WASHINGTON, Dec 14 (Reuters) – Vietnam has conducted a major expansion of dredging and landfill work at several of its South China Sea outposts in the second half of this year, signaling an intent to significantly fortify its claims in the disputed waterway, a U.S. think tank reported on Wednesday.
Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) said the work in the Spratly Islands, which are also claimed by China and others, had created roughly 420 acres (170 hectares) of new land and brought the total area Vietnam had reclaimed in the past decade to 540 acres (220 hectares).
Basing its findings on commercial satellite imagery, CSIS’s Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative (AMTI) said the effort included expanded landfill work at four features and new dredging at five others.
“The scale of the landfill work, while still falling far short of the more than 3,200 acres of land created by China from 2013 to 2016, is significantly larger than previous efforts from Vietnam and represents a major move toward reinforcing its position in the Spratlys,” the report said.
Vietnam’s Washington embassy did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the report.
AMTI said Vietnam’s midsized outposts at Namyit Island, Pearson Reef and Sand Cay were undergoing major expansions, with a dredged port capable of hosting larger vessels already taking shape at Namyit and Pearson.
Namyit Island, at 117 acres (47 hectares) and Pearson Reef, at 119 acres (48 hectares), were both now larger than Spratly Island at 97 acres (39 hectares), which had been Vietnam’s largest outpost. Tennent Reef, which previously only hosted two small pillbox structures, now had 64 acres (26 hectares)of artificial land, the report said.
AMTI said Vietnam used clamshell dredgers to scoop up sections of shallow reef and deposit the sediment for landfill, a less destructive process than the cutter-suction dredging China had used to build its artificial islands.
“But Vietnam’s dredging and landfill activities in 2022 are substantial and signal an intent to significantly fortify its occupied features in the Spratlys,” the report said.
“(W)hat infrastructure the expanded outposts will host remains to be seen. Whether and to what degree China and other claimants react will bear watching,” it said.
China claims most of the South China Sea and has established military outposts on artificial islands it has built there. Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and the Philippines all have overlapping claims in the sea, which is crisscrossed by vital shipping lanes and contains gas fields and rich fishing grounds.
Reporting by David Brunnstrom; editing by Jonathan Oatis
SEOUL, Dec 14 (Reuters) – U.S. Forces Korea launched a new space forces unit on Wednesday as the allies ramp up efforts to better counter North Korea’s evolving nuclear and missile threats.
The U.S. Space Forces Korea is the second overseas space component of the U.S. Space Force and is tasked with monitoring, detecting and tracking incoming missiles, as well as bolstering the military’s overall space capability. It will be led by Lt. Col. Joshua McCullion.
U.S. Forces Korea commander Gen. Paul LaCamera said the unit would enhance the U.S. ability to ensure peace and security on the Korean peninsula and in Northeast Asia.
“The U.S. military is faster, better connected, more informed, precise and legal because of space,” LaCamera told a ceremony at Osan Air Base in the South Korean city of Pyeongtaek.
Seoul and Washington are seeking to boost security cooperation to deter North Korea, which this year has tested intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching the U.S. mainland.
South Korea’s air force also set up its own space unit this month to bolster its space power and operation capability together with the U.S. Space Force.
U.S. officials have expressed concerns over rising security activity in space by major rivals, including China’s development of hypersonic weapons and Russia’s test of anti-satellite technology last year.
Beijing has warned Seoul against joining a U.S.-led global missile shield, and criticised the THAAD U.S. missile defence system installed in South Korea.
Seoul’s defence ministry said the creation of the U.S. space component had nothing to do with South Korea’s participation in existing missile defence programmes.
Around 28,500 U.S. troops are stationed in South Korea under a mutual defence treaty forged after the 1950-1953 Korean War ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty.
The U.S. Indo-Pacific Command and Central Command set up their space units last month in Hawaii and Florida.
Reporting by Hyonhee Shin; Additional reporting by Hyunyoung Yi; Editing by Gerry Doyle and Edmund Klamann
WASHINGTON, Dec 14 (Reuters) – Puerto Ricans could move a step closer to a referendum on whether the island should become a U.S. state, an independent country or have another type of government when the House of Representatives votes Thursday on a bill outlining the process.
A House committee approved the Puerto Rico Status Act on Wednesday, paving the way for the full House vote.
The legislation lays out terms of a plebiscite as well as three potential self-governing statuses – independence, full U.S. statehood or sovereignty with free association with the United States. The latter is in place in Micronesia, Palau and the Marshall Islands.
Puerto Rico, which has about 3.3 million people and high rates of poverty, became a U.S. territory in 1898. Activists have campaigned for greater self-determination including statehood for decades.
There have been six referendums on the topic since the 1960s, but they were nonbinding. Only Congress can grant statehood.
“After 124 years of colonialism Puerto Ricans deserve a fair, transparent, and democratic process to finally solve the status question,” Representative Nydia Velazquez, a Democratic cosponsor of the bill, said on Twitter.
The Caribbean island’s citizens are Americans but do not have voting representation in Congress, cannot vote in presidential elections, do not pay federal income tax on income earned on the island and do not have the same eligibility for some federal programs as other U.S. citizens.
If the bill passes the House, it will need 60 votes in the closely divided Senate and Democratic President Joe Biden’s signature to become law.
The legislation has the support of lawmakers of both parties and Puerto Rican officials.
But time is running out as lawmakers have a full agenda before a vacation at the end of next week. A new Congress with a Republican-controlled House will be sworn in on Jan. 3, at which point any legislative process would have to start over.
Reporting by Moira Warburton in Washington; Editing by Cynthia Osterman
WELLINGTON, Dec 5 (Reuters) – The New Zealand government said it will introduce a law that will require big online digital companies such as Alphabet Inc’s (GOOGL.O) Google and Meta Platforms Inc (META.O) to pay New Zealand media companies for the local news content that appears on their feeds.
Minister of Broadcasting Willie Jackson said in a statement on Sunday that the legislation will be modelled on similar laws in Australia and Canada and he hoped it would act as an incentive for the digital platforms to reach deals with local news outlets.
“New Zealand news media, particularly small regional and community newspapers, are struggling to remain financially viable as more advertising moves online,” Jackson said. “It is critical that those benefiting from their news content actually pay for it.”
The new legislation will go to a vote in parliament where the governing Labour Party’s majority is expected to pass it.
Australia introduced a law in 2021 that gave the government power to make internet companies negotiate content supply deals with media outlets. A review released by the Australian government last week found it largely worked.
Reporting by Lucy Craymer; Editing by Cynthia Osterman
TORONTO, Dec 4 (Reuters) – As the Bank of Canada considers ditching oversized interest rate hikes, it is dealing with an economy likely more overheated than previously thought but also the bond market’s clearest signal yet that recession and lower inflation lie ahead.
Canada’s central bank says that the economy needs to slow from overheated levels in order to ease inflation. If its tightening campaign overshoots to achieve that objective it could trigger a deeper downturn than expected.
The bond market could be flagging that risk. The yield on the Canadian 10-year government bond has fallen nearly 100 basis points below the 2-year yield, marking the biggest inversion of Canada’s yield curve in Refinitiv data going back to 1994 and deeper than the U.S. Treasury yield curve inversion.
Some analysts see curve inversions as predictors of recessions. Canada’s economy is likely to be particularly sensitive to higher rates after Canadians borrowed heavily during the COVID-19 pandemic to participate in a red-hot housing market.
“Markets think the Canadian economy is about to suffer a triple blow as domestic consumption collapses, U.S. demand weakens and global commodity prices drop,” said Karl Schamotta, chief market strategist at Corpay.
The BoC has opened the door to slowing the pace of rate increases to a quarter of a percentage point following multiple oversized hikes in recent months that lifted the benchmark rate to 3.75%, its highest since 2008.
Money markets are betting on a 25-basis-point increase when the bank meets to set policy on Wednesday, but a slim majority of economists in a Reuters poll expect a larger move.
