UN Security Council binding resolution makes terror financing a serious crime

DW, 28 Mar, 2019

The body has threatened sanctions as a means to ensure that countries crack down on the problem. Though the topic has been addressed in part before, this is the first comprehensive measure of its kind.

A vault full of gold bars (picture-alliance/ZUMAPRESS.com/Miami Herald)

The United Nations Security Council on Thursday unanimously passed a French resolution making terrorism financing a serious crime.

The binding resolution, drafted under chapter 7 of the UN Charter, can be backed with sanctions for countries that do not comply.

Although the topic of terror financing has been addressed in a number of resolutions since the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, Thursday's measure is the first comprehensive terror financing resolution the body has ever passed.

The resolution demands that individual countries "ensure that their domestic laws and regulations establish [terror financing as] serious criminal offenses."Vladimir Voronkov, the UN's counterterrorism chief, said the resolution "comes at a critical time" as it is clear to all that terrorists are funded through both illegal and legal channels.

Not a crime in many countries

The president of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), Marshall Billingslea, said the resolution will not only allow his organization to pressure more than 50 countries to enforce such laws, he said it will also help in the fight against ransom payments to groups like "Islamic State (IS)."

Billingslea said, "States must not allow hostage-takers or terrorists to benefit from ransom payments." Ransom payments have become a major source of income for IS.

According to FATF, which fights money laundering and terror financing, less than one-fifth of the world's countries currently have laws labeling terror financing a crime.

The UN resolution calls on member states to uphold international humanitarian, human rights and refugee law in the fight against terror financing.

Furthermore, the measure calls on countries to establish financial intelligence units to combat the problem of terror financing and to direct those units to share any information they uncover.

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2015 Kryon Kundalini Tour (Cusco #2, Peru) - "The Dysfunction of Darkness" - Nov, 14, 2015 (Kryon Channelling by Lee Carroll) - (Reference to Paris/ISIS/Dark-Old Energy/USA+Warning for Governments around the World !!!) - (Text version)

"... Funding is the Grease of the Engine of Darkness

Everyone on the planet will have to get off the fence in order to eliminate the dark army. Now we have told you before how to do it. And politicians will roll their eyes. Those on the inside of government who know how things work will roll their eyes. You can eliminate the dark army without death. The very thing they're afraid of losing, you can take from them now. Money! How does a dark army work when they can't eat? How will they function when they have no weapons? I guarantee you, even the darkest member of a dark army will go home if they're not fed, or there's no one around to organize them because the leaders are hungry and left. It's impossible, some say. The money is coming from unknown sources, they say. Let me tell you something. No, it isn't. It is coming from very known sources. Much of it comes from the resources of conquered land, but not all. They will start losing their land soon, so they will need funds all the more. If the sources of their income were totally exposed - there are those listening who need to hear this - if the sources of their income were totally exposed, it would make a big difference to the public, who would be shocked.

Let me talk to politicians. You regularly sit across the table from those who are from other countries and who are allies. They smile at you as they fund the dark side. After all, there is money to be made with war! This has been the way of it for years. But this won't last long. Politician, when it's found out that you knew about it, you are the one who will be held responsible. You didn't do anything about it.

I want to talk to Americans, because my partner [Lee] is an American. I'm going to tell you something now, and you're not going to believe it. Many of your hard-earned tax funds are finding their way to the dark army! And there are those within your government who know it. I'll give you an answer as to what to do about it in just a few words: International transparent forensic accounting. International transparent forensic accounting! It is time to clean up the funding of the dark, and kill their ability to make war. (***)

I have a warning for any of those in leadership who know about where the money is coming from, and are not doing anything about it. Your leadership days are numbered. The light is going to expose it and you will lose. Why not get on the right side of the fence now?

Is this too high-minded? Is this too simple? To think that the world could come together and pull the rug from under the darkness where they sit and the cocoon of money that they're in - could this actually happen? Watch for a wild card! [Kryon chuckles again.]

