Forged letter warning about 'wolves on the loose' part of Canadian Forces propaganda gone awry

The letter told residents to be wary of wolves that had been reintroduced into the area by the provincial and federal governments

Author of the article: David Pugliese • Ottawa Citizen
Publishing date: Oct 14, 2020 •  

A screenshot of a letter from the Nova Scotia government which was sent out to residents to warn about a pack of wolves on the loose in the province. The letter was actually a forgery by Canadian military personnel as part of a propaganda training mission.

A letter from the Nova Scotia government sent out to residents to warn about a pack of wolves on the loose in the province was forged by Canadian military personnel as part of a propaganda training mission that went off the rails.

The letter told residents to be wary of wolves that had been reintroduced into the area by the provincial and federal governments and warned the animals were now roaming the Annapolis Valley. The letter, which later became public, sparked concern and questions among residents but was later branded as “fake” by the Nova Scotia government which didn’t know the military was behind the deception.

The training also involved using a loudspeaker to generate wolf sounds, the Canadian Forces confirmed to this newspaper.

The fake letter was part of new skills being tested by the military as it hones its expertise for launching propaganda missions at home and abroad. The letter was developed by information warfare specialists with the Halifax Rifles, a reserve unit.

They not only forged the logo of the Wildlife Division of Nova Scotia’s Department of Lands and Forestry but they also attributed the letter to a real Nova Scotia government employee, even though they didn’t have permission to do so. A phone number on the letter, which residents were to call if they had concerns about the wolves, was traced by this newspaper to the work number of an Environment Canada employee, who also appears to be a Canadian Forces reservist.

The Canadian Forces revealed its role behind the fake letter last week to the Nova Scotia government and then on the weekend to local news media. Media outlets reported military staff had written the letter but didn’t know why.

Emma Briant, a professor at Bard College in the U.S. who specializes in researching military propaganda, said what the Canadian Forces did was a major violation of ethics. “This is way over the top,” Briant said. “It’s a very dangerous path when you start targeting your own public with false information and trying to manipulate them.”

Briant said the deception has nothing to do with wolves; it was likely an exercise in the testing the military’s skills in trying to manipulate the population with false information. “You start a rumour about wolves on the loose and then you see how the public reacts,” she added.

Similar deception operations were tried by contractors of SCL, a propaganda company which had worked for the U.S. and British militaries in Afghanistan and other locations in Asia. In those cases, false information was transmitted to villagers to convince them not to send their children to religious schools where they might be radicalized. But instead of being truthful, the contractors concocted an information campaign claiming pedophiles were operating in religious schools and parents shouldn’t send them there because their children would be in danger of being molested.

Department of National Defence spokesman Dan Le Bouthillier said the fake letter wasn’t meant to be released to the public and an investigation is underway to determine how that happened. The letter was an aid for the propaganda training. Le Bouthillier said he didn’t know why the loudspeaker was set up to transmit wolf sounds and that will be investigated as well.

The training initiative did not follow the established approval process and was not okayed by senior leaders, he added.

The Nova Scotia propaganda training comes as the Canadian Forces spools up its capabilities to conduct information warfare, influence operations and other deception missions aimed at populations overseas and, if necessary, the Canadian public.

Briant revealed on Monday the Canadian Forces spent more than $1 million in training its public affairs officers in skills to influence targeted populations.

In July, this newspaper reported a team assigned to a Canadian military intelligence unit monitored and collected information from people’s social media accounts in Ontario, claiming such data-mining was needed to help troops working in long-term care homes during the coronavirus pandemic. The collection involved comments made by the public about the provincial government’s failure in taking care of the elderly in the province. That data was turned over to the Ontario government, with a warning from the team it represented a “negative” reaction from the public.

This newspaper reported at the same time that the Canadian Forces planned a propaganda campaign aimed at heading off civil disobedience by Canadians during the coronavirus pandemic. The plan used similar propaganda tactics to those employed against the Afghan population during the war in Afghanistan, including loudspeaker trucks to transmit government messages. The propaganda operation was never put into action.

In addition, some Canadian military officers have suggested creating fake Facebook and other social media accounts for carrying out deception operations as well as harnessing social media accounts of Canadian Forces members, military-friendly academics and retired senior military staff to challenge opposition politicians and journalists who raise controversial issues regarding the Canadian Forces.

