U.S. President Joe Biden made an observation when conferring the National Medal of Arts on rocker Bruce Springsteen on Tuesday:

“Bruce, some people are just born to run, man.”

Springsteen and a host of actors, authors, singers and other artists joined Biden in the White House East Room where they received either a National Medal of Arts or National Humanities Medal for their contributions to American society.

Comedian Julia Louis-Dreyfus, whose “Veep” show made light of the vice presidency — an office Biden once held — was also honored.

“She embraces life’s absurdity with absolute wit, and handles real life turns with absolute grace. A mom, a cancer survivor, a pioneer for women in comedy, she is an American original,” Biden said.

Actress Mindy Kaling, a main character on the long-running television show, “The Office,” set in Biden’s hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania, received a medal as well.

When Biden introduced author Colson Whitehead to the crowd, he noted that Whitehead had won back-to-back Pulitzer Prizes for his books and gave a hint of his own ambitions.

“I’m trying to go back to back myself,” said Biden, who has said he intends to run for reelection in 2024.

Singer Gladys Knight, the “empress of soul,” was an honoree, along with clothing designer Vera Wang, historian Walter Isaacson and authors Amy Tan, Ann Patchett and Tara Westover, among others.
…

U.S. officials are reacting to the joint statement by China and Russia on the Russian war on Ukraine. A statement was issued Tuesday in Moscow, where Chinese President Xi Jinping held two days of talks with his host, Russian President Vladimir Putin.

National Security Council spokesman John Kirby, at the White House press room lectern on Tuesday, said there is nothing from the talks and agreement between the Chinese and Russian leaders that gives hope the war in Ukraine is going to end any time soon.

“If China wants to play a constructive role here in this conflict, then they ought to press Russia to pull its troops out of Ukraine and Ukrainian sovereign territory,” Kirby said. “They should urge President Putin to cease bombing cities, hospitals and schools, to stop the war crimes and the atrocities and end the war today.”

Kirby added that while China should not be considered a neutral party, the United States has seen no indication the Chinese are poised to provide the Russians with lethal weapons.
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The government of Niger says it negotiated the release of a U.S. aid worker and a French journalist who were held captive by Islamist militants in the Sahel region. Aid worker and missionary Jeffery Woodke was held for more than six years, while reporter Olivier Dubois spent nearly two years in captivity.

Kidnappings in the Sahel are growing at an alarming rate. Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger saw a combined 532 abductions in 2022, up from to 33 in 2017, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project. Some 115 abduction incidents have already been recorded in the region this year.

Kidnappings in the Sahel represent a “permanent risk” for all actors working in the region, said Fahiraman Kone, a security analyst with the Institute for Security Studies in Dakar.

“This is a practice that has been put forward for a long time by jihadist groups as a method of financing, but also by other ransom groups who simply engage in banditry,” he said.

Due to the private nature of hostage negotiations, it’s difficult to decipher the role each country plays in securing someone’s release, Kone said. Niger’s efforts, however, should not go unnoticed, he added.

“Niger nevertheless stands out more and more in the central Sahel in its approach to the fight against insecurity,” he said. “While in Burkina Faso and Mali we see a strengthening of the militarized approach to the fight, Niger is trying to set forth a policy of negotiation so as to disengage fighters from groups and to negotiate with jihadist leaders themselves.”

While abductions of foreigners often make headlines, the majority of kidnappings target locals. Some 97% of civilians abducted in Mali since 2012 were Malian, according to a 2021 report from the Institute for Security Studies. Local humanitarian workers, village chiefs, religious leaders and journalists are among the most targeted groups.

Sadibou Marong is the West Africa director for Reporters Without Borders. People must not forget Malian journalists Hamadoun Nialibouly and Moussa M’Bana Dicko, who are still being held captive, he said.

The safe return of Dubois shows that hostage release campaigns can be successful, he added.

“When people generally think it’s not possible, we need to go far and wide,” Marong said. “It’s always possible to set up mechanisms to advocate, to mobilize allies everywhere, so as to achieve such a positive result.”

Dubois was kidnapped on April 8, 2021, in Mali’s northern Gao region by the Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims, or JNIM, a coalition of jihadist insurgent groups active in the Sahel. He was there to interview a jihadist leader when he was abducted.

In a video posted to Twitter from Niamey airport Monday he told reporters he was tired but felt fine.

“It’s huge for me to be here, to be free,” he said. “I’d like to acknowledge Niger and their expertise with this sensitive mission. And to France as well — to everyone that allowed me to be here today.”

Dubois returned to Paris Tuesday, where he was greeted by President Emmanuel Macron.

U.S. aid worker Jeffery Woodke was kidnapped in October 2016 from his home in Abalak, Niger, and was believed to have been taken to Mali.

Niger’s interior minister said Nigerien authorities secured his release from JNIM.

Via Twitter, White House national security advisor Jake Sullivan said he was “gratified” and “relieved” over Woodke’s liberation and thanked Niger for its help in securing the aid worker’s release.

The releases followed a recent trip to Niger by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
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The administration of U.S. President Joe Biden is trying to lower any possible animosity from China over an upcoming visit to the United States by Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen.  

President Tsai will stopover in California and New York later this month before embarking on an official mission to Central America.  An unnamed administration official says the Biden administration has told Beijing that past Taiwanese presidents have routinely made stopover visits in the U.S. on their way to other nations, including Tsai, who has made six stopover visits between 2016 and 2019.

The official says China should not use Tsai’s stopover in the U.S. as a reason to take any aggressive action towards Taiwan.

China responded to a visit to Taiwan last August by then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi by launching several days of massive military drills over the Taiwan Strait, including firing ballistic missiles in the waterway that separates the island from mainland China.

Beijing considers the democratically-ruled island part of its territory, even though Taiwan has been self-governing since the end of China’s civil war in 1949, when Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist forces were driven off the mainland by Mao Zedong’s Communists. China has vowed to bring the island under its control by any means necessary, including a military takeover.

The United States switched diplomatic recognition of China from Taiwan to Beijing in 1979, but it provides Taiwan military equipment for self-defense under the Taiwan Relations Act.   

News outlets said last month that Tsai will give a speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Center near Los Angeles ahead of her scheduled trip to Central America. It was also reported that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy will meet with President Tsai during her stopover in the U.S.  The Republican leader, who represents a district in California, has previously expressed an interest in visiting Taiwan himself.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters. 
…

U.S. President Joe Biden said Monday the United States stands with the “brave women and all the citizens of Iran” who are inspiring the world with their conviction and courage as they fight for their “human rights and fundamental freedoms.” 

Speaking at a White House event celebrating Nowruz, the Iranian New Year, Biden said the United States and its partners will “continue to hold Iranian officials accountable for their attacks against their people.” 

Biden also highlighted the people who have been unjustly detained in Iran, and elsewhere in the world, saying it is a top priority for his administration to bring those people home. 

In a statement earlier Monday, Biden said he and first lady Jill Biden “send our best wishes to everyone celebrating Nowruz across the United States and around the world— from the Middle East, to Central and South Asia, to the Caucasus, to Europe.” 

“This year, Nowruz comes at a difficult time for many families, when hope is needed more than ever — including for the women of Iran who are fighting for their human rights and fundamental freedoms,” President Biden said. 
…

The United States has welcomed an agreement between Yemen’s warring sides to free nearly 900 detainees. 

“This important step builds on the positive environment created by a truce in Yemen that has effectively stopped the fighting for the past 11 months,” National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said in a statement.  “We thank UN Special Envoy for Yemen Hans Grundberg and the International Committee of the Red Cross for their hard work finalizing the agreement.” 

Monday’s agreement came after 10 days of negotiations in Switzerland. 

It includes the Iran-backed Houthi rebels releasing 180 prisoners in exchange for Yemen’s internationally recognized government freeing more than 700 Houthi prisoners, according to Abdul-Qader el-Murtaza, the head of the Houthi delegation. 

