Month: April 2017

The European Commission is not ready yet to take measures against Hungary, despite the country passing laws to curb academic freedom and trying to decrease the freedom of civil society organizations.  The EU executive arm complete a legal assessment to study if newly introduced laws are compatible with EU rules.

EU Commission Vice President Frans Timmermans said Wednesday the commission decided developments in Hungary need discussion, but do not warrant action.

“There is in the view of the commission today, not a systemic threat to the rule of law in Hungary.  … The college unanimously agreed that a broader political dialogue between the Hungarian authorities, other member states, and the European Parliament and Commission is now warranted.”

Since Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban was elected in 2010, independent media and civil society freedom to operate is shrinking.  He frequently criticizes the European Union and says he is working to transform Hungary into an “illiberal democracy.”

Despite signing the Rome Declaration on the future of the bloc last month, Orban’s administration started a “stop Brussels” campaign that includes a nationwide survey asking citizens how the government should deal with threatening policies.

Academic freedom targeted

A law passed earlier this week targets academic freedom.  It is believed the law is intended to stop operations of the Central European University that is funded by Hungarian-American billionaire George Soros.

Tens of thousands of protesters have demonstrated against the education bill, and are opposing a law targeting non-governmental organizations, which is expected to be approved in May.

Eszter Kiss of the Eotvos Karoly Policy Institute says there have been several times when it seems its employees are under government surveillance.  Kiss feels that the new law would further stigmatize civil society organizations.

“Because of the hate campaign and the aggressive, unpredictable legislation practice of the government very few people in Hungary have the courage to openly donate for CSOs and the law will make the situation only more difficult.  The draft and the plan of this law were introduced with the communication that CSOs should operate transparently.  In fact, they are already obliged by the law to publish their financial reports.”

Hungarian Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Stefania Kapronczay says the proposed law will not shut down organizations immediately, but that it strengthens the negative rhetoric used against civil society.  Kapronczay hopes the European Union will defend democracy in the country and the freedom of expression.

“When Hungary joined this union we signed up for the adherence to those values, so we expect the European Union and the European politicians to hold Hungary accountable to upholding those values.  We believe that is something that holds together the union and these are the European values.”

A few options for pressure

The EU Commission said follow up steps on legal concerns in Hungary will be decided by the end of this month.  The country has been able to enact most of its illiberal reforms.

Agata Gostynska-Jakubowska of the Center for European Reform says the tools the bloc has to address rule of law issues aren’t working properly.

“When a government violates European law and in the process goes against democratic values the commission can open an infringement procedure and bring the case in front of the Court of Justice.  This procedure cannot be applied however when an EU government backtracks on democratic values but does not break any EU law.  If the European Commission does not find any evidence that the EU law has been broken by government’s reforms on higher education there is little it can do.”

A recent report by monitoring group Freedom House claims Hungary has the lowest democracy score in Central Europe and that Poland is also failing.

European Justice Commissioner Vera Jourova said earlier this week the European Union sees “worrying trends” in countries such as Hungary and Poland, which has received several warnings from the bloc on issues related to democracy and rule of law.

Massive demonstrations were staged in both countries, but the governments are still moving forward with their agenda. Jourova said she encourages people to be vocal.

“I myself do not believe that any administrative steps or infringements or other measures taken by the European commission in relation or against some member state will help a lot.  It must be the people in the member states which feels the need to say something on the future development,” said Jourova.

One EU measure could be to trigger Article 7, a punishment whereby a member state loses its voting rights.  But triggering Article 7 needs backing of all member states and is so politically sensitive it’s called the “nuclear option.”

 
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President Donald Trump is hosting NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg at the White House Wednesday, where the two men are expected to discuss Trump’s commitment to the organization.

After the meeting, Trump and Stoltenberg are scheduled to meet with reporters, where they will likely face more questions about the U.S. commitment to NATO and Trump’s insistence that other NATO countries shoulder more of the burden for defense spending.

Ahead of the meeting, a senior White House official said Trump is “100 percent committed to NATO.”

This comes after Trump, as recently as January, called NATO “obsolete” due to its inability to thwart several terrorist attacks and because “it was designed many, many years ago.”

Still, the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity, the president has “made it very clear, repeatedly, that he is very committed to NATO.”

Along with reaffirming the U.S. commitment to NATO, Trump and Stoltenberg are expected to discuss NATO’s role in fighting global terror and Trump’s repeated assertions that other NATO countries don’t pay their fair share for defense spending.

‘Likely to see eye-to-eye’

The White House official said he doesn’t expect an “awkward conversation” because Trump and Stoltenberg are “likely to see eye-to-eye” on the issue of increased spending among NATO countries.

All NATO countries have agreed to spend two percent of their gross domestic product on their own defense by 2024, but only a few of the member-countries currently meet that goal.

Last month, after a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Trump said Germany “owes vast sums of money to NATO” and said the country needs to pay the U.S. more for the “powerful, and very expensive, defense it provides Germany.”

The U.S. spends about three percent of its GDP on defense, while Germany spends about 1.2 percent.

On Monday, Trump gave his official approval Tuesday for Montenegro to join NATO, marking another step forward in the tiny Balkan country’s quest for NATO membership.

The White House official said the Trump administration is “very concerned about the Russians’ interference in October elections in Montenegro.”

Russia has described Montenegro’s NATO membership as a “provocation” due to the country’s geographical proximity to Russia. The Kremlin has long seen the Balkans as inside its “sphere of influence.”
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Italy’s parliament approved on Tuesday measures to accelerate asylum procedures, cutting the number of possible appeals and speeding up deportations of rejected migrants.

Since 2014 the number of migrants reaching Italy’s shores has surged, with half a million arriving in the country, and under European Union law Italy has to set up so-called “hotspots” where migrants with the right of asylum are set apart from those without.

As a result, Italy’s asylum applications have jumped, burdening the national civil courts and with procedures further delayed by appeals that can take years.

Under the new rules the asylum ruling can be appealed only once, instead of twice, and the request has to be submitted within a month.

The law, named after Interior Minister Marco Minniti and Justice Minister Andrea Orlando, also creates 26 new sections in courts across the country, specialized in immigration.

It enables the Interior ministry to employ up to 250 people in the next two years to work in specialized state-run committees dealing with the asylum request.

Rights group Amnesty International said on Tuesday it was worried for the “significant reduction in the procedural guarantees for the asylum seekers” claiming that the new procedures could be unconstitutional and discriminatory.

“Faster decision are in the interest of those requesting asylum but they must not lead to a limitation of [the migrants’] rights,” the head of Amnesty International in Italy Antonio Marchesi said in a statement.

The new rules had already been adopted by Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni’s government at the beginning of February with an emergency decree on the grounds that the court backlog was stacking up quickly and asylum-seeker shelters were filling up.

Under Italian law, emergency decrees have to be converted into law by parliament within 60 days.

Italy has estimated that it will spend about 3.9 billion euros ($4.1 billion) this year on managing immigration, almost three times as much as in 2013. The annual bill could rise to 4.3 billion euros if arrivals increase, the equivalent to a quarter of the country’s annual spending on defense.

($1 = 0.9428 euros)
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Turks living overseas are turning out in greater numbers to vote in a referendum on changing the constitution to create an executive presidency, President Tayyip Erdogan said on Tuesday, a development that pollsters say could benefit him.

Voters in Turkey will go to the polls on April 16 to decide on the referendum that would give Erdogan sweeping new powers.

Voting for expatriate Turks began as early as late March in some countries and is due to run until Sunday.

The referendum campaign has brought a rapid deterioration in relations with some of Turkey’s European allies over the banning of some rallies by Turkish ministers in the Netherlands and Germany on security grounds, something Erdogan has denounced as “Nazi-like” tactics.

A high turnout abroad is likely to boost Erdogan, pollsters say, citing past elections, but at home it could hurt him as opposition voters traditionally make up a bigger proportion of those who tend to shun the polls on an election day.

“There is an amazing explosion of votes abroad. Around 1.42 million votes have been cast,” Erdogan said at a ceremony in the southeastern city of Sanliurfa, calling on his supporters to flood the ballot box with “yes” votes in the referendum.

The figure Erdogan cited suggests a turnout of around 50 percent, based on the 2.88 million voters registered abroad in the last general election in November 2015, according to data from the High Electoral Board (YSK).

