The Catholic Easter custom of hunting brightly colored eggs and chocolate bunnies may be over now, but in the Orthodox world, Easter comes one week later. And it brings with it, its own unique traditions. One of them is the centuries-old practice of drawing elaborate patterns on Easter eggs decorated and painted using hot wax. Mariia Prus and Konstantin Golubchik produced this report from Alexandria, Virginia that is narrated by Katherine Gypson.
…
The United Nations human rights office is echoing a recent call by U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres for an independent investigation into Israel’s use of force against Palestinians who staged protests in Gaza on March 30. The call came Friday as Israeli troops again clashed with Palestinians staging “right of return” border protests.
What began as a peaceful demonstration along the Gaza-Israeli border Friday turned deadly shortly after the U.N. human rights office in Geneva called for restraint by both the Israeli security forces and Palestinians. Spokeswoman Liz Throssell told reporters U.N. officials feared a repeat of last month’s riots, which resulted in the deaths of 16 people and injuries to more than 1,000.
She said several hundred protesters reportedly were wounded by live ammunition. She noted the victims reportedly were unarmed or did not pose a serious threat to the Israeli security forces, who were well protected. The rights office said Israeli security forces used excessive force last month. Throssell told VOA that Israel denies the accusation.
“From what we have documented, it is certainly that the killings and the injuries do actually point to an excessive use of force and, in particular lethal force,” said Throssell. “And, that was in a situation where there was no threat of death or serious injury. And, that is why we have made this call. This is a law enforcement issue. This has law enforcement principles.”
Under international human rights law, firearms may be used only as a last resort, only in response to an imminent threat of death or risk of serious injury. Throssell said international law obliges Israel’s security forces to respect the rights of peaceful assembly.
She said in the context of a military occupation, as is the case in the self-governing Palestinian territory, the unjustified and unlawful recourse to firearms by law enforcement resulting in death may amount to a willful killing and a grave breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention.
The Palestinians have constructed protest tent camps along the entire length of the Gaza Strip in five locations. They are expected to stay in place for six weeks.
The protests are designed to commemorate the Nakba or “catastrophe” when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians had to flee their land or were expelled during the 1948 war that led to the creation of Israel. Israel has deployed more than 100 snipers along the Gaza Strip.
read more
When calls to a Polish domestic violence helpline in Britain plunged last year, its founder Ewa Wilcock was puzzled.
Since its launch in 2014, she had been receiving more calls from compatriots living in Britain than she could handle. Yet they halved — to just over a dozen a month — in mid-2017.
“People would start the conversation saying they were not sure if they should be calling at all because they were afraid of the social services,” Wilcock told Reuters by phone from Cheshire in northwest England.
Wilcock soon discovered that myths were spreading among Poles on social media — and by abusers — that parents who reported domestic violence would lose their children, making victims too scared to seek help.
“Some people said that social services remove children from homes and put them up for adoption,” she said.
“[They said] that foster families get a lot of money for caring for children, that it’s a great business.”
There is no reliable data on domestic violence among the 900,000 Poles in Britain — its largest overseas-born population — but nearly 2 million people, mostly women, are physically or emotionally abused by a partner or relative each year.
“They are ashamed to tell family in Poland,” Wilcock said. “They don’t want them to worry, but they have no one to talk to in Britain.”
Scared
Services provided by Polish charities are often the first point of contact because they make the process of accessing support and finding safety less intimidating for victims.
“When you’re stressed, it’s very difficult to communicate even in your own language,” domestic violence counselor Anna Janczuk told Reuters.
“It’s even more difficult using a second language and finding appropriate words to describe what is happening,” said Janczuk, who runs the London-based nonprofit Familia Support Centre, which provides legal and psychological consultations.
Katarzyna Zatorski, a family solicitor based in the northern town of Huddersfield, said most of her Polish clients dealing with domestic violence are referred to her by Polish charities.
“The most difficult thing is to seek a lawyer’s help,” she told Reuters by phone. “If it’s difficult for a Briton, then it’s much more difficult for someone living in a foreign country.”
Hanna, who declined to give real name, said her husband used to suffocate and beat her, once breaking her nose. He told her that social workers would take their daughter away if she reported him.
“I didn’t know what to start with, how to do it, because I was very scared,” she said.
“In a situation like this, you don’t even know what your name is. When you speak about legal matters, you don’t understand the meaning of certain expressions.”
Without Janczuk’s support “nothing” would have changed, Hanna said, nearly a year after she left her abusive husband.
“Contact [with Janczuk] calmed me,” she said.
Volunteers
Wilcock’s helpline only takes calls twice a week, while Janczuk’s support center is open for less than 20 hours a week because of funding shortages.
“Some funders don’t like it that we help just one minority,” Janczuk said, sitting next to a donated computer in the modest room from which she runs her organization with the support of volunteers.
“We are doing more than the limited resources that we have allow us to do,” said Janczuk, who helps about 25 victims of domestic violence per month.
“Sometimes it’s just this one piece of information that we give the victims that allows them to go on.”
Hanna said she still calls Wilcock’s helpline about once a month when she is worried about issues like child custody.
She used to call every week.
“If they were open more than twice a week, I would have called them more often,” she said.
…
The European Union said Friday Facebook has told it that up to 2.7 million people in the 28-nation bloc may have been victim of improper data sharing involving political data-mining firm Cambridge Analytica.
EU spokesman Christian Wigand said EU Justice Commissioner Vera Jourova will have a telephone call with Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg early next week to address the massive data leaks.
The EU and Facebook will be looking at what changes the social media giant needs to make to better protect users and how the U.S. company must adapt to new EU data protection rules.
Wigand said that EU data protection authorities will discuss over the coming days “a strong coordinated approach” on how to deal with the Facebook investigation.
Separately, Italy’s competition authority opened an investigation Friday into Facebook for allegedly misleading practices following revelations that the social network sold users’ data without consent.
Authority chairman Giovanni Pitruzzella told Sky News24 that the investigation will focus on Facebook’s claims on its home page that the service is free, without revealing that it makes money off users’ data.
The investigation comes as Italian consumer advocate group Codacons prepares a U.S. class action against Facebook on behalf of Italians whose data was mined by Cambridge Analytica. Codacons said just 57 Italians downloaded the Cambridge Analytica app, but that an estimated 214,000 Italians could be affected because the data mined extended to also the users’ friends.
A top Facebook privacy official is scheduled to meet with the authority later this month.
This story was earlier corrected to show that the EU call will take place with Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg not with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
…
A German court ruled Thursday that Catalan separatist leader Carles Puigdemont cannot be extradited to Spain on charges of revolution and can be freed from a German jail on bail.
Puigdemont supporters say they expect Catalonia’s former president to be out of jail by Friday morning.
The judges in Schleswig in northern Germany based their ruling on German law, saying while rebellion may be a crime in Spain, it is not a criminal offense in Germany.
The judges also ruled Puigdemont could still be extradited to Spain on charges of embezzling public funds not rebellion, but could only be tried for embezzlement if he is sent back.
If Puigdemont posts bail, he can only leave Germany with prosecutors’ permission, inform them when he changes his address, and must report to police once a week.
Pro-independence Catalans celebrated when they heard the German court’s decision and some cried openly.
Spanish officials and the country’s supreme court have not yet commented on the German ruling.
German police arrested Puigdemont on a Spanish warrant last week. He crossed into Germany from Belgium, where he fled on October to avoid arrest.
He is wanted in Spain on charges of inciting rebellion by defying the central government and going ahead with a Catalan independence referendum in October, leading to a violent police crackdown.
Twenty-four other Catalan separatist leaders are also facing rebellion charges.
Pro-independence lawmakers won a slim majority in December’s parliamentary elections in Catalonia. But parliament has been unable to name a new president since Puigdemont fled, and the future of independence is murky.
Catalonia, in northeast Spain, and its capital Barcelona are major tourist destinations. It has its own language and distinct culture. But the separatist crisis has hurt tourism and the regional economy.
Catalan separatists call the region a powerful economic engine that drives Spain, and they have demanded more autonomy.
Those who want to stay united with Spain fear the region will sink into an economic abyss without the central government, its ties to the European Union, and its numerous existing bilateral relations.
This story was written by VOA News.
…
A District of Columbia judge on Thursday sentenced two Turkish-Americans to one year and one day in prison after they pleaded guilty of assaulting pro-Kurdish demonstrators during Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s visit to Washington last year.
