California rock climber Brad Gobright reportedly reached the top of a highly challenging rock face in northern Mexico and was rappelling down with a companion when he fell to his death.
Climber Aidan Jacobson of Phoenix, Arizona, told Outside magazine he was with Gobright, and said they had just performed an ascent of the Sendero Luminoso route in the El Potrero Chico area near the northern city of Monterrey. Jacobson also fell, but a shorter distance, after something went wrong in the “simul-rappelling” descent, the magazine said.
The technique involves two climbers balancing each other’s weight off an anchor point. In online forums, many climbers described the technique as difficult and potentially dangerous.
Civil defense officials in Nuevo Leon state said Gobright, 31, fell about 300 meters (328 yards) to his death on Wednesday. The magazine account described the fall as 600 feet (about 200 meters). Jacobson suffered minor injuries, officials said.
Gobright’s body was recovered Thursday. The publication Rock and Ice described Gobright as “one of the most accomplished free solo climbers in the world.”
Friends on Friday described him as a dedicated climber who would travel the West Coast, living out of his Honda Civic, following the weather on a diet of gas station food.
“In some ways, I think he was such a fixture of the climbing community and such a big character on the scene, I feel like I’ve always known him,” said his friend Alex Honnold, who was the first person to ascend Yosemite National Park’s granite wall known as El Capitan without ropes or safety gear.
“He spent almost every day of his life doing exactly what he wanted to be doing.”
Jacobson said the pair might not have evened out the length of the 80-meter (88-yard) rope between them, to ensure each had the same amount, because Gobright’s end was apparently tangled in some bushes near a ledge below them.
That might have caused Gobright to essentially run out of rope; without the balancing weight of the other climber, both would fall. Jacobson fell through some vegetation and onto a ledge they were aiming for, injuring his ankle.
The duo did not tie knots at the end of the rope that would have prevented Gobright from rappelling off the end of it, Jacobson told Outside magazine.
Honnold said he’d often climb with Gobright as they discussed weighty topics such as the rise of China and would trade books about the evolution of humankind.
“He was just interested in the world,” Honnold said.
Samuel Crossley, a climber and photographer, said he first met Gobright about three years ago while filming “Safety Third,” a film chronicling Gobright’s life as a free solo climber.
Crossley said Gobright took the photographer’s needs and perspective into his climbs, taking direction well so they could make good photographs during sunrise or sunset that would become some of Crossley’s favorites.
Despite being an elite climber, Crossley said Gobright enjoyed living out of his sedan, noting other elite climbers lived out of vans.
“Brad was Brad, that was the beauty of it,” Crossley said. When you’re hanging out with Brad, you’re typically climbing and having a good time.”

…

Black Friday enthusiasts woke up before dawn and traveled cross-state to their favorite malls in search of hot deals, kicking off a shortened shopping season that intensified the scramble between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
But the ever-growing popularity of online shopping and holiday discounts that started weeks earlier dampened the frenzy. This year, more people got a head start on gift-hunting, lured by deals from retailers trying to compensate for the shorter season.
The shopping season is the shortest since 2013 because Thanksgiving fell on the last Thursday in November — the latest possible date it could be.
Shoppers up since the wee hours slept in chairs at Nashville’s Opry Mills mall, known for its outlet stores. Outside, deal-seekers were still fighting for parking spots by midmorning.
Haley Wright left Alabama at 4 a.m. to arrive at the Tennessee mall by 7 a.m. She makes the annual trip because she says the stores offer better deals and a more fun environment than the shops back home.
“I let my husband do the online shopping; I do Black Friday,” she said.
The National Retail Federation, the nation’s largest retail trade group, baked the shorter season into its forecast, but it says the real drivers will be the job market. It forecasts that holiday sales will rise between 3.8% and 4.2%, an increase from the disappointing 2.1% growth in the November and December 2018 period that came well short of the group’s prediction.
NRF expects online and catalog sales, which are included in the total, to increase between 11% and 14% for the holiday period.

A woman carries a shopping bag while walking in front of a cable car in San Francisco, Nov. 29, 2019.Last year’s holiday sales were hurt by turmoil over the White House trade policy with China and a delay of nearly a month in data collection because of a government shutdown.
Marshal Cohen, chief industry analyst at market research firm NPD Group Inc., says he doesn’t believe a shorter season will affect overall sales, but early discounts will likely diminish Black Friday’s impact. In terms of the busiest day of the year, it will be a toss-up between Black Friday and the last Saturday before Christmas.
“We still have the same amount of money to spend regardless of whether the season is longer or shorter,” he said.
More than half of consumers started their holiday shopping early this year, and nearly a quarter of purchases have already been made, according to the annual survey released by the NRF and Prosper Insights & Analytics.
Kara Lopez and Jeremy Samora arrived at Denver’s Cherry Creek Shopping Center as soon as it opened Friday to snag deals on candles and lotions at Bath & Body Works.
A half-hour later, they sat with their purchases sharing a thermos of hot chocolate, a tradition Lopez started years ago when she had to wait in line for the store to open and the first shoppers inside got gifts like stuffed animals. It’s more relaxed these days, but Lopez likes it that way.
“I like the mall but not when it’s full of people,” she said.
Adobe Analytics predicts a loss of $1 billion in online revenue from a shortened season. Still, it expects online sales will reach $143.7 billion, up 14.1% from last year’s holiday season.
Adobe Analytics said Thanksgiving Day set records for online shopping. Consumers spent $4.2 billion on Thanksgiving, a 14.5% increase from the holiday a year ago. Black Friday was on track to hit $7.4 billion.

