From Sweden to southern Spain, and the Netherlands to Hungary, populist forces have gained seats in recent elections and they now see a chance at power in Brussels itself.
Europe is gearing up for EU parliament elections in May, a vote where the balance of power could shift decisively.
The campaigns are getting under way amid the fevered atmosphere of street protests in France and many other EU states, alongside growing brinkmanship in the negotiations on Britain’s imminent withdrawal from the bloc.
The 751 members of the European Parliament (or MEPs) are directly elected every five years, and they form the legislative body of the bloc which has the power to pass EU laws and approve the appointment of EU commissioners.
Populist forces, backed by the power of street protests, look set to make the coming vote unlike any other in the bloc’s history, according to analyst Michael Cottakis of the London School of Economics. He is also director of the ’89 Initiative,’ which seeks to engage younger generations in European decision-making.
“It’s an opportunity to hit the piñata when the establishment presents it to you and get your policy opinions across,” Cottakis told VOA. “Generally we’ve seen that the European elections have been a sort of locus in which angry, disaffected citizens essentially voice their concerns – the height of a delayed populist political backlash against a long period of economic hardship.”
In France, far-right leader Marine Le Pen is seeking to align her National Rally party with the yellow vest protesters.
Coordinated May assault
Across Europe, populist forces are attempting a coordinated assault on the May elections. Italy’s far-right interior minister recently weighed in on the French protests, posting a video on social media in which he said he hoped “that the French can free themselves from a terrible president, and the opportunity will come on May 26.”
The minister, Matteo Salvini, is trying to form alliances with governments in Hungary and Poland. Their common foe is immigration — but there are major contradictions, says analyst Luigi Scazzieri of the Center for European Reform.
“With Italy wanting other countries to take migrants but Hungary, for example, having absolutely no intention of doing so. So the real question is, will they be able to work together to form an effective group?'”
That’s unlikely, says Michael Cottakis, citing other significant policy differences among Europe’s populist governments.
“Italy is a member of the eurozone, Poland is not. And then in terms of foreign policy, very importantly, Poland is a great believer in the NATO alliance, terrified of Russia, greatly mistrusting of Vladimir Putin; whereas Salvini has openly expressed support.”
Street fights back
Political battle lines are being drawn, colors nailed to the mast. Several hundred self-styled red scarf’ protesters staged counter-demonstrations in Paris Sunday, waving EU flags and voicing support for pro-EU President Emmanuel Macron of France.
In Hungary, the EU flag has been at the forefront of growing anti-government demonstrations. In Germany meanwhile, the Green party has overtaken the far right Alternative for Germany’ party in the polls.
Populists are fast discovering they do not have a monopoly on the street. The real test of strength will come at the ballot box on May 26, a vote that could change the balance of power in Europe.
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U.S. intelligence chiefs are sounding alarms about an ever more perilous future for the United States, one in which the country is in danger of seeing its influence wane, its allies waiver and key adversaries team up to erode norms that once kept the country safe and the world more stable.
Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, along with the leaders of five other top intelligence agencies, delivered the grim assessment Tuesday, unveiling their annual worldwide threats report for lawmakers on the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Coats described the challenges facing the U.S. as a “toxic mix,” combing the exploits of the “big four” — Russia, China, North Korea and Iran — and of non-state actors such as terrorists and criminal networks, and factors such as rapidly advancing technology, climate change and migration.
“It is increasingly a challenge to prioritize which threats are of greatest importance,” Coats said, sharing testimony that often and repeatedly contradicted past assertions by U.S. President Donald Trump.
“We face significant changes in the domestic and global environment that has resulted in an increasingly complex and uncertain world and we must be ready. We must be ready,” he added.
Driving many of the concerns, according to intelligence officials, is a growing alliance between Russia and China competing against the U.S. not just for military and technological superiority, but for global influence.
Russia-China nexus
“China and Russia are more aligned than at any point since the mid-1950s,” the report warns.
That relationship is only likely to strengthen as both Moscow and Beijing attempt to take advantage of what they see as a growing U.S. unilateralism, it added.
Officials say that is already playing out in Europe where both countries find openings, as traditional U.S. allies question Washington’s role and consider new partnerships.
The threat assessment, while not mentioning the Trump administration’s focus on “America First” policies or its repeated criticism of alliances like NATO, cautions that many of these U.S. allies are already “seeking greater independence from Washington in response to their perceptions of changing U.S. policies on security and trade.”
At the same time, China and Russia appear to be benefiting from different approaches.
Beijing is trying to win influence by selling would-be partners “a distinctly Chinese fusion of strongman autocracy and a form of Western-style capitalism as a development model and implicit alternative to democratic values and institutions,” Coats said.
In contrast, Coats warned Russia is using weapons sales, private security firms and energy deals with some success across the Middle East, Africa and Southeast Asia.
North Korea
The intelligence chiefs also broke with Trump over North Korea less than a month after the president touted what he called an “incredible” meeting with North Korean nuclear envoy Kim Yong Chol.
“We have made a lot of progress, as far as denuclearization is concerned,” Trump said at the time.
But Coats is skeptical that Pyongyang will ever give up its entire nuclear arsenal, pointing to “activity that is inconsistent with full denuclearization.”
CIA Director Gina Haspel also said that despite indications North Korean leader Kim Jong Un “is trying to navigate a path toward some kind of better future,” his calculations on the need for nuclear weapons do not seem to have changed.
“The regime is committed to developing a long-range nuclear armed missile that would pose a direct threat to the United States,” she told lawmakers.
And while North Korea has not conducted a nuclear test in more than a year, Defense Intelligence Agency Director Gen. Robert Ashley likewise warned there is no reason to relax.
“They showed a capability to have an ICBM function,” Ashley said, pointing to older missile tests. “The capabilities and threat that existed a year ago are still there.”
Islamic State
The U.S. intelligence community also expressed caution about the president’s willingness to declare the demise of the Islamic State terror group.
The IS caliphate, Coats said, has been defeated, reduced to just a “couple of little villages” in Syria. But he said underestimating the group’s resolve would be a mistake.
“ISIS is intent on resurging and still commands thousands of fighters in Iraq and Syria,” Coats said, using an acronym for the group.
“ISIS will continue to be a threat to the United States, and we’re going to have to continue … to keep our eyes on that and our interest in the realization that this terrorism threat is going to continue for some time.”
Iran nuclear deal
U.S. intelligence analysts also appear to split with Trump over Iran and its pursuit of nuclear weapons.
“At the moment, technically, they are in compliance,” Haspel said of the 2015 deal between Iran and world powers meant to prevent Tehran from pursuing nuclear weapons.
The U.S. withdrew from the agreement last May, after Trump decried it as “defective to its core,” arguing that it would allow Iran to get economic relief and still have a path to nuclear weapons.
But for now, U.S. intelligence officials say Tehran is at least a year away from being able to produce a nuclear warhead, though they caution that with new U.S. and European sanctions, their willingness to stick with the agreement may be waning.
“We do see them debating amongst themselves as they’ve failed to realize the economic benefits they hoped for from the deal,” Haspel added.
At the same time, Coats said intelligence analysts expect Iran to put greater pressure on the U.S. in the Middle East, with Iranian-backed Shia militias likely to pose a growing threat to U.S. troops in Iraq.
Cyber
Coats and the other intelligence chiefs warned lawmakers that Russia, China, North Korea and Iran would continue to pressure the U.S. in cyberspace.
