Apple might be building a burgeoning media empire on top of its long-running hardware business, but the iPhone maker seems to be ramping up its AI efforts, too.
Former Google AI researcher Ian Goodfellow has left the search engine giant in favor of Apple, as first noted by CNBC. It was all but certain thanks to an update on Goodfellow's LinkedIn page, but Google separately confirmed it to CNBC.
Apple brought in another high-profile Google AI executive in John Giannandrea a year ago.
Goodfellow spent two years at Google as an AI research scientist, but his new title at Apple is director of machine learning for Apple's special projects group. There are plenty of possibilities for what Goodfellow will work on at Apple, of course. Siri immediately comes to mind as the most visibly AI-driven thing Apple makes, and the virtual assistant could always use more improvements. Read more...
Ahead of its earnings report later this month, the South Korean electronics giant shared earnings guidance for operating profit in the first quarter of 2019 — and it doesn't look good.
Samsung says it expects operating profit for the quarter to total 6.2 trillion Korean won ($5.5 billion) — a 60 percent drop compared to the 15.64 trillion won ($13.75 billion) profit it raked in during the same period in 2018.
Samsung says a number of reasons contributed to its reduced profit, including decreased demand for memory chips for data centers from Amazon and fewer orders for storage chips for iPhones from Apple. Read more...
Tulipán, an Argentinian sex toy and condom brand, created a condom packaging that allegedly requires four hands to be opened. The packaging is part of the company's initiative to promote consent in sexual relationships.
Mashable tried to simulate the process of opening the package and it looks like one would probably be able to singlehandedly achieve this.
Although the efforts are appreciated, the condom does not prevent assault and it's not accessible to people with certain disabilities. Read more...
My biggest pet peeve is when people don't take the time to learn how to pronounce other people's names, which is why I appreciated a recent segment on the Ellen DeGeneres Show from comedian Hasan Minhaj.
Just a few seconds in, DeGeneres mispronounces his name, and Minhaj corrects her — making the audience laugh along the way. The moment teaches viewers why it's so important to spend the time and effort to avoid mispronunciations.
"If you can pronounce Ansel Elgort, you can pronounce Hasan Minhaj," he says.
Later on, he jokes that he uses the name Timothée Chalamet for his Starbucks orders. Read more...
Top specs • Battery lasts for ages • The best smartphone camera
The Bad
Screen resolution lower than that of competitors • Not the most original look
The Bottom Line
Huawei's P30 Pro has a camera that trumps the competition in numerous ways, and the rest of the phone is great as well.
⚡ Mashable Score4.5
😎 Cool Factor4.0
📘Learning Curve3.5
💪Performance5.0
💵 Bang for the Buck4.5
Smartphone cameras have become great in the last decade, but there are still some things they can't do. In fact, I bet these shortcomings have unconsciously trained many of us to avoid taking photos in certain situations: dimly lit restaurants, starry skies, a squirrel sitting in a tree — why bother taking a photo if you know the shot is going to look like crap? Read more...
It seems Apple has been scammed by a couple of students, but it doesn't look likely to end well for them.
As The Oregonian reports, Yangyang Zhou and Quan Jiang are Chinese students who were studying engineering at Oregon State University and Linn Benton Community College on student visas. However, outside of classes they were busy importing smartphones from Hong Kong, which turned out to be fake iPhones.
The duo then sent each fake iPhone back to Apple, either by mail or in person, stating they were faulty and wouldn't power on. Apple sent them a brand new, legitimate iPhone as part of its warranty process. Each of those new phones was then shipped overseas and sold for a healthy profit, with a share being sent to Jiang's mother who then transferred it to Jiang's bank account. According to The Verge, the two students were so successful at this scam, which they started back in 2017, it has cost Apple $895,800 in new iPhones $999.99 at Verizon Wireless. Read more...
Searching for ways to reduce your waste output and carbon footprint? Well, one of the best places to start is to get a reusable thermos for all of your beverages — but we have something even better than that thanks to Hamilton Beach.
The Hamilton Beach Personal Blender is on a slight discount on Amazon right now ($3.50 off) — it’s a very handy device to have at your disposal and will save you a ton of time.
This 14-ounce blender/travel mug combo makes delicious smoothies and other icy drinks for when you’re on the go — and you can sip right out of it. Just add your ingredients, hit blend, and take the whole blender with you for your enjoyment. The blender’s petite size makes it a perfect accessory to chuck in your bag, keep at your office, or even just leave it in the kitchen for when you need it. Even storage is simple with its included cord wrap, and the whole thing is dishwasher safe for no-fuss cleaning. It's the kitchen appliance you never knew you needed. Read more...
If your dentist consistently tells you that your gums are bleeding because you don’t floss, take that as a sign to finally make a change. Yeah, flossing is a pain and honestly kind of gross, but that’s why water flossing exists. It’s more sanitary and it cleans your teeth better than traditional flossing.
Up your oral hygiene game by brushing your pearly whites with the Waterpik sonic toothbrush followed by a run-through with the water flosser. This routine is proven to be up to 50% more effective for improving gum health than string flossing and removes up to 99.9% of plaque. Read more...
It doesn't matter how cynical you are online; videos of musicians inviting people onstage are still wholesome and good.
Michael Bublé participated in this pleasant genre on Wednesday night, when he played a show at Oracle Arena in Oakland, California. Midway through the show, he handed the mic to one of the venue's security officers, who sang "At Last" so perfectly that the whole thing truly appears pre-planned. (According to one of the woman's co-workers, it was not pre-planned.)
All of us have that list of big purchases that we'd like to make once our budget allows it: A new TV, new laptop, new tablet, or new gaming console are likely among your inspirations to not order Uber Eats for the third time this week.
The only thing harder than saving up may simply be choosing which item you need the most right now.
Here's a deal to cross off two things in one purchase: This Walmart bundle includes a 55-inch LG OLED TV and an Xbox One S together for $1,496.99. For reference, this TV alone is originally $2,299 and on sale for $1,499 on LG's site — so that's a savings of $800 on the TV, plus the $200-ish that an Xbox One S goes for. Read more...
Welcome to "Westeros World," land of synthetic dragons.
Pulling different aspects from the opening sequences of both "Game of Thrones" and "Westworld," Gilles Augustijnen made an intro for "Westeros World." The Berlin-based artist used his spare time to birth this fascinatingly accurate clip over the span of eight months.
Augustijnen was inspired by Brandon Chapman, a composer who made a mashup of the theme music from both shows. Augustijnen uses Chapman's score in his conceptual intro, making it feel even more real.
While "Westeros World" isn't a real show, this intro could definitely serve as inspiration for anyone trying to bridge the gap between Westeros and "Westworld." Read more...
We all want homes that are safe and secure. Yet, according to the real estate listings we definitely skimmed, fortress inventory is at an all-time low. Additionally, the landscape architect we totally interviewed informed us that moats haven’t been en vogue since the Middle Ages. Fortunately, we remembered that we live in the 21st century and have access to some remarkable technology including home security cameras. Read more...
Robot vacuums are a hot item right now and although they could obviously make your life 100 times easier, there's a hard part to the process: picking the right one.
With so many brands, features, and app capabilities out there, deciding which vacuum you're going to drop a hefty load of cash on can be overwhelming. No worries. We hate cleaning just as much as you do and have laid out a simple, comprehensive list of all your best options, sorted by price. Read more...
If you're looking to do something to benefit your health, juicing could be a great place to start. A fresh juice allows you to get the most out of your fruits and vegetables, extracting vitamins and nutrients that would otherwise be depleted through other cooking methods. Not to mention, of course, they can be delicious and refreshing. Read more...
Wellness is a buzzy word lately. Over the past few years, we’ve seen a surge in all things health, wellness, and spirituality. Juice bars are popping up, boutique studios are becoming more accessible, and essential oils are chilling all of us out. Self-care is becoming more of the norm too, but amidst all this hype, it can be challenging to find the right routine that promotes good exercise, sleep, vitals, and mindset. Read more...
Nintendo is bringing two of its biggest games on the Nintendo Switch into virtual reality: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odyssey.
With the release of Nintendo's Labo VR Kit approaching, Nintendo revealed updates Thursday for Breath of the Wild and Mario Odyssey that make them VR-compatible with the help of the Toy-Con VR Goggles.
— Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) April 5, 2019
For Super Mario Odyssey, there will be a new, "bite-sized" VR experience for players to check out, which looks like it will be weave through a handful of different kingdoms in the game. Read more...
Airpods are great and all (seriously, we *really* like them), but there’s one thing about them that just doesn’t mesh well with high-octane activities: Sometimes they fall out, never to be found again. The chances of this happening go way up when you’re working out, so maybe it’s time for you to get another pair that’s reserved specifically for your fitness regimen.
Bose's SoundSport Wireless headphones are now $30 off on Amazon — you can get them for just $119 instead of their usual $149 price tag.
Let’s get the most important part out of the way: These things are designed to stay put in your ears — and that’s exactly what they do. Go on runs, lift weights, and whatever else you do to stay in shape without even thinking about losing your headphones (oh, and they’re really comfortable). Thanks to Bose active EQ, you’ll get a balanced, high-fidelity audio experience at any volume. They connect to your wireless device quickly, and maintain a strong connection throughout usage. As another added plus, they are sweat- and weather-resistant — raining on your jogging route? Don’t sweat it (see what we did there?). Read more...
There is something that all contract deals have in common. If you commit for a longer period, the monthly rate you pay will be less. This goes for dating sites, smartphones, VPNs, and pretty much everything else.
It makes sense when you think about it. If you have made a longer commitment to a service, you deserve to pay a reduced monthly rate. But what if you don't want to commit to one service for years and years? Is it still possible to get a great deal on a VPN if you only want a one-year plan? It is with PureVPN.
You can now save £6.14 a month on PureVPN's annual plan. The price has dropped by a massive 73% to just £2.27 a month. This comes with a generous 31-day money-back guarantee, so you can back out if you're not convinced. Read more...
This Cuisinart has seven different functions: Air fry, convection bake, convection broil, bake, broil, warm, and toast. It does so much that you probably won’t want to use your actual oven for a while.
The Air Fryer Toaster Oven can toast six slices of bread, air fry three pounds of chicken wings, bake a 12-inch pizza, or roast a four-pound chicken — yet it’s small enough to fit easily on your countertop. Read more...
There are few arcs in Game of Thrones that fall anything short of epic, but one of the most pivotal and gripping by far is the story of Rhaegar Targaryen and Lyanna Stark.
The link between this then-prince of Westeros and young lady of Winterfell was the scandal of a century, but also a relationship that managed to entirely destabilize the seven kingdoms and whose ripples still affect every character to this day.
In honor of Game of Thrones Season 8 and the undoubtedly critical role of Rhaegar and Lyanna's legacy, we look back on the connection that changed Westeros forever.
How does on demand, hands-free, ad-free, and unlimited access to your favourite songs for free sound? Pretty good, right? Well you can now get three months of Amazon Music Unlimited for absolutely nothing in the Amazon Spring Sale, if you know how.
Until April 19, any new customer to Amazon Music Unlimited can get a three-month subscription to the service for free. There are some terms and conditions, that we'll go into, but that's the gist of the deal. Three months for free. What's not to love?
