French President Macron Denounces Paris’ Most Violent Riot in a Decade

Posted by - 2. decembra 2018

(PARIS) — France’s most violent urban riot in a decade engulfed central Paris on Saturday as “yellow jacket” activists torched cars, smashed windows, looted stores and tagged the Arc de Triomphe with multi-colored graffiti.

Protesters angry about rising taxes and the high cost of living clashed with French riot police, who closed off some of the city’s most popular tourist areas and fired tear gas and water cannon as they tried to quell the mayhem in the streets.

French President Emmanuel Macron denounced the violence from the G-20 summit in Argentina, saying those who attacked police and vandalized the Arc de Triomphe will be “held responsible for their acts.” He said he will hold an emergency government meeting Sunday on the protests.

“(Violence) has nothing to do with the peaceful expression of a legitimate anger” and “no cause justifies” attacks on police or pillaging stores and burning buildings, Macron said in Buenos Aires. He refused to answer any questions from journalists a..

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French President Macron Denounces Paris’ Most Violent Riot in a Decade

Posted by - 2. decembra 2018

(PARIS) — France’s most violent urban riot in a decade engulfed central Paris on Saturday as “yellow jacket” activists torched cars, smashed windows, looted stores and tagged the Arc de Triomphe with multi-colored graffiti.

Protesters angry about rising taxes and the high cost of living clashed with French riot police, who closed off some of the city’s most popular tourist areas and fired tear gas and water cannon as they tried to quell the mayhem in the streets.

French President Emmanuel Macron denounced the violence from the G-20 summit in Argentina, saying those who attacked police and vandalized the Arc de Triomphe will be “held responsible for their acts.” He said he will hold an emergency government meeting Sunday on the protests.

“(Violence) has nothing to do with the peaceful expression of a legitimate anger” and “no cause justifies” attacks on police or pillaging stores and burning buildings, Macron said in Buenos Aires. He refused to answer any questions from journalists a..

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All G-20 Leaders Agree to Fix Trade System, While Only 19 Agree on Paris Climate Accord

Posted by - 2. decembra 2018

(BUENOS AIRES, Argentina) — Leaders of the Group of 20 agreed Saturday to fix the world trading system after difficult, all-night talks in the Argentine capital, but only 19 of them agreed to support the Paris accord on fighting climate change with the United States the lone holdout.

The official summit statement acknowledges flaws in global commerce and calls for reforming the World Trade Organization. It doesn’t mention the word “protectionism,” however, after negotiators said that had met resistance from the United States.

Applause broke out in the summit hall as the leaders, including U.S. President Donald Trump, signed off on a final statement at the end of a two-day summit.

The non-binding agreement was reached after talks by diplomats stretched overnight and into daylight on Saturday, amid deep divisions between member nations. European Union officials said the United States was the main holdout on nearly every issue. Trump has criticized the WTO and taken aggressive trade po..

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Defense Secretary Mattis Accuses Russian President Putin of Trying to ‘Subvert Democratic Processes’

Posted by - 2. decembra 2018

(WASHINGTON) — Defense Secretary Jim Mattis on Saturday took aim at Russian President Vladimir Putin, accusing him of trying to “muck around” in the U.S. midterm elections, of duplicity in arms control and of acting irresponsibly in last weekend’s naval confrontation with Ukraine.

In remarks at the Reagan National Defense Forum in Simi Valley, California, Mattis said the U.S.-Russian relationship has deteriorated over the last two years.

“We are dealing with someone that we simply cannot trust,” he said. “There is no doubt the relationship has worsened.”

Mattis did not elaborate on his claim that Russia tried to interfere in last month’s elections, adding only, “We are seeing a continued effort along those lines.” He added more generally, “It’s his efforts to try to subvert democratic processes that must be defended.”

Citing Russia’s seizure of Ukrainian vessels and sailors, President Donald Trump canceled his plans to meet with Putin at this weekend’s Group of 20 summit in Argenti..

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Defense Secretary Mattis Accuses Russian President Putin of Trying to ‘Subvert Democratic Processes’

Posted by - 2. decembra 2018

(WASHINGTON) — Defense Secretary Jim Mattis on Saturday took aim at Russian President Vladimir Putin, accusing him of trying to “muck around” in the U.S. midterm elections, of duplicity in arms control and of acting irresponsibly in last weekend’s naval confrontation with Ukraine.

In remarks at the Reagan National Defense Forum in Simi Valley, California, Mattis said the U.S.-Russian relationship has deteriorated over the last two years.

“We are dealing with someone that we simply cannot trust,” he said. “There is no doubt the relationship has worsened.”

Mattis did not elaborate on his claim that Russia tried to interfere in last month’s elections, adding only, “We are seeing a continued effort along those lines.” He added more generally, “It’s his efforts to try to subvert democratic processes that must be defended.”

