BRUSSELS: European Union envoys are on the verge of agreeing an 18th package of sanctions against Russia for its full-scale invasion of Ukraine that would include a lower price cap on Russian oil, four EU sources said after a Sunday meeting.
The sources said all the elements of the package had been agreed, although one member state still has a technical reservation on the new cap.
The sources — speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss confidential talks — said they expect to reach a full agreement on Monday, ahead of a foreign ministers’ meeting in Brussels the following day that could formally approve the package.
The sources said they had also agreed to a dynamic price mechanism for the price cap. On Friday, the European Commission proposed a floating price cap on Russian oil of 15 percent below the average market price of crude in the previous three months.
One of the sources said the initial price would be around $47 a barrel based on the average price of Russian crude for the last 22 weeks minus 15 percent. Further, the price would be revised based on the average oil price every six months instead of the proposed three months.
Slovakia — which has held up the proposed package — is still seeking reassurances from the European Commission on its concerns about plans to phase out Russian gas supply but it has agreed to the new measures, the sources said.
Sanctions require unanimity among the EU’s member countries to be adopted.
The Group of Seven (G7) price cap, aimed at curbing Russia’s ability to finance the war in Ukraine, was originally agreed in December 2022. The European Union and Britain have been pushing the G7 to lower the cap for the last two months after a fall in oil futures made the current $60 a barrel level largely irrelevant.
The cap bans trade in Russian crude oil transported by tankers if the price paid was above $60 per barrel and prohibits shipping, insurance and re-insurance companies from handling cargoes of Russian crude around the globe, unless it is sold for less than the price cap.
The Commission proposed the package in early June, aimed at further cutting Moscow’s energy revenues, including a ban on transactions with Russia’s Nord Stream gas pipelines, and financial network that helps it circumvent sanctions.
Another one of the sources said the new package will list a Russian-owned refinery in India, two Chinese banks, and a flag registry. Russia has used flags of convenience for its shadow fleet of ships and oil tankers.
EU envoys near agreement on lower Russian oil price cap
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EU envoys near agreement on lower Russian oil price cap
Indonesian students vow more protests after one killed in Jakarta demonstration
- Muzammil Ihsan, head of Indonesia’s largest student union, said that students will protest against police violence on Friday afternoon
- An armored police vehicle hit and killed a motorcycle rideshare driver during clashes on Thursday
Muzammil Ihsan, head of Indonesia’s largest student union, said that students will protest against police violence on Friday afternoon, and he expected other student groups to attend.
On Thursday, demonstrators were protesting a number of issues including lawmakers’ pay, education funding and the government’s school meals program. As the protest persisted into the night, local media reported that riot police fired tear gas and used water cannons to try to disperse people.
The capital’s police chief, Asep Edi Suheri, said that during the clashes an armored police vehicle hit and killed a motorcycle rideshare driver. A motorcycle drivers’ association said the dead man was not involved in the protests. “As police chief and on behalf of the entire unit, I would like to express my deepest apologies and condolences,” he said in a press conference late on Thursday. The seven crew of the armored vehicle have been arrested and an investigation is underway, Abdul Karim, head of the professional and security division of the Indonesian police, told the news conference.
Following the death, a group led by motorcycle drivers protested in front of the riot police’s headquarters on Thursday night, local media reported. Kompas TV reported on Friday that military officers were sent to the building to calm dozens of protesting drivers.
Jakarta Legal Aid, in a post on Instagram, urged the government and police to release 600 people who had been arrested during the demonstrations.
Powerful US senator arrives in Taiwan to discuss security
- US Senator Roger Wicker is chairman of the powerful Senate Armed Services Committee and one of the strongest advocates for Taiwan
- The US is Taiwan’s most important international backer and arms supplier despite the lack of formal diplomatic ties
TAIPEI: US Senator Roger Wicker, the chairman of the powerful Senate Armed Services Committee and one of the strongest advocates for Taiwan in the US Congress, arrived in Taipei on Friday to discuss security at a time of a rising threat from China.
Wicker, a Republican, said he and Senator Deb Fischer were visiting to reinforce and emphasize the “great partnership” the United States and Taiwan had and would have in the future. Fischer is also a Republican and a member of the armed services committee.
“We’re here to talk to our friends and allies in Taiwan about what we’re doing to enhance worldwide peace, the kind of peace through strength that Ronald Reagan talked about,” he told reporters at Taipei’s downtown Songshan airport, referring to the late US president.
