British Prime Minister Theresa May fought back against critics of her Brexit deal Saturday, telling opponents from within her party their alternative plans for Britain’s departure from the European Union wouldn’t work.

May is battling to win over rebels in her Conservative Party and and to preserve her position as prime minister after a grueling week in which party members plotted to oust her and two Cabinet ministers quit within hours of her government striking the long-sought divorce agreement with the EU.

In a public relations offensive, May revealed in a Daily Mail interview how her husband supported her during “a pretty heavy couple of days.”

Calling her husband, Philip, her “rock,” May said that when the Conservative revolt erupted Wednesday, the first thing he did was pour her a whisky.

She also laid into political opponents, saying their ideas for resolving the biggest stumbling block in EU-U.K. negotiations — avoiding a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland after Brexit — wouldn’t resolve the problem.

“People say, `If you could only just do something slightly different, have a Norway model or a Canada model, this backstop issue would go away.’ It would not. That issue is still going to be there,” May said in the interview , published Saturday.

“Some politicians get so embroiled in the intricacies of their argument they forget it is not about this theory or that theory, or does it make me look good,” she added.

While May appeared to have survived the week, her headaches are far from over. Disaffected “Brexiteers” think they have the numbers required to trigger a challenge to her leadership within days.

They are aiming for 48 letters of no confidence, the number needed for a vote under Conservative Party rules. So far, more than 20 lawmakers have publicly said they submitted such letters.

One of them, Mark Francois, complained that May’s draft deal would leave Britain with the worst outcome _ “half in and half out” of the EU. He said it would never be approved in Parliament, where May’s Conservatives do not have a majority.

Like Francois, many pro-Brexit Conservatives are pushing for a clean break with the EU and argue that the close trade ties between the U.K. and the EU called for in the deal would leave Britain a vassal state.

As it stands, the draft agreement sees Britain leaving the EU as planned on March 29 but remaining inside the bloc’s single market and bound by its rules until the end of December 2020.

It also commits the two sides to the contentious “backstop” solution, which would keep the U.K. in a customs arrangement with the EU as a guarantee the Irish border remained free of customs checkpoints.

British media reported that several pro-Brexit senior Conservatives, including House of Commons leader Andrea Leadsom, were trying to persuade May to renegotiate the divorce deal in a way they find more acceptable.

Leadsom told Sky News Saturday “there is still more to be done” to get “the best possible deal for the U.K.” before the draft withdrawal agreement is signed off on Nov. 25 in Brussels. She didn’t elaborate.

The deal also requires approval from Britain’s Parliament before the U.K. leaves the bloc.
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Thousands of protesters demonstrated in Norwegian cities on Saturday against restricting women’s access to abortion, the subject of talks between the ruling minority coalition and a small party seeking to join the government.

In Norway’s capital Oslo, the demonstrators, some pushing children in strollers, marched through the city center carrying banners with slogans such as “My body my right” and “Defend abortion.”

“The new law that’s proposed is limiting women’s rights,” said Ine Lund, a 22-year-old criminology student. “I feel it should be up to the woman to choose.”

When the Christian Democrats opened talks on teaming up with the opposition Labour Party to bring down the Conservative-led government, Prime Minister Erna Solberg intervened, offering to discuss tightening abortion rules.

The argument helped persuade rank-and-file members of the socially conservative, Lutheran-based party to vote for talks to join the ruling coalition, potentially securing Solberg a majority in parliament until the next election in 2021.

The Christian Democrats want further restrictions or an end to terminations after the twelfth week of pregnancy, potentially reining in exemptions for genetic conditions or injuries.

The party also wants to make it more difficult, or stop altogether, selective abortions in multi-fetal pregnancies.

“It is discriminating to select on the basis of having different skills … Children with Down syndrome should have the same legal rights as other children,” Kjell Ingolf Ropstad, deputy leader of the Christian Democrats, told public broadcaster NRK earlier this month.

Since 1978, a termination after 12 weeks must be authorized by a panel of two hospital doctors. If the panel refuses, the decision can be appealed.

In an effort to quell a backlash within her own party, as well as from the opposition, Solberg said any changes to the abortion law would not undermine women’s rights.

“In practice this will mean that, in future, women who seek an abortion after the twelfth week of pregnancy will as much as before have the right to have an abortion,” she told parliament on Wednesday.

Some 68 percent of Norwegians are against changing the abortion law, while 16 percent are in favor, according to a poll published in daily VG on Nov. 9. The phone survey by Respons Analyse polled 1,000 participants aged 18 and over.
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The woman campaigning to succeed Angela Merkel as head of Germany’s Christian Democrats (CDU) said she may consider quotas to get more women in parliament, as she positioned herself for a party election in December. 

Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer was placed second in a poll released by Bild am Sonntag, with support from 32 percent of conservatives, behind businessman Friedrich Merz with 49 percent in favor of seeing him succeed Merkel at a party congress on Dec. 7. 

The poll, which questioned members of the Bavarian CSU as well as the CDU, put Health Minister Jens Spahn third, with 7 percent. 

But in another poll of a more narrow sampling of CDU supporters for broadcaster ARD, Kramp-Karrenbauer, CDU general secretary, won 46 percent compared with 31 percent for Merz and 12 percent for Spahn. 

Kramp-Karrenbauer told broadcaster Suedwestrundfunk that many in the party had failed to take seriously a 1996 CDU rule that a third of party list candidates should be women, and she said a fall in the proportion of CDU lawmakers to one-fifth in the 2017 elections could be a vote loser. 

‘Last resort’

Creating quotas for parliament was “a last resort,” she said. “But it would be naive to think we can just let the issue run its course.” 

On another policy front, Kramp-Karrenbauer criticized dual citizenship rules, accusing Turkey’s leadership of trying to split the loyalties of German-Turkish dual nationals. 

“If that continues, then dual citizenship is missing its sense and purpose, and we must talk about how we end this system,” she told Der Spiegel magazine. 

The former premier of the western state of Saarland said she supported a plan under which the children of immigrants received a second passport, but their children would not. 

The CDU voted in 2016 to end dual citizenship, but Merkel subsequently said she did not feel bound by the vote. 

Spahn, an early critic of Merkel’s 2015 decision to welcome over a million mostly Muslim migrants, also weighed in on the immigration issue, urging the party congress to debate a U.N. pact on global migration signed in July. 

“All the citizens’ questions … should be answered. Otherwise there will be political fallout,” he said. 

Merkel on Friday accused her critics of spreading lies about the U.N. migration pact and insisted it would not curtail German sovereignty. 

Merkel, now in her fourth term, has said she will step down as party leader but will remain chancellor through 2021. 
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British lawmakers are calling for hand car washes to be regulated and licensed to combat the modern-day slavery that is being carried out “in plain sight.”

The Environmental Audit Committee said in a report that authorities are not doing enough to prevent the “flagrant rule-breaking” and exploitation of workers at the tens of thousands of hand car washes around the country. Many of them operate on shopping center parking lots and other disused spaces.

More than a quarter of the reports of alleged labor abuses referred to the Modern Slavery Helpline last year were about hand car washes.

“Hand car washes are a common sight in our towns and cities,” said Committee Chair Mary Creagh. “Yet they hide the widespread exploitation of workers through illegally low pay, poor working conditions and in some cases, forced labor.”

The committee report said thousands of workers in Britain are believed to be slaves. Many of them are thought to be Eastern European men trapped in debt bondage, forced to work in unsafe conditions, stripped of their documents and subjected to threats, abuse and violence.

The hand car washes are also blamed for water pollution as the chemicals used flow unchecked into storm drains.
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Turkish police have detained 13 academics, activists and journalists over links to a jailed businessman and human rights defender, and allegations that they sought to topple the government by supporting mass protests during 2013, Turkey’s state-run news agency reported Friday.

Anadolu Agency said professors Betul Tanbay and Turgut Tarhanli of Istanbul’s Bosphorus and Bilgi universities, and journalist Cigdem Mater were among those detained in simultaneous police operations in Istanbul and in three provinces.

They were being questioned over their links to the Anatolia Culture Association founded by Osman Kavala, a philanthropist businessman who was arrested a year ago and accused of attempts to “abolish” the constitutional order and the government. No indictment has been issued against him.

Anadolu said police are searching for seven other people linked to the association, which says it aims to promote peace and minority rights through culture.

The group is suspected of trying to bring down the government by fomenting “chaos and disorder” through their alleged involvement in efforts to expand anti-government protests that grew from opposition to the cutting down of trees at Istanbul’s Gezi Park. Authorities suspect that Kavala used the association, as well as a foundation that he also headed, to finance and organize efforts to broaden the protests, the agency reported.

The detentions drew criticism from the European Union, which called the development “alarming,” and from human rights groups.

“The repeated detentions of critical voices and the continued widespread pressure on civil society representatives run counter to the Turkish government’s declared commitment to human rights and to fundamental freedoms,” the EU said a statement.

The statement said the detentions would be raised during a high-level EU visit to Ankara next week.

Amnesty International’s Turkey Strategy and Research Manager Andrew Gardner said: “This latest wave of detentions of academics and activists, on the basis of absurd allegations, shows that the authorities are intent on continuing their brutal crackdown of independent civil society.”

