Turkey Furious at France, US Over Armenian Remembrance

France on Wednesday observed it first “national day of commemoration of the Armenian genocide” provoking a furious reaction from Turkey. 

April 24, 1915, is considered the start of the World War I-era massacres of ten of thousands of Armenians by Ottoman Turks. 

France was the first major European country to recognize the massacres as genocide in 2001.  Turkey disputes the description, saying the toll has been inflated and considers those killed to be victims of a civil war.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says nations who accuse Turkey of genocide should look at their own “bloody past.”  Erdogan has previously accused France of of being responsible for the genocide in Rwanda in 1994. Rwanda’s government has also accused France of being complicit in the mass killings of minority Tutsi community by majority Hutus. 

The Turkish Foreign Ministry also strongly criticized a statement issued by the White House on the Armenian killings. 

“Today, we commemorate the Meds Yeghern and honor the memory of those who suffered in one of the worst mass atrocities of the 20th century.  Beginning in 1915, one-and-a-half million Armenians were deported, massacred, or marched to their deaths in the final years of the Ottoman Empire,” the White House statement said. 

Turkey objected to the Trump administration’s use of the Armenian term, Meds Yeghern, which means “the great calamity.” 

“We reject the statement by U.S. President Trump on the 1915 incidents on April 24, 2019,” the Turkish statement said. “Based on the subjective narrative fictionalized by the Armenians, this statement has no value at all. The distortion of history for political objectives is unacceptable.”

Microsoft Surges Toward Trillion-Dollar Value as Profits Rise

Microsoft said profits climbed in the past quarter on its cloud and business services as the U.S. technology giant saw its market value close in on the trillion-dollar mark.

Profits in the quarter to March 31 rose 19 percent to $8.8 billion on revenues of $30.8 billion, an increase of 14 percent from the same period a year earlier.

Microsoft shares gained some 3% in after-hours trade, pushing it closer to $1 trillion in value. 

It ended the session Wednesday with a market valuation of some $960 million, just behind Apple but ahead of Amazon.

In the fiscal third quarter, Microsoft showed its reliance on cloud computing and other business services which now drive its earnings, in contrast to its earlier days when it focused on consumer PC software.

“Leading organizations of every size in every industry trust the Microsoft cloud,” chief executive Satya Nadella said in a statement.

Commercial cloud revenue rose 41% from a year ago to $9.6 billion, which now makes up nearly a third of sales, Microsoft said.

Some $10.2 billion in revenue came from the “productivity and business services” unit which includes its Office software suite for both consumers and enterprises, and the LinkedIn professional social network.

The “more personal computing” unit which includes its Windows software, Surface devices and gaming operations generated $10.6 billion in the quarter.

Conservatives Reject Move to Topple PM Theresa May, for Now

British Prime Minister Theresa May’s job is safe, for now, after Conservative lawmakers decided against enabling a new challenge to her leadership.

Graham Brady, chairman of a powerful party rules committee, said Wednesday the body had decided not to change the rule that a party leader can only face one no-confidence vote in a year.

Pro-Brexit Conservatives are angry with May’s failure to take Britain out of the European Union, almost three years after voters backed leaving. They want her replaced with a more staunchly pro-Brexit leader.

But May survived a Conservative no-confidence vote in December, leaving her safe for 12 months.

May says she’ll step down once Parliament has approved a Brexit deal.

Brady said, however, that May must provide more clarity about her departure and provide “a clear roadmap forward.”

Mexican President Says New Airport Construction to Start Next Week

Construction at a military base that is slated to host the Mexican capital’s new commercial airport will begin next week, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said at the site of the project on Wednesday.

“We will being construction of Mexico City’s new airport next Monday,” said Lopez Obrador in a speech at the Santa Lucia military air base, north of the sprawling capital in the neighboring State of Mexico.

He did not further detail the construction plans, and it is not the first time the president has announced a start time. Lopez Obrador said in late December that construction would begin in January for the controversial airport project being overseen by the military.

The plan is a replacement for a part-built $13 billion Mexico City airport on the capital’s eastern flank which Lopez Obrador canceled on Oct. 29, a few weeks before taking office. Markets were shocked by that decision, which sparked a major sell-off in Mexican financial assets.

The now-scrapped airport on the dried-out bed of Lake Texcoco was the biggest public works project launched by Lopez Obrador’s predecessor as president, Enrique Pena Nieto.

The leftist Lopez Obrador dismissed the Texcoco plan as tainted by corruption, geologically unsound and too costly. Lopez Obrador’s idea is to convert the Santa Lucia base into a commercial airport and upgrade the capital’s current hub as well as another in the nearby city of Toluca.

The plan for Santa Lucia, which lies some 29 miles (47 km) north of the current Benito Juarez International Airport, is not popular with a number of prominent business leaders who were angry about he cancellation of the Texcoco airport.

Critics of the project argue that Santa Lucia’s distance from the capital will deter tourism and could complicate travel for connecting flights from Mexico City.

In addition, engineering experts have said the Santa Lucia airport may not be able to operate at the same time as the current hub because of conflicting flight paths.

 

Diplomats Walk Out as Venezuela Hits US in UN Speech

Several dozen diplomats walked out from the U.N. General Assembly Wednesday to protest a speech by Venezuela’s foreign minister, who denounced U.S. calls on the world body to recognize opposition leader Juan Guaido as interim president.

Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza took the General Assembly rostrum in the name of the Non-Aligned Movement as part of a special U.N. session devoted to the value of multilateralism. 

Walking out were between 30 and 40 diplomats from the Lima Group, the coalition of Latin American nations and Canada that have nearly all recognized Guaido and declared the leftist Nicolas Maduro to be illegitimate after widely criticized elections.

In his speech, Arreaza accused the United States of wanting to “impose a dictatorship” at the United Nations through its “blatant attempt to expel or withdraw recognition of the credentials of member-states with full rights such as Venezuela.”

“This is discriminatory and unacceptable,” he told the session, in which the United States was not participating.

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence traveled earlier this month to the United Nations where he denounced Maduro as a  “dictator,” part of a U.S. push for the world body to recognize Guaido instead.

Venezuela is facing the worst crisis in its modern history with inflation expecting to soar a mind-boggling 10 million percent this year, contributing to a shortage of basic goods that has caused more than 2.7 million people to flee since 2015, according to the United Nations. 

Iran, another nation under heavy U.S. pressure, also appealed at the U.N. session for more multilateralism.

Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif denounced the “unlawful, unilateralist policies” of President Donald Trump, ranging from withdrawing from a European-backed denuclearization deal with Iran to threatening the International Criminal Court for taking up accusations of war crimes against U.S. troops.

“To defend multilateralism, it is imperative to deny the U.S. any perceived benefit from its unlawful actions and to forcefully reject any pressure it brings to bear on others to violate international law and Security Council resolutions,” Zarif said.

NYT: Potential Russian Meddling in 2020 US Election Sensitive Issue for Trump

Special Counsel Robert Mueller concluded that Russia engaged in “sweeping and systematic” interference in the 2016 U.S. election  to help Donald Trump become president, but a new account says the issue is still too sensitive to discuss in front of Trump as it relates to what Moscow might do when he runs for re-election in 2020.

Former Homeland Security chief Kirstjen Nielsen tried to focus the attention of top U.S. officials on combating Russian influence in next year’s election in the months before Trump forced her to resign in early April after protracted conflict over immigration policies, The New York Times reported Wednesday.

But the newspaper quoted an unnamed senior Trump administration official as saying that acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney warned Nielsen against raising the issue in front of Trump, who has equated discussion of Russian meddling in the 2016 election with questions of whether his election victory was legitimate.

The Times quoted a senior administration official as saying Mulvaney told Nielsen that Russian meddling in the upcoming presidential election “wasn’t a great subject and should be kept below his level.”

Mulvaney disputed the account, saying, “I don’t recall anything along those lines happening in any meeting.”

He blamed Trump’s predecessor, former president Barack Obama, for not forcefully confronting Russia about its ongoing election interference, although Obama and others raised the issue with Moscow in the lead-up to the 2016 election.

“Unlike the Obama administration, who knew about Russian actions in 2014 and did nothing, the Trump administration will not tolerate foreign interference in our elections, and we’ve already taken many steps to prevent it in the future,” Mulvaney said.

“In fact, for the first time in history, state, local and federal governments have coordinated in all 50 states to share intelligence. We’ve broadened our efforts to combat meddling by engaging the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, and the FBI, among others, and we have even conducted security breach training drills to ensure preparedness,” Mulvaney said.

Mueller concluded that Russian meddling in the 2016 election was widespread, including fake postings on U.S. social media accounts aimed at helping Trump defeat his Democratic challenger, Hillary Clinton, and hacking and disclosing emails written by Democratic officials that reflected poorly on Clinton.

But the prosecutor also concluded that while there were numerous contacts between Trump campaign aides and Russians, neither Trump nor his campaign conspired with Russia. In Trump’s frequent refrain, there was “no collusion.”

Jared Kushner, a White House adviser and Trump’s son-in-law, said Tuesday that Mueller’s 22-month investigation was “more harmful” to the U.S. than Russia’s 2016 election interference.

“You look at what Russia did, buying some Facebook ads and trying to sow dissent. It’s a terrible thing,” Kushner said. “But I think the investigations and all of the speculation that’s happened for the last two years has a much harsher impact on our democracy than a couple Facebook ads.”

“I think they said they spent $160,000,” Kushner said. “I spent $160,000 on Facebook every three hours during the campaign. If you look at the magnitude of what they did, the ensuing investigations have been way more harmful.”

 

Notre Dame Fire Highlights Plight of France’s Underfunded Patrimony

France’s government met Wednesday to draft a framework for donations to rebuild Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. While more than $1 billion has been raised in response to last week’s massive blaze, many other historic monuments across France crumble for lack of funds to preserve them. 

The 12th-century Senanque Abbey — also called Notre Dame — in southern France is gradually decaying. Massive cracks in the abbey’s structure have forced the Cistercian monks living there to close part of it to visitors, and there are not sufficient funds available to fully restore it.

“We do not feel forgotten, but maybe a bit underestimated,” the abbey’s prior, Father Jean Marie, told French TV.

While Paris’ Notre Dame is grabbing the headlines, many other French monuments are also suffering. The Cistercian monastery has managed to raise several hundred thousand dollars for needed repairs, but it is still short about half-a-million.

Experts estimate about 2,000 historical monuments are at risk across France, including many cathedrals and village churches.

