The Trump Organization said Monday it has made good on the president’s promise to donate profits from foreign government spending at its hotels to the U.S. Treasury, but neither the company nor the government disclosed the amount or how it was calculated.
Watchdog groups seized on the lack of detail as another example of the secrecy surrounding President Donald Trump’s pledges to separate his administration from his business empire.
“There is no independent oversight or accountability. We’re being asked to take their word for it,” said Noah Bookbinder, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. “Most importantly, even if they had given every dime they made from foreign governments to the Treasury, the taking of those payments would still be a problem under the Constitution.”
Trump Organization Executive Vice President and Chief Compliance Counsel George Sorial said in a statement to The Associated Press that the donation was made on Feb. 22 and includes profits from Jan. 20 through Dec. 31, 2017. The company declined to provide a sum or breakdown of the amounts by country.
Sorial said the profits were calculated using “our policy and the Uniform System of Accounts for the Lodging Industry” but did not elaborate. The U.S. Treasury did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
Watchdog group Public Citizen questioned the spirit of the pledge in a letter to the Trump Organization earlier this month since the methodology used for donations would seemingly not require any donation from unprofitable properties receiving foreign government revenue.
Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen, said that the lack of disclosure was unsurprising given that the Trump’s family businesses have “a penchant for secrecy and a readiness to violate their promises.”
“Did they pay with Monopoly money? If the Trump Organization won’t say how much they paid, let alone how they calculated it at each property, why in the world should we believe they actually have delivered on their promise?” Weissman said.
Ethics experts had already found problems with the pledge Trump made at a news conference held days before his inauguration because it didn’t include all his properties, such as his resorts, and left it up to Trump to define “profit.” The pledge was supposedly made to ameliorate the worry that Trump was violating the Constitution’s emoluments clause, which bans the president’s acceptance of foreign gifts and money without Congress’ permission.
Several lawsuits have challenged Trump’s ties to his business ventures and his refusal to divest from them. The suits allege that foreign governments’ use of Trump’s hotels and other properties violates the emoluments clause.
Trump’s attorneys have challenged the premise that a hotel room is an “emolument” but announced the pledge to “do more than what the Constitution requires” by donating foreign profits at the news conference. Later, questions emerged about exactly what this would entail.
An eight-page pamphlet provided by the Trump Organization to the House Oversight Committee in May said that the company planned to send the Treasury only profits obviously tied to foreign governments, and not ask guests questions about the source of their money because that would “impede upon personal privacy and diminish the guest experience of our brand.”
“It’s bad that Trump won’t divest himself and establish a truly blind trust, and it’s worse that he won’t be transparent,” said Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Maryland, ranking member on the House Oversight Committee. He called the Republicans refusal to do oversight, such as subpoena documents, that would shed light on Trump’s conflicts of interest “unconscionable.”
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Greece entered a last round of reform talks with creditors Monday, just five months before the country’s massive rescue program ends — and with the government and central bank publicly disagreeing on how to finance the nation after the bailout.
Government officials said the talks with representatives of Greece’s European partners and the International Monetary Fund in Athens would cover privatizations and energy.
But the negotiations were upstaged by a continued spat between Greece’s central bank governor, Yannis Stournaras, and the government over financing policies after the bailout runs out in August. The country will then have to raise money from international investors in bond markets — at a much higher rate than bailout creditors charge.
Stournaras repeated his argument that the government should consider setting up a precautionary credit line from the bailout rescuers that would secure the country — and its banks — cheap funding if needed, particularly as the country’s bonds are still rated well below investment grade. The finance ministry countered that this would create market jitters as to Greece’s ability to finance itself.
“Regardless of intentions, (Stournaras’) position … creates objective doubts regarding the prospects of the Greek economy, increases uncertainty and impedes Greece’s smooth exit from the bailout,” said Franciscos Koutentakis, the ministry’s general secretary for fiscal policy.
Greece signed the first of its three multi-billion euro bailouts in 2010, after it admitted its budget deficit was much higher than initially reported and investors stopped buying Greek bonds.
To secure the funds that kept it solvent, the country has slashed spending and public sector incomes, hiked taxes and extensively reformed its economy.
But the measures worsened a recession that wiped out more than a quarter of the economy and sent unemployment spiraling up by 16 percentage points between 2008 and 2016. The third bailout runs out in August.
Over the past eight months, the country has raised money from bond markets on three occasions through issues that were amply oversubscribed but offered high interest rates to attract investors.
Stournaras argued Monday that the possibility of an official credit line, to be used if needed, “should not be dramatized” as it would lower borrowing costs and “offer security as to state and bank access to financing after the end of the bailout.”
He also warned that the economy would remain under supervision from its European creditors until 75 percent of its debts have been repaid. Presenting the Bank of Greece’s annual report for 2017, Stournaras said economic growth is expected to accelerate to 2.4 percent this year, mostly on the wings of higher tourism receipts and exports.
Also Monday, some 2,000 municipal employees marched through central Athens to protest planned changes in school policy that unions say would threaten jobs in municipally-run kindergartens. Minor scuffles with police broke out outside parliament, but no arrests or injuries were reported.
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U.S., Mexican and Canadian negotiators met on Monday seeking to narrow disagreements on how to overhaul the NAFTA trade deal despite renewed signs of tension between Mexico and U.S. President Donald Trump over his planned border wall.
The trade teams began a seventh round of talks on Sunday aiming to finish reworking less contentious chapters of the North American Free Trade Agreement in order to create space to broker agreement on the trickiest subjects.
Still, with a presidential election looming in Mexico in July and U.S. mid-term congressional elections in November, the talks increasingly run the risk of getting entangled in domestic political considerations.
Negotiators are confident that the lesser hurdles will gradually be cleared. But the discussions have again been clouded by the proposed wall along the U.S. southern border that Trump has long touted as a necessity to curb illegal immigration and that he says Mexico must pay for.
Mexico has consistently rejected paying for the wall, and its government had hoped to arrange a meeting between President Enrique Pena Nieto and Trump in the next few weeks. However, a senior U.S. official said at the weekend that plan had been postponed after a phone call between the two soured over the wall earlier this month.
Used to distractions
The trade negotiators have become used to such distractions, but the talks are increasingly centering on U.S. demands that officials say can be resolved only at the top political level.
Mexico’s government has not commented officially on the derailment of the planned meeting, but Juan Pablo Castanon, head of the powerful CCE business lobby, was less reticent as he took stock of the unfolding NAFTA negotiations in Mexico City.
“Obviously, the cancellation of the Mexican president’s trip to the United States is an important element in the negotiations: it’s politics that can help us resolve the technical issues we’re moving forward on.” Castanon said.
