this screen grab taken from Panamanian channel TVN Noticias.”All of these rites were aimed at killing them if they did not repent their sins,” he said. “There was a naked person, a woman,” inside the building, where investigators found machetes, knives and a ritually sacrificed goat, he said.The rites had been going on since Saturday, and had already resulted in deaths, Baloyes said.About a mile (2 kilometers) away from the church building, authorities found a freshly dug grave with the corpses of six children and one adult. The dead included five children as young as a year old, their pregnant mother and a 17-year-old female neighbor.”They searched this family out to hold a ritual and they massacred them, mistreated them, killed practically the whole family,” Baloyes said, adding that one of the suspects in the killing is the grandfather of the children who were slain.All the victims, and apparently all the suspects, were members of the same indigenous community.Ricardo Miranda, leader of the Ngabe Bugle semi-autonomous zone known as a Comarca, called the sect “satanic” and said it went against the region’s Christian beliefs.”We demand the immediate eradication of this Satanic sect, which violates all the practices of spirituality and co-existence in the Holy Scriptures,” Miranda said.’Message’ from GodApparently, the sect is relatively new to the area, and had been operating locally only for about three months.Things reportedly came to a head Saturday, when one of the church members had a vision.”One of them said God had given them a message,” Baloyes said. That message apparently boiled down to making everyone repent or die.The Ngabe Bugle are Panama’s largest indigenous group and suffer from high rates of poverty and illiteracy.It was not clear what belief or affiliations “The New Light of God” church has. A well-established evangelical church known as Luz del Mundo said in a press statement that it had no ties to the case.The area is so remote that helicopters had to be used to ferry the injured out to hospitals for treatment. They included at least two pregnant women and some children.
 
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Europe has so far remained united in its backing for the 2015 Iran nuclear deal or JCPOA, despite strong pressure from the Trump administration to abandon the agreement. The deal saw most sanctions on Iran lifted in return for limits on nuclear fuel enrichment – but the U.S. withdrew and re-imposed sanctions in 2018. As Henry Ridgwell reports from London, Washington is ramping up pressure on its closest European allies, following Tehran’s accidental shooting down of a Ukrainian passenger jet last week
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Five countries that lost citizens in the downing of a Ukrainian airliner are calling on Iran to conduct an open investigation and to provide compensation to the victims’ families.The demands came from Ukraine, Canada, Afghanistan, Sweden and the United Kingdom after the foreign ministers of those countries met Thursday at the Canadian High Commission in London.The ministers called for “an independent criminal investigation followed by transparent and impartial judicial proceedings.”The Ukraine International Airlines plane was mistakenly shot down Jan. 8 by Iranian ballistic missiles shortly after takeoff from an airport in Tehran, killing all 176 people on board.Among the victims were 57 Canadians, 17 people from Sweden, 11 Ukrainians, four Afghans, four British citizens and Iranians.FILE – Debris is seen from a downed Ukrainian plane as authorities work at the scene, in Shahedshahr, southwest of the capital Tehran, Iran, Jan. 8, 2020.Iran originally said technical difficulties led to the downing of the plane but admitted days later amid mounting evidence that its paramilitary Revolutionary Guard had accidentally fired missiles at the jetliner.The plane was shot down amid heightened tensions between Iran and the United States over the killing of Revolutionary Guard commander Qassem Soleimani in a U.S. drone strike.Iran retaliated by firing missiles at Iraqi bases that house U.S. troops.Canadian Transport Minister Marc Garneau said Wednesday that two Canadian investigators joined an international team of investigators in Iran. He said the investigators were collaborating effectively, but that Canada was still demanding an official role in the investigation.Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said this week the victims would be alive if tensions had not escalated in the Middle East. “If there was no escalation recently in the region, those Canadians would be right now home with their families,” Trudeau told in an interview with Global News Television. “This is something that happens when you have conflict and the war. Innocents bear the brunt of it.” 
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An Israeli court heard a case Thursday calling for restrictions to be slapped on NSO Group, an Israeli company that makes surveillance software that is said to have been used to target journalists and dissidents around the world.The case, brought by Amnesty International, calls for Israel to revoke the spyware firm’s export license, preventing it from selling its contentious product abroad, particularly to regimes that could use it for malicious purposes.“They are the most dangerous cyber weapon that we know of and they’re not being properly overseen,” said Gil Naveh, spokesman for Amnesty International Israel. “That is the reason why we think that their license should be revoked.”NSO is implicated in a series of digital break-in attempts and the court case is the latest pushback against the company and its product. Last year, Facebook sued the hacker-for-hire company in U.S. federal court for allegedly targeting some 1,400 users of its encrypted messaging service WhatsApp with highly sophisticated spyware.Khashoggi Friend Says Israeli Spyware Played Role in His Killing

        An Israeli software company calls the allegation that its spyware played a part in the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi "unfounded."