Shoppers carry bags as they cross a street in San Francisco, Nov. 29, 2019. Black Friday kicks off the start of the holiday shopping season.As online sales surged, some retailers including Costco.com and H&M grappled with brief outages, according to technology company Catchpoint.
Target reported Friday that 1 million more customers used its app to shop Black Friday deals compared with last year. The discounter said customers bought big ticket items like TVs, Apple iPads and Apple Watches.
Walmart worked to ease long lines with technology allowing shoppers to check out with sales associates in the aisles. The retail giant said its most popular deals included TVs, Apple AirPods and “Frozen” toys.
In Europe, though, Black Friday drew a backlash from activists, politicians and even consumers who criticized the U.S. shopping phenomenon as capitalism run amok. Climate demonstrators blocked a shopping mall near Paris and gathered in front of Amazon’s headquarters. Workers at Amazon in Germany went on strike for better pay. Some French lawmakers called for banning Black Friday altogether.
In the U.S., attention Friday turned to malls, which are fighting for traffic as online shopping grows.
At Mall of America, the country’s largest shopping mall, crowds were expected to exceed the 240,000 count on Black Friday from a year ago, said Jill Renslow, senior vice president at the Bloomington, Minnesota-based mall.
Maria Mainville, a spokesman at Taubman Centers, which operates a little over 20 malls in the U.S., says that its centers reported strong customer traffic since earlier this week. That’s different from last year when Black Friday and Thanksgiving drew the majority of the crowds for the period.
At some malls, some shoppers were surprised at the relatively thin crowds.
Two Bath & Body Works saleswomen wearing reindeer antler headbands shouted about promotions at a trickle of shoppers walking through Newport Centre in Jersey City, New Jersey.
“It looks empty for Black Friday,” said Latoya Robinson, a student who lives in New York and planned to stop by Forever 21 and Macy’s to shop for herself.
In Kansas, Kassi Adams and her husband drove 50 miles (80 kilometers) to Town East Mall in Wichita, even though the couple were nearly done with their holiday shopping. They were surprised to see how few people were there and even boasted about getting a choice parking spot.
“There is really not much of a crowd to fight,” she said.

…

Anti-government violence raged on in southern Iraq on Friday, despite the announced resignation of Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi. At least 21 people were killed in the southern part of the country, and one protester was killed in central Baghdad as demonstrations continued here, including a thousands-strong sit-in at Tahrir Square.
Abdul Mahdi’s announcement came after the country’s senior Shiite Muslim cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, urged lawmakers to reconsider their support for a government rocked by weeks of deadly anti-establishment unrest.
“In response to this [the cleric’s] call, and in order to facilitate it as quickly as possible, I will present to parliament a demand [to accept] my resignation from the leadership of the current government,” a statement signed by Abdul Mahdi said. 

FILE – A still image taken from a video shows Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi delivering a speech on reforms, in Baghdad, Iraq Oct. 25, 2019.The statement did not say when he would resign. Parliament is to convene an emergency session on Sunday to discuss the crisis. 
For weeks, young, unemployed and unarmed protesters have led calls for an overhaul of a political system they say is endemically corrupt and serves foreign powers, especially Tehran.
Protesters celebrated the imminent departure of Abdul Mahdi, but said they would not stop their demonstrations until the whole of the political class was removed.  
“Abdul Mahdi’s resignation is just the beginning. We’ll stay in the streets until the entire government has gone, and all the rest of the corrupt politicians,” said Mustafa Hafidh, a protester at Tahrir Square. 
“It’s not enough,” said Ali al-Sayeda, another demonstrator. “We need them all out, root and branch. We can’t let up the pressure.” 
A victory for Iraq’s national soccer team against the United Arab Emirates gave protesters at Tahrir Square more cause for celebration and they set off fireworks, enjoying a brief respite from the unrest. 
Later, security forces shot dead a demonstrator at nearby Ahrar Bridge, police sources said. 
 Nasiriyah clash
Security forces, meanwhile, shot dead at least 21 people in the southern city of Nasiriyah after protesters tried to storm a local police headquarters, hospital sources said. In Najaf, unidentified armed men shot live rounds at demonstrators, sending dozens scattering. 
Iraqi forces have killed hundreds of demonstrators since the anti-government protests broke out October 1. More than a dozen members of the security forces have also died in clashes. At least 436 people have died in less than two months, according to a Reuters tally from medical and police sources. 

