LONDON: Prominent human rights lawyer Amal Clooney on Friday resigned her post as a UK envoy for media freedom, in protest at the government’s “lamentable” decision to breach its EU divorce treaty.
Clooney became the third lawyer to part ways with Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government, after it introduced legislation that would rewrite its post-Brexit obligations to the European Union over Northern Ireland.
Undermining the rule of law “threatens to embolden autocratic regimes that violate international law with devastating consequences all over the world,” she wrote in a letter to Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab and seen by AFP.
“Although the government has suggested that the violation of international law would be ‘specific and limited’, it is lamentable for the UK to be speaking of its intention to violate an international treaty signed by the prime minister less than a year ago.”
On her appointment to the UK role in April 2019, Clooney had said she welcomed the opportunity to build on her legal defense of persecuted journalists by working with the government to champion a free press around the world.
“I accepted the role because I believe in the importance of the cause, and appreciate the significant role that the UK has played and can continue to play in promoting the international legal order,” she wrote.
“However, very sadly, it has now become untenable for me, as special envoy, to urge other states to respect and enforce international obligations while the UK declares that it does not intend to do so itself.”
While conceding the UK internal market bill violates the EU Withdrawal Agreement, the government argues it is needed to protect the country’s territorial integrity in case the EU seeks to unfairly impede trade with Northern Ireland.
The argument has failed to persuade two other jurists who have quit their government roles recently including its most senior law officer for Scotland, Richard Keen.
He said in his resignation letter to Johnson he had “found it increasingly difficult to reconcile what I consider to be my obligations as a law officer with your policy intentions with respect to the UKIM bill.”
After quelling one backbench revolt over the legislation and under pressure to make its intent clearer, the government on Thursday issued a document spelling out various scenarios in which the bill’s provisions would be executed.
But in an apparent olive branch to Brussels, the document said the government would also seek to resolve post-Brexit disputes with the EU in “appropriate formal dispute settlement mechanisms,” not unilaterally.
The document was released as the chief negotiators for EU-UK trade talks met in Brussels, to try again to avoid a potentially ruinous breakdown when a post-Brexit transition period expires at the end of this year.
Amal Clooney quits UK envoy post over Brexit bill
https://arab.news/jdbu6
Amal Clooney quits UK envoy post over Brexit bill
- The government argues it is needed to protect the country’s territorial integrity in case the EU seeks to unfairly impede trade with Northern Ireland
- Clooney became the third lawyer to part ways with Johnson’s government after it introduced the legislation
UN climate chief says ‘no time for victory laps’ after COP29 deal
BAKU, Azerbaijan: UN climate chief Simon Stiell on Sunday said it was “no time for victory laps” after nations at COP29 in Azerbaijan agreed a bitterly negotiated finance deal.
“No country got everything they wanted, and we leave Baku with a mountain of work still to do. So this is no time for victory laps,” Stiell said in a statement.
Mass rape trial sparks demonstrations across France
- Police sources said 35,000 people had turned out across the country, while organizers put the figure at 100,000
PARIS: Tens of thousands demonstrated in major French cities Saturday against violence targeting women, as campaigners push for the country to learn from a mass rape trial that has shocked the public.
The prosecution in the southern city Avignon is in its final stages for 51 men, including one who drugged his wife over the course of a decade and dozens of others charged with accepting his invitations to abuse her at their home.
Out on the street, “the more of us there are, the more visible we are, this is everyone’s business, not just women,” said Peggy Plou, an elected official from the Indre-et-Loire region in western France who had made the trip to Paris.
Thousands of people marched in the capital alone, mostly women but including some children and men. Police put the turnout there at 12,500, while organizers said 80,000.
Police sources said 35,000 people had turned out across the country, while organizers put the figure at 100,000.
Hundreds also turned out in other major cities including Marseille in the south, Lille in the northeast and Rennes in the northwest. Local officials in Bordeaux, in the southwest, put the turnout there at 1,600.
Many demonstrators carried signs with variations on the slogan “Shame must switch sides,” popularised by the plaintiff in the Avignon trial, Gisele Pelicot.
She has become a feminist hero for choosing public hearings in her case rather than a trial behind closed doors, despite their painful content.
