Macron vows to keep fighting extremism in West Africa

December 21, 2019

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast (AP) — France's President Emmanuel Macron has vowed to boost the fight against Islamic extremism in West Africa as French troops killed 33 Islamic extremists in central Mali. Saturday was Macron's second day of his three-day trip to Ivory Coast and Niger that has been dominated by the growing threat posed by jihadist groups.

“We must remain determined and united to face that threat," Macron said in a news conference in Abidjan. “We will continue the fight.” By Macron's side, Ivorian President Alassane Ouattara in Abidjan announced a “historic" reform of the French-backed currency CFA Franc, established in 1945 and used by eight states in West and Central Africa.

The currency’s name will become the “eco” next year and all French officials will withdraw from its decision-making bodies, Ouattara said. In addition, the obligation for member states to keep half of their foreign reserves in France will end.

The currency will remain pegged to the euro, which guarantees its stability, Ouattara stressed. Macron, who turned 42 on Saturday, welcomed the reform and praised the financial and economic empowerment of the region.

“I don't belong to a generation that has known colonialism ... so let's break the ties!" he said, adding that the currency was considered by some, especially the African youth, as a post-colonial heritage.

Earlier that day, Macron announced that a French military operation killed 33 Islamic extremists in the Mopti region of central Mali on Saturday morning. He tweeted he was “proud of our soldiers who protect us.” Two Malian gendarmes also were rescued in the operation, he said.

France has about 4,500 military personnel in West and Central Africa, much of which was ruled by France during the colonial era. The French led a military operation in 2013 to dislodge Islamic extremists from power in several major towns across Mali's north.

In the ensuing years, the militants have regrouped and pushed further into central Mali, where Saturday morning's operation was carried out. On Friday evening, Macron met with French military personnel stationed in Ivory Coast, which shares a long border with volatile Mali and Burkina Faso. The visit included commandos who were involved in the operation in Mali last month during which 13 soldiers died in a helicopter collision.

Earlier Saturday, Macron and Ouattara highlighted a new training effort being launched. The International Academy to Fight Terrorism will be in charge of "training in Ivory Coast some specialized forces from across Africa," Macron said. “Then we will collectively be better prepared for the fight against terrorism.”

On Sunday, Macron will pay tribute in Bouake to the victims of a 2004 bombing by the Ivorian air force during the civil war in the country, which killed nine French soldiers and an American civilian who had sought shelter at the French army base.

He also will pay a visit to Niger's President Mahamadou Issoufou in Niamey before returning to France, where a summit with West African leaders will be held in mid-January to clarify the strategy of the French military operation in the Sahel region.

Krista Larson in Dakar, Senegal contributed to the story.

S. Korean military decides to discharge transgender soldier

January 22, 2020

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korea’s military decided Wednesday to discharge a soldier who recently undertook gender reassignment surgery, a ruling expected to draw strong criticism from human rights groups.

It was the first time in South Korea that an active-duty member has been referred to a military panel to determine whether to end his or her service due to a sex change operation. South Korea prohibits transgender people from joining the military but has no specific laws on what to do with those who have sex change operations during their time in service.

The army said in a statement that it concluded that the soldier’s sex change operation can be considered as a reason for discharge. The statement said the decision went through due process and was based on a related military law on personnel changes. Army officials cited the law's provision that allows the military to discharge a member with physical and mental disabilities.

The non-commissioned officer had a male-to-female sex operation abroad late last year. The staff sergeant has since been hospitalized at a military-run facility and expressed a desire to continue serving as a female soldier, according to the army.

South Korea’s state-run human rights watchdog recommended Tuesday the army postpone its decision. The National Human Rights Commission said in a statement that referring the soldier to the military panel would be an act of discrimination over sexual identity and affect the soldier’s basic human rights.

Public views on gender issues in South Korea have gradually changed in recent years. Several gay-themed movies and TV dramas have become hits and some transgender entertainers have risen to stardom. However, a strong bias against sexual minorities still runs deep through South Korean society .

Activists say transgender people are likely to face harassment, abuse and insults, and many suffer from depression and have attempted suicide.

N Korean leader holds party meeting to bolster military

December 22, 2019

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea said Sunday leader Kim Jong Un has convened a key ruling party meeting to decide on steps to bolster the country’s military capability. The meeting came amid speculation that the North could abandon diplomacy with the U.S. and launch either a long-range missile or a satellite-carrying rocket if Washington doesn’t accept its demand for new incentives to salvage faltering nuclear negotiations by year’s end.

The Korean Central News Agency said Kim presided over a meeting of the Central Military Commission of the Workers' Party. It didn't say when it took place. It cited Kim as saying the meeting would determine “important organizational and political measures and military steps to bolster up the overall armed forces ... as required by the fast-changing situation and crucial time of the developing Korean revolution."

According to KCNA, the gathering decided on “important military issues and measures for organizing or expanding and reorganizing new units ... (and) changing the affiliation of some units and changing deployment of (others)."

KCNA didn’t elaborate. But South Korean media speculated the meeting might have discussed the restructuring of military units over the deployment of new weapons that the North had test-launched in recent months, and what steps it will take in coming weeks.

North Korea is to hold a higher-level Workers’ Party gathering, a Central Committee meeting, later this month to discuss what it previously described as “crucial issues” in line with “the changed situation at home and abroad.”

In Washington, the White House said President Donald Trump discussed “recent threatening statements” by North Korea in a phone call with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. The two leaders agreed to continue close communication, it said.

Earlier this month, North Korea carried out two major tests at its long-range rocket and missile engine testing site. Experts said they were engine tests that indicate that North might be preparing for a banned satellite launch or an intercontinental ballistic missile test.

The nuclear diplomacy remains stalled since the second summit between Kim and President Donald Trump in Vietnam in February collapsed after Trump rejected Kim’s calls for broad sanction relief in return for partial disarmament steps.

Taiwan defense officials meet after crash kills top officer

January 03, 2020

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen convened a meeting of top defense officials and urged them Friday to be on a lookout for military developments concerning China following a helicopter crash that killed the island's top military officer and other prominent personnel.

In a tweet, Tsai said the morning conference focused on ensuring military morale, security in and around the Taiwan Strait and the importance of “complete equipment inspections." The meeting followed the grounding for inspection of Taiwan's 52 UH-60M Black Hawk choppers belonging to the air force, the army and the National Airborne Service Corps., the agency responsible for search and rescue operations.

Thursday morning's crash in forested mountains outside the capital Taipei killed eight people, including chief of the general staff Gen. Shen Yi-ming. A former pilot and air force chief, Shen had since July been largely responsible for overseeing the self-governing island's defense against China.

“The best way for us to honor the memory of the fallen is to ensure Taiwan's security and maintain military morale,” Tsai wrote. In a video handout from the Presidential Office, Tsai is shown asking officials including the defense minister to “please be vigilant and pay close attention to military developments around the Taiwan Strait."

“We need to respond quickly to any military deployments to ensure security across the strait,” Tsai said. Others killed in the crash included both pilots, the deputy head of the Political Warfare Bureau and the deputy chief of the General Staff for Intelligence, while two lieutenant generals and a major general were among the five survivors.

Tsai and her two rivals in the Jan. 11 presidential election suspended their campaigns to observe a period of mourning. The crash, which is under investigation, is not expected to affect the holding of the election, which Tsai is highly favored to win, but will require an urgent reshuffling of top military staff. Questions have also been raised as to why so many high-ranking officers were aboard a single flight.

China threatens to use military force if necessary to annex what it considers part of its territory. A vacuum within Taiwan's military leadership could embolden it to step up its military intimidation.

Shen's death comes as Taiwan's military is undergoing a substantial upgrade with the arrival of the most advanced version of the U.S. F-16V fighter jets, along with tanks, missiles and improved military software.

Local media reported that rescuers were able to swiftly arrive at the scene because Chen Ying-chu, a correspondent with the Military News Agency who was on board and survived, sent a series of messages to a chat group reporting the crash and giving the chopper's location.

Copter crash kills Taiwan's top military officer, 7 others

January 02, 2020

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — Taiwan's top military official was among eight people killed in an air force helicopter crash in mountainous terrain outside Taipei on Thursday, the defense ministry said. Five others survived.

As chief of the general staff, Gen. Shen Yi-ming was responsible for overseeing the self-governing island's defense against China, which threatens to use military force if necessary to annex what it considers part of its territory.

The helicopter was flying from Taipei to the nearby city of Yilan for a New Year's activity when it crashed. The victims included other senior military officials and the two pilots. The UH-60M Blackhawk with 13 people on board dropped from the radar screen 10 minutes after takeoff from Songshan air force base around 7:50 a.m., Taiwan's defense ministry said. It went down in the mountainous, heavily forested Wulai area southeast of the capital.

Shen, 63, had taken over as chief of the general staff in July after serving as commander of Taiwan’s air force, which is undergoing a substantial upgrade with the arrival of the most advanced version of the U.S. F-16V fighter.

Alexander Huang, a strategic studies professor at Tamkang University in Taiwan who had known Shen for a decade, said he had stood out as a pilot and an officer. “He was very calm and very stable and unlike other army guys he was always smiling, so he got a specific leadership style that also made him a popular leader in the entire military,” Huang said.

It will likely be months before the cause of the crash is known, but the pilots appeared to have been highly experienced. “Of course, reasonable people would think in the direction of mechanical failure or maintenance problem, but without proof you can’t say anything," Huang said.

A special government committee will look into the cause of the crash, a defense ministry statement said. Taiwan's military has operated Blackhawk helicopters for decades and completed a sale for another 60 UH-Ms from the U.S. for $3.1 billion in 2010. The one that crashed was a model dedicated to search and rescue and had been delivered in 2018, according to the ministry.

The loss of Shen and other high-ranking officials will require a rapid reshuffle of positions, but should have minimal effect on Taiwan's Jan. 11 elections for president and lawmakers, said Andrew Yang, a former deputy defense minister who said Shen was highly respected throughout his career.

