The International Olympic Committee hit back Thursday at the US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) after its chief accused the IOC of failing to hold Russia accountable for doping in sports.

In a rebuke directed at USADA CEO Travis Tygart, the IOC chastised the US over its struggles in tackling doping in its domestic leagues and for refusing to join the international fight against corruption in sport.

Tygart had in testimony to a US agency that looks at human rights in Europe said that in allowing Russian athletes to take part in the Rio and Pyeongchang Olympic games, the IOC “chose not to stand up for clean athletes and against institutionalized doping.”

“We very much appreciate and welcome moves in the United States to step up the fight against doping and we assume that the very worrying existing challenges with some of the professional leagues in the United States will be addressed as a matter of urgency — especially since this has become extremely obvious again in the last report of USADA,” an IOC spokesman said in a statement sent to AFP.

According to Tygart, the IOC had assembled clear evidence of state-sponsored doping in Russia but missed an opportunity to combat “culture of corruption through doping in global sport”.

“When the decisive moment arrived … the IOC failed to lead.”

Replying to the USADA critique, the IOC said it “would kindly invite the United States government to join ‘The International Partnership against Corruption in Sport,'” a global network formed to clean up sports governance, which includes most major sporting powers, except the US.
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Belgian doctors have euthanized three minors in the past two years, according to a report from the nation’s chief euthanasia regulatory body released earlier this month.

The report, produced by Belgium’s Federal Commission for Euthanasia Control and Evaluation, said these three minors were the first to be euthanized since the country’s parliament voted to lift age restrictions on euthanasia in the country, the first such law in the world. Euthanasia for adults has been legal in Belgium since 2002.

“There is no age for suffering,” said Professor Wim Distelmans, chairman of the euthanasia committee. “Fortunately, euthanasia among young people remains very exceptional. Even if it were only one, the law would have been very useful. ”

The minors were 9, 11 and 17 years old, according to the report. Their conditions ranged from muscular dystrophy to brain tumors to cystic fibrosis. The conditions of all three were determined to be terminal, and euthanasia was approved unanimously by the committee.

The report, part of a series released by the committee every two years, examined all euthanasia cases within Belgium from January 2016 to December 2017. The report said 4,337 euthanizations were administered in Belgium during that time. The majority of euthanizations — 2,781 — were for cancer patients. The second leading cause was “poly-pathologies,” ranging from dementia and heart disease to incontinence and hearing loss, with 710 euthanizations listing “poly-pathology” as its primary reason.

Euthanasia cases rising

Since euthanasia was first legalized in Belgium in 2002, the number of deaths from it have steadily increased every year. In 2016, the report found, the number of people who died via euthanasia was 2,028. In 2017, that number jumped to 2,309, nearly a 14 percent increase.

The Netherlands and Belgium are the only two countries in the world that permit the euthanasia of minors. The Netherlands, however, restricts euthanasia to minors above the age of 12.

The 2014 law stipulated that before euthanasia can be considered for a minor, he or she must be suffering from terminal illness, face “unbearable physical suffering” and repeatedly request to die.

“The law says adolescents cannot make important decisions on economic or emotional issues, but suddenly they’ve become able to decide that someone should make them die,” said Andre-Joseph Leonard, head of the Catholic Church in Belgium, following the passage of the 2014 law.

In 2017, a doctor resigned from Belgium’s euthanasia commission, alleging that the committee had euthanized a demented patient who had not formally requested to die. 
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Turkey is expanding its economic and cultural influence over the Balkans, and analysts say the strategy, which targets the region’s large Muslim minorities, is worrying some of its Western allies.

The Balkan region was the center of the Turkish Ottoman Empire. That historical legacy has made the area a priority for Turkey’s ruling AKP under recently re-elected President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Turkey’s growing influence was visible at this month’s inauguration ceremony of Erdogan. While Western European leaders stayed away, five heads of state from the Balkans attended.

“Since AKP has this mental construction of re-establishing the Ottoman past, it’s [the Balkan region is] important for them,” said professor Istar Gozaydin, who has studied the Balkans extensively.

“The Balkans as a region, as it has for so many centuries, was under the Ottoman rule and influence. I do see the renaissance of Islamic identity of Turkish influence in the region,” said international relations professor Huseyin Bagci, an expert on the Balkans at Ankara’s Middle East Technical University.

“Turkey is using smart power there culturally, economically and language-wise,” he continued. “When you look to those Turks living in the Balkans, they get more and more under the increasing Turkish influence.”

Some European leaders are already voicing concern. “I don’t want a Balkans that turns toward Turkey or Russia,” French President Emmanuel Macron declared in May. Erdogan quickly shot back, saying the comment was “unbecoming of a statesman.”

The Turkish economy dwarfs those of its Balkan neighbors, and economic muscle is at the forefront of Ankara’s projection of influence. “Turkey is building airports, even investing in several sectors, like in Bulgaria and Romania, from textiles to many others,” Bagci said.

“There is an aggressive economic policy toward the Balkan countries, which cannot compete with Turkey,” Bagci said. “In the Balkans, we have two big countries getting influence. One is Germany and the other one Turkey.”

Trade has helped Ankara overcome past animosities. “These countries, many of them, don’t have automatic access to the EU [European Union], and many of them look to Turkey for trade,” said columnist Semih Idiz of the Al Monitor website.

