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A proposed permanent U.S. military base in Poland, nicknamed “Fort Trump,” is one step closer to becoming a reality. 

Negotiations on establishing the base are “ongoing this very week,” Kathryn Wheelbarger, the acting assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, told the House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday. 

Wheelbarger’s comments came as John Rood, the undersecretary of defense for policy, met with his Polish counterpart to work out details of what Rood called a “generous offer” from Poland, according to defense officials.  

Warsaw has offered to contribute at least $2 billion to place permanent U.S. forces and assets in Poland, a NATO ally, in an attempt to deter any possible Russian aggression. NATO has expanded its presence near Russia’s borders to reassure its eastern members, a buildup Russia has described as a threat to its security. 

“We’ve come forward with, we think, a very serious, robust offer, and we’re working out some of the technicalities this very week,” Wheelbarger said. “We hope to have a very solid foundation to work from coming out of this meeting today.” 

She added that it would most likely take six months to a year for any base agreement to be finalized. 

Permanent base seen as ‘helpful’

The U.S. military would not need to start budgeting for the base for at least two or three years, according to Army Gen. Curtis “Mike” Scaparrotti, the head of U.S. European Command. 

Asked about making rotational U.S. forces permanent in Poland, Scaparrotti told lawmakers he’s “perfectly content with the large forces that we are rotating,” but a more permanent base would be “helpful.” 

Negotiations on the proposed base with Warsaw come amid reports that the Trump administration is considering a plan in which wealthy nations such as Germany, Japan and South Korea would be required to pay the full cost of U.S. soldiers deployed on their territory, plus 50 percent more for the privilege of American defense. 

Wheelbarger denied that the “cost plus 50” idea was being discussed for European allies, telling lawmakers, “My understanding is that rhetoric came from conversations from the Pacific; it’s not a conversation we’ve had in my portfolio at all.”
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British lawmakers are set to vote Wednesday on whether Britain should leave the European Union without agreeing on any of the details of its departure.

The so-called “no-deal” Brexit is opposed by Prime Minister Theresa May, but lawmakers have resoundly rejected the agreement her government struck with the EU.

The House of Commons voted 391-242 against the latest version of May’s plan on Tuesday, setting up the Wednesday vote. 

If lawmakers reject a no-deal Brexit as well, a third vote will come Thursday on whether to ask the EU for more time beyond the March 29 deadline to figure out how to conduct the divorce. EU member states would have to approve any extension.

Ahead of Tuesday’s defeat, May implored lawmakers to adopt the deal she negotiated Monday with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker for “legally binding changes” to ensure that the border between EU member Ireland and Britain’s Northern Ireland would remain open after Brexit.

But the outcome mirrored a January vote on an earlier plan, which May lost even more decisively, by 230 votes.

After losing again, May, the Conservative Party leader, told the House of Commons, “I continue to believe the best and only way” to quit the EU is “in an orderly way.”

​She said the next options “are unenviable choices” — leaving without a deal, or asking for more time to negotiate after already spending months to reach terms of the now-defeated pacts.

Jeremy Corbyn, leader of Britain’s main opposition Labor Party, told the parliamentarians, “The government has now been defeated by an enormous majority. The prime minister has run down the clock, and the clock has run out on her.” He called for a new election.

Before Tuesday’s vote, May told lawmakers, “The danger for those of us who want to deliver, to have faith in the British public and deliver on their vote for Brexit, is that if this vote is not passed tonight, if this deal is not passed, then Brexit could be lost.”

Key opponents to her plan quickly emerged.

Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party said May had only made “limited” progress in negotiating the new terms, and said its 10 members in parliament would vote against her plan.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the EU had made “clear, far-reaching proposals” to address Britain’s concerns about the deal. But she deflected a question about whether she was willing to delay the British exit from the EU if British lawmakers could not agree on a plan.

The original deal, rejected two months ago, called for a backstop agreement that would keep Britain and the EU in a customs union until they agree on a new trade agreement. Opponents in Britain’s parliament said they were concerned about being locked into EU rules instead of being able to gain full control of trade policies.

​May said the new terms agreed to on Monday would ensure the backstop deal is not a permanent part of Britain’s exit from the EU.

The Labor Party rejected the plan, saying it still does not go far enough to allay its concerns.

Juncker warned that Britain is running out of options. 

“It is this deal, or Brexit might not happen at all,” he said.
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Rome, the heart of Christianity now has its own Mormon temple. The entire leadership of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for the first time gathered outside of the United States for the dedication of their temple in the eternal city. VOA’s Sabina Castelfranco has more from Rome.
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Now that British lawmakers overwhelmingly rejected Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit divorce deal for a second time, the country’s planned March 29 departure from the bloc is an open question. 

Lawmakers now have two starkly different choices: no deal or delay. 

A look at what might happen in the days ahead:

Destination no-deal 

The House of Commons voted 391-242 against May’s EU withdrawal agreement Tuesday, snubbing changes she secured from the bloc the night before to allay concerns about the deal’s Irish border provisions. Lawmakers voted down the deal in January by an even bigger margin.

After the tally, May said Parliament would  vote Wednesday on whether to abandon efforts to secure an agreement and to leave the EU as planned in a little more than two weeks without a deal.

A phalanx of pro-Brexit politicians supports that idea. They argue it would free the U.K. from  EU rules and red tape, allowing the country to forge an independent global trade policy.

But economists and businesses fear a so-called “no-deal Brexit” would hammer the economy as tariffs and other trade barriers go up between Britain and the EU, its biggest trading partner.

In the short term, there could be gridlock at British ports and shortages of fresh produce. In the long run, the government says a no-deal scenario would leave the economy 6 percent to 9 percent smaller over 15 years than remaining in the EU.

Last month, Parliament passed a non-binding amendment ruling out a “no-deal” Brexit, and it is unlikely they will support it now. May said lawmakers would be free to follow their consciences rather than party lines when they consider the question Wednesday.

Delay, delay, delay

If lawmakers give leaving the EU without an agreement a thumbs down, they have one choice left: seeking more time. A third vote scheduled for Thursday is on asking the EU to delay Brexit day by up to three months.

This option is likely to prove popular, since politicians on both sides of the Brexit debate fear time is running out to secure an orderly withdrawal by March 29.

Extending the timeframe for Brexit would require approval from all 27 remaining EU member countries. They have an opportunity to grand such a request at a March 21-22 summit in Brussels. But the rest of the EU is reluctant to postpone Brexit beyond the late May elections for the EU’s legislature, the European Parliament.

The EU said Tuesday that Britain needs to provide “a credible justification” for any delay.

Crisis deferred 

Whatever Parliament decides, it will not end Britain’s Brexit crisis. Both lawmakers and the public remain split between backers of a clean break from the EU and those who favor continuing a close relationship through a post-Brexit trade deal or by reversing the June 2016 decision to leave.

May is unwilling to abandon her hard-won Brexit agreement and might try to put it to Parliament a third time, although the latest margin of defeat makes that tricky.

Some lawmakers want her to have Parliament consider different forms of Brexit to see if there is a majority for any course of action.

Some think the only way forward is a snap election that could rearrange the forces in Parliament and break the political deadlock. May has ruled that out, but could come to see it as her only option.

And anti-Brexit campaigners haven’t abandoned efforts to secure a new referendum on whether to remain in the EU. The government opposes the idea, which at the moment also lacks majority support in Parliament.

However, the political calculus could change if the paralysis drags on. The opposition Labour Party has said it would support a second referendum if other options were exhausted.

It all means more twists are coming in the Brexit drama.

“No one really believes this is the last chance saloon,” said Oliver Patel, a research associate at the European Institute at University College London.

 
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The BBC, Britain’s public broadcaster, is to be investigated over suspected discrimination following complaints that women have been paid less than men, the country’s equality watchdog announced on Tuesday.

