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U.S. President Donald Trump says Iran is likely to engage in new negotiations on its nuclear program. Trump told reporters Wednesday the United States will impose some of the strongest sanctions on Iran ever and that the United States will work toward a deal with Tehran that will ensure the world’s safety. Iran has rejected suggestions to renegotiate any part of the 2015 agreement. Britain, France and Germany say they will continue to uphold the agreement with Iran. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports.
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A transatlantic diplomatic tussle appears to be looming after European leaders pledged to defend their countries’ commercial interests in Iran, following U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the 2015 nuclear deal with Tehran. Fellow signatories Russia and China also said they would stick with the accord. Henry Ridgwell reports.
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Attraction park Legoland has unveiled a miniature model of this month’s royal wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle at Windsor castle, built by a team of 11 model-makers who used almost 60,000 pieces of Lego bricks.

The replica includes a 60-brick Markle in her wedding dress and veil, with Harry by her side.

The couple are riding in a brick-built carriage being drawn by horses along Windsor Great Park’s Long Walk toward the castle, surrounded by 500 spectators, recreating the real-life procession that is planned for the big day on May 19.

The scene is completed by miniature models of Queen Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh along with best man Prince William, his wife, Kate, and their children, Prince George and Princess Charlotte, and Meghan Markle’s parents.

Lego said the wedding scene replica, which took 752 hours to build, will be on permanent display at its theme park, just three miles (5 km) from the real Windsor castle to the west of London.
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The double-Oscar winning filmmaker who opened the Cannes Film Festival has made a last-minute plea to Iran to let a fellow Iranian director – who is officially banned from working and traveling – come to the premiere of his own film.

Seated alongside Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz, the stars of his new movie, Asghar Farhadi said Iran should allow acclaimed director Jafar Panahi to attend the festival where they both have movies competing for the Palme d’Or.

“I think there’s still time,” he said of getting Panahi to the Saturday premiere of his film “3 Faces.”

“I would like to send this message: I hope the decision will be taken to allow him to come,” Farhadi said at the end of a news conference on his own movie “Everybody Knows” on Wednesday.

Farhadi, who won foreign language Oscars for films made in Iran: “A Separation” and “The Salesman”, is free to come and go from his home country as he makes films there and in Europe.

But Panahi, who won the Camera d’Or in Cannes in 1995 for his debut “The White Balloon” was arrested after the 2009 protests against the re-election of hardline president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and was banned from making films.

Depite that, he has continued working under the radar, starting with “This Is Not a Film,” shot in his Tehran apartment on a mobile phone, and more recently “Taxi” in which he plays himself as a film director now working as a taxi driver – winning the Golden Bear for best film at the Berlin film festival in 2015.

“It’s wonderful that he has continued his work in such adversity,” Farhadi told reporters. “It’s a very strange feeling for me to be able to be here but not him. It’s something I have difficulty living with.”

The gala screening of “Everybody Knows” on Tuesday evening coincided with U.S. President Donald Trump’s announcement that he was pulling of the 2015 nuclear deal – delivering a bitter-sweet moment for Iranians.

“It was a very strange moment, to have come out of the film and have all the emotions about how good or bad the film was and also the real, real worries that we have about the future of our country,” said Arash Azizi, a New-York based Iranian movie critic for website IranWire.

“Unfortunately, the reality of the world is that our fate is not being decided not by the Farhadis or other artists but by Trump or (Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali) Khamenei – men in power who represent a very different face of Iranians.”

The Cannes Film Festival runs from May 8 to May 19.

 
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Unidentified assailants on Tuesday shot and wounded a Montenegrin journalist who has written about crime and corruption in the small Balkan country.

Olivera Lakic, a journalist for the Montenegrin newspaper Vijesti, was wounded in the right leg outside her home in the capital, Podgorica. Lakic was taken to a hospital and was reported out of danger.

Police said the attack happened around 9 p.m. A search for the attackers was underway, including stepped up controls throughout the city and a review of surveillance cameras in the area, police said.

Vijesti’s chief editor, Mihailo Jovovic, said Lakic told him a man approached her and shot her in the leg, while two other men ran away.

Lakic, 49, was beaten six years ago after she wrote a series of articles about alleged murky dealings over a tobacco factory. That attacker was jailed for several months and Lakic had police protection for a while.

“I am speechless. For how much longer will this be happening?” Jovovic said in comments published on the Vijesti website. “A lot of stories she wrote have not been investigated (by the authorities). For how much longer must we live in fear of such cowards?”

Prime Minister Dusko Markovic condemned the attack and urged a “swift and efficient investigation” to discover the motive as well as who might have ordered it.

The U.S. Embassy in Podgorica tweeted that it was “following with concern the attack tonight on journalist Olivera Lakic.” It said journalists “are the guardians of democracy and must be protected so they can do their jobs in safety.”

Aivo Orav, head of the European Union delegation in Montenegro, called the attack “very worrying.” In the tweet, Orav said that “journalists must be protected.”

Montenegro is a former Yugoslav republic that joined NATO last year and is now also seeking EU membership. The long-ruling Democratic Party of Socialists has faced accusations of widespread crime and corruption.
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Dolls, a memory jar, a magnifying glass, a used condom — each is a memento of heartbreak contributed by an anonymous contributor to the Museum of Broken Relationships, an eccentric display in Kosovo.

The traveling exhibition — tied to a permanent tourist attraction in the Croatian capital, Zagreb, dedicated to treasuring and sharing heartbreak stories and symbolic possessions — opened a monthlong stint in Kosovo last week as part of Europe Week. 

“Its mission is to connect people in public spaces through the stories of love and loss,” a statement from the EU office in Kosovo said.

Curator Kushtrim Fetahu said organizers launched an open call for stories on Facebook and Instagram, and managed to collect 30 objects for the Kosovo exhibition.

They all aim at “storytelling, story sharing, to explain all the relationships, what happened not only between lovers but also between friends and families,” he said.

One contributor from the western Kosovo city of Prizren writes of a memory jar: “This jar holds the beautiful days and nights of our relationship and that doesn’t deserve to be thrown away and not to be remembered.”

The collection in Pristina includes items from the museum’s permanent collection in Zagreb, such as a positive pregnancy test from Leipzig, Germany, as well as the wedding dress of a Turkish woman who lost her husband-to-be the day they would have gotten married — in June 28, 2016, when a terrorist attack killed him at the Istanbul airport.

The museum won the EMYA Kenneth Hudson Award in 2010 for the most innovative and daring museum project in Europe.

The EU statement said that the Museum “encourages discussion and reflection not only on the fragility of human relationships but also on the social, cultural and political circumstances surrounding the stories being told.”

When the project wraps up in Kosovo, some of the stories will be sent to the permanent museum in Zagreb.

“In this way, stories from Kosovo will be a permanent part of an international museum,” the EU statement said.
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As tens of thousands gathered in the central square of Armenia’s capital to celebrate Tuesday’s 59-42 vote to make Nikol Pashinyan prime minister, supporters of the longtime opposition figure called their political triumph the first step in a much longer journey.