“A law about consent must be put in place very quickly. Just because someone doesn’t say something, doesn’t mean that they agree” to sexual contact, said Marie-Claire Abiker, 78, a retired nurse who marched in Paris.
France’s legal definition of rape calls it “any act of sexual penetration... by violence, constraint, threats or surprise” but includes no language about consent — a key demand of women’s rights groups especially since the MeToo movement launched in the late 2010s.
“In 2018, there were basically only women (demonstrating). Today there are, let’s say, 30 percent men. That’s really great news,” said Amy Bah, a member of the NousToutes (All of us women) feminist group protesting in Lille.
“I feel like this is my business too, we each have our role to play, especially men,” said Arnaud Garcette, 38, at the Marseille demonstration in the city’s historic port with his two children.
“We’re at the source of the problem, and at the source of the solutions too,” he added.
The demonstrations, called by more than 400 campaign groups, come two days before the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women on Monday.
Equality Minister Salima Saa has promised “concrete and effective” measures to coincide with the global day.
According to a report in Sunday’s Tribune Dimanche weekly, Prime Minister Michel Barnier will announce measures including increased training for police officers and more support for victims of domestic violence who leave their home.
The campaigners who organized Saturday’s protests are calling for more far-reaching measures, including a dedicated 2.6 billion-euro ($2.7 billion) budget and a stronger legal framework to tackle the problem.
During his first term as French president, Emmanuel Macron vowed to prioritize the cause of equality between men and women and to work to eliminate violence against women.
US reels from rain, snow as second round of bad weather approaches for Thanksgiving week
- A winter storm warning in California’s Sierra Nevada on Saturday was in effect through Tuesday, according to the National Weather Service’s Sacramento office, with heavy snow expected at higher elevations and wind gusts potentially reaching 55 mph (88 kph
WINDSOR, California: The US was reeling from snow and rain on Saturday with a second round of bad weather threatening to disrupt holiday travel ahead of Thanksgiving. A person was found dead in a vehicle submerged in floodwaters in California, which braced for more precipitation while still grappling with flooding and small landslides from a previous storm. And thousands in the Pacific Northwest remained without power after multiple days in the dark.
A winter storm warning in California’s Sierra Nevada on Saturday was in effect through Tuesday, according to the National Weather Service’s Sacramento office, with heavy snow expected at higher elevations and wind gusts potentially reaching 55 mph (88 kph). Total snowfall of roughly 4 feet (1.2 meters) was forecast, with the heaviest accumulations coming Monday and Tuesday.
Forecasters said the Midwest and Great Lakes regions will see rain and snow Monday, and the East Coast will be the most impacted on Thanksgiving and Black Friday.
A low pressure system will bring rain to the Southeast early Thursday before heading to the Northeast, where areas from Boston to New York could see rain and strong winds. Parts of northern New Hampshire, northern Maine and the Adirondacks could get snow. If the system tracks further inland, the forecast would call for less snow for the mountains and more rain.
Deadly ‘bomb cyclone’ on West Coast
The storm on the West Coast arrived in the Pacific Northwest earlier this week, killing two people and knocking out power to hundreds of thousands, mostly in the Seattle area, before its strong winds moved through Northern California. The system roared ashore on the West Coast on Tuesday as a ” bomb cyclone,” which occurs when a cyclone intensifies rapidly. It unleashed fierce winds that toppled trees onto roads, vehicles and homes.
Santa Rosa, California, saw its wettest three-day period on record with about 12.5 inches (32 centimeters) of rain falling by Friday evening, according to the National Weather Service in the Bay Area. On Saturday vineyards in Windsor, about 10 miles (16 kilometers) to the north, were flooded.
To the west, rescue crews in Guerneville recovered a body inside a vehicle bobbing in floodwaters around 11:30 a.m. Saturday, according to Rob Dillion, a Sonoma County sheriff’s deputy and spokesperson. The deceased was presumed to be a victim of the storm, but an autopsy had not yet been conducted.