The issue made headlines last year when senior broadcaster Carrie Gracie quit her job as BBC China editor in a highly public protest at being paid less than her male counterparts.

This followed an outcry in 2017, when the BBC published a list of its best-paid on-air staff, revealing two-thirds were men, some of whom were paid far more than their female peers.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), which is looking at records dating back to January 2016, said the BBC had provided a large amount of information on its pay policies.

“Having reviewed all of the information … we suspect that some women at the organization have not received equal pay for equal work,” the EHRC said in a statement.

The equality regulator, which acknowledged that the BBC had begun making reforms, will examine formal and informal pay grievances raised by staff and look at how they were resolved.

“Paying men and women the same salary for the same job has been a legal requirement for almost 50 years,” EHRC chief executive Rebecca Hilsenrath said in a statement.

The EHRC said it hoped to finish the investigation by the end of 2019.

Lawmaker Damian Collins, chairman of parliament’s media committee, welcomed the inquiry, saying it had been “a very distressing time for many BBC employees”.

BBC Director General Tony Hall said the organization had been through a “tremendous period of reform” and improvements had already been made.

“We try to be the gold standard of what everyone wants from society – openness, respect and equality,” he was quoted as saying on the BBC’s news site.

“We may not always succeed, but I am confident that we are a decent and fair employer.”

The BBC said in January 2018 it would implement “substantial” pay reductions for some men and pay increases for some men and women, following a report by auditors PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Britain enacted legislation outlawing sex discrimination in the 1970s and this was followed by an equality act in 2010.

But Sam Smethers, head of the Fawcett Society, a women’s rights charity which campaigns on equal pay, said pay discrimination was still common.

“We hope this results in lasting change at the BBC and acts as a warning to other employers too,” she said.
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At the ripe old age of 30 and with half the globe using it, the World Wide Web is facing growing pains with issues like hate speech, privacy concerns and state-sponsored hacking, its creator says, trumpeting a call to make it better for humanity.

Tim Berners-Lee on Tuesday joined a celebration of the Web and reminisced about his invention at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, starting with a proposal published on March 12, 1989. It opened the way to a technological revolution that has transformed the way people buy goods, share ideas, get information and much more.

It’s also become a place where tech titans scoop up personal data, rival governments spy and seek to scuttle elections, and hate speech and vitriol have thrived — taking the Web far from its roots as a space for progress-oriented minds to collaborate.

As of late 2018, half of the world was online, with the other half often struggling to secure access.

Speaking at a “Web@30” conference at CERN, Berners-Lee acknowledged that a sense among many who are already on the Web has become: “Whoops! The web is not the web we wanted in every respect.”

His World Wide Web Foundation wants to enlist governments, companies, and citizens to take a greater role in shaping the web for good under principles laid out in its “Contract for the Web.”

Under the contract, governments are called upon to make sure everyone can connect to the internet, to keep it available and to respect privacy. Companies are to make the internet affordable, respect privacy and develop technology that will put people — and the “public good” — first. Citizens are to create and to cooperate and respect “civil discourse,” among other things.

“The Contract for the Web is about sitting down in working groups with other people who signed up, and to say, ‘Ok, let’s work out what this really means,’” Berners-Lee said. It was unclear, however, how such rules would be enforced.

Berners-Lee cautioned it was important to strike a balance between oversight and freedom but difficult to agree what it should be.

“Where is the balance between leaving the tech companies to do the right thing and regulating them? Where is the balance between freedom of speech and hate speech?” he said.

The conference, which brought together Internet and tech experts, also gave CERN the chance to showcase its reputation as an open-source incubator of ideas. Berners-Lee worked there in the late 1980s, and had been determined to help bridge a communications and documentation gap among different computer platforms.

As a young English software engineer at CERN, Berners-Lee, who is now 63, came up with the idea for hypertext transfer protocol — the “http” that adorns web addresses — and other building blocks for the web.

The “http” system allowed text and small images to be retrieved through a piece of software — the first browser — which Berners-Lee released in 1990 and is considered the start of the web. In practice, the access to a browser on a home computer made the internet easily accessible to consumers for the first time.

Speaking to reporters on Monday, Berners-Lee recalled how his research was helped his former boss at CERN, Mike Sendall, who wanted a pretext to buy a then-new Next computer by Steve Jobs’ Apple needed for his research.

Berners-Lee said Sendall told him to ”‘pick a random program to develop on it … Why don’t you do that hypertext thing?’”

Berners-Lee has since become a sort of father figure for the internet community, been knighted by Queen Elizabeth II and named as one of the 100 most important people of the 20th century by Time magazine.

While he now wants to get the debate going, other panelists expressed concerns like the increasing concentration of control of the internet by big corporate players, and fretted about a possible splintering of cyberspace among rival countries.

“The challenges come from the same things that make it (the Web) wonderful, and that’s the difficulty,” said conference panelist Zeynep Tufekci, an associate professor at the University of North Carolina’s School of Information and Library Science.

“The openness is wonderful, the connectivity is wonderful, the fact that it was created as a network for academics who are kind of into trusting each other…” she said.

Now with the Web, “there’s an enormous amount of centralization going on, with a few big players becoming gatekeepers. Those few big players have built, basically, surveillance machines,” she said. “It’s based on surveillance profiling us and then targeting us for ads — which wasn’t the original idea at all.”
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The influential speaker of Chechnya’s parliament has declared a blood feud against a popular exiled blogger in what appears to be another example of intimidation of critics in Chechnya.

Magomed Daudov, a close ally of Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, on Saturday called blogger Tumso Abdurakhmanov “an enemy to me and my brothers” after Abdurakhmanov criticized Kadyrov’s late father, the former Chechen leader, on his YouTube channel.

In a video published last week, Abdurakhmanov called Akhmat Kadyrov, who switched sides in Russia’s separatist wars in Chechnya in the 1990s, “a traitor” of the Chechen people.

Daudov’s response, in Chechen, was translated into Russian and reported on Tuesday by several Russian news outlets.

During a live broadcast on his Instagram which is now unavailable, Daudov said that he is “not going to kill” the blogger but pledged to track him down and retaliate.

“Let’s settle this according to Muslim laws,” the official said. “From now on, when you go to bed, make sure that you lock the door with a key. When you go outside, be vigilant. If you get a kick in the back, know that it’s no accident.”

Speaking from Poland, Abdurakhamnov said on Tuesday that he does not feel safe due to his complicated, ongoing asylum case although he now lives far from Chechnya.

“I take Daudov’s words very seriously,” he told The Associated Press. “He is a person who has the power to follow through on his threats.”

Abdurakhmanov, 32, who fled Chechnya in 2015, is seeking asylum in Poland, from where he continues to criticize Kadyrov and his rule. His YouTube channel, which has over 140,000 subscribers, focuses on human right violations and endemic corruption in this predominantly Muslim region in Russia’s North Caucasus.

With his first asylum application rejected, and his second case hanging in the balance, Abdurakhmanov is now facing deportation from Poland, despite strong opposition from human rights activists who warn he will face torture or death if he returns to Chechnya.

This is not the first time Daudov has publicly threatened the blogger. Last year, he allegedly phoned Abdurakhmanov to try to coax and threaten him to return to the Chechen capital, Grozny. The blogger later released the recordings of his conversation with Daudov.

The speaker of the Chechen parliament has been described as Kadyrov’s right-hand man and has been named as one of the main perpetrators of the 2017 crackdown on gay people in Chechnya. He and other Chechen authorities denied the crackdown ever happened.

International rights groups have accused Kadyrov and his security forces of extrajudicial arrests, torture and killings. Kadyrov has denied these claims. In 2016, Kadyrov warned in a report broadcast on Chechen state television that any Chechen residents who fled abroad would pay dearly for their criticisms of his rule if they return home.