The Canadian Forces stresses that it follows ethical guidelines in its propaganda operations.

But others inside the military say that isn’t the case, pointing to the Nova Scotia operation as a prime example as it violated Canadian privacy law and the Criminal Code when soldiers forged documents.

The fake wolf letter was dated Sept. 19, two days after Chief of the Defence Staff Gen. Jon Vance met with senior military leaders to explain “the value of ethical decision making and the importance of maintaining the credibility of the CAF by being honest and transparent in everything we do.”

Giant robot 'monster wolves' installed to protect rural Japanese town from aggressive bears

Reuters 

A Japanese town has deployed robot wolves in an effort to scare away bears that have become an increasingly dangerous nuisance in the countryside.

© Provided by National Post

 A robot called Monster Wolf, equipped with sensors that can detect bears or vermin, is installed in an effort to scare away bears that have become an increasingly dangerous nuisance in the countryside, in Takikawa on Japan's northernmost main island of Hokkaido, in this photo taken by Kyodo October 21, 2020. 

PHOTO BY KYODO via REUTERS.

The town of Takikawa on the northern island of Hokkaido purchased and installed a pair of the robots after bears were found roaming neighbourhoods in September. City officials said there have been no bear encounters since.

Bear sightings are at a five-year high, mostly in rural areas in western and northern Japan, national broadcaster NHK has reported. There have been dozens of attacks so far in 2020, two of them fatal, prompting the government to convene an emergency meeting last month to address the threat they pose.

The so-called ‘Monster Wolf’ robot consists of a shaggy body on four legs, a blond mane and fierce, glowing-red eyes. When its motion detectors are activated, it moves its head, flashes lights and emits 60 different sounds ranging from wolfish howling to machinery noises.

Machinery maker Ohta Seiki has sold about 70 units of the robot since 2018.

The real Japanese wolf roamed the central and northern islands of the country before being hunted to extinction more than a century ago.

Takikawa city officials said that bears become more active and dangerous as they search for food before going into hibernation in late November. A decrease of acorns and nuts in the wild this year may have driven the animals to venture closer to towns in search of sustenance, according to local media.

Wolves preying on beavers in Minnesota reshape wetlands

WASHINGTON — One spring afternoon in 2015, biologist Thomas Gable followed signals from a gray wolf’s GPS tracking collar to a small stream in Minnesota’s Voyageurs National Park. There he found a large canine paw print in the mud and tufts of wolf and beaver fur caught in low bramble

A beaver had fallen victim to a wolf, Gable deduced. The industrious rodent's work in progress stood nearby — aspen logs, stripped clean, spanned the stream, and a pond about a foot deep was forming behind them. But when Gable checked again 10 days later, the dam had begun to collapse. With no aquatic engineer to repair the structure, the pond had disappeared.

“The water had totally vanished,” said Gable, who is based at the University of Minnesota. But the episode sparked an idea.

Over the next four years, biologists placed GPS collars on about 30 wolves inside the park. Then they visited every location where wolves had lingered for more than 20 minutes and searched the ground for clues about animals they preyed upon. They also documented when new beaver dams were abandoned nearby.

“Once a wolf takes out a beaver," Gable said, “it takes a while for another beaver to return to the site."

At each abandoned dam site studied, it took more than a year for another beaver to return, according to research published Friday in the journal Science Advances.

Wolves preying on beavers profoundly affect northern Minnesota's wetland ecosystems because dams built by individual beavers — those not associated with beaver colonies — quickly fall apart. The new research doesn't show wolves reduced the total beaver population in Voyageurs National Park, but that they influenced where beavers were able to build and maintain dams and ponds.

On average, there are about 73 wolves in the Voyageurs ecosystem, but this number can fluctuate annually between 63 and 82, said Gable.

A survey during winter of 2019-2020 by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources found the state was home to around 2,596 wolves.

Federal wildlife officials announced last month that the gray wolf would be removed from U.S. Endangered Species Act protection, leaving management decisions to states and opening the door to hunting in some. However, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz has said he opposes recreational wolf hunting.

While wolf packs target large animals such as adult deer and moose in winter, they tend to hunt alone for smaller prey, including fawns and beavers, in summer.

