LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump struck a more conciliatory tone over California’s raging wildfires on Tuesday, saying he was in constant contact with officials there, a day after blaming the state’s environmental policies for exacerbating the fires. One of the 17 major fires in California, dubbed the Mendocino Complex, became the biggest in state history on Tuesday, eclipsing a previous record set only eight months ago, as hot, windy conditions fanned the blazes in what Governor Jerry Brown has called a “new normal.” The Mendocino Complex, made up of two fires, grew to nearly 300,000 acres (117,700 hectares) - almost the size of Los Angeles - and was expected to burn for the rest of the month, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) said. The blaze has surpassed the Thomas Fire, which burned 281,893 acres (114,078 hectares) in Santa Barbara and Ventura counties in southern California last December, destroying over 1,000 structures. In the last two days, Trump has said California was letting water run into the ocean instead of using it to fight blazes and blamed California’s environmental policies for worsening the fires. The comments baffled California firefighters, who said they had more than enough water to douse the flames. “We’re going to have to have some meetings about it because there are ... things you can do to mitigate what’s happening,” Trump said at a dinner in New Jersey. The fires have killed seven people, destroyed over 1,500 structures and displaced tens of thousands of people over the past month. Climate change is widely blamed for higher temperatures that have fueled wildfires in California, and as far afield as Portugal, Sweden and Siberia. Temperatures in Northern California could reach 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43 Celsius) over the next few days, the National Weather Service said, making it easier for fire to spread. The Mendocino Complex has burnt 75 homes and forced the evacuation of 23,322 people. Firefighters are trying to keep fire out of communities like Nice, Lucerne and Clearlake Oaks. Slideshow (7 Images)“It’s going into residences, backyards, farmland,” said Mitch Bosma, a spokesman with Cal Fire. The fires are on track to be the most destructive in a decade, prompting Brown and Republican leaders such as state Senator Ted Gaines to call for thinning and controlled burns of forests to reduce fire danger - moves opposed by environmentalists who say they kill wildlife. “We have to re-examine the way we manage our forests, the way we build our houses - how we build them, where we build them - and how much we invest in our fire protection services,” Brown said at a weekend news conference after touring an area destroyed by the deadly Carr Fire in Shasta County. Editing by Bill Tarrant and Diane Craft; Additional reporting by James Oliphant in Bedminster, New Jersey and Adndrew Hay is Taos, New Mexico; Editing by Sandra Maler; Editing by Sandra MalerOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Enlarge this image Iran announced Sunday that it will no longer limit its enrichment of uranium under the terms of the 2015 nuclear deal. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif is seen here in Tehran in September 2019. Atta Kenare/AFP via Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Atta Kenare/AFP via Getty Images Iran announced Sunday that it will no longer limit its enrichment of uranium under the terms of the 2015 nuclear deal. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif is seen here in Tehran in September 2019. Atta Kenare/AFP via Getty Images Updated at 7:49 p.m. ETIran will no longer honor its commitment to limit its enrichment of uranium, stepping away from a key component of the landmark nuclear deal it agreed to with six nations, including the United States, in 2015.The announcement was reported Sunday in Iranian state media. It marks the latest in the country's retreat from the limitations agreed to in the agreement, known as the JCPOA."The Islamic Republic of Iran, in the fifth step in reducing its commitments, discards the last key component of its operational limitations in the JCPOA, which is the 'limit on the number of centrifuges,' " the statement said, according to Iran's Mehr News Agency. "As such, the Islamic Republic of Iran's nuclear program no longer faces any operational restrictions, including enrichment capacity, percentage of enrichment, amount of enriched material, and research and development. From here on, Iran's nuclear program will be developed solely based on its technical needs," the statement said.Iran says it will continue to cooperate with international atomic monitors. Middle East In A Day Of Turmoil, Repercussions Of Soleimani Killing Grow More Widespread The nuclear deal was negotiated by the Obama administration and was signed by the U.S., China, France, Germany, Russia and the United Kingdom. But it has been falling apart since President Trump withdrew the U.S. from the agreement in May 2018 and imposed severe economic sanctions on Iran as part of a campaign of "maximum pressure." The latest announcement follows the U.S. drone strike that killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad on Friday.Earlier, Iran Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi told outlets including The Associated Press that Soleimani's death would be a factor in Iran moving further from the nuclear deal."In the world of politics, all developments are interconnected," he said.The announcement strikes a death knell to a deal once promised to curtail Iran's nuclear program, said David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, a nonprofit in Washington."It's finished. If there's no limitation on production, then there is no deal," Albright told the New York Times. Iran had been gradually backing away from portions of the deal, in 60-day increments. In July 2019, Iranian state media reported that Iran had begun enriching uranium above the 3.67% purity level maximum authorized in the agreement. The move sent a signal that Iran was losing patience with deal, more than a year after the United States withdrew and reimposed economic sanctions. "Iran is willing to go back into the deal if it sees the economic benefits it was promised," he said. Iran has also said it would continue to comply with nuclear inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations watchdog agency."This happens to be exactly 60 days after the last step. It's very consistent with what they've been doing with nuclear deal, but it's hard not to see it also as a message of the current situation," Brumfiel said. Mark Fitzpatrick, a nuclear expert on Iran, wrote on Twitter that the announcement was "ambiguous," with room for "both negotiation and escalation."European signatories have long expressed that they would like the nuclear deal to stay in place. In 2018, the U.K., France and Germany issued a joint statement condemning President Donald Trump's decision to withdraw. "Together, we emphasize our continuing commitment to the JCPOA. This agreement remains important for our shared security," the statement read. Those nations have not issued a statement about this recent development.

Former Brazilian President Luis Inácio Lula da Silva has appeared on stage before supporters outside Sao Paulo as he defies a court order to begin a 12-year jail term for corruption. He emerged from the union building where he is staying to attend a Mass for his late wife, Marisa Leticia.Dilma Rousseff, his impeached successor as president, joined him on the stage along with several priests.Two last-minute appeals to have his arrest warrant suspended have failed. Lula says the case against him was politically motivated.A large crowd of supporters are surrounding the union building in the suburb of Sao Bernardo do Campo, where Lula built his trade union and political career. The former metalworker and trade union activist is an iconic figure for the left in Latin America. He is the first left-wing leader to make it to the Brazilian presidency in nearly half a century.The authorities stress he is not being regarded as a fugitive, as everyone knows where he is.Lula says his conviction was designed to stop him from running for president in October's poll, which he had been favourite to win.In an order issued on Thursday, federal judge Sergio Moro said Lula had to present himself before 17:00 local time (20:00 GMT) on Friday at the federal police headquarters in the southern city of Curitiba.Minutes before the deadline, his lawyers lost a bid to keep him out of jail while he appealed against his conviction.By Katy Watson, BBC News, Sao Bernardo do Campo These past 24 hours have captivated Brazil. Helicopters have been circling the metalworkers' union building where Lula is with his supporters, broadcasting every move for viewers across the country. As Friday went on the crowds got bigger. The deadline came and went, and the thousands of Lula fans waiting outside carried on regardless - chanting their support for a man many say was the best president Brazil ever had. What happens now though is unclear - even for a country used to complicated political sagas, this is uncharted territory. Will he go willingly, or could he - and his supporters - put up a fight? There is concern that Lula's demise could yet turn violent.Lula served as president from 2003-2011. Despite a lead in opinion polls ahead of October's election, he remains a divisive figure.While he was in office, Brazil experienced its longest period of economic growth in three decades, allowing his administration to spend lavishly on social programmes.Tens of millions of people were lifted out of poverty thanks to the initiatives taken by his government and he left office after two consecutive terms (the maximum allowed in Brazil) with record popularity ratings.The charges against Lula came from an anti-corruption investigation known as Operation Car Wash, which has embroiled top politicians from several parties.He was convicted of receiving a renovated beachfront apartment worth some 3.7m reais ($1.1m, £790,000), as a bribe from engineering firm OAS. A quick guide to Brazil's scandals Key words and names in Brazil's corruption cases Read more about Lula The defence says Lula's ownership of the apartment has never been proven and that his conviction rests largely on the word of the former chairman of OAS, himself convicted of corruption.Supreme Court Justice Edson Fachin rejected Lula's appeal on Saturday, a day after his appeal to the Superior Court was declined.The two courts did not re-examine Lula's conviction, only whether legal procedures were followed correctly and his constitutional rights were observed. Ordering his surrender on Thursday, Judge Moro said the former president would have a separate cell with its own toilet in Curitiba.He would not be handcuffed if he came quietly, the judge promised.

