Americans among group arrested in Haiti with arsenal of guns: media

PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) - Haitian police arrested a group of foreign nationals, including five Americans, armed with semi-automatic weapons, Haitian newspapers reported on Monday, adding to uncertainty in the impoverished Caribbean country after days of anti-government protests. The U.S. State Department was aware that Haitian police arrested a group that included U.S. citizens, an official at the department said on Monday. Haitian police did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Haitian newspaper Le Nouvelliste reported that seven foreigners and a Haitian were in the group picked up by police on Sunday night. Police found rifles, pistols, drones and satellite phones in their two vehicles, the newspaper said. Other media said several of the men were U.S. citizens, one was Serbian and another from Russia. Haitian newspapers printed names that corresponded to social media profiles of U.S. citizens claiming military backgrounds.

The State Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said U.S. citizens arrested overseas were entitled to appropriate consular assistance. The official declined to provide further comment, citing privacy. Reuters was not immediately able to independently confirm the identities of the arrested men. Since Feb. 7, thousands of demonstrators have called for President Jovenel Moise to resign and for an independent probe into the whereabouts of funds from the PetroCaribe agreement, an alliance between Caribbean countries and OPEC member Venezuela. The State Department last week ordered the departure of all non-emergency U.S. personnel and their families from Haiti, and advised U.S. citizens not to travel there.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-haiti-protests-americans/americans-among-group-arrested-in-haiti-with-arsenal-of-guns-media-idUSKCN1Q71I9

Canada PM's chief secretary resigns amid SNC-Lavalin controversy

(Reuters) - A top aide to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau resigned unexpectedly on Monday amid allegations Trudeau’s office had pressured the former justice minister to help construction firm SNC-Lavalin Group Inc avoid criminal prosecution.

Gerald Butts, Trudeau’s principal private secretary and a key architect of the Liberals’ 2015 election victory, said in a statement he did not pressure then-Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould over SNC-Lavalin. Trudeau, who faces a re-election bid in October, has faced criticism since Wilson-Raybould quit his Cabinet following a Globe and Mail newspaper report this month that officials in Trudeau’s office had urged her to let SNC-Lavalin escape with a fine rather than face trial on charges of bribing Libyan officials.

SNC-Lavalin has said it had sought to avoid a corruption trial because the executives accused of wrongdoing had left the company and it had overhauled its ethics and compliance systems. Any accusation that “I or the staff put pressure on the Attorney General (Wilson-Raybould) is not true,” Butts said in the statement on Monday. He added that the allegation was distracting from the “vital work” Trudeau was doing and that it was in the best interest of the Prime Minister’s Office for him to step aside.

Trudeau accepted Butts’ resignation and said he had served the country with “integrity, sage advice and devotion.” “I want to thank him for his service and continued friendship,” Trudeau said in a post on Twitter. Neither Butts nor chief Trudeau spokesman Cameron Ahmad was immediately available for comment. Butts, 47, has known Trudeau for more than 25 years, going back to when they were students at McGill University in Montreal. Along with Trudeau’s chief of staff, Katie Telford, Butts is widely credited with helping Trudeau’s Liberals win a surprise election victory in October 2015.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-canada-politics-snc-lavalin/canada-pms-chief-secretary-resigns-amid-snc-lavalin-controversy-idUSKCN1Q71SK

Venezuela stages own concerts in response to Branson's Live Aid show

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela’s government will stage two concerts on the Colombian border this weekend to compete with a “Live Aid”-style show announced by British billionaire Richard Branson to raise funds for food and medicine for the South American country. Increasingly internationally isolated President Nicolas Maduro, who denies there is a humanitarian crisis in Venezuela, says Western relief efforts coordinated by the opposition are part of a U.S.-orchestrated coup to overthrow him.

Branson said last week he was organizing a concert on Feb. 22 to raise funds for aid for Venezuela in the Colombian border city of Cucuta, where donations provided by the United States and others are already being stockpiled. The move has evoked comparisons to Irish rock star Bob Geldof’s global Live Aid concert to raise money for famine relief in Ethiopia. Branson has said he wants to raise $100 million in 60 days.

Venezuelan Information Minister Jorge Rodriguez said on Monday that the government was also planning concerts on Feb. 22 and 23, on the Simon Bolivar bridge connecting the country with Cucuta, with the slogan “nothing for war, hands off Venezuela”. The government would also hand out food to poor residents of Cucuta this weekend, he said in televised statements - a “cynical” move, according to opposition leader Juan Guaido, given shortages of food in Venezuela. Guaido last month invoked constitutional provisions to assume the presidency, arguing Maduro was re-elected in a sham election, and has since been recognized as Venezuela’s legitimate leader by dozens of nations. He said on Monday that the government’s statements would not alter the opposition’s plans to bring in aid from neighboring countries via land and sea on Saturday with the help of volunteers nationwide. “This does not in the slightest change our plan to generate pressure, to ensure the arrival of the aid,” Guaido said at a news briefing. “If it doesn’t enter on the twenty-third, it will enter on the twenty-fourth, it will enter on the twenty-fifth” of February. The opposition has urged the military, which remains loyal to Maduro, to let the aid in. Analysts say that would seriously undermine Maduro’s authority and could lead to his ouster. In a speech late on Monday, U.S. President Donald Trump warned members of Venezuela’s military who are helping Maduro to stay in power that they are risking their future and their lives and urged them to allow humanitarian aid into the country.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-politics/venezuela-stages-own-concerts-in-response-to-bransons-live-aid-show-idUSKCN1Q71RT

Poland pulls out of Israel summit in row over WW2 role

WARSAW/JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Poland pulled out of a planned summit in Israel after Israel’s acting foreign minister said on Monday that “many Poles” had collaborated with the Nazis in World War Two and shared responsibility for the Holocaust. Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki branded the remarks “racist and unacceptable”. He had previously said he would not join Tuesday’s gathering of central European leaders in Israel, sending instead a lower-level delegation, but said on Monday that no Polish officials would now attend. “Not only can we not accept such racist comments, but with all our strength we want to stress that we will fight for historical truth, for the honor of Poles,” he told reporters. The leaders of the other three ‘Visegrad Group’ nations - Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia - all still planned to attend the talks, Israel said, but Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis said they would instead consist of bilateral discussions and that the summit would be rescheduled for later in 2019.

Poland’s right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) government has made what it sees as the defense of national honor over its wartime record a cornerstone of foreign policy since taking power in 2015. Many Poles refuse to accept research showing thousands of their countrymen participated in the Holocaust in addition to thousands of others who risked their lives to help the Jews. They say Warsaw’s Western allies have also failed to acknowledge the scale of Poland’s own suffering under wartime occupation. The diplomatic row between Poland and Israel has been escalating since Friday, when Israeli media reported remarks by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday suggesting Polish complicity in the Holocaust.

Israel’s Acting Foreign Minister Israel Katz exacerbated the dispute on Monday when he told Israel’s Army Radio: “Many Poles collaborated with the Nazis and took part in the destruction of the Jews during the Holocaust.” Katz also quoted comments attributed to Israel’s late prime minister Yitzhak Shamir: “Shamir said that every Pole suckled anti-Semitism with his mother’s milk. Nobody will tell us how to express our stance and how to honor the dead.”

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-poland/poland-pulls-out-of-israel-summit-in-row-over-ww2-role-idUSKCN1Q70GF