In that election the turnout was around 40 percent among expatriates, with 56 percent of those votes being cast for the AK Party, which Erdogan founded more than a decade ago.

Polls show a close race days before the referendum, putting the “yes” vote slightly ahead, but indicate that nearly half the country could reject the proposed constitutional changes.

Foreign vote results will be announced once the actual referendum is held on Sunday.

Bitterly Divided

One polling company, Mak Danismanlik, seen as close to Erdogan, said initial exit polls from abroad showed the “yes” vote at 62 percent. It said the only country where the “no” vote had prevailed was the United States. It did not say how many people it had polled or where the research was conducted.

Pollsters Gezici, whose research has tended to overestimate opposition support, forecast 82-83 percent voter participation domestically and a “yes” vote as high as 56 percent if the turnout is lower in Turkey.

The referendum has polarized the nation of 79 million.

Erdogan’s opponents fear increasing authoritarianism from a leader they see as bent on eroding modern Turkey’s democracy and secular foundations.

Erdogan argues that the proposed strengthening of the presidency will avert instability associated with coalition governments, at a time when Turkey faces security threats from Islamist and Kurdish militants.

It was not immediately clear what the turnout in specific countries was, but in the November 2015 election, around 40 percent of the Turks in Germany cast their votes while the figure was around 45 percent in the Netherlands.

Germany’s Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper said Turks living there had cast 696,863 votes for the referendum, bringing turnout in Germany to 48.73 percent.
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President Donald Trump gave his official approval Tuesday for Montenegro to join NATO, marking another step forward in the tiny Baltic country’s quest for NATO acceptance.

The White House says Trump looks forward to meeting with Montenegro and other NATO leaders next month in Brussels to welcome the 29th member of the alliance.

The White House statement said Montenegro’s accession will signal other countries seeking to join NATO that “the door to membership in the Euro-Atlantic community of nations remains open and that countries in the Western Balkans are free to choose their own future.”

The U.S. Senate voted overwhelmingly last month to support Montenegro’s NATO bid.

Trump is scheduled to meet Wednesday with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg at the White House.

As recently as January, Trump called NATO “obsolete” because it had not defended against terrorist attacks. He also complained other NATO countries are not paying their fair share for defense.

“A lot of these countries are not paying what they are supposed to be paying, which I think is very unfair to the United States,” Trump told The Times of London.  “With that being said, NATO is very important to me.  There are five countries that are paying what they are supposed to. Five. It is not much.”

Russia has described Montenegro’s NATO membership as a “provocation” due to the country’s geographical proximity to Russia. The Kremlin has long seen the Balkans as inside its “sphere of influence.”
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God comes first in this mountaintop village on Turkey’s Black Sea, the saying goes. Then, according to adoring villagers, comes local boy Recep Tayyip Erdogan, today one of the most transformational, polarizing figures in modern Turkish history.

Nestled among tea plantations, the village of Dumankaya in the rugged province of Rize oozes the fervent loyalty that has propelled Erdogan, 63, to one electoral triumph after another since he took power as prime minister in 2003.

Now the Turkish president is hoping that pious Muslim bedrocks of support like Dumankaya will help deliver him another win, this time in Turkey’s April 16 referendum. The vote could extend Erdogan’s rule for many years and, in his opponents’ view, further erode Turkey’s challenged democracy.

For many Turks, Sunday’s vote on whether to expand the powers of the Turkish presidency is not a dry constitutional matter. For people on both sides of the political divide, it’s all about the outsized ambitions of one man, Erdogan.

Fisherman Birol Bahtiyar, wearing a cap emblazoned with a “Yes” slogan, dismissed suggestions by opponents that the referendum was a power-grab by Erdogan or that he was leading Turkey into a one-man regime.

“In the past 14 years, Turkey stepped into a new age,” said the 49-year-old as he and his friends fixed their nets at Rize’s harbor. “I will vote yes because I trust him. There is no such thing as a one-man rule. We still have an assembly, a parliament. We have confidence [in the proposed system].”

The constitutional amendments would shift Turkey’s system from a parliamentary to a presidential system, in one of the most radical political changes since the Turkish republic was established in 1923. Opponents fear that the changes will give the president near-absolute powers with little oversight, turning the NATO country that once vied for European Union membership into an authoritarian state.

For ‘the people’

But for the socially conservative and pious residents of Rize, such arguments ring hollow. To them, the region’s most famous son is a reformist leader who has brought unprecedented economic growth and prosperity to Turkey and provided improved health care, education and large infrastructure projects.

In Erdogan — whose parents and siblings were born in Dumankaya (Smoky Rock in English for the fog that frequently hangs over it) — they see a local who has given a greater voice to the pious — who felt marginalized under previous governments, which enforced secular laws barring Islamic headscarves in schools and public offices.

They believe Erdogan — who has ruled Turkey for over a decade, first as prime minister and as president since 2014 — is a strong leader who has provided political stability, ending the political squabbles that plagued Turkey in the 1990s.

Voters in Rize have backed Erdogan by a wide margin in a long string of election victories and promise to do so again on April 16. They support his ambition to turn Turkey into one of the world’s top powers by 2023, when the country marks its centenary.

Mehmet Celik, a Dumankaya resident, sees the president as a larger-than-life trail-blazer and fighter against Turkey’s perceived enemies.

“For us, God comes first. Then comes Recep Tayyip Erdogan,” said Celik. “He supports the people and the people support him.”

Two sides to coup

Celik believes Erdogan rescued Turkey from last summer’s failed coup and feels that a strong presidency would protect Turkey from greater calamity. Turkey has blamed the coup on the followers of the U.S.-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, a charge Gulen has denied.

“They [the Gulenists] would have ruined us. If we had fallen into their hands, we would have been destroyed. Why would we not vote ‘Yes?”‘ Celik said. “If our president did not exist, we would have been in a miserable state.”

But critics say Erdogan has used the coup attempt to purge his critics. More than 150,000 people have been taken into custody, fired or forced to retire from Turkey’s armed forces, judiciary, education system and other public institutions since the coup attempt.

Ismail Erdogan, a cousin of Erdogan and the chief administrator of Dumankaya, points at a long list of projects either launched or completed under Erdogan’s rule, including a major coastal highway, the Recep Tayyip Erdogan University, a hospital.

“He brought infrastructure, natural gas. He is bringing an airport. We had never seen such things. He brought a giant hospital,” Ismail Erdogan said, describing his cousin as a serious child who liked to talk about soccer and commanded respect even at an early age.

Speaking in a recently renovated local government building in Dumankaya, Ismail Erdogan also praised his cousin for standing up to Europe, following a dispute last month over restrictions imposed by the Netherlands and Germany on Turkish ministers holding referendum campaigns there.

“Let’s not [join] the European Union, we don’t need it,” Ismail Erdogan said. “We are self-sufficient.”

Erdogan campaigned in Rize recently to court the votes of his fellow townsmen, symbolically launching the start of construction for an airport that will serve Rize and the neighboring province of Artvin. In a speech laced with nationalist and anti-European rhetoric, Erdogan also promised that the construction of mountain tunnel pass would soon be finished.

Among the crowd of adoring supporters — waving flags and banners emblazoned with the word “Yes” — was 22-year-old religious studies student Leyla Erdeniz. Her affection for Erdogan runs so deep that she moved to Rize to study at the university named after him.

“A ‘Yes’ result will be very beneficial to our country,” the university student said. “There will be no trace left of the old Turkey.”
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The Trump administration must decide by the end of this month whether to grant Belarus continued relief from U.S. economic sanctions despite a stiff government crackdown on street demonstrations last month.

The renewal decision is considered a low-level priority for the administration, which is facing bigger questions about U.S. relations with Russia and China, and with most major diplomatic positions still unfilled.

But whether the United States renews the sanctions relief or instead returns to blacklisting nine major Belarus companies is an early test for the Trump administration on the importance it puts on human rights versus efforts to coax countries in Russia’s orbit to turn to the West.

The sanctions waivers, which began in 2015 and were extended twice last year, were tied to domestic political reforms and intended to encourage Belarus, which has long historical ties to Russia, to move closer to the European Union and the United States.