Sinan Narin, 46, of Virginia and Eyup Yildirim, 51, of New Jersey each pleaded guilty in December to one count of assault with significant bodily injury in connection with the May 2017 clashes with protesters near the Turkish ambassador’s residence.
Judge Marisa Demeo of the Superior Court for the District of Columbia accepted their plea agreements and imposed the previously agreed upon sentence on each.
The two have been in jail since their arrest last June and will receive credit for time already served, the U.S. attorney’s office for the District of Columbia said.
The street brawl that led to the pair’s arrest started after a small group of Kurdish demonstrators gathered near the Turkish ambassador’s residence to protest Erdogan’s arrival, only to be confronted by the president’s supporters, security guards and other members of his delegation.
WATCH: Demonstration at Turkish Embassy in DC Turns Violent
Video of the confrontation recorded by a VOA journalist showed what appeared to be Erdogan’s security guards pushing, shoving and kicking the protesters, some of whom were carrying Kurdish flags.
A grand jury last August indicted 19 people — 15 members of Erdogan’s security detail, the two Turkish-Americans and two Turkish-Canadians — on charges of conspiracy to commit a crime of violence, a felony punishable by up to five years in prison.
But U.S. prosecutors later dropped charges against 11 of the guards for what a government official described as “evidentiary reasons.”
Criminal charges against the other four bodyguards remain pending, as do ones against the two Canadian citizens of Turkish ancestry.
The Turkish-Canadians have not been arrested, and it remains unclear whether they’ll be extradited to the U.S. to stand trial.
…
A U.N. rights watchdog called on Hungary on Thursday to crack down on hate speech by politicians against Roma, Muslims and other minorities, and to repeal a law allowing migrants to be deported without a chance to seek
asylum.
It urged the nationalist government to reject draft laws known as the “Stop-Soros Package” that would empower the interior minister to ban nongovernmental organizations that support migration and pose a “national security risk.”
The government says the bill is meant to deter illegal immigration that Prime Minister Viktor Orban says is eroding European stability and has been stoked in part by Hungarian-born U.S. financier George Soros. It says its policies are to ensure Hungarians can live in safety.
Orban, seeking a third consecutive term Sunday, has campaigned on a strong anti-migration message, although a U.N. panel expert said the timing of the watchdog’s comments, at the end of a four-week meeting, was not directed at voters.
The U.N. Human Rights Committee voiced concern at “hate crimes and about hate speech in political discourse, the media and on the internet targeting minorities, notably, Roma, Muslims, migrants and refugees, including in the context of government-sponsored campaigns.”
The panel issued its findings and recommendations after its 18 independent experts reviewed Hungary’s record on upholding civil and political rights.
“The concern we saw in Hungary is that sometimes hate speech is accompanied by hate crimes which are directed against minorities and against migrants,” Yuval Shany, the panel vice chair, told Reuters TV.
Security issue
Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto defended Hungary’s policies, telling the U.N. panel last month: “First and foremost, it is a firm conviction of the government that the Hungarian people have the right to live a life in security, without fear of terrorist atrocities.”
In 2015, the central European country had a “sad experience” when 400,000 migrants passed through on their way to Western Europe, “ignoring all rules,” he said.
The U.N. panel also decried a Hungarian law adopted a year ago that allows for automatically removing all asylum applicants to transit zones for indefinite confinement.
People should be allowed freedom of movement while their asylum claims are examined to see whether they are refugees fleeing war or persecution, the committee said.
The panel added that Hungary should repeal a June 2016 law that enables police to summarily expel anyone entering irregularly.
The committee also voiced concern at the “prevalence of anti-Semitic stereotypes” and how “high-ranking officials have nurtured conspiracy theories relating to George Soros.”
Orban has waged a billboard and media campaign asserting that Soros would “settle millions from Africa and the Middle East,” among other allegations.
Soros, who is Jewish, has rejected the campaign against him as “distortions and lies” meant to create a false external enemy.
…
Three buses believed to be carrying expelled diplomats have departed from the U.S. Embassy in Moscow.
Before the Thursday morning departure, journalists outside the embassy compound saw people leaving the residences, placing luggage on trucks. Some toted pet-carriers.
Russia last week ordered 60 American diplomats to leave the country by Thursday, in retaliation for the United States expelling the same number of Russians.
The moves were part of a deepening dispute over the nerve-agent poisoning in Britain of a Russian former double-agent and his daughter. Britain alleges Russian involvement, which Moscow vehemently denies.
More than 150 diplomats have been expelled by Britain and allies, and Russia has ordered reciprocal moves.
…
Hungary’s foreign minister is rejecting accusations his government is racist, but said it does not accept that a multicultural society is better than a homogeneous one.
“We don’t accept that multiculturalism is a value by itself,” Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó told VOA on Wednesday in an interview at the United Nations. “We don’t accept that multiculturalism would be better than a homogeneous society, for example. We think it’s up to the given nation, it’s up to the given society, to decide what is considered to be a value.”
Szijjártó was responding to a question about remarks made by the U.N. high commissioner for human rights last month, accusing Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban of being a “racist,” a “bully” and a “xenophobe” because Orban said he did not want Hungary to be “multicolored.”
The foreign minister added that Hungary has been “a homogeneous united Hungarian Christian society” for 1,100 years and considers “this as a value.”
His comments came amid a rise in nationalist and anti-immigrant sentiment throughout parts of Europe.
Migration
Migration has been a key election issue in several recent European elections, and Hungary is no different. This Sunday, Hungarians will vote in general elections, and Orban and his right-wing Fidesz party are overwhelmingly favored to stay in power.
Szijjártó is at the United Nations this week for negotiations on a Global Compact on Migration. In December, the United States pulled out of the discussions, saying the proposed pact was not consistent with Trump administration immigration policies.
“We agree with the American administration that this is a very biased, very unbalanced and very extremely radically pro-migration document,” Szijjártó told VOA on Wednesday. “So this goes totally against our migration policy, just like it goes against the migration policy of the current administration here.”
But despite its objections, Szijjártó said Hungary would remain in the migration negotiations and seek changes to the document.
UN agreement
The U.N. discussions are part of a process to draft a multilateral agreement that would cover all aspects of safe, orderly and regular migration. The United Nations estimates there are about 244 million migrants in the world, or just over 3 percent of the world’s population.
Hungary’s location at the crossroads of two popular migration routes brought it more than 440,000 mostly Syrian and Afghan refugees and migrants in 2015, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM). Most were passing through to reach other European Union countries, but the massive influx was seen as disruptive and unwelcome by the Hungarian government.
Hungary has since constructed fences along its southern border and enacted legislation that has significantly reduced irregular migration across its territory.
“We don’t think it’s a fundamental human right that to wake up in the morning, you finger-point on some country on the globe that you want to live there,” Szijjártó said. “And in order to get there you violate borders and you make everything to get there.”
The foreign minister told VOA that Hungarians do have a fundamental human right to live in safe conditions in their own country and that security comes first.
“We will never accept that anyone gives priority to the questionable rights of migrants against the right of the Hungarian people to have a safe life back in Hungary,” he said.
…
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan hosted his Iranian counterpart, Hassan Rouhani, and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Ankara Wednesday for a second trilateral summit, part of ongoing efforts to end the Syrian civil war.
Iran, Russia and Turkey, the main backers of the opposing sides in the seven-year war, may make unlikely partners for peace. Increasingly, the leaders see one another as key to ending the conflict and achieving their regional goals.
At the end of the summit, a commitment was made by the attending leaders to return Syrian refugees. Such a commitment is particularly important for Ankara, given its hosting of about 3 million displaced Syrians from the conflict.
Refugees will return
Erdogan has pledged a return of the refugees, analysts say, because the Turkish president is aware they are increasingly becoming a political liability, with growing Turkish public unease over their presence.
A declaration released at the end of the summit saw the presidents committed to maintaining Syria’s territorial integrity.
“Maintaining Syria’s territorial integrity depends on preserving equal distance from all terrorist organizations,” Erdogan said at the summit’s closing press conference. “It’s very important that all terrorist organizations that are posing a threat not only to Syria and Turkey, but to all neighboring countries and even the whole region, are excluded without exceptions.”
Kurdish militia
Erdogan also reiterated his threat to expand Turkey’s military offensive against the U.S.-backed Syria Kurdish militia, the YPG, which Ankara accuses of secessionist aspirations and links to an insurgency inside Turkey.
