| U.K.'s Andrea Leadsom to Meet Businesses to Assess Brexit Preparedness Posted: 11 Sep 2019 04:01 PM PDT ![U.K.'s Andrea Leadsom to Meet Businesses to Assess Brexit Preparedness]( "U.K.'s Andrea Leadsom to Meet Businesses to Assess Brexit Preparedness") (Bloomberg) -- Business Secretary Andrea Leadsom will meet with companies on Thursday to assess preparedness for the U.K.'s departure from the European Union.Executives at nine companies including the business services firms Deloitte and EY and engineers Arup Group have been invited to Leadsom's office in Westminster for a morning roundtable, the business department said in a statement, noting it will be the sixth such meeting hosted by Leadsom.While Leadsom aims to give reassurances to businesses as the U.K. prepares to exit a trading bloc of 500 million consumers, she also wants to hear how they're preparing for Brexit.The meeting comes as huge uncertainty surrounds when Britain will leave the bloc. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has promised to deliver Brexit "do or die" and without a deal if necessary on Oct. 31, but Parliament has passed legislation forcing him to seek an extension if he hasn't secured a new deal by Oct. 19.That represents an organizational headache for companies currently preparing for a third Brexit date after the two earlier deadlines were pushed back."Today's meeting is to discuss both the opportunities and concerns facing business and to help them get ready for Brexit," Leadsom said in a statement. "My number one priority is ensuring businesses get ready."The government has stepped up preparations for a no-deal departure, and is also trying to smooth out the process for companies -- particularly small and medium-sized ones -- that don't have the planning capacity or financial firepower to prepare for every scenario.That includes the automatic enrollment of exporters in a key customs system so they can trade with the European Union after Brexit.To contact the reporter on this story: Alex Morales in London at amorales2@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Tim Ross at tross54@bloomberg.net, Thomas Penny, Stuart BiggsFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Trump Flirts With $15 Billion Bailout for Iran, Sources Say Posted: 11 Sep 2019 03:48 PM PDT  NICHOLAS KAMMPresident Donald Trump has left the impression with foreign officials, members of his administration, and others involved in Iranian negotiations that he is actively considering a French plan to extend a $15 billion credit line to the Iranians if Tehran comes back into compliance with the Obama-era nuclear deal.Trump has in recent weeks shown openness to entertaining President Emmanuel Macron's plan, according to four sources with knowledge of Trump's conversations with the French leader. Two of those sources said that State Department officials, including Secretary Mike Pompeo, are also open to weighing the French proposal, which would effectively ease the economic sanctions regime that the Trump administration has applied on Tehran for more than a year.The deal put forth by France would compensate Iran for oil sales disrupted by American sanctions. A large portion of Iran's economy relies on cash from oil sales. Most of that money is frozen in bank accounts across the globe. The $15 billion credit line would be guaranteed by Iranian oil. In exchange for the cash, Iran would have to come back into compliance with the nuclear accord it signed with the world's major powers in 2015. Tehran would also have to agree not to threaten the security of the Persian Gulf or to impede maritime navigation in the area. Lastly, Tehran would have to commit to regional Middle East talks in the future. While Trump has been skeptical of helping Iran without preconditions, In public, the president has in public at least hinted at an openness to considering Macron's pitch for placating the Iranian government—a move intended to help bring the Iranians to the negotiating table and to rescue the nuclear agreement that Trump and his former national security adviser John Bolton worked so hard to torpedo.At the G7 meeting in Biarritz, France last month, Trump told reporters that Iran might need a "short-term letter of credit or loan" that could "get them over a very rough patch."Why Trump Wants the Ayatollah's CashIranian Prime Minister Javad Zarif made a surprise appearance at that meeting. To Robert Malley, who worked on Iran policy during the Obama administration, that visit indicated that "Trump must have signaled openness to Macron's idea, otherwise Zarif would not have flown to Biarritz at the last minute." "Clearly, Trump responded to Macron in a way that gave the French president a reason to invite Zarif and Zarif a reason to come," he said.The French proposal would require the Trump administration to issue waivers on Iranian sanctions. That would be a major departure from the Trump administration's so-called "maximum pressure" campaign to exact financial punishments on the regime in Tehran. Ironically, during his time in office, President Barack Obama followed a not-dissimilar approach to bring the Iranians to the negotiating table, throttling Iran's economy with sanctions before pledging relief for talks. The negotiations resulted in the Iran nuke deal that President Trump called "rotten"—and pulled the U.S. out of during his first term.Trump's flirtations with—if not outright enthusiasm toward—chummily sitting down with foreign dictators and America's geopolitical foes are largely driven by his desire for historic photo ops and to be seen as the dealmaker-in-chief. It's a desire so strong that it can motivate him to upturn years worth of his own administration's policymaking and messaging.And while President Trump has not agreed to anything yet, he did signal a willingness to cooperate on such a proposal at various times throughout the last month, including while at the G7 meeting in Biarritz, France, according to four sources with knowledge of the president's conversations about the deal.Several sources told The Daily Beast that foreign officials are expecting Trump to either agree to cooperate on the French deal or to offer to ease some sanctions on Tehran. Meanwhile, President Trump is also considering meeting Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in September. "I do believe they'd like to make a deal. If they do, that's great. And if they don't, that's great too," Trump told reporters Wednesday. "But they have tremendous financial difficulty, and the sanctions are getting tougher and tougher." When asked if he would ease sanctions against Iran in order to get a meeting with Iran Trump simply said: "We'll see what happens. I think Iran has a tremendous, tremendous potential."Spokespeople for the State Department, White House, and Treasury did not provide comment for this story. A spokesperson for the National Security Council simply referred The Daily Beast to Trump's Wednesday comments on Iran. Bolton didn't comment on Wednesday, either.Trump's willingness to discuss the credit line with the French, the Iranians and also Japanese President Shinzo Abe frustrated Bolton who had for months had urged Trump against softening his hard line against the regime in Tehran. Bolton, who vociferously opposed the Macron proposal, departed the Trump administration on explicitly and mutually bad terms on Tuesday. On his way out of door, Trump and senior administration officials went out of their way to keep publicly insisting he was fired, as Bolton kept messaging various news outlets that Trump couldn't fire him because he quit. The former national security adviser and lifelong hawk had ruffled so many feathers and made so many enemies in the building that his senior colleagues had repeatedly tried to snitch him out to Trump for allegedly leaking to the media. On Tuesday afternoon, Bolton messaged The Daily Beast to say that allegations about him being a leaker were "flatly incorrect."At a press briefing held shortly after Bolton's exit on Tuesday, neither Secretary of State Mike Pompeo nor Treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin showed much sympathy for Bolton's falling star in Trumpworld. "There were many times Ambassador Bolton and I disagreed," Pompeo told reporters. "That's to be sure, but that's true with a lot of people with whom I interact."According to those who know Pompeo well, the secretary's public statement was a glaring understatement.Trump Approved Iran Strikes Knowing Body Count Would Be High"By the end he viewed [Bolton] as an arsonist hell bent on setting fire to anyone's agenda that didn't align with his own—including the president's," said a source close to Pompeo who's discussed Bolton with the secretary in recent weeks. Pompeo "believes him to be among the most self-centered people he's ever worked with. A talented guy, no doubt, but not someone who was willing to subordinate his ego to the president's foreign-policy agenda." Whether or not the president follows through with supporting Macron is unclear, as Trump is known to consider or temporarily back high-profile domestic or foreign policy initiatives, only to quickly backtrack or about-face. Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? 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| Israel's Netanyahu faces criticism over annexation plan Posted: 11 Sep 2019 03:31 PM PDT  Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's pre-election pledge to annex the West Bank's Jordan Valley drew praise from right-wing allies Wednesday, but opponents called it a desperate bid to remain in office. Battling to win re-election in September 17 polls, Netanyahu issued the deeply controversial pledge on Tuesday night, drawing firm condemnation from the Palestinians, Arab states, the United Nations and the European Union. Netanyahu said in a televised speech he would move to annex the strategic valley, which accounts for around a third of the occupied West Bank, if he wins the vote.
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| U.K. Warns of Protests, Chaotic Border Scenes in No-Deal Brexit Posted: 11 Sep 2019 03:24 PM PDT ![U.K. Warns of Protests, Chaotic Border Scenes in No-Deal Brexit]( "U.K. Warns of Protests, Chaotic Border Scenes in No-Deal Brexit") (Bloomberg) -- The full scale of the damage a no-deal Brexit could cause to the U.K. was revealed when Boris Johnson's government published its worst-case scenario -- a document it tried to keep secret.The paper warned of food and fuel shortages, disruption to the supply chain, public disorder and intense pressure to return to the negotiating table if the U.K. crashes out of the European Union without an agreement. The five-page summary of no-deal planning, code-named Yellowhammer, was released late Wednesday to meet a deadline forced upon the government by Parliament.The scenario undermines Prime Minister Boris Johnson's assertion that the U.K. can cope with a no-deal Brexit, and will further fuel opposition to his strategy to take the U.K. out of the EU "do or die" on Oct. 31. Parliament has already passed a law intended to prevent Johnson forcing through a no-deal Brexit, but he says he's ready to do it anyway."It's completely irresponsible for the government to have tried to ignore these stark warnings and prevent the public from seeing the evidence," the opposition Labour Party's Brexit spokesman Keir Starmer said in an emailed statement. "Boris Johnson must now admit that he has been dishonest with the British people about the consequence of a no-deal Brexit."The documents includes the following scenarios:On day one, as many as 85% of trucks attempting to cross the Dover-Calais straits may not be ready for French customs, blocking flow through the ports -- with freight recovering to 50% to 70% of pre-Brexit levels in three monthsMedicines are "particularly vulnerable" to severe extended delays; some can't be stockpiled, and for others it's not practical to stockpile for "expected delays of up to six months"Supplies of some fresh foods will decrease; there will also be a reduced choice of productsWhile the threat to the supply of clean water is "low," it is possible that hundreds of thousands of people will experience problemsSome cross-border U.K. financial services will be disruptedProtests will take place nationwide, sapping police resourcesRegional traffic disruption could affect fuel distributionImmediate imposition of EU tariffs will "severely disrupt" trade with Ireland, with agriculture and food the hardest-hit sectorsNo-deal arrangements for the Irish border will be "unsustainable" and force the U.K. back to the negotiating table in days or weeksThere could be clashes between U.K. and EU fishing fleetsRebel Conservative lawmakers teamed up with opposition parties on Monday to force through a vote compelling the government to publish the Yellowhammer documents. The plans were leaked to the Sunday Times newspaper last month.RedactedOne paragraph was redacted for what the government said were reasons of commercial confidentiality. The Sunday Times said the section dealt with the impact on oil refineries. EU tariffs will make U.K. gasoline exports uncompetitive, and the government's decision to set import tariffs on gasoline at 0% will likely result in two refineries closing, costing around 2,000 jobs, it said.The government expects subsequent strike action at refineries to hit fuel supplies, according to the newspaper.Members of Parliament also demanded the government release communications between the prime minister and senior advisers on both Operation Yellowhammer and the government's decision to suspend Parliament, which took effect on Monday night. But Cabinet minister Michael Gove, in charge of no-deal Brexit planning, said the government would not do so.The advisers "have no right of reply, and the procedure used fails to afford them any of the protections that would properly be in place," Gove said in a letter to former Attorney General Dominic Grieve, who brought the vote in Parliament. "It offends against basic principles of fairness."Legal BlowThe administration suffered another blow on Wednesday when a Scottish court ruled Johnson's decision to suspend Parliament was unlawful, setting up a showdown in the Supreme Court next week.Johnson's spokesman said the government will abide by whatever judgment that court comes to. "We have absolute respect for the independence of the judiciary," James Slack told reporters at a hastily convened briefing.Johnson has said the suspension is needed so he can lay out his government's legislative plans in what's called a Queen's Speech on Oct.14. While it's standard practice to suspend, or prorogue, Parliament before such a speech, it's usually for a matter of days. Johnson has opted for a 5-week prorogation -- the longest in decades.Colin Sutherland, Scotland's most senior judge, said in the decision that documents including a handwritten note from Johnson dismissing the parliamentary session as a "rigmarole" demonstrated that "the true reason for the prorogation" was to curtail the legislature's ability to hold the government to account.'Egregious'His colleague, Judge Philip Brodie, went even further, calling the suspension an "egregious case of a clear failure to comply with generally accepted standards of behavior."Business Minister Kwasi Kwarteng told the BBC that "many people up and down the country are beginning to question the partiality of the judges," while stressing that he believed them to be impartial. "The more the courts get involved in politics, that is of detriment not only to politics but also to the courts," Kwarteng said.Earlier, there were conflicting messages from the EU on Brexit. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she'll "work until the last day" to ensure the U.K. leaves the bloc in an orderly fashion. But Spanish acting Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said a hard Brexit that seemed "unthinkable" months ago "has now become a more than probable scenario."Johnson said in a Facebook Live question and answer session that he sees the mood changing in the EU, after holding meetings with his counterparts in Germany, France and Ireland. "The ice floe is cracking, there is movement under the keel of these talks and we can do this thing absolutely," he said.The prime minister rejected reports that he's seeking to replace the so-called backstop part of Theresa May's Brexit deal, which would ensure the Irish border remains free of checks by keeping the U.K. tied to EU rules, with a Northern Ireland-only version. That wouldn't work for the U.K., he said."The backstop is going to be removed, I very much hope -- I insist," Johnson said. "We've got to come out whole and entire and solve the problem of the Northern Irish border, and I'm absolutely certain we can do that."(Updates with business minister remarks in 16th paragraph.)To contact the reporters on this story: Alex Morales in London at amorales2@bloomberg.net;Robert Hutton in London at rhutton1@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Tim Ross at tross54@bloomberg.net, Stuart Biggs, Thomas PennyFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Netanyahu Vows to Annex West Bank Settlements If Re-Elected Posted: 11 Sep 2019 03:10 PM PDT  (Bloomberg) -- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he'd annex West Bank territory if re-elected next week, in a brazen ploy to bag right-wing votes ahead of the expected knife-edge vote.The Trump administration will unveil its plan for Middle East peace days after Israel's Sept. 17 election, and that presents Israel with "a historic, onetime chance to extend Israeli sovereignty over our settlements in Judea and Samaria, and also to other areas important to our security, our heritage, and our future," he said Tuesday."I ask you to give me a clear mandate to extend Israeli sovereignty over all the settlements," Netanyahu added.Over 400,000 Israelis live in more than 120 settlements, which together with roads and other support systems account for about 60% of the West Bank. Annexation would deal a body blow to the Palestinians' dreams of establishing an independent state with the West Bank as its heartland.Those dreams have steadily eroded since December 2017, when the Trump administration recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital over the objections of the Palestinians, who claim the city's eastern sector for a future capital. A senior Palestinian official called Netanyahu's plan "madness."UN Alarm"If Prime Minister Netanyahu is allowed to implement his plans of annexation, he would have succeeded in burying even any chance of peace between Palestinians and Israelis," said Saeb Erekat, a longtime peace negotiator and now secretary general of the Palestine Liberation Organization. "The Israeli, the international community must stop such madness. We need to end the conflict and not to keep it for another 100 years."United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres expressed alarm over Netanyahu's pledge on Wednesday, saying such steps would be a blow to peace efforts."Such steps, if implemented, would constitute a serious violation of international law," he said in a statement. "They would be devastating to the potential of reviving negotiations and regional peace, while severely undermining the viability of the two-State solution."The U.S. was informed of the announcement before it was made, and doesn't think annexation would foreclose the possibility of a political solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Times of Israel website reported.Later Tuesday, militants from the Gaza Strip fired two rockets at southern Israeli cities, including one where Netanyahu was holding an election rally. Netanyahu's security detail hustled him off the stage at a campaign event in Ashdod after air raid sirens went off.The rockets were intercepted by missile defenses, and early Wednesday, the Israeli air force struck 15 military targets in Gaza in retaliation.Once TabooAnnexation of West Bank territory, captured in the 1967 Middle East war, had been considered taboo for decades in Israeli politics because of the international outcry it would spark. But as religious and nationalist political parties gained clout, and peacemaking with the Palestinians drifted off the country's agenda amid continuing Palestinian attacks, the notion has come to resonate with large swaths of the Israeli public.According to an August poll by the Israel Democracy Institute, 48% of Jewish Israelis and 11% of Arab Israelis would favor such a plan if it were supported by President Donald Trump and his administration. This compares to 28% of Jewish Israelis and 56% of Arab Israelis who oppose the idea.Netanyahu said the first area to be annexed if he's re-elected would be the Jordan Valley, where Israeli forces now guard the country's eastern flank with Jordan. There is wide support for such a move in Israel, including on the part of Netanyahu's top election rival, former military chief Benny Gantz of the Blue and White bloc.Dangling the prospect of annexation is a gambit Netanyahu has used before. Three days before Israel's April 9 poll, and again last week, he suggested he'd extend Israeli sovereignty over parts of the West Bank that are home to Jewish settlements if re-elected. Polls show his Likud party in a tight race with Blue and White, and Netanyahu has been warning nationalists that if they don't vote for his slate, then his right-wing government will be toppled.Endorsing a proposal that has become the battle cry of other hawkish politicians might burnish his nationalist credentials."It mostly, I think, is a way to get votes from the right," said Professor Amichai Cohen, dean of the law faculty at Israel's Ono Academic College.(Updates to add UN Secretary-General's comments in seventh paragraph.)\--With assistance from Ivan Levingston and David Wainer.To contact the reporter on this story: Alisa Odenheimer in Jerusalem at aodenheimer@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Shaji Mathew at shajimathew@bloomberg.net, Amy Teibel, Bill FariesFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| The DIY foreign policy president: Bolton ouster confirms it Posted: 11 Sep 2019 02:27 PM PDT  Donald Trump has said he doesn't mind if the U.S. is on its own in the world. Now, it seems he doesn't mind running American foreign policy on his own as well. With the ouster of John Bolton as his national security adviser, the president has again pushed away an experienced hand in international affairs and a counter-weight to his DIY approach to Iran, North Korea, China and more.