“We expect these actors and others to rely more and more on cyber capabilities when seeking to gain political, economic and military advantages over the United States and its allies and partners,” he told lawmakers Tuesday.
Coats said despite successful efforts to protect “the integrity of the 2018 midterm elections,” the intelligence agencies expected Russia, China, Iran and others to target the 2020 U.S. presidential elections.
“We expect them to refine their capabilities and add new tactics as they learn from each other’s experiences and efforts in previous elections,” he said.
Venezuela
Coats called the situation in Venezuela, where the U.S. has officially recognized Venezuelan legislative leader Juan Guaido as the country president, “tenuous.”
In an effort to support Guaido and constrain Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro, the U.S. on Monday slapped sanctions on the country’s state-run oil company.
But Coats said he expects Cuba, Russia and China “to prop up the Maduro regime’s security or financing,” and that the deciding factor could be the country’s military.
“The influence of the military on that decision … probably is key to what direction we might go in,” he said.
U.S. border
Despite the heavy focus from the White House and the Department of Homeland Security on the need for a border wall, the intelligence chiefs made no direct mention of threats along the southern U.S. border with Mexico.
Coats said he expected Mexico would “pursue cooperation with the United States as it tries to reduce violence and address socioeconomic issues, but authorities still do not have the capability to fully address the reduction, the flow and trafficking of the drug cartels.”
Coats also warned that high crime rates and economic problems “will continue to spur U.S.-bound migrants from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.”
The Worldwide Threat Assessment report also warned of increased migration pressures worldwide due to a combination of a slowing global economy and climate change.
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President Donald Trump is dismissing — and potentially bolstering sales — of a new tell-all book by a former White House aide, calling it “made-up stories and fiction.”
The book by Cliff Sims, called Team of Vipers, is the latest in a series of insider accounts by journalists and former Trump staffers that paint an unflattering picture of life in the West Wing. In it, Sims engages in score-settling with former internal rivals, fingers other administration officials as “leakers,” and casts the president as disloyal to his staff.
Trump, in a Tuesday morning tweet, dismissed Sims as a “low level staffer” who had written “yet another boring book.”
“He pretended to be an insider when in fact he was nothing more than a gofer,” said Trump, who claimed Sims had signed a non-disclosure agreement.
Indeed, Michael Glassner, chief operating officer of Trump’s re-election campaign, tweeted that the campaign was preparing to file suit against Sims for violating the agreement. Trump and his associates have a habit of announcing legal action and not following through.
Sims was read Trump’s tweet during an appearance on CNN and said he knew a mean tweet was a possibility.
Sims’ book was officially released Tuesday, the same day as another behind-the-scenes account of Trump’s team by former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, an informal Trump adviser and longtime friend. The book, titled Let Me Finish: Trump, the Kushners, Bannon, New Jersey, and the Power of In-Your-Face Politics, paints a sympathetic picture of a president who has been ill-served by what he describes as a “revolving door of deeply flawed individuals — amateurs, grifters, weaklings, convicted and unconvicted felons — who were hustled into jobs they were never suited for, sometimes seemingly without so much as a background check via Google or Wikipedia.”
Christie, who challenged Trump for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016 but endorsed Trump after dropping out, oversaw Trump’s transition team until he was fired shortly after the November election, allegedly at the urging of Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser. Christie, during his tenure as a federal prosecutor, sent Kushner’s father — businessman Charles Kushner — to prison after winning his conviction on tax evasion and other crimes.
In his account, Christie paints unflattering portraits of a number of former Trump aides, including former chief White House strategist Steve Bannon, whom he describes as “a fraud, a nobody, and a liar.” He also rails against former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, panning him as a “walking car crash” and “train wreck from beginning to end.”
Sims began rolling out his book Monday with a media blitz that included an appearance on ABC’s Good Morning America and a sit-down with late-night TV host Stephen Colbert of CBS.
Christie was due to visit with Colbert on Tuesday.
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Голова політради партії «Опозиційна платформа – за життя» Віктор Медведчук заявив 29 січня про необхідність створення «автономного регіону Донбас» і закріплення цього статусу в Конституції України. У виступі на партійному з’їзді Медведчук заявив, що його політична сила має план встановлення миру на Донбасі.
«План… передбачає створення автономного регіону Донбас у складі України – зі своїм парламентом, урядом і іншими органами влади», – вказав політик.
Медведчук вважає, що домовленості можуть бути досягнуті у чотирикутнику Київ – Донецьк –Луганськ – Москва.
Медведчук на з’їзді партії «Опозиційна платформа – за життя» висловив підтримку кандидату в президенти України Юрію Бойку. З’їзд ухвалив висунути цю кандидатуру на виборах.
Представниця президента України у Верховній Раді Ірина Луценко заявила в ефірі «5 каналу», коментуючи висловлювання Медведчука, що його позиція є віддзеркаленням поглядів президента Росії Володимира Путіна.
«Вважайте, Путін словами Медведчука сказав «хочу Донбас» так, як він захотів Крим… Медведчук на замовлення Путіна чітко розуміє, що їм треба вкинути ту автономію, через яку, можливо, він зможе управляти політичними процесами всередині України», – сказала Ірина Луценко.
Станом на 29 січня Центральна виборча комісія зареєструвала 23 кандидати в президенти України. Чинний президент Петро Порошенко 29 січня заявив про висунення своєї кандидатури на другий термін на посаді.
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Колишній радник президента США Дональда Трампа Роджер Стоун у суді у Вашингтоні відкинув усі звинувачення на свою адресу, повідомляють американські інформагенції.
66-річного Стоуна затримали 25 січня в рамках розслідування справи про ймовірне втручання Росії в президентські вибори в США в 2016 році. Йому висунуті звинувачення за сімома пунктами, серед яких перешкоджання розслідуванню, неправдиві свідчення і тиск на свідків.
Звинувачення пов’язані з висловлюваннями Стоуна про електронні листи, які були викрадені хакерами з серверів Демократичної партії і згодом опубліковані WikiLeaks. Зокрема, за версією слідства, колишній радник обговорював з членами штабу Трампа можливий негативний ефект публікації цих листів для кампанії кандидата від демократів Гілларі Клінтон. Стверджується, що Стоун зв’язувався із засновником WikiLeaks Джуліаном Ассанжем і обговорював з ним ці листи.
Стоуна звинувачують також у тому, що він не надав повної інформації про ці контакти. Слідство переконане, що сервери Національного демократичного комітету були зламані російськими хакерами, серед яких були співробітники військової розвідки. Кільком із них заочно висунуті звинувачення. Москва заперечує, що вдавалася до допомоги хакерів, щоб забезпечити обрання президентом США Дональда Трампа.
Стоун раніше заявляв, що очікує, що йому будуть висунуті звинувачення. Він, слідом за президентом Дональдом Трампом, критикував розслідування спецпрокурора Роберта Мюллера.
У межах цього розслідування різні звинувачення висунуті кільком колишнім співробітникам штабу Трампа. Деякі з них уже засуджені. Досі нікого з них не звинувачували в змові з Росією, і слідство поки не виступало із заявами про те, що така змова була.
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Британські депутати схвалили поправку до плану виходу Великої Британії з Євросоюзу, яка виключає можливість припинення членства країни в ЄС без спеціальної угоди. За це рішення проголосували 318 депутатів, проти були 310.
