By Ahmed ElShamy, Marko Vesovic, Greek reporters, Visar Prebreza, Naima Chougui, Lawrence Marzouk and Ivan Angelovski

For four years, officials in Cairo, London and Brussels rang alarm bells over the production of billions of cigarettes bearing the name of Egypt’s most popular brand at a state-run factory in Montenegro and, they believed, smuggled across North Africa from lawless Libya. Montenegro, despite negotiating to join the European Union, ignored them.

Egypt’s No. 1 brand of cigarette, Cleopatra, was born in 1961 when Egyptian ruler Gamal Abdel Nasser asked for a local version of the smuggled American Kent brand he liked to smoke.

Created by the century-old Eastern Company S.A.E., Cleopatra is now one of the most widely smoked cigarettes in North Africa and one of the top sellers globally.

So it is perhaps ironic, given its copycat roots, that the brand should be undercut by a state-owned factory across the Mediterranean in Montenegro, a former Yugoslav republic negotiating to join the European Union.

But that is precisely what authorities in Egypt, Britain and the European Union flagged for four years, according to confidential correspondence obtained by reporters from Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, BIRN, and Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism, ARIJ.

And Montenegro ignored them.

The warnings, BIRN/ARIJ can reveal, went to the highest echelons of the Montenegrin government, raising questions over the country’s claim to have turned a page on the 1990s, when cigarette smuggling was effectively a government-sponsored means of financial survival amid the war and sanctions of Yugoslavia’s bloody collapse.

It also speaks to the scale of the task to ready Montenegro, an Adriatic country of 620,000 people, for accession to the EU after almost three decades of rule of by the same party and, effectively, the same man – President Milo Djukanovic.

According to the findings of the BIRN/ARIJ investigation, Cairo, London and the EU’s anti-fraud office, OLAF, considered the flood of cigarettes coming out of Duvanski Kombinat Podgorica, DKP, “counterfeit”, suspecting they were being channelled to Libyan smugglers who distributed them illegally across North Africa.

Egypt asked repeatedly through diplomatic channels for Montenegro to shut the operation down.

Production did stop, finally, in 2016, but only after the factory was privatised and came under new ownership. But the offshore firm that contracted the factory to produce the cigarettes has not given up, according to the BIRN/ARIJ investigation; it has explored setting up production in Kosovo and has invested 1 million euros in a new operation in Montenegro.

This story reveals the unusual cast of mostly Greek characters behind the “counterfeiting” operation, including a man who has hosted Djukanovic at his Athens restaurant on more than one occasion.

Production lists seen by reporters show that besides Cleopatra, the factory also produced smaller quantities of Tunisian Mars 20, Algerian Rym and Libyan Riyadi.

“We all know how strict EU rules are on smuggling,” Sami Ben Jannet, managing director of the RNTA factory in Tunisia which produces the Mars 20 brand, told BIRN/ARIJ. “That’s why when we found out the factory belonged to a government we were shocked.”

From port of Bar to lawless Libya

DKP denies any wrongdoing. It says it was contracted by an offshore company called Liberty FZE, which it said showed the factory a trademark registration to produce the cigarettes.

According to contracts obtained by BIRN/ARIJ, DKP was expected to produce 400 million packs, or about eight billion individual cigarettes, between 2010 and 2016, though the actual number that left the factory is not known.

A DKP official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that the North African brands mentioned on the production lists were all made on behalf of Liberty FZE, a fact later confirmed by DKP as part of an investigation into the tobacco trade that concluded in November.

In court proceedings in Greece concerning two seized shipments of Cleopatra, Liberty FZE has insisted its exports of Cleopatra were entirely legal.

But this is disputed by the owner of the brand in Egypt – Eastern Company S.A.E. – as well as by British and EU authorities, according to emails submitted to the Greek courts and others leaked to BIRN/ARIJ.

Eastern Company S.A.E. told BIRN/ARIJ: “Our company has not issued any licence, authorisation or declaration to the Emirates LIBERTY FZE Company.”

The Egyptian company, according to a report seen by BIRN/ARIJ, estimated that the proportion of smuggled cigarettes on the Egyptian market had rocketed from less than one per cent in 2010 to 20 per cent in 2012, and that, as a result, the Egyptian state had lost in excess of 100 million euros in uncollected taxes.

Egypt, according to correspondence seen by BIRN/ARIJ, took its concerns to Montenegro’s then ambassador to Cairo, Gojko Celebic, as well as directly to the Montenegrin foreign ministry and to a foreign policy adviser to the then Montenegrin president, Filip Vujanovic, an ally of Djukanovic. It complained “over and over”, according to a note sent from Egypt’s foreign ministry to Eastern Company in January 2016.

Outlining a meeting between Egypt’s ambassador to Prague and Celebic, the note cited Celebic as saying that he had received Egyptian protest letters since 2012 but that he had been unable to secure any “official explanation” from his superiors as to why production had not been stopped.

Celebic was quoted as citing the “complexity and sensitivity related to the issue,” including the fact DKP was in the process of being privatised and that “there is a possibility that some officials in Montenegro have stakes in the tobacco company in Montenegro.”

Celebic said he would ask Montenegro’s foreign minister to raise the issue again with the minister of agriculture, who was ultimately responsible for the factory.

Nothing ever came of it.

‘Fake Cleopatra’

Ben Jannet said that RNTA had not issued a licence for the production of Mars 20 cigarettes in Montenegro, and, though he was well aware there were counterfeit cigarettes on the market, Jannet was startled to learn from reporters about the operation at a state-run factory in an EU candidate state.

He also noted the link between cigarette smuggling and funding for terrorism.

“Terrorism needs cash,” he said, “and one of the biggest sources is the smuggling business.”

Crucial to the operation was the power vacuum in Libya, which has become a smuggler’s paradise since a 2011 war ended the 41-year rule of Muammar Gaddafi but left the country divided between rival administrations, tribes and militias.

While weapons, migrants and refugees have flowed from its ports, the Montenegrin-made cigarettes went the other way, arriving by boat to Libyan firms in Benghazi, Tobruk and Misrata. Eastern Company and RNTA believe they were then smuggled over dangerous desert borders into Egypt, Tunisia and beyond.

In 2012 and 2015, Greek coastguard patrols seized two shipments on their way from the Montenegrin port of Bar to Libya.

Sailors on the boats – the Noah and the Genc 3 – were charged in Greece with smuggling, and the 2015 cargo was destroyed under EU trademark protection rules after Greek customs accepted Eastern Company’s argument that the cigarettes were counterfeit. But in both cases the defendants were cleared as it could not be proven that the cigarettes were destined for the black market in Greece, the alleged offence.

French customs emailed their Egyptian counterparts describing the cigarettes seized on board the Genc 3 as “fake Cleopatra”.

And in an email to the Greek coastguard, an OLAF official wrote: “I can inform you that Cleopatra cigarettes are probably destined for the contraband market in North Africa, especially Egypt.”

BIRN/ARIJ have found no evidence that Liberty FZE, DKP or the Libyan importers – including El Liboo of Tobruk, Al Manaraa of Benghazi , Al Watania of Benghazi – have been accused of any crime.

A third boat, Skylark, was identified in an October 2015 letter from HMRC to Egyptian customs as carrying goods “believed to be counterfeit product manufactured without the authority or permission of the legal trademark holder”.

“The cigarettes should be considered high risk for diversion to the illicit markets in Egypt and Europe,” it wrote.

OLAF told BIRN/ARIJ that the Genc 3 was one of eight unnamed ships mentioned in a 2018 report as carrying cigarettes from Montenegro which were believed destined to be smuggled.

BIRN/ARIJ has learnt that in 2017 OLAF launched an investigation related to the movement of ‘cheap white’ cigarettes through Montenegro. The investigation is ongoing and no further details were available. BIRN/ARIJ understands that OLAF has, as part of a separate investigation, also looked at the activities of suspicious offshore firms in the free economic zone in the port of Bar. OLAF said it had received good cooperation from the Montenegrin authorities following the 2017 investigation.

‘More Catholic than the Pope’

The cigarettes produced in DKP would have been virtually indistinguishable from the originals produced by Eastern Company in Cairo.  The label bears the words ‘Made in Egypt’, as well as Egyptian health warnings and a claim to be produced by “Eastern Company”.

Photos from inside the DKP factory show that the Rym cigarettes bore labels that claimed they were made by the Algerian firm associated with the brand, SNTA.

BIRN/ARIJ reporters were unable, however, to obtain comment from the firms producing SNTA or Riyadi in Libya.

In confidential 2015 correspondence, seen by BIRN/ARIJ, HMRC described an unnamed factory in Montenegro as producing “100 million counterfeit Cleopatra cigarettes every month”. It later specified DKP as the source of cigarettes “believed to be counterfeit.

Slavoljub Vukasinovic, the former executive director of DKP, denied the factory did anything wrong, saying Liberty FZE had presented a trademark for the brand from “another country”

“I really do not know from what country,” he told BIRN/ARIJ in an interview. “They had a registration of that brand, they brought those papers, and based on those papers we produced that brand.”

Liberty FZE later registered the trademark for Cleopatra, Rym and Mars in Montenegro in 2015, three years after production started.

But Stanford Law Professor Mark Lemley, an expert in intellectual property, said that made little difference if the cigarettes were due to be sold in North Africa, where Eastern Company, for example, has registered trademarks in Libya and Egypt.

“Because trademark rights are territorial, the normal rule is that the first person to register and use the mark in a particular country gets the rights in that country,” he said. “So while Cleopatra marks can coexist in different countries, a registration in Montenegro would not give the registrant the rights to sell anywhere except Montenegro.”

“If Eastern owns the rights in Libya, importing the cigarettes from Montenegro would be infringement.”

Trademark infringements are usually regulated at the point of import, Lemley noted, but given the conflict in Libya the country was unlikely to paying much attention to intellectual property rights. If the Montenegrin government, however, “produced the cigarettes and knew the cigarettes were being exported for illegal use abroad they could be liable for trademark infringement,” he said.

The former head of human resources at DKP, Nebojsa Stankovic, said the factory had never been asked to halt production, and in November a report by Montenegro’s special prosecution, which had been asked to look into DKP’s cigarette production by the opposition political movement Alternativa, concluded there was no evidence of irregularities as each export had been properly documented.

“Unfortunately, someone expects us to be more Catholic than the Pope and that we should be on the look-out for something,” Stankovic told BIRN/ARIJ, meaning whether Liberty FZE really had a licence or not.