closeVideoDHS warns that Iran's retaliation could come in the form of cyberattacksHemu Nigam, founder of Cyber Security Affairs, responds.Esmail Ghaani, the Iranian general taking over for Qassem Soleimani, told state television Monday that “actions will be taken” to revenge the death of his predecessor.Since Soleimani’s killing last week, Iran has issued a series of threats to the U.S.President Trump has responded by vowing that any Iranian strike would be perhaps met with a "disproportionate" response. This undated photo released by the official website of the office of the Iranian supreme leader, shows Maj. Gen. Esmail Ghaani. (Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader via AP) ROSE MCGOWAN, JOHN CUSACK RESPOND TO KILLING “God the almighty has promised to get his revenge, and God is the main avenger,” Ghaani said, according to the Associated Press. “Certainly actions will be taken.”Ghaani, 62, is the new leader of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' elite Quds Force. He had served as Soleimani’s deputy commander since 1997 – and the Treasury Department says he has used his power to direct funding toward terrorist groups like Hezbollah.“We promise to continue martyr Soleimani’s path with the same force and the only compensation for us would be to remove America from the region,” he told state radio before Soleimani’s funeral in Tehran, Reuters reported.Soleimani was killed by a U.S. airstrike early Friday in Baghdad. The killing sparked the biggest international crisis of Trump’s presidency. Soleimani’s death has been compared to other high-profile killings by the U.S., including Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who was believed to be the Islamic State mastermind and Usama bin Laden. Trump has insisted that Soleimani was planning attacks against American assets and has blamed him for the deaths of U.S. troops.Trump told reporters on Air Force One that there will be a “major retaliation” if Tehran strikes. Reuters reported that the president said the U.S. would target 52 Iranian sites “at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture.”"They're allowed to kill our people. They're allowed to torture and maim our people. They're allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people. And we're not allowed to touch their cultural sites? It doesn't work that way," Trump said.Terhan has taken new and aggressive actions. On Sunday, Iranian officials said they will no longer abide by its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.The United States pulled out of the deal in 2018, a decision that had been met with disappointment by allies at the U.N., where the deal was codified. The U.S. then reinstated waves of sanctions on the regime and has called for other countries to join the U.S as part of what Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called a “coalition of responsible nations.”Fox News’ Greg Norman,Talia Kaplan and the Associated Press contributed to this report

Imagine, if you will, a Middle East situation room with four of the region's key leaders who have been watching the recent confrontation between the US and Iran unfold. At the table is Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman; Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; caretaker Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi; and Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Iran's Lebanese ally, the militant Hezbollah movement. They've just been listening to what sounded like a "mission accomplished" speech from US President Donald Trump. Most of them, although perhaps not all, are breathing a sigh of relief. But they are scratching their heads about what this turbulent week means for their future. For Mohammed bin Salman, the speech signals an immediate danger averted. It's true the crown prince has previously been outspoken about what he's called the "evil" nature of Iran's leadership in recent years. But the Saudis have been urging de-escalation since Mr Trump ordered the assassination of top Iranian general Qasem Soleimani in a drone strike in Baghdad, afraid of becoming engulfed in a spiral of conflict between their ally, Washington, and their enemy, Tehran. And if Saudi Arabia had been caught in the crossfire, there was no guarantee the US would have struck back on its behalf. It didn't last year, when two oil installations were disabled in an attack blamed on Iran.That experience deepened doubt that the Saudis could rely on the man in the White House, who seemed to be telegraphing that he didn't want to get drawn into another Middle East war. So they began exploring diplomatic options to reduce tensions with Iran. But wait, is the equation changing? Is the Trump administration more prepared now to take military action in its ongoing confrontation with Iran? Or did Soleimani, that master military strategist, take a wrong step across the "red line" of targeting Americans? "You've got to understand elections," let's imagine Mr Netanyahu saying. The conversation turns to the recent attack on the US embassy in Baghdad during a protest by supporters of Iran-backed Iraqi militias. It goes something like this: "OK, no-one was hurt, there wasn't much damage, so Soleimani thought he'd get away with sending a strong message. But Mr Trump was probably thinking about the 1979 hostage crisis at the US embassy in Iran, which sunk [then President] Jimmy Carter."It's even more likely he was thinking about the 2012 attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, for which he's lambasted the Obama administration. He even tweeted that the incident was the 'Anti-Benghazi'. He didn't want to head into a presidential election year looking weak." US officials have variously justified the killing as self-defence to prevent an "imminent" attack on American interests, and a show of deterrence to Iran to signal that the president's previous restraint was not a sign of weakness. The Israeli prime minister is almost certainly hoping it's the latter. The Israelis were deeply concerned by the lack of US military retaliation last year for alleged Iranian attacks in the region. "It would be better if we weren't alone," the chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, General Aviv Kochavi, said darkly in end-of-the year remarks. "Suddenly we are no longer alone!" crowed Israeli defence correspondent Alex Fishman after the strike on Soleimani. "This is a strategic miracle!" The Israelis are also rid of their number one enemy. Israeli analysts say Qasem Soleimani was the author and executor of a plan to entrench an Iranian military presence - via proxies and otherwise - in countries around Israel, what they call a "ring of fire".But by and large, Israeli officials have been quiet about the drone strike, like the Saudis seemingly hoping to avoid getting caught in the crossfire. Mr Abdul Mahdi probably feels like he has been thrown into a fire during the past week. The US strike toppled him off the tightrope on which he's been trying to balance alliances with both the US and Iran. The Iraqi foreign ministry summoned ambassadors from both countries to chastise them for using Iraq as their battleground. He can be grateful that Iran gave President Trump a face-saving way to step off the path to war, by firing missiles at bases that caused no casualties. But he's still in the hot seat.The US is a demanding if inconsistent ally. Yet when cornered, Mr Abdul Mahdi found it safer to side with the pro-Iran forces in Iraq. The powerful Shia politicians and militias have been given a new shot of legitimacy after months of popular protests against their grip on the country. They've condemned America's violation of Iraqi sovereignty and demanded that its 5,200 troops there leave. It's not clear what's going to come of that. But the fallout from the assassination has created uncertainty about the staying power of a US military presence. Mr Abdul Mahdi has said there's no other way "otherwise we are speeding toward confrontation".That is the goal of Hassan Nasrallah. As one of the most senior figures left standing in Qasem Soleimani's regional network of proxy forces - the US air strike also killed the powerful Iraqi paramilitary leader, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis - he feels the weight of responsibility to continue the general's mission and to avenge his death. That should focus on hitting US military assets, he has said. So far he hasn't mentioned Israel - Hezbollah's usual target. Perhaps the Iranians don't think it's a good idea to reignite that front on top of everything else right now. Hassan Nasrallah is probably still trying to game out the new landscape - what does this mean for the so-called "axis of resistance" now that its prime architect is gone; and how will he step into the breach given the turmoil in Lebanon that's challenged Hezbollah's domestic political dominance? Let's imagine that, after this meeting breaks up, the Hezbollah chief plans to debrief Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who's been tied up with a rare visit by Russian President Vladimir Putin.Without Qasem Soleimani's crucial help, Mr Assad's regime would almost certainly not have survived Syria's civil war. The Iranian general's cruel counter-insurgency methods have left many Syrians rejoicing at his death. But how will the country take shape now, without the heaviness of his guiding hand? No doubt that's what Mr Putin, Iran's ally in Syria, is trying to gauge, along with the question that has consumed our situation room. Was this Mr Trump's parting shot before exiting the region, or is the US really back in the game? And have the Americans struck a mortal blow to Iran's regional reach, or unwittingly aided its long-term goal of expelling US troops from the region?

