After months of restraint, Mexico adopts new strategy: Standing up to Donald Trump

MEXICO CITY — The rise of Donald Trump and the anti-immigrant wave he is riding in his campaign for president have alarmed the Mexican government so much that it has reshuffled top diplomats and adopted a new strategy to defend the image of Mexicans abroad, according to officials.
Trump’s campaign has consistently targeted the United States’ southern neighbor, calling Mexican border-crossers “rapists” and criminals and threatening to cut off the money that Mexican immigrants send home to their families unless Mexico pays for a border wall. But for months, the Mexican government has opted to remain quiet, with a few high-profile exceptions, rather than publicly challenging Trump’s claims.
Under mounting domestic pressure, Mexican officials now say they have chosen a new strategy: to stand up for Mexicans and defend the reputation of their countrymen living in the United States.
“In recent months, we have seen a growing anti-immigrant discourse in general, anti-Mexican in particular, and not exclusively from Donald Trump,” said a Mexican official who was not authorized to speak publicly on this issue. “This set off our fear that it would damage the image of Mexico in the United States.”
After just seven months on the job, Miguel Basañez Ebergenyi, Mexico’s ambassador to Washington, will be replaced by Carlos Manuel Sada Solana, the consul general in Los Angeles. Paulo Carreño King, a top aide to President Enrique Peña Nieto whose portfolio has included dealing with the foreign media and improving the country’s brand, will take over as the senior Foreign Ministry official responsible for North America.
The United States is Mexico’s biggest trading partner, with more than $1 billion in bilateral trade each day, and millions of Mexicans live north of the border. The government is worried that Trump’s rhetoric and wider anti-Mexican sentiment could hurt foreign investment and tourism and lead to more damaging U.S. policies in the future.
Foreign Secretary Claudia Ruiz Massieu told El Universal newspaper on Tuesday that the government must “reevaluate our performance and strategy toward the United States.”
“We see an exacerbated mood, in some sectors, against our countrymen, against our country,” she added. “There is a fear on the part of our community in the United States that this spirit can grow and overflow and may generate hostilities."
As Trump’s stature grew at home in recent months, Mexican officials conducted public opinion polling in the United States and spoke with their network of consulates. The outreach, they said, raised new worries about the scope of anti-Mexican feeling.
“We found young people have begun to adopt arguments that are anti-Mexican,” the official said.
Now the government hopes that its diplomats can make a more forceful argument about the benefits that Mexico provides to the United States.
Basañez took over the Mexican Embassy last year after serving as a professor at the Fletcher School at Tufts University. In his brief tenure, he earned a reputation as a low-profile leader who was restrained amid the Trumpian storm. Last year, he played down Trump’s comments as “just part of the primary campaign” and reportedly argued that attacking the Republican presidential front-runner would elevate him. Basañez could not be reached for comment.
Sada, the incoming ambassador, pending confirmation, has served in several Mexican consulates, including in Chicago, San Antonio and New York. He has also been the head of congressional affairs at the Mexican Embassy in Washington.
Arturo Sarukhan, Mexico’s ambassador to the United States from 2007 to 2013, said Mexico must rebut Trump’s claims. The new strategy is a “very welcome tack,” he said.
“There is a clear need for the Mexican government to do something about this, and there was intense domestic pressure on this front,” Sarukhan added. An ambassador’s job, he said, should be to “counter lies, distortions and negative narratives with hard data and facts.”

OPINION: Panama Papers and the lessons of Watergate BY Alicia Shepard

Imagine the movie. A reporter gets a query from a mysterious source promising information so damning it could lead to a head of state resigning. The source insists on anonymity.

Sounds like what just happened in Iceland this week. The prime minister resigned amid a spate of reports on the so-called Panama Papers, triggered when a German reporter was offered 11.5 million documents pilfered from a Panamanian law firm that specializes in secret offshore services.

The events mirror what happened in the iconic journalism film All the President’s Men, which debuted in theaters nationwide 40 years ago Saturday. The movie spins the tale of two young Washington Post reporters — Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein — who with relentless sleuthing and the help of a famous anonymous source, Deep Throat, uncovered evidence that forced President Nixon to resign in 1974.

While the reporting duo wrote a 1974 book of the same name, Woodward and Bernstein and the Washington Post truly catapulted to fame with the 1976 movie starring Robert Redford as Woodward, Dustin Hoffman as Bernstein and Jason Robards as Post editor Ben Bradlee.

The blockbuster movie turned the pair into national celebrities, earning them attention previously unheard of for most journalists. On TV, in magazines and on the speaking circuit, they were often introduced as the two men who profoundly and permanently changed journalism.

All the President’s Men drove a generation of Woodstein wannabes into journalism and became standard fare shown at journalism schools. It still holds up as one of the best films made about the craft of journalism and just how risky investigative journalism can be.

“We’re under a lot of pressure, you know, and you put us there,” Robards says in the film to the twentysomething reporters. “Nothing’s riding on this except the, uh, First Amendment to the Constitution, freedom of the press and maybe the future of the country. Not that any of that matters, but if you guys f--- up again, I’m going to get mad. Good night.”

The movie was Redford’s idea. He was drawn to the contrast between Woodward and Bernstein.

“They couldn’t be more different,” Redford told me. “Bernstein was radical, Jewish, intellectually inclined, very liberal. Woodward was bland, boring, a WASPy Republican. How in the hell could they work together? The tension intrigued me.”

Redford had a clear vision that this film would reveal the mysterious world of investigative reporting. He wanted the public to understand the rigors of investigative journalism, to show how meticulous reporters need to be, how many dead ends they pursue, and how repetitive, sometimes downright boring, investigative reporting could be.

He promised the reporters, who went along reluctantly, that he’d make a serious movie about reporting, not a flashy Hollywood movie about the shifty Watergate figures surrounding Nixon or a screwball comedy about newspapers.