“I don’t think the crash will have a strong impact over the elections but certainly it will affect the armed forces because so many senior officers passed away as a result of this crash," he said. The ruling Democratic Progressive Party said in a statement on social media that all its public campaign events from now through Saturday would be canceled.

"The loss of pillars of our country make us feel endless sorrow," the statement read. The party has been strongly critical of China's attempts to increase economic, military and diplomatic pressure. Incumbent President Tsai Ing-wen appears on track to win a second term over her more pro-China opponent, Han Kuo-yu of the main opposition Nationalists.

Taiwan's Tsai defends Anti-Infiltration Law aimed at China

January 01, 2020

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — China has been relentless in its attempts to influence and infiltrate Taiwan's politics and society but the island's new ban on political interference should have no effect on normal exchanges between the sides, Taiwan's president said in her New Year's address.

The Anti-Subversion Law that obtained a third and final approval in Taiwan's legislature Wednesday aims to prevent illegal campaign contributions, staging of political events, the spread of misinformation and other acts by foreigners that could affect Taiwan's elections or the work of government. It was denounced by the opposition and by China's Cabinet as overly broad and an attack of exchanges between the sides, but President Tsai Ing-wen defended it as having no effect on normal interactions.

The law's passage “won't have any effect on freedom or violate human rights and won't influence normal commercial exchanges. It will simply provide greater guarantees from Taiwan's freedom and democracy," Tsai said.

Given China's similar actions in other countries, Taiwan's failure to prevent interference could give the impression it is untroubled by Beijing's actions, Tsai said. “Under Chinese pressure and with the constant Chinese infiltration and interference, we really needed this law to make Taiwan a safer place and to prevent social divisions arising from infiltration and interference,” she said.

Tsai cited the continuing protests in Hong Kong as proof its governing framework, which Beijing proposes for Taiwan, is untenable. “China's goal is very clear and that is to compel Taiwan to make concessions on the question of sovereignty under duress,” Tsai said. “Yet in Hong Kong, where ‘one country, two systems' is in effect, the situation has just gotten worse and worse. Democracy and authoritarianism ... cannot co-exist in the same country."

Tsai said Taiwan would emphasize in the coming year that China's policies cause instability in the Taiwan Strait, and that Taiwan would not exchange sovereignty for short-term economic gains. China has repeatedly offered benefits to Taiwanese who choose to work and study on the mainland and hundreds of thousands are believed to have taken advantage of the lower costs and greater opportunities in the Chinese market.

That poses the prospect of a “brain drain" of talented Taiwanese to the advantage of China's economy while furthering Beijing's goal of breaking down resistance to the possibility of future political unification between the sides. Recent surveys show around 80 percent of Taiwanese reject the idea of political union with China, with most backing the island's current status of de facto independence.

Tsai is favored to win a second term during elections for president and the legislature on Jan. 11. China cut contacts with Tsai's government shortly after her 2016 election and her potential reelection raises the possibility Beijing will intensify its campaign of economic, military and diplomatic pressure over her refusal to agree to Beijing's claim that Taiwan is a piece of Chinese territory that must be reclaimed. China threatens to use force to annex the island if peaceful means fail.

In Beijing, the head of the Cabinet's Taiwan Affairs Office, Liu Jieyi, warned of “serious damage” to Taiwanese interests if the island's government did not fall in line with China's demands. “The bright prospect for the peaceful development of cross-strait relations needs the joint efforts by compatriots on both sides across the Strait and needs Taiwan compatriots to correctly grasp (the situation)," Liu said in a statement issued by his office.

While Liu restated China's contention that unification between the sides is inevitable, he did not reiterate Beijing's threat to bring that about by force. In his new year's eve address, president and Communist Party leader Xi Jinping also avoided repeating his previous references to the military option, possibly in hopes of not further alienating voters from the China-friendly opposition parties.

SUV on grounds of Beijing's Forbidden City sparks outrage

January 18, 2020

BEIJING (AP) — A Chinese woman sparked social media outrage in her country by posting photos of herself and a friend with a Mercedes-Benz on the grounds of Beijing's Forbidden City. The reaction prompted an apology from the management of China's 600-year-old former imperial palace.

Vehicles have been banned since 2013 to protect the cultural dignity of the vast site and its hundreds of historic buildings, according to the official Xinhua News Agency. The palace was home to the Qing and Ming emperors, who ruled China for nearly five centuries.

“The Palace Museum was deeply distressed and sincerely apologizes to the public," it said in a post Friday night on Weibo, a popular service similar to Twitter. It added that it would prevent a repetition of the incident “through strict management.”

The four photos played into public perceptions that people with connections have special privileges in China, though it wasn't clear if the unidentified woman was from an influential family. The shots showed two young women in sunglasses and a black Mercedes SUV in front of the towering Gate of Supreme Harmony on a sunny winter day.

The woman said in another post that she and her friend had enjoyed the palace without the usual crowds on a Monday, when it is closed, the state-owned Global Times newspaper reported. The posts have been deleted, and she did not respond to a message sent to her Weibo account.

A man identified as the owner of the vehicle told the Beijing News that the woman is a friend who had been invited to an event at the palace, and that some guests had been allowed to drive into the grounds. The newspaper included audio clips of the interview in an online video post.

The issue went viral on Friday. One Weibo user said that the rich and powerful can do whatever they want in China. Some questioned why the woman had privileges not accorded to visiting heads of state, who must get out of their vehicles and walk into the palace, the Global Times said.

At each end of Pacific, skepticism over China farm purchases

December 26, 2019

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — President Donald Trump likes to joke that America's farmers have a nice problem on their hands: They're going to need bigger tractors to keep up with surging Chinese demand for their soybeans and other agricultural goods under a preliminary deal between the world's two largest economies.

But will they really? From Beijing to America's farm belt, skeptics are questioning just how much China has actually committed to buy — and whether U.S. farmers would be able anytime soon to export goods there in the outsize quantity that Trump has promised.

It amounts to $40 billion a year, according to Trump's trade representative, Robert Lighthizer. If you ask the exuberant president himself, though, the total is actually “much more than’’ $50 billion. To put that in perspective, U.S. farm exports to China have never topped $26 billion in any one year.

What's more, since Trump's trade war with Beijing erupted last year, China has increased its farm purchases from Brazil, Argentina and other countries. As a result, Beijing may now be locked into contracts it couldn't break even if it intended to quickly increase its purchases of American agricultural goods to something approximating $40 billion.

“History has never been even close to that level," said Chad Hart, an agricultural economist at Iowa State University. "There's no clear path to get us there in one year.” “The figure of $40 billion," added Cui Fan, a trade specialist at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing, “is larger than I expected, and I wonder whether the United States can ensure the full supply of the products.”

America's farmers would surely like to. The farm belt has endured much of the impact from Beijing's retaliatory tariffs since July 2018, when the Trump administration imposed taxes on $360 billion in Chinese imports. Beijing struck back by taxing $120 billion in U.S. exports, including soybeans and other farm goods that are vital to many of Trump's supporters in rural America.

The impact from China's retaliatory tariffs was substantial: U.S. farm exports to China, which hit a record $25.9 billion in 2012, plummeted last year to $9.1 billion. Soybean exports to China fell even more — to a 12-year low of $3.1 billion, according to the Department of Agriculture. (Farm imports to China have rebounded somewhat this year but remain well below pre-trade-war levels.)

The so-called Phase 1 deal that the two sides announced Dec. 13 did manage to de-escalate the standoff and offer at least a respite to American farmers. Yet the truce put off for future negotiations the toughest and most complex issue at the heart of the trade war: The Trump administration's assertion that Beijing cheats in its drive to achieve global supremacy in such advanced technologies as driver-less cars and artificial intelligence.

The administration alleges — and independent analysts generally agree — that China steals technology, forces foreign companies to hand over trade secrets, unfairly subsidizes its own firms and throws up bureaucratic hurdles for foreign rivals. Beijing has rejected the accusations and contended that the administration is instead trying to suppress a rising competitor in international trade.

Under the preliminary U.S.-China deal, Trump suspended his plan to impose new tariffs and reduced some existing taxes on Chinese imports. In return, Lighthizer said, China agreed to buy $40 billion a year in U.S. farm exports over two years, among other things. (Beijing also committed to ending its long-standing practice of pressuring foreign companies to hand over their technology as a condition of gaining access to the Chinese market.)

Many farmers say they're hopeful but restrained in their expectations. “At this point, we have to wait to see more details,” said Jeff Jorgensen, who farms about 3,000 acres in southwest Iowa. Yet the Trump administration has released no text of the agreement. And a fact sheet that Lighthizer’s office issued didn’t specify the target for increased Chinese farm purchases. What's more, Beijing has so far declined to confirm the $40 billion figure.

“After the agreement is officially signed, the contents of the agreement will be announced to the public,” said Gao Feng, a spokesman for the Commerce Ministry, Still, Chinese imports of U.S. soybeans more than doubled in November after the Phase 1 agreement was initially announced in mid-October — a sign that reduced tensions might have begun to ease the strain on American farmers, according to AWeb.com, a news website that serves China's farming industry.

Beijing insists, though, that its farm purchases will be based on consumer demand and market prices, pointedly implying that it won’t buy more than it needs just to satisfy the Trump administration's promises.

“The purchases should be based on market principles,” said Tu Xinquan, director of the China Institute for WTO Studies in Beijing. “The United States should compete with other countries through price and quality.”

Some analysts suggest that it's at least theoretically possible for the U.S. to boost its farm exports to China to something close to the figures the administration has promised. Flora Zhu, associate director of China corporate research at Fitch Ratings, calls the $40 billion “achievable.’’

She notes, for example, that China's demand for soybeans amounts to $40 billion a year. Even before the trade war, the U.S. supplied about a third of that total — “suggesting, Zhu said, that “there is still large room for China to increase its purchases of soybeans from the U.S.”

In addition, China's demand for imported pork has intensified because its own pig herds have been decimated by an outbreak of African swine fever. Yet that same outbreak could reduce China's need for American soybeans: Fewer hogs could mean less demand for soybeans and other sources of feed.