The NAFTA talks were launched last year after Trump said the 1994 agreement should be overhauled to better favor American interests or Washington would quit the accord.
Phone call fallout
One former Mexican official still familiar with the process said the government was concerned that the fallout from the Trump-Pena Nieto phone call could weigh on the atmosphere at the talks, in spite of hopes that several chapters may be finished.
Castanon of the CCE said measures on e-commerce, telecommunications and sanitary standards for agricultural products were almost completed, and others close to the talks believe the energy chapter could also conclude.
Officials do not anticipate major breakthroughs on the most intractable proposals during the latest round of talks in Mexico City, which are due to run until March 5.
U.S. demands range from changes to automotive content origin rules and dispute resolution mechanisms, to imposing a clause that could automatically kill NAFTA after five years.
Agriculture, rules of origin, labor and regulatory practices were among the issues due to be discussed on Monday, one day before chief negotiators return to the fray.
Auto components
The Trump administration wants NAFTA rules of origin changed to make automakers source more parts from the region and specifically the United States, a major sticking point that the industry itself opposes.
The government is concerned that a lack of progress on the issue could hurt the renegotiation, the former official said.
In a sign of movement, the U.S. official leading the auto content negotiations was called back to Washington from Mexico for consultations on Monday, U.S. and Mexican officials said.
One official said the negotiator went back to talk to U.S. automakers and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer Seeking to break the deadlock, the Mexican government has said it would put forward a proposal on rules of origin at this round, but a Mexican official said on Monday no new ideas had been presented so far.
Supply management
There was little sign of compromise on other thorny issues early on, with a senior Canadian agriculture official pushing back against U.S. demands to dismantle Canadian protections for the dairy and poultry sectors known as supply management.
“When it comes to supply management, we believe there can be no concession,” said Jeff Leal, the minister of agriculture, food and rural affairs for the province of Ontario.
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У Міжнародній правозахисній організації Amnesty International засудили арешти жінок в Ірані після їхніх акцій протесту проти обов’язкового носіння хіджабу. Правозахисники заявили, що десятки жінок потрапляють нині в Ірані під ризик «тривалих термінів тюремного ув’язнення».
Відповідна заява з’явилася після того, як іранська поліція 23 лютого попередила, що жінкам, які протестували проти хіджабу тепер будуть висунуті звинувачення в «підбурюванні до корупції і проституції», максимальний термін покарання за що становить 10 років.
«Цей крок поставив десятки людей перед безпосередньою загрозою несправедливого ув’язнення і є тривожною ескалацією насильницького придушення владою прав жінок», – прокоментували в Amnesty International.
У правозахисній організації зазначили, що в столиці Ірану Тегерані з грудня 2017 року понад 35 жінок були «насильницьки атаковані і заарештовані» за участь в «мирних протестах».
Минулого тижня влада заарештувала ще двох жінок, які протестували проти носіння хіджабу в Тегерані.
Понад два десятки жінок за останні тижні вийшли з протестом в Ірані проти закону, який зобов’язує жінок носити хіджаб у публічних місцях.
Жіночому одягу в Ірані приділяють особливу увагу після революції 1979 року: відтоді дотримання ісламських правил в одязі стало обов’язковим. Закони вимагають, щоб жінки покривали тіло і волосся, а поліція моралі переслідує жінок, які повністю не дотримуються правил носіння хіджабу.
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Президент Європейської комісії Жан-Клод Юнкер заявив, що Сербія має вирішити свою суперечку з Косовом і провести низку реформ, перш ніж зможе приєднатися до Європейського союзу.
Виступаючи після переговорів з президентом Сербії Александром Вучичем у Белграді Юнкер заявив, що ця балканська країна перебуває на правильному шляху, але ЄС не може приймати нових членів з невирішеними територіальними питаннями.
«Сербія вже здолала значну частину шляху до ЄС», – сказав Юнкер 26 лютого, і додав, що низку проблем «все ще потрібно вирішувати».
Юнкер наголосив, зокрема, на необхідності провести судову реформу в Сербії та поліпшити ситуацію з верховенством закону.
Юнкер відвідує Сербію в рамках свого турне країнами Західних Балкан, які прагнуть вступити в ЄС на тлі спроб Росія розширити свій вплив в регіоні, особливо в Сербії.
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Російська журналістка і правозахисниця Зоя Свєтова звернулася до президента Франції Емманюеля Макрона з проханням посприяти у звільненні українського кінорежисера Олега Сенцова, засудженого в Росії.
У листі до Макрона, опублікованому 26 лютого французькою газетою Liberation, Свєтова пише, що не було ніяких терактів в Криму, як і не було жодного пам’ятника Леніну, в підриві якого російський суд звинуватив Олега Сенцова.
Звернення російської правозахисниці з’явилося у зв’язку з проведенням сьогодні в Парижі заходу на підтримку українського кінорежисера, яку організувала група «Нові дисиденти». На акцію з демонстрацією фільму «Суд: Російська держава проти Олега Сенцова» запросили французьких та інших іноземних діячів культури та кіно.
Олег Сенцов разом з Олександром Кольченком були затримані російськими спецслужбами в анексованому Криму в травні 2014 року. Їх звинувачують в організації терактів на півострові.
У серпні 2015 року суд у російському Ростові-на-Дону засудив Сенцова до 20 років колонії суворого режиму за звинуваченням у терористичній діяльності на території Криму. Кольченко отримав 10 років колонії. Обвинувачені провину не визнали.
Сенцов і Кольченко визнані правозахисним рухом «Меморіал» політичними в’язнями.
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Президент України Петро Порошенко відповідним указом відзначив за участь в АТО державними нагородами 108 воїнів, серед яких 43 посмертно і 62 – поранених, інформує сайт президентської адміністрації 26 лютого.
«Бійці відзначені орденами «Богдана Хмельницького» та «За мужність» III ступеня, медалями «За військову службу Україні» та «Захиснику Вітчизни», – йдеться в повідомленні.
Повідомляється також, що нагороджені двоє співробітників МВС, представлені до нагороди посмертно, та один поранений військовослужбовець Нацгвардії.
Раніше в інтерв’ю Радіо Свобода начальник Генерального штабу ЗСУ Віктор Муженко заявив, що від початку бойових дій у Збройних силах України 50 людей отримали генеральське звання.
Збройний конфлікт на сході України почався навесні 2014 року після російської анексії Криму. За даними ООН, за час конфлікту загинули понад 10 тисяч людей. Україна і Захід звинувачують Росію у підтримці сепаратистів на Донбасі, Москва ці звинувачення відкидає і заявляє, що на непідконтрольних Києві територіях можуть бути хіба що російські «добровольці».