It couldn't be easier to get started. Simply follow the link, log in to your Amazon.co.uk account, check that "Individual plan" is selected, and click "Start your free trial - pay later". You'll get a 30-day free trial to start with, and then you'll receive full discounts in months two and three. Read more...
Girl, we get it. Beto's easy on the eyes, he skateboards in Whataburger parking lots, writes public diaries in the form of Medium posts, and was in a punk band. He's a Hot Dad, if you will. But that's just it — he's a dad! Running for president! He cannot be your prom date.
Fox News contributor Lawrence Jones was at the center of a Twitter roasting on Thursday after he shared a photo of himself wearing a teeny protective vest while preparing for a live shot at the U.S.-Mexico border in Laredo, Texas.
A few other journalists shared their own photos reporting from the border without the need for protections from a shootout, questioning if Jones' choice was necessary or for optics. Read more...
If you are the creative type, then it's important to give your talents the opportunity to shine. What a shame it would be to hide your creativity away where nobody can see it.
It's all well and good saying this, but the practicality of actually letting your creativity out isn't that easy. Becoming a graffiti artist might come with a bit of street cred, but it's probably better to steer clear of something illegal.
There is another way. With a Adobe Creative Cloud: All Apps plan, you get access to the entire collection of over 20 creative desktop and mobile apps including Photoshop, Illustrator, and Adobe XD. The plan also includes 100GB of cloud storage, your own portfolio website, premium fonts, and social media tools. If that's not enough, then up to 10TB of cloud storage is available. Read more...
Maybe it's our primal monkey brains, but we humans sure do love watching things get smooshed, stretched, squashed, and cut in half.
After all, that's how why we have an entire corner of the internet exclusively dedicated to things like hydraulic press videos and water jets slicing through everyday objects. We're just suckers for anything aesthetically satisfying.
But it's also the nature of human brain-weirdness to collectively respond to colorful inanimate objects by thinking "ooh, a snack!"
This was certainly Twitter's response to the colorfully complex and weird world of golf ball interiors. Read more...
You might be wondering what that strange light is that's coming through the window. Or what that unfamilar warm sensation is on your back. It's all down to the sun, that's back again after going missing for the last six months.
Spring is here and we can finally think about leaving the house without looking like we're about to tackle Mount Everest. We can also profit from a bunch of deals released in Amazon's Spring Sale.
Amazon has launched its HP Spring sale, with the chance to save up to £200 on a wide range of everyday, gaming, and premium laptops. You can pick up a HP Pavilion, HP OMEN, HP ENVY, HP Spectre, and more at reduced prices while stocks last. Read more...
Ah the weekend. Time to catch up on sleep, spend time with friends, and first and foremost, grab a great deal on the latest Apple and Huawei handsets.
Online smartphone retailer Mobiles.co.uk clearly knows how we best like to spend our free time, and has announced some new money-saving tariffs just in time for the weekend. These include massive data allowances on the latest iPhone range, and low-cost line-rentals on the recently released Huawei P30.
Don't hang though if you fancy bagging a deal, because these limited time offers can only be found onsite until April 8 — while stocks last. These are the best deals from Mobiles.co.uk for the weekend: Read more...
We don't know about you, but we always make sure to keep up to speed with all the latest tax news. There's nothing we find more thrilling than tax. Straight up.
OK, tax might not be the most glamorous subject in the world, but it is important. The UK has now moved into a new era of digital tax collection, as its system for automated payment of value added tax has officially been switched on. Not thrilling, but essential information.
Doing your taxes can be confusing at the best of times, and a completely draining drag at the best of times. There are services out there that can make it a little easier though, especially now that the UK has switched to a digital system. Read more...
Happy Friday. How better to spend your weekend, than playing board games for hours on endAmazon has the Azul board game for only $22.85 for a limited time. With Easter just around the corner, it's not a bad idea to stock up on some new board games to entertain your friends and family.
To the extent one can believe nature documentaries have spoilers, the following review is spoiler-free.
From flocks of birds to colonies of ants, big group shots are a staple in most nature documentaries.
Meticulously filmed and explained, these scenes often depict some massive group of animals — occasionally in tandem with another massive group of animals — working to accomplish a monstrous task that's somehow critical to their survival. Think a pack of wolves cooperatively hunting down prey or a family of beavers collecting materials to build a dam.
Netflix's Our Planet, a new series narrated by genre icon David Attenborough, is no exception to this rule. Throughout its eight episodes as it explores eight ecosystems, Our Planet investigates the many ways various species work together to overcome obstacles and survive in our mistreated and increasingly inhospitable world. Read more...
Ten years ago, the tax agency formed a special team to unravel the complex tax-lowering strategies of the nation's wealthiest people. But with big money — and Congress — arrayed against the team, it never had a chance.
Terry Gilliam's "The Man Who Killed Don Quixote" is reaching screens after 30 years, several cast changes and a flash flood. Those who were there at the start look back.
Control Center by Caavo is the first universal remote designed to simplify everything connected to your TV. Just say what you want to do or watch and Control Center's sophisticated A.I. technology does the rest.
Jotham Dyble manages tree plantations, which means he occasionally runs into some wildlife. Luckily, he had his dog with him when he ran into a feisty cougar — which Dyble eventually had to hit with a stick to make it leave.
The Burger King in Mattoon, Illinois isn't affiliated at all with the fast-food chain and is the one restaurant in the US with a trademark that Burger King's parent company has been unable to wrest away.
Forget your standard duffel bag: this Kodiak Leather Weekender Duffel Bag is made from high quality leather construction, helping you stand out whether you're traveling for a long weekend or taking a trip overseas.
Q is meant to "end gender bias" by disrupting the association between female voices and servitude. But its solution to both, in effect, is to insert a "neutral" voice into a position of total passivity.
Control Center by Caavo is the first universal remote designed to simplify everything connected to your TV. Just say what you want to do or watch and Control Center's sophisticated A.I. technology does the rest.
My friends raved about this peculiar beverage but, a small-town kid, I couldn't understand the allure. Eventually, when my workload at university grew, it became my comfort drink.
Abigail Disney, 59, is an activist and Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker. She is also the granddaughter of Roy O. Disney, making her an heiress to the Disney family fortune (she declines to say how much she inherited, but has given away over $70 million since she turned 21).
2019 represents the 40th anniversary year for Coppola's all-time war epic, "Apocalypse Now," and to celebrate the occasion, Coppola has apparently committed himself toward a task he's already taken on once before.
Edmond-Vargas and Charles Berry started developing curriculum in 2013 to educate other incarcerated men on how their lives have been affected by patriarchy and toxic masculinity. The full program, which launched February of 2014 under the name Success Stories, includes a variety of intersectional feminist texts with a focus on bell hooks.
While these two dudes were amped about the situation, we're glad they made their way out. Had they hung around any longer, we're afraid that it could have started to look a like what happened to those Thai teenagers, or worse.
When Lina Hidalgo was elected Harris County judge in November, many scoffed at her unexpected victory. Now she's on a mission to prove that her progressive agenda is just what Houston needs.
The patient lying on the emergency room table in front of Paul Pugsley was having a stroke. Time was running out. But when Pugsley looked over at the computer screen at the side of the room, he saw a pop-up message demanding bitcoin payment.
The trailer for this latest version gave away a big change to the story — but few great adaptations are completely faithful. Here's what critics think.
The Beatle loved Monty Python so much, he set up HandMade Films to make "Life of Brian" — and rehabilitated the UK movie industry. But the studio's fun couldn't last.
In a far-reaching email chain within Microsoft, women have shared stories of sexual harassment and discrimination, gaining notice from the company's senior leadership team, according to more than 90 pages of emails reviewed by Quartz.
Invited witnesses include Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan, Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Joseph Dunford and the commander of U.S. Strategic Command Gen. John Hyten.
WASHINGTON — Top defense civilian and military leaders have been asked to testify next week in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee about President Trump's proposal to establish a Space Force as a separate military service.
Committee Chairman Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) and Ranking Member Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) on Thursday announced there will be a full committee hearing on April 11 to examine the proposal.
The SASC is the toughest audience that Space Force proponents will have faced thus far. While the House Armed Services Committee has been critical of the proposal, it appears more likely to support at least a modified version of the administration's plan. Many HASC members in 2017 voted to create a Space Corps in the fiscal year 2018 National Defense Authorization Act. The SASC, however, rejected the proposal and it was removed from the NDAA.
Trump said he wants the Space Force to be authorized in the fiscal year 2020 NDAA.
Image: China's President Xi Jinping (C) attends the bilateral meeting with President of Botswana Mokgweetsi Masisi (not pictured) at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China, 31 August 2018. Roman Pilipey/Pool via Reuters
Two years ago, Indonesian President Joko Widodo -- also known as Jokowi -- stood shoulder to shoulder with Xi Jinping for a group photo to celebrate the Chinese leader's Belt and Road project.
Yet now, as Jokowi seeks re-election, he appears to be distancing himself from Beijing and downplaying the importance of Chinese-funded projects in Indonesia.
It's a pattern emerging across southeast Asia and beyond, and one that will be of great concern for Beijing as Chinese investment and ties become an awkward -- if not downright toxic -- election issue.
The growing skepticism over Xi's signature Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) risks exacerbating existing tensions many countries in the region have with Beijing over territorial disputes, as both China and the US continue to jockey for power amid a drawn-out trade war.
WNU Editor: Tens years ago anti-Chinese sentiment in Asia was isolated to only a few countries. Today .... China does not have many friends in Asia, and anti-Chinese sentiment has become more intense, especially among those who have a border dispute with Beijing.
Riyadh has so far resisted international watchdog's requests to accept a strict inspection regime
Saudi Arabia is within months of completing its first nuclear reactor, new satellite images show, but it has yet to show any readiness to abide by safeguards that would prevent it making a bomb.
The reactor site is in the King Abdulaziz city for science and technology on the outskirts of Riyadh. The site was identified by Robert Kelley, a former director for nuclear inspections at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), who said it was very small 30-kilowatt research reactor, not far from completion.
FILE PHOTO: An oil tanker is being loaded at Saudi Aramco's Ras Tanura oil refinery and oil terminal in Saudi Arabia May 21, 2018. REUTERS/Ahmed Jadallah
LONDON/DUBAI (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia is threatening to sell its oil in currencies other than the dollar if Washington passes a bill exposing OPEC members to U.S. antitrust lawsuits, three sources familiar with Saudi energy policy said.
They said the option had been discussed internally by senior Saudi energy officials in recent months. Two of the sources said the plan had been discussed with OPEC members and one source briefed on Saudi oil policy said Riyadh had also communicated the threat to senior U.S. energy officials.
The chances of the U.S. bill known as NOPEC coming into force are slim and Saudi Arabia would be unlikely to follow through, but the fact Riyadh is considering such a drastic step is a sign of the kingdom's annoyance about potential U.S. legal challenges to OPEC.
BREAKING: A high level source within the Ecuadorian state has told @WikiLeaks that Julian Assange will be expelled within "hours to days" using the #INAPapers offshore scandal as a pretext--and that it already has an agreement with the UK for his arrest.https://t.co/adnJph79wq
"As we pause to recognize the important contribution of the alliance, we also remember and commit to never forget the courage, sacrifice and commitment of those who have preceded us."