Tuesday’s decision followed weeks of largely peaceful protests against corruption and poor governance that came after former President Serzh Sargsyan became prime minister in April, a move that critics called a manipulation of the country’s constitution to extend his hold on power.

Just last week, Armenia’s ruling Republican Party, which holds a majority in parliament, blocked Pashinyan’s initial bid to become prime minister, prompting further protests and city-wide blockades and strikes.

Republican Party leaders then agreed to grant Pashinyan the minimum number of votes required to secure the office with full support of Pashinyan’s minority opposition coalition.

In sharp contrast with the jubilance that erupted in Yerevan’s central Republic Square after Pashinyan’s election was confirmed, the atmosphere inside the national assembly was dour, said Gevorg Gorgisyan, a legislator aligned with Pashinyan’s Yelk, or “Way Out,” alliance.

“Republican Party members were not in a celebratory mood, and it reflected on everyone,” Gorgisyan told VOA’s Armenian Service.

Pashinyan, a one-time political prisoner whose years of street activism earned him the ire of establishment officials and legislators, had crusaded against entrenched corruption and oligarchical influence for decades.

“Our country and our people needed this,” Gorgisyan told VOA. “Now we have a chance to create a new, happy, independent and democratic Armenia. … The revolution is starting, it is not over and big changes are to come.”

Note from Russia

Shortly after the vote, Russian President Vladimir Putin telegrammed Pashinyan to say that Moscow is depending on him to “aid the further strengthening of bilateral, allied relations between our countries.”

Russia, which has strong strategic interests in Armenia, including a military base, has been watching the country’s political turmoil closely.

In a region dominated by “strongman” politics, the grass-roots demonstrations — which protest leaders had been careful not to paint as pro-Western or anti-Russian — are focused on a domestic agenda led by honest elections.

In weeks leading up to the vote, Pashinyan repeatedly said that he would not seek to change Armenia’s cooperation with Russia.

Unwilling to cooperate

Also within hours of the vote, however, Armen Ashotyan, vice president of the Republican Party and head of the parliamentary foreign affairs committee, said the party now considers itself the opposition and will refuse to cooperate with the new government.

“We do not consider it expedient to cooperate with the new government; it would be hypocritical to consider the issue of our participation in the new government,” he said in a prepared statement. “We will find a place for ourselves. And this place is not in power, but in the opposition.”

Pashinyan now has five days to propose cabinet members and just over two weeks to file a government program for parliamentary approval.

While the new leader has vowed to establish a government of “national accord,” parliamentary failure to approve a program within 20 days of his ascension to office requires dissolution of parliament and a call for early general elections.

Although majority Republicans may resist any plan advanced by Pashinyan, some observers — such as former legislator Armen Martirosyan of the Heritage party, which is not represented in parliament — say all Armenians, regardless of party affiliation, should appreciate that non-violent political changes are under way.

“I am in a very good mood, I am happy that my people’s fight ended in celebrations!” Martirosyan said. “We did not have a leader who was popular among people for a long time, now we have one. I congratulate the people of Armenian and Nikol Pashinyan in his new role. I expect productive changes and reforms.”

For Syrian refugees living in Armenia in particular, Tuesday’s peaceful outcome was a welcome change from the broader geopolitics of the region.

“We were very nervous at the beginning, but now we are happy and celebrating with Armenia,” said Sevan Kilegyan, who crossed the border into Armenia after her native Syria was plunged into a bloody and grinding civil war.

“We came to Armenia from Syria. Now, our husbands are working outside of Armenia to be able to provide for our families. We want them to be able to come back and work here and be next to us,” she told VOA.

“I am a Syrian Armenian, and I am visiting my sisters,” said Suzi Nshanyan, a refugee who had just traveled to Yerevan from Germany.

“I see hope and happiness in people’s faces that I have not seen before,” she said.

This story originated from VOA’s Armenian Service. Some information for this report was provided by AP.
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The court examining war crimes against ethnic Serbs in Kosovo said on Monday it has appointed a new chief prosecutor, who will pick up the court’s efforts to issue its first indictments, three years after it was established.

The court said U.S. prosecutor Jack Smith will succeed fellow American David Schwendiman, who stepped down March 31, a setback for the court, which politicians in Kosovo have long tried to abolish.

The Specialist Chamber was set up in The Hague in 2015 to handle cases of alleged crimes by the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) guerrillas during the 1998-99 war that led to the country’s secession from Serbia.

The court has yet to hear any cases. Its prosecutors and judges are foreign, but it was established under Kosovan law and comes under Pristina’s jurisdiction. Kosovo lawmakers only this year gave up an attempt to repeal the law that created it.

Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia in 2008, nearly a decade after a NATO bombing campaign drove out Serbian troops.

NATO launched the action in response to attacks by Serbian forces against Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian majority during a two-year counter-insurgency war against the KLA.

Crimes committed by Serbian forces were punished by a Yugoslavia tribunal that closed in December last year, but incidents carried out by the KLA were mostly not covered.
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The ruling Czech ANO party expects a deal on a coalition with the Social Democrats (CSSD) by Friday, ANO chairman and Prime Minister Andrej Babis said on Monday.

The ANO won elections last October but fell short of a parliamentary majority and since then most parties have refused to cooperate with it because Babis faces fraud charges. An ANO minority cabinet lost a vote of confidence in January and has since ruled as a caretaker.

“[The agenda] is in the final stages, I believe it will be absolutely clear by Friday and then we will only wait for the (CSSD) referendum,” Babis told reporters after the meeting.

He referred to an internal vote among CSSD members, which the party leadership may launch as soon as Friday. The result is expected in early June. Babis said he planned to have a confidence vote in the parliament by the end of June.

Neither Babis, nor Social Democratic chairman Jan Hamacek would comment on specific items on the new government’s agenda such as a special tax on banks the Social Democrats want or steeper progression of income tax for the highest earners.

Notes from previous meetings of the ANO and CSSD seen by Reuters showed that the ANO would reject both ideas. CSSD chairman Hamacek said that the agreement should be acceptable to his party colleagues.

“Speaking for myself, the text which we have, is acceptable … all problems are solved. I regard the coalition agreement as solved,” he said.

The parties also agreed that if all CSSD ministers resigned, the whole government would follow suit, Hamacek said.

The leaders declined to comment on the other key CSSD demand: that Babis resign if found guilty in an investigation into charges of illegally tapping EU subsidies. He denies the police charges and the case is yet to go to trial.

If the agreement holds, the two parties would still need a support from a third party, the Communists, to win a confidence vote. It would be the first participation of the Communists on power, however indirect, since their  totalitarian rule fell during the Velvet Revolution in 1989.

Their limited role, with no cabinet seats, would not bring the kind of policy changes that have sparked conflict between the EU and Hungary and Poland. But it would still anger many Czechs who suffered under their rule.

ANO has also cooperated with the far-right, anti-EU and anti-NATO SPD party in parliament, even considering leaning on it for support for a minority government. That helped the SPD to fill the post of the deputy speaker and chair some committees.