Поправку внесла член опозиційної Лейбористської партії Керолайн Спелман.
Раніше уряд заявив, що буде готовий до виходу королівства з Євросоюзу 29 березня навіть за відсутності угоди з Брюсселем. При цьому такий варіант Brexit кабінет міністрів називав небажаним.
Депутати проголосували за поправку, згідно з якою з угоди з ЄС має бути виключено згадку про появу прикордонної та митної інфраструктури між Республікою Ірландія і британською Північною Ірландією. Однак раніше в Брюсселі попередили, що не погодяться на таку зміну, а досягнута угода не підлягає перегляду.
Також парламент Великої Британії відхилив поправку, яка вимагала від уряду відтемінувати на кілька місяців вихід Сполученого королівства з Євросоюзу.
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150 обвинувальних актів вже скеровано до суду – директор Державного бюро розслідувань України
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Понад 129 тисяч українців отримали безоплатну правову допомогу адвокатів у кримінальних, цивільних та адміністративних справах у 2018 році, повідомив міністр юстиції України Павло Петренко.
За його словами, інтереси ще майже 35 тисяч українців у суді захистили працівники центрів безоплатної правової допомоги. Ще понад 550 тисяч українців отримали консультації та роз’яснення від співробітників БПД.
«Лише минулого року нашим захисникам вдалося домогтися виправдувальних вироків у 280 кримінальних провадженнях. Це значить, що ще 280 невинуватих українців було врятовано від тюрми. Якби не було наших адвокатів, всі ці люди, за часто сфабрикованими для забезпечення гарної статистики справами, потрапили б за грати, а їхнє життя назавжди було б зруйноване тавром злочинця», – сказав Петренко.
Він стверджує, що 64,9% від усіх, хто звернувся за допомогою, становили малозабезпечені особи, 13,6% – особи з інвалідністю, 9,3% – внутрішньо переміщені особи, 8,9% – учасники бойових дій, 1,5% – діти.
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Про це він заявив на форумі «Від Крут до Брюсселя. Ми йдемо своїм шляхом»
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It’s known as “the theater committee” for its high profile, high-drama role investigating President Donald Trump’s White House. And now, five of the fieriest Democratic freshmen in the House are players on that stage.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Katie Hill, Rashida Tlaib and others now have seats on the powerful House Oversight and Reform Committee — a sign that Democratic leaders want their social media savvy and star power front and center of investigations into the Trump administration. In return, the new members get a platform on which to polish their good-government bona fides. And the bet among senior Democrats is that more experienced committee members will help harness the newcomers’ energy, fame and know-how as the blandly-named panel turns its spotlight on the White House ahead of the 2020 elections.
“I consider myself to be a little bit of a justice and truth-teller,” said Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., referring to her background as a prosecutor. “I think I’m in good company.”
On the mission, yes. But the newcomers’ styles will depend in part on how solidly they won their districts in the November elections.
“Mine is going to be a very fact-based approach,” said Hill, a liaison to Democratic leaders who will serve as Cummings’ vice chairman and flipped a Republican stronghold in California. “I am not going to go in there with a set agenda as much as seeking the truth.”
Added Rep. Harley Rouda, a former Republican who also represents a swing California district: “We have an obligation as members of Congress to provide appropriate oversight regardless of whether it’s Republicans or Democrats or otherwise,” he said. Rouda called himself “somewhat centrist, and I’m going to carry that into that committee as well.”
It’s an apt home for the outspoken new members. Real-time drama — on matters ranging from former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Hurricane Katrina and steroids in sports — was the panel’s trademark long before Trump and the Democratic freshmen came to Washington.
“You walk in here, into the back room, you muster your righteous indignation and you step out on the stage and ask somebody: ‘How could you? What were you thinking? When did you first know?'” said Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., a committee member and outspoken conservative who was appointed to the panel when Barack Obama was president. “You can make a grandma feel bad about making cookies for her grandkids.”
Though theatrical, the committee has real power to “at any time conduct investigations of any matter,” according to its charter, using as tools subpoenas and the fact that lying to Congress is a crime. And the new chairman, Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., is promising serious probes that could have consequences for Trump and administration officials who saw relatively little oversight under the Republican-led House. Cummings has promised to look at conflicts of interest within the administration and is one of several chairmen who will lead investigations into Trump’s ties to Russia.
The committee also is where Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, was scheduled to testify next month on Trump, his links to Russia and payments to buy the silence of porn star Stormy Daniels. Last week he delayed his appearance on the advice of his legal team, citing ongoing cooperation in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation and threats against his family.
For now, Cummings is repeating two guiding words to keep the newcomers’ enthusiasm productive: “efficiency” and “effectiveness.”
“They are very articulate, they are very sharp,” said Cummings. “And I’m sure that working very closely with the leadership of our committee, that they will be disciplined about what they put out to the media.”
His comments reflect an acute awareness among senior Democrats that this group eschews a script and likes to improvise. Tlaib’s vow on Trump to “impeach the mother—er,” on Day 1 of the new Congress ran afoul of Pelosi’s dictum to not speak of impeachment in any serious way at least until special counsel Robert Mueller reports on his Russia probe. Tlaib apologized for the distraction and, Cummings said, “realized that those comments do not lend themselves to my two major goals: being effective and efficient.”
For House Democratic leaders it was a forgivable offense. They opted to leverage the social media prowess and outspokenness of all five freshmen, including Tlaib, by giving them the platform of the oversight panel. Notably, Pelosi kept them off the Judiciary Committee, the body that is made up mostly of lawyers and that would handle any impeachment proceedings against Trump.
Cummings, the freshmen say, is encouraging them to speak up.
“He’s made very clear that a lot of what he wants to do with his leadership is to cultivate the talent and the potential within the committee and the party overall,” said Ocasio-Cortez, who said she wants to focus on immigrant protections and the environment. Cummings, she said, “wants to pass the ball a lot to many of the different members.”
For those who opt for a splashy confrontation, there’s plenty of precedent during Republican control. A joint meeting of the oversight and judiciary panels last year erupted into a yelling match virtually from the first question to former FBI Agent Peter Strzok.
There’s almost an art to the absurdity, Massie suggested. When his hypothetical grandma comes up with an answer about her cookies, “You say, ‘I’m sorry, I’ve only got five minutes, I’ve got to move on to the next question. What about the applesauce?'”
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Цей крок був оголошений 28 січня услід за рішенням Вашингтона й інших держав не визнавати Ніколаса Мадуро законним лідером Венесуели.
Нові санкції не забороняють імпорт у США венесуельської нафти. Ринок США є найбільшим експортним ринком Венесуели.
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Це означає, що оплата за імпорт венесуельської нафти піде на заблоковані банківські рахунки, йдеться в заяві міністра фінансів США Стівена Мнучина.
Мадуро розкритикував таке рішення. «Це незаконні, аморальні, злочинні дії», – сказав він на зустрічі з дипломатами.
Венесуела є одним із найбільших світових виробників нафти, а державна компанія, Petroleos de Venezuela SA, була важливим джерелом доходів, що підтримувало президентство Мадуро, навіть коли в країні почався економічний хаос.
Санкції також торкаються американської нафтопереробної компанії Citgo, яка належить PDVSA.
