Detainees who remain at the U.S. Guantanamo Bay facility in Cuba are showing symptoms of accelerating ageing, according to a senior official of the International Committee of the Red Cross who was alarmed by the detainees’ physical and living conditions during a recent visit.

“I was particularly struck by how those who are still detained today are experiencing the symptoms of accelerated ageing, worsened by the cumulative effects of their experiences and years spent in detention,” Patrick Hamilton, the ICRC head of delegation for the U.S. and Canada, said in a statement. His last visit before the most recent one was in 2003. 

“There is a need for a more comprehensive approach if the U.S. is to continue holding detainees over the years to come,” Hamilton said.  

He called for the detainees to receive “access to adequate health care that accounts for both deteriorating mental and physical conditions.” In addition, he said the infrastructure of the facility should be adapted “for the detainees’ evolving needs and disabilities.”

A “comprehensive approach” is also needed, he said, to improve the quality of contact the detainees have with their families.

Hamilton said the ICRC is calling on the Biden administration and Congress “to work together to find adequate and sustainable solutions” to the detainees’ issues.

“If there is a likelihood that even a small number of people are going to be held longer at this facility, the planning for an ageing population cannot afford to wait,” he said.

Guantanamo Bay holds Muslim militants and suspected terrorists apprehended by U.S. forces following the September 11, 2001, attacks on the U.S.
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The United States is deploying more troops at its base in Djibouti as it considers whether to evacuate diplomats from Sudan, where a power struggle between two military factions has led to days of violence that has killed more than 330 people.

John Kirby, National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications, spoke Friday with VOA’s White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara about the ongoing fighting in Sudan. He also previewed next week’s White House state visit by President Yoon Suk Yeol of South Korea.

This transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.

VOA WHITE HOUSE BUREAU CHIEF PATSY WIDAKUSWARA: I’d like to start with Sudan. What’s the latest on the evacuation of American diplomats and the deployment of troops to the base in Djibouti?

NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL COORDINATOR FOR STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS JOHN KIRBY: There’s been no decision to evacuate our diplomats. We’re still focused right now on pre-positioning appropriate military capabilities nearby in the region, not in Sudan, just in case there is a decision made to evacuate our embassy.

The bottom line is the situation on the ground in Khartoum is not good. The violence continues, the fighting continues despite both sides calling or urging the other to abide by cease-fires. There’s still a lot of violence inside Khartoum, and so it’s a very tenuous, very dangerous situation. And as we’ve said, if you are an American citizen, and you didn’t take our warning to leave Sudan and particularly Khartoum, you need to take care of your own safety and security, shelter in place, find a place to stay where you can stay safe and not be moving around.

VOA: So there’s no evacuation for American citizens at this point?

KIRBY: There is no expectation that there’s going to be a U.S. government evacuation of American citizens. That remains the case right now.

VOA: Secretary [of State Antony] Blinken has called the leaders of both warring parties to push for a cease-fire. Obviously, that hasn’t happened. The U.S. has very limited leverage because we have pulled U.S. assistance since the coup in Sudan in 2021. Which countries in the region are you reaching out to, to help push for a cease-fire?

KIRBY: We’re talking to the African Union, we’re talking to the Arab League. Clearly, we’re talking bilaterally with other nations around Sudan in the region who obviously have a stake in making sure that peace and security, stability has a chance there in Sudan. And yes, we are reaching out directly. You’ve mentioned Secretary Blinken, but there are other lines of communication reaching out directly with the leaders on both sides there, General [Abdel Fattah] Burhan of the Sudanese Armed Forces and General [Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo] “Hemedti” of the RSF and to urge them to put down their arms, actually put in place a sustainable cease-fire so that humanitarian aid and assistance can get to the people that need it.

VOA: Would the U.S. administration consider any kind of punitive measures to push for a cease-fire?

KIRBY: I don’t have any muscle movements to speak to right now. We are focused right now on communicating to both sides they need to put their arms down, they need to stop the fighting. We need to get the ability for people to get access to food and water and medicine and again, to have a discussion about a transition to civilian authority.

VOA: And how concerned are you that this would turn into a proxy war, where outside groups such as the Wagner Group that’s already in the region might take opportunity from the chaos?

KIRBY: Obviously, we don’t want to see this conflict expand or broaden, and we certainly wouldn’t want to see additional firepower brought to bear; that will just continue the violence and continue to escalate the tensions.

VOA: I want to move on to the South Korean president’s visit next week. One of the leaks showed that there is concern from the South Koreans that President [Joe] Biden might push President Yoon [Suk Yeol] to supply military weapons, munitions particularly to Ukraine. Has this leak complicated the visit at all?

KIRBY: We are very excited about having our second state visit be the Republic of Korea. President Biden and President Yoon have a terrific relationship. We as a nation have a great relationship with the Republic of Korea, our South Korean allies. And it is an alliance. We have actual alliance commitments with South Korea. And there’s an awful lot on the agenda and it won’t just be Ukraine.

But there’s an awful lot of other things on the agenda, everything from high technology to climate change to certainly threats inside the Indo-Pacific region. Obviously, North Korea will be on the agenda. There’s a lot to talk about. And this is a terrific relationship.

VOA: President Yoon said he may be open to providing military support to Ukraine under some circumstances. Is this something that President Biden will push President Yoon for?

KIRBY: This isn’t about pushing South Korea at all. It’s about having a meaningful conversation about items of mutual shared concern and interest and certainly the war in Ukraine is something that South Korea shares that concern with. I’ll let President Yoon speak to what he is or isn’t willing to do.

We have said from the very beginning that what a nation decides to do with respect to supporting Ukraine is up to them to decide. It’s a sovereign decision. The whole idea of supporting Ukraine, this whole fight is about sovereignty. It’s about independence. And how ironic and hypocritical would it be for the United States to dictate terms to a sovereign nation about what they should or shouldn’t do.

VOA: Can we expect any kind of announcements in terms of extended deterrence, increasing U.S. strategic assets, any kind of joint operations of nuclear scenarios in the region?

KIRBY: We routinely talk to the South Koreans about the extended deterrence. I’m not going to get ahead of the president or any specific announcements or anything going forward.

