Russian officials continue denying Moscow interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, brushing aside hundreds of pages of evidence in the Mueller report by saying the document contained no proof. Experts in Moscow told VOA’s Igor Tsikhanenka they don’t believe the Russian government will ever acknowledge any wrongdoing, nor do they think the Kremlin and the White House will be able to establish rapprochement in the near future
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The European Union is praising Facebook, Google and Twitter for tackling disinformation while urging the social media giants to do more in clamping down on fake accounts.
Under an EU code of conduct, the three companies report routinely on their efforts to stop election interference. Facebook, for one, has been criticized for being a tool for foreign interference in elections.
Tuesday’s reports say Facebook, Google and Twitter are tightening advertising policy and surveillance, particularly with election-targeted ads.
But the commission urges them to share fake account data with outside experts and researchers.
Millions of people across the 28-nation bloc will vote in the May 23-26 European Parliament elections.
Polls show nationalist and populist parties could make significant gains, while mainstream parties would lose seats but retain control over the assembly.
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U.S. President Donald Trump is making a state visit in June to Britain, where he will meet with Queen Elizabeth as well as Prime Minister Theresa May.
A White House statement says the president and first lady Melania Trump “accepted the invitation of Her Royal Majesty Queen Elizabeth II to visit the United Kingdom from June 3 to 5.” It said the visit will “reaffirm the steadfast and special relationship” between the United States and Britain.
While in Britain, the Trumps will attend a ceremony in Portsmouth to commemorate the 75th anniversary of D-Day, the invasion by Allied forces that helped defeat the Nazis in World War II.
After the state visit, they will attend a D-Day anniversary commemoration when they travel to Normandy, France, on June 6, according to the White House, which said President Trump will meet with his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, during the trip.
On D-Day, Allied troops parachuted or waded onto the beaches of Normandy on June 6, 1944, in what was the largest sea assault in military history. Although about 4,500 died by the end of the day, the operation eventually led to an Allied victory across Europe.
read moreNorth Korean leader Kim Jong Un will visit Russia for a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, North Korean state media confirmed.
With his Russia visit, North Korea’s Kim is seen working to build up foreign support for his economic development plans, since the breakdown of the second U.S.-North Korea summit in Hanoi in February led to stalled talks with Washington on the sanctions relief Pyongyang had sought.
State media Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said the visit will happen “soon,” but did not elaborate the time or the venue.
Putin and Kim are on track to meet by the end of April, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Monday.
Kim Jong Un’s chief aide, Kim Chang Son, was seen in Vladivostok on Sunday according to South Korean news agency Yonhap, leading to speculation that the Putin-Kim summit will be held in the city around April 24-25.
NK News, a group that follows North Korea, showed photos on its website on Monday of preparations underway at Vladivostok’s Far Eastern Federal University, likely to host part of the summit, with workers installing North Korean and Russian flags.
After the diplomatic failure at the Hanoi summit, Kim is likely looking to prove that he is still being sought after by world leaders, and that he has more options, said Artyom Lukin, a professor at Far Eastern Federal University in Vladivostok.
“Kim does not want to look too dependent on Washington, Beijing and Seoul,” he said. “As for Russia, the Putin-Kim summit will reaffirm Moscow’s place as a major player on the Korean Peninsula. This meeting is important for Russian international prestige.”
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As spring flower fields around the Netherlands burst into bloom, painting the countryside with dazzling swaths of red, white, and blue, a modern day tulip bubble may be forming: tourists.
More than a million foreign sightseers are expected to visit this country of 17 million people on Easter weekend, a record, the Dutch Tourism Bureau said on Thursday.
Director Jos Vranken said he expects them to spend 300 million euros — a boon for the national economy. Many are attracted to the country’s museums and other cultural offerings, but in April, the flower fields and Keukenhof flower show in Lisse top many “must see” lists.
While flower lovers and the photographs they share on social media are free advertising for the country’s tourism, cut flower and bulb industries, it isn’t all a bed of roses.
“That has a downside,” Vranken said. “Farmers are having increasing damage to their fields from tourists taking photos.”
Foreign and Dutch tourists alike have learned to use “Flower Radar” websites to identify where fields are in bloom, especially in the main bulb-growing center known as the “Bollenstreek” along the coast between Haarlem and Leiden.
Do Not Tiptoe Through the Tulips
Signs and barricades — now printed in Chinese and English — saying “Enjoy the Flowers, Respect Our Pride” have gone up at the edge of many fields.
They illustrate the concept that taking photos at the edge of a field is okay, but actually walking among the flowers to take pictures ruins them.
Meanwhile, farmers in less-promoted areas of the country sense an opportunity.
In Creil, northwest of Amsterdam, one enterprising group has set up a “Tulip Experience” complete with designated selfie area, hundreds of tulip varieties on display, helicopter tours, food and drinks, and bouncy castles for kids.
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North Macedonia’s pro-Western candidate, Stevo Pendarovski, and his main rival Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova emerged tied in the first round of a presidential vote dominated by deep divisions over a change of the country’s name under a deal with Greece.
The change, which Greece demanded to end what it called an implied territorial claim on its northern province of Macedonia, resolves a decades-old dispute and opens the door to North Macedonian membership of NATO and the European Union.
But the accord continues to divide Macedonians and has eclipsed all other issues during campaigning for Sunday’s election, in which about 1.8 million voters were able to chose among three candidates.
Results on the State Election Commission website based on 98% of the votes counted showed Pendarovski got 42.7% of the votes, while Siljanovska-Davkova had 42.5% of the votes.
The two will face a run-off on May 5, reflecting differences over the deal pushed through by the pro-Western government of Prime Minister Zoran Zaev.
Blerim Reka, the candidate of the second largest Albanian party, came third with 10.4% of the votes.
Polls opened at 7 a.m. local time (0500 GMT). The State Election Commission put turnout at 41.9%.
Both Zaev’s Social Democrats and the opposition VMRO-DPMNE proclaimed victory.
“I am convinced that in the second round we will have a European president of our state,” Zaev told journalists late on Sunday.
This election is about voting to move the country forward, he said.
“We won,” said Hristijan Mickoski, leader of the opposition VMRO-DPMNE, which supported Siljanovska-Davkova. VMRO-DPMNE opposed the deal with Greece.
Analysts said the low turnout was down to disillusion among voters at the government’s lack of progress in attracting foreign investment and tackling high unemployment.
“We need a new and better president, a nation’s father that will help move this country forward,” said Sonja Kjurcieva, a 49-year old housewife from Skopje. “Together with the government they will bring us closer to Europe.”
The presidency has no authority to block constitutional amendments that were passed earlier this year by a two-thirds majority of parliament to enable the name change.
Shaping the future
Pendarovksi said the vote will be for how the country’s future will be shaped rather than a choice of president.
“I expect to win the elections and be the first woman president of Macedonia,” Siljanovska-Davkova said after casting her vote.
“I am a professor of European law, so I’ll respect (the agreement with Greece),” she said. “But I’ll do my best to show that some of the solutions are against our constitution.”
The presidency of the former Yugoslav republic is a mostly ceremonial post, but acts as the supreme commander of the armed forces and signs off on parliamentary legislation.
The refusal of outgoing nationalist President Gjeorge Ivanov to sign some bills passed by parliament has delayed the implementation of some key laws, including one on wider use of the Albanian language — 18 years after an ethnic Albanian uprising that pushed North Macedonia to the brink of civil war.
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Climate change protesters who have brought parts of London to a standstill said Sunday they were prepared to call a halt if the British government will discuss their demands.
Some 963 arrests have been made and 42 people charged in connection with the ongoing Extinction Rebellion protests.
On the seventh day of demonstrations that have occupied key spots in the British capital, Swedish teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg addressed the demonstrators, telling them: “Humanity is standing at a crossroads.”
Organizers said they were willing to switch tactics from disruption to dialogue next week — if the government enters talks.
“We are prepared to pause, should the government come to the negotiating table,” Extinction Rebellion spokesman James Fox told AFP.
“What the pause looks like is us stopping an escalation.
“We can discuss leaving if they are willing to discuss our demands.
“At the moment, we haven’t received a response from the government… so we’re waiting on that.”
Extinction Rebellion was established last year in Britain by academics and has become one of the world’s fastest-growing environmental movements.
