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French President Emmanuel Macron acknowledged the “pain of colonization” Saturday during a visit to New Caledonia that was rich with symbolism and emotion as the South Pacific archipelago prepares to vote on whether to break free of French rule.

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

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

Activists remembered

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Warning against friction

Macron warned against letting the referendum fuel local tensions.

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

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

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

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

The Indian Ocean island of Mayotte, which chose to remain French in the 1970s, voted in 2009 for closer ties with the mainland.
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The Supreme Court in Russia’s Chechnya region Friday rejected an appeal of the extension of the pretrial detention of the chief of a human rights group. That means Oyub Titiyev, the director of Memorial’s Grozny office, will remain in jail until at least June 9.

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

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

Other activists, similar cases

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Danila Galperovich of VOA’s Russian Service contributed original reporting.
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Russian police have detained supporters of opposition politician Alexei Navalny, raiding their homes and detaining them on the streets of various Russian cities ahead of Saturday protests against President Vladimir Putin, whose new term starts Monday.

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

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

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

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

Crackdown warning

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

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

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

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

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

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

Navalny office raided

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#MeToo campaign

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

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

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

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

An exclusive survey by Reuters in February found more than 120 staff from leading global charities were fired or lost their jobs in 2017 over sexual misconduct.
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Dr. Paul Offit is an infectious disease specialist and an expert in vaccines. He’s been at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia since 1992. Since then he says not a year has gone by when he has not seen a child die from a vaccine-preventable disease. It’s largely, he says, because the parents chose not to vaccinate their child.

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

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

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

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

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

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

23 viruses, two cancers

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

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

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

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

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

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

Vaccine refusal spreads

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

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

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

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

Australia HPV work

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

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

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

Cervical cancer takes 20 to 30 years to develop. By 2035, Australia expects to see up to a 45 percent decline in deaths from cervical cancer all because of a vaccine and the government’s policy.
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Vaccines can prevent 23 viruses and two types of cancer, and more vaccines are in the works, including one for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Yet, despite these advances, many people choose to avoid getting these vaccinations for themselves and for their children. VOA’s Carol Pearson has more.
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Prime Minister Theresa May’s Conservative Party avoided a wipeout in London local elections and eked out gains in Brexit-supporting regions elsewhere, results Friday showed, denting the opposition Labour Party’s hopes of a big win.

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

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

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

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

Labour’s limitations

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

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

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

Slim majority in Parliament

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

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

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

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

Ruling party losses typical

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

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

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

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

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

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

But May’s party lost control of the highly prized council in the Trafford area of the northern city of Manchester, its only foothold in an Labour-dominated important economic region where the Conservatives have spent years trying to win support.
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Six German Roman Catholic cardinals have held talks with other top Church officials at the Vatican about the possibility of allowing non-Catholic Christian spouses to receive communion. Any such move is likely to alarm conservative Catholics who believe Pope Francis is already veering too far from the traditional doctrine.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Many protesters were still skeptical.

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

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

Pashinian then called on demonstrators to cease their protests.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But as the protests against him attracted tens of thousands nightly in Yerevan’s central square, Sargsyan unexpectedly resigned just six days after being appointed prime minister.
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The opposition lawmaker who has led weeks of mass demonstrations in Armenia called Wednesday for the protests to take a break after a surprising move by the ruling party appeared to clear the way for him to become prime minister.

On a fast-moving day of turmoil that began with crowds blocking roads, railways and the airport in the capital of Yerevan, the head of the ruling Republican Party’s faction in parliament said it would vote May 8 for any prime minister candidate nominated by a third of the body’s 105 members.

That effectively promised the job to protest leader Nikol Pashinian, just one day after parliament rejected him.

Pashinian told a Wednesday evening rally that his Elk party and the two other opposition factions would nominate him on Thursday. Together, those parties hold 47 seats — well over the one-third mark set by the Republicans, who will not nominate a candidate of their own.

“Armenia will have a prime minister on May 8,” Republican faction leader Vagram Bagdasarian said.

In turn, Pashinian called for supporters not to protest on Thursday, saying: “Tomorrow, we will work in parliament.”

Pashinian was the only candidate nominated in Tuesday’s parliament vote for prime minister, but lost 45-55.

The protests began April 13, plunging Armenia into political turmoil and leading to the resignation of Prime Minister Serzh Sargsyan just days after his appointment.

