The United States said on Tuesday it was “deeply troubled” by Turkey’s re-arrest of the chairman of the local arm of Amnesty International, and called on its NATO ally to end its state of emergency and safeguard the rule of law.

U.S.-Turkish relations have been strained recently by a series of disagreements, especially over the Syria crisis.

Taner Kilic was one of 11 human rights activists arrested last year on what Amnesty International has said were “bogus terrorism charges.” He is the only one of the 11 still jailed after eight months in detention, the rights group said.

Kilic was conditionally released last week, but the prosecution successfully appealed the decision and he was re-arrested before he had even arrived home, Amnesty said in a statement.

U.S. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert told a briefing the United States was “deeply troubled” by Kilic’s re-arrest on Feb. 1.

She said Washington was closely following Kilic’s case, as well as those against other human rights defenders, journalists, civil society leaders and opposition politicians detained in the state of emergency that followed a failed coup against President Tayyip Erdogan on July 15, 2016.

“We call on the Turkish government to end the protracted state of emergency, to release those detained arbitrarily under the emergency authorities and to safeguard the rule of law,” Nauert said, noting that the emergency had “chilled freedom of expression” and raised concerns about judicial independence.

In the year after the coup, Turkey arrested more than 40,000 people and fired 125,000, including many from the police, army, and judiciary. Erdogan blames the attempted coup on Fethullah Gulen, an exiled cleric and former ally based in the United States. Gulen has denied any role in the plot.

 
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The 28-member European Union faces an aggregate of pressures, including slow economic growth, persistently high unemployment, escalating populism, a migrant wave, the threat of terrorism, and a resurgent Russia. Amid these difficulties, the future shape and character of the EU is being questioned. VOA’s Jela de Franceschi probes the topic with three veteran observers of all things Europe.
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A Paris judge on Tuesday denied bail to a controversial Swiss Muslim scholar facing rape accusations, as fresh allegations promise to further complicate one of France’s most prominent sexual assault cases to date.

Oxford University professor Tariq Ramadan, 55, was charged with rape late last week, following two French women’s accusations of brutal sexual experiences in hotel rooms years before. Ramadan was questioned for two days before being taken into custody Friday.

Swiss media have reported allegations that Ramadan had sexual relations with teenage girls at a Geneva school where he taught in the 1980s. In addition, French media have reported that police have testimonies from other women, who have not leveled charges.

The allegations first surfaced last fall, as the Harvey Weinstein scandal triggered a broader #MeToo outcry against sexual assault and harassment.

Ramadan, a married father of four, adamantly denies the charges, claiming they amount to slander from enemies intent on demolishing him. The case has stunned the Muslim world and further fueled the many critics of Ramadan, who has long been a polarizing figure in Europe.

The accusations

Both of the women pressing charges describe similar episodes — of hotel room meetings, ostensibly for religious discussions, that quickly turned into violent sexual encounters. One woman — a handicapped, 45-year-old convert to Islam using the pseudonym “Christelle” — described in interviews a particularly brutal and humiliating encounter with the scholar in the French city of Lyon in 2009.

During recent questioning, “Christelle” allegedly identified a scar on Ramadan’s groin, which he reportedly confirmed existed. She turned over a USB flash drive to investigators allegedly containing compromising text messages from Ramadan, according to Le Parisien newspaper.

But the newspaper also reported a plane reservation that, if confirmed, would show Ramadan flying from London to Lyon at about the same time the woman said the assault took place.

The second woman, Henda Ayari, a former Salifist-turned-feminist activist, went public with her accusations in October. She was the first to openly accuse Ramadan of sexual assault, earning insults and threats in the weeks that followed. Like “Christelle,” Ayari said the experience took place in a hotel in 2012.

But Ayari’s account, too, has been compromised in recent days, with reports of a man claiming she threatened to press rape charges against him in 2013 — a year after her alleged encounter with Ramadan —after he rebuffed her advances.

Beginning of the end?

Regardless of the outcome, the charges amount to a significant blow to Ramadan, once seen as an inspiration to a generation of young European Muslims. In conferences and television interviews, he preached that Islam and Europe were compatible. Still, critics claimed Ramadan, the grandson of Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna, wielded a double discourse, hiding political Islam behind unifying rhetoric.

Following last fall’s allegations, Ramadan took a leave of absence from his teaching post at Oxford University. More recently, French media report that Qatar — which financed his Islamic Studies chair at Oxford — has also distanced itself from him.

“He has a real hold on his [sexual] prey, as on his faithful,” feminist writer Caroline Fourest, a longtime Ramadan foe, told Le Journal du Dimanche.

“I don’t think people realize his impact on Europe as a preacher,” she added. “He has radicalized brilliant students — young Muslims —and transformed them into vindictive paranoids. He has divided European citizens with the kind of harm that few extremists can match.”

A number of prominent Muslims have chosen to remain silent, saying they will wait for French justice to weigh in. Analysts claim Ramadan’s star was fading long before the allegations surfaced — and especially after the Arab uprisings starting in 2011.

“It’s a whole myth that is collapsing. Tariq Ramadan will have a hard time continuing his preaching career based on his personality and a discourse of religious puritanism,” Islam specialist Omero Marongui-Perria told Le Parisien.

For their part, Ramadan’s backers have launched a petition and written an open letter of support in which they denounce an alleged campaign against him carried out by French media and politicians.
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North Korea has been getting equipment and technology for its nuclear weapons program through its embassy in Berlin, Germany’s intelligence chief says.

“When we detect something of this sort, we prevent it,” BfV head Han-Georg Maassen told German public television NDR Monday. “But we can’t guarantee that we will be able to detect and thwart all cases.”

Maassen says German authorities suspect underground markets and shadow buyers got their hands on the parts and the North Koreans procured them in Germany. 

He did not say exactly what equipment the North Koreans bought, but said it is likely duel-use technology, meaning it has civilian and military purposes.

The German TV report says the North carried out its activities in Germany in 2016 and 2017, but that a North Korean diplomat tried to buy a monitor used in chemical weapons production as early as 2014.

A North Korean embassy spokesman denies the report, telling CNN it is “simply not true.”

The United Nations has imposed a series of increasingly stronger sanctions on North Korea because of its refusal to stop developing nuclear weapons and testing ballistic missiles that could carry such bombs.

But a recent U.N. report says the North earned nearly $200 million last year ignoring sanctions and exporting such goods as coal, iron, and steel.
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European Central Bank head Mario Draghi said Monday that it’s too soon to declare victory over weak inflation – indicating it would be premature to set a definite end date for the bank’s money-printing stimulus despite a strengthening economy.

Draghi’s statement to a session of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, said that continuing economic growth means inflation would eventually tick up toward the bank’s goal of just under 2 percent, from an annual 1.3 percent in January. 

“While our confidence that inflation will converge towards our aim of below, but close to, 2 percent has strengthened,” Draghi said, “we cannot yet declare victory on this front.”

