US agency plans deeper study of sea turtles, dredging threat

By RUSS BYNUM

AP

YESTERDAY

In this June 30, 2019, photo provided by the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, a loggerhead sea turtle returns to the ocean after nesting on Ossabaw Island, Ga. A U.S. agency has agreed Friday, May 5, 2023, to an in-depth study of whether dredging a Georgia shipping channel in the spring and summer would post threats to rare sea turtles.

 (Georgia Department of Natural Resources via AP, File)

SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) — A U.S. agency has agreed to an in-depth environmental study into whether dredging a Georgia shipping channel in the spring and summer would threaten rare sea turtles nesting on nearby beaches — a review demanded by conservationists who sued to stop the project.

Georgia conservation group One Hundred Miles moved to dismiss its lawsuit against the Army Corps of Engineers after the agency announced Friday that it would voluntarily conduct the study. The group sued in December, asking a U.S. District Court judge to order the Corps to produce such a report.

“The Corps has now committed to what we’ve asked for, to go back and review the science,” Catherine Ridley, a One Hundred Miles vice president, said Monday. “The science is clear: Spring and summer dredging puts Georgia’s sea turtles and decades of conservation progress at risk.”

Environmentalists and the Army Corps have battled since 2021 over the agency’s plan to end a policy that for three decades has prohibited the dredging of accumulated sand and mud from harbors in Georgia and the Carolinas during the nesting season for sea turtles.

In place since 1991, the seasonal limits are intended to protect sea turtles from being killed and maimed by the vacuum-like suction pumps of hopper dredges during the warmer months, when female turtles are most abundant near Southern beaches. Conservationists credit that policy with helping threatened and endangered turtle species begin a fragile rebound.

The Army Corps said in a statement Monday that it is undertaking the fuller environmental study to “ensure robust public, agency, and stakeholder engagement” as well as “full evaluation of the impacts that this action may have to the human and natural environment.” The agency is responsible for keeping shipping channels clear of accumulated sediments to ensure safe passage for ships

Since the 1990s, maintenance dredging in Georgia and the Carolinas has been confined to a period roughly between December and March. Giant loggerhead sea turtles, federally protected as a threatened species, typically start nesting in May. Smaller numbers of endangered green and Kemp’s ridley sea turtles lay eggs in the region as well.

The Corps has argued seasonal dredging limits are no longer necessary. That’s because the National Marine Fisheries Service concluded in 2020 that sea turtles protected by the Endangered Species Act can likely endure roughly 150 deaths anticipated annually from year-round dredging.

Army Corps officials have said seasonal restrictions make it difficult to compete for a limited number of contractors. They also argue that dredging windows timed to protect sea turtles ignore species such as critically endangered North Atlantic right whales, which frequent the same waters during winter.

A federal judge in May 2021 temporarily blocked the Army Corps from conducting year-round dredging in Georgia. Last September, a different judge halted a similar plan in North Carolina. Both judges ruled that the Corps failed to adequately assess potential dangers to legally protected sea turtle species.

In Georgia, the Army Corps responded a year later with an environmental assessment that concluded year-round dredging in Brunswick would have no significant impact on sea turtles. Last July, the agency solicited bids for dredging in Georgia that included an “optional bid item” to dredge in Brunswick between May and August during sea turtle nesting season.

One Hundred Miles filed suit again in December, arguing the Corps’ assessment was insufficient. The group asked a judge to order the Corps to produce a full environmental impact statement — the most comprehensive type of review federal agencies can undertake to ensure projects don’t violate the National Environmental Policy Act.

Col. Joseph R. Geary, commander of the Army Corps’ Savannah District, in March prohibited any maintenance dredging in Brunswick outside the seasonal window, pending further review. On Friday, the Corps announced that review would consist of a full environmental impact statement.

The Army Corps said it does not know how long the more in-depth study is expected to take.

CAMBODIA IS NOT A DEMOCRACY
Top challenger in Cambodian polls awaiting official approval

IT IS A STALINIST MONARCHY!

By SOPHENG CHEANG

AP

TODAY

 Son Chhay, second from right, deputy leader of the opposition political Candlelight Party, arrives at the Phnom Penh Municipal Court, in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Friday, Oct. 7, 2022. Cambodia’s National Election Committee has announced that 20 political parties have registered for the general election in July 2023 but nine of them still have not been approved, including the Candlelight Party, the sole credible challenger to the governing Cambodian People’s Party.

(AP Photo/Heng Sinith)

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) — Cambodia’s National Election Committee announced Monday that 20 political parties have registered for July’s general election but nine of them still have not been approved, including the Candlelight Party, the sole credible challenger to the governing Cambodian People’s Party.

About 9.7 million Cambodians are registered to vote in the July 23 election to select the 125 members of the National Assembly.

Prime Minister Hun Sen and his entrenched Cambodian People’s Party are certain to easily top the polls, holding all the advantages of incumbency. They dominate the field in terms of nationwide organizing, personnel, finances and influence with the mass media.

The party has held an iron grip on power for decades and controls almost every level of government. Hun Sen, 70, an authoritarian ruler in a nominally democratic state, has held his position for 38 years. His eldest son, army chief Hun Manet, is widely expected to replace his father as prime minister after the polls.

The opposition, led by the Candelight Party, is low on financial resources and subject to constant harassment in the courts initiated by the governing party. Most prominent opposition members are in self-imposed exile to avoid being jailed on various charges they say are trumped up and unfair.

The Candlelight Party is the unofficial successor to the Cambodia National Rescue Party, which posed a serious challenge to Hun Sen’s party ahead of the 2018 election. It was disbanded just months ahead of the polls by a controversial court ruling that said it had plotted the illegal overthrow of the government.

The courts are widely believed to be under the influence of Hun Sen’s government, and the party’s disbanding enabled the governing party to win all of the seats in the National Assembly.

However, in local elections last June, the Cambodian People’s Party won 74.3% of the votes and the Candlelight Party received about 22.3%.