AFP graphic showing the leading causes of death for men and women according to the World Health Organisation's annual World Health Statistics report@AFPgraphicspic.twitter.com/Foh3X1oaxd
Keanu Reeves doesn't fuck around when it comes to training. For the last several years, there's been a steady trickle of behind-the-scenes clips showing how the actor went from playing space cadets who only seem to know how to look confused and say "whoa" to a bespoke-suited murder machine who once killed a man using just a pencil.
Now, thanks to Vigilance Elite, we can see what new tricks Reeves has up his sleeves when John Wick Chapter 3: Parabellum premieres on May 17.
Trucks wait in a long queue at border customs control to cross into the U.S, caused by the redeployment of border officers to deal with a surge in migrants, at the Otay border crossing in Tijuana, Mexico April 3, 2019. REUTERS/Carlos Jasso
The fortress-like facility that holds nuclear material and high explosives wasn't designed to take the quakes the land it sits on can dole out.
One of the most important and high-security facilities in the Department Of Energy's sprawling nuclear infrastructure portfolio could be a radiation hazard just waiting to occur according to the Chairman of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board.
The fortress-like Device Assembly Facility (DAF) sits about 60 miles northwest of Las Vegas within the highly-security Nevada National Security Site (NNSS)—previously called the Nevada Test Site—near Yucca Dry Lake.
WNU Editor: It is in the desert far away from a civilian population. I guess that is their way to address the safety issues on what may happen if the facility is seriously damaged..
MANILA (Reuters) - Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte told China on Thursday to "lay off" an island occupied by Manila in the disputed South China Sea and said he would deploy his soldiers there if Beijing touches it.
Duterte's remarks, which he said was not a warning but rather a word of advice to a friend, follow a statement made by the foreign affairs ministry calling the presence of more than 200 Chinese fishing boats near Thitu island illegal.
"I will not plead or beg, but I am just telling you that lay off the Pagasa because I have soldiers there. If you touch it, that's a different story. I will tell the soldiers 'prepare for suicide mission'," Duterte said in a speech, using the local name for Thitu.
Duterte has repeatedly said he would not go to war with China because it would be suicide.
BREAKING: A high level source within the Ecuadorian state has told @WikiLeaks that Julian Assange will be expelled within "hours to days" using the #INAPapers offshore scandal as a pretext--and that it already has an agreement with the UK for his arrest.https://t.co/adnJph79wq
A Twitter account for WikiLeaks, the document trove website website founded by Julian Assange, said Thursday that Assange will be ousted from his sanctuary at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London within "hours to days."
The website tweeted Thursday claiming that a senior source with Ecuador's State Department had informed WikiLeaks that Assange would be removed from the embassy and subject to arrest by British authorities.
* A woman was able to bluff her way into Mar-a-Lago on Saturday while carrying four cellphones, a hard drive, and a thumb drive containing malware. * Yujing Zhang passed Secret Service physical checks and proceeded into the property because Mar-a-Lago staff mistakenly thought she was the daughter of a member who shared her last name. * The FBI is now reportedly investigating whether she is a Chinese spy. * The episode has also exposed flaws in Mar-a-Lago's security system. The Secret Service issued a rare statement on Tuesday saying that it "does not determine who is invited or welcome at Mar-a-Lago; this is the responsibility of the host entity."
The arrest of a woman who hoodwinked her way into President Donald Trump's Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, with a thumb drive containing "malicious malware" over the weekend has exposed flaws in the club's security system, as the FBI reportedly launches an investigation into whether she is a Chinese spy.
The woman, identified as 32-year-old Yujing Zhang, entered the resort on Saturday after showing two Taiwanese passports to Secret Service agents and telling them she was a club member trying to use the pool, Secret Service Agent Samuel Ivanovich said in a Saturday court filing.
About a month ago, while campaigning for Turkey's March 31 local polls, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan stressed that "separating domestic and foreign policy is impossible" and that "domestic policy shapes foreign policy anywhere in the world." In further remarks at the March 2 rally in Trabzon, he said, "The more our country grew stronger at home, the more it grew stronger and gained respect abroad over the past 17 years. The more the Turkish economy grew, the more influence Turkish diplomats gained. The more Turkish democracy advanced, the more Turkey's say in foreign affairs increased."
TRIPOLI/BENGHAZI (Reuters) - Eastern Libyan commander Khalifa Haftar ordered his troops on Thursday to march to the capital Tripoli, taking his conflict with the internationally recognized government to a dangerous new level.
Shortly after the announcement, his forces moved on the capital from several sides, an eastern official said, making it from the south as close as al-Heira and Gharyan, two mountainous areas some 80 km (49.7 miles) south of the capital despite its force getting attacked in an air strike.
The developments mark a dramatic escalation of a power tussle that has dragged on in Libya since the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.
Health System Has Collapsed, Widespread Food Shortages
(Washington, D.C.) – The combination of severe medicine and food shortages within Venezuela, together with the spread of disease across the country's borders, amounts to a complex humanitarian emergency that requires a full-scale response by the United Nations secretary-general, researchers from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The Venezuelan authorities during the presidency of Nicolás Maduro have proven unable to stem the crisis, and have in fact exacerbated it through their efforts to suppress information about the scale and urgency of the problems.
The two leaders reportedly discussed events in Syria just days before Netanyahu runs for re-election.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in Moscow on Thursday for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, five days before parliamentary elections are due to begin in Israel.
The vote is largely seen as a referendum on Netanyahu, who has campaigned on his foreign policy prowess and relations with world leaders.
The trip to Moscow, made at Netanyahu's request, came a week after a visit to Washington where he met US President Donald Trump at the White House.
Yemeni soldiers stand on their position on a mountain on the frontline of fighting with Houthis in Nihem area, near Sanaa, Yemen, January 27, 2018. Photo by Faisal Al Nasser/Reuters
House voted 247-175 to send the resolution to Trump's desk, where it is likely to be met with a veto.
Congress has given final approval on a resolution to end American military assistance for Saudi Arabia's war in Yemen, in an unprecedented attempt to curtail the president's power to go to war and a sweeping rebuke to Donald Trump's foreign policy.
The House voted 247 to 175 to send the resolution to the president's desk, where it is likely to be met with a veto. Sixteen Republicans broke ranks and joined Democrats in the effort. The Senate passed the resolution last month, with seven Republicans voting in favor of it.
The resolution's passage sets up another confrontation between Congress and Trump, who has already threatened to veto it. The White House has said the resolution raises "serious constitutional concerns".
* Libya's eastern military leader orders his forces to march into Tripoli, the seat of a rival United Nations-recognized government. * "Those who lay down their weapons are safe, and those who raise the white banner are safe," Haftar says. * General Khalifa Haftar holds the nation's eastern oil terminals and his forces have moved south recently to secure Libya's oil fields.
Libya's eastern military leader has ordered his forces to march on Tripoli, sparking concerns that open war could soon break out between the main political factions in a key oil-producing nation.
The OPEC member state has been riven by conflict since the fall of dictator Muammar Qaddafi in 2011. For much of that time, General Khalifa Haftar has held the country's east, drawing support from Egypt and the United Arab Emirates and serving as a foil to the United Nations-recognized government in the capital of Tripoli.
Trump and Kim Yong Chol pose in the Oval Office after Trump accepted the letter. Trump told reporters afterwards that it was a 'nice letter' but then said he hadn't yet read it
WNU Editor: As this blog predicted after the failure of the Hanoi summit with U.S. President Trump, Kim Kong-un is getting rid of his top negotiators .... Report: Top negotiator Kim Yong Chol 'out' in North Korea (UPI). With the exception of his sister, expect a lot of new faces in the next South - North Korean summit, and in talks with U.S. officials in the future.
An official survey on the extent of economic hardship that Russians currently face — including their inability to afford new shoes — has left the Kremlin scratching its head.
An extensive State Statistics Service, or Rosstat, survey said that four-fifths of Russian families had a hard time making ends meet — and one-third of households could not afford to buy a second pair of shoes.
"Why shoes? Why one-third? Where are these figures from?" Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov asked reporters on a conference call, BBC reported on Wednesday.
WNU Editor: Truth be known. Russians, like many in the West, live paycheck to paycheck. But in comparison to the past, IMHO, the standard of living for most Russians has improved dramatically when compared to the time of the Soviet Union.
Debt has been rising around the world and according to a new report, the trend is unlikely to stop anytime soon. Some African countries are so indebted that they don't even bother trying to service their debt anymore.
The "Debt Report 2019," presented by Jubilee Germany in Berlin on Wednesday, paints a dark picture of global debt. The organization, which is comprised of civic and church groups, is engaged in efforts to end the problem.
The report claims that low interest rates and cheap credit are motivating poorer countries to borrow beyond their means, catching them in a debt trap they will never be able to escape from.
The rise of China is one of the greatest challenges that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) will face in the coming decades, Vice President Mike Pence said Wednesday during an event to mark the 70th anniversary of the military alliance.
"Adjust we must. Determining how to meet the challenge of Chinese 5G technology, meet the challenge of the easy money offered by China's Belt and Road Initiative, is a challenge European allies must contend with every day," Pence said during a speech at the NATO Engages conference.
WNU Editor: Maybe China will be a challenge in the coming decades, but for now most NATO members are embracing China's business and trade .... China's Xi Signs Deals With Europe Worth Billions (The Trumpet).
TRIPOLI/BENGHAZI (Reuters) - Eastern Libyan commander Khalifa Haftar ordered his troops on Thursday to march on the capital Tripoli, taking his conflict with the internationally recognized government to a dangerous new level.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who is in Tripoli trying to push an international peace deal, called for restraint. When asked about Haftar's statement, he said Libya needed a political not a military solution.
Haftar made his order in a video posted online hours after his forces took full control of Gharyan, a town about 100 km (60 miles) south of the capital.
The Second World War had been over for barely a year when former British prime minister Winston Churchill stepped on a podium at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri.
There he thundered: "From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent."
On March 5, 1946, at this tiny rural college, Churchill announced the dawn of the Cold War.
In this now famous Sinews of Peace speech, he also called for the creation of a military force for "the grand pacification of Europe within the structures of the United Nations."
MOSCOW, April 4 (Reuters) - Venezuela's deputy foreign minister Ivan Gil said on Thursday he does not rule out that more Russian military personnel may arrive in Venezuela under agreements already concluded with Russia, Interfax news agency reported.
The deputy minister also said Russian forces will stay in Venezuela as long as needed, and that there is no set period for their stay.
"The group of military specialists is (in Venezuela) in the context of our agreements and contracts for military-technical cooperation," Interfax quoted Gil as saying.
WNU Editor: From what I am reading and seeing on Russian news, the groundwork is being laid to deploy more Russian troops to Venezuela. So yes .... when Venezuela's deputy foreign minister made the remarks today that more Russian troops may arrive, he is probably reading from a prepared script.
SOUTH China Sea tensions surged after Beijing sent more than 200 militia vessels to the disputed waters, sparking major concerns they are about to launch an undeclared invasion.
JULIAN ASSANGE, the fugitive computer programmer, is set to be expelled from the Ecuadorian embassy in London "within hours", a "high-level" source claims.
JULIAN ASSANGE is a computer programmer and co-founder of website Wikileaks. He has been living in London's Ecuadorian Embassy since 2012 after he was granted political asylum. But who is Julian Assange and why is he in exile?
