Author: Ohart

The Justice Department can’t replace nine lawyers so late in the dispute over whether to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census without explaining why it’s doing so, a judge says.

U.S. District Judge Jesse M. Furman, who earlier this year ruled against adding the citizenship question, put the brakes on the government’s plan on Tuesday, a day after he was given a three-paragraph notification by the Justice Department along with a prediction that the replacement of lawyers wouldn’t “cause any disruption in this matter.”
 
“Defendants provide no reasons, let alone `satisfactory reasons,’ for the substitution of counsel,” Furman wrote, noting that the most immediate deadline for government lawyers to submit written arguments in the case is only three days away.
 
The judge said local rules for federal courts in New York City require that any attorney requesting to leave a case provide satisfactory reasons for withdrawing. The judge must then decide what impact a lawyer’s withdrawal will have on the timing of court proceedings.
 
He called the Justice Department’s request “patently deficient,” except for two lawyers who have left the department or the civil division which is handling the case.
 
President Donald Trump tweeted about the judge’s decision Tuesday night, questioning whether the attorney change denial was unprecedented.
 
“So now the Obama appointed judge on the Census case (Are you a Citizen of the United States?) won’t let the Justice Department use the lawyers that it wants to use. Could this be a first?” Trump tweeted.
 
The new team came about after a top Justice Department civil attorney who was leading the litigation effort told Attorney General William Barr that multiple people on the team preferred not to continue, Barr told The Associated Press on Monday.
 
The attorney who was leading the team, James Burnham, “indicated it was a logical breaking point since a new decision would be made and the issue going forward would hopefully be separate from the historical debates,” Barr said.
 
Furman’s refusal came in a case that has proceeded on an unusual legal path since numerous states and municipalities across the country challenged the government’s announcement early last year that it intended to add the citizenship question to the census for the first time since 1950.
 
Opponents of the question say it will depress participation by immigrants, lowering the population count in states that tend to vote Democratic and decreasing government funds to those areas because funding levels are based on population counts.
 
At one point, the Justice Department succeeded in getting the Supreme Court to block plans to depose Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. Nearly two weeks ago, the Supreme Court temporarily blocked the plans to add the census question, saying the administration’s justification for adding the question “seems to have been contrived.”
 
Afterward, the Commerce Department’s Census Bureau began printing census questionnaires without the question and the Department of Justice signaled it would not attempt to continue the legal fight.
 
It reversed itself after Trump promised to keep trying to add the question.
 
The Justice Department then notified judges in three similar legal challenges that it planned to find a new legal path to adding the question to the census.
 
Furman said the urgency to resolve legal claims and the need for efficient judicial proceedings was an important consideration in rejecting a replacement of lawyers.
 
He said the Justice Department had insisted that the speedy resolution of lawsuits against adding the question was “a matter of great private and public importance.”
 
“If anything, that urgency — and the need for efficient judicial proceedings — has only grown since that time,” Furman said.
 
Furman said the government could re-submit its request to replace attorneys only with a sworn statement by each lawyer explaining satisfactory reasons to withdraw so late. He said he’ll require new attorneys to promise personnel changes will not slow the case.
       

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A U.S. federal appeals court has ruled President Donald Trump cannot silence critics on his Twitter account, maintaining that blocking them violates the Constitution’s right to free speech.

The 2nd U.S. Court of Appeals in Manhattan ruled in a 3-0 decision Tuesday the First Amendment prohibits Trump from blocking critics from his account, a public platform.

On behalf of the three-judge panel, Circuit Judge Barrington Parker wrote “The First Amendment does not permit a public official who utilizes a social media account for all manner of official purposes to exclude persons from an otherwise-open online dialogue because they expressed views with which the official disagrees.”

Trump has used his Twitter account, which has more than 60-million followers, to promote his agenda and to attack critics.

The court ruled on a lawsuit filed by Columbia University’s Knight First Amendment Institute on behalf of seven people who were blocked by Trump after criticizing his policies.

Institute director Jameel Jaffer said the ruling “will ensure that people aren’t excluded from these forums simply because of their viewpoints” and added “It will help ensure the integrity and vitality of digital spaces that are increasingly important to our democracy.”

Justice Department spokesman Kelly Laco said the agency is “disappointed with the ruling and is “exploring possible next steps.” He reiterated the administrations’ argument that “Trump’s decision to block users from his personal Twitter account does not violate the First Amendment.”

The decision upheld a May 2018 ruling by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. The U.S. Justice Department said the ruling was “fundamentally misconceived,” arguing Trump used the account in a personal capacity to express his views, and not as a forum for public discussion.

Twitter did not immediately comment on the ruling.

Among those who were blocked from Trump’s account were author Stephen King and model Chrissy Teigen.

 

…

The political action committee for a group founded by former Georgia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams has reported raising $3.9 million in the past six months.

Abrams founded Fair Fight to support voting rights after narrowly losing to Republican Gov. Brian Kemp in November. She accused Kemp of using his previous position as Georgia’s chief election officer to suppress votes in their race, which Kemp has vehemently denied.

The report filed Monday with the state ethics commission shows Fair Fight PAC has raised $4.1 million since its inception and made $3 million in expenditures, leaving $1.1 million in cash on hand. Expenditures include more than $1.2 million given to the group’s nonprofit arm and $100,000 given to abortion rights groups after Georgia’s passage of a restrictive abortion ban.

They also include political contributions to various candidates, payments to consultants, staff salaries and travel expenses.

Many of the contributions came from small donors around the country. The group says that it has had more than 15,000 individual contributions from all 50 states.

The largest contribution was over $1 million from Silicon Valley-based physician and philanthropist Karla Jurvetson. The group banked another $250,000 from the Service Employees International Union, a labor union with 2 million members in service occupations including within the health care industry. 
 
“Fair Fight PAC is grateful for the overwhelming support we have received from across Georgia and around the country,” Fair Fight CEO Lauren Groh-Wargo said in a statement. “Fair Fight is advocating for voting rights, supporting progressive organizing and advocacy, and keeping the heat on those who suppress the vote.”

She said the group would soon share details for nationwide voter protection programs to mitigate “attempts to suppress the vote of people of color in this critical election cycle.”

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Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are teaming up on a plan that would designate climate change as an emergency, and at least one of Sanders’ fellow Democratic presidential candidates is planning to sign on.

The measure to be introduced in the House on Tuesday is designed to highlight Democrats’ focus on global warming and push back against President Donald Trump, who’s declared a national emergency at the U.S.-Mexico border.
 