Had it been asked, “I guarantee you that production in Podgorica would be immediately suspended,” he said. “But four years passed, and no one reacted.”

But in fact, besides the Egyptian diplomatic pleas, pressure was also coming from HMRC.

Emails leaked to BIRN/ARIJ show that both were carefully monitoring the movement of counterfeit Cleopatras, with Britain one of the biggest markets in Europe for counterfeit and contraband cigarettes.

In a letter to Egyptian customs in May 2015, HMRC said it was determined “to eradicate the counterfeit production of Cleopatra brand cigarettes with the help of The Eastern Company, the legitimate licence holder for the brand.”

The Greek connection

On paper, Liberty FZE is based in the small emirate of Ras Al Khaimah. Little, to date, was known about who ran it, but the 2016 Montenegrin parliamentary committee provided a clue when it repeatedly referred to the firm as “Greek”.

Through official documents, interviews with factory workers and business associates and detailed analysis of social media profiles, BIRN/ARIJ reporters have confirmed the Hellenic connection, and the identity of those behind the operation.

While the business registry in Ras al Khaimah does not provide information on company ownership, through a Freedom of Information request BIRN/ARIJ got hold of documents filed with Montenegro’s business registry for the opening of a subsidiary of Liberty FZE.

They name the firm’s owner as Konstantinos Fyrogenis, a Greek from Athens who until recently, according to his Facebook profile, live in the Romanian town of Brasov.

Based on company records, Fyrogenis owns a small stake in Explosal Ltd, a cigarette factory located in a Cypriot free trade zone and which legally produces the Raquel brand, a common product on Europe’s black market. Marlboro is
currently fighting it in the EU for allegedly aping its distinctive design..

Despite being formally registered in Ras Al Khaimah, Liberty FZE appears in one online listing with an address in Romania: Str.Valea Parcului 42B, 077135 IIfov.

Another tobacco company connected to Fyrogenis was listed at the same address – Italia Tobacco Production SRL.

According to Romanian company records, Fyrogenis was director of the firm between May and Decemberof 2009. Italia Tobacco Production was linked to a 2011 bribery case involving a Romanian tax official and a lawyer, although the firm was not found to have committed an offence and Fyrogenis was not accused of committing a crime.

In the 1980s, Fyrogenis studied in the western Romanian city of Timisoara. So too did another Greek called Ioannis Zinas.

‘Yes, Ioannis. He is the president’

Fyrogenis and Zinas have joint business interests in the cafe/restaurant and marketing sectors in Greece through two companies – C&C and Cinnamon Communications.
But Zinas’s main business appears to be tobacco, based on his history, social media postings and interviews Multiple sources say Zinas is the unofficial ‘president’ of Liberty FZE.

“When he needed to sign something, he would literally avoid it, he did not want to sign anything,” a former senior official at DKP told BIRN/ARIJ of Zinas. Speaking on condition of anonymity, the former official said Zinas was “certainly” at the helm of Liberty FZE. [Transkript_novo EN Signal-Audio-2018].

Stankovic, the HR manager at DKP, told BIRN/ARIJ: “Yes, Ioannis, Ioannis. He is the president of Liberty”.

The factory’s former executive director, Vukasinovic, described Zinas as a “mediator in the whole story” between Liberty FZE and DKP. “I really don’t know who stands behind [Liberty],” he said in an interview.

Intriguingly, in December 2017, an obituary was taken out in the Montenegrin daily newspaper Pobjeda to mark the death of a businessman called Jovan Jovetic. It was signed, with a possible typo, ‘Zinas Loanis Liberty FZE UAE’.

A former export manager at one of Greece’s main tobacco firms, privately-owned SEKAP, Zinas was convicted in 2015 of cigarette smuggling in one court, only to be acquitted in another Greek court looking at the same allegations, but which had been led by a different police force.

Independently of the criminal case, in 2016, SEKAP, Zinas and three other individuals were fined a total of 28.1 million euros for lost tax revenues, according to documents filed by Greek customs to parliament. The fine is currently being appealed.

 Zinas said he stood down from SEKAP in 2010. In November 2010, Liberty FZE signed its first contract with Montenegro’s DKP.

Social media profiles show that Zinas and his family were frequent visitors to Montenegro, enjoying a jet-set lifestyle with powerful friends.

One photo, posted to Zinas’s Facebook profile in September 2015 , shows him with Djukanovic, then Montenegro’s prime minister, and hotel owner Dragan Perovic. 

Zinas, Fyrogenis and Perovic  failed to respond to requests for comment. Djukanovic has always denied involvement in cigarette smuggling in the 1990s and has never been charged with any crime.

In a statement to BIRN/ARIJ, a spokeswoman for Djukanovic said the president knew Zinas and had dined in his restaurant in Athens, but denied any knowledge of his business activities or the allegations contained in this article.

“President Djukanovic, in his capacity as prime minister, never had any contact with this topic during the period you are looking into,” the spokeswoman said.

“… he never received any warning of any illegal activity anywhere in Montenegro. If he did, he would react by asking the authorities to investigate.”

With regards Zinas, the spokeswoman said Djukanovic “knows the aforementioned gentleman.”

“The president was sometimes a guest in his restaurant in Athens when he owned it. The president has no knowledge of what he was doing in Montenegro, nor whether it was legal or not. That is beyond the scope of the work of prime minister.”

Fresh opportunities

DKP’s production of Cleopatra and other brands eventually halted in 2016, when the factory was sold by the state to BMJ Industries, a firm based in the United Arab Emirates.

Profit margins for the illegal tobacco trade can reach 900 per cent, an EU-backed event was told recently, making the smuggling of Cleopatra a lucrative business. But the benefits for the Montenegrin state of producing the “counterfeits” were less obvious.

According to the publicly-available reports of a parliamentary committee that looked into its 2016 privatisation, DKP was officially operating at a loss of 70,000 euros a month, meaning the state was effectively subsidising Liberty FZE’s production.

Opposition MP Aleksandar Damjanovic, the reports show, told the committee he had been informed by DKP that the production of 3,000 tonnes of cigarettes, as per the contract with Liberty FZE, would generate profits of 1.8 million euros, meaning workers could be paid properly.

Despite the fact DKP surpassed its targets, he said, it still made a loss on paper and did not keep up with salary payments.

The privatisation of DKP snuffed out Liberty FZE’s lucrative Podgorica operation, but that did not spell the end of the Cleopatra operation.

In March 2016, the company applied to trademark Cleopatra in Kosovo.

Zinas and two former DKP workers were photographed in a café in the eastern Kosovo town of Gjilan/Gnjilane in pictures posted on one of the worker’s Facebook profiles in April 2016. Around the same time, the workers uploaded photos of themselves in a cigarette factory in the town.

Gazmend Abrashi, political adviser to the Kosovo prime minister, Ramush Haradinaj, and president of Exclusive Group, which owns the Gjilan/Gnjilane factory, told BIRN that nothing came of the visit as he hoped to develop his own brands.

“We heard that Liberty FZE was trying to register the Cleopatra brand in Kosovo, but I do not know this progressed,” he told BIRN. “I remember that we met these people two to three years ago but I do not remember their names.”

Then, in June 2017, Liberty FZE opened a branch in the Montenegrin Free Zone of Bar. Slavoljub Vukasinovic, the former DKP executive director, was named as director.

Vukasinovic told BIRN/ARIJ that Liberty FZE  had invested “about a million euros” in cigarette-making machinery and renovating a warehouse in the port’s free zone, but that the plan was on hold as Liberty FZE had yet to secure a permit.

“The plan is on hold,” he said, but the warehouse “is still under lease.”

Additional reporting from Dusica Tomovic, Jelena Cosic, Lindita Cela and Milena Perovic Korac.

By Luis Liwanag and Jeoffrey Maitem

American and Filipino officials on Tuesday hailed a “bright future” and the end to a dark episode in their nations’ longtime alliance as the United States brought back to Philippine soil three bells looted from a local church in 1901.

After a U.S. Air Force plane carrying the Bells of Balangiga landed in Manila, the American ambassador to the Philippines signed them over to Filipino Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana in a ceremony filled with symbolism.

“The return of the Bells of Balangiga lets us reflect on the U.S.-Philippine relationship – where we have been, where we are, where we are going,” U.S. envoy Sung Kim said during a handover witnessed by kin of Filipinos who were killed by American forces in the sacking of Balangiga town, in the central Philippines, during the Philippine-American War 117 years ago.

American troops at the time claimed the church bells as war booty.

The bells were symbolically flown in on a U.S. military cargo plane named after late American Gen. Douglas MacArthur, who once famously declared that he would return to liberate the Philippines – a U.S. colony at the time – from Japanese occupation during World War II.

Kim said the ties binding the two allies were “ironclad” and “consecrated by the service and sacrifice of the Americans and Filipinos who fought side-by-side for freedom.”

“On behalf of the United States, it is my great honor to be here at this closing of a painful chapter in our history,” he said. “The bells’ return reflects the strong bonds and mutual respect between our nations and our people. It demonstrates our determination to honor the past and the sacrifices made together by Filipinos and Americans. And it heralds our bright future as friends, partners, and allies.”

While Kim noted that past Philippine presidents had worked to have the bells returned, President Rodrigo Duterte took the Americans to task over them.

The president’s rhetoric and threats to sideline Washington while the Philippines sought closer ties with U.S. rivals China and Russia were largely seen as having sped up legal work needed to repatriate the church bells.

“The history of these bells spans the entire relationship between the United States and the Philippines. In the process, they have touched many lives. And their return underscores the enduring friendship between our countries, our shared values and shared sacrifices,” Kim said.

The bells soon will be reinstalled at the Church of San Lorenzo de Martir in Balangiga, Samar province, a fitting Christmas gift to the mostly Catholic town that was pining for the return of the historical artifacts.

With the bells finally back on Philippine soil, both countries can now move on, Lorenzana said.

“They are going back to where they belong. It is time for healing. It is time for closure. It is time to look ahead as two nations should which shared history as allies,” the Philippine defense chief said.

“There’s no need to argue who is wrong and who is right. But it is safe to say these bells come to symbolize a painful episode in the history both the Philippines and U.S.,” he said.

Heading home

Duterte will be present during the handover of the Balangiga bells on Saturday in Eastern Samar.