U.N. special envoy Hans Grundberg said the two sides agreed to meet again in mid-May to discuss more releases but added that there is much more work to be done to resolve the conflict that began in late 2014. 

“A comprehensive and sustainable end to the conflict is necessary if Yemen is to recover from the devastating toll the eight-year conflict has had on its men and women,” Grundberg said. 

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters. 
…

President Joe Biden signed a bipartisan bill Monday that directs the federal government to declassify as much intelligence as possible about the origins of COVID-19 more than three years after the start of the pandemic.

The legislation, which passed both the House and Senate without dissent, directs the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to declassify intelligence related to China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology. It cites “potential links” between the research that was done there and the outbreak of COVID-19, which the World Health Organization declared a pandemic March 11, 2020. The law allows for redactions to protect sensitive sources and methods.

U.S. intelligence agencies are divided over whether a lab leak or a spillover from animals is the likely source of the deadly virus.

Experts say the true origin of the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed more than 1.1 million in the U.S. and millions more around the globe, may not be known for many years — if ever.

Biden, in a statement, said he was pleased to sign the legislation.

“My Administration will continue to review all classified information relating to COVID-19’s origins, including potential links to the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” he said. “In implementing this legislation, my Administration will declassify and share as much of that information as possible, consistent with my constitutional authority to protect against the disclosure of information that would harm national security.”
…

The criminal charges looming over former President Donald Trump pivot around the payment of hush money to adult movie actress Stormy Daniels in the final days of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

The payment was made by former Trump lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen as part of a scheme to “catch and kill” politically damaging stories about the real estate mogul’s marital infidelities.

Cohen pleaded guilty in connection with the case in 2018 but federal prosecutors did not charge Trump, leaving it to New York City’s district attorney to investigate the case under state law.

In court documents, federal prosecutors laid out how Cohen, working at the behest of Trump, sought to prevent then-candidate Trump’s accusers from going public with their allegations.

In October 2016, an agent for Daniels contacted American Media Inc. (AMI), the publisher of the supermarket tabloid National Enquirer, to offer the rights to a story about an alleged sexual encounter she had with Trump a decade earlier.

AMI Chairman David Pecker, a longtime Trump friend, had offered to help the Trump campaign deal with negative press about his relationships with women by identifying stories that could be bought but not published, a tactic known as “catch and kill.”

The tabloid agreed to keep Cohen “apprised of such stories,” according to federal prosecutors.

In August 2016, AMI had identified one such story and, after receiving Cohen’s assurances of reimbursement, agreed to pay former Playboy model Karen McDougal $150,000 for the rights to her story about an alleged affair with Trump in 2006 and 2007.

But when Daniels’ agent approached AMI, the chairman put him in touch directly with Cohen, who negotiated a $130,000 agreement to buy her silence, federal prosecutors say.

Paying hush money is not a crime. But federal prosecutors say Cohen arranged for the payments to Daniels and McDougal in an attempt to influence the presidential campaign while falsely recording it as a legal “retainer” expense and receiving reimbursements from the Trump Organization.

In fact, “there was no such retainer agreement, and the monthly invoices COHEN submitted were not in connection with any legal services he had provided in 2017,” federal prosecutors wrote.

In August 2018, Cohen pleaded guilty to eight federal criminal charges, including campaign finance violations related to the payment of $130,000 to Daniels.

In the lead up to his guilty plea, Cohen admitted under oath that he had facilitated the hush money payments “in coordination with and at the direction of” Trump.

Trump, who has denied Daniels’ allegation, later said that he “never directed Michael Cohen to break the law” and said the payment was not a “campaign contribution.”

“If it were, it’s only civil, and even if it’s only civil, there was no violation based on what we did. OK?” he told Reuters in 2018.

Cohen spent a little over two years in federal prison before being released in 2021.

Federal prosecutors did not charge Trump in the case.

The Manhattan District Attorney has since been investigating whether the hush money payments violated any state laws.

While it remains unknown what charges the prosecutor will ultimately bring, legal experts say they could center on the falsification of business records.

The theory is that Trump allegedly used the guise of a legal retainer agreement to conceal the hush money payments in violation of federal election laws.

Under New York law, falsifying business records is typically a misdemeanor. To elevate the charge to a felony, prosecutors would have to show that the act of fraud was carried out with the intent to commit, aid or conceal another crime.

“That other crime would appear to be the federal election violations which the Justice Department previously declined to charge,” Jonathan Turley, a law professor at the George Washington University, wrote in a column in The Hill.

Saying he “did absolutely nothing wrong,” Trump has called the New York District Attorney’s investigation a “witch hunt” led by a “racist” prosecutor. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is Black.

This is not the only criminal case hanging over the former president. In Georgia, prosecutors are considering bringing criminal charges in connection with Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election result in the state. Trump narrowly lost to Democrat Joe Biden in Georgia.

Meanwhile, special counsel Jack Smith has been investigating Trump’s role in the effort to overturn the election results as well as his handling of classified documents after he left office.
…

Republican lawmakers on Monday assailed the New York Democratic prosecutor investigating former President Donald Trump in connection with his alleged $130,000 hush money payment to a porn star ahead of the 2016 election.

Three committee chairmen in the House of Representatives accused Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg of prosecutorial misconduct and demanded that he provide them information and documents related to his investigation of Trump.

The former president said over the weekend that he expects to be arrested in the case on Tuesday, although the prosecutor has made no public announcement indicating whether Trump would be indicted or when. Trump called for protests if he is indicted, and New York officials have been coordinating with federal security agencies to handle any unrest near the courthouse in New York.

Trump would be the first former U.S. president ever charged with a criminal offense.

He also faces wide-ranging investigations by a Justice Department special counsel and a state prosecutor in the southern state of Georgia for his role in trying to upend his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden to stay in power.

Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith is also probing Trump’s role in fomenting the January 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol as lawmakers met to certify Biden’s victory and how Trump kept classified documents at his Florida estate after leaving office, rather than turning them over to the National Archives as he was required by law to do.

The New York probe stems from the $130,000 paid to adult star Stormy Daniels by former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen to guarantee her silence just ahead of the 2016 election about the one-night sexual encounter she claims to have had with Trump, an allegation he has long denied. Cohen has said that Trump approved the payment and then reimbursed him, saying it was for legal expenses.

“You are reportedly about to engage in an unprecedented abuse of prosecutorial authority: the indictment of a former president of the United States,” the Republican committee chairmen said in their letter to Bragg.

“This indictment comes after years of your office searching for a basis — any basis — on which to bring charges,” they added.

The letter was signed by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer and House Administration Committee Chairman Bryan Steil.

Democrats rebuffed the criticism of the Trump investigation, with Representative Daniel Goldman saying on Twitter, “Defending Trump is not a legitimate legislative purpose for Congress to investigate a state district attorney.”

“Congress has no jurisdiction to investigate the Manhattan DA, which receives no federal funding nor has any other federal nexus,” said Goldman, who was lead counsel in a 2019 House impeachment of Trump.

Trump announced his intention to seek the 2024 Republican presidential nomination months ago and says he would keep campaigning even if he is charged with a criminal offense. Numerous national polls show him as the front-runner for the Republican nomination, although several other Republicans have either announced their own candidacies or said they are seriously considering a race against Trump.

Trump was impeached twice during his presidency, once in 2019 over his conduct demanding Ukraine investigate Biden, and again in 2021 over the attack on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters. He was acquitted by the Senate both times.
…

U.S. hostage Jeffery Woodke has been released after more than six years in captivity in West Africa, White House national security advisor Jake Sullivan said Monday.  

Woodke was kidnapped from his home in Abalak, Niger, where he was a humanitarian aid worker, by men who ambushed and killed his guards, forced Woodke into their truck at gunpoint and drove toward the border with Mali. The incident happened Oct. 14, 2016. 

According to Niger’s interior minister, Hamadou Souley, Nigerien authorities secured Woodke’s release from Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin, or JNIM, a terrorist group active in West Africa and the Sahel. 