He succeeded.

The movie educated my generation on the need for documents and the importance of following the money — much like Spotlight, the 2016 Oscar-winning movie aboutThe Boston Globe’s investigation into the Catholic Church’s disastrous sex abuse scandal and coverup, is educating this generation.

The good news is that investigative reporting, thought to be moribund in the new digital order, is enjoying a resurgence. Investigative teams at Buzzfeed and Fusionare the most recent digital ventures. ProPublica, the Center for Investigative Reporting, the Center for Public Integrity, the Marshall Project and TheTexas Tribune, among other non-profit investigative outfits, are all noteworthy digital muckrakers.

Just this week, the importance of shining a spotlight on corruption was highlighted, with the massive data drop and reporting project shepherded by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), another non-profit.

The ICIJ managed to closely collaborate with 400 reporters working for 100 media partners around the world to handle the largest data leak in modern history — and keep it secret for a year. They revealed how high-profile heads of state, celebrities, athletes and public officials across the globe managed to launder billions of dollars, evade taxes and avoid sanctions through the Mossack Fonseca law firm in Panama.

This project is as exciting and pioneering as the Post’s Watergate coup. How the ICIJ pulled off one of the most stunning investigative reporting collaborations in history not only portends well for the future of journalism, it also would be a movie as worthy asAll the President’s Men.

Mr. Redford, are you listening?

Alicia Shepard, a former NPR ombudsman who recently spent two years in Kabul working with Afghan journalists and the U.S. Agency for International Development, is the author of Woodward and Bernstein: Life in the Shadow of Watergate. Follow her on Twitter: @Ombudsman

Austria Considers Law to Seize Home Where Hitler Was Born

NYT

Adolf Hitler was born in a three-story building in Braunau, Austria. His parents rented an apartment above what was then a tavern. CreditLaetitia Vancon for The New York Times

The fate of Adolf Hitler’s birthplace in the picturesque Austrian border town of Braunau has been fiercely debated at least since victorious American G.I.s stopped the Nazis from destroying the house at the end of World War II.
Now Austria plans to end the dispute, drafting a law that would enable the government to seize the property and decide on its final use.
Discussions continue, said Karl-Heinz Grundböck, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry in Vienna, but a draft law is expected to go to Parliament by summer while a commission of experts considers the building’s fate.
The boy who became Hitler was born in Braunau on April 20, 1889, in an apartment rented to his parents above what was a tavern.

A stone outside is the only indication of the building’s place in history. The marble memorial says, “For Peace, Freedom and Democracy/Never Again Fascism/Millions of Dead Warn.” CreditLaetitia Vancon for The New York Times

After moving as a young man to Vienna and failing as an artist, Hitler went to Munich. There, he led a failed coup and spent time in prison before rising to power as head of the Nazi party, then as chancellor of Germany. He committed suicide as Allied troops were seizing Berlin in 1945.
Hitler paid no attention to Braunau, preferring instead to amass thousands of works of art and make grandiose plans for a vast museum in his honor in the northern Austrian city of Linz.
Yet Martin Bormann, a high-ranking Nazi, acquired and restored the Braunau property, which became something of a place of pilgrimage from 1938 until 1945.
The family that had owned the house bought it back after the war. A descendant, Gerlinde Pommer, has refused in recent years to sell the increasingly decrepit building to the Austrian government or to undertake repairs. The last tenant — a workshop for the disabled — moved out in 2011.
Mr. Grundböck, reached by telephone on Saturday, said the future of the building was not clear. Historians have pressed for years for an exhibit that would promote peace and dispel any possibility that the site could become a shrine for neo-Nazis.
A memorial stone outside the three-story building is the only outward sign of its uniqueness. The marble slab bears an inscription: “For Peace, Freedom and Democracy/Never Again Fascism/Millions of Dead Warn.”
The Austrian government and the City of Braunau have rented the building from the owners since 1972, and still pay Ms. Pommer about 5,000 euros, or about $5,700, a month.
Mr. Grundböck confirmed a report in Der Spiegel, the German weekly newsmagazine, that Austria’s Interior Ministry was determined that the house should never represent “an affirming memory of National Socialism.

Panama Leaks : Iceland announces new PM, autumn election

Iceland’s right-wing government on Wednesday named a new prime minister and said it would hold early elections in the autumn, after the previous leader was forced to step down over his implication in the Panama Papers scandal.

The two coalition partners, the Progressive Party and the Independence Party, agreed after talks late Wednesday to hand the prime ministerial post to the agriculture minister Sigurdur Ingi Johannsson, 53, of the Progressives.

He replaces Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson, 41, who stepped down Tuesday amid massive public protests over a hidden offshore account revealed in the so-called Panama Papers leak of 11.5 million financial documents.

“We expect to have elections this autumn,” Johannsson told reporters, insisting that the coalition, in power since 2013, would continue to run the country’s affairs despite thousands of protesters calling for the whole government’s resignation.

“We will continue our work together. We are of course hoping this will help bring stability in the political system,” he said.

President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, who at 72 is due to retire in June after five terms and 20 years in office, is expected to approve Johannsson’s appointment.

Iceland’s next legislative elections were originally scheduled for April 2017.

First casualty of Panama papers

Gunnlaugsson, who remains the head of the Progressive Party for the time being, was the first major political casualty to emerge from the leak of millions of documents detailing offshore accounts held by world leaders and celebrities.

Two other Iceland cabinet ministers have been singled out in the leak—Finance Minister Bjarni Benediktsson and Interior Minister Olof Nordal—and the coalition is keen to stall for time to avoid what would surely be a resounding protest vote if a snap election were held soon.

The coalition parties “have lost all their legitimacy, but I am sceptical they will leave of their own initiative. Time is on their side and it’s crucial for them to stay in power,” lamented Gyda Margret Petursdottir, a 42-year-old teacher who was one of hundreds who protested against the government outside parliament on Wednesday.