Public financing to preserve the country’s cultural heritage has shrunk steadily over the years.Today, France’s patrimony budget amounts to a tiny fraction of state spending. Local governments and the private sector are in charge of many historic monuments, but their budgets are limited.

President Emmanuel Macron’s patrimony adviser, Stephane Berne, told French radio that revitalizing rural communities starts with restoring local historic monuments that can deliver returns on the investment with jobs and tourism.

Berne is in charge of a new lottery program to raise money for preservation, but that totals just more than $20 million annually for all of France’s cultural heritage sites, compared to the billion-plus dollars raised for Notre Dame Cathedral.

“In each village, there is a Notre Dame that sometimes burns by the flame of indifference,” one group wrote in an editorial this week. 

However, private fundraising efforts are growing. A couple of years ago, for example, a crowdfunding campaign raised nearly $2 million to save a 13th-century chateau in western France. Like Notre Dame, it had been partially destroyed by fire.

And some people have suggested reallocating a portion of the Notre Dame donations — which may exceed what is needed to restore the cathedral — to save other cultural treasures.

EU Envoy: Trump Cuba Policy Worries European Companies

The Trump administration’s crackdown on business with Cuba’s communist government is causing unprecedented concern among European companies on the island, according to the European Union’s ambassador.

“There’s enormous worry,” Ambassador Alberto Navarro told The Associated Press.

“There are businesspeople who’ve been here 20, 30 years, who’ve made bets on investing their financial resources in Cuba to stimulate commerce, tourism, international exchange, and many of them tell me that they haven’t lived through a similar situation,” Navarro said in an interview at the EU embassy Tuesday afternoon.

The Trump administration announced last week that it would allow Americans to sue foreign companies whose partnerships with the Cuban government make use of commercial and industrial properties confiscated from Americans in Cuba’s 1959 revolution. The measure also allows suits by the large number of Cubans who fled the island and later became Americans.

The first lawsuits can be filed starting May 2.

Navarro said the European Union will vigorously defend European companies doing business in Cuba in court and before the World Trade Organization.

“I think I have said with great clarity, any country can adopt whatever legislation it wants, and apply the law within its own country, we can criticize whether we like it or not. What that country cannot do is impose its legislation on others,” Navarro said.  “We are the front line of defense in Cuba, and obviously have legitimate interests in Cuba and we want to defend them and protect our citizens and our investors.”

The EU is Cuba’s largest trading partner, with some 2.6 billion euros in annual trade with the island, all but 400 million euros a year in exports from the EU to Cuba.

The Trump administration has imposed a series of recent measures meant to damage the Cuban economy, saying they are meant to prevent Cuba from aiding President Nicolas Maduro’s socialist administration in Venezuela.         

 

Disaffected Venezuelan Military Tell of Rising Desertions to Brazil

Venezuelan military personnel are deserting to Colombia and Brazil in growing numbers, refusing to follow orders to repress protests against the government of President Nicolas Maduro, six of them told Reuters.

A lieutenant and five sergeants of the National Guard, the main force used by the Maduro government to suppress widespread demonstrations, said the bulk were going to Colombia, the most accessible border, but others like themselves had left for Brazil.

Colombian immigration authorities said some 1,400 Venezuelan military had deserted for Colombia this year, while the Brazilian Army said over 60 members of Venezuela’s armed forces had emigrated to Brazil since Maduro closed the border on Feb. 23 to block an opposition effort to get humanitarian aid into the country.

“Most military people that are leaving are from the National Guard. They will continue coming. More want to leave,” said a National Guard lieutenant, speaking earlier this month. She had just crossed into Brazil on foot, arriving in the frontier town of Pacaraima after walking hours along indigenous trails through savannah.

Officials in both countries said the pace of desertion has sped up in recent months as political and economic turmoil in Venezuela has worsened.

The deserters, who asked to withhold their names due to fear of reprisals against their families, complained that top commanders in Venezuela lived well on large salaries and commissions from smuggling and other black market schemes while the lower ranks confronted conflicts in Venezuela’s streets for little pay.

“They already have their families living abroad. They live well, eat well, have good salaries and profits from corruption,” said the lieutenant.

The Venezuelan government’s Information Ministry, which handles all media inquiries, did not reply to requests for comment.

In February, Maduro’s ambassador to the United Nations, Samuel Moncada, told a Security Council meeting the number of military desertions had been exaggerated. Foreign ministry spokesman William Castillo said at the time that just 109 of the 280,000-strong armed forces had deserted under Maduro.

‘Bad orders’

A Venezuelan sergeant, who proudly donned his National Guard uniform for an interview in a hotel room in Pacaraima, said he could not provide for his two small sons on his $12-a-month salary.

“We risked our lives so much for the little we were paid,” he said. “I left because of this and the bad orders the commanding officers were giving us.”

The head of Venezuela’s opposition-led congress, Juan Guaido, backed by most Western nations, is trying to oust Maduro on the basis that the socialist president’s 2018 re-election was illegitimate.

But top armed forces commanders have remained loyal to Maduro because they earn well in dollars and have too much to lose by abandoning him, according to the National Guard deserters.

Maduro has placed military chiefs in high-level jobs running state companies so they do not turn against him, the sergeant said.

“Maduro knows that if he removes them from those posts, the military will turn their backs on him and could oust him in a coup,” he said.