Cambodia's Candlelight Party supporters on trucks march during an election campaign for the June 5 communal elections in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Saturday, May 21, 2022. Cambodia’s National Election Committee has announced that 20 political parties have registered for the general election in July 2023 but nine of them still have not been approved, including the Candlelight Party, the sole credible challenger to the governing Cambodian People’s Party. (AP Photo/Heng Sinith)

Speaking to reporters Sunday when registering with the National Election Committee, Candlelight Party deputy president Rong Chhun said several party members have been intimidated, threatened and even beaten up, though his party has not publicized the incidents. He also said some government officials who are members of his party were dismissed from their jobs.

Rong Chhun appealed to the authorities to treat all political parties fairly, and said he wishes for calm ahead of the election, with people allowed to express their party allegiances without fear.

The party said ahead of registration that the election committee had demanded documents it could not provide, even though they had not been needed for last year’s local elections.

The committee asked for the party’s original registration papers issued by the Interior Ministry. But the Candlelight Party said the papers were taken in a 2017 police raid on the headquarters of its predecessor, the Cambodia National Rescue Party.

If the Candlelight Party is not allowed to contest the July polls, the sole competition for the governing party would be groups aligned with it, or small, obscure parties without a national presence.

By law, parties have seven days to provide any missing information to the election committee, failing which their registration will be rejected. They can then appeal the ruling to the Constitutional Council.

——-

This story has been updated to correct number of seats in contention for this year’s election to 125 and Hun Sen’s age to 70.

Australia forecasts first annual budget surplus in 15 years

By ROD McGUIRK

AP

TODAY



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Australian Treasurer Jim Chalmers speaks to the media as he arrives at Parliament House in Canberra, Australia, Tuesday, May 9, 2023. Chalmers will be handing down the nation's first balanced annual budget in 15 years but warned that economic pressures such as inflation would push the country into deeper debt in future years. 

(Lukas Coch/AAP Image via AP)

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — The Australian government on Tuesday forecast the nation’s first balanced annual budget in 15 years but warned that economic pressures such as inflation would push the country into deeper debt in future years.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers announced a surplus was forecast for the fiscal year ending June 30 ahead of releasing the government’s economic blueprint for next year that aims to ease financial hardships of the most needy without stoking stubbornly high inflation.

High prices for commodities including iron ore, coal and gas plus income tax revenue buoyed by an extraordinarily low jobless rate of 3.5% are expected to deliver the first surplus since the global financial crisis tipped the Australian economy into the red in 2008.

“We are now forecasting a surplus this year, smaller deficits after that, and less debt throughout the budget,” Chalmers told reporters. Australian annual budgets typically contain forecasts for the next four years.

Chalmers did not say how big the surplus would be, but several media outlets report a 4 billion Australian dollar ($2.7 billion) surplus is expected.

In an interim budget forecast released by the government in October last year, a AU$36.9 billion ($25 billion) deficit was expected this year. That was less than half the AU$78 billion ($53 billion) forecast by the previous government in March last year.

In October, Australia’s gross debt as a share of GDP was forecast to reach 37.3%, or AU$927 billion ($628 billion), by the end of the current fiscal year and to continue to rise through the decade.

The government has already announced that next year’s budget, to be detailed later Tuesday, will contain AU$14.6 billion ($9.9 billion) in measures to help low and middle-income earners cope with inflation that slowed to 7% in the year through March from a 7.8% peak in December.

Australia’s central bank says inflation remains too high and last week increased its benchmark interest rate by a quarter percentage point to 3.85%. It was the 11th hike since May last year when the cash rate was a record low 0.1%.

Chalmers said government spending measures in his latest budget were designed to avoid fueling inflation.

“This is a responsible budget which helps people doing it tough and sets Australia up for the future,” Chalmers said.

“It’s carefully calibrated to address cost of living pressures in our communities, rather than add to them,” he added.

The budget will contain the initial costs of the so-called AUKUS agreement with the United States and Britain that will deliver Australia a fleet of eight submarines powered by U.S. nuclear technology.

The fleet, announced in March, is forecast to cost Australia between AU$268 billion ($182 billion) and AU$368 billion ($249 billion) by the mid-2050s.

Chalmers said delivering surplus budgets would become more difficult from next year as economic pressures were expected to intensify.

Tanked Biden pick highlights escalation of dark-money forces

By TRENTON DANIEL

AP

yesterday

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Gigi Sohn, who withdrew her long delayed nomination by the Biden administration for the Federal Communications Commission, poses for a portrait at Georgetown University Law Center, Tuesday, April 4, 2023, in Washington. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

WASHINGTON (AP) — When President Joe Biden nominated Gigi Sohn to serve on the Federal Communications Commission, the longtime consumer advocate expected to face criticism over her desire to expand free internet access and improve competition among broadband providers.

Instead, Sohn found herself the target of an aggressive campaign funded by a conservative group that doesn’t have to disclose its donors. The American Accountability Foundation called Sohn too partisan, anti-police and soft on sex trafficking. The attacks landed — to the point that even some Democrats abandoned her. Sohn withdrew her nomination, ditching her fight for a five-year term as an FCC commissioner.

“Look, I’m not naive. I’ve been a consumer advocate my whole career. I knew I was going to get some opposition,” Sohn told The Associated Press. “Now, did I expect what was to come — the dark money, the lies, the caricatures? No.”

The battle over the nomination is the latest example of how organizations with political and financial agendas have been able to sway public opinion by deploying donations that are impossible to trace. It is also emblematic of how nominees’ missteps — even on matters wholly unrelated to their prospective jobs — can become fodder for attacks.

In Sohn’s case, the stakes were high. Her confirmation would’ve ended a 2-2 split on the commission, enabling Biden’s administration to pursue its agenda of making communication networks more equitable. Sohn has been a vocal advocate of such regulations, which have been aggressively opposed by the telecom industry.

Sohn was not likely to coast to confirmation. Moderate Democrats were going to have trouble justifying their support for a nominee who had assisted controversial liberal groups, seemed to endorse tweets critical of police and accused Fox News of being “state-sponsored propaganda.”

When Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia announced his opposition to the nomination in March, the moderate Democrat cited Sohn’s “partisan activism, inflammatory statements online, and work with far-left groups.”

Even so, outside groups left nothing to chance. Just two of those organizations spent at least $420,000 on ads seeking to torpedo Sohn’s confirmation, a sum that is likely a fraction of the total spent.