In the town of Balangiga, residents were excited for the historic homecoming of the three bells, and local officials have tightened the security in time for the arrival ceremony. For the first time in more than a century, the bells will peal to mark this year’s nine dawn Masses before Christmas.

“We are praying we will have a good weather on the day of arrival,” said Fe Campanero, a town tourism officer, adding that the bells will be open for a public viewing for locals and tourists after the turnover.

The bells of Balangiga were considered war trophies by the U.S. Army after reprisals that followed the infamous Balangiga Massacre on Sept. 28, 1901. The massacre was ordered to avenge the deaths of 45 American soldiers who were attacked by Filipino guerrillas. The bells were taken by American soldiers because they were used to signal a surprise attack by Filipino revolutionaries.

After being removed from the Philippines, one of the bells wound up with the U.S. 9th Infantry regiment at Camp Red Cloud in South Korea, while the two others ended up were at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Cheyenne, Wyo.

President Duterte used the story of the Balangiga Massacre to cast aspersions on the U.S. government after it questioned his administration’s war on drugs that has left thousands dead since mid-2016. He then demanded the return of the bells, and accused Washington of being hypocritical for calling him out on alleged rights abuses when the American military had committed past atrocities.

By David Vergun

At one time, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria controlled a self-proclaimed caliphate that stretched from Syria to Iraq, but now that force in Iraq has been degraded so much that the remnants are hiding in caves, deep wadis and tunnels in the desert and hills of western Iraq’s austere terrain, the commander of Task Force Rifles told Pentagon reporters.

Army Col. Jonathan C. Byrom, who also serves as deputy director of Joint Operations Command Iraq, spoke via video teleconference from Baghdad.

Kurdish peshmerga and Iraqi security forces are conducting continuous clearance operations against these small pockets, the colonel said.

Checkpoints along the Iraq-Syria border have now been reopened, and Iraq’s border guard and security forces are operating along that border to prevent ISIS from crossing, he said. That includes “intense cross-border fires” by Iraqi and coalition forces in consultation and coordination with Syrian Democratic Forces, he added.

Iraqi security forces are large-scale clearance operations and are hunting ISIS leadership and trying to take out the terrorist group’s media, propaganda and financial capabilities, Byrom said.

Assistance from U.S., Coalition Forces

U.S. and coalition forces are advising, assisting and enabling Iraqi forces, he said, support that includes providing them with joint fires, intelligence, aerial surveillance and training, along with some equipment. “It’s a good partnership” that’s preventing a resurgence of ISIS and continues to degrade their numbers and effectiveness, the colonel said.

Byrom emphasized that the Iraqis are conducting their own missions and making the decisions. “They are effectively targeting ISIS and regularly conducting operations that disrupt ISIS and preventing their resurgence,” he said.

Asked how many ISIS fighters remain in Iraq, Byrom said he doesn’t focus on the number. “What we’re really focused on is the capability and whether they can translate this capability into destabilizing or resurging,” he explained.

The good news story, he said, is that ISIS attacks “are not having that much of an impact on the population.”

A gunman killed at least four people people Tuesday, inside the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Conception in Campinas, Brazil. After opening fire inside the cathedral, the gunman took his own life.

The man entered the cathedral at the conclusion of a midday Mass on Dec. 11 and began firing, according to the Military Police of Campinas. In addition to those killed, at least four people were injured during the attack.

According to local fire department officials, the man was carrying two handguns, at least one of which was a .38 caliber revolver.

He reportedly committed suicide directly in front of the cathedral’s altar.

Father Amauri Thomazzi, who celebrated Tuesday’s 12:15 Mass in the cathedral, published a video on his Facebook page, in which he requested prayer.

“At the end of the Mass, a person came in firing and took lives. Nobody could do anything,” the priest said.

“To you, friends, I ask only that you pray for the [attacker]. He killed himself after the situation. He shot people and there were over 20 shots in here, then he killed himself. So we pray for him and for those who have been injured, there are some fatalities,” he said.

The names of the victims and the attacker have not yet been disclosed.

On its Facebook page, the Archdiocese of Campinas also urged Catholics to pray.

“A shooting left at least five people dead and four others injured in the early afternoon of Tuesday, inside the Metropolitan Cathedral of Campinas, in the city center, according to information from the fire department. The motive is not yet known,” the Facebook post said.

“The cathedral remains closed for the care of the victims and the investigation of the police. Once we have more information, we will make it available. We count on the prayers of all in this moment of deep pain,” the post concluded.

Major Paulo Monteiro of the Campinas Fire Department told reporters that the motive for the crime is not yet known and that at the moment the main concern is the care of the survivors.

The wounded were taken to local hospitals; their condition has not been disclosed.

“Let us ask Our Lady Immaculate to intercede for this cathedral, for these people and for these families,” Thomazzi urged.

A new study shows that several species of bats are giving Madagascar’s rice farmers a vital pest control service by feasting on plagues of insects. And this, a zoologist at the University of Cambridge believes, can ease the financial pressure on farmers to turn forest into fields.

There are few places in the world where relations between agriculture and conservation are more strained. Madagascar’s forests are being converted to agricultural land at a rate of one per cent every year and much of this destruction is fuelled by the cultivation of the country’s main staple crop: rice.

A key reason for this is that insect pests are destroying vast quantities of rice, leading local subsistence farmers to destroy even more forest to create new paddies. The result is devastating habitat and biodiversity loss on the island. But not all species are suffering. In fact, some of the island’s insectivorous bats are thriving, and this has important implications for farmers and conservationists alike.

Co-leading an international team of scientists, Ricardo Rocha from the University of Cambridge’s Zoology department Conservation Science Group, found that several species of indigenous bats are taking advantage of habitat modification to hunt insects swarming above the country’s rice fields. They include the Malagasy mouse-eared bat, Major’s long-fingered bat, the Malagasy white-bellied free-tailed bat, and Peters’ wrinkle-lipped bat.

“These winner species are providing a valuable free service to Madagascar as biological pest suppressors,” Rocha said. “We found that six species of bat are preying on rice pests such as the paddy swarming caterpillar and grass webworm. The damage that these insects cause puts the island’s farmers under huge financial pressure and that encourages deforestation.”

The study, published in the journal Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment, used state-of-the-art ultrasonic recorders and molecular analysis to investigate the feeding activity of insectivorous bats in the farmland bordering the Ranomafana National Park in the southeast of the country.

The researchers recorded over a thousand bat ‘feeding buzzes’ (echolocation sequences used by bats to target their prey) at 54 sites, to identify their favourite feeding spots. This revealed that bat activity over rice fields was much higher than it was in continuous forest – seven times higher over irrigated rice fields, and sixteen times higher over hillside fields – which clearly shows that the animals are preferentially foraging in these man-made ecosystems. The researchers suggest that the bats favour hillside fields most because lack of water and nutrient run-off make these crops more susceptible to insect pest infestations.

The team next used DNA barcoding techniques to analyse droppings collected from bats captured within the rice plantations and nearby forest. All six species of bats were found to have fed on economically important insect pests. While the findings indicated that rice farming benefits most from the bats, the scientists also found pests of other crops, including the black twig borer (a pest of coffee), the sugarcane cicada, the macadamia nut-borer, and the sober tabby (a pest of citrus fruits).

“The effectiveness of bats as pest controllers has already been proven in the USA and Catalonia,” said co-author James Kemp, from the University of Lisbon. “But our study is the first to show this happening in Madagascar, where the stakes for both farmers and conservationists are very high.”

The researchers argue that maximising bat populations has the potential to boost crop yields and promote sustainable livelihoods. They are now calling for further research to quantify this contribution because Madagascar’s bats currently fall under game species legislation and are not actively protected in the country.

Bats comprise roughly one-fifth of all Malagasy mammal species and thirty-six recorded bat species are endemic to the island, making Madagascar one of the most important regions for conservation of this animal group anywhere in the world.

“Bats have a bad reputation in Madagascar because they are seen as a nuisance when they roost in buildings,” Rocha said. “The problem is that while these bats are benefiting from farming, deforestation is also denying them places to roost. With the right help, we hope that farmers can promote this mutually beneficial relationship by installing bat houses.”

Local people may have a further reason to be grateful to the animals. While bats are often associated with spreading disease, Rocha and his team found evidence that Malagasy bats feed not just on crop pests but also on mosquitos – vectors of malaria, Rift Valley fever virus and elephantiasis – as well as blackflies, which spread river blindness.

US healthcare costs for animal-related injuries exceed $1 billion every year

Numbers likely to rise amid climate change and development pressure on animal habitats, warn researchers

The healthcare costs of injuries caused by encounters with animals in the USA exceed US$1 billion every year, finds research published in the online journal Trauma Surgery and Acute Care Open.

These figures exclude doctors’ fees, outpatient clinic charges, lost productivity, or the costs of rehabilitation, and so are likely to be higher still, warn the researchers, who add that the numbers of injuries are likely to increase amid the impact of climate change and development pressures on animal habitats.

Most of the available evidence on the extent and costs of injuries caused by encounters with animals in the US has drawn on death certification data or short-term hospital studies.

The researchers therefore wanted to try and gauge the broader healthcare costs for injuries caused by a wide range of creatures great and small.

They looked at the outcomes for all patients who were treated for animal related injuries in emergency care departments across the US between 2010 and 2014, using data submitted to the National Emergency Department Sample (NEDS).

During the five year study period, 6, 457, 534 visits were made to emergency care departments by people who had sustained injuries as a result of an encounter with creatures great and small. Their average age was 31.

This equates to a rate of 19 animal-related injuries for every 10,000 visits to emergency care and 410 such injuries per 100,000 of the population.

Nearly half (2,648,880; 41%) of the injuries were caused by non-venomous insect and spider bites, while dog bites accounted for around one in four (1,658,295; 26%). Around one in eight (13%; 812,357) were caused by hornet, wasp, or bee stings.

Only a small proportion of patients (3%; 210,516) were admitted to hospital, with bites from insects and spiders accounting for a quarter of these admissions (26%).

Only 1162 patients (0.02%) died as a result of their injury, with the highest rate of deaths among those who had been bitten by a rat (6.5 deaths/100,000 bites), venomous snake/lizard (6.4/100,000 bites), or a dog (6.1/100,000 bites).

People over the age of 85 were six times more likely to be admitted to hospital and 27 times more likely to die after their injury.

Female sex was associated with better chances of survival and lower odds of a hospital admission.

