Crowds lined the streets of Cambridge, England, on Saturday for the funeral of one of the world’s most famous scientists: physicist Stephen Hawking, who died March 14 at age 76.

The scientist, confined for decades to a wheelchair and voice synthesizer because of the disease ALS, was known for his charisma, curiosity, and a crackling sense of humor. His science books and television cameos made him a pop-culture icon.

Hawking described his research as seeking “a complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all.”

Hawking’s funeral was held Saturday at the Cambridge University church known as Great St. Mary’s. As the funeral procession arrived, bells rang 76 times — once for each year of Hawking’s life.

In addition to Hawking’s family members, caretakers, former students, and admirers, the ceremony was attended by a number of famous faces. Among them was actor Eddie Redmayne, who played Hawking in an award-winning film biography of his life called The Theory of Everything, released in 2014.

Redmayne’s co-star, Felicity Jones, model Lily Cole, Queen guitarist and astrophysicist Brian May, and Britain’s Astronomer Royal, the Lord Rees of Ludlow (Martin Rees), were also there.

The eulogy, read by professor Faye Dowker, praised Hawking as someone “revered for his devotion as a scholar to the pursuit of knowledge.”

Hawking will be given one last high honor: his remains are to be interred in Westminster Abbey among some of Britain’s most legendary intellectuals. Hawking will take his place next to 17th-century mathematical scientist Isaac Newton and near 19th-century evolutionary scientist Charles Darwin.
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Many students would be delighted to have the World Cup in town, but not Maria Cheremnova.

 

The 20-year-old physics student in Moscow is one of thousands campaigning against the June 14-July 15 soccer tournament, which is set to disrupt academic life across the country.

 

There will be a 25,000-capacity fan zone outside the main building at Russia’s prestigious Moscow State University during exam season. In other cities, exams have been brought forward and thousands of police are set to move into dorm rooms.

 

The Moscow fan zone – a public viewing area with a big screen, beer and music – is on prime real estate near the vast Luzhniki arena, the river and the main university building, a Stalin-era colossus that ranks among the Russian capital’s most recognizable structures.

 

 The building is also home to around 6,500 students. Residents say it doesn’t have great soundproofing.

 

“I came to university to study, not to watch football and listen to that noise,” Cheremnova said. “Imagine 25,000 people and the events at night. It’ll all be visible, with lights, a big screen, music and fans, who aren’t very quiet guys. It’s going to stop people sleeping before their exams. It’s just awful.”

 

 It will also mean extra strain on already struggling transport networks – the fan zone is two subway stops from Luzhniki stadium – and fans could damage a nearby nature reserve, Cheremnova claimed.

A group of Moscow State University students and recent graduates has gathered more than 4,600 signatures demanding the fan zone be moved to another location. They said more students and staff would have signed but feared retaliation from the university administration. When attempting to deliver the petition to the rector’s office, security guards blocked the way and elevator access was cut to that floor only, supposedly for repair.

 

Russian universities have little tradition of student protest. While they were hotbeds of activism before the Russian Revolution of 1917, in Soviet times access to a college education was closely linked to political loyalty and membership of groups like the Young Communist League.

 

World Cup organizers have revised earlier plans for Moscow’s fan zone to be larger and closer to the university. FIFA said “to lessen the impact of the event on students and the adjacent infrastructure of the university, it was agreed to move the stage away from the main building by several meters, to reduce the capacity to 25,000 spectators and to change access flows.”

 

Opposition not only in Moscow

Across Russia, the tournament has brought upheaval for students.

 

The Russian academic year often runs well into the summer months, and late June is usually prime time for exams.

 

In most of the 11 host cities, university dorms are due to turn into temporary barracks for police and National Guard troops brought in from out of town for the tournament.

 

Many universities have brought forward examinations, often by more than a month, to avoid the World Cup and free up dorm space for security forces.

 

That means semesters have been cut short with little warning, forcing students to cram more studies into less time. Cheremnova said that some Moscow State University students were told to prepare for earlier examinations, only for the decision to be reversed.

At the Southern Federal University in Rostov-on-Don, semesters run back-to-back since “the winter vacation was postponed until the summer period,” according to spokesman Andrei Svechnikov.

 

What’s angering students more than anything else is the prospect of being forced to move out of rooms they’ve paid for.