Maduro has called Guaido a U.S. puppet trying to foment a coup, and blames the country’s economic problems on U.S. sanctions.

Inmates in uniform

Rebellion in the middle ranks of the National Guard has been contained by intimidation and threats of reprisals against officers’ families, the deserters told Reuters. They said phones of military personnel suspected of anti-Maduro sympathies were tapped to watch their behavior.

With desertions on the rise and dwindling support for Maduro, the government has used armed groups of civilians known as “colectivos” to terrorize Maduro opponents, the interviewees said. Rights groups in Venezuela have warned of rising violence meted out by the militant groups.

The government has also released jail inmates and put them in National Guard uniforms, to the disgust of soldiers with years of military career behind them, the six deserters said. It is unclear if the former inmates or militants are paid by the government.

A lack of food, water and medicines, along with extended blackouts, have added to a sense of anarchy, the deserters said.

The uniformed sergeant said he feared bloodshed at the hands of the “colectivos” trying to keep Maduro in power if the armed forces balked at government orders to repress protests.

“There won’t be enough soldiers left with hearts of stone to fire on the people,” he said. “We military know that among the crowds on the streets there are relatives of ours protesting for freedom and a better future for Venezuela.”

Technology Ethics Campaigners Offer Plan to Fight ‘Human Downgrading’

Technology firms should do more to connect people in positive ways and steer away from trends that have tended to exploit human weaknesses, ethicists told a meeting of Silicon Valley leaders on Tuesday.

Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin are the co-founders of the nonprofit Center for Humane Technology and the ones who prompted Apple and Google to nudge phone users toward reducing their screen time.

Now they want companies and regulators to focus on reversing what they called “human downgrading,” which they see as at the root of a dozen worsening problems, by reconsidering the design and financial incentives of their systems.

Before a hand-picked crowd of about 300 technologists, philanthropists and others concerned with issues such as internet addiction, political polarization, and the spread of misinformation on the web, Harris said Silicon Valley was too focused on making computers surpass human strengths, rather than worrying about how they already exploit human weaknesses.

If that is not reversed, he said, “that could be the end of human agency,” or free will.

Problems include the spread of hate speech and conspiracy theories, propelled by financial incentives to keep users engaged alongside the use of powerful artificial intelligence on platforms like Alphabet Inc’s YouTube, Harris said.

YouTube and other companies have said they are cracking down on extremist speech and have removed advertising revenue-sharing from some categories of content.

Active Facebook communities can be a force for good but they also aid the dissemination of false information, the campaigners said. For example, a vocal fringe that oppose vaccines, believing contrary to scientific evidence that they cause autism, has led to an uptick in diseases that were nearly eradicated.

Facebook said in March it would reduce the distribution of content from groups promoting vaccine hoaxes.

In an interview after his speech, Harris said that what he has called a race to the bottom of the brainstem – manipulation of human instincts and emotions – could be reversed.

For example, he said that Apple and Google could reward app developers who help users, or Facebook could suggest that someone showing signs of depression call a friend who had previously been supportive.

Tech personalities attending included Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, early Facebook funder turned critic Roger McNamee and MoveOn founders Joan Blades and Wes Boyd. Tech money is also backing the Center, including charitable funds started by founders of Hewlett Packard, EBay, and Craigslist.

The big companies, Harris said, “can change the incentives.”

Multisensory VR Allows Users to Step Into a Movie and Interact with Objects

Imagine stepping into a movie or virtual world and being able to interact with what’s there. That’s now possible through the magic of Hollywood combined with virtual reality technology.  For $20, the company Dreamscape takes visitors through a multi-sensory journey. Currently in Los Angeles, creators say they plan on opening more virtual reality venues across the U.S. and eventually to other countries.

  Once visitors step through these doors, they leave behind reality and embark on a journey to another world.

“We see Dreamscape as a travel agency that will take you on adventures that transcend time, space and dimension,” Bruce Vaughn, Dreamscape Immersive chief executive officer, said.   

Vaughn used to work on Disney theme park attractions and special effects.  

Imagine a trip to a zoo filled with alien creatures from outer space or going on a treasure hunt or an underwater adventure. That’s the world visitor Zach Green stepped into when he entered a Dreamscape room. 

“I kind of forgot I was in Earth for a second and I was actually under the ocean,” Green expressed.

Dreamscape makes it possible by combining Hollywood storytelling with the expertise of building theme parks. These ingredients are brought to life through virtual reality says motion picture screenwriter and producer Walter Parkes who is also co-founder and chairman of the board of Dreamscape.   

“Our technology allows us at Dreamscape to actually track your full body, all of your movements and render you in an avatar. We use the word registration where we’re actually registering you as a human presence inside a virtual world is very unique,” Parkes said.

Visitor Robin McMillan is wowed by the experience.

“I think it’s probably the future of entertainment in terms of a completely immersive experience. You kind of forget you’re in a room,” McMillan said.

Before stepping into the virtual world, travelers would first have to put on four sensors, one on each hand and one on each foot, have a backpack on and virtual reality goggles. Now they’re ready to step inside. 

“We blur that line between the physical and the virtual by letting you actually reach out and pet an alien creature or have a torch that actually lights your way and it’s physically there,” Vaughn said.

