VALLETTA, Dec 4 (Reuters) – A large picture of an unborn baby was placed outside the office of Malta’s prime minister on Sunday as demonstrators called on the government to halt plans to amend the country’s strict anti-abortion laws.
The protest, the biggest in years, attracted several thousand people including Malta’s top Catholic bishop and the leader of the conservative opposition, but was led by a former centre-left president, Marie Louise Coleiro Preca.
“We are here to be the voice of the unborn child,” said 19-year-old university student Maria Formosa, one of the speakers at the rally. “Through abortion, life is always lost.”
Some of those present carried placards reading slogans such as “Keep abortion out of Malta” and “Protect our children”. They also chanted “No to abortion, yes to life”.
Traditionally Catholic Malta is the only member of the European Union which bans abortion in all circumstances, even when a woman’s life or health is endangered by her pregnancy.
Last week, Health Minister Chris Fearne presented an amendment in parliament that would make doctors no longer risk up to four years’ imprisonment if their intervention to help women with severe health issues causes the end of a pregnancy.
To date, no doctor has been prosecuted on such charges.
The centre-right opposition, the powerful Catholic Church and some NGOs have described the amendment as not needed and as paving the way for a full liberalisation of abortion, a claim rejected by the ruling centre-left Labour party.
Prime Minister Robert Abela’s government holds a comfortable majority and no dissent has appeared within its ranks, but opinion polls show a big majority against abortion, particularly among older people.
No one from the government made any comment in response to the protest on Sunday.
The move to change abortion rules comes after a U.S. tourist, Andrea Prudente, was refused a request in June to terminate a non-viable pregnancy after she began to bleed profusely.
Her doctors said her life was at risk and she was eventually transferred to Spain where she had an abortion. She later sued the Malta government, calling on the courts to declare that banning abortion in all circumstances breaches human rights.
The case has not yet come to trial.
Reporting by Christopher Scicluna; Editing by Alvise Armellini and David Holmes
E.Europe arms companies step up production for Ukraine
Hope to find new markets as defence spends rise
Can produce and service Soviet-era and NATO-standard weaponry Poland, Czechs among big suppliers of military aid to Kyiv
Industry’s history stretches from 1800s and through Cold War
PRAGUE/WARSAW, Nov 24 (Reuters) – Eastern Europe’s arms industry is churning out guns, artillery shells and other military supplies at a pace not seen since the Cold War as governments in the region lead efforts to aid Ukraine in its fight against Russia.
Allies have been supplying Kyiv with weapons and military equipment since Russia invaded its neighbour on Feb. 24, depleting their own inventories along the way.
The United States and Britain committed the most direct military aid to Ukraine between Jan. 24 and Oct. 3, a Kiel Institute for the World Economy tracker shows, with Poland in third place and the Czech Republic ninth.
Still wary of Russia, their Soviet-era master, some former Warsaw Pact countries see helping Ukraine as a matter of regional security.
But nearly a dozen government and company officials and analysts who spoke to Reuters said the conflict also presented new opportunities for the region’s arms industry.
“Taking into account the realities of the ongoing war in Ukraine and the visible attitude of many countries aimed at increased spending in the field of defence budgets, there is a real chance to enter new markets and increase export revenues in the coming years,” said Sebastian Chwalek, CEO of Poland’s PGZ.
State-owned PGZ controls more than 50 companies making weapons and ammunition – from armoured transporters to unmanned air systems – and holds stakes in dozens more.
It now plans to invest up to 8 billion zlotys ($1.8 billion)over the next decade, more than double its pre-war target, Chwalek told Reuters. That includes new facilities located further from the border with Russia’s ally Belarus for security reasons, he said.
Other manufacturers too are increasing production capacity and racing to hire workers, companies and government officials from Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic said.
Immediately after Russia’s attack some eastern European militaries and manufacturers began emptying their warehouses of Soviet-era weapons and ammunition that Ukrainians were familiar with, as Kyiv waited for NATO-standard equipment from the West.
