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U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin will lead a group of U.S. officials who will attend the World Economic Forum later this month in Davos, Switzerland, the White House said Wednesday.Mnuchin will be joined by officials including Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and White House senior advisers Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner.Also attending will be Keith Krach, a State Department undersecretary for growth, energy and the environment, and Christopher Liddell, a White House deputy chief of staff.Reuters reported Dec. 17 that President Donald Trump planned to attend the annual Davos economic forum, citing a source familiar with the plan. A White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Wednesday that Trump is still expected to attend at this time.In 2019, Trump had to cancel his plans to attend the annual gathering of global economic and world leaders because of a government shutdown. He attended the Davos forum in 2018.The World Economic Forum in the Swiss ski resort town is scheduled to run Jan. 21-24.Events in Congress could affect the Republican president’s attendance at the event.Trump, who on Dec. 18 became the third American president to be impeached, faces a trial on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress once House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, sends the charges, called articles of impeachment, to the Republican-controlled Senate.A dispute between Pelosi and Senate Leader Mitch McConnell over how the trial will be conducted arose after the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives impeached Trump.
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Brexit and EU enlargement will be priorities during Croatia’s six-month presidency of the  bloc, Foreign Minister Goran Grlic Radman said Wednesday.Croatia, the youngest European Union member, has a “lot of work and an important task that we have to do in the best possible way in the interest of all EU members, first of all organization of the relationship between the Union and the United Kingdom,” Grlic Radman said.Britain is due to leave the European Union on Jan. 31 but will remain in a transitional arrangement until the end of the year while negotiators try to thrash out future trade ties.European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen recently expressed concern over whether the EU can conclude a post-Brexit trade deal with Britain by the end-2020 deadline.Another challenge for the Croatia EU presidency will be Western Balkans countries wanting to join the bloc “as there have been different approaches when EU enlargement is concerned,” Grlic Radman told N1 television channel.He spoke from Vienna where he marked the start of his country’s presidency in a ceremony at the embassy there.Despite big expectations by the candidate countries “we will support what is realistic and possible,” he said.”The process of joining EU does not happen in a day; we worked hard to meet all the criteria and standards,” he said.Out of the Western Balkans countries only Serbia and Montenegro are in the process of negotiations while Albania and Northern Macedonia are yet to start  talks. Kosovo and Bosnia meanwhile are seriously lagging behind, the latter due to its complicated post-war political system that blocks reforms needed to become an EU candidate country.Along with Slovenia, who joined in 2004, Croatia is the only country emerging from the former Yugoslavia to have become an EU member. It joined the bloc in 2013.
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Mexico President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador closed out 2019 with a parting shot at his predecessors, saying imprisoned drug kingpin Joaquin El Chapo Guzman Loera had had the same power as the country’s president. In a video message from the southern city of Palenque on Wednesday, Lopez Obrador recounted his administration’s successes in its first year and highlighted its challenges — foremost, surging violence. He said that he had already done away with the high-level corruption that was rampant in previous governments, and that it was crucial to draw a bright line between criminal elements and authorities so that the two sides do not mingle as they had in the past. There was a time when Guzman had the same power or had the influence that the then president had ... because there had been a conspiracy, and that made it difficult to punish those who committed crimes. That has already become history, gone to the garbage dump of history, Lopez Obrador said. It appeared to be a reference to the indictment and arrest last month of Mexico’s former public safety secretary, Genaro Garcia Luna. Garcia Luna was public safety secretary in President Felipe Calderon’s Cabinet from 2006 to 2012. Before joining Calderon’s government, Garcia Luna led Mexico’s equivalent of the FBI, the Federal Investigative Agency, under President Vicente Fox. He was charged in federal court in New York with three counts of trafficking cocaine and one count of making false statements. He had been living in Florida and was arrested in Texas. U.S. prosecutors allege he accepted millions of dollars in bribes from Guzman’s Sinaloa cartel and in exchange allowed it to operate without interference. FILE – In this photo provided U.S. law enforcement, authorities escort Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, center, from a plane to a waiting caravan of SUVs at Long Island MacArthur Airport, Jan. 19, 2017, in Ronkonkoma, N.Y.Guzman was convicted on drug conspiracy charges in New York. He was sentenced last year to life in prison. Lopez Obrador’s public safety secretary, Alfonso Durazo, on Wednesday echoed the president’s comments about rooting out corruption in the security forces. In a series of posts on Twitter, Durazo also said the government would recruit 21,170 people in 2020 to join the newly formed National Guard and continue to expand its presence in the country. Lopez Obrador has bet big that the new federal security force will be able to wrangle violence that generated a record-setting number of murders in 2019. 
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Bogota’s first woman mayor Claudia Lopez took office Wednesday promising leadership in the troubled Colombian capital and pledging to fight “racism, class distinctions and xenophobia.”The center-left mayor, who married her same-sex partner last month, takes over a city that has become a focal point of countrywide protests against the rule of right-wing President Ivan Duque.Lopez, 49, broke with tradition and held her inauguration event in the city’s Simon Bolivar park attended by hundreds of people.”Thank you to all for accompanying me in this special moment of my life by taking me as the first woman — diverse woman — elected as mayor in the history of Bogota,” she told the cheering crowd.Supporters of Bogota’s incoming Mayor Claudia Lopez attend her inauguration ceremony in Bogota on Jan. 1, 2020.Lopez’s election in October was one of a series of setbacks for Duque’s ruling Democratic Center party, which lost control of several major cities and many see her as an emerging challenger to his presidency.With seven million inhabitants, Colombia’s capital has been the main focus of a series of mass protests against Duque’s rule that have rocked the country for the past six weeks.The city is home to a quarter of the 1.6 million migrants who fled the economic crisis in neighboring Venezuela to take refuge in Colombia.The new mayor presented “an agenda of change” for her four-year term, focused on the fight against insecurity and the city’s traffic congestion, while promoting jobs and quality, free education. She also promised a “greener” Bogota under her mayorship.She called on Bogotans to build a citizen’s culture that “once and for all banishes all racism, classism, machismo and zenophobia” from its streets.”Bogota, thank you very much for trusting me with your present and your future. I promise to honor that trust, and give everything of myself so that our Bogota will be in the next four years a more caring, inclusive and sustainable city and region,” she said.Lopez married her partner Angelica Lozano, a senator, on Dec. 16.She first stepped into the national spotlight after helping to expose links between Colombian lawmakers and right-wing paramilitary groups.She was briefly forced to flee the country after the scandal came to light but returned to be elected senator in 2014 and stood as a vice presidential candidate in last year’s national elections.Lopez won the Oct. 27 mayoral poll with just over 35% of the vote in a narrow triumph over liberal Carlos Fernando Galan.
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Austrian conservative leader Sebastian Kurz struck a coalition deal on Wednesday with the Greens to ensure his return to power and bring the left-wing party into government for the first time, three months after Kurz won a parliamentary election. The deal marked a swing left for Kurz, whose last coalition was with the far-right Freedom Party. It also means Austria will join fellow European Union member states Sweden and Finland in having the Greens in government, albeit in a junior role, at a time of growing calls for urgent action on climate change. After a final round of coalition talks on New Year’s Day and two days of leaks of new Cabinet members’ names, Kurz and his Greens counterpart said they had struck a deal, as widely expected. They held off, however, on providing details of their plans. Those will be presented to the public Thursday. “We have reached an agreement,” Kurz told reporters standing next to Greens leader Werner Kogler. The two will become chancellor and vice chancellor of the new government, and the Greens will control just four of 15 ministries, roughly reflecting their performance in the September 29 election, which Kurz’s People’s Party won with 37.5% of the vote. The Greens came in fourth with 13.9%. “It is possible to reduce the tax burden and to ecologize the tax system,” Kurz said, referring to core campaign pledges of each party and hinting at the deal’s contents. The Greens said they wanted an investment package in environmental measures and to make products that damage the environment more expensive. 
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At least 16 inmates in a central Mexico prison were killed and five more were wounded in a riot that closed out a violent 2019 for the country, authorities said. Zacatecas state security secretary Ismael Camberos Hernandez told local press that authorities had confiscated four guns believed to have been brought into the Cieneguillas state prison during visits Tuesday. He said the prison had been searched for weapons on Saturday and Sunday and that no guns had been found. The melee broke out around 2:30 p.m. Tuesday and the prison was brought under control by 5 p.m., according to a statement from the state security agency. Fifteen of the victims died at the prison and one died later at a hospital. One prisoner was detained with a gun still in his possession and the other three guns were found inside the prison, the statement said.  Camberos said not all the victims died from gunshot wounds. Some were stabbed and others beaten with objects. No guards or police were wounded, he said. Camberos did not offer a possible motive for the attacks, but such killings frequently involve score settling between rival cartel members or a battle for control of the prison’s illicit business. Mexico has a long history of deadly prison clashes. In October, six inmates were killed in a prison in Morelos state. 
In September, Nuevo Leon state closed the infamous Topo Chico prison, the site of many killings over the years. In February 2016, 49 prisoners died there during rioting when two factions of the Zetas cartel clashed. 
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Venice’s mayor says police are investigating an anti-Semitic attack in which youths punched a left-wing Italian politician in the city’s St. Mark’s Square.Mayor Luigi Brugnaro tweeted Wednesday that fascist-like incidents like the one that happened on New Year’s Eve “won’t be tolerated” in Venice.Arturo Scotto, a former lawmaker, was walking with his wife Tuesday night when eight youths yelled out, “Duce! Duce!” a reference to Italy’s World War II fascist leader Benito Mussolini. The youths then punched Scotto in the nose.Scotto told Italian state TV that a young man who tried to help him was also beaten up. He said the youths also shouted disparaging remarks about Anne Frank, a young Jewish woman who perished in a Nazi death camp.Brugnaro said police are examining surveillance videos to see if the culprits can be identified. Scotto said the attackers wore scarves to hide their faces.Anti-Semitic incidents have been on the rise in Italy, as far-right political groups, including those with neo-fascist roots, gain traction in the country. Mussolini’s regime had propagated anti-Jewish laws in 1938.The head of Rome’s Jewish community, Ruth Dureghello, expressed solidarity with Scotto, saying “one mustn’t give in to any form of anti-Semitism and racism.”
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Haitian President Jovenel Moise broke with tradition on Wednesday and celebrated the country’s independence day in the capital for security reasons following months of political turmoil.Moise, whose government has been accused of corruption, denounced graft during his speech at the National Palace in Port-au-Prince and urged Haiti’s elite to work with the government and help create employment.“We’re still extremely poor,” he said. “Those who continue to get rich find it normal that they do not pay taxes, find it normal that there can be no competition, find it normal that they set prices for consumers, especially when this consumer is the state itself.”Moise also apologized for the country’s ongoing power outages and renewed his 2016 campaign pledge to provide electricity 24 hours a day, saying it was harder to accomplish than he imagined.The speech that marked the 216th anniversary of the world’s first black republic was originally slated to take place in the northern coastal town of Gonaives, where Jean-Jacques Dessalines declared Haiti’s independence.But the town, like many others, was hit by violent protests that began in September amid anger over corruption, fuel shortages and dwindling food supplies as opposition leaders and supporters demanded the resignation of Moise.More than 40 people have been killed and dozens injured.Large-scale protests in Port-au-Prince have since dissipated, although smaller ones are still occurring elsewhere in the country. On Wednesday, opposition leaders and supporters gathered in Gonaives to attend the funeral of an anti-government protester and then carried his coffin through the streets as more protesters joined them.
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U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Wednesday postponed a trip to Ukraine, the country at the heart of impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump, after an attack on the American embassy in Iraq, the State Department announced.Pompeo had been due to travel at week’s end to Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Cyprus.But on Tuesday, a mob of pro-Iran demonstrators stormed the U.S. embassy in Baghdad over American airstrikes that killed two dozen paramilitary fighters.Pompeo’s travel was pushed back “due to the need for the secretary to be in Washington, DC to continue monitoring the ongoing situation in Iraq and ensure the safety and security of Americans in the Middle East,” State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus announced.”Secretary Pompeo’s trip will be rescheduled in the near future and he looks forward to the visit at that time,” she added.The trip would have made Pompeo the most senior U.S. official to visit Kyiv since a scandal erupted in 2019 over a controversial phone call in which Trump allegedly tried to pressure his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskiy to find dirt on Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden.Pompeo, a staunch Trump defender, was set to meet with Zelenskiy and other top Ukrainian officials, Ortagus said Monday when the trip was first announced.But the following day, the embassy in Baghdad was besieged. Demonstrators finally left on Wednesday.No U.S. personnel were injured in the attack and U.S. officials said they had no plans to evacuate.Trump was impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress Dec. 18 and faces trial in the Senate, possibly later this month, though top Democratic and Republican lawmakers are still sparring over how it will be conducted. 
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Turkey may hold off from sending troops to Libya if forces loyal to eastern commander Khalifa Haftar halt their offensive against the internationally recognized government in Tripoli and pull back, the Turkish vice president said Wednesday.The Turkish parliament is due to debate and vote on a bill mandating the deployment of military forces to Libya on Thursday after Fayez al-Serraj’s Government of National Accord (GNA) requested support as part of a military cooperation agreement.”After the bill passed from the parliament … it might happen that we would see something different, a different stance and they would say, ‘OK, we are withdrawing, dropping the offensive,'” Fuat Oktay said in an interview with Andalou news agency. “Then, why would we go there?”Oktay also said that Ankara hoped the Turkish bill would send a deterrent message to the warring parties.Ankara has already sent military supplies to the GNA despite a United Nations embargo, according to a U.N. report seen by Reuters, and has said it will continue to support it.Haftar’s forces have received support from Russia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Jordan.
 