VOA: On semiconductors, now that China cannot access U.S. technology but also Japanese and Netherlands technology for semiconductors, they are reaching out to South Korean companies. Is this something that the president will also discuss?

KIRBY: I have no doubt that they’ll talk about high technology and the need to keep improving, preserving, maintaining resilient supply chains when it comes to semiconductors. But I won’t get ahead of the conversation.

VOA: You mentioned today’s meeting in Ramstein, Germany, which marks one year that the Defense Contact Group has been meeting. Secretary [of Defense Lloyd] Austin said this morning that the focus will be on air defense, ammunition and logistics. What does that say in terms of where we are in the war right now and the strategy going forward?

KIRBY: We have evolved the capabilities that we are providing Ukraine … as the war itself has evolved over time. Here we are past a year. And we know that in the spring when the weather improves, and it’s already starting to improve, that we can expect the Russians to want to go on the offensive in some areas, and we don’t know exactly where or how they’ll do that. But we want to make sure that the Ukrainians are able to better defend themselves against that and if they choose offensive operations of their own, that they’ve got the capabilities to conduct those.

And you heard Secretary Austin talk about air defense, talk about armor capabilities because we believe that one of the things and they say they need to be better at is combined arms warfare, which is maneuver warfare in open terrain. That means, that requires armor, that requires artillery, that requires some air defense. But he also talked about logistics because that’s really the lifeblood of any army in the field, is how do you keep it in the field? How do you sustain it? How do you get him spare parts and food and water and fuel, the kinds of things that they need to maintain operations in a continuous way? So that’s got to be front and center as well.

VOA: Last question, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg this week said that Ukraine’s rightful place is in the Euro-Atlantic family. At this point, do you see Ukraine to be closer toward becoming a NATO member?

KIRBY: Nothing’s changed about our support for the Open Door Policy of NATO. Nothing’s changed about that. We continue to support an open door for NATO. But we’ve also said that any conversation about coming into the alliance has got to be a conversation between the nation in question and the alliance itself.

VOA: But do you see that Ukraine itself has improved on the criteria that it must meet?

KIRBY: Our focus right now with respect to Ukraine is making sure that they can beat back the Russian aggression. That they can be successful on the battlefield so that President [Volodymyr] Zelenskyy, if and when he’s ready to negotiate, he can be successful at the table. That’s our focus. We’ll let the secretary-general speak for the alliance.
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American citizens told to shelter in place
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Longtime New York Times China reporter Chris Buckley traveled to Wuhan, the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic, on the day the city went into lockdown. It was January 2020.

“In retrospect, it sounds crazy,” Buckley said. He went prepared with masks and a healthy sense of caution, but he never predicted that what he saw during those weeks would still grip the world three years later.

“It was a big story, and I like to cover big stories. It’s exciting. It’s fulfilling. And I hope it didn’t make me reckless,” Buckley told VOA. “I wanted to be part of what was going to be a big story.”

His visa was about to expire, and the Chinese government had already told him they wouldn’t renew it. That meant the start of the pandemic was among the last big stories Buckley was going to be able to report from inside China before he left that spring.

Beijing has expelled or declined to renew visas for several foreign correspondents in recent years. China in 2020 said it was responding to the previous U.S. administration decision to cap the number of visas for staff at state-run Chinese media and designate their outlets “foreign missions.”

When Buckley got off the train in Wuhan, he didn’t find any more security than normal — which made some parts of the assignment easier than he had expected.

“It was difficult reporting, but it wasn’t constrained by being followed or anything like that. It was constrained by people being worried [about the virus],” he told VOA from Taiwan, where he currently lives.

Buckley, who has covered China for over two decades, is among the correspondents whose stories from the 1940s to today make up a new book — Assignment China: An Oral History of American Journalists in the People’s Republic.

“If we want to understand China, we should care about who is reporting about China,” said Katherine Wilhelm, who reported in China for various outlets between 1987 and 2001 and is also featured in the book. “How do they experience the process of gathering information on a day-to-day basis? It helps to see how the sausage is made.”

Assignment China was written by CNN’s first Beijing bureau chief Mike Chinoy.

“The way in which journalists for the American media have covered China has had a huge impact in the way most Americans understand or misunderstand China,” Chinoy told VOA. “The American media organizations’ coverage of China has had a disproportionate impact in shaping perception of China all around the world.”

Chinoy wanted to help readers better understand what he sees as the “particular challenges of trying to cover a story as challenging and complicated and as hugely important as China is.”

That goal was important to Chinoy in light of tensions between Washington and Beijing.

Chinoy served as CNN’s Beijing bureau chief from 1987 to 1995. It was a period that “went from relatively relaxed to extremely repressive during and after Tiananmen Square, to becoming relatively relaxed again,” Chinoy said.

“On the night of the [Tiananmen Square] crackdown, my live reporting was all done on a telephone line that we kept open on the balcony of the Beijing Hotel because we didn’t have a cellphone,” Chinoy said. Following the 1989 crackdown was a period of intense restrictions that made it harder to report until 1992, he said.

The most promising period for foreign reporters in China, according to Melissa Chan, was in the run-up to the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. Chan began reporting in China in 2006 and worked there as a correspondent for Al Jazeera until 2012, when she was expelled from the country.

She was the first foreign reporter to be told to leave the country in over a decade.

“It was pretty big news at the time,” Chan, now an independent journalist based in Berlin, told VOA. “Today, we’ve lost track of the number of reporters who’ve lost their credentials and have had to leave.”

China’s Washington embassy did not reply to VOA’s email requesting comment. A Foreign Ministry spokesperson, however, has previously dismissed claims of a closed media environment, saying, “as long as foreign journalists abide by the law and do reporting in compliance with the law and regulations, there is no need to worry.”

Even before Chan was forced to leave, the relative freedom that foreign journalists briefly enjoyed had begun to decline, she said.

During a 2011 reporting trip to the northwestern region of Xinjiang, where Beijing is accused of genocide against Uyghurs, Chan was tailed by two cars the entire time.

“It was becoming unbearable, particularly for TV crews,” she said.