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Міністр юстиції Ірану Аліреза Авейї планує виступити 26 лютого на 37-й щорічній сесії Ради ООН з прав людини ООН, хоча перебуває під санкціями Євросоюзу та Швейцарії, яка приймає форум.
Сесія, під час якої відбудеться триденний саміт лідерів близько 100 країн та міжнародних організацій, розпочнеться 26 лютого і триватиме до 23 березня у Палаці націй у Женеві.
Критики висловили обурення планованим виступом іранського міністра. ЄС та Швейцарія запровадили фінансові санкції щодо Авейї, стверджуючи, що як колишній провідний прокурор Ірану він «відповідає за порушення прав людини, свавільні арешти, відмову у правах ув’язнених та зростання кількості страт».
«Дозвіл Авейї звернутися до Ради з прав людини є ганебним, це буде знущанням із ООН та її механізмів у галузі прав людини», – заявив член базованої в парижі Національної ради опору Ірану Шахін Гобаді.
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After a 10-day break, members of Congress are returning to work under hefty pressure to respond to the outcry over gun violence. But no plan appears ready to take off despite a long list of proposals, including many from President Donald Trump.
Republican leaders have kept quiet for days as Trump tossed out ideas, including raising the minimum age to purchase assault-style weapons and arming teachers, though on Saturday the president tweeted that the latter was “Up to states.”
Their silence has left little indication whether they are ready to rally their ranks behind any one of the president’s ideas, dust off another proposal or do nothing. The most likely legislative option is bolstering the federal background check system for gun purchases, but it’s bogged down after being linked with a less popular measure to expand gun rights.
The halting start reflects firm GOP opposition to any bill that would curb access to guns and risk antagonizing gun advocates in their party. Before the Feb. 14 shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida, that killed 17 people, Republicans had no intention of reviving the polarizing and politically risky gun debate during an already difficult election year that could endanger their congressional majority.
“There’s no magic bill that’s going to stop the next thing from happening when so many laws are already on the books that weren’t being enforced, that were broken,” said Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., the third-ranking House GOP leader, when asked about solutions. “The breakdowns that happen, this is what drives people nuts,” said Scalise, who suffered life-threatening injuries when a gunman opened fire on lawmakers’ baseball team practice last year.
Under tough public questioning from shooting survivors, Trump has set high expectations for action.
“I think we’re going to have a great bill put forward very soon having to do with background checks, having to do with getting rid of certain things and keeping other things, and perhaps we’ll do something on age,” Trump said in a Fox News Channel interview Saturday night. He added: “We are drawing up strong legislation right now having to do with background checks, mental illness. I think you will have tremendous support. It’s time. It’s time.”
Trump’s early ideas were met with mixed reactions from his party. His talk of allowing teachers to carry concealed weapons into classrooms was rejected by at least one Republican, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio. House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., both spoke to Trump on Friday. Their offices declined comment on the conversations or legislative strategy.
Some Republicans backed up Trump’s apparent endorsement of raising the age minimum for buying some weapons.
Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., said he would support raising the age limit to buy a semi-automatic weapon like the one used in Florida. Rubio also supports lifting the age for rifle purchases. Rep. Brian Mast, R-Fla., a longtime NRA member, wrote in The New York Times that he now supports an assault-weapons ban.
Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., said he expects to talk soon with Trump, who has said he wants tougher background checks, as Toomey revives the bill he proposed earlier with Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., to expand presale checks for firearms purchases online and at gun shows.
First introduced after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012 in Connecticut, the measure has twice been rejected by the Senate. Some Democrats in GOP-leaning states joined with Republicans to defeat the measure. Toomey’s office said he is seeking to build bipartisan support after the latest shooting.
“Our president can play a huge and, in fact, probably decisive role in this. So I intend to give this another shot,” Toomey said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
The Senate more likely will turn to a bipartisan bill from Sens. John Cornyn, R-Texas and Chris Murphy, D-Conn., to strengthen FBI background checks — a response to a shooting last November in which a gunman killed more than two dozen people at a Texas church.
That bill would penalize federal agencies that don’t properly report required records and reward states that comply by providing them with federal grant preferences. It was drafted after the Air Force acknowledged that it failed to report the Texas gunman’s domestic violence conviction to the National Criminal Information Center database.
The House passed it last year, but only after GOP leaders added an unrelated measure pushed by the National Rifle Association. That measure expands gun rights by making it easier for gun owners to carry concealed weapons across state lines.
The package also included a provision directing the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to review “bump-stock” devices like the one used during the shooting at a Las Vegas music festival that left 58 people dead and hundreds injured.
Murphy told The Associated Press he was invited to discuss gun issues with the White House and he was interested in hearing the president’s ideas. He said he did not expect the Florida shooting to lead to a major breakthrough in Congress for those who’ve long pushed for tighter gun laws.
“There’s not going to be a turning point politically,” he said. Rather, it’s about “slowly and methodically” building a political movement.
Senate Democrats say any attempt to combine the background checks and concealed-carry measures is doomed to fail.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said he was skeptical Trump would follow through on proposals such as comprehensive background checks that the NRA opposes.
“The real test of President Trump and the Republican Congress is not words and empathy, but action,” Schumer said in a statement. He noted that Trump has a tendency to change his mind on this and other issues, reminding that the president has called for tougher gun laws only to back away when confronted by resistance from gun owners. The NRA’s independent expenditure arm poured tens of millions into Trump’s 2016 campaign.
“Will President Trump and the Republicans finally buck the NRA and get something done?” Schumer asked. “I hope this time will be different.”
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Всесвітня антидопінгова агенція (ВАДА) виступила пізно ввечері 25 лютого із заявою, в якій підтримала рішення Міжнародного олімпійського комітету не відновлювати повноваження Олімпійського комітету Росії (ОКР) на церемонії закриття Олімпійських ігор у Пхьончхані.
ВАДА нагадує, що умовою відновлення ОКР в олімпійській родині була відсутність нових порушень з боку членів делегації олімпійських атлетів із Росії (ОАР).
«Російська антидопінгова агенція (РУСАДА) все ще не відповідає вимогам Всесвітнього антидопінгового кодексу, оскільки вона все ще не виконала критеріїв Дорожньої карти відповідності, затвердженої після доведення існування в Росії систематичного маніпулювання процесом допінгового контролю», – ідеться в заяві.
Міжнародний олімпійський комітет (МОК) проголосував 25 лютого на підтримку заборони російським атлетам марширувати під своїм національним прапором під час церемонії закриття Олімпіади у Пхьончхані.