Central to the advertising offensive was the American Accountability Foundation, which produced an advertising blitz assailing the nominee on Facebook, as well as in newspapers and on billboards.

Another group, co-founded by a former Democratic senator, said it spent “six figures” on ads arguing that Sohn was “the wrong choice for the FCC and rural America.” The National Fraternal Order of Police also joined the fray, chastising Sohn over endorsing social media posts that were critical of law enforcement.

Opposing nominations is hardly new in American politics. But a 2010 ruling by the Supreme Court freed corporations and unions to spend unlimited amounts on political campaigns and nomination fights. The Citizens United ruling also opened the door to an influx of untraceable donations, known as “dark money,” to special interest groups seeking to influence policy, elections and nominations.

Norman Ornstein, a senior fellow emeritus at the American Enterprise Institute, said such dark-money groups are growing so powerful that they can “hamstring or stymie an entire administration” by discouraging qualified people from accepting nominations.

Sohn’s nomination was meant to be historic. If confirmed, Sohn would have been the FCC’s first openly LGBTQ+ commissioner. When the White House announced her nomination in October 2021, it hailed her trailblazing biography and called her a consumer advocate who would “defend and preserve the fundamental competition and innovation policies that have made broadband Internet access more ubiquitous.”

When Congress failed to confirm Sohn during its last term, Biden didn’t give up. In January, he renominated her to the post.

Sohn was a favorite of progressives and had served as a top adviser for Tom Wheeler, the Obama-era FCC chair who enacted net neutrality rules that were jettisoned during the Trump administration. Such regulations would have required AT&T, Comcast, Verizon and other internet providers to treat all web traffic equally. The telecommunications industry has battled such rules, arguing they are illegal and overly burdensome.

Some business groups pounced at the possibility of Sohn joining the FCC. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the world’s largest business federation, said this year that it opposed Sohn’s confirmation “due to her longtime advocacy of overly aggressive and combative regulation of the communications sector.”

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Telecommunications companies and their trade organizations took a less combative approach, at least in public. Some even congratulated her on her nomination.

It is not known whether those companies donated dark money to groups that attacked Sohn. A spokeswoman for USTelecom, a national trade association on broadband, said the group and its “members did not take a position on Ms. Sohn’s nomination.”

Behind the scenes, however, the industry’s lobbyists worked hard to kill the nomination, according to Sohn and her allies. Telecom companies are among the nation’s biggest spenders on lobbyists, with the industry shelling out $117 million last year to influence lawmakers and administration officials, according to OpenSecrets.

In her withdrawal letter, Sohn blamed her failed nomination on “legions of cable and media industry lobbyists, their bought-and-paid-for surrogates, and dark money political groups with bottomless pockets.”

“It was a perfect storm of, you know, industry interests,” Sohn told the AP in an interview last month at Georgetown Law School, where she is a fellow at its Institute for Technology Law & Policy.

At least three Democratic lawmakers agreed with Sohn’s assessment, describing her nomination as a proxy fight over the future of free broadband.

“If affordable broadband gets deployed anywhere, then somehow more affordable broadband might get deployed everywhere,” Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., the chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, said at Sohn’s February confirmation hearing. “So I think there’s probably billions of dollars at stake here, and that is why the vitriol is coming at you.”

Sohn took particular umbrage with the campaign waged by the American Accountability Foundation. The nonprofit boasted it spent “hundreds of thousands of dollars” on advertising to “educate the American people how wrong she was for the position.”

The AAF dished out more than $320,000 on Facebook advertising, according a review of advertising data by the AP. Such ads blasted Sohn over her connections to two liberal groups and suggested she opposed stiffening sex-trafficking laws. An ad alleged she was a “complete political ideologue.”

The organization targeted most of its advertising in states where moderate Democratic senators are up for reelection next year, including Nevada, Arizona and Montana. In the closely divided Senate, nominees have little margin for error. They can lose only one Democratic vote if all Republican senators oppose them.

It is unknown how much AAF spent on traditional advertising, which included ads in newspapers and on billboards. One of those billboards was on the Las Vegas Strip, looming above an illuminated sign of two showgirls replete with feathered headdresses.

The billboard called Sohn “too extreme” for the FCC and provided information for people to contact AAF. The likely target of that ad was not tourists but Sen. Jacky Rosen, a moderate Democrat seeking reelection next year.

AAF also promoted criticism of Sohn over Twitter posts in 2020 that suggested she supported the “defund the police” movement and agreed with a tweet that alleged police were “armed goons with tear gas.”

Tom Jones, the group’s executive director, declined an interview request. In an email, he declined to name the the organization’s donors, noting only that they are “G-d fearing Patriots!”

“We’re guided by traditional American values,” wrote Jones, a veteran Republican operative who led opposition research for Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, during his failed 2016 presidential run. His group has led similar campaigns against other nominees who later withdrew from such posts as Federal Aviation Administration administrator, vice chair for supervision of the Federal Reserve Board, director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the comptroller of the currency.

Jones’ group was joined in its campaign against Sohn by other organizations, including one led by Heidi Heitkamp, a former Democratic senator from North Dakota.

Heitkamp’s advocacy group, the One Country Project, announced in 2022 it was spending at least $100,000 on a campaign to oppose Sohn’s nomination by highlighting her purported disregard for rural broadband.

The former senator, who lost her reelection bid in 2018, did not respond to requests for comment about the source of her group’s funding. Heitkamp collected more than $106,000 in donations from the telecommunications industry during her last Senate campaign, according to OpenSecrets, a nonpartisan nonprofit that tracks U.S. election spending.

The National Fraternal Order of Police also opposed the nomination, a move that surprised Sohn and her allies because the police union has no business before the FCC. Citing Sohn’s social media posts about police, the group said in February that a vote for Sohn “would show a complete disregard for the hard-working men and women of law enforcement.”

Jim Pasco, FOP’s executive director, acknowledged it was unusual for his organization to take sides on an FCC nominee. But he said Sohn’s Twitter presence was too incendiary to ignore. He said no telecom companies influenced the union’s decision to oppose the nomination.

“You know, we don’t — we don’t oppose people lightly,” Pasco said. “The more we looked into it, the more we saw that this person is really, vocally opposed to just basic public safety efforts in the United States.”

