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Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido says military police raided the home of his uncle, a week after the relative was arrested on his return with Guaido to Venezuela.
    
Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido said military police raided the home of his uncle early Thursday, a week after the relative was arrested on his return with Guaido to Venezuela.
    
On Twitter, Guaido described the search of Juan Jose Marquez’s home as another act of persecution by a “cowardly dictatorship” that will not deter the opposition movement.
    
An Associated Press journalist saw a police vehicle parked in front of the Caracas apartment building where Marquez lives. An officer in a black mask later drove off in the vehicle.
    
Marquez traveled to Venezuela with Guaido, who had completed an international tour in which he sought support for the opposition’s campaign to oust President Nicolas Maduro.
    
Marquez was promptly arrested and accused of transporting explosives, an allegation that Guaido has dismissed as absurd.
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The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) has called on Russian authorities to reopen a criminal investigation into the murder of Boris Nemtsov, the former Russian opposition politician who was killed almost five years ago near the Kremlin.The OSCE said shortcomings in Russia’s original investigation left many questions unanswered.“His death was a tragedy for Russia and had a strong impact on the political climate, spreading fear and possibly opening up for further attacks and repression,” the OSCE said in a Feb. 20 report.Nemtsov was shot dead at close range on the Bolshoi Moskvoretsky Bridge, near the Kremlin in central Moscow, on Feb. 27, 2015.In June 2017, a Russian court sentenced former Chechen battalion leader Zaur Dadayev to 20 years in prison for killing Nemtsov.Four other Chechens were found guilty of involvement in the killing and sentenced to prison terms ranging from 11 to 19 years.FILE – Shadid Gubashev (L), Anzor Gubashev (C), and Zaur Dadayev (R) are seen during the reading of their sentences at their trial in the murder of Russian opposition politician Boris Nemtsov, in a courtroom in Moscow, Russia, July 13, 2017.Critics, including relatives and colleagues of Nemtsov, say Russian authorities failed to determine who ordered the killing.Some have expressed suspicions that the killing was ordered by someone within the inner circle of Russian President Vladimir Putin or Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov.The OSCE report, prepared by the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly’s special rapporteur, Margareta Cederfelt, said “organizers and instigators” of Nemtsov’s killing must be held accountable to “instill hope among those in Russia who continue to risk persecution and attacks to fight for democracy and the rule of law.”Despite calls both from within Russia and from other countries and from the international community to make sure Mr. Nemtsov’s murder was thoroughly, effectively, and transparently investigated so that both perpetrators, organizers, and initiators were held accountable, the official investigation and the following trial has been subject to severe criticism,” Cederfelt said.Cederfelt cited “important work” by independent researchers and experts “in filling in the blanks” left by Russia’s official investigation.FILE – The OSCE’s Margareta Cederfelt speaks during a news conference in Tbilisi, Georgia, Nov. 29, 2018.“They have particularly pointed to the potential involvement of the Chechen leadership and/or security services, even suggesting that the Russian president may be the initiator,” Cederfelt said.Cederfelt said that given the shortcomings of the official Russian probe, “such arguments can neither be dismissed nor confirmed.”The killing of Nemtsov — a reformist politician, former deputy prime minister, and sharp critic of Putin — was condemned internationally.Critics say Nemtsov’s killing has highlighted the dangers faced by Russians who oppose the Kremlin.Supporters of Nemtsov, including members of the country’s opposition, plan to hold a mass rally in Moscow on Feb. 29 to mark the fifth anniversary of his death.Some opposition supporters also plan to use the rally to protest proposed amendments to the country’s constitution that critics say are aimed at extending Putin’s grip on power after his current presidential term ends in 2024. 
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Google is attempting to make sure people know exactly what they’re signing up for when they use its online services — though that will still mean reading a lengthy document.The company updated its terms of service on Thursday — its largest update to the general use contract since 2012 — in response to a pair of court orders in Europe.Google has been updating its policies and tweaking what is and isn’t allowed on its sites for the past couple of years as scrutiny of the tech industry heats up across the U.S. and Europe. Google, Facebook, Twitter and other digital companies have been forced under a spotlight as regulators and customers examine just how much the companies know about their users and what they do with that information.Facebook last year updated its terms of service to clarify how it makes money from user data.Google says it hasn’t changed anything significant in the document, but rather used plain language to describe who can use its products and what you can post online.“Broadly speaking, we give you permission to use our services if you agree to follow these terms, which reflect how Google’s business works and how we earn money,” the document reads.The document is now about 2,000 words longer than it was before, in part because Google included a list of definitions and expanded it to cover Google Drive and Chrome. The new terms take effect in March.Google’s privacy policy is separate and was substantially updated in 2018 after Europe enacted broad-reaching privacy laws.The company also separately updated its “About Google” page to explain how it makes money from selling advertisements, often informed by the vast amount of customer information it collects.As Britain prepares to leave the European Union, Google also announced it is switching the service provider for U.K. customers from one based in Ireland to its main U.S. provider. The company says that it won’t change how U.K. customers’ data is protected or used. 
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Bolivia’s public prosecutor has opened an investigation into “electoral fraud” against former president Evo Morales and some of his closest allies, the attorney general said on Wednesday.
“A new case has been opened against the ex-authorities for electoral fraud,” said Juan Lanchipa.Morales was controversially awarded victory at October’s election despite a highly suspicious 24-hour freeze in the live vote count, after which his lead over nearest challenger Carlos Mesa had jumped significantly.An audit by the Organization of American States found clear evidence of vote rigging.After three weeks of at times violent protests against Morales’s re-election, the 60-year-old resigned on November 10 and fled abroad.October’s election was annulled a new one called for May 3 by interim President Jeanine Anez.Former president Mesa brought the case against Morales, accusing him of falsifying and altering documents, blocking electoral processes and concealing results.Following Morales’s resignation, the six members of the electoral tribunal were arrested. Five are currently in jail and the sixth under house arrest.Mesa says the investigation against them is inconclusive because it “doesn’t take into consideration the intellectual authors” of the fraud.The case against Morales and his associates — former vice president Alvaro Garcia and ex-ministers Juan Ramon Quintana, Hector Arce and Carlos Romero — has been brought so that “never again a president of the state, abusing his power, makes a mockery of the public’s vote,” said Mesa’s lawyer, Carlos Alarcon.He said it was “inadmissible” that only the six magistrates had been investigated when “they didn’t act for their own benefit.””They acted for the benefit of the ex-president Morales and the leadership of his government.”Morales, Bolivia’s first indigenous president who ruled for almost 14 years, is already under investigation for sedition and terrorism over an audio recording in which he allegedly urges his supporters to lay siege to La Paz and other major cities.The former trade union leader has been barred from standing for president in May’s general election — Bolivia’s constitution limits a president to two successive terms, while Morales ruled for three in a row.His Movement for Socialism party has nominated him to stand for a berth in the Senate but the electoral tribunal — which has been entirely replaced since he left power — is studying his eligibility.