Anti-government protesters carry a symbolic coffin during protests in Baghdad, Iraq, Nov. 29, 2019.The burning of Iran’s consulate in the holy city of Najaf on Wednesday escalated violence and drew a brutal response from security forces, who shot dead more than 60 people nationwide on Thursday. 
Sistani, who only weighs in on politics in times of crisis and wields huge influence over public opinion, warned against an explosion of civil strife and tyranny. 
He urged government forces to stop killing protesters and the protesters themselves to reject all violence, in apparent reference to the burning of the consulate in Najaf. 
The government “appears to have been unable to deal with the events of the past two months. … Parliament, from which the current government emerged, must reconsider its choices and do what’s in the interest of Iraq,” a representative of Sistani said in a televised sermon. 
Sunni areas
Some protesters took to the streets in Iraq’s northern, Sunni-majority provinces in solidarity with their Shiite compatriots in the south, spurred by Abdul Mahdi’s resignation and emboldened by the soccer win, witnesses said. 
Sunni areas decimated by the fight to defeat Islamic State have mostly been quiet, partly because of fears that IS militants could exploit unrest to grow an ongoing insurgency. 
A rocket hit Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone, which houses government buildings and embassies, late on Friday but caused no casualties, the military said. 
Iraq’s “enemies and their apparatuses are trying to sow chaos and infighting to return the country to the age of dictatorship. … Everyone must work together to thwart that opportunity,” Sistani said, without elaborating.
The prime minister’s departure could be a blow for Iranian influence;  Iran’s militia allies and its own commanders intervened last month to keep the premier in place despite the weeks of anti-government unrest.

…

Singapore instructed Facebook on Friday to publish a correction on a user’s social media post under a new “fake news” law, raising fresh questions about how the company will adhere to government requests to regulate content.
The government said in a statement that it had issued an order requiring Facebook “to publish a correction notice” on a Nov. 23 post which contained accusations about the arrest of a supposed whistleblower and election rigging.
Singapore said the allegations were “false” and “scurrilous” and initially ordered user Alex Tan, who runs the States Times  Review blog, to issue the correction notice on the post. Tan, who does not live in Singapore and says he is an Australian citizen, refused and authorities said he is now under    investigation.
Facebook reviews request
Facebook said in a statement that it was reviewing a request from the Singapore government, but declined to comment further.
Tan’s post remained up as of mid-afternoon on Friday, with a Nov. 28 update noting that the government denied the arrest. Tan also posted the article on Twitter, LinkedIn and Google Docs and challenged the government to order corrections there as well.
Facebook has been under fire in recent years for its lax approach to fake news reports, state-backed disinformation  campaigns and violent content spread on its services, prompting calls for new regulations around the world.
It is also frequently criticized for being too willing to do the bidding of governments in stamping out political dissent.
Facebook often blocks content that governments allege violate local laws, with nearly 18,000 cases globally in the year to June, according to the company’s “transparency report.”
But the new Singapore law is the first to demand that  Facebook publish corrections when directed to do so by the government, and it remains unclear how Facebook plans to respond  to the order.
First big test
The case is the first big test for a law that was two years in the making and came into effect last month.
The Asia Internet Coalition, an association of internet and technology companies, called the law the “most far-reaching  legislation of its kind to date,” while rights groups have said  it could undermine internet freedoms, not just in Singapore, but   elsewhere in Southeast Asia.
Facebook has previously said it was “concerned with aspects of the new law which grant broad powers to the Singapore executive branch to compel us to remove content they deem to be  false and to push a government notification to users.”
In the only other case under the law, which covers statements that are communicated in the country even if they originate elsewhere, opposition political figure Brad Bowyer  swiftly complied with a correction request.
The penalties range from prison terms of as much as 10 years or fines up to S$1 million ($735,000).
Singapore, ruled by the People’s Action Party since independence in 1965, is widely expected to hold a general election within months, though no official date has been set.

…

The French government summoned the Turkish ambassador Friday to seek explanations after his president described French President Emmanuel Macron as “brain dead.”
Ahead of a NATO summit next week that both men will attend, tensions have mounted around Turkey’s military operation in Syria, and its role within the trans-Atlantic defense alliance, which is also a member of the fight against so-called Islamic State.
Macron, complaining of a U.S. leadership vacuum, recently lamented the “brain death” of NATO and says the allies need “a wake-up call.” And on Thursday, he reiterated criticism of Turkey’s operation in northeast Syria against Kurdish fighters who were crucial in the international fight against IS extremists.
“I respect the security interests of our Turkish ally … but one can’t say that we are allies and demand solidarity, and on the other hand, present allies with a fait accompli by a military intervention which jeopardizes the action of the coalition against IS,” Macron said at a meeting with the NATO chief, Jens Stoltenberg.

The comments angered Turkey’s leadership and prompted President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to shoot back Friday: “You should get checked whether you’re brain dead.”
“Kicking Turkey out of NATO or not, how is that up to you? Do you have the authority to make such a decision?” Erdogan asked, characterizing Macron as “inexperienced.”
Turkey also criticized Macron for agreeing to talks with a Syrian Kurd politician whom Ankara considers an extremist.
The French Foreign Ministry said in a statement that Ambassador Ismail Hakki Musa was summoned Friday to explain “unacceptable statements … that have no place in Turkish-French relations and cannot substitute for the necessary dialogue between the two countries.”
An official in Macron’s office said that NATO allies are expecting “clear answers” from Turkey about its intentions in Syria.
The Macron-Erdogan spat comes amid other problems within NATO that are expected to come to the fore at next week’s summit in London, including U.S. President Donald Trump’s complaints that other members don’t spend enough on defense and differences over the alliance’s post-Cold War mission.

