Author: News Polite

WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said on Tuesday that governments around the world, including in Russia and China, grew more repressive last year, as the State Department released its annual report on global human rights.

The department’s 2021 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices echoes President Biden’s warnings that authoritarianism is on the rise worldwide. Its introduction cites “continued democratic backsliding on several continents, and creeping authoritarianism that threatens both human rights and democracy — most notably, at present, with Russia’s unprovoked attack on Ukraine.”

The report covers the past year and thus does not include details about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February. But it singled out Russia’s government as a leading rights abuser, citing reports of extrajudicial killings, arbitrary arrests, physical abuse of suspects by the police and other offenses, along with frequent impunity for accused security officials.

Among the trends Mr. Blinken highlighted was the increasingly brazen way governments were “reaching across borders to threaten and attack critics.” He described a plot to kidnap a journalist in New York that prosecutors said was orchestrated by an intelligence network in Iran, and the Belarusian government’s decision to force a Ryanair passenger flight to land so that security forces could arrest a journalist on board.

Some governments were also quick to lock up critics at home, Mr. Blinken said, listing Cuba, Egypt and Russia. More than one million political prisoners are being held in 65 countries, the report found.

China’s government “continues to commit genocide and crimes against humanity” against ethnic Uyghurs in Xinjiang and has cracked down on basic freedoms in Hong Kong, Mr. Blinken said.

One nation that saw a serious turn for the worse was Afghanistan, whose U.S.-backed government collapsed after Mr. Biden withdrew American forces from the country in August. Mr. Blinken described “a serious erosion of human rights,” including arbitrary detentions of women, protesters and journalists; reprisals against the former government’s security forces; and restrictions on the freedom of women and girls to work and study.

But the report also noted that Afghanistan’s “pre-Aug. 15 government,” led by President Ashraf Ghani, was far from an exemplary model. “Widespread disregard for the rule of law and official impunity for those responsible for human rights abuses were common,” it found — a reality that helped the Taliban maintain popular support as they battled back to power.

The report included a long list of rights violations in Saudi Arabia, America’s longtime oil-rich authoritarian partner. Among them were “serious abuses” in the conflict in neighboring Yemen, including “civilian casualties and damage to civilian infrastructure as a result of airstrikes.”

But in an echo of Saudi protestations about the rationale for the kingdom’s military campaign in Yemen, the report noted that attacks by Houthi militants in Yemen had “caused civilian casualties and damage to infrastructure” in Saudi Arabia.

One positive sign amid the bleak landscape, Mr. Blinken said, was the successful U.S.-led effort last week to suspend Russia from the United Nations Human Rights Council.

“A country that’s perpetrating gross and systemic violations of human rights shouldn’t sit on a body whose job it is to protect those rights,” he said.

Mr. Blinken also urged the Senate to confirm Sarah Margon, Mr. Biden’s nominee to be the State Department’s top official for human rights. Ms. Margon, a former official at Human Rights Watch, was nominated nearly a year ago to be the assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor.

Although she appeared for a confirmation hearing in September, her nomination remains stalled. The top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Jim Risch of Idaho, has criticized Ms. Margon for past tweets he depicted as unduly critical of Israel.

PARIS — France’s presidential election entered a new, intense phase on Tuesday as President Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen, the far-right candidate trying to unseat him, traded barbs from afar and rubbed shoulders with voters in hopes of widening their appeal, especially on the left.

Mr. Macron, who spent the day in eastern France, and Ms. Le Pen, who was campaigning in Normandy, are competing in the second round of voting in the elections, a rematch of their 2017 face-off that will be held on April 24.

In the first round of voting on Sunday, both attracted a bigger share of voters than they did five years ago — Mr. Macron with 27.85 percent of the vote, up from 24.01 in 2017, and Ms. Le Pen, of the National Rally party, with 23.15 percent. It was the largest proportion ever gained by a far-right candidate in the first round of voting, and almost 2 percentage points more than in 2017.

The latest polls predict a very close runoff, and put Mr. Macron only slightly ahead.

With less than two weeks to go before the vote, Mr. Macron has picked up the pace, seeking to dispel criticism that his campaign ahead of the first round was unfocused and that he appeared distracted by his diplomatic efforts to end the war in Ukraine.

In Mulhouse, a city in the Alsace region, Mr. Macron navigated crowds to shake the hands of those who supported him and debate those who did not, many of whom sharply questioned him on issues like purchasing power, welfare benefits and hospital funding.

“I’m on the field,” Mr. Macron pointedly told a scrum of television reporters, emphasizing that for the past two days he had chosen to meet voters in towns that had not voted for him.

He sought to portray Ms. Le Pen as unfit to govern.

