France is facing a “new form of anti-Semitism” marked by violence, French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said Wednesday, deploring an assault this week in a Paris suburb on an 8-year-old boy wearing a Jewish skullcap.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Macron tweeted: “Each time a citizen is attacked because of his age, appearance or religion, it is the whole nation that is attacked.”
…

Exiled separatist leader Carles Puigdemont has stunned Spain with private remarks picked up by TV news cameras in which he said Catalonia’s independence bid is “finished.”

The shock admission came after Spain’s constitutional court ruled that Puigdemont could not be named president because he faced arrest and was not physically present to assume the presidency.

“The [independence] process is finished. I’ve been sacrificed,” Puigdemont wrote in a text message to a close confidant after the speaker of the Catalan parliament, Roger Torrent, suspended a Tuesday session in which secessionists holding a majority of seats planned to nominate him.

Spain’s vice president, Soraya Saenz de Santamaria, called on Torrent to look for another candidate to replace Puigdemont.

“Mr. Torrent has to open a new round of contacts to save the situation generated by Puigdemont,” she said.

A Telecinco news station reporter caught on camera Puigdemont’s message, which had been sent to the cellphone of Toni Comin, a close aide also in exile. The station had been filming a Brussels meeting that Puigdemont had been scheduled to attend.

Puigdemont may have been excusing his absence to Comin, who organized the conference in which Puigdemont was expected to reaffirm his bid to continue as president, sources in the independence movement told VOA.

In an earlier statement to reporters Tuesday, Puigdemont said he would continue to work to remain president. Puigdemont’s first name, Carles, was clearly visible on the cellphone screenshots taken by Telecinco.

“La Moncloa’s [Spain’s presidential palace] plan has triumphed. I hope it’s true and that it means everyone in prison will be released. Otherwise, it would be a historical farce,” Puigdemont said. Some analysts say the comments could indicate some kind of plea-bargaining deal with the Spanish government.

‘Broken’ movement

When Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy imposed direct rule on Catalonia following the regional government’s declaration of independence last November, most members of Puigdemont’s Cabinet were arrested, while he fled to exile. Three of them, including his vice president Oriol Junqueras, remain in jail.

Spokesmen for Junqueras’ independence group, the Catalan leftist Republican party, have said that Puigdemont could be sacrificed so a new government could be formed. Claims by Puigdemont and his supporters that he could lead “telematically” by Skype have been ridiculed throughout Spain’s political spectrum.

“Puigdemont’s farce is finished,” tweeted Prime Minister Rajoy’s ruling PP party.

Puigdemont’s center-right rival for Catalonia’s presidency, Ines Arrimadas, said the independence movement was “broken.”

“They have to face the truth,” Arrimadas said. “If they name someone else who violates the law, the same thing is going to happen.”

Comin said the “pro-government bloc should have no illusions about divisions among supporters of independence.”

Violent protests

Four separatist lawmakers from the radical Catalan Unity Candidacy, or CUP, refused to leave the parliamentary chamber when Tuesday’s session was suspended. About 500 violent protesters, organized by the party’s Catalan republic defense committees, tried to storm the parliament building from a tent city erected in a nearby park. They overran police barricades and chased away officers who took refuge in the building.

The crowd jeered and insulted members of the Catalan parliament as they emerged from the session, calling Torrent a “traitor.” Twenty-seven Catalan police officers were injured in the clashes, according to press reports.

“We go back to seeing the last days of a Catalan republic,” Puigdemont texted Comin in an apparent reference to a previous attempt to set up an independent Catalan state at the time of the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s.

While Puigdemont excused his comments as being the result of a momentary irritation, he did not seem to see many political prospects.

“My future is likely to be more judicial than political,” he wrote Comin. “I will have to dedicate my life to my legal defense.”
…

The Communist Party’s candidate for president would seem to be an odd choice: He’s a millionaire and proud of it. He also openly rejects the basic tenets of Communism.

 

 Pavel Grudinin is the Russian party’s first new nominee in 14 years as it hopes to rejuvenate itself and broaden its appeal from its traditional base of aging voters who are nostalgic for the old Soviet Union.   

 

Not that Grudinin – or any other candidate – has much of a chance of unseating President Vladimir Putin when Russia votes on March 18. The presence of Grudinin and other official candidates are largely viewed as a Kremlin ploy to boost voter participation in an election that has a foregone conclusion.

 

A low presidential vote turnout would be seen as an embarrassment for the Kremlin. That’s why opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who was leading a grassroots campaign for nearly a year before being formally barred from running, has been urging his supporters to boycott the presidential election and dent its legitimacy.

 

In contrast, Grudinin is urging voters to come to polls and bring change through the political process.

