A fragile partnership in Iraq tries to prevent IS revival
By SAMYA KULLAB

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Kurdish Peshmerga forces oversee digging of defensive trenches in the village of Lheiban , Iraq, Tuesday, Dec. 7, 2021. For the first time since the defeat of Islamic State, federal Iraqi forces and Kurdish peshmerga are coordinating to close security gaps along a disputed zone in northern Iraq, as part of their ongoing fight against the militants. (AP Photo/Samya Kullab)

LHEIBAN, Iraq (AP) — As a backhoe dug up the ground to build trenches, Iraqi soldiers scanned the vast farming tracts for militants; not far away, their Kurdish counterparts did the same.

The scene earlier this month in the small northern Iraqi farming village of Lheiban was a rare instance of coordination between the federal government and the semi-autonomous Kurdish region. The two sides were fortifying a joint position aimed at defending the village against attacks by the Islamic State group.

Despite a long-standing territorial dispute, Baghdad and Iraq’s Kurds are taking steps to work together to prevent a resurgence of the Islamic State group.

Whether the fragile security partnership can hold is the big test in the next chapter of Iraq’s war with IS. Both sides say they need the Americans to help keep it together — and they say that is one reason why the U.S. military presence in Iraq is not going away even as its combat mission officially ends on Dec. 31.

Iraq declared IS defeated four years ago this month. But the rivalry between Baghdad and the Kurds opened up cracks through which IS crept back: a long, disputed zone snaking through four provinces -- Nineveh, Kirkuk, Salaheddin and Diyala -- where the forces of either side did not enter. In some places, the zone was up to 40 kilometers (24 miles) wide.

Lheiban lies in one part of the zone, and a recent flurry of IS attacks threatened to empty the area of its residents, mostly Kurds. So for the first time since 2014, Iraqi troops and peshmerga are setting up joint coordination centers around the zone to better police the gaps.

“Daesh took advantage,” said Capt. Nakib Hajar, head of Kurdish peshmerga operations in the area, using the Arabic acronym for IS. Now, he said, “we are coordinating ... It begins here, in this village.”

NIGHT VISIONS

Like all residents of Lheiban, Helmet Zahir is tired. In past months, the cement factory worker would spend all night on the roof of his humble home, his wife and children sleeping inside, holding his rifle and waiting.

Security personnel guarding a nearby oil company -- the only ones in the area equipped with thermal night vision -- would send the signal when they spotted IS militants making their way down the Qarachok Mountain range toward Lheiban.

It was up to Zahir and other armed residents to fend them off.

“We were abandoned. The peshmerga was on one side, the Iraqi army on another and neither was intervening,” he said.

A recent uptick in attacks on the village, with three in the first week of December alone, prompted many of the village’s residents, who are mainly Kurds, to leave. Zahir moved his family to Debaga in the relative safety of the Kurdish-run north.

Once numbering 65 families, Lheiban now has only 12 left, said village mukhtar Yadgar Karim.

On Dec. 7, peshmerga and Iraqi forces moved into the village with plans to replicate coordination elsewhere across the disputed territories. Kurdish officials hoped this would prompt villagers to return. Maintaining a Kurdish population in the area is key to their territorial claims.

Zahir is not convinced. “I came to check on the situation only, I am too afraid to return,” he said.

The peshmerga have positions all along the ridge of the Qarachok mountains. But they don’t have orders to stop IS militants as they cross on attacks or to raid IS positions because of wariness over entering disputed territory, explained Col. Kahar Jawhar.

Moreover, the militants move at night, using tunnels and hiding in caves, and the peshmerga lack key equipment including night vision.

“That is why IS are able to terrorize the residents, because we can’t see them,” Jawhar said.

DISPUTED LAND

The talks to re-establish joint coordination centers between the Iraqi army and peshmerga began over two years ago, but fell apart because of deep mistrust and differences over how to carve out lines of control.

Under current Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi, talks were rekindled, paving the way for an agreement to set up six joint coordination centers in Baghdad, Irbil, and across the disputed zone.

Kadhimi also agreed to establish two joint brigades to conduct anti-IS operations. But this is awaiting budget approval from Baghdad’s Finance Ministry, said Hajar Ismail, peshmerga head of relations with the coalition.

Between 2009-2014, Iraqi and Kurdish forces conducted joint security in the northern provinces of Ninevah, Kirkuk and Diyala. But the collapse of the Iraqi army during the IS onslaught of 2014 ended the arrangement.

Kurdish authorities managed to solidify control over Kirkuk and other disputed areas during this time, even developing oil fields and conducting an independent export policy, to the ire of the federal government.

After Iraq declared victory over IS in 2017, Baghdad turned its sights to these areas, launching a military operation in October 2017 to retake them. Relations soured, with Baghdad cutting off budget allocations to the Kurdish region, rendering it unable to pay public sector workers and debts to oil companies.

Baghdad was long reluctant to resume security talks partly due to political optics in the capital, with many dominant Shiite parties deeply mistrustful of Kurdish intentions, according to federal officials.

The Popular Mobilization Forces, made up largely of Shiite militia groups close to Iran, has opposed joint patrols with the peshmerga. The PMF also has a powerful presence in many areas in the disputed zone.

So far, the PMF has been surprisingly quiet about the new joint arrangement, as it copes with a devastating loss in federal elections earlier this year.

But “at some point they will speak out against it,” Zmkan Ali, a senior researcher at the Institute of Regional and International Studies, a research center in Sulaymaniyah.

COMMON FRIEND

The road to better coordination has often involved a common friend: The U.S.

Iraqi and Kurdish officials said the U.S.-led coalition’s mediation and support were key in bringing parties to the table.

“They played an important role, coordinating with us and the Iraqi side,” said Jawhar, the peshmerga based in Qarachok. “Without them we wouldn’t speak — they wouldn’t come here, and we wouldn’t go there.”

Both sides say they still need the Americans to play that role.

U.S. troops quietly stopped direct involvement in combat against IS months ago and have since been advising and training troops. That role will continue when the combat mission formally ends on Dec. 31.

The U.S. presence is also crucial in other ways. The Americans pay the salaries of many peshmerga fighters, amid ongoing budget disputes with Baghdad. Some $240 million in U.S. funding covers the salaries of around 45,000 peshmerga personnel, according to Ismail.

“Thankfully, this will continue in 2022,” he said.

WW3.0

Russia sets out tough demands for security pact with NATO

By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV and LORNE COOK

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FILE - In this photo released by the Russian Defense Ministry Press Service, a view of the joint strategic exercise of the armed forces of the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus Zapad-2021 at the Mulino training ground in the Nizhny Novgorod region, Russia, Saturday, Sept. 11, 2021. A Russian troop buildup near Ukraine has fueled Ukrainian and Western fears of an invasion, but Moscow has denied planning such an attack.

 (Vadim Savitskiy/Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP, File)

MOSCOW (AP) — Russia on Friday published draft security demands that NATO deny membership to Ukraine and other former Soviet countries and roll back the alliance’s military deployments in Central and Eastern Europe — bold ultimatums that are almost certain to be rejected by the U.S. and its allies.

The proposals, which were submitted to the U.S. and its allies earlier this week, also call for a ban on sending U.S. and Russian warships and aircraft to areas from where they can strike each other’s territory, along with a halt to NATO military drills near Russia.

The demand for a written guarantee that Ukraine won’t be offered membership already has been rejected by the West, which said Moscow doesn’t have a say in NATO’s enlargement.

NATO’s secretary-general emphasized Friday that any security talks with Moscow would need to take into account NATO concerns and involve Ukraine and other partners. The White House similarly said it’s discussing the proposals with U.S. allies and partners, but noted that all countries have the right to determine their future without outside interference.

The publication of the demands — contained in a proposed Russia-U.S. security treaty and a security agreement between Moscow and NATO — comes amid soaring tensions over a Russian troop buildup near Ukraine that has raised fears of an invasion. Moscow has denied it has plans to attack its neighbor but wants legal guarantees precluding NATO expansion and deploying weapons there.

Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Russia’s relations with the U.S. and NATO have approached a “dangerous point,” noting that alliance deployments and drills near Russia have raised “unacceptable” threats to its security.

Moscow wants the U.S. to start talks immediately on the proposals in Geneva, he told reporters.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said the alliance had received the Russian documents, and noted that any dialogue with Moscow “would also need to address NATO’s concerns about Russia’s actions, be based on core principles and documents of European security, and take place in consultation with NATO’s European partners, such as Ukraine.”