The Panama Papers, revealed by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), showed that Gunnlaugsson and his wife owned an offshore company in the British Virgin Islands and had placed millions of dollars of her inheritance there.

The prime minister sold his 50-percent share of the company to his wife for a symbolic sum of $1 at the end of 2009, but he had neglected to declare the stake as required when he was elected to parliament six months earlier.

Gunnlaugsson has said he regretted not having done so, but insisted he and his wife had followed Icelandic law and paid all their taxes in Iceland.

Vote of no-confidence

It has not been proven the couple stood to gain financially from the offshore holding, and the ICIJ noted only that Gunnlaugsson had “violated Iceland’s ethics rules”.

But the issue is particularly sensitive in Iceland, a country marked by the excesses of the 2000s when senior bankers used shell companies in tax havens to conceal their dealings in risky financial products which ultimately led to the 2008 collapse of the nation’s three main banks.

The left-wing opposition presented a motion of no-confidence to parliament on Monday, and said late Wednesday it intended to push ahead with it despite the government’s plans for an early election.

“There is a consensus between the opposition parties that we will push the vote of no-confidence,” said Birgitta Jonsdottir, the founder of the libertarian Pirate Party which campaigns for more transparency in politics.

“We don’t see the point in continuing with a government that has 26 percent trust,” she said, acknowledging however that the motion had little chance of passing in parliament because of the government’s majority.

A Gallup poll conducted Monday and Tuesday credited the Pirate Party with a whopping 43 percent of voter support, far ahead of the Independence Party at 21.6 percent, the opposition Left Green Movement at 11.2 percent, and the Progressives at 7.9 percent

INTERVIEW-Panama law firm says data hack was external, files complaint

The Panamanian lawyer at the center of a data leak scandal that has embarrassed a clutch of world leaders said on Tuesday his firm was a victim of a hack from outside the company, and has filed a complaint with state prosecutors.
Founding partner Ramon Fonseca said the firm, Mossack Fonseca, which specializes in setting up offshore companies, had broken no laws and that all its operations were legal. Nor had it ever destroyed any documents or helped anyone evade taxes or launder money, he added in an interview with Reuters.
Company emails, extracts of which were published in an investigation by the U.S.-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and other media organizations, were "taken out of context" and misinterpreted, he added.
"We rule out an inside job. This is not a leak. This is a hack," Fonseca, 63, said at the company's headquarters in Panama City's business district. "We have a theory and we are following it," he added, without elaborating.
"We have already made the relevant complaints to the Attorney General's office, and there is a government institution studying the issue," he added, flanked by two press advisers.
Governments across the world have begun investigating possible financial wrongdoing by the rich and powerful after the leak of more than 11.5 million documents, dubbed the "Panama Papers," from the law firm that span four decades.
The papers have revealed financial arrangements of prominent figures, including friends of Russian President Vladimir Putin, relatives of the prime ministers of Britain and Pakistan and Chinese President Xi Jinping, and the president of Ukraine.
On Tuesday, Iceland's prime minister, Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson, resigned, becoming the first casualty of the leak.
"The (emails) were taken out of context," Fonseca said.
He lamented what he called journalistic activism and sensationalism, extolling his own investigative research credentials as a published novelist in Panama.
"The only crime that has been proven is the hack," Fonseca said. "No one is talking about that. That is the story."
France announced on Tuesday it would put the Central American nation back on its blacklist of uncooperative tax jurisdictions.

Why Russia Is Rebuilding Its Nuclear Arsenal

Time

Vladimir Putin skipped the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington last week—one more sign that Russia isn't interested in cutting its arms