If you did this, would it change the kind of attack you had in Paris? After all, that wasn't an army at all, but just a few. The answer is yes - for the few answer to the many and were trained by the many. They saw the many as an established core to work from. Without the core, there is no purpose. The few are then on their own, without anything backing them up.

It's up to you listening, not the ones in this room. The ones listening and reading later may not even be into Kryon or channeling, but they hear this and know I'm right. This is not a dark message. It's a light message! The beginning is here. Things are changing. You are witnessing the change as we speak.

There'll come a day when you will never see this happen again, these organized groups of evil. This is the joyful message I have for you today. History will remember these times when the world finally got together and realized where they were going. It is tough now. It changes the paradigm of existence. Lives, governments and business will all start to understand the battle is here and is theirs to win. What is your reaction?

I want you to congratulate, love, and understand those who were lost yesterday [in Paris]. I've said this before: They are on my side of the veil now. They're all right. They're now looking back at you and - we have used the phrase before - they're saying, “We did our part. Now you do yours.” They will return to this planet, all of them, and participate in the beauty of the light you are creating at this time of shift on your planet.

Believe me, the end has already happened. This is the beginning.

I am in love with humanity, because of what I have seen you do.

And so it is.

KRYON

(*) "The Recalibration of Dark and Light"

www.kryon.com/k_channel11_San%20Antonio-12.html

(**) "Revelations of Darkness"

www.kryon.com/CHAN2014/k_channel14_Philadelphia-14.html

(***) Within days, a petition was circulating for this exact thing: https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/create-international-transparent-forensic-accounting-system-end-all-funding-terrorist-groups-isisisisil

US Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew (R) votes yes on a wide-ranging draft

 resolution aimed at ramping up sanctions against the Islamic State group as

 finance ministers gather at the United Nations Security Council on December 17,

2015 (AFP Photo/Timothy A. Clary)

UN unanimously adopts resolution targeting IS finances

"Revelations of Darkness" - Oct 1, 2014 (Kryon Channelling by Lee Carroll) - (Text version)

“ .. Do Not Despair

There's too much information to give you in one channelling, in one sitting, so I refer to past messages for you to better understand and reference the information in order to get the bigger picture. So I wish to remind you of something I also told you in a recent channelling called Do Not Despair. You're winning! It's because you're winning that the dark consciousness on this planet is feeling it, and the humanity that represents darkness is pulling out everything it has to survive.

It Has Always Been There

Let's look at it, because it's all over the news. Are you shocked at the sudden existence of the organization that will remain unnamed [for this channelling]? Where did it come from? How could it be so organized? How could it be so well funded? This organization could have its own country soon! They might as well name it, “The Old Energy Dark Country”, for that's what it will represent.

The barbaric past of humanity comes forward to show its face. It has always been there, hiding under the rocks and between the cracks of civilized humanity. It couldn't show itself until now, but now it has to. It's ugly and it's not for the faint at heart, is it, dear ones? Seeing evil personified in Human action is abhorrent. It is so ugly and so dark that you cannot look upon it with a gentle heart. God is not a part of it and this is obvious.

You're winning! Light is winning! The uprising of dark consciousness would not have shown itself with this strength, or this quickly, if this were not so. This is exactly what I told you to look for, and it is proof that those representing this dark consciousness are in trouble. Dear ones, dark consciousness has always had a tried-and-true system. It lurks in the shadows and influences all the power places of the planet - government, commerce, finance. Suddenly, it can't hide there as well anymore and it's out in the open.

Where is the funding coming from? It is coming from a storehouse that has always been there, dear ones. It uses income that has been generated from low consciousness acts, collected for a very long time. Funding didn't just appear. It has been stored, waiting to be used in order to spread fear and darkness to save what they believe is their way.

Who Will Win?

Dear ones, they haven't got a chance! But it looks like they do, doesn't it? Everything that they are doing is calculated to scare you into submission. Are they winning? Now, that's a question I want you to take from here and examine every day.

Fear is black. If you're in fear, there is no light. You can be the grandest Lightworker, or even be the channeller, but if you're in fear, it doesn't matter how many years you've done light work, or how much light you've accumulated personally. It all goes away with fear, and then they've won the battle for your mind. Do you understand this?