He added that the 30 NATO countries “have made clear that should Russia take concrete steps to reduce tensions, we are prepared to work on strengthening confidence building measures.”

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said the administration is ready to discuss Moscow’s concerns about NATO in talks with Russian officials, but emphasized that Washington is committed to the “principle of nothing about you without you” in shaping policy that impacts European allies.

“We’re approaching the broader question of diplomacy with Russia from the point of view that ... meaningful progress at the negotiating table, of course, will have to take place in a context of de-escalation rather than escalation,” Sullivan said at the event hosted by the Council on Foreign Relations. He added “that it’s very difficult to see agreements getting consummated if we’re continuing to see an escalatory cycle.”

While U.S. intelligence has determined that Russian President Vladimir Putin has made plans for a potential further invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, Sullivan said the U.S. still does not know whether he has decided to move forward.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki noted that strategic security talks with Moscow go back decades, saying that “there’s no reason we can’t do that moving forward to reduce instability, but we’re going to do that in partnership and coordination with our European allies and partners.”

”We will not compromise the key principles on which European security is built, including that all countries have the right to decide their own future and foreign policy free from the outside interference,” Psaki said.

Moscow’s draft also calls for efforts to reduce the risk of incidents involving Russia and NATO warships and aircraft, primarily in the Baltic and the Black seas, increase the transparency of military drills and other confidence-building measures.

A senior U.S. official said some of the Russian proposals are part of an arms control agenda between Moscow and Washington, while some other issues, such as transparency and deconfliction, concern all 57 members of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, including Ukraine and Georgia.

The official, who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity in order to talk about the proposals, said the U.S. is looking at how to engage every country whose interests are affected in prospective talks on European security issues and will respond to Moscow sometime next week with concrete proposals after consulting with the allies.

President Vladimir Putin raised the demand for security guarantees in last week’s video call with U.S. President Joe Biden. During the conversation, Biden voiced concern about a buildup of Russian troops near Ukraine and warned him that Russia would face “severe consequences” if Moscow attacked its neighbor.

Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and shortly after cast its support behind a separatist rebellion in the country’s east. More than seven years of fighting has killed over 14,000 people and devastated Ukraine’s industrial heartland, known as the Donbas.

The Russian demands would oblige Washington and its allies to pledge to halt NATO’s eastward expansion to include other ex-Soviet republics and rescind a 2008 promise of membership to Ukraine and Georgia. The alliance already has firmly rejected that demand from Moscow.

Moscow’s documents also would preclude the U.S. and other NATO allies from conducting any military activities in Ukraine, other countries of Eastern Europe and ex-Soviet republics in the Caucasus and in Central Asia.

The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry commented on Moscow’s proposals by emphasizing that it’s up to the alliance and Ukraine to discuss NATO membership prospects and its military cooperation with other countries.

“The Russian aggression and the current Russian escalation along the Ukrainian border and on the occupied territories is now the main problem for the Euro-Atlantic security,” said its spokesman Oleg Nikolenko.

The Russian proposal also ups the ante by putting a new demand to roll back NATO military deployments in Central and Eastern Europe, stating that the parties agree not to send any troops to areas where they hadn’t been present in 1997 — before NATO’s eastward expansion started — except for exceptional situations of mutual consent.

Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic joined NATO in 1999, followed in 2004 by Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and the former Soviet republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. In the following years, Albania, Croatia, Montenegro and North Macedonia also became members, bringing NATO membership to 30 nations.

The draft proposals contain a ban on the deployment of U.S. and Russian warships and aircraft to “areas where they can strike targets on the territory of the other party.”

Moscow has long complained about patrol flights by U.S. strategic bombers near Russia’s borders and the deployment of U.S. and NATO warships to the Black Sea, describing them as destabilizing and provocative.

Russia’s draft envisages a pledge not to station intermediate-range missiles in areas where they can strike the other party’s territory, a clause that follows the U.S. and Russian withdrawal from a Cold War-era pact banning such weapons.

The Russian draft also calls for a ban on the deployment of U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons on the territory of other countries — a repeat of Moscow’s longtime push for the U.S. to withdraw its nuclear weapons from Europe.

Dmitri Trenin, the director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, noted that the publication of the Russian demands signals that the Kremlin considers their acceptance by the West unlikely.

“This logically means that Russia will have to assure its security single-handedly” using military-technical means, he said on Twitter.

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Cook reported from Brussels. Darlene Superville, Ellen Knickmeyer and Aamer Madhani in Washington and Yuras Karmanau in Kyiv, Ukraine, contributed.

NATO issues statement in connection with build-up of Russia's military presence on Ukraine's border
17.12.2021


In connection with the build-up of Russian military forces on the border with Ukraine, the NATO North Atlantic Council issued a statement urging Russia to stop the escalation.

The text of the statement was released late Thursday by the headquarters of the alliance.

"We are gravely concerned by the substantial, unprovoked, and unjustified Russian military build-up on the borders of Ukraine in recent months, and reject the false Russian claims of Ukrainian and NATO provocations. We call on Russia to immediately de-escalate, pursue diplomatic channels, and abide by its international commitments on transparency of military activities," the statement reads.

The North Atlantic Council stated "it is seriously assessing the implications for Alliance security of the current situation." "We will always respond in a determined way to any deterioration of our security environment, including through strengthening our collective defense posture as necessary. NATO will take all necessary measures to ensure the security and defense of all NATO Allies. Any further aggression against Ukraine would have massive consequences and would carry a high price. NATO will continue to closely coordinate with relevant stakeholders and other international organizations including the EU," the Alliance said.

In addition, the North Atlantic Council reiterated its support for the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine within its internationally recognized borders, and called on Russia to withdraw its forces from Ukraine in accordance with its international obligations and commitments. "We support the right of all countries to decide their own future and foreign policy free from outside interference. NATO's relationship with Ukraine is a matter only for Ukraine and the 30 NATO Allies. We firmly reject any attempts to divide Allied security," the Alliance said.

At the same time, the allies conformed that they are "ready for meaningful dialogue with Russia." "We reiterate our long-standing invitation to Russia for a meeting of the NATO-Russia Council in the near future. We are aware of Russia's recent European security proposals. We are clear that any dialogue with Russia would have to proceed on the basis of reciprocity, address NATO's concerns about Russia's actions, be based on the core principles and foundational documents of European security, and take place in consultation with NATO's European Partners. Should Russia take concrete steps to reduce tensions, we are prepared to work on strengthening confidence-building measures. The OSCE is also a relevant platform," the statement reads.

Russian court says country's soldiers stationed in Ukraine

A Russian court has acknowledged the country's armed forces are present in the eastern part of Ukraine. The Kremlin has persistently denied the presence of Russian forces in the Donbas region.

Ukrainian soldiers have dug in positions at a line of separation near the Donbas region

The Kremlin said Thursday that a southern Russian court's acknowledgment of the presence of Russian soldiers in the eastern part of Ukraine known as the Donbas was a "mistake," despite much evidence to the contrary presented to the court.

The case involved allegations of corruption concerning a catering service intended for "the garrisons of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation stationed on the territory of the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics," Judge Leonard Sholokhov wrote.

Later on Thursday, the court's press office released a statement that stated the local court responsible for collecting the man's testimony had not confirmed the veracity of his statements to the court.

What was the case about?

The court's words are poignant given the lengths Moscow has gone to obfuscate whether its forces are stationed in Ukraine. The court, located in Rostov-on-Don near the border with Ukraine, is where the former Russian-backed president of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych fled following his ouster in 2014.

The defendant in the case, identified in court papers as V.N. Zabaluyev, said in court he had supplied meals to Russian troops in eastern Ukraine. Zabaluyev worked at a local company as the deputy regional manager for military meal logistics. In 2019, he received a sentence of five years in prison for bribing officials.

The court heard that every two weeks a caravan of 70 trucks with supplies would cross into eastern Ukraine to supply Russian troops deployed there.
How has the Kremlin reacted?

Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin's spokesman, said Thursday there was a "mistake on the part of those who wrote the text" and that any food deliveries to the region would consist of humanitarian aid.

Peskov added the statement was an error "because it is not possible. There are no armed forces of the Russian Federation on the territory of the self-proclaimed republics at all."