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On Friday evening, at the end of the final nuclear security summit of his tenure, President Barack Obama took a swipe at his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, for standing in the way of nuclear disarmament. Obama's remark was pointed, calling out Putin by name, and it cast a rare bit of light on the personal clash between the two presidents on an issue that both of them see as central to their legacies.
“Because of the vision that he’s been pursuing of emphasizing military might,” Obama told reporters at the summit, “we have not seen the type of progress that I would have hoped for with Russia.”
This was putting it lightly. Over the course of Obama’s presidency, Russia has managed to negotiate deep cuts to the U.S. arsenal while substantially strengthening of its own. It has allegedly violated the treaty that limits the deployment of nuclear weapons in Europe and, in the last few years, it has brought disarmament talks with the U.S. to a complete standstill for the first time since the 1960s. In its rhetoric, Moscow has also returned to a habit of nuclear threats, while in its military exercises, it has begun to practice for a nuclear strike, according to the NATO military alliance.
But of all these stark reversions to the posture of the Cold War, nothing expressed Russia’s position on nuclear disarmament more clearly than Putin’s decision to skip the nuclear summit in Washington last week. Apart from North Korea, which was not invited to the talks, Russia was the only nuclear power not to send a senior delegate.
The snub was no surprise. It was announced back on Nov. 5 in a statement from the Russian Foreign Ministry, which offered a curious explanation. By influencing the policies of global watchdogs like the International Atomic Energy Agency, “Washington is trying to take the role of the main and the privileged ‘player’ in this sphere,” the statement said. In part because of this, “we have shared with our American colleagues our doubts about the ‘added value’ of the forum.” Russia therefore saw no need to participate, the Ministry said.
A few days after that statement, the world got a more colorful reminder of Putin’s position on nuclear disarmament. During a meeting at the Kremlin with his top generals on Nov. 10, he accused the U.S. of trying to “neutralize” Russia’s nuclear arsenal by building a missile shield over Europe, one that could knock Russian rockets out of the sky. In response, he said, Russia would have to “strengthen the potential of its strategic nuclear forces,” including the deployment of “attack systems” capable of piercing any missile shield.
As if on cue, a state television camera then zoomed in on a piece of paper that one of the generals was holding in his hand. It showed the plans for a nuclear device codenamed Status-6, complete with a curt definition of its purpose: “to create an extensive zone of radioactive contamination” along the enemy’s coast, rendering it uninhabitable “for a long time.”
Asked to comment the following day, Putin’s spokesman claimed the image had appeared in the nightly news by mistake. But the Kremlin’s mouthpiece newspaper then followed up with details. The warhead inside Status-6, it said, would likely be covered in cobalt, an element which would “guarantee the destruction of all living things” once it was irradiated and scattered by a nuclear explosion.
Vladimir Dvorkin, a retired major general of the Russian strategic rocket forces, remembers such designs from his days developing nuclear submarines for the former Soviet Union. “It’s an old Soviet brainchild,” he told me by phone from Moscow. But he never expected to see it revived. In the 1990s and during first two years of Putin’s presidency, Dvorkin headed the main nuclear research directorate of the Russian Ministry of Defense. The emphasis throughout those years was on cooperating with the U.S. to secure nuclear stockpiles and keep them out of the hands of terrorists.
The reemergence of Status-6—even if more as a propaganda ploy than as an actual weapon—shows just how far relations have fallen since then. “The idea is to creep up on the seaboard of the United States and set off a massive nuclear explosion,” says Dvorkin. “It’s being revived in order to spook the West.”
Few in the West had expected to hear such spook stories again. For Americans, a nuclear arms race is the stuff of Cold War fiction. But for Russians, or at least their leaders, the world still looks much as it did in the age of the nuclear arms race.
That became clear to many of Obama’s top advisers soon after his Administration took office. During a landmark speech in Prague in the spring of 2009, Obama described his vision for a nuclear-free world. The timing and venue were both highly symbolic. Earlier the same week, the newly-elected President had come to Europe for a summit of the NATO alliance, which had just extended membership to two more formerly communist nations, Albania and Croatia, moving the military bloc deeper into Moscow’s former zone of influence.
Prague, too, had been a key Cold War battleground, and as Obama pointed out at the beginning of his speech, few people could have imagined in those years that the Czech Republic would eventually become a NATO member in 2004, standing as proof that Russian dominance of Eastern Europe was receding. “The Cold War has disappeared,” Obama told the city square packed with his Czech admirers. Yet the existence of nuclear weapons, he said, was its “most dangerous legacy.” He promised to work towards abolishing them.
The previous week, the White House had begun talks with the Kremlin on an arms reduction treaty it called New Start. But the two sides came to the table with very different ambitions. “We wanted to get rid of as many nuclear weapons as we could,” says Michael McFaul, who was then serving as Obama’s top adviser on Russian affairs. The Kremlin did not seem to share that dream. During one round of talks at the Defense Ministry in Moscow early in 2010, Obama’s Prague speech came up in some idle conversation, McFaul says, and the Russians started laughing. “They said, ‘Yeah, of course you guys want a nuclear-free world, because then you would dominate the world with your conventional weapons. Why would we ever want to do that?’”
For Russia, the Cold War had never simply disappeared. It had resulted in defeat and the loss of empire, leaving Russia’s rival of more than 40 years to dictate the terms of peace in Europe. By the time Putin took power in 2000, the only vestige of his country’s superpower status was its nuclear arsenal, which was still the biggest in the world. So he began to use it as a crutch.
“Even in the darkest days of the Russian military, when they weren’t able to afford to pay their soldiers and fly their airplanes, they paid close attention to the readiness and modernization of their nuclear forces,” says David Ochmanek, who served as a U.S. Air Force officer during the Cold War and, between 2009 and 2014, was the Pentagon’s top official for force development. “Their doctrine reflected this,” he says.
In one of his first acts as President, Putin adopted a new military doctrine in the spring of 2000, one that rejected the Soviet pledge never to launch a nuclear weapon first. His reasoning was simple: only Russia’s nukes could counter the vastly superior strength of U.S. conventional weapons. So he lowered the bar for using nuclear weapons in situations “critical to national security.” This meant that if Russia ever felt badly outgunned in a military conflict, it could launch a nuclear missile to even the score and make the enemy back off. That doctrine was still in place when the U.S. and Russia began negotiating the New Start treaty.
But Putin’s position in Russia had changed. In 2008, the constitution prevented him from seeking a third consecutive term as President. So he moved over to the nominally less powerful role of Prime Minister and ceded the presidency to his protégé, Dmitri Medvedev.
Obama saw this as an opportunity. He and Medvedev had taken office within a year of each other, and Obama had made it one of his foreign policy priorities to improve—or “reset”—troubled relations with Russia. Nuclear arms reduction was at the core of this agenda, and the two leaders pursued the talks with notable warmth and enthusiasm. From behind the scenes, however, Putin and his generals set rigid parameters for Medvedev. Even with a new president, the balance of power in Russia had never really changed.
“I always called Medvedev Putin’s lawyer,” says Gary Samore, who was then the White House coordinator for arms control and a lead negotiator of the treaty. “It was very clear who was calling the shots.”
As the negotiations moved ahead, Samore saw the Russians advancing two core priorities. Most of their nuclear warheads were still deployed in static, Soviet-era silos dug into the ground, and these could easily get taken out if the U.S. were ever to launch a surprise attack against Russia. “They were very vulnerable to a pre-emptive first strike,” says Samore. What Russia needed most from the New Start treaty was a chance to get rid of this vulnerability and regain nuclear parity with the U.S. “Their priority first and foremost was to limit our capabilities,” he says, “and to buy time for the Russians to go through their strategic modernization program.”
Obama was prepared to allow that. Since the end of the Cold War, U.S. security concerns had shifted away from the threat of nuclear war with Russia. The bigger American fear was the possibility that Moscow would let some of its nukes fall into the hands of terrorists, says Ivo Daalder, who served as U.S. ambassador to NATO during negotiations on the New Start treaty. “Russia as a military security concern wasn’t really on the agenda,” Daalder says. “The focus was really on cooperation.”
In particular, Obama needed Russia’s help on Iran, whose nuclear program the West did see as a major security threat. “So to me there was a very clear quid pro quo,” Samore says. “We very consciously and deliberately were prepared to give the Russians strategic parity in exchange for cooperation on other key issues, Iran being the most important.”
Both sides got what they wanted. In the spring of 2011, Obama returned to Prague to sign the New Start treaty with Medvedev, and that same day, Russia agreed to support another round of Western sanctions against Iran. The pain of these sanctions proved instrumental in getting Iran to give up its nuclear weapons program four year later, perhaps Obama's most notable foreign policy achievement.
On paper at least, the New Start treaty also looked impressive. Both sides agreed to cut their arsenals of long-range nuclear missiles in half and to reduce the number of warheads by around three-quarters. But in practice, the New Start treaty allowed Russia to scrap many of its old silo-based missile systems while pushing ahead with a wholesale upgrade of its broader arsenal. “The treaty does not prevent you from modernizing,” says McFaul, who went on to become the U.S. ambassador in Moscow from 2011 to 2013. “In terms of parity, they felt like they needed to modernize, whereas we didn’t feel that way.”
It will still take Russia at least until the end of this decade to complete its nuclear modernization program. But it is off to an impressive start. Moscow is building a new generation of long-range nuclear bombers, truck-mounted ballistic missiles and nuclear-armed submarines. In the past two years, Russian officials and state-run media have routinely boasted about the fruits these efforts, often under giddy headlines like this gem from the Sputnik news agency: “Rail Phantom: Russia developing invisible death trains with nukes.”
This seems far from the spirit of Medvedev’s term as president, which ended in 2012 with Putin’s return to the Kremlin’s top post. The New Start treaty, Medvedev told me in mid-February, “was a great achievement in Russian-U.S. relations, and it was good for the international situation.” Later in our interview, he added: “It’s a shame that things began to take a different path after that.”
In the the foreseeable future, Medvedev said, Russia would have no choice but to develop weapons like Status-6 to balance against the enormous advantage the U.S. enjoys in conventional arms. (Washington spends more than seven times as much on defense as Russia, which will have to cut its military spending this year, thanks largely to a shrinking economy.) “Isn’t that scary? Yes, it is very scary,” Medvedev told me, referring to these weapons. “If hundreds or thousands of such missiles are used in an attack, the consequences will be just as devastating” as a nuclear strike.
This point came back to the essential paradox of Russia’s position on nuclear weapons. It is the very real feeling of weakness and vulnerability that makes Russia cling to its most destructive and dangerous arms. And until Russia’s leaders are made to believe that the U.S. does not wish them any harm, Obama’s vision of a nuclear free world will never be realized.
Obama admitted as much at the nuclear security summit in Washington. “It is very difficult,” he said at the closing news conference, “to see huge reductions in our nuclear arsenal unless the United States and Russia, as the two largest possessors of nuclear weapons, are prepared to lead the way.” From the start of his tenure, Obama tried to take that lead, likely believing that the Cold War had, as he put it, “disappeared.”
But his most important partners in this effort saw things differently, says Samore, his former adviser. “To some extent Obama didn’t appreciate how the level of Russian paranoia and fear of the United States continued to permeate their defense and security establishment,” he says. “For them it was so old school. He just didn’t see it.” By now, as he prepares to leave office, Obama most certainly does

