Zelensky, European leaders head to US for talks on peace deal terms

US President Donald Trump said reclaiming Crimea or entering NATO were off the table for Ukraine, as President Volodymyr Zelensky arrived in Washington for Monday talks aimed at ending the war with Russia.Zelensky, who has repeatedly rejected territorial concessions, will meet Trump in Washington on Monday, accompanied by European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen and other leaders.The meeting comes on the heels of a summit between Trump and Russia’s Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday, which failed to yield a ceasefire breakthrough but produced promises from both leaders to provide “robust security guarantees” to Ukraine.Zelensky was not invited to the Alaska meeting, after which Trump pivoted to the long-held Russian position that a ceasefire was not needed before a final peace deal.”President Zelenskyy of Ukraine can end the war with Russia almost immediately, if he wants to, or he can continue to fight,” Trump posted on his social media platform. “Remember how it started. No getting back Obama given Crimea (12 years ago, without a shot being fired!), and NO GOING INTO NATO BY UKRAINE. Some things never change!!!”Trump and Zelensky are expected to meet one-on-one before being joined by a cohort of European leaders on Monday, according to the White House schedule.Along with von der Leyen, NATO chief Mark Rutte and the leaders of Britain, Finland, France, Germany and Italy will be present.It will be the first time Zelensky visits Washington since a bust-up with Trump and Vice President JD Vance in February when the two men berated the Ukrainian leader for being “ungrateful.”On Sunday night, after arriving in Washington, Zelensky said: “We all share a strong desire to end this war quickly and reliably.”- Security guarantees -Since the Oval Office row in February, Trump has grown more critical of Putin and shown some signs of frustration as Russia repeatedly stalled on peace talks.But Washington has not placed extra sanctions on Moscow and the lavish welcome offered to Putin in Alaska on his first visit to the West since he invaded Ukraine in 2022 was seen as a diplomatic coup for Russia.Speaking in Brussels on the eve of his visit to the United States, Zelensky said he was keen to hear more about what Putin and Trump discussed in Alaska.He also hailed Washington’s offer of security guarantees to Ukraine as “historic.”Trump said he spoke to Putin about the possibility of a NATO-style collective defense guarantee for Ukraine.The promise would be outside of the framework of the Western military alliance that Ukraine wants to join and which is seen as an existential threat by Russia.French President Emmanuel Macron said European leaders would ask Trump “to what extent” Washington is ready to contribute to security guarantees for Ukraine.- Discussion on land -Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff said Moscow had made “some concessions” regarding five Ukrainian regions that Russia fully or partially controls, and said that “there is an important discussion with regard to Donetsk and what would happen there.”That discussion is going to specifically be detailed on Monday,” he said, without giving details.Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 following a sham referendum and did the same in 2022 for four Ukrainian regions — Donetsk, Kherson, Lugansk and Zaporizhzhia — even though its forces have not fully captured them.A source briefed on a phone call between Trump and European leaders on Saturday told AFP that the US leader was “inclined to support” a Russian demand to be given territory it has not yet captured in the Donbas, an area that includes the Donetsk and Lugansk regions and which has seen the deadliest battles of the war.In exchange, the source cited Trump as saying, Moscow would agree to “freeze” the front line in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, where Russian forces hold swathes of territory but not the regional capitals.Russia has until now insisted that Ukraine pull its forces out of all four regions as a precondition to any deal.- ‘Capitulation’ -There is concern in Europe that Washington could pressure Ukraine to accept Russia’s terms.”For peace to prevail, pressure must be applied to the aggressor, not the victim of aggression,” Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said Sunday.Macron said: “There is only one state proposing a peace that would be a capitulation: Russia.”Zelensky has repeatedly pushed back against ceding territory, but said he is ready to discuss the issue in the context of a trilateral summit with Trump and Putin.Trump has raised the possibility of such a meeting, but Russia has played down the prospect.Moscow’s forces have been advancing gradually but steadily in Ukraine, particularly in the Donetsk region.Russian attacks on Kharkiv killed three people and wounded dozens more, Ukrainian authorities said Monday, while a separate overnight attack on the Sumy region near the border wounded two others. 