RESILIENT ECONOMY
Canada’s employment report for November showed that the labour market remains tight, while gross domestic product grew at an annualized rate of 2.9% in the third quarter.
That’s much stronger than the 1.5% pace forecast by the BoC and together with upward revisions to historical growth could indicate that demand has moved further ahead of supply, economists say.
But they also say that the details of the third-quarter GDP data, including a contraction in domestic demand, and a preliminary report showing no growth in October are signs that higher borrowing costs have begun to impact activity.
The BoC has forecast that growth would stall from the fourth quarter of this year through the middle of 2023.
The depth of Canada’s curve inversion is signaling a “bad recession” not a mild one, said David Rosenberg, chief economist & strategist at Rosenberg Research.
It reflects greater risk to the outlook in Canada than the United States due to “a more inflated residential real estate market and consumer debt bubble,” Rosenberg said.
Inflation is likely to be more persistent after it spread from goods prices to services and wages, where higher costs can become more entrenched. Still, 3-month measures of underlying inflation that are closely watched by the BoC – CPI-median and CPI-trim – show price pressures easing.
They fell to an average of 2.75% in October, according to estimates by Stephen Brown, senior Canada economist at Capital Economics. That’s well below more commonly used 12-month rates.
“The yield curve would not invert to this extent unless investors also believed that inflation will drop back down toward the Bank’s target,” said Brown.
Like the Federal Reserve, the BoC has a 2% target for inflation.
“The curve is telling us the Bank of Canada will be forced into a reversal by late 2023, with rates remaining depressed for years to come,” Corpay’s Schamotta said.
Reporting by Fergal Smith; Editing by Andrea Ricci
Air alerts sound across Ukraine, south and north hit, 4 dead
Russia striking Ukraine’s infrastructure since October
Moscow: Ukrainian drones attack air bases in Russia, 3 dead
Price cap of $60 for Russian oil comes into force
KYIV, Dec 5 (Reuters) – Ukraine said Russia destroyed homes in the southeast and knocked out power in many areas with a new volley of missiles on Monday, while Moscow said Ukrainian drones had attacked two air bases deep inside Russia hundreds of miles from front lines.
A new missile barrage had been anticipated in Ukraine for days and it took place just as emergency blackouts were due to end, with previous damage repaired. The strikes plunged parts of Ukraine back into freezing darkness with temperatures now firmly below zero Celsius (32 Fahrenheit).
At least four people were killed in the Russian missile attacks, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, adding that most of some 70 missiles were shot down. Energy workers had already begun work on restoring power supplies, he said.
Russia’s defence ministry said Ukrainian drones attacked two air bases at Ryazan and Saratov in south-central Russia, killing three servicemen and wounding four, with two aircraft damaged by pieces of the drones when they were shot down.
Ukraine did not directly claim responsibility for the attacks. If it was behind them, they would be the deepest strikes inside the Russian heartland since Moscow invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24.
One of the targets, the Engels air base near the city of Saratov, around 730 km (450 miles) southeast of Moscow, houses bomber planes belonging to Russia’s strategic nuclear forces.
“The Kyiv regime, in order to disable Russian long-range aircraft, made attempts to strike with Soviet-made unmanned jet aerial vehicles at the military airfields Dyagilevo, in the Ryazan region, and Engels, in the Saratov region,” the Russian defence ministry said.
It said the drones, flying at low altitude, were intercepted by air defences and shot down. The deaths were reported on the Ryazan base, 185 km (115 miles) southeast of Moscow.
The Russian defence ministry called the drone strikes a terrorist act aimed at disrupting its long-range aviation.
Despite that, it said, Russia responded with a “massive strike on the military control system and related objects of the defences complex, communication centres, energy and military units of Ukraine with high-precision air- and sea-based weapons” in which it said all 17 designated targets were hit.
Ukraine’s air force said it downed over 60 of more than 70 missiles fired by Russia on Monday – the latest in weeks of attacks targeting its critical infrastructure that have cut off power, heat and water to many parts of the country.
“Our guys are awesome,” Andriy Yermak, head of the Ukrainian presidential staff, wrote on Telegram.
Kyiv’s forces have also demonstrated an increasing ability to hit strategic Russian targets far beyond the 1,100 km-long frontline in south and eastern Ukraine.
Saratov is at least 600 km from the nearest Ukrainian territory. Russian commentators said on social media that if Ukraine could strike that far inside Russia, it might also be capable of hitting Moscow.
Previous mysterious blasts damaged arms stores and fuel depots in regions near Ukraine and knocked out at least seven warplanes in Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula annexed by Russia from Ukraine in 2014.
[1/15] People take shelter inside the metro station amid Russian missile attacks in Kyiv, Ukraine, December 5, 2022. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton
President Vladimir Putin drove a Mercedes across the bridge linking southern Russia to Crimea on Monday, less than two months since that, too, was hit by an explosion.
Kyiv has not claimed responsibility for any of the blasts, saying only that they were “karma” for Russia’s invasion.
“If something is launched into other countries’ air space, sooner or later unknown flying objects will return to (their) departure point,” Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak tweeted, tongue in cheek, on Monday.
MISSILE FRAGMENTS HIT MOLDOVA
Moscow has been hitting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure roughly weekly since early October as it has been forced to retreat on some battlefronts.
This time, police in Moldova were reported to have found missile fragments on its soil near the border with Ukraine.
In the Zaporizhzhia region, at least two people were killed and several houses destroyed, the deputy head of the presidential office, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, said.
Missiles also hit energy facilities in the regions of Kyiv and Vinnytsia in central Ukraine, Odesa in the south and Sumy in the north, officials said.
Forty percent of the Kyiv region had no electricity, regional governor Oleksiy Kuleba said, praising the work of Ukrainian air defences.
Ukraine had only just returned to scheduled power outages from Monday rather than the emergency blackouts it has suffered since widespread Russian strikes on Nov. 23, the worst of the attacks on energy infrastructure that began in early October.
Russia has said the barrages are designed to degrade Ukraine’s military. Ukraine says they are clearly aimed at civilians and thus constitute a war crime.
WESTERN PRICE CAP ON RUSSIAN OIL
A $60 per barrel price cap on Russian seaborne crude oil took effect on Monday, the latest Western measure to punish Moscow over its invasion. Russia is the world’s second-largest oil exporter.
The agreement allows Russian oil to be shipped to third-party countries using tankers from G7 and European Union member states, insurance companies and credit institutions, only if the cargo is bought at or below the $60 per barrel cap.
Moscow has said it will not abide by the measure even if it has to cut production. Ukraine wants the cap set lower: Zelenskiy said $60 was too high to deter Russia’s assault.
A Russian oil blend was selling for around $79 a barrel in Asian markets on Monday – almost a third higher than the price cap, according to Refinitiv data and estimates from industry sources.
Reporting by Nick Starkov and Reuters bureaus; Writing by Philippa Fletcher and Mark Heinrich; Editing by Peter Graff and Angus MacSwan
WASHINGTON, Dec 3 (Reuters) – Chinese leader Xi Jinping is unwilling to accept Western vaccines despite the challenges China is facing with COVID-19, and while recent protests there are not a threat to Communist Party rule, they could affect his personal standing, U.S. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said on Saturday.
Although China’s daily COVID cases are near all-time highs, some cities are taking steps to loosen testing and quarantine rules after Xi’s zero-COVID policy triggered a sharp economic slowdown and public unrest.
Haines, speaking at the annual Reagan National Defense Forum in California, said that despite the social and economic impact of the virus, Xi “is unwilling to take a better vaccine from the West, and is instead relying on a vaccine in China that’s just not nearly as effective against Omicron.”
“Seeing protests and the response to it is countering the narrative that he likes to put forward, which is that China is so much more effective at government,” Haines said.