…

China’s ambassador to Canada on Friday called on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government to “correct its mistake” of detaining Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou last year on a US extradition warrant.
Ambassador Cong Peiwu issued the statement after visiting Meng at her mansion in Vancouver, where she is under house arrest pending an extradition trial scheduled to start in January.
Cong said that he stressed to Meng that Beijing is “determined to protect the just and legitimate rights and interests of its citizens and enterprises, and will continue to urge the Canadian side to correct its mistake and take measures to solve the issue as soon as possible.”
“We expect (Meng) to go back to China safe and sound at an early date,” he said.
Meng’s arrest last December during a layover at Vancouver’s international airport triggered an escalating diplomatic row between Canada and China.
Within days, China detained two Canadians — former diplomat Michael Kovrig and businessman Michael Spavor — in apparent retaliation, and subsequently blocked billions of dollars worth of Canadian canola and meat shipments, before restoring imports of the country’s beef and pork earlier this month.
Canada, meanwhile, enlisted the support of allies such as Britain, France, Germany, the United States and NATO to press for the release of its two citizens.
When he met his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi at a G20 meeting in Japan last weekend, Canada’s new foreign minister, Francois-Philippe Champagne, called their release an “absolute priority.”
But Cong, who was posted to Ottawa in September, told Canadian media that Meng’s release was a “precondition” for improved relations.
Canada has previously declared the arrests of Spavor and Kovrig “arbitrary.” Others have gone further, tarring it as “hostage diplomacy.”
The pair, held in isolation until June when they were formally charged with allegedly stealing Chinese state secrets and moved to a detention center, have been permitted only one 30-minute consular visit per-month.
Describing their harsh detention conditions, The Globe and Mail newspaper, citing unnamed sources, reported that Kovrig’s jailers at one point seized his reading glasses.
Since being granted bail soon after her arrest, Meng has been required to wear an electronic monitoring anklet and abide by a curfew, but she is free to roam within Vancouver city limits under the gaze of a security escort.
Her father, Huawei founder Ren Zengfei, told CNN that she’s “like a small ant caught between the collision of two giant powers.”
He described her spending time in Vancouver enjoying painting and studying, adding that her mother and husband routinely travel to Canada to care for her.

…

Angry motorists blocked roads with their vehicles in Beirut and other parts of Lebanon on Friday, creating traffic jams to protest a strike by owners of gas stations demanding an increase in gasoline prices as the local currency drops and the nation slides deeper into a financial crisis.
The road closures around Lebanon came as President Michel Aoun headed a meeting of the country’s top economic officials to discuss the rapidly deteriorating economic and financial situation in the country.
Nationwide protests that began Oct. 17 over widespread corruption and mismanagement have worsened Lebanon’s worst economic and financial crises since the 1975-90 civil war ended, as did the resignation of the government late last month. Although Hariri resigned his government on Oct. 29, Aoun has not yet set a date for binding consultations with heads of parliamentary blocs to name a new premier.
The protests were initially sparked by new taxes but quickly evolved into calls for the entire political elite to step aside.

Friday’s meeting was attended by the ministers of economy and finance as well as the Central Bank’s chief and the head of the banking association as well as the economic adviser of outgoing Prime Minister Saad Hariri.
Lebanon is one of the world’s highest indebted countries and the country’s banking sector has imposed unprecedented capital control amid a widespread shortage of dollars. People have not been allowed in recent weeks to withdraw as much as they want from their bank accounts.
The price of the dollar has dropped 40 percent on the black market after it was stable at 1,507 pounds to the dollar since 1997.
During the meeting, Aoun put forward some suggestions to come out of the crisis and it was decided that the central bank governor would take needed measures regarding coordination with banks to issue circulars to preserve stability, said a statement read by Salim Sfeir, the chairman of the Association of Banks in Lebanon.
“The meeting discussed financial and banking conditions that the country is passing through that has begun to negatively affect most sectors,” the statement said adding that Lebanon will remain committed to its free market economy.
The shortage of liquidity has led to drops in businesses and over the past months scores of institutions have closed and thousands of employees were either laid off or had their salaries cut.
Gas stations began an open-ended strike Thursday as owners are demanding that they be allowed to hike prices saying they are losing money because of the shortage of dollars in the market.
In Beirut and several areas across the country, motorists parked their cars in the middle of the road, saying they ran out of petrol. In other areas angry protesters blocked roads to express their anger against closure of gas stations.

 
Politicians, meanwhile, have failed to agree on the shape and form of a new government. Hariri had insisted on heading a government of technocrats, while his opponents, including the militant Hezbollah, want a Cabinet made up of both experts and politicians.
U.N. Special Coordinator for Lebanon Jan Kubis said he met Friday with central bank governor Riad Salameh and discussed with him measures “urgently needed to stop the further deepening” of the economic crisis and to increase the ability of the banking sector to cope with the pressures.
“Formation of a credible and competent government that can regain the trust of the people and of the international partners of #Lebanon is the priority,” Kubis tweeted.