The Strength of the Old Soul - YOU

Old souls, Lightworkers reading this, the experiences you have had over lifetimes and lifetimes are incredible! The old soul knows fear. I don't want to be too graphic, but I want you to understand! What was it like when you put your head in the guillotine because you talked about God in a way that was inappropriate? What was it like to be bound hand and foot when they lit the match at your feet? Old soul, that's fear! You carry those experiences in your Akash.

I want to tell you they haven't got a chance to scare you! You absolutely know what fear is, and they haven't got a chance as long as you cling to that part of you that is the strength of God. You've been through it all. That means you've got the weapons of truth, wisdom and light. Don't forget it. Don't forget who you are!

Do you see how fast they assembled? It seemed like only yesterday that there was no organization at all. Where did they come from? Have you noticed a certain hesitancy to fight them? Why is it that the citizens of the lands that they are invading are hesitant to fight them? Instead, these leaders are calling on others to help. Why is it that the others are also hesitant? I want to show you that there are some anomalies of logic that are not making sense, because this is a battle you have never seen before on this planet. We've expected it, but you haven't. It's about consciousness, not land or resources.

How to Win?

We gave you the secret before of how to defeat them without taking even one life: Simply take away their funding. They cannot exist without their funding. The funding has to be organized, stored, and distributed. It has to be generated in such a way that it must also go through institutions. Did you hear that? All you have to do is stop the system. Winning won't be done with bombing. It's going to be done with intelligence, clever thinking and financial forensics. It's time to get smart on some of these things and not to be afraid to look at this puzzle differently than you have before. Do not apply the energy they are using in order to fight them, because you won't win. Figure it out. It's the last bastion of organized darkness and evil thinking on this planet coming together to try to survive the assault of your light. Don't be afraid to look at the funding trail, no matter where it takes you.

Fear is Their Weapon

I want you to know something as you look at your news. It may appear that you are unable to stop them. In many places, they will gain strength as they create fear. The fear is easily created in those who are not old souls and who don't know fear like you do and who don't have the armor of your spiritual experiences. This puts you in the front line, dear one. Did you realize that? But you don't have to go fight them on their terms. All you have to do is broadcast light. High consciousness will beat fear any day.. .”

Church in Canada opens probe of child sexual abuse by clergy

Yahoo – AFP, March 27, 2019

A former Quebec superior court judge will assess "the number and the nature" of
allegations of sexual abuse of children against clergy members going back to 1950
(AFP Photo/ANNE LEVASSEUR)

Montreal (AFP) - The Catholic Church in Quebec has commissioned a former judge to investigate possible sexual abuse of children by clergy in the Canadian province over seven decades, the archdiocese of Montreal said Wednesday.

Former Quebec superior court judge Anne-Marie Trajan will assess "the number and the nature" of such allegations against clergy members going back to 1950, the archdiocese said in a statement.

It said the investigation was "inspired" by similar probes of clergy sexual abuse elsewhere in the world, which have uncovered hundreds of previously unacknowledged cases.

"We all wish to prioritize transparency and to get to the bottom of things in the search for truth," Montreal Archbishop Christian Lepine said.

Trajan has been assured access to all pertinent church archives and the results of the investigation will be published.

The investigation will focus solely on "individuals working in diocesan parishes, services and institutions," the archdiocese said.

Trajan is expected to begin in September and take 18 months to two years to complete the probe.

"The report to be made public will present an aggregate statistical overview of sexual abuse allegations involving minors that occurred in the five dioceses combined, while respecting the requirements under Quebec's privacy laws."

The clergy pedophile scandal has reached to the very top of the church, with disgraced Australian Cardinal George Pell recently sentenced to six years in prison for the sexual abuse of two choirboys.

Canada grants asylum to woman who sheltered Snowden in Hong Kong

Yahoo – AFP, March 25, 2019

Former US National Security Agency contractor and whistle-blower Edward
Snowden speaking on March 15, 2019 via video link from Russia (AFP Photo/
FREDERICK FLORIN)

Canada has granted asylum to a woman who helped Edward Snowden hide in Hong Kong after his leaks exposed US global surveillance programs, a refugee rights association said Monday.