“It’s, again, not something we see as being a threat to stability at this moment, or regime change or anything like that,” she said, while adding: “How it develops will be important to Xi’s standing.”
China’s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent on Sunday.
China has not approved any foreign COVID vaccines, opting for those produced domestically, which some studies have suggested are not as effective as some foreign ones. That means easing virus prevention measures could come with big risks, according to experts.
China had not asked the United States for vaccines, the White House said earlier in the week.
One U.S. official told Reuters there was “no expectation at present” that China would approve western vaccines.
“It seems fairly far-fetched that China would greenlight Western vaccines at this point. It’s a matter of national pride, and they’d have to swallow quite a bit of it if they went this route,” the official said.
Haines also said North Korea recognized that China was less likely to hold it accountable for what she said was Pyongyang’s “extraordinary” number of weapons tests this year.
Amid a record year for missile tests, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said last week his country intends to have the world’s most powerful nuclear force.
Speaking on a later panel, Admiral John Aquilino, the commander of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, said China had no motivation to restrain any country, including North Korea, that was generating problems for the United States.
“I’d argue quite differently that it’s in their strategy to drive those problems,” Aquilino said of China.
He said China had considerable leverage to press North Korea over its weapons tests, but that he was not optimistic about Beijing “doing anything helpful to stabilize the region.”
Reporting by Michael Martina, David Brunnstrom, Idrees Ali, and Eric Beech; Additional reporting by Martin Quin Pollard in Beijing; Editing by Sandra Maler and Lincoln Feast
Nov 24 (Reuters) – Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday discussed Western attempts to cap the price of Russian oil during a phone call with Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, the new Iraqi prime minister, the Kremlin said in a readout of the call.
It said Putin had told Sudani that a price cap would have serious consequences for the global energy market.
“Attempts by a number of Western countries to impose restrictions on the cost of crude oil from Russia were touched upon,” the Kremlin’s statement said.
“Vladimir Putin stressed that such actions contradict the principles of market relations and are highly likely to lead to serious consequences for the global energy market.”
The European Union and United States have stepped up attempts in recent days to strike an agreement on where to set a price cap on their imports of Russian oil.
Russia and Iraq are both major oil producers and members of the OPEC+ agreement, which sets oil production levels in a bid to manage world prices.
MEXICO CITY, Nov 24 (Reuters) – An extensive cache of Aztec ritual offerings found underneath downtown Mexico City, off the steps of what would have been the empire’s holiest shrine, provides new insight into pre-Hispanic religious rites and political propaganda.
Sealed in stone boxes five centuries ago at the foot of the temple, the contents of one box found in the exact center of what was a ceremonial circular stage has shattered records for the number of sea offerings from both the Pacific Ocean and off Mexico’s Gulf Coast, including more than 165 once-bright-red starfish and upwards of 180 complete corral branches.
Archeologists believe Aztec priests carefully layered these offerings in the box within the elevated platform for a ceremony likely attended by thousands of rapt spectators amid the thunder-clap of drums.
“Pure imperial propaganda,” Leonardo Lopez Lujan, lead archeologist at the Proyecto Templo Mayor of Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), which is overseeing the dig, said of the likely spectacle.
In the same box, archeologists previously found a sacrificed jaguar dressed like a warrior associated with the Aztec patron Huitzilopochtli, the war and sun god, before the COVID-19 pandemic forced a more than two-year pause on excavations.
Previously unreported details include last month’s discovery of a sacrificed eagle held in the clutches of the jaguar, along with miniature wooden spears and a reed shield found next to the west-facing feline, which had copper bells tied around its ankles.
The half-excavated rectangular box, dating to the reign of the Aztec’s greatest emperor Ahuitzotl who ruled from 1486 to 1502, now shows a mysterious bulge in the middle under the jaguar’s skeleton, indicating something solid below.
“Whatever is underneath the jaguar is something enormously important,” said Lopez Lujan.
“We’re expecting a great discovery.”
Lopez Lujan, who heads excavations at what is today known as the Templo Mayor, thinks the box could contain an urn holding the cremated remains of Ahuitzotl, the emperor whose military campaigns expanded the empire to modern-day Guatemala while linking Mexico’s Pacific and Gulf coasts. But he says at least another year of digging is needed to settle the question.
[1/10] A general view of the Templo Mayor where several ritual offerings have recently been found just off the steps of the Templo Mayor, the Aztec empire’s most sacred temple, in Mexico City, Mexico November 15 , 2022. REUTERS/Henry Romero.
AZTEC WORLDVIEW
To date, no Aztec royal tomb has ever been found despite more than 40 years of digging around the Templo Mayor, where more than 200 offerings boxes have been found.
The temple towered as high as a 15-story building before it was razed in the years after the 1521 Spanish conquest of Mexico, the rubble serving to obscure many of the latest finds.
Besides the central offering containing the jaguar, two additional boxes were recently identified adjacent to it, with both set to be opened in the next few weeks.
More ferocious animals dressed as warriors, perhaps adorned with jade, turquoise and gold, are likely.
The aquatic offerings covering the jaguar may represent the watery underworld where the Aztecs believed the sun sank each night, or possibly part of a king’s journey after death.
Joyce Marcus, an archeologist specializing in ancient Mexico at the University of Michigan, says the recently unearthed offerings illuminate the Aztec “worldview, ritual economy, and the obvious links between imperial expansion, warfare, military prowess and the ruler’s role” in ceremonies that sanctified conquests and allowed tribute to flow into the capital.
“Each offering box adds another piece of the puzzle,” she said.
Lastly, the skulls of a dozen sacrificed children between one to six years old were also discovered in a nearby pit, dating back decades earlier but also linked to Huitzilopochtli.
The information obtained from the excavations goes far beyond incomplete colonial-era accounts that were also colored by the European invaders’ own justifications for conquest, according to Diana Moreiras, Aztec scholar at the University of British Colombia.
“We’re really getting to know the Aztecs on their own terms,” she said, “because we’re actually looking at what they did, not what the Spaniards thought about them.”
Reporting by David Alire Garcia; Editing by Stephen Eisenhammer and Josie Kao
RIYADH, Nov 24 (Reuters) – Representatives from Russia and Ukraine met in the United Arab Emirates last week to discuss the possibility of a prisoner-of-war swap that would be linked to a resumption of Russian ammonia exports, which go to Asia and Africa, via a Ukrainian pipeline, three sources with knowledge of the meeting said.
The sources said the talks were being mediated by the Gulf Arab state and did not include the United Nations despite the U.N.’s central role in negotiating the ongoing initiative to export agricultural products from three Ukrainian Black Sea ports. Ammonia is used to make fertilizer.
However the talks aim to remove remaining obstacles in the initiative extended last week and ease global food shortages by unblocking Ukrainian and Russian exports, they added.
The sources asked not to be named in order to freely discuss sensitive matters.
The Russian and Ukrainian representatives travelled to the UAE capital Abu Dhabi on Nov. 17 where they discussed allowing Russia to resume ammonia exports in exchange for a prisoner swap that would release a large number of Ukrainian and Russian prisoners, the sources said.
Reuters could not immediately establish what progress was made at the talks.
The Ukrainian ambassador to Turkey, Vasyl Bodnar, told Reuters that “releasing our prisoners of war is part of negotiations over opening Russian ammonia exports”, adding “Of course we look for ways to do that at any opportunity”. Bodnar said he was unaware if a meeting took place in the UAE.
Putin said on Wednesday that Russian officials would work to unblock Russian fertilisers stuck in European ports and to resume ammonia exports.
The UAE’s foreign ministry did not respond to Reuters’ request for comment.
Lana Nusseibeh, UAE’s Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, said Abu Dhabi remains firmly committed to help keep channels of communication open, encourage dialogue and support diplomacy to end the war in Ukraine.
“In times of conflict, our collective responsibility is to leave no stone unturned towards identifying and pursuing paths that bring about a peaceful and swift resolution of crises,” Nusseibeh said in a statement carried by state news agency WAM.