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| Bolton exit followed bust-up over mooted Trump-Rouhani meeting Posted: 11 Sep 2019 02:19 PM PDT  * National security adviser opposed idea of easing sanctions * Trump on Bolton: 'He made some very big mistakes'President Hassan Rouhani visits the Bushehr nuclear power plant just outside of Bushehr, Iran, in this 2015 file photo released by the Iranian President's Office. Photograph: Mohammad Berno/APDonald Trump and his top officials reportedly discussed the possibility of easing sanctions on Iran on Monday, as a means of engineering a meeting with Iran's president, Hassan Rouhani, at this month's UN general assembly.According to the account by Bloomberg News, the then national security adviser, John Bolton, argued forcefully against such a meeting, a day before his abrupt departure from the White House.His removal followed deep differences with Trump over the president's wish to score some quick diplomatic successes, by meeting Rouhani, the Taliban and other US adversaries.According to the Bloomberg account, the treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, argued for a lifting of sanctions as a means of restarting negotiations with Iran. Asked on Wednesday on whether he would meet Rouhani, Trump said: "We'll see what happens.""I do believe they'd like to make a deal," the president said. On Wednesday, Trump criticised Bolton for his positions on a range of foreign policy issues, stretching back to his role in advocating the 2003 Iraq invasion."He made some very big mistakes," the president said. "John is known as a tough guy. He's so tough, he got us into Iraq."Bolton had been "way out of line" on Venezuela policy and was "not getting along with people" in the administration, Trump added.Bolton's departure from the White House is widely seen in Washington as clearing the way for a more conciliatory foreign policy towards US adversaries in the run-up to next year's elections, as the president seeks to launch his campaign looking more like a dealmaker than a warmonger.Securing a meeting with Rouhani at the UN general assembly is likely to be challenging without significant sanctions relief, a U-turn from the Trump administration's "maximum pressure" policy. The Iranian president's options are limited by domestic politics and the views of the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, who has thus far been adamant in his rejection of a return to talks.Foreign policy analysts suggested that to score a quick foreign policy win – or at least the appearance of one – getting nuclear talks with North Korea back on track looks an easier hill to climb. Pyongyang has said it is prepared to restart discussions later this month, although the regime followed the offer with two short-range missile tests and a warning that the US would have to change its negotiating position."With Trump flailing around and looking for a Kodak moment, to my mind North Korea seems more ripe than Iran," said Barbara Slavin, director of the Future of Iran Initiative at the Atlantic Council. "The Iranians must be smelling weakness now, with Trump looking for his fourth national security adviser. Now is not the time to go easy on him."Trump acknowledged on Wednesday that Bolton's presence was an obstacle to negotiating with the North Korean dictator, Kim Jong-un, after the former adviser suggested the "Libyan model" of disarmament for Pyongyang."Take a look at what happened to Gaddafi… and he's using that to make a deal with North Korea?" Trump said. "I don't blame Kim Jong-un for what he said after that. He wanted nothing to do with John Bolton. That's not a question of being tough; that's a question of being not smart."Suzanne DiMaggio, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who has been involved in back-channel negotiations with both Tehran and Pyongyang, said: "Bolton's removal provides an opportunity for the Trump administration to reassess its failed 'maximum pressure' approach to both Iran and North Korea."She added: "Much would depend on whether Trump has the capacity to empower seasoned diplomats to carry out real diplomacy on both fronts."Emmanuel Macron has being trying to orchestrate a Trump-Rouhani meeting at the UN general assembly, and Trump appeared to be open to the idea at the G7 summit last month in Biarritz..In this 21 July photo, a Revolutionary Guard speedboat circles the oil tanker Stena Impero. Iran has stepped up harassment of oil shipping. Photograph: Morteza Akhoondi/APRouhani's office said on Wednesday the Iranian president had talked by phone to Macron, and told him: "From the point of view of the Iranian government, parliament and people, negotiating with the US under sanctions is pointless."Ariane Tabatabai, a political scientist and Iran expert at the Rand Corporation, said that Iran was amassing bargaining chips in anticipation of an eventual return to talks with the US.One by one, Tehran has ceased observing the limits on its nuclear programme imposed in the 2015 deal: it has harassed oil shipping going through the strait of Hormuz, seizing a British tanker, the Stena Impero, and it has stepped up arbitrary arrests of westerners visiting Iran, including two British-Australian dual nationals and a third Australian."What I think they are actually pursuing is more leverage than anything else," Tabatabai said. "A lot of their activities currently are just them trying to build this pressure campaign of their own, so that they can come back to the table with more chips, so that the US does not go straight for their red lines."Rouhani's decision on whether to meet Trump at the UN will be influenced by the degree to which the US eases the oil and banking embargo on Iran, but also by the dynamics of Iranian politics."Rouhani has an opportunity here. There's an American president who is desperate for something that looks remotely like a foreign policy success," said Alex Vatanka, an Iran expert at the Middle East Institute. But he added that Rouhani would not meet Trump without the approval of Iran's ageing supreme leader. Khamenei was furious with the president for even taking a phone call from Obama at the UN general assembly six years ago."I think the supreme leader is thinking in terms of succession, and passing the baton on to someone that he would like, and not doing anything to empower Rouhani."Trump has options too, when it comes to diplomatic breakthroughs. One is a return to a partial nuclear deal with North Korea, which was under discussion before Trump's second summit with Kim Jong-un in Vietnam in February.At that meeting, Trump switched to a harder-line position advocated by Bolton that North Korea disarm completely in return for full sanctions relief.Victor Cha, former director of Asian affairs at the national security council, said Trump could decide to accept a North Korean offer of dismantling a handful of sites, including parts of the nuclear complex at Yongbyon, in return for partial sanctions relief."It would certainly be lower-hanging fruit than Iran," Cha, now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "There is already stuff on the table and with Bolton gone, there is nothing stop him."
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| Sudan's government, rebels agree on roadmap for peace Posted: 11 Sep 2019 02:16 PM PDT ![Sudan's government, rebels agree on roadmap for peace]( "Sudan's government, rebels agree on roadmap for peace") Sudan's newly appointed government and rebel leaders agreed Wednesday on a roadmap aimed at ending war in the country by year end, following the military's ouster of autocratic President Omar al-Bashir in April. The two sides signed an initial deal after three days of negotiations in Juba, capital of neighboring South Sudan. Sudan has been convulsed by rebellions in its far-flung provinces for decades, resulting in tens of thousands of people being killed.
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| UK's worst-case no-deal Brexit plan confirms scenario's 'severe risks'- Labour Party Posted: 11 Sep 2019 01:20 PM PDT ![UK's worst-case no-deal Brexit plan confirms scenario's 'severe risks'- Labour Party]( "UK's worst-case no-deal Brexit plan confirms scenario's 'severe risks'- Labour Party") The worst-case Brexit plan published by the UK government on Wednesday has confirmed the "severe risks" of a no-deal Brexit scenario, the Brexit spokesman of Britain's main opposition Labour Party said. "It is also now more important than ever that Parliament is recalled and has the opportunity to scrutinise these documents and take all steps necessary to stop No Deal," Keir Starmer said on Wednesday. The "Operation Yellowhammer" worst-case assumptions published on Wednesday were prepared on August 2, the government said, and form the basis of its no-deal planning.
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| Scottish court hands Boris Johnson fresh Brexit blow Posted: 11 Sep 2019 01:02 PM PDT  British Prime Minister Boris Johnson suffered a fresh blow Wednesday when a Scottish court ruled that his controversial decision to suspend parliament in the run-up to Brexit was unlawful. The decision came as the government was forced to release documents revealing that preparedness for a no-deal Brexit remained "at a low level", with logjams at Channel ports threatening to impact drug and food supplies. The Operation Yellowhammer documents also warned of "a rise in public disorder and community tensions" in such a scenario.
