HOLLAND: Freezing social rents for 500,000 private landlord tenants "practically impossible"

 

Tuesday, 13 May 2025 - 09:58

https://nltimes.nl/2025/05/13/freezing-social-rents-500000-private-landlord-tenants-practically-impossible

 

Freezing social rents for 500,000 private landlord tenants "practically impossible"

 

It is “practically impossible” to freeze the rents of the around 500,000 social housing tenants who rent from private landlords, people involved told NOS. Compensating the landlords involved will be very complicated and the government doesn’t have the money to do so, the broadcaster’s sources said.

 

Freezing social rents was one of PVV leader Geert Wilders’ most fervent demands in the massive 25-hour negotiation session for the spring budget update. The government and coalition agreed that social housing rents will not increase in the coming two years. Housing corporations will receive over 1 billion euros in compensation for this. Housing corporations own around 2 million social housing units.

 

But the negotiators seemingly forgot about the around 500,000 other social housing tenants renting from private landlords. No compensation was agreed for these landlords, and Housing Minister Mona Keijzer set aside no money for this. She could take some of the money from the housing corporations’ compensation, but they are already threatening to go to court because they find the amount too low. The housing corporations warn that they’ll be able to build far fewer homes due to the rent freeze.

 

And even if the Minister finds money to compensate the private landlords, doing so will be “practically impossible,” NOS’s sources said. Each landlord would have to be compensated individually, and there is no overview or central register of who these landlords are. The operation of finding them, figuring out how much to compensate them, and paying out the money will likely cost many times more than the compensation itself, the sources said.

 

Vastgoed Belang, the organization that represents private landlords, informed Keijzer that they would rather increase rents than receive compensation. “Compensation is complex and never complete,” chairman Niek Verra told NOS. “This also allows landlords to invest less in making homes more sustainable.”

 

But if private social housing landlords increase their rents while housing corporations don’t, a distinction is made between social housing tenants, and “that is also inexplicable,” the broadcaster’s sources said. Minister Keijzer is looking for a solution nd promised to present a proposal within two weeks.

Apple Used China to Make a Profit. What China Got in Return Is Scarier.

 

Apple Used China to Make a Profit. What China Got in Return Is Scarier.

 

In “Apple in China,” Patrick McGee argues that by training an army of manufacturers in a “ruthless authoritarian state,” the company has created an existential vulnerability for the entire world.

 

Hannah Beech

By Hannah Beech

Published May 15, 2025

Updated May 16, 2025, 2:54 a.m. ET

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/15/books/review/apple-in-china-patrick-mcgee.html

 

APPLE IN CHINA: The Capture of the World’s Greatest Company, by Patrick McGee

 

A little more than a decade ago, foreign journalists living in Beijing, including myself, met for a long chat with a top Chinese diplomat. Those were different days, when high-ranking Chinese officials were still meeting with members of the Western press corps. The diplomat whom we met was charming, funny, fluent in English. She also had the latest iPhone in front of her on the table.

 

I noticed the Apple gadget because at the time, Chinese state news media were unleashing invectives on the Cupertino, Calif.-based company for supposedly cheating Chinese consumers. (It wasn’t true.) There were rumors circulating that Chinese government officials were being told not to flaunt American status symbols. The diplomat’s accouterment proved that wrong.

 

At the time, one could make the argument that China’s economic modernization was being accompanied by a parallel, if somewhat more laggardly, political reform. But the advent in 2012 of Xi Jinping, the Chinese leader who has consolidated power and re-established the primacy of the Chinese Communist Party, has shattered those hopes. And, as Patrick McGee makes devastatingly clear in his smart and comprehensive “Apple in China,” the American company’s decision under Tim Cook, the current C.E.O., to manufacture about 90 percent of its products in China has created an existential vulnerability not just for Apple, but for the United States — nurturing the conditions for Chinese technology to outpace American innovation.

 

McGee, who was the lead Apple reporter for The Financial Times and previously covered Asian markets from Hong Kong, takes what we instinctively know — “how Apple used China as a base from which to become the world’s most valuable company, and in doing so, bound its future inextricably to a ruthless authoritarian state” — and comes up with a startling conclusion, backed by meticulous reporting: “that China wouldn’t be China today without Apple.”

 

Apple says that it has trained more than 28 million workers in China since 2008, which McGee notes is larger than the entire labor force of California. The company’s annual investment in China — not even counting the value of hardware, “which would more than double the figure,” McGee writes — exceeds the total amount the Biden administration dedicated for a “once-in-a-generation” initiative to boost American computer chip production.

 

“This rapid consolidation reflects a transfer of technology and know-how so consequential,” McGee writes, “as to constitute a geopolitical event, like the fall of the Berlin Wall.”

 

McGee has a journalist’s knack for developing scenes with a few curated details, and he organizes his narrative chronologically, starting with Apple’s origins as a renegade upstart under Steve Jobs in the 1970s and ’80s. After Jobs’s firing and rehiring comes a corporate mind shift in which a vertically integrated firm falls for the allure of contract manufacturing, sending its engineers abroad to train low-paid workers in how to churn out ever more complicated electronics.