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Airbus has become the world’s largest planemaker for the first time since 2011 after delivering a forecast-beating 863 aircraft in 2019, seizing the crown from embattled U.S. rival Boeing, airport and tracking sources said on Wednesday.A reversal in the pecking order between the two giants had been expected as a crisis over Boeing’s grounded 737 MAX drags into 2020. But the record European data further underscores the distance Boeing must travel to recoup its market position.Photo shows a Boeing Center in Crystal City, Arlington, Virginia. (Photo: Diaa Bekheet)Airbus, which had been forced by its own industrial problems to cut its 2019 delivery goal by 2-3% in October, deployed extra resources until hours before midnight to reach 863 aircraft for the year, compared with its revised target of 860 jets.Deliveries rose 7.9 % from 800 aircraft in 2018.Airbus declined to comment on the figures, which must be audited before they can be finalized and published.Planemakers receive most of their revenues when aircraft are delivered – minus accumulated progress payments – so the end-year delivery performance is closely monitored by investors.Airbus’s tally, which included around 640 single-aisle aircraft, broke industry records after it diverted thousands of workers and canceled holidays to complete a buffer stock of semi-finished aircraft waiting to have their cabins adjusted.Airbus has been hit by delays in fitting the complex new layouts on A321neo jets assembled in Hamburg, Germany, resulting in dozens of these and other models being stored in hangars to await last-minute configurations and the arrival of more labor.Such out-of-sequence work drives up costs and could have a modest impact on Airbus profit margins, but the impact will be largely blunted by the high volume of planes and already solid profitability for such single-aisle aircraft, analysts say.Still, the problems in fitting complex cabins have curtailed Airbus’s ability to take advantage of the market turmoil surrounding Boeing’s 737 MAX – grounded since March following two fatal accidents.Boeing delivered 345 mainly long-haul jets between January and November, less than half the number of 704 achieved in the same period of 2018, when the MAX was being delivered normally. For the whole of 2018, Boeing had delivered 806 aircraft.Airbus production plants traditionally halt over Christmas and New Year. But the company’s delivery centers and completion facilities were humming well into the afternoon of New Year’s Eve to allow Asian and other airlines to fly away new jets.
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French President Emmanuel Macron hopes the repatriation of the body of General Charles-Etienne Gudin, who was killed in Russia more than two centuries ago, could play a symbolic role in his diplomatic courting of Russian President Vladimir Putin.Gudin, one of French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte’s favorite generals, succumbed to gangrene three days after a cannonball destroyed his leg in an 1812 battle 20 kilometers east of the Russian city of Smolensk. Bonaparte reportedly sat at Gudin’s side as he died.If all goes according to French officials’ plan, Gudin’s remains will be returned to Paris in 2020 and reburied with great fanfare in a ceremony Macron hopes Putin will attend.Gudin’s heart is already in the French capital, having been transported there by his loyal troops. In July, a one-legged skeleton was discovered in a wooden coffin in a park in Smolensk. Subsequent DNA tests established it was Gudin’s.If the Kremlin agrees to France’s request, Gudin, who was 44 when he was killed, will be reburied in Les Invalides where the tombs of Napoleon and other military war heroes are located.Russian specialist Hélène Carrère d’Encausse told Le Figaro newspaper that Macron “has a sense of symbols” and sees a reburial ceremony as possibly helpful in his four-month diplomatic campaign to coax Russia into the Western fold.”President Macron is trying to put Franco-Russian relations back on track,” she said.FILE – Russian President Vladimir Putin meets with French President Emmanuel Macron at Fort Bregancon near the village of Bormes-les-Mimosas, France, Aug. 19, 2019.Ahead of last August’s G-7 summit in Biarritz, Macron showed how adept he is at using symbols and history when he hosted Putin at his summer residence on the French Riviera. Macron hailed the impact Russian artists and writers had on France, saying they served as a reminder of how Russia is essentially a European nation.It was a far cry from 2017, when fresh from an election victory in which he beat two pro-Kremlin challengers, Macron berated Putin at a joint press conference at the Palace of Versailles. Standing beside the uneasy-looking Russian leader, Macron blasted Russia for seeking to meddle in Western elections by spreading fake news, disinformation and falsehoods. He condemned brutal tactics, including the use of chemical weapons, allegedly employed by the Moscow-partnered Syrian government to regain control over the war-torn Middle East country.Macron’s about-face has made some of France’s allies nervous, especially Russia’s neighbors in Central Europe and the Baltic States. They fear that in his determination to move from hostility to rapprochement with the Kremlin, he risks falling into a trap of rewarding bad behavior for little in return.But Macron has countered that “Europe would disappear” if it does not rethink strategy toward Russia, and that prolonging hostility will push the Kremlin into the arms of an assertive China, which also is courting Russia.Russia reactionEarlier in December, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that the Kremlin will look favorably on a request for the return of Gudin’s remains.FILE – Archaeologists work at a site of the supposed burial place of French General Charles-Etienne Gudin in Smolensk, Russia, July 7, 2019.”We know that French and Russian archaeologists indeed made such a discovery and performed a DNA analysis that proved 100% correct,” Peskov said. “So, those are indeed the remains of General Gudin. We know that it is big news for France, and we also know that the agenda has the topic of returning these remains.”He added, “If France sends an official request, Russia will respond positively to returning these remains.”French officials have confirmed that Macron raised the issue in December with Putin during the Ukraine peace talks in Paris. Le Figaro said the reburial “could become a symbol of Franco-Russian fraternity.”Before considering an official tribute to Gudin, Elysée Palace advisers researched Gudin’s life to ensure he was safe from reproach or possible historical embarrassment, French magazine Le Point reported. The advisers were mindful of the political controversy in 2018 surrounding Macron’s praise of General Philippe Pétain as a “great soldier” during commemorations of the centenary of World War I.Jewish leaders and Macron’s political foes argued that Macron’s praise was ill-deserved, as Petain became a Nazi collaborator. Macron was forced to justify the homage.Gudin appears to have passed the “honor” test. He is seen as a valiant warrior, above politics. He served the monarchy before the French Revolution and loyally commanded the armies of the French Republic.
 
