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Elias, the new language teacher at a Finnish primary school, has endless patience for repetition, never makes a pupil feel embarrassed for asking a question, and can even do the “Gangnam Style” dance.

Elias is also a robot.

The language-teaching machine comprises a humanoid robot and mobile application, one of four robots in a pilot program at primary schools in the southern city of Tampere.

The robot is able to understand and speak 23 languages and is equipped with software that allows it to understand students’ requirements and helps it to encourage learning. In this trial, however, it communicates in English, Finnish and German only.

The robot recognizes the pupil’s skill levels and adjusts its questions accordingly. It also gives feedback to teachers about a student’s possible problems.

Some of the human teachers who have worked with the technology see it as a new way to engage children in learning.

“I think in the new curriculum, the main idea is to get the kids involved and get them motivated and make them active. I see Elias as one of the tools to get different kinds of practice and different kinds of activities into the classroom,” language teacher Riika Kolunsarka told Reuters.

“In that sense, I think robots and coding the robots and working with them is definitely something that is according to the new curriculum and something that we teachers need to be open-minded about.”

Elias the language robot, which stands around a foot tall, is based on SoftBank’s NAO humanoid interactive companion robot, with software developed by Utelias, a developer of educational software for social robots.

The mathematics robot — dubbed OVObot —is a small, blue machine around 25 cm (10 inches) high and resembles an owl. It was developed by Finnish AI Robots.

The purpose of the pilot project is to see if these robots can improve the quality of teaching, with one of the Elias robots and three of the OVObots deployed in schools. The OVObots will be tested for one year, while the school has bought the Elias robot, so its use can continue longer.

Using robots in classrooms is not new — teaching robots have been used in the Middle East, Asia and the United States in recent years — but modern technologies such as cloud services and 3-D printing are allowing smaller startup companies to enter the sector.

“Well, it is fun, interesting and exciting and I’m a bit shocked,” pupil Abisha Jinia told Reuters, giving her verdict on Elias the language robot.

Despite their skills in language and mathematics however, the robots’ inability to maintain discipline amongst a class of primary school children means that, for the time being at least, the human teachers’ jobs are safe.
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Tensions between Kosovo and Serbia heightened a day after a senior Serb politician was arrested and expelled in northern Kosovo, with Russia wading into the dispute and the European Union trying to avert further friction Tuesday.

Kosovo Serbs set up a roadblock in the divided town of Mitrovica to monitor access into Serb-dominated territory, and Serb politicians walked away from Kosovo’s government and threatened to form their own local administrations throughout Kosovo where minority Serbs live.

European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini made an urgent trip to Belgrade for talks with Serbia’s president in a bid to prevent a full-blown crisis from erupting. President Aleksandar Vucic’s office said in a statement that he and Mogherini agreed to find “new ways” to solve problems between Serbia and Kosovo peacefully.

Mogherini didn’t immediately comment, but the statement quoted her as saying “what happened yesterday must not be repeated.”

“The European Union expects peace to be preserved with wisdom and restraint,” Mogherini said according to the statement.

Meanwhile, the Russian Foreign Ministry issued a strongly-worded statement, accusing the EU and the U.S. of wanting “to crudely suppress” attempts by Kosovo Serbs to “safeguard their legitimate interests.”

“It is nakedly clear that the Kosovars [Kosovo Albanians] follow the advice of their U.S. and European patrons, who trample international law and act on the basis of arbitrariness,” said the statement carried by Tass news agency.

While Russia supports Serbia’s claims over its former province, the U.S. and most Western states have recognized Kosovo’s independence a decade ago. Russia has been trying to expand its influence in the Balkans mainly through its traditional Slavic ally Serbia.

Djuric detained

The developments came a day after Marko Djuric, the head of the Serbian government office for Kosovo, was briefly detained in the divided town of Mitrovica because he entered the country without Kosovo’s official approval. Kosovo police used tear gas and stun grenades to disperse Serb protesters in Mitrovica on Monday.

Djuric said he was beaten while in detention and that his arrest was aimed at humiliating Serbs in Kosovo and as a rehearsal for a possible attempt by Kosovo police to take over northern Kosovo.

“By dragging me on the ground like a dog, pulling me by my tie, they wanted to humiliate me, thinking they can humiliate the Serbian people,” Djuric told a news conference Tuesday.

But Kosovo President Hashim Thaci denounced the incident as a provocation by Serbia.

“Monday’s events are contrary to the commitment of dialogue and building sustainable peace in Kosovo,” he said in a statement Tuesday.

‘A forced move’

Politicians representing Kosovo’s Serb minority met with Serbia’s president in Belgrade, saying they would no longer support Kosovo’s government. This could trigger a government crisis if the Serb ministers aren’t quickly replaced by Kosovo Albanians.

Goran Rakic, who heads the Serbian List in Kosovo’s parliament, said that Serbs would on their own form an association of Serb-dominated municipalities in Kosovo, which was envisaged in a European Union-mediated deal in 2013 but was never carried out by Kosovo authorities.

“This is not a one-sided move. This is a forced move,” Rakic said. “We waited for five years for them to give us what is ours. We will form only what they signed up to, what was guaranteed five years ago.”

The move could further fuel friction between Serbia and Kosovo, which declared independence against Belgrade’s wishes in 2008. In 1999, NATO intervened to stop a bloody Serb crackdown against Kosovo Albanian separatists.

On Tuesday, Kosovo Serbs blocked the main road leading from northern Kosovo to the capital, Pristina, by parking a bulldozer and a flatbed truck across it.

Djuric, whose hands were bandaged, appeared at the news conference with Kosovo Serb officials after talks with Vucic.

He said that Kosovo police officers “took selfies with me and pulled me down to my knees, with a gun pushed against my body.”

He accused unidentified Western countries of directly or indirectly supporting Kosovo’s actions.

Kosovo Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj said in Pristina on Tuesday that “yesterday’s actions weren’t directed against Serb citizens in Kosovo, but against those who broke the law.”

“It is not good to make limitless testing of anyone’s decision,” Haradinaj said. “It would be good to return to the negotiating table and discuss the issues together.”
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Spain has been plunged back into political turmoil after violent protests over the weekend in the wake of the arrest of former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont. 

The 55-year-old former leader was detained on the German-Danish border Sunday under a European arrest warrant issued by Spain, as he attempted to drive back to his adopted home in Belgium. He appeared before a court in the German town of Neumuenster on Monday for a preliminary hearing ahead of a decision on his extradition. 

Puigdemont declared independence after the semi-autonomous region of Catalonia voted overwhelmingly for independence in a referendum last year, though turnout was below 50 percent. 

Madrid called the vote illegal, and the Spanish government sacked the Catalan administration and imposed direct rule. Puigdemont fled to Brussels, where he has been living since being charged with rebellion.

Puigdemont’s detention triggered violent demonstrations in several Catalan cities over the weekend. At least 50 people were injured, including several police officers.

“I think it’s time for a real revolution. We need to bring this country to a complete halt,” said one pro-independence supporter who did not want to be named.

Pro-independence lawmakers and parliament workers staged a strike Monday in protest.

Paul Bekaert, Puigdemont’s lawyer in Brussels, criticized Madrid’s actions.

“The elected people are put in jail — that is [a] dictatorship. And they abuse the European warrant for political purpose. And it’s a scandal that Europe doesn’t react against the situation,” Bekaert said Monday.

German judges will have to decide whether to extradite Puigdemont — a potentially complex process, said German legal analyst Nikolaos Gazeas.

“The responsible court will have to examine whether the events that occurred in Spain, in Catalonia, the things that Mr. Puigdemont is being accused of, are punishable in Germany and would be considered criminal under German law.”