JULIAN ASSANGE, the Australian-born WikiLeaks founder, is due to be expelled from Ecuador's London embassy within "hours to days", according to a WikiLeaks tweet. Follow here for live updates as the situation progresses.
WIKILEAKS founder Julian Assange will be expelled from the Ecuadorian embassy in London in the next few days, according to sources close to the Ecuadorian government. Why is Julian Assange being expelled from the Ecuadorian embassy and where will he go?
JULIAN Assange will not be expelled from Ecuador's London embassy, despite tweets from Wikileaks claiming he will be kicked out within "hours to days", a senior Ecuadorian official has said.
RUSSIA has once more demonstrated the devastating firepower at its disposal with a series of live-fire artillery drills at combat training ranges in the Barents Sea, further stoking up already heightened tensions with the West.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Saudi Arabia detained eight people, including two dual U.S.-Saudi citizens, in a new round of arrests in the kingdom targeting individuals supportive of women’s rights and those with ties to jailed activists, a person with knowledge of the apprehensions said Friday.
It marks the first sweep of arrests to target individuals perceived as critics of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman since the killing of writer Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul in October. The arrests come despite global outcry over Khashoggi’s grisly killing by Saudi agents in an operation directed by former top aides to the crown prince.
The arrested individuals, nearly all of whom were detained on Thursday, are not seen as front-line activists. They are writers and advocates who quietly supported greater social reforms and most had ties to the group of women’s rights activists currently on trial.
Those detained include a pregnant woman and seven men, among them two U.S.-Saudi nationals: Badr al-Ibrahim, a writer and physician, and Salah al-Haidar, whose mother is prominent women’s rights activist Aziza al-Yousef who was recently temporarily released from prison.
Al-Haidar has a family home in Vienna, Virginia, and lives with his wife and child in Saudi Arabia.
A third U.S.-Saudi national, Walid al-Fitaihi, remains imprisoned in Saudi Arabia since late 2017, when the crown prince detained more than 100 businessmen, princes and officials in a purported anti-corruption sweep. Al-Fitaihi, whose family alleges that he’s been tortured in prison, worked as a physician in the Boston area before he returned in 2006 to his native Saudi Arabia, where he helped found a hospital built by his family.
Nearly all of those detained Thursday were taken from their homes in the capital, Riyadh. One individual was arrested in the eastern city of Dammam, according to the person with knowledge of the arrests, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.
The individuals were not active politically on Twitter and were not widely quoted in foreign media. The group loosely had ties to one another, some as friends and others through intellectual circles, including with Saudi activists living abroad.
Those arrested include: Khadijah al-Harbi, a feminist writer who is pregnant; her husband Thumar al-Marzouqi, also a writer; Mohammed al-Sadiq and Abdullah al-Dehailan, both writers; and Fahad Abalkhail, an activist who supported the right of women to drive.
Anas al-Mazroui, a lecturer at King Saud university was believed to have been detained last month. He was not known to be actively involved in human rights work and appears to have been detained shortly after he merely mentioned the names of some of the detained women’s rights activists during a panel discussion about human rights at a book fair in Saudi Arabia.
The person with knowledge of their arrests said the group is among 13 people placed under travel bans since February.
Meanwhile, the siblings of Loujain al-Hathloul, a female activist detained since May, stated on Twitter this week that they are being pressured to remain silent about her arrest and her claims of torture. The siblings live outside Saudi Arabia, but their father who resides in Saudi Arabia was previously briefly detained after tweeting about his daughter’s imprisonment.
Al-Hathloul and Aziza al-Yousef are among nearly a dozen women on trial for charges related to their activism, which included campaigning for the right to drive before the ban was lifted last year and calling for an end to guardianship laws that give men final say over a woman’s right to marry or travel abroad.
Al-Yousef, a grandmother and former university professor, was released from prison last week along with two other women. Al-Hathloul and at least 10 other women activists remain imprisoned.
The women — some of whom have been held in solitary confinement for moths — have told the court they were abused during interrogations, including being waterboarded, caned, electrocuted, sexually assaulted and threatened with rape and death.
Ecuador plans to expel WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange from its London embassy and has an agreement in place with the U.K. for his arrest, Wikileaks said citing a source within the Ecuadorian government.
“A high level source within the Ecuadorian state has told Wikileaks that Julian Assange will be expelled within ‘hours to days’,” WikiLeaks said on Twitter.
Ecuador’s government did not respond to calls made after office hours.
WikiLeaks cited the unidentified person as saying the planned expulsion is a response to the organization’s recent tweet linking to a website that alleged money laundering and corruption during Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno’s time as United Nations special envoy for the disabled in Geneva. Foreign Minister Jose Valencia said last month that the government was “very surprised” by that and other actions by Assange and his lawyers.
The website in question also linked to emails and phone screen captures tying Moreno to the corruption scandal. Moreno, speaking in a nationwide broadcast Feb. 27, denied any wrongdoing.
Ecuador last year introduced rules governing Assange’s life in its London embassy. The protocol, which warned that it could expel him if he should violate its terms, addressed public statements that could damage the host government. Assange, who was granted asylum by Ecuador in 2012, lost local and international legal challenges against the protocol.
(CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand) — A New Zealand judge on Friday ordered that the man accused of killing 50 people at two Christchurch mosques undergo two mental health assessments to determine if he’s fit to stand trial.
High Court judge Cameron Mander made the order during a hearing in which 28-year-old Australian Brenton Harrison Tarrant appeared via video link from a small room at the maximum security Paremoremo prison in Auckland.
Tarrant was wearing handcuffs and a gray-colored sweater when he appeared on a large screen inside the Christchurch courtroom, which was packed with family members and victims of the shooting, some in wheelchairs and hospital gowns and still recovering from gunshot wounds.
Tarrant had stubble and close-cropped hair. He showed no emotion during the hearing. At times he looked around the room or cocked his head, seemingly to better hear what was being said. The judge explained that from his end, Tarrant could see the judge and lawyers but not those in the public gallery.
Tarrant spoke only once to confirm to the judge he was seated, although his voice didn’t come through because the sound was muted. It wasn’t immediately clear if his link had been deliberately or inadvertently muted.
Mander said nothing should be read into his order for the mental health assessments, as it was a normal step in such a case. Lawyers said it could take two or three months to complete.
The courtroom was filled with more than two dozen reporters and about 60 members of the public. A court registrar greeted people in Arabic and English as the hearing got underway. Some of those watching got emotional and wept.
The judge said Tarrant was charged with 50 counts of murder and 39 counts of attempted murder. Police initially filed a single, representative murder charge before filing the additional charges this week.
In the March 15 attacks, 42 people were killed at the Al Noor mosque, seven were killed at the Linwood mosque and one more person died later.
The day after the attacks, Tarrant dismissed an appointed lawyer, saying he wanted to represent himself. But he has now hired two Auckland lawyers to represent him, Shane Tait and Jonathan Hudson. The next court hearing was scheduled for June 14, and the mental health findings would determine whether he is required to enter a plea then.
Outside the courtroom, Yama Nabi, whose father died in the attacks, said he felt helpless watching.
“We just have to sit in the court and listen,” Nabi said. “What can we do? We can’t do nothing. Just leave it to the justice of New Zealand and the prime minister.”
Tofazzal Alam, 25, said he was worshipping at the Linwood mosque when the gunman attacked. He felt it was important to attend the hearing because so many of his friends were killed.
Alam said he felt upset seeing Tarrant.
“It seems he don’t care what has been done. He has no emotion. He looks all right,” Alam said. “I feel sorry. Sorry for myself. Sorry for my friends who have been killed. And for him.”
(SALT LAKE CITY) — The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on Thursday repealed rules banning baptisms for children of gay parents and making gay marriage a sin eligible for expulsion — marking a reversal of policies condemned as jarring detours from a push by the faith to be more compassionate about LGBTQ issues.
The 2015 rules that were approved by global church leaders had prohibited baptisms for children living with gay parents until the children turned 18 and disavowed same-sex relationships.
With the change, children of gay parents can now be baptized as long as their parents approve the baptisms and acknowledge that the children will be taught church doctrine, the church said in a statement from its highest leadership group called the First Presidency.
The faith widely known as the Mormon church said in a statement that it is not changing its doctrinal opposition to gay marriage and still considers same-sex relationships to be a “serious transgression.”
But people in same-sex relationships will no longer be considered “apostates” who can be kicked out of the religion, the statement said. That label given to same-sex couples in the 2015 policy was widely condemned by LGBQT members and allies as being demeaning and hurtful to people who already struggle to find acceptance in the faith.
“The very positive policies announced this morning should help affected families,” church leaders said in the statement. “In addition, our members’ efforts to show more understanding, compassion and love should increase respect and understanding among all people of goodwill. We want to reduce the hate and contention so common today.”
The faith that counts 16 million members worldwide did not apologize for putting the previous policy in place.
Troy Williams with the LGBT-advocacy group Equality Utah called the announcement a big step forward for the faith.
“Clearly this is a great development for the church,” he said. “I think this will go a long way toward healing Latter-day Saint families that have LGBT members.”
Erika Munson, co-founder of the group Mormons Building Bridges that advocates for LGBTQ members of the faith, said there’s a “great feeling of being heard” because the change came after an outcry from church members, including a public mass resignation by several hundred people shortly after it was announced.
“We saw the church correct a mistake in record time,” Munson said. “Usually these things take maybe 100 years or more.”
But emotional trauma caused by the policy still lingers, said Lisa Dame, a member of a mothers group called “Mama Dragons” that advocates for parents with LGTBQ members of the faith.
Dame said the policy did not affect large numbers of church members, but carried an implicit unwelcoming message. She is a heterosexual Mormon who has five children, including a 33-year-old daughter who is a lesbian.
“Especially in the LGBTQ community that are Mormon, it was like a bomb had gone off,” Dame said. “There would have been so much more healing to have had an apology that acknowledged the damage.”
The change marks the biggest move yet by church President Russell M. Nelson, who became the leader of the faith in January 2018 and has made a flurry of changes to how the church functions since taking over, including a campaign to eradicate well-known nicknames for the faith and severing the faith’s longstanding ties with the Boy Scouts of America.
The announcement came two days before Saturday’s twice-yearly church conference in Salt Lake City. It was unknown if church leaders will speak more about the changes during the two-day conference, where church leaders give speeches about spirituality and sometimes unveil new church initiatives.
The move marks a reset for the faith on LGBTQ issues, undoing the one major detour from a decade-long path by the faith to carve out a more open and compassionate position on LGBTQ issues while sticking to doctrinal opposition of gay marriage and intimacy between people in same-sex relationships, said, Patrick Mason, a religion professor at Claremont Graduate University in California who studies the faith.
“That policy always seemed out of step,” Mason said.
The policy triggered displeasure and protests from liberal and conservative members alike and hurt the church’s image from within, Mason said.
“That struck a nerve with people, even with longtime, faithful otherwise conservative and orthodox members,” Mason said.
The change announced Thursday shows that church leaders “are in fact responsive to people’s concerns,” he said.
Faith leaders had previously explained that the 2015 rules were designed to protect kids by not putting them in a potential tug-of-war between the beliefs of same-sex couples raising them and teachings and activities at church.
Nelson, then a member of a governing body that helps the president lead the church, defended the policy in a 2016 speech in which he said a revelation received by then-President Thomas S. Monson and other leaders gave them “spiritual confirmation” that the rules were right thing to do after many states legalized gay marriage.
