Twelve years after the inaugural Earth Hour observance in Australia, countries around the world continue joining the grassroots gesture against manmade CO2 (carbon dioxide) emissions. This year in the Philippines, armed with lightsabers, fans of the movie Star Wars joined the world with a nod to a galaxy far, far away. Arash Arabasadi has more.
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Month: March 2019
German Train Car Arrives in New York for Auschwitz Exhibit
On a Sunday morning, a crane lowered a rusty remnant of the Holocaust onto tracks outside Manhattan’s Museum of Jewish Heritage — a vintage German train car like those used to transport men, women and children to Auschwitz and other Nazi death camps.
The windowless boxcar is among 700 Holocaust artifacts, most never before seen in the United States, which are being prepared for one of the largest exhibits ever on Auschwitz — a once ordinary Polish town called Oswiecim that the Nazis occupied and transformed into a human monstrosity.
The New York exhibit opens May 8, the day in 1945 when Germany surrendered and the camps were liberated.
German-made freight wagons like the one in the exhibit were used to deport people from their homes all around Europe. About 1 million Jews and nearly 100,000 others were gassed, shot, hanged or starved in Auschwitz out of a total of 6 million who perished in the Holocaust.
That fate awaited them after a long ride on the kind of train car that’s the centerpiece of the New York exhibit.
“There were 80 people squeezed into one wooden car, with no facilities, just a pail to urinate,” remembers Ray Kaner, a 92-year-old woman who still works as a Manhattan dental office manager. “You couldn’t lie down, so you had to sleep sitting, and it smelled.”
She and her sister had been forced to board the train in August 1944 in occupied Poland, after their parents died in the Lodz ghetto where Jews were held captive.
The Germans promised the sisters a better new life.
“We believed them, and we schlepped everything we could carry,” she said. “We still had great hope.”
Once in Auschwitz, “they took away whatever we carried,” and prisoners were beaten, stripped naked and heads shaved bald.
Titled “Auschwitz. Not long ago. Not far away,” the upcoming exhibit will transport visitors into the grisly faceoff between perpetrators and victims.
On display will be concrete posts from an Auschwitz fence covered in barbed and electrified wires; a gas mask used by the SS; a desk belonging to Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Hoss; and a dagger and helmet used by Heinrich Himmler, the chief architect of Hitler’s “final solution.”
The collection of prisoners’ personal items includes a comb improvised from scrap metal; a trumpet one survivor used to save his life by entertaining his captors; and tickets for passage on the St. Louis, a ship of refugees whom the United States refused to accept, sending them back to Europe where some were killed by the Nazis.
The materials are on loan from about 20 institutions worldwide, plus private collections, curated by Robert Jan van Pelt, a leading Auschwitz authority, and other experts in conjunction with the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in Poland and Musealia, a Spanish company that organizes traveling shows.
The New York one will run through Jan. 3.
The eight-decade-old box car brought to New York on a cargo ship came from a German auction, in terrible condition. Van Pelt’s team bought it and restored it.
“The dark, smelly car represents that moment of transition from the world of the living that people understood and trusted to the radically alien world of the camps where the doors opened and families were separated forever,” said van Pelt, whose relatives in Amsterdam lived down the street from Anne Frank’s family.
“The Nazis wanted to wipe out every last Jew in the world,” and at the end of a train trip, “this is where the last goodbyes were said.”
The exhibit items all belonged to somebody — most now gone, either because they were murdered in camps or survived and have since died. Some people who inherited artifacts came forward with stories attached to them.
Thousands of survivors live in New York City, among the last who can offer personal testimony.
And that’s why the exhibit is important, said real estate developer Bruce Ratner, the chairman of the museum’s board of trustees.
“While we had all hoped after the Holocaust that the international community would come together to stop genocide, mass murder and ethnic cleansing, these crimes continue and there are more refugees today than at any time since the Second World War,” said Ratner. “So my hope for this exhibit is that it motivates all of us to make the connections between the world of the past and the world of the present, and to take a firm stand against hate.”
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Zelenskiy Leads Poroshenko in First Round of Ukraine’s Elections
Comedian and political novice Volodymyr Zelensky was the top vote getter, ahead of incumbent president Petro Poroshenko, in Ukraine’s first round of presidential elections, according to exit polls Sunday, leading the two candidates into a run-off election.
Zelensky, a comedian who plays the role of the president in a television comedy series, was projected to win 30.4 percent of the vote, easily beating Poroshenko, in power since 2014, who earned 17.8 percent, according to the Central Election Commission’s report as of 6pm.
If no candidate wins more than half of the votes, the election will proceed to a run-off to be held on April 21.
“This is only the first step toward a great victory,” Zelensky told reporters after the initial results were released.
Zelenskiy is seeking to prove life can indeed imitate art. He in the protagonist of a long-running popular series called the “Servant of the People,” in which he plays a teacher who unexpectedly finds himself president after a student posts on YouTube one of his rants denouncing the elite.
President Petro Poroshenko had the support of just 13.7 percent of the voters, according to a pre-election poll by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology.
The 53-year-old billionaire dubbed the chocolate king because of his confectionery business has been accused by opponents of running schemes to buy votes, especially in small towns where the pull of political paternalism is strong.
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Center in Havana Opens to Preserve Hemingway’s Legacy
U.S. donors and Cuban builders have completed one of the longest-running joint projects between the two countries at a low point in bilateral relations.
Officials from the Boston-based Finca Vigia Foundation and Cuba’s National Cultural Heritage Council cut the ribbon Saturday evening on a state-of-the-art, $1.2 million conservation center on the grounds of Ernest Hemingway’s stately home on a hill overlooking Havana.
The center, which has been under construction since 2016, contains modern technology for cleaning and preserving a multitude of artifacts from the home where Hemingway lived in the 1940s and 1950s.
When he died in 1961, the author left approximately 5,000 photos, 10,000 letters and perhaps thousands of margin notes in roughly 9,000 books at the property.