The Social Democrats have demanded SPD officials be ousted from these positions to prevent the ANO seeking support from the anti-Islam party in case of coalition squabbles. Both Babis and Hamacek declined to comment.
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European Union states are wrestling over how to reform their broken migration and asylum system, pushing for a deal at a leaders’ summit in June over the highly-politicized issue that has defied resolution for nearly three years.

The dispute has divided the bloc between southerners on the Mediterranean shore where most refugees and migrants land from the Middle East and Africa against ex-communist states that refuse to host part of the arrivals.

Wealthy destination countries such as Germany are also pushing for a deal under which no one could bail out completely from hosting those coming.

The latest proposal would let capitals avoid taking in a quarter of their “fair share” of asylum-seekers who make it to Europe. Instead they could bring in a handpicked person from across the sea or offer 30,000 euros to an EU host for each individual they refuse.

But Poland and Hungary staunchly oppose any obligatory immigration quotas and a diplomat involved in the talks for one of the two said the idea was “absolutely not” acceptable.

A joint paper by five Mediterranean states including Italy also rejected it – but for the exact opposite reason. It said such option would not have enough “immediate positive impact” in easing the burden on the main countries of entry.

The dissonance shows that another half year that has passed since the EU leaders last failed to break the deadlock saw little real progress on the most contested parts of the reform.

National envoys will discuss it in Brussels in mid-May, hand on to interior ministers meeting early next month and then to the leaders’ summit on June 28-29.

The bitter discussion started in the summer of 2015 as southern arrivals in the EU spiked, overwhelming EU governments and feeding support for anti-immigration parties. The wound has since festered, undermining trust between EU states.

A senior EU diplomat said on Monday the “very delicate and difficult negotiations” could still bear fruit.

Another diplomat from an EU country where refugees and migrants often want to go said the latest draft was a good basis for compromise since “everybody is almost equally unhappy with it”, but added Warsaw and Budapest were “still only against.”

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Monday the main task of his new government was to preserve Hungary’s security and Christian culture, rhetoric he has used in denying access to people from the mainly-Muslim Middle East and North Africa.

Not ready for another crisis

Those pushing for a deal are also looking at outvoting the two staunch critics if they could have on board their eastern peers Slovakia and the Czech Republic, seen as less ideological on the matter, said a different diplomat from a rich EU state.

The political limbo in Italy is also a problem since a strong government in Rome is needed to sign off on any deal.

“You win or lose elections on that,” said another diplomat, referring to former Italian Prime Minister Mateo Renzi who was voted out partly because voters felt Rome was not controlling migration enough, and Orban who claimed victory in Hungary on a tough anti-immigration platform.

Many in the EU warn the bloc is not ready for another mass influx of people. While overall arrival numbers have since dropped sharply, they point to data from Germany where many still arrive without proper registration on entering the EU, most notably through the overburdened Greek islands.

Germany, France and several other states introduced emergency border checks in what is normally Europe’s zone of free travel to control the situation better. They are now in place until October and many see them extended beyond that.

Highlighting how the matter is crucial to the bloc, the executive European Commission earmarked 35 billion euros ($41.7 bln) for protecting the EU’s external borders and managing migration in 2021-27, a nearly-threefold increase from the previous joint budget. But a deal still seems elusive.

“I don’t see consensus emerging,” said one of the diplomats.

 
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Air France’s share price dived Monday after its CEO quit and the French government warned that the country’s flagship carrier might collapse.

A new strike Monday over wage demands, meanwhile, prompted the cancellation of about 15 percent of Air France flights worldwide. The number of striking staffers appears to be slightly declining as the airline enters its 14th day of walkouts this year, but the labor action has already cost the company more than 300 million euros ($360 million) in a matter of weeks.

Air France’s share price plunged nearly 13 percent at the open Monday and was trading 10.9 percent lower at 7.21 euros early afternoon Paris time amid questions about its future management and direction.

The share price woes follow the resignation Friday evening of Air France-KLM CEO Jean-Marc Janaillac after workers rejected the company’s latest wage proposal.

The Air France drama is posing yet another problem for President Emmanuel Macron’s government as he marks one year in office. The airline’s labor dispute come as separate strikes over Macron’s labor reforms are hitting France’s national railways.

French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire on Sunday said the government, which owns 14 percent of Air France, would not rescue the airline.

He urged striking pilots, crew and ground staff to be “responsible” and said “the survival of Air France is at stake.”

“Air France will disappear if it does not make the necessary efforts to be competitive,” he said on BFM television.

The strikes have taken a heavier toll on Air France than management and investors expected, and the company last week forecast a “notably” lower income this year compared to 2017.

Unions want a 5.1 percent pay rise this year, arguing that the company is making enough of a profit to meet their demands. They noted that their wages have been frozen since 2011 as the airline cut jobs and restructured.

The company argues that the union demands would wipe out hard-earned gains from the restructuring, which was aimed at stemming years of losses and keeping Air France afloat, as well as jeopardize efforts to win back market share from low-cost airlines and big-spending Mideast and Asian carriers.

After protracted negotiations, management last week offered a 2 percent pay rise this year and an additional 5 percent over 2019-2021.

Employees rejected that offer Friday, prompting the CEO’s decision to step down. He called the dispute a “huge waste that can only make our competitors rejoice.”

The Air France-KLM board asked Janaillac to stay on until May 15 when it will put a transitional leadership in place.

 
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Vladimir Putin, who has been either president or prime minister of Russia since 1999, was sworn in for a fourth term as president Monday at the Grand Kremlin Palace’s ornately-decorated Andreyevsky Hall.  With his hand on a gold-embossed copy of the constitution, Putin said, “I consider it my duty and my life’s aim to do everything possible for Russia, for its present and for its future.”

He will not be able to run for a fifth term as president unless there is a change to Russia’s constitution which prohibits more than two consecutive terms. 

Putin annexed Crimea from Ukraine during his most recent term and also partnered with Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad for a military campaign in Syria. 

In the March election, Putin won against seven weak challengers, garnering almost 77 percent of the vote. International observers criticized the poll, saying there had been no real choice in the election and complained of widespread allegations of ballot rigging. Russian election officials described the violations as “minor,” but said they were investigating. 

Putin’s inauguration at the Kremlin comes just two days after demonstrations across the country were mounted to protest the beginning of another six-year presidential term for the former KGB chief.

On Saturday, Russia’s most widely known opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, was arrested within minutes of his arrival at a demonstration in central Moscow. Navalny and hundreds of his supporters were detained during the protests in Moscow and 90 other cities. Navalny was released Sunday.

Baton-wielding riot police and even men dressed in traditional Cossack uniforms repeatedly waded into the Moscow crowd of most younger Russians to make arrests. 

Denis Krivosheev, Amnesty International deputy director for Eastern Europe and Central Asia, said the “forceful dispersal” of the opposition’s demonstrations was “outrageous.” He denounced the scheme that Russian authorities used “once again” of refusing to authorize protests rallies and then using the ban to crackdown on those gathered in Moscow and elsewhere. 