Vanessa Rodel and her 7-year-old daughter Keana were scheduled to arrive in Toronto later Monday on a flight from Hong Kong, the non-profit organization For the Refugees said.

Rodel was among a group of people who sheltered Snowden, a former CIA employee and US National Security Agency (NSA) contractor, putting him up in her apartment in 2013 while he was in Hong Kong on the run from US authorities.

His leaks of highly classified documents revealed the existence of global surveillance programs run by the NSA in cooperation with partners Australia, Britain and Canada.

Snowden, who now lives in Russia, was charged in June 2013 in the United States with espionage and stealing state secrets.

Canada granted Rodel, a Philippines national, and her daughter asylum in January but it was kept secret for security reasons, according to For the Refugees.

Five other people who helped Snowden have also requested asylum but remain in Hong Kong awaiting a response, according to the daily National Post.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau declined to comment, saying it would be inappropriate to do so in "a situation regarding a specific case."

But Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland implicitly confirmed the report, telling reporters she had not personally intervened in the process.

Asked during a Washington visit whether the granting of asylum might harm US-Canadian relations, Freeland told reporters that Ottawa based its decision on case-by-case considerations, not "geopolitical relations."

A spokesperson for Canada's immigration ministry also declined to comment except to say that in "exceptional circumstances" requests for asylum can be accelerated.

Radio Canada said Rodel was under pressure from Hong Kong authorities and faced a risk of deportation to the Philippines.

Slavery reparations debate resurfaces in White House race

Yahoo – AFP, Chris Lefkow, March 24, 2019

Senator Elizabeth Warren, a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination,
has supported reparations for the descendants of slaves (AFP Photo/Drew Angerer)

Washington (AFP) - In January 1865, as the US Civil War was drawing to a close, some freed slaves were promised "40 acres and a mule" to begin new lives.

The audacious experiment was fleeting -- repudiated within months by president Andrew Johnson, successor to the assassinated Abraham Lincoln, and the land returned to its former owners.

More than 150 years later, the question of whether the United States should provide compensation to African-Americans for past wrongs is still on the table.

Reparations for centuries of slavery and racial discrimination has emerged as a spirited topic of debate among the slew of candidates seeking to become the 2020 Democratic nominee for president.

Civil rights activist Jesse Jackson, during his failed 1988 White House bid, raised the controversial subject but it has never figured so prominently before in a presidential race.

Barack Obama, America's first black president, and 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton did not support compensation for the descendants of slaves.

Former San Antonio mayor Julian Castro is seeking to become the first US 

president of Hispanic origin (AFP Photo/SUZANNE CORDEIRO)

Among the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates, Senator Elizabeth Warren and Julian Castro, the former mayor of San Antonio, have come out strongly in favor of reparations.

"America was founded on principles of liberty and freedom and on the backs of slave labor," Warren, a senator from Massachusetts, said recently at a CNN event in Jackson, Mississippi.

"This is a stain on America," Warren said. "I believe it's time to start the national, full-blown conversation about reparations in this country."

Castro, seeking to become the first US president of Hispanic origin, said he backed reparations while acknowledging there is a "tremendous amount of disagreement" on what they should be.

"If, under the Constitution, we compensate people because we take their property, why wouldn't you compensate people who actually were property?" he said.

Senator Kamala Harris, a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, 

has signalled support for reparations (AFP Photo/Ethan Miller)

'Injustice, cruelty, brutality'

Warren has thrown her support behind a bill in the US House of Representatives that would appoint a commission to examine the subject.

The bill, HR 40, calls for a panel "to address the fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality, and inhumanity of slavery in the United States and the 13 American colonies between 1619 and 1865."

The commission would "consider a national apology and proposal for reparations for the institution of slavery."

HR 40 -- so named for the unkept "40 acres and a mule" pledge -- was first introduced in the House three decades ago and has been resubmitted every year since, but has never reached the floor for a vote.

