Month: January 2018

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

Netanyahu was speaking out against a proposed law in Poland imposing fines and jail time on anyone who refers to the Nazi genocide of Jews as being a Polish crime, or the Nazi death camps as Polish death camps.

Israel’s foreign ministry summoned the Polish ambassador Sunday to express its objections.

Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial also warned against trying to change history.

“Restrictions on statements by scholars and others regarding the Polish people’s direct or indirect complicity with the crimes committed on their land during the Holocaust are a serious distortion,” it said in a statement.

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

Poland’s President Andrzej Duda, recognizing the extreme sensitivity of the law, promised Sunday to give it a “careful analysis” before signing it if it passes the Polish senate.

Poland was home to one of the world’s most thriving Jewish populations before Nazi Germany invaded in 1939. It murdered about 3 million Jews in death camps set up in Poland, including such chilling places as Auschwitz and Treblinka.

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 itself been a victim of Nazi terror and resents being blamed for crimes carried out by Hitler and his gang of murderers.

On Sunday, Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki tweeted a metaphor comparing Jews and Poles in pre-war Poland.

“A gang of professional thugs enters a two-family house,” he wrote. “They kill the first family almost entirely. They kill the parents of the second, torturing the kids. They loot and raze the house. Could one in good conscience say that the second family is guilty for the murder of the first?”
…

Several thousand people braved sub-zero temperatures in cities across Russia to protest what they say is a lack of competition ahead of March presidential elections all but guaranteed to extend Vladimir Putin’s grip on power through 2024.

The rallies were part of a nationwide “Voters Strike” called by opposition leader and erstwhile presidential candidate Alexey Navalny, an anti-corruption campaigner who has been blocked from participating in the elections over legal problems widely seen as manufactured to keep him out of the race.

“We demand a real contest. Even many supporters of Putin say ‘why wouldn’t he participate in a competitive election?’” said Vladimir Milov, a Navalny campaign adviser, in an interview with VOA at the Moscow rally.  

“They believe Putin can beat Navalny, and we believe Navalny can beat Putin,” he added.  

“That’s what elections are all about.”

Yet Sunday’s protests reflected a realization among Navalny’s camp that such a direct contest will not take place. 

Barred from participating by Russia’s courts and state election commission, Navalny’s campaign has shifted to calls to boycott the election — arguing low voter turnout nationwide will take the shine off a Putin victory and high voter approval ratings that, they argue, are inflated by state manipulation. 

“We are not going to take part in this election,” said Vladislav Sovostin, a small business owner, as the crowd shouted “Strike! Strike!” “Boycott!” and “These Aren’t Elections!” 

“We are going to monitor the vote and not allow them to falsify the election for Putin,” he added.

Arrests

Organizers argued that protests took place in over 100 cities across the country — with several approved in advance by authorities.  Notable exceptions were Russia’s two main cities — Moscow and St. Petersburg — where police and interior ministry troop presence were heavy and authorities threatened arrests. 

OVD-Info, a civic police monitoring group, reported 340 people had been detained nationwide.

Many of those included Navalny surrogates and campaign volunteers in cities such as Tomsk, a Siberian university town where the local independent TV-2 channel reported 10 arrests. 

In Moscow, police also stormed Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, where an online video feed of the day’s events was shut down after police broke through office doors with a chainsaw. 

 

​

Navalny, too, had little opportunity to take part in the event he organized.

Video published online (LINK https://twitter.com/navalny/status/957581631921033216)  showed police roughly dragging him into a police van almost as soon as he arrived on Moscow’s central Tverskaya Street.  

“I’ve been detained. That doesn’t matter,” he posted minutes later on Twitter.  “Come to Tverskaya. You’re not coming out for me, but for yourself and your future.”

Generational shifts

Once again, the faces of younger Russians — many in their teens and early 20s who have grown up under Putin’s rule — were prominent at rallies across the country. 

“The authorities are used to thinking that Russians will just sit quietly and wait for change. Well, our generation won’t wait. We want a better life,” says Ivan Savin, a high school student who attended the rally.

He also admitted to telling his parents he was “out with friends” for the day rather than out protesting the Russian president. 

“Only because they’ll worry and think I’ll get arrested.” 

His classmate, Valerie Koltsov, added that other friends felt the same.

“I know a lot of people who don’t come because it really does scare them. They think they’ll get fined for not doing what the government tells them.”