Turkish-led forces last month ousted the militia from the Syrian Afrin enclave. The YPG is a key ally in Washington’s war against Islamic State, with U.S. forces deployed with the militia.
During his talks with his Russian and Iranian counterparts, Erdogan reportedly pressed for their support. It remains unclear if he was successful.
Turkish offensive
Tehran has voiced opposition to the Turkish offensive in Syria, calling for its immediate end. Analysts suggest the Iranians will likely be wary of a growing Turkish military presence in Syria that could ultimately challenge its power. Iran and Turkey are historical regional rivals.
At a closed-door meeting, Rouhani reportedly pressed Erdogan to hand over the recently captured Syrian Afrin enclave to Syrian regime forces. Ankara has in the past ruled out such a move.
Common ground on U.S.
But common ground was found in criticizing the U.S. role in Syria.
“Some big powers, particularly the United States, wanted terrorist organizations such as Daesh and al-Nusra to remain in our region as their tool so they can benefit from this,” Rouhani said at the summit’s press conference. “But big countries like Syria and Iraq destroyed this conspiracy with the help of friendly countries.”
Rouhani also mocked U.S. President Donald Trump’s announcement hours before the summit that he wanted to “bring our troops back home” from Syria.
“The Americans say something different every day,” the Iranian president said at the press conference.
Putin also joined in criticizing Washington’s role in the region. For now, the U.S. appears to be providing strong new common ground for the three leaders to unite on, rather than focus on their considerable differences.
The presidents agreed to hold another summit in Tehran.
…
William spreads cream over a lemon sponge cake, as another cook ladles steaming platefuls of paella. The kitchen staff is in rush mode on a recent weekday, not to serve a hungry restaurant crowd, but prison officials on their lunchtime break.
Welcome to Eysses detention center in Villeneuve-sur-Lot, a picturesque southern French town abutting the Garonne River better known for its medieval architecture than its penal population. But, in some ways, Eysses inmates like William are test cases for a sweeping government effort to slash recidivism and tackle one of Europe’s highest rates of prison overcrowding.
Last month, President Emmanuel Macron outlined measures that would scrap or reconsider short-term prison sentences in favor of options such as home detention with electronic tagging, and building 7,000 cells over the next four years to ease overcrowding. Proposals also call for creating jobs to reinforce probation and re-insertion programs for an inmate population that has soared from 48,000 in 2001 to nearly 70,000 today.
“Sentences must be credible and understandable, not necessarily in terms of being the most severe possible,” said Macron.
Some call Macron’s plan soft on crime, while others suggest it doesn’t go far enough, particularly when it comes to radicalism flourishing in French jails. Yet, it has drawn support for encouraging experiments, like the Respect pilot rolled out just over a year ago at Eysses, which is based on a Spanish model.
“We don’t have results yet,” when it comes to shrinking the number of repeat offenders, Eysses detention head Philippe Sperandio said. “But we see a drop in physical violence among inmates; there are fewer infractions.”
The 18 prisons that have launched Respect since 2015 also report a drop in suicide rates. Another 20 are expected to introduce the pilot project over the next two years.
Options to delinquency
Respect is run in only one Eysses wing, and getting into the program is competitive. Those accepted must a sign a contract listing a series of obligations, and risk expulsion for infractions like possessing a cellphone. Rules include spending 25 hours weekly either working or participating in educational or health-related activities. Inmates also take shifts cleaning up communal spaces; but, the plusses include keys to their cells — a powerful symbol of limited liberty, even if guards have copies.
“Just getting up in the morning, going to work, participating in activities, helps them to get back into life and to realize there are other possibilities besides delinquency and crime,” says prison psychologist Ludmilla Issanchou.
Detention head Sperandio recounts one departing inmate telling him he had never experienced anything like Respect before.
“Will that help ensure he won’t come back? I don’t know,” he added. “But he sees things differently. He knows what he’s lost.”
For 32-year-old pastry maker William, the pilot program marks a sharp break from previous penitentiary experiences during his decade behind bars.
“Some are hotter then others,” he says. “Here, we have a semblance of liberty within the walls, even if there are always bars.”
In the small prison garden, guard Carol Cerjak helps several inmates pull out the last of the winter greens. The pilot has also helped to build better relations between guards and inmates, Eysses staff say – a stark contrast from other French prisons, where several attacks by radicalized inmates unleashed a nationwide prison guard strike in January over prison conditions.
“I am very rarely confronted by violence, and we’re a lot more relaxed,” Cerjak says. “You see a prisoner coming here, and a week later, they’re completely different.”
Not for radicalized inmates
A recent report by the Council of Europe, the region’s top rights watchdog, counted French jails among the most overcrowded in western Europe, and France among the few where the penal population is rising. While Danish and Dutch prisons average one prisoner per cell, it found France averages 117 inmates per 100 cells, with even higher rates in areas like Paris.
Alternatives to 24/7 incarceration encouraged under Macron’s reforms have their limits, however. For the country’s roughly 1,600 radicalized inmates — whose numbers have swollen with returning jihadi fighters, and those charged for plotting or carrying out attacks at home — the answer is building more cells and isolation blocks to stop the spread of radical Islam.
“The idea is not to ostracize them so they leave embittered,” says Justice Ministry spokesman Youssef Badr, describing small units and one-on-one attention for radicalized inmates. “There’s real effort made to rehabilitate them.”
Experts suggest countering radicalism should include more open systems, pointing to Denmark, where inmates wear their own clothes, participate in sports and cook their own meals to prepare for life outside.
Yet, “if one of these jihadists in open spaces become violent and kills people, it would be very politically costly for the government,” says leading prison expert Farhad Khosrokhavar, “so they don’t dare do it.”
“They stress the repressive side and not the integration side,” he adds. “And that is the attitude, I would say, of many European governments nowadays.”
At Eysses, inmate Jean-Luc digs his hands deep into the earth, preparing the prison garden for spring planting. After 29 years behind bars, he is a believer of Respect’s “tough love” approach.
“I’ve been in some where even a dog wouldn’t enter,” he says. “Here, Respect gives us back our dignity.”
…
The family of a British-Iranian woman jailed in Iran on espionage charges has demanded that the British government take a bigger role in securing her release, two years after the young mother was detained while visiting relatives.
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe is being held in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison. The 39-year-old was arrested at Tehran’s airport as she tried to leave Iran in April 2016 and later sentenced to jail for five years on charges of seeking to overthrow the government. Nazanin and her family have maintained she was in Iran on vacation.
In an interview with VOA, her husband, Richard, said their hopes had been raised in recent weeks that her release was imminent — but she is caught in the middle of a diplomatic tussle between London and Tehran.
“The head of the prison, of Evin prison, said to her, ‘Look, I’ve approved your release. I approved your release months ago, but it’s not in my hands.’ And then the judge in charge of parole said, ‘Look, we can move you to guarded house arrest if you want something, but we can’t release you at the moment. There’s this problem between the British government and the Iranian government over the interest calculation on an old debt,’” Ratcliffe told VOA.
That debt is believed to concern an arms deal that collapsed with the Iranian revolution in 1979, leaving Tehran millions of dollars out of pocket.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s family wants British Prime Minister Theresa May to become more involved in the case, given its apparent political nature.
Last year, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson pledged to leave ‘no stone unturned’ to secure Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s release. He traveled to Tehran to discuss the matter with his Iranian counterpart, Mohammad Javad Zarif. Richard Ratcliffe said there has been little communication since then.
“Part of what we’re pushing for now is to meet with the foreign secretary again, to meet with him in the presence of lawyers and to talk through — given it feels like there’s a standoff between both governments — what do they think Nazanin’s rights are?”
Richard Ratcliffe hasn’t seen his daughter for two years. Gabriella was just a year old when her mother was detained, leaving her in the care of her grandparents.
“Now, she’s a little girl. She speaks Farsi, she doesn’t speak English. Her relationship with both her parents, but certainly with me, is a much more remote relationship. We do sort of funny faces and games on the phone, but she’s still too small to really engage on the phone. And there will be — we’ll need to learn to be a parent again,” Ratcliffe said.
Family and supporters held an event in London Monday to mark the two-year anniversary of Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s detention.
In a statement Tuesday, the British Foreign Office said it is continuing to approach the case “in a way that we judge is most likely to secure the outcome we all want,” adding it would not provide a running commentary “on every twist and turn.”
Each of those twists continues to cause anguish for Zaghari-Ratcliffe, her family and friends.