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DESSOURCES, HAITI – Farmhand Celavi Belor has lost so much weight over the past year his clothes hang limply off his angular frame.“Sometimes I go two or three days without eating,” the 41-year-old said as he looked up from hoeing a rocky field in the mountains of northwestern Haiti.Farmhand Celavi Belor, 41, a father of five children, pauses from work in Jean-Rabel, Haiti, Jan. 31, 2020.The only food Belor, his wife and five children had to eat the day before was cornmeal, and now the only food left in their mud shack is a shriveled green chili and some stale beans.“My biggest worry is one day I just won’t be able to get up anymore,” he said, his eyes sunken and unfocused.While Haiti, the poorest country in the Americas, has long had one of the world’s highest levels of food insecurity, drought has ravaged harvests for the last few years, worsening food shortages and raising prices.The northwest, one of the Caribbean nation’s most remote and impoverished regions, has suffered the most.A collapse in the gourde currency has put imported food, which supplies more than half the country’s needs, out of reach for many Haitians like Belor, who earns just $0.40 a day when he can find the work.Compounding that, anti-government protests sparked by anger over alleged corruption shuttered businesses and public institutions for three months last fall and disrupted the transportation of goods, including food aid.By further stoking inflation and squeezing incomes, the peyi lock, as the standstill was known in Creole, has tipped Haiti into a new hunger crisis.Third of Haitians need foodOne in three Haitians, about 3.7 million people, needs urgent food assistance, up from 2.6 million people at the end of 2018, the United Nations said in December. Haiti now ranks 111 out of 117 countries on the Global Hunger Index, in the company mostly of the poorest sub-Saharan African countries.If immediate action is not taken, by next month 1.2 million people will only be able to eat one meal every other day in the Caribbean nation, the United Nations has warned.Frena Remorin, 30, (seated) cooks bananas in the improvised kitchen in the yard of her house in Jean-Rabel, Haiti, Jan. 31, 2020.“No one has eaten yet today but if I feed my kids too early in the day they are hungry by night and cannot sleep,” said Frena Remorin, 30, who lives down the road from Belor in the district of Dessources.Sitting on a stool peeling manioc and bananas to boil over a charcoal fire, Remorin is struggling to find work washing clothes because few people have the money to spend.“I don’t have enough money now for two meals a day,” she said.Political instabilityDonors who had hoped Haiti could rebuild as a successful nation after the country’s devastating 2010 quake have been frustrated by the political instability and bad governance hampering development efforts.With no authorized government or budget, Haiti now is not allowed to access certain funds from international organizations earmarked for it, further hindering its ability to respond to the food crisis. Foreign aid to Haiti’s public coffers, which leapt after 2010, halved last year.FILE – Haiti’s President Jovenel Moise speaks with Reuters, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Nov. 15, 2019.President Jovenel Moise is struggling to negotiate a power-sharing agreement to break the political gridlock. In the meantime, local authorities make do.“This is the first time we’ve had it this bad,” said Dessources district leader Jean Jacques Lebeau, 60, who receives $45 per month from the central government to help around 12,000 households.Self-sufficientIt wasn’t always like this. Haiti was largely food self-sufficient until the 1980s, when at the encouragement of the United States the country started loosening restrictions on crop imports and lowered tariffs, then imported surplus U.S. crops, a decision that put Haitian farmers out of business and contributed to investment tailing off.Add to this the effects of climate change: Haiti regularly tops the ranks of most vulnerable nations. This is because it is part of an island in the Caribbean, where hurricanes are getting stronger, but also because it has little infrastructure or resilience.The real impact of the crisis will show in six months or so as malnutrition sets in, experts like Cédric Piriou, Haiti Country Director of Action Against Hunger, say.Infant mortality already appears to be rising.“If we had four children suffering malnutrition die before, now these last few months it has been six to eight,” said Margareth Narcisse, 57, a doctor on the medical board of St Damien Pediatric’s Hospital in Port-au-Prince, the capital city.The impoverished slums of the capital are, together with the Northwest, the areas worst affected by hunger.Dorvil Chiloveson, 3, swollen with edema, is watched over by his mother Linda Julien, 20, in the malnutrition ward at St. Damien Pediatric Hospital in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Jan. 29, 2020.In the malnutrition ward, 3-year-old Dorvil Chiloveson lies on his side in a cot. He is suffering from severe protein malnutrition, known as kwashiorkor: his tiny body is swollen with edema, with patches of skin discolored and showing raw flesh.“We couldn’t go sell our harvest during peyi lock so we lost it,” said his grandmother Marise Rose Dor, 41, who lives on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince.After they ate their crop, all they could afford was rice with bananas from the garden. Instead of buying drinking water, they used a local spring they know is likely to be contaminated because of the absence of a sewage system in Haiti.Many families told Reuters they could no longer afford tablets to clean the water or charcoal to boil it.Helicopter aidThe U.N. World Food Program (WFP), which alongside other international organizations assists Haiti’s most needy, has scaled up operations in response to the crisis, distributing more food, and cash. Given the resurgence of gang violence plaguing the roads, it has also arranged for a helicopter to transport staff, other humanitarian workers and light cargo.The WFP estimated in November it needed $72 million to fund this emergency assistance to 700,000 Haitians for eight months.On Wednesday it said it had raised only $19 million so far.“Why should we bail the authorities out if they helped create this crisis?” one Haiti-based European diplomat asked, adding that politicians were not being held accountable. “How do we change that so that they don’t hurt people when they are going hungry?” Humanitarian workers — and Haitians — beg the world not to turn a blind eye to the immediate suffering.In Dessources, Belor, who cannot afford schooling in a country where about 80% of education is private, says his children are pale and listless.In the past, at least they could rely on the mango and breadfruit trees if they could not afford to buy food. But thanks to the drought, these trees are no longer producing.Belor no longer even worships at his Baptist church because he cannot afford the clothes he feels he needs to attend.“I live without hope,” he said.
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Federal prosecutors said Thursday they are taking charge of the investigating into a shooting in the German city of Hanau that left 11 people dead, including the suspect, amid reports that he may have had a far-right motive.The Federal Prosecutors Office in Karlsruhe, which handles serious crimes, said it planned to hold a news conference later Thursday.German news agency dpa reports that police are examining a video the suspect may have posted online several days earlier in which he details a conspiracy theory about child abuse in the United States. The authenticity of the video couldn’t immediately be verified.Nine people were killed at two hookah bars overnight. Police later said they found the suspected shooter and another person dead at a house not far from the second bar.Forensics officers investigate at the scene after a shooting in central Hanau, Germany, Feb. 20, 2020. Several people were killed in shootings in Hanau on Wednesday evening, authorities said.A spokesman for Hanau prosecutors, Markus Jung, confirmed the death toll but declined to comment on the reported video, or provide details of the suspect or victims.“We don’t believe there were further attackers,” Jung told The Associated Press.Officers sealed off and searched the apartment in Hanau’s Kesselstadt district, near the scene of one of the shootings, after following up witness statements on a getaway car. Police said work to confirm the identities of the two bodies at the home was still underway, and they couldn’t immediately give details on them or the identities of the victims of the earlier shootings.“Thoughts this morning are with the people of Hanau, in whose midst this terrible crime was committed,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman said on Twitter.“Deep sympathy for the affected families, who are grieving for their dead,” the spokesman, Steffen Seibert, said. “We hope with those wounded that they will soon recover.”Earlier Thursday, police said that eight people were killed and around five wounded. They said a dark vehicle was seen leaving the location of the first attack and another shooting was reported at a scene about 2½ kilometers (1½ miles) away.Police officers swarmed central Hanau, cordoning off the area of one of the shootings as a helicopter hovered overhead. A car covered in thermal foil also could be seen, with shattered glass next to it. Forensic experts in white overalls collected evidence.Hookah lounges are places where people gather to smoke flavored tobacco from Middle Eastern water pipes.“This was a terrible evening that will certainly occupy us for a long, long time and we will remember with sadness,” Hanau Mayor Claus Kaminsky told the Bild newspaper. Lawmaker Katja Leikert, a member of Merkel’s center-right party who represents Hanau in the German parliament, tweeted that it was “a real horror scenario for us all.”Hanau is about 20 kilometers (12 miles) east of Frankfurt. It has about 100,000 inhabitants and is in Hesse state.
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The European Union’s first post-Brexit summit Thursday in Brussels promises to be a contentious one. The subject is money — how to fill a nearly $65 billion budget gap left by Britain’s departure from the bloc. The EU’s 27 remaining members came together during Brexit negotiations, but that may not be the case in this new post-Brexit reality, with the departure of one of the EU’s biggest contributors.  ‘The Brexit gap’“What we call the Brexit gap — that’s estimated to be around 60 billion over seven years. So that leaves a hole of approximately 10 billion every year,“ said Marta Pilati, a policy analyst for the European Policy Center, a Brussels research group.  “One of the most contentious issues is that as a consequence of Brexit, the budget should be smaller,”  Pilati said, “or whether it should be maintained at the same level and thus allow more funding for the 27 member states.”Draft proposals are also getting pushback from richer EU countries, which argue they will shoulder too much of the financial burden. Meanwhile, poorer member states, many from central and eastern Europe, worry they will lose key development funds.  In France, the EU’s biggest agricultural producer, farmers said they were worried about cuts to the bloc’s Common Agricultural Policy, the biggest budget item.  Climate change funding?And some new areas of EU emphasis, including defense, research and innovation, and Europe’s coming “Green Deal” to fight climate change, could face less funding than expected.  “Because of course it’s easier to cut the budget of things that don’t exist yet, rather than cut the budget of programs that have been around for a very long time, and over which member states have very strong interests,” Pilati said.Some observers like Pilati believe this one-day summit may stretch into two days and possibly more, as countries try to resolve their differences.