The total healthcare costs for these animal related injuries over the five years was US$5.96 billion, which works out at US$1.2 billion for each of the five years. But this figure doesn’t include doctors’ fees, outpatient clinic charges, lost productivity, or the costs of rehabilitation.

Dog bites, non-venomous insect and spider bites, and bites from venomous snakes and lizards accounted for 60 per cent of the total costs.

“Animal-related injuries are an underappreciated and increasing burden to the US healthcare system,” say the researchers.

And this is likely to become worse amid the impact of climate change and development pressures on animal habitats, they suggest.

“Injuries due to mountain lions, bears, alligators and venomous snakes among other wild animals attract considerable media attention and are associated with dramatic morbidity and mortality.

But injuries caused by smaller animals and insects form the majority of incidents, and they are no less likely to be affected by habitat pressures and climate change, they add.

“As available habitat for these animals increasingly overlaps with human development and recreational activities, it is expected encounters with these animals may increase and could result in increased animal-related injuries,” they write.

Seventy percent of the current infrastructure in the Arctic has a high potential to be affected by thawing permafrost in the next 30 years. Even meeting the climate change targets of the Paris Agreement will not substantially reduce those projected impacts, according to a new study published in Nature Communications.

“Much more needs to be done to prepare Alaska and Alaskans for the adverse consequences of coming changes in permafrost and climate,” said Vladimir Romanovsky, a scientist with the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute who has been monitoring permafrost across Alaska for 25 years.

Permafrost is ground that is frozen year-round for a minimum of two years. When it thaws, it can change from solid earth into mud. In many cases, the ground will slump, leading to destructive failure in any structures erected there.

“These observations have led me to believe that the global warming is not a ‘fake’ but the reality,” Romanovsky said. “And here, in Alaska, we are dealing already and will be dealing even more in the near future with this reality.”

Romanovsky is one of the study’s authors, along with researchers from Finland, Norway, Russia and Michigan. The research is the first to explicitly show the amount of fundamental infrastructure across the Northern Hemisphere that is at risk of structural failure from permafrost thaw caused by climate change.

The paper reports that by 2050, about three-quarters of the population now living on permafrost, about 3.6 million people, will be affected by damage to infrastructure from permafrost thaw. In Alaska, about 340 miles of the trans-Alaska oil pipeline traverses ground where near-surface permafrost may thaw by 2050.

“The results show that most fundamental Arctic infrastructure will be at risk, even if the Paris Agreement target is achieved,” the authors write. However, after 2050, attaining the Paris Agreement goals would make a clear difference in potential damage to infrastructure.

The authors looked at measurements of ground temperature, annual thaw depth and other data to make their projections. They note that because of the uncertainties, the amount of infrastructure at risk from permafrost thaw is probably not much smaller than their estimate, but could be substantially larger.

Damage to industrial facilities such as pipelines could lead to major ecosystem disruption if it results in spills. Energy supplies, national security and general economic activity could be adversely affected as well, the authors write. The Yamal-Nenets region in northwestern Siberia is the source of more than one-third of the European Union’s pipeline imports of natural gas, for example.

Many parts of the Arctic’s infrastructure have relatively short lifespans. Planners and engineers need to know in detail where permafrost is most likely to thaw as they plan for replacements, upgrades and maintenance. This study mapped such areas at a resolution of 0.6 miles, allowing them to target mitigation where it is most needed.

A £36k lifetime cap on care costs for older people would cost £3.6 billion by 2035 – according to research from the University of East Anglia, the London School of Economics and Political Science and the Pensions Policy Institute.

Rolling out a minimum level of social care to all older people with high needs and limited resources would cost a similar amount.

A new report published reveals the costs and trade-offs of reforming long-term care funding for older people in England, and identifies those who stand to gain and lose from a range of proposed reforms.

It comes ahead of an eagerly-awaited Government Green Paper on Social Care.

In 2011, the Dilnot Commission found people with similar needs were getting “very different” levels of support and recommended a cap of £35k on the amount an individual must pay for their own care costs during their lifetime.

Today’s findings show that such a cap would cost about £3.6 billion by 2035, in today’s prices. And ensuring a minimum level of social care for all older people with high needs and limited resources would cost a similar amount.

Lead researcher Prof Ruth Hancock, from the Health Economics Group at the University of East Anglia, said: “There have been big questions about whether people should have to use all their savings to pay for care in old age, or whether local authorities should be given funds to ensure that a minimum level of care is available to all those in high need – even if individuals have to contribute something towards that care.”

“Our research estimates the current and projected care costs across a range of potential reforms.

“We have also identified trade-offs – in terms of protecting the savings of those who currently pay for all their care themselves and easing the means tests, for example for people who get some help with their care home’s fee but typically have to handover nearly all their income to their Local Authority as a contribution.”

The report reveals that easing the means test would enable some people, who currently fund their own care because of their savings or incomes, to receive publicly funded care.

Meanwhile funding care for a greater number of older people would enable those with high needs and limited resources, who may currently rely on unpaid care, to receive publicly funded care.

The research also shows that extending social care to all older people with at least moderate needs and limited resources would cost £5.8 billion by 2035. This would enable some of those whose needs are not currently deemed high enough to receive publicly funded care to do so in future.

For a similar cost, free personal care could be provided to all older people in England. This would enable those with substantial needs who currently fund their own care because of their savings or incomes to receive publicly funded care.

The proposed reforms investigated include previous plans for a £72k lifetime cap on care costs which had been due to be implemented in 2020, suggestions for a cap on care costs which covers daily living costs in care homes as well as care costs, free personal care as implemented in Scotland and the Conservative Party manifesto suggestion of including housing wealth in the means test for home care.

The research has been carried out by the CASPeR team which comprises members from the Pension Policy Institute, the London School of Economics and Political Science and the University of East Anglia. It was funded by the Nuffield Foundation.

Associate Professorial Research Fellow Raphael Wittenberg, from the Personal Social Services Research Unit at the London School of Economics and Political Science, said: “How best to reform the system of financing social care has proved a challenge for successive governments.

“There are difficult trade-offs to address. How far should additional resources be focused on relaxing the means test to help people with substantial care needs who because of the means test currently fund their own care? And how far should they be focused on people with limited resources who currently do not receive publicly funded care because their needs are not assessed as sufficiently substantial to meet the eligibility criteria? In order to inform decisions we have examined in detail the likely impacts of a range of potential reforms.”

New “classification models” sense how well humans trust intelligent machines they collaborate with, a step toward improving the quality of interactions and teamwork.

The long-term goal of the overall field of research is to design intelligent machines capable of changing their behavior to enhance human trust in them. The new models were developed in research led by assistant professor Neera Jain and associate professor Tahira Reid, in Purdue University’s School of Mechanical Engineering.

“Intelligent machines, and more broadly, intelligent systems are becoming increasingly common in the everyday lives of humans,” Jain said. “As humans are increasingly required to interact with intelligent systems, trust becomes an important factor for synergistic interactions.”

For example, aircraft pilots and industrial workers routinely interact with automated systems. Humans will sometimes override these intelligent machines unnecessarily if they think the system is faltering.

“It is well established that human trust is central to successful interactions between humans and machines,” Reid said.

The researchers have developed two types of “classifier-based empirical trust sensor models,” a step toward improving trust between humans and intelligent machines.

The work aligns with Purdue’s Giant Leaps celebration, acknowledging the university’s global advancements made in AI, algorithms and automation as part of Purdue’s 150th anniversary. This is one of the four themes of the yearlong celebration’s Ideas Festival, designed to showcase Purdue as an intellectual center solving real-world issues.

The models use two techniques that provide data to gauge trust: electroencephalography and galvanic skin response. The first records brainwave patterns, and the second monitors changes in the electrical characteristics of the skin, providing psychophysiological “feature sets” correlated with trust.

Forty-five human subjects donned wireless EEG headsets and wore a device on one hand to measure galvanic skin response.

One of the new models, a “general trust sensor model,” uses the same set of psychophysiological features for all 45 participants. The other model is customized for each human subject, resulting in improved mean accuracy but at the expense of an increase in training time. The two models had a mean accuracy of 71.22 percent, and 78.55 percent, respectively.

It is the first time EEG measurements have been used to gauge trust in real time, or without delay.

“We are using these data in a very new way,” Jain said. “We are looking at it in sort of a continuous stream as opposed to looking at brain waves after a specific trigger or event.”

Findings are detailed in a research paper appearing in a special issue of the Association for Computing Machinery’s Transactions on Interactive Intelligent Systems. The journal’s special issue is titled “Trust and Influence in Intelligent Human-Machine Interaction.” The paper was authored by mechanical engineering graduate student Kumar Akash; former graduate student Wan-Lin Hu, who is now a postdoctoral research associate at Stanford University; Jain and Reid.

“We are interested in using feedback-control principles to design machines that are capable of responding to changes in human trust level in real time to build and manage trust in the human-machine relationship,” Jain said. “In order to do this, we require a sensor for estimating human trust level, again in real-time. The results presented in this paper show that psychophysiological measurements could be used to do this.”

The issue of human trust in machines is important for the efficient operation of “human-agent collectives.”

“The future will be built around human-agent collectives that will require efficient and successful coordination and collaboration between humans and machines,” Jain said. “Say there is a swarm of robots assisting a rescue team during a natural disaster. In our work we are dealing with just one human and one machine, but ultimately we hope to scale up to teams of humans and machines.”

Algorithms have been introduced to automate various processes.

“But we still have humans there who monitor what’s going on,” Jain said. “There is usually an override feature, where if they think something isn’t right they can take back control.”

Sometimes this action isn’t warranted.

“You have situations in which humans may not understand what is happening so they don’t trust the system to do the right thing,” Reid said. “So they take back control even when they really shouldn’t.”

In some cases, for example in the case of pilots overriding the autopilot, taking back control might actually hinder safe operation of the aircraft, causing accidents.

“A first step toward designing intelligent machines that are capable of building and maintaining trust with humans is the design of a sensor that will enable machines to estimate human trust level in real time,” Jain said.

To validate their method, 581 online participants were asked to operate a driving simulation in which a computer identified road obstacles. In some scenarios, the computer correctly identified obstacles 100 percent of the time, whereas in other scenarios the computer incorrectly identified the obstacles 50 percent of the time.

“So, in some cases it would tell you there is an obstacle, so you hit the brakes and avoid an accident, but in other cases it would incorrectly tell you an obstacle exists when there was none, so you hit the breaks for no reason,” Reid said.