…
French railway transport has been disrupted following a launch of a three-month strike to protest President Emmanuel Macron’s labor reforms. The start of the action led by the employees of the state railway SNFC was dubbed “Black Tuesday” and was followed by a street demonstration. The strike will affect railway transport for two days in every five over a three-month period. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports Tuesday protest turned unruly in some places.
…
Queen Elizabeth II’s 96-year-old husband, Prince Philip, has been admitted to a London hospital for a previously scheduled hip surgery, Buckingham Palace said Tuesday.
The palace said the prince entered the King Edward VII Hospital in the afternoon and would have the surgery Wednesday. It said the hospital admission and surgery were planned.
Officials declined to provide additional details about the surgery and said “further updates will be issued when appropriate.”
The prince announced in May that he was retiring from most public duties after decades of royal service. The palace said at the time he had carried out roughly 22,000 solo royal engagements since Elizabeth ascended to the throne in 1952.
Philip has missed several public events in recent weeks, including an Easter Sunday church service in Windsor. He has been reported to be hobbled by hip pain, but the news of the planned surgery took many by surprise.
The health scare comes at a busy time for the royal family. Prince William and his wife Kate are expecting their third child this month, and Prince Harry plans to marry American actress Meghan Markle on May 19 at Windsor Castle.
Philip has sharply reduced the number of charity events he attends since announcing his retirement, but still accompanies the queen on occasion.
Philip has been in generally good health for his age, but he was briefly hospitalized over Christmas in 2011 for angioplasty treatment of a blockage in his coronary arteries. He has suffered from other ailments as well but has not spoken about them in public.
He and Elizabeth celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary in November.
The queen has praised her husband for his devotion and long years of service, calling him the rock she depends on.
read moreTurkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan hosts his counterparts from Russia and Iran Wednesday for a second trilateral summit on Syria. The three, whose countries have a significant military presence in Syria, are increasingly cooperating to resolve the civil war under the auspices of the so-called “Astana Process.”
The deepening cooperation comes in the face of intense rivalries.
“Since 2011, Ankara’s sole purpose was to dethrone Assad,” said Aydin Selcen, a former senior Turkish diplomat, who served widely in the region. “Whereas, Russia and Iran came to Syria upon Assad’s invitation to keep him in place and this is a contradiction,” he added, referring to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
All sides have so far managed their differences, out of an awareness, analysts suggest, that is based on the realization they need one another’s cooperation in efforts to secure their regional goals and ultimately bring an end to the seven-year conflict.
Under the “Astana Process,” so-called deconfliction zones have been created across Syria, in which rebel groups are concentrated. Ankara, with its close ties to those rebel groups, has worked closely with Moscow within the process. Wednesday’s meeting is expected to focus on the Syrian enclave of Idlib. Turkish forces have been steadily increasing their deployment there, creating observation posts to monitor the deconfliction zone.
The Turkish-led military campaign against the YPG Syrian-Kurdish militia is also expected to be on the agenda of Wednesday’s summit. Ankara accuses the militia of being a terrorist group linked to a decades-long Kurdish insurgency inside Turkey.
Last month, Turkish forces ousted the YPG from the Syrian enclave of Afrin, but Erdogan has pledged to expand the military operation across northern Syria up to the Iraqi border. Erdogan is expected to seek to assuage any concerns from Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Iran’s Hassan Rouhani.
“The limits of the [Turkish military] operation [in Syria] will depend on the reaction of other actors who are stakeholders in Syria,” predicted Sinan Ulgen of Brussels-based Carnegie Europe, a research institution. With Russian air defenses currently controlling most of Syria’s airspace, Moscow up until now has given its tacit support to the offensive, allowing Turkish jets to fly with impunity in Syrian airspace in support of the operation.
Turkey-Iran tensions
Tehran has called for an end to the Turkish operation. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is expected to press his concerns over the operation in the talks with Erdogan. The two leaders are scheduled for a separate face-to-face meeting.
Analysts point out Iran is likely to be increasingly concerned about the growing number of Turkish armed forces in Syria. Tehran will be aware Turkish forces seldom withdraw once deployed in a neighboring country. Regional rivalries between the two powerful neighbors are exacerbated by sectarian tensions.
“I don’t see any good relation between Erdogan and the Islamic regime of Iran because Sunni and Shia Muslims are fighting for the same land in the Middle East,” warns Iranian expert Jamshid Assadi of France’s Burgundy Business School. “They might agree on not fighting a war, but that is all.”
Tehran’s recent cooperation with Ankara over Syria is giving Iran an opportunity to further undermine Turkey’s strained ties with the United States. That, observers say, is important for Iran, given the importance of Turkey in any new sanctions by the U.S. against Iran.
Also Rouhani, like Russia’s Putin, will be aware of the looming confrontation between Turkish and U.S. forces over the Syrian town of Manbij. Erdogan has pledged to oust the Kurdish YPG militia from Manbij, where U.S. forces are also deployed. Washington sees the YPG as a key ally in its war against Islamic State. Sources in Ankara have suggested the Turkish-led operation is as much about removing the U.S. presence in Syria as is the Kurdish militia.
Tehran, like Moscow, is also aware of the important role Ankara is playing in helping to facilitate the movement of rebels toward the region near the Turkish border.
“The Moscow-Tehran-Damascus trio wants all jihadists to seek refuge near the Turkish border, which is an extremely smart move on their part,” wrote columnist Barcin Yinanc of the Hurriyet Daily News. He warned, however, that Ankara could pay a heavy price. “There is no guarantee that these Islamist and jihadist groups will not end up hitting back at Turkey in the future.” Analysts, however, point out the priority for Ankara remains its ongoing campaign against the YPG.
read morePoland’s prime minister claims Jews took part in their own destruction in the Holocaust. His Hungarian counterpart declares that the “color” of Europeans should not mix with that of Africans and Arabs. And the Croatian president has thanked Argentina for welcoming notorious pro-Nazi war criminals after World War II.
Ever since WWII, such views were taboo in Europe, confined to the far-right fringes. Today they are openly expressed by mainstream political leaders in parts of Central and Eastern Europe, part of a global populist surge in the face of globalization and mass migration.
“There is something broader going on in the region which has produced a patriotic, nativist, conservative discourse through which far-right ideas managed to become mainstream,” said Tom Junes, a historian and a researcher with the Human and Social Studies Foundation in Sofia, Bulgaria.
In many places, the shift to the right has included the rehabilitation of Nazi collaborators, often fighters or groups celebrated as anti-communists or defenders of national liberation. In Hungary and Poland, governments are also eroding the independence of courts and media, leading human rights groups to warn that democracy is threatened in parts of a region that threw off Moscow-backed dictatorships in 1989.
Some analysts say Russia is covertly helping extremist groups in order to destabilize Western liberal democracies. While that claim is difficult to prove with concrete evidence, it is clear that the growth of radical groups has pushed moderate conservative parties to veer to the right to hold onto votes.
That’s the case in Hungary, where Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his Fidesz party — the front-runner in the April 8 elections — have drawn voters with an increasingly strident anti-migrant campaign.
Casting himself as the savior of a white Christian Europe being overrun by hordes of Muslims and Africans, Orban has insisted that Hungarians don’t want their “own color, traditions and national culture to be mixed by others.”
Orban, who is friendly with Russian President Vladimir Putin, was also the first European leader to endorse Donald Trump in the 2016 U.S. presidential race. In 2015 he erected razor wire at Hungary’s borders to stop migrants from crossing, and has since been warning in apocalyptic terms that the West faces racial and civilizational suicide if the migration continues.
Orban has also been obsessed with demonizing the financier and philanthropist George Soros, falsely portraying the Hungarian-born Holocaust survivor as an advocate of uncontrolled immigration into Europe. In what critics denounce as a state-sponsored conspiracy theory with anti-Semitic overtones, the Hungarian government spent $48.5 million on anti-Soros ads in 2017, according to data compiled by investigative news site atlatszo.hu.
In a recent speech, Orban denounced Soros in language that echoed anti-Semitic clichés of the 20th century. He said Hungary’s foes “do not believe in work, but speculate with money; they have no homeland, but feel that the whole world is theirs.”
In nearby Poland, xenophobic language is also on the rise. The ruling party’s leader, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, claimed migrants carried “parasites” ahead of the 2015 elections. And when nationalists held a large Independence Day march in November — when some carried banners calling for a “White Europe” and “Clean Blood” — the interior minister called it a “beautiful sight.”