Asked about Daudov’s threat, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Tuesday said that there is “no such thing” as blood feuds in Russian law, although it is still widespread in Chechnya, but stopped short of directly criticizing the Chechen official.
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French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday sought to reassert the importance of France in its former colony Djibouti with Paris increasingly fearing China’s muscular role in Africa as it expands economic and military influence across the continent.

Djibouti, strategically located at the southern entrance to the Red Sea on the route to the Suez Canal, hosts France’s largest naval base on the continent and is home to some 1,400 personnel used to train African troops as well as to monitor the Horn of Africa and Yemen.

While it was seen as a vital outpost in the past, French administrations have disregarded it in recent years with Macron only the second French leader to visit the East African country in the last 20 years.

“France considered Djibouti for too long to be a territory that was won,” said a senior French diplomat based in the region. “But now the competition from China is fierce.”

Those comments echoed President Ismail Omar Guelleh’s public criticism in 2015 accusing France – from which it gained independence in 1977 – of abandoning Djibouti and investing very little.

Djibouti also hosts a U.S. military base used as a launch pad for operations in Yemen and Somalia, but in 2013, China opened its largest overseas military base in the country rivaling Paris and Washington directly.

In recent years, Beijing has provided economic aid, developed industrial production in the country and invested massively in high-profile public infrastructure projects, including restoring a French-made railway from 1917 linking Djibouti to Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa.

With a population of less than a million, it also handles 95 percent of the goods imported by Ethiopia, its landlocked neighbor with 100 million people.

“Strategically we need to strengthen the French presence threefold: economically, culturally and militarily,” Marielle de Sarnez, the head of France’s parliamentary foreign affairs committee, said after being dispatched by Macron last May. “It’s urgent. Otherwise we will lose ground.”

The unexpected peace accord between Ethiopia and Eritrea in 2018 has also reshuffled the cards for Djibouti.

The lifting of the United Nations Security Council’s arms embargo on Eritrea and other sanctions in November sparked Djibouti’s ire. It accuses Eritrea of occupying part of its territory and holding 13 Djiboutian soldiers.

French officials say they have raised this at the U.N. and see it as a way for Paris to assert its diplomatic influence in the region.

“What the Djiboutian authorities are expecting from us is that we remain active so that Djibouti fully has its place in the recomposition of the region,” a French presidential source said.
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Eurozone ministers on Monday held back granting Greece debt relief because the government failed to implement reforms promised during the massive bailout that ended last year, officials said.

Greece exited its third and final international bailout in August, a turning point in its progress out of the catastrophe that engulfed the country during the financial crisis.

The Greek government has still failed to complete housing insolvency rules that have raised fears in Greece for families threatened with foreclosure on their homes.

European officials, however, played down the delay, not wanting to rekindle memories of the eurozone debt crisis that nearly destroyed Europe’s single currency.

“It’s too early to decide formally on the disbursement today,” said EU Economics Affairs Commissioner Pierre Moscovici ahead of a Eurogroup meeting of eurozone finance ministers.

“The signal given to the markets is decisive, the message of today’s Eurogroup will be and must be positive,” he added.

The debt relief measures are mainly profits made by the European Central Bank (ECB) and other EU central banks on Greek government bonds during the bailout period.

Greece could receive just short of one billion euros from its eurozone partners in the debt relief scheme.

The delay comes days after Greece issued a 10-year bond, the country’s first since its 2010 debt crisis.

The bond was hailed as a major milestone marking Greece’s return to normalcy after almost a decade of being avoided by the markets.

The country hopes to raise a total of around nine billion euros in the markets this year to boost investor confidence in the Greek economy.

Growth is expected to reach 2.4 percent in 2019 after an estimated 2.1 percent in 2018, according to the latest International Monetary Fund (IMF) projections.
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Democrats and Republicans are inviting NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg to address a joint meeting of Congress next month around the 70th anniversary of the trans-Atlantic alliance.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, with agreement from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and other members of Congress, is expected to extend the invitation, the leaders’ offices said. The address is expected to be one of several events in the U.S. capital celebrating the treaty’s signing in 1949, congressional officials said.

The bipartisan show of support for NATO comes after President Donald Trump has criticized the alliance’s 29-member nations for, in his view, not paying their fair share to protect against threats, such as Russian aggression. He has threatened to pull the U.S. out of the alliance. 

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Each of NATO’s countries spends money on its own military capabilities in an effort to lessen dependence on the U.S. for defense against threats. Stoltenberg said that some NATO allies will spend an additional $100 billion by the end of 2020. 

The celebration of the alliance’s anniversary is the latest bipartisan defiance of Trump on the issue. McConnell in particular among Republicans has been outspoken about his support for NATO, issuing a memorable rebuke of Trump’s behavior at Russian President Vladimir Putin’s side in Helsinki last summer. 

“We value the NATO treaty,” McConnell declared. “We believe the European Union counties are our friends, and the Russians are not.”

For his part, Trump campaigned on the idea that the U.S. is paying too much to defend European countries and vowed to make them pay their fair share. In his State of the Union address in January and in Hanoi last week, Trump misleadingly suggested that the U.S. has “picked up” $100 billion from NATO since he’s been president. 

“A hundred billion dollars more has come in,” he said in Hanoi.

In reality, Stoltenberg said on Feb. 15 that NATO allies in Europe and Canada had spent an additional $41 billion on their own defense since 2016, and that by the end of 2020 that figure would rise to $100 billion. So, the $100 billion refers to additional military spending over a four-year period, not over the past two years.

In 2014, during the Obama administration, NATO members agreed to move “toward” spending 2 percent of their gross domestic product on their own defense by 2024. Trump’s pressure may have spurred some countries to increase their spending faster than they planned or to become more serious about moving to the 2 percent goal.

The United States is the biggest and most influential NATO member, contributing about 22 percent of the alliance’s budget. 

Member-state contributions were a central point of friction at a NATO summit in Brussels last year. However, in a January interview with Fox News, Stoltenberg said NATO countries heard Trump “loud and clear” and were “stepping up.”

Some analysts have warned diminished U.S. leadership in NATO has already weakened the alliance. Former Ambassador Nicholas Burns said in a recent report NATO is facing its ”most difficult” crisis in seven decades and “the single greatest threat (to NATO) is the absence of strong, principled American presidential leadership for the first time in its history.”

Stoltenberg has said Trump will meet with his counterparts from the military alliance at a summit in London in December.

Stoltenberg said Wednesday that the leaders will “address the security challenges we face now and in the future, and to ensure that NATO continues to adapt in order to keep its population of almost 1 billion people safe.”
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After months of Brexit deadlock, this is it: decision time. At least for now.

With Britain scheduled to leave the European Union in less than three weeks, U.K. lawmakers are poised to choose the country’s immediate direction from among three starkly different choices: deal, no deal or delay.

A look at what might happen:

Deal deja vu

The House of Commons has a second vote scheduled Tuesday on a deal laying out the terms of Britain’s orderly departure from the EU. Prime Minister Theresa May and EU officials agreed to the agreement in December, but U.K. lawmakers voted 432-202 in January to reject it. To get it approved by March 29, the day set for Brexit, May needs to persuade 116 of them to change their minds — a tough task. 

Opposition to the deal in Parliament centers on a section that is designed to ensure there are no customs checks or border posts between EU member Ireland and the U.K.’s Northern Ireland. Pro-Brexit lawmakers dislike that the border “backstop” keeps the U.K. entwined with EU trade rules. May has been seeking changes to reassure them the situation would be temporary, but the EU refuses to reopen the withdrawal agreement.

Around 100 hard-core Brexit supporters in May’s Conservative Party look set to oppose the deal unless the backstop is altered. To offset them, May has courted the opposition Labour Party with promises of money for urban regeneration.

Oliver Patel, a research associate at the European Institute at University College London, says “it’s highly unlikely the deal will be passed. The big question is, what will the margin be?”