The testing allowed the researchers to identify psychophysiological features that are correlated to human trust in intelligent systems, and to build a trust sensor model accordingly. “We hypothesized that the trust level would be high in reliable trials and be low in faulty trials, and we validated this hypothesis using responses collected from 581 online participants,” she said.

The results validated that the method effectively induced trust and distrust in the intelligent machine.

“In order to estimate trust in real time, we require the ability to continuously extract and evaluate key psychophysiological measurements,” Jain said. “This work represents the first use of real-time psychophysiological measurements for the development of a human trust sensor.”

The EEG headset records signals over nine channels, each channel picking up different parts of the brain.

“Everyone’s brainwaves are different, so you need to make sure you are building a classifier that works for all humans.”

For autonomous systems, human trust can be classified into three categories: dispositional, situational, and learned.

Dispositional trust refers to the component of trust that is dependent on demographics such as gender and culture, which carry potential biases.

“We know there are probably nuanced differences that should be taken into consideration,” Reid said. “Women trust differently than men, for example, and trust also may be affected by differences in age and nationality.”

Situational trust may be affected by a task’s level of risk or difficulty, while learned is based on the human’s past experience with autonomous systems.

The models they developed are called classification algorithms.

“The idea is to be able to use these models to classify when someone is likely feeling trusting versus likely feeling distrusting,” she said.

Jain and Reid have also investigated dispositional trust to account for gender and cultural differences, as well as dynamic models able to predict how trust will change in the future based on the data.

Hazelnuts are poised to be the “it” nut for 2019, and new research suggests that adding hazelnuts to your daily diet could bode well for long-term health.

The new study, administered by the Linus Pauling Institute at Oregon State University and published in the December 2018 issue of The Journal of Nutrition , found that older adults who added hazelnuts to their diet for 16 weeks significantly improved their levels of two key micronutrients. Results showed increased blood concentrations of magnesium and elevated urinary levels of a breakdown product of alpha tocopherol, commonly known as vitamin E.

Older adults are at increased risk of various chronic diseases where inadequate levels of vitamins and minerals may play a significant role, including cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer’s disease, liver disease and cancer. Tree nuts, including hazelnuts, contain a wide variety of vitamins and minerals, and are an excellent source of vitamin E and good source of magnesium, two “shortfall nutrients” that are lacking in the typical American diet.

Study Details

Researchers stated the objective of the study was to determine whether daily hazelnut consumption by healthy older adults for 16 weeks improves biomarkers of micronutrient status, especially vitamin E and magnesium. Participants (n = 32 including 22 women; mean ± SD age: 63 ± 6 y) consumed hazelnuts (?57 g/d) for 16 weeks. Blood and urine samples and anthropomorphic measures were taken at the start and end of the intervention to determine plasma concentrations of α-tocopherol and serum concentrations of magnesium, lipids, glucose, insulin, and high-sensitivity C-reactive protein along with urinary vitamin E metabolites; several other micronutrients were measured by a lymphocyte proliferation assay. There were 3 primary endpoints, calculated as the mean changes in measurements between baseline and the end of the 16 week intervention for 1) plasma α-tocopherol, 2) urinary α-carboxyethyl hydroxychromanol (α-CEHC; an α-tocopherol metabolite), and 3) serum magnesium.

Hazelnuts: The indulgent health nut

A one-ounce serving (28.35 g) of raw hazelnuts contains 27 percent (4 mg) of your daily value (15 mg) of vitamin E . Vitamin E is a shortfall micronutrient, as identified by the Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2015-2020 , which frequently is consumed at levels less than the Estimated Average Requirement of 15 mg/day.

These new findings complement existing knowledge about the role of nuts in heart health. In 2003, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved a qualified health claim related to nuts that states: “Scientific evidence suggests but does not prove that eating 1.5 ounces per day of most nuts, such as hazelnuts, as part of a diet low in saturated fat and cholesterol may reduce the risk of heart disease.” U.S Dietary Guidelines recommend that the majority of your fat intake be unsaturated. One serving of raw hazelnuts (28.35 grams, or about 21 hazelnuts) has 6 grams of monounsaturated fat and only 1 gram of saturated fat.

This discovery also builds upon a growing body of scientific evidence on the benefits of nuts for older adults (average age 63 + 6 years). In 2013, observational researchers at Harvard University looked at how eating nuts may help reduce the risk of mortality, finding that those who ate nuts daily, such as hazelnuts, saw health benefits nearly double. The benefits were seen in both men and women, independent of other predictors for mortality. The results, published in the New England Journal of Medicine , are based on approximately three decades of follow-up among 76,464 women in the Nurses’ Health Study (1980-2010) and 42,498 men in the Health Professionals Follow-up Study (1986-2010), including examination of food questionnaire data.

Compared to people who didn’t eat nuts, people who ate nuts saw benefits that increased along with the number of servings of nuts they ate. Those who ate nuts seven times a week had nearly twice the benefit compared to those who ate nuts once a week; once a week nut eaters had a small, but still significant benefit. This observational study is an important addition to the body of research on nuts and heart health; however, given its observational nature, it’s not possible to conclude cause and effect between nut consumption and mortality.

Hazelnuts 365: A tasty way to get your daily dose of nuts

Oregon hazelnuts are a delicious way to get seven servings of nuts per week. Because they are so versatile, these crunchy Pacific Northwest gems upgrade the flavor and nutrition of salads, entrees, desserts and snacks. A one-ounce serving of hazelnuts equals approximately 21 nuts.

A 2017 consumer survey, funded by the Oregon Hazelnut Marketing Board, found that 47 percent of people found hazelnuts to be “very healthy,” which was nearly twice the number from the previous year. The survey also found people don’t view hazelnuts as being as expensive as some other nuts. Food manufacturers have taken note and hazelnuts are gradually starting to appear in more commercially available products, according to the survey, growing from 63 products in 2013 to 93 in 2015, when data was last available.

Oregon boasts an ideal climate for producing the world’s highest quality hazelnuts and it’s in this special corner of the world where temperate ocean, mountain and river climates meet with rich volcanic soils to create prime hazelnut-growing country. Ninety-nine percent of U.S. hazelnuts are grown in Oregon across 72,000 acres. The 2018 harvest has officially come to an end, and early reports indicate a yield of 46,000 to 48,000 tons, an increase of 44-50 percent over last year’s 32,000 tons.

“This harvest season was a great success thanks to perfect weather conditions, new acreage, dedicated farmers and the hazelnut industry work force,” said Meredith Nagely, manager of the Oregon Hazelnut Marketing Board. “Consumers can expect to see an increase in hazelnuts available at retailers and on menus.”

Using data gleaned from historical reports, researchers have now identified the sources of some of the most destructive Indonesian earthquakes in Java, Bali and Nusa Tenggara, using these data to independently test how well Indonesia’s 2010 and 2017 seismic hazard assessments perform in predicting damaging ground motion.

The study published in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America concludes that the hazard assessments do well at predicting damaging ground motion in key Javanese cities, but that there is much more to learn about earthquake sources in the region.

Indonesia has made earthquake risk prediction a priority after the magnitude 9.1 Sumatra-Andaman megathrust earthquake and tsunami in 2004, but to date most of the research on regional earthquake hazard has concentrated on Sumatra, at the expense of studies further east in Java, said Jonathan Griffin of Geoscience Australia and colleagues.

More than 57 percent (about 140 million people) of Indonesia’s population lives in Java, “on a relatively small island roughly the same area as New York State, or the North Island of New Zealand, that faces many natural hazards,” explained Griffin. “Getting the hazard levels right to underpin building codes is therefore critically important for a huge number of people, particularly combined with rapid economic growth and urbanization in Indonesia.”

Probabilistic seismic hazard assessments or PSHA is a method that calculates the likelihood that certain levels of earthquake-related ground shaking will exceed a specific intensity at a given location and time span. PSHA calculations are based on data from earthquakes detected by seismographs, however, so some of the largest and most damaging earthquakes in a region may not be included in the assessments if they occurred before instrumentation in a region.

Griffin and colleagues analyzed historical catalogs and accounts of earthquakes in Java, Bali and Nusa Tenggara from 1681 to 1877, to determine the source and shaking intensity for some of the region’s historically destructive earthquakes.

The most significant tectonic feature of the Indonesian region is the collision and subduction of the Indian and Australian tectonic plates under the Sunda and Burma tectonic plates, generating megathrust earthquakes like the 2004 Sumatra quake. However, the researchers found little evidence for the occurrence of large earthquakes on the Java Megathrust fault during the historic time period they studied.

Instead, they concluded that large intraslab earthquakes (earthquakes that occur within a subducting tectonic plate) were responsible for some of Java’s most damaging historic quakes, including a magnitude 7.4 earthquake near Jakarta in 1699 and a magnitude 7.8 quake in Central Java in 1867. The researchers also noted a cluster of large earthquakes occurring on the Flores Thrust to the east of Java in 1815, 1818 and 1820, as well as earthquakes on shallow crustal faults on Java that had not been mapped previously.

The Flores Thrust was responsible for two magnitude 6.9 earthquakes in Lombok in August 2018 that together killed more than 500 people.

Intraslab earthquakes are well-known in the region, including recent events such as the magnitude 7.6 quake in West Sumatra and the magnitude 7.0 quake in West Java that together killed more than 1000 people in 2009, said Griffin. “However we were surprised that we didn’t find conclusive evidence for a large megathrust event during the time period we examined.”

Although it can be difficult to distinguish between megathrust and intraslab earthquakes using the data analyzed by the researchers, Griffin said that the data he and his team analyzed fit better with an intraslab model. “So while the intraslab models fit the data better for earthquakes in 1699 and 1867, we also rely on an absence of tsunami observations from coastal locations where ground shaking damage was reported to make the case that intraslab events were the more likely source,” he added.

“The absence of strong historical evidence for a large megathrust earthquake south of Java over the past 350 years is a really interesting problem,” said Griffin. Javanese and Dutch population centers “were historically on the north coast facing the calmer Java Sea, so we only have limited data from the less hospitable south coast. So it’s quite likely that smaller megathrust earthquakes have occurred that aren’t captured well in the historical records, but we’d be surprised if a really large earthquake went unnoticed.”