Thirteen former Catalan independence leaders have been charged with rebellion by Madrid. Five — including Puigdemont — fled overseas in the wake of the government crackdown in October and are subject to international arrest warrants. But criminal law differs across Europe, where the principle of mutual recognition is key, said Gazeas.

“If the German court rules that rebellion is not an extraditionable offense, then that would mean — if the German government agrees to this — that Puigdemont could not be charged with rebellion in Spain. But only with the offenses he was extradited for. And that would probably be the offense of embezzlement — an offense with a much lower range of sentencing, and which is not in the prime focus of Spain.”

Germany has 60 days to make a decision, but that can be extended by another 30 days, if necessary. Analysts say a decision is likely to take several days, or even weeks. 

Despite the protests in Catalonia, analysts say it’s uncertain whether his arrest will spark a revived bid to break away from Spain, as the independence movement itself is divided.
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The Trump administration’s decision to shutter the Russian consulate in Seattle displeased many Russian immigrants Monday, some of whom rushed to its offices in hopes of securing passports, visas and other important documents.

One woman, who identified herself as a dual U.S.-Russian citizen from Boise, Idaho, said she spent $1,000 traveling to Seattle to renew a passport so that she could visit her brother in Russia – only to be turned away. Another, Luda Rieve, of San Diego, told The Seattle Times she too was turned away after taking the day off work and flying from California to renew her passport.

Many procedures handled by the consulate require in-person appearances, and because the administration also ordered the San Francisco consulate closed last September, the only facilities remaining are in New York, Houston and Washington, D.C.

“My sister is at the consulate right now trying to get a travel passport,” David Mordekhov said, a Seattle lawyer and Moscow native who moved to the U.S. 20 years ago. “Any travel paperwork that has to do with trips to Russia, visa applications, powers of attorney and any other documents are going to be much harder to procure.”

The closure of the Seattle consulate, effective April 2, came as the United States and more than a dozen European nations kicked out Russian diplomats as punishment for Moscow’s alleged poisoning of an ex-spy in Britain. The Seattle consulate was responsible for handling requests from people in Alaska, Idaho, Iowa, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Washington, Wisconsin and Wyoming.

The administration cited the consulate’s proximity to a submarine base, Naval Base Kitsap, as well as Boeing’s operations, but University of Washington international relations professor Don Hellmann suggested that rationale “might be a little simplistic.”

“The real thrust of intelligence these days is digital,” he said. “It’s intellectual property. We live in a hacked world. Microsoft is probably as much a target as the naval base or Boeing.”

The Seattle area is home to about 33,000 Russians, a number of whom work in the engineering or tech industries. Among them is Sergey Bobkov, an analyst for the travel website Expedia, who said Russians and Russian-Americans would to have to travel farther and go through more hoops to visit friends and family there.

“It’s been frustrating to no end, to say the least,” Bobkov said, a 34-year-old native of St. Petersburg, Russia, who holds dual citizenship. “I’m trying to get a visa for my wife to go to Russia with me in August. We will have to either fly to New York City or Washington, D.C. and handle those things in person, or we’ll have to pay someone under the table to do express services.”

He added, “It’s hard on all of us who have nothing to do with politics.”

Not everyone who showed up Monday came away empty-handed. Alex Bendetov said he was able to obtain a passport for his baby after starting the process some time ago.

“My wife acted quickly. She said, ‘We gotta go and try to pick up the passport,”’ he said. “We have grandparents living back home and it’s important to go back and visit with them.”

Last summer, the Trump administration ordered the San Francisco consulate closed in a diplomatic tit-for-tat, after Congress passed sanctions against Russia for election interference and the Kremlin retaliated by ordering the U.S. to cut its diplomatic staff there. A day later, black smoke poured from a chimney as consular officials burned undisclosed items in a fireplace, prompting a response from firefighters.

There were no immediate reports of smoke Monday at the consulate’s offices on the 25th floor of a downtown Seattle skyscraper or at the consular residence, a stately red-brick building surrounded by a wrought-iron fence, cedar trees and rhododendrons.
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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday voiced hope that a difficult period in relations between Turkey and the European Union is now in the past.

Erdogan spoke after talks with European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker, European Council President Donald Tusk and Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borissov in the Bulgarian Black Sea resort of Varna.

“I hope that we have left a tough period in the relations between Turkey and Europe behind us,” Erdogan said and voiced hope that “a first step was taken here toward restoring trust with Europe.”

He also said that EU membership was a “strategic goal.”

Tusk said that the summit’s purpose was to “continue the dialogue in really difficult circumstances.”

“Our meeting today demonstrated that while our relationship is going through difficult times, in areas where we do cooperate, we cooperate well,” he said.

Tusk acknowledged that no concrete compromise or solution had been achieved at the summit, but expressed hope that such would be possible in the future.

“Only progress on these issues will allow us to improve the EU-Turkey relations, including the accession process,” he added.

“We reconfirm our readiness to keep up the dialogue and conversation and work together to overcome current difficulties with a view to unleashing the potential of our partnership,” Tusk said.

On migration and support for refugees, Tusk said that the EU and Turkey remain very close partners.

“I would like to express our appreciation for the impressive work Turkey has been doing, and to sincerely thank Turkey and the Turkish people for hosting more than 3 million Syrian refugees these past years,” he said.

“The EU has lent substantial support to improve the livelihood of these refugees, and this evening we reaffirmed the European Union’s unwavering commitment to continue this support,” Tusk said.

He also said that while the EU understands Turkey’s need to deal effectively with its security, it is concerned that some of the methods used, undermine fundamental freedoms and the rule of law in Turkey.

“It would be a mistake for a Europe that claims to be a global power to keep Turkey outside of expansion policies,” Erdogan said.

Borissov said that “I think that before the end of our EU presidency (the end of June) another EU-Turkey summit will be held.”

In response to European criticism of its cross-border operation to drive out Syrian Kurdish militia from the northwestern Syrian border enclave of Afrin, Erdogan said Turkey expected European backing. He added that Turkey intended to continue with its operations as long as necessary.

“Our operations against terrorism do not just contribute to our and the Syrians’ security, but to Europe’s security as well,” Erdogan said. “On sensitive issues such as the struggle against terrorism, we don’t expect unnecessary criticism but strong support.”

On Cyprus, Erdogan reiterated the Turkish Cypriot community’s rights to Cyprus’ resources and said the EU had “nothing to contribute” to the dispute as long as it does not maintain a “fair” approach.

The summit was held amid an array of issues that have strained ties, including a dispute between Turkey and EU member Cyprus over energy exploration in the Mediterranean.

Turkish warships have prevented a drillship from carrying out exploratory drilling on behalf of Italian company Eni southeast of Cyprus, in a move that the EU criticized.

Turkey objects to “unilateral” gas searches by ethnically divided Cyprus’ Greek Cypriot-run government without the direct involvement of breakaway Turkish Cypriots. The Cyprus government says a gas search is its sovereign right and will benefit all citizens.

Erdogan pressed his European leaders to grant Turkish citizens visa liberalization to allow them to travel to certain European countries without visa restrictions.

“We told the EU side, that it needs to complete its work on this issue… This should not be turned into a political issue, it should not become an issue that shakes the trust of our people,” he said.
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Britain and Russia have been waging a fast and furious information war since former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter were found poisoned March 4 in the provincial English town of Salisbury. 

Not a day has gone by without at least one fierce exchange between British and Russian officials — and both governments have turned to social media, from Twitter to Facebook, to make accusations and counter-claims in their efforts to convince a global audience of guilt or innocence. 

And the barbs flying have been getting more personal. The British narrative has been more consistent, demanding an explanation from Moscow for why a Soviet-developed nerve agent, Novichok, was used to poison the Skripals and arguing the only plausible one is that the attempted assassination was sanctioned by the Russian government, a view endorsed by European Union leaders last week and by the U.S. government. 