 

Despite official denials from the Education and Science Ministry that any students will be kicked out to make way for security forces, more than 2,800 students have signed a petition against alleged removals.

 

“There will be no forced eviction of students under this process,” the ministry told The Associated Press, adding that security forces will “not disrupt the learning process.”

 

The AP contacted 17 universities cited in local media reports as planning to evict students for the World Cup. Of those, six said no students would be forced to move, one said a small number would be required to move to other dorms, and 10 failed to reply.

 

In many cities, students report mixed messages from university officials over accommodation and study schedules.

 

Zhokhangir Mirzadzhanov, a student in the western city of Kaliningrad, said his university initially offered to buy tickets for students to leave the city and free up dorm space for the tournament but details remained unclear.

 

“There are a lot of simple issues that they still can’t answer,” he said. “What comes next, no one knows.”
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Pope Francis presided over solemn Good Friday services amid tight security at Rome’s Colosseum for the Via Crucis procession. Italian police and army soldiers were on high alert, with Holy Week coinciding with a spate of arrests of suspected Islamic extremists around Italy.

Francis presided at a traditional candle-lit Way of the Cross procession around Rome’s ancient Colosseum. Some 20,000 people turned out to take part in the event with the pope on the most somber day in the Christian liturgical calendar, which commemorates the death of Jesus on the cross.

Rome authorities increased security this year with checks carried out as the faithful approached the area. Italian police carried out four raids against suspected supporters of Islamist terrorism, arresting seven people, including one man who was believed to have been planning a truck attack.

The Way of the Cross procession marks 14 events, called stations, beginning with Roman governor Pontius Pilate’s condemning Jesus to death, until his burial in a tomb. This year the meditations at each station were written by Catholic high school and college students in keeping with Francis’ decision to dedicate 2018 to addressing the hopes and concerns of young Catholics.

At the end, he delivered a meditation of his own, denouncing those who seek power, money and conflict. He prayed that the Catholic Church be always an “ark of salvation, a source of certainty and truth.”

Pope Francis also said many should feel “shame because our generations are leaving young people a world that is fractured by divisions and wars, a world devoured by selfishness where young people, children, the sick and the elderly are marginalized.”

The pope praised those in the Church who are trying to arouse “humanity’s sleeping conscience” through their work helping the poor, immigrants, and prison inmates.

Earlier, the pope presided over a solemn Passion of the Lord service in St. Peter’s Basilica which was kept open despite several pieces of plaster having come crashing down from a pillar of the church on Thursday. The damage was swiftly repaired.

    

Thousands of faithful filled the basilica. Francis lay prostrate in prayer on the marble pavement in front of the altar at the start of the chant-filled evening service. Later, the crucifix was carried in procession from the back of the basilica to the pope who then kissed it. The other concelebrants followed his example.

On Holy Saturday, in the evening, the pope will celebrate the solemn Easter Vigil in St. Peter’s Basilica, followed by the joyful Easter Sunday Mass marking what Christians observe as Christ’s resurrection.

 
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The father-in-law of Pippa Middleton, whose sister Kate is married to Britain’s Prince William, has been placed under formal investigation over suspected rape of a minor, a court source told Reuters on Friday.

David Matthews, who is the father of Pippa Middleton’s husband, James Matthews, was arrested Tuesday by the Juvenile Protection Brigade (BPM) and formally put under investigation for suspected rape of a minor under his authority, said the source, confirming a report on Europe 1 radio.

Paris prosecutors arrested Matthews during a visit to France, and later released him and placed him under judicial control, the source said. The source did not say when he was released. French police can hold suspects 24 or 48 hours in such cases.

The source said the alleged rape took place in 1998 or 1999. Europe 1 reported that a complaint was filed in 2017.

Reuters could not immediately reach Matthews nor any spokespeople or lawyers for him.

Being placed under judicial control means that prosecutors have attached certain conditions to his release or imposed certain limits on whom he can meet or where he can go. The source did not say what conditions had been attached in Matthews’ case.