But achieving $40 billion a year would likely require diverting market share away from other countries — Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, New Zealand — that export sizeable quantities of farm goods to China. Those nations could then argue to the World Trade Organization that they are losing exports not because they can’t compete but because China is being coerced into buying American to avoid Trump’s tariffs.

“It is a situation many countries are concerned about,’’ said Tu of the WTO studies institute in Beijing. U.S. farmers sound wary. Some worry that the prolonged trade war will brand the United States an unreliable trade partner in China and jeopardize access to a vast Chinese market that had increased its purchases of U.S. farm products from less than $1 billion a year in the early 1990s to nearly $26 billion by 2012. U.S. farm exports to China then fluctuated between about $20 billion to $25 billion a year before Trump’s trade war erupted in earnest last year.

Farmers have watched with frustration as breakthroughs in the trade war appeared several times to have been achieved only to collapse soon thereafter. “I think it's a lot of false promises again,” said Bob Kuylen, who grows wheat and sunflowers and raises cattle near South Heart, North Dakota. “I'd love to see $50 billion, but I don't think it will ever happen ... It's just almost an impossible thing, so why even say it?”

Wiseman reported from Washington and McDonald from Beijing.

As Trump shuns US multilateralism, China ups diplomatic ante

December 20, 2019

GENEVA (AP) — Chinese leaders have long been sensitive about their communist country’s international image. Now, they are battling back — investing in diplomacy and a courtship of hearts and minds, just as the United States digs in on the Trump administration’s “America First” mindset.

A trade war and other frictions between the world’s top economic power and the fast-growing No. 2 have exposed Washington’s fears about technology, security and influence. U.S. political leaders have derided China’s government over policies in protest-riddled Hong Kong, at detention centers in the majority Muslim Xinjiang region, and over allegedly underhanded business tactics by tech titan Huawei.

But increasingly, China is seeking to recapture the narrative — with a new assertiveness under President and Communist Party boss Xi Jinping, China’s most powerful leader in decades. “Almost overnight, we have awakened to the reality that while America slept, the Chinese Communist Party has emerged as an immediate and growing threat to our prosperity, our freedoms, and our security," Sen. Marco Rubio, (R-Fla.) said in a speech to the National Defense University last week.

Now the Chinese even have the world's biggest diplomatic arsenal to draw from. China’s diplomatic network — including embassies, consulates and other posts — has overtaken that of the United States, according to the Lowy Institute, a Sydney-based think tank. Beijing has 276 diplomatic posts worldwide, topping Washington’s declining deployment by three posts, the institute found.

China's growing diplomatic presence comes as Beijing is trying to expand its international footprint in places like resource-rich Africa or the strategic South China Sea, and to compete economically with Western countries, including with its much-ballyhooed Belt and Road Initiative that seeks to expand Chinese economic clout in places like Africa and Asia.

China’s campaign to increase its influence on the global stage comes as the Trump administration retreats from multilateral diplomacy. Trump has pulled the United States out of the United Nations’ educational, scientific and cultural organization and the U.N.-supported Human Rights Council, and this month the U.S. squeezed the World Trade Organization’s appeals court out of action. His administration has announced a U.S. pullout from the Paris climate accord and shredded multilateral trade pacts.

It’s part of a broader diplomatic retrenchment that has led to the loss of nearly 200 foreign service posts at American embassies and consulates abroad. “We’ve entered an era in which diplomacy matters more than ever, on an intensely competitive international landscape,” said William Burns, president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a former deputy secretary of state who has been highly critical of Trump’s foreign policy. “China realizes that and is rapidly expanding its diplomatic capacity. The U.S., by contrast, seems intent on unilateral diplomatic disarmament.”

The U.S. pullback has been particularly felt in Geneva, a hub of U.N.-backed multilateralism: More than 2 1/2 years into Trump’s tenure, the U.S. finally brought in a new ambassador to U.N. institutions in Geneva only last month. Meanwhile, China’s deployment has grown, complete with a months-long renovation to its WTO offices on the bucolic Geneva lakefront.

Trump's administration has initiated staffing draw-downs in Afghanistan and Iraq in particular, recalling diplomats from those countries to Washington but not sending them out to other overseas missions, according to the American Foreign Service Association, the union that represents U.S. diplomats.

“This the first time that any country has had more global presence than the United States and it’s a concern,” said union president Eric Rubin. “If we’re going to meet the challenge of a rising China, we need to represent ourselves aggressively and with resources overseas.”

In African nations like Angola, Mozambique, Tanzania and Uganda, U.S. diplomats report being outnumbered five-to-one by their Chinese counterparts, according to a union presentation to the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Since Trump took office in 2017, at least five small nations in Latin America and the Pacific — Panama, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Kiribati and the Solomon Islands — have rejected intense U.S. lobbying and cut diplomatic ties with Taiwan in order to recognize China, which often promises them major investments of the kind that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has warned against.

And countries in Europe and elsewhere have been reluctant to heed U.S. admonitions to cut Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei out of their advanced communications networks. The U.S. says Huawei equipment is suspect, subject to intrusion by the Chinese Communist Party, and has warned nations including NATO allies that they could be stripped of intelligence cooperation with the United States if they grant the company a role in their national grids. Huawei denies the U.S. allegations.

There was a time when China was considered a potentially benevolent rising power. Nearly a generation ago, the communist country was welcomed into the capitalist-dominated WTO in Geneva. Now U.S. officials complain that China has taken advantage of the trade body and isn’t playing by its rules. That adds to the suspicion — even as Beijing insists it respects and abides by the rules-based international system.

In 2019, “we have seen a change in how the rest of the world sees China,” said Steve Tsang, director of the SOAS China Institute at the University of London. “From Xinjiang to Huawei to now Hong Kong: China is no longer seen as the rising benign giant, but it is being seen as, 'Whoops, we need to get worried about it.’”

But in some areas, like its efforts to fight climate change, China is scoring political points abroad — while Trump's policies on the environment have drawn widespread scorn. China’s Communist Party has long believed in its monopoly on truth, history and narrative at home, Tsang said. Now, with “fake news” a buzzword, that belief may be ripe for export.

Chinese diplomats have claimed that China holds no political prisoners and insist the Xinjiang centers — which have been widely criticized for locking up Muslim Uighurs and others — were only there to provide “vocational” training and save them from religious radicalism.

“If Donald Trump can say anything he wants — whatever that happens to be, without too much regard to whether it’s factually correct or not — why would the Communist Party of China not feel that they've been vindicated?” he said. “Therefore, Xi Jinping's idea of seizing the narrative is the right thing: You don't have to get worried about facts.”

Chinese authorities have used advertising pitches, news conferences, TV and radio interviews, social media — including on the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s new Twitter account — and other messaging to promote Beijing’s positions and push back against criticism.

Barely a day goes by without Chinese officials speaking out in some part of the globe: The Chinese Foreign Ministry’s web site lists 67 Chinese-language pages of statements, speeches, newspaper columns and other communications by Chinese diplomats and other officials since May alone. They blend tough talk, self-defense and self-congratulation.

China’s ambassador in Poland has decried “unilateralist” U.S. trade protection measures; its ambassador to South Africa claimed a U.S. “hidden political agenda” with its criticism about the Xinjiang centers — calling them “innovative.” One Chinese diplomat upbraided U.N. human rights chief Michelle Bachelet over a recent column she wrote airing her concerns about the Hong Kong protests and the government response.

The Chinese ambassadors in Britain and Sweden have been particularly outspoken. “China is not a country you can kick around,” Ambassador Liu Xiaoming told the BBC’s Hardtalk program last month, part of his one-man media blitz in London in recent weeks. He insisted no political prisoners are held in China, and faulted U.S. Vice President Mike Pence by name as a “China-basher” bent on “demonizing” the country.

China’s envoy in Stockholm, Gui Congyou, told Swedish tabloid Expressen that China will blacklist the Swedish culture minister for attending an award ceremony for Gui Minhai, a Chinese-born Swedish publisher based in Hong Kong who was imprisoned by China after printing books critical of the Chinese government.

The tabloid quoted the ambassador as saying that China offers “good wine for its friends, but shotguns for its enemies.”

Lee reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Kelvin Chan in London; Jan Olsen in Copenhagen, Denmark; Sylvie Corbet in Paris; Yanan Wang in Beijing; Elias Meseret in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; Sonja Smith in Windhoek, Namibia; and Cara Anna in Johannesburg contributed to this report.

China furious, Hong Kong celebrates after US move on bills

November 28, 2019

BEIJING (AP) — China reacted furiously Thursday to President Donald Trump’s signing two bills aimed at supporting human rights in Hong Kong, summoning the U.S. ambassador to protest and warning the move would undermine cooperation with Washington.

Hong Kong, a former British colony that was granted semi-autonomy when China took control in 1997, has been rocked by six months of sometimes violent pro-democracy demonstrations. Thousands of pro-democracy activists crowded a public square in downtown Hong Kong on Thursday night for a “Thanksgiving Day” rally to thank the United States for passing the laws and vowed to “march on” in their fight.

Trump’s approval of the bills was not unexpected. Neither was the reaction from Beijing, given China’s adamant rejections of any commentary on what it considers an internal issue. Nevertheless, the clash comes at a sensitive time and could upset already thorny trade negotiations between the two nations.

Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Le Yucheng told U.S. Ambassador Terry Branstad that the move constituted “serious interference in China’s internal affairs and a serious violation of international law,” a foreign ministry statement said.

Le called it a “nakedly hegemonic act.” He urged the U.S. not to implement the bills to prevent greater damage to U.S.-China relations, the ministry said. In a statement about the meeting, the U.S. Embassy in Beijing said, “the Chinese Communist Party must honor its promises to the Hong Kong people.”