As those stocks have dwindled, arms makers have cranked up production of both older and modern equipment to keep supplies flowing. The stream of weapons has helped Ukraine push back Russian forces and reclaim swathes of territory.
Chwalek said PGZ would now produce 1,000 portable Piorun manpad air-defence systems in 2023 – not all for Ukraine -compared to 600 in 2022 and 300 to 350 in previous years.
The company, which he said has also delivered artillery and mortar systems, howitzers, bulletproof vests, small arms and ammunition to Ukraine, is likely to surpass a pre-war 2022 revenue target of 6.74 billion zlotys.
Companies and officials who spoke to Reuters declined to give specific details of military supplies to Ukraine, and some did not want to be identified, citing security and commercial sensitivities.
HISTORIC INDUSTRY
Eastern Europe’s arms industry dates back to the 19th Century, when Czech Emil Skoda began manufacturing weapons for the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Under Communism, huge factories in Czechoslovakia, the Warsaw Pact’s second-largest weapons producer, Poland and elsewhere in the region kept people employed, turning out weapons for Cold War conflicts Moscow stoked around the world.
[1/6] GROT C16 FB-M1, modular assault rifles system is seen at PGZ (Polska Grupa Zbrojna) arms factory Fabryka Broni Lucznikin Radom Poland, November 7, 2022. REUTERS/Kacper Pempel
“The Czech Republic was one of the powerhouses of weapons exporters and we have the personnel, material base and production lines needed to increase capacity,” its NATO Ambassador Jakub Landovsky told Reuters.
“This is a great chance for the Czechs to increase what we need after giving the Ukrainians the old Soviet-era stocks. This can show other countries we can be a reliable partner in the arms industry.”
The 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union and NATO’s expansion into the region pushed companies to modernise, but “they can still quickly produce things like ammunition that fits the Soviet systems”, said Siemon Wezeman, a researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
Deliveries to Ukraine have included artillery rounds of “Eastern” calibres, such as 152mm howitzer rounds and 122mm rockets not produced by Western companies, officials and companies said.
They said Ukraine had acquired weapons and equipment via donations from governments and direct commercial contracts between Kyiv and the manufacturers.
NOT JUST BUSINESS
“Eastern European countries support Ukraine substantially,” Christoph Trebesch, a professor at the Kiel Institute, said. “At the same time it’s an opportunity for them to build up their military production industry.”
Ukraine has received nearly 50 billion crowns ($2.1 billion) of weapons and equipment from Czech companies, about 95% of which were commercial deliveries, Czech Deputy Defence Minister Tomas Kopecny told Reuters. Czech arms exports this year will be the highest since 1989, he said, with many companies in the sector adding jobs and capacity.
“For the Czech defence industry, the conflict in Ukraine, and the assistance it provides is clearly a boost that we have not seen in the last 30 years,” Kopecny said.
David Hac, chief executive of Czech STV Group, outlined to Reuters plans to add new production lines for small-calibre ammunition and said it is considering expanding its large-calibre capability. In a tight labour market, the company is trying to poach workers from a slowing car industry, he said.
Defence sales helped the Czechoslovak Group, which owns companies including Excalibur Army, Tatra Trucks and Tatra Defence, nearly double its first-half revenues from a year earlier, to 13.8 billion crowns.
The company is increasing production of both 155mm NATO and 152mm Eastern calibre rounds and refurbishing infantry fighting vehicles and Soviet-era T-72 tanks, spokesman Andrej Cirtek told Reuters.
He said supplying Ukraine was more than just good business.
“After the Russian aggression started, our deliveries for Ukrainian army multiplied,” Cirtek said.
“The majority of the Czech population still remember times of a Russian occupation of our country before 1990 and we don´t want to have Russian troops closer to our borders.”