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After one suspected chemical poisoning, two arrests, 40 days in jail and multiple police raids on his Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) offices nationwide, it’s safe to say Russia’s most prominent opposition figure has had a rough year.  But for Alexei Navalny, 2019 wasn’t without at least one small victory. His calls for mass demonstrations over the exclusion of opposition candidates from local Moscow elections sparked the largest sustained protest movement in years, prompting state investigators to launch a money-laundering probe and label his group a “foreign agent,” a move that he and others call part of a Kremlin-orchestrated campaign to stifle growing dissent.Despite house-to-house searches for FBK staffers, asset seizures and frozen bank accounts, the well-known blogger and activist says he also maintained a regular jogging routine while preparing new investigative exposes on alleged corruption that fuels the excessively lavish lifestyles at the highest echelons of Russian officialdom.Navalny recently sat down with VOA’s Russian Service to reflect on 2019, the state of the American and Russian political systems, and accusations that he’s been needlessly hard on Moscow banker Andrei Kostin, one of Russia’s most powerful civilians.Just hours after this interview was conducted, Russian officials again raided FBK’s Moscow headquarters using power tools to gain entry before dragging Navalny out by force and confiscating computer equipment. The latest raid came one day after police broke into Ruslan Shaveddinov’s Moscow flat, forcibly conscripting the 23-year-old FBK project manager to serve at a remote military base in the Arctic, a move Navalny has since called tantamount to kidnapping.The following has been edited for brevity.QUESTION: How serious are FBK’s financial losses as a result of these raids, and in what other ways did Russian authorities try to interfere with your work this year?ALEXEI NAVALNY: In order to impede, complicate, and paralyze the foundation’s work, a wide range of tools are used. First, it’s just non-stop “searches,” which are in fact planned confiscations of computers, phones, flash drives — any data-processing electronics of FBK employees, staff, their relatives, neighbors, sometimes even random people. Second, it’s the freezing of accounts, such that people can’t, for example, pay or receive a salary. All accounts and cards are blocked, even for child care and survivor benefits. And then there’s the recently launched criminal case, which allows [officials] to call in anyone in for questioning at any time, along with unending efforts to nightmare and harass people through ostensibly legal actions. And while our people are quite resilient, the pressure strongly affects their relatives.As for finances, we now have several million rubles on the account blocked. The question is not even what the financial losses are, but that we’re prevented from receiving cash inflows. … After the last [election] campaign for the Moscow City Duma, there were quite a lot of [donations], so the authorities are simply trying to block this cash flow, and the campaign to designate us as “foreign agents” means all of FBK’s monetary assets were declared “criminal.”Q: Which events of 2019 were most significant to you?NAVALNY: Undoubtedly the Moscow City Duma elections. Initially, we didn’t think it would have any great national political significance, but the actions of the authorities, which were extraordinary in their stupidity, severity and senselessness, caused these events to resonate nationally. We received, on the one hand, new independent [Moscow City Duma] deputies, and, on the other hand, a huge number of people [were blocked from voting, which only made more people sympathetic to our cause]. So we got new political prisoners, new political stars. … In this sense, the Moscow City Duma elections were the main event.Q: You do what many would call the kind of high-quality investigative journalism, which, in the West, might topple an entire government. Yet your exposes of government corruption aren’t compelling most Russians to protest. Why?NAVALNY: This is indeed a cause of frustration on our part. We grasp perfectly well the quality our investigations, and we see many examples where exposes of less impact trigger government resignations and parliamentary crises in other countries. But in Russia this doesn’t have major consequences due to the general political situation. And it’s not a purely Russian phenomenon — we see similar things in Belarus, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, any number of other authoritarian countries with staggering levels of corruption. That’s where we also see this unfortunate, conditioned familiarity with corruption: the population already understands the elite stole everything, and the whole country exists only for the enrichment of this elite. And then of course there’s censorship and intimidation. Therefore, we don’t believe that the population is indifferent to our investigations — they know about them, but they’re afraid of the state aggression toward those who choose to protest.Q: You don’t suppose that since quite a lot of people are now connected with state structures in Russia, and because they have families to feed, that corruption schemes have now become the new normal for a significant part of the populace? That the fight against corruption is a threat to a broad class of people?NAVALNY: That’s a good question. Does, say, the deputy head of the consumer market department of the city of Kostroma feel himself a direct part of Putin’s “power vertical”? In fact, the vast majority of officials are not corrupt, if only because corruption isn’t as lucrative in lower-level bureaucracies, [whereas theft of natural resource commodities such as oil and gas] is basically limited to maybe a thousand or so families with direct ties to Vladimir Putin at the highest level of his administration. But yes, in a certain sense, the system is built in such a way — and the belief systems of individuals within the system are built in such a way — that you live a very poor but stable life within the system. And of course you receive some informal privileges by being inside of it, such that your rational choice is to defend it rather than try to change it for the better.Q: Your recent expose showed that Andrei Kostin, president and chairman of Russia’s state-owned VTB bank, gave millions of dollars in gifts, including property, a private jet and a yacht, to his purported romantic partner, Russian state TV presenter Nailya Asker-Zade. Some commentators then accused you of prying into the personal affairs of private citizens as opposed to state officials. How do you feel about such accusations?NAVALNY: Personal life is peoples’ relationships. We are not interested in the relationships, love, passions and dramas that occur in the families of Kostin, Asker-Zade or anyone, not even Putin. However, when it comes to colossal spending from a state bank, it’s already about corruption, not about personal relationships. And if a state banker spends literally tens of millions of dollars on his mistress, providing her with a standard of living on par with Arab sheikhs, that’s already far, far beyond the limits of a private, personal affair. We try, as far as possible, not to condemn or evaluate Kostin from the point of view of public morality or “family values,” but we certainly reserve the right to discuss his morals from the point of view of corruption, from the point of view of lifestyle, from the point of view of expenditures.Q: There’s the impression that you now regularly visit the United States, where your daughter studies. What’s your impression of American political life?NAVALNY: Unfortunately, I don’t visit so often. I took my daughter to the university and went to shoot a story about Nailya Asker-Zade’s plaque on a bench in New York City’s Central Park, [which she had engraved with a declaration of her love for Kostin]. My feelings are unambiguous and probably align with those of many people, including most Americans: the country is split, the political class is split. Everyone on the left is [feeling] a kind of frustration, demoralization and rage, while those on the right are probably also furious, frustrated and demoralized, because it’s not clear what to do about it or where it’s all headed. It’s still not very clear, for example, why the newspapers consistently reported [that Hillary Clinton had a commanding lead in the race, and then Trump won]. This is a very interesting but difficult time for Americans. But overall, even though I see a lot of exasperated people, I do think checks-and-balances generally works. Nothing so terrible is happening to America. Democracy works.Q: Can Western countries somehow influence Russia’s behavior in terms of corruption and human rights? What mechanisms are effective?NAVALNY: I think we already understand empirically that, unfortunately, they can’t influence anything, and they don’t really want to. There’s always some fictitious geostrategic interests or, perhaps, short-term political interests, some ideas about “peacekeeping missions,” etc … that simply prevent us from taking steps that are long overdue. Western countries need to protect not Russian citizens but themselves from the secondary effects Russian corruption by implementing their own laws. But this isn’t happening. We repeatedly see that, despite the sanctions, despite the fact that there is a lot of talk on this subject, the entire Putin elite feels completely at ease. We haven’t seen any real examples of asset freezes or seizures. On the contrary, we see people under sanctions traveling quite freely and continuing to buy up properties and assets only to register them to their children. And regulators, including American ones, pretend not to notice. … I am completely pessimistic about the role of the West in the fight against corruption in Russia.Q: What are your political plans? The much discussed 2024 [presidential election] is still more than 4 years away; what are you going to do?NAVALNY: It’s still a long time until 2024, but we don’t plan our activities from election to election. Elections take place constantly, and we’re actively engaged in them. We also have the anti-corruption foundation, so we’re engaged in the investigations, and we’ll continue to build a nationwide system combating censorship through YouTube channels and blogs. We have a system of more than 40 headquarters, which now face the main task of learning how to survive under new conditions, in which [the state] is trying to paralyze our entire structure and funding with constant raids. We’ll continue what we are doing, and we’ll reinvent ourselves so that we can do it even more effectively in the new environment. And we’ll try to expand. We have a lot of work to do.Q: Are you going to continue trying to register a political party? You’ve been doing this for a long time, but you keep getting rejected.NAVALNY: As we’ve stated many times, this is our right. Court cases on this issue have been going on for many years, and we are constantly making new attempts to register. We’ll always do it. At the same time, of course, we’re well aware that the Kremlin simply can’t afford to register our party, because then it’s unclear what they will do with it in the elections. But it’s our right, and we’ll continue to defend it.
 