Turnout tactics

Indeed, turnout was smaller than previous Navalny-led protests from the past year, when tens of thousands of Russians came out to protest alleged corruption at the highest levels of government.

Few doubt that Navalny’s message — fueled by an effective social media campaign — has connected well beyond Moscow and into the regions. 

But Sunday’s smaller numbers, despite temperatures as low as -40C in Siberia, were all but certain to fuel debate in opposition circles over the wisdom of Navalny’s call for a nationwide boycott of the vote.

The tactic, critics point out, demands widespread participation or risks simply increasing Putin’s margin of victory. 

Ksenia Sobchak, a television star-turned-opposition figure whose own presidential bid has been tacitly endorsed by the Kremlin, is among those calling on anti-Putin forces to register their dissatisfaction by supporting her “Against All” candidacy at the ballot box rather than on the streets. 

Navalny’s supporters have largely derided Sobchak’s campaign as a Kremlin ploy to legitimize the vote. 

Yet Ludmilla Sidodova, a pensioner at the Moscow rally who was a veteran of the massive pro-democratic movement of the late-Soviet period, argued it would simply take a wider movement if Russians hoped to evoke real change.

She was among hundreds of thousands who once had demanded change, and suggested a new generation could learn from that history.  

“I wish they’d understand that we did what we could. Maybe it wasn’t always enough. But now it depends on them,” Sidodova said.  “Whatever life they decide they want is the life they’ll have.”
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Ingvar Kamprad, who founded Sweden’s IKEA furniture brand and transformed it into a worldwide business empire, has died at the age of 91.

Kamprad died Saturday of pneumonia in the southern Swedish region of Smaland where he grew up on a farm, and with some modest financial help from his father, starting selling pens, picture frames, typewriters and other goods. It was the start of what became IKEA, now with 403 stores across the globe, 190,000 employees and $47 billion in annual sales.

His brand became synonymous with the simplicity of Scandinavian design, modest pricing, flat-pack boxing and do-it-yourself assembly for consumers. It turned Kamprad into an entrepreneur with a reported net worth of $46 billion. The company name was an acronym of his initials, the name of his farm, Elmtaryd, and his town of origin, Agunnaryd.

Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven said Kamprad “was a unique entrepreneur who had a big impact on Swedish business and who made home design a possibility for the many, not just the few.” King Carl XVI Gustaf called Kamprad a “true entrepreneur” who “brought Sweden out to the world.”

Kamprad’s life was not without controversy, however.

He faced sharp criticism for his ties to the Nazi youth movement in the 1940s. While Sweden was neutral during the war, its Nazi party remained active after the war. Kamprad said he stopped attending its meetings in 1948, later attributing his involvement to the “folly of youth,” and calling it “the greatest mistake of my life.”

While he eventually returned to Sweden, Kamprad fled his homeland’s high-tax structure for Denmark in 1973 and later moved to Switzerland in search of even lower taxes.

The European Commission last year launched an investigation into ways IKEA allegedly used a Dutch subsidiary to avoid taxes, with the Green Party contending the company avoided $1.2 billion in European Union taxes between 2009 and 2014. The Consortium of Investigative Journalists identified IKEA in 2014 as one of the giant multinationals that moved money to tax havens to avoid taxes.

Kamprad was known for his frugality, buying his clothes at thrift shops, driving an aging Volvo and bringing his lunch to work.
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Russians unhappy with the prospect of six more years under President Vladimir Putin are expected to protest nationwide on Sunday, backing Alexei Navalny’s call for an election boycott amid warnings from authorities that they will be tough on demonstrators deemed to have broken the law.

Navalny, an anti-corruption crusader and opposition leader, called for the boycott after being barred from the March 18 presidential election because of a financial-crimes conviction that he and his supporters contend was Kremlin-engineered retribution. He has dismissed the vote as the “reappointment” of Putin, who has been president or prime minister since 1999.

With the Kremlin controlling the levers of political power nationwide after years of steps to suppress dissent and marginalize political opponents, it is virtually certain that the election will hand Putin a new six-year term. Political commentators say Putin, 65, is eager for a high turnout to strengthen his mandate in what could be his last stint in the Kremlin, as he would be constitutionally barred from seeking a third straight term in 2024. 

