In Brief: Nation & World: 4-5-16

Leaks about offshore accounts leave Russians unimpressed

MOSCOW — In the list of presidents, prime ministers, sheikhs, billionaires and other magnates cited in a sweeping worldwide investigation into hidden assets in offshore accounts, there was an odd man out: A Russian cellist.

Up until now, 64-year-old Sergei Roldugin was known only in the Russian music community — as a People’s Artist of Russia and the artistic director of the House of Music in St. Petersburg. What makes him stand out from other Russian musicians, however, is his close ties to President Vladimir Putin.

Roldugin features in Putin’s early autobiography as a close friend and the godfather of Putin’s eldest daughter, Maria. He pursued a musical career, and despite the fact that he never became a tycoon like many of Putin’s other friends, he did somehow acquire a stake in the Rossiya bank, one of the first Russian firms slapped with U.S. sanctions following Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea.

The U.S. Treasury in 2014 described the bank as being “designated for providing material support to government officials” and co-owned by members of Putin’s inner circle. But unlike other Putin friends who have built flourishing businesses in Russia, Roldugin, whose stake in Rossiya was reported at 3.3 percent, was not slapped with sanctions.

A myriad of documents that the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists gained access to showed Roldugin — or someone posing as him — skillfully operating affiliated companies that controlled a significant share of a business empire that earned tens of millions of rubles per day from murky deals. The companies received millions from Putin’s friends and Russian billionaires as well as preferential loans from a Russia-controlled Cyprus-based bank.

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Destruction, razed monastery left behind by IS in Syria town

QARYATAIN, Syria — Syrian troops fired their guns in celebration amid smoldering buildings inside the town of Qaryatain on Monday, hours after recapturing it from retreating Islamic State militants who had abducted and terrorized dozens of its Christian residents.

An Associated Press crew was among the first journalists to enter the town and witnessed the destruction wrought on the once-thriving Christian community and its fifth-century monastery, which was bulldozed by the extremist group last summer.

Once a cherished pilgrimage site, much of the St. Elian monastery had been reduced to a pile of stones.

Escorted by the Syrian government, the AP crew was allowed to venture only about three kilometers (1½ miles) inside Qaryatain, located 125 kilometers (75 miles) northeast of Damascus, because army experts were still clearing explosives and mines left by the group.

Black smoke billowed from the western side of town where skirmishes continued. Near the central square, some residential and government buildings were completely destroyed, their top floors flattened. Others had gaping holes where they had taken direct artillery hits or were pock-marked by gunfire. Electricity poles and cables were broken and shredded; a snapped tree hung to one side.

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EU begins shipping migrants in Greece back to Turkey

ATHENS, Greece — A controversial European Union plan to stem the flow of refugees began Monday with the deportation of more than 200 people from Greek islands to Turkey, despite concerns over human rights and criticism that Europe was turning its back on refugees.

As dawn broke, buses filled with migrants left under heavy security from a detention center on the island of Lesbos headed to the port for the short boat ride to the Turkish port of Dikili. More were ferried across from the island of Chios, where riot police clashed hours earlier with demonstrators protesting the expulsions.

In all, 202 people from 11 nations — 191 men and 11 women — were sent back. They included 130 Pakistanis, 42 Afghans, 10 Iranians, five Congolese, four Sri Lankans, three Bangladeshis, three from India, and one each from Iraq, Somalia and Ivory Coast, as well as two Syrians who Greek authorities said had asked to be sent back.

Human rights groups expressed deep concern over the operation.

“The returns underway this morning in the Aegean are the symbolic start of the potential disastrous undoing of Europe’s commitment to protecting refugees,” said Amnesty International’s deputy director for Europe, Gauri van Gulik. “Urgent key questions are: What process is everyone going through and what will become of them after their return?”

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US says Iran forces pulling back in Syria; others say no

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is making the case that Iran is drawing down its elite fighting force from Syria in an effort to allay fears that Tehran is using its powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Syria to strengthen its influence across the Middle East. Yet the Iranian government said Monday it has dispatched commandos to the war and it is still taking high-ranking casualties.

Secretary of State John Kerry, who is deeply involved in trying to broker a political solution to end the five-year-old civil war between President Bashar Assad and rebels, told Congress in late February that Iran was recalling its IRGC forces from Syria.