Sargsyan had led the country as president for 10 years, but stepped down because of term limits. Soon thereafter, parliament named him prime minister under a new government structure that gave the post greater powers. Protesters said the move effectively allowed him to remain as leader indefinitely.

After he lost the vote in parliament, Pashinian called for Wednesday’s nationwide strike.

Earlier in the day, Pashinian warned the government not to bring troops to the capital to quell the demonstrations.

“Police and security services are neutral, and if they (government) will bring for example the army to Yerevan, all soldiers will come to us and they will join us. And there is no way for any solution by force,” he said in an interview with The Associated Press.

Acts of civil disobedience took place elsewhere in the small former Soviet republic. Protesters occupied the city hall in Gyumri, Armenia’s second-largest city, and some significant highways in the countryside became impassable. The highways are key conduits to Iran and Georgia; Armenia’s two other borders, with Azerbaijan and Turkey, are closed.

The State Revenue Committee warned that the blockages could “present a serious blow to Armenia’s food security” and urged protesters not to interfere with food deliveries.

The national railway said it was suspending passenger service for Yerevan’s suburban area because of protesters blocking the tracks. 

About 300 demonstrators used cars to block the road to Armenia’s main international airport, forcing many travelers to make long walks with their luggage to catch flights.

In the AP interview, Pashinian said that by rejecting him as prime minister, the ruling party had dealt itself a fatal blow.

“I think that the Republican Party yesterday have made a suicide pact, as a party, as a whole,” he said.
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With snap elections in Turkey less than two months away, the government has begun investing billions of dollars in financial giveaways in an unprecedented spending spree that has sent the lira to near record lows and prompted concerns about the health of the economy.

The currency fell by nearly 2 percent against major currencies Wednesday in response to Prime Minister Binali Yildirim’s announcement of a $5.9 billion spending package. Along with tax social security payment amnesties, the bulk of the spending is to be split into two payments of 1,000 lira — the equivalent of $240 — to 13 million pensioners. The payments are timed to coincide with religious holidays, with the first installment set to be paid a week before the June 24 vote.

The unprecedented level and nature of the spending caught the financial markets by surprise.

“When the elections were first announced, there was an assumption given the very short time until the elections, the government cannot significantly let fiscal balances deteriorate,” said economist Inan Demir of Nomura Securities.

“Given this spending commitment can be recurring for coming years, it shows there can be more lasting damage to the fiscal balances than what the market assumed at the announcement of the election,” Demir added.

In another sign of investor concerns, the S&P rating agency downgraded Turkey’s credit rating.

“Our downgrade reflects our view that there is a risk of a hard landing for Turkey’s overheating, credit-fueled economy,” a statement from S&P read. “The ongoing weakness of the Turkish lira is not only fueling inflation, but also amplifying risks related to Turkey’s high external debt.”

The lira already has suffered heavy losses this year amid growing investor concern over a government policy of stimulating growth through cheap loans and expenditures.

Deputy Prime Minister Mehmet Simsek criticized the announcement of the S&P downgrade.

“The timing of the decision is very meaningful,” tweeted Simsek. Ankara routinely accuses international investors and rating agencies of conspiring against it.

The ruling AK Party has, in the past, shunned election spending giveaways. In the June 2015 election, the main opposition CHP was condemned for advocating almost identical policies to those announced this week.

No certain victory

Analysts interpret the sudden spending as a declaration of intent by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the AKP, whom polls indicate remain short of winning the vote by an absolute majority.

“It’s [elections] not in the pocket. He [Erdogan] would like to ensure he will win, because he has no luxury to lose, as simple as that,” political scientist Cengiz Aktar said.

The June elections will usher in an executive presidential system, giving sweeping powers to the new president. Observers see the polls as an effort by Erdogan to consolidate his authority.

While Erdogan remains well ahead in opinion polls, most surveys indicate he remains short of the required 50 percent plus one vote to win outright. Equally, the AKP still is not assured of victory, with the traditionally splintered opposition working hard to unite. The opposition also is targeting economic discontent.

Although the economy is growing at more than 7 percent, due to massive government spending and cheap business loans, unemployment and inflation remain in the double digits.

