Boris Johnson, leadership candidate for Britain's Conservative Prime Minister, leaves his home in London, Britain June 15, 2019. REUTERS/Toby Melville
(Reuters) - British conservative lawmaker Esther McVey said on Saturday that she will support Boris Johnson in his bid to be prime minister, The Telegraph reported.
"Boris Johnson is supporting my agenda – which is why I'm supporting him", she wrote bit.ly/2WLp52V in the newspaper, adding that she looks forward to working with Johnson to deliver on behalf of "blue collar Conservatives" across the country.
Reporting by Ishita Chigilli Palli in Bengaluru; Editing by Daniel Wallis
FILE PHOTO: Mayor of London Sadiq Khan speaks during an interview with Reuters at an event to promote the start of London Tech Week, in London, Britain, June 10, 2019. REUTERS/Dylan Martinez/File Photo
LONDON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump once again criticized London Mayor Sadiq Khan on Saturday, saying he is a “disaster” and will “only get worse” after three people were slain in the city in less than 20 hours.
Trump retweeted a tweet by the right-wing commentator Katie Hopkins who called London “stab city” and said “this is Khan’s Londonistan,” a phrase used to describe the city’s failure to tackle Muslim extremists.
“LONDON needs a new mayor ASAP. Khan is a disaster - will only get worse!” Trump said on Twitter.
Trump called Khan, a Muslim of Pakistani heritage, a “stone-cold loser” earlier this month after the mayor criticized the British government for inviting Trump for a state visit and compared him to 20th century fascists.
Trump’s feud with Khan dates back several years. Khan has criticized Trump’s effort to ban travelers from Muslim countries, while the president has castigated the mayor for his handling of a 2017 terrorist attack on the London bridge that killed 11 people.
Reporting By Andrew MacAskill; Editing by Bill Trott
DUBAI (Reuters) - Iran on Saturday summoned the British ambassador to Tehran after London blamed it for attacks on oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman, the semi-official Students News Agency ISNA reported.
“During the meeting with Iran’s foreign ministry official, Iran strongly condemned the unfounded allegations and criticized Britain’s unacceptable stance regarding the attacks in the Gulf of Oman,” it said.
The ambassador was asked for an explanation and correction after Britain was the only nation to echo U.S. accusations, ISNA reported.
British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt issued a statement on Friday blaming Iran and its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps for the attacks, saying no other state or non-state actor could have been responsible.
Iran has denied any involvement.
The attacks have raised fears of a confrontation in the vital oil shipping route of the Strait of Hormuz at a time of increased tension between Iran and the United States.
Writing by Parisa Hafezi; Editing by Hugh Lawson and Andrew Cawthorne
PARIS (Reuters) - A small congregation in white hard hats attended mass at Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris on Saturday, the first service since fire devastated the Gothic landmark two months ago.
The Archbishop of Paris Michel Aupetit leads the first mass in a side chapel two months to the day after a devastating fire engulfed the Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral, in Paris, France June 15, 2019. Karine Perret/Pool via REUTERS
Church leaders are keen to show life goes on at the cathedral as donations for rebuilding trickle in.
Less than 10% of the 850 million euros ($953 million) pledged by billionaires, business leaders and others has been received so far, the French government said.
The mass, which commemorates the cathedral’s consecration as a place of worship, was held in a side-chapel left undamaged by the April 15 fire, with attendance limited to about 30 people wearing protective headgear.
Priests in ceremonial garb of white robes and yellow stoles briefly parted with their hard hats during the communion.
“It is with much emotion that we are here to celebrate the consecration of the cathedral,” said Paris’s archbishop Michel Aupetit, who led the service.
“It is a message of hope and thanks to all those who were moved by what happened to this cathedral,” he added, acknowledging afterwards it was “a bit strange” to celebrate mass with a helmet.
The service was broadcast live on a religious TV channel that showed poignant images of the blue sky through the collapsed roof and the black rubble still clogging the building.
On Friday, France’s Culture Minister Franck Riester said the cathedral was still in a fragile state, especially the vault.
The blaze caused the roof and spire of the architectural masterpiece to collapse, triggering worldwide sadness.
Among those who promised to donate to the rebuilding effort were luxury goods tycoons Bernard Arnault and François-Henri Pinault.
“There could be people who promised to donate then in the end did not,” Riester told France 2 television, without giving further details. “But more importantly, and this is normal, the donations will be paid as restoration work progresses.”
President Emmanuel Macron has set a target of five years for restoring the cathedral, though Riester was more cautious.
“The president was right to give a target, an ambition,” he said. “But obviously what matters in the end is the quality of the work. So it does not mean that work will be totally finished in exactly five years.”
SANTIAGO (Reuters) - Chilean authorities found alive one of three Bolivian miners trapped beneath the rubble at a small copper mine early on Saturday, while another was found dead, Chile´s mining ministry said.