 

We only really get to Apple in China about 90 pages into the book, and that China, in the mid- to late 1990s, was mainly attractive because of what one China scholar called “low wages, low welfare and low human rights.” McGee relates how one Apple engineer, visiting suppliers in the southern Chinese manufacturing center of Shenzhen, was horrified that there were no elevators in the “slapdash” facility, and that the stairs were built with troubling irregularity: with, say, 12 steps (of varying heights) between the first and second floors, then 18 to the next, then 16, then 24.

 

But China at the turn of the millennium was in the process of joining the World Trade Organization, and its leaders were banking on an export-led economy that would learn from foreign investors. Starting in the 2000s the Taiwanese mega-supplier Foxconn constructed entire settlements for Chinese workers building Apple electronics. First up on the new assembly lines were iMacs that were produced by what became known as “China speed.”

 

Less than 15 years after Chinese workers began making Apple products en masse, Chinese consumers were buying them en masse, too. Covering China at the time, I chafed at the popular narrative that reduced Apple’s presence in China to a tale of downtrodden workers at Foxconn and other suppliers. Yes, there were nets outside factory dorms to prevent suicides; and wages remained low. Even Apple admitted to alarming labor abuses in its Chinese supply chain.

 

But that was only half the story. The iPhone in China signified success, an individualistic, American-accented flavor that seemed to delight both veteran diplomats and Foxconn workers I got to know in southwest China. Those of us who had lived in China for years could see that life was getting freer and richer for most Chinese. By the mid-2010s, it was the United States that seemed behind in terms of integrating apps into daily life. In China, at least in the big cities, we were already living in the tech future.

 

Yet there were episodes of unease. After Xi came to power, state media campaigns targeted Apple’s Western “arrogance.” Apple acquiesced to Beijing’s demands that it remove the New York Times app from its online store in China and keep Chinese user data in China rather than the United States, prompting worries about government intrusion. As Xi cracked down on labor rights activism, more independent audits of the Apple supply chain ceased.

 

In 2015, Apple was the largest corporate investor in China, to the tune of about $55 billion a year, according to internal documents McGee obtained for this book. (Cook himself told the Chinese media that the company had created nearly five million jobs there: “I’m not sure there are too many companies, domestic or foreign, who can say that.”) At the same time, Xi laid out “Made in China 2025,” his blueprint for achieving technological self-sufficiency in the next decade, dependent on Apple being what McGee calls “a mass enabler of ‘Indigenous innovation.’”

 

“As Apple taught the supply chain how to perfect multi-touch glass and make the thousand components within the iPhone,” he writes, “Apple’s suppliers took what they knew and offered it to homegrown companies led by Huawei, Xiaomi, Vivo and Oppo.” Today, some of these premium products come with specs that are increasingly ahead of American design, and have outsold Apple in many major markets.

 

Sometimes, McGee is too comprehensive. He draws interesting portraits of characters who disappear after a few paragraphs. We do not need to know the full name of the law firm that Apple hired in preparation for a possible bankruptcy in the mid-1990s or even the minutiae of pre-China personnel wrangles, especially when centuries of Chinese history are compressed to less than a page. There are a few Chinese misspellings and miscues — the surname Wang is not, in fact, pronounced quite as “Wong.” And it would have been nice to have gotten more perspectives of Chinese people.

 

But these are quibbles with an otherwise persuasive exposé of the trillion-dollar company’s uncomfortably close relationship with the global power. China may have enabled Apple to become one of the most profitable companies in the world, but the exploitation goes both ways: This is not just a story of China making Apple, but of Apple making China. Given Xi’s authoritarian hold on power, what began as a feat of manufacturing has troubling consequences for the entire world.

 

APPLE IN CHINA: The Capture of the World’s Greatest Company | By Patrick McGee | Scribner | 437 pp. | $32

 

Hannah Beech is a Times reporter based in Bangkok who has been covering Asia for more than 25 years. She focuses on in-depth and investigative stories.

Opinion / Romania Is About to Experience Disaster

 Opinion

Guest Essay

 Romania Is About to Experience Disaster

 

May 16, 2025

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/16/opinion/romania-election-simion-dan.html

By Vladimir Bortun

Dr. Bortun is a Romanian political scientist and a lecturer at Oxford University.

 

We knew it was coming.

 

Ahead of the first round of Romania’s presidential elections on May 4, it was obvious what would happen. This was, after all, practically a rerun of an election held last November that was won by a far-right candidate, Calin Georgescu. The Constitutional Court, citing Russian interference, canceled those elections and later barred Mr. Georgescu from running. But that merely cut off a head of the Hydra. The next far-right candidate in line, George Simion, stepped up — and won the first round even more comprehensively than his predecessor, taking 41 percent of the vote.

 

Worse is perhaps to come. In Sunday’s runoff, Romanians will vote for either Mr. Simion or Nicusor Dan, an independent candidate who scored 21 percent of the first-round vote. This race is tighter, but barring a surge in turnout, Mr. Simion looks likely to become the country’s next president. That would give him, a self-described Trumpist, power to appoint a prime minister, direct foreign policy and command the armed forces. For Romania, a country of nearly 20 million people, it would be a very bad turn of events.

