The European Union reached a blockbuster free trade agreement Friday with Brazil, Argentina and the three other South American nations in the Mercosur trade alliance, capping a quarter-century of on-off negotiations even as France vowed to derail the contentious accord.

Provided it is ratified, the accord would create one of the world’s largest free trade zones, covering a market of 780 million people that represents nearly a quarter of global gross domestic product.

The accord’s proponents in Brussels say it would save businesses some $4.26 billion in duties each year, slashing red tape and removing tariffs on products like Italian wine, Argentine steak, Brazilian oranges and German Volkswagens.

Its critics in France, the Netherlands and other countries with big dairy and beef industries say the pact would subject local farmers to unfair competition and cause environmental damage.

From Uruguay, the host of the Mercosur summit, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen hailed the deal as a “truly historic milestone” at a time when global protectionism is on the rise.

“I know that strong winds are blowing in the opposite direction, toward isolation and fragmentation, but this agreement is our clear response,” von der Leyen said, an apparent reference to U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s vows to protect American workers and goods.

Under pressure from his country’s powerful and vocal farming lobby, French President Emmanuel Macron said Friday the deal remained “unacceptable” as it stands and stressed that governments have not yet seen “the final outcome” of negotiations.

“The agreement has neither been signed nor ratified. This is not the end of the story,” Macron’s office said, adding that France demands additional safeguards for farmers and commitments to sustainable development and health controls.

For France to block the deal, it would need the support of three or more other EU member states representing at least 35% of the bloc’s population.

The French government, which has been rallying countries to oppose the pact, named Austria, Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands and Poland as other wary states that share French concerns about the deal.

To take effect, the pact must also be endorsed by the European Parliament.

In remarks aimed at her “fellow Europeans,” and perhaps in particular French skeptics, von der Leyen promised the accord would boost 60,000 businesses through lower tariffs, streamlined customs procedures and preferential access to raw materials otherwise supplied by China.

“This will create huge business opportunities,” von der Leyen said.

She then turned to address European farmers who fear that an influx of cheap food imports will jeopardize their livelihoods. South American countries do not have to adhere to the same standards for animal treatment and pesticide use.

“We have heard you, listened to your concerns, and we are acting on them,” von der Leyen said.

Outrage over environmental rules, rising costs and unregulated imports has unleashed massive farmers’ protests across the continent over the past year.

Leaders on both sides of the Atlantic who long have pushed for the deal praised the announcement Friday, welcoming the results as a boon for export industries.

It marks the first major trade agreement for Mercosur, which is comprised of Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay and, newly, Bolivia. The bloc had previously only managed to conclude free-trade deals with Egypt, Israel and Singapore.

“An important obstacle to the agreement has been overcome,” said Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany, where the nation’s vaunted car industry is poised to profit.

From Spain, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez called the agreement “an unprecedented economic bridge.”

At the Mercosur summit in Uruguay’s capital of Montevideo, Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva praised “a modern and balanced text which recognizes Mercosur’s environmental credentials.”

“We are securing new markets for our exports and strengthening investment flows,” he said.

The Brazilian Trade and Investment Promotion Agency said it expects the pact to boost the nation’s Europe-bound exports by $7 billion.

Libertarian President Javier Milei of Argentina described the accord as aligning with his free market principles. Argentines are excited about selling more beef and agricultural products in the EU.

The deal is the product of 25 years of painstaking negotiations, dating back to a Mercosur summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1999. Talks collapsed over differences in economic priorities, regulatory standards and agricultural policies. The rise of protectionist tendencies also repeatedly upended hopes.

Momentum picked up in 2016, as former President Trump imposed harsh tariffs on Europe. At the same time, market-friendly governments came to power in South America’s biggest economies, Brazil and Argentina, which had been closed for years.

In June 2019, negotiators announced a deal that included provisions for tariff reductions and commitments to environmental standards.

But it was never implemented. In Brazil, the region’s economic powerhouse, right-wing former President Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, presided over record levels of deforestation in the Amazon, prompting EU governments to demand tougher sustainability criteria. In Argentina, a new left-wing protectionist government opposed the deal.

But things picked up as the region’s politics shifted again in 2023. Brazil’s President Lula rode to power on pledges to rein in illegal logging, soothing concerns that the pact could accelerate deforestation. Argentina’s Milei is working to open the nation’s notoriously closed and crisis-stricken economy.

But if past EU trade agreements are any indication, ratification could take years.

“We celebrate it, but it’s still far from reality,” Milei said of the accord.