The Trump administration has maintained from the start that it ordered the assassination of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani in order to forestall an imminent threat to American lives.It’s pretty clear this is not true, that the administration instead simply made a calculated decision to escalate American pushback on Iran as part of a larger series of back-and-forth actions that began with the US pullout from the Iran nuclear deal.And though the deception involved has been fairly widely reported in the press, it hasn’t played a leading role in describing the cycle of tensions. That’s a mistake. By killing a foreign country’s key leader, the US put itself in the position of facing retaliation, as Iran did with rocket attacks on US bases in Iraq earlier this week. Those attacks, thankfully, didn’t kill any Americans. The Trump administration, thankfully, agreed not to retaliate further, for now.But it’s clear that members of the Trump administration are not in complete agreement on Iran policy with some influential conservatives who have long pushed for a regime change in Tehran. For an administration that appears to want a war with Iran but lacks the public backing — or for a faction that wants a war but lacks the full support of the president — this is one good way to make the dream happen: provoke Iranian responses that, in turn, provoke new American responses.A way to halt that cycle of escalation is to insist that people who want to take provocative steps give accurate information about what they are doing.There’s substantial evidence to doubt the administration’s imminent threat message.For example, the Pentagon’s original press release about the Soleimani operation didn’t mention it, and the immediate US reaction was to order all American civilians out of Iraq for fear of retaliation — clearly, nobody was made safer in a direct, immediate sense.Those actions are consistent with a scenario in which Soleimani was a dangerous person in general, and the decision to take him out was made by policymakers seeking long-term benefits at the short-term cost of elevated risk to American lives. That’s fine as far as it goes; sometimes in life you need short-term pain for long-term gain. But when someone asks you to suffer short-term pain, you normally ask them to explain what kind of gain they’re promising so you can consider whether it’s a fair deal.The administration, instead, said it was heading off imminent attacks even as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo conceded that he couldn’t say where or when these attacks were supposed to happen. Pompeo insists the ideas that Soleimani presented an "imminent" threat but the administration doesn't know when or where he planned to strike are "completely consistent thoughts." pic.twitter.com/7LDFR7zcVU— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 10, 2020 Similarly, senators briefed on the intelligence simply said there was no evidence presented of an imminent threat. REPORTER: Why are you saying that Soleimani presented an imminent threat against embassies here but not to senators during this week's briefing?POMPEO: We did.REPORTER: So senators are lying?POMPEO: I won't talk about the details. pic.twitter.com/91NoZLoJ1G— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 10, 2020 Then on Friday, John Hudson, Missy Ryan, and Josh Dawsey reported for the Washington Post that on the same day as the successful strike on Soleimani, there was a second, failed anti-Iranian operation. That operation, which the administration neglected to tell us about, targeted Abdul Reza Shahlai, described in the Post as “a financier and key commander of Iran’s elite Quds Force who has been active in Yemen.”This is another nail in the coffin of the idea that the Soleimani strike was about disrupting an imminent threat as opposed to a broader shift in policy. That the administration kept this quiet, even as it went on a multi-day victory tour about killing Soleimani, is further confirmation that it is not leveling with us about its actions.And that’s unacceptable.Trump is notorious for lying about all kinds of things. And the national security sector, accustomed as it is to dealing in classified matters and state secrets, seems in some ways to be instinctively unbothered by deception. But in reality, this kind of lying is especially dangerous.The public is highly motivated to protect American lives, as are members of Congress who are responsive to the public. They would be willing to go further in terms of killing foreigners to actually defend Americans in a specific way than they would to, say, advance Saudi Arabia’s regional ambitions with regard to Iran. And if Iran responds to American acts with new rounds of aggression that kill more Americans, the public is likely to support further escalation against Iran, and who knows where that will end.This dynamic is already clearly in place in the larger question of the Iran nuclear deal, the specific elements of which Trump keeps lying about. Iran’s aggressive behavior against the US is clearly linked to Trump’s decision to abrogate the deal. Trump keeps saying he did so because Iran was cheating, which, if it were true, would be a good reason to abrogate the deal. But it wasn’t true. Now, though, US-Iran relations have deteriorated to a point where Iran is refusing to abide by the limits in the agreement. If you lack the original context that the US pulled out of the deal despite Iranian compliance, Iran’s actions could be seen as justifying new anti-Iran moves from the US.By the same token, killing Iranian officials could be a highly effective way of provoking Iranian retaliations that inflame American opinion and drive support for aggressive acts that the public wouldn’t otherwise get behind. The way to break the cycle is to demand that the American government give a clear, convincing, and honest account of what it is doing and why — and to stop treating its refusal to do so as a secondary plot, when in fact it’s at the heart of the story.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross on Wednesday directed federal agencies to use any water that was needed to “protect life and property” threatened by wildfires in California, a statement from the Commerce Department said. In the statement, Ross said he had directed the National Marine Fisheries Service to facilitate access to the water needed to fight the fires. Reporting by Tim Ahmann; editing by Jonathan OatisOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

The blowback over the U.S. killing of a top Iranian general mounted Sunday as Iran announced it will no longer abide by the limits contained in the 2015 nuclear deal and Iraq's Parliament called for the expulsion of all American troops from Iraqi soil.The twin developments could bring Iran closer to building an atomic bomb and enable the Islamic State group to stage a comeback in Iraq, making the Middle East a far more dangerous and unstable place.Adding to the tensions, U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to demand billions of dollars in compensation from Iraq or impose “sanctions like they've never seen before” if it goes through with expelling U.S. troops.Iranian state television cited a statement by President Hassan Rouhani's administration saying the country would not observe the deal's restrictions on fuel enrichment, on the size of its enriched uranium stockpile and on its research and development activities."The Islamic Republic of Iran no longer faces any limitations in operations," a state TV broadcaster said. Virginia’s ‘amazing moment’: The view from ground zero of U.S. gun debateIn Iraq, meanwhile, lawmakers voted in favor of a resolution calling for an end to the foreign military presence in the country, including the estimated 5,200 U.S. troops stationed to help fight Islamic State extremists. The bill is subject to approval by the Iraqi government but has the backing of the outgoing prime minister.In yet another sign of rising tensions and threats of retaliation over the deadly airstrike, the U.S.-led military coalition in Iraq said it is putting the battle against ISIS on hold to focus on protecting its own troops and bases.The string of developments capped a day of mass mourning over Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, killed in a U.S. drone strike in Baghdad on Friday. Hundreds of thousands of people flooded the streets in the cities of Ahvaz and Mashhad to walk alongside the casket of Soleimani, who was the architect of Iran's proxy wars across the Mideast and was blamed for the deaths of hundreds of Americans in roadside bombings and other attacks.Trump responded to the Parliament's troop withdrawal vote with a monetary threat, saying the U.S. expected to be paid for its military investments in Iraq before leaving and threatening economic sanctions if the U.S. is not treated properly.“We have a very extraordinarily expensive air base that’s there. It cost billions of dollars to build. Long before my time. We’re not leaving unless they pay us back for it," he told reporters aboard Air Force One.“If they do ask us to leave, if we don’t do it in a very friendly basis, we will charge them sanctions like they’ve never seen before ever. It’ll make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame," he saidHe added: “We’re not leaving until they pay us back for it.”State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus earlier said the U.S. is awaiting clarification on its legal meaning but was “disappointed” by the move and strongly urged Iraq to reconsider.