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A Slovak court handed a 15-year prison sentence to a man charged with facilitating the murder of investigative journalist Jan Kuciak in 2018 in a plea deal on Monday, a spokeswoman said.The killing of Kuciak and his fiancee, both 27, at their home outside Bratislava in February 2018 sparked mass protests against corruption in the central European nation, shaking the government. The case will play a role in a parliamentary election due in February.FILE – Suspects in the 2018 slaying of investigative journalist Jan Kuciak and his fiancee Martina Kusnirova are escorted by armed police officers from a courtroom in Pezinok, Slovakia, Dec. 19, 2019.Zoltan Andrusko, 42, was one of five charged in the case but the only to confess and seek a plea deal to act as a witness.The trial of the other four, including entrepreneur Marian Kocner who was a subject of Kuciak’s reporting on fraud cases involving politically connected businessmen, started on Dec. 19 and will continue in January.Andrusko had agreed a 10-year sentence with prosecutors but a court on Monday rejected that deal and proposed a longer sentence, which the defendant accepted, the court said.”This court considers the extraordinary reduced sentence as justified, as well as logical, but the court, by its decision, should seek justice not only for the accused but for all sides of the case, for society, for justice in the law,” newspaper Dennik N cited judge Pamela Zaleska as saying.Prosecutors say Kocner had ordered Kuciak’s killing. He and his accomplices, who have all pleaded not guilty, face up to life in prison if convicted.The case is a test of Slovak judicial independence given that the investigation exposed links between Kocner and police and public officials.The murders stoked widespread public anger and forced Prime Minister Robert Fico to resign last year. His ruling Smer party faces a tight election on Feb. 29.
 