Authorities have yet to locate the third miner. The three men had gone missing late Thursday after a small landslide blocked the entrance to the mine, trapping the miners nearly 70 meters (230 feet) beneath the surface.
“Our rescue teams found one of the miners in good physical condition, and he has been transferred to the hospital,” mining minister Baldo Prokurica said in a statement on Saturday. “We will continue to look for the third person that has not been found.”
The mining ministry said authorities had worked for nearly 40 hours at the Directorio 8 mine near Tocopilla on the northern Chilean coast before locating two of the three men.
Chile is the world’s top copper producer, and mining accidents, while uncommon, are closely followed by the Chilean public and politicians.
In 2010, a mining accident in Copiapo, northern Chile, led to 33 miners being trapped underground for nearly 10 weeks before being rescued, an event that made world headlines.
Reporting by Dave Sherwood, Editing by Franklin Paul
PARIS (Reuters) - NATO faces significant costs if it does not act soon to choose a successor for its ageing fleet of 14 Boeing E-3A Airborne Warning & Control System (AWACS) surveillance aircraft, often called the alliance’s “eyes in the sky”, senior officials said.
FILE PHOTO: A NATO AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control Systems) aircraft approaches the Air Base number 5 during the Real Thaw 2018 exercise in Monte Real, Portugal February 6, 2018. REUTERS/Rafael Marchante/File Photo
Michael Gschossmann, general manager of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization agency that manages the AWACS fleet, said he expected to finalize by December a $750 million contract with U.S. arms maker Boeing Co to extend the life of the aircraft through 2035, with $250 million more earmarked for design, spare parts and testing.
But he said it was critical to decide quickly how to replace the 1979/1980-era airplanes, with their distinctive radar domes on the fuselage, or NATO would need to take costly steps to keep them flying even longer.
“We have to get moving on this. We have to ensure that the studies move along quickly. We need a reality check,” he said.
The AWACS planes are among the few military assets owned and operated by NATO, rather than individual states. They are used to conduct missions such as air policing, support for counter-terrorism operations, evacuations, and crisis response.
Gschossmann told Reuters NATO could follow the lead of member states Britain and Turkey in purchasing the E-7, a newer radar plane also built by Boeing. Those aircraft, he said, were large enough to add potential new capabilities, such as operating drones for expanded surveillance, in coming years.
“We have to ensure that we acquire a system that has growth potential, but that also – for financial and time reasons – is based on existing capabilities,” he said.
NATO is considering the AWACS replacement issue as part of a broader study of surveillance, but the process has dragged out given rapidly changing threats and newly emerging capabilities.
France and the United States also operate E-3A aircraft and could potentially buy E-7 planes in coming years, which could lower costs by generating larger order quantities.
“Why don’t we bet on the proven technology that we already have in the E-7 and provide NATO with a certain number of those aircraft? That would give us a basic capability that could be expanded in the future,” he said.
George Riebling, deputy general manager of the agency and a former senior U.S. official, said NATO was running out of time.
“If you don’t have an idea of what you’re going to do to replace NATO AWACS, then the ‘F’ in Final Lifetime Extension Programme (FLEP) can’t stand for final,” he said.
“There will be things we need to do to the NATO E-3A fleet to keep it flying past 2040.”
The FLEP program will update the aircraft’s mission system, as well as the processors for its electronic support measures (ESM) antenna. But it does not cover the radar itself, which would have doubled the cost.
Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne
PARIS (Reuters) - A small congregation wearing hard hats will attend mass at Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris on Saturday, the first service to be held since fire devastated the Gothic landmark two months ago.
FILE PHOTO: A picture shows bells gathered during preliminary work at the Notre-Dame Cathedral one month after it sustained major fire damage in Paris, France May 15, 2019. Philippe Lopez/Pool via REUTERS
Church leaders are keen to show life goes on at the cathedral as donations to help rebuild it trickle in. Less than 10% of the 850 million euros pledged by billionaires, business leaders and others has been received so far, the French government said.
Saturday’s mass, which commemorates the cathedral’s consecration as a place of worship, is due to be held at 1600 GMT in a side-chapel, with attendance limited to about 30 people who will wear the protective headgear for safety reasons.
“It is a nice symbol. A very small group of people will attend and one can understand why as there are still major safety issues,” Culture Minister Franck Riester told Europe 1 radio.
He told France 2 television on Friday the cathedral was still “in a fragile state, namely the vault, which has not yet been secured. It can still collapse”.
The April 15 blaze caused the roof and spire of the architectural masterpiece to collapse, triggering a worldwide outpouring of sadness as well as the multi-million-euro pledges for reconstruction work.
Among the high-profile people who promised to donate to the rebuilding effort were luxury goods tycoons Bernard Arnault and François-Henri Pinault.
