Ravenna

Understanding Weinstein’s charges and potential punishment

A look at the charges against Harvey Weinstein, 67, and the punishment the once-revered Hollywood titan could face if convicted at his New York City rape trial. WHAT IS HARVEY WEINSTEIN ACCUSED OF? Scores of women have come forward in recent years to accuse Weinstein of sexual misconduct, but his New York City trial stems from just three allegations.

UNifeed, the United Nations broadcast quality video news platform, joins Reuters Connect

Reuters today announced that UNifeed, the United Nations broadcast quality video news content platform, has joined the award-winning digital content marketplace, Reuters Connect, as a content distribution partner.

Merkel Says She Plans to Stay Out of Search for Successor

(Bloomberg) -- Angela Merkel said she won’t get directly involved in choosing a new leader for her party or a candidate to succeed her as German chancellor, appearing to row back on previous comments.“My historical experience is that predecessors should stay out of such things,” Merkel said at a news conference after hosting Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin in Berlin. “That’s what I will do,” she said, adding that she’s still open to speaking with potential candidates.Merkel, who plans to leave politics when her fourth term expires next year at the latest, previously said she plans to “cooperate very well” in the effort to find a new head for the Christian Democratic Union, who would have the inside track to be the party’s chancellor candidate in the next national election.The leadership race was thrown open last week when her chosen successor, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, unexpectedly announced she would step down after a state chapter defied her orders and threw its lot in with the far-right AfD.Three senior CDU figures are the leading contenders for CDU chief: Friedrich Merz, the former head of Merkel’s parliamentary caucus, Jens Spahn, her health minister, and Armin Laschet, the premier of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia.Norbert Roettgen, head of the Bundestag’s foreign affairs committee, made a surprise announcement Tuesday that he will also run.While Laschet is considered a Merkel acolyte, Merz, Spahn and Roettgen are all seen as antagonists, raising the prospect of an early end to her chancellorship if they decide to try to force her out.Kramp-Karrenbauer -- widely known by her initials AKK -- is overseeing the succession process and met with Merz on Tuesday and Roettgen on Wednesday morning. She is due to hold talks with Spahn and Laschet later on Wednesday before making a recommendation to CDU leaders on Feb. 24 on how to proceed.‘Unusual Times’Roettgen and other senior CDU figures are putting pressure on AKK to accelerate the succession.“We have to have clarity. These are unusual times,” Roettgen told reporters Wednesday, according to news agency DPA. “I think it must be done before the summer break,” he added, reiterating that the CDU cannot afford months of self-obsession and calling for an open process that avoids what he termed a “back-room solution.”Herbert Reul, the CDU interior minister in North Rhine-Westphalia, warned against the kind of protracted search for a party leader that he said has contributed to a collapse in support for the Social Democrats, Merkel’s junior coalition partners.AKK’s replacement will likely have “the best cards” in the race to be the next conservative chancellor candidate, but there is no rush to decide who will run, he said in an interview Wednesday with Deutschlandfunk radio.Whoever the party chooses, it would be wrong for them to try to force Merkel out before the end of her term, he added.“I don’t understand the rush at all,” Reul said. “She is doing her job as chancellor, she is the most popular politician in Germany. For me, there is no reason for her to resign.”To contact the reporters on this story: Patrick Donahue in Berlin at pdonahue1@bloomberg.net;Iain Rogers in Berlin at irogers11@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Ben Sills at bsills@bloomberg.net, Chris ReiterFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

Conagra Brands Issues 2019 Update To Its Citizenship Report

Conagra Brands, Inc. (NYSE: CAG) today announced it has published its 2019 Citizenship Update Report (available online here), which provides a look at Conagra's recent progress against key social and environmental initiatives. The Report focuses on actions that support each of the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, which are designed to achieve a better and more sustainable future by addressing poverty, inequality, climate change, water scarcity and other global challenges. Because Conagra Brands acquired Pinnacle Foods in fiscal 2019 and is still integrating opportunities from the combined portfolio into our Corporate Social Responsibility program, the 2019 Report is a high-level overview on recent progress. Please see our full, GRI-compliant citizenship report, released in May 2019, for additional details on environmental, social and governance management practices across all our CSR pillars.

China's Xi urges more protection for medical workers after deaths

China's President Xi Jinping called Wednesday for greater protection of medical staff fighting the new coronavirus after the deaths of prominent doctors sparked national anger at the government's handling of the outbreak. At least seven medical workers have died from the virus, while 1,716 have been confirmed as infected, most at the epicentre of the epidemic in central Hubei province where hospitals have dealt with a huge influx of patients. Staff have faced shortages of masks and protective bodysuits, with some even wearing makeshift suits and continuing to work despite showing respiratory symptoms, health workers have told AFP.

Erdogan criticizes EU move to enforce Libyan arms embargo

Recep Tayyip Erdogan also hailed a decision by Libya’s U.N.-supported government to withdraw from talks with rivals following an attackTuesday on the sea port of the Libyan capital, Tripoli. EU foreign ministers agreed earlier this week to end Operation Sophia, the bloc’s naval mission in the Mediterranean Sea, and launch a maritime effort focused more on implementing the U.N. arms embargo around Libya.

Iran's FM says his meeting with US senator spooked Trump

Mohammad Javad Zarif met last week with Sen. Chris Murphy on the sidelines of an international security conference in Germany. The Connecticut Democrat defended the meeting on Tuesday after his actions were questioned in conservative media, and as President Donald Trump suggested they may have violated U.S. law. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said he hoped anyone who meets with Zarif would be reflecting the U.S. position with Iran.

