BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Parliament launched a lawsuit against the bloc s executive on Friday for failing to apply a new law that allows the freezing of EU payments to countries which do not respect rule-of-law principles. Poland and Hungary are both under formal EU investigation for not respecting the rule of law and stand to lose tens of billions of euros if the law is successfully applied to them. The executive European Commission, which is the guardian of EU laws, has said it would only apply the law, called the conditionality regulation, once the EU s top court rules it is in line with EU treaties a ruling that might come next year. The Commission s decision to delay application of the law is part of a deal made in December 2020 between EU governments and Poland and Hungary that a court ruling on the law would have to come first. Poland and Hungary challenged the law in the Court of Justice of the European Union in March. The parliament argues, however, that the Commiss
NEW YORK (Reuters) - A former official at the International Monetary Fund said Argentina is not going to pay the Fund and any agreement between the two will be a temporary Band-Aid that will only delay a run on banks in the South American country. Argentina is not going to pay the IMF. Argentina is not going to do good macro-micro institutional policies, said Alejandro Werner, who was the head of the IMF’s Western Hemisphere Department for nearly a decade before he left in August. Argentina is negotiating a program to replace a failed one from 2018 that left it as the Fund s largest debtor by far, with about $45 billion in payments due. If the current deal is not modified, payments of near $19 billion are due next year. Werner, speaking at an event on the economic future of Latin America hosted by the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum on Thursday, said, we re overplaying the IMF program, because at most it s going to be a temporary Band-Aid to hold the expectations a
By Ricardo Brito BRASILIA (Reuters) - A Brazilian Senate investigative committee approved a report on Tuesday that calls for President Jair Bolsonaro to be indicted for nine crimes related to his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, including crimes against humanity. The report, which is more than 1,300 pages long and took the opposition-controlled committee about six months to prepare, also alleges that 77 additional people and two companies committed crimes. A draft report released last week had called for Bolsonaro to be indicted for genocide and murder, but senators later decided to drop those particular charges due to what lawmakers described as technical reasons. They also decided to add 10 people to the list of individuals who should be indicted. Among the people added was Wilson Lima, the governor of interior Amazonas state, where a lack of hospital oxygen supplies resulted in deaths by asphyxia earlier this year. His government is currently under federal investigation for all
(Reuters) - Representatives from nearly 200 countries meet in Glasgow, Scotland, from Oct. 31 to Nov. 12 to flesh out the rules of a new global climate pact. Decades of climate talks have spawned a host of acronyms and jargon. Here is a guide: PARIS AGREEMENT Successor to the Kyoto Protocol, the international climate treaty that expired in 2020. Agreed in December 2015, the Paris Agreement aims to limit the rise in the average global surface temperature. To do this, countries that signed the accord set national pledges to reduce humanity s effect on the climate that are meant to become more ambitious over time. GREENHOUSE GASES The carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted by the burning of fossil fuels such as coal, diesel, gasoline or petrol, kerosene and natural gas is the main greenhouse gas responsible for warming the Earth s atmosphere. But there are others such as methane, which is produced by cows and waste dumps, that are much more potent than CO2 but much shorter-lived in the atmosphere.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House said it is still realistic that U.S. President Joe Biden s signature spending plan could get congressional support by Thursday, but conceded that he may need to depart to Europe without a final deal in hand. Biden is expected to depart Thursday morning to a meeting of G20 nation leaders in Rome and the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Scotland. The Glasgow conference was expected to be a showcase for Biden to demonstrate U.S. efforts to tackle climate change and ask other countries to adopt similar measures. However, his roughly $1.5 to $2 trillion spending plan aimed at curbing climate change and expanding the social safety net remained mired in intra-party squabbles Wednesday, as did a linked $1 trillion infrastructure bill that also includes climate related measures. Of course he would like to head on this trip with a deal,” White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said on Wednesday. However, world leaders are “looking at the p