Sunday marks 20 years since US President George W. Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq. American forces remain in the country today, not as a foe — as was the case in 2003 — but now as a key partner. VOA Pentagon correspondent Carla Babb takes a look at the war’s toll on both countries.
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The White House is rejecting Beijing’s proposal for a cease-fire in Ukraine, ahead of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s meeting with Russian leader Vladimir Putin in Moscow next week, saying it would ratify Russia’s territorial gains in Ukraine.

However, officials say the administration “fully supports” Xi talking to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy so that China may consider Kyiv’s perspective. Zelenskyy is scheduled to hold a phone call following the Chinese leader’s meeting with Putin.

John Kirby, National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications, spoke Friday with VOA Chinese Service White House correspondent Paris Huang. He said the U.S. still hasn’t seen evidence that China has provided lethal weaponry to Russia. He said the U.S. will deliver more assistance to Ukraine in the coming days.

Kirby also spoke of Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen’s upcoming trip to the U.S., to which Beijing has objected.

This transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.

VOA: The International Criminal Court, the ICC judges, just issued an arrest warrant against Vladimir Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova for the deportation of children. What does this mean for U.S. policies toward Putin? Does that mean President Joe Biden will not be meeting Putin in future?

John Kirby, National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications: Look, this is just breaking news. We’re going to have to take a look at this before we can make any kind of official comment. Separate and distinct from that, President Biden has been clear, we want to make sure that Russia is held accountable for the atrocities, for the war crimes, for the crimes against humanity that they are perpetrating inside Ukraine and against the Ukrainian people. We’re going to continue to help international bodies as they collect evidence and begin to analyze that evidence going forward. But I won’t go any further than that right now.

VOA: China’s President Xi Jinping is going to Moscow to meet with Putin next week. Do you think Xi Jinping’s words carry weight in Putin’s mind? Any concern about this meeting?

Kirby: We know that China and Russia have been improving and increasing their relationship in many different ways, both sides have been. I can’t speak for the kind of influence that Mr. Xi might have over Mr. Putin. We’ll just have to see what it is they decide to talk about. What we are concerned about is that President Xi hasn’t talked to President Zelenskyy and we believe it’s important that he do that as well – that he doesn’t just get the Russian perspective here on this war, but that he gets President Zelenskyy’s perspective. And I would also say, while we’re at this, we’ve seen in the China 12-point so-called peace proposal, they talk about a cease-fire. And we’d be concerned if coming out of this meeting there was some sort of a call for a cease-fire, because right now, while a cease-fire sounds good, it actually ratifies Russia’s gains on the ground. It actually serves Russia’s purpose for a cease-fire to basically call a stop right now without any acknowledgement that Russia is illegally inside Ukraine.

VOA: What is your response to the assessment that if there’s a cease-fire that can temporarily put aside the question of territorial boundaries, that that kind of cease-fire might be what is feasible?

Kirby: That doesn’t serve Ukraine’s interests. Doesn’t serve the world’s interests. It doesn’t serve the U.N. Charter’s interest. It would be a violation of the U.N. Charter. Look in the first line of the Chinese proposal – it says that they want to see sovereignty respected. Well, you know what? We agree with that, everybody should agree with that, and if you want to see sovereignty respected, then that means you don’t call a cease-fire right now which ratifies Russia’s gains and their conquest and leaves it at that, at the expense of the Ukrainian people.

VOA: What is the administration and NATO’s proposal that may be coming forward for lowering tensions? And on that note, can you give us the administration’s current thinking of the discussion of the Germany, France and U.K. defense pact for Ukrainians to encourage peace talks with Moscow?

Kirby: We all want to see this war end, and it could end today if Mr. Putin would pull his troops out. That’s not going to happen, so I think we all envision the possibility that there could be some sort of negotiated settlement. I won’t speak for other countries and what their sovereign approach to this is. For the United States perspective, it’s nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine – no negotiation, no settlement discussion can or should take place without Ukraine being squarely in the middle of it, and President Zelenskyy’s perspective fully and completely understood and respected. That’s where we are.

VOA: President Xi Jinping is going to talk to President Zelenskyy virtually, according to China. So, what would you like to see from that call, and have President Zelenskyy talk to the U.S. side about what kind of message he’s going to convey to President Xi?

Kirby: We fully support President Xi talking to President Zelenskyy. We think it’s important that he gets the Ukrainian perspective. And I won’t speak for President Zelenskyy but I’m sure that if he gets that opportunity, he’ll be very frank and forthright with President Xi, as he has been with leaders around the world, about what this war is doing to his country and to his people, and how much he’s willing to continue to fight off Russian aggression and defend his sovereignty and his independence. And we believe that a more comprehensive picture of those efforts, and President Zelenskyy’s goals and objectives, are absolutely good for President Xi to hear.

VOA: Can we expect President Biden and President Xi’s phone call to happen before Xi’s visit to Moscow? And if that happens, what would President Biden’s message to President Xi be?

Kirby: I’m not going to get ahead of the president. The president said he wants to keep the lines of communications open with China. He means that, and he said he would look forward to a potential discussion with President Xi here in the near future. Nothing’s on the schedule right now, but the president has made his intent obvious to all of us, and we look forward to getting [to] that place in the days and weeks ahead.

VOA: CNN reported that Ukrainian forces shot down a drone that was used during the war, and it turned out to be – it was made by a Chinese company. Is purchasing that kind of drones from Chinese companies, although they are private companies, a violation of sanctions?

Kirby: I don’t know the specifics on this report, so I’m not going to address that. That’s the first I heard of that, but we have not seen China enforce sanctions against Russia and we have been calling, since the beginning, for all nations to observe these sanctions and abide by them, and we certainly want China to be included in that, but I don’t have the details on this particular account.

VOA: There are Chinese companies that have shipped the assault rifles, Chinese-made rifles and drone parts, and body armor through Turkey and UAE to Russia. You said earlier that those are long-standing deals. Does that mean if there’s new deals coming out, that will be a violation?

Kirby: Our understanding is that these are long-standing business transactions, and we don’t have information or confirmation that any of those dual-use items are actually on the battlefield. Now, again, that’s just where we are right now. We have not seen the Chinese move in a direction to provide lethal weaponry to Russia. They’ve not made that decision, that official decision. And so, we urge them not to. What I can tell you is we don’t think it’s in China’s best interests to provide lethal weapons to Russia, to Mr. Putin, so that he can turn around and just kill more innocent Ukrainians. It’s hard to see how that’s in China’s best interests. They have a choice to make, and we obviously have made it clear privately to them and certainly publicly where we think they ought to come down on this.

VOA: U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has confirmed that he will meet with the President of Taiwan Tsai Ing-wen in California in early April. China is going to react. What precautions is the administration taking in case of China’s retaliation?

Kirby: First of all, I won’t speak for Speaker McCarthy and his schedule or that of Taiwan’s leaders. These transits are not new. They happen and have happened in the past in a fairly routine way. And again, I won’t speak to the particulars of who Speaker McCarthy will meet or when. He can speak to that. We just need to put this into some perspective here, because these are routine, because they have happened before, these transits, there should be no reason for anybody to overreact one way or the other. As we have said many, many times, we do not seek a conflict with China, we don’t seek any kind of escalation in the tensions in this relationship. As a matter of fact, as we’ve just been talking about, the president wants to keep the lines of communication open. He wants to be able to continue to try to build on the progress that he and President Xi were able to make in Bali. Now, unfortunately, that progress has been stunted somewhat by the fact that they flew a Chinese balloon over the country, but he believes that it’s still the most consequential bilateral relationship in the world, and he wants to keep those lines open.

VOA: Honduras announced that it will cut diplomatic ties with Taiwan and switch to China. Is the Biden administration concerned about China’s growing influence in America’s backyard? And what are you doing to prevent this from happening?

Kirby: We aren’t actively telling countries to choose between the United States and China. We’re not, and these are sovereign decisions that nations have to make. We would hope that Hondurans, just like other people around the world, will see what China is trying to do with their expanding influence – that they will see that this is all about China’s self and not about a genuine belief in the power of partnerships around the world. All I can do is speak for our foreign policy. We have a very active, engaged foreign policy in Latin America and we’re going to continue to pursue that.

VOA: Taiwan will certainly be disappointed if Honduras actually cuts the tie. So how can the U.S. convince Taiwan and other allies that siding with the U.S. is beneficial diplomatically?

Kirby: Again, these are decisions that countries have to make, and I understand Honduras has to make this decision on their own, but we would just hope that Honduras and the Honduran people understand the potential risks and downsides that come with simply accepting China’s influence and entering into negotiations with China that may not actually be in the best interest of the Honduran people.

VOA: Ukraine is having an ammunition shortage. Are you confident that Ukraine will be able to achieve their goals on the battlefield in the next few weeks or months? Are the U.S. and its partners trying to speed up the delivery and production right now?