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Canadian police said Wednesday that sudden whiteout conditions most likely triggered a massive pileup involving about 200 vehicles south of Montreal. There were no immediate reports of deaths, but Quebec provincial police said about a dozen people were sent to hospitals with minor to serious injuries after the midday crash in La Prairie, Quebec. Firefighters from La Prairie said two people were still trapped Wednesday afternoon, and authorities were trying to stabilize a diesel spill before extracting them from the wreckage. Those two people were considered to be in serious condition. The crash occurred around 12:30 p.m. on a stretch of Highway 15 that runs along the St. Lawrence River. The pileup of vehicles stretched for about a kilometer. Strong windsTransport Minister Francois Bonnardel told reporters in Quebec City the pileup took place in an area where heavy winds come off the river, creating sudden blizzard-like conditions. “People were driving, there were strong winds … and, suddenly, you couldn’t see anything,” Bonnardel said. ”And then, well, the pileup started.” Two snow removal operations took place in the area in the hour before the incident, he noted. Bonnardel said the highway isn’t known for particular safety issues and 65,000 vehicles use the southbound part of it daily. The transport minister said he’d await the results of an investigation before deciding if any measures needed to be taken. Dozens need towingPolice spokesman Sergeant Stephane Tremblay said about 50 vehicles were able to drive away from the collision, but 75 others would need to be towed. Numerous vehicles were mangled, including several large trucks. About 150 people were taken by bus to a nearby community center for treatment and to be picked up. Tremblay said police crash experts would study what caused the pileup. A school bus was also involved in the pileup, but none of the high school students on board were injured, said Andree Laforest, the province’s acting public security minister. 
 
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Across parts of southern England and Wales, families were watching anxiously midweek to see if major rivers break their flood barriers. Heavy rain is forecast for counties that have already been flooded thanks to torrential downpours brought on by two by massive storms in quick succession.A four-day deluge could turn already swollen rivers even more dangerous, forecasters and locals fear. Britain’s Environment Agency’s executive director, John Curtin, said Wednesday:  “We expect further disruptive weather into Wednesday and Thursday, bringing a significant flood risk to the West Midlands, and there are flood warnings in place across much of England.”A man uses a plank of wood to paddle a kayak on flood water after the River Wye burst its banks in Ross-on-Wye, western England, on February 17, 2020, in the aftermath of Storm Dennis.But the unprecedented floods that have hit southern England, and now threatening damage further north, too, are not only wrecking homes and properties, but also the reputation of a government that was only elected into office just two months ago, say analysts.Furious locals hit by extreme floods are slamming  Prime Minister  Boris Johnson  for having failed to visit communities worst affected by the storms. Thousands have been evacuated. Even so, Mr. Johnson and the most senior ministers have not pulled on their waders to get out and about to empathize and console.It is now as common on the drenched frontlines to hear the refrain, “Where’s Boris?” as it is to hear the query, “What’s the forecast?”A man cleans mud from the street in Pontypridd in south Wales, Feb. 16, 2020.In the Welsh town of Pontypridd — where 600 people have been displaced — Robin Williams, 62, asked journalists:  “Where’s Boris? Where’s the help?” Another Pontypridd homeowner, Tracey Waites, 49, told reporters,  “We haven’t seen anyone. There are no politicians down here helping. Where are they?”The local MP, Labour’s Alex Davies-Jones, has dubbed Mr. Johnson  “the Scarlet Pimpernel,” adding,  “You can never find him in an emergency.”For several commentators the absence of the prime minister is even more inexplicable considering this is not the first time Mr. Johnson has been slow off the mark when it comes to natural disasters and even flooding. In December, he was heckled during the election campaign for visiting belatedly storm-wracked communities in the north of England.Regularly ‘updated’
Mr. Johnson  is also facing growing criticism for failing to convene the government’s emergency Cobra committee, a cross-departmental panel normally called to respond to a national crisis or potential one. As historic towns battled unprecedented floodwaters destroying lives and livelihoods, Mr. Johnson remained working at a government mansion in Kent with no plans to visit communities worst-hit by the storm.FILE – Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson speaks during a cabinet meeting at 10 Downing Street in London, Dec. 17, 2019.A Downing Street spokesman said Mr. Johnson did not need to visit as he is being “updated” regularly.   And the environment minister, George Eustice, said the government had a  “firm grip” on the situation. But those responses were being scorned Wednesday by locals affected by the floods as well as by a swelling chorus of local  MPs.Fresh off a major general election victory in December — one that is reshaped the electoral map of Britain — Mr. Johnson seemed destined for a long honeymoon period. He was king of all he surveyed and armed with a large parliamentary majority he was able finally to conclude the long-running first phase of Britain’s tumultuous exit from the European Union, securing passage in the House of Commons of a contentious withdrawal agreement, an approval that had evaded his predecessor in Downing Street, Theresa May.Tightening his iron grip on the ruling Conservatives, he is been able without danger to purge his cabinet of potential challengers and to avoid bringing into his government from Conservative ranks other major political figures who might cause him problems.FILE – Government Cabinet Minister Sajid Javid arrives for a meeting at 10 Downing Street in London, Oct. 10, 2017.Last week, his Chancellor of the Exchequer,  Sajid Javid, resigned rather than be reappointed without the right to name his own advisers, a Mr. Johnson precondition for him to continue as Britain’s finance minister. A less secure Prime Minister would have been nervous to lose a heavyweight from his cabinet, one who could all too easily serve as a rallying point for internal party dissent, say analysts.But the government’s handling of this week’s floods appear to have washed out Mr.  Johnson’s honeymoon, bringing it to a premature close.  The criticism is coming not just from his usual detractors in the opposition parties. Johnson-supportive tabloid newspapers the Daily Mail and Sun have been pointing out that the frustration is high even in constituencies that voted for Brexit and backed Mr. Johnson to become Conservative leader.  
   
And a series of other gaffes and mishaps — as well as a likely looming bad-natured clash with the EU over future relations — has left some questioning about the competency of his government and its powers of foresight.No-show at Munich conference
The question of where is Boris was being asked, too, in Munich last week at the annual security conference, which draws top leaders from around the World and secures the attendance of virtually all Europeans heads of government. This year’s conference featured France’s Emmanuel  Macron,  Canada’s Justin  Trudeau, Germany’s Angela Merkel as well as Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey  Lavrov. The U.S. was represented by a high level delegation led by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.FILE – Members of the international committee take their seats for a follow-up meeting on Libya, arranged by German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, in Munich, Germany, Feb. 16, 2020.None of Britain’s military or intelligence chiefs attended. Nor did Britain’s foreign or defense secretaries. Mr. Johnson had been offered a speaking slot  in the coveted opening session of the conference, but turned it down. Britain only sent a junior foreign affairs minister.At the last minute, Britain’s national security adviser, Mark Sedwill, an un-elected official, was ordered to cut short a family vacation and fly to Munich for the conference’s final session. According to Sky News commentator,  Alistair Bunkall, “a small cheer went up in the media center when he was introduced.” Bunkall reported that a conference organizer told Sedwill, “It’s great you’re here but it would have been even greater if others from your government were present.” Britain’s absence was noticed by others, too.Some of the blame for what commentators and Opposition MPs see as a mishandling of the political response to the floods — as well as the lack of representation at Munich — is being laid at the door of Mr. Johnson’s top strategist, Dominic Cummings, a firebrand populist who was the major tactician for anti-EU campaigners in the 2016 Brexit referendum.Cummings drew fire earlier this week for appointing as a political forecaster in Downing Street a 27-year-old who had a history of racist social-media comments, in which he’d argued black people are less intelligent than whites for genetic reasons. Amid a media firestorm the political forecaster quit. “Cummings has been the most visible face of No 10 in the 10 weeks since the December 2019 general election,” says Anthony Seldon, a contemporary historian and author of biographies on every British prime minister since Margaret Thatcher. “He has adopted a ‘hub and poke’ model. He has tried to centralize power within No 10, over the Treasury, ministers and their advisers,” he wrote in a commentary for The Times.Seldon says part of he problem is that Mr. Johnson’s team has yet to learn that the single-minded qualities needed to get into power are different from those required in government. Once in office, he says, prime ministers “have to be diplomats, cajoling and persuading people, and not alienating them.” 
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German police say several people were shot to death in the city of Hanau on Wednesday evening.The dpa news agency reported that police said people were killed but it was not clear exactly what was behind the incident. It also was not immediately clear how many people were dead.Hanau is near Frankfurt.Regional public broadcaster Hessischer Rundfunk reported, without citing sources, that an attack took place in a hookah lounge in the center of the city. It said witnesses reported hearing eight or nine shots and seeing at least one person lying on the ground.The perpetrator or perpetrators then apparently went to another part of the city, where shots were fired in another hookah lounge, the broadcaster said.