“The U.S. thanks Niger for its help in bringing him home to all who miss & love him,” Sullivan wrote in a tweet Monday, referring to Woodke. “I thank so many across our government who’ve worked tirelessly toward securing his freedom.” 

Woodke’s wife, Els Woodke, told The New York Times that she was notified of his release and told he was in Niger’s capital city of Niamey.  

A U.S. official confirmed that Woodke was in Niamey and said he was being medically evaluated. Another senior administration official briefing reporters said that the U.S. had not paid a ransom or made other concessions.  

Separately, French journalist Olivier Dubois was also released following his kidnapping April 8, 2021 in Mali. Dubois posted a video on Twitter saying he was tired but felt fine. 

Media rights group Reporters Without Borders issued a statement Monday, saying it was “overjoyed and hugely relieved” by Dubois’ release. The group had long campaigned for his release. 

The developments come days after U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Niger. 

Some information from this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.  

VOA’s French to Africa service and Annika Hammerschlag contributed to this report. 
…

U.S. officials said current sanctions on China’s new defense chief, Li Shangfu, will not prevent him from conducting official meetings with his American counterparts, nor is the U.S. government considering issuing an exemption for or waiving Li’s sanction designation.

The People’s Republic of China named General Li as its minister of national defense on March 12. The U.S. has not proposed a call between Li and U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.

In 2018, the U.S. sanctioned Li under the so-called Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) when he headed the Equipment Development Department of the Chinese military.

The sanctions were related to China’s purchase of ten SU-35 combat aircrafts in 2017 and S-400 surface-to-air missile system-related equipment in 2018, according to the State Department.

A State Department spokesperson told VOA that “CAATSA sanctions do not necessarily prohibit sanctioned persons from meeting with U.S. government officials.”

“Visa records are confidential under U.S. law. We therefore cannot discuss the details of individual visa cases,” said the spokesperson when asked if the existing sanctions would ban Li from traveling to the U.S. to conduct official meetings.

But to Beijing, seeing the United States lift the sanctions against Li as a goodwill gesture may be deemed a critical step to resuming military talks between the defense chiefs of the two nations.

Experts said sanctions should not be the reason against having deconfliction talks.

“Most of the meetings between our defense secretary and the Chinese defense minister recently have been conducted in third countries—for example, at the Shangri-La Dialogues in Singapore,” said Dennis Wilder, professor of Asian studies at Georgetown University, referring to Asia’s premier annual defense and security forum.

“In that case, there would be no reason not to have the meeting, even though [General Li] is under sanctions, because meeting in the third country makes those sanctions quite meaningless,” Wilder told VOA on Monday.

While General Li remains blocked from any U.S. property interests, financial transfers, payments or foreign exchange under U.S. jurisdiction due to current sanctions, President Joe Biden’s administration continues to seek open lines of communication with PRC military leaders to ensure competition does not spill into conflict, said a Pentagon spokesperson.

Secretary Austin “is able to engage in official United States government business” with General Li despite the sanctions, the spokesperson added.

The U.S. and Chinese militaries have had working level communications both in Washington and Beijing, but no leader-level military talks since November 2022 despite U.S. requests.
…

Judith Thompson sits straight and still in her chair, eyes bright, warming herself from the cold. In Mandarin, she tells VOA she taught English at the Southwestern University of Political Science and Law in Chongqing, China. But those days of doing missionary work with her husband of 49 years are long gone. “I’ve never been homeless before,” the American woman says. “It’s a whole new experience for me to adapt.”

Thompson has been staying at the Springs Rescue Mission since November. She is part of the homeless shelter’s Hope Program, which includes job training. Thompson plans to return to the mission field, in outreach. “I want to be God’s light to give people hope and encouragement.”

The Christ-centered rescue mission and similar groups have reduced homelessness by 50% in Colorado Springs. Mission president and CEO Jack Briggs credits the success to community partnership and treating all clients as humans. “It’s people. I think we miss that sometimes. People on the streets are people.”

Addicts welcome

To accomplish that, the mission meets people “where they are,” Briggs says. Those with legal issues and/or addictions can enter. The single entry to the shelter, called the welcome center, increases the safety and security that homeless people seek.

Visitors and clients walk through a metal detector, and personal items are run through a scanner. Officers employed directly by the shelter physically search clients before entry. All drugs, alcohol and weapons are removed and placed in a locker, should the client want them back upon exiting.

Anyone who enters can hear barking coming from the next room, the shelter’s kennel. Springs Rescue Mission does not want clients choosing between a roof over their head or their dog, oftentimes the only family they have.

Clients do agree, however, to part with their clothes, which in many cases are their only possessions. The shelter launders and folds them, then places them into one of 300 red lockers. “When we build that trust and a relationship, that’s the starting point to get better from the situation they happen to be in,” Briggs says.

200 loads of laundry

Thomas McDonald, who, with the mission’s help, recovered from addictions to alcohol and cocaine, coordinates the area that includes the showers and the laundry. McDonald says he manages 200 loads of laundry daily, which “helps keep me accountable for my actions.”

Clients typically spend time working and living outside the shelter before applying for a job at the mission. Community partners step in with job leads, and the mission helps 40 people a month get jobs. Briggs says that is only possible because of the rescue mission’s job training program.

“They aren’t work ready — they just aren’t. They’ve lost the skillset, they have lost the personal hygiene, they maybe have lost the motivation,” he says. Once they graduate, the mission vouches for them to liaisons in the community.

The mission boasts a dining hall that serves 500 meals daily — again, run by former clients. During the COVID-19 pandemic, when catering businesses around Colorado Springs lacked employees, the Springs Rescue Mission recognized the need and began a catering preparation business at the shelter.

Head Chef Matt De Laurell, a former methamphetamine and cocaine addict, explained, “We do everything from little picnics all the way up to big 1,000-people corporate events.” During COVID, they also supplied first responders with well-appreciated hot meals at the end of their 12-hour shifts.

USAF general to CEO

Jack Briggs was a retired U.S. Air Force major general when he was hired as president and CEO of Springs Rescue Mission. His military attention to detail is evident as he pulls out his cellphone and shows numerous statistics from the “client information gathering system.”

Unlike other shelters, Springs Rescue Mission has a full-time data analyst on staff. Says Briggs, “We gather all the data that we can at a macro level for the whole place. But then we can break it down by individuals … for care.”

Briggs says that the statistics show about 30% of his clients graduate with enough “skills, talent and capacity” to get jobs and live independently, but that recidivism after graduation lowers that number.

Jesus greets all

Religion is at the center of the nonprofit’s philosophy. An oversize bronze sculpture of Jesus wearing a crown of thorns stands above the courtyard, where clients quietly talk outdoors when the weather allows.

It wasn’t until the sculpture was in place two years ago during an $18 million renovation that Briggs realized Jesus’ index finger pointed to the enormous cross atop the welcome center.

A handwritten sign in the dining hall reads, “Need Prayer? Just ask, we would love to pray with you.”

Jack Briggs never shies away from crediting God for the rescue mission’s success.

“That’s the starting point of everything. When we focus on that, we tend to do good work. When we think it’s about Jack or this particular program or something like that, we tend to get off track.”
…

Daniel Duggan is wanted in the United States on charges including conspiracy to unlawfully export defense services to China and money laundering. Lawyers for the former U.S. marine, accused of helping to train Chinese military pilots, have said they are investigating whether he was ‘trapped’ by American authorities who are seeking his extradition from Australia.  

Duggan had applied for an Australian government job in aviation that needed security clearance. That was initially granted but was revoked soon after he returned to Australia.     

The former U.S. marine pilot’s lawyer, Dennis Miralis, believes the extradition request is politically motivated and says that his client could well have been entrapped.   

“It is striking to us that a sequence of events like that could occur,” Miralis told reporters Monday outside the court in Sydney. “We are exploring at this stage whether or not he was lured back to Australia by the U.S., where the U.S. knew that he would be in a jurisdiction where he would be capable of being extradited back to the U.S.”  

