A gay couple detained in one of the UK’s toughest prisons are to marry after conducting an illicitrelationship in the jail library. | This is what Pussy Riot has been doing since getting out of prison | Is Vladimir Putin a brilliant strategist, tactician, or mad? West must figure out Russia’s endgame | Documentary claims Putin was a lazy wife-beater who only turned his life around when KGB collapsed | América : Detención del alcalde de Caracas hunde a Venezuela en una nueva crisis | European jihadis unable to join Islamic State, locked at home
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Gay couple serving life sentences to marry in prisonby Helen Pidd Northern editor Eric Allison Prisons correspondent
Convicted murderers Mikhail Gallatinov and Marc Goodwin are to get married at Full Sutton prison near York, but will not be able to share a cell
A gay couple detained in one of the UK’s toughest prisons are to marry after conducting an illicitrelationship in the jail library.
Both men are serving life sentences for murder in Full Sutton prison near York, which houses some of the most dangerous offenders in the country.
Prisoners ... are in prison for public safety reasons, not to stop them asserting their civil rights
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USA TODAY |
Ex-Va. first lady gets a year and a day for corruption
USA TODAY RICHMOND, Va. — Maureen McDonnell, the wife of former Gov. Bob McDonnell, will be sentenced Friday after a jury found the couple guilty of taking gifts and loans from a vitamin executive in exchange for. Loading… Post to Facebook. Ex-Va. first lady gets a ... Former Va. first lady sentenced to 366 days in corruption caseWashington Post Ex-Virginia First Lady Sentenced to One Year in Prison Over Bribery SchemeTheBlaze.com Ex-First Lady: Marriage, Family Poisoned by CorruptionABC News Chicago Tribune -Al Jazeera America all 246 news articles » |
They've been very busy.
Germany’s Wolfgang Schäuble and Greece’s Yanis Varoufakis face off behind closed doors amid reports that ECB is drafting Grexit contingency plan
Talks to save Greece from an imminent cash crunch are underway in Brussels, after a frantic round of diplomacy attempted to bring Athens and eurozone finance ministers closer to a compromise.
Continue reading...- Strikes target fighting positions in lead-up to Iraqi attack in March or April
- Jordan and Egypt also launch air strikes against Isis militants
The US and partner nations have conducted 10 air strikes against the Islamic State (Isis) in Iraqsince Thursday, five of them near the militant-controlled city of Mosul, the Combined Joint Task Force said on Friday.
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Analysis
At a recent conference held in the Baltic states, one word dominated the agenda: Putin. They could have discussed Russia and its foreign policy more generally, but all routes lead to a president whose 15 years in power have left him in total charge.
Amid increased fears of all-out war in Ukraine, governments and policy-makers around Europe are anxiously analyzing the motivation of the most dangerous politician on the continent since the end of the Cold War. In stark terms, three possibilities are considered: is he a brilliant strategist succeeding in a long-term plan to create a 21st century variant of the Soviet Union? Is he a cunning tactician who responds to events as they happen? Or is he mad?
No consensus was reached at that conference because the complexities of the human brain defy such simple assessment. Indeed, all three explanations could be said to be playing a part – to devastating effect.
MAXIM ZMEYEV/AFP/Getty ImagesFrench President Francois Hollande, right, gestures as he speaks during a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Angela Merkel at the Kremlin in Moscow on Feb. 6, 2015.
A decade ago, Vladimir Putin described the demise of the USSR as the greatest geo-strategic catastrophe of the 20th century. He is infused with the standard KGB mind-set of paranoia, vindictiveness and self-confidence. After seeking to engage the West in the early 2000s, attempting to be amenable on issues ranging from Iraq to Afghanistan (and, to a degree, justifiably feeling let down), he reverted to type, setting himself in contradistinction to Western enlightenment values. Soviet-era contempt for human rights and free speech were reinforced by a revived position for the ultra-conservative Orthodox Church.
When the people of Georgia and Ukraine (twice) sought a different path, he dismissed their popular movements as orchestrated by the CIA and NATO. The overthrow of Ukraine’s corrupt pro-Moscow ruler, Viktor Yanukovych, gave him a new opportunity. He merged the immediate task of preventing the encroachment of democratic values onto his doorstep with his previously vague dream of a greater Russia. The seizure of Crimea was brazen, but straightforward. Many governments in the West were quietly reconciled, given that it had been Russia’s until the 1950s.
The insurgency in eastern Ukraine was different. Even the most credulous dove struggled, after a while, to believe that the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic was anything but coordinating with and heavily armed by the Kremlin. Now Putin does not even bother to pretend.