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Pro-independence protesters in the Spanish region of Catalonia are using the latest technology to try to outwit authorities. An anonymous smartphone app is being used to coordinate demonstrations  – and the latest target was the world-famous “El Clasico” football match between giants Barcelona and Real Madrid. As Henry Ridgwell reports, the protests have intensified since Madrid jailed several Catalan pro-independence leaders in October. 
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Heading into his second year as Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro has held firm to his combative culture-warrior policies while feuding with critics at home and abroad – an approach that has thrilled supporters but eroded his efforts to win allies and lift the world’s 9th-largest economy out of its doldrums.
                   
Bolsonaro’s inauguration last Jan. 1 marked a dramatic break from Brazil’s previous four elections, all won by the left. He vowed to attack the socialist ideology, stamp out corruption and unleash police against crime. As he did that, many moderates felt pushed away.
                   
In a national address just before Christmas, Bolsonaro said he “took over Brazil in a deep ethical, moral and economic crisis.”
                   
“The government has changed. Today we have a president who cherishes families, respects the will of its people, honors its military and believes in God,” he said, flanked by his wife Michelle Bolsonaro, who wore a shirt with JESUS written in large letters.
                   
And he has backed up that stand in deeds, such as stripping some human rights protection from LGBT people and cutting funding for arts projects that challenge “Christian values” as well as in words, inveighing against flamboyant carnival celebrations.
                   
Marco Feliciano, a conservative lower house lawmaker and evangelical pastor, believes Bolsonaro keeps true to values that were ignored by his predecessors.
                   
“At the start of the year, we clearly felt sectors within the government trying to separate the president from the evangelicals, but the president pushed those people away and stayed loyal to those who elected him. Evangelicals were never as honored by a president,” he said.
                   
Long a fringe lawmaker, Bolsonaro became president as an outsider following a deep economic crisis, a sweeping political corruption scandal and amid a wave of populist triumphs around the planet.
                   
But Bolsonaro’s focus on a far-right cultural agenda has generated infighting between military appointees and evangelicals in his administration and whittled away his support in Congress.
                   
While U.S. President Donald Trump, to whom Bolsonaro is often compared, has cemented authority over his Republican Party, Bolsonaro’s spats with his own party’s leaders led him to quit it in November. That leaves him effectively isolated until and if he can create his new party Alianca Pelo Brasil (Alliance for Brazil).
                   
“Bolsonaro started 2019, which was supposed to be his honeymoon year, in positive territory, but he will start his second year in the negative,” said Carlos Melo, a political science professor at Insper University in Sao Paulo. “He will be under a lot of pressure. And that puts him in fighting mood.”
                   
But he’ll need allies to pass some of his cultural agenda through congress. He will also need lawmakers to approve new reforms aimed at slashing costs in efforts to revive an economy that has seen six straight years of negative or stagnant growth.
                   
Bolsonaro’s most ambitious legislative win, an overhaul to Brazil’s pension system  that prior governments failed to achieve, came on a watered down version.
                   
Measures still pending include tax reforms and spending caps, some of which will be controversial as the parties head toward a test of strength in October’s mayoral elections. Lawmakers will be involved with the vote from June to the beginning of November.
                   
Congress already has felt comfortable blocking presidential decrees to loosen gun controls, allowing executive orders to expire without ratification, and watering down his bills like signature anti-crime legislation.
                   