Investigative Journalism : Greatest Leak of All Time Uncovered By Panama Paper

One of the biggest document leaks in history snared world leaders, celebrities and sports stars in a snowballing worldwide scandal Monday over their secretive offshore financial dealings.
A year-long worldwide media investigation into a trove of 11.5 million documents, leaked from a Panama-based law firm with offices in 35 countries, exposed a tangle of confidential financial dealings by the elite, from aides of Russian President Vladimir Putin to relatives of Chinese President Xi Jinping, sports celebrities and screen stars.
The vast stash of records from legal firm Mossack Fonseca, the so-called Panama Papers, was obtained from an anonymous source by German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung and shared with more than 100 media groups by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).

Offshore financial dealings are not illegal in themselves but may be abused to hide assets from tax authorities, launder the proceeds of criminal activities or conceal misappropriated or politically inconvenient wealth.
- Putin aides implicated -
Among the biggest findings of the media probe, which fingered about 140 political figures including 12 current or former heads of state:
-- Banks, companies and close associates of Putin, who is not himself named in the documents, "secretly shuffled as much as $2 billion through banks and shadow companies", according to the ICIJ. These allegations were not aired by Russian state TV.
-- The families of some of China's top communist brass -- including the nation's president -- used offshore tax havens to conceal their fortunes. At least eight current or former members of the Politburo Standing Committee, the ruling Communist Party's most powerful body, have been implicated.
-- A member of FIFA's ethics committee, Juan Pedro Damiani, had business ties with three men indicted in a corruption scandal. Argentine football great Lionel Messi and his father are named as owners of a Panama company, Mega Star Enterprises, that has not previously been disclosed in a Spanish tax probe into their affairs. UEFA chief Michel Platini used Mossack Fonseca to administer an offshore company, but he denied wrongdoing in a statement to AFP.
-- A Panamanian shell company may have helped hide millions of dollars from the Brink's-Mat heist, a $40 million British gold bullion robbery at London-Heathrow Airport in November 1983 that is etched in criminal folklore. The Panamanian law firm denies this allegations, however, the ICIJ said.
-- Iceland's Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson secretly owned millions of dollars of bank bonds during his country's financial crisis when the country's financial system collapsed and banks had to be bailed out. The irritated premier denied wrongdoing in a television interview, which he cut short, but faces calls to resign and a no-confidence vote in parliament this week.