Спочатку вважалося, що МОК відновить повноваження Олімпійського комітету Росії, і російські атлети зможуть пройти на закриття Олімпіади під національним прапором, навіть після того, як російського керлінгіста Олександра Крушельницького спіймали на допінгу і позбавили через це «бронзи». Але після цього ще одна російська атлетка, бобслеїстка Надія Сергеєва також не пройшла тест на допінг і була дискваліфікована 24 лютого.
На зимовій Олімпіаді в Південній Кореї російські атлети були позбавлені права змагатися під прапором своєї країни. Міжнародний олімпійський комітет 5 грудня 2017 року відсторонив збірну Росії від участі в зимовій Олімпіаді-2018 року після того, як два розслідування підтвердили, що Кремль організував систему застосування допінгу в спорті. Російським спортсменам, які довели, що не застосовували допінг, дозволили змагатися під нейтральним прапором. У результаті було зареєстровано 169 російських атлетів для участі в Олімпіаді-2018.
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After researching digital currencies for work last year, personal finance writer J.R.
Duren hopped on his own crypto-rollercoaster.
Duren bought $5 worth of litecoin in November, and eventually purchased $400 more, mostly with his credit card. In just a few months, he experienced a rally, a crash and a recovery, with the adrenaline highs and lows that come along.
“At first, I was freaking out,” Duren said about watching his portfolio plunge 40 percent at one point. “The precipitous drop came as a shock.”
The 39-year-old Floridian is part of the new class of crypto-investors who do not necessarily think bitcoin will replace the U.S. dollar, or that blockchain will revolutionize modern finance or that dentists should have their own currency.
Dubbed by longtime crypto-investors as “the noobs” — online lingo for “newbies” — they are ordinary investors hopping onto the latest trend, often with little understanding of how cryptocurrencies work or why they exist.
“There has been a big shift in the type of investors we have seen in crypto over the past year,” said Angela Walch, a fellow at the UCL Centre for Blockchain Technologies. “It’s shifted from a small group of techies to average Joes. I overhear conversations about cryptocurrencies everywhere, in coffee shops and airports.”
Walch and other experts cited parallels to the late-1990s, when retail investors jumped into stocks like Pets.com, a short-lived online seller of pet supplies, only to watch their wealth evaporate when the dot-com bubble burst.
Bitcoin is the best-known virtual currency but there are now more than 1,500 to choose from, according to market data website CoinMarketCap, ranging from popular coins like ether and ripple to obscure coins like dentacoin, the one intended for dentists.
Exactly how many “noobs” bought into the craze last year is unclear because each transaction is pseudonymous, meaning it is linked to a unique digital address, and few exchanges collect or share detailed information about their users.
A variety of consumer-friendly websites have made investing much easier, and online forums are now filled with posts from ordinary retail investors who were rarely spotted on the cryptocurrency pages of social news hub Reddit before.
Reuters interviewed eight people who recently made their first foray into digital currency investing. Many were motivated by a fear of missing out on profits during what seemed like a never-ending rally last year.
One bitcoin was worth almost $20,000 in December, up around 1,900 percent from the start of 2017. As of Friday afternoon it was worth about $10,000 after having fallen as much as 70 percent from its peak. Other coins made even bigger gains and experienced equally dizzying drops over that time frame.
“There was that two-month period last year where all the virtual currencies kept going and up and I had a couple of friends that had invested and they had made five-figure returns,” said Michael Brown, a research analyst in New Jersey, who said he bought around $1,000 worth of ether in December.
“I got swept by the media frenzy,” he said. “You never hear stories of people losing money.”
In the weeks after Brown invested, his holdings soared as much as 75 percent and tumbled as much as 59 percent.
Buy and ‘Hodl’
Investors who got into bitcoin before its 2013 crash like to refer to themselves as “OGs,” short for “original gangsters.”
They tend to shrug off the recent downturn, arguing that cryptocurrencies will be worth much more in the future.
“As crashes go, this is one of the biggest,” said Xavier Levenfiche, who first invested in cryptocurrencies in 2011.
“But, in the grand scheme of things, it’s a hiccup on the road to greatness.”
Spooked by the sudden fall but not willing to book a loss, many investors are embracing a mantra known as “HODL.” The term stems from a misspelled post on an online forum during the cryptocurrency crash in 2013, when a user wrote he was “hodling” his bitcoin, instead of “holding.”
Mike Gnitecki, for instance, bought one bitcoin at around $18,000 in December and was sitting on a 43 percent decline as of Friday, waiting for a recovery.
“I view it as having been a fun side investment similar to a gamble,” said Gnitecki, a paramedic from Texas. “Clearly I lost some money on this particular gamble.”
Duren, the personal finance writer, is also holding onto his litecoin for now, though he regrets having spent $33 on credit card and exchange fees for a $405 investment.
Some retail investors who went big into cryptocurrencies for the first time during the rally last year remain positive.
Didi Taihuttu announced in October that he and his family had sold everything they owned — including their business, home, cars and toys — to move to a “digital nomad” camp in Thailand.
In an interview, Taihuttu said he has no regrets. The crypto-day-trader’s portfolio is in the black, and he predicts one bitcoin will be worth between $30,000 and $50,000 by year-end.
His backup plan is to write a book and perhaps make a movie about his family’s experience.
“We are not it in it to become bitcoin millionaires,” Taihuttu said.
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U.S. lawmakers return to Washington this week facing heightened pressure to address gun violence in America after yet another mass shooting that claimed 17 lives at a Florida high school. VOA’s Michael Bowman has this report
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At least four people were hospitalized in critical condition after an explosion in Leicester, England Sunday destroyed a convenience store and a home.
Police said there was no immediate indication the explosion was linked to terrorism butdeclared it a “major incident.”
The explosion happened just after 7 pm local time and Leicester police initially asked the public to stay away from the road and urged the news media and everyone else not to speculate about the cause.
“The cause of the explosion will be the subject of a joint investigation by the police and Leicestershire Fire and Rescue Service,” the police department said.
Police said a number of other buildings were damaged and homes and businesses in the area had been evacuated.
The city’s fire department said it sent six fire engines after the reports of a large explosion and a building collapse.
Pictures of the blast showed flames shooting up from the rubble where the building once stood, while neighbors frantically tried to get close to the site to help.
Leicester is about 177 kilometers north of London.
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Flash protests for and against secession from Spain marked Spanish King Felipe’s visit to Barcelona to inaugurate an international exhibit of cell phone producers. It was his first trip to the Catalan capital since an October regional vote for independence.