Sohn said she knew her nomination was dead at her February confirmation hearing. That’s when Rosen, the Nevada Democrat, said police concerns about the social media posts “do give me pause.” Other Democrats, Sohn said, put little effort into parrying Republican attacks.

“It was a bloodbath,” Sohn said.

Three weeks later, she withdrew from the fight.

Union Lawsuit: Yellen should ignore ‘unconstitutional’ debt limit

By CHRISTOPHER RUGABER and FATIMA HUSSEIN

AP

FILE - Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen speaks on the U.S.-China economic relationship at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, Thursday, April 20, 2023, in Washington. Yellen said Sunday that there are “no good options” for the United States to avoid an economic “calamity” if Congress fails to raise the nation's borrowing limit of $31.381 trillion in the coming weeks. She did not rule out President Joe Biden bypassing lawmakers and acting on his own to try to avert a first-ever federal default. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta, File)


WASHINGTON (AP) — A union of government employees on Monday sued Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and President Joe Biden to try to stop them from complying with the law that limits the government’s total debt, which the lawsuit contends is unconstitutional.

The lawsuit comes just weeks before the government could default on the federal debt if Congress fails to raise the borrowing limit. Financial markets have become increasingly nervous about the potential for default, with economists warning that a failure to raise the debt limit could trigger a global financial crisis.

On Tuesday, Biden will meet with the top Republicans and Democrats in Congress to seek a potential breakthrough. The two sides remain far apart. Republicans have demanded steep spending cuts as the price of agreeing to raise the debt limit. Biden has argued that the debt ceiling, which applies to borrowing the government has already done, shouldn’t be used as leverage in budget talks.

The lawsuit, filed by the National Association of Government Employees, says that if Yellen abides by the debt limit once it becomes binding, possibly next month, she would have to choose which federal obligations to actually pay. Some analysts have argued that the government could prioritize interest payments on Treasury securities. That would ensure that the United States wouldn’t default on its securities, which have long been regarded as the safest investments in the world and are vital to global financial transactions.

But under the Constitution, the lawsuit argues, the president and Treasury secretary have no authority to decide which payments to make because the Constitution grants spending power to Congress. Doing so, it contends, would violate the Constitution’s separation of powers.

“Nothing in the Constitution or any judicial decision interpreting the Constitution,” the lawsuit states, “allows Congress to leave unchecked discretion to the President to exercise the spending power vested in the legislative branch by canceling, suspending, or refusing to carry out spending already approved by Congress.”

White House and Treasury Department spokespeople declined to comment on the lawsuit Monday.

The NAGE represents about 75,000 government employees who it says are at risk of being laid off or losing pay and benefits should Congress fail to raise the debt ceiling. The debt limit, currently $31.4 trillion, was reached in January. But Yellen has since used various accounting measures to avoid breaching it.

Last week, Yellen warned that the debt limit would become binding as early as June 1, much earlier than many analyses had previously predicted, because tax receipts have come in lower than projected.

Laurence Tribe, a law professor at Harvard University, suggested that “it is possible that the Treasury Department would welcome the suit” because it expresses the view that “the ceiling is not a permissible bargaining tool for Congress to employ because it simply threatens to destroy the economy and hold the president hostage.”

Tribe has written a column in the New York Times expressing support for the idea that the debt ceiling is unconstitutional. White House aides have explored the notion of having the president invoke the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which says the “validity” of the public debt “shall not be questioned.”

How fast the lawsuit may advance through the legal system depends, in part, on the judge, Tribe noted. ”It could move extremely quickly,” he said. “It’s quite hard to predict.”

Richard Stearns, a federal judge who was nominated by President Bill Clinton, has been assigned to the case.

Norm Eisen, a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution, suggested that it may be “up to the Supreme Court to determine whether there is a constitutional option to resolve this hostage crisis.”

“If Congress is going to demonstrate this propensity for hostage taking,” Eisen said, then “a reallocation of authority in this dimension away from Congress” may be called for.

On Sunday, Yellen said there were “no good options” for the United States to avoid an economic “calamity” if the debt ceiling isn’t raised. Economists say the standoff has distorted financial markets. Since Yellen warned a week ago that the government could default on its debt as early as June 1, interest rates on one-month Treasury bills have been shooting higher. They reached 5.35% Monday, up from 4.12% a week earlier — an unusually sharp move.

That suggested that investors were shunning the one-month bills out of concern that they could suffer from a default. The one-month yield, in an unusual move, now exceeds the rates on all longer-dated Treasuries, including 10-year notes, which yield 3.49%. Typically, borrowers demand higher rates to lock up their money for longer periods. Rates on the 10-year have fallen because investors expect a recession later this year that would force the Federal Reserve to cut its benchmark rate.

“Markets are beginning to aggressively price in a potential default,” said Joe Brusuelas, chief economist at tax advisory firm RSM. “The timing of an economic and financial crisis caused by the political authority could not be any worse.”

In the wake of three large bank failures in the past two months, Brusuelas, like many economists, thinks many banks are pulling back on lending to bolster their finances, a trend that could weaken the economy.

“A partial or full default would exacerbate those trends and result in a pullback in spending and investment by households and firms, as well as an increase in unemployment,” Brusuelas said. “It would almost surely tip the economy into a full-blown recession.”

Chile: Conservatives will now control Constitution rewrite

By EVA VERGARA and DANIEL POLITI

AP

TODAY

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José Antonio Kast, leader of the Republican party, speaks while celebrate obtaining the largest number of representatives after the election for the Constitutional Council, which will draft a new constitution proposal in Santiago, Chile, Sunday, May 7, 2023. A first attempt to replace the current Charter bequeathed by the military 42 years ago was rejected by voters during a referendum in 2022. (AP Photo/Esteban Felix)



SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) — Chile seemed on the cusp of a progressive revolution last year when a committee dominated by leftists drafted a bold new constitution to replace the country’s dictatorship-era charter. But voters have put the brakes on the effort, first rejecting the proposed constitution and now giving conservatives the leading role in writing its replacement.

The far-right in Chile was the big winner of Sunday’s vote to select the members of the commission that will be tasked with writing a new constitution to replace the one imposed by Gen. Augusto Pinochet.