 

It would also be entirely foreseeable. Far from sudden, the far-right’s rise in Romania is rooted in decades of economic failure: Chronic underdevelopment, widespread insecurity and mass emigration have generated deep anti-establishment anger, on which Mr. Simion and his Alliance for the Union of Romanians party feed. Even now, traditional mainstream parties have little to say about the broken economic model that has brought us to this point. That dereliction has spurred the country’s disastrous slide to the far right.

 

The costs of our economic model are clear to see. Though Romania posts respectable growth numbers, it consistently performs among the worst in the European Union on many key social indicators, with 28 percent of the population at risk of poverty and a further 17 percent living in severe material deprivation. Despite successive increases in the minimum wage over the past decade, the median wage is barely over five euros an hour, about one-third the European Union average.

 

These are the fruits of over three decades of free-market orthodoxy, which has seen mass privatizations of industry, decreased security in the labor market and successive cuts to public services — all underpinned by strikingly low taxes, which stand at 16 percent for corporations and 10 percent on all personal income. This low-tax nirvana, which most American conservatives wouldn’t even dream of, comes hand in hand with the European Union’s largest budget deficit and a growing debt pile.

 

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Yet most politicians seem strangely unconcerned with this state of affairs. Mr. Dan is no exception. The mayor of Bucharest since 2020, he has built his profile around fighting corruption and nefarious real estate interests. But he emphasizes the need for public spending cuts and has little to say, if anything, on socioeconomic justice. Recently, he stated that he is on the political right because it “prioritizes work instead of laziness.” This is in a country with the second-highest rate of in-work poverty and one of the lowest shares of G.D.P. spent on welfare in the European Union.

 

The one parliamentary force on the center-left, the Social Democratic Party, is little better. The party did not even stand a candidate in the election, instead choosing to endorse Crin Antonescu, an old figure of the mainstream right who failed to make the runoff. What’s more, in a coalition government since the end of last year with the right-wing Liberal Party, the party announced an extensive austerity plan that would disproportionately hit students and pensioners. Though no longer in office — the coalition collapsed the day after the first round — the party showed where its priorities lie.

 

Given this political landscape, it was only a matter of time until anti-establishment populists took electoral advantage — and how. Of the country’s 47 electoral districts, 36 went Mr. Simion’s way, proof of his widespread appeal, and support was strongest among groups most affected by the country’s lack of opportunities. Rural areas backed him and more than 60 percent of the diaspora, which is one of the largest in Europe, voted for him. This is what the focus on the role of Russian interference and unregulated social media misses. Behind the far-right’s rise, as elsewhere, is economic insecurity.

 

That’s not to say that far-right populists offer a truly different economic model. On the contrary, Mr. Simion has called for cutting welfare benefits and downsizing the public sector. He and his party have focused most of their economic agenda on catering to the domestic business class, especially the construction and hospitality sectors, while promising tax breaks and subsidies for farmers and small and medium enterprises. For poor Romanians, it’s just more promises of tax cuts. Even Mr. Simion’s flagship policy aimed at ordinary people — to build one million affordable homes — was candidly admitted to be mere political marketing.

 

For all its supposed iconoclasm, this is hardly the recipe for economic nationalism. The best guide to what lies in store, perhaps, is Viktor Orban’s Hungary. While Mr. Orban oversaw the strengthening of the domestic business class (his son-in-law included) in ring-fenced sectors like real estate, he also reinforced foreign corporate interests in other areas, particularly manufacturing. Similarly, while Mr. Simion aims to restore majority state control over natural resources, the pre-eminence of multinationals in other sectors — which often sees them pay little to no tax — is more than likely to persist.

 

This is the unspoken truth at the heart of Sunday’s contest. The two candidates may have different geopolitical affinities, with Mr. Simion more aligned with the Trump administration and Mr. Dan with the European Union — putting them on different sides of the question of military aid to Ukraine. But both share an allegiance to the business class, just different parts of it, and have no plans to alter the country’s fundamental economic framework. This is common practice for the far right. Despite capitalizing on popular anger against established elites, it is itself an elite project for state power. In the process, the ordinary people it claims to represent are left behind.

 

The kind of party that could represent them is still missing in Romania, despite overwhelming support for an agenda of state-led job creation, better-funded public services, poverty reduction measures and public housing programs. Such a political project, one that can offer a genuine alternative to the status quo, is more urgently needed in Romania than ever.

 

Vladimir Bortun is a lecturer in politics at Oxford University and the author of “Crisis, Austerity and Transnational Party Cooperation in Southern Europe: The Radical Left’s Lost Decade.”

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Reporter demands Starmer APOLOGISE to Albanians during press conference

Starmer digs himself into a hole in Tirana while Tories froth about a flag

 

Starmer digs himself into a hole in Tirana while Tories froth about a flag

John Crace

Keir was supposed to be here for a deal on an asylum returns hub but his towering host had a surprise in store

 

Thu 15 May 2025 17.51 BST

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/may/15/keir-starmer-tirana-tories-flag

 

During Wednesday’s prime minister’s questions, Keir Starmer said the Conservative party was heading for brain-dead oblivion. The very next day, the Tories screamed: “Hold my beer. You ain’t seen nothing yet.” They seem to look on the prime minister’s description as a challenge. One to which they are determined to rise.

 

Forget Ukraine and Gaza. Forget the growth and immigration figures. Come Thursday morning, the most pressing question on the minds of the shadow paymaster general, Richard Holden, and other Conservative MPs was their outrage that Downing Street would not be flying the Middlesex flag on Friday to mark Middlesex Day.