“We stand here to re-emphasize the partnership and the security friendship agreement that the United States has had with Taiwan for some decades.”
The US Senate is due to consider next week the National Defense Authorization act, or NDAA, a nearly $1 trillion bill that sets policy for the Pentagon.
Wicker said that this year’s NDAA would “add to the provisions again” when it came to Taiwan, though he gave no details.
The Chinese embassy last month urged Wicker and other lawmakers to cancel plans to go to Taiwan. Beijing, which views the island as its own territory, regularly denounces any shows of support for Taipei from Washington.
China has increased its military activities around Taiwan over the past five years or so, including staging war games. Beijing has never renounced the use of force to bring Taiwan under its control.
Wicker’s trip takes place as some members of Congress – both President Donald Trump’s fellow Republicans and Democrats – have expressed concern that Trump is de-emphasizing security issues as he works on negotiating a trade deal with China.
Administration officials have said Trump remains fully committed to Asia-Pacific security matters as he pursues his trade agenda and a good personal relationship with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
The United States is Taiwan’s most important international backer and arms supplier despite the lack of formal diplomatic ties.
South Korea’s former first lady and former prime minister indicted by special prosecutors
- The wife of jailed former President Yoon Suk Yeol was charged with violating financial market and political funding laws and receiving bribes
- Three special prosecutor investigations were launched under the government of liberal President Lee Jae Myung that targeted Yoon’s presidency
SEOUL: South Korea’s former first lady Kim Keon Hee and former Prime Minister Han Duck-soo were indicted Friday in special investigations that followed the ousting of the former president for imposing martial law.
The wife of jailed ex-President Yoon Suk Yeol was charged with violating financial market and political funding laws and receiving bribes, about two weeks after a court ordered her arrest.
Han was charged with abetting Yoon’s imposition of martial law imposition, which investigators say amount to a rebellion, and also falsifying and destroying official documents and lying under oath.
Three special prosecutor investigations were launched under the government of liberal President Lee Jae Myung that targeted Yoon’s presidency and the actions taken to impose martial law last December.
Yoon’s defense minister, military commanders and police officers have been arrested for their involvement in imposing martial law.
Yoon was removed from office in April and rearrested last month over his December martial law decree.
Kim and Yoon are suspected of exerting undue influence on the conservative People Power Party to nominate a specific candidate in a 2022 legislative by-election, allegedly at the request of election broker Myung Tae-kyun. Myung faces accusations of conducting free opinion surveys for Yoon using manipulated data that possibly helped him win the party’s presidential primaries before his election as president.
Kim apologized for causing public concern earlier this month but also hinted she would deny the allegations against her, portraying herself as “someone insignificant.”
Assistant special counsel Park Ji-young told a televised briefing that Han was the highest official who could have blocked Yoon’s attempt to impose martial law. Park said Han still played an “active” role in Yoon’s martial law declaration by trying to get Yoon’s decree passed through a Cabinet Council meeting as a way to give “procedural legitimacy” to it.
Han has maintained he conveyed to Yoon that he opposed his martial law plan.
Han, who was appointed prime minister, the country’s No. 2 post, by Yoon, was South Korea’s acting leader after Yoon was impeached in mid-December.
After Yoon was formally dismissed as president in a Constitutional Court decision, Han was supposed to continue to head the caretaker government until the June presidential election. Han resigned to seek the presidential nomination instead, but Yoon’s conservative party chose someone else.
Swiss court rejects Islamic scholar Ramadan’s rape conviction appeal
GENEVA: Switzerland’s supreme court said Thursday it had rejected an appeal by Islamic scholar Tariq Ramadan against his rape conviction, but his lawyers said he would take the case to Europe’s rights court.
“The Federal Court dismissed Tariq Ramadan’s appeal against the conviction for rape and sexual coercion handed down by the Geneva Court of Justice,” the high court said in a statement.
Ramadan’s lawyers Yael Hayat and Guerric Canonica said in a statement sent to AFP: “The defense takes note of the decision by the Federal Court and contests it.”
They added that “the final word will belong to the European Court of Human Rights.”
After being acquitted in 2023, a Geneva appeals court last year found the 63-year-old former Oxford University professor “guilty of rape and sexual coercion” of a woman in a Geneva hotel 17 years ago.
It sentenced him to three years in prison, two of which were suspended.
The ruling marked the first guilty verdict against Ramadan, who faces a string of rape allegations in Switzerland and France.