Previous research suggests that that the length of time between earthquakes on the Sumatran megathrust varies considerably, said Griffin. “So the lack of large megathrust events south of Java over the past few centuries could just imply that we have been in a period of relative inactivity, but not that large earthquakes occur less frequently here on average over the long-term.”

By Aileen Agüero García

Recently, different arguments have been discussed in terms of why India should focus more in the Latin American region.^[1] Among them are pro poor policies in the latter that lead to expand India’s exports potential; strategic importance in energy and food security; increasing trade in commodities, among others. At the same time, the lack of a uniform approach from India towards Latin America is stated as one of the main challenges.

In particular, it becomes relevant to analyse India’s relations with Peru, one of the region’s fastest-growing economies in the last decades. Diplomatic relations started in the seventies decade, while trade and economic exchange expanded during the nineties, when Peru joined APEC and became more interested in the Asian region. The main cooperation topics in bilateral agreements among these countries include education, geology, natural resources, investment promotion, health, taxation, and in the last few years, negotiations have started for a Free Trade Agreement (FTA).

In terms of this agreement, the first round of negotiations started in August 2017, while the second and third ones are taking place during 2018 (April and December). It is important to mention that India has been mainly exporting to Peru motor vehicles, iron and steel products, cotton and manmade yarn, drugs formulations, iron and steel, auto tyres and tubes, etc.; all these constitute key inputs for the Peruvian industry, and there is also considerable potential for Peru to import technological goods for promoting the digital transformation of its firms. Peru’s exports to India, on the other hand, consist of gold and copper to a great extent, and more recently of cocoa, grapes, coffee and fishmeal.

Lima, the capital city, is currently a hub for different operations, which could be useful for India to reach more markets. Therefore, both countries could become strategic partners to continue growing together.

In addition, one aspect that needs to be discussed is related to the new opportunities that emerge as a consequence of the exchange of goods and services between both countries in the context of the Information Society. Nowadays, information is considered an asset and it is almost freely available for people who manage to connect to the Internet. Technologies and several digitization processes have had a huge impact in different aspects of our daily lives, and trade is not an exception.

According to the 2017 Information Economy Report (United Nations), a limited number of businesses in developing countries trade across borders; exports are usually driven by few firms; and a significant proportion of firms (70%) do not last more than a year as exporters. Explanations on these issues are related to limited geographical diversification of exports of sellers that are still offline. In this sense, the promotion of access to the Internet could contribute to change these patterns of international trade.

E-commerce (commercial transactions conducted electronically through the Internet) comes to play a fundamental role, as it has the potential of expanding market opportunities, providing new services, reducing transaction costs, having faster processes, etc.; in other words, it could constitute a tool to promote entrepreneurship, creativity and innovation.

However, in economic transactions it is necessary to have information on both the quality of traded goods, as well as on the reputation of the counterpart. In the case of e-commerce, given its characteristics, problems of information asymmetries are more evident than in traditional transactions. First, there may be no knowledge about how the data that is provided online would be used; as a consequence, this lack of information negatively influences customers’ perceptions of security and trust. This asymmetry could become a great barrier to the development of ecommerce,
but if there is a secure virtual environment (websites with clear information about the conditions of the transaction), the potential benefits of this tool would be higher.

In addition, there are information gaps related to products’ characteristics, since it is difficult to have complete details about their real quality. This failure can lead to opportunistic behaviour from one of the parties involved in e-commerce transactions, such as the distortion of information and violation of rules and regulations. In addition, online fraudulent transactions may occur since the identity of online business parties can not be fully verified.

On the one hand, since 2013, India has been working on a national-level Cyber Security Policy, while Peru is still revising a national plan. FTA discussions should include this topic and take the opportunity to align both strategies, to enhance not only traditional trade but also e-commerce.

Information on e-commerce indicators in Peru can provide an idea of its development.^[2] For instance, only 15% of Peruvian firms buy goods and services through e-commerce; these firms are basically in the following sectors: information and communications, electricity supply and human health care. Regarding online sales, only 7% of firms reported using the Internet to sell their products, and the main sector is accommodation and food services; medium-sized firms are the ones using more electronic channels (as compared to large firms), which shows ecommerce
could contribute for more inclusive trade.

In conclusion, we have seen that an FTA among India and Peru could benefit both parties but also these potential benefits may be higher if efforts are put in terms of e-commerce promotion as well as the enhancement of security in the digital world. Negotiations should also include these topics in order to achieve better outcomes.

^[1] See

^[2] Annual Economic Survey 2016 – National Statistics Office (Peru)

By Gergely Varga*

A deepening diplomatic row between Ukraine and Hungary is beginning to draw the attention of the US foreign policy establishment. Tensions have increased recently between Kiev and Budapest in connection with a new Ukrainian education law and the issue of dual citizenship for ethnic Hungarians living in Ukraine. The main reason why Washington has been paying increasing attention to the debate stems from a Hungarian decision to take the issue to the North-Atlantic Council, and to block all high-level NATO-Ukraine dialogue until the dispute over the education law is resolved.

From Washington’s perspective, Budapest is threatening the strategic interests of the Alliance, namely the goal of bringing Ukraine closer to Euro-Atlantic institutions, for narrow national interests with no relevance to strategic and geopolitical considerations during a time of crisis. Although Washington certainly is correct in considering the significance of Ukraine’s future geopolitical orientation and, as the leading NATO power with decades of investments in European security, the U.S. has legitimate interests in the region, it’s still worth taking a more careful view of the Hungarian perspective in this debate.

At the center of Hungarian-Ukrainian tensions is an education law adopted by Ukraine in the fall of 2017, which obliges secondary schools to teach only in the Ukrainian language. The new regulation would seriously harm the rights of ethnic minorities to education in their native language.

In its dispute with Kiev, Hungary is not demanding new rights for ethnic Hungarians living in Ukraine or questioning Ukraine’s sovereignty, but defending existing rights guaranteed by the Ukrainian constitution and by international conventions to which Ukraine is a signatory. From this perspective, Hungary is not only stepping up for its own legitimate interests, but for the predominance of European conventions and for the international obligations of Ukraine, such as the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement. The issues at stake are thus not narrow-minded Hungarian interests, but the relevance of Euro-Atlantic norms and keeping Ukraine substantively on a Euro-Atlantic path.

Hungary never questioned the sovereign right of Ukraine to take measures for the protection of its state language; rather, it based its criticism – along with other countries, such as Romania and Poland – on legitimate legal arguments, primarily on the opinion of the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe. In its legal opinion about the controversial law, the Venice Commission stated:

Criticism seems justified due to a number of reasons… Article 7 contains important ambiguities and does not appear to provide the guidance needed from a framework law in the application of the country’s international and constitutional obligations.

From this perspective, Hungary is simply asking Ukraine to proceed according to the recommendations of the Commission. Even with strong legal arguments backing the Hungarian position, Budapest has demonstrated considerable flexibility, such as withdrawing its original request to revoke the law and instead asking for a multi-year transition period and for exemptions in the case of private schools. Within this context, Budapest exhausted all possible bilateral diplomatic avenues to resolve the issue before raising the question in NATO.

However, even within NATO, Hungary only blocks NATO-Ukrainian relations above the ambassadorial level. Furthermore, Hungary demonstrated its goodwill toward Ukraine at the Brussels Summit by allowing Kiev to participate at the Summit’s Black Sea conference and broadening the agenda of discussions to include topics considered to be important for Kiev. To summarize, it is not Russian influence or excessive Hungarian demands which are driving Hungarian policies against Kiev but legitimate Hungarian and Euro-Atlantic interests.

Unfortunately, during the past few months, tensions between Kiev and Budapest further escalated after “death lists” appeared on extremist Ukrainian websites involving Ukrainian Hungarians with dual citizenship. Kiev’s protests against Hungarian diplomats issuing passports in Ukraine to ethnic Hungarian Ukrainian citizens also heightened tensions.

According to Kiev’s narrative, Hungary violated Ukraine’s sovereignty with the passport issuance, but in reality these accusations are baseless. Even though Ukraine does not recognize dual citizenship, the law does not ordain any penalty if a Ukrainian citizen obtains another citizenship. It is worth mentioning that many Ukrainian politicians also hold the passport of another country. Furthermore, easier access to Hungarian citizenship for Ukrainian citizens with Hungarian ancestors has been available since 2010 and up until recently, the Ukrainian side didn’t raise any major objections against the practice. Therefore, instead of legitimate rule of law and sovereignty considerations being stressed by Kiev, domestic political interests are driving Ukrainian motivations in the dispute, with a view on the 2019 presidential and parliamentary elections.

Hungary is as much interested if not more than any other NATO member in the successful Euro-Atlantic integration of Ukraine. Budapest has demonstrated its genuine commitment to this goal through the past two decades, and even since 2014 countless times. However, from a Hungarian perspective, the Ukrainian transition process has to be substantive and based on shared Euro-Atlantic principles to be lasting and successful.

Concerns are raised in basically every Western capital in terms of the level of commitment to reforms by Ukraine’s elite. The common interest of NATO allies is to provide Ukraine with the proper incentives to press on with the necessary reforms while pushing back those forces which pull Ukraine further from European norms and principles. The first line of defense against regional Russian meddling is a strong, stable, and democratic Ukraine which adheres to the rule of law and respects the legitimate rights of all of its citizens.

*Gergely Varga is a senior research fellow at the Institute of International Affairs and Trade in Budapest specializing in Trans-Atlantic relations.      

The opinions, beliefs, and viewpoints expressed by the authors are theirs alone and don’t reflect the official position of Geopoliticalmonitor.com or any other institution.

Ge Chili,director of the Russian-Chinese Strategic Investment Foundation, tells RBC that his group has asked Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev to support a Chinese plan to construct a canal to divert water from the Altay region to China, a move that if Medvedev agrees seems certain to infuriate Russians and Siberians alike. 

The idea was already discussed at the Shanghai Cooperation Council Summit in June 2018, he says, and “received political support.”  The 1200 to 1500 km canal would be built in two states. In the first, costing 10 to 13 billion US dollars, it would carry 600 to 700 million cubic meters of water a year (rbc.ru/business/10/12/2018/5bf67ef69a79475447e3f597).

In the second stage,which would be built in the next two decades and cost 70 to 75 billion US dollars, it would lead to the flow of 1.8 to 2.4 billion cubic meters of water a year from Siberia to China, to be funded by international financial bodies like the IMF and World Bank. 