Russian officials have offered more than 20 different explanations about who might have been behind the nerve-agent poisoning of the Skripals or why Russia is innocent of the charge of being behind the assassination attempt. Western officials charge this changing of stories is designed to muddy the waters and sow doubt.

Russian explanations have ranged from claims the British might have done it themselves to accusations that the whole incident was made up. Kremlin officials have insinuated also that Sweden, Slovakia or the Czech Republic may be to blame, earning sharp rebukes from the governments of all three European countries. The Russian finger has pointed at Uzbekistan and Ukraine, too.

“The authorities of UK are not interested in finding the truth about the Skripal case, they have other motives,” lamented the Russian Mission to the United Nations on Twitter last week. “They are using propaganda war tools to influence an uninformed and impressionable public. There are no facts, only allegations about the ‘Russian trace,’” the mission added. 

On Saturday, the Russian emphasis returned once again to implying that Britain itself was behind the assassination bid, with officials noting that Porton Down, the British military research facility, is only about 10 miles from where the Skripals were discovered. The shifting Russian narratives give Moscow some advantages in the information war, say analysts.

“Russia feels free to say whatever it wants, it doesn’t feel need to tell truth, be consistent, or stick to any norms or rules,” says a communications strategist, who has worked for the British government. “These are handicaps in a battle like this,” he adds. Britain doesn’t have the same centralized, aggressive messaging machinery the Kremlin has, he notes.

Social media battle

Moscow has also launched an extensive social media-based disinformation campaign to buttress it claims of innocence as well as to press its accusations that London is in the grip of Russophobia, say Western analysts. 

“Twitter has become a battleground,” says Ben Nimmo, an analyst with the Digital Forensic Research Lab at the Atlantic Council, a New York-based think tank. Supporters and defenders of the Russian government have clashed over who was to blame, and which side to believe; politicians and diplomats have joined in on both sides with much of the invective ‘organic” and driven by angry users and officials, he says.

But Russia’s so-called troll factories have also been at work using fake and automated social media accounts able to spread rapidly memes and messages.

Atlantic Council researchers have been plotting the activity of accounts that have been used in other Kremlin disinformation campaigns — notably during the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea and the downing of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 over Ukraine. One tactic they have spotted is the large-scale amplification by Russia’s troll accounts of doubts or criticism posted by genuine British critics of the British government or conspiracy theorists in a bid to show that Britons did not believe Russian leader Vladimir Putin was behind the poisoning.

British officials estimate at least 2,800 robotic troll accounts have posted messages or re-tweets about the attempted assassination of the Skripals reaching at least 7.5 million people in Britain. Facebook also has witnessed a large volume of postings of English-language content produced by Russian state-owned media. 

Russia’s Twitter campaign “shows the power which anonymous trolls with demonstrably falsified profiles continue to wield online,” says Nimmo.

British officials have sought to expose the methodology behind what they say is Russia’s online disinformation campaign, posting on social media sites last week a video mocking the shifting narratives their Russian rivals have offered for what happened to the Skripals.

Not that Britain’s information approach is receiving unblemished praise. On Saturday, a former British envoy to Moscow, Tony Brenton, said while he supported the actions taken by the British government over the Skripal poisoning, he worried the language use, especially by Britain foreign secretary Boris Johnson, who has compared Putin to Adolf Hitler, was “unnecessarily virulent.” 

He told a British newspaper: “Obviously we have to react robustly and firmly to deal with the Skripal outrage, but at some point we are going to have to get back to doing business with Russia. We should certainly be taking action that minimizes the recurrence of [a similar] attack, but we should not be burning our bridges so much that we cannot re-establish lines of communication.”

There is also criticism of Johnson in the Russian capital from British expatriots who say his comparisons of Russia now with Nazi Germany of the 1930s and 1940s is deeply offensive, noting that the Great Patriotic War, as Russians describe the Second World War, is something people from across the spectrum here celebrate.
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Turkey has declared complete control of the northern Syrian area of Afrin after a two-month-long offensive to oust a Kurdish militia. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced Sunday that the next target is the nearby town of Tal Rifaat. Erdogan has vowed to remove Kurds from power in all areas of Syria and Iraq where they took control after defeating Islamic State militants. As VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports.
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With the fire alarms silent and staff reportedly nowhere to be seen, a fire at a shopping mall packed with children and their parents on the first weekend of the school recess killed 64 people in eastern Russia.

The fire at the Winter Cherry mall in Kemerovo, a city in Siberia, about 3,000 kilometers (1,900 miles) east of Moscow, was extinguished by Monday morning after burning through the night. Firefighters were still recovering bodies as parts of the buildings were still smoldering. Some of the dead were found inside a cinema.

Sixty-four deaths were confirmed after the firefighters finished combing through the four floors of the mall, Emergency Situations Minister Vladimir Puchkov told a televised briefing. Six of the bodies have not yet been recovered. Puchkov would not immediately say how many of the victims were children. 

Ten people have been hospitalized. Health Minister Veronika Skvortsova, who visited the Keremovo hospital where the victims were receiving treatment, said on Russian state television that the patient in the gravest condition is an 11-year-old boy who jumped out of a window from the fourth floor. The boy’s parents and younger brother died in the fire, Skvortsova said.

The Investigative Committee said it has detained four people for questioning, including one of the mall’s tenants, but would not immediately give the cause of the fire, which started on the top floor on Sunday evening. The investigators have launched a probe into possible negligence and violations of the fire safety rules.

Witness testimony indicated that the fire alarm did not go off and that staff did not arrange for the evacuation at the shopping mall, which was was converted from a former confectionery factory in 2013.

Winter Cherry was one of Kemerovo’s most popular entertainment centers for children, with its own indoor skating rink, petting zoo and trampolines. Kemerovo residents said the mall was packed with children and their parents.

The Ekho Mosvky radio station on Monday quoted witnesses who said the fire alarm did not go off and that the mall’s staff did not organize the evacuation.

Anna Zarechneva who was on the top floor where the fire started, watching a movie with her husband and son, said they only found out about the fire when a man ran into the theater shouting.

“We didn’t hear the fire alarm, they even didn’t turn on the light during the show,” she said. “That movie could have been the last for us, I’ve only just realized that.”

Zarechneva said her husband stayed upstairs trying to help arrange the evacuation because the mall’s security and staff were nowhere to be seen.
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Catalonia’s ousted president Carles Puigdemont was arrested in Germany Sunday while crossing the border from Denmark, German police said.

Puigdemont’s lawyer, Jaume Alonso-Cuevillas, confirmed the arrest on Twitter, adding that Puigdemont was traveling to Belgium, where he initially fled after an arrest warrant was issued against him for his role in an independence referendum in October.

A news report (on AFP) says Puigdemont will appear before a judge in Germany on Monday as part of a process of determining if he is to be returned to Spain. Puidgmont’s detention sparked some demonstrations in Spain, according to the Associated Press.

Puigdemont “was heading to Belgium to present himself, as always, at the disposal of Belgian courts,” Alonso-Cuevillas wrote.

The arrest follows a Spanish Supreme Court decision Friday to charge 13 Catalan separatist leaders with rebellion and other crimes for their attempt to declare independence from Spain last year.

German police arrested Puigdemont in conjunction with an international arrest warrant issued by Spain. The ousted Catalan leader could face up to 25 years in Spanish prison.

Last week, the latest regional presidential candidate, Jordi Turull, was placed in custody over his role in the attempted breakaway from Spain, marking the third time Catalonia’s parliament has been unable to nominate a new president.

One of Puigdemont’s associates, former Catalonia education chief, Clara Ponsati may also face arrest after fleeing from Spain to Scotland.  News reports say her attorney has been working out arrangements for Ponsati to surrender to police.  After leaving Spain, she resumed teaching at a university in Scotland.