Eighty percent of people polled this month registered dissatisfaction with the economy, a figure up from 62 percent in March.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, or OECD, noted that 29 percent of people between the ages of 15 and 29 were out of work or not in education or training, the lowest number among its 35 members.

“The voter might attend the ballot box to register his or her protest with AKP’s impoverishing growth policies,” said analyst Atilla Yesilada of Global Source Partners.

Commitment to winning

The AKP spending commitments are being widely seen as a shrewd move to address voter discontent, but also a possible sign of the party’s commitment to winning, whatever the financial cost.

“I think it [spending] will be hugely popular. But if they don’t see any movements in the polls, we may see more measures. He [Erdogan] is not taking anything for granted and the size of the expenditure shows he wants to pull all levers necessary to secure a first-round victory and majority in parliament,” economist Demir said.

International investors were widely seen as welcoming Erdogan’s call for snap elections, in the belief a swift victory for the president and his AKP would usher in a new period of political and economic stability and continuity. Analysts warn the growing financial cost of the election, however, can only add to growing unease among investors.
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The head of the Russian Olympic Committee is stepping down from his post, three months after athletes from his country were forced to compete at the Pyeongchang Games as neutral athletes.

Alexander Zhukov said he wants to focus on his political career as a deputy speaker of parliament for the ruling United Russia party.

Zhukov has led the ROC since 2010 and spent much of that time battling allegations of widespread doping in Russian sport.

“In the complex situation which has occurred in international sport in recent times, it is very important that the leader who will take charge of the Russian Olympic Committee works at the ROC on a full-time basis,” Zhukov said in a statement issued by the ROC.

His intention to leave paves the way for vice president Stanislav Pozdnyakov to take charge at scheduled elections May 29. Pozdnyakov is the only confirmed candidate.

Pozdnyakov led the “Olympic Athletes from Russia” delegation in February, when the country’s official team was banned because of doping.

Pozdnyakov, like International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach, is a former fencer who won an Olympic gold medal.

Zhukov has been an IOC member and his departure from the ROC would leave Russia with two members instead of three, unless the IOC votes to add his successor.

Zhukov will remain a member until the May 29 election to replace him, IOC spokesman Mark Adams said Wednesday.

That membership was suspended for almost three months until the Russian Olympic body was reinstated after the Pyeongchang Games. Zhukov, therefore, lost his position chairing an IOC panel overseeing preparations for the 2022 Beijing Olympics. 
…

As teacher Tanya Mathiason flicked through a slideshow to display diagrams of male and female genitalia to primary school children in northwest London, no one flinched or giggled.

Instead, the students eagerly discussed the meaning of the words: female, genital and mutilation.

“Break those words down: What does female mean? What does genital mean? What does mutilation mean?” said Mathiason, the head of pastoral care at Norbury School in the culturally and ethnically diverse neighborhood of Harrow.

“It means when someone cuts off stuff?” replied one student.

“Harm?” said another.

By the time they leave Norbury School, all 640 students — both boys and girls — will have learned about female genital mutilation (FGM), a ritual that usually involves the partial or total removal of the external genitalia including the clitoris.

An estimated 137,000 women and girls in England and Wales have undergone FGM, according to the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC).

FGM can cause chronic pain, menstrual problems, recurrent urinary tract infections, cysts and infertility. Some girls hemorrhage to death or die from infections. It can also cause fatal childbirth complications in later life.

Young age

As FGM is mostly carried out between infancy and age 15, school principal Louise Browning said she wanted the students to start learning about it in the third year, at about seven years old.

“I became more aware that FGM was happening to girls at a much younger age than I thought,” Browning told Reuters.

“Who’s to say that we don’t have survivors in our school? I felt I was letting down my girls by not raising this. Our end goal is for this practice to stop.”

Browning and her team worked with the National FGM Centre, run by children’s charity Barnado’s and the Local Government Association, to devise age-appropriate lessons, which they began teaching in Norbury School in 2015.

It is one of only a handful of primary schools in the country that teaches students about FGM, but raising awareness among parents and children was necessary, she said.

FGM mostly affects immigrant communities from various countries including Somalia, Sierra Leone, Eritrea, Sudan, Nigeria and Egypt — a demographic that is well-represented in the Harrow school.

“Many of our families, our children, come from FGM-practicing communities so it is really important that they have this knowledge, that they leave here at 11 [years old] knowing what this practice is about,” said pastoral manager Mathiason.