“That is a matter of grave significance,” Miralis said. “At this stage these are matters under investigation.”    

Authorities in Washington have accused Duggan of training Chinese fighter pilots and believe he’s violated the arms export control act.     

He was arrested last October in the Australian state of New South Wales and has recently been moved from a remand center in Sydney to a maximum-security prison.     

His legal team has filed a submission to the U.N. Human Rights Commission claiming that his incarceration breaches the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.    

The Australian government approved a request for his extradition almost three months ago.   

The former marine airman is an Australian citizen who’s renounced his U.S. citizenship.  He denies breaking any law and has said he was training civilian not military pilots.    

Australia, the United States and Britain in recent months have launched a crackdown on former military pilots being recruited by China.   

A magistrate in Sydney will decide if Duggan is eligible for extradition to the United States to face criminal charges. The case has been adjourned until May 1. 
…

A Pentagon study has found high rates of cancer among military pilots and for the first time has shown that ground crews who fuel, maintain and launch those aircraft are also getting sick. 

The data had long been sought by retired military aviators who have raised alarms for years about the number of air and ground crew members they knew who had cancer. They were told that earlier military studies had found they were not at greater risk than the general U.S. population. 

In its yearlong study of almost 900,000 service members who flew on or worked on military aircraft between 1992 and 2017, the Pentagon found that air crew members had an 87% higher rate of melanoma and a 39% higher rate of thyroid cancer, while men had a 16% higher rate of prostate cancer and women a 16% higher rate of breast cancer. Overall, the air crews had a 24% higher rate of cancer of all types. 

The study showed ground crews had a 19% higher rate of brain and nervous system cancers, a 15% higher rate of thyroid cancer and a 9% higher rate of kidney or renal cancers, while women had a 7% higher rate of breast cancer. The overall rate for cancers of all types was 3% higher. 

There was some good news reported as well. Both ground and air crews had far lower rates of lung cancer, and air crews also had lower rates of bladder and colon cancers. 

The data compared the service members with the general U.S. population after adjusting for age, sex and race. 

The Pentagon said the new study was one of the largest and most comprehensive to date. An earlier study had looked at just Air Force pilots and had found some higher rates of cancer, while this one looked across all services and at both air and ground crews. Even with the wider approach, the Pentagon cautioned that the actual number of cancer cases was likely to be even higher because of gaps in the data, which it said it would work to remedy. 

The study “proves that it’s well past time for leaders and policy makers to move from skepticism to belief and active assistance,” said retired Air Force Col. Vince Alcazar, a member of the Red River Valley Fighter Pilots Association, which had lobbied the Pentagon and Congress for help. Alcazar serves on the association’s medical issues committee. 

The study was required by Congress in the 2021 defense bill. Now, because higher rates were found, the Pentagon must conduct an even bigger review to try to understand why the crews are getting sick. 

Isolating potential causes is difficult, and the Pentagon was careful to note that this study “does not imply that military service in air crew or ground crew occupations causes cancer, because there are multiple potential confounding factors that could not be controlled for in this analysis,” such as family histories, smoking or alcohol use. 

But aviation crews have long asked for the Pentagon to look closely at some of the environmental factors they are exposed to, such as jet fuels and solvents used to clean and maintain jet parts, sensors and their power sources in aircraft nose cones, and the massive radar systems on the decks of the ships they land on. 

When Navy Capt. Jim Seaman would come home from a deployment aboard an aircraft carrier, his gear would reek of jet fuel, his widow, Betty Seaman, said. The A-6 Intruder pilot died in 2018 at age 61 of lung cancer. Betty Seaman still has his gear stored and it still smells of fuel, “which I love,” she said. 

She and others wonder if there’s a link. She said crews would talk about how even the ship’s water systems would smell of fuel. 

She said she and others have mixed feelings about finally seeing in data what they have suspected for years about the aviation cancers. But “it has the potential to do a lot of good as far as early communication, early detection,” she said. 

The study found that when crew members were diagnosed with cancer, they were more likely to survive than members of the general population, which the study suggested was because they were diagnosed earlier due to regular required medical checkups and were more likely to be in better health because of their military fitness requirements. 

The Pentagon acknowledged that the study had gaps that likely led to an undercount of cancer cases. 

The military heath system database used in the study did not have reliable cancer data until 1990, so it may not have included pilots who flew early-generation jets in the prior decades. 

The study also did not include cancer data from the Department of Veterans Affairs or state cancer registries, which means it did not capture cases from former crew members who got sick after leaving the military medical system. 

“It is important to note that study results may have differed had additional older former service members been included,” it said. 

To remedy that, the Pentagon is now going to pull data from those registries to add to the total count, the study said. 

The second phase of the study will try to isolate causes. The 2021 bill requires the Defense Department not only to identify “the carcinogenic toxicants or hazardous materials associated with military flight operations,” but also determine the type of aircraft and locations where diagnosed crews served. 

After her husband got sick, Betty Seaman asked him if he would have chosen differently, knowing his service might be linked to his cancer. 

“I flat-out asked Jim. And he, without hesitation, said, ‘I would have still done it.'” 
…

Miami Beach officials imposed a curfew beginning Sunday night during spring break after two fatal shootings and rowdy, chaotic crowds that police have had difficulty controlling. 

The city said in a news release the curfew would be from 11:59 p.m. Sunday until 6 a.m. Monday, with an additional curfew likely to be put in place Thursday through next Monday, March 27. The curfew mainly affects South Beach, the most popular party location for spring breakers. 

The release said the two separate shootings Friday night and early Sunday that left two people dead and “excessively large and unruly crowds” led to the decision. The city commission plans a meeting Monday to discuss potential further restrictions next week. 

Miami Beach Mayor Dan Gelber said in a video message posted Sunday that the crowds and presence of numerous firearms has “created a peril that cannot go unchecked” despite massive police presence and many city-sponsored activities meant to keep people busy. 

“We don’t ask for spring break in our city. We don’t want spring break in our city. It’s too rowdy, it’s too much disorder and it’s too difficult to police,” Gelber said. 

The latest shooting happened about 3:30 a.m. Sunday on Ocean Drive in South Beach, according to Miami Beach police. A male was shot and died later at a hospital, and officers chased down a suspect on foot, police said on Twitter. Their identities were not released, nor were any possible charges. 

In the Friday night shooting, one male victim was killed, and another seriously injured, sending crowds scrambling in fear from restaurants and clubs into the streets as gunshots rang out. Police detained one person at the scene and found four firearms, but no other details have been made available. 

Under the curfew, people must leave businesses before midnight, although hotels can operate later only in service to their guests. The city release said restaurants can stay open only for delivery and the curfew won’t apply to residents, people going to and from work, emergency services and hotel guests. Some roads will be closed off and arriving hotel guests may have to show proof of their reservations. 

Last year, the city imposed a midnight curfew following two shootings, also on Ocean Drive. The year before that, there were about 1,000 arrests and dozens of guns confiscated during a rowdy spring break that led Miami Beach officials to take steps aimed at calming the situation. 
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While American support for Ukraine is still strong, there are some fractures among members of the Republican and Democratic parties that are beginning to surface. And as VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias explains, those splits could deepen as other important policy decisions compete for attention with Ukraine. VOA footage by Saqib Ul Islam. Video editing by Marcus Harton.
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When the U.S. government announced this month that it had stepped in to take over Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and Signature Bank, it was a 90-year-old Great Depression-era agency that took the lead in assuring depositors that their funds were safe and quelling a bank run that threatened broader damage to the industry.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. took control of SVB on March 10 and Signature Bank two days later, moves that rendered the publicly traded stock of both institutions worthless but preserved other assets for distribution to account holders and each bank’s creditors.

In a decision some found surprising, the FDIC announced that all deposits held at both banks would be fully guaranteed. Historically, depositors have been protected up to $250,000, a limit designed to keep the overwhelming majority of individual depositors safe from loss.