Australie: Qantas condamnée à verser 50 millions d’euros pour licenciements illégaux durant la pandémie

Un tribunal australien a condamné lundi la compagnie aérienne Qantas à verser 50 millions d’euros en raison du licenciement jugé illégal de quelque 1.800 membres de son personnel au sol durant la pandémie de Covid.Le juge de la Cour fédérale Michael Lee a déclaré que cette décision avait vocation à constituer une “véritable dissuasion” pour les employeurs qui seraient tentés d’enfreindre le droit du travail.Sur ces 50 millions d’euros, 28 millions iront au Syndicat des travailleurs des transports. Les 22 autres millions seront destinés à des paiements futurs aux anciens employés de Qantas.Cette décision met un terme à une bataille judiciaire de plusieurs années entre les syndicats et la compagnie aérienne.Qantas avait décidé de renvoyer ces travailleurs et de faire appel à la sous-traitance en août 2020, alors que le secteur du transport aérien faisait face aux fermetures généralisées de frontières et aux mesures de confinement face au Covid, pour lequel aucun vaccin n’avait encore été mis au point.La Cour fédérale avait déjà jugé que Qantas avait agi illégalement puisqu’elle avait empêché les membres de son personnel à exercer leurs droits à mener une négociation collective et faire grève. La Cour avait ensuite rejeté l’appel de l’entreprise.Ces 50 millions d’euros s’ajoutent à quelque 67 millions d’euros d’indemnisation que Qantas avait accepté l’an dernier de débourser à l’attention de ses anciens employés.La compagnie vieille de 104 ans, surnommée l'”Esprit de l’Australie”, cherche à se refaire une réputation, après ces licenciements massifs, l’augmentation de ses prix, des critiques négatives quant à la qualité de ses services ou encore la vente de billets sur des vols pourtant annulés.Sa directrice générale Vanessa Hudson, qui a pris ses fonctions en 2023, a promis une amélioration de la satisfaction de la clientèle.Dans un communiqué, Qantas a annoncé qu’elle paierait les 50 millions d’euros demandés par la Cour fédérale. “La décision d’externalisation d’il y a cinq ans, en particulier à une époque pleine d’incertitudes, a provoqué de véritables difficultés chez nombre de nos anciens collègues et leurs familles”, a décrit Mme Hudson dans ce communiqué. “Nous présentons nos excuses les plus sincères à chacun des 1.820 employés de manutention”, a-t-elle ajouté.Après “cinq longues années, aujourd’hui est un jour de victoire, non seulement pour nos collègues mais aussi pour tous les travailleurs australiens”, s’est réjouie Anne Guirguis, qui a nettoyé des avions de la compagnie pendant 27 ans avant d’être renvoyée.”Nous pouvons refermer ce chapitre et passer maintenant à autre chose”, a-t-elle déclaré à la presse à l’extérieur du tribunal.Le secrétaire national du Syndicat des travailleurs des transports, Michael Kaine, a applaudi la décision, une “victoire définitive” pour les ex-travailleurs de la compagnie, dont “beaucoup ont découvert par un haut-parleur dans la salle de déjeuner qu’ils avaient perdu leur emploi”, a affirmé M. Kaine.

Tourism deal puts one of Egypt’s last wild shores at riskMon, 18 Aug 2025 03:22:51 GMT

In Egypt’s Wadi al-Gemal, where swimmers share a glistening bay with sea turtles, a shadowy tourism deal is threatening one of the Red Sea’s last wild shores.Off Ras Hankorab, the endangered green turtles weave between coral gardens that marine biologists call among the most resilient to climate change in the world.By night in nesting season, …

Tourism deal puts one of Egypt’s last wild shores at riskMon, 18 Aug 2025 03:22:51 GMT Read More »