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A Mexican microbiologist accused of spying for Russia in Miami is considered a benefactor in his native Oaxaca state, the mayor of his hometown said Wednesday, and he holds positions with at least two prominent universities. Mayor Hazael Matus said scientist Hector Alejandro Cabrera has helped set up science projects in his hometown of El Espinal and had been considered a contender for a Nobel Prize in medicine; Cabrera was known for his work on cardiac treatments and was hoping to produce an ointment to help heal wounds in diabetics in his home state. It is very strange for this to happen because he is a very altruistic person with a lot of social conscience. He helped people and all this seems strange, Matus said. “We don’t know what happened, but I bet it is a confusion or an attack for scientific reasons. He may have discovered something that upset some people or some business interests.” U.S. authorities said Tuesday that Cabrera had been hired by a Russian government official to locate the vehicle of a U.S. government source in the Miami area and inform the Russian of its location. The U.S. government source, who might be better described as an informant, was not identified. It was also unclear why a Mexican scientist based in Singapore might have been chosen for such a mission. Two wivesBut U.S. authorities revealed in an indictment that Cabrera had a Mexican wife and simultaneously also had another Russian wife. The Russian wife had traveled back to her home country in March to arrange some documents, but was then prevented by Russian authorities from leaving the country, in what may have been part of an effort by the Russians to pressure Cabrera into working for them. Cabrera was arrested and charged with acting within the United States on behalf of a foreign government — in this case, Russia — without notifying the U.S. attorney general, and conspiracy to do the same, according to the Justice Department. A pretrial detention hearing was set for Friday in U.S. Magistrate Court in Miami and arraignment for March 3 in the same court. Cabrera is listed as an associate professor at the medical school jointly run by Duke University and the National University of Singapore. He also was appointed director in 2018 of the FEMSA Biotechnology Center at the Monterrey Institute of Technology in northern Mexico, which said he earned doctorates in molecular microbiology in Russia and molecular cardiology in Germany. Matus, the mayor, described Cabrera as a hometown boy who made good, going abroad to study for his graduate degrees. But he said Cabrera never forgot his hometown of 9,500 and helped organize the scientific community to assist in rebuilding houses in El Espinal after a magnitude 8.1 quake hit on September 7, 2017, and a 6.1 temblor struck two weeks later. The town has a large Zapotec indigenous community. Development meetings setCabrera had been scheduled to attend meetings in Mexico on Monday about a series of research centers that he was helping to establish in El Espinal as part of the government’s huge Trans-Isthmus development project, which is meant to upgrade rail links between the Pacific and Gulf of Mexico through Mexico’s narrow Isthmus of Tehuantepec. The $430 million project is one of the infrastructure priorities of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. Cabrera was a leading promoter of El Espinal’s role in the project, helping recruit Mexican universities and government agencies to set up research centers on medicine, seismology, logistics and other topics there. According to the Justice Department, a Russian government official recruited Cabrera in 2019. The Russian official later directed him to rent a specific property in Miami-Dade County, Florida, but not in his own name, the Justice Department said. Cabrera traveled twice to Moscow to meet with the official, the Justice Department said, and during the second meeting he received a physical description of the U.S. government source’s vehicle. The Russian official told Cabrera to locate the car, obtain the source’s vehicle license plate number, and note the physical location of the source’s vehicle with the goal of providing that information in April or May. The Justice Department said Cabrera, having traveled from Mexico City to Miami on February 13, attracted the attention of a security guard where the U.S. government source resided because his rental car entered the premises while tailgating another vehicle. According to the indictment, Cabrera asked his Mexican wife, who accompanied him, to take a photo of the source’s vehicle and license plate — a step taken for convenience even though the Russian official had told him not to take a photo — just to write the number down. U.S. Customs and Border Protection stopped Cabrera and his wife when they appeared at Miami’s airport Sunday night to return to Mexico City. Cabrera admitted to law enforcement officers that he was directed by a Russian government official to conduct the operation, the Justice Department said. 
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Russia’s entry ban for Chinese nationals will be partial and affect only those who travel with tourist, private, student or work visas, the country’s Foreign Ministry said Wednesday, clarifying the conditions of a sweeping entry ban for Chinese citizens announced the day before. Visitors with official, business, humanitarian or transit visas will still be allowed into the country, the ministry said. The ban goes into effect Thursday at midnight Moscow time (2100 GMT). It was announced by the Russian government on Tuesday amid the new coronavirus outbreak centered in China that has infected more than 75,000 people worldwide. The measure is one of many Russia has taken to keep the virus from spreading. The country so far has reported three confirmed cases of the COVID-19 disease — two Chinese citizens in Russia who were treated and released, and a Russian national infected on the Diamond Princess cruise ship. Trains stopped, school vacation extendedRussia suspended all trains to China and North Korea, shut down its land border with China and Mongolia, and extended a school vacation for Chinese students until March 1. Hundreds of Russians who returned from China this year have been hospitalized as a precaution, and medics continue to monitor more than 14,000 people in total. However, while some of these steps at first appeared sweeping, they turned out to have loopholes and caveats that allowed Russia to maintain its political and economic ties with China. Those ties became increasingly important for Moscow after its relations with the West soured over Russian’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and other disputes. Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova argued that the entry ban was necessary because Russia lacks enough facilities to hospitalize all Chinese travelers who may have the virus. Ensuring quarantine conditions with permanent monitoring for thousands of travelers from China is unfeasible,'' Golikova said. As described Wednesday, this week's partial entry ban would minimize the effect on business connections between China and Russia and on the operation of Moscow's Sheremetyevo International Airport, a major transit hub for Chinese tourists traveling to Europe. FILE - A medical staffer works with test systems for the diagnosis of coronavirus at the Krasnodar Center for Hygiene and Epidemiology microbiology lab in Krasnodar, Russia, Feb. 4, 2020.In the same vein, the Russian government last month halted most air traffic to China, with exceptions for four Chinese airlines and flagship Russian carrier Aeroflot. Currently, there are still regular flights to Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Hong Kong. China has remained a top trading partner for Russia for the last decade, so cutting the ties completely is hardly an option, said Alexander Gabuyev, chair of the Russia in the Asia-Pacific Program at the Carnegie Moscow Center. This contradiction between the need to … control the spread of disease and at the same time to maintain good economic ties with China is dictating this two-steps-forward-one-step-back policy,” Gabuyev said. Visitors coming to Russia for business or humanitarian purposes account for 10% of all Chinese travelers, according to Gabuyev. Last year, 1.5 million Chinese tourists traveled to Russia. Millions could be lostHowever, Russia’s tourism industry is about to suffer a significant blow with the flow of Chinese visitors effectively cut off during the entry ban. Because of all the restrictions, tour operators working with Chinese travelers could lose up to $47 million of profits in the coming months, Maya Lomidze, head of the Association of Tour Operators of Russia, said Wednesday. The forecast is pessimistic at this point,'' Lomidze said.It would be good to have an understanding of how the situation in China will unfold and how long the travel ban for Chinese nationals will last.” 
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A man in Florida is suing one of Latin America’s largest airlines, saying his 6-year-old son was sexually assaulted by an airline employee while traveling as an unaccompanied minor from Brazil to the U.S.The father filed the negligence lawsuit Monday against LATAM Airlines in federal court in Orlando, Florida.In a statement, a spokesman for LATAM said the company hadn’t received a summons related to the lawsuit. “However, it takes any allegation of this nature seriously and will fully cooperate with any resulting investigation,” the statement said.  In 2018, the boy’s mother put him on a LATAM flight from Belo Horizonte to Sao Paulo with the expectation that her son would then transfer to a Florida-bound flight, according to the lawsuit.The boy had his Brazilian and U.S. passports, as well as airline documents, in a plastic folder around his neck. At some point, a flight attendant removed the folder and placed the documents in the boy’s backpack. The boy was handed off to another LATAM employee when he landed in Sao Paulo, but the flight attendant neglected to tell the employee where the travel documents were, the lawsuit said.Because they couldn’t find the documents, Brazilian Federal Police refused to let the boy on the connecting flight. By the time the airline employee found the documents in the backpack, the Florida-bound flight had taken off, according to the lawsuit.The airline decided to put the boy up at a nearby hotel where four airline employees took turns supervising him over 15 hours. One of the employees — a man — sexually assaulted the boy, the lawsuit said.The lawsuit said the airline failed to train its employees, minimize risks and supervise its employees.”LATAM, and the airline industry generally, had actual knowledge of the risk to unaccompanied minor children during lengthy layovers, and that unaccompanied minors who are negligently cared for could result in assaults of children,” the lawsuit said.The Associated Press typically does not name people who say they have been sexually assaulted.A spokeswoman for the father’s attorney on Wednesday would not comment when asked whether law enforcement was notified.