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who is competing with Sanders for the support of liberal voters in the presidential primary, plans to sign onto the resolution when it’s introduced in the Senate, according to a spokeswoman.

Sanders tells reporters that “strong American leadership” is needed to compel effective worldwide action on climate change.

 

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Brazil’s far-right President Jair Bolsonaro is among the least popular since the country’s return to democracy three decades ago, but his rating in a poll released on Monday showed his numbers stabilizing.

The Datafolha polling institute found that 33% of respondents said Bolsonaro was doing a “great or good” job. That is technically tied with the 32% in an April Datafolha poll.

Those who think Bolsonaro is doing a “bad or awful” job rose to 33% from 30% in the April poll.

The latest polls show Bolsonaro technically tied with former President Fernando Henrique Cardoso as the leader with the least support at this point in his first term. Thirty-four percent of those asked by Datafolha in June 1995 thought Cardoso was doing “good or great.”

The poll of 2,086 people across Brazil on July 4-5 has a margin of error of 2 percentage points.

Bolsonaro easily won last year’s election over leftist rival Fernando Haddad, who stepped in to take the top place on the Workers Party ticket after a graft conviction prevented imprisoned former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from running. Datafolha polls last year showed Lula far more popular than Bolsonaro – even after he had been imprisoned.

Lula’s conviction has come under scrutiny since the publication of leaked messages last month by news website The Intercept Brasil showed former federal judge and current Justice Minister Sergio Moro stepping over ethical, and possibly legal, lines by coaching the prosecution in Lula’s trial.

Moro, who presided over the case and found Lula guilty, has alternatively argued that the leaked messages show no improper behavior to questioning their authenticity, is facing withering criticism.

On Monday, Moro’s press office said he would take the week of July 15-19 off for “personal” reasons, and later added he was spending time with his family. Moro’s wife and children do not live with him in the capital. July is winter recess for schools in Brazil.

In August the Supreme Court is expected to weigh an appeal from Lula’s legal team, demanding his release from jail.

Lula has been convicted in a second graft trial and faces at least eight more.

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Aficionados of Western classical music have carved out a niche for themselves in Iran, where cultural expression remains tightly controlled by strict rules imposed after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

And perhaps surprisingly, musicians in their 20s and 30s perform for overwhelmingly young audiences.

Last week, the Tehran Symphony Orchestra, including female musicians in burgundy headscarves on cello, horn and harp, played works by 19th-century Russian composers for an enraptured crowd in the capital’s main concert venue, Vahdat Hall.

A major draw is Shahrdad Rohani, 65, the orchestra’s charismatic music director. The Iranian-American composer, musician and conductor who has led orchestras in the United States and Europe, said he is proud of his homegrown crop of young musicians.

Classical music may not have mass appeal, but Rohani said in a backstage interview that there’s potential for growth, citing a large turnout during a stadium concert last year in Abadan, a provincial city in southwestern Iran.

“Classical music is growing, and as you see, the audience, they are really supporting the arts and classical music,” he told The Associated Press during the intermission of the July 3 sold-out concert.

In four decades of conservative Islamic rule, the space for artistic expression in Iran has expanded or contracted, depending on whether political hard-liners or moderates prevail.

In the first decade after the Islamic Revolution, including the eight-year war with Iraq, pop music disappeared from the public sphere, said Nima Mina of the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London.

The Tehran Symphony Orchestra, founded in 1933, continued its work after 1979, he said. Live performances were initially rare, but have increased in number since the 1990s.

Even during periods of eased controls, red lines are enforced.

This includes a ban on female singers performing for mixed audiences, considered “haram,” or religiously forbidden. In February, female guitarist Negin Parsa sang a solo during a concert by pop singer Hamid Askari. The authorities cut her microphone, and Askari’s permission to perform was briefly suspended.

A music cafe in downtown Tehran complies with the ban on female singers during live shows, but not when playing records. On a recent afternoon, a blues recording featuring a soulful female vocalist played in the background, as customers sipped coffee and smoked cigarettes.

“Authorities rarely challenge the playing of recorded music in the cafe, and mainly argue about the hijab issue,” said waitress Nillofar Dailami, 29, referring to the headscarf all Iranian women are required to wear. Dailami also professed a love for classical music as a result of her study of guitar.

These days, the influence of hard-liners appears on the upswing again as moderates find themselves on the defensive because of the seeming collapse of the 2015 nuclear deal they negotiated with world powers.

The U.S. walked away from the deal a year ago, instead embarking on a “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran, including unprecedented economic sanctions.

The sanctions have hurt ordinary Iranians, sending prices for staples and consumer goods soaring and weakening the local currency, while raising the specter of war with the U.S.

For Tehran music lovers, events like Wednesday’s concert on the main national stage next to the Russian Embassy offers a momentary escape from reality.

“It is little moments that build up your life in the end,” said Shafa Sabeti, a 36-year-old architect whose business has suffered as the result of the economic downturn linked to the U.S. sanctions. “Public spaces have gotten more crowded recently. People are just living the moment — maybe it’s some coping mechanism.”

Yet tensions and fear of escalation are a “major big black cloud hovering over the country,” he said.

Wednesday’s concert featured works by Russian composers Alexander Borodin, Sergey Rachmaninov and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.

The audience was entranced.

There was no fidgeting or coughing. A young couple in the balcony held hands. A woman nearby recorded the concert on her iPhone. Rohani, the conductor, was greeted by loud applause and addressed the crowd several times, including announcing details about an upcoming concert.

“I love the work of Rohani,” said concert-goer Ali Reza, 26, who was introduced to classical music by learning to play the piano. He said most of his friends prefer other styles of music, including rock and pop.

Some said there’s a generational divide, with older people tending to prefer traditional Iranian music.

“There is a lot of interest in Western culture among the young urban middle class population,” said Mina, portraying it as pushback against the lifestyle and artistic expression promoted by the authorities.

He said that since the 1940s, Tehran’s music conservatory has provided a steady supply of musicians, including those who later join the Tehran Symphony Orchestra.

One of the graduates of the conservatory, violinist Ed Nekoo, spent 10 years in the Los Angeles area but returned home to care for his mother.

He said he misses the exchange with peers abroad and complained of the lack of foreign music teachers.

“We have to learn the music by ourselves,” said Nekoo, 44.

Still, he’s optimistic.

“Our audience is so young,” he said. “That’s what I like about classical music.”