…

The 164 signatory countries to the Mine Ban Treaty (MBT) agreed Friday to accelerate the work to achieve the goal of a “mine-free” world in 2025, Norway’s foreign ministry said.
“Countries have now agreed that it is necessary to speed up mine clearance over the next five years,” Norway’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Ine Eriksen Soreide said in a statement following a meeting in Oslo.
According to Landmine Monitor, an annual report by the Landmine and Cluster Munition Monitor, 6,897 people were killed or injured by mines and other explosive remnants of war in 2018 and the report noted that it was the fourth year in a row with “exceptionally high numbers of recorded casualties.”
Of those, 3,789 were victims of so-called improvised mines, the highest recorded number to date.
Under the Oslo Action Plan, adopted Friday, states undertake to “identify mined areas and put in place national plans for mine clearance.”
They also commit to measuring their progress in the final stretch before 2025, the goal set by the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention or Ottawa Treaty in 1997, the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement.

FILE – Zimbabwean citizens work on a mined beach in Stanley, Falkland Islands (Malvinas), Oct. 11, 2019.The meeting in Oslo this week was the last in a series of five-year meetings to implement the treaty drafted in 1997, which helped to put an end to virtually all mine use by governments, including those that did not sign it.
Armed groups are, however, increasingly using improvised anti-personnel mines.
According to Landmine Monitor, non-state groups used this type of weapon last year in at least six countries: Afghanistan, India, Burma, Nigeria, Pakistan and Yemen.
Since the treaty’s adoption, nearly 58 million mines have been removed by clearing minefields and destroying stockpiles, according to the Norwegian ministry.
Efforts to rid the world of these weapons were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997, which was given to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines and U.S. citizen Jody Williams.
 

…

Hundreds of protesters took to the streets of Sydney, Australia Friday to kick off a fresh round of global demonstrations urging more action to curb climate change. 
       
The protesters gathered outside the New South Wales Liberal Party headquarters to demand the government reject any new coal, oil or gas projects, as protesters in several other Asia-Pacific cities echoed the call to action from 16-year-old Swedish climate change campaigner Greta Thunberg.
The protests in Australia are taking place as the country’s southeast has been devastated by hundreds of damaging bushfires in recent weeks.
Groups of young Americans have planned a “Black Friday Strike”, from Los Angeles to New York, to boycott the celebration of consumer discount shopping and to call for changes to business-as-usual to confront the climate crisis.
As protests against climate change are widening around the world on Friday analysts warn that the United Nations climate conference taking place over the coming two weeks in Madrid, Spain, will likely fall short of their expectations.

…

Everyone overlooks them as they scurry about in their luminescent orange uniforms at all hours of the day and night, armed only with small brushes and the the type of long-handled lobby dustpans a concierge might use in New York or London to tidy up an entrance.
Moscow’s army of road sweepers keeps the Russian capital pretty spotless, but Muscovites hardly notice.
Most of the nearly 30,000 sweepers in the city appear to be Central Asian migrants — they are underpaid and the thankless drudgery offers few, if any, fringe benefits.
“If you fall sick, you get nothing,”  said Sukhrab, a father of three from Kyrgyzstan, whose dark hair is flecked with gray and whose worn face makes him look considerably older than his 39 years. 
A few months ago he suffered a stroke, but returned to sweeping as soon as he could struggle to his feet. 
The city apparently has more than 6,000 single-seat vacuum trucks but tends only to deploy them, along with sprinkler trucks, sparingly, and then generally in swankier boulevards and districts in the center.
The machines are expensive to run and maintain and break down frequently. 
“We are cheaper,” Sukhrab said.
The average monthly road-sweeping salary is $346 a month. Sukhrab, a veteran, earns around $500.
With a huge pool of Central Asian migrants in Russia — at least 11 million — there are plenty of workers available. Migrants are at the bottom of a strictly observed street-cleaning hierarchy and tend to be the drudges. Team supervisors and managers invariably are Russian. The bosses are corrupt. 
“To keep our jobs we have to give the supervisors gifts,” he said. 
Moscow’s road sweepers can be out in the streets even in the middle of the night, regardless of the weather, now starting to turn bitterly cold.
“They can send us out at any time,” Sukhrab said, adding, “Orders are sent by WhatsApp.”  