Kirby: We have been putting security assistance in the hands of Ukrainian soldiers at an unprecedented rate and with a sense of urgency that we all have shared over the course of a year now, and that will continue going forward. I’m not going to get ahead of Ukrainian operations, or what they’re going to need, or where they’re going to be. That’s for them to talk to. You’re going to see another delivery package here from the United States in [the] coming days, and I think you’ll see in that package the kinds of materiel, weapons and ammunition that we believe are going to be vital to Ukraine succeeding in the weeks and months ahead.

VOA: Last week Russia launched a massive missile attack against Ukraine using the type of rockets that Ukrainians don’t have the ability to intercept for now. When will the first Patriot battery arrive in Ukraine?

Kirby: The Department of Defense will have a much better sense of that than I do. It’s going to be many months before a Patriot battery can be delivered into Ukraine. I will remind that we continue to provide a full range of air defense capabilities to Ukraine, short and medium range, and it’s not just us, it’s our allies and partners that are doing that as well. There are four things that we think the Ukrainians need the most right now: artillery, ammunition, armored capability and air defense. And I think, again, if you look at what we have provided in recent months and what we will continue to provide, you’ll see that we prioritize air defense.

VOA: Following Tehran’s and Riyadh’s normalization of diplomatic relations, Saudi Arabia’s finance minister said Saudi will soon invest in Iran. Are you concerned that this will be a way for Tehran to circumvent the U.S. sanctions?

Kirby: Iran is a destabilizing actor throughout the region. Make no mistake about that. Whether it’s the way they’re treating their own people, whether the support for the terrorist groups – Hamas and Hezbollah as well as the Houthi rebels – or the attacks on maritime shipping, and let’s not forget the provision of hundreds of lethal drones to Russia, so that Russia can, again, kill more Ukrainian people. That’s what the regime is signing up to. They’re killing their own people who are protesting in the country and they’re helping Russia kill Ukrainian citizens, innocent people who are not involved and should not have ever been invaded. That’s what Iran is up to. I’ll let Iran and Saudi Arabia speak to this arrangement. If this arrangement can decrease tensions, if it can help us end the war in Yemen, if it can make safer the people living in Saudi Arabia, including 70,000 Americans, then that’s all to the good and we support that, but it remains to be seen whether it was going to actually have that effect.

VOA: The Persian New Year, Nowruz, is coming up in a few days. What is the Biden administration’s message to the Iranian people?

Kirby: The president will have a message. I certainly won’t get ahead of that, but obviously, we wish the very best to the Iranian people for Nowruz and for the new year. We recognize that as we do wish the Iranian people a better new year, that the last year visited upon them an inordinate amount of suffering and pain at the hands of their own regime. And no citizen of any country should have to go through what so many Iranians have had to go through. But of course, our issues are with the regime in Tehran, it’s not with the Iranian people. And again, we certainly wish that they have a better, safer, a more secure, and a more prosperous new year than they had last year.
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One of the top priorities for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security this year is to add more companies to a sanctions list for using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region, a senior DHS official said on Friday.

Robert Silvers, DHS undersecretary for strategy, policy and plans, said another priority this year was to work to persuade like-minded countries in Europe, as well as Japan, Australia, India and others, to pursue enforcement regimes similar to those of the United States.

The department was assigned by the U.S. Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act to create a sanctions list for companies known to traffic in forced labor.

“One of our highest priorities for 2023 is to add additional entities to that list,” Silvers told an event at the Hudson Institute in Washington.

“We are very aware based on credible reporting from the NGO and other communities that there’s a significant number of companies that are operating in Xinjiang or around Xinjiang that are engaging in these abhorrent practices, and we want to name them, and we want to ensure that their goods do not come into this country,” he said.

Beijing denies any abuses and rejects allegations by rights groups and governments of forced labor and internment of Uyghurs, a mainly Muslim ethnic minority of around 10 million people in the western region of Xinjiang. The United States has accused China of genocide in Xinjiang.

“We’ve seen darkness in Xinjiang province. We continue to see darkness,” Silvers said, adding that DHS was in a position to step up the pace of imposition of sanctions.

It is also possible to remove companies from the entities list if they prove they have “cleaned up” their act, Silvers said. DHS is very interested in using technology, such as DNA testing, to determine whether cotton products came from Xinjiang, he said.
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The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank has caused panic not just in the U.S. tech industry but also in China, where the bank has been a key player for years among Chinese startups.

In recent days, many startups in China have issued statements to reassure their investors that their deposits with SVB will not impact their operations.

Before the bank failed and was taken over by U.S. regulators this month, Silicon Valley Bank was the 16th-largest American bank. In foreign markets, SVB’s reputation for financing about half of all U.S. venture-backed technology and health care companies made it a popular choice for companies, including those based in China and backed by U.S. venture capitalists.

BeiGene, one of China’s largest biotech companies that specializes in the development of cancer drugs, said that the collapse of SVB would have “no major impact” on its operations, and that its uninsured cash deposits in Silicon Valley Bank totaled only $175 million, or about 3.9% of its cash and other investments.

Zai Lab, a biopharmaceutical company headquartered in Shanghai, issued a statement saying that SVB’s collapse would have no impact on its operations, including the ability to pay wages and make payments to third parties.

Other startups, including Andon Health, Sirnaomics, Everest Medicines and Jacobio Pharma, have issued similar statements.

After SVB failed, the Biden administration stepped in and ensured that all customers would be able to get their deposits back, even those who had more than $250,000 in their accounts. That’s the maximum amount that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation typically covers when a bank fails, but more than 90% of Silicon Valley Bank accounts were above that amount.

With their SVB deposits frozen, many companies could have been at risk of failing themselves, so the Biden administration said it would step in to guarantee they would get their funds back.

FDIC reimbursements for Chinese customers?

On Chinese social media, there has been concern that the reimbursements may apply only to customers in America.

“Is it true that only depositors who are U.S. citizens can get their money back? What about us?” asked one post on Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter.

William Hanlon, a partner at Seyfarth Shaw LLP, told VOA Mandarin in an email that the FDIC as receiver “will not categorize account holders by nationality” and “will treat all depositors equally based on their status as depositors.”

David M. Bizar, another partner at Seyfarth Shaw, said the FDIC is continuing to operate SVB as a full-service bridge bank while it searches for buyers of the bank’s assets.

“It can be expected that the United States will continue to maintain these deposit accounts and keep them from losing their value so long as it maintains them in its receivership, and that the FDIC as receiver will not sell these deposit accounts to purchasers who would be permitted under the sale agreements to reduce their values after the transfers,” he told VOA.

So far, several Chinese companies have publicly said they were able to withdraw all their deposits at SVB.

SVB’s role in China

The now-failed SVB carved out a unique role in the Chinese banking scene. It served roughly 2,200 clients and advised government regulators who were eager to build the country’s tech sector. The Santa Clara, California-based bank supported startup companies that not all banks, especially the big commercial ones in China, would accept because of higher risks.

In 2010, then-CEO Ken Wilcox brought the entire board of directors to China to showcase the importance he attached to the China market, according to Chinese media reports. In a 2019 interview, when he was SVB’s chief credit officer, he said SVB was “a model bank for China.”

SVB approached China in two different ways. One involved wholly owned operations in major tech centers, including Beijing, Shenzhen and Shanghai, where it advised startups on how to manage overseas funding. The other involved a 50-50 joint-venture with Shanghai Pudong Development Bank, also known as SPD Silicon Valley bank, that operates under a similar model as SVB.

Following the collapse of SVB, the Chinese policymakers signaled stricter oversight to improve financial market security.

The South China Morning Post quoted Liu Xiaochun, deputy director of the Shanghai Finance Institute, as saying it was inappropriate to set up a similar specialist bank in China.

He argued that to avoid potential losses in supporting tech and health startups, large commercial banks should establish branches to finance innovation, while managing risk exposure at headquarters.
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U.S. former officials and experts are urging greater efforts to thwart Chinese espionage, which many believe has enabled Beijing to develop a range of advanced weaponry on the back of stolen American technology.

James Anderson, a former acting undersecretary of defense for policy, said China stole U.S. military technology for developing its J-20 fighter jet and has benefited immensely.

“They have profited greatly from their thievery over the years,” he said. “They’ve put it to good use, and they’ve come up with an advanced fifth-generation fighter,” noting that it’s “hard to say, short of actual combat,” how the J-20 matches up against the U.S. F-22 Raptor fighter.

Matthew Brazil is a researcher and writer with Jamestown Foundation who served in the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, where he both promoted and controlled U.S. high-technology exports to China. He said the FBI doesn’t have enough people to keep track of China’s activities in the U.S.

Brazil told VOA Mandarin, “Chinese communist espionage is not like an army of cockroaches crawling up our arms with daggers between their teeth. It’s spying. We can handle it with a better counterespionage system that includes both the government and the private sector working more closely together.”