“On Iran, let me just inform everybody here that the IRGC has actually pulled its troops back from Syria,” Kerry told the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei “pulled a significant number of troops out. Their presence is actually reduced in Syria.”

Other administration officials have backed Kerry’s assertion.

U.S. officials, who were not authorized to publicly discuss Iran’s role in Syria and spoke only on condition of anonymity, said Tehran’s drawdown of IRGC forces will compel Assad to rely more on his own forces, which lack the training and intelligence capabilities of the IRGC.

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Supreme Court bolsters political influence of US Latinos

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court unanimously endorsed election maps that bolster the growing political influence of America’s Latinos on Monday, ruling that states can count everyone, not just eligible voters, in drawing voting districts.

The decision rejected a challenge from Texas voters that also could have diluted the voting power of urban Democrats, to the benefit of rural Republicans.

The case offered a test of the principle of “one person, one vote,” the requirement laid out by the Supreme Court in 1964 that political districts be roughly equal in population. The issue here, though, was what population to consider: everyone or just eligible voters.

All 50 states use total population as their basis for drawing district lines, but the challengers said the rural state Senate districts in which they lived had vastly more eligible voters than urban districts, making their votes count for less, in violation of the Constitution.

In Texas, and other states with large immigrant populations, urban districts include many more people who are too young, not yet citizens, in the country illegally or otherwise ineligible to vote. All of them, recorded by the census, count for the purpose of drawing political districts.

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Trump and Cruz making final pitches to Wisconsin voters

MILWAUKEE — After Donald Trump’s toughest stretch of the campaign, he and Ted Cruz made spirited final pitches Monday to Wisconsin voters, who will cast ballots Tuesday in a Republican primary that both consider a key step in the race for president.

After Tuesday, there’s a two-week lull before the next important voting, in New York.

Trump is facing pressure on multiple fronts following a difficult week marked by his controversial comments, reversals and rare moments of contrition. While his past remarks on topics like Mexican immigrants have drawn a backlash, even he appeared to recognize the damage caused by missteps in the lead-up to Wisconsin.

Those included re-tweeting an unflattering photo of Cruz’s wife and a series of contradictory comments on abortion that managed to draw condemnation from both abortion rights activists and opponents.

While Trump is the only Republican with a realistic path to clinching the nomination ahead of the Republican convention, a big loss in Wisconsin would greatly reduce his chances of reaching the needed 1,237 delegates before then. A big win for Trump would give him more room for error down the stretch.

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Amtrak contractor confirms work was underway near crash site

CHESTER, Pa. — An Amtrak contractor was doing maintenance work near where a passenger train crashed into a backhoe on the tracks, killing two people outside Philadelphia, but the company said neither its equipment nor its workers were involved.

Autopsies were being performed on the two track workers who were killed Sunday. Federal officials described both of them as Amtrak employees.

Amtrak trains on the Northeast Corridor were running on schedule Monday. The National Transportation Safety Board scheduled an early evening briefing on the crash.

The train was heading from New York to Savannah, Georgia, at about 8 a.m. Sunday when it hit a piece of equipment in Chester, about 15 miles outside of Philadelphia. The impact derailed the lead engine of the train, which was carrying more than 300 passengers and seven crew members.

The NTSB confirmed that one of the people killed was the equipment operator. U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York said Amtrak board Chairman Anthony Coscia told him that the other was a supervisor and that both were Amtrak employees.

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Trump thinks his former teaching pro will do well at Masters

AUGUSTA, Ga. — An invitation to the Masters might be only the second-best offer Jim Herman got this week.

Less than 24 hours after winning the Shell Open, Donald J. Trump joked that Herman, a former assistant golf pro at one of his resorts, might be considered for a cabinet-level post in a new Trump administration.

“That’s a character — the kind of character — you want. Somebody who can handle the pressure,” Trump told The Associated Press in a telephone interview Monday between campaign stops in Wisconsin.

The GOP presidential front-runner was laughing, but dead-serious when he added, “I’m very happy and proud to have helped him out.”

The self-taught scrambler who wouldn’t give up the game and the mogul with a love for golf first came together in 2006. Mickie Gallagher, a mutual friend and the head pro at Trump National in Bedminster, New Jersey, hired Herman as one of his assistants. Soon enough, Herman got a call that the boss was headed over to play and wanted him to join the foursome.