Biologists often call beavers “ecosystem engineers” because their dams create wetlands and new habitats for plants, aquatic insects, amphibians, fish and birds.

“Beavers are so central to the way these boreal forests look that anything that affects beaver distribution is going to have a cascading effect,” said Rolf Peterson, a wildlife ecologist at Michigan Technological University who studies wolves in Michigan and was not involved in the new study.

While Yellowstone and adjoining western states are the most famous homes to gray wolves in the United States, wolf packs also live in forests of Minnesota and Michigan, where they mix with wolf populations in neighbouring Canada.

Peterson contributed to research that found beaver colonies on Michigan's Isle Royale National Park increased five-fold between 2010 and 2018, when the wolf population there was dwindling.

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Follow Christina Larson on Twitter: @larsonchristina

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Manitoba Nurses union head slams gov't plan to deal with short-staffing issue

Glen Dawkins 

The head of the Manitoba Nurses Union is slamming the Pallister government after the union notified its members that the province had asked to suspend nurses’ rights under their collective agreement in order to deal with the critical short-staffing issues that have emerged amidst the worsening pandemic.

© Handout

Darlene Jackson is president of the 12,000 member Manitoba Nurses Union.

“Nurses are doing everything they can to meet the growing COVID-19 surge and support Manitobans during this critical time,” said MNU President Darlene Jackson in an email Saturday. “Across the province, they are facing incredibly long hours and extremely heavy workloads.

“In the midst of this, it’s disappointing that employers may resort to suspending nurses’ rights to respond to a worsening situation that was preventable. Nurses and Manitobans plainly see the Pallister government did not do nearly enough to prepare for this situation. Now they are once again asking nurses to clean up the mess, while refusing to provide adequate support.”

The MNU sent out a notice that the Provincial Health Labour Relations Secretariat (PHLRS) had indicated to the MNU that they were seriously considering an Article 10 declaration, or other emergency declaration that would suspend nurses’ rights under the collective agreement.

Rather than risk immediate imposition of these measures, and to ensure some recognition for any disruption to nurses’ assignments, MNU and PHLRS agreed to a compensation package for the next seven days, the notice read. The package would pay affected nurses a $25 premium per shift if their schedule is modified, or they are required to work at a personal care home in an outbreak situation or intensive care unit/critical care unit in their own facility. The agreement applies to any MNU member employed in the public health care system, effective immediately and extends to next Friday.

“We recognize this premium does not nearly account for the many hardships nurses are facing during this extraordinarily challenging time, but we hope that this small gesture will assist with desperately needed recruitment and retention efforts in areas of critical need,” the notice read.

“Government and health officials had months to prepare for this scenario, yet they did little to support nursing recruitment and retention,” said Jackson. “Over the summer, government could have invested to bolster staffing levels and made it easier for retired nurses to come back to the workforce. They could have ensured PPE and supplies were safe and well stocked. They could have trained nurses to work in areas of need in advance.

“Instead, they waited until we were in the midst of a surge. Government sat on their hands, focused more on managing their budget than ensuring we were prepared to weather the storm. It didn’t have to be this way. The Pallister government must change course. They must rebuild trust with their health workforce, not strip away what little is left.“

gdawkins@postmedia.com
Twitter: @SunGlenDawkins

Explosion kills 2 steam pipe workers at veterans hospital

NOV 14, 2020
WEST HAVEN, Conn. — Two workers were killed in an explosion Friday, November 13, while repairing a steam pipe in a maintenance building at a Veterans Affairs hospital in Connecticut, officials said.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Alfred Montoya Jr., director of the VA Connecticut Healthcare System, said the men were in the basement of the small outer building and had just finished routine maintenance on a leaky pipe. He said the explosion occurred just after 8 a.m. as the pipe was being refilled with steam.

The names of those killed were not immediately released. One was a contractor and the other was a VA employee and a Navy veteran, Montoya said.

That man's next of kin told Montoya that her loved one had decided to work for the VA because he wanted to take care of fellow veterans.

“(She said) he wanted to give back to those men and women who fought so hard,” Montoya said. “It's moments like that really tear at your heart and tear at your soul.”

Three other workers were injured, but those injuries were not life threatening, officials said. Officials initially believed one worker was missing but all were accounted for.