The U.S. “believes that Hong Kong’s autonomy, its adherence to the rule of law, and its commitment to protecting civil liberties are key to preserving its special status under U.S. law,” it said. The U.S. laws, which passed both chambers of Congress almost unanimously, mandate sanctions on Chinese and Hong Kong officials who carry out human rights abuses in Hong Kong, require an annual review of Hong Kong’s favorable trade status and prohibit the export to Hong Kong police of certain nonlethal munitions.

“I signed these bills out of respect for President Xi, China, and the people of Hong Kong,” Trump said in a statement. “They are being enacted in the hope that Leaders and Representatives of China and Hong Kong will be able to amicably settle their differences leading to long term peace and prosperity for all.”

Prominent Hong Kong activist Joshua Wong, who was among those who lobbied for the U.S. laws, said it was remarkable that human rights had triumphed over the U.S.-China trade talks. Wong told Thursday’s rally that the next aim is to expand global support by getting Britain and other Western nations to follow suit.

Since the Hong Kong protests began in June, Beijing has responded to expressions of support for the demonstrators from the U.S. and other countries by accusing them of orchestrating the unrest to contain China’s development. The central government has blamed foreign “black hands” bent on destroying the city.

C.Y. Leung, a former chief executive of Hong Kong, said at a talk at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Hong Kong that he doubts the U.S. or supporters of the bills “ever had the interest of Hong Kong in mind.”

He suggested Hong Kong was being used as a “proxy” for China and the legislation was a way to hit back at Beijing. While China has repeatedly threatened unspecified “countermeasures,” it’s unclear exactly how it will respond. Speaking on Fox News, Trump called the protests a “complicating factor” in trade negotiations with Beijing.

At a daily briefing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang responded to a question about how Trump’s endorsement of the legislation might affect the trade talks by saying it would undermine “cooperation in important areas.”

Asked Thursday if the U.S. legislation would affect trade talks with Washington, a Chinese Commerce Ministry spokesman said he had no new information to share. Recently both sides expressed confidence they were making headway on a preliminary agreement to avert a further escalation in a tariff war that has hammered manufacturers in both nations.

Associated Press writers Eileen Ng in Hong Kong and Elaine Kurtenbach in Beijing contributed to this report.

Pro-democracy camp looks to have won big in Hong Kong vote

November 25, 2019

HONG KONG (AP) — The pro-democracy opposition won a resounding victory in Hong Kong elections, according to media tallies, in a clear rebuke to city leader Carrie Lam and her handling of violent protests that have divided the Chinese territory.

Hong Kong media said Monday that the pro-democracy camp had won a commanding majority of the 452 district council seats at stake, taking control of at least 17 of the city’s 18 district councils. The result of Sunday’s elections could force the central government in Beijing to rethink how to handle the unrest, which is now in its sixth month. The district councils have little power, but the vote became a referendum on public support for the protests.

“It’s nothing short of a revolution. This is a landslide,” said Willy Lam, a political expert at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. “It’s a sound repudiation of the Carrie Lam administration and shows the silent majority are behind the demands of the protesters,”

The media tallies are based on official results for the individual races. The pro-democracy camp hailed its strong gains in the normally low-key race as a victory for the people. Former Democratic Party chairman Lee Wing-tat said that Carrie Lam should give serious consideration to the demands of the protesters, and in particular a call for an independent commission to investigate the events of the past six months.

“It is a genuine referendum of the people of Hong Kong,” he said at a news conference. “The Democratic Party hopes our chief executive, Mrs. Carrie Lam, receives the same message because the votes make a clear voice of the Hong Kong people.”

Lam issued a statement saying her government respects the results and will listen to and seriously reflect on the opinions of members of the public. “There are various analyses and interpretations in the community in relation to the results, and quite a few are of the view that the results reflect people's dissatisfaction with the current situation and the deep-seated problems in society,” she said.

A record 71% of Hong Kong’s 4.1 million registered voters cast ballots Sunday, well exceeding the 47% turnout in the district council elections four years ago. The large number of votes was slowing down the counting.

The largest pro-Beijing political party suffered a major setback, with at least 155 of its 182 candidates defeated, according to media tallies. Horace Cheung, the vice chairman of the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong, said the loss was the collective responsibility of the party, and that the party would reflect on the outcome to prepare for coming challenges.

Among the losing incumbents was controversial pro-Beijing lawmaker Junius Ho, who was stabbed with a knife while campaigning this month. The winners included former student leaders and a candidate who replaced activist Joshua Wong, the only person barred from running in the election.

Pro-democracy rally organizer Jimmy Sham, who was beaten by hammer-wielding assailants last month, also triumphed, as did a pro-democracy lawmaker who had part of his ear bitten off by an assailant. The demonstrations have turned increasingly violent. Protesters have smashed storefronts of businesses seen as sympathetic to China, torched toll booths, shut down a major tunnel and engaged in pitched battles with police, countering tear gas volleys and water cannons with torrents of gasoline bombs.

More than 5,000 people have been arrested in the unrest that has contributed to Hong Kong’s first recession in a decade. The vote is the only fully democratic one in Hong Kong. Members of the legislature are chosen partly by popular vote and partly by interest groups representing different sectors of society, and the city’s leader is picked by a 1,200-member body that is dominated by supporters of the central government in Beijing.

Dixon Sing, a political science lecturer with the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, said the election result was “tantamount to a rejection of the hard-line policy of Beijing and the Hong Kong government.”

A win would give the pro-democracy camp 117 seats in the panel that elects the city’s leader, bolstering its influence, but Beijing isn’t likely to soften its stance or make any concessions to the protesters, he said.

Associated Press writer Ken Moritsugu contributed to this report.

Vietnamese village holds funeral for trafficking victims

November 28, 2019

DIEN THINH, Vietnam (AP) — The village of Dien Thinh is bidding farewell to two of its sons, victims of the human trafficking tragedy unveiled last month when the bodies of 39 Vietnamese were discovered in a truck in England.

This village's church did double duty Thursday as coffins with the bodies of cousins Nguyen Van Hung and Hoang Van Tiep were carried in for a funeral attended by about 300 people. The remains of 16 of the 39 people found Oct. 23, east of London in the town of Grays, were repatriated to Vietnam on Wednesday and sent on to their families.

The 31 men and eight women are believed to have paid human traffickers for their clandestine transit into England. Police say the victims were aged between 15 and 44.

Trump peace plan delights Israelis, enrages Palestinians

January 29, 2020

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump unveiled his long-awaited Mideast peace plan Tuesday alongside a beaming Benjamin Netanyahu, presenting a vision that matched the Israeli leader’s hard-line, nationalist views while falling far short of Palestinian ambitions.

Trump’s plan envisions a disjointed Palestinian state that turns over key parts of the West Bank to Israel. It sides with Israel on key contentious issues that have bedeviled past peace efforts, including borders and the status of Jerusalem and Jewish settlements, and attaches nearly impossible conditions for granting the Palestinians their hoped-for state.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas dismissed the plan as “nonsense” and vowed to resist it. Netanyahu called it a “historic breakthrough” equal in significance to the country's declaration of independence in 1948.

“It's a great plan for Israel. It's a great plan for peace,” he said. He vowed to immediately press forward with his plans to annex the strategic Jordan Valley and all the Israeli settlements in occupied lands. Netanyahu said he'd ask his Cabinet to approve the annexation plans in their next meeting on Sunday, an explosive move that could trigger harsh international reaction and renewed violence with the Palestinians.

“This dictates once and for all the eastern border of Israel,” Netanyahu told Israeli reporters later. “Israel is getting an immediate American recognition of Israeli sovereignty on all the settlements, without exceptions.”

Given the Palestinian opposition, the plan seems unlikely to lead to any significant breakthrough. But it could give a powerful boost to both Trump and Netanyahu who are both facing legal problems ahead of tough elections.

Trump called his plan a “win-win” for both Israel and the Palestinians, and urged the Palestinians not to miss their opportunity for independence. But Abbas, who accuses the U.S. of unfair bias toward Israel, rejected it out of hand.

“We say 1,000 no's to the Deal of the Century," Abbas said, using a nickname for Trump's proposal. “We will not kneel and we will not surrender,” he said, adding that the Palestinians would resist the plan through “peaceful, popular means.”

The plan comes amid Trump's impeachment trial and on a U.S. election year, and after Netanyahu was indicted on counts of fraud, breach of trust and bribery in three separate cases. The longtime Israeli leader, who denies any wrongdoing, also faces a March 2 parliamentary election, Israel’s third in less than a year. He hopes to use the plan, and his close ties with Trump, to divert attention from his legal troubles.

The Palestinians seek all of the West Bank and east Jerusalem — areas captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war — for an independent state and the removal of many of the more than 700,000 Israeli settlers from these areas.

But as details emerged, it became clear that the plan sides heavily with Netanyahu's hard-line nationalist vision for the region and shunts aside many of the Palestinians' core demands. Under the terms of the “peace vision" that Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner has been working on for nearly three years, all settlers would remain in place, and Israel would retain sovereignty over all of its settlements as well as the strategic Jordan Valley.

“The Israeli military will continue to control the entire territory,” Netanyahu said. “No one will be uprooted from their home.” The proposed Palestinian state would also include more than a dozen Israeli “enclaves” with the entity's borders monitored by Israel. It would be demilitarized and give Israel overall security control. In addition, the areas of east Jerusalem offered to the Palestinians consist of poor, crowded neighborhoods located behind a hulking concrete separation barrier.

Trump acknowledged that he has done a lot for Israel, but he said he wanted the deal to be a “great deal for the Palestinians." The plan would give the Palestinians limited control over an estimated 70% of the West Bank, nearly double the amount where they currently have limited self-rule. Trump said it would give them time needed to meet the challenges of statehood.

The only concession the plan appears to demand of Israel is a four-year freeze on the establishment of new Israeli settlements in certain areas of the West Bank. But Netanyahu clarified later that this only applied to areas where there are no settlements and Israel has no immediate plans to annex, and that he considered the plan to impose no limitations on construction.