If, against the odds, lawmakers approve the deal, a short delay to Brexit may be needed so Parliament can translate the agreement’s terms into British law. But the U.K. would be on course to leave the EU in the next few months, with a long transition period built in to help people and businesses get used to the new relationship.

May will have delivered on her promise of an orderly Brexit — and snatched an astonishing political victory from the jaws of widely predicted defeat.

Destination no-deal

If the deal is rejected, lawmakers expect to vote Wednesday on whether to abandon efforts to secure an agreement and leave the EU as planned on March 29 without a deal.

That idea is backed by a phalanx of pro-Brexit politicians, who say it would cut Britain free of EU rules and red tape, allowing the country to forge an independent global trade policy.

But economists and businesses fear a so-called “no-deal Brexit” would hammer the economy as tariffs and other trade barriers go up between Britain and the EU, its biggest trading partner. 

In the short term, there could be gridlock at British ports and shortages of fresh produce. In the long run, the government says a no-deal scenario would leave the economy 6 percent to 9 percent smaller over 15 years than remaining in the EU.

Last month, Parliament passed a non-binding amendment ruling out a “no-deal” Brexit, so lawmakers are unlikely to go with it now.

Delay, delay, delay

If lawmakers reject leaving the EU without an agreement, they have one choice left: seek more time. A vote scheduled for Thursday would decide whether to ask the EU to delay Britain’s departure by up to three months.

This is likely to pass, since politicians on both sides of the debate fear time is running out to secure an orderly Brexit by March 29.

An extension requires approval from all 27 remaining EU member countries. They will probably agree, possibly at a March 21-22 summit in Brussels. But they are reluctant to grant a delay that stretches past elections for the EU’s legislature, the European Parliament, in late May.

Crisis deferred

Whatever the U.K. Parliament decides, this week will not bring an end to Britain’s Brexit crisis. Both lawmakers and the public remain split between backers of a clean break from the EU and those who favor continuing a close relationship — either through a post-Brexit trade deal or by reversing the decision to leave.

May is unwilling to abandon her hard-won Brexit agreement and might try to put it to Parliament a third time, especially if she loses by a small margin on Tuesday. But some lawmakers want her to have Parliament consider different forms of Brexit to see if there is a majority for any course of action.

Maddy Thimont-Jack, a researcher at the Institute for Government think tank, said this week’s votes could force the famously stubborn May to compromise.

“If she loses the vote by quite a significant margin again, it really suggests that what she has done is just not going to fly,” Thimont-Jack said. “In which case she will be under a lot of pressure to follow what Parliament wants.”

Some think the only way forward is a snap election that could rearrange the forces in Parliament and break the political deadlock. May has ruled that out, but could come to see it as her only option.

And anti-Brexit campaigners haven’t abandoned efforts to secure a new referendum on whether to remain in the EU. The government opposes the idea, which at the moment also lacks majority support in Parliament. 

But that could change if the political paralysis drags on. The Labour Party has said it would support a second referendum if other options were exhausted.

It all means more twists are coming in the Brexit drama.

“No one really believes this is the last chance saloon,” Patel said. 
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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday accused International Women’s Day protesters of being led by political rivals and of “disrespect” during the Islamic call to prayer, after Friday’s march was broken up by police firing tear gas.         

Thousands of people took to the streets of Istanbul on Friday in defiance of a ban by authorities, crowding the famous Istiklal avenue, before a police crackdown brought the demonstration to a chaotic end.

In his comments on Sunday, Erdogan referenced an unverified viral video showing women and men continuing to chant during the call to prayer.

“A group which came together in Taksim led by the (main opposition Republican People’s Party) CHP and (pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party) HDP supposedly for women’s day behaved rudely with whistling and chanting during the call to prayer,” Erdogan said.

The avenue is close to Taksim square, a traditional rallying point.

The president has been holding daily rallies across the country and often slamming the opposition ahead of local elections on March 31. He has accused the CHP of being in an alliance with the HDP, which Erdogan says is a political front for Kurdish insurgents.

The “March 8 Feminist Night march” group issued a statement on Sunday decrying the attempt to use Friday’s rally as “election material” in the press and on social media.

“Police violence against tens of thousands of women taking part/trying to take part in the night march cannot be covered up with polarising language… fake news and hate,” the group said, without making any direct reference to Erdogan.

In his statement the Turkish leader also played a short clip of the video as well as footage of an opposition rally from 2011 and said that participants did not carry the Turkish flag.

“(The opposition is) attacking our liberty and our future with this disrespect to our flag and our call to prayer,” he said during a rally in the southern city of Adana.

Although polls suggest Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) remains dominant, the opposition may make larger gains as the economic slowdown and the weaker Turkish lira impacts households.

Erdogan often says that his Islamic-rooted party has given greater freedom to Muslims in Turkey where until a few years ago, women were banned from wearing the Islamic headscarf, known as the hijab, in state institutions and universities.

But he has been accused by critics of eroding the secular pillars of modern Turkey.

The call to prayer has been at the centre of controversy in the Turkish republic since its foundation in 1923.

From 1932 to 1950, the call to prayer was banned in Arabic in Turkey.

Most recently in 2018, there was a row after CHP MP Ozturk Yilmaz called for it to be in Turkish rather than Arabic.
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Europe’s largest Mormon temple will be dedicated over three days starting Sunday. Russell Nelson, president of the world’s 16 million Mormons, will be in Rome for the dedication ceremonies. No expense has been spared on Italy’s first temple, a magnificence, Mormons say, that is justified by faith.

The entire leadership of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, widely known as the Mormon Church, has for the first time gathered outside of the United States for a very special occasion, the dedication of its temple in the eternal city. For the more than 25,000 Italian Mormons and the many others who will travel to Rome, this temple has special significance, as Italy’s representative of the Mormons, Alessandro Dini-Ciacci explains.

“Rome is the center of Christianity. Here’s where the apostles Peter and Paul, the early apostles of the Church of Christ came to preach and bear their testimony. We are followers of Jesus Christ. We love the Savior,” says Dini-Ciacci. “The temple we just built as a statement of our belief in Jesus Christ as the Savior of the world in our belief that life goes on after we die and that families can be together. That is the focus of our temples. The ordinances that bind families together.”

The Mormons have 162 temples in different parts of the world and 40 more have already been announced for a church growing in numbers. No expense was spared for Rome’s towering white “house of the Lord.”

“The temple was built with the finest materials, is very refined, as our offering of love. Our show of love for the Savior and his father. That’s why we choose the best materials possible,” said Dini-Ciacci. “There’s Carrara marbles, stained glass, fine fabrics. It is all a tribute to our heavenly father.”

Elder Dini-Ciacci said it took a decade to build the 3,800 square meter temple.

He would not give a figure for how much the temple cost but simply said “it’s a cost of faith.” One of the 10 commandments of the Mormons, he added, is to keep the law of tithing which allows the church to pay for temples and all operations. He said the money spent on temples is far less than what the Church spends on humanitarian aid.

Members of the Church abide by rules which include chastity outside of marriage.

“We keep the Ten Commandments. We ask people to treat their bodies as temples. So we ask them not to pollute them with drugs or alcoholic beverages. We ask them not to smoke. That is what we believe was revealed to one of our prophets for the benefit of all out members,” said Dini-Ciacci.

The church’s leader, Prophet Russel Nelson, met with Pope Francis on Saturday at the Vatican. It was the first time a head of the Church of Latter Day Saints met with a pope. While the two churches differ in doctrine, they share concerns like human suffering, the importance of religious liberty and of building bridges of friendship.

 
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After months of Brexit deadlock, this is it: decision time.

With Britain scheduled to leave the European Union in less than three weeks, U.K. lawmakers are poised to choose the country’s direction, at least for now, from among three starkly different choices: deal, no deal or delay.