Critics slam UK post-Brexit immigration plans

Britain's government on Wednesday faced a backlash over its new post-Brexit immigration plans, which are designed to cut "cheap Labour from Europe" in favour of high-skilled English speakers. The points-based system is due to start on January 1, 2021, and was billed as "taking back control" of Britain's borders -- a key demand of anti-EU campaigners in the divisive Brexit debate. Interior minister Priti Patel called the sweeping reforms "firm and fair" and said it would make it easier for higher-skilled workers to get visas, and harder for low-skilled migrants to do so.

A Counter-Revolution Is Brewing in the U.K. and Europe

(Bloomberg Opinion) -- Behind the headlines about Brexit, a counter-revolution has quietly occurred in Britain in recent years. Its reverberations seemed certain to reach beyond the English Channel when last week the guillotine unexpectedly came down on Sajid Javid, the Chancellor of the British Exchequer.Javid, a devotee of the libertarian philosopher Ayn Rand and alumnus of Deutsche Bank, was edged out of Boris Johnson’s cabinet largely because he seemed too much a foot soldier of the ideological revolution that occurred in the 1980s in, first, Britain, and then, the United States.In that upheaval, the hyper-individualist free-marketeering of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan became dominant across the West. Thatcher aimed to “roll back the frontiers of the state.” Her ideological kin Ronald Reagan claimed that “government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem.”In this view, the primary, if not the only, legitimate economic role of the government is to guarantee price stability rather than to intervene repeatedly to stem inequality and protect the weakest members of the population. Today, however, many citizens buffeted by global economic headwinds have come to see government yet again as a necessary player in the national economy.Javid is actually the latest casualty of the counter-revolutionary urge to overthrow obsolete pieties. The much bigger victims have been left-leaning parties across Europe, such as the Labour Party, the creator of Britain’s welfare state.Rebranded as New Labour under Tony Blair, it embraced Thatcherism — to the point where Thatcher identified Blair as her heir. During its 13 years in power, New Labour pushed through Thatcher-style deregulation and privatization, often disguising it through “public-private partnerships.”Failing to check de-industrialization, or rising social inequality, New Labour started to lose the party’s traditional working-class base in the manufacturing and mining districts of North England.Claiming to be Blair’s “true heir,” the Tory Prime Minister David Cameron, together with his Chancellor of Exchequer George Osborne, more aggressively advanced policies of “austerity” that further shrunk the remnants of the welfare state.The eventual outcome of Thatcherism on steroids was Brexit: a furious rejection by Britain’s working class of a long ideological status quo that seemed to benefit only a rich metropolitan minority.An early beneficiary of the anti-establishment mood was Jeremy Corbyn, who, in elections held one year after the Brexit referendum, dramatically increased his party’s vote share.Corbyn belonged to the marginalized left wing of the Labour Party, which had always seen the European Union (EU) as an enforcer of free-market fundamentalism, drastically constraining the British state’s ability to intervene in the economy. Accepting that Brexit had to get done, Corbyn offered in his popular election manifesto of 2017 a bonanza of spending promises. The manifesto was pathbreaking not only because it broke with the Thatcherite orthodoxy of non-intervention that for decades had prevailed inside the Labour Party.It was extraordinary also because the Conservative party, traditionally representatives of big business and the landed aristocracy, rushed to imitate Corbyn’s rhetoric, and to disown Thatcherism, claiming in own manifesto that “we do not believe in untrammeled free markets” and that “we reject the cult of selfish individualism.”“She has even adopted,” the Economist complained of the then-British Prime Minister Theresa May, “Labour’s ‘Marxist’ policy of energy-price caps.”In last year’s elections, the Conservative Party under Johnson competed even more fiercely with Labour to offer spending plans (much to the despair of orthodox economists and balanced-budget diehards).Johnson carefully distanced himself from his posh Tory pals, such pro-EU architects of austerity as Cameron and Osborne. He promised to use Brexit to re-engineer British laws in favor of British people. He even abandoned an earlier promise to cut corporation tax from 19% to 17%.Johnson, closely identified all his life with Tory free-marketeers, was responding to an altered public mood. According to a recent British Social Attitudes survey, 60 percent support more government spending.As it turned out, Johnson’s gamble succeeded. While the London-based leadership of the Labour party strove futilely for a second referendum on Brexit, many of its lifelong voters in the Northern England lent their support to a party that seemed more capable of extracting Britain from the EU and turning on the spending taps. Johnson is moving fast to please his new and potentially fickle constituency, nationalizing Northern Rail and increasing public spending. Sajid Javid, with his tattered copy of The Fountainhead, clearly stood in his boss’s (and neighbor’s) way, insisting that Britain should run a balanced budget by 2023. Javid’s replacement, Rishi Sunak, a hurriedly promoted Johnson loyalist, has no such constricting goal. As a political insider told the Financial Times about the new occupants of Downing Street: “It wasn’t a question of what they wanted to spend more money on; it was more a question of whether there was anything they didn’t want to spend more money on.” Johnson is, of course, an opportunist; and his actual ability to spend, already limited, may shrink even more by the time Brexit gets done. Moreover, he has barely started on his impossible task: triangulating the clashing demands of rich Tory grandees and North England’s immiserated working class. Nevertheless, the political alignments and re-alignments of the last three decades are now in plain sight.During the ideological hegemony of Reagan and Thatcher, left-leaning parties with electoral bases among working classes moved right — or, to the “center,” in their preferred euphemism.One unexpected outcome of this shift is that, today, they appear complicit in extensive social and economic breakdown. Worse: Their founding ideas about beneficent government, which they have steadily discarded since the 1980’s, are being stolen by carpetbaggers and the far-right.Indeed, Boris Johnson’s success in the UK could be paralleled by Marine Le Pen in France.Presidential elections are due in two years, and Le Pen, pitted against a weakened Emmanuel Macron (hailed early and fatefully in his tenure as the “French Blair”) is surging on the back of her promise to deepen the activist role of the state in the national economy.France may witness in 2022 what has already occurred in Britain: a counter-revolution that sends both free-marketeers and self-proclaimed “centrists” to the guillotine.To contact the author of this story: Pankaj Mishra at pmishra24@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: James Gibney at jgibney5@bloomberg.netThis column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg LP and its owners.Pankaj Mishra is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. His books include “Age of Anger: A History of the Present,” “From the Ruins of Empire: The Intellectuals Who Remade Asia,” and “Temptations of the West: How to Be Modern in India, Pakistan, Tibet and Beyond.” For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinionSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

