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On Sunday Venezuela switched time zone to save on energy; and the people are on the brink of facing famine.

The government has reduced access to food and electricity and the government is taking a series of increasingly desperate measures to address public discontent.

Since last week, access to electricity is rationed to four hours a day. In addition, public servants have a two-day week (Monday, Tuesday). Changing time zone was the latest, but not the most desperate of measures.

The electricity problem is accentuated by the worst drought of the last forty years that has reduced water in the country’s hydroelectric power stations.

With a 70% reduction in international oil prices, the country’s finances have all but collapsed. Last week the government announced a 30% rise of the minimum wage to 15,000 Bolivar. But, this is not expected to have a huge impact as the country is experiencing 180,9% inflation. Officially, 15.000 Bolivar correspond to approximately €35; in reality this is more €13.

Food shortages are getting acute.

In 2014, shortages were triggered by a policy of food subsidies, which motivated people to massively engage in contraband trade with Colombia. Given a sinking economy, Venezuelans would sell subsidized food and fuel on the border to make ends meet. It was then, in May 2014, that Maduro introduced food rationing. But as people were going around to buy the same amount of food from place to place, rationing became more sophisticated.

Venezuela now uses biometric measures to ration food (fingerprints).  But, now people are going hungry, with crowds looting stores.

Last week the regional government of Villalobos asked citizens to stay at home for their own security. In the capital Caracas looting is spreading out in various neighborhoods by people shouting “we are hungry.”

Supermarkets are expected to run out of food stock by the end of the first week of May, according to the Venezuelan Chamber of Food.

People stand in line for hours to purchase basic goods.

(Huffington Post, Reuters, PanAm)

The post Venezuela has food until the end of the week appeared first on New Europe.

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Berlin does not want Tel Av to “instrumentalize” its alliance key and is rethinking its unconditional support Der Spiegel reports.

One of the first tangible policy effects is that Tel Aviv can no longer count on German support to avoid the labelling of settlers’ products in the West Bank, Ytnews reports.

A free press daily, Israel Hayom, came with a story in February quoting Angela Merkel in a meeting with Israel’s Prime Minister. Obviously leaked by Benjamin Netanyahu, the leak claimed the German Chancellor would not push forward with a two-state solution at this point in time, forgetting to mention that she was also highly critical of Israeli settlement policy.

Israel now has a population of 350,000 settlers, spread across 125 settlements in the West Bank. The policy consensus in Berlin is apparently that this policy undermines a two-state solution. The majority of the Israeli cabinet is openly opposing the two-state framework and is heading towards a direction that many in Germany compare to South Africa’s apartheid regime.

Both the German Foreign Ministry and the Chancellor’s advisors now believe Israel has taken the Chancellor’s pledge to support the security of the Jewish State as a diplomatic carte blanche.

Unconditional is being withdrawn.

Former ambassador to Israel and current foreign ministry political director, Andreas Michaelis, is apparently opposing accommodating to requests habitually made by Benjamin Netanyahu’s administration. And the chancellor’s advisor, Christoph Heusgen, is on the record supporting EU policy on labeling settler products.

Berlin is not the only traditional ally skeptical of current Israeli government policy. US Secretary John Kerry said in December 2015 in Washington that the “two-state solution” is becoming just a “throwaway phrase.”

Last week, Israel’s intelligence Minister Katz admitted that under the Obama administration Israel can no longer depend on a US veto in the UN Security Council, which is a key component of Israel’s national security. “With the current administration, we cannot be sure of that,” he said.

The Obama administration has used the Security Council veto once in seven years, to veto a resolution against Israeli settlements.

(AP, DPA, Der Spiegel, ynet, Jerusalem Post)

The post Berlin rethinks its support for Israel appeared first on New Europe.

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German and other European security officials accuse Russian media of launching what they call an “information war” against Germany. By twisting the truth in reports on Germany’s migrant crisis, the officials told Reuters, Russia hopes to fuel popular anger, weaken voters’ trust in leaders such as Chancellor Angela Merkel, and feed divisions in the European Union so that it drops sanctions against Moscow.