A look at what might happen:

Deal deja vu

The House of Commons has a second vote scheduled Tuesday on a deal laying out the terms of Britain’s orderly departure from the EU. Prime Minister Theresa May and EU officials agreed to the agreement in December, but U.K. lawmakers voted 432-202 in January to reject it. To get it approved by March 29, the day set for Brexit, May needs to persuade 116 of them to change their minds — a tough task.

Opposition to the deal in Parliament centers on a section that is designed to ensure there are no customs checks or border posts between EU member Ireland and the U.K.’s Northern Ireland. Pro-Brexit lawmakers dislike that the border “backstop” keeps the U.K. entwined with EU trade rules. May has been seeking changes to reassure them the situation would be temporary, but the EU refuses to reopen the withdrawal agreement.

Around 100 hard-core Brexit supporters in May’s Conservative Party look set to oppose the deal unless the backstop is altered. To offset them, May has courted the opposition Labour Party with promises of money for urban regeneration.

Oliver Patel, a research associate at the European Institute at University College London, says “it’s highly unlikely the deal will be passed. The big question is, what will the margin be?”

If, against the odds, lawmakers approve the deal, a short delay to Brexit may be needed so Parliament can translate the agreement’s terms into British law. But the U.K. would be on course to leave the EU in the next few months, with a long transition period built in to help people and businesses get used to the new relationship.

May will have delivered on her promise of an orderly Brexit — and snatched an astonishing political victory from the jaws of widely predicted defeat.

Destination no-deal

If the deal is rejected, lawmakers expect to vote Wednesday on whether to abandon efforts to secure an agreement and leave the EU as planned on March 29 without a deal.

That idea is backed by a phalanx of pro-Brexit politicians, who say it would cut Britain free of EU rules and red tape, allowing the country to forge an independent global trade policy.

But economists and businesses fear a so-called “no-deal Brexit” would hammer the economy as tariffs and other trade barriers go up between Britain and the EU, its biggest trading partner.

In the short term, there could be gridlock at British ports and shortages of fresh produce. In the long run, the government says a no-deal scenario would leave the economy 6 percent to 9 percent smaller over 15 years than remaining in the EU.

Last month, Parliament passed a non-binding amendment ruling out a “no-deal” Brexit, so lawmakers are unlikely to go with it now.

Delay, delay, delay 

If lawmakers reject leaving the EU without an agreement, they have one choice left: seek more time. A vote scheduled for Thursday would decide whether to ask the EU to delay Britain’s departure by up to three months.

This is likely to pass, since politicians on both sides of the debate fear time is running out to secure an orderly Brexit by March 29.

An extension requires approval from all 27 remaining EU member countries. They will probably agree, possibly at a March 21-22 summit in Brussels. But they are reluctant to grant a delay that stretches past elections for the EU’s legislature, the European Parliament, in late May.

Crisis deferred

Whatever the U.K. Parliament decides, this week will not bring an end to Britain’s Brexit crisis. Both lawmakers and the public remain split between backers of a clean break from the EU and those who favor continuing a close relationship — either through a post-Brexit trade deal or by reversing the decision to leave.

May is unwilling to abandon her hard-won Brexit agreement and might try to put it to Parliament a third time, especially if she loses by a small margin on Tuesday. But some lawmakers want her to have Parliament consider different forms of Brexit to see if there is a majority for any course of action.

Maddy Thimont-Jack, a researcher at the Institute for Government think tank, said this week’s votes could force the famously stubborn May to compromise.

“If she loses the vote by quite a significant margin again, it really suggests that what she has done is just not going to fly,” Thimont-Jack said. “In which case she will be under a lot of pressure to follow what Parliament wants.”

Some think the only way forward is a snap election that could rearrange the forces in Parliament and break the political deadlock. May has ruled that out, but could come to see it as her only option.

And anti-Brexit campaigners haven’t abandoned efforts to secure a new referendum on whether to remain in the EU. The government opposes the idea, which at the moment also lacks majority support in Parliament.

But that could change if the political paralysis drags on. The Labour Party has said it would support a second referendum if other options were exhausted.

It all means more twists are coming in the Brexit drama.

“No one really believes this is the last chance saloon,” Patel said.

 
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It could have been another achievement that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could boast of in his frantic election campaign. The prime ministers of Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic — the Visegrad Group, or V4 — accepted his invitation to hold last month’s summit in Jerusalem, Israel’s controversial capital.

Then came Israel Katz, the acting Minister of Foreign Affairs, and spoiled it all.

“Poles collaborated with the Nazis,” Katz asserted in a TV interview on the eve of the summit. He quoted former Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir as having said that Poles “suckled anti-Semitism from their mothers’ milk.”

That affront the Poles would not bear. They canceled their participation, leaving the others who did come to hold informal and bilateral meetings.

​Cultivating the right

The invitation to meet in Jerusalem was part of Israel’s attempt to cultivate relations with the EU’s eastern and central European members. Those countries, especially the right-wing, nationalist governments of Poland and Hungary, have been critical of the mainstream, Western, liberal EU members.

Netanyahu has attended summit meetings of the Visegrad Group, the three Baltic States and the Craiova Forum that includes Bulgaria, Romania and Serbia.

He complained to the V4 that Israel was being criticized “more than any other place in the world.”

“I unabashedly asked the help of my friends here in making, correcting … a distorted position, a distorted view on Israel in the EU,” he said at a press conference with the leaders of the Baltic states.

​EU objections

Much of the friction is over Israeli settlement expansion in the West Bank and construction in East Jerusalem which, the EU maintains, violate international law.

The EU has deterred Israel from evicting Palestinian refugees from a decades-old encampment beside the Jerusalem-Jericho road. It sought to have Israel label goods produced in the settlements and deny them customs benefits available to products made in Israel proper. It wants Israel to pay for, or return, EU-funded materials that Israel destroyed or confiscated from West Bank Palestinians; Israeli scientists in the occupied territories are not eligible for EU research grants; and it supports Israeli NGOs that criticize the government.

​Right-wing coalition

Israel and nationalist governments share perceptions, noted Joanna Dyduch in a paper published by the German Institute for International and Security Affairs. Netanyahu’s coalition is the most right-wing coalition in Israel’s 70 years history.

According to Dyduch, having experienced Soviet domination, the Visegrad four share the view that “they are entities which continually need to be defended.” They focus on power relations while “liberalism, which emphasizes the significance of the individual, human rights and civil liberties, is often consciously portrayed as being inadequate, or even dangerous.”

Security threats

Netanyahu strikes a sensitive chord among European leaders when he addresses threats to their security.

“The biggest common adversary to our common civilization is the force of militant Islam, its radical forces, the terrorists that seek to bring down our planes, bombard our cities, murder our civilians,” he said with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban at his side. 

Israel can help, he said. Its intelligence saved many lives. It built a border fence that blocks illegal migrants, has an effective airport security system and is tops in cybertechnology.

​Turning point was Turkey

The breakthrough to those countries followed the deterioration of its relations with Turkey. The Israeli air force could no longer train in Turkish skies and needed an alternative, the Foreign Ministry’s former Director General Alon Liel recalled.

It started warming relations with Turkey’s enemies, Greece and Cyprus, then with Bulgaria and Romania. A very strong friendship ensued and produced “excellent results in reducing EU pressure,” Liel said.

Israel then decided to expand ties to other former East Bloc countries that were interested in its security technologies, weapons and intelligence to cope with the influx of Syrian refugees and militant Islam.

Political gains, dangers

Security cooperation intensified and political gains emerged.

Hungary and Poland sided with Israel in U.N. and EU forums. Hungary, the Czech Republic and Romania blocked a proposal that all 28 EU states criticize the United States for moving its embassy to Jerusalem. EU foreign ministers differed on whether to let Netanyahu address one of their breakfast meetings. Lithuania went ahead and invited him.

The EU sanctioned Israeli firms that were conspicuously based in the occupied territories but did not pursue others who were discreet, recalled Avi Primor, a former ambassador to the EU.

