A London court will rule on Tuesday whether it would be in the interests of justice to pursue action against WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange for failing to surrender to bail back in 2012.

If the judge rules in his favor, then Assange, 46, would be free to leave the Ecuadorean Embassy in London where he has been holed up for more than five years.

However, he might still elect to remain in the embassy, where he has been granted political asylum, because he fears Britain would arrest him under a U.S. extradition warrant, the existence of which has neither been confirmed nor denied.

Who is Julian Assange?

Assange was born in Townsville, Australia, in July 1971, to parents who were involved in theater and traveled frequently.

In his teens, Assange gained a reputation as a sophisticated computer programmer and in 1995 he was arrested and pleaded guilty to hacking. He was fined, but avoided prison on condition he did not reoffend.

In his late 20s, he went to Melbourne University to study mathematics and physics.

Wikileaks

Assange launched WikiLeaks in 2006, creating a web-based “dead letter drop” for would-be leakers. It says it is a non-profit organization funded by human rights campaigners, journalists and the general public, with the aim of fighting government and corporate corruption.

The website rose to prominence in April 2010 when it published a classified video showing a 2007 U.S. helicopter attack that killed a dozen people in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, including two Reuters news staff.

In July that year, it released more than 90,000 classified U.S. military documents on the war in Afghanistan and then in October, it published about 400,000 more secret U.S. files on the Iraq war. The two leaks represented the largest security breaches of their kind in U.S. military history.

It followed these up with the release of 250,000 secret diplomatic cables from U.S. embassies around the world, with some of the information published by newspapers such as the New York Times and Britain’s Guardian.

The leaks angered and embarrassed U.S. politicians and military officials, who said the unauthorized dissemination would put lives at risk, and drew similar condemnation from U.S. allies such as Britain.

Arrest in 2010

On Nov. 18, 2010, a Swedish court ordered Assange’s detention as a result of an investigation into allegations of sex crimes.

He had spent much of the year in Sweden and the accusations of misconduct were made by two female Swedish WikiLeaks volunteers. On Dec. 7, 2010, Assange was arrested by British police on a European Arrest Warrant (EAW) issued by Sweden.

Assange denied the allegations and was eventually granted bail on Dec. 16. He said from the outset that he believed the Swedish case was a pretext to extradite him to the United States to face charges over the WikiLeaks releases.

His extradition to Sweden for questioning was ordered in Feb. 2011.

Subsequent appeals failed and an order for his surrender was issued for June 29, 2012. On June 19, he entered the Ecuadorean Embassy in the upmarket Knightsbridge area of London seeking asylum.

Ten days later a judge at London’s Westminster Magistrates’ Court issued a warrant for his arrest.

Ecuadorean Embassy

Ecuador granted Assange asylum on Aug. 16, 2012 and at the time he said he expected to wait six months to a year for a deal which would allow him to leave the embassy. British police mounted a round-the-clock guard to prevent his escape, saying he would be arrested should he leave.

The impasse left Assange living in cramped quarters in the embassy with no political or legal solution to the saga in sight. A United Nations panel said in Feb. 2016 that Assange had been arbitrarily detained. Britain called that description “ridiculous”, saying his detention was voluntary.

British police ended their permanent guard in October 2015, having spent an estimated 12.6 million pounds, but said they would maintain “covert tactics” to arrest him if he left the embassy.

Swedish Case Dropped

On Nov. 14, 2016, Swedish prosecutors questioned Assange at the embassy in London about the alleged sex crimes for about four hours.

Swedish prosecutors announced on May 19, 2017, that they had dropped their investigation and withdrawn their EAW. However, British police said he would still be arrested if he left the embassy because there was an outstanding warrant for failing to surrender to bail.

In January this year, Ecuador granted Assange citizenship after Britain refused a request for him to be given diplomatic status, saying he would face justice if he left the embassy.

New Court Challenge

On Jan. 26, Assange’s lawyers asked London’s Westminster Magistrates Court to drop the arrest warrant against him because it no longer applied as Sweden’s EAW had been withdrawn.

They said Assange and his guarantors had forfeited more than 110,000 pounds ($156,000) when he failed to surrender and he had already spent 5-1/2 years in conditions which were “akin to imprisonment.”