Separatists poured onto streets, plazas and balconies Sunday banging pots in what has become a ritual act of defiance since Spain’s central government imposed direct rule in November, dissolving the regional government.
A swelling crowd of protestors surrounded the city’s Baroque Music Palace as the King arrived for the inaugural dinner, forming a symbolic yellow ribbon around the building to highlight the detention of leaders.
But flag waving supporters of unity with Spain also held rallies in the city center to welcome the king, leading to street clashes with separatists indicating the extent to which Catalonia’s society is divided. At least two arrests had been reported by Sunday evening.
Tensions have grown in recent days, after Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy suggested using direct rule provisions to reintroduce Spanish as the main language in Catalan schools.
Catalan teachers’ unions have threatened strikes and mass protests to block the measures. “It would be a pedagogic disaster if Madrid tried to control our educational system through a kind of inquisition”the head of the Catalan Teachers’ Union, Ramon Fonts, told VOA.
Echoes of Franco
Separatists have equated efforts to impose central control on education to the dictatorship of Francisco Franco of a half a century ago that banned speaking Catalan. But proponents of the measures say post-Franco governments have devolved too much power to regional authorities, which have used the local language to promote separatism and advance their own political interests.
“It’s about allowing parents the right to decide in which language they want their children to be educated” said Raquel Cavisner,spokesperson of Convivencia Civica, a Catalan organization promoting unity with Spain. She says that Catalan language “immersion” in schools is a “discriminatory system” that puts children from Spanish speaking families at a disadvantage.
Current Catalan legislation fixes the portion of class time in which teaching can be conducted in Spanish at 25 percent. Such basic courses as mathematics are taught in Catalan, as is Spanish history. “Spanish is generally taught as a foreign language”a Barcelona school teacher said.
While secessionists continue to control the regional parliament, following emergency elections last December, polls consistently show Catalan opinion to be about evenly split. Pro-independence parties received 47 percent of the vote,but the largest vote getter of all seven parties competing in the elections was a unionist center right group, Ciudadanos, which proposes Spanish as main language.
Mixed responses
Resistance to the imposition of Catalan was manifested by hospital workers last week in the Balearic Islands, which would be encompassed in a projected Catalan state. They protested against legislation requiring Catalan for jobs in the health service. “You cure with medicine not with language” chanted about 3,000 nurses and doctors.
But thousands of Catalan independence supporters filled a theater in Barcelona Sunday to hear their exiled leader Carles Puigdemont say via video from Belgium that King Felipe would only be welcomed in the Republic of Catalonia if he “apologized” for opposing independence.
Barcelona Mayor Ada Colau and the president of the Catalan parliament Roger Torrent snubbed Felipe, by boycotting the inauguration of the Mobile World Congress, despite earlier assurances to international sponsors they would not to allow politics to interfere with the event.
Radical Committees for the Defense of the Republic associated with the “anti-capitalist” Catalan Unity Party, scuffled with police as they tried to block access to the convention hall, following a video address by their exiled leader Ana Gabriel.
Secessionist spokesmen blame the exile and jailing of their leaders for their inability to form a government since winning elections two months ago. Marcel Mauri of the pro independence Omnium Cultural says their united opposition to Madrid’s moves to take control of education could influence pro-independence parties to resolve their differences and announce a government in the next few days.
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Учасників ходи пам’яті російського опозиціонера Бориса Нємцова у Москві на місці збору оглядала поліція, вилучаючи плакати «Путіне, досить брехати і воювати» та «Я проти анексії Криму», повідомляє російська служба Радіо Свобода.
Як повідомляє видання «ОВД-інфо», щонайменше трьох людей затримала поліція.
За даними волонтерів проекту «Білий лічильник», який підраховує кількість учасників мітингів, на акцію пам’яті Бориса Нємцова у Москві вийшло понад 7 тисяч людей.
Мітинг почався близько 13 години за київським часом.
Як раніше заявляв представник руху «Солідарність» Ілля Яшин, збір учасників у Москві відбувається на Страсному бульварі, а далі їм узгодили маршрут по бульварах із завершенням на проспекті Сахарова. Організатори висловлювали очікування, що на ходу прийде до 30 тисяч людей.
За годину після столичного мітинг на честь Нємцова має початися у Санкт-Петербурзі.
Мітинги на вшанування пам’яті російського опозиціонера відбулися також цього дня і в інших містах. Зокрема, близько двохсот людей вийшли на ходу у Новосибірську, близько сотні – у Казані, також акції відбулися в Уфі та Іжевську.
27 лютого – третя річниця з дня вбивства Бориса Нємцова, колишнього віце-прем’єра уряду Росії, згодом опозиційного політика.
Бориса Нємцова застрелили на Великому Москворецькому мосту неподалік Кремля 27 лютого 2015 року. Вирок у справі про його вбивство винесли в липні минулого року. Обвинувачених у виконанні вбивства політика засудили на терміни від 11 до 20 років позбавлення волі. Замовник злочину досі не встановлений.
Убивство Нємцова викликало обурення в усьому світі і привернуло увагу міжнародної спільноти до складного становища російських опозиціонерів.
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Stricter enforcement of U.S. immigration law has created uncertainty for migrants who have been living in the United States for many years, despite having entered the country illegally. Mike O’Sullivan reports from Los Angeles that a widespread crackdown and recent workplace raids have prompted some to seek legal advice.
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У Москві почали ходу пам’яті російського опозиціонера Бориса Нємцова, убитого три роки тому, з вимогою встановити замовників цього злочину.
Учасники маршу скандують: «Росія буде вільною».
Російська служба Радіо Свобода веде пряму трансляцію акції.
Як раніше заявляв представник руху «Солідарність» Ілля Яшин, збір учасників у Москві відбувається на Страсному бульварі, а далі їм узгодили маршрут по бульварах із завершенням на проспекті Сахарова. Організатори висловлювали очікування, що на ходу прийде до 30 тисяч людей.
За годину після столичного мітинг на честь Нємцова має початися у Санкт-Петербурзі.
Мітинги на вшанування пам’яті російського опозиціонера відбулися також цього дня і в інших містах. Зокрема, близько двохсот людей вийшли на ходу у Новосибірську, близько сотні – у Казані, також акції відбулися в Уфі та Іжевську.
27 лютого – третя річниця з дня вбивства Бориса Нємцова, колишнього віце-прем’єра уряду Росії, згодом опозиційного політика.
Бориса Нємцова застрелили на Великому Москворецькому мосту неподалік Кремля 27 лютого 2015 року. Вирок у справі про його вбивство винесли в липні минулого року. Обвинувачених у виконанні вбивства політика засудили на терміни від 11 до 20 років позбавлення волі. Замовник злочину досі не встановлений.