“The laboratory we’re inaugurating today is the only one in Cuba with this capacity and it will allow us to contribute to safeguarding the legacy of Ernest Hemingway in Cuba,” said Grisell Fraga, director of the Ernest Hemingway Museum.
U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern, a Democrat from Massachusetts, spoke at the ceremony and called it a sign of the potential for U.S.-Cuban cooperation despite rising tensions between the Communist government and the Trump administration.
McGovern, who met with President Miguel Diaz-Canel and other Cuban officials during his visit, said that despite tensions over Venezuela, a Cuban ally, he still believed respectful dialogue was the most productive way of dealing with Cuba’s government.
The Trump administration has said it is trying to get rid of socialism in Latin America.
ПЦУ почала працювати в Словенії – посольство
Тим часом томос про автокефалію, наданий ПЦУ Вселенським патріархатом, встановлює, що вона як помісна українська церква може діяти тільки в межах території України
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Thousands March in Spain to Demand More Help for Rural Areas
Thousands of Spaniards gathered in Madrid on Sunday to demand that the government take steps to curb the depopulation of rural areas.
Sunday’s march under the slogan “The Revolt of the Emptied Spain” was organized by grassroots groups from rural areas in the southern European Union nation.
In Spain, 90 percent of the population is now concentrated in 30 percent of the country’s territory, namely in Madrid and the coastal areas. That leaves 10 percent of its people spread over large swaths of the interior.
On Friday, the government announced measures to improve internet networks in the countryside.
The march comes before Spain’s April 28 general election, when rural areas could play a key role in deciding if the Socialists stay in power. Spanish election law gives more weight to underpopulated areas.
Is Britain Heading for Constitutional Crisis?
At no time since the Great Depression of the 1930s, when a Labour leader had to break with his party and head a national unity government, has a British prime minister been so boxed in as Theresa May, say analysts.
British lawmakers, exhausted and on edge from the political turmoil of last week — when the country was meant to have left the European Union, but didn’t — fear this coming week could be more traumatic for a constitutional order that’s cracking under the stress of a Brexit impasse that’s also fracturing Britain’s two storied parties, the Conservatives and Labour.
Labour’s deputy leader, Tom Watson, outraged party activists by suggesting Saturday a national unity government may have to be formed to find a way out of the political dead-end.
“If needs must, we have to then do what’s right,” he said.
Former Conservative minister Nicky Morgan has also hinted that a national government might be the only option, if May declines to implement any alternative Brexit policy for lawmakers to vote on Monday in a second stage of so-called indicative voting.
Last week, for the first time since 1906, lawmakers seized control of the parliamentary agenda from the government, aided by the House Speaker, to debate 16 Brexit options. They voted in the end on eight, although none secured a majority.
But two came close — one calling for a second referendum and another for a so-called soft Brexit that would see Britain remaining in a customs union with the bloc. A third that would see an even closer relationship with the European Union also did fairly well and behind-the-scenes is reportedly picking up more promises of support.
May has reserved the right not to implement what the House of Commons decides, but could be forced by parliament to do so, a further overturning of constitutional practice. She still hopes to secure backing for her thrice-defeated and highly contentious Brexit withdrawal deal that’s anathema to a large group of hardline Conservative Brexiters and a Northern Irish party she relies on in her minority government.
No-deal Brexit
More than half of her Conservative lawmakers signed a letter Saturday insisting May decide to go for a no-deal Brexit and leave without any agreement with Brussels, a move that could wipe out 10 percent of Britain’s trade, according to economists, disrupt crucial supply chains and push Britain into a recession.
It would also leave up in the air the fate of 3.5 million Europeans living in Britain and as many as 1.5 million Britons living on the continental mainland.
But there is no majority in parliament for such a sharp break.
With all avenues seemingly leading to dead-ends, half her Cabinet is pushing for a general election, hoping it would return a parliament not so undecided. But the other half is adamantly opposed to a snap poll, pointing out that an early election she called two years ago crippled the Conservatives, losing them their majority in the Commons.
“It would be an act of extraordinary self-harm,” a minister told VOA. “How can we fight a general election when we are so bitterly divided and with a leader who’s promised to relinquish leadership soon. What will be the manifesto that can unite the party,” he said.
His fears may not be misplaced. Despite poisonous divisions in the Labour Party over Brexit, allegations of anti-semitism and over the ideology of Jeremy Corbyn, the most far-left leader the party has had since the 1940s, an opinion poll on Saturday put Labour five points ahead of the Conservatives.
If repeated in an election, that would leave Labour the largest party, although shy of an overall majority. It would likely form a coalition government or agree to voting arrangements with the pro-EU Scottish nationalists, Liberal Democrats and a new breakaway centrist party made up of Labour and Conservative defectors.
But it too has sharp Brexit differences, replicating the irreconcilable difficulties the Conservative government is finding impossible to overcome.
Few lawmakers and commentators now think Britain will escape the mess without wide-ranging and long-term constitutional and political wreckage. That could possibly draw the queen into the crisis, and right into the center of party politics, something modern-day monarchs have avoided as they are meant to stay above the political fray.
‘Nuclear option’
Two constitutional lawyers have advised the government it would have the legal right to ask the queen to withhold her royal assent to any bill foisted on the government by parliament. Stephen Laws, a former parliamentary counsel, and Richard Elkins, an Oxford University law professor, argue parliament would be abusing constitutional process and “the government might plausibly decide to advise Her Majesty not to assent.”
Ministers have tagged that approach a “nuclear option.” It would propel the monarchy onto a collision course with parliament, something not seen since the 18th century.
Exasperation is rising across the country that is angrily split down the middle over staying a member of the EU or quitting. The one thing uniting the nation is frustration bordering on contempt for the country’s political class.
Commentator Charles Moore, a former editor of the pro-Conservative Daily Telegraph, argues parliament members are putting themselves above a public vote that decided for Brexit.