Pippa Middleton came to national attention in Britain as the maid of honor at her sister’s royal wedding to William in 2011. Her own lavish wedding to James Matthews last May was one of the most widely reported social events of the year, attended by William and his brother Harry, grandsons of Queen Elizabeth.
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The State Department responded swiftly to an announcement by the Kremlin that Russia will retaliate for the expulsions of Russian diplomats from the U.S., Britain and other countries. Moscow announced Thursday it is expelling 60 U.S. diplomats and closing the U.S. consulate in St. Petersburg. State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert told reporters that is not justified and the U.S. reserves the right to respond. VOA’s Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine has more from the State Department.
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Girls who spend the most time on social media at age 10 may be unhappier in their early teens than peers who use social media less during the tween years, a U.K. study suggests.

Researchers looked at social media use and scores on tests of happiness and other aspects of well-being among boys and girls at age 10 and each year until age 15. Overall, well-being decreased with age for boys and girls, but more so for girls. And high social media use early on predicted sharper increases in unhappiness for girls later.

For boys, social media use at 10 had no association with well-being in the midteens, which suggests that other factors are more important influences on well-being changes in boys, the authors note in BMC Public Health.

A pattern for girls

“Our findings suggest that young girls, those aged 10, who are more interactive with social media have lower levels of well-being by age 15 than their peers who interact with social media less at age 10. We did not find any similar patterns for boys, suggesting that any changes in their well-being may not be due to social media,” said lead author Cara Booker, a researcher at the University of Essex.

Booker’s research group had done a previous study of social media use and well-being in adolescents, but wanted to explore how it changes over time, she said in an email. They had also noticed gender differences and wanted to look more closely at them, she added.

The study team analyzed data on nearly 10,000 teens from a large national survey of U.K. households conducted annually from 2009 to 2015. The researchers focused on how much time young participants spent chatting on social media on a typical school day.

The survey also contained questions about “strengths and difficulties” that assessed emotional and behavioral problems, and researchers generated a happiness score based on responses to other questions about school, family and home life.

Social media use

The researchers found that adolescent girls used social media more than boys, though social media interaction increased with age for both boys and girls.

At age 13, about half of girls were interacting on social media for more than one hour a day, compared to just one-third of boys.

By age 15, girls continued to use social media more than boys, with about 60 percent of girls and just less than half of the boys interacting on social media for one or more hours per day.

Social and emotional difficulties declined with age for boys, but rose for girls.

It’s possible that girls are more sensitive than boys to social comparisons and interactions that impact self-esteem, the authors write. Or that the sedentary time spent on social media impacts health and happiness in other ways.

“Many hours of daily use may not be ideal,” Booker said.

Digitally literacy needed

The study cannot prove whether or how social media interactions affect young people’s well-being. The authors note that compared to girls, boys may spend more time gaming than chatting online, yet gaming has become increasingly social so it’s possible that it also has an effect that they did not examine in this study.

Parents should become more digitally literate as well as teach their children how to positively interact with social media, Booker said. Dealing with filtered posts and mostly positive posts may lead to incorrect conclusions about others’ lives that lead to lower levels of well-being, she noted.

“I don’t want people to come away with the idea that social media is bad, just that increased use at a young age may be detrimental for girls,” she said.

More research needs to be done on why and whether this persists into adulthood, Booker added.
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A committee of British lawmakers published written evidence on Thursday provided by a whistleblower who says information about 50 million Facebook users ended up in the hands of political consultancy Cambridge Analytica.

Cambridge Analytica said the documents did not support whistleblower Christopher Wylie’s testimony to the committee this week.

Wylie, who formerly worked for Cambridge Analytica (CA), alleges the data was used to help to build profiles on American voters and raise support for Donald Trump in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Wylie also alleges that CA was linked to Canadian firm AggregateIQ (AIQ), which he says was involved in the development of the software used to target voters. AggregateIQ, he says, received payment from a pro-Brexit campaign group before the 2016 referendum when Britain voted to quit the European Union.

This was co-ordinated with the lead “Vote Leave” group in a breach of British electoral funding rules, Wylie alleged.  Vote Leave denies any wrongdoing.

Wylie appeared before the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee of the British parliament on Tuesday. The committee said Wylie provided it with documents including a services agreement between AIQ and SCL Elections, an affiliate of Cambridge Analytica, dated September 2014.

Reuters was unable to independently verify the authenticity of the documents made public by the committee.

“None of these documents support the false allegations made in Tuesday’s hearing,” Cambridge Analytica said in a statement, adding that Wylie had left the company in July 2014 and would have no direct knowledge of its work or practices since then.