Thousands of Palestinians protested in Gaza City ahead of the announcement, burning pictures of Trump and Netanyahu and raising a banner reading “Palestine is not for sale.” Trump said he sent a letter to Abbas to tell him that the territory that the plan has set aside for a new Palestinian state will remain open and undeveloped for four years.

"It's going to work," Trump said, as he presented the plan at a White House ceremony filled with Israeli officials and allies, including evangelical Christian leaders and wealthy Republican donors. Representatives from the Arab countries of Bahrain, Oman and the United Arab Emirates were present, but there were no Palestinian representatives.

“President Abbas, I want you to know, that if you chose the path to peace, America and many other countries ... we will be there to help you in so many different ways," he said. "And we will be there every step of the way."

The 50-page plan builds on a 30-page economic plan for the West Bank and Gaza that was unveiled last June and which the Palestinians have also rejected. It envisions a future Palestinian state consisting of the West Bank and Gaza, connected by a combination of roads and tunnels. It also would give small areas of southern Israel to the Palestinians as compensation for lost West Bank land.

But the many caveats, and ultimate overall Israeli control, made the deal a nonstarter for the Palestinians. Netanyahu and his main political challenger in March elections, Benny Gantz, had signed off on the plan.

“Mr. President, because of this historic recognition and because I believe your peace plan strikes the right balance where other plans have failed,” Netanyahu said. “I've agreed to negotiate peace with the Palestinians on the basis of your peace plan.

The Jordan Valley annexation is a big part of Netanyahu's strategy and a key promise meant to appeal to his hard-line nationalist base, which mostly applauded the Trump plan. U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity ahead of the plan's release, said they expected negative responses from the Palestinians, but were hopeful that Jordan and Egypt, the only two Arab nations to have peace treaties with Israel, would not reject it outright.

Jordan gave the plan a cool reaction, saying it remained committed to a two-state solution based on Israel's pre-1967 lines. It also said it rejected any unilateral move by Israel, referring to the annexation plan.

The reaction of Jordan, which would retain its responsibilities over Jerusalem's al-Aqsa Mosque under the plan, is particularly significant. Located next to the West Bank, Jordan also is home to a large Palestinian population.

Egypt, the first Arab country to reach a peace deal with Israel, urged Israelis and Palestinians to carefully study the plan. The European Union also said it needed to study it more closely. Saudi Arabia, another key Arab country, said it appreciated the Trump administration's efforts and encouraged the resumption of direct talks between Israel and the Palestinians “under the auspices of the United States.”

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the United Nations supports two states living in peace and security within recognized borders, on the basis of the pre-1967 borders, according to his spokesman.

The Palestinians see the West Bank as the heartland of a future independent state and east Jerusalem as their capital. Most of the international community supports their position, but Trump has reversed decades of U.S. foreign policy by siding more blatantly with Israel. The centerpiece of his strategy was recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and moving the American Embassy there. He's also closed Palestinian diplomatic offices in Washington and cut funding to Palestinian aid programs.

Those policies have proven popular among Trump’s evangelical and pro-Israel supporters. But the Palestinians refuse to even speak to Trump and they called on support from Arab leaders.

Associated Press writer Josef Federman in Jerusalem and Deb Riechmann in Washington contributed.

World leaders rally in Jerusalem against anti-Semitism

January 23, 2020

JERUSALEM (AP) — Dozens of world leaders descended upon Jerusalem on Thursday for the largest-ever gathering focused on commemorating the Holocaust and combating modern-day anti-Semitism. Russian President Vladimir Putin, French President Emmanuel Macron, Britain's Prince Charles, Vice President Mike Pence and the presidents of Germany, Italy and Austria were among the more than 40 dignitaries attending the World Holocaust Forum, which coincides with the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp.

Pence and Putin arrived Thursday morning within less than an hour of each other and both were scheduled to meet Israeli leaders before and after the main event. The three-hour-long event at Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial — called “Remembering the Holocaust: Fighting Antisemitism” — looks to project a united front in commemorating the genocide of European Jewry amid a global spike in anti-Jewish violence in the continent and around the world.

But the unresolved remnants of World War II’s politics have permeated the solemn assembly over the differing historical narratives of various players. Poland’s president, who’s been criticized for his own wartime revisionism, has boycotted the gathering since he wasn’t invited to speak while Putin was granted a central role even as he leads a campaign to play down the Soviet Union’s pre-war pact with the Nazis and shift responsibility for the war’s outbreak on Poland, which was invaded in 1939 to start the fighting.

On the eve of the gathering, Israeli President Reuven Rivlin implored world leaders assembled for a dinner at his official residence to “leave history for the historians." "The role of political leaders, of all of us, is to shape the future," he said.

The event marks one of the largest political gatherings in Israeli history, as a cascade of delegations including European presidents, prime ministers and royals, as well as American, Canadian and Australian representatives, arrived at Ben-Gurion Airport. More than 10,000 police officers were deployed in Jerusalem and major highways and large parts of the city were shut down ahead of the event.

For Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu it offered another opportunity to solidify Israel’s diplomatic standing and boost his profile as he seeks re-election on March 2. He was hoping to use his meetings with world leaders to bolster his tough line toward Iran and rally opposition to a looming war crimes case against Israel in the International Criminal Court.

“Iran openly declares every day that it wants to wipe Israel off the face of the earth,” he told Christian broadcaster TBN. “I think the lesson of Auschwitz is, one, stop bad things when they're small ... and, second, understand that the Jews will never ever again be defenseless in the face of those who want to destroy them.”

For historians, though, the main message is one of education amid growing signs of ignorance and indifference to the Holocaust. A comprehensive survey released this week by the Claims Conference, a Jewish organization responsible for negotiating compensation for victims of Nazi persecution, found that most people in France did not know that 6 million Jews were killed during World War II. Among millennials, 45% said they were unaware of French collaboration with the Nazi regime and 25% said they weren’t even sure they had heard of the Holocaust.

The World Holocaust Forum is the brainchild of Moshe Kantor, the president of the European Jewish Congress, an umbrella group representing Jewish communities across Europe. The group recently reported that 80% of European Jews feel unsafe in the continent.

Kantor established the World Holocaust Forum Foundation in 2005 and it has held forums before in Auschwitz, the Ukrainian killing fields of Babi Yar and at the former concentration camp Terezin. Thursday’s event is the first time it is convening in Israel. The official commemoration marking the 75th anniversary of Auschwitz’s liberation will be held next week at the site itself in southern Poland.

Organizers of the Jerusalem event have come under criticism for not sufficiently including Holocaust survivors and instead focusing on the panoply of visiting dignitaries. In response, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy tweeted on Thursday that his delegation was giving up its seats to allow more survivors to attend.

Simmy Allen, a spokesman for Yad Vashem, said “some 100” survivors were expected among the 780 attendees. “Of course we would like as may Holocaust survivors as possible to attend, but we're also dealing with 48 delegations from all around the world,” he said.

The gathering comes amid an uptick in anti-Semitic violence. Tel Aviv University researchers reported last year that violent attacks against Jews grew significantly in 2018, with the largest reported number of Jews killed in anti-Semitic acts in decades. They recorded 400 cases, with the spike most dramatic in western Europe. In Germany, for instance, there was a 70% increase in anti-Semitic violence. In addition to the shooting attacks, assaults and vandalism, the research also noted increased anti-Semitic vitriol online and in newspapers, as extremist political parties grew in power in several countries.

In advance of the forum, an anthology of statements from world leaders sending delegations to Jerusalem was published to project a newfound commitment to quelling a climate some said was reminiscent of that before World War II.

“I express my fervent hope that by continued vigilance and positive education, the iniquities perpetrated during one of the darkest periods in our history will be eliminated from the face of the earth,” Pope Francis wrote.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau specifically mentioned “the scourge of antisemitism and hatred that is becoming all too common once again.” “The murder of six million Jews by the brutal and antisemitic Nazi regime started with a slow erosion of rights, and the normalization of discrimination,” he wrote. “We cannot permit the passage of time to diminish our resolve never to allow such horrors to happen again."

Greece, Israel, Cyprus sign deal for EastMed gas pipeline

January 02, 2020

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Greece, Israel and Cyprus signed a deal Thursday to build an undersea pipeline to carry gas from new offshore deposits in the southeastern Mediterranean to continental Europe. The 1,900-kilometer (1,300-mile) EastMed pipeline is intended to provide an alternative gas source for energy-hungry Europe, which is largely dependent on supplies from Russia and the Caucasus region.

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who attended the signing ceremony with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades, said the pipeline will offer Europe “better flexibility and independence in its energy sources.”

The pipeline would run from Israel’s Levantine Basin offshore gas reserves to Cyprus, the Greek island of Crete and the Greek mainland. An overland pipeline to northwestern Greece and another planned undersea pipeline would carry the gas to Italy.

The project could also accommodate future gas finds in waters off Cyprus and Greece, where exploration is under way. The project, with a rough budget of $6 billion, is expected to satisfy about 10% of the European Union's natural gas needs. But it is fraught with political and logistical complexities.

The race to claim offshore energy deposits in the southern Mediterranean has created new tensions between Greece and Cyprus, on one side, and historic rival Turkey. Ankara has raised the stakes with recent moves to explore waters controlled by the two EU member countries. Cyprus and Greece are particularly disturbed because Turkey sent warship-escorted drill ships into waters where Cyprus has exclusive economic rights.

Cyprus' Anastasiades said the pipeline affirms that Greece and Cyprus have sovereign rights in waters assigned to them under international law. “This cooperation that we have developed ... isn’t directed against any third country,” he said. “On the contrary, whichever country wishes is welcome to join, on the understanding of course that it adopts the basic principles of international law and fully respects the sovereign rights and the territorial integrity of independent states.”

Alluding to Turkey's stance, Anastasiades said cooperation is the only approach in an unstable region instead of embarking on a course of “self-isolation.” Netanyahu said Israel is set to become a “powerhouse in terms of energy” with its offshore gas reserves. He added that the three countries have established ”an alliance of great importance" that will bolster regional stability.