- Three of Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's four children -- Maryam, who has been tipped to be his political successor; Hasan and Hussain -- were named as owners of London real estate through offshore entities. But Sharif's son Hussain told Pakistani television: "There is nothing wrong with it and I have never concealed them, nor do I need to do that."
 'Nothing wrong with it' - 
The Panama Papers, from around 214,000 offshore entities covering almost 40 years, also name the president of Ukraine and the king of Saudi Arabia, as well as sporting and movie stars including Jackie Chan.
At least 33 people and companies listed in the documents were blacklisted by the US government for wrongdoing, including dealings with North Korea and Iran, as well as Lebanon's Islamist group Hezbollah, the ICIJ said.
President Francois Hollande promised Monday that French tax authorities will investigate the disclosures of the Panama Papers and that legal proceedings will follow. Australia said it, too, had launched a probe into 800 wealthy Mossack Fonseca clients.
"I think the leak will prove to be probably the biggest blow the offshore world has ever taken because of the extent of the documents," said ICIJ director Gerard Ryle.
One of the Panama law firm's founders, Ramon Fonseca, told AFP the leaks were "a crime, a felony" and "an attack on Panama".
"Certain countries don't like it that we are so competitive in attracting companies," he said.
Panama's government said it had "zero tolerance" for any shady deals, and vowed to "vigorously cooperate" with any legal investigations.
- 'Biggest leak in history' -
The massive leak of documents recalls Wikileaks' exploits of 2010 -- which included the release of secret military files and diplomatic cables.
However, in terms of size, "the 'Panama Papers' is likely the biggest leak of inside information in history," according to ICIJ.
More than 500 banks, their subsidiaries and branches have worked with Mossack Fonseca since the 1970s to help clients manage offshore companies. UBS set up more than 1,100 and HSBC and its affiliates created more than 2,300.
The documents show "banks, law firms and other offshore players often fail to follow legal requirements to make sure clients are not involved in criminal enterprises, tax dodging or political corruption," the ICIJ said.
Mossack Fonseca is already subject to investigations in Germany and Brazil, where it is part of a huge money laundering probe that has threatened to topple the current government.

Indian expert: Not inviting Iran to NSS 2016 is a mistake

In an exclusive interview with IRNA here, Dr. Reshmi Kazi, Associate Fellow, Nuclear and Arms Control Centre, Institute for Defence Studies & Analyses (IDSA), New Delhi, said, “Not inviting Iran to the 2016 NSS could prove to be a lost opportunity in consolidating a robust nuclear security regime. Integrating Iran into the global community would have further incentivized Tehran to make commitments to secure its dangerous nuclear materials from any illicit diversion.”

“It also could encourage Iran to sign and ratify the International Convention for the Suppression of Acts of Terrorism, the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material and extend support for International Atomic Energy Agency guidelines like the Code of Conduct on the Safety and Security of Radiological Sources”. She added

On the possibility of Iran’s membership in future in the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) after signing a nuclear deal with world powers, the seasoned analyst of the world affairs said, “Membership of the Nuclear Suppliers Group is premised upon the unanimous decision of the existing 48 members of the group. So any future prospect of Iran’s inclusion to the NSG will depend upon the consensus among the NSG members.”

On the importance of holding of the Nuclear Security Summit by the US president Barak Obama to ensure the safety of the nuclear materials all over the world, Dr. Kazi said, “Holding of the Nuclear Security Summit has played an exemplary role in raising awareness about the threat of nuclear terrorism. It has been successful in drawing a high-level political attention for securing all weapons usable nuclear materials from falling into wrong hands.”

“The results have been so far commendable. However, much more needs to be done to rid the world from emerging new nuclear risks – like threats from ISIS, growing production of highly enriched uranium, insider threats and increasing demands of nuclear energy that can accelerate proliferation risks.” She added.

On the measures to be taken by the Nuclear Security Summits to eliminate the nuclear threats in future, Dr. Kazi said, “The NSS must focus on how to deal with the new threats. An emphasis must also be placed on developing a strong culture of nuclear security that would contribute in building a robust nuclear security regime. The Summit also needs to focus on strengthening the existing international institutions like the IAEA, the NSSC and the CoEs and support their initiatives for raising the standards of nuclear security.”

On the why India and Pakistan, despite of not signing the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), have been invited to the 4th Nuclear Security Summit but not Iran, Dr. Kazi said, “India and Pakistan are victims of terrorism. Nuclear terrorism is a global threat which has been acknowledged by India and Pakistan and that is why they are cooperating in combating this menace.”

On the terms and conditions for admitting a new member in the NSG, she said, “It is of cardinal importance that the NSG should follow an objective, equitable and non-discriminatory approach for admitting new members. Moreover, a country must have an impeccable non-proliferation record and be a responsible nuclear nation for entry into the NSG. There must not be any discrimination or prejudice on these counts.”

Tsipras Demands Explanations from IMF over Wikileaks report

Greece on Saturday demanded “explanations” from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) after Wikileaks said the lender sought a crisis “event” to push the indebted nation into concluding talks over its reforms.

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said he would write to IMF chief Christine Lagarde and reach out to European leaders after the website published what it said was a transcript of a teleconference in which IMF officials complained that Athens only moves decisively when faced with the peril of default.

An “event” was therefore needed to drive the threat of default and get the Greeks to act, the officials say in the document dated March 19, and released by the whistleblowing website Saturday. The nature of such an “event” is not specified.

The officials also express concern that Britain’s referendum in June on EU membership will hold up the negotiations, predicting that the vote will halt the talks on Athens’ latest massive international bailout “for a month”.

The Greek government reacted strongly to the report, saying it wanted the IMF to clarify its position.

“The Greek government is demanding explanations from the IMF over whether seeking to create default conditions in Greece, shortly ahead of the referendum in Britain, is the fund’s official position,” spokeswoman Olga Gerovassili said in a statement.