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Uber is already known for its global ride-hailing service, food delivery arm, and electric bike rentals. Now it has inspired a comedy action movie.

“Stuber,” which begins its international roll-out on Wednesday, revolves around a mild-mannered Uber driver who picks up a Los Angeles detective who turns out to be on the trail of a brutal killer.

Wild ride for driver

Desperate to increase his Uber ratings, driver Stu is drawn into a wild ride involving shootouts, chases, strip clubs and crime bosses.

Director Michael Dowse said Uber Technologies neither sponsored the film and was not involved in any way with making the movie.

“There’s no sponsorship. We never reached out to them for permission or anything like that,” Dowse told Reuters Television.

“We vetted it all legally and stuff and the opinion was that because everyone uses it so much, it’s fair game. As long as you’re not derogatory about it and as long as you use it as it’s used in real life and you’re not making stuff up about how it’s used, you’re free to go. And it’s a better title than ‘Stiffed’,” he said.

Former wrestler plays cop

Former wrestler Dave Bautista plays police officer Vic, who needs a driver to get around Los Angeles after undergoing eye surgery.

Kumail Nanjiani plays Stu, who also works a day job and drives for Uber to supplement his income — hence earning him the nickname Stuber.

…

The first Democratic presidential debate for the 2020 elections brought a decades-old civil rights issue back into the public spotlight: whether to bus children to racially integrate schools.

One of the most defining moments of the debate came when U.S. Senator Kamala Harris challenged former Vice President Joe Biden’s record for not supporting the type of busing that she experienced as a black schoolgirl in California.

The exchange garnered headlines and brought the topic of busing, which had been a national issue in the 1970s but had largely fallen out of the public conversation, back into the spotlight.

What is busing?

Busing was a tool that many U.S. communities used to overcome racial segregation in public schools.

Following the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, legal racial segregation in schools was outlawed across the United States. However, because of demographic trends and housing policies, many U.S. neighborhoods remained segregated, and as a result schools were effectively segregated because students attended schools in neighborhoods where they lived. 

In the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s, courts ruled that local jurisdictions were not doing enough to promote desegregation in schools and began mandating busing to address the problem. Federal agencies oversaw and enforced busing efforts, including collecting data about the race of students and withholding money from noncompliant schools.

Who was bused?

Both black students took buses to majority-white schools and white students to majority-black schools in court-ordered busing.

However, Brett Gadsden, the author of a book about desegregation efforts in Delaware, “Between North and South: Delaware, Desegregation, and the Myth of American Sectionalism,” said, “African American students disproportionally shouldered the burden” of efforts to desegregate schools.

Gadsden, an associate professor of history at Northwestern University, said black students were forced to travel longer distances and for many more years than white students.

Why was it controversial?

Busing proved to be intensely controversial nationwide. Supporters argued busing was necessary to integrate schools and to give black and white students equal access to resources and opportunities.

Critics argued that busing was dangerous and costly, and many parents did not want their children to have to travel great distances to get to school. 

While much of the opposition to busing came from whites, the black community was also divided about its merits. 

Gadsden said black critics cited the burden their children had to shoulder in terms of distance traveled and time spent on buses. They also complained that historically black schools were closed, and black administrators and teachers lost their jobs as a result of busing policies, while similar demands were not made of white schools, Gadsden said. 

In Boston, anti-busing protests turned violent in 1974, with demonstrators throwing bricks and bottles at school buses.

Political analyst Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia said in a Twitter post following the Democratic debate that busing was so unpopular in the 1970s that Democrats running for office often had a choice to “be a profile in courage and lose, or oppose busing in whole or in part & win to fight another day on stronger ground.”

Biden’s stance

During the 1970s when Biden was a freshman U.S. senator representing Delaware, he worked with conservative senators to oppose federally mandated busing. 

In a 1975 interview with a Delaware newspaper that was first resurfaced by The Washington Post, Biden said, “I do not buy the concept, popular in the ’60s, which said, ‘We have suppressed the black man for 300 years and the white man is now far ahead in the race for everything our society offers. In order to even the score, we must now give the black man a head start, or even hold the white man back, to even the race.’”

During the Democratic debate, Biden defended his position against mandated busing in the 1970s, arguing that he did not oppose voluntary busing by communities, only federal mandates. “I did not oppose busing in America; what I opposed is busing ordered by the Department of Education,” he said.

Harris responded by saying the federal government needed to be able to step in and mandate busing in some areas because “there was a failure of states to integrate public schools in America.”

Schools today

While some communities still champion voluntary busing measures, most busing efforts ended by the turn of the century. Local and national court rulings in the 1990s said many communities had succeeded in improving the integration of their schools and allowed busing programs to end. 

The Civil Rights Project at UCLA said in a May report  to mark the 65th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, that segregation in schools is again on the rise and has been growing “unchecked” for nearly three decades, “placing the promise of Brown at grave risk.”

The report said white students, on average, attend a school in which 69% of the students are white, Latino students attend schools in which 55% of the students are Latino, and black students attend schools with a combined black and Latino enrollment averaging 67%. 

Gadsden agreed there is “a lot of segregation in schools now” but said there is little political will to go back to the era of busing. “Federal courts now are not particularly sympathetic to challenges to school segregation,” he said, also noting there is no great appetite in the U.S. Congress to introduce measures to advance school desegregation.  

After the debate, Harris told reporters that “busing is a tool among many that should be considered.” however, when pressed on whether she supported federally mandated busing today, she said she would not unless society became as opposed to integration as it was in the 1970s.

Some critics say Harris’ position on busing today is not that much different from Biden’s.

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When people are recovering from an illness or injury, they often don’t think of nutrition, but it may be key to getting their health back.

When Monika McComb returned home from the hospital, she didn’t think about nutrition as being essential for a full recovery.   

“I was really, really weak. I could hardly even walk with a cane,” McComb said. 

McComb didn’t associate her weakness with malnutrition until she was evaluated; but, researchers from Advocate Health Care and Abbott were conducting a study to evaluate the role nutrition plays in reducing hospital admissions. 

Suela Sulo, a researcher from Abbott, says malnutrition is rarely taken into account in dealing with patients who are in recovery.

“Malnutrition is invisible to the eye, and therefore it remains under diagnosed and underrated,” Sulo said. 

McComb enrolled in a home health care program and was given a detailed nutrition plan. 

Most Americans have access to food, but one in three patients in home health care is malnourished or has some nutritional deficiency that puts his or her health — and recovery  — at risk. Katie Riley is the chief nursing officer with Advocate Aurora Health.