A street sweeper walks past St. Basil’s Cathedral at Red Square in Moscow, Russia, January 15, 2016. REUTERS/Maxim Zmeyev TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY – GF20000095901Putin’s fate
Will Vladimir Putin finally relinquish the reins of power when his current presidential term ends in 2024? The guessing game is now a dinner-party favorite, of course, and no doubt is a key question Western diplomats based here are struggling to answer for their political masters back home. Western think tanks certainly are free with their forecasts, holding forums to focus on what will follow Putin. 
Former Putin adviser Gleb Pavlovsky, one of those responsible for the whole architecture of the Kremlin’s media management during Putin’s first two presidential terms, said he doubts very much his old boss is going anywhere.
“I think it’s quite possible, he’ll remain president,” Pavlovsky said. 
That, of course, would require rewriting the Russian constitution, which limits a president to two consecutive terms, but allows a return to the Kremlin after a break of at least a term. In 2008 Putin did a job swap with his doggedly loyal prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, while beefing up the powers of the premiership. It didn’t work out, too, well — factional strife within the Kremlin flared and Medvedev started to harbor ambitions of serving a second presidential term — an aspiration Putin disabused him of sharply, according to insider reports.
Putin won’t want to repeat that exercise, Pavlovsky said in his office a 15 minute walk from the Kremlin. He broke with Putin in 2011, upset with Putin’s decision to push Medvedev aside. He thinks, though, that Putin still is “looking for a successor,” hoping to repeat what his predecessor Boris Yeltsin managed when he plucked him from obscurity to take over.
“He wants to repeat this exercise, but it is not possible,” Pavlovsky said. He said he believes it is much more complicated now because “Putin has accrued too much informal authority to be passed on to a successor.”  
He says “the system” that Putin has helped shape while in power won’t let him quit. All the various Kremlin factions “will try to make him stay at any price,” fearing otherwise they could lose out.
“Maybe I’m wrong, but in my opinion, a successor is not possible at all,” and “so I think Putin will try to stay, probably by deleting four words from the Constitution. It is not a big correction — a small one.” 
That would  prompt a crisis, Pavlovsky said. Eventually “the system” will cross a red line and prompt a fierce public backlash, he said. Whether that happens in 2024, if Putin continues in power, Pavlovsky would not forecast.
“It is like Russian roulette,” he said, “Some people play Russian roulette 10, 20 times and it doesn’t kill them, and it seems like they can play forever.”  All the speculation about whether Putin will go is a useful political distraction for the Kremlin, he adds.
Comedy
The Economist recently bewailed the gagging of comedy in Russia, starting its article with a 1980s joke by the Ukrainian-born comic Yakov Smirnoff: “Many people are surprised to hear that we have comedians in Russia, but they are there. They are dead, but they are there.”
It isn’t that bad nowadays, but The Economist argued political humor has been blunted in Russia compared to the perestroika period of the 1980s and the anything-goes decade of the 1990s. That’s thanks to the television channels’ fear of offending the government, the magazine said.
However, 37-year-old comedian Vyacheslav Vereschaka, a keen student of late-night American comics, especially Jimmy Fallon, and the work of British comics stretching back to Tommy Cooper, disagrees. He says the picture is more complicated than the one The Economist paints.
First, he said, television-based comics are cracking some sharp political jokes. He pointed to a recent broadcast by the long-running Comedy Club program on Russia’s TNT-channel, owned by the Kremlin-linked energy giant Gazprom, during which the established comedian Pavel Volya ripped into the government, joking that his quips would no doubt lead to drugs being planted on him by the police or tax inspectors showing up at his door. Maxim Galkin, a performer on state-owned Russia One channel has also not been pulling his punches.
Vereschaka said he doesn’t feel restricted in his stand-up performances.
“I make jokes about Putin and I have routines about politics,” he said. He portrays politicians as drunks.
The bigger question, he added, concerns what audiences want from comics. “Humor is universal but there are also cultural differences,” he said, and the appetite for political humor isn’t as developed in Russia as it is in the U.S. or Britain.
He focuses his routines on his wife and children; he began his comedy career at 14 and his 13-year-old daughter is following in his footsteps with a YouTube channel of her own. People want comedy that connects with their daily lives, he said. Political satire is supplied more by political bloggers either in their blogs or on monologues they post on YouTube. 
Another cultural difference, he said, is how audiences respond to humor.
“Russian audiences aren’t like Western ones, and appreciate jokes by laughing inside rather than guffawing loudly,” he said.
“They will applaud politely to show appreciation of a joke,” although that’s beginning to change with younger Russians, who are more expressive, he said.
The difference can be highly off-putting for visiting foreign comedians.
He recalled that one Irish comic was appalled when the audience sat stony-faced during his routine, and was nonplussed by the polite applause. “What am I doing wrong?” he bewailed.