He said that “new headwinds” had arisen from a recently stronger euro. The stronger currency can hurt exporters _ and therefore growth _ and makes it harder to raise inflation, since it reduces the costs of imports. The euro was little changed after Draghi spoke, trading around $1.242, down 0.3 percent on the day. 

Draghi offered no indication of any looming change in the bank’s statement that it would continue purchasing 30 billion euros ($37 billion) per month in bonds at least through September, and longer if necessary. The purchases pump newly created money into the economy, driving down longer-term interest rates in an effort to raise inflation and growth.

The ECB head said that “overall, while we can be more confident about the path of inflation, patience and persistence with regard to monetary policy is still warranted for underlying inflation pressures to build up and inflation to converge durably towards our objective.”

An end to the purchases would eventually mean higher long-term borrowing costs for governments and companies. The ECB’s stance is being closely watched in currency markets, which tend to send the euro higher against the dollar on any indication that the stimulus might come to an end. Monetary stimulus tends to lower a currency’s exchange rate, while interest rate increases tend to raise the exchange rate against other currencies. 

The ECB has made clear that interest rate increases will only occur well after the end of the purchases. That means the next rate increase likely won’t happen until sometime in 2019. Currently, the bank’s main benchmark interest rate is at a record low of zero.
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The United States says it is confident that both the U.S. and Russia will have honored their commitments under the bilateral Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) by the Monday deadline. 

U.S. State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert said there is good news to report on deadline day, which is also the eighth anniversary of the new Start treaty taking effect.

“The United States has met the central limits of the New Start treaty in August 2017. We assess at this time that Russia has also progressed toward meeting those limits. We have no reason to believe that the Russian government will not meet those limits as well.” 

The State Department said in a release late Sunday that both countries will exchange data on their respective nuclear arsenals “within the next month, as we have done twice per year over the last seven years in accordance with the Treaty.”

Treaty signed in 2010

The New START Treaty was signed in Prague on April 8, 2010 by then U.S. President Barack Obama and then Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and came into force on Feb. 5, 2011. 

It limits the U.S. and Russia to no more than 1,550 nuclear warheads and also limits deployed and non-deployed intercontinental ballistic missiles, heavy bombers and submarine-launched ballistic missiles. 

Under the treaty, both sides are to exchange information twice a year on the number of warheads and delivery vehicles, and are allowed to conduct on-site inspections to verify each other’s compliance.

Olga Oliker is the Director of the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.  She told VOA the ability to deploy “boots on the ground” for inspections helps build trust.

“It limits your incentives to try to cheat, and it gives everyone also the opportunity to meet one another and to actually build relationships that are based on verifying compliance with the treaty that everyone agreed to.”

Trump calls for upgrade

At his State of the Union speech last week, President Donald Trump outlined his approach to nuclear weapons.

“We must modernize and rebuild our nuclear arsenal, hopefully never having to use it, but making it so strong and powerful that it will deter any acts of aggression. Perhaps someday in the future there will be a magical moment when the countries of the world will get together to eliminate their nuclear weapons. Unfortunately, we are not there yet.”

Experts say despite a widening rift between Moscow and Washington on Russia’s election interference, Syria, Crimea, Ukraine and other issues, the fact that both sides are still cooperating and complying with nuclear monitoring and verification is crucial to global security and stability.

Treaty is crucial

Olga Oliker says the disagreements between Washington and Moscow make the treaty even more crucial.

“I think the United States and Russia disagree on a great many things and have some interests that are very misaligned. This means all the more that we need to work to make sure that our disagreements don’t escalate and that if they do get worse, we don’t run the risk of blowing up the world many times over.”

Oliker says the New START treaty is key to global security and stability because the U.S. and Russia have about 95 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons.
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Israel’s education minister is set to visit Warsaw amid uproar over proposed legislation that would outlaw blaming Poland for crimes committed during the Holocaust.

Naftali Bennett said Monday he would “make it clear: the past can’t be rewritten, the future should be written together.”

The bill sparked outrage in Israel, raising tensions with a close ally.

It calls for up to three years in prison for any intentional attempt to falsely attribute crimes of Nazi Germany to the Polish state or people.

Israel sees it as an attempt to whitewash the role some Poles played in the killing of Jews during World War II.

Bennett noted ahead of his trip Wednesday that while thousands of Poles helped Jews during the war many others participated in their persecution.
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British officials reacted angrily Monday to President Donald Trump’s stark criticism of the U.K. health care system, which he said was breaking down.

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt said he is proud of the National Health Service and rejected Trump’s claim that it’s collapsing.

The “NHS may have challenges but I’m proud to be from the country that invented universal coverage – where all get care no matter the size of their bank balance,” he said.

Opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn called Trump’s comments “wrong” and said Britons love the NHS.

The latest dispute between Trump and Britain started when Trump criticized Democrats and the British approach to health care in a single tweet.

“The Democrats are pushing for Universal HealthCare while thousands of people are marching in the UK because their U system is going broke and not working,” he tweeted Monday. “Dems want to greatly raise taxes for really bad and non-personal medical care. No thanks!”

His comments followed a march in London on Saturday that drew thousands of people demanding more government funding for Britain’s NHS, which has been badly overstretched this winter, in part because of a rise in severe flu cases. Emergency rooms have at times been overwhelmed, causing long waits.

The march was organized by the People’s Assembly and Health Campaigns Together group, which on Monday condemned Trump’s comments.

“We don’t agree with your divisive and incorrect rhetoric. No thanks,” the group said in a statement.

It said the marchers wanted to show their support for the principle of universal, comprehensive medical care that is free to the user and paid for through general taxation.

Trump has sought to repeal the health care law of his predecessor, Barack Obama.

Congress repealed the unpopular requirement that most Americans carry insurance or risk a tax penalty. That takes effect next year. But other major parts of the overhaul remain in place.

Trump’s relationship with Britain has been strained by his retweeting of videos by the far-right group Britain First and disagreements over his policies on climate change, immigration and other matters. Nonetheless, officials in both countries are working on plans for him to visit Britain later this year.
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Russia sentenced 43 people to jail over online posts last year, a rights group said Monday, warning that the country is slowly criminalizing internet use as the security service tightens its grip.

The Agora rights group presented a report in Moscow on “the creeping criminalization of the internet,” in which it registered 115,706 cases of restrictions on internet freedom last year.

The report said there was a rise in physical attacks and criminal convictions, with the 43 people sentenced to prison in 2017 up from 32 in 2016.

In a new trend, five people were placed in isolation in psychiatric hospitals.

A total of more than 10 million websites have been blocked in recent years, less than half of those after a court decision, said the internet rights group RosKomSvoboda.

The Agora report listed one murder and 66 cases of violence or threats of violence against bloggers and online journalists in 2017. This was the highest number since they started monitoring this issue since 2011.

Some of the measures that criminalize restrictions on internet freedom in Russia include anti-extremism and anti-separatism laws.