“Nutrition is not the primary reason why patients usually come to home health; however, it is important for us to pay attention to the nutrition to promote their strength and get them recovered quicker,” Riley said.

Abbot funded a study in partnership with Advocate Health Care to find a way to reduce hospitalizations, cut medical costs and promote patients’ health. 

Suela Sulo said the researchers found that when patients on home health care received education about nutrition along with nutritional drinks, they were nearly 20 percent less likely to be hospitalized or re-hospitalized in the 90 days after an injury or illness. 

“Through identifying the patients with malnutrition risk, feeding them with the right nutritional drinks, you are increasing their chances of recovering faster, not going back to the hospital, or not going to the hospital in the first place.”

One of the study’s goals was to create a program that patients could follow on their own, one reason they were educated about nutrition. Gretchen VanDerBosch says anyone can become malnourished and not realize it. She says educating patients about nutrition is so important.   

“Because they’re educated, they actually continue their supplements and start it back up, and their outcome is so much improved, they have more strength, they heal quicker, have fewer falls, they have less readmissions,” VanDerBosch said. 

The researchers say they hope other health care programs and hospitals can use the study to help other patients as well. 

As for Monika McComb, she says she feels stronger and has more energy than she had at the start of the program. She credits support from the home health nurse and the focus on nutrition for her improved health.

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Iraq’s security and paramilitary forces began Sunday a military operation along the border with Syria aimed at clearing the area of Islamic State group militants, the military said in a statement.

Although Iraq declared victory against IS in July 2017, the extremists have turned into an insurgency and have carried out deadly attacks in the country.

The military said the operation that began at sunrise was being carried out by Iraqi troops and members of the Popular Mobilization Forces that largely consist of Iran-backed militias.

It said the operation will last several days and was the first phase of the Will of Victory Operation securing the western province of Anbar and the central and northern regions of Salahuddin and Nineveh.

“We press on the hands of our heroic forces that will achieve victory with the will of its heroes against the gangs of Daesh,” said Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi using an Arabic acronym to refer to IS. “May God protect you and make you victorious.”

IS once held large parts of Syria and Iraq where it declared a caliphate in 2014. The extremists lost in March the last territory they controlled in Syria.

 

…

She vowed to stay out of politics and even dropped the French far right’s signature name – Le Pen – from her moniker. But Marion Marechal, a former star lawmaker who’s still only in her 20s, is now tip-toeing back into the political arena, and is already causing trouble.

Widely seen as a potential party leader, the 29-year-old’s discreet meetings in recent days to build bridges with enemy conservatives, crippled by their crushing defeat in European Parliament elections, are further unsettling the mainstream right.

The forays into forbidden territory by the woman once voted the most popular in the far-right National Rally party (formerly the National Front) led by her aunt, Marine Le Pen, have also raised questions about Marechal’s political intentions – and whether a new war within the Le Pen clan is afoot.

Marechal is the darling of her controversial grandfather, Jean-Marie Le Pen, a National Front co-founder expelled by daughter Marine for repeating anti-Semitic remarks that got him convicted. Marechal is more conservative than her aunt. Addressing a major forum for American conservatives last year, she decried the European Union and said France is becoming “the little niece of Islam.”

To Jean-Marie’s disappointment, Marion dropped out of politics two years ago, refusing to seek a new mandate as a National Rally lawmaker to found a private school in Lyon seen as a training ground for far-right leaders.

She denies speculation she is making an end-run around Aunt Marine for a comeback. Nevertheless, the noise created after at least two below-the-radar meetings became known underscores Marechal’s potentially pivotal role in the power politics of the French right.

A dinner in late June between Marechal and more than a dozen officials and lawmakers of The Republicans, or LR, caused a firestorm within the main conservative party. The conservative mainstream has long been extremely wary of liaisons with France’s far right, but the meeting suggested that some conservatives may believe the only way to survive is by joining forces with the likes of Marechal.

Senate leader Gerard Larcher, of the LR, said those who met at a Paris restaurant with Marechal have placed themselves “outside” the party.

“I have always said there was a firewall between us and the National Rally,” party, he said on LCI TV. “Whether you like it or not, this (dinner) was a breach.” Those who attended risk exclusion from the party, Larcher said, making clear that for him they already had “placed themselves outside the values of our political formation.”

Meanwhile, France’s powerful business lobby Medef invited Marechal to speak about the rise of populism at its annual summer gathering – but then canceled the whole panel after the idea left many aghast.

The National Rally came to the forefront of French politics with its win in the European Parliament elections in May. The party bettered President Emmanuel Macron’s centrists and hopes to maintain momentum ahead of municipal elections next year.

In a TV interview in early June, she said she wanted to build a “grand alliance of the right” – though she insisted her intentions were devoid of personal ambition.

She had some stinging words for the National Rally, saying it is “indispensable to political life, but unfortunately it isn’t sufficient.” Defending the nation, and countering Macron’s progressives, needs “other voices from other movements, currents” to create alliances.

Marechal has been regarded as a potential presidential candidate in the 2022 election, or later, raising occasional tensions with her aunt, who was roundly defeated in 2017 by Macron after making it to the runoff. Former White House strategist Steve Bannon praised her as a “rising star” – on a stage he shared with Marine Le Pen at an important National Rally congress.

If Marine Le Pen is wary that her niece is setting the stage for a return to politics, neither she nor her camp is saying so.

Le Pen was politely dismissive of her niece’s initiatives.

“That Marion wants to build bridges with people of the traditional right closer to us than to Emmanuel Macron, so much the better,” she said in an interview with BFMTV this month after her niece’s remarks. As for Marechal’s “regret” about short-comings of the National Rally, Le Pen took a diplomatic dig.

“One should not be pessimistic when one is young,” she said.

 

…

African leaders met on Sunday to launch a continental free-trade zone that if successful would unite 1.3 billion people, create a $3.4 trillion economic bloc and usher in a new era of development.

After four years of talks, an agreement to form a 55-nation trade bloc was reached in March, paving the way for Sunday’s African Union summit in Niger where attendees will unveil which
nation will host the trade zone’s headquarters, when trading will start and discuss how exactly it will work.

It is hoped that the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) — the largest since the creation of the World Trade Organization in 1994 — will help unlock Africa’s long-stymied economic potential by boosting intra-regional trade, strengthening supply chains and spreading expertise.

“The eyes of the world are turned to Africa,” Egyptian President and African Union Chairman Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said at the summit’s opening ceremony.