“There could be people who promised to donate then in the end did not,” Riester said, without giving further details. “But more importantly, and this is normal, the donations will be paid as restoration work progresses.”
French President Emmanuel Macron has set a target of five years for restoring the cathedral, though Riester was more cautious.
“The president was right to give a target, an ambition. But obviously what matters in the end is the quality of the work,” he said. “So it does not mean that work will be totally finished in exactly five years.”
The archbishop of Paris, Michel Aupetit will lead Saturday’s service, which will be broadcast live on a religious TV channel.
Russian President Vladimir Putin (R) toasts with Chinese President Xi Jinping while congratulating him on his birthday before the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia (CICA) in Dushanbe, Tajikistan June 15, 2019. Sputnik/Alexei Druzhinin/Kremlin via REUTERS
BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese President Xi Jinping celebrated his 66th birthday on Saturday with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who Xi considers a close friend and who gave Xi ice cream as a present, Chinese state media reported.
The discussion of senior leaders’ private lives is extremely rare in China, and the exact birth dates of most of them are not revealed publicly, as they are considered a state secret.
State television showed pictures of Xi and Putin holding up champagne glasses to toast Xi’s birthday at the hotel he is staying at in Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan, where they are both attending a regional summit.
While Putin gave Xi Russian ice cream - the flavor was not mentioned - Xi gave Putin back some Chinese tea, the report said.
Xi thanked Putin and said that in China Putin was extremely popular, it added.
Pictures on Chinese state television’s website showed the two men inspecting a white cake decorated with red and blue confectionary flowers with the words written on it, in somewhat shaky red-colored Chinese characters, “good fortune double six”.
It was not immediately clear if Xi ate any of the cake.
Reporting by Ben Blanchard; editing by Christian Schmollinger
MUMBAI (Reuters) - Two weeks after an avalanche swept up and probably killed a group of climbers in the Himalayas, Indian authorities mounted efforts to pluck their bodies from an exposed mountain face, braving harsh weather and treacherous terrain.
FILE PHOTO: Snow-covered Nanda Devi mountain is seen from Auli town, in the northern Himalayan state of Uttarakhand, India February 25, 2014. Picture taken February 25, 2014. REUTERS/Stringer
The peaks in the 2,400-km (1,500-mile) -long range are among some of the world’s tallest and most dangerous, drawing thousands of adventurers who risk their lives scaling them each year.
This year alone, more than two dozen climbers have been killed on peaks in India, Nepal and Pakistan.
“It could be very frightening up there and it’s definitely going to snow,” said Purmal Dharmshaktu, 61, who has climbed Himalayan peaks for 35 years.
“It’s summer and the crevasses would have widened. This is an incredibly tough task.”
The retrieval could take days, if not weeks, said officials who have been forced to abort aerial recovery bids because of the rugged terrain.
(Graphic link: tmsnrt.rs/2X594cE)
The Indian air force, border police and state and national disaster officials have been drafted into the recovery plans. A team of 32 launched a fresh ground and aerial effort on Tuesday that is expected to run 25 days.
“It is difficult for a helicopter to hover for long in that area,” said Vijay Kumar Jogdande, a government official in India’s northern state of Uttarakhand, adding that a three-sided bowl-shaped geographic configuration complicated the task.
The eight feared killed in the avalanche had targeted Nanda Devi East, a sister mountain of the Nanda Devi peak that is 7,816 m (25,643 ft) tall. Both rank among the world’s most challenging peaks, conquered by only a handful of people.
In an effort to acclimatize before that bid, however, the group, led by expert Martin Moran, set out to scale an unclimbed 6,477-m (21,250-ft) -high peak, said deputy leader Mark Thomas.
Thomas, and three others on the expedition, survived because they did not attempt that climb.
Moran and his companions did not return to their base camp on May 29 as planned, with five bodies being spotted by a helicopter on June 3, at a height of about 5,000 m (16,404 ft).
Climbing regulator the Indian Mountaineering Foundation (IMF) is sending a separate expedition of 12 on Wednesday. It will take an alternate route to reach the bodies by June 19, IMF spokesman Amit Chowdhury told Reuters.
The eight missing climbers have been identified as Moran, John Mclaren, Rupert Whewell and Richard Payne, all from Great Britain; Anthony Sudekum and Ronald Beimel from the United States; Ruth McCance from Australia; and Chetan Pandey, an Indian, who was the IMF’s liaison officer.
Reporting by Sankalp Phartiyal; Editing by Euan Rocha and Clarence Fernandez
HONG KONG (Reuters) - Hong Kong media reported on Saturday the city’s government would suspend a proposed law on extradition to mainland China that sparked widespread anger and violent protests, with leader Carrie Lam planning to address reporters later in the day.
Support for the swift passage of the extradition bill began to crumble on Friday with several pro-Beijing politicians and a senior advisor to Lam saying discussion of the bill should be shelved for the time being.