The predicament, for all sides, is now alarming. Putin’s cult of personality among “ordinary” Russians – many of the more urbanised middle-class have either quit the country or are keeping their heads down – revolves around the image of the bare-chested tough man fighting the good fight. The more Russia’s economy contracts, the more its dependency on oil and gas exports is exposed, the more he knows he has only his machismo to fall back on. Compromise on Ukraine could easily be interpreted as retreat. In any case, nothing unites a populace (particularly one that is now deprived of news that is anything other than propaganda) more than a war against an outside enemy.
Boxed into a corner, he is playing a weak hand reasonably adeptly. His immediate aim is to drive a wedge among Western governments who have struggled even to agree on sanctions. If they provide weaponry to the Ukrainian government (as John Kerry, the U.S. Secretary of State is proposing), they may redress the military balance in the short term. But, unless they really want to commit NATO to all-out war, Russia knows that if it wants to step up the pace, it can.
The next few weeks will be crucial. It was right for Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande, the German and French leaders, to go to Moscow. So far they have carried off their task well, displaying an openness to listen rather than a willingness to buckle.
Britain’s marginal role is a reflection of the new reality of European politics. Merkel is fighting against a German political establishment that has long sought to accommodate Russia. Hollande’s predicament is similar. Putin saw how easy it was during the 2003 Iraq war for George Bush to mischaracterize Europe into “new” and “old.” But the core of that division remains, with Poland and most of Eastern Europe fearful of Russia and determined to be tough with Moscow, while others are keen to cut deals. The EU’s new high representative for foreign affairs, the Italian Federica Mogherini, has a track record of being soft on Russia. Britain has lurched from weakness (the initial attempts to prevent a full inquiry into the polonium poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko being the most abject example of appeasement) into a stronger position.
Putin will have to be convinced that it is not in his long-term interests to play with fire in Ukraine. The most effective counter-measures against Putin remain economic.
So far the sanctions have been little more than pinpricks. Russian money laundering and thuggery are intertwined. Putin and his cronies are at the heart of the action.
Western governments and banks know where is vulnerable. But are they willing to take the financial hit to strike back at him?
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Vladimir Putin was regularly violent to his ex-wife Lyudmila during their marriage, a German documentary on the Russian leader has claimed.
Putin the Man, made by ZDF television and shown this week, claimed to have been given access to the unseen files of an unidentified Western intelligence agency. They included details of Mr Putin’s time as a young KGB officer stationed in Dresden in the Eighties, as well as his rise to power in Russia.
A secretary inside the Dresden office code-named “Lehnchen”, who befriended Mrs Putin, told how he used to beat his wife regularly.
Far from his image as a fitness fanatic today, the young Mr Putin was overweight and a heavy drinker, according to the documentary.
“He was depressed, fat, lazy and disillusioned,” Mahsa Gessen, an author and activist told the documentary. The files included the testimony of a woman identified as “Mrs H” who said Mr Putin groped her at a party, and that his colleagues blamed it on alcohol.
AP Photo/RIA Novosti Kremlin, Mikhail KlimentyevRussian President Vladimir Putin heads a cabinet meeting in the Novo-Ogaryovo residence, outside Moscow, Russia, Wednesday, Feb. 4, 2015.
It was the collapse of his KGB career, caused by the fall of the Soviet Union, that made Mr Putin turn his life around and fight his way back to the centre of power, according to the documentary.
It presented new evidence that he has misrepresented an incident from 1989, when anti-Communist protesters tried to storm the KGB office in Dresden before the Berlin Wall fell. Mr Putin has always claimed that he talked the protesters down while posing as an interpreter. But Siegfried Dannath, one of the demonstrators, told the film-makers that Mr Putin had appeared in full uniform and told the crowd his men had orders to shoot.
That version was corroborated by Sergei Bezrukov, a former KGB colleague of Mr Putin’s.
Far from his image as a fitness fanatic today, the young Mr Putin was overweight and a heavy drinker
The documentary also said Mr Putin had been left paranoid and obsessed with holding on to power after a series of assassination attempts. The files identified five attempts on Mr Putin’s life, including one in London that was foiled by Scotland Yard. Previous reports have said that two men were arrested in London in 2003 in connection with a suspected plot to kill Mr Putin.
The files also mention attempts in Moscow, St Petersburg, Tehran and the Azerbaijani capital Baku, as well as a failed coup shortly after Mr Putin was appointed prime minister under President Boris Yelstin in 1999.