Citing Russia’s seizure of Ukrainian vessels and sailors, President Donald Trump canceled his plans to meet with Putin at this weekend’s Group of 20 summit in Argenti..

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Why This British Lawmaker Decided to Come Out as HIV-Positive in Parliament

Posted by - 30. novembra 2018

On Thursday, a lawmaker stood up in the U.K. parliament and made history: he became the first politician to openly declare to the House of Commons that he was HIV-positive.

Lloyd Russell-Moyle’s speech came two days before World AIDS Day, which marks its 30th anniversary on Dec. 1.

“Such events are also deeply personal to me, because next year I will be marking an anniversary of my own —10 years since I became HIV-positive,” Russell-Moyle told lawmakers in parliament, during a debate about public health.

He described his diagnosis in words that would reverberate around the world on social media in the hours that followed. “When you are first diagnosed, you get that call from the clinic and they just say, ‘You need to come in.’ They do not tell you the details, and you know immediately that something is wrong.”

“It hits you like a wall,” he said, describing the moment the doctor told him.

Labour's Lloyd Russell-Moyle becomes first MP to announce in the Commons that he is HIV p..

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Some Fear an Economic Cold War as Trump and Xi Meet at G-20

Posted by - 30. novembra 2018

The stakes for President Donald Trump’s Saturday meeting with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping seem like they couldn’t be higher as the world’s two biggest economies argue over escalating tariffs, how to handle North Korea and saber rattling in the South China Sea.

But as in the meetups between U.S. presidents and Soviet leaders during the Cold War, analysts say the most likely results of the dinner meeting will be a vague promise to work together followed by further tension. The result may be something of an economic Cold War between the U.S. and China.

Simply put, the trade issues at hand simply too thorny for Trump and Xi to reach a Grand Bargain when they sit down for dinner on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Buenos Aires. Trump has demanded that China end some trade policies like its requirement that foreign companies provide technology knowhow to Chinese firms as a condition for doing business and its state-support for certain industries.

While those policies have been wi..

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‘There Is an Atmosphere of Civil War.’ France’s Yellow Jackets Are Driving Fury at Macron

Posted by - 30. novembra 2018

On the one side sits a hugely powerful global leader who made his fortune as an investment banker, then in his 30s took power of the world’s seventh-biggest economy. Pitted against him: A growing mass of protestors seething with frustration and contempt, who opinion polls said this week have the support of two-thirds of the country.

Emmanuel Macron is that leader, of course. The French President landed in Argentina this week for the annual G-20 summit, as one of the group’s most pivotal leaders. But it must feel like a vacation compared to the mess back home 7,000 miles away.

For the past two Saturdays, a protest movement calling itself the gilets jaunes, or yellow jackets, has stormed the streets of Paris in fluorescent safety vests. The protests have attracted a huge array of people, with some setting alight barricades, blocking access roads, smashing windows and hurling chunks of concrete at riot police on the Avenue de Champs-Elysées.

The yellow jackets — so-called for the high-..

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‘It’s About Right and Wrong.’ In Conversation With the Journalist Who Exposed the World’s Biggest Corruption Scandal

Posted by - 30. novembra 2018

On the morning when I first met Clare Rewcastle Brown, the British journalist known for breaking wide one of the biggest-ever corruption scandals to involve a head of state, she casually mentioned we were being followed. We were taking part in a rally snaking through London’s Trafalgar Square when she noted the “dodgy looking fellow.” At the time, being stalked through central London was not unusual for Rewcastle Brown. It was November 2016 and the mother of two had already seen her life transformed by her investigation, which prompted death threats and selfie requests in equal measure, though it had yet to wreak the international consequences apparent today.

Rewcastle Brown, 59, had been shining a spotlight on environmental destruction in her birthplace, Sarawak, Malaysia, when she uncovered a trail that eventually exposed billions of dollars being siphoned from a state sovereign fund known as 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB). In all, U.S. Department of Justice investigators belie..

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Why a Genocide Verdict in Cambodia Could Be the Last of Its Kind

Posted by - 30. novembra 2018

Four decades after Cambodia’s vicious Khmer Rouge regime killed 1.7 million people — a fifth of the country’s population — some justice is finally being served.

Starting in 1975 (the regime’s “Year Zero”), the Khmer Rouge devastated Cambodia in its effort to create a utopian agrarian society. In 1979, it was toppled by a Vietnam-backed invasion. Many died of starvation, deprivation and exposure; others were tortured and executed in labor camps, prisons and killing fields across the Southeast Asian country.

But on Nov. 16, the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), a hybrid bench of Cambodian and foreign prosecutors, found former regime leaders Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan guilty of genocide against the ethnic Vietnamese from 1975 to 1979, among a litany of other crimes against humanity; Nuon Chea was also convicted of genocide against the Muslim Cham people. The ruling marked the first time the U.N.-backed Cambodian tribunal handed down the notoriously elusive verdic..

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