Catalonia has been in political limbo since December, when Spain’s Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy called a special election in an effort to derail an independence movement in the region. The plan backfired when parties favoring a split with Spain won the election.

Madrid invoked special powers to take over the regional government after the Catalan administration declared independence in October.

 
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Survivors and families of victims of Friday’s terror attack in France attended a special mass to honor the four killed and three wounded, including an officer who swapped himself with a hostage in a supermarket in the southwestern town of Trebes.

The Bishop of Carcassonne and Narbonne Alain Planet celebrated mass, during which he praised the “extraordinary devotion” of Lieutenant-Colonel Arnaud Beltrame.

“I am here to share in people’s mourning, but also to warm myself to their profound solidarity. This event was also an opportunity to see an extraordinary act, extraordinary devotion by [Lieutenant] Colonel Arnaud Beltrame,” he said. “The whole of France has been touched by this, we were too, especially the Christian community, as he was one of ours. And at the start of this holy week, when we look at Christ take our place to save us from death, well his act takes on a whole new meaning and I’m sure he was aware of that when he did what he did.”

Planet said Friday’s events offered an opportunity to reflect on the suffering felt by countless people around the world.

After French President Emmanuel Macron said evidence suggested the gunman’s actions were considered terrorism, the Islamic State militant group’s propaganda arm claimed responsibility.

The Paris prosecutor’s office said counterterrorism authorities have assumed control of the investigation.

French authorities say two people have been arrested in connection with the shootings, including a woman who is reported to have been close to the assailant.

Islamic State extremist attacks have killed more than 200 people since 2015.

Meanwhile, U.S. President Donald Trump denounced Friday’s attack in France in a message on Twitter Saturday.

“Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims of the horrible attack in France yesterday, and we grieve the nation’s loss,” the president wrote, adding “We also condemn the violent actions of the attacker and anyone who would provide him support. We are with you @EmmanuelMacron!”

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Pope Francis marked Palm Sunday in Saint Peter’s Square urging young people not to let themselves be manipulated. A large crowd turned out at the Vatican to listen to the pope’s words and receive his blessing on the first of Holy Week services leading up to Easter.

Pope Francis and cardinals dressed in red robes marked Palm Sunday with a long and solemn ceremony in Saint Peter’s Square attended by a large crowd, which included many young people who turned out to celebrate the Catholic Church’s World Day of Youth.

Carrying a woven palm branch, Pope Francis first led a procession in front of Saint Peter’s Basilica to commemorate the day Jesus Christ rode into Jerusalem and was hailed as a savior, before his crucifixion five days later.

Palm fronds and olive branches surrounded the altar. In his homily, Pope Francis told young people that the temptation to silence them has always existed.

The pope said: “There are many ways to silence young people and make them invisible. Many ways to anesthetize them, to make them keep quiet, ask nothing, question nothing. There are many ways to sedate them, to keep them from getting involved, to make their dreams flat and dreary, petty and plaintive.”

Pope Francis urged young people to keep shouting and not allow the older generations to silence their voices. He urged youth to be like the people who welcomed Jesus with palms rather than those who shouted for his crucifixion only days later.

Palm Sunday is the start of one of the busiest weeks for the pope in the Christian calendar. On Holy Thursday he is due to preside at two services, including one in which he will wash the feet of 12 inmates at a Rome prison to commemorate Jesus Christ’s gesture of humility towards his apostles the night before he died.

On Good Friday, he is due to lead a solemn Way of the Cross procession at Rome’s ancient Colosseum. Then, on Saturday night he is scheduled to lead an Easter vigil service before delivering his twice-yearly “Urbi et Orbi” message and blessing on Easter Sunday.

 
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About 1,000 people have protested again in Volokolamsk, some 100 kilometers west of Moscow, demanding the closure of a landfill that has been leaking toxic gas that harmed dozens of children this week.

The protesters gathered outside the local administration headquarters, many of them wearing pink ribbons as homage to a local schoolgirl who shamed Moscow region Governor Andrei Vorobyov with a defiant gesture during a previous protest.

Saturday’s protest came despite the fact that Vorobyov the previous day fired the district chief, after dozens of local children were hospitalized Wednesday due to apparently breathing gas that leaked from the Yadrovo landfill near Volokolamsk.

Vorobyov’s office said that he replaced Yevgeny Gavrilov with another regional official.

Some 150 schoolchildren sought medical assistance Wednesday after they felt extremely sick following a suspected leak of noxious gas from Yadrovo.

The same day, angry residents scuffled with government officials in Volokolamsk, demanding explanations and the closure of the dump. Vorobyov was pelted with snowballs and confronted by irate residents.

During the protest, 10-year-old Tanya Lozova, a local girl who was wearing a pink ski cap and bright jacket, was caught on cameras pointing her finger in a throat-cutting gesture at Vorobyov, who was promising furious residents that he would quickly deal with the problem.

Lozova, who instantly became an internet hero in Russia, told Dozhd TV that her gesture was meant to say “You are killing us!” She said she wanted the landfill to close so “people finally could breathe fresh air.”

On March 7, Volokolamsk authorities declared a temporary state of emergency, saying the level of hydrogen sulphide in the air was recorded as 2.5 times higher and the level of nitric oxide was double usual levels because of a gas leak at the landfill.

The Yadrovo landfill was opened in 2008 and is a dumping site for garbage from Moscow and nearby regions. Local residents have been staging protests, demanding the closure of the landfill for some time.

The Moscow regional authorities said earlier Friday that the landfill will suspend its operations until April 14, after which the old section of the dump will be closed.

In the past, local authorities had promised to “modernize” the landfill but refused to consider closing it.
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Britain’s information regulator said Saturday that it was assessing evidence gathered from a raid on the office of data mining firm Cambridge Analytica, part of an investigation into alleged misuse of personal information by political campaigns and social media companies like Facebook.

More than a dozen investigators from the Information Commissioner’s Office entered the company’s central London office late Friday, shortly after a High Court judge granted a warrant. The investigators were seen leaving the premises early Saturday after spending about seven hours searching the office.

The regulator said it would “consider the evidence before deciding the next steps and coming to any conclusions.”

“This is one part of a larger investigation by the ICO into the use of personal data and analytics by political campaigns, parties, social media companies and other commercial actors,” it said.

Authorities in Britain as well as the U.S. are investigating Cambridge Analytica over allegations the firm improperly obtained data from 50 million Facebook users and used it to manipulate elections, including the 2016 White House race and the 2016 Brexit vote in Britain.

Both Cambridge Analytica and Facebook deny wrongdoing. 

​Chief executive suspended

The data firm suspended its CEO, Alexander Nix, this week after Britain’s Channel 4 News broadcast footage that appeared to show Nix suggesting tactics like entrapment or bribery that his company could use to discredit politicians. The footage also showed Nix saying Cambridge Analytica played a major role in securing Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Cambridge Analytica’s acting chief executive, Alexander Tayler, said Friday that he was sorry that SCL Elections, an affiliate of his company, “licensed Facebook data and derivatives from a research company [Global Science Research] that had not received consent from most respondents” in 2014.

“The company believed that the data had been obtained in line with Facebook’s terms of service and data protection laws,” Tayler said.

His statement said the data were deleted in 2015 at Facebook’s request, and he denied that any of the Facebook data that Cambridge Analytica obtained were used in the work it did on the 2016 U.S. election.
…

Turkey’s president on Saturday criticized anti-war students at a top university, calling them terrorists following a fight there.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan said “communist traitor youth” tried to mess up a student stand opened by “religious nationalist local youth” at the public Bogazici University. Erdogan announced an investigation and said “we won’t give these terrorist youth the right to study at these universities.”

On Monday, a group of students opened a stand distributing sweets dubbed “Afrin delight” to commemorate fallen soldiers in Turkey’s cross-border operation in Syria. Another group protested against them, holding anti-war banners.