Senators Kamala Harris and Cory Booker, the two black candidates in the race, have also signaled support for reparations while former Texas congressman Beto O'Rourke has said there should be a "conversation" about the subject.

Senator Bernie Sanders has said he does not support the idea of "writing a  check" 

as reparations for the African-American descendants of slaves (AFP Photo/

Sean Rayford)

"We need to study the effects of generations of discrimination and institutional racism and determine what can be done, in terms of intervention, to correct course," Harris said on National Public Radio.

Marianne Williamson, a self-help author considered a long shot for the nomination, is the only Democratic candidate for the moment advocating direct payments to African-Americans.

Williamson has proposed creating a $200- $500 billion fund to do it -- a number that scholars of the subject have ridiculed as far too little. A more reasonable figure, they argue, would run into the trillions of dollars.

Two other Democratic hopefuls -- Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar -- have supported addressing racial inequality as part of their wider plans to reduce income disparity.

"I think right now our job is to address the crises facing the American people in our communities," Sanders said on ABC's "The View." "And I think there are better ways to do that than just writing out a check."

'Frightening'

Klobuchar said there was a need to "invest in those communities that have been so hurt by racism."

"That means looking at, for our whole economy, community college, one-year degrees, minimum wage, child care," she said on NBC's "Meet the Press." "It doesn't have to be a direct pay for each person."

Senator Amy Klobuchar said she does not support direct payments as reparations to

the descendants of slaves (AFP Photo/MARK WILSON)

Blacks are a key voting bloc for Democrats and their support is seen as essential to the candidate running against Republican President Donald Trump next year.

Fifty-two percent of the African-Americans surveyed in a 2015 CNN-Kaiser poll supported cash payments to the descendants of slaves.

But 89 percent of the white Americans polled opposed the idea.

Author Ta-Nehisi Coates, in a seminal 2014 article in The Atlantic called "The Case For Reparations," said the idea is "frightening" to many Americans "not simply because we might lack the ability to pay."

"The idea of reparations threatens something much deeper -— America's heritage, history, and standing in the world," Coates said.

"But I believe that wrestling publicly with these questions matters as much as -- if not more than -- the specific answers that might be produced," he said. "An America that asks what it owes its most vulnerable citizens is improved and humane."

The United States has handed out reparations in the past including to Japanese-Americans put in internment camps during World War II.

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Syria force takes IS bastion, 'caliphate' wiped out

Yahoo – AFP, Rouba EL HUSSEINI, 23 March 2019

US-backed fighters of the Syrian Democratic Forces raise their flag in the Islamic
State group's last redoubt of Baghouz as their commanders proclaim the total
elimination of its "caliphate"

Kurdish-led forces pronounced the death of the Islamic State group's nearly five-year-old "caliphate" Saturday after flushing out diehard jihadists from their very last bastion in eastern Syria.

Fighters of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces raised their yellow flag in Baghouz, the remote riverside village where jihadists from many countries made a desperate last stand.

The SDF's victory capped a deadly six-month operation against the final remnants of the "caliphate" which once stretched across a vast swathe of Iraq and Syria, and held seven million people in its sway.

World leaders hailed the victory as a major landmark in the fight against IS and its ideology, but warned that the group that spurred a spate of global terror attacks was far from defeated.

"Syrian Democratic Forces declare total elimination of so-called caliphate and 100 percent territorial defeat of ISIS," spokesman Mustefa Bali said in a statement, using another acronym for IS.

US President Donald Trump hailed the announcement but vowed to remained "vigilant" as the military coalition his country led against IS said the fight "is far from over".

In Al-Omar, an oil field used by the SDF as a staging base, fighters laid down their weapons and broke into song and dance.

They joined top Kurdish and Arab tribal officials, as well as a leading US envoy, for a ceremony unveiling a monument to their fallen comrades and celebrating the landmark victory.

The state proclaimed in mid-2014 by fugitive IS supremo Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi started collapsing in 2017 when parallel offensives in Iraq and Syria wrested back its main hubs Mosul and Raqa.

