Obama: support democratically elected government

The White House has just released a statement on the reports of an attempted coup, saying that Barack Obama and secretary of state John Kerry “agreed that all parties in Turkey should support the democratically-elected Government of Turkey, show restraint, and avoid any violence or bloodshed”.
The state department will “continue to focus on the safety and security of US citizens in Turkey,” the statement added.

A terrorist who used a hired lorry to kill at least 84 people in a rampage during Bastille Day celebrations in Nice has been named as a convicted criminal well known to the police for armed attacks. Tunisian-born Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, a 31-year-old delivery driver, was reported to be a French passport holder who lived in the Riviera city and was regularly in trouble with the law.

At least 10 children are among the dead following the "cowardly and barbaric" atrocity that left at least one British national among the many injured. Officials feared the death toll will rise, as dramatic footage emerged of the mass killer being shot dead by police in the cab of his truck.  As hundreds remained in hospital - including 18 fighting for their lives in intensive care - investigators have been searching the home of Bouhlel in the Abattoirs area of Nice and carried out a controlled explosion on a white box van nearby...The fact that the killer was known to the authorities will be of grave concern to those trying to prevent terrorist attacks in France.  A recent Paris parliamentary investigation into last year’s attacks identified multiple failings by France’s intelligence agencies.  New Prime Minister Theresa May said Britain must redouble its efforts to defeat  "brutal" terrorist "murderers" after the "horrifying" attack, as she called a meeting of senior officials in the Government's  emergency Cobra committee. 

The new British prime minister, Theresa May, took office on Wednesday (13 July) amid indications she might not be an easy partner for the EU in talks to organise the UK's exit from the bloc.

In phone talks with German chancellor Angela Merkel, French president Francois Hollande and Irish prime minister Enda Kenny, she said the UK would "need some time to prepare" for Brexit negotiations. She added she hoped the talks "could be conducted in a constructive and positive spirit", according to her office. But EU leaders have started to put pressure on her to trigger Article 50, the procedure to exit the EU. Hollande "repeated his desire that negotiations for Britain's exit from the European Union should be launched as quickly as possible", a statement from his office said.  In his congratulation letter to May, European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker said that the UK and the EU had to "address soon" the "new situation" created by the Brexit vote on 23 June.

He added he looked forward to learning about May's "intentions in this regard."

On Sunday, Merkel had told Germany's ZDF channel that "the decision has been taken … and the next step is to invoke Article 50." In an interview with the Polish weekly Politiyka, European Council president Donald Tusk said on Wednesday that "no-one should be seething with desire to punish, humiliate [the UK] for what they have done to us", but he added that "we cannot let them profit from Brexit, as that would be lethal for the EU"  In her first statement as prime minister, Theresa May focused on domestic issues and did not develop her views on Brexit. "We are living through an important moment in our country’s history. Following the referendum, we face a time of great national change," she said.

Conservative leadership candidate Andrea Leadsom has announced she is pulling out of the race to replace David Cameron as prime minister. The energy minister has paved the way for Home Secretary Theresa May, as the only remaining candidate, to become Tory leader and Prime Minister - and she is expected to make a statement at 5pm today.  Mrs Leadsom said: "The best interests of our country inspired me to stand for the leadership. I believe that in leaving the EU a bright future awaits, where all our people can share in a new prosperity, freedom and democracy...  Theresa May learned that she was to become Prime Minister in a side room in an unprepossessing venue a stone’s throw from the International Conference Centre in central Birmingham. Normally the nearest the “IET Events and Weddings venue” gets to political history is when it hosts fringe meetings organised by right wing thinktanks when the Conservative party conference is being held at the nearby ICC. The Home Secretary had just given a 20 minute speech to launch what she thought would be the beginning of a nine week Conservative leadership campaign in which she had made a bold claim to orientate her premiership around the needs and interests of blue collar Tories.

