United Nations appeals judges on Wednesday hand down a final verdict in the case of former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, a key figure in the Balkan wars who is serving a 40-year prison sentence for genocide.

The ruling will likely bring to a close one of the highest profile trials stemming from the series of wars in the 1990s that saw the bloody collapse of the former Yugoslavia and death of at least 100,000 Bosnians.

Karadzic, 73, was convicted in 2016 for the July 1995 Srebrenica massacre of more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys by Bosnian Serb forces. He was also found guilty of leading a campaign of ethnic cleansing that drove Croats and Muslims out of Serb-claimed areas of Bosnia.

On appeal, prosecutors are seeking a life sentence and a second genocide conviction for his alleged role in that policy of targeting non-Serbs across several Bosnian towns in the early years of the war. Karadzic meanwhile is appealing against his conviction and wants a retrial.

The ruling, which is final and cannot be challenged on appeal, will have huge resonance in the former Yugoslavia, especially in Bosnia, where ethnic communities remain divided and Karadzic is still seen as a hero by many Bosnian Serbs.

The judgment will be read out at 14:00 local time (13:00 GMT) in The Hague at a U.N. court handling cases left over when the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia closed its doors in 2017.

A delegation of the association of Mothers of Srebrenica will be in the Netherlands for the judgment.

In hiding for nearly a decade, Karadzic was arrested and handed over to the court in July 2008.
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Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit plans were in disarray on Tuesday as her government sought to plot a way around the  speaker of parliament’s ruling that she had to change her twice-defeated divorce deal to put it to a third vote.

After two-and-a-half years of negotiations, Britain’s departure from the European Union remains uncertain – with options including a long postponement, leaving with May’s deal, an economically disruptive exit without a deal, or even another membership referendum.

Speaker John Bercow blindsided May’s office on Monday by ruling the government could not put the same Brexit deal to another vote in parliament unless it was substantially different to the ones defeated on Jan. 15 and March 12.

Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay said the ruling meant a vote this week on May’s deal was more unlikely but said ministers were studying a way out of the impasse and indicated the government still planned a third vote on May’s deal.

“This is a moment of crisis for our country,” Barclay said.

“The ruling from the speaker has raised the bar and I think that makes it more unlikely the vote will be this week.”

“We always said that in terms of bringing a vote back for a third time we would need to see a shift from parliamentarians in terms of the support – I think that still is the case.”

May is due at an EU summit in Brussels on Thursday at which she will ask for a delay to the March 29 Brexit departure set in law as the British government tries to come up with a way to leave the European Union after 46 years of membership.

EU leaders could hold off making a final decision at that summit on any Brexit delay depending on what exactly May asks them for, senior diplomats in the bloc said.

“Now it looks like we have to wait till the week after the council to find out what happens,” one diplomat said.

Speaker’s spanner

Bercow said his ruling, based on a convention dating back to 1604, should not be considered his last word and the government could bring forward a new proposition that was not the same as those already voted upon.

Because May must now spice any deal with additional legal and procedural innovation, Bercow’s ruling means she is likely to get just one more chance to put the deal to a vote.

Barclay, who last week said Britain should be unafraid of a no-deal exit, indicated the government was looking at different options and that circumstances, such an extension or a shift in support, would indicate a change in context.

“The speaker himself has pointed to possible solutions, he himself has said in earlier rulings we should not be bound by precedent,” Barclay said. “You can have the same motion but where the circumstances have changed.”

“The speaker himself has said that where the will of the House is for a certain course of action, then it is important that the will of the House is respected.”

Third vote?

Even before Bercow’s intervention, May was scrambling to rally support for her deal – which keeps close trading ties with the EU while leaving the bloc’s formal structures – after it was defeated by 230 votes in parliament on Jan. 15, and by 149 votes on March 12.

To get her deal through parliament, May must win over at least 75 lawmakers – dozens of rebels in her own Conservative Party, some Labour lawmakers, and the Northern Irish Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), which props up her minority government.

The biggest issue is the so-called Northern Irish border backstop, an insurance policy aimed at avoiding post-Brexit controls on the United Kingdom’s border with EU-member Ireland.

Many Brexiteers and the DUP are concerned the backstop will trap the United Kingdom in the EU’s orbit indefinitely, and have sought guarantees it will not.

The Financial Times said May had been told by senior colleagues she will have to set a timetable for her departure if she is to persuading many rebels to support her deal.

Barclay ruled out May asking Queen Elizabeth to cut short the entire parliamentary session, known as prorogation, saying involving the 92-year-old monarch in Brexit was a bad idea.

“The one thing everyone would agree on is that involving Her Majesty in any of the issues around Brexit is not the way forward, so I don’t see that a realistic option,” he said.
…

Authorities in the Netherlands worked Tuesday to determine the motive behind a shooting on a tram that left three people dead and five others wounded in the city of Utrecht.

​Police arrested a suspect identified as 37-year-old Turkish-born Gokmen Tanis hours after a manhunt that lasted several hours Monday.

By Tuesday they said no direct link had been found between the suspect and the shooting victims.

In addition to the main suspect, two other people have been detained, but authorities have not detailed their possible roles in the attack.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said Monday a terror attack “could not be excluded,” while the Turkish news agency Anadolu reported that relatives of Tanis in Turkey said the shooting could have been part of a family dispute.

A Dutch regional prosecutor said the suspect had previously been arrested in the Netherlands, but did not give further details.

Security has been increased at Dutch airports, as well as mosques. Schools in Utrecht have been closed, and residents were advised to stay home.

Political parties suspended campaigning for provincial elections scheduled for Wednesday that will also determine the makeup of the Dutch senate.

Utrecht is the fourth-largest city in the Netherlands, known for its canals and large student population. Gun violence in the city is rare, as it is across the Netherlands.

 
…

NATO is to receive the first of five Northrop Grumman high-altitude drones in the third quarter after years of delays, giving the alliance its own spy drones for the first time, the German government told lawmakers.

Thomas Silberhorn, state secretary in the German Defense Ministry, said the NATO Alliance Ground Surveillance (AGS) drone would be delivered to an air base in Sigonella, Italy, followed by four additional systems, including drones and ground stations built by Airbus, later in the year.

NATO plans to use the aircraft, a derivative of Northrop’s Global Hawk drone, to carry out missions ranging from protection of ground troops to border control and counter-terrorism. The drones will be able to fly for up to 30 hours at a time in all weather, providing near real-time surveillance data.

Northrop first won the contract for the AGS system from NATO in May, 2012, with delivery of the first aircraft slated for 52 months later. However, technical issues and flight test delays have delayed the program, Silberhorn said.

Andrej Hunko, a member of the radical Left opposition party, called for Germany to scrap its participation in the program, warning of spiraling costs and the risk that it could escalate the conflict in eastern Ukraine.

“The drones are closely linked to a new form of warfare,” he said. “They stand for an arms race that will see existing surveillance and spy systems replaced with new platforms.”

Silberhorn, in a previously unreported response to a parliamentary query from Hunko, said NATO had capped the cost of the program at 1.3 billion euros ($1.47 billion) in 2007.

Germany, which is funding about a third of system, scrapped plans to buy its own Global Hawk drones amid spiraling costs and certification problems, and is now negotiating with Northrop to buy several of its newer model Triton surveillance drones.

Fifteen NATO countries, led by the United States, will pay for the AGS system, but all 29 alliance nations are due to participate in its long-term support.

Germany has sent 76 soldiers to Sigonella to operate the surveillance system and analyze its findings, Silberhorn said.

He said a total of 132 German soldiers would eventually be assigned to AGS, of whom 122 would be stationed in Sigonella.

NATO officials had no immediate comment on the program’s status or whether Northrop faced penalties for the delayed delivery.

No comment was available from Northrop.
…

France has fired the Paris police chief and threatened to ban demonstrations on the city’s Champs-Elysees Monday after a weekend of rioting left stores ransacked and charred.

French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe announced Monday that Paris’ police chief Michel Delpuech, 66, who has been in the position since August 2017, will be replaced after an 18th straight weekend of “yellow vest” protests in the capital turned violent.

Philippe also announced new security measures following a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron and top security officials, including a ban on demonstrations on the city’s popular Champs-Elysees — a street of high-end shops popular among tourists — if violent groups were seen there.