Американські посадовці можуть спробувати передати контроль над PDVSA союзникам Хуана Гуайдо, лідера опозиції, якого Вашингтон й інші країни визнали лідером Венесуели. Якщо це станеться, Мадуро може припинити виплату кредитів російській державній нафтовій компанії «Роснефть».
Це, у свою чергу, може спонукати «Роснефть» скористатися умовами договору й отримати 49,9-відсотковий контроль над Citgo.
В останні роки у Венесуелі триває гуманітарна криза. У 2018 році показник інфляції в країні перевищив позначку в мільйон відсотків. Від 2014 року в країні регулярно спалахують вуличні протести проти президента.
У січні 2019 року Хуан Гуайдо на мітингу опозиції оголосив себе тимчасовим президентом країни і пообіцяв провести в країні нові вибори.
PDSVA – один з найбільших боржників російської державної нафтової компанії «Роснефть». У березні 2018 року «Роснефть» оцінила видані PDVSA аванси за поставки нафти в 6,5 мільярдів доларів. У компанії очікували, що Венесуела розплатитися за боргом до 2020 року.
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Розслідування російського втручання в американський виборчий процес, очолюване спеціальним прокурором Робертом Мюллером, близьке до завершення. Про це заявив у понеділок 28 січня виконувач обов’язків генерального прокурора США Метью Вітакер.
«Я очікую появи заключного звіту Роберта Мюллера», – заявив, відповідаючи на питання репортерів, Вітакер.
За його словами, він отримав повну інформацію про хід розслідування. Вітакер також повідомив, що його відомство «розгляне» рішення, прийняті спеціальним прокурором.
Ці слова глави генпрокурора розкритикували провідні законодавці-демократи, які вимагають оприлюднити остаточний звіт спеціального прокурора Роберта Мюллера повністю. У понеділок в Сенат був внесений відповідний законопроект. Згідно з існуючими правилами, долю звітів спецпрокурорів вирішує керівництво міністерства юстиції.
У США триває розслідування ймовірного втручання Росії в президентські вибори. Спецпрокурор Мюллер з’ясовує, чи існувала змова штабу Трампа з Кремлем, щоб підірвати позиції суперника нинішнього президента США Дональда Трампа від Демократичної партії Гілларі Клінтон. Москва заперечує втручання у вибори в США в 2016 році.
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The U.S. has imposed sanctions on Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, PdVSA, in an increased effort to pressure Nicolás Maduro to relinquish power to Juan Guaidó, now recognized by the U.S. and a number of other nations as the country’s legitimate president. VOA’s diplomatic correspondent Cindy Saine reports from the State Department.
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Brazil eyes management overhaul for Vale after dam disaster
Brazil’s government weighed pushing for a management overhaul at iron ore miner Vale SA on Monday as grief over the hundreds feared killed by a dam burst turned into anger, with prosecutors, politicians and victims’ families calling for punishment.
By Monday night, firefighters in the state of Minas Gerais had confirmed that 65 people were killed by Friday’s disaster, when a burst tailings dam sent a torrent of sludge into the miner’s offices and the town of Brumadinho.
There were still 279 people unaccounted for, and officials said it was unlikely that any would be found alive.
Brazil’s acting president, Hamilton Mourao, told reporters a government task force on the disaster response is looking at whether it could or should change Vale’s top management.
Public-sector pension funds hold several seats on the board of the mining company, and the government holds a “golden share” giving it power over strategic decisions.
“The question of Vale’s management is being studied by the crisis group,” said Mourao, who is serving as acting president for some 48 hours while President Jair Bolsonaro recovers from surgery. “I’m not sure if the group could make that recommendation.”
Shares of Vale, the world’s largest iron ore and nickel producer, plummeted 24.5 percent on Monday in Sao Paulo, erasing nearly $19 billion in market capitalization. A U.S. law firm filed a shareholder class action lawsuit against the company in New York, seeking to recover investment losses.
Igor Lima, a fund manager at Galt Capital in Rio, said the severe threats from the government and prosecutors drove the shares even lower than many analysts had estimated.
“This reaction has brought quite a lot of uncertainty about the size of the financial punishment Vale will have to handle,” he said.
Senator Renan Calheiros, who is in the thick of a Senate leadership race, on Twitter called for Vale’s top management to be removed urgently “out of respect for the victims … and to avoid any destruction of evidence.”
One of Vale’s lawyers, Sergio Bermudes, told newspaper Folha de S. Paulo that management should not leave the company and said that Calheiros was trying to profit politically from the tragedy.
Vale’s senior executives have apologized for the disaster but have not accepted responsibility, saying the installations met the highest industry standards.
Brazil’s top prosecutor, Raquel Dodge, said the company should be held strongly responsible and criminally prosecuted.
Executives could also be personally held responsible, she said.
Repeated Failures
The disaster at the Corrego do Feijao mine occurred less than four years after a dam collapsed at a nearby mine run by Samarco Mineracao SA, a joint venture by Vale and BHP Billiton, killing 19 and dumping toxic sludge in a major river.
While the 2015 Samarco disaster unleashed about five times more mining waste, Friday’s dam break was far deadlier as the wall of mud hit Vale’s local offices, including a crowded cafeteria, and tore through a populated area downhill.
“The cafeteria was in a risky area,” Renato Simao de Oliveiras, 32, said while searching for his twin brother, a Vale employee, at an emergency response station. “Just to save money, even if it meant losing the little guy. … These businessmen, they only think about themselves.”
As search efforts continued on Monday, firefighters laid down wood planks to cross a sea of sludge that is hundreds of meters wide in places, to reach a bus in search of bodies inside. Villagers discovered the bus as they tried to rescue a nearby cow stuck in the mud.
Longtime resident Ademir Rogerio cried as he surveyed the mud where Vale’s facilities once stood on the edge of town.
“The world is over for us,” he said. “Vale is the top mining company in the world. If this could happen here, imagine what would happen if it were a smaller miner.”
Nestor José de Mury said he lost his nephew and coworkers in the mud. “I’ve never seen anything like it, it killed everyone,” he said.
Vale Chief Financial Officer Luciano Siani told journalists on Monday evening that, despite interrupting operations in Brumadinho, the company would continue royalty payments to the municipality. He said Vale royalties made up about 60 percent of the town’s 140 million reais in revenue last year.
Siani said a donation of 100,000 reais will be made to each family that lost a relative in the disaster and said Vale would step up investments in dam safety.
Safety Debate
The board of Vale, which has raised its dividends over the last year, suspended all shareholder payouts and executive bonuses late on Sunday, as the disaster put its corporate strategy under scrutiny.
Since the disaster, courts have order a freeze on 11.8 billion reais of Vale’s assets to cover damages. State and federal authorities have slapped it with 349 million reais of administrative fines.
German insurer Allianz SE may have to cover some of the costs of the dam collapse, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters.
“I’m not a mining technician. I followed the technicians’ advice and you see what happened. It didn’t work,” Vale CEO Fabio Schvartsman said in a TV interview. “We are 100 percent within all the standards, and that didn’t do it.”
Many wondered if the state of Minas Gerais, named for the mining industry that has shaped its landscape for centuries, should have higher standards.
“There are safe ways of mining,” said Joao Vitor Xavier, head of the mining and energy commission in the state assembly. “It’s just that it diminishes profit margins, so they prefer to do things the cheaper way — and put lives at risk.”