However the report noted a surge in convictions for “inciting terrorism”, which increased 20-fold in the last five years.

The Federal Security Service, the feared KGB successor that probes major crimes against the state, now handles a third of all cases relating to freedom of expression on the internet — up from just 16 percent in 2015.

“The role of the FSB is growing significantly. De facto it is becoming the main controller of the Russian internet, both technologically and as the main repressive organ,” the report said.

 
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Cyprus President Nicos Anastasiades won reelection to second five-year term Sunday, promising to continue economic recovery and the island’s reunification efforts.

The conservative Anastasiades beat his leftist challenger Stavros Malas 56 to 44 percent. The two also faced-off in the 2013 election.

“I will continue to be president for all Cypriots,” Anastasiades told cheering supporters in Nicosia. “Tonight, there are no winners of losers. There is only a Cyprus for all of us.”

Malas told his backers they can be disappointed, but said “the battle” does not begin or end with a single election. He said he telephoned Anastasiades and told him to “take care of our Cyprus.”

Anastasiades is credited with helping the Greek Cypriot economy bounce back from a severe recession that required a bailout from the European Union and International Monetary Fund.

But there has been little progress in U.N.-sponsored reunification talks with the Turkish Cypriot north.

Anastasiades promises to resist Turkish demands to keep a military presence on a reunified Cyprus and continue oil and gas exploration off the Greek Cypriot coast – an enterprise that also angers Turkish Cypriots.

Cyprus has been split between a Greek Cypriot south and Turkish Cypriot north since 1974, when Turkish forces invaded in response to a military coup aimed at unifying the entire island with Greece.

Only Turkey recognizes an independent northern Cyprus while the southern half enjoys international recognition and the economic benefits of EU membership.
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Tens of thousands of demonstrators marched in Athens Sunday to protest a potential compromise between Greece and Macedonia over a long-standing name dispute.

Police estimated a crowd size of about 140,000, while organizers of the march claimed 1.5 million people from Greece and the Greek diaspora gathered to urge the government against brokering a deal regarding neighboring Macedonia’s official name.

“The million protesters that the organizers imagined was wishful thinking,” Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said in a statement released by his office.

“The crushing majority of Greek people conclude that foreign policy issues should not be dealt with with fanaticism.”

Greece and Macedonia have been feuding over who gets to use the name since Macedonia’s independence from Yugoslavia in 1991. Many Greeks say allowing the neighboring country to use the name insults Greek history and implies a claim on the Greek territory also known as Macedonia — a key province in Alexander the Great’s ancient empire.

Greece has blocked Macedonian efforts to join the European Union and NATO because of the name dispute. The country of Macedonia is officially known at the U.N. as the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

But Tsipras, a leftist, has been open to negotiating a compromise in the 27-year dispute, sparking protests in both nations.

Macedonian Prime Minister Zoran Zaev said in recent weeks his country would rename an airport and a major road after Alexander the Great “to demonstrate, in practice, that we are committed to finding a solution.”

 
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After nearly two years in solitary confinement at a maximum security jail, the top surviving suspect of the deadliest terror attack in recent French history goes on trial Monday in Brussels.

The four-day trial of 28-year-old Salah Abdeslam will not deal directly with the November 2015 attacks that killed 130 people around Paris, but rather a shootout with police months later. But it is being closely watched, in hopes it may shed insight into the tangle of alliances and events that link the Paris attacks with the March 2016 attacks on the Brussels airport and metro.

The trial may turn on whether Abdeslam, who has remained silent for months under round-the clock prison watch, will finally talk or even make a courtroom appearance.

“Will he say anything more than he has said?” asks Rik Coolsaet, a longtime terrorism expert and senior fellow at the Egmont Institute, a Brussels-based research group. “If he doesn’t, I’m afraid the trial will not make things much clearer about his involvement either in the Brussels or in the November attacks in Paris.”

The trial directly deals with a March 2016 shootout with Belgian police that took place days before Abdeslam was arrested, after months on the run. He and accomplice Sofiane Ayari face attempted murder charges.

Much still unknown

Abdeslam’s case comes amid a changing terror landscape in Europe. With the Islamist State group beaten back in Syria and Iraq, the focus is now on returning radicals and those leaving European prisons in the not-too-distant future. The Brussels trial is one of many expected during the coming months and years dealing with recent terrorist attacks across the region.

But while the trials may shed light on the past, “they won’t inform us much about the future threats and challenges,” analyst Coolsaet says. “We are living in a kind of post-ISIS era, in which the threat has been transformed from organized networks of plots and attacks to lone actors.”

A former pot-smoking petty criminal who once ran a bar in the Molenbeek neighborhood of Brussels with his brother Brahim, who blew himself up in the Paris attacks, Abdeslam seems an unlikely jihadist. His Belgian lawyer, Sven Mary, once characterized him as a ‘little jerk from Molenbeek’ with the “intelligence of an empty ashtray.”

Yet Abdeslam is believed to have played a key logistical role in preparing the attacks. He allegedly organized safe houses, drove across Europe to pick up other suspects, and dropped off three suicide bombers to the Stade de France soccer stadium outside Paris, where they blew themselves up during a France-Germany game.

The stadium attack was the first in a string of shootings and bombings that took place across Paris on a warm November evening. The terrorists targeted bars, restaurants and the Bataclan concert hall before blowing themselves up or being shot dead by police.

But Abdeslam escaped, sneaking across the French border into Belgium the following day with the help of friends. Recent evidence shows his suicide vest was defective, although it remains unclear whether he intended to trigger it.

After a four-month manhunt, he was finally caught in the Molenbeek neighborhood where he grew up, just days after the shootout with police, who were investigating a suspected safe house they originally thought was unoccupied.

Days later, three bomb attacks on Brussels airport and the Maalbeek metro station killed 32 people. The suspected killers were closely tied to the Paris attackers. Abdeslam, who initially talked during interrogations, and gave misleading information, has kept silent since.

His silence ultimately led both Belgian lawyer Mary and Abdeslam’s French lawyer Franck Berton to give up his defense a few months later. Berton blamed the round-the-clock surveillance for eroding Abdeslam’s mental stability, and warned his former client was “radicalizing in an extreme fashion.” In December, Abdeslam finally tapped Mary to resume his defense for the Brussels trial.

Many questions remain about the Brussels and Paris attacks, among them the whereabouts of onetime Syrian jihadist and suspected coordinator Oussama Atar. An international arrest warrant is still out for Atar who, like Abdeslam, is a Belgian national of Moroccan extraction (although Atar is bi-national). He is also the cousin of two of the Brussels suicide bombers.

The French and Belgian attacks were only the beginning of several killings across Europe that targeted Germany, Britain, Spain and the French Riviera city of Nice. Last month, the first trial relating to the 2015 Paris attacks opened in the French capital. Three suspects are charged with assisting or being aware of the assailants’ whereabouts.