Church leaders said in the statement that the change reversing the 2015 decisions was made after “fervent, united prayer to understand the will of the Lord on these matters.”
The speed at which church leaders and Nelson in particular changed course on this topic was rare and surprising, said Matthew Bowman, an associate professor of history at Henderson State University in Arkadelphia, Arkansas who studies the faith.
“It seems to indicate that ultimately they decided it was doing more harm than good,” Bowman said.
Boeing Co., Ethiopian Airlines and aircraft-part maker Rosemount Aerospace Inc. were sued in the U.S. over a plane crash last month that killed 157 people and intensified concern about the safety of 737 Max passenger jets.
The suit filed Thursday in Chicago federal court on behalf of an American citizen who was on the doomed Ethiopian Airlines flight March 10 joins a growing pile of complaints against Boeing, as well as a criminal investigation, following two crashes of 737 Max planes in five months that have killed 346 people.
The family of Samya Stumo alleged that Boeing, Ethiopian Air and Rosemount Aerospace were negligent by allowing a faulty flight-control system for its 737 Max 8 aircraft. The suit also cites a similar malfunction in the Lion Air flight of a 737 Max 8 jet that crashed into the Java Sea on Oct. 29 that killed 189.
Earlier on Thursday, the Ethiopian transport minister called on Boeing to review the 737 Max flight-control system before allowing planes to be used, after a preliminary government report showing the doomed jetliner couldn’t recover from an uncommanded and persistent nose dive shortly after takeoff.
Samya Stumo, 24, was the niece of consumer activist Ralph Nader, who became famous in the 1960s for skewering the U.S. Federal Trade Commission over the regulator’s shortcomings in policing serious safety problems in the auto industry.
Boeing, the leading U.S. aerospace manufacturer, and its principal regulator, the Federal Aviation Administration, have come under intense scrutiny in recent weeks over claims their relationship is too cozy. The FAA is responsible for regulating aviation in the U.S. and operating the nation’s air traffic control system.
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The chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee said this week that whistleblowers have come forward to report that FAA safety inspectors, including those involved with approvals for the 737 Max, lacked proper training and certifications. Senator Roger Wicker, a Mississippi Republican, said those claims prompted him to investigate potential connections between training and certification shortcomings and the FAA’s evaluation of the airliner.
The Senate panel’s probe is the latest in a string of investigations by U.S. officials and lawmakers into how the FAA cleared the 737 Max as safe to fly. The Transportation Department’s inspector general is reviewing the FAA’s process for approving the airworthiness of new jets and aiding a Justice Department criminal probe.
A grand jury convened by U.S. prosecutors last month subpoenaed a former Boeing engineer demanding he provide testimony and documents related to the 737 Max.
FAA Acting Administrator Dan Elwell has said the agency “welcomes external review of our systems, processes and recommendations.”
Boeing faces the prospect of substantial payouts to the families of passengers if it’s found responsible for both the Ethiopia Air and Lion Air crashes. But legal experts have said the second disaster could prove even more damaging for the company. That’s because plaintiffs will argue the manufacturer was put on notice by the earlier tragedy that there was something dangerously wrong with its planes that should have been fixed.
Pilots commanding a doomed Ethiopian Airlines jet were hit with a cascade of malfunctions and alarms seconds after the Boeing Co. 737 Max took off from Addis Ababa on March 10, according to a preliminary report released Thursday.
Most critically, the plane’s automatic anti-stall system that was also linked to a previous 737 Max crash months earlier began pushing the nose of the jetliner down less than two minutes into the flight due to a malfunctioning sensor. The crew was able to climb as high as 13,400 feet and request permission to return to the airport after temporarily disabling part of the system.
But the pilots struggled to control the plane, which entered a steep dive reaching speeds of 575 miles per hour before crashing into a field, killing all 157 people on board.
Boeing should review the flight-control system to ensure the plane’s safety, Ethiopian Transport Minister Dagmawit Moges said at a news conference in the capital of Addis Ababa on Thursday to announce the report. Aviation authorities should verify the issues have been adequately addressed “before the release of the aircraft to operations.”
The comments underscored the need for a software update that Boeing already has under way for the anti-stall system that can push down the plane’s nose. That so-called MCAS feature had been suspected in the crash of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 about six minutes after takeoff on March 10. The disaster came less than five months after a 737 Max operated by Lion Air plane plunged into the Java Sea and killed 189 people after MCAS was activated. The model is now grounded worldwide as investigators probe its airworthiness and how it gained permission to fly.
Dagmawit said the pilots followed proper procedures issued by Boeing and U.S. aviation authorities after the Lion Air crash, though details in the report raised questions about whether they followed all the steps.
Boeing blamed the accident on “a chain of events” and acknowledged its responsibility in at least one of those chain links.
“As pilots have told us, erroneous activation of the MCAS function can add to what is already a high workload environment,” Boeing Chief Executive Officer Dennis Muilenburg said in a statement. “It’s our responsibility to eliminate this risk. We own it and we know how to do it.”
Muilenburg confirmed that a software update is in the works and should be approved by regulators and ready to implement “in the weeks ahead.” The planemaker’s fix, accompanied by additional training, “will eliminate the possibility of unintended MCAS activation and prevent an MCAS-related accident from ever happening again.”
Boeing rose 2 percent to $396.40 at 3:12 p.m. in New York. Through Wednesday, the shares had fallen 8.9 percent since the crash.
Boeing’s Grounded 737 Max — the Story So Far: Quick Take
Thursday’s report paints a harrowing picture of the cockpit during most of the six-minute flight.
The altitude and airspeed information on the captain’s side of the cockpit didn’t agree with the copilot’s and multiple alarms were sounding. At various times, they were being warned of flying too fast and told not to “sink” by automated systems on the plane.
Sensors in the aircraft that report how high its nose is pointed relative to oncoming air varied by almost 60 degrees. One of the “angle-of-attack” gauges read 15.3 degrees, likely an accurate reading for a plane taking off. The other erroneously read 74.5 degrees — which would suggest a plane pointing almost straight skyward.
The malfunctioning sensor triggered a feature on the 737 Max that automatically forces the aircraft’s nose down when it senses the plane is aimed too high and is at risk of an aerodynamic stall.
Over the next two minutes, audible “DON’T SINK” alerts sounded in the cockpit. The captain called out three times “pull-up” and the first officer acknowledged the command, the report said.
Automatic systems commanded the nose to pitch down four times without the pilot’s input, according to the report. The plane’s angle of descent reached 40 degrees.
Motor Disabled
Pilots disabled the motor that was driving down the nose about 40 seconds after the first automated dive. But the plane was still set to dive, forcing them to pull back on their control column to keep climbing.
They were able to reach an altitude of 13,400 feet, almost 6,000 feet above where they’d taken off, during that time.
But they were unable to reset the trim on the horizontal stabilizer, the wing on the tail of the plane, according to the report. For unexplained reasons, they reactivated power to the electric trim motor about 30 seconds before the crash.
Within seconds, the plane was pushed automatically into a steep dive that the pilots couldn’t counteract with their control column. Switches on the pilot’s control column are designed to overcome such a dive but the report doesn’t say if that was attempted.
Pilot Training
One question raised by the Ethiopian report is whether guidance issued to pilots by Boeing in the wake of the Lion Air crash was sufficient. While the U.S. manufacturer and aviation regulators made a point of telling airlines worldwide how to disarm MCAS, the pilots of the Ethiopian Airlines plane were found to have followed “all the procedures repeatedly,” according to Dagmawit.
The investigation, staffed by Ethiopian, U.S. and European safety experts, has pitted Boeing’s reputation for technical quality against a successful, modern African airline that’s a symbol of pride for Ethiopia. Importantly, Dagmawit said there were no dissenting voices among participants who worked on the preliminary report, which was sent to the 34 nations with citizens aboard the flight. The full report is expected to be completed within one year.
“Despite full compliance with the emergency procedures,” pilots could not recover from the “persistence of nose diving,” state-owned Ethiopian Airlines said. The crew followed recommendations mapped out by Boeing and approved by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, the airline said.
Boeing said it’s reviewing the findings, and the FAA said it’s working to understand what happened.
“Understanding the circumstances that contributed to this accident is critical to ensuring safe flight,” said Boeing Commercial Airplanes President and CEO Kevin McAllister in a statement. He said the company will review the report and “will take any and all additional steps necessary to enhance the safety of our aircraft.”
MCAS Focus
The details underscore the focus on MCAS, a new software feature installed on the fourth generation of the 737, the world’s best-selling commercial aircraft family.
“It is recommended that the aircraft flight control system related to the flight controllability shall be reviewed by the manufacturer,” Dagmawit said at the news conference, without directly naming the MCAS.
The crash has also raised questions about the aircraft’s approval to fly. In the U.S., the Transportation Department has ordered a full audit of the FAA’s 2017 certification of the Max and the Justice Department is also investigating.
China said it’s been invited by the FAA to join a panel to review the 737 Max. China was one of the first countries to ground the American narrow-body jet.
Boeing has spent months refining the 737 Max’s software since data from the Lion Air crash indicated the stall-avoidance system had repeatedly tipped the nose down before pilots lost control. Boeing was close to a software fix when the Ethiopian Airlines jet went down.
Planes usually climb steadily to get safely away from terrain and to reach altitudes where engines burn more efficiently.
“Pilots tried to control the plane repeatedly but were not able to do so,’’ Dagmawit said at the briefing. The plane appeared “very normal” on takeoff and then suffered “repetitive uncommanded nose-down.”
Captain Yared Getachew, in command of the Ethiopian Airlines flight, had amassed more than 8,000 flight hours, according to the airline, while first officer Ahmed Nur Mohammod had spent about 200 hours aloft.
Passengers included 32 Kenyans, 18 Canadians, nine Ethiopians and eight Americans. The United Nations, which was hosting an environmental conference in Nairobi, said it lost 19 staff members in the crash.
While Africa has a generally poor aviation safety record compared with global norms, Ethiopian Airlines is known for operating a modern fleet that features Boeing 787 Dreamliners and the latest Airbus SE A350, as well as the 737 Max.
Africa’s only consistently profitable carrier, Ethiopian has built Addis Ababa into a major hub feeding travelers from around the world into dozens of African cities in competition with rivals such as Dubai-based Emirates.
Boeing designed the 737 Max to deliver a 14 percent fuel-savings to compete with the A320neo from the company’s European rival, Airbus. The use of new, bigger engines required Boeing’s designers to mount the units farther forward on the wings in order to give them proper ground clearance when taking off or landing. That changed the flying characteristics in a way that the engineers thought required the additional system to prevent stalls.
Ethiopian safety officials stopped short of saying the plane needs a redesign.
“Is there a structural design problem? No, we cannot characterize it now,” said Amdye Andualem, the investigator in charge, told the news conference. The investigation found no evidence that a foreign object may have struck the plane, he said, adding that the probe would continue for six months or more.
When the U.S., Canada and 10 western European nations came together in 1949 to form the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, they had a clear goal. “Keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in, and the Germans down,” said Lord Hastings Lionel Ismay, NATO’s first Secretary General. The military alliance was intended to rebuild Europe from the rubble of World War II and to act as a buffer against Soviet aggression.