Nevertheless, former Israeli ambassadors criticized the close ties with right-wing governments as being short-sighted, on thin ice, and severing an umbilical cord to Western culture. 

It places Israel with allies such as Orban, “who distances himself from democracy and his campaign contains anti-Semitic characteristics,” said Nimrod Goren, head of the Israeli Institute for Regional and Foreign Policy.

Israel’s agreements with the EU must be renewed or updated periodically, and each member state can block it. Israel’s close ties with the United States and memories of the Holocaust moderates them, but if Israel would resist U.S. pressure, “the Europeans will act more decisively,” Primor predicted.
…

Germany changed its travel advice for visitors to Turkey on Saturday, warning its citizens that they risked arrest for expressing opinions that would be tolerated at home but might not be by Turkish authorities. 

“It cannot be ruled out … that the Turkish government will take further action against representatives of German media and civil society organizations,” an updated Foreign Ministry travel advisory read. 

“Statements which are covered by the German legal understanding of the freedom of expression can lead in Turkey to occupational restrictions and criminal proceedings.” 

The advice, which a ministry spokeswoman confirmed was updated on Saturday, noted that several European journalists, including Germans, had been denied accreditation in Turkey without explanation. In the last two years German nationals have also been increasingly arbitrarily detained, it said. 

Turkish authorities are suspicious about any connections to the network of U.S.-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, who Ankara says orchestrated a 2016 coup attempt, the ministry said. 

But it added that any tourists who had taken part in meetings abroad of organizations banned in Turkey risked being detained, as did Germans who made, or endorsed, statements on social media critical of the Turkish government. 
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Three police officers in Ukraine have been injured in a clash with far-right demonstrators in the capital.

The violence occurred outside the presidential administration building in Kiev where several hundred demonstrators had gathered Saturday to call for arrests of top figures in an alleged military corruption scandal.

A media investigation last week detailed alleged embezzlement schemes in Ukraine’s military industry, including at a factory controlled by President Petro Poroshenko.

A police statement said the demonstrators tried to break through police lines and were setting off fireworks. Police turned them back with tear gas.

The police said one officer was hospitalized with chemical burns to his eyes.
…

A labor strike in France, prompted by concerns over Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union, might spread to the flying public. Strikes by customs agents at ports and rail stations earlier in the week could now spread airports.

Long lines of trucks at Calais and Dunkirk ports. Two-hour delays for Britain-bound Eurostar rail passengers. That was the scene this week in France for passengers and merchandise headed for the U.K. French customs agents staged slowdowns by strictly observing rules, leading to lengthy security checks, a preview, they claim, of what might happen if Britain leaves the European Union without an exit agreement later this month.

Unions warned select French airports would also be affected over the weekend, including the country’s busiest hub, Charles de Gaulle, outside Paris — amid heavy school holiday traffic.

Christophe Abadie, head of the (CFDT) customs labor union, urged passengers to prepare for potential delays. He told France’s CNews TV that the French customs service lacks the technical and infrastructure ability to deal with Brexit. The government says it will be recruiting 700 more agents to cope with Brexit demands. Unions say that’s not enough. They also want better pay and working conditions.

Another customs union member warned that without enough reinforcements, kilometer-long lines seen this week at northern French ports could be even longer under a no-deal Brexit.  French authorities say they’ll be prepared. The minister in charge of customs, Gerald Darmanin, meets with union leaders early next week.

British lawmakers are set to vote again Tuesday on Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit deal, and reports suggest its passage is unlikely.  Like France, other European countries are concerned about the transportation chaos that could result from London’s departure from the EU without an agreement.  

That’s especially true for the Netherlands, where authorities at Europe’s largest port of Rotterdam warned last month that a no-deal Brexit could lead to serious problems. A Dutch transportation institute also warned that under a worst-case Brexit scenario, trade between Britain and the Netherlands could drop by as much as 50 percent.

 
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An acclaimed Italian forensic scientist has for years had the difficult job of identifying bodies of migrants, who sought to reach Europe in search of a better life but never made it. Cristina Cattaneo says it is complicated process but an important one for the families of the victims.

At least 30,000 migrants are believed to have perished in the Mediterranean Sea in their efforts to reach Europe. Of these, more than half have not been identified. For some years now, Cattaneo has been trying to improve that situation. But giving a name to migrants who died is no easy matter, particularly because there is no databank of missing migrants.

Cattaneo said what is needed is to put post-mortem details of dead migrants into a single database to match with pre-mortem details that must be gathered from relatives looking for their loved ones. She initially encountered resistance: there were no public funds available for that kind of work and criticism included the fact that no one was looking for the nameless migrants. But she disagreed.

Cattaneo said she felt the “anxiety of relatives searching for their dead and how they have the right to find them and be given their death certificates.” She said the initiative began in 2012 to afford relatives the same dignity that is given to victims of other disasters, like plane crashes. She said “the discrimination toward dead migrants” is wrong.  

The catalyst for proper identification of nameless migrants, Cattaneo said, came in the form of two major disasters that occurred in the Mediterranean: the sinking of a vessel off the island of Lampedusa on October 3, 2013, in which more than 360 migrants died, and an incident off the Libyan coastline on April 18, 2015, in which a vessel carrying more than 800 migrants sank to the bottom of the Mediterranean.  Later reports said that up to 1,100 hundred migrants could have been aboard the doomed vessel.

For both of these tragedies, forensic scientists gathered post-mortem information, including DNA, for all those recovered, in an effort to identify the migrants. In the case of the 2015 sinking, the operation was complex because many of the bodies recovered one year later were decomposed, and the vessel had to be raised from a depth of 400 meters by the Italian navy.

Cattaneo explained that identifying victims’ remains is also important from a legal point of view.

She said that orphans — especially minors — and widows often need death certificates of their relatives or it is very difficult for them to legally move forward with their lives.

After collecting and profiling the information gathered from the victims, Cattaneo said they needed to gather pre-mortem information from living relatives. In the case of the vessel that sank off Lampedusa, the Italian government put out a call for anyone who thought they may have had a family member who died in that disaster to come forward with details that could be matched against data gathered by forensic scientists.

Cattaneo said 72 relatives came forward, leading to the positive identification of 35 dead migrants, and their cases were closed.

For the ship that was recovered from the bottom of the sea, the International Red Cross put out a call for the likely relatives to come forward. One-hundred-ninety relatives from Mali and Mauritania alone responded to that call. Cattaneo and her team are continuing their identification efforts at a forensic laboratory at Milan University.

Italy is the only country in Europe that has embarked on a project like this using post-mortem and pre-mortem information matching for migrants. Underscoring the many hurdles in this process, Cattaneo saaid the only way forward is for a databank to be created in which European countries share information, similar to how law enforcement officials currently operate.

 
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In Turkey, International Women’s Day saw nationwide protests, with many focusing on the growing scourge of violence against women. According to rights groups, hundreds of women are slain yearly in Turkey.

In Istanbul’s Kadikoy district, the heart of the Asian side of the city, hundreds of women gathered, holding placards condemning violence against women.

“We are here to demand the police and judiciary take these endless murders of women seriously. I have had enough of these killings,” said Sibel, who wanted to give only her first name. 

Police presence

Despite a heavy police presence, the Kadikoy demonstration passed without incident. But thousands of women gathered in Istanbul’s main Istiklal Street area, where hundreds of riot police, backed by armored cars, used rubber bullets and tear gas to break up a procession. 

In Izmir, on Turkey’s western Aegean coast, police using clubs broke up a Women’s Day demonstration, arresting seven. However, most commemorations and protests, held in many towns and cities across Turkey, ended without incident.

The scale and extent of the protests, in the face of strict laws controlling demonstrations, reflect a growing assertiveness regarding women’s rights and violence against women. Last month saw nationwide outrage through social media and protests over the death of Sule Cet, 23.