“But what is worse,” Krivosheev said, “is the total police inaction, which allowed the beating of protesters by unknown men in Moscow. On what grounds people in ‘Cossack’ uniforms were allowed to use force remains a question.” 

Putin, however, is not without supporters.

A nationalist youth movement organized a counter-protest in Moscow, attempting to block Navalny’s supporters from gaining access to Pushkinskaya Square. Some chanted “Putin-Russia” and “No to Maidan,” a reference to the Ukrainian street revolution of 2014 that toppled the country’s pro-Russian government.

Maksim Slavin, a spokesman for the radical pro-Putin National Liberation Movement, said his members were there to show that Putin supporters represented the true voice of the people.

Russians, he insisted, would do anything to prevent a street revolution like those that had taken place in neighboring Ukraine or, more recently, Armenia.

“We’re against any change in power through unlawful means. … You should do it through referendums, changes in the constitution, or elections,” Slavin said.
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Britain’s Foreign Secretary is set to lobby the Trump administration to remain a party to the 2015 agreement struck between Iran and world powers to limit Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief.

Boris Johnson is meeting Monday with U.S. Vice President Mike Pence and National Security Adviser John Bolton with Iran as one of the top agenda items, according to Johnson’s office.

“The UK, U.S., and European partners are also united in our effort to tackle the kind of Iranian behavior that makes the Middle East region less secure – its cyber activities, its support for groups like Hezbollah, and its dangerous missile program, which is arming Houthi militias in Yemen,” Johnson said ahead of his visit.

U.S. President Donald Trump has been a frequent critic of what he calls a flawed deal, and has until May 12 to decide whether to renew sanctions waivers linked to the agreement. Trump wants added limitations on Iran’s ballistic missile program and objects to the so-called sunset clauses in the nuclear deal that let certain provisions expire after a certain amount of time.

Britain, China, France, Russia, Germany and the United States negotiated the agreement with Iran amid allegations Iran was working to develop nuclear weapons. Iran repeatedly denied that was the case, and has further asserted that it has every right to its ballistic missile program for defense.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said Sunday that if the United States does withdraw from the nuclear deal, “you will soon see that they will regret it like never before in history.”

He added Monday that Iran could continue the existing agreement with the rest of the signatories, but is also prepared to take its own “path.”

Britain’s Ambassador to the U.S. Kim Darroch said in an interview Sunday with CBS that Johnson and Trump spoke about the nuclear deal in a phone call Saturday and that the president had likely not yet made a final decision.

“It’s not a perfect deal, no deal is ever perfect, and the president is rightly concerned about Iran’s regional activities, which are malign and damaging to security and stability,” Darroch said.

He added that Britain prefers the United States remain part of the agreement, but that as long as Iran remains in compliance, Britain “wants to stick with it.”
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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed Sunday to launch a new offensive against Kurdish militants along the country’s borders with Syria and Iraq.

Turkey has conducted two previous operations aimed at Syrian Kurdish YPG militia, militants Ankara considers an extension of Kurdish fighters the Turkish government has been clashing with for three decades for control of southeastern Turkey.

In an address to thousands of supporters in Istanbul in advance of June’s snap election, Erdogan said, “We will not give up on constricting terrorist organizations. In the new period, Turkey will add new ones to the Euphrates Shield and Olive Branch operations in order to clear its borders.”

He added, “We shattered the terror corridor being formed on our southern border with these operations. Our soldiers, who lastly wrote an epic in Afrin, are ready for new missions. The operations will continue until not one terrorist is left.”

Erdogan called for the June 24 election more than a year ahead of the planned vote, which analysts say was designed to capitalize on nationalist sentiment running in favor of the successful military operation in the Syrian border town of Afrin.

With the election, Turkey is transforming its governing system to an executive presidency, abolishing the position of prime minister and vesting the ruling power in the presidency.

Erdogan said that with the presidential and parliamentary votes, Turkey would “take the stage as a global power.”

 
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High school students in Germany have gathered tens of thousands of signatures in an online petition to complain about an “unfair” final English exam, saying the test was much harder than in previous years.

By Sunday, the students from the southwestern state of Baden-Wuerttemberg had gathered almost 36,000 signatures — even though only 33,500 people took last month’s statewide exam.

They complained that text excerpts from American author Henry Roth’s 1934 novel “Call it Sleep” were too difficult and obscure to analyze and asked for the grading to be more lenient this year.

The final high school exams in Germany — called the Abitur — are a rite of passage that all students who want to enter university have to pass.

Only those with excellent grades and test scores will get into the most coveted university programs, with medicine among the hardest. But other subjects like engineering or language studies also offer only a limited amount of places.

Many German students, parents and teachers have been stressed out for months over the Abitur. Often schools will cancel all regular classes for younger students during the tests so the Abitur students won’t be disturbed.

The online petition has created such uproar that even state governor Winfried Kretschmann weighed in, though he showed only limited compassion.

“There’s no right to a simple Abitur,” he told the frustrated teenagers. “You wish for it, but you don’t have a right to it.”

At the same time Kretschmann admitted that his own English skills were too weak to actually judge whether the disputed text had been overly difficult, the German news agency dpa reported.

Students said the passage from Roth’s novel that they had to analyze — a metaphorical description of the Statue of Liberty — was difficult to understand because of its “unknown vocabulary.” They also complained the questions they had to answer were not asked precisely.

They quoted some of the text’s most difficult sentences to illustrate their point: “Against the luminous sky the rays of her halo were spikes of darkness roweling the air; shadow flattened the torch she bore to a black cross against flawless light — he blackened hilt of a broken sword. Liberty.”

The state’s education ministry responded by asking external experts to evaluate the exam — who then concluded its level was appropriate. Educational authorities also noted that students in the eastern German state of Mecklenburg-West Pomerania had to analyze the same passage and did not complain about it.

That has not stopped the number of signatures online from growing, as younger and out-of state students sign the petition in a show of solidarity.

“I was struggling like all the others, even though I spent a year abroad in America!” Aimee Schaefer wrote in the comment section of the petition. “You would think that I can understand everything by now, but I had to look up a lot of vocabulary… whoever compiled this exam must really hate us Abitur students.”

 
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French President Emmanuel Macron has warned that war could ensue if U.S. President Donald Trump withdraws from the 2015 deal in which Iran agreed to curb its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief.

“We would open the Pandora’s box. There could be war,” Macron told German weekly magazine Der Spiegel. But he added: “I don’t think that Donald Trump wants war.”

Trump is set to decide by May 12 whether to pull out of the Iran deal. Trump has all but decided to withdraw but exactly how he will do so remains unclear, two White House officials and a source familiar with the administration’s internal debate said on May 2.

Trump could still figure out a way to stay in the deal between the Islamic Republic and six world powers — Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States.

Macron urged Trump not to withdraw when he met the president in Washington late last month.