“We believe it is in the shared interests of the United States and Iraq to continue fighting ISIS together,” Ortagus said.The leaders of Germany, France and Britain issued a joint statement on Sunday calling on Iran to abide by the terms of the nuclear deal and refrain from conducting or supporting further “violent acts.”German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson specifically urged Iran to “withdraw all measures” not in line with the 2015 agreement that was intended to stop Tehran from pursuing its atomic weapons program.Iran insisted that it remains open to negotiations with European partners over its nuclear program. And it did not back off from earlier promises that it wouldn't seek a nuclear weapon.However, the announcement represents the clearest nuclear proliferation threat yet made by Iran since Trump unilaterally withdrew from the accord in 2018 and reimposed sanctions. It further raises regional tensions, as Iran's longtime foe Israel has promised never to allow Iran to produce an atomic bomb.Iran did not elaborate on what levels it would immediately reach in its program. Tehran has already broken some of the deal's limits as part of a step-by-step pressure campaign to get sanctions relief. It has increased its production, begun enriching uranium to 5% and restarted enrichment at an underground facility.While it does not possess uranium enriched to weapons-grade levels of 90%, any push forward narrows the estimated one-year “breakout time” needed for it to have enough material to build a nuclear weapon if it chose to do so.The International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations watchdog observing Iran's program, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. However, Iran said that its cooperation with the IAEA “will continue as before.”Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi earlier told journalists that Soleimani's killing would prompt Iranian officials to take a bigger step away from the nuclear deal.“In the world of politics, all developments are interconnected," Mousavi said.In Iraq, where the airstrike has been denounced as a violation of the country's sovereignty, Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi said that the government has two choices: End the presence of foreign troops or restrict their mission to training Iraqi forces. He called for the first option.The majority of about 180 legislators present in Parliament voted in favor of the troop-removal resolution. It was backed by most Shiite members of Parliament, who hold a majority of seats. Many Sunni and Kurdish legislators did not show up for the session, apparently because they oppose abolishing the deal.A U.S. pullout could not only undermine the fight against the Islamic State but could also enable Iran to increase its influence in Iraq, which like Iran is a majority-Shiite country.Soleimani's killing has escalated the crisis between Tehran and Washington after months of back-and-forth attacks and threats that have put the wider Middle East on edge. Iran has promised “harsh revenge" for the U.S. attack, while Trump has vowed on Twitter that the U.S. will strike back at 52 targets “VERY FAST AND VERY HARD. ”He doubled down on that threat Sunday, dismissing warnings that targeting cultural sites could be a war crime under international law.“They’re allowed to kill our people. They’re allowed to torture and maim our people. They’re allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people. And we’re not allowed to touch their cultural sites? It doesn’t work that way,” Trump told reporters.The U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia warned Americans “of the heightened risk of missile and drone attacks.”In Lebanon, the leader of the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah said Soleimani's killing made U.S. military bases, warships and service members across the region fair game for attacks. A former Iranian Revolutionary Guard leader suggested the Israeli city of Haifa and centers like Tel Aviv could be targeted should the U.S. attack Iran.Iranian state TV estimated that millions of mourners came out in Ahvaz and Mashhad to pay their respects to Soleimani.The casket moved slowly through streets choked with mourners wearing black, beating their chests and carrying posters with Soleimani's portrait. Demonstrators also carried red Shiite flags, which traditionally symbolize both the spilled blood of someone unjustly killed and a call for vengeance.The processions marked the first time Iran honored a single man with a multi-city ceremony. Not even Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who founded the Islamic Republic, received such a processional with his death in 1989. Soleimani on Monday will lie in state at Tehran's famed Musalla mosque as the revolutionary leader did before him.Soleimani's remains will go to Tehran and Qom on Monday for public mourning processions. He will be buried in his hometown of Kerman. Get the Monitor Stories you care about delivered to your inbox. ___Gambrell reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates and Karam reported from Beirut. Associated Press writers Aya Batrawy in Dubai, Qassim Abdul-Zahra in Baghdad, Sarah El Deeb in Beirut, Kelvin Chan in London and Robert Burns and Jonathan Lemire in Washington contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON—The Justice Department’s chief antitrust enforcement official has recused himself from the department’s investigation into whether Alphabet Inc.’s Google is unlawfully suppressing competition.The department said that as the probe progressed, Assistant Attorney General Makan Delrahim came to realize that he needed to recuse himself because of his past work in private practice.Google...

So the administration was justified in killing Soleimani—but that doesn’t mean it was a good idea.The fact is that much of Soleimani’s strategy had begun to falter, and in ways advantageous to U.S. interests. While Soleimani fought the ground war in Syria on Bashar al-Assad’s behalf, only Russian intervention prevented Assad’s fall. Russia will dictate the terms of Syria’s future, not Iran. Iraq’s Kurdish president had succeeded in preventing a pro-Iranian successor to pro-Iranian Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi. The protests in Iraq and Lebanon were about corruption and unrepresentative governance, which Iran was associated with because of its influence in those countries even before Iranian-affiliated militias responded violently. In the case of Iraq, they killed more than 500 protesters and wounded a staggering 19,000.Iran’s strategy of gaining depth beyond its borders succeeded because it was opaque. Soleimani’s desire for credit—pictures from regional battlefields, chairing the Iraqi-government meeting that decided whether Abadi would remain in power—removed the plausible deniability of Iranian orchestration, activating nationalistic antibodies in Iraq and Lebanon. It’s possible, even likely, that recent attacks by Iran on U.S. bases in Iraq were an overt attempt to distract from the validity of protests in Iraq. In that, Soleimani may have succeeded in death at what he was failing to achieve in life. Judging by the crowds at Soleimani’s funerals in Iran, his killing erased fissures between Iranians and their government, at least temporarily.Iraq, meanwhile, may well determine that it’s more secure without U.S. forces. Trump’s threat not to leave Iraq unless remunerated for the cost of bases built in that country are damaging to the relationship. Who wants that kind of friend?Losing the strategist of Iranian proxy warfare would be a cheap price to pay for Iran to achieve a rapprochement between the government and its people, and a U.S. exit from Iraq. That’s especially the case since the proxy strategy may have been reaching its limits under Soleimani, and he’d created a capable cadre of deputies.The better strategy would have been to leave Soleimani alive and in place, but to make him operationally ineffective by killing his deputies, as the U.S. has done with al-Qaeda deputies. Taking out a deputy draws less press, but sends a powerful message; the strategy places the onus of escalation on Iran and gives the U.S. the benefit of a public posture of restraint. It’s what the Eisenhower administration called “quiet military measures” during the 1958 Berlin crisis.But since Trump decided to go after the Quds Force commander, he should at least have coordinated with countries that host U.S. bases or that have deployed forces in furtherance of U.S. interests in the Middle East. He did not. When the U.S. leaves allies out of the loop, those allies become less likely to contribute to future coalitions, leading to more strain on U.S. forces. Trump also made it abundantly clear that he thinks only of America, first and last, when he tweeted that the U.S. would respond to any attacks on U.S. service personnel specifically. That is a poor way to repay the 78 other countries and four international organizations participating in the fight against the Islamic State for their dedication.

Ms. Rodriguez-Coss filed a complaint to the E.E.O.C., which notified the Justice Department. Mr. Carwile subsequently suspended permission for her to work from Connecticut. She sued the department in 2016, accusing him of gender discrimination and claiming that her permission to work in Connecticut was taken away in retaliation for her complaints.Seven men and women from the unit filed declarations in her support. Two male colleagues said that they had not been assigned so much travel. Bruce R. Hegyi, a former prosecutor, wrote that he left because of “plainly unethical and improper conduct.”He said in his filing that Mr. Carwile promoted “a sexualized environment,” took him to a restaurant with scantily clad waitresses and let a fellow prosecutor show naked photographs of a woman during a work gathering of both men and women.Other employees said in their declarations that Mr. Carwile held men-only meetings, sent emails only to men and assigned more desirable and high-profile cases to men. “Women only go to law school to find rich husbands,” he said, according to a declaration filed by one lawyer, Amanda Haines.Under Mr. Carwile, there was incentive “not to stir things up,” said Kevin Little, the lawyer representing Ms. Rodriguez-Coss.“My client and other of her colleagues feared retaliation,” he said.The Justice Department said in its response that Ms. Rodriguez-Coss’s claims “boil down to her admitted refusal to perform the essential requirements of her position,” which included taking on cases that required travel.Around the same time, Ms. Haines, who worked as a federal prosecutor for 18 years before joining the division, alerted Mr. Carwile to persistent work-quality issues, warnings that she later described in a court filing.