Israeli Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz has said the EastMed pipeline would take up to seven years to build and that its advantages include being less vulnerable to sabotage and not crossing many national borders to reach markets.

Cyprus is divided into a Greek Cypriot south, where the island nation's internationally recognized government is located, and a breakaway Turkish Cypriot north backed by Turkey. The split followed a 1974 Turkish invasion after an aborted coup aiming to bring Cyprus under Greek rule.

Turkey doesn't recognize Cyprus as a state and claims much of Cyprus' exclusive economic zone as falling within its own continental shelf. Turkey is also laying claim to large tracts under Greek control in the Aegean Sea and off Crete. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said no project can proceed without his country's consent following a maritime border agreement that Ankara signed with the Libya's Tripoli-based government.

The Cypriot government has licensed Italian energy company Eni, France's Total, ExxonMobil and Texas-based Noble Energy to carry out exploratory hydrocarbons drilling in the country's offshore economic zone.

Hadjicostis contributed from Nicosia, Cyprus.

Israel's Netanyahu shores up base but obstacles remain

December 27, 2019

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shored up his base with a landslide primary victory announced early Friday, but he will need a big win in national elections in March if he hopes to stay in office and gain immunity from prosecution on corruption charges.

Netanyahu handily defeated Gideon Saar, a former aide and Cabinet minister, in a Likud party primary held Thursday, winning 72% of the vote. “This is the time to unite, to bring a sweeping victory to the Likud and the right in the Knesset elections,” Netanyahu told reporters Friday. “The final and sweeping primary decision was a huge expression of trust in my way, in our way.”

Only around half the party's 116,000 registered members turned out to vote, in part because of stormy weather. They represent the most faithful members of a party defined by fierce loyalty, which has only had four leaders since it was founded in the 1970s.

Netanyahu faces a much greater challenge in March — the third vote in less than a year — after failing to form a government in the last two elections, held in April and September. This time around the stakes are much higher. Netanyahu was indicted last month on serious charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust. His best hope of escaping prosecution is to gain a 61-seat majority in parliament that is willing to grant him immunity.

“A candidate for prime minister who is under indictment and requests immunity for himself is something we’ve never had,” Yossi Verter wrote in the Haaretz newspaper. “It’s hard to see how he, with all his sophisticated campaigning abilities, can make this situation work in his favor.”

The September vote left Netanyahu's Likud in a virtual tie with the centrist Blue and White party led by former army chief of staff Benny Gantz. Neither was able to form a majority with their natural allies, and they were unable to form a national unity government in part because Blue and White refused to accept an indicted prime minister.

Polls indicate the March vote would produce a similar outcome, rounding out more than a year of uncertainty in which Netanyahu has led a caretaker government. “It appears that the defendant Netanyahu, who is leading the State of Israel down a path of corruption, will continue to lead Likud,” Gantz said in a statement. “Blue and White must achieve a decisive outcome that will extricate us from both political deadlock and a path of corruption.”

The Supreme Court is meanwhile set to meet next week to consider whether an indicted member of parliament is eligible to become prime minister. It's unclear when a ruling would be handed down, but if the court finds Netanyahu ineligible it could precipitate a constitutional crisis.

Reuven Hazan, a political science professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said the court is likely to defer any ruling, potentially even until after the elections. “They understand that if he wins big tonight and they turn around and say he cannot be prime minister, then although they’ve done their job, which is to make the right legal decision, that they will be in political turmoil that could rip the elections apart," Hazan said Thursday, before the primary results were announced.

Netanyahu is already Israel's longest-serving prime minister and has cultivated the image of a veteran statesman with close personal ties to President Donald Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin and other world leaders.

His refusal over the last decade to make any concessions to the Palestinians was rewarded after Trump took office, as the U.S. began openly siding with Israel on several key issues. Netanyahu's hard-line stance on Iran has also proved popular. He was a staunch opponent of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, which has unraveled since Trump withdrew from the agreement. A wave of Israeli strikes on Iran-linked targets in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq in recent years has burnished Netanyahu's claims to having protected Israel from its enemies.

His fortunes have nevertheless waned over the past year. His party came in second place in September's elections, and two months later he was indicted on allegations of trading legislative and regulatory favors for lavish gifts and favorable media coverage.

Netanyahu has dismissed the indictment as an “attempted coup” by hostile media and law enforcement and has vowed to battle the charges from the prime minister's office. The political uncertainty has led the Trump administration to delay the release of its long-anticipated Mideast peace plan.

The Palestinians have already rejected the plan, saying the administration is marching in lockstep with Israel's right-wing government. They point to Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital, to cut off virtually all aid to the Palestinians and to reverse longstanding opposition to Jewish settlements in annexed east Jerusalem and the West Bank, which Israel captured in the 1967 war.

Netanyahu has meanwhile said that Israel is on the cusp of securing U.S. support for the annexation of large parts of the occupied West Bank — but only if he remains in power. That would all but extinguish the Palestinians' hope of one day establishing an independent state while cementing Netanyahu's legacy as a transformative leader.

In recent weeks, Netanyahu shifted away from the divisiveness of his previous campaigns and appeared rejuvenated as he met face-to-face with Likud supporters during a packed schedule of public events. He has long been seen as a political magician, and the new approach could allow him to pull off yet another comeback.

“One might say that Netanyahu seems reinvigorated and rejuvenated both for the election fight in March and the struggle against those corruption charges. Except that, in essence, they are two sides of the same coin,” David Horovitz, the founding editor of the Times of Israel, wrote. “If he wins in March, he may have the political power to fend off those court cases as well with an immunity bid. If he loses, of course, even Likud may not again be so forgiving.”

Israeli PM evacuated from rally after rocket fired from Gaza

December 26, 2019

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel said a rocket was fired from the Gaza Strip into its southern territory Wednesday, forcing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to be hustled from a stage during an election rally in the city of Ashkelon.

The Israeli military said its air defense system, known as Iron Dome, intercepted the rocket. There were no reports of casualties. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz posted a video on its website showing Netanyahu being taken to a shelter as he was campaigning hours before the primaries of his Likud party. The video showed Netanyahu and his wife slowly walking off the stage with security guards after sirens went off.

Early Thursday, Israeli fighter jets and helicopters carried out multiple strikes at three military bases for Hamas, the Islamic movement that rules Gaza, according to witnesses in Gaza. No casualties were reported as the sites have been empty.

There was no immediate comment from Israel's military. Netanyahu says he knows how to protect Israel, but opponents accuse him of being soft on handling threats from Gaza. Gideon Saar, Netanyahu’s challenger in Thursday elections, called in a Twitter statement for a “broad national consensus for dismantling the military infrastructure" of Palestinian militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

A similar incident happened in September when Netanyahu was in the nearby city of Ashdod. He was campaigning then for the second general Israeli election of the year. That was believed to have triggered Israel's targeted killing of a senior commander in the Islamic Jihad in November. Israel and Gaza militants had their worst round of fighting in months as a result.

No Palestinian group claimed responsibility for Wednesday's attack. Such sporadic launches of rockets and ensuing Israeli airstrikes have happened frequently despite an Egyptian-brokered cease-fire that ended two days of fighting in November.

Hamas seeks “understandings” with Israel to alleviate Gaza’s economic and humanitarian crises. The militant group stayed on the sidelines during the November flare-up.

Natan Sharansky receives Israel's prestigious Genesis Prize

December 10, 2019

JERUSALEM (AP) — Former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky has been awarded Israel's prestigious 2020 Genesis Prize for a lifetime of work promoting political and religious freedoms, organizers announced Tuesday.

The $1 million award is granted each year to a person recognized for outstanding professional achievement, contribution to humanity and commitment to Jewish values. Following a tradition set by previous winners, Sharansky has decided to forgo the award, and the prize money will be donated in his honor to nonprofit organizations not yet chosen, the Genesis Prize Foundation said.

In a statement, Sharansky said he was “humbled” by the award. Quoting the late President Ronald Reagan, he said, “freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. “It is not passed to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like to live when men were free,” he said.

Sharansky rose to prominence in the 1970s as a dissident in the Soviet Union, where he worked closely with the human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Andre Sakharov. He was a founding member of the Helsinki Group, which monitored rights abuses by the Soviets, and became one of the best-known “refuseniks,” Soviet Jews who were denied permission to emigrate to Israel.

In 1977, Sharansky was imprisoned on fabricated charges of spying for the United States. He spent nine years in prison, serving much of that time in solitary confinement. A former chess prodigy, Sharansky passed the days by playing chess games in his head, famously boasting that he won every match.

Sharansky was freed in a prisoner swap in 1986 after an intense international campaign led by his wife, Avital, and immediately moved to Israel. The following year, he led a demonstration in Washington where, on the eve of a visit by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, some 250,000 Jews called for an end to persecution of Soviet Jews and for the freedom for them to emigrate. Gorbachev subsequently opened the country's borders, clearing the way for an estimated 1.6 million Jews to emigrate.

In Israel, Sharansky spent over a decade as a lawmaker and Cabinet minister, promoting the integration of new immigrants into Israeli society while also taking a hard line toward the Palestinians. Sharansky has opposed making major concessions to the Palestinians and said Israel can only make peace with a democratic Palestinian entity.

Sharansky later served nine years as the chairman of the Jewish Agency, an influential nonprofit close to the Israeli government that promotes Jewish immigration to Israel and works to bolster relations between Israel and overseas Jewish communities. In that role, Sharansky attempted to broker a compromise that would have allowed liberal streams of Judaism that are popular overseas to have an egalitarian prayer area at Jerusalem's Western Wall. The plan was abandoned by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu under pressure from ultra-Orthodox allies who oppose mixed-gender prayers. Sharansky, 71, stepped down from the agency last year.

Sharansky has authored three books and received a number of prestigious recognitions, including Israel's highest award, the Israel Prize, as well as the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom and Congressional Gold Medal.

“Natan Sharansky is one of the great human rights advocates of our lifetime,” said Stan Polovets, co-founder and chairman of the Genesis Prize Foundation. “Natan’s example is an inspiration to all those struggling for democracy.”

