Having spent much of her career railing against bureaucrats and financial elites, Italy’s new right-wing Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni now has to get them on side – and it is not proving easy.

Things got off to a bad start after her victory at a Sept. 25 election.

Searching for a finance minister who would reassure markets and Italy’s European partners, three political sources told Reuters she was turned down by European Central Bank board member Fabio Panetta and the outgoing minister Daniele Franco, a former Bank of Italy official.

So instead of appointing a ‘technocrat’ – an unelected official with the technical expertise to implement policy – Meloni ended up picking career politician Giancarlo Giorgetti of the co-ruling League party.

Panetta and Franco were left to vie next year for the role of Bank of Italy governor, an appointment made jointly by the government, the central bank and the head of state.

An ECB spokesperson said Panetta declined to comment. Franco was not available to comment. Meloni’s office did not reply to several requests for comment.

Now the Treasury department’s influential director general Alessandro Rivera is in the crosshairs of Meloni’s inner-circle, three government officials said, declining to be named due to the sensitivity of the matter. But there is a dearth of viable alternatives.

Meloni, a fiery conviction politician, has often spoken out against Italy’s reliance on technocrats to solve its economic problems and lambasted alleged interference from “high international finance” and “Brussels bureaucrats”.

Yet to manage Europe’s second-largest debt pile and ensure the arrival of billions of euros of European Union pandemic recovery funds, it is vital that she finds a constructive way of working with these powerful policymakers, both at home and abroad.

Most Italian civil servants remain in place regardless of election outcomes, but new governments can replace some heads of department soon after taking office. Experienced top officials like Rivera, who has been Treasury director general under three administrations, are usually reappointed.

Unknown to the general public but a point of reference for the financial community and European officials, Rivera is considered too independent by Meloni’s aides, who are unhappy with his handling of some of Italy’s main financial dossiers.

These include the privatisation of national airline ITA Airways – the successor to Alitalia – and efforts to relaunch the country’s fifth largest bank Monte dei Paschi di Siena (MPS) (BMPS.MI), which is 64%-owned by the Treasury.

“Rivera has influential supporters, especially among bankers, but he also seems to have powerful enemies in Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party,” said Francesco Galietti, head of political risk consultancy Policy Sonar and a former Treasury official.

Rivera was not available to comment. A Treasury spokesperson said his future would be decided “at the right time.”

During the election campaign Meloni called in vain for her predecessor Mario Draghi to freeze the sale of a majority stake in ITA.

Less than a month before the election, the Treasury picked a consortium for exclusive talks led by U.S. private equity fund Certares, but the transaction has not been completed.

Now German carrier Lufthansa has renewed an interest, which would reverse the path laid out by Rivera’s top team.

Meloni’s people were also unhappy with the Treasury’s insistence on braving markets with a 2.5 billion euro ($2.59 billion) capital hike for Monte Paschi. The share issue eventually went ahead and the bank’s prospects have brightened.

Deputy Economy and Finance Minister Maurizio Leo, an adviser to Meloni, had proposed splitting his ministry by hiving off the finance department responsible for tax matters.

The scheme, announced in an interview to Reuters, has been shelved after pushback from the ministry’s career civil servants. The head of the finance department, Fabrizia Lapecorella, has asked to move to another ministry, two sources said.

Lapecorella did not respond to a request for comment.

Another top economic official, Pasquale Tridico, who heads state pensions agency INPS, is also in Meloni’s sights.

Defence Minister Guido Crosetto, of the Brothers of Italy, on Sunday accused Tridico, considered close to the left-leaning 5-Star Movement, of opposing the government’s plans and hinted he would not be reappointed when his mandate ends next year.

One of Meloni’s closest advisors told Reuters many top officials in ministries and state-run companies had been appointed by centre-left parties, and the right wanted to replace them with people from its own camp.

Antonino Turicchi, a former senior Treasury official and deputy chairman of Monte Paschi who has been historically close to the Italian right, was tipped by some government sources to replace Rivera.