Now, however, U.S. officials are alarmed by the arrests of hundreds of people last month during an attempt to hold a street protest in the capital Minsk, and concerned if continuing sanctions relief could be seen as ignoring the crackdown.

Belarus authorities last month raided a human rights group’s offices and used violence against peaceful protesters, rights groups say.

“This most recent crackdown sharpened people’s focus,” said a U.S. congressional aide, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “Now there is a real question about whether or not they [the sanctions] should be reimposed.”

April deadline

The decision must be taken by the end of April. If the administration makes no decision, the sanctions will be reimposed.

NATO members, including Poland and the Baltic states, feel threatened by what they see as increased Russian intervention in Europe, including Moscow’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea region in 2014.

“Belarus is so important from a strategic point of view and it’s so dependent economically on Russia that we are really very concerned,” said Piotr Wilczek, the Polish ambassador to the United States. “Belarus is becoming more and more part of this wider Russian problem we have.”

The Trump administration is inclined to renew the sanctions relief, but likely would wait until the last minute “to make sure they don’t do anything awful,” said a U.S. official, also speaking on condition of anonymity.

State and Treasury Department officials declined to comment in detail on the Belarus sanctions. The Belarus Ministry of Foreign Affairs declined to comment.

President George W. Bush in 2006 blacklisted top Belarus officials, including President Alexander Lukashenko, for undermining the country’s democratic processes or human rights abuses. The United States later added large Belarus companies to the sanctions list.

But in 2015, Lukashenko released political prisoners and indicated he was open to better relations with the West. That October, President Barack Obama temporarily lifted sanctions on nine Belarus companies, including petrochemical conglomerate Belneftekhim and tire manufacturer Belshina.

Now, however, Lukashenko appears to be keeping his country firmly in Moscow’s orbit. In a letter to him last week, four U.S. senators said they were concerned over the crackdown and that he decided to allow Russia to conduct “provocative” military exercises in Belarus later this year.
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Hungary’s right-wing president has signed controversial legislation on foreign universities that critics warn could force the closure of a top international institution founded by U.S. financier George Soros.

The approval Monday by President Janos Ader came less than a day after tens of thousands of protesters rallied in central Budapest against the legislation, which is seen as targeting Central European University.

Soros founded CEU — an English-language institution of about 1,400 students from more than 100 countries — in 1991, after the fall of the Soviet Union. At that time, the financier’s move was widely hailed as helping Hungary transition from decades of communism to democracy by providing exposure to democratic ideals.

The legislation signed Monday requires all 28 foreign universities operating in Hungary to have campuses in their home countries, as well. Critics have for months pointed out that CEU is the only university among the 28 with no overseas branch, fueling widespread fears the law aims to deny young people access to the Western-leaning CEU and its pro-democracy curriculum.

The new law further bars colleges and universities based outside the European Union from awarding Hungarian diplomas without the consent of the respective governments.

Without such consent, the law will ban the university from enrolling new students after Jan. 1, 2018, and force it to close in 2021.

State media quoted the president Monday as insisting the new law “does not infringe [on] freedom of learning or of teaching” enshrined in Hungary’s constitution.

However, last week the U.S. embassy in Budapest issued a statement critical of the legislation, while accusing lawmakers who backed it of targeting the Soros-founded university. Embassy Charge d’ Affaires David Kostelancik also said that Washington will continue to advocate for CEU’s “unhindered operation in Hungary.”

Prime minister viewed harshly in West 

Right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orban, whose ruling Fidesz party crafted the legislation, is viewed in much of Europe and beyond as an autocrat and a xenophobe who has long viewed the liberal internationalist Soros as an ideological foe.

Orban is an outspoken critic of EU migration policy and has loudly criticized sanctions against Russia that were imposed by the EU and the United States after Moscow’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula.

The online U.S. publication Politico described him in 2015 as “Europe’s new dictator.”

Last October, thousands of demonstrators marched in Budapest to protest the sudden closure of the country’s largest-selling opposition newspaper, Nepszabadsag. 

Those protests also targeted Orban, who has long been accused of stifling press freedoms and isolating private media outlets critical of his controversial anti-migrant stance.

The newspaper’s shutdown came just weeks after it published reports alleging widespread corruption within Orban’s ruling party, including close allies of the prime minister.
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Swedish authorities have arrested second person in connection with Friday’s truck attack in Stockholm that killed four people and wounded 15 others.

There were no immediate details about the additional suspect and how that person is connected to the 39-year-old Uzbek national suspected of ramming a stolen truck into an upscale shopping hub

The suspected terrorist was previously known to Swedish intelligence services, but authorities say he was not a part of any ongoing investigations.

“Nothing indicates we have the wrong person,” said the head of Sweden’s national police, Dan Eliasson, in comments to reporters Saturday. “On the contrary, suspicions have strengthened as the investigation has progressed.”

Photos taken at the scene Friday showed the vehicle was a truck belonging to beer maker Spendrups, which said its truck had been hijacked earlier in the day.

Witnesses say the truck drove straight into the entrance of the Ahlens Department Store on Drottninggatan, the city’s biggest pedestrian street, sending shoppers screaming and running. Television footage showed smoke coming out of the store after the crash.

Following the attack, Stockholm’s central train station was evacuated and nearby buildings were locked down for hours. Police say they have increased security at the country’s borders.

Sweden’s King Carl Gustaf expressed his condolences for the victims and their families in a brief statement.

“We follow developments but as of now our thoughts go to the victims and their families,” he said. The king cut short a visit to Brazil on Friday to return home.

A number of European leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel and London’s mayor, Saddiq Khan, have released statements indicating their solidarity with Sweden.

“One of Europe’s most vibrant and colorful cities appears to have been struck by those wishing it — and our very way of life — harm,” said European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker.

French President Francois Hollande voiced his “horror and indignation” over the assault. Paris’ Eiffel Tower went dark for five minutes Friday to honor the victims of the attack.

The U.S. State Department also condemned the attack, adding, “Attacks like this are intended to sow the seeds of fear, but in fact they only strengthen our shared resolve to combat terrorism around the world.”
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Pope Francis, who is scheduled to visit Egypt later this month, decried Sunday’s blast at a Coptic Church in Egypt’s Nile Delta that killed 21 worshippers and wounded dozens more.

At the end of his Palm Sunday Mass, the leader of the world’s Roman Catholic Church said, ” I pray for the dead and the victims. May the Lord convert the hearts of people who sow terror, violence and death and even the hearts of those who produce and traffic in weapons.”

Earlier, in his homily, Francis denounced the suffering in the world today.

He said those who ” . . . suffer from slave labor, from family tragedies, from diseases . . . They suffer from wars and terrorism, from interests that are armed and ready to strike.”

Before the beginning of the Mass, Francis and a group of cardinals, holding elaborately braided palm fronds, walked through the crowd at Saint Peter’s Square.

In Jerusalem, worshippers at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher celebrated Palm Sunday by waving palm branches during the procession next to the newly restored Tomb of Jesus.

The church in Jerusalem’s Old City is believed to be the burial site of Jesus.

Palm Sunday marks Jesus’ triumphant entry in Jerusalem more than 2,000 years ago and the beginning of the Christian Easter Holy Week.

 
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Norwegian police set off a controlled explosion of a “bomblike device” found in central Oslo Saturday, a suspect is being held in custody, and the security police are investigating, authorities said.

A Reuters reporter described a loud bang shortly after the arrival of Oslo’s bomb squad.

“The noise from the blast was louder than our explosives themselves would cause,” a police spokesman said, while adding that further investigation would be conducted at the scene.

The device had appeared to be capable of causing only a limited amount of damage, the police said earlier.

Police declined to give information about the suspect.

Norway’s police security service said in a tweet it had taken over the investigation from local police.

Oslo’s Groenland area, a multi-ethnic neighborhood that is home to popular bars and restaurants as well as several mosques, is also where the city’s main police station is located, less than a kilometer from where the device was found.

In neighboring Sweden, a truck Friday plowed into crowds in Stockholm, killing four people and wounding 15 in what police said was an apparent terror attack.

In 2011, right-wing extremist Anders Behring Breivik set off a car bomb in Oslo that killed eight people and destroyed Norway’s government headquarters, before going on a shooting rampage that killed 69 people at nearby Utoeya island.
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Britain’s foreign minister, Boris Johnson, canceled plans Saturday to visit Moscow, just hours before he was due to depart London, as tensions escalated between the U.S. and Russia over Syria.