Shocking

FGM is performed by Muslims and Christians and by followers of some indigenous religions. People often believe FGM is required by religion, but it is not mentioned in the Koran or the Bible.

“Most people who do it think it’s in their religion … but no religion actually tells you to do that,” said 11-year-old Khadija, who has learned about FGM since she was seven.

“It’s just shocking because it’s most likely to be parents who would do it. They’re the ones who love you and care about you, but instead they want to harm you,” she added.

In March, a London solicitor accused of forcing his daughter to be circumcised was acquitted, increasing pressure on police and prosecutors who have yet to secure a conviction for FGM more than 30 years after it was outlawed.

The prosecution was only the second to be brought under FGM legislation introduced in 1985.

FGM is underpinned by the desire to control female sexuality, but beliefs around the practice vary enormously. Many believe it purifies the girl, brings her status in the community and prevents promiscuity. Uncut girls risk being ostracized.

Sonita Pobi, head of training at the National FGM Center, said the lessons helped children make sense of the practice and know who to turn to for help, regardless of their cultural background or religion.

“It’s about giving children the vocabulary to speak up when something is wrong. It’s about making children aware about the hidden form of abuse that may happen to them,” Pobi said.

After learning about FGM at Norbury School, 11-year-old Oliver said he felt empowered to help classmates and friends.

“When I first learnt about it, I was quite scared because it was happening. But once I knew quite a bit about it, I knew that I couldn’t really sort out the situation, but I would know who to speak to,” he said.

His classmate Naylen, also 11, agreed.

“I think the FGM lessons are good for children to learn because … we could make a change to all of these harmful activities,” he said.
…

Russian military spending fell by a fifth last year, its first decline in nearly two decades, with tighter purse strings likely to affect Moscow’s military activity ahead, a report by defense think tank SIPRI showed Wednesday.

Russia has flexed its military muscles during the last few years with its 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea and deep involvement in the Syrian conflict serving as examples of its more belligerent stance.

But while global military spending rose 1 percent to $1.739 billion last year, Russia’s fell 20 percent in real terms to $66.3 billion, the report from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute showed.

It was the first fall since 1998, a year of a major crisis when Russia’s economy collapsed and it defaulted on domestic debt. The following year Vladimir Putin took power as prime minister and, on New Year’s Eve, president.

Based on the government’s spending plan until 2020, defense costs are expected to stay flat from 2017 or possibly even fall somewhat adjusted for inflation, said Siemon Wezeman, senior researcher in the SIPRI Arms and Military Expenditure Program.

“Very clearly that has a direct impact on procurement and on operations. Those are the quickest things to cut,” Wezeman told Reuters.

In fourth place

Russia dropped to fourth place in the ranking of the world’s biggest military spenders, overtaken by Saudi Arabia.

“Russia definitely has a very clear feeling it has to show that it is still a major power, and you show that by undertaking operations, in for example, Syria, by showing up on the Atlantic Ocean with your navy,” Wezeman said. “But I am sure that there will be serious cost cuts to those.”

Russia’s finances are still fragile following a two-year economic downturn brought on by Western sanctions and a collapse in global oil prices. Higher crude prices helped the economy return to growth of 1.5 percent last year, short of a government target of 2 percent.

The export-dependent economy has now got accustomed to lower commodity prices than before 2014, and the budget is likely to post a small deficit or even a surplus in 2018.

Putin has also called for higher living standards and higher spending on social infrastructure, such as health care and education. Some government officials have called for lower military spending to free up funds for such initiatives.

The Kremlin said in March that Russia would cut its military budget to less than 3 percent of gross domestic product within the next five years.

The United States remains the world’s biggest military spender by far, accounting for 35 percent of global expenditures, more than the next seven highest-spending countries combined. Its military budget was unchanged in 2016 and 2017 but a significant rise is expected this year.

China’s spending as a share of world military expenditure rose to 13 percent last year from 5.8 percent in 2008.
…

Britain will be able to impose sanctions on people who commit gross human rights violations under a so-called “Magnitsky amendment” backed by members of parliament on Tuesday.

The amendment to a new Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering

Bill going through parliament passed without a vote, because it was backed both by the ruling Conservatives and the main opposition Labor Party.