Russia and Ukraine’s defence and foreign ministries did not respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.
Asked if the United Nations were involved in the talks, a spokesperson for the organisation declined to comment.
WESTERN PRESSURE
The export of Russian ammonia would be via an existing pipeline to the Black Sea.
The pipeline was designed to pump up to 2.5 million tonnes of ammonia gas per year from Russia’s Volga region to Ukraine’s Black Sea port of Pivdennyi, known as Yuzhny in Russian, near Odesa for onward shipment to international buyers. It was shut down after Russia sent its troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24.
The export of ammonia was not part of the renewal of the U.N.-backed grains corridor deal that restored commercial shipping from Ukraine.
Last week, Rebeca Grynspan, Secretary-General of U.N. agency UNCTAD, who leads the negotiations on fertiliser, said she was optimistic Russia and Ukraine could agree to the terms for the export of Russian ammonia via the pipeline, without giving details.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has publicly set several conditions before allowing Russia to resume its ammonia exports via the pipeline, including a prisoner swap and reopening of Mykolaiv port in the Black Sea.
Neither Russia nor Ukraine have released official figures on how many prisoners of war they have taken since Russia invaded in February. On Oct. 29, Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskiy said that since March, Russia had freed a total of 1,031 prisoners.
Russia and Ukraine have disclosed few details about direct meetings between representatives from the two countries following the abandonment of ceasefire talks in the first few weeks following Moscow’s invasion on February 24.
Abu Dhabi’s efforts follow in the footsteps of Saudi Arabia, which scored a diplomatic win by securing freedom for foreign fighters captured in Ukraine in September.
The UAE, like Saudi Arabia, is a member of the OPEC+ oil alliance that includes Russia and has also maintained good ties with Moscow despite Western pressure to help isolate Russia over the invasion of Ukraine, which Moscow calls its “special military operation”.
UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan visited Moscow last month where he discussed with President Vladimir Putin the possibility of Abu Dhabi mediating for an ammonia deal, two of the sources said.
Ukraine is a major producer of grains and oilseeds. Russia is the world’s largest wheat exporter and a major supplier of fertilisers to global markets.
Since July, Moscow has repeatedly said its shipments of grain and fertilisers, though not directly targeted by sanctions, are constrained because sanctions make it harder for exporters to process payments or to obtain vessels and insurance.
Reporting by Aziz El Yaakoubi in Riyadh, Pavel Polityuk in Kiev and Jonathan Saul in London, additional reporting by Jonathan Spicer; Editing by Frank Jack Daniel and Jon Boyle
Nov 24 (Reuters) – The United States marked the Thanksgiving holiday on Thursday with traditional feasts, parades and American football, taking a moment to celebrate in a week shadowed by gun violence.
The official holiday dates to the Civil War, when President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed the last Thursday of November as a day to give thanks and seek healing. U.S. schoolchildren learn to trace the holiday to Pilgrims who landed at Plymouth Rock in 1620 and celebrated the autumn harvest with the Wampanoag peoples. Among Native Americans, Thanksgiving is a day of dark reflection on the genocide that followed.
Americans were mourning this year in the wake of a pair of deadly shootings. On Saturday, an attacker opened fire in an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs, Colorado, killing five people. On Tuesday, a Walmart employee gunned down six coworkers and turned the gun on himself in Chesapeake, Virginia.
Those were just two of the more than 600 mass shootings so far this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, using the definition of four or more shot or killed, not including the shooter.
President Joe Biden on Thursday called the two owners of Colorado Springs nightspot Club Q, Nic Grzecka and Matthew Haynes, to offer condolences and thank them for their contributions to the community, the White House said.
[1/5] A girl watches while people take pictures during the 96th Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in Manhattan, New York City, U.S., November 24, 2022. REUTERS/Andrew Kelly
While visiting a firehouse on Nantucket Island, Massachusetts, to thank first responders on Thanksgiving, Biden told reporters he would attempt to pass some form of gun control before a new Congress is seated in January, possibly renewing his attempt to ban assault weapons.
“The idea we still allow semi-automatic weapons to be purchased is sick. It’s just sick. It has no, no social redeeming value, zero, none. Not a single solitary rationale for it except profits for gun manufacturers,” Biden said, presumably referring to certain rifles as many common and less lethal weapons are also semi-automatic.
Earlier Biden phoned into presenters of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York, a televised extravaganza of marching bands, floats and performances by stars including Dionne Warwick, who sang the classic “What the World Needs Now.”
The approach of the long holiday weekend typically ignites a frenzy of travel as scattered families come together from across the country for holiday meals.
Midnight after Thanksgiving also marks the unofficial start of the Christmas shopping season, offering a snapshot of the state of the U.S. economy.
Televised American football serves as the backdrop to turkey dinners with mounds of side dishes and desserts. The National Football League was staging three games Thursday.
Thanksgiving also prompts an outpouring of donations to the poor and hungry, a task complicated by avian flu outbreaks that have eliminated about 8 million turkeys, making the big birds more scarce and thus more expensive this year. Production of turkey meat this year is forecast to fall 7% from 2021, according to U.S. government data.
Reporting by Daniel Trotta in Carlsbad, California; Additional reporting by Nandita Bose in Nantucket, Massachusetts; editing by Jonathan Oatis
WASHINGTON, Nov 14 (Reuters) – Democrats in the U.S. Congress aim to pass bills protecting same-sex marriage, clarifying lawmakers’ role in certifying presidential elections and raising the nation’s debt ceiling when they return from the campaign trail on Monday.
President Joe Biden’s party got a boost over the weekend when it learned it would keep control of the Senate for the next two years, while control of the House of Representatives is still up in the air as votes are counted after Tuesday’s midterm election.
But Democrats escaped a feared midterm drubbing and will look to make the most they can of their current thin majorities in both chambers before the new Congress is sworn in on Jan. 3, a period known as the ‘lame duck’ session.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen both signaled that addressing the nations’ looming debt ceiling would be a priority during the session.
Some Republicans have threatened to use the next hike in the $31.4 trillion debt ceiling, expected in the first quarter of 2023, as leverage to force concessions from Biden. Yellen in a Saturday interview with Reuters warned that a failure to act would pose a “huge threat” to America’s credit rating and the functioning of financial markets.
Pelosi, who would lose her position as speaker if Republicans win a majority in the House, told ABC News on Sunday that the best way to address the debt ceiling was “to do it now.”
“My hope would be that we could get it done in the lame duck,” Pelosi said. “We’ll have to, again, lift the debt ceiling so that the full faith and credit of the United States is respected.”
Biden told reporters over the weekend he would wait to speak to Republican leadership before deciding any priorities, adding he planned to “take it slow.”
Congress has a long to-do list in the coming weeks. It faces a Dec. 16 deadline to passing either a temporary funding bill to keep government agencies operating at full steam until early next year, or a measure that keeps the lights on through Sept. 30, the end of the current fiscal year. Failure to enact one of those would result in partial government shutdowns.
[1/5] Members-elect from the upcoming 118th congress arrive at the U.S. Capitol building for orientation in Washington, U.S., November 14, 2022. REUTERS/Leah Millis
The House already has passed legislation legalizing gay marriage and the Senate was poised, as soon as this week, to approve its slightly different version of the “Respect for Marriage Act.” The bill is intended to ensure that the U.S. Supreme Court does not end gay marriage rights, which conservative Justice Clarence Thomas mused was possible when the court in June ended the national right to abortion.
Another high-priority item is a bipartisan bill reforming the way Congress certifies presidential elections, intended to avoid a repeat of the violence of the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol by supporters of former President Donald Trump who wanted to stop lawmakers from certifying Biden’s win.
Democratic leaders also aim to pass legislation speeding permits for energy projects and provide more financial and military support for Ukraine in its fight against Russia’s invasion.