Bolsonaro also has feuded with other international leaders, notably the leaders of France, Germany and the government of Norway, over their efforts to protect the Amazon rainforest, a region he sees as key to Brazil’s future. Deforestation there has accelerated in his first term.
                   
That has caused unease even among agribusiness leaders who voted for Bolsonaro, such as “soy king” Blairo Maggi, who have said the president’s handling of the environment jeopardizes Brazil’s exports.
                   
Poor economic results and his aggressive rhetoric have turned off many Bolsonaro voters, and only about 30% rate  his government good or excellent the lowest first year performance for an elected Brazilian president since the country’s 1985 return to democracy.
                   
But given the choice to simply approve or disapprove of Bolsonaro, the polls show his popularity runs higher _ roughly on a par with that of Trump in the U.S.
                   
“This is not a weak president,” said Christoper Garman, managing director for the Americas at Eurasia Group.
                   
The Brazilian government’s highest marks come in security. Justice Minister Sergio Moro, whose anti-corruption work as a judge largely contributed to the conviction of past President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s corruption conviction, polls better than Bolsonaro.
                   
Police figures compiled by website G1 show homicides fell 22% to 30,864 cases in the first nine months of the year, compared to the same period in 2018.
                   
Meanwhile, Bolsonaro has also been bothered by investigations into his family that could shake his image of incorruptibility among hard-core supporters.
                   
Prosecutors are investigating allegations that staffers working for his son Flavio, then a Rio state lawmaker, kicked their salaries back to his former driver, a long-time friend of the Bolsonaros.
                   
The 2020 local races could be telling for Bolsonaro’s re-election bid in 2022, according to Claudio Couto, a political science professor at the Getulio Vargas Foundation.
                   
“If Bolsonaro fails to get his own party in time he will have to build alliances with politicians of other parties so they can carry his banner. It could be a hard task for a politician that has had trouble in building bridges,” Couto said.
 
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In his New Year’s message, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres presented a gloomy assessment of the past year and pinned his hopes for a better future in the year to come upon the world’s young people.Guterres said he looks forward to 2020 and the decade to come with a mix of dread and hope.  While welcoming in the New Year, he suggested the uncertainty and insecurity of what lies ahead is cause for reflection and concern.  He said he considered persistent inequality and rising hatred, a warring world and a warming planet as ever present threats to stability and peace.  He said climate change is not only a long-term problem but a clear and present danger.  He said the world cannot afford to see the present generation fiddling around while the planet burns.  “But there is also hope. This year, my New Year’s message is to the greatest source of that hope: the world’s young people.  From climate action to gender equality to social justice and human rights, your generation is on the frontlines and in the headlines.  I am inspired by your passion and determination. You are rightly demanding a role in shaping the future and I am with you. The United Nations stands with you — and belongs to you,” Guterres said.In September, the United Nations presented its top environmental award to a global student movement known as Fridays for Future. The movement, inspired by Swedish teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg, is demanding action to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that are leading to climate change.Guterres, who views global warming as a grave threat to life on Earth, champions the young activists who are agitating to forestall such a catastrophic outcome. He said the world needs young people to keep speaking out and to keep thinking big. He urged young people to keep pushing boundaries, to keep up the pressure.He ended with “I wish you peace and happiness in 2020. Thank you.” 
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People across the world are gathering for traditional celebrations to welcome the year 2020.Revelers in New Zealand and other Pacific islands were among the first to celebrate the new year with fireworks displays.Events elsewhere in the world are being overshadowed by other concerns, including in Australia where the fireworks show in Sydney is going forward as other communities in the country cancel theirs due to fears of making a wildfire crisis worse.In Hong Kong, the usual fireworks show was canceled due to what officials said were security concerns in the city that has seen months of pro-democracy protests.Planet Fitness, in partnership with Time Square Alliance, tested the “air worthiness” of the confetti prior to Times Square’s New Year’s Eve 2020 celebration in New York City, Dec. 29, 2019 in New York.Events are scheduled to take place as the new year rolls around in major cities from Berlin to Dubai and London to New York.
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Chancellor Angela Merkel is telling Germans in her New Year message that “everything humanly possible” must be done to tackle climate change.Merkel said that there is good reason to be confident about the 2020s in her annual televised message, the text of which was released ahead of its broadcast Tuesday. But she pointed to challenges such as the effect of digitization on people’s jobs and, above all, climate change.”The warming of our Earth is real. It is threatening. It and the crises arising from global warming were caused by humans,” she said. “So we must do everything humanly possible to deal with this challenge for humanity. That is still possible.”Merkel said that was the principle behind a recently agreed German package of measures aimed at addressing climate change, which include a carbon dioxide pricing system for the transport and heating sectors and lowering value-added tax on long-distance rail tickets.She acknowledged criticism both from people who are worried about being overburdened by the measures and from those who think they don’t go far enough, but said they provide the “necessary framework.””It’s true that, at 65, I am at an age where I personally won’t experience all the consequences of climate change that would arise if politicians didn’t act,” she said.”It is our children and grandchildren who will have to live with the consequences of what we do or don’t do today,” Merkel added. “So I am putting all my energy into Germany making its contribution — ecologically, economically, socially — to getting a grip on climate change.”That is also a priority of the European Union’s new executive Commission, headed by Ursula von der Leyen — a former German defense minister. Germany will hold the EU’s rotating presidency in the second half of 2020.”Europe must raise its voice more strongly in the world,” Merkel said, pledging to work for that during the EU presidency. She pointed to planned meetings with Chinese and African leaders.Merkel, Germany’s leader since 2005, has said that her current fourth term as chancellor will be her last.Protection against hatredUnlike last year’s, this New Year message contained no reference to infighting in the often-tense coalition government of her center-right Christian Democratic  Union and the center-left Social Democrats. It remains uncertain whether the coalition will last until the end of the parliamentary term in 2021.Merkel did, however, stress the need for authorities to protect local government officials and “all people in our country against hatred, hostility and violence, against racism and anti-Semitism.”This year saw the killing of a regional government official from Merkel’s party, Walter Luebcke, who had vocally supported Merkel’s welcoming stance toward refugees in 2015. The suspect is a far-right extremist.And in October, a man tried to force his way into a synagogue in Halle on Judaism’s holiest day, later killing two passers-by before being arrested. The suspect posted an anti-Semitic screed before the attack.
 