The contractor who died worked for Mulvaney Mechanical, based in Danbury, Connecticut, said company Vice-President Charles Brough.

“Our prayers are with the families of the victims of this explosion," VA Secretary Robert Wilkie said.

Police, the FBI, the VA and the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration were investigating the accident, and the cause of the explosion had not been determined Friday, officials said.

The explosion occurred in a building that houses the hospital’s labour shops, such as carpentry and plumbing, a spokesperson for the hospital said.

U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a member of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee, said the hospital, which officials said was built in the 1950s and underwent a renovation in the 1990s, has decaying infrastructure and is on a list of aging VA facilities that need to be replaced.

“This building is past its sell-by date,” he said.

Gov. Ned Lamont, a Democrat, said state emergency management officials will provide as much aid as necessary to conduct an investigation.

“This is a heartbreaking tragedy, and I have instructed our state agencies to provide full resources as the response and investigation continues,” Lamont said.

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Associated Press writer Dave Collins in Hartford contributed to this report.

Pat Eaton-Robb, The Associated Press

Avi Benlolo: The world sleeps while our beds are burning

National Post  NOV 15, 2020

One of my favourite songs from the 1980s is Midnight Oil’s “Beds Are Burning.” For me, it was a call to open our eyes to our own blind spots about the world around us. Its chorus hit home like a sledge-hammer: “How can we dance when our earth is turning? How do we sleep while our beds are burning?”

© Provided by National Post

While many say the song is about Indigenous rights in Australia, it extends far beyond that. It extends to all Indigenous rights, to human rights and to how we are treating our planet. As we look around us today, nothing much has changed. In fact, it seems like things have gotten worse, especially in the last decade.


Most days, it feels like the fire around us is burning stronger and inching closer and closer. Yes, we are dealing with COVID-19, which, by official counts has infected over 52 million people worldwide, and likely quite a few more. But while that’s in the news, other issues are being ignored.

A top civil servant told me that approximately 20,000 Indigenous people are living in “third-world conditions” in northwestern Ontario, the region he’s responsible for. Many of them don’t have access to drinkable water. It has to be boiled or trucked in. At least 23 communities desperately require the basic necessities of life, such as housing.

To make matters worse, many still suffer from multi-generational trauma resulting from having attended residential schools as kids. Sadly, according to the civil servant I spoke with, physical violence and sexual abuse are frequent occurrences. Their remoteness maintains our obvious neglect and blindness to their human condition.

The world has been consumed by the election in the United States. As a result, news channels neglect to report upon critical global events that have dire consequences for humanity.

The Uyghurs in China are also in a desperate situation. The Canadian executive director of the Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project, Mehmet Tohti, told me that he hasn’t heard from his mother in years. He believes she was taken by the Chinese government to one of its concentration or labour camps. He doesn’t know if she is still alive and is calling on governments to take immediate action to help his people.

As the world turns, our beds continue to burn. Human suffering is pervasive, especially in remote places. It might be information overflow that limits our capacity to digest and act, or the overwhelming human feeling of helplessness and apathy. Or it may simply be a result of a polarized world that has lost patience in multilateralism, collaboration and co-operation. The United Nation’s 2005 Responsibility to Protect resolution — which requires states to act against genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity — is rarely mentioned anymore.

While we’re asleep and distracted, mass atrocities happen on a near daily basis. Just a few days ago, more than 50 people were beheaded in northern Mozambique by Islamists who turned a soccer field into an execution ground, where they decapitated people and chopped up their bodies. It’s believed that up to 2,000 people have been killed and about 430,000 have been left homeless in Cabo Delgado province alone since 2017.

It is easy to bury our heads in the sand, but ignoring events that shape our world has ramifications. Whether it’s the butterfly effect or the domino effect, every action has a reaction somewhere. Many believe that a life worth living changes the course of history by being a counterweight to the evil that lurks in the shadows. Positive actions can also have positive reactions elsewhere.

This starts with overcoming our blind spots. Freedom House says that, “In every region of the world, democracy is under attack by populist leaders and groups that reject pluralism and demand unchecked power to advance the particular interests of their supporters, usually at the expense of minorities and other perceived foes.” Indeed, there has been a marked decline in democracy around the world and a strengthening and retrenchment of tyrannies.

