Category: EU

Pope Francis leaves Cairo on Saturday after two days of meetings with Egypt’s political and religious leaders. Officials hope the papal visit will jump-start interfaith efforts to curb extremism and sectarianism in the region. VOA’s Heather Murdock reports.
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Turkey has dismissed nearly 4,000 people from its civil service, military, and gendarmerie, in what appears to be a purge related to last year’s attempted coup.

Turkey announced the move on Saturday, saying in the government’s Official Gazette that those let go include 1,127 employees of the justice ministry, made up of prison guards, academics and religious affairs ministry employees.

It appears to be one of the largest such purges since the coup attempt last July.

Since that time some 120,000 people have been suspended from their jobs in civil service and the private sector, and more than 40,000 people were arrested.

Also Saturday, Turkey announced it has banned television dating programs, and access to the Wikipedia online research tool. Ankara says Wikipedia has suggested Turkey is cooperating with terror groups.
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Macedonia’s rival parties are trading blame for violence in parliament, while world powers are giving opposing reactions to the events.

The European Union and the United States condemned Thursday’s attack, in which protesters stormed the Macedonian parliament in Skopje, attacking opposition lawmakers after they elected an ethnic Albanian speaker.

Russia blamed the events on the West, saying it had meddled in the Balkan nation’s internal affairs.

Pointing fingers

In Macedonia, the previous night’s violence turned into a war of words between rival politicians on Friday.

Zoran Zaev, the head of the opposition Social Democrats, who were targeted in the attack, accused the attackers of attempted murder.

Former Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski, whose supporters were among the mob that stormed the parliament, said he deplored the violence, but he accused the opposition of instigating it with an attempted power grab.

Interior Minister Agim Nuhiu announced his resignation Friday over the night’s events. He told reporters that 10 lawmakers and an unspecified number of journalists were among those hurt.

The interior ministry said 102 people were treated at city hospitals.

Speaker election

The violence began Thursday after lawmakers from the Social Democrats and ethnic Albanian parties elected former Defense Minister Talat Xhaferi speaker, even though the country has no functioning government.

Demonstrators stormed the parliament and began throwing chairs and attacking opposition lawmakers.

Demonstrators blocked the door of the chamber, refusing to let lawmakers leave as demonstrators waved flags in lawmakers’ faces and shouted “traitors.” Police outside the building fired stun grenades to break up the crowd.

Zaev’s Social Democrats and the ethnic Albanians would have enough seats to form a coalition government, but President Gjorge Ivanov has refused to give him a mandate.

The conservatives won December’s parliamentary election, but without enough seats to form a government. Coalition talks with other parties collapsed over ethnic Albanian demands to make Albanian an official language.

International reaction

The United States condemned Thursday’s violence “in the strongest terms.” In a statement posted on its State Department website, the U.S. Embassy in Skopje said the violence “is not consistent with democracy and is not an acceptable way to resolve differences.”

The U.S. called on all parties to “refrain from violent actions which exacerbate the situation.”

The European Union also condemned Thursday’s violence. 

“I condemn the attacks on MPs in Skopje in the strongest terms. Violence has no place in parliament,” enlargement commissioner Johannes Hahn said. “Democracy must run its course.”

However, Russia blamed the events on the West, saying the Macedonian opposition had “foreign patrons.”

A Foreign Ministry statement said Xhaferi’s election was an “unceremonious manipulation of the will of citizens” and said EU and U.S. representatives were quick to recognize the speaker, indicating the vote was planned in advance.

The United Nations said in a statement by the U.N. secretary-general’s spokesman that it is “following developments unfolding in the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia with great concern and call for restraint and calm. Violence directed at democratic institutions and elected representatives of the people is unacceptable.”

Macedonia has a Slavic majority, but about a third of the population is ethnic Albanian. The Balkan country aspires to join the European Union and NATO.
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France’s far-right National Front, the party of presidential candidate Marine Le Pen, has replaced its leader for the second time in three days.

Jean-Francois Jalkh, who was named interim president of the party on Tuesday after Le Pen stepped down, was forced to vacate the office in response to allegations he praised a Holocaust denier. He also expressed doubts about the reality of Nazi gas chambers, which killed millions of Jews during World War II.

Jalkh is being replaced by Steeve Briois. Each has served as one of the party’s five vice presidents.

Another party vice president, Louis Aliot — Marine Le Pen’s partner — told reporters that Briois would take over the interim leadership and “there’ll be no more talk about it.”

It is a blow to the campaign of Le Pen, who had a better-than-expected showing in French elections on Sunday and faces a runoff with centrist rival Emmanuel Macron on May 7.

Le Pen raised controversy earlier in the campaign by saying France was not responsible for the roundup and demise of thousands of Parisian Jews during World War II.

Ironically, she expelled her father, party founder Jean-Marie Le Pen, from the party in 2015 because he referred to the Holocaust as a “detail of history.”

Macron is expected to win the May 7 runoff, but experts say an unexpected voter turnout could rock the results to one side or the other.
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The independent Russian television channel Dozhd (Rain) reported Friday that the central executive committee of the country’s ruling party, United Russia, had distributed to its regional branches a list of 36 slogans that party activists should use during party activities next week marking the annual May Day holiday.

While, according to Dozhd, the slogans include some praising the country’s president (“Putin is for the People, He is Leading Russia to Success!”) and others condemning corruption (“Praise Honesty, Jail Bribe-takers!”), none of them refers to the Russian prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, who happens to be United Russia’s formal head.

The likely reason for that omission is not hard to figure out: Medvedev has seen his popularity drop sharply since early March, when anti-corruption blogger and opposition leader Alexei Navalny published a video investigation into the prime minister’s alleged wealth. It offered viewers shots of yachts, villas, and even a winery in a picturesque Italian village, all allegedly belonging to Medvedev.

A survey released Thursday by the Levada Center, Russia’s only independent national polling agency, found that Medvedev’s “trust” rating had fallen to a record low since Navalny’s video was posted and viewed more than 20 million times.

Bloomberg News, citing two Medvedev “allies,” reported this week that he “is more worried than ever about his political future.”

The news agency quoted President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, as brushing aside the drop in Medvedev’s approval, saying “ratings go up and down, that’s a normal process.”

Still, Peskov declined to say whether the prime minister still “enjoys Putin’s full trust,” Bloomberg reported.