But the collapse of the Soviet Union made NATO’s purpose less clear. In fact, in 1990, as the Cold War drew to a close, President Mikhail Gorbachev proposed the Soviet Union join NATO. At the time, Gorbachev was negotiating German reunification with the then U.S. Secretary of State James Baker. “You say that NATO is not directed against us,” he said, referring to the rival Warsaw Pact, an alliance between the Soviet Union and Communist countries in Eastern Europe, “that it is simply a security structure that is adapting to new realities. Therefore, we propose to join NATO.”
Baker reportedly dismissed the proposal as a “dream” but it has been floated several times since. Giving Russia membership would have required NATO, which turned 70 on Thursday, to fundamentally redefine itself. Nevertheless, in the three decades since the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, NATO has had to find a new raison d’être.
As NATO foreign ministers met in Washington to mark the anniversary, they faced questions about its future. Here’s what to know about the relationship between Russia and NATO.
After the Cold War, what happened between Russia and NATO?
In 1991 Boris Yeltsin, the first president of the new Russian state, wrote to NATO, reiterating Gorbachev’s proposal. He echoed calls made by former Warsaw Pact countries like Hungary to join the Western alliance, and called NATO membership a “long-term political aim” of Russia.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union though, NATO began to redefine its purpose. Vesko Garcevic, a former Montenegro ambassador to NATO, says the new mission became to ensure the democratization of newly post-communist republics, which the alliance considered crucial to guaranteeing a stable Europe. After joining NATO, most of the countries then became E.U. members. “It was no longer not just about security. It was also political. That’s why the alliance has survived for so many years,” he says.
In 1994, Russia officially signed up to the NATO Partnership for Peace, a program aimed at building trust between NATO and other European and former Soviet countries. President Bill Clinton described it in January 1994 as a “track that will lead to NATO membership.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin told filmmaker Oliver Stone in a 2017 interview that he discussed the option with Clinton during the American president’s visit to Moscow in 2000. And when then-Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen met with Putin in the early 2000s, he says he got the impression Russia was pro-Western and open to joining the transatlantic alliance.
Since the end of the Cold War, 13 countries have joined NATO; the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland (1999), Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia (2004), Albania and Croatia (2009), and Montenegro (2017).
Natalia Kolesnikov – AFP/Getty ImagesRussian President Vladimir Putin talks during a press conference after the NATO-Russia Council meeting at the Parliament in Bucharest, Romania, on April 4, 2008.
So why isn’t Russia a member of NATO?
Despite Russia signaling its interest to join NATO, there has since been a lot of tension between them. “Once Russia can show it is upholding democracy and human rights, NATO can seriously consider its membership,”says Rasmussen, the former Danish Prime Minister who served as NATO Secretary General from 2009 to 2014. In the meantime, he adds “we tried to build strong cooperation with Moscow.” He cites the 2002 Russia-NATO council, a development of the 1997 Act, which serves as a mechanism for cooperation, consensus building and joint-decision making. “We do share common interests. We cooperated on counter terrorism in Afghanistan, counter narcotics and counter piracy,” says Rasmussen.
But Russia has repeatedly made a request that NATO has rejected: to refuse to accept new members in its “backyard” (or neighboring countries), says Rasmussen. “It wasn’t for the West or Moscow to decide whether those countries should join NATO. Each and every country has the right to decide its alliance and affiliation,” says the former NATO ambassador Garcevic.
By 1999, when it became clear that NATO and Russia had irreconcilable views over the future of the post-Soviet republics, the alliance “turned into a security challenge” for the Kremlin, according to Garcevic. It was a “critical turning point,”he says, noting that Russia started to become more anti-Western. As the years went on, nostalgia for the Soviet Union became more apparent. In 2005, Putin famously said the breakup of the Soviet Union “was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.”
Eventually, actions rather than words made it clear that Russia saw NATO as an adversary. In April 2008, NATO promised membership to Georgia and Ukraine at the Bucharest summit, but a membership plan was not offered. In August 2008, Russia launched a five day invasion of Georgia on the pretext of defending the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Eight hundred people were killed. South Ossetia and Abkhazia later declared their independence; Russia is one of the few countries in the world to recognize this.
“We sent the wrong signal from Bucharest,” says Rasmussen, who believes an action plan for Georgia’s membership could have deterred the invasion. “Putin interpreted our actions as a lack of resolve and a lack of will to act if he tested that resolve.”
Putin continued to test it. In 2014, he sent Russian troops to annex Crimea from Ukraine and sparked the ongoing conflict in the country’s eastthat has killed more than 13,000 people.
Former Kremlin adviser Sergei Karaganov tells TIME that history could have looked different. Not allowing Russia to join NATO was “one of the worst mistakes in political history,” says Karaganov. “It automatically put Russia and the West on a collision course, eventually sacrificing Ukraine.”
How does Russia feel about NATO today?
Tensions skyrocketed between NATO and Russia after the 2014 annexation. “Now, countries bordering Russia, including the Baltics, are really fearful,” Karaganov says. If they had not joined NATO and stayed “neutral” they would have been “much more comfortable.”
Since 2014, Russia and NATO’s relations have reverted back to their Cold War hostility. But today the threat Russia poses is much more complex, says Rasmussen, the ex-NATO Secretary General. The security environment has transformed from a “predictable, bipolar confrontation” to a “multilayered, non-transparent picture of threats and challenges.”
In his view, Russia has become a “geopolitical spoiler” that seeks to undermine trust, confidence and stability in democratic society. Russia’s war games and regular military exercises have struck fear in its neighbors, including Poland and the Baltics. Even countries that are geographically far from Russia, such as the Balkans, fear Russia’s subtler methods of destabilization including disinformation and cyber warfare.
Today, there is “no way” Moscow could join NATO, says Rasmussen, nor does Russia have any interest in joining an alliance that it perceives as a threat. In Putin’s address to the Russian Parliament shortly after the Crimea annexation, he said Russia was humiliated by NATO’s expansion eastward after the fall of Communism. “They lied to us many times, made decisions behind our backs.” The Russian president has repeatedly warned NATO against forging closer ties with Ukraine and Georgia, saying it was “irresponsible” and would have consequences for the alliance, which he did not specify.
In theory, NATO’s door “remains open to any European country” that meets membership requirements. However, former Montenegro ambassador to NATO, Garcevic believes the reality is constrained by fear over a resurgent Russian threat. “I can’t see further NATO enlargement happening in the near future. European countries are very cautious about Russia’s reaction.”
Picture Alliance – Picture Alliance via Getty ImagesJens Stoltenberg, NATO Secretary General at the Munich Security Conference in Bavaria, München on 15 February 2019
Is NATO still effective in 2019?
Rasmussen insists that “NATO has never been more needed.” And NATO members have shown some strategic unity in countering the Russian threat. Since 2014, the alliance has said “readiness” has been at the top of its agenda, which has led to security reinforcements of some4,000 additional troopson its eastern flank. Gustav Gressel, a Senior Policy Adviser at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said these measures amount to reassurance, not deterrence. NATO members have unanimously refused to recognise the annexation of Crimea, and all have maintained economic sanctions despite regular criticism over the measures by Austria, Italy, Hungary and other member states. “But sanctions alone do not reflect a united strategy on dealing with Russia,” Gressel said.
NATO has not really risen to the Russian challenge, others agree. “We haven’t done enough,” Rasmussen says. Only a few NATO nations dared to militarily support the Ukrainian armed forces. Those that have, including the U.S., Canada, Poland, Slovakia, the Baltics and the U.K. have done so on a voluntary basis, and not as part of a NATO initiative. Hungary has blocked greater institutional relations between NATO and Ukraine.
After Russia annexed Crimea, Rasmussen says he was surprised at how some of the bigger European countries, including Germany and France “were very careful not to admit what was happening.” Since NATO can only act with a consensus from all its members, the alliance ultimately could not take action. Rasmussen believes Germany’s hesitation was connected to a “historical gratitude” for Russia accepting its reunification in 1990, while France thinks “Russia’s interests should be respected because it is a big country.” In the U.K., he considers there is a more “realistic attitude” about the Kremlin’s geopolitical ambitions. “The U.S. and Europe need to take firm stance because the only language Putin understands is the language of power,” says Rasmussen.
But for the first time in NATO’s history, a U.S. president has questioned the validity of the security alliance. Donald Trump has questioned Washington’s commitment to NATO, calling it “obsolete” and has suggested the alliance is a bad bargain for the U.S. It is “extremely dangerous” when democratic leaders send doubtful messages about their resolve, says Rasmussen. “It leaves behind a vacuum that will be filled by the bad guys. Putin, Assad, Kim Jong-un will have more room to maneuver.”
Rasmussen and Garcevic are confident NATO will continue to exist because “its task to protect democracy and human rights is eternal.” Collective security has never been more important, they say. But the alliance’s existence has also perhaps never been more threatened by a lack of unity among political leaders. NATO’s ability to protects its members is as much about political strength — sending the right signal — as military capability.
Even in the worst of times, Russia had been a reliable friend to the Sudan of Omar al-Bashir. It continued selling him weapons during the atrocities his regime carried out in the Darfur region from 2003 to 2007. And when the International Criminal Court indicted al-Bashir in 2009 for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, issuing a warrant for his arrest, Russia went its own way. Instead of detaining al-Bashir when the Sudanese leader landed in Sochi in 2017, Russian President Vladimir Putin received him at his official residence and put the meeting on state television.
As it turned out, Russia’s enduring friendship was about to pay off. The outlaw President had arrived with an offer: “Sudan,” he told Putin, “can be Russia’s key to Africa.” What he wanted in return was “protection from aggressive U.S. actions” in the region, said al-Bashir. The evidence shows Putin took him up on it. The leaders’ talks opened the gates to a flood of Russian ventures in Sudan, from political consulting to mining and military aid, according to documents obtained by TIME. As Russian geologists began drilling for gold near the banks of the Nile River last year, the Russian armed forces drafted plans to use Sudan’s ports and air bases as military outposts.
Sudan is just the start. Over the past few years, the Kremlin has once again been scouring the world in search of influence. In troubled countries overlooked since the Cold War, Russia has been forging new alliances, rekindling old ones and, wherever possible, filling the void left by an inward-looking West. Across Africa, the Middle East and Latin America, TIME tracked the Kremlin effort through months of interviews with local officials, Russian operatives and other players, as well as by vetting documents provided by the Dossier Center, a private investigative unit funded by Mikhail Khodorvsky, an exiled Russian businessman and critic of Putin.
The Russian campaign reaches from major conflict zones such as Venezuela, Libya and Syria to the more obscure corners of Africa and, as al-Bashir hoped, to Sudan. What comes through is a newfound Russian willingness, even an eagerness, to involve itself in wars and cultivate regimes anywhere Moscow sees a chance to assert itself.
Illustration by Brian Stauffer for TIME
But unlike the Cold War, when the communist East competed with the capitalist West as equals, the new contest is being waged in an altered world. Trump’s America no longer projects interest in foreign affairs, democratic ideals or even alliances. And China, with an economy eight times the size of Russia’s, has replaced it as the major alternative to the West. Yet Putin has managed to keep Russia in the global picture–punching far above its weight through a combination of opportunism, bluster and common cause with isolated despots to whom Moscow offers weapons, protection and respect.