Why Trump Features in Iran’s Election

(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.Iran’s conservatives are making a comeback.The so-called “principlists” wedded to the theocratic ideals of Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution look set to win parliamentary elections on Friday. That will give them momentum for next year’s presidential vote and the eight-year political cycle to follow, Marc Champion and Arsalan Shahla report.Long gone is the euphoria evoked by the moderate President Hassan Rouhani’s victory in 2013. Hopes that the nuclear deal two years later would trigger a wave of foreign investment and open the nation of 84 million to the West have long since faded.President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the accord cost Rouhani credibility, and U.S. sanctions have pounded the economy, which shrank 9.5% last year.Relations with key Middle East nations are at rock bottom. While China provides some succor, it is reluctant to risk U.S. penalties by buying much more Iranian oil.For the current leadership in Tehran, there’s a faint glimmer of hope that Trump will lose office in November. With the economy at least stabilizing for now, they appear confident they can ride out sanctions until then.At a time when the Iranian electorate is showing little enthusiasm for the vote, Trump’s actions have largely empowered the conservatives. They never supported the nuclear deal in the first place. Global HeadlinesFirst look | Michael Bloomberg, whose rise in the polls has rattled the Democratic presidential field, will face rivals eager to take him on in person for the first time on a debate stage, injecting a new, untested candidate into what had become almost routine campaign events. For many voters, tonight’s event in Las Vegas will mark an initial chance to see the former New York mayor live instead of in a television ad. (Bloomberg is the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News.) Trump is set to rally voters today in Arizona, where an influx of new residents challenge the president’s hold on the Republican-dominated state.Brexit redux | Anyone who thought that Brexit turmoil was over when the U.K. left the European Union on Jan. 31 looks sadly mistaken. The British government is playing hardball with the EU, threatening a violent rupture when the transition period ends on Dec. 31. That has business alarmed, and is breathing new life into the remnants of the Remain campaign fighting to stay close to the single market, Alex Morales and Olivia Konotey-Ahulu report.U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson is looking at Australia’s “points-based” skilled workers’ program as a guide for how to tackle immigration post-Brexit. Read more here.Giving out pardons | Trump announced a set of clemencies and pardons, including for former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, who was convicted of public corruption, and for financier Michael Milken, who was found guilty of securities fraud. He also pardoned former New York City police Commissioner Bernard Kerik and Edward DeBartolo Jr., who owned the San Francisco 49ers football team for 23 years.Attorney General William Barr has told associates he might resign in response to Trump’s comments and tweets about Justice Department investigations.Critical phase | It’s already spread wider than SARS in 2003 and it’s more dangerous than swine flu. And while the coronavirus doesn’t kill at anywhere near the terrifying pace of Ebola in 2014, it can be passed through the air. In less than three months, it’s infected tens of thousands of people. Experts warn if it remains a severe virus and takes off in other parts of the world, it could be almost as serious as the 1918 flu pandemic.Media crackdown | China revoked the press credentials of three Wall Street Journal reporters following a dispute over a controversial headline in the newspaper’s opinion section. The government took action after it said the Journal refused to apologize for a “racially discriminatory” op-ed that described China as the “sick man of Asia,” a phrase used by 19th century European powers. It ran as Beijing began its battle against the deadly coronavirus.What to WatchTrump is casting doubts over the likelihood of an anticipated trade deal with India, just days before a scheduled visit to the South Asian power Afghan’s incumbent president, Ashraf Ghani, was finally declared the winner of a dispute election that began in September. His main rival, Abdullah Abdullah, rejected the outcome and declared himself the victor. U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo sought yesterday to reassure African allies that Washington is committed to fighting Islamist militants even as the Trump administration weighs cutting troops stationed across the continent.Tell us how we’re doing or what we’re missing at balancepower@bloomberg.net.And finally ... China’s Communist Party invented a duo of virtual social media influencers in its latest bid to win over millennials. Instead, they did the opposite. The regime’s Youth League this week debuted the anime characters — adolescents in traditional garb with names straight out of Mao Zedong’s poetic oeuvre — on the social site Weibo. It ignited an onslaught of ridicule and vitriol, prompting the Youth League to pull them offline within hours.  \--With assistance from Kathleen Hunter and Ruth Pollard.To contact the author of this story: Karl Maier in Rome at kmaier2@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Alan Crawford at acrawford6@bloomberg.netFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

Pompeo to raise case of US doctor on trial in Saudi Arabia

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Wednesday he planned to raise U.S. concerns about human rights during a visit to Saudi Arabia, in particular the case of a Saudi-American doctor facing trial there who was barred from leaving the kingdom and allegedly tortured. Pompeo was scheduled to arrive in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday and will remain there until Friday, before departing to Oman, a close U.S. ally that has ties with both Saudi Arabia and Iran. Pompeo said that during his time in Saudi Arabia, he will speak with the kingdom's leadership about security issues, threats posed by Iran, the economic relationship between the two countries, and issues of human rights.

