Month: September 2018

Trump Slams Canada Over NAFTA, Says Rejected Trudeau Meeting

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U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday blasted Canada over the slow pace of talks over NAFTA, saying he was so unhappy that he had rejected Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s request for a one-on-one meeting.

The remarks by Trump, who repeated a threat to impose tariffs on Canadian autos, knocked the Canadian dollar down to a one-week low against the U.S. greenback.

The comments also mark a new low in relations between the two leaders. Trudeau spokeswoman Chantal Gagnon said: “No meeting was requested. We don’t have any comment beyond that.”

The attack cast further doubt on the future of the three-nation North American Free Trade Agreement, which underpins $1.2 trillion in annual trade between Canada, Mexico and the United States. Markets and business groups are openly fretting about the damage that a collapse could provoke.

Trump, who wants major changes to the 1994 treaty, has already concluded a text with Mexico and is threatening to leave out Canada unless it signs up by this Sunday.

Trump told reporters he had rebuffed a Trudeau request for a meeting “because his tariffs are too high and he doesn’t seem to want to move and I told him ‘forget about it.’ And frankly we’re thinking about just taxing cars coming in from Canada.”

Earlier on Wednesday, Trudeau shrugged off U.S. pressure to quickly agree to a deal and indicated it was possible the three member nations might fail to conclude a new pact.

The two sides are still far apart on major issues such as how to settle disputes and U.S. demands for more access to Canada’s protected dairy market.

“We’re very unhappy with the negotiations and the negotiating style of Canada. We don’t like their representative very much,” Trump said in an apparent reference to Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland.

Relations between the Canadian and U.S. leaders have been chilly since June, when Trump left a Group of Seven summit in Canada and then accused Trudeau of being dishonest and weak.

U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer — Freeland’s counterpart at the talks — on Tuesday had complained Canada was not making enough concessions and said time was running out.

Canadian officials said they do not believe Trump can rework NAFTA into a bilateral deal without the approval of Congress.

“We will keep working as long as it takes to get to the right deal for Canada,” Trudeau earlier told reporters at the United Nations. He has repeatedly said he is ready to walk away from the talks rather than sign a document he thinks is bad.

Asked about the challenge that autos tariffs would pose, Trudeau said Canada would need to feel confident “about the path forward as we move forward — if we do — on a NAFTA 2.0.”

The three nations’ auto industries are highly integrated and tariffs on Canadian cars would be hugely disruptive.

Speaking separately, Canada’s ambassador to Washington said that on a scale of 1 to 10, the chances of an agreement by the Sept. 30 deadline were 5.

“If it doesn’t happen by the end of the week, we’ll just keep working away and trying to get the best deal for Canada,” David MacNaughton told a Toronto event arranged by Politico Canada.

A Trump administration official said the text of the agreement with Mexico was set to be published on Friday.

The official declined to be named because the matter has not yet been made public. A spokesman for the U.S. Trade Representative’s Office declined to comment.

Trudeau said existing U.S. tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum in late May would have to be scrapped before Canada felt comfortable signing a new NAFTA.

The Trump administration has said the text of an agreement between the three nations is needed by Sunday to allow the current Mexican government to sign it before it leaves office at the end of November. 
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US Lawmakers Urged to Enact Personal Data Protections, But With Care

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U.S. communications and social media titans are urging lawmakers to craft strong, uniform protections for Americans’ personal data without squashing innovation.

The Senate Commerce Committee heard testimony Wednesday from Apple, Amazon.com, Google, Twitter, and AT&T executives at a time when data breaches are commonplace, many Americans are mystified or unaware of how their personal data may be used or shared, and jurisdictions from the European Union to the state of California have taken action to safeguard consumers.

“Privacy means much more than having the right to not share your personal information. Privacy is about putting the user in control when it comes to that information. We believe that privacy is a fundamental human right, which should be supported by both social norms and the law,” said Apple’s vice president for software technology, Bud Tribble.

“In today’s data-driven world, it is more important than ever to maintain consumers’ trust and give them control over their personal information,” said AT&T’s senior vice president for global public policy, Leonard Cali.

The executives urged lawmakers to implement national standards that would preempt individual states from taking action on their own, as California has done.

“California is a single state, and if other states follow suit, we’ll be facing a patchwork of rules and fragmentation that will be just unworkable for consumers, as well as mobile companies and internet companies,” Cali said.

At the same time, senators were urged to craft legislation with care. Several witnesses described the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation, implemented earlier this year, as overly burdensome.

“Meeting its [the GDPR’s] specific requirements for the handling, retention, and deletion of personal data required us to divert significant resources to administrative tasks and away from invention on behalf of customers,” Amazon.com Vice President Andrew DeVore said.

DeVore added, “We encourage Congress to ensure that additional overhead and administrative demands any legislation might require, actually produce commensurate consumer privacy benefits.”

Current proposal

Congress already has legislation to consider. Earlier this year, Minnesota Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar and Louisiana Republican John Kennedy introduced a bill that would require companies to write terms of service agreements in plain language and allow consumers to review data collected about them and find out if and how it has been shared. Other proposals are likely to be forthcoming.

“The question is no longer whether we need a federal law to protect consumers’ privacy,” said the committee’s chairman, Republican Senator John Thune of South Dakota. “The question is what shape that law should take.”

Privacy questions

Several senators readily acknowledged that they did not grow up in the digital age.

“This thing sometimes mystifies me,” Montana Democrat Jon Tester said, holding up his smartphone.  Tester added that he was perplexed to see that, after searching for new tires for his truck, online advertisements for tires appeared on Web pages he subsequently visited.

“How the hell did they get that information?” he asked.

Google Chief Privacy Officer Keith Enright responded the search engine allows Web pages to earn revenue “by placing advertisements that may be targeted to a user’s interests.” But, he stressed, “No personal information is passing from Google to that third party — we neither sell it nor share it.”
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Incoming Mexican President to Accept Truth Commission

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Mexican President-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said Wednesday his administration will accept a truth commission to investigate the case of 43 teachers-college students missing since Sept. 26, 2014, drawing rare praise and expressions of hope from the long-suffering parents of the victims.