Tsipras’ office added: “The Prime Minister will immediately send an official letter to Christine Lagarde over the issue.”

– ‘We need an event’ –

Those taking part in the leaked discussion were Iva Petrova and Delia Velculescu, who have been representing the IMF in the negotiations with Greece, and Poul Thomsen, director of the Fund’s European Department.

In it, Thomsen allegedly voices exasperation with the slow pace of talks on the economic reforms Athens has agreed to carry out in exchange for a new 84-billion-euro ($95 billion) international bailout agreed in July after months of bruising negotiations that saw Greece teeter on the brink of a eurozone exit.

The IMF has yet to officially sign onto Greece’s latest bailout and is making its participation conditional on the fact that no ground is yielded on the reforms needed by Athens, especially on pensions.

“In the past there has been only one time when the decision has been made and then that was when (the Greeks) were about to run out of money seriously and to default,” Thomson is quoted as saying in the transcript.

Later in the conversation, Velculescu reportedly replies: “I agree that we need an event, but I don’t know what that will be.”

She also says that Eurogroup chief Jeroen Dijsselboem is trying to “jump start” a discussion on debt but “not to generate an event.”

Mission chiefs from Greece’s international lenders — the EU, IMF, European Central Bank and European rescue fund — are due to resume an audit of the reforms on Monday.

But the institutions are believed to be clashing over their assessment of the current state of the Greek economy, with the IMF worried that estimates drawn up by the EU and Greece do not add up.

In the Wikileaks transcript, the IMF officials allegedly say Greece’s leftist government is “not even getting close” to accepting their views.

“(The Greeks) don’t have any incentive and they know that the (European) Commission is willing to compromise, so that is the problem,” Velculescu is cited as saying.

Athens is under pressure to address the large number of non-performing loans burdening Greek banks and to push forward with a pension and tax overhaul resisted by farmers and white-collar staff.

Tsipras has accused the IMF of employing “stalling tactics” and “arbitrary” estimates to delay a reforms review crucial to unlock further bailout cash.

15 dead, 70 injured in India flyover collapse

Indian rescue workers and volunteers try to free people trapped under the wreckage of a collapsed fly-over bridge in Kolkata. AFP Photo - 

Emergency workers in India battled Thursday to rescue dozens of people still trapped after a flyover collapsed onto a busy street, killing at least 15 people and injuring over 100 more.

The flyover was under construction when a 100-metre (330-feet) section collapsed suddenly onto a crowded street in the eastern city of Kolkata around lunchtime, crushing pedestrians, cars and other vehicles under huge concrete slabs and metal.

Authorities said they expected the death toll to rise further, with an unknown number of people still trapped under the rubble.

"Fifteen people have been declared dead. More than 100 people have been rescued and are in hospital," said Anil Shekhawat, a spokesman for the National Disaster Response Force.

"Our five teams with equipment are on the spot, carrying out rescue operations."

Specialist rescue teams armed with concrete and metal cutters, drilling machines, sensors to detect life and sniffer dogs were dispatched to the scene.

But many of those engaged in the rescue appeared to be ordinary people who were seen trying to pull away concrete slabs with their bare hands.

Workers struggled to get cranes and other large machinery through the narrow streets of Burrabazar, one of the oldest and most congested parts of the city, where locals desperately waited for news of missing loved ones.

"Everything is finished," screamed Parbati Mondal, whose fruit-seller husband had not been seen since the accident.

An injured builder told AFP at the scene that he had been working on the structure before it collapsed and had seen bolts come out of the metal girders.

"We were cementing two iron girders for the pillars, but the girders couldn't take the weight of the cement," said 30-year-old Milan Sheikh before being taken away to hospital.

"The bolts started coming out this morning and then the flyover came crashing down."

Construction on the two-kilometer-long flyover began in 2009 and was supposed to be completed within 18 months but has suffered a series of hold-ups.

The disaster is the latest in a string of deadly construction accidents in India, where enforcement of safety rules is weak and substandard materials are often used.

'Like a bomb blast' 

Many locals said they were fleeing their houses for fear that more of the damaged structure could collapse.

"We heard a massive bang sound and our house shook violently. We thought it was an earthquake," 45-year-old resident Sunita Agarwal told AFP.

"We're leaving -- who knows what will happen next."

The disaster came just days before the World T20 cricket final, which is set to draw thousands of fans to the city this Sunday.

Television footage showed one bloodied body trapped under a concrete slab, and also the hand of a person sticking out from under twisted debris.

An eyewitness at the scene described a loud bang "like a bomb blast and suddenly there was a lot of smoke and dust".

A crane was seen lifting a mangled car from under the debris and part of a crushed bus was visible protruding from the rubble, although it was unclear if it had been carrying passengers.

K P Rao, a representative of the Indian construction company IVRCL which was contracted to build the giant flyover, called the disaster an "act of God".

The firm was given an 18-month deadline and a budget of nearly $25 million to complete the project in 2009, but after seven years only about 55 percent of the work has been done.

In 2014 the company wrote to the city's development authority to say it was running out of funds to complete the project.

Mamata Banerjee, the chief minister of West Bengal of which Kolkata is the capital, told reporters those behind the disaster would "not be spared".

- See more at: http://www.newvision.co.ug/new_vision/news/1420966/dead-injured-india-flyover-collapse#sthash.81VErB6x.dpuf

Cyprus remands suspected hijacker who wanted to see ex-wife

An Egyptian man accused of hijacking a passenger plane and diverting it to Cyprus has told police he acted because he wanted to see his estranged wife and children, saying "what should one do?".

The suspect, whom Cypriot and Egyptian authorities have identified as Seif Eldin Mustafa, 59, surrendered on Tuesday after commandeering a domestic Alexandria-Cairo flight with 72 passengers and crew on board.

A Larnaca court on Wednesday ordered him to be held in custody for eight days on suspicion of hijacking, abduction, threatening violence, terrorism-related offences and two counts related to possession of explosives.