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| U.K. Warns of Sweeping Risk of Chaos From No-Deal: Brexit Update Posted: 11 Sep 2019 12:38 PM PDT ![U.K. Warns of Sweeping Risk of Chaos From No-Deal: Brexit Update]( "U.K. Warns of Sweeping Risk of Chaos From No-Deal: Brexit Update") (Bloomberg) -- Follow @Brexit, sign up to our Brexit Bulletin, and tell us your Brexit story. The U.K. published warnings of disruption to trade, financial services and food supplies if it leaves the European Union without a deal on Oct. 31. The document, which also warns of the threat of public disorder, was produced as part of no-deal Brexit planning under the code-name Operation Yellowhammer. It was released on Wednesday evening after lawmakers voted to force Boris Johnson's government to make it public.Key Developments:Johnson said he wants a deal with the EU but that the U.K. can manage withoutScottish appeals court rules suspension of Parliament is unlawful," setting up Supreme Court showdownGerman Chancellor Angela Merkel pledged to work until the "last day" to secure a Brexit agreementThe government said it would look "closely" at Hong Kong Exchanges & Clearing's surprise bid for London Stock ExchangeMust read: Four Ways Johnson Could Break the Brexit DeadlockShortages of Fuel, Food, Clean Water (8:35 p.m.)There are risks of disruption to fuel supplies to London and the south-east, with localized shortages across the U.K., the no-deal Brexit planning document warned.While the threat to the supply of clean water is "low," it is possible that hundreds of thousands of people will experience problems. That could mean urgent steps are needed to shore up the water supply, the document said.Food prices will rise, and certain types of fresh produce will be harder to get in shops. The issues are likely to be worst in the run-up to Christmas, the busiest time of the year for the food industry, and the government cannot anticipate all the potential impacts on the food supply chain, it said."There is a risk that panic buying will cause or exacerbate food supply disruption," the document said.'Severe' Risk to Irish Border Without a Deal (8:30 p.m.)The U.K. expects Northern Ireland would be worst hit, with tariff and regulatory checks on goods moving over the border that would "severely disrupt trade" if there's a no-deal split from the EU, the newly released document says.The government accepts that its plan not to introduce border checks "is likely to prove unsustainable due to significant economic, legal and biosecurity risks." It expects businesses to close, relocate or raise prices, leading to job losses, protests, and an increase in black market activity.The effect of all that, the government says, will be "significant pressure" to return to the negotiating table with the EU "within days or weeks." Meanwhile the government doesn't see any hope that the EU will be feeling similar levels of pressure, as the document talks about "a small number of instances where the impact of Brexit could be felt negatively in the EU".Delays at Ports After No-Deal Split (8:15 p.m.)Most of the government's assumptions about no-deal Brexit problems flow from expected problems at ports and the Channel Tunnel. Here's more detail about the expected problems:Between 50% and 85% of hauliers won't have the correct paperworkFlow rate reduced to between 40% and 60% of current levels, as unprepared trucks fill portsAfter three months, that flow rate would rise to 50% to 70% of current levelsTrucks face maximum delays of 1.5 to 2.5 daysDisruption expected to last for six monthsNo-Deal Risks to Trade and Public (7:50 p.m.)The U.K. government expects a no-deal Brexit would mean the flow of traffic through ports would be more than halved on day one, with trucks delayed by as long as two and a half days, leading to disruption to food and medical supplies.The disruption could last up to six months, according to the "reasonable worst-case assumptions", which Parliament this week ordered the government to publish.The document also warns of unspecified disruption to financial services, increases in electricity prices, possible protests, and clashes between fishing fleets from different nations. It says poor people will be worst affected by increases in food and fuel costs.Johnson Says He's Focused on 'People's Priorities' (5:40 p.m.)In his Facebook Q&A session, Boris Johnson also took questions on homelessness and the National Health Service, and stressed the importance of moving on from Brexit and dealing with the "people's priorities."Among other things, he pledged to bring in a homelessness czar as well as a national plan to tackle the problem, and cited the importance of holding a Queen's speech so the government can spell out its legislative priorities. Echoing his spokesman's comments (see 1 p.m.), he said that was the reason for proroguing Parliament. His comments come after a Scottish court ruled the decision to do so was an unlawful attempt to stymie the legislature.Johnson Rules Out Northern Ireland-Only Backstop (5:20 p.m.)In an Facebook Q&A session, Boris Johnson ruled out the idea of a Northern Ireland-only backstop, saying that it would not work for the U.K. The idea had been gaining traction among politicians as a potential way to end the impasse, and Johnson himself has previously said an all-Ireland agri-foods zone -- which falls far short of the backstop -- could be the "germ" of a solution."We've got to come out whole and entire and solve the problem of the Northern Irish border, and I'm absolutely certain we can do that," Johnson said. He reiterated that the U.K. must leave the EU on Oct 31, and that while his government wants a divorce deal, the country could manage without one."We will work very hard for a deal in the course of the next few days and weeks and we're making great progress," Johnson said, citing talks with Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. "The mood is changing, the ice flow is cracking, there is movement under the keel of these talks."MPs: 'There's a Hell of a Lot of Work to Do' (2:40 p.m.)A group of cross-party MPs protested outside Parliament against its suspension, saying they want to be able to properly scrutinize documents on the government's planning for a no-deal Brexit, code named Operation Yellowhammer, which have to be published today."We've got a hell of a lot of work to do sifting through these Yellowhammer documents when we eventually see them," said Labour's Rosie Duffield. "And getting on with sorting out what we're going to do with Brexit."MPs voted on Monday to force the government to publish the papers, as well as correspondence and documents related to the decision to suspend Parliament. Some lawmakers also sat in the chamber as a protest against the suspension.Johnson Rules Out Deal With Farage (1.30 p.m.)Boris Johnson has rejected an offer of an electoral pact from Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage, who had proposed his party not stand against the Conservatives in selected seats in return for similar treatment elsewhere. But a Conservative spokesman ruled that out.Electorally, it would likely have destroyed any hope Johnson has of retaining the more liberal part of his political coalition.Ruling Centers on Motivation for Prorogation (1:20 p.m.)The Scottish ruling (see 10:15 a.m.) cut through arguments that the suspension or prorogation of Parliament wasn't a matter for the courts. If the purpose of prorogation was to "stymie Parliamentary scrutiny," then it was unlawful, the appeal judges said.The court was shown documents including a handwritten note from Johnson that dismissed the Parliamentary session as nothing but a "rigmarole." Such documents demonstrated that curtailing the ability of Parliament to hold the government to account was "the true reason for the prorogation," Colin Sutherland, Scotland's most senior judge, said in the brief decision.His colleague, Judge Philip Brodie, went even further, calling this particular suspension was an "egregious case of a clear failure to comply with generally accepted standards of behavior of public authorities."'Govt Has to Obey Law': Johnson's Spokesman (1 p.m.)The U.K. government will abide by the ruling of the Supreme Court once it has considered appeals on the suspension of Parliament next week, Johnson's spokesman James Slack said."We have absolute respect for the independence of the judiciary," Slack told reporters at a hastily convened briefing. "The government will abide by the Supreme Court judgment.""We are disappointed by today's decision, and will appeal in the Supreme Court," Slack said of the ruling by a Scottish Appeals Court (see 10:15 a.m.). He said there is a need for a Queen's speech to set out the government's agenda, and "proroguing Parliament is the legal and necessary way of delivering this. There are now contradictory judgments in the English and Scottish courts."Parliament to Stay Suspended: U.K. Official (12:55 p.m.)The U.K. Parliament will remain suspended, or prorogued, pending a ruling by the Supreme Court, a government official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.Boris Johnson's government has appealed to the Supreme Court after today's ruling in a Scottish Appeal Court and the case, alongside one from an English court, is expected to be heard next week.Earlier, a spokesman for Speaker of the House of Commons John Bercow said: "Any decision to accelerate the meeting of Parliament during prorogation is a matter for the Government."Justice Secretary Defends Judges (12.15 p.m.)Justice Secretary Robert Buckland, who on Sunday took to Twitter to assure the public the government will obey the law over Brexit, has now jumped to the defense of the country's independent judiciary."Our judges are renowned around the world for their excellence and impartiality and I have total confidence in their independence in every case," Buckland said on Twitter, in what looks like an attempt to head off any colleagues in the Conservative Party from criticizing the Scottish court.Grieve: Johnson Must Quit If He Misled Queen (11.45 a.m.)Former Attorney General Dominic Grieve, one of the MPs Boris Johnson expelled from the Conservative Party last week, said that if it was shown that the prime minister had misled the Queen about the reasons for suspending parliament, it would be a "shameful act" and the prime minister would have to resign."The PM has a duty of total candor towards the Queen," Grieve told the BBC. "If that were to be the case that it had happened, then Boris Johnson would find himself in an untenable situation in Parliament."Opposition MPs Demand Recall of Parliament (11:10 a.m.)Following the Scottish court ruling that Johnson's decision to suspend Parliament was "unlawful," prominent opposition politicians are calling on the prime minister to recall the legislature immediately. The government said it plans to appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court."I urge the Prime Minister to immediately recall Parliament so we can debate this judgment and decide what happens next," Labour's Brexit spokesman Keir Starmer said on Twitter.Ian Blackford, the Scottish Nationalist Party's leader in Westminster, accused Johnson of "playing fast and loose with the law."Government 'Disappointed' at Court Ruling (10:40 a.m.)A spokesman for the U.K. government responded to the Scottish court ruling (see 10:15 a.m.), confirming it will appeal the decision."We are disappointed by today's decision, and will appeal to the U.K. Supreme Court," the spokesman said in a statement. "The U.K. government needs to bring forward a strong domestic legislative agenda. Proroguing Parliament is the legal and necessary way of delivering this."Starmer: Govt Not Making Progress in EU Talks (10:20 a.m.)In a speech to the Trades Union Congress, opposition Labour Party's Brexit spokesman Keir Starmer told the audience not to be fooled by government claims to be making progress in Brexit negotiations with the EU. The U.K. hasn't even made any proposals to the EU side, he said."The truth is I don't think Johnson has the first idea how to negotiate a deal that protects jobs and rights," Starmer said. "For the Tories, that's not what Brexit is about."Starmer said Brexit would be a central issue in any general election and that voters are "yearning to move on." He said a referendum is "the only way forward" and Labour wants a ballot that includes Remain and a "credible" option for leaving the bloc.Scottish Court: Parliament Suspension 'Unlawful' (10:15 a.m.)A Scottish appeals court ruled that Prime Minister Boris Johnson's suspension of Parliament is unlawful, sowing even more confusion into the deadlocked British political system ahead of the Oct. 31 Brexit date.The judges deferred implementing the ruling until the U.K. Supreme Court takes up the issue next week. A group of more than 70 lawmakers had argued the premier's move was unconstitutional because it curtailed debate in the run-up to the deadline for Britain's exit from the European Union.U.K. Parliament's Suspension is Unlawful, Scottish Court RulesLeadsom Says U.K. Wants Irish Backstop Removed (10 a.m.)In her media round on Wednesday, Business Secretary Andrea Leadsom said the government is "negotiating very hard" with the EU to "very explicitly remove the backstop from the withdrawal agreement." She told BBC TV that Boris Johnson is "seeking alternative creative ways'' to avoid a border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.She declined to "negotiate in public" on what those solutions may be, but said they range from technological solutions to pre-customs checks. "Essentially what we will be doing is ensuring we protect the United Kingdom and the integrity of the United Kingdom internal market," she said.MPs are discussing the revival of an idea to put a border down the Irish Sea. That would make the province the only part of the U.K. to remain aligned to European Union rules, allowing the free flow of goods over the land border with the Irish Republic until alternative arrangements can be agreed.It's an idea that has caused anger in the Democratic Unionist Party, who have 10 MPs in the U.K. Parliament, because they don't want to be treated differently to the rest of the U.K.Speaking to Bloomberg TV, Leadsom appeared to reassure the DUP: "We won't do anything that undermines the integrity of the U.K." either politically "or from the point of view of harming the U.K. internal market," she said.Foster: Johnson Gave Assurances on Backstop (Earlier)DUP Leader Arlene Foster told BBC Radio Ulster on Wednesday that Johnson gave her assurances that he is not pushing for a Northern Ireland-only backstop. But she didn't rule out an all-Ireland zone for livestock and agricultural goods -- which Johnson has said could represent the "germ" of a solution to the border issue."What we're doing is exploring ideas," Foster said. "What we're doing at the moment is working with the prime minister to try and find a deal what works for us in Northern Ireland, works for the Republic of Ireland, and our neighbors in the Republic of Ireland, but also means we leave the European Union, the United Kingdom. all together."Merkel to Work Until 'Last Day' to Secure Deal (Earlier)German Chancellor Angela Merkel said her government will work until the "last day" to ensure the U.K. leaves the European Union in an orderly way, but insisted Germany is ready for a no-deal Brexit."I'm firmly convinced as before that we have every opportunity to do it in an orderly fashion -- and the German government will work until the last day to ensure that that's possible," Merkel told lawmakers on Wednesday. "But I can also say that we're prepared for a disorderly exit."Spain Says U.K. Is Heading for a No-Deal Brexit (Earlier)Spain won't allow further concessions to the U.K., which now seems set to leave the European Union without an agreement, acting Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said.No further negotiation of the withdrawal agreement already endorsed by the EU is possible and there is no room for further concessions, Sanchez told the Spanish parliament in Madrid on Wednesday."What some months ago seemed unthinkable -- a hard Brexit or Brexit without agreement -- has now become a more than probable scenario," Sanchez said.Earlier:Four Ways That Britain's Brexit Drama Could Play Out NextEU Appointments Bring Good News for Ireland: Brexit BulletinBelfast Court to Rule Thursday on Brexit Peace-Plan CaseCarney Says Brexit-Hit Pound Looks Like Emerging Market Currency\--With assistance from Alastair Reed, Jonathan Browning, Charles Penty, Patrick Donahue, Arne Delfs, Kitty Donaldson, Sharna Hawkins and Jessica Shankleman.To contact the reporters on this story: Robert Hutton in London at rhutton1@bloomberg.net;Alex Morales in London at amorales2@bloomberg.net;Tim Ross in London at tross54@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Tim Ross at tross54@bloomberg.net, Thomas Penny, Stuart BiggsFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Bolton exit opens battle on how Trump handles world Posted: 11 Sep 2019 12:36 PM PDT  The exit of John Bolton as US national security advisor removes the most forceful voice pushing President Donald Trump's foreign policy to the right with all eyes on whether his successor will signal a fresh course. Bolton, a 70-year-old master of Washington infighting, succeeded in championing hawkish stances on Iran and Venezuela and pressing Trump to hold back from an accord with North Korea at a February summit. Bolton's worldview overlapped in some areas with Trump's, especially in their "America First" contempt for international organizations.
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| US 'warmongering' a failure, Iran says, as Bolton ousted Posted: 11 Sep 2019 12:29 PM PDT  President Hassan Rouhani said on Wednesday that the United States' "warmongering" was a failure, as Iran welcomed the sacking of hawkish US national security adviser John Bolton. Rouhani also dismissed the prospect of meeting President Donald Trump at a time his US administration is continuing to slap more crippling sanctions on the Islamic republic. Both... must be abandoned," Rouhani told his cabinet.
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| Short list to replace Bolton includes some familiar White House faces Posted: 11 Sep 2019 12:25 PM PDT ![Short list to replace Bolton includes some familiar White House faces]( "Short list to replace Bolton includes some familiar White House faces") President Donald Trump's short list for the post of national security adviser is made up of reliable conservatives with solid ties to key Trump administration stalwarts, including, according to several sources, the vice president's foreign policy chief. Mike Pence's national security adviser, retired General Keith Kellogg, is part of a group that also includes the State Department's Iran envoy, Brian Hook, and former deputy White House national security adviser Rick Waddell.
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| Trump says he's considering 5 candidates to replace Bolton Posted: 11 Sep 2019 12:24 PM PDT  President Donald Trump said Wednesday he's looking at five individuals to become his fourth national security adviser to replace John Bolton, the hawkish diplomat who clashed with the president on global challenges, especially Iran and North Korea. "John wasn't in line with what we were doing," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. "I hope we've left in good stead," Trump said.