The prime minister has become a lightning rod for Russian anger over official malfeasance. On March 26, an estimated 60,000 people answered Navalny’s call and took to the streets in more than 80 Russian cities to protest corruption. Many protesters mocked Medvedev’s taste for expensive athletic shoes by hanging sneakers on street lamps.

Medvedev finally responded to Navalny’s video in early April. He claimed, among other things, that the allegations of corruption cited in the video were based on “nonsense” about “acquaintances and people that I have never even heard of.” He also obliquely referred to Navalny as “a political opportunist” who is trying to seize power.

Meanwhile, another Levada poll published this week found that 45 percent of respondents would like to see Medvedev dismissed as prime minister, up sharply from the 33 percent who felt that way last November.

Medvedev’s press secretary, Natalya Timakova, a former Kremlin pool reporter, called the Levada poll a “political hit job.”
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Scores of protesters in Macedonia have broken through a police cordon and entered parliament, attacking some lawmakers, to protest the election of a new speaker despite a months-long deadlock in talks to form a new government.
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Scores of protesters, many wearing masks, broke through a police cordon and entered Macedonia’s parliament late Thursday, attacking lawmakers to protest the election of a new speaker despite a months-long deadlock in talks to form a new government.

The protesters stormed parliament after the country’s opposition Social Democrats and parties representing Macedonia’s ethnic Albanian minority voted for a new speaker. Shouting and throwing chairs, the protesters attacked lawmakers, including opposition leader Zoran Zaev, who television footage showed bleeding from the forehead.

Television footage showed Zaev and other Social Democrat lawmakers surrounded by protesters waving national flags, shouting “traitors” and refusing to allow them to leave.

Macedonia has been without a government since December, when former Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski’s conservative party won elections, but without enough votes to form a government.

Coalition talks broke down over ethnic Albanian demands that Albanian be recognized as an official second language. One-fourth of Macedonia’s population is ethnic Albanian.

Zaev has been seeking a mandate to form a government for months, after reaching an agreement with an ethnic Albanian party, the Democratic Union for Integration, to form a coalition government. However, President Gjorge Ivanov refused to hand him the mandate.

The Assembly of the Republic of Macedonia, as the Balkan nation’s parliament is known, has been deadlocked for three weeks over electing a new speaker. Zaev had suggested earlier Thursday that one could be elected outside normal procedures, an idea immediately rejected by the conservative party as an attempted coup.

Zaev went ahead with the vote, and a majority in parliament elected Talat Xhaferi, a former defense minister and member of the Democratic Union for Integration.

Police said about 10 officers were injured during the melee and that reinforcements have been sent to assist those inside the parliament building.

DUI party spokesman Artan Grubi told Telma TV in a telephone interview that Zaev and three other lawmakers had been injured.

“This is a sad day for Macedonia,” Grubi said.

The protesters who stormed parliament Thursday night were among a group of demonstrators who have been holding protest rallies nightly for the past two months in the streets of Skopje and other cities in the country over the political situation. Many are supporters of Gruevski.

European Union Enlargement Commissioner Johannes Hahn condemned Thursday’s violence, saying in a tweet that “Violence has NO place in Parliament. Democracy must run its course.”

Sweden’s ambassador to Macedonia, Mats Staffansson, speaking on behalf of other European diplomats, reminded the country’s politicians of the need for dialogue and said “it is the responsibility of the police of this country to make sure that this kind of violence does not happen.”

WATCH: Protesters storm Macedonian parliament
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Tensions between Russia and the West over security in Europe, the Middle East and Asia have surfaced at an annual defense conference in Moscow. Major flashpoints include the situation in Syria and NATO expansion.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov gave a stark warning about the expanding threat of terrorism and conflict across the globe at the opening Wednesday of the two-day Moscow Conference on International Security.

“The situation in the world is not becoming more stable or predictable, rather the opposite,” he said. “In front of our eyes we see that tension on both global and regional levels is on the rise. Further erosion of international law is obvious, so are attempts to use force to promote personal interests, to strengthen own security at the expense of others’ security, to contain by all means the process of a formation of a polycentric world order.”

Middle East

As if to underscore the point, Israeli missiles hit a suspected Iranian arms depot in Damascus just hours after Lavrov and Israel’s Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman met on the sidelines of the security conference.

Those airstrikes also symbolize the complicated nature of Russia’s relationship with Israeli and Iran, says analyst Alexey Malashenko via Skype.

“Russia is playing a very difficult game between Israel and Iran,” he said. “It creates some problems. … I think similar situation will continue. So, Russia will keep the normal relations with both countries.”

Russia says it wants a global alliance against terrorists and is fighting them in Syria just like a U.S.-led Western alliance has been doing.

But Western and Arab states say Russia is defending Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and they accuse him of responsibility for a chemical attack on civilians this month that Moscow and Damascus blame on Syrian rebels.

The Western alliance wants Assad out of power, but the Kremlin fears losing its ally in Damascus would mean losing regional influence.

“Maybe the problem of Bashar al-Assad, his presidency, is most painful problem for Kremlin because indeed, it has to be replaced, and Putin and in Kremlin they understand it. That’s no doubt,” Malashenko said. “But, anyway, by whom it’s possible to replace him, who will come instead of him? This is a problem.”

NATO

Another problem, according to Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, is the gradual expansion of the NATO Western military alliance into eastern Europe.

“NATO is a military and political bloc and not a group of stamp collectors. It follows a course of projecting its power and bringing more and more states into its orbit,” Shoigu said at the conference opening. “The recent decision to make Montenegro an alliance member is the latest proof of that. Podgorica’s military potential is close to zero, but its geographic location allows [the alliance] to strengthen control over the Balkans.”

Montenegro’s opposition held protests Tuesday against joining NATO. Many fear joining the Western alliance could upset relations with Russia, or even lead to a military clash.

Also this week, U.S. fighter jets arrived in Estonia, and British typhoon jets went to Romania, as NATO reassures members concerned about Russian aggression.

Trust is almost completely eroded between NATO and the Kremlin, says the Carnegie Moscow Center’s Petr Topychkanov via Skype.

“It all started from Yugoslavia in 1990s, but then Georgia war, NATO extension, missile defense programs — United States and NATO — and, of course, the most recent and the most important thing was the Crimea annexation by Russia.”

On East Asia, Russian President Vladimir Putin and visiting Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe discussed North Korea’s nuclear program.