Britain, France and Germany remain committed to the accord but, in an effort to keep Washington in it, want to open talks on Iran’s ballistic missile program, its nuclear activities beyond 2025 – when key provisions of the deal expire — and its role in Middle East crises such as Syria and Yemen.
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Two missing coal miners were found hurt but conscious after a quake struck a mine Saturday in southern Poland, and scores of rescue workers were still trying to reach five other missing miners, a Polish mining company said. 

The rescue operation was launched at 11:25 a.m. Saturday after a temblor occurred at the Zofiowka coal mine, said Katarzyna Jablonska-Bajer of the Jastrzebie Coal Company. The mine is located in the southern town of Jastrzebie-Zdroj near Poland’s border with the Czech Republic. 

She said four miners were quickly brought to the surface but contact was lost with seven others who were 900 meters (2,950 feet) underground, preparing a new corridor for extraction work. 

Poland’s State Mining Authority said the temblor had a magnitude of 3.4, while the European Mediterranean Seismological Center pegged it at 4.3 magnitude. TVN24 said the quake was also felt on the surface and shook some houses. 

“There has never been such a powerful quake at the mine,” Jablonska-Bajer said

High methane levels in the mine delayed rescuers’ effort to reach the accident site for several hours. The two miners were brought to the surface and ambulances took them to the hospital.

Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, who arrived at the mine Saturday night, said almost 90 rescuers were working nonstop and using the best equipment to reach the missing miners but were running into blocks of rubble.

“We are doing everything to save the miners,” he told reporters.

Miners’ relatives gathered in front of the mine Saturday, waiting for the latest information, while the families of the missing were brought into the building. 

Coal mining is a major industry in Poland. Coal remains the main source of energy and heating in the country, but Poland is taking some steps to shift toward renewable, cleaner sources of energy.

The Main Statistical Office said 65.8 million metric tons of coal were extracted last year in Poland, 4.8 million less than in 2016.

Many of Poland’s mines are dangerous, with methane gas that has led to a number of deadly explosions and cave-ins. 

So far this year, four miners have been killed at different coal mines, according to the State Mining Authority.

In 2016, eight miners were killed in a cave-in at the Rudna mine in Polkowice, and methane explosions killed five miners at the Myslowice-Wesola mine in 2014. 
…

Trauma surgeons in London said U.S. President Donald Trump had missed the point after he linked a wave of knife crime in the British capital to a ban on handguns.

Anger also flared in France after Trump, in a speech to the National Rifle Association (NRA), used his hands in a gesture to mimic the shooting of victims in Paris in 2015. 

Trump, who is due to visit Britain on July 13, told members of the NRA in Dallas, Texas, on Friday that a “once very prestigious” London hospital, which he did not name, had become overwhelmed with victims of knife attacks.

“They don’t have guns. They have knives and instead there’s blood all over the floors of this hospital,” he said. “They say it’s as bad as a military war zone hospital. Knives, knives, knives, knives,” he added, making stabbing gestures.

London suffered a spike in knife crime in the early part of this year, and the total number of murders during February and March exceeded that in New York.

Last month, trauma surgeon Martin Griffiths told the BBC that some of his colleagues had likened the Royal London Hospital in east London where he works to the former British military base Camp Bastion in Afghanistan.

“Some of my military colleagues have described their practice here as being similar to being at Bastion,” he said. “About a quarter of what we see in our practice is knife and gun injury. And it’s now we’re doing major lifesaving cases on a daily basis.”

But on Saturday he implied Trump had drawn the wrong conclusion from his remarks, saying on Twitter that he would be happy to invite Trump to his “prestigious” hospital to discuss London’s efforts to reduce violence.

Griffiths posted his comment next to an animation of a stick figure with the phrase “The Point” flying over its head, and also linked to a statement on the hospital’s website by a fellow trauma surgeon, Karim Brohi.

“There is more we can all do to combat this violence, but to suggest guns are part of the solution is ridiculous. Gunshot wounds are at least twice as lethal as knife injuries and more difficult to repair,” Brohi said in the statement on Saturday.

Britain’s government effectively banned handgun ownership in England, Scotland and Wales after a school shooting in 1996.

Diane Abbott, the opposition Labor Party’s spokeswoman for home affairs, said she could “hardly see how violent crime in London justifies the licensing of guns in the U.S.”

Trump’s comments have caused upset before in Britain, which views itself as the United States’ closest ally. Relations with Prime Minister Theresa May cooled last year after she criticized him for retweeting anti-Islam videos by a British far-right group.

Trump’s NRA speech also drew anger in France on Saturday, after the U.S. president, using his hand in a gun gesture, acted out how a gunman had killed hostages one by one during an attack in Paris in November 2015.

Trump said a civilian could have stopped the massacre at the Bataclan concert hall, where 90 of the 130 victims of the attack died, had they had a gun.

Former French President Francois Hollande, who was head of state at the time, said on Twitter that Trump’s comments and antics were “shameful” and “obscene.”

Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo said Trump’s portrayal of the 2015 attacks was “contemptuous and unworthy.”
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French President Emmanuel Macron acknowledged the “pain of colonization” Saturday during a visit to New Caledonia that was rich with symbolism and emotion as the South Pacific archipelago prepares to vote on whether to break free of French rule.

Wrapping up a three-day trip, Macron said, “France would not be the same without New Caledonia” — but he was careful not to openly campaign for the territory to stay French when it holds an independence referendum in November.

The territory east of Australia has about 270,000 inhabitants including the native Kanaks, who represent about 40 percent of the population. New Caledonia already enjoys a broad degree of autonomy, but is an important part of France’s overseas holdings that stretch from the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean and the northeast coast of Canada.

Activists remembered

Macron paid homage Saturday to 19 Kanak independence activists killed 30 years ago after taking police hostage in a cave on the New Caledonian island of Ouvea. Four soldiers were also killed.

It was the first time a French president took part in the annual ceremony marking the May 5, 1988, event.

Children of Ouvea sang the French Marseillaise and the Caledonian anthem at the site of the police station occupied by the independence activists. Macron then visited the burial site of the 19 killed and spoke with victims’ families.

“I am glad and proud that the president came,” said Micheline Ouanema of the Takedji tribe, whose husband was among those killed.

Macron also met with a group that protested his participation in the ceremony, the Gossanah collective, but decided not to lay flowers at the site to show respect for their anger.

Later, Macron handed over two documents from 1853 that declared New Caledonia as a French possession. At the same site in 1998, then-Prime Minister Lionel Jospin signed the accords that paved the way for this year’s referendum.

“We are no longer in a time of possession, but a time of choice, and collective responsibility,” Macron said.

In a closely watched speech addressing the referendum, Macron said, “We will not forget the pain of colonization. We must recognize the place of each person, to look directly at each other.”

Macron insisted that he would not take sides in the referendum. Some in the loyalist camp criticized Macron’s trip as favoring pro-independence partisans.

Past electoral results and recent polls suggest voters will choose to remain in France in the November 4 referendum.

Warning against friction

Macron warned against letting the referendum fuel local tensions.