Changing threat

But the geopolitical landscape has changed dramatically in the interim. With IS weakened, terrorists in Europe cannot count on the same kind of extensive backing as the Paris and Brussels assailants once did, analysts say.

European jihadists are also coming home, although in fewer numbers than earlier feared. “Returnees are not coming back here en masse, and that’s for the whole of Europe,” says terrorist expert Coolsaet. “Either they’re fighting to death, or they’re being imprisoned.”

Yet other threats remain. That includes in overcrowded prisons which critics claim have long been breeding grounds for terrorists.

For survivors and victims’ families, the Paris attacks remain painfully present. Jean-Francois Mondeguer lost his daughter Lamia, killed in a hail of gunfire as she was dining with her boyfriend at an outdoor cafe. Mondeguer is part of a survivors’ group called “November 13, Brotherhood and Truth.”

Before leaving for Brussels to attend Abdeslam’s trial, Mondeguer said, “I’m not angry with him, I don’t hate him, but I will never forgive him. What we want to find out is what exactly happened on November 13.”

 
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Turkish guards at the border with Syria are indiscriminately shooting at and summarily returning asylum seekers attempting to cross into Turkey, Human Rights Watch said.

A senior Turkish government official denied the report Saturday, repeating that Turkey had taken in 3.5 million war refugees since the Syrian conflict began in 2011.

New York-based Human Rights Watch said Syrians were now fleeing heightened violence in the northwestern province of Idlib to seek refuge near Turkey’s border, which remains closed to all but critical medical cases.

Syrian armed forces have thrust deeper into the mainly rebel-held province in recent months, and Turkey last month launched military action in the nearby Afrin region, targeting Kurdish YPG militia fighters.

“Syrians fleeing to the Turkish border seeking safety and asylum are being forced back with bullets and abuse,” Lama Fakih, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch, said.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s spokesman, Ibrahim Kalin, when asked about the HRW statement, told reporters that Turkish soldiers were there to protect these people and that Ankara has had an “open-door policy” since the start of Syria’s civil war in 2011.

A senior government official later told Reuters: “There has been absolutely no case of civilians being fired upon at the border.”

HRW cited U.N. figures saying 247,000 Syrians were displaced to the border area between December 15 and January 15.

“As fighting in Idlib and Afrin displaces thousands more, the number of Syrians trapped along the border willing to risk their lives to reach Turkey is only likely to increase,” Fakih said.

In the latest fighting in Afrin, five Turkish soldiers were killed Saturday when their tank was hit in an attack carried out by YPG fighters, Turkey’s armed forces said.

Under fire

Of 16 Syrian refugees HRW spoke to, 13 alleged that Turkish border guards had shot toward them or other fleeing asylum seekers as they tried to cross while still in Syria, killing 10 people, including one child, and injuring several more.

Turkey has taken in more Syrian refugees than any other country, granting many temporary protection status and providing them with basic services, including medical care and education.

“However, Turkey’s generous hosting of large numbers of Syrians does not absolve it of its responsibility to help those seeking protection at its borders,” the HRW statement added.

It said Erdogan’s government should issue standard instructions to border guards at all crossing points that lethal force must not be used against asylum seekers and that no asylum seeker is to be mistreated.
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Russian oligarchs suspected of corruption will be forced to explain their wealth in Britain, The Times newspaper reported on February 3, quoting the security minister.
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Poland is seeing a resurgence of anti-Semitism over pending legislation that would impose jail terms for suggestions that the nation was complicit in the

Holocaust, local minority groups warned, as pressure mounts on the president to veto the bill.

Parliament passed the measure Thursday, drawing outrage from Israel, U.S. criticism and condemnation from a number of international organizations. President Andrzej Duda has 21 days to decide whether to sign it into law.

The bill would impose prison sentences of up to three years for mentioning the term “Polish death camps” and for suggesting “publicly and against the facts” complicity on the part of the Polish nation or state in Nazi Germany’s crimes.

More than 3 million of Poland’s 3.2 million Jews were killed by the Nazis, accounting for about half of the Jews killed in the Holocaust. Jews from across Europe were sent to be killed at death camps built and operated by the Germans on Polish soil, including Auschwitz, Treblinka, Belzec and Sobibor.

According to figures from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Nazis also killed at least 1.9 million non-Jewish Polish civilians.

In a rare show of unity, Polish minority and ethnic groups, including Jewish, Ukrainian and Russian, urged Duda and other authorities to counteract all forms of xenophobia, intolerance and anti-Semitism, although they did not directly call on the president to veto the bill.

“Our particular concern and objection is caused by the numerous and loud manifestations of anti-Semitism that we have been witnessing this week after the [parliament] passed [the Holocaust bill],” the groups said in a statement.

Painful debate

Poland, which has gone through a painful public debate in recent years after the publication of research showing some Poles participated in the Nazi atrocities, has long sought to discourage use of the term “Polish camps” to refer to Nazi camps on its territory, arguing that the phrase implies complicity.

On Saturday, German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said the use of the phrase “Polish death camps” was wrong.

“There is not the slightest doubt as to who was responsible for the extermination camps, operated them and murdered millions of European Jews there: namely Germans,” Gabriel said in a statement.

Israeli officials said the legislation criminalizes basic historical facts. The country’s Foreign Ministry said Thursday that Israel “adamantly opposes” the bill’s approval as a whole.

The Israeli Embassy in Warsaw said late Friday that Israel did not oppose Poland’s fight to assure that the phrase “Polish death camps” is never used.

“We would like to use this opportunity to repeat that Israel stands with Poland in using the proper term for the death camps — German Nazi camps,” the embassy said in its statement.

The embassy also said that it had received “a wave of anti-Semitic statements” in the past week.

Poland is one of the most ethnically and religiously homogenous countries in Europe, but before World War II, Jews made up 10 percent of the population and the country also had large Ukrainian, German, Belarussian and other minorities.

Poland’s ruling party, the socially conservative PiS, has reignited debate on the Holocaust as part of a campaign to fuel patriotism since sweeping into power in 2015.

The party says the bill is needed to protect Poland’s reputation and ensure historians recognize that Poles as well as Jews were victims of the Nazis.

Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the chairman of the PiS and the country’s de facto leader, told public radio Jedynka on Saturday that Poland rejected “anti-Semitism very radically.”

“But we are also a sovereign state and we have a duty to start, because this is only the beginning, the fight against … this great defamatory campaign against Poland, namely, insulting Poland, blaming us for someone else’s actions.”

Free speech

Critics of the bill have raised concerns it will curb free speech and could be used against Holocaust survivors or historians.

A U.S. congressional task force on combating anti-Semitism and a number of Jewish groups urged Duda to veto the bill.

The International Auschwitz Council, an advisory body to the office of the Polish prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, said Friday that the bill’s imprecision raised “legitimate concerns about restricting freedom in discovering the truth about the Holocaust.”