Russia agrees to pressure Pyongyang to give up its nuclear ambitions, but only through the U.N. Security Council.
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It’s hard to think all the way back to the events of April 26, 1986. Nonetheless, it has become a standout moment in a world of nuclear accidents: Chernobyl.

In the early days of what would become the world’s worst nuclear accident, 32 people died and dozens of others suffered painful radiation burns.

It took Swedish authorities reporting the fallout to prompt the Soviets to admit an accident had occurred.

For years, it seemed that all the people who chose to stay in Chernobyl mourned, and tried to manage.

The area was ignored for decades, first by the Soviet government and later by the Ukrainian government.

In Photos: 31 Years Later, Chernobyl Disaster Remembered

Then, suddenly, there were signs of activity, perhaps even renewal.

“Today, almost a year after we have started the work, I can announce the first private investment project working in the Chernobyl zone to build a small solar energy plant,” Ostap Semerak, Ukraine’s minister of ecology, said in an exclusive interview with VOA.

It’s projected to be completed in May.

More than 50 companies — energy giants and small companies alike — have submitted their applications, expressing interest in the solar farm in the Exclusion Zone. When this park becomes a reality, all the fields combined will be able to produce half of the power that had been produced by the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the early days.

“Cumulatively, those would be enough to produce 2.5 gigawatts of power, which would be 2,500 megawatts,” said Semerak. “This is comparable to the output by two units of a nuclear power plant. This is about half the capacity which the Chernobyl power plant had before the disaster.”
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Thirty-one years ago this week, the world eyes focused on the Ukrainian city of Chornobyl, where the world’s worst nuclear accident was contaminating large swaths of what was then called the Soviet Union. Three years ago, VOA’s Steve Herman visited the area, photographing monuments and artifacts near the Chernobyl reactor site.
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Turkish authorities say they have arrested more than 1,000 people and suspended 9,100 policemen in an accelerated crackdown on alleged supporters of cleric Fethullah Gulen.

The government blames the exiled cleric for orchestrating last year’s failed military coup against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Officials said Wednesday 1,009 “secret imams” who infiltrated the police and other state-run agencies were arrested. More than 9,100 police personnel suspected of being Gulen backers were suspended.

“In Turkey, there was an attempted coup with a goal of toppling the government and destroying the state,” Erdogan told the Reuters News Agency. “We are trying to cleanse members of FETO inside the armed forces, inside the judiciary, and inside the police,” he said using the government’s acronym for the Gulen group.

Turkey has arrested or fired more than 160,000 alleged coup organizers and participants since last July.

Gulen, who lives in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania, denies playing any part in the coup. The State Department has balked at Turkey’s demand for his extradition, citing a lack of concrete evidence.

The latest arrests come a little more than a week after Turkish voters narrowly approved a referendum to expand Erdogan’s presidential powers and weaken parliament — a move the opposition says could destroy Turkish democracy and secular traditions.

Supporters say it will bring stability to Turkey after years of political uncertainty that came with power-sharing coalition governments.
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It was the most stunning political victory of the 21st century, one that brought shocked concern in many parts of the world and cheers in others. One uncontroversial certainty was that it would cause reverberations around the globe.

Donald Trump campaigned on an “America First” platform, but has found himself as president drawn into thorny geopolitical complexities aplenty in the first 100 days of his administration. Relations with Russia plummeted to “an all-time low,” as Trump himself described it, in the wake of the U.S. missile strikes on the Syrian government’s airfield in response to a deadly chemical attack. The administration’s Syria policy and how to handle President Bashar al-Assad seesawed.

A window of opportunity appeared with China after Trump hosted President Xi Jinping for a summit at his Florida estate, but tensions on the Korean Peninsula soared over North Korea’s nuclear program. Mexico showed consternation and agitation over the president’s planned border wall, but gave no sign it would pay for the structure as Trump had repeatedly promised voters.

Trump’s travel ban rocked refugees and asylum-seekers in several Muslim-majority nations, though it was blocked by federal courts at home. There were echoes of darker U.S.-Iran days, but nothing yet that would derail the landmark nuclear deal, as the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict continued to simmer.

Associated Press journalists in North Korea, Syria, Iran, Somalia, Israel, the West Bank, Russia, Germany and Mexico have gauged the global temperature by asking people five questions:

Do you feel more secure under a Trump presidency, or in danger?

Yuliya Konyakhina, Moscow: “I have a feeling that the world became more dangerous in general, not because Trump got elected, but in general it (the world) became more dangerous. When I go down to a metro I have sort of thoughts that something bad can happen.”

Shahrzad Ebrahimi, Tehran, Iran: “[The world] is 100 percent a more dangerous place. The U.S. threats to the world had been lessened during [Barack] Obama’s presidency and policies of that country were based on moving toward peace for at least eight years. But as soon as Trump took office, demonstrations began against him and the situations in Syria, Palestine, bombings, military and war threats all got worse. The more he sticks with his current policies, the more insecure and non-peaceful the world, especially the Middle East, will become. As you can see, now he is exchanging verbal blows with North Korea. Sometimes one can assume that this situation can even trigger a third world war.”  

Kim Hyang Byol, Pyongyang, North Korea: “It’s coming to 100 days since Trump became president, but we don’t care who the president is. The problem is whether they’re going to stop their hostile policy against North Korea, and whether they will do anything to help us reunify our country.”

Rustam Magamedov, Moscow: “[Trump is] agent provocateur, but in reality, he is just a good showman, as they say in the U.S. The fact that he became a president is rather scary, because he can start a war. It seems like that he is already moving toward the Korean borders. I think it is dangerous, first of all for Russia, because as a president and politician he is a bad person, a bad politician who has little understanding of politics.

Dan Mirkin, Tel Aviv, Israel: “Yeah, well maybe a little bit more dangerous. But I think that the steps that he took should have been taken a long time ago. And if it became more dangerous, then it’s not only because of Trump. Although, he has other drawbacks.”

Is the Trump administration more bark than bite?

Diane Lallouz, Tel Aviv: “It’s true that Donald Trump has a loud bark and you can say it’s more bark than bite. But, not really. It’s enough that he takes a few actions as opposed to not doing anything. He talks a lot, sometimes way too much and right off the sleeve without actually thinking about it and that may be a problem. But, at least the world knows that Donald Trump is going to take action when required.”

Raya Sauerbrun, Tel Aviv: “If it’s barking or if it’s doing, at least it shows that it’s doing something.  If it will sustain for a long time, we don’t know.”