Campaigners want governments to declare a climate and ecological emergency, reduce greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2025, halt biodiversity loss and be led by new “citizens’ assemblies on climate and ecological justice.
“We’re giving them an opportunity now to come and speak to us,” Fox told AFP.
“If they refuse to come and negotiate with us, then this is going to continue and this is going to escalate in different, diverse and very creative ways.”
Thunberg, the 16-year-old activist who has inspired pupils worldwide to boycott classes to join climate protests, addressed the cheering crowds at the Marble Arch landmark, the only authorized demonstration site.
“For way too long the politicians and people in power have got away with not doing anything at all to fight the climate crisis and ecological crisis,” she said.
“But we will make sure that they will not get away with it any longer.”
She continued: “How do we want the future living conditions for all living species to be like?
“Humanity is now standing at a crossroads. We must now decide which path we want to take.
“We are waiting for the others to follow our example.”
Police said they had managed to clear the protesters from Parliament Square and the Oxford Circus and Piccadilly Circus junctions.
Those charged range in age from 19 to 77. They hail from around England and Wales, with one person from France charged.
The charges are for various offenses including breaching public order laws, obstructing a highway and obstructing police.
Calling for an end to the protests, London Mayor Sadiq Khan said more than 9,000 police officers had been responding to the demonstrations, which had left the force as a whole overstretched.
“This is now taking a real toll on our city… this is counter-productive to the cause,” he said.
“I’m extremely concerned about the impact the protests are having on our ability to tackle issues like violent crime.
“You must now let London return to business as usual.”
In the blazing sunshine on Waterloo Bridge, police lifted protesters and carried them off to waiting police vans.
“I’m genuinely terrified. I think about it all the time. I’m so scared for the world. I feel like there is going to be calamity in my lifetime,” student Amber Gray told AFP.
“I don’t even feel comfortable bringing children into this world knowing that that is coming.
“And I don’t want people in the future to say to me, ‘why didn’t you do anything?’.”
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French Catholics on Sunday celebrated Easter mass in Paris in the shadow of the badly burned Notre-Dame Cathedral, praying that the landmark monument — and along with it the entire Catholic Church — can be renewed.
The fire at Notre-Dame six days earlier destroyed the cathedral’s spire and two-thirds of its roof. The damaged building is now to be closed for years to visits and worship.
Deprived of access to Notre-Dame, regular worshipers instead lined up patiently to celebrate Easter Sunday mass a short walk away, on the Right Bank of the Seine at Saint-Eustache church.
Throughout, the service was pervaded by the spirit and hope of a fresh start, infused by the Easter celebrations commemorating the resurrection of Christ according to the Bible.
‘Recreate unity’
The flames that devastated the cathedral were a “sign” said worshiper Marie Fliedel, 59, adding that she now felt a “renewal, a communion and a spirit”.
“I hope Christians react and take note of all that is taking place in this sad period and that this will bring us back together,” she said.
“This will recreate unity among Catholics. In misfortune, the fire will give strength to find ourselves again and defend our religion,” added Francois Toriello, 70.
The Catholic Church worldwide has been hit by a series of sexual abuses scandals, including in France where French cardinal Philippe Barbarin was handed a six-month suspended jail sentence last month for failing to report sex abuse by a priest under his authority.
Another sombre mark came from the series of devastating bomb blasts that ripped through high-end hotels and churches holding Easter services in Sri Lanka on Sunday, killing more than 200 people, including dozens of foreigners.
‘Courage, knowledge and prayers’
The Saint-Eustache service, also attended by Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo, was led by Archbishop of Paris Michel Aupetit who thanked the capital’s fire brigade for saving the cathedral from an even worse fate.
“When, for a moment, we thought that the bell towers could also fall, these towers that are so well known throughout the would, courage and knowledge came together with the prayers of all the faithful,” he told members of the fire service, several of whom were present in the front pews.
Laurence Mahoudeau, 55, who had come with her husband to celebrate the mass, said she had her doubts over whether the fire would prompt major change in the Catholic Church.
“Notre-Dame is something that goes beyond our religion, it’s historic, it is our heritage,” she said.
“I don’t know if this will prompt a renewal. There needs to be time. We want a strong Church. But it must be something completely different after the suffering and the sexual abuse.”
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Pope Francis expressed closeness to the Christian community struck by the attacks in Sri Lanka on Easter day. In his Easter message he also prayed for peace in Syria, Yemen, Libya and South Sudan. Addressing tens of thousands of pilgrims gathered in Saint Peter’s Square from the central balcony of the basilica, the pope said the resurrection of Christ, he said, is the principle of new life for every man and woman.
Under grey skies, but in a Saint Peter’s Square filled with flowers, Pope Francis, dressed in white vestments, celebrated Easter mass in front of tens of thousands of faithful and tourists.
At the end of the mass the pope gave his traditional message and blessing to the city and to the world. His last words before he wished everyone a Happy Easter were for the people of Sri Lanka struck he said by the serious attacks on Easter day, which brought mourning and pain in some of the churches and other sites in the country. He said he learned the news with sadness and expressed closeness to the Christian community gathered in prayer.
Earlier in his message the pope said, “The resurrection of Christ is the principle of new life for every man and every woman, for true renewal always begins from the heart, from the conscience.” Yet Easter, the pope added, is also “the beginning of the new world, set free from the slavery of sin and death.”
The pope’s first thoughts went to the people of Syria, “victims of an ongoing conflict to which we risk becoming ever more resigned and even indifferent.” He urged a new commitment for a political solution that will respond for the hopes for peace and confront the humanitarian crisis. The pope’s thoughts also turned to “the people of Yemen, especially the children, exhausted by hunger and war,” and to the situation in Libya.
The pope said, “May conflict and bloodshed cease in Libya, where defenseless people are once more dying in recent weeks and many families have been forced to abandon their homes.” Pope Francis urged the parties involved to “choose dialogue over force and to avoid reopening wounds left by a decade of conflicts and political instability.”
The pope also prayed for peace in other parts of the African continent, which he said is still rife with “social tensions, conflicts and at times violent forms of extremism that leave in their wake insecurity, destruction and death.” He mentioned Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Nigeria and Cameroon. But he also spoke of Sudan, which he said is “presently experiencing a moment of political uncertainty.”
Referring to the recent spiritual retreat held with South Sudanese leaders in the Vatican, the pope expressed the hope for “a new page open in the history of that country, in which all political, social and religious components actively commit themselves to the pursuit of the common good and the reconciliation of the nation.”
The pope also mentioned the crisis Venezuela and the situation in Nicaragua, where he expressed hope for a “peaceful negotiated solution.”
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Several world and religious leaders condemned the explosions on Easter at Sri Lankan churches and hotels that killed scores of people.
Dozens of foreigners — British, Dutch and American citizens — are believed to be among them the dead.
British Prime Minister Theresa May said attacks were “truly appalling.”
“The acts of violence against churches and hotels in Sri Lanka are truly appalling, and my deepest sympathies go out to all of those affected at this tragic time,” she tweeted. “We must stand together to make sure that no one should ever have to practice their faith in fear.”
The Catholic Church in Jerusalem released a statement saying “We pray for the souls of the victims and ask for speedy recovery of the injured, and ask God to inspire the terrorists to repent of their killing and intimidation.”
But during the traditional Easter address at the Vatican, Pope Francis conveyed sadness over the attacks.
“I want to express my affectionate closeness with the Christian community, attacked while it was at prayer, and to all the victims of such cruel violence,” he said.
Sunday’s bomb attack came a month after dozens of Muslims were killed in a shooting at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern such violence was “devastating”.
“New Zealand condemns all acts of terrorism, and our resolve has only been strengthened by the attack on our soil on the 15th of March. … New Zealand rejects all forms of extremism and stands for freedom of religion and the right to worship safely. Collectively we must find the will and the answers to end such violence,” Ardern said in a written statement.
Meanwhile in the U.S., President Donald Trump said Americans stand “ready to help.”
”Heartfelt condolences from the people of the United States to the people of Sri Lanka on the horrible terrorist attacks on churches and hotels,” he tweeted.
The World Jewish Congress denounced the attack as “heinous” and appealed for “zero tolerance of those who use terror to advance their objectives.”
“This truly barbarous assault on peaceful worshippers on one of the holiest days in the Christian calendar serves as a painful reminder that the war against terror must be at the top of the international agenda and pursued relentlessly,” World Jewish Congress President Ronald S. Lauder said.
