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Violent clashes in Paris between baton-wielding police and protesters outraged at the police killing of a Chinese man in his home injured three police officers and led to the arrest of 35 protesters, authorities said Tuesday.

The tensions have prompted China’s Foreign Ministry to express its concern to French authorities over the killing of the man, who it says was shot by a plainclothes officer.

Demonstrators from the Asian community gathered Monday night outside the multicultural 19th district’s police station in Paris’ northeast, said Agnes Thibault-Lecuivre, of the Paris Prosecutor’s Office.

They were angry at rumors the man was shot in his home in front of his children while cutting up fish and had not hurt anyone. Police say an officer fired in self-defense during a raid because the victim wounded an officer with a “bladed weapon.”

With chants of “murderers” and candles that spelled “opposition to violence” lining the road Monday night, scores of demonstrators broke down barricades, threw projectiles and set fire to cars during the brutal clashes with police that lasted several hours.

Authorities said 26 demonstrators were held for participating in a group planning violence, six for throwing projectiles, and three others for violence against police that saw a police car damaged by arson.

China’s state-run Xinhua News Agency said that, according to witnesses, one man of Chinese origin was injured in the clashes.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said that China had summoned a representative of the French embassy in Beijing Tuesday and urged French officials to “get to the bottom of the incident as soon as possible.”

Hua said Chinese authorities “hope that Chinese nationals in France can express their wishes and demands in a reasonable way.”

France is home to Europe’s largest population of ethnic Chinese, a community that routinely accuses police of not doing enough to protect them against racism.

“Chinese are victims of racist attitudes in France — especially from other ethnic groups like Arabs. They are targets for crime because they often carry cash and many don’t have residence permits, so can be threatened easily. They’re angry with police for not protecting them enough,” said Pierre Picquart, Chinese expert at the University of Paris VIII.

“Chinese people do not like to protest or express themselves publicly, so when we see them like this it means they are very, very angry. They’ve had enough of discrimination,” he added.

He estimated that there are 2 million people living in France of Chinese origin.

Last September, 15,000 people rallied in the French capital to urge an end to violence against the Asian community after the beating to death of Chinese tailor Chaolin Zhangh called new attention to ethnic tensions in Paris suburbs. The victim’s lawyer said the August 2016 attack was ethnically motivated, and the area’s Chinese immigrant community says it is routinely targeted by armed robbers and violence.

The recent killing and clashes also come just days after thousands marched in Paris in a show of anger over the alleged rape in February of a young black man by police. The alleged incident in the Paris suburb of Aulnay-sous-Bois turned the 22-year-old, identified only as Theo, into a symbol for minorities standing up to police violence.
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Violent clashes in Paris between police and protesters angry at the police killing of a Chinese man in his home have left three police officers injured and 35 protesters arrested, authorities said Tuesday.

Demonstrators, who were from the Asian community, had gathered in the multicultural 19th district on the French capital’s northeastern edge, police official Agnes Thibault Lecuivre said.

They were paying homage to a Chinese man killed Sunday by a police officer, outraged by reports that he was shot in his home in front of his children while he was cutting up fish. Police say the officer fired in self-defense during a raid because the victim, whom Chinese media say is Chinese, wounded an officer with a bladed weapon.

With candles spelling “violence” lining the road Monday evening, scores of protesters broke down barricades, threw projectiles and set fire to a car during the clashes with police that lasted several hours.

The latest violence comes just days after several thousand people marched in Paris against police violence, in a show of anger sparked by the alleged rape in February of a young black man with a police baton, and other police abuse. Anarchists faced off with riot police at the end of that march, and tear gas was fired. But clashes remained limited in scope and violence.

The alleged police rape of Theo in the Paris suburb of Aulnay-sous-Bois turned the 22-year-old into a symbol for minorities standing up to police violence. His last name hasn’t been publicly released.
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The leader of Bulgaria’s Socialist party has conceded defeat after exit polls showed her party placing second in the parliamentary election held Sunday.

Socialist leader Kornelia Ninova congratulated former Prime Minister Boiko Borisov’s GERB party as the election’s winner.

An Alpha Research exit poll said GERB won 32.2 percent of the vote, with the Socialist Party coming in second with 28 percent. A separate exit poll by Gallup International Balkan had GERB with 32.8 percent and the Socialists with 28.4 percent.

Official results are expected Monday.  

The election had been seen as a test of Bulgaria’s loyalties to the European Union and to Russia, with which it has historic political and cultural links. Bulgaria is set to take over the bloc’s presidency in 2018.

GERB and the Socialists both campaigned to revive economic ties with Russia to benefit voters in the European Union’s poorest nation. But the Socialists vowed to go further, even if it meant upsetting the country’s European Union partners.

GERB did not win enough votes to govern alone, and will likely form a coalition government with the United Patriots, an alliance of three nationalist parties that the exit polls showed placing third.

The Socialists ruled out any option of serving in a coalition government. But Ninova said her party would look at options for forming a government should the center-right GERB party find it cannot do so on its own.

Borisov, 57, resigned as prime minister after his party lost the presidential election last year.  Parliament was dissolved in January, and the president appointed a caretaker government that will stay until a new government is formed.

 
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German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s center-right party won a state election by large margin, exit polls said Sunday, in an early setback to center-left hopes of unseating her in the September national vote.

Early results from the voting in Saarland state had Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) leading with 40 percent while the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) had around 30 percent.

The SPD was facing its first electoral test since nominating Martin Shultz to face off against Merkel in September.

The party has seen a recent surge in popularity.

Merkel is expected to run for fourth term as chancellor.
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The U.S. State Department has “strongly condemned” the detention of hundreds of protesters throughout Russia including the country’s opposition leader on Sunday.

Tens of thousands of Russians demonstrated in cities across the country in support of a call by Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny for accountability among Russia’s elite.  Nearly 500 people were detained around Moscow’s Pushkin square, including Navalny, for protesting without permission.

“Detaining peaceful protesters, human rights observers, and journalists is an affront to core democratic values,” acting State Department spokesman Mark Toner said in a statement.

He said the United States was “troubled” by the arrest of Navalny, who has announced plans to run for president in the 2018 election.

Navalny, a Kremlin critic, was detained as he arrived to join the Moscow rally. Reports from the scene say police put him in a truck that was surrounded by hundreds of protesters who tried to open its doors and halt the arrest.

The protests appeared to be the largest coordinated outpouring of dissatisfaction since the massive 2011-2012 demonstrations following a fraud-tainted parliamentary election.

“This is an  important event!  We came here to express our position as citizens,” said one protester who just gave her first name-Alina.  “We came to remain citizens of our country.”

“By my presence here, I stand against the corruption of the incumbent power,” said another protester who only gave his first name-Maxim.  “The authorities do not feel like talking to their people, they communicate only through force-applying methods.”  

Navalny called the demonstrations after publishing a detailed report earlier this month accusing Prime Minister  Dmitry Medvedev of amassing a collection of mansions, yachts and vineyards through a shadowy network of non-profit organizations.

The report has been viewed over 11 million times on YouTube.  Medvedev has not reacted to it so far.

Navalny said on his official website that 99 Russian cities planned to protest, but that in 72 of them local authorities did not give permission.

There was scant coverage of the demonstrations on Russia’s official media.  A short report on Tass said a police officer was injured during an “unauthorized” rally in Moscow.

Navalny, who has announced his intention to run for president in next year’s election, has been rallying supporters in major Russian cities in recent weeks.
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A state election Sunday in western Germany offers Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives a tough test against their resurgent center-left rivals six months before Merkel seeks a fourth term in a national vote.