‘Quite close’

“During the recent Balkan war, Turkey and Serbia were at opposite ends of the fence. They looked at one another with great enmity. Today, we see Serbia and Turkey are quite close, despite differences over Kosovo and Bosnia and things like that. A country like Serbia values its friendship with Turkey, and I think it applies to a certain extent to countries like Croatia, too,” Idiz said. He was referring to the events that led to the breakup of Yugoslavia.

Serbia is now Turkey’s main Balkan trading partner, with $1 billion in commerce.

Reaching out to the Balkans’ large ethnic Turkish population, through the promotion of religion and cultural awareness, is also an essential tool deployed by Ankara.

“They are using religion. They are using diplomacy. Institutions like Tika and Diyanet have been working quite efficiently and hard in the region,” Gozaydin said.

Tika is the Turkish state’s development agency, while the Diyanet administers Turkey’s Islamic affairs nationally and internationally. The two institutions are at the forefront of expanding Turkish influence in the Balkans.

“They work with the authorities in those countries. They try to influence the politics there,” Gozaydin said. “In Bosnia, they are trying, for example, to be influential in the appointment of religious authorities so they can work together.”

Turkey has been funding mosque projects across the Balkans, including two of the region’s largest mosques in Albania and Bulgaria. Turkish cultural foundations also work to promote ethnic Turkish identity.

While Ankara has been successful in projecting its influence, there are signs of growing unease, Gozaydin warned. She said she had met quite a few people in the Balkans, including some authorities, “who were not happy with Turkey trying too hard to have an influence on them. So that was considered to be an interference in their domestic politics.”

‘Grave concern’

Last year, the United States voiced alarm about Ankara’s policy. “The Balkans is an area of grave concern now,” said then-national security adviser H.R. McMaster.

Ankara dismissed such criticism, contending that it was only re-establishing cultural ties that date back centuries and claiming that Russia and other European countries were jockeying for influence in the Balkans. In May, European officials held talks with western Balkan leaders in Bulgaria to reaffirm the “European perspective” of that region.

Given the Balkans’ recent history of ethnic and religious conflict, however, analysts warn of the risk of a nationalist backlash if Ankara does not tread carefully.

“The Turkish minorities, or Muslim minorities, yes, they are always considered as a potential threat by the majority of the Balkan countries,” Bagci said. “The more the Muslim identity gets stronger, the more populist movements in the Balkans, like in Germany and other countries, will increase and get stronger. This is the potential conflict.”
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The United States and France have imposed sanctions upon groups and individuals with links to Syria’s chemical weapons program, the U.S. Treasury Department said Wednesday.

“Syria’s horrific use of chemical weapons, including attacks against innocent women and children, remains deeply embedded in our minds,” said Sigal Mandelker, treasury undersecretary for terrorism, said in a statement. “Today, we are continuing our campaign to stop the Assad regime’s ruthless attacks by targeting the procurement networks that have supported its chemical weapons program.”

According to the statement, the United States will block five entities and eight individuals who have been part of a network supplying electronics to Syria’s chemical weapons program.

On Sunday, France froze the assets of 24 individuals in the same network, the statement read.

One entity that Treasury sanctioned is Electronics Katrangi Trading, a Lebanese electronics retailer. Two of the individuals sanctioned by the department were former residents of Massachusetts.

The Syrian government has long received criticism for its alleged use of chemical weapons against its own civilians amid the nation’s civil war. The Syrian government and Russia, its ally, have denied these claims.

In April, over 70 people were killed in a suspected chemical attack in the Syrian city of Douma, a rebel-held town. An interim report released in July by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, an intergovernmental chemical weapons watchdog, found “explosive residues [and] various chlorinated organic chemicals” on the site.

As a response to the April attacks, the U.S., French and British governments launched a missile strike on suspected chemical weapon sites in Syria.

“If the Syrian regime uses this poisonous gas again, the United States is locked and loaded,” Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said in April. 
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Tariffs are set to top the agenda in a meeting Wednesday between U.S. President Donald Trump and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker.

Juncker is coming to Washington with the hopes the European Union can avoid an all-out trade war by convincing Trump to hold off punitive tariffs on European cars. The potential car tariffs would hurt Germany’s thriving automobile industry and come on top of hefty tariffs that Trump has already imposed on aluminum and steel imports.

But on the eve of the meeting, Trump appeared pessimistic the two sides would come to any agreement after the U.S. leader threatened more tariffs on U.S. trading partners. In a tweet late Tuesday, Trump said both the United States and the European Union should drop all tariffs, barriers and subsidies.

“That would finally be called Free Market and Fair Trade!” Trump said. “Hope they do it, we are ready — but they won’t!” he added.

Earlier Tuesday, the U.S. president declared “Tariffs are the greatest!” and threatened to impose additional penalties on U.S. trading partners. “Either a country which has treated the United States unfairly on trade negotiates a fair deal, or it gets hit with tariffs. It’s as simple as that.”

Trump again complained the world uses the United States as a “piggy bank” that everyone likes to rob. 

The European Commission has responded with retaliatory tariffs, but new levies on cars could prompt Europe to take further action.

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said Tuesday Europe won’t cave in to Trump’s threats.

“No one has an interest in having punitive tariffs, because everyone loses in the end,” Maas wrote on Twitter. “Europe will not be threatened by President Trump If we cede once, we will often have to deal with such behavior in the future.”

Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan told reporters Tuesday he does not think “the tariff route is the smart way to go.”

Ryan said he understands Trump is seeking “a better deal for Americans” but added the U.S. should instead “work together to reduce trade barriers and trade restrictions between our countries.”
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