A fellow Saudi dissident and Khashoggi friend living in exile in Canada — Omar Abdelaziz — is suing NSO Group, alleging the Saudi government used NSO’s Pegasus spyware to track his and Khashoggi’s movements and communications.

The two dissidents had been working on a pro-opposition project targeting the Saudi government and calling for democracy in the…
In 2018, Amnesty said one of its employees had been targeted with the malware, saying a hacker tried to break into the staff member’s smartphone, using a WhatsApp message about a protest in front of the Saudi Embassy in Washington as bait.The spyware has also been implicated in the gruesome killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was dismembered in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018. It is also said to be behind a campaign to compromise proponents of a soda tax in Mexico and an effort to hack into the phone of an Arab dissident that prompted an update to Apple’s operating system.An Associated Press investigation last year found that critics of NSO were targeted in elaborate undercover operations in which operatives tried to discredit them. NSO has denied involvement.NSO Group’s flagship malware, called Pegasus, allows spies to effectively take control of a phone, surreptitiously controlling its cameras and microphones from remote servers and vacuuming up personal data and geolocations.NSO does not disclose the identities of its clients, but they are believed to include Middle Eastern and Latin American states. The company says it sells its technology to Israeli-approved governments to help them stop militants and criminals. The company said it would not comment on the case because it revolves around a demand directed at Israel’s defense ministry, but last year NSO announced that it had adopted “a new human rights policy” to ensure its software is not misused.The Israeli Defense Ministry, which issues export licenses to Israeli defense and security companies, declined to comment.Reflecting the interest in the case’s outcome, the Tel Aviv courtroom on Thursday was packed, with many attendees forced to stand until the hearing was moved to a larger space. As with previous cases involving defense exports, judge Rachel Barkai ruled that the legal proceedings would be closed to media and she imposed a gag order on the case.“There is a tangible concern that if the hearing is open it will cause harm to the state’s security and to its foreign relations,” she said, before journalists were ushered out of the courtroom.Thursday’s hearing is expected to be the only one in the case, Naveh said, and a decision is set to be handed down in the coming days.
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The U.S. Senate approved a new North American trade agreement Thursday, a key victory for President Donald Trump as the Senate officially opened an historic impeachment trial against him.The 100-member Senate approved the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) by an overwhelming 89-to-10 bipartisan vote, sending it to Trump to be signed into law.“This historic agreement not only modernizes and re-balances our trade relationship with Canada and Mexico, but it promotes economic growth, creates jobs, and provides crucial certainty for farmers, workers and manufacturers,” U.S. Treasury Steve Mnuchin said in a statement.House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the initial draft of the agreement proposed by the Trump administration “left American workers exposed to losing their jobs to Mexico,” high prescription drug prices and low environmental standards.Pelosi added that the USMCA was “transformed by Democrats’ leadership for American workers, American patients and the environment.”The USMCA replaces the 25-year-old North American Free Trade agreement, known as NAFTA.The legislation includes more stringent rules on auto manufacturing, e-commerce and labor provisions, but leaves largely unchanged the trade flows between the North American countries valued at $1.2 trillion.The measure was passed in December by the House of Representatives, where it received bipartisan support after Democrats secured amendments to its enforcement, environment, pharmaceutical and worker provisions.Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell touted the measure’s approval as “a major win for country” and “a major win for the Trump administration.”But Senator Pat Toomey, a member of Trump’s Republican Party, offered a rare criticism of the deal.“It will mean higher prices for American consumers, who will have to pay more money for a car and therefore will have less money available for any of the other things they would like to consume.”Toomey added: “It will probably lead to an increase or acceleration in the shift of automation.”The pact aims to have more vehicles made in the U.S. and requires Mexico to revise its laws to facilitate the formation of independent unions, which should benefit workers and reduce the incentive for American companies to relocated their factories.The AFL-CIO, an association representing trade unions, endorsed the measure. But many environmental groups opposed it, maintaining that not only does it ignore climate change, but asserting that it would contribute to rising temperatures.  The USMCA had been delayed in the Senate due to political wrangling over the chamber’s impeachment trial of President Trump.The deal will not be fully implemented until it is ratified by Canada, whose House of Commons is expected to vote on it later this month. 