Duda has not said whether he will sign the bill, but his spokesman told the Polish state radio Trojka: “The president believes that Poland, as any other country, has the right to defend its good name … has the right to defend the truth.”

Kaczynski said that Duda should sign the law.

“We must talk to our allies in a way that would allow them to understand that we have no intention of renouncing our dignity,” he said.
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Greek Cypriots are gearing up for a presidential runoff Sunday, barely seven months after the latest failure to reunify the eastern Mediterranean island nation of Cyprus.

President Nicos Anastasiades is looking to reprise his triumph over left-leaning Stavros Malas in 2013 when the two men faced each other. Earlier polls had shown Anastasiades beating Malas convincingly in Sunday’s runoff, but Malas’ strong showing in last weekend’s first round of voting might make it a closer race.

Voters are skeptical about whether anyone can lead them out of the labyrinth of the decades-old division with Turkish Cypriots.

Cyprus was divided into a Greek-speaking south and a Turkish-speaking north in 1974 when Turkey invaded following a coup by supporters of union with Greece. Only Turkey recognizes a Turkish Cypriot declaration of independence and keeps more than 35,000 troops in the north.

Anastasiades, 71, who says it will be his last term in office if re-elected, is counting on his track record of turning the economy around after a 2013 financial crisis that saw unemployment soar and salaries slashed. He has also been trumpeting his role in steering peace talks with breakaway Turkish Cypriots further than anyone else since the 1974 split.

By contrast, the 50-year-old Malas is hoping his relative youth will strike a chord with the 550,000 eligible voters, many of whom are disillusioned by the acrimonious breakdown of the latest round of peace talks and years of economic uncertainty that’s shaken the confidence of the middle class.

Anastasiades and Malas secured 35.5 and 35.2 percent of the vote, respectively, in the first round, setting up potentially a tighter than anticipated final vote.
…

Britain has made clear its desire to be part of China’s so-called ‘One Belt One Road Initiative’ — a cornerstone of President Xi Jinping’s vision to boost Chinese investment and influence across Asia, Europe and Africa. There are, however, concerns over the financial and humanitarian costs of the vast infrastructure projects being undertaken. As Henry Ridgwell reports, the United States has issued a blunt warning over what it sees as the dangers of being tied to China’s huge investment projects.
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A record-setting Russian spacewalk ended with a critical antenna in the wrong position Friday outside the International Space Station.

NASA’s Mission Control reported that the antenna was still working. Nevertheless, Russian space officials were convening a special team to see whether further action would be necessary. The antenna is used for communications with Russia’s Mission Control outside Moscow.

The trouble arose toward the end of the more than 8 hour spacewalk — the longest ever by Russians and the fifth longest overall — after Commander Alexander Misurkin and Anton Shkaplerov successfully replaced an electronics box to upgrade the antenna.

Antenna misplaced

The pair watched in dismay as the antenna got hung up on the Russian side of the complex and could not be extended properly. The antenna — a long boom with a 4-foot dish at the end — had been folded up before the repair work.

Misurkin and Shkaplerov pushed, as flight controllers tried repeatedly, via remote commanding, to rotate the antenna into the right position. Finally, someone shouted in Russian, “It’s moving. It’s in place.”

NASA Mission Control said from Houston that the antenna wound up in a position 180 degrees farther than anticipated.

The spacewalk dragged on so long — lasting 8 hours and 13 minutes — that Misurkin and Shkaplerov ended up surpassing the previous Russian record of 8 hours and 7 minutes, set in 2013. It was supposed to last 6 hours.

“Are you kidding us?” one of them asked when they heard about the record.

NASA still holds the world record, with a spacewalk just shy of nine hours back in 2001.

Original equipment

Misurkin and Shkaplerov also asked flight controllers whether the antenna was operating “or have we just wasted our time?” The response: It’s being evaluated.

It was the second spacewalk in as many weeks. On Jan. 23, two U.S. astronauts went out to give a new hand to the station’s big robotic arm. NASA had planned another spacewalk this week, but bumped it to mid-February because engineers needed extra time to get the mechanical hand working.

After removing the old, obsolete electronics box from the antenna — an original part, launched in 2000 — Misurkin shoved it away from the space station. The bundle tumbled harmlessly away, 250 miles above the North Atlantic.

The 60-pound box — measuring just a couple of feet, or less than a meter — was hurled in a direction that will not intersect with the space station, according to NASA officials.

Different approach

While the Russians routinely toss old equipment and used towels overboard during spacewalks, NASA prefers to secure no-longer-needed items or, if possible, bring them inside. Except for SpaceX’s cargo ships, empty supply capsules are filled with trash and set loose to burn up in the atmosphere. The discarded electronics box will re-enter and burn up, too; Mission Control said it did not know when that will occur. 

Misurkin will return to Earth at the end of this month with two NASA crewmates.

The space station is home to two Russians, three Americans and one Japanese.
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Britain has made clear its desire to be part of China’s so-called “One Belt One Road” initiative — a cornerstone of President Xi Jinping’s vision to boost Chinese investment and influence across Asia, Europe and Africa. But there are concerns about the financial and humanitarian costs of the vast infrastructure projects being undertaken.

British Prime Minister Theresa May recently visited Beijing, leading a delegation of ministers and business leaders in an effort to boost trade after Britain’s European Union exit. The two countries signed deals worth $12.7 billion, and May hailed a “golden era” of Sino-British relations.

Her ambassador to Beijing, Barbara Woodward, earlier outlined Britain’s hopes of cooperating in China’s “One Belt One Road” initiative.

“The first is, we’d like to collaborate on practical projects,” she said. “The second area where we’d like to collaborate with China is bringing some of our city of London financing experience. Because these projects are big projects, particularly infrastructure, they require complex funding mechanisms.”

Too complex, according to some.

Approximately 9,500 kilometers away in Uganda, one of China’s latest “One Belt One Road” projects is nearly complete. Soaring above the muddy swamp between the capital, Kampala, and its airport, the new 51-kilometer (31-mile) four-lane expressway was built by the China Communications Construction Company. Its $580 million cost was met with a loan from Beijing.

Kampala’s mayor, Erias Lukwago, says the price is too high.

“Even these Chinese who are coming here from — even these commercial banks we are borrowing from, Exim Banks and what not, the burden will finally come on our shoulders as Ugandans, our children and grandchildren will have to shoulder this burden which is very, very unfortunate,” Lukwago said.

Through the “One Belt” initiative, China has invested across Africa, Asia and the Middle East, and even into eastern Europe.

However, Britain’s decision to get involved should not be taken lightly, warns Barnaby Willitts-King of the Overseas Development Institute.

“Particularly in fragile parts of the world where China’s Belt and Road initiative is going to be running through, there are a lot of potential risks around humanitarian concerns, environmental concerns, that I think focusing on just on a trade deal might overlook,” Willitts-King said. “But it’s also got an advantage. The U.K. has worked and invested in a lot of these countries over the years. And it could actually provide some very practical advice to China.”