The election for the state legislature in Saarland, a region of just less than 1 million people on the French border that Merkel’s Christian Democrats have led since 1999, is the first of three regional votes before Germany’s September 24 national vote.

Test for Merkel, Schulz

It’s being watched closely as the first electoral test since the center-left Social Democrats nominated Martin Schulz as Merkel’s challenger in January.

Schulz, a former president of the European Parliament but a newcomer to national politics, has boosted his party’s long-moribund poll ratings and injected it with new self-confidence. He’s offering a classic though often vague center-left pitch of tackling economic inequality at home.

That boost means that a fourth Merkel term no longer looks inevitable — and it also has tightened the race in Saarland.

Conservative governor Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer until recently looked certain to win a new five-year term. But Social Democrat rival Anke Rehlinger now hopes to finish first, and polls suggest she could win a majority for an alliance with the opposition Left Party.

The two women currently govern together in a “grand coalition” of the biggest parties, an alliance similar to Merkel’s at the national level.

Governor’s race important

Kramp-Karrenbauer is one of only five conservative governors in Germany’s 16 states. Losing her would be a worrying signal for the national campaign and for two bigger state elections in May — in Schleswig-Holstein and Germany’s most populous state, North Rhine-Westphalia, both led by the Social Democrats.

Merkel has barely mentioned Schulz so far, but warned at a rally in Saarland on Thursday against a left-wing coalition there.

“We don’t want the clocks to go back on Sunday; we want the clocks to be put forward,” she said.
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Francois Fillon’s aides used an umbrella to shield him from eggs thrown by protesters in southwest France on Saturday as the beleaguered conservative fell further behind centrist Emmanuel Macron and far-rightist Marine Le Pen in opinion polls.

The contrast between former front-runner Fillon, embroiled in a financial scandal, and new poll favorite Macron was striking as both candidates campaigned 29 days before the first round of France’s unpredictable presidential election.

Addressing a rally in the French island of La Reunion, in the Indian ocean, Macron departed from typical campaign speeches by inviting members of the audience — including a 6-year old who asked him “How do you get to be president?” — on stage to ask questions on a wide range of issues.

“It’s historic, we need to decide whether we want to be afraid of the century that has just started … or want to bring fresh ambition to France,” the 39-year-old former investment banker said to chants of “Macron President!”

Macron, a former economy minister to Socialist President Francois Hollande, set up his own centrist party last year.

Macron leads in polls

He has shot to first place in opinion polls since Fillon was put under investigation over suspicions he misused public funds by paying his wife hundreds of thousands of euros as a parliamentary assistant for work she may not have done. Fillon denies any wrongdoing.

Fillon slipped to 17 percent in a BVA poll published Saturday, which saw Macron getting 26 percent of the first-round vote, up 1 percentage point from a week ago with Le Pen at 25 percent, down one point.

The number of undecided voters for the first round remains high, with 40 percent of voters still undecided.

The poll showed Macron winning a second round vote with 62 percent of the vote versus 38 percent for Le Pen, who is to hold a rally in the northern France city of Lille on Sunday.

The poll was carried out partly before a TV interview Thursday night in which Fillon, 63, accused Hollande of leading a smear campaign against him.

Voters throw eggs, bang pans 

Met by some 30 protesters throwing eggs and banging pots and pans to shouts of “Fillon in prison” in the southwest France town of Cambo-les-Bains, Fillon told reporters: “Those protests are an insult to democracy … the more they protest, the more French voters will support me.”

Meanwhile, a faction of the centrist UDI party, which is allied with Fillon’s The Republicans, was kicked out of the party Saturday for rallying behind Macron.

The BVA poll also showed far-left candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon gaining ground in the first round, up 2 points from a week earlier to 14 percent, now 2.5 points ahead of the ruling Socialist Party’s candidate Benoit Hamon.
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Tens of thousands of pro-EU demonstrators rallied in London, despite heightened concerns about the terrorism threat, to mark the European Union’s 60th anniversary — just days before Britain’s exit from the EU is expected to formally begin.

Organizers said about 80,000 people joined the march calling for Britain to stay in the EU on March 25.

The demonstration came four days before British Prime Minister Theresa May said she would formally start Britain’s exit negotiations by invoking Article 50 of the EU’s Lisbon Treaty.

Hundreds of blue EU flags were carried by protesters in the procession as it stretched through central London.

Banners carried by the demonstrators had slogans like “I am European,” and “I’m 15 — I want my future back!”

The protesters fell silent as they moved through Parliament Square, where a British-born terrorist earlier this week drove a car through crowds of people before crashing into a fence and stabbing a police officer to death.

One banner raised in front of Britain’s Parliament said, “Terrorism won’t divide us — Brexit will.”

About 10,000 EU supporters also marched in Rome on March 25 while about 4,000 gathered in Berlin.

Some material for this report came from AFP, BBC and AP.
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U.S. cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike has revised and retracted statements it used to buttress claims of Russian hacking during last year’s American presidential election campaign. The shift followed a VOA report that the company misrepresented data published by an influential British think tank.

In December, CrowdStrike said it found evidence that Russians hacked into a Ukrainian artillery app, contributing to heavy losses of howitzers in Ukraine’s war with pro-Russian separatists.

VOA reported Tuesday that the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), which publishes an annual reference estimating the strength of world armed forces, disavowed the CrowdStrike report and said it had never been contacted by the company.

Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense also has stated that the combat losses and hacking never happened.

Some see overblown allegations

CrowdStrike was first to link hacks of Democratic Party computers to Russian actors last year, but some cybersecurity experts have questioned its evidence. The company has come under fire from some Republicans who say charges of Kremlin meddling in the election are overblown.

After CrowdStrike released its Ukraine report, company co-founder Dmitri Alperovitch claimed it provided added evidence of Russian election interference. In both hacks, he said, the company found malware used by “Fancy Bear,” a group with ties to Russian intelligence agencies.

CrowdStrike’s claims of heavy Ukrainian artillery losses were widely circulated in U.S. media.

On Thursday, CrowdStrike walked back key parts of its Ukraine report.

The company removed language that said Ukraine’s artillery lost 80 percent of the Soviet-era D-30 howitzers, which used aiming software that purportedly was hacked. Instead, the revised report cites figures of 15 to 20 percent losses in combat operations, attributing the figures to IISS.

The original CrowdStrike report was dated Dec. 22, 2016, and the updated report was dated March 23, 2017.

The company also removed language saying Ukraine’s howitzers suffered “the highest percentage of loss of any … artillery pieces in Ukraine’s arsenal.”

Finally, CrowdStrike deleted a statement saying “deployment of this malware-infected application may have contributed to the high-loss nature of this platform” — meaning the howitzers — and excised a link sourcing its IISS data to a blogger in Russia-occupied Crimea.

In an email, CrowdStrike spokeswoman Ilina Dmitrova said the new estimates of Ukrainian artillery losses resulted from conversations with Henry Boyd, an IISS research associate for defense and military analysis. She declined to say what prompted the contact.

CrowdStrike defends report

“This update does not in any way impact the core premise of the report that the FANCY BEAR threat actor implanted malware into a D-30 targeting application developed by a Ukrainian military officer,” Dmitrova wrote.

Reached by VOA, the IISS confirmed providing CrowdStrike with new information about combat losses, but declined to comment on CrowdStrike’s hacking assertions.

“We don’t think the current version of the [CrowdStrike] report draws conclusions with regard to our data, other than quoting the clarification we provided to them,” IISS told VOA.

Dmitrova noted that the FBI and the U.S. intelligence community have also concluded that Russia was behind the hacks of the Democratic National Committee, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the email account of John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager.