 
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A lawyer for Julian Assange said Wednesday that the WikiLeaks founder plans to claim during his extradition hearing that he was offered a pardon by the Trump administration if he agreed to say Russia was not involved in leaking Democratic National Committee emails during the 2016 U.S. election campaign.Assange is fighting extradition to the United States on spying charges, and his full court hearing is due to begin next week.At a preliminary hearing, lawyer Edward Fitzgerald said that in August 2017, then-Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher visited Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy in London.Wikileaks founder Julian Assange leaves in a prison van after appearing at Westminster Magistrates Court for an administrative hearing in London, Jan. 13, 2020.Fitzgerald said a statement from another Assange lawyer, Jennifer Robinson, recounted “Mr. Rohrabacher going to see Mr. Assange and saying, on instructions from the president, he was offering a pardon or some other way out, if Mr. Assange … said Russia had nothing to do with the DNC leaks.”The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Emails embarrassing for the Democrats and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign were hacked before being published by WikiLeaks in 2016.District Judge Vanessa Baraitser said the evidence was admissible in the extradition case.Assange appeared at London’s Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Wednesday by video-link from Belmarsh prison, where he is being held as he awaits his extradition hearing.U.S. prosecutors have charged the 48-year-old Australian computer hacker with espionage over WikiLeaks’ hacking of hundreds of thousands of confidential government documents. If found guilty, he faces up to 175 years in jail.He argues he was acting as a journalist entitled to First Amendment protection.Assange spent seven years in Ecuador’s embassy after holing up there in 2012 to avoid questioning in Sweden over unrelated sexual assault allegations.Assange was evicted from the embassy in April 2019 and was arrested by British police for jumping bail in 2012. In November, Sweden dropped the sex crimes investigation because so much time had elapsed.There is no quick end in sight to Assange’s long legal saga. His full extradition hearing is due to begin with a week of legal argument starting Monday. It will resume in May, and a ruling is not expected for several months, with the losing side likely to appeal.
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​In October 2016, the head of Russia’s largest oil company traveled to the birthplace of Hugo Chavez, in the empty, sweltering plains of Venezuela, to unveil a giant bronze statue  of the late socialist leader that he and his longtime friend, Russian President Vladimir Putin, commissioned from a prominent Russian artist.It was a turning point in the relationship between Russia and Venezuela, and Rosneft CEO Igor Sechin brought with him a 600-year-old choir from a Moscow monastery to celebrate. Speaking to throngs of red-shirted government supporters in fluent Spanish gleaned from his days as a Soviet military translator in Africa, Sechin praised Chavez as a “leader of multi-polarity” and a “symbol of an entire era.”
“We have no choice between victory or death,” said Sechin, quoting a Venezuelan independence hero to describe the deepening ties between the two U.S. adversaries. “We must achieve victory.”
Now the Trump administration wants to break up that blossoming alliance as part of its campaign to oust Chavez’s successor, Nicolas Maduro.
On Tuesday, the Treasury Department blocked U.S. companies from doing business with Rosneft Trading SA, accusing the Geneva subsidiary of the Russian state-owned oil giant of providing a critical lifeline to Maduro as he seeks to bypass U.S. sanctions.
For months, U.S. officials have been warning foreign companies that they could face retaliation if they continue to do business with Maduro. Those admonishments have been aimed primarily at Russia, which U.S. officials say handles about 70% of Venezuelan oil transactions that have been rerouted since the Trump administration a year ago made it illegal for Americans to by crude from Venezuela.
Francisco Monaldi, a Venezuelan oil expert at Rice University in Houston, said the latest actions should send a chill through companies in Spain, China and elsewhere that continue to partner with state-run oil monopoly PDVSA. It could also foretell the ending of a special license for Chevron that has so far exempted the San Ramon, California-based company from having to pull out of the country, where it’s a partner in joint ventures with PDVSA that produce about a quarter of the OPEC nation’s total production.
“It’s no longer the dog barking,” said Monaldi. “It’s biting now.”
PDVSA in a statement condemned what it called “economic assassination” by the U.S. aimed at taking control of Venezuela’s oil industry. Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza said the new actions would bolster Venezuela’s lawsuit filed against the Trump administration at the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity.
Rosneft operates with PDVSA several oil fields that it acquired after U.S. drillers were forced out by Chavez’s nationalization drive.
But as the new, go-to supplier of the country’s pariah crude it wins two ways, according to analysts. First, Rosneft purchases Venezuela’s premium Merey 16 crude at a steep discount. It then uses the proceeds from its sale to pay down $6.5 billion lent to PDVSA since 2014 for the purchase of Russian-made weaponry and other goods.
Meanwhile, refineries along the U.S. Gulf Coast that used to depend on Venezuela’s heavy crude have nearly tripled their imports of unfinished Russian petroleum products in the year since sanctions have been in place, according to U.S. Energy Department data.
To avoid complications for customers in China and India, Rosneft has been hiring tankers that try to hide their cargo by turning off their mandatory tracking systems and carrying out risky ship-to-ship transfers off the coast of west Africa and other distant locations.
In the short term, he expects Maduro will have to pay more to find another intermediary to take on the added risk of moving the country’s oil. That means his cash-strapped government will have even less money to import scarce food and medical supplies as well as repair the country’s crumbling electricity infrastructure. And with storage facilities already at capacity, production that is already at a seven-decade low is likely to fall even further, he added.
Still, short of a U.S. naval blockade of Venezuelan ports — a military option that the Trump administration has refused to rule out but has shown no sign of pursuing — nobody expects oil sales from the nation sitting atop the world’s largest petroleum reserves to dry up completely.
“They can find always find ways to sell it, but it’s much harder,” said Monaldi.
Even less clear is the impact on the U.S.’ goal of engaging Russia to find a solution to Venezuela’s year-old political impasse.
The U.S. leads a group of now nearly 60 nations that recognize opposition leader Juan Guaido as Venezuela’s rightful leader following what it considers Maduro’s fraudulent 2018 re-election. In turn, Russia has accused the Trump administration of spreading false information to engineer a coup, needling the U.S. in what has traditionally been considered Washington’s backyard as the two sides wage proxy battles for influence in Syria, Ukraine and other global hot spots.
Richard Nephew, an energy researcher at Columbia University, said that in sparing Rosneft itself, and only going after one of its many units, the impact on Russia’s continued political support for Maduro is likely to be more muted.
The bulk of Rosneft’s long-term supply contracts are arranged directly by the parent company in Moscow, with the Swiss-based trading unit handling spot sales, he said. The sanctions also include a three-month winding down period, which should give the company — and ravenous oil traders — plenty of time to redirect transactions, including with Venezuela.
In addition, Rosneft and Sechin were already partially sanctioned in 2014 in retaliation for Russia’s annexation of Crimean peninsula in Ukraine. As a result, many U.S. companies had already been steering clear of the company.
“This seems more like a warning shot designed to look bigger than it actually is,” said Nephew, who helped design U.S. sanctions policy while at the State Department under President Barack Obama. “It’s shooting someone who is Russian sounding without really punishing the Russians themselves.”
Several pro-Putin lawmakers were dismissive of the actions, saying they would appeal to the World Trade Organization to remove what they described as unilateral, unlawful U.S. actions.
“I think this issue can be resolved,” Vladimir Dzhabarov, a member of Russia’s upper house of parliament, told RIA Novosti news agency. “They’re smart over there [in Rosneft] and they will find a way to get around it.”
But even if Putin maintains outward support for Maduro, it’s unclear if he’ll double down and lend even more money to the bankrupt country.
At the height of unrest in 2018, anti-government protesters tried to destroy the Chavez statue dedicated by Russia. Today, it’s under heavy guard, pointing to the uneasy calm that prevails in the normally pro-government Venezuelan countryside, where power outages are an almost daily occurrence and misery widespread.
While Venezuela has stayed current on its debt to Russia, and is expected to pay off the last remaining amount in the coming weeks, it’s defaulted on almost all other lenders and investors in the country’s bonds. Meanwhile, its debt with Russia is backed by a lien on 49.9% of PDVSA’s American subsidiary, Houston-based CITGO, control of which the Trump administration has handed to a board named by Guaido.
“The Russians are nothing if not good chess players,” Russ Dallen, the Miami-based head of Caracas Capital Markets brokerage, wrote in a recent report. Rosneft’s “choice here will be an important tell for us about the future direction of their policy.” 