 

Never mind that Middlesex barely exists any more. Never mind that almost no one but a few supporters of Middlesex county cricket club could even recognise the Middlesex flag. Never mind that only about two people can even see the Downing Street flagpole, let alone care what flag it is flying. This was a major snub to the Middlesex regiment and its part in the Battle of Albuera during the peninsula war. A date that was on everyone’s mind. Clearly.

 

“Keir Starmer would rather hoist the white flag of surrender,” thundered the increasingly unhinged Holden. Not a day goes by when he does not thank his stars for the defeat of Napoleon. Yet another foreigner trying to subjugate the plucky Brits. Just like the EU. Give me strength. This was a stunt so ludicrous it was beneath even Reform. The Tories sometimes wonder why they are no longer taken seriously by most of the country. They need wonder no more.

 

While the Conservatives were having their very public psychiatric breakdown, Starmer was otherwise engaged on the latest round of his “island of strangers” immigration tour. If it’s Thursday, it must be Tirana, where he was off to meet the 6ft 7in Albanian prime minister, Edi Rama, for a bilateral meeting and a press conference. The difference in height between the two men was marked. Keir looked as if he was standing in a hole and was struggling to see over the lectern.

 

This was the first time a UK prime minister had visited Albania and Rama was keen to express his gratitude. It was an honour, he said, and he was looking forward to ever closer ties between the two countries. Though maybe not quite as close as Keir would have liked, because Edi was keen to point out that Albania was not open to being used as a returns processing hub for other countries’ unwanted asylum seekers and illegal immigrants.

 

The relationship with Italy was a one-off, Rama said. One forged out of a special relationship between the two countries. A geographical and emotional intensity. He was too polite to mention that the deal had also stalled in the Italian courts. No point in upsetting anyone. So his ties with Giorgia Meloni were like a marriage. And he wasn’t looking for any one-night stands with the Brits. Or anyone else, for that matter.

 

This seemed to come as a bit of a surprise to Starmer. The simultaneous translation feed faded in and out and he tapped his earpiece to make sure he had heard correctly. Unfortunately for him, he had. Most members of the media had been led to believe that one of the objectives of this first trip to Albania was to secure the outlines of a deal for a returns hub. This was all part of the government’s immigration express, after all. Now everything was rather more confused. Surely the UK prime minister hadn’t come to Albania a day ahead of the European Political Community summit just for a schmooze and to express solidarity over Ukraine?

 

It rather looked as though Keir had done just that. Sounding rather more keen about returns hubs than he ever had in opposition – he’s desperate to offload immigrants somewhere – Starmer went into waffle mode. He was talking to other countries about returns hubs. Just not Albania. That had never been on his list. Oh no. Though he couldn’t say exactly which countries he had in mind. But fingers crossed and all that.

 

Rama looked as if he was beginning to enjoy himself. This was all going a lot better than expected. Now he turned up the heat. Yes, there had been a high point of 12,000 Albanians arriving illegally in the UK via small boats in 2022. But thanks to cooperation between the two countries that figure had been cut by 95%. So there were hardly any Albanians making the trip these days. So there was no problem. Only, there was for Keir. He hadn’t come to Tirana to praise the efforts of the previous government in cutting illegal migration. But that was rather what he was forced to do. Though not in quite so many words. It had all been a lucky coincidence.

 

The presser ended with an Albanian journalist demanding an apology from the Brits for our politicians’ negative portrayal of Albanians as all criminals. Edi came to the rescue. It had only been some – viz Suella Braverman – he observed. And she and the Tories had got their comeuppance at the ballot box last July. So no hard feelings. Keir smiled gratefully.

 

Edi continued. Surely now was the time to celebrate the 100,000 Albanians who had legally settled in the UK and who paid their taxes and had integrated into society. Keir smiled less gratefully. A successful immigration story was not on the government’s news grid. He was in Albania to talk about Britain’s squalid history of immigration in the last 14 years. The incalculable damage that foreigners had done to the country. Having to be nice wasn’t part of the script. He headed off to lunch. You win some, you lose some. Perhaps no one had been watching.

 

Having a rather better day was Rachel Reeves. It’s been one long run of bad news for the chancellor since last July, but on Thursday she learned that growth had risen unexpectedly by 0.7% in the first quarter of the year. So she was out and about, telling anyone who would listen. Fastest-growing economy in the G7. Everything was fine. Top of the world, Ma. One in the eye for the Tories and Reform for talking the country down. Rachel should enjoy it while it lasts. With the imposition of tariffs, the next quarter is unlikely to look so rosy.

Starmer reveals plans to send refused asylum seekers to overseas ‘return hubs’

 

Starmer reveals plans to send refused asylum seekers to overseas ‘return hubs’

 

PM proposes use of third countries during visit to Albania, which rules out role in any such UK scheme

 

Aletha Adu, Rajeev Syal and Peter Walker

Thu 15 May 2025 18.21 BST

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/may/15/starmer-trip-labelled-an-embarassment-as-albania-rules-out-asylum-seeker-deal

 

Plans to send refused asylum seekers to “return hubs” in third countries have been announced by Keir Starmer on a trip to Albania during which the Balkan country ruled out participating in the scheme.