“It is wrong to suggest that Cambridge Analytica’s earlier relationship with Aggregate IQ implies that we were involved with their work for Vote Leave. Cambridge Analytica did no work in any capacity in the 2016 EU referendum.”

AIQ did not respond to a Reuters request for comment after Tuesday’s committee hearing, but in an earlier statement said it had never entered into a contract with Cambridge Analytica and had never been part of the firm.

The parliamentary committee’s chairman has said it was “astonishing” that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg decided not to answer lawmakers’ questions, given the claims that Wylie had made about how data was used.
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He did jail time for petty crime and was under surveillance as a potential extremist, yet Radouane Lakdim slipped through the French security net.

Lakdim — who killed four people in a shooting-and-hostage rampage in southern France last week — is a prime example of the challenges security officials face and the missteps they can make as homegrown extremists multiply.

Even before France buried his victims Thursday, angry voices asked what went wrong.

The questions are coming from victims’ families, opposition leaders and even from Morocco’s counterterrorism chief — whose country has helped France investigate dual-national extremists in the past but was never told that the French-Moroccan Lakdim was a risk.

Did a summons to meet with intelligence officials play a role in Lakdim’s decision to spring into action? Was there a slip-up in surveillance? 

Experts say French intelligence services are drowning in data and lacking enough analysts to interpret.

More than 20,000 names are on two lists of radicalized or potentially radicalized people in France. It takes 20 officers to survey a single person daily, experts say.

Lakdim was one of more than 15 people in France under surveillance as potentially dangerous since 2012 but went on to commit attacks and kill. With soldiers in the streets, a new, tougher terrorism law and new efforts to prevent radicalization, France appears to be covering all bases. But attacks keep coming.

Lakdim took his sister to school on March 23, then killed in the name of the Islamic State group in a three-stage attack in the medieval city of Carcassonne, where he lived, and in the nearby town Trebes. The 25-year-old was shot dead later that day when police stormed a supermarket to free his hostages.

List of offenses

By the time he died, Lakdim had been convicted twice on drug and weapons possession charges; was suspected of belonging to a local Salafist movement; had a radicalized girlfriend who had converted to Islam and is now charged in the case; owned a saber, a handgun and knives; had done a month of prison time; and was to go before a court on April 23 for possessing a knife and driving without a permit.

The profile mimics those of many small-time delinquents. But questions arise because Lakdim was on two watch lists, starting in 2014, and was closely monitored since late 2015, according to anti-terrorism prosecutor Francois Molins. The surveillance failed to provide “warning signs of an intention to act” or indications he planned to travel to Syria or Iraq, Molins said.

Interior Minister Gerard Collomb on Wednesday confirmed reports that French security services were poised to reduce the surveillance on Lakdim. Yet Collomb maintained there were no “dysfunctions” in tracking him.

“This poses once again the question of the efficacy of the surveillance,” said Yves Trotignon, a former intelligence official.

In 2016, one of two men who slashed a priest’s throat during Mass in a small Normandy town wore an electronic bracelet after serving prison time. The man who killed a police couple in their home outside Paris a month earlier was under surveillance. A man who tried to crash his car loaded with gas canisters and weapons into gendarmes on Paris’ Champs-Elysees last year was under surveillance, yet had a gun permit.

French authorities stress their successes. While 11 deadly attacks have been carried out since the Charlie Hebdo newspaper and a kosher grocery were attacked in January 2015, 51 attacks have been thwarted and 17 more have failed, Prime Minister Edouard Philippe told lawmakers Tuesday.

A 100 percent success rate in counterterrorism is impossible, and the threat will last for years, authorities warn.

Trotignon compares a terror attack to an industrial accident because “there is never a single cause,” but an accumulation of missteps.

Little problems, like a defective joint in refinery piping, get patched. “Then one day all the little problems happen at the same time. … An attack is like that.”

What’s the stimulus?

Investigators look for attack triggers.

The newspaper Le Monde reported that Lakdim had recently received a written summons from French intelligence headquarters for an “administrative meeting” — a flag that he was under watch.

At the time of the failed Champs-Elysees ramming attack, Le Monde reported that the driver, Adam Djaziri, had received his third demand for an “administrative meeting” shortly before the attack, which killed no one but himself.

Across the Mediterranean, the chief of Morocco’s counterterrorism agency questioned why France didn’t communicate with him.