Some 10,000 yellow vest demonstrators smashed and looted businesses on the iconic Champs Elysees and hurled cobble stones at police, who responded with tear gas and water cannons. Others participated in a peaceful climate march that brought together tens of thousand of people—underscoring the diffuse, unorganized complexity of the leaderless protest movement.

The months of yellow vest protests have slowed Macron’s reformist agenda. The protest movement, named after the fluorescent jackets French keep in their cars, has morphed well beyond its initial opposition to a planned fuel tax hike, to embrace a hodgepodge of grievances of a largely rural and working class France left behind.
…

President Vladimir Putin has signed legislation enabling Russian authorities to block websites and hand out punishment for “fake news” and material deemed insulting to the state or the public.

The two bills that critics see as part of a Kremlin effort to increase control over the Internet and stifle dissent were signed by the president on March 18, according to posts on the government portal for legal information.

The new legislation allows the authorities to block websites or internet accounts that publish what they deem to be “fake news” and penalize those who post material found to be insulting to state officials, state symbols, or Russian society.

The parliament’s upper chamber, the Federation Council, approved the bills on March 13 after the lower chamber, the State Duma, gave final approval to the proposed legislation on March 7.

On March 11, the Russian Presidential Council for Development of Civil Society and Human Rights urged the upper house to send the bills back to the Duma to be reworked.

The presidential council, whose advice is often ignored by Putin, cited the European Convention on Human Rights and said freedom of expression cannot be restricted exclusively due to doubts about whether what is being expressed is true.

The new law empowers the prosecutor-general and his deputies to determine what constitutes fake news without a court decision, after which the state media and communications watchdog Roskomnadzor would block the site or account.

Fines, jail time

The law sets fines for publishing “fake news” at up to 100,000 rubles ($1,525) for individuals, 200,000 rubles for public officials, and 500,000 rubles for companies.

The law says publications officially registered with Roskomnadzor, including online media outlets, will be given a chance to remove reports deemed as fake news before their websites are blocked.

It says websites that are not registered with Roskomnadzor will be blocked without warning.

The law also establishes fines of up to 100,000 rubles for insulting the Russian authorities, government agencies, the state, the public, the flag, or the constitution.

Repeat offenders will face bigger fines and can be jailed for up to 15 days.

Roskomnadzor will give Internet users 24 hours to remove material deemed by the prosecutor-general or his deputies to be insulting to the state or society, and those that fail to do so will be blocked, the law says.

In January, after the State Duma approved the bills in their first readings, Russian opposition politician Ilya Yashin said: “These are crazy bills.”

“How can they prohibit people from criticizing the authorities?” he added.
…

President Donald Trump complained Monday that the U.S. national news media “is working overtime to blame me for the horrible attack in New Zealand.”

He said on Twitter, “They will have to work very hard to prove that one. So Ridiculous!”  

Trump apparently was incensed that major U.S. news outlets reported that Brent Harris Tarrant, the Australian white supremacist accused in the massacre of 50 Muslim worshippers at two mosques in Christchurch, said in a manifesto he released Friday shortly before the attacks that he viewed Trump as “a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose,” even though he did not support his policies.

Asked Friday after the attacks whether he sees an increase in white nationalism, Trump said, “I don’t really. I think it’s a small group of people that have very, very serious problems, I guess.”

Trump said he had not seen the manifesto.

The president has condemned the attack and voiced support for New Zealand.  But he has not commented on Tarrant’s apparent motive for allegedly carrying out the attacks — his avowed racism and hatred for immigrants and Muslims.

The White House on Sunday rejected any attempt to link Trump to Tarrant.

“The president is not a white supremacist,” acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney told “Fox News Sunday.” “I’m not sure how many times we have to say that. Let’s take what happened in New Zealand for what it is: a terrible evil tragic act.”

Trump’s dismissal that white nationalism is on the rise renewed criticism that he has not voiced strong enough condemnation of white nationalists.

Trump was widely attacked in the aftermath of a deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 when he equated white supremacists with counter-protesters, saying “both sides” were to blame and that there were “fine people” on both sides of the protest.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, one of numerous Democrats seeking the party’s presidential nomination to oppose Trump in the 2020 election, said on Twitter after the New Zealand attack, “Time and time again, this president has embraced and emboldened white supremacists and instead of condemning racist terrorists, he covers for them. This isn’t normal or acceptable.”

Mulvaney, in the Fox News interview, said, “I don’t think it’s fair to cast this person (Tarrant) as a supporter of Donald Trump any more than it is to look at his eco-terrorist passages in that manifesto and align him with (Democratic House Speaker) Nancy Pelosi or Ms. Ocasio-Cortez.”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a Democratic congresswoman from New York.

“This was a disturbed individual, an evil person,” Mulvaney said.

Scott Brown, U.S. ambassador to New Zealand, told CNN that he gave no credence to Tarrant’s comments about Trump in the manifesto, saying the accused gunman “is rotten to the core.” Brown said he hopes Tarrant is convicted “as quickly as he can be,” and “lock him up and throw away the key.”
…

A few months after teen shooters killed 12 classmates and her father at Columbine High School, Coni Sanders was standing in line at a grocery store with her young daughter when they came face to face with the magazine cover.

It showed the two gunmen who had carried out one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history. Sanders realized that few people knew much about her father, who saved countless lives. But virtually everyone knew the names and the tiniest of details about the attackers who carried out the carnage.

In the decades since Columbine, a growing movement has urged news organizations to refrain from naming the shooters in mass slayings and to cease the steady drumbeat of biographical information about them. Critics say giving the assailants notoriety offers little to help understand the attacks and instead fuels celebrity-style coverage that only encourages future attacks.

The 1999 Colorado attack continues to motivate mass shooters, including the two men who this week stormed their former school in Brazil, killing seven people.

The gunman who attacked two mosques in New Zealand on Friday, killing at least 49 people, was said to have been inspired by the man who in 2015 killed nine black worshippers at a church in Charleston, South Carolina.

Adam Lankford, a criminologist at the University of Alabama, who has studied the influence of media coverage on future shooters, said it’s vitally important to avoid excessive coverage of gunmen.

“A lot of these shooters want to be treated like celebrities. They want to be famous. So the key is to not give them that treatment,” he said.

The notion hit close to home for Sanders. Seemingly everywhere she turned — the grocery store, a restaurant, a newspaper or magazine — she would see the faces of the Columbine attackers and hear or read about them. Even in her own home, she was bombarded with their deeds on TV.

Everyone knew their names. “And if you said the two together, they automatically knew it was Columbine,” Sanders said. “The media was so fascinated — and so was our country and the world — that they really grasped onto this every detail. Time and time again, we couldn’t escape it.”

Criminologists who study mass shootings say the vast majority of shooters are seeking infamy and soak up the coverage as a guide.

Just four days after the 2017 Las Vegas concert shooting, which stands as the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history, Lankford published a paper urging journalists to refrain from using shooters’ names or going into exhaustive detail about their crimes.

These attackers, he argued, are trying to outdo previous shooters with higher death tolls. Media coverage serves only to encourage copycats.

Late last year, the Trump administration’s federal Commission on School Safety called on the media to refrain from reporting the names and photos of mass shooters. It was one of the rare moments when gun-rights advocates and gun-control activists agreed.

“To suggest that the media alone is to blame or is primarily at fault for this epidemic of mass shootings would vastly oversimply this issue,” said Adam Skaggs, chief counsel for the Giffords Law Center, which works to curb gun violence.

Skaggs said he is “somewhat sympathetic to journalists’ impulse to cover clearly important and newsworthy events and to get at the truth. … But there’s a balance that can be struck between ensuring the public has enough information … and not giving undue attention to perpetrators of heinous acts.”

Studies show a contagion effect from coverage of both homicides and suicides.

The Columbine shooters, in particular, have an almost cult-like status, with some followers seeking to emulate their trench-coat attire and expressing admiration for their crime, which some have attributed to bullying. The gunman in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting kept a detailed journal of decades’ worth of mass shootings.