Ms. Le Pen, for example, says she has no intention of leaving the European Union — but many of her promised policies would flout its rules. Mr. Macron dismissed her assurances as “carabistouilles,” an old-fashioned term that roughly translates to “claptrap” or “nonsense.”

“The election is also a referendum on Europe,” Mr. Macron said later at a public meeting in Strasbourg, where supporters waved French and European Union flags in the shadow of the city’s imposing cathedral.

Roland Lescure, a lawmaker in France’s lower house of Parliament for Mr. Macron’s party, La République en Marche, said that the campaign was now focused on getting Mr. Macron as much direct face time with voters as possible.

“The method is contact,” Mr. Lescure said, warning that there is a real risk of Ms. Le Pen being elected. “We have to campaign at full speed and until the end.”

Mr. Macron’s stature as a leader who was at the helm throughout the Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine is not enough to secure him a new term, and neither is admonishing voters about the threat of the far right, Mr. Lescure said.

“It’s not the devil against the angel,” he said. “It’s social models that are fundamentally opposed. We need to show what Marine Le Pen’s platform would do to France.”

On Tuesday, Mr. Macron was endorsed by Nicolas Sarkozy, France’s right-wing president from 2007 to 2012. Ms. Le Pen’s campaign unveiled an official poster reminiscent of Mr. Macron’s official presidential portrait. Ms. Le Pen’s has a tagline: “For all the French.”

After the collapse of France’s traditional left-wing and right-wing parties on Sunday, much of the candidates’ energy is now devoted to wooing voters who either abstained in the first round or picked Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the radical leftist and veteran politician who came in a strong third place, with 21.95 percent of the vote.

For Ms. Le Pen, that means highlighting economic proposals like a lower sales tax on essential goods, but also keeping Éric Zemmour, another far-right politician, at arm’s length.

Mr. Zemmour, a pundit who shook up French politics with his presidential bid, came in fourth on Sunday, and polls suggest that over 80 percent of those who picked him in the first round intend to vote for Ms. Le Pen in the second. That gives her little incentive to court them openly as she tries to reinvent herself in the eyes of mainstream voters.

On Tuesday, Ms. Le Pen flatly rejected the possibility of making Mr. Zemmour one of her ministers should she win, telling France Inter radio that “he doesn’t wish to and neither do I.”

For Mr. Macron, attracting Mr. Mélenchon’s voters means toning down proposals that are particularly taboo on the left, especially his plans to raise the legal age of retirement from 62 to 65, which he says is necessary to keep funding France’s state pension system.

On Monday, he insisted that he would gradually push back the retirement age by four months per year starting in 2023, but he said he was open to discussing a softening of the plan in its later stages, although how and to what degree is still unclear. During his first term, Mr. Macron’s pension proposals were derailed by massive strikes and protests.

Ms. Le Pen, speaking Tuesday at a news conference in Vernon, a town in Normandy where she also mingled with crowds, dismissed Mr. Macron’s concession as a feeble attempt to attract left-wing voters, and called his platform “social carnage.”

She detailed several proposals that she hoped would attract voters who supported Mr. Mélenchon, like creating a mechanism for referendums proposed by popular initiative, or introducing proportional representation in Parliament.

“I intend to be a president who gives the people their voice back,” she said.

Mr. Mélenchon was particularly popular with urban voters, coming ahead in cities like Lille, Marseille, Montpellier and Nantes, and he scored high with France’s youth. One study by the Ipsos and Sopra Steria polling institutes found that over 30 percent of those 35 and younger had voted for him, more than for any other candidate.

Marie Montagne, 21, and Ellina Abdellaoui, 22, both English literature students standing in front of the Sorbonne University in Paris, said that Mr. Mélenchon had not necessarily been their first choice — online quizzes suggested to Ms. Abdellaoui that she was most compatible with Philippe Poutou, a fringe anticapitalist candidate.

But Mr. Mélenchon’s leftist, ecological platform was still appealing, they said, and he seemed like the left-wing candidate best positioned to reach the runoff. Now, though, the two students said they faced a difficult choice.

“I am hesitating between abstaining and Macron,” Ms. Abdellaoui said. “I can’t vote for Le Pen.”

Ms. Montagne said she would vote for the incumbent “because I don’t want the smallest chance of the far-right passing.”

“But I won’t vote for him because I enjoy it,” she added.

Adèle Cordonnier contributed reporting.

The U.S. government announced a severe crackdown Tuesday on Daniel Kinahan, the accused head of an Irish organized crime group who has long been involved in boxing, including with one of its biggest stars, Tyson Fury.