Washington has gone further in its criticism of China’s trade and foreign policy.

“China, as it does in emerging markets throughout the world, offers the appearance of an attractive path to development. But in reality, this often involves trading short-term gains for long-term dependency,” U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Thursday, ahead of his trip to Latin America.

Many emerging economies welcome China’s investments, and the involvement of countries such as Britain. However, there are concerns that mounting debts will cause big problems further down the road. 
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“Put on a thick jacket,” the 18-year-old son of Albanian immigrants instructed the 12-year-old German-Iraqi boy over the Internet on how to carry out a Christmas market attack last year in the Rhineland town of Ludwigshafen.

“Then go behind a hut and light and run,” he advised.

Fortunately, the crude nail-bomb device failed to work and the 12-year-old was arrested by police in December trying for a second time to pull off an attack, this time outside Ludwigshafen’s city hall.

The chilling mentoring by the 18-year-old from his home in neighboring Austria was detailed last month in court papers.

And now the head of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency is lobbying for a repeal of laws restricting security surveillance of minors under the age of 14, arguing that the country is facing grave risks from what the German media dubs “kindergarten jihadists.”

In a media interview midweek, Hans-Georg Maassen, head of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, warned that the Islamic State and the terror group’s followers are continuing to target children in Germany online. “Islamic State uses headhunters who scour the internet for children who can be approached and tries to radicalize these children, or recruit these children for terrorist attacks,” he warned.

‘Massive danger’

Maassen said he was alarmed also at the risks posed by returning “brainwashed” Islamic State women and their children, who he warned pose a “massive danger” to the country. He described the children of jihadist parents as “ticking time bombs.”

An estimated 1,000 German recruits joined IS.

“There are children who have undergone brainwashing in the ISIS [Islamic State] areas and are radicalized to a great extent,” he said. “We see that children who grew up with Islamic State were brainwashed in the schools and the kindergartens of the Islamic State. They were confronted early with the ISIS ideology … learned to fight, and were in some cases forced to participate in the abuse of prisoners, or even the killing of prisoners.”

Only a handful of the 290 children and toddlers who left Germany with jihadist parents — or who were born in Syria or Iraq — have so far returned to Germany. And some rights activists have warned that Germany should not over-react and be too quick to alter civil liberty protections, questioning whether the danger is being over-stated.

The threat posed by the radicalization of minors has become a major political issue in Germany. Three out of five radical Islamist attacks in the country in 2016 were carried out by minors.

This is the second time Maassen has sounded a public alarm about child recruits — he last did so in October, saying he was worried about a new generation of jihadists being raised in Germany. He urged Germans to “take a very serious look” at the threat, and to call police if they noticed anything suspicious.

Last year, de-radicalization experts warned that Western governments were not giving enough thought about what to do with so-called “cubs of the caliphate” — both the offspring of foreign recruits as well as Syrian and Iraqi children enlisted into the terror ranks.

IS leaders made no secret of their earmarking of the young to be “the generation that will conquer Baghdad, Jerusalem, Mecca and Rome,” grooming youngsters to be the deadly legacy of a murderous caliphate on the brink of military defeat. As the terror group’s territory shrank in the face of offensives on IS strongholds in the Levant, the militants highlighted in a series of gloating videos what they hoped would be in store for their enemies.

Other countries share worries

German intelligence officials aren’t alone in expressing worries about the offspring of IS foreign fighters — or the continuing efforts of jihadist recruiters. On Thursday, the head of London’s police’s counter-terrorism command, Dean Haydon, warned of children trained by Islamic State coming back to Britain to carry out attacks.

“Some terror groups are training children to commit atrocities,” he said as he outlined the risks posed by returnees. “We need to not just understand the risk the mother poses but the risk that any child poses as well. We look at them on a case-by-case basis and they may be arrested,” he told a London newspaper. Last month a 27-year-old British woman returning from Syria was arrested at Heathrow airport under terrorism laws. She had a two-year-old with her.

Haydon revealed that police are DNA-testing children who have been brought to Britain by ‘jihadist’ parents after being born in Syria or Iraq to establish their identity. “If a mother turns up with a stateless child, born in Syria, we need to be satisfied that that child actually belongs to that mother because we have had instances of kids trying to be smuggled back into the UK but not actually belonging to that parent,” he said.

De-radicalization experts say child recruits can be rehabilitated but warn they are battling a prevalent attitude among Western officials that ‘cubs of the caliphate’ are different from child soldiers from other wars.

In an interview with VOA last year, Mia Bloom, a Canadian academic, who’s co-authoring a book on jihadist child soldiers, said: “It would be a terrible mistake to think that because someone was a cub for a year or two, they are lost forever – they can be saved and rehabilitated.” She highlighted a de-radicalization program funded partly by the Pakistani army that has proved highly successful. 

 
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The International Court of Justice has laid down definitive maritime boundaries between Costa Rica and Nicaragua in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean and a small land boundary in a remote, disputed wetland.

As part of the complex ruling, the United Nations’ highest judicial organ ruled that a Nicaraguan military base on part of the disputed coastline close to the mouth of the San Juan River is on Costa Rican territory and must be removed.

Ruling in two cases filed by Costa Rica, the 16-judge U.N. panel took into account the two countries’ coastlines and some islands in drawing what it called “equitable” maritime borders that carved up the continental shelf underneath the Caribbean and Pacific.

Such rulings can affect issues including fishing rights and exploration for resources like oil.

Earlier, the court ordered Nicaragua to compensate Costa Rica for damage Nicaragua caused with unlawful construction work near the mouth of the San Juan River, the court’s first foray into assessing costs for environmental damage.

The order by the United Nations’ principal judicial organ followed a December 2015 ruling that Nicaragua violated Costa Rica’s sovereignty by establishing a military camp and digging channels near the river, part of a long-running border dispute in the remote region on the shores of the Caribbean Sea.

In total, Nicaragua was ordered to pay just over $378,890 for environmental damage and other costs incurred by Costa Rica.

Decisions by the court based in The Hague, Netherlands, are final and legally binding.
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As fighting in Syria’s Afrin region nears the end of its second week, soldiers say the battle is moving slowly, with both sides heavily armed and civilian casualties occurring in and around the war zone. VOA’s Heather Murdock is with Turkish and Syrian opposition forces in Soran, in northern Syria.
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Turkey’s judiciary is facing growing international condemnation for the ongoing imprisonment of the local head of Amnesty International.

Thursday, an Istanbul court reversed an earlier decision to release Taner Kilic from pre-trial detention, ruling he should remain in jail for the duration of his case.  In a rare move, the prosecutor had turned to a second court to overturn Wednesday’s release order.

The dramatic succession of events has provoked international condemnation.  “A disgrace and an outrageous travesty of justice,” Amnesty International Secretary General Salil Shetty declared in a statement.  In a similar vein, Rebecca Harms, a member of the European Parliament wrote, “We deeply regret this situation and call for an immediate review of the decision.”