Turkey’s official Anadolu Agency said a fight broke out and 12 people were later detained.

Turkey hasn’t tolerated criticism of its military offensive to oust a Syrian Kurdish militia that it considers a terror group.
…

European Union leaders have given their unqualified backing to Britain over its accusation that Russia used a nerve agent to try to kill a former double agent and his daughter in Southern England earlier this month. At a two-day summit in Brussels that ended Friday, EU leaders also demanded a permanent exemption from proposed U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum imports. Henry Ridgwell reports.
…

Serbia has canceled a women’s World Championship qualifier handball match with Kosovo over security concerns after nationalists announced they would protest the game.

Serbia’s Interior Minister Nebojsa Stefanovic told local media Friday he called off the match to avoid any clashes between nationalist fans and police.

In response, the European Handball Federation (EHF) said it was expelling the Serbian team from the tournament.

Match moved

The game would have been the first documented sporting encounter between Serbia and its former province, Kosovo, which declared independence in 2008. Serbia does not recognize Kosovo as a nation.

“Could we have organized for this match to go ahead? Certainly. But at what cost?” Stefanovic told the news website B92. “We are not ready to have the police beat up people for the sake of a match, which contradicts all our positions.”

The match was originally set to be played Friday in the central town of Kragujevac, but was moved to an isolated sports center in Kovilovo for security reasons. Both teams agreed the game would be played without fans or media because of the security concerns.

Fans, protesters gather

However, some Serbian fans gathered at the Kovilovo sports center Thursday evening, waving Serbian flags and singing patriotic songs. Police were deployed to the venue Friday in anticipation of the game.

Kosovo declared independence in 2008, nearly a decade after a NATO bombing campaign ended a crackdown by Serbian authorities against secessionists in Kosovo, populated mostly by ethnic Albanians.
…

Britain’s opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn sacked his shadow Northern Ireland minister Friday after he called for a second referendum on Brexit, a move that exposes deep divisions in the party over whether to leave the European Union.

Owen Smith, who challenged Corbyn for the party leadership in 2016, wrote an article in the Guardian newspaper Friday urging his party to reopen the question of whether Brexit was the right decision.

Smith said he was sacked for voicing his opinion that Brexit will damage the economy and threaten the 1998 Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland, which ended decades of armed sectarian conflict in the province.

“Those views are shared by Labour members & supporters and I will continue to speak up for them, and in the interest of our country,” Smith said in a Twitter post.

Labour is narrowly ahead in opinion polls but, like Prime Minister Theresa May’s ruling Conservatives, remains deeply divided on Brexit.

Britain is due to formally leave the EU on March 29, 2019.

Over the last few months, Labour has diverged from the government’s policy on Brexit. Last month it said it wanted to remain in the EU’s customs union — a move that would make commerce with the European Union easier but limit Britain’s ability to strike future trade deals with non-EU countries.

The government has ruled out staying in any form of the customs union.

Corbyn, who supported the “Remain” campaign in the 2016 referendum but with little enthusiasm, has repeatedly said it is not Labour’s policy to offer Britons a vote on any final deal that Britain negotiates with the EU.

Smith will be replaced by a former Labour minister, Tony Lloyd, who returned to parliament last year after quitting in 2012 to become police and crime commissioner in Manchester.

Critics of the move

Some Labour lawmakers criticized Corbyn’s decision to sack Smith.

Pro-EU Labour lawmaker Chuka Umunna said it was “extraordinary” that a shadow cabinet member should be sacked for advocating a Brexit policy that commands the overwhelming support of the party.

“What has happened to our party?” he said on Twitter.

Peter Hain, the former Northern Ireland minister and a Labour lawmaker in the House of Lords, Britain’s unelected upper house, accused Corbyn of carrying out of a “Stalinist purge.”
…

At least one person is believed to have been killed Friday after a gunman claiming allegiance to the Islamic State militant group fired shots in a supermarket during an apparent hostage situation in the southwestern French town of Trebes.

“We unfortunately presume one person has been killed, but we cannot bring a doctor on site to check,” said regional police chief Jean-valery Letterman.

Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said investigators are treating the situation as a terrorist act.

National police said law enforcement authorities had surrounded the suspect at the supermarket and may have taken hostages.
…

With the results of Russia’s presidential elections now nearly a week old, Russia’s domestic political analysts and foreign observers alike have largely arrived at the same conclusion: The March 18 contest brought few surprises for Russians and Westerners alike.

While the Kremlin insists the elections were fair and transparent, a number of Russia’s leading political analysts are voicing concerns and predicting a succession crisis in the country in 2024, when Russian constitutional terms limits say Putin, now 65, will be ineligible to seek another consecutive term.

The Vienna-based Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which sent hundreds of election observers to monitor polling, said the election was conducted in an orderly fashion but lacked real choice. Putin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov, however, said the results were highly significant — and that they speak for themselves.

“Elections that took place on March 18 demonstrated that our society is fully consolidated,” Peskov said in a statement to the press. “And it is not consolidated because of someone’s attacks, but, rather, thanks to the plans of further development of the country, which the election results demonstrated.”

Compared to Soviet elections

However, a number of Russian political scientists disagree with this assessment. Among them is Dmitry Oreshkina, a political scientist, journalist and the 2001 Person of the Year, according to the Rambler web portal — Russia’s largest.

“[Putin] won. What am I unhappy about? The elections resemble Soviet elections,” Oreshkina said in an interview with VOA’s Russian Service on Thursday.

“Firstly, there was no alternative to Putin,” he added, referring to the fact that although Putin won his fourth term, with 77 percent of the vote from a field of eight candidates, numerous news outlets have reported that his campaign was exempt from most election laws and restrictions.

“Similarly, Soviet ballots only had one name on them,” Oreshkina added. “Secondly, the electorate was [coerced into going] to the polls. People can’t risk taking a political stance. Their bosses tell them they need to go, so they go.”

No real transparency

Ekaterina Shulman, senior lecturer in public policy at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, said polling results reported by Kremlin officials lack any real transparency.

“One of the post-elections scandals [in Russia] is the statement of Russia’s internal affairs minister [Sergey Shoigu] that 99 percent of the military and their family members have voted, and 89 percent of those supported Russia’s commander-in-chief,” said Shukman, who is also a host for Echo of Moscow radio. “That is crazy, because the military personnel vote at the same polls as everyone else — with the exception of military communities and military bases abroad — and there’s absolutely no way to know who they voted for. This makes this statement either deeply speculative or proof of fraud.”

Succession crisis?

As for Russia’s future, Kirill Rogov, a political expert and journalist who has championed Russian independent media, believes that the country will face an intractable succession crisis.

“Everything will be focused on what happens in 2024,” he told VOA. “The elites are going to find the succession issue unacceptable, because whoever Putin’s successor is, [this successor] would have to — despite staying loyal to Putin — reshuffle the elites in order to maintain power.”

Oreshkin challenged the notion of any succession within Putin’s lifetime, saying the former KGB spy will continue to lead the country in whatever capacity he sees fit, for as long as he sees fit.

“Who is going to be Putin’s successor? Putin himself. We don’t know yet in what capacity, whether he’ll be prime minister or the leader of a new state, but he’ll find it hard to leave,” Oreshkin said. “And each year it’ll only become harder.”

This story originated in VOA’s Russian Service.
…

The sale of one Turkey’s largest media conglomerates to a pro-government businessman is being seen as the ruling AKP party strengthening its control of the media.

The sale came as parliament on Thursday passed legislation widening government control of the internet, one of the last remaining platforms for critical and independent reporting.

Dogan Media Company, owns a chain of prominent newspapers and TV channels. The company was reportedly sold to Demiroren Holding, whose owner, Erdogan Demiroren, has close ties to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

“Demiroren will probably do to Dogan media what he did when he bought independent newspapers Milliyet and Vatan, and turn it into a government mouthpiece,” analyst Atilla Yesilada of Global Source Partners predicted. “With this sale, there is nothing left in the mainstream media for a guy or girl out there who is seeking independent information, that period is now over in Turkish media.”