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Turkey’s president Wednesday criticized the European Union’s decision to launch a maritime effort focused on enforcing the U.N arms embargo around Libya, accusing European nations that agreed to the operation of “interfering in the region.”Recep Tayyip Erdogan also hailed a decision by Libya’s U.N.-supported government to withdraw from talks with rivals following an attack Tuesday on the sea port of the Libyan capital, Tripoli.EU foreign ministers agreed earlier this week to end Operation Sophia, the bloc’s naval mission in the Mediterranean Sea, and launch a maritime effort focused more on implementing the U.N. arms embargo around Libya.Operation Sophia was set up in 2015 as tens of thousands of migrants headed across the sea from North Africa to Europe. Its aim was to crack down on migrant smugglers, but also to enforcethe 2011 arms embargo, which is routinely being flouted.EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said several European countries had offered to take part in the new operation.“I want to specifically mention that the EU does not have the right to make any decision concerning Libya,” Erdogan said in a speech to legislators from his ruling party in parliament. “The EU is trying to take charge of the situation and interfere.”Libya has been in turmoil since 2011, when a civil war toppled long-time dictator Moammar Gadhafi, who was later killed. Relentless turmoil subsequently engulfed the oil-rich country, which is now split between rival governments based in its east and west, each backed by an array of foreign countries apparently jockeying for influence to control Libya’s resources.The U.N.-supported government in Tripoli is backed by Turkey and Qatar. On the other side are the eastern-based forces of commander Khalifa Hifter, which rely on military assistance from the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, as well as France and Russia.Hifter was in Moscow on Wednesday and met with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement.The parties “noted the important role” of talks that took place in Moscow on Jan. 13 in “implementing a ceasefire and starting the process of normalizing the situation in the country.” The statement also reiterated the need to comply with decisions made during a Berlin peace summit last month.In the Berlin conference, world powers and other countries with interests in Libya’s long-running civil war agreed to respect the much-violated arms embargo, hold off on military support to the warring parties, and push the sides to reach a full cease-fire.The U.N. special envoy to for Libya, Ghassan Salame, however has accused some countries of stepping up weapons deliveries to Libya’s warring sides in hopes of a military victory.Fighting between the country’s factions has intensified over the past year. Recently, Turkey sent hundreds of Syrian fighters, including militants affiliated with groups such as al-Qaida and the Islamic State group, to fight on behalf of the Tripoli-based government to defend the city from Hifter’s offensive.The Turkish leader also voiced support for Tuesday’s decision by the Tripoli-based government to suspend participation in U.N.-brokered talks in Geneva, following an attack by Hifter’s forces on Tripoli’s port.“It is the right decision,” Erdogan said.He added that Turkey would continue supporting the Tripoli-based government to “establish dominance” over the whole of the country.Hifter’s forces claimed they hit a weapons and ammunition depot at the port on Tuesday “to weaken the combat capabilities of the mercenaries who arrived from Syria” to fight alongside Tripoli-based militias.The Geneva talks between Libya’s warring sides had resumed earlier on Tuesday in a bid to salvage a fragile cease-fire in the North African nation. The current cease-fire was brokered by Russia and Turkey on Jan. 12 to deescalate the fight for control of Tripoli, but both sides have repeatedly violated the truce. 
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An international appeals court in the Netherlands has ordered Russia to pay $50 billion in compensation to shareholders of the former oil company, Yukos.It is the latest chapter in a long-running saga that came to define Russia’s political and business climate in the early years of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s rule.According to the ruling issued by The Hague Court of Appeal, Yukos — the one-time oil giant owned by Russian businessman-turned-Kremlin-foe Mikhail Khodorkovsky — unfairly lost tens of billions of dollars in revenue after Khodorkovsky was jailed and his company seized by the Russian government amid unpaid tax claims in 2004.Tuesday’s ruling in effect reinstated an earlier 2014 court-ordered compensation package that had been overturned during a later appeal that went in Russia’s favor.The court ruled that decision “not correct,” adding “the arbitration order is in force again.”Yukos alumni and allies celebrated the decision. “This is a victory for the rule of law,” Tim Osborne, chief executive of GML, a company that represents Yukos shareholders, said in a statement. “The independent courts of a democracy have shown their integrity and served justice. A brutal kleptocracy has been held to account.”Russia’s Justice Ministry indicated it would appeal the decision, arguing the court ”failed to take into account the illegitimate use by former Yukos shareholders of the Energy Charter Treaty that wasn’t ratified by the Russian Federation.”The ministry also noted that a 2011 European Court for Human Rights review had rejected allegations the case against Yukos was politically motivated.In a message posted on Facebook, Khodorkovsky denied that he had gained financially from the decision, but celebrated its outcome nonetheless.“For it has confirmed not only in procedure but in essence: The seizure of Yukos was not about taxes, but a fight with a political opponent,” he said.New president, ambitious oligarchThe Yukos case played an outsized role in defining what kind of Russia Putin would come to build.On the surface, it was a business dispute. The Kremlin argued that Khodorkovsky and his company owed millions in unpaid taxes. In reality, it was more about politics and power.  Putin, still relatively new to the Kremlin post in the early 2000s, sought to assert himself over powerful business barons — the so-called oligarchs — who had played a big role in government affairs under his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin.Putin’s offer: Stay out of politics and keep your wealth.  While some took the warning seriously, Khodorkovsky, then Russia’s wealthiest man, continued to openly fund Russia’s budding civil society and liberal political parties.  To supporters, Khodorkovsky represented the best of an emerging Russian business culture — a reformed oligarch looking to play by western rules of transparency and fair play.To his detractors, including Putin, he was merely a wolf in sheep’s clothing.  The arrestA turning point was a meeting with Putin and the business elite in 2003, in which Khodorkovsky and the Kremlin leader openly sparred over corruption.Six months later, FSB agents stormed Khodorkovsky’s plane at a Siberian airport. Russia’s wealthiest man was now its most famous prisoner.  An initial trial found him guilty of tax evasion and sentenced him to nine years in prison. A second criminal investigation added money laundering and additional years to Khodorkovsky’s prison term.Amnesty International labeled the former tycoon a prisoner of conscience.Meanwhile, the Kremlin oversaw Yukos’s dismantling, divvying up its prized assets to a new cadre of Kremlin loyalists at bargain prices until the oil giant was bankrupt.Life after prison  Putin freed Khodorkovsky as part of a wider amnesty ahead of the Sochi Games in 2014 — and a promise the businessman would stay out of politics.  Yet Russia, and Putin, have remained the focus of Khodorkovsky’s work after he fled Russia for Europe.He relaunched his NGO, Open Russia, with an eye toward reforming Russian civil society and insuring free and fair elections.  The organization was put on Russia’s “undesirable organizations” list in 2017, and its employees were routinely hounded by police.In a further sign that Khodorkovsky’s activities are perceived as a threat to the Kremlin, Putin proposed a ban on Russians who lived abroad from assuming the presidency, amid a wide-ranging set of reforms to the constitution earlier this year.  The amendment, currently under review by Russian lawmakers, seemed almost tailor-made to Khodorkovsky.And yet, it was another constitutional amendment suggested by Putin — that Russia no longer abide by international court decisions when it felt its state interests were infringed — that seemed to anticipate today’s Hague ruling in favor of compensation.Indeed, while Khodorkovsky acknowledged money to Yukos would likely not be forthcoming, he waxed lyrical on Russia’s future beyond the Putin era. “Russia is my homeland. And my homeland has no secret accounts, does not rob companies, and has no political opponents,” Khodorkovsky said on Twitter. “It has only sons.”Россия мне и не должна. Россия – моя Родина, а Родина тайных счетов не имеет, компании не ворует и политических противников у нее нет. Только сыновья. А вот с Кремлем счеты не закрыты и луж для всех кремлевских приготовлено еще не мало. pic.twitter.com/uzGrq5KZgy— Ходорковский Михаил (@mich261213) February 18, 2020
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When avalanches crash down mountainsides, it is a race against time to find those buried in the snow.  Rescue teams rush to emergency sites.  At that point, they deploy their secret weapon.  VOA’s Arash Arabasadi reports rescue dogs dig deep for disaster relief.