The extradition bill, which will cover Hong Kong residents and foreign and Chinese nationals living or traveling in the city, has many concerned it may threaten the rule of law that underpins Hong Kong’s international financial status.
Around a million people, according to protest organizers, marched through Hong Kong last Sunday to oppose the bill. Protests through the week were met with tear gas and rubber bullets from police, plunging the city into turmoil and piling heavy pressure on Lam.
Another protest is planned for this Sunday.
Hong Kong’s iCable, the South China Morning Post and Sing Tao newspaper all reported that the bill would be suspended on Saturday. TVB and iCable said Lam would hold a news conference on Saturday afternoon.
Calls to Lam’s office went unanswered outside of business hours. Lam has not appeared in public or commented since Wednesday. Hong Kong media reported Lam would meet pro-Beijing lawmakers around noon to explain her pending announcement.
Backing down from efforts to drive the bill through the city’s legislature by July would have been unthinkable last week when the law’s passage seemed inevitable as Lam remained defiant.
People attend a rally in support of demonstrators protesting against the proposed extradition bill with China, in Hong Kong, China, June 14, 2019. Picture taken June 14, 2019. REUTERS/Jorge Silva
But Michael Tien, a member of Hong Kong’s legislature and a deputy to China’s national parliament, said a total withdrawal of the bill was unlikely.
“The amendment is supported by the central government, so I think a withdrawal would send a political message that the central government is wrong. This would not happen under ‘one country, two systems’,” he told Reuters, referring to the model under which Hong Kong enjoys semi-autonomy.
Tien, a member of the pro-Beijing camp, said he supported a suspension of the bill without a timetable.
Despite chatter that the government would hit pause on the bill, organizers of last Sunday’s protest march stood by plans for another march this Sunday. In addition to opposing the bill they would also be calling for accountability of the police for the way protests have been handled.
Lam has said the extradition law is necessary to prevent criminals using Hong Kong as a place to hide and that human rights will be protected by the city’s court which will decide on a case-by-case basis extraditions.
Critics, including leading lawyers and rights groups, note that China’s justice system is controlled by the Communist Party, and marked by torture and forced confessions, arbitrary detention and poor access to lawyers.
Last Sunday’s protest in the former British colony was the biggest political demonstration since its return to Chinese rule in 1997 under a “one country, two systems” deal. The agreement guarantees Hong Kong’s special autonomy, including freedom of assembly, free press and independent judiciary.
Many accuse China of extensive meddling since then, including obstruction of democratic reforms, interference with elections and of being behind the disappearance of five Hong Kong-based booksellers, starting in 2015, who specialised in works critical of Chinese leaders.
Slideshow (4 Images)
Beijing has denied that it has overreached in Hong Kong.
The extradition bill has spooked some of Hong Kong’s tycoons into starting to move their personal wealth offshore, according to financial advisers, bankers and lawyers familiar with the details.
Reporting by John Ruwitch, Joyce Zhou, Vimvam Tong, Clare Jim and Anne Marie Roantree; Editing by Michael PerryEditing by Michael Perry
HONG KONG (Reuters) - Hong Kong media reported on Saturday the city’s government would suspend a proposed law on extradition to mainland China that sparked widespread anger and violent protests, with leader Carrie Lam planning to address reporters later in the day.
People attend a rally in support of demonstrators protesting against proposed extradition bill with China, in Hong Kong, China, June 14, 2019. REUTERS/Athit Perawongmetha
Support for the extradition bill began to crumble on Friday with several pro-Beijing politicians and a senior advisor to Lam saying discussion of the bill should be shelved for the time being.
The extradition bill, which will cover Hong Kong residents and foreign and Chinese nationals living or traveling in the city, has many concerned it may threaten the rule of law that underpins Hong Kong’s international financial status.
Hundreds of thousands of people marched through Hong Kong last Sunday to protest the bill, and street demonstrations through the week were met with tear gas and rubber bullets from police, plunging the city into turmoil and piling heavy pressure on Lam. Another protest is planned for this Sunday.
Hong Kong’s iCable, the South China Morning Post and Sing Tao newspaper all reported that the bill would be suspended on Saturday. TVB and iCable said Lam would hold a news conference on Saturday afternoon.
Calls to Lam’s office went unanswered outside of business hours. Lam has not appeared in public or commented since Wednesday.
Backing down from efforts to drive the bill through the city’s legislature by July would have been unthinkable last week when the law’s passage seemed inevitable as Lam remained defiant.
Lam has said the extradition law is necessary to prevent criminals using Hong Kong as a place to hide and that human rights will be protected by the city’s court which will decide on a case-by-case basis extraditions.
Opponents, including leading lawyers and rights groups, say China’s justice system, where courts are controlled by the Communist Party, is marked by torture and forced confessions, arbitrary detention and poor access to lawyers.