Russian leaders, who have dubbed as illegal the U.S. action to punish the government of President Bashar al-Assad for its use of chemical weapons, ramped up the war of words late Friday when the country’s prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, warned America was “one step away from military clashes with Russia.”

In an apparent show of force, a Russian frigate armed with cruise missiles, reportedly was heading into the Mediterranean. According to Russian state media, the ship, the Admiral Grigorovich, will dock at Tartus on the Syrian coast.

Russia also has pledged to bolster Syria’s air defenses.

News of the cancelation of the British foreign minister’s trip was relayed first by Johnson himself, who tweeted: “I will now not travel to Moscow on Monday 10 April.” He said his priority was to hold talks with Western allies about Syria and Russia’s support for Assad.

British officials say that Johnson’s trip was called off after the British foreign minister consulted his American counterpart, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who himself is due to visit the Russian capital in a few days.

They said Johnson wants to spearhead efforts to help shape a “coalition of support” against Russian activity in Syria. In a statement later, Johnson said, “Developments in Syria have changed the situation fundamentally.”

A Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman described the cancelation as “absurd.”

Johnson was due to hold talks with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, and the two diplomats were expected to hold a joint news conference.

“It seems that our Western colleagues live in their own kind of reality in which they first try to single-handedly make collective plans, then they single-handedly try to change them, coming up with absurd reasons,” said Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova in a statement.

“Unfortunately, stability, and consistency have long stopped being the hallmark of Western foreign policy,” she added.

As the diplomatic turmoil unfolded, activists Saturday claimed Syrian government warplanes had again struck Khan Sheikhoun, the rebel-held town targeted earlier in the week in an alleged chemical weapons attack by the Syrian regime.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the London-based pro-opposition watchdog that gathers information from activists on the ground, claimed a woman was killed and three people wounded after being machine-gunned by jets in an eastern neighborhood.

The warplanes carrying out Saturday’s alleged raid are believed to have flown from al-Shayrat, the airbase targeted Thursday by the U.S. in a punitive barrage of 59 Cruise missiles strike, the greatest show of America firepower in more than a decade. Tuesday’s chemical attack left scores dead, including children and women, according activists. U.S. officials so far have not commented on the claimed raid. In addition, there was no confirmation by other monitors.

There also was an unconfirmed report of a U.S.-led raid against the Islamic State in the countryside around Raqqa, the terror group’s de facto capital in Syria. The observatory quoted local activists as saying missiles struck the village of Hanida, to the west of the city.

 
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Officials say the top US diplomat will urge Russia to rethink its continued support for the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad. More from Nike Ching.
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U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson heads to Moscow on April 12, just days after the United States launched missile strikes on a Syrian airbase in response to a Syrian chemical weapons attack that killed civilians.

Officials say the top U.S. diplomat will urge Russia to rethink its continued support for the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad.

Britain’s foreign minister, Boris Johnson, said on Saturday he had canceled a visit to Moscow that was scheduled for April 10. “Developments in Syria have changed the situation fundamentally,” said Johnson in a statement.

Secretary of State Tillerson is scheduled to travel to Moscow on Wednesday, after he attends the G-7 Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in Italy from April 9 to 11.

The State Department did not respond to VOA’s inquiry on whether Tillerson’s Moscow trip has been changed or canceled since the U.S. military strikes.  

Analysts say Washington needs the diplomatic follow-up, though, after the military action.

The top U.S. diplomat, known as a man of few words, had harsh comments for Russia, which Washington blamed for failing to rein in its ally, Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad.

“Either Russia has been complicit or Russia has been simply incompetent,” said Tillerson on Thursday night. He was referring to the Kremlin’s failure to prevent the Assad government from allegedly conducting a poison gas attack that killed scores of people in rebel-held Idlib province.

In 2013, the Syrian government agreed to surrender its chemical weapons under the supervision of the Russia government. Prior to the recent gas attack, Tillerson said Assad’s future would be decided by the Syrian people. After the attack, he took aim at Assad’s government and Russia’s support for him.

Experts said the U.S. military strike could complicate Tillerson’s diplomatic mission to Moscow, and that an escalation of tensions between the U.S. and Russia over the future of Assad also is possible. 

“For sure this means further immediate bumps in the bilateral relationship,” former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine John Herbst told VOA.

He said despite the fact that the missile strikes were quite limited and Washington had warned Moscow ahead of time so that Russian soldiers would not be in danger, Moscow’s reaction was rather strong.

Herbst, now director of the Atlantic Council’s Dinu Patriciu Eurasia Center, said Russia’s decision to suspend the de-confliction mechanism, which is intended to avoid accidents, was not well considered.

“While de-confliction serves the interest of both U.S. and Russian, it is more important to Moscow” because U.S. conventional forces are far superior and “Russian forces are more at risk in case of an incident,” said Herbst.

“The strikes undoubtedly change the tone of the conversation, given the de-confliction protocols, between Russia and the U.S. have been suspended in Syria,” Michael Kofman from Center for Naval Analyses told VOA.

Professor Doga Ulas Eralp of American University in Washington told VOA on Friday that Tillerson “now has to scramble to broker a deal” that would allow a sustainable coordination mechanism between the two countries “if the U.S. is determined to escalate its military engagement in Syria.”

Middle East Institute scholar Daniel Serwer told VOA the military strikes “shoot the Syria agenda item to the top.” The key question is whether Tillerson can get something going with the Russians on a political solution in Syria,” he added.

Former U.S. officials say the Syrian chemical attack is a major challenge to the nascent relationship between the Trump administration and the Kremlin.

“It is vital that the U.S. corrects course and that the current administration moves quickly from a set of alarming and ignorant comments to having a real policy and strategy for managing and mitigating Putin’s negative impacts on world peace and security,” said former U.S. ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe Daniel Baer.

Alexei Arbatov, director of the Center of International Security at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations in Moscow, told VOA’s Russian service that while the U.S. missile strike in Syria complicates U.S.-Russian relations, “the reaction of the Russian Foreign Ministry thus far has been quite restrained, and it is not rejecting the possibility of agreements and cooperation with the United States.”

While Washington is willing to work with Moscow in areas of practical cooperation, the State Department said Secretary Tillerson will make it clear the U.S. is committed to holding Russia accountable when international norms are violated.

 
…

Kostas Argyros’s unpaid electricity bills are piling up, among a mountain of debt owed to Greece’s biggest power utility.

His family owe 850 euros to the Public Power Corporation (PPC), a tiny fraction of the state-controlled firm’s 2.6 billion euros ($2.8 billion) in unpaid bills.​

Argyros picks up only occasional work as an odd-job man.

“When you only work once a week, what will you pay first?” said the 35-year-old, who lives in a tiny apartment in an Athens suburb with his unemployed wife and four small children.

The Argyros family are emblematic of deepening poverty in Greece following seven years of austerity demanded by the country’s international creditors. They burn wood to heat their home in winter, food is cooked on a small gas stove, and hot water is scarce.

The only evening light is the blue glare of a TV screen, for fear of racking up more debt.

Five-watt lightbulbs provide a dim glow and Argyros worries about the effect on their eyesight. More than 40 percent of Greeks are behind on their utility bills, higher than anywhere else in Europe.

People in poor neighborhoods are also increasingly turning to energy fraud, meaning that the problem for PPC is much higher than the mountain of unpaid bills suggests.

Power theft is costing PPC around 500-600 million euros a year in lost income, an industry official said, requesting anonymity because he was not authorised to divulge the numbers.

PPC declined to comment on the figure. Public disclosures by the Hellenic Electricity Distribution Network Operator HEDNO, which checks meters, show that verified cases of theft climbed to 10,600 last year, up from 8,880 in 2013 and 4,470 in 2012.

Authorities believe theft is far higher than the cases verified by HEDNO, another official said, declining to be named.

Households in the country are equipped with analog meters, which are easy to hack. One of the most common tricks is using magnets, which slow down the rotating coils to show less consumption than the real amount, a HEDNO official said.

Some websites even offer consumers tips and tricks on power fraud.

Burden of Arrears

For households who have had their electricity cut off, a group of activists calling themselves the “I Won’t Pay” movement have taken it upon themselves to reconnect the supply. The group says it has done hundreds this year.

PPC, which has a 90 percent share of the retail market and 60 percent of the wholesale market, is supposed to reduce this dominance to less than 50 percent by 2020 under Greece’s third, 86 billion euro bailout deal.

The lenders also want PPC to sell some of its assets, but the company is toiling under the debt of unpaid bills, a problem opposition lawmakers say will force a fire-sale.

In little over a year from June 2015, overdue bills to the 51-percent state-owned firm grew by nearly a billion euros to 2.6 billion, Chief Executive Manolis Panagiotakis told lawmakers in March.

Analysts estimate PPC’s cash reserves have shrunk to about  00 million euros, forcing it to secure a 200 million euro bank loan to repay a bond due in May.

The tangle has left it with little leeway for new investments or to fund a switch to cleaner forms of energy from coal to improve environmental standards.

“It is often said that PPC is undergoing the most critical phase of its history,” Panagiotakis told lawmakers. “I will not argue with that.” He declined a Reuters request for an interview.

The burden of arrears for PPC is now “so big that some worry it will not be able to lift it for much longer”, said energy expert Constantinos Filis.

The apartment building where the Argyros family live is a testament to that. Many tenants struggle even to pay the 25 euro annual fee to light communal areas such as staircases.

Ground Zero

PPC has tried to recoup unpaid bills with phased repayment plan. A total of 625,000 customers owing a total of 1.3 billion euros had signed up to the plan by January.

The Argyros family have also entered the plan with the help of Theofilos, a local charity, which also contributes towards their monthly bills.

Meanwhile, PPC’s provisions for bad debt remain high. The plans drove the figure down to 453 million euros in the nine months to September last year from 690 million a year earlier.

Analysts expect PPC to swing back to a profit of between 63-109 million euros in 2016, with provisions of below 600 million euros.

Filis, the energy expert, said the more things stayed the same, the closer PPC was to “ground zero” and he drew comparisons with the Greek state’s brushes with near bankruptcy during the debt crisis.

“It’s reasonable to say that PPC is too big to allow it to collapse, particularly regarding energy security,” he said. “On the other hand, a few years ago some argued that no country could fail either.”
…

The United States appears to be raising the stakes in Syria, suggesting Russia may have helped the Assad regime carry out a deadly chemical weapons attack that killed more than 80 people in Idlib province.

A day after firing 59 Tomahawk missiles at Syria’s Shayrat Airfield, the launching point for the chemical weapons strike, senior American military officials said they were looking at evidence that the Syrian regime did not act alone.

“We think we have a good picture of who supported them,” a senior military official told Pentagon reporters, adding officials were “carefully assessing any information that would implicate the Russians” — confirming they either knew of Tuesday’s sarin gas attack in advance or assisted Syrian government forces.

The Pentagon’s comments Friday followed a series of terse criticisms from Washington about Russia’s role in Syria, some accusing Moscow of trying to “sow confusion” over Syria’s use of chemical weapons by promoting what they called “false facts.”

Watch: Russia’s Suspension of US Cooperation on Syrian Airspace Elevates Risk of Clash

‘Russia faces a choice’

“Damascus and Moscow assured us all these weapons had been removed and destroyed,” a U.S. official told VOA, referencing an agreement in 2013 to eliminate Syria’s chemical-weapons stockpiles.

“Russia faces a choice,” the official continued. “Either it takes responsibility for ensuring the removal of these weapons, as Russia committed it would do, or it admits that it lacks the ability to control [Syrian President Bashar al-] Assad.”

Pentagon officials refused to offer any direct evidence Friday linking Russia to the April 4 gas attack on town of Khan Sheikhoun, which was hit by bombs containing a chemical consistent with sarin, an extremely potent and deadly nerve-gas agent. However, they noted that a Russia military aviation unit is based at the same airfield, and that Russian forces in Syria are known to have “chemical expertise.”

U.S. military officials said Friday they had watched a small drone flying over a hospital in Khan Sheikoun that was both a target of the chemical attack and also provided treatment for gas victims.

“About five hours later, the UAV [drone] returned, and the hospital was stuck by additional munitions,” one official said.

‘Hiding the evidence’

A senior military official suggested that was an attempt “to hide the evidence of a chemical attack.”

Syria has claimed that its airstrike Tuesday in Khan Sheikhoun was carried out with conventional explosives, which may have inadvertently detonated a stockpile of sarin gas in a warehouse controlled by anti-Assad rebels. That theory was ridiculed by Western experts on Syrian military and other analysts.

Syrian authorities condemned the U.S. missile strike, terming it a “flawed U.S. strategy” that “makes the U.S. a partner of Islamic State and [the al-Nusra Front] and other terrorist organizations.’’

Russia, meanwhile, opened fire in its own war of words with Washington.

Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev took to social media, branding the U.S. missile strike an illegal act and warning that Washington was now “one step away from military clashes with Russia.”

Moscow also claimed it shut down a direct line of communication with American forces in the area around Syria. The communications link was established soon after Russian military forces arrived to assist Assad, more than a year ago, with the aim of avoiding near collisions or other midair incidents involving Russian and U.S. aircraft operating in the same Syrian airspace.

U.S. officials denied the communications link had been shut down. They confirmed it had been used to warn Russia of the U.S. missile strike in advance, and that it remained operational afterwards.

Watch: What is a Tomahawk?

US emphasizes ‘precision strikes’

Pentagon officials said they took precautions to avoid striking Russian personnel stationed at the Syrian airfield, and added that they specifically avoided hitting chemical-weapons storage facilities in the area. Military experts told VOA that Tomahawk missiles were used in the attack because precision strikes were necessary.

One American military official said the action in Syria early Friday was “appropriate, proportionate, precise and effective.”

Early assessments indicated the U.S. successfully targeted about 20 aircraft, storage facilities, ammunition supply bunkers and radars, yet doubts are beginning to emerge about the missile strike’s effectiveness.

The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Syrian warplanes based at Shayrat were back in the skies Friday, carrying out airstrikes on rebel-held areas in the countryside east of the city of Homs.

In Palm Beach, Florida, President Donald Trump’s spokesman defended the U.S. strike and said it sent a “very, very clear message” to Assad. But White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer also seemed to distance himself from some of the tough talk about Russia.

“The actions that were taken were clearly against the Assad regime, and I’m not going to say anything further than that,” Spicer said.

He also appeared to walk back Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s comment Thursday that “steps are underway” to form an international coalition to cooperate on removing Assad from power.

“The president believes that the Syrian government, the Assad regime, should at the minimum agree to abide by the agreements that they made not to use chemical weapons,” Spicer said. “I think that’s where we start.”

What next?

The U.S. position has left many allies, while supportive of the missile strike against Syria, wondering what comes next.

“We think it is a good move, because we have been asking for it for a long time,” a Western diplomatic official told VOA on condition of anonymity, adding that while it is clear Assad cannot remain in power, no one has yet to present a clear path to agreement on a suitable replacement.

“That’s the problem. We have not identified anyone,” the official said.

Western intelligence agencies have also warned repeatedly that any move that creates a power vacuum in Syria will only strengthen terror groups like Islamic State and al-Qaida.

The White House promised the U.S. is well positioned to build a consensus. 

“There’s going to be a lot of foreign leader engagement,” one official there told VOA. “We have the credibility.”

At the United Nations Friday, U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley said the United States “took a very measured step” with the missile strike. “We are prepared to do more,” she added, “but we hope that will not be necessary.”

VOA’s U.N. Correspondent Margaret Besheer contributed to this report.
…

Serbian President-elect Aleksandar Vucic likes to use the past to explain the future.

In 1947, as Josip Broz Tito was consolidating Yugoslavia, he built a railway through Bosnia that linked Serbs, Croats and Muslim Bosniaks, friend and foe after World War II.

“Tito wasn’t stupid,” Vucic told Reuters. “People had to work together, build together, then travel together, live together. That’s what we need — connecting.”

Together again

Yugoslavia broke up in war 26 years ago, spawning seven states. Now, the European Union has taken up a project put forward by Vucic that would see five of them — plus Albania — joined once more, this time in a common market.

It would abolish all remaining tariff barriers, lift obstacles to the free movement of people, commodities and services and introduce standard regulations across the region.

The EU wants an outline agreed to in July, seizing on the idea as a way to re-engage with Balkan states unnerved by the bloc’s evaporating enthusiasm for further enlargement and exposed to the growing influence of Russia.

But it has received a mixed reception.

Some apprehensions

Kosovo, for one, fears being roped back into a Serbian-dominated union of the kind it fought to leave; others worry it will only slow their accession to the EU, or worse still replace it.

The EU has delegated development of the plan to the Regional Cooperation Council. Its head, Goran Svilanovic, told Reuters Balkan leaders were “increasingly realistic” about the reduced appetite in Brussels for EU enlargement.

“They see what’s up in the EU,” he said.

But they will work together on the Balkan market plan and with the EU “when it comes to something they see is … bringing change to their daily lives.”

Market of 20 million

For years, the prospect of EU accession has stabilized relations and driven reform in a turbulent and impoverished region. But since Croatia followed ex-Yugoslav Slovenia in joining in 2013, the EU has been beset by problems of migration, Brexit and right-wing populism.

A year later, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker ruled out any further expansion until at least 2020.

Stability and democracy in the Balkans have suffered.

Juncker was stating a fact, a senior EU official told Reuters, but in hindsight he had made “a huge mistake.”

“A lot of things that were in progress just stopped,” the official said. Another EU diplomat said Brussels had “dropped the ball” and was trying to re-engage.

Start with market, trade

One of the results is the Western Balkans Common Market, which would build on the Central European Free Trade Area, CEFTA. All six countries are members of CEFTA, but the pact has struggled to stimulate trade within the region and some barriers remain.

Backers of the plan say a single economic space with a market of 20 million people would be more attractive to investors than six small states each with their own red tape.

“Investors would be banging down our doors,” said Vucic, Serbia’s prime minister who was elected president Sunday.

The EU says it would mark a step toward membership, not an alternative.

But it did not go unnoticed that enlargement had no place in a March document by Juncker that set out the options for the EU after Britain leaves in 2019.

“Create your own common market [because you are not joining ours],” was the headline of an opinion piece last month by Kosovo analyst Besa Shahini on the Pristina Insight website.

Kosovo threw off Belgrade’s repressive rule in a 1998-99 war, and is wary of Serbia as the biggest country in the region and a friend of Russia.

“We don’t want to see a Serbia that behaves in the style of Russia, trying to politically dominate the region,” Kosovo Foreign Minister Enver Hoxhaj said of the initiative Tuesday.

Prime Minister Isa Mustafa took to Facebook: “We share different experiences of the past,” he wrote. “We do not want that past to return, repackaged.”

Sokol Havolli, an adviser to Mustafa, told Reuters the project risked slowing the region’s EU integration.

Alternative narratives

Asked if a common market may become a substitute for EU enlargement, Vucic said that “should not and must not” happen but said he had heard, unofficially, of such fears in Montenegro.

The office of Montenegrin Prime Minister Dusko Markovic told Reuters Podgorica had yet to receive a detailed proposal, but that it supported greater regional cooperation.

An Albanian official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Tirana was “skeptical.”

Kristof Bender, deputy chairman of the European Stability Initiative, a Brussels-based research group, said he would be surprised if creating a club of poor economies would do much to address the region’s woes.

Nor could it be a “credible alternative” to the narrative of prosperity and stability inside the EU.

“If this narrative evaporates, Balkan politicians will need to look for other narratives,” Bender told Reuters. “Given recent history, this is dangerous.”

Railroad holds lessons

Today, the railway Tito built speaks less of the future than the folly of the past: as trains cross between Bosnia’s two ethnically-based regions, different crews take over, reflecting how power was divided up in order to end the 1992-95 war. Part of the line is no longer used.

Vucic said critics of his idea argued they simply wanted to leave the Balkans behind and join the EU.

So does Serbia, he said. “But does that mean we should lose the next three, four, five years when we know we’re not going to become a member?”
…

A 31-year-old Romanian tourist who was knocked into the River Thames from Westminster Bridge during an attack on Britain’s Houses of Parliament more than two weeks ago has died, London police said Friday.

Andreea Cristea was rescued from the cold river after the attack, in which a man identified as Khalid Masood drove his rented SUV into pedestrians on the bridge and then fatally stabbed a police officer at the Houses of Parliament.

Cristea’s family described her as “our shining ray of light that will forever keep on shining in our hearts,’’ and said they would be donating to charity all the money raised to help her since the March 22 attack.

Her boyfriend Andrei Burnaz suffered a broken foot in the attack. 

Police said she had been receiving extensive treatment in the hospital since the attack but that life support was withdrawn Thursday afternoon.

The death toll from the attack now stands at five, including the police officer. The attacker was shot dead by police. Dozens more were wounded.

Police believe the 52-year-old attacker acted alone and was motivated by Islamist extremism.
…

A few days before the July 2014 missile attack on Malaysian Airlines flight MH17, a Ukraine Army-operated Buk missile launcher was located not near fighting in the east, as Moscow has long insisted, but hundreds of kilometers to the west.

That’s what a team of journalists and researchers at Bellingcat, a Britain-based investigative website, has concluded after lengthy analysis of digital images taken by a Ukrainian army chaplain.

Bellingcat, which specializes in using open-source information such as social media posts to analyze conflicts, was one of the first groups to produce evidence debunking key elements of the Russian government’s claim that Ukrainian forces shot down MH17 on July 17, 2014, killing all 298 people aboard. Bellingcat’s conclusion — that Moscow doctored images in order to buttress allegations that Kyiv was responsible for the single worst atrocity of the war — was later corroborated by arms control researchers at the Middlebury Institute for International Studies at Monterey in California.

Bellingcat’s new report says metadata from a series of digital images prove that the exact same Buk missile launcher that Moscow claims was within striking range of MH17 on the day of the attack was actually stationed at Mirgorod Air Base in Poltava, central Ukraine — well outside of firing distance.

“The only operational Buk missile launcher observed within firing range of MH17 on July 17, 2014, was the Russian Buk 332, from the Kursk-based 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade,” a surface-to-air combat unit of the Russian ground forces that was stationed in eastern Ukraine at the time, Bellingcat reported.

Kyiv-based political scientist Yuri Lesnichiy of the Institute of Analysis and Forecasting says the new information will prove vital to undercutting the Kremlin narrative surrounding the tragedy.

“Such high-profile investigations … carry across particular information and the Kremlin finds it difficult to twist the facts that the Europeans will believe in,” he told VOA’s Russian Service.

Immediately after MH17 was shot out of clear blue skies over the frontlines in eastern Ukraine, Russia’s RIA state news agency reported that Russian-backed separatists had successfully shot down a Ukrainian military aircraft. They retracted the story upon learning that it was a civilian airliner that had been brought down.

In March, Ukraine asked the United Nations’ highest court to order Russia to stop funding and equipping pro-Russian separatists. In that filing, they cited a September 2016 six-country investigation team led by the Netherlands, which said MH17 had been shot down with a Russian-manufactured Buk surface-to-air missile from an area controlled by pro-Russian forces.

Russia denies sending troops or military equipment to eastern Ukraine and has dismissed findings of the September 2016 probe as biased and politically motivated.

This report was translated by Svetlana Cunningham and produced in collaboration with VOA’s Russian Service.
…

The European Parliament on Thursday supported easing travel rules for Ukrainians, driving on a Western integration viewed with great suspicion by Moscow.

Ukraine has been the scene of the worst confrontation between Russia and the West in Europe since the Cold War with Moscow annexing Crimea from Kyiv in 2014 and backing separatist rebels in the east of the country.

The West has sided with Ukraine, where Russia intervened after a Moscow-allied president was toppled by street protests demanding an end to corruption and closer EU ties. Russia denies direct military involvement in its southern neighbor.

European lawmakers voted 521 to 75 to grant Ukrainians holding biometric passports the right to visit for up to 90 days for tourism, business or visiting relatives and friends.

“Great day for the people of Europe and Ukraine,” said Anna Maria Corazza Bildt, a Swedish member of the Parliament.

The visa waiver, which does not give Ukrainians the right to work in the EU, is expected to take effect this summer.

The pro-Western government in Kiev is moving closer to the EU and NATO. But a weak economy and endemic corruption would hinder any move to accession, and some states would be unwilling to further anger Ukraine’s Soviet-era ruler, Russia, by incorporating it into an alliance it views as hostile.

The waiver covers all EU states except Ireland and Britain, as well as Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland – not in the EU but members of Europe’s free-travel Schengen zone.

Kyiv’s Europe Minister Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze said the vote on Thursday was “a strong signal to the aggressor that Ukraine is on its way back to the European family.”

Three years of fighting in Ukraine’s industrial east killed more than 10,000 people.

While the heaviest battles have died down, the conflict is still simmering and peace efforts are stalled amid mutual recriminations by Kyiv, EU and NATO on the one side, and Russia and the rebels on the other.
…

European Central Bank head Mario Draghi insisted Thursday that the bank’s massive stimulus efforts are still needed even though the 19-country eurozone’s economy is strengthening.

“The recovery is progressing and now may be gaining momentum,” Draghi said in a speech at a conference at Frankfurt’s Goethe University.

He cautioned, however, that much of the improvement depended on the ECB’s monetary stimulus efforts and that it was “too soon to declare success.”

Draghi’s stance on keeping stimulus in place contrasts with that of the U.S. Federal Reserve, which has already started withdrawing monetary stimulus by raising benchmark interest rates off their lows near zero. Minutes of the Fed’s last meeting, released Wednesday, showed officials were considering reducing their large bond holdings sooner than expected, a step that could eventually mean higher market interest rates. The Fed can do that because the U.S. economic recovery is farther along and unemployment has fallen to lower levels than in Europe.

The ECB has said it intends to continue its main stimulus program – which pushes newly printed money into the eurozone economy through bond purchases – at least through the end of the year. It has also kept its key interest rate benchmark at a record low of zero. Both steps aim to raise inflation and increase credit to businesses so they can expand and hire people.

A raft of recent economic data has stoked speculation that the ECB might start withdrawing its stimulus efforts earlier than planned. Surveys suggest that the eurozone may have grown as much as 0.6 percent in the first quarter from the previous three-month period, while official figures have shown inflation rising sharply from near zero to 1.5 percent in March, which is closer to the bank’s goal of just under 2 percent. Unemployment has also fallen but remains high at 9.5 percent, with sharp differences between member countries.

Bringing an end to the stimulus efforts could have wide-ranging consequences for markets, companies and consumers. It would likely mean an end to unusually low borrowing costs for governments and financially solid companies. It would also remove support for bond prices and might mean higher returns for savers, who currently get very little, if anything at all, on conservative holdings such as bank deposits.

Draghi indicated the central bank was not considering an earlier exit and that “a reassessment of the current monetary policy stance is not warranted at this stage.”

Draghi warned that recent gains in growth had come to a great extent from cheaper oil and from the ECB’s own efforts. He said the bank needed to see that inflation would remain stronger even after the stimulus started to be withdrawn.

His comments were in line with the written account released Thursday of the bank’s March 9 meeting, when it left the stimulus efforts unchanged. The account indicated that the bank’s 25-member rate-setting committee was in “broad agreement” that “a very substantial degree” of stimulus was still needed.

Europe’s recovery still faces risks from unexpected political turbulence in Europe and elsewhere. Anti-EU candidate Marine Le Pen could seek to take her country out of the euro if she wins the French presidency in June. U.S. President Donald Trump has raised uncertainty about global trade conditions by vowing to review existing agreements such as the North American Free Trade Agreement, saying they have disadvantaged U.S. companies and workers.

The political risks lead analysts to think that the ECB will not signal a stimulus exit is on the way until after the French elections at the earliest. Draghi has said bond purchases would not end abruptly but would likely be tapered off over a period of months.

The Frankfurt-based ECB is the chief monetary authority for the 19 European Union member countries that use the euro as a currency.
…

The European Union says it is imposing new sanctions on North Korea in retaliation for the country’s repeated nuclear and ballistic missile tests.

The new sanctions include investment bans on aerospace, metalworking and conventional arms-related industries, and prohibitions against providing computer services to people involved with mining and chemical industries.

An EU statement Thursday said the new sanctions were imposed because North Korea violated multiple U.N. resolutions and constitutes “a grave threat to international peace and security.”

The European Union asked North Korea to “cease its provocations and to abandon all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs” and begin talks with the international community.

Four people were also added to the EU visa ban and asset freeze list. Their names were not immediately released.

On Wednesday, North Korea launched a projectile about 60 kilometers into the Sea of Japan. Last month, North Korea fired four ballistic missiles into the sea in response to annual U.S.-South Korea military drills, which the North sees as a preparation for war.

Any launch of objects using the ballistic missile technology is a violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions, but the North has defied the ban as infringement of its sovereign rights to self-defense and pursuit of space exploration.

The sanctions announced Thursday are the second round imposed on North Korea by the European Union since late February when Kim Jong-Nam, the estranged half-brother of leader Kim Jong-Un, was assassinated in Kuala Lumpur.

 
…

Russian police arrested three people Thursday in connection with a suicide bombing in the St. Petersburg subway system earlier this week.

Police said the suspects come from the same region of central Asia as the bomber, Akbarzhon Dzhalilov. A bomb also was found and disarmed in the apartment shared by the three suspects on the outskirts of St. Petersburg.

The Investigative Committee, Russia’s top criminal investigation agency, said investigators found other evidence in the apartment that will help in the case against the three suspects.

Reuters reports the unexploded bomb found in the apartment was similar to the unexploded bomb found Monday in the subway.

The arrests come a day after eight other central Asian men were arrested in St. Petersburg for allegedly recruiting people to join the Islamic State and other extremist groups.

The poverty-stricken countries in Central Asia have become a prime recruiting territory for the militant groups, with thousands of people from the region believed to be fighting alongside the IS group in Iraq and Syria.

Authorities said there is no immediate evidence linking the alleged recruiters to the subway bombing.

No one has yet claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing Monday that left 14 people dead, including the bomber, and more than 50 others wounded.

 
…

Switzerland and Italy are in a diplomatic dispute over Switzerland’s decision to close three secondary border crossings at night in a bid to fight crime.

Italy’s Foreign Ministry on Tuesday summoned the Swiss ambassador for urgent talks, emphasizing that the closings violate Europe’s norms on free circulation.

In an email, the press office of the Swiss Department of Foreign Affairs said Ambassador Giancarlo Kessler “took note” of the message from Italian authorities and pledged to keep them informed on the results from what it characterized as an experiment.

Italian mayors in the affected region had protested the closures as penalizing Italians who legitimately cross the border for work or other reasons.

The crossings from the Italian provinces of Como and Varese have an average nightly traffic of 90 vehicles during the week and 110 vehicles on weekends, 20 percent of which are Swiss vehicles, according to Swiss authorities.

Switzerland started closing the three border crossings at night on April 1 as part of a six-month pilot program. The move, approved by the Swiss parliament, follows a brief surge of migration into the Italian-speaking Swiss region of Ticino last summer from Italy, which has seen the arrival of tens of thousands of migrants rescued at sea.

The populist Swiss People’s Party, which has the most seats in parliament, has led the push to restrict access both to citizens of European Union countries who want to work in Switzerland and to migrants who have arrived in Europe from Africa and the Middle East.

Switzerland is not a member of the European Union, but adheres to the “Schengen zone” rules that allow for unimpeded cross-border travel and trade on the continent.

Kessler said Switzerland “had informed the Italian authorities on several occasions” about the project, including during a meeting of their two countries’ foreign ministers last month, according to the foreign affairs department.
…

Ebay founder Pierre Omidyar’s philanthropy promised $100 million over the next five years to support journalism and fight fake news, the foundation announced Wednesday.

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which broke the story of the controversial Panama Papers, is the first organization to receive funds from the Omidyar Network – a three-year grant of up to $4.5 million “to expand its investigative reporting”.

“Across the world, we see a worrying resurgence of authoritarian politics that is undermining progress towards a more open and inclusive society,” Matt Bannick, Omidyar Network Managing Partner, said. “A lack of government responsiveness and a growing distrust in institutions, especially the media, are eroding trust. Increasingly, facts are being devalued, misinformation spread, accountability ignored, and channels that give citizens a voice withdrawn.”

​

Formally announcing the commitment at the Skoll World Forum on social entrepreneurship in Oxford, England, the Omidyar Network has also promised support to the Anti-Defamation League, devoted to fighting anti-Semitism, and the Latin American Alliance for Civic Technology (ALTEC).

Established in 2004 by Pierre Omidyar and his wife Pam, the Omidyar Network supports organizations to foster economic and social change.

Reporting on the Panama Papers revealed secret, so called offshore financial accounts that were hiding assets to avoid tax payments.

 
…

A gap is widening between the Trump administration and European allies over the future of President Bashar al-Assad and how to end the six-year war in Syria.

While U.S. officials have shifted the focus away from Assad having to relinquish power, European leaders remain adamant he has no future as ruler of Syria. His departure, they say, remains a crucial part of any solution to a conflict that has left an estimated 470,000 dead.

Following Tuesday’s toxic gas attack on a town in northern Syria, the worst chemical weapons attack in the war since mid-2013, European leaders are intensifying their rhetoric. On Tuesday, Britain’s Theresa May called “on all the third parties involved to ensure that we have a transition away from Assad.”

Photo Gallery: Aftermath of gas attack on  Khan Sheikhoun

European politicians gathered for an international conference hosted by the European Union in Brussels on Syria drew a link between what seems to be the use of a more deadly nerve agent than seen in previous claimed chemical weapons attacks, and the Trump administration’s shift on Syria.

Last week, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Assad’s future was up to the Syrian people to decide, while the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, said removing him was no longer a Washington priority.

On Monday, just hours before the gas attack on the town of Khan Sheikhoun, Haley hardened her rhetoric, referring to the Syrian leader as a “war criminal” guilty of “disgusting” actions against his people.” She said Syrians “don’t want Assad anymore.”

In the wake of the chemical weapons attack, U.S. officials in Washington did not publicly indicate any likely shift in administration policy. The White House and U.S. State Department condemned the attack as “heinous,” dubbing it a likely war crime.

But officials placed the emphasis on the need for Russia and Iran, Assad backers, to do something. Tuesday, the White House press secretary didn’t outline any punitive steps in response to an attack the administration says was carried out by the Assad regime.

Russian, Iranian influence

Tillerson demanded Tuesday that Moscow and Tehran “exercise their influence over the Syrian regime and to guarantee this sort of horrific attack never happens again.” He added that “Russia and Iran also bear great moral responsibility for these deaths.”

On Wednesday, Moscow reiterated its denial the Assad regime was responsible for the attack that has left close to 100 dead, according to local activists, and more than 400 injured. Russia’s Defense Ministry said in a statement it believed a rebel “terrorist warehouse” was hit by a conventional airstrike from Syria’s military, causing the release of “toxic substances.”

The Defense Ministry claimed chemical weapons were being stored for use in neighboring Iraq. Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konoshenkov said,“On the territory of the depot there were workshops, which produced chemical warfare munitions.”

British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said “all the evidence” he had seen in relation to the incident “suggests this was the Assad regime who did it in the full knowledge they were using illegal weapons in a barbaric attack on their own people.”

Johnson added he did “not see how a government like that can continue to have any kind of legitimate administration over the people of Syria.”

Focus on Assad

German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said, “There is one thing which cannot happen, that a dictator who committed horrible crimes in the region remains untouched.”

The European Union’s foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini also said she could see no way Assad can remain as Syria’s ruler. “It seems completely unrealistic to believe that the future of Syria will be exactly the same as it used to be in the past,” she told reporters in Brussels.

But it is unclear what the Europeans can or would be willing to do without U.S. support, according to analysts.

They note that European influence on shaping international policy on the Syrian conflict is waning, despite the fact Europe is the largest provider of humanitarian aid in Syria. This week’s EU co-hosted international conference on humanitarian assistance to Syria has attracted minimal participation from the United States, Russia and Turkey.

Instead of sending its foreign minister, Russia is only represented at the gathering by its EU ambassador, Vladimir Chizhov. Washington has sent the State Department’s under-secretary for political affairs, Thomas Shannon. That contrasts with last year when then Secretary of State John Kerry attended.

Damascus calculation

Analyst Charles Lister of the Middle East Institute in Washington, says he believes Damascus has taken note of the Trump administration’s policy shift when it comes to Assad’s future and that may have shaped the decision behind launching Tuesday’s attack.

“Assad also knows full well that the U.S. is increasingly distancing itself from any consideration of intervention in Syria, so what has Assad got to lose?” he argued. “If all he suffers is a few days of international condemnation, then he comes out of things just as secure as he was beforehand.”

 
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The European Union is determined to stick to a deal with Turkey to stem the flow of undocumented migrants into the bloc, European Council President Donald Tusk said on Tuesday.

Tusk, who met Bulgaria’s President Rumen Radev, welcomed Sofia’s efforts to boost security on its southeastern border with Turkey to prevent migrants from crossing. He said Brussels would provide additional financing if the situation worsened.

“We are determined to keep routes of illegal migration in this region closed,” Tusk told reporters. “We remain committed to the full implementation of the EU-Turkey statement. The EU is honoring its commitments, just like we expect Turkey to continue keeping its part of the deal.”

The EU-Ankara agreement came into force in March 2016 after more than a million refugees and migrants from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and beyond reached Europe in 2015, many crossing to Greek islands from Turkey.

“Should further difficulties arise on Bulgaria’s borders, the EU has already planned emergency funding, and stands ready to react quickly in support of Bulgaria,” Tusk said.

Turkey has said it may cancel the migrant readmission agreement, under which it takes back people who enter Greece through irregular routes. It was angered after several EU states prevented Turkish politicians from holding rallies to drum up support for plans to give President Tayyip Erdogan new powers in a referendum.

Bulgaria, the EU’s poorest member, expressed concern about a possible new migrant influx given that Turkey-EU tensions are running high.

“It is extremely important for us to develop good neighborly relations with Turkey,” Radev said. “At the same time, rising tensions between the EU and Turkey create the greatest risk for Bulgaria.”
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The referendum in Turkey to extend President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s powers is a couple of weeks away, and polls indicate the outcome remains too close to call. The “No” campaign, having little access to mainstream media, is increasingly turning to social media, and human rights groups accuse prosecutors of targeting those who adopt such a strategy.

Turkish law student Ali Gul’s video on why to vote “No” highlights, in a humorous way, the dangers of concentrating too much power in one person’s hands. It was an instant hit on social media. At the end of the video, Gul rhetorically asked, “Will I get arrested if this video is popular?”

Within days of its success, Gul issued another video, and he said he knew he would be arrested for making it.

Youth ‘deserve freedom’

“I am now going to the prosecutor to give a statement,” he said. “I will probably be arrested after that.  But it is not important, I am not afraid. The children and youth of this nation deserve freedom and happiness — and not fear, imprisonment and death.”

Gul was indeed arrested and jailed — but not for the video. He was detained instead for tweets posted two years ago that were deemed insulting to the president, a crime that carries three years in jail. Gul denied writing them, but his attorneys warned that he was destined to remain in pretrial detention for many months.

Turkey researcher Emma Sinclair Webb of U.S. based Human Rights Watch said there appears to be a systematic campaign of intimidation against “No” campaigners on social media.

“I think actually clamping down on individuals, making them a target for punitive measures pre-referendum because they have had a prominent voice in the ‘No’ campaign, is all about creating a chilling effect which will give the message loud and clear to the general public that you are not welcome to discuss what is at stake in the referendum and you are not welcome to publicly voice opposition of it,” she said.

Scores of arrests, closures

Meanwhile, independent mainstream media have been all but crushed. Under emergency rule, introduced after July’s failed coup, more than 150 journalists have been jailed and 170 media outlets closed, all critical of the government. The government claims the prosecutions and closures are all related to terrorist actions and coup plotting.

Most news TV channels broadcast at least three or four campaign speeches a day in support of a “Yes” vote on the presidential powers issue, while the “No” campaign is all but invisible, accounting for only 10 percent of coverage.

For the “No” campaign, social media have become vital, but with more than 2,500 prosecutions for insulting the president in the past six months, social media postings are not without risks.  

Observers warn such pressure is likely to intensify as the referendum campaign ends.
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