“His values and ethics, rooted deeply in his Jewish faith, have served as his moral compass — and his life has been a beacon to so many who dream of freedom,” added former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, the first Genesis Prize winner,

The Genesis Prize was inaugurated in 2014 and is run in a partnership between the Israeli prime minister's office, the private Genesis Prize Foundation and the chairman's office of the Jewish Agency. It is funded by a $100 million endowment established by the foundation.

The award has experienced recent controversy. The 2018 winner, actress Natalie Portman, snubbed the prize ceremony because she did not want to appear to be endorsing Netanyahu. This year's winner, New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft was charged with soliciting a prostitute at a Florida massage parlor weeks after the award was announced. Several months later, Kraft was welcomed in Jerusalem for a lavish award ceremony. Sharansky is to receive his prize in June.

Previous winners also include actor Michael Douglas, violinist Itzhak Perlman and sculptor Sir Anish Kapoor. In 2018, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg received the foundation's inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award.

Kobe Bryant, daughter killed in copter crash, 7 others dead

January 27, 2020

CALABASAS, Calif. (AP) — NBA legend Kobe Bryant, his daughter and seven others were killed Sunday when their helicopter plunged into a steep hillside in dense morning fog in Southern California, his sudden death at age 41 touching off an outpouring of grief for a star whose celebrity transcended basketball.

The chopper went down in Calabasas, about 30 miles (48 kilometers) northwest of downtown Los Angeles. Authorities said nine people were aboard and presumed dead. Bryant, an all-time basketball great who spent his entire 20-year career with the Los Angeles Lakers, was among the victims, a person familiar with the situation told The Associated Press.

Bryant’s 13-year-old daughter, Gianna, also was killed, a different person familiar with the case said. Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva would not confirm the identities of the victims Sunday pending official word from the coroner.

“God bless their souls,” Villanueva said at a news conference. The cause of the crash was unknown. News of the charismatic superstar's death rocketed around the sports and entertainment worlds, with many taking to Twitter to register their shock, disbelief and anguish.

“Words can't describe the pain I am feeling. I loved Kobe — he was like a little brother to me," retired NBA great Michael Jordan said. “We used to talk often, and I will miss those conversations very much. He was a fierce competitor, one of the greats of the game and a creative force."

NBA players were in tears during pregame warm-ups as crowds chanted “Kobe! Kobe!” Tiger Woods was unaware of the news during his final round at Torrey Pines in San Diego when he started hearing the gallery yell “Do it for Mamba,” referring to Bryant by his nickname.

The medical examiner's office said specialists were working at the scene to recover the bodies, and investigators were trying to confirm identities. Federal transportation safety investigators were en route.

Bryant’s helicopter left Santa Ana shortly after 9 a.m. and circled for a time just east of Interstate 5, near Glendale. Air traffic controllers noted poor visibility around Burbank, just to the north, and Van Nuys, to the northwest.

After holding up the helicopter for other aircraft, they cleared the Sikorsky S-76 to proceed north along Interstate 5 through Burbank before turning west to follow U.S Route 101, the Ventura Highway.

Shortly after 9:40 a.m., the helicopter turned again, toward the southeast, and climbed to more than 2,000 feet above sea level. It then descended and crashed into the hillside at about 1,400 feet, according to data from Flightradar24.

When it struck the ground, the helicopter was flying at about 160 knots (184 mph) and descending at a rate of more than 4,000 feet per minute, the Flightradar24 data showed. At the time of the crash, the Los Angles County Sheriff's Department had grounded its own helicopters because of the poor weather conditions. The impact scattered debris over an area about the size of a football field, Villanueva said.

Among other things, investigators will look at the pilot's history, the chopper's maintenance history, and the records of its owner and operator, NTSB board member Jennifer Homendy said at a news conference.

Justin Green, an aviation attorney in New York who flew helicopters in the Marine Corps, said weather may have contributed to the crash. Pilots can become disoriented in low visibility, losing track of which direction is up. Green said a pilot flying an S-76 would be instrument-rated, meaning they could fly the helicopter without relying on visual cues from outside.

All around the world, people were glued to their phones and TV screens as news of the crash spread and networks broke into programming with live coverage. A visibly shaken LeBron James wiped his eyes with tissues and walked away alone from the Lakers plane that had just landed in Southern California.

Thousands of people gathered to mourn Bryant outside the Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles. Mourners in No. 24 jerseys mixed with those in fancy dress arriving at the downtown arena for Sunday evening’s Grammy Awards.

People carried flowers and chanted “Kobe!” and “MVP!” under giant video screens showing Bryant’s smiling face. “This is where we needed to be,” said Naveen Cheerath, 31. Bryant retired in 2016 as the third-leading scorer in NBA history, finishing two decades with the Lakers as a prolific shot-maker with a sublime all-around game and a relentless competitive ethic. He held that spot in the league scoring ranks until Saturday night, when the Lakers’ James passed him for third place during a game in Philadelphia, Bryant’s hometown.

“Continuing to move the game forward (at)KingJames,” Bryant wrote in his last tweet. “Much respect my brother.” Bryant had one of the greatest careers in recent NBA history and became one of the game’s most popular players as the face of the 16-time NBA champion Lakers franchise. He was the league MVP in 2008 and a two-time NBA scoring champion, and he earned 12 selections to the NBA’s All-Defensive teams.

He teamed with O’Neal in a combustible partnership to lead the Lakers to consecutive NBA titles in 2000, 2001 and 2002. His Lakers tenure was marred by scandal, when in 2003, Bryant was accused of raping a 19-year-old employee at a Colorado resort. He said the two had consensual sex, and prosecutors later dropped the felony sexual assault charge at the request of the accuser. The woman later filed a civil suit against Bryant that was settled out of court.

Bryant went on to win two more titles in 2009 and 2010, and retired in 2016 after scoring 60 points in his final NBA game. After leaving the game, Bryant had more time to play coach to daughter Gianna, who had a budding basketball career of her own and, her father said, wanted to one day play in the WNBA. They were seen sitting courtside at a Brooklyn Nets game late last year, Bryant clearly passing along his wisdom to his daughter. He regularly showcased her talents on the court on social media.

Bryant’s death was felt particularly painfully in Los Angeles, where he was unquestionably the most popular athlete and one of the city’s most beloved public figures. Hundreds of fans — many in Bryant jerseys and Lakers gear — spontaneously gathered at Staples Center and in the surrounding LA Live entertainment complex, weeping and staring at video boards with Bryant’s image.

Among those killed were John Altobelli, head coach of Southern California's Orange Coast College baseball team, his wife, Keri, and daughter, Alyssa, who played on the same team as Bryant's daughter, said his brother, Tony, who is the sports information director at the school.

The National Transportation Safety Board typically issues a preliminary report within about 10 days that will give a rough summary of what investigators have learned. A ruling on the cause can take a year or more.

Colin Storm was in his living room in Calabasas when he heard what sounded to him like a low-flying airplane or helicopter. “Ït was very foggy so we couldn’t see anything,” he said. “But then we heard some sputtering and then a boom.”

The fog cleared a bit, and Storm could see smoke rising from the hillside in front of his home. Firefighters hiked in with medical equipment and hoses, and medical personnel rappelled to the site from a helicopter, but found no survivors, Los Angeles County Fire Chief Daryl Osby said.

Associated Press writers Christopher Weber in Los Angeles, David Koenig in Dallas, Mark J. Terrill and John Antczak in Calabasas, Tim Reynolds in Miami and Michael Rubinkam in northeastern Pennsylvania contributed to this report.

Downtown Tokyo's homeless fear removal ahead of Olympics

January 23, 2020

TOKYO (AP) — Shelters made of cardboard start popping up in the basement of Tokyo's Shinjuku train station right before the shutters come down at 11 p.m., in corridors where “salarymen” rushing home and couples on late-night dates have just passed by.

Dozens of homeless people sleeping rough in such spots worry that with Japan's image at stake authorities will force them to move ahead of the Olympics. Already, security officials have warned them they will likely have to find less visible locations by the end of March.

The former laborers, clerical workers and others sleeping in cardboard boxes are a not-quite-invisible glimpse of a more pervasive but largely hidden underclass of poor in Japan, a wealthy nation seen as orderly and middle class.

Efforts to clean up what some see as urban blight have preceded every recent Olympics, including those in Beijing, London and Rio de Janeiro. Tokyo city officials deny they are moving to force the homeless out specially for the Olympics. They say trying to get them into shelters is part of an overall welfare effort to get them off the streets and find them jobs and housing.

“There is nothing more than the programs we already have in place to help the homeless,” said Emi Yaginuma, a Tokyo city official in charge of such programs. “We keep trying by making the rounds and talking to them, but all we can do is to try to persuade them.”

In theory, overnight sleeping at train stations is trespassing. In practice, the homeless have long slept in Shinjuku station and other spots. JR East, a major train company servicing Tokyo, doesn't have regulations on the homeless and employees handle situations as they come up, such as passenger complaints.

Just as the homeless arrive for the night, a public speaker overhead is warning that sleeping in the station isn't allowed. As preparations for the Olympics began years ago, homeless people camping in a park in Tokyo's Shibuya were forced out to make way for development and a soup kitchen program there was moved to another, less visible park nearby. Advocates for the homeless fear that was just the start.

Homeless people were evicted in 2016 from a park near where the New National Stadium was built, the main arena for the Olympics. Like the U.S., Japan has a relatively high poverty rate for a wealthy nation. It also is less generous with social welfare than countries in Europe, and lacks the sorts of private charities prevalent in the U.S.

Nearly 16% of Japanese fall below the poverty rate, with annual income below the cutoff of 1.2 million yen ($11,000), according to 2017 Japanese government data. The poverty rate for single-adult households with children is way higher, at 51%.

The unraveling of extended family support networks and job insecurity have left many in Japan vulnerable to setbacks that can lead to homelessness. Japan's culture of conformity leaves many, including families, ashamed to seek help.