James Alan Fox, a professor at Northeastern University who has studied mass shootings, said naming shooters is not the problem. Instead, he blamed over-the-top coverage that includes irrelevant details about the killers, such as their writings and their backgrounds, that “unnecessarily humanizes them.”

“We sometimes come to know more about them — their interests and their disappointments — than we do about our next-door neighbors,” Fox said.

Law enforcement agencies have taken a lead, most recently with the Aurora, Illinois, police chief, who uttered just once the name of the gunman who killed five co-workers and wounded five officers last month.

“I said his name one time for the media, and I will never let it cross my lips again,” Chief Kristen Ziman said in a Facebook post.

Some media, most notably CNN’s Anderson Cooper, have made a point of avoiding using the name of these gunmen.

The Associated Press names suspects identified by law enforcement in major crimes. However, in cases in which the crime is carried out seeking publicity, the AP strives to restrict the mention of the name to the minimum needed to inform the public, while avoiding descriptions that might serve a criminal’s desire for publicity or self-glorification, said John Daniszewski, the AP’s vice president and editor-at-large for standards.

For Caren and Tom Teves, the cause is personal. Their son Alex was among those killed in an Aurora, Colorado, movie theater in 2012.

They were both traveling out of state when the shooting happened, and it took 15 hours for them to learn the fate of their son. During those hours, they heard repeatedly about the shooter but virtually nothing about the victims.

Not long after, they created the No Notoriety movement, encouraging media to stick to reporting relevant facts rather than the smallest of biographical details. They also recommend publishing images of the shooter in places that are not prominent, steering clear of “hero” poses or images showing them holding weapons, and not publishing any manifestos.

“We never say don’t use the name. What we say is use the name responsibly and don’t turn them into anti-heroes,” Tom Teves said. “Let’s portray them for what they are: They’re horrible human beings that are completely skewed in their perception of reality, and their one claim to fortune is sneaking up behind you and shooting you.”
…

Serbia’s president pledged Sunday to defend the country’s law and order a day after opposition supporters stormed the national TV station, protesting what they called his autocratic rule and biased grip on the country’s media.

The opposition clashes with police on Saturday and Sunday in Belgrade, the capital, were first major incidents after months of peaceful protests against populist President Aleksandar Vucic. The demonstrators are demanding his resignation, fair elections and a free media.

As Vucic held a news conference Sunday in the presidency building in downtown Belgrade, thousands of opposition supporters gathered in front demanding his resignation and trapping him in the building for a few hours.

Skirmishes with riot police were reported, including officers firing tear gas against the protesters who sought to form a human chain around the presidency to prevent Vucic from leaving the building.

The pro-government Pink TV showed a photo of Vucic playing chess with the interior minister apparently inside the presidency. Vucic posted a video message on Instagram, saying “I’m here and I won’t move from a place they want to occupy.”

Later, he was seen leaving the building as most of the protesters dispersed from the scene.

“They (protesters) have no power, can do nothing … as you can see, they have no courage, no courage for anything,” Vucic said as he got into his car. “Nothing will come of it, nothing.”

Police said they were attacked and arrested several demonstrators. The interior minister said the protest leaders must be “processed” as soon as possible.

The crowd, however, chanted “He is finished!” at Vucic, which was the slogan of the October 2000 uprising that led to the ouster of late Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic, architect of the country’s bloody wars with its neighbors during the early 1990s.

During his televised address, Vucic repeatedly branded opposition leaders as “fascists, hooligans and thieves.”

“There will be no more violence,” Vucic said. “Serbia is a democratic country, a country of law and order and Serbia will know how to respond.”

Vucic tried to downplay the protesters’ numbers, insisting that only about 1,000 people had gathered, saying “they think they have the right, 1,000 of them, to determine the fate of the country.”

He has also claimed support from outside the capital, saying people are ready to come to Belgrade to defend him.

Serbian riot police on Saturday night removed hundreds of people, including opposition leaders, who stormed the state-run TV headquarters in Belgrade to denounce the broadcaster, whose reporting they consider highly biased.

Serbia’s weekly anti-government protests began after thugs beat up an opposition politician in November. A former extreme nationalist, Vucic now says he wants to lead Serbia into the European Union.
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The deadly mass shooting at New Zealand mosques has prompted an outpouring of grief and rekindled dialogue and reflections about confronting hate and xenophobia in communities spanning the globe, including in the United States. VOA’s Michael Bowman reports from Washington, where stopping the spread of hate messaging in the digital age is a topic of renewed discussion.
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Vocal government critic Zuzana Caputova clinched pole position in round one of Slovakia’s weekend presidential election, according to near-complete results of the first ballot since an investigative journalist’s slaying dealt a blow to the political establishment.

The environmental lawyer secured 40.55 percent of the ballot with 99.88 percent of votes counted, while runner-up European Commission Vice President Maros Sefcovic, the ruling Smer-SD party’s candidate, garnered 18.66 percent, the Slovak Statistics Office said early Sunday.

Caputova is on course to become Slovakia’s first female president, as a new opinion poll by the Focus pollster said she would win the runoff vote against career diplomat Sefcovic, 52, by a landslide on March 30.

The 45-year-old liberal thanked her supporters in the race for the largely ceremonial post, saying “thank you” in Slovak as well as in the languages of the country’s largest minority groups.

Focus on public trust

Running on a slogan of “Stand up to evil,” Caputova had appealed to voters tired of the country’s main political players and vowed to restore public trust in the state.

She was among tens of thousands of protesters who took to the streets after last year’s killing of journalist Jan Kuciak, which shocked the nation and raised fears about media freedom and political corruption.

They were the largest anti-government protests since communist times in the central European country of 5.4 million people, which spent decades behind the Iron Curtain before joining the European Union, the eurozone and NATO.

“It turns out that we want our country to be decent and fair. Zuzana Caputova is exactly the person who can pull Slovakia out of the crisis,” outgoing President Andrej Kiska said in a Facebook video message after the results rolled in. 

The president ratifies international treaties, appoints top judges, is commander in chief of the armed forces and can also veto laws passed by parliament.

Turnout was just under 50 percent.

The voting did not go completely without a hitch, as a man ran out with the ballot box at the polling station in the eastern village of Medzany and threw it to the ground, scattering its contents on the street. 

Caputova, a deputy head of the non-parliamentary Progressive Slovakia party, cast her ballot in her southern city of Pezinok.

“Slovakia is at a crossroads in terms of regaining the public’s trust,” she said, flanked by her daughters and partner.

Symbol of change

Journalist Kuciak and his fiancee were gunned down in February 2018 just as he was about to publish a story on alleged ties between Slovak politicians and the Italian mafia.

The double murder and Kuciak’s last explosive report, published posthumously, plunged the country into crisis.

Then-Prime Minister Robert Fico was forced to resign but remains the leader of the populist-left Smer-SD and is a close ally of current Premier Peter Pellegrini.

Four people were charged with the killings. 

On Thursday, prosecutors said they had also charged multimillionaire businessman Marian Kocner with ordering the killing of Kuciak, who had been investigating his business activities at the time.

Kocner is believed to have ties to Smer-SD.

“With this announcement, the authorities may have wanted to show just how effectively the state functions so it could help Sefcovic gain some points,” Bratislava-based analyst Grigorij Meseznikov told AFP. 

“On the other hand, this could also be a vindication for Caputova, as she is the symbol of change.”

‘Courageous’

On the streets of Bratislava, several voters said they were impressed by Caputova’s fresh approach. 

Project manager Nora Bajnokova, 33, said she backed Caputova because “she is a woman, a mother, a lawyer and not involved in active politics,” while voter Ivan Jankovic, 31, called her “courageous and open-minded.”

But for security guard Oto, 41, who did not give his last name, only Sefcovic was “serious” enough to be presidential material.

“Sefcovic is an experienced multilingual diplomat who can immediately represent Slovakia abroad,” said another voter, Milan Perunko, 54.

A sports enthusiast and European Commission vice president since 2014, Sefcovic campaigned on the slogan “Always for Slovakia.” 

Official results will be announced at noon on Sunday. 
…

The Northern Irish party that props up British Prime Minister Theresa May’s minority government is demanding a seat at post-Brexit trade talks as its price for supporting her twice-defeated divorce deal, The Sunday Telegraph newspaper reported.