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| Donald Trump considers successors for 'Mr Tough Guy' John Bolton as national security advisor Posted: 11 Sep 2019 11:56 AM PDT  At least half a dozen contenders are under consideration to replace John Bolton as Donald Trump's national security advisor. The search for Mr Trump's fourth national security adviser in less than three years began after he announced in a tweet on Tuesday that Mr Bolton's services were "no longer needed." Over the following 24 hours several of Mr Bolton's allies also departed. The changes leave Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state, with increased influence over US foreign policy. He and Mr Bolton frequently disagreed. Lindsey Graham, the Republican senator and friend of Mr Trump, said he had spoken to the president about a successor. Those being considered included retired Army general Keith Kellogg, currently national security adviser to vice president Mike Pence. Profile | John Bolton, the hawk who clashed with Trump one too many times Brian Hook, the US special representative for Iran, and Rick Waddell, a former deputy national security adviser, were also possibilities. Mr Graham said: "Those are three names the president mentioned to me. There are others on the list. "Keith Kellogg's a retired general, competent, capable, confident, has the president's trust, I like him a lot." The others on the list were believed to include Richard Grenell, the US ambassador to Germany, Pete Hoekstra, the US ambassador to the Netherlands, and Stephen Biegun, the special representative for North Korea. A group of Republican senators were believed to be lobbying the president to pick Mr Grenell. Ousted | The 'no men' who Trump has let go Charles Kupperman, Mr Bolton's deputy and a former defence company executive, has taken over as acing national security adviser. Mr Trump is expected to make his choice known next week. White House officials indicated Mr Bolton's departure after 17 months was because his views had not "aligned" with Mr Trump's on a variety of issues. There were also suggestions that others within the administration blamed Mr Bolton for a media report that Mr Pence was opposed to pursuing a Taliban peace deal. The report annoyed Mr Trump. who declared it "fake news". Mr Bolton denied he was responsible. Mr Bolton was preceded as national security adviser by H.R. McMaster, and Michael Flynn. John Bolton says he offered his resignation to the president before he was fired Credit: Tom Brenner/Bloomberg Mr Trump, speaking at the White House, called Mr Bolton "Mr Tough Guy" and criticised him over the Iraq war. The president said: "Mr Tough Guy. Now, we're in for seven trillion dollars in the Middle East. He was very out there in wanting to have them do it. I thought it was a terrible mistake." Mr Trump said he got along "very well" with Mr Bolton personally, but he "made some very big mistakes." That included Mr Bolton's suggestion of a "Libyan model" for North Korea, which "set us back" with North Korean negotiations, and was "not smart". The president said: "What a disaster. I don't blame Kim Jong-un for what he said after that. He wanted nothing to do with John." He said Mr Bolton was also "way out of line" on Venezuela, and added: "John wasn't getting along with people in the administration who are very important. I wish John the best."
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| Saudis condemn Israeli PM's West Bank annexations plans Posted: 11 Sep 2019 11:50 AM PDT  Saudi Arabia on Wednesday denounced Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's pre-election vow to annex parts of the West Bank as a "very dangerous escalation," adding to a chorus of international condemnations and injecting the issue of Palestinian statehood into an election campaign that had all but ignored it. The strongly worded statement from the Saudi royal court, which runs the affairs of King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, marked a significant rebuke from a regional power that had grown closer to Israel in recent years over its shared concerns about Iran's growing belligerency. Netanyahu said Tuesday he'd extend Israeli sovereignty over the Jordan Valley if he is re-elected in the vote next week and would move to annex Jewish settlements.
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| Pope Francis demands Britain hand back Chagos Islands Posted: 11 Sep 2019 11:27 AM PDT  Pope Francis has accused Britain of placing greed over humanity by refusing to hand over a disputed island archipelago in the Indian Ocean to Mauritius. In an unusually muscular foreign policy intervention, the pope suggested that Britain's failure to heed a United Nations vote calling on it relinquish sovereignty over the British Indian Ocean Territory was uncivilised. "Not all things that are right for humanity are right for our pocket, but international institutions must be obeyed," the pope told journalists as he left Mauritius at the end of a three-nation tour of Africa. "If there is an internal dispute or conflict among countries, you go there to resolve it like brothers, like civil people." The United Nations General Assembly passed a motion in May calling on Britain to return the remote but strategically important territory, also known as the Chagos Islands, to Mauritius, which had administered them as a dependency in the colonial era. Pope Francis commented on the dispute over the Chagos Islands' sovereignty Credit: DAI KUROKAWA/EPA-EFE/REX For the past 50 years the main Chagossian island of Diego Garcia has been the site of a US military base. The population of the islands, numbering about 1,500 people at the time, was evicted by Britain in the Sixties and Seventies to pave the way for the construction of the base. Unlike resolutions by the UN Security Council, General Assembly votes are non-binding. However, pressure has been mounting on Britain since a UN court ruled in February that its acquisition of the archipelago was "wrongful". A group of British MPs visited the islands, which lie 1,400 miles of the Mauritian coast, last month on an unprecedented Parliamentary fact-finding mission. Britain purchased the islands from Mauritius in 1965 when it was still a self-governing territory within the Commonwealth. In the 1970s, Britain signed a deal with the islanders offering them £4m in exchange for surrendering their right to live on the archipelago. The government of Mauritius, then fully independent, also accepted financial aid to resettle the islanders on its territory — but the housing it offered them was so poor most moved to Crawley in West Sussex, where they still live today. Britain's Supreme Court has rejected petitions by the islanders to be allowed to return to the archipelago, a position backed the European Court of Human Rights, largely because they had accepted the compensation package. There are more than 3,500 people who identify as Chagossians today, fewer than a fifth of whom have ever set foot on the territory. If allowed to return, they say they would make a living by fishing, harvesting coconuts and tourism.
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| A look at the Jordan Valley Israeli PM has vowed to annex Posted: 11 Sep 2019 11:23 AM PDT  Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's last-minute vow to annex the Jordan Valley if re-elected next week has sparked Arab condemnation and injected the Palestinians into a political campaign that had almost entirely ignored them. Netanyahu has made similar promises before but hasn't followed through. Netanyahu presented the move as a historic "one-time opportunity" to favorably redraw Israeli's borders, at a time when a friendly administration in Washington says it's about to unveil it's long-delayed Middle East peace plan.
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| Pregnant woman evacuated off migrant ship by helicopter Posted: 11 Sep 2019 11:19 AM PDT  Malta's armed forces airlifted a 9 months pregnant Nigerian woman and her husband Wednesday from a charity-run ship carrying more than 80 migrants rescued in the Mediterranean Sea. A helicopter winched the couple off the Ocean Viking, a sea rescue ship operated by nonprofit groups SOS Mediterranee and Doctors Without Borders, after the vessel requested a medical evacuation earlier in the day. A midwife and a medical team examined the pregnant woman on the Ocean Viking and determined she had "developed a serious medical complication which could put her and the baby at risk," Doctors Without Borders Project Coordinator Erkinalp Kesikli said.
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| UPDATE 1-Netanyahu sees U.S. staying 'very, very tough' on Iran despite Bolton ouster Posted: 11 Sep 2019 11:10 AM PDT ![UPDATE 1-Netanyahu sees U.S. staying 'very, very tough' on Iran despite Bolton ouster]( "UPDATE 1-Netanyahu sees U.S. staying 'very, very tough' on Iran despite Bolton ouster") Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu played down the impact of hawkish John Bolton's exit from the post of U.S. national security adviser, predicting on Wednesday that Washington would hold to a tough line on Iran. U.S. President Donald Trump fired Bolton on Tuesday, citing policy disagreements. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said immediately after that Trump might meet Iranian President Hassan Rouhani at the U.N. general assembly this month.
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| UPDATE 2-'We'll see what happens,' Trump says about possible easing of Iran sanctions Posted: 11 Sep 2019 10:45 AM PDT ![UPDATE 2-'We'll see what happens,' Trump says about possible easing of Iran sanctions]( "UPDATE 2-'We'll see what happens,' Trump says about possible easing of Iran sanctions") U.S. President Donald Trump left open on Wednesday the possibility that the United States could ease sanctions on Iran, adding he believes Iran wants to strike a deal with Washington on its nuclear program. "We'll see what happens," Trump told reporters at the White House when asked about the possibility the United States would ease up on its "maximum pressure" campaign. Trump's firing of his hard-line national security adviser, John Bolton, on Tuesday prompted speculation that Washington's policy toward adversaries such as Iran could ease.
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| Al-Qaida chief in 9/11 speech calls for attacks on West Posted: 11 Sep 2019 10:29 AM PDT  Al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahri called Wednesday on Muslims to attack U.S., European, Israeli and Russian targets in a speech on the 18th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks. SITE Intelligence Group, which tracks online activity of jihadist groups, reported that in a video released by the militant group, the 68-year-old al-Zawahri also criticizes "backtrackers" from jihad, referring to former jihadis who changed their views in prison and called the 9/11 attacks unacceptable because innocent civilians were harmed. "If you want Jihad to be focused solely on military targets, the American military has presence all over the world, from the East to the West," he said.
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| Iran urges US to 'put warmongers aside' after Bolton firing Posted: 11 Sep 2019 10:18 AM PDT  Iran's president urged the U.S. on Wednesday to "put warmongers aside" as tensions roil the Persian Gulf amid an escalating crisis between Washington and Tehran in the wake of the collapsing nuclear deal with world powers. Hassan Rouhani's remarks signaled approval of President Donald Trump's abrupt dismissal of John Bolton as national security adviser, a man routinely pilloried by Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif as part of a "B Team" that targeted Iran.
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| The Latest: Trump says Bolton didn't get along with team Posted: 11 Sep 2019 10:10 AM PDT  President Donald Trump says former national security adviser John Bolton was not aligned with his administration's priorities. Speaking to reporters Wednesday in the Oval Office, Trump says Bolton wasn't getting along with other members of his administration. Trump is also critical of Bolton comparing the effort to denuclearize North Korea to the "Libya model," words which angered Kim Jong Un (gihm jung oon) ahead of their sit-down last year.
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| China and Germany in row over Berlin's support for Hong Kong activists Posted: 11 Sep 2019 10:03 AM PDT  China summoned the German ambassador on Wednesday amid a rapidly escalating row over a Hong Kong democracy activist's visit to Berlin. Beijing reacted with anger after Joshua Wong, a prominent figure in the protest movement gripping Hong Kong, met with the German foreign minister in Berlin this week. "We have expressed our deep discontent," the Chinese ambassador to Germany, Wu Ken, told a press conference in Berlin. "Do not interfere in the internal affairs of China and Hong Kong." Describing Mr Wong as a "riotmaker" and the protests in Hong Kong as "almost terrorist", the Chinese ambassador claimed: "Wong and his followers sow violence". The furious reaction from Beijing comes after Mr Wong held his own press conference in Berlin on Tuesday in which he compared the situation in Hong Kong to the Cold War division of the German capital. "If we are in a new Cold War, Hong Kong is the new Berlin," Mr Wong told reporters. "The Berlin Wall fell 30 years ago. Now we hope the great firewall falls in China." But it was Mr Wong's meeting with Heiko Maas, the German foreign minister, that appears to have particularly incensed Beijing. China had repeatedly urged Angela Merkel's government not to allow the activist entry, and he was briefly detained in Hong Kong airport prior to his departure for Germany. But shortly after his arrival in Berlin, Mr Wong shared pictures of himself with Mr Maas at an event in the German parliament on Twitter. China is also angered at calls to name twin baby pandas in Berlin zoo Hong and Kong Credit: ZOO BERLIN HANDOUT/EPA-EFE/REX Bild, the German newspaper that sponsored the event, claimed its reporter had been barred from attending the Chinese ambassador's press conference in retaliation. The Chinese embassy claimed the journalist had not been admitted for reasons of space. China also appears to have been angered by calls in Germany for twin baby pandas at Berlin zoo to be named Hong and Kong in honour of the protesters. The Chinese state-run Global Times newspaper reported what it claimed were widespread calls for the pandas to be returned to China after the names topped an online poll. The unofficial poll was organised by a German newspaper and had nothing to do with Berlin zoo. A spokesman for the zoo pointed out that the pandas will in fact be named by China. Under China's "panda diplomacy" policy, the animals are lent to zoos around the world on the understanding they and any young they produce remain Chinese property. "The young pandas belong to China and will be returned there in two to four years," the spokesman said. The final decision on naming the pandas will rest with the Chinese panda breeding institute in Chengdu.
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| Iran 'wants to swap British-Australian women for Iranian jailed in US' Posted: 11 Sep 2019 08:24 AM PDT  Iran is believed to be holding two British-Australian women captive in the hope of exchanging one of them for an Iranian imprisoned in the US on charges of evading American sanctions. Tensions between Britain and Iran escalated dramatically after it emerged the women were being held in the first recent case of Tehran arresting British citizens who do not also hold Iranian nationality. One woman, a travel blogger, was arrested this summer while visiting Iran with her Australian fiancée. The second woman, a university lecturer, was seized earlier and has reportedly already been sentenced to 10 years in prison. The Telegraph is not naming them at the request of the Foreign Office. Sources said Tehran sees the women as bargaining chips to secure the release of Negar Ghodskani, a 40-year-old Iranian woman facing jail in the US after pleading guilty to a conspiracy to export prohibited technology to Iran. Ghodskani was arrested in Australia in 2017 at the request of US government and gave birth to a baby boy while in custody in Adelaide. She was extradited to the US and now faces five years in federal prison. Iran's government has repeatedly called for her release. Javad Zarif, the Iranian foreign minister, publicly suggested she could be swapped in exchange for Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the British-Iranian mother imprisoned in Tehran. Negar Ghodskani is in prison in the US Credit: Sherburne County Sheriff's Office via AP "Nobody talks about this lady in Australia who gave birth to a child in prison, whose child is growing up outside prison with the mother in prison," Mr Zarif said in April. "I put this offer on the table publicly now: exchange them." Iran is believed now to be considering leveraging at least one of the British-Australian women in an effort to free Ghodskani from US prison. Australia's government is taking the lead in dealing with Iran on the case. Ben Wallace, the UK defence secretary, called for the women's release on Wednesday and said Iran "should behave like any other civilisation in the world" by following the rule of law. The travel blogger and her fiancée were arrested in July after entering Iran as part of a months-long trip across Asia, which they chronicled on Youtube and Instagram. They were arrested after flying a drone in Tehran without a license, according to Manoto, a UK-based Iranian news site associated with Iranian opposition groups. Both women are understood to be being held in Evin Prison, the Tehran facility where Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe has been imprisoned since 2016. Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe is also being held by Iran Richard Ratcliffe, her husband, accused Iran of pursuing "state-sponsored kidnap". "The British government must do more to stop our citizens being used as political pawns by the Iranian government," he told The Telegraph. Alistair Burt, the former Foreign Office minister, described the turn of events in Iran as "deeply worrying". He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "I think Iran does work on a basis of putting the pressure on those countries that are hostile to it, or it believes are hostile to it, and hostage-taking appears to have become part of the practice. "It's deeply worrying because those who are seeking a new relationship with Iran, those who recognise that Iran reacts under pressure not very well and are looking for an opportunity to change the nature of the relationship having secured the nuclear deal a couple of years ago, in which Iran had to make serious concessions. Iran now finds that broken by the United States, it looks to hit back." The Foreign Office declined to comment. It states on its website: "There is a risk that British nationals, and a higher risk that British-Iranian dual nationals, could be arbitrarily detained in Iran. All British nationals should consider carefully the risks of travelling to Iran."
