The Australian casino owner James Packer and the Hollywood producer Arnon Milchan probably never imagined they would be running a free drinks delivery service for the Israeli prime minister and his wife. But when Sara Netanyahu called an assistant of the two men to say the drinks had run out, it was the signal for Packer and Milchan to renew the supplies of champagne, courtesy of their own wallets and a private driver, according to alleged testimony in an investigation into sleaze claims against Benjamin Netanyahu.

The claims, widely reported in the Israeli media on Tuesday, are the latest leaks from a police investigation into the Netanyahus. If true, they would illustrate how brazen the couple were in demanding favours. According to the reports, first carried by Israel’s Channel 2 and Channel 10 on Monday night, Hadas Klein, an assistant to both Packer and Milchan, has given evidence describing how the Netanyahus would routinely call demanding cigars, champagne and even that the bill be paid for a building inspector.

While the Israeli prime minister has repeatedly denied the items represented anything more than goodwill between friends, the leak suggests that the Netanyahus always initiated the favours.(theguardian)…[+]

BONN – The European Investment Bank (EIB) and the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) have set up an emergency post-disaster reconstruction financing initiative to help the Region recover from recent hurricane events.

The arrangement will support investments for infrastructure reconstruction projects in the Caribbean in the wake of the recent hurricanes. The new USD 24 million financing package is an addition to the USD 120 million Climate Action Framework Loan II signed in May this year, and which remains the EIB’s biggest loan to the Caribbean. Eligible investments under the new loan will include infrastructure reconstruction, with a focus on “building back better” and integrating climate risk and vulnerability assessments into the projects. This will help reduce the Bank’s Borrowing Member Countries’ vulnerability to future natural disasters and worsening climate change impacts. As well as infrastructure, financing to communities for low-carbon and climate-resilience measures such as improved water resource management are also foreseen.

To date, CDB has committed all of the resources under the first Climate Action Line of Credit – USD 65.6 million – for seven projects. This co-financing is associated with total project financing of USD 191 million. Since CDB’s Climate Resilience Strategy was approved in 2012, 58% of projects financed have included climate change adaptation and/or mitigation elements in the climate-sensitive sectors of water, education, agriculture, and physical infrastructure such as sea defences, drainage, and roads. Using the Joint Multilateral Development Bank Methodology, climate financing represented 13% of total CDB project financing in 2015. In 2016, CDB approved USD 50 million for projects with explicit climate resilience and sustainable energy actions…[+]

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has led a series of solemn and emotional commemorations to mark two years since Paris was hit by a series of terrorist attacks that left 130 people dead and hundreds injured.

Macron laid a wreath and stood grim-faced as the names of those killed in the bombings and shootings were read out and a minute’s silence was held at each of the places the terrorists struck.

Accompanied by his predecessor, François Hollande, and the Paris mayor, Anne Hidalgo, Macron met relatives of some of those who died. One grief-stricken woman, who had lost her son, told him: “I cry every day, I have no life any more. My life is finished. He was my only child.” Flanked by his wife, Brigitte, Macron appeared close to tears as he spoke to families and survivors. The event was deliberately simple and low-key at the request of the victim’s families. The president made no public speech.

The homage began at the Stade de France where the first attack happened, and was repeated at four other sites including the Bataclan concert venue where 90 people died on the night of 13 November 2015. It ended in front of the town hall of the 11th arrondissement, where balloons were released.(theguardian)…[+]

A powerful magnitude-7.3 earthquake has rocked the northern border region between Iran and Iraq, killing more than 400 people and injuring thousands more.

Iran’s state-run Irna news agency raised the death toll to 407 on Monday and said 5,953 people were injured after the quake that struck the country’s western provinces at 9.20pm local time on Sunday. Local officials said the tolls would rise as search and rescue teams reached remote areas. More than 70,000 people were in need of emergency shelter, the Iranian Red Crescent said. The hardest hit province was Kermanshah, where three days of mourning have been announced. More than 236 people died in the town of Sarpol-e Zahab, about 10 miles from the Iraq border.(theguardian)…[+]

Iraqi security forces have found mass graves that could contain up to 400 bodies in an area recently retaken from the Islamic State group, an Iraqi official has said. The bodies of civilians and security forces were found in an abandoned base near Hawija, a northern town retaken in early October, the Kirkuk governor, Rakan Saed, said on Sunday. He did not say when authorities would start exhuming the bodies.

“Not less than 400 people were executed,” he said, adding that some were clad in the uniform of prisoners condemned to death while others wore civilian clothing. Khalaf Luhaibi, a local shepherd who led troops to the site, said Isis brought captives to the area and shot them or poured oil over them before setting them on fire. The area was strewn with torn clothing and what appeared to be human bones and skulls.

Saad Abbas, a farmer from the area, told Agence France-Presse that during the three years of Isis control the group’s fighters could be seen “driving around in cars with their prisoners. They would shoot them and then throw them to the ground or burn their bodies,” Abbas said. Iraqi forces have driven Isis from nearly all the territory it once controlled. Authorities have already uncovered several mass graves in other newly liberated areas.(theguardian)…[+]

The EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, has said the bloc is drawing up contingency plans for the possible collapse of Britain’s departure talks. Barnier, who last week gave the UK a two-week deadline to provide greater clarity on the financial settlement it was prepared to offer as part of the divorce deal, told France’s Journal du Dimanche newspaper the failure of the talks was not his preferred option.

“But it’s a possibility,” he said. “Everyone needs to plan for it, member states and businesses alike. We too are making technical preparations for it. On 29 March 2019, the United Kingdom will become a third country.” The remarks came as Theresa May faces increasing pressure at home, with Tory and Labour MPs warning she risks a Commons defeat over Brexit within weeks if she continues to deny parliament a meaningful vote on the final deal with the EU.

Michael Gove and Boris Johnson, who led the Brexit campaign but infamously split when Gove withdrew his support for Johnson’s Tory leadership campaign to run himself, have also joined forces to complain in a leaked letter of “insufficient energy” on Brexit in some parts of government and insist any transition period must end in June 2021.(theguardian)…[+]

Tens of thousands of nationalist demonstrators marched through Warsaw at the weekend to mark Poland’s independence day, throwing red-smoke bombs and carrying banners with slogans such as “white Europe of brotherly nations”.

Police estimated 60,000 people took part in Saturday’s event, in what experts say was one of the biggest gathering of far-right activists in Europe in recent years. Demonstrators with faces covered chanted “Pure Poland, white Poland!” and “Refugees get out!”. A banner hung over a bridge that read: “Pray for Islamic Holocaust.” The march organised by far-right groups in Poland is an annual event originally to mark Poland’s independence in 1918. But according to Nick Lowles, from UK anti-extremism group Hope Not Hate, it has become an important rallying point for international far-right groups.

“The numbers attending this year seem to be bigger and, while not everyone on the march is a far-right activist or fascist, it is undoubtedly becoming more significant and is acting as a magnet for far-right groups around the world.”(theguardian)…[+]

Donald Trump has abruptly ended the diplomatic streak he displayed on his 12-day tour of Asia by launching a tirade against “violations, cheating or economic aggression” in the region, just hours after heaping lavish praise on China.

Speaking at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) conference in Da Nang, Vietnam, on Friday, the US president’s words had the tone of a fierce reprimand. The speech was clearly, sometimes explicitly, focused on China and other countries he blamed for predatory economic policies, accusing them of having “stripped” jobs, factories and industries out of the United States. “We can no longer tolerate these chronic trade abuses and we will not tolerate them,” he said, with audio speakers in the large hall crackling as Trump raised his voice at times.

“Despite years of broken promises, we were told that someday soon everybody would behave fairly and responsibly. People in America and throughout the Indo-Pacific region have awaited that day to come but it never has and that is why I am here today,” he said.(theguardian)…[+]

Saudi Arabia has ordered its citizens to leave Lebanon immediately, escalating a regional standoff with Iran centred on the fragile state, which it claims is being run by Tehran’s proxy, Hezbollah. The move follows a week of bellicose rhetoric from the Sunni Arab powerhouse about its Shia rival, drawing strong support from Donald Trump and Israel, all three of whom insist Iran is forging strongholds across the region.

The standoff has taken tensions between Riyadh and Tehran to new levels and raised fears that decades of distrust and manoeuvrings between the two may be building towards a military confrontation, underwritten by the Trump administration and joined by Israel.The Saudi order for its citizens to leave, also made by the kingdom’s allies in Bahrain and Kuwait, came after the country’s foreign minister, Adel al-Jubeir, said his government would treat Lebanon as a hostile state as long as Hezbollah was in the government. He described Hezbollah’s participation in government as an “act of war” against Saudi Arabia.(theguardian)…[+]