The Republican Party, which has long said it opposes a new charter, obtained 23 of the 50 seats in the commission, meaning its representatives will not only have the most seats but will also enjoy veto power over any proposals they dislike.

“It’s ironic that the sector that said it was the least enthusiastic about the process now controls it,” said Robert Funk, a political scientist at Chile University.

A coalition of left-leaning parties allied with President Gabriel Boric, Unity for Chile, won 16 seats while a center-right alliance, Safe Chile, got 11.

The dominance of right-leaning parties in the commission “indicates that the proposal will likely make few changes (to the current constitution) and could be even more conservative,” Funk said.

The results marked a big blow for Boric and Chile’s left in general which won’t be able to force any issues into the drafting of the new constitution and won’t have any power to reject anything they dislike.

“They can’t do anything, it must be extremely frustrating,” said Kenneth Bunker, a political analyst. “The only thing they have left is to try to push a moral debate to try to find a middle ground.”

Recognizing this new reality, Boric called on those who won the election Sunday to “not make the same mistake we did … in believing that pendulums are permanent.”

The proposed constitution put to Chilean voters last year had been described as the most progressive in the world, characterizing Chile as a plurinational state, establishing autonomous Indigenous territories, and prioritizing the environment and gender parity.

But critics said it was too long, lacked clarity and went too far in some of its measures. About 62% of Chileans voted to reject it, setting up Sunday’s vote to choose a committee to draft its replacement.

The victory of the right is partly explained by the “excesses of the first constitutional process that put forward a proposal that was too ideological,” Funk said, adding that the concerns of Chileans have changed and now the economy, crime and immigration are the most important issues.

If the Republican Party does “the same thing as the others did and we end up with a constitution that is too ideological, they run the risk of people rejecting it in December,” Funk said.

A key difference is that, unlike last time, the commission’s members won’t start from scratch, but rather work from a preliminary document drafted by 24 experts who were approved by Congress. The body’s proposal will face a plebiscite in December.

The big winner of Sunday’s vote was José Antonio Kast, who leads the Republican Party and lost the presidential runoff to Boric in 2021.

After his party’s victory on Sunday, Kast now “becomes the de facto head of the opposition” and will be the “orchestra director who will manage the constitutional debate,” Bunker said. That automatically puts him in the “pole position for the next presidential race,” Bunker added.

Kast’s victory comes at a time when other countries in the region are also seeing the far-right make gains.

In Paraguay, for example, far-right populist candidate Paraguayo Cubas came in an unexpectedly strong third place in presidential elections last month and obtained 23% of the vote. In Argentina, polls show far-right lawmaker Javier Milei could be a strong contender in the October presidential elections.

The path to rewriting Chile’s constitution began after violent student-led protests in 2019 that were sparked by a hike in public transportation prices but quickly expanded into broader demands for greater equality and social protections.

Congress managed to get the protests under control by calling for a referendum on whether to draw up a new constitution, which almost 80% of voters agreed was needed. Much of that early enthusiasm has waned.

China expels Canadian diplomat in tit-for-tat response

AP
TODAY

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks during a panel discussion at the Global Citizen NOW Summit on April 27, 2023, in New York. Trudeau's government is expelling a Chinese diplomat whom Canada’s spy agency alleged was involved in a plot to intimidate an opposition lawmaker and his relatives in Hong Kong. 

(AP Photo/Mary Altaffer, File)

BEIJING (AP) — China has announced the expulsion of a Canadian diplomat in retaliation for Ottawa’s ordering a Chinese consular official to leave over alleged threats he made against a Canadian lawmaker and his family.

The Foreign Ministry on Tuesday said China was deploying a “reciprocal countermeasure to Canada’s unscrupulous move,” which it said it “firmly opposes.”

It said the Canadian diplomat based in the business hub of Shanghai has been asked to leave by May 13 and that China “reserves the right to take further actions in response.”

Canada earlier on Tuesday said that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government is expelling a Chinese diplomat whom Canada’s spy agency alleged was involved in a plot to intimidate an opposition lawmaker and his relatives in Hong Kong.

A senior government official said Toronto-based diplomat Zhao Wei has five days to leave the country.

Canada, China expel diplomats in escalating row

Issued on: 09/05/2023 

Shanghai (AFP) – China said Tuesday it was expelling Canada's consul in Shanghai, in a tit-for-tat move after Ottawa announced it was sending home a Chinese diplomat accused of trying to intimidate a lawmaker.

The expulsions have plunged the two nations into a fresh diplomatic row after years of souring relations.

They follow an outcry in Canada over allegations that Chinese intelligence had planned to target MP Michael Chong and his relatives in Hong Kong with sanctions for sponsoring a motion condemning Beijing's conduct in the Xinjiang region as genocide.

In response, Canadian Foreign Minister Melanie Joly said Toronto-based Chinese diplomat Zhao Wei -- who allegedly played a role in the scheme -- would have to leave the country.

Canada, she said, would "not tolerate any form of foreign interference in our internal affairs".

The Chinese foreign ministry on Tuesday condemned the decision to expel Zhao, and said it had ordered Canadian consul Jennifer Lynn Lalonde to leave the country by May 13.

"As a reciprocal countermeasure in reaction to Canada's unscrupulous move, China decides to declare Jennifer Lynn Lalonde, consul of the Consulate General of Canada in Shanghai persona non grata," the ministry said in a statement.

And foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin urged Canada to stop "unreasonable provocations".

"If the Canadian side doesn't listen to this advice and acts recklessly, (China) will take resolute and forceful retaliatory measures, and all consequences will be borne by the Canadian side," Wang told a regular press briefing.

A single police car was parked outside the Shanghai office building where the consulate is based, AFP journalists saw.

Inside, appointments appeared to be running as normal, and staff at reception said they were unaware of Tuesday's developments.

Neither Canada's foreign ministry nor its embassy in Beijing replied to requests for comment from AFP.

"We remain firm in our resolve that defending our democracy is of the utmost importance," Joly said Monday, adding that foreign diplomats in Canada "have been warned that if they engage in this type of behaviour, they will be sent home".

'Playground for interference'

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has faced growing pressure to take a hard line on China following revelations in recent months that it sought to sway Canada's 2019 and 2021 elections in his party's favour.