He noted the FBI lacks “enough agents trained in Chinese language, culture and area studies. Congress should step in here and fund this sort of program to train people.”

U.S. Senators Marco Rubio and Mark Warner last month urged the Biden administration to expand the use of existing tools and authorities at the Treasury and Commerce departments to prevent China’s military-industrial complex and entities from benefiting from U.S. technology, talent and investments.

As of March 14, Warner’s office told VOA Mandarin, “We have not yet received a response and are following up with the relevant departments.”

VOA Mandarin emailed the Chinese Embassy in Washington asking for a comment but did not receive a response in time for publication. Anderson, who made his remarks to Fox News Digital last week, was sworn in on June 8, 2020, and resigned in November 2020.

US tech in Chinese weapons

China claims to have independently developed its fifth-generation stealth fighter J-20, which entered service in 2017. John Chipman, head of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said on February 15 at an IISS event that China’s J-20A production is expected to surpass that of the U.S. F-22 Raptor fighter jet by the end of 2023.

China’s sixth-generation fighter jets, hypersonic weapons and missiles, and even the spy balloons that crossed the continental United States last month all appear to incorporate elements of American technology, according to DefenseOne, a Washington news site devoted to military issues.

U.S. defense officials say China has the world’s leading hypersonic arsenal.

Terry Thompson, a retired U.S. Air Force colonel and war planner at the Pentagon who blogs, told VOA Mandarin that China lacks a solid technological foundation and has a long history of stealing technology.

He said, “If you look back at the epic progression of Chinese aircraft, they say they’ve produced an aircraft that looks like and flies like the F-16 and like the F-15 and the F-18. I mean, they look just like our aircraft. They’re not building something new that comes from their own base of technology. They don’t have a base of technology.”

Thompson said China targets engine and power system technology, but also “the aerodynamics. They didn’t have the capability to coat airplanes with stealth material. They stole that from us.

“But now China is making its way right up to the table that the rest of the free world is playing on, because they are just stealing their pathway to that table.”

Old-style spies and cyberattacks

Anderson told Fox News Digital that China’s intelligence practices include the old-fashioned — spies and bribes to buy American contractors, university professors and government officials — and high-tech cyberactivity to steal key information on military weapons.

“In effect, we end up subsidizing a portion of their research and development budget because they are successfully stealing some of our secrets,” Anderson said.

Kris Osborn, president and editor-in-chief of the U.S. Military Modernization Center, said in an article published last month that China has hired at least 162 Chinese scientists who had worked at the U.S. Los Alamos National Laboratory on deep-penetrating warheads, new hardened heat-resistant nanocomposite materials, vertical-takeoff-and-landing drones and a new generation of submarine “quiet” technologies.

“However, to put things simply and clearly, many of the U.S.-driven technological advances in these critical areas appear to have been stolen by Chinese spies,” Osborn wrote.

A report published in April 2022 by BluePath Labs, a consulting firm commissioned by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, said, “Despite a wide body of research on China’s scientific progress, the laboratory system remains a less understood component. … This opacity not only leads to gaps in our knowledge of Chinese defense research, but in many cases has allowed these labs to fly under the radar, leading to cases of close interaction, and even cooperation between Chinese defense labs and U.S. and allied academic institutions.”

In 2023, China’s military expenditure will expand significantly, by 7.2% to $224.8 billion, according to the official budget discussed in an analysis by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

When meeting with a delegation of the People’s Liberation Army and the Armed Police Force on March 8, China’s President Xi Jinping said China should accelerate the promotion of high-level technological self-reliance.

Emily de La Bruyere, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told VOA Mandarin that China wants semiconductor technology for military functions, development of algorithms and valuable data.

“Stealing technology has been an escalating priority. And I also say that just general aggressiveness of China when it comes to the development of these capabilities, but also its use of international presence in order to coerce – all of those are increasing,” she said. “Not only are they working to catch up, but also if they’re stealing technology from the international system for their military modernization, they’re then able to modernize more cheaply than anybody else.”

Adrianna Zhang contributed to this report.
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U.S. President Joe Biden hosted Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar on Friday, part of the longstanding White House tradition of St. Patrick’s Day celebrations of Irish culture in the United States.

“It’s a big day in my grandparents’ household, our household, big day here,” Biden told Varadkar in reference to his Irish heritage. “Ireland and the United States share great friendship and long, long traditions,” added the president, who was wearing a green tie and shamrock in his suit pocket, traditional Irish symbols.

Varadkar thanked Biden for his “support and understanding for our position on Brexit.”

During negotiations on the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union, also known as Brexit, the Irish government pushed to include the Northern Ireland Protocol, designed to maintain an open border between Northern Ireland, which is part of the UK, and the Republic of Ireland, an EU member.

The Irish government feared that a hard border could threaten the U.S.-brokered Good Friday Agreement, the 1998 peace deal that ended decades of sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland over the question of whether it should unify with Ireland or remain part of the UK.

Under the 2021 protocol, Northern Ireland remains in UK customs territory, but it follows many EU rules and regulations.

“And we’ve got to a good place now I think with the Windsor framework, where we can have an agreement that lasts,” Varadkar noted, referring to the post-Brexit deal designed to fix trade issues under the Northern Ireland Protocol.

The White House said the framework is an important step in maintaining the peace accord.

Biden is expected to visit Ireland in coming weeks to mark the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement. The White House has not officially announced the trip, but Varadkar said he was looking forward to it.

“I promise you that we’re going to roll out the red carpet and it’s going to be a visit like no other,” Varadkar said.

Support for Ukraine

Biden thanked Varadkar for his support in Ukraine. “It means a great deal, speaking out against Russian aggression,” he said.

The taoiseach, as the Irish prime minister is officially known, in turn thanked Biden for his leadership against Moscow.

“I never thought we’d see a war like this happen in Europe in my lifetime,” Varadkar said, repeating a line often used by Western leaders that his country will stand with Ukraine “for as long as it takes.”

After their meeting, Biden and Varadkar headed to Capitol Hill for a Friends of Ireland Caucus luncheon hosted by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, before returning to the White House for a St. Patrick’s Day reception in the evening, where the taoiseach presents the president with a crystal bowl full of shamrocks, as per tradition.

St. Patrick’s Day in-person meetings at the White House and lunch with congressional leaders at the Capitol were suspended the past two years because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The 44-year-old Varadkar served as prime minister from 2017 to 2020 before returning to the office in December 2022 and was the last Irish leader to visit the White House in person in March 2020 under former president Donald Trump. Biden met with Varadkar’s predecessor, Micheal Martin, virtually in 2021 because of the pandemic, and virtually in 2022, after Martin tested positive for COVID-19 while already in Washington.

With Indian heritage from his father’s side, Varadkar is the first minority taoiseach in the country’s history. He also is the first openly gay Irish leader.

Prior to his White House engagement, Varadkar and his partner, Matthew Barrett, attended a breakfast with Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, at the vice president’s official residence.
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Oh, Danny boy, ’tis the time of year when Irish bagpipes will be calling in the concrete glens of New York City, across the swooning boughs of Savannah, Georgia, and in the halls of the White House as the U.S. celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with parades, pub crawls and a state visit.

The annual parade in New York City — which bills itself as the world’s largest and oldest — will draw throngs to Fifth Avenue to listen to bagpipes and bands, and give homage to Ireland’s patron saint.

In Savannah, Georgia, paradegoers plant their lawn chairs in prime viewing areas to watch a flow of floats, dancers and marching bands. The city’s annual parade is one of the largest and draws visitors from near and far.

Some cities including Chicago, which dyes its river green to commemorate a day when everyone pretends to be Irish, already held their parades last weekend. Other cities, including Boston, will hold parades and other festivities this weekend.

But their streets will nevertheless be awash in green Friday evening, as revelers raise pints in pubs and bars.

Also flowing green will be the fountain on the South Lawn of the White House as President Joe Biden, who often speaks of his Irish heritage, welcomes Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar for a longstanding meetup between the two heads of state that had been delayed two years by the COVID-19 pandemic.

 
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China is hoping there will be a peaceful solution to the conflict in Ukraine and is urging Russia and Ukraine to come to the table for peace talks, China’s foreign minister told his Ukrainian counterpart in a telephone conversation Thursday.

China’s foreign ministry said in a statement that Qin Gang told Dmytro Kuleba China “has committed itself to promoting peace and advancing negotiations and calls on the international community to create conditions for peace talks.”

Qin also said “China hopes that all parties will remain calm, rational and restrained,” according to the statement, as Russian’s invasion of Ukraine has recently passed its one-year anniversary.

The U.S. military released a video Thursday of a Russian military intercept that resulted in the downing of a U.S. surveillance drone Tuesday over the Black Sea.

The video shows a Russian Sukhoi Su-27 dumping fuel as it approaches the U.S. MQ-9 drone from behind and passes over the top.