Last Tuesday, Judge Emma Arbuthnot rejected his bid to have the warrant withdrawn. However, she then agreed to consider whether, even if Assange were arrested and brought to court, it would actually be in the interests of justice to take any further action against him.

Her ruling will be made on Tuesday and if he is successful, it would mean there was no public, legal case in Britain against him.

U.S. Criminal Investigation

During his successful election campaign, U.S. President Donald Trump praised Assange’s organization for releasing hacked emails from Democratic National Committee (DNC) computers, telling a rally in Oct. 2016 “I love WikiLeaks.”

There is no public record or evidence demonstrating any U.S. criminal charges are pending against Assange. When Barack Obama was president, the U.S. Justice Department leadership concluded it would be inappropriate to prosecute WikiLeaks because it was too similar to a media organization.

However in March last year, U.S. federal prosecutors in Alexandria, Virginia, expanded a long-running grand jury investigation into WikiLeaks and its personnel including Assange. A Justice Department official recently confirmed to Reuters this investigation was still open.

Last April, CIA Director Mike Pompeo described WikiLeaks as a “hostile intelligence service” abetted by states such as Russia, who had used it to distribute hacked material from DNC computers during the 2016 presidential election. He also called Assange a “fraud” and a “coward.”

Assange and his supporters believe that U.S. prosecutors have a sealed, therefore secret, indictment against him. They also suspect that Britain has received a U.S. extradition warrant linked to these charges and that he would be arrested by British police were he to leave the embassy.

They hope if his court case is successful, it will put pressure on the British authorities to disclose what, if any, U.S. efforts are in place to prosecute him.
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President Vladimir Putin on Monday passed greetings from U.S. President Donald Trump to the visiting Palestinian leader, who responded that he doesn’t want to  cooperate with Washington following its decision to recognize Jerusalem as the Israeli capital.

Speaking at the start of their meeting in the Kremlin, Putin told Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas that he was just off the phone with Trump. 

“Naturally, we spoke about the Palestinian-Israeli settlement,” he said “I would like to convey to you his best wishes.”

Abbas responded that the Palestinians don’t want to cooperate with the United States as a sponsor of the peace process, but welcome multilateral cooperation.

Trump honored a campaign promise in December by recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and vowing to relocate the U.S. Embassy there. 

The move outraged Palestinians and others across the Muslim world. Palestinian leaders have said it means that Washington can no longer serve as a Mideast peace broker.

“We refuse to cooperate with the Americans as co-sponsors,” Abbas told Putin in remarks carried by Russian news agencies. “President Trump again surprised us. His decision to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem and consider Jerusalem the capital of Israel was like a slap in our face.”
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Russian teams of emergency workers and investigators searched a snow-covered field outside Moscow Monday, looking for body fragments and clues after a plane crashed a day earlier, killing all 71 people on board, including the crew and three children.

The 65 passengers on board were from 5 to 79-years-old, according to a list posted by the Russian Emergencies Ministry, which did not give their nationalities.

More than 400 people and 70 vehicles were deployed to the crash site, the ministry said.

WATCH: Crash

​President Vladimir Putin ordered a special commission to investigate what caused the Antonov AN-148 plane to go down shortly after taking off.

Human error, technical failure and weather conditions are among the several possible cause, according to Russia’s Investigative Committee, which did not mention the possibility of terrorism. 

The regional jet, operated by Saratov Airlines, was traveling from Domodedovo airport, to the city of Orsk in the Orenburg region when it crashed near Argunovo, about 80 kilometers southeast of Moscow.

The seven-year-old plane disappeared from the radar just minutes after departing from the capital city’s second busiest airport and was falling up to 6,700 meters per minute in the last seconds of the crash, flight-tracking site FlightRadar24 reported.

Russian media reported that search crews had found one flight recorder but it is not clear if it is the data or voice recorder.

Putin offered “his profound condolences to those who lost their relatives in the crash,” according to his spokesman Dmitry Peskov.

U.S. President Donald Trump joined world leaders in offering condolences to Putin and the Russian people. “The United States is deeply saddened by the tragic deaths of those on board Saratov Airlines Flight 703. We send our condolences to the families of those who lost their lives and to the people of Russia,” a statement released by the White House said.