Rivals criticized

Navalny has accused the rest of the field of presidential hopefuls of playing into Putin’s hands and aiding what he says is a Kremlin bid to portray the vote as a legitimate, competitive contest. 

The planned rallies come days after a Moscow court ordered the closure of a foundation crucial to the presidential campaign Navalny has sought to conduct, and as reports of police searches of his campaign offices and harassment of his supporters mount.

On Friday, Russia’s Supreme Court revealed that it had declined Navalny’s appeal to be allowed to run for president.

On Thursday, police issued a stern warning to anti-government protesters. At a meeting with top Moscow police officials, First Deputy Interior Minister Aleksandr Gorovoi said that police would respect the right of citizens to hold public gatherings, as provided by the constitution and other legislation — but emphasized they would “absolutely toughly … prevent violations of these laws.”

In Moscow, Navalny has called on demonstrators to gather on a central street despite city authorities’ refusal to grant permission for a rally there, setting the stage for a potential confrontation. 

In a blog post on Saturday, Navalny urged people to come to the rallies on Sunday, writing that “to stay at home is to send them [those in power] the signal: ‘I’m ready to endure this for another six years.’ ” 

He also wrote that in 80 percent of cases, authorities have granted permission for rallies at the requested sites for Sunday, but not in Moscow or St. Petersburg.

Past crackdowns

Police have repeatedly cracked down on demonstrations organized by Navalny in the past. More than 1,000 people were detained in Moscow alone on March 26, 2017, when Navalny organized protests in some 100 cities nationwide. Law enforcement authorities also cracked down hard at a protest in May 2012, the day before Putin returned to the Kremlin for his current term after a stint as prime minister.

Navalny appeared this week at a European Court of Human Rights hearing in his case against Russia over repeated incidents in which he has been detained and jailed.

Days before the police warning, a Moscow district court ruled on January 22 that the foundation Navalny and his allies have used to rent premises and pay salaries at campaign headquarters should be shut down. Navalny’s campaign chief, Leonid Volkov, described the ruling as absurd and vowed to appeal.

That ruling came days after the Constitutional Court refused to review a complaint from Navalny regarding the Central Election Commission’s decision in December to bar him from the presidential election. 

Navalny supporters have complained of a surge in harassment by the state in recent weeks, saying police have searched offices and seized pamphlets calling for an election boycott.
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Political leaders in Greece and Macedonia met Saturday to discuss ways to resolve a longstanding dispute over the name of Greece’s northern neighbor.

The meetings come days before United Nations envoy Matthew Nimetz will visit the countries to seek a compromise. Nimetz is expected in Greece on Monday and Tuesday before going to Macedonia the following two days.

Greece has disputed Macedonia’s right to call itself by a name shared with its own northern province of Macedonia ever since the Republic of Macedonia became independent in 1991. It has blocked Macedonia’s accession to NATO.

Greece contends that the use of the name, along with certain clauses in Macedonia’s constitution, imply territorial designs on Greece, as well as the perceived appropriation of Greek symbols and names, such that of Alexander the Great, the most famous ruler of the Ancient Greek Kingdom of Macedonia.

Although recognized as the Republic of Macedonia by the majority of countries, Macedonia sits in the U.N. as The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia in deference to Greek objections.

Politicians meet

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras met Saturday with the leaders of all opposition parliamentary parties except for far-right Golden Dawn. Although none gave him carte blanche for negotiations, he focused his criticism on opposition leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis.

Tsipras described Mitsotakis as vacillating and too influenced by extremists within his party. The Greek premier said he is prepared to accept a “composite name … with a geographical or historical reference” that would include the name Macedonia. This could mean a name such as Upper, or New, Macedonia.

“We must not listen to nationalist outbursts or fanatical shouts,” Tsipras said in a televised speech after the meetings were over. He nonetheless acknowledged that “there is still a long way” before an agreement is achieved.

Besides the opposition, the leftist Tsipras has to contend with his own defense minister and leader of the right-wing, populist Independent Greeks, who has called for a referendum on the name issue and suggested the neighboring country call itself “Vardarska.”

A protest against allowing the name “Macedonia” to be used by Greece’s neighbor is scheduled for Feb. 4 in Athens. It follows a similar one in Thessaloniki, capital of Greece’s Macedonia province, which, according to police, was attended by 90,000 people.