Wednesday marked the fourth anniversary of the students’ abduction by corrupt police in the southern city of Iguala. Prosecutors say the police turned the students over to a drug gang, which allegedly killed them and incinerated their bodies. But apart from charred bone fragments matched to one student, their bodies have never been found.

Parents of the 43 missing youths met with Lopez Obrador, and in a tear-filled news conference afterward said they had hope for the first time in four years.

“This is the first day in all these last four years that we parents feel hope that we will get the truth,” said Epifanio Alvarez, his voice shaking. “This is the first day that a government has said to us, ‘We are going to help, we are going to get to the truth.’”

“God willing we will get to hug our children, God willing we will arrive at the truth,” Alvarez said.

Another parent, Maria Elena Guerrero, said the new investigative commission would be coordinated with a group of experts from the Inter-American Human Rights Commission, the United Nations and Mexico’s own Human Rights Commission. “Without truth there is no justice,” she said.

Lopez Obrador said he would issue a decree to create the commission when he takes office Dec. 1. He called the parents of the 43 “an example for everyone fighting for justice in Mexico and the world.”

It was a break from years of suspicion, deceit and mistrust during which official investigators were accused of manipulating evidence, torturing suspects and trying to channel the entire investigation toward a single, terrible hypothesis: That the students were killed and their bodies incinerated in a huge fire at a garbage dump outside the southern city of Iguala. 

But international experts and the victims’ parents cast doubt on that theory, and want a more thorough probe of the possible involvement of the army or other authorities. 

Meanwhile, students and victims’ parents have engaged in a series of violent protests outside army barracks and on highways, in which gasoline bombs have been thrown and trucks and buses hijacked.

In June, a federal court ordered the government to create the truth commission due to doubts about the investigation. But the government of President Enrique Pena Nieto has appealed that ruling, saying there is no provision for such an investigative body in the Mexican legal system.

Pena Nieto tweeted Wednesday, “four years after the regrettable events in Iguala, the government is committed to the victims’ families and to justice.”

Pena Nieto has said he remained convinced of the massive fire theory. But the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights issued a report saying that 34 of the 129 people arrested in connection with the students’ disappearance had suffered torture.
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Russian Officer Named in Britain Nerve Agent Poisoning

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A group of British investigative journalists have identified a highly decorated member of the Russian military intelligence agency (GRU) as one of two men accused of trying to assassinate an ex-Russian spy and his daughter in Britain earlier this year.

British prosecutors have charged two Russians, Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, of trying to kill Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, with the Soviet nerve agent Novichok in the English city of Salisbury on March 4. 

On Wednesday, the investigative website Bellingcat reported that Boshirov was actually Col.  Anatoliy Chepiga, who was awarded Russia’s highest honor — Hero of the Russian Federation — in 2014.

The New York Times reported that the Russian news outlet Insider has confirmed Bellingcat’s findings. 

British authorities say the suspects arrived at London’s Gatwick airport two days before the poisoning took place.  

Their journey from a London hotel to the crime scene in Salisbury was tracked by security cameras. The two men then flew out of Heathrow Airport back to Russia the same evening.

Boshirov and Petrov were charged in absentia with carrying out the attack. In an interview on the Kremlin-funded RT channel, they denied they were GRU agents and claimed to work instead in the nutrient supplements business. The suspects said they visited Salisbury to see its famous cathedral and did not know Skripal or where he lived.

Britain quickly rejected the claims. 

“The government is clear,” Britain said, that the men “used a devastating toxic, illegal chemical weapon on the streets of our country.” 

Skripal and his daughter recovered from the attack, but a British woman who touched a discarded perfume bottle that contained the nerve agent died. 

Ken Bredemeier contributed to this report.
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Syrian Official says S-300 Defenses Will Give Israel Pause

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Israel should think carefully before attacking Syria again once it obtains the sophisticated S-300 defense system from Russia, a Damascus official said.

 

The warning followed pledges from Moscow to deliver the missile system after last week’s downing of a Russian plane by Syrian forces responding to an Israeli airstrike.

 

Syria’s Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad said late Tuesday that the S-300 should have been given to Syria long ago.

 

Israel, “which is accustomed to launching many aggressions under different pretexts, will have to make accurate calculations if it thinks to attack Syria again,” he said.

 

The Russian Il-20 military reconnaissance aircraft was downed by Syrian air defenses that mistook it for an Israeli aircraft, killing all 15 people on board.

 

Russia laid the blame on Israel, saying Israeli fighter jets were hiding behind the Russian plane, an account denied by the Israeli military.

 

On Monday, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu announced the S-300s will be delivered to Damascus within two weeks. Earlier in the war, Russia suspended a supply of S-300s, which Israel feared Syria could use against it.

 

U.S. national security adviser John Bolton said the delivery would be a “significant escalation” in already high tensions in the region and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said he would raise the matter this week with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov at the U.N. General Assembly.

 

Mekdad said the missiles are for defensive purposes, adding that “Syria will defend itself, as it always did” — a reference to missiles Syrian forces fired at Israeli warplanes carrying out airstrikes inside Syria over the past months.

 

Meanwhile, in northwestern Syria, preparations were underway to set up a demilitarized zone around the rebel-held province of Idlib, the last major area controlled by a mix of Turkey-backed opposition fighters and other insurgent groups, including al-Qaida-linked militants.

 

Two jihadi groups have so far rejected the plan to set up a demilitarized zone by Oct. 15. The al-Qaida-linked Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, Arabic for Levant Liberation Committee, the largest militant group in Idlib province, has not said yet whether it approves setting up the zone.

 

A Turkish security official said Wednesday that there were “indications” that some insurgents were leaving the demilitarized zone in and around Idlib but that it was unclear whether a “concrete” withdrawal of radical groups has started. The official spoke on condition of anonymity in line with government rules.

 

Russia and Turkey agreed last week to set up a demilitarized zone around Idlib to separate government forces from rebels, averting a government offensive on the last major opposition stronghold in Syria.