The Domodedovo airport has been the focus of security concerns in the past. It came under sharp criticism in 2004, after Chechen suicide bombers destroyed two airliners that took off from the airport on the same evening, killing a total of 90 people. A 2011 bombing in the arrivals area killed 37 people. 

Shabby equipment and poor supervision plagued Russian civil aviation for years after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, but the safety record has improved in recent years.
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Russian authorities are investigating the cause of a passenger plane crash near Moscow on Sunday. All 71 people on board are thought to have died in the crash. Fragments of the An-148 plane have been found near the village of Stepanovskoye, about 40 kilometers from Moscow’s Domodedovo airport. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports weather conditions, pilot error or a technical malfunction are among the possible causes.
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The British government is warning charities and humanitarian relief organizations that it will withdraw public funding if they fail to establish effective internal reviews to prevent and investigate sexual predatory behavior and abuse by their aid workers. 

The warning came Sunday in the wake of disclosures that one of the country’s biggest charities, Oxfam, failed to disclose its dismissal in 2011 of senior aid workers who paid local prostitutes, some likely under-age, for sex parties in Haiti in the wake of a devastating earthquake that killed more than 200,000 people and left 300,000 injured and 1.5 million homeless.

Four men were fired and three were allowed to resign, including Oxfam’s country director for Haiti. But they were also given references by Oxfam, enabling them to join other aid agencies, despite allegations of sexual exploitation of quake survivors and the downloading of pornography, as well as bullying and intimidation. 

A 2011 internal report that wasn’t made public uncovered “a culture of impunity” and noted, “it cannot be ruled out that any of the prostitutes were under-aged.” 

Oxfam failed to provide full details to Britain’s Charity Commission, a regulatory body, about the probe and what the charity’s critics called an exercise of power over vulnerable people.

And it didn’t inform Haiti’s government — a disclosure that has prompted the Haitian ambassador in London to demand a formal public apology from the aid agency. 

Penny Mordaunt, Britain’s international development minister, condemned Sunday what she described as “horrible behavior” by Oxfam staff in Haiti and said public funding of the charity is now in jeopardy. She has threatened to pull government funding not only from Oxfam but from any British charity that falls below expected standards.

“With regard to Oxfam and any organization that has safeguarding issues, we expect them to cooperate fully, and we will cease to fund any organization that does not,” she said.

Oxfam received $45 million from the British government in 2017 and received more than $200 million in donations from the British public. Now, there are also questions about similar behavior by Oxfam aid workers in Chad more than a decade ago.

“I am affording them the opportunity to tell me in person what they did after these events, and I’m going to be looking to see if they are displaying the moral leadership that I think they need to now,” Mordaunt said in a television interview. “If they do not hand over all the information that they have from their investigation and subsequently to the relevant authorities, including the Charity Commission and prosecuting authorities, then I cannot work with them any more as an aid delivery partner,” she said.

The minister has informed all British charities that receive government funds that they must declare all “safeguarding concerns” or lose funding.

But Mordaunt’s predecessor, Priti Patel, said the government doesn’t have the moral high ground on the issue and fears the problem is more widespread. 

“Predatory pedophiles” have been allowed to exploit the aid sector, she said Sunday. Patel said when she was international development minister, she faced obstruction from her ministerial staff and “internal pushback” when trying to probe exploitation claims against aid workers.

“I did my own research, and I have to say, I had a lot of pushback within my own department. I pushed hard — I had pushback internally, and that is the scandal. The scandal is within the industry, people know about this,” the former minister said, wondering why there were no prosecutions.

Figures analyzed by Britain’s Sunday Times revealed that in the past year alone, more than 120 workers for Britain’s top charities have been accused of sexual abuse, harassment or predatory behavior, mostly while serving overseas.

Oxfam recorded 87 incidents in 2017, of which 53 cases were referred to police or civilian authorities. Save the Children had 31 cases, 10 of which were referred to authorities 

Oxfam has admitted it made an error in failing to make public the Haiti sex scandal and the details of its investigation. Oxfam’s chief executive, Mark Goldring, said the charity is ashamed but has denied it sought to cover up the scandal. 