Some Republicans have expressed reluctance to provide more financial support for Ukraine.
Progressive Democrats have bridled at the prospect of the government stepping up the energy permitting process, thus encouraging the flow of fossil fuels to market even as Biden attempts to meet stringent goals to reduce the impact of climate change.
Biden has suggested permitting reform could be included in the National Defense Authorization Act, the annual bill funding the military that usually gets strong bipartisan support.
But keeping the Senate majority for the next two years means that there will be less pressure on Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to confirm as many of Biden’s nominees for federal judgeships as possible before the end of the year.
There are 57 judicial nominees pending before the Senate, with 25 already approved by the Judiciary Committee and awaiting action by the full chamber.
The Senate has already confirmed 84 of Biden’s judicial nominees, allowing him to essentially keep pace with the near-record number of appointments Trump made during four years as he worked to move the judiciary rightward.
Reporting by Moira Warburton and Richard Cowan; Additional reporting by David Lawder in New Delhi, Nandita Bose in Phnom Penh and Trevor Hunnicutt, Doina Chiacu and Susan Heavey in Washington; Editing by Scott Malone, Alistair Bell and Daniel Wallis
Nov 14 (Reuters) – The United Nations General Assembly on Monday called for Russia to be held accountable for its conduct in Ukraine, voting to approve a resolution recognizing that Russia must be responsible for making reparations to the country.
The resolution, supported by 94 of the assembly’s 193 members, said Russia, which invaded its neighbor in February, “must bear the legal consequences of all of its internationally wrongful acts, including making reparation for the injury, including any damage, caused by such acts.”
The resolution recommends that member states, in cooperation with Ukraine, create an international register to record evidence and claims against Russia.
General Assembly resolutions are nonbinding, but they carry political weight.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy called the resolution an “important” one.
“The reparations that Russia will have to pay for what it has done are now part of the international legal reality,” Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address.
Kyiv’s Ambassador to the U.N. Sergiy Kyslytsya told the General Assembly before the vote that Russia has targeted everything from factories to residential buildings and hospitals.
“Ukraine will have the daunting task of rebuilding the country and recovering from this war, but that recovery will never be complete without a sense of justice for the victims of the Russian war. It is time to hold Russia accountable,” Kyslytsya said.
The United Nations headquarters building is pictured with a UN logo in the Manhattan borough of New York City, New York, U.S., March 1, 2022. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri
Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia told the General Assembly before the vote that the provisions of the resolution are “legally null and void” as he urged countries to vote against it.
“The West is trying to draw out and worsen the conflict and plans to use Russian money for it,” Nebenzia said.
Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, now deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, said on the Telegram messaging app that the “Anglo-Saxons are clearly trying to scrape together a legal basis for the illegal seizure of Russian assets.”
Fourteen countries voted against the resolution, including Russia, China and Iran, while 73 abstained, including Brazil, India and South Africa. Not all member states voted.
In March, 141 members of the General Assembly voted to denounce Russia’s invasion, and 143 in October voted to condemn Moscow’s attempted annexation of parts of Ukraine.
Zelenskiy on Saturday said Russian forces destroyed critical infrastructure in the strategic southern city of Kherson before fleeing. Moscow denies deliberately targeting civilians, although the invasion has reduced Ukrainian cities to rubble and killed or wounded thousands.
“It will take a broad international effort to support Ukraine’s recovery and reconstruction in order to build a safe and prosperous future for the Ukrainian people,” Britain’s U.N. Ambassador Barbara Woodward told the assembly.
“But only one country, Russia, is responsible for the damage to Ukraine, and it is absolutely right, as this resolution sets out, that Russia pay for that damage.”
Reporting by Daphne Psaledakis and Doina Chiacu in WASHINGTON; Additional reporting by Oleksandr Kozhukhar in Kyiv and Lidia Kelly in Melbourne; editing by Grant McCool
Burns to warn Russia’s spy chief not to use nuclear weapons
Burns also due to raise issue of U.S. prisoners
Kremlin confirm a U.S.-Russia meeting took place in Turkey
LONDON/WASHINGTON, Nov 14 (Reuters) – U.S. Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns was expected to caution President Vladimir Putin’s spy chief at talks on Monday about the consequences of any use of nuclear weapons, and to raise the issue of U.S. prisoners in Russia, a White House official said.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed to Russian news agencies that a U.S.-Russia meeting had taken place in the Turkish capital Ankara but declined to give details about the participants or the subjects discussed.
The White House spokesperson, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Burns was meeting Sergei Naryshkin, head of Russia’s SVR foreign intelligence service.
It was the first known high-level, face-to-face U.S.-Russian contact since Russia invaded Ukraine in February.
“He is not conducting negotiations of any kind. He is not discussing settlement of the war in Ukraine,” the spokesperson said.
“He is conveying a message on the consequences of the use of nuclear weapons by Russia, and the risks of escalation to strategic stability … He will also raise the cases of unjustly detained U.S. citizens.”
Burns is a former U.S. ambassador to Russia who was sent to Moscow in late 2021 by President Joe Biden to caution Putin about the troop build-up around Ukraine.
“We briefed Ukraine in advance on his trip. We firmly stick to our fundamental principle: nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine,” the spokesperson said.
Putin has repeatedly said Russia will defend its territory with all available means, including nuclear weapons, if attacked. He says the West has engaged in nuclear blackmail against Russia.
MANY OUTSTANDING ISSUES
The remarks raised particular concern in the West after Moscow declared in September that it had annexed four Ukrainian regions that its forces partly control.
The U.S.-Russian contact in Turkey was first reported by Russia’s Kommersant newspaper. The SVR did not respond to a request for comment.
Beyond the war, Russia and the United States have a host of outstanding issues to discuss, ranging from the extension of a nuclear arms reduction treaty and a Black Sea grain deal to a possible prisoner swap and the Syrian civil war.
U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres, asked at a summit of the Group of 20 (G20) leading economies in Indonesia about the meeting in Turkey, said the United Nations was not involved.
Biden said this month he hoped Putin would be willing to discuss seriously a swap to secure the release of U.S. basketball star Brittney Griner, who has been sentenced to nine years in a Russian penal colony on drugs charges.
Former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, who holds American, British, Canadian and Irish passports, was sentenced in 2020 to 16 years in a Russian jail after being convicted of spying, a charge he denied.
Viktor Bout, a Russian arms dealer jailed in the United States, has been mentioned as a person who could be swapped for Griner and Whelan in any prisoner exchange.
Reporting by Reuters; Additional reporting by Jonathan Spicer in Turkey; Editing by Gareth Jones
Nov 14 (Reuters) – A suspect in a shooting at the University of Virginia that left three members of the University of Virginia football team dead was in custody on Monday, hours after he allegedly opened fire on a bus full of students returning from a field trip.
University police said during a news conference that the suspect, student Christopher Darnell Jones, 22, was arrested hours after the shooting that unfolded at 10:30 p.m. on Sunday (0330 GMT on Monday) at the school in Charlottesville, Virginia, attended by 25,000 students.
Minutes after the shooting, school officials issued alerts on social media telling students and staff to shelter in place with one tweet saying to “RUN HIDE FIGHT.” The sprawling campus remained on alert throughout the night and morning as law enforcement officers conducted a massive manhunt for Jones.
University President Jim Ryan identified the slain students as Devin Chandler, Lavel Davis and D’Sean Perry.
Chandler and Perry died on the scene, while Davis died of his wounds at a hospital. Two other students were wounded and taken to UVA Medical Center, where one is in good condition and another in critical condition, University Police Chief Tim Longo said.
The shooting unfolded on a bus full of students after it pulled into a parking garage on campus, Ryan said. The students had just returned from a class field trip to see a play in Washington, D.C.
Jones was armed with a handgun, Longo said.
Jones, who was apprehended off campus, was held on three counts of second-degree murder and three counts of using a handgun in the commission of a felony, Longo said. It was unclear how he was taken into custody.