But pro-EU commentators, while agreeing the constitutional order is at risk of unraveling, say voters were tricked and many who voted for Brexit had no idea that could put Britain outside the EU single market and customs union, something leading Brexit politicians promised wouldn’t happen.
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Денісова отримала понад 200 звернень через порушення виборчих прав
Прес-служба Уповноваженої Верховної Ради з прав людини Людмили Денісової повідомляє, що омбудсмен отримала 218 телефонних звернень і 21 електронне звернення від виборців станом на 13 годину дня.
На брифінгу Денісова уточнила, що 40% звернень стосуються реєстру.
«В списках виборців допущені неточності, технічні помилки, описки в даті народження, в адресі проживання виборця. Таких у нас 40%, це 114 тільки сьогодні звернулося. Ми радимо нашим громадянам звертатися до голови ДВК, контролюємо це питання, коли вони звертаються. Всі, хто звернувся до 14 години, виборче право реалізували і проголосували. Потім – немає у списках виборців, але тут вже складніше питання, тому що зараз вже нічого не можна зробити, тільки, вже якщо буде другий тур, звернутися до відділу реєстру і встановити, щоб там була в списках ця людина занесена», – повідомила вона.
Читайте також: Поліція: надійшло 649 заяв про порушення на виборах
Крім того, Денісова зазначила, що деякі дільниці відкривалися з запізненням, а низка дільниць непристосовані для людей з інвалідністю.
Раніше Центральна виборча комісія повідомила, що три виборчі дільниці відкрилися з запізненням, але наразі всі вони працюють.
В Україні 31 березня відбувається голосування на чергових виборах президента країни. Голосування закінчиться о 20:00. У бюлетень для голосування внесено прізвища 39 кандидатів.
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У ЦВК дозволили використовувати в Ізмаїлі печатку з невідповідним номером «як виняток»
Центральна виборча комісія надала роз’яснення з приводу випадку в Ізмаїлі, де номер печатку дільничної виборчої комісії не відповідав номеру дільниці. Згідно з повідомленням ЦВК, окружна виборча комісія територіального округу №143 (Ізмаїл) повідомила, що виявила невідповідність номеру на раніш виданій печатці на одній із виборчих дільниць номеру дільниці. Номер печатки – 51002, номер дільниці – 511002.
«Комісія надала дозвіл вказаній дільничній виборчій комісії та окружній виборчій комісії з виборів Президента України територіального виборчого округу № 143 для забезпечення проведення голосування, підрахунку голосів виборців на цій виборчій дільниці під час складання протоколу про підсумки голосування на виборах Президента України в межах цього округу використовувати та враховувати, як виняток, раніше виготовлену та передану окружною виборчою комісією ТВО № 143 печатку, а саме – із зазначенням номеру виборчої дільниці на печатці вказаної дільничної виборчої комісії: «Звичайна виборча дільниця № 510002» «Територіальний виборчий округ № 143», – йдеться в роз’ясненні.
Читайте також: Спостерігачі фіксують порушення в розміщенні даних про кандидатів
У ЦВК додають: в разі другого туру печатку використовувати не будуть, після першого туру її мають повернути окружній виборчій комісії округу і знищити.
Заступник голови ЦВК Олег Конопольський повідомив на брифінгу, що на дільниці триває голосування.
Зранку дільниця в Ізмаїлі не відкрилася вчасно, оскільки було виявлено невідповідність між номером печатки і номером дільниці.
В Україні 31 березня відбувається перший тур чергових виборів президента країни. Голосування закінчиться о 20:00. У бюлетень для голосування внесено прізвища 39 кандидатів.
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New Exhibit Commemorates 50 Years of Gay Rights Movement
A groundbreaking new exhibit at the Newseum in Washington marks the 50th anniversary of a police raid on a gay bar in New York’s Greenwich Village, and highlights key moments in the modern gay rights movement in America that many believe was born out of that historic event. For some members of the LGBTQ community, the exhibit is deeply personal. VOA’s Julie Taboh has more.
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За перші дві години виборів зареєстровано 25 заяв про порушення – МВС
З початку дня поліція отримала 25 заяв і повідомлень, пов’язаних із виборами, повідомляє Міністерство внутрішніх справ.
Згідно з повідомленням, найчастіше звертаються до поліцейських у Києві – сім разів. Крім того:
у Закарпатській області – чотири звернення
у Кіровоградській – три
у Вінницькій, Сумській, Запорізькій, Луганській – по два
у Київській, Одеській, Черкаській – по одному
Правоохоронці уточнюють, що звернення зокрема йдеться про незаконну агітацію, підкуп виборців, фотографування бюлетенів і спробу винести бюлетень з виборчої дільниці.
В Україні та на закордонних виборчих дільницях 31 березня триває голосування на виборах президента України. На виборчій дільниці в Австралії голосування вже завершилося. Дільниці в Україні працюватимуть до 20 вечора.
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Бокс: Олександр Гвоздик захистив титул чемпіона світу за версією WBC
31-річний українець Олександр Гвоздик захистив титул чемпіона світу з боксу за версією WBC у напівважкій вазі. Технічним нокаутом у п’ятому раунді харків’янин переміг представника Франції Дуду Енгумбу.
Поєдинок відбувся в американській Філадельфії.
Для Гвоздика це був перший захист титулу, здобутого в грудні 2018 року. Тоді українець нокаутував канадця Адоніса Стівенсона. Тепер на професійному рингу Олександр Гвоздик має 17 перемог, жодного разу він не йшов після бою переможеним.
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Slovaks Elect Newcomer Caputova as President
A liberal environmental activist has been elected as the first female president of Slovakia.
Relative newcomer Zuzana Caputova had 58 percent of the vote with almost 95 percent of returns counted in Saturday’s runoff election, topping European Commission Vice President Maros Sefcovic, who had 42 percent.
Sefcovic conceded defeat and congratulated his rival.