A second Sukhoi Su-27 approaches in a similar manner, and as it reaches the drone, the video feed is disrupted at the moment the U.S. military says the Russian fighter aircraft collided with the drone.

A final shot shows the video feed restored and that one of the drone’s propeller blades has been bent.

The video’s release came a day after U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin spoke to his Russian counterpart about the encounter.

“The United States will continue to fly and to operate wherever international law allows, and it is incumbent upon Russia to operate its military aircraft in a safe and professional manner,” Austin told reporters after announcing that he had “just got off the phone” with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.

It was the first call between the two defense leaders since October, according to officials.

Meanwhile, Poland became the first NATO country to dispatch fighter jets to Ukraine, agreeing to send four Soviet-made MiG-29 fighter jets to Kyiv’s forces in the coming days. The U.S. and other Western allies far have balked at Kyiv demands for attack jets.

The downed U.S. MQ-9 drone was “conducting routine operations” in international airspace Tuesday, according to the U.S. military, when the pair of Russian Sukhoi Su-27 fighter aircraft intercepted it. U.S. forces brought down the drone in international waters after the Russian jet struck the drone’s propeller.

“We know that the intercept was intentional. We know that the aggressive behavior was intentional. We also know it is very unprofessional and very unsafe,” General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters Wednesday.

Milley said he was “not sure yet” whether the physical contact between the Russian aircraft and the drone was intentional.

Russia said it is considering whether to try to retrieve the drone, but U.S. officials said its operatives were able to remotely erase sensitive software on the drone to prevent Russia from collecting secret information before sending the aircraft into the Black Sea.

The U.S. does not have ships in the Black Sea, which is largely controlled by Russia.

“But we do have a lot of allies and friends in the area, and we’ll work through recovery operations. That’s U.S. property,” Milley said.

Another top U.S. military leader, Gen. Erik Kurilla, told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday that since March 1, the U.S. is seeing an increase “in the unprofessional and unsafe behavior of the Russian Air Force.” He said armed Russian fighter jets fly over U.S. bases in Syria “in an attempt to try and be provocative.”

Kurilla said that Russia tries to “renegotiate the deconfliction protocols that they violate every day.”

Russia denied that its Su-27 jets came into contact with the U.S. drone and pinned blame for the crash on the operation of the drone. A U.S. military official told VOA the unmanned MQ-9 has not yet been recovered. State Department spokesperson Ned Price said Tuesday the United States summoned the Russian ambassador to protest the incident.

The Russian Defense Ministry Telegram channel reported Wednesday that Shoigu has blamed the incident on the United States’ “non-compliance with the restricted flight zone declared by the Russian Federation, which was established as part of a special military operation.”

Earlier Wednesday, Austin and Milley hosted the 10th meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group more than a year after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The virtual meeting included 51 participants. Milley said the group promised “a broad mix of air defense systems,” in addition to providing more artillery, armor and ammunition. For example, Sweden will provide 10 more Leopard tanks to Ukraine, and Norway will partner with the United States to provide two additional National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems, or NASAMS.

“Ukraine matters. It matters not to just Ukraine or to the United States, it matters to the world. This is about the rules-based international order,” Austin told reporters Wednesday.

“Russia is running out of capability and out of friends,” he added. “Putin still hopes he can wear down Ukraine and wait us out, so we can’t let up, and we won’t.”
…

As tough as action film star Michelle Yeoh is, it still might have been hard for her to clinch the best actress Oscar and become the first Asian woman to win the coveted award in its 95-year history—if everything hadn’t fallen into place.

Besides her hard work and talent, Yeoh’s history-making win Sunday is a culmination of many forces, according to film experts and critics.

First, Hong Kong’s film industry made her a well-known star in Asia long before Hollywood noticed her.

“I think her Hong Kong experience definitely is crucial to her latest success,” Timmy Chen (陳智廷), director of the Hong Kong Film Critics Society, said of the Malaysia-born Yeoh, commenting that there were few opportunities for Chinese actors in Malaysia’s Malay-dominated film industry at the time.

Hong Kong cinema cast her in many action and martial arts films — from Yes, Madam to Police Story 3: Super Cop — nurturing her acting and fighting skills, which enabled her to land the role as a Bond girl in the 1997 James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies, her first Hollywood film.

Yeoh also benefited from trailblazing Asian-American directors who boldly made films with an Asian theme and cast her in them, including Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Jon Chu’s box office hit Crazy Rich Asians, both of which boosted her fame.

The success of Yeoh, her co-star Vietnamese American Ke Huy Quan — who became only the second Asian to win an Oscar for best supporting actor — and their film Everything Everywhere All at Once, which won seven awards including best picture and director, is part of a growing trend in the past few years of “trans-Pacific” Asian directors producing works that are popular not only in Asia, but also the United States, says Jason Coe, an assistant professor at Hong Kong Baptist University’s (HKBU) Academy of Film.

These are people who “are working both in the U.S., but also in places like Hong Kong and Taiwan, taking the sort of best of both, and making films that can appeal to audiences in Hong Kong, Taiwan, mainland China and Southeast Asia, but also in the United States,” Coe noted.

This has led to more opportunities for actors such as Yeoh and has made it possible for the making of the sci-fi comedy Everything Everywhere All at Once, in which Yeoh plays a middle-aged Chinese American immigrant laundromat owner determined to save the universe and her family, all the while showing off her martial arts skills.

Movie streaming platforms such as Netflix helped to fuel this trend by letting audiences have more say.

“Because streaming platforms like Netflix and even YouTube are able to make and distribute so many different types of content, they’ll eventually find their audience, and because their audiences are so diverse, they’ll eventually find their content,” Coe said.

That means a film that might seem niche, like Crazy Rich Asians, a romantic comedy about rich Singaporeans, can find an audience of Asians and non-Asians, “and this can build a momentum that allows for the audiences to have a say in the kind of stories they want,” Coe said. Everything Everywhere All at Once is further proof that stories about Asian Americans can do well at the box office, he said.

It helps to have a theme that resonates with a wide audience – in this film’s case, it’s being overwhelmed and losing touch with what’s really important in life, as well as the disconnection among family members.

But it’s not just the popularity of such stories and the skills of the directors and actors. Yeoh and the film also benefited from the push for diversity in Hollywood in recent years.

“A few years back, they tried to give justice to African American representation, now they are paying attention to Asians. It’s part of the same wave for diversity,” Chen said. “We see more Asian representation, such as award recognitions for films about Asians or made by Asians, including Parasite, Nomadland, Crazy Rich Asians and Farewell.”

Coe agrees, crediting activism within the filmmaking and greater community.

“You’re not going to get a film like Crazy Rich Asians or even Shang-Chi and the Legend of Ten Rings without a film like Black Panther,” Coe said. “It takes all of these ethnic minority communities and disenfranchised communities to advocate for greater diversity in order for more [of these] movies to be made.”

It’s taken decades, but Asian actors have come a long way since the days of Anna May Wong, the first Chinese American Hollywood actress. She had no choice but to play stereotypical and demeaning supporting roles in the 1930s. When a film version of Pearl S. Buck’s novel about China, The Good Earth, was to be made, Wong was not considered for the leading role; it was instead given to a white actress to play in yellowface.

But many insist there’s still a long way to go.

“Michelle Yeoh is one the few fortunate Asian actors or Asian-American actors to get this recognition. There are countless unnamable talents out there who are struggling,” Chen said.

He noted Yeoh’s co-star Quan suffered a nearly 20-year hiatus in his acting career before he got his latest role. Quan couldn’t get much acting work, despite his talents as a child actor, including playing Short Round, Harrison Ford’s sidekick in 1984’s Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

“It’s hard to tell whether [the recent successes] will lead to a long-term trend. We definitely will see more Asian content and representation on American screens in the future, but I think there is still structural inequality in the system,” Chen said.

What helps is that it’s never been easier to make a movie and it’s never been easier to find your audience, Coe said.

“The gatekeepers no longer have that sort of power, and so if you’re telling a really great story, and there are people who want to hear that story, then you’re much more likely to find them [your audiences] now than ever before,” Coe said.

The hopeful impact is that the film, and more films like it that tell Asian American stories in an authentic way, will lead to fewer stereotypes, a sense of understanding, and a sense of belonging by Asian Americans in the United States.

Already, it’s making an impact among young Asian actors and actresses who are inspired by Yeoh, Quan and their film’s success.

“Before, I didn’t dare to think of going to Hollywood. Asians are a minority there and there are many Asian actors that are underrated because of race and language barriers. I didn’t think there would be opportunities,” said Sheena Chan, a student in HKBU’s Acting for Global Screen Program. “Now that Michelle Yeoh and this film have won many Oscar awards, and it’s not just in English, but Cantonese and Mandarin, I think there are more opportunities. I will start to think of going to Hollywood.”
…

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Niger with a pledge of humanitarian assistance for displaced people and support for the country’s efforts to combat violent extremism.