How has Ukraine reacted?

Ukraine's Foreign Ministry spokesman Oleh Nikolenko said, "Russia has by itself created a legal precedent that clearly fixates its status as a party to an international armed conflict."

He added: "It is not possible to hide Russia's crimes in Ukraine."

In 2014, following a three-month civil uprising on the central Kyiv square known as Maidan and the ouster of Yanukovych, Russia annexed Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula. Russia then threw its weight in support of the pro-Russian rebels taking on Kyiv in Donbas.

Independent media have unearthed evidence of more than just spiritual and ideological overlap between Moscow and the rebel forces in the Donbas. Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta has published images of the bodies of the war dead in Donbas being transferred to Russia.

The UN reports 13,000 have died in the nearly eight-year-old conflict.

ar/sms (AFP, dpa, Reuters)

Ukrainian Soldier Killed as Tensions with Moscow Soar

By AFP

Ukrainian troops in the Donetsk region.president.gov.ua

Ukraine said Friday that one of its soldiers was killed in fighting with pro-Russia separatists in the east of the country, as tensions with Moscow soar.

Kiev has been battling a pro-Moscow insurgency in two breakaway regions bordering Russia since 2014, when the Kremlin annexed Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula.

Russia has massed troops near Ukraine's borders and the West has for weeks accused it of planning an invasion, warning Moscow of massive sanctions should it launch an attack.

The Ukrainian army said separatists had targeted its positions with grenade launchers and mortars.

"One serviceman was fatally wounded," and another soldier was injured, it said on Facebook.

Kiev and its allies accuse Russia of supporting the rebels militarily — claims which Moscow denies.

The latest death brings Ukraine's toll in the simmering conflict to 65 since the start of the year, according to an AFP tally based on official figures, compared to a total of 50 in all of 2020.

Russia has massed around 100,000 troops on its side of the border.

U.S. President Joe Biden warned his Russian counterpart President Vladimir Putin of "sanctions like he's never seen" should the troops attack Ukraine.

European Union leaders on Thursday urged Moscow to halt its military build-up and return to talks led by France and Germany.

The conflict in eastern Ukraine has so far left more than 13,000 dead.

Jittery Ukrainian villagers ‘fear that a big war will start’

By INNA VARENYTSIA and YURAS KARMANAU

December 16, 2021

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Liudmyla Momot weeps as she searches for any still-usable items Friday, Dec. 10, 2021, in the debris of her house in the village of Nevelske in eastern Ukraine, that was struck by a mortar shell fired by Russia-backed separatists. Her village, northwest of the rebel-held city of Donetsk, is only about 3 kilometers (2 miles) from the line of contact between the separatists and the Ukrainian military and has been emptied of all but five people. Small arms fire frequently is heard in the daytime, giving way to the booms of light artillery and mortars after dusk. (AP Photo/Andriy Dubchak)


NEVELSKE, Ukraine (AP) — Liudmyla Momot wipes away tears as she searches for clothes and household items to salvage from the ruins of her home that was shelled by Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine.

Her village of Nevelske, northwest of the rebel-held city of Donetsk, is only about 3 kilometers (2 miles) from the line of contact between the separatists and the Ukrainian military and has been emptied of all but five people.

Small arms fire frequently is heard in the daytime, giving way to the booms of light artillery and mortar shelling after dusk.

With the bloody conflict now more than seven years old, there are fears in Ukraine and the West that a buildup of armed forces on Russia’s side of the border could lead to an invasion or the resumption of full-scale hostilities.

Rebels targeted Nevelske with shelling twice in the last month, damaging or destroying 16 of the village’s 50 houses and rattling the handful of nervous residents who remain.

“The worse Ukraine-Russia relations are, the more we simple people are suffering,” said 68-year-old Momot, who has worked at a dairy farm all her life.

Now with no home, “who could have imagined that? I was preparing for the winter, stocking up coal and firewood.”

After the shell hit her house, Momot fled to a nearby settlement where her son lives. But the anxiety has followed her there.

“We fear that a big war will start. People are scared and packed up their bags,” said Momot, who collected some blankets, warm clothes and other items in the debris.

The conflict in the eastern industrial heartland known as the Donbas erupted in April 2014, weeks after Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula following the ouster of Ukraine’s Moscow-friendly former president. Ukraine and the West have accused Russia of supporting the rebels with troops and weapons, but Moscow says that Russians who joined the fight were volunteers acting on their own.

More than 14,000 people have been killed in fighting that has driven more than 2 million people from their homes in the east.

When the conflict began, Nevelske had a population of 286. Now, the five older people who remain in the ruined village collect rainwater for drinking and cooking. Between shipments of humanitarian aid, they rely on eating stale bread.

“We have grown accustomed to the shelling,” said 84-year-old Halyna Moroka, who has stayed in Nevelske with her disabled son.

A 2015 peace agreement brokered by France and Germany ended large-scale battles, but frequent skirmishes have continued. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which monitors the shaky cease-fire, has reported an increasing number of such incidents, with both sides trading the blame for truce violations.

“The security situation along the contact line is still of concern, with a high level of kinetic activity,” Mikko Kinnune, the OSCE representative for the group that involves representatives of Ukraine, Russia and the rebels, said earlier this month.

Amid the recent Russian troop buildup, Washington and its allies have warned Moscow that it will pay a high economic price if it attacks Ukraine. Moscow denies having such intentions and accused Ukraine of planning to reclaim control of rebel-held territory, something Kyiv has rejected,

Russian President Vladimir Putin has urged the West to provide guarantees that NATO won’t expand to include Ukraine or deploy the alliance’s forces and weapons there, calling that a “red line” for Moscow. The U.S. and its allies have refused to make such a pledge, but U.S. President Joe Biden and Putin decided last week to hold talks to discuss Russian concerns.

A dog limps past the debris of a house Friday, Dec. 10, 2021, after the home was struck by a mortar shell fired by Russia-backed separatists in the village of Nevelske in eastern Ukraine. The 7-year-old conflict between the separatists and Ukrainian forces has all but emptied the village. Shelling has damaged or destroyed 16 of the 50 houses there. (AP Photo/Andriy Dubchak)

The geopolitical threats resonate in Nevelske on those few occasions that the village has power, enabling its remaining residents to watch Russian television news.

“We don’t want war!” exclaimed 75-year-old Kateryna Shklyar, who shares her fears with her husband, Dmytro. Their daughter and grandchildren live in nearby Krasnohorivka, a Ukrainian-controlled western suburb of Donetsk.

“For how long will this torment last?” asked Shklyar. “It has worn out our souls and hearts. You can’t call that life, but we have no place to go.”

Humanitarian groups provide basic supplies to Nevelske and other villages and even try to offer housing in safer areas, but their resources are limited.

“I just survive each day, trying to make it to the evening, and my soul aches,” said Moroka, who has lost vision in one eye but can’t get any medical help.

“We are frightened,” she added. “It’s really scary to sit here and wait for death. It’s horrible!”

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Yuras Karmanau reported from Kyiv, Ukraine.

EU faces nuclear rift in decision on energy funds, future

By SAMUEL PETREQUIN and RAF CASERT

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German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, right, and French President Emmanuel Macron address a media conference at the conclusion of an EU Summit in Brussels, Friday, Dec. 17, 2021. European Union leaders met for a one-day summit Thursday focusing on Russia's military threat to neighbouring Ukraine and on ways to deal with the continuing COVID-19 crisis. (John Thys, Pool Photo via AP)

BRUSSELS (AP) — The leaders of the European Union’s two most important nations faced reporters together during a joint news conference early Friday, a show of unity at the end of the EU’s final summit of the year.

Then two words - “nuclear energy” - intervened.

Heading into the Christmas week, atomic power is a topic on which France and Germany broadly differ, and one that has become a big thorn in the side of the EU as the 27-nation bloc decides whether to include nuclear-generated energy among the economic activities that qualify for sustainable investment.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who took office last week, and French President Emmanuel Macron agreed on most of the issues tackled during Thursday’s summit, including Ukraine-Russia tensions and an immigration dispute with Belarus.

On the the sustainable investment rules, however, the two leaders have yet to reach a compromise. The rift over nuclear energy was enough to scuttle any agreement on energy prices during the summit.

A big rise in energy prices has reignited the debate about whether the EU should promote nuclear power projects as a way of becoming greener and more energy independent.