Reaction to the disaster could threaten the plans of Brazil’s newly inaugurated president to relax restrictions on the mining industry, including proposals to open up indigenous reservations and large swaths of the Amazon jungle for mining.
Environment Minister Ricardo Salles said in a TV interview on Monday that Brazil should create new regulation for mining dams, replacing wet tailings dams with dry mining methods.
Mines and Energy Minister Bento Albuquerque proposed in a Sunday newspaper interview that the law be changed to assign responsibility in cases such as Brumadinho to the people responsible for certifying the safety of mining dams.
“Current law does not prevent disasters like the one we saw on Brumadinho,” he said. “The model for verifying the state of mining dams will have to be reconsidered. The model isn’t good.”
($1 = 3.7559 reais)
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Food shocks, or sudden losses of crops, livestock or fish, due to the combination extreme weather conditions and geopolitical events like war, increased from 1961 to 2013, said researchers at The University of Tasmania in a report released Monday.
Researchers saw a steady increase in shock frequency over each decade with no declines.
The report, published in Nature Sustainability, said that protective measures are needed to avoid future disasters.
The authors studied 226 shocks across 134 countries over the last 53 years and, unlike previous reports, examined the connection between shocks and land-based agriculture and sea-based aquaculture.
“There seems to be this increasing trend in volatility,” said lead author Richard Cottrell, a PhD candidate in quantitative marine science at the University of Tasmania in Australia. “We do need to stop and think about this.”
Extreme weather events are expected to worsen over time because of climate change, the report said, and when countries already struggling to feed their populations experience conflict, the risk of mass-hunger increases.
The researchers found that about one quarter of food resources are accessed through trade, and many countries could not feed their populations without imports, making them particularly vulnerable to food shocks of trading partners.
As the frequency of shocks continues to increase, it leaves what Cottrell called “narrowing windows” between shocks, making it nearly impossible to recover and prepare for the next one.
The report said trade-dependent countries must find ways to store food in preparation for inevitable shocks elsewhere.
Countries must invest in “climate-smart” practices like diversifying plant and animal breeds and varieties and enhance soil quality to speed recovery following floods and droughts, the report said.
“We need to start changing the way we produce food for resiliency,” Cottrell said, adding that he had yet to see much action being taken by wealthy food-producing countries. “Because we are going to see a problem.”
The report was released the same day the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization reported findings on conflict and hunger.
That report stated that around 56 million people across eight conflict zones are in need of immediate food and livelihood assistance.
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U.S. lawmakers and nuclear arms control leaders are set to hold a news conference Tuesday to discuss limiting the power of U.S. presidents to launch a nuclear strike.
Democratic Sen. Edward Markey of Massachusetts and Congressman Ted Lieu of California are seeking to limit the ability of “President Donald Trump or any U.S. president to launch a nuclear first strike without a declaration of war by Congress,” a statement they released Tuesday said.
The statement cited the incident in 2018 when the president taunted North Korea over the size of his nuclear button.
After North Korean leader Kim Jong Un used part of his New Year’s message to remind the world he has a “nuclear button,” Trump responded in a tweet: “Will someone from his depleted and food starved regime please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!”
Markey and Lieu floated the idea of a bill limiting the president’s power at that time. Since then, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, the nonprofit group that keeps track of the “Doomsday Clock” said Thursday the clock is stuck at 11:58, or two minutes to midnight — a metaphor for the nuclear destruction of the world.
In 2018, the world’s arms control architecture teetered on the brink of collapse as the United States withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal and threatened withdrawal from the landmark Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.
Negotiations between the United States and North Korea over Pyongyang’s nuclear program stalled. Later, in an unrelated incident, Hawaii spent 38 minutes of panic, believing it was under nuclear missile attack after an employee at the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency mistakenly activated a real-life missile alert.
“Recognizing this grim reality,” Bulletin president Rachel Bronson said, “it is still two minutes to midnight — remaining the closest to midnight that the clock has ever been set.”
Past efforts to limit power
Limiting a president’s power to launch a nuclear strike is not a new idea for American leaders.
During the Watergate crisis, President Richard Nixon declared, “I can go back into my office and pick up the telephone and in 25 minutes, 70 million people will be dead.”
That reportedly prompted Defense Secretary James Schlesinger to instruct the Joint Chiefs of Staff that “any emergency order coming from the president” — such as a nuclear launch order — should go through him or Secretary of State Henry Kissinger first.
There was no need for the military leaders to follow that order.
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The European Union has a message for Prime Minister Theresa May as she plots a path out of the Brexit impasse: Britain needs to decide what it really wants but the negotiated divorce deal will not be reopened.
With less than nine weeks until Britain is due by law to leave the European Union on March 29, there is no agreement yet in London on how and even whether to leave the world’s biggest trading bloc.
Parliament defeated May’s deal two weeks ago by a huge margin, with many Brexit-supporting rebels in her Conservative Party angry at the Irish “backstop,” an insurance policy aimed at preventing a hard border in Ireland if no other solutions can be agreed.
Ahead of Tuesday’s votes in the British parliament on a way forward, lawmakers in May’s party are pushing for her to demand the European Union drop the backstop and replace it with something else.
“It is quite a challenge to see how you can construct from a diversity of the opposition a positive majority for the deal,” EU deputy chief negotiator Sabine Weyand told a Brussels conference organized by the European Policy Center think-tank.
In a note of criticism of May’s strategy, she said there appeared to be a lack of “ownership” in Britain of the agreement struck between the two sides in November, and that there was insufficient transparency in the prime minister’s moves.
“There will be no more negotiations on the Withdrawal Agreement,” said Weyand, a German senior civil servant at the European Commission, reiterating the EU stance.
As the Brexit crisis goes down to the line, however, EU officials indicated there might be wriggle room if May came back with a clear, and viable, request for changes that she — and the EU — believe will secure a final ratification.
Wriggle room?
However, Weyand echoed her boss Michel Barnier in saying that Britain could resolve some of the problems caused by opposition to the Irish backstop by changing some of its demands on post-Brexit trade.
Referring to an amendment to May’s proposed next steps on Brexit put forward by senior Conservative lawmaker Graham Brady, who wants “alternative arrangements” to the backstop, Weyand said that the withdrawal treaty already contained that possibility.
“We are open to alternative arrangements” on the Irish border, she said. “The problem with the Brady amendment is that it does not spell out what they are.
“The backstop is not a prerequisite for the future relationship,” she said. “We are open to alternative proposals.”
A source in May’s office said the government would tell Conservative lawmakers to vote in favor of Brady’s amendment if it is selected by the speaker on Tuesday.
Britain remaining in a customs union, or even the EU single market, could help reach a final agreement, Weyand said, adding: “We need decisions on the U.K. side on the direction of travel.”
Weyand said the ratification of the EU-U.K. deal would build the trust necessary to build a new relationship, but ruled out bowing to British calls to set a time limit to the backstop beyond which the insurance policy would lapse.
“A time-limit on the backstop defeats the purpose of the backstop because it means that once the backstop expires you stand there with no solution for this border,” Weyand said.
Impasse
Speaking to the same conference, a former British envoy to the EU, Ivan Rogers, said he expected the deadlock to persist in the coming weeks, saying it had always seemed likely that the outcome would remain in doubt until much closer to March 29.
Rogers was speaking in a personal capacity, having resigned two years ago after differences with May over the negotiation.
The question for May is whether the EU can offer enough to get a variant of her defeated deal through parliament.