It was that verdict that the supreme court confirmed on Thursday.
READ MORE:
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• Swiss prosecutor seeks three-year sentence for rape-accused Tariq Ramadan
• Tariq Ramadan faces fourth claim of rape
Switzerland’s supreme court revealed Thursday that it had back in July “dismissed Tariq Ramadan’s appeal against the conviction for rape and sexual coercion handed down by the Geneva Court of Justice.”
The supreme court said the lower cantonal court verdict was “admissable,” concluding in the verdict that Ramadan’s appeal did “not demonstrate that the judgment appealed against is based on an arbitrary assessment of the evidence.
“The appeal arguments do not demonstrate any violation of the presumption of evidence by the cantonal court,” it added.
“Nothing in the appeal brief renders untenable the conclusion drawn by the cantonal court... (establishing) serious events of a sexual nature.”
A charismatic yet controversial figure in European Islam, Ramadan has always maintained his innocence.
His lawyers insisted Thursday that the supreme court decision to reject their appeal “in no way undermines the truth asserted by Mr. Ramadan, even if it does not confirm it.”
“Long ordeal”
Lawyers for the woman who brought the complaint — a Muslim convert identified only as “Brigitte” — hailed the supreme court decision.
“This marks the end of a long ordeal and a long legal battle for our client and her lawyers,” they said in an email statement sent to AFP.
Brigitte had testified before the Geneva appeals court that Ramadan had subjected her to rape and other violent sex acts in a Geneva hotel room during the night of October 28, 2008.
Ramadan had said Brigitte invited herself up to his room. He let her kiss him, he said, before quickly ending the encounter, insisting he was the victim of a “trap.”
Brigitte, who was in her forties at the time of the alleged assault, filed her complaint 10 years later, telling the court she felt emboldened to come forward following similar complaints filed against Ramadan in France.
Ramadan was a professor of contemporary Islamic studies at Oxford and held visiting roles at universities in Qatar and Morocco.
He was forced to take a leave of absence in 2017 when rape allegations surfaced in France at the height of the “Me Too” movement.
In France, he is due to stand trial next year over allegations that he raped three women between 2009 and 2016.
Mystery surrounds $1.2 billion Army contract to build huge detention tent camp in Texas desert
WASHINGTON: When President Donald Trump’s administration last month awarded a contract worth up to $1.2 billion to build and operate what it says will become the nation’s largest immigration detention complex, it didn’t turn to a large government contractor or even a firm that specializes in private prisons.
Instead, it handed the project on a military base to Acquisition Logistics LLC, a small business that has no listed experience running a correction facility and had never won a federal contract worth more than $16 million. The company also lacks a functioning website and lists as its address a modest home in suburban Virginia owned by a 77-year-old retired Navy flight officer.
The mystery over the award only deepened last week as the new facility began to accept its first detainees. The Pentagon has refused to release the contract or explain why it selected Acquisition Logistics over a dozen other bidders to build the massive tent camp at Fort Bliss in West Texas. At least one competitor has filed a complaint.
The secretive — and brisk — contracting process is emblematic, experts said, of the government’s broader rush to fulfill the Republican president’s pledge to arrest and deport an estimated 10 million migrants living in the US without permanent legal status. As part of that push, the government is turning increasingly to the military to handle tasks that had traditionally been left to civilian agencies.
A member of Congress who recently toured the camp said she was concerned that such a small and inexperienced firm had been entrusted to build and run a facility expected to house up to 5,000 migrants.
“It’s far too easy for standards to slip,” said Rep. Veronica Escobar, a Democrat whose district includes Fort Bliss. “Private facilities far too frequently operate with a profit margin in mind as opposed to a governmental facility.”
Attorney Joshua Schnell, who specializes in federal contracting law, said he was troubled that the Trump administration has provided so little information about the facility.
“The lack of transparency about this contract leads to legitimate questions about why the Army would award such a large contract to a company without a website or any other publicly available information demonstrating its ability to perform such a complicated project,” he said.
Ken A. Wagner, the president and CEO of Acquisition Logistics, did not respond to phone messages or emails. No one answered the door at his three-bedroom house listed as his company’s headquarters. Virginia records list Wagner as an owner of the business, though it’s unclear whether he might have partners.
Army declines to release contract
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth approved using Fort Bliss for the new detention center, and the administration has hopes to build more at other bases. A spokesperson for the Army declined to discuss its deal with Acquisition Logistics or reveal details about the camp’s construction, citing the litigation over the company’s qualifications.
The Department of Homeland Security, which includes US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, declined for three weeks to answer questions about the detention camp it oversees. After this story was published Thursday, the department’s spokeswoman, Tricia McLaughlin, issued a statement that said “under President Trump’s leadership, we are working at turbo speed on cost-effective and innovative ways to deliver on the American people’s mandate for mass deportations of criminal illegal aliens.”
She said the Fort Bliss facility “will offer everything a traditional ICE detention facility offers, including access to legal representation and a law library, access to visitation, recreational space, medical treatment space and nutritionally balanced meals.”
Named Camp East Montana for the closest road, the facility is being built in the sand and scrub Chihuahuan Desert, where summertime temperatures can exceed 100 degrees Fahrenheit and heat-related deaths are common. The 60-acre site is near the US-Mexico border and the El Paso International Airport, a key hub for deportation flights.
The camp has drawn comparisons to “Alligator Alcatraz,” a $245 million tent complex erected to hold ICE detainees in the Florida Everglades. That facility has been the subject of complaints about unsanitary conditions and lawsuits. A federal judge recently ordered that facility to be shut down.
The vast majority of the roughly 57,000 migrants detained by ICE are housed at private prisons operated by companies like Florida’s Geo Group and Tennessee-based CoreCivic. As those facilities fill up, ICE is also exploring temporary options at military bases in California, New York and Utah.
At Fort Bliss, construction began within days of the Army issuing the contract on July 18. Site work began months earlier, before Congress had passed Trump’s big tax and spending cuts bill, which includes a record $45 billion for immigration enforcement. The Defense Department announcement specified only that the Army was financing the initial $232 million for the first 1,000 beds at the complex.
Three white tents, each about 810 feet long, have been erected, according to satellite imagery examined by The Associated Press. A half dozen smaller buildings surround them.
Setareh Ghandehari, a spokesperson for the advocacy group Detention Watch, said the use of military bases hearkens back to World War II, when Japanese Americans were imprisoned at Army camps including Fort Bliss. She said military facilities are especially prone to abuse and neglect because families and loved ones have difficulty accessing them.
“Conditions at all detention facilities are inherently awful,” Ghandehari said. “But when there’s less access and oversight, it creates the potential for even more abuse.”
Company will be responsible for security
A June 9 solicitation notice for the Fort Bliss project specified the contractor will be responsible for building and operating the detention center, including providing security and medical care. The document also requires strict secrecy, ordering the contractor inform ICE to respond to any calls from members of Congress or the news media.
The bidding was open only to small firms such as Acquisition Logistics, which receives preferential status because it’s classified as a veteran and Hispanic-owned small disadvantaged business.
Though Trump’s administration has fought to ban diversity, equity and inclusion programs, federal contracting rules include set-asides for small businesses owned by women or minorities. For a firm to compete for such contracts, at least 51 percent of it must be owned by people belonging to a federally designated disadvantaged racial or ethnic group.
One of the losing bidders, Texas-based Gemini Tech Services, filed a protest challenging the award and the Army’s rushed construction timeline with the US Government Accountability Office, Congress’ independent oversight arm that resolves such disputes.
Gemini alleges Acquisition Logistics lacks the experience, staffing and resources to perform the work, according to a person familiar with the complaint who wasn’t authorized to discuss the matter and spoke on the condition of anonymity. Acquisition Logistics’ past jobs include repairing small boats for the Air Force, providing information technology support to the Defense Department and building temporary offices to aid with immigration enforcement, federal records show.
Gemini and its lawyer didn’t respond to messages seeking comment.
A ruling by the GAO on whether to sustain, dismiss or require corrective action is not expected before November. A legal appeal is also pending with a US federal court in Washington.
A judge in that case denied a motion that sought to freeze construction at the site at a sealed hearing Thursday.
Schnell, the contracting lawyer, said Acquisitions Logistics may be working with a larger company. Geo Group Inc. and CoreCivic Corp., the nation’s biggest for-profit prison operators, have expressed interest in contracting with the Pentagon to house migrants.
In an earnings call this month, Geo Group CEO George Zoley said his company had teamed up with an established Pentagon contractor. Zoley didn’t name the company, and Geo Group didn’t respond to repeated requests asking with whom it had partnered.
A spokesperson for CoreCivic said it wasn’t partnering with Acquisition Logistics or Gemini.