($1 = 4.5165 zlotys)
($1 = 23.3850 Czech crowns)
Reporting by Michael Kahn and Robert Muller in Prague and Anna Koper in Warsaw; Editing by Catherine Evans
ROME, Nov 24 (Reuters) – A year-long study of the drainage system under the Colosseum has unearthed fragments of the bones of bears and big cats that were probably used to fight or as prey in hunting games in the ancient Roman arena, archaeologists said on Thursday.
Other discoveries include more than 50 bronze coins from the late Roman period as well as a silver coin from around 170-171 AD to commemorate 10 years of rule of the emperor Marcus Aurelius, they added in a statement.
Seeds from fruits such as figs, grapes and melons as well as traces of olives and nuts — thought to indicate what spectators snacked on during shows — were also recovered from the 2,000-year-old stone amphitheatre.
The study, which began in January, involved the clearance of around 70 metres of drains and sewers under the Colosseum and is seen as shedding light on its later years before it fell into disuse around 523 AD.
Alfonsina Russo, Director of the Colosseum Archaeological Park, said the discoveries “deepen our understanding of the experience and habits of those who came to this place during the long days dedicated to the performances”.
Writing by Keith Weir
Editing by Alvise Armellini and Gareth Jones
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.
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
STOCKHOLM — Sweden’s central bank followed other central banks in undertaking a big increase to its key interest rate to combat inflation, saying Thursday that high prices are undermining people’s purchasing power and making it tough for households and companies to plan their finances.
Riksbanken said the hike of three-quarters of a percentage point pushes the key rate to 2.5% — the highest in 14 years, according to Swedish news agency TT — and is meant “to bring down inflation and safeguard the inflation target.”
Consumer prices rose 9.3% in October from a year earlier in the European Union country, lower than the 9.7% seen in September.
The big rate increase in Sweden, which does not use the euro currency so it is not part of the European Central Bank’s decision-making, builds on the jumbo full percentage point hike made in September.
It comes as the ECB, U.S. Federal Reserve and other central banks also have made large rate increases to fight inflation that has been squeezing people around the world.
In Sweden, the forecast “shows that the policy rate will probably be raised further at the beginning of next year and then be just below 3%,” the bank said.
“It is still difficult to assess how inflation will develop and the Riksbank will adapt monetary policy as necessary to ensure that inflation is brought back to the target within a reasonable time,” the bank said in a statement.
The decision on the policy rate will apply with effect from Nov. 30.
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This story has been corrected to show that the rate of 2.5%, not the rate increase, is the highest in 14 years.
SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt — Negotiators at U.N. climate talks in Egypt say they have struck a potential breakthrough deal on the creation of a fund for compensating poor nations that are the most vulnerable to climate change, called ‘loss and damage.’
“There is an agreement on loss and damage,” Maldives Environment Minister Aminath Shauna told The Associated Press Saturday. “That means for countries like ours we will have the mosaic of solutions that we have been advocating for.”
It still needs to be approved unanimously in a vote later today.
Saturday afternoon’s draft proposal came from the Egyptian presidency.
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KEY DEVELOPMENTS:
— UN climate talks drag into extra time with scant progress
— Despair, lack of progress at climate talks, yet hope blooms
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Two separate drafts released by the Egyptian presidency, on efforts to step up emissions cuts and the overarching decision of this year’s talks, barely build on what was agreed in Glasgow last year.
The texts leave in place a reference to the Paris accords goal of limiting global warming to “well below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit)” which scientists say is far too risky.
They also don’t suggest any new short-term targets for either developing or developed countries, which experts say are needed to achieve the more ambitious 1.5 C (2.7 F) goal that would prevent some of the more extreme effects of climate change.
A new proposal on the issue of loss and damage that calls for the creation of a new fund to help developing countries hit by climate disasters said developed countries would be “urged” to contribute to the fund, which would also draw on other private and public sources of money such as international financial institutions.
However, the proposal does not suggest that major emerging economies such as China have to contribute to the fund, which was a key ask of the European Union and the United States.
It also does not tie the creation of the new fund to any increase in efforts to cut emissions, or restrict the recipients of funding to those countries that are most vulnerable.