May wants to use a series of votes on Tuesday to find a consensus that lawmakers in her own party could support, just two weeks since her deal suffered the biggest parliamentary defeat in modern British history.
Parliament will vote on proposals made by lawmakers including a delay to Brexit and going back to the EU to demand changes to the Northern Irish backstop.
In essence, May is forcing lawmakers to show their cards on what sort of Brexit, if any, they want. Lawmakers in her own party want her to demand a last-minute change to the withdrawal deal to remove the backstop, which they fear could end up trapping the U.K. in a permanent customs union with the EU.
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When Germany signed a deal last month to help Bolivia exploit its huge lithium reserves, it hailed the venture as a deepening of economic ties with the South American country. But it also gives Germany entry into the new “Great Game,” in which big powers like China are jostling across the globe for access to the prized electric battery metal.
The signing of the deal in Berlin on Dec. 12 capped two years of intense lobbying by Germany as it sought to persuade President Evo Morales’ government that a small German family-run company was a better bet than its Chinese rivals, according to Reuters interviews with German and Bolivian officials.
While the substance of the deal has been reported, how China, Bolivia’s biggest non-institutional lender and close ideological ally, lost out to Germany has not.
China has been quietly cornering the global lithium market, making deals in Asia, Chile and Argentina as it seeks to lock in access to a strategic resource that could power the next energy revolution.
China has invested $4.2 billion in South America in the past two years, surpassing the value of similar deals by Japanese and South Korean companies in the same period. Chinese entities now control nearly half of global lithium production and 60 percent of electric battery production capacity.
German officials told Reuters they championed the bid by ACI Systems GmbH because they saw an opportunity to lower Germany’s reliance on Asian battery makers and help its carmakers catch up with Chinese and U.S. rivals in the race to make electric cars.
The German push included a series of visits by German government officials who talked up the benefits of picking a German company. Bolivian officials also toured German battery factories, Bolivia’s deputy minister of High Energy Technologies, Luis Alberto Echazu, told Reuters.
German Economy Minister Peter Altmaier wrote a letter to Morales, an environmental champion, emphasizing Germany’s commitment to environment protection.
The lobbying effort was capped by a call last April between Altmaier and Morales, Bolivian, German and ACI officials said, without offering details of what was discussed.
German diplomats in La Paz also stressed high-level German government backing for the project, potential loan guarantees and the tantalizing prospect of supply agreements with German automakers, ACI and Bolivian officials told Reuters.
ACI’s win means Germany now has a foothold in the final frontier of South America’s so-called Lithium Triangle: the Uyuni salt flat in Bolivia, one of the world’s largest untapped deposits. The triangle comprises lithium deposits in an area that includes parts of Chile, Argentina and Bolivia.
“This partnership secures lithium supplies for us and breaks the Chinese monopoly,” Wolfgang Tiefensee, economy minister of the German state of Thuringia, an automotive manufacturing hub, told Reuters during a visit to the Bolivian capital La Paz in October.
Some risks
The venture in Bolivia is not without risk for ACI.
While Uyuni boasts at least 21 million tons of lithium, Morales has made nationalizing natural resources a key policy plank. Bolivian officials assured ACI that foreign investments in the Uyuni would be guaranteed should anything go awry, CEO Wolfgang Schmutz said in an interview.
In addition, unlike Chile’s sun-drenched Atacama salt flats, snow and rain slow the evaporation process needed to extract lithium from brine in Uyuni, and the landlocked nation will have to use a port in neighboring Chile or Peru to ship the metal out.
ACI, a family-run clean tech and machinery supplier, has no experience producing lithium. The company dismisses concerns from some lithium analysts about its ability to deliver, saying its small size gives it more flexibility to bring partners from different fields into the project.
Schmutz said the company has preliminary lithium supply deals with major German carmakers, but declined to provide details, citing non-disclosure agreements.
None of Germany’s top three carmakers — BMW, VW or Daimler — confirmed any agreement with ACI when contacted by Reuters.
BMW said it was in preliminary talks with ACI but had made no decision. VW said ensuring supplies and stable prices for raw materials was important, but noted lithium production in Bolivia was particularly demanding. Daimler board member Ola Kaellenius said: “If it’s happening, we’re not part of it.”
ACI said the carmakers that it was in talks with would not be able to confirm anything publicly until final deals were made.
The “Great Game” — lithium version
The global battle for control of lithium has been likened to the “Great Game,” the term coined to describe the struggle between Russia and Britain for influence and territory in Central Asia in the 19th century.
The Bolivian project includes plans to build a lithium hydroxide plant and a factory for producing electric car batteries in Bolivia. Once completed, the factory will help to fulfill Morales’ ambition to break with Bolivia’s historic role as a mere exporter of raw materials.
ACI has said it expects the lithium hydroxide plant to have an annual production capacity of 35,000-40,000 tons by the end of 2022, similar in output to plants operated by the world’s top lithium producers. Eighty percent of that would be exported to Germany.
ACI’s willingness to build a battery plant in Bolivia helped to seal the deal, said Echazu, the deputy minister.
The Chinese did not want to build a battery plant in Bolivia because they felt it made no economic sense to ship in materials to make the batteries only to re-import the final product to China, he said.
China’s embassy in La Paz declined to comment on the Uyuni project, but said the potential for future cooperation with Bolivia on lithium was “huge.”
Bolivia’s state-owned lithium producer YLB will own 51 percent of the new joint venture. Control of the project was another key demand of the Bolivians, who have bitter memories of foreign powers meddling in the former Spanish colony to seize its natural resources.
Juan Carlos Montenegro, the head of YLB, said geopolitics was a factor for Bolivia in deciding which companies to work with.
“We don’t want a single country to set the rules, we want balance and other world powers must help create that balance,” he said. “So for Bolivia, it’s important to have not just economic partners for markets, but geopolitical strategic partners.”
He stressed, however, that Bolivia had not been predisposed against China in deciding who had made the best offer.
“China-Bolivia relations are still good. China is present in every country in the world and impossible to avoid,” he said.
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British officials are war-gaming various strategies for coping with the disruption of Britain leaving the European Union without an exit deal, including declaring a state of emergency and martial law to avert disorder provoked by possible food shortages and energy outages.
Details emerged of Operation Yellow Hammer, the contingency planning underway for a so-called no-deal Brexit, ahead of important parliamentary votes this week that could result in Britain postponing its departure by nine months or even more.
Operation Yellow Hammer has provoked the wrath of hardline Brexiters, who say the war-gaming is excessive and the leaking of what the government is considering is just designed to scare rebel lawmakers into accepting the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement the House of Commons rejected earlier this month.
As the exit day of March 29 looms, the government and businesses are scrambling to prepare for possible chaos wrought by a no-deal exit, which some fear could severely disrupt supply chains, energy networks and basic cross-border services, from banking to travel. Downing Street admits a no-deal exit would bring disruption “but as a responsible government we are taking the appropriate steps to minimize this disruption and ensure the country is prepared.”
Some civil servants have compared the likely disruption to the impact of a war. Defense officials told Sky News Sunday the army is stockpiling food, fuel, spare parts and ammunition in readiness. “An army marches on its stomach. If supply lines break down, they struggle,” an official said.