​Since an attempted coup in 2016, Turkey’s government has been accused of stifling freedom of expression by arresting thousands of people for alleged connections to U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, whom Turkey blames for the failed attempt, or links to terror groups. It has purged many more people from state institutions and jailed dozens of journalists.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has called Kavala “Turkey’s Soros,” a reference to American billionaire George Soros, whose Open Society Foundations have funded education, health, justice and media projects around the world. Pro-government media in Turkey accuse Kavala of engaging in anti-government conspiracies.

Eleven prominent activists, including Amnesty International’s former Turkey chairman, were arrested last year at their hotel on an island off of Istanbul while training. They were eventually released from jail pending the outcome of their trial for supporting terror groups.

Separately on Friday, police detained 86 people, most of them former Air Force personnel, in operations across Turkey and were looking for 100 others for alleged links to Gulen’s movement, Anadolu reported.

More than 15,000 people have been purged from the military since the coup, Turkey’s defense minister has said.

The cleric denies involvement in the coup. 
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U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says “Ukraine has no greater friend than the United States” in resisting Russia’s attempted annexation of the Crimean Peninsula. He spoke Friday in Washington after meeting with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin.

Pompeo said Washington would continue to punish Russia until it returned control of Crimea to Ukraine.

Klimkin said the U.S. and Ukraine “stand shoulder to shoulder in countering Russian aggression.” He said such aggression takes many forms, both the war in Crimea and parts of Donbas in Ukraine, and in Russian efforts to undermine democratic institutions in the United States and Europe.

The two men met on the 10th anniversary of the declaration of a strategic partnership between Ukraine and the United States. Pompeo said they made progress on countering Russian aggression in Ukraine; bolstering the rule of law and humanitarian issues; and economic and energy security matters.

In an interview with Voice of America’s Ukrainian service Friday, Klimkin predicted that Russia would “try its utmost” to meddle in Ukraine’s presidential and parliamentary elections next year. He accused Russia of spreading “fierce propaganda” and “disinformation.” 

“It’s a comprehensive conventional and nonconventional war against Ukraine,” he said.

Klimkin also expressed concern about Russian aggression in the Azov Sea, saying it was “critically important” to keep the peace there.

“We need the support of the international community to bring peace to this important region,” he said.

Klimkin also told VOA that Ukraine was open to any kind of international mission to help the occupied Donbas region. He said Ukrainian citizens have been suffering from Russian occupation there. 

“It could be a peacekeeping mission, it could be a police mission, it could be international administration, or all three coming together,” he said, to aid the citizens of the region.

VOA’s Ukrainian service contributed to this report.
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The Justice Department inadvertently named Julian Assange in a court filing in an unrelated case, suggesting prosecutors have charged the WikiLeaks founder under seal.

Assange’s name appears twice in an August court filing from a federal prosecutor in Virginia, who was attempting to keep sealed a separate case involving a man accused of coercing a minor for sex.

Any charges against Assange could help illuminate the question of whether Russia coordinated with the Trump campaign to sway the 2016 presidential election. It would also suggest that, after years of internal wrangling within the Justice Department, prosecutors have decided to take a more aggressive tact against the secret-sharing website.

Wrong name in filing

In one sentence, the prosecutor wrote that the charges and arrest warrant “would need to remain sealed until Assange is arrested in connection with the charges in the criminal complaint and can therefore no longer evade or avoid arrest and extradition in this matter.” In another sentence, the prosecutor said that “due to the sophistication of the defendant and the publicity surrounding the case, no other procedure is likely to keep confidential the fact that Assange has been charged.”

It was not immediately clear why Assange’s name was included in the document, though Joshua Stueve, a spokesman for the Eastern District of Virginia, which had been investigating Assange, said, “The court filing was made in error. That was not the intended name for this filing.”

The Washington Post reported late Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter, that Assange had indeed been charged. The Associated Press could not immediately confirm that.

It was not immediately clear what charges Assange, who has been holed up for years in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, might face.

Assange arrest a priority for Sessions

But recently ousted Attorney General Jeff Sessions last year declared the arrest of Assange a priority. Special counsel Robert Mueller has been investigating whether Trump campaign associates had advance knowledge of Democratic emails that were published by WikiLeaks in the weeks before the 2016 election and that U.S. authorities have said were hacked by Russia. Any arrest could represent a significant development for Mueller’s investigation into whether the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia to influence the election.

Barry Pollack, a lawyer for Assange, told the AP earlier this week that he had no information about possible charges against Assange.

The filing was discovered by Seamus Hughes, a terrorism expert at the Program on Extremism at George Washington University, who posted it on Twitter and said, “To be clear, seems Freudian, it’s for a different completely unrelated case, every other page is not related to him, EDVA just appears to have assange on the mind when filing motions to seal and used his name.”
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Ethically driven businesses are becoming increasingly popular and profitable but they can face threats for shaking up the existing order, entrepreneurs said on Social Enterprise Day.