AfCFTA “will reinforce our negotiating position on the international stage. It will represent an important step.”

Africa has much catching up to do: its intra-regional trade accounted for just 17% of exports in 2017 versus 59% in Asia and 69% in Europe, and Africa has missed out on the economic booms
that other trade blocs have experienced in recent decades.

Economists say significant challenges remain, including poor road and rail links, large areas of unrest, excessive border bureaucracy and petty corruption that have held back growth and
integration.

Members have committed to eliminate tariffs on most goods, which will increase trade in the region by 15-25% in the medium term, but this would double if these other issues were dealt with, according to International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates.

The IMF in a May report described a free-trade zone as a potential “economic game changer” of the kind that has boosted growth in Europe and North America, but it added a note of caution.

“Reducing tariffs alone is not sufficient,” it said.

Divergent interests

Africa already has an alphabet soup of competing and overlapping trade zones — ECOWAS in the west, EAC in the east, SADC in the south and COMESA in the east and south.

But only the EAC, driven mainly by Kenya, has made significant progress towards a common market in goods and services. These regional economic communities (REC) will continue to trade among themselves as they do now. The role of AfCFTA is to liberalise trade among those member states that are not currently in the same REC, said Trudi Hartzenberg, director at Tralac, a South Africa-based trade law organization.

The zone’s potential clout received a boost on Tuesday when Nigeria, the largest economy in Africa, agreed to sign the agreement at the summit. Benin has also since agreed to join.
Fifty-four of the continent’s 55 states have signed up, but only 25 have ratified.

One obstacle in negotiations will be the countries’ conflicting motives.

For undiversified but relatively developed economies like Nigeria, which relies heavily on oil exports, the benefits of membership will likely be smaller than others, said John Ashbourne, senior emerging markets economist at Capital Economics.

Nigerian officials have expressed concern that the country could be flooded with low-priced goods, confounding efforts to encourage moribund local manufacturing and expand farming.

In contrast, South Africa’s manufacturers, which are among the most developed in Africa, could quickly expand outside their usual export markets and into West and North Africa, giving them
an advantage over manufacturers from other countries, Ashbourne said.

The presidents of both countries are attending the summit.

The vast difference in countries’ economic heft is another complicating factor in negotiations. Nigeria, Egypt and South Africa account for over 50% of Africa’s cumulative GDP, while its six sovereign island nations represent about 1%. “It will be important to address those disparities to ensure that special and differential treatments for the least developed countries are adopted and successfully implemented,” said Landry Signe, a fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Africa Growth Initiative.

Regulations governing rules of origin, removal of non-tariff barriers and the development of a payments and settlements system are expected to be unveiled at the summit.

 

…

A life-size rough wooden sculpture of U.S. first lady Melania Trump was unveiled Friday near her hometown of Sevnica in southeastern Slovenia. 

Commissioned by Berlin-based American artist Brad Downey and carved with a chainsaw by local folk artist Ales Zupevc, the statue serves as a perhaps wry accompaniment to Downey’s exhibition in the capital, Ljubljana, exploring Melania’s roots in the small Alpine country. 

The blocky, rustic figure was cut from the trunk of a living linden tree whose base forms a tall plinth, in a field beside the Sava River in Rozno, eight kilometers (five miles) from Sevnica. 
 
There was no attempt to create an accurate likeness, to the point that the gallery in Ljubljana appears uncertain how seriously to take the statue.  

“Perhaps we are simply trying vigorously to make sense of things that might only be a slapstick prank,” it says in a leaflet. “Who knows?” 
 
Although the statue’s face is rough-hewn and unrecognizable, the figure is shown clothed in the pale blue wraparound coat that Melania wore at Donald Trump’s inauguration as U.S. president. 
 
Downey said he wanted to “have a dialogue with my country’s political situation” and highlight Melania Trump’s status as an immigrant married to a president sworn to reduce immigration. 

The sculptor, known as Maxi, was born in the same hospital as Melania Trump, in the same month, and now mostly works as a pipelayer. 
 
“Let’s face it,” he says in a short film being shown as part of the exhibition, “she owns half of America while I have nothing.” 

…

An apparent gas explosion at a shopping plaza in Plantation, Florida, injured several people on Saturday, authorities and local media reported.

Video posted to Twitter showed the force of the blast scattered debris across a parking lot and blew out several windows at a nearby L.A. Fitness gym, sending patrons running for the exits.

The Plantation fire department said on Twitter that there were multiple patients being treated at the scene.

The Sun-Sentinel newspaper reported that witnesses said a vacant restaurant appeared to be the source of the explosion. The city of Plantation is about 6 miles west of Fort Lauderdale.

 

…

A war monitor and first responders group say an airstrike has killed at least 13 people in a village in northwestern Syria.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says the dead, most of them internally displaced persons, include seven children and three women. They died on Saturday in a Syrian government airstrike on the village of Mhambel in the province of Idlib.
 
Opposition-allied first responders known as the White Helmets also reported the attack and the casualties.
 
Idlib is the last major rebel stronghold in Syria’s eight-year civil war. Government troops backed by Russia have been using heavy airstrikes in their campaign to take the area in the past months.

 

…

Iraq is celebrating the UNESCO World Heritage Committee’s decision to name the historic city of Babylon a World Heritage Site in a vote in Azerbaijan.

Friday’s vote comes after Iraq bid for years for Babylon to be added to the list of World Heritage Sites.

The city on the Euphrates River is about 85 kilometers (55 miles) south of Baghdad.

The 4,300-year-old Babylon, now mainly an archaeological ruin and two important museums, is where dynasties have risen and have fallen since the earliest days of settled human civilization.

Parliament speaker Mohammed al-Halbousi and Minister of Culture Abdul-Amir al-Hamadani congratulated the Iraqi people on the announcement.

The vote comes years after the Islamic State group damaged another Iraq World Heritage site in the country’s north, the ancient city of Hatra.
 

…

The U.S. coal industry sank deeper this week as the nation’s sixth-largest coal company declared bankruptcy.

Though the Trump administration has taken measures aimed at supporting coal, six of the 10 largest coal companies have gone bankrupt since 2014.

Blackjewel LLC’s Chapter 11 filing comes just weeks after the No. 3 producer, Cloud Peak Energy, declared bankruptcy. 

The coal industry has been pummeled as electric utilities switch from coal-fired power to cleaner, cheaper natural gas and renewable energy. 

It is good news for the climate and public health. Burning coal produces more greenhouse gas emissions and other pollutants than other fuels. 