Germany to tighten screws on online hate speech

With the danger growing from far-right extremists and torrents of threats against politicians, Germany plans to toughen online speech laws and tighten the screws on social networks. Ministers in Chancellor Angela Merkel's government approved a new package of measures on Wednesday, days after 12 men were arrested for planning deadly attacks on mosques, communicating in part via chat groups. The draft law now passes to parliament for MPs to deliberate.

Iran reports its first 2 cases of the new coronavirus

Iranian authorities confirmed on Wednesday two cases of the new coronavirus, the first in the country, the semi-official ISNA news agency reported. Jahanpour did not say how many people were suspected of having the virus, which causes the illness that the World Health Organization recently named COVID-19, referring to its origin late last year and the coronavirus that causes it. The new virus comes from a large family of what are known as coronaviruses, some causing nothing worse than a cold.

U.K. Aims to Slash Unskilled Immigration After Leaving EU

(Bloomberg) -- Boris Johnson’s government unveiled plans to end what it called the U.K.’s dependence on “cheap low-skilled labor” and deliver on its pledge to halt freedom of movement from the European Union after Brexit.Under a points-based immigration system to come into effect on Jan. 1, 2021, workers must prove they can speak English, have a verified job offer and meet a points threshold based on their specific skills, qualifications and prospective salaries, according to a government policy paper published Wednesday.The system will “bring overall migration numbers down” while attracting “the brightest and the best from around the globe,” Home Secretary Priti Patel told LBC radio. The aim is to “end our reliance on low-skilled workers that are obviously -- more often than not -- low paid,” she said.Why Immigration Down Under Appeals to U.K.’s Johnson: QuickTakeJohnson has repeatedly said voters opted for Brexit at least in part to control immigration, but the plans triggered immediate warnings from businesses about the impact of anticipated worker shortages. A government advisory group estimated last month that 70% of EU workers already in the U.K. wouldn’t have qualified for visas under the new rules. The government says companies must “adapt” and do more to train the domestic workforce.Business Risk“The speed and scale of these changes will require significant adjustment by businesses,” said Adam Marshall, Director General of the British Chambers of Commerce. “Companies are already investing heavily in home-grown talent across the U.K., but critical labor shortages mean firms will still need access to overseas workers at all skill levels.”A table published by the Home Office showed 70 points would be needed to get a visa. Examples include 10 points for speaking English, 20 points for a job offer, 20 for a salary of 25,600 pounds ($33,000) or above, and 20 points each for a post-doctoral qualification or a job in a designated shortage occupation.Although Johnson has branded the rules a complete change, it largely involves making EU citizens apply for visas under the existing system for non-EU migrants. That will include student visas. With employers no longer able to access the entire EU to fill job vacancies, required thresholds on the existing system have been lowered, both in salaries and required qualifications.In moves describing how the U.K. border itself will work from next year, the government said that EU citizens will be able to use electronic gates, reducing waits, and they won’t need a visa for stays of less than six months.The existing system for high-earners and the most skilled, which allows them to come to the U.K. without a job offer, will likewise be extended to EU citizens, the government said, though it gave fewer details.BacklashRepresentatives of the social care, hospitality and food industries were among those quick to criticize the new system. Minette Batters, president of the National Farmers’ Union, told the Times newspaper plans to restrict visas for low-skilled workers could severely affect the sector.The opposition Labour Party said the government’s plan amounted to a “salary threshold system” that will make it difficult to attract needed workers and pledged to challenge the proposal as the legislation goes through Parliament. The pro-EU Liberal Democrats said the proposal is “based on xenophobia.”But Patel argued that the government is delivering on what voters demanded in the 2016 Brexit referendum, and when they kept her Conservative Party in power in general elections in 2017 and 2019.The public “are fed up,” she told LBC. “They want to see a British government with its own immigration policy and system, a government that would take take back control of our borders.”(Updates with policy details from fourth paragraph)\--With assistance from Robert Hutton and Alex Morales.To contact the reporter on this story: Olivia Konotey-Ahulu in London at okonoteyahul@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Tim Ross at tross54@bloomberg.net, Stuart Biggs, Alex MoralesFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

Iran election watchdog defends decision to bar candidates

Iran's electoral watchdog on Wednesday defended its decision to disqualify thousands of candidates for a parliamentary election in two days, saying it was done in accordance with the law. The Guardian Council, a powerful body that vets candidates for Iranian elections, also said it expected at least 50 percent of registered voters to turn out at Friday's election. Thousands of candidates, most of them moderates and reformists, have been barred from entering the race by the Council, which is dominated by ultra-conservatives.

Syria's Aleppo airport resumes flights amid fighting nearby

A Syrian passenger jet landed in Aleppo on Wednesday from Damascus, marking the resumption of domestic flights between Syria's two largest cities for the first time since 2012, while the government's onslaught continued nearby with airstrikes reported in several rebel-held towns and villages. The flight carrying Syrian officials and journalists was a symbolic message from President Bashar Assad's government, days after its forces consolidated control over the northwestern province of Aleppo and seized the last segments of the strategic M5 highway linking Aleppo to Damascus.