The Democratic Unionist Party also wants a guarantee that Northern Ireland will be treated no differently from the rest of the United Kingdom, the newspaper said.

“We are determined that Brexit should happen in accordance with the referendum result, but the only way it can happen which is acceptable to us is if the United Kingdom is treated as one,” DUP deputy leader Nigel Dodds told The Sunday Telegraph. “The government is now focused on this key issue, but political statements or pledges are not enough.” 

Earlier, May warned lawmakers that unless they approved her twice-defeated Brexit divorce deal, Britain’s exit from the European Union could face a long delay and could involve taking part in European Parliament elections. 

After 2½ years of tortuous divorce negotiations with the EU, the final outcome is still uncertain with options including a long delay, exiting with May’s deal, a disorderly exit without a deal, or even another referendum. 

An ultimatum

May has issued Brexit supporters a clear ultimatum: Ratify her deal by a European Council summit March 21 or face a delay to Brexit way beyond June 30 that would open up the possibility that the entire divorce could be ultimately thwarted. 

Negotiation of a new deal “would mean a much longer extension — almost certainly requiring the United Kingdom to participate in the European Parliament elections in May,” she told The Sunday Telegraph.

“The idea of the British people going to the polls to elect MEPs three years after voting to leave the EU hardly bears thinking about. There could be no more potent symbol of Parliament’s collective political failure.”

EU leaders will consider pressing Britain to delay Brexit by at least a year to find a way out of the domestic maelstrom, though there is shock and growing impatience at the political chaos in London. 

Her deal, an attempt to keep close relations with the EU while leaving the bloc’s formal structures, was defeated by 230 votes in parliament on Jan. 15 and by 149 votes on March 12. 

But May continues to fight to build support for her plan, which is expected to put before lawmakers for a third time next week, possibly on Tuesday.

To get it through Parliament, the prime minister must win over dozens of Brexit-supporting rebels in her own Conservative Party — and the Democratic Unionist Party. 

The DUP has voted against May’s plan because of concerns about the Northern Ireland backstop, which is an insurance policy aimed at maintaining an open border between the British province of Northern 

Ireland and EU member Ireland.
…

Thousands of supporters of Catalan independence marched through central Madrid on Saturday to protest the trial of 12 separatist leaders who face years in prison for their role in organizing a failed independence bid from Spain in 2017.

Demonstrators, many who made the journey from the northwestern Catalonia region for the protest, waved Catalan flags and carried signs reading “Self-determination is not a crime.”

Protest organizers put the turnout at 120,000 while police gave a figure of 18,000. 

Tensions between Madrid and Barcelona have thawed since the political crisis triggered by Catalonia’s independence declaration in late 2017, but the trial of 12 separatist leaders for their role in the secession bid and events leading up to it has been one of several sticking points to derail negotiations. 

The 12 are on trial in Madrid on charges ranging from rebellion to misuse of funds, which they deny. 

The Catalan crisis is set to play a major role in April 28 elections, with three right-leaning parties — the conservative People’s Party (PP), the center-right Ciudadanos and the relatively new far-right Vox party — calling for Spain to take a tougher position with separatists. 

Polls show the support of Catalan parties may prove decisive if Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez is to form a government after the vote. Most polls indicate Sanchez’s Socialists winning the most seats but falling short of a parliamentary majority. 

Sanchez came to power by winning a confidence motion last year with the support of Catalan separatist parties but was unable to secure their backing for his budget, effectively dooming the project and leading him to call an early election. 
…

Overwhelmed by tourists Venice will soon start to charge an entrance fee. Venice Mayor Luigi Brugnaro says the money raised will help pay for the upkeep of the historic lagoon city.

Venice routinely has more tourists than permanently declared residents. Rising housing costs and the use of properties for tourist accommodation have driven the population down by two thirds since the middle of the 20th century.

As a result, Venice for years has been struggling with numerous woes, including high tides that regularly flood the city’s iconic Saint Mark’s Square, and growing numbers of tourists.

To deal with the endless flows of visitors no solutions at this moment are final but, starting later this year, all tourists will be paying a fee that will go towards the upkeep, cleaning and services that are needed for the city to survive. City administrators say the maintenance costs of Venice are extremely high compared to other cities.

Visitors who stay in hotels for the night are already paying a tax which is added to their room rate. But later this year day-trippers or tourists who visit Venice for just for a few hours will also be subject to a fee. Mayor Brugnaro this week outlined the plan to the foreign press gathered in Rome.

He said they want to defend the city for current and future residents and visitors because Venice is a marvel of the world and only in this way will they be able to safeguard it”.

Brugnaro said an experimental entrance fee of about $3 will be charged to those who visit Venice this year but said no date had yet been set as to when this charge would start. The fee, the mayor said, would be collected by transport companies bringing the visitors to the city on planes, trains, buses and cruise boats. Cameras, he said, would also be installed in certain parts of Venice for those arriving for the day in private cars. He made clear there would be stiff fines for those who do not comply with the new charge.

Some, like students and workers, would be exempt from paying the fee, as would those who were born and reside in Venice and children under the age of 6.

From January 1st, 2020, the entrance fee will be set to about $7 but will be variable and range from $3 to $11, depending how busy the city is.

Some in Venice say they do not believe the entrance fee plan will work. Lawyer Roberta Pierabon said it will be impossible to implement.

She said visitors arrive from all sides. It’s impossible to block Venice because Venice is an island and you reach it on water. She does not believe the flow of arrivals can be controlled and added that she disapproved of the plan.

Other Venetians favor the idea, saying that it will help control the tourism so that it is not so “aggressive.” Michele Tessari, who, often works with tourists on lagoon transport, said Venetians would like a more elite kind of tourism, not so much “eat-and-run” tourism and the entrance fee will help with this. He said locals want to avoid seeing tourists eating their sandwiches sitting on the bridges of Venice like tramps.”

Venetians love their city and know it will never stop attracting visitors. Venice is so special, they say, that it belongs to the whole of humanity, and everyone should have the opportunity to visit this incredible city at least once in their lifetime.

 
…

Russia on Saturday slammed the “hypocrisy” of new Western sanctions against its officials over their role in a naval confrontation with Ukraine last year, and vowed to respond to the “unfriendly” move.

The United States, Canada and the European Union Friday slapped new sanctions on more than a dozen Russian officials and businesses in response to Moscow’s “continued aggression in Ukraine.”

“The pretext for including our countrymen in the illegitimate sanctions list of the EU astounds with hypocrisy and cynicism,” the Russian foreign ministry said.

In a previous statement late on Friday, it said Russia “will not leave the unfriendly act of the EU without a response” and accused Brussels of siding with Kyiv on the eve of its presidential election due on March 31.

“It cannot be ignored that the decision came not long before the presidential election in Ukraine,” it said.

It also accused Washington and Ottawa of “Russophobia” and said the sanctions will “not lead to the results the U.S. and Canada want”.  

A U.S. Treasury statement Friday said six Russian officials, six defense firms and two energy and construction firms had been targeted, either over the seizure of Ukrainian vessels in the Kerch Straight last November, or for their activities in Russian-annexed Crimea or separatist eastern Ukraine.

The U.S. sanctions freeze all property and interests in property belonging to the designated individuals and entities, and prohibit U.S. persons from transacting with them.

Four of the individuals are border guard or coast guard officials, singled out for their role in a November 25, 2018, naval confrontation, in which Russian ships fired on and seized three Ukrainian vessels in the narrow Kerch Strait the two countries share.

The four were targeted jointly with the EU and Canada according to the State Department.

Twenty-four Ukrainian crew members were detained in the naval incident.

In the statement on Saturday, Russia said its border guards were “bravely fulfilling their duty to defend the state borders of our country” and that the confrontation was the result of a “provocation” by the Ukrainian side.

It said Moscow was acting “within the norms of international law” in arresting the Ukrainians.

Russia has said the sailors will go on trial for violating its maritime borders. They face up to six years in prison for illegally crossing Russian borders, lawyers have said.

 
…

A dissident organization committed to overthrowing North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was behind a raid on the North Korean embassy in Spain last month, The Washington Post reported Friday, quoting people familiar with the planning and execution of the mission.