“The process of gathering the Turkish media industry in one hand according to the Putin model is completed,” Kadri Gursel, a leading Turkish journalist, tweeted.

​Bitter struggle ends

The sale of Dogan Media ends a prolonged bitter struggle between owner Aydin Dogan and Erdogan.

For decades, Dogan was Turkey’s most powerful media tycoon. With most of Turkey’s media gradually coming under the direct or indirect control of the ruling AKP party, Dogan media remained one of last sources mainstream independent reporting, observers said.

In 2009, Dogan’s Hurriyet newspaper provoked Erdogan with a report on a German court linking prominent AKP party officials to a charity fraud. Shortly afterward, tax authorities placed a multibillion-dollar fine on the media company, nearly bankrupting it.

A series of court cases have also been launched against the media tycoon and other family members, with prosecutors demanding heavy prison sentences for the alleged crimes.

“The prospect of spending rest of his life in jail is what I think finally forced his decision to sell,” analyst Yesilada said. “It’s symbolic because AKP has this mentality of conquest of its enemies. In the end, Dogan surrendered and this should serve as a lesson as to whatever enemies Erdogan has left, if he has a grudge against you, you should run.”

The government denied such allegations, insisting the judiciary is independent.

Internet gains

There are still a number of critical newspapers and satirical magazines, but Dogan media is the only newspaper distributor outside government control. Observers suggest publications critical of the government could face distribution problems in the future.

In Turkey, the internet is increasingly becoming a platform for independent journalism. Many journalists who’ve been fired for reporting critical of Erdogan have continued working on the growing numbers of web publications.

Some news stations have also begun broadcasting on the internet to maintain independence.

New controls on internet, broadcasting

But Thursday’s action by the Turkish parliament put sweeping new legislation in place to control broadcasting on the internet.

“Now considering Dogan Media is being sold, there is not much of the mainstream media let alone independent media, the only area is left is the internet,” law professor Yaman Akdeniz, an expert on cyber freedom at Istanbul’s Bilgi University, said. “People follow not only local produced news media on (the) internet, but also Turkish broadcasts by the BBC, VOA and DW, as news sources. So the government is trying to take action to control these before the elections, which might be early this summer.”

Among the new reforms: the powers of the state regulator for radio and television have been extended to internet broadcasting.

The regulator is controlled by representatives of the ruling AKP party. Under the new legislation, internet broadcasters will have to apply for a license from the regulator.

“Hypothetically, they (the regulators) could declare these programs incite terrorism, so they could close down the programs or revoke their licenses. They could ask (for) the blocking of the website,” professor Akdeniz said.

Observers point out that a growing number of Turkish reporters working overseas are broadcasting internet programs, particularly Germany. The ability of Turkish authorities to impose controls on these is likely limited, observers said.

Well-informed public

Recent surveys found more than 70 percent of Turks have access to the internet, and 70 percent of Turkish youth rely solely on the internet for news.

“The underlying truth (is) these media takeovers and current internet censorship will be completely ineffective,” analyst Yesilada said. “The Turkish public intends to remain well-informed, and despite these shocks within a few years, different networks and ways will develop for them to remain informed.”

Turkish authorities have already banned more than 170,000 websites, but observers point out that Turks have become increasingly savvy on the internet, using various means to circumvent restrictions, such as by using virtual private networks (VPN).

But authorities are quickly becoming adept, too.

“Fifteen VPN providers are currently blocked by Turkey,” cyber rights expert Akdeniz said. “It’s becoming really, really difficult for standard internet users to access banned content. It’s not a simple but a complex government machinery now seeking to control the internet.”
…

“I brought tea for you — English tea, from Fortnum and Mason, the very best,” chirped the financial adviser in the foyer of a plush Moscow hotel near the Kremlin.  “You have a package for me, I think,” he added before scurrying off with his Russian client.

The adviser, like many of his British colleagues, has been making routine rounds to reassure clients since the poisoning of former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal in Britain, an attempted assassination Britain accuses the Kremlin of orchestrating.

British ministers and their Kremlin counterparts have been threatening further reprisals after retaliatory expulsions of diplomats in response to the Skripal attack.

With Anglo-Russian relations plunging to their lowest point since the Cold War, British financial advisers in Moscow had expected to encounter Russian clients anxious about Britain mounting a retaliatory financial crackdown on Russian money invested in London.

British Prime Minister Theresa May has promised to go after the financial assets in Britain of wealthy Russians connected to the Kremlin.

But it is business as usual in Moscow.

Advisers visiting the Russian capital say oligarchs and other super-wealthy businessmen appear unconcerned, having concluded May is all bark and no bite.  

Part of the reason is Britain has been reluctant in the past to use already existing legislation to probe too deeply the origins of Russian money spent in Britain, fearing it might lead to an exodus of Russian cash out of the country.  Moscow investors also believe Brexit-mired Britain is going to need Russian money even more in the future and chasing it out risks also frightening super-wealthy investors from other countries.

“My clients don’t see it as a threat,” said the adviser who exchanged tea for a package of signed documents.  He asked not to be identified.  “Neither do we.  The new measures being drafted are just repeating legislation that’s already available and will rest largely unused.  What few investigations launched will take forever and then get bogged down in the courts,” he said.

Britain’s past unwillingness to investigate Russian money, and the suspicion Britain isn’t serious this time either, is not helping May convince Britain’s European allies to do more than issue statements of solidarity over the Skripal poisoning.

Norbert Röttgen, chairman of Germany’s parliamentary foreign affairs committee, has highlighted the need for Britain “to examine its open stance toward Russian capital of dubious origin” before it starts asking for concrete action by Britain’s allies.

In response to doubts about their determination, British officials say they are likely to ban secretive Scottish limited partnerships that have been used to hide the true ownership of some Russian-origin money. The Scottish-based shell companies have long been a target of transparency campaigners.

May was due to brief  EU leaders Thursday in Brussels on the investigation into the March 4 nerve-agent poisoning of Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury.  Both remain in critical condition.

May will warn Russia is a threat to Western democracy, according to British officials.

“The challenge of Russia is one that will endure for years to come,” she will say, according to extracts released in advance by her office.  “As a European democracy, the United Kingdom will stand shoulder to shoulder with the European Union and with NATO to face these threats together.  United we will succeed,” she will add.

EU leaders are expected to strongly condemn the attack, but fearful of push-back the British government isn’t asking EU partners to agree to fresh sanctions on Russia in addition to the Ukraine-related ones already in effect.

Behind-the-scenes, British officials have sought to persuade their European neighbors to expel undeclared spies among Russian diplomats based in their countries, say European officials.

But it is unclear whether Britain will be successful in persuading other EU countries to agree to point the finger at Moscow.

Several states, including Italy and Greece, appear eager to shield their ties with Russia and are resisting a stark statement of blame.  The United States, France and Germany have said they accept Britain’s assessment Russia is the only plausible culprit.  But Greece, Italy, Cyprus and Austria say the accusation remains to be proven.

They are not alone, even some Putin critics in Russia question whether the Kremlin ordered the attack.  

Outspoken Putin opponent Gennady Gudkov, a former KGB counter-intelligence officer, says he believes Russian intelligence has carried out overseas assassinations in recent years, but he says he “can’t find rational explanations for” the attack on Skripal.

“After the so called ‘umbrella assassination’ of Georgi Markov in London in the late 1970s, the KGB decided to stop all special [assassination] operations abroad.  It seems to me that today the concept has changed and some of the special operations related to the elimination of political opponents has been done with the help of the intelligence,” he told VOA.
…

Time to check that mailbox.