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| Sept. 11 and the Post-Post-Cold War World Posted: 11 Sep 2019 08:00 AM PDT  (Bloomberg Opinion) -- The anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks is in a sort of transition phase. The wounds are no longer fresh after 18 years, but the terrible day is not yet enshrined in the deep historical past. That makes it a good time to take stock of what's been achieved in the fight against global terrorism, and what remains to be done.I can think of no better person to discuss this than Philip Zelikow. Now a professor of governance at the University of Virginia's Miller Center, Zelikow had a long career inside government, rising to counselor of the State Department under President George W. Bush. But he's best known for his role as executive director of the federal 9/11 Commission, and thus is the primary author of the commission's report on the attacks. (If you haven't read it, you must: It's not only an exhaustive examination of what went wrong, it reads like a page-turning spy novel.)This week, Zelikow and an old pal from his government days, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, have a new book coming out, "To Build a Better World: Choices to End the Cold War and Create a Global Commonwealth." It's a work of policy and anecdote from inside the effort to remake the world after the Soviet Union fell apart in 1991, a topic that's particularly timely given the efforts of China, Russia and, sadly, President Donald Trump's America to shake that world at its foundations. Here is an edited transcript of a conversation we had this week:Tobin Harshaw: Before we get to the lessons of the more distant past, let's start with those of this sad anniversary. Of the recommendations in the 9/11 report, can you name one on which there's been good progress?Philip Zelikow: We've made it far harder for Islamist extremist groups to form and operate safely inside the U.S. The 9/11 hijackers both trained and staged here, and that now seems less likely. Unfortunately, the danger has mutated into gun-wielding mass murderers, many of whom are white nationalists. TH: Is the progress against the Islamist terrorists due largely to the Patriot Act and other national security and surveillance measures?PZ: No, it's not just that. We've developed a lot of capabilities for protecting the country internally that are not necessarily captured in legislation. Both in the FBI and in various municipal agencies – look at the way the New York Police Department has changed the way it staffs counterterrorism since 9/11 – there's a large story there. In general, there has just been a much greater consciousness of the danger, which has led to improved capabilities in many ways. All the best defenses are layered defenses in which no one layer does all the work. TH: The terrorists are still going to be active abroad. For example, much of the discussion about withdrawing from Afghanistan centers on whether it would become a safe haven for terrorists. Do you buy into the safe haven theory?PZ: The 9/11 commission helped cement the safe haven theory. We argued that that if you let the sanctuary develop to a certain point, the enemy can build capabilities that can be very dangerous. The problem then is, where to draw the line, as to what Americans need to do and how to do it. People are worried that if we withdraw entirely from Afghanistan, it will slide into civil war and it could become a safe haven for Islamist groups. But I can make that same argument not only about Afghanistan but also about Yemen, Libya, Syria, Somalia and more. If this is going to force us to maintain large American forces in all those countries and more, and to take sides in the civil wars in all those countries, it's an impossible prescription.TH: That's too many fingers in the dike.PZ: Nor are these military measures the best ways to build these states up to be more resistant. It involves a lot of difficult political and economic and social efforts in which the U.S. also needs to engage constructively, but which mainly people don't have the patience or interest to understand or pursue.TH: Going back to 9/11 and your new book with Condi Rice, "To Build a Better World," one thing I'd forgotten was that on the day after the attacks, Bush had a long phone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin, leading to a partnership. That has dissolved into acrimony today. Is there any chance of resolving our issues with Russia?PZ: In the book, we argued that the break with Russia did not really occur decisively until the mid-2000s. Rather than treat this as a story of Russian villainy, we treat it as a rather sad and complex tragedy. But since the mid-2000s, Putin has structured his politics and his regime around the idea of the American enemy and the danger posed by free societies, the danger not just politically or militarily, but even culturally, with Putin portraying free societies as culturally degenerate. Even if you have some good discussions with Putin on policy, you're not going to be able to reverse the whole way in which he has structured his reason for having supreme power.TH: One of Putin's great complaints with the U.S. and the West was the expansion of NATO. There are many people in the foreign-policy establishment today who look back at that as having been a mistake. What's your feeling in retrospect?PZ: Our book offers a balanced discussion of exactly what happened, and when and why the key decisions were made. I was not a big advocate of expanding the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in the early 1990s. I mainly thought that we needed to concentrate on other problems that were more urgent, like the wars in the Balkans. But the theory that NATO expansion is the reason for the break with Russia is substantially wrong. It was a source of tension, but probably the worst source of tension in the whole 1990s was the war over Kosovo in 1998 and 1999, which really tore the relationship with Boris Yeltsin and left a lot of sore feelings when Putin came to power. The decisive causes for the break with Russia were during the 2000s. Putin came to believe that the West in general was adopting a freedom agenda in which it was going to try to replay the revolutions of 1989 - which he had personally experienced in East Germany – in Eastern Europe. So at that point the eastward expansion of Western institutions became an essential Russian concern, especially the desire of Ukraine to join the West. This was not just NATO – Ukrainian membership in NATO was blocked in 2008 by other NATO members, mainly Germany. More important was the expansion of the European Union. Putin thought these moves were stages in bringing a freedom revolution to Russia. And he reacted very strongly to that, including beginning the war against Ukraine in 2014.TH: How do we deal with him today?PZ: I think many Americans don't appreciate that the main sanctions now on Russia are being developed and enforced by the Europeans, not by the U.S. Russia wants economic relations much more with Europe than it wants them with the U.S. The Europeans are standing up for these sanctions because of course they care a lot about a breakdown of European security – they care far more, frankly, than the current American government does.TH: Trump has behaved terribly to some of those European leaders, criticizing them openly and straining those ties. Can those bridges be mended by another administration, or is there lasting damage?PZ: There is some lasting damage. Europeans now have a deeper and more tragic sense of what is possible, not just with the U.S., but in their own continent and in their own countries. That was a reason we wrote our new book about the way the modern world was created at the beginning of the 1990s. People on both sides of the Atlantic - and actually in Asia - are now questioning that whole system. So if that system needs to be reinvented, we thought it was essential to understand how and why that commonwealth of free nations got invented in the first place.One crucial issue about the future then is simply to ask: Do Americans want partnerships with Europe for common action? Do Europeans want partnerships with Americans for common action? I think for most Europeans and most Americans, the answer to both of those questions is yes. Next question: Can Europeans and Americans find the leaders who can then craft those partnerships and make them practical? You need principles, partnerships and practicality, and all those have to come together through leaders.TH: German Chancellor Angela Merkel is on her way out. French President Emmanuel Macron seems to be trying to grab her mantle of European leadership. Are there others who can do what you describe?PZ: It's hard to predict who will be the leaders of Europe two, three or five years from now. If it's any reassurance, I will tell you that in the mid-1980s, no one thought that German Chancellor Helmut Kohl was the great visionary of Europe's future. He seemed like a prudent, stable, bourgeois conservative.TH: Sometimes it's all about circumstances, right?PZ: Correct. Sometimes the combination of circumstances and people and their principles come together. It wasn't just Kohl who did it, and it wasn't just French President Francois Mitterrand, and wasn't just President George H.W. Bush. They were, say, radical pragmatists.TH: That's a great term.PZ: They were people of prudent temperament, yet because they were so intensely practical, they were willing to put their foot on the accelerator and transform Germany at the fastest possible pace, transform NATO, transform the international financial and trade institutions, transform the United Nations - all because that seemed to be practical under the circumstances.TH: Let's go to China. Do you believe in the Thucydides Trap - the idea that the U.S. and China are destined to go to war?PZ: I do not. Is there a danger of conflict with the rising China? Of course there is. But we're not destined for war. My reading of history is not nearly so deterministic. And I don't think the Chinese themselves have figured out where they will be and what they want to be even five or 10 years from now. They're encountering a lot of difficulties in making the next stages of economic growth. They're approaching their peak population now, and then their population is going to shrink and rapidly age.The situation with China is worse than it was five years ago. This is because of developments on both sides of the Pacific, and the way China is governed. But we stress in our new book that we don't regard a warlike confrontation as inevitable. And we don't think that appeals to analogies to the Cold War are all that useful in helping work on the policy problems. The irony is that it's the Chinese who now claim to want to be world leaders and builders of global institutions, while the U.S. is walking away from those institutions.TH: We walk out on the Trans-Pacific Partnership while they are building their Belt and Road.PZ: They're the ones trying to offer global leadership and global partnerships. And although we're trying to counter a little bit with arguments about the Indo-Pacific world, if you talked to leaders in Australia or India or Japan, I think they would privately have some very different advice for the U.S. about how best to compete during these difficult times.TH: Do you think that the global network of allies is just trying to wait Trump out?PZ: It depends who you're talking about in these countries, because they're split and divided, too - some Australian politicians think Trump is great. But I think in general they find themselves caught in a crossfire. What they want is for the U.S. to figure out how to constructively lead in partnerships. And then you ask yourself: Partnerships to do what? Do we want an open world economic system? It's not clear at the moment that we do - but almost all of our Asian partners do want such a system. Well, if we want an open economic system, we're going to have to build that through partnerships, not on our own. If we want to have cybersecurity and have a 21st-century internet that serves our interests and doesn't just create new digital divides, we're going to need partners in building that world too.TH: Speaking of partnerships, let's end with yours with Condoleezza Rice. Can you just talk a little bit about that collaboration?PZ: Fortunately, we've known each other for more than 30 years - each of us knows what the other's strengths and weaknesses are, and which roles each of us can best play. For example: She reads Russian, I don't; I can read German, she can't. There are some subjects that she looks to me to take the lead in writing about. And then there are other subjects where I kind of want her to do the first draft. And then we each make our contributions, trade our drafts. But one reason we worked well together in government is because we often think alike, and share a pretty similar interpretation of contemporary history.To contact the author of this story: Tobin Harshaw at tharshaw@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Jonathan Landman at jlandman4@bloomberg.netThis column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.Tobin Harshaw is an editor and writer on national security and military affairs for Bloomberg Opinion. He was an editor with the op-ed page of the New York Times and the paper's letters editor.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinion©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| UN: Reconstruction of landmark Mosul mosque to begin in 2020 Posted: 11 Sep 2019 07:54 AM PDT  The United Nations' cultural agency UNESCO announced Wednesday that a landmark reconstruction of Iraq's al-Nouri mosque in Mosul, which was blown up by the Islamic State group in 2017, will start at the beginning of next year. The timeline of the restoration plan of the 12th-century monument, famed for its leaning minaret, was hammered out during a meeting in Paris between UNESCO Director General Audrey Azoulay and several Iraqi officials, including Iraqi Culture Minister Abdulamir al-Dafar Hamdani, and Mosul's regional governor, Mansour al-Mareed.