Residents in the capital city of Niamey interviewed by VOA had mostly positive things to say about the first visit by a U.S. secretary of state.

“We see how today the American military forces, which are on Nigerien territory, are training the defense and security forces,” a woman in Niamey told VOA’s French to Africa Service. But she said cooperation should not be limited to security.

“There are several cooperation opportunities in the context of climate change. There is also clean water, there are many things,” she said.

Blinken used the trip to announce $150 million in new humanitarian assistance to help meet needs in Western and Central Africa and the Sahel region created by instability.

Beyond immediate assistance to refugees and other vulnerable groups, the United States is committing to investing in the long-term stability of the region, Blinken said.

The U.S. will assist in making “Niger’s law enforcement more effective in combating terrorism, strengthening border security, enhancing counternarcotics capacity, stemming trafficking, and helping to investigate, prosecute and ultimately reduce terrorism and violent extremism,” Blinken said during a joint news conference with his Nigerien counterpart in Niamey.

The United States has military personnel stationed at two air force bases in the country and has supported the Nigerien armed forces with training, equipment donations, and support for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance to combat violent extremism.

Another Niamey resident interviewed by VOA said the military equipment donations have been helpful, but urged political leaders to be cautious.

“Our leaders would have to be very vigilant with regard to the clauses of the contracts signed with these powers because, in reality, they have no friends,” he said. “They only pursue their interests. Some may be greedier, pettier than others, but we have a duty to the youth, as a civil society to ask our leaders to be very clairvoyant.”

Another person interviewed said she can see the impact of the U.S. involvement in the security situation.

“Well, on the Niger-America relations, it is visible and palpable and they helped us,” she told VOA. “Regarding the insecurity and all that, that is really this case, we appreciate the relationship of the United States and Niger.”

Niger is on the forefront of an escalating violence and fighting in the western Sahel, Joseph Siegle, director of research at the Africa Center for Strategic Studies said. The country experienced a 43% increase in violent events in 2022, but fatalities decreased by half, the ACSS said.

While neighboring Burkina Faso, Mali and Chad have experienced coups or political upheaval, Niger has maintained a functioning democracy.

“Niger is a linchpin right now towards stability in the Sahel and it has done significantly better than its neighbors. It has a more democratic government. Remember that in Mali and Burkina Faso, we’ve seen military coups, and so you have great governance turmoil in those countries,” Siegle said.

“Niger is an island of stability in comparison. This is going to be critical towards reversing the instability trends that we’ve seen in the Sahel. And Niger has played a role in that regional effort to regain some stability for neighboring countries.”

One Niamey resident was skeptical of Blinken’s visit, bemoaning the inequality of the U.S.-Niger relationship.

“I say that it’s a relationship of subordination because the United States, in general, has always held the top position since the end of World War II,” he told VOA. “We can deal with you, but not as equals.”

This story originated in VOA’s French to Africa Service. VOA’s Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine contributed to the report.
…

The Biden administration said it is not seeking armed conflict with Russia as it releases footage of a Russian jet spraying fuel on a U.S. surveillance drone and — seconds later, the drone with a broken propeller — in international airspace over the Black Sea off the coast of Ukraine.
…

In a first for a U.S. secretary of state, Antony Blinken was in the African nation of Niger Thursday to offer humanitarian, economic and security aid.

Blinken’s visit to Niger follows a stop earlier in the day in Ethiopia, a trip viewed by analysts as an effort to bolster U.S. relations in a part of the world where Russia and China have been seeking to gain influence.

At a news conference with his Niger counterpart, Blinken announced a $150 million humanitarian aid package for the west and central region of African known as the Sahel, which includes Niger, Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali and Mauritania.

As he announced the aid package, Blinken credited Niger and other nations in the region for their commitment to democratic principles. He said the United States is “committed to continuing to invest in the resilience of democracies to a wide range of threats and challenges.”

Blinken also discussed programs designed to address food insecurity in the nation, which he made a point to note had been exacerbated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The conflict in Ukraine became further part of the discussion when Blinken was asked to comment on Poland’s decision to send MiG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine to help in its defense efforts. Ukraine has requested more advanced air power to counter the Russian offensive, but the U.S. has so far resisted.

Blinken said this was a sovereign decision by Poland, and “different nations are doing different things” to help Ukraine defend itself against the Russian aggression.

He said it has always been the U.S. focus to do everything to ensure Ukraine has what it needs in the moment, and he said it was a mistake to focus on any specific weapons system at any given time.

Blinken said what is important is not only that the Ukrainians have the right weapons system, but also that they know how to use it and that it fits into a comprehensive plan.

The secretary of state was also asked about the growing influence of the Russian mercenary Wagner Group.

Many nations in the region have turned to Russia and the Wagner Group for security assistance after unsuccessful efforts by the U.S. and France to quell terrorist and extremist group attacks in the region.

Blinken first lauded Niger for rejecting and criticizing Russia and the Wagner Group. He said that in areas where Wagner has been active, things have ended badly and that it has not been an effective response to insecurity.

“We’ve seen countries find themself weaker, poorer and less independent as a result of an association with Wagner,” he said.

Blinken added there have been cases in which the Wagner Group has engaged in exploitation of a country’s resources, as well as corruption, violence and human rights abuses. He said nations found themselves less secure as a result of that association.

Blinken said it was incumbent upon the United States to demonstrate how its more comprehensive approach to security can deliver concrete results.

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

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered a number of improvements in access to mental health care on Thursday to reduce suicides in the military but held off on endorsing more controversial recommendations to restrict gun and ammunition purchases by young troops, sending them to another panel for study.

An independent committee in late February recommended that the Defense Department implement a series of gun safety measures, including waiting periods for the purchase of firearms and ammunition by service members on military property and raising the minimum age for service members to buy guns and ammunition to 25.

In a memo released Thursday, Austin called for the establishment of a suicide prevention working group to “assess the advisability and feasibility” of recommendations made by the initial study committee — which would include the gun measures. He also asked for cost estimates and a description of any “barriers” to implementing other changes and set a deadline of June 2 for that report. At no point did he specifically refer to the gun proposals or mention gun safety.

Growing concern 

Austin’s orders reflect increasing concerns about suicides in the military despite more than a decade of programs and other efforts to prevent them and spur greater intervention by commanders, friends and family members. But his omission of any gun safety and control measures underscores the likelihood that they would face staunch resistance, particularly in Congress, where such legislation has struggled in recent years.

The more immediate changes address broader access to care.

To more quickly provide help for troops who might be struggling, Austin directed the Pentagon to hire more behavioral health specialists and implement a scheduling system for appointments where patients receive multiple health care visits weekly when they first seek care.

Austin also ordered military primary care health clinics to screen for unhealthy levels of alcohol use, make unhealthy alcohol use treatment easier to receive, and make sure mental health care is available through service members’ primary care as well.

“The mental health support available for our teammates must be comprehensive and easy to access,” Austin said in the memo.

Brigadier General Pat Ryder, the Pentagon press secretary, told reporters in a briefing Thursday that Austin’s orders involved areas where the department already has the authority to take immediate steps.

“While we recognize that suicide has no single cause, and that no single preventative action, treatment or cure will eliminate suicide altogether, we will exhaust every effort to promote the wellness, health and morale of our total force,” Ryder said.

Committee recommends rules about firearms

The initial study committee recommended that the department require anyone living in military housing to register all privately owned firearms. In addition, the panel said the department should restrict the possession and storage of privately owned firearms in military barracks and dorms.

Confirming findings in annual suicide reports, the panel noted that about 66% of all active-duty military suicides — and more than 70% of those by National Guard and Reserve members — are done with firearms. It said reducing access to guns could prevent some deaths.

Craig Bryan, a clinical psychologist and member of the Suicide Prevention and Response Independent Review Committee, said the department should slow down troops’ access to guns — specifically those bought in stores on bases — so people under stress can survive periods of high risk.

He likened the expanded gun safety measures to requirements that the department puts on motorcycle usage — such as mandated helmets — that are often more strict than some state laws. Asked how likely such changes would be, Bryan said he believes troops are more receptive to such limits than civilians might be.
…

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told lawmakers on Thursday the U.S. banking system remains sound even though two regional banks failed in the last week.

She told the Senate Finance Committee that Americans “can feel confident” their deposits “will be there when they need them.”

Yellen said the government “took decisive and forceful actions to strengthen public confidence” in the U.S. banking system by ensuring that all depositors, including those holding uninsured funds exceeding $250,000, were protected by federal deposit insurance when Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank collapsed.

Some critics of the government’s action have called it a bailout, but investors have lost their financial stakes in the two banks, something that would not occur in the normal definition of a bailout, and their executives have been fired.

Senator Mike Crapo of Idaho, the committee’s lead Republican, said, “I’m concerned about the precedent of guaranteeing all deposits,” calling the federal rescue action a “moral hazard.”