​Talks, protests in Macedonia

In Macedonia, a “coordination meeting” under President Gjorge Ivanov went late into the night Saturday and no statements have been issued. It was attended by Prime Minister Zoran Zaev, Foreign Minister Nikola Dimitrov, and opposition leaders Hristijan Mickovski, the new leader of the conservative VMRO-DPMNE party, and Ali Ahmeti, head of the Albanian-minority Democratic Union for Integration.

There was a protest outside the meeting. The protesters object to Zaev’s proposal to rename Macedonia’s main highway and airport, both named for Alexander the Great, and demand termination of negotiations on the name issue.
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The FBI has released dozens of pages from its investigation into the death of Mikhail Lesin, files that largely corroborate earlier police and other reports about the circumstances behind the former Russian press minister’s 2015 death. 

The 56-page file, released by the U.S. law enforcement agency on Friday, includes heavily redacted copies of the medical and toxicology exam of Lesin’s body, as well as the investigation by forensic experts into the closed-circuit video footage of the hotel where he lived in his final days. 

Lesin’s death was declared accidental, due to blunt force injuries to the neck, torso, and lower and upper extremities, according to a final report released in October 2016 by the U.S. attorney’s office for Washington and city police. Acute ethanol intoxication was a contributing factor.

A city police report released in December 2017 highlighted Lesin’s heavy drinking at Washington’s Four Seasons Hotel, and later at the Dupont Circle Hotel, where he was found dead on November 5, 2015, just a few blocks from the White House. 

Deep suspicion

But deep suspicion remains among many journalists and Russia-watchers, as well as some business acquaintances, over the exact circumstances of the death of the once-powerful, wealthy Russian figure — who was instrumental in the Kremlin’s crackdown on independent TV and in the creation of the Russia Today TV channel.

The FBI file said forensic investigators examined dozens of hours of video footage from hotel cameras. In the footage from the Dupont Circle Hotel, one camera caught “a rather clear picture of the back of Lesin’s head” at 10:48 a.m. on November 4, 2015. 

​The file notes that Lesin is then not seen leaving his hotel room again; his body was found dead at 11:32 a.m. on November 5, 2015, approximately 25 hours later. 

Lesin was Russian President Vladimir Putin’s press minister in the early 2000s. He was instrumental in bringing the country’s national TV channels under Kremlin control, primarily the once-feisty channel NTV. Later, he set up the TV channel Russia Today, now known as RT. 

He fell out of favor with the Kremlin, however, sometime between 2012 and 2014, and he largely fell out of the public eye. 

In 2014, a year before his death, Lesin had drawn attention from the U.S. Senate, where one lawmaker had called on the FBI to investigate him for possible money laundering.

Beverly Hills mansions

Lesin owned mansions in Beverly Hills, California, where his children and estranged wife live. 

Much of Lesin’s wealth came from a private company he set up in the 1990s to sell television advertising on Russia’s then-exploding TV advertising market. That company, called Video International, or VI, was later acquired by Yury Kovalchuk, the main shareholder of Bank Rossiya, which has been closely linked to the Kremlin.

Lesin was not known to be a regular visitor to Washington. But not long after his death, it emerged that one of his reasons for being in the U.S. capital was to attend a gala fundraiser at the Wilson Center’s Kennan Institute on November 3, two days before his body was found. 

One of the philanthropists being honored that night was the influential Russian banker Pyotr Aven. Lesin never attended the event.

Aven also attended a private event at the Atlantic Council, another Washington think tank, on November 4. According to a person with knowledge of that event, Lesin had sought to attend as well, but the organizers declined to include him.

‘Stumbling drunk’

The D.C. city police report released in December said that on November 4, at around 2 p.m., a Dupont Circle security guard who reported finding Lesin “stumbling drunk” in his room asked if he needed medical help. Lesin put his arm on the guard’s shoulder and replied “nyet,” the report said.

About six hours later, at 8:16 p.m., another guard found Lesin lying face down on the floor in his room. He was breathing but the guard said he was unable to wake him, the report said.

The following morning, at around 11:30 a.m., a security guard who went to Lesin’s room to remind him to check out found him still face down on the floor. The guard called for medical help, and responding police determined Lesin was dead.

The FBI files also include 29 pages from the city medical examiner’s office. However, the files are all nearly entirely redacted. 

Russia officials have said little publicly about Lesin’s death, aside from indicating early on that they expected U.S. law enforcement to provide full details. 