Last Sunday’s protest in the former British colony was the biggest political demonstration since its return to Chinese rule in 1997 under a “one country, two systems” deal. The agreement guarantees Hong Kong’s special autonomy, including freedom of assembly, free press and independent judiciary.
Many accuse China of extensive meddling since then, including obstruction of democratic reforms, interference with elections and of being behind the disappearance of five Hong Kong-based booksellers, starting in 2015, who specialized in works critical of Chinese leaders.
The extradition bill has spooked some of Hong Kong’s tycoons to start moving their personal wealth offshore, according to financial advisers, bankers and lawyers familiar with the details.
Reporting by John Ruwitch, Joyce Zhou, Vimvam Tong, Clare Jim and Anne Marie Roantree
FILE PHOTO: The logo of Swiss drugmaker Roche is seen at its headquarters in Basel, Switzerland February 1, 2018. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann
(This June 10 story deletes paragraph 9 to clarify that retreatment with Polivy has not been studied.)
(Reuters) - The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Monday granted earlier-than-expected approval to Roche Holding AG’s antibody- Polivy for treatment of patients with advanced lymphoma.
Polivy was approved in combination with Roche’s older drug Rituxan and a chemotherapy agent for adult patients with advanced diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) whose cancer has worsened despite at least two previous lines of therapy.
Antibody-drug conjugates are designed to deliver a toxic chemotherapy directly to tumors. Roche said the average U.S. list price for a four-month course of Polivy would be $90,000. Rituxan is priced at $39,500 for four months.
Wall Street analysts estimate Polivy sales at nearly $1 billion by 2024, according to IBES data from Refinitiv.
Side effects seen in studies of Polivy included low blood cell counts, nerve damage, fatigue and pneumonia, the FDA said in a statement.
Cell therapies Yescarta, from Gilead Sciences Inc and Kymriah, sold by Novartis AG, are also approved for patients with advanced DLBCL.
Dr. Matthew Matasar, a hematologist at New York’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center who was involved in the development of Polivy, said the drug could be an option for some patients to try before determining whether they need to move on to CAR-T treatments.
Roche estimates that nearly 25,000 new cases of DLBCL, a type of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL), will be diagnosed in the United States this year. NHL, which is one of the most common cancers, accounts for about 4% of all types of cancers in the United States, according to the American Cancer Society. Continued approval for the treatment may depend on data from a confirmatory trial, Roche said. The FDA’s accelerated approval program allows conditional approval of a medicine that fills an unmet medical need for a serious condition.
Reporting by Aakash Jagadeesh Babu in Bengaluru and Deena Beasley in Los Angeles; Editing by James Emmanuel and Lisa Shumaker
FILE PHOTO - Ada Colau, the Mayor of Barcelona, issues a statement in Barcelona, Spain, October 9, 2017. REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes
BARCELONA (Reuters) - Barcelona’s acting far-leftist mayor Ada Colau may win a second term in office on Saturday with the support of the Socialists and representatives backed by former French premier Manuel Valls - in a deal aimed at preventing a Catalan pro-independence leader taking the job.
Local elections in May produced a fragmented result in Spain’s second-largest city: Colau’s Barcelona en Comu (Barcelona in Common) and the separatist Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (Catalonia’s Republican Left) parties each won 10 seats, while the Socialists got eight and Valls’ group took six.
City hall votes to pick a new mayor on Saturday. The winning candidate will need the support of 21 representatives.
The outcome has national importance because Spain’s acting Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez may need the support of Esquerra Republicana to be re-elected by parliament in the coming weeks.
Colau’s party said on Friday its members had voted in favor of her seeking a new term in a deal with the Catalan Socialist Party.
Valls, born in Barcelona to a Catalan father and Swiss-Italian mother, has said he would support Colau or Socialist candidate Jaume Collboni as mayor to avoid a secessionist taking the job.
But if no candidate wins the support of 21 representatives, Esquerra’s Ernest Maragall would take the job as his party won 5,000 more votes than Barcelona en Comu in the May election.
CHISINAU (Reuters) - Moldova’s new prime minister Maia Sandu consolidated her power on Friday as her predecessor resigned, appearing to ease a crisis that shook the country for the past week as two rival governments jostled for control.
Pavel Filip, former Moldova's Prime Minister and one of the leaders of the Democratic Party of Moldova, speaks at a news briefing in Chisinau, Moldova, June 14, 2019. REUTERS/Vladislav Culiomza
Sandu took office last weekend as the head of a new coalition government designed to fight corruption and remove a party led by tycoon Vladimir Plahotniuc from power.
But Plahotniuc’s Democratic Party called her a usurper and insisted Prime Minister Pavel Filip was still in charge. Filip stepped down on Friday but demanded a snap election and refused to recognize Sandu’s government as legal.