“I’m extremely happy about the result,” Caputova said. “It’s an extremely strong mandate for me,” she said.
“Zuzana, Zuzana,” her supporters chanted.
Political newcomer
Caputova, 45, has little experience in politics and attracted voters who are appalled by corruption and mainstream politics.
She only recently became vice chairman of the Progressive Slovakia, a party so new it has not had a chance to run in parliamentary elections. Caputova resigned from her party post after winning the first round of the presidential vote two weeks ago.
She becomes Slovakia’s fifth president since the country gained independence after the split of Czechoslovakia in 1993.
Rising star in Slovakia
The president of the nation of 5.4 million people has the power to pick the prime minister, appoint Constitutional Court judges and veto laws. Parliament can override the veto with a simple majority, however. The government is led by the prime minister, who possesses most executive powers.
A lawyer by profession, Caputova is a rising star of Slovak politics. She became known for leading a successful fight against a toxic waste dump in her hometown of Pezinok, for which she received the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize in 2016.
A divorced mother of two, she is in favor of gay rights and opposes a ban on abortion in this conservative Roman Catholic country.
She was also part of a campaign in 2017 that led to the annulment of pardons granted by former authoritarian Prime Minister Vladimir Meciar.
Sefcovic, 52, is a career diplomat who was supported by the leftist Smer-Social Democracy party led by former populist Prime Minister Robert Fico, a major force in Slovak politics that was tarnished by corruption scandals. He campaigned on a traditional family values ticket.
Popular incumbent Andrej Kiska, who did not stand for a second term, backed Caputova in the vote.
Street protests of corruption
The two had supported the massive anti-government street protests last year triggered by the slayings of an investigative reporter and his fiancee that led to the fall of Fico’s coalition government. Investigators have linked Jan Kuciak’s death to his work probing possible widespread government corruption.
Fico’s party suffered losses in local elections in November, the first votes since the largest demonstrations in the country since the anti-Communist Velvet Revolution of 1989.
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Україна перейшла на літній час
У ніч на 31 березня Україна перейшла на літній час. О 3:00 за київським часом стрілки годинників перевели на одну годину вперед.
Сьогодні в Україні відбудуться вибори президента. Дільниці розпочнуть роботу о 8:00 вже за літнім часом. Працюватимуть вони до 20:00.
Зміна часу в Україні відбувається разом з усім Європейським союзом і більшістю країн Європи двічі на рік: в останню неділю березня країна переходить на літній час, а кожної останньої неділі жовтня повертається на зимовий, тобто свій поясний час.
У 2011 році Верховна Рада України намагалася скасувати переведення годинників на зимовий час, щоб повторити схожий крок Росії, але ця постанова була скасована.
В Україні літній час уперше формально з’явився 1916 року – його запровадила Австро-Угорщина, до якої входила західна частина України. 1917 року його запровадив і Тимчасовий уряд Російської республіки, до якої тоді належала інша, більша частина України.
Після низки радянських експериментів із часом літній час стали знову регулярно застосовувати в Україні як на той час частині СРСР із 1981 року.
На початку 1990-х років Україна експериментувала з відмовою від сезонного переходу на літній час, але потім відновила його 1992 року «з урахуванням порядку обчислення часу, що діє в країнах Європи», і «згідно з рекомендаціями Європейської економічної комісії ООН».
Уперше перехід на літній час здійснили в кількох європейських країнах у 1916 році. Ідея полягає у кращому використанні світлого часу дня, а відтак в економії – в часи Першої світової війни йшлося про заощадження вугілля, в пізніші часи про електроенергію. Водночас такої економії практично немає в місцевостях, розташованих ближче до екватора, та у приполярних регіонах, де сезонний час не має економічного сенсу.
Практика щорічного переходу на літній час і повернення на поясний застосовується зараз приблизно в 60 країнах, на всій їхній площі чи частково. При цьому близько 140 країн або ніколи не користувалися сезонним часом, або відмовилися від такої практики.
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Eiffel Tower, Other Sites Go Dark for Earth Hour
The Eiffel Tower was plunged into darkness late on Saturday as the city of Paris switched off the lights on its best-known tourist attraction to mark this
year’s Earth Hour.
The 13th annual edition of the global event, organized by environmental group World Wildlife Fund to push for action on climate change and other man-made threats to the planet, called for nearly 200 major landmarks around the world to be unplugged at 8:30 p.m. local time.
They included New York’s Empire State Building, the Christ the Redeemer statue in Brazil and the Sydney Opera House.
Ahead of the Eiffel Tower shutdown, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo and Junior Environment Minister Brune Poirson appeared at the foot of the 130-year-old edifice for a public discussion on global warming and declining biodiversity.
Earth Hour has grown steadily since the first event in 2007 and is now marked in more than 180 countries and territories, according to its organizers.
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Crimean Tatars’ Leader: Russian Detentions Aim at Purging Followers
Moscow’s recent raids in Simferopol are part of a broader effort to suppress democratic activists in the Russian-controlled Black Sea Peninsula. That’s the assertion being made by Refat Chubarov, chairman of the Mejlis, the Crimean Tatars’ self-governing body that Russia has outlawed.
Crimean Tatars, who are predominantly Muslim, confronted Russian security forces on Wednesday after 20 people were detained in what Russian officials called a sweep for suspected Islamist militants.
Ukraine’s representative to the European Union, Ambassador Mykola Tochytskyi, immediately called on European partners to “harshly and decisively” condemn the “illegal” searches of homes and arrests, triggering broad international condemnation by U.S. and EU representatives who believe Crimean Tatars are being targeted for speaking out against Russian rule in the territorially disputed region.
“As I see it, one of the main reasons why we’ve had the record-high number of people arrested in one day last Wednesday — for all five years since the occupation of Crimea — is the desire of Russian occupants to threaten the community of Crimean Tatars as much as they can,” Chubarov told VOA’s Russian service. “It’s the desire to push the Crimean Tatars out. I don’t really see any other explanation of this.”