We cannot afford for this to happen. We cannot sleep while our beds are burning. Its our responsibility as a free nation to advance peace, freedom and democracy around the globe. I only take one exception with Midnight Oil — keep dancing as long as our earth is turning. That brings hope, optimism, happiness, friendship and resilience.

National Post

avibenlolo@icloud.com

Avi Benlolo is a human-rights activist. His website is avibenlolo.org

Jane Fonda celebrates 25 years of Georgia-based non-profit

ATLANTA — Jane Fonda is celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Georgia-based non-profit organization she founded to prevent teenage pregnancies

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© Provided by The Canadian Press

Fonda, 82, founded the Georgia Campaign for Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention in 1995, when she lived in Atlanta and when Georgia had the highest teenage birth rate in the United States. Now it says its programs reach more than 60,000 young people every year.

“Twenty-five years ago, if we had gone into Grady County or White County or said we’d like to talk to you about teaching comprehensive sexuality in school, we would have been thrown out or arrested,” Fonda told The Associated Press. “Counties that didn’t want us to be there are now inviting us in, and that’s very gratifying.”

Fonda is hosting a virtual celebration and fundraiser on Thursday with recording artist Trisha Yearwood.

Retired Major League Baseball right fielder Hank Aaron will present the Lifetime Humanitarian Award to Fonda's ex-husband, CNN founder Ted Turner. President Jimmy Carter is also expected to deliver a message during the celebration.

In 2012, the organization changed its name to Georgia Campaign for Adolescent Power & Potential and expanded its mission beyond teenage pregnancy prevention to include nutrition and physical activity.

“If you put a map across the United States that showed pockets of poverty and distress, those would correspond with where our teen pregnancy rates are high,” Fonda said. “Hope is the best contraceptive. If you help a child see a future for themselves they will be motivated to either not have sex or to use contraceptives responsibly when they do.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, the birth rate for 15- to 19-year-olds dropped 5% in 2019. It’s fallen almost every year since 1991.

Arkansas, Mississippi and Louisiana have the highest teenage birth rates in the United States. Birth rates also remain higher among Native American, Hispanic and Black teenagers.

Fonda served as GCAPP’s chair until she moved from Atlanta to Los Angeles in 2010.

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Follow Alex Sanz on Twitter at @AlexSanz.

Alex Sanz, The Associated Press

A COVID-19 Vaccine Looks Promising — & Trump Had Nothing To Do With it

Molly Longman 


The race toward a workable COVID-19 vaccine had been an area of intense interest for the duration of the pandemic. Today, a glimmer of hope came in the form of a press release. An early analysis found that the COVID-19 vaccine candidate being developed by Pfizer and BioNTech was more than 90% effective at protecting people from COVID-19 compared to a placebo shot, Pfizer said in a press release on November 9

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© Provided by Refinery29

It didn’t take long for President Donald Trump to weigh in on the promising (though not conclusive) analysis. “STOCK MARKET UP BIG, VACCINE COMING SOON. REPORT 90% EFFECTIVE. SUCH GREAT NEWS!” Trump tweeted early Monday morning, taking a break from redistributing Fox News clips about the presidential election, which on Saturday was called in former Vice President Joe Biden’s favor. 

About an hour later, Vice President Mike Pence tweeted: “HUGE NEWS: Thanks to the public-private partnership forged by President @realDonaldTrump, @pfizer announced its Coronavirus Vaccine trial is EFFECTIVE, preventing infection in 90% of its volunteers.” 

Mike Pence

@Mike_Pence

HUGE NEWS: Thanks to the public-private partnership forged by President @realDonaldTrump, @pfizer announced its Coronavirus Vaccine trial is EFFECTIVE, preventing infection in 90% of its volunteers.

6:36 AM · Nov 9, 2020

142.2K

See the latest COVID-19 information on Twitter

In this tweet, Pence seems to be referring to a deal Pfizer struck in July with Operation Warp Speed, a project that uses federal resources to help accelerate the development, testing, and distribution of effective, safe vaccines and therapies to combat COVID-19.