The crisis threatened more instability for one of Europe’s smallest and poorest countries, where the West and Russia vie for influence.
Moldova has been dogged by scandals and the emigration of citizens to Russia or wealthier European countries to find work. Sandu is the country’s eighth prime minister since 2013.
“I have a message to the entire world. Moldova is finally free,” Sandu told a televised briefing.
Earlier on Friday in an interview with Reuters, she laid out some of her government’s priorities: fight corruption, sack dishonest officials, make the electoral system fairer and get foreign aid flowing.
“The biggest challenge of the country is that people are leaving. It’s the young people who are leaving.”
UNLIKELY ALLIANCE
After a February election produced a hung parliament, Sandu, a Harvard-educated former World Bank economist, became head of a coalition government comprising her ACUM bloc and the Socialist party of President Igor Dodon.
It is an unlikely alliance – ACUM wants Moldova to join the EU, while Dodon wants closer ties with Russia.
Sandu told Reuters her government will adhere to Moldova’s current international agreements, including a political and trade pact with the EU rolled out in 2014.
“This is not a natural alliance. There is no question about it, and probably half a year ago nobody would have said that this could happen,” she said.
She is keen to ensure Moldova receives two outstanding tranches of aid from the International Monetary Fund before the current program expires in November.
Sandu joined politics in 2012 as an education minister, where she became well known for her efforts to clamp down on rampant cheating during exams.
Tackling corruption on a national scale would likely prove popular as it is one of voters’ biggest concerns.
Plahotniuc’s Democratic Party said Sandu had missed a legal deadline to form the government and the Constitutional Court last weekend declared her government invalid.
It suspended Dodon temporarily to allow Filip as acting president to declare an election in September. Sandu and Dodon ignored the ruling.
The crisis led to two rival governments issuing orders. Sandu’s ministers could not enter government buildings, which were surrounded by police and Plahotniuc’s supporters. She ran her government out of offices in the parliament.
When the man Sandu appointed interior minister tried to enter police headquarters earlier this week, it ended in a scuffle with officers in helmets and balaclavas.
Russia supports the new government. The EU, which froze aid to Moldova last year, said it was “ready to work with the democratically legitimate government”. Washington had earlier called on all sides to show restraint.
Sandu accuses Plahotniuc of corruption and trampling on democracy. Plahotniuc’s camp says such allegations against him are politically driven lies, and that Sandu’s government would let Moldova fall into Moscow’s orbit.
Filip, for his part, has accused Sandu and Dodon of subverting democracy and called their administration an “illegal, Kremlin-backed government”.
Slideshow (6 Images)
He resigned on Friday but said he only did so because of the pressure being put on his administration.
“Our resignation does not unblock the legal process, because the constitutional crisis continues,” he said.
Sandu called on the Democratic Party to withdraw its supporters from surrounding government buildings and desist from protests.
Additional reporting by Alexander Tanas; Editing by Kevin Liffey
CHISINAU (Reuters) - The Democratic Party of Moldova said on Friday it would step down from power and dismiss Prime Minister Pavel Filip’s government.
“The resignation of the government of Pavel Filip is the only possible and legitimate solution to prevent a political crisis,” Vladimir Cebotari said in a televised briefing.
Moldova has been in turmoil for the past week as two rival governments tussled for control of the east European country. Maia Sandu was nominated as Prime Minister last weekend, but Filip’s camp refused to recognize her government’s legitimacy.
Reporting by Matthias Williams and Alexander Tanas; Editing by Hugh Lawson
LONDON (Reuters) - The number of people to die from a listeria outbreak in British hospitals has risen to five from three, Public Health England (PHE) said on Friday.
The agency said that since the outbreak it had reviewed earlier cases and established that one other death had also been linked to the infection, which is thought to stem from sandwiches and salads. One patient who had been seriously ill has also since died, taking the number to five.
“To date, there have been no patients linked to this incident outside healthcare organizations, but we continue to investigate,” said PHE’s Nick Phin. “Swift action was taken to protect patients and any risk to the public is low.
Reporting by Kate Holton; editing by Stephen Addison
PARIS (Reuters) - France and Italy forged a military shipbuilding alliance on Friday, as state-controlled Naval Group and Fincantieri signed off on a 50-50 joint venture that will bid for Franco-Italian warship projects and sell to the world market.
FILE PHOTO: A sub-scale sized model of a Corvette by Fincantieri is displayed at Euronaval, the world naval defence exhibition in Le Bourget near Paris, France, October 23, 2018. REUTERS/Benoit Tessier/File Photo
The alliance reflects the two countries’ desire to fend off competition in naval shipbuilding from the likes of China, the United States and Russia.
It is targeting orders worth up to 5 billion euros ($5.63 billion) over the next decade. Naval Group said the joint venture aims to build 10-15 warships in that period, with synergies estimated at 10-15%.