 

The prime minister flew to Tirana to confirm the UK was seeking to send people whose asylum claims had been turned down to foreign detention centres once they had exhausted all avenues of appeal.

 

The proposals risked being overshadowed by remarks from the Albanian prime minister, Edi Rama, who used a joint press conference with Starmer to highlight his country’s refusal to engage in such negotiations while it was trying to set up a similar scheme with Italy.

 

On Wednesday night, the Times reported that Albania was one of the UK’s preferred options for a hub.

 

The Conservatives claimed Starmer’s trip and policy announcement had not gone to plan and had been exposed by Rama’s remarks.

 

Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, said: “This trip is an embarrassment. Starmer jetted off and now the Albanian prime minister has made clear that there will be no UK return hubs in Albania. So, what was the point of this entire visit?”

 

British officials had hoped to establish return hubs in the western Balkans, with Albania previously seen as a potential partner.

 

Starmer told GB News that officials had begun formal negotiations with potential host countries but he refused to reveal which ones.

 

“What now we want to do and are having discussions of, talks of, is return hubs, which is where someone has been through the system in the UK, they need to be returned and we have to make sure they’re returned effectively, and we’ll do that, if we can, through return hubs,” he said.

 

If established, the return hubs will be used to process asylum seekers who have lost their paperwork or who are considered to be trying to frustrate their deportation.

 

Downing Street confirmed the plan but gave few other details. Starmer’s official spokesperson said: “We are having formal discussions with partners across Europe on the prospects of collaborating on return hubs. Return hubs are targeted at failed asylum seekers who have exhausted all legal routes to remain in the UK but are currently here, costing millions of taxpayers.”

 

He said the aim was to focus on asylum seekers whose legal routes had ended but were using “stalling tactics”, which he said included saying they had lost their documentation, or who were starting a family.

 

Removing people to their home countries was difficult under such circumstances, the spokesperson said, but there were fewer legal obstacles to taking them to a third country where the processing could continue.

 

Rama said he would not try to establish a deal with the UK because he was already engaged in a similar process with Italy. “We have been asked by several countries if we were open to it and we said no, because we are loyal to the marriage with Italy and the rest is just love,” Rama said.

 

Italy has two detention centres in Albania to process refused asylum seekers, with 40 people having been sent to the centres so far despite a number of legal challenges.

 

Starmer’s spokesperson rejected the idea that Rama’s remarks had been a surprise, saying the PM and his officials knew beforehand that Albania had no interest in hosting a UK return hub.

 

Asked if it was peculiar to make such an announcement in Albania, when the country was not part of the plans, he rejected this: “The prime minister was making a visit in relation to illegal migration. I think it is entirely relevant.”

 

Enver Solomon, the chief executive of the Refugee Council, said: “Threatening to detain people in countries they’ve never set foot in causes fear and panic, leading to low rates of compliance. The government’s approach to returns must be based on evidence if it’s going to work and it is clear that the most effective returns systems are not punitive but orderly and humane.”

 

This week the number of people crossing the Channel in small boats passed 12,000 for the year to date, putting 2025 on course to be a record year for such crossings.

 

In March, the EU announced it had approved of member states pursuing the approach of return hubs. The Netherlands is in negotiations with Uganda about such a possibility.

 

The UN refugee agency has also endorsed the idea of return hubs, which is significant given that the UN intervened against the Conservative government’s Rwanda scheme, which led to it being ruled unlawful.

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O almirante não é homem de uma só palavra

Ventura já teve alta: "Vou olhar pelo meu esófago. Tenho pena, mas não conseguirei acompanhar o meu partido"

 

Política

Ventura já teve alta: "Vou olhar pelo meu esófago. Tenho pena, mas não conseguirei acompanhar o meu partido"

 

Acompanhe aqui os principais destaques do penúltimo dia de campanha para as legislativas. André Ventura voltou às ruas. Luís Montenegro e Pedro Nuno Santos têm arruadas na mesma rua do Porto.

 

NUNO VEIGA

Leonardo Ralha

Carla Alves Ribeiro

Rui Miguel Godinho

Sofia Fonseca, Susete Henriques, Leonardo Ralha, Carla Alves Ribeiro, Rui Miguel Godinho

Publicado a:

15 Mai 2025, 09:51

https://www.dn.pt/pol%C3%ADtica/ad-e-ps-descem-a-rua-de-santa-catarina-num-dia-que-pode-ter-ventura-de-volta

 

Ventura já teve alta: "Não conseguirei acompanhar o meu partido amanhã"

 

André Ventura já recebeu alta do Hospital de São Bernardo, em Setúbal, e confirmou de viva voz aos jornalistas que vai falhar o último dia de campanha.

 

"Sinto-me melhor. Conseguimos fazer uma série de exames, que conseguiram tranquilizar-me muito quanto à parte cardíaca. Hospital aconselhou a medicar-me e parar um pouco. Terei mesmo de parar", começou por dizer, à saída da unidade hospitalar.

 

"Todo o diagnóstico leva-nos a pensar que foi um espasmo esofágico. Tenho muita pena, mas não conseguirei acompanhar o meu partido amanhã. Vou tentar olhar pelo meu esófago. Vou tentar que isto não afete a campanha eleitoral", acrescentou.