Lawmakers referred to it during their debate as the Magnitsky amendment, in reference to Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer who was arrested in 2008 after alleging that Russian officials were involved in large-scale tax fraud. He died in a Moscow prison in 2009 after complaining of mistreatment.

The amendment is not specifically aimed at Russians, but it comes at a time of crisis in relations between Britain and Russia following a nerve agent attack in England on a Russian ex-spy and his daughter, which London blames on Moscow.

Russia has denied any involvement in the attack on Sergei and Yulia Skripal. The standoff has led to tit-for-tat expulsions of diplomats and fiery rhetoric on both sides.

Boris Johnson, Britain’s foreign minister, called the passage of the amendment through the House of Commons an “important moment.”

“These [provisions] will allow U.K. to act against those responsible for serious offenses worldwide. U.K. stands up for human rights globally,” he said on Twitter.

The United States passed a law known as the Magnitsky Act in 2012 under which it has imposed visa bans and asset freezes on Russian officials linked to the lawyer’s death.

Prime Minister Theresa May spoke May 14 about bringing forward a Magnitsky Act-style amendment in one of her statements responding to the attack on the Skripals.

Bill Browder, an investment fund manager who employed Magnitsky and has led a campaign to punish Russian officials he blames for the lawyer’s death, took to Twitter to thank lawmakers who played a part in the British Magnitsky amendment.

“Thank you for making a UK Magnitsky Act happen,” he said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has dismissed allegations that Magnitsky’s death was linked to mistreatment, saying he died of heart failure. A Russian court sentenced Browder in absentia in December to nine years in prison after finding him guilty of deliberate bankruptcy and tax evasion, allegations

Browder denies.
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An Australian court ruled Tuesday that Cardinal George Pell, one of the Vatican’s highest-ranking officials and a close adviser to Pope Francis, must face trial on charges of historical sexual offenses.

Pell will be the highest-ranked Catholic official to be tried on such charges during the church’s decades-long sexual abuse scandal involving clergy. 

He has denied wrongdoing and pleaded not guilty Tuesday. 

Magistrate Belinda Wallington dismissed half the charges Pell was facing, including some his lawyer said were the most serious.

Pell was released on bail, but is not allowed to leave Australia where he returned last year after Pope Francis granted him a leave of absence.

The Vatican said in a statement it has “taken note” of Tuesday’s court decision and that Pell’s leave of absence remains in place.

Pell has long been under criticism for his handling of priests accused of sexually abusing children during his years as archbishop of Melbourne and Sydney. He was interviewed twice by a special commission formed to investigate allegations of sexual abuse committed by clergy, many of them dating back decades. 
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U.S. President Donald Trump is extending tariff exemptions on aluminum and steel exports from the European Union, Canada, and Mexico for at least another month.

The temporary exemptions of the tariffs already imposed on such nations as China, Japan, and Russia, were to have expired Tuesday.

But the White House says it is giving negotiators 30 more days to work out a deal.

The European Commission criticized the temporary extension in a statement Tuesday, saying the EU has been willing to discuss the issue and “will not negotiate under threat.”

“The U.S. decision prolongs market uncertainty, which is already affecting business decisions,” it said. “The EU should be fully and permanently exempted from these measures, as they cannot be justified on the grounds of national security.”

Trump has called the tariffs a national security issue because overproduction by some countries makes U.S. exports more expensive and undesirable on the global markets.

WATCH: US trade and tariffs

​The White House also announced late Monday it reached a final deal on steel exports with South Korea — granting it a permanent exemption — while reaching agreements in principle with Argentina, Australia, and Brazil.

“These agreements underscore the Trump administration’s successful strategy to reach fair outcomes with allies to protect our national security and address global challenges to the steel and aluminum industries,” a White House statement said. 

Trump imposed a 25 percent tariff on steel imports and 10 percent on aluminum in March on China, Russia, Japan, and other exporters to for what he says is a remedy for unfair competition. 

U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and other senior U.S. officials head to China this week for trade talks, as reminded by Trump in a post on Twitter.

“Delegation heading to China to begin talks on the Massive Trade Deficit that has been created with our Country.  Very much like North Korea, this should have been fixed years ago, not now.  Same with other countries and NAFTA…but it will all get done.  Great Potential for USA!”