 

Also Wednesday, Russian Maj. Gen. Yevgeny Ilyin said more than 3,150 Syrians returned to their homes in the past week, including 494 refugees. The rest were internally displaced people.

 

Moscow has called for international assistance for Syrian refugee returns, rejecting Western arguments that the Mideast country remains unsafe.

 

Ilyin, who spoke during a conference call on coordination of efforts to encourage the return of refugees, said the total of more than 1.2 million internally displaced people and more than 244,000 refugees have regained their homes.

 

In seven years of civil war, some 5.5 million Syrians have fled their homeland and millions more were internally displaced.
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Senate Panel Opens Hearing on Crafting US Privacy Law

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The Trump administration is hoping Congress can come up with a new set of national rules governing how companies can use consumers’ data that finds a balance between “privacy and prosperity.”

But it will be tricky to reconcile the concerns of privacy advocates who want people to have more control over the usage of their personal data — where they’ve been, what they view, who their friends are —and the powerful companies that mine it for profit.

Senior executives from AT&T, Amazon, Apple, Google, Twitter and Charter Communications are scheduled to testify at the hearing, amid increasing anxiety over safeguarding consumers’ data online and recent scandals that have stoked outrage among users and politicians.

Sen. John Thune, a South Dakota Republican who heads the Senate Commerce Committee, opened Wednesday’s hearing by saying there’s a strong desire by both Republicans and Democrats for a new data privacy law.

But the approach being pondered by policymakers and pushed by the internet industry leans toward a relatively light government touch. That’s in contrast to stricter EU rules that took effect in May.

An early move in President Donald Trump’s tenure set the tone on data privacy. He signed a bill into law in April 2017 that allows internet providers to sell information about their customers’ browsing habits. The legislation scrapped Obama-era online privacy rules aimed at giving consumers more control over how broadband companies like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon share that information.

Allie Bohm, policy counsel at the consumer group Public Knowledge, says examples abound of companies not only using the data to market products but also to profile consumers and restrict who sees their offerings: African Americans not getting access to ads for housing, minorities and older people excluded from seeing job postings.

The companies “aren’t going to tell that story” to the Senate panel, she said. “These companies make their money off consumer data.”

What is needed, privacy advocates maintain, is legislation to govern the entire “life cycle” of consumers’ data: how it’s collected, used, kept, shared and sold.

Meanwhile, regulators elsewhere have started to act.

The 28-nation European Union put in strict new rules this spring that require companies to justify why they’re collecting and using personal data gleaned from phones, apps and visited websites. Companies also must give EU users the ability to access and delete data, and to object to data use under one of the claimed reasons.

A similar law in California will compel companies to tell customers upon request what personal data they’ve collected, why it was collected and what types of third parties have received it. Companies will be able to offer discounts to customers who allow their data to be sold and to charge those who opt out a reasonable amount, based on how much the company makes selling the information.

Andrew DeVore, Amazon’s vice president and associate general counsel, told the Senate panel Wednesday that it should consider the “possible unintended consequences” of California’s approach. For instance, he says the state law defines personal information too broadly such that it could include all data.

The California law doesn’t take effect until 2020 and applies only to California consumers, but it could have fallout effects on other states. And it’s strong enough to have rattled Big Tech, which is seeking a federal data-privacy law that would be more lenient toward the industry.

“A national privacy framework should be consistent throughout all states, pre-empting state consumer-privacy and data security laws,” the Internet Association said in a recent statement . The group represents about 40 big internet and tech companies, spanning Airbnb and Amazon to Zillow. “A strong national baseline creates clear rules for companies.”

The Trump White House said this summer that the administration is working on it, meeting with companies and other interested parties. Thune’s pronouncement and one from a White House official stress that a balance should be struck in any new legislation — between government supervision and technological advancement.

The goal is a policy “that is the appropriate balance between privacy and prosperity,” White House spokeswoman Lindsay Walters said. “We look forward to working with Congress on a legislative solution.”

 
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Convicted Danish Submarine Killer Loses Appeal Against Life Sentence

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Danish submarine inventor Peter Madsen, convicted of torturing and murdering Swedish journalist Kim Wall aboard one of his own vessels last year, lost his appeal Wednesday against his life sentence.

The Danish version of a life sentence typically is about 16 years long, but it may be continuously extended if the court rules that circumstances call for it. Madsen had sought a time-limited term. Now the 47-year-old could potentially spend the rest of his life in prison.

His defense had argued that Wall’s death was an accident, although Madsen himself admitted to throwing her body parts into the Baltic Sea.

The prosecution had argued that Madsen’s motive was sexual and that the murder was planned.

“I’m terribly sorry to Kim’s relatives for what happened,” Madsen told the court. Wall’s parents were not present.

A Copenhagen court ruled in April that Madsen had lured Kim onto his home-made submarine UC3 Nautilus with the promise of an interview, where she then died. The exact cause of her death has never been established.

 
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Trump Willing to Meet With Venezuela’s Maduro

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U.S. President Donald Trump says he is willing to meet with Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro, while hinting at other avenues for resolving the tension between the two countries.

“All options are on the table,” he said Wednesday before chairing a meeting of the U.N. Security Council.  “Every one, the strong ones, and the less than strong ones.  Every option – and you know what I mean by strong.”

Tuesday, the Trump administration placed sanctions on members of Maduro’s Cabinet, including his wife, Cilia Flores, while Trump suggested Maduro’s regime could easily be toppled by a military coup.

Maduro hit back on Venezuelan television, calling the sanctions a badge of honor for those around him.

“If you want to attack me, come at me directly.  But don’t touch Cilia and my family,” Maduro said.  “Her only crime is being my wife.”
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Trump: Venezuelan Socialist President Easily Toppled

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President Donald Trump suggested on Tuesday that Venezuela’s leader Nicolas Maduro could be easily toppled by a military coup and the U.S stepped up financial pressure by slapping the socialist president’s inner circle with fresh sanctions. 