But the trend has been devastating for the coal industry and its employees. 

Blackjewel, a subsidiary of Revelation Energy, employed about 1,700 workers in four states, including Kentucky, Virginia, West Virginia and Wyoming, according to court filings. 

Gas, wind, solar

In bankruptcy filings, Blackjewel blamed a “combination of an abundant, cheap and reliable alternative fuel in the form of natural gas, increased usage of renewable sources of energy,” plus stricter environmental regulations, for the coal industry’s decline. 

Coal consumption is at its lowest point in four decades. 

The dramatic rise of natural gas in the United States has undercut the economics of coal-fired power. The United States has been the world’s leading natural gas producer since 2009. 

Meanwhile, this April marked the first time coal-fired electricity generation slipped behind renewable sources,  including wind, solar and hydropower, in monthly totals.  Those figures fluctuate seasonally, but they highlight the rise of renewables and coal’s descent.

While several companies have emerged from insolvency, “You can’t say the coal industry fixed itself with bankruptcies,” said analyst Karl Cates at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. “It bought itself some more time. But it continues to be a sector in decline.”

Trump support

The Environmental Protection Agency issued a rule last month that might prolong the life of some coal-fired power plants. 

The Affordable Clean Energy rule targets greenhouse gas emissions in the electric power sector. By focusing on power plant efficiency, the EPA says, the rule will reduce emissions up to 35 percent by 2030. 

It replaces the Obama administration’s more stringent Clean Power Plan that was expected to force many coal-fired plants to close. 

Critics note that if plants do stay open longer because of the rule, they will produce more greenhouse gases, even if they are more efficient. 

Given market forces and industry trends, however, it’s not clear how many plants would avoid shutdown under the new rule.

Some coal backers are pursuing technology to capture carbon dioxide from smokestacks and bury it underground or use it to produce products. 

While carbon capture, utilization and storage technology exists, it currently costs too much to make economic sense on a large scale. 

Congress has recently passed bipartisan legislation aimed at making it viable. 

“Carbon capture technologies are essential to reducing emissions while protecting jobs,” said Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, a Republican from the coal state of West Virginia and one of the bill’s lead sponsors. 

…

Marilyne Tatang, 23, crossed nine borders in two months to reach Mexico from the West African nation of Cameroon, fleeing political violence after police torched her house, she said.

She plans soon to take a bus north for four days and then cross a 10th border, into the United States. She is not alone, a record number of fellow Africans are flying to South America and then traversing thousands of miles of highway and a treacherous tropical rainforest to reach the United States.

Tatang, who is eight months pregnant, took a raft across a river into Mexico on June 8, a day after Mexico struck a deal with U.S. President Donald Trump to do more to control the biggest flows of migrants heading north to the U.S. border in more than a decade.

Trump threats encourage migrants

The migrants vying for entry at the U.S. southern border are mainly Central Americans. But growing numbers from a handful of African countries are joining them, prompting calls from Trump and Mexico for other countries in Latin America to do their part to slow the overall flood of migrants.

As more Africans learn from relatives and friends who have made the trip that crossing Latin America to the United States is tough but not impossible, more are making the journey, and in turn are helping others follow in their footsteps, migration experts say.

Trump’s threats to clamp down on migrants have ricocheted around the globe, paradoxically spurring some to exploit what they see as a narrowing window of opportunity, said Michelle Mittelstadt, communications director for the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington-based think tank.

“This message is being heard not just in Central America, but in other parts of the world,” she said.

Record breaking numbers from Africa

Data from Mexico’s interior ministry suggests that migration from Africa this year will break records.

The number of Africans registered by Mexican authorities tripled in the first four months of 2019 compared with the same period a year ago, reaching about 1,900 people, mostly from Cameroon and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), which remains deeply unstable years after the end of a bloody regional conflict with its neighbors that led to the deaths of millions of people.

‘They would have killed me’

Tatang, a grade school teacher, said she left northwest Cameroon because of worsening violence in the English-speaking region, where separatists are battling the mostly French-speaking government for autonomy.

“It was so bad that they burned the house where I was living … they would have killed me,” she said, referring to government forces who tried to capture her.

At first, Tatang planned only to cross the border into Nigeria. Then she heard that some people had made it to the United States.

“Someone would say, ‘You can do this,’” she said. “So I asked if it was possible for someone like me too, because I’m pregnant. They said, ‘Do this, do that.’“

Tatang begged her family for money for the journey, which she said so far has cost $5,000.

Epic journey

She said her route began with a flight to Ecuador, where Cameroonians don’t need visas. Tatang went by bus and on foot through Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala until reaching Mexico.

She was still deciding what to do once she got to Mexico’s northern border city of Tijuana, she said, cradling her belly while seated on a concrete bench outside migration offices in the southern Mexican city of Tapachula.

“I will just ask,” she said. “I can’t say, ‘When I get there, I will do this.’ I don’t know. I’ve never been there.”

Reuters spoke recently with five migrants in Tapachula who were from Cameroon, DRC and Angola. Several said they traveled to Brazil as a jumping-off point.

They were a small sampling of the hundreds of people, including Haitians, Cubans, Indians and Bangladeshis, clustered outside migration offices.

Political volatility in Cameroon and the DRC in recent years has displaced hundreds of thousands of people.

People from the DRC made up the third largest group of new refugees globally last year with about 123,000 people, according to the U.N. Refugee Agency, while Cameroon’s internally displaced population grew by 447,000 people.

The number of undocumented African migrants found by authorities in Mexico quadrupled compared with five years ago, reaching nearly 3,000 people in 2018.

Most obtain a visa that allows them free passage through Mexico for 20 days, after which they cross into the United States and ask for asylum.

More families coming, too

Few choose to seek asylum in Mexico, in part because they don’t speak Spanish. Tatang said the language barrier was especially frustrating because she speaks only English, making communication difficult both with Mexican migration officials and even other Africans, such as migrants from DRC who speak primarily French.

Those who reach the United States often send advice back home, helping make the journey easier for others, said Florence Kim, spokeswoman for the International Organization for Migration in West and Central Africa.

Like their Central American migrant counterparts, some Africans are also showing up with families hoping for easier entries than as individuals, said Mittelstadt of the Migration Policy Institute.

U.S. data shows a huge spike in the number of families from countries other than Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras at the U.S. southern border. Between last October and May 16,000 members of families were registered, up from 1,000 for the whole of 2018, according to an analysis by the MPI.