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| The Queen Gets Dragged Into the Brexit Quagmire Posted: 11 Sep 2019 07:30 AM PDT ![The Queen Gets Dragged Into the Brexit Quagmire]( "The Queen Gets Dragged Into the Brexit Quagmire") (Bloomberg Opinion) -- Three Scottish judges just lobbed a constitutional grenade onto an already bloody Brexit battlefield by ruling that Boris Johnson's decision to suspend Britain's Parliament is unlawful. If Queen Elizabeth II has so far largely succeeded in staying out of all matters Brexit, it will be much harder now.Officially, it wasn't the U.K. prime minister who controversially prorogued (or suspended) Parliament on Monday for five weeks — in what was seen as an attempt to stop lawmakers from trying to stymie his Brexit plans. It was the queen, who exercises her royal prerogative on the advice of her ministers. But what happens if that advice proves to have been not just poorly judged, but actually unlawful?The practical impact of the Scottish ruling isn't yet clear. The judges elegantly dodged the problem of how to enforce their decision by deferring the question of what to do about it until the U.K. Supreme Court makes its own prorogation ruling, expected next week.The issue turns not on whether the government has the right to suspend Parliament — it does. Indeed, last week a Scottish judge dismissed a petition brought by a group of more than 70 lawmakers that the prorogation was illegal, accepting the government's rationale that it was a matter of "high policy" and political judgment.Intention, however, matters. On Wednesday, the Court of Session judges, overturning the previous ruling, punctured the government's case, saying prorogation "would nevertheless be unlawful if its purpose was to stymie parliamentary scrutiny of the executive." It then judged that circumventing Parliament was indeed the "true reason for the prorogation."Johnson argued — in the manner of a child playing truant ostensibly for the purposes of educational enrichment — that his government had closed down Parliament merely to ensure that a new legislative agenda, which is announced in the queen's speech at the opening of a new parliamentary session, could be presented. So difficult was it to maintain that flimsy pretext that even his ministers had trouble sticking to the script.The government's evocation that proroguing was "high policy" would usually be the end of the matter. That's considered the granddaddy of the prerogative powers handed down from monarch to ministers, which let governments make decisions on everything from issuing passports to going to war without the need to seek parliamentary approval.The courts, which have become increasingly activist over time in reviewing prerogative powers, have largely steered clear of ruling on high policy, but that may be changing. Constitutional scholar Paul Craig has been arguing in recent weeks that just because prorogation may fall under a prime minister's discretionary authority, it doesn't prevent the government from using it unlawfully.Craig also dismisses the related argument that the courts would be intruding on political turf here. If the executive couldn't be challenged on these grounds, he says, "then every text book, article and essay on constitutional law has missed this crucial qualification to the sovereignty of Parliament."None of this may matter much if the U.K. Supreme Court doesn't confirm the Scottish ruling. In that case, Johnson will be inclined to try to ignore it.If the Supreme Court backs the Scottish judgment, though, it will be hard to swat aside. It would, for one thing, suggest that the queen has been improperly advised. In that case, some suggest prorogation would have to be annulled and lawmakers would head back to the House of Commons, no doubt with daggers drawn. Another possibility is that the queen would be advised to issue a new proclamation setting out an earlier date for reconvening Parliament, a partial U-turn that both Johnson and the queen would find embarrassing.Ironically, a ruling that prorogation is illegal might not change much practically. Johnson's original aims with taking such a drastic step were thwarted largely when Parliament rejected his demand for an early election and also voted to force him to seek an extension to Brexit rather than leave without a deal on Oct. 31.Disbanding Parliament still allows Johnson to use the bully pulpit of the prime minister's office without being subject to a near daily verbal beating from its members. If Parliament were recalled early, Johnson would suffer the embarrassment of having been shot down by the high courts and he'd also be confronted by a chamber whose scrutiny he's tried desperately to avoid.And yet Johnson would probably use the opportunity to drive home the "people versus Parliament" message that he intends to use in the inevitable forthcoming election. Having already gone full-metal populist, the painting of wigged lawyers and judges as part of an establishment dead set on thwarting Brexit isn't much of a stretch. But with the courts now dragged in, the stakes just got higher.To contact the author of this story: Therese Raphael at traphael4@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: James Boxell at jboxell@bloomberg.netThis column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.Therese Raphael writes editorials on European politics and economics for Bloomberg Opinion. She was editorial page editor of the Wall Street Journal Europe.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinion©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| EU Pipeline Ruling Helps Ukraine Thwart Russia Posted: 11 Sep 2019 07:09 AM PDT ![EU Pipeline Ruling Helps Ukraine Thwart Russia]( "EU Pipeline Ruling Helps Ukraine Thwart Russia") (Bloomberg Opinion) -- A European Union court has undermined Russia's strategic plan to eliminate its dependence on Ukraine for the transit of its natural gas exports to Europe. That's another stroke of luck for Ukraine's new president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy: Now he has a much stronger position in trilateral gas talks with Russia and the EU, due to take place later this month. And no long-threatened U.S. sanctions against the Nord Stream 2 project expanding the capacity of pipelines beneath the Baltic Sea were required to achieve this important result.The EU General Court in Luxembourg on Tuesday overruled a 2016 European Commission decision allowing the Russian natural gas exporter Gazprom PJSC to use more than 50% of the capacity of the OPAL pipeline, which runs from Lubmin in North Germany to Olbernhau near the German-Czech border. OPAL is an onshore extension of Nord Stream 1, the Russian pipeline laid across the bottom of the Baltic Sea, finished in 2012. Last year, Nord Stream 1 delivered 58.8 billion cubic meters of gas to Germany, more than its nominal capacity of 55 billion cubic meters and about 29% of Russia's gas exports to Europe. Without the 2016 EU decision, these record deliveries wouldn't have been possible. The gas needs to travel further from the north German landing point to reach consumers. But initially, in 2009, the EU only allowed OPAL to be built on the condition that Gazprom would be able to use just 50% of its 35-billion-cubic-meter capacity: The bloc's energy rules require competitive access to pipelines. (Also because of these rules, which limit suppliers' right to own the delivery infrastructure, Gazprom owns less than 50% of OPAL shares; the rest belong to Germany's Wintershall Holding GmbH.) In this particular case, the rules make little practical sense. No one else delivers gas to the same point near the German city of Greifswald; supplies only become competitive along the way, more and more so by the pipeline's endpoint. But because of the capacity cap, Gazprom had to maintain higher prices for Nord Stream 1 gas, giving competing traders no incentive to lower their prices. Instead of benefiting from the EU competition regulations, customers ended up paying more for gas.The European Commission realized that and allowed Gazprom to bid for more OPAL capacity. According to the Polish state oil and gas company, PGNiG, it allowed Gazprom to pump an additional 12.4 billion cubic meters of gas through Nord Stream 1. This, along with increasing competition from liquefied natural gas imported from the Middle East, the U.S. and, more recently, Russia, helped drive down European gas prices to a 10-year low this fall. The available onshore capacity has allowed Russia to go ahead with building a new pipeline, Nord Stream 2, parallel to Nord Stream 1. That project is opposed by the U.S. It argues that Nord Stream 2 would make Germany too dependent on Russia for energy supplies and would allow Gazprom's exports to Europe to bypass Ukraine's Soviet-era pipeline system, depriving that country of about $3 billion in transit fees just as Ukraine receives major Western financial assistance. Germany has ignored the criticism: It needs all the gas it can get to enable its simultaneous transitions from coal and nuclear power generation.But if the onshore pipeline network cannot carry more Russian gas, the costly offshore expansion makes little sense. And that's the weak point at which PGNiG decided to strike.The Polish state company's goals are twofold. Politically, the strongly anti-Russia Polish government is aligned with the U.S. It's trying to drive Poland's imports of Russian gas down to zero. But PGNiG is also vying for higher transit fees from Gazprom than the paltry $5.3 million a year it currently is receiving. It is, therefore, strategically interested in preserving the Ukrainian transit option. That's why PGNiG challenged the 2016 commission decision in the General Court."As Gazprom can no longer enjoy its monopolistic position on the OPAL pipeline, it will not be able to terminate transit of gas to Europe via Ukraine, at least in the coming months," the Polish company's vice president, Maciej Wozniak, said after the court ruling. Ukraine moved 86.8 billion cubic meters of Russian gas to Europe last year, and there's no guarantee that volume won't drop once Nord Stream 2 is finished. But any hurdles on the alternative route do force Gazprom — and its controlling owner, the Russian government — to maintain the Ukrainian transit option. That's something Russia wanted to avoid starting next year, once Nord Stream 2 is operational and the current 10-year transit contract with Ukraine has run out.The European Commission has two months to appeal the court ruling, but even if it decides to do it (its first reaction was noncommittal), it probably won't file an appeal before it engages with Russia and Ukraine on the future of Ukrainian transit after the transit deal expires at the end of this year. The talks will take place in Brussels on Sept. 19, and before the OPAL decision, Russia wanted a short placeholder contract with low guaranteed deliveries, while Ukraine insists on a new 10-year deal with supplies of 60 billion cubic meters guaranteed.The court ruling makes a sizable dent in Russia's armor. Even if the reimposed OPAL cap doesn't hold, Gazprom can't be sure it won't be hit with further restrictions: The EU's competition rules are extremely unfavorable to it. These obstacles make it harder for the Russian supplier to compete with exporters of liquefied natural gas. Gazprom needs Ukraine to keep deliveries stable and retain market share. It may well have to opt for a sensible business strategy, even if it doesn't quite fit President Vladimir Putin's preference for using Russia's power in the energy sector to put economic pressure on Ukraine's pro-Western government.If Russia compromises and reaches a more generous deal with Kyiv and the EU than it has planned, Zelenskiy will be able to log a major success for his fledgling administration pretty much without lifting a finger: By winning in court, Poland, backed by Lithuania and Latvia, has done all the work.To contact the author of this story: Leonid Bershidsky at lbershidsky@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Jonathan Landman at jlandman4@bloomberg.netThis column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.Leonid Bershidsky is Bloomberg Opinion's Europe columnist. He was the founding editor of the Russian business daily Vedomosti and founded the opinion website Slon.ru.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinion©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Czech Leader Adds to Tension in Balkans Territorial Dispute Posted: 11 Sep 2019 06:33 AM PDT ![Czech Leader Adds to Tension in Balkans Territorial Dispute]( "Czech Leader Adds to Tension in Balkans Territorial Dispute") (Bloomberg) -- The Czech president sparked ire when he said he'd ask his nation's leadership whether the European Union member could undo its recognition of Kosovo, making him an unexpected backer of Serbia in the Balkans' biggest territorial dispute.Like most EU states, the Czech Republic recognized Kosovo following its 2008 unilateral declaration of independence. Serbia refuses to do so and has been trying to persuade nations to not recognize its neighbor or withdraw their endorsement.President Milos Zeman, who was prime minister of the Czech Republic when as a NATO member it supported the alliance's 1999 bombing of Serbia to end its war with Kosovo, doesn't have the power to undo his country's recognition. But his comments, made during an official visit to Belgrade Wednesday won praise from Serb politicians.Kosovo canceled its participation in a meeting of prime ministers from the so-called Visegrad 4 group of central European countries and western Balkan states that is scheduled in Prague for Thursday, the Prague-based CTK news service reported.While the countries have to mend ties in order to join the EU, Serbia is seeking to reduce the number of states recognizing Kosovo to at least half of the members of the United Nations to ensure it isn't accepted into international organizations. The biggest former Yugoslav republic also relies on the backing from Russia, China, India and five EU states that haven't recognized Kosovo.Serbia and Kosovo fought a war that stopped in 1999 only after NATO warplanes bombed Serbia. The Balkan neighbors signed an EU-brokered deal to mend ties in 2013 but the efforts stalled last year when Serbia blocked Kosovo from joining Interpol, triggering a retaliatory 100% tax on Serb imports.Western nations have urged Kosovo to suspend the tariffs and called on Serbia to stop the de-recognition campaign against Kosovo.To contact the reporter on this story: Andrea Dudik in Prague at adudik@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Flavia Krause-Jackson at fjackson@bloomberg.net, Michael Winfrey, Balazs PenzFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| U.K. Reaches Post-Brexit Deal With World’s Oldest Customs Union Posted: 11 Sep 2019 06:15 AM PDT  (Bloomberg) -- Follow @Brexit, sign up to our Brexit Bulletin, and tell us your Brexit story. The five members of the Southern African Customs Union and Mozambique have reached a deal with the U.K. to govern trade between them after Brexit.The new agreement mirrors the deal between those countries and the European Union and will come into effect if the U.K. leaves the bloc on Oct. 31, South African Trade and Industry Minister Ebrahim Patel told reporters Wednesday in Cape Town. The agreement will be submitted to South Africa's cabinet for approval and then be ratified by parliament, he said. SACU is the world's oldest customs union and the four smaller members -- Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia and Eswatini -- derive between 30% and 40% of their government revenue from a customs-sharing pool that gains and falls on South African trade. Africa's most-industrialized economy recorded its first quarterly trade deficit in more than a year in the three months through June, widening the current-account shortfall.The fortunes of Lesotho, Namibia and Eswatini are also beholden to developments in their larger neighbor with their exchange rates pegged to the rand.The U.K. is South Africa's fourth-largest trading partner. Patel said he doesn't foresee any fundamental change in trading conditions such as tariffs between southern African countries and the U.K. and EU after Brexit. To contact the reporter on this story: Paul Vecchiatto in Cape Town at pvecchiatto@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Paul Richardson at pmrichardson@bloomberg.net, Rene Vollgraaff, Alastair ReedFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Johnson Legal Defeat on Parliament Suspension Increases Political Confusion Posted: 11 Sep 2019 05:44 AM PDT  (Bloomberg) -- Follow @Brexit and sign up to our Brexit Bulletin. Prime Minister Boris Johnson lost a Scottish court ruling on the suspension of Parliament, throwing the deadlocked British political system into even greater confusion ahead of the Oct. 31 Brexit date.The court, in a short ruling, said that the purpose of the Prime Minister's move was to unlawfully "stymie" Parliament. The unanimous decision Wednesday by a panel of Edinburgh appeal judges will set up a showdown in the U.K. Supreme Court, which will take up the issue next week."My message to Boris Johnson is you are playing fast and loose with the law," Ian Blackford, a Scottish member of Parliament, said in a tweet. "You have acted in an anti-democratic manner and need to respond by recalling Parliament."While Johnson had suffered several political defeats in Parliament, until now he had fared better in court with victories in London and at a lower court in Edinburgh. The threat of prorogation galvanized Labour politicians and a group of Conservative rebels into passing a bill requiring the prime minister to push back the date when the U.K. leaves the European Union if he can't get a deal in Brussels.A group of more than 70 lawmakers had argued that the prime minister's move -- which took effect Monday night -- was unconstitutional because it curtailed debate in the run-up to the deadline for Britain's exit from the EU."I have never been able to contemplate the possibility that the law could be that our sovereign Parliament might be treated as an inconvenience by the Prime Minister," Jolyon Maugham, the attorney spearheading the Scottish case, said after the ruling. "I am pleased that Scotland's highest court agrees."The three judges didn't issue an interim order on whether Parliament can sit in the meantime, but Maugham said he believed that lawmakers could convene immediately.Johnson's move to prorogue was unlawful, the judges said, because it was motivated by the "improper purpose" of stymieing Parliament."This was an egregious case of a clear failure to comply with generally accepted standards of behavior of public authorities," Judge Philip Brodie said in the ruling.The government said it was disappointed with the decision and would appeal the case to the top court."The U.K. government needs to bring forward a strong domestic legislative agenda," the government said in a statement. "Proroguing Parliament is the legal and necessary way of delivering this."The legal action now moves to a hearing before the country's top court on Sept. 17. The panel of nine Supreme Court judges will need to reconcile a different judgment from London last week.The full ruling from the London case, issued by three of England's most senior judges, focused on the lack of clarity around rules for the suspension of Parliament.The London court, in contrast to their Scottish counterparts, also said that Johnson's motivation wasn't an issue.Even if prorogation was "designed to advance the Government's political agenda regarding withdrawal from the European Union rather than preparations for the Queen's Speech, that is not territory in which a court can enter with judicial review," the judges said in the full text of the ruling released Wednesday after a short initial judgment was issued Sept. 6.A court in Northern Ireland is also set to rule on the matter on Thursday. The Belfast case also involves the question of whether a no-deal Brexit would violate the Good Friday peace accord.(Adds Supreme Court panel makeup in 10th paragraph.)To contact the reporters on this story: Alastair Reed in Edinburgh at areed12@bloomberg.net;Jonathan Browning in London at jbrowning9@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Anthony Aarons at aaarons@bloomberg.netFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| John Bolton's firing frees Trump to tear up his Iran policy, and pursue an unprecedented meeting with its president — at the risk of angering his hardline backers Posted: 11 Sep 2019 05:27 AM PDT  With John Bolton out, Trump could pursue a meeting with Iran's Hassan Rouhani. But this could anger some of his supporters, like Israel allies.
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| Iraqi Shiite holy city mourns stampede deaths of 31 pilgrims Posted: 11 Sep 2019 05:23 AM PDT  The governor of the Iraqi Shiite holy city of Karbala has declared three days of mourning for 31 pilgrims who died in a stampede a day earlier. At least 100 other people were injured in the stampede, which occurred on Tuesday as tens of thousands of Shiite Muslims marked Ashoura, one of the most solemn days of the year for the sect, when worshippers from all over converge on Karbala. It was the deadliest stampede in recent history during Ashoura commemorations.
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| Inside Bolton's exit: Mongolia, a mustache, a tweet Posted: 11 Sep 2019 05:05 AM PDT  John Bolton was in Mongolia. More than 1,200 miles (1,930 kilometers) away, President Donald Trump orchestrated an image for the world's front pages by becoming the first U.S. president to set foot in North Korea, shaking hands with Kim Jong Un on the north side of the demilitarized zone. Bolton, a longtime critic of diplomacy with North Korea, had scheduled his foray to Mongolia weeks before Trump's impromptu invitation to meet Kim.
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| UPDATE 2-Russia blasts idea a CIA mole lifted lid on its U.S. meddling Posted: 11 Sep 2019 04:47 AM PDT ![UPDATE 2-Russia blasts idea a CIA mole lifted lid on its U.S. meddling]( "UPDATE 2-Russia blasts idea a CIA mole lifted lid on its U.S. meddling") MOSCOW/LONDON, Sept 11 (Reuters) - Russia on Wednesday condemned as lies and slander suggestions a suspected CIA mole in President Vladimir Putin's administration had handed over information to the United States about alleged Russian meddling in the U.S. presidential elections. Deputy Foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov made the comment after U.S. media reports, confirmed to Reuters by two sources, said a CIA informant in the Russian government had been extracted and brought to the United States in 2017.