The release of embarrassing Democratic emails during last year’s U.S. political campaign, and the subsequent finding by intelligence agencies that the hacks were meant to help then-candidate Donald Trump, have led to investigations by the FBI and intelligence committees in both the House and Senate.

Trump and White House officials have denied colluding with Russians.
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U.S. officials say Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will meet with members of the NATO alliance next week, following criticism over his initial decision to skip a NATO foreign ministers meeting.

State Department officials say Tillerson will meet NATO members on March 31 in Brussels. Foreign ministers from NATO countries were originally scheduled to gather in Brussels on April 5-6. It is not clear if the new meeting will replace the April dates.

There was no official statement from NATO.  

Voices of support for NATO

Earlier this week, Tillerson’s office said he would not be able to attend the April meeting of the 28-member alliance, raising fears about the U.S. administration’s commitment to NATO.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly dismissed NATO as “obsolete,” though his vice president, Mike Pence, voiced staunch U.S. support for the alliance during a news conference in Brussels last month and Tillerson has also expressed his support for NATO, as has U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis.

After meeting German Chancellor Angela Merkel last week at the White House, Trump said Germany owes “vast sums of money to NATO and the United States,” voicing a charge he has repeatedly made that allies do not pay their fair share.

Tillerson to visit Turkey

U.S. State Department officials said Tillerson will travel to Brussels after his trip to Ankara, Turkey. They said more details about his schedule will be released soon.

Tillerson is also expected to to attend Trump’s meeting on April 6-7 with Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.

Earlier this week, the White House announced that Trump will attend a summit of NATO heads of state set to be held May 25 in Brussels, and will host NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg for talks on April 12.
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As police race to identify what motivated a 52-year-old British-born father to carry out Wednesday’s attack at the Houses of Parliament in Westminster, a debate is simmering in the country over issues of identity, religion and immigration — already hot topics in the wake of the vote to leave the European Union. VOA’s Henry Ridgwell reports.
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London police said Friday they have made two more arrests in connection with the attack near Parliament.

Counter-terrorism commander Mark Rowley characterized the arrests as “significant,” though he did not provide any details. He said nine people are currently in custody and one person has been released.

Police officials identified the attacker who killed four people near Parliament as Khalid Masood, a Briton who converted to Islam and had a lengthy criminal record for weapons possession and other charges.

Rowley said Masood’s birth name was Adrian Russell Ajao and appealed to the public for any information about him.

“We remain keen to hear from anyone who knew Khalid Masood well, understands who his associates were and can provide us with information about places he has recently visited,’’ Rowley said. “There might be people out there who did have concerns about Masood but did not feel comfortable for whatever reason in passing those concerns to us.’’

Islamic State said Masood, who was 52, was a “soldier” of the extremist group who responded to its call to attack civilians and the military in countries allied with the United States in battling IS.

Masood had never been convicted of terrorist offenses, but British security officials said he had been investigated in the past “in relation to concerns about violent extremism.” Authorities say they believe he was acting alone Wednesday when he ran down pedestrians on Westminster Bridge, a Thames River crossing leading to the Houses of Parliament, crashed his rented vehicle into a gate and fatally stabbed a policeman who tried to stop him.

Armed police shot and killed Masood moments later.

In the hours after Wednesday’s attack in the heart of London, police conducted raids around the country in search of anyone who may have given support to Masood. Eight men and women were arrested Thursday on suspicion of planning terrorist acts.

The dead assailant, who was older than most Islamist attackers involved in recent spectacular terror attacks in Europe, had been a teacher of English and was known as a fanatical bodybuilder.

One of the civilians who was run down on the bridge, a 75-year-old man, died Thursday in a hospital, raising the casualty toll to four victims and Masood.

Although Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack, a statement posted online did not implicate the group in the planning or execution of the attack.

An Italian tourist who witnessed the carnage told reporters he saw Masood attack the policeman with two knives. “He gave [the officer] around 10 stabs in the back,” the visitor said.

Valiant efforts to resuscitate Constable Keith Palmer at the scene failed. The 48-year-old officer was a 15-year police veteran.

One American was among the dead – 54-year-old Kurt Cochran of Utah, who was in London with his wife to celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary. His wife, Melissa, was among the 30 people injured. Masood’s vehicle hit the Cochrans as they crossed Westminster Bridge.

The remaining victim of the attack was a British school administrator, Aysha Frade, 43.

Mourners gathered in London’s Trafalgar Square Thursday evening, about one kilometer from the crime scene, for a candlelight vigil. The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, told the crowd of thousands that”those trying to destroy our shared way of life will never succeed.”

Khan said the vigil in the most recognizable public plaza in London was meant to honor the dead and injured, but also “to send a clear, clear message: Londoners will never be cowed by terrorism.”

Rowley, head of counterterrorism efforts for London’s Metropolitan Police Service, said the eight people arrested Thursday were picked up during searches at six separate locations, and that investigations were continuing in London, Birmingham and other parts of England. He declined to say whether or how those detained were involved in Wednesday’s attack.

“It is still our belief, which continues to be born out by our investigation, that this attacker acted alone and was inspired by international terrorism,” Rowley told reporters.

Prime Minister Theresa May struck a defiant tone in discussing the attack before Parliament Thursday, telling British lawmakers that what London experienced was “an attack on free people everywhere.”

“Yesterday an act of terrorism tried to silence our democracy, but today we meet as normal, as generations have done before us and as future generations will continue to do, to deliver a simple message: We are not afraid and our resolve will never waver in the face of terrorism,” she said.

May thanked Britain’s friends and allies around the world “who have made it clear that they stand with us at this time.”She said the victims include nationals of France, Romania, South Korea, Germany, Poland, Ireland, China, Italy and Greece, as well as the United States.

The United Nations Security Council in New York, chaired by British Foreign Minister Boris Johnson, observed a moment of silence Thursday for the London victims.

Tense London Carries on After Islamic State Attack

“You may know that today there are victims in London from 11 nations. Which goes to show that an attack on London is an attack on the world,” Johnson said. “I can tell you from my talks here in the United States with the U.S. government and with partners from around the world that the world is uniting to defeat the people who launched this attack and defeat their bankrupt and odious ideology.”

In London, Parliament’s session began with a minute of silence Thursday. Police officers stood in silence nearby outside the headquarters of the city’s Metropolitan Police.
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Friday marks the United Nations’ World Tuberculosis Day, aimed at raising awareness of a disease that kills an estimated 1.8 million people every year. Six countries account for nearly two-thirds of the cases: India, Indonesia, China, Nigeria, Pakistan and South Africa.

The date commemorates the day in 1882 when German scientist Dr. Robert Koch announced that he had discovered the cause of the disease, the TB bacillus. It remains the most deadly infectious disease in the world.

“Every single day 5,000 people lose their lives because of tuberculosis. TB hits particularly those vulnerable populations that include migrants, refugees, prisoners, people who are marginalized in their societies,” said Mario Raviglione, the World Health Organization’s Global Tuberculosis Program Director.

On World Tuberculosis Day, Doctors Warn of New Drug-Resistant Bacteria

Drug-resistant strains

In recent years drug-resistant strains of TB have taken hold around the world, posing an increasingly urgent public health threat. These strains often go undetected and are spread across populations.

“In South Africa, for example, TB is the commonest cause of death and the disease is out of control in Africa,” said Dr. Keertan Dheda, head of the Division of Pulmonology at the University of Cape Town.

But there is new hope as a small number of new drugs have become available.