Trump declined to respond to questions about whether a U.S.-led military intervention in the crisis-stricken country was possible, saying he doesn’t reveal military strategy.

“It’s a regime that, frankly, could be toppled very quickly by the military if the military decides to do that,” Trump said in comments on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly. “It’s a truly bad place in the world today.”

Earlier in the day, the Trump administration slapped financial sanctions on four members of Maduro’s inner circle, including his wife and the nation’s vice president, on allegations of corruption. 

As part of the actions, the U.S. barred Americans from doing business with and will seize any financial assets in the U.S. belonging to First Lady Cilia Flores, Vice President Delcy Rodriguez, Communications Minister Jorge Rodriguez and Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino. 

“We are continuing to designate loyalists who enable Maduro to solidify his hold on the military and the government while the Venezuelan people suffer,” Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin said in a statement.

Over the past two years the Trump administration has sanctioned dozens of individuals, including Maduro himself, on allegations of corruption, drug trafficking and human rights abuses. 

But until now it had spared key leaders like Delcy Rodriguez, as well as the U.S.-trained Padrino, believing they occupy seats of power and could play a key role in an eventual transition. 

David Smilde, a Tulane University professor who has spent more than two decades living and working in Venezuela, said Tuesday’s actions would seem to suggest the U.S. has given up trying to sow division within the government in the hopes it could force a democratic transition from within.

“This clearly breaks from that strategy, said Smilde. “If everyone is sanctioned then it could end up uniting the government.”

Maduro later appeared on state television, thanking Trump for sanctions that he called a badge of honor for those around him in a battle against what he calls an imperialist power. He also blasted the sanctions targeting his wife. 

“If you want to attack me, come at me directly. But don’t touch Cilia and my family,” Maduro said, calling her an anti-imperialist warrior. “Her only crime is being my wife.”

Flores is an influential figure in her own right, and has served in congress as well as a constitutional assembly that has expansive powers.

Beyond rallying Maduro’s opponents, it’s unclear what impact the sanctions will have. 

For over a year, top U.S. officials have struggled to build support for more-sweeping oil sanctions, facing resistance from energy companies still active in the country and fearing it could tip the OPEC nation over the edge at a time of hyperinflation and widespread food and medicine shortages.

The latest sanctions by the U.S. Treasury Department also seized a $20 million private jet belonging to an alleged front man for powerful socialist party boss Diosdado Cabello.

Trump publicly floated the idea of a military option in August 2017, but since then he has avoided making any direct references to a possible attack.

Maduro, however, has repeatedly accused the U.S. of backing attempts to overthrow him.

But Fernando Cutz, who until April led U.S. policy on Venezuela at the National Security Council under both Presidents Obama and Trump, said that only in unusual cases would the United States employ military action in Venezuela. 

An attack on the U.S. Embassy in Caracas harming American citizens would warrant a military response, he said, or a scenario where Venezuelan government forces slaughtered 1,000 or more of its own people. 

Cutz spoke publicly Monday at the Wilson Center think tank in Washington for the first time since leaving government. He said he did not back force as an option, but that it’s likely the only way the entrenched Maduro regime could be removed.

“For us to remove that from the table is irresponsible,” Cutz said. “We need to keep all the options on the table.”

Adding to the political pressure, a bi-partisan group of 11 senators on Monday introduced sweeping legislation that calls for expanding humanitarian relief to Venezuelans by $40 million and increasing pressure on Maduro’s government. 

“From the country’s plummeting economy to the deterioration of the rule of law, something has got to change,” said Senator David Perdue, a Georgia Republican and member of the Armed Services Committee. 

Vice President Mike Pence pledged an additional $48 million to help Venezuelans fleeing their country’s historic crisis, bringing the total U.S. aid since 2017 for Venezuelan refugees to $95 million. 

In a sign of simmering tensions, Pence also noted reports of Maduro sending troops to Venezuela’s border with Colombia, a U.S. ally, calling it an intimidation tactic.

“Let me be clear: the USA will always stand with our allies,” Pence tweeted. “The Maduro regime would do well not to test the resolve of (at)POTUS or the American people.”
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Morocco Fires on Migrant Boat, Wounding 4

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Morocco’s navy opened fire on a boat carrying migrants off its Mediterranean coast Tuesday, wounding four.

Moroccan officials say the boat’s Spanish captain ignored orders to stop.

The wounded migrants were taken to a hospital while authorities seized the boat and opened an investigation. It gave no other information.

Meanwhile, France, Germany, Malta, Portugal and Spain reached a deal Tuesday to take in a boatload of 58 migrants stranded at sea.

The Aquarius will dock in Malta, where the 58 migrants will disembark and head for their new homes.

A dog named Bella is also aboard the ship. Her final destination has not been revealed.

Italy’s new right-wing government refused to let the ship dock, saying it has taken in enough migrants over the past several years and other EU members need to help out.

France also denied permission for the boat to go to Marseille, saying under the law of the sea, the ship needs to head to the closest port.

Two well-known charities — Doctors Without Borders and SOS Mediterranee — operate the Aquarius.

The ship picked up more than 600 migrants from the Mediterranean in June. EU nations squabbled for nearly two months over who is responsible for accepting them before several nations gave them refuge.
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Talk of Kosovo Land Swaps Worry Serbian Faithful

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The stone steps leading into the medieval church where Serbian Orthodox worshipers enter are worn. In the half-light of the interior, some pilgrims reverentially lean on or drape themselves across the tomb of King Stefan Dečanski, considered by Serbs a “holy monarch.”

Others light candles. One young woman has dozens of tapers in her hand, lighting each one slowly and methodically after a brushing kiss and a silent prayer.

Many of the pilgrims have driven six hours from Belgrade to pray this Sunday in one of the most revered Serbian Orthodox churches, the 14th century Visoki Dečani. For many Serbs, Visoki Dečani is a besieged church, surrounded as it is by Kosovar Albanians and located deep in the territory of Kosovo, the former province that broke away from Serbia in 1999 after a U.S.-led NATO intervention brought a year-long ethnic war to a halt.