Bounties of $5 million were offered for information leading to the arrest and convictions of Kinahan; his father, Christy; and his brother Christy Jr. The U.S. Department of the Treasury also announced financial sanctions against the Kinahans, other members of their group and a number of connected businesses, including a sports management company based in the United Arab Emirates, where U.S. officials say Kinahan now lives.

“The Kinahan Organized Crime Group smuggles deadly narcotics, including cocaine, to Europe, and is a threat to the entire licit economy through its role in international money laundering,” Brian Nelson, the under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence at the Treasury Department, said in a statement.

Kinahan has previously been represented by the British law firm Brandsmiths in defamation cases. Adam Morallee, a partner at Brandsmiths, said in an email that he had “reached out for instructions” but had not yet heard from Kinahan. Kinahan’s lawyers in the United States did not respond to an email requesting comment on the sanctions.

At a news conference in Dublin, Greg Gatjanis, an associate director of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, compared the Kinahan group to the Camorra in Italy, the yakuza in Japan and Los Zetas in Mexico.

Outside Ireland, however, Daniel Kinahan, 44, is best known for his deep influence in boxing. In 2012, he founded MTK Global, a boxing and mixed martial arts company that represents top British boxers like Fury, Billy Joe Saunders and Michael Conlan.

MTK Global, which was not subject to sanctions by the U.S. government, said it cut ties with Kinahan after a shooting in 2016 at the Regency Hotel in Dublin at the weigh-in for a planned boxing match between Jamie Kavanagh and Antonio João Bento. According to reports in the Irish news media, Kinahan is believed to have been the target of the shooting, which killed a Kinahan associate.

John O’Driscoll, an assistant commissioner for the Irish national police service, said the shooting was a pivotal moment that led the police to stop thinking of the Kinahans as a “group of criminals located and engaged in crime in Dublin” and start thinking of them as “being a transnational organized crime group possessed of significant wealth.”

Even after the 2016 shooting, Kinahan’s connections to boxing have endured. In February he posed for a photograph with Fury in Dubai, and last month he posed for a photograph with Mauricio Sulaimán, the president of the World Boxing Council, a sanctioning organization in the sport. Kinahan was also involved in the ultimately failed negotiations to secure a lucrative two-fight deal between Fury and Anthony Joshua.

Athletes and sports officials were urged to cut all ties with the Kinahans by Drew Harris, the head of the national police service in Ireland.

“In terms of some individuals, prominent sporting individuals who are in some way connected with this grouping, I would say you need to look to your sport, to your fans, and think of your own reputation,” Harris said.

Harris also warned British broadcasters who have shown fights featuring Fury and other fighters associated with MTK Global to “look at their own business” and consider if they wanted to still be involved with them.

The sanctions against Kinahan and those associated with the Kinahan organized crime group, which authorities said were worth over a billion dollars, seek to cut them off from much of the world’s financial system. All of their property and money in the United States is blocked, and American citizens, as well as anybody else on U.S. soil, are almost entirely prohibited from engaging in transactions with them.

Inflation hit 8.5 percent in the United States last month, the fastest 12-month pace since 1981, as a surge in gasoline prices tied to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine added to sharp increases coming from the collision of strong demand and stubborn pandemic-related supply shortages.

Fuel prices jumped to record levels across much of the nation and grocery costs soared, the Labor Department said Tuesday in its monthly report on the Consumer Price Index. The price pressures have been painful for American households, especially those that have lower incomes and devote a big share of their budgets to necessities.

But the news was not uniformly bad: A measure that strips out volatile food and fuel prices decelerated slightly from February as used car prices swooned. Economists and policymakers took that as a sign that inflation in goods might be starting to cool off after climbing at a breakneck pace for much of the past year.

In fact, several economists said March may be a high-water mark for overall inflation. Price increases could begin abating in the coming months in part because gasoline prices have declined somewhat — the national average for a gallon was $4.10 on Tuesday, according to AAA, down from a $4.33 peak in March. Some researchers also expect consumers to stop buying so many goods, whether furniture or outdoor equipment, which could begin to take pressure off overtaxed supply chains.

“These numbers are likely to represent something of a peak,” said Gregory Daco, the chief economist at Ernst & Young’s strategy consultancy, EY-Parthenon. Still, he said, it will be crucial to watch whether price increases excluding food and fuel — so-called core prices — slow down in the months ahead.

A letup would be welcome news for the White House, because inflation has become a major liability for Democrats as midterm elections approach in November. Public confidence in the economy has fallen sharply, and as rapid price increases undermine support for President Biden and his party, they could imperil their control of Congress.

While inflation is up across much of the world as economies adjust to the pandemic and share supply-chain problems, core prices have risen more sharply in the United States than in places like Europe and Japan.

That has handed Republicans a talking point, especially as prices overwhelm recent wage growth. Average hourly earnings were up 5.6 percent in March, according to the Labor Department. But adjusted for inflation, average pay was down 2.7 percent.