According to Chubarov, Russian security forces not only raided private homes but also detained any local activists who were attending court hearings in support of Ukrainians and Tatars who’ve been jailed without sentencing.
“They arrested any activists,” he said. “Even the ones who stood next to the court building in Simferopol during the two-day trial of jailed Ukrainian sailors, the ones who were livestreaming everything.
“Thanks to them, the international community and the society has learned about what’s happening in Crimea,” he added. “Put simply, they arrested the most active people, which allows me to infer that they’re attempting to isolate everything that’s happening in Crimea from the outside world and, at the same time — thanks to the large number of arrests — they’re also sending a very clear message to the Crimean Tatars: ‘If you don’t like it here, leave.’ ”
The message, Chubarov said, was reiterated by pro-Russian Crimean Prime Minister Sergei Aksyonov, who prior to the 2014 annexation had been an obscure figure in local politics. His Russian Unity party holds only a trio of seats in the regional legislature.
“Aksyonov openly talked about it in a YouTube interview, in which he said that the Council of Ministers of Crimea fully supports the FSB’s attempt to put an end to radical underground organizations,” said Chubarov. “He finished the interview by saying that anyone who doesn’t like Russian Crimea can leave and live happily in other countries. Basically, Aksyonov openly voiced what Moscow is aiming to achieve but doesn’t say publicly.”
Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry immediately protested the arrests, expressing concern that the Russian occupation authorities again chose the so-called “Hizb ut-Tahrir ban” as a pretext for searches.
Russian security forces have targeted members of the Hizb ut-Tahrir group ever since Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 in a move that Ukraine and almost all of the world view as illegal. The Islamist group is not banned in Ukraine, but Russia and several other ex-Soviet nations consider it to be a terrorist organization.
The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry decried the raids as human rights violations that may represent the start of a new wave of persecution against Crimean Tatars.
As AFP reported, the majority of Crimean Tatars have refused to renounce their Ukrainian citizenship and many are planning to vote in the first round of Sunday’s presidential poll.
This story originated in VOA’s Russian service. Some information in this report came from AFP.
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Stones Postpone Tour as Jagger Seeks Medical Treatment
The Rolling Stones are postponing their latest tour so Mick Jagger can receive medical treatment.
The band announced Saturday that Jagger was told by doctors “he cannot go on tour at this time.” The band added that Jagger “is expected to make a complete recovery so that he can get back on stage as soon as possible.”
No more details about 75-year-old Jagger’s condition were provided.
The Stones’ No Filter Tour was expected to start April 20 in Miami.
Jagger says in the statement he hates letting the fans down but he’s “looking forward to getting back on stage as soon as I can.”
Tour promoters AEG Presents and Concerts West advise ticketholders to hold on to their existing tickets because will be valid for the rescheduled dates.
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Jackson, Nicks Enter Rock Hall of Fame, Along With 5 British Bands
Stevie Nicks, who became the first woman inducted twice into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and Janet Jackson, the latest member of the Jackson clan to enter the hall, called for other women to join them in music immortality on a night they were honored with five all-male British bands.
Jackson issued her challenge just before leaving the stage of Brooklyn’s Barclays Center. “Rock and Roll Hall of Fame,” she said, “in 2020, induct more women.”
Neither Jackson or Nicks were around at the end of the evening when another Brit, Ian Hunter, led an all-star jam at the end to “All the Young Dudes.” The Bangles’ Susanna Hoffs was the only woman onstage.
Five British bands
During the five-hour ceremony, Bryan Ferry of Roxy Music thanked multiple bass players and album cover designers, the Cure’s Robert Smith proudly wore his mascara and red lipstick a month shy of his 60th birthday and two of Radiohead’s five members showed up for trophies.
During Def Leppard’s induction, Rick Allen was moved to tears by the audience’s standing ovation when singer Joe Elliott recalled the drummer’s perseverance following a 1985 accident that cost him an arm.
Jackson wanted to be a lawyer
Jackson followed her brothers Michael and the Jackson 5 as inductees. She said she wanted to go to college and become a lawyer growing up, but her late father Joe had other ideas for her.
“As the youngest in my family, I was determined to make it on my own,” she said. “I was determined to stand on my own two feet. But never in a million years did I expect to follow in their footsteps.”
She encouraged Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, producers of her breakthrough “Control” album and most of her vast catalog, to stand in Brooklyn’s Barclays Center for recognition, as well as booster Questlove. She thanked Dick Clark of “American Bandstand” and Don Cornelius of “Soul Train,” along with her choreographers including Paula Abdul.
Jackson was inducted by an enthusiastic Janelle Monae, whose black hat and black leather recalled some of her hero’s past stage looks. She said Jackson had been her phone’s screen-saver for years as a reminder to be focused and fearless in how she approached art.
Nicks blueprint for success
Nicks was the night’s first induction. She is already a member of the hall as a member of Fleetwood Mac, but only the first woman to join 22 men, including all four Beatles members, to have been honored twice by the rock hall for the different stages of their career.
Nicks offered women a blueprint for success, telling them her trepidation in first recording a solo album while a member of Fleetwood Mac and encouraging others to match her feat.
“I know there is somebody out there who will be able to do it,” she said, promising to talk often of how she built her solo career. “What I am doing is opening up the door for other women.”
Radiohead
David Byrne inducted Radiohead, noting he was flattered the band named itself after one of his songs. He said their album “Kid A” was the one that really hooked him, and he was impressed Radiohead could be experimental in both their music and how they conduct business.
“They’re creative and smart in both areas, which was kind of a rare combination for artists, not just now but anytime,” he said.
With only drummer Philip Selway and guitarist Ed O’Brien on hand, Radiohead didn’t perform; there was a question of whether any of them would show up given the group’s past ambivalence about the hall. But both men spoke highly of the honor.