Dominick Conti, a 19-year-old volunteer firefighter, and a friend drove around the Santa Rosa area Friday helping people whose vehicles were swamped. With his 2006 Dodge Ram pickup truck and a set of ropes, they were able to rescue the driver of a sedan that stalled out in water, a truck stuck in a giant mudhole and a farmer stranded on a dirt road.
Tens of thousands remain without power in Seattle area
Some 80,000 people in the Seattle area were still without electricity after this season’s strongest atmospheric river — a long plume of moisture that forms over an ocean and flows over land. Crews worked to clear streets of downed lines, branches and other debris, while cities opened warming centers so people heading into their fourth day without power could get warm food and plug in their cellphones and other devices.
The power came back in the afternoon at Katie Skipper’s home in North Bend, about 30 miles (50 kilometers) east of the city in the foothills of the Cascades, after being out since Tuesday. It was tiring to take cold showers, rely on a wood stove for warmth and use a generator to keep the refrigerator cold, Skipper said, but those inconveniences paled in comparison to the damage other people suffered, such as from fallen trees.
“That’s really sad and scary,” she said.
Northeast gets much-needed precipitation
Another storm brought rain to New York and New Jersey, where rare wildfires have raged in recent weeks, and heavy snow to northeastern Pennsylvania. Parts of West Virginia were under a blizzard warning through Saturday morning, with up to 2 feet (61 centimeters) of snow and high winds making travel treacherous.
Despite the mess, the precipitation was expected to help ease drought conditions after an exceptionally dry fall.
“It’s not going to be a drought buster, but it’s definitely going to help when all this melts,” said Bryan Greenblatt, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Binghamton, New York.
Heavy snow fell in northeastern Pennsylvania, including the Pocono Mountains. Higher elevations reported up to 17 inches (43 centimeters), with lesser accumulations in valley cities like Scranton and Wilkes-Barre. Less than 80,000 customers in 10 counties lost power, and the state transportation department imposed speed restrictions on some highways.
Parts of West Virginia also experienced their first significant snowfall of the season Friday and overnight Saturday, with up to 10 inches (25.4 centimeters) in the higher elevations of the Allegheny Mountains. Some areas were under a blizzard warning.
The precipitation helped put a dent in the state’s worst drought in at least two decades. It also was a boost for West Virginia ski resorts preparing to open their slopes in the weeks ahead.
After Trump’s Project 2025 denials, he is tapping its authors and influencers for key roles
- As the blueprint for a hard-right turn in America became a liability during the 2024 campaign, Trump denied knowing anything about the “ridiculous and abysmal” plans written in part by his first-term aides and allies
- Now he is stocking his new administration with key players in effort he temporarily shunned, notably Russell Vought as budget head, Tom Homan as “border czar;” and Stephen Miller as deputy chief of policy
WASHINGTON: As a former and potentially future president, Donald Trump hailed what would become Project 2025 as a road map for “exactly what our movement will do” with another crack at the White House.
As the blueprint for a hard-right turn in America became a liability during the 2024 campaign, Trump pulled an about-face. He denied knowing anything about the “ridiculous and abysmal” plans written in part by his first-term aides and allies.
Now, after being elected the 47th president on Nov. 5, Trump is stocking his second administration with key players in the detailed effort he temporarily shunned. Most notably, Trump has tapped Russell Vought for an encore as director of the Office of Management and Budget; Tom Homan, his former immigration chief, as “border czar;” and immigration hard-liner Stephen Miller as deputy chief of policy.
Those moves have accelerated criticisms from Democrats who warn that Trump’s election hands government reins to movement conservatives who spent years envisioning how to concentrate power in the West Wing and impose a starkly rightward shift across the US government and society.
Trump and his aides maintain that he won a mandate to overhaul Washington. But they maintain the specifics are his alone.
“President Trump never had anything to do with Project 2025,” said Trump spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt in a statement. “All of President Trumps’ Cabinet nominees and appointments are whole-heartedly committed to President Trump’s agenda, not the agenda of outside groups.”
Here is a look at what some of Trump’s choices portend for his second presidency.
As budget chief, Vought envisions a sweeping, powerful perch
The Office of Management and Budget director, a role Vought held under Trump previously and requires Senate confirmation, prepares a president’s proposed budget and is generally responsible for implementing the administration’s agenda across agencies.