Relations between Beijing and Ottawa have been tense since Canada's 2018 arrest of a top Huawei executive and the detention of two Canadian nationals in China in apparent retaliation.

All three have been released, but Beijing has continued to blast Ottawa for aligning with Washington's China policy, while Canadian officials have regularly accused China of interference.

After China's ambassador was summoned last week over the latest interference allegations, Beijing on Friday slammed what it called "groundless slander and defamation" by Canada.

The Chinese foreign ministry insisted the scandal had been "hyped up" by Canadian politicians and the media.

"We have known for years that the PRC is using its accredited diplomats here in Canada to target Canadians and their families," he said, using an acronym for the People's Republic of China.

He said Canada has become "a playground for foreign interference," including the harassment of diaspora communities.

© 2023 AFP

UN report: Female Afghan UN employees harassed, detained

By RAHIM FAIEZ

TODAY

FILE - The symbol of the United Nations is displayed outside the Secretariat Building, Feb. 28, 2022, at United Nations Headquarters. (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File)



ISLAMABAD (AP) — Some Afghan women employed by the United Nations have been detained, harassed and had restrictions placed on their movements since being banned by the Taliban from working for the world body, the U.N. said Tuesday.

Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers informed the United Nations early last month that Afghan women employed with the U.N. mission could no longer report for work.

“This is the most recent in a series of discriminatory – and unlawful – measures implemented by the de facto authorities with the goal of severely restricting women and girls’ participation in most areas of public and daily life in Afghanistan,” the U.N. said in a report on the human rights situation in the south Asian country.

Taliban authorities continued to crack down on dissenting voices this year, in particular those who speak out on issues related to the rights of women and girls, the report said.

The U.N. report cited the March arrest of four women who were released the following day during a protest demanding access to education and work in the capital of Kabul and the arrest of Matiullah Wesa, head of PenPath, a civil society organization campaigning for the reopening of girls’ schools.

It also pointed to the arrest of a women’s rights activist Parisa Mobariz and her brother in February in the northern Takhar province.

Several other civil society activists have been released — reportedly without being charged — following extended periods of arbitrary detention by the Taliban Intelligence service, the report said.

The measures will have disastrous effects on Afghanistan’s prospects for prosperity, stability and peace, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, UNAMA said in the report.

“UNAMA is concerned by increasing restrictions on civic space across Afghanistan,” said Fiona Frazer, the agency’s human rights chief.

The Taliban previously banned girls from going to school beyond the sixth grade and blocked women from most public life and work. In December, they banned Afghan women from working at local and non-governmental organizations — a measure that at the time did not extend to U.N. offices.

The report also pointed to ongoing extrajudicial killings of individuals affiliated with the former government. On March 5 in southern Kandahar, Taliban forces arrested a former police officer from his home, then shot and killed him, according to the report. During the same month in northern Balkh, a former military official was killed by unknown armed men in his house, it said.

“Arbitrary arrests and detention of former government officials and Afghanistan National Security and Defense Force members also occurred throughout February, March and April,” added the report.

In a separate report released Monday, the U.N. strongly criticized the Taliban for carrying out public executions, lashings and stonings since seizing power in Afghanistan, and called on the country’s rulers to halt such practices.

In the past six months alone, 274 men, 58 women and two boys were publicly flogged in Afghanistan, said the report.

The Taliban foreign ministry said in response that Afghanistan’s laws are determined in accordance with Islamic rules and guidelines, and that an overwhelming majority of Afghans follow those rules.

The Taliban began carrying out such punishments shortly after coming to power almost two years ago, despite initial promises of a more moderate rule than during their previous stint in power in the 1990s.

Under the first Taliban regime from 1996 to 2001, public corporal punishment and executions were carried out by officials against individuals convicted of crimes, often in large venues such as sports stadiums and at urban intersections.

United Nations: Taliban's use of corporal punishment violates human rights


Taliban and their supporters held a demonstration in support of the first anniversary of the Taliban rule in Kandahar, Afghanistan on August 15, 2022. The United Nations said Monday that the Taliban government has been implementing corporal punishment since its takeover. 

File Photo by Shekib Mohammadyl/UPI | License Photo

May 8 (UPI) -- The United Nations on Monday called out the Taliban for their widespread use of corporal punishment, including public lashings and amputations, and execution in violation of international rights.

The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan said since the Taliban seized control of the country in August 2021, their authorities have implemented corporal punishment and the death penalty.

The United Nations said the first documented use of corporal punishment since the takeover came on Oct. 20, 2021, in the Kapisa province when a man and woman received 100 lashes each by a de facto district court in front of religious scholars.

"Since this first instance in October 2021, the de facto authorities have continued to implement corporal punishment -- both following judicial decisions and on an ad hoc basis," the report said.

U.N. Security Council condemns Taliban regime's ban on female workers

The U.N. said the use of corporal punishment "increased significantly" on Nov. 13, 2022, after Zabihullah Mujahid, a spokesperson for the de facto authorities tweeted the Taliban Supreme leader had met with judges to emphasize their obligation to carry out such punishments.

Lashings had been used mostly for "so-called moral crimes," including for sex outside of marriage and for girls and women "running away" from their homes, often to escape domestic violence, the report said.

Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people were all "at high risk" under the Taliban for public lashings.

The report said those convicted of crimes of adultery to murder have been given the death penalty, often by hanging and stoning the public.

"So long as the Taliban shows disdain for international human rights law, these barbaric practices are likely to continue," Patricia Gossman, associate Asia director for Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.

"Governments engaging with the Taliban, including U.N. Security Council members, should press for an end to these abuses and make clear that international sanctions will remain in place and could be expanded if they continue."

Killing of alleged collaborator exposes Palestinian tensions

By ISABEL DEBRE

AP

TODAY

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Palestinians walk under a banner depicting militants from the Lions' Den group who were killed by Israeli forces, from left, Fadi Qufesheh, Abdulrahman Soboh, Mohammad Azizi and Mahmoud Zakari, in al-Yasmeena quarter of the Old City of Nablus, in the West Bank, Thursday, May 4, 2023. The killing of Zuhair al-Ghaleeth last month, the first slaying of a suspected Israeli intelligence collaborator in the West Bank in nearly two decades, has laid bare the weakness of the Palestinian Authority and the strains that a recent surge in violence with Israel is beginning to exert within Palestinian communities. (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)

NABLUS, West Bank (AP) — There was no mourning tent for 23-year-old Palestinian Zuhair al-Ghaleeth. There were no banners with his portrait, no chants celebrating his martyrdom.