“This is such a beautifully surreal evening for us,” said O’Brien. “It’s a big (expletive) deal and it feels like it. … I wish the others could be here because they would be feeling it.”
The Cure
The Cure’s Smith has been a constant in a band of shifting personnel, and he stood onstage for induction Friday with 11 past and current members. Despite their goth look, the Cure has a legacy of pop hits, and performed three of them at Barclays, “I Will Always Love You,” “Just Like Heaven” and “Boys Don’t Cry.”
Visibly nervous, Smith called his induction a “very nice surprise” and shyly acknowledged the crowd’s cheers. “It’s been a fantastic thing, it really has,” he said. “We love you, too.”
Def Leppard
Def Leppard sold tons of records, back when musicians used to do that, with a heavy metal sound sheened to pop perfection on songs like “Photograph” and “Pour Some Sugar on Me.” They performed them in a set that climaxed the annual ceremony.
Singer Joe Elliott stressed the band’s working-class roots, thanking his parents and recalling how his father gave them 150 pounds to make their first recording in 1978.
Besides Allen’s accident, the band survived the 1991 death of guitarist Steve Clark. Elliott said there always seemed to be a looming sense of tragedy around the corner for the band, but “we wouldn’t let it in.”
Roxy Music
Roxy Music, led by the stylish Ferry, performed a five-song set that included hits “Love is the Drug,” “More Than This” and “Avalon.” (Brian Eno didn’t show for the event).
Simon LeBon and John Taylor of Duran Duran inducted them, with Taylor saying that hearing Roxy Music in concert at age 14 showed him what he wanted to do with his life.
“Without Roxy Music, there really would be no Duran Duran,” he said.
The soft-spoken Ferry thanked everyone from a succession of bass players to album cover designers.
“We’d like to thank everyone for this unexpected honor,” he said.
The Zombies
The Zombies, from rock ’n’ roll’s original British invasion, were the veterans of the night. They made it despite being passed over in the past, but were gracious in their thanks of the rock hall. They performed hits “Time of the Season,” “Tell Her No” and “She’s Not There.”
Zombies lead singer Rod Argent noted that the group had been eligible for the hall for 30 years but the honor had eluded them.
“To have finally passed the winning post this time — fantastic!”
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In Elections, Turkey’s Opposition Hopes to Capitalize on Erdogan’s Woes
On Sunday Turkey holds critical local elections, with control of the country’s main cities up for grabs. With inflation soaring and recession threatening, the election may pose President Recep Tayyip Erdogan biggest challenge.
A week ahead of Sunday’s polls Erdogan rallied hundreds of thousands in his hometown of Istanbul, in a bid to consolidate his voting base.
Even though Erdogan is not up for election, he is leading the campaign, aware his AK Party’s more than decade-long grip on most of Turkey’s main cities is under threat.
Since Erdogan won Istanbul’s mayorship in 1994, a victory that served as a springboard for him to dominate Turkish politics, the city has been his unassailable power base. However, the latest opinion polls indicate the outcome of Istanbul local elections is too close call.
‘All the poverty’
In Istanbul’s Gungoren district, people line up for state-subsidized food in a small local park, which is overshadowed by a vast, idle construction site.
“I see Gungoren as worse now, then how it once was. Is that right?” said CHP Istanbul mayoral candidate Ekrem Imamoglu, addressing a crowd from the roof of his campaign bus.
“Yes,” shout the people, waving CHP flags.
“All the poverty that a person can experience exists here,” Imamoglu said, “there are no green areas, there is no social life, it is a district that is left deprived of all the richness of life. We will take care of that.”
Gungoren in the past strongly backed Erdogan’s AK Party, but people are angry.
“We are retired people, by the 15th of the month our pension is finished, after that we are hungry,” said Seniye, who wears a religious headscarf.
Pensioners hurting
There is still strong support for Erdogan by people who believe AKP can still deliver.
“We are very hopeful about the elections. We just came here to see who is this Imamoglu because our path and choice is solid: We say AK Party,” said one man, who did not want to give his name.
With the Istanbul local election the closest in decades, the outcome could be in the hands of the pro-Kurdish HD Party.
HDP strategy
Erdogan accuses the HDP of being a terrorist party, claiming it’s linked to the outlawed Kurdish separatist group the PKK, a charge the party denies.
Since the 2015 collapse of peace talks with the PKK, thousands of HDP officials have been arrested, along with elected mayors, parliamentary deputies, and its leaders.
Ahead of the local elections, the HDP says the crackdown has intensified, particularly in western cities.
The growing pressure saw the party, in a surprise move, decide not to contest mayoral elections in Turkey’s main western cities, focusing its efforts in the predominantly Kurdish region.
“This pressure we are facing of arrests means we have to come up with new methods to resist,” said Ertugrul Kurkcu, honorary president of the HDP.
“That is why in the seven main western cities outside the Kurdish region, we are calling on our supporters to vote for the opposition to help voters defeat Tayyip Erdogan,” he said.
He said “our supporters are voting for the opposition not because they like them, but for the strategic reason of defeating Erdogan.”
WATCH: Turkey’s Opposition Hopes to Capitalize on Erdogan’s Woes
Second largest opposition party
The HDP is Turkey’s second largest opposition party and accounts for as much as 10 percent of the vote in Turkey’s main cities. However, it is far from certain that all its party supporters will heed their leadership’s call to back the CHP opposition.
“The HDP’s supporters, there are secular people, liberals and of course in the party, there are conservative, religious, and rightist Kurds,” said professor Baris Doster of Marmara University.
“I think that the liberals, the seculars, the social democrat supporters of HDP, they will vote for the opposition CHP,” he said. “The conservatives, the rightist voters of the HDP, will vote for Erdogan’s party, or they will stay at home.”
The HDP is working hard to persuade its supporters to go to the polls Sunday and vote against Erdogan’s AKP.
“Some supporters were unhappy about the decision not to stand for office,” said Gul Demir HDP’s co-leader of Istanbul’s Kadikoy district.