The nearly five years of fighting against the most brutal jihadist group in modern history left major cities in ruins and populations homeless.

Foreigners last

IS-held territory continued to shrink month after month and in September 2018 the SDF launched a final offensive on the last dregs of the "caliphate" in the Euphrates Valley.

SDF fighters last week expelled IS fighters who refused to surrender from an encampment on the edge of Baghouz and have since been hunting down a few survivors hiding on the reedy banks of the Euphrates River.

"Those who lasted the longest were mostly foreigners... Tunisians, Moroccans, Egyptians," Kurdish fighter Hisham Harun, 21, told AFP.

Around him, the former jihadist encampment was littered with bullet-riddled truck carcasses, discarded suicide belts and torn tents where the caliphate's last families sheltered for weeks.

Some bodies of suspected IS fighters could also be seen.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 630 civilians, 750 SDF fighters and around 1,600 jihadists were killed in the offensive.

Kurdish officers and aid groups were flummoxed by the number of people who poured out of Baghouz, a small village even few Syrians knew of until this year.

As SDF forces pummelled IS positions and US warplanes dropped huge payloads on the riverside village, tens of thousands of people fled over a rocky hill.

Aid emergency

For weeks, the ghostly figures hobbled out of the besieged village, famished, often wounded but sometimes still defiantly proclaiming their support for IS.

The Kurdish-led force and foreign intelligence have screened more than 60,000 people since January, around 10 percent of them jihadists turning themselves in.

Most of the people evacuated from the smouldering ruins of Baghouz in recent days were relatives of IS members who now fill overcrowded camps further north in Syria's Kurdish-controlled region.

The biggest of them, Al-Hol, is struggling to host 74,000 people, including at least 25,000 school-aged children.

Among them are thousands of foreigners from more than 40 countries that are in most cases unwilling to take them back.

"The needs are huge and the camp is overwhelmed," International Committee of the Red Cross head Peter Maurer said Friday after a five-day visit to Syria.

Still a threat

Speaking at the ceremony in Al-Omar, top SDF commander Mazloum Kobane warned that a new phase had begun in anti-IS operations.

The US has vowed to draw down its forces in Syria, but Kobane appealed for sustained coalition assistance to help smash sleeper cells "which are a great threat to our region and the whole world".

US coalition envoy William Roebuck agreed and said "we still have much more to do to achieve an enduring defeat" of IS.

EU expands tax blacklist to 15 countries, including UAE

Yahoo – AFP, March 12, 2019

The "naming and shaming" of countries into better tax policies comes only days
after a money-laundering blacklist by the EU was torpedoed by the bloc's own
member governments, after a draft included Saudi Arabia (AFP Photo/Emmanuel
DUNAND)

Brussels (AFP) - The European Union expanded its tax haven blacklist to 15 countries on Tuesday, adding the United Arab Emirates and Bermuda over the objections of powerful member states such as Italy.

The list was first drawn up in 2017 in the wake of several scandals, including the Panama Papers and LuxLeaks, that pushed the EU into doing more to fight tax evasion by multinationals and the rich.

Seven countries are to be moved back from a grey list because reform commitments had not been met. These are Aruba, Belize, Bermuda, Fiji, Oman, Vanuatu and Dominica, an EU statement said.

They are joined by three other countries whose tax policies have grown more aggressive in the past months. They are Barbados, the United Arab Emirates and the Marshall Islands.

Italy long resisted the addition of the UAE. The Middle East powerhouse has recently made significant investments in the economically troubled European country.

Rome had wanted to keep the Emirates on the so-called grey list of countries that have made pledges to get their tax laws in order with a standard set by Brussels.

"Everything will be solved" when new legislation in passed in the UAE, Italian Finance Minister Giovanni Tria said. "The Emirates will come out immediately afterwards."

Britain, just weeks before its planned divorce from the EU on March 29, resisted the addition of its overseas territory Bermuda but relented last week.