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Alok Sharma, the British official who chaired last year’s climate talks in Glasgow, declined to comment on criticism of the Egyptian presidency, but made clear that an ambitious outcome to combat climate change was crucial.
“Every presidency runs things in their own way,” he said. “The key issue for me and for the UK is that what we have here at the end of the day is a balanced and ambitious text across all the key pillars,” he said.
“For us it’s also vitally important to not just preserve what we agreed in Glasgow but that we build on that as well,” said Sharma, referring to the recommitment made last year to limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) and a pledge to increase efforts to slash emissions cuts.
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Spain’s environment minister said they are willing to walk out if they can’t reach a fair deal at the U.N. climate talks.
“We could be exiting of course,” said Teresa Ribera. “We won’t be part of a result that we find unfair and not effective to address the problem that we are handling, which is climate change and the need to reduce emissions.”
Ribera said she is “concerned” that a draft of the final document may not include a mention of the 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) warming limit target set in Paris in 2015.
She added she didn’t want to see a result “that may backtrack what we already did in Glasgow,” referring to the renewed commitment to the 1.5 C goal at the climate summit last year.
“That’s something that we’d like to see, that there is a strong commitment to the 1.5 target,” said Teresa Ribera.
On the role of the presidency, Ribera said that the process has been “very confusing.”
“It is not clear … and we are running out of time,” she said.
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Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry said parties must now “rise to the occasion” in a news conference Saturday morning.
“The issue now rests with the will of the parties,” Shoukry said at a press conference. “It is the parties who must rise to the occasion and take upon themselves the responsibility of finding the areas of convergence and moving forward.”
On a new draft text for the overarching decision at the conference, which was being worked on overnight, Shoukry said that “a vast majority of the parties indicated to me that they considered the text as balanced and that they constitute a potential breakthrough that can lead to consensus.”
He added that “all must show the necessary flexibility” in reaching a consensus, and that Egypt was merely “facilitating this process.”
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New Zealand’s climate minister has said a draft of the final document circulated by the presidency “has been received quite poorly by pretty much everybody,” adding that delegations are going into another round of talks.
Speaking to The Associated Press, James Shaw called the draft “entirely unsatisfactory.”
He added that the proposal “abandons really any hope of achieving 1.5 (degrees Celsius, 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit),” referring to the warming limit agreed at the Paris agreement back in 2015.
He said parties will continue to work on the issue as well as look to reach consensus on a loss and damage fund for developing nations who are suffering from the impacts of climate change.
“Everybody wants an outcome on loss and damage and everybody wants to keep 1.5 alive. So that’s what we’re going to keep doing,” he said.
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German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock says that responsibility for the fat of the U.N. climate talks “now lies in the hands of the Egyptian COP presidency.”
She said the European Union had made clear overnight that “we will not sign a paper here that diverges significantly from the 1.5 C path, that would bury the goal of 1.5 degrees.”
“If these climate conferences set us back then we wouldn’t have needed to travel here in the first place,” she said.
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Follow AP’s climate and environment coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment
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Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
DOHA, Qatar — Bukayo Saka has put the racist abuse he experienced at last year’s European Championship behind him, England teammate Aaron Ramsdale said Friday.
The Arsenal forward was targeted on social media after missing a penalty in the shootout loss to Italy in the Euro 2020 final. Marcus Rashford and Jadon Sancho were also subjected to attacks.
Saka was only 19 at the time and visibly shaken by the experience in front of England fans at Wembley Stadium. But he has recovered to play a pivotal role in Arsenal’s resurgence, which has seen the London club build up a five-point lead at the top of the Premier League.
Ramsdale, who also plays for Arsenal, has seen up close how he has recovered from the experience and grown as a player.
He believes Saka will be one of the standout performers at the World Cup.
“There is no doubt about that, off the pitch and on it, he’s a more complete person,” the goalkeeper said. “I’m trying to find the right words (to describe how he’s handled it). Impeccably, probably.