The agency decided, however, that to prevent “contagion” — panic about one failing bank spreading to broader panic about others — it would make all depositors whole.

The decision was also likely motivated by the fact that many businesses, primarily in the tech sector, kept large accounts at SVB that they used to meet payroll and ordinary business expenses. The impact of so many companies suddenly being unable to pay thousands of employees would have been hard to estimate but could have potentially damaged the economy.

The FDIC and the Biden administration were quick to deny that the two banks had been the subjects of a “bailout,” stressing that bank executives had been fired, stockholders’ equity had been wiped out, and any funds supplied by the agency to make depositors whole would come from an insurance fund financed by premiums paid by insured banks.

The FDIC, however, will have to raise assessments on banks to replenish what money it spends on the resolution of SVB and Signature. Banks will likely pass these costs on to their customers by charging higher fees or increasing interest on loans.

History of the FDIC

The FDIC was created in 1933, after the U.S. weathered years of panic during the Great Depression, which led to the closures of thousands of banks. Between 1921 and 1929, approximately 5,700 banks across the U.S. failed, some because of poor management and many because depositors lost confidence and demanded withdrawals so rapidly that the banks simply ran out of cash.

Things worsened between 1929 and 1933, when nearly 10,000 banks across the country failed. During a particularly difficult week in February 1933, bank panics were so pervasive that governors in almost all U.S. states acted to temporarily close all banks.

The FDIC was created in the aftermath of that crisis, when the federal government finally acted on a long-delayed plan to establish national deposit insurance. The agency originally guaranteed individual deposits of up to $2,500, a level that has been periodically increased over the decades.

The agency is funded by premiums that banks and savings associations pay for deposit insurance coverage. It is managed by a board of five presidential appointees. The current chair of the FDIC is Martin J. Gruenberg. By statute, the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Comptroller of the Currency, whose agency supervises nationally chartered banks, are also members. Two other appointees round out the board, which cannot have more than three members of the same political party.

In its nine decades, the FDIC has closed hundreds of failed banks, but insured deposits have always been repaid in full.

Promoting financial stability

“The mission of the FDIC is to promote financial stability,” said Diane Ellis, the former director of the agency’s Division of Insurance and Research. “The FDIC does that by exercising several authorities. One is to provide deposit insurance so that bank depositors can be confident that they’ll get their money back regardless of what happens with their bank.”

In addition, the agency has the authority to “resolve” failed banks, which can involve selling the bank outright to another institution, creating a “bridge” bank that provides ongoing services to depositors while the agency works toward a resolution, or selling off the bank’s assets to return as much money as possible to depositors whose holdings exceed the coverage limit.

Ellis, now a senior managing director at the banking network IntraFi, noted that the agency also has oversight authority over the banks it insures.

“For open banks, examiners conduct regular examinations to make sure banks are operating in a safe and sound manner … promoting a healthy, stable banking system, which is important for economic growth,” she told VOA.

Avoiding ‘moral hazard’

When the FDIC was established, capping the standard insurance amount per depositor was a central feature of its design. The creators of the agency were concerned about a problem called “moral hazard.” They worried that if the federal government guaranteed 100% of deposits, individuals and businesses would fail to exercise due diligence when deciding what banks to trust with their money, and that lack of scrutiny would result in banks taking excessive risks.

“Legislators wanted to strike a balance, to protect people up to a certain amount, but not everything, so that there’d be an incentive for people to make sure that their money was in a safe bank rather than a dangerous one,” said John Bovenzi, who served as chief operating officer and deputy to the chairman of the FDIC from 1999 to 2009.

Bovenzi, the co-founder of the Bovenzi Group, a financial services consultancy, told VOA that he was initially surprised by the decision of the FDIC and other regulators to make all uninsured depositors whole.

“These weren’t the largest institutions. Silicon Valley and Signature, they were in sort of a second tier and weren’t viewed as ‘too big to fail,'” he said.

However, Bovenzi said, it soon became apparent to regulators that there were other banks in the country that operated with business models similar to that of SVB, which had large amounts of low-interest securities on its books, the value of which was being systematically undercut by the Federal Reserve’s decision to raise interest rates dramatically over the past year.

“What happened was that they saw there was too much spillover effect to other institutions, so they invoked what’s called a ‘systemic risk exception,'” he said. Had this not been the case, he said, the FDIC would have had to conduct the closing in a way that resulted in the least cost to it and the government to save money, “and that would have meant uninsured taking losses. By protecting the uninsured, the FDIC raises its own costs to cover it. And so it needed to say, ‘We don’t want to do it for the institution, but we need to do it for the system.'”

Setting a precedent

The decision to protect all deposits at SVB and Signature was not unique. During the financial crisis sparked by widespread defaults in the subprime mortgage sector from 2007 to 2010, regulators shuttered several hundred banks in the space of a few years, and implemented a policy of protecting all deposits to avoid increasing the damage to the broader economy.

The decision to do so for SVB and Signature, though, absent such a widespread crisis, has raised questions about whether a precedent has been set that will lead depositors to expect to be rescued by the government if their bank fails.

In testimony before Congress Thursday, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned that the treatment of SVB and Signature should not be taken as a signal that similar protection will be extended to other banks in the future.

Such action, she said, would take place only when “failure to protect uninsured depositors would create systemic risk and significant economic and financial consequences.”
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Shannon Castellano and Travis Methvin should have spent this weekend seeing world-famous waterfalls on the Havasupai Tribe Reservation in the southwestern U.S. state of Arizona.

Instead, the two friends from San Diego spent Friday night along with 40 other hikers camped out on a helipad. But sleep was elusive because tribal members warned that an emergency services helicopter could potentially land anytime during the night.

“Yeah, so we didn’t really sleep,” Castellano said Saturday while driving to a hotel in Sedona. “I just kept one eye open really and one ear open … You just do not expect any of that to happen. So, I think I’m still in shock that I’m not even there right now.”

Tourists hoping to reach the breathtaking waterfalls on the reservation instead went through harrowing flood evacuations.

The official Havasupai Tribe Tourism Facebook page reported Friday that flooding had washed away a bridge to the campground. An unknown number of campers were evacuated to Supai Village, with some being rescued by helicopter.

The campground is in a lower-lying area than the village of Supai. Some hikers had to camp in the village. Others who weren’t able to get to the village because of high water were forced to camp overnight on a trail.

But floodwaters were starting to recede as of Saturday morning, according to the tribe’s Facebook post.

Visitors with the proper permits will be allowed to hike to the village and campground. They will be met with tribal guides, who will help them navigate around creek waters on a back trail to get to the campground.

Tourists will not be permitted to take pictures. The back trail goes past sites considered sacred by the tribe.

Meanwhile, the tribe said in its statement that it has “all hands on deck” to build a temporary bridge to the campground.

Abbie Fink, a spokesperson for the tribe, referred to the tribe’s Facebook page when reached for comment Saturday.

Methvin and Castellano decided to leave by helicopter Saturday rather than navigate muddy trails with a guide. Despite losing money on a pre-paid, three-day stay, Methvin says they can still try to salvage their trip. Having only received permits last month, he feels especially sad for hikers they met with reservations from 2020.

“They waited three years to get there,” Methvin said. “At least we have the ability to go do something else versus having that whole weekend ruined.”

From Supai to Sedona, several areas of northern Arizona have been slammed this week by storms. The resulting snow combined with snowmelt at higher elevations has wreaked havoc on highways, access roads and even city streets.

The flooding of the Havasupai campground comes as the tribe reopened access last month to its reservation and various majestic blue-green waterfalls — for the first time since March 2020. The tribe opted to close to protect its members from the coronavirus. Officials then decided to extend the closure through last year’s tourism season.

At the beginning of this year, President Joe Biden approved a disaster declaration initiated by the Havasupai Tribe, freeing up funds for flood damage sustained in October. Flooding at that time had destroyed several bridges and left downed trees on trails necessary for tourists and transportation of goods into Supai Village.