Abdelhak Khiame told The Associated Press that as of Tuesday — four days after Lakdim’s deadly attack — he had heard nothing from Paris, despite a policy of information sharing.

“His country of birth should have been notified that its national is wanted by French security,” said Khiame, director of Morocco’s Central Bureau of Judicial Investigations. Moroccans make up a large subset of Islamic State group fighters, and dual Moroccan-European citizens have taken part in past IS attacks in Europe.

Alain Bauer, a leading criminologist, maintains the attacks by Lakdim could have been thwarted. Analysis is the key, he and other experts said, along with on-the-ground tailing.

“Like almost all others that … succeeded, it could have been avoided,” said Bauer, who has written a book on French intelligence. “We rely on ‘Inspector Google’ to decide how to fight YouTube radicals. It doesn’t work … these tools cannot replace human intelligence.”
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Russia’s RT television network is going off the air in the Washington, D.C., area, one of the channel’s most coveted markets in the United States.

The Kremlin-backed English language news channel will still be available via satellite, but two Washington-area stations that carry it are set to suspend operations at midnight Saturday, prompting cable operators to drop the channel.

MHz Networks, a Virginia-based distributor of international programming in the United States that broadcast RT and other foreign news channels on the two stations, said it was ending distribution in the wake of the station operator’s decision to auction off their licenses.

As a result, Washington-area cable operators such as Comcast and Cox Communications, which are legally required to carry channels with “must-carry rights,” will drop them.

“We’re dropping all of them,” Frederick Thomas, MHz Networks founder and CEO, told VOA, referring to the international news channels. “We’re not carrying them because we don’t have access to a broadcast license after midnight March 31st.”

RT did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment on MHz Networks’ decision, which was first reported Thursday by Bloomberg News.

Formerly Russia Today

RT, formerly known as Russia Today, has struggled to get on cable in the United States. Washington is one of a couple of metropolitan areas in the nation where the channel is available on cable, Thomas said.

The broadcaster has come under increased scrutiny since last January when U.S. intelligence agencies concluded the channel and a sister radio network had been used as part of a Kremlin-orchestrated campaign to disrupt the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Last year, the U.S. Justice Department forced RT’s U.S. arm, T&R Productions LLC, to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). The agency also compelled Reston Translator LLC, a radio station operator that carries Kremlin-funded Radio Sputnik, to register as a foreign agent.

Thomas insisted that his decision to drop the foreign news channels had “nothing to do with politics” or the Justice Department’s scrutiny of foreign news distributors and broadcasters.

“The reason we’re getting out of the channel is related to a change in technology and TV business,” Thomas said. “The FARA thing is very coincidental to the entire thing.”

He said he initiated talks with the Justice Department last year to find out whether his company was required to register as a foreign agent because of its distribution of the international news channels. Justice Department lawyers indicated they were, Thomas said.

“The way I read it, and our discussions have said as much, the concept is if you are a distributor of that news content, as it’s been explained to me, you need to register,” Thomas said.

Under FARA, persons acting as agents of foreign governments or foreign political parties must register with the Justice Department and provide periodic disclosure of their activities.

Registering as foreign agent

While lobbyists and lawyers working for foreign governments routinely register with the Justice Department, no American distributor of foreign news content is known to have filed paperwork under FARA.

But that may change as the Justice Department takes an increasingly expansive view of FARA.

“It is possible that a distributor might be subject to FARA,” said Joshua Ian Rosenstein, a FARA expert and a partner at the Sandler Reiff Lamb Rosenstein & Birkenstock law firm in Washington.

“The key issues for DOJ here would be the nature of control and funding by RT or other foreign governments,” Rosenstein said. “It would be unusual to go after a passive conduit for content,” such as a website for allowing paid ads without any government control.

However, “it’s certainly within the realm of possibility for DOJ to find a case where registration is appropriate, and certainly appropriate for DOJ to make inquiries into government control over the process to determine if registration is warranted,” Rosenstein said.

While MHz Networks will no longer be carrying RT, it will continue to air three hours daily of French, German and Chinese government-funded news content on a different channel, MHz Worldview, potentially leaving it subject to FARA registration.

But Thomas said he did not see the need for registration.

“We’re going argue that three hours a day shouldn’t necessitate us having to doing all of this,” he said.

Justice Department spokesman Ian Prior declined to comment.
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