Those difficulties strike at the heart of the book, Chinoy said, which is “the never-ending struggle between American journalists seeking to penetrate the veil of secrecy that has enshrouded China for so long, and get a better understanding of Chinese reality.”

For Wilhelm, who now leads the U.S.-Asia Law Institute at New York University’s law school, reporting in China gave a sense, “all day, every day, that you were swimming upstream, or swimming against the tide, trying to find out things in a system that really didn’t want you to find them out.”

Despite the barriers, which have multiplied in recent years, Buckley said that for media to cover the news on China effectively, they need to be inside China.

Reporting from the countryside is one of the things Buckley misses most about being based in China. But that’s become harder to do, he said.

“Ultimately it means people abroad don’t get that more textured sense about what life is like in China,” Buckley said. “And that’s a loss.”

In the short term, the Chinese government may be relieved to have fewer foreign journalists, especially from American outlets, said Buckley. But those potential benefits won’t last forever.

“Longer term, if readers, if audiences are deprived of a fuller understanding of what’s happening in China, that space where information can’t be shared is going to be filled with distortions and rumors and more misunderstandings,” he said.
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Competition between the U.S. and China in artificial intelligence has expanded into a race to design and implement comprehensive AI regulations.

The efforts to come up with rules to ensure AI’s trustworthiness, safety and transparency come at a time when governments around the world are exploring the impact of the technology on national security and education.

ChatGPT, a chatbot that mimics human conversation, has received massive attention since its debut in November. Its ability to give sophisticated answers to complex questions with a language fluency comparable to that of humans has caught the world by surprise. Yet its many flaws, including its ostensibly coherent responses laden with misleading information and apparent bias, have prompted tech leaders in the U.S. to sound the alarm.

“What happens when something vastly smarter than the smartest person comes along in silicon form? It’s very difficult to predict what will happen in that circumstance,” said Tesla Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk in an interview with Fox News. He warned that artificial intelligence could lead to “civilization destruction” without regulations in place.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai echoed that sentiment. “Over time there has to be regulation. There have to be consequences for creating deep fake videos which cause harm to society,” Pichai said in an interview with CBS’s “60 Minutes” program.

Jessica Brandt, policy director for the Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technology Initiative at the Brookings Institution, told VOA Mandarin, “Business leaders understand that regulators will be watching this space closely, and they have an interest in shaping the approaches regulators will take.”

US grapples with regulations

AI regulation is still nascent in the U.S. Last year, the White House released voluntary guidance through a Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights to help ensure users’ rights are protected as technology companies design and develop AI systems.

At a meeting of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology this month, President Joe Biden expressed concern about the potential dangers associated with AI and underscored that companies had a responsibility to ensure their products were safe before making them public.

On April 11, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, a Commerce Department agency that advises the White House on telecommunications and information policy, began to seek comment and public input with the aim of crafting a report on AI accountability.

The U.S. government is trying to find the right balance to regulate the industry without stifling innovation “in part because the U.S. having innovative leadership globally is a selling point for the United States’ hard and soft power,” said Johanna Costigan, a junior fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis.

Brandt, with Brookings, said, “The challenge for liberal democracies is to ensure that AI is developed and deployed responsibly, while also supporting a vibrant innovation ecosystem that can attract talent and investment.”

Meanwhile, other Western countries have also started to work on regulating the emerging technology.

The U.K. government published its AI regulatory framework in March. Also last month, Italy temporarily blocked ChatGPT in the wake of a data breach, and the German commissioner for data protection said his country could follow suit.

The European Union stated it’s pushing for an AI strategy aimed at making Europe a world-class hub for AI that ensures AI is human-centric and trustworthy, and it hopes to lead the world in AI standards.

Cyber regulations in China

In contrast to the U.S., the Chinese government has already implemented regulations aimed at tech sectors related to AI. In the past few years, Beijing has introduced several major data protection laws to limit the power of tech companies and to protect consumers.

The Cybersecurity Law enacted in 2017 requires that data must be stored within China and operators must submit to government-conducted security checks. The Data Security Law enacted in 2021 sets a comprehensive legal framework for processing personal information when doing business in China. The Personal Information Protection Law established in the same year gives Chinese consumers the right to access, correct and delete their personal data gathered by businesses. Costigan, with the Asia Society, said these laws have laid the groundwork for future tech regulations.

In March 2022, China began to implement a regulation that governs the way technology companies can use recommendation algorithms. The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) now supervises the process of using big data to analyze user preferences and companies’ ability to push information to users.

On April 11, the CAC unveiled a draft for managing generative artificial intelligence services similar to ChatGPT, in an effort to mitigate the dangers of the new technology.

Costigan said the goal of the proposed generative AI regulation could be seen in Article 4 of the draft, which states that content generated by future AI products must reflect the country’s “core socialist values” and not encourage subversion of state power.

“Maintaining social stability is a key consideration,” she said. “The new draft regulation does some good and is unambiguously in line with [President] Xi Jinping’s desire to ensure that individuals, companies or organizations cannot use emerging AI applications to challenge his rule.”

Michael Caster, the Asia digital program manager at Article 19, a London-based rights organization, told VOA, “The language, especially at Article 4, is clearly about maintaining the state’s power of censorship and surveillance.

“All global policymakers should be clearly aware that while China may be attempting to set standards on emerging technology, their approach to legislation and regulation has always been to preserve the power of the party.”

The future of cyber regulations

As strategies for cyber and AI regulations evolve, how they develop may largely depend on each country’s way of governance and reasons for creating standards. Analysts say there will also be intrinsic hurdles linked to coming up with consensus.

“Ethical principles can be hard to implement consistently, since context matters and there are countless potential scenarios at play,” Brandt told VOA. “They can be hard to enforce, too. Who would take on that role? How? And of course, before you can implement or enforce a set of principles, you need broad agreement on what they are.”

Observers said the international community would face challenges as it creates standards aimed at making AI technology ethical and safe.
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Editor’s note: Here is a fast take on what the international community has been up to this past week, as seen from the United Nations perch.

Violence erupts in Sudan, UN chief calls for truce

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for an immediate halt to fighting in Sudan on Thursday and appealed for a three-day cease-fire to mark the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan to enable trapped civilians to seek safety and supplies.