Kilic has been held for eight months on charges of being a member of a terrorist organization. Prosecutors claim an encryption software found on his phone linked him to followers of U.S.-based Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen, who is blamed of being behind a 2016 failed coup attempt in Turkey. Gulen denies the charge.

Kilic is also accused, along with 10 other human rights activists, including two foreign nationals, of being part of a new conspiracy to overthrow the Turkish government. The 10 other defendants have all been released from pre-trial detention following an international campaign and intense diplomatic pressure.

Kilic’s imprisonment has made him a focal point of growing concern about the treatment of human rights defenders. In a sign of the importance of the case, the Istanbul court Wednesday was packed with European diplomats and international human rights representatives.

Playing the system

“We’re witnessing unusual legal maneuvers which are a reflection of the current dire state of the Turkish judicial system, as well as the erosion of the rule of law,” tweeted Kati Piri the European Parliament’s Turkey rapporteur.

But the Kilic case is also putting the spotlight on the EU stance towards Ankara, “It’s totally useless, to send tweets and sorry messages and raise concerns and more concerns about what is happening in Turkey.  They should really think of something, else, for instance Turkey is still a candidate and negotiates its membership with the European Union, it’s a totally weird situation,” points out political scientist Cengiz Aktar, “the tolerance the regime enjoys in the West, this appeasement, is intimately linked to what is happening to the rule of law in Turkey.”

Since Turkey’s declared a state of emergency following the 2016 failed coup, concerns have been growing over the impartiality and functioning of its judiciary. More than 1,000 judges and prosecutors, including two members of the Constitutional Court, are among the 60,000 people arrested in the post-coup crackdown.  Many more members of the judiciary have been fired.  The government claims large parts of the judiciary had been infiltrated by supporters of the coup attempt.

Legal order challenged

The very structure of the judiciary is also in question.  Last month, an Istanbul court ignored the judgment of the Constitutional Court to release journalists Mehmet Altan and Sahin Alpay, who have been in pre-trial detention for more than a year, accused of seeking to overthrow the government.  Prime Minister Binali Yildirim backed the Istanbul court’s stance insisting it knew more about the case.

The move has caused alarm among legal experts, “If this trend continues, any government can use this as a “judicial” basis for not recognizing the decisions of the Constitutional Court.  This means chaos.  This chaos, unfortunately, has been encouraged by the politicians,” warns law professor Osman Can of Istanbul’s Marmara University and member of the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe.  

The European Court of Human Rights, of which Turkey is a member, is set to become embroiled in the ongoing controversy.  The European Court remains the last legal means of redress for Turkish citizens.  “There are so many violations of the European convention of human rights, if the court accepts all these cases, it will be overwhelming, it can virtually stop the work of the court.  This is why the court is very cautious taking these cases,” claims political scientist Aktar.

In a move that has drawn criticism domestically and internationally, the European Court has refused to hear most cases in relation to the post-coup crackdown, arguing the defendants have to exhaust all judicial avenues in Turkey.  That stance is predicted to be increasingly challenged with the power of Turkey’s Constitutional Court in question.  “This can be interpreted as the loss of the effectiveness … of the entire legal order, which in turn can cause very serious consequences for Turkey.  In such a case, the problem becomes, now, one of international relations,” warns professor Can.

 
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A support group for victims of sexual harassment in France said it was forced to shut its helpline after receiving a deluge of calls in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein sex scandal.

Paris-based AVFT, a national association helping women who have experienced violence at work, said it was “overwhelmed” with a backlog of cases that had piled up over the past two years so could take no more calls.

“For several months we have been submerged by requests, which has forced us to take a break in order to respond,” a voicemail message told people phoning the line on Thursday.

A slew of allegations of sexual misconduct against Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein last year sparked the #MeToo campaign, with women and men using social media to talk about their experiences of harassment at work.

The scandal prompted a rethink of attitudes toward harassment in France, a country that cherishes its image as the land of seduction and romance.

Last month, French actress Catherine Deneuve sparked an outcry by saying the #Metoo campaign had gone too far and amounted to puritanism.

French women have meanwhile been sharing their stories on social media under the name-and-shame hashtag #BalanceTonPorc – or ‘expose your pig.’

AVFT, which has given legal help to victims since 1985, said the heightened focus on how men treat and mistreat women at work had resulted in a higher number of women seeking its services.

More than 220 got in touch in 2017, a two-fold increase on 2015 – leaving its five staff overwhelmed, the group said in a statement on Wednesday.

It called for an increase in government support, saying subsidies had not increased in 13 years.

Clemence Joz, a legal advisor for AVFT, said the group was hoping to re-open its line as soon as possible.

“I cannot say how long it’s going to be,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone. In November, French President Emmanuel Macron unveiled measures aimed at educating the public and schoolchildren about sexism and violence against women and improving police support for victims. He also proposed criminalizing street harassment.

 
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The Trump administration says it is concerned Poland’s proposed Holocaust law could impact free speech and Polish relations with the United States and Israel.

The law would make it a crime to call the Nazi genocide of Jews a Polish crime, or the Nazi death camps Polish death camps, even though some of the most brutal Nazi atrocities took place on Polish soil.

“We understand that phrases such as ‘Polish death camps’ are inaccurate, misleading, and hurtful,” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said in a statement Wednesday. “We all must be careful not to inhibit discussion and commentary on the Holocaust. We believe open debate, scholarship, and education are the best means of countering inaccurate and hurtful speech.”

Israel, others concerned

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel will not tolerate “distortion of the truth, rewriting history, and denial of the Holocaust.”

Some experts fear the new Polish law could also mean jail for Holocaust survivors when talking about their ordeals.

President’s remarks

Polish President Andrzej Duda said this week there was no institutional participation by Poland in the Holocaust, but it did recognize criminal actions toward Jews by some individual Poles.

“There were wicked people who sold their neighbors for money. But it was not the Polish nation, it was not an organized action,” Duda said.

He pointed out that some Poles sacrificed their lives to save Jews from the Nazis, and that the Polish underground and government in exile resisted efforts to wipe out European Jewry.

Poland was home to one of the world’s most thriving Jewish populations before Nazi Germany invaded in 1939.

Holocaust survivors who returned to Poland after the war found themselves victims of further anti-Semitism. Some historians say many Poles collaborated with the Nazis in persecuting Jews.

Poland regards itself as having been a victim of Nazi terror. It resents being blamed for crimes carried out by Hitler and his gang of murderers.
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A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket blasted off from Florida on Wednesday carrying into orbit a Luxembourg-made communications satellite designed in part to expand NATO’s surveillance reach and its capability to deter cyber attacks on alliance members.

The liftoff at 4:25 p.m. EST (2125 GMT) from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station followed a technical glitch that prompted a 24-hour flight delay. It marked the second rocket launch this year for billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk and his privately owned Space Exploration Technologies.