“However, I believe in this election campaign period we could explain ourselves to our base. In Turkish we have a saying, ‘great minds think alike.’ What is obvious is that we have entered a very heavy fascist system. It feels like the last exit before the bridge.
“If we lose these elections, if we don’t strike a blow to Erdogan, I don’t believe there will be elections in Turkey again,” Demir said.
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Turkey’s Opposition Hopes to Capitalize on Erdogan’s Woes at Polls
On Sunday, Turkish voters go to the polls in critical local elections, in which control of the country’s main cities are up for grabs. With inflation soaring and the country in recession, this election is set to pose a big challenge for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling party. Dorian Jones reports from Istanbul.
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Syrian Immigrants, Now Turkish Citizens, Ready Vote in Elections
More than 3.5 million Syrian refugees migrated to Turkey since the Syrian crisis began in 2011. In January, Turkish Minister of Interior Suleyman Soylu said that nearly 80,000 of those refugees have become naturalized citizens of Turkey. Roughly 53,000 of which are able to participate in Turkey’s elections Sunday. VOA’s Tan Cetin spoke to two Syrian-born Turkish citizens to find out what factors play a role in their voting decision and filed this report narrated by Bezhan Hamdard.
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Agnes Varda, French New Wave Pioneer, Dies at 90
Agnes Varda, the French New Wave pioneer who for decades beguiled, challenged and charmed moviegoers in films that inspired generations of filmmakers, has died. She was 90.
Varda’s production company, Cine-Tamaris, said Varda died early morning Friday at her home in Paris from cancer.
With a two-tone bowl haircut, the Belgian-born Varda was a spirited, diminutive figure who towered over more than a half century of moviemaking. Her first film, made at the age of 27, “La Pointe Courte,” earned her the nickname Grandmother of the New Wave, even though she — the sole woman among the movement — was a contemporary of its participants, including Jean-Luc Godard and Jacques Demy, whom she later married.
A photographer-turned-filmmaker, Varda’s films fluctuated between fiction and documentary, often blurring the line in between. Her 1962 breakthrough, “Cleo From 5 to 7,” followed a glamorous woman (Corinne Marchand) in real time across Paris while she awaited results of a cancer exam. In her 2017 Oscar nominated road trip “Faces Places,” she traversed the French countryside with the street artist JR, pasting giant images of people they encountered on building facades.
“Life comes through the frame and through the stock. It’s like a filter,” Varda said in an interview in 2017. “I feel I am an artist but I am a movie maker. I make a film with my hands. I love the editing, I love the mixing. It’s a tool to make other people exist. It’s giving understanding between people.”
Varda worked almost right up to her death, releasing the scrapbook documentary “Varda by Agnes” earlier this year. She had originally intended her 2008 cinematic memoir “Beaches by Agnes” to be her swan song but, to her surprise, ended up with another decade of work. “I’m 90 and I don’t care,” she says into the camera in “Varda by Agnes.”
In 2015, Varda was given an honorary Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. In 2017, she was given an honorary Academy Award. But she was more content, she said, “in the margins.” “I’m flattered,” she said of the Oscar, “but not that much.”
Varda’s films quickly became feminist landmarks and she a champion of women behind the camera. One of the only female filmmakers in France when she started, she led an insurgency that continued, in greater number, through her life. At the 2018 Cannes Film Festival, she helped preside over a protest for gender equality on the red carpet steps of the festival’s central Palais with 81 other women.
At the premiere of what she called her “feminist musical,” “One Sings, the Other Doesn’t,” in 1977, she introduced “a film about women who were also people.” Her “Vagabond,” which won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1985, followed a young female drifter (Sandrine Bonnaire) discovered dead in a freezing ditch.
“When I started, my point was not to be a woman,” said Varda. “I wanted to do radical cinema.”
Varda’s death was immediately felt across the movie industry. The Cannes Film Festival said: “The place she occupied is irreplaceable. Agnes loved images, words and people. She’s one of those whose youth will never fade.” “Moonlight” filmmaker Barry Jenkins recalled a legend whose “life and work were undeniably fused.”
Arlette Varda was born in Brussels, Belgium on May 30, 1928 to a French mother and Greek father. Varda, who later changed her name to Agnes, started as a photographer after studying literature and arts. In 1951, she was appointed official photographer of the Theatre National Populaire, and remained in that position for the next decade.
In 1954, well before Godard and Francois Truffaut became the emblematic figures of the New Wave, Varda’s first movie, “La Pointe Courte,” followed a couple going through a crisis in the small port of Sete on the Mediterranean coast. The movie was cut by Alain Resnais but was regarded as too radical at the time and only had a limited release. Varda contrasted the young couple’s story with the local villagers’ struggle to survive, eventually linking the two seemingly disparate ways of life.
She deliberately used a real fishing village, wanting to give the film the look of a documentary. “I’ve always been using reality as a texture to understand better,” she said. “I like for stories to look true.”
She made several documentary shorts, but inadequate funds prevented Varda from making her next feature, “Cleo From 5 to 7,” until 1961. Backed by French businessman Georges de Beauregard, who had supported Jean-Luc Godard’s “Breathless,” the film studied Cleo’s evolvement from a shallow pop star to an authentic human being capable of understanding pain in herself and others.
“I obliged myself to follow the time. Ninety minutes, one after another. Real time and real geography,” said Varda. “I filmed all the steps, all the streets. What she does, it could be retraced. I gave myself something difficult because inside the difficulty, I wanted to hear her heart beating.”
The widely hailed “Cleo” built anticipation for her next film, “Happiness,” which won the Silver Bear award at the 1965 Berlin Festival.
Varda married Demy, the “Umbrellas of Cherbourg” director, in 1962 and two were married until his death in 1990. They worked separately but alongside each other, regularly occupying opposite sides of the courtyard of their Paris home.