“We have had a very hard time since the last Kosovo conflict,” said Father Sava Janjic, Visoki Dečani’s abbot.

“Last” seems an appropriate word, hinting at the possibility of more conflict to come.

And taking the long, historical view, it is not hard to imagine that sometime in the future, monks at Visoki Dečani will again hear the fearsome echo of war raging around them.

The church has been plundered over the centuries by Ottoman troops, Austro-Hungarian soldiers, and during World War II, it was targeted for destruction by Albanian nationalists and Italian fascists. During the Kosovo War, the final one in a series of Balkan wars in the 1990s, the church was attacked five times. In May 1998, two elderly Albanians were killed 400 meters from its walls reportedly by the Kosovo Liberation Army for allegedly collaborating with Serbian forces.

“This is one of the most politically turbulent areas in Europe. The Balkans have always been on the crossroads of civilizations and invasions,” said Fr. Sava.

As he talked with VOA, soldiers from the NATO-led Kosovo Force of peacekeepers patrolled the grounds – as they have done every day since the war’s end.

“Since 1999, we have had three mortar attacks and one RPG (rocket-propelled grenade), bazooka attack. Thank God no particular damage was made and nobody was hurt,” said Fr. Sava. A strong advocate of multi-ethnic peace and tolerance, he likes to think of the church as “a haven for all people of goodwill.” During the war, the church sheltered not only Serbian families but also Kosovar Albanians and Roma.

He added, “I’m still trying to believe that the majority of Kosovar Albanians don’t harbor negative feelings toward us. But very often we are seen just as Serbs. This church is seen as something alien here, as a kind of threat to the new Kosovo identity.”

Now he worries about whether Serbia and Albania can put conflict behind them.

Serbs and Kosovar Albanians remain at odds over Kosovo, and the jigsaw puzzle of the Balkans map isn’t helping them.

The presidents of Serbia and Kosovo are considering border changes in a bid to reach a historic peace settlement which, if sealed, could advance their countries’ applications to join the European Union and, for Kosovo, which declared independence in 2008, secure U.N. membership. More than 100 countries recognize Kosovo as an independent state, but not Serbia. The EU has said it will not consider advancing accession talks until Belgrade and Pristina have made up.

Most EU leaders have long opposed any Balkan border changes, fearing any tweaks large or small might spark a return of ethnic violence.

U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton recently indicated that Washington could entertain the idea of border changes.

The U.S. ambassador to Greece, Geoffrey Pyatt, appeared more cautious about a land-swap deal, but kept the door open. In an interview with VOA, Pyatt said, “There are no blank checks.” “What we have been very clear on is that this process needs to be locally-owned and locally-driven and we are supporting European Union efforts to see progress.”

Under the land-swap deal, the Serbian border would be extended south to include Serbs in Kosovo’s north and some majority ethnic Albanian areas in Serbia would be traded in return by Belgrade. That would not help the majority of Serbs in Kosovo, who are spread across the south and west of the country.

Fr. Sava worries a land-swap deal, if pulled off, would amount to ‘peaceful’ ethnic cleansing. “Land swaps, where the majority of Kosovo Serbs would not just be left in majority-Albanian territory but also probably be forced to leave, would be very unjust,” he said.

Ultranationalists on both sides reject land swaps.

Serbia’s main opposition leader, Vojislav Šešelj, dismissed land transfers. “What are we talking about? Kosovo is just part of Serbia,” He told VOA. Kosovo is being illegally occupied, he said, due to assistance from the West, and especially the U.S.

“We are not exchanging the land,” Šešelj said. “They can only have the highest level of autonomy. We will not recognize their independence.”

Šešelj, a onetime deputy to Serbia’s wartime leader Slobodan Milošević, was found guilty by the U.N. court of crimes against humanity for instigating the deportation of Croats from the village of Hrtkovci in May 1992. He argues Serbs and Albanians cannot possibly live together and that they should be in separate communities. “Albanian ones in Kosovo could be allowed some self-administration rights,” he added.

Earlier in September, Kosovo Albanian nationalists led by veterans of the 1998-1999 war disrupted a planned two-day visit by Serbia’s president, Aleksandar Vučić, to Kosovo by blocking roads and burning tires. Their action showed how inflammatory the whole issue can easily become. Banje, the village west of the capital, Pristina, that Vučić planned to visit was the scene of the first crackdown by Serbian troops against ethnic Albanian separatists in 1998, which triggered the outbreak of open hostilities.

“All the wars in the former Yugoslavia were focused on territory and division, and to continue with the idea of territory is dangerous and will inflame nationalistic passions,” warned Nataša Kandić, a Serbian human rights campaigner and Nobel Peace prize nominee.

Fr. Sava harbors the same fear. “We still see people who are drawing up maps, and these maps in the 1990s became actually the killing fields. Do we still need it now?” he asked. “I am just trying to be hopeful that politicians see the risk of going into this story again.”
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Germany Rocked By Catholic Abuse Cover-up; Pope Warns Scandals ‘Driving People From Church’

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Pope Francis has acknowledged that the cover-up of clerical sexual abuse is driving people away from the Church. He made the comments during his visit to Estonia Tuesday, just hours before the official release of a devastating report into decades of abuse by Catholic priests in Germany. Henry Ridgwell reports on the latest revelations that have threatened to engulf the papacy.
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Shape-Changing Materials to Enter Everyday Life

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Many materials change shape when exposed to heat, electricity or some other kind of energy. That change is usually random, but scientists are now learning how to direct that energy to turn the material into a predetermined shape. VOA’s George Putic visited a lab at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh that experiments with morphing materials.
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In Estonia, Pope Says Scandals Driving People From Church 

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Pope Francis on Tuesday acknowledged that the cover-up of sexual abuse is driving people away from the Catholic Church — just hours before the release of a devastating report that detailed decades of sexual abuse by priests in Germany.

The report by the German Bishops’ Conference looks at abuse by Roman Catholic priests over seven decades until 2014. The stories of 3,677 victims are documented, and close to 1,700 clergy are identified who carried out the sexual abuse.