[1/6] A handout picture shows college football player Lavel Davis Jr. who was killed in a shooting attack at the University of Virginia, in this undated handout. University of Virginia/Handout via REUTERS
‘HEARTBROKEN’
Jones, who was listed as a player on the school’s football team in 2018, came to the attention of the University of Virginia’s threat assessment team in the fall of 2022, according to Longo. In September 2022, the Office of Student Affairs reported to the team that it received information Jones had made a comment about possessing a gun to a person that was unaffiliated with the university, though no threat was made.
During an investigation, the person said they never saw the gun, and Jones’ roommate reported that he never saw the presence of a weapon.
The investigation was later closed because the witnesses would not participate with the process, he said.
Ryan said in a letter posted on social media hours after the shooting that he was “heartbroken,” and added that classes were canceled for the day.
“This is a message any leader hopes never to have to send, and I am devastated that this violence has visited the University of Virginia,” he wrote.
The shooting was the latest episode of gun violence on U.S. college and high school campuses. The bloodshed has fueled debate over tighter restrictions on access to guns in the United States, where the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment guarantees the right to bear arms.
A 2007 massacre at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, about 150 miles (241 km) southwest of Charlottesville, left 33 people dead, including the shooter, and 23 injured in one of the deadliest college mass shootings in U.S. history.
(This story has been corrected to add Davis’ name in fifth paragraph)
Reporting by Jyoti Narayan in Bengaluru and Brendan O’Brien in Chicago; Editing by Toby Chopra, Chizu Nomiyama, Jonathan Oatis and Aurora Ellis
LONDON/WASHINGTON, Nov 14 (Reuters) – Thousands of smartphone applications in Apple (AAPL.O) and Google’s (GOOGL.O) online stores contain computer code developed by a technology company, Pushwoosh, that presents itself as based in the United States, but is actually Russian, Reuters has found.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the United States’ main agency for fighting major health threats, said it had been deceived into believing Pushwoosh was based in the U.S. capital. After learning about its Russian roots from Reuters, it removed Pushwoosh software from seven public-facing apps, citing security concerns.
The U.S. Army said it had removed an app containing Pushwoosh code in March because of the same concerns. That app was used by soldiers at one of the country’s main combat training bases.
According to company documents publicly filed in Russia and reviewed by Reuters, Pushwoosh is headquartered in the Siberian town of Novosibirsk, where it is registered as a software company that also carries out data processing. It employs around 40 people and reported revenue of 143,270,000 rubles ($2.4 mln) last year. Pushwoosh is registered with the Russian government to pay taxes in Russia.
On social media and in U.S. regulatory filings, however, it presents itself as a U.S. company, based at various times in California, Maryland and Washington, D.C., Reuters found.
Pushwoosh provides code and data processing support for software developers, enabling them to profile the online activity of smartphone app users and send tailor-made push notifications from Pushwoosh servers.
On its website, Pushwoosh says it does not collect sensitive information, and Reuters found no evidence Pushwoosh mishandled user data. Russian authorities, however, have compelled local companies to hand over user data to domestic security agencies.
Pushwoosh’s founder, Max Konev, told Reuters in a September email that the company had not tried to mask its Russian origins. “I am proud to be Russian and I would never hide this.”
Pushwoosh published a blog post after the Reuters article was issued, which said: “Pushwoosh Inc. is a privately held C-Corp company incorporated under the state laws of Delaware, USA. Pushwoosh Inc. was never owned by any company registered in the Russian Federation.”
The company also said in the post, “Pushwoosh Inc. used to outsource development parts of the product to the Russian company in Novosibirsk, mentioned in the article. However, in February 2022, Pushwoosh Inc. terminated the contract.”
After Pushwoosh published its post, Reuters asked Pushwoosh to provide evidence for its assertions, but the news agency’s requests went unanswered.
Konev said the company “has no connection with the Russian government of any kind” and stores its data in the United States and Germany.
Cybersecurity experts said storing data overseas would not prevent Russian intelligence agencies from compelling a Russian firm to cede access to that data, however.
Russia, whose ties with the West have deteriorated since its takeover of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and its invasion of Ukraine this year, is a global leader in hacking and cyber-espionage, spying on foreign governments and industries to seek competitive advantage, according to Western officials.
Reuters Graphics
HUGE DATABASE
Pushwoosh code was installed in the apps of a wide array of international companies, influential non-profits and government agencies from global consumer goods company Unilever Plc (ULVR.L) and the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) to the politically powerful U.S. gun lobby, the National Rifle Association (NRA), and Britain’s Labour Party.
Pushwoosh’s business with U.S. government agencies and private companies could violate contracting and U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) laws or trigger sanctions, 10 legal experts told Reuters. The FBI, U.S. Treasury and the FTC declined to comment.
Jessica Rich, former director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said “this type of case falls right within the authority of the FTC,” which cracks down on unfair or deceptive practices affecting U.S. consumers.
Washington could choose to impose sanctions on Pushwoosh and has broad authority to do so, sanctions experts said, including possibly through a 2021 executive order that gives the United States the ability to target Russia’s technology sector over malicious cyber activity.
Pushwoosh code has been embedded into almost 8,000 apps in the Google and Apple app stores, according to Appfigures, an app intelligence website. Pushwoosh’s website says it has more than 2.3 billion devices listed in its database.
“Pushwoosh collects user data including precise geolocation, on sensitive and governmental apps, which could allow for invasive tracking at scale,” said Jerome Dangu, co-founder of Confiant, a firm that tracks misuse of data collected in online advertising supply chains.
“We haven’t found any clear sign of deceptive or malicious intent in Pushwoosh’s activity, which certainly doesn’t diminish the risk of having app data leaking to Russia,” he added.
Google said privacy was a “huge focus” for the company but did not respond to requests for comment about Pushwoosh. Apple said it takes user trust and safety seriously but similarly declined to answer questions.
Keir Giles, a Russia expert at London think tank Chatham House, said despite international sanctions on Russia, a “substantial number” of Russian companies were still trading abroad and collecting people’s personal data.
Given Russia’s domestic security laws, “it shouldn’t be a surprise that with or without direct links to Russian state espionage campaigns, firms that handle data will be keen to play down their Russian roots,” he said.
‘SECURITY ISSUES’
After Reuters raised Pushwoosh’s Russian links with the CDC, the health agency removed the code from its apps because “the company presents a potential security concern,” spokesperson Kristen Nordlund said.
“CDC believed Pushwoosh was a company based in the Washington, D.C. area,” Nordlund said in a statement. The belief was based on “representations” made by the company, she said, without elaborating.
The CDC apps that contained Pushwoosh code included the agency’s main app and others set up to share information on a wide range of health concerns. One was for doctors treating sexually transmitted diseases. While the CDC also used the company’s notifications for health matters such as COVID, the agency said it “did not share user data with Pushwoosh.”
The Army told Reuters it removed an app containing Pushwoosh in March, citing “security issues.” It did not say how widely the app, which was an information portal for use at its National Training Center (NTC) in California, had been used by troops.
The NTC is a major battle training center in the Mojave Desert for pre-deployment soldiers, meaning a data breach there could reveal upcoming overseas troop movements.
U.S. Army spokesperson Bryce Dubee said the Army had suffered no “operational loss of data,” adding that the app did not connect to the Army network.
Some large companies and organizations including UEFA and Unilever said third parties set up the apps for them, or they thought they were hiring a U.S. company.
“We don’t have a direct relationship with Pushwoosh,” Unilever said in a statement, adding that Pushwoosh was removed from one of its apps “some time ago.”
UEFA said its contract with Pushwoosh was “with a U.S. company.” UEFA declined to say if it knew of Pushwoosh’s Russian ties but said it was reviewing its relationship with the company after being contacted by Reuters.
The NRA said its contract with the company ended last year, and it was “not aware of any issues.”