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Turkish airstrikes inside Iraq targeting members of an outlawed Kurdish rebel group have killed at least four minority Yazidi fighters allied with the rebels, an Iraqi army official said Thursday.The strikes, which took place on Wednesday, hit a military pickup truck in the northern town of Sinjar in Nineveh province, said the army official, speaking on condition of anonymity under regulations.The pickup was carrying members of the Iraqi Yazidi militia known as the Shingal Resistance Units, affiliated with the Kurdistan Worker’s Party, or PKK, which is fighting an insurgency in Turkey and has been outlawed by Ankara.Kurdish television channels in northern Iraq reported that Yazidi commander Zardasht Shingali was among the dead and that another five fighters were wounded in the strikes.In Baghdad, Iraq’s joint operations command said five people were killed in the attack in Sinjar. The different casualty tolls could not immediately be reconciled.The Yazidi militia was formed in 2014, after the Islamic State group overran much of northern Iraq in August of that year and took over security in Sinjar after IS was pushed out of town in November 2015. It maintains strong relations with Kurdish groups such as the People’s Protection Units, or YPG, in Syria, and the PKK in Turkey.Turkey has repeatedly struck the Yazidi militia positions in Sinjar in efforts to cut supply routes of the PKK. Also, a Turkish airstrike there last year killed Zaki Shingali, a PKK commander.Elsewhere in Iraq, a car bombing wounded at least four Iraqi solders on a highway leading to a border crossing with Saudi Arabia, according to a statement from the Iraqi joint command.No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack but it was suspected to have been carried out by remnants of the Islamic State group.
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President Hassan Rohani says Iran is now enriching more uranium than the country did before it agreed to a nuclear deal with world powers in 2015, as Tehran gradually scales back its commitments under the agreement.“Pressure has increased on Iran, but we continue to progress,” Rohani said in a televised speech on January 16. The country has lifted all limits on its production of enriched uranium, which can be used to make reactor fuel but also nuclear weapons.Iran has breached its main limitations, exceeding the stockpiles of heavy water and uranium allowed, the number and types of centrifuges it can operate to enrich uranium, and the purity of uranium, in response to sanctions reinstated by the United States after President Donald Trump unilaterally abandoned the nuclear agreement in 2018.Trump wants Tehran to negotiate a new accord that would place indefinite curbs on its nuclear program and restrict Tehran’s ballistic-missile program.The five remaining parties to the accord — Britain, France, and Germany, plus China and Russia — have pledged to keep the accord alive.But European partners have been unable to offer Tehran a way to sell its crude oil abroad despite the U.S. sanctions, which caused the value of Iran’s currency to plummet and sent its inflation rate soaring.Announcing they had triggered the 2015 deal’s Dispute Recognition Mechanism on January 14, Britain, France, and Germany warned that Tehran’s actions were “inconsistent with the provisions of the nuclear agreement” and had “increasingly severe and non-reversible proliferation implications.”Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said on January 16 that the three countries were allowing themselves to be bullied by the United States, which had threatened new tariffs on their goods.”E3 sold out remnants of JCPOA to avoid new Trump tariffs,” he wrote in a tweet, referring to the nuclear accord.“It won’t work my friends. You only whet his appetite. Remember your high school bully?” Zarif added.He continued by telling Europeans: “If you want to sell your integrity, go ahead. But DO NOT assume high moral/legal ground. YOU DON’T HAVE IT.”The Trump administration has threatened to impose a 25 percent tariff on European automobile imports if Britain, France, and Germany did not formally accuse Iran of breaking the nuclear pact, the Washington Post reported on January 15.In a speech on January 15, Rohani criticized the European powers’ decision and their failure to ensure his country enjoyed the economic benefits of the 2015 deal.”The next step you need to take is to return to your commitments,” the Iranian president said, while Zarif asserted that the nuclear deal was “not dead.”Under the 2015 pact, Iran pledged to curb its nuclear ambitions in exchange for international sanctions relief.Tehran, which insists its nuclear program is for civilian purposes only, announced that the final limit on its production of enriched uranium had been lifted earlier this month, days after top Iranian general Qasem Soleimani was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Baghdad.In retaliation, Iran on January 8 fired ballistic missiles at two bases housing U.S. forces in Iraq.Hours after the missile attack, a Ukrainian passenger airliner was shot down by Iran’s air defenses after it took off from Tehran, killing all 176 people on board.Rohani said in his speech on January 16 that his government was “working daily to prevent military confrontation or war.”He also said that that dialogue with the international community was difficult but remained “possible.”