“The day after [the vote], each will have to work together,” he said.

While he didn’t urge voters to stay French, he insisted that developing deeper ties with the South Pacific — where France also has ties thanks to French Polynesia — is an important part of his global strategy. Macron arrived in New Caledonia after a trip to Australia, where he sought to boost military and economic cooperation.

“France is a great power thanks to all its territories,” he said, calling his country “the last European country in the Pacific.”

France’s African and Asian colonies mostly broke free in the 1950s and 1960s. The vote in New Caledonia is the first time a self-determination referendum is being held on a French territory since Djibouti, in the Horn of Africa, voted for independence in 1977. 

The Indian Ocean island of Mayotte, which chose to remain French in the 1970s, voted in 2009 for closer ties with the mainland.
…

The Supreme Court in Russia’s Chechnya region Friday rejected an appeal of the extension of the pretrial detention of the chief of a human rights group. That means Oyub Titiyev, the director of Memorial’s Grozny office, will remain in jail until at least June 9.

The 60-year-old Titiyev has been in pretrial detention in Chechnya since his arrest January 9 on a charge of marijuana possession, which he and his supporters say was fabricated.

He was stopped and detained by police while in his car. Chechen authorities later said drugs had been found in his vehicle. Titiyev and Memorial, the only human rights group with a presence in Chechnya, contend the marijuana was planted in his car.

Other activists, similar cases

According to Western human rights activists, Chechen police systematically plant drugs on critics of Chechnya’s pro-Moscow leader, Ramzan Kadyrov.

In 2014, following public criticism of Kadyrov, activist Ruslan Kutayev was sentenced to four years in prison on drug-possession charges that he flatly denied. In 2016, journalist Zhalaudi Geriyev of the Caucasian Knot website was also arrested on drug charges and sentenced to three years in prison. He remains in custody.

Speaking with VOA’s Russian Service directly from Titiyev’s hearing in Grozny, Tatiana Lokshina, Russia Program Director of Human Rights Watch, said Kadyrov’s anger against the Memorial chief is a result of U.S. sanctions placed on him in 2017 in accordance with the Magnitsky Act.

Cases against the most prominent rights activists in Chechnya, she said, can come only from the highest levels of power in the republic.

“Right before the new year, when Kadyrov lost his Instagram account because of the U.S. sanctions against him for violating human rights, his ‘right hand,’ Chechen parliamentary speaker Magomed Daudov, instantly made very aggressive statement on local television … blaming so-called human rights defenders behind [the sanctions],” she said.

Instagram had for years been Kadyrov’s preferred mode of public communication, “a matter of Kadyrov’s image, of his prestige,” Oleg Orlov, a Memorial founder, told the Guardian in January. “When he feels offended, nothing else is important to him, whoever gets in his way must be destroyed.”

Titiyev’s arrest came on the next business day, the very first working day after the New Year’s holidays.

“Just a week after Titiyev’s arrest, Kadyrov himself, also speaking on Chechen television, utters a fierce monologue, calling human rights defenders ‘enemies,’ explaining that he will show how he will break their spine,” Lokshina said. “In my opinion, this entire chain of events and statements can hardly be regarded as a coincidence. Everything is quite clear here.”

Western governments and human rights groups in Russia and abroad have demanded Titiyev’s immediate release, saying the case against him is politically motivated.

If convicted, Titiyev faces up to 10 years in prison.

Danila Galperovich of VOA’s Russian Service contributed original reporting.
…

Russian police have detained supporters of opposition politician Alexei Navalny, raiding their homes and detaining them on the streets of various Russian cities ahead of Saturday protests against President Vladimir Putin, whose new term starts Monday.

“Activist Ilya Gantvarg was detained in St. Petersburg last night,” said an Open Russia Foundation press release reported by Interfax. “Ilya is an active participant in the actions held by Alexei Navalny’s staff.”

The Open Russia document also says one of its own members, Viktor Chirikov, was detained in Krasnodar, and that an employee of Navalny’s staff was detained in her own backyard in Krasnoyarsk.

“She was taken to a court right from home … tentatively [to be charged] in connection with the May 5 action,” the group said.

Navalny’s supporters have planned 90 anti-Putin rallies around the country Saturday, some of which have not been approved.

Crackdown warning

In a recent interview with VOA’s Russian service, Leonid Volkov, Navalny’s chief of staff, warned that a crackdown was imminent.

“The authorities have been and continue to be afraid of protests,” he said. “They are trying everything they can — threats, warnings, promises to shatter [the opposition] — it’s always the same.”

While at least one smaller protest has been sanctioned, Volkov said it was approved largely to project the appearance of direct democracy in action.

“They’ll approve and coordinate one protest, something that looks moderately decent,” he said, explaining that the one demonstration usually occurs in a secure part of Moscow or St. Petersburg. Smaller cities are more tightly regulated so it doesn’t “seem like protests are being dispersed throughout the country.”

“It’s typical of this fascist police state,” he added, explaining that no grass-roots protests have been approved in major cities for at least three years. “Politically speaking, they just can’t afford to have a large-scale protest in Moscow.

“I think it’s very likely there will be more arrests,” he said. “This is part of their routine when it comes to threatening everyone, to try to lower the number of protesters. They do that before every protest — May 5th is no exception.”

Navalny office raided

Navalny, who branded Saturday’s protest “He’s Not Our Tsar,” saw his regional headquarters in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg raided early Friday. Police confiscated promotional materials for Saturday’s rally.

According to a report by Radio Free Europe, a Navalny organizer in the southern city of Volgograd tweeted that local students were “forced to sign papers acknowledging that they could face serious consequences, including expulsion, if they take part in the rally.”

Supporters were also detained in Cheboksary, Kemerovo, Tambov and Ryazan.

All detainees are to face charges of violating regulations for holding public gatherings.

Putin, who has been president or prime minister since 1999, is to be sworn in to a new six-year presidential term on Monday after winning a March 18 election that opponents said was marred by fraud and international observers said gave voters no real choice.

Navalny, who organized massive street protests to coincide with Putin’s 2012 re-election, was barred from the presidential ballot because of a conviction on financial crimes charges he contends were fabricated.

Some information in this report came from RFE.
…

The United Nations will launch a screening system to prevent former employees guilty of sexual misconduct from finding new jobs with its agencies or other charities, a senior official said Friday, part of an effort to address its #MeToo issue.

The tool will be an electronic registry of information to be available across the U.N.’s vast international reach and eventually to other groups, said Jan Beagle, U.N. under-secretary-general for management, following a high-level meeting in London.

Prominent U.N. bodies including the World Food Program (WFP) and refugee agency (UNHCR) fired several staff last year amid concerns raised that sexual misconduct was going unreported in a culture of silence and impunity at U.N. offices worldwide.

The wider aid sector was rocked by reports that some staff at Oxfam, one of the biggest disaster relief charities, paid for sex during a relief mission after a 2010 earthquake.

And in February, a high-level official at the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF resigned over inappropriate behavior toward women in his previous role as head of Save the Children UK.