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U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo leaves this week for Ukraine — the country at the center of President Donald Trump’s impeachment.Pompeo will be in Kyiv on Friday, the first stop of a five-nation European and Central Asian tour that will also take him to Belarus, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Cyprus.Pompeo will be the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit Ukraine and hold talks with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.The two senior State Department officials who briefed reporters Monday on Pompeo’s trip dodged all questions surrounding the impeachment, sparked by Trump’s July 25 telephone call with Zelenskiy when Trump asked the Ukrainian leader for a “favor” and to investigate 2020 Democratic rival Joe Biden and his son Hunter’s job with a Ukrainian gas company.Trump is also accused of holding up military aid to Ukraine until Zelenskiy publicly committed to the probe.FILE – Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy speaks in Kyiv, Dec. 4, 2019.No evidence against the Bidens has surfaced, and Trump’s belief that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election on behalf of Democrats is based on a debunked conspiracy theory spread by Russia.One of the officials called Pompeo’s visit to Ukraine this week “much more than symbolic.””The secretary’s visit to Ukraine highlights our unshakable commitment to Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” the official said. “Crimea is part of Ukraine, and the United States will never recognize Russia’s attempt to annex it. This important visit also reinforces our support to Ukraine as it counters Russian aggression and disinformation, and advances reform efforts to stamp out corruption.”The official said the United States has given Ukraine about $3 billion since 2014 earmarked for law reforms and battling corruption.Ambassador William Taylor The two officials also avoided answering why Ambassador William Taylor will be leaving Kyiv before Pompeo’s arrival Friday.Taylor was appointed acting ambassador to replace Marie Yovanovitch, who was abruptly fired in May allegedly because of her objections to Trump’s push for an investigation into the Bidens.FILE – Top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine William Taylor testifies before the House Intelligence Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, Nov. 13, 2019.Taylor’s appointment was supposed to have lasted until mid-January. It is unclear why he is leaving early.Both Taylor and Yovanovitch appeared as witnesses in the Democratic-led House impeachment hearings.Another witness — U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland — said Pompeo was “in the loop” about Trump’s pressure on Ukraine for an investigation. Democrats also say Pompeo tolerated the so-called shadow foreign policy carried out in Ukraine by Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani.Pompeo has only said the State Department will “continue to comply with all the legal requirements” in the impeachment process.The House of Representatives voted to impeach Trump in mid-December on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. It is still unclear when he will be put on trial in the Senate.Other stopsDuring his European trip, Pompeo will meet with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko for talks on normalizing relations between the U.S. and Belarus. Lukashenko has long been considered an authoritarian ruler, but the State Department said Belarus is continuing to make progress in human rights and democratization.Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are two nations the State Department said have also made improvements in human rights, and are close economic and security partners with the U.S.Pompeo’s final stop will be in Cyprus, where the U.S. backs United Nations efforts to reunify the island split between a Greek Cypriot south and Turkish Cypriot north since 1974.
 