“Nerves are certainly frayed at this moment,” said Democratic committee chairman Senator Ron Wyden. “One of the most important steps the Congress can take now is make sure there are no questions about the full faith and credit of the United States,” referring to raising the country’s $31.4 trillion debt ceiling in the next few months so the government can borrow more money to continue to pay its bills.

Some Republicans have demanded large spending cuts in exchange for raising the debt ceiling, while the White House has requested passage of a debt limit increase that is not tied directly to spending cuts. Both Republican and Democratic lawmakers have said they will not cut health insurance and pensions for older Americans.

Stock markets in both Europe and the U.S. rallied sharply Thursday after Credit Suisse announced it would borrow almost $54 billion from the Swiss central bank to shore up its finances.
…

TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew is scheduled to testify before the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce on March 23. Lawmakers have questions about the app’s connections to China. For VOA, Deana Mitchell reports.
…

Parts of California are under water, the Rocky Mountains are bracing for more snow, flood warnings are in place in Nevada, and water is being released from some Arizona reservoirs to make room for an expected bountiful spring runoff.

All the moisture has helped alleviate dry conditions in many parts of the western U.S. Even major reservoirs on the Colorado River are trending in the right direction.

But climate experts caution that the favorable drought maps represent only a blip on the radar as the long-term effects of a stubborn drought persist.

Groundwater and reservoir storage levels — which take much longer to bounce back — remain at historic lows. It could be more than a year before the extra moisture has an effect on the shoreline at Lake Mead that straddles Arizona and Nevada. And it’s unlikely that water managers will have enough wiggle room to wind back the clock on proposals for limiting water use.

That’s because water release and retention operations for the massive reservoir and its upstream sibling — Lake Powell on the Utah-Arizona border — already are set for the year. The reservoirs are used to manage Colorado River water deliveries to 40 million people in seven U.S. states and Mexico.

Still, Lake Powell could gain 45 feet (14 meters) as snow melts and makes its way into tributaries and rivers over the next three months. How much it rises will depend on soil moisture levels, future precipitation, temperatures and evaporation losses.

“We’re definitely going in the right direction, but we still have a long way to go,” said Paul Miller, a hydrologist with the National Weather Service’s Colorado Basin River Forecast Center.

Federal forecasters are scheduled Thursday to roll out predictions for temperature, precipitation and drought over the next three months, as well as the risk for springtime flooding.

California already has been drenched by a fire hose of moisture from the Pacific Ocean that has led to flooding, landslides and toppled trees.

Ski resorts on the California-Nevada border are marking their snowiest winter stretch since 1971, when record-keeping began. In fact, the Sierra Nevada is on the verge of surpassing the second-highest snow total for an entire winter season, with at least two months still to go.

In Arizona, forecasters warned that heavy rain was expected to fall on primed snowpack in the mountains above the desert enclave of Sedona. One of the main creeks running through the tourist town was expected to reach the flood stage and evacuations were ordered for some neighborhoods late Wednesday.

“We’ve pretty much blown past all kinds of averages and normals in the Lower Colorado Basin,” Miller said, not unlike other western basins.

Forecasters say the real standout has been the Great Basin, which stretches from the Sierra Nevada to the Wasatch Mountains in Utah. It has recorded more snow this season than the last two seasons combined. Joel Lisonbee, with the National Integrated Drought Information System, said that’s notable given that over the last decade, only two years — 2017 and 2019 — had snowpack above the median.

Overall, the West has been more dry than wet for more than 20 years, and many areas will still feel the consequences.

An emergency declaration in Oregon warns of higher risks for water shortages and wildfires in the central part of the state. Pockets of central Utah, southeastern Colorado and eastern New Mexico are still dealing with extreme drought, while parts of Texas and the Midwest have become drier.

Forecasters are expecting warm, dry weather to kick in over the coming weeks, meaning drought will keep its foothold in some areas and tighten its grip elsewhere.

Tony Caligiuri, president of the preservation group Colorado Open Lands, said all the recent precipitation shouldn’t derail work to recharge groundwater supplies.

“The problem or the danger in these episodic wet year events is that it can reduce the feeling of urgency to address the longer-term issues of water usage and water conservation,” he said.

The group is experimenting in the San Luis Valley in southern Colorado, the headwaters of the Rio Grande. One of North America’s longest rivers, the Rio Grande and its reservoirs have been struggling due to meager snowpack, long-term drought and constant demands. It went dry over the summer in Albuquerque, and managers had no extra water to supplement flows.

Colorado Open Lands reached an agreement with a farmer to retire his land and stop irrigating the about 1,000 acres. Caligiuri said the idea is to take a major straw out of the aquifer, which will enable the savings to sustain other farms in the district so they no longer face the threat of having to turn off their wells.

“We’ve seen where we can have multiple good years in place like the San Luis Valley when it comes to rainfall or snowpack and then one drought year can erase a decade of progress,” he said. “So you just can’t stick your head in the sand just because you’re having one good wet year.”
…

Returning to the United States seven years ago, I was puzzled how the Bureau of Land Management had seemingly become involved with race politics. Then I deciphered that the hashtag #BLM had taken on a new meaning during my quarter century abroad: Black Lives Matter.

I was likewise confused when newscasters recently began speaking about the IRA — the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. The abbreviation had spent decades in the headlines representing the Irish Republican Army.

Then, there is the personal IRA, an acronym — sometimes pronounced eye-ruh — for a tax-advantaged Individual Retirement Account.

Such recycling or duplications of initials is nothing new. The NRA — National Rifle Association — is frequently in the news amid the gun control debate. The abbreviation was just as pervasive in 1930s America during the Great Depression. The NRA blue eagle logo was displayed by companies adhering to President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s labor codes of the National Recovery Administration.

At VOA, we stake our claim to the initials from the time of our first broadcast (in German) in 1942. We were latecomers, having been preceded by the Volunteers of America, a philanthropic organization originating in New York City in 1896.

Abbreviations or initialisms are convenient shorthand, usually formed from the initial letters of two or more words. Acronyms technically are shortcuts pronounceable as words. Radar, for example, comes from the 1940s technology of radio direction and ranging. That rang nicely, leading to the related acronym for sound navigation and ranging: sonar. Also below the waterline: scuba (self-contained underwater breathing apparatus).

‘Bad acronyms’

Joe Essid, Ph.D. (that suffix from the Latin, meaning philosophiae doctor), director of the Writing Center at the University of Richmond, notes “the military is full of bad acronyms.”

The acronym for the commander in chief of the U.S. Navy fleet (CINCUS – “sink us”) was retired after the Japanese did just that at Pearl Harbor in 1941. The Air Force proposed a space plane in the 1960s, the X-20 Dyna-Soar. That did not fly.

“I think one reason it got canceled was because it was called the dinosaur,” says Essid, whose own surname has become an acronym for extended service set identifier.

In World War II, American soldiers hoping to avoid being MIA (missing in action) or KIA (killed in action) sometimes complained their equipment or plans were fubar — fouled up beyond all recognition. Except the first word was not fouled, but an expletive. “FUBAR” in 2023 is the title of a Netflix action-comedy starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. 

Fubar’s twin from the same era is snafu, which in polite company means situation normal all fouled up. During the war, the U.S. Army officially took it in good humor and produced a series of instructional cartoon shorts titled “Private Snafu.”

Educator and podcaster Mignon Fogarty (AKA Grammar Girl on social media) has mixed feelings about all the abbreviations.

“Acronyms are a great example of jargon — language that is wonderful shorthand for insiders, but that excludes everyone else. Acronyms aren’t bad in all situations, but when you’re an outsider, they’re quite off-putting,” she says.

Shortened names are not consistent across languages. In English, OAS is used for the Organization of American States. But in most of those three dozen member nations, it is known as the OEA, (La Organización de los Estados Americanos).

The international organization providing humanitarian medical assistance in war and disaster zones was initially known as MSF: Médecins Sans Frontières. It now refers to itself in English as Doctors Without Borders, but DWB does not seem to have caught on.

Similarly for the dual identities of Reporters Without Borders, which uses its French acronym RSF (Reporters sans frontières) even in English.

Speaking of the French, they do try to impose some method to language madness, resisting their phrases and acronyms from inundation by anglicisms. In English, there is no equivalent of the Académie Française, and hence no registry of acronyms.

“There’s no American academy of linguistic purity. That’s the strength of the English language,” according to Essid. “It’s a malleable and imperfect tool.”

Any group, individual or agency can create their own acronyms in English, hoping they gain flight ASAP by RTITW (releasing them in the wild), which I just made up.

Let us see if someone will add it to the Acronym Finder. 

The White House

As a White House correspondent, my lexicon overflowed with acronyms: POTUS (President of the United States), FLOTUS (First Lady of the United States) and VPOTUS (Vice President of the United States), whose ceremonial office is not inside the White House but next door in the EEOB (Eisenhower Executive Office Building).