“For the first time after about four to five decades, we have two drugs. One is called bedaquiline,” Dheda said. “That has now been registered in South Africa and is available to treat many patients with drug-resistant TB. And there’s another new drug called delamanid, that’s not yet licensed in South Africa but is available in other countries.”

New drugs must be used carefully

In a report published in the Lancet medical journal, Dheda and his co-authors warn that the effectiveness of these new drugs could be rapidly lost if they aren’t used correctly.

“There are several case reports globally of patients that have already become resistant to both delamanid and bedaquiline. We need to change our strategy,” Dheda said. “We need to go out into the community and find these cases. We have to address the major drivers of TB, which are poverty and overcrowding, nutritional deprivation, alcohol abuse, cigarette smoking and biomass fuel exposure,” Dheda added in a VOA interview Thursday.

The report warns the new drugs must be prescribed as individually targeted treatments with clear dosing guidelines, to prevent further resistant TB strains from emerging.
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A month before the first round of France’s presidential election, 43 percent of voters are hesitant about who to vote for, a poll said Friday, underlining the uncertainty surrounding the volatile election campaign.

Opinion polls show independent centrist Emmanuel Macron and far-right leader Marine Le Pen likely to lead in the first round of the election April 23 and that these two candidates would go through to a May 7 run-off that Macron would win easily.

Unprecedented uncertainty

But an opinion poll by Odoxa for franceinfo radio found that 43 percent of voters were still hesitating between several candidates, which it said reflected an “uncertainty unprecedented in (French) electoral history.”

“The level of voter indecision about the candidates is completely exceptional,” Odoxa said.

Investors have been jittery about the possibility of Le Pen, leader of the anti-European Union, anti-immigration National Front, winning the election and taking France out of the euro.

On the right, more sure

The poll found that potential voters for right-wing candidates — Le Pen and conservative Francois Fillon — were more settled in their choices than potential voters for Macron and the leading left-wing candidates, Benoit Hamon of the ruling Socialist Party and far-left firebrand Jean-Luc Melenchon.

Sixty percent of Le Pen’s potential voters and 57 percent of Fillon’s had definitely decided on their candidate compared with 47 percent for Macron, 44 percent for Melenchon and 40 percent for Hamon, the poll found.

Fillon slipped in polls

Fillon, once the front runner, has slipped in the polls since media reports in late January that he had paid his wife, Penelope, and two children hundreds of thousands of euros of public funds for work they may not have carried out.

Fillon accused President Francois Hollande in a television interview on Thursday of being involved in what he alleges is a government plot to spread damaging media leaks about his affairs to destroy his chances of being elected. 
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Speaking in the House of Commons, Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May solemnly listed the diverse nationalities of those injured in Wednesday’s lone wolf attack in London, underlining the global nature of the British capital and its diversity. She emphasized the attacker was British-born.

But some British nationalists and nativists have been quick to blame whole communities for the attack, accusing migrants and liberals for having created the conditions for Islamist terrorism.

Two narratives are being fought over in newspapers and social media following the attack that left four dead and 40 injured. One emphasizing the importance of unity and embracing plurality, the other tarring foreigners as the threat and blaming migrants and freedom of movement in the European Union for terrorism.

“In addition to 12 Britons admitted to hospital, we know the victims include three French children, two Romanians, four South Koreans, one German, one Pole, one Irish, one Chinese, one Italian, one American and two Greeks,” May told a subdued House of Commons.

“A terrorist came to the place where people of all nationalities and cultures gather to celebrate what it means to be free. And he took out his rage indiscriminately against innocent men, women and children,” said May.

WATCH: May addresses House of Commons

“We are united by our humanity,” responded Britain’s main opposition leader, Jeremy Corbyn.

But shortly after the exchanges between lawmakers emphasizing the importance of diversity, Nigel Farage, one of Britain’s leading Brexiters, struck a different tone.

Despite May confirming police believe the assailant was British born, Farage used the London attack to blame politicians who embrace multiculturalism and lambasted immigration mainly from the Middle East for “inviting in terrorism.”

“We’ve made some terrible mistakes in this country, and it really started with the election of Tony Blair back in 1997, who said he wanted to build a multicultural Britain,” said Farage, the former leader of Britain’s UK Independence Party.

“The problem with multiculturalism is that it leads to divided communities … We have now a fifth column living inside these European countries. I do actually think that the moment has come for us to actually point the blame. What these politicians have done in the space of just 15 years may well affect the way we live in this country over the next 100 years,” he added.

Defend ‘our culture’

Katie Hopkins, a TV personality and newspaper columnist, was more scathing, arguing the English must defend “our culture.” “London is a city so desperate to be seen as tolerant … Liberals convince themselves multiculturalism works because we all die together, too,” she wrote in a column for the right-wing tabloid the Daily Mail just hours after the attack.

She added, “This place is just like Sweden. Terrified of admitting the truth about the threat we face, about the horrors committed by the migrants we failed to deter, because to admit that we are sinking, and fast, would be to admit that everything the liberals believe is wrong. That multiculturalism has not worked.”

In Birmingham, the Midlands city that saw law-enforcement raids late Wednesday on the homes of people suspected of being connected in some way to the London attacker, locals fear they will be tarred as terrorists and there will be a backlash.

Muslim anxiety

Britain’s top counterterror officer, Mark Rowley, has acknowledged that Muslim communities “will feel anxious at this time”, but has said police will work with community leaders to ensure protection. Birmingham is home to large South Asian and Muslim communities, and last year hosted Europe’s largest celebrations for the Eid festival, a major Muslim holiday.

Thursday, local police assisted Birmingham’s Central Mosque in distributing more than 50,000 copies of a booklet explaining the Muslim faith, entitled “Terrorism Is Not Islam,” to schools and shops.

Mosque chairman, Mohammed Afzal, said the attacker’s motives had nothing to do with true Islam. “Whoever the attacker is and whatever the cause may be, nothing justifies taking lives of innocent people, which is completely against the good of humanity,” he said. “We call upon those that may have even a shred of sympathy for the like-minded terrorists to shake their conscience and realize that such acts are the work of evil and not the work of God-fearing people.”

David Aaronovitch, an author and broadcaster, believes the attack should not be allowed to “trigger a wholesale tarring of Muslim communities in Britain with the terrorist brush.”

In his column in The Times he argued it is important “not to cede political space to the fanatics, the extreme nationalists, the fundamentalists. To always think, despite the temptations just to react.”

Others, though, are keen to react, determined that a nativist, anti-Islam narrative becomes dominant. Tommy Robinson, a far-right activist, rushed Wednesday to the Houses of Parliament as emergency crews were assisting the wounded and claimed Britain is at “war” with Muslims and labeled the attack the work of a foreigner. “This is the reality. The reality is these people are waging war on us,” he said.

Bystanders, and even some reporters, denounced him for what they saw as an opportunistic intervention at the site of an atrocity, one designed to inflame.
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In advance of World TB day (March 24), the World Health Organization is warning the battle to wipe out the global tuberculosis epidemic will not be won unless stigma, discrimination and marginalization of TB patients is brought to an end. VOA was in Geneva at the launch of new WHO ethics guidance for the treatment of people with tuberculosis.

Progress is being made toward achieving the U.N. Sustainable Development Goal of ending the global TB epidemic by 2030.  The World Health Organization reports 49 million lives have been saved since 2000.

But, much remains to be done. 

Data from 2015 show more than 10.4 million people fell ill and 1.8 million died of tuberculosis, with most cases and fatalities occurring in developing countries.

The World Health Organization says stigma and discrimination against TB patients hamper efforts to wipe out this deadly disease. 