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| UPDATE 2-UK PM Johnson rules out Farage deal despite warning of electoral "kicking" Posted: 11 Sep 2019 04:08 AM PDT ![UPDATE 2-UK PM Johnson rules out Farage deal despite warning of electoral "kicking"]( "UPDATE 2-UK PM Johnson rules out Farage deal despite warning of electoral \"kicking\"") Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Wednesday ruled out an electoral pact with Nigel Farage's Brexit Party, which had warned that the Conservatives would take a "real kicking" in an election if Brexit was not a clean break from the EU. Johnson, who has lost his working majority in the House of Commons, wants to hold an election but parliament has ordered him to ask the EU to delay Brexit until 2020 unless he can strike a transition deal at an EU summit on Oct. 17-18.
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| One Country’s Brexit Dismay Is Another’s Economic Boon, For Now Posted: 11 Sep 2019 03:43 AM PDT  (Bloomberg) -- Follow @Brexit, sign up to our Brexit Bulletin, and tell us your Brexit story. Britons may be fed up with uncertainty over Brexit but their indecision has boosted an economy on the opposite side of the European Union.Lithuania upgraded this year's growth forecasts on Wednesday, citing the delay in the U.K.'s exit from the EU -- and the lack of resulting disruption -- as the main reason for the rosier outlook."The Brexit factor was key," Finance Minister Vilius Sapoka said. "While risks haven't disappeared, they've been pushed back until autumn or even later. The Brexit factor has also shown up in foreign demand as businesses responded to the huge uncertainties by stockpiling products."To contact the reporter on this story: Milda Seputyte in Vilnius at mseputyte@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Andrea Dudik at adudik@bloomberg.net, Andrew Langley, Michael WinfreyFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Bolton Learns That Trump’s Not a Listener. Pompeo’s Next Posted: 11 Sep 2019 03:30 AM PDT  (Bloomberg Opinion) -- Before calling it quits Tuesday with his national security adviser, John Bolton, President Donald Trump reportedly spent months phoning Bolton's predecessor, H.R. McMaster, seeking advice.During those calls, NBC News noted, Trump told McMaster "that he missed him."Awwww.But enough of that.Before giving in to the idea that humane longings glimmer beneath Trump's leathery façade, consider McMaster's own fate. Like Bolton, McMaster endured the very classy public spectacle of the president of the United States using Twitter to disclose their parting of ways. Trump had come to loathe Bolton so much that he excluded him from important diplomatic meetings. McMaster suffered different ritual humiliations before departing the White House, including Trump mocking him and his inexpensive, ill-fitting suits.Yet Trump, after all of that, still managed to seek out McMaster when he needed him, and McMaster took the calls.I disparaged you. I shanked you. I fired you. I need advice. I miss you.Many of those who roll in and out of Trump's business and political orbits are like abused spouses unable or unwilling to escape their tormentor. They are thumped, then thumped again, but they persist. In that capacity, Trump has the unique ability to make some unsympathetic people who work for him seem, however briefly, sympathetic.There is another crop of ambitious, craven folks on Team Trump who have signed on for White House jobs simply to get their resumes stamped, and it's hard (for me, at least) to shed a tear when Trump, inevitably, devours them.One additional character chooses to venture into the Trump zone. That's the tough, informed Washington veteran who embraces public service (think of former Defense Secretary James Mattis) or the policy evangelist who can give as good as he or she gets. I think Bolton falls firmly into that latter category.Bolton, Trump's third national security adviser, had to know at the very least that he was going to work for an unpredictable, undisciplined and unenlightened boss when he succeeded McMaster. What he may not have fully grasped is this essential truth about Trump: The president doesn't take advice.That's no small matter. As I wrote two weeks after Trump's inauguration in 2017, the appellation "Trump adviser" is a contradiction in terms. I wondered then how long advisers like Steve Bannon and Kellyanne Conway would last, and thought that Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump would be the only long-term survivors in the White House (at least in positions that Trump truly cared about).Trump's "entire business career, his presidential campaign, and now his presidency, have been routinely marked by chaos and seat-of-the-pants decision-making," I wrote in 2017. "Some observers attribute this — as well as Trump's haphazard tweeting and his fondness for confrontational or unsettling statements — to various forms of the Trumpian dark arts and wily, strategic thinking. It's none of that. It's just Trump being Trump, and the country he's presiding over should brace itself accordingly."Bolton should have braced accordingly. A wizened policy hawk, he entered the White House stoked to put Iran, North Korea, Afghanistan, Venezuela and other countries on notice that hard-line intervention might be afoot. Trump wasn't really on board, however.It wouldn't have mattered if Bolton was a dove, though. Trump wouldn't have listened to that chatter either. He doesn't listen to advice because, in part, he fancies himself an expert on everything. (Even though he has called Nepal "Nipple" and Bhutan "Button"; invented a country called "Nambia"; called Syria "Iraq" shortly after bombing Syria; confused South Korea with North Korea; described Belgium as a "beautiful city"; and was amazed early in his first term that the world "had so many countries.")Trump also isn't a listener because he doesn't really care about the nuts-and-bolts, or the long-term trajectory, of policy. He cares about theater, and most of his policy positions are performance art, including his approach to foreign affairs. Bolton the hard-line interventionist had hitched his wagon to Trump the showman and they never aligned. Trump liked the spectacle of chummy letters and dramatic meetings with North Korea's Kim Jong Un, while Bolton was opposed on principle to any get-togethers. Trump liked the spectacle, and seemed oblivious to the insensitivity, of inviting a terrorist group, the Taliban, to Camp David to resolve the Afghanistan war just days before the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Bolton opposed that meeting too, which made it the final, pivotal rift between the two men."Imagine getting fired for the advice 'Don't throw a 9/11 party for the Taliban,'" the comedy writers at "The Daily Show" tweeted.Trump enjoys military parades and the macho bluster of war threats but he lacks the clarity of purpose, the policy chops and the stomach to follow through on his saber-rattling — converting the old Teddy Roosevelt foreign policy adage "Speak softly and carry a big stick" to something more akin to "Speak loudly and carry a twig."For all of this, you can expect the national security apparatus at the White House to remain shambolic. In the wake of Bolton's departure from the Trump administration on Tuesday, the White House put Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in front of the media as a show of foreign-policy depth. Mnuchin, a former financier who found a second career producing films such as "The Lego Batman Movie," brings thimble-shallow national security expertise to the table, however.And it's not only a lack of depth wearing down the White House's national security capabilities. It's also a lack of leadership. In addition to the new vacancy at the national security adviser's post, the White House has yet to appoint a permanent head of the Department of Homeland Security and it has no director of national intelligence. Should a crisis emerge, Trump's national security team may offer weak support — which means the ultimate victim of Trump's behavior will be average citizens and public safety.For his part, Pompeo, who emerges from the Bolton debacle with enhanced influence, remains optimistic and appears to believe that the president will be taking his advice on board.Trump "should have people that he trusts and values, and whose efforts and judgments benefit him in delivering American foreign policy," he told reporters at the Tuesday news briefing.To contact the author of this story: Timothy L. O'Brien at tobrien46@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Matthew Brooker at mbrooker1@bloomberg.netThis column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.Timothy L. O'Brien is the executive editor of Bloomberg Opinion. He has been an editor and writer for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, HuffPost and Talk magazine. His books include "TrumpNation: The Art of Being The Donald."For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinion©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Bolton Learns That Trump’s Not a Listener. Pompeo’s Next Posted: 11 Sep 2019 03:30 AM PDT  (Bloomberg Opinion) -- Before calling it quits Tuesday with his national security adviser, John Bolton, President Donald Trump reportedly spent months phoning Bolton's predecessor, H.R. McMaster, seeking advice.During those calls, NBC News noted, Trump told McMaster "that he missed him."Awwww.But enough of that.Before giving in to the idea that humane longings glimmer beneath Trump's leathery façade, consider McMaster's own fate. Like Bolton, McMaster endured the very classy public spectacle of the president of the United States using Twitter to disclose their parting of ways. Trump had come to loathe Bolton so much that he excluded him from important diplomatic meetings. McMaster suffered different ritual humiliations before departing the White House, including Trump mocking him and his inexpensive, ill-fitting suits.Yet Trump, after all of that, still managed to seek out McMaster when he needed him, and McMaster took the calls.I disparaged you. I shanked you. I fired you. I need advice. I miss you.Many of those who roll in and out of Trump's business and political orbits are like abused spouses unable or unwilling to escape their tormentor. They are thumped, then thumped again, but they persist. In that capacity, Trump has the unique ability to make some unsympathetic people who work for him seem, however briefly, sympathetic.There is another crop of ambitious, craven folks on Team Trump who have signed on for White House jobs simply to get their resumes stamped, and it's hard (for me, at least) to shed a tear when Trump, inevitably, devours them.One additional character chooses to venture into the Trump zone. That's the tough, informed Washington veteran who embraces public service (think of former Defense Secretary James Mattis) or the policy evangelist who can give as good as he or she gets. I think Bolton falls firmly into that latter category.Bolton, Trump's third national security adviser, had to know at the very least that he was going to work for an unpredictable, undisciplined and unenlightened boss when he succeeded McMaster. What he may not have fully grasped is this essential truth about Trump: The president doesn't take advice.That's no small matter. As I wrote two weeks after Trump's inauguration in 2017, the appellation "Trump adviser" is a contradiction in terms. I wondered then how long advisers like Steve Bannon and Kellyanne Conway would last, and thought that Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump would be the only long-term survivors in the White House (at least in positions that Trump truly cared about).Trump's "entire business career, his presidential campaign, and now his presidency, have been routinely marked by chaos and seat-of-the-pants decision-making," I wrote in 2017. "Some observers attribute this — as well as Trump's haphazard tweeting and his fondness for confrontational or unsettling statements — to various forms of the Trumpian dark arts and wily, strategic thinking. It's none of that. It's just Trump being Trump, and the country he's presiding over should brace itself accordingly."Bolton should have braced accordingly. A wizened policy hawk, he entered the White House stoked to put Iran, North Korea, Afghanistan, Venezuela and other countries on notice that hard-line intervention might be afoot. Trump wasn't really on board, however.It wouldn't have mattered if Bolton was a dove, though. Trump wouldn't have listened to that chatter either. He doesn't listen to advice because, in part, he fancies himself an expert on everything. (Even though he has called Nepal "Nipple" and Bhutan "Button"; invented a country called "Nambia"; called Syria "Iraq" shortly after bombing Syria; confused South Korea with North Korea; described Belgium as a "beautiful city"; and was amazed early in his first term that the world "had so many countries.")Trump also isn't a listener because he doesn't really care about the nuts-and-bolts, or the long-term trajectory, of policy. He cares about theater, and most of his policy positions are performance art, including his approach to foreign affairs. Bolton the hard-line interventionist had hitched his wagon to Trump the showman and they never aligned. Trump liked the spectacle of chummy letters and dramatic meetings with North Korea's Kim Jong Un, while Bolton was opposed on principle to any get-togethers. Trump liked the spectacle, and seemed oblivious to the insensitivity, of inviting a terrorist group, the Taliban, to Camp David to resolve the Afghanistan war just days before the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Bolton opposed that meeting too, which made it the final, pivotal rift between the two men."Imagine getting fired for the advice 'Don't throw a 9/11 party for the Taliban,'" the comedy writers at "The Daily Show" tweeted.Trump enjoys military parades and the macho bluster of war threats but he lacks the clarity of purpose, the policy chops and the stomach to follow through on his saber-rattling — converting the old Teddy Roosevelt foreign policy adage "Speak softly and carry a big stick" to something more akin to "Speak loudly and carry a twig."For all of this, you can expect the national security apparatus at the White House to remain shambolic. In the wake of Bolton's departure from the Trump administration on Tuesday, the White House put Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in front of the media as a show of foreign-policy depth. Mnuchin, a former financier who found a second career producing films such as "The Lego Batman Movie," brings thimble-shallow national security expertise to the table, however.And it's not only a lack of depth wearing down the White House's national security capabilities. It's also a lack of leadership. In addition to the new vacancy at the national security adviser's post, the White House has yet to appoint a permanent head of the Department of Homeland Security and it has no director of national intelligence. Should a crisis emerge, Trump's national security team may offer weak support — which means the ultimate victim of Trump's behavior will be average citizens and public safety.For his part, Pompeo, who emerges from the Bolton debacle with enhanced influence, remains optimistic and appears to believe that the president will be taking his advice on board.Trump "should have people that he trusts and values, and whose efforts and judgments benefit him in delivering American foreign policy," he told reporters at the Tuesday news briefing.To contact the author of this story: Timothy L. O'Brien at tobrien46@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Matthew Brooker at mbrooker1@bloomberg.netThis column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.Timothy L. O'Brien is the executive editor of Bloomberg Opinion. He has been an editor and writer for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, HuffPost and Talk magazine. His books include "TrumpNation: The Art of Being The Donald."For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinion©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Austrian writer acquitted of terror charges in Turkey Posted: 11 Sep 2019 03:23 AM PDT ![Austrian writer acquitted of terror charges in Turkey]( "Austrian writer acquitted of terror charges in Turkey") An Austrian student and journalist says a Turkish court has acquitted him and two others of terror-related charges. Max Zirngast was taken into custody in September 2018 after Turkey accused him and two other people of "membership in an armed terrorist organization." They were accused of links to the Turkish Communist Party/Kivilcim. Ties between Turkey and the European Union have been strained over the arrests of foreign journalists and others in Turkey.