🔴 VENTURA FALA AO PAÍS

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No Peace Talks (Yet) After Ukrainians and Russians Arrive in Turkey

 

No Peace Talks (Yet) After Ukrainians and Russians Arrive in Turkey

 

The first peace talks in three years were supposed to begin on Thursday but amid posturing and accusations, they were pushed back at least until Friday.

 

As he arrived in Ankara on Thursday, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said Russia’s delegation “appears to be more theatrical than substantive.

 

Anton Troianovski Marc Santora Andrew E. Kramer

By Anton Troianovski Marc Santora and Andrew E. Kramer

Anton Troianovski reported from Istanbul, and Marc Santora and Andrew E. Kramer from Kyiv, Ukraine.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/15/world/europe/russia-ukraine-putin-zelensky-ceasefire-trump.html

May 15, 2025

 

An anticipated round of Ukraine peace talks in Turkey descended into bluster and confusion on Thursday, as Ukrainian and Russian delegations arrived in different cities and spent much of the day questioning whether they would even meet with one another.

 

By evening, both sides indicated that the talks in some form were still on, but that they could be postponed until Friday. President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, visiting the Turkish capital of Ankara, slammed the Kremlin for its “disrespect” in sending a midlevel delegation to Istanbul, where Russia wanted the talks to take place.

 

“There is no time of the meeting, there is no agenda of the meeting, there is no high-level delegation,” Mr. Zelensky said at a news conference after sitting down with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey. “I think Russia’s attitude is unserious.”

 

After a day of uncertainty over whether Ukraine would participate in the talks in Istanbul, Mr. Zelensky said he would send a pared-down delegation there, led by the minister of defense, Rustem Umerov. He said he made the decision to show that Ukraine would engage in any effort for peace, even one with the slimmest chance of success, after President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia rebuffed his appeal to meet in person in Turkey.

 

Overshadowing it all was President Trump, who told reporters traveling with him on Air Force One that “nothing’s going to happen until Putin and I get together.” Mr. Trump, who was in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates on Thursday, had earlier said that he might travel to Turkey on Friday “if something happened” in the peace talks. However, there was no other indication that a last-minute summit would materialize.

 

Mr. Putin last weekend proposed direct talks between Russia and Ukraine, in what would be the first known face-to-face negotiation between the two sides since the first weeks of the war, in March 2022, shortly after Russia’s invasion. Mr. Zelensky upped the ante by calling on Mr. Putin himself to come, and arrived in Ankara on Thursday with his foreign minister and other senior officials.

 

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But Mr. Putin refused, and instead sent a delegation that was a mirror image of the one he dispatched for the 2022 talks, which fell apart after about two months and included a high-profile meeting in Istanbul. In that negotiation, Russia made numerous demands that would undermine Ukraine’s sovereignty, seeking a pledge that the country would never join NATO and would limit the size of its military.

 

Vladimir Medinsky, a former culture minister who led Russia’s delegation in 2022 and resumed that role on Thursday, told reporters that Russia saw the new round of talks as “a continuation of the peace process” of that year.

 

“The delegation is committed to a constructive approach, focused on finding possible solutions and points of contact,” Mr. Medinsky said.

 

Neither side specified when, exactly, a meeting would take place. Mr. Zelensky made it clear that Ukraine’s expectations were low.

 

“Russia does not want to end this war,” he said.

 

Mr. Zelensky said the United States and Turkey would be involved in any talks. Turkey, though it is a NATO member, has taken a largely neutral stance in the war, maintaining ties with Ukraine but refusing to sanction Russia.

 

A Turkish official said that Keith Kellogg, Mr. Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine, was in Istanbul on Thursday, and that Steve Witkoff, the special envoy for the Middle East and Russia, was expected to arrive on Friday.

 

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in Antalya, Turkey, for other meetings, said the Trump administration was “impatient” for progress in the peace talks between Ukraine and Russia. The United States was “open to virtually any mechanism” that could engender a lasting peace, Mr. Rubio said, adding, “We remain committed to that.”

 

Thursday’s chaotic diplomacy highlighted the wide divergence between Moscow and Kyiv over how to end the war.

 

Mr. Zelensky wants an immediate and unconditional cease-fire, followed by negotiations over a potential peace deal. But Mr. Putin, who appears confident of Russia’s upper hand on the battlefield, is refusing to stop fighting before he secures major concessions from Kyiv and the West.

 

Mr. Medinsky, the head of the Russian delegation, indicated on Thursday that Russia would continue to seek wide-ranging concessions rather than an immediate cease-fire. Speaking at Russia’s consulate in Istanbul, Mr. Medinsky repeated Mr. Putin’s frequent phrasing that any peace deal needed to tackle the “root causes” of the conflict — Kremlin shorthand for a range of issues including the existence of Ukraine as an independent country aligned with the West.

 

“The goal of direct negotiations with the Ukrainian side is — sooner or later — to achieve the establishment of a lasting peace by addressing the fundamental root causes of the conflict,” Mr. Medinsky said.

 

Russian state media had reported that the talks were to take place at an Istanbul palace on the Bosporus where Ukraine-Russia negotiations were held in March 2022. And so dozens of reporters on Thursday morning thronged outside a side entrance to that palace, Dolmabahce, forcing confused ferry commuters to scramble for a detour around the press scrum. But throughout the day, there were no negotiators in sight.