Israeli President Reuven Rivlin called the attacks despicable.
“We are all children of God; an attack on one religion is an attack on us all,” he said on Twitter.
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan condemned in the “strongest terms possible the Easter terror attacks in Sri Lanka. This is an assault on all of humanity.” While Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said terrorism must be condemned and confronted globally as is a global menace with no religion.
“Terribly saddened by terrorist attacks on Sri Lankan worshippers during Easter. Condolences to friendly government and people of Sri Lanka. Our thoughts and prayers with the victims and their families,” he said.
read moreThe U.S. ambassador to Poland wished Jews a happy Passover in Polish, and the reaction has been a wave of angry comments on Twitter.
Ambassador Georgette Mosbacher also wished Poles a happy Easter on Sunday. But by then, she was accused of offending the country with her Passover tweet and reminded that she is serving in a mostly Roman Catholic country.
Krystyna Pawlowicz, a lawmaker with Poland’s ruling right-wing party, called it a “provocation.”
Robert Bakiewicz, a far-right activist who organizes a yearly Independence Day march that government leaders joined last year, said “Christ died and was resurrected also for you, pagans and traitorous Jews.”
Some came to Mosbacher’s defense, recalling that Poland also has a small Jewish population. Poland was home to Europe’s largest Jewish population before the Holocaust.
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France is spearheading a new higher education plan aimed to make it a more attractive destination for foreign students — but also a more expensive one. The move to raise foreign tuition fees has sparked protests, especially when it comes to African students who make up nearly half the country’s foreign student body.
In many ways, the University of Paris-Est Creteil, or UPEC, is the face of today’s France — and of France’s reputation abroad. Nearly 10 percent of its student body is international.
So it’s no surprise its administration has been closely tracking the government’s new higher education plan. Dubbed “Welcome to France,” the strategy aims to boost foreign student numbers from about 300,000 to half-a-million by 2027. UPEC supports many aspects of the plan. Except one: a sharp tuition hike next academic year.
No increase here
Laurent Thievenet is UPEC’s vice president for international relations. He says a large part of its international student body comes from North and sub-Saharan Africa. They can’t afford a tuition increase.
Even with the tuition increase, French fees are much lower than elsewhere in the West. But like a number of other French universities, UPEC has opted not to raise costs for foreign students. Even so, some like Nanto Ralibera, a graduate student from Madagascar, are worried.
Ralibera said he was shocked to hear about the tuition hike, which would have amounted to about 15 times more than what he pays now. It’s not part of the budget of students like himself when they left their countries.
Katarina Vuckovic from Serbia is also on a tight budget.
“I definitely have the impression that part of the strategy of the French government will not contribute to the attraction as they want,” she said.
Vuckovich says she’s happy about the quality of education here. But she says Serbian students like herself may not be afford to study in France if tuition costs are raised.
Popular but losing ground
France is the world’s top non-Anglophone destination for foreign students and fourth overall. It’s home to the iconic Sorbonne university and prestigious business schools. A big draw is also the country’s inexpensive tuition. Still France has been losing ground in recent years.
“We are competitive — we are very competitive. … The problem is that we receive a lot of students, but maybe we don’t receive them very well,” said Olivier Rollot, a French journalist specializing in higher education.
“When you come here from all over the world, you expect to live like in America, in big university campuses. In France it’s not like that. So maybe students are a bit disappointed,” he said.
The government plan aims to tackle some of the hurdles by simplifying student visas, offering better housing and more French language classes. It also aims to expand France’s educational presence in Africa.
Larger goals
Experts say the country’s higher education strategy serves larger goals, by expanding French influence and interests abroad. Over the decades, presidents and business leaders, especially from France’s former African colonies, earned university degrees here.
“It’s important to get the best students that tomorrow will be in charge of their countries,” Rollot said.
France may also profit from potential barriers to studying elsewhere, including tougher immigration restrictions in the United States and uncertainty over Brexit.
The government aims to increase scholarships to offset tuition hikes for the neediest students. But in today’s competitive environment, that may not be enough. A recent study by Campus France, which represents French education globally, found a sharp drop so far in African enrollment since the plan was announced.
“It’s not a problem for Chinese students or Indian students or American students to pay more,” Rollot said. “It’s a problem for African students to pay more.”
Rollot says the best and brightest students risk going elsewhere. Saudi Arabia and Turkey, for example, offer attractive scholarships.
While aiming to attract more students from other parts of the world, UPEC wants to expand its presence in Africa, including through collaborations with African universities. UPEC’s Thievenet says its mission aims to contribute to Africa’s development and to a more balanced relationship with France.
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A Frenchman who has spent 113 days floating across the Atlantic in a custom-made barrel says he is in high spirits as he approaches the end of his journey.
Earlier this week, Jean-Jacques Savin, 72, posted on his Facebook page that he was just 750 kilometers from the island of St. Martin. But he has traveled only 250 kilometers in the past week because of the lack of wind.
But he does not seem to mind. “There is no hurry, let’s leave time to time and now there are a series of favorable days coming to push me towards the South-West,” he wrote.
With no engine, sails or paddles, the unusual craft has relied on trade winds and currents to push Savin 4,800 kilometers from the Canary Islands to the Caribbean.
Savin spent months building his bright orange, barrel-shaped capsule of resin-coated plywood that is strong enough to withstand battering waves and other stresses.
The barrel is 3 meters long and 2.10 meters across, has a small galley area, and a mattress with straps to keep him from being tossed out of his bunk by rough seas.
Portholes on either side of the barrel and another looking into the water provide sunlight and a bit of entertainment. The unique craft also has a solar panel that generates energy for communications and GPS positioning.
As he drifts along, Savin is dropping markers in the ocean to help oceanographers study ocean currents. At the end of the journey, Savin himself will be studied by doctors for effects of solitude in close confinement.
He also posts regular updates, including GPS coordinates that track his journey, on a Facebook page.
He described his journey as a “crossing during which man isn’t captain of his ship, but a passenger of the ocean.”
Savin’s adventure, which will cost a little more than $65,000, was funded by French barrel makers and crowdfunding.
Savin hopes to end his journey on a French island, like Martinique or Guadeloupe. “That would be easier for the paperwork and for bringing the barrel back,” he told AFP.
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French police said they arrested more than 100 “yellow vest” demonstrators on Saturday in Paris as thousands of protestors took to the streets for a 23rd week of anti-government marches.
AFP journalists reported scuffles between police and protesters in the afternoon, after hours of calm, as police used anti-riot grenades and tear gas to disperse marchers in the center of the French capital.
Police headquarters reported 126 arrests and 11,000 checks on individual protesters.
Paris seemed to bear the brunt of Saturday’s protests, but other French cities were also expecting demonstrations.
Earlier this month, French President Emmanuel Macron signed into law legislation that gave security forces greater powers at demonstrations but which opponents claimed violated civil liberties.
One measure banned protestors from covering their faces, but France’s Constitutional Council, its highest constitutional authority, refused to give its green light to one of the most contentious parts of the legislation.
It would also have given the authorities the power to ban from demonstrations any individual “posing a particularly serious threat to public order.”
The “yellow vest” movement is demanding changes to the government’s social and fiscal policies.
read more
Tourists, devout Catholics and others are looking on mournfully at Notre Dame Cathedral, regretting that they can’t get inside the magnificent monument on this Easter weekend because of the damage caused by a violent fire.
The Paris fire service said Saturday that the last hot points have been cooled, and firefighters who had worked inside non-stop since Monday’s fire have now left.
Crowds lined the embankments across from the cathedral Saturday, taking photos or just staring in shock. The fire collapsed the spire and destroyed the roof of the 12th century monument, and Easter services normally held in Notre Dame are being conducted elsewhere.
Visitor Susan Harlow of Kansas City, Missouri, said: “We didn’t get here in time to see it. And now we probably never will,” given the many years it’s expected to take to repair.
read more
Architects and construction workers have stabilized the damaged structure of Notre Dame cathedral, four days after a fast-spreading fire ravaged the iconic Paris building, and firefighters were leaving the site Friday night, a fire service official said.
The promising development came as Notre Dame’s parishioners celebrated Good Friday in a nearby church, praying for the damaged monument and celebrating its rescued relics such as the Crown of Thorns believed to have been worn by Jesus at his crucifixion.