Police initially treated Cet’s death as a suicide after she fell from the 20th floor of an office building, where she worked overnight. After intense pressure from an attorney representing Cet’s family, police finally treated her case as a homicide, with her boss and another man now standing trial for rape and murder.

Anger about the case was exacerbated when the defense attorney said Cet was not a virgin and that she should not have been drinking with her boss late at night. The case, which has engrossed millions, has become a focal point for women’s rights groups across Turkey and the source of growing anger about an increasing number of killings. Cet’s name has become a leading hashtag, while talk shows and social media have become platforms for people’s outrage about the way the case has been handled.

“Cet’s case raises so many issues that are wrong about the way cases of murdered women are handled,” said law professor Istar Gozaydin, who is also a presenter of a women’s rights television program.

“In the judicial process, we see the private lives of the victims being routinely mentioned or the character of the victim being impugned, like raising whether the victim is a virgin or not. Also, the figures of murdered women given by authorities are not very reliable. They are designated as accidents or considered as suicides, which we saw in Sule Cet’s case,” added Gozaydin, who is doing research on violence against women for the European Union.

This week, the Umut, a prominent nongovernmental organization, said that 477 women were slain and 232 were injured by men in 2018, and that Turkish media reported 1,760 femicide cases over the past four years.

In 2012, Turkey’s AK political party made the country the first signatory of the Council of Europe’s convention to protect women. The document is intended to prevent violence against women, provide victim protection and “end the impunity of perpetrators.” 

“On paper, the legal regulations and structures are very sufficient [in Turkey] to stop violence and murders against women,” said Gozaydin. “But the way the judiciary and police enforce these procedures and laws is very, very problematic. That’s why the judicial process should be monitored very closely to achieve a fair trial.”

Seen as major problem

Experts suggest there is a growing awareness within Turkish society about the scale of violence against women. A survey released this month by Istanbul’s Kadir Has University found that 60 percent of the participants viewed violence as “the biggest problem that women face in society.”

The issue appears to be crossing the deep political divide between religious and secular Turkey. “It [violence against women] has become the target issue of so many people to give their reaction,” said Gozaydin. “It is just not limited to the secular group or just women. It is much wider.”
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The United Nations says 1.8 billion people in the world are below age 30. Most live in developing countries, with hundreds of millions in areas of conflict.

Actor Forest Whitaker, a U.N. goodwill ambassador, says young people too often are viewed in a negative light. He says they are seen as a problem rather than the solution to unresolved conflicts.  

Speaking to VOA on Friday on the sidelines of a U.N. Human Rights Council meeting, Whitaker said his foundation, the Whitaker Peace and Development Initiative, trains young people to become mediators in four systems of conflict resolution and education. He said young women and men also are trained in information and communication technologies, life skills and entrepreneurial skills.

Efforts in South Sudan

Whitaker said many are applying their skills within their own communities as part of a peace and reconciliation program his foundation is running in South Sudan.

“They are in the middle of mediating conflicts that have to deal with cattle issues,” he said. “They are in the middle of mediating conflicts that have to do with revenge killings, that have to do with territorial rights. … They go out into the communities as well, sometimes, and interpret in their native language or native tongue the peace agreements to the communities.”

Whitaker said young people apply their expertise on many fronts. He said they often are called upon by the countries themselves to act as mediators.

He said many of the people his foundation works with in South Sudan are decommissioned child soldiers. Similar programs exist in post-conflict situations for young people who were recruited as child soldiers by the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda, he said.

The foundation has projects in Mexico and the United States and soon will begin working with young people on peace and reconciliation issues in South Africa.
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The Pentagon is warning of “grave consequences” to military relations between the United States and Turkey should Ankara purchase a Russian surface-to-air missile system.

“If Turkey takes the S-400, there would be grave consequences in terms of our relationship, military relationship with them,” chief Pentagon spokesman Charlie Summers told reporters Friday.

Summers said those consequences would encompass losing U.S. military sales to Turkey, including the long-awaited sale of the United States’ new F-35 Joint Strike Fighter jet.

“If they take the S-400s then … they would not get the F-35s and the Patriots,” Summers said, referring to the Patriot surface-to-air missile system, which has a primary function of defending against ballistic missiles and has been presented as an American-made alternative to the S-400.

Ankara signed an agreement with Moscow for the S-400 missile system in 2017. At the same time, Turkey has helped finance the F-35 program and planned to buy 100 of the jets from the U.S., the first of which are due to be delivered later this year.

Washington fears the sophisticated radar of the S-400 system could compromise the F-35 technology, which was developed to elude Russian-made systems. Ankara insists the S-400 offers the best value for its needs and poses no threat to NATO systems.

Earlier this week, the head of U.S. European Command told lawmakers the United States should not move forward with the F-35 sales, should Turkey purchase the S-400.

“My best military advice would be that we don’t then follow through with the F-35, flying it or working with allies that are working with Russian systems, particularly air defense systems,” Army Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti said Tuesday.

A day later, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan reiterated his commitment to buy the Russian missile system and suggested expanding the purchase to Russia’s more advanced S-500 system.

Ankara is slated to receive the S-400 later this year in hopes of making the system ready for use by 2020.

Dorian Jones contributed to this report from Istanbul
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Britain will hand diplomatic protection to British-Iranian aid worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe to underline the government’s belief that Iran has behaved unjustly in its treatment of her, foreign minister Jeremy Hunt said on Thursday.

Hunt said while the move, a little-used way for governments to seek protection on behalf of their nationals, was unlikely to be a “magic wand,” it may help Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s case.

Iran’s ambassador in London said on Twitter that Britain’s move “contravenes international law.”

Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a project manager with the Thomson Reuters Foundation, was arrested in April 2016 at a Tehran airport as she headed back to Britain with her daughter after a family visit.

She was sentenced to five years in jail after being convicted of plotting to overthrow Iran’s clerical establishment, a charge denied by her family and the Foundation, a charity organization that operates independently of Thomson Reuters and Reuters News.

“I have today decided that the UK will take a step that is extremely unusual and exercise diplomatic protection,” Hunt said in a statement, adding that the move signaled to Tehran that “its behavior is totally wrong.” 

“It is unlikely to be a magic wand that leads to an overnight result. But it demonstrates to the whole world that Nazanin is innocent and the UK will not stand by when one of its citizens is treated so unjustly,” he said.

Diplomatic protection is a mechanism under international law through which a state may seek reparation for injury to one of its nationals on the basis that the second state has committed an internationally wrongful act against that person.

“UK Govt’s extension of diplomatic protection to Ms Zaghari contravenes int’l law. Govts may only exercise such protection for own nationals,” Hamid Baeidinejad, Iran’s ambassador in London, said on Twitter.

“As (the) UK Govt is acutely aware, Iran does not recognize dual nationality. Irrespective of UK residency, Ms Zaghari thus remains Iranian,” Baeidinejad added.

Earlier this year, Zaghari-Ratcliffe went on hunger strike in protest at her treatment in jail.

“We have been working hard to secure her release but despite repeated efforts have not been successful. We have not even been able to secure her the medical treatment she urgently needs despite assurances to the contrary,” Hunt said.

“No government should use innocent individuals as pawns for diplomatic leverage so I call on Iran to release this innocent woman so she can be reunited with her family.”
…

President Donald Trump and Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis now have another thing in common: They both like the same campaign slogan.

Babis said Thursday at the White House that he similarly wants to “Make the Czech Republic great again.”

The two leaders already have much in common.

Babis, like Trump, is a wealthy businessman who rode into office on a nationalist-style campaign.

While Trump is dogged by special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, Babis is facing charges of misusing European Union subsidies for a farm he transferred to relatives, including his son.

Trump wants to strengthen the U.S. border with Mexico. Babis is a vocal opponent of accepting migrants and refugees in his country.