Earlier this month, nearly 100 trucks took part in a drill to test Britain’s contingency plans for coping with likely customs and security delays in the event of a no-deal Brexit. The port of Dover normally sees 10,000 trucks pass through every day, bringing vital supplies from the continent and sending Britain’s exports to the European Union and beyond. The fear is a large part of southeast England could see unmanageable traffic lines.
Hardline Brexiters, like former foreign secretary Boris Johnson, have dismissed the no-deal Brexit warnings as hysteria. “These doom-laden predictions are so hyperbolical as to suffer from the law of diminishing returns. Brexiteers have, for months, been arguing that a no-deal exit is manageable and government warnings are overblown,” Johnson said recently.
The House of Commons is set to vote Tuesday on whether Britain should delay the March 29 exit if a withdrawal deal that will garner sufficient support from lawmakers cannot be reached with Brussels.
More than a dozen ministers are warning they’ll resign if May fails to commit to avoiding a no-deal Brexit, although they’re prepared to give her two weeks to try to conclude a new withdrawal deal first.
In the event she can’t, parliament would have to pass new legislation to delay an exit. But delaying Britain’s departure would also require unanimous agreement from the 27 other EU member states, and Brussels has warned the exit could only be postponed for a handful of months.
Ironically, rebellious hardline Euro-skeptics in May’s ruling Conservative party, who were key in the heavy defeat of May’s Brexit Withdrawal Agreement earlier this month, appear to be softening their opposition to her deal; while pro-EU Conservative rebels and middle-of the-roaders appear to be moving closer together in an alliance determined now to bury it for good.
May’s proposed deal would see Britain locked in a customs union with the European Union for several years while it negotiates a vaguely defined free trade settlement.
In the temporary customs union, Britain would be unable to influence EU laws, regulations and product standards it would have to observe. The transition was reached to avoid customs checks on the border separating Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic, but British lawmakers fear Britain could be trapped indefinitely in the transition.
Leading Brexiters say if May can get a sunset clause written into the agreement to allow Britain to escape the transition agreement later on, if it wished, or if the transition was time-limited, they might reverse their opposition and back the deal.
The possible change of heart is being determined by their fear that pro-EU lawmakers are gaining in parliamentary strength. But it isn’t clear Brussels or the other 27 member states will agree such a clause, they insist there can’t be substantial changes to the deal they agreed on after two years of haggling.
Pro-EU lawmakers across all parties appear emboldened and determined to negotiate a much softer agreement that would see Britain stay in a customs union with the bloc permanently.
your ad hereThe U.S. Treasury has lifted sanctions on three Russian companies connected to Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska, reversing a move which wreaked havoc on global aluminum markets last year.
To the Treasury and supporters of the move, it was an example of sanctions working as they should by changing a target’s behavior in nine months under suffocating restrictions on trade. Due to the sanctions, Deripaska, a tycoon who has been close to the Kremlin, agreed to reduce his shareholdings to below 50 percent.
Congressional Democrats and some Republicans, however, worry that Deripaska could retain significant influence, even as he himself stays under sanctions.
Here is a look at Deripaska, his companies, and possible consequences of the Treasury ruling.
Putin ally
With his cropped hair and scruffy beard, Deripaska was a familiar face to Russians long before he was dragged into in the U.S. furor over the 2016 election.
Amid the economic chaos that followed the Soviet Union’s collapse, the trained physicist became a major player on the Russian metals market even before his 30th birthday. Even among Russian billionaire businessman, Deripaska’s also notable for his closeness to Russian President Vladimir Putin. A leaked U.S. diplomatic cable from 2006 described him as “among the 2-3 oligarchs Putin turns to on a regular basis.”
As special counsel Robert Mueller investigates alleged collusion between President Donald Trump’s 2016 electoral campaign and Russian interests, Deripaska’s links to former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort have come under scrutiny. Manafort, who was convicted last year in the United States of tax and bank fraud, was a former business partner of Deripaska.
The Belarusian model and self-described sex coach Anastasia Vashukevich — known by her pseudonym Nastya Rybka — said last year that she had obtained details of Deripaska’s alleged role in U.S. election meddling while spending time on his yacht. Vashukevich was arrested in Thailand last February and deported this month. She is now in Russia.
Vashukevich earlier indicated she would turn over the recordings she claimed to have if the U.S. could help secure her release, but she later withdrew the offer, suggesting that she and Deripaska had reached an agreement. Deripaska won a Russian defamation suit against Vashukevich and another man last year.
Sanctions collateral damage
The U.S. decision in April 2018 to sanction Rusal — the massive aluminum producer then controlled by Deripaska — had a big impact. Shares in the company plunged over 50 percent, and supply chains around the world were disrupted.
That exposed both the power and the limits of U.S. policy toward Russia, says Tom Adshead of Moscow-based consultancy Macro-Advisory.
Previous sanctions had been written to minimize damage to other sectors of the economy, and in particular Western businesses buying Russian commodities. That changed with Deripaska.
By barring almost any commercial relationship with one of the world’s largest producers of a metal key to international supply chains, U.S. policymakers ensured this time the economic pain would be felt not only in Russia.
“There was collateral damage that wasn’t desirable,” Adshead said. Besides an immediate jump in aluminum prices, that included economic uncertainty for Rusal’s employees outside Russia in countries like Sweden and Ireland.
The Rusal experience could mean the U.S. is more cautious about sanctioning major market players in future, Adshead predicted.
After the sanctions were removed from Rusal on Monday, shares in the company rose to their highest since April, though they remained at only around two-thirds of their value prior to the sanctions.
The price of aluminum largely held steady as other companies have stepped into the void left by Rusal and increased supply, analysts say.
The main winners have been state-owned metal producers in China — just the ones the Trump administration has sought to stymie by imposing tariffs on Chinese aluminum.
Enforcing conditions
The key condition of lifting sanctions on Rusal and Deripaska’s other companies is that the companies “reduced Oleg Deripaska’s direct and indirect shareholding stake in these companies and severed his control,” the Treasury said.
Whether that will actually prove to be the case was a key bone of contention in Congress, which voted this month to try to block the administration’s efforts to remove the sanctions. In the House, 136 Republicans joined Democrats to disapprove the deal while in the Senate 11 Republicans supported the move but fell short of the 60 votes needed.
Deripaska remains a significant minority shareholder — his En+ group says he holds “no more than 44.95 percent” — and other shares are held by smaller shareholders and independent trustees under an agreement with the Treasury.
There’s no other shareholder of the same size and a number of the other shareholders would probably agree with him on many strategic issues,” Adshead said. “Therefore it will almost certainly be run in the way he wants it to be run, but the point is that he no longer has as much freedom or control as he wanted.”
your ad hereГолова Херсонської облдержадміністрації Андрій Гордєєв заявив, що «розуміє емоції батька Катерини Гандзюк», і додав, що «батьківське горе використовується в політичних маніпуляціях негідниками, які стоять в «тіні». Про це йдеться в офіційній заяві високопосадовця, поширеній увечері 28 січня сайтом Херсонської ОДА.
«Шукаючи справедливість, важливо не зачіпати безневинних людей, мішаючи всіх докупи. Як це не було б важко, треба намагатися не піддаватися на провокації нечистих людей», – твердить чиновник.
Гордєєв також вказав, що «все, що в наших силах, ми спрямуємо для пошуку винних осіб». «Такі страшні речі не можуть відбуватися на Херсонщині та залишатися безкарним», – ідеться в заяві голови ОДА.