“Americans’ paychecks are worth less and less each month,” Senator Patrick J. Toomey, Republican of Pennsylvania, wrote on Twitter after the report.

While the Federal Reserve has primary responsibility for controlling inflation, the administration has taken steps to combat price increases. Mr. Biden announced on Tuesday that a summertime ban on sales of higher-ethanol gasoline blends would be suspended this year, a move that White House officials said was aimed at lowering gas prices.

The action followed the president’s decision last month to release one million barrels of oil a day from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve over the next six months.

“I’m doing everything within my powers, by executive order, to bring down the prices and address the Putin price hike,” Mr. Biden said in Iowa on Tuesday afternoon, referring to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. Inflation had risen sharply before the war in Ukraine, though the conflict has added to the pressure on energy and commodity prices.

There are a few hopeful signs that inflation could slow in the months ahead.

The first is largely mechanical. Prices began to pop last spring, which means changes will be measured against a higher year-ago number in the months ahead.

More fundamentally, March’s data showed that prices for some goods, including used cars and apparel, moderated or even fell — though the signal was somewhat inconsistent, with furniture prices rising sharply. If rapid inflation in prices for goods does wane, it could help overall inflation subside.

“It’s very welcome to see the moderation in this category,” said Lael Brainard, a Fed governor and Mr. Biden’s nominee to be the central bank’s next vice chair, in an online appearance hosted by The Wall Street Journal. “I’ll be looking to see whether we continue to see moderation in the months ahead.”

Between the slowdown in gasoline prices this month and a potential easing of goods prices, even economists who have long expressed concern about inflation said it might begin to ease.

“It’s better-than-even odds that we’re not going to see a number above 8.5 percent this year,” said Jason Furman, a Harvard economist who served as chair of President Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers.

But even if inflation slows slightly, it is likely to spend 2022 running far above the Fed’s goal, which it defines as 2 percent on average using a related but more delayed price index.

The critical question is how much and how quickly prices will come down, and recent developments ramp up the risks that uncomfortably rapid inflation could linger.

Services costs, including rent and other housing expenses, are increasing more rapidly. Those measures move slowly, and are likely to be a major factor determining the course of inflation.

Wages are up sharply, pushing costs up for employers and potentially prompting them to lift prices. Businesses may feel that they have the power to pass rising costs along to customers, and even to expand their profits, because consumers have continued to spend during a full year of rapid price increases.

And cheaper goods are not guaranteed. A coronavirus outbreak is shuttering cities and disrupting production in China, and the war in Ukraine adds a huge dose of uncertainty about commodity prices and supply chains.

“The impact from these commodity price shocks, they can take a while to make it through the economy,” said Tim Mahedy, senior economist at the tax and advisory firm KPMG U.S.

After a long stretch of rapid inflation, America’s central bank is reacting, rather than waiting to see what happens next. Fed officials began raising interest rates last month and have signaled that they will continue to push them up “expeditiously” as they try to rein in lending, spending and demand, hoping to prevent steep price increases from becoming a more permanent feature of the U.S. economy.

“It’s been a shock: We went for a decade in which we could not get inflation to 2 percent,” Christopher J. Waller, a Fed governor, said during an event on Monday. “We’re hoping that it will go away relatively fast, that’s our job, and we’re going to get it done.”

Policymakers are expected to make a half-point interest rate increase at their meeting in early May, and have indicated that they will soon begin to quickly shrink their bond holdings, a change that should reinforce higher rates and soften demand. Ms. Brainard suggested on Tuesday that such a plan could be announced as soon as May, and go into effect as soon as June.

While she predicted that consumer demand would ease in the coming months as the government provided less financial help to households than in 2021 and as borrowing costs climbed, Ms. Brainard cited the war in Ukraine and Chinese lockdowns as risks that could curtail supply and keep inflation elevated.

In a recent Bloomberg survey of economists, the median inflation forecast for the final three months of this year was 5.4 percent over the prior year — well above the Fed’s goal. Businesses and consumers regularly say rapid inflation is disrupting their economic lives, and many are voicing concerns that it will not quickly evaporate.

“Even if the economy slows down, it’s not going to feel like it’s slowed down to the builders, to people that have building products companies, to the trucking companies,” said Crissy Wieck, chief sales officer at the trucking company Western Express, during a Fed-hosted panel on Monday.

She noted that truckers typically buy trucks when shipping demand is as hot as it is now, lured by the promise of high pay — but because of a truck shortage, that additional capacity could be years away.

“That supply chain and supply-demand ratio isn’t going to correct,” she said.

Ben Casselman and Ana Swanson contributed reporting.