That’s not all. Each person’s backpack computer and the sensors in the room trigger special effects such as wind, mist and ground vibrations.  Six people at a time can take part in the 10 minute experience interact. The company is already planning new worlds for travelers to visit.

New Zealand, France Plan Bid to Tackle Extremism on Social Media

In the wake of the Christchurch attack, New Zealand said on Wednesday that it would work with France in an effort to stop social media from being used to promote terrorism and violent extremism.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said in a statement that she will co-chair a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris on May 15 that will seek to have world leaders and CEOs of tech companies agree to a pledge, called the Christchurch Call, to eliminate terrorist and violent extremist content online.

A lone gunman killed 50 people at two mosques in Christchurch on March 15, while livestreaming the massacre on Facebook.

Brenton Tarrant, 28, a suspected white supremacist, has been charged with 50 counts of murder for the mass shooting.

“It’s critical that technology platforms like Facebook are not perverted as a tool for terrorism, and instead become part of a global solution to countering extremism,” Ardern said in the statement.

“This meeting presents an opportunity for an act of unity between governments and the tech companies,” she added.

The meeting will be held alongside the Tech for Humanity meeting of G7 digital ministers, of which France is the chair, and France’s separate Tech for Good summit, both on 15 May, the statement said.

Ardern said at a press conference later on Wednesday that she has spoken with executives from a number of tech firms including Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, Google and few other companies.

“The response I’ve received has been positive. No tech company, just like no government, would like to see violent extremism and terrorism online,” Ardern said at the media briefing, adding that she had also spoken with Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg directly on the topic.

A Facebook spokesman said the company looks forward to collaborating with government, industry and safety experts on a clear framework of rules.

“We’re evaluating how we can best support this effort and who among top Facebook executives will attend,” the spokesman said in a statement sent by email.

Facebook, the world’s largest social network with 2.7 billion users, has faced criticism since the Christchurch attack that it failed to tackle extremism.

One of the main groups representing Muslims in France has said it was suing Facebook and YouTube, a unit of Alphabet’s Google, accusing them of inciting violence by allowing the streaming of the Christchurch massacre on their platforms.

Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg said last month that the company was looking to place restrictions on who can go live on its platform based on certain criteria.

Despite US Pressure and Sanctions, No End in Sight to Venezuela Crisis

Three months after the U.S. intensified efforts to oust Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, the autocratic socialist leader remains in power. As VOA’s Brian Padden reports, the Trump administration may have overestimated the power of tough sanctions to coerce the Venezuelan military to abandon Maduro, and underestimated regional opposition to any military measure to force regime change.

Google’s Wing Aviation Gets FAA OK for Drone Deliveries

Google affiliate Wing Aviation has received federal approval allowing it to make commercial deliveries by drone. 

It’s the first time a company has gotten a federal air carrier certification for drone deliveries. 

The approval from the Federal Aviation Administration means that Wing can operate commercial drone flights in part of Virginia, which it plans to begin later this year.

The FAA said Tuesday that the company met the agency’s safety requirements by participating in a pilot program in Virginia with the Mid-Atlantic Aviation Partnership and Virginia Tech, and by conducting thousands of flights in Australia over the past several years.

“This is an important step forward for the safe testing and integration of drones into our economy,” Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao said in a statement. 

Wing said the approval “means that we can begin a commercial service delivering goods from local businesses to homes in the United States.”

The company didn’t name any businesses that would take part in commercial deliveries. It said it plans to spend the next several months demonstrating its technology and answering questions from people and businesses in Blacksburg and Christiansburg, Virginia. 

Wing said it will “solicit feedback with the goal of launching a delivery trial later this year.”

Wing said that to win FAA certification it had to show that one of its drone deliveries would pose less risk to pedestrians than the same trip made in a car. The company said its drones have flown more than 70,000 test flights and made more than 3,000 deliveries to customers in Australia.

The company is touting many benefits from deliveries by electric drones. It says medicine and food can be delivered faster, that drones will be especially helpful to consumers who need help getting around, and that they can reduce traffic and emissions. 

Drone usage in the U.S. has grown rapidly in some industries such as utilities, pipelines and agriculture. But drones have faced more obstacles in delivering retail packages and food because of federal regulations that bar most flights over crowds of people and beyond sight of the operator without a waiver from the FAA.

The federal government recently estimated that about 110,000 commercial drones were operating in the U.S., and that number is expected to zoom to about 450,000 in 2022. 

Amazon is working on drone delivery, a topic keen to CEO Jeff Bezos. Delivery companies including UPS and DHL have also conducted tests.

Leading Conservative Candidate Warns Populists to Back a United Europe

The leading conservative candidate in next month’s European Parliament elections says he would like to see Britain stay in the European Union and warned populist parties in Europe that they would have no place in the EU’s largest political bloc unless they shared its vision of an “integrated and more ambitious Europe.”

 

Manfred Weber, the center-right European People’s Party candidate and front-runner to replace Jean-Claude Juncker as president of the European Commission, visited Greece on Tuesday to launch his campaign for the May 23-26 elections across the bloc.

 

His priorities include having tough controls on migration, creating an EU crime-fighting agency modeled on the FBI and ending EU accession talks with Turkey. He spoke in an interview with The Associated Press.

 

WHAT ABOUT BREXIT?