Poland’s government has also been embroiled in a bitter dispute with Israel and Jewish organizations over a law that would criminalize blaming Poland for Germany’s Holocaust crimes.
With tensions running high in February, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki listed “Jewish perpetrators” as among those who were responsible for the Holocaust. He also visited the Munich grave of an underground Polish resistance group that had collaborated with the Nazis.
In the same vein, an official tapped to create a major new history museum has condemned the postwar tribunals in Nuremberg, Germany — where top Nazis were judged — as “the greatest judicial farce in the history of Europe.” Arkadiusz Karbowiak said the Nuremberg trials were only “possible because of the serious role of Jews” in their organization, and called them “the place where the official religion of the Holocaust was created.”
Across the region, Roma, Muslims, Jews and other minorities have expressed anxiety about the future. But nationalists insist they are not promoting hate. They argue they’re defending their national sovereignty and Christian way of life against globalization and the large-scale influx of migrants who don’t assimilate.
The Balkans, bloodied by ethnic warfare in the 1990s, are also seeing a rise of nationalism, particularly in Serbia and Croatia. Political analysts there believe that Russian propaganda is spurring old ethnic resentments.
Croatia has steadily drifted to the right since joining the EU in 2013. Some officials there have denied the Holocaust or reappraised Croatia’s ultranationalist, pro-Nazi Ustasha regime, which killed tens of thousands of Jews, Serbs, Roma and anti-fascist Croats in wartime prison camps.
In a recent visit to Argentina, President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic thanked the country for providing post-war refuge to Croats who had belonged to the Ustasha regime.
The world’s top Nazi hunter, Efraim Zuroff of the Wiesenthal center, called her statement “a horrific insult to victims.” Grabar-Kitarovic later said she had not meant to glorify a totalitarian regime.
Meanwhile in Bulgaria, which holds the EU’s rotating presidency, the government includes a far-right alliance, the United Patriots, whose members have given Nazi salutes and slurred minorities. Deputy prime minister Valeri Simeonov has called Roma “ferocious humanoids” whose women “have the instincts of street dogs.”
Junes, the Sofia-based researcher, says that even though hate crimes are on the rise in Bulgaria, the problem has raised little concern in the West because the country keeps its public debt in check and is not challenging the fundamental Western consensus, unlike Poland and Hungary.
“Bulgaria isn’t rocking the boat,” Junes said. “They play along with Europe.”
While populist and far-right groups are also growing in parts of Western Europe, countries like Poland and Hungary are proving more vulnerable to the same challenges, said Peter Kreko, director of Political Capital Institute, a Budapest-based think tank.
“In younger, weaker, more fragile democracies,” Kreko said, “right-wing populism is more dangerous because it can weaken and even demolish the democratic institutions.”
…
Last week’s tit-for-tat closure of U.S. and Russian consulates over the death of a former spy in Britain was intended to punish officials and diplomats, but ordinary citizens of both countries are already feeling the impact.
The fallout is most severe for Russian citizens and travel-minded Americans in the U.S. Northwest, who would normally seek visas, passport renewals and other documents at the Russian consulate in Seattle, which shut down Friday.
With Russia’s San Francisco consulate having already been closed in September, that leaves residents of the Seattle area with a minimum four-and-a-half-hour flight to the nearest functioning Russian consulate in Houston, Texas, some 3,000 kilometers (1,860) miles) away.
Gayane Yaffa, head of Russian visa services in Seattle, said her phone rang non-stop all week after the March 26 White House announcement.
“People started calling at 7 a.m. asking what to do now,” said Yaffa. “Many had already planned their trips and purchased tickets. People kept asking what to do. It was impossible to reach the consulate in Seattle, and those who succeeded were told there was no point in coming because the employees only gave out the ready passports with visas in them.”
Russia responded later last week by ordering the United States to close its consulate in St. Petersburg, the second busiest one in the country. But the impact of that closing will be less severe, since the U.S. consulate in Moscow — less than 700 kilometers (435 miles) to the southeast — will continue to operate.
Russian national Yuri Dukhovny, a Los Angeles resident, says he believes the exchange of closings is going to have a disproportionate impact on Russians.
“All conflicts between states first affect average citizens,” he said. “Many Russians need to renew passports and deal with paperwork. Not having any Russian consulates on the West Coast affects them greatly. Everything will now take forever.”
Script writer Jeremy Iverson, an American who says he moved to Russia a year ago to seek adventure, echoed that view, saying it is average Russians who ultimately will pay the price for the diplomatic gamesmanship.
“The closure of the (St. Petersburg) consulate isn’t actually going to impact American citizens they’ll still have to go through the ILS system to mail in your documents needed for obtaining a visa,” he said. “It will impact Russian citizens who need consular services, those who are here and are trying to get passports changed, to get documentation things like that. It’s going to be an issue for them.”
Moscow responded to the U.S. order to close the Seattle consulate with a Twitter poll asking Russian citizens which U.S. consulate should be closed in response.
What seemed like a sarcastic joke, said Russian political analyst Alexandr Konfisakhor, was actually a political tactic that appeared to shift responsibility for the decision to the will of the Russian people. Konfisakhor suggested it was a way for the Russian government to respond to the U.S. but not overdo it.
“You can get to Moscow from St. Petersburg in just a couple of hours. It means that everyone who needs a visa can easily get one. Closing a consulate in Yekaterinburg or Vladivostok would have been a much more serious inconvenience,” he said.
This story originated from VOA’s Russian Service.
…
Jailed former Catalan separatist leader Carles Puigdemont insisted those who want independence for the northern Spanish region are not criminals.
“We want to decide our own future — is that a crime? We used ballot boxes — is that a crime?” Puigdemont asked during a jail cell interview by a German news website.
“We were elected by the people, so what is the problem with the Spanish authorities? Why don’t they start politics in order to solve a political problem?”
German police arrested Puigdemont on a Spanish warrant last week. He is wanted in Spain on charges of inciting rebellion by defying the central government and going ahead with a Catalan independence referendum in October, leading to a violent police crackdown.
Puigdemont initially fled to Belgium to avoid arrest.
The French News Agency reported Puigdemont’s attorney has appealed the Supreme Court’s decision to prosecute him on the rebellion charges. The lawyer argued the charge implies Puigdemont advocated an uprising by violence. He said any violence that followed the October referendum was isolated and does not justify the charges.
Twenty-four other Catalan separatist leaders are also facing rebellion charges.
Pro-independence lawmakers won a slim majority in December’s parliamentary elections in Catalonia. However, parliament has been unable to name a new president since Puigdemont fled, and the future of independence is murky.
Catalonia, in northeast Spain, and its capital Barcelona are major tourist magnets. It has its own language and distinct culture, but the separatist crisis has hurt tourism and the regional economy.
Catalan separatists call the region a powerful economic engine that drives Spain, and they have demanded more autonomy.
Those who want to stay united with Spain fear the region will sink into an economic abyss without the central government, its ties to the European Union, and its numerous existing bilateral relations.
…
The U.S. relationship with fellow NATO members comes under scrutiny again this week as U.S. President Donald Trump hosts a Baltic Summit at the White House on Tuesday.
According to a White House statement, Trump and President Kersti Kaljulaid of Estonia, President Raimonds Vejonis of Latvia, and President Dalia Grybauskaite of Lithuania are set to discuss how to strengthen security, business, trade, energy, and cultural partnerships between the United States and these three NATO allies.
The White House says the gathering will also highlight the countries’ recent success in meeting NATO’s defense spending pledge.
Trump has repeatedly criticized NATO member countries for not contributing their fair share to the alliance and not meeting their 2 percent defense spending benchmark. In a speech to NATO members last year, he noticeably failed to reiterate the U.S. commitment to NATO’s Article 5 pledge of mutual defense, rattling NATO allies.
Since Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania have grown increasingly worried about Russia’s regional military buildup and the possibility that they could suffer a similar fate as Crimea.
The countries have since pledged to boost their defense spending, counting on NATO allies to provide military assistance should Russia take any action.
Latvian President Raimons Vejonis told Latvian television last week that he expects Washington to publicly commit to the region’s security. “It is planned to adopt a declaration, from which we expect a very strong political message from the U.S. expressing support for strengthening Baltic security and expressing, once again, support for the independence of the Baltic states,” he said.
New spike in tensions
The U.S.-Baltic summit comes amid heighten tensions between Russia and the West.