However, last week Turicchi was named president of airline ITA, a job which is seen as preventing him from competing for the position at the Treasury – at least for now.

A senior official in Draghi’s former government said Rivera, with his broad international connections, was the only figure in the top tier of the Treasury qualified to flank finance minister Giorgetti, who has limited international experience and speaks little English.

Under Italian legislation, Giorgetti has until the end of January to either confirm or remove Rivera. But until then, he remains at the heart of Italian policymaking, helping prepare the government’s 2023 budget unveiled on Tuesday and accompanying the minister to the G20 summit in Bali last week.

($1 = 0.9650 euros)

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More than two thirds of the Ukrainian capital was still without power on Thursday morning and a swathe of residents had no running water, a day after Russian missile strikes caused Kyiv’s biggest outages in nine months of war.

The capital was one of the main targets of the latest wave of attacks on energy facilities that cut power in many regions and made emergency blackouts necessary in others to conserve energy and enable repairs as winter sets in.

The temperature plunged below zero degrees Celsius overnight in a city that had 2.8 million residents before the war and where it is already snowing and the streets are icy.

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said electricians and repair workers were doing everything to get the power back on “as fast as possible” but the recovery would depend largely on the overall energy “balance” of the nationwide grid.

Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy chief of President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s staff, said power supplies had been restored in the Kirovohrad and Vinnytsia regions.

In the south, Mykolaiv region governor Vitali Kim appealed to Ukrainians to be as frugal as possible in their use of power.

“Consumption has been growing this morning (which is logical), there isn’t enough capacity in the system to switch it on for more consumers!!,” he wrote on the Telegram messaging app.

“The energy system is united like we all are! If you’ve turned off a few unneeded lights, that’s really important!!!”

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TAIPEI (Reuters) – Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen on Thursday cast this weekend’s local elections as a referendum on her leadership, saying a vote for her party’s candidates was a vote for her and her commitment to “take good care” of Taiwan and ensure peace with China.

Tsai’s second term in office runs out in 2024 and she cannot stand again as president because of term limits. She was re-elected by a landslide in 2020 on a pledge to stand up to China and protect Taiwan’s freedom and democracy.

Saturday’s elections, for city mayors, county chiefs and local councillors, are ostensibly about domestic issues such as the COVID-19 pandemic and crime, and those elected do not have a direct say on China policy.

But Tsai has reframed the campaign to put relations with China, which views Taiwan as its own territory and has increased military pressure to assert those claims, front and centre.

In a video message, Tsai said voting for the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) candidates was the same as voting for her.

“If you have not yet decided which city or county chief candidate to vote for, then I ask you to please cast this vote for me, for candidates I am recommending,” she said.

“Thank you for choosing Tsai Ing-wen the last time around, and I believe that I can take good care of Taiwan,” she added. “I am also very conscientious and responsible about Taiwan getting a firm footing internationally, and committed to maintaining peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.”

The election is happening a month after the end of the 20th congress of China’s Communist Party, where President Xi Jinping secured an unprecedented third term in office – a point Tsai has repeatedly made on the campaign trail.

China carried out war games near Taiwan in August to express its anger at a visit to Taipei by then-U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Taiwan’s main opposition party the Kuomintang (KMT), which traditionally favours close ties with China and crushed the DPP at the last local elections in 2018, says it too is committed to protecting the island’s democracy and freedom.

But the KMT has criticised the DPP for being overly confrontational with China.

Former Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou, who remains a senior KMT member, wrote on his Facebook page on Thursday that voting for the DPP could bring war and supporting the KMT would ensure peace.

“Choose peace and reject war!” he added.

Tsai has repeatedly offered to talk to Beijing on the basis of equality and respect, but has been rebuffed.

An extensive cache of Aztec ritual offerings found underneath downtown Mexico City, off the steps of what would have been the empire’s holiest shrine, provides new insight into pre-Hispanic religious rites and political propaganda.