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Erik Prince, a major Republican donor and founder of controversial security firm Blackwater, has been referred to the U.S. Treasury Department for possible sanctions violations tied to his recent trip to Venezuela for a meeting with a top aide of President Nicolas Maduro, two senior U.S. officials said.There’s no indication that Prince, whose sister is Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, will be sanctioned for the meeting last month in Caracas with Venezuela’s Vice President Delcy Rodriguez.Vice President of Venezuela Delcy Rodriguez addresses the 74th session of the United Nations General Assembly, Sept. 27, 2019.But the fact the visit was flagged underscores the concern of officials in the Trump administration over what appeared to be an unauthorized diplomatic outreach to Maduro. This, as support for opposition leader Juan Guaido inside Venezuela — if not Washington — appears to be waning.The U.S. officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they aren’t authorized to discuss the matter publicly. Little has been revealed about Prince’s surprise trip to Caracas last month. But the mere presence in Venezuela of a businessman with longstanding ties to the U.S. national security establishment prompted questions about whether he was there to open a secret back channel to Maduro on behalf of the Trump administration, something the State Department has strenuously denied. It also marks something of a reversal for Prince, who earlier in 2019 was thought to have been pitching a plan to form a mercenary army to topple Maduro.A person familiar with Prince’s visit said he had been asked to travel to Venezuela by an unidentified European businessman with longstanding ties to the oil-rich nation. The person said Prince did not discuss any business nor receive anything of value during his trip — actions that would’ve violated U.S. financial sanctions on Maduro’s socialist government.The purpose of the trip was to meet key players in the crisis-wracked nation, not to serve as an emissary for the Trump administration, according to the person, who isn’t authorized to discuss the visit and spoke on condition of anonymity.The person said Prince, a former Navy SEAL, continues to support the Trump administration’s goal of removing Maduro but believes State Department efforts to reach that goal have failed and new alternatives — which the person did not specify — need to be tried.Before traveling, Prince notified the National Security Council and Treasury Department about his plans and received no objections, the person said.In a statement, Prince’s attorney didn’t provide any details about the trip or whom his client may have alerted in the U.S. government.“Before traveling to Venezuela as a private citizen, Erik Prince received clear legal guidance, which he scrupulously followed,” Matthew Schwartz said in the statement. “There is nothing unlawful about simply visiting Venezuela and participating in non-business discussions, which is all that Mr. Prince did. We would be better served by focusing on measures that might actually restore peace and prosperity to Venezuela rather than worrying about who paid a visit to whom.”Neither the National Security Council nor the Treasury Department responded to a request for comment.Rodriguez is a key aide to Maduro and also one of more than 100 Venezuelan government insiders who have been slapped with sanctions by the U.S. In addition, the Trump administration this year has imposed sweeping sanctions on Venezuela’s oil industry and a ban on U.S. companies and individuals from doing business with the Maduro administration.While in Caracas, Prince also met members of the opposition, although the person familiar with his trip declined to say whom.FILE – Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido, who many nations have recognized as the country’s rightful interim ruler, gestures as he speaks during an extraordinary session of Venezuela’s National Assembly in Caracas, Venezuela, Dec. 17, 2019.An aide to Juan Guaido said no such meeting with anyone in the opposition took place. But the aide was unable to provide the same assurances for a small faction of minority parties that recently split from Guaido and initiated negotiations with Maduro that the U.S. considers a time-wasting sideshow.A year after the U.S. recognized Guaido as Venezuela’s interim president, arguing that Maduro’s re-election was fraudulent, the 36-year-old lawmaker is under increasing pressure from friends and foes alike to articulate a fresh vision for unseating the socialist leader, who has grown more confident as the economy stabilizes under a flood of black-market U.S. dollars.Another person familiar with the visit said Prince, in his late November dinner at Rodriguez’s home, urged the release of six executives of Houston-based Citgo held for more than two years on what are widely seen as trumped-up corruption charges. Two weeks later, the six men — five of them dual U.S.-Venezuelan citizens — were granted house arrest. The person also spoke on the condition of anonymity given the sensitivities surrounding the trip.Elliott Abrams, the U.S. special envoy to Venezuela, said Dec. 20 that Prince was not a messenger for the U.S. government, nor was the U.S. engaging in any secret talks with Maduro.“I have yet to find an American official who says he or she was briefed by Mr. Prince, and I have asked,” Abrams told a press briefing. “So, I don’t know if he briefed an American official, and if so, who it was.”Prince has been accused of acting as a back channel on behalf of Trump before. In 2017, he met with an official close to Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Seychelles, islands off the coast of east Africa. Special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on his Russia investigation said the meeting was set up ahead of time with the knowledge of former White House aide Stephen Bannon.Prince soared to notoriety after Blackwater employees in 2007 shot and killed Iraqi civilians in Baghdad’s Nisour Square during the Iraq war. After the scandal the company’s name was changed and Prince sold his shares to a private equity fund. Today he heads a private equity fund focused on investments in emerging markets.
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One U.S. citizen and four Mexican nationals were arrested near the Canadian border in Maine in what border officials called a “human smuggling attempt.”The five men were arraigned in Bangor on Thursday, according to court documents. Two of the men were charged with bringing immigrants into the U.S. illegally and harboring them, the Bangor Daily News reported.The other three told agents that they had traveled illegally from Mexico to Canada to gain entry to the United States, according to court documents. One of them was charged with entry after removal and the other two were charged with improper entry by an alien.Border Patrol agents saw a vehicle with two people in it on Dec. 23 in an area near Limestone that is often used as an illegal crossing between Canada and the U.S., according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. The agents stopped the vehicle after they saw it leave the area with five people.Investigators determined that four of the occupants were in the U.S. illegally, three of whom crossed the border illegally near LimestoneLogan Perkins, an attorney for one of the men, said her client crossed the border simply to provide for his family in Mexico. Attorneys for the other four didn’t immediately return messages. 
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The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency has devised technology to restrict the use of anti-aircraft missiles after they leave American hands, a researcher said, a move that experts say could persuade the United States that it would be safe to disseminate powerful weapons more frequently.The new technology is intended for use with shoulder-fired missiles called Man-Portable Air-Defense Systems (MANPADS), Dutch researcher Jos Wetzels told a cybersecurity conference in Leipzig, Germany on Saturday. Wetzels said the system was laid out in a batch of CIA documents published by WikiLeaks in 2017 but that the files were mislabeled and attracted little public attention until now.Wetzels said the CIA had come up with a “smart arms control solution” that would restrict the use of missiles “to a particular time and a particular place.” The technique, referred to as “geofencing,” blocks the use of a device outside a specific geographic area.Weapons that are disabled when they leave the battlefield could be an attractive feature. Supplied to U.S. allies, the highly portable missiles can help win wars, but they have often been lost, sold, or passed to extremists.For example, Stinger MANPADS supplied by the United States are credited with helping mujahedeen rebels drive Soviet forces out of Afghanistan in a conflict that spanned the 1980s and 1990s. But U.S. officials have since spent billions of dollars to clear the missiles from the country — and from other conflict zones around the worldWetzels said it was unclear whether the CIA’s design ever left the drawing board or where it was meant to have been deployed, but he noted that the apparent period of development in the documents’ metadata — 2014 to 2015 — roughly coincided with media reports about the deployment of MANPADS to rebels in Syria. Geofencing might have been seen as a way of ensuring the missiles were used on the Syrian battlefield and nowhere else, he said.The CIA declined to comment.Outside experts who reviewed Wetzels’ analysis said they found it plausible.N.R. Jenzen-Jones, who directs the British-based ARES intelligence consultancy, said geofencing has long been discussed as a safeguard to allow powerful weapons “into the hands of friendly forces operating in high-risk environments.”Wetzels said geofencing was no panacea, running through a list of security vulnerabilities that could be used by insurgents to bypass the restrictions.”It’s not a watertight solution,” he said.
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Spain’s state attorney called Monday for an imprisoned Catalan politician to be allowed to be sworn in as a member of the European Union parliament, a step that could ease the way for a center-left governing alliance to take office in the country.The European Union’s top court ruled this month that Oriol Junqueras, who served as Catalonia’s vice president until 2017, had the right to parliamentary immunity when he was elected to the bloc’s parliament in May, when he was already on trial.In response to the ruling, the Spanish state attorney’s office on Monday said that Junqueras should be allowed to leave prison to take his seat. But it said that a request should be made immediately for the European Parliament to drop the separatist politician’s immunity, so that he would serve the 13-year prison term for his role in a secession bid two years ago.The Supreme Court is expected to make a decision in coming days.FILE – Spain’s Socialist leader and acting Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez attends a rally to mark the kick off his campaign ahead of the general election in Seville, Spain, Oct. 31, 2019.Junqueras remains the leader of the Catalan ERC party, whose 13 lawmakers’ abstention from the 350-seat Congress of Deputies would allow the Socialists of caretaker Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and the anti-austerity United We Can (Unidas Podemos) to form a minority coalition government after months of political impasse in Spain.The state attorney’s move could lead ERC to abstain from the confidence vote, expected as soon as next week. ERC has said it will make its final decision in a party meeting next week.Governing agreementIn a further sign of an impending end to the political deadlock, Sanchez and United We Can leader Pablo Iglesias were set to announce later on Monday their governing agreement, a 50-page document outlining more taxes for high-earning individuals and companies, plans to water down a labor reform passed in 2012 at the height of the financial crisis, as well as increases to spending on social policies.FILE – Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias speaks during a plenary session at Parliament in Madrid, Spain, Sept. 11, 2019.They also plan to roll back a national security law passed by a previous conservative government and increase the minimum wage, which stands at 1,050 euros (1,176 dollars), according to Spanish daily El Pais, which obtained a copy of the document.Spanish laws allow minority governments to be formed as long as they receive more votes in favor than against in the parliament’s lower house. But even with the support of a small Basque nationalist party, Sanchez and Iglesias need ERC’s abstention. They have been widely criticized by other parties for relying on the help of an imprisoned separatist.The 50-year-old Junqueras was convicted of sedition and misuse of public funds in October for his role in promoting the illegal 2017 secession bid of the prosperous northeastern region of Catalonia, which includes the city of Barcelona.He was under trial already when he decided to run in the European elections in May. Spain’s Supreme Court denied Junqueras permission to get out of jail at the time to take his position.’Against the interests of Spain’Pablo Casado, leader of the conservative Popular Party that for decades took turns in power with the Socialists, said that Sanchez was being opaque in the negotiations and that, as an interim prime minister over the past few months, the Socialist leader had governed “against the interests of Spain.””You can’t negotiate the government of Spain with those who want to break it apart,” Casado told reporters.The Popular Party, the fast-rising far-right Vox party and the center-right Citizens (Ciudadanos), which suffered a big defeat in the Nov. 10 repeated general election, together hold 150 seats in the lower chamber.
 
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