 

Weber said he respected the result of Britain’s 2016 referendum to leave the EU. But he added “I personally would really enjoy and really would welcome if Great Britain would decide to stay.”

 

The EU has given Britain until Oct. 31 to ratify an agreement or leave the 28-nation EU without a deal — granting an extension after U.K. lawmakers repeatedly rejected British Prime Minister Theresa May’s divorce deal with the EU.

 

Several prominent European politicians have said they hoped Britain would eventually stay in the union, including European Council President Donald Tusk and Weber’s main opponent in the May election, Social Democrat candidate Frans Timmermans.

 

Weber stressed, however, the final decision on Brexit remained with British people.

 

“What we ask at the moment is simply to speed up (and) give us a clear indication what their plan for the future is, because we respect the outcome — we regret it — but we respect the outcome,” Weber said.

 

HOW SHOULD EUROPE HANDLE THE POPULIST THREAT?

 

Weber said the European People’s Party, which groups many conservative national parties under its umbrella at the European Parliament, remains willing to part ways with member parties that do not share its vision for deepening European integration.

 

“The EPP is … a party of values of common ideas,” he said. “That means for all of us who don’t believe anymore in the idea of a more integrated and more ambitious Europe for the future — they are not any more our parties.”

 

In March, the EPP suspended Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s Fidesz party over the nationalist government’s rejection of EU policies, but the party’s European lawmakers were allowed to remain in the conservative parliamentary group.

 

Weber spoke after a visit to an ancient temple at Nemea in southern Greece.

 

Speaking later at his campaign launch in Athens, Weber argued that European conservatives were the true founders of the EU and would fight those who undermined it.

 

“In the year 2019, we will fight against those who want to destroy our Europe. The nationalists will be our enemies,” he said.

MIGRATION STILL A PRIORITY IN EUROPE

 

Weber on Wednesday is traveling to Spain’s autonomous cities of Ceuta and Melilla on the tip of North Africa, to underscore the party’s commitment to maintaining tough controls on immigration.

 

Although the number of migrants and asylum-seekers trying to get into Europe has dropped sharply since the large influx in 2015, Weber said the issue remains a priority for the bloc.

 

He wants to speed up the increased deployment of EU border guards, creating standing force of 10,000 border guards by 2022, or five years earlier than planned.

 

“My experience, when I speak with people all over Europe, is that the migration debate — especially illegal migration — is still the dominant political issue,” he said.

WEBER HELPS OTHER EUROPEAN CONSERVATIVES

 

The 46-year-old Weber, a relatively unknown politician outside his native Germany, focused the early stages of his campaign on countries where conservative allies are also facing national elections.

 

He began with Greece to voice support for Kyriakos Mitsotakis, the 51-year-old leader of the center-right New Democracy party, who is leading polls in an election year. In Spain, he will join the struggling 38-year-old conservative leader Pablo Casado in a country that is holding a general election on Sunday.

 

With Spain’s conservatives splintering into three factions, Casado is trailing in opinion polls behind the Socialist incumbent, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez. Weber’s office said he is also planning campaign stops in Lithuania and Malta over the next week.

Venezuelans Seek Joy Amid the Chaos

A night at a bar is interrupted by a power outage, going to a baseball game is prohibitively expensive, and a trip to a nearby beach requires months of savings. But many Venezuelans have not given up on finding ways to smile.

Despite an economic crisis that has led to shortages of food and medicine and has prompted more than three million to emigrate, Venezuelans are seeking ways to have fun and spend time with family in the hope of easing their discomfort.

Still, the increased frequency of blackouts and a political showdown between the socialist government and the opposition has cast a cloud of uncertainty, leaving many Venezuelans bereft of simple pleasures.

Venezuela fell to the 108th place in the 2019 World Happiness Report prepared by the United Nations, down from 102nd place in 2018. In the Western hemisphere, only Haiti was below the oil-rich nation, ranking 147th out of 156 countries studied by the U.N.

The happiness report — which in its first edition in 2012 placed Venezuela in the 19th position — is based on indicators such as gross domestic product per capita, generosity, life expectancy, social freedom and absence of corruption.

Venezuela was plunged into darkness with two massive blackouts in March, generating water shortages and prompting the government to suspend work and school. Earlier this month, the government launched a power rationing plan, and electricity remains intermittent in many parts of the country. 

In search of distraction, Venezuelans from the country’s capital of Caracas have long taken to the nearby seaside state of Vargas to spend weekends with family and friends on the shores of the Caribbean.

“You put your mind in another place,” said Leonel Martinez, a 26-year-old soldier, while relaxing on the sand with his girlfriend while her nephews played nearby. “It’s a way to think about something besides what is happening in the country.”

But in a country where the monthly minimum wage amounts to just $6 per month, the $15-$20 a day trip to the beach can require months of savings and advance planning.

Martinez, who said he used to take the 40-kilometer (25-mile) trip to the beach frequently, said it was the first time he had gone in a year.

“It’s not something you can do every day, because of the situation in the country,” said Martinez.

‘In this world, there is no crisis’

For Venezuelans, queuing for food is a daily ordeal. They also are used to trying multiple pharmacies and hospitals in search of the medicines they need, and more recently have grown accustomed to collecting water from streams.

But that has not stopped Joaquin Nino, a cash-strapped 35-year-old father of two, from taking his kids to an amusement park in southern Caracas.