There is no more risk the edifice's walls could fall down,'' Lt. Col. Gabriel Plus, chief spokesman for the Paris fire service, told The Associated Press. Plus said firefighters have been able to cool down the walls and debris from the roof inside the cathedral, and there are no morehot points” inside.
‘A miracle’
“It’s a miracle that the cathedral is still standing, and that all the relics were saved,” he said.
Investigators believe the fire was an accident and are studying multiple factors that could have contributed.
The cathedral’s rector said a “computer glitch” may have played a role in the rapidly spreading blaze that devastated the 850-year-old architectural masterpiece.
Rector Patrick Chauvet did not elaborate on the exact nature of the glitch. “We may find out what happened in two or three months,” he told local business leaders and construction workers.
Newspaper Le Parisien reported that a computer bug could have misdirected firefighters responding to the initial fire alarm. The unsourced report said investigators are also looking into whether the fire was linked to temporary elevators being used in a renovation that was underway at the time the cathedral caught fire.
The fire burned through the network of enormous, centuries-old oak beams supporting the monument’s vaulted stone ceiling, dangerously weakening the building. Chauvet said there were fire alarms throughout the building, which he described as “well-protected.”
Firefighter spokesman Plus said there could have been “a smoldering fire inside the frame” of the Notre Dame roof that was fueled by the wind.
Short circuit suspected
Paris police investigators said they believe an electrical short circuit most likely caused the fire. It’s believed to be one of multiple leads being investigated.
“Is it linked to the renovation work? A human error? The investigation will say,” Plus said.
He warned that “the central nave remains dangerous” but said the stones are drying out from the water sprayed from hoses during nine hours of firefighting efforts.
The last artworks were taken out of the cathedral Friday and taken to the Louvre for safekeeping pending renovation, he said.
Catholic worshippers carried out the Way of the Cross ritual near the cathedral to mark Good Friday, and the Crown of Thorns relic saved from the fire was presented to worshippers at the nearby Saint-Sulpice Church.
A public veneration of the crown is normally part of the ceremonies leading up to Easter at Notre Dame. But because of the fire, the crown was shown at a service Friday evening at Saint-Sulpice instead.
Judith Kagan, a conservation official at France’s Culture Ministry, said Friday that the artworks inside Notre Dame had suffered no major damage from the fire.
Macron moves quickly
French President Emmanuel Macron met Friday with officials from the United Nations’ cultural agency, UNESCO. UNESCO representatives have offered their technical expertise to help with the reconstruction.
Macron is moving quickly on the fire-ravaged monument’s reconstruction, which is being viewed both as a push to make it part of his legacy and a way to move past the divisive yellow vest protests over social inequality in France.
Notre Dame’s reconstruction is prompting widespread debate across France, with differing views about whether it should involve new technologies and designs.
Macron hasn’t offered specifics on his vision for the roof or whether the frame should be wood, metal or concrete, according to his cultural heritage envoy, Stephane Bern. He has named a general, Jean-Louis Georgelin, former chief of staff of the armed forces, to lead the reconstruction effort.
Over $1 billion has already poured in from people from all walks of life around the world to restore Notre Dame.
According to an opinion poll by BVA institute published Friday — the first carried out since the fire — Macron has gained three points in popularity in the past month with an approval rating of 32%. That puts him back at the support level of September, before the yellow vest crisis, BVA said.
Although all French polls show that Macron’s popularity has remained low since a tax increase on retirees last year, they suggest his party may be ahead in France’s May 26 European Parliament election, with Marine Le Pen’s far-right party, the National Rally, close behind.
Despite the destruction of Notre Dame dominating the news in France, a new round of nationwide yellow vest protests was planned for Saturday. Interior Minister Christophe Castaner said 60,000 police officers were being mobilized and demonstrations near Notre Dame would be be banned as he expected some protests to turn violent.
Tough bees
In a hopeful development Friday, 180,000 bees being kept in hives on Notre Dame’s lead roof were discovered alive.
“I am so relieved. I saw satellite photos that showed the three hives didn’t burn. I thought they had gone with the cathedral,” Nicolas Geant, the monument’s beekeeper, told the AP.
Geant has looked after the bees since 2013, when they were installed as part of a citywide initiative to boost declining bee numbers.
Geant said the carbon dioxide in the fire’s heavy smoke put the bees into a sedated state instead of killing them, adding that when bees sense fire they “gorge themselves on honey” and protect their queen. European bees never abandon their hives, he said.
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Russian officials Friday continued to deny that Moscow tried to influence the 2016 U.S. election, brushing aside hundreds of pages of evidence released in special counsel Robert Muller’s report by saying it contained no proof.
“We still do not accept accusations of that sort,” Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters in a conference call. He said Russia has insisted from the very beginning of the two-year probe that “whatever investigators did, they would find no [Russian] meddling, because there was no meddling.”
In the United States, there is consensus among the nation’s intelligence community, and details published in the Mueller report, on how Moscow used a variety of tactics and people to try to influence Americans’ political opinions, hurt political enemies and help Donald Trump’s campaign. U.S. prosecutors announced indictments against 25 Russian nationals, mostly military officers and “internet trolls,” as well as three Russian entities for their roles in the meddling.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry released a statement saying that [Mueller’s conclusions] “actually confirm the absence of any argument that Russia supposedly meddled in the American elections.”
Last month, Russian officials reacted in a similar fashion after U.S. Attorney General William Barr released a summary of Mueller’s investigation. In their euphoric reactions, however, they commented only on the news that the U.S. probe had found no evidence of collusion between Trump’s campaign and Moscow, ignoring the fact that Mueller’s team had also backed the assessment of U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia in fact meddled in the 2016 election campaign.
Observers believe there is little hope that Russia will change its position on the conclusions of Mueller’s investigation.
“I don’t think there will be new statements made on the matter [by Russian officials], unless new facts are presented against Russia,” said Leonid Gusev of the Moscow-based Institute of International Research.
Consistent stance
Pavel Sharikov, a senior fellow at the Institute for U.S. and Canadian Studies, agreed with his countryman, saying that “Russia’s position on the matter has been consistent” throughout the course of Mueller’s investigation and that at this point nothing will change it.
Experts are also doubtful about the ability of Washington and Moscow to build a constructive relationship in the near future. For that to happen, they say, a new administration will have to come to the White House.
Even though the special counsel and his team could not find evidence of coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 campaign, some analysts say the cloud of collusion will linger over Trump’s presidency.
“There is no action that Russia can take that would change this [negative] narrative both in U.S. domestic politics and U.S. policies towards Russia,” Sharikov said.
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Police in Northern Ireland searched for multiple suspects Friday after the fatal shooting of a journalist during rioting in Londonderry and sought help from the public to get “a killer off the streets” and into custody.
The Police Service of Northern Ireland said 29-year-old journalist Lyra McKee was shot and killed, probably by a stray bullet, during overnight rioting in the city’s Creggan neighborhood. It said the New IRA dissident group was most likely responsible.
Assistant Chief Constable Mark Hamilton said a gunman fired a number of shots at police during the unrest that began Thursday evening.
“We believe this to be a terrorist act,” he said.
Police on Friday night released closed-circuit TV footage showing the man suspected of firing the shots that killed McKee.
Detective Superintendent Jason Murphy said the footage shows “the gunman at the corner and an individual picking up something from the ground on the same corner. We are releasing this to encourage anyone with information to make contact with us.”
He said locals know the identity of the gunman and urged them to come forward “to try to help us take a killer off the streets.”
The killing reminded many of the decades of violence that plagued Northern Ireland before the 1998 Good Friday peace agreement. It was condemned by all the major political parties as well as the prime ministers of Britain and Ireland.
Speaking in Dublin, Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said the people of Ireland and Northern Ireland had chosen peace and cooperation on Good Friday 21 years ago and will not be “dragged into the past” by political violence.
McKee rose to prominence in 2014 with a moving blog post — “Letter to my 14 year old self” — describing the struggle of growing up gay in Belfast, the capital of Northern Ireland.
In the post, she described the shame she felt at 14 as she kept the “secret” of being gay from her family and friends and the love she eventually received when she was finally able to reveal it.
She also had recently signed a contract to write two books.
Hours before her death, she tweeted a photo of the rioting with the words: “Derry tonight. Absolute madness.”
Her partner, Sara Canning, told a vigil Friday that McKee’s amazing potential had been snuffed out.