As of Friday, street battles were reportedly continuing. Guterres said a truce for Eid al-Fitr must be the first step to a permeant cease-fire and a return to the transition to civilian rule. Rival generals in a power struggle have unleashed fighting in the capital and across the country, which has killed more than 400 people so far, many of them civilians.

UN Chief Calls for Cease-Fire in Sudan to Mark End of Ramadan

UN complains to US over spying reports

The United Nations lodged a formal complaint Monday with the United States over reports that Washington spied on Secretary-General Guterres and other senior U.N. officials. The revelation came to light as part of a trove of classified military documents allegedly leaked online by a 21-year-old U.S. air national guardsman, who was arrested and charged last week. News outlets reported that the U.S. may have monitored Guterres’ private communications, including with Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed. The U.S. government has not commented on the substance of the leaked documents.

UN Expresses Concern to US Over Spying Reports

Talk of Taliban recognition draws condemnation

Remarks by U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed about possible future recognition of the Taliban drew criticism this week from U.S. officials as well as Afghan activists and politicians. Speaking at Princeton University, Mohammed said a meeting is being organized in Qatar in early May of special envoys on Afghanistan from different countries. “And out of that, we hope that we’ll find those baby steps to put us back on the pathway to recognition [of the Taliban], a principled recognition,” Mohammed said. “Is it possible? I don’t know. [But] that discussion has to happen. The Taliban clearly want recognition, and that’s the leverage we have.” The U.N. has rejected as “unlawful” the Taliban’s latest edict banning Afghan women from working for the international organization. It follows other restrictions on their education, work and movements.

Top UN Official Proposes Meeting to Discuss Recognition of Taliban

The U.N. quickly moved to clarify Mohammed’s remarks, saying the recognition issue was “clearly in the hands of the member states” and that she was reaffirming the need for an internationally coordinated approach. Mohammed has been outspoken on upholding the rights of Afghan women and girls and personally met with the Taliban’s supreme leader earlier this year.

US Rules Out Talks on Afghan Taliban Recognition at UN-Hosted Meeting

No consensus on UN Security Council on what to do about DPRK

A senior United Nations official warned Monday that North Korea is hitting “significant milestones” in its five-year military development plan, including its launch last week of a reported solid fuel intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). U.N. deputy political chief Khaled Khiari added that the lack of Security Council unity is not helping the situation, as North Korea is “unconstrained.” Russia and China have repeatedly blocked action on the council to address numerous ballistic missile launches.

As UN Security Council Dithers, North Korea Progresses on WMD

Decline in vaccination rates jeopardizes children’s health

The U.N. children’s fund, UNICEF, warns that many children are likely to die from vaccine-preventable diseases because of a decline in routine immunizations during the COVID-19 pandemic. The report also found that 67 million children, nearly half of them on the African continent, have missed out on one or more vaccinations due to disruptions in immunization services in the three years since the pandemic began.

UNICEF Warns Many Children in Danger of Dying from Preventable Diseases

In brief

— Despite a decrease in fighting in Yemen, the country’s health sector remains at risk of collapse, the World Health Organization warned Friday. Nearly half the country’s health facilities are closed or only partially functioning. The WHO says the health crisis is compounded by a rise in outbreaks of measles, diphtheria, dengue, cholera and polio. There are also 540,000 children under the age of five who are suffering severe acute malnutrition with a direct risk of death. The WHO has been supporting Yemen’s health sector but, due to a shortage of funds, has faced reductions affecting millions of people.

— There were three attacks on peacekeepers in Mali in the past week. Two Bangladeshi peacekeepers were injured when an IED targeted their logistics convoy Tuesday in the Mopti region. Days before that, two peacekeepers from Togo were injured when their convoy was also hit by an IED near Douentza. On Wednesday, the U.N. mission in Mali reported an explosion targeting an empty fuel tank belonging to a contractor. No injuries were reported. For the past nine years, MINUSMA has been the U.N.’s deadliest mission for peacekeepers. In 2022, 32 “blue helmets” were killed in deliberate attacks.

— The new special representative of the secretary-general for Haiti, María Isabel Salvador, has arrived in Port-au-Prince, where she met Prime Minister Ariel Henry. She is scheduled to deliver her first briefing to the Security Council on April 26.

Good news

The International Committee of the Red Cross said Monday that the warring sides in Yemen released nearly a thousand detainees over four days. The development comes a month after an agreement between Saudi Arabia and Iran to restore ties. Saudi Arabia has backed Yemen’s internationally recognized government, while Iran supports the Houthi rebels who seized Yemen’s capital in 2014.

Nearly 1,000 Detainees Released in Yemen

What we are watching next week

As part of its Security Council presidency this month, Russia’s foreign minister will chair two meetings next week. On Monday, Sergey Lavrov will preside over a debate on “effective multilateralism through the defense of the principles of the U.N. Charter” and on Tuesday the regular debate on the Middle East. It will be his second visit to the U.N. since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022. His first was during the General Assembly high-level week in September, during which Lavrov said the Kremlin had “no choice” but to launch its “special military operation” in Ukraine. It also comes just weeks before the May 18 deadline Russia has set for the U.N. to meet its conditions to extend a deal that facilitates the exports through the Black Sea of Ukrainian grain and Russian grain and fertilizer. Moscow has complained for months that it is not benefiting from the 9-month-old deal. It will certainly be a focus of discussion between Lavrov and U.N. chief Guterres when they meet next week.
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U.S. homeland security officials are launching what they describe as two urgent initiatives to combat growing threats from China and expanding dangers from ever more capable, and potentially malicious, artificial intelligence.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced Friday that his department was starting a “90-day sprint” to confront more frequent and intense efforts by China to hurt the United States, while separately establishing an artificial intelligence task force.

“Beijing has the capability and the intent to undermine our interests at home and abroad and is leveraging every instrument of its national power to do so,” Mayorkas warned, addressing the threat from China during a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington.

The 90-day sprint will “assess how the threats posed by the PRC [People’s Republic of China] will evolve and how we can be best positioned to guard against future manifestations of this threat,” he said.

“One critical area we will assess, for example, involves the defense of our critical infrastructure against PRC or PRC-sponsored attacks designed to disrupt or degrade provision of national critical functions, sow discord and panic, and prevent mobilization of U.S. military capabilities,” Mayorkas added.