In Theresa May, the British home secretary who is set to become the next prime minister of the UK on Wednesday (13 July), the EU will get a pragmatic, meticulous and tough negotiator, who is unlikely to rush into Brexit talks. The 59-year-old is likely to use the summer to hammer out a negotiating position for Britain to leave the EU.  May, who was a quiet supporter of the Remain camp, ruled out a second referendum in her leadership campaign and vowed to honour the British voters' choice of leaving the EU. “Brexit means Brexit and we’re going to make a success of it,” she said when she launched her leadership bid for the Conservative Party.  “There will be no attempts to remain inside the EU, no attempts to rejoin it by the back door, and no second referendum.” May is unlikely to bow to pressure from EU leaders to start negotiations by triggering Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty any time soon. Until the procedure is officially launched, the UK remains in control of timing and can still be at the table of the EU as a full member. She might use the time to feel out what other leaders are ready to give to the UK, and build alliances among the remaining 27 members. The EU 27 will meet in September without the UK to discuss the EU's future, and May will be ushered into her first EU summit in late October.

EU leaders are likely to want to hear how she envisages the British exit and future relationships with the block.  May needs to navigate between more pragmatic states like Germany, Sweden, Ireland and the Netherlands that would want to maintain strong trading ties with the UK, and others like Belgium and France that are likely to want to make an example out of Britain. Central and Eastern European states could be sympathetic to May, as they share the UK's view of the EU as a loose cooperation, not a federal state, but rights and benefits of their citizens living and working in the UK could mean trouble for the talks.  France's presidential election in May, and Germany's general election next autumn could complicate matters, as their leaders are likely to be grounded by election campaigns and would be less flexible in the negotiations.   May might want to delay launching Article 50 further into next year, not to have Brexit negotiations held hostage by the various campaigns.  British media reported that May could appoint Liam Fox, a previous contender for the Tory leadership, or David Davis, another senior Tory MP, both Brexiteers as lead negotiatiors for the talks with the EU.

Davis suggested in a blog post that triggering Article 50 should happen before or by the beginning of next year.

The IMF said the UK's looming exit from the EU would hurt eurozone trade as the referendum result was "likely to lead to persistent uncertainty" regarding its future relationship with the bloc.  "A slowdown in global growth could also undermine the recovery and raise the likelihood of stagnation," the IMF said in its latest evaluation of the eurozone. Financial markets and business confidence would also be hit, while slower growth would also mean inflation was likely to be weaker in the short to medium term.  The IMF said rising euro scepticism had created "stark political divisions" in the bloc, hindering any "collective will to take crucial decisions for a stronger union", such as dealing with the refugee crisis.

It came as ratings agency Moody's warned that the rise of populism could "threaten the existence" of the eurozone and the wider EU, if anti-establishment movements gained traction ahead of elections in Germany and France next year. "In the long run, the potential strengthening of these movements could have detrimental implications for the continued cohesiveness of the EU and the euro area," it said. "The fragmentation of the EU could also encourage protectionist tendencies in a number of countries, and therefore seriously challenge, and ultimately reverse, the past few decades of increased globalisation... thwart the long-term growth prospects of individual economies and slow the catch-up of less developed countries." Moody's downgraded its UK growth forecast to 1.5pc this year and 1.2pc in 2017, from previous forecasts of 1.8pc and 2.1pc.

Growth across the eurozone would also be weaker, it said, though the impact of the Brexit vote on the US economy was expected to be limited.

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The argument between the two heads of the dragon called the EU is the main hurdle to the transformations and reforms that the ones who have been hit by the wave of the Brexit vote. Aside from some cosmetic measures, if they even do get taken, most likely the EU will forget the need to bring up again a constitutional project that would end the institutional aberrations, the massive democratic shortcomings, the huge waste of funds and the inability to decide precisely on the most serious issues that need to be resolved, from the energy policies, to security and financial and budgetary ones, all the way to those that concern the control of individual movement in the EU space, whether it is the control of borders, legal or illegal immigration or professional mobility caused by the dynamic of the workforce.  There is no doubt, the EU should learn something, with both of its heads: "Or first of all, history teaches us that a people that doesn't move forwards is standing still, in fact it is going backwards, that the law of progress is like that, the quicker you move, the farther you get." But I am afraid that not even one of the heads of the EU will get to that wisdom on its own, and if they do, they'll fail to agree on how to use it. Just like the Brits who one day found themselves that not only are they not going forward, but they're actually going backwards!!!