The newspaper, which did not further identify its sources, identified the group as Cheollima Civil Defense, which also goes by the name Free Joseon. It said the group came to prominence in 2017 after evacuating a nephew of Kim from Macau when potential threats to his life surfaced.

The Post’s sources said the group did not act in coordination with any governments and U.S. intelligence agencies would have been especially reluctant to be involved given the sensitive timing of the mission ahead of a second summit between Kim and U.S. President Donald Trump in Hanoi from Feb. 27-28.

According to Spanish media accounts, broadly confirmed by a Spanish Foreign Ministry source, a group of unidentified men entered North Korea’s embassy in Madrid on Feb. 22, bound and gagged staff, and drove off four hours later with computers.

There has been no claim of responsibility.

The dissident group identified by The Washington Post could not be reached for comment and its purported website has made no mention of any involvement in the raid.

On Feb. 25 the website posted a statement saying the group had “received a request for help from comrades in a certain Western country” and that “it was a highly dangerous situation but (we) responded.” The group said an important announcement would be coming that week, but no details of any operation have been released.

The Madrid embassy is where North Korea’s chief working-level negotiator in talks with the United States, Kim Hyok Chol, was ambassador until 2017.

Intelligence experts said computers and phones reportedly seized in the raid would be eagerly sought by foreign intelligence agencies given the information they might contain on Kim Hyok Chol and others.

Asked about The Washington Post report, the U.S. State Department referred queries to the Spanish authorities. The CIA declined to comment.
…

Slovakia could get its first woman president as voters elect a new head of state on Saturday.

The leading contenders are Zuzana Caputova, an environmental activist who is in favor of gay rights and opposes a ban on abortion in this conservative Roman Catholic country, and Maros Sefcovic, an establishment figure who is the European Commission Vice-President.

In all, 13 candidates are vying to become the country’s fifth head of state since Slovakia gained independence in 1993 after Czechoslovakia split in two.

Andrej Kiska, a successful businessman-turned-philanthropist, is not standing for a second five-year term in the largely ceremonial post.

His term in office was marked by clashes with former prime minister Robert Fico, considered a populist leader.

Kiska supported the huge street protests that led to the fall of Fico’s coalition government amid a political crisis triggered by the slayings last year of an investigative reporter and his fiancee. The reporter, Jan Kuciak, was investigating possible widespread government corruption and Italian mob influence.

If no single candidate wins a majority on Saturday, a runoff will be held on March 30 in this central European nation of 5.4 million people.

What’s at stake

The president has the power to pick the prime minister, appoint Constitutional Court judges and veto laws. Parliament can override the veto with a simple majority, however. The government, led by the prime minister, possesses most executive powers.

The favorites 

Zuzana Caputova

Caputova, a 45-year-old lawyer, is a rising star of Slovak politics. She became known for leading a successful fight against a toxic waste dump in her home town of Pezinok near the capital of Bratislava, for which she received an international environmental prize in 2016. She was also part of a campaign in 2017 that led to the annulment of pardons granted by former authoritarian prime minister Vladimir Meciar. She is deputy chairman of “Progressive Slovakia,” a non-parliamentary party that supported the massive street protests after Kuciak’s death.

Maros Sefcovic

A career diplomat, 52-year-old Sefcovic was a member of the Communist Party before the anti-Communist 1989 Velvet Revolution. Sefcovic accepted an offer to stand from Fico’s left-wing Smer-Social Democracy party, a dominant political group in Slovakia in recent years whose reputation has been tarnished by corruption scandals. 

Other notable candidates

Stefan Harabin

A former justice minister and chief judge of the Supreme Court, 61-year-old Harabin was a close ally of Meciar, whose rule in the 1990s was marred by repeated flouting of the law. A populist, Harabin exploits the fear of migration and presents himself as a guardian of traditional conservative values. As a vocal opponent of the sanctions against Russia for its actions against Ukraine, Harabin is a favorite candidate of pro-Russian media.

Marian Kotleba

The 42-year-old heads the neo-Nazi People’s Party Our Slovakia, which has 14 lawmakers in the 150-seat Slovak Parliament. Kotleba and his party speak admiringly of Slovakia’s time as a Nazi puppet state during World War II. Party members use Nazi salutes and consider NATO a terror group. They want Slovakia to leave the military alliance and the European Union.

What’s ahead

Caputova and Sefcovic are predicted by polls to be the two candidates to advance to a runoff. But the last polls allowed were published two weeks before Saturday’s ballot. Analysts say there’s a room for a surprise result, particularly for Harabin who was running third in the polls.

                  
…

The United States, in coordination with the European Union and Canada, Friday slapped new sanctions on more than a dozen officials and businesses in response to Russia’s “continued aggression in Ukraine.”

Six Russian officials, six defense firms and two energy and construction firms were targeted, either over the seizure of Ukrainian vessels in the Kerch Straight, or for their activities in Russian-annexed Crimea or separatist eastern Ukraine, a U.S. Treasury statement said.

“The United States and our transatlantic partners will not allow Russia’s continued aggression against Ukraine to go unchecked,” Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin was quoted as saying.

The U.S. sanctions freeze all property and interests in property belonging to the designated individuals and entities, and prohibit U.S. persons from transacting with them.

Four of the individuals are border guard or coast guard officials, singled out for their role in a November 25, 2018 naval confrontation, in which Russian ships fired on and seized three Ukrainian vessels in the narrow Kerch Strait the two countries share.

The four were targeted jointly with the EU and Canada according to the State Department.

Twenty-four Ukrainian crew members were detained in the naval incident.

“We call upon Russia to immediately return to Ukraine the seized vessels and detained crewmembers, and keep the Kerch Strait and the Sea of Azov open to ships transiting to and from Ukrainian ports,” added State Department spokesman Robert Palladino in a statement.

“We also call on Russia to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity within its internationally recognized borders, including its territorial waters.”

The United States additionally imposed sanctions on two Ukrainian separatists — Aleksey Naydenko and Vladimir Vysotsky — involved in organizing November elections in the breakaway east, which Washington says were a “sham.”

The six defense firms were targeted over their operations in Russian-annexed Crimea, where the United States says several “misappropriated Ukrainian state assets to provide services to the Russian military.”

Among them are Russian shipbuilding giant Zelenodolsk, the hydroacoustic equipment producer Okeanpribor, a diesel engine supplier to the Russian military, Zvezda, and an electronic parts supplier to the military, Fiolent.
…

Turkey’s unemployment rate has hit a near-10-year high, bringing more bad economic news for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ahead of critical local elections.

According to figures released Friday, Turkey’s jobless rate surged to 13.5 percent, the highest since 2010. The number of unemployed is a record 4.3 million.

The unemployment figures are just the latest economic bad news with soaring inflation and the country in recession.

Erdogan is leading his AK Party campaign to maintain control of most of Turkey’s cities. However, with a slew of bad economic news, the March 31 polls are now being hotly contested.

With the passing of constitutional reforms, that centralized power in the hands of the presidency in 2017, the control of Turkey’s main cities is one of the few remaining sources of political power and patronage outside Erdogan’s control.

Erdogan is campaigning hard, seeking to draw heavily on his own popularity. In the past, the Turkish president used to make economic prosperity the centerpiece of his campaign strategy. Seventeen years of nearly unbroken growth is widely acknowledged as a critical factor for his political success.

However, Erdogan is largely sidestepping the economy, angrily dismissing what he characterizes as calls for assistance. “Don’t expect anything from us. We gave all that we could. Moreover, don’t provoke this rally,” Erdogan reprimanded an audience demanding jobs in the provincial city of Sivas.

Instead, the Turkish president is looking to highlight other achievements. Tuesday, Erdogan opened a new urban rail link in Istanbul, promising crowds an end to the city’s chronic traffic problems.

“This line will by itself carry the same number of passengers who are transported with 100,000 vehicles,” he declared to cheering supporters.“ Istanbul’s 10 districts will have the opportunity to use this line. It will importantly relieve the Istanbul traffic,” he added.

Istanbul is Erdogan’s home, and his political powerbase, ever since he won the mayorship back in 1994, which was the springboard to him going on to dominate Turkish politics.