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 Fox News |
Putin: No one would be able to get military superiority over Russia
Fox News Russian President Vladimir Putin gestures at the award ceremony in St. George Hall of the Grand Kremlin Palace in Moscow, Friday, Feb. 20, 2015. President Putin awarded World War II veterans with jubilee medals marking the 70th victory anniversary of ... Vladimir Putin gives decorated Russian tank colonel another medalTelegraph.co.uk Vladimir Putin Says Russia's Military Might Has No MatchNBCNews.com Documentary claims Putin was a lazy wife-beater who only turned his life around ...National Post OregonLive.com -Business Insider all 49 news articles » |
 USA TODAY |
Obama Defends Economic Record to Democrats
NBCNews.com President Barack Obama told Democrats on Friday that their work has improved the economy while strengthening the middle class, and jabbed at Republicans for trying to take the credit after stiffly opposing his agenda for six years. Speaking at the ... US lawmaker pushes White House to aid allies in Islamic State fightReuters Obama Says Republicans Are Trying to 'Bamboozle Folks' on Income InequalityTIME Obama: GOP "rhetoric" doesn't match the realityUSA TODAY The Daily Voice -The Tribune -The Republic all 429 news articles » |
Telegraph.co.uk |
Eurozone would be better off without Greece, warn Germany's 'Wise Men'
Telegraph.co.uk A Grexit, or Greek exit, from the euro would strengthen the EU's single currency, according to Germany's council of economic “wise men”. The five-member Wirtschaftsweise, or 'Wise Men', have written to Germany's conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung ... Germany Turns Up Pressure on Greece as Cash Crunch LoomsBloomberg EconomyGreece meeting produces text on bailout extensionFinancial Times Greek PM 'certain' euro zone will back loan, Merkel demands moreReuters Africa Daily Mail -Reuters UK all 7,414 news articles » |
The renminbi’s value, long kept down by official policy in order to stimulate exports, is now being influenced by flows of money out of the country.
El presidente Nicolás Maduro acusó a Antonio Ledezma de complicidad en lo que llamó un complot norteamericano para derrocar al gobierno.
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BEIRUT(Reuters) - The flow of European fighters from Europe to territory held by the ultra-hardline Islamic State is drying up due to tighter restrictions imposed by European states that have prevented would-be jihadis from traveling, fighters from the group said.
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The German government appeared to make a step towards a last-minute deal between Athens and its creditors, saying Friday that Greece's request for a loan extension from its eurozone partners...
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Los Angeles Times |
Obama administration to ask judge to lift block on immigration actions
Los Angeles Times The Obama administration said Friday it will ask a judge to allow it to continue with plans to offer protection from deportation to millions of people living in the U.S. illegally. lRelated Obama answers immigration ruling with vow to fight courts and Congress. Obama will seek to lift order against immigration planUSA TODAY Justice Department to seek emergency stay to allow immigration actionReuters Justice Department to Seek Stay of Judge's Order on ImmigrationBloomberg CBS Local -CNN -Charlotte Observer all 20 news articles » |
The region's most gripping saga has produced one of the most genteel protests.
Feb 20, 2015
A massive offensive is being planned to fight an estimated 1,000 to 2,000 Islamic State fighters in the key Iraqi city.
Intelligence agents took Caracas Mayor Antonio Ledezma from his office on Thursday. 11:27 am
This post has been generated by Page2RSS
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By David Francis with Sabine Muscat
U.S. Central Command develops plans to retake Mosul. In a highly unusual briefing to reporters about future battle plans, a Pentagon official said U.S. forces will train five Iraqi brigades to launch a spring offensive to recapture the city lost to the Islamic State last year. Planners have yet to decide if U.S. advisors or other American troops would be involved in the fight, FP’s Kate Brannen and Seán D. Naylor report.
More on the Islamic State below.
Ukraine’s call for peacekeepers puts Russia on the spot. With its request for U.N. peacekeepers to be sent to eastern Ukraine, Kiev is demanding that Moscow prove its commitment to the new cease-fire — and is hoping for Security Council support. In an exclusive interview with FP’s Reid Standish and John Hudson, Ukraine’s ambassador to Washington, Olexander Motsyk, called Moscow’s bluff: “‘If Russia is actually interested in peace as it claims, it has to support this resolution that would authorize the peacekeeping forces in Ukraine.’”
More on Ukraine below.