Since his death, some of Lesin’s assets have been gradually sold off. His yacht was sold in Florida in 2016, listed for $40 million.

Earlier last year, his two Beverly Hills mansions were listed for sale, at $23 million and $29 million. It wasn’t immediately clear if the homes had sold already.
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A defiant Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned Friday that he’s prepared to risk confrontation with the United States over Turkey’s military incursion into northern Syria, vowing to next target a Kurdish-held town where U.S. Special Forces are stationed.

Speaking to members of his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Ankara, a belligerent Erdogan shrugged off U.S. calls for Turkey to limit the incursion launched a week ago, saying the next town to be targeted after the Kurdish enclave of Afrin, where Turkish tanks have been grinding through winter mud, will be Manbij, raising the possibility of American troops being drawn inadvertently into the bruising fight between Turks and Syrian Kurds.

The Reuters news agency reports that Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Saturday the United States needs to withdraw from northern Syria’s Manbij region immediately, suggesting that an attack might be imminent.

 

On Wednesday, U.S. President Donald Trump expressed concerns in a phone call with Erdogan about the Turkish offensive aimed at ousting Kurdish militiamen the U.S. sees as allies in the battle against the Islamic State terror group. Trump urged him to limit the incursion and to avoid civilian casualties. The U.S. president, though, acknowledged Turkey’s legitimate security concerns, according to Turkish officials, who say that Trump asked Erdogan “not to criticize the U.S.”

Dramatic escalation

But speaking to AKP members, Erdogan outlined a far more expansive operation than he’s committed to before, indicating his readiness to order Turkish forces, along with thousands of allied Syrian rebels, remnants of the Free Syrian Army that led the fight against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, to drive right across northern Syria all the way to Iraq.

That would mean attacking east of the Euphrates River the Kurdish stronghold of Rojava, which Syrian Kurds hope one day will become their own independent state. It would mark a dramatic escalation of Turkey’s offensive – as well as adding a massive complication in the already complex Syrian conflict.  

“We will rid Manbij of terrorists, as was promised before. Our battles will continue until no terrorist is left right up to our border with Iraq,” Erdogan said.

Turkish officials refer to Kurdish militiamen with the People’s Protection Units (YPG) as a terrorists. They say the YPG is an affiliate of the Turkey’s own outlawed Kurdish separatist group, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has waged a three-decade-long insurgency against Ankara.

The Turkish offensive, oddly named Operation Olive Branch, “will continue until it reaches its goals,” Erdogan pledged. He made no reference to the fact that as many as 2,000 U.S. troops are stationed in Manbij or nearby. We will “walk on our road until the end,” Erdogan added.

Turkey shares a 911-kilometer-long border with Syria, around two-thirds of which is under YPG control. Manbij is some 100 km east of the mountainous pocket of Afrin, which has been the focus of the Turkish offensive so far. U.S. troops have been located in Manbij since 2016, when Islamic State militants were driven from the city by the YPG with American assistance.

Kurdish officials say they are ready to deploy militiamen from Rojava to reinforce about 10,000 YPG fighters in the crowded city of Afrin, which would mean weapons, including anti-tank missiles, supplied by Washington for use against jihadist militants being turned instead on the Turks and their Syrian rebel allies.

‘Confusion and conflict’

On Monday, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Washington would continue to pursue talks with Turkey and hoped to find a way to create a “security zone” that would meet Turkey’s “legitimate” security interests.” Senior Pentagon officials visited Ankara this week and sought to try establish a clear line between Afrin and other Kurdish-held territory and between different YPG units. Major Adrian Rankine-Galloway, a Pentagon spokesman, told reporters that “the armed Kurdish groups in Afrin” are not part of the U.S.-backed coalition against Islamic State.

But some analysts say that distinction is false, and former U.S. envoy to Turkey James Jeffrey says there is “confusion and conflict” in Washington about what steps to take.

Gonul Tol, an analyst with the Middle East Institute, a Washington-based policy research organization, says that persuading Erdogan not to move on Manbij will likely prove extremely difficult. He argues one of the driving factors behind the offensive is Erdogan’s goal of “galvanizing [Turkish] nationalists ahead of critical 2019 elections.”