Last week, the U.S. and more than two dozen countries – including the three Baltic States – expelled a total of more than 150 Russian diplomats in a show of solidarity over the poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain. Russia responded by announcing the expulsion of more than 150 foreign diplomats, including 60 U.S. diplomats.
In addition to the expulsions, the U.S. and the Baltic states have been accusing Russia of conducting a barrage of cyberattacks and spreading fake news, propaganda, and disinformation online in an effort to meddle in European countries’ political systems and sway public opinion in favor of Russia’s agenda. Top U.S. intelligence officials have accused Russia of interfering in 2016 US presidential election and taking steps to undermine the 2018 midterm elections.
“I think what we have seen in the past four or three years is the community of democratic nations is under the attack,” Latvian Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkevics recently told VOA’s Russian Service, referring to Russian interference.
“The very basis of our democratic institutions are under attack through social media by fake news, and also through the influence of money, and it is very important that we stick together,” he said.
Russia test-fired its new liquid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missile Sarmat on Friday. Latvia’s Defense Ministry said Thursday it was concerned by a sudden announcement from Russia that it will test-fire missiles in the Baltic Sea between Latvia and Sweden on April 4 and 6.
Last month, Trump congratulated Russian President Vladimir Putin on his re-election victory during a phone call and said the two agreed to hold talks in the “not-too-distant future.”
White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said Monday they discussed the meeting could take place “at a number of potential venues, including the White House.”
…
German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas wants to resume dialogue with Russia and gradually improve ties after diplomatic expulsions over a nerve agent attack on a former Russian spy in England that Britain blames on Russia, he said on Sunday.
Conservative German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Maas have joined the United States and other European countries in standing with Britain in a major standoff over the attack on former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter.
Maas, a member of the Social Democrats (SPD) who are split on how tough to be on Moscow, told Bild am Sonntag much trust had been lost in the last few years due to Russia’s behavior.
“At the same time, we need Russia as a partner to settle regional conflicts, for disarmament and as an important pillar of multilateralism,” he was quoted as saying in the paper.
“We are therefore open for dialogue and are trying to rebuild trust bit by bit if Russia is ready.”
He also, however, defended the decision to expel diplomats, “to show solidarity with Britain but also as a signal of unity.”
In the last week, as part of mass expulsions on both sides, Germany expelled four Russian diplomats and Moscow has reciprocated with the same number, prompting talk of a crisis in relations between Russia and the West.
Some Social Democrats have urged the ‘grand coalition’ of their party and Merkel’s conservatives to ensure a new Cold War does not start, and business groups are also worried.
Germany relies on Russia for roughly a third of the gas it uses and, before Western states imposed sanctions on Russia over its role in the Ukraine crisis, Europe’s biggest economy exported about 38 billion euros of goods to Russia.
London accuses Moscow of being responsible for the first known use of a military-grade nerve agent on European soil since World War II and Germany has repeatedly called on Moscow to cooperate more with the investigations.
…
To track down people in Britain who may have broken immigration rules, the government is turning to a new and controversial source of information: doctors.
In letters made public last month, politicians sparred with immigration officials over a data-sharing agreement quietly signed in 2016 that gives the government access to personal information collected by the country’s family doctors. Medical details are excluded.
A parliamentary health committee condemned the situation as “unacceptable,” calling for the agreement to be suspended. But Britain’s immigration department has dismissed those concerns, arguing that such data sharing allows the U.K. to remove people “who might pose a danger to the public.”
Doctors who work with refugees and asylum-seekers have described it as a major breach of medical ethics, saying it isn’t up to physicians to enforce immigration rules.
“We understand the government has a job to do, but going into health records to get patient information is not OK,” said Lucy Jones, director of programs at Doctors of the World U.K. “The idea that any patient information is being shared with a government body immediately breaks their trust in a doctor-patient relationship.”
Several leading medical organizations, including the Royal College of General Practitioners, Public Health England and the General Medical Council, have all slammed the data-sharing deal, saying it could worsen the health of vulnerable people and drive disease outbreaks underground, hurting health care for all.
Dalia Omer, a refugee from Sudan who was granted asylum in the U.K. in February after nearly two years, sought medical help several times while awaiting the government’s decision. She said had she known about the data sharing arrangement, she would not have been as forthcoming.
“If I knew the doctors could share information with the Home Office, I would not tell them everything,” she said, referring to the British department that oversees immigration and security. She said she might even lie about certain details to protect herself.
Dr. Kitty Worthing, a London-based doctor with the group Docs Not Cops, said “the cornerstone of the doctor-patient relationship is confidentiality and this data-sharing is a direct breach of that.” She said when she’s advised people that their personal information could be shared with immigration officials “their reaction is always fear.”
Elsewhere in Europe, many countries have a strict firewall that stops information gathered by health services from being disclosed to other government agencies. Germany’s data protection office said regulations prohibit any blanket sharing of such information. In France, no data obtained by doctors is shared with the Interior Ministry.
Some health experts said it was critical that some types of health care are available to everyone in the U.K., regardless of their immigration status.
“With HIV treatment, it makes much more sense to treat everybody with HIV, because treatment lowers the level of virus in your blood so you can’t pass it on,” said Kat Smithson of the National AIDS Trust. “If people are not diagnosed because they’re not accessing health care, they’re not aware they’re living with HIV, which means they’re far more likely to pass it on to somebody else.”
The British government, however, says protecting its borders outweighs those concerns.
“We believe that the release of (patient) information is lawful and proportionate action in pursuit of the effective enforcement of the U.K.’s immigration policy,” wrote Caroline Noakes, the minister of state for immigration and James O’Shaughnessy, parliamentary undersecretary of state for health, responding to lawmaker’s concerns.
They cited the case of a Pakistani citizen who overstayed a visitor’s visa. After the Pakistani was refused residency in 2013, contact with the Home Office was broken off. Immigration officials sent a request to health services, which revealed a new address.
“The Home Office visited the address and arrested the individual, a convicted sex offender, who is now complying with the Home Office and will leave the U.K.,” Noakes and O’Shaughnessy wrote, describing patients’ non-medical data as being “at the lower end of the privacy spectrum.”
From last November to January, health officials agreed to nearly 1,300 requests for information. Of those, health officials found 501 cases where patients had a different address from the one in Home Office records.
Some Londoners said it was OK for immigration officials to get data from doctors under certain conditions.
“If the Home Office needs the information for a good reason, I guess it’s OK, but they should ask the people for permission,” said Farooq, outside an east London clinic that provides health care largely for migrants. He declined to give his last name because he was worried about the immigration status of his father, originally from Afghanistan.
Farooq said data sharing could make migrants nervous about getting medical attention.
“It could put people in a risky situation if they’re worried about their visa and they need to see a doctor,” he said.
…
Christians around the world Sunday are celebrating Easter —
the day they believe Jesus arose from the dead. It is the holiest day of the Christian calendar.
Easter is Christianity’s “moveable feast,” falling on a different date each year. Western Christian churches celebrate Easter on the first Sunday following the full moon after the vernal equinox.
Thousands of the faithful gathered in the Vatican’s Saint Peter’s Square to hear Pope Francis deliver the annual “Urbi et Orbi” — “to the city and to the world” — Easter address.
Easter marks the end of Holy Week, which is the week before Easter and includes Maundy Thursday, the day of Jesus’ last supper with his disciples. Holy Week also includes Good Friday, the day Jesus was crucified.
The Eastern Orthodox church celebrates Easter next Sunday, April 8.
The two Easters are usually weeks apart with the Western Christian church following the Gregorian calendar, while the Eastern Orthodox uses the older Julian calendar. Last year, however, Easter was celebrated on the same day in both traditions.
read moreCrowds lined the streets of Cambridge, England, on Saturday for the funeral of one of the world’s most famous scientists: physicist Stephen Hawking, who died March 14 at age 76.
The scientist, confined for decades to a wheelchair and voice synthesizer because of the disease ALS, was known for his charisma, curiosity, and a crackling sense of humor. His science books and television cameos made him a pop-culture icon.
Hawking described his research as seeking “a complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all.”
Hawking’s funeral was held Saturday at the Cambridge University church known as Great St. Mary’s. As the funeral procession arrived, bells rang 76 times — once for each year of Hawking’s life.