Britain’s Labour Party did not respond to requests for comment.
“The data Pushwoosh collects is similar to data that could be collected by Facebook, Google or Amazon, but the difference is that all the Pushwoosh data in the U.S. is sent to servers controlled by a company (Pushwoosh) in Russia,” said Zach Edwards, a security researcher, who first spotted the prevalence of Pushwoosh code while working for Internet Safety Labs, a nonprofit organization.
Roskomnadzor, Russia’s state communications regulator, did not respond to a request from Reuters for comment.
FAKE ADDRESS, FAKE PROFILES
In U.S. regulatory filings and on social media, Pushwoosh never mentions its Russian links. The company lists “Washington, D.C.” as its location on Twitter and claims its office address as a house in the suburb of Kensington, Maryland, according to its latest U.S. corporation filings submitted to Delaware’s secretary of state. It also lists the Maryland address on its Facebook and LinkedIn profiles.
The Kensington house is the home of a Russian friend of Konev’s who spoke to a Reuters journalist on condition of anonymity. He said he had nothing to do with Pushwoosh and had only agreed to allow Konev to use his address to receive mail.
Konev said Pushwoosh had begun using the Maryland address to “receive business correspondence” during the coronavirus pandemic.
He said he now operates Pushwoosh from Thailand but provided no evidence that it is registered there. Reuters could not find a company by that name in the Thai company registry.
Pushwoosh never mentioned it was Russian-based in eight annual filings in the U.S. state of Delaware, where it is registered, an omission which could violate state law.
Instead, Pushwoosh listed an address in Union City, California as its principal place of business from 2014 to 2016. That address does not exist, according to Union City officials.
Pushwoosh used LinkedIn accounts purportedly belonging to two Washington, D.C.-based executives named Mary Brown and Noah O’Shea to solicit sales. But neither Brown nor O’Shea are real people, Reuters found.
The one belonging to Brown was actually of an Austria-based dance teacher, taken by a photographer in Moscow, who told Reuters she had no idea how it ended up on the site.
Konev acknowledged the accounts were not genuine. He said Pushwoosh hired a marketing agency in 2018 to create them in an attempt to use social media to sell Pushwoosh, not to mask the company’s Russian origins.
LinkedIn said it had removed the accounts after being alerted by Reuters.
Reporting by James Pearson in London and Marisa Taylor in Washington
Additional reporting by Chris Bing in Washington, editing by Chris Sanders and Ross Colvin
Both leaders stress need to get ties back on track
Indonesia seeks partnerships on global economy at G20
Ukraine’s Zelenskiy to address G20 on Tuesday
NUSA DUA, Indonesia, Nov 14 (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping engaged in blunt talks over Taiwan and North Korea on Monday in a three-hour meeting aimed at preventing strained U.S.-China ties from spilling into a new Cold War.
Amid simmering differences on human rights, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and support of domestic industry, the two leaders pledged more frequent communications. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will travel to Beijing for follow-up talks.
“We’re going to compete vigorously. But I’m not looking for conflict, I’m looking to manage this competition responsibly,” Biden said after his talks with Xi on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Indonesia.
Beijing has long said it would bring the self-governed island of Taiwan, which it views as an inalienable part of China, under its control and has not ruled out the use of force to do so. It has frequently accused the United States in recent years of encouraging Taiwan independence.
In a statement after their meeting, Xi called Taiwan the “first red line” that must not be crossed in U.S.-China relations, Chinese state media said.
Biden said he sought to assure Xi that U.S. policy on Taiwan, which has for decades been to support both Beijing’s ‘One China’ stance and Taiwan’s military, had not changed.
He said there was no need for a new Cold War, and that he did not think China was planning a hot one.
“I do not think there’s any imminent attempt on the part of China to invade Taiwan,” he told reporters.
On North Korea, Biden said it was hard to know whether Beijing had any influence over Pyongyang weapons testing. “Well, first of all, it’s difficult to say that I am certain that China can control North Korea,” he said.
Biden said he told Xi the United States would do what it needs to do to defend itself and allies South Korea and Japan, which could be “maybe more up in the face of China” though not directed against it.
“We would have to take certain actions that would be more defensive on our behalf… to send a clear message to North Korea. We are going to defend our allies, as well as American soil and American capacity,” he said.
Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan said before the meeting that Biden would warn Xi about the possibility of enhanced U.S. military presence in the region, something Beijing is not keen to see.
Beijing had halted a series of formal dialogue channels with Washington, including on climate change and military-to-military talks, after U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi upset China by visiting Taiwan in August.
Biden and Xi agreed to allow senior officials to renew communication on climate, debt relief and other issues, the White House said after they spoke.
Xi’s statement after the talks included pointed warnings on Taiwan.
[1/7] U.S. President Joe Biden speaks during a news conference following his meeting with Chinese president Xi Jinping, ahead of the G20 leaders’ summit, in Bali, Indonesia, November 14, 2022. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
“The Taiwan question is at the very core of China’s core interests, the bedrock of the political foundation of China-U.S. relations, and the first red line that must not be crossed in China-U.S. relations,” Xi was quoted as saying by Xinhua news agency.
“Resolving the Taiwan question is a matter for the Chinese and China’s internal affair,” Xi said, according to state media.
Taiwan’s democratically elected government rejects Beijing’s claims of sovereignty over it.
Taiwan’s presidential office said it welcomed Biden’s reaffirmation of U.S. policy. “This also once again fully demonstrates that the peace and stability of the Taiwan Strait is the common expectation of the international community,” it said.
SMILES AND HANDSHAKES
Before their talks, the two leaders smiled and shook hands warmly in front of their national flags at a hotel on Indonesia’s Bali island, a day before a Group of 20 (G20) summit set to be fraught with tension over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“It’s just great to see you,” Biden told Xi, as he put an arm around him before their meeting.
Biden brought up a number of difficult topics with Xi, according to the White House, including raising U.S. objections to China’s “coercive and increasingly aggressive actions toward Taiwan,” Beijing’s “non-market economic practices,” and practices in “Xinjiang, Tibet, and Hong Kong, and human rights more broadly.”
Neither leader wore a mask to ward off COVID-19, although members of their delegations did.
U.S.-China relations have been roiled in recent years by growing tensions over issues ranging from Hong Kong and Taiwan to the South China Sea, trade practices, and U.S. restrictions on Chinese technology.
But U.S. officials said there have been quiet efforts by both Beijing and Washington over the past two months to repair relations.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told reporters in Bali earlier that the meeting aimed to stabilise the relationship and to create a “more certain atmosphere” for U.S. businesses.
She said Biden had been clear with China about national security concerns regarding restrictions on sensitive U.S. technologies and had raised concern about the reliability of Chinese supply chains for commodities.
G20 summit host President Joko Widodo of Indonesia said he hoped the gathering on Tuesday could “deliver concrete partnerships that can help the world in its economic recovery”.
However, one of the main topics at the G20 will be Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Xi and Putin have grown close in recent years, bound by their shared distrust of the West, and reaffirmed their partnership just days before Russia invaded Ukraine. But China has been careful not to provide any direct material support that could trigger Western sanctions against it.
Reporting by Nandita Bose, Stanley Widianto, Fransiska Nangoy, Leika Kihara, David Lawder and Simon Lewis in Nusa Dua, and Yew Lun Tian and Ryan Woo in Beijing; additional reporting by Jeff Mason and Steve Holland in Washington; Writing by Kay Johnson and Raju Gopalakrishnan; Editing by Angus MacSwan, Grant McCool, Heather Timmons and Rosalba O’Brien
Nov 14 (Reuters) – Former President Donald Trump did not show up for deposition testimony before the congressional committee investigating his supporters’ attack on the U.S. Capitol last year, the panel said on Monday.
In doing so Trump defied a subpoena issued by the panel in October, Chair Bennie Thompson, a Democrat, and co-Chair Liz Cheney, a Republican, said in a joint statement.