“We have to work miracles just to have some fun,” Nino said.

At a parade in eastern Caracas celebrating Holy Week, revelers dressed in straw hats topped with flowers sang, banged drums and blew trumpets to tropical beats. With the sun beating down, one marcher who gave his name as Carlos remembers how in past years onlookers would douse those marching with water to cool them down.

“Now, because of the problems with the water, that probably will not happen,” he said.

In central Caracas, a group of men of all ages meet every Sunday to play softball while a handful of their relatives watch. The wire fence that once surrounded the field was long ago stolen. The lights, which once allowed the group to play at night, were also pilfered.

“I always come because my husband plays,” said Delia Jimenez, a 62-year-old industrial designer who jumps up from the stands whenever her husband comes up to bat. “We have fun and we shake off our stress.”

A few blocks away, groups of young people come together to break-dance, which they say is a way to disconnect. But some admitted that they had not been eating enough recently to be able to spend as much time dancing as they used to.

“When we’re out here dancing, we don’t think about the state of the country,” said Yeafersonth Manrique, a 24-year-old drenched in sweat after a long practice. “In this world, there is no crisis.”

Brazilian Court Reduces Sentence of Ex-President da Silva

Brazil’s second-highest court reduced the sentence of incarcerated former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Tuesday, opening the possibility he could be moved to house arrest later this year.

 

The Superior Court of Justice vote was in response to a request by da Silva’s lawyers that it annul the ex-president’s corruption conviction or reduce his sentence. The session’s four judges voted unanimously to uphold the conviction but lower the sentence from 12 years and one month to eight years and 10 months.

 

The shorter sentence opens a pathway for da Silva to get out of a cell later this year.

Under Brazilian law, after serving at least one-sixth of their sentence, prisoners can request to serve the remainder under house arrest or under a “semi-open regime” in which inmates leave for work but sleep in prison. Da Silva was jailed in April 2018 and will have served a sixth of the reduced sentence in September.

 

Da Silva, who was president in 2003-2010, was convicted of corruption and money laundering over a beachfront apartment that prosecutors say he received from a construction company in exchange for lucrative government contracts.

 

Da Silva and his Worker’s Party maintain he is innocent and say he was persecuted by political enemies to prevent him from running for president again. Others believe justice was served for a corrupt politician.

 

The former president is the most prominent figure jailed in an anti-corruption investigation called “Operation Car Wash” that has snared dozens of prominent politicians and business figures in Brazil.

Venezuelan Opposition Envoy Addresses OAS

A Venezuelan opposition envoy addressed the Organization of American States from his country’s seat Tuesday, the first time it has happened in the two decades since a socialist administration rose to power in the South American nation.

 

Gustavo Tarre delivered a speech during a session held by the Permanent Council of the OAS exactly three months after Juan Guaido, leader of Venezuela’s opposition-controlled congress, declared himself the country’s interim president in an escalating confrontation with President Niclolas Maduro.

 

Ambassadors from at least four Caribbean countries — Barbados, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and Trinidad and Tobago — left the room before Tarre spoke, showing their opposition to his recognition by the OAS as Venezuela’s representative.

 

The U.S. and most of the regional group’s 34 member states recognize Guaido as Venezuela’s interim leader. They say Maduro wasn’t legitimately re-elected last year because leading opposition candidates weren’t permitted to run.

 

Francisco Paparoni was the last Venezuelan representative to the OAS not aligned with Chavismo, the socialist movement associated with the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Paparoni stepped down in April 1999, two months after Chavez became president and began two decades of socialist rule.

 

Maduro succeeded Chavez in 2017 started a two-year process to abandon the Washington-based OAS, but Guaido earlier this year asked it to ignore Maduro’s request and designated Tarre as his own envoy.

 

Tarre plans to keep attending OAS sessions and representing Venezuela, even though Maduro’s government announced plans to hold a rally next Saturday to celebrate its departure from the organization.

 

Samuel Moncada, Venezuelan ambassador to the United Nations and the only diplomat loyal to Maduro currently on U.S. territory, used to attend OAS sessions representing his country. But the State Department recently restricted his movements to a 25-mile (40-kilometer) radius around New York.

 

Tarre, who was recognized earlier this month with the support of 18 countries, said in his speech that he will work to organize free and fair elections in his country and that it once again recognize the authority of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

 

Tarre is considered part of the traditional political class that ruled Venezuela until Chavez was elected president. He served as a congressman in 1979-1999 for the Christian Democratic party.

 

The OAS and the Inter-American Development Bank are the only two multilateral organizations that recognize Guaido as interim president of Venezuela.

Tencent Invests in Argentine Mobile Banking Startup

Chinese tech giant Tencent Holdings has invested in Argentine mobile banking service Uala, which also counts George Soros and Point72 Ventures LLC among its investors, the start-up’s founder said.

Uala founder Pierpaolo Barbieri said the company planned to collaborate with the Chinese social media-to-gaming giant to further develop its app. He declined to disclose the amount of Tencent’s investment.

Tencent, one of Asia’s most valuable listed companies, announced last year it would boost investments in a number of “key areas” including digital payment, where its service jostles with rival Alipay, backed by Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.

Tencent’s own messenger-to-payment app WeChat now has more than 1 billion users in China and has launched in-app services that compete with Apple and Google apps.