Tourism deal puts one of Egypt’s last wild shores at risk

In Egypt’s Wadi al-Gemal, where swimmers share a glistening bay with sea turtles, a shadowy tourism deal is threatening one of the Red Sea’s last wild shores.Off Ras Hankorab, the endangered green turtles weave between coral gardens that marine biologists call among the most resilient to climate change in the world.By night in nesting season, they crawl ashore under the Milky Way’s glow, undisturbed by artificial lights.So when excavators rolled onto the sand in March, reserve staff and conservationists sounded the alarm.Thousands signed a petition to “Save Hankorab” after discovering a contract between an unnamed government entity and an investment company to build a resort.The environment ministry — which has jurisdiction over the park — protested, construction was halted and the machinery quietly removed.But months later, parliamentary requests for details have gone unanswered, and insiders say the plans remain alive.”Only certain kinds of tourism development work for a beach like this,” said Mahmoud Hanafy, a marine biology professor and scientific adviser to the Red Sea governorate.”Noise, lights, heavy human activity — they could destroy the ecosystem.”Hankorab sits inside Wadi al-Gemal National Park, declared a protected area in 2003.- Coastal expansion -The UN Development Programme (UNDP) describes it as home to “some of the last undisturbed natural beaches on the Southern Red Sea coast” — an area now caught between environmental protection and Egypt’s urgent push for investment.Egypt, mired in its worst economic crisis in decades, is betting big on its 3,000 kilometres of coastline as a revenue source.A $35-billion deal with the United Arab Emirates to develop Ras al-Hekma on the Mediterranean set the tone, and similar proposals for the Red Sea have followed.In June, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi allocated 174,400 square kilometres (67,300 square miles)of Red Sea land to the finance ministry to help cut public debt.The Red Sea — where tourism is the main employer — is key to Cairo’s plan to attract 30 million visitors by 2028, double today’s numbers.Yet the UNDP warned as early as 2019 that Egyptian tourism growth had “largely been at the expense of the environment”.Since then, luxury resorts and gated compounds have spread along hundreds of kilometres, displacing communities and damaging fragile habitats.”The goal is to make as much money as possible from developing these reserves, which means destroying them,” said environmental lawyer Ahmed al-Seidi.”It also violates the legal obligations of the nature reserves law.”- Legal limbo -At Hankorab, Hanafy says the core problem is legal.”The company signed a contract with a government entity other than the one managing the reserve,” he said.If true, Seidi says, the deal is “null and void”.When construction was reported in March, MP Maha Abdel Nasser sought answers from the environment ministry and the prime minister -— but got none.At a subsequent meeting, officials could not identify the company behind the project, and no environmental impact report was produced.Construction is still halted, “which is reassuring, at least for now”, Abdel Nasser said. “But there are no guarantees about the future.”For now, the most visible change is a newly built gate marked “Ras Hankorab” in Latin letters.Entry now costs 300 Egyptian pounds ($6) — five times more than before — with tickets that do not name the issuing authority.An employee who started in March recalls that before the project there were “only a few umbrellas and unusable bathrooms”.Today, there are new toilets, towels and sun loungers, with a cafe and restaurant promised soon.The legal and environmental uncertainty remains, leaving Hankorab’s future — and the management of one of Egypt’s last undisturbed Red Sea beaches — unresolved.

Australian court fines Qantas US$59 million for illegal layoffs

An Australian court fined Qantas Aus$90 million (US$59 million) on Monday for illegally laying off 1,800 ground staff during the Covid-19 pandemic, ending a five-year legal battle over the workers’ rights.Federal Court Justice Michael Lee said he wanted the penalty to be a “real deterrence” to firms that might be tempted by the financial rewards of breaching employment law.Qantas decided to sack the workers and outsource their jobs in August 2020, a period of lockdowns and border closures when no Covid-19 vaccine was widely available.Australia’s Federal Court subsequently found that Qantas had acted illegally despite its stated “commercial imperatives” because it prevented staff from accessing their rights to collectively bargain or take industrial action.It later dismissed an appeal by the airline.Long-dubbed the “Spirit of Australia”, 104-year-old Qantas has been on a mission to repair its reputation, which was hit in recent years by the illegal sackings, soaring ticket prices, claims of sloppy service, and the selling of seats on already-cancelled flights.Qantas chief executive Vanessa Hudson took over in 2023, promising to improve customer satisfaction. She replaced Alan Joyce, who stepped down earlier than planned as Qantas endured criticism over its treatment of workers and passengers, despite delivering bumper profits for shareholders.- ‘We sincerely apologise’ -Qantas said it accepted the penalty.”The decision to outsource five years ago, particularly during such an uncertain time, caused genuine hardship for many of our former team and their families,” Hudson said.”We sincerely apologise to each and every one of the 1,820 ground handling employees and to their families who suffered as a result,” she said in a statement.Qantas had worked for 18 months to change the way it works and “rebuild trust”, the airline boss said.”This remains our highest priority as we work to earn back the trust we lost.”Qantas’ fine is to be paid in two parts, the court said, with Aus$50 million going to the Transport Workers Union and Aus$40 million being held for future payments to the former workers.The penalty is in addition to a compensation payment of Aus$120 million for affected former employees that Qantas agreed to last year.”It has been five long years. Today is a victory, not just for our colleagues but for all Australian workers,” said Anne Guirguis, who worked at Qantas for 27 years cleaning aircraft before being laid off.”We can close this chapter and move on now,” Guirguis told reporters outside court. Transport Workers’ Union National Secretary Michael Kaine described Monday’s decision as a “final win” for the Qantas workers.”Qantas was not sorry to workers when it illegally outsourced these workers, many finding out they’d lost their jobs over a loudspeaker in the lunch room,” Kaine said.”Qantas is only sorry now that it has to pay the largest penalty fine of any employer in Australian corporate history.” 