Russian official slams Obama’s counter-extremism summit. The head of Russia’s domestic security agency, Aleksandr Bortnikov, made a rare visit to Washington where he attended President Barack Obama’s summit on Thursday. But in New York, Russia’s U.N. envoy, Vitaly Churkin, used the occasion to blast the White House. FP’s Colum Lynch says Churkin “accused the United States of failing to seek Moscow and other capitals’ views on the event’s agenda, and said it snubbed Russia’s close allies, including Serbia, which was not invited to the conference.”
More on Obama’s summit below.
PRESS PACK: Ukraine
The New York Times’ Andrew E. Kramer and David M. Herszenhorn: “As violence continued to plague eastern Ukraine on Thursday, demoralized Ukrainian soldiers straggled into the town of Artemivsk, griping about incompetent leadership and recounting desperate conditions and gruesome killing as they beat a haphazard retreat from the strategic town of Debaltseve.”
The Wall Street Journal’s Nick Shchetko and Gregory L. White: “European leaders on Thursday stood by the cease-fire they brokered a week ago for Ukraine, even as the U.S. said Russian equipment and troops continued to flow into the country and the Ukrainian military significantly raised its latest casualty toll.”
FP’s Elias Groll on a first-hand look at British warplanes intercepting Russian bombers: “The fascinating footage provides not only a great view of the intercepting jets — British Typhoons and French Mirage 2000s — but also a look at the quirky contra-rotating turboprop engines of the Russian TU-95 strategic bomber.”
ONLY IN SITREP: Ukraine Could Be Split like Germany during the Cold War
FP’s David Francis: Russia has created a dynamic in Ukraine similar to the one that dominated Germany during the Cold War, Stephen F. Szabo, executive director of the German Marshall Fund’s Transatlantic Academy, told Foreign Policy.
“The best that we can hope for is to stabilize western Ukraine. We’re looking at a West Germany/East Germany situation,” where western Ukraine favors Europe and eastern Ukraine favors Russia, Szabo said. “We’re going to have two Ukraines.”
Szabo’s prediction is unlikely to please hawks like Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who continues to call for the White House to send weapons. But it does fall in line with earlier predictions by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who recognized the parallels with German history earlier this month.
Welcome to Friday’s edition of the Situation Report, where we hope the cold gives you an excuse to binge-watch this and catch up before next week’s Season 3 premiere.
Connect with me at david.francis@foreignpolicy.com and @davidcfrancis and spread the word about SitRep — your destination for global security news and Washington whatnot. Like what you see? Tell a friend. Tell your colleagues. Don’t like what you see? Tell me. Or holler with tips, reports, or anything else the world needs to know, and I’ll try to include it.
WHO’S WHERE WHEN TODAY
9:00 a.m. Deputy Secretary Blinken meets with U.N. Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura at the Department of State. 9:15 a.m. Secretary Kerry meets with Jordanian Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh at the Department of State. 12:00 p.m. The Washington Institute for Near East Policy Event hosts a panel on the “Rehabilitation and Reintegration of Foreign Terrorist Fighters.”
WHAT’S MOVING MARKETS
FP’s Keith Johnson on winners and losers in the energy game: “The swoon in oil prices is driving another big change in global energy markets — a collapse in the price of liquefied natural gas in Asia. That promises big implications for producers and consumers alike and could even have knock-on effects on Russia’s plans to shift more of its energy business to the east.”
EUobserver’s Valentina Pop: “The Greek government on Thursday submitted a request to extend the current bailout programme by six months, but Germany rejected the demand on the eve of a meeting of eurozone finance ministers.”
FP’s David Francis: “[B]ecause of the global nature of the economy, the United States is exposed to countries that in turn are directly impacted by what happens in Greece — Germany, most importantly — and a Grexit would add another level of uncertainty to a continent already rocked by the economic fallout from the war in Ukraine.”
The Wall Street Journal’s Stephen Fidler: “What is in question is whether the Greek government can levy taxes or charges on its people—or can sell assets—sufficient to service its debts and still do all the other things Greeks expect it to do.”
LIBYA: Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi gets a cold reception from the Gulf and the West on Libya airstrikes.
The Wall Street Journal’s Tamer El-Ghobashy and Benoît Faucon: “Mr. Sisi’s … involvement in Libya’s deepening crisis threatened to unravel already tenuous U.N. mediation efforts in the North African nation.”
Al Arabiya: “Gulf Arab states voiced support for Qatar Thursday in its row with Egypt, which accused Doha of supporting ‘terrorism’ during discussions about Cairo’s air strikes on jihadist targets in Libya.”
Breaking Friday morning: The Associated Press reports a car bomb killed at least 30 people in the eastern Libyan town of Qubba.