France has asked for nuclear power to be included in the so-called “taxonomy” by the end of the year, leading the charge with several other EU countries that operate nuclear power plants.

The group initially faced strong opposition from Germany and other members that wanted nuclear power to be ineligible for green financing, but Scholz adopted a peacebuilding tone in the summit’s final hours early Friday.

“We are talking about countries with different business models. It’s important that each EU country can pursue its own approach without Europe becoming disunited,” Scholz said. “At the end of the day, we will have to come together despite the different priorities we may have set.”

Germany’s remaining nuclear power plants are due to go offline next year. France derives about 70% of its electricity from nuclear energy.

Last month, Macron announced that France will start building its first new nuclear reactors in decades. Unveiling the plans, he said the the new reactors will help guarantee France’s energy independence and help reach carbon neutrality in 2050.

“It’s not a Franco-German discussion,” Macron said during the press conference. “There are different energy models in different European countries. What we want to achieve is agree on a taxonomy that allows us to continue with our industrial policy and to be coherent in decarbonizing our economies.”

Two years ago, EU leaders agreed that nuclear could be part of the bloc’s solution to making its economy carbon neutral by 2050. Leaving the possibility of using nuclear energy in their national energy mixes reassured the bloc’s coal-reliant countries, which are expected to suffer the most during the transition.

However, making future nuclear power projects eligible for billions in euros available as part of the European Green Deal while avoiding “greenwashing” remains a controversial issue.

Countries that want nuclear power to remain ineligble for green financing often cite the EU’s guidance that all investments financed by the pandemic recovery fund should not harm the bloc’s environmental goals.

“The lack of agreement shows how lively this is, not only in our country, but throughout Europe,” Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo, who faces a domestic crisis over how to phase out nuclear plants and still maintain energy security to his citizens.

De Croo suggested that amid the energy price crunch, nuclear energy and gas could be temporarily eligible for funds.

“You have to be able to look sufficiently ahead, and if you do so you can assume that technologies like nuclear and gas can be useful technologies in the medium term to bridge the gap until we have fully sustainable energy,” De Croo said early Friday.

The ball is now with the EU’s chief, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. She is expected to present before the end of the year the list of activities eligible for the green investment funds and must decide whether nuclear energy and natural gas make the cut.

Von der Leyen has been under pressure from environmental groups and Green European lawmakers to resist the inclusion of both.

“Fossil gas and nuclear power have no place in the EU taxonomy” for sustainable activities, said Sven Giegold, a Green lawmaker in the European Parliament.

A low-carbon alternative to fossil fuels, nuclear energy represented around 26% of the electricity produced in the bloc in 2019, with 13 EU countries endowed with operational reactors.

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Follow all AP stories about climate change at https://apnews.com/hub/climate.

Over Ethiopia’s objections, UN rights body backs war monitor
By JAMEY KEATEN

Nada Al-Nashif, UN Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights, delivers her statement, during the Human Rights Council special session on "the grave human rights situation in Ethiopia", at the European headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, Friday, Dec. 17, 2021. The U.N.'s main human rights body is opening a special session Friday to discuss rights violations in conflict-torn Ethiopia, with many Western countries trying to set up an international team of experts to boost scrutiny of the situation despite a lack of support from African nations and amid accusations from Ethiopia’s government that it's politically motivated. (Salvatore Di Nolfi/Keystone via AP)

GENEVA (AP) — Over Ethiopia’s objections, the U.N.’s main human rights body voted Friday to create an international team of experts to boost scrutiny of rights abuses in the devastating yearlong war between Ethiopian government forces and fighters from the country’s Tigray region.

Ethiopia’s government decried a “neocolonialist mentality” after the European Union and other Western countries sought a special session of the Human Rights Council to ratchet up attention on the conflict that has left tens of thousands dead.

A resolution that won the council’s approval on a 21-15 vote with 11 countries abstaining creates a three-person team with a one-year mandate to monitor and report on rights abuses in Ethiopia.

The push from EU and other Western countries demonstrates their frustration that a joint investigation between Ethiopia’s human rights commission and the U.N. human rights office, which culminated with a report last month, didn’t go far enough.

“The conflict has continued with ongoing fighting beyond the borders of Tigray. Our office continues to receive credible reports of severe human rights violations and abuses by all parties,” the U.N. deputy high commissioner for human rights, Nada al-Nashif, told representatives at Friday’s session. “The humanitarian impact of the conflict is increasingly dramatic.”

Nearly 10 million people in northern Ethiopia face acute food insecurity, and at least 2 million have been forced to flee their homes. Humanitarian workers have little access and face hostility. Ethiopia’s government has sought to restrict reporting on the war and detained some journalists, including a video freelancer accredited to The Associated Press, Amir Aman Kiyaro.

Between 5,000 and 7,000 people swept up under Ethiopia’s new state of emergency remain detained, most of them Tigrayans, al-Nashif said: “Many are detained incommunicado or in unknown locations. This is tantamount to enforced disappearance, and a matter of very grave alarm.”

The government-created Ethiopian Human Rights Commission acknowledged in a statement this week that there was “value-added” in encouraging the joint investigation to continue, but said creation of a new body “is repetitive, counterproductive to ongoing implementation processes, and further delays redress for victims and survivors.”

Ethiopia’s ambassador in Geneva, Zenebe Kebede Korcho, said his government rejects the draft resolution the Human Rights Council is considering. At Friday’s session, he called the resolution a “deliberate destabilization effort” and said the government “will not cooperate with any mechanism imposed on it.” The Africa group of nations at the council backed his position in a separate statement.

“Multilateralism, after all these years, is once again being hijacked by a neocolonialist mentality. Ethiopia is being targeted and singled out at the Human Rights Council for defending a democratically elected elected government,” the ambassador said. “The council is being used as an instrument of political pressure.”

The Ethiopian ambassador said Ethiopia’s government had set up an “inter-ministerial task force” in response to the human rights report issued last month, and it has begun work.

The joint report decried the “terrible toll on civilians” in the conflict in the Tigray region, and human rights violations and abuses committed by all sides. The rare collaboration by the U.N. human rights office with the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission was hampered by authorities’ intimidation and restrictions, and didn’t visit some of the war’s worst-affected locations.

The U.N. human rights chief, Michelle Bachelet, has said all sides in the war in the Tigray region have committed brutal abuses that could amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The investigation broke little new ground and confirmed in general the abuses described by witnesses throughout the war. But it gave little sense of scale, saying for example that the more than 1,300 rapes reported to authorities were likely far fewer than the real number.

The government has insisted the report cleared it of allegations that genocide was happening in Tigray.

The conflict erupted in November 2020 after a political falling-out between the Tigray forces that long dominated the national government and Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s current government. Ethnic Tigrayans across the country have reported being targeted with arbitrary detentions, while civilians in Tigray have described gang rapes, human-caused famine and mass expulsions.

The Tigray forces now face a growing number of allegations of abuses after taking the fighting into Ethiopia’s neighboring Amhara and Afar regions in recent months. The joint investigation didn’t examine that period.

For a special council session to take place, the support of one-third of its 47 member states is required.

___

Cara Anna in Nairobi, Kenya, contributed to this report.

Pope at 85: Gloves come off as Francis’ reform hits stride
By NICOLE WINFIELD

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 Pope Francis attends a meeting with priests, religious men and women, seminarians and catechists, at the Cathedral of Saint Martin, in Bratislava, Slovakia, Sept. 13, 2021. Pope Francis is celebrating his 85th birthday Friday, Dec. 17, 2021, a milestone made even more remarkable given the coronavirus pandemic, his summertime intestinal surgery and the weight of history: His predecessor retired at this age and the last pope to have lived any longer was Leo XIII over a century ago. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia, file)

ROME (AP) — Pope Francis celebrated his 85th birthday on Friday, a milestone made even more remarkable given the coronavirus pandemic, his summertime intestinal surgery and the weight of history: His predecessor retired at this age and the last pope to have lived any longer was Leo XIII over a century ago.

Yet Francis is going strong, recently concluding a whirlwind trip to Cyprus and Greece after his pandemic-defying jaunts this year to Iraq, Slovakia and Hungary. And he shows no sign of slowing down his campaign to make the post-COVID world a more environmentally sustainable, economically just and fraternal place where the poor are prioritized.