…

Even among hardliners in Iran, there seems to be an acknowledgment of one fact after widespread protests, violence and a security force crackdown following a spike in government-set gasoline prices: This will not be the last time demonstrators come out on the street.
As Iran struggles under crushing U.S. sanctions following President Donald Trump’s unilateral withdrawal of America from Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers, its elected civilian government and those in its Shiite theocracy will face ever-tougher decisions on where to cut costs.
Those cuts will more than likely target its vast system of government subsidies that make life affordable for its poor, from low-cost electricity in their homes to the bread on their plates. Any move to increase those prices will draw further protests. But the government may not have any other option.
The protests that struck some 100 cities and towns across Iran beginning Nov. 15 came after Iran raised minimum gasoline prices by 50% to 15,000 rials per liter. That’s 12 cents a liter, or about 50 cents a gallon. After a monthly 60-liter quota, it costs 30,000 rials a liter. That’s nearly 24 cents a liter or 90 cents a gallon. An average gallon of regular gas in the U.S. costs $2.58 by comparison, according to AAA.
Cheap gasoline is practically considered a birthright in Iran, home to the world’s fourth-largest crude oil reserves despite decades of economic woes since its 1979 Islamic Revolution. Gasoline there remains among the cheapest in the world, in part to help keep costs low for its underemployed, who often drive taxis to make ends meet.
Iran’s per-capita gross domestic product, often used as a rough sense of a nation’s standard of living, is just over $6,000, compared to over $62,000 in the U.S., according to the World Bank. That disparity, especially given Iran’s oil wealth, fueled the anger felt by demonstrators.
Iran’s government, however, likely saw little choice in trying to push through changes to its gasoline subsidies. Iran spent $26.6 billion on oil subsidies in 2018, according to the Paris-based International Energy Agency, the most of any country in the world. Iran spent 15% of its overall GDP, or $69.2 billion, that year on oil, electricity and natural gas subsidies.
Keeping gas costs low also benefits the wealthy, as well as those who smuggle Iranian fuel into other countries.
U.S. sanctions, re-imposed by Trump, largely have stopped Iran from selling its crude oil abroad, cutting into a crucial source of government income. While Iranian President Hassan Rouhani pledged the money saved from cutting gasoline subsidies would go to the poor, Tehran also needs to cut back spending in order to weather the sanctions.
Already, Iranians have seen their savings chewed away by the rial’s collapse from 32,000 to $1 at the time of the 2015 atomic accord to 126,000 to $1 today. Daily staples also have risen in price.
Even with the hike in gasoline prices, Iran still subsidizes fuel costs. Its economy remains largely state-planned despite privatization efforts. Among other major subsidies are bread and wheat, diesel fuel, heating oil and electricity.
Iran’s minister of industry and trade, Reza Rahmani, pledged Tuesday that prices will not be increased through the end of the current Iranian year on March 21. However, the gasoline prices came suddenly and without warning overnight, signaling further cuts likely would follow the same way in order to try and control the outcry.
The scale of the gasoline price demonstrations remains unclear even today as Iran so far has not offered nationwide statistics for the number of people arrested, injured or killed in the protests. Amnesty International believes the protests and the security crackdown killed at least 161 people.
One Iranian lawmaker said he thought that over 7,000 people had been arrested, while the country’s interior minister said as many as 200,000 people took part in the demonstrations.
While demonstrators attacked gas stations, the target of choice appeared to be banks. Protesters attacked over 700 banks, smashing ATMs and setting some ablaze, Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli said. That anger doesn’t come as a surprise. In recent years, banks burdened by bad debts or circled by corruption allegations have collapsed in Iran, sparking sporadic protests by depositors who lost their money. Some of those banks had ties to powerful people within Iran, leading to allegations of cronyism.
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called those who attacked the banks “thugs” in his first comments on the demonstrations. His website published a cartoon showing masked rioters attacking a bank, while another frame showed a family and an elderly man with a cane peacefully waiting to withdraw money from an ATM.
“Setting fire to such and such bank is not the action of the people, it is the action of thugs,” Khamenei said, according to his website. “These acts of sabotage do not solve any problem. In fact, they add insecurity to the problems that exist.”
However, bank attacks were widespread in 1978 in the months ahead of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi abandoning the throne and the Islamic Revolution. Marxists who hated capitalism, Islamists who opposed usury rates and others taking advantage of the chaos ransacked hundreds of banks, angry over corruption. The Iranian economy nosedived as money flooded out of the country.
The revolution saw millions on the street, something not seen in these recent protests. However, these demonstrations turned violent in the span of a day, showing the danger looming ahead for Iran’s government as it likely faces further hard choices ahead as sanctions look unlikely to be lifted as it has begun breaking centrifuges, enrichment and stockpile limitations in the nuclear deal.
“These riots are not the last ones and it definitely will happen in the future,” Revolutionary Guard acting commander Gen. Ali Fadavi has warned.

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Former Japanese Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone, a giant of his country’s post-World War II politics who pushed for a more assertive Japan while strengthening military ties with the United States, has died. He was 101.
The office of his son, Hirofumi Nakasone, confirmed that Nakasone died Friday at a Tokyo hospital where he was recently treated.
As a World War II navy officer, Yasuhiro Nakasone witnessed the depths of his country’s utter defeat and devastation. Four decades later, he presided over Japan in the 1980s at the pinnacle of its economic success.
In recent years, he lobbied for revision of the war-renouncing U.S.-drafted constitution, a longtime cause that no postwar leader has achieved to date.

FILE – U.S. President Ronald Reagan, left, and Japanese Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone attend their meeting at the Cipriani Hotel, in Venice, June 8, 1987.From US critic to ally
Nakasone began his political career as a fiery nationalist denouncing the U.S. occupation that lasted from 1945 to 1952, but by the 1980s he was a stalwart ally of America known for his warm relations with President Ronald Reagan.
He boosted defense spending, tried to revise Japan’s U.S.-drafted pacifist constitution and drew criticism for his unabashed appeals to patriotism.
In the 1950s, he was a driving force behind building nuclear reactors in resource-poor Japan, a move that helped propel Japan’s strong economic growth after World War II but drew renewed scrutiny in the aftermath of the meltdowns at a nuclear plant in Fukushima swamped by a tsunami in 2011.
Navy officer to parliament
The son of a lumber merchant, Nakasone was born May 27, 1918, the last year of World War I. He went to Tokyo Imperial University before entering the Interior Ministry and then the navy, where he rose to the rank of lieutenant commander during World War II.
In his last news conference as prime minister, he said his political ambitions were sparked after the war by “the conviction I felt as I gazed bewildered at the burned ruins of Tokyo.”
“How can this country be revived into a happy and flourishing state?” he said.
He established his nationalist credentials by campaigning for parliament riding a white bicycle bearing the “rising sun,” or the “Hinomaru” national flag, which Japan’s wartime military had used. He won a seat in 1947, becoming the youngest member of parliament at age 28.
Nakasone became a leading figure in the Liberal Democratic Party that has dominated postwar politics. During more than a half-century in parliament, he served as defense chief, the top of the powerful Ministry of International Trade and Industry, and secretary-general of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party before becoming prime minister.
Nakasone assailed the U.S.-drafted postwar constitution, demanding revision of the document’s war-renouncing Article 9 and urging a military buildup.