“The kid’s a lovely boy, he has time for everyone, works super hard throughout every week. Very, very rarely misses a training session and used all that as motivation. The criticism, but also, more so, the love that everyone gave him, gave him an extra boost.”
Saka was one of the breakthrough talents for England at the tournament and is now a fixture in the squad.
Ramsdale said his teammate has also benefited from taking on so much responsibility at Arsenal.
“Don’t forget he had the pressure of the whole club on him last year — him and Emile Smith Rowe were our main guys — and he has dealt with that, he’s dealt with everything else,” Ramsdale said at England’s training base. “He is thriving and I can’t wait to see him thrive over here.”
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AP World Cup coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/world-cup and https://twitter.com/AP—Sports
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James Robson is at https://twitter.com/jamesalanrobson
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 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
LONDON, Nov 14 (Reuters) – Britain’s King Charles celebrated his 74th birthday on Monday, with the occasion marked by him replacing his late father as The Ranger of Great Windsor Park, a position which dates back more than four centuries.
Charles, who became the oldest monarch in British history when he succeeded his mother on the throne in September, will enjoy his first birthday as king in private with no public engagements planned.
However, Buckingham Palace announced that he had officially taken up his new role as Ranger, a job which dates back to 1559 when Queen Elizabeth I appointed Henry Neville, and released a new photograph of Charles next to an old oak tree in the park.
His father Prince Philip held the title from 1952 when his wife became Queen Elizabeth II, succeeding her father George VI in the job.
Queen Victoria is among other royals to have held the role which involves providing oversight and guidance to the Deputy Ranger and his team in the daily running of one of the country’s oldest landed estates, the Palace said.
Reporting by Michael Holden, Editing by Kylie MacLellan
LONDON, Nov 14 (Reuters) – King Charles asked the British parliament on Monday to amend the law to allow two more of his siblings to act on his behalf in his absence, adding them to a group which currently includes his disgraced brother Prince Andrew.
In a statement read out on his behalf in the House of Lords, the upper chamber of parliament, Charles, who on Monday turned 74, asked for the number of Counsellors of State to be increased to include his sister Princess Anne and youngest brother Prince Edward.
The Counsellors, who can act on behalf of the monarch in his absence to carry out all but his most key roles such as appointing a new prime minister, are selected from his spouse and the four adults next in line to the throne.
That currently means that in addition to Charles’s wife Camilla and his eldest son and heir Prince William, the grouping comprises the king’s younger son Prince Harry, younger brother Prince Andrew, and Andrew’s eldest daughter Princess Beatrice.
That has led to criticism from some commentators because neither Andrew nor Harry carry out official royal roles any more.
Andrew was stripped of most of his titles and removed from royal duties due to a scandal over his friendship with the late U.S. financier Jeffrey Epstein, a convicted sex offender, and he later settled a U.S. lawsuit in which he was accused of sexual abuse.
Meanwhile, Harry stepped down from royal duties in 2020 and moved to California with his wife Meghan.
“To ensure continued efficiency of public business when I’m unavailable, such as while I’m undertaking official duties overseas, I confirm that I would be most content should parliament see fit for the number of people who may be called upon to act as Counsellors of State … to be increased to include my sister and brother,” the king’s statement said.
The change will require parliament to amend the terms of the Regency Act.
Reporting by Michael Holden
Editing by Gareth Jones
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
WASHINGTON/LONDON, Nov 4 (Reuters) – The Group of Seven rich nations and Australia have agreed to set a fixed price when they finalize a price cap on Russian oil later this month, rather than adopting a floating rate, sources said on Thursday.
U.S. officials and G7 countries have been in intense negotiations in recent weeks over the unprecedented plan to put a price cap on sea-borne oil shipments, which is scheduled to take effect on Dec. 5 – to ensure EU and U.S. sanctions aimed at limiting Moscow’s ability to fund its invasion of Ukraine do not throttle the global oil market.