Surkov: Ukraine pointman and Putin's ideologue

Vladislav Surkov, the Kremlin's chief ideologue and pointman on relations with Ukraine and Moscow-backed separatists, who was dismissed late Tuesday, was for many years viewed as one of Russia's most powerful men. A hate figure among liberals, Surkov, 55, was credited with coining the term "sovereign democracy" to describe Russia's political system and once said God sent strongman Vladimir Putin to Russia.

U.S. Puts Restrictions on Five Chinese State Media Outlets

(Bloomberg) -- The U.S. designated five Chinese media companies as “foreign missions,” a decision that reflects the Trump administration’s view that the communist party of Xi Jinping is imposing increasingly draconian government-control over news services, senior State Department officials said.The State Department’s foreign mission designation includes Xinhua News Agency, China Global Television Network, China Radio International, China Daily Distribution Corp. and Hai Tian Development USA, the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Tuesday. The designation requires the outlets to adhere to requirements similar to those imposed on embassies and consulates in the U.S., including registering their current properties and getting prior approval for any acquisitions of new ones, the officials said.China’s foreign ministry denounced the move, saying the country’s media outlets helped promote understanding and adding that Beijing would “reserve the right” to retaliate. “We urge the U.S. to discard its ideological prejudice and Cold War zero-sum-game mentality, and stop ill-advised measures that undermine bilateral trust and cooperation,” ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told reporters at a regular briefing Wednesday in Beijing.Separately, Geng said that authorities had revoked the local press credentials of three Wall Street Journal staff members over a Feb. 3 commentary with a headline describing China as the “real sick man of Asia.” Geng said China expected the newspaper to apologize for using “a racially discriminatory title, triggering indignation and condemnation among the Chinese people and the international community.” The U.S. has stepped up its pressure on China’s government as it competes for economic and military influence in the Asia-Pacific region. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper warned on Saturday that China is moving further outside the international order as the world’s second-largest economy pursues more aggressive economic and military policies at the expense of other nations.Although Beijing and Washington have reached agreement on a “phase one” trade deal, the two sides have continued to feud over a broad range of issues including telecommunications policy. The U.S. last week charged Huawei Technologies Co. with racketeering to engage in intellectual property theft and recently charged members of China’s military over one of the biggest data thefts in American history.The U.S. made the decision on the Chinese media outlets as it sees Xi stepping up his control of the country’s media in an effort to better control the government’s message and expands its overseas media operations, the officials said. The U.S. government doesn’t view these media outlets as independent, the officials said.Read More: Racketeering Hammer Gives U.S. Legal Boost Against HuaweiCGTN America, the U.S. division of China’s state-owned broadcaster, registered as a foreign agent in 2019 in response to a request from the Justice Department. Other U.S. partners of Chinese media entities, including the China Daily Distribution Corp. and Hai Tian Development U.S.A., Inc., both of which distribute newspapers, have been registered for decades.Other international news organizations have also registered as foreign agents with the Justice Department, including T&R Productions LLC, a U.S. contractor for Russian state broadcaster RT, which registered in 2017. At the time, the U.S. Congress was investigating RT’s role in Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential campaign, as well as possible influence by Sputnik, a state-run news agency.(Updates with Chinese response in third paragraph.)\--With assistance from Joe Light, Bill Allison and Sharon Chen.To contact the reporter on this story: Glen Carey in Washington at gcarey8@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Bill Faries at wfaries@bloomberg.net, Sara FordenFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

Pompeo says South Africa land seizures would be 'disastrous'

America's top diplomat on Wednesday asserted that South Africa's plan to allow expropriation of private property without compensation would be “disastrous” for the country's economy and its people. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made the comments in an address in Ethiopia on the final day of an Africa visit largely aimed at countering China's influence on the continent of more than 1.2 billion people. There was no immediate government response in South Africa to Pompeo's comments.

Devices found in missiles, Yemen drones link Iran to attacks

A small instrument inside the drones that targeted the heart of Saudi Arabia's oil industry and those in the arsenal of Yemen's Houthi rebels match components recovered in downed Iranian drones in Afghanistan and Iraq, two reports say. The discovery further ties Iran to an attack that briefly halved Saudi Arabia's oil output and saw energy prices spike by a level unseen since the 1991 Gulf War.