FILE – Workers are seen in front of storage tanks for radioactive water at the tsunami-crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Okuma town, Fukushima prefecture, Japan, Feb. 18, 2019.Nuclear power
He was a key figure behind crafting and ramming through government funding for nuclear research in 1954, less than a decade after the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing 200,000 people in the last days of the war. In 1955, he helped pass legislation designed to promote nuclear power.
“Atomic power used to be a beast, but now it’s cattle,” he told a parliamentary session in 1954.
In a 2006 speech marking the 50th anniversary of Japan’s first nuclear institute in Tokaimura, Nakasone said he was intrigued by nuclear power as he tried to figure out why Japan lost the war.
“My conclusion was that one of the biggest reasons was (the lack of) science and technology,” he said. “I felt strongly that Japan would end up being a lowly farming nation forever unless we take a bold step to develop science and technology.”
After the Fukushima disaster in 2011, there was a public backlash against nuclear energy, but Nakasone said it remained indispensable to maintain Japan’s industrial growth.
New kind of leader
As prime minister from 1982 to 1987, Nakasone broke the mold of the Japanese politician. His outspokenness appealed to voters, and he was praised for putting a human face on Japanese politics.
His tongue sometimes got him in trouble. He sparked outrage in 1986 by suggesting Japan was an economic success because it didn’t have minorities with lower intellectual levels.
He was the first Japanese prime minister to visit South Korea, a country with bitter memories of its 1910-1945 colonization by Japan. That was his first trip abroad as leader, a break from his predecessors, who made Washington their first stop.
Despite that gesture, Nakasone was staunchly committed to Japan’s alliance with the U.S., and his warm friendship with Reagan was known as “Ron-Yasu” diplomacy.
His premiership coincided with a period of major trade disputes with the West. Responding to U.S. complaints that Japanese markets were closed, Nakasone initiated packages to reduce tariffs and other import barriers, including a long-term plan to shift Japan’s export-dependent economy to focus more on domestic growth.
He also privatized the sprawling Japan National Railways, today’s Japan Railways group, as well as the state telephone and tobacco companies.
Controversial moves
Nakasone’s nationalist legacy includes the first official visit in 1985 by a postwar prime minister to Yasukuni Shrine, which honors the war dead, including Japan’s convicted war criminals. His visit fueled disputes with China and South Korea over World War II history that persist to this day.
Nakasone overcame opposition from Japan’s strong pacifist forces to boost defense budgets, and excluded military technology cooperation with the U.S. from Japan’s ban on arms exports.
“Japanese cowered under the (postwar U.S.) occupation and occupation policies,” Nakasone said just before stepping down as prime minister in 1987. “It is important to revive from that cowered spirit — that is healthy nationalism.”
But Nakasone also said Japan should remain a war-renouncing nation.
“We must stick to our commitment as a pacifist nation. We have caused tremendous trouble to our neighboring countries in the past war,” Nakasone said in a 2011 interview with public broadcaster NHK. “Our commitment to peace must be the centerpiece of Japan’s domestic and diplomatic policies.”
Both nationalist and wrestling with the same issues — stronger military, constitutional revision and trade friction with the U.S. — Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has been compared to Nakasone by some Japanese media and analysts. But the Japan that Abe leads today is no longer at its peak and China is now a rival to the U.S., and Abe is seen more hawkish toward Beijing’s aspirations.
Elder statesman
In later life, Nakasone became one of Japan’s leading elder statesmen. He promoted his longtime dream of revising the U.S.-drafted constitution and pronouncing his views on national and international affairs. He had attended an annual May rally campaigning for a constitutional revision until he skipped one just before turning 100, when he had a hand injury and couldn’t use his cane to rise from his wheelchair.
He retired from parliament in 2003, at age 85, when he was pushed to retire from parliament after then-Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi urged him to step aside in upcoming elections to make way for a younger lawmaker.
Nakasone complied, but he accused Koizumi of discrimination and lack of respect for his elders. He publicly read a haiku poem. In his 100th birthday message, Nakasone said that he was not done yet, and that same haiku still best described his spirit:
Even after dusk,
Cicada persists in song,
While it still has life.
Nakasone is survived by his son Hirofumi, a parliamentarian, two daughters, and three grandchildren.

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Donald Trump faces a process that could end with his removal as President of the United States. Impeachment hearings underway now in the House of Representatives are just the start of what is prescribed by the U.S. Constitution. In today’s installment of American Impeachment, VOA’s Steve Redisch has an overview of what is taking place.
 

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