“What we wanted to do was get on and deliver an aid program,” Golding said. In a radio interview Saturday, he expressed regret for not addressing the issue. 

“With hindsight, I would much prefer we had talked about sexual misconduct,” he said.

Paying for sex is in breach of not only Oxfam’s code of conduct but the United Nations’ codes for the aid workers it funds. Oxfam did announce publicly that there had been misconduct in Haiti and that some staff had been terminated, but it did not reveal the misbehavior to Britain’s Charity Commission. 

Oxfam isn’t alone in scandals involving Haiti. Last year, U.N. peacekeepers in the country were accused of participating in sex rings using food as a lure.

A Save the Children report in 2008 said sex exploitation by aid workers was under-reported generally in countries hit by devastating disasters, man-made or natural. 

“Children as young as six are trading sex with aid workers and peacekeepers for food, money, soap,” the report said. 
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Forget the Winter Olympics, the Champion’s League or the Super Bowl. The real competition right now is who’s going to be invited to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s wedding.

Everyone who is anyone in Britain is angling for an embossed royal ticket.

British heavyweight boxer Anthony Joshua, who is seeking to add two more world championships to the three he already owns, says he would be happy to interrupt his high-level training for a trip to Windsor Castle on May 19. The ebullient Joshua has not been shy, tweeting a picture of himself and Harry with the question “Need a best man?”

“I’m single,” the 28-year-old told the BBC, expressing an interest in seeing if the elegant, raven-haired Markle’s “got any sisters.”

(For the record Anthony, she has a half sister, 53-year-old Samantha Grant, a divorced mother of three who has called Markle “a social climber.”)

The actual guest list is a closely guarded secret – and details about it may not be released until the event is underway. But that hasn’t stopped speculation about who’s in or who’s out from becoming a national parlor game and the subject of wagers in Britain’s legal betting shops.

Any bride and groom run into parental interference in their guest list, whether it’s adding random cousins or forgotten neighbors. Yet Harry and Markle are enduring this phenomenon at a cosmic level due to the royal expectations that come along with being a grandson of Queen Elizabeth II.

At least Harry and Markle won’t face the 3,500 guests that his parents, Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer, welcomed to their 1981 “wedding of the century” in St. Paul’s Cathedral in London.They also avoided the warehouse-sized Westminster Abbey, where Harry’s brother Prince William and Kate Middleton packed in 1,900 guests for a 2011 royal wedding extravaganza televised around the world.

Their wedding venue, St. George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle, holds a mere 800 guests. Even so, it’s going to be tough to cut that list.

The British royals’ close relatives alone number over 50 – and this time Princess Eugenie gets to bring a plus-one, fiance Jack Brooksbank. Harry also won’t forget non-royals like Kate’s sister, Pippa Middleton, her husband James Mathews, and brother James Middleton.

At William’s wedding, 45 foreign royals from 20 countries were invited from nations as diverse as Spain, Norway, Malaysia, Thailand and Saudi Arabia. William also invited governor generals from Commonwealth countries (23 seats); foreign dignitaries (27); U.K. politicians (42); religious figures (31); senior military officers (14) and 80 workers from charities that he backs. Oh – and don’t forget the ambassadors from countries with ties to Britain.

William barely could squeeze in A-listers like David Beckham and TV adventure host Ben Fogle – who may return for Harry’s nuptials.

Britain’s governing elite – Prime Minister Theresa May, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond – would normally expect a Windsor invite. But with turmoil over Brexit roiling the ruling Conservative Party, perhaps the bride and groom should just wait until a week before the wedding, then invite whoever is still left standing.

The juiciest debate has been over invites for rival U.S. presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump. Harry and Obama have obvious chemistry and have worked together promoting Harry’s Invictus Games competition for wounded soldiers. Some British officials, however, fear that an invite to Obama would anger Trump.

The royals could note that Obama, the U.S. president in 2011, was not invited to William’s wedding. And they have a bit more leeway because Harry’s wedding is not considered a state event. Markle, meanwhile, is a Hillary Clinton fan.

“We’ve changed our minds on this. We think Harry is in a position that he does not have to worry about the political implications of an invite,” said Rupert Adams, a spokesman for the betting agency William Hill PLC. “We feel strongly that the Obamas will get an invite.”