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Monday imposing tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum would be a major disruption because U.S. and Canadian industries — including U.S. car and fighter jet manufacturing — are closely integrated.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is warning of a possible trade war if the U.S. does not grant the European Union a permanent exemption.
…

U.S. President Donald Trump has postponed his decision on whether to impose tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from the European Union, Canada and Mexico until June 1. The announcement Monday provides more time to negotiate deals to exempt those countries from U.S. steel and aluminum tariffs. The Trump administration announced broad tariffs in early March that went into effect for China, Russia, Japan and many other exporters. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports.
…

Britain’s Housing Minister Sajid Javid, the son of Pakistani immigrants, was named Monday to take over the portfolio of the Home Office (interior ministry), which oversees  law enforcement, immigration, and counter-terrorism activities.

Interior minister Amber Rudd resigned Sunday amid a growing scandal over the harsh treatment of elderly immigrants who were brought to the country from the Caribbean seven decades ago.

Rudd told lawmakers last week that the government had not set targets to deport people considered illegal immigrants. But documents have since emerged contradicting her testimony.

She said in her resignation letter to Prime Minister Theresa May Sunday she “inadvertently misled” Parliament about the deportation targets.

Housing Minister Sajid Javid, the son of Pakistani immigrants, was named Monday to take over the portfolio of the Home Office (interior ministry),

May and Rudd have been under increasing fire since the so-called Windrush scandal first emerged several months ago. The scandal gets its name from the ship Empire Windrush, which in 1948 brought the first wave of immigrants from the Caribbean to Britain to help rebuild the country in the aftermath of World War II.

News reports have revealed that many of these immigrants have lost jobs, housing, access to medical care and threatened with deportation because they could not produce documents proving their right to reside in Britain, which was granted by a law passed in 1971.

The harsh treatment of the “Windrush generation” apparently stems from a policy introduced by May during her tenure as interior minister between 2010 and 2016, which called for creating a “hostile environment” for illegal immigrants.
…

The latest U.S. sanctions imposed on Russia earlier this month targeting two dozen Kremlin insiders and oligarchs close to Vladimir Putin and their companies are proving more painful than had been expected, say analysts. But they’re doing nothing at this stage in turning ordinary Russians against the Kremlin or undermining the Russian leader’s overall popularity.

The rouble suffered its worst week in four years in the immediate wake of the April 6 announcement of new sanctions on 24 super-wealthy Russians and 14 companies, suggesting the additions to the sanctions blacklist could have major impact on the Russian economy.

And that appears to be the case with the fortunes of the blacklisted Oleg Deripaska. He is the owner is Rusal, one of the world’s largest aluminum producers, which until the sanctions started to bite exported 82 percent of its production.

A majority of analysts and economists polled by Reuters Saturday said the latest round of U.S. sanctions against Moscow will likely limit interest rate cuts planned by Russia’s central bank, thereby slowing the country’s economic recovery, despite rising oil prices.

Retaliation

“The introduction of sanctions drastically raised uncertainty for the business environment in the Russian economy,” said Kirill Tremasov, a former Russian official and now head of research at Loko-Invest, a financial brokerage. The threat of counter-measures by the Russian parliament isn’t helping to calm turbulence, he added.

The Kremlin says the April round of sanctions, which Washington imposed after accusing Russia of “malign activities,” are unlawful and Russian officials have warned they will retaliate.

In mid-May, the lower house of the Russian parliament is set to consider legislation detailing retaliatory steps, including suspension of space and nuclear cooperation and a ban on importing U.S. agricultural produce, pharmaceuticals, tobacco and alcohol.

Some Russian lawmakers also want to suspend the intellectual rights to software developed by U.S. individuals or companies that’s used on Russian territory.

Impact on investment

When the West imposed its first sanctions on Russia, after Moscow’s annexation of Crimea and fomenting separatism in eastern Ukraine, the effect was limited, according to analyst to Nigel Gould-Davies of Britain’s Chatham House, Russia found ways to adapt.

“But America’s latest financial sanctions, announced on 6 April, are a game-changer,” he argued in a recent commentary, noting the latest sanctions have created bigger uncertainty.

“No one knows who might be targeted next,” he continued. “Russia faces a new systemic risk: expectations about U.S. sanctions are now as important as the oil price for assessing its prospects.”