Plans for the U.N. screening tool to register workers found guilty of sexual misconduct were announced at the gathering of its agency heads in London this week.

“[It] is a screening tool so that when we have confirmed perpetrators of sexual harassment in the system, we can ensure that they are not able to move around,” Beagle told Reuters on the sidelines of the meeting.

Beagle said groundwork for the system, which will be managed by the secretariat, is complete and it was expected to be fully operational by the summer.

“In due course when we have some experience with it, we would like to extend it to other partners,” Beagle said, referring to aid agencies, nongovernmental organizations and other groups.

#MeToo campaign

The plans come amid the #MeToo campaign, in which women around the world have taken to social media to share their experiences with sexual harassment and abuse. It was sparked by accusations made last year against Hollywood movie mogul Harvey Weinstein.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres last year appointed Beagle to lead a special task force to address the issue.

At the London meeting, U.N. agencies also discussed setting up 24-hour help lines for workers, agreed on a common definition of harassment and were told to hire more specialized investigators, preferably women, to speed up probes, said Beagle.

“Most of our investigators are specialized in things like fraud, which is a different type of skill,” she said. The secretariat has already started the recruiting process, she added.

An exclusive survey by Reuters in February found more than 120 staff from leading global charities were fired or lost their jobs in 2017 over sexual misconduct.
…

Dr. Paul Offit is an infectious disease specialist and an expert in vaccines. He’s been at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia since 1992. Since then he says not a year has gone by when he has not seen a child die from a vaccine-preventable disease. It’s largely, he says, because the parents chose not to vaccinate their child.

Far from Philadelphia, along the rugged border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, health workers are desperately trying to vaccinate every child against polio so no child will ever again suffer the crippling effects of this disease. If they can complete this task, polio will be a disease of the past.

Offit says the difference between parents in this mountainous border region of southcentral Asia and those in the U.S. is that in Pakistan and Afghanistan, people know the devastating consequences of polio. He says previous generations in the U.S. did, too.

WAYCH: Some Parents More Wary of Vaccines Than the Diseases Vaccines Prevent

“For my parents, who were children of the 1920s and 1930s, they saw diphtheria as a routine killer of teenagers. They saw polio as a common crippler of children and young adults, so you didn’t have to convince them to vaccinate me, my brother and sister.”

Offit says parents in his generation were also quick to vaccinate their children.

“I had measles. I had mumps. I had German measles (rubella). I had the chickenpox so I know what those diseases felt like, and it was miserable,” he said.

23 viruses, two cancers

Vaccines can prevent 23 viruses and two types of cancer, and more vaccines are in the works, including one for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Offit is the co-inventor of a life-saving rotavirus vaccine.

But some parents are not getting their children vaccinated. Last year there were more than 14,000 cases of measles in Europe, mostly in Romania. Nearly 40 children died. It exasperates health officials like Miljana Grbic, head of the World Health Assembly in Romania. 

“We cannot fight this disease if we do not increase vaccination coverage,” she said. “… But we also have to understand why vaccination coverage is going down.”

For some parents, it’s the inconvenience of the trip to the doctor’s office. Others think good hygiene and nutrition are all children need to stay healthy. Still others believe vaccines can give their children autism, diabetes and other diseases.

Offit says persuading these parents to vaccinate their children is hard. 

“It’s hard to compel people to vaccinate against something that they don’t fear,” he said. “And when they don’t fear that, what they’ll do is, they’ll fear the vaccines, and I think that’s where we’re at.”

Vaccine refusal spreads

A study published in BMJ suggests that in the U.S., vaccine refusal is contagious. It spreads from communities with a high number of parents who oppose vaccines to other communities nearby when parents who oppose vaccines talk to their friends and parents of their children’s schoolmates.

“Collectively, this factor is driving vaccine refusal and delay,” said Professor Tony Yang, one of the principal authors of the study.

Yang, from George Mason University, and his co-authors looked at the number of non-medical exemptions for vaccines from 2000 to 2013. They found these exemptions increased in geographical clusters.

Some governments are now making it harder for parents not to immunize their children. After a measles outbreak, California passed more restrictive laws. Yang says parents trust their pediatricians, so health care providers need to be more pro-active in getting children vaccinated.

Australia HPV work

Despite hesitancy in some parts of the world, some countries are leading the way in promoting vaccines. Australia has provided the HPV vaccine to school-aged girls since 2007.

The Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) causes cervical cancer, the second most common type of cancer in women worldwide. It also causes head and neck cancers and genital warts.

By 2013, a study showed a significant reduction in the number of young women with abnormal cells of the cervix and a 90 percent decline in genital warts in young women.

Cervical cancer takes 20 to 30 years to develop. By 2035, Australia expects to see up to a 45 percent decline in deaths from cervical cancer all because of a vaccine and the government’s policy.
…

Vaccines can prevent 23 viruses and two types of cancer, and more vaccines are in the works, including one for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Yet, despite these advances, many people choose to avoid getting these vaccinations for themselves and for their children. VOA’s Carol Pearson has more.
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Prime Minister Theresa May’s Conservative Party avoided a wipeout in London local elections and eked out gains in Brexit-supporting regions elsewhere, results Friday showed, denting the opposition Labour Party’s hopes of a big win.

The elections are viewed as a gauge of public support for May as she faces a possible revolt in parliament over her strategy for leaving the European Union.

With two-thirds of results declared, May had avoided the kind of widespread losses that would have weakened her authority over Conservative lawmakers ahead of key tests of her plans to take Britain out of the EU customs union as it quits the bloc.

“These results are as good as any government party after eight years in power could expect,” said Tony Travers, a professor at the London School of Economics Department of Government.

“They’ll be a relief for May and the Conservative Party as a whole because they’re suggestive that despite the fact the Conservatives are in an on-and-off civil war over Brexit, the Labour Party’s problems are possibly worse,” he added.

Labour’s limitations

Against a backdrop of heightened expectations for the Labour Party, the ballot also showed the limitations of its recent resurgence under veteran socialist Jeremy Corbyn.

May’s party held on to control of Wandsworth council, a low-tax Conservative stronghold since the time of late Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. The council had been one of Labour’s more ambitious targets in Thursday’s vote and one it campaigned heavily to win.

“Labour will have to do far, far better than this in local elections in future to suggest they are convincing the electorate more generally,” Travers said.

Slim majority in Parliament

Voting decides more than 4,400 council seats, determining the makeup of 150 local government authorities who are responsible for the day-to-day provision of public services.

They do not affect seats in parliament, where May has only a slim working majority, thanks to a deal with a smaller party.

The Conservatives also held the symbolic council of Westminster, London’s political district, indicating that the final scale of losses in the capital would come in at the lower end of the predicted range.

Despite retaining overall control, the Conservatives lost individual seats in Westminster and Wandsworth.

Ruling party losses typical

Ruling parties typically suffer losses at local elections, and opinion polls had predicted a bad night in London for the Conservatives after eight years in power. May is also negotiating an exit from the EU that 60 percent of the capital rejected at the 2016 Brexit referendum.