As for Trump?

“We’d be very surprised to see him on the guest list,” Adams said.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has a trifecta of ties to the bride and groom:He’s the head of a Commonwealth country, host of Harry’s latest Invictus Games and leader of the nation where Markle had been living.

On the celebrity front, Elton John, who turned his song “Candle in the Wind” into an anthem for the late Princess Diana, is considered a 1-50 lock for an invite (98 percent chance) and singer James Blunt comes in at 1-4. Singer/songwriter Ed Sheeran is also reportedly close to Harry’s royal cousins and his U.K. tour doesn’t start until a few days later.

The betting for wedding performer includes John, Sheeran, Coldplay, Joss Stone and Adele.

Violet von Westenholz who introduced the couple will get a nod, along with Harry’s buddies Thomas and Charlie van Straubenzee, Thomas Inskip and Arthur Landon.

Yet A-listers could find themselves outnumbered by British military members and charity workers. Look for dress uniforms from both the Blues and Royals regiment and the Army Air Corps, because Harry served as a former Apache helicopter co-pilot in Afghanistan.

“You create significant bonds in a war zone,” noted Adams.

Among the 10 guests that Markle is allowed to pick [just kidding] will be her mom Doria Ragland, dad Thomas, half brother Thomas Jr. and possibly Grant. Markle’s friends include tennis star Serena Williams, stylist Jessica Mulroney, “Suits” star Patrick J. Adams and former “Made in Chelsea” cast member Millie Macintosh.

Markle’s ex-husband, producer Trevor Engelson, is not expected to receive an invitation.

But William Hill spokesman Adams admits that British bookies don’t really have a clue about who the 36-year-old American will invite.

“The simple reality is … we have been focusing on Harry over here,” Adams said.
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The World Health Organization is calling for resolute action to end violence against children. WHO’s appeal comes in advance of a meeting in Stockholm, Sweden this week that will seek solutions to the problem of violence, which affects one out of every two children on this planet.

The upcoming conference will explore ways to achieve the U.N.’s sustainable development goal of ending violence against children by 2030. But, the statistics weigh heavily against this aspiration.

The World Health Organization reports one half of the two billion children on earth, aged between two and 17, are victims of physical, sexual or emotional violence, or neglect. This violence, it says, occurs in the home behind closed doors or in schools. It involves bullying and violent behavior between young people. It says violence thrives in situations of conflict and other fragile settings.

The ultimate consequence of violence is death. WHO Director of Non-Communicable Diseases, Etienne Krug, says homicide is one of the three leading causes of death for adolescents.

“But, beyond that, there are also for those that survive, which is the vast majority a wide array of health consequences — mental health consequences, depression, anxiety, insomnia, changes in behavior,” he said. “They are more likely to smoke, to drink alcohol, to engage in risky sexual behavior, which leads to HIV, NCDs, etc.”

Krug says violence is not inevitable.It is predictable and preventable. He says the Stockholm conference will consider seven strategies for ending violence against children.

These include the enforcement of laws against this practice, changing norms so violence is no longer acceptable, dealing with aggressive behavior of boys, creating safer environments and teaching young parents how to be good parents.
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All 71 people aboard a Russian passenger plane were killed when it crashed near Moscow, Russian officials said Sunday.

“Sixty-five passengers and six crew members were on board, and all of them died,” Russia’s office of transport investigations said in a statement.

The seven-year-old plane disappeared from the radar just minutes after departing from the capital city’s second largest airport, Domodedovo and was falling up to 6,700 meters per minute in the last seconds of the crash, flight-tracking site FlightRadar24 reported.

The An-148 regional jet, operated by Saratov Airlines, was traveling from Domodedovo, to the city of Orsk when it crashed near Argunovo, about 80 kilometers southeast of Moscow.

Russian president Vladimir Putin offered “his profound condolences to those who lost their relatives in the crash,” his spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

The crash site was covered in heavy snow, delaying access to the area as rescue workers had to park their cars and travel to the crash site on foot.

The cause of the crash is currently unknown, though Russia’s transport ministry said it is investigating bad weather and human error as possible explanations.