Убивство Нємцова викликало обурення в усьому світі і привернуло увагу міжнародної спільноти до складного становища російських опозиціонерів.
your ad hereTo understand why Chile, one of Latin America’s most socially conservative nations, is losing faith in the Roman Catholic Church, visit Providencia, a middle-class area of Santiago coming to terms with a decades-old clergy sex abuse scandal.
Providencia is home to El Bosque, the former parish of priest Fernando Karadima, who was found guilty in a Vatican investigation in 2011 of abusing teenage boys over many years, spurring a chain of events leading to this week’s visit by a Vatican investigator.
A Chilean judge in the same year determined the Vatican’s canonical sentence was valid, but Karadima was not prosecuted by the civil justice system because the statute of limitations had expired.
So many Chileans were shocked in 2015 when Pope Francis appointed as a bishop a clergyman accused of covering up for Karadima, and defended that choice in a visit to Chile last month.
Socially conservative
Chile remains largely conservative on social issues. It only legalized divorce in 2004, making it one of the last countries in the world to do so. Chile’s ban on abortion, one of the strictest in the world, was lifted in 2017 for special circumstances only. Same-sex marriage remains illegal.
Yet El Bosque, like many other Chilean parishes, no longer has the large crowds attending Mass that it did in the 1970s and 1980s, when Karadima was a pillar of the Providencia community.
“Karadima did a lot of damage to the Catholic Church,” said Ximena Jara Novoa, 65, a hairdresser who lives in a neighboring community but has worked in Providencia for 45 years. She once counted Karadima’s mother and sister as clients.
“If I had been from this neighborhood, I would not let my son go to church anymore,” she said in an interview.
Empty pews, less trust
A poll by Santiago-based think tank Latinobarometro in January 2017 showed the number of Chileans calling themselves Catholics had fallen to 45 percent, from 74 percent in 1995.
In the same survey, Pope Francis, who hails from neighboring Argentina and is the first Latin American pontiff, was ranked by Chileans asked to evaluate him at 5.3 on a scale of zero to 10, compared to a 6.8 average in Latin America.
The pope surprised many Chileans last month by defending the appointment of Bishop Juan Barros, who considered Karadima his mentor and is accused by several men of covering up sexual abuse of minors committed by the priest.
Barros, of the southern diocese of Osorno, has said he was unaware of any wrongdoing by Karadima.
Just before leaving Chile, the pope testily told a Chilean reporter: “The day I see proof against Bishop Barros, then I will talk. There is not a single piece of evidence against him.
“It is all slander. Is that clear?”
The comments were widely criticized and just days after his return to Rome, Francis made a remarkable U-turn and ordered a Vatican investigation into the accusations.
Challenging the church
Residents of Providencia, once dotted with mansions belonging to the most powerful families in Santiago but now home to largely upscale high-rise apartments, said the abuse of children by the charismatic Karadima was an open secret as far back as the 1970s.
“It was always rumored, everything was talked about. People knew,” Novoa said quietly.
But challenging the powerful church in the once predominately Catholic society was not previously accepted.
That is changing.
The Vatican special envoy sent by the pope is scheduled to hear testimony from more than 20 sex abuse victims before he leaves Santiago.
Archbishop Charles Scicluna, the Vatican’s most experienced sex abuse investigator, also spent four hours in New York speaking to Juan Carlos Cruz, one of Karadima’s most vocal accusers.
On Thursday, a group of people who say they were sexually abused by members of the Marist Brothers congregation in Santiago asked Vatican officials to investigate their cases, too.
The Vatican’s defense of Barros has been compounded by the perceived lack of punishment of Karadima.
Miguel Angel Lopez, a professor at the University of Chile who grew up in Providencia and met Karadima several times when the priest visited his Catholic school, said the legal loophole that allowed the clergyman to escape punishment had infuriated Chileans.
“The fact that Karadima didn’t go to jail is one of the reasons people don’t trust the church much,” Lopez said. “They were very angry.”
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U.S. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke revamped a plan for a sweeping overhaul of his department Friday with a new organizational map that more closely follows state lines instead of the natural boundaries he initially proposed.
The changes follow complaints from a bipartisan group of Western state governors that Zinke did not consult them before unveiling his original plan last month. The agency oversees vast public lands, primarily in the U.S. West, ranging from protected national parks and wildlife refuges to areas where coal mining and energy exploration dominate the landscape.
Zinke said in an interview with The Associated Press that his goal remains unchanged: decentralizing the Interior Department’s bureaucracy and creating 13 regional headquarters.
Regional map redrawn
The redrawn map, obtained by AP, shows that states such as Colorado, New Mexico and Wyoming would fall within a single region instead of being split among multiple regions. Other states remain divided, including California, Nevada, Montana and Oregon.
Aspects of the original map remain, with some regions labeled according to river systems, such as the Upper Colorado Basin and the Missouri Basin. But the new lines tend to cut across geographic features and follow state lines, not boundaries of rivers and ecosystems.
The new proposal resulted from discussions with governors, members of Congress and senior leaders at the agency, Interior officials said.
Many department changes
Zinke, a former Republican congressman from Montana, has imposed major changes at the 70,000-employee Interior Department. He has rolled back regulations considered burdensome to the oil and gas industry and reassigned dozens of senior officials who were holdovers from President Barack Obama’s administration.
The vision of retooling the department’s bureaucracy plays into longstanding calls from politicians in the American West to shift more decisions about nearly 700,000 square miles (more than 1.8 million square kilometers) of public lands under Interior oversight to officials in the region.
Some Democrats have speculated that Zinke’s true motivation for the overhaul is to gut the department, noting that more than 90 percent of its employees work outside Washington, D.C.
Zinke contends that he’s trying to streamline Interior’s management of public lands by requiring all of the agencies within the department to use common regional boundaries, including the Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service and Fish and Wildlife Service.
Congress has the final word on the proposal.
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President Emmanuel Macron on Saturday faced heckles and whistles from French farmers angry with reforms to their sector, as he arrived for France’s annual agricultural fair.
For over 12 hours, Macron listened and responded to critics’ rebukes and questions — only to return home to the Elysee Palace with an adopted hen.
“I saw people 500 meters away, whistling at me,” Macron said, referring to a group of cereal growers protesting against a planned European Union free-trade pact with a South American bloc, and against the clampdown on weedkiller glyphosate.
“I broke with the plan and with the rules and headed straight to them, and they stopped whistling,” he told reporters.
“No one will be left without a solution,” he said.
Macron was seeking to appease farmers who believe they have no alternative to the widely used herbicide, which environmental activists say probably causes cancer.