The filmmaking couple also spent several years in Hollywood in the late `60s. Demy made “Model Shop” there while Varda befriended Jim Morrison of the Doors (she was one of just a handful of people to attend Morrison’s 1971 funeral in Paris’ Pere Lachais cemetery), filmed the Los Angeles-set “Lions Love” and interviewed the imprisoned Black Panther leader Huey Newton for the 1968 documentary “Black Panthers.”
She and Demy had two children together: Mathieu Demy and Rosalie Varda, who both found career in French filmmaking. Varda is survived by both.
Demy’s death fueled Varda’s late period of documentaries, including several heartfelt tributes to her husband including 1991’s “Jacquot de Nantes.”
“I had to stay alive even though he died. I made two films about him. Then I went off and I did cinema. Fiction films are beautiful but documentaries put you at peace with the world. You try to make the world understandable, make the people come near to you.”
One of those documentaries, the 2000 film “The Gleaners and I,” is considered by some her masterwork. Documenting people who live off the garbage thrown out by others, it’s a meditation on waste and reuse, art and death.
“Filming, especially a documentary, is gleaning,” Varda told IndieWire. “Because you pick what you find. You bend. You go around. You are curious.”
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Справу Рубана і Савченко передали до Верховного суду
Колегія суддів палати з розгляду кримінальних справ Київського апеляційного суду направила справу Володимира Рубана і Надії Савченко до Верховного суду для визначення підсудності.
Як пояснюють у прес-службі суду, таким чином колегія частково задовольнила подання виконувача обов’язків голови Солом’янського районного суду про визначення територіальної підсудності кримінальної справи.
«Київський апеляційний суд не в праві вирішувати питання про направлення кримінального провадження за обвинуваченням Савченко Надії Вікторівни та Рубана Володимира Володимировича з одного суду до іншого, оскільки, відповідно до обвинувального акту, кримінальні правопорушення вчинялись в межах територіальної юрисдикції різних апеляційних судів», – йдеться в поясненні суду.
25 лютого стало відомо, що справу Савченко й Рубана мав розглядати Солом’янський районний суд Києва.
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Володимира Рубана затримали 8 березня 2018 року на КПВВ «Майорське». Його підозрюють у незаконному поводженні зі зброєю і підготовці терактів, зокрема збройних замахів на державних діячів і політичних лідерів, серед яких президент України Петро Порошенко, міністр внутрішніх справ Арсен Аваков, екс-прем’єр-міністр Арсеній Яценюк і секретар РНБО Олександр Турчинов.
Пізніше в цій справі заарештували народного депутата Надію Савченко. Їй інкримінують злочини, передбачені статтями Кримінального кодексу «дії, спрямовані на насильницьку зміну чи повалення конституційного ладу або на захоплення державної влади», «готування до злочину», «вчинення злочину групою осіб, групою осіб за попередньою змовою, організованою групою або злочинною організацією», «посягання на життя державного чи громадського діяча», «терористичний акт», «створення терористичної групи чи терористичної організації», «незаконне поводження зі зброєю, бойовими припасами або вибуховими речовинами».
Савченко заявляла, що планувала не теракт, а лише «політичну провокацію». Рубан усі звинувачення відкидав.
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У НКРЕКП розповіли, скільки потужностей відновлюваної енергетики запрацювало з початку року
За перший квартал 2019 року (з січня по кінець березня) в Україні запрацювали генерувальні потужності на 861,1 мегаватів відновлюваної енергетики, повідомили в Національній комісії, що здійснює регулювання у сфері енергетики і комунальних послуг. Такі дані містить звіт НКРЕКП про розвиток сектору відновлюваних джерел енергії.
Це, за даними НКРЕКП, у 5,4 рази більше, ніж за аналогічний період 2018 року. 99,5% нових потужностей складають вітряні і сонячні електростанції.
«У першому кварталі 2019 року НКРЕКП встановила «зелений» тариф для 67 об’єктів електроенергетики (серед яких сонячні електростанції – 58 об’єкти, вітряні електростанції – чотири об’єкти, біогаз/біомаса – чотири об’єкти, малі гідроелектростанції – один об’єкт)», – мовиться в заяві регулятора.
У комісії зазначають, що лідером із упровадження відновлюваної енергетики за підсумками кварталу стала Дніпропетровська область – 258,6 мегаватів, усі – сонячні електростанції.
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Вибухи в Кропивницькому: прокуратура повідомила про двох підозрюваних
Кіровоградська місцева прокуратура оголосила про підозру керівнику підприємства «Елан-Ві» та головному інженеру цієї компанії, повідомляє прес-служба прокуратури.
Йдеться про порушення за частиною 2 статті 272 Кримінального кодексу: порушення правил безпеки під час виконання робіт з підвищеною небезпекою, яке спричинило загибель людей або інші тяжкі наслідки.
Як зазначили у прокуратурі, наразі готують клопотання до суду про обрання запобіжного заходу підозрюваним у вигляді тримання під вартою.
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«Зауважимо, що інженера правоохоронцями було затримано в порядку статті 208 КПУ України при спробі покинути територію України. Керівник підприємства до цього часу перебуває в лікарняному закладі під охороною», – йдеться в заяві.
Працівники прокуратури закликають людей, які вважають себе постраждалими від вибухів, звернутися до цього відомства або Кропивницького відділу Національної поліції.
27 березня ввечері через вибух з пожежею на автостоянці в Кропивницькому постраждали чотири людини, 18 автомобілів були знищені. У МВС повідомили, що поліція відкрила кримінальне провадження за статтею «порушення правил безпеки під час виконання робіт з підвищеною небезпекою».
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US Seniors Use Marijuana to Ease Pain, Fight Sleeplessness
Once stigmatized and banned across the United States, marijuana is now legalized in many parts of the country, primarily for medicinal use, but increasingly also for recreation. As cannabis becomes mainstream, Americans in their 70s and 80s who used to get high on marijuana in their youth, are now using cannabis-infused products to relieve old age aches and pains. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke has this report.
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