“We are proud of their interest in Uala and look forward to collaborating on new products and services. This investment will allow us to grow even faster with our product roadmap,” Barbieri said in an email to Reuters.

Argentine startups face regulatory hurdles in South America’s second largest economy, but the country has spawned some of the region’s most successful tech startups, including U.S.-listed online marketplace MercadoLibre and Internet travel agent Despegar.com.

The country, which has a large unbanked population, is also seeing a boom in digital finance from start-ups like Uala to a new wave of online banks competing with more traditional lenders.

Austrian Far-right Politician Resigns over ‘Rat’ Poem

The vice mayor of the Austrian town where Adolf Hitler was born resigned from his post and the far-right Freedom Party on Tuesday after provoking strong criticism with a poem in which he compared migrants with rats.

Christian Schilcher left the Freedom Party (FPO) to avoid damaging the junior partner in a national coalition with Chancellor Sebastian Kurz’s conservatives, FPO chief Heinz Christian Strache told a news conference in Vienna. 

Schilcher’s poem in a party newspaper was written under his pseudonym “the city rat” and told from the perspective of a rodent.

“Just as we live down here, so must other rats, who as guests or migrants… share with us the way of life! Or (they must) hurry away quickly,” it says.

One verse adds that if two cultures were mixed it was as if they were destroyed.

“Such misconduct is incompatible with the principles of the Freedom Party,” said Strache, who is vice-chancellor in Austria’s coalition government.

Freedom Party members have repeatedly stumbled over Nazi scandals and made headlines in local media for alleged links with the far-right Identitarian movement.

Schilcher’s resignation was “the only logical consequence” after publishing that “horrible and racist poem”, Kurz told news agency APA.

Japan’s PM Vows to Help France in Rebuilding Notre Dame

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is pledging to help France rebuild the fire-ravaged Notre Dame Cathedral.

Abe stopped in France Tuesday as part of his tour of Europe and North America.

Speaking alongside French president Emmanuel Macron, Abe said through a translator he “was deeply saddened by the damage inflicted to the World Heritage” building.

He said the Japanese government “will spare no effort to bring its cooperation” in the reconstruction.

Macron and Abe will discuss the agenda for the upcoming Group of Seven and Group of 20 leaders’ summits that France and Japan will respectively host this year.

In their statement at the Elysee palace, they said they will also talk about boosting economic growth through free trade, and address issues including North Korea and plastic waste in ocean.

Turkey’s Sole Communist Mayor Promises Small Steps to Socialism

Capitalism is too firmly entrenched in Turkey to be uprooted overnight, according to the country’s sole communist mayor, but small steps to create local jobs and promote cooperative farming can help nudge it along “the path to socialism.”

Fatih Macoglu, from the Communist Party of Turkey (TKP), took over as mayor of the central district of Tunceli this month after victory in March 31 local elections, which saw President Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling Islamist-rooted AK Party lose control of the capital Ankara and Turkey’s business hub, Istanbul.

In a country where politics have often been dominated by right-wing nationalist or Islamist parties and where the TKP won just 0.16% of the vote in the March polls, Macoglu’s victory has been a cause for celebration among Turkish leftists.

But then the eastern town of Tunceli, home to minorities such as the Kurds, Zazas and Alevis, has long been known for its leftist, secularist views and for bucking national trends.

The Turkish government removed Tunceli’s last elected mayor for suspected links to the outlawed militant Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and appointed a trustee who built walls around the town hall for security reasons.

The first thing Macoglu did after his election was to remove the walls, but he also knows he has to adapt his ideals to the tough economic and security conditions of provincial Turkey.

“When we went to people before elections, they had two problems. First, they did not want walls, bureaucracy between the people and the municipality. Second was the issue of unemployment,” he told Reuters at an interview in his office.

“As part of this world where capitalism, imperialism, fascism rule, this country is unable to work without them,” he said, striking a pragmatic tone that has earned him respect beyond far-leftist circles and also beyond Tunceli. 

“Of course, we are not establishing communism. We want to clear the path to socialism that has been polluted by capitalism.”

‘Fairness and equality’

Macoglu came to prominence five years ago when he was elected to run Tunceli’s Ovacik district. He paid off most of the municipality’s sizeable debt, provided free public transportation and opened up government land for agriculture.

Macoglu’s work in Ovacik has changed ordinary Turks’ views of communism, said Serife Ozdemir, 64, a retired teacher from nearby Malatya, one of many admirers from around Turkey to visit Tunceli to offer their congratulations to its new mayor.

“In the past, if two people fought, instead of swearing, one would yell, ‘communist, communist,’ and the other would feel offended,” she said.

Tunceli has always been a “socialist society”, said Serkan Sariates, 44, a bookstore owner who wears a beret with a red star, “because people here believe in fairness and equality.”

Pledging greater transparency, Macoglu has put up posters outside the town hall detailing municipal expenditure and income.

He aims to curb high unemployment — which he puts as high as 35% — by promoting tourism, cooperative farms and the construction of eco-friendly homes for rent. He also wants to slash the municipality’s heavy debt load within two years, repeating his success in Ovacik.

But not everyone in Tunceli is convinced he can succeed.

“The conditions are not suitable here,” said Firaz Tekol, a 24-year-old sociology student. “He’s going to have a hard time tackling all these problems.”