 
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Britain’s Charity Commission must conduct a “full and urgent investigation” into Oxfam following an alleged cover-up of its staff hiring prostitutes in Haiti during a 2011 relief effort on the earthquake-hit island, the prime minister’s office said Saturday.

“The reports of what is unacceptable behavior by senior aid workers in Haiti are truly shocking,” a spokeswoman for Theresa May said. “We want to see Oxfam provide all the evidence they hold of the events to the Charity Commission for a full and urgent investigation of these very serious allegations.”

The call came as the British charities regulator released its own statement detailing Oxfam’s previous disclosure of the events, including that it characterized the misconduct as “inappropriate sexual behavior.”

“Our approach to this matter would have been different had the full details that have been reported been disclosed to us at the time,” the commission said.

It confirmed that it had asked Oxfam to urgently provide fresh information.

Late on Friday, the Department for International Development (DFID) also said it was reviewing its relationship with the U.K.-based charity, to which it gave nearly $44 million last year.

It said Oxfam’s leaders had “showed a lack of judgment” in their handling of the matter and their level of openness with the government and Charity Commission.

‘Appalling abuse’

“The international development secretary is reviewing our current work with Oxfam and has requested a meeting with the senior team at the earliest opportunity,” a DFID spokeswoman said. “The way this appalling abuse of vulnerable people was dealt with raises serious questions that Oxfam must answer.”

Oxfam Chief Executive Mark Goldring said Saturday that the charity receives less than 10 percent of its funding from DFID and hoped to continue working with the department while rebuilding trust with the public. 

He admitted Oxfam did not give full details of the scandal to the commission in 2011 but insisted it “did anything but cover it up.”

“With hindsight, I would much prefer that we had talked about [the] sexual misconduct,” Goldring told BBC radio. “But I don’t think it was in anyone’s best interest to be describing the details of the behavior in a way that was actually going to draw extreme attention to it.”

The charity is under growing pressure after an investigation by The Times found young sex workers had been hired by senior staff in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake. Groups of young prostitutes were invited to homes and guesthouses paid for by the charity for sex parties, according to one source who claimed to have seen footage of an orgy with sex workers wearing Oxfam T-shirts.

In further revelations Friday, the paper said Oxfam failed to warn other aid agencies about the staff involved, which allowed them to get jobs among vulnerable people in other disaster areas.

Roland van Hauwermeiren, 68, whom Oxfam said was forced to resign as Haiti country director in 2011 after allegedly admitting hiring prostitutes, went on to become head of mission for Action Against Hunger in Bangladesh from 2012 to 2014.

Good references received

The French charity told AFP it made pre-employment checks with Oxfam but that the U.K.-based organization “did not share with us the reasons for his resignation as head of mission in Haiti or the results of its internal inquiry.”

“Moreover we received positive references from former Oxfam staff — in their individual capacities — who worked with him,” including from a human resources staffer, a spokesman said.

In a statement, Oxfam denied providing positive references for those implicated.

It said the vast number of aid operations working around the globe made it impossible “to ensure that those found guilty of sexual misconduct were not re-employed in the sector.”

“Unfortunately, there is nothing we can do to stop individuals falsifying references, getting others that were dismissed to act as referees and claiming it was a reference from Oxfam,” a spokeswoman added.

And there was also nothing to stop them from getting former or current staff to provide a reference “in a personal capacity,” she said.

The charity said it launched an immediate investigation in 2011 that found a “culture of impunity” among some staff, but it denied trying to cover up the scandal.

During the probe, Oxfam dismissed four staff members and another three resigned, including van Hauwermeiren.

The charity also said it had yet to find evidence proving allegations that underage girls were involved.
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German Chancellor Angela Merkel declined to comment Saturday on a Polish law that imposes jail terms for suggesting the country was complicit in the Holocaust, saying she did not want to wade into Poland’s internal affairs.

The law would impose prison sentences of up to three years for using the phrase “Polish death camps” and for suggesting “publicly and against the facts” that the Polish nation or state was complicit in Nazi Germany’s crimes.

“Without directly interfering in the legislation in Poland, I would like to say the following very clearly as German chancellor: We as Germans are responsible for what happened during the Holocaust, the Shoah, under National Socialism [Nazism],” Merkel said in her weekly video podcast.