The sanctions, he and other analysts argue, deter counter-parties and agencies handling payments from doing business with the blacklisted Russians, including the aluminum king Deripaska and Vladimir Bogdanov, CEO of Russia’s third largest oil company. And by targeting publicly traded companies the sanctions have stripped away protecting corporate assets by listing on foreign stock exchanges, including London, New York or Hong Kong.

The sanctions have already impacted Deripaska by locking Rusal out of the global aluminum market, roiling the market and prompting massive prices hikes. The U.S. Treasury has now said it will consider lifting sanctions on Rusal, if Deripaska divests from the company and relinquishes control, something the industrial titan has hinted he may have to do.

UK sanctions

This week, more pressure will be applied on the Russian elite, when British lawmakers start the process of introducing legislation that will block Russian oligarchs and officials linked to human rights abuses from doing business in the country and buying property in Britain.

“If foreign oligarchs and kleptocrats who’ve committed crimes or abused human rights suddenly find they can’t buy property or stash their cash in the UK, it’s going to hurt,” said British Conservative lawmaker John Penrose.

Impact on Putin?

But while the Russian elite is being roiled by U.S. sanctions targeting oligarchs, disrupting their businesses and impacting foreign investment more broadly in the country, it remains unclear whether they’re denting Putin’s popularity among Russians or will in the future.

The Kremlin has been able to maintain price stability with subsidies, cushioning the impact of sanctions by dipping into reserves and the increased revenue from oil price rises.

Analysts remain divided about whether sanctions will force the Kremlin to curtail what Washington views as aggressive foreign activity, such as the alleged poisoning in Britain of former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal, an attack Moscow denies it had a hand in.
…

Britain’s interior minister has resigned after Prime Minister Theresa May’s government faced criticism for its treatment of some long-term Caribbean residents who were wrongly labeled illegal immigrants, a government official said.

A spokesman for May was not immediately available for comment but a government official who spoke on condition of anonymity confirmed a BBC report that Home Secretary Amber Rudd had resigned.

For two weeks, British ministers have been struggling to explain why some descendants of the so-called “Windrush generation,” invited to Britain to plug labor shortfalls between 1948 and 1971, had been labeled as illegal immigrants.

The Windrush scandal overshadowed the Commonwealth summit in London and has raised questions about Theresa May’s six-year stint as interior minister before she became prime minister in the wake of the 2016 Brexit referendum.

Rudd had faced repeated calls from the opposition Labor Party to resign after she gave contradictory statements about meeting targets for deportations.

May apologized to the black community on Thursday in a letter to The Voice, Britain’s national Afro-Caribbean newspaper.

“We have let you down and I am deeply sorry,” she said. “But apologies alone are not good enough. We must urgently right this historic wrong.”

 
…

A court in Iraq has sentenced 19 Russian women to life in prison for joining the Islamic State terrorist group.

The Central Criminal Court in Baghdad, which deals with terrorism cases, also sentenced six women from Azerbaijan and four from Tajikistan to life in prison on Sunday on the same charge.

Most of the defendants told the court they had been brought to Iraq against their will from Turkey by IS fighters.

Earlier this month, the Russian Foreign Ministry said between 50 and 70 “Russian-speaking women” were being held in Iraq, along with more than 100 of their children.

IS took over nearly one third of Iraq in a blistering 2014 offensive, seizing control of the country’s second largest city, Mosul, among others.

Baghdad declared military victory over the jihadists in December, after expelling them from all urban centers.

Experts estimate that Iraq is holding 20,000 people in jail over suspected IS membership. There is no official figure.

Iraqi courts have sentenced to death a total of more than 300 people, including dozens of foreigners, for belonging to IS.

 
…

A mystery is brewing at the White House about what happened to the oak tree President Donald Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron planted there last week.

The sapling was a gift from Macron on the occasion of his state visit.

News photographers snapped away Monday as Trump and Macron shoveled dirt onto the tree during a ceremonial planting on the South Lawn. By the end of the week, the tree was gone from the lawn. A pale patch of grass was left in its place.

The White House hasn’t offered an explanation.

The oak sprouted at a World War I battle site that became part of U.S. Marine Corps legend.

About 2,000 U.S. troops died in the June 1918 Battle of Belleau Wood, fighting a German offensive.

 
…

Tens of thousands of people have marched in northern Spain for a third consecutive day to protest the acquittal of five men on gang rape charges.