“We are not out to rule the world or impose some ideology on other countries, be it communism or capitalism,” says Senator Andrei Klimov, a fixture in Moscow’s foreign policy circles. “We are merely out to defend our interests. And we will do that wherever they arise.”
That became clear as recently as March 23, when two planeloads of Russian troops and military cargo landed in Venezuela to shore up the embattled dictator Nicolás Maduro. The deployment was meant as a challenge to the U.S., which recognizes the legitimacy of Maduro’s rival Juan Guaidó. It got Trump’s attention. “Russia has to get out,” he told reporters in the Oval Office four days later, adding that “all options are open” for ensuring a Russian withdrawal.
But Maduro has survived U.S. sanctions thanks in part to Russian cash and political cover. In Syria, Russia rescued the dictatorship of Bashar Assad with a military campaign that forced the U.S. to abandon its hopes of ousting him–while boosting Assad’s only other friend in the world, Iran. And in the complex war for control of Libya, various factions have sought the Kremlin’s support, often in exchange for access to oil fields and other resources that the U.S. also covets.
“They are specifically targeting countries that have toxic relations with the West,” says Andrew Weiss, who studies Russia at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a think tank based in Washington. “They’re trying to deal themselves into any conflict they can, not because they are going to solve it, but because they want influence. They want to have a voice.”
The agility of the campaign has caught some Western officials off guard. Last year alone Russia made major arms deliveries to at least 23 nations. It won the rights to build logistics hubs on the Red Sea and the Suez Canal. It has struck major energy deals over the past three years with Turkey, India and Iraqi Kurdistan. Russia even brought the Taliban to Moscow last fall to try to broker peace in Afghanistan.
None of these ventures has garnered nearly as much attention as the Russian attempts to sway elections in the U.S. and Europe over the past few years. But they flow from the same well of resentment over the humiliation that followed the loss of the Cold War. And they feed a new narrative of national revival: Russia at the center of attention wherever it chooses to be, with a leader who seems unafraid to gamble and improvise in his quest to ease the West’s hold over global affairs.
Helping the effort along is Trump’s “America first” policy, says Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the former NATO Secretary-General. “When the U.S. retrenches and retreats, [it] will leave behind a vacuum that will be filled by the bad guys,” he tells TIME. “And that’s what we’re witnessing now.”
Valery Sharifulin—Tass/Getty ImagesVenezuelan President Nicolas Maduro with Putin on Dec. 5. He visited Russia to seek financial aid
One afternoon in late December, Dalia El Roubi, a rights activist in Sudan, was on her way to a demonstration in Khartoum, the nation’s dusty capital, when she came upon an unusual scene. A Russian-made Ural military truck stood on the side of a road near the demonstration. A handful of European-looking men and Sudanese security personnel milled around it. “It was a very bizarre sight,” she recalls by phone. “You don’t see that at protests around here.”
The incident only began to make sense a few weeks later, when the Times of London reported that Russian mercenaries were helping the regime put down a popular uprising. What began in December as a series of protests against the rising cost of food and fuel has since grown into a revolution intent on ending al-Bashir’s 30-year reign. Dozens of people have been killed in the state’s attempts to crush the protests, according to Human Rights Watch. Hundreds of protesters have been jailed amid widespread reports of beatings and torture in Sudanese prisons.
Just as the protests were unfolding in Sudan, the Trump Administration was rolling out a new Africa strategy. John Bolton, the White House National Security Adviser, touted it as a response to Russia and China, which he called “great power competitors” on the continent. But his proposals for facing that challenge focused primarily on pinching pennies. Rather than engage with countries that are tempted into deals with Russia or China, Bolton said the U.S. would cut off aid to punish them. “We want something more to show for Americans’ hard-earned taxpayer dollars,” he said.
That approach suits Putin just fine. Having the White House refer to Russia as a great power bolsters his image at home, and it has cost him relatively little. Bolton said the U.S. still sends more than $8 billion in aid to Africa each year, much of it to help fight AIDS and other diseases, and China plans to spend $60 billion over the next three years on infrastructure across the continent. But Russia has built relationships in Africa without building much of anything–no major highways, bridges, hospitals or universities. Instead the Kremlin has focused on wooing elites: the warlords, generals and Presidents for life whose personal desires are simpler and cheaper to satisfy than the needs of their people or their economies.
Mikhail Metzel—Tass/Getty ImagesPutin, right, with Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir in Moscow in July 2018. Sudan has welcomed a number of Russian ventures from military aid to political consulting
Take Sudan. Since 2003, the U.N. estimates that 300,000 people have been killed amid the government’s attempts to quell the region of Darfur. A U.N.-mandated peacekeeping mission was deployed in 2007 to contain the bloodshed, and the charges handed down by the International Criminal Court two years later made al-Bashir the only current head of state indicted for crimes against humanity. Only Russia has stood by his side. In November 2016, the Kremlin even broke off ties with the Court, calling its decisions “one-sided.” A year later, Putin accepted al-Bashir’s offer of a key to the African continent.
Among the men Putin entrusted with exploiting the offer is Evgeny Prigozhin. An ex-convict who began his career in the 1990s selling hot dogs in St. Petersburg, he has evolved into a catering executive, responsible for feeding guests at state dinners and filling the mess halls of the Russian military with cheap cutlets and buckwheat stew, according to his official biography. The man known in Moscow as “Putin’s chef” is also a master of covert warfare, according to the U.S. government, responsible for a network of Internet trolls who were paid in 2016 to pose as Americans on social media. Investigations in the Russian and Western media have also identified him as the backer of a private army known as the Wagner Group.
Some of the most damning claims about Prigozhin come directly from special counsel Robert Mueller. As part of his investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, Mueller indicted Prigozhin early last year for staging a campaign of disinformation aimed at swaying the vote in Trump’s favor. The businessman has denied those charges in florid terms. “There’s an old saying,” he wrote in response to journalists’ questions about his work outside of catering. “Don’t stick your nose where a dog wouldn’t stick its c-ck.”
Prigozhin’s fingerprints are also on a number of ventures in Sudan and elsewhere in Africa, according to the documents TIME obtained in February and interviews with his current and former associates. In addition to gold and mineral mines, his companies have offered dictators a broad range of consulting services. One strategy brief outlines a road map for reforming Sudan’s entire bureaucracy, from its tax and customs bureaus to its central bank. Its co-author, who spoke to TIME on condition of anonymity, confirmed he had been hired to prepare the strategy by one of Prigozhin’s firms. “We never dealt with him directly,” said the co-author, a well-known political consultant in Russia. “But we knew it was for him.” Prigozhin did not respond to TIME’s requests for comment via his companies and his lawyer.
It’s not clear whether the strategy was ever implemented. Sudan’s Foreign Ministry did not respond to several interview requests. But the ambitions set out in the document suggest that Russia has begun to offer its allies in Africa the sort of soft-power assistance with state building typically provided by NGOs and development agencies. “They’re learning from us,” says Paul Stronski, a Russia expert and former contractor for USAID, the development arm of the U.S. government, who reviewed the document at TIME’s request. The key difference, he says, is that the reforms on offer from Russia seem mostly cosmetic. “They tick the boxes Sudan would need to improve its credit rating, but they don’t really address the corruption in the system.”
Federico Parra—AFP/Getty ImagesThe Russian air force took part in joint exercises with Venezuelan troops near Caracas in December
Russian hard power, including armed mercenaries, is more worrying to Sudan’s opposition movement. Since December, when El Roubi first spotted that Ural truck, her fellow demonstrators have posted photos and videos of similar scenes online. “What we’re seeing in Khartoum are Russian mercenaries, and that’s the last thing the country needs right now,” says Eric Reeves, a researcher at Harvard University who has studied Sudan for 20 years.
Russia has for years used private mercenary outfits for its strategic missions abroad. Their first big test under Putin came on the battlefields of eastern Ukraine, where these loose formations of volunteers, ex-convicts and veterans helped the Russian military seize control of Crimea in 2014. In the eastern cities of Donetsk and Luhansk, they helped establish Russian protectorates known as People’s Republics.
The groups exist in a legal gray zone. Private military companies are technically illegal in Russia, and serving in one can lead to a sentence of up to seven years in prison. But for the Kremlin, the law has provided a convenient way to control these companies through selective enforcement. “There’s a criminal case waiting for every single fighter that steps out of line,” says Evgeny Shabaev, a former paramilitary who has campaigned for the law to be overturned.
The war in Syria offered these groups a more complex battlefield on which to demonstrate their usefulness–and no company has succeeded like the Wagner Group, a Russian mercenary outfit whose fighters have told investigative journalists in the U.S., Russia and other countries that Prigozhin is the Group’s founder and financial backer. (He has denied having anything to do with private military companies.) Along with its commander, Dmitry Utkin, the company has been under U.S. sanctions since 2017 for its role in the conflict in Ukraine. But it was in Syria that Utkin earned the Kremlin’s gratitude. At an official awards ceremony in 2016, he even posed alongside Putin for a photo. When asked by journalists about the Wagner Group and the ban on private militaries, Putin was magnanimous. “If they comply with Russian laws,” he said, in December 2018, “they have every right to work and promote their business interests anywhere in the world.”
Those interests have sometimes landed the Wagner Group in trouble. In February 2018, Russian mercenaries and Syrian troops tried to seize a gas plant guarded by a small group of U.S. Marines who, when faced with a barrage of artillery fire, called in air support. U.S. fighter jets and attack helicopters reportedly killed dozens of Russian fighters and destroyed their column of military hardware. To the surprise of U.S. officers, the Russian military denied having anything to do with the combatants, who were overheard speaking Russian on their radios throughout the battle. “The Russian high command in Syria assured us it was not their people,” James Mattis, who was then the U.S. Defense Secretary, told Senators last spring.
In reality, the mercenaries often work in lockstep with the Russian armed forces. This appears to be the case in Sudan, where one lease agreement obtained by TIME shows that in order to run flights in and out of the country, a company run by a close associate of Prigozhin chartered Russian military planes. Many Western officials see the Wagner Group operating as an instrument of the Kremlin, behind a facade of deniability. As U.K. Defense Secretary Gavin Williamson put it in a February speech, the Wagner Group “allows the Kremlin to get away with murder while denying blood on their hands.”
Florent Vergnes—AFP/Getty ImagesRussian consultants have trained Central African armed forces, seen here in August 2018.
Last year three Russian journalists set out to report on the activities of Russian mercenary groups operating in the Central African Republic (CAR), which borders Sudan. All three of them–conflict reporter Orkhan Dzhemal, filmmaker Aleksandr Rastorguev and cameraman Kirill Radchenko–were shot dead on the side of a road on the night of July 30. The Russian government–which has been sending arms and contractors to CAR since early 2018–said the murders were the result of a robbery, possibly committed by rebels who control parts of the nation. But the journalists’ friends and colleagues at the Dossier Center launched their own probe into the murders. Like all their work, that investigation was financed by Khodorkovsky, one of Putin’s most vocal critics in exile. “We knew there was more to the story,” the businessmen told TIME at his central London office.
The investigation concluded in January that Russian mercenaries were involved in a plot to kill the journalists in central Africa. The Kremlin was quick to deny these claims as a “conspiracy theory,” and Russian state media pointed out the grudge that Khodorkovsky carries against Putin’s regime, which imprisoned him for 10 years on charges of fraud and tax evasion before allowing him to move to Europe in 2013. But a lot of the documentary evidence uncovered by the Dossier Center was compelling: it included phone records that appeared to show Russian military contractors tracking the reporters before they were killed. (In the course of its investigations, the group also acquired a trove of documents related to Russian efforts in Sudan. After extensive vetting and verification, some were incorporated into this report.)