The 57-year-old agricultural college graduate runs what is still known as the Lenin State Farm, a sprawling collective farm south of Moscow, the capital.

 

With his bushy mustache and salt-and-pepper hair, Grudinin’s looks are often compared to those of a young Josef Stalin. Grudinin worked on the farm in the mid-1980s and was appointed its director a decade later.

 

While most of the collective plots outside Moscow were sold off years ago to property developers, the Lenin State Farm evolved into a successful private business, growing vegetables and raising livestock. Its signature product is strawberries, accounting for a third of all of them produced in Russia.

 

While metal or wooden strawberries adorn lampposts, fences and farm buildings in the town, Grudinin’s self-promoted image of a farmer is not the whole story. He admits that his company over the years has made only a third to half of its income from agricultural production, which he blames on a lack of government subsidies and low wages for consumers who cannot afford his organic produce.

 

In fact, the Lenin State Farm makes most of its money from property deals, leasing and selling land for shopping centers.

 

Corruption is rampant in the Moscow region, home to some of Russia’s most expensive real estate. Yet many international corporations doing business here refuse to pay officials under the table.

 

Communist-capitalist

Grudinin views his deals with companies like the Swedish furniture giant IKEA as a badge of honor, citing it as proof that he does not pay bribes.

 

Grudinin owns 44 percent of the farm and runs it with 33 other shareholders. The Communist-capitalist prides himself on reinvesting the profits back into the business or creating housing, education and other benefits for the community.

 

The small town that bears the same name as the farm is dominated by two Disneyland-like castles with spires and a futuristic building that looks like a sports arena but is actually a high-tech, 1.7 billion-ruble ($30 million) school that the farm built for residents.

 

“We spend this money in line with socialist principles: We spend it on people,” he says.

 

Grudinin boasts that he is fighting corruption just like opposition leader Navalny – but “not only with words but also with deeds, by not paying bribes.”

While Grudinin refuses to recognize Navalny as the only viable alternative to Putin, he is willing to appropriate some of the opposition leader’s agenda.

 

“We have too many bureaucrats and no one is responsible,” Grudinin said on state television. “If I tell the rich ‘instead of buying yachts, you should pay a higher income tax here, just like they do abroad,’ then maybe we will replenish the budget and we will modernize education and health care.”

 

Grudinin, who has declared 157 million rubles ($2.8 million) in income in the past six years, is no political novice. He sat on the local council in the early 2000s and was a member of the ruling United Russia Party until 2010.

 

In Putin’s first presidential election in 2000, Grudinin was one of 100 proxies for him, representing or speaking on his behalf in the campaign.

 

Asked if it feels strange now to run against Putin, Grudinin replies: “I wouldn’t say I’m running against Putin. I stand for a different path for the country’s development.”

 

Coopted by the Kremlin

Although openly critical of the current political order – saying that “people don’t trust the authorities” and that “corruption has taken the upper hand” – Grudinin is careful not to blame it all on the man who has been leading Russia for the past 18 years. Putin is just part of the system, he says.

 

That line echoes the rhetoric of his predecessor, long-time Communist Party chairman Gennady Zyuganov, who has run in four presidential elections since 1996.

 

Once a searing critic of President Boris Yeltsin, the 73-year-old Zyuganov and the Communists have been coopted by the Kremlin. These days, the Communists support all crucial Kremlin directives, such as the 2014 annexation of Crimea, while dissenting on minor issues, which allows Putin to maintain a facade of democracy.

 

While running against Yeltsin in 1996, Zyuganov spooked Russia’s oligarchs and foreign investors by promising to re-nationalize the strategic sectors of the economy while still allowing private property. Grudinin rejects calls to ban private ownership of land – once a key tenet of Communism.

 

Unlike Russia’s oligarchs who make headlines by buying foreign sports teams or giant yachts, Grudinin’s investments like those in the town of 5,000 people have made him a popular figure.

 

‘Putin’s place’

Pavel Samoilov, who works in a car repair shop, says he would love to work for Grudinin but the jobs on the farm are hard to get.

 

“People in the regions are much worse off than what they say on television,” says Samoilov, 33. He says he admires Putin’s foreign policy but says he has “allowed the country to come to ruin.”

 

Putin enjoys national approval ratings of over 80 percent. While Grudinin once was polling second to Putin, he has since fallen to a tie with perennial candidate Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who has run for president six times.

 

Many of those who admire Grudinin still do not see him as a leader.

 

Maria, a 40-year-old mother of two who wouldn’t give her last name, sounded ecstatic about the well-equipped local school and kindergarten and likes Grudinin. But she won’t vote for him.

 

“We need to vote for Putin because he is a strong leader,” she said. “This is Putin’s place.”