 

The prospect of a high-profile cease-fire negotiation in Turkey was the latest turn in a rapidly shifting diplomatic landscape.

 

Mr. Trump came into office earlier this year promising to bring the war to a swift conclusion. He began his efforts on Feb. 12, with phone calls to Mr. Putin and to Mr. Zelensky, but did not coordinate with European allies, who have urged the United States to put more pressure on Russia to get the Kremlin to compromise.

 

But Mr. Trump instead pressured Kyiv, blaming Ukraine for causing a war that Russia had started.

 

In late February, Mr. Zelensky met with the American president in Washington — a disastrous visit in which Mr. Trump and Vice President JD Vance castigated the Ukrainian leader in the Oval Office for not being grateful enough for U.S. support, as journalists recorded the scene. The Trump administration then briefly suspended military assistance and intelligence sharing.

 

At the same time, Mr. Trump was trying to induce Moscow to agree to a cease-fire by holding out the prospect of economic relief from sanctions.

 

Later in the spring, at a meeting in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, Mr. Zelensky agreed to a key demand of the Trump administration: an immediate and unconditional 30-day cease-fire, abandoning demands that Western countries guarantee Ukraine’s future security before it agrees to a truce.

 

Mr. Putin rebuffed that idea and proposed a three-day cease-fire to coincide with an annual Victory Day parade in Moscow commemorating the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II. Kyiv did not agree to that.

 

Overall, during the first months of this year, while Mr. Trump was trying to broker peace talks, the hostilities were far deadlier than the same period last year, according to the United Nations.

 

Nataliia Novosolova contributed research. Nataliya Vasilyeva Qasim Nauman and Safak Timur contributed reporting.

 

Anton Troianovski is the Moscow bureau chief for The Times. He writes about Russia, Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia.

 

Marc Santora has been reporting from Ukraine since the beginning of the war with Russia. He was previously based in London as an international news editor focused on breaking news events and earlier the bureau chief for East and Central Europe, based in Warsaw. He has also reported extensively from Iraq and Africa.

 

Andrew E. Kramer is the Kyiv bureau chief for The Times, who has been covering the war in Ukraine since 2014.

Trump says “nothing will happen” in Ukraine peace talks until he meet

Ukraine war briefing: Putin stays home and fires a general instead of peace talks

 

Explainer

Ukraine war briefing: Putin stays home and fires a general instead of peace talks

 

Gen. Oleg Salyukov is the latest high-ranking military figure to be dismissed; Germany’s Merz says EU sanctions on Russia ready for Tuesday. What we know on day 1,178

 

Warren Murray with Guardian writers and agencies

Fri 16 May 2025 03.17 CEST

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/may/16/ukraine-war-briefing-putin-stays-home-and-fires-a-general-instead-of-peace-talks

 

• Vladimir Putin has sacked the chief of the Russian military’s land forces, Gen. Oleg Salyukov, according to a decree published by the Kremlin, in the latest removal of a high-profile figure from Russia’s military during its war on Ukraine. Salyukov, 70, will become a deputy to the also-sacked defence minister Sergei Shoigu, who was removed in 2024 and made secretary of the security council.
•  
• The development came as the Russian president snubbed peace talks that he suggested in Turkey with Ukraine. Putin instead sent a lower-level delegation to Istanbul, and Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy – who had promised to attend if Putin did – reciprocated with a Ukrainian negotiating contingent. Putin had insisted on the Istanbul meeting instead of agreeing to the longstanding offer by Ukraine and its allies of a 30-day unconditional ceasefire.
•  
• Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor, said Putin and Russia would face new sanctions as a consequence. “The fact that President Zelenskyy travelled to Istanbul despite this is an enormous gesture,” Merz posted. “Putin didn’t show up – and that put him in the wrong. A new sanctions package is ready. We will adopt it in Brussels on Tuesday.”
•  
• UK prime minister Keir Starmer accused Putin of stymying progress on peace. “There was only one country that started this conflict – that was Russia. That was Putin,” he said, speaking in Albania. “There’s only one country now standing in the way of peace – that is Russia. That is Putin.” There’s only one country now standing in the way of peace – that is Russia. That is Putin.”
•  
• France’s foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, echoed that sentiment: “In front of Ukrainians, there is an empty chair, one that should have been occupied by Vladimir Putin,” he said. Putin “is dragging his feet and in all evidence does not want to enter into these peace discussions.”
•  
• Due to Putin’s no-show , it appeared that any talks taking place would only begin in earnest on Friday, under Turkey’s supervision. Zelenskyy on Thursday arrived in Turkey’s capital, Ankara, for separate meetings, having said he would meet Putin in Istanbul if the Russian president arrived.
•  
• Late on Thursday, Turkey’s foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, met the Russian delegation. “The meeting has ended. Tomorrow there will be more talks in different formats,” said a Turkish foreign ministry source, indicating that “trilateral talks between Russia, Ukraine and Turkey are on the agenda”.
•  
• The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said on Thursday: “I want to be frank. I don’t think we have high expectations of what will happen tomorrow.” The top US diplomat described the current state of the talks to end the war as a “logjam” that only Donald Trump could break.
•  
• Trump, the US president, offered a tangled version of events: “Obviously he wasn’t going to go,” Trump said of Putin. “He was going to go, but he thought I was going to go. He wasn’t going if I wasn’t there.” He told reporters on Air Force One: “I don’t believe anything’s going to happen, whether you like it or not, until he and I get together.”
•  
• Ukraine lost an F-16 fighter plane though the pilot had time to eject safely, the air force announced on Friday morning. “According to preliminary data … an unusual situation arose on board. The pilot moved the aircraft away from the settlement and successfully ejected.”
•  
• Estonia accused Russia on Thursday of posing a “serious threat” to Nato after a Russian fighter jet violated its airspace. Estonia said it detected the incursion on Tuesday while it was inspecting a tanker from the “shadow fleet” of ships that Russia is using to skirt sanctions. The Estonian foreign minister, Margus Tsahkna, told a Nato meeting in Turkey that Estonia was inspecting “the unflagged and uninsured Argent/Jaguar [tanker], which is sanctioned by the United Kingdom”, when the Russian plane violated Estonia’s airspace. Nato fighter jets scrambled to “inspect and check the Russian fighter”.