Syrian Kurds have accused both the U.S. and Russia of stepping aside when it comes to Afrin, which has an estimated population of more than 300,000 after having been swelled by refuges from other parts of war-torn Syria. Russian advisers were based in Afrin but were withdrawn by Moscow just days before Operation Olive Branch was launched. Erdogan claimed last week that he and Russian President Vladimir Putin have an agreement over the Turkish incursion.

A Kurdish official told al-Sharq al-Awsat, a Saudi-owned pan-Arab newspaper, that the Kremlin brokered a meeting between the YPG and the Syrian government 48 hours before the Turkish offensive. He said the Kurds were told to hand over Afrin to President Assad as a way to avoid a Turkish attack and it was when they refused that the Russian military advisers were removed from Afrin.

Russia has been wooing the Kurds but appears now to have chosen the Turks in the conflict with the Kurds. Russian analysts say Turkey is more important in Moscow’s plans for ending the Syria conflict in a way that benefits its ally Assad.

“Afrin’s defenders have a poor hand to play,” according to Aron Lund, an analyst at the Century Foundation, a New York-based think tank. He says that while the Turks risk getting bogged down during the offensive and the YPG could drag out an insurgency, the Syrian Kurds face a powerful foe in Turkey “whose goal is not to win concessions but to destroy it.” Kurdish leaders may have no option but “to negotiate with Moscow and Damascus, self-interested actors whose assistance will come at a steep price, if at all,” he says.

Operation Olive Branch is enjoying widespread public support in Turkey. Three of the country’s four main parties support the incursion amid a media frenzy backing the offensive. Ankara has moved against critics, and dozens who oppose the offensive, including at least five journalists, have been detained. Erdogan has pledged to “crush anyone who opposes our nationalist struggle.”

 
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The United States needs to withdraw from northern Syria’s Manbij region immediately, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Saturday.

President Tayyip Erdogan on Friday said Turkish forces would sweep Kurdish fighters from the Syrian border and could push all the way east to the frontier with Iraq, including Manbij – a move which risks a possible confrontation with U.S. forces allied to the Kurds.

Speaking to reporters, Cavusoglu also said Turkey wanted to see concrete steps by the United States to end its support for the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia.

Ankara said earlier it had been told by U.S. National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster that Washington would not provide the YPG with weapons anymore.
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The world marks Holocaust Remembrance Day on Saturday, the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz Nazi death camp in 1945.

The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington hosted officials from around the world to remember the genocide.

European Union Ambassador David O’Sullivan said that museums remembering the Holocaust are essential for future generations to learn about the past atrocities.

 

WATCH: EU Ambassador: New Generation Needs to Keep Memory Alive

“The new generation also needs people, stories and places to keep the memory alive. To make sure we keep the promise made at the end of the Holocaust — Never Again,” O’Sullivan said.

Museum officials also read a letter from Dr. Muhammad Al-Issa, secretary-general of the Muslim World League based in Saudi Arabia, who wrote, “Who in their right mind would accept, sympathize or even diminish the extent of this brutal crime?”

 

WATCH: Letter From Secretary General of Muslim World League

First lady Melania Trump was among those who toured the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Friday and tweeted that she experienced a “powerful and moving tour.” She posted a photograph of her lighting a candle at the Prayer Wall.

The U.N. Security Council announced Friday that it will visit the U.S. Holocaust Museum on Monday as part of a trip to Washington, where members will have lunch with President Donald Trump.

The White House on Friday recognized International Holocaust Remembrance Day with a message that said, “We acknowledge this dark stain on human history and vow to never let it happen again.”

The statement specifically mentioned the 6 million Jews killed by the Nazis, following criticism last year that it made no mention of Jews in its statement.

“Tomorrow (Saturday) marks the 73rd anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the Nazi death and concentration camp in Poland,” the statement said.

“We take this opportunity to recall the Nazis’ systematic persecution and brutal murder of 6 million Jewish people. In their death camps and under their inhuman rule, the Nazis also enslaved and killed millions of Slavs, Roma, gays, people with disabilities, priests and religious leaders, and others who courageously opposed their brutal regime,” the statement said.

WATCH: Saved by Ukrainian Family, Jewish Boy Lived to Become Nobel Laureate

Last year, the White House defended its omission of Jews from the statement with Hope Hicks, now the White House communications director, saying that “despite what the media reports, we are an incredibly inclusive group, and we took into account all of those who suffered.”