Mohamed Shire, Mogadishu, Somalia: “This might be a new step; this might be a new strategy. We probably have to wait and see, but I think the United States administration needs to be very careful in just getting involved in Somalia without having a clear strategy and program that they align with the current Somali government.”

Yadollah Sobhani, Tehran: “Trump comes out with a lot of hype at first but eventually backs down from some of his stances on issues such as Russia, Middle East, Syria and so on. His inconsistent actions have proven that his bark is worse than his bite and he should not be taken very seriously.”

Majed Mokheiber, Damascus, Syria: “This is why we cannot predict whether there will be stability or more military security. In addition to that, we see that there are military tension spots around the world in other areas such as North Korea … that frankly may lead to a big explosion and a world war.”

Juan Pablo Bolanos, Mexico City: “I think it’s a bit of both. On the issue of sending Mexicans back, it is being fulfilled by the guy, Trump, and on the issue of building the wall, I definitely think he will not achieve it.”

Has Trump changed your views about America?

Ra So Yon, Pyongyang, North Korea: “After Trump became president, there has been no improvement in America’s image. If America doesn’t stop its aggression against us and pressure on us, then we’ll never have any good image of America; it will only get worse. We’ll never be surprised, whatever America does. And we’re not expecting any surprises from Trump.”

Yuri (no last name given), Moscow: “Nothing actually had changed, for real. Nothing had changed in Russian-American relations. They aren’t our friends or enemies. Geopolitical enemies, maybe, that’s it.”

Margret Machner, Berlin: “My trust at the moment is a lot less than it was earlier. One had the feeling that America was a strong, safe partner and I do not believe this anymore.”

Dan Mirkin, Tel Aviv: “I think that the U.S. remains the beacon of democracy because the U.S. itself is much more than its president. The president can be less or more of a beacon. But, America is a beacon.”

Hamza Abu Maria, Hebron, West Bank: “I’m about 30 years old, and since I grew up and started to understand and follow news, I don’t think the United States up until today was a beacon of democracy. If it was truly democratic, then from a long time ago they would have done justice to the Palestinian people.”

Mohammad Ali, Damascus: “We should never bet on any American administration, either Republican or Democrat. It’s the same front, supposedly to fight terrorism, but they didn’t do any of that. Instead they carried out an aggression against a sovereign state, which is Syria. They attacked Syria and they attacked the air base of a sovereign state and a member of the Arab League.”

Deqo Salaad, Mogadishu: “The U.S. was once both the beacon of democracy and human rights, but nowadays, a big change has happened as we can see more segregation committed by President Trump, especially when he said he was going to ban Muslims coming to the U.S. And with that, he has damaged the reputation of the U.S. of being the beacon of democracy and human rights in this world that the U.S. government promoted for ages now.”

Are we now living in a “post-truth” world?

Diane Lallouz, Tel Aviv: “I don’t think that we’re existing in a post-truth world and I don’t think that the way we consume information has anything to do with Trump. Actually over the last several decades we are getting information more and more on social media, so people are getting small amounts of information. Not too much real knowledge and that’s part of the problem. People are making judgments based on tiny amounts of truth or half-truth or non-truths, and it’s impossible to know, by the social media, what is really true. Is Trump the cause of this? I don’t think so. I think Trump is just a part of the picture that we live in today.”

Dan Mirkin, Tel Aviv: “I don’t think it affects the way that I consume information but it certainly changes the way in which the information is delivered, and the fact of alternative truth, alternative facts is a new invention, so we have to apply filters more than before.”

Mahmoud Draghmeh, Nablus, West Bank: “The world is far from the truth, despite the fact the technological development helped the news to reach. But I think that there is a distance from the truth, because the media, with all my respect to the different media outlets, everyone adopts his idea and exports it to the world.”

What has surprised you about President Trump?

Ute Hubner, Berlin: “I find he is very honest – more honest than I thought in the sense that a lot isn’t pushed under the table. He says it like it is, while here in our case so much is said and talked about that “everything is fine, wonderful and all is good,” while we know that the reality is more often than not something else.”

Fatmeh (full name not given) Damascus: “Trump increased problems in the Arab world and the first proof is the strike on Syria. This has increased problems and confusion. He didn’t do anything against terrorism; he only increased it. There is nothing new. His policy has been to oppress people, especially the Arab people. We didn’t see anything new.”

Yadollah Sobhani, Tehran: “What shocked me most from Trump was a sudden shift in his policies toward Russia from a friendly position to a clash. I did not expect such instability in a politician’s behavior.”

Payam Mosleh, Tehran: “What scared me most was the classification of human beings (under Trump’s proposed Muslim ban). I think history has taught and shown us enough times that separating people from each other has never done anyone any good. Building walls either in Berlin or America has no results and is disastrous.”

Mahdieh Gharib, Tehran: “What surprised me most was preventing Iranians from entering the United States or even barring those Iranians who were U.S. residents and had temporarily left that country. Bombing Syria was the second thing that surprised me.”

Shimon Abitbol, Tel Aviv: “He’s playing too much golf. That’s the only thing I’m surprised by. I mean, how can he have so much time to play so much golf?
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Britain, where the Industrial Revolution began more than 200 years ago, has recorded its first full day without using coal power. The milestone was achieved Friday, following years of investment in renewable energy — a trend being replicated in some other European countries, and even in developing nations. Henry Ridgwell reports from London.
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The magnate behind LVMH is to incorporate Christian Dior into his luxury goods empire in a multibillion-dollar deal.

It’s the latest business coup for businessman Bernard Arnault, who has expanded his LVMH empire to include dozens of leading luxury brands — from high-end champagne and whiskies, to exclusive Vuitton handbags, Kenzo and Givenchy perfumes and Bulgari and TAG Heuer watches. Dior Couture, launched in 1946 and seen as the pinnacle of Paris style, would be a starring jewel in his empire.

Shares in Christian Dior and LVMH Moet Hennessy — Louis Vuitton rose after Tuesday’s long-awaited deal. The public offers values Dior at 260 euros per share. Shares in Dior spiked 12 percent to 253.95 euros by early afternoon trading Tuesday, while LVMH shares were up 4.3 percent at 223.95 euros.

According to the announcement, LVMH, which already owned Christian Dior cosmetics and perfumes, would buy Christian Dior Couture, its fashion business, for 6.5 billion euros ($7.1 billion). In addition, the Arnault Family Group is making a public offer for the Christian Dior shares it doesn’t currently hold.