‘Stagflation’

Erdogan has never lost an election, a success he uses to silence critics who accuse him of authoritarianism. “Winning the elections constitute the unique sole source of legitimacy for this regime. So therefore it’s very important for the regime, “said political scientist Cengiz Aktar.

“But this (election) is definitely a challenge (to Erdogan)” he added. “Turkey is in stagflation, it’s a recession with inflation and this is why the regime is so nervous.”

Advertisements for Erdogan’s AK Party saturate the airwaves, listing its achievements. With mainstream media in the iron grip of Erdogan’s supporters, watching TV, it is easy to forget that other parties are contesting the polls.

According to official Turkish figures, during the campaign, the state broadcaster TRT, devoted 53 hours to the ruling AKP in contrast to seven hours for other parties. The pro-Kurdish HDP, Turkey’s second main opposition, received only two minutes.

However, according to opinion polls, the economic discontent is the main issue of concern with voters, with unemployment second. The same poll points to the main opposition CHP securing many of Turkey’s cities, including the capital, Ankara. While Istanbul is the economic powerhouse of the country, the AKP lead has been whittled down to within the margin of error.

Istanbul CHP candidate Ekrem Imamoglu, a local Istanbul suburban mayor, was little known. However, his touring food market places across the city focusing on rising discontent over inflation, appears to striking chord among many.

“I don’t understand the prices. One day you come, there is this price and the next day another price,” said an exasperated trader.

“Believe me, I can’t understand how these prices come about,” he added. “The sales are affected. The prices are all shot to pieces. How come it doesn’t affect us. Prices are all in pieces.”

Old loyalties

Small-time traders traditionally are a vital constituent of support of the ruling AKP. However, in the market place, there are still many people who remain loyal to Erdogan.

“I haven’t personally been affected that much (by inflation) but I am of course concerned about the effect of it on other people and this makes me sad. Of course, I want the prices to be lower,” said a woman wearing a religious headscarf. “But the president is working to reduce prices, and, God willing, he will continue to succeed.”

Turkey’s large conservative, religious population is the foundation of Erdogan’s electoral support. Until now they have remained mostly loyal.

Under Erdogan’s rule as prime minister and now president, he introduced many reforms, lifting restrictions under Turkey’s secular constitution, preventing head-scarved women from going to university and working for the state. A dominant, prosperous religious middle class also flourished under his rule.

The AKP, with its deep financial pockets and the resources of the Turkish State at its disposal along with control of mainstream media, still has considerable advantages over its opponents. However analysts point out, Erdogan’s AKP is facing growing anger in the country over rising prices and unemployment.

 
…

Poland’s Catholic Church authorities revealed Thursday they have recorded cases of 382 clergymen who have abused 625 victims under the age of 18 since 1990.

The figure includes 198 priests and friars who abused minors under 15 years old and 184 clergy who abused victims between 15 and 18, according to Wojciech Sadlon, head of the church’s Institute of Statistics.

In both confirmed and unconfirmed cases, there were 345 victims under age 15 and 280 victims between 15 to 18. The crimes occurred from 1990 through June of last year, Sadlon told a news conference. More than 58 percent of the victims were male.

Archbishop Wojciech Polak, the primate of Poland, expressed “pain, shame and the sense of guilt that such situations took place.”

Authorities said in 25 percent of the cases before church courts, the clergymen were defrocked and in 52 percent of the cases they had their duties limited and were banned from working with children. Acquittals amounted to 10 percent of the cases and 13 percent of the cases were discontinued.

Church leaders said the cases call for a change in the way that vocational seminaries educate clergymen.  

The figures were released following a three-day session of Poland’s Episcopate in Warsaw that discussed abuse and ways of protecting children. The news came just weeks after Pope Francis convened church leaders from around the world to the Vatican, where they discussed how to stop sex abuse by clergy. 

Church leaders in predominantly Catholic Poland have previously admitted they knew that some priests had abused minors in Poland but did not reveal how many.

Compensation for victims

A private foundation supporting victims of abuse has given Francis a list of more than 90 court verdicts concerning priests in Poland and over 300 cases of alleged abuse. The “Have No Fear” foundation on Thursday criticized the Episcopate’s revelation, saying it lacked words of apology or any mention about compensation for victims.

Despite the millions in compensation paid out to victims by Catholic authorities in other countries, Polish church leaders argue that the church as an institution has no obligation to compensate victims because the crimes were committed by individual persons.

Last month, a statue of a prominent Solidarity-era priest was torn down at night in the northern city of Gdansk amid allegations that the late Rev. Henryk Jankowski, respected for his pro-democracy activity in the 1980s, abused minors. It was later officially removed from the Rev. Jankowski Square, which was also renamed.

Poland’s Catholic church has the support of the country’s conservative government and enjoys special respect in the nation due to its role in preserving Poland’s national identity during World War II and under decades of communist rule.
…

A Spanish human rights activist quoted survivors Thursday saying that 45 migrants have died trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea to Spain.

Helena Maleno, who runs a Tangiers-based non-governmental organization, said she based her figure on accounts from seven female survivors. They told her a pregnant woman was among the dead.

A Moroccan official said he couldn’t confirm the report. He said he was aware of 21 migrants who were rescued by the Royal Marines after their rubber dinghy floundered.

He said he knew of only one body being recovered Thursday, a day after the boat went adrift as it crossed the Mediterranean.

The official, who had information about the incident, wasn’t authorized to discuss it and asked to remain anonymous. He said the migrants, all sub-Saharans, were in a critical state when pulled from the water north of Nador.
…

Northern Ireland’s Public Prosecution Service has announced there is enough evidence to charge one British soldier with murder for the so-called Bloody Sunday killings in Northern Ireland nearly 50 years ago.

Bloody Sunday is the nickname given to an incident that took place during a civil rights march on Jan. 30, 1972. On that day, 13 people were shot and killed as they fled police or tried to help those who were wounded. A 14th shooting victim died months later.

British authorities announced Thursday that a soldier known only as Soldier F will be prosecuted for the murders of protesters James Wray and William McKinney. Soldier F will also face charges for the attempted murders of Patrick O’Donnell, Joseph Friel, Joe Mahon and Michael Quinn.

The director of the Public Prosecution Service, Stephen Herron, said there was not enough evidence admissible in criminal proceedings to charge the other soldiers with the shootings. But the PPS has announced it will begin considering perjury charges against them.

“I am mindful that it has been a long road for the families to reach this point and today will be another extremely difficult day for them,” Herron said. “As prosecutors, we are required to be wholly objective in our approach.”

John Kelly, a representative for the families of the victims, told reporters and onlookers, “There’s a terrible disappointment at the outcome. … The full cost of Bloody Sunday cannot be measured just in those who died that day.”

After Thursday’s announcement, British Defense Secretary Gavin Williamson promised the government’s full support to Soldier F, including paying his legal costs. He also promised that the government will pass a new package of safeguards to protect members of the armed forces from unfair treatment.

“Our serving and former personnel cannot live in constant fear of prosecution,” he said.

The families of the victims of Bloody Sunday have hoped for years to have those who fired the fatal shots held accountable for the deaths. 

The original investigation in 1972 concluded by clearing the soldiers and British authorities of blame, accepting the explanation that they shot at armed men.

A second investigation in 1998 concluded that the soldiers had given false testimony and that none of the shooting victims were armed or posed a threat to the soldiers. With that, British authorities began a murder investigation.

At the close of the second investigation in 2010, then-Prime Minister David Cameron made a public apology for the shootings, saying the shootings were “unjustified and unjustifiable.”
…

Three days of voting in Britain’s parliament culminates Thursday with lawmakers deciding whether to ask the European Union for a delay in Britain’s exit from the bloc.

The House of Commons overwhelmingly voted against Prime Minister Theresa May’s negotiated terms for Brexit on Tuesday, and it followed that with another vote Wednesday rejecting the possibility of leaving the EU on March 29 with no deal in place.

If Thursday’s extension measure passes, it would need further approval from the other EU members in order to go forward.

EU officials have repeatedly said they would need proper justification to agree to pushing back the deadline. And after Wednesday’s vote they said that while it is one thing for the British government to reject a so-called no-deal exit, at some point they would have to figure out the alternative, a deal they could actually pass.