She was responding to a question from a student who had asked whether the new Polish law curbs freedom of expression. Israel and the United States criticized President Andrzej Duda for signing the bill into law this week.

Israel says the law will curb free speech, criminalize basic historical facts and stop any discussion of the role some Poles played in Nazi crimes.

A Polish government spokeswoman welcomed Merkel’s remarks, the PAP news agency reported. Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki will hold talks with Merkel in Berlin next week.

Poland’s ruling Law and Justice party has clashed with the European Union and human rights groups on a range of issues since taking power in late 2015. It says the law is needed to ensure that Poles are recognized as victims, not perpetrators, of Nazi aggression in World War II.

More than 3 million of the 3.2 million Jews who lived in pre-war Poland were killed by the Nazis, accounting for about half of all Jews killed in the Holocaust.

Jews from across the continent were sent to be killed at death camps built and operated by Germans in occupied Poland — home to Europe’s biggest Jewish community at the time.
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Skier Albin Tahiri will miss Kosovo’s 10th-anniversary celebrations next week — but as the country’s first winter Olympian, he thinks his 1.8 million compatriots will forgive him while he competes in the Pyeongchang Games that began Friday.

While it has long had snow-capped mountains offering steep slopes and deep powder, Kosovo didn’t exist as a country until it broke free from Serbia in 2008, nearly a decade after a NATO-led bombing campaign pushed out Serbian forces to end a brutal crackdown on ethnic Albanians during a two-year battle for independence.

Now the 28-year-old Tahiri will compete in all five alpine-ski events in South Korea, one of 115 countries that recognize Kosovo as a country.

“When I started skiing, Kosovo was not an independent country,” says the Slovenian-born Tahiri, who carried Kosovo’s flag into the Olympic Stadium during the opening ceremonies.

“My father always cheered for Kosovar athletes and I did it as well, so when Kosovo proclaimed independence I wanted to help by representing the country as an athlete,” he adds. 

Kosovo’s inclusion in the Olympics was not always a given.

Serbia lobbied hard to block Kosovo from being recognized as a separate Olympic country and it wasn’t until the International Olympic Committee granted such a status to Kosovo in late 2014 that it made its debut at the Summer Olympics two years later in Brazil, which still does not formally recognize Kosovo as an independent country.

Tahiri, who began skiing in Slovenia at the age of 7, collected enough World Cup points while studying dentistry.

Now given the chance to represent Kosovo, the birthplace of his father, Tahiri will have to compete against the world’s best skiers without access to a full-time equipment manager or his coach — who can’t travel with him to South Korea because of the cost.

‘Once-In-A-Lifetime Pressure’

With the lighting of the flame in Pyeongchang, Kosovo will be one of six countries competing in the Winter Olympics for the first time.

The young country officially marks its independence on Feb. 17, midway through the Olympics, which finish eight days later.

“For me as president of the country, for the state and Kosovar society, as well as for the whole world, the participation of Kosovo for the first time in the Olympic Winter Games in [South] Korea is [big] news,” Hashim Thaci, president of Kosovo, said on Feb. 5, during a ceremony presenting the official Kosovar flag to Tahiri.

“I hope that not only the participation [of Tahiri] will make news, but that we will also have the strong news of winning a medal,” Thaci added.

Thaci and the rest of the country still have the Rio Olympics fresh in their minds. That debut by Kosovo put the country on the sporting map as Majlinda Kelmendi made history by winning a gold medal in judo.

Kelmendi says she is proud that Kosovo will finally be represented in the Winter Olympics, and knows the pressure Tahiri faces as the hopes of a nation weigh on him as he glides down the slopes.

“I wish him all the best,” Kelmendi said in a Thursday Facebook video post. “I know you have responsibility, you will also be waving the flag, but enjoy this experience to the maximum. Believe me, it’s something that happens once in a lifetime, so all the best and feel proud for the country you represent,” she added.

RFE/RL’s Balkan Service contributed to this report.
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A new vocabulary program claims to dramatically accelerate a child’s understanding of language. As Faith Lapidus reports, the Mrs Wordsmith teaching system relies on cartoon drawings and short word exercises to boost academic achievement.
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