WHO Global TB Program medical officer Ernesto Jaramillo says vulnerable people, such as migrants, prisoners, ethnic minorities, marginalized women and children are most likely to suffer abuse, neglect and rejection.

He says this prevents them from seeking treatment for tuberculosis.

“Having new tools for diagnosis, and treatment of TB is not sufficient if there are not clear standards to ensure that vulnerable people can have access in a matter of priority to these tools in a way that the end TB strategy can really serve the interest not only of individuals, but also the interests of public health in general ,” said Jaramillo.

WHO Global TB program director Mario Raviglione tells VOA no country, rich or poor, is immune from getting tuberculosis.  He warns marginalizing patients with TB is dangerous.

“You cannot eliminate a disease like TB thinking that you build walls or you isolate your country,” said Raviglione. “TB is an airborne disease.  It travels by air.  So, you have a Boeing 747 that leaves Malawi tonight and it comes to Switzerland tomorrow morning and there you go.  So, it has to be faced from a global perspective.”

New WHO ethical guidance includes actions to overcome barriers of stigma, discrimination and marginalization of people with tuberculosis.  The agency says protecting the human rights of all those affected will save many lives and will make it possible to end this global scourge. 
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Pope Francis is making five more child saints: two Portuguese shepherd children who said the Virgin Mary appeared to them in Fatima 100 years ago and three Mexican adolescents who were killed for their faith in the 16th century.

Francis signed the canonization decrees Thursday.

In the case of the Mexicans, Francis declared the three Child Martyrs of Tlaxcala worthy of sainthood without having a miracle attributed to their intercession, once again sidestepping the typical saint-making process. The boys, Cristobal, Antonio and Juan, were converted to Catholicism by missionaries in the early 1500s.

Francis followed the rules in approving a miracle for Francisco and Jacinta Marto, the Fatima siblings, just two months before he is to travel to the Fatima shrine to mark the centennial anniversary of their apparitions.

 
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Oleg Deripaska, the Russian oligarch connected in press reports Wednesday to former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, has a long history of connections with senior U.S. politicians, including Senator John McCain and former senator Bob Dole.

Deripaska was listed by Forbes magazine in 2008 as Russia’s richest oligarch, with a fortune the business magazine then assessed at $28 billion. He is suddenly back in the news, despite the fact that Forbes now estimates his wealth at a mere $5.1 billion.

The reason? The Associated Press reported Wednesday that President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, secretly worked with Deripaska a decade ago to advance Russian President Vladimir Putin’s interests and proposed a strategy to undermine anti-Russian opposition in former Soviet states.

Manafort has confirmed the AP’s report that he represented Deripaska almost a decade ago “on business and personal matters in countries where he had investments,” but says his work for Deripaska “did not involve representing Russian political interests.”

Oleg Deripaska began building his business empire in the 1990s, a period that saw a wild scramble to grab the most valuable assets of the moribund Soviet economy – a contest that was often accompanied by violence.

Russia’s post-Soviet metals sector saw a particularly violent division of spoils, and the bloodshed which accompanied the fight to control the country’s aluminum smelters – involving ambitious young businessmen like Deripaska, organized crime hitmen and their numerous victims – became the stuff of legend.

Deripaska has admitted that, while navigating this Hobbesian world, he made protection payments to criminal gangs and local police, and set up a security force consisting of former KGB agents and soldiers.

 “The first time I was directly threatened … two weeks later my commercial director was shot two times in the head,” Deripaska told London’s Telegraph in 2012. “This was how, finally, I decided it was better to pay for the moment to stay alive and for my people to stay alive…  I hated having to pay but there was no other safe choice, for me or my staff.”

As a Russian metals analyst told Britain’s Spectator magazine in 2007: “Many people were killed during the aluminium wars. Deripaska survived, and won.”

In 2000, Deripaska and fellow Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich, who owns Britain’s Chelsea soccer team, created Russian Aluminum (RusAl), which is now the world’s sixth largest aluminum company. Deripaska owns a controlling share of RusAL and is its president. He also owns Basic Element, a Russian holding company with assets in the energy, manufacturing, financial services, agriculture, construction and aviation sectors.

Deripaska is married to Polina Yumashev, the daughter of Valentin Yumashev, former President Boris Yeltsin’s chief of staff. After her birth, Valentin Yumashev married Tatyana Dyachenko, the younger daughter of Yeltsin.

Some of Deripaska’s past has apparently come back to haunt him. He was reportedly barred for years from entering the United States because of alleged ties with organized crime, and while that ban was lifted in 2005, it was reimposed in 2006.

Deripaska enlisted help to try to overcome these hurdles. For example, he reportedly paid $560,000 in the early 2000s to Alston & Bird, the law firm of Bob Dole, the former U.S. Senate majority leader and 1996 Republican presidential nominee, which was able to get Deripaska’s U.S. visa reinstated, at least for a time.

In addition, the Washington Post reported in January 2008 that Rick Davis, who was then the manager of Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign, helped arrange a drinks-and-dinner meeting in January 2006 between Deripaska and a small group of U.S. senators, including McCain, near Davos, Switzerland, where the World Economic Forum was taking place.

According to the newspaper, seven months later, in August 2006, Davis, McCain and Deripaska attended a dinner in Montenegro, whose governing party had a contract with the lobbying firm that Davis ran together with Paul Manafort.

“Afterward, a group from the dinner took boats out to a nearby yacht moored in the Adriatic Sea, where champagne and pastries were served, partly in honor of McCain’s 70th birthday,” the Washington Post reported.

The newspaper quoted a spokesman for McCain as saying neither the senator nor Davis recalled Deripaska being on the yacht after dinner.

The spokesman, Mark Salter, told the Post that McCain’s meetings with Deripaska took place during official overseas trips by U.S. senators and that any contact with the Russian tycoon was “social and incidental” and did not constitute a “private meeting.”
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The British parliament building in London has been put on lockdown following reports of gunfire outside the building Wednesday.  London metro police have said they are treating the incident as a terrorist attack until they have further details.
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U.S. media reports say worries about an Islamic State bomb led U.S. authorities to ban passengers from carrying large electronic devices on inbound flights from some airports in the Middle East.

Citing unnamed sources, The New York Times reports that the ban was put in place to counter IS jihadists’ plans to develop a bomb small enough to fit inside a laptop battery.

ABC reports that intelligence obtained by U.S. officials earlier this year showed the IS group working on ways to smuggle explosives onto U.S.-bound planes. A government source told ABC the threat information is “substantiated” and “credible.”

The Transportation Safety Agency, however, denied any specific threat and said in a statement it instituted the ban due to “evaluated intelligence” that shows terrorist groups’ continued interest in targeting commercial flights.

The directive requires passengers flying directly to the United States from 10 Middle Eastern airports to store electronic devices larger than a cellphone in checked baggage. The TSA said it chose not to include cellphones due to logistical reasons.

The TSA said it chose the airports “based on the current threat picture” and after consultation with intelligence officials, though more airports could be added in the future.

“As threats change, so too will TSA’s security requirements,” the agency said.

The airports affected by the U.S. ban are: Queen Alia International Airport, Cairo International Airport, Ataturk International Airport, King Abdul-Aziz International Airport, King Khalid International Airport, Kuwait International Airport, Mohammed V Airport, Hamad International Airport, Dubai International Airport, and Abu Dhabi International Airport.

Britain institutes ban

Britain joined the United States in instituting a similar ban on large electronic devices Tuesday, though the British version is slightly less restrictive.

The British directive will block carry-on electronics larger than 16 centimeters in length, 9.3 centimeters in width and with a depth of over 1.5 centimeters on direct flights from Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Tunisia and Saudi Arabia.