When I got too close to POTUS or VPOTUS with my boom microphone, I got a stern look from a plainclothes agent of the PPD (Presidential Protective Division) of the USSS (United States Secret Service).

Confusingly, PPD at the White House can also refer to a presidential policy directive.

Really famous 20th century presidents became historical initials starting with FDR (Franklin Delano Roosevelt), who was eventually followed by JFK (John F. Kennedy) and LBJ (Lyndon Baines Johnson). Johnson’s successor, Richard Milhous Nixon, the only U.S. president to resign, is not immortalized as RMN.

With the election of the first female vice president, Kamala Harris, her husband, Douglas Emhoff, became the first SGOTUS (Second Gentleman of the United States).

And when a man eventually assumes the traditional FLOTUS role, he’ll be FGOTUS, although the media used that term during the Obama administration to denote White House resident Marian Robinson, mother of FLOTUS Michelle Obama, as the unofficial ‘first grandmother of the United States.’

‘Make the meaning clear’

Grammarian Fogarty offers pro tips for those employing linguistic shorthand.

“When writing for a more general audience, context will also often make the meaning clear. MVP in a baseball story will obviously mean ‘most valuable player.’ But in a general business story, you may need to define MVP (minimum viable product) the first time you use it.”

She prefers to err on the side of caution and spell it out if there is any doubt the audience won’t know the meaning.

OK, (said to originate from oll korrect, an alteration of all correct).

Forgarty’s suggestion is likely good advice for a resume or cv (curriculum vitae).

Fred DeFilippo, for example, went from the CIA to the CIA. The former executive chef at the Central Intelligence Agency is a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America. 

Cellphone text messaging unleashed a torrent of abbreviations to reduce character count: AFAIK (as far as I know); BRB (be right back); IDK (I don’t know); MIRL (meet in real life); NSFW (not safe for work); ROFL (rolling on the floor laughing), and TMI (too much information).

“I try not to use them,” says Essid. “I don’t text a lot, I hate smartphones. I tend to communicate with email and in person. And so, I don’t tend to use these abbreviations and acronyms.”

Except in his hobby of beekeeping where they seem to be buzzing all around.

“A lot of them have to do with sex,” such as JH for juvenile hormones, Essid explains.

Human teenagers with surging hormones are prolific users of social messaging codes.

Before the advent of fruit and vegetable emojis, initialisms were created to KPC (keep parents clueless), such as FWB (friends with benefits); OC (open crib, meaning no parent will be home) and TDTM (talk dirty to me). Many more examples are NSFW (not safe for work).

Early Christians under threat of persecution had the Latin initialism INRI (Iesus Nazarenus, Rex Iudaeorum — Jesus the Nazarene, King of the Jews). Perhaps it was not meant to obscure meaning, rather, to save time carving wooden crosses.

Are acronyms 2,000 years on so pervasive that editors should let them stand on their own without elaboration?

IDK, TBD. TTYL. LOL.
…

TikTok confirmed Wednesday that U.S. officials have recommended the popular video-sharing app part ways with its Chinese parent ByteDance to avoid a national ban.

Western powers, including the European Union and the United States, have been taking an increasingly tough approach to the app, citing fears that user data could be used or abused by Chinese officials.

“If protecting national security is the objective, calls for a ban or divestment are unnecessary, as neither option solves the broader industry issues of data access and transfer,” a TikTok spokesperson told AFP.

“We remain confident that the best path forward to addressing concerns about national security is transparent, U.S.-based protection of U.S. user data and systems, with robust third-party monitoring, vetting, and verification.”

The Wall Street Journal and other U.S. news outlets on Wednesday reported that the White House set an ultimatum: if TikTok remains a part of ByteDance, it will be banned in the United States.

“This is all a game of high stakes poker,” Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said in a note to investors.

Washington is “clearly… putting more pressure on ByteDance to strategically sell this key asset in a major move that could have significant ripple impacts,” he continued.

The White House last week welcomed a bill introduced in the U.S. Senate that would allow President Joe Biden to ban TikTok.

The bipartisan bill “would empower the United States government to prevent certain foreign governments from exploiting technology services… in a way that poses risks to Americans’ sensitive data and our national security,” Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said in a statement.

The bill’s introduction and its quick White House backing accelerated the political momentum against TikTok, which is also the target of a separate piece of legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Appearing tough on China is one of the rare issues with potential for bipartisan support in both the Republican-run House and the Senate, where Biden’s Democratic Party holds the majority.

Concern ramped up among American officials earlier this year after a Chinese balloon, which Washington alleged was on a spy mission, flew over U.S. airspace.

TikTok use rocketing

TikTok claims it has more than a billion users worldwide including over 100 million in the United States, where it has become a cultural force, especially among young people.

Activists argue a ban would be an attack on free speech and stifle the export of American culture and values to TikTok users around the world.

U.S. government workers in January were banned from installing TikTok on their government-issued devices.

Civil servants in the European Union and Canada are also barred from downloading the app on their work devices.

According to the Journal report, the ultimatum to TikTok came from the U.S. interagency board charged with assessing risks foreign investments represent to national security.

U.S. officials declined to comment on the report.

TikTok has consistently denied sharing data with Chinese officials and says it has been working with the U.S. authorities for more than two years to address national security concerns.

Time spent by users on TikTok has surpassed that spent on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram or Twitter and is closing in on streaming television titan Netflix, according to market tracker Insider Intelligence.
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U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, as well as other government officials and civil society leaders, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, during the first stop of his visit to the African continent.

Speaking at a press conference held at Addis Ababa University on Wednesday, Blinken highlighted the importance of democracy and human rights in Ethiopia, noting the United States is committed to promoting human rights and the rule of law in Ethiopia.

Blinken also took a moment to reflect on the lives lost and the pain many endured in the two-year-long war that began in late 2020 and ended with a cease-fire brokered in November.

“The conflict was absolutely devastating,” Blinken said. “Hundreds of thousands killed. Widespread sexual violence against women. Millions forced to flee their homes. Many left in need of food and shelter, medicine. Hospitals, schools, and businesses were shelled and destroyed.”

He commended the peace effort that has taken root in the country, with the help of mediators from the African Union, Kenya and South Africa, and supported by the United States.

“The Cessation of Hostilities Agreement is a major achievement and step forward, saving lives and changing lives. The guns are silent,” he said.

Blinken praised the Ethiopian government and Tigrayan leadership for the cessation of hostilities. And he brought some good news, saying that the U.S., already the biggest bilateral donor to Ethiopia, will add to that total.

“Today I announced an additional $331 million in emergency food and humanitarian assistance that will reach billions of people, millions of Ethiopians affected by conflict, affected by drought.”

Joseph Siegle, director of research at the Africa Center for Strategic Studies said that the U.S. “has a very critical role to play as a trusted actor, as a guarantor,” in the ongoing peace process.

The U.S., he said, can make sure the process is balanced by speaking up for Tigrayan interests while still ensuring “that Ethiopian sovereignty and Ethiopian interests are also being respected.”

Although the cease-fire is an opportunity to pursue justice and hold those responsible for atrocities accountable, Siegle said that it is not a simple process.

“It’s complicated because there are many actors involved in this conflict and atrocities were committed on all sides including from the Tigrayan side, the Eritreans who were involved as well,” he told VOA. And although it might not be easy to get “accountability to the full extent that human rights advocates might want,” he added, “there is room for considerable progress on that front.”

Blinken said that with peace taking hold, Ethiopia is moving in the right direction, and the U.S. shares its aspirations, but is not yet ready to welcome it back into the U.S. trade program known as the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA). AGOA, a preferential trade agreement, allows some African businesses duty-free access to U.S. markets. Ethiopia was removed from AGOA at the beginning of 2022.

Siegle said that it is not practical to expect an immediate return to normal for the Ethiopia-U.S. relationship. However, there is “a sincere interest on both sides to resume a full-fledged robust relationship,” he said.

“There’s great interest on both sides to restart economic engagement, to open up trading opportunities, including the AGOA [the African Growth and Opportunity Act] accreditation, that was put on hold for Ethiopia. Ethipia needs considerable investment and trade to help rebuild, following the devastating conflict, and Ethiopia is a very important country in the Horn of Africa, in Africa more generally. It’s one of the strongest partners the United States has in Africa. And so, I think the U.S. also wants to get things back onto a more normal footing.”

But human rights advocates say not enough has been done by the Ethiopian leadership in terms of making amends for war crimes and allowing investigators to document atrocities. Sarah Yager is the Washington director at Human Rights Watch, a New York-based advocacy group. She said Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed simply wants to move on from the war without accepting any blame.

“What he has been doing is downplaying the atrocities that have occurred by all warring parties, but also his own, by his own direction in places like Tigray,” Yager said. “He is looking to get economic relief from the United States. He is looking to get other partners around the world interested in being donor nations, in having free trade and bringing businesses back to Ethiopia.”
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A top U.S. law enforcement official on Wednesday said he sees no link between a rise in Chinese migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border and illicit fentanyl entering the United States, in response to questioning by a Republican lawmaker.