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Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro repeated a debunked sexually charged allegation about one of the country’s more prominent journalists on Tuesday, drawing fire from press freedom advocates and even some recent allies.Bolsonaro referred to Patricia Campos Mello, a reporter for newspaper Folha de S. Paulo who last year won the International Press Freedom Award after coverage of his presidential campaign. She’d also been honored for earlier reporting from the Middle East, U.S. and Africa.A witness in a congressional hearing testified she had insinuated an offer of sex in exchange for help with a story that triggered an investigation of Bolsonaro’s campaign by Brazil’s top electoral court. Her newspaper quickly debunked the assertion by releasing transcripts, screenshots and recordings of their conversations.Still, Bolsonaro echoed the insinuation as he spoke outside the presidential residence in Brasilia.“He talked about the journalist’s harassment, hitting on him. She wanted a scoop, she wanted to give a scoop, at any price, against me,” Bolsonaro said with a smile, using a Portuguese word for “scoop” that can have sexual connotations. That drew laughs from his supporters.Hours later Bolsonaro spoke to journalists again at the same spot. “Is there anyone from Folha there? So I sexually attacked your reporter? OK. I don’t want to talk to you,” he said before walking away.FILE – Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro greets supporters after attending a Changing of the Guard at the Planalto Presidential Palace, in Brasilia, Nov. 28, 2019.The Brazilian Press Association issued a statement calling Bolsonaro’s comment cowardly and embarrassing to Brazilians.“This misogynous behavior is undeserving of the office of the President and an affront to the Constitution,” the statement said.Folha, issued a statement calling Bolsonaro’s comment an attack to all professional journalists. “He also tars the dignity, the honor and the decorum as stated by the law for the exercise of the presidency,” the daily added.Campos Mello declined to comment on Bolsonaro’s insult.She has suffered online abuse and received threats from supporters of the Brazilian president since October 2018, when Folha published her report on a network of businessmen who allegedly sponsored the production of false news against rival candidate, Fernando Haddad.The wave of insults against the journalist returned last week after the testimony in Congress.Like U.S. President Donald Trump, Bolsonaro frequently speaks off the cuff, doesn’t shy from comments perceived as politically incorrect and often uses the press as a foil to rally support. He has repeatedly said that journalists willfully misconstrue his statements and are seeking to undermine his administration.The incident in Brasilia follows two recent examples of Bolsonaro making offensive arm gestures at a group of journalists.The Brazilian association of investigative journalism and the Brazilian bar association’s press freedom branch issued a joint statement Tuesday expressing “vehement repudiation” of Tuesday’s statement.Even the right-wing party that sponsored Bolsonaro’s run for president repudiated his comments. The Social Liberal Party said called the president’s attacks unacceptable and said “they deserve the repudiation of good Brazilians.” 
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Turkey’s civil society swung from hope to despair Tuesday after a new arrest warrant was issued for leading rights defender Osman Kavala just hours after a court ordered his release from jail.Kavala and eight other defendants were acquitted by a court outside Istanbul in the highly controversial Gezi Park trial.But within hours, a new warrant from the Istanbul prosecutor’s office called for his arrest as part of the investigation into a failed 2016 coup against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government.FILE – Osman Kavala, April 29, 2015It was not immediately clear if Kavala would be released from jail, where he has spent more than 800 days in pre-trial detention.The judge had earlier said there was “not enough concrete evidence” that he and the other defendants sought to overthrow the government.Seven other defendants, who remain on the run, were not formally acquitted.Kavala, the only defendant kept in jail throughout the trial, faced a life sentence without parole if convicted for his alleged role in orchestrating the Gezi Park protests of 2013 that presented the first major challenge to Erdogan, then prime minister.News of a fresh arrest warrant came as supporters waited for him to be released from the Silivri court and prison complex, and was met with shocked silence.Kavala has became a symbol of what critics say is a crackdown on civil society under Erdogan, and received loud cheers as he left the packed courtroom in Silivri, on the outskirts of Istanbul.’Mockery’The mass protests of 2013 began over plans to demolish Gezi Park — one of the only green spaces in Istanbul’s center — but quickly spiraled into broader demonstrations against the government.Critics have called the Gezi trial “a mockery” in which the prosecution failed to present any evidence of wrong-doing by the defendants.”This is a trial that should have never happened in the first place. This whole process has caused untold misery to those who were so wrongfully targeted,” Emma Sinclair-Webb of Human Rights Watch told AFP at the courthouse.Turkish sociologist Ayse Bugra, wife of Turkish rights defender Osman Kavala, reacts after Istanbul prosecutors issued a new arrest warrant for Kavala, in Silivri, near Istanbul, Feb. 18, 2020.Andrew Gardner of Amnesty International had earlier warned that the verdict should not create too much optimism.There are “countless other trials of journalists, of opposition political activists, of human rights defenders. The justice system is completely devoid of independence and impartiality in Turkey,” he told AFP.In December, the European Court of Human Rights heavily criticized the quality of the Gezi Park prosecution.It ruled that the 657-page indictment against Kavala lacked “facts, information or evidence” to raise even the suspicion that he helped organize the protests, let alone attempted to overthrow the government, and called for his immediate release.The Turkish court still put Kavala and the other defendants through two more hearings in December and January.The acquittal was welcomed by several foreign observers, including the U.S. embassy in Ankara and the Council of Europe, a 47-nation body overseeing human rights, of which Turkey is a member.Among the criticisms of the trial was the fact that defense lawyers were denied the chance to cross-examine the key government witness, identified as Murat Papuc, when he gave evidence in December after he claimed his life was in danger.Ekrem Imamoglu, mayor of Istanbul metropolitan municipality, speaks during a rally in Istanbul, Feb. 18, 2020.Lawyers also decried the inclusion of testimony from a police officer convicted of kicking a Gezi Park protester to death in July 2013, who now portrays himself as a victim of the demonstrations.The defendants received support from Ekrem Imamoglu, the new high-profile mayor of Istanbul who took control of the city out of the hands of the ruling party last year.”The acquittal of all the defendants in the #GeziPark trial is a true source of joy, and restores trust in the Turkish judicial system. I salute all those who stand to defend our city’s history, culture and nature,” he tweeted.Kavala’s supporters say he was targeted because he worked to build bridges across Turkey’s often fractious ethnic and social divides, in contrast to the combative rhetoric favored by Erdogan’s ruling party.
 
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French President Emmanuel Macron said on Tuesday he would curb the practice of foreign countries sending imams and teachers to France to crack down on what he called the risk of “separatism.”Macron has so far stayed away from issues related to France’s Muslim community, the biggest in Europe, focusing instead on economic reforms.Mayoral elections a month awayIn a much-anticipated intervention less than a month before mayoral elections, Macron said he would gradually put an end to the system in which Algeria, Morocco and Turkey send imams to France to preach in mosques.”This end to the consular Islam system is extremely important to curb foreign influence and make sure everybody respects the laws of the republic,” he told a news conference in the eastern city of Mulhouse.Macron said 300 imams were sent to France every year by these countries, and that those who arrived in 2020 would be the last to arrive in such numbers.He said his government had asked the body representing Islam in France to find solutions to train imams on French soil instead, make sure they can speak French and don’t spread Islamist views.Macron, who is constantly attacked by far-right leader Marine Le Pen on the issue of how to integrate French Muslims, also said he would end the practice of French students being taught by teachers paid by foreign governments.Deal with Turkey lackingFrance has agreements with nine countries, including Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia and Turkey, whereby their governments can send teachers to French schools to teach languages to students originally from these countries.Macron said he had found an agreement to end the practice with all of these countries except Turkey.”I won’t let any country, whatever it is, feed separatism,” Macron said. “You can’t have Turkish law on French soil. That can’t be.”France has suffered major attacks by Islamist militants in recent years. Co-ordinated bombings and shootings in November 2015 at the Bataclan theatre and other sites around Paris killed 130 people — the deadliest attacks in France since World War Two.