Ukraine breakthrough depends on meeting between Trump and Putin, says Rubio

Portuguese far-right leader taken to hospital after second collapse

 

Portuguese far-right leader taken to hospital after second collapse

 

André Ventura taken ill at campaign event less than 48 hours after first collapse and three days before election

 

Sam Jones in Madrid and agency

Thu 15 May 2025 19.27 CEST

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/may/15/portuguese-far-right-leader-andre-ventura-hospital-second-collapse

 

The leader of Portugal’s far-right Chega party has been taken to hospital after another collapse during a rally days before the country votes in its third snap election since 2022.

 

André Ventura, whose brash, blunt leadership style has helped make the populist, anti-immigration party Portugal’s third biggest political force, was taken ill at an event in the southern town of Odemira on Thursday, two days after a similar episode.

 

Videos from the rally showed Ventura, 42, grabbing his chest and trying to undo his tie before falling into the arms of aides who carried him away. He was taken to a local clinic and then transferred to a hospital in Setúbal, near Lisbon, to undergo a medical procedure.

 

Ventura had been discharged from hospital in Faro on Wednesday after his previous collapse. The hospital said he had had an oesophageal spasm caused by gastric reflux and high blood pressure.

 

The Chega MP Marta Silva told CNN Portugal on Thursday that an electrocardiogram in an ambulance immediately after the second collapse had shown that “everything is well with his heart” and that it was probably another spasm.

 

Ventura posted a picture of himself giving a thumbs-up sign from a hospital bed on Thursday afternoon. “This is a setback and a difficulty,” he wrote on X. “It won’t bring us down. Keep going … keep going!!! Portugal is much more important, it is this country that moves us.”

 

Chega looks likely to once again finish third on Sunday, behind the ruling, centre-right Democratic Alliance (AD) and the Socialist party (PS). Recent polls put the AD on about 33%, the PS on 26% and Chega on 17%.

 

Ventura’s efforts to win a place in government have been rebuffed by Portugal’s prime minister, Luís Montenegro, who has repeatedly ruled out any deal with the far-right party.

 

Chega, which has campaigned on a promise to clean up Portuguese politics at the same time as increasing its rhetoric against the Roma population, has been hit by a series of damaging allegations relating to some of its members over recent months.

 

In January, Chega expelled one of its MPs from the party after he was accused of stealing suitcases at several airports. Another party member was caught drink-driving the same month, while a third has been charged with paying for oral sex with an underage male, who was 15 at the time.

 

Reuters contributed to this report

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MOEDAS PROÍBE ERGUE-TE NO MARTIM MONIZ

Câmara Municipal de Lisboa opõe-se a manifestação do Ergue-te no Martim Moniz . Carlos Moedas considera que a manifestação é uma “afronta à dignidade de comunidades residentes em Lisboa e ameaça à convivência democrática”.

 

Local

Câmara Municipal de Lisboa opõe-se a manifestação do Ergue-te no Martim Moniz

Carlos Moedas considera que a manifestação é uma “afronta à dignidade de comunidades residentes em Lisboa e ameaça à convivência democrática”.

 

DN/Lusa

Publicado a:

15 Mai 2025, 14:50

Atualizado a:

15 Mai 2025, 14:50

https://www.dn.pt/local-geral/c%C3%A2mara-municipal-de-lisboa-op%C3%B5e-se-a-manifesta%C3%A7%C3%A3o-do-ergue-te-no-martim-moniz

 

O presidente da Câmara Municipal de Lisboa opôs-se ao pedido de manifestação do partido Ergue-te para sexta-feira para a praça do Martim Moniz, no encerramento da campanha eleitoral, com base no parecer da PSP.

 

Carlos Moedas baseou-se no parecer do Comando Metropolitano da PSP de Lisboa e determinou “objetar a realização da manifestação e comício comunicados pelo partido Ergue-te”, tendo em conta o “risco real e fundado de perturbação da ordem pública”.

 

O autarca considera também que a manifestação é uma “afronta à dignidade de comunidades residentes em Lisboa e ameaça à convivência democrática”, segundo o despacho a que a Lusa teve acesso.