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| John Bolton Fired Due to ‘Failed’ Iran Policy, Rouhani’s Aide Says Posted: 11 Sep 2019 03:13 AM PDT  (Bloomberg) -- The dismissal of John Bolton as U.S. national security adviser is a recognition by the Trump administration that its policy toward Iran has been a "failure," according to a top aide to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani."The firing of Bolton after a not-so-long period shows that even the hawkish U.S. government has come to the conclusion that the age of warmongering and intimidation is over and, if it's to interact with the world, reason is the way," Rouhani's chief of staff, Mahmoud Vaezi, was cited by state-run Islamic Republic News Agency as saying.U.S. President Donald Trump announced in a tweet on Tuesday that he had sacked Bolton, citing strong disagreements over policy. The move followed growing speculation that Trump and Rouhani might hold talks this month at the United Nations General Assembly in New York, a potentially historic meeting that would mark a significant lowering of tensions between the two nations.Any get-together still faces substantial hurdles as top officials on both sides remain opposed to major concessions. Addressing Bolton's dismissal, Iran's UN ambassador, Majid Takht-Ravanchi, said that talks between the leaders were out of the question while Washington's policy of "economic terrorism against Iran" remained in place, IRNA reported.Vaezi's comments are the first substantial official reaction to Bolton's firing from the Iranian government, which has been at the center of Bolton's hawkish cross-hairs since he was named national security adviser in April 2018.A month into the appointment, Trump announced the U.S.'s exit from the 2015 nuclear deal and started the toughest sanctions regime ever imposed by Washington on another country.(Updates with fresh quotes and background.)To contact the reporters on this story: Abbas Al Lawati in Dubai at aallawati6@bloomberg.net;Arsalan Shahla in Tehran at ashahla@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Shaji Mathew at shajimathew@bloomberg.net, Mark Williams, Amy TeibelFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Angela Merkel says there is hope for Brexit deal 'right up to the last day' Posted: 11 Sep 2019 03:08 AM PDT  Angela Merkel has said there is still every chance of a Brexit deal being struck as British negotiators headed to Brussels for further talks. "We still have every chance of getting an orderly (Brexit) and the German government will do everything it can to make that possible - right up to the last day. But I also say we are prepared for a disorderly Brexit," Mrs Merkel told the Bundestag. But Pedro Sanchez, the acting prime minister of Spain, said that the EU would offer no further concessions to the UK, which was headed for a no deal Brexit. David Frost, the top UK Brexit official, is travelling to Brussels on Wednesday for talks about the political declaration with EU officials. The declaration sets out the terms of the negotiations on the future trading relationship between the UK and the EU. Mrs Merkel hinted that Brussels would insist on level playing field guarantees as part of any agreement. The commitments to uphold EU standards on tax, state aid and the environment - designed to keep the UK from gaining a competitive advantage over the EU - were accepted by Theresa May. David Frost and UK ambassador to the EU Tim Barrow arrive in Brussels for a technical meeting last week Credit: Francisco Seco/AP Mr Frost has told officials he wants them ditched and for Britain to remain free to diverge from Brussels' rules and regulations, even if that means accepting tariffs on some goods as part of a Canada-style trade deal. "The fact remains that after the withdrawal of Britain, we have an economic competitor at our door, even if we want to keep close economic, foreign and security cooperation and friendly relations," the German Chancellor said in Berlin. The British to ditch the level playing field guarantees has angered some in the EU-27 and jeopardised agreement on the prime minister's call for an all-Ireland food standards zone. The zone would go some way, but by no means all the way, to replacing the Irish border backstop, which would put the UK into a customs union with the EU to prevent checks on the border. EU27 diplomats said that asking for different treatment in Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK on the standards issue was a classic example of trying to "have your cake and eat it". Brexit Bulletin newsletter SUBSCRIBER (article) Pedro Sanchez repeated the EU's long-standing red line that the Brexit withdrawal agreement cannot be renegotiated. He added that "no further concessions" could be made to Britain in a speech to MPs in Madrid. Hopes have risen that a breakthrough could be possible. The EU would be prepared to limit the backstop to Northern Ireland only, rather than the whole UK. That was their original offer but Mrs May extended the backstop to the rest of Britain to prevent a customs border in the Irish Sea. The British government has denied that it is prepared to accept the Northern Ireland backstop and is pushing for technical solutions, in conjunction with the food standards zone, to replace it. On Tuesday, Phil Hogan, the Irish EU commissioner, said the "penny was dropping" with the British government. "Mr Johnson has made a proposal in the last few days talking about an all-Ireland food zone, he told the Irish Times, "If we can build on that we certainly might get closer to one another in terms of a possible outcome." Brexit | The best comment and analysis "I remain hopeful that the penny is finally dropping with the UK that there are pragmatic and practical solutions that can actually be introduced into the debate at this stage, albeit at the eleventh hour, that may find some common ground between the EU and the UK." Mr Hogan was named as the EU's new trade commissioner on Tuesday and will helm the future negotiations on a free trade agreement. He will take office on November 1. If no agreement is struck before the Oct 31 deadline, or an extension is not requested, Britain will leave the EU with no deal.
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| Bolton’s Ouster Unleashes the Inner Trump Posted: 11 Sep 2019 03:00 AM PDT  (Bloomberg) -- Want to receive this post in your inbox every day? Sign up for the Balance of Power newsletter, and follow Bloomberg Politics on Twitter and Facebook for more.John Bolton's departure as the president's national security adviser removes one source of American tension with the world. But it means that Donald Trump may increasingly shape U.S. foreign policy himself.Longtime hawk Bolton — fired yesterday by Trump citing disagreements on policy — was a key enabler for the president to take a hard line on Iran and North Korea.Yet while Bolton is a believer in foreign policy as a tool to combat regimes he perceives as a threat to U.S. strategic power, Trump tends to see overseas dealings through the prism of advancing U.S. economic interests.That increasingly put them at odds as Trump met with North Korea's Kim Jong Un, planned a meeting — later nixed — with the Taliban and now flirts with the idea of seeing Iran's Hassan Rouhani. Trump also has a more relaxed view of Vladimir Putin of Russia.Much now depends on who becomes the fourth national security adviser to serve Trump, and how quickly.In the short term, Bolton's demise may strengthen Secretary of State Michael Pompeo, a Trump loyalist, and leave rulers Bolton detests breathing easier. But it also removes a brake on Trump recalibrating foreign policy in even more disruptive ways.Global HeadlinesJust In: A Scottish court ruled that British Prime Minister Boris Johnson's decision to suspend Parliament is unlawful, meaning the U.K. Supreme Court will take up the issue next week, further clouding the constitutional picture over Brexit.Trump's headaches | As Trump accelerates his 2020 re-election campaign, he faces months of investigations by House Democrats on everything from his finances to his alleged role in payments to silence two women claiming to have had affairs with him. Added to those, the Judiciary Committee says it's reached a key phase in building an impeachment case against the president.Unlikely comeback | Taiwan's China-skeptic leader, Tsai Ing-wen, looked to be on the way out just a few months ago, with poor polling heading into presidential elections in January. The Hong Kong protests changed all that. Tsai's firm stance on China has become her biggest selling point to a Taiwanese electorate acutely aware that what happens in Hong Kong matters for them.Good fortune | Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's assault on economic orthodoxy — high interest rates cause inflation, he maintains — may just benefit from favorable timing and data. Analysts are predicting the world's biggest interest-rate cuts will precede a drop in inflation from around 20% to single digits. The question is how long the lira can bear it: cutting too far will crash the currency and send inflation soaring again.Google's heart | U.S. state attorneys general investigating Google over antitrust concerns are targeting its core business model by ordering it to turn over a wide range of information about its sprawling system of online advertising products. Questions posed by their investigative demand, which is similar to a subpoena, dig deep into Google's money-making machine and ask for a thorough explanation of how it all works.Netanyahu's gambit | Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's proposal to annex swaths of the West Bank was denounced as "madness" by Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, who appealed to the international community to stop it. The move would deal a body blow to Palestinian dreams of an independent state. Next week's Israeli elections will show if Netanyahu's bid pays off regardless.What to WatchItalian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte is due to meet top officials in Brussels today and forge what he promises will be warmer ties with the EU after he won the second of two confidence votes in parliament. Russia and Ukraine will face off at Europe's top human rights court over claims that Moscow-led forces tortured and killed Ukrainian police and civilians during their annexation of Crimea five years ago. A Nigerian court is due to rule today on an opposition challenge to President Muhammadu Buhari's re-election in February in Africa's biggest oil producer.And finally...Libya is gripped by its worst fighting since the 2011 NATO-backed ouster of Moammar Qaddafi, as rival powers vie for control of the oil-rich North African nation. Field Marshall Khalifa Haftar's self-styled Libyan National Army, the largest force in the country, is trying to pry the UN-backed government of Fayez al-Sarraj from the capital, Tripoli. The upshot, as Samer Al-Atrush reports, is a population that's grown inured to violence, power cuts and gas shortages, and a country more divided than ever. \--With assistance from Benjamin Harvey.To contact the author of this story: Rosalind Mathieson in London at rmathieson3@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Alan Crawford at acrawford6@bloomberg.net, Karl MaierFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| South African Confidence at Lowest Since 1980s Disinvestment Posted: 11 Sep 2019 03:00 AM PDT ![South African Confidence at Lowest Since 1980s Disinvestment]( "South African Confidence at Lowest Since 1980s Disinvestment") (Bloomberg) -- South African business confidence slumped to the lowest level since disinvestment from the country over its apartheid policies started gaining momentum more than three decades ago.A sentiment index compiled by the South African Chamber of Commerce and Industry declined to 89.1 last month from 92 in July, according to an emailed statement Wednesday. That's the lowest level since April 1985, the year the United Nations Security Council called on members to introduce more far-reaching economic measures against South Africa.While Africa's most-industrialized economy dodged a second recession in as many years, it's stuck in the longest downward cycle since 1945, according to central bank data. Weak economic growth, rising debt and an unemployment rate at 29% continue to vex the country, provoking social tensions and prompting warnings from business groups and analysts that it may be forced to seek assistance from the International Monetary Fund.South Africa experienced a wave of xenophobic attacks over the past three weeks, which have seen scores of foreign-owned shops looted and burned. While Police Minister Bheki Cele said the primary motive behind the violence is crime, some groups say the actions are partly due to the frustration of people who continue to live in poverty."The current state of fiscal deficiencies, social injustices and unemployment necessitates an urgent adjustment in how their impact is viewed, no longer as just economic terms that must be studied and converted into action, but as the likely cause of crime violence, looting and anti-foreigner sentiments that are currently dominating news headlines," the business chamber said. "It is denting the status of South Africa as a favored investment destination and affecting lives and businesses of ordinary South Africans."'Giving Up Hope'A quarterly business confidence index compiled by FirstRand Ltd.'s Rand Merchant Bank unit and Stellenbosch University's Bureau for Economic Research dropped to a two-decade low of 21 in the three months through September, from 28 the previous quarter. That means eight out of every 10 respondents are dissatisfied with prevailing business conditions."It would appear if more and more business people participating in the BER's survey are simply giving up hope, a concerning development, and one that spells even greater trouble ahead for an already weak economy," RMB said in an emailed statement.Business sentiment surged to a two-year high in early 2018 after Cyril Ramaphosa won the leadership of the ruling African National Congress and took over as president of the country, but has since waned as businesses continue to seek real reforms.Policy uncertainty and legislation that forces bank to write off certain debts, along with plans to introduce prescribed assets for pension funds and a national health insurance system, and unresolved issues around land reform added to the adverse business climate in August, Sacci said."To further delay growth-boosting reforms that should have been implemented years ago, such as easing of immigration regulations, cutting red tape, auctioning spectrum and simplifying visa regulations, will simply perpetuate this vicious cycle South Africa is currently in," said RMB chief economist Ettienne le Roux. "Time is not on our side, especially now that the global headwinds the country is facing are becoming ever-fiercer."(Updates with RMB/BER business confidence index from sixth paragraph)To contact the reporter on this story: Prinesha Naidoo in Johannesburg at pnaidoo7@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Rene Vollgraaff at rvollgraaff@bloomberg.net, Paul RichardsonFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Merkel says there is hope for Brexit deal 'right up to the last day' Posted: 11 Sep 2019 02:38 AM PDT Angela Merkel has said there is still every chance of a Brexit deal being struck as British negotiators headed to Brussels for further talks. "We still have every chance of getting an orderly (Brexit) and the German government will do everything it can to make that possible - right up to the last day. But I also say we are prepared for a disorderly Brexit," Mrs Merkel told the Bundestag. But Pedro Sanchez, the acting prime minister of Spain, said that the EU would offer no further concessions to the UK, which was headed for a no deal Brexit. David Frost, the top UK Brexit official, is travelling to Brussels on Wednesday for talks about the political declaration with EU officials. The declaration sets out the terms of the negotiations on the future trading relationship between the UK and the EU. Mrs Merkel hinted that Brussels would insist on level playing field guarantees as part of any agreement. The commitments to uphold EU standards on tax, state aid and the environment - designed to keep the UK from gaining a competitive advantage over the EU - were accepted by Theresa May. David Frost and UK ambassador to the EU Tim Barrow arrive in Brussels for a technical meeting last week Credit: Francisco Seco/AP Mr Frost has told officials he wants them ditched and for Britain to remain free to diverge from Brussels' rules and regulations, even if that means accepting tariffs on some goods as part of a Canada-style trade deal. "The fact remains that after the withdrawal of Britain, we have an economic competitor at our door, even if we want to keep close economic, foreign and security cooperation and friendly relations," the German Chancellor said in Berlin. The British to ditch the level playing field guarantees has angered some in the EU-27 and jeopardised agreement on the prime minister's call for an all-Ireland food standards zone. The zone would go some way, but by no means all the way, to replacing the Irish border backstop, which would put the UK into a customs union with the EU to prevent checks on the border. EU27 diplomats said that asking for different treatment in Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK on the standards issue was a classic example of trying to "have your cake and eat it". Pedro Sanchez repeated the EU's long-standing red line that the Brexit withdrawal agreement cannot be renegotiated. He added that "no further concessions" could be made to Britain in a speech to MPs in Madrid. Hopes have risen that a breakthrough could be possible. The EU would be prepared to limit the backstop to Northern Ireland only, rather than the whole UK. That was their original offer but Mrs May extended the backstop to the rest of Britain to prevent a customs border in the Irish Sea. The British government has denied that it is prepared to accept the Northern Ireland backstop and is pushing for technical solutions, in conjunction with the food standards zone, to replace it. On Tuesday, Phil Hogan, the Irish EU commissioner, said the "penny was dropping" with the British government. "Mr Johnson has made a proposal in the last few days talking about an all-Ireland food zone, he told the Irish Times, "If we can build on that we certainly might get closer to one another in terms of a possible outcome." "I remain hopeful that the penny is finally dropping with the UK that there are pragmatic and practical solutions that can actually be introduced into the debate at this stage, albeit at the eleventh hour, that may find some common ground between the EU and the UK." Mr Hogan was named as the EU's new trade commissioner on Tuesday and will helm the future negotiations on a free trade agreement. He will take office on November 1. If no agreement is struck before the Oct 31 deadline, or an extension is not requested, Britain will leave the EU with no deal.
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