Games industry in search of new winning combo at Gamescom 2025

The global games industry gathers for the vast Gamescom trade fair in Cologne this week, with hopes that upcoming heavy-hitters like “GTA VI” can help the industry escape its doldrums.Tuesday’s opening night event will show off major releases slated for the months ahead, with the starring role going to “Black Ops 7” — the new instalment in the sprawling “Call of Duty” saga.Trade visitors will have Wednesday to peruse the stands and make connections, before tens of thousands of enthusiastic gamers are unleashed on the vast salon from Thursday to Sunday.Last year’s Gamescom drew almost 335,000 people to the Cologne exhibition centre, where studios lay on vast stands with consoles or PCs offering hands-on play with the latest releases.Nintendo is back in 2025 after staying away last year, surfing on record launch sales for its Switch 2 console.And Microsoft’s Xbox gaming division will show off new portable hardware expected to be released towards the end of the year.Sony, the Japanese giant behind the PlayStation, has opted out this time around.The mood is mixed for the roughly 1,500 exhibitors attending this year, as major publishers have recently steered back into profitability but the job cuts seen over the past two years continue.In early July, Microsoft said it would lay off around 9,000 people, with hundreds leaving game studios like “Candy Crush” developer King and several games cancelled, including “Perfect Dark” and “Everwild”.- Battle for attention -“The industry is consolidating quite a bit” after the bumper years when Covid-19 lockdowns created a captive audience, said Rhys Elliott of specialist games data firm Alinea Analytics.Around 30,000 workers have lost their jobs since early 2023, according to tracking site Games Industry Layoffs — more than 4,000 of them so far this year.Revenue in the global games market should hold steady at just under $190 billion this year, data firm Newzoo has forecast.The number of players and hours spent with the medium are stable while an ever-expanding number of titles are jostling for attention.And with leviathans like “Roblox” or “Fortnite” swallowing the attention of hundreds of millions of monthly users, “everyone’s fighting for a smaller share of that pie,” said Circana expert Mat Piscatella.The need to find new audiences has pushed Microsoft’s Xbox, the biggest games publisher in the world, to switch strategy, increasingly offering its titles on competing console makers’ hardware.”They’ve had really great success on the PlayStation platform. Sony is making a bunch of money on that too,” Piscatella said”It’s a little bit of a win-win all the way around.”Some PlayStation games are making the trip in the opposite direction, with “Helldivers 2” the first to be made available on Xbox as well as the traditional PC port.- Success on a budget -Shoring up sales is vital in an era where the cost of developing high-spec “AAA” games has mounted into the hundreds of millions of dollars — exposing studios to massive risk should their games not perform as hoped.But several breakout hits have recently shown that lower-budget games can still win over players with gameplay, story and art style, such as four-million-selling French turn-based battler “Clair Obscur: Expedition 33″.”There’s a realisation you don’t need to spend masses of money to deliver a high-quality game that can appeal broadly and so everyone is rushing towards that model,” said Christopher Dring, founder of industry website The Game Business.But “for every ‘Clair Obscur’ success story, there are 10 games that fail to find an audience at all,” Piscatella pointed out.”It’s hyper-competitive for those products outside of that big sphere” and smaller developers must fight hard for the funding they need to get games to market.Nor is the cult-hit trend likely to displace the mega-budget mastodons.Analysts predict that Rockstar Games’ vast “Grand Theft Auto VI” could notch up the biggest launch for any entertainment product in history.That might be the juice the flagging industry needs to regain some of its mojo.