Instead, a bulldozer dropped his bullet-riddled body into an unmarked grave, witnesses said.

The day after six masked Palestinian gunmen shot and killed al-Ghaleeth over his suspected collaboration with Israel, his family and friends refused to pick up his body at the morgue, the public prosecution said. He was buried in a field cluttered with discarded animal bones and soda cans outside the northern West Bank city of Nablus.

It was a grim end to a short life. The April 8 killing in the Old City of Nablus — the first slaying of a suspected Israeli intelligence collaborator in the West Bank in nearly two decades — riveted the Palestinian public and cast a spotlight on the plight of collaborators, preyed on by both sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The case has laid bare the weakness of the Palestinian Authority and the strains that a recent surge in violence with Israel is beginning to exert within Palestinian communities.

“It feels like we’re in war times,” said 56-year-old Mohammed, who heard shouting that night, followed by gunshots. He ventured out of the Ottoman-era bathhouse where he works to find his neighbor, al-Ghaleeth, motionless on the ground, his eyes rolled up and mouth agape. A crowd of Palestinians swelled around his bloodied body. “Collaborator!” they yelled. “Spy!”

The scene had an eerie familiarity, Mohammed said, as if the horrors of the First and Second Intifadas, or Palestinian uprisings, were being replayed: Paranoia turning Palestinians against each other. Rumors ruining lives. Vigilante violence spiraling out of control. Like all witnesses interviewed about the incident, Mohammed declined to give his last name for fear of reprisals.

The angry gathering around al-Ghaleeth’s body quickly turned into a protest of the Palestinian Authority, which administers most Palestinian cities and towns in the West Bank. The cries against al-Ghaleeth’s betrayal took on new meaning as the crowds directed their anger toward the deeply unpopular self-rule government, which ordinary Palestinians accuse of collaboration with Israel for coordinating with Israeli security forces.

“It was chaos,” acknowledged Ghassan Daghlas, a Palestinian Authority official. Palestinian security forces fired tear gas. Medics rushed al-Ghaleeth to a Nablus hospital, where they tried to resuscitate him but could not get a pulse. A medical report seen by The Associated Press said al-Ghaleeth died of gunshot wounds in his lower extremities at 10:15 p.m.

The next morning, as word spread that al-Ghaleeth had been building a house in the nearby village of Rujeib, Palestinians swarmed the construction site, poured gasoline over the unfinished walls and set them on fire.

The public prosecution is still investigating al-Ghaleeth’s killing and has yet to announce arrests.

But an independent armed group known as the Lion’s Den, which has risen to prominence in the past year, seemed to take responsibility.

In the Old City of Nablus, where al-Ghaleeth lived and died, the Lion’s Den has brought together militants from the secular nationalist Fatah party and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group. The young men — disillusioned with the moribund Israeli-Palestinian peace process and with the undemocratic Palestinian Authority — have made the Old City a sort of private fiefdom.

After news of al-Ghaleeth’s death broke, the Lion’s Den declared that “the traitor was liquidated.”

“A traitor sells his homeland and his value as a human being for money,” commander Oday Azizi wrote on Facebook.

Lion’s Den member Tyseer Alfee said the killing was a warning. “We want all to see the fate of those who collaborate with the Israeli occupation,” he wrote in a text message when asked why al-Ghaleeth was shot publicly in the bustling marketplace, his body left for residents to find.

A grainy video purporting to show al-Ghaleeth confess to his collaboration was posted on social media and quickly garnered many views. In the four-minute clip, al-Ghaleeth — looking tired and swallowing hard several times — tells how Israeli agents used footage of him having sex with another man as blackmail.

He said an Israeli recruiter ordered him to gather intelligence on Lion’s Den leaders to help the military target them. After each mission, he said, the Israeli agent gave him 500 shekels (about $137) and a carton of Marlboro cigarettes.

Two members of the Lion’s Den, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals, said that after months of suspicion, they began following al-Ghaleeth around. They caught him surveilling another militant and detained him. They described a six-hour videotaped interrogation, with just a clip leaked to social media to protect sensitive information about the group. “He confessed to everything after 30 minutes, maybe in hopes we wouldn’t kill him,” one said.

The public prosecution said it filed the online video as additional evidence in the case.

But the confession raised as many questions as it answered, evoking the fraught judicial processes of grisly executions in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip — both those considered legal and those with little or no due process.

Since its 2007 takeover of the enclave, the Hamas militant group has publicly killed 33 suspected collaborators and other convicted criminals, according to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights. During war times, Hamas gunmen have seized at least 29 alleged collaborators from detention centers and killed them in the streets, without any pretense of a trial. Their bodies were dragged through Gaza City by motorbikes and left for crowds to gawk at or stomp on.

In the occupied West Bank, killings of alleged collaborators have occurred only in periods of intense unrest. Over 900 suspected collaborators were killed in the chaos of the First Intifada that began in 1987. More than 100 were killed in the second uprising, from 2000-05, according to Israeli rights group B’Tselem.

“These killings are a symptom of increased violence,” said Nathan Thrall, an analyst and author of a book on Israel and the Palestinians. Without due process, he said, “there are people who will use these accusations opportunistically to eliminate rivals and settle scores.”

Now Israelis and Palestinians are in the midst of one of the region’s bloodiest phases, outside a full-blown war, in two decades. As of Tuesday, 105 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire this year, according to an AP tally, about half of them affiliated with militant groups. Palestinian attacks against Israelis have killed 20 people in that time.

In recent months, the Israeli army has killed most key commanders and founders of the Lion’s Den, it says. In an apparently rare targeted killing last fall, a bomb on a motorbike exploded as militant Tamer al-Kilani walked by. Purported security video provided by the Lion’s Den shows an unidentified man parking the motorbike and exiting the frame before the blast killed al-Kilani. During raids, Israeli special forces often adopt disguises, such as of local worshippers or laborers, to quietly slip into the Old City — most recently last Thursday.