The job is influential but Vought made clear as author of a Project 2025 chapter on presidential authority that he wants the post to wield more direct power.
“The Director must view his job as the best, most comprehensive approximation of the President’s mind,” Vought wrote. The OMB, he wrote, “is a President’s air-traffic control system” and should be “involved in all aspects of the White House policy process,” becoming “powerful enough to override implementing agencies’ bureaucracies.”
Trump did not go into such details when naming Vought but implicitly endorsed aggressive action. Vought, the president-elect said, “knows exactly how to dismantle the Deep State” — Trump’s catch-all for federal bureaucracy — and would help “restore fiscal sanity.”
In June, speaking on former Trump aide Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast, Vought relished the potential tension: “We’re not going to save our country without a little confrontation.”
Vought could help Musk and Trump remake government’s role and scope
The strategy of further concentrating federal authority in the presidency permeates Project 2025’s and Trump’s campaign proposals. Vought’s vision is especially striking when paired with Trump’s proposals to dramatically expand the president’s control over federal workers and government purse strings — ideas intertwined with the president-elect tapping mega-billionaire Elon Musk and venture capitalist Vivek Ramaswamy to lead a “Department of Government Efficiency.”
Trump in his first term sought to remake the federal civil service by reclassifying tens of thousands of federal civil service workers — who have job protection through changes in administration — as political appointees, making them easier to fire and replace with loyalists. Currently, only about 4,000 of the federal government’s roughly 2 million workers are political appointees. President Joe Biden rescinded Trump’s changes. Trump can now reinstate them.
Meanwhile, Musk’s and Ramaswamy’s sweeping “efficiency” mandates from Trump could turn on an old, defunct constitutional theory that the president — not Congress — is the real gatekeeper of federal spending. In his “Agenda 47,” Trump endorsed so-called “impoundment,” which holds that when lawmakers pass appropriations bills, they simply set a spending ceiling, but not a floor. The president, the theory holds, can simply decide not to spend money on anything he deems unnecessary.
Vought did not venture into impoundment in his Project 2025 chapter. But, he wrote, “The President should use every possible tool to propose and impose fiscal discipline on the federal government. Anything short of that would constitute abject failure.”
Trump’s choice immediately sparked backlash.
“Russ Vought is a far-right ideologue who has tried to break the law to give President Trump unilateral authority he does not possess to override the spending decisions of Congress (and) who has and will again fight to give Trump the ability to summarily fire tens of thousands of civil servants,” said Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, a Democrat and outgoing Senate Appropriations chairwoman.
Reps. Jamie Raskin of Maryland and Melanie Stansbury of New Mexico, leading Democrats on the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, said Vought wants to “dismantle the expert federal workforce” to the detriment of Americans who depend on everything from veterans’ health care to Social Security benefits.
“Pain itself is the agenda,” they said.
Homan and Miller reflect Trump’s and Project 2025’s immigration overlap
Trump’s protests about Project 2025 always glossed over overlaps in the two agendas. Both want to reimpose Trump-era immigration limits. Project 2025 includes a litany of detailed proposals for various US immigration statutes, executive branch rules and agreements with other countries — reducing the number of refugees, work visa recipients and asylum seekers, for example.
Miller is one of Trump’s longest-serving advisers and architect of his immigration ideas, including his promise of the largest deportation force in US history. As deputy policy chief, which is not subject to Senate confirmation, Miller would remain in Trump’s West Wing inner circle.
“America is for Americans and Americans only,” Miller said at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally on Oct. 27.
“America First Legal,” Miller’s organization founded as an ideological counter to the American Civil Liberties Union, was listed as an advisory group to Project 2025 until Miller asked that the name be removed because of negative attention.
Homan, a Project 2025 named contributor, was an acting US Immigration and Customs Enforcement director during Trump’s first presidency, playing a key role in what became known as Trump’s “family separation policy.”
Previewing Trump 2.0 earlier this year, Homan said: “No one’s off the table. If you’re here illegally, you better be looking over your shoulder.”