Regional approach

The grueling Latin America trek forces migrants to spend at least a week trudging across swampland and hiking through mountainous rainforests in the lawless Darien Gap that is the only link between Panama and Colombia.

Still, the route has a key advantage: Countries in the region typically do not deport migrants from other continents partly because of the steep costs and lack of repatriation agreements with their home countries.

That relaxed attitude could change, however.

Under a deal struck with United States last month, Mexico may start a process later this month to become a safe third country, making asylum-seekers apply for refuge in Mexico and not the United States.

To lessen the load on Mexico, Mexico and the United States plan to put pressure on Central American nations to do more to prevent asylum-seekers, including African migrants, from moving north.

For the moment, however, more Africans can be expected to attempt the journey, said IOM’s Kim.

“They want to do something with their life. They feel they lack a future in their country,” she said.

…

America’s annual Independence Day is celebrated a bit differently in Washington, D.C., this year, with a display of military might and a speech about patriotism by U.S. President Donald Trump. The event draws Trump supporters, as well as protesters who accuse the president of politicizing a nonpartisan holiday and wasting taxpayer money. White House Correspondent Patsy Widakuswara has the story.

…

A single cigarette may have started the April fire that destroyed much of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris.  Flames tore through the global tourist destination as firefighters struggled to find and extinguish their source.  German authorities want to make sure what happened in France, doesn’t happen there.  Arash Arabasadi has more.

…

The amount of sea ice around Antarctica has plunged from a record high to a record low in just three years, according to a new report released this week by the U.S. space agency NASA. Faith Lapidus reports scientists are not sure why.

…

Vietnamese manufacturers should use domestically-sourced raw materials to avoid incurring U.S. tariffs, Vietnam’s foreign ministry said on Thursday, days after Washington said it would impose large duties on some steel products shipped through the Southeast Asian country.

The U.S. Commerce Department said on Tuesday it would slap tariffs of up to 456% on certain steel produced in South Korea or Taiwan which are then shipped to Vietnam for minor processing and finally exported to the United States.

“The Ministry of Industry and Trade has warned local companies about possible moves by importing countries, including the United States, to apply stricter requirements in trade protection cases,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Le Thi Thu Hang said at a routine news conference in Hanoi.

Vietnamese companies should consider business strategies that include switching to domestic materials, she said.

Hang said Vietnam will continue to work with the United States in its efforts to crack down on goods of foreign origin illegally relabeled “Made in Vietnam” by exporters seeking to dodge tariffs.

Vietnam has been touted as one of the largest beneficiaries of the ongoing trade war between the United States and China, but recent comments from U.S. President Donald Trump have led some to believe that Vietnam may be the next target of U.S. tariffs.

Last month, Trump said Hanoi treated the United States “even worse” than China, amid the ongoing trade spat between Washington and Beijing.

Vietnam responded by saying it was committed to free and fair trade with the United States.

Vietnam’s largest export market is the United States, with which it has a rapidly growing trade surplus, which widened to $17 billion in the first five months of this year from $12.9
billion in the same period last year.
 

…

When David landed an assembly line job at Volkswagen’s Bratislava factory, his colleagues congratulated him on securing a well-paid position he could ride to retirement.

Two years later, he is among the 3,000 workers being laid off at the plant that produces the Volkswagen Touareg and Porsche Cayenne in a round of job cuts that has sent shockwaves through Slovakia, the world’s biggest car producer per capita.

“All my colleagues were saying there’s nothing to worry about, if I get used to the work load and work pace, the salary will gradually increase and I will have a stable job until retirement,” said David, who declined to give his last name.

“And suddenly I get a call from human resources and learn that I’m being let go.”

The job losses at the factory, Slovakia’s largest private sector employer, underline the challenges the country faces to keep the engine revving in an industry that accounts for about 12% of annual economic output and more than one in ten jobs.

Competition from lower-cost southeastern European markets, a shift to electric vehicles and global trade tensions are among the headwinds buffetting the small central European nation as automakers mull where to launch future production lines.

Volkswagen itself is looking at building a new plant in eastern Europe, with trade publications citing Bulgaria, Serbia and Turkey as the most likely locations.

While David found a job at another carmaker, the layoffs at the Bratislava plant, which also makes the Audi Q7 and Q8 models, have put the government on alert.

“To use a car metaphor, we see a warning light, we don’t need to take the car for a general repair yet,” economy minister Peter Ziga told Reuters.

“We have 300,000 people working in the car sector (directly and indirectly). Should anything happen to them it would be serious.”

The uncertainty has spurred unions, which have previously pushed for big wage increases, to change tack.

“At the moment, we do not focus on salaries, the priority is job stability,” Volkswagen union chief Zoroslav Smolinsky told Reuters. “We need to wait out the worse times and wait for the better times.”

COMPETITIVE EDGE

Seeking to bolster an auto industry that accounts for 44% of industrial output and 40% of exports, the government has approved subsidies to boost the sale of electric cars and announced tax breaks of up to 200% of the amount invested in research and development.

But at the same time, moves to raise the minimum wage and increase bonuses for night shifts introduced last year are making Slovakia less competitive, said Jan Pribula, secretary general of the Slovak Automotive Industry Association.

“This is the time when companies are deciding who gets new models in seven years,” said Pribula, whose group represents Slovakia’s four carmakers – Volkswagen, PSA Group, Kia Motors and Jaguar Land Rover – along with suppliers, research institutes and importers.

“It is important to send a signal that we are responsible because now we are gradually losing a competitive edge.”

Slovakia is not the only central European country facing such challenges. Fellow European Union members the Czech Republic, home to Volkswagen’s Skoda brand, and Hungary, where both BMW and Daimler have plants, rely heavily on investment from foreign automakers.

A brewing global trade war is a particular concern for such countries, given their high reliance on foreign trade, European Central Bank President Mario Draghi said earlier this month.

Deloitte Chief Economist David Marek has said a 25% tariff on U.S. imports of cars from Europe would cut the revenue of the Czech auto industry by 12 billion crowns ($532 million) a year.

Poland, the region’s biggest economy, is betting on electric vehicles, setting a target of having 1 million such cars and vans on the road by 2025 and highlighting a battle for investment as the auto industry embraces new technologies.

At the same time, faltering global growth has led some carmakers to put expansion plans on hold, such as Daimler’s announcement in May to postpone an increase in capacity at its Kecskemet compact-car plant in Hungary.