The EU also prefers any extension be limited, finishing before its own elections in late May. If the process is still ongoing, Britain would take part even though it wants to remove itself from the EU.

May brought what she said was an improved deal to parliament for Tuesday’s vote, one that sought to remove concerns about the border between Northern Ireland and EU member Ireland. Opponents want to make sure Britain is not locked into a long-term customs agreement that subjects the country to EU trade rules.

May hinted Wednesday that she could try for a third time to get lawmakers to approve the deal that negotiators from Britain and the EU worked on for two years.

The Wednesday vote rejecting a no-deal exit does not carry legal weight, only political force, meaning it is still possible that without an extension and without an agreement during the next two weeks, Brexit could proceed with no divorce terms in place.
…

Estonia’s president called for continued unity among democratic allies in the face of Russian aggression on Wednesday and expressed a wish for even greater U.S. involvement in the Baltics.

Kersti Kaljulaid, on her second visit to the United States in less than a year, told an audience at the Brookings Institution that membership in the European Union and NATO have served to defend and enhance her country’s sovereignty.

With only 1.2 million people and located on the Baltic Sea near Russia, the former Soviet republic has been especially concerned about growing Russian assertiveness, particularly since its annexation of the Ukrainian region of Crimea and its military support for two breakaway regions in Georgia.

‘Direct involvement in Baltics’

The United States has responded with military exercises along NATO’s borders with Russia and a troop presence in Poland, actions acknowledged by Kaljulaid. While “America’s contribution to enhanced forward presence in Poland is appreciated, we would love to see more U.S. direct involvement in the Baltics as well,” she said.

Rachel Ellehuus, deputy director and senior fellow with the Europe Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), said Estonia and its Baltic neighbors have served as model members of NATO since being admitted to the defense alliance in 2004, but cannot defend themselves without help.

“Due to their small size, they need our and NATO’s help in procuring big-ticket capabilities,” Ellehuus said in an interview.

Quick US response appreciated

The former Pentagon official noted that the United States was the first country to send forces to the Baltics following Russia’s takeover of Crimea.

She said she would like to see “a persistent rotational presence of U.S. forces in the Baltics and possibly funding in the appropriations bill to support regional capability development in areas such as air and maritime surveillance.”

In an age of increasing attention devoted to big-power politics and competition, it is understood that small states like the Baltic countries cannot win a war against a power like Russia, but they can raise the cost of war for their potential adversaries.

“Their strategy is to increase resilience and hold the line until reinforcements, i.e., NATO, regional partners, can come to their aid,” said Ellehuus. She quoted her former boss at the Pentagon, Secretary of Defense James Mattis, saying that “even the bear knows to avoid the porcupine.”

In Ellehuus’s words: The Baltics can take steps “to make themselves as indigestible as possible,” even though they don’t have the capacity to win an all-out war against their giant neighbor to the east.

‘Follow-up plan’

In her speech on Wednesday, Kaljulaid said her country was prepared to “hold the line” against an initial assault but that the “follow-on plan” involving sufficient allied forces was not yet in place.

Her visit to Washington comes at a time when the Pentagon made it clear in the latest national defense budget proposal that it is focused on countering rising capacities from both Russia and China and ensuring that potential adversaries know there is “no path to victory” if they choose to fight the United States.
…

A proposed permanent U.S. military base in Poland, nicknamed “Fort Trump,” is one step closer to becoming a reality. 

Negotiations on establishing the base are “ongoing this very week,” Kathryn Wheelbarger, the acting assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, told the House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday. 

Wheelbarger’s comments came as John Rood, the undersecretary of defense for policy, met with his Polish counterpart to work out details of what Rood called a “generous offer” from Poland, according to defense officials.  

Warsaw has offered to contribute at least $2 billion to place permanent U.S. forces and assets in Poland, a NATO ally, in an attempt to deter any possible Russian aggression. NATO has expanded its presence near Russia’s borders to reassure its eastern members, a buildup Russia has described as a threat to its security. 

“We’ve come forward with, we think, a very serious, robust offer, and we’re working out some of the technicalities this very week,” Wheelbarger said. “We hope to have a very solid foundation to work from coming out of this meeting today.” 

She added that it would most likely take six months to a year for any base agreement to be finalized. 

Permanent base seen as ‘helpful’

The U.S. military would not need to start budgeting for the base for at least two or three years, according to Army Gen. Curtis “Mike” Scaparrotti, the head of U.S. European Command. 

Asked about making rotational U.S. forces permanent in Poland, Scaparrotti told lawmakers he’s “perfectly content with the large forces that we are rotating,” but a more permanent base would be “helpful.” 

Negotiations on the proposed base with Warsaw come amid reports that the Trump administration is considering a plan in which wealthy nations such as Germany, Japan and South Korea would be required to pay the full cost of U.S. soldiers deployed on their territory, plus 50 percent more for the privilege of American defense. 

Wheelbarger denied that the “cost plus 50” idea was being discussed for European allies, telling lawmakers, “My understanding is that rhetoric came from conversations from the Pacific; it’s not a conversation we’ve had in my portfolio at all.”
…

British lawmakers are set to vote Wednesday on whether Britain should leave the European Union without agreeing on any of the details of its departure.

The so-called “no-deal” Brexit is opposed by Prime Minister Theresa May, but lawmakers have resoundly rejected the agreement her government struck with the EU.

The House of Commons voted 391-242 against the latest version of May’s plan on Tuesday, setting up the Wednesday vote. 

If lawmakers reject a no-deal Brexit as well, a third vote will come Thursday on whether to ask the EU for more time beyond the March 29 deadline to figure out how to conduct the divorce. EU member states would have to approve any extension.

Ahead of Tuesday’s defeat, May implored lawmakers to adopt the deal she negotiated Monday with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker for “legally binding changes” to ensure that the border between EU member Ireland and Britain’s Northern Ireland would remain open after Brexit.

But the outcome mirrored a January vote on an earlier plan, which May lost even more decisively, by 230 votes.

After losing again, May, the Conservative Party leader, told the House of Commons, “I continue to believe the best and only way” to quit the EU is “in an orderly way.”

​She said the next options “are unenviable choices” — leaving without a deal, or asking for more time to negotiate after already spending months to reach terms of the now-defeated pacts.

Jeremy Corbyn, leader of Britain’s main opposition Labor Party, told the parliamentarians, “The government has now been defeated by an enormous majority. The prime minister has run down the clock, and the clock has run out on her.” He called for a new election.

Before Tuesday’s vote, May told lawmakers, “The danger for those of us who want to deliver, to have faith in the British public and deliver on their vote for Brexit, is that if this vote is not passed tonight, if this deal is not passed, then Brexit could be lost.”

Key opponents to her plan quickly emerged.

Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party said May had only made “limited” progress in negotiating the new terms, and said its 10 members in parliament would vote against her plan.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the EU had made “clear, far-reaching proposals” to address Britain’s concerns about the deal. But she deflected a question about whether she was willing to delay the British exit from the EU if British lawmakers could not agree on a plan.

The original deal, rejected two months ago, called for a backstop agreement that would keep Britain and the EU in a customs union until they agree on a new trade agreement. Opponents in Britain’s parliament said they were concerned about being locked into EU rules instead of being able to gain full control of trade policies.

​May said the new terms agreed to on Monday would ensure the backstop deal is not a permanent part of Britain’s exit from the EU.

The Labor Party rejected the plan, saying it still does not go far enough to allay its concerns.

Juncker warned that Britain is running out of options. 

“It is this deal, or Brexit might not happen at all,” he said.
…

Rome, the heart of Christianity now has its own Mormon temple. The entire leadership of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for the first time gathered outside of the United States for the dedication of their temple in the eternal city. VOA’s Sabina Castelfranco has more from Rome.
…

Now that British lawmakers overwhelmingly rejected Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit divorce deal for a second time, the country’s planned March 29 departure from the bloc is an open question. 

Lawmakers now have two starkly different choices: no deal or delay. 

A look at what might happen in the days ahead:

Destination no-deal 

The House of Commons voted 391-242 against May’s EU withdrawal agreement Tuesday, snubbing changes she secured from the bloc the night before to allay concerns about the deal’s Irish border provisions. Lawmakers voted down the deal in January by an even bigger margin.