Project 2025 contributors slated for CIA and Federal Communications chiefs
John Ratcliffe, Trump’s pick to lead the CIA, was previously one of Trump’s directors of national intelligence. He is a Project 2025 contributor. The document’s chapter on US intelligence was written by Dustin Carmack, Ratcliffe’s chief of staff in the first Trump administration.
Reflecting Ratcliffe’s and Trump’s approach, Carmack declared the intelligence establishment too cautious. Ratcliffe, like the chapter attributed to Carmack, is hawkish toward China. Throughout the Project 2025 document, Beijing is framed as a US adversary that cannot be trusted.
Brendan Carr, the senior Republican on the Federal Communications Commission, wrote Project 2025’s FCC chapter and is now Trump’s pick to chair the panel. Carr wrote that the FCC chairman “is empowered with significant authority that is not shared” with other FCC members. He called for the FCC to address “threats to individual liberty posed by corporations that are abusing dominant positions in the market,” specifically “Big Tech and its attempts to drive diverse political viewpoints from the digital town square.”
He called for more stringent transparency rules for social media platforms like Facebook and YouTube and “empower consumers to choose their own content filters and fact checkers, if any.”
Carr and Ratcliffe would require Senate confirmation for their posts.
COP29 draft deal would have rich nations pay $300 billion in climate finance
- EU, US, others raised their offer after earlier draft rejected
- Climate talks run into overtime. Talks reach deal on carbon credits
BAKU, Azerbaijan: Developed nations should pay $300 billion a year by 2035 to help poorer countries deal with climate change, according to a new draft deal from UN climate talks published early on Sunday, after an earlier target of $250 billion was rejected.
Reuters previously reported that the European Union, the United States and others wealthy countries would support the $300 billion annual global finance target in an effort to end a deadlock at the two-week summit.
The document, described as a draft decision rather than a draft negotiating text like previous iterations, said nations had decided to set a goal “of at least $300 billion per year by 2035 for developing country Parties for climate action.”
The decision would need to be adopted by consensus before becoming final.
The COP29 climate conference in the Azerbaijan capital Baku had been due to finish on Friday, but ran into overtime as negotiators from nearly 200 countries struggled to reach consensus on the climate funding plan for the next decade.
At one point delegates from poor and small island nations walked out of talks in frustration over what they called a lack of inclusion, and amid concerns fossil fuel producing countries were seeking to water down aspects of the deal.
The summit cut to the heart of the debate over the financial responsibility of industrialized countries, whose historical use of fossil fuels has caused the bulk of greenhouse gas emissions, to compensate others for the damage wrought by climate change.
It also laid bare the divisions between wealthy governments constrained by tight domestic budgets and developing nations reeling from the costs of worsening storms, floods and droughts.
Fiji’s Deputy Prime Minister Biman Prasad told Reuters he was optimistic for an eventual agreement in Baku.
“When it comes to money it’s always controversial but we are expecting a deal tonight,” he said.
The new goal is intended to replace developed countries’ previous commitment to provide $100 billion per year in climate finance for poorer nations by 2020. That goal was met two years late, in 2022, and expires in 2025.
A previous $250 billion proposal drawn up by Azerbaijan’s COP29 presidency was rejected as too low by poorer countries, which have warned a weak deal would hinder their ability to set more ambitious greenhouse gas emissions cutting targets.
Countries also agreed Saturday evening on rules for a global market to buy and sell carbon credits that proponents say could mobilize billions of dollars into new projects to help fight global warming.
What counts as developed nation?
Negotiators have been working to address other questions on the finance target, including who is asked to contribute and how much of the funding is provided as grants, rather than loans.
The roster of countries required to contribute — about two dozen industrialized countries, including the US, European nations and Canada — dates back to a list decided during UN climate talks in 1992.
European governments have demanded others join them in paying in, including China, the world’s second-biggest economy, and oil-rich Gulf states.
Donald Trump’s US presidential election victory this month has also cast a cloud over the Baku talks.
Trump, who takes office in January, has promised to again remove the US from international climate cooperation, so negotiators from other wealthy nations expect that under his administration the world’s largest economy will not pay into the climate finance goal.
A broader goal of raising $1.3 trillion in climate finance annually by 2035 — which would include funding from all public and private sources and which economists say matches the sum needed — was included in the draft deal.