Other areas of focus for the sprint will include addressing ways to stop Chinese government exploitation of U.S. immigration and travel systems to spy on the U.S. government and private entities and to silence critics, and looking at ways to disrupt the global fentanyl supply chain.

AI dangers

Mayorkas also said the magnitude of the threat from artificial intelligence, appearing in a growing number of tools from major tech companies, was no less critical.

“We must address the many ways in which artificial intelligence will drastically alter the threat landscape and augment the arsenal of tools we possess to succeed in the face of these threats,” he said.

Mayorkas promised that the Department of Homeland Security “will lead in the responsible use of AI to secure the homeland and in defending against the malicious use of this transformational technology.”

The new task force is set to seek ways to use AI to protect U.S. supply chains and critical infrastructure, counter the flow of fentanyl, and help find and rescue victims of online child sexual exploitation.

The unveiling of the two initiatives came days after lawmakers grilled Mayorkas about what some described as a lackluster and derelict effort under his leadership to secure the U.S. border with Mexico.

“You have not secured our borders, Mr. Secretary, and I believe you’ve done so intentionally,” the chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, Republican Mark Green, told Mayorkas on Wednesday.

Another lawmaker, Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene, went as far as to accuse Mayorkas of lying, though her words were quickly removed from the record.

Mayorkas on Friday said it might be possible to use AI to help with border security, though how exactly it could be deployed for the task was not yet clear.

“We’re at a nascent stage of really deploying AI,” he said. “I think we’re now at the dawn of a new age.”

But Mayorkas cautioned that technologies like AI would do little to slow the number of migrants willing to embark on dangerous journeys to reach U.S. soil.

“Desperation is the greatest catalyst for the migration we are seeing,” he said.

FBI warning

The announcement of Homeland Security’s 90-day sprint to confront growing threats from Beijing followed a warning earlier this week from the FBI about the willingness of China to target dissidents and critics in the U.S.

and the arrests of two New York City residents for their involvement in a secret Chinese police station.

China has denied any wrongdoing.

“The Chinese government strictly abides by international law, and fully respects the law enforcement sovereignty of other countries,” Liu Pengyu, the spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, told VOA in an email earlier this week, accusing the U.S. of seeking “to smear China’s image.”

Top U.S. officials have said they are opening two investigations daily into Chinese economic espionage in the U.S.

“The Chinese government has stolen more of American’s personal and corporate data than that of every nation, big or small combined,” FBI Director Christopher Wray told an audience late last year.

More recently, Wray warned of Chinese’ advances in AI, saying he was “deeply concerned.”

Mayorkas voiced a similar sentiment, pointing to China’s use of investments and technology to establish footholds around the world.

“We are deeply concerned about PRC-owned and -operated infrastructure, elements of infrastructure, and what that control can mean, given that the operator and owner has adverse interests,” Mayorkas said Friday.

“Whether it’s investment in our ports, whether it is investment in partner nations, telecommunications channels and the like, it’s a myriad of threats,” he said.
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Montana’s House speaker on Thursday refused to allow a transgender lawmaker to speak about bills on the House floor until she apologizes for saying lawmakers would have “blood on their hands” if they supported a bill to ban gender-affirming medical care for transgender youth, the lawmaker said.

Rep. Zooey Zephyr, who was deliberately misgendered by a conservative group of lawmakers demanding her censure after Tuesday’s comments, said she will not apologize, creating a standoff between the first-term state lawmaker and Republican legislative leaders.

Speaker Matt Regier refused to acknowledge Zephyr on Thursday when she wanted to comment on a bill seeking to put a binary definition of male and female into state code.

“It is up to me to maintain decorum here on the House floor, to protect the dignity and integrity,” Regier said Thursday. “And any representative that I don’t feel can do that will not be recognized.”

Regier said the decision came after “multiple discussions” with other lawmakers and that previously there have been similar problems.

Democrats objected to Regier’s decision, but the House Rules committee and the House upheld his decision on party-line votes.

“Hate-filled testimony has no place on the House floor,” Republican Rep. Caleb Hinkle, a member of the Montana Freedom Caucus that demanded the censure, said in a statement.

Zephyr said she stands by what she said about the consequences of banning essential medical care for transgender youth.

“When there are bills targeting the LGBTQ community, I stand up to defend my community,” Zephyr said. “And I choose my words with clarity and precision, and I spoke to the real harms that these bills bring.”

Regier also declined to recognize Zephyr on Thursday when she rang in to speak about another bill, which was unrelated to LGBTQ+ issues and seeks to reimburse hotels that provide shelter to victims of human trafficking.

“The speaker is refusing to allow me to participate in debate until I retract or apologize for my statements made during floor debate,” Zephyr said.

The issue came to a head Tuesday when Zephyr, the first transgender woman to hold a position in the Montana legislature, referenced the floor session’s opening prayer when she told lawmakers if they supported the bill, “I hope the next time there’s an invocation when you bow your heads in prayer, you see the blood on your hands.”

She had made a similar comment when the bill was debated in the House for the first time.

House Majority Leader Sue Vinton rebuked Zephyr on Tuesday, calling her comments inappropriate, disrespectful and uncalled for.

Later, the Montana Freedom Caucus issued its censure demand in a letter that called for a “commitment to civil discourse” in the same sentence in which it deliberately misgendered Zephyr. The caucus also misgendered Zephyr in a Tweet while posting the letter online.

“It is disheartening that the Montana Freedom Caucus would stoop so low as to misgender me in their letter, further demonstrating their disregard for the dignity and humanity of transgender individuals,” Zephyr said in a statement Wednesday.

Zephyr also spoke emotionally and directly to transgender Montanans in February in opposing a bill to ban minors from attending drag shows.

“I have one request for you: Please stay alive,” Zephyr said then, assuring them she and others would keep fighting and challenge the bills in court.

The legislature has also passed a bill stating a student misgendering or deadnaming a fellow student is not illegal discrimination, unless it rises to the level of bullying.

At the end of Thursday’s House session, Democratic Rep. Marilyn Marler asked that the House majority allow Zephyr to speak on the floor going forward.