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — A new Iranian general has stepped out of the shadows to lead the country’s expeditionary Quds Force, becoming responsible for Tehran’s proxies across the Mideast as the Islamic Republic threatens the U.S. with “harsh revenge” for killing its previous head, Qassem Soleimani.The Quds Force is part of the 125,000-strong Revolutionary Guard, a paramilitary organization that answers only to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The Guard oversees Iran’s ballistic missile program, has its naval forces shadow the U.S. Navy in the Persian Gulf and includes an all-volunteer Basij force. Like his predecessor, a young Esmail Ghaani faced the carnage of Iran’s eight-year war with Iraq in the 1980s and later joined the newly founded Quds, or Jerusalem, Force. While much still remains unknown about Ghaani, 62, Western sanctions suggest he’s long been in a position of power in the organization. And likely one of his first duties will be to oversee whatever revenge Iran intends to seek for the U.S. airstrike early Friday that killed his longtime friend Soleimani. “We are children of war,” Ghaani once said of his relationship with Soleimani, according to Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency. “We are comrades on the battlefield and we have become friends in battle.”The Guard has seen its influence grow ever-stronger both militarily and politically in recent decades. Iran’s conventional military was decimated by the execution of its old officer class during the 1979 Islamic Revolution and later by sanctions.A key driver of that influence comes from the elite Quds Force, which works across the region with allied groups to offer an asymmetrical threat to counter the advanced weaponry wielded by the U.S. and its regional allies. Those partners include Iraqi militiamen, Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthi rebels. In announcing Ghaani as Soleimani’s replacement, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called the new leader “one of the most prominent commanders” in service to Iran. The Quds Force “will be unchanged from the time of his predecessor,” Khamenei said, according to IRNA. Soleimani long has been the face of the Quds Force. His fame surged after American officials began blaming him for deadly roadside bombs targeting U.S. troops in Iraq. Images of him, long a feature of hard-line Instagram accounts and mobile phone lockscreens, now plaster billboards calling for Iran to avenge his death. But while Soleimani’s exploits in Iraq and Syria launched a thousand analyses, Ghaani has remained much more in the shadows of the organization. He has only occasionally come up in the Western or even Iranian media. But his personal story broadly mirrors that of Soleimani.Born on Aug. 8, 1957 in the northeastern Iranian city of Mashhad, Ghaani grew up during the last decade of monarchy. He joined the Guard a year after the 1979 revolution. Like Soleimani, he first deployed to put down the Kurdish uprising in Iran that followed the shah’s downfall. Iraq then invaded Iran, launching an eight-year war that would see 1 million people killed. Many of the dead were lightly armed members of the Guard, some of whom were young boys killed in human-wave assaults on Iraqi positions. Volunteers “were seeing that all of them are being killed, but when we ordered them to go, would not hesitate,” Ghaani later recounted. “The commander is looking to his soldiers as his children, and in the soldier’s point of view, it seems that he received an order from God and he must to do that.”He survived the war to join the Quds Force shortly after its creation. He worked with Soleimani, as well as led counterintelligence efforts at the Guard. Western analysts believe while Soleimani focused on nations to Iran’s west, Ghaani’s remit was those to the east like Afghanistan and Pakistan. However, Iranian state media has not elaborated on his time in the Guard. In 2012, the U.S. Treasury sanctioned Ghaani, describing him as having authority over “financial disbursements” to proxies affiliated with the Quds Force. The sanctions particularly tied Ghaani to an intercepted shipment of weapons seized at a port in 2010 in Nigeria’s most-populous city, Lagos. Authorities broke into 13 shipping containers labeled as carrying “packages of glass wool and pallets of stone.” They instead found 107 mm Katyusha rockets, rifle rounds and other weapons. The Katyusha remains a favored weapon of Iranian proxy forces, including Iraqi militias and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. An Iranian and his Nigerian partner later received five-year prison sentences over the shipment, which appeared bound for Gambia, then under the rule of dictator Yahya Jammeh. Israeli officials had claimed the rockets would be shipped to militants in the Gaza Strip, while Nigerian authorities alleged that local politicians could use the arms in upcoming elections. Also in 2012, Ghaani drew criticism from the U.S. State Department after reportedly saying that “if the Islamic Republic was not present in Syria, the massacre of people would have happened on a much larger scale.” That comment came just after gunmen backing Syrian President Bashar Assad killed over 100 people in Houla in the country’s Homs province. “Over the weekend we had the deputy head of the Quds Force saying publicly that they were proud of the role that they had played in training and assisting the Syrian forces — and look what this has wrought,” then-State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said at the time. In January 2015, Ghaani indirectly said that Iran sends missiles and weapons to Palestinians to fight Israel. “The U.S. and Israel are too small to consider themselves in line with Iran’s military power,” Ghaani said at the time. “This power has now appeared alongside the oppressed people of Palestine and Gaza in the form of missiles and weapons.”Now, Ghaani is firmly in control of the Quds Force. While Iran’s leaders say they have a plan to avenge Soleimani’s death, no plan has been announced as the country prepares for funerals for the general starting Sunday. Whatever that plan for revenge is, Ghaani likely will be involved. “That Qaani survived at such high ranks in the (Guard), and remained Soleimani’s deputy for so long, says a lot about the trust both Khamenei and Soleimani had in him,” said Afshon Ostovar, the author of a book on the Guard. “I suspect he’ll have little difficulty filling Soleimani’s shoes when it comes to operations and strategy.”___Gambrell reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump holds a Make America Great Again rally in Olentangy Orange High School in Lewis Center, OH, U.S., August 4, 2018. REUTERS/Leah MillisBEDMINSTER, N.J. (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said on Tuesday his administration was in contact with officials in California over wildfires burning in the state and would look into what could be done to mitigate fire danger in the state. “My administration is in constant contact ... with the local authorities and the state authorities,” Trump said at a meeting with business leaders at one of his golf resorts in New Jersey. “We’re going to have to have some meetings about it because there are ... things you can do to mitigate what’s happening.” Reporting by James Oliphant; Writing by Mohammad Zargham; Editing by Sandra MalerOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

PARIS (Reuters) - French trade unions disrupted rail services, cut power generation and brought tens of thousands of demonstrators onto the streets on Thursday in a make-or-break push to force President Emmanuel Macron to abandon his planned pension reform. Workers on strike hold CGT labour union placards as they attend a demonstration in Paris during the 36th consecutive day of strike against French government's pensions reform plans in France, January 9, 2020. REUTERS/Charles PlatiauHere’s how the strike is affecting France: Power generation was down nearly 7 gigawatts (GW) on Thursday, according to the power company EDF and power grid RTE. Current available power generation capacity is at 75.2 GW. Output was reduced at several nuclear, gas-fired and coal-fired plants. EDF said 12% of its French workforce were on strike, compared to 36.5% on the first day of the protests on Dec. 5. Total said fewer than 5% of staff at its five refineries had walked out. Its Normandy, Donges, Grandpuits, La Mede and Feyzin refineries were operating normally, storing output as they await the end of picketing at their gates, the group said. Total said 54 of its 3,500 petrol stations had run dry of fuel on Thursday. The strikes have hit transport networks the hardest. State railway operator SNCF said a third of all railway workers were on strike, while the figure among train drivers was two thirds. Figures showed that the strike observance was lower than on Dec. 5. Only three in every five high-speed intercity TGV services were running, and four in every 10 commuter services in the Paris region, according to SNCF. The company urged travelers to find alternative transport. The Paris urban transport network reported severe delays on all its tram, bus and metro routes, according to state-owned operator RATP. None of the capital’s 16 metro lines was running normally. Eurostar said it was running a reduced timetable on its train services linking Paris and London. Air France said it was operating more than 90% of domestic flights and all long- and medium-haul operations. France’s civil aviation authority instructed airlines to reduce their flight schedule by 33% on Thursday to and from Toulouse airport in the south. The education ministry said 18.8% of primary school teachers in state schools were on strike, and 16.5% of secondary school teachers - lower again than on Dec. 5. The Eiffel Tower in Paris was closed on Thursday as its employees went on strike. The Palace of Versailles and the Louvre Museum, home to Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, remained open. Compiled by Matthieu Protard and Bate Felix; editing by Nick MacfieOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

BERN, Switzerland—Hours after a U.S. strike killed Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the Trump administration sent an urgent back channel message to Tehran: Don’t escalate.The encrypted fax was sent via the Swiss Embassy in Iran, one of the few means of direct, confidential communication between the two sides, U.S. officials said. In the...