At the United Nations, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a statement Friday that “decades since the Second World War, we see the persistence of anti-Semitism and an increase in other forms of prejudice.”

He said the world remembers the 6 million Jews who died in the Holocaust and said, “All of us have a responsibility to quickly, clearly and decisively resist racism and violence.”
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A Moscow cinema has been warned after defying a government ban on showing The Death Of Stalin. (Please see related stories link for VOA story on “The Death of Stalin”) The black comedy was screened to a packed audience on January 25, and many said they didn’t find the satirical film offensive. (RFE/RL’s Russian Service)
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The United States added Russian officials and energy firms to a sanctions blacklist on Friday, days before details of further possible penalties against Moscow are due to be released.

Washington could release reports as early as Monday detailing the possibilities for expanding sanctions against Russia over its alleged meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, an accusation the Kremlin has repeatedly denied.

Russia is already under U.S. sanctions over its annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and support for separatist rebels fighting in eastern Ukraine.

The U.S. Treasury Department said it had added 21 people and nine companies to the sanctions list, including some that had been involved in the delivery of Siemens gas turbines to Crimea.

It said Friday’s announcement was not related to the reports due on Monday.

“Today’s action is part of Treasury’s continued commitment to maintain sanctions pressure on Russia,” the department said in a statement. “This action underscores the U.S. government’s opposition to Russia’s occupation of Crimea and firm refusal to recognize its attempted annexation of the peninsula.”

One of the people added to the list was Russian Deputy Energy Minister Andrey Cherezov, who was put under sanctions by the European Union over his role in the delivery of turbines to Crimea last year.

The list also now includes Sergey Topor-Gilka, head of the Russian engineering company Technopromexport, as well as multiple subsidiaries of oil producer Surgutneftegaz, the Treasury Department said.

A spokeswoman for Rostec, which is already subject to U.S. sanctions and is the parent company of Technopromexport, said the company regretted that the main U.S. main tool in international relations was pressure and not dialogue.

Reporting by Jack Stubbs and Gleb Stolyarov in Moscow and Patricia Zengerle in Washington; Editing by Kevin Liffey.
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Netherlands’ spy service broke into the computers used by a powerful Russian hacking group and may be sitting on evidence relating to the breach of the U.S. Democratic National Committee, a Dutch newspaper and television show jointly reported Friday.

Reports carried in the respected daily Volkskrant and the current affairs show Nieuwsuur say hackers working for the Dutch General Intelligence and Security Service penetrated the computers used by the group, often nicknamed Cozy Bear, in mid-2014 and watched them for at least a year, even managing to catch the hackers on camera.

Dutch officials declined comment; Interior Minister Kajsa Ollongren, interviewed by reporters in The Hague before the government’s weekly cabinet meeting, said she was “very happy that we have good security services in the Netherlands that do their work well. I can’t say anything about this case that has been published.”

Volkskrant and Nieuwsuur said that the Dutch spies used their access to help oust Cozy Bear from U.S. State Department computers in late 2014. Volkskrant said American spies were so grateful they sent the Dutch cake and flowers.

Cozy Bear would later be identified as one of two Russian government-linked hacking groups that broke in to the DNC ahead of the 2016 presidential election; the other is usually called Fancy Bear. Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike says the two groups operated independently.

Unmasking the Cozy Bear hackers would provide key evidence for investigators trying to unravel the DNC breach, but it may not dispel the mystery surrounding the leaks that followed.

A recent AP investigation found that all but one of the two dozen or so officials whose emails were published in the run-up to the 2016 election were targeted by Fancy Bear, suggesting a separate Russian intelligence operation may have been responsible.

Satter reported from London.
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Grocery shopping went a little nuts in France when a supermarket chain deeply discounted jars of Nutella.

Aficionados of the chocolate hazelnut spread jostled and fought each other when the Intermarché supermarkets offered the treat at a 70 percent discount.

“They are like animals. A woman had her hair pulled, an elderly lady took a box on her head, another had a bloody hand,” one customer told French media.

Videos posted on social media showed huge crowds gathered around pallets of Nutella, with people grabbing as many jars as they could carry.

In some stores, including in Ostricourt in northern France, police had to be called as scuffles broke out between customers.

In L’Horme, an employee told a newspaper that he saw a customer with a black eye in the crowd. “We were trying to get in between the customers, but they were pushing us,” he said.