The hope is that combining Dior’s entities under one roof and simplifying internal activities, savings will be generated.

The statement says the boards of both companies approved the transactions on Monday. The proposed deal will still need regulatory approval and consultations with workers. The companies also hope to issue the public offer in June, and finalize the purchase of Dior Couture in the second half of this year.

The companies laid out their hope that Dior’s fashion revenues and profit, which have risen in recent years, will be a  “source of growth” for LVMH, particularly with development in the U.S., China and Japan.

 
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Tens of thousands of Armenians rallied Monday for the annual remembrance of the massacre of more than 1 million Armenians at the hands of the Ottoman Empire.

Marchers gathered at a memorial in Yerevan to lay flowers. Some burned a Turkish flag with torches.

April 24 is the day most Armenians regard as the start of the massacre in 1915, with the first arrests of Armenians by Turkish authorities in what was then Constantinople.

Between then and 1923, 1.5 million Armenians were killed through forced deportation, torture, starvation and outright murder.

Armenian culture restored

“The Armenians’ physical, cultural and political losses are immeasurable,” Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan said Monday. “The biggest loss is the people who were members of an ancient, rich and authentic civilization.”

Sargsyan said those who survived the killings and their descendents successfully restored Armenian culture and science.

“Within this period of time, we gave the world a whole constellation of creative geniuses and the world learned what happened to us through the great Armenians.”

In Washington, President Donald Trump put out a statement calling the Armenian massacre one of the 20th century’s worst mass atrocities.

“We must remember atrocities to prevent them from occurring again. We welcome the efforts of Turks and Armenians to acknowledge and reckon with painful history, which is a critical step toward building a foundation for a more just and tolerant future.”

Turkey denies organized campaign

Armenians call the killings a genocide and urge everyone who talks about the massacre to use that word, including the United States which has yet to officially recognize the deaths as genocide.

But Turkey denies there was any organized campaign to obliterate the Armenian people.

It says the number of Armenians killed during and after World War I was far fewer than 1.5 million and said the victims died in the fighting between the Ottoman military and Russia.
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The governments of Spain and Brazil on Monday reinforced their commitment to completing a trade pact between the European Union and South American trade bloc Mercosur despite protectionist sentiments.

On a two-day visit to Brazil, Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said he agreed with Brazilian President Michel Temer about the need to wrap up a trade deal that has taken more than 15 years to negotiate.

Rajoy also called for elections as the only way to reach a negotiated solution to the political crisis in Venezuela, expressing “deep concern” over the volatile situation in the neighboring country.

“We agree that given the degree of confrontation and the volatility of the situation, a negotiated solution is needed, and it must inevitably involve giving back to the Venezuelan people their voice,” he said.

Rajoy is heading a large delegation of Spanish businessmen who are looking for investment opportunities in Brazilian banking, energy, water and infrastructure sectors.

Spain backs deal

Brazil is the third-most important market for Spanish investors, who account for the second largest stock of foreign investment in the South American nation after the United States.

Spain is one of the strongest backers of an accord to lower trade barriers between the European Union and Mercosur members Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay. Negotiations have been delayed for years by the reluctance of European farmers and Mercosur manufacturers to face competition.

“Spain has always been and will continue to be a firm supporter of the agreement,” Rajoy said after meeting Temer. “In these moments in which some feel protectionist temptations, we both agree on the importance of free trade.”

US retreat favors EU  

Argentine Foreign Minister Susana Malcorra, who is hoping to clinch the EU-Mercosur deal by the end of the year, said external reasons would help advance it.

Malcorra said the retreat of the United States from trade talks had opened a window for the European Union to become a strong player in multilateral, region-to-region accords.

“Our view is that [the EU-Mercosur accord] is not only an economic agreement,” she said in Geneva on Monday. “It’s more than that, a political agreement.”
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The Italian and Greek governments are counting on France’s likely next president Emmanuel Macron to help them see off populist parties that blame European Union-enforced austerity and open immigration policies for economic and social ills.

Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras and Italian premier Paolo Gentiloni both called Macron on Monday to congratulate him after the independent centrist won Sunday’s first round of voting in the French election.

The former economy minister, who is seen in southern Europe as an opponent of rigid austerity, is favored to defeat far-right, anti-EU candidate Marine Le Pen in the May 7 run-off.

Five Star Movement a concern

The ruling parties in heavily indebted Italy and Greece hope his enthusiasm for the EU will help them see off challengers such as Italy’s Five Star Movement, which wants a referendum on ditching the shared euro currency.

A Greek official said Tsipras and Macron had an amicable discussion in which Macron noted his previous support for Athens in tough bailout talks with EU powers.

“I supported the need for a change of stance towards Greece,” the official quoted Macron as telling Tsipras. “It is certain that if I’m elected we will work closely together to ensure that Europe meets the needs of our generation.”

Gentiloni also spoke to Macron, an Italian official said, adding that the two would work together to ensure Europe can face its economic challenges.

Former Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi, who is plotting a path back to power at elections due next year, also welcomed Macron’s first-round victory, saying he represented a Europe that looked to the future, not “to the decimal points.”

Italian European Affairs Minister Sandro Gozi told Reuters a Macron presidency would bolster the ruling Democratic Party (DP) against populist forces like Five Star, which opinion polls show rivaling the DP with as much as a third of the vote. A path to government remains difficult, however, given its refusal to consider alliances and Italy’s electoral system.

Le Pen’s plans

Five Star and the right-wing Northern League question to varying degrees the adoption of EU open-immigration policies, the cornerstone of which is the Schengen open-borders area.

“Macron’s first round win and his likely victory in the second round will help give us a push,” Gozi said.

“Le Pen wants to get out of the eurozone, to get out of NATO, to dismantle Schengen and basically do many things that either the Northern League or Five Star want to do here. So if Macron wins, it is excellent news for us.”

The French connection

For Greece, a Le Pen victory would knock its major EU ally out of the union and weaken its defenses against a push from Germany, the bloc’s biggest creditor, for continued austerity.

Greece has debts equal to 178 percent of its economy and is struggling to conclude a progress review on reforms prescribed by its international lenders in exchange for vital loans.

Outgoing French President Francois Hollande helped fellow leftist Tsipras seal a 86 billion euro ($93 billion) bailout from the EU in July 2015, its third since 2010, which kept the crisis-hit country in the eurozone.

