Новини

Delivering his annual speech to Russian parliament Feb. 20, President Vladimir Putin promised an “asymmetric” response to the West and specifically to the United States, should Washington decide to deploy its intermediate-range nuclear weapons in Europe. The Russian leader said his country would target “decision-making centers” in the West, if the US doesn’t give credence to Moscow’s concerns. Responding to Putin’s remarks, NATO said such threats are “unacceptable. Igor Tsikhanenka has more.
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The French government will adopt an international organization’s definition of anti-Semitism and propose a law to reduce hate speech from being circulated online, French President Emmanuel Macron said Wednesday.

Macron, speaking at the annual dinner of a Jewish organization, said France and other parts of Europe have seen in recent years “a resurgence of anti-Semitism that is probably unprecedented since World War II.”

Macron said applying the working definition of anti-Semitism drawn up by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance would help guide police forces, magistrates and teachers in their daily work.

Since the intergovernmental organization approved the wording in 2016, some critics of Israel have said it could be used suppress Palestinian rights activists. The definition states anti-Semitism can take the form of “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.”

Macron said he thinks that view is correct.

“Anti-Zionism is one of the modern forms of anti-Semitism,” the French leader said in Paris at the dinner of Jewish umbrella organization CRIF. “Behind the negation of Israel’s existence, what is hiding is the hatred of Jews.”

Macron mentioned anti-Semitism based on “radical Islamism” as a rampant ideology in France’s multi-ethnic, poor neighborhoods.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed his appreciation at France’s adoption of the international definition of anti-Semitism, in a phone call with the French leader ahead of the speech, Netanyahu’s office said.

Social media

Macron also said his party would introduce legislation in parliament in May to force social media to withdraw hate speech posted online and use all available means to identify the authors “as quickly as possible.”

He especially denounced Twitter as waiting days, sometimes weeks, to remove hate content and to help authorities so a judicial investigation can be led. At the same time, he praised Facebook’s decision last year to allow the presence of French regulators inside the company to help improving practices combating online hate speech.

Anti-Semitism

Macron’s speech came a day after thousands of people attended rallies across France to decry an uptick in anti-Semitic acts in recent months. On Tuesday morning, about 80 gravestones spray-painted with swastikas were discovered in a cemetery in a small village of eastern France.

Macron observed a moment of silence Tuesday with parliament leaders at the Holocaust museum in Paris.

The Paris prosecutor’s office said Wednesday that a man has been arrested over a torrent of hate speech directed at Jewish philosopher Alain Finkielkraut during a Saturday march by yellow vest protesters. The insults included words like “Zionist!” and “Go back to Tel Aviv!” and “We are France!”

The man was taken into custody Tuesday evening after a police inquiry was opened into a suspected public insult based on origin, ethnicity, nation, race or religion.

The government last week reported a rise in incidents of anti-Semitism last year: 541 registered incidents, up 74 percent from the 311 registered in 2017.

In other incidents this month, swastika graffiti was found on street portraits of Simone Veil, a survivor of Nazi death camps and a European Parliament president who died in 2017, the word “Juden” was painted on the window of a bagel restaurant in Paris and two trees planted at a memorial honoring a young Jewish man tortured to death in 2006 were vandalized.

“That’s our failure,” Macron said. “The time has come to act.”
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In the study of his home outside Washington, former priest Tom Doyle searched a shelf packed with books to find the thick report that led him to walk away from the priesthood and become an advocate for victims of sexual abuse by clergymen.

The 1985 report was one of the first exposes in a sexual abuse scandal that has plagued the Catholic Church. Pope Francis has called senior bishops to meet for four days starting Thursday to discuss how to tackle the worsening crisis.

Doyle, who lost his job soon after the report was made public and eventually decided to leave the priesthood, is deeply skeptical that anything of substance will come of this week’s meeting.

“They’re going to pray and they’re going to meditate. But it’s totally useless,” he said. “You shouldn’t have to have something like this in 2019. These men should know right out of the gate that if you have a priest who’s raping children, you don’t allow them to continue.”

The meeting comes after a year in which fresh revelations about abuse of children and cover-up has shaken the church globally and tested the pope’s authority. Predatory priests were often moved from parish to parish rather than expelled or criminally prosecuted as bishops covered up the abuse.

Monsignor Stephen Rossetti, 67, a professor at Catholic University, said that U.S. bishops have already taken decisive steps to keep children from being abused. In 2002, after decades of abuse in the Boston area became public, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) passed a charter including requirements to report allegations of abuse of minors to police and to remove abusive priests or deacons after a single offense.

“The bishops of the United States are following zero tolerance,” said Rossetti, who helped draft the charter. “If you molested a minor at any time in your life, you’re not going to be a priest in this country. Period.”

Rossetti said the pope and the bishops should use the Vatican meeting to push for similar reforms in other countries where the problem of abuse is still coming to light.

But the U.S. policy “still left the bishops off the hook,” said David Lorenz, a director at Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP. He called the pope’s summit “a publicity stunt.”

Recalling how he was abused at age 16 by a priest at an all-boys high school in Kentucky, Lorenz said the church and bishops with secrets of their own will continue to cover up abuse.

“It’s the secrecy. It’s the silence. It’s because I was silent for so long,” Lorenz, now 60, said, welling up. “They rely on that.”
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Hunkered down behind a wall of snow, two U.S. Marines melt slush to make drinking water after spending the night digging out a defensive position high in the Sierra Nevada. Their laminated targeting map is wedged into the ice just below the machine gun.

Nearly 8,000 feet up at a training center in the California mountains, the air is thin, the snow is chest high and the temperature is plunging. But other Marines just a few kilometers away are preparing to attack, and forces on both sides must be able to battle the enemy and the unforgiving environment.

The exercise is designed to train troops for the next war — one the U.S. believes will be against a more capable, high-tech enemy like Russia, North Korea or China. The weather conditions on the mountain mimic the kind of frigid fight that forces could face in one of those future hotspots.

“We haven’t had to deal with these things. We’ve been very focused on Iraq and Afghanistan,” said Maj. Gen. William F. Mullen, head of the Marines’ Training and Education Command. “What we really have to do is wake folks up, expose them to things that they haven’t had to think about for quite a while.”

After 17 years of war against Taliban and al-Qaida-linked insurgents, the military is shifting its focus to better prepare for great-power competition with Russia and China, and against unpredictable foes such as North Korea and Iran. U.S. forces must be able to survive and fight while countering drones, sophisticated jamming equipment and other electronic and cyber warfare that can track them, disrupt communications and kill them — technology they didn’t routinely face over the last decade.

“If you were to draw a line from here to the DMZ between North and South Korea, both of these sites are on the 38th parallel. And so the weather here accurately replicates the weather that we would encounter in North and South Korea,” said Col. Kevin Hutchison, the training center commander. “What you’re seeing here is Marines fighting Marines, so we are replicating a near-peer threat.”

As a snowstorm swirls around them, Mullen and Hutchison move through the woods, checking in with the young Marines designated as the adversary force of about 250 troops who must prevent more than 800 attackers from gaining control of nearby Wolf Creek Bridge. An Associated Press team was allowed to accompany them to the Marine Corps’ Mountain Warfare Training Center south of Lake Tahoe and watch the training.

Lance Cpl. Reese Nichols, from Pensacola, Florida, and Lance Cpl. Chase Soltis of Bozeman, Montana, dug their defensive position a day ago, and they’ve been watching all night for enemy movement, while using a small burner to melt snow to stay hydrated.

The hardest part, said Nichols, is “boiling water 24/7. And the cold. It’s cold.”

The cold and wet conditions force the Marines to use snowshoes and cross-country skis to get around. They wrap white camouflage around their weapons, struggle to keep the ammunition dry and learn how to position their machine guns so they don’t sink into the powdery snow.

“It’s kind of overwhelming coming up here. Many of them have never been exposed to snow before,” said Staff Sgt. Rian Lusk, chief instructor for the mountain sniper course. “You’re constantly having to dig or move up the mountain range. So, it’s physically taxing, but more than anything, I think, it’s mentally taxing.”

The Marine Corps has changed its training in the mountain course and at Twentynine Palms Marine base 400 miles south. Instead of scripted exercises, trainers map out general objectives and let the Marines make their own battle decisions, replicating a more unpredictable combat situation.

Rather than fighting from forward operating bases that stretched across Iraq and Afghanistan, complete with security forces and chow halls, troops now have to be more independent, commanders say, providing their own protection and support. And they must prepare for a more formidable, high-tech enemy.

Mullen recalled speaking to a commander in Ukraine in the aftermath of Russia’s annexation of Crimea. “He said that within two minutes of keying his handset he had rockets coming in on his position,” said Mullen, who spent two days at Twentynine Palms, watching a battlefield exercise, before flying to the Bridgeport base in California’s Toiyabe National Forest.

The key in both places, said Mullen, is whether the Marines can stay undetected and adjust their battle plan quickly when faced with unexpected threats.

Back on the mountain, Mullen and Hutchison have seized on that issue. The attacking force, members of 2nd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment out of Camp Pendleton, California, spotted one of the adversary’s fighting positions and fired on it. The simulated attack didn’t hurt anyone, but the competition is real for the defending forces from 2nd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, out of Twentynine Palms.

“You took casualties today, and you didn’t respond to it,” Hutchison told the platoon leader, 2nd Lt. Brendan Dixon of Hampton Roads, Virginia.

Why, pressed Mullen, didn’t Dixon move his Marines to a safer location?

In the face of questioning from senior leaders, Dixon held his ground, confident his forces were in the right place to defend the bridge.

It turns out, he was right.

Moving toward the bridge, the attacking forces became trapped on a ridgeline, exposed to the enemy and unable to move through a ravine filled with snow. Gunfire exploded across the ridge.

The final assessment by the trainers was that the attackers suffered 30-40 percent casualties, while Dixon’s troops lost about 10 percent.

The attacking force, said Hutchison, made some decisions that would have resulted in Marine deaths in a real battle, but it’s better to learn now, than in combat.

“In the Far East, whether it’s in northern Europe, etc., we’re replicating that here. And what we’re finding is, it’s an extremely challenging problem,” said Hutchison. “And it’s a problem that, frankly, if we don’t train to, it’s going to cost a lot of Marine lives.”

 
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British Prime Minister Theresa May makes another trip to Brussels on Wednesday, hoping European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker may prove more yielding than of late to salvage her Brexit deal.

With Britain set to jolt out of the world’s biggest trading bloc in 37 days unless May can either persuade the British parliament or the European Union to budge, officials were cautious on the chances of a breakthrough.

The key sticking point is the so-called backstop, an insurance policy to prevent the return of extensive checks on the sensitive border between EU member Ireland and the British province of Northern Ireland.

May agreed on the protocol with EU leaders in November but then saw it roundly rejected last month by U.K. lawmakers who said the government’s legal advice that it could tie Britain to EU rules indefinitely made the backstop unacceptable.

She has promised parliament to rework the treaty to try to put a time limit on the protocol or give Britain some other way of getting out of an arrangement which her critics say would leave the country “trapped” by the EU.

A spokesman for May called the Brussels trip “significant” as part of a process of engagement to try to agree on the changes her government says parliament needs to pass the deal.

But an aide for Juncker quoted the Commission president as saying on Tuesday evening: “I have great respect for Theresa May for her courage and her assertiveness. We will have friendly talk tomorrow but I don’t expect a breakthrough.”

EU sources aired frustration with Britain’s stance on Brexit, saying Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay brought no new proposals to the table when he was last in Brussels on Monday for talks with the bloc’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier.

On Tuesday, the EU responded to U.K. demands again: “The EU 27 will not reopen the withdrawal agreement; we cannot accept a time limit to the backstop or a unilateral exit clause,” said Margaritis Schinas, a spokesman for Juncker. “We are listening and working with the UK government … for an orderly withdrawal of the UK from the EU on March 29.”

May’s spokesman again said it was the prime minister’s intention to persuade the EU to reopen the divorce deal.

“There is a process of engagement going on. Tomorrow is obviously a significant meeting between the prime minister and President Juncker as part of that process,” he said.

Legal advice

Barclay and Britain’s Attorney General Geoffrey Cox are also due back in Brussels midweek and want to discuss “legal text” with Barnier that would give Britain enough assurances over the backstop, British sources said.

It is Cox’s advice that the backstop as it stands is indefinite, which May is  trying to see changed by obtaining new legally binding EU commitments.

May needs to convince eurosceptics in her Conservative Party that the backstop will not keep Britain indefinitely tied to the EU, but also that she is still considering a compromise idea agreed between Brexit supporters and pro-EU lawmakers.

May’s spokesman said the Commission had engaged with the ideas put forward in the so-called “Malthouse Compromise” but raised concerns about “their viability to resolve the backstop.”

The EU says the alternative technological arrangements it proposes to replace the backstop do not exist for now and so cannot be a guarantee that no border controls would return to Ireland.

Barnier told Barclay the EU could hence not agree to this proposal as it would mean not applying the bloc’s law on its own border.

Eurosceptic lawmakers said Malthouse was “alive and kicking” after meeting May on Tuesday.

May has until Feb. 27 to secure EU concessions on the backstop or face another series of Brexit votes in the House of Commons, where lawmakers want changes to the withdrawal deal.

EU and U.K. sources said London could accept other guarantees on the backstop and the bloc is proposing turning the assurances and clarifications it has already given Britain on the issue in December and January into legally binding documents.
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The European Commission will take action against Poland if its government is harassing judges for consulting the European Court of Justice on the legality of Polish reforms, Commission First Vice President Frans Timmermans said Tuesday.

Timmermans, responsible in the Commission for making sure European Union countries observe the rule of law, was responding to a letter from Poland’s biggest judge association Iustitia, which asked him to act.

Iustitia urged Timmermans to sue the euroskeptic Polish government over the harassment of judges who question the legality of the government’s judicial reforms by asking the opinion of the ECJ.

“Every Polish judge is also a European judge, so no one should interfere with the right of a judge to pose questions to the European Court of Justice,” Timmermans told reporters on entering a meeting of EU ministers who were to discuss Poland’s observance of the rule of law.

“If that is becoming something of a structural matter, if judges are being faced with disciplinary measures because they ask questions to the court in Luxembourg, then of course the Commission will have to act,” he said, without elaborating.

Poland’s ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party has been in conflict with the Commission over its handling of Polish courts since the start of 2016. Most EU countries back the Commission.

“The combined effect of the legislative changes could put at risk the independence of the judiciary and the separation of powers in Poland,” German Minister for Europe Michael Roth and French Minister for European Affairs Nathalie Loiseau said in a joint statement at a ministerial meeting with Timmermans.

“In this context, the amendments made so far by the Polish authorities are not sufficient,” they said, according to delegation officials.

Procedure

Worried about the government flouting basic democratic standards in the country of 38 million people, the Commission has launched an unprecedented procedure on whether Poland is observing the rule of law, which serves mainly as a means of political pressure.

The procedure could lead to the loss of voting power in the EU for a government that does not observe the rule of law.

“Sadly, not much has changed and some things even have worsened,” Timmermans said.

The EU has launched a similar procedure against Hungary, where the authoritarian rule of Prime Minister Viktor Orban is raising concern in other EU countries. Brussels has also warned Romania to stop its push for influence over the judicial system.

Iustitia, grouping one-third of all Polish judges, wrote to Timmermans to act against repressive disciplinary steps against judges by the National Council of Judiciary, which, under changes made by the government, is now appointed by politicians from the ruling PiS parliamentary majority.

“The proceedings are usually initiated against judges who are active in the field of defending the rule of law, among others by educational actions, meetings with citizens, international activity,” Iustitia head Krystian Markiewicz wrote in the letter to Timmermans, seen by Reuters. “Therefore I appeal for referring Poland to the Court of Justice of the European Union in connection with the regulations concerning the disciplinary proceedings against judges.”
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The European Union on Tuesday warned British Prime Minister Theresa May that her trip to EU headquarters to seek an elusive breakthrough in Brexit negotiations stands no chance of success when it comes to her central demand for the divorce deal to be reopened.

Reinforcing the message, EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker made it clear that he had little hope that something fruitful would emerge during his evening talks with May Wednesday, and that the stalemate between Britain and the 27 other EU nations would likely continue.

“There is not enough movement for me to able to assume that it will be a productive discussion,” Juncker told reporters in Stuttgart, Germany. “I don’t know what Mrs. May will tell me tomorrow.”

He added that, even after almost two years of talks, “I don’t know what our British friends actually want to have. In the British Parliament, there is always only a majority against something, there is never a majority for something.”

Earlier, Juncker’s spokesman, Margaritis Schinas, warned that “the EU27 will not reopen the withdrawal agreement,” a condition that many British lawmakers are insisting on before they back a Brexit deal to have Britain leave the bloc on March 29.

U.K. lawmakers’ objections center on a provision for the border between the U.K.’s Northern Ireland and Ireland. The mechanism, known as the backstop, is a safeguard that would keep the U.K. in a customs union with the EU to remove the need for checks along the Irish border until a permanent new trading relationship is in place.

May wants to change the deal’s phrasing to make sure that a provision to ensure an open Irish border after Brexit would only apply temporarily.

But the EU refuses to budge and says the 585-page legally binding Brexit agreement is a take-it-or-leave-it document and can’t be altered. It is willing to discuss other ways to find a compromise, but has challenged London to come up with concrete proposals.

The British government appears to be pinning its hopes in Attorney-General Geoffrey Cox, who has been trying to come up with new wording that can satisfy both Britain and the EU and could produce an addendum or other addition “clarifying” the backstop.

Schinas said the talks this week seek “to see whether a way through can be found that would gain the broadest possible support in the U.K. parliament and respect the guidelines agreed” by the EU nations.

The Brexit deal negotiated between May and the EU last year — and rejected by Britain’s Parliament last month — includes a long transition period after Britain leaves the bloc on March 29 to give time for new trade relations to be set up.

If the U.K. Parliament does not agree on the deal before March 29, Britain risks a chaotic departure that could be costly to businesses and ordinary people on both sides of the Channel.

The uncertainty has already led many firms to shift some operations abroad, stockpile goods or defer investment decisions.

On Tuesday, Honda announced it will close its only U.K. plant in 2021. The automaker said the decision was not directly related to Brexit, but U.K. Business Secretary Greg Clark said “decisions like Honda’s this morning demonstrates starkly how much is at stake.”

Clark, a leading pro-EU voice in May’s Cabinet, said the Brexit-related uncertainty facing businesses was “unacceptable” and “needs to be brought to a conclusion.” Clark said businesses could not wait until “the last minute on March 28” for certainty.

With less than six weeks to go until March 29, chances are growing that Britain will seek to postpone its departure from the EU.

Business Minister Richard Harrington told a manufacturers’ conference Tuesday that if May could not get her deal through Parliament on a second try before March 29, there would likely be “a small extension” to the Brexit deadline so Parliament could come up with a new plan.

But delaying Brexit would require the EU’s approval — and if it is extended too far, that would force Britain to take part in the May 23-26 EU-wide election for the European Parliament. Juncker told the German daily Stuttgarter Zeitung on Tuesday that such a scenario was “difficult to imagine.”

Juncker said it’s up to Britain to decide whether it wants to request a delay to the Brexit date, but that Britain’s departure should take place before the newly elected European Parliament gathers in early July.
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The Vatican’s chief sexual crimes investigator says the Roman Catholic Church must “break any code of silence over sexual abuse.” Archbishop Charles Scicluna was speaking ahead of a summit on the protection of minors that will start Thursday at the Vatican. He added that the meeting, to be attended by presidents of bishops’ conferences from around the world, will focus on the themes of responsibility, accountability and transparency.

Scicluna said Pope Francis’ plans for the meeting include increasing awareness among the leadership of the Church about the prevention of abuse and the safeguarding of minors. He added participants would share experiences and discuss issues such as the accountability of bishops, their responsibilities and transparency.

Scicluna said attendees will have opportunities during the four-day meeting to hear the expectations of survivors of abuse. He said Pope Francis has in the past met with victims on a regular basis.

“He realizes that if we are talking about the wounds of people who feel betrayed on the most fundamental level, which is their dignity, their innocence, their faith, the Church needs to be about healing and not ignoring wounds or even making them worse,” he said.

But many doubt concrete results will emerge. Speaking in Rome Tuesday, Anne Barrett Doyle of the group Bishop Accountability said much is at stake with grieving and disillusioned Catholics all over the world as thousands have been sexually abused by clergy for decades. She said the meeting must produce a solution.

“Canon law has to be changed, not tweaked, not modified, but fundamentally changed so that it stops prioritizing the priesthood of ordained men over the lives of children and vulnerable adults who are sexually assaulted by them,” Barrett Doyle said.

She added that the Church is nowhere close to enacting the reforms it must make to stop the twin epidemic of sexual assault and sexual violence by priests and the almost universal cover-up of that violence when the bishops get away with it.

Phil Saviano, himself a survivor of abuse and a member of the Bishop Accountability board, said it is important to realize that this is not just an issue of homosexuality in the priesthood.

“I think that trying to dump it all together under homosexuality, A – it’s a dodge, B – it’s not psychologically accurate and it’s not going to lead to a proper solution, and it’s also an insult to all the women who have been sexually abused as children, and of whom I know many,” he said.

Saviano said one fundamental issue he will stress in his meetings with the summit’s organizing committee is the importance of releasing the names of all guilty priests and bishops, whether they have been convicted of abuse or even if there are allegations. He said that would be a huge service to public safety.

 
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A long-running legal battle over the house where Adolf Hitler was born erupted again on Tuesday when the Austrian government appealed against the amount of compensation it has been ordered to pay for seizing the property.

Last month, a regional court ruled that the state should pay the house’s former owner, Gerlinde Pommer, 1.5 million euros ($1.7 million) in compensation, instead of the 310,000 euros she had originally been offered.

According to Austrian media reports, the court decided on the higher sum to take into account the building’s historical significance.

But the Austrian Financial Procurator’s Office, which represents the government in legal matters, argued that the sum was too high because it did not take into account the rent the state had already paid for the property prior to its seizure, nor the costs of the building’s upkeep.

Hitler was born in the yellow corner house in the northern town of Braunau on April 20, 1889, and Pommer’s family owned it for nearly a century.

The government took control of the dilapidated building in December 2016 after years of legal wrangling with Pommer.

It wanted to prevent the premises from becoming a neo-Nazi shrine.

Wolfgang Peschorn of the procurator’s office said Tuesday the state was not contesting a compensation payment per se.

Nevertheless, “the Republic of Austria has an obligation towards taxpayers to ensure that the amount of compensation is verified by independent courts”, he said.

According to the state, the current market price of the property – set by a court-appointed expert at 810,000 euros excluding any rental income – would constitute an appropriate amount of compensation.

Pommer had been renting the 800-square-meter (8,600-square-feet) property – which also has several garages and parking spaces located behind the main building – to the interior ministry since the 1970s.

The government paid around 4,800 euros a month in rent and used it as a center for people with disabilities.

But the agreement fell apart in 2011 when Pommer refused to carry out essential renovation work and also refused to sell it.

Since then, the building has lain empty.

At one point, the interior ministry was pushing to have it torn down but the plans ran into angry resistance from other politicians and historians.

In June 2017, Austria’s highest court, the Constitutional Court, ruled in favor of its expropriation.

Although Hitler only spent a short time at the property, it continues to draw Nazi sympathizers from around the world.

Every year on Hitler’s birthday, anti-fascist protesters also organize a rally outside the building.

 
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Seven British lawmakers have quit the main opposition Labor Party over the leadership’s approach to Brexit and anti-Semitism allegations in the ranks.  

The seven moderate members of parliament say they will form an independent group. Their defection is the biggest split in the Labor Party since four senior members quit in 1981 to form the Social Democratic Party.  

The group told reporters in London’s County Hall Monday that the Labor Party has changed since leader Jeremy Corbyn came to power in 2015 and said the party no longer tolerates center-left views.

 “The bottom line is this — politics is broken. It doesn’t have to be this way. Let’s change it,” said Chuka Umunna, one of the lawmakers.  

Chris Leslie, another defector, said: “Marxism is now masquerading as the Labor Party. It has the Labor brand, but it is a machine that has taken over.”  

In a direct challenge to Corbyn, the seven centrist parliament members say they are courting other lawmakers to join their group.  

One of the group’s chief complaints is that the Labor Party has been complicit in facilitating Brexit. Corbyn has come under fire by some party members for not doing enough to oppose Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May’s plans for leaving the EU and for not pushing hard enough for a second referendum.  

The Labor Party has been divided by the Brexit vote, with many traditional voters, particularly in northern England, having chosen to leave the European Union in the 2016 referendum, while a majority of Labor MPs had supported staying in.

 Brexit has also divided the country’s Conservative Party into pro-Brexit and pro-EU wings. Britain’s departure from the EU — the terms of which are still up in the air — is set for March 29.

The seven lawmakers also accused Corbyn Monday of failing to tackle anti-Semitism in the party, a charge that has previously been leveled at the Labor leader.

A longtime supporter of Palestinian rights and a critic of the Israeli government, Corbyn denies the allegations, saying he is stamping out anti-Semitism in the party.

Luciana Berger, one of the seven MPs who defected, said Labor has become “institutionally anti-Semitic.” Berger, who is Jewish, said in leaving the Labor Party, “I am leaving behind a culture of bullying, bigotry and intimidation.”

Corbyn said he was “disappointed that these MPs have felt unable to continue to work together for the Labor policies that inspired millions at the last election and saw us increase our vote by the largest share since 1945.”
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Ukraine’s foreign minister asked the European Union on Monday for hundreds of millions of euros in loans and aid for infrastructure and businesses in its troubled east and south, regions he said Russia was trying to “suffocate.”

EU foreign ministers were discussing increasing support for Ukraine, which holds a presidential election next month in tough conditions. Russia annexed its Crimea peninsula in 2014 and backs armed separatists in its eastern industrial Donbas region.

The EU is also moving to put more Russians under sanctions over Moscow’s standoff with Kiev in the Azov Sea, to the southeast of Ukraine.

“We need targeted… support for the Ukrainian south, to work with us on infrastructure… Further Russian attempts to destabilize Ukraine’s south would be very detrimental for European security,” Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin told reporters in Brussels.

“[There is] an attempt to suffocate the whole Ukrainian Donbas… We need infrastructure, it’s about roads and railways. And to support people… help them to launch new small and medium businesses because we need to fundamentally reshuffle the whole economic model there,” he added.

President Petro Poroshenko, elected amid high hopes for change in Ukraine after street protests ousted his pro-Russian predecessor in 2014, is in an uphill battle for re-election after his popularity plunged over graft and sliding living standards.

Klimkin accused Russia of turning the Donbas region – which remains outside the control of the Kiev government – into a “big [money] laundering machine”. He also said Kiev could “under no circumstances” allow Russians to be part of an OSCE election monitoring mission.

The EU’s top diplomat, Federica Mogherini, who chaired Monday’s ministerial meeting, stressed the bloc’s “unwavering support for Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty” but also urged Kiev to press on with economic and political reforms.

Despite Western pressure, Moscow has vowed never to return Crimea to Ukraine. A peace plan for eastern Ukraine, sponsored by Germany and France, has helped put an end to heavy fighting there but has since largely stalled.

Relations between the EU and Russia plunged to fresh lows last year over the poisoning of a former Russian double agent in Britain. But the EU is divided over how hard to punish Moscow – or how far to support Kiev – as some would prefer to prioritize business ties with Russia.
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Facebook said on Thursday it had disrupted an attempt to influence voters in Moldova, increasing concerns that EU elections in May could be prey to malign activity.

Employees of the Moldovan government were linked to some of the activity, the California-based social media company said. Authorities in Chisnau, capital of the tiny former Soviet republic, denied knowledge.

Facebook said it dismantled scores of pages and accounts designed to look like independent opinion pages and to impersonate a local fact-checking organization ahead of Moldova’s elections later this month.

“So they created this feedback loop,” Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s head of cybersecurity policy, told reporters in Brussels. “We did assess that there were links between some of that activity and individuals associated with the Moldovan government.”

The government said it welcomed any initiative to combat “fake news”, saying it did not check the private accounts of its more than 200,000 state employees.

“They have different political views and opinions, and the state is obliged to maintain the boundary between fighting the phenomenon of Fake News and guaranteeing the freedom of expression for citizens,” it said.

Facebook said it removed 168 accounts, 28 pages and eight Instagram accounts involved in “inauthentic behavior.” Some 54,000 accounts followed at least one of these Facebook pages.

The owners of pages and accounts typically posted about local news and political issues such as requirements for Russian- or English-language education and potential reunification with Romania, the company said.

Guarding elections

Facebook stepped up efforts to combat disinformation, including accounts in Russia, Iran and Indonesia, over the last year after coming under public scrutiny for not doing enough to stem the spread extremism and propaganda online.

The vulnerabilities exposed in Moldova, sandwiched between EU member Romania and Ukraine on the fringes of the bloc, were a warning ahead of polls in neighboring Ukraine and for the European legislature.

The European Union has pushed tech companies to do more to stop what it fears are Russian attempts to undermine Western democracies with disinformation campaigns that sow division. Russia has repeatedly denied any such actions.

The sheer perception of manipulation can damage polls, Gleicher warned. “We are starting to see actors try to create the impression that there is manipulation without owning lots and lots of accounts,” he said.

“We already have the teams up and running and focused on the European parliamentary elections and that is only going to grow as the elections get closer and the pace of threats increases.”

Dogged by scandal, Moldova’s pro-Western government has failed to lift low living standards. That has driven many voters towards the Socialists, who favor closer ties with Russia.

The European Parliament called Moldova a “state captured by oligarchic interests” in November, and there are concerns whether the parliamentary election on February 24 will be fair. The election is likely to produce a hung parliament, which could set the scene for months of wrangling or possibly further elections.
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