“This body is denying the representative … the chance to do her job,” Marler said.

Majority Leader Vinton, before moving for adjournment, said: “I will let the body know that the representative … has every opportunity to rectify the situation.”

The House meets again Friday afternoon.
…

Muslims in Minneapolis can now hear their call to prayer broadcast five times a day from mosques around the city, thanks to a new law. From Minneapolis, Mohamud Mascadde has the story, narrated by Salem Solomon.
…

U.S.-made M1A1 Abrams tanks will arrive in Germany in May, and Ukrainians will start training on them soon after, according to senior military officials.

Thirty-one Abrams tanks will arrive at a base in Grafenwöhr, Germany next month so that Ukrainians can start a 10-week course on how to operate the tanks. Additional force-on-force training and maintenance courses will be held at either Grafenwöhr or another base in Hohenfels, Germany, the officials said.

The U.S.-led training will involve about 250 Ukrainians, and officials say 31 Abrams tanks will be delivered to Ukraine by the end of this year.

The news comes as U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin is hosting another meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group on Friday, where military leaders from more than 50 nations are focusing on the Ukrainian military’s armor, air defense and ammunition needs.

Austin is expected to announce that the Abrams will arrive in Germany in the coming weeks during a Friday press conference.

Speaking at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, where he first convened the group last April, Austin said the groups’ members had provided more than $55 billion in security assistance for Ukraine.

“More than a year later, Ukraine is still standing strong. Our support has not wavered, and I’m proud of the progress that we have made together,” he said.

In the past few months, members of the group have provided enough equipment and training to support nine additional armored brigades, according to Austin.

Abrams tanks, in particular, have been a long-awaited addition to the fight. The tank’s thick armor and 1,500-horsepower turbine engine make it much more advanced than the Soviet-era tanks Ukraine has been using since the war’s beginning.

The Biden administration announced in January that it would send a newer version of the Abrams tanks, known as M1A2, to Ukraine after they were procured and built, a process that could potentially take years.

In March, the administration pivoted to provide M1A1 Abrams tanks instead, in order to get the tanks “into the hands of the Ukrainians sooner rather than later,” Pentagon press secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said at the time.

The U.K. was the first to promise Western-style tanks for Ukraine, sending its Challenger 2 tanks to aid in the fight. After the U.S. Abrams announcement in January, Germany announced it would provide Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine and allow other allies with German tanks, such as Poland, to do the same.

Ukrainian Minister of Defense Oleksii Reznikov spoke to members of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group Friday in order to update leaders on the state of the battlefield and Ukraine’s most urgent military needs. Moscow began a renewed offensive in Ukraine earlier this year that has stalled, and Kyiv is preparing for a massive counteroffensive that is expected to begin in the coming days or weeks.

The U.S. has now provided more than $35 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion began in February 2022, which Austin called “an unprovoked and indefensible war of aggression.”

Some countries, including Estonia and Latvia, have donated more than 1% of their GDP to Ukraine’s defense.

Ahead of the meeting, Austin addressed the massive Pentagon leak of classified documents detailing sensitive intelligence on the war in Ukraine, Russian intelligence and intelligence gleaned from spying on allies.

Austin said he took the issue very seriously and would continue to work with “our deeply valued allies and partners.”

“I’ve been struck by your solidarity and your commitment to reject efforts to divide us. And we will not let anything fracture our unity,” he said.

The Ukraine Defense Contact Group has worked better than predicted in terms of maintaining supplies for Ukraine, showing Western resolve to face down Russian aggression and having “Ukraine’s back even without having forces on the battlefield,” according to Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

The U.S. and allies have vowed to support Ukraine in defending its sovereign territory for “as long as it takes,” which O’Hanlon says may extend through all of 2024.

“I’m afraid that’s a distinct possibility,” he said.
…

A Biden administration review said the chaotic August 2021 U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan was largely the result of policy decisions made by the Trump administration. VOA’s congressional correspondent Katherine Gypson spoke to House Foreign Affairs Committee members about next steps for oversight.
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President Joe Biden announced plans Thursday to increase U.S. funding to help developing countries fight climate change and curb deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest.

During a virtual meeting of the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate, Biden urged his counterparts to be ambitious in setting goals to reduce emissions and meet a target of limiting overall global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

“We’re at a moment of great peril but also great possibilities, serious possibilities. With the right commitment and follow-through from every nation … on this call, the goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees can stay within reach,” Biden said.

The countries that take part in the forum account for about 80% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions and global gross domestic product, according to the White House. Thursday’s meeting was the group’s fourth under Biden’s presidency.

Biden announced a U.S. contribution of $1 billion to the Green Climate Fund, which finances projects on clean energy and climate change resilience in developing countries, doubling the overall U.S. contribution.

“The impacts of climate change will be felt the most by those who have contributed the least to the problem, including developing nations,” Biden said. “As large economies and large emitters, we must step up and support these economies.”

Biden also announced plans to request $500 million over five years to contribute to the Amazon Fund, which works to combat deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, and related activities. A senior administration official said Biden’s team would have to work with Congress to secure that funding.

“Together, we have to make it clear that forests are more valuable conserved than cleared,” Biden said.

Brazil welcomed the pledge.

“It is obviously a great achievement, both for what it means to have the United States contributing to a fund like the Amazon Fund and for the volume of resources to be contributed,” Brazil’s Environment Minister Marina Silva said at a news conference.

Biden’s announcement comes during a week of tension between the U.S. and Brazil after the latter’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva called for Western powers to stop supplying arms to Ukraine and said Washington was encouraging the fighting between Ukraine and Russia. He later toned down his comments and condemned Russia’s violation of Ukraine’s territorial integrity.

Biden, who has made fighting climate change one of his top policy priorities, has set a goal of reducing U.S. emissions 50%-52% by 2030 compared with 2005 levels.

This month, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed sweeping emission cuts for new cars and trucks through 2032 in an effort to boost electric vehicles. Biden encouraged leaders from the group to join a collective effort to spur zero-emission vehicles and to reduce emissions from the shipping and power industries.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced a new European Union-led initiative to develop new global targets for energy efficiency and renewable energy alongside the International Energy Agency, in time for a global summit on climate change in November.