Many records were destroyed. The report said the true number of victims and perpetrators is likely to be much higher. 

“For too long, we in the Catholic Church have looked away, covered up, denied, did not want it to be true,” Cardinal Reinhard Marx, head of the German Bishops’ Conference, said at a news conference. “For all failure and for all pain, I must apologize.”

Speaking to several hundred young people in the Estonian capital of Tallinn, Pope Francis acknowledged that the historical revelations were driving people away from the church.

“They are upset by sexual and economic scandals that do not meet with clear condemnation,” he said during the final leg of his three-day trip to the Baltic states. “This is very bad when a church, a community, behaves in such a way that young people believe that it cannot give anything to their lives.”

Such is the scale of the problem now facing the church. In Chile, all of the country’s 34 bishops have offered their resignations over allegations of a cover-up. There have been similar revelations in the United States, Australia and the Netherlands.

Jack Valero of Britain-based Catholic Voices said it is a traumatic time for worshippers, but he welcomed the release of the report.

“We want it to end. We don’t want any abuse to happen ever again. We want victims recompensed. We want perpetrators and their enablers to be punished. We want all that to happen. So, these reports are good for us, that everything should come out so we can move on,” Valero told VOA.

Francis has summoned top bishops from around the world for a February summit at the Vatican on tackling abuse. Some campaigners are calling for an end to the principle that Catholic priests must remain celibate — an issue that Valero calls divisive.

“Celibacy is not a dogma, you know. It is a discipline of the Catholic Church for priests in the West. But I think it’s a great gift for the church. I think that it’s looking in the wrong place to try to change that,” he said.

But Catholics say the church must change if it is to regain trust, and they hope the pope’s acknowledgment of the challenge ahead is the first step on that long road.
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Brazil’s Jobs Crisis Lingers, Posing Challenge for Next President

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After losing his job with a foreign food company in March, Alexander Costa surveyed Brazil’s anemic labor market and decided to start selling cheap lunches by the beach in Rio de Janeiro to try and provide for his young family.

“I could have stayed home, looking for work, sending out resumes, with few jobs and things very hard,” Costa said. “But I didn’t stand still. I decided to create something different … to reinvent myself.”

Many other Brazilians have also had to reinvent themselves in recent years, as Latin America’s largest economy struggles to overcome a jobs crisis more than a year after officially exiting recession.

Nearly 13 million people – or more than the entire population of Greece – are out of a job, with the unemployment rate hovering between 12 percent to 14 percent since 2016. As a result, unemployment is among voters’ top concerns ahead of next month’s election.

The desperate search for work amid a string of political graft scandals and rising violence has soured the mood, polarizing debate and distracting from the country’s underlying fiscal challenges.

But only by lowering the unemployment rate will Brazil achieve the rise in household spending it needs to maintain sustained growth, said Marcos Casarin, the head of Latin America macro research at Oxford Economics.

“The only way to have a prolonged recovery in economic activity is if unemployment starts to fall in a substantial way,” he said.

However, it could take several years to get the rate below 10 percent, he said, adding: “I’m not very optimistic.”

Divisive Figures

With no presidential candidate likely to win a majority in the first-round vote on Oct. 7, it looks increasingly likely voters will face a choice between two candidates in the Oct. 28 run-off: far-right Jair Bolsonaro and leftist Fernando Haddad of the Workers Party.

Both are divisive figures — rejected by nearly half the electorate — making it likely that either one will face an uphill battle to pass ambitious economic reforms that foreign investors have long called for.

Bolsonaro has vowed to erase Brazil’s primary budget deficit by 2020 through controversial privatizations and spending cuts.

Haddad has proposed broadening the central bank’s mandate to include unemployment, while boosting government-led investments, revoking a spending ceiling and scuttling privatizations.

Both Bolsonaro and Haddad are pitching their proposals as ways to tackle the unemployment crisis, which has pushed many into the informal sector, sapping tax income and leaving workers without paid holidays, salary raises and other benefits.

Outgoing President Michel Temer last year passed an overhaul of the country’s labor laws, which was intended to make the job market more flexible and which the government said would help create new jobs, an effect that as yet has failed to materialize.

Bolsonaro supports Temer’s labor reform and wants to further cut work regulations to boost jobs. Haddad has suggested putting the labor reform, which was opposed by unions, to a referendum, while also advocating a short-term stimulus program.

Costa, however, was unwilling to wait and see what Brazil’s next president comes up with.

His meals-on-wheels business started slowly, selling 13-reais ($3) lunches from the back of his car in Rio’s wealthy Barra da Tijuca neighborhood. But business took off when he joined forces with his friend, Stefan Weiss, whose white BMW provides a ritzier shop window from which they now sell roughly 200 hot meals each day.

“At the moment, Brazil faces a big problem in relation to the economy and the lack of jobs,” said Weiss, who works on an offshore oil platform but sells meals on days off to earn extra cash. “The people who lost their jobs are trying to find new ways to establish themselves in the market.”
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Into the Fold? What’s Next for Instagram as Founders Leave

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When Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger sold Instagram to Facebook in 2012, the photo-sharing startup’s fiercely loyal fans worried about what would happen to their beloved app under the social media giant’s wings. 

None of their worst fears materialized. But now that its founders have announced they are leaving in a swirl of well wishes and vague explanations, some of the same worries are bubbling up again — and then some. Will Instagram disappear? Get cluttered with ads and status updates? Suck up personal data for advertising the way its parent does? Lose its cool? 

Worst of all: Will it just become another Facebook?

“It”s probably a bigger challenge (for Facebook) than most people realize,” said Omar Akhtar, an analyst at the technology research firm Altimeter. “Instagram is the only platform that is growing. And a lot of people didn’t necessarily make the connection between Instagram and Facebook.”

Instagram had just 31 million users when Facebook snapped it up for $1 billion; now it has a billion. It had no ads back then; it now features both display and video ads, although they’re still restrained compared to Facebook. But that could quickly change. Facebook’s growth has started to slow, and Wall Street has been pushing the company to find new ways to increase revenue.