Permits to visit are highly coveted. Pre-pandemic, the tribe received an estimated 30,000 to 40,000 visitors per year to its reservation deep in a gorge west of Grand Canyon National Park. The area is reachable only by foot or helicopter, or by riding a horse or mule. Visitors can either camp or stay in a lodge.

Castellano is already planning to try to get a permit again later this year if there are cancellations. “We just want to see i in all its glory, not muddy falls,” she said.
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Three senior U.S. security officials held a video call with a group of their Ukrainian counterparts to discuss military aid to Kyiv, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s chief of staff said Saturday.

“We discussed the further provision of necessary assistance to our country, in particular vehicles, weapons and ammunition,” Andriy Yermak wrote on the Telegram messaging app.

Yermak said he, Ukraine’s Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov, top general Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, and several other senior commanders and officials had attended the meeting Friday.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, top military commander Mark Milley, and the White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan represented the other side.

“The Ukrainian officials provided an update on battlefield conditions and expressed appreciation for the continued provision of U.S. security assistance,” according to a White House statement released Friday.

Yermak did not give details of specific requests to the U.S. side.

The meeting took place as Kyiv seeks to gather sufficient supplies of arms from its Western backers, of which the U.S. has been the most significant, to mount a counter-offensive and try to take back territory captured by Moscow last year.

Yermak added that Zelenskyy had joined the meeting at the end to give his views on the liberation of Ukrainian territories occupied by Russia since its invasion nearly 13 months ago.

“We briefed our allies in detail about the current situation at the front, combat operations in the most difficult areas, as well as the urgent needs of the Ukrainian army,” Yermak said.

Ukrainian forces continued Friday to withstand Russian assaults on the ruined city of Bakhmut, the focal point for eight months of Russian attempts to advance through the industrial Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine bordering Russia.
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Soon after a train derailed and spilled toxic chemicals in Ohio last month, anonymous pro-Russian accounts started spreading misleading claims and anti-American propaganda about it on Twitter, using Elon Musk’s new verification system to expand their reach while creating the illusion of credibility.

The accounts, which parroted Kremlin talking points on myriad topics, claimed without evidence that authorities in Ohio were lying about the true impact of the chemical spill. The accounts spread fearmongering posts that preyed on legitimate concerns about pollution and health effects and compared the response to the derailment with America’s support for Ukraine following its invasion by Russia.

Some of the claims pushed by the pro-Russian accounts were verifiably false, such as the suggestion that the news media had covered up the disaster or that environmental scientists traveling to the site had been killed in a plane crash. But most were more speculative, seemingly designed to stoke fear or distrust. Examples include unverified maps showing widespread pollution, posts predicting an increase in fatal cancers, and others about unconfirmed mass animal die-offs.

“Biden offers food, water, medicine, shelter, payouts of pension and social services to Ukraine! Ohio first! Offer and deliver to Ohio!” posted one of the pro-Moscow accounts, which boasts 25,000 followers and features an anonymous location and a profile photo of a dog. Twitter awarded the account a blue check mark in January.

Social accounts spread propaganda

Regularly spewing anti-U.S. propaganda, the accounts show how easily authoritarian states and Americans willing to spread their propaganda can exploit social media platforms like Twitter to steer domestic discourse.

The accounts were identified by Reset, a London-based nonprofit that studies social media’s impact on democracy and shared with The Associated Press. Felix Kartte, a senior advisor at Reset, said the report’s findings indicate Twitter is allowing Russia to use its platform like a bullhorn.

“With no one at home in Twitter’s product safety department, Russia will continue to meddle in U.S. elections and in democracies around the world,” Kartte said.

Twitter did not respond to messages seeking comment for this story.

The 38-car derailment near East Palestine, Ohio, released toxic chemicals into the atmosphere, leading to a national debate over rail safety and environmental regulations while raising fears of poisoned drinking water and air.

The disaster was a major topic on social media, with millions of mentions on platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, according to an analysis by San Francisco-based media intelligence firm Zignal Labs, which conducted a study on behalf of the AP.

Online comments try to affect opinions

At first, the derailment received little attention online but mentions grew steadily, peaking two weeks after the incident, Zignal found, a time lag that gave pro-Russia voices time to try to shape the conversation.

The accounts identified by Reset’s researchers received an extra boost from Twitter itself, in the form of a blue check mark. Before Musk purchased Twitter last year, its check marks denoted accounts run by verified users, often public figures, celebrities or journalists. It was seen as a mark of authenticity on a platform known for bots and spam accounts.

Musk ended that system and replaced it with Twitter Blue, which is given to users who pay $8 per month and supply a phone number. Twitter Blue users agree not to engage in deception and are required to post a profile picture and name. But there’s no rule that they use their own.

Under the program, Twitter Blue users can write and send longer tweets and videos. Their replies are also given higher priority in other posts.

The AP reached out to several of the accounts listed in Reset’s report. In response, one of the accounts sent a two-word message before blocking the AP reporter on Twitter: “Shut up.”

While researchers spotted clues suggesting some of the accounts are linked to coordinated efforts by Russian disinformation agencies, others were Americans, showing the Kremlin doesn’t always have to pay to get its message out.

One account, known as Truth Puke, is connected to a website of the same name geared toward conservatives in the United States. Truth Puke regularly reposts Russian state media; RT, formerly known as Russia Today, is one of its favorite groups to repost, Reset found. One video posted by the account features ex-President Donald Trump’s remarks about the train derailment, complete with Russian subtitles.

In a response to questions from the AP, Truth Puke said it aims to provide a “wide spectrum of views” and was surprised to be labeled a spreader of Russian propaganda, despite the account’s heavy use of such material. Asked about the video with Russian subtitles, Truth Puke said it used the Russian language version of the Trump video for the sake of expediency.

“We can assure you that it was not done with any Russian propagandist intent in mind, we just like to put out things as quickly as we find them,” the company said.

Other accounts brag of their love for Russia. One account on Thursday reposted a bizarre claim that the U.S. was stealing humanitarian earthquake relief supplies donated to Syria by China. The account has 60,000 followers and is known as Donbass Devushka, after the region of Ukraine.

Another pro-Russian account recently tried to pick an online argument with Ukraine’s defense department, posting photos of documents that it claimed came from the Wagner Group, a private military company owned by a Yevgeny Prigozhin, a key Putin ally. Prigozhin operates troll farms that have targeted U.S. social media users in the past. Last fall he boasted of his efforts to meddle with American democracy.

A separate Twitter account claiming to represent Wagner actively uses the site to recruit fighters.

“Gentlemen, we have interfered, are interfering and will interfere,” Prigozhin said last fall on the eve of the 2022 midterm elections in the U.S. “Carefully, precisely, surgically and in our own way, as we know how to do.” 
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The United States, its Western allies and experts shone a spotlight on the dire human rights situation and increasing repression in North Korea at a United Nations meeting Friday that China and Russia denounced as a politicized move likely to escalate tensions on the Korean peninsula.

China blocked the U.S. from broadcasting the informal Security Council meeting globally on the internet, a decision criticized by U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield as an attempt to hide North Korea’s “atrocities from the world.”

Webcasting requires agreement from all 15 council members. But the U.S. envoy said Beijing’s effort was in vain because the meeting will be made public, and the U.S. and many others will continue to speak out against Pyongyang’s human rights abuses and threats to international peace.

James Turpin, a senior official in the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, said the ongoing tensions on the Korean peninsula pose a threat to regional and international peace and security, and “these tensions cannot be separated from the dire human rights situation in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea,” the North’s official name.

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, North Korea has been isolated. The U.N. has no international staff in the country and Turpin said this “coincides with an increase in the repression of civil and political rights.”

He pointed to stronger government measures to prevent people from getting access to information from the outside world, an extreme level of surveillance, people’s homes being subjected to random search for material not authorized by the state, and punishments for anyone trying to exercise basic rights including freedom of expression, religion and peaceful assembly.

