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
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
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.”
LONDON (Reuters) - Britain’s special forces are about to shift away from counter-terrorism work and instead concentrate on blocking covert operations by countries such as Russia, the BBC reported on Thursday, citing unnamed British officials and military sources.
Senior military officers are considering the proposal and are likely to recommend the government approve it, the BBC’s security editor said.
“The counter-terrorist task is drawing down, while the need to confront dangerous international behavior by peer adversaries is increasing,” the BBC quoted one source as saying.
Britain blames Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency for the poison attack on former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in the English city of Salisbury last year. Russia denies responsibility.
The Skripals’ poisoning with a nerve agent prompted a wave of diplomatic expulsions and recriminations, with ties between London and Moscow shriveling to a post-Cold War low in its wake.
Russia has raised international concerns following its 2014 annexation of Crimea, the Skripal affair and accusations by the United States and some EU governments that it interfered in their elections.
“Under the new plan, an operation might be mounted in a Baltic republic or African country in order to uncover and pinpoint Russian covert activities,” the BBC said.
Britain’s Ministry of Defence declined to comment on the BBC report, and a spokeswoman said the government did not routinely comment on matters affecting special forces.
The BBC said the change would boost the role of Britain’s Special Reconnaissance Regiment, a military unit which carries out covert surveillance such as planting cameras in insurgent-held territory and electronic eavesdropping.
It quoted an unnamed senior British military officer as saying commanders wanted a greater range of options beyond conventional military action.
“Right now, you do nothing or you escalate,” the officer said. “We want to expand that competitive space.”
Reporting by David Milliken; Editing by Sandra Maler