Instagram has been a primary focus of those efforts.

Facebook has been elevating Instagram’s profile in its financial discussions. In July, it unveiled a new metric for analysts, touting that 2.5 billion people use at least one of its apps — Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp or Messenger — each month. While not particularly revealing, the measurement underscores the growing importance Facebook places on those secondary apps. 

Facebook doesn’t disclose how much money Instagram pulls in, though Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter estimates it’ll be around $6 billion this year, or just over 10 percent of Facebook’s expected overall revenue of about $55.7 billion. 

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has long seen Instagram’s promise. At the time, it was by far Facebook’s largest acquisition (although it was dwarfed by the $19 billion Zuckerberg paid for WhatsApp two years later). And it was the first startup allowed to operate mostly independently. 

That has paid off big time. Not only did Instagram reach 1 billion users faster than its parent company, it also succeeded in cloning a popular Snapchat feature, dealing a serious blow to that social network upstart and succeeding where Facebook’s own attempts had repeatedly failed. Instagram also pioneered a long-form video feature to challenge YouTube, another big Facebook rival.

Recently, Instagram has been on a roll. In June, Systrom traveled to New York to mark the opening of its new office there, complete with a gelato bar and plans to hire hundreds of engineers. Only a month earlier, Instagram had moved into sparkly new offices in San Francisco. In a July earnings call, Zuckerberg touted Instagram’s success as a function of its integration with Facebook, claiming that it used parent-company infrastructure to grow “more than twice as quickly as it would have on its own.”

But Instagram has also been a case study in how to run a subsidiary independently — especially when its parent is mired in user-privacy problems and concerns about election interference, fake news and misinformation. And especially when its parent has long stopped being cool, what with everyone and their grandma now on it.

Instagram’s simple design — just a collection of photos and videos of sunsets, faraway vacations, intimate breakfasts and baby close-ups — has allowed it to remain a favorite long after it became part of Facebook. If people go to Twitter to bicker over current events and to Facebook to see what old classmates are up to, Instagram is where they go to relax, scroll and feast their eyes.

So, will that change?

“I don’t think Zuckerberg is dumb,” Akhtar said. “He knows that a large part of Instagram’s popularity is that it’s separate from Facebook.”

As such, he thinks Facebook would be wise to reassure users that what they love about Instagram isn’t going to change — that they are not going to be forced to integrate with Facebook. “That’ll go a long way,” he said. 

Internally, the challenge is a bit more complicated. While Systrom and Krieger didn’t say why they’re leaving, their decision echoes the recent departure of WhatsApp’s co-founder and CEO Jan Koum, who resigned in April. Koum had signaled years earlier that he would take a stand if Facebook’s push to increase profits risked compromising core elements of the WhatsApp messaging service, such as its dedication to user privacy. When Facebook started pushing harder for more revenue and more integration with WhatsApp, Koum pulled the ripcord.

One sign that additional integration may be in Instagram’s future: Zuckerberg in May sent longtime Facebook executive Adam Mosseri to run Instagram’s product operation. Mosseri replaced longtime Instagrammer Kevin Weil, who was shuffled back to the Facebook mothership. 

That likely didn’t sit well with Instagram’s founders, Akhtar and other analysts said. Now that they’re gone as well, Mosseri is the most obvious candidate to head Instagram. 

“Kevin Systrom loyalists are probably going to leave,” Akhtar said. 

Which means Facebook may soon have a new challenge on its hands: Figuring out how to keep Instagram growing if it loses the coolness factor that has bolstered it for so long.
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Mexican Marines Raid Acapulco Police Force on Suspected Crime Links

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Heavily armed Mexican marines and soldiers stormed on Tuesday the police force of violent port city Acapulco on suspicions of ties to organized crime, arresting two officers accused of homicide and seizing weapons and equipment.

Acapulco in southern Guerrero state, once a glamorous beach resort for Hollywood’s rich and famous, has fallen on hard times as entrenched drug crime has transformed it into one of the most murderous cities in the world.

Guerrero is a hub for opium poppy production and the scene of frequent violent clashes between warring drug cartels.

The military personnel, along with federal and state police and the Guerrero state’s attorney general’s office, disarmed Acapulco municipal police officers and arrested two of them for their “probable responsibility” in homicide, they said in a joint statement.

Acapulco’s other police officers are under investigation, the group said, without specifying how many, adding that weapons, bulletproof vests, ammunition and radios were seized.

There were over 30,000 murders across Mexico last year, the highest in records going back to 1997, as rival drug gangs splintered into smaller, more bloodthirsty groups following more than a decade of a military-led campaign to battle the cartels.
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Guatemala’s President says UN Anti-graft Body is Threat to Peace

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Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales slammed a U.N. anti-corruption body on Tuesday, telling the United Nations General Assembly that the agency that has attempted to prosecute him was a “threat to peace” in the Central American nation.

Morales decided last month to not renew the mandate of the U.N.-backed International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG) and banned the body’s head from setting foot in the country, on the grounds they violated laws and sowed “judicial terror” with “selective justice.”

Morales was scheduled to meet with U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Tuesday night, Guatemala’s government said in a brief statement without providing further details.

The comedian turned politician dedicated more than half his speech at the United Nations to condemning the CICIG, accusing it of abuses of power, violations of human rights and politicizing justice in Guatemala.

He also attempted to blame deaths on the CICIG, saying that it had caused fatalities by pressuring judges to deny five unidentified suspects in custody proper medical treatment.

“In essence, the CICIG has become a threat to peace in Guatemala. The CICIG has created a system of terror, a system wherein those who think differently are persecuted,” he said.

The ideals of the CICIG had been lost in U.N. bureaucracy and the “cult of personality, which should never be greater than the institution it represents,” Morales said.

CICIG head Ivan Velasquez, a hard-charging Colombian prosecutor, helped bring down and imprison Morales’ predecessor as president. Working with Guatemala’s attorney general, CICIG in 2017 also sought to prosecute Morales over illegal campaign financing allegations.