Five countries remain blacklisted because they did nothing to justify moving them off the original list of tax havens: American Samoa, Guam, Samoa, Trinidad and Tobago, and the US Virgin Islands

This "naming and shaming" of countries into better tax policies comes only days after a money-laundering blacklist by the EU was torpedoed by the bloc's own member governments, after a draft included Saudi Arabia.

Romanian Finance Minister Eugen Teodorovici, whose country holds the EU's six-month rotating presidency, earlier told reporters that last minute promises by countries to fix their tax policies would delay the list until May.

However French counterpart Bruno Le Maire, France’s finance minister said he wanted no delays.

"France wants the list to be adopted today," he said.

Iran's part in US sanctions bypass scheme ready 'this month'

Yahoo – AFP, Jastinder KHERA, March 6, 2019

Iran is attending a "joint commission" in the Austrian capital with representatives from
China, Russia, Britain, Germany and France -- all signatories of the international deal
on Iran's nuclear programme (AFP Photo/JOE KLAMAR)

Vienna (AFP) - Iran hopes to have its part of a new payments vehicle -- devised to allow it to trade with EU firms despite US sanctions -- -- ready within a fortnight, Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Wednesday.

"We hope it will be before the end of the Iranian calendar year," Araghchi told reporters in Vienna, referring to March 20.

He said that Iran now had a "clearer picture" of how the new vehicle, known as INSTEX -- short for Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges - -- would work and that its managing director would visit Tehran for discussions "very soon".

But he added that only when the mechanism becomes fully operational would Iran be able to assess whether it "can work properly and can produce results, (and) can do payments between Iran and European countries".

Araghchi was in the Austrian capital for a "joint commission" with representatives from China, Russia, Britain, Germany and France -- all signatories of the international deal on Iran's nuclear programme.

INSTEX was launched at the end of January by Britain, France and Germany.

It is seen as key to European Union efforts to preserve the deal struck in 2015 between world powers and Iran over its nuclear programme, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

The US was also a signatory but last May President Donald Trump withdrew from the deal and in November imposed sweeping new sanctions on Iran.

Remaining members 'united'

Araghchi said there was "very strong support" for the deal from all participants at the meeting.

He emphasised that Iran expects INSTEX to work "for all goods and commodities, not only humanitarian goods", but that it could start with humanitarian goods "in order to set the patterns for doing business with Iran".

Tehran's deputy foreign miniser Abbas Araghchi (R) and EU External Action Service 

secretary general Helga Schmid at the joint commission on the Iran nuclear deal 

(AFP Photo/JOE KLAMAR)

"Once the patterns are set, then other goods, including sanctioned goods -- and oil of course -- would be added to this mechanism," he added.

"It is late but still a move in the right direction," Araghchi said.

INSTEX, to be registered in France with German governance, will allow Iran to trade with EU companies despite Washington reimposing sanctions after President Donald Trump pulled out of the 2015 accord.

The EU representative, who chairs the joint commission, said in a statement after the meeting that the EU would continue to support the work to make INSTEX operational "as soon as possible in close coordination with an Iranian corresponding entity which is being established".

Russia's ambassador to Vienna's UN organisations, Mikhail Ulyanov, who was also at the meeting, told AFP the remaining signatories to the deal are "united in the need to save the JCPOA".

"There are some problems, particularly in the economic field but we are aimed at overcoming them as soon as possible," Ulyanov said.

He said the speed with which INSTEX became fully operational was up to Germany, France, Britain and Iran.

But Ulyanov added: "I believe it may take a rather long time, at least a few months; most likely even more."

In February the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency watchdog said Iran was adhering to the terms of the JCPOA, under which Tehran drastically scaled back its nuclear programme in return for sanctions relief.

Washington has urged European signatories to the JCPOA to follow Trump's example and withdraw, but this has been rejected by the Europeans.

Trudeau scandal catapults Canada Tories into lead: poll

Yahoo – AFP, March 5, 2019

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks to reporters before Question Period in the
Canadian Parliament in late February 2019 (AFP Photo/Lars Hagberg)

Ottawa (AFP) - Support for Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his Liberals has fallen for the first time behind the opposition Tories, according to a poll released Tuesday, after a second minister quit his cabinet in protest.