Раніше 28 січня Віктор Гандзюк, батько загиблої херсонської активістки Катерини Гандзюк, розкритикував українську владу через розслідування вбивства дочки та заявив, що для нього «вже немає різниці між замовниками та тими, хто їх весь цей час покривав».
«Для мене тепер партія «Батьківщина» – це партія вбивць моєї доньки. Для мене тепер «Блок Петра Порошенка» – це партія вбивць моєї доньки», – заявив Віктор Гандзюк під час засідання тимчасової слідчої комісії з розслідування вбивства Катерини Гандзюк та нападів на інших активістів.
На його думку, підозрюваний в організації вбивства Олексій Левін («Москал-молодший») співпрацює з головою Херсонської обласної ради, представником «Батьківщини» Владиславом Мангером та головою Херсонської ОДА, представником «Блоку Петра Порошенка» Андрієм Гордєєвим та його заступником Євгеном Рищуком.
Голова Херсонської обласної ради Владислав Мангер у коментарі Радіо Свобода заперечив інформацію про свої зв’язки з підозрюваним в організації вбивства Гандзюк: «Пан Левін був помічником одного з депутатів обласної ради (від «Радикальної партії»). Ні більше, ні менше».
«Дуже співчуваю батькам Катерини Гандзюк, рідним. Вважаю, що ті люди, які сьогодні використовують питання цього горя у політичній боротьбі, – це верх цинізму», – додав Мангер.
Радіо Свобода також звернулося по коментар до прес-служби голови Херсонської облдержадміністрації Андрія Гордєєва та очікує на відповідь.
Чиновниця Херсонської міської ради, активістка Катерина Гандзюк померла 4 листопада 2018 року. Це сталося через три місяці після того, як її облили концентрованою сірчаною кислотою 31 липня. За даними медиків, у неї були опіки 40% шкіри і пошкодження очей. Її літаком доставили на лікування до Києва і надали охорону.
У цій справі затримали п’ятьох людей, зокрема й підозрюваного в організації злочину.
4 грудня 2018 року генеральний прокурор Юрій Луценко заявив, що в справі про вбивство херсонської активістки Катерини Гандзюк оголосили підозру раніше судимому громадянину Левіну, який залишив територію України, коли поліція затримала перших підозрюваних.
Після смерті активістки поліція перекваліфікувала її справу на «закінчене вбивство», і кримінальне провадження буде розслідуватися як «умисне вбивство з корисливих мотивів, вчинене з особливою жорстокістю, скоєне на замовлення, вчинене за попередньою змовою групою осіб». Відповідна стаття Кримінального кодексу передбачає за такі дії від 10 років позбавлення волі до довічного ув’язнення.
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Центральна виборча комісія зареєструвала як кандидатів у президенти Олександра Данилюка та Руслана Кошулинського.
Кандидатуру Кошулинського висунула на своєму з’їзді партія ВО «Свобода», а член партії «Громадянський рух «Спільна справа»» Данилюк подав свою кандидатуру як самовисуванець.
Загалом, наразі кандидатами офіційно зареєстровано 22 осіб. Окрім двох згаданих політиків, це – Ігор Шевченко, Сергій Каплін, Валентин Наливайченко, Віталій Скоцик, Андрій Садовий, Віталій Купрій, Євген Мураєв, Анатолій Гриценко, Геннадій Балашов, Ольга Богомолець, Олександр Шевченко, Роман Насіров, Юлія Тимошенко, Олег Ляшко, Олександр Вілкул, Аркадій Корнацький, Дмитро Добродомов, Олександр Мороз та Ілля Кива.
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Чергові вибори президента призначені на 31 березня 2019 року. Передвиборна кампанія почалася 31 грудня минулого року. З цього дня починається реєстрація потенційних кандидатів у ЦВК і передвиборна агітація. До 9 лютого 2019 року буде оголошений остаточний список претендентів на посаду глави держави.
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The longest-ever partial U.S. government shutdown cost the country’s economy $3 billion in lost economic activity that won’t be recovered, the Congressional Budget Office concluded Monday.
The CBO said its assessment of the effects of the 35-day shutdown on the U.S. economy, the world’s largest, showed that $3 billion in economic activity was lost in the waning days of 2018 after the government closures took effect December 22, and another $8 billion in January, extending to last Friday when the shutdown was ended.
However, the CBO said with 800,000 federal workers who were furloughed or forced to work without pay being paid back wages in the coming days and government operations resuming, all but $3 billion in economic activity “will eventually be recovered” in the coming weeks.
CBO estimated that about $18 billion in federal discretionary spending was delayed during the shutdown, although most of that is likely to resume again — unless there is another shutdown in less than three weeks.
President Donald Trump and Democratic and Republican congressional leaders agreed to end the shutdown and created a bipartisan panel to negotiate security provisions along the U.S.-Mexico border.
The shutdown was spawned over Trump’s demand for $5.7 billion for a border wall to thwart illegal immigration, perhaps his most prominent 2016 campaign pledge during his successful run for the presidency. Opposition Democrats, however,have refused his demand for border wall money while saying they are willing to offer more funding for other security measures, including tightened controls at ports of entry, more border agents and increased use of technology to monitor illegal border crossings.
Trump said Sunday he thinks there is less than a 50 percent chance the congressional border security negotiators will be able to reach an agreement he would accept by their self-imposed Februay 15 deadline.
He said another government shutdown is “certainly an option” if there is no agreement or he could declare a national emergency and attempt to build the wall without congressional approval by tapping unspent government funds.
However, several prominent Republican lawmakers have urged Trump to not declare a national emergency, an action that would draw quick Democratic lawsuits in opposition.
Smaller GDP
The CBO said the $3 billion permanently lost to the U.S. economy means the projected 2019 gross domestic product of more than $19 trillion will be .02 percent smaller than it otherwise would have been.
But its report said “underlying those effects on the overall economy are much more significant effects on individual businesses and workers.
Among those who experienced the largest and most direct negative effects are federal workers who faced delayed compensation and private-sector entities that lost business. Some of those private-sector entities will never recoup that lost income.”
Still, the CBO said that “all of the estimated effects and their timing are subject to considerable uncertainty. In particular, CBO is uncertain about how much discretionary spending was affected by the partial shutdown, how affected federal employees and contractors adjusted their spending in response to delayed compensation, and how agencies will adjust their spending on goods and services now that funding has resumed.”
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Підозрюваний у викраденні картини «Ай-Петрі. Крим» із Третьяковської галереї в столиці Росії Москві заявив правоохоронцям про свою невинуватість. Відео затримання оприлюднило Міністерство внутрішніх справ Росії.
«Я не скоюю злочинів. Я – законослухняний громадянин Росії», – сказав підозрюваний.
Він заявив, що не пам’ятає, де був вдень. «Мені потрібно освіжити пам’ять», – зазначив затриманий.
МВС Росії повідомляє, що чоловіка затримували в грудні 2018 року за тримання наркотиків. Сам підозрюваний це заперечує. За попередніми даними, злочин здійснений із «корисливих мотивів».
27 січня невідомий викрав «Ай-Петрі. Крим» з Третьяковської галереї в Москві. За словами очевидців, він дістав картину з рами і зник.
31-річного підозрюваного затримали в селі Заріччя Московської області. Картину знайшли на території будівництва в Одинцовському районі.
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