Morales’ moves to dismantle CICIG have prompted what critics have labeled a “constitutional crisis” in Guatemala.

The nation’s constitutional court issued a provisional ruling on Sept. 16 allowing Velasquez to return. But the government has nonetheless refused to let him return to Guatemala, asking the United Nations instead to name a new leader for the mission.

Morales repeated that request in New York in his speech.

The United Nations said on Sept. 19 that it would send an assistant director to lead CICIG as Velasquez remains banned.
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A Swipe is Not Enough: Tinder Tests Extra Control for Women

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The Indian edition of dating app Tinder is testing a new feature which gives women an additional level of scrutiny before they allow men to start messaging conversations, with a view to rolling the function out globally.

The “My Move” feature allows women to choose in their settings that only they can start a conversation with a male match after both have approved each other with Tinder’s swiping function.

Normally, the app gives both parties to a successful match – where both have swiped yes on the other’s photograph – the right to text each other immediately.

Tinder has been testing the function for several months and plans to spread it worldwide if the Indian rollout proves successful. Rival dating-app Bumble already only allows the female party to a heterosexual match to start conversations.

Dating is still frowned upon in many circles in India’s religiously- and ethnically-divided society, where arranged marriages are still the norm.

Taru Kapoor, general manager for Tinder owner Match Group in India, told Reuters the function had been pioneered in India because of Tinder’s need to attract more women to the app by making them feel more comfortable and secure.

“We’re a platform based on mutual respect, consent, and choice,” she said. “We are focused on making the experience of women safer.”

Thousands of reports of sexual violence and rape in India each year have raised concerns around the safety of women in many parts of the country.

Yet an emerging class of young, well-to-do Indians in cosmopolitan cities like Bengaluru and Mumbai have made the country Tinder’s largest market in Asia. The company also says India is its “chattiest” market globally, with users using the in-app messaging feature more than any other country.

Tinder has generally had few ad campaigns and its few glossy productions in India have tended to focus on the female experience on the app – a reflection of the predominance of men on the Indian version.

The app, which has an average 3.8 million users globally had the highest number of monthly active users on Android phones in India last month in the Lifestyle category, according to market data and analytics firm, App Annie.

The app is also the third highest earner by revenue across all categories when Google Play & iOS revenues are combined.

“I know the kind of creeps out there on Tinder and other dating apps,” said one of a dozen male users Reuters talked to on Tuesday.

“One extra layer of security doesn’t do much harm to men apart from slimming their chances of striking up a conversation.”

Several female users interviewed by Reuters remained skeptical about the usefulness of the feature and said the change in settings would not do much to change their experience.

“Even after carefully picking someone, if they turn out to be nothing like you imagined, there is always an unmatch option,” said one 25-year-old Bengaluru resident who met her boyfriend through Tinder.
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Trade Minister: Updated Peru-China Trade Deal May Be Ready by 2020

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An update of Peru’s trade agreement with China could be completed as soon as 2020, and certainly by the time President Martin Vizcarra leaves office, Peruvian Trade Minister Roger Valencia said Tuesday.

Peru and its top trade partner China vowed to update their 2010 bilateral free trade deal shortly after Donald Trump won the U.S. presidential election in November 2016.

Trump’s complaints that other countries were taking advantage of the United States on trade, as well as his pledges to pursue an “America First” economic agenda, sparked fears of an upsurge in global protectionism.

Vizcarra’s term ends in July 2021, and the new China accord should be signed by then, Valencia told Reuters in New York as he accompanied Peru’s delegation to the U.N. General Assembly.

“For (20)20, (20)21, we should have an improved agreement, the necessary modifications,” he said.

Peru has said the existing deal with China was negotiated to exclude 11 sectors — including textiles, clothing and shoes.

That took into account Peruvian fears that its local industries could not compete with China if tariffs were lowered.

Peru has also been holding discussions over trade with Britain, whose government wants to boost its trading relations with the rest of the world after it leaves the European Union.

Known as Brexit, that is scheduled to take place in 2019.

Valencia said that Peru and Britain had agreed to ratify their current trading arrangements irrespective of what occurs in the Brexit process. Once Britain had left the EU, the two would work to expand the trade relationship, he added.
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Spotify, Deezer, Others Call for Stronger EU Action Against US Rivals

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Music streaming services Spotify and Deezer joined European business and industry bodies in calling on EU regulators to take tougher action to curb what they say are the unfair practices of online platforms.

EU governments are set in the coming weeks to come up with a joint position on a proposed platform-to-business (P2B) law which is meant to ensure greater transparency and fairness in the digital economy.

Driven by concerns over privacy and data protection, the European Union has in recent years introduced tougher rules to regulate online markets dominated by U.S. tech giants such as Google, Apple and Amazon.

But in a joint letter, businesses and industry bodies such as the European Publishers Council and the European Association of Craft, Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises, said the P2B proposal did not go far enough.

“Targeted measures to prevent unfair practices by platforms are needed if the legislation is to promote sustained digital growth,” they said in a joint letter dated Sept. 24 seen by Reuters.

Unveiled by the European Commission in April, the P2B law would force app stores, search engines, e-commerce sites and hotel booking websites such as Expedia to be more transparent about how they rank search results and why they delist some services.

It would also give companies the right to group together and sue online platforms.

The European business and industry groups did not name any platforms in their letter, which was addressed to EU ministers of competitiveness who are due to meet in Brussels on Sept. 27.

“Instead of being gateways that facilitate access, these platforms use their privileged position to become gatekeepers to the digital economy,” they said in the letter.

They also said unfair business practices include large platforms favoring their own services, unilateral and sudden changes in terms and conditions, arbitrary marketing bans, mandatory use of a particular billing system and arbitrary restrictions on data use.

Tech lobbying group CCIA, which represents Google, Amazon and eBay, have previously said there is no evidence of a systemic problem to justify more regulations.

Once EU governments have decided on a joint position, they will have to negotiate with the Commission and European Parliament on the final legislation.
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