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Lev Parnas, the indicted associate of U.S. President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer who worked to pressure Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden, told the New York Times and the U.S.-based cable news network MSNBC that Trump was aware of his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani’s activities in Ukraine.Trump “knew exactly what was going on,” Parnas told Rachel Maddow in an interview broadcast Wednesday night.The Times quoted him as saying, “I am betting my whole life that Trump knew exactly everything that was going on that Rudy Giuliani was doing in Ukraine.”Previously, Trump has denied sending Giuliani to Ukraine to look for dirt on Biden, the former vice president and a rival in the 2020 presidential election.But Parnas told Maddow that Trump “was aware of all my movements.””I wouldn’t do anything without the consent of Rudy Giuliani or the president,” Parnas said.  “I was on the ground doing their work.”Parnas said his function in working with Giuliani was to meet with senior Ukrainian officials in a search for evidence of corruption by Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, who worked for Burisma, a Ukrainian gas company. Trump allegedly withheld aid to Ukraine until President Volodymyr Zelenskiy committed to investigating the Bidens, and those allegations are at the center of his impeachment by the House of Representatives.In a tweet later Wednesday night, Katherine Faulders, White House and Capitol Hill reporter for ABC News, said she asked Giuliani if he had any comment on the interview with Parnas. He texted, “None he’s a very sad situation.”Asked Giuliani if he had any comment on the ongoing Parnas interview and he texted me “None he’s a very sad situation.”— Katherine Faulders (@KFaulders) January 16, 2020″I mean they have no reason to speak to me,” Parnas told Maddow. “Why would President Zelenskiy’s inner circle or (Interior Minister Arsen) Avakov or all these people or (former) President (Petro) Poroshenko meet with me? Who am I? They were told to meet with me. And that’s the secret they’re trying to keep.”He added that Trump’s interest in Ukraine was never about rooting out government corruption but was “all about Joe Biden, Hunter Biden.”When Maddow asked Parnas about Trump’s claim that he does not know him, Parnas said, “He lied,” adding that he was with Giuliani four or five days a week in Ukraine during which Trump was in constant contact with Giuliani.Parnas said he wants “to get the truth out … it’s important for our country, it’s important for me … a lot of things are being said that are not accurate.”Parnas and another Giuliani associate, Igor Fruman, have been indicted on charges of making illegal contributions to the Trump campaign. Both have pleaded not guilty. 
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Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to shift some of the presidential powers to the parliament before he ends his fourth and most likely last term as president.  He proposed constitutional changes to that effect in his state-of the-nation speech Wednesday. Putin also reshuffled the cabinet, naming a little-known government official as new prime minister to replace Dmitry Medvedev. Analysts see Putin’s unexpected moves as paving the way to hold on to power after 2024, when his presidential term ends. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke has more.
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The former pope Benedict XVI reportedly wants his name removed from a controversial book that appears to undermine his successor, Pope Francis, on issues of priestly celibacy. The book hit stores Wednesday in France, the first country to publish it. But despite the furor the book has stirred in the press, many French readers appear underwhelmed.The book, “Des Profondeurs de Nos Coeurs,” meaning “From the Depths of Our Hearts,”  defends priestly celibacy at a time when Pope Francis is considering whether to lift restrictions on married priests in remote areas. Cardinal Robert Sarah, who co-authored the book, rejects accusations he manipulated Benedict regarding the content.  The furor, which appears to lay bare spiritual divisions between the two popes, has made news headlines, but hasn’t stirred up much public interest.  Parisian Brigitte Gallay says she has heard about the book, but notes Protestant ministers are married with children. She sees nothing wrong about a church that’s closer to the lives of ordinary people — even though some Catholics might be shocked at the thought of married priests.  The Catholic Church has taken a hit in France, not just because of declining attendance, but also because of a major pedophilia scandal — the theme of a recent movie. A trial opened this month against a priest at the heart of the scandal, which has helped fuel debate about the dangers of priestly celibacy.  At Paris bookstore Gibert Joseph, social worker Alexander Monnot adds the book to a pile of others he’s planning to buy. Monnot says he supports celibacy for priests.  “The fact is, at the very beginning of the Church, there was Jesus and 12 apostles,” Monnot said. “And even some were married. They all left their families to preach. Jesus was not married. And priests should be an incarnation, a continuation of Jesus.”Monnot says he is looking forward to reading the book’s arguments in favor of celibacy, but that’s not the only reason he’s buying it. He predicts the French publisher will recall this edition, which has Benedict’s name as co-author, meaning the copy he’s buying may one day be a collector’s item.
 
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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is planning what’s dubbed ‘the construction project of the decade’, a massive canal connecting Turkey’s Marmara and Black Sea. The canal will provide an alternative route to the Bosporus, one of the world’s busiest waterways, which divides Istanbul. But the project is proving controversial, both domestically and internationally. Dorian Jones reports.
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