A Counter-Revolution Is Brewing in the U.K. and Europe

(Bloomberg Opinion) -- Behind the headlines about Brexit, a counter-revolution has quietly occurred in Britain in recent years. Its reverberations seemed certain to reach beyond the English Channel when last week the guillotine unexpectedly came down on Sajid Javid, the Chancellor of the British Exchequer.Javid, a devotee of the libertarian philosopher Ayn Rand and alumnus of Deutsche Bank, was edged out of Boris Johnson’s cabinet largely because he seemed too much a foot soldier of the ideological revolution that occurred in the 1980s in, first, Britain, and then, the United States.In that upheaval, the hyper-individualist free-marketeering of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan became dominant across the West. Thatcher aimed to “roll back the frontiers of the state.” Her ideological kin Ronald Reagan claimed that “government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem.”In this view, the primary, if not the only, legitimate economic role of the government is to guarantee price stability rather than to intervene repeatedly to stem inequality and protect the weakest members of the population. Today, however, many citizens buffeted by global economic headwinds have come to see government yet again as a necessary player in the national economy.Javid is actually the latest casualty of the counter-revolutionary urge to overthrow obsolete pieties. The much bigger victims have been left-leaning parties across Europe, such as the Labour Party, the creator of Britain’s welfare state.Rebranded as New Labour under Tony Blair, it embraced Thatcherism — to the point where Thatcher identified Blair as her heir. During its 13 years in power, New Labour pushed through Thatcher-style deregulation and privatization, often disguising it through “public-private partnerships.”Failing to check de-industrialization, or rising social inequality, New Labour started to lose the party’s traditional working-class base in the manufacturing and mining districts of North England.Claiming to be Blair’s “true heir,” the Tory Prime Minister David Cameron, together with his Chancellor of Exchequer George Osborne, more aggressively advanced policies of “austerity” that further shrunk the remnants of the welfare state.The eventual outcome of Thatcherism on steroids was Brexit: a furious rejection by Britain’s working class of a long ideological status quo that seemed to benefit only a rich metropolitan minority.An early beneficiary of the anti-establishment mood was Jeremy Corbyn, who, in elections held one year after the Brexit referendum, dramatically increased his party’s vote share.Corbyn belonged to the marginalized left wing of the Labour Party, which had always seen the European Union (EU) as an enforcer of free-market fundamentalism, drastically constraining the British state’s ability to intervene in the economy. Accepting that Brexit had to get done, Corbyn offered in his popular election manifesto of 2017 a bonanza of spending promises. The manifesto was pathbreaking not only because it broke with the Thatcherite orthodoxy of non-intervention that for decades had prevailed inside the Labour Party.It was extraordinary also because the Conservative party, traditionally representatives of big business and the landed aristocracy, rushed to imitate Corbyn’s rhetoric, and to disown Thatcherism, claiming in own manifesto that “we do not believe in untrammeled free markets” and that “we reject the cult of selfish individualism.”“She has even adopted,” the Economist complained of the then-British Prime Minister Theresa May, “Labour’s ‘Marxist’ policy of energy-price caps.”In last year’s elections, the Conservative Party under Johnson competed even more fiercely with Labour to offer spending plans (much to the despair of orthodox economists and balanced-budget diehards).Johnson carefully distanced himself from his posh Tory pals, such pro-EU architects of austerity as Cameron and Osborne. He promised to use Brexit to re-engineer British laws in favor of British people. He even abandoned an earlier promise to cut corporation tax from 19% to 17%.Johnson, closely identified all his life with Tory free-marketeers, was responding to an altered public mood. According to a recent British Social Attitudes survey, 60 percent support more government spending.As it turned out, Johnson’s gamble succeeded. While the London-based leadership of the Labour party strove futilely for a second referendum on Brexit, many of its lifelong voters in the Northern England lent their support to a party that seemed more capable of extracting Britain from the EU and turning on the spending taps. Johnson is moving fast to please his new and potentially fickle constituency, nationalizing Northern Rail and increasing public spending. Sajid Javid, with his tattered copy of The Fountainhead, clearly stood in his boss’s (and neighbor’s) way, insisting that Britain should run a balanced budget by 2023. Javid’s replacement, Rishi Sunak, a hurriedly promoted Johnson loyalist, has no such constricting goal. As a political insider told the Financial Times about the new occupants of Downing Street: “It wasn’t a question of what they wanted to spend more money on; it was more a question of whether there was anything they didn’t want to spend more money on.” Johnson is, of course, an opportunist; and his actual ability to spend, already limited, may shrink even more by the time Brexit gets done. Moreover, he has barely started on his impossible task: triangulating the clashing demands of rich Tory grandees and North England’s immiserated working class. Nevertheless, the political alignments and re-alignments of the last three decades are now in plain sight.During the ideological hegemony of Reagan and Thatcher, left-leaning parties with electoral bases among working classes moved right — or, to the “center,” in their preferred euphemism.One unexpected outcome of this shift is that, today, they appear complicit in extensive social and economic breakdown. Worse: Their founding ideas about beneficent government, which they have steadily discarded since the 1980’s, are being stolen by carpetbaggers and the far-right.Indeed, Boris Johnson’s success in the UK could be paralleled by Marine Le Pen in France.Presidential elections are due in two years, and Le Pen, pitted against a weakened Emmanuel Macron (hailed early and fatefully in his tenure as the “French Blair”) is surging on the back of her promise to deepen the activist role of the state in the national economy.France may witness in 2022 what has already occurred in Britain: a counter-revolution that sends both free-marketeers and self-proclaimed “centrists” to the guillotine.To contact the author of this story: Pankaj Mishra at pmishra24@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: James Gibney at jgibney5@bloomberg.netThis column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg LP and its owners.Pankaj Mishra is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. His books include “Age of Anger: A History of the Present,” “From the Ruins of Empire: The Intellectuals Who Remade Asia,” and “Temptations of the West: How to Be Modern in India, Pakistan, Tibet and Beyond.” For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinionSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

Turkish court to issue verdict in rights activists' trial

A group of human rights activists delivered their final statements in their own defense on Wednesday before a court in Istanbul hands down a verdict in their closely-watched trial on charges of belonging to or aiding terror groups. The case against Amnesty International's former Turkey chairman and 10 other activists heightened concerns about Turkey's treatment of human rights defenders and helped sour Turkey's relations with European nations, notably with Germany.

UN: Houthi rebels impeding aid flow in Yemen

Yemen’s Houthi rebels have blocked half of the United Nations’ aid delivery programs in the war-torn country — a strong-arm tactic to force the agency to give them greater control over the massive humanitarian campaign, along with a cut of billions of dollars in foreign assistance, according to aid officials and internal documents obtained by The Associated Press. The rebel group has made granting access to areas under their control contingent on a flurry of conditions that aid agencies reject, in part because it would give the Houthis greater sway over who receives aid, documents and interviews show. The Houthis' obstruction has hindered several programs that feed the near-starving population and help those displaced by the nearly 6-year civil war, a senior U.N. official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the situation.