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The Trump administration announced sanctions Tuesday on a Russian state-controlled brokerage that has helped the Venezuelan government skirt an American oil embargo and enabled President Nicolas Maduro keep his grip on power in the South American country.Administration officials said Rosneft Trading S.A. and its president, Didier Casimiro, would be added to a financial blacklist in a move that is expected to largely freeze him and the company out of the global financial system.The action is an unusually strong move against a company linked to the Russian state and amounts to a substantial escalation of a U.S.-led campaign that has failed to oust Maduro from power.Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Rosneft Trading is the primary broker for the sale and transportation of Venezuelan crude oil.”Rosneft Trading has propped up the dictatorial Maduro, enabling his repression of the Venezuelan people,” he said in announcing the sanctions.Rosneft Trading is incorporated in Switzerland and Russian-owned, according to the State Department. The parent company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.But Russian lawmaker Pavel Zavalny said the country would continue to cooperate with Venezuela in the energy sector despite the U.S. sanctions. “One doesn’t abandon friends in need,” Zavalny said.The U.S. and about 60 other countries say Maduro’s reelection in 2018 was not legitimate and have recognized opposition leader Juan Guaido as interim president.The U.S. is considering additional economic sanctions aimed at further tightening economic pressure on the Maduro government, the special U.S. envoy for Venezuela, Elliott Abrams, told reporters.Maduro has held on to power despite runaway hyperinflation, a massive exodus and shortages of food and medicine and the international pressure that has left his socialist administration isolated.Venezuela managed to ship hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil last year with the help of Rosneft Trading despite sanctions on its petroleum sector imposed by the Trump administration last year.FILE – The leader of Venezuela’s political opposition Juan Guaido makes a speech at the Madrid regional government building during a visit to Madrid, Spain, Jan. 25, 2020.Opposition leader Juan Guaido called the latest sanctions a “new victory!””Whoever supports the dictator, from whatever part of the world, will bear the consequences,” Guaido tweeted. “Those who collaborate with democracy will be welcomed.”Guaido launched a campaign to oust Maduro a year ago but so far has failed to make it a reality. He has been unable to flip the military’s loyalty away from Maduro.In recent months the Venezuelans who had fervently supported Guaido early on had stopped filling the streets for demonstrations, and Maduro has grown emboldened.The action against Rosneft Trading and Casamiro means that any assets they have in the U.S. or in the control of U.S. financial institutions will be frozen. In addition, anyone who does business with them could face American sanctions, which senior administration officials told reporters should largely freeze the company out of the global financial system.The officials said the move was not expected to have a significant effect on global oil prices.Officials also said that President Donald Trump approved the move. They said he has spoken with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the past about U.S. objections to his country’s support for Maduro.
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Ukraine and Russia-backed separatists blamed each other for an outbreak of fighting in the country’s rebel-held east on Tuesday.Ukraine’s military said in a statement that the separatists attempted to advance into the Ukraine-controlled territory but were repelled.Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy denounced the attack as a “cynical provocation.”Separatist authorities in the Luhansk region, however, blamed Ukraine for starting the fighting. They claimed the fighting erupted when a group of Ukrainian soldiers tried to make an incursion into rebel-held territory near the village of Holubovske, but got into a minefield.The chief of the General Staff of Ukraine’s armed forces, Colonel-General Ruslan Khomchak, said one Ukrainian soldier was killed and another five were wounded in combat. He said four separatists were killed and six others were wounded.The separatists said two Ukrainian troops were killed and three others were wounded and the Ukrainian forces launched an artillery barrage to cover their evacuation.They said a civilian resident in Holubovske was wounded by the Ukrainian shelling that also damaged civilian infrastructure in the villages of Kirovsk and Donetskiy.The exchange of gunfire marks the latest spike in hostilities in the separatist conflict in eastern Ukraine that has killed over 14,000 people since 2014.A 2015 peace deal brokered by France and Germany helped reduce the scope of fighting, but sporadic clashes have continued and efforts to negotiate a political settlement have stalled.During a meeting in Paris in December, the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany made a deal to exchange prisoners and pledged to ensure a lasting cease-fire in fighting between Ukrainian troops and Russia-backed separatists. They made no progress, however, on key contentious issues — a timeline for local elections in eastern Ukraine and when Ukraine can get back control of its borders in the rebel-held region.Zelenskiy said on Facebook that Tuesday’s outbreak of hostilities was an attempt to derail efforts to end the conflict and said he would call a meeting of his Security Council to discuss the situation.“Our course for ending the war and our adherence to international agreements remain unchanged, just as our determination to repel any acts of aggression against Ukraine,” he said.
 
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European Union foreign ministers agreed Monday to launch a revamped mission to try to monitor and enforce an international weapons embargo on warn-torn Libya. After meeting European counterparts, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas announced naval assets would be deployed to the Mediterranean to help enforce the ban.The German foreign minister told reporters the planned EU mission was a major step toward fulfilling the EU’s commitment made in Berlin last month at an international conference to honor the routinely flouted arms embargo in a bid to stabilize the North African country.
“We all agreed to create a mission to block the entry of arms into Libya,” said Italy’s foreign minister, Luigi di Maio, after the meeting in Brussels.
The new mission is a revival of Operation Sophia, which was launched in 2015 with the dual mission of curbing human trafficking from North Africa to Europe, while also trying to enforce the U.N. arms embargo on Libya. But few observers believe the new mission will have much impact as EU naval assets will be deployed at least 100 kilometers away from the Libyan coast.The decision to circumscribe the mission to a limited geographic zone, one that easily can be circumnavigated by gunrunners, was the only way to overcome opposition to the deployment of warships by several European leaders led by Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz. The Austrian leader has for weeks argued that deploying ships in the Mediterranean Sea would act as a “pull factor” for migrants trying to reach Europe from Libya.With fears mounting that Europe could see another massive influx of asylum-seekers from the Middle East and Africa — thanks to political turmoil in Lebanon and a Russian-backed offensive by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the north of his country — EU critics of a deployment off the coast of Libya said the mission would morph quickly from embargo-enforcement to rescuing migrants.EU warships would have little choice but to pick up migrants trying to make the perilous Mediterranean crossing, they said, repeating what happened to Operation Sophia, which had its naval assets stripped away last year under pressure from the populist coalition that was then in power in Rome.FILE – Italian Navy light aircraft carrier Giuseppe Garibaldi, seen from a helicopter, sails the Mediterranean Sea, off the coast of Sicily, part of the European Union’s naval mission Operation Sophia, Nov. 25, 2016.Operation Sophia was named after a migrant child born on a German frigate to a Somali mother in 2015. Her mother chose the name at the suggestion of the doctors who helped with the delivery.In a recent interview Kurz warned a naval mission would be “a ticket to Europe for thousands of illegal migrants.” He told Germany’s Die Welt newspaper that the vessels would inevitably encourage another migrant influx. Under international law ships — military or civilian — are obliged to rescue people in distress at sea.Libya has been a key gateway for Europe-bound migrants and asylum-seekers. France and Italy have been backing opposing sides in the long-running conflict in the country between an internationally recognized government in Tripoli, which has Rome’s support, and forces from the east of Libya commanded by the renegade general Khalifa Haftar, which are backed by Paris.According to Luxembourg’s Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn, the “maritime assets will be withdrawn” from any area should their presence attract migrants hoping to be picked up at sea. Italy’s Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio said if the EU ships proved to be a “pull factor” for migrants desperate to reach Europe “the mission will be stopped.”In Berlin last month EU leaders joined other powers, including Turkey, Qatar, and Russia, in agreeing to do whatever was needed to implement the U.N. arms embargo and observe a cease-fire. They pledged to ensure their respective international allies stop supplying arms. But within hours of the agreement, which was brokered by Germany’s Angela Merkel, there were reports of the embargo being violated.Last week, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he was “deeply frustrated with what’s happening in Libya.” He added: “The truth is that the Security Council embargo remains violated.”On Sunday the U.N. deputy special envoy for Libya, Stephanie Williams, described the arms embargo as a joke.FILE – German Navy sailors and Finish Special Forces surround a boat with migrants near the German combat supply ship Frankfurt am Main during the EU’s Operation Sophia, in the Mediterranean Sea, off the coast of Libya, March 29, 2016.The EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, said Monday that he hopes the new mission will be in operation by the end of March. Borrell admitted negotiations over the maritime mission had been combative, but that several states have volunteered vessels. “There will be no shortage” of ships, he said.  Borrell had been highly critical of the stance of Austria’s Kurz, saying it was absurd for Austria, a landlocked country without a navy, to block the revival of Operation Sophia. But on Monday he struck a more conciliatory tone, saying that some member states had “legitimate concerns” about the “potential impact on migration flows.”He said the EU would do what it can to enforce the embargo but added “we cannot station troops along the Egyptian-Libyan border.” Egypt has been a backer of Gen. Haftar and has reportedly supplied eastern forces with artillery.Ahead of the Brussels meeting, the EU’s top general had warned that a failure to revive a military mission to enforce the arms embargo on Libya would mean the bloc had failed to live up to geopolitical ambitions. In an interview with Politico, Italian General Claudio Graziano said if Sophia wasn’t revived, it would send “an extremely negative message” and would mean the EU is “not able to find a solution.”Humanitarian organizations are criticizing the terms of the new naval mission.“Foreign policy aside, this is hugely concerning from a humanitarian and human rights perspective,” tweeted Liam Kelly, Libya country director for the Danish Refugee Council. He added: “Under International Maritime Law, every State has a duty to render assistance to persons found at sea in danger of being lost and rescue persons in distress. This proposal is exactly the opposite – to withdraw assistance if it is deemed likely to be needed.” 
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