After the tally, May said Parliament would  vote Wednesday on whether to abandon efforts to secure an agreement and to leave the EU as planned in a little more than two weeks without a deal.

A phalanx of pro-Brexit politicians supports that idea. They argue it would free the U.K. from  EU rules and red tape, allowing the country to forge an independent global trade policy.

But economists and businesses fear a so-called “no-deal Brexit” would hammer the economy as tariffs and other trade barriers go up between Britain and the EU, its biggest trading partner.

In the short term, there could be gridlock at British ports and shortages of fresh produce. In the long run, the government says a no-deal scenario would leave the economy 6 percent to 9 percent smaller over 15 years than remaining in the EU.

Last month, Parliament passed a non-binding amendment ruling out a “no-deal” Brexit, and it is unlikely they will support it now. May said lawmakers would be free to follow their consciences rather than party lines when they consider the question Wednesday.

Delay, delay, delay

If lawmakers give leaving the EU without an agreement a thumbs down, they have one choice left: seeking more time. A third vote scheduled for Thursday is on asking the EU to delay Brexit day by up to three months.

This option is likely to prove popular, since politicians on both sides of the Brexit debate fear time is running out to secure an orderly withdrawal by March 29.

Extending the timeframe for Brexit would require approval from all 27 remaining EU member countries. They have an opportunity to grand such a request at a March 21-22 summit in Brussels. But the rest of the EU is reluctant to postpone Brexit beyond the late May elections for the EU’s legislature, the European Parliament.

The EU said Tuesday that Britain needs to provide “a credible justification” for any delay.

Crisis deferred 

Whatever Parliament decides, it will not end Britain’s Brexit crisis. Both lawmakers and the public remain split between backers of a clean break from the EU and those who favor continuing a close relationship through a post-Brexit trade deal or by reversing the June 2016 decision to leave.

May is unwilling to abandon her hard-won Brexit agreement and might try to put it to Parliament a third time, although the latest margin of defeat makes that tricky.

Some lawmakers want her to have Parliament consider different forms of Brexit to see if there is a majority for any course of action.

Some think the only way forward is a snap election that could rearrange the forces in Parliament and break the political deadlock. May has ruled that out, but could come to see it as her only option.

And anti-Brexit campaigners haven’t abandoned efforts to secure a new referendum on whether to remain in the EU. The government opposes the idea, which at the moment also lacks majority support in Parliament.

However, the political calculus could change if the paralysis drags on. The opposition Labour Party has said it would support a second referendum if other options were exhausted.

It all means more twists are coming in the Brexit drama.

“No one really believes this is the last chance saloon,” said Oliver Patel, a research associate at the European Institute at University College London.

 
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The BBC, Britain’s public broadcaster, is to be investigated over suspected discrimination following complaints that women have been paid less than men, the country’s equality watchdog announced on Tuesday.

The issue made headlines last year when senior broadcaster Carrie Gracie quit her job as BBC China editor in a highly public protest at being paid less than her male counterparts.

This followed an outcry in 2017, when the BBC published a list of its best-paid on-air staff, revealing two-thirds were men, some of whom were paid far more than their female peers.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), which is looking at records dating back to January 2016, said the BBC had provided a large amount of information on its pay policies.

“Having reviewed all of the information … we suspect that some women at the organization have not received equal pay for equal work,” the EHRC said in a statement.

The equality regulator, which acknowledged that the BBC had begun making reforms, will examine formal and informal pay grievances raised by staff and look at how they were resolved.

“Paying men and women the same salary for the same job has been a legal requirement for almost 50 years,” EHRC chief executive Rebecca Hilsenrath said in a statement.

The EHRC said it hoped to finish the investigation by the end of 2019.

Lawmaker Damian Collins, chairman of parliament’s media committee, welcomed the inquiry, saying it had been “a very distressing time for many BBC employees”.

BBC Director General Tony Hall said the organization had been through a “tremendous period of reform” and improvements had already been made.

“We try to be the gold standard of what everyone wants from society – openness, respect and equality,” he was quoted as saying on the BBC’s news site.

“We may not always succeed, but I am confident that we are a decent and fair employer.”

The BBC said in January 2018 it would implement “substantial” pay reductions for some men and pay increases for some men and women, following a report by auditors PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Britain enacted legislation outlawing sex discrimination in the 1970s and this was followed by an equality act in 2010.

But Sam Smethers, head of the Fawcett Society, a women’s rights charity which campaigns on equal pay, said pay discrimination was still common.

“We hope this results in lasting change at the BBC and acts as a warning to other employers too,” she said.
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At the ripe old age of 30 and with half the globe using it, the World Wide Web is facing growing pains with issues like hate speech, privacy concerns and state-sponsored hacking, its creator says, trumpeting a call to make it better for humanity.

Tim Berners-Lee on Tuesday joined a celebration of the Web and reminisced about his invention at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, starting with a proposal published on March 12, 1989. It opened the way to a technological revolution that has transformed the way people buy goods, share ideas, get information and much more.

It’s also become a place where tech titans scoop up personal data, rival governments spy and seek to scuttle elections, and hate speech and vitriol have thrived — taking the Web far from its roots as a space for progress-oriented minds to collaborate.

As of late 2018, half of the world was online, with the other half often struggling to secure access.

Speaking at a “Web@30” conference at CERN, Berners-Lee acknowledged that a sense among many who are already on the Web has become: “Whoops! The web is not the web we wanted in every respect.”

His World Wide Web Foundation wants to enlist governments, companies, and citizens to take a greater role in shaping the web for good under principles laid out in its “Contract for the Web.”

Under the contract, governments are called upon to make sure everyone can connect to the internet, to keep it available and to respect privacy. Companies are to make the internet affordable, respect privacy and develop technology that will put people — and the “public good” — first. Citizens are to create and to cooperate and respect “civil discourse,” among other things.

“The Contract for the Web is about sitting down in working groups with other people who signed up, and to say, ‘Ok, let’s work out what this really means,’” Berners-Lee said. It was unclear, however, how such rules would be enforced.

Berners-Lee cautioned it was important to strike a balance between oversight and freedom but difficult to agree what it should be.

“Where is the balance between leaving the tech companies to do the right thing and regulating them? Where is the balance between freedom of speech and hate speech?” he said.

The conference, which brought together Internet and tech experts, also gave CERN the chance to showcase its reputation as an open-source incubator of ideas. Berners-Lee worked there in the late 1980s, and had been determined to help bridge a communications and documentation gap among different computer platforms.

As a young English software engineer at CERN, Berners-Lee, who is now 63, came up with the idea for hypertext transfer protocol — the “http” that adorns web addresses — and other building blocks for the web.

The “http” system allowed text and small images to be retrieved through a piece of software — the first browser — which Berners-Lee released in 1990 and is considered the start of the web. In practice, the access to a browser on a home computer made the internet easily accessible to consumers for the first time.

Speaking to reporters on Monday, Berners-Lee recalled how his research was helped his former boss at CERN, Mike Sendall, who wanted a pretext to buy a then-new Next computer by Steve Jobs’ Apple needed for his research.

Berners-Lee said Sendall told him to ”‘pick a random program to develop on it … Why don’t you do that hypertext thing?’”

Berners-Lee has since become a sort of father figure for the internet community, been knighted by Queen Elizabeth II and named as one of the 100 most important people of the 20th century by Time magazine.

While he now wants to get the debate going, other panelists expressed concerns like the increasing concentration of control of the internet by big corporate players, and fretted about a possible splintering of cyberspace among rival countries.

“The challenges come from the same things that make it (the Web) wonderful, and that’s the difficulty,” said conference panelist Zeynep Tufekci, an associate professor at the University of North Carolina’s School of Information and Library Science.

“The openness is wonderful, the connectivity is wonderful, the fact that it was created as a network for academics who are kind of into trusting each other…” she said.

Now with the Web, “there’s an enormous amount of centralization going on, with a few big players becoming gatekeepers. Those few big players have built, basically, surveillance machines,” she said. “It’s based on surveillance profiling us and then targeting us for ads — which wasn’t the original idea at all.”
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