It expires next year, however, and Athens now needs France to lobby the rest of the EU, especially Germany, to agree to debt relief. Tsipras is counting on this support as the next election approaches in 2019.

Markets react to results

“Relations between Greece and France are strategic, they are based on mutual interests and common views on European affairs and I believe that Macron would stick to Hollande’s policy, which was supportive on Greece,” deputy foreign minister George Katrougalos told Reuters.

A senior Greek government official close to the bailout talks, which resume this week in Athens, agreed that a Macron presidency would be “sympathetic and supportive” of Greece.

Markets in Greece and Italy also welcomed the prospect of a Macron victory next month. Greek 10-year government bond yields hit a two-and-a-half-year low and Italian yields sank despite a credit rating downgrade on Friday.
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An American member of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) was killed and at last two others were injured Sunday when their car hit a mine near rebel-held Luhansk in eastern Ukraine.

Austria’s Foreign Ministry confirmed the incident near the small village of Pryshyb.  Austria currently holds the OSCE’s rotating presidency.

Austrian Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz demanded a thorough investigation, adding that those responsible would be held accountable.

Alexander Hug, deputy chief of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission (SMM), told journalists that a German and a Czech national were injured but have been treated at a local hospital in Ukraine’s eastern republic of Lugansk.

According to reports, the vehicle drove over a mine in territory controlled by the self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic.

A rebel statement said the OSCE team was traveling along an unsafe road.  “We know that the mentioned crew deviated from the main route and moved along side roads, which is prohibited by the mandate of the OSCE SMM,” local media reported.

The incident marks the first loss of life for the OSCE’s Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine.

The OSCE has 600 members in eastern Ukraine, the only independent monitoring mission in the destroyed industrial war zone.  It provides daily reports on the war and has angered insurgents for accusing them of being responsible for most truce agreement violations.

For the past three years tensions between Ukraine and separatists in the Russian-held eastern part of the country continue to increase, despite a 2015 ceasefire agreement that is repeatedly violated.

At least 9,750 people have been killed in the war in eastern Ukraine since April 2014.  More than 40 died during the first two months of this year, when hostilities in the conflict suddenly surged.
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Pope Francis urged governments on Saturday to get migrants and refugees out of holding centers, saying many had become “concentration camps.”

During a visit to a Rome basilica, where he met migrants, Francis told of his trip to a camp on the Greek island of Lesbos last year.

He met a Muslim refugee from the Middle East there who told him how “terrorists came to our country.” Islamists had slit the throat of the man’s Christian wife because she refused to throw her crucifix on the ground.

“I don’t know if he managed to leave that concentration camp, because refugee camps, many of them, are of concentration [type] because of the great number of people left there inside them,” the pope said.

The American Jewish Committee (AJC) later urged the pope “to reconsider his regrettable choice of words” for using the term concentration camp.

“The conditions in which migrants are currently living in some European countries may well be difficult, and deserve still greater international attention, but concentration camps they certainly are not,” the AJC’s head, David Harris, said in a statement.

“The Nazis and their allies erected and used concentration camps for slave labor and the extermination of millions of people during World War II. There is no comparison to the magnitude of that tragedy,” he said.

Francis praised countries helping refugees and thanked them for “bearing this extra burden, because it seems that international accords are more important than human rights.”

He did not elaborate but appeared to be referring to agreements that keep migrants from crossing borders, such as deals between the European Union (EU) and Libya and the EU and Turkey. Humanitarian groups have criticized both deals.

The pope urged people in northern Italy, home to an anti-immigrant party, to take more migrants, hoping that the generosity of southern Italy could “infect the north a bit.”

Noting that Italy had one of the world’s lowest birth rates, he said: “If we also close the door to migrants, this is called suicide.”

The basilica of St Bartholomew is a shine to Christians killed for their faith in the 20th and 21st centuries.

It contains a prayer book used by Father Jacques Hamel, the 85-year-old French priest killed by Islamist militants who stormed into a church in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray last year, forced Hamel to his knees, and slit his throat while they chanted in Arabic. His sister Roselyne attended the service.
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Preliminary results from France’s first round of presidential elections confirmed that centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron and nationalist, anti-immigration candidate Marine Le Pen are heading into a runoff in two weeks, marking what analysts describe as a political earthquake in France.

It is the first time in the history of the modern French Republic that the presidency will be held by a member of a non-traditional party, highlighting a deep anti-establishment sentiment that ultimately could determine whether France remains a part of the EU or follows an independent path like that of post-Brexit Britain and the United States under Donald Trump.

According to projected results, Macron garnered 23.8 percent, and Le Pen won 21.7 percent.  The winner needs an absolute majority and that will be determined in a runoff on May 7th.

“In one year, we have entirely changed French politics,” Macron said at a victory rally Sunday night.

Macron, a 39-year-old center-left former economy minister who is pro-EU, pro-business, led pre-election polls despite his previous association with unpopular Socialist President Francois Hollande. The appeal of his year-old En Marche! (Onward!) movement lies mainly in France’s prosperous urban areas, where globalism has benefited many.

His challenge is to galvanize support of centrists and the left, including members of France’s fractured Socialist party, and convince voters he does not represent an extension of Hollande’s policies.

Macron will face Le Pen and her National Front party, whose strongholds are largely in formerly industrial areas of France where unemployment is high and so is disillusionment with the modern economic and social order.  Le Pen, who wants France out of the European Union, has succeeded in winning over large numbers of former leftists and centrists. Over the next two weeks, she hopes to draw from the right and the center, especially those who are most disillusioned with the status quo.  

“It is time to liberate the French people,” she told supporters at a rally Sunday.

Among the top contenders from 11 candidates was former Prime Minister Francois Fillon, a center-right social conservative whose bid was damaged by allegations of creating fake jobs for close relatives.  Conceding defeat on Sunday, he endorsed Macron.

The vote happened amid tight security following a terrorist attack in Paris just days before the poll that observers thought would benefit Le Pen.

On Sunday, 50,000 police officers backed by 7,000 soldiers, including special forces, were deployed to the streets amid tensions following the attack claimed by the Islamic State terrorist group. The shooting along the iconic Champs-Elysees in the heart of Paris left one police officer dead and several other people injured.

In a tweet one day after the Champs Elysees shooting, U.S. President Trump said, “The people of France will not take much more of this.  Will have a big effect on presidential election!”

Analysts and voters interviewed saw this as the most unpredictable election since World War II.  One third of voters were undecided just days before the balloting.