“It is the product of a shared industrial ambition,” Herve Guillou, chief executive of Naval Group told reporters on a call.
“We are by far the two biggest naval shipbuilders in Europe, but we cannot remain competitive and maximize our resources if we rely only on our domestic markets.”
The joint venture does not entail a share swap between the two groups.
France and Italy first outlined plans to deepen naval shipbuilding cooperation in September 2017.
However, political and business relations between the two euro zone powerhouses have become increasingly fraught since then and uncertainty hangs over other deals.
Earlier this month, Fiat Chrysler withdrew its proposal for a 35 billion euro merger with Renault, with both the Italian-American carmaker and Rome blaming French government interference for the deal’s collapse.
Meanwhile, at France’s request, the European Union’s antitrust chief is examining Fincantieri’s purchase of a 50% stake in French shipbuilder Chantiers de l’Atlantique, formerly STX, a move which irritated Fincantieri and Rome.
Fincantieri top executives recently said they were confident of winning approval from Brussels, but that it could take some months.
The joint venture between Fincantieri and Naval Group, in which French defense company Thales has a 35% stake, seeks to balance power within the alliance.
That has been a stumbling block for other Franco-Italian mergers such as the troubled Essilor-Luxottica tie-up.
The new enterprise will be headquartered in Genoa, with its engineering center based in France’s southern Var region.
Its chief executive Claude Centofanti is a Frenchman and its chairman, Giuseppe Bono, an Italian who is also CEO of Fincantieri.
The two companies have said they will look for efficiencies by taking advantage of their bigger scale, jointly conducting some research and sharing test facilities.
Guillou said the market for mid-size to large frigates was growing 5-7% a year. “It’s also where the emerging competition is attacking us the hardest,” he added.
He said there was potential for Naval Group and the new JV to derive synergies too from the Fincantieri-Chantiers de l’Atlantique tie-up, but a go-ahead from Brussels would be needed before they can be more deeply explored.
But he added that the setting up of the venture and the merger between Fincantieri and Chantier were separate issues, downplaying analysts’ hopes the JV could make it easier to win the go-ahead for Fincantieri-Chantier.
Naval Group holds a minority stake in Chantiers de l’Atlantique.
“We could imagine buying steel benefitting from scale of volume,” Guillou said. “When you think about what vessels of the future might look like, and cleaner energies, it’s not something that will only interest military shipbuilders.”
FILE PHOTO: Jailed Catalan politician Oriol Junqueras attends the first session of parliament following a general election in Madrid, Spain, May 21, 2019. Bernat Armangue/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo
MADRID (Reuters) - Spain’s Supreme Court on Friday blocked Catalan separatist Oriol Junqueras from leaving jail to collect his credentials for the European Parliament, to which he was elected on May 26.
Without the credentials, Junqueras, who is in prison awaiting the conclusion of a high profile trial on Catalonia’s bid for independence from Spain, is unable to claim his seat in the European legislature.
The court said its ruling did not mean he would permanently lose his European seat and that he must remain in jail while it concludes its deliberations surrounding the trial of 12 Catalan political leaders who led the region’s secession push in 2017.
Junqueras had been set to temporarily leave the prison where he has been held since 2017 on Monday to collect the papers.
Catalonia’s independence drive has overshadowed Spanish politics for years and is a major test for Pedro Sanchez’s Socialists after they won a national election in April but fell short of a majority.
Junqueras, the former deputy head of the region, is charged with rebellion, sedition and misuse of public funds for his part in organizing a referendum and declaration of independence that were deemed illegal by Spain’s Constitutional Court. He denies the charges.
Two other Catalan politicians won European Parliament seats in May but have also been unable to formalize their places because they will be detained if they return to Spain to collect their MEP papers.
The region’s former leader Carles Puigdemont and local council member Antoni Comin have both lived in self-imposed exile in Belgium since arrest warrants were issued following the attempted secession.
Junqueras was allowed to leave jail in May to collect his credentials as a member of Spain’s lower house of parliament following April’s election although he will not be able to serve as a lawmaker until the trial is concluded.
Reporting by Belen Carreno; Writing by Paul Day; Editing by Jesus Aguado and Catherine Evans
(Reuters) - Flesh-eating zombies terrorize a small town in Jim Jarmusch’s “The Dead Don’t Die”, a comedy horror in which polar fracking sets off strange reactions and raises the dead.
72nd Cannes Film Festival - Photocall for the film "The Dead Don't Die" in competition - Cannes, France, May 15, 2019. Cast members Bill Murray, Chloe Sevigny, Selena Gomez and Tilda Swinton pose. REUTERS/Stephane Mahe
Reuters spoke with Bill Murray and Chloe Sevigny, who portray police, and Tilda Swinton, who plays a mysterious funeral parlor worker, about the film’s albeit lighthearted environmentalism.