Francis also has set in motion an unprecedented two-year consultation of rank-and-file Catholics on making the church more attuned to the laity.

“I see a lot of energy,” said the Rev. Antonio Spadaro, one of Francis’ trusted Jesuit communications gurus. “What we’re seeing is the natural expression, the fruit of the seeds that he has sown.”

But Francis also is beset by problems at home and abroad and is facing a sustained campaign of opposition from the conservative Catholic right. He has responded with the papal equivalent of “no more Mr. Nice Guy.”

After spending the first eight years of his papacy gently nudging Catholic hierarchs to embrace financial prudence and responsible governance, Francis took the gloves off this year, and appears poised to keep it that way.

Since his last birthday, Francis ordered a 10% pay cut for cardinals across the board, and slashed salaries to a lesser degree for Vatican employees, in a bid to rein in the Vatican’s 50-million-euro ($57 million) budget deficit.

To fight corruption, he imposed a 40-euro ($45) gift cap for Holy See personnel. He passed a law allowing cardinals and bishops to be criminally prosecuted by the Vatican’s lay-led tribunal, setting the stage for the high-profile trial underway of his onetime close adviser, Cardinal Angelo Becciu, on finance-related charges.

Outside the Vatican, he hasn’t made many new friends, either. After approving a 2019 law outlining the way cardinals and bishops could be investigated for sex abuse cover-up, the past year saw nearly a dozen Polish episcopal heads roll.

Francis also approved term limits for leaders of lay Catholic movements to try to curb their abuses of power, resulting in the forced removal of influential church leaders. He recently accepted the resignation of the Paris archbishop after a media storm alleging governance and personal improprieties.

“In the past year, Pope Francis has accelerated his efforts at reform by putting real teeth into the church’s canon law regarding finances,” the Rev. Robert Gahl, director of the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross’s Program of Church Management, said.

“While celebrating his birthday, Vatican watchers are also looking for more concrete signs of compliance regarding the pope’s new rules, especially from those who report directly to him within the Vatican,” Gahl said in an email, noting that a change in culture is needed alongside Francis’ new policies and regulations.

Despite Francis’ tough line, the pope nevertheless got a round of birthday applause from Holy See cardinals, bishops and priests who joined him for an Advent meditation on Friday morning. Later in the day, he welcomed a dozen African and Syrian migrants whom the Vatican helped resettle from Cyprus.

If there was anything Francis did this past year that riled his critics, it was his July decision to reverse his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, and reimpose restrictions on celebrating the old Latin Mass. Francis said he needed to take action because Benedict’s 2007 decision to allow freer celebration of the old rite had divided the church and been exploited by conservatives.

“Some wanted me dead,” Francis said of his critics.

Speaking with fellow Jesuits in Slovakia in September, Francis confided that he knew his 10-day hospital stay in July for surgery to remove 33 centimeters (about 13 inches) of his large intestine had fueled hope among some conservative Catholics eager for a new pope.

“I know there were even meetings among priests who thought the pope was in worse shape than what was being said,” he told the Jesuits, in comments that were later published in the Vatican-approved Jesuit journal La Civilta Cattolica. “They were preparing the conclave.”

That may not have been the case, but if history is any guide, those priests might not have been wrong to have at least discussed the prospect.

Benedict was 85 when he resigned in February 2013, becoming the first pope to step down in 600 years and paving the way for Francis’ election. While enjoying robust health at the time, Benedict said he simply didn’t have the strength to carry on.

Before him, John Paul II died at age 84 and John Paul I died at 65 after just 33 days on the job. In fact, all 20th-century popes died in their early 80s or younger, with the exception of Pope Leo XIII, who was 93 when he died in 1903.

Early on in his pontificate, Francis predicted a short papacy of two or three years, and credited Benedict with having “opened the door” to future papal retirements.

But the Argentine Jesuit made clear after his July surgery that resigning “didn’t even cross my mind.”

That is welcome news to Sister Nathalie Becquart, one of the top women at the Vatican. Francis tapped her to help organize the two-year consultation process of Catholics around the globe that will end in 2023 with a meeting of bishops, known as a synod.

Becquart knows well what the pope is up against as he tries to remake the church into a less clerical, more laity-focused institution.

“It’s a call to change,” she told a conference this week. “And we can say it’s not an easy path.”

Opinion: A difficult papacy — Pope Francis turns 85

A pope who wants to change his Church more than it can be changed. But also one for whom time is running out, says Christoph Strack.


Pope Francis often seems alone in a Catholic Church mired in systemic decay

He has reached an age that most pope's never see — Francis, head of the Roman Catholic Church since 2013, turns 85 this Friday. Still, he's making travel plans, and embarking on a path of reform and renewal of the Church from within that will take years, decades to complete. Every step a new beginning.

But what does it all mean? The topic that has overshadowed everything about this papacy remains the Church's global sex scandals, in which young children were abused by clerics. With these scandals goes a loss of trust — and that at an institution built on belief and trust. Francis promised a full investigation of the scandal and vowed a "zero tolerance" policy.

Yet more often than not, his words were grander than his gestures. That is all part of a system in which the pope is the sole prosecutor and judge while also acting as auditor, role model, boss and confidant.
Sometimes subversive

Francis has always been one to criticize clericalism, patriarchal arrogance and pretensions of power. His actions often seem like a caricature of his diminishing Church. A pope is — when the Church gets lucky — a prophetic figure. But in far too many of Francis' speeches you initially think: "Now he's doing something!" Yet then you sense his intention: "Do it already …" That is not enough. It's too little.

DW's Christoph Strack

All the while, Francis stands at the head of and is caught in the middle of an organization steeped in crisis — and it reaches all the way to the College of Cardinals who will eventually elect his successor. A quick look at the three German cardinals currently seated among 120 colleagues says a lot: One, Munich's Cardinal Marx (age 68), unexpectedly offered his resignation this May and has cut a pale figure ever since. Another, Cardinal Woelki (65), is so controversial in his Archdiocese of Cologne that parishioners there are leaving the Church in droves and the pope has sent him on hiatus. And the third, Cardinal Müller (73), loses himself in US-style conspiracy theories, populism and anti-papal tirades. Certain circles seem to want the Church more feudal again, displaying contempt for questions of basic rights.

Sure — Francis sounds different in his criticism, almost contrary and sometimes even subversive. He encourages Catholics to enthusiastically forge ahead at the grass roots level. Yet, in the end, he also reminds everyone that the Catholic Church is not a democracy.

The old man and the Holy See

Francis' strongest moments come when he directly engages with people, especially those who are marginalized. He seeks to give them a face and to restore their dignity — migrants, refugees, the homeless, ostracized, the physically and mentally weak. This man, who never fails to rail against the "globalization of indifference," seems indifferent to no one. That is more than a protest against false standards. Francis stands for a different image of the Church. One of the most iconic pictures of his entire papacy remains that of his entreaties during the global coronavirus pandemic. Pope Francis at an entirely empty Saint Peter's Square in March 2020 — a man alone in prayer, pleading with his god, the image of Job in his moment of need. Francis, pastor of the world. The old man and the Holy See.

Yet none of that can hide the fact that time is running out for this pope. His predecessor Benedict, now 94, retired at age 85. And Francis? When he had to undergo surgery this summer it was weeks before he acknowledged the seriousness of the operation. Still, the Argentine divulged even that information in his typically earnest yet good-natured and chatty style. At 85, Pope Francis represents a great, difficult and strange papacy in a structurally decaying Church.

AMERIKA

Supply shortages and emboldened workers: A changed economy
By PAUL WISEMAN and DEE-ANN DURBIN

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Muhammad Rahman delivers orders at Gotham restaurant on Tuesday, Dec. 14, 2021, in New York. When COVID-19 tore through the United States in March 2020, the recession it caused was brutal yet brief. Yet for much of 2021, the recovery was undermined by new threats: A surge in inflation that shrank the value of paychecks, hurt the least advantaged Americans most and posed a political threat to President Joe Biden and Democrats in Congress. (AP Photo/Brittainy Newman)

Employees at a fast-food restaurant in Sacramento, California, exasperated over working in stifling heat for low wages, demanded more pay and a new air conditioner — and got both.

Customer orders poured in to an Italian auto supplier, which struggled to get hold of enough supplies of everything from plastic to microchips to meet the demand.