As the deaths rose, mistrust grew in the Old City. “We are all terrified because of how many have died,” said Ahmad, a 23-year-old hotel waiter in Nablus. “There are drones and cameras. There must be spies. Everyone suspects everyone.”

On Instagram, al-Ghaleeth looks like any other 20-something Palestinian. His page is full of mirror selfies in track suits, beauty shots of Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque and fan photos of Argentine soccer star Lionel Messi, with captions praising Lion’s Den “martyrs” sprinkled in.

Rumors abound about how he first aroused suspicion. Some say he always covered his face with a keffiyeh scarf in the Old City, as though trying to hide. Others talk of his apparently sudden wealth that allowed him to build a large house on a hilltop even though he once swept streets for cash. A few neighbors allege he resembled the shadowy figure in security footage of al-Kilani’s killing.

“We all knew he was an agent,” said Nael, a 52-year-old cafe owner in the Old City, whose nephew, a leader in the Lion’s Den, was killed last year. “It was the way he walked and talked. We have a sense for these things.”

Despite Israel’s sophisticated technology for surveilling militants, former intelligence officials say Palestinians themselves remain a crucial tool in preventing militant attacks, allowing Israel to conduct intelligence operations at safe remove.

“People think we only target terrorists, but the person down the street is very interesting as well. You can blackmail all kinds of people even if they’re not involved,” said one former Israeli intelligence agent, among nearly four dozen operatives who refused to report for reserve duty in 2014 to protest his unit’s tactics. He spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals. “There is no military control without this kind of intelligence.”

He said relationships between recruiters and collaborators often become twisted into something else. “The gifting of a pack of cigarettes is very symbolic,” he said. “This person has to be under the impression that you care for him, that you’re just a friend who’s helping out.”

Collaboration has featured in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since before the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation. Palestinians have been blackmailed into service — threatened with having behavior exposed that’s forbidden, or “haram,” in their conservative Islamic communities, such as alcohol use, gambling or homosexuality. Others are recruited when seeking permits to get medical treatment in Israel.

“If they’re gay? Absolutely,” said retired Col. Miri Eisin, a former senior intelligence officer, referring to how the Israeli military, with great leverage over Palestinians’ lives, tries to recruit them. “Family problems. Money problems. None of it makes you feel lovely in the morning, but it’s very effective.”

The Shin Bet, Israel’s main agency responsible for collecting intelligence in the West Bank and Gaza since Israel’s capture of those territories in 1967, declined to comment on its tactics or on al-Ghaleeth’s case. The Israeli military also had no comment.

Al-Ghaleeth’s family declined to be interviewed, instead sharing a statement saying that Zuhair “has nothing to do with them.”

“The history of the family is honorable in serving Palestine,” it added.

Neighbors said the family had barely scraped by, collecting garbage in the Old City.

The Palestinian Authority, which is responsible for prosecuting suspected Israeli collaborators, said it considered al-Ghaleeth’s death symptomatic of a larger failing.

“This is a dangerous sign,” the public prosecution said. “It affects the safety of citizens.”

The Palestinian leadership accuses Israel of undermining its security forces by raiding cities and villages under its control. Israel contends it has been forced to act because of the authority’s ineffectiveness in dismantling militant infrastructure.

“Our situation is very weak, and that empowers extremism,” said Daghlas, the Nablus official, describing growing Palestinian militancy he fears could render the authority irrelevant. “We are not Gaza, where such killings happen all the time. But Israeli escalations push us in that direction.”

Whether the authority will hold the gunmen accountable is unclear. Palestinian security forces are wary of acting against militants, especially after their arrest of a popular Hamas financier in Nablus last fall sparked a day of riots. Detaining gunmen with family ties to Fatah could exacerbate internal tensions.

Nael, the Old City cafe owner, was blunt when asked why al-Ghaleeth was killed rather than handed over to Palestinian security forces. “How can a collaborator investigate a collaborator?” he said.

In a pasture outside Nablus — between a horse farm and an Israeli military checkpoint — teenagers working the field steer clear of a certain patch of rocks.

“If the spy was guilty, he deserves what happened,” said 16-year-old Laith, looking toward the unmarked grave. “Only God knows the truth.”

___

Associated Press writer Fares Akram in Gaza City, Gaza Strip, contributed to this report.

EU cancels Tel Aviv event in protest over radical minister

yesterday

Israel's National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir speaks at a military cemetery ceremony during a ceremony to mark the country's Memorial Day for fallen soldiers and victims of militant attacks, in Beersheba, Israel, Tuesday, April 25, 2023. The families of people being remembered there had asked him not to attend.

 (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)


JERUSALEM (AP) — The European Union said Monday that it canceled a diplomatic reception to prevent a radical ultranationalist Israeli minister from attending.

The act of protest by the EU’s delegation to Israel against a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, the most religious and ultranationalist in the country’s history, could cause a diplomatic spat between Israel and the EU.

Relations already have been strained over Israeli policies in the occupied West Bank.

Itamar Ben-Gvir, the leader of the Jewish Power faction, serves as the national security minister and was assigned to represent the Israeli government at the EU’s Europe Day event on Tuesday.

Foreign Minister Eli Cohen said Sunday in a Kan radio interview that Ben-Gvir had been assigned by the government secretary to attend “not as a representative of the Jewish Power party ... but to represent the government of Israel.”

The EU said that it decided “to cancel the diplomatic reception, as we do not want to offer a platform to someone whose views contradict the values the European Union stands for.” The remainder of the public event would take place as scheduled.

Ben-Gvir is a former far-right activist and hard-line West Bank settler who has been convicted of incitement and support for a Jewish terror group. As the government’s representative at the Europe Day event, Ben-Gvir would have addressed attendees.

“It’s a shame that the EU, which pretends to represent democratic values and multiculturalism, behaves with undiplomatic gagging,” Ben-Gvir said.

Netanyahu returned to office in December at the head of a coalition that includes ultra-Orthodox parties and religious ultranationalists, including Ben-Gvir’s small Jewish Power faction. The government has put expansion of West Bank settlements as a top priority. The EU, along with most of the international community, considers Jewish settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem illegal under international law and obstacles to peace with the Palestinians.

Israel captured the West Bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza Strip in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians seek all three areas for a future independent state.