“The Coalition has agreed the price cap will be a fixed price that will be reviewed regularly rather than a discount to an index,” said a coalition source, who was not authorized to speak publicly. “This will increase market stability and simplify compliance to minimize the burden on market participants.”
The initial price itself has not been set, but should be in coming weeks, multiple sources said. Coalition partners agreed to regularly review the fixed price and revise it as needed, the source said, without disclosing further details.
Pegging the price as a discount to some index would have resulted in too much volatility and potential price swings, the source added.
The coalition worried that a floating price pegged below the Brent international benchmark might enable Russian President Vladimir Putin to game the mechanism by reducing supply, a second source with knowledge of the discussions said.
Putin could benefit from a floating price system because the price for his country’s oil would also rise if Brent spiked due to a cut in oil from Russia, one of the world’s largest petroleum producers. The downside of the agreed fixed price system is that it will require more meetings of the coalition and bureaucracy to review it regularly, the source said.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and other G7 officials argue the price cap, set to begin Dec. 5 on crude and Feb. 5 on oil products, will squeeze funding to Russia without cutting supply to consumers. Russia has said it will refuse to ship oil to countries that set price caps.
Shipping services are eager to see more details about the G7 plan which is due to take effect in a month.
A steady price cap could enable insurers to more confidently roll over contracts and initiate new ones without fear that the price could be adjusted by the countries buying Russian oil, which could have potentially exposed insurers to sanctions.
No immediate comment was available from Treasury or the embassies of coalition members, which include the G7 rich nations, the European Union and Australia.
Separately, The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that the United States and its allies had agreed on further details on which sales of Russian oil will face the price cap.
Each load of seaborne Russian oil will only be subject to the price cap when first sold to a buyer on land, the countries determined. Reuters could not immediately verify the report which cited people familiar with the matter.
Reporting by Andrea Shalal and Timothy Gardner in Washington and Noah Browning in London; editing by Heather Timmons and Matthew Lewis
LONDON, Nov 4 (Reuters) – President Vladimir Putin on Friday said the West had hammered historical nonsense into the heads of millions of people, including about the real course of World War Two and the Soviet Union’s role in the victory over Nazi Germany.
Without citing evidence, Putin repeated a claim that Poland has not abandoned dreams of taking over parts of Ukraine.
Poland has repeatedly denied such Russian claims, and says such statements are disinformation spread by Moscow in an attempt to sow discord between Warsaw and Kyiv.
Nov 4 (Reuters) – Twitter Inc laid off half its workforce on Friday but said cuts were smaller in the team responsible for preventing the spread of misinformation, as advertisers pulled spending amid concerns about content moderation.
Tweets by staff of the social media company said teams responsible for communications, content curation, human rights and machine learning ethics were among those gutted, as were some product and engineering teams.
The move caps a week of chaos and uncertainty about the company’s future under new owner Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, who tweeted on Friday that the service was experiencing a “massive drop in revenue” from the advertiser retreat.
Musk blamed the losses on a coalition of civil rights groups that has been pressing Twitter’s top advertisers to take action if he did not protect content moderation – concerns heightened ahead of potential pivotal congressional elections on Tuesday.
After the layoffs, the groups said they were escalating their pressure and demanding brands pull their Twitter ads globally.
“Unfortunately there is no choice when the company is losing over $4M/day,” Musk tweeted of the layoffs, adding that everyone affected was offered three months of severance pay.
The company was silent about the depth of the cuts until late in the day, when head of safety and integrity Yoel Roth tweeted confirmation of internal plans, seen by Reuters earlier in the week, projecting the layoffs would affect about 3,700 people, or 50% of the staff.
Among those let go were 784 employees from the company’s San Francisco headquarters and 199 in San Jose and Los Angeles, according to filings to California’s employment authority.
Roth said the reductions hit about 15% of his team, which is responsible for preventing the spread of misinformation and other harmful content, and that the company’s “core moderation capabilities” remained in place.
Musk endorsed the safety executive last week, citing his “high integrity” after Roth was called out over tweets critical of former President Donald Trump years earlier.