When Meghan Markle wore a pair of “slave-free” jeans on a royal tour of Australia last month, she sparked a sales stampede and shone a spotlight on the growing number of companies aiming to meet public demand for ethical products.

“Right now is the perfect time to have this kind of business,” said James Bartle, founder of Australia-based Outland Denim, which made the $200 (150 pound) jeans. “There is awareness and people are prepared to spend on these kinds of products.”

Social Enterprise Day

Social Enterprise Day, which celebrates firms seeking to make profit while doing good, is being marked in 23 countries, including Australia, Nigeria, Romania and the Philippines, led by Social Enterprise UK (SEUK), which represents the sector.

Outland Denim is one such company, employing dozens of survivors of human trafficking and other vulnerable women in Cambodia to make its jeans, which all contain a written thank-you message from the seamstress on an internal pocket.

Bartle said he wanted to create a sustainable model that gives people power to change their future through employment.

More companies are striving to clean up their supply chains and stamp their goods as environmentally friendly and ethical, with women and millennials, people born between 1982 and 2000, driving the shift to products that seek to improve the world.

“For-profits create the mess, and then the not-for-profits clean it up,” said Andrew O’Brien, director of external affairs at SEUK, which estimates that 2 million British workers are employed by a social enterprise. “We are an existential threat to that system, by coming through the middle and forcing businesses to change the way they do business.”

Risky business 

Britain has the world’s largest social enterprise sector, according to the U.K. government. About 100,000 firms contribute 60 billion pounds ($76 billion) to the world’s fifth largest economy, SEUK says.

Elsewhere in the world, it can be a risky business.

“I get threats,” said Farhad Wajdi who runs Ebtakar Inspiring Entrepreneurs of Afghanistan, which helps women enter the workforce by training and providing seed money for them to operate food carts in the war-torn country. “I can’t go to the provinces.”

His work has met resistance in parts of Afghanistan, a conservative society where women rarely work outside the home.

“A social enterprise can lead to sustainable change in those communities,” Wajdi said on the sidelines of the Trust Conference in London. “It can propagate gender equality and create friction for social change at a grassroots level.”

Niche? Window dressing?

There is, however, a danger that social enterprise will remain a niche form of business or become window-dressing for firms that just want to improve their public image.

“I don’t want social enterprise to become the next (corporate social responsibility), another (public relations) move,” said Melissa Kim, the founder of Costa Rican-based Uplift Worldwide, which supports social enterprises.

“To me this is just good business, and good sustainable business is not just about the environment and human rights … if you care about your relationships internally and externally you will stay in business.”
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The three candidates competing to succeed German Chancellor Angela Merkel as leader of the Christian Democrats (CDU) agreed on Thursday to revive their party’s fortunes by cutting taxes and reducing Germany’s dependence on the United States for defense.

In a strikingly good-humored three-hour debate in the northern city of Luebeck, the first of eight meetings with party grass roots across Germany before a leadership vote on Dec. 7, the rivals barely clashed on broad policy.

While there were different nuances on details, the three agreed to work to improve the integration of migrants, focus more on affordable housing, cut subsidies to poorer eastern states and further Merkel’s digitalization drive.

 

The race for leader of the Christian Democratic Union party has shaped up as a dual between Merkel protege Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, widely seen as the continuity option, and Friedrich Merz, a millionaire who describes himself as “a free-trade man.”

Merkel has said she will remain chancellor atop a ‘grand coalition’ with the CDU’s Bavarian sister party and Social Democrats until the end of her term in 2021.

CDU General Secretary Kramp-Karrenbauer, the front-runner, won applause for saying she would continue the process of renewal, by taking into account the views of the party base.

Former Merkel rival Merz said he aimed to take the CDU back over the 40 percent mark and halve support for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), currently polling at around 16 percent. The CDU is at around 26-27 percent in most surveys.

“It is our job to do this,” he said, adding the CDU had to make clear it had not forgotten voters who felt neglected after the influx of some 1.5 million migrants since 2015.

Health Minister Jens Spahn, the third candidate and an arch-critic of Merkel’s migrant policy, said CDU policy had in part led to the rise of the AfD, now represented in all of Germany’s 16 states. “We can also get rid of them,” he said.

All three candidates promised to work with each other after the leadership election and stressed their mutual respect.

“I will not criticize the others, we will only say good things about each other … In the end, the party must be the winner,” said Merz.

An opinion poll for broadcaster ARD conducted on Monday and Tuesday showed Kramp-Karrenbauer, known as mini-Merkel, still favorite among CDU voters with 46 percent support.

The poll, released on Thursday, showed 31 percent of CDU supporters favored Friedrich Merz, returning to politics after 10 years in the private sector. Twelve percent backed Spahn.
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