In the last few weeks before the vote, far-left candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon surged in the polls and so did discussion of the previously obscure candidate in social media.

Among the ways his campaign lured young voters was through the release of a video game in which a player pretending to be Melenchon walks the streets and takes money from men in suits.  The player is shown in a battle against the rich and powerful.

Anger at the establishment is the sentiment driving voters in an election in which security, France’s lagging economy, its 10 percent unemployment rate, and Islamist extremism are issues on the minds of those on the left and on the right.

That, say analysts, is what influenced large numbers of people, including some of the middle and upper class residents of Paris, to vote for candidates of the extreme.  

“Some of them for the thrill of it.  It’s the principle, you know.  Like playing Russian roulette, but politically.  Some others it would be because they despise the elite of this country,” said Thomas Guénolé, a political analyst in Paris, told VOA.

Socialist President Francois Hollande announced he would not to run for reelection after his approval ratings sank to 4 percent, something analysts widely attribute to a string of terrorist attacks in France and a stagnation of economic growth during his tenure.  Hollande is the first incumbent president not to seek reelection in the history of modern France.
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French expatriates in South America, Canada and the United States kicked off the voting Saturday in France’s presidential election, on the heels of several terror attacks that could affect the outcome.

Far-right candidate Marine Le Pen and a former economy minister, independent centrist Emmanuel Macron, are the top contenders, followed by conservative former Prime Minister Francois Fillon and far-left candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon.

The candidates are vying to replace incumbent Francois Hollande, who announced earlier this year that he would not run for another term.

Campaigning ended earlier than expected Thursday when a French policeman was killed by a gunman on the Champs-Elysee, one of Paris’ most popular streets for shopping and tourism. Analysts have long said a last-minute event could swing the election outcome.

In November 2015, Paris terror attacks, in which 130 people were killed, happened just weeks before France held regional elections. The attacks are thought to have given a boost to Le Pen’s National Front party, which lost in the second round of voting and failed to win control of any region.

Some French critics of LePen told reporters they feared this week’s attack and others like it could push her campaign to a win, perhaps endangering France’s future in the European Union.

But national security is not the only issue that matters in this year’s election. France’s unemployment rate is about 10 percent, more than twice as high as that of its neighbor Germany, and the state of the economy is a constant worry.

The bulk of the first-round voting in France itself will come Sunday. Early results are expected around 9 p.m. Paris time.
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European scientists are taking part in the March for Science demonstration taking place in hundreds of cities around the world to commemorate Earth Day. Science and research skeptics are becoming more mainstream in an era of populist and Eurosceptic movements. And on both sides of the Atlantic, there is less funding to support independent research.

Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, a professor at the University of Leuven, says shifting priorities in Europe has had an impact on the work of scientists.

“Now funds for fundamental research are much more difficult to get. Even if the budget remains the same or sometimes has increased, there was a shift in priorities towards research that is supposed to deliver more immediate results in terms of job creation or that kind of thing. Or research that helps the European industry to bring a product to the market. And climate scientists are not building any products that the European industries can sell.”

The European Union set a target for its member states that they should spend three percent of their budget on science, but many countries are only at around two percent.

Scientists hope that by joining forces globally, they will raise awareness about a global trend that seems to take science less serious. With U.S. President Donald Trump in the White House and populist and Eurosceptic movements gaining popularity in Europe, scientists say their budgets are being reduced and their work is being taken less serious.

Bas Eickhout, a scientist and member of the European Parliament for the Greens Party, says climate change policy should not be seen as a “left wing hobby.” He calls on scientist to be more involved in the decision making process.

“Not in policy making itself but providing information to politicians is crucial. And quite often once we start with decision making, that information is just lost. Scientist are really a bit too scared for the word lobby, and I don’t think its lobbying that your doing, but its also trying to feed decision making also during the negotiations, and not only at the beginning.”

The March for Science is a volunteer based movement and organizers say there is an “alarming trend toward discrediting scientific consensus and restricting scientific discovery.” The organizers aim to celebrate science and hold political and science leaders accountable, but do not affiliate with any political party.

Sofie Vanthournout, director of Sense about Science EU, a charity advocating the importance of science, says the march aims to change the perspective of citizens and politicians who doubt the importance of science:

“The message that we want to bring it is important for every aspect of our lives, for every aspect of society. Whether it’s in technology that we use in our daily lives or whether it is for important decisions that politicians make about our lives. We don’t want scientists to tell politicians what to do but we need the politicians to have access to all of the facts and all of the knowledge that is available.”

One week after the March of Science, the Peoples Climate March will follow. In 2015, the world came together to sign the Paris Accord, an agreement signed by almost all nations in the world to curb global warming.

U.S. President Trump promised during his election campaign to pull the United States out of the international accord, but later softened his stance, saying he thinks there is “some connectivity” between human activity and global warming.

 
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Michele Scarponi, the 2011 Giro d’Italia champion, has been killed in a road accident while training close to his home in Filottrano, his Astana team said Saturday.

Scarponi, 37, left home early on Saturday morning for a training ride and was hit by a van at a crossroads.

“This is a tragedy too big to be written,” Astana said in a statement.

“We left a great champion and a special guy, always smiling in every situation, he was … a landmark for everyone in the Astana Pro Team.”

Scarponi, who completed the Tour of the Alps on Friday, after winning a stage and finishing fourth overall, is survived by his wife and two children.

Scarponi, who started his professional career in 2002, got his best results in Italian races, winning three stages on the Giro before being handed the 2011 title after Alberto Contador was stripped of his victory in a retroactive doping ban.

He also had good results in the one-day races, finishing fourth on the Liege-Bastogne-Liege classic in 2003.

Scarponi was suspended for 18 months after being implicated in the Operation Puerto blood doping scandal in 2006.

After he returned from suspension, he won the Tirreno-Adriatico in 2009 and the Tour of Catalonia in 2011.

“We will miss this guy in the peleton, always with a smile,” Olympic champion Greg van Avermaet wrote on Twitter. 
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Greece far exceeded its international lenders’ budget demands last year, official data showed on Friday, posting its first overall budget surplus in 21 years even when debt repayments are included.

The primary surplus — the leftover before debt repayments that is the focus of International Monetary Fund-European Union creditors — was more than eight times what they had targeted.

Data released by Greek statistics service ELSTAT — to be confirmed on Monday by the EU — showed the primary budget surplus at 3.9 percent of gross domestic product last year versus a downwardly revised 2.3 percent deficit in 2015.