Trump and first lady Melania Trump greeted the prime minister of the central European country and his wife, Monika Babisova, outside the White House and they walked to the Oval Office.

“Czech Republic doing very, very well economically and in all other respects,” Trump said. “It’s always been a safe country. Strong military. Strong people. We have a very good relationship with the Czech Republic and the United States. We do a lot of trade.”

Babis said U.S.-Czech Republic business relations are growing.

“Our investors are investing in the U.S. and already created thousands of jobs,” Babis said. “Mr. President, I watched your 2019 State of the Union address and I perfectly understand you plan how to make America great again. I have a similar plan to make the Czech Republic great again.”

The two leaders also discussed cybersecurity. A Czech watchdog followed U.S. authorities in warning against use of hardware or software made by Chinese companies Huawei and ZTE.

Huawei has become the target of U.S. security concerns because of its ties to the Chinese government. The U.S. has pressured other countries to limit use of its technology, warning they could be opening themselves up to surveillance and theft of information.

“Our countries will work to ensure secure and reliable telecommunications networks and supply chains to reduce the risk of malicious cyber activity,” the two leaders said in a joint statement issued after their meeting. “We resolve to deepen our cooperation. … to develop telecommunications security principles.”

On trade, Trump has raised the ire of many Europeans by imposing tariffs on aluminum and steel, while threatening to slap tariffs on imports of cars from the European Union. Before leaving for the United States, Babis told The Associated Press that he hoped the trade spat would not escalate and that talks would result in a solution that avoids a trade war.

In their statement, the two leaders also said they would work together to promote enhanced energy diversification in Europe and ensure security. “We will further investigate the potential benefits of regional energy infrastructure development in Central Europe,” they said.

Babis’ visit coincides with the 30th anniversary of the 1989 anti-communist “Velvet Revolution” and the 20th anniversary of the Czech Republic’s membership in NATO, which began in 1999.

The Czech Republic is among the countries criticized by Trump for not meeting the NATO goal of committing 2 percent of their gross domestic product to defense. Babis has promised to meet the target by 2024.
…

Russia’s leading telecoms firm said Thursday it had agreed to pay $850 million to settle a U.S. corruption case over huge bribes paid to the family of Uzbekistan’s former president.

The case shed light on massive corruption in Uzbekistan under former president Islam Karimov, who ruled the ex-Soviet republic from 1990 until his death in 2016.

MTS, based in Moscow and listed on the New York Stock Exchange, said the settlement had been agreed with the U.S. Justice Department and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

The deals “mark the closure of the investigations into the company’s acquisition and operation of its former subsidiary in Uzbekistan,” MTS said in a statement.

MTS complies 

In agreeing to the fine “MTS affirmed its commitment” to complying with anti-corruption legislation, it said.

MTS was in a long-running dispute with the Uzbek authorities, which seized the company’s local subsidiary in 2012 after cancelling its operating licenses for alleged tax evasion.

The Uzbek subsidiary, which had 9.5 million subscribers by the end of 2011, filed for bankruptcy in 2013.

The SEC said that MTS had “bribed an Uzbek official” related to Karimov to obtain and retain business operations in Uzbekistan, a Central Asian nation of more than 32 million people.

“The company engaged in egregious misconduct for nearly a decade, secretly funneling hundreds of millions of dollars to a corrupt official,” the SEC said in a statement. 

‘$1 billion worth of payments’

An investigation by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project previously said that the subsidiary, which was known as Uzdunrobita before it was acquired by MTS, had paid hundreds of millions of dollars to companies owned by Karimov’s daughter Gulnara.

The OCCRP, an NGO that works with investigative reporters mainly in Eastern Europe, alleged that MTS made payments in 2004 and 2007 to purchase stakes in the company. 

MTS was not the only telecoms company involved. “Karimova squeezed more than $1 billion worth of payments… out of international telecom-related companies,” OCCRP said.

Some commentators in Russia expressed dismay that the U.S. was fining Russian companies for operations in third countries.

“What concern does the U.S. have about the faraway Uzbekistan and Russian operators?” said a journalist on BFM business radio, pointing out that “the money will go to the American budget, not the Uzbek one.”

End to economic isolation

Uzbekistan is led by Karimov’s former prime minister Shavkat Mirziyoyev, who has moved to end the country’s economic isolation and removed visa restrictions for travelers from European Union countries and the United States.

Gulnara Karimova, once a high-profile diplomat and pop singer, was being held under house arrest after being convicted on fraud and money laundering charges in 2017 and sentenced to five years.

Uzbek authorities this week said she had violated the terms of her house arrest and had been sent to prison where she would remain until the end of her sentence.
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A French court convicted the Roman Catholic archbishop of Lyon on Thursday of failing to act on historic allegations of sexual abuse of boy scouts in his diocese, handing Cardinal Philippe Barbarin a six-month suspended jail sentence.

Barbarin is the highest-profile cleric to be caught up in the child sex abuse scandal inside the Catholic Church in France. He was found guilty of failing to report allegations of sexual abuse in the 1980s and early 1990s by a priest who is due to go on trial later this year.

Barbarin has 10 days to appeal.

Barbarin’s trial put Europe’s senior clergy in the spotlight at a time when Pope Francis is under fire for the church’s response a sexual abuse crisis that has engulfed the church, deeply damaging its standing around the globe.

The pontiff last month ended a conference on the sexual abuse of children by clergy by calling for an “all-out battle” against a crime that should be “erased from the face of the earth.”

Victims and their advocates expressed deep disappointment, saying Francis had merely repeated old promises and offered few new concrete proposals.
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British police said a suspicious package destroyed by bomb-disposal experts at the University of Glasgow on Wednesday contained an explosive device and was linked to three letter bombs sent to two London airports and a railway station.  

The Metropolitan Police’s Counter Terrorism Command said the item sent to the Scottish university had “similarities in the package, its markings and the type of device” to the three small improvised bombs received by the London transportation hubs on Tuesday.  

The mailing envelope sent to London’s Heathrow Airport with one of the bombs inside partly caught fire when someone opened it, but no one was injured.  

The force said it had not identified the sender and urged transportation operators, mail sorting companies and schools “to be vigilant” about watching for suspicious packages. 

Precautionary evacuation

The University of Glasgow said several buildings on its campus, including the mailroom, were evacuated “as a precautionary measure” after the package was found in the mailroom on Wednesday morning. 

Assistant Chief Constable Steve Johnson of Police Scotland said “the package was not opened and no one was injured.” 

He said bomb-disposal experts later performed a controlled explosion on the item.  

Another package sparked an evacuation Wednesday at the Royal Bank of Scotland headquarters in Edinburgh. It was found to contain “promotional goods” and deemed no threat to the public, police said. 

The envelopes received in London appeared to carry Irish stamps, and Jarrett said one line of inquiry “is the possibility that the packages have come from Ireland.” 

There has been speculation the devices could be connected to Irish Republican Army dissidents. But Dean Haydon, Britain’s senior national coordinator for counterterrorism policing, said no sender had been identified and no group had claimed responsibility. 

“We are talking to our Irish counterparts but at the moment there’s nothing to indicate motivation of the sender or ideology, so I cannot confirm at the moment if it’s connected to any Ireland-related terrorist groups,” he said.
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Pope Francis has urged Roman Catholic faithful to free themselves from the “clutches of consumerism and the snares of selfishness” as he marked the start of Lent, the period of prayer and fasting before Easter.

Francis led a procession and then celebrated Ash Wednesday Mass at the basilica of Santa Sabina, one of Rome’s most beautiful.

In his homily, Francis said the 40-day period of Lent is a “wakeup call for the soul” to rediscover the direction of life.

He said: “We need to free ourselves from the clutches of consumerism and the snares of selfishness, from always wanting more, from never being satisfied, and from a heart closed to the needs of the poor.”

At the end of Lent, Christians commemorate the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ.
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