ISLAMIC STATE: Tensions grow within the militant group as it strives for shock value.
The Associated Press: The group “appears to be on the defensive in Syria for the first time since it swept through the territory last year and is suffering from months of U.S.-led coalition airstrikes and the myriad factions fighting it on the ground.”
The Washington Post’s Erin Cunningham: “In late January, however, Islamic State fighters suffered asetback as Iraqi Kurdish forces seized a stretch of the key highway at the town of Kiske, west of Mosul.”
The New York Times’ Anne Barnard: “The Islamic State’s campaign of high-profile killings … is one-on-one slaughter with Hollywood production values, seeking to maximize emotional impact and propaganda value.
EUROPE: Illegal weapons are easy to find in Europe as its citizens debate whether radical Islam or violent tendencies led to attacks in Paris and Copenhagen.
The Washington Post’s Griff Witte and Karla Adam: “The flood of high-powered weaponry began with the dissolution of the Soviet Union and continued through the 1990s as war raged across the Balkans.”
The New York Times’ Andrew Higgins: “Often the attackers invoke Islam. But just as often, well before they had found religion, the professed jihadists built up long track records as violent criminals.”
TERROR SUMMIT: Tensions rise over the White House’s approach to terrorism as Obama calls on allies to do more to stop the spread of extremism.
The New York Times’ Peter Baker and Julie Hirschfeld Davis: “While Mr. Obama has concluded that radicalism is fueled by political and economic grievance, he has found himself tethered to some of the very international actors most responsible for such grievances, dependent on them for intelligence and cooperation to prevent future attacks.”
The Guardian’s Dan Roberts: “Following similar calls to domestic critics of his foreign policy on Wednesday, the president insisted it played into the hands of terrorists to describe the struggle as a ‘war with Islam’ and demanded more vocal support from Middle East allies.”
YEMEN: After weeks of unrest, an agreement is reached.
Al Jazeera: “Yemen’s feuding parties have agreed on a ‘people’s transitional council’ to help govern the country and guide it out of a political crisis.”
IRAN: Iran allegedly falls short on full cooperation as nuclear talks resume today. Meanwhile, Bibi takes a swipe at Obama.
Reuters’s Shadia Nasralla: “Iran has still not addressed specific issues that could feed suspicions it may have researched an atomic bomb, a U.N. watchdog report showed on Thursday.”
CNN’s Brian Walker: “A final outcome to what has been a months-long series of negotiations is expected to have a lasting effect on Iran’s relations with the West.”
Politico’s Kendall Breitman: “Netanyahu claimed to know the details of the nuclear deal being negotiated between the two countries — despite a recent spate of reports claiming that the Obama administration has begun withholding information.”
AFGHANISTAN: The Pentagon tries to incorporate lessons learned as peace talks take shape.
FP’s Kate Brannen with lessons gleaned from Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster about previous wars: “In his current role, McMaster is committed to making sure the Army accepts and embraces the hard-won lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan by including them in training and doctrine manuals.”
The Washington Post’s Sudarsan Raghavan and Tim Craig on potential peace talks: “They will represent the first direct negotiations between the Taliban and the Afghan government since the war began in late 2001.”
CYBER: The State Department’s network is still under siege after three months of countermeasures; a new Snowden tidbit is revealed.
The Wall Street Journal’s Danny Yadron: “Each time investigators find a hacker tool and block it, these people said, the intruders tweak it slightly to attempt to sneak past defenses.”
The Intercept’s Jeremy Scahill and Josh Begley: “American and British spies hacked into the internal computer network of the largest manufacturer of SIM cards in the world.”
NORTH KOREA: Human rights researchers catalogue a series of abuses by Pyongyang.
The New York Times’ Choe Sang-hun on North Korea exporting slave labor: “Around the globe, tens of thousands of North Koreans work long hours for little or no pay.”
REVOLVING DOOR
USA Today’s David Jackson: “Jen Psaki is leaving her post as spokesperson for Secretary of State John Kerry to become the new White House communications director, President Obama said Thursday.”
AND FINALLY, please stay safe and warm as record-breaking cold settles in over the eastern United States. And please, no jumping out of windows into snow drifts.
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THE recent release of a landmark report on the history of lynching in the United States is a welcome contribution to the struggle over American collective memory. Few groups have suffered more systematic mistreatment, abuse and murder than African-Americans, the focus of the report.
One dimension of mob violence that is often overlooked, however, is that lynchers targeted many other racial and ethnic minorities in the United States, including Native Americans, Italians, Chinese and, especially, Mexicans.
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