China is desperate to find new sources of water, especially for its parched northern regions, Ge says.  Russian experts say they view the project as “realistic”as long as it doesn’t take more than one percent of the flow of water in the Altay water system, something that Chinese plans suggest is not a restrict Beijing cares very much about staying within.

What is striking about this Chinese request and the apparently respectful response it is getting in Moscow is that the powers that be in the Russian capital appear to have forgotten what happened when they talked about diverting Siberian river water to Central Asian republics at the end of Soviet times.

Then it provoked a serious reaction among Russian nationalists who viewed this idea as something that would lead to the destruction of the Russian village.  Now,with Moscow focused only on money, the Kremlin may very well go ahead.  But if it does, there will be an even more negative reaction because satisfying China will have negative consequences for Russia – and especially for Russian areas east of the Urals.

Venezuela’s consumer prices rose 1.3 million percent in the year ending in November, the opposition-controlled National Assembly said on Monday, December 10 as hyperinflation and recession grip the OPEC member, Reuters reports.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecast earlier this year that inflation would top 1 million percent in 2018 and 10 million percent next year. Monthly inflation decelerated to 144 percent in November from 148 percent the prior month and 233 percent in September, the National Assembly said in a report.

Socialist President Nicolas Maduro late last month increased the monthly minimum wage by 150 percent to 4,500 bolivars, fewer than $10 at the black market exchange rate. Citizens had complained that they could not afford basic items despite a previous 60-fold minimum wage increase in August.

The National Assembly has become the only reliable source for consumer price data since the government stopped publishing economic indicators years ago as falling oil prices sent activity tumbling. The IMF has been pressuring Venezuela to provide it with official economic data, sources said last month.

Maduro blames an ‘economic war’ waged by domestic business interests and the United States for Venezuela’s woes. Critics point to his interventionist policies and printing of money to finance a wide fiscal deficit as the causes of hyperinflation and shortages of basic goods.

By José Niño*

James Bovard notes the threat to private gun ownership posed by the “deep state,” the “officials who secretly wield power permanently in Washington, often in federal agencies with vast sway and little accountability.”

While such laws were made by elected officials, it is unelected bureaucrats who are largely left in charge of enforcement, and that can cause big problems for gun owners. Just before press time for this issue, it was reported that a California farmer who was simply trying to meet the state’s ever-changing restrictive gun laws by registering his rifle is being charged with 12 felonies after the state DOJ determined his AR-15 to be “illegally modified.”

Questionable Federal Background Checks

Bovard’s observations should not come as a surprise. As government agencies — unlike lawmakers — are able to directly access databases that relate to gun ownership, the agencies themselves are often in a position to abuse this information. These databases are under the control of gigantic bureaucracies like FBI that face little to no accountability from voters.

The National Instant Background Check System (NICS) is the pillar of all background check systems for firearms purchases and was a part of the 1994 Brady Act. Any time a prospective gun owner wants to buy a gun from a federally licensed firearms dealer (FFL), they must go through a background check. Under this system, the FBI looks at certain factors such as criminal history and mental health to determine if an individual presents too much of a risk to own a firearm.

Although NICS is marketed as a speedy background check system, it comes with its own set of problems. NICS has gained notoriety for producing false positives. In other words, law-abiding citizens are mixed and matched with criminals who have the same name. In turn, these individuals are prevented from acquiring guns due to bureaucratic errors.

Particularly worrisome is the rate of initial NICS denials that turn out as false positives. Some estimates from the Crime Prevention Research Center indicate that in 2009 alone, 93 percent of initial NICS denials were false positives.

Regardless, NICS has remained intact even when evidence has shown that it is ineffective in combatting crime. For example, crime rates had already gone into steep decline by the mid-1990s, well before NICS went into effect in 1998.

Fear of Gun Registration is Warranted

Yet, the gun-control bureaucracy continues to grow. This was on full display when Fix NICS was recently signed into law— it was the largest gun expansion at the federal level since the Brady Act was enacted in 1993. Under Fix NICS, state governments are now being incentivized to share records with the federal government in order to streamline the background check process. Proponents of Fix NICS claim that these tweaks would have prevented the Charleston church and the Sutherland Springs mass shootings, in which both shooters supposedly fell through the cracks of the NICS system.

Certain gun owners worry that the federal government’s program to incentivize states to hand over their gun records could lead to the creation of a federal gun registry. And these fears are not without their merits.

After NICS came into effect in 1998, the federal government was eager to amass its own database. Even though the Brady Act prohibited the federal government from creating a gun owner registry, then Attorney General Janet Reno proceeded to keep gun owner records for 6 months — a clear violation of the Brady Act’s requirement to have all records destroyed immediately.

Bureaucracies are a Different Animal

The Reno incident shows yet again that bureaucracies have their own agendas. It is myopic to believe that bureaucracies will act in the public interest and abide by the rule of law when left unchecked.

Bovard thus raises an interesting concern: “While such laws were made by elected officials, it is unelected bureaucrats who are largely left in charge of enforcement, and that can cause big problems for gun owners”.

Exercising control over this sort of legal abuse can be exceptionally difficult when dealing with unelected bureaucrats. In the book Bureaucracy , Ludwig von Mises contended that the “worst law is better than bureaucratic tyranny”. There is considerable truth behind this assertion. A solid citizen lobby can vote out anti-gun politicians, but they will have much more work on their plate in order to put the clamps on bureaucratic overreach. In some cases it may require a wholesale abolition or defunding of a government bureaucracy — a tall order in today’s climate of ever-expanding government.

*About the author: Jose Nino is a Venezuelan-American political activist based in Fort Collins, Colorado. Contact: twitter or email him here.

Source: This article was published by the MISES Institute.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told the UN Security Council on Wednesday that the US is seeking to re-impose previous UN restrictions on Iran’s ballistic missile program, and that the UN should not lift an arms embargo on Iran in 2020.

A 2015 UN resolution “called upon” Iran to refrain for up to eight years from work on ballistic missiles designed to deliver nuclear weapons. Some states argue that the language does not make it obligatory.

The US wants the council to toughen that measure, Pompeo said, to reflect language in a 2010 resolution that left no room for interpretation by banning Iran from “activity related to ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using ballistic missile technology.”

He said the UN should also establish “inspection and interdiction measures, in ports and on the high seas, to thwart Iran’s continuing efforts to circumvent arms restrictions.”

He added that Iran does not comply with UN resolutions and continues to support terrorism around the world and that the US has evidence that Iran is supplying the Houthis in Yemen with missiles and weapons. 

“Iran is harboring Al-Qaeda, supporting Taliban militants in Afghanistan, arming terrorists in Lebanon, facilitating illicit trade in Somali charcoal benefiting Al-Shabaab, and training and equipping Shiite militias in Iraq,” he said.

Pompeo said that the US’s continued “goodwill gestures” had been “futile in correcting Iran’s missile activity” and its “destructive behavior.”

Eight EU nations underlined their commitment to the Iran nuclear deal while urging Tehran to stop its “destabilizing regional activities,” especially the launch of ballistic missiles.

Their statement said: “It has been confirmed that Iran continues to implement its nuclear related commitments.”

But they warned that ballistic-missile-related activities including “the launch of nuclear-capable missiles and any transfers of missiles, missile technologies and components” would violate Security Council resolutions.

Ambassadors of Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Sweden and United Kingdom issued the statement outside the UN Security Council on Wednesday ahead of a meeting on Iran’s compliance with the 2015 nuclear agreement and the council resolution endorsing it.

Eight months after United States’ unilateral exit from the Iran nuclear deal, Iran is still awaiting the European delivery of their promises for undertaking concrete and meaningful action to preserve the deal known as the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action). Yet, despite sincere efforts by the European Union officials to make good on some of their promises before the year’s end, the chaotic political scene in the continent may not allow this to happen.

Roiled by Britain’s increasingly chaotic and uncertain Brexit plans, France’s popular revolt, and the growing influence of far-right populist political forces, the European Union is in the midst of a political storm that certainly does not bode well for a “united and powerful” Europe. Germany too is rocked by political dissension and Merkel’s decision to step down as the leader of her party, thus throwing the future of German politics under a cloud of uncertainty. Europe is, in a word, ‘divided’ and, in the case of Macron’s France, grappling with an unprecedented political crisis warranting the embattled president’s re-prioritization of domestic needs and, perhaps, a major stepping back from Macron’s hitherto ambitious goal to play the role of a European leader. Today, under tremendous pressure at home, Macron is lucky if he can survive and hold onto power, requiring a substantial attrition of his globalist demeanor.

None of this is good news for the future prospect of JCPOA (minus US), which has been put on life-support since US’s exit and the re-imposition of nuclear-related sanctions by Washington. The JCPOA was meant to normalize Iran’s foreign trade and pave the way to foreign investment in Iran, and yet, the American deal breaker initiative has put the ball squarely in Europe’s lap, at a wrong time when the EU is increasingly fragmented and lacks the unity of purpose and determination, despite the verbal commitments to JCPOA.

Unfortunately, Iran does not have too many options and it would be futile for Tehran to press Europe to deliver the deliverables at a time when there are signs of crisis pretty much everywhere in Europe. EU’s foreign policy chief, Mogherini, has noble intentions and no one can question her sincerity, yet it is far from clear that Mogherini can summon the political forces necessary for a long-term united plan on the JCPOA.

From Iran’s vantage, it is in Europe’s own economic and security interests to safeguard the JCPOA from the precipice of extinction that it has been hurled to by the Trump administration, but the problem is that JCPOA has now become a badge of America’s impotence as a global leader and, naturally, the US is inclined to do whatever is necessary to frustrate the efforts of Mogherini and other well-intention EU officials with respect to the JCPOA. A considerably weakened and fractious Europe is ill-tuned with the strong will to stand up to American power determined to scuttle the nuclear deal — that it views as a win-lose favoring Iran.

At the moment, with several rounds of bilateral diplomacy between Iran and Europe, Tehran continues to vest hope in Europe’s ability to withstand the transatlantic pressures and translate its pro-JCPOA pronouncements into tangible results. Europe has lost a great deal of profit as a result of Trump’s unwise action and, chances are, a more inward looking Europe may be even less inclined to heed Trump’s policy prescriptions on Iran. The latter have so far gone nowhere and US is practically alone in the world on Iran, save a couple of regional allies, and that puts added pressure on Washington to seek to undermine the European leaders who pursue a foreign policy path not in line with United States. A big question regarding France is, of course, if Macron’s next chapter after the Yellow Vest rebellion will be marked with even greater independence from US, or will he try to patch up with Trump, who has been critical of him? In other words, it is far from given that the ‘new Macron’ will chart a new foreign policy map away from Washington, although there are at the moment strong signs that he may.