Results elsewhere in London’s 32 boroughs showed the forecast swing to Labour in the capital had materialized, although not strongly enough to inflict the heavy losses that would pose a serious headache for May.

Corbyn has endured fierce criticism over the handling of anti-Semitism within his party. Critics also say he misjudged his response to military action in Syria and a row with Moscow over the poisoning of a former Russian spy in southern England.

Despite intensive campaigning, Labour did not take overall control of Barnet, a borough previously thought to be easily winnable. May’s Conservatives won back control of the borough, which has the largest Jewish population of any single council area in the country.

Outside London, the Conservatives regained control of councils in the pro-Brexit regions of Peterborough and Basildon, largely at the expense of the anti-EU UK Independence Party (UKIP).

UKIP has suffered leadership issues and struggled for a new purpose since achieving its primary political aim at the 2016 Brexit referendum when Britons decided to leave the EU.

But May’s party lost control of the highly prized council in the Trafford area of the northern city of Manchester, its only foothold in an Labour-dominated important economic region where the Conservatives have spent years trying to win support.
…

Six German Roman Catholic cardinals have held talks with other top Church officials at the Vatican about the possibility of allowing non-Catholic Christian spouses to receive communion. Any such move is likely to alarm conservative Catholics who believe Pope Francis is already veering too far from the traditional doctrine.

German cardinals and other prelates met Thursday to discuss possible access to the Eucharist for non-Catholic spouses. The issue is delicate, as conservative Catholics have grown increasingly displeased with the liberal attitudes and stances of Pope Francis during the past five years.

A group of German bishops requested the meeting after a vote in their country’s bishops’ conference last February overwhelmingly approved a proposal for non-Catholic Christians married to Catholics to be allowed to receive Holy Communion, under certain circumstances.

On the eve of the Vatican meeting, one German bishop said, “Enough is enough! The time has come to no longer put off a well-justified decision – even if some people still insist on contradicting it.”  Bishop Gerhard Feige of Magdeburg said, “Missing a chance like this would be both shameful and macabre!”

In November 2015, at the Lutheran Church in Rome, Pope Francis said the question of Lutherans receiving communion was one for the individual’s conscience. He said non-Catholic Christians share “one baptism, one Lord, one faith.”

At the time, the pope said, “I ask myself: Don’t we have the same baptism?  If we have the same baptism, then we must walk together.”

Not all German bishops agree on the way forward. Cardinal Gerhard Mueller has called the proposal a “rhetorical trick,” stressing that interdenominational marriage is “not an emergency situation” and “neither the pope nor the bishops can redefine the sacraments as a means of alleviating mental distress and satisfying spiritual needs.”
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The International Olympic Committee plans to appeal to Switzerland’s supreme court against rulings which cleared some Russian athletes of doping at the Sochi Games.

The Olympic body is “unsatisfied both by the decision and the motivation” of verdicts by the Court of Arbitration for Sport, IOC spokesman Mark Adams said Thursday on the sidelines of an executive board meeting.

The Swiss Federal Tribunal — also based in Lausanne — can overturn CAS verdicts if legal process was abused, though appeals rarely succeed.

Days before the Pyeongchang Olympics opened in February, two CAS judging panels upheld appeals of 28 Russian athletes against IOC sanctions. CAS said the IOC’s investigations did not prove doping offences, while also stressing the 28 were not formally declared innocent of taking part in orchestrated cheating.

The verdicts irritated Olympic leaders who believed the sports court applied the burden of proof of a criminal case. Sports law in a civil court like CAS typically requires cases to be proven to the “comfortable satisfaction” of judges.

A further 11 Russians lost their appeals at CAS, which confirmed their disqualifications from the 2014 Sochi Olympics.

The Russian athletes’ urgent appeals to CAS followed a slew of IOC disciplinary hearings late last year to process the cases before the Pyeongchang Games, where some hoped to compete.

The IOC had disqualified 43 Russians from their Sochi Olympics results for doping offenses. Those cases sought to verify allegations and evidence presented by World Anti-Doping Agency-appointed investigator Richard McLaren and Russian whistleblower Grigory Rodchenkov, the former director of testing laboratories in Moscow and Sochi.

In one detailed verdict published two weeks ago, the CAS judges found flaws in the evidence-gathering and conclusions of the two star witnesses. Rodchenkov testified from a secret location in the United States, where he is in the witness protection program.

A 154-page document detailed why a three-man CAS panel upheld the appeal of cross-country skier Alexander Legkov. He was reinstated as the gold medalist in the 50-kilometer freestyle race and the silver medalist in the 4×10-kilometer relay from the Sochi Games.
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After weeks of raucous protests, the streets of the Armenian capital suddenly calmed Thursday and the ruling party confirmed it would back an opposition leader to become prime minister next week.

The opposition lawmaker who led the protests in Yerevan, Nikol Pashinian, called for them to stop Thursday following the concession by the ruling party.

But the deal leaves the ruling Republican Party with a solid majority in parliament, suggesting that real change in the landlocked former Soviet republic that is a key Russian ally could still be far away.

Many protesters were still skeptical.

“We just let off steam and didn’t achieve anything yet – the Republicans stay in power and the old system won’t change,” said Bagram Oganian, a university instructor who a day earlier was among those blocking the capital’s airport.

In a move to calm the turmoil that has gripped Armenia for weeks, the Republican Party said it would support any candidate for premier nominated by one-third of the lawmakers in parliament – support that Pashinian claims to have.

Pashinian then called on demonstrators to cease their protests.

In an interview Thursday with The Associated Press, party deputy head Armen Ashotyan reaffirmed the deal for the vote that is to be held Tuesday in parliament.

“We had two criteria to assist any candidate. The first is a necessary threshold of signatures … The second is to calm down the situation on the streets, not blocking interstate roads, airports, etc.,” he said. “So the man who could cope with these criteria is considered to be Nikol Pashinian.”

Ashotyan said if the streets stay calm “as agreed, we will assist his election.”

Yet once Pashinian takes the post, Armenia’s political dynamics will become complicated. Ashotyan said the Republican party would “consider itself the opposition” despite retaining a majority of lawmakers in parliament.

“In my personal opinion, there is no way of any cooperation with new political forces,” he said. “We will not be part of this government.”

A stalemate could quickly rekindle demonstrators, whose actions over the past three weeks bolstered their confidence.

“We paralyzed the whole country. We showed the authorities our strength and we should finish the revolution,” said 46-year-old businessman Tigran Ovsesian.

The Yerevan protests began April 13 and spread to other parts of the country. Frustration with widespread poverty and corruption burst into anger over what demonstrators saw as longtime President Serzh Sargsyan’s power grab.

Sargsyan, who was president for a decade, stepped down because of term limits but on April 17 was named prime minister. Under a shift in government structure, the premiership had become more powerful than the presidency.

But as the protests against him attracted tens of thousands nightly in Yerevan’s central square, Sargsyan unexpectedly resigned just six days after being appointed prime minister.
…