Nevertheless, the United States does not appear to be in a position to capitalize on the aftermath of the Soleimani strike. Iranians are furious with their government, but their government continues to be willing to incarcerate and torture large numbers of them. And the theory of how disaffection within the Iranian public—over the downing of the airliner and so much more—leads to the overthrow of the current regime remains opaque at best.Meanwhile, signs of trouble abound in the surrounding region. After the Soleimani attack, Iraq may revoke America’s right to keep troops in their country, or severely restrict the use of those forces, in ways that prevent their effectiveness in either fighting the Islamic State or containing Iranian behavior.American allies around the Persian Gulf are fuming that the U.S. didn’t respond more forcefully to the attacks on Saudi Arabia and to neutral shipping, thereby raising questions about the value of our security guarantee. The administration’s preferred way to reassure these allies is to deploy military forces—14,000 more U.S. personnel have been sent to the Middle East since Trump was elected. But this approach is less meaningful, as military capability matters far less than the political willingness to use it on behalf of allies. Because the United States is seen as unreliable, what’s necessary to reassure these allies is getting more expensive.In another worrisome sign, the only countries willing to join a U.S.-led maritime force in the Gulf have been Albania, Australia, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom. One indicator of the concern about American policy is that more U.S. allies have committed forces to a competing French-led European Union coalition.The EU and the Trump administration are working at cross-purposes in other ways. The EU, which preferred Obama’s approach, went so far as to build a payment system that would allow global companies to circumvent dollar sanctions on Iran. That mechanism lies unused because businesses are unwilling to risk U.S. Treasury sanctions in order to do business with companies in Iran, whose economy is half the size of Maryland’s. Nevertheless, for the EU—led by Britain, France, and Germany, three of our closest friends—to create a mechanism to circumvent U.S. policy is truly startling.European countries have also raised the possibility of reimposing economic sanctions on Iran, as the United States did. But they are doing so to get Iran back into compliance with the Obama-led nuclear agreement, not to force Iran to make the broader concessions that the Trump administration wants.In short, the administration’s policies have created some potentially useful turmoil with respect to Iran. But they do not appear to be advancing the United States toward its objectives—and the U.S. is incurring significant reputational, military, and security costs in the process. Kori Schakeis a contributing writer atThe Atlanticand leads the foreign and defense policy program at the American Enterprise Institute.

MSNBC’s “First Look” host Ayman Mohyeldin on Saturday called Pence’s “deliberate, misleading” claim a “low point in American politics.” (See the video above.) The stretch to make a link between Soleimani and the attack is likely tied to standing congressional authorization from 2001 to use force in response to 9/11 as the Trump administration works to build legitimacy for its action, noted The Washington Post. In fact, Soleimani’s name isn’t mentioned once in the nearly 600-page 9/11 Commission report, which interviewed some 1,200 people and analyzed 2.5 million pages of documents. The report concluded that there was no evidence that “Iran or Hezbollah was aware of the planning for what later became the 9/11 attack.” Pence even had the number of hijackers in the attack wrong. He insisted to back his claim that Soleimani helped “10 of the 12” terrorists travel through Iran to Afghanistan and eventually launch an attack on the U.S. There were 19 hijackers; 15 of them were Saudis. (Pence’s spokeswoman later claimed that Pence meant that 10 of the 12 of the 19 who traveled through Afghanistan were assisted by Soleimani). Assisted in the clandestine travel to Afghanistan of 10 of the 12 terrorists who carried out the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States.— Mike Pence (@Mike_Pence) January 3, 2020 “Pretty much everything in that tweet is not correct,” CNN security analyst Peter Bergen said Saturday. He called Pence’s claim a “crazy conspiracy theory that for some reason the vice president is pushing.” If travel is the standard for 9/11 complicity, then the U.S.would have “somehow been assisting the hijackers because they all received visas to the United States,” and even overstayed them without detection, he added. “The 9/11 Commission completely dismissed” any Iranian complicity in the attacks, noted Bergen. “There were no Iranians involved” in the 9/11 attack, nor were there any Iranians in the al Qaeda terror network, which was responsible for the attack, Bergen noted. Iran is a majority Shiite Muslim state. Saudi Arabia, home of most of the 9/11 hijackers, is a Sunni Muslim monarchy that has long had a tense relationship with Iran. Al Qaeda is also Sunni. For a time Soleimani cooperated with the U.S. government against the Taliban (who are also Sunni) in Afghanistan. Pence’s claim “makes little sense from both a religious and political perspective,” Osamah Khalil, an associate professor of history at Syracuse University, told The Los Angeles Times. The Washington Post reports that at the time of the future hijackers’ travel through Iran, the nation adopted a policy of not stamping visas on al Qaeda members’ passports, in part to improve relations with the organization. But not only was Iran unaware of the 9/11 plans, the al Qaeda operatives themselves probably didn’t know specific details of their future operation, the 9/11 Commission report concluded. Mr. Vice President,First, there were 19 terrorists who carried out the 9/11 attacks: 15 Saudis, 2 Emiratis, 1 Egyptian, and 1 Lebanese. Second, there are lots of bad things Soleimani did, this is not one of them. https://t.co/7D8jnQ9LPI— Ali H. Soufan (@Ali_H_Soufan) January 3, 2020 The President of the United States is pinning Benghazi on Iran. Then to top it off, the Vice President of the United States is pinning 9/11 on Iran. This is not only reckless, it’s dangerous misinformation. pic.twitter.com/HiiMJiPcVa— Holly Dagres (@hdagres) January 4, 2020 Download Calling all HuffPost superfans! Sign up for membership to become a founding member and help shape HuffPost's next chapter Join HuffPost

PARIS (AP) — French union activists cut electricity to nearly 100,000 homes or offices. Eiffel Tower staff walked off the job. Even Paris opera workers joined in Tuesday’s nationwide protests across France, singing an aria of anger as workers rallied against the government’s plan to raise the retirement age to 64. Despite 13 days of crippling train and subway strikes, French President Emmanuel Macron and his government stayed firm. The prime minister declared his “total” determination to reshape a pension system that unions celebrate as a model for the rest of the world but that he calls unfair and destined to collapse into debt.Lighting red flares and marching beneath a blanket of multi-colored union flags, thousands of workers snaked through French cities from Brittany on the Atlantic to the Pyrenees in the south.Hospital workers in scrubs, Air France staff in uniforms, lawyers wearing long black robes — people from across the French workforce joined in the strikes and protests in higher numbers than the last cross-sector walkout last week. The retirement reform that has brought them together is just one of their many gripes against Macron, a business-friendly centrist they fear is dismantling France’s costly but oft-envied welfare state.Workers from the hard-left CGT union on Tuesday carried out what they called “targeted” blackouts on electricity networks around Lyon and Bordeaux to call attention to their grievances, and their power.Several European countries have raised the retirement age or cut pensions in recent years to keep up with lengthening life expectancy and slowing economic growth. Macron argues that France needs to do the same.Tourists canceled plans and Paris commuters took hours to get to work Tuesday, as train drivers kept up their strike against changes to a system that allows them and other workers under special pension regimes to retire as early as their 50s. “Monument Closed” read a sign on the glass wall circling the base of the Eiffel Tower, which was shut for the second time since the strike, one of the most protracted France has seen in years, started Dec. 5.