“These targets would complement other goals, such as the phaseout of unabated fossil fuels and the ambitious goals for zero-emission vehicles and ships,” she said at the meeting.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called on rich countries to reach net-zero emissions by 2040, a decade before the goal set in the Paris climate agreement, and developing countries to hit that milestone by 2050.

He also called for OECD countries to phase out coal by 2030 and 2040 in all other countries and end all licensing or funding — public and private — of new fossil fuel projects.

Developing countries have resisted setting specific timelines for these reductions.

The countries and entities that make up the Major Economies Forum: Argentina, Australia, Canada, Chile, China, Egypt, the European Commission, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, Nigeria, Norway, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Britain and Vietnam.
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The United States has rejected discussions about recognizing Afghanistan’s Taliban leadership at a U.N.-hosted meeting scheduled for May 1-2.

“The intent and purpose of this meeting was never to discuss recognition of the Taliban, and any discussion at the meeting about recognition of the Taliban would be unacceptable,” a U.S. official told VOA on Thursday, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The rebuttal came after U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed shared details of the planned meeting in Qatar, suggesting the recognition issue would be on the agenda.

“We hope that we will find those baby steps to put us back on the pathway to recognition … of the Taliban. In other words, there are conditions,” Mohammed told a seminar at Princeton University on Monday.

That discussion has to happen because Taliban authorities demand diplomatic recognition, and “that’s the leverage we have,” she stressed.

Doha meeting

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will host the two-day meeting in Doha of envoys from countries around the world, but the deliberations will not focus on recognition of the Taliban, his office reiterated Thursday.

“The point of the discussion, which will be held in a closed, private setting, is to build a more unified consensus on the challenges at hand,” U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq told reporters in New York.

“There’s a need to reinvigorate international engagement around the sort of common objectives that the international community has on Afghanistan. So, we consider it a priority to advance an approach-based pragmatism and principles to have a constructive engagement on the issue.”

Taliban chief spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid demanded Thursday that the U.N. “fulfill its responsibility” toward the people of Afghanistan.

The “Islamic Emirate wants the recognition process to be completed soon. It will build mutual trust with world countries and help resolve all issues that can benefit regional security and stability,” Mujahid told VOA by phone. He used the official title of the Taliban government.

Mohammed’s remarks sparked a backlash from Western critics and self-exiled members of the Afghan diaspora, including rights activists and former government officials, citing restrictions the Taliban have imposed on women’s access to public life.

On Wednesday, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric attempted to explain Mohammed’s comments, saying the recognition issue was “clearly in the hands of the member states” and that she was reaffirming the need for an internationally coordinated approach.

“She was not in any way implying that anyone else but member states have the authority for recognition,” Dujarric said.

The 193-member U.N. General Assembly in December postponed for a second time a decision on whether to recognize the Taliban government by allowing its leaders to appoint their ambassador to the United Nations.

The Taliban seized power in August 2021 from the then-internationally backed Afghan government as U.S.-led NATO troops withdrew following 20 years of engagement in the country.

The Taliban’s men-only administration has since banned most female government employees from work and teenage girls from seeking education beyond grade six.

Afghan female staffers have recently been barred from working for the U.N. and nongovernmental organizations in a country where millions of families need urgent assistance.

The Taliban dismiss criticism of their governance, saying it aligns with Afghan culture and Islamic law.

Patsy Widakuswara contributed to this report.
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The United States has renewed calls for countries to take back their nationals who have been held in detention camps and prisons in northeastern Syria.

Since the military defeat of the Islamic State terror group in 2019, thousands of foreign fighters and their families have been detained in several camps and prisons in areas under the control of the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF.

While many countries have been taking back women and children affiliated with IS who are held in two detention centers in northeastern Syria, U.S. officials have urged them to repatriate more than 10,000 IS fighters, who are also held there.

“This is the largest concentration of detained terrorists anywhere in the world,” said Ian Moss, deputy counterterrorism coordinator at the U.S. State Department.

He said IS continues to look for new opportunities to replenish its ranks by trying to free those detained fighters.

“If they escape, they will pose a threat, not only to northeast Syria, but they’ll also pose a threat to the region and to our homelands,” Moss said Wednesday during an event at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “The best way to prevent this is to repatriate these individuals so they can be rehabilitated, reintegrated, and, where appropriate, prosecuted.”

More than 50,000 people, mostly women and children, from nearly 54 countries are currently held at al-Hol and Roj, two camps run by the Kurdish-led SDF. The 10,000 IS fighters are being held in more than a dozen prisons across northeastern Syria.

Syrian Kurdish officials say they cannot bear the responsibility of dealing with IS captives alone and that other countries should step in by taking back their citizens. They have also been calling for the establishment of a special tribunal inside Syria for those IS foreign fighters who have committed crimes in Syria.

Asked by VOA whether the U.S. would support such a tribunal in northeast Syria, Moss said the U.S. government believes that for those prisoners from third countries, their home nations have judicial systems that should be used to prosecute them.

“We’re also looking at all options to include the possible prosecution of individuals in northeast Syria. But again, the institutions most capable of effectively prosecuting those cases are found elsewhere,” he added.

According to U.S. officials, more than 3,000 individuals, mostly women and children, were repatriated last year to countries that include Albania, Barbados, Canada, France, Iraq, Kosovo, Kyrgyzstan, the Netherlands, Norway, Sudan, Spain and Slovakia. So far this year, at least 1,300 others have been repatriated to their home countries.

Moss said the U.S. anticipates that at least 25 countries this year will conduct around one repatriation operation from northeastern Syria.

Despite such efforts, experts say most countries have been reluctant to take back their citizens from Syria for domestic political and security reasons.

“But even in the best-case scenario, this is a time-consuming process because backgrounds need to be investigated and family members need to be tracked down and agree to act as guarantors,” said Calvin Wilder, an analyst at the New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy in Washington.

Wilder said the focus should be more on improving living conditions in al-Hol camp, which has witnessed a growing number of security incidents that have resulted in the deaths of many civilians.

“Repatriating citizens is a hard challenge with many different stakeholders, but increasing camp standards of living is far simpler for the United States to do unilaterally,” he told VOA.