Kensington Palace said Thursday that invitations for the wedding between Prince Harry and his American fiancée Meghan Markle have been dispatched.

Some 600 people have been invited to the May 19 nuptials at St. George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle. All 600 have also been invited to a lunchtime reception given by Queen Elizabeth II at St George’s Hall.

The invitations, which are beveled and gilded in gold along the edges, feature Prince Charles’ three-feather badge. They were made by Barnard & Westwood, which has held the Royal Warrant for printing and bookbinding since 1985.

Harry and Markle will also celebrate with some 200 guests at a private evening reception given by Prince Charles.

The palace declined to comment as to who is on the list.
…

Poland’s government distanced itself Thursday from comments made by the prime minister’s father, who claimed Jews willingly entered ghettos during the German occupation of Poland to get away from their Christian neighbors.

The comment by Kornel Morawiecki, a senior lawmaker and father of Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, is the latest episode in weeks of bitterness that have erupted over a controversial new Holocaust speech law.

Kornel Morawiecki claimed in a recent interview that Jews were not forced into ghettos by Germans but went willingly because “they were told there would be an enclave where they could get away from nasty Poles.”

The comment is historically inaccurate. It also seems to minimize the tragedy of the Jews and suggest they partly brought the tragedy upon themselves out of anti-Polish hatred.

The deputy foreign minister, Bartosz Cichocki, said the comment does not reflect the position of the Polish government.

Cichocki has led recent talks in Israel aimed at damage control after an angry dispute triggered by the Polish law, which makes it a crime punishable by up to three years of prison to publicly and falsely blame Poland for German Holocaust atrocities.

The Polish government says it needs a tool to fight cases in which Poland is inaccurately blamed for German crimes that were carried out in occupied Poland during World War II.

Israel and other critics, however, fear that the law – which is in any case unenforceable outside of Poland – is really aimed at trying to stifle research and discussion within Poland into anti-Jewish wartime violence, something that casts a shadow over Polish wartime behavior that was often honorable under conditions of profound suffering.

Amid the heated debates, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki has also sparked criticism with comments seen as insensitive and historically wrong.

At a forum of world leaders in Munich last month he listed “Jewish perpetrators” of the Holocaust along with German, Ukrainian, Russian and Polish perpetrators, seeming also to suggest that Jews were partly responsible for their own genocide.
…

Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy was handed preliminary charges Wednesday over allegations he accepted millions of euros in illegal campaign funding from the late Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi.

A judicial official told The Associated Press that investigating judges overseeing the probe had charged the ex-president with illegally funding his successful 2007 campaign, passive corruption and receiving money from Libyan embezzlement.

The person was not authorized to speak publicly about the case.

The charges involving illegal campaign funding from a foreign dictator are the most serious faced by a former French president in recent history. They were presented after Sarkozy was questioned for two days by anti-corruption police at a station in Nanterre, northwest of the French capital.

Investigators are examining allegations that Gadhafi’s regime secretly gave Sarkozy 50 million euros (about $62 million) overall for his presidential election bid.

The sum would be more than double the legal campaign funding limit at the time — 21 million euros. In addition, the alleged payments would violate French rules barring foreign financing and requiring that the source of campaign funds be declared.

​Innocence proclaimed

Sarkozy, 63, who was France’s president from 2007 to 2012, has repeatedly and vehemently denied any wrongdoing. According to the same source, he again proclaimed his innocence during his questioning by police.

The former president was released Wednesday night but placed under judicial supervision. Details of the restrictions he was ordered to obey have not been revealed.

In the French judicial system, preliminary charges mean Sarkozy is personally under formal investigation in a criminal case. The judges will keep investigating the case in the next weeks and months. 

At the end of their investigation, they can decide either to drop the preliminary charges or to send Sarkozy to trial on formal charges.

Sarkozy had a complex relationship with Gadhafi. Soon after winning the French presidency, he invited the Libyan leader for a state visit and welcomed him to France with high honors. 

But Sarkozy then put France in the forefront of the NATO-led airstrikes against Gadhafi’s troops that helped rebel fighters topple Gadhafi’s regime in 2011.

Sarkozy has faced other campaign-related legal troubles in the past. In February 2017, he was ordered to stand trial after being handed preliminary charges for suspected illegal overspending on his failed 2012 re-election campaign. Sarkozy has appealed the decision.

In 2013, he was cleared of allegations that he illegally took donations from France’s richest woman, L’Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt, on the way to his 2007 election victory.

His attorney, Thierry Herzog, did not respond to requests for comment from AP.

Former aide questioned

Sarkozy’s former top aide, the ex-minister Brice Hortefeux, was also questioned Tuesday but was not detained. He said on Twitter that the details he gave investigators “should help put an end to a series of mistakes and lies.”

The investigation got a boost when French-Lebanese businessman Ziad Takieddine told the online investigative site Mediapart in 2016 that he delivered suitcases from Libya containing 5 million euros ($6.2 million) in cash to Sarkozy and his former chief of staff, Claude Gueant.

Takieddine repeated his allegations during a live interview with France’s BFM TV on Wednesday night. 

He said he personally handed a suitcase containing 2 million euros (about $2.5 million) in cash to Sarkozy at the then-candidate’s apartment and another suitcase with 1.5 million euros (about $1.9 million) to Sarkozy and a close aide at the French Interior Ministry. Sarkozy was interior minister at the time.

Takieddine alleged he gave a third suitcase with 1.5 million euros in cash to the aide alone. He said the money was not meant to finance Sarkozy’s presidential campaign in 2007, but to honor contracts between France and Libya.
…

Tear gas was thrown into the Kosovo parliament Wednesday, but it failed to stop lawmakers from approving a major border agreement that is key to eventual membership in the European Union.

Police arrested several opposition politicians who tossed tear gas several times just before voting was to take place, forcing lawmakers to evacuate the chamber.

Despite the tactic, parliament passed the measure 80 to 11.

The deal was hammered out in 2015. It sets Kosovo’s borders with neighboring Montenegro and fulfills a key requirement for Kosovars to enjoy visa-free travel throughout the European Union. It also moves Kosovo one step closer towards EU membership.

Opponents of the deal say it forces Kosovo to give up some of its territory — a claim supporters deny.

Montenegro has already approved the agreement. 
…

Russia’s top election official has lashed out at U.S. State Department criticism that in the recent presidential election, Russia’s Central Election Commission (CEC) denied observer status to 4,500 monitors linked to anti-corruption crusader Alexei Navalny, along with 850 others with ties to Golos, the independent Moscow-based election watchdog.

“This is an absolutely illiterate lie,” CEC Chairwoman Ella Pamfilova was quoted Tuesday as saying to Russia’s state-run TASS news organization. She was responding to a comment by U.S. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert, who on Friday tweeted about widespread news reports of election monitoring violations.

“The #Russian Central Election Commission’s decision to deny observer status to over 5,000 independent media observers shows Kremlin authorities fear transparency ahead of the March 18 #elections,” Nauert had tweeted, referring to accounts of Russian police seizing some observer permits and revoking the office lease of Golos’ headquarters.

Pamfilova followed up her charges of “illiterate lies” by saying accreditation had been denied only to monitoring groups that “incorrectly filled out their applications,” and that as of Election Day, “everyone who wanted to, monitored at the polling stations.”

OSCE preliminary report

Nauert discussed the issue of monitors during the daily briefing Tuesday, noting that “the gold standard of monitors,” from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, had issued a preliminary report on the election.

She read an excerpt of the report from the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights. It said the “team noted that the election in Russia took place in an overly controlled legal and political environment marked by continued pressure on critical voices. Restrictions on fundamental freedoms resulted in a lack of genuine competition and an uneven playing field.”