Steven Cagen, an assistant director with the investigative arm of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said during a congressional hearing that his agency had not established such ties.

“Our investigations and intelligence show that those are two separate situations,” he told Republican Representative Clay Higgins, who had asked if Chinese migrants might be connecting with criminal networks.

Republicans have repeatedly tried to link the trafficking of fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid, to the record number of migrants caught crossing the U.S.-Mexico border illegally since Democratic President Joe Biden took office in 2021. The vast majority of fentanyl seized at the southwest border is intercepted at legal ports of entry.

About 4,300 Chinese migrants have been caught crossing the border illegally through the first five months of fiscal year 2023, which began on October 1, more than double the previous year’s total.

Republicans, who took control of the U.S. House of Representatives in January, have pledged more oversight of the Biden administration. No Democrats attended the House Homeland Security Committee hearing on Wednesday in Pharr, Texas, near the border.

Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz, who also testified, urged lawmakers to stiffen consequences for crossing illegally, calling the current migration levels “a crisis situation” in some areas.

Washington has been seeking greater help from Beijing in stemming the illicit flow of fentanyl “precursor” chemicals from China, but U.S. officials have told Reuters that Chinese counterparts have been reluctant to cooperate as relations between the two countries have soured.

The drug, which is 100 times more potent than morphine, has fueled a surge in U.S. opioid overdose deaths in recent years.
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Stock markets in Europe and the U.S. tumbled Wednesday as investors worried about the stability of global banking systems in the immediate aftermath of the collapse of two American banks.

Major stock indexes in London, Paris and Frankfurt all plunged by more than 3% while three key U.S. indexes — the Dow Jones Industrial Average of 30 key stocks, the broader S&P 500 index and the tech-heavy Nasdaq index — also dropped, although by 1% or less in late-day trading. Asian markets increased, mirroring Tuesday gains in the U.S.

The newest worries centered on Credit Suisse, with shares for the beleaguered Swiss lender falling more than 17% after its biggest shareholder, the Saudi National Bank, said it would not invest more money in it.

Problems at Credit Suisse, with outlets in major global financial centers, predated the U.S. government takeover of operations at Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank in the last week.

Credit Suisse said Tuesday that managers had identified “material weaknesses” in the bank’s internal controls on financial reporting as of the end of last year.

But on Wednesday, Credit Suisse chairman Axel Lehmann, speaking at a financial conference in the Saudi capital of Riyadh, defended the bank’s operations, saying, “We already took the medicine” to reduce risks. “We are regulated. We have strong capital ratios, very strong balance sheet. We are all hands on deck.”

But with the drop in the share price for Credit Suisse, bank stocks in Britain, France and Germany also fell sharply, although not by as much as for Credit Suisse.

S&P Global Ratings said on Tuesday that the failures at the two U.S. banks would have little effect on the fortunes of European banks. But the S&P analysts added, “That said, we are mindful that SVB’s failure has shaken confidence.”

Share prices of other U.S. regional banks like Silicon Valley have fallen sharply in recent days.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press.
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An exiled Chinese businessman with ties to former Trump White House adviser Steve Bannon has been arrested on federal charges of defrauding his online followers out of more than $1 billion, the Justice Department announced  Wednesday.

Ho Wan Kwok, also known as Miles Guo and Guo Wengui, was arrested earlier Wednesday in New York and was to make his first court appearance later in the day. Kwok fled to the United States in 2015.  

The charges against Kwok stem from an alleged conspiracy to solicit investments in various entities and programs from thousands of people on social media.

“Kwok is charged with lining his pockets with the money he stole, including buying himself, and his close relatives, a 50,000-square-foot mansion, a $3.5 million Ferrari, and even two $36,000 mattresses, and financing a $37 million luxury yacht,” U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a statement.

As part of the investigation of Kwok, the Justice Department seized about $634 million from 21 different bank accounts and a Lamborghini Aventador SVJ Roadster, Williams said.

A 12-count indictment unsealed Wednesday charged Kwok with wire fraud, securities fraud, bank fraud and money laundering.

Kwok’s alleged financier, Kin Ming Je, is also charged with obstruction of justice. Je, a dual citizen of Hong Kong and Britain, remains at large.

The indictment accused Kwok of lying to his online followers and promising outsized profits in return for investing in four ventures known as GTV Media Group, Himalaya Farm Alliance, G|CLUBS and the Himalaya Exchange.

“The indictment today alleges the defendants were behind an elaborate scheme that defrauded thousands of individuals of over $1 billion,” FBI Assistant Director Michael J. Driscoll said in a statement. “Fraudulent investment scams make victims out of innocent people, ultimately harming the public’s confidence in the integrity of financial systems.”

Kwok and Bannon are longtime associates. Bannon was arrested on a yacht owned by Kwok off the coast of Connecticut in 2020. He was charged in connection with stealing money from a fundraising campaign for a project known as “We Build the Wall.”
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Florida is the fastest-growing state in America for the first time since 1957, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The population in the southeastern state, which is known for its warm weather and sandy beaches, now tops 22 million.

“I hate being cold,” says Kathy Bonini, 42, who grew up in Pennsylvania but moved to Florida in 2011. “Everybody loves sunshine and palm trees.”

Nancy Sikes-Kline, mayor of the Florida port city of St. Augustine, agrees.

“You know, we call ourselves ‘the sunshine state’ and I think that that makes a big difference,” Sikes-Kline says when asked why people relocate to her state. “I think, at the very core, it’s just this wonderful weather that we have. The sunshine.”

Florida is known for attracting older, retired Americans. But more than 700,000 people of all ages moved to the state between April 1, 2020, and July 1, 2022. That was during the COVID-19 pandemic, a time when many remote workers could live wherever they wanted.

Economist Sean Snaith says there are factors other than the weather that draw people to Florida, including a robust labor market and the fact that, unlike most U.S. states, Florida has no state income tax.

“Depending on where folks are moving from, that might be an extra 8, 9, 10% of your pay that you get to keep that previously went to pay state taxes or other local taxes,” says Snaith, an economics professor at the University of Central Florida and director of UCF’s Institute for Economic Forecasting.

An analysis of Census data shows that people within the United States who move to Florida most frequently come from New York, Georgia, Ohio, Pennsylvania and California.

“Time to kind of get out of California with the wildfires and the high cost of living,” says Florida resident Aaron Dan, 36, who moved from the West Coast in May 2021, during the pandemic. Dan, who works in real estate, sees more opportunities for land development and commercial leasing in Florida.

“You can get a lot more for your dollar around here, lower taxes, obviously,” he says. So, I think just the cost of living is very attractive as well as the opportunity for growth.”

Even before the pandemic, nearly two-thirds of the people who lived in Florida came from out of state. One-fifth of those transplants relocated from a foreign country.

“We’ve had a lot of international in-migration to the state, from a variety of locations. You know, it’s not just one or two countries, it’s Central America and South America, the Caribbean,” he says. “People want to move to the United States, in general, and Florida tends to get a larger chunk of those immigrants.”

But population growth can make life in the Sunshine State more expensive. The average price of a home in Florida rose 14% in the past year, compared with the national average of 8.7%, according to Zillow, a real estate marketplace company.

“Florida is kind of a cheap place to buy a house and to live. That’s become less the case,” Snaith says. “So that is making life difficult in terms of affordability. And that’s one of the problems that Florida is going to be grappling with here, I think, for some time to come.”

Realtor Sharon Wooten is a Florida native. Over time, she’s seen orange groves give way to housing developments.

“It’s changed a lot. The farmland is gone. … I think if we take care of our natural resources, and we don’t grow too fast, it’s OK. And, I think, if we are choosy about what comes in. A lot of these developments are very, very nice and they take care of these developments and everything they do is top notch,” she says. “As long as it’s good growth, it’s OK. You know, it’s brought in a lot of opportunities for people in this area that they may not have ever had.”

Wooten says the increased development has had a positive impact on daily life for some.

“My mother and my grandmother have had opportunities to shop and go to plays and restaurants and things that they didn’t have before,” she says. “So, it’s just sort of opened up a new world to them.”

Snaith says that, as far as the economy is concerned, population growth is “nothing but good news.”

“Every new household that moves to Florida needs a place to live, they need food, they need medical care, their children, if they have them, need schooling, and they clothe them. They need all the things that consumers buy,” Snaith says. “So, you know, population growth is one side of the coin. The flip side of that same coin is economic growth…. The more people you have in any regional economy, the more economic activity they will generate.”

Florida is the third-most-populous state in the country. People have been moving there since the 1950s, when air-conditioning first became commonplace, and that influx shows no signs of letting up.

“Unless there’s some sort of a dramatic change to, you know, the environment, politically, economically,” Snaith says, “I just don’t see any kind of factor that would take us off this course that the state’s been on for a long time.”
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