Local police in Pamplona estimated the size of the crowd at Saturday’s march at 35,000.

An 18-year-old woman was attacked during the city’s famed San Fermin bull-running festival in 2016.

The five men, whose members named their WhatsApp group “The Pack,” were convicted Thursday on a lesser felony of sexual abuse and sentenced to nine years each in prison. Lawyers say the victim is appealing.

The court’s decision has also prompted thousands of women to share their experiences of abuse on Twitter under the hashtag #cuentalo, Spanish for #tell it.

The Spanish government has announced plans to convene discussions on possible legal reforms.
…

Law enforcement authorities in the United States, European Union and Canada this week began a joint cybercampaign against Islamic State online communication channels that will “severely disrupt” the group’s propaganda machine, the EU’s law enforcement agency Europol said.

The multinational action, led by Belgian federal prosecutors, was launched  Wednesday and Thursday and targeted IS media outlets, including Amaq news, al-Bayan radio, Halumu and Nashir news.

IS’s Amaq news agency is believed to be a major propaganda outlet for the terror group. The group relies on the outlet to spread propaganda in several languages, including English and French. Amaq has broadcast claims of responsibility for deadly terrorist attacks in Paris, Brussels, Berlin and Barcelona.

“With this groundbreaking operation we have punched a big hole in the capability of IS to spread propaganda online and radicalize young people in Europe,” Rob Wainwright, the head of Europol, said in a statement released Friday.

“I applaud the determined and innovative work by Europol and its partners to target a major part of the international terrorist threat prevalent in Europe today,” he added.

Earlier efforts

This is not the first time Western countries joined forces to crack down on IS propaganda capabilities. A coordinated effort in August 2016 hit Amaq’s mobile application and web infrastructure. Another multinational operation led by Spanish Guardia Civil in June 2017 against the outlet helped authorities identify radicalized individuals in over 100 countries around the world.

Europol claimed the two-day effort this week led to the seizure of digital evidence by law enforcement authorities and compromised IS broadcast capabilities and materials.

Europol authorities said the data retrieved as a result of the crackdown would be used to identify the administrators behind IS media outlets.

In a separate statement, Belgian police said the operation also aimed to seize and shut down computer servers used to spread terror propaganda in Europe.

Over the years, IS has weaponized the internet to radicalize, recuit and inspire acts of terrorism in the West and around the world.

The group’s ability to produce and distribute new propaganda has been significantly diminished since it lost nearly 98 percent of the territory it once held in Iraq and Syria, and social media giants Facebook, Google and Twitter increased their efforts to remove radical content from the internet. 

VOA Turkish service’s Arzu Cakir contributed to this report from Paris. 
…

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Saturday that airstrikes on Syria, conducted by the U.S., Britain, and France on April 14, were a violation of international law and indicated that the Western powers were trying to destroy the peace process.

Lavrov, speaking after meeting in Moscow with his Turkish and Iranian counterparts, said such “attempts to … destabilize the situation” encourage the extremists in Syria to go on with their armed struggle.

Lavrov and his counterparts said they agreed that Syria’s territorial integrity should be preserved, while accusing the United States of plans to “reformat” the Middle East and divide Syria into parts.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javid Zarif said there was no military solution to the Syrian crisis. He also said that Iran condemned the use of chemical weapons and hoped that the investigation of an alleged Syrian attack on its own people would uncover the truth. He also said anyone who supported Iraq when it used chemical weapons against Iran in the 1980s had no right to criticize Syria today.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said his country, too, supported Syrian territorial integrity and, with allies Iran and Russia, hoped ultimately to find a political solution to the crisis. He said “some groups” had tried to undermine that work, and he urged all parties to contribute to the peace process instead.
…

Former Turkish president Abdullah Gul has announced he would not be running in early elections, dispelling rumors of his candidacy.

Speaking in Istanbul Saturday, Gul said he would have considered running as a presidential candidate had there been “widespread agreement and desire” for him to do so. The ex-president left politics in 2014 but his name is often floated as a possible competitor to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Erdogan announced presidential and parliamentary elections would be moved forward by more than a year to June 24, catching opposition parties by surprise.

Gul, a founding member of Erdogan’s ruling party, briefly served as Turkey’s prime minister following elections that brought the party to power in 2002. He served as Erdogan’s foreign minister and Turkey’s eleventh president.
…