In 2016, the EU and Canada signed a pact, known as the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, or CETA, but the approval process is still lumbering along.

Germany’s parliament only signed off on that pact two years ago, and the French Senate rejected it in March this year.

“Anyone with any memory is skeptical,” said Brian Winter, a vice president of the New York-based Council of the Americas. “They have trotted out leaders and declared victory and celebrated, and yet there always seems to be a hitch.”

A military police officer has been arrested in Brazil after a video emerged of him throwing a civilian over a bridge in Sao Paulo on Monday, sparking protests in the city.

The video, which was shared widely on social media and the Brazilian press, showed an officer grabbing a civilian by the shirt and walking him towards the side of a bridge. Moments later, the officer lifts the man – who appears unarmed and not applying any resistance – and pushes him over the edge.

The state’s public ministry said the incident was “appalling and absolutely unacceptable” in a statement posted Tuesday.

“There is no other way to classify the images of the moment in which a military police officer throws a man from the top of a bridge,” the public ministry said, adding that in the video it is “evident that the suspect was already subdued by security agents, who had the functional duty of taking him, intact, to a police station so that the incident could be recorded.”

An arrest warrant was issued for the officer, Luan Felipe Alves, who was taken into custody early Thursday, state media Agencia Brasil reported. He was later ordered to remain under preventive detention by Sao Paulo’s military court as investigations around the incident are conducted, Agencia Brasil added.

The man is believed to have survived the fall, and authorities are currently searching for him for questioning, according to Agencia Brasil.

It is unclear what charges Alves may be facing but his legal team said in a statement that his arrest “demonstrates that there is an anticipation of guilt.”

The state’s military police removed several officers from their main duties, including Alves, while the incident and the officers are investigated, Agencia Brasil reports.

“I have ordered the immediate removal of the police officers involved in this regrettable scene,” Secretary of Public Security of the State of Sao Paulo, Guilherme Derrite, said Tuesday in a video post on X, adding that the “this type of attitude” differs from the mission of the military police.

The incident hit a nerve in the city where there has been growing public anger over police violence, including an incident where an off-duty policeman killed a man for allegedly stealing soap from a market, Reuters reported.

A protest against police violence broke out on Thursday in Sao Paulo, where demonstrators demanded for Derrite’s resignation, according to Reuters. “We really need our voices to be heard. We need to fight more and more. We need to take to the streets to expose the police which are so violent in the state of Sao Paulo and in Brazil,” one protester told Reuters.

Property tycoon Truong My Lan was one of Vietnam’s richest businesswomen. She amassed an eye-wateringly valuable portfolio of luxury homes, hotels and commercial properties all over the country and abroad – allegedly by effectively turning a major bank into her own personal ATM.

On Tuesday, the 68-year-old lost her appeal against the death sentence for masterminding one of the biggest frauds in global history, in which billions vanished from Vietnam’s financial system.

She had been put on death row by a Ho Chi Minh City court in April for embezzling more than $12 billion – an amount equivalent to roughly 3% of Vietnam’s entire economy. The scale of the fraud rattled confidence in an economy which hopes to woo foreign investors away from competitors such as neighboring China, which could find itself hobbled by US tariffs under the second Donald Trump administration.

There is, however, a small glimmer of a reprieve for Lan – if she can afford it.

Her death sentence could be commuted to life imprisonment if she repays three-quarters of what she earned via the fraud, judges said in their ruling, state-run VnExpress International reported.

So, can she find $9 billion to spare, to save her life?

Humble beginnings

Born to a modest Sino-Vietnamese family in 1956, Lan started out selling cosmetics with her mother at Ho Chi Minh City’s oldest market, according to local and state media reports.

She steadily grew small businesses, but her wealth skyrocketed after she met Hong Kong investor Eric Chu. She set up real-estate company Van Thinh Phat in 1992, the year she married Chu.

By 2011, Lan was already a powerful yet low-profile business figure in Ho Chi Minh City. That year, she became involved in the merger of the struggling Saigon Joint Commercial Bank with two other lenders, in a deal coordinated by Vietnam’s central bank.

She was well on her way to riches, high status and, eventually, infamy.

Lan’s arrest in October 2022 sparked a week-long run on Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB), then the nation’s fifth-largest lender, over suspicions of its ties with Lan’s alleged financial crimes.

Her arrest set off a ticking bomb that reverberated across the business and political elites which became “too big to not recognize,” Giang said.

On paper, Lan owned 5% of SCB’s shares, the upper limit allowed under Vietnamese law. But prosecutors accuse her of indirectly owning 91.5% of the bank, according to state media reports of the trial. Prosecutors also alleged she bribed banking regulators and officials to cover her tracks.

Investigators accuse her and dozens of accomplices of taking loans and cash through a web of thousands of shell companies over more than a decade – siphoning off what amounts to a total of $44 billion.

By comparison, Malaysia’s long-running 1MDB state fund scandal that began in 2009, described as one of the world’s biggest financial crimes, involved the looting of about $4.5 billion. Even crypto entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried’s $8 billion fraud is dwarfed by Lan’s case.

The sheer scale of the criminality meant the case was split into two trials.

Among the total losses, $12 billion was ruled to have been embezzled, for which Lan was sentenced to death. She was tried alongside 85 others, including former central bankers and government officials, as well as previous SCB executives.

Lan was also handed a life sentence in a separate trial in October after being found guilty of obtaining property by fraud, money laundering and illegal cross-border money transfers, VnExpress International reported, misappropriating roughly $27 billion.

“When you have corruption of this scale, it signals that things are bad in the country because it means legislation is not good, supervision is not good and the financial system is actually quite vulnerable,” Giang said.

Giang said Lan would likely not be executed immediately, adding her lawyers would probably request a review of the case or apply for a presidential pardon.

But the court’s harsh sentencing shows the authorities’ commitment to making Vietnam more transparent and better placed to attract foreign investment, especially if the US-China trade war reignites, he added.

Lan, for her part, has repeatedly made pleas for mercy. During a trial in October, Lan told the court that she never intended to commit fraud but was prepared to take responsibility, according to a VnExpress International report.

“I consider this my destiny,” Lan was quoted as saying.

Upholding the death sentence this week, the appeal court’s judges said Lan’s crimes caused grave consequences, and there are no mitigating circumstances to reduce her sentence, VnExpress International reported.

The ‘blazing furnace’

The real estate mogul’s downfall was stunning for the gargantuan scale of the fraud, rattling a country which has long projected an image of authoritarian stability.

Vietnam’s ruling Communist Party (CPV) has led the country of nearly 100 million people since it won the Vietnam War in 1975, priding itself on longevity, national unity and party loyalty.

The country transitioned away from a state-run economy towards a more market-oriented one in a series of reforms called “Doi Moi” in 1986, welcoming private businesses and foreign investors.

Now, Vietnam depends on manufacturing exports and foreign investment, and its leaders have been tightening the party’s grip on power by clamping down not only on dissent but also on corruption.

Former CPV secretary general Nguyen Phu Trong launched a sweeping anti-corruption campaign – dubbed the “blazing furnace” – in 2016, which has led to the indictments of thousands of people, including party top brass.

Business and politics have long been intricately entwined in Vietnam. In 2023, the country ranked 83rd out of 180 countries in Transparency International’s Corruption Index. And the country’s opaque media-political ecosystem means access to information is tightly controlled.

“In Vietnam, the land is controlled by the state. There’s no way she could have done what she did… without more official connivance,” Abuza said.

Her trial, which began in March, has played out publicly in state media, and parts of it were live-streamed outside the court in Ho Chi Minh City, deliberately designed to show the public that the government is following through on its crackdown.

But bank regulators and financial ministers are poorly paid and notoriously corrupt, making them arguably culpable for allowing the fraud to snowball, Abuza added.

“Vietnamese regulators were absolutely shocked at the extent and investigators were flabbergasted by the extent of the corruption,” Abuza said.

“But they did everything they could to make this case about her and have really tried not to draw lines linking her to communist party officials.”

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol has apologized to the nation in his first public comments since his abortive attempt to impose martial law threw the country into political chaos and led to calls for his impeachment.

“This emergency martial law declaration stemmed from my desperation as the ultimate responsible party for state affairs,” Yoon said in a two-minute address.

“I am deeply sorry and sincerely apologize to the citizens who must have been greatly shocked,” Yoon said, adding he “caused anxiety and inconvenience” to South Korean citizens.

Yoon, who is expected to face an impeachment vote in parliament this weekend, said he “will not avoid the legal and political responsibility related to this martial law declaration.”

Yoon declared martial law in an unannounced television address late Tuesday night, accusing the main opposition party of sympathizing with North Korea and of “anti-state activities.” He cited a motion by the Democratic Party, which has a majority in parliament, to impeach top prosecutors and reject a government budget proposal.

Yet within just six hours, the leader was forced to back down, after lawmakers forced their way past soldiers into parliament to unanimously strike down the decree.

Addressing rumors that martial law will be invoked again, Yoon said “there will absolutely be no second attempt at a constitutional amendment.”

“I will entrust my party with methods to stabilize the political situation, including the remainder of my term… I apologize to the citizens for the concerns I have caused,” Yoon concluded as he stepped off the podium and bowed.

The declaration of a military emergency, although short-lived, was met with shock and anger across the country, which remains deeply scarred by the brutality of martial law imposed during decades of military dictatorship before it won a long, bloody fight for democracy in the 1980s.

Pressure on Yoon has mounted in the days since, with protesters and opposition figures demanding his impeachment – and support wavering even within his own party and military.

The leader of South Korea’s ruling party said after Yoon’s address that the president’s resignation is now inevitable.

Speaking to reporters, Han Dong-hoon, chief of Yoon’s own People Power Party, said it was “impossible for the president to carry on his normal duties,” adding that his “early resignation is inevitable.”

On Friday, Han said Yoon needs to be immediately suspended from duty to protect the country from “grave danger,” in a dramatic reversal of opinion that compounds the pressure building on the president ahead of an impeachment vote in parliament.

Global stakeholders now have to reckon with the geopolitical impact of a rebel offensive led by an Islamist group in Syria that could potentially threaten President Bashar al-Assad’s hold over the country.

Syrian rebels have made a lightning advance in the north of the country, taking two major cities: Aleppo, the second biggest city, and Hama, a strategically important city that lies on a vital supply route. The rebels are saying they’ll advance further south to Homs, just over 100 miles from the Syrian capital of Damascus.

While Assad has many enemies in the region and beyond, his fall wouldn’t be welcomed by all.

Western and Arab states, as well as Israel, would like to see Iran’s influence in Syria curtailed, but none wish for a radical Islamist regime to replace Assad. For Russia, Syria’s fall could mean losing its closest Middle Eastern ally and undermining its ability to project power while it fights a war in Ukraine. For Iran, it could shatter its so-called Axis of Resistance, comprising allied states and militias.

Here’s how the events in Syria could impact key players in the Middle East:

Arab states

The rebel advances in Syria mark the first real test of powerful Arab states’ commitment to reconcile with Assad.

At the height of the Syrian civil war, Sunni Arab states, including regional powerhouses Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, broke ties with the Iran-allied Assad regime, moved to isolate it and threw their weight behind opposition groups trying to topple it, seeing it as an opportunity to curb Tehran’s regional influence.

But Assad, aided by Russia, Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, survived and reclaimed territory lost to the rebels. Under heavy US sanctions, Syria turned into what some experts have called a “narco-state,” fueling a drug crisis in neighboring countries.

Syria’s new reality prompted Arab nations to extend a hand to the Assad regime, and over the past few years, Saudi Arabia and the UAE have led efforts toward his regional and international rehabilitation. In 2023, the Syrian regime was readmitted to the Arab League.

Over a decade after they backed the Syrian opposition, Gulf Arab states, including Saudi Arabia and the UAE, are now siding with Assad as he once again faces a rebellion.

“In 2011, a very large number of countries rather quickly came to the view that they would be better off if Assad fell and they wanted to get rid of him… but the Saudis, Emiratis and others in the region see this now as a challenging and destabilizing situation for them if Assad falls at this point,” said Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Washington DC-based Quincy Institute.

In their annual Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) summit last weekend, Gulf Arab leaders called for the preservation of Syria’s territorial integrity, declared respect for its sovereignty and rejected regional interference in its internal affairs. By contrast, the statement after the 2011 GCC summit called on Assad to “immediately stop the killing machine, put an end to the bloodshed and release detainees.”

“We might see that many of these countries would want to take advantage of the situation to improve their own position inside Syria, particularly with Iran, but that necessitates that Assad is weakened but stays – a very different position from what they had earlier on when they were throwing everything at him to get rid of him all together,” Parsi said.

Iran

Iran has used Syria to expand its regional influence through proxy groups stationed in the country. The Islamic Republic, along with its most formidable proxy Hezbollah, have proven instrumental in keeping Assad in power, by helping Syrian government forces regain lost territory, while sending its own Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commanders to advise Assad’s military.

After the Palestinian militant group Hamas launched its attack on Israel in October last year, Hezbollah began exchanging fire with Israel, prompting an Israeli retaliation that had the group’s top brass assassinated and significantly debilitated its capabilities. As a result, Hezbollah pulled its forces out of Syria to focus on its war with Israel, leaving Assad exposed, experts said.

In Syria, Israel has consistently targeted Iranian personnel and supply routes used to transfer weapons to its proxies. The fall of Aleppo and potentially other cities bordering Lebanon could further disrupt those routes, placing Iran in a difficult position. Last week, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told the Qatari news outlet Al Araby Al Jadeed that Tehran would consider sending troops to Syria if requested by the Assad regime. However, escalating the war in Syria could undermine Iran’s efforts to pursue diplomacy with the West and Arab states.

Losing Syria would be “a huge blow” for Iran, Parsi said. “The investment Iranians have made in Syria is very significant, it’s an important land bridge to Lebanon, but also the alliance the Iranians have with the Assad regime has lasted across the Islamic Republic’s history.”

Iran may also use its proxies in the region as leverage in potential talks with an incoming Trump administration, Parsi said.

“If Iran loses too much of their position in the region, will they be too weak to negotiate? But if they fight back to try and retain as much of that position as possible, do they risk escalating the war to the point where diplomacy may no longer be possible?” he said. “They’re walking a fine balance,”

Israel

Israel too is caught in a difficult position. Assad, who views Israel as an enemy, has not posed a direct threat to the country, opting not to respond to the regular Israeli strikes in Syria over the past year. But the regime has allowed its territory to be used by Iran to supply Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Hadi al-Bahra, a Syrian opposition leader representing anti-Assad groups, including the Turkey-backed Syrian National Army (SNA), said rebels felt encouraged to make an advance for Aleppo last week after Israel debilitated Hezbollah and weakened Iran’s footprint in the region.

“Due to the Lebanese war and decrease in Hezbollah forces, (Assad’s) regime has less support,” Al Bahra told Reuters in an interview, adding that Iran-backed militias also have fewer resources, and Russia is providing less air cover to Assad’s forces due to its “Ukraine problem”.

The group leading the rebellion, however, is Hayat Tahrir Al Sham (HTS) whose leader Abu Muhammad Al Jolani is a former al Qaeda fighter with an Islamist ideology that opposes Israel.

Israel has to make sure that the offensive will not evolve into a “new challenge” posed by HTS and the Sunni rebels leading the offensive in Syria, he added.

Russia

Assad was on a losing streak in Syria until Russian President Vladimir Putin intervened in 2015. Without Russian air support, the recapture of Aleppo in 2016, a turning point for the embattled Syrian president, would have been difficult, if not impossible.

The Kremlin said this week it will “certainly continue to support” Assad as Russian jets stepped up strikes on opposition forces in northern Syria.

Nicole Grajewski, a fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace with a focus on Russia, said the Assad regime was caught off-guard during the rebels’ latest offensive, and the rebels may have taken advantage of Russia’s distraction with Ukraine to take land in Syria.

Moscow hadn’t committed a large number of forces to Syria and may still be capable of supporting it, she added, but Russia’s ability to mobilize forces would be difficult given how quickly the rebels are advancing across northern Syria.

Turkey

Turkey has tried to distance itself from the rebels’ actions in northern Syria, but it is the primary backer of the Syrian National Army, one of the groups pushing the offensive.

Ankara has also represented the opposition in negotiations with Russia over several years in the past decade, which eventually led to a ceasefire agreement in 2020 between parties in Syria each of them supports.

Despite its support for opposition forces, Turkey has not ruled out a rapprochement with Syria. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has called for a meeting with Assad, the man he once labeled a terrorist, to reset relations. Assad has refused to meet him as long as Turkey continues to occupy parts of his country.

Turkey has also sought a solution for an estimated 3.1 million Syrian refugees it hosts – more than any other country. The refugees have become a major point of contention in Turkey, often leading to anti-Syrian riots and calls for mass deportation by opposition parties.

Until recently, the Syria situation was seen in Turkey as “regime is winning, opposition is losing” with the Iran-Russia axis defining the developments on the ground, said Galip Dalay, a senior consulting fellow at Chatham House, a think tank in London. But the recent rebel push has changed that power dynamic.

Another goal for Turkey is to push back Kurdish insurgent groups located along the Turkish-Syria border and create a buffer zone. Erdogan has long opposed Kurdish nationalism and made it clear that his ultimate goal is to eliminate the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a Kurdish far-left militant and political group based in Turkey and Iraq that has fought the Turkish state for more than three decades.