“Direct flights to the U.K. from these destinations continue to operate to the U.K. subject to these new measures being in place,” a spokesman for Prime Minister Theresa May told reporters. “We think these steps are necessary and proportionate to allow passengers to travel safely.”

Terrorism analyst Greg Barton of Australia’s Deakin University said the action seems to be linked to al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the terror group’s affiliate active in Yemen and Saudi Arabia that has targeted airlines in the past.

“They’re clearly concerned about airports that are regarded as not being up to scratch on security, and other airports that are, while very good, dealing with massive flows of passengers that are coming through,” Barton told VOA. “Presumably the intelligence that triggered all of this is linked to AQAP in Yemen, and it may have come out of that rather disastrous raid that killed a U.S. soldier but nevertheless was said to have yielded valuable intelligence.”

Terrorist efforts ‘intensifying’

Private security experts on both sides of the Atlantic are divided on the wisdom of having electronic gadgets consigned to the hold, with some pointing out that airlines have become increasingly worried about the risk of lithium battery-powered items catching fire in the hold. Others said a bomb could still be triggered via a cellphone signal.

But a British intelligence official told VOA, “Consigning gadgets to the hold presents some serious obstacles for the bomb-maker, forcing him to design an automatic trigger device or timer that can be designed small enough to fit into an e-reader or a thin laptop.”

The TSA statement said, “Our information indicates that terrorist groups’ efforts to execute an attack against the aviation sector are intensifying given that aviation attacks provide an opportunity to cause mass casualties and inflict significant economic damage, as well as generate overwhelming media coverage.”

Airlines were notified of the increased security measures Tuesday and have until Friday to comply. No end date was included in the order, meaning it will extend indefinitely.

Several British airlines will be impacted by the British ban — including British Airways and low-cost carrier Easyjet, as well as package-vacation carriers Thomas Cook and Thomson. The British ban affects in-bound flights from Egypt, Tunisia, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. It is unclear why the U.S. and British bans do not exactly match when it comes to the airports and countries included.

Sophisticated technology

No U.S. airline is impacted by the U.S. electronics ban — none fly direct to any of the countries listed by the Department of Homeland Security, which warns militants are seeking “innovative methods” to bring down jets amid concerns that bombs will be hidden in laptops.

A U.S. intelligence official dismissed claims by some security experts that the ban is as much politics-led as security-informed. He told VOA: “The ban is reflective of how sophisticated al-Qaida is becoming in the next generation of devices their bomb-makers are trying to develop.”

U.S. intelligence agencies have long been focused on militants in the Middle East exploring a new generation of non-metallic explosives unlikely to be detected by current airport security equipment.

In 2014 U.S. intelligence officials were alarmed by what they said was a teaming up of veteran jihadists in Syria with bomb-makers and terror planners from AQAP.

The group was behind the attempted Christmas Day bombing in 2009 of Northwest Airlines flight 253 by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who bungled the detonation of explosives sewn into his underwear. And it claimed responsibility for a 2010 cargo plane bomb plot foiled by British intelligence.

Al-Qaida isn’t the only group that’s prompting concern. Last year the Somali insurgent group al-Shabab smuggled an explosive-filled laptop on a flight out of Mogadishu, blowing a hole in the side of the plane. The aircraft was still low enough that the pilot was able to land the plane safely.

Meanwhile. Turkey said Tuesday it would ask the U.S. to reverse the ban, which affects travelers departing for the U.S. from Istanbul’s Ataturk airport.

VOA’s Jamie Dettmer and Victor Beattie contributed to this report.
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Tens of thousands of demonstrators gathered in Macedonia’s capital, Skopje, Tuesday to protest a visit by a European Union envoy who is trying to break the political deadlock that has left the country without a government for three months.

Waving red-and-yellow national flags, the protesters chanted “Macedonia! Macedonia!” – as EU enlargement commissioner Johannes Hahn held talks with political leaders.

Protest organizers said they were holding rallies at 42 sites around the country, and unfurled giant banners along the route taken by Hahn from the airport to the capital.

Macedonia’s two largest parties do not have enough lawmakers to form a government after a general election in December.

They would need to form a coalition with one party from the country’s ethnic Albanian minority, which is demanding that Albanian be made the country’s second official language.

The long-governing conservatives rejected the minority demand outright. Conservative President Gjorge Ivanov, however, has refused to hand the rival Social Democrats a mandate to form a government until they do the same.

Ivanov, who did not meet with Hahn, argues that the language demand is an attempt to destroy Macedonia’s character.

Supporting Ivanov’s tough line, demonstrators have gathered regularly for the past three weeks, and organizers said that a crowd of 50,000 rallied in Skopje Tuesday _ a number not immediately confirmed by authorities.

“We’ve had enough of commissioners,” Bogdan Ilievski, a protest organizer, said. “The language we all understand is Macedonian and the [minority demand] is only aimed at breaking up the country. That’s why we won’t allow it to become the policy of any government.”

Ethnic Albanians make up a quarter of Macedonia’s population. Albanian is currently recognized as an official language in minority-dominated areas but not in the country as a whole.

Macedonia has been locked in a major political crisis for the past two years, sparked by a wiretapping scandal and corruption allegations.
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Poland’s defense minister has accused European Council President Donald Tusk of working with Russia’s Vladimir Putin to harm Polish interests following the 2010 plane crash that killed President Lech Kaczynski and 95 others.

The ministry notified the military department of the National Prosecutor’s Office on Monday that it suspected Tusk, who was Polish prime minister at the time, of an “abuse of trust in foreign relations.”

The move was the latest, and possibly most serious, in an internal political row between Poland’s ruling right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party and rival Tusk.

Poland was isolated and rebuffed at an European Union summit earlier this month when Tusk, a centrist, was reappointed as council president over Warsaw’s objections.

Tusk accused of treason

A spokeswoman for the prosecutor’s office in Warsaw confirmed it had received the ministry’s notification, which effectively accuses Tusk of diplomatic treason. It now has 30 days to decide whether to investigate.

Tusk dismissed the accusations as “purely about emotions and obsessions.”

“This is not a matter of legal or political nature, it is purely about emotions and obsessions,” he said in emailed comments. “Therefore, it is not within my competence to comment on cases like this one.”

The PiS is led by Kaczynski’s twin brother Jaroslaw, Poland’s most powerful politician and a longstanding opponent of Tusk.

Lech Kaczynski died when in a plane carrying a Polish delegation crashed approaching Smolensk Air Base in Russia. He was flying from Warsaw to commemorate the 1940 Katyn massacre of Polish officers by Soviet secret police.

‘Illegal contract’ with Putin

Defense Minister Antoni Macierewicz told the Gazeta Polska Codziennie daily on Tuesday: “Tusk made an illegal contract with Vladimir Putin to the detriment of Poland and should bear criminal responsibility for that.”

State news agency PAP quoted the notification as accusing Tusk of agreeing to terms that prevented Poland from playing a full part in investigating the causes of the crash.

Macierewicz alleged that Tusk failed to secure from the start an agreement with Moscow “to guarantee the participation of representatives of Poland in all investigative activities on the site,” and that this allowed Russia to limit the Polish role.

The notification also accused Tusk of failing to take steps that would enforce the return of the Tu-154 plane wreckage to Poland, the notification said.

Russia has repeatedly refused Poland’s demand to return the Tu-154 wreckage and its black box recorders, citing its own ongoing investigation.