But Moss said the U.S. military, in partnership with the SDF, has been conducting operations against suspected IS operatives inside al-Hol “to reduce threats inside the camp, to give individuals inside the camp some space and to also give space for the provision of humanitarian assistance.”

Americans repatriated

While it is not clear how many U.S. citizens are held in northeastern Syria, State Department official Moss said 39 individuals have been repatriated from there.

“That is certainly a priority for me and for my team and colleagues across the [State] Department,” he said.

“We do everything we can to bring folks home, whether that’s women and children, or other individuals who are in detention, whether they’re known foreign terrorist fighters. We work with our interagency colleagues, as appropriate as they work to develop cases and potentially prosecute those individuals for whom they can bring charges against,” Moss added.

The U.S. has prosecuted several IS members, but the most prominent prosecution involved El Shafee Elsheikh, a former British citizen, who – along with others in an IS cell known as “the Beatles” – was responsible for a hostage-taking that resulted in the deaths of four U.S. citizens, James Foley, Kayla Mueller, Steven Sotloff, and Peter Kassig, as well as British and Japanese nationals in Syria. Elsheikh was sentenced to life imprisonment in August 2022.

This story originated in VOA’s Kurdish Service.
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SpaceX’s giant new rocket blasted off on its first test flight Thursday but exploded minutes after rising from the launch pad and crashed into the Gulf of Mexico.

Elon Musk’s company was aiming to send the nearly 400-foot (120-meter) Starship rocket on a round-the-world trip from the southern tip of Texas, near the Mexican border. It carried no people or satellites.

The plan called for the booster to peel away from the spacecraft minutes after liftoff, but that didn’t happen. The rocket began to tumble and then exploded four minutes into the flight, plummeting into the gulf. After separating, the spacecraft was supposed to continue east and attempt to circle the world, before crashing into the Pacific near Hawaii.

Throngs of spectators watched from South Padre Island, several miles away from the Boca Chica Beach launch site, which was off limits. As it lifted off, the crowd screamed: “Go, baby, go!”

The company plans to use Starship to send people and cargo to the moon and, eventually, Mars. NASA has reserved a Starship for its next moonwalking team, and rich tourists are already booking lunar flybys.

It was the second launch attempt. Monday’s try was scrapped by a frozen booster valve.

At 394 feet and nearly 17 million pounds of thrust, Starship easily surpasses NASA’s moon rockets — past, present and future. The stainless steel rocket is designed to be fully reusable with fast turnaround, dramatically lowering costs, similar to what SpaceX’s smaller Falcon rockets have done soaring from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Nothing was to be saved from the test flight.

The futuristic spacecraft flew several miles into the air during testing a few years ago, landing successfully only once. But this was to be the inaugural launch of the first-stage booster with 33 methane-fueled engines.
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The Supreme Court initially gave itself a deadline of Wednesday to decide whether women seeking access to a widely used abortion pill would face more restrictions while a court case plays out. But on the day of the highly anticipated decision the justices had only this to say: We need more time.

In a one-sentence order, the court said it now expects to act by Friday evening. There was no explanation of the reason for the delay.

The new abortion controversy comes less than a year after the Supreme Court’s conservative majority overturned Roe v. Wade and allowed more than a dozen states to effectively ban abortion outright.

The following is a look at the drug at issue in the new case, how the case got to the nation’s highest court and what the delay might say about what’s going on.

WHAT IS MIFEPRISTONE?

Mifepristone was approved for use by the Food and Drug Administration more than two decades ago. It has been used by more than 5 million women to safely end their pregnancies, and today more than half of women who end a pregnancy rely on the drug, the Justice Department said.

Over the years, the FDA has loosened restrictions on the drug’s use, extending from seven to 10 weeks of pregnancy when it can be used, reducing the dosage needed to safely end a pregnancy, eliminating the requirement to visit a doctor in person to get it and allowing pills to be obtained by mail. The FDA also approved a generic version of mifepristone that its manufacturer, Las Vegas-based GenBioPro, says makes up two-thirds of the domestic market.

Mifepristone is one of two pills used in medication abortions, along with misoprostol. Health care providers have said they could switch to misoprostol only if mifepristone is no longer available or is too hard to obtain. Misoprostol is somewhat less effective in ending pregnancies.

HOW DID THE CASE GET STARTED?

A lawsuit over mifepristone was filed in Amarillo, Texas, late last year. Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian legal group, represents the pill’s opponents, who say the FDA’s approval of mifepristone was flawed.

Why Amarillo? U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, who was nominated by then-President Donald Trump, is the sole district court judge there, ensuring that all cases filed in the west Texas city land in front of him. Since taking the bench, he has ruled against President Joe Biden’s administration on several other issues, including immigration and LGBTQ protections.

On April 7, Kacsmaryk issued a ruling that would revoke the FDA’s approval of mifepristone, but he put the decision on hold for a week to allow an appeal.

Complicating matters, however, on the same day Kacsmaryk issued his order, a court in Washington state issued a separate ruling in a lawsuit brought by liberal states seeking to preserve access to mifepristone. The Washington judge, Spokane-based Thomas O. Rice, whom then-President Barack Obama nominated, ordered the FDA not to do anything that might affect the availability of mifepristone in the suing states. The Biden administration has said it is impossible to follow both judges’ directives at the same time.

HOW DID THE CASE GET TO THE SUPREME COURT?

The Biden administration responded to Kacsmaryk’s ruling by asking the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to prevent it from taking effect for now. 

Last week, the appeals court narrowed Kacsmaryk’s ruling so that the initial approval of mifepristone in 2000 is not affected, for now. But it agreed with him that changes the FDA made to relax the rules for prescribing and dispensing the drug should be put on hold. Those rules included expanding when the drug could be taken and allowing for the drug’s delivery through the mail.

The appeals court acted by a 2-1 vote. The judges in the majority, Kurt Engelhardt and Andrew Oldham, are both Trump picks.

The Biden administration and the maker of mifepristone, New York-based Danco Laboratories, appealed to the Supreme Court, saying that allowing the appeals court’s restrictions to take effect would cause chaos. Facing a tight deadