World
FDIC: First Citizens Bank to acquire Silicon Valley Bank
North Carolina-based First Citizens will buy Silicon Valley Bank, the tech industry-focused financial institution that collapsed earlier this month, rattling the banking industry and sending shockwaves around the world.
The sale involves the sale of all deposits and loans of SVB to First-Citizens Bank and Trust Co., the FDIC said in a statement late Sunday. Customers of SVB automatically will become customers of First Citizens, which is headquartered in Raleigh. The 17 former branches of SVB will open as First Citizens branches Monday.
The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank on March 10 prompted the FDIC and other regulators to act to protect depositors to prevent wider financial turmoil.
The bank, based in Santa Clara, California, failed after depositors rushed to withdraw money amid fears about the bank’s health. It was the second-largest bank collapse in U.S. history after the 2008 failure of Washington Mutual.
On March 12, New York-based Signature Bank was seized by regulators in the third-largest bank failure in the U.S.
In both cases, the government agreed to cover deposits, even those that exceeded the federally insured limit of $250,000, so depositors at Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank were able to access their money.Mid-sized San Francisco-based First Republic Bank, which serves a similar clientele as Silicon Valley Bank and appeared to be facing a similar crisis, was in turn battered by investors worried that it, too, might collapse. That led 11 of the biggest banks in the country to announced a $30 billion rescue package.
The acquisition of SVB by First Citizens gives the FDIC shares in the latter worth $500 million. Both the FDIC and First Citizens will share in losses and the potential recovery on loans included in a loss-share agreement, the FDIC said.
First Citizens Bank was founded in 1898 and says it has more than $100 billion in total assets, with more than 500 branches in 21 states as well as a nationwide bank. It reported net profit of $243 million in the last quarter.
Myanmar army leader calls for decisive action to crush foes
As Myanmar’s military put on an annual show of strength Monday, its top leader told its assembled ranks they need to take decisive action against those fighting army rule of the country.
Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing spoke at a military parade on Armed Forces Day. At sunrise, members of all service branches marched in mass formations onto a huge parade ground in the capital, Naypyitaw, backed by armored vehicles, missiles and artillery as well as fighter jets and helicopters flying overhead.
Myanmar’s military has been accused of indiscriminate killings of civilians as it engages in major offensives to suppress the armed resistance opposed to its takeover of the government two years ago. Min Aung Hlaing in his speech said those who condemned his military government demonstrated indifference to the violence committed by its opponents.
Armed Forces Day marks the anniversary of the start of a 1945 uprising of a ragtag army against occupying Japanese forces. The country then called Burma attained independence from colonial power Britain in 1948 and has been ruled by a succession of military governments for most of the years since.
On Feb. 1, 2021, the army ousted Aung San Suu Kyi’s elected government, prompting peaceful protests that security forces suppressed with bloody violence. The escalation of the violence since then has been characterized by U.N. experts and others as a civil war.
The opposition to military rule is led by a self-styled National Unity Government, or NUG, which was established by elected lawmakers who were denied their seats by the army and stakes a claim to being the country’s legitimate administration.
Its armed wing, the loosely organized People’s Defense Forces, or PDF, along with their armed ethnic minority allies, regularly strike military columns, bases and outposts. At the same time, the army and air force are hitting villages with artillery and air strikes, often causing civilian casualties and credibly being accused of other brutal human rights abuses. Their offenses have displaced more than a million people, causing a humanitarian crisis.
“The terror acts of the NUG and its lackey so-called PDFs are needed to be tackled for good and all," Min Aung Hlaing said in his speech. "The (military) and the government also need to take action against this terrorist group, trying to devastate the country and killing the people.”
His government has declared major resistance organizations to be terrorist groups, and anyone associated with them is subject to harsh punishment.
While Min Aung Hlaing said the actions of his military were necessary to achieve peace, his government is keen to dismiss allegations of human rights abuses by pointing at violence carried out by its opponents.
After security forces arrested, tortured and killed activists in the cities, urban guerrilla groups responded with bombing and assassinations of targets linked to the military. On Friday, a veteran corporate lawyer accused of being a military crony was shot dead in the country's biggest city, Yangon.
There were scattered protests reported against the army's celebration.
Independent online media reported that bomb explosions took place in at least three areas of the country’s biggest city, Yangon on Monday morning.
Yangon Revolution Force, a pro-democracy activist group, announced it had protested Armed Forces Day by performing a ritual at a Buddhist pagoda placing a curse on Min Aung Hlaing. The military’s leaders, like many other people in Myanmar, are known to be highly superstitious.
In the Sagaing region in the northwest, a stronghold of armed resistance, people held small protests against Armed Forces Day.
Mass protests erupt after Netanyahu fires defense chief
Tens of thousands of Israelis poured into the streets of cities across the country Sunday night in a spontaneous outburst of anger after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu abruptly fired his defense minister for challenging the Israeli leader's judicial overhaul plan.
Protesters in Tel Aviv blocked a main highway and lit large bonfires, while police scuffled with protesters who gathered outside Netanyahu's private home in Jerusalem.
The unrest deepened a monthslong crisis over Netanyahu's plan to overhaul the judiciary, which has sparked mass protests, alarmed business leaders and former security chiefs and drawn concern from the United States and other close allies.
Netanyahu's dismissal of Defense Minister Yoav Gallant signaled that the prime minister and his allies will barrel ahead this week with the overhaul plan. Gallant had been the first senior member of the ruling Likud party to speak out against it, saying the deep divisions were threatening to weaken the military.
But as droves of protesters flooded the streets late into the night, Likud ministers began indicating willingness to hit the brakes. Culture Minister Micky Zohar, a Netanyahu confidant, said the party would support him if he decided to pause the judicial overhaul.
Israeli media said leaders in Netanyahu's coalition were to meet on Monday morning. Later in the day, the grassroots protest movement said it would hold another mass demonstration outside the Knesset, or parliament, in Jerusalem.
In a brief statement, Netanyahu’s office said late Sunday the prime minister had dismissed Gallant. Netanyahu later tweeted, “We must all stand strong against refusal.”
Tens of thousands of Israelis poured into the streets in protest after Netanyahu's announcement, blocking Tel Aviv's main artery, transforming the Ayalon highway into a sea of blue-and-white Israeli flags and lighting a large bonfire in the middle of the road.
Demonstrations took place in Beersheba, Haifa and Jerusalem, where thousands of people gathered outside Netanyahu's private residence. Police scuffled with protesters and sprayed the crowd with a water cannon. Thousands then marched from the residence to the Knesset.
Inon Aizik, 27, said he came to demonstrate outside Netanyahu’s private residence in central Jerusalem because “bad things are happening in this country.” He called the judicial overhaul “a quick legislative blitz.”
Netanyahu's decision came less than a day after Gallant, a former senior general, called for a pause in the controversial legislation until after next month’s Independence Day holidays, citing the turmoil in the ranks of the military.
Gallant had voiced concerns that the divisions in society were hurting morale in the military and emboldening Israel’s enemies. “I see how the source of our strength is being eroded,” Gallant said.
While several other Likud members had indicated they might follow Gallant, the party quickly closed ranks Sunday, clearing the way for his dismissal.
Galit Distal Atbaryan, Netanyahu’s public diplomacy minister, said Netanyahu summoned Gallant to his office and told him “that he doesn’t have any faith in him anymore and therefore he is fired.”
Gallant tweeted shortly after the announcement that “the security of the state of Israel always was and will always remain my life mission.”
Opposition leader Yair Lapid said Gallant’s dismissal "harms national security and ignores warnings of all defense officials.”
Israel’s consul general in New York City, Assaf Zamir, resigned in protest.
Avi Dichter, a former chief of the Shin Bet security agency, is expected to replace Gallant. Dichter had reportedly flirted with joining Gallant but instead announced Sunday he was backing the prime minister.
Netanyahu’s government is pushing ahead for a parliamentary vote this week on a centerpiece of the overhaul — a law that would give the governing coalition the final say over all judicial appointments. It also seeks to pass laws that would would grant parliament the authority to overturn Supreme Court decisions and limit judicial review of laws.
Netanyahu and his allies say the plan will restore a balance between the judicial and executive branches and rein in what they see as an interventionist court with liberal sympathies.
But critics say the laws will remove Israel's system of checks and balances and concentrate power in the hands of the governing coalition. They also say that Netanyahu, who is on trial for corruption charges, has a conflict of interest.
Tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets over the past three months to demonstrate against the plan in the largest demonstrations in the country's 75-year history. The State Department dismissed as “completely false” claims repeated by Yair Netanyahu, the prime minister’s son, that the U.S. government was financing these protests.
Leaders of Israel’s vibrant high-tech industry have said the changes will scare away investors, former top security officials have spoken out against the plan and key allies, including the United States and Germany, have voiced concerns.
In recent weeks, discontent has surged from within Israel’s army — the most popular and respected institution among Israel’s Jewish majority. A growing number of Israeli reservists, including fighter pilots, have threatened to withdraw from voluntary duty if the laws are passed.
Israel's military is facing an increase in fighting in the occupied West Bank, threats from Lebanon's Hezbollah militant group and concerns that archenemy Iran is close to developing a nuclear-weapons capability.
Manuel Trajtenberg, head of an influential Israeli think tank, the Institute for National Security Studies, said that “Netanyahu can dismiss his defense minister, he cannot dismiss the warnings he heard from Gallant.”
Meanwhile, an Israeli good governance group asked the country’s Supreme Court on Sunday to punish Netanyahu for allegedly violating a conflict of interest agreement meant to prevent him from dealing with the country’s judiciary while he is on trial for corruption.
The Movement for Quality Government in Israel, a fierce opponent of the overhaul, asked the court to force Netanyahu to obey the law and sanction him either with a fine or prison time for not doing so. It said he was not above the law.
The prime minister said the appeal should be dismissed and said that the Supreme Court didn’t have grounds to intervene.
Netanyahu is barred by the country’s attorney general from directly dealing with his government’s plan to overhaul the judiciary, based on a conflict of interest agreement that the Supreme Court acknowledged in a ruling over Netanyahu’s fitness to serve while on trial for corruption. Instead, Justice Minister Yariv Levin, a close confidant of Netanyahu, is spearheading the overhaul.
But on Thursday, after Parliament passed a law making it harder to remove a sitting prime minister, Netanyahu said he was unshackled from the attorney general’s decision and vowed to wade into the crisis and “mend the rift” in the nation. That declaration prompted the attorney general, Gali Baharav-Miara, to warn that Netanyahu was breaking his conflict of interest agreement.
The fast-paced legal and political developments have catapulted Israel into uncharted territory, said Guy Lurie, a research fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute, a Jerusalem think tank.
“We are at the start of a constitutional crisis in the sense that there is a disagreement over the source of authority and legitimacy of different governing bodies,” he said.
Macron's govt ignites firestorm of anger in France with unpopular pension reforms
A big day has come for French high school student Elisa Fares. At age 17, she is taking part in her first protest.
In a country that taught the world about people power with its revolution of 1789 — and a country again seething with anger against its leaders — graduating from bystander to demonstrator is a generations-old rite of passage. Fares looks both excited and nervous as she prepares to march down Paris streets where people for centuries have similarly defied authority and declared: “Non!”
Two friends, neither older than 18 but already protest veterans whose parents took them to demonstrations when they were little, are showing Fares the ropes. They’ve readied eyedrops and gas masks in case police fire tear gas — as they have done repeatedly in recent weeks.
“The French are known for fighting and we’ll fight,” says one of the friends, Coline Marionneau, also 17. “My mother goes to a lot of demonstrations ... She says if you have things to say, you should protest.”
For French President Emmanuel Macron, the look of determination on their young faces only heralds deepening crisis. His government has ignited a firestorm of anger with unpopular pension reforms that he railroaded through parliament and which, most notably, push the legal retirement age from 62 to 64.Furious not just with the prospect of working for longer but also with the way Macron imposed it, his opponents have switched to full-on disobedience mode. They’re regularly striking and demonstrating and threatening to make his second and final term as president even more difficult than his first. It, too, was rocked by months of protests — often violent — by so-called yellow vest campaigners against social injustice.
Fares, the first-time protester, said her mother had been against her taking to the streets but has now given her blessing.
“She said that if I wanted to fight, she wouldn’t stop me,” the teen says.
Critics accuse Macron of effectively ruling by decree, likening him to France’s kings of old. Their reign finished badly: In the French Revolution, King Louis XVI ended up on the guillotine. There’s no danger of that happening to Macron. But hobbled in parliament and contested on the streets piled high with reeking garbage uncollected by striking workers, he’s being given a tough lesson, again, about French people power. Freshly scrawled slogans in Paris reference 1789.
So drastically has Macron lost the initiative that he was forced to indefinitely postpone a planned state visit this week by King Charles III. Germany, not France, will now get the honor of being the first overseas ally to host Charles as monarch.
The France leg of Charles’ tour would have coincided with a new round of strikes and demonstrations planned for Tuesday that are again likely to mobilize many hundreds of thousands of protesters. Macron said the royal visit likely would have become their target, which risked creating a “detestable situation.”
Encouraged by that victory, the protest movement is plowing on and picking up new recruits, including some so young that it will be many decades before they’ll be directly impacted by the pushed-back retirement age. Their involvement is a worrisome development for Macron, because it suggests that protests are evolving, broadening from workplace and retirement concerns to a more generalized malaise with the president and his governance.
Violence is picking up, too. Police and environmental activists fought pitched battles over the weekend in rural western France, resulting in dozens of injuries. Officers fired more than 4,000 nonlethal dispersion grenades in fending off hundreds of protesters who rained down rocks, powerful fireworks and gasoline bombs on police lines.
“Anger and resentment,” says former President François Hollande, Macron’s predecessor, “are at a level that I have rarely seen.”
For Fares, whose first demonstration was a peaceful protest in Paris this weekend, the final straw was Macron’s decision to not let legislators vote on his retirement reform, because he wasn’t sure of winning a majority for it. Instead, he ordered his prime minister to skirt parliament by using a special constitutional power to ram the bill through.
It was the 11th time that Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne had to resort to the so-called Article 49.3 power in just 10 months — a telling sign of Macron’s fragility since he lost his parliamentary majority in an election last June.
“It’s an attack on democracy,” Fares said. “It annoyed me too much.”
Her friend Luna Dessommes, 18, added hopefully: “We have to use the movement to politicize more and more young people.”
At age 76, veteran protester Gilbert Leblanc has been through it all before. He was a yellow vest; by his count, he took part in more than 220 of their protests in Macron’s first term, rallying to the cry that the former banker was too pro-business and “the president of the rich.”
Long before that, Leblanc cut his teeth in seminal civil unrest that reshaped France in May 1968. He says that when he tells awe-struck young protesters that he was a “soixante-huitard” — a ’68 veteran — they “want to take selfies with me.”
This winter, he has kept his heating off, instead saving the money for train fares to the capital, so he can protest every weekend, he said.
“My grandfather who fought in World War I, got the war medal. He would rise from his grave if he saw me sitting at home, in my sofa, not doing anything,” Leblanc said.
“Everything we’ve obtained has been with our tears and blood.”
Is Michelangelo’s David 'porn'? Come and see, Italian museum tells Florida parents
The Florence museum housing Michelangelo’s Renaissance masterpiece the David on Sunday invited parents and students from a Florida charter school to visit after complaints about a lesson featuring the statue forced the principal to resign.
Florence Mayor Dario Nardella also tweeted an invitation for the principal to visit so he can personally honor her. Confusing art with pornography was “ridiculous,” Nardella said.
The board of the Tallahassee Classical School pressured Principal Hope Carrasquilla to resign last week after an image of the David was shown to a sixth-grade art class. The school has a policy requiring parents to be notified in advance about “controversial” topics being taught.
The incredulous Italian response highlighted how the U.S. culture wars are often perceived in Europe, where despite a rise in right-wing sentiment and governance, the Renaissance and its masterpieces, even its naked ones, are generally free of controversy. Sunday’s front page of the Italian daily publication Corriere della Sera featured a cartoon by its leading satirist depicting David with his genitals covered by an image of Uncle Sam and the word “Shame.”
Carrasquilla believes the board targeted her after three parents complained about a lesson including a photo of the David, a 5-meter tall (17 foot) nude marble sculpture dating from 1504. The work, reflecting the height of the Italian Renaissance, depicts the Biblical David going to fight Goliath armed only with his faith in God.
Carrasquilla has said two parents complained because they weren’t notified in advance that a nude would be shown, while a third called the iconic statue pornographic.
Carrasquilla said in a phone interview Sunday that she is “very honored” by the invitations to Italy and she may accept.
“I am totally, like, wow,” Carasquilla said. “I’ve been to Florence before and have seen the David up close and in person, but I would love to go and be a guest of the mayor.”
Cecilie Hollberg, director of the Galleria dell’Accademia, where the David resides, expressed astonishment at the controversy.
“To think that David could be pornographic means truly not understanding the contents of the Bible, not understanding Western culture and not understanding Renaissance art,” Hollberg said in a telephone interview.
She invited the principal, school board, parents and student body to view the “purity” of the statue.
Tallahassee Classical is a charter school. While it is taxpayer-funded and tuition-free, it operates almost entirely independently of the local school district and is sought out by parents seeking an alternative to the public school curriculum.
About 400 students from kindergarten through 12th grade attend the three-year-old institution, which is now on its third principal. It follows a curriculum designed by Hillsdale College, a conservative Christian school in Michigan frequently consulted by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on educational issues.
Barney Bishop, chairman of Tallahassee Classical’s school board, has told reporters that while the photo of the statue played a part in Carrasquilla’s ouster, it wasn’t the only factor. He has declined to elaborate, while defending the decision.
“Parents are entitled to know anytime their child is being taught a controversial topic and picture,” Bishop said in an interview with Slate online magazine.
Several parents and teachers plan to protest Carrasquilla’s exit at Monday night’s school board meeting, but Carrasquilla said she isn’t sure she would take the job back even if it were offered.
“There’s been such controversy and such upheaval,” she said. “I would really have to consider, ‘Is this truly what is best?’”
Marla Stone, head of humanities studies at the American Academy in Rome, said the Florida incident was another episode in escalating U.S. culture wars and questioned how the statue could be considered so controversial as to warrant a prior warning.
“What we have here is a moral crusade against the body, sexuality, and gender expression and an ignorance of history,” Stone said in an email. “The incident is about fear, fear of beauty, of difference, and of the possibilities embedded in art.”
Michelangelo Buonarroti sculpted the David between 1501-1504 after being commissioned by the Cathedral of Florence. The statue is the showpiece of the Accademia, and helps draw 1.7 million visitors each year to the museum.
“It is incredibly sought-after by Americans who want to do selfies and enjoy the beauty of this statue,” Director Hollberg said.
The museum, like many in Europe, is free for student groups. There was no indication that any trip would be subsidized by the city or museum.
North Korea test-fires 2 more missiles as US sends carrier
North Korea fired two short-range ballistic missiles into its eastern waters Monday, continuing its weapons displays as the United States moved an aircraft carrier strike group to neighboring waters for military exercises with the South.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said the two missiles were fired from a western inland area south of the North Korean capital of Pyongyang from around 7:47 a.m. to 8 a.m. and traveled around 370 kilometers (229 miles) before landing at sea. Japan’s military said the missiles flew on an “irregular” trajectory and reached a maximum altitude of 50 kilometers (31 miles) before landing outside Japan’s exclusive economic zone.
Japan has previously used the term to describe a North Korean solid-fuel missile apparently modeled after Russia’s Iskander mobile ballistic system, which is designed to be maneuverable in low-altitude flight to better evade South Korean missile defenses. North Korea also has another short-range system with similar characteristics that resembles the U.S. MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile System.
The launches came a day before the USS Nimitz and its strike group are to arrive at the South Korean port of Busan. South Korea’s Defense Ministry said in a statement that the Nimitz strike group will participate in exercises with South Korean warships on Monday in international waters near the South Korean resort island of Jeju before heading to Busan.
The launches were the North’s seventh missile event this month and underscore heightening tensions in the region as the pace of both North Korean weapons tests and the U.S.-South Korea joint military exercises has accelerated in recent months in a cycle of tit-for-tat responses.
Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno said North Korea may dial up its testing activity further with more missile launches or even conducting its first nuclear test since September 2017.
The South Korean and Japanese militaries denounced the latest launches as serious provocations threatening regional peace and violating U.N. Security Council resolutions and said they were working with the United States to analyze the missiles further.
The United States and South Korea completed their biggest springtime exercises in years last week, which had included both computer simulations and life-fire field exercises. But the allies have continued their field training in a show of force against North Korea’s expanding nuclear arsenal and belligerent threats of nuclear conflict.
Jang Do Young, a spokesperson of South Korea's navy, said during a briefing that the allies' combined exercises involving the Nimitz strike group are aimed at sharpening joint operational capabilities and reaffirming the credibility of the U.S. commitment to defend its ally in face of the North's “escalating nuclear and missile threats.”
North Korea had also conducted a short-range launch when the USS Ronald Reagan and its battle group arrived for joint drills with South Korea in September, which was the last time the United States sent an aircraft carrier to waters near the Korean Peninsula.
North Korea has fired more than 20 ballistic and cruise missiles across 11 launch events this year as it tries to force the United States to accept its nuclear status and negotiate a removal of sanctions from a position of strength.
North Korea’s launches this month included a flight-test of an intercontinental ballistic missile and a series of short-range weapons intended to overwhelm South Korean missile defenses as it tries to demonstrate an ability to conduct nuclear strikes on both South Korea and the U.S. mainland.
The North last week conducted what it described as a three-day exercise that simulated nuclear attacks on South Korean targets as leader Kim Jong Un condemned the U.S.-South Korean joint military drills as invasion rehearsals. The allies say the exercises are defensive in nature.
The North's tests also included a purported nuclear-capable underwater drone that the North claimed is capable of setting off a huge “radioactive tsunami” that would destroy naval vessels and ports. Analysts were skeptical about the North Korean claims about the drone or whether the device presents a major new threat, but the tests underlined the North’s commitment to expand its nuclear threats.
Following the North’s announcement of the drone test on Friday, South Korea’s air force released details of a five-day joint aerial drill with the United States last week that included live-fire demonstrations of air-to-air and air-to-ground weapons. The air force said the exercise was aimed at verifying precision strike capabilities and reaffirming the credibility of Seoul’s “three-axis” strategy against North Korean nuclear threats — preemptively striking sources of attacks, intercepting incoming missiles and neutralizing the North’s leadership and key military facilities.
North Korea already is coming off a record year in weapons testing, launching more than 70 missiles in 2022, when it also set into law an escalatory nuclear doctrine that authorizes pre-emptive nuclear strikes in a broad range of scenarios where it may perceive its leadership as under threat.
Germany, EU reach agreement in combustion engine row
Germany and the European Union announced Saturday that they have reached an agreement in their dispute over the future of cars with combustion engines, allowing the registration of new vehicles with such engines even after 2035 provided they use climate-neutral fuel only.
EU Commission Vice-President Frans Timmermans tweeted that “we have found an agreement with Germany on the future use of e-fuels in cars.”
German Transport Minister Volker Wissing tweeted that the way had been cleared for vehicles with internal combustion engines that only use climate-neutral fuels to be newly registered even after 2035.
“We secure opportunities for Europe by preserving important options for climate-neutral and affordable mobility," Wissing wrote.
An initial proposal by European Union member countries on new carbon dioxide emission standards for cars had been postponed amid opposition from Germany. The EU had wanted to ban the sale of all new cars with combustion engines from 2035.
Germany had demanded an exemption for cars that burn e-fuels, arguing that they are carbon neutral when produced using renewable energy and carbon captured from the air so they wouldn’t spew further climate-changing emissions into the atmosphere.
Wissing said they had agreed on concrete procedural steps and that a specific timetable has been made binding. “We want the process to be completed by fall 2024,” he added.
Timmermans also wrote that “we will work now on getting the CO2-standards for cars regulation adopted as soon as possible.”
The issue has driven an ideological wedge within the German government between Wissing’s libertarian Free Democratic Party, or FDP, and the environmentalist Green party, which had backed a complete ban on combustion engines.
Germany’s main opposition party, the center-right Union bloc, also opposed an EU-wide ban on combustion engine vehicles, warning that it would harm the country’s prized auto industry.
Critics say battery-electric technology is a better fit for passenger cars and precious synthetic fuels should be used only where no other option is feasible, such as in aviation.
The transport policy spokesman for the FDP in the European Parliament, Jan-Christoph Oetjen, called the agreement a great success, German news agency dpa reported.
“The nonsensical blanket ban on the internal combustion engine is thus off the table,” he said.
“We are keeping a cutting-edge technology and important jobs on the continent," Oetjen added.
Germany's Environment Minister Steffi Lemke, a member of the Greens, said it was good that an agreement had been reached. A further impasse would have severely damaged both confidence in the European Union's procedures and Germany’s reliability in terms of European policy, she said, according to dpa.
Lemke added that it was important that the automotive industry now has clarity regarding the switch to electromobility.
E-fuels will play an important role, “especially for those sectors that cannot easily switch to efficient electric motors,” Lemke said.
Ferdinand Dudenhoeffer, head of the CAR Center for Automotive Research in Duisburg, Germany, said the permission for e-fuels does not mean a significant change for the overall transformation to electric cars.
Still, he called the late agreement between Germany and the EU “the end of a sad episode.”
“The EU’s credibility has been severely damaged,” he added.
Iran-backed fighters on alert in east Syria after US strikes
Iran-backed fighters were on alert in eastern Syria on Saturday, a day afte r U.S. forces launched retaliatory airstrikes on sites in the war-torn country, opposition activists said. The airstrikes came after a suspected Iran-made drone killed a U.S. contractor and wounded six other Americans on Thursday.
The situation was calm following a day in which rockets were fired at bases housing U.S. troops in eastern Syria. The rockets came after U.S. airstrikes on three different areas in Syria’s eastern province of Deir el-Zour, which borders Iraq, opposition activists said.
While it’s not the first time the U.S. and Iran have traded strikes in Syria, the attack and the U.S. response threaten to upend recent efforts to deescalate tensions across the wider Middle East, whose rival powers have made steps toward détente in recent days after years of turmoil.
“The calm continues as Iran-backed militiamen are on alert out of concern of possible new airstrikes,” said Rami Abdurrahman, who heads the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor.
Also Read: Suspected Iran drone kills US worker in Syria; US retaliates
President Joe Biden said Friday that the U.S. would respond “forcefully” to protect its personnel after U.S. forces retaliated with airstrikes on sites in Syria used by groups affiliated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. The strikes followed an attack Thursday by a suspected Iran-made drone that killed a U.S. contractor and wounded five American servicemembers and a U.S. contractor.
“The United States does not, does not seek conflict with Iran,” Biden said in Ottawa, Canada, where he was on a state visit. But he said Iran and its proxies should be prepared for the U.S. “to act forcefully to protect our people. That’s exactly what happened last night.” Activists said the U.S. bombing killed at least four people.
A statement issued late Friday by the Iranian Consultative Center in Syria warned the U.S. not to carry out further strikes in Syria. Otherwise, “we will have to retaliate." It warned that "it will not be a simple revenge.”
Also Read: Saudi Arabia, Syria may restore ties as Mideast reshuffles
The center, which speaks on behalf of Tehran in Syria, said the U.S. airstrikes targeted places used to store food products and other service centers in Deir el-Zour. It said the strike killed seven people and wounded seven others without giving the nationalities of the dead. An official with an Iran-backed group in Iraq said the strikes killed seven Iranians.
The Observatory raised the death toll from the U.S. strikes to 19, saying they were killed in three locations, including an arms depot in the Harabesh neighborhood in the city of Deir el-Zour, and two military posts near the towns of Mayadeen and Boukamal.
Iran-backed militia groups and Syrian forces control the area, which also has seen suspected airstrikes by Israel in recent months allegedly targeting Iranian supply routes.
According to U.S. officials, two simultaneous attacks were launched at U.S. forces in Syria late Friday. Officials said that based on preliminary information, there was a rocket attack on the Conoco plant, where U.S. troops are stationed, and one U.S. service member was wounded but is in stable condition. At about the same time, several drones were launched at Green Village, in Deir el-Zour province where U.S. troops are also based. One official said all but one of the drones were shot down, and there were no U.S. injuries there. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss military operations.
Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, which answers only to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has been suspected of carrying out attacks with bomb-carrying drones across the wider Middle East.
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the American intelligence community had determined the drone in Thursday’s attack was of Iranian origin, but offered no other immediate evidence to support the claim. The drone hit a coalition base in the northeast Syrian city of Hasakeh.
Iran relies on a network of proxy forces throughout the Mideast to counter the U.S. and Israel, its arch regional enemy. The U.S. has had forces in northeast Syria since 2015, when they deployed as part of the fight against the Islamic State group, and maintains some 900 troops there, working with Kurdish-led forces that control around a third of Syria.
The exchange of strikes came as Saudi Arabia and Iran have been working toward reopening embassies in each other’s countries. The kingdom also acknowledged efforts to reopen a Saudi embassy in Syria, whose embattled President Bashar Assad has been backed by Iran in his country’s long war. According to officials, Iran has launched 80 attacks against U.S. forces and locations in Iraq and Syria since January 2021. The vast majority of those have been in Syria.
The U.S. under Biden has struck Syria previously over tensions with Iran — in February and June of 2021, as well as August 2022.
Syria’s conflict that began in 2011 has left nearly half a million people dead.
Chocolate plant blast kills 2, leaves 9 missing in US
An explosion at a chocolate factory in Pennsylvania Friday killed two people and left nine people missing, authorities said.
Several other people were injured by the explosion at the R.M. Palmer Co. plant, said West Reading Borough Police Department Chief of Police Wayne Holben, who did not confirm the exact number of injured.
The explosion just before 5 p.m. sent a plume of black smoke into the air, destroying one building and damaging a neighboring building that included apartments.
“It’s pretty leveled,” West Reading Borough Mayor Samantha Kaag said of the explosion site. “The building in the front, with the church and the apartments, the explosion was so big that it moved that building four feet forward."
Also Read: Coroner: 7 dead in tornado that ripped through US South
The cause of the blast in the community about 60 miles (96 kilometers) northwest of Philadelphia was under investigation, Holden told reporters.
Eight people were taken to Reading Hospital Friday evening, Tower Health spokeswoman Jessica Bezler said.
Two people were admitted in fair condition and five were being treated and would be released, she said in an email. One patient was transferred to another facility, but Bezler provided no further details.
Also Read: US Embassy expects investigation of alleged assault on journo Zulkarnain's brother
Kaag said people were asked to move back about a block in each direction from the site of the explosion but no evacuations were ordered.
Dean Murray, the borough manager of West Reading Borough, said some residents were displaced from the damaged apartment building.
Kagg said borough officials were not in immediate contact with officials from R.M. Palmer, which Murray described as “a staple of the borough.”
The company's website says it has been making “chocolate novelties” since 1948 and now has 850 employees at its West Reading headquarters.
Spiking violence strains sectarian ties in Iraqi province
Hussein Maytham and his family were driving past the palm tree grove near their home after a quiet evening shopping for toys for his younger cousins when their car hit a bomb planted on the moon-lit road.
“I only remember the explosion,” Maytham, 16, said weakly from his hospital bed, his pale arms speckled brown by shrapnel. The attack took place earlier this month in the Shiite-majority village of Hazanieh. The force of the blast hurled the teenager out of the vehicle, but his family – his parents, an aunt and three cousins - perished in the fiery carnage. Residents say gunmen hidden nearby in irrigation canals opened fire, killing two others.
This is the latest in a series of attacks witnessed over the last month in the central Iraqi province of Diyala, located north and east of Baghdad. Security officials say at least 19 civilians have been killed by unidentified assailants, including in two targeted attacks.
The violence is pitting communities against each other in the ethnically and religiously diverse province. It also raises questions whether the relative calm and stability that has prevailed in much of Iraq in the years since the defeat of the extremist group Islamic State can be sustained.
Also Read: Corruption, deep disparity mark Iraq’s oil legacy post-2003
Iraq as a whole has moved on from the conditions that enabled the rise of the Islamic State group and the large-scale bloody sectarian violence that erupted after the U.S.-led invasion 20 years ago, according to Mohanad Adnan, a political analyst and partner at the Roya Development Group.
But some parts of the country, including Diyala, remain tense, with occasional waves of violence reopening old wounds. “There are a few villages, especially in Diyala, where they have not overcome what happened in the past,” said Adnan.
Also Read: 20 years on, most Americans say Iraq invasion was wrong decision: Axios poll
Officials, residents, and analysts say at least one instance of violence in Diyala appears to be a sectarian reprisal by Shiites against Sunnis over an IS-claimed attack. But they say other killings were carried out by Shiites against Shiites, as rival militias and their tribal and political allies that control the province struggle over influence and lucrative racketeering networks. Diyala, bordering both Iran and Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region, is a prime conduit for smuggling, including drugs.
The Iranian-backed Badr Organization, a state-sanctioned militia within the Popular Mobilization Forces with a political wing, wrested control of the province from IS in 2015. Since then, it has asserted its dominance over several Shiite political parties and their associated paramilitaries, as well as Sunni groups.
Although most Sunni residents displaced during the war against IS have returned to the province, they say they are often viewed with suspicion by authorities and neighbors due to their perceived affiliation with the extremists. When remnants of the group stage attacks on civilians or security forces, it often prompts a spiral of retaliatory attacks.
Also Read: Kurds remain biggest winners from US-led invasion of Iraq
In the Sunni village of Jalaylah, nine people, including women and children, were killed in a gruesome attack in late February, two months after they were blamed for allowing an IS attack on a neighboring village, according to security officials.
The attackers moved openly through the area, said villager Awadh al-Azzawi. “They didn’t wear masks. Their faces were clear,” he said.
Residents accuse members of the nearby Shiite village Albu Bali, where IS killed nine in December, of carrying out the attack in revenge. They say the perpetrators belong to local militias using weapons given to them by the state. Security officials affiliated with the armed groups declined to comment.
Banners calling for the blood of the attackers are hoisted on the walls of Jalaylah.
Maytham’s relatives less readily voice their suspicions of who killed their family members, who were Shiite.
“Only God can be certain who is behind this attack,” said Sheikh Mustaf, the teenager’s grandfather, in his reception hall surrounded by guests offering their condolences for the eight killed in the March 3 attack, only describing the attackers as “terrorists.”
A local leader of the Bani Tamim, one of the most prominent Shiite-majority tribes in Diyala, Sheikh Mustaf has called for calm. But tribe members say their weapons are at the ready if authorities do not bring the assailants to justice.
Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani visited Diyala days after the attack, sending military reinforcements to the area. Several have been arrested on terrorism charges and caches of weapons, including mortars, missiles, and ammunition, have been uncovered, according to the security media cell.
“We blame the security forces and the government because they have to secure the area. It’s their responsibility,” said Sheikh Maher, another relative of the deceased and prominent member of the tribe. He blamed “foreign hands” that he said “are trying to return our province back to the days of sectarianism and chaos.”
A provincial security official, speaking to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the media, said, “what is happening in Diyala is not only terrorism” – a term generally used for attacks by Sunni militant groups like IS – “but also a struggle for influence between armed factions linked to political blocs.”
Experts say internal rifts are emerging within the Bani Tamim clan, who are split in their support among the competing forces of the Badr Organization, the movement of influential Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, and the Iranian-affiliated paramilitary group Asaib Ahl Al-Haq.
“There is a struggle within the tribe in order to impose power and to obtain important positions in Diyala, positions in the Diyala government, and security positions,” the official said.
Iraq analyst Tamer Badawi, a doctoral researcher at the University of Kent, said armed groups are also carrying out attacks to destabilize the area and undermine a crackdown launched by the government against smuggling networks that they have operated for years.
“Now, after cracking down on smuggling, crime is increasing, namely murder and kidnapping for the sake of money,” said the security official.
Residents of Diyala say regardless of the cause of the attack, they feel unsafe and blame Iraqi authorities for letting the attacks happen. “This is terrorism. It’s not about tribes, or sectarianism, it’s terrorism,” said Azzawi.