Russian officials deny their country is mounting a campaign against Germany. “These accusations are atrocious,” one Russian official told Reuters, pretending that on the contrary Moscow is the victim of an “indiscriminate information war” being waged from Germany.

Relations between the two countries are now at their lowest. Russia is using propaganda and made-up stories in order to discredit the West and its institutions.

Thus, in January, the Russian media fabricated a story about the alleged rape case of a 13-year-old German-Russian girl. She told police she had been kidnapped in Berlin by Muslim immigrants, who raped her while she was held for 30 hours. The story was widely spread by the Russian media and provoked a huge wave of indignation.

The story triggered widespread outrage in Russia after the country’s most watched television network, state-run Channel One, gave the rape allegation prominent place in a January 16 report by its Berlin correspondent, Ivan Blagoy.

Blagoy’s report quoted the girl’s relatives as saying that police had refused to launch criminal proceedings in an attempt to cover up the case, and had pressured the girl to say the sex was consensual.

Russian immigrant communities in Berlin and other German cities organized rallies to voice their anger. On January 23, some 700 people protested in front of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s office, holding banners that read “Our children are in danger” and “Today my child, tomorrow yours.”

The flagrant deceit of the so-called “Lisa affair” shocked the German public. Russia had employed similar disinformation tactics in the war against Ukraine, but never in Germany. The German government accused the Russian media of “biased reporting” in the particular case of the girl, or on events such as the Ukraine crisis and reports on Russia’s neighbouring states and an alleged rape case involving a German-Russian girl.

The Berlin public prosecutor’s office later said a medical examination showed she had not been raped.

The case stirred concern among senior German officials that Russia was trying to erode public trust in Merkel using immigration, an issue that has already cost her support and caused tensions in the European Union.

At a meeting in Moscow on March 23, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov irritated his German counterpart by raising again the case of the girl.

Germany’s Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier was upset when Lavrov raised the issue again. “I can only hope that such incidents and difficulties, as we had in that case, aren’t repeated,” he told Reuters afterwards.

German and European officials say Russia’s aim is two-fold: To exaggerate the problems the migrant crisis is causing Germany and to push Germany to relax its backing for European sanctions on Russia over Moscow’s interference in Ukraine. While EU governments last month extended asset freezes and travel bans on Russians and Russian companies, there is less consensus on whether to prolong more far-reaching sanctions on Russia’s banking, defence and energy sectors from July.

Both sides agree on one point: relations between the two countries are at their lowest point since the early days of the Cold War. Russia’s campaign against Europe uses “trolls” who produce online hate speech and sow discord and doubt about news events. There are dozens of examples of Russian reporting on the migrant crisis that it says are clear cases of deliberate disinformation.

Moscow rejects the idea of any coordinated campaign. One Russian official told Reuters there was a German media campaign to paint Russia in a bad light and “demonize” it.

The Kremlin is also using far-right parties in Europe to sow discord among the EU countries. Thus Russia is using the Front National, the third largest political force in France, and other anti-EU parties as a vehicle to lobby its political interests in Europe. Marine Le Pen, whose party came first in European elections in May 2014 with 25 % of votes and obtained even more in the recent French local elections, has made no secret of her sympathy for Russian President Vladimir Putin. She also obtained a loan from a Russian bank.

One other example of ties with Moscow is the UK Independence Party, commonly known as UKIP, whose leader Nigel Farage’s appears very frequently on state-owned Russia Today and who is very criticised for his expression of open admiration for Vladimir Putin.

Also, the Italian Northern League’s leader, Matteo Salvini calls the euro a “criminal currency” and wants to demolish the Brussels consensus that has dominated European politics since the end of World War Two. Matteo Salvini is also an open admirer of Vladimir Putin and a friend of Marine Le Pen.Sigmar Gabriel, an SDP member and Germany’s Economy Minister, said recently that the EU should try to lift sanctions on Russia by this summer. Before the EU’s Ukraine-related sanctions, Russia accounted for 4% of German trade; that has fallen to 2.4%.