Yemen's Houthi rebels impeding UN aid flow, demand a cut

Yemen’s Houthi rebels have blocked half of the United Nations’ aid delivery programs in the war-torn country — a strong-arm tactic to force the agency to give them greater control over the massive humanitarian campaign, along with a cut of billions of dollars in foreign assistance, according to aid officials and internal documents obtained by The Associated Press. The rebel group has made granting access to areas under their control contingent on a flurry of conditions that aid agencies reject, in part because it would give the Houthis greater sway over who receives aid, documents and interviews show. The Houthis' obstruction has hindered several programs that feed the near-starving population and help those displaced by the nearly 6-year civil war, a senior U.N. official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the situation.

Sanders hopes early strength will prove he can beat Trump

Terry Reece has long been skeptical that voters would back Bernie Sanders, a 78-year-old self-described democratic socialist who is just months removed from a heart attack. After months of leaning toward former Vice President Joe Biden, Reece filled out a preference card for Sanders during early voting this week in the Nevada caucuses. "I think that people are kind of wanting to turn the pages and get more radical, or switch from the status quo," said Reece, a 62-year-old African American who owns a small media company in Las Vegas.

Las Vegas debate a major test of Bloomberg campaign's gamble

Mike Bloomberg will confront the greatest test of his presidential campaign when he faces five Democratic rivals in a debate in Las Vegas that could fundamentally change the direction of the party’s 2020 nomination fight. The debate debut for the billionaire former mayor of New York is poised to offer fresh insight into whether his unconventional campaign strategy — bypassing early voting states such as Nevada and spending hundreds of millions of dollars to spread his message on the airwaves — is sustainable. Wednesday night's debate comes at a pivotal point in the campaign as moderate voters are struggling to unify, with some increasingly looking to Bloomberg to become the clear alternative to progressive Bernie Sanders.

5 questions for next Democratic debate, Mike Bloomberg's 1st

No candidate has the potential to upend the race for the Democratic presidential nomination more than Bloomberg, the former New York mayor and billionaire owner of a financial data and news empire. Since Bloomberg accepts no donations, polls were the only way he could qualify.

Iran dissidents urge vote boycott as leaders eye high turnout

Opponents of Iran's theocratic leadership are urging an outright boycott of its parliamentary elections, arguing that it is anything but democratic and that casting a ballot serves only to bolster the country's Islamic rulers. The country's supreme leader has urged Iranians to "disappoint the enemy" by participating en masse in the vote on Friday, which coincides with one of the most testing periods for the country since the ousting of the pro-US shah in 1979. "Participating in elections and voting... is a religious duty" that will strengthen the Islamic republic against the "propaganda" of its enemies, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Tuesday.

Boris Johnson Is Told to Rein In Top Aide After Racism Row

(Bloomberg) -- Sign up to our Brexit Bulletin, follow us @Brexit and subscribe to our podcast.Boris Johnson was under pressure from colleagues in the U.K.‘s ruling Conservative Party to discipline his most senior adviser as an escalating dispute over allegations of racism threatened to engulf his government.Senior Tories, including current and former ministers, spoke out after Andrew Sabisky -- an official hired to work in the prime minister’s office -- quit over his claims that black Americans are intellectually inferior to their white compatriots.The blame for recruiting Sabisky fell on Dominic Cummings, Johnson’s chief adviser, who launched a high-profile drive to attract “weirdos and misfits” to join his effort to revolutionize the way British government works. It is the latest in a series of controversies involving Cummings since he went to work with Johnson last year.Last week, Cummings was blamed for a plan to strip the Treasury of its independence over economic policy, which prompted Sajid Javid to resign as chancellor of the exchequer after a disagreement with Johnson. The senior adviser, who masterminded the pro-Brexit campaign before the 2016 referendum, had earlier clashed with Javid and others in government over his unorthodox methods and confrontational approach.‘Unorthodox Way’The furor comes at a critical time for Johnson’s government, as it prepares to open negotiations with the European Union on a future trading agreement, and it threatens to overshadow the prime minister’s domestic agenda.“It’s incumbent upon the prime minister to keep Dominic Cummings on a tight rein,” former minister Caroline Nokes said in an interview. “When an adviser becomes a story, then clearly there’s a problem.”Business Minister Kwasi Kwarteng said Johnson’s office must “ensure this doesn’t happen again” and needs to review the process for vetting potential recruits. Problems arise when “you get people who slip through the net, who are recruited in perhaps an unorthodox way,“ Kwarteng told Sky News. “I think the vetting will be much more severe.“Boris Johnson’s Top Aide Seeks ‘Weirdos’ to Overhaul GovernmentSpeaking privately, another minister accused Cummings of turning the government into a circus and described him as a corrosive influence. The minister said Johnson’s team must ensure recruits are far more vigorously vetted, and added that it would be best if Cummings left the government.Johnson’s government won a large majority in December’s general election, putting him in a powerful position to shape the country and drive his reforming agenda through Parliament. Cummings said he wants to shake up the way the government works by recruiting “unusual” people with “different skills and backgrounds.”In a 3,000-word blog post last month, Cummings said there is “little need to worry about short-term unpopularity” given the size of Johnson’s majority. It seems some of his Conservative colleagues in Parliament and in government disagree.To contact the reporters on this story: Tim Ross in London at tross54@bloomberg.net;Alex Morales in London at amorales2@bloomberg.net;Jessica Shankleman in London at jshankleman@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Flavia Krause-Jackson at fjackson@bloomberg.net, Thomas Penny, Stuart BiggsFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

AP source: Barr tells people he might quit over Trump tweets

Attorney General William Barr has told people close to him he’s considering quitting his post after President Donald Trump wouldn’t heed his warning to stop tweeting about Justice Department cases, an administration official told The Associated Press. The revelation came days after Barr took a public swipe at the president, saying in a television interview that Trump’s tweets about Justice Department cases and staffers make it “impossible” for him to do his job. The next day, Trump ignored Barr’s request and insisted that he has the “legal right” to intervene in criminal cases and sidestep the Justice Department’s historical independence.