This was calculated under European System of Accounts guidelines, which differ from the methodology used by Greece’s in bailout deliberations.

Under EU-IMF standards, the surplus was even larger.

Government spokesman Dimitris Tzanakopoulos said the primary budget surplus under bailout terms reached 4.19 percent of gross domestic product last year versus the 0.5 percent of GDP target.

“It is more than eight times above target,” Tzanakopoulos said in a statement. “Therefore, the targets set under the bailout program for 2017 and 2018 will certainly be attained.”

Debt-strapped Greece and its creditors have been at odds for months over the country’s fiscal performance, delaying the conclusion of a key bailout review which could unlock needed bailout funds.

The IMF, which has reservations on whether Greece can meet high primary surplus targets, has yet to decide if it will fund Greece’s current bailout, which expires in 2018.

The 2016 outperformance could lead the fund to revise some of its projections. The IMF’s participation is seen as a condition for Germany to unlock new funds to Greece.

Athens hopes to discuss the fund’s participation and its projections at the sidelines of the IMF’s spring meetings in Washington. EU and IMF mission chiefs are expected to return to Athens on Tuesday to discuss the bailout review.

After meeting Greek Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos in Washington, IMF chief Christine Lagarde said: “We had constructive discussions in preparation for the return of the mission to discuss the two legs of the Greece program: policies and debt relief.”

ELSTAT said the overall surplus including debt repayments reached 0.7 percent of GDP compared with a 5.9 percent deficit in 2015.

Analysts attributed the outperformance to the implementation of bailout measures and increased efforts to improve the state’s revenue collection capacity.

“It’s an impressive outperformance versus the bailout program target for the primary surplus,” said Athens-based Eurobank’s chief economist Platon Monokroussos.

“The data suggests that the 2017 fiscal target under the bailout program is fully attainable under the current baseline macroeconomic scenario,” he said.

Athens faces a primary surplus target of 1.75 percent of GDP this year.
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Challenges are growing to the validity of Sunday’s referendum in Turkey to extend the country’s presidential powers.

“Referendum won by cheating,” declared Osman Baydemir, spokesman of the pro-Kurdish HDP, Turkey’s second-largest opposition party.

An HDP report on the vote said 2,462 “No” campaigners were detained and 453 jailed during the 85-day campaign. HDP’s honorary president and deputy, Ertugrul Kurkcu, said the past two months were a “total violation of democratic principles.”

Kurkcu said the investigation revealed widespread abuse on voting day.

“It’s obvious,” he said. “Fraud is extensive. Invalid ballots and envelopes were very widely deliberately used, as well as people forced to vote openly in remote districts and villages, using votes for people who are away from their homes, like construction workers or agricultural migrant laborers.”

Under Turkey’s election law, all ballots and the envelopes they are placed in have to have an official stamp — a measure aimed at preventing vote stuffing. But on voting day, the Supreme Election Board sanctioned uncertified ballots.

The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), which monitored the election, strongly condemned the move in an interim report Monday. The report also highlighted difficulties of monitoring voting procedures in the predominantly Kurdish southeast, citing cases of its monitors being temporarily detained by security forces.

The HDP, too, claimed its monitors were excluded by security forces from numerous voting stations in rural parts of the southeast, the center of renewed fighting between Turkish security forces and the Kurdish PKK.

“There is much greater presence of security forces in the region than there has been for many years,” observed Emma Sinclair-Webb, a Turkey researcher with Human Right’s Watch. “We’ve seen pictures circulating on social media of people armed in front of ballot boxes, taking photos of those voting at ballot boxes. Of course, this could have had an intimidating effect on people voting, and this needs investigating.”

Dismissing complaints

On Tuesday, the Supreme Election Board dismissed all complaints and calls by opposition parties for a revote. The decision was made in less than a day, despite calls by the European Commission for a full and transparent investigation. The ruling cannot be legally challenged and Prime Minister Binali Yildirim declared the issue resolved.

The referendum to turn Turkey from a parliamentary to an executive presidency was carried out under Emergency Rule and only narrowly passed by 51 to 49 percent of the vote.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who led the “Yes” campaign, saw his traditional strongholds of Turkey’s largest cities vote against him, including Istanbul and Ankara. The Kurdish region voted 40 percent yes, significantly higher than the support Erdogan’s AK Parry secured in November’s general election.

Throughout his campaign, Erdogan courted the Turkish nationalist votes, taking a hardline against the pro-Kurdish right movements. He has presided over an unprecedented crackdown on the PKK since a collapse in the peace process in 2015.

The referendum vote is being interpreted by the presidency as a turning point.

“By making a very clear distinction between the Kurds and the PKK, President Erdogan and the government have won the Kurdish confidence again” wrote Presidential adviser Ibrahim Kalin in Sabah newspaper.

The HDP acknowledged that all the voters the “Yes” camp cannot be explained by fraud.

“Under the circumstance, imagine a town already destroyed by military, the leadership of popular movement is crushed the people left alone,” said Kurkcu. “Face to face with the aggressors, under those circumstance, people have to make their decision before the barrel of a gun. But Erdogan won with fraud, and this referendum is stained by fraud.”

The president and his government dismiss such concerns as belonging in the past, arguing it is time to look to the future.
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Russia’s Federal Security Service said on Friday that a gunman had burst into one of its regional offices in the far east of the country and opened fire, killing one of its employees and a visitor.

The region where the incident happened is close to China. The FSB, the successor organization to the Soviet KGB, said the attacker had been killed and that another person had been injured in the incident.

“An unknown person entered the reception of the FSB’s Khabarovsk regional branch and started shooting at people inside,” the FSB said in a statement.

The Site Intelligence Group, a U.S.-based monitoring service, said that Islamic State had claimed responsibility for the attack. It said that the claim of responsibility had been made through the militant group’s Amaq news agency.

That contradicted earlier media reports, which said the FSB believed the gunman was a nationalist. The TASS news agency cited an unnamed FSB official as saying that the gunman was a local resident and born in 1999.

The visitor who was killed and the one who was injured were from former Soviet states outside Russia, according to the security service.

Russia was this month shaken by a suicide bombing of the St. Petersburg metro, which killed 16 people. The suspected suicide bomber and his alleged accomplices were from Central Asia.

The man Russian police believe was the suicide bomber had developed an interest in Islam and soon after travelled to Turkey, two people who knew him told Reuters.
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