There’s little mystery about the presence of Russia’s private military companies in Sudan. Even though the regime has denied it, Russia has admitted they have been training local security forces since the end of last year. Asked about the deployment in January, Mikhail Bogdanov, the Russian diplomat in charge of relations with the Middle East and Africa, said it was a natural part of a burgeoning relationship. “We’re in touch with the Sudanese leadership,” he told Russian news agencies. “We know their needs, their requirements and requests to various Russian structures, both state and private ones.”
The al-Bashir regime’s primary need right now is to end the revolution. Sudan’s police chief, Ahmed Bilal Osman, has denied that Russian mercenaries have played any role in doing that. But their presence in the country may have emboldened al-Bashir to go even further than closing schools, imposing nationwide curfews and censoring the media, critics say. In February, al-Bashir declared a state of emergency, dissolving the central and regional governments and ordering the military to rule in their place. “Bashir is in full survival mode,” says Reeves. “And the reason he thinks he can survive is the protection he is getting from the Russians.”
Russia did not always advocate for an end to the order defined by the West. “After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, we tried hard to fit in with the globalized world,” Vladimir Yakunin, an old friend and colleague of Putin’s from their service in the KGB, tells TIME. “But it was naive to assume that the family of civilized nations would really integrate us.” The resulting sense of exclusion came to a head in 2007, when Putin gave a landmark speech in Munich to an audience of Western statesmen. He told them that the rising strength of Russia, China and other developing nations would soon end the American century. “That speech was not about Russia baring its fangs,” says Yakunin. “It was a prophecy that, unfortunately, the Western leaders failed to heed at the time.”
Today, while some in the West still offer sermons about democracy and human rights, the value that Russia champions on the world stage is sovereignty–which holds that each regime has the right to rule its territory without fear of foreign interference. Long exploited as a cover for the brutal suppression of dissent by autocratic regimes such as China, the principle got a boost when Trump took office. In his first speech to the U.N. General Assembly, the U.S. President used the word 10 times while conspicuously embracing autocratic leaders in Egypt, the Philippines and China. But it’s Russia that’s building a foreign policy around respect for rogue regimes without much judgment of their actions at home. “We don’t tell anyone how to live,” says Yakunin.
Russia offers its new friends a powerful weapon: its veto in the U.N. Security Council, which has been used to block at least a dozen Security Council resolutions on chemical-weapon use, war crimes and cease-fires since the Syrian civil war began in 2011. By coming to the aid of the Assad regime, Putin won the right to claim that Russia will stand by its allies even when they gas, bomb and torture their own citizens. “We don’t toss any of our friends aside,” says Klimov, the Russian senator. “In the West people often switch sides. They have different priorities.”
Florent Vergnes—AFP/Getty ImagesRussian diplomat Victor Tokmakov, left center, and Valeriy Zakharov, special security adviser to the nation’s President, meet with government ministers after the deaths of Russian journalists in July
Other nations have taken notice. In Africa, where the rule of law is too frequently tenuous, at least 18 governments have signed military-cooperation deals with Russia since its warplanes roared in to save Assad in 2015. According to the head of the Kremlin’s arms-export monopoly, sales have also spiked since the Syrian intervention, pushing its backlog of orders to $50 billion last year.
At the same time, Russia is seeking to forge a reputation as a peace broker, especially in areas where the U.S. is seen to have fallen short. The Taliban, for instance, has been banned in Russia since 2003 as a terrorist organization. But its military successes against U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan cast the group in a new light. In a widely publicized summit in November, Taliban leaders were welcomed in Moscow for what the Kremlin billed as a round of peace talks. “The West has lost,” Russia’s special representative in Afghanistan, Zamir Kabulov, told reporters after the talks. “The U.S. has had enough time, 17 years,” he added, referring to the longest war in American history. “We don’t need that kind of leadership.”
With neither U.S. nor Afghan delegates in attendance, the talks were not going to produce anything but attention. But Moscow still seemed eager to elbow its way into the debate and demonstrate that it could bring the Taliban to the table. “There are bigger strategic games at play for Russia,” says the former Afghan diplomat Omar Samad. “They see Afghanistan as a potential bargaining chip.”
A lot of Putin’s new entanglements in the developing world could be explained that way. Russia and many Putin allies are under sanctions imposed by the West, and the more hot spots where Russia has a hand, the more opportunities Putin might see for leveraging relief. By this calculation, Putin’s placing bets around the globe the way a gambler lays chips on a felt table.
Will they pay off? You can’t win if you don’t play. Some of Russia’s initiatives could indeed ease tensions in far-flung conflict zones. At a peace conference held in Sudan last year, for instance, Russia managed to bring warring factions in the Central African Republic together. “One has to recognize that they have helped us,” says Ambassador Smail Chergui, who chaired the talks on behalf the African Union, an intergovernmental body that promotes peace across the continent.
In Venezuela, if Russia resolved to end the standoff between Maduro and the opposition, the Kremlin would have no trouble bringing the dictator to the negotiating table: His regime subsists almost entirely on help from Moscow. Stakes in his country’s enormous oil reserves have been snapped up by Russian energy firms at fire-sale prices.
But U.S. officials see scant evidence of altruism in Moscow’s behavior, and little chance of its playing mediator. “Russian strategy is to support this regime,” Elliott Abrams, the U.S. official in charge of resolving the conflict in Venezuela, told reporters in response to a question from TIME in March. “They are completely unconcerned by the degree of repression that the regime is using … They are trying to protect the money that they’re owed by Venezuela.”
Graphic by Lon Tweeten
And apart from the money, Putin also has a reputation to protect. In Syria, Sudan and other parts of the Arab world, as well as in Africa and much of Latin America, he is seen as a bulwark for autocrats, the man who will defend his allies’ sovereignty no matter how much pressure they face from the West. This, above all, explains why Russia has created for itself a ragtag empire of pariah autocracies and half-failed states. There’s a reason the world’s dictators are lining up to sign cooperation deals with Russia.
It’s working for Moscow. Eight months after meeting al-Bashir in Sochi, the Russian President was busy hosting the World Cup soccer tournament in cities across the country. But he did not miss a chance to sit down with Sudan’s fugitive President, this time in the Kremlin. Putin noted that in the intervening months, trade between their countries had doubled and military ties had gotten stronger. Al-Bashir, looking a lot more confident than he had in Sochi, thanked Putin for acting as a “counterweight” to the West in the U.N. Security Council. In particular, he was glad that Russia had demanded the withdrawal of international peacekeepers from Darfur.
The meeting was brief. Both leaders had plans to watch the final of the World Cup the next day. But before parting ways with the man accused of carrying out the worst genocide of the 21st century, Putin smiled and had something to say. “We are glad to see you, Mr. President. Welcome!”
–With reporting by PHILIP ELLIOTT/WASHINGTON and ALEC LUHN/MOSCOW
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the strongman of Turkish politics and a former mayor of Istanbul, has lost Istanbul. In the March 31 municipal elections, he and his party also lost Ankara, the country’s capital, and several other sizable cities. Erdogan was rebuked thanks to a sharp economic slowdown brought on by mismanagement. His party, which has won every national election in Turkey since 2002, now faces a less certain future, and he may be forced to turn to the hated International Monetary Fund for assistance.
It’s not that Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) has collapsed. In fact, its overall vote share in cities across the country suffered only a marginal decline. With its ultranationalist ally, the MHP, the AKP still won more than 51% of the vote nationwide, a fall of just 2% from its performance in last June’s elections. Erdogan remains in command of the strong presidential system he created via referendum in 2017.
But the opposition CHP now controls cities responsible for more than 60% of Turkey’s gross domestic product, and Erdogan’s losses are made more embarrassing by the built-in advantages he has and by the way he campaigned. First, Turkey’s media is controlled almost entirely by the government, which for the past three years has jailed more journalists than any other country. Despite Erdogan’s power to shape the news the public consumes, half the voting population opposes the President and his party.
Second, Erdogan did his best to frame this election as a fight for Turkey’s survival against an opposition alliance he claims is controlled by subversives, foreigners and terrorists. He promoted conspiracy theories that Americans and Europeans have sabotaged Turkey’s economy. He stoked controversy on the campaign trail by repeatedly showing video footage of the Christchurch, New Zealand, terrorist attack in which 50 Muslims were murdered inside two mosques. When the governments of Australia and New Zealand protested, Erdogan railed against the fact that troops from those nations were sent to fight the Ottoman Empire during World War I.
He has continued to antagonize the U.S., in part because he accuses Washington of harboring Fethullah Gulen, a political rival who Erdogan claims has repeatedly conspired to bring down his government. Donald Trump, like Barack Obama, has refused to extradite Gulen to Turkey from his home in Pennsylvania for lack of evidence that Gulen has done anything more than oppose Erdogan’s government.
Erdogan’s accomplishments are real. He presided over a period of sharp economic growth in the first decade of this century, in part by empowering politicians and business leaders in the country’s heartland to challenge the stranglehold that the major cities–Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir–held over political and economic life. He also beat back threats from the military, which has a long history of undermining elected governments to protect its political and commercial privileges. The July 2016 coup that nearly brought down his government gave Erdogan a powerful argument that his conspiracy theories were not just fantasies.
In recent years his bid to accumulate more power and to repress dissent has brought comparisons to Vladimir Putin. Voters in Turkey have again reminded their government, and the world, that Turkey is not Russia. For now, competitive multiparty democracy will continue in their country whether President Erdogan likes it or not.
India’s 2019 general-election campaign kicks off on April 11 with the world’s largest exercise in democracy: more than 900 million eligible voters, 1 million polling stations and seven phases spread across five weeks. The drama culminates on May 23, when Indians find out if they’re in for another five years of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) or whether the opposition Congress Party, which ruled India for decades after independence, has staged a comeback.
Modi came to power in 2014 promising to supercharge India’s economy. But he has struggled with surging unemployment and implemented unpopular measures that hurt small businesses. The BJP was accused in January of suppressing a report showing joblessness at a 45-year high. Lately, Modi has pivoted to a national-security platform, capitalizing on tensions with Pakistan over a suicide attack in Indian-administered Kashmir. Amid tit-for-tat airstrikes, Modi’s approach appealed to desires for national pride and strength.
Modi’s first term also made ideology a consequential battleground: Should India be a secular country, as enshrined in its 1950 constitution, or a Hindu nation, as the BJP believes? In the past few years, nationalist sentiment has fueled a rise in divisive political language as well as violence directed at Muslims, who make up 14% of India’s population. While Congress and an alliance of secularist regional parties hope to reverse those trends, most polls still point to a BJP victory.
More than any before, this election will play out online, with an estimated 39% of Indians owning smartphones. But as 4G coverage has swept India in the years since Modi’s rise, it’s also brought dangers. On April 1, Facebook said it had removed 702 pages, groups and accounts over “coordinated inauthentic behavior” in support of the BJP and Congress, and TIME has found that BJP supporters used WhatsApp chats to spread fake news. India’s democracy may be unique in size, but it’s not immune to the problems others face.
This appears in the April 15, 2019 issue of TIME.
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