“The truth is that Donald Trump, like several of his closest allies, is hiding from the Select Committee’s investigation and refusing to do what more than a thousand other witnesses have done,” Thompson and Cheney said.
The panel did not say what next steps they might pursue against Trump. Thompson told the New York Times in an interview that he would not rule out seeking contempt of Congress charges against the former president.
“That could be an option. And we’ll have to wait and see,” Thomson told the Times. “The first thing we’ll do is see how we address the lawsuit. At some point after that, we’ll decide the path forward.”
Trump filed a lawsuit on Friday seeking to avoid having to testify or provide any documentation to the Jan. 6 committee.
The congressional committee has held a series of hearings as it seeks to make its case to the public that Trump provoked his supporters into storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, while lawmakers met to formally declare his loss to Democrat Joe Biden.
The subpoena ordered Trump to submit documents to the panel by Nov. 4 and for him to appear for deposition testimony beginning on or about Nov. 14.
On Nov. 4, it said it had agreed to give Trump an extension before producing the documents but the Nov. 14 deadline remained in place.
Republicans are expected to dissolve the panel if they win control of the U.S. House of Representatives in the mid-term elections.
Reporting by Tyler Clifford and Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Leslie Adler
TOKYO, Nov 14 (Reuters) – Britain and the euro zone economies are likely to tip into recession next year, Morgan Stanley said, but the United States might make a narrow escape thanks to a resilient job market.
At the same time, China’s expected reopening after almost three years of COVID-19 curbs is set to lead a recovery in its own economy and other emerging Asian markets, the investment bank’s analysts said in a series of reports published on Sunday.
“Risks are to the downside,” the reports said, projecting the global economy to grow by 2.2% next year, lower than the International Monetary Fund’s latest 2.7% growth estimate. read more
Next year, Morgan Stanley predicts a sharp split between developed economies “in or near recession” while emerging economies “recover modestly” but said an overall global pickup would likely remain elusive. China’s economy was predicted to grow 5% in 2023, outpacing the average 3.7% growth expected for emerging markets, while the average growth in the Group of 10 developed countries was forecast at just 0.3%.
Central banks across the globe have raised interest rates this year to curb raging inflation, and in the United States, Morgan Stanley predicted the Federal Reserve to keep rates high in 2023 as inflation remains strong after peaking in the fourth quarter of this year.
“The U.S. economy just skirts recession in 2023, but the landing doesn’t feel so soft as job growth slows meaningfully and the unemployment rate continues to rise,” the report said, predicting a 0.5% expansion next year.
“The cumulative effect of tight policy in 2023 spills over into 2024, resulting in two very weak years,” the report added.
Globally too, the peak in inflation should come in the current quarter, the analysts said, “with disinflation driving the narrative next year”.
U.S. core inflation to fall to 2.9% at end-2023, headline inflation to 1.9%
Asia growth to dip to 3.4% in 1H23 before recovering to 4.6% in 2H23, fuelled by domestic demand
Cross-asset returns – especially in fixed income – will look much better in 2023 than in 2022, driven by cheaper starting valuations
High-grade fixed income to outperform global equities
EM and Japan stocks to outperform, with U.S. shares lagging
Reporting by Kevin Buckland, editing by Miral Fahmy
WASHINGTON, Nov 4 (Reuters) – Economic sanctions, the primary means the United States has used for years to try to exert pressure on North Korea, have abjectly failed to halt its nuclear and missile programs or to bring the reclusive northeast Asian state back to the negotiating table.
Instead, North Korea’s ballistic missile program has become stronger and it has carried out a record-breaking testing regime of multiple types of weapons this year – including of intercontinental ballistic missiles designed to reach the U.S. mainland. Expectations are that it may soon end a self-imposed five-year moratorium on nuclear bomb testing.
Now, U.S. policy makers and their predecessors can do little more than pick through the wreckage and seek to determine what went wrong, and who might be to blame.
“We’ve had a policy failure. It’s a generational policy failure,” said Joseph DeThomas, a former U.S. diplomat who worked on North Korea and Iran sanctions and served in the administrations of Democratic Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.
“An entire generation of people worked on this. It’s failed … so alright, now we have to go to the next step, figure out what we do about it.”
Biden administration officials concede that sanctions have failed to stop North Korea’s weapons programs – but they maintain they have at least been effective in slowing North Korea’s nuclear program.
“I would disagree with the idea that sanctions have failed. Sanctions have failed to stop their programs – that’s absolutely true,” a senior administration official told Reuters. “But I think that if the sanctions didn’t exist, (North Korea) would be much, much further along, and much more of a threat to its neighbors to the region and to the world.”
The State Department, U.S. Treasury and White House’s National Security Council did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Former officials and experts say sanctions were never imposed robustly enough for long enough and blame faltering U.S. overtures to North Korea as well as pressures like Russia’s war in Ukraine and U.S-China tensions over Taiwan for making them ineffective and easy for North Korea to circumvent.
North Korea has long been forbidden to conduct nuclear tests and ballistic missile launches by the U.N. Security Council.
The Security Council has imposed sanctions on North Korea since 2006 to choke off funding for it nuclear and ballistic missile programs. They now include exports bans coal, iron, lead, textiles and seafood, and capping imports of crude oil and refined petroleum products.
However U.N. experts regularly report that North Korea is evading sanctions and continuing to develop its programs.
Russia and China backed toughened sanctions after North Korea’s last nuclear test in 2017, but it is not clear what U.N action – if any – they might agree to if Pyongyang conducts another nuclear test.
Anthony Ruggiero, who headed North Korea sanctions efforts under former President Donald Trump, said they were only pursued vigorously enough from the last year of the Obama administration to early in Trump’s second year. They then dropped off in the ultimately vain hope of progress in summit negotiations between Trump and Kim.
Some critics like sanctions expert Joshua Stanton fault both the Trump and Biden administrations for failing to exert maximum pressure to stop China allowing North Korea’s sanctions evasion. They point to the powerful option of imposing sanctions on big Chinese banks that have facilitated this.
“The sanctions we don’t enforce don’t work, and we haven’t been enforcing them since mid-2018,” Stanton said, noting that history had shown a correlation between stronger enforcement and North Korea willingness to engage diplomatically.
“The Biden administration’s most significant failure is its failure to prosecute or penalize the Chinese banks we know are laundering Kim Jong Un’s money,” he said.
Some experts like DeThomas argue that taking what some call the “nuclear option” of going after Chinese banks could exclude huge Chinese institutions from the international financial system and have catastrophic consequences not just for the Chinese, but for the U.S. and global economies – something Stanton considers unfounded.
“Going full bore against the Chinese over North Korea is always a possibility, but it’s a high-risk option,” said DeThomas, arguing that such a measure should be reserved for an even more pressing scenario, such as deterring any move by China to all-out support for Russia’s war in Ukraine.
“You want them to be thinking about that. And you can’t fire that gun twice,” he said. “And even if you sanctioned the Chinese banks, you wouldn’t get the North Koreans to change.”
Some U.S. academic experts argue that Washington should recognize North Korea for what it is – a nuclear power that is never going to disarm – and use sanctions relief to incentivize better behavior.
“I do think we can buy things other than disarmament with our economic leverage,” Jeffrey Lewis, a non-proliferation expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies told a conference in Ottawa this week.
“I do think we can buy things other than disarmament with our economic leverage,” Jeffrey Lewis, a non-proliferation expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, told a conference in Ottawa this week.
The senior Biden administration official said maintaining sanctions was not just punitive, but about the international community showing it is united.
He rejected the idea that Washington should recognize North Korea as a nuclear-armed state.
“There is an extraordinarily strong global consensus … that the DPRK should not, and must not, be a nuclear nation,” he said. “No country is calling for this … the consequences of changing policy, I think would be profoundly negative.”
Additional reporting by Steve Holland and Michelle Nichols
Editing by Alistair Bell
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