Canning said the senseless murder “has left me without the love of my life, the woman I was planning to grow old with.”
“It has left so many friends without their confidante,” she added.
A murder investigation has been launched but there have been no arrests yet. Police appealed for calm over the long Easter holiday weekend.
Hamilton said the force’s assessment “is that the New IRA are most likely to be the ones behind this.”
The New IRA is a small group who reject the 1998 Good Friday agreement that marked the Irish Republican Army’s embrace of a political solution to the long-running violence known as “The Troubles” that claimed more than 3,700 lives.
The group is also blamed for a Londonderry car bombing that did not cause any injuries in January. It is regarded as the largest of the splinter dissident groups still operating and has been linked to several other killings in the past decade.
Deputy Chief Constable Stephen Martin said Friday that police believe more than one person was involved in the shooting.
“We certainly believe there was more than one person who was involved in this last night. Obviously only one person pulled the trigger but there was more than one person,” he said.
He said the violence started after police entered the area to search for weapons and that the gunman was aiming at policemen when the rioting intensified.
“The full and total responsibility for Lyra McKee’s death lies with the organization that sent someone out with a gun,” he said.
There has been an increase in tensions in Northern Ireland in recent months with sporadic violence, much of it focused in Londonderry, also known as Derry.
Londonderry Mayor John Boyle said the city was united in mourning McKee’s death.
“I have known her since she was 16 years old,” he said. “She was bright, she was warm, she was witty. But most of all, she was an outstanding individual, a great friend to so, so many people in this city in the short time that she was with us.”
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Three renowned mountain climbers are presumed dead after an avalanche in Alberta’s Banff National Park, Canadian officials said Thursday.
Outdoor apparel company The North Face said that American Jess Roskelley and Austrians David Lama and Hansjorg Auer disappeared while attempting to climb the east face of Howse Peak on the Icefields Parkway. They were reported overdue Wednesday.
“They are missing, and local search and rescue has assumed the worst,” North Face said in a statement.
Roskelley climbed Mount Everest in 2003 at age 20. At the time he was the youngest American to climb the world’s highest peak.
The North Face says it is doing what it can to support the climbers’ families and friends.
Parks Canada said the three men were attempting to climb the east face of Howse Peak on the Icefields Parkway Wednesday.
Officials say recovery efforts are on hold because of a continued risk of avalanches.
Parks Canada says safety specialists immediately responded by air and observed signs of multiple avalanches and debris containing climbing equipment.
“Parks Canada extends its sincerest condolences to the families, friends and loved ones of the mountaineers,” Parks Canada said in a statement.
Roskelley’s father, John Roskelley, was himself a world-renowned climber who had many notable ascents in Nepal and Pakistan, mostly in the 1970s. John Roskelley joined his son on the successful Everest expedition in 2003.
Jess Roskelley grew up in Spokane, Washington, where his father was a county commissioner. John Roskelley told The Spokesman-Review the route his son and the other climbers were attempting was first done in 2000.
“It’s just one of those routes where you have to have the right conditions or it turns into a nightmare. This is one of those trips where it turned into a nightmare,” John Roskelley said.
John Roskelley had climbed the 10,810-foot Howse Peak, via a different route, in the 1970s and knows the area well. On Thursday he was preparing to go to Canada to gather Jess Roskelley’s belongings and see if he could get into the area.
“It’s in an area above a basin,” he said. “There must have been a lot of snow that came down and got them off the face.”
The elder Roskelley said: “When you’re climbing mountains, danger is not too far away. … It’s terrible for my wife and I. But it’s even worse for his wife.”
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Paris police investigators think an electrical short-circuit most likely caused the fire at Notre Dame Cathedral, a police official said Thursday, as France paid a daylong tribute to the firefighters who saved the world-renowned landmark.
A judicial police official told The Associated Press that investigators made an initial assessment of the cathedral Wednesday but don’t have a green light to search Notre Dame’s charred interior because of ongoing safety hazards.
The cathedral’s fragile walls were being shored up with wooden planks, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak by name about an ongoing investigation.
Investigators believe the fire was accidental, and are questioning both cathedral staff and workers who were carrying out renovations. Some 40 people had been questioned by Thursday, according to the Paris prosecutor’s office.
The police official would not comment on an unsourced report in Le Parisian newspaper that investigators are looking at whether the fire could have been linked to a computer glitch or the temporary elevators used in the renovation work, among other things. The prosecutor’s office said only that “all leads must be explored.”
Temporary structure proposed
Since the cathedral will be closed to the public for years, the rector of the Catholic parish that worships there has proposed building a temporary structure on the plaza in front of the Gothic-era landmark, and City Hall gave its approval Thursday “subject to technical restraints.”
“The rector has no cathedral for the moment. … But I’m going to try to invent something,” Bishop Patrick Chauvet said.
A crypt containing vestiges dating from antiquity is located under the vast esplanade.
President Emmanuel Macron has said he wants Notre Dame to be restored in five years, in time for the 2024 Summer Olympics, which Paris is hosting. Restoration specialists have questioned the ambitious timeline, with some saying it could take three times that long to rebuild the 850-year-old architectural treasure.
Honoring the firefighters
Earlier Thursday, Macron held a ceremony at the Elysee Palace to thank the hundreds of firefighters who battled the fast-moving fire at Notre Dame for nine hours starting Monday evening, preventing the structure’s destruction and rescuing many of the important relics held inside.
“We’ve seen before our eyes the right things perfectly organized in a few moments, with responsibility, courage, solidarity and a meticulous organization,” Macron said. “The worst has been avoided.”
The cathedral’s lead roof and its soaring spire were destroyed, but Notre Dame’s iconic bell towers, rose windows, organ and precious artworks were saved.
Macron said the firefighters will receive an Honor Medal for their courage and devotion.
Paris City Hall also held a ceremony in the firefighters’ honor Thursday afternoon, with a Bach violin concert, two giant banners strung from the monumental city headquarters and readings from Victor Hugo’s “The Hunchback of Notre Dame.”
Remarkably, no one was killed in the blaze that broke out as the cathedral was in the initial stages of a lengthy restoration.
Securing area, cathedral
A large swath of the island in the Seine River where Notre Dame is located was officially closed Thursday by police, who cited “important risks” of collapse and falling objects. The area had been unofficially blocked off since the fire.
Meanwhile, workers using a crane removed some statues to lessen the weight on the cathedral’s fragile gables, or support walls, to keep them from collapsing since they were no longer supported by the roof and its network of centuries-old timbers that were consumed by the inferno.
They also secured the support structure above one of Notre Dame’s rose windows with wooden planks.
Saving history
Among the firefighters honored Thursday was Paris fire brigade chaplain Jean-Marc Fournier, who told the Le Parisian daily he was able to save the cathedral’s consecrated hosts. The paper said he climbed on altars to remove large paintings, but that he was especially proud “to have removed Jesus” from the Cathedral — a reference to the Catholic belief that consecrated hosts are the body of Christ.
An earlier report credited Fournier with helping salvage the crown of thorns believed to have been worn by Jesus at his crucifixion, but Fournier told France Info Thursday he arrived after rescuers had already broken the relic’s protective covering and an official who had the secret code needed to unlock it finished the job. He praised the action that preserved “this extraordinary relic, this patrimony of humanity.”
Among others honored was Myriam Chudzinski, one of the first firefighters to reach the roof as the blaze raged. Loaded with gear, they climbed hundreds of steps up the cathedral’s narrow spiral staircase to the top of one of the two towers.
“We knew that the roof was burning, but we didn’t really know the intensity,” she told reporters. “It was from upstairs that you understood that it was really dramatic. It was very hot and we had to retreat, retreat. It was spreading quickly.”
Benedicte Contamin, who came to view the damaged cathedral from afar Thursday, said she’s sad but grateful it’s still there.
“It’s a chance for France to bounce back, a chance to realize what unites us, because we have been too much divided over the past years,” she said.
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In a show of solidarity, the foreign ministers of Germany and Portugal laid two wreaths near the site where 29 German tourists died on Wednesday after their bus overturned on the Portuguese island of Madeira.
The bus — carrying 55 tourists, a guide and a driver — veered off a steep road in the coastal town of Canico, near Madeira’s capital city, Funchal, and came to a halt next to a house, which was damaged in the crash, authorities said.
