EU able to withhold funds from Hungary, Poland, top court rules
BRUSSELS — The European Union’s highest court said Wednesday that the 27-nation bloc can suspend support payments to member states if they breach rule of law principles.
The right-wing governments of Hungary and Poland, which had challenged the EU’s right to take such action, responded by arguing that the rule lacked a proper legal basis and would fundamentally interfere with their running of national business.
Both nations have come under increasing criticism over the past few years for veering away from democratic norms with policies such as exerting excessive control over the judiciary, stifling media freedom and denying the rights of LGBT people.
When it comes to democratic principles, “the European Union must be able to defend those values, within the limits of its powers,” the European Court of Justice said in Wednesday’s ruling.
The decision was the last legal impediment to EU institutions withholding funds from any government they consider to be at odds with core democratic principles. The rule, seen as the EU’s most potent weapon to prevent a democratic rift from deepening within the bloc, was approved 14 months ago, but the executive European Commission waited to apply it.
EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen promised to “act with determination,” and EU legislators immediately urged her to start enforcing the rule within days. Withholding any funds could take until the end of the year because of institutional rules and a tortuous approval process that needs majority approval of member states.
Polish Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro — who is responsible for many of the changes seen as eroding the independence of judges — called the court’s move a turning point.
“It is a gloomy date that will be written in the history books,” Ziobro said. “From an area of freedom, the EU is changing into an area where it will be possible to use unlawful violence in order to take this freedom away from member states and limit their sovereignty.”
Hungarian Justice Minister Judit Varga called the court ruling a “political judgment” and proof that the EU was abusing its power.
Former U.S. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke misused his position to advance a commercial development project that included a microbrewery in his Montana hometown and lied to an agency ethics official about his involvement, according to a report by federal investigators released Wednesday.
The investigation by the agency’s inspector general found that Zinke continued work on the project through a nonprofit foundation in the resort community of Whitefish, Montana, after he committed upon taking office to break ties with the foundation.
The report also said Zinke gave incorrect and incomplete information to an ethics official who confronted him over his involvement, and that Zinke ordered staff to help him with the project.
Zinke is a candidate in the June Republican primary for an open Montana congressional seat, a position he held prior to joining former President Donald Trump’s Cabinet.
His campaign blasted the investigative report as “a political hit job”
Zinke investigation:
San Francisco school board: San Francisco residents recalled three members of the city’s school board Tuesday for what critics called misplaced priorities and putting progressive politics over the needs of children during the pandemic.
Mayor London Breed will now appoint board replacements who will serve until another election in November.
The school board has seven members, all Democrats, but only three were eligible to be recalled: school board President Gabriela López, Vice President Faauuga Moliga and Commissioner Alison Collins.
Opponents called the recall a waste of time and money as the district challenges include a $125 million budget deficit and the need to replace retiring Superintendent Vincent Matthews.
Parents in the politically liberal city launched the recall effort in January 2021 out of frustration over the slow reopening of district
schools, while the board pursued the renaming of 44 school sites and the elimination of competitive admissions at the elite Lowell High School.
A swimmer on a Sydney beach in Australia died after being attacked Wednesday by what witnesses described as a 15-foot great white shark.
It was the first fatal shark attack in Sydney since 1963.
A witness said the swimmer was in the water when the shark “came and attacked him vertically.”
Police closed Little Bay Beach as they continued to search the area for the shark.
According to researchers with the International Shark Attack File, Australia led the world with three unprovoked shark-related deaths in 2021.
There were a total of 11 worldwide.
Deadly shark attack: Africa vaccine factories:
German vaccine maker BioNTech, which developed the first widely approved
shot against COVID19 together with Pfizer, unveiled plans Wednesday to establish manufacturing facilities in Africa that would boost the availability of much-needed medicines on the continent.
The modular design consists of shipping containers fitted with the equipment necessary to make the company’s mRNA-based vaccine.
BioNTech has been criticized by some campaign groups for refusing to suspend its vaccine patents and let rivals manufacture the shots as part of an effort to make them more widely available, especially in poor countries.
The first facility will be shipped to either Senegal or Rwanda in the second half of this year, BioNTech said.
Botched baptisms: Thousands of baptisms performed by a priest who served in Arizona for 16 years are now presumed to be invalid because he used incorrect wording on a
subtle but key component of the sacrament, Roman Catholic officials said.
People affected were baptized by the Rev. Andres Arango, who served in three parishes from September 2005 until his resignation Feb. 1.
Arango’s error was in saying, “We baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” when he should have begun the sentence by saying, “I baptize you.”
“The issue with using ‘We’ is that it is not the community that baptizes a person, rather, it is Christ, and Christ alone, who presides at all of the sacraments, and so it is Christ Jesus who baptizes,” Bishop Thomas Olmsted wrote in a mid-January message on the website for the Diocese of Phoenix.
The Vatican in June 2020 issued the guidance declaring that the formula “We baptize you...” was invalid and that anyone who was baptized using it must be rebaptized using the proper formula.