“It’s very frustrating for us, unfortunately,” South African tourist Victor Hellberg said, gazing up at the 19th century landmark. “We had decided to be here for one day and that’s life I suppose.” Victor Garcia, visiting from Barcelona, said he’s used to protests at home but admitted not climbing the Eiffel Tower’s steps “is kind of a bummer.”Police in Paris barricaded the presidential Elysee Palace, bracing for violence by yellow vest activists or other radical demonstrators.Across the French capital, union leaders demanded that Macron drop the retirement reform. “They should open their eyes,” said Philippe Martinez, the head of the CGT union, said at the head of the Paris march.With riot police watching closely, protesters carrying humorous signs and colorful costumes marched past the historic Bastille plaza. On the steps of the opera house overlooking the monument, workers sang famous arias and played instruments to defend their special retirement plan. Bernard Buffet, a costume fitter, is 63 and retiring in April after 35 years at the Bastille Opera, but is protesting in solidarity with younger colleagues. “The government is stuck on the reform. They are very arrogant,” he said.Prime Minister Edouard Philippe confirmed new negotiations with unions starting Wednesday, but showed no sign of backing down.“Democratic opposition, union opposition is perfectly legitimate,” he told lawmakers. “But we clearly laid out our plans. And on this plan, the creation of a universal retirement system, my determination ... is total.”He also paid tribute to “the French who go to work despite difficulties.”In addition to transportation troubles, parents faced shuttered schools and students had key exams canceled Tuesday as teachers joined in the strike.Hospitals requisitioned workers to ensure key services Tuesday, as nurses, doctors and pharmacists went on strike to save a once-vaunted public hospital system that’s struggling after years of cost cuts.Tuesday’s protests upped the pressure on Macron, whose key architect of his pension overhaul had to resign Monday over alleged conflicts of interest.Unions fear people will have to work longer for lower pensions, and polls suggest at least of half of French people still support the strike. Unions at the SNCF rail authority want to keep the strike going through the Christmas holidays.While patience was running short among Paris Metro riders squeezing into scarce trains , the strike troubles weren’t enough to scare away some visitors to the City of Light. Spanish tourist Lydia Marcos, finding the Eiffel Tower unexpectedly closed, shrugged it off and said, “It’s like an excuse to come here another year.”___Nadine Achoui-Lesage, Nicolas Garriga and Jeffrey Schaeffer in Paris contributed.

CARACAS (Reuters) - One of the central mysteries of Venezuela’s slow-motion collapse: Why does the military continue to support Nicolas Maduro, the president who has led the once-prosperous South American country into poverty and chaos? The answer, according to people familiar with Venezuela’s military structure, starts with Maduro’s late predecessor, Hugo Chavez, the charismatic caudillo who cemented strongman socialist rule in the nation of about 30 million people. In a series of actions that began in 1999, the former lieutenant colonel and one-time coup leader began taming the military by bloating it, buying it off, politicizing it, intimidating the rank and file, and fragmenting the overall command. Once he took office in 2013, Maduro handed key segments of the country’s increasingly ravaged economy to the armed forces. Select military officers took control of the distribution of food and key raw materials. A National Guard general and military deputies now manage the all-important national oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela SA, or PDVSA [PDVSA.UL]. The two leaders also embedded intelligence agents, with the help of Cuba’s security services, within barracks, former officers say, instilling paranoia and defusing most dissent before it happens. Intelligence agents have arrested and jailed scores of perceived troublemakers, including several high-profile officers, even for minor infractions. The overhaul, former military officials say, created a jumbled and partisan chain of command. Top officers, grateful for perks and fearful of retribution, are often more preoccupied with pleasing Socialist Party chiefs than with national defense. Instead of drills and war games, some generals find themselves fielding calls to plant vegetables or clear garbage. Many lower-ranking soldiers, destitute and desperate like most of Venezuela’s working class, have deserted the military in recent years, joining at least 4 million other fellow emigres seeking a better life elsewhere. But few senior officers have heeded the opposition’s call for rebellion, leaving the armed forces top-heavy, unwieldy and still standing by Maduro. “The chain of command has been lost,” said Cliver Alcala, a former general who retired in 2013 and now supports the opposition from Colombia. “There is no way to know who is in charge of operations, who is in charge of administration and who is in charge of policy.” Some commanders, like Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino, a four-star general, are nearly as much a face of the administration as Maduro. Padrino is sanctioned by the United States for ensuring Maduro’s “hold on the military and the government while the Venezuelan people suffer,” according to the U.S. Treasury Department. Reuters was unable to reach Padrino or other senior officers mentioned in this article. Venezuela’s defense ministry didn’t reply to email or telephone inquiries. The country’s information ministry, responsible for government communications including those of the president, didn’t reply to Reuters either. Padrino is hardly alone. Consider the sheer number of officers awarded flag rank in Venezuela. The country’s roughly 150,000 Army, Navy, Air Force and National Guard troops are a fraction of the more than 1 million who make up the U.S. armed forces. Yet Venezuela, with as many as 2,000 admirals and generals, now boasts as much as twice the top brass as the U.S. military – more than 10 times as many flag officers as existed when Chavez became president. The estimate is according to calculations by former Venezuelan officers and the U.S. military. The result, government opponents say, is a bureaucratic and operational mess, even at the very top. Padrino, for instance, is both a general and defense minister. But he can’t officially mobilize troops without the consent of Remigio Ceballos, an admiral who also reports directly to Maduro and heads the Strategic Operations Command, an agency created by Chavez to oversee deployments. “You have a general in chief and an admiral in chief,” said Hebert Garcia, a retired general who once served under Maduro but now supports the opposition from Washington. “Which one are you supposed to obey?” The armed forces could still turn on Maduro, particularly if popular outrage boils over and makes military support for the president untenable. Still, calls by opposition leader Juan Guaido, who in late April unsuccessfully sought to rally the troops against Maduro, thus far remain unheeded. Guaido in May told reporters his efforts to convert troops are thwarted by the military’s fragmented structure and intimidation within its ranks. “What is preventing the break?” he asked. “The ability to speak openly, directly with each of the sectors. It has to do with the persecution inside the Socialist Party, inside the armed forces.” To better understand the pressures and policies keeping the troops in Maduro’s camp, Reuters interviewed dozens of current and former officers, soldiers, military scholars and people familiar with Venezuelan security. In their assessment, the military has evolved into a torpid bureaucracy with few leaders capable of engineering the type of mass mutiny that Maduro’s opponents long for. Venezuela’s “Bolivarian Revolution,” as Chavez dubbed his remaking of the country, itself has roots in military rebellion. Six years before he was elected president in 1998, Chavez led a failed coup against Carlos Andres Perez, a deeply unpopular president who Congress eventually forced from office. Once in power, Chavez immediately took steps to enlist the military in his vision for a paternalistic, state-led economy that would share abundant oil wealth with long-neglected segments of Venezuela’s population. With a new constitution in December 1999, Chavez stripped Congress of its oversight of promotion of senior officers. That gave the president ultimate authority to assign flag ranks and empower allied officers. Because many state and local governments at the time were still controlled by rivals, Chavez also saw the military as a tool that could show his administration hard at work. A new program, “Plan Bolivar 2000,” ordered troops to fill potholes, clean highways, refurbish schools and carry out other public works. The $114 million effort put sizeable sums at the discretion of commanders, giving officers a taste for a new kind of influence. “What Plan Bolivar 2000 taught officers was that real power doesn’t lie in commanding troops, but rather in controlling money,” said one retired general. The general, who served under Chavez and Maduro, spoke on condition of anonymity. Soon, some of the funds began to disappear. Miguel Morffe, a retired major, once worked as a captain in the remote northwestern region of La Guajira. He recalls receiving a request from superiors to provide materials for an unspecified schoolhouse. When Morffe told a lieutenant colonel that he didn’t understand where the supplies would be going, the superior told him: “I need those