Portugal’s public prosecutor’s office opened an investigation into the accident, the cause of which authorities said they could not yet determine. Local TV channel SIC attributed it to either brake failure or a problem with the accelerator cable.
Heiko Maas, Germany’s foreign minister, landed in Madeira on Thursday evening with a team of doctors, psychologists and consular officials to meet those affected and thank Portugal for its help.
As soon as he touched down, the minister and his team headed to the scene of the crash, where he paid tribute to the victims and, alongside his Portuguese counterpart, held a minute of silence.
Flowers left near accident site
Shocked residents also laid flowers by the road where the accident took place.
“This is a terrible event,” Maas told reporters during his visit to the site. “We can’t just stay in Germany watching and celebrating Easter.”
Maas then visited Funchal’s hospital, where 28 people were treated for head, abdominal, chest and other injuries, a hospital spokesman said on Thursday morning.
A statement released on Thursday evening by Madeira’s regional health service confirmed that 17 of the 28 injured remained in hospital and that 10 people were already discharged.
None of those injured are currently in a life-threatening condition, Portugal’s foreign minister, Augusto Santos Silva, told reporters after he arrived in Madeira on Thursday afternoon.
“We are working flat-out to bring people who are injured and capable of being transported, to identify those who have died and to inform their families.” Maas said. “It is very difficult work.”
Many victims were retirees
Authorities on the island confirmed all 29 people killed were German. Madeira’s regional health service said 17 were women and 12 were men. Many were retirees, said Germany’s best-selling daily, Bild.
The 29 victims were members of a bigger holiday group, other members of which were traveling on another bus, a regional civil protection spokesman said.
Two of the injured were Portuguese and the rest were foreign nationals, a hospital spokesman said. Santos Silva confirmed the two Portuguese citizens were the driver and the tour guide.
Images taken by Reuters photographers on Thursday showed the bulk of the wreckage had been removed, leaving some debris still scattered on the ground.
Tributes poured in and three days of mourning were declared in Portugal on Thursday in honor of the victims of the bus crash.
“I have no words to describe what happened. I cannot face the suffering of these people,” Canico Mayor Filipe Sousa told SIC TV.
Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa sent his “deepest condolences” to victims’ families, while German Chancellor Angela Merkel expressed “sadness and shock” at the scale of the tragedy.
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When archaeologists in Spain unearthed layers of human bones from a mass grave last year, the remains of one body emerged draped in a shirt that had the letters “MG” embroidered on it in red.
The initials spoke volumes to Daniel Galán.
They sparked hope he would be able to provide a proper burial for his grandfather, Miguel Galán, a village mayor who disappeared eight decades ago along with tens of thousands of others summarily executed by the forces of Gen. Francisco Franco during and after the 1936-39 Spanish Civil War.
Galán is among a small number of descendants promised provincial government funds for DNA tests to confirm that their ancestors were tossed into a mass grave at Paterna Cemetery in Valencia. But with Spain’s national election later this month exposing an ideological divide that has echoes of the clash of left and right during the civil war, some Spaniards worry they may lose the chance to recover their dead.
The far-right Vox party, which recently exploded onto Spain’s political scene, wants to scrap efforts to exhume and identify Franco’s victims. Its ambition counters the pledge by the ruling Socialists to remove Franco’s remains from a huge, publicly maintained mausoleum near Madrid so they no longer attract nationalists celebrating the dictator as a hero.
“Depending on who wins, logically there would be a change. If the right wins, well, all this will just stop or worse,” Galán, 61, said while visiting Paterna Cemetery to repair the grainy black-and-white photo of his grandfather, which had fallen off the headstone.
For other Spaniards, digging up bodies just stirs up a painful past unnecessarily and runs counter to the desire for reconciliation that made it possible for Spain to have a bloodless transition from dictatorship to democracy after Franco’s death in 1975. They also fear that the exhumations could lead to a shaming of those who had relatives on the side of Franco*s right-wing forces.
“I think that that period of history was settled,” Elena Escribano, a 60-year-old housewife, said at a Vox rally. “Not knowing where a relative is is hard, but there are victims on both sides. We must pray for them but we must look to the future.”
Activists and relatives pushed for the excavations after the then-Socialist government passed the 2007 Law of Historical Memory, which allowed exhumations of mass graves and condemned atrocities committed during Franco’s regime. But the law did not guarantee funding, and the conservative Popular Party that governed between 2011 and 2018 included none in the national budget.
The result is a piecemeal and sometimes cumbersome process.
At Paterna, the precarious funding scheme and a backlog of work meant the remains of 244 people — Galán’s grandfather possibly among them — ended up being stored in a ceramics museum.
Rosa Pérez, a local lawmaker who championed funding for families to exhume mass graves at Paterna Cemetery and other sites in the province of Valencia, has promised that money will be there to carry out forensic and DNA tests on the bones stored in the museum regardless of who wins the April 28 national election.
But Pérez is putting on hold any spending for new exhumations until after regional and local elections this month and next to see if her United Left party remains in power locally. So far, archaeologists have removed the remains of 450 of the 2,237 bodies thought to be in the mass graves at the Paterna Cemetery.
“This shouldn’t be how this is being handled,” Pérez said. “We have been in need of a national plan for a long time.”
Experts have estimated for the Spanish government that 740 mass graves and 9,000 bodies have been exhumed nationally since 2000. That leaves an estimated 114,000 bodies still hidden in 2,500 mass graves, they added.
The Socialist government of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez wanted to include 15 million euros ($20 million) in the national budget that failed to pass this year to continue identifying victims of Franco’s regime. It has also mentioned establishing a “truth commission” to investigate the crimes of his dictatorship, and is studying a plan to have 25,000 bodies exhumed in five years.
But Sánchez faces strong competition in the April 28 national election, at which the far-right Vox is widely anticipated to win its first seats in the Spanish Parliament.
Vox has already successfully pushed the Popular Party to commit to rolling back regional laws that allow the exhumations of mass graves in Spain’s south in order to support their formation of a government for Andalusia earlier this year.
Now, Vox could prove influential in the creation of possible coalition government at the national level after the election.
Popular Party president and opposition leader, Pablo Casado, who in 2015 called those who want to recover the mass grave bodies “old fogeys,” wants a new “Law of Concord” that would subsume the Law of Historical Memory.
The leader of Vox, Santiago Abascal, criticized the exhumations when he kicked off his campaign.
“How are we going to condemn our grandparents?” Abascal asked supporters. “For us, we only have one doctrine for the recent historical memory. And that is liberty: liberty for you to respect your grandparents.”
Outside the walls of the Paterna Cemetery, a walk through scrubland leads to a wall in which bullet holes from the Francoist firing squads that executed people like Miguel Galán still are visible.
Galán insists he does not want to drag Spain back into its bloody past.
“The difference is between them lying in mass graves like rotting dogs and being able to take them and give them dignified burial,” Galán said. “For those who say we are only reopening old wounds, that is not true, because these wounds have been open for 80 years.”
read moreA Ukrainian court has ruled that the 2016 nationalization of a major bank owned by a powerful tycoon was illegal.
The court in Kyiv ruled on Thursday that Pryvatbank, owned by tycoon Ihor Kolomoyskyi, was nationalized in 2016 illegally.
It was not immediately clear how the government would return the bank, once Ukraine’s biggest private lender with a reported capital shortfall of $5 billion, to Kolomoyskyi.
Ukraine’s National Bank vowed to appeal the ruling.
Kolomoiskyi’s figure has loomed large in Ukraine in the past few weeks as the country goes to the polls to elect a new president Sunday. Kolomoyskyi is an archrival of incumbent President Petro Poroshenko. The tycoon is believed to have ties to Volodymyr Zelenskiy, a comedian who emerged as an odds-on favorite in the race.
read more
After 17 days of recounts and controversies, Turkey’s opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) was confirmed the official winner Wednesday in the Istanbul mayoral election.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is seeking to overturn the historic vote, which ends his Justice and Development Party’s (AKP), and other Erdogan-affiliated parties’, 25-year control of Turkey’s largest city.
Ekrem Imamoglu, Istanbul’s new mayor, addressed thousands of jubilant supporters outside the city’s mayoral building.
“I take this victory for Turks, Kurds, Greeks and Armenians,” Imamoglu said, referring to Istanbul’s diverse population.
Imamoglu’s victory speech included a theme of inclusivity that underpinned his winning campaign, which secured a narrow victory by 14,000 votes out of 9 million ballots cast.