Mercosur warning
He also wanted to calm fears after France’s biggest farm union warned Friday that more than 20,000 farms could go bankrupt if the deal with the Mercosur trade bloc (Brazil, which is the world’s top exporter of beef, plus Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay) goes ahead.
Meanwhile, Macron was under pressure over a plan to allow the wolf population in the French countryside to grow, if only marginally.
“If you want me to commit to reinforce the means of protection … I will do that,” he responded.
And he called on farmers to accept a decision on minimum price rules for European farmers, “or else the market will decide for us.”
But it wasn’t all jeers and snarls for Macron at the fair.
He left the fairground with a red hen in his arms, a gift from a poultry farm owner.
“I’ll take it. We’ll just have to find a way to protect it from the dog,” he said, referring to his Labrador, Nemo.
It was a far cry from last year, when, as a presidential candidate not yet in office, Macron was hit on the head by an egg launched by a protester.
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Investor Warren Buffett says Wall Street’s lust for deals has prompted CEOs to act like oversexed teenagers and overpay for acquisitions, so it has been hard to find deals for Berkshire Hathaway.
In his annual letter to shareholders Saturday, Buffett mixed investment advice with details of how Berkshire’s many businesses performed. Buffett blamed his recent acquisition drought on ambitious CEOs who have been encouraged to take on debt to finance pricey deals.
“If Wall Street analysts or board members urge that brand of CEO to consider possible acquisitions, it’s a bit like telling your ripening teenager to be sure to have a normal sex life,” Buffett said.
Berkshire is also facing more competition for acquisitions from private equity firms and other companies such as privately held Koch Industries.
Sticking with guideline
Buffett is sitting on $116 billion of cash and bonds because he’s struggled to find acquisitions at sensible prices. And Buffett is unwilling to load up on debt to finance deals at current prices.
“We will stick with our simple guideline: The less the prudence with which others conduct their affairs, the greater the prudence with which we must conduct our own,” Buffett wrote.
He said the conglomerate recorded a $29 billion paper gain because of the tax reforms Congress passed late last year. That helped it generate $44.9 billion profit last year, up from $24.1 billion the previous year.
Investors left wanting
Buffett’s letter is always well-read in the business world because of his remarkable track record over more than five decades and his talent for explaining complicated subjects in plain language. But this year’s letter left some investors wanting more because he didn’t say much about Berkshire’s succession plan, some noteworthy investment moves or the company’s new partnership with Amazon and JP Morgan Chase to reduce health care costs.
Edward Jones analyst Jim Shanahan said he expected Buffett to devote more of the letter to explaining his decision to promote and name the top two candidates to eventually succeed him as Berkshire’s CEO. Buffett briefly mentioned that move in two paragraphs at the very end of his letter.
That surprised John Fox, chief investment officer at FAM Funds, which holds Berkshire stock.
“He didn’t say a lot about succession. I was expecting more,” Fox said.
Greg Abel and Ajit Jain joined Berkshire’s board in January and took on additional responsibilities. Jain will now oversee all of the conglomerate’s insurance businesses while Abel will oversee all of the conglomerate’s non-insurance business operations.
Bet pays off for charity
Buffett, 87, has long had a succession plan in place for Berkshire to ensure the future of the conglomerate he built even though he has no plans to retire. Until January, he kept the names of Berkshire’s internal CEO candidates secret although investors who follow Berkshire had long included Jain and Abel on their short lists.
Shanahan said it also would have been nice to read Buffett’s thoughts on why he is selling off Berkshire’s IBM investment but maintaining big stakes in Wells Fargo and US Bancorp.
But Buffett did offer some sage investment advice based on his victory in a 10-year bet he made with a group of hedge funds. The S&P 500 index fund Buffett backed generated an 8.5 percent average annual gain and easily outpaced the hedge funds. One of Buffett’s favorite charities, Girls Inc. of Omaha, received $2.2 million as a result of the bet.
Buffett said it’s important for people to invest money regularly regardless of the market’s ups and downs, but watch out for investment fees, which will eat away at returns.
Succeeding in the stock market requires the discipline to act sensibly when markets do crazy things. Buffett said investors need “an ability to both disregard mob fears or enthusiasms and to focus on a few simple fundamentals. A willingness to look unimaginative for a sustained period — or even to look foolish — is also essential.”
Buffett said investors shouldn’t assume that bonds are less risky than stocks. At times, bonds are riskier than stocks.
Berkshire owns more than 90 subsidiaries, including clothing, furniture and jewelry firms. It also has major investments in such companies as Coca-Cola Co. and Wells Fargo & Co.
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Italy has had 64 governments since the World War II and many more prime ministers, but even by its own chaotic standards the country is mired in one of the most divisive and increasingly violent parliamentary elections in recent years.
Rising political violence has prompted comparisons to the 1970s and early 1980s — the “Years of Lead,” as they were known — when the country was engulfed in political and social turmoil and buffeted by domestic terrorism launched by extremists on the right and left of the political spectrum.
Twenty-one parties — and two highly unstable electoral alliances with shifting allegiances and sharp personal animosities, also darkened by intrigue worthy of the Borgia era — are competing in a race that has become shriller and more menacing with each passing day.
Tribal mood prevails
Politicians haven’t restrained their political rhetoric, hurling accusations with abandon at their rivals, smarting their characters and alleging treachery. The political language matches the grim, tribal mood of an electorate in the grip of anti-migrant fervor and furious with a political system seemingly incapable of grappling with key bread-and-butter issues.
Voters have become angrier as the election campaigning has unfolded, as well as more violent. This was demonstrated this week as police in several towns scuffled with bottle-throwing far-left protesters to block them from closing in on provocative anti-migrant and far-right rallies, where speakers call for the mass expulsion of the more than 600,000 migrants who have arrived in the country in the past two years.
On Friday, political violence plunged the center of the coastal city of Pisa into chaos and sent shoppers scurrying as left-wing protesters mounted a violent demonstration against Lega leader Matteo Salvini, who was speaking at a public rally and repeating his pledge to fight Brussels to ensure that “Italians come first.” Protesters threw smoke bombs, stones and bottles at blue-helmeted riot police.
In Turin, six police were hurt Thursday as they battled anti-fascists trying to reach a rally mounted by CasaPound, a neo-fascist grassroots group turned political party. The skirmish was described by local officials as “very serious.” They said the protesters clearly “intended to hurt” the police.
Anti-migrant fever
CasaPound itself has been eager in recent weeks to goad reaction from leftwing adversaries. It has been mounting highly provocative patrols in the multi-ethnic Esquilino neighborhood of Rome. This week group members in the district waved Italian flags and unfurled an anti-migrant banner emblazoned with the words: “Rape, theft, violence, enough degradation in this area.”