Beyond negligence

The notification from the defense ministry covers the period from the plane crash on April 10, 2010 to 2014, when Tusk took up his current post as chairman of EU leaders’ summits. The alleged crime carries a sentence of one to 10 years in prison.

“It’s not about negligence, it is about a criminal offense,” Macierewicz said.

Polish prosecutors are already conducting several investigations into the Smolensk crash, including a case against a group of public officials also suspected of acting to Poland’s detriment in the year after the accident.

Tusk has frequently denied any responsibility for the crash, which an earlier official investigation concluded was an accident.

The accusation marks a sharp escalation of the conflict between PiS and Tusk, who led the rival Civic Platform party and was prime minister from 2007 to 2014. PiS has already accused him of neglecting the existence of a fraudulent investment  scheme when prime minister and selling off too many Polish businesses to foreigners.

Civic Platform party hopes Tusk may return to Poland after his EU stint and become its candidate for the next presidential election in 2020.
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An influential British think tank and Ukraine’s military are disputing a report that the U.S. cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike has used to buttress its claims of Russian hacking in the presidential election.

The CrowdStrike report, released in December, asserted that Russians hacked into a Ukrainian artillery app, resulting in heavy losses of howitzers in Ukraine’s war with Russian-backed separatists.

But the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) told VOA that CrowdStrike erroneously used IISS data as proof of the intrusion. IISS disavowed any connection to the CrowdStrike report. Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense also has claimed combat losses and hacking never happened.

The challenges to CrowdStrike’s credibility are significant because the firm was the first to link last year’s hacks of Democratic Party computers to Russian actors, and because CrowdStrike co-founder Dimiti Alperovitch has trumpeted its Ukraine report as more evidence of Russian election tampering.

Alperovitch has said that variants of the same software were used in both hacks.

While questions about CrowdStrike’s findings don’t disprove allegations of Russian involvement, they do add to skepticism voiced by some cybersecurity experts and commentators about the quality of their technical evidence.

The Russian government has denied covert involvement in the election, but U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Russian hacks were meant to discredit Hillary Clinton and help Donald Trump’s campaign. An FBI and Homeland Security report also blamed Russian intelligence services.

On Monday, FBI Director James Comey confirmed at a House Intelligence Committee hearing that his agency has an ongoing investigation into the hacks of Democratic campaign computers and into contacts between Russian operatives and Trump campaign associates. The White House says there was no collusion with Russia, and other U.S. officials have said they’ve found no proof.

Signature malware

VOA News first reported in December that sources close to the Ukraine military and the artillery app’s creator questioned CrowdStrike’s finding that a Russian-linked group it named “Fancy Bear” had hacked the app. CrowdStrike said it found a variant of the same “X-Agent” malware used to attack the Democrats.

CrowdStrike said the hack allowed Ukraine’s enemies to locate its artillery units. As proof of its effectiveness, the report referenced publicly reported data in which IISS had sharply reduced its estimates of Ukrainian artillery assets. IISS, based in London, publishes a highly regarded, annual reference called “The Military Balance” that estimates the strength of world armed forces.

“Between July and August 2014, Russian-backed forces launched some of the most-decisive attacks against Ukrainian forces, resulting in significant loss of life, weaponry and territory,” CrowdStrike wrote in its report, explaining that the hack compromised an app used to aim Soviet-era D-30 howitzers.

“Ukrainian artillery forces have lost over 50% of their weapons in the two years of conflict and over 80% of D-30 howitzers, the highest percentage of loss of any other artillery pieces in Ukraine’s arsenal,” the report said, crediting a Russian blogger who had cited figures from IISS.

The report prompted skepticism in Ukraine.

Yaroslav Sherstyuk, maker of the Ukrainian military app in question, called the company’s report “delusional” in a Facebook post. CrowdStrike never contacted him before or after its report was published, he told VOA.

Pavlo Narozhnyy, a technical adviser to Ukraine’s military, told VOA that while it was theoretically possible the howitzer app could have been compromised, any infection would have been spotted. “I personally know hundreds of gunmen in the war zone,” Narozhnyy told VOA in December. “None of them told me of D-30 losses caused by hacking or any other reason.”

VOA first contacted IISS in February to verify the alleged artillery losses. Officials there initially were unaware of the CrowdStrike assertions. After investigating, they determined that CrowdStrike misinterpreted their data and hadn’t reached out beforehand for comment or clarification.

In a statement to VOA, the institute flatly rejected the assertion of artillery combat losses.

“The CrowdStrike report uses our data, but the inferences and analysis drawn from that data belong solely to the report’s authors,” the IISS said. “The inference they make that reductions in Ukrainian D-30 artillery holdings between 2013 and 2016 were primarily the result of combat losses is not a conclusion that we have ever suggested ourselves, nor one we believe to be accurate.”

Erica Ma, operations administrator with IISS in the U.S., said that while the think tank had dramatically lowered its estimates of Ukrainian artillery assets and howitzers in 2013, it did so as part of a “reassessment” and reallocation of units to airborne forces.

“No, we have never attributed this reduction to combat losses,” Ma said, explaining that most of the reallocation occurred prior to the two-year period that CrowdStrike cites in its report.

“The vast majority of the reduction actually occurs … before Crimea/Donbass,” she added, referring to the 2014 Russian invasion of Ukraine.

‘Evidence flimsy’

In early January, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense issued a statement saying artillery losses from the ongoing fighting with separatists are “several times smaller than the number reported by [CrowdStrike] and are not associated with the specified cause” of Russian hacking.

But Ukraine’s denial did not get the same attention as CrowdStrike’s report. Its release was widely covered by news media reports as further evidence of Russian hacking in the U.S. election.

In interviews, Alperovitch helped foster that impression by connecting the Ukraine and Democratic campaign hacks, which CrowdStrike said involved the same Russian-linked hacking group—Fancy Bear—and versions of X-Agent malware the group was known to use.

“The fact that they would be tracking and helping the Russian military kill Ukrainian army personnel in eastern Ukraine and also intervening in the U.S. election is quite chilling,” Alperovitch said in a December 22 story by The Washington Post.

The same day, Alperovitch told the PBS NewsHour: “And when you think about, well, who would be interested in targeting Ukraine artillerymen in eastern Ukraine? Who has interest in hacking the Democratic Party? [The] Russia government comes to mind, but specifically, [it’s the] Russian military that would have operational [control] over forces in the Ukraine and would target these artillerymen.”

Alperovitch, a Russian expatriate and senior fellow at the Atlantic Council policy research center in Washington, co-founded CrowdStrike in 2011. The firm has employed two former FBI heavyweights: Shawn Henry, who oversaw global cyber investigations at the agency, and Steven Chabinsky, who was the agency’s top cyber lawyer and served on a White House cybersecurity commission. Chabinsky left CrowdStrike last year.

CrowdStrike declined to answer VOA’s written questions about the Ukraine report, and Alperovitch canceled a March 15 interview on the topic. In a December statement to VOA’s Ukrainian Service, spokeswoman Ilina Dimitrova defended the company’s conclusions.

“It is indisputable that the [Ukraine artillery] app has been hacked by Fancy Bear malware,” Dimitrova wrote. “We have published the indicators to it, and they have been confirmed by others in the cybersecurity community.”

In its report last June attributing the Democratic hacks, CrowdStrike said it was long familiar with the methods used by Fancy Bear and another group with ties to Russian intelligence nicknamed Cozy Bear. Soon after, U.S. cybersecurity firms Fidelis and Mandiant endorsed CrowdStrike’s conclusions. The FBI and Homeland Security report reached the same conclusion about the two groups.