France is the second-biggest consumer of Nutella, eating around 100 million jars per year, behind Germany.
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U.S. President Donald Trump has questioned whether peace talks between the Israelis and Palestinians will ever resume. He made the remarks in a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. As Henry Ridgwell reports, Trump is due to give a much-anticipated speech at the summit Friday.
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U.S. President Donald Trump has questioned whether peace talks between the Israelis and Palestinians will ever resume.

Trump made the remarks in a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where he accused the Palestinians of disrespecting the United States after Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas refused to meet with U.S. Vice President Mike Pence during his recent visit to the region.

Trump threatened Thursday to cut aid to the Palestinians.

“That money is on the table and that money is not going to them unless they sit down and negotiate peace,” he told reporters. “Because I can tell you that Israel does want to make peace, and they’re going to have to want to make peace too, or we’re going to have nothing to do with it any longer.”

WATCH: Trump on Palestinians

According to State Department figures, the U.S. provided slightly more than $290 million in foreign assistance for the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 2016. Separately, Washington contributed an additional $355 million to the U.N. agency that supports Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA. But this year, the U.S. has significantly cut its assistance to UNRWA, announcing a $60 million contribution.

Only a portion of U.S. funds go directly to the Palestinian Authority, with much of the assistance routed to nongovernmental groups and humanitarian partners working there.

By contrast, in 2016, Washington provided Israel with $3.1 billion in military aid. Under a 10-year bilateral military aid package signed under President Barack Obama in 2016, that amount will increase to $3.8 billion a year starting in 2019.

“No price tag can be put on the rights and dignity of any people,” Palestinian U.N. envoy Riyad Mansour said Thursday in New York. “They cannot be quashed by threats, intimidation or punitive action, and such attempts must be rejected by all who seek peace and justice and who truly believe in international law as the path for their realization.”

Mansour’s comments came during a U.N. Security Council meeting on the Middle East.

During the session, U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley slammed President Abbas as lacking the courage to forge peace with Israel.

“We will not chase after a Palestinian leadership that lacks what is needed to achieve peace,” Haley said. “To get historic results, we need courageous leaders.”

​​Atlantic ties

Earlier in Davos, Trump rejected what he called “false rumors” of differences with British Prime Minister Theresa May and promised to boost trade after Britain’s EU exit.

“I look forward to the discussions that will be taking place are going to lead to tremendous increases in trade between our two countries which is great for both in terms of jobs,” he said, adding that Britain and the United States are “joined at the hip when it comes to the military.”

There is nervousness that Trump’s “America First” diplomacy is about to shake-up the global system that underpins the Davos summit. Denmark’s Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen said many Europeans are hoping for a positive message.

“I hope he will send a message, of course it will be ‘America First’, but if he could add on ‘But not alone’, or ‘But America First and we need cooperation with the rest of the world’ or whatever, that could be nice, because I think everybody needs to realize, whether you are a leader from a small or medium-sized or big countries, that you can’t achieve what you want on your own. The world is faced with a lot of challenges, which can only be solved with close international cooperation,” Rasmussen said Thursday.

​Wealth distribution questioned

The general mood in Davos is upbeat, with the IMF forecasting synchronized global growth across 2018.  But behind the many closed doors, there is talk of danger ahead.  The background report to the WEF summit is titled “Fractures, Fears and Failures,” a reflection of growing global tension, says Inderjeet Parmar, professor of international politics at City University London.

“Even though international wealth and the wealth of states and the levels of economic growth and the GDPs of states have grown, the inequality of the distribution is having large scale political effects.”

The fortunes of the world’s wealthiest 500 billionaires rose by a quarter last year, while the poorest 50 percent of the world’s population did not increase their income.

Oxfam Executive Director Winnie Byanyima, in Davos for the summit, says it’s time for action. “I’m here to tell big business and politicians that this is not natural, that it’s their actions and their policies that have caused it, and they can reverse it.”

Trump is due to give the closing speech to the conference Friday.

“President Trump will be speaking to two audiences, the ones assembled in front of him, and his voter base at home.  And I have a strong feeling that he is going to give some strong words in order to show people back home that he has gone to the belly of the beast itself, of globalization, and told them that he stands for America and the American people,” said analyst Parmar.

Davos is braced for what could be a dramatic finale Friday.

Margaret Besheer at the United Nations contributed to this report.
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