materials for something else.” “The school didn’t exist,” Morffe concluded. Military officials didn’t reply to questions about the alleged incident. By 2001, a raft of corruption allegations plagued the Plan Bolivar program. Chavez fired General Victor Cruz, the Army’s commander in charge of the program. Cruz denied wrongdoing and wasn’t charged with any crime at the time. Venezuelan authorities arrested him last year when press reports linked him to funds in an offshore account. A Caracas court in May ordered him to stand trial on charges of illicit enrichment. Reuters couldn’t reach Cruz for comment or identify his legal counsel. In 2002, Chavez said he would wind down Plan Bolivar 2000. Regional elections, he told Chilean sociologist and political activist Marta Harnecker in an interview, had put more allies in mayoral and state offices, where they could now work in unison with the national government. The military, he said, would return to its normal business. That April, however, a small group of top officers emboldened Chavez to further remake the armed forces. Encouraged by conservative leaders and wealthy elites unhappy with his leftist agenda, the officers staged a coup and briefly arrested Chavez. But the coup unraveled. Within two days, Chavez was back in power. FILE PHOTO: Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro speaks to soldiers while he attends a military exercise in Turiamo, Venezuela February 3, 2019. Miraflores Palace/Handout via REUTERS/File Photo He purged the top ranks. More importantly, he reined in several powerful offices, including the Defense Ministry. Henceforth, the ministry would manage military budgets and weapons procurement, but no longer control troops themselves. Chavez created the Strategic Operations Command, the agency that manages deployments. The move, former officers say, jumbled the chain of command. He also rethought overall strategy. Increasingly concerned that Venezuela’s oil wealth and leftist policies would make it a target for invasion, particularly by the United States, Chavez pushed for the military to integrate further with the government and society itself. “We’re transforming the armed forces for a war of resistance, for the anti-imperialist popular war, for the integral defense of the nation,” he said at a 2004 National Guard ceremony. Military leaders soon had to pledge their allegiance to Chavez and his Bolivarian project, not just the nation itself. Despite resistance from some commanders, the ruling party slogan, “Fatherland, Socialism or Death,” began echoing through barracks and across parade grounds. As of 2005, another factor helped Chavez tighten his hold on power. Oil prices, years before fracking would boost global supply, soared along with the notion the planet’s reserves were dwindling. For most of the rest of his time in power, the windfall would enable Chavez to accelerate spending and ensure popular support. Oil money also helped him strengthen relationships with like-minded countries, especially those seeking to counterbalance the United States. Venezuela purchased billions of dollars in arms and equipment from Russia and China. It secured medical and educational support through doctors, teachers and other advisors arriving from Cuba, the closest ally of all. Cubans came with military know-how, too. A “cooperation agreement” forged between Chavez and Fidel Castro years earlier had by now blossomed into an alliance on security matters, according to two former officers. Around 2008, Venezuelan officers say they began noticing Cuban officials working within various parts of the armed forces. General Antonio Rivero, who the previous five years had managed Venezuela’s civil protection authority, says he returned to military activities that year to find Cuban advisors leading training of soldiers and suggesting operational and administrative changes. The Cubans, he told Reuters, advised Chavez to rework the ranks, once built around strategic centers, into more of a territorial system, spreading the military’s presence further around the country. Rivero was stunned at one training session on military engineering. A Cuban colonel leading the session told attendees the meeting and its contents should be considered a state secret. “What’s happening here?” Rivero said he asked himself. “How is a foreign military force going to possess a state secret?” Rivero left Venezuela for the United States in 2014. Cuban officials didn’t respond to requests from Reuters for comment. The island’s influence soon would become apparent in day-to-day operations. In Cuba, the military is involved in everything from public works to telecommunications to tourism. In Venezuela, too, ruling party officials increasingly began ordering officers to take part in activities that had little to do with military preparedness. Soldiers increasingly became cheap labor for governors and mayors. In 2010, a former general working in the Andes, a western region on the Colombian border, was overseeing a complex mobilization of 5,000 troops for a month of combat training. The general spoke on condition that he not be named. Another general, from a nearby command, called and asked him to halt the exercises. The state governor, the other officer told the general, wanted to reroute the troops - to install energy-efficient light bulbs in homes. When the general refused, Army Commander Euclides Campos issued a formal order to scrap the training. “This would sound shocking to any military professional, but it’s exactly how the Venezuelan armed forces work,” the former general said. Reuters was unable to reach Campos for comment. Chavez, stricken by cancer, died in 2013. Maduro, his vice president and hand-picked replacement as the Socialist party candidate for president, won the election to succeed him. The new president continued naming new flag officers and appointed even more military officials to helm agencies. By 2017, active and former military figures had held as many as half of Maduro’s 32 cabinet posts, according to Citizen Control, a Venezuelan non-profit that studies the armed forces. In 2014, just as a collapse in oil prices torpedoed Venezuela’s economy, Maduro further fragmented the military structure. Following the advice of the Cubans, former military officers say, Maduro created new command centers nationwide. He appointed senior officers to run new commands in each of the 23 states and Caracas, the capital, as well as eight regional commands above those. His public speeches are now increasingly peppered with terms like ZODI and REDI, acronyms for the new commands. Near military facilities, new brass abounded. “Before, seeing a general was like seeing a bishop or an archbishop, he was an important figure,” recalls Morffe, the retired major. “Not long ago, I saw one in an airport. He walked past a group of soldiers and they didn’t even salute.” Flag officers now oversee some areas that were once slivers of larger commands, in areas so remote that they have few human inhabitants. The largest landmass in the Western Maritime and Insular Command, overseen by an admiral, is a rocky archipelago with little vegetation and no permanent residents. The officer, Vice Admiral Rodolfo Sanchez, didn’t respond to a Reuters phone call to his office. The lopsided, partisan structure has led to mission creep, former officers say. In the Andes command, which oversees three states, six generals once oversaw roughly 13,000 troops, according to officers familiar with the region. Today, at least 20 generals are now managing ranks that have dwindled to as few as 3,000 soldiers, according to officers familiar with the region. Last August, three of the generals, including the regional commander, met with municipal officials in the state of Tachira, a hotbed of protests against Maduro in recent years. Days earlier, the government had said explosives used in a drone attack on a military parade in Caracas had been smuggled through Tachira from Colombia. “All of us together can solve this problem,” Major General Manuel Bernal told the assembled officers and a group of onlookers, including a Reuters reporter. Bernal wasn’t talking about the drones, however. Or even national security, once a major issue in the Andean region, where Colombia’s guerrilla war long posed a threat. Instead, the generals had gathered to talk about trash overflowing at a landfill. They deployed soldiers to clear garbage and put out a fire there. A communications official for the Andes command didn’t respond to a Reuters request to speak with Bernal about the episode. Military bosses show few signs of shying away from such directives. In the weeks since Guaido’s failed call to arms, senior officers have reiterated their commitment to Maduro. Slideshow (13 Images)“We will continue fulfilling our constitutional duties, fulfilling duties under your command,” Defense Minister Padrino told Maduro alongside troops gathered in Caracas in early May. “Loyal always!” Padrino shouted. The troops responded in unison: “Traitors never!” Additional reporting by Mircely Guanipa in Paraguana, Anggy Polanco in San Cristobal, Vivian Sequera in Caracas, and Phil Stewart in Washington. Editing by Paulo Prada.Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.