 
…

British Prime Minister Theresa May arrived in China Wednesday on a visit aimed at boosting economic ties with the Asian giant ahead of her country’s exit from the European Union next year.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chris Patten, the last British governor of Hong Kong, wrote May this week warning that the semi-autonomous territory is facing “increasing threats to the basic freedoms, human rights and autonomy” that China agreed to observe under the handover agreement.
…

Protests broke out in the Spanish city of Barcelona Tuesday after Catalonia’s parliament postponed a vote on who should be president of the region. Pro-independence parties, which form a majority in the parliament, had nominated only one candidate – the exiled former leader Carles Puigdemont. The stand-off between Barcelona and Madrid looks set to deepen as parties on all sides of the debate harden their positions, as Henry Ridgwell reports.
…

The social divide revealed by Britain’s 2016 vote to leave the European Union is not only here to stay but deepening, according to academic research published Wednesday.

UK in a Changing Europe, a research initiative, said Britons were unlikely to change their minds about leaving the EU, despite the political and economic uncertainty it has brought, because attitudes are becoming more entrenched.

“The [Brexit] referendum highlighted fundamental divisions in British society and superimposed a leave-remain distinction over them. This has the potential to profoundly disrupt our politics in the years to come,” said Anand Menon, the think tank’s director.

Britain is negotiating a deal with the EU that will shape future trade relations, breaking with the bloc after four decades, but the process is complicated by the divisions within parties, society and the government itself.

Menon said the research, based on a series of polls over the 18 months since Britain voted to leave the European Union, showed 35 percent of people self-identified as “Leavers” and 40 percent as “Remainers.”

Research also found that both sides had a tendency to interpret and recall information in a way that confirmed their pre-existing beliefs, which also added to the deepening of the impact of the vote.

Second vote

Polls have shown increasing support for a second vote on whether to leave the European Union once the terms of departure are known, but such a vote would not necessarily provide a different result, a poll by ICM for The Guardian newspaper indicated last week.

The report also showed that age was a better pointer to how Britons voted than employment. Around 73 percent of 18-to-24-year-olds voted to stay in the EU, but turnout among that group was lower than among older voters.

“British Election Study surveys have suggested that, in order to have overturned the result, a startling 97 percent of under-45s would have had to make it to the ballot box, as opposed to the 65 percent who actually voted,” the report said.

The difference between generations became even more pronounced in the 2017 general election, when the largest gap in how different generations voted was measured in Britain.

The British Election Study has been conducted by academics at every general election since 1964 and looks at why people vote, and why they vote the way they do.
…

Russia’s foreign spy chief, who is under U.S. sanctions, met last week outside Washington with U.S. intelligence officials, two U.S. sources said, confirming a disclosure that intensified political infighting over probes into Moscow’s alleged meddling in the 2016 U.S. election.

Sergey Naryshkin, head of the Russian service known by its acronym SVR, held talks with U.S. Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and other U.S. intelligence officials, the sources said. The sources did not reveal the topics discussed.

A Russian Embassy tweet disclosed Naryshkin’s visit. It cited a state-run ITAR-Tass news report that quoted Russia’s ambassador to Washington, Anatoly Antonov, as telling Rossiya-1 television that Naryshkin and his U.S. counterparts discussed the “joint struggle against terrorism.”

Antonov did not identify the U.S. intelligence officials with whom he met.

The Central Intelligence Agency declined to comment. Coats’ office said that while it does not discuss U.S. intelligence officials’ schedules, “any interaction with foreign intelligence agencies would have been conducted in accordance with U.S. law and in consultation with appropriate departments and agencies.”

News of Naryshkin’s secret visit poured fresh fuel on the battles pitting the Trump administration and its Republican defenders against Democrats over investigations into Moscow’s alleged 2016 election interference.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer demanded that the administration “immediately come clean and answer questions — which U.S. officials did he meet with? Did any White House or National Security Council official meet with Naryshkin? What did they discuss?”

The key question, Schumer told reporters, is whether Naryshkin’s visit accounted for the administration’s decision on Monday not to slap new sanctions on Russia under a law passed last year to punish Moscow’s purported election meddling.

“Russia hacked our elections,” Schumer said. “We sanctioned the head of their foreign intelligence and then the Trump administration invites him to waltz through our front door.”

A January 2017 U.S. intelligence report concluded that Russia conducted an influence campaign of hacking and other measures aimed at swinging the 2016 presidential vote to Trump over his Democratic challenger, Hillary Clinton.

Last week, the Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant reported that the Netherlands intelligence concluded that some of the Russians running a hacking operation, known as “Cozy Bear,” against Democratic organizations were SVR agents.

CIA Director Mike Pompeo told the BBC in an interview last weekend that he had not “seen a significant decrease” in Russian attempts at subversion in Europe and the United States, and he expects Moscow to meddle in November’s U.S. mid-term elections.