But as they’ve made clear, Pfizer not did not accept money to help with the development or testing of the vaccine candidate. The $1.95 billion contract the pharmaceutical company signed with the federal government was specifically regarding distributing the vaccine. Once they had a working vaccine approved, Pfizer would use the money to provide 100 million doses to Americans, helping to support Operation Warp Speed’s ultimate goal of producing and delivering “300 million doses of safe and effective vaccines with the initial doses available by January 2021.” So while Pence is right that there is a partnership, the arrangement between Operation Warp Speed and Pfizer didn’t have anything to do with the trial’s early success.

Companies such as Moderna, AstraZeneca, and Johnson & Johnson, on the other hand, accepted money to help develop or test their vaccine candidates, according to a fact sheet provided by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Pfizer, however, sunk $2 billion of its own money into the project, according to The Washington Post.

“While Pfizer did reach an advanced purchase agreement with the U.S. government, the company did not accept BARDA [Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority] funding,” Pfizer said in a statement provided via email to Refinery29. “Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine development and manufacturing costs have been entirely self-funded. We have already invested about $2 billion, at risk, and are prepared to continue bearing the costs of all development and manufacturing, in an effort to help find a solution to this pandemic. We decided to self-fund our efforts so we could move as fast as possible”

“We were never part of the Warp Speed,” Kathrin Jansen, a senior vice president and the head of vaccine research and development at Pfizer, further emphasized to The New York Times. “We have never taken any money from the U.S. government, or from anyone.”

Jansen also made clear that Pfizer has no agenda. Yes, the promising results were made public this morning, shortly after the presidential election was called in favor of Biden — but that was just because the company had received the results on Sunday afternoon, she told The Times. “We have always said that science is driving how we conduct ourselves — no politics,” Jansen said.


While these results are a step in the right direction, they have not been peer-reviewed or published yet, and it’s too soon to say for sure whether the promising early results will bear out. “We need to see the actual data, and we’re going to need longer-term results,” Jesse Goodman, a professor of medicine and infectious diseases at Georgetown University, told The New York Times.

Still, the early analysis looks promising, Pfizer notes. “This first interim analysis of our trial evaluated 94 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in participants without prior SARS-CoV-2 infection among participants 16 to 85 years of age,” Pfizer told Refinery29 in an email. “Meaning, 90 percent of those cases came from the placebo group, which means we are showing 90 percent efficacy against infection.”

If all continues to go well, the Food and Drug Administration would need to give emergency use authorization before the vaccine could be distributed. Pfizer plans to ask the FDA to approve their vaccine candidate — which is a shot that’s given in two doses, three weeks apart — in the third week of November. So far, no major safety concerns have been reported thus far in the trial. There are 11 other late-stage COVID-19 vaccine trials.

While many are taking issue with the White House’s attempt to seemingly take credit for work they weren’t involved in, that shouldn’t blot out the fact that these early analysis results are fantastic news. “Today is a great day for science and humanity,” Albert Bourla, PhD, Pfizer’s chairman and CEO, said in Monday’s press release. “With today’s news, we are a significant step closer to providing people around the world with a much-needed breakthrough to help bring an end to this global health crisis.”

This story was originally published on Nov. 9, but has been updated with a statement from Pfizer.

Moldova election: blow to Kremlin as opposition candidate sweeps to victory

Andrew Roth in Moscow 


The opposition candidate Maia Sandu has won a landslide victory in Moldova’s presidential elections, easily defeating the pro-Russian incumbent, Igor Dodon

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© Photograph: Valery Sharifulin/Tass

 Maia Sandu, a former prime minister, backs closer ties with the EU.

Sandu, a former World Bank economist who has supported closer ties with the EU, won the run-off by harnessing voters’ anger over a long history of political scandals and exhaustion with endemic corruption, including the theft of $1bn from Moldovan banks in 2014-15.

Dodon, who has been accused of having a blasé attitude towards the coronavirus pandemic, is a regular guest in Moscow and his defeat is being seen by analysts as a major blow to the Kremlin.

Russia had wanted polarised Moldova to remain in its sphere of influence at a time when several Kremlin-aligned governments are rocked by political unrest and security crises.

Sandu, a former prime minister, turned out diaspora voters in record numbers while Dodon lost support among his largely conservative base in a nearly 58% to 42% loss.

“Moldovans need a state that does not steal, but protects its citizens,” Sandu said in a televised briefing that appeared careful not to alienate Russian-speaking voters or Moldovans who favour closer ties to Moscow.