With respect to Britain, biggest possibility now is Theresa May’s failure followed by a general elections and or new referendum, in either case a good many months in London will be chewed up by the domestic priorities and, much like Paris, London will be less equipped to marshal the forces necessary for a grand opposition to American leviathan power when it comes to Iran and the Middle East. The irony is that although Iran has been primed for “regime change” by its rivals, this may come sooner for some of America’s Western allies. With the US actively seeking to preserve a unipolar moment, the current European sentiments for an “independent” Europe saddled by its own “European army” and so on may soon prove delusional. Negatively affecting Iran’s “Western strategy,” such negative developments cited above may in fact spur a more energetic “Eastern strategy” on Iran’s part, but that too must reckon with the differentiated interests of both Russia and China as well, instead of taking for granted a harmony of interests with the countries of the East. These are indeed challenging times for Iran’s external relations, and the turmoil in Europe simply compounds the nature of those challenges.

This article was published by Iranian Diplomacy

By Beatriz Rios and Jorge Valero

EU leaders will discuss late on Thursday (13 December) how to address the UK’s concerns about its withdrawal agreement from the EU, but discussions on contingency plans are gathering pace as the chances of an orderly divorce continue to wane.

“As time is running out, we will also discuss the state of preparations for a no-deal scenario,” European Council President Donald Tusk wrote in the letter sent to the EU leaders.

As part of this preparations, the EU progressed on plans to protect its financial industry, one of the sectors most exposed ones to a no-deal Brexit.

Member states agreed on Wednesday to grant a one-year permission to European traders to continue using the UK clearing houses in case of a no-deal result, as first reported by Financial Times.

Officials told EURACTIV.com that this temporary equivalence right would avoid forcing traders to redraft thousands of contracts in the derivatives market, most of which are controlled by UK-based Central Counterparty Clearing Houses, which could lead to financial turmoil. 

According to the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), the EU’s derivatives markets amounted to €660 trillion of gross notional outstanding transactions by the end of 2017.

Reassurances

May told her Parliament she would seek some “reassurances” from its EU partners during the summit to be held in Brussels on Thursday and Friday.

On Thursday afternoon she is expected to express her “concerns” about the postponed vote by MPs on the withdrawal agreement, initially scheduled for Tuesday, a senior EU official said on Wednesday (12 December).

Following her presentation, Tusk would open the floor for questions from the 27 leaders.

But it will be later at night, without May in the room, when the heads of state or government of the remaining 27 countries discuss what type of assurances could be offered.

The senior official insisted that these reassurances could not contradict the withdrawal agreement and the political declaration on future relations reached on 25 November.

The EU side remains open to discuss the formula to state the clarifications, as May wants a legally binding text. 

EU sources were considering on Tuesday a declaration, although a protocol attached to the withdrawal agreement was not ruled out by officials and could be part of the leaders’ discussion.

May met on Tuesday with Tusk and the European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker in a bid to win some assurances on the controversial backstop, which seeks to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland.

In order to placate hardliners in her party, May wants a clear commitment from the EU side that the backstop, which would force the UK to remain in the customs union, would be temporary.

But EU officials are sceptical that the declaration would play any difference, given the limited chances the withdrawal deal already had and the no-confidence vote put forward by her own Conservative party on Wednesday.

As time is running out, preparations for a no-deal scenario are increasing, EU officials said.

For former Irish minister of European Affairs, Dick Roche, May is going to be confronted with the need for a second referendum sooner rather than later.

Roche told EURACTIV.com that May would reach a point where she would see that “she did her best for passing her agreement with the EU, but it is not possible”. 

In that case, he believes she should go back to the people and allow them pick between two choices: having a no-deal Brexit or remaining in the EU.

A second referendum or snap election would force May to obtain an extension of the Brexit date from the EU beyond 29 March, and beyond the European elections in late May.

Noting that the leaders had not discussed any potential extension, the senior EU official said the reason why the date was being postponed would be key in deciding on the length.  

“We will find a good answer”, the source said.

A post-Brexit EU budget

As the UK leaves the EU, the bloc loses one of the main net contributors, which will heavily impact the next long-term budget, the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF).

The seven-year budget will be on the leaders’ agenda on Thursday. The EU heads of states and governments will have their first meaningful discussions on the proposal tabled by the Commission in May. 

For Juncker, this long-term budget is not only a counting exercise but a proposal to shape the future of Europe. 

In its proposal, the EU executive took account of leaders’ concerns over the need to finance new priorities, such as migration, security and the fight against climate change, while ensuring that traditional policies – Common Agricultural Policy and Cohesion Policy – are properly funded. 

However, the actual size of the budget, the introduction of a conditionality clause when accessing EU funds, and the redistribution of the money are still controversial issues among member states, and EU sources expect a long debate.

A step forward on deepening the EMU

On Friday, member states will gather for a euro summit and the discussions on the reform of the Economic and Monetary Union are expected to heat up. 

While leaders are expected to give the green light to completing the Banking Union, albeit in a watered down form, there are still some important issues to be discussed.

In particular, it is not clear what should be the scope of the leaders’ mandate when it comes to the Franco-German proposal for a eurozone budget, whose main objective is to boost competitiveness to ensure economic convergence among euro area members. 

However, some non-eurozone member states such as Hungary or Poland might have raised their concerns over the Eurogroup’s intention to include this budget in the next Multiannual Financial Framework, although funds would only be accessible for countries in the euro. 

It is not yet clear either whether or not France will push for the stabilisation function of the budget, which seems largely controversial among member states, particularly for the Netherlands. 

In spite of the remaining differences, EU sources insisted that the work done in the past few months to strengthen the Economic and Monetary Union proves the bloc is able to move forward in difficult areas in times of crisis and also periods of economic stability and growth. 

Neither the dispute over the Italian budget nor the possible deviation of France’s deficit – a result of the new measures announced by President Emmanuel Macron this week in response to ‘yellow vests’ protesters – are on the agenda.

Other topics on the agenda

The EU 28 are also expected to discuss foreign policy, migration, Single Market reform and the citizens’ dialogue proposals. 

On migration, there has not been enough progress for completing the remaining reforms of the common asylum policy legal instruments.

Moreover, the recent signing of the Global Pact on Migration, which several member states refused to back,  has once again exposed the deep divide among member states when it comes to the management of migratory flows. 

Despite the controversies, or precisely because of them, the debate on migration is not likely to last long, according to EU sources. 

The yellow vest or “gilet jaune” is symbolic following weeks of widespread protests in France, with thousands taking to the streets while wearing the vests to protest fuel price hikes and low wages. The intensity of the protests has cost France $11 billion and forced President Emmanuel Macron to make concessions by scrapping price hikes and promising to raise the minimum wage. The move is probably the first of many capitulations. 

The background is relevant. As part of his environmental policy strategy, Macron announced a green tax on fuel last month to come into effect on Jan. 1. The move set off nearly a month of protests around France. The Interior Ministry estimates 136,000 protesters turned out across the country over the past weekend, in addition to 280,000 in previous weeks. The protests started in the French provinces but spread to Paris, where demonstrations turned into riots and scenes of violent civil unrest occurred on the Avenue des Champs Elysees.

The yellow vest protesters were people from rural areas who have to drive long distances as part of their daily life. They said they couldn’t afford the hike in fuel prices. Protests appeared in pockets around France to denounce Macron’s green tax, and then quickly grew into a larger movement that includes members of the working and middle classes, who are expressing their frustration about slipping standards of living. They say their incomes are too high to qualify for social welfare benefits but too low to make ends meet. The movement has no official leadership and was organized initially through social media groups.

The protesters focus on Macron as the source of their problems. Along with his early reforms to loosen labor laws and cut France’s famous wealth tax, the fuel tax reinforced protesters’ image of him as a president for the rich. For some, Macron represents the French elite and thus the dividing line between the elite and the workers is now fully exposed.

There is no doubt that the yellow vest movement is not weakening. It will therefore continue to take root and highlight the gap between the haves and the have-nots, between urban and rural divides. The EU ultimately faces a test, as social and political challenges continue to emerge and challenge continental unity. 

Last weekend showed that the level of violence in France had gone up several degrees. The number of arrests exceeded 1,300. Investigations are being carried out in order to understand and pinpoint the movement in terms of its leadership. People have been injured by the police. The symbol of law enforcement used by the gendarmerie in Paris will remain. Importantly, the rioting evoked comparisons with the violence of 1968.

In 1968, a battle between 6,000 student demonstrators and 1,500 gendarmes escalated within days to a civil dispute featuring 10 million French workers going on strike and bringing the economy to a virtual halt. The De Gaulle government was forced to hold new elections. Importantly, May 1968 is an important marker in modern French history between the balance of what may be called the “liberation and anarchy” and feeds into today’s discourse over the significance of the yellow vest movement. Today’s riots are different in that, in modern society, everything is filmed, including images showing high school students in Mantes-la-Jolie being rounded up by the police. The images tell an interesting story of where France is going as part of Europe.

Macron’s government has a road map that is between the framework of the EU and the euro. If Macron leaves this path, the impact on financial markets will be immediate. His government is listening to the markets and complying with the euro’s framework. Moreover, the French government will now need to move on to the introduction of proportional representation in the upcoming elections, while balancing the requirement to reduce the number of MPs and senators. Wrapped up in the political game are traditional issues of immigration and acculturation within French society that have fed into the yellow vest demonstrations, especially in terms of slogans and graffiti. 

It is therefore more than likely that the movement will continue, as Macron has been damaged by the riots and their significance. Images of violence and continued resentment at a lack of change may mean that Macron is a “lame duck” at exactly the wrong time geopolitically. France is in the middle of several security and military operations throughout Africa and the Middle East and is intensely working on the Iran file, in addition to making heavy energy investments. Paris is also involved in important counter-terrorism operations. Domestic violence at home and a crisis of authority does not add up well for scoring major foreign policy points in the coming year. 

Overall, France has entered a crisis period. This crisis will have social, political and institutional dimensions. But it may be more about the adverse effects on the EU framework, and in particular the euro, at this juncture. Macron, who was gesticulating earlier this year at the World Cup in Russia, is unlikely to enjoy that pose again in the future.