Still, some cybersecurity experts are skeptical that the election and purported Ukraine hacks are connected. Among them is Jeffrey Carr, a cyberwarfare consultant who has lectured at the U.S. Army War College, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and other government agencies.

In a January post on LinkedIn, Carr called CrowdStrike’s evidence in the Ukraine “flimsy.” He told VOA in an interview that CrowdStrike mistakenly assumed that the X-Agent malware employed in the hacks was a reliable fingerprint for Russian actors.

“We now know that’s false,” he said, “and that the source code has been obtained by others outside of Russia.”

This report was produced in collaboration with VOA’s Ukrainian Service.
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The biggest construction project in Europe is taking place beneath the British capital, London.

The largely subterranean Crossrail route linking Heathrow airport to the eastern financial district and beyond is designed to ease congestion as London’s population grows; but, it has also unearthed a trove of archaeological finds that provide a fascinating window on eight thousand years of the city’s history.

“The great thing about the Crossrail project is that it’s allowed us to basically sort of take a slice through London. We’ve been amazed at the quantity, tens of thousands of artifacts,” said Jackie Keily, curator of “The Archaeology of Crossrail” exhibition at the Museum of London – itself housed in a 200-year-old shipping warehouse in the old docks next to the River Thames.

Among the highlights is a bronze medallion dating from the year 245 AD, when southern Britain was ruled by the Romans.

“It would have been given by the emperor to a high-ranking official, probably in Rome. And it’s quite fascinating that it’s traveled right across the Empire to be here in London,” Keily said.

Nearby, a glass case contains a dozen carefully worked metal discs. These “hipposandals” were an early form of horse shoe designed to aid pack animals as they negotiated the rain-soaked streets of Roman London.

Many of the finds hint at macabre rituals. Hundreds of skulls were found beneath what is now the financial heart of London. Could the victims have been executed and put on display as a warning? Were they the losers of gladiatorial battles at the nearby Roman amphitheater?

One of the most striking exhibits is the decapitated skeleton of a Roman woman found buried beneath what is now Liverpool Street station. The skull is placed between the leg bones.

“To have placed the head between the legs one feels was almost certainly sending some sort of message, either about the person or was some kind of ritual associated with the burial,” Keily said.

The Crossrail route tunnels through several graveyards, many dating to major disease outbreaks such as the “Black Death” in the mid-1300s. That plague pandemic wiped out much of London’s population and killed an estimated 1.5 million people across Britain.

Despite the panic that swept across Europe at the time, archaeologists have noted that burials appear to have been conducted with as much dignity as possible. There are few mass graves and most burial sites were dug in an orderly fashion. Some held up to 20,000 bodies.

Lighter aspects of London life are also on display: a bowling ball found in the moat of a 16th century manor house, perhaps lost beneath the murky water during a high society summer party. Laws prevented lower class peasants from partaking in such revelry.

A collection of leather shoes has survived five centuries buried in the London mud. Some are plain with rounded toes, patched up and well worn. Others appear to have barely been used, their tapering ends suggestive of the modern stiletto heel.

“So very fashionable shoes that Londoners were wearing. It connects us in a way with people in the past,” Keily noted.

Despite the painstaking archaeological work each time something new is unearthed, construction of Crossrail remains on schedule. The first trains are due to take passengers through the tunnels in late 2018.
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The biggest construction project in Europe is taking place beneath the British capital London – and it has unearthed an array of archaeological finds that provide a fascinating window on eight thousand years of the city’s history. Henry Ridgwell reports from the Museum of London.
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Montenegro’s Foreign Minister Srdjan Darmanovic on Monday said U.S.-led NATO allies have been supportive of an investigation into what Montenegrin prosecutors are calling a pro-Russian plot to overthrow the country’s pro-Western government to prevent it from joining the European military alliance.

The “United States were among the most helpful in providing us with support and information,” Darmanovic told VOA’s Serbian Service. His comments came on the same day that U.S. legislators conducted a hearing on alleged Russian meddling in last year’s U.S. presidential election.

Some Western officials have also said they suspect Russian involvement in October’s attempted coup. The Kremlin has repeatedly denied involvement in the alleged plot to oust the small Balkan nation’s pro-NATO leadership, but it has openly supported and financed Montenegro’s anti-NATO opposition.

Montenegro’s bid to join NATO is awaiting approval from the U.S. Senate.

Last week Senator Rand Paul blocked a floor vote, thwarting ratification of a treaty to advance the country’s NATO membership by unanimous consent without debate. More than 90 senators, according to advocates in the U.S. Senate, support Montenegro’s ratification.

Paul’s opposition to the vote provoked a furious response from Republican Senator John McCain, who accused Paul of “working for Vladimir Putin.”

Darmanovic, a former envoy to the United States, said in an interview that he does not expect any further issues to hamper American ratification of Montenegro’s NATO membership.

“We understand that the Senate has a very busy agenda and that not all the matters can be considered immediately,” he told VOA. “But we are convinced that, once majority leader [Senator Mitch McConnell] schedules the vote, the treaty will be ratified with an overwhelming majority.”

Montenegro’s bid requires ratification from all 28 NATO members. Darmanovic says that the U.S. administration is supporting its bid, and therefore expects Montenegro to participate as a full member at this May’s NATO summit in Brussels.

Produced in collaboration with VOA’s Serbian Service.
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President Donald Trump risks driving wedges between the United States and its closest allies, something America can ill-afford. So say lawmakers of both political parties as public disputes have arisen between the White House and Britain as well as Germany. VOA’s Michael Bowman reports from Washington.
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Tensions between Germany and Turkery are on the rise again, with the Turkish president accusing the German chancellor of using “Nazi” measures. The accusation follows a pro Kurdish rally in Germany Saturday that turned into a rally against the Turkish President.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, campaigning in a referendum to extend his presidential powers again, turned his fire on the German chancellor Angela Merkel. In a televised speech Sunday, Erdogan used Germany’s Nazi past against Merkel

“When we call them fascists, Nazis they in Europe get uncomfortable. They rally together in solidarity. Especially Merkel,” Erdogan said adding, “But you are right now employing Nazi measures,”

Erdogan was infuriated after two of his ministers earlier this month were prevented from addressing meetings in Germany for the Turkish diaspora, in support of a yes vote in April’s referendum. The meetings were cancelled by local authorities because of security concerns. But on Saturday tens of thousands of Kurds were allowed to attend a gathering in the German City of Frankfurt. The meeting ostensibly to mark Newroz, the Kurdish new year, turned into a rally against Erdogan and called for a “No” vote in the referendum.

Turkish foreign minister Mevlut Cavusolgu in a statement accused Berlin of double standards, hypocrisy and supporting the” No” vote. Sunday, the German ambassador was summoned to the foreign ministry to receive an official condemnation.

Adding to Ankara’s anger, many Kurds attending the Frankfurt rally carried pictures of the imprisoned leaderof the PKK Abdullah Ocalan. The PKK is fighting the Turkish State and is designated internationally as a terrorist organization..

Political columnist Semih Idiz of Al Monitor website says the Europe is becoming increasingly embroiled in Turkish politics.

“The vote in Europe is significant , there is nearly 5 million people across Europe who are Turkish. In Germany 1.4 million who are eligible to vote. So this a reflection of domestic politics overflowing into the foreign domain and creating a big mess,” said Idiz.

Observers say the importance of the diaspora vote which traditionally gives strong support to Erdogan is viewed as increasingly key given that opinion polls indicate the result is too close to call. Tensions with Berlin could ratcheted up further with an Erdogan spokesman saying Turkey is considering sending another minister to Germany to speak at a rally ahead of the April referendum.

 
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