“It has been taken for granted that plants like Bratislava would just carry on and produce the next generation model,” Carol Thomas, an auto analyst at LMC Automotive, told Reuters.

“But we can’t just assume that anymore. Plants will not only have to fight for new models, they will also face greater competition to retain new generations of models they already produce.”

So far this year, Volkswagen has scaled back production lines in Bratislava and returned workers borrowed from Hungary’s Audi plant in 2016.

“This is the key year that will decide the future of the Slovak factory,” VW Slovak Chief Executive Oliver Grunberg said, adding a decision was expected by the end of the year.

“Improvements in Slovakia’s business environment would help increase attractiveness of Bratislava’s plant.”

…

India said on Thursday it needs $330 billion in investments over the next decade to power its renewable energy dream, but coal would remain central to its electricity generation.

The energy guzzling country wants to raise its renewable energy capacity to 500 Gigawatts (GW), or 40% of total capacity, by 2030. Renewables currently account for 22% of India’s total installed capacity of about 357 GW.

“Additional investments in renewable plants up to year 2022 would be about $80 billion at today’s prices and an investment of around $250 billion would be required for the period 2023-2030,” according to the government’s economic survey presented to parliament on Thursday.

India wants to have 175 GW of renewable-based installed power capacity by 2022.

 The investment estimate reflects the magnitude of financial challenges facing one of the world’s most important growth markets for renewable energy, with government data indicating a growth slowdown in private and capital investments in the year ended March 2019.

India, which receives twice as much sunshine as European countries, wants to make solar a cornerstone of its renewable expansion, but also wants to make use of its cheap and abundant coal reserves, the fifth-largest in the world.

  The annual economic survey warned India against abruptly halting coal-based utilities, citing risks to its banking sector and the stability of the electricity grid.

“It may not be advisable to effect a sudden abandonment of coal based power plants without complete utilization of their useful lifetimes as it would lead to stranding of assets that can have further adverse impact on the banking sector,” the survey said.

Thermal power plants account for 80% of all industrial emissions of particulate matter, sulfur and nitrous oxides in India. India, one of the world’s largest coal producers and greenhouse gas emitters, estimates coal to be its energy mainstay for at least the next three decades. The country’s coal use rose 9.1% to nearly a billion tons in 2018-19.

The survey said it would be difficult for a growing economy like India to migrate to renewable power supply unless “sufficient technological breakthrough in energy storage happens in the near future”.

Environmentalists worry that India’s rising use of coal at a time when many Western nations are rejecting the dirty fossil fuel will hamper the global fight against climate change, despite the country’s commitment to renewable energy.

 

…

One of a half-dozen men who have accused the Vatican’s ambassador to France of groping them said Wednesday he plans to take his legal complaint directly to the Vatican, alleging the Holy See had invoked diplomatic immunity for the high-ranking churchman in a French criminal probe.

Mathieu De La Souchere filed a police report in Paris earlier this year accusing Archbishop Luigi Ventura of touching his buttocks repeatedly during a Jan. 17 reception at Paris City Hall. De La Souchere met with one of Pope Francis’ sex abuse advisers about the allegations Wednesday.

The Paris prosecutor’s office has opened an investigation into alleged sexual aggression. The Vatican said Ventura was cooperating with the investigation. But De La Souchere said the French case was essentially stalled over the immunity question.

“The French government’s request to the Vatican to lift the diplomatic immunity remained unanswered,” he told The Associated Press.

De La Souchere said his lawyer plans to file a complaint with the Vatican City State’s criminal tribunal next week. The tribunal largely follows the Italian penal code and is separate from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which handles sex abuse-related crimes under the Catholic Church’s canon law.

“This new judicial step here in the Vatican, we hope, will be one more step toward the trial that we all the victims in France are waiting for,” De La Souchere said after meeting with the Rev. Hans Zollner, a founding member of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors.

De La Souchere met with Zollner and another man who has accused Ventura. Catholic online site Crux has said as many as a half-dozen men have accused Ventura of unwanted groping over the course of his diplomatic postings, which have included Canada and Chile.

Ventura has repeatedly denied wrongdoing. His French lawyer, Bertrand Ollivier, did not respond to requests for comment Wednesday.

The archbishop’s whereabouts are unknown, but he attended a meeting at the Vatican last month of all the Holy See’s apostolic nuncios, or ambassadors.

Vatican spokesman Alessandro Gisotti said Ventura “has fully and voluntarily cooperated with French judicial authorities who are in charge of his case, and will continue to do so.” He didn’t immediately respond when asked about the status of Ventura’s immunity.

Ventura did agree to investigators’ request to take part in a “confrontation” with his accusers in May, according to French media reports. All accused him of putting his hands on their buttocks, sometimes repeatedly, or making other inappropriate gestures.

Speaking to one alleged victim, identified as Benjamin G., Ventura first claimed he didn’t remember the incidents in question and then said Benjamin misinterpreted his actions, according to French newspaper Le Monde.

The Vatican has previously recalled its diplomats when they get into trouble during overseas postings, as is common for governments with diplomats serving abroad.

In the most high-profile case, the Vatican recalled its ambassador to the Dominican Republic and prepared to put him on trial in the city state’s criminal tribunal for allegedly sexually abusing young boys. But he died before trial started.

More recently, the Vatican convicted a diplomat from its U.S. embassy for possession and distribution of child pornography and sentenced him to five years in prison.

The Vatican also invoked immunity during the recently-concluded trial in France that convicted French Cardinal Philippe Barbarin of failing to report an admitted pedophile to police. Also accused in the case was a Vatican official, Cardinal Luis Ladaria, who now heads the Vatican office in charge of handling sex abuse cases.

The Vatican invoked Ladaria’s immunity as a public official of a foreign sovereign — the Holy See — and he was not prosecuted. Barbarin enjoyed no such immunity as the archbishop of Lyon and was convicted and given a six-month suspended sentence.

Francis recently named a temporary administrator to run the Lyon archdiocese after Barbarin stepped aside pending his appeal.

…

Scientists, government officials and conservationists are calling for a swift response to protect North Atlantic right whales after a half-dozen died in the past month.

All six of the dead endangered species have been found in the Gulf of St. Lawrence off Canada. At least three appear to have died after being hit by ships.

There are only a little more than 400 of the endangered species left. 
 
The deaths have led scientists to sound the alarm about a potentially catastrophic loss to the population.

Some say the whales are traveling in different areas than usual because of food availability. That change has apparently brought whales outside of protected zones and left them vulnerable.
 

…