Elizabeth Salmon, the U.N. special investigator on human rights in North Korea, also stressed “the interdependence of international peace and security and human rights,” saying peace and denuclearization can’t be addressed without considering the current human rights violations.

She told the meeting that the limited information available shows the suffering of the North Korean people has increased and their already limited liberties have declined. Access to food, medicine and health care remains a priority concern, “people have frozen to death during the cold spells in January,” and some didn’t have money to heat their homes while others were forced to live on the streets because they sold their homes as a last resort.

Xing Jisheng, a counselor at China’s U.N. Mission, criticized the U.S. for discussing human rights in the Security Council whose mandate is ensuring international peace and security, saying it “is not constructive in any way.” Instead of easing tension, he said, “it may rather intensify the conflict, and therefore it’s an irresponsible move.”

“Using U.N. WebTV for live broadcast is a waste of U.N. resources,” Xing added, saying if countries are really concerned about the situation on the Korean peninsula and well-being of the people, they should work to relaunch dialogue, deescalate tensions, and support lifting sanctions that affect the livelihood of North Koreans and the country’s deteriorating humanitarian situation.

Stepan Kuzmenkov, a senior counselor at Russia’s U.N. Mission, echoed China’s opposition to having the Security Council discuss human rights and said there were no grounds for convening the meeting “which has a clear anti-North Korean bent.”

He accused the U.S. of using human rights “to settle scores with the governments not to their liking” and condemned what he called “streams of disinformation” about North Korea disseminated by the U.S. and its allies “on the pretext that they’re trying to protect human rights.”

“What we see is that the United States, South Korea and Japan are engaging in aggressive, militaristic activities, thereby whipping up tensions in northeastern Asia, putting the security of countries in the region at risk,” Kuzmenov said. “The Americans are ignoring initiatives which would help ease tensions as well as the substantive and constructive signals (North Korean leader) Kim Jong Un is sending, which could bring about possible de-escalation.”

Thomas-Greenfield, of the U.S., countered that “the regime’s widespread human rights abuses and its threats to our collective security could not be clearer.”

North Korea’s ballistic missile and weapons of mass destruction programs threaten international peace and security and are “inextricably linked to the regime’s human rights abuses,” she said.

“In the DPRK, the pursuit of weapons of mass destruction always, always trumps human rights and humanitarian needs of its people,” Thomas-Greenfield said.
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Former U.S. president Donald Trump is indicating he will be arrested within days.

Former president Donald Trump, in a message on his Truth Social media platform on Saturday morning, said he will be arrested Tuesday and called on his supporters to “protest.”

He did not give details. It is known that authorities in New York City have been looking at charges against Trump in a so-called hush money case in which a former adult film performer was paid to keep silent about an alleged affair with Trump before he was president. 

Media reports say law enforcement has been preparing for security in and around the Manhattan Criminal Court, where Trump would surrender if he is indicted. 
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States that rely on water from the over-tapped Colorado River want the U.S. Supreme Court to block a lawsuit from the Navajo Nation that could upend how water is shared in the Western U.S.

The tribe doesn’t have enough water and says that the federal government is at fault. Roughly a third of residents on the vast Navajo Nation don’t have running water in their homes.

More than 150 years ago, the U.S. government and the tribe signed treaties that promised the tribe a “permanent home” — a promise the Navajo Nation says includes a sufficient supply of water. The tribe says the government broke its promise to ensure the tribe has enough water and that people are suffering as a result.

The federal government disputes that claim. And states, such as Arizona, California and Nevada, argue that more water for the Navajo Nation would cut into already scarce supplies for cities, agriculture and business growth.

The high court will hold oral arguments Monday in a case with critical implications for how water from the drought-stricken Colorado River is shared and the extent of the U.S. government’s obligations to Native American tribes.

A win for the Navajo Nation won’t directly result in more water for the roughly 175,000 people who live on the largest reservation in the U.S. But it’s a piece of what has been a multi-faceted approach over decades to obtain a basic need.

Tina Becenti, a mother of five, made two or three short trips a day to her mom’s house or a public water spot to haul water back home, filling several five-gallon buckets and liter-sized pickle jars. They filled slowly, sapping hours from her day. Her sons would sometimes help lift the heavy containers into her Nissan SUV that she’d drive carefully back home to avoid spills.

“Every drop really matters,” Becenti said.

That water had to be heated then poured into a tub to bathe her young twin girls. Becenti’s mother had running water, so her three older children would sometimes go there to shower. After a couple of years, Becenti finally got a large tank installed by the nonprofit DigDeep so she could use her sink.

DigDeep, which filed a legal brief in support of the Navajo Nation’s case, has worked to help tribal members gain access to water as larger water-rights claims are pressed.

Extending water lines to the sparsely populated sections of the 69,000-square-kilometer reservation that spans three states is difficult and costly. But tribal officials say additional water supplies would help ease the burden and create equity.

“You drive to Flagstaff, you drive to Albuquerque, you drive to Phoenix, there is water everywhere, everything is green, everything is watered up,” said Rex Kontz, deputy general manager of the Navajo Tribal Utility Authority. “You don’t see that on Navajo.”

The tribe primarily relies on groundwater to serve homes and businesses.

For decades, the Navajo Nation has fought for access to surface water, including the Colorado River and its tributaries, that it can pipe to more remote locations for homes, businesses and government offices.

It’s a legal fight that resonates with tribes across the U.S., said Dylan Hedden-Nicely, the director of the Native American Law Program at the University of Idaho and an attorney representing tribal organizations that filed a brief in support of the Navajo Nation.

The Navajo Nation has reached settlements for water from the San Juan River in New Mexico and Utah. Both of those settlements draw from the Colorado River’s Upper Basin.

The tribe has yet to reach agreement with Arizona and the federal government for water rights from the Colorado River in the Lower Basin that includes the states of California, Arizona and Nevada. It also has sought water from a tributary, the Little Colorado River, another major legal dispute that’s playing out separately.

In the U.S Supreme Court case, the Navajo Nation wants the U.S. Department of the Interior to account for the tribe’s needs in Arizona and come up with a plan to meet those needs.

A federal appeals court ruled the Navajo Nation’s lawsuit could move forward, overturning a decision from a lower court.

Attorneys for the Navajo Nation base their claims on two treaties the tribe and the U.S. signed in 1849 and 1868. The latter allowed Navajos to return to their ancestral homelands in the Four Corners region after being forcibly marched to a desolate tract in eastern New Mexico.

The Navajo Nation wants the Supreme Court to find that those treaties guaranteed them enough water to sustain their homeland. And the tribe wants a chance to make its case before a lower federal court.

The federal government says it has helped the tribe get water from the Colorado River’s tributaries, but no treaty or law forces officials to address the tribe’s general water needs. The Interior Department declined to comment on the pending case.

“We absolutely think they’re entitled to water, but we don’t think the lower Colorado River is the source,” said Rita Maguire, the attorney representing states in the Lower Basin who oppose the tribe’s claims.

If the Supreme Court sides with the Navajo Nation, other tribes might make similar demands, Maguire said.

Arizona, Nevada and California contend the Navajo Nation is making an end run around another Supreme Court case that divvied up water in the Colorado River’s Lower Basin.

“The first question in front of the court now is: why is the lower court dealing with the issue at all?” said Grant Christensen, a federal Indian law expert and professor at Stetson University.

Even if the justices side with the Navajo Nation, the tribe wouldn’t immediately get water. The case would go back to the U.S. District Court in Arizona, and rights to more water still could be years, if not, decades away. The Navajo Nation also could reach a settlement with Arizona and the federal government for rights to water from the Colorado River and funding to deliver it to tribal communities.

Tribal water rights often are tied to the date a reservation was established, which would give the Navajo Nation one of the highest priority rights to Colorado River water and could force conservation on others, said Hedden-Nicely of the University of Idaho.