Below are edited excerpts.
TILDA SWINTON
Q: Why is environmentalism such a key theme here?
A: “It’s the landscape of the film, it very often is in zombie films ... (they) are a very useful kind of Trojan Horse to talk about society’s relationship with itself and the environment. But I would say it’s whatever anybody sees in it and this is a landscape that really concerns Jim and all of us.”
Q: What do you do personally to be environmentally friendly?
A: “I would like to fly a great deal less. I think we should all fly less anyway for about a million different reasons and not only to do with the effect of it on our planet but also on our bodies.”
BILL MURRAY
Q: What do you do to be environmentally friendly?
A: “I’m no hero but I tried to give up plastic bottles about three or four years ago. I think I’ve had about four since the situation arose, I either had to take medicine or something like that ... I realized I was drinking probably 100 plastic bottles of water a month. I thought, well, that’s 1,200 a year, at least. And that’s one person. So I gave up and stopped it and I find that glass bottle water tastes better.”
CHLOE SEVIGNY
Q: As someone associated with fashion, what do you do for the environment?
A: “I try not to use any single-use plastic and not use the dryer, take quick showers. It’s all the little things that one can do one hopes will accumulate in some way.
“Flying is always one of the worst and that’s unfortunately unavoidable in my line of work but I do compost in Manhattan and buy mostly recycled clothes. I’m trying to just not consume as much as maybe I have in the past and just try and spread that word to especially young girls. I’m somewhat of a fashion icon and I try encourage people to buy vintage or buy slightly used.”
Reporting by Hanna Rantala; writing by Marie-Louise Gumuchian; editing by Jason Neely
GENEVA (Reuters) - The World Health Organization (WHO) should and is likely to declare an international emergency over the Ebola epidemic in the Democratic Republic of Congo that has now spread to Uganda, experts said as a WHO advisory panel met on Friday.
A health worker wearing Ebola protection gear enters the Biosecure Emergency Care Unit (CUBE) at the ALIMA (The Alliance for International Medical Action) Ebola treatment centre in Beni, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, April 1, 2019. Picture taken April 1, 2019.REUTERS/Baz Ratner
Congo’s epidemic is the second worst worldwide since West Africa’s Ebola outbreak in 2014-16, with 2,084 cases and 1,405 deaths since being declared in August. The WHO said on Thursday that two people had died in Uganda having arrived with the disease from Congo.
A panel of 13 independent medical experts on the WHO’s Emergency Committee (EC) were meeting from midday to evaluate the latest evidence and whether the epidemic constitutes a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC).
Such a decision would lead to boosting public health measures, funding and resources, and could include recommendations on trade and travel, academic experts and aid groups said.
“Will @WHO declare global emergency for #Ebola? I predict yes. My sense is @DrTedros will call PHEIC if #EC recs it. He understands depth of crisis,” Lawrence Gostin, professor of global health law at Georgetown University Law School in Washington, D.C., who is not on the panel, said in a tweet.
People are still dying outside of Ebola treatment centers - exposing their families to the disease - and many don’t appear on lists of known contacts being monitored, he said.
“Vaccines alone can’t work if community hides cases due to distrust. Violence persists. We are in this for the long haul,” Gostin said, referring to deadly attacks on Congo health facilities.
The panel, which twice before decided not to declare an emergency, will make recommendations to WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus who takes the final decision.
Only 4 emergencies have been declared in the past decade: the H1 virus that caused an influenza pandemic (2009), West Africa’s Ebola outbreak, polio (2014) and Zika virus (2016).
SECOND WORST EPIDEMIC
Top WHO official Mike Ryan said on Thursday there had been no known person-to-person spread of Ebola in Uganda and that there were encouraging signs in Congo, with the disease’s spread slowing in cities of Butembo and Katwa. However it the virus was now entrenched in rural areas including Mabalako, he said.
“But these can be very volatile, these can go up and down week to week. So we have to be careful looking at one week of data and declaring victory.
“We have a hell of a long way to go in this response,” he told Reuters.
The WHO, in a statement overnight, said that given all three confirmed cases in Uganda belong to a single family cluster, the level of preparedness and experience of Ugandan authorities to manage previous Ebola outbreaks, and their rapid detection of cases in a limited geographical area, “the overall level of risk at national level is assessed as moderate”.
“However, the overall regional risk posed by the outbreak in DRC remains very high. The overall risk at international level remains low,” it said.
Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust global medical charity, said the WHO should declare a public health emergency of international concern.
“Doing so would raise the levels of international political support, which has been seriously lacking so far, show strong support for DRC and neighboring countries and WHO, and release more resources, including finance, healthcare workers, enhanced logistics, security and infrastructure,” he said.
Additional reporting by Kate Kelland in London; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky
