Новини

A support group for victims of sexual harassment in France said it was forced to shut its helpline after receiving a deluge of calls in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein sex scandal.

Paris-based AVFT, a national association helping women who have experienced violence at work, said it was “overwhelmed” with a backlog of cases that had piled up over the past two years so could take no more calls.

“For several months we have been submerged by requests, which has forced us to take a break in order to respond,” a voicemail message told people phoning the line on Thursday.

A slew of allegations of sexual misconduct against Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein last year sparked the #MeToo campaign, with women and men using social media to talk about their experiences of harassment at work.

The scandal prompted a rethink of attitudes toward harassment in France, a country that cherishes its image as the land of seduction and romance.

Last month, French actress Catherine Deneuve sparked an outcry by saying the #Metoo campaign had gone too far and amounted to puritanism.

French women have meanwhile been sharing their stories on social media under the name-and-shame hashtag #BalanceTonPorc – or ‘expose your pig.’

AVFT, which has given legal help to victims since 1985, said the heightened focus on how men treat and mistreat women at work had resulted in a higher number of women seeking its services.

More than 220 got in touch in 2017, a two-fold increase on 2015 – leaving its five staff overwhelmed, the group said in a statement on Wednesday.

It called for an increase in government support, saying subsidies had not increased in 13 years.

Clemence Joz, a legal advisor for AVFT, said the group was hoping to re-open its line as soon as possible.

“I cannot say how long it’s going to be,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone. In November, French President Emmanuel Macron unveiled measures aimed at educating the public and schoolchildren about sexism and violence against women and improving police support for victims. He also proposed criminalizing street harassment.

 
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The Trump administration says it is concerned Poland’s proposed Holocaust law could impact free speech and Polish relations with the United States and Israel.

The law would make it a crime to call the Nazi genocide of Jews a Polish crime, or the Nazi death camps Polish death camps, even though some of the most brutal Nazi atrocities took place on Polish soil.

“We understand that phrases such as ‘Polish death camps’ are inaccurate, misleading, and hurtful,” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said in a statement Wednesday. “We all must be careful not to inhibit discussion and commentary on the Holocaust. We believe open debate, scholarship, and education are the best means of countering inaccurate and hurtful speech.”

Israel, others concerned

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel will not tolerate “distortion of the truth, rewriting history, and denial of the Holocaust.”

Some experts fear the new Polish law could also mean jail for Holocaust survivors when talking about their ordeals.

President’s remarks

Polish President Andrzej Duda said this week there was no institutional participation by Poland in the Holocaust, but it did recognize criminal actions toward Jews by some individual Poles.

“There were wicked people who sold their neighbors for money. But it was not the Polish nation, it was not an organized action,” Duda said.

He pointed out that some Poles sacrificed their lives to save Jews from the Nazis, and that the Polish underground and government in exile resisted efforts to wipe out European Jewry.

Poland was home to one of the world’s most thriving Jewish populations before Nazi Germany invaded in 1939.

Holocaust survivors who returned to Poland after the war found themselves victims of further anti-Semitism. Some historians say many Poles collaborated with the Nazis in persecuting Jews.

Poland regards itself as having been a victim of Nazi terror. It resents being blamed for crimes carried out by Hitler and his gang of murderers.
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A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket blasted off from Florida on Wednesday carrying into orbit a Luxembourg-made communications satellite designed in part to expand NATO’s surveillance reach and its capability to deter cyber attacks on alliance members.

The liftoff at 4:25 p.m. EST (2125 GMT) from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station followed a technical glitch that prompted a 24-hour flight delay. It marked the second rocket launch this year for billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk and his privately owned Space Exploration Technologies.

It comes a week before the California-based company is slated to conduct its highly anticipated first test flight of the much larger and more powerful Falcon Heavy rocket, which packs three times the thrust of the Falcon 9.

Communications satellite

Wednesday’s payload was a communications satellite built for LuxGovSat S.A., a public-private joint venture between the Luxembourg government and Luxembourg-based telecommunications company SES, in part to fulfill that nation’s growing defense obligations to NATO.

The so-called GovSat-1 satellite will provide, among other things, greater cyber protection for Luxembourg’s European Union partners and NATO allies, including the United States, Luxembourg Defense Minister Etienne Schneider told a news conference Tuesday.

GovSat-1 also will serve civilian telecommunications security functions.

Thirty-four minutes after liftoff, the satellite was successfully released into a highly elliptical “parking” orbit, according to SpaceX. It will eventually settle into a round orbit 22,370 miles (36,000 km) high, where it will circle the Earth for 15 years.

A spokesman for Schneider said the $279 million satellite, which weighs about 4½ tons, is part of a broader policy of doubling the country’s contributions to NATO.

Citing new security threats, a senior NATO official told Reuters in March that the alliance planned to spend more than $3 billion on defense technology, a third of which would go toward satellite communications.

Rocket retrieved

Unlike many recent SpaceX launches, the company had not initially planned on retrieving the rocket’s reusable main-stage because the payload had to be carried to such a high orbit that the booster was left without sufficient fuel to fly back to Earth for a return landing.

However, the booster “amazingly” survived its ocean splashdown intact, Musk said in a Twitter message posted later with a photograph of the vehicle floating at sea. “We will try to tow it back to shore,” he said.

The same Falcon 9 booster was used last year in a mission to launch a top-secret payload into space for the U.S. government.
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France is facing a “new form of anti-Semitism” marked by violence, French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said Wednesday, deploring an assault this week in a Paris suburb on an 8-year-old boy wearing a Jewish skullcap.

President Emmanuel Macron has denounced the attack Monday in Sarcelles, a northern suburb with a large Jewish population, as “heinous.”

French media have described the attackers as teenagers who ran away after tripping and kicking the boy to the ground. Police were investigating, but there have been no arrests.

Speaking before lawmakers, Philippe noted the emergence of a new kind of anti-Semitism in France, which has the largest Jewish population in western Europe.

To fight something, one must have “the courage to put a name on it … to acknowledge that, yes, there is a new form of anti-Semitism, violent and brutal, emerging more and more openly in our land,” Philippe said.

Interior Minister Gerard Collomb and Jewish leaders say the number of anti-Semitic acts in France has risen this month after a drop in previous years.

An annual national count of racist, anti-Semitic, anti-Muslim and anti-Christian acts — mainly threats — dipped in 2017 compared with the year before. However, the count, released Wednesday by the Interior Ministry, shows that violent racist acts in France increased overall, and notably anti-Semitic acts went from 77 in 2016 to 97 last year.

Collomb told Jewish leaders last week that such acts were “an attack on the principles that unify our nation.”

Macron tweeted: “Each time a citizen is attacked because of his age, appearance or religion, it is the whole nation that is attacked.”
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British Prime Minister Theresa May arrived in China Wednesday on a visit aimed at boosting economic ties with the Asian giant ahead of her country’s exit from the European Union next year.

May began her three-day trip in the central industrial city of Wuhan, before heading to Beijing for talks with Premier Li Keqiang. She is accompanied by a large delegation of 50 British business leaders eager to expand their business in the world’s second largest economy.

The prime minister will meet with President Xi Jinping in Beijing on Thursday, before wrapping up her visit Friday in the financial hub of Shanghai.

The British leader says she is eager to use her trip to lay the groundwork for a so-called “golden era” between London and Beijing, a term which first surfaced in 2015 ahead of a state visit to Britain by President Xi. The Chinese leader is hoping Britain will endorse his flagship Belt and Road Initiative, a multi-billion dollar project aimed at reviving the ancient Silk Road trade routes between Asia and Europe. 

But Prime Minister May has been cautious in the past about embracing Chinese investment. She angered Beijing in 2016 when she temporarily delayed approval of Chinese-funded nuclear power plant in southwest England.

She has also expressed caution over the Belt and Road Initiative, saying that while the project holds promise, it is important the project meets “international standards.” 

In addition to trade, May is expected to discuss the escalating political tensions in Britain’s former colony, Hong Kong, which it ruled for more than 150 years before giving it back to China in 1997.

Chris Patten, the last British governor of Hong Kong, wrote May this week warning that the semi-autonomous territory is facing “increasing threats to the basic freedoms, human rights and autonomy” that China agreed to observe under the handover agreement.
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Protests broke out in the Spanish city of Barcelona Tuesday after Catalonia’s parliament postponed a vote on who should be president of the region. Pro-independence parties, which form a majority in the parliament, had nominated only one candidate – the exiled former leader Carles Puigdemont. The stand-off between Barcelona and Madrid looks set to deepen as parties on all sides of the debate harden their positions, as Henry Ridgwell reports.
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Nine members of Turkey’s medical association have been detained for voicing opposition to the ongoing Turkish-led military incursion into Syria against a Kurdish militia group. The arrests are part of a widening crackdown on dissent over the operation.

Ankara’s prosecutor’s office issued arrest warrants for 11 leading members of the Turkish Medical Association, including its head, Rasit Tukel.

Police raided the homes of the doctors early Tuesday morning. The organization’s offices across the country have also been targeted.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday labeled the association’s members as traitors and “servants of imperialism.” The remarks were in response to the association calling for an end to the ongoing military incursion into Syria, and the doctors raising humanitarian concerns for civilians trapped by fighting.

Nearly two weeks ago, Turkish-led forces entered the Syrian enclave of Afrin to oust the YPG Kurdish militia, which is a key ally of the United States in the fight against Islamic State. Ankara accuses the YPG of supporting a Kurdish insurgency inside Turkey.

Reaction to detentions

The doctors’ detention has drawn swift political condemnation.

Member of parliament Selin Sayek Boke of the opposition CHP, speaking outside the headquarters of the medical association, criticized the government.

“This is an attack on freedom of expression and on those who call for peace and it is an attack done by those who want to kill the culture of living together in this country,” Boke said.

International human rights groups have also criticized the detentions.

The London-based Amnesty International’s Turkey representative, Andrew Gardner, tweeted the government should be protecting the association, rather than detaining doctors from their beds on false propaganda charges.

​Growing crackdown

The medical association is one of the country’s most prominent nongovernmental organizations, with more than 80,000 members. The arrest of its leading members is part of a growing crackdown on dissent over the ongoing Syrian operation.

The Turkish Interior Ministry announced Monday that more than 300 people, including four journalists, have been detained under the country’s anti-terror laws for social media postings criticizing the operation.

Erdogan said last week all dissent would be crushed.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin says the United States has taken a ‘hostile step” by releasing a list detailing the wealth and political connections of 210 people with close Kremlin connections. But he said there would be no immediate move to retaliate.

The U.S. Treasury Department published the list Monday, as required by a law passed by Congress last August aimed at punishing Russia for meddling in the 2016 presidential election, a charge Russia denies.   

U.S. President Donald Trump reluctantly signed the law, and administration officials said Monday there are no immediate plans to impose new sanctions on the Kremlin.

In a written statement, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said the measure already was hitting Russian companies.

“Today, we have informed Congress that this legislation and its implementation are deterring Russian defense sales,” Nauert wrote. “Since the enactment of the … legislation, we estimate that foreign governments have abandoned planned or announced purchases of several billion dollars in Russian defense acquisitions.”

Several Kremlin officials reacted angrily to the U.S. report. Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said it would “poison relations for a long time.”

But Putin was more reserved. Speaking at a campaign event Tuesday in Moscow, he said that while he was dismayed at publication of the list, he would hold off on retaliatory actions, apparently in view of the lack of accompanying U.S. sanctions.

“We were waiting for this list to come out, and I’m not going to hide it: we were going to take steps in response, and, mind you, serious steps, that could push our relations to the nadir. But we’re going to refrain from taking these steps for now,” Putin said.

He joked, however that he was disappointed that he was not included on the list.

The report details the finances and political connections of 114 Russian politicians and 96 so-called “oligarchs” who have prospered under Putin. Officials noted that the list of oligarchs appears to be the same as Forbes’ ranking of Russian billionaires.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, who is among those on the list, said Russia would study the information in the U.S. report before deciding on a response.

‘Crooks and thieves’

Opposition leader Alexei Navalny hailed the publication of the list, tweeting Tuesday that he was “glad to see these [people] have been officially recognized at the international level as crooks and thieves.”

Trump criticized the congressionally-mandated list when he signed the “Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act,” saying it “improperly encroaches on executive power, disadvantages American companies and hurts the interests of our European allies.”

The measure gave the Trump administration 180 days to produce the list, which includes Prime Minister Medvedev, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and top spy agency officials. Among the business figures are aluminum magnate Oleg Deripaska, Sberbank CEO German Gref and Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller.

The law ordered the Trump administration to impose sanctions on anyone who engages in a “significant transaction” with the defense or intelligence sectors of the Russian government.

House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer criticized the administration’s decision not to impose new sanctions or “put forth a plan for how it plans to deter further Russian aggression.”

“Sanctions are a deterrent only if countries believe the U.S. will impose them. The anemic announcements today, with no statements from senior administration officials, do not give me confidence that is the case,” Hoyer said in a statement.

Democratic Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi also criticized the White House decision.

“Congress passed sanctions on Russia overwhelmingly to send a message on Russian interference in our democracy. The president doesn’t appear to want to send that message,” he wrote on Twitter.

 
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Last week British Prime Minister Theresa May basked in praise in Davos, Switzerland at the World Economic Forum from U.S. President Donald Trump, who said he thought she was doing a good job and pledged to help advance a trade deal to help offset economic losses Britain will likely suffer from leaving the European Union.

But this week, the growing rift in her Cabinet over Brexit, as well as her leadership, has critics within her ruling Conservative party saying she isn’t doing a good job and accusing her of governing more like a tortoise than a lion.

Traditionally, the Conservatives are unsentimental when it comes to ditching their leaders, and far more so than the main opposition party, Labour, which has often retained leaders long after they should have been dumped. And internecine warfare in Britain’s Conservative party can be especially fratricidal: most of the key players tend to have grown up together in college, where they waged youthful ideological battles or competed to run student societies and debating clubs. The bruising rivalries of the past often remain unforgiven.

But few of May’s senior party foes have the political courage to condemn her openly. That is left to lawmaker allies who don’t have government positions or to ideological friends in the country’s top newspapers, mostly Conservative.

Hence this week’s avalanche of headlines in the key Conservative newspapers, The Times, Daily Telegraph, and Daily Mail: “Theresa May Faces Growing Calls to Quit,” “It Could End for Mrs. May Tomorrow,” “One Well-Aimed Speech Could Topple Mrs. May,” and “Theresa May’s ‘Tortoise’ Leadership Openly Criticized.”

In a column headlined “Will Someone Rid Us of This Appalling PM?” The Times columnist Iain Martin accused May of overseeing “one of the most spineless, depressed and depressing administrations in living memory.” He remarked she appears “temperamentally incapable” of getting things done, “with a zero capacity for initiative.”

Dogged by criticism

May has been dogged by criticism and predictions of doom since she became prime minister in July 2016 after her Conservative predecessor, David Cameron, quit in the wake of the Brexit referendum. But even her friends acknowledge her tenure has been hapless.

She called an early snap parliamentary election in a bid to expand her party’s Commons majority, only to suffer reversal after running what the media described as a desultory and robotic campaign. That left her heading a minority government dependent on the votes of a small Northern Ireland party.

Critics say May has struggled to define exactly what she stands for, and what she has to offer.

She tried to distinguish herself by offering a social mobility agenda, but that effort collapsed when the entire board of a high-powered Social Mobility Commission resigned in protest at the lack of government action, claiming they were being used as window-dressing.

Earlier this month, her attempt to mold a more friendly Cabinet in a reorganization failed calamitously and revealed her weakness when some senior ministers refused to be moved or sacked. One minister told the Spectator magazine’s James Forsyth, “She’s like the Wizard of Ozthere’s nothing there when you pull back the curtain.”

But behind the curtain is a raging battle within the British establishment over Brexit, one seamed with personal rivalries and ambition. And that, according to a Conservative minister who spoke with VOA, is “sucking the oxygen from the government.”

He added, “We are unable to agree on what Brexit should mean, unable to address other pressing matters, including the awful state of the national health service, and that issue alone could lose us the next general election, and when it comes to important foreign issues, we are just missing in action.”

Brexit

Party members clash over whether Britain should crash out of the European Union without a deal, secure a Canada-like trade agreement or follow the Norwegian example and exit the political institutions of the bloc, Britain’s largest trading partner, but retain membership in the Single Market and the customs union.

Britain’s “soft-Brexit” finance minister, Philip Hammond, caused a storm last week when he said in Davos that May’s government would seek only “modest” changes in Britain’s relationship with the European Union in upcoming negotiations, prompting a furious reaction from so-called hard Brexiters, who have also been making speeches, infuriating May’s officials and disclosing the scale of party rifts.

A leaked government analysis Tuesday that projects Britain will be considerably worse off after Brexit, and especially so if it exits without a deal, is fueling the rancor within party circles with hard Brexiters dubbing their opponents “mutineers” and “traitors” and soft-Brexiters describing their foes as “swivel-eyed” and “jihadists.”

Conservative insiders say May has survived because senior members on either side of the party’s Brexit divide fear the consequences of a leadership challenge. Neither side can guarantee one of their champions would replace May.Others worry that trying to topple May now will lead to an early election, one that Labour is in a strong position to win.

“She survives, for now, because anyone who took over from her would face the same challenges and the same disaffection,” says Walter Ellis, a commentator with the news site Reaction.

An earlier version of this story misidentified Iain Martin as a columnist with The Telegraph. He is in fact a columnist with The Times. VOA regrets the error.
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Romania’s parliament overwhelmingly endorsed a new Social Democrat-led government Monday, giving Prime Minister Viorica Dancila a mandate that will be scrutinized closely by the country’s foreign partners and investors.

Dancila was named prime minister earlier this month to replace Mihai Tudose, who quit after a falling out with the powerful leader of the Social Democrats, Liviu Dragnea. Tudose himself became prime minister when Dragnea forced out his predecessor, Sorin Grindeanu, last summer.

Dancila had to be approved in a vote of confidence, which she won easily Monday — 282 legislators backed her, including some junior opposition groups. The new cabinet retains around a third of the former government’s ministers.

“This government, as a whole, does not bode well for the rule of law in Romania and its relations with the West, particularly with the European Union,” said independent political commentator Cristian Patrasconiu.

Dancila has set up a new ministry to handle European Union funds and nominated as its head Social Democrat lawmaker Rovana Plumb, whom anti-corruption prosecutors wanted to investigate. Her appointment has fueled renewed concerns about Romania’s commitment to seriously tackling graft.

Parliament rejected the prosecutors’ attempt to investigate Plumb, who denied any wrongdoing. But then-Prime Minister Tudose sacked her and two other ministers, saying graft allegations were damaging Romania’s relations with the EU.

On Monday, Prime Minister Dancila said her cabinet reflected the 2016 general elections. “Together with my colleagues, I do represent the political will of the ruling coalition,” she said.

“Today, you do not vote for persons but back Romanian citizens’ desire revealed by democracy. We will govern with pride and respect for Romanians, having the government program in front of us,” Dancila told parliament.

The revised governing program includes plans to further increase pensions and the minimum wage, and cut value-added tax by one percentage point to 18 percent from 2019. It also aims to set up a sovereign wealth fund and boost the absorption of EU funds.

But leftist legislators aim to change the criminal code that would decriminalize several graft offenses, their second attempt in a year to fight off a crackdown on corruption.

Last week, Brussels urged parliament to reconsider earlier judicial reforms, which critics say weaken judicial independence.
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Failure by the next German government to fulfill a pledge to boost military spending to two percent of its economic output will weaken the NATO alliance, a senior U.S. military official said on Monday.

Army secretary Mark Esper told reporters during a visit to U.S. troops in Wiesbaden, Germany, that NATO members had recommitted to meeting the NATO 2-percent target in 2017, and he would take the German government at its word that it would stick to that pledge.

“It’s important for all of our NATO allies to live up to their commitments,” Esper said during a teleconference on Monday. “If not, it weakens the alliance, clearly, and Germany is such a critical member of NATO.”

Esper said Germany had a particularly important role in NATO given its economic strength in Europe and its leadership within NATO.

“I take the German government at their word that they’re going to get to the 2 percent and live up to that,” he said.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives and the center-left Social Democrats are locked in negotiations about renewing the coalition government that ruled since 2013.

A negotiating blueprint hammered out by the two political blocs did not mention the NATO target specifically – dodging an issue that continues to divide the parties.

The BDI industry association this month estimated that Germany spent just 1.13 percent of its economic output on the military in 2017, well below NATO’s projection of 1.22 percent due to stronger-than-expected economic growth.

BDI expert Matthias Wachter said the percentage could drop further in coming years if the economy’s expansion outpaced planned increases in military spending.

Esper said NATO’s efforts to reassure Poland and the Baltic States remained a key priority to guard against any Russian “adventurism” given Russia’s actions in Georgia and Ukraine.

“We all wish that Russia was on a different trajectory, but after what we’ve seen in Georgia and Ukraine, we have to hope for the best and prepare for the worst,” he said, referring to the Russian military incursion into Georgia in 2008 and the annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.
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Senior European Union officials on Monday urged the eurosceptic but pro-Russian Czech President Milos Zeman to pursue cooperation within the bloc following his re-election.

Zeman won a second term in a presidential election in the Czech Republic last weekend after campaigning on a tough stance against immigration and touting his courtship of Russia and China.

In a message of congratulations, European Council President Donald Tusk wrote: “I trust that your country will continue to play an active and constructive role within the European Union.”

The former Polish prime minister, who has tried to calm mounting frictions between the wealthier governments in the west and the formerly-communist EU states in the east, highlighted his own efforts to get the bloc to “better respond to European citizens’ concerns” — a nod to popular worries over issues such as immigration.

The head of the EU’s executive European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, echoed Tusk’s appeal for cooperation.

“In an increasingly polarized and complex world, we need to build bridges within and between countries,” he wrote.

Later on Monday, Juncker was due to host Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis, who has support from Zeman as he struggles to form a government following a parliamentary election in October.

While Babis is expected to reassure Juncker that Prague remains dedicated to the EU, he will also make clear he would not help other countries in the bloc by agreeing to host any refugees, sources said.

The migration dispute, which has split the eastern members of the bloc from their western and southern peers, has caused bad blood in the EU, weakening member states’ trust in each other.
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