“Italians can no longer walk around this area peacefully, because of all the foreigners that continue to arrive end up here,” Carlomanno Adinolfi, a group member told reporters.
On Saturday police imposed a major security clampdown on Rome as political tensions mounted in the final days of the March 4 elections. A Mai piu fascismo (fascism never again) march drew thousands, and beforehand police warned demonstrators from carrying “blunt objects and rigid flag poles” and from wearing helmets and hard hats.
The tone for violence was set earlier this month when a onetime regional candidate for the right-wing populist Lega party, a key group in a right-wing alliance with former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia, shot and wounded half-a-dozen migrants in a central Italian town 200 kilometers from Rome.
Street skirmishes between neo-fascists and leftists — as well as racially motivated attacks on migrants — have increased ever since. In the central town of Perugia, a campaigner was reportedly stabbed and wounded midweek while putting up campaign posters for Potere al Popolo (Power to the People), a coalition of communist parties.
Politicians targeted, abducted, beaten
And politicians have been singled out for attack.
Candidates receive death threats on social media. Laura Boldrini, the speaker of the Italian Parliament, who has been a vehement opponent of racism, has received more than most — she also received a bullet in the mail. She is competing for reelection in Milan but is living in a secure house, the whereabouts of which are a closely-guard secret. Effigies of her and the country’s current left-wing prime minister, Paolo Gentiloni, were burned last month by youth members of the Lega in the northern town of Varese.
On Wednesday, a regional leader of Forza Nuova, a stand-alone far-right party that blames migrants themselves for anti-migrant attacks, was abducted in Palermo, Sicily, by leftwing activists wearing balaclavas, who bound and beat him. The activists sent a video of the assault to news stations, accusing their victim, Massimo Ursino, of spreading hate and racism across Italy.
“We tied him up and beat him to show that Palermo is anti-fascist and there is no place for men like him here,’’ they said.
Palermo’s mayor, Leoluca Orlando, said the attack was a sign of the “shameful and disgraceful” state of Italian politics. “We can’t beat fascism with violence. We can’t beat fascism with fascist behavior,” he added. The rise of the far-right has prompted the rise of a new far-left, which appears determined to be muscular.
Homegrown dangers
The day before the Palermo attack, the Italian intelligence services released their annual security report detailing potential hazards to the country. They identified radical Islamic terrorism as the greatest of the security challenges facing Italy, but the agencies also noted that home-grown extremism and the increased presence in Italy of far-right groups, and “fierce Neo-Nazi networks” promulgating racism and intolerance, posed a grave risk, too.
The Italian security services also raised the possibility of cyber-campaigns aimed at influencing public opinion and the country’s political orientation in the run-up to the March 4 election, worrying such campaigns would seek to introduce “destabilizing elements” by exacerbating online Italy’s political, economic and social divisions.
Although Russia wasn’t mentioned by name, U.S. and Italian analysts have warned that European elections have been targets for Russian meddling. But La Stampa newspaper in an investigation has found scant evidence of Russian actors using social media and cyber-attacks to try to shape this election cycle in Italy.
The country’s domestic political actors have proven all too capable of poisoning the political atmosphere without a helping hand from overseas, analysts note.
“Political violence must be stopped,” said Pietro Grasso, leader of Free and Equal (LeU), a leftwing party contesting in the elections. A former anti-mafia prosecutor and Senate speaker, Grasso told a Facebook forum this week, “I condemn violence, from whatever side it comes. It must be condemned and it must be stopped, and we must try to nip in the bud all manifestations of violence linked to political ideology.”
your ad hereThe Turkish government called it “extremely worrying” the U.S. will open an embassy in Jerusalem this coning May instead of by the end of next year as had been previously announced.
“This decision shows the U.S. administration’s insistence on damaging the grounds for peace by trampling over international law, resolutions of the United Nations Security Council on Jerusalem,” Turkey’s Foreign Ministry said Saturday in a statement.
Vice President Mike Pence told the Israeli parliament last month the move of the mission from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem would take place at the end of 2019, but the State Department said Friday the administration would open the embassy in May to coincide with the 70th anniversary of Israel’s founding.
President Donald Trump announced U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in December, angering Washington’s Arab allies and Palestinians, who claim the eastern part of the Old City as their capital.
“Turkey will continue its effort to protect the legitimate rights of the Palestinian public … against this extremely worrying decision by the U.S.,” the ministry said.
The Palestinian leadership said Friday moving the embassy a year earlier than originally announced was a “provocation to Arabs.”
Jerusalem is considered holy by Christians, Jews and Muslims and is central to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The move further strains relations between the U.S. and Turkey, already at odds on a number of issues, including Turkey’s latest military offensive against a U.S.-supported Kurdish militia in Syria.
The U.S. is the only country to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, a move that has also created dissension between the U.S. and the European Union over peace efforts in the Middle East.
your ad hereAustralia appears to be failing in its efforts to crack down on bribery, according to the latest survey conducted by Transparency International, a non-governmental organization based in Germany.
The group said developed countries – including Australia – appeared to be lagging in their efforts to combat corruption in the public sector. It pointed to an inadequate regulation of foreign political donations in Australia, conflicts of interest in planning approvals, revolving doors and improper industry lobbying in large-scale mining projects.
While Australia’s ranking is unchanged – it remains ranked 13th out of 180 countries – its corruption score has slipped eight points since the index started in its current form in 2012.
Concern about Australia’s ranking comes as debate continues about the need for a nationwide anti-corruption body similar to the Independent Commission Against Corruption in the state of New South Wales. It was set up in 1989 and has scored many notable victories, including the jailing of corrupt state politicians.
Professor A.J. Brown, who leads a project called “Strengthening Australia’s National Integrity System” for Transparency International, says much more work needs to be done.
“We do not have a federal anti-corruption body amongst other things, so it is also about the fact that our track record in terms of government commitment to controlling foreign bribery or money laundering and some of the things that the private sector is also involved in internationally is not that strong. We are moving but we have been moving very slow and very late, and not very comprehensively,” Brown said.
This year, New Zealand and Denmark were ranked highest in the Transparency International survey, the U.S. is ranked 16th, while South Sudan and Somalia were the lowest-ranked nations. The best performing region was Western Europe, while the most corrupt regions were Sub-Saharan Africa, followed by Eastern Europe and Central Asia.
The survey found that more than 6 billion people live in countries that are corrupt. Transparency International said most countries failed to protect the independence of the media, which plays a crucial role in preventing corruption.
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