A drought in Taiwan magnified a worldwide shortage of computer chips, so vital to auto and electronics production.

The global economy hadn’t experienced anything like this for decades. Maybe ever. After years in which ultra-low inflation had become a fixture of economies across the world, prices rocketed skyward in 2021 — at the grocery store, the gasoline pump, the used-car lot, the furniture store. Chalk it up to a surprisingly swift and robust economic recovery from the pandemic recession, one that left suppliers flat-footed and hampered by COVID-19 disruptions.

U.S. workers, having struggled for years to achieve economic gains, secured better wages, benefits and working conditions — and the confidence to quit their jobs if they didn’t get them.

Global supply chains that ran efficiently for years broke down as factories, ports and freight yards buckled under the weight of surging orders.

Propelled by vast infusions of government aid and the widespread distribution of COVID vaccines, the economic bounce-back was as startling as the fall that had preceded it. Policymakers, business owners and economists were caught off-guard by both the speed of the recovery and the new COVID variants that threatened its durability.

They had never, after all, had to manage the unpredictable fallout, economic and otherwise, from a global pandemic.

BACK FROM THE BRINK

In the spring of 2020, the global economy appeared to stand on the brink of a catastrophe. The sudden and blindingly fast spread of COVID-19 infections forced lockdowns, frightened people into hunkering down at home, paralyzed travel and ordinary business activity and led employers to slash tens of millions of jobs.

In June that year, the International Monetary Fund predicted that the global economy would shrink 4.9% for the year, the first drop in worldwide economic output since the 2008-2009 financial crisis.

But the governments of the wealthiest nations, scarred by the achingly slow recovery from the financial crisis just over a decade earlier, poured money into rescuing their economies. The United States was particularly aggressive: It supplied $5 trillion in COVID-related stimulus aid to individuals, businesses and municipalities this year and last.

“The U.S. has been a total outlier globally,” said Robin Brooks, chief economist at the Institute of International Finance, a global trade group for financial companies.

“We had the deepest pocketbook of any country. We have this exorbitant privilege” — the ability to run up debts to pay for COVID relief without having to pay high interest rates to do so. Global investors regard U.S. government debt as perhaps the safest investment around; their purchases of U.S bonds keep American interest rates low.

So despite immense federal spending and surging inflation, the yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note — below 1.4%, as of early Friday — remains lower than it was before the pandemic.

In the United States and elsewhere, stimulus aid is widely credited with helping stave off disaster. Though the global economy did shrink in 2020, it did so by a less-than-expected 3.1%. And the IMF expects growth to rebound to 5.9% for 2021. That would be the fastest calendar-year expansion in IMF records dating to 1980.

Beginning earlier this year, vaccines accelerated the return to something much closer to ordinary pre-pandemic life.

“We got this scientific miracle,” said Jacob Kirkegaard, senior fellow with the German Marshall Fund of the United States. “We had a vaccine that was available six to nine months earlier than anybody had really believed in 2020 ... What that meant was that the second half of 2021 saw basically a general reopening in all of the advanced economies, and that was certainly was a massive positive surprise.’’


COVID UNCERTAINTY

Still, the virus itself has continued to complicate anyone’s ability to forecast where the economy was headed or to determine what to do about it. A wave of infections over the summer, for instance, sent Japan’s economy into a nasty tailspin: It shrank from July through September at a 3.6% annual rate.

Likewise, America’s recovery lost momentum once the highly contagious delta variant erupted over the summer. Growth slowed to a 2.1% annual rate from July through September, sharply down from a 6.7% rate in the April-June quarter and 6.3% in the January-March period.

Overall, though, the economy has recovered with surprising vigor. In June 2020, with the economy still reeling from the pandemic, the Federal Reserve’s policymaking committee forecast that unemployment would average 9.3% in the final three months of the year and 6.5% at the end of 2021. In reality? The jobless rate plummeted from 11.1% in June 2020 to 6.7% by year’s end. It’s now at a near-fully healthy 4.2%.

Flush with government payments and, in many cases, savings accrued from working at home and from stock-market gains, people in rich countries were sitting on larger piles of cash and spending a lot of it.

Capital Economics calculates that households in advanced economies like the United States and the European Union were holding “excess savings” at mid-year of $3.7 trillion — the amount above what they would likely have saved if the pandemic had never happened.


OVERWHELMED

In some ways, it’s been too much of a good thing.

Robust demand, especially for autos, appliances and other physical goods, overwhelmed global manufacturers. Factories couldn’t obtain enough raw materials and parts. Ports and freight yards were swamped. Companies grappled with shortages of everything they needed, notably workers.

That was particularly true at many restaurants. At the newly re-opened Gotham restaurant in Manhattan, for instance, patrons are unable to find handcrafted chocolates, once a big draw for the holidays, or grab a burger or order oysters. Gotham couldn’t find enough employees to make the chocolates, work the grill or shuck the oysters.

“We worked to bring the restaurant back to life,” said Bret Csencsitz, the new owner of the restaurant. “The demand is there. The product is superior. Yet I don’t have enough people to make the business what it needs to be and what it should be.”

The restaurant was also hampered by shortages of basic supplies like ceramic plates and glassware. Food costs fluctuated wildly. Halibut, which cost $14 a pound one day, was $24.99 a week and a half later.

Across the Atlantic, MTA, an auto components manufacturer that endured Italy’s first lockdown in February 2020, reopened within a week and ended 2020 with unexpectedly healthy business. But the recovery bred new troubles.

“Everything is lacking,” said Maria Vittoria Falchetti, the company’s marketing chief.

“Plastic is lacking. Metals are lacking. Paper is lacking. Microchips — don’t even mention. Also, we are struggling with a big increase in prices in these materials, and also energy,”

In Asia, manufacturers of everything from toys to cellphones suffered from a global shortage of computer chips and surging costs for components, raw materials and shipping.

Kaixiang Electric Appliance Co., which makes LED lamps and flashlights in Ningbo, south of Shanghai, paid 20% more in 2021 for labor, materials and complications resulting from shipping bottlenecks.

“The current delay in delivery is about one or two months,” said Susan Yang, CEO of the 80-employee company.

“The sharp rise in sea freight has eaten into manufacturers’ profits and ours,” said Max Chen, general manager of Makefigure Co., a toymaker in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen. “If we want to stay in the business, we need to lower our profit expectations and develop new clients.”

The supply chain problems have been compounded by what Kirkegaard of the German Marshall Fund calls “idiosyncratic things.”

A drought in Taiwan curtailed production at water-dependent computer chip plants. A February deep freeze shut down petrochemical plants in Texas. A huge container ship got stuck in the Suez canal for a week in March and cut off shipping between Asia and Europe.


THE PAIN OF HIGH PRICES

The supply chain bottlenecks have driven up costs, contributing to a problem that most rich countries hadn’t had to endure for years: Persistently high inflation. The IMF expects consumer prices in advanced economies to rise 2.8% this year. That would be the highest such rate since 2008.

Soaring energy prices, a response to the brisk economic recovery, contributed mightily to the runup in prices. The price of the U.S. benchmark crude skyrocketed 75% — to $84 a barrel — from January through October, before easing in recent weeks as the omicron variant raised the prospect of slower growth.

Inflationary pressures were especially intense in the United States. In addition to energy, some of the largest cost spikes were for such necessities as food, housing, autos and clothing — goods and services that millions of Americans regularly depend upon. Especially hard hit were lower-income households with little or no cash cushions. Last month, U.S. consumer prices shot up 6.8% from 12 months earlier — the biggest year-over-year increase since 1982.

Over the past year, used-car prices surged 31%, beef roast 26%, men’s suits and coats 14%. And price hikes are outpacing wage gains. After inflation, U.S. workers’ hourly earnings, despite pay increases, were actually down 1.9% last month compared with November 2020.

At a Mobil station in Yonkers, New York, a gallon of regular gas was selling for $3.89. Mario Bodden, a project manager at a nearby mall, said it cost $50 to fill up, instead of the $35 he was used to.

“You start thinking: Do I go shopping? Do I fill it up today?” Bodden said. “Every trip is planned and targeted. So there’s a lifestyle change.”

“We still have to do what we have to do to survive,” Ray Khoury, a hospital administrator, said as he filled up a Mercedes at a BP station in Yonkers. “The everyday needs of your families, your kids — it trickles down. Forget about savings. Savings are shot.”