Potential game changer
Victory for the CHP in Istanbul, the country’s industrial, financial and cultural capital, is already touted as a potential political game changer for an opposition that has suffered nearly two decades of defeat at the hands of the AKP.
“The unquestionable significance of this election is that power can be changed through the ballot box, and that is a big change,” said Soli Ozel, professor of international relations, at Istanbul’s Kadir Has University. “On the other hand, it will be quite disastrous for the (AK) party — in terms of finances, power, psychology, morale— to lose Istanbul.”
The AKP vigorously challenged the result, calling for numerous partial recounts of the millions of votes. In an attempt to prove fraud, interior minister Suleyman Soylu sent police to knock on the doors of Istanbul residents to confirm voter lists.
Erdogan is calling for the vote to be annulled. Tuesday, AKP officials delivered five suitcases of evidence to the Supreme Electoral Board to back calls to rescind the Istanbul election.
Analysts warn of the dangers a vote annulment holds.
“All the opponents from various parties and different ways of life are tired of this regime, and people are rejoicing now,” political scientist Cengiz Aktar said. “The annulation of the vote will have a devastating effect on them. I worry about the reaction.”
The High Election Board (YSK) is predominantly made up of government and presidential appointees. Opposition parties have in recent polls questioned the board’s impartiality, but have raised few criticisms of its handling of the Istanbul result.
Evidence of impartiality
On election night, the YSK declared Imamoglu to be provisionally ahead, contradicting claims of victory by AKP candidate Binali Yildirim. Analysts cite the electoral board’s decision to give Imamoglu the mayoral mandate, and with it further political momentum to his claim for power, as further evidence of impartiality.
“The credibility of the electoral board was on the line,” Ozel said. “I think they have been compromised in other places, but at least the procedural lines were at last followed (in Istanbul).
“In that sense, it’s both a political victory for Mr. Imamoglu, and at least a somewhat legal victory, too. So we are, in my judgment, on a different plateau. A threshold has been crossed,” he added.
Observers suggest the AKP will be lobbying the YSK hard behind the scenes to overturn the vote, given the importance of Istanbul to the party.
“Istanbul presents so many patronage opportunities. It greases the wheels of politics for those who control it,” Ozel said. “And for the AKP, in the last 25 years, they have truly mastered that, as well.”
“They’ve generated enormous urban rents, which they used to help the dependent and poorer sections of society, but also enrich contractors, who in turn supported the party. So, that wheel of fortune will be broken,” he added.
Significant risks
Any rerun of the Istanbul vote brings with it significant risks for the AKP, as well as for Erdogan. The underlining causes for the AKP’s defeat — high unemployment and inflation — remain unchanged. Observers also point out that voters usually punish the party blamed for re-elections, especially any considered unjustified.
There are unconfirmed reports that the AKP has conducted private polls in Istanbul that indicate Imamoglu would win with a larger margin of victory in a revote.
Analysts also warn that Turkey’s current economic woes could be further exacerbated by another Istanbul poll held in a profoundly polarized atmosphere.
Analyst Atilla Yesilada of Global Source Partners suggests while Erdogan is publicly calling for another vote, he may not be too disappointed if his calls for a new ballot are rejected.
“Erdogan’s finely honed political instincts tell him repeating the elections carry several political and economic hazards, which are costlier than losing the center of cronyism,” Yesilada said.
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France on Wednesday announced it would invite architects from around the world to submit designs for replacing the spire of Notre-Dame cathedral after a devastating blaze, as the government braced for a mammoth restoration challenge.
Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said the contest would decide whether the monument should have a new spire at all and if so, whether it should be identical to the fallen 19th-century model or be a wholly new design.
The world looked on in horror Monday as flames engulfed the 850-year-old gothic masterpiece seen as encapsulating the soul of Paris and the spire came crashing down.
Explaining that having no new spire at all was an option, Philippe noted that Notre-Dame had been without a steeple for part of its history.
“The international contest will settle the question of whether we should build a new spire, whether we should rebuild the spire that was designed and built by [Eugene] Viollet-Le-Duc, in identical fashion, or whether we should… endow Notre-Dame cathedral with a new spire adapted to the techniques and the challenges of our era.”
Philippe described the task of rebuilding it as “a huge challenge and historic responsibility,” a day after President Emmanuel Macron said the entire restoration should be completed in just five years.
The bells of French cathedrals were to ring out at 1650 GMT on Wednesday to mark the exact moment when the fire started on Monday.
Macron had vowed to rebuild the iconic monument, the real star of Victor Hugo’s “Hunchback of Notre Dame” by 2024 when France hosts the summer Olympics.
“We can do it,” he said Tuesday, calling France “a nation of builders.”
On Wednesday afternoon, he was set to chair a meeting of senior government, church, conservation and Paris city officials to launch the reconstruction process.
Rebate debate
No sooner had firefighters extinguished the flames than pledges of donations towards restoring France’s best-loved monument, which attracted 12 million visitors in 2018, began to pour in.
Within 24 hours, the pledges had reached more than 800 million euros ($900 million), with French business magnates and corporations jostling to outshine each other with displays of generosity.
But the slew of announcements raised eyebrows in France, with some leftist politicians arguing that the ultra-rich could best help protect the country’s cultural heritage by fully paying their taxes — or helping the “human cathedral” of people in need.
The huge tax breaks available on the donations also caused some unease, prompting Francois-Henri Pinault, the billionaire CEO of the Kering luxury goods empire, to announce he would forfeit his rebate.
“The donation for Notre-Dame of Paris will not be the object of any tax deduction. Indeed, the Pinault family considers that it is out of the question to make French taxpayers shoulder the burden,” Pinault said in a statement.
Pinault had led the pledges of donations starting Monday night with a promise of 100 million euros.
Billionaire Bernard Arnault and his LVMH luxury conglomerate, Total oil company and cosmetics giant L’Oreal also each pledged 100 million euros or more, while US tech giant Apple said it would give an unspecified amount.
French corporations are eligible for a 60-percent tax rebate on cultural donations.
The government said Wednesday that figure would remain unchanged, but increased the rebate to 75 percent on individual donations for Notre-Dame of up to 1,000 euros.
Bigger private donations will continue to qualify for the standard 66 percent rebate.
Rebuilding for 2024 Olympics
On Tuesday evening, Macron set out an ambitious timeline for restoring the landmark that took nearly two centuries to build and which has played a role in many of the defining moments of French history.
“We will rebuild the cathedral even more beautifully and I want it to be finished within five years,” Macron said in an address to the nation, in which he hailed how the fire had shown the capacity of France to mobilize and unite.
In a sign of the monument’s resilience, the copper rooster that topped its spire was found Tuesday in the rubble of the roof, “battered but apparently restorable” according to a spokesperson for the culture ministry.
The walls, bell towers and the most famous circular stained-glass windows also remain intact.
But the floor of the nave was left strewn with blackened roof beams and chunks of the collapsed upper vaulting.
Experts have warned that full restoration could take longer than five years, with one of the biggest tasks involving replacing the precious oak “forest” that propped up the roof.
“I’d say decades,” Eric Fischer, head of the foundation in charge of restoring the 1,000-year-old Strasbourg cathedral, told AFP.
‘Long, complex’ investigation
Investigators trying to determine the cause of the blaze are questioning workers who were renovating the steeple, an operation suspected of accidentally triggering the blaze.
The police have already spoken to around 30 people from five different construction companies.
Public prosecutor Remy Heitz has said the investigation threatened to be “long and complex”.
Meanwhile, work to secure the cathedral continues.
Junior interior minister Laurent Nunez said Tuesday that although “some weaknesses” had been identified, overall the building was “holding up OK”.
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“Is your boss working for Moscow?”
It isn’t a question any Western counter-intelligence officer wants to be asked by counterparts in agencies from allied NATO countries, but for Ferenc Katrein it wasn’t such an infrequent query during his decade-and-a-half at Hungary’s Constitution Protection Office.
Worst of all, there were grounds for suspicions about Hungary’s civilian intelligence services, doubts Katrein himself harbored.
Five-and-half years ago Katrein left Hungary’s counter-espionage agency, where he’d risen to become executive head of operations and later chief adviser to the director. “There comes a point when you have to say no,” he told me as we sipped coffee in a cafe near a railway station.