Sealed in stone boxes five centuries ago at the foot of the temple, the contents of one box found in the exact center of what was a ceremonial circular stage has shattered records for the number of sea offerings from both the Pacific Ocean and off Mexico’s Gulf Coast, including more than 165 once-bright-red starfish and upwards of 180 complete corral branches.

Archeologists believe Aztec priests carefully layered these offerings in the box within the elevated platform for a ceremony likely attended by thousands of rapt spectators amid the thunder-clap of drums.

“Pure imperial propaganda,” said lead archeologist Leonardo Lopez Lujan when describing the likely spectacle.

In the same box, archeologists previously found a sacrificed jaguar dressed like a warrior associated with the Aztec patron Huitzilopochtli, the war and sun god, before the COVID-19 pandemic forced a more than two-year pause on excavations.

Previously unreported details include last month’s discovery of a sacrificed eagle held in the clutches of the jaguar, along with miniature wooden spears and a reed shield found next to the west-facing feline, which had copper bells tied around its ankles.

The half-excavated rectangular box, dating to the reign of the Aztec’s greatest emperor Ahuitzotl who ruled from 1486 to 1502, now shows a mysterious bulge in the middle under the jaguar’s skeleton, indicating something solid below.

“Whatever is underneath the jaguar is something enormously important,” said Lopez Lujan.

“We’re expecting a great discovery.”

Lopez Lujan, who heads excavations at what is today known as the Templo Mayor, thinks the box could contain an urn holding the cremated remains of Ahuitzotl, the emperor whose military campaigns expanded the empire to modern-day Guatemala while linking Mexico’s Pacific and Gulf coasts. But he says at least another year of digging is needed to settle the question.

To date, no Aztec royal tomb has ever been found despite more than 40 years of digging around the Templo Mayor, where more than 200 offerings boxes have been found.

The temple towered as high as a 15-story building before it was razed in the years after the 1521 Spanish conquest of Mexico, the rubble serving to obscure many of the latest finds.

Besides the central offering containing the jaguar, two additional boxes were recently identified adjacent to it, with both set to be opened in the next few weeks.

More ferocious animals dressed as warriors, perhaps adorned with jade, turquoise and gold, are likely.

The aquatic offerings covering the jaguar may represent the watery underworld where the Aztecs believed the sun sank each night, or possibly part of a king’s journey after death.

Joyce Marcus, an archeologist specializing in ancient Mexico at the University of Michigan, says the recently unearthed offerings illuminate the Aztec “worldview, ritual economy, and the obvious links between imperial expansion, warfare, military prowess and the ruler’s role” in ceremonies that sanctified conquests and allowed tribute to flow into the capital.

“Each offering box adds another piece of the puzzle,” she said.

Lastly, the skulls of a dozen sacrificed children between one to six years old were also discovered in a nearby pit, dating back decades earlier but also linked to Huitzilopochtli.

The information obtained from the excavations goes far beyond incomplete colonial-era accounts that were also colored by the European invaders’ own justifications for conquest, according to Diana Moreiras, Aztec scholar at the University of British Colombia.

“We’re really getting to know the Aztecs on their own terms,” she said, “because we’re actually looking at what they did, not what the Spaniards thought about them.”

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Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim was appointed prime minister on Thursday, the sultan’s palace said, and will be sworn in at 5 p.m. (0900 GMT).

A general election on Saturday ended in an unprecedented hung parliament with neither of two main alliances, one led by Anwar and the other ex-premier Muhyiddin Yassin, immediately able to secure enough seats in parliament to form a government.

Anwar’s appointment caps a three-decade long journey from heir apparent to a prisoner convicted of sodomy, to longtime opposition leader.

The 75-year-old has time and again been denied the premiership despite getting within striking distance over the years: he was deputy prime minister in the 1990s and the official prime minister-in-waiting in 2018.

In between, he spent nearly a decade in jail for sodomy and corruption in what he says were politically motivated charges aimed at ending his career.

Ukraine’s government appealed to people to conserve energy amid relentless Russian strikes that have halved the country’s power capacity, as the United Nations health body warned of a humanitarian disaster in Ukraine this winter.

* Ukraine’s national power grid operator said the damage dealt to Ukrainian power-generating facilities by Russian missile attacks was “colossal” but he dismissed the need to evacuate civilians.

* The Kremlin said no substantive progress had been made towards creating a security zone around Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine, once again accusing Kyiv of shelling at the plant and risking a nuclear incident.

* There are no immediate nuclear safety or security concerns at the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia reactor complex despite shelling at the weekend that caused widespread damage, the U.N. atomic watchdog said after its experts toured the site.

* Moscow and Kyiv blame each other for repeated shelling in the immediate area of the facility.
CONFLICT

* Battles continued to rage in the east, where Russia has sent some of the forces it moved following its withdrawal from around the city of Kherson in the south. Moscow is pressing an offensive of its own along a stretch of frontline west of the city of Donetsk, held by its proxies since 2014.

* “The enemy does not stop shelling the positions of our troops and settlements near the contact line (in the Donetsk region),” the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said.

* Russian air defences repelled two drone attacks in Crimea, annexed from Ukraine in 2014, including one targeting a thermal power station near Sevastopol, the home port of Russia’s Black Sea fleet, the regional governor said.

* Russian shelling hit a humanitarian aid distribution centre in the town of Orihiv in southeastern Ukraine, killing a volunteer and wounding two women, the regional governor said.

* Reuters could not independently verify the battlefield accounts.

* Ukraine’s SBU security service and police raided a 1,000-year-old Orthodox Christian monastery in Kyiv as part of operations to counter suspected “subversive activities by Russian special services”, the SBU said.

* Russia’s Orthodox Church condemned the raid as an “act of intimidation”.

* Russian President Vladimir Putin will in the coming days meet the mothers of reservists called up to fight in Ukraine, the Kremlin said.

* Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Germany must be ready for the situation in Ukraine to escalate but that his recent trip to China was worth it alone for spelling out the two countries’ joint stance against using nuclear weapons.

* Disbursement of $4.5 billion in U.S. economic aid for Ukraine will begin in the coming weeks, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said.

“Stock up on warm clothes, blankets, think about options that will help you wait a long outage. It’s better to do it now than to be miserable.” –Sergey Kovalenko, the head of YASNO, which provides energy for Kyiv.

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Indonesian authorities struggled on Thursday to get aid to thousands of evacuees displaced by a deadly earthquake in western Java, as rain-triggered landslides and difficult mountainous terrain hampered the efforts of rescue teams.

Monday’s 5.6-magnitude earthquake in the town of Cianjur, about 75 km (50 miles) south of the capital Jakarta, killed at least 271 people with 40 missing, and left many sheltering in tents with scant medical and aid supplies.

Survivors included a woman who gave birth at a makeshift medical centre in a tent.

“The conditions are steep,” President Joko Widodo said of the rugged terrain as he visited Cianjur. “It’s still raining and there are still aftershocks. The ground is shaky, so caution is needed.”

Evacuation remains a priority, he said, adding that he wants to make sure distribution goes well. He visited emergency tents, handing out food to children.

Suharyanto, the disaster mitigation agency chief, said many have not received aid and officials have gathered nearly 200 volunteers to help distribute water, instant food, tents and diapers.

With dozens missing, rescuers used earth diggers and other heavy machinery to clear mud and debris in search of victims. Some areas that have been cut off by landslides could only be reached by helicopter, disaster officials have said.

Search efforts focussed on Cijedil village, where about 30 people were thought to be buried under a landslide, Joshua Banjarnahor of the national search and rescue agency, told reporters.

Rain-soaked slopes and potential landslides were delaying rescue efforts, the search and rescue agency said on Wednesday, adding the likelihood of finding survivors was getting slimmer.

Indonesia is one of the world’s most earthquake-prone nations, regularly recording strong earthquakes offshore where fault lines run.

Monday’s quake was particularly deadly because it struck a densely populated area at a depth of just 10 km (6 miles). Poor construction standards also caused buildings to collapse, leading to many deaths, officials said.

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