The latter counts were connected to his claim of being strapped with explosives, even though the belt he wore is believed to be fake, a police source told Reuters.

As he left the court compound in a police jeep, Mustafa stuck his hand out of an open window flashing the 'v' sign for victory.

Mustafa took charge of the early morning flight by flashing what appears to be a belt stuffed with plastic wires and a remote control, directing it to the holiday island where he asked for the release of female prisoners in Egypt, and to come in contact with his Cypriot ex-wife.

"When someone hasn't seen his family for 24 years and wants to see his wife and children, and the Egyptian government doesn't allow it, what should one do?," he told Cypriot police in a statement.

Details of his claimed predicament were not available.

All hostages were released unharmed after a six-hour standoff.

The suspect allegedly commandeered the aircraft 15 minutes after takeoff from Alexandria. He approached a flight attendant and showed off the belt, attached to a remote control he held in his hand, investigating officer Andreas Lambrianou told the court.

"The suspect asked all passengers and crew to hand in their passports, then gave two messages to a member of the crew, asking that the pilot be informed that he was a hijacker and wanted to land at an airport in Turkey, Greece or Cyprus, but preferably Cyprus," Lambrianou said.

"In a note, he stressed that if the airplane landed on Egyptian territory he would immediately blow the plane up."

In Cyprus, Mustafa dropped an envelope on the runway addressed to a Cypriot woman, later ascertained to be his ex-wife. In the letter, the suspect demanded the release of 63 female prisoners held in Egypt.

EgyptAir hijack ends with passengers freed unharmed, suspect arrested

An EgyptAir plane flying from Alexandria to Cairo was hijacked and forced to land in Cyprus on Tuesday but the passengers and crew were freed unharmed and the hijacker, whose motives remained a mystery, was arrested after giving himself up.

Eighty-one people, including 21 foreigners and 15 crew, had been onboard the Airbus 320 flight when it took off, Egypt's Civil Aviation Ministry said in a statement.

Conflicting theories emerged about the hijacker's motives, with Cypriot officials saying early on the incident did not appear related to terrorism but the Cypriot state broadcaster saying he had demanded the release of women prisoners in Egypt.

After the aircraft landed at Larnaca airport, negotiations began and everyone onboard was freed except three passengers and four crew, Egypt's Civil Aviation Minister Sherif Fethy said.

Soon after his comments, Cypriot television footage showed several people leaving the plane via the stairs and another man climbing out of the cockpit window and running off.

The hijacker then surrendered to authorities.

"Its over," the Cypriot foreign ministry said in a tweet.

Speaking to reporters after the crisis ended, Egyptian Prime Minister Sherif Ismail said the hijacker was an Egyptian national but that his motives remained unclear.

"At some moments he asked to meet with a representative of the European Union and at other points he asked to go to another airport but there was nothing specific," he said, adding that the man would now be questioned to ascertain his motives.

Cypriot foreign ministry official Alexandros Zenon told reporters during the crisis that the hijacker appeared to be "unstable".

Egypt's Civil Aviation Ministry said the plane's pilot, Omar al-Gammal, had informed authorities that he was threatened by a passenger who claimed to be wearing a suicide explosives belt and forced him to divert the plane to Larnaca.

Photographs shown on Egyptian state television showed a middle-aged man on a plane wearing glasses and displaying a white belt with bulging pockets and protruding wires.

Fethy, the Egyptian minister, said authorities suspected the suicide belt was not genuine but treated the incident as serious to ensure the safety of all those on board.

"Our passengers are all well and the crew is all well... We cannot say this was a terrorist act... he was not a professional," Fethy told reporters after the incident.

In the midst of the crisis, witnesses said the hijacker had thrown a letter on the apron in Larnaca, written in Arabic, asking that it be delivered to his ex-wife, who is Cypriot.

But the Cyprus Broadcasting Corporation (CyBC) said the hijacker had asked for the release of women prisoners in Egypt, suggesting a political motive.

EgyptAir also delayed a New York-bound flight from Cairo onto which some passengers of the hijacked plane had been due to connect. Fethy said it was delayed partly due to a technical issue but partly as a precaution.

The plane remained on the tarmac at Larnaca throughout the morning while Cypriot security forces took up positions around the scene.

EGYPT'S IMAGE

While the reasons for the hijacking were not entirely clear, the incident will deal another blow to Egypt's tourism industry and hurt efforts to revive an economy hammered by political unrest following the 2011 uprising.

The sector, a main source of hard currency for the import-dependent county, was already reeling from the crash of a Russian passenger plane in the Sinai in late October.

President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has said the Russian plane was brought down by a terrorist attack. Islamic State has said it planted a bomb on board, killing all 224 people on board.

The incident has raised renewed questions over airport security in Egypt, though it was not clear whether the hijacker was even armed. Ismail said stringent measures were in place.

There was also some confusion over the identity of the hijacker. Egypt's official state news agency MENA initially named him as Egyptian national Ibrahim Samaha but later said the hijacker was called Seif Eldin Mustafa.

The Cypriot Foreign Affairs Ministry also identified the hijacker as Mustafa.

Passengers on the plane included eight Americans, four Britons, four Dutch, two Belgians, an Italian, a Syrian and French national, the Civil Aviation Ministry.

Cyprus has seen little militant activity for decades, despite its proximity to the Middle East.

A botched attempt by Egyptian commandos to storm a hijacked airliner at Larnaca airport led to the disruption of diplomatic relations between Cyprus and Egypt in 1978.

In 1988, a Kuwaiti airliner which had been hijacked from Bangkok to Kuwait in a 16-day siege had a stopover in Larnaca, where two hostages were killed.

Egypt said it would send a plane to Cyprus to pick up stranded passengers, some of whom had been traveling to Cairo for connecting flights abroad.