Merkel, though, has refused to ease the sanctions, insisting that Russia first needs to comply with an agreement to enforce a ceasefire, pull back heavy weapons, exchange prisoners, and hold internationally monitored local elections in eastern Ukraine. (with Reuters, AP)

The post Je t’aime moi non plus: new chill between Germany and Russia appeared first on New Europe.

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Another document leak upset the world. On Monday Greenpeace gave to German media 240 pages of secreted US documents concerning the controversial Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), a controversial free trade agreement between USA and the EU.

The TTIP has been discussed for three years now. However, it is highly unpopular throughout Europe and attracted huge criticism from environmental agency because, among other things, it may open the strictly regulated European food market to less controlled and hormone-enhanced American products.

American President Barack Obama was in Germany last week specifically to promote the TTIP, with hopes to sign the treaty before he leaves office in January. However, this leak can make American’s hopes crumble.

So far all the talks and the documents surrounding the TTIP were not released to the public. The Greenpeace leak is the first time official documents are made public. German media Süddeutsche Zeitung and German networks ARD, NDR and WDR checked with officials who worked on the TTIP and they confirmed the authenticity of the documents obtained by Greenpeace.

In the first batch of the documents (available here) it has emerged that US officials were blocking European car exports into the USA in order to put pressure on the EU to remove the strict measures on food health that are a constrain to American export into Europe.

In the USA gene-manipulated and hormone-treated food is usually sold to the public until proven dangerous for consumers, while in Europe is the other way around. Products can’t be sold unless they are certified as safe by the authorities.

In addition to this, the documents leaked also showed that the US blocked EU demand to have public arbitration panels to handle corporate lawsuits. The US wants to keep the panels private.

 

The post Leaked documents show US pressuring EU on TTIP appeared first on New Europe.

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New rules that slash roaming charges for using mobile phones in other European countries have come into effect on 1 May, putting an end to overcharging from phone companies.

For several years the European commission has been battling with the big mobile providers to force through cuts to the cost of making cross-border calls and using data in another country. Following lengthy negotiations, the EU announced in October last year that it will ban these charges from June 2017. Until then, the EU has put a cap on the amount operators can charge.

That means roaming charges in the EU will fall by at least a third starting immediately. From June next year, roaming charges in the EU will be abolished completely.

This applies to cost of making calls, sending texts and using data within the European Economic Area; that is the 28 EU countries plus Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway.

The most an operator will be able to add to what you would pay domestically is five euros cents for a call, two cents for a text and five cents for each megabyte of data. Incoming voice calls will incur a charge of one cent per minute.

This applies to cost of making calls, sending texts and using data within the European Economic Area; that is the 28 EU countries plus Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway.

The roaming charges have event entered UK’s Brexit campaign, with prime minister David Cameron posting on Twitter: “EU roaming charges now down to near-zero; gone entirely next year. Consumers are better off remaining in the EU.”

The post Roaming charges in the EU slashed by a third appeared first on New Europe.

Since the conclusion of the Turkey deal and the closure of the Balkan route fewer migrants have arrived in the EU. But does this mean the EU now has the refugee crisis under control? Only superficially, commentators conclude.

Confidential documents were made public on Sunday that reveal the current status of the negotiations on the TTIP free trade pact. Obama and Angela Merkel spoke out only last week in favour of the deal while tens of thousands of people protested against it. The press also discusses the pros and cons of the TTIP.

People demonstrated across Europe on May 1 in favour of workers' rights and social justice. The press wonders what significance International Workers' Day has in today's digitised, globalised world.

The Latvians have donated 10,000 euros so that a man suffering from throat cancer can travel to Switzerland and die by assisted suicide. The country and the press are divided over the issue.

A minority government has emerged in Ireland under the conservative Fine Gael party led by former Taoiseach Enda Kenny. The liberal Fianna Fáil has agreed to back the government. A precondition for the historic agreement was the repeal of the controversial water charges. Commentators criticise the deal.