Russian Intelligence Recruited Mexican Man to Spy on FBI Informant in Miami, Feds Say

Russian intelligence recruited a Mexican citizen to track down the whereabouts of an FBI informant in Miami who previously provided the U.S. government with information on Russian operations “implicating national security interests of the United States.”The Mexican man, Hector Alejandro Cabrera Fuentes, was arrested on Monday after being recruited by a Russian official last year, according to The Miami Herald and the Justice Department. After renting out a specific Miami property at the direction of the official, Fuentes allegedly traveled to Moscow earlier this month for more instructions. At this meeting, Fuentes was given the description of the informant’s car, was told to locate it, to obtain the license plate number, and to take note of “the physical location” of the vehicle.The informant was described only as a “confidential human source” for the FBI counterintelligence division who had provided information on Russian espionage activities in the state, the Herald reports.Fuentes and the official planned to meet again in April or May 2020 so Fuentes could share what he found out about the informant's vehicle, federal prosecutors say.But the plan was foiled when Fuentes and his Mexican wife arrived in Miami from Mexico City on Feb. 13, and he took a Chrysler sedan rental car to the residence of the informant the following day. He tried to enter the condominium complex by tailgating behind another vehicle.The sedan drew the attention of a security guard, who approached the vehicle. As the guard was making the approach, Fuentes’ wife allegedly exited the car and took a photo of the license plate on the informant’s car.The guard questioned the pair about their business at the building, and Fuentes gave the name of someone he claimed to be visiting. The guard didn’t recognize the name, and told him to leave.Two days later, Fuentes and his wife were preparing to board a flight to Mexico City at Miami International Airport when a Customs and Border Protection agent inspected the wife's phone. The agent discovered the license plate photo in her “recently deleted folder.” Fuentes admitted to asking his wife to take the photo, and a review of Fuentes’ phone showed that his wife had sent the picture to him via WhatsApp message. He later admitted to officials that a Russian official had tasked him with the operation, and messages on his phone showed the official initiated and directed their meetings.It was not immediately clear where Russian intelligence recruited Fuentes, but he reportedly resided in Singapore and had ties to other parts of the world as well. In his first court hearing on Tuesday, he told the judge, “None of my family knows I’m here.” Fuentes admitted to having a second family in Russia: a wife and two daughters. He said he had visited them while he was in Russia having meetings with the official. The official allegedly told Fuentes he could help get his Russian family out of the country. “We can help each other,” the agent is said to have told him.It’s possible the “confidential human source” targeted by Fuentes and the Russian official was a defector. In 2017, a CIA source with access to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle and files reportedly defected after alerting the U.S. about Putin’s plans to meddle in the 2016 election. Reports said the former Russian foreign policy official ended up in the Washington area. Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

While Haiti police take frustrations out on streets, UN sounds alarm on gangs, bad cops

Angry over poor pay and miserable working conditions, members of Haiti’s U.S.-backed and United Nations-trained police force are taking their frustrations out on the streets.

LA adopts new 'war room' strategy for tackling homelessness

Los Angeles city and county officials on Tuesday announced a new strategy to speed the process of getting homeless people into permanent housing that is modeled on the federal government’s response to natural disasters. The creation of a “Housing Central Command” marks an overhaul of how agencies work together in addressing the growing number of people living on the street, according to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority. Previously the system was slowed by red tape and gaps in information showing what housing units were available and who is eligible to move into them, officials said.

China's virus center vows no patient unchecked as cases fall

Protective suit-clad inspectors in the epicenter of China's viral outbreak went door-to-door Wednesday to find every infected person in the central city suffering most from an epidemic that is showing signs of waning as new cases fell for a second day. Wuhan, where the new form of coronavirus emerged, is on the final day of a campaign to root out anyone with symptoms whom authorities may have missed so far. Mainland China reported Wednesday 1,749 new cases and 136 additional deaths.

Bernie Sanders' campaign to request recount of Iowa caucuses

Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign plans to ask for a partial recount of the Iowa caucus results after the state Democratic Party released results of its recanvass late Tuesday that show Sanders and Pete Buttigieg in an effective tie. Sanders campaign senior adviser Jeff Weaver told The Associated Press in an interview Tuesday that the campaign has had a representative in contact with the Iowa Democratic Party throughout the recanvass process. "Based on what we understand to be the results, we intend to ask for a recount," he said.

Iran defends barring of candidates as low-key campaign ends

Iran's electoral watchdog on Wednesday defended its decision to disqualify thousands of candidates for a crucial parliamentary election in two days, as a lacklustre campaign neared its end. Conservatives are expected to make an overwhelming resurgence in Friday's election, which comes after months of steeply escalating tensions between Iran and its decades-old arch foe the United States.

US tells remaining cruise passengers: Stay out for 2 weeks

The U.S. government made good on its warning to Americans who chose to remain on board a quarantined cruise ship in Japan, telling them they cannot return home for at least two weeks after they come ashore. U.S. officials notified the passengers Tuesday of the travel restriction, citing their possible exposure to the new virus while on board the Diamond Princess. Over the weekend, more than 300 American passengers, including some who tested positive for coronavirus, left Japan on charter flights.