“We saw in the news over the weekend that some people were paid to turn out to vote,” Nauert added. “We’ve seen that opposition leaders have been intimidated, jailed, and other things of the sort. So I would just draw ourselves back to the OSCE preliminary report.”

Financial Times Moscow correspondent Max Seddon on Sunday reported that observers were “beaten up by a mobile gang of toughs at polling stations.” Golos said more than 1,500 violations at polling stations were reported nationwide.

Golos also recorded several cases of people stuffing ballot boxes. Navalny, the onetime opposition candidate who was disqualified from the race because of a conviction for embezzlement, which the European Court of Human Rights dismissed as politically motivated, said data compiled by his observers at polling stations showed that the official turnout of 67.5 percent was inflated by 10 percentage points.

Video monitored

Although Navalny’s thousands of supporters were barred from physically observing polling stations, they were each assigned to monitor streaming public access video footage of individual polling stations that anyone in Russia can access online. While watching, they documented the number of voters and conduct of polling station officials.

The OSCE, which requested 420 short-term observers to monitor polling stations, voting, ballot counts and results, said the election was conducted in an orderly fashion but lacked real choice.

“After intense efforts to promote turnout, citizens voted in significant numbers, yet restrictions on the fundamental freedoms, as well as on candidate registration, have limited the space for political engagement and resulted in a lack of genuine competition,” said OSCE, which was slated to issue its final report on Russia’s electoral process in two months.

On Thursday, Leonid Slutsky, the head of the State Duma’s foreign affairs committee, released the names of 1,300 Kremlin-friendly foreign observers invited to monitor the elections. As expected, they unanimously gave the election their stamp of approval.

The Kremlin-backed observers included Italy’s representative to the European Parliament, Stefano Maullu of the center-right European Peoples Party, who said that the election displayed a good result for democracy in Russia.

Spanish Senator Pedro Argamunt, who was ousted from Europe’s parliamentary assembly after meeting with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, also attended, along with France’s Thierry Mariani, widely perceived as the head of Western European nation’s pro-Russia lobby and a regular visitor to the territorially disputed Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, where, in protest, OSCE refused to send observers.

‘Big national team’

After claiming a resounding, and expected, victory in the election, Putin addressed thousands on Manezhnaya Square near the Kremlin late Sunday, hailing those who voted for him as a “big national team” and adding that “we are bound for success.”

Asked whether he would seek the presidency again when next eligible to run, in 2030, the 65-year-old Russian leader snapped, “It’s ridiculous. Do you think I will sit here until I turn 100?” 

This story originated in VOA’s Russian Service. Some information came from Reuters.
…

A British parliamentary committee on Tuesday summoned Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to answer questions as authorities stepped up efforts to determine if the personal data of social-media users has been used improperly to influence elections.

The request comes amid allegations that a data-mining firm based in the U.K. used information from more than 50 million Facebook accounts to help Donald Trump win the 2016 presidential election. The company, Cambridge Analytica, has denied wrongdoing.

However, the firm’s board of directions announced Tuesday evening that it had suspended CEO Alexander Nix pending an independent investigation of his actions. Nix made comments to an undercover reporter for Britain’s Channel 4 News about various unsavory services Cambridge Analytica provided its clients.

“In the view of the board, Mr. Nix’s recent comments secretly recorded by Channel 4 and other allegations do not represent the values or operations of the firm and his suspension reflects the seriousness with which we view this violation,” the board said in a statement.

Facebook also drew continued criticism for its alleged inaction to protect users’ privacy. Earlier Tuesday, the chairman of the U.K. parliamentary media committee, Damian Collins, said his group has repeatedly asked Facebook how it uses data and that Facebook officials “have been misleading to the committee.”

“It is now time to hear from a senior Facebook executive with the sufficient authority to give an accurate account of this catastrophic failure of process,” Collins wrote in a note addressed directly to Zuckerberg. “Given your commitment at the start of the New Year to ‘fixing’ Facebook, I hope that this representative will be you.”

Facebook sidestepped questions on whether Zuckerberg would appear, saying instead that it’s currently focused on conducting its own reviews.

​Personal data

The request to appear comes as Britain’s information commissioner said she was using all her legal powers to investigate the social-media giant and Cambridge Analytica.

Commissioner Elizabeth Denham is pursuing a warrant to search Cambridge Analytica’s servers. She has also asked Facebook to cease its own audit of Cambridge Analytica’s data use.

“Our advice to Facebook is to back away and let us go in and do our work,” she said.

Cambridge Analytica said it is committed to helping the U.K. investigation. However, Denham’s office said the firm failed to meet a deadline to produce the information requested.

Denham said the prime allegation against Cambridge Analytica is that it acquired personal data in an unauthorized way, adding that the data provisions act requires services like Facebook to have strong safeguards against misuse of data.

Chris Wylie, who once worked for Cambridge Analytica, was quoted as saying the company used the data to build psychological profiles so voters could be targeted with ads and stories.

Undercover investigation

The firm found itself in further allegations of wrongdoing. Britain’s Channel 4 used an undercover investigation to record Nix saying that the company could use unorthodox methods to wage successful political campaigns for clients.

He said the company could “send some girls” around to a rival candidate’s house, suggesting that girls from Ukraine are beautiful and effective in this role.

He also said the company could “offer a large amount of money” to a rival candidate and have the whole exchange recorded so it could be posted on the internet to show that the candidate was corrupt.

Nix says in a statement that he deeply regrets his role in the meeting and has apologized to staff.

“I am aware how this looks, but it is simply not the case,” he said. “I must emphatically state that Cambridge Analytica does not condone or engage in entrapment, bribes or so-called ‘honeytraps,’ and nor does it use untrue material for any purposes.”

Nix told the BBC the Channel 4 sting was “intended to embarrass us.”

“We see this as a coordinated attack by the media that’s been going on for very, very many months in order to damage the company that had some involvement with the election of Donald Trump,” he said.

The data harvesting used by Cambridge Analytica has also triggered calls for further investigation from the European Union, as well as federal and state officials in the United States.
…

Despite tensions, sanctions and recriminations between the United States and Russia, two American astronauts will join a Russian cosmonaut blasting off Wednesday from Kazakhstan for the International Space Station.

Even when things get nasty between the two countries, experts say the space program rarely suffers.

The United States has depended entirely on Russia to deliver astronauts to the ISS since the end of the space shuttle program in 2011.

After President Barack Obama imposed sanctions on Russia in 2014 for annexing Crimea, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin suggested U.S. astronauts could get to the International Space Station by trampoline.

But the launches continued.

“The politicians can be very cute and make their statements. But that doesn’t seem to have had an impact on day-to-day work on the International Space Station,” said Cathleen Lewis, a curator in the Space History Department at the National Air and Space Museum.

Cold War collaborators

U.S.-Russia cooperation in space dates back to the mid-1970s, during the Cold War.

In the race to the moon, both sides suffered losses. Three U.S. astronauts died in the first Apollo mission in a fire on the launchpad in 1967; the Soviet Union lost a cosmonaut in a crash later that year.

The two sides agreed to cooperate on a space project. In 1975, an American Apollo spacecraft and a Russian Soyuz spacecraft met in orbit, where cosmonauts and astronauts shook hands.

In addition to the political achievement, it was a major engineering feat to make the two crafts compatible.

“That created a bond, but also the knowledge that we could do this, even in the height of the Cold War, and probably one of the worst periods of the Cold War,” Lewis said. “Both sides could get together and do this, unperturbed by the politics around them.”

Reaching beyond Earth

Today, the United States, Russia and 13 other countries collaborate on the International Space Station.

Lewis says that kind of cooperation will likely be essential as humans reach beyond Earth.

“It’s going to take a lot of resources to make either the moon or Mars habitable for humans,” she said.

For now, collaboration is the only option for ISS crews. However, SpaceX and Boeing expect to bring human launch capability back to U.S. soil in a year or so.
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