Given the likelihood of a long road ahead, Kontz of the Navajo Tribal Utility Authority says many older Navajo won’t live to see running water in their homes.

Becenti, the 42-year-old mother of five, remembers shedding tears of joy when running water finally was installed in her house and her family could use a flushable indoor toilet.

It was a relief to “go to the facility without having to worry about bugs, lizards, snakes,” she said.

 
…

Last month, for several long days, many in the American Jewish community were gripped with fear over a neo-Nazi organized “National Day of Hate.”

Jewish leaders and law enforcement officials urged community members to be vigilant after a little-known white nationalist group announced plans for a day of antisemitic action on February 25.

But the day came and went without incident, raising questions over whether, by spotlighting the event, mainstream organizations such as the American Defamation League helped to quash it or gave its organizers undue publicity, something many fringe groups crave.

The ADL, a prominent anti-hate group, says its “advisories and public advocacy” caused some extremists to stay home rather than partake in the antisemitic event.

“This is a success and a win for the Jewish community in keeping our communities safe,” an ADL spokesperson said in a statement to VOA.

But critics say that by magnifying the Day of Hate, advocacy groups, law enforcement and media outlets played into white nationalists’ strategy of cowing their victims and drawing publicity with what often amounts to little more than stunts.

Warnings about the so-called day of hate “made national headlines, became one of the top trending topics on social media in the United States, frightened the Jewish community, and led to a heightened security posture across the country,” researchers at the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) wrote in a recent report.

Seed planted on Telegram

The episode began on January 4, when an Iowa-based white nationalist group calling itself “Crew 319” went on the Telegram messaging app to announce plans for a “National Day of Hate” on February 25, urging followers to join in “a day of MASS ANTI-SEMITIC ACTION.”

“Shock the masses with banner drops, stickers, fliers and graffiti,” the post read. “Inaction is unacceptable.”

This wasn’t the first time a neo-Nazi group was pushing a “day of action.” In recent years, “White Lives Matter,” a relatively new network of white supremacists, has popularized “days of action” featuring rallies and propaganda distribution.

But Crew 319’s call fell flat. With just a few hundred followers on Telegram, the group barely registered on anyone’s radar, according to extremism researcher Ben Lorber of the social justice think tank Political Research Associates.

“From spending a little bit of time on their online spaces, it was clear that this was a small group with a handful of people at most,” Lorber said in an interview with VOA.

Warnings spread

NCRI researchers studied how the group’s call to action evolved from an obscure post on Telegram into a top trending social media topic.

They found that the clique’s initial post generated roughly 20 likes on Telegram. And when a week later it reposted the announcement, it received even fewer likes — 11.

What is more, white nationalist groups such as the National Socialist Movement largely ignored the announcement.

“There was no momentum around it,” Lorber said. “It was going to be nothing. But then all of a sudden, the national media turned it into a huge thing.”

The turning point came on February 9, more than a month after Crew 319’s initial post, when the ADL highlighted the planned observance in a series of tweets.

Advising its followers that it had been “monitoring plans for a day of antisemitic action,” the ADL wrote that the proposed “National Day of Hate” had been “endorsed and shared online by various extremist groups.”

“If at any time you feel that you may be in danger, contact law enforcement,” the ADL wrote in one of the tweets. “Jewish institutions should use this event as an appropriate moment to review security protocols with staff.”

The ADL isn’t just another Jewish civil rights organization. Though it has its detractors, it is widely respected, and whenever it issues a public alert, “people take it very seriously,” Lorber said.

Crew 319 reveled in the attention.

“The National Day of Hate is already an overwhelming success before it’s even occurred,” the group wrote on its Telegram channel on February 10.

Communities on edge

In the leadup to February 25, the ADL posted about the “nationwide extremist day of hate” several more times. It also sent out several emails about the day to its mailing list.

“White supremacist groups are trying to organize antisemitic activities as a ‘National Day of Hate’ throughout this coming weekend and especially this Saturday,” ADL President Jonathan Greenblatt warned in an email on February 23, urging allies to join in a #ShabbatOfPeaceNotHate.

By then, the “National Day of Hate” had taken on a life of its own.

Cities with large Jewish communities were on alert.

Police departments from New York to Chicago issued advisories that “circulated among Jews on social media, in WhatsApp chats and via email,” the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported.

Prominent lawmakers “referenced the ‘National Day of Hate’ in solidarity with the Jewish community,” according to the NCRI report.

And while there was no evidence that large white nationalist organizations intended to participate, news outlets reported that “neo-Nazi groups” were planning to “target” Jews with a “National Day of Hate.”

The Jewish community was on edge.

“This weekend will be hard for the Jewish people,” Rabbi Abram Goodstein tweeted from Alaska on February 23.

With growing online chatter about the National Day of Hate, the term became one of the top trending terms on Twitter the weekend of February 25, according to the NCRI’s analysis.

On Twitter, the term was mentioned in more than 104,000 tweets and retweets and garnered tens of millions of impressions.

On TikTok, the hashtag #nationaldayofhate received close to 100,000 views, and #dayofhate received close to 700,000 views, according to NCRI.

In the face of growing public anxiety, even groups that did not foresee violence felt compelled to put something out.

“By the Wednesday night before the Saturday scheduled Day of Hate reached such a crescendo that we said OK, we better put something out. Let’s try to tamp down some of the fear that’s out there,” said Mitch Silber, executive director of Community Security Initiative.

Yet the feared mass anti-Semitic action did not come to pass.

“Luckily, nothing happened despite the widespread fear,” said NCRI lead intelligence analyst Alex Goldenberg.

Public warnings were ‘necessary,’ say some

The day after, Crew 319 went on Telegram to claim, without evidence, that “tons of people” participated in the event and that it would soon release a video of the day.

It has yet to produce the promised video. And Goldenberg said he hasn’t seen any evidence to suggest that “the National Day of Hate was any different from any other weekend that we typically see in the United States.”

In the days that followed, however, NCRI and other extremism researchers have seized on the event to highlight the dangers of amplifying what they call “low-signal extremist content.”

“To sound an undue or outsized alarm amplifies extremist causes with unnecessary attention, potentially elevating risks of acceleration,” NCRI researchers wrote.

“In their view, they set out to ‘shock the masses,’ and amplification helped them succeed.”

Goldenberg said the amplification may have given white supremacists something to celebrate.

“What happens on February 25th next year?” Goldenberg said. “Are they going to gather up, (and) galvanize around this next year or the year after? And if they do, who is the onus on?”

The ADL stands by its public advocacy.

“Issuing public advisories is not something ADL does lightly,” an ADL spokesperson said in a statement to VOA. “Precisely because we take seriously the importance of not amplifying extremist threats or traumatizing the Jewish community, we send the vast majority of our extremism-related alerts directly to law enforcement. In this instance, we believe going public was not only necessary, but was successful in helping prevent a worse situation.”

Others involved in security preparation for the “National Day of Hate” say the postmortem criticism amounts to “Monday morning quarterbacking” — an American sports analogy for leveling criticism with the benefit of hindsight.

“I think, if, God forbid, something happened, people wouldn’t be saying that,” said Evan Bernstein, national director and CEO of Community Security Service, a volunteer security organization that works with more than 200 synagogues around the country.

For Marc Katz, the rabbi of a synagogue in Bloomfield, New Jersey, the “National Day of Hate” came close to home.

In January, a man wearing a ski mask threw a Molotov cocktail at the synagogue’s door before fleeing. The attack caused superficial damage but left the congregation shaken.

“The ‘National Day of Hate’ re-triggered congregants,” Katz said in an interview with VOA. “I had somebody show up in my office in tears. People were nervous, rightfully.”

In response, local police added extra patrols during the weekend and the synagogue adopted a closed-door policy during services.

“The Day of Hate is a strange name for that day,” Katz said. “And in the back of my mind, I was always wondering whether or not we were being trolled. Something felt off almost like it was meant to panic the Jewish community more than it was a true day that was being planned to wreak havoc.”
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