What started as mere allegations of interference in the criminal prosecution of engineering giant SNC-Lavalin has exploded into a political crisis in just under a month.

And polling that had consistently showed the next election would be the Liberals to lose now appears to favor the Conservatives forming the next government.

A general election is expected in October, but if votes were cast now Trudeau would receive only 31 per cent of the decided popular vote, down three points from a few weeks earlier, according to the Ipsos Reid poll for television's Global News.

Conservative leader Andrew Scheer, meanwhile, would receive 40 percent.

Former Canadian Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould testified about the 

SNC-LAVALIN affair in Parliament on February 27, 2019 (AFP Photo/Lars Hagberg)

'Inappropriate' pressure

The poll of 1,000 Canadians was carried out between March 1 and March 4, on the heels of former attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould's resignation from cabinet, followed by Trudeau's top advisor Gerry Butts and most recently Jane Philpott who quit as Treasury Board president on Monday.

"This is the first time we've actually seen the Conservative Party... looking like they could potentially form the government," Ipsos Public Affairs chief executive Darrell Bricker told Global News.

Last month, Wilson-Raybould testified before the Commons Justice Committee that Trudeau and his inner circle applied "inappropriate" pressure on her, including "veiled threats," to intervene in the prosecution of SNC-Lavalin for allegedly bribing officials in Libya to secure government contracts.

She said that from September to December 2018, officials "hounded" her to ask prosecutors to settle the case out of court.

Andrew Scheer took over as leader of the Conservative Party of Canada in 

May 2017 (AFP Photo/Geoff Robins)

Wilson-Raybould refused, and the trial is set to proceed.

But in her resignation letter, Philpott said she has "lost confidence in how the government has dealt with this matter and in how it has responded to the issues raised."

"The solemn principles at stake are the independence and integrity of our justice system," she said.

Trudeau said he "completely disagrees" with his former attorney general's characterization of events, insisting that he and his team were rightly looking to safeguard up to 9,000 Canadian jobs at SNC-Lavalin, which would be banned from bidding on government contracts if convicted.

He also insisted that he made clear to his former attorney general that the "decision around SNC-Lavalin was Wilson-Raybould's and hers alone to make."

A former top aide to Justin Trudeau faced a grilling by Canadian lawmakers over accusations of meddling in the prosecution of a corporate giant that have plunged the prime minister into his worst crisis since taking office https://t.co/SRNwv4KKjU

— AFP news agency (@AFP) 6 maart 2019

Grand imam of Egypt's Al-Azhar calls polygamy an 'injustice'

Yahoo – AFP, March 2, 2019

Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb, grand imam of Egypt's famed Al-Azhar institution, said
polygamy was the result of a "lack of understanding of the Koran" (AFP Photo/
Vincenzo PINTO)

Cairo (AFP) - The grand imam of Egypt's famed Al-Azhar institution, Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb, has described polygamy as an "injustice" for women.

"Polygamy is often an injustice to women and children," said the influential cleric, in quotes published on Twitter late Friday by Al-Azhar, Sunni Islam's most prestigious seat of learning.

The practice is the result of "a lack of understanding of the Koran and the tradition of the Prophet," he added.

Tayeb also addressed the issue in a weekly Friday television show, telling viewers: "Those who say that marriage must be polygamous are all wrong".

He added the Koran says that in order for a Muslim man to have multiple wives, he "must obey conditions of fairness -- and if there is not fairness it is forbidden to have multiple wives".

After the grand imam's comments sparked fervent debate on social media, Al-Azhar on Saturday clarified that he did not call for polygamy to be banned.

In his Friday comments, Tayeb called more broadly for the way women's issues are addressed to be revamped.

"Women represent half of society, if we don't care for them it's like we are walking on one foot only," he said in the remarks published on Twitter.

The grand imam's approach was welcomed by Egypt's National Council for Women.

"The Muslim religion honours women -- it brought justice and numerous rights which didn't exist before," said the Council's president Maya Morsi.