Nicu Popescu, a former foreign minister under Sandu in 2019 and director of the Wider Europe programme at the European Council on Foreign Relation, said: “There’s been high demand for an anti-corruption platform for many, many years. It was also very clear that Dodon has been part of the same world with very corrupt politics … it was clear for people and they didn’t buy into his divisive campaign.”

Dodon said he had “tentatively” conceded the race on Monday, claiming his campaign had recorded a “huge number of violations”, including in the pro-Russian breakaway region of Transnistria. Nonetheless, it appears his campaign is over.

Sandu, who also heads the centre-right Party of Action and Solidarity, will face an uphill battle to fight corruption in Moldova, a parliamentary republic where the president has little control over domestic affairs or oversight of the prosecutors and courts. The next elections must be held by 2023 and she will probably seek snap elections.

As president, Sandu will be more likely to influence the country’s foreign policy. The former Soviet republic signed an association agreement with the EU in 2014 and now does the bulk of its trade with countries to its west rather than Russia.

But Dodon cultivated support from Moscow over four years in power, soliciting loans and visiting Moscow at least 20 times since 2016, more than any other country. He also appeared to be implicated last year in taking more than $700,000 (£530,000) in funding a month from Moscow to support the Socialist party, or PSRM, in leaked videos. He insisted that the footage was edited to twist his words and take them out of context.

The head of Russia’s foreign intelligence service had claimed that “Americans are plotting a revolutionary scenario for Moldova”, stoking concerns that Moscow could intervene to prevent him from losing.

But on Monday the Kremlin issued its congratulations to the challenger, something it still has not done in the US presidential elections. “I expect that your actions as head of state will contribute to the constructive development of relations between our countries,” Putin said in a telegram to Sandu. The Russian president wished her “successes, strong health, and prosperity”, the Kremlin’s press service said.

Sandu said she would “establish a pragmatic dialogue with all countries, including Ukraine, Romania, European nations, Russia, and the United States”.

Popescu said Russian support for Dodon was “half-hearted” and that Sandu could find a common language with Moscow while improving ties with the west.

“On the foreign policy front, [she’s pro-]Europe but she’s very pragmatic and positive about having a mutually respectful relationship with Russia,” said Popescu. “She never attacked Russia, she never criticised Russia … if there will be any deterioration, it won’t come from Chisinau.”

Qatar FM: Normalisation with Israel undermines Palestinian statehood efforts


DUBAI (Reuters) - Qatar's foreign minister said on Monday Arab states that establish ties with Israel undermine efforts for Palestinian statehood, but it was in their own sovereign right to do so.© Reuters/IBRAHEEM AL OMARI Doha hosts intra-Afghan talks

Three Arab countries - the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan - set aside hostilities with Israel in recent months to agree to formal relations in deals brokered by U.S. President Donald Trump's administration.

Palestinian leaders have accused them of betrayal, while U.S. and Israeli officials have said more Arab states could soon follow.

"I think it's better to have a united (Arab) front to put the interests of the Palestinians (first) to end the (Israeli) occupation," Qatar Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani told the online Global Security Forum.

He said division was not in the interest of concerted Arab efforts to get the Israelis to negotiate with the Palestinians and resolve the decades-long conflict between the sides.

However, for the states who established ties, "it is up to them at the end of the day to decide what is best for their countries", he said.

The UAE, Bahrain and Sudan broke with decades of Arab policy that had demanded Israel first cede land to the Palestinians to form their own state before establishing relations.

UAE officials have said the Gulf state remains committed to Palestinian statehood, and that its deal with Israel had stopped further annexation of lands Palestinians seek for a state.

Until this year, Israel had only current formal relations with just two Arab states - its neighbours Egypt and Jordan - established under peace deals reached decades ago.

Qatar has been tipped by Israeli officials as among Arab and other Muslim-majority countries that could establish formal ties with Israel.

Sheikh Mohammed said Doha maintains some relations with Israel, though only on matters concerning the Palestinians such as humanitarian needs or development projects.

Qatar, which also has relations with two of Israel's bitter enemies, Iran and Palestinian militant group Hamas, supports a two-state solution with East Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state, a stance the foreign minister reiterated.

(Writing by Alexander Cornwell; Editing by Mark Heinrich)