A MADE-IN-AMERICA LABOR SHORTAGE

Even while absorbing higher prices, workers, especially in America, were benefiting from a tighter labor market that gave them leverage to secure better pay and benefits. With many white collar employees able to work from home, companies found that their staffs didn’t need to commute to the office to do their jobs. That meant that workers could spend more time at home and save money they would have spent on parking, commuting and lunches out.

The United States, in particular, experienced acute labor shortages. At the depths of the pandemic recession in the spring of 2002, employers had slashed 22 million jobs. As the economy recovered, they refilled more than 18 million jobs — and complained that they couldn’t find enough workers.

In September and October, employers listed 1.4 job openings for every unemployed American, the most in records going back 15 years. That marked a striking reversal from April 2020, in the depths of the coronavirus recession, when there were just 0.2 openings for each unemployed person — or, stated another way, when there were five unemployed people for every available job.

A rise in early retirements, a shortage of affordable child care, the reluctance of many restaurant workers to return and a drop in immigration contributed to the labor shortage. The government also expanded unemployment aid and gave relief checks to households, bolstering their savings and allowing the jobless to be choosier about their next employer.

In Europe, by contrast, governments essentially paid companies to keep workers on their payrolls.

“In Europe, you didn’t have this fire-and-rehire response,” Kirkegaard said.

Keeping European workers on company payrolls, he noted, made it “much more seamless to reopen the economies in Europe because basically people just went back to their old job.”

American companies, by contrast, had to call back employees they had laid off or find new ones.

Workers in some cases gained a rare upper hand in negotiations over wages and working conditions.

Workers who are in particularly high demand and in short supply, many of whom are in relatively lower-paying service jobs, are receiving pay raises high enough to exceed inflation. Adjusted for inflation, hourly earnings have jumped 12% in the past year for people who work at bars and nearly 6% for workers at hotels and restaurants.

Hundreds of Frito-Lay workers went on strike in July to protest mandatory overtime shifts. More than 10,000 workers at Deere & Co. struck in the fall before winning a contract with 10% raises. U.S. cereal workers at Kellogg Co. have been on strike since October.

Among the newly emboldened workers was Leticia Reyes, a mother of five who has worked at a Jack in the Box restaurant in Sacramento, California, for nearly two years. Over the summer, she and her co-workers went on strike to protest working conditions, including an air conditioner that constantly broke, forcing them to toil in sweltering heat.

Reyes said the store’s regional manager installed a new air conditioner and raised workers’ wages by $1.25 an hour.

“The increase was small, but every little bit helps,” she said.

American workers, as a whole, were hardly afraid to change jobs: 4.2 million of them quit in October, just off the all-time record of 4.4 million, set one month earlier.

After COVID hit in March 2020, Stephanye Blakely of Louisville, Kentucky, quit her job at a warehouse. With schools closed, she needed to care for her 7-year-old son. She had been thinking about leaving anyway. The warehouse work, she said, was tedious.

Blakely, 36, spent three months training for a tech career with Hack Reactor, a software engineering boot camp, where she learned about database management. She had to tap her savings and take out a loan. But the timing was right. The job market was rebounding, and Blakely eventually landed a job at a tech company — earning 10 times what she had made before.

And she could work from home, giving her the flexibility to care for her son. At first, it looked as though she’d eventually have to move to New York for the job, but the company decided to let employees keep working from home. She could stay in Louisville and avoid New York’s much higher housing costs.

Likewise, life improved for Pamela Thompson of Tampa, Florida, who had labored in the federal court system for more than 10 years, most recently as supervisor. While still working at her job, Thompson, 38, had started a business — My Shade & Texture, a beauty supply store. When the pandemic hit, she decided to take it on full time.

She has endured ups and downs with periodic shutdowns during the pandemic. But she says she doesn’t regret anything. She earns “significantly more” than she did before, with work she enjoys far more.

“I don’t have a desire to return to corporate America,” she said. “I love doing what I’m doing.”

____

Wiseman reported from Washington and Durbin from Detroit. AP Writers Anne D’Innocenzio and Mae Anderson in New York; Cathy Bussewitz in Yonkers, New York; Tom Krisher in Detroit; Colleen Barry in Milan; Joe McDonald in Beijing; Christopher Rugaber in Washington; David McHugh in Frankfurt, Germany; and David Koenig in Dallas contributed to this report.

Far-right using COVID-19 theories to grow reach, study shows

By DAVID KLEPPER and LORI HINNANT

 Protestors light flares during a demonstration against measures to battle the coronavirus pandemic in Vienna, Austria, on Dec. 11, 2021. New research indicates that far-right extremists and white supremacists are gaining new followers and influence by co-opting conspiracy theories about COVID-19. (AP Photo/Florian Schroetter, File)

PARIS (AP) — The mugshot-style photos are posted on online message boards in black and white and look a little like old-fashioned “wanted” posters.

“The Jews own COVID just like all of Hollywood,” the accompanying text says. “Wake up people.”

The post is one of many that white supremacists and far-right extremists are using to expand their reach and recruit followers on the social media platform Telegram, according to the findings of researchers who sifted through nearly half a million comments on pages — called channels on Telegram — that they categorized as far-right from January 2020 to June 2021.

The tactic has been successful: Nine of the 10 most viewed posts in the sample examined by the researchers contained misleading claims about the safety of vaccines or the pharmaceutical companies manufacturing them. One Telegram channel saw its total subscribers jump tenfold after it leaned into COVID-19 conspiracy theories.

“COVID-19 has served as a catalyst for radicalization,” said the study’s author, Ciaran O’Connor, an analyst at the London-based Institute for Strategic Dialogue. “It allows conspiracy theorists or extremists to create simple narratives, framing it as us versus them, good versus evil.”

Other posts downplayed the severity of the coronavirus or pushed conspiracy theories about its origins. Many of the posts contain hate speech directed at Jews, Asians, women or other groups or violent rhetoric that would be automatically removed from Facebook or Twitter for violating the standards of those sites.

Telegram, based in the United Arab Emirates, has many different kinds of users around the world, but it has become a favorite tool of some on the far-right in part because the platform lacks the content moderation of Facebook, Twitter and other platforms.

In a statement to The Associated Press, Telegram said it welcomed “the peaceful expression of ideas, including those we do not agree with.” The statement said moderators monitor activity and user reports “in order to remove public calls for violence.”

O’Connor said he believes the people behind these posts are trying to exploit fear and anxiety over COVID-19 to attract new recruits, whose loyalty may outlast the pandemic.

Indeed, mixed in with the COVID-19 conspiracy posts are some direct recruitment pitches. For example, someone posted a link to a news story about a Long Island, New York, synagogue on a channel popular with the far-right Proud Boys and added a message urging followers to join them. “Embrace who you were called to be,” read the post, which was accompanied by a swastika.

The researchers found suggestions that far-right groups on Telegram are working together. ISD researchers linked two usernames involved in running one Telegram channel to two prominent members of the American far-right. One was a scheduled speaker at the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where a white supremacist deliberately drove into a crowd of counterdemonstrators, killing one and injuring 35.

That channel has grown steadily since the pandemic began and now has a reach of around 400,000 views each day, according to Telegram Analytics, a service that keeps statistical data on about 150,000 Telegram channels on the site TGStat. In May 2020 the channel had 5,000 subscribers; it now has 50,000.

The data is especially concerning given a rash of incidents around the world that indicate some extremists are moving from online rhetoric to offline action.

Gavin Yamey, a physician and public health professor at Duke University, has written about the rise of threats against health care workers during the pandemic. He said the harassment is even worse for those who are women, people of color, in a religious minority or LGBTQ.

Yamey, who is Jewish, has received threats and anti-Semitic messages, including one on Twitter calling for his family’ to be “executed.” He fears racist conspiracy theories and scapegoating may persist even after the pandemic eases.

“I worry that in some ways the genie is out of the bottle,” Yamey said.

The pandemic and the unrest it has caused have been linked to a wave of harassment and attacks on Asian-Americans. In Italy, a far-right opponents of vaccine mandates rampaged through a union headquarters and a hospital. In August in Hawaii, some of those who harassed that state’s Jewish lieutenant governor at his home during a vaccine protest brandished fliers with his photo and the word “Jew.”

Elsewhere, people have died after taking sham cures, pharmacists have destroyed vaccine vials, and others have damaged 5G telecommunication towers since the pandemic began nearly two years ago.