Musk has promised to restore free speech while preventing Twitter from descending into a “hellscape.”
President Joe Biden said on Friday that Musk had purchased a social media platform in Twitter that spews lies across the world.
“And now what are we all worried about: Elon Musk goes out and buys an outfit that sends – that spews lies all across the world… There’s no editors anymore in America. There’s no editors. How do we expect kids to be able to understand what is at stake?”
Major advertisers have expressed apprehension about Musk’s takeover for months.
Brands including General Motors Co (GM.N) and General Mills Inc (GIS.N) have said they stopped advertising on Twitter while awaiting information about the new direction of the platform.
Musk tweeted that his team had made no changes to content moderation and done “everything we could” to appease the groups. Speaking at an investors conference in New York on Friday, Musk called the activist pressure “an attack on the First Amendment.”
[1/9] Owner and CEO of Twitter, Inc. Elon Musk arrives at the 29th Annual Baron Investment Conference in Manhattan in New York City, New York, U.S., November 4, 2022. REUTERS/Andrew Kelly
Twitter did not respond to a request for comment.
ACCESS TO SYSTEMS CUT
The email notifying staff about layoffs was the first communication Twitter workers received from the company’s leadership after Musk took over last week. It was signed only by “Twitter,” without naming Musk or any other executives.
Dozens of staffers tweeted they had lost access to work email and Slack channels overnight before receiving an official layoff notice on Friday morning, prompting an outpouring of laments by current and former employees on the platform they had built.
They shared blue hearts and salute emojis expressing support for one another, using the hashtags #OneTeam and #LoveWhereYouWorked, a past-tense version of a slogan employees had used for years to celebrate the company’s work culture.
Twitter’s curation team, which was responsible for “highlighting and contextualizing the best events and stories that unfold on Twitter,” had been axed, employees wrote.
Shannon Raj Singh, an attorney who was Twitter’s acting head of human rights, tweeted that the entire human rights team at the company had been sacked.
Another team that focused on research into how Twitter employed machine learning and algorithms, an issue that was a priority for Musk, was also eliminated, according to a tweet from a former senior manager at Twitter.
Senior executives including vice president of engineering Arnaud Weber said their goodbyes on Twitter on Friday: “Twitter still has a lot of unlocked potential but I’m proud of what we accomplished.”
Employees of Twitter Blue, the premium subscription service that Musk is bolstering, were also let go. An employee with the handle “SillyRobin” who had indicated they were laid off, quote-tweeted a previous Musk tweet saying Twitter Blue would include “paywall bypass” for certain publishers.
“Just to be clear, he fired the team working on this,” the employee said.
DOORS LOCKED
Twitter said in its email to staffers that offices would be temporarily closed and badge access suspended “to help ensure the safety of each employee as well as Twitter systems and customer data.”
Offices in London and Dublin appeared deserted on Friday, with no employees in sight. At the London office, any evidence Twitter had once occupied the building was erased.
A receptionist at Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters said a few people had trickled in and were working in the floors above despite the notice to stay away.
A class action was filed on Thursday against Twitter by several employees, who argued the company was conducting mass layoffs without providing the required 60-day advance notice, in violation of federal and California law.
The lawsuit asked the San Francisco federal court to issue an order to restrict Twitter from soliciting employees being laid off to sign documents without informing them of the pendency of the case.
Reporting by Sheila Dang in Dallas, Katie Paul in Palo Alto, California, and Paresh Dave in Oakland, California; Additional reporting by Fanny Potkin, Rusharti Mukherjee, Aditya Kalra, Martin Coulter, Hyunjoo Jin, Supantha Mukherjee and Arriana McLymore; Writing by Matt Scuffham and Katie Paul; Editing by Kenneth Li, Jason Neely, Matthew Lewis and William Mallard
San Francisco Bay Area-based tech reporter covering Google and the rest of Alphabet Inc. Joined Reuters in 2017 after four years at the Los Angeles Times focused on the local tech industry.
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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