“It was both a matter of being asked to do things I didn’t think right and blocked from doing things we needed to do,” he adds. The final straw for Ferenc was being obstructed from mounting operations to counter Russian intelligence activity in Hungary by, among other things, targeting Russian officers in a bid to recruit them as double agents.
‘Russian’ bank relocation
Katrein, who now lives outside Hungary, agreed to be interviewed by VOA amid a political storm in Budapest over a controversial decision by the government of Viktor Orban to agree to the relocation to the Hungarian capital of a Russian-controlled development bank steeped in Cold War history.
Known now as the International Investment Bank, formerly as Comecon, the obscure Russian-controlled financial institution is headed by Nikolai Kosov, whose parents had storied careers in the Soviet spy agency KGB.
Opposition politicians in Hungary, as well as Western security officials, have expressed fear the bank will be used as cover for Russian espionage activities in Europe.
Katrein shares the worries, hence his agreement to the interview and his readiness to discuss the politicization of the Hungarian intelligence services and the Russian threat to Europe.
“The Russians will use the bank, as they use other state-owned companies and organizations that set up shop overseas, for intelligence purposes,” he says. “This hurts me as a former counter-intelligence officer to see this bank being allowed to re-base in Budapest,” he adds.
The bank has denied it or its director is in any way linked to Russian intelligence.
But Katrein says his old agency won’t have the resources or manpower to be able to monitor what the bank is up to or the activities of its employees. The Orban government has extended diplomatic immunity to the bank, further shielding it. He believes Orban is anxious to play Russia and the West against each other.
“All the Russian [intelligence] services — the GRU, FSB and SVR — are highly active in Hungary and they have free rein, that was my problem. There was no effort to curtail or control them. We are a member of NATO and we have a responsibility to our allies. The question some of us started asking was, ‘Who is our partner, NATO or the Russians? The question was being asked inside the building. We didn’t understand what was going on,” he says.
The original sin in Hungary after the fall of communism was not to effect a root-and-branch clearing of the country’s intelligence agencies. “We didn’t do what the Czechs did or what happened to the intelligence services in the Baltic countries. They all rebuilt their agencies from scratch, with the help of the British,” he says.
One of the first triggers for Hungarian agents to question operations in their agencies was in 2007, a decade after Hungary had joined NATO. During the socialist administration of Ferenc Gyurcsany, the then-chief intelligence director Lajos Galambos invited Russian operatives to help him find the source of political leaks to Orban’s party, Fidesz.
Sixteen Hungarian intelligence officers were polygraphed by two Russian operatives, who pretended to be Bulgarian psychologists, according to documents declassified and released by Hungary’s general prosecutor last week.
Katrein says the focus was on up-and-coming younger officers, many of whom are now in leadership positions in the agency. “The polygraphs were very deep and probing and they have a lot of information on those people. If I had that information on the leaders of Russian counterintelligence, I’d consider that a big coup,” he says.
Counterintelligence in crisis
The politicization, as well as demoralization, of the counterintelligence agency continued under Orban, who was re-elected in 2010 replacing Gyurcsany, says Katrein. Around 100 experienced intelligence specialists have left the agency in the past eight years, frustrated by having their hands tied when it comes to combating Russian espionage activity.
“Hungary is being used as a logistical base to launch operations in other European Union countries,” Katrein explains. “They can organize operations and missions in Hungary without many worries,” he adds.
Asked how he would characterize the Russian espionage and active measures threat to Europe, he doesn’t hesitate in replying, “It is grave.” Katrein adds, “I have no problems with Russians; I like the culture. But the Russian government is very aggressive against the European Union. You shouldn’t underestimate these guys.”
read moreUkrainian authorities say they have arrested seven people they claim were sent by Russian security services to carry out political killings and other “terrorist” acts, including the slaying of Ukrainian intelligence agents.
Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) chief Vasyl Hrytsak made the announcement April 17, four days ahead of Ukraine’s presidential runoff vote.
At a news conference, Hrytsak said the SBU thwarted “a sabotage and reconnaissance terrorist group of the Russian special services” that consisted of seven people, all of whom have been arrested.
One person who assisted the group was arrested April 17, he said, but it was not clear if that was in addition to the other seven.
Russia seized control of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in March 2014 and has given crucial backing to militants who hold parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in a war that has killed some 13,000 people since April 2014.
Hrytsak alleged that since early 2017, the Russian security services had sent several “autonomously operating” sabotage groups into parts of Ukraine including the separatist-held section of the Donetsk region.
He said these groups were responsible for attacks including a car bombing that killed Ukrainian military intelligence officer Maksim Shapoval in June 2017 and one that missed its apparent target, also a military intelligence officer, in Kyiv earlier this month.
Prosecutors said at the time that the man suspected of planting that bomb, on April 4, was killed by the blast. However, Hrytsak said that the suspect, a Russian man, was alive and had given information to the Ukrainian authorities.
Hrytsak alleged that “the true organizer” of operations that included the killing of Shapoval was an officer of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), Dmitry Minayev.
SBU officials identified one of the seven suspects whose arrests were announced on April 17 as Timur Dzortov, who they said was deputy chief of staff to the leader of Russia’s Ingushetia region, Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, in 2015-17.
There was no immediate comment from Russian officials.
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Just a couple of days ago, Severine Vilbert strolled by Notre Dame with her eldest daughter on a chilly but brilliantly sunny day. The blossoms were out and the cathedral glistened in the light.
“We were looking at Notre Dame and saying, ‘Wow, it’s such a beautiful monument, how proud we were to be Parisian and live in this beautiful city,'” Vilbert recalled, not bothering to fight back tears. “And then, it was like a nightmare for us.”
On Tuesday, Vilbert retraced her footsteps in a transformed Paris. A few drops of rain fell from a slate grey sky, as she joined thousands of Parisians and tourists paying a vigil of sorts to a smoking-but-still-cherished icon.
The inferno that raced through the more than 850-year-old cathedral Monday night destroyed most of the roof. Its 90-meter (295-foot) spire collapsed in the blaze, causing selfie-snapping onlookers to gasp.
Investigators are scouring for clues from the fire that they consider likely, for the moment, accidental.
“I’m a Christian. I’m a Catholic. I think it’s really terrible about what’s happened,” George Castro, a French-Colombian, said of the blaze that occurred just a week before Easter. “It’s really, really sad.”
But amazingly, no lives have been lost and priceless treasures were saved, along with Notre Dame’s stunning rose window. Reports quoted experts assessing the building as structurally sound.
The fire is the latest assault on one of the world’s most beautiful cities. Over the past few years, Paris has weathered two massive terrorist attacks that bookended 2015, and most recently the yellow vest crisis that defaced some of its most prestigious landmarks and deeply divided French citizens.
Some Parisians, like Nicolas Chouin, believe the blaze can help to reconcile a fractured France.
“It’s something beyond us, beyond our little problems of everyday life,” he said, gazing at the skeleton of the cathedral’s roof. “Of course, it doesn’t solve all the political issues — let’s see if it’s just a parenthesis.”
President Emmanuel Macron canceled a major address to the nation Monday night, in which he was expected to outline measures to assuage the yellow vest anger, to race to the scene of the fire.
“We will rebuild the cathedral even more beautiful,” he vowed on Tuesday, promising to restore the edifice within five years.
Companies and business tycoons have lost no time to turn his promises into reality, donating hundreds of millions of dollars within hours of the blaze. The French government and Paris city hall have promised to donate hundreds of millions more.
“We’re French, we’re proud of being French, and we’re going to rebuild it,” Vilbert said. “It’s going to take many years, but it’s going to be great.”
Tourists and foreign residents, who flock to the French capital yearly by the millions, are just as devastated.
“There’s beauty, there’s history, there’s culture — it represents Paris,” said Briton Rhia Patel, who studies French literature at the Sorbonne University. “It’s what people travel long and far to come and find.”
Staring at the charred remains, retired Paris firefighter Philippe Facquet offered an expert assessment of the challenges that faced his former colleagues.
“Attacking this kind of fire is very difficult,” he said, “because there are narrow spiral staircases, so carrying hoses and other heavy material is very difficult. And the adjacent roads are very narrow — so a lot of complications.”
Then Facquet offered his personal assessment — that he felt “very bad.”
“It’s our mother, it’s our patrimony, it’s the symbol of Paris,” he said. “Our heart is bleeding.”
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