FILE - People carry signs and flags as several hundred anti-mandate demonstrators rally outside the Capitol during a special legislative session considering bills targeting COVID-19 vaccine mandates, on Nov. 16, 2021, in Tallahassee, Fla. New research indicates that far-right extremists and white supremacists are gaining new followers and new influence by co-opting conspiracy theories about COVID-19. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell, File)

FILE - People take part in a protest against COVID-19 vaccine passports and other policies outside the Houses of Parliament in London, on Dec. 13, 2021. New research indicates that far-right extremists and white supremacists are gaining new followers and new influence by co-opting conspiracy theories about COVID-19. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham, File)


FILE - Anti-vaccine mandate protesters hold signs outside the front doors of the Los Angeles Unified School District, LAUSD headquarters in Los Angeles, on Sept. 9, 2021. New research indicates that far-right extremists and white supremacists are gaining new followers and new influence by co-opting conspiracy theories about COVID-19. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes, File)

Events such as the pandemic leave many people feeling anxious and looking for explanations, according to Cynthia Miller-Idriss, director of the Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab at American University, which studies far-right extremism. Conspiracy theories can provide an artificial sense of control, she said.

“COVID-19 has created fertile ground for recruitment because so many people around the world feel unsettled,” Miller-Idriss said. “These racist conspiracy theories give people a sense of control, a sense of power over events that make people feel powerless.”

Policing extremism online has challenged tech companies that say they must balance protecting free speech with removing hate speech. They also must contend with increasingly sophisticated tactics by groups that have learned to evade platform rules.

Facebook this month announced that it had removed a network of accounts based in Italy and France that had spread conspiracy theories about vaccines and carried out coordinated harassment campaigns against journalists, doctors and public health officials.

The network, called V_V, used both real and fake accounts and was overseen by a group of users who coordinated their activities on Telegram in an effort to hide their tracks from Facebook, company investigators found.

“They sought to mass-harass individuals with pro-vaccination views into making their posts private or deleting them, essentially suppressing their voices,” said Mike Dvilyanski, head of cyber espionage investigations at Meta, Facebook’s parent company.

O’Connor, the ISD researcher, said sites like Telegram will continue to serve as a refuge for extremists as long as they lack the moderation policies of the larger platforms.

“The guardrails that you see on other platforms, they don’t exist on Telegram,” O’Connor said. “That makes it a very attractive place for extremists.”

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Klepper reported from Providence, R.I.

Pressure builds against doctors peddling false virus claims
By HEATHER HOLLINGSWORTH

In this June 8, 2021, photo provided by the The Ohio Channel, Dr. Sherri Tenpenny speaks at a Ohio House Health Committee in Columbus, Ohio. The Cleveland-based osteopathic doctor testified that COVID-19 vaccines cause magnetism. “They can put a key on their forehead; it sticks,” said Tenpenny. (The Ohio Channel via AP)

They have decried COVID-19 as a hoax, promoted unproven treatments and pushed bogus claims about the vaccine, including that the shots magnetize the human body.

The purveyors of this misinformation are not shadowy figures operating in the dark corners of the internet. They are a small but vocal group of doctors practicing medicine in communities around the country.

Now medical boards are under increasing pressure to act. Organizations that advocate for public health have called on them to take a harder line by disciplining the doctors, including potentially revoking their licenses. The push comes as the pandemic enters a second winter and deaths in the U.S. top 800,000.

At least a dozen regulatory boards in states such as Oregon, Rhode Island, Maine and Texas recently issued sanctions against some doctors, but many of the most prolific promoters of COVID-19 falsehoods still have unblemished medical licenses.

“Just because it is physicians, it is no different than if someone called you claiming to be the IRS trying to steal your money,” said Brian Castrucci, president and chief executive officer of the de Beaumont Foundation. “It’s a scam, and we protect Americans from scams.”

Castrucci’s organization, which advocates for public health, and No License For Disinformation, which fights false medical information, issued a report Wednesday that highlighted some of the cases. The report emerged a week after the Federation of State Medical Boards released a survey that found that 67% of the boards had seen an increase in complaints about COVID-19 misinformation.

That figure “is a sign of how widespread the issue has become,” said Dr. Humayun Chaudhry, president and CEO of the federation.

Dr. Kencee Graves, a physician at the University of Utah hospital in Salt Lake City, said one of her patients decided not to get vaccinated after listening to misinformation from a physician.

“She was led astray” by someone she should have been able to trust, Graves said, describing the patient as a “very, very sweet older lady.”

The woman later acknowledged her mistake, saying “I realize now I am wrong, but that is who I thought I should listen to.”

There is widespread support for cracking down on such doctors, according to a national poll conducted by the de Beaumont Foundation. In the survey of 2,200 adults, 91% of respondents said doctors do not have the right to intentionally spread false information.

But policing doctors is no easy feat for boards that were created long before social media. Their investigations tend to move slowly, taking months or even years, and many of their proceedings are private.

Castrucci said it is time for them to “evolve,” but doing so is challenging. This month, Tennessee’s medical licensing board removed from its website a recently adopted misinformation policy amid pressure from a GOP state lawmaker and a new law imposing sprawling virus-related restrictions.

Even individual board members have been targeted. In California, the president of the state’s medical board, Kristina Lawson, said a group of anti-vaccine activists stalked her at home and followed her to her office last week. She said the people identified themselves as representing America’s Frontline Doctors, a group that criticizes the COVID-19 vaccine and spreads misinformation.

The group’s leader, Dr. Simone Gold, who was arrested during the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, tweeted this month to her nearly 390,000 followers that “nurses know that Covid patients are dying from government subsidized hospital protocols (Remdesivir, intubation), NOT from Covid.”

Gold remains a licensed physician in California, although her emergency medicine certification lapsed last year. Complaints and investigations are not public in the state, so it is unclear whether she faces any.

In Idaho, the state’s medical association got so frustrated with pathologist Dr. Ryan Cole’s promotion of the anti-parasite drug ivermectin that it filed a complaint with the state medical board. Susie Keller, the association’s chief executive director, said she believed it was the first time the group sought action against one of its own. Many doctors, she explained, are fed up.

The spreading falsehoods have “actually caused our physicians and nurses to be subjected to verbal assaults” by patients who are convinced that the fake information is true, Keller said.

Cole did not respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press, but his work voicemail said that he is “unable to prescribe medications or issue vaccine or mask exemption letters.” The voicemail also directed callers to the website of the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance, a group that champions ivermectin.

Under Idaho law, all investigations of physicians are conducted in private unless there is a formal hearing. The Washington state medical board, meanwhile, is investigating five complaints about Cole, spokeswoman Stephanie Mason said.

Investigating misinformation is “very challenging in that a lot of action isn’t documented,” she wrote in an email. Many examples “happen quietly in an office.”

In Ohio, the state’s medical board automatically renewed the license of Sherri Tenpenny in September after the Cleveland-based osteopathic doctor testified this summer before a state House Health Committee that COVID-19 vaccines cause magnetism.

Vaccine recipients “can put a key on their forehead; it sticks,” Tenpenny said.

Jerica Stewart, a spokesperson for the state’s medical board, said that a recent license renewal doesn’t prevent the board from taking action.

“Making a false, fraudulent, deceptive or misleading statement” is grounds for discipline, Stewart said.

In Texas, Dr. Stella Immanuel appeared in a video that promoted the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine. “You don’t need masks. There is a cure.”

In October, the Texas Medical Board ordered her to pay $500 and improve her consent procedures because it found she had prescribed hydroxychloroquine to a COVID-19 patient without adequate explanation of the potential health consequences, records show.

Immanuel did not respond to a Facebook message from the AP, and the medical practice where she works did not respond to an email.

Dr. Nick Sawyer, who heads No License For Disinformation, described the action against Immanuel as a “small slap on the wrist” and accused the nation’s medical boards of “not doing their job of protecting public health.”

He said he has seen the damage firsthand as he practices emergency medicine in Sacramento, California. He said a diabetic patient in her 70s insisted just this month that she didn’t have COVID-19 despite testing positive, then demanded ivermectin and signed out against medical advice when the drug was denied.

“She said, ‘If I have COVID, you gave it to me,’” he recalled, blaming the woman’s resistance on misinformation-spreading doctors. “It is killing us.”