In addition to Hawking’s family members, caretakers, former students, and admirers, the ceremony was attended by a number of famous faces. Among them was actor Eddie Redmayne, who played Hawking in an award-winning film biography of his life called The Theory of Everything, released in 2014.
Redmayne’s co-star, Felicity Jones, model Lily Cole, Queen guitarist and astrophysicist Brian May, and Britain’s Astronomer Royal, the Lord Rees of Ludlow (Martin Rees), were also there.
The eulogy, read by professor Faye Dowker, praised Hawking as someone “revered for his devotion as a scholar to the pursuit of knowledge.”
Hawking will be given one last high honor: his remains are to be interred in Westminster Abbey among some of Britain’s most legendary intellectuals. Hawking will take his place next to 17th-century mathematical scientist Isaac Newton and near 19th-century evolutionary scientist Charles Darwin.
…
Many students would be delighted to have the World Cup in town, but not Maria Cheremnova.
The 20-year-old physics student in Moscow is one of thousands campaigning against the June 14-July 15 soccer tournament, which is set to disrupt academic life across the country.
There will be a 25,000-capacity fan zone outside the main building at Russia’s prestigious Moscow State University during exam season. In other cities, exams have been brought forward and thousands of police are set to move into dorm rooms.
The Moscow fan zone – a public viewing area with a big screen, beer and music – is on prime real estate near the vast Luzhniki arena, the river and the main university building, a Stalin-era colossus that ranks among the Russian capital’s most recognizable structures.
The building is also home to around 6,500 students. Residents say it doesn’t have great soundproofing.
“I came to university to study, not to watch football and listen to that noise,” Cheremnova said. “Imagine 25,000 people and the events at night. It’ll all be visible, with lights, a big screen, music and fans, who aren’t very quiet guys. It’s going to stop people sleeping before their exams. It’s just awful.”
It will also mean extra strain on already struggling transport networks – the fan zone is two subway stops from Luzhniki stadium – and fans could damage a nearby nature reserve, Cheremnova claimed.
A group of Moscow State University students and recent graduates has gathered more than 4,600 signatures demanding the fan zone be moved to another location. They said more students and staff would have signed but feared retaliation from the university administration. When attempting to deliver the petition to the rector’s office, security guards blocked the way and elevator access was cut to that floor only, supposedly for repair.
Russian universities have little tradition of student protest. While they were hotbeds of activism before the Russian Revolution of 1917, in Soviet times access to a college education was closely linked to political loyalty and membership of groups like the Young Communist League.
World Cup organizers have revised earlier plans for Moscow’s fan zone to be larger and closer to the university. FIFA said “to lessen the impact of the event on students and the adjacent infrastructure of the university, it was agreed to move the stage away from the main building by several meters, to reduce the capacity to 25,000 spectators and to change access flows.”
Opposition not only in Moscow
Across Russia, the tournament has brought upheaval for students.
The Russian academic year often runs well into the summer months, and late June is usually prime time for exams.
In most of the 11 host cities, university dorms are due to turn into temporary barracks for police and National Guard troops brought in from out of town for the tournament.
Many universities have brought forward examinations, often by more than a month, to avoid the World Cup and free up dorm space for security forces.
That means semesters have been cut short with little warning, forcing students to cram more studies into less time. Cheremnova said that some Moscow State University students were told to prepare for earlier examinations, only for the decision to be reversed.
At the Southern Federal University in Rostov-on-Don, semesters run back-to-back since “the winter vacation was postponed until the summer period,” according to spokesman Andrei Svechnikov.
What’s angering students more than anything else is the prospect of being forced to move out of rooms they’ve paid for.
Despite official denials from the Education and Science Ministry that any students will be kicked out to make way for security forces, more than 2,800 students have signed a petition against alleged removals.
“There will be no forced eviction of students under this process,” the ministry told The Associated Press, adding that security forces will “not disrupt the learning process.”
The AP contacted 17 universities cited in local media reports as planning to evict students for the World Cup. Of those, six said no students would be forced to move, one said a small number would be required to move to other dorms, and 10 failed to reply.
In many cities, students report mixed messages from university officials over accommodation and study schedules.
Zhokhangir Mirzadzhanov, a student in the western city of Kaliningrad, said his university initially offered to buy tickets for students to leave the city and free up dorm space for the tournament but details remained unclear.
“There are a lot of simple issues that they still can’t answer,” he said. “What comes next, no one knows.”
…
Pope Francis presided over solemn Good Friday services amid tight security at Rome’s Colosseum for the Via Crucis procession. Italian police and army soldiers were on high alert, with Holy Week coinciding with a spate of arrests of suspected Islamic extremists around Italy.
Francis presided at a traditional candle-lit Way of the Cross procession around Rome’s ancient Colosseum. Some 20,000 people turned out to take part in the event with the pope on the most somber day in the Christian liturgical calendar, which commemorates the death of Jesus on the cross.
Rome authorities increased security this year with checks carried out as the faithful approached the area. Italian police carried out four raids against suspected supporters of Islamist terrorism, arresting seven people, including one man who was believed to have been planning a truck attack.
The Way of the Cross procession marks 14 events, called stations, beginning with Roman governor Pontius Pilate’s condemning Jesus to death, until his burial in a tomb. This year the meditations at each station were written by Catholic high school and college students in keeping with Francis’ decision to dedicate 2018 to addressing the hopes and concerns of young Catholics.
At the end, he delivered a meditation of his own, denouncing those who seek power, money and conflict. He prayed that the Catholic Church be always an “ark of salvation, a source of certainty and truth.”
Pope Francis also said many should feel “shame because our generations are leaving young people a world that is fractured by divisions and wars, a world devoured by selfishness where young people, children, the sick and the elderly are marginalized.”
The pope praised those in the Church who are trying to arouse “humanity’s sleeping conscience” through their work helping the poor, immigrants, and prison inmates.
Earlier, the pope presided over a solemn Passion of the Lord service in St. Peter’s Basilica which was kept open despite several pieces of plaster having come crashing down from a pillar of the church on Thursday. The damage was swiftly repaired.
Thousands of faithful filled the basilica. Francis lay prostrate in prayer on the marble pavement in front of the altar at the start of the chant-filled evening service. Later, the crucifix was carried in procession from the back of the basilica to the pope who then kissed it. The other concelebrants followed his example.
On Holy Saturday, in the evening, the pope will celebrate the solemn Easter Vigil in St. Peter’s Basilica, followed by the joyful Easter Sunday Mass marking what Christians observe as Christ’s resurrection.
read moreThe father-in-law of Pippa Middleton, whose sister Kate is married to Britain’s Prince William, has been placed under formal investigation over suspected rape of a minor, a court source told Reuters on Friday.
David Matthews, who is the father of Pippa Middleton’s husband, James Matthews, was arrested Tuesday by the Juvenile Protection Brigade (BPM) and formally put under investigation for suspected rape of a minor under his authority, said the source, confirming a report on Europe 1 radio.
Paris prosecutors arrested Matthews during a visit to France, and later released him and placed him under judicial control, the source said. The source did not say when he was released. French police can hold suspects 24 or 48 hours in such cases.
The source said the alleged rape took place in 1998 or 1999. Europe 1 reported that a complaint was filed in 2017.
Reuters could not immediately reach Matthews nor any spokespeople or lawyers for him.
Being placed under judicial control means that prosecutors have attached certain conditions to his release or imposed certain limits on whom he can meet or where he can go. The source did not say what conditions had been attached in Matthews’ case.
Pippa Middleton came to national attention in Britain as the maid of honor at her sister’s royal wedding to William in 2011. Her own lavish wedding to James Matthews last May was one of the most widely reported social events of the year, attended by William and his brother Harry, grandsons of Queen Elizabeth.
…
Russian ships are skulking around underwater communications cables, causing the U.S. and its allies to worry the Kremlin might be taking information warfare to new depths.
Is Moscow interested in cutting or tapping the cables? Does it want the West to worry it might? Is there a more innocent explanation? Unsurprisingly, Russia isn’t saying.
But whatever Moscow’s intentions, U.S. and Western officials are increasingly troubled by their rival’s interest in the 400 fiber-optic cables that carry most of world’s calls, emails and texts, as well as $10 trillion worth of daily financial transactions.
“We’ve seen activity in the Russian navy, and particularly undersea in their submarine activity, that we haven’t seen since the ’80s,” General Curtis Scaparrotti, commander of the U.S. European Command, told Congress this month.