Congressional panels and Special Counsel Robert Mueller are investigating Russia’s alleged interference and possible collusion between Moscow and Trump’s election campaign. Russia denies it meddled and Trump dismissed the allegations of collusion as a political witch hunt.

Naryshkin’s visit coincided with other serious disputes in U.S.-Russian relations. They include Russia’s 2014 seizure of Crimea and its interference in Ukraine and Russia’s military intervention on the government’s side in the Syrian civil war.

Washington and Moscow cooperate in some areas, including the fight against Islamic militant groups, officials said.

For example, a month ago the United States provided advance warning to Russia that allowed it to thwart a terrorist plot in St. Petersburg, the White House said.

Naryshkin, who was appointed by Russian President Vladimir Putin to head the SVR in September 2016, was sanctioned by the Obama administration in March 2014 as part of the U.S. response to Russia’s annexation of Crimea. At the time, he was speaker of the lower house of the Russian parliament.

He was banned from entering the United States, but sanctions experts said there are processes for providing people under sanction permission to enter for official business. Meetings between foreign intelligence chiefs, even from rival nations, mostly are kept secret but are not unusual.
…

A U.N. special envoy urged Greece and Macedonia on Tuesday to seize on momentum in talks to resolve a name dispute straining relations for a quarter of a century, saying the two sides now appeared “energized” to reach an accord.

Athens says Skopje’s use of “Macedonia” as its name could imply a territorial claim over the northern Greek province of the same name, and a claim to its national heritage. Skopje counters that Macedonia has been its name dating to the now defunct Yugoslav federation of which it was part.

The 25-year-long dispute has posed an obstacle to Macedonia’s ambition to join both the EU and NATO.

“Everyone knows what the issues are. There is a time for decision-making, and I think we are there,” said Matthew Nimetz, U.N. special envoy on the “Macedonia” dispute since 1999.

“I know the [Greek] government is very sincere and energized to reach a solution to the problem … I think there is a will here, and I think also in Skopje, to try to reach a settlement,” he told reporters in Athens.

The two countries recently agreed to intensify talks. Still, there is mounting public sentiment in Greece against any deal which could include the name Macedonia. Greece has said a compromise could include a compound name with a geographical or chronological qualifier, and be known only by that name.

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has so far failed to secure broad backing from political parties for a settlement which would include the contentious name.

“I think waiting, slowing things down doesn’t make any sense. Here it doesn’t make any sense, and in the northern neighbor it doesn’t make any sense [either],” Nimetz said.

Athens may submit an outline of its proposals to Skopje and the United Nations next month, Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias told state television on Monday night.

Until the issue is resolved, Greece has agreed only that its Balkan neighbor be referred to internationally as the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), the name under which it was admitted to the United Nations in 1993, two years after Skopje won independence from Yugoslavia.
…

Peace talks aimed at ending Syria’s seven-year war began Tuesday in Russia, despite heckling, boycotts and disputes over who should preside over the event.

Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov’s opening speech at the two-day Syrian Congress of National Dialogue held in the Black Sea resort of Sochi was interrupted by heckling from Syrian delegates and cries of “Long live Russia!” The speech was delayed by two hours due to ongoing negotiations.

Reading a letter from Russian president Vladimir Putin, Lavrov said conditions were ripe for Syria to turn “a tragic page” in its history. Syrian delegates accused Russia of killing innocent civilians in their country. Russian state television footage of the event showed security guards ordering a man in the audience to sit down.

Critics of the Sochi Congress, which is backed by Turkey and Iran, accused Russia of trying to hijack the Syrian peace process from the United Nations and offering a solution that favors the government of Bashar al-Assad.

A Syrian opposition delegation that included members of the armed opposition who had flown in from Turkey refused to leave the airport upon arrival, saying it was boycotting the talks because of broken promises to remove the Syrian government emblem from the premises.

Artyom Kozhin, senior diplomat at the Russian Foreign Ministry, said Lavrov had spoken by phone with his Turkish counterpart prior to the meeting and promised that Syrian flags and emblems would be removed from the airport and the conference venue. Kozhin acknowledged that there had been complications.

The United States, France and Britain declined to attend the conference, deferring to a U.N.-led effort to end the civil war.

VOA’s Victor Beattie contributed to this report.
…

Nine members of Turkey’s medical association have been detained for voicing opposition to the ongoing Turkish-led military incursion into Syria against a Kurdish militia group. The arrests are part of a widening crackdown on dissent over the operation.

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

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

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

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

Reaction to detentions

The doctors’ detention has drawn swift political condemnation.

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

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

International human rights groups have also criticized the detentions.

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

​Growing crackdown

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

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

Erdogan said last week all dissent would be crushed.
…