It comes a week before the California-based company is slated to conduct its highly anticipated first test flight of the much larger and more powerful Falcon Heavy rocket, which packs three times the thrust of the Falcon 9.

Communications satellite

Wednesday’s payload was a communications satellite built for LuxGovSat S.A., a public-private joint venture between the Luxembourg government and Luxembourg-based telecommunications company SES, in part to fulfill that nation’s growing defense obligations to NATO.

The so-called GovSat-1 satellite will provide, among other things, greater cyber protection for Luxembourg’s European Union partners and NATO allies, including the United States, Luxembourg Defense Minister Etienne Schneider told a news conference Tuesday.

GovSat-1 also will serve civilian telecommunications security functions.

Thirty-four minutes after liftoff, the satellite was successfully released into a highly elliptical “parking” orbit, according to SpaceX. It will eventually settle into a round orbit 22,370 miles (36,000 km) high, where it will circle the Earth for 15 years.

A spokesman for Schneider said the $279 million satellite, which weighs about 4½ tons, is part of a broader policy of doubling the country’s contributions to NATO.

Citing new security threats, a senior NATO official told Reuters in March that the alliance planned to spend more than $3 billion on defense technology, a third of which would go toward satellite communications.

Rocket retrieved

Unlike many recent SpaceX launches, the company had not initially planned on retrieving the rocket’s reusable main-stage because the payload had to be carried to such a high orbit that the booster was left without sufficient fuel to fly back to Earth for a return landing.

However, the booster “amazingly” survived its ocean splashdown intact, Musk said in a Twitter message posted later with a photograph of the vehicle floating at sea. “We will try to tow it back to shore,” he said.

The same Falcon 9 booster was used last year in a mission to launch a top-secret payload into space for the U.S. government.
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France is facing a “new form of anti-Semitism” marked by violence, French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said Wednesday, deploring an assault this week in a Paris suburb on an 8-year-old boy wearing a Jewish skullcap.

President Emmanuel Macron has denounced the attack Monday in Sarcelles, a northern suburb with a large Jewish population, as “heinous.”

French media have described the attackers as teenagers who ran away after tripping and kicking the boy to the ground. Police were investigating, but there have been no arrests.

Speaking before lawmakers, Philippe noted the emergence of a new kind of anti-Semitism in France, which has the largest Jewish population in western Europe.

To fight something, one must have “the courage to put a name on it … to acknowledge that, yes, there is a new form of anti-Semitism, violent and brutal, emerging more and more openly in our land,” Philippe said.

Interior Minister Gerard Collomb and Jewish leaders say the number of anti-Semitic acts in France has risen this month after a drop in previous years.

An annual national count of racist, anti-Semitic, anti-Muslim and anti-Christian acts — mainly threats — dipped in 2017 compared with the year before. However, the count, released Wednesday by the Interior Ministry, shows that violent racist acts in France increased overall, and notably anti-Semitic acts went from 77 in 2016 to 97 last year.

Collomb told Jewish leaders last week that such acts were “an attack on the principles that unify our nation.”

Macron tweeted: “Each time a citizen is attacked because of his age, appearance or religion, it is the whole nation that is attacked.”
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British Prime Minister Theresa May arrived in China Wednesday on a visit aimed at boosting economic ties with the Asian giant ahead of her country’s exit from the European Union next year.

May began her three-day trip in the central industrial city of Wuhan, before heading to Beijing for talks with Premier Li Keqiang. She is accompanied by a large delegation of 50 British business leaders eager to expand their business in the world’s second largest economy.

The prime minister will meet with President Xi Jinping in Beijing on Thursday, before wrapping up her visit Friday in the financial hub of Shanghai.

The British leader says she is eager to use her trip to lay the groundwork for a so-called “golden era” between London and Beijing, a term which first surfaced in 2015 ahead of a state visit to Britain by President Xi. The Chinese leader is hoping Britain will endorse his flagship Belt and Road Initiative, a multi-billion dollar project aimed at reviving the ancient Silk Road trade routes between Asia and Europe. 

But Prime Minister May has been cautious in the past about embracing Chinese investment. She angered Beijing in 2016 when she temporarily delayed approval of Chinese-funded nuclear power plant in southwest England.

She has also expressed caution over the Belt and Road Initiative, saying that while the project holds promise, it is important the project meets “international standards.” 

In addition to trade, May is expected to discuss the escalating political tensions in Britain’s former colony, Hong Kong, which it ruled for more than 150 years before giving it back to China in 1997.

Chris Patten, the last British governor of Hong Kong, wrote May this week warning that the semi-autonomous territory is facing “increasing threats to the basic freedoms, human rights and autonomy” that China agreed to observe under the handover agreement.
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Protests broke out in the Spanish city of Barcelona Tuesday after Catalonia’s parliament postponed a vote on who should be president of the region. Pro-independence parties, which form a majority in the parliament, had nominated only one candidate – the exiled former leader Carles Puigdemont. The stand-off between Barcelona and Madrid looks set to deepen as parties on all sides of the debate harden their positions, as Henry Ridgwell reports.
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Nine members of Turkey’s medical association have been detained for voicing opposition to the ongoing Turkish-led military incursion into Syria against a Kurdish militia group. The arrests are part of a widening crackdown on dissent over the operation.

Ankara’s prosecutor’s office issued arrest warrants for 11 leading members of the Turkish Medical Association, including its head, Rasit Tukel.

Police raided the homes of the doctors early Tuesday morning. The organization’s offices across the country have also been targeted.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday labeled the association’s members as traitors and “servants of imperialism.” The remarks were in response to the association calling for an end to the ongoing military incursion into Syria, and the doctors raising humanitarian concerns for civilians trapped by fighting.

Nearly two weeks ago, Turkish-led forces entered the Syrian enclave of Afrin to oust the YPG Kurdish militia, which is a key ally of the United States in the fight against Islamic State. Ankara accuses the YPG of supporting a Kurdish insurgency inside Turkey.

Reaction to detentions

The doctors’ detention has drawn swift political condemnation.

Member of parliament Selin Sayek Boke of the opposition CHP, speaking outside the headquarters of the medical association, criticized the government.

“This is an attack on freedom of expression and on those who call for peace and it is an attack done by those who want to kill the culture of living together in this country,” Boke said.

International human rights groups have also criticized the detentions.

The London-based Amnesty International’s Turkey representative, Andrew Gardner, tweeted the government should be protecting the association, rather than detaining doctors from their beds on false propaganda charges.

​Growing crackdown

The medical association is one of the country’s most prominent nongovernmental organizations, with more than 80,000 members. The arrest of its leading members is part of a growing crackdown on dissent over the ongoing Syrian operation.

The Turkish Interior Ministry announced Monday that more than 300 people, including four journalists, have been detained under the country’s anti-terror laws for social media postings criticizing the operation.

Erdogan said last week all dissent would be crushed.
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