Most of the homeless sleeping underground in Shinjuku, a glitzy shopping area fringed by red-light districts, high-rise offices and parks, are older men. Shigeyoshi Tozawa has a lacquer begging bowl with a few coins, three tiny, solar-powered toy figures with bobbing heads bought at a 100-yen ($1) store, and various bags filled with blankets, clothes and other items, including his poems.

“Last night/ dream of a future trip/ it is dark,” goes one poem. Passersby sometimes give him money for the poems, he says. “This is my community. We all help each other,” Tozawa said. “There are no dirty homeless here. We are all ‘trendy.’"

In what's clearly a routine, he and the others quietly prepare for the night, picking their favorite spots, neatly folding blankets. Some change into sleepwear and wipe their feet clean with wet towels, daintily placing their shoes beside their lopsided cardboard shelters.

Tozawa and the others are relatively well-dressed, in handout down jackets, baseball caps and camouflage sweatpants. Some have cell phones and other gadgets. Many have some money in the bank. They get by making the rounds of downtown soup kitchens run by church and volunteer charities, and other spots where they can get free rice balls or sandwiches.

Many of those sleeping rough are “working poor,” said Daisaku Seto, who works for a nonprofit for refugees and a consumers' food cooperative called Palsystem. He says some suffer psychological trauma and need training to get better-paying jobs. Once they drop into poverty, they rarely find their way back out.

“We need to come up with ways to help that empower them,” said Seto, who is a leader in a one of the leaders of a grassroots group called the Anti-Poverty Network. Yukio Takazawa, executive director of a support group for the poor in Yokohama's Kotobukicho, an area of flophouses where homeless people also tend to congregate, worries the worst is to come.

The construction boom from the Olympics will be winding down, reducing chances for odd jobs for day laborers. The younger poor, who now spend nights in Internet cafes, likely will eventually end up on the streets, said Takazawa, who has been working with the poor for 30 years.

Finding affordable housing in Tokyo is tough. Rents are high and landlords tend to be finicky. Just getting a rental contract can require six months of rent or more up front. Those unable or unwilling to get apartments camp along river banks, in parks and train stations. Welfare offices try to get people to move into shelters but many, like former construction worker Masanori Ito, resist. “They have rules,” he said, munching on sandwiches he got from a volunteer.

If he has to move, Ito said he plans to find some other warm outdoor spot. “I don't know where we will all move next,” he said.

International Swimming League expanding to Tokyo, Toronto

December 22, 2019

LAS VEGAS (AP) — The International Swimming League is expanding for its second season next year. The pro league that featured over 100 Olympians will add teams in Tokyo and Toronto, bringing the number of clubs to 10. Five will comprise the Europe-Asia group with the other five in the U.S.

The season will begin in September, a month after the Tokyo Olympics end, and run until April 2021. There will be breaks in December and March for other events on the world swimming calendar. A total of 27 matches — a minimum of 10 per club — will be held, including regular season, playoffs and the grand finale.

“If we want to be a league, we have to act like a league," said ISL managing director Andrea Di Nino, who promised an increase in prize money and the salary cap for each team. The ISL held six meets in its first season and staged its grand finale in Las Vegas, where the expansion was announced Saturday. Europe-based Energy Standard won the championship and its 28 members split $100,000.

The 3,800-seat Mandalay Bay Events Center wasn't filled either day, although there were noticeably more people on Saturday for the music and spotlight-filled event featuring finals only over two hours.

“It was a great show for everybody," said Di Nino, who was open to the possibility of returning to Vegas for the finale. “Next year is going to be even better. Of course, we're looking to improve and look at our mistakes."

Retired four-time Olympic gold medalist Kosuke Kitajima will represent the Tokyo entry, which has yet to be named. “I'm very happy to be given this big opportunity for swimming," Kitajima, who attended the finale, said through a translator. “When I was first approached about this opportunity I was very happy, but I was thinking why didn't you come to me in the beginning. I hope a lot of Japanese swimmers will be able to participate."

Daiya Seto was the only Japanese swimmer who competed in the ISL’s first season, and he only swam the finale for winning Energy Standard. He set a world short-course record in the 400-meter individual medley on Friday, which was streamed live in Japan.

“Japan is one of the world’s leading swimming nations with a large fan base, so we expect to see a very competitive team be developed there and many fans excited to learn of our plans," ISL founder Konstantin Grigorishin said in a statement.

Robert Kent, an investment banker and former swimmer, will head the Toronto entry, which also has yet to be named. Thirteen Canadian swimmers competed in the ISL this year, including Olympic gold medalist Penny Oleksiak and two-time world champion Kylie Masse. CBC Sports offered broadcast and live streaming coverage throughout the season.

Tokyo and Toronto will join Europe-based Aqua Centurions, Energy Standard, Iron and London Roar, along with Cali Condors, DC Trident, LA Current and NY Breakers in the U.S.

Police, protesters clash outside Barcelona-Real Madrid game

December 18, 2019

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Riot police clashed with protesters in the streets Wednesday night outside a soccer match between Barcelona and Real Madrid, as authorities sought to keep Catalonia's separatist movement from disrupting the game viewed by 650 million people worldwide.

The match in Barcelona's Camp Nou stadium began without incident and was halted only briefly when some fans threw balls onto the field bearing a message for the Spanish government to open a dialogue with the separatists.

The game, which drew nearly 100,000 spectators, ended in a scoreless draw. Thousands of police and private security guards were deployed in and around stadium. In the street clashes, riot police used batons to force the crowd back, some threw objects at officers lined up behind shields and other protesters fought among themselves. Authorities said nine people had been arrested, and Spain's national news agency Efe reported that 12 were injured.

At least four plastic trash cans were set on fire, and a smell of smoke wafted into the Camp Nou. When the game ended, fans were directed to leave on the stadium's south side to avoid the clashes outside.

The separatists sought to promote their independence bid by using the media coverage of the game between Barcelona, the Spanish league leader, and its fierce rival Real Madrid. Known as El Clásico, the game was postponed from Oct. 26 amid violent protests by the separatists.

As crowds entered Europe's largest soccer stadium Wednesday night, security guards confiscated masks of Barcelona's Argentine star Lionel Messi from supporters, apparently to ensure they could be identified on closed-circuit cameras if they broke the law.

As the game began, some fans held up blue signs saying 'Spain, Sit and Talk" and “FREEDOM.” Others chanted, in Catalan, “Freedom for the Political Prisoners.” Those messages referred to the Spanish government's refusal to discuss the wealthy northeastern region's independence, as well as the recent imprisonment of nine of the movement’s leaders convicted for their roles in a failed 2017 secession bid.

A shadowy online group called Tsunami Democratic, which was behind the protest, had posted a message on social media saying: “Hello, world! Tonight Tsunami has a message for you.” Protest organizers said over 25,000 people signed up to demonstrate near the stadium in Barcelona, Catalonia's capital, although it was hard to distinguish between protesters and fans.

There was a festive atmosphere before the game, though some protesters briefly blocked main roads to the stadium. The Barcelona team asked its fans to behave with civility and not to affect the match.

Francisco Sánchez, a 60-year-old mechanic, was outside Camp Nou hours before the match. He did not have a ticket, but was one of several protesters who distributed small blue banners with the message urging Spain to begin a dialogue.

“I hope this movement will make our leaders realize that they have to lay off the law and start taking," he said. "This can’t be solved with violence, but through words.” Miguel Ángel Giménez, a 42-year-old policeman in a Barcelona shirt and scarf, drove with a friend over 700 kilometers (430 miles) from the southern region of Murcia to attend the match.

“Our friends back home told us we were crazy to cross half of Spain to go to a game that might not be played,” he said, adding that “everything is quite calm. There is lots of security.” The U.S. Consulate in Barcelona advised people to avoid the area or use caution if near it.

Henrik Noerrelund, a 55-year-old electrician from Denmark, flew in with his wife to attend his first Barcelona match after a lifetime supporting the club. “In my parts, they used to say politics and football don´t mix, but today you have to accept it,” Noerrelund said. “It’s there, you cannot separate it, you have seen it for many years, and I don’t think they can manage to separate it and just play football.”

Separatist sentiment grew sharply in Catalonia during the global recession that hit Spain hard. The 7.5 million residents of Catalonia are about equally divided by the secession question, according to polls and election results.

Separatists have used the Camp Nou stadium as a protest platform for years. They shout “Independence!” at a set time during matches and sometimes unfurl banners. The Barcelona team has walked a fine line between supporting its fans' right to free expression and aligning itself with the greater interests of Catalonia. Many feel it does not fully support secession so as not to anger its Catalan fans who are not separatists or its millions of supporters across Spain.

With its slogan "More than a club,” it presents itself as a Catalan institution, aligned with the region’s proud cultural traditions and language, which is spoken along with Spanish in the semi-autonomous region.

Its rivalry with Real Madrid has a decades-old political undercurrent, with many Catalans seeing the capital's team as a symbol of domineering, central power and a hallmark of Spanish unity and authority.

Madrid supporters, in turn, see Barcelona as representing a traitorous region that wants to break up Spain. For many years, some Barcelona fans held up a massive banner at games that read “Catalonia is not Spain.”

Players from both teams usually get along. The Spanish national team that won the 2010 World Cup and two European Championships was packed with players from both sides. Security is always high whenever they play — just like at many soccer matches between fierce rivals — but there is no history of violence at the games.

Tsunami Democratic carried out its first major action in October when it organized a large protest after several of the secession movement's leaders were sentenced to jail for their role in a failed secession bid in 2017.

A call by Tsunami Democratic led to thousands of angry protesters gathering at Barcelona’s airpor t. A street battle broke out between the most radical protesters and police inside and outside the terminal, and about 150 flights were canceled as ground transport was halted for hours. Protests by separatists left more than 500 people injured, half of them police.

Hatton reported from Lisbon, Portugal. Associated Press writers Joseph Wilson in Barcelona and Ciaran Giles in Madrid contributed.