Without undersea cables, a bank in Asian countries couldn’t send money to Saudi Arabia to pay for oil. U.S. military leaders would struggle to communicate with troops fighting extremists in Afghanistan and the Middle East. A student in Europe wouldn’t be able to Skype his parents in the United States.
Small passageways
All this information is transmitted along tiny glass fibers encased in undersea cables that, in some cases, are little bigger than a garden hose. All told, there are 620,000 miles of fiber-optic cable running under the sea, enough to loop around Earth nearly 25 times.
Most lines are owned by private telecommunications companies, including giants like Google and Microsoft. Their locations are easily identified on public maps, with swirling lines that look like spaghetti. While cutting one cable might have limited impact, severing several simultaneously or at choke points could cause a major outage.
The Russians “are doing their homework and, in the event of a crisis or conflict with them, they might do rotten things to us,” said Michael Kofman, a Russian military expert at nonprofit research group CNA Corp.
It’s not Moscow’s warships and submarines that are making NATO and U.S. officials uneasy. It’s Russia’s Main Directorate of Deep Sea Research, whose specialized surface ships, submarines, underwater drones and minisubs conduct reconnaissance, underwater salvage and other work.
One ship run by the directorate is the Yantar. It’s a modest, 354-foot oceanographic vessel that holds a crew of about 60. It most recently was off South America’s coast helping Argentina search for a lost submarine.
Parlamentskaya Gazeta, the Russian parliament’s publication, last October said the Yantar has equipment “designed for deep-sea tracking” and “connecting to top-secret communication cables.” The publication said that in September 2015, the Yantar was near Kings Bay, Georgia, home to a U.S. submarine base, “collecting information about the equipment on American submarines, including underwater sensors and the unified [U.S. military] information network.” Rossiya, a Russian state TV network, has said the Yantar not only can connect to top-secret cables but also can cut them and “jam underwater sensors with a special system.”
Russia’s Defense Ministry did not respond to a request for comment.
Preparing for sabotage
There is no hard evidence that the ship is engaged in nefarious activity, said Steffan Watkins, an information technology security consultant in Canada tracking the ship. But he wonders what the ship is doing when it’s stopped over critical cables or when its Automatic Identification System tracking transponder isn’t on.
Of the Yantar’s crew, he said: “I don’t think these are the actual guys who are doing any sabotage. I think they’re laying the groundwork for future operations.”
Members of Congress are wondering, too.
Representative Joe Courtney, a Connecticut Democrat on a House subcommittee on sea power, said of the Russians, “The mere fact that they are clearly tracking the cables and prowling around the cables shows that they are doing something.”
Democratic Senator Gary Peters of Michigan, an Armed Services Committee member, said Moscow’s goal appears to be to “disrupt the normal channels of communication and create an environment of misinformation and distrust.”
The Yantar’s movements have previously raised eyebrows.
On October 18, 2016, a Syrian telecom company ordered emergency maintenance to repair a cable in the Mediterranean that provides internet connectivity to several countries, including Syria, Libya and Lebanon. The Yantar arrived in the area the day before the four-day maintenance began. It left two days before the maintenance ended. It’s unknown what work it did while there.
Watkins described another episode on November 5, 2016, when a submarine cable linking Persian Gulf nations experienced outages in Iran. Hours later, the Yantar left Oman and headed to an area about 60 miles west of the Iranian port city of Bushehr, where the cable runs ashore. Connectivity was restored just hours before the Yantar arrived on November 9. The boat stayed stationary over the site for several more days.
Undersea cables have been targets before.
At the beginning of World War I, Britain cut a handful of German underwater communications cables and tapped the rerouted traffic for intelligence. In the Cold War, the U.S. Navy sent American divers deep into the Sea of Okhotsk off the Russian coast to install a device to record Soviet communications, hoping to learn more about the U.S.S.R.’s submarine-launched nuclear capability.
Eavesdropping by spies
More recently, British and American intelligence agencies have eavesdropped on fiber-optic cables, according to documents released by Edward Snowden, a former National Security Agency contractor.
In 2007, Vietnamese authorities confiscated ships carrying miles of fiber-optic cable that thieves salvaged from the sea for profit. The heist disrupted service for several months. And in 2013, Egyptian officials arrested three scuba divers off Alexandria for attempting to cut a cable stretching from France to Singapore. Five years on, questions remain about the attack on a cable responsible for about a third of all internet traffic between Egypt and Europe.
Despite the relatively few publicly known incidents of sabotage, most outages are due to accidents.
Two hundred or so cable-related outages take place each year. Most occur when ship anchors snap cables or commercial fishing equipment snags the lines. Others break during tsunamis, earthquakes and other natural disasters.
But even accidental cuts can harm U.S. military operations.
In 2008 in Iraq, unmanned U.S. surveillance flights nearly screeched to a halt one day at Balad Air Base, not because of enemy mortar attacks or dusty winds. An anchor had snagged a cable hundreds of miles away from the base, situated in the “Sunni Triangle” northwest of Baghdad.
The severed cable had linked controllers based in the United States with unmanned aircraft flying intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions for coalition forces in the skies over Iraq, said retired Air Force Colonel Dave Lujan of Hampton, Virginia.
“Say you’re operating a remote-controlled car and all of a sudden you can’t control it,” said Lujan, who was deputy commander of the 332nd Expeditionary Operations Group at the base when the little-publicized outage lasted for two to three days. “That’s a big impact,” he said, describing how U.S. pilots had to fly the missions instead.
…
French lawyers staged a walkout Friday while Air France staff went on strike over pay, adding to a growing wave of industrial unrest that threatens to slow President Emmanuel Macron’s reform drive.
Air France canceled a quarter of the day’s flights as its pilots, stewards and ground crew press for a 6 percent pay rise.
And courts postponed hearings as hundreds of lawyers, clerks and magistrates stopped work across the country to protest judicial reforms, among a slew of changes by the ambitious 40-year-old president riling various sections of French society.
“The government’s plan at least has the benefit of being coherent — scrimping, cutting, sacrificing everything it can,” legal profession unions said in a joint statement ahead of protests Friday afternoon.
Law unions complain that the court shake-up, which aims to streamline penal and civil proceedings and digitize the court system, will result in courts that are over-centralized and “dehumanized.”
They particularly object to the scrapping of 307 district courts and their judges which they say will result in a judiciary that is “remote from the people.”
In the meantime, staff at state rail operator SNCF will begin three months of rolling strikes, two days out of every five, on Monday evening — just as many travelers are coming back from an Easter weekend away.
The next day, refuse collectors will strike demanding the creation of a national waste service, energy workers will strike urging a new national electricity and gas service, and Air France staff will walk out again.
“The cost of living goes up, but not salaries,” Francois, an Air France employee, told AFP during a demonstration at Paris’s Charles de Gaulle airport, saying a six percent raise represents “barely a baguette a day for a month.”
Various universities across the country have, meanwhile, been disrupted for weeks by protests against Macron’s decision to introduce an element of selection to the public university admissions process.
‘Growth first, raise later’
Macron has so far avoided the mass industrial action suffered by his predecessor Francois Hollande.
But discord has been growing, with an estimated 200,000 taking to the streets last week in protests and walkouts by workers across the public sector angered by his reforms, including plans to cut 120,000 jobs.
Elected last May, the centrist ex-investment banker has pledged to shake up everything from France’s courts to its education system.
At Air France, 32 percent of pilots were set to join Friday’s walkout along with 28 percent of cabin crew and 20 percent of ground staff, according to company estimates.
But while just 20 to 30 percent of long-haul flights were cut at Charles de Gaulle and Orly in Paris, at other airports such as Nice, as many as half of Air France flights were cancelled.
The French state owns 17.6 percent of the carrier as part of the Air France-KLM group, Europe’s second-biggest airline, which has been plagued by strikes and labor disputes in its French operations in recent years.
Eleven trade unions have already staged two Air France strikes on February 22 and March 23 seeking a six percent salary hike, with two more planned on April 3 and April 7.
Unions argue the airline should share the wealth with its staff after strong results last year, but management insists it cannot offer higher salaries without jeopardizing growth in an intensely competitive sector.
“To distribute wealth we have to create it first,” chief executive Franck Terner told Le Parisien newspaper.
Air France is set to bring in a 0.6 percent pay rise from April 1 and another 0.4 percent increase from October 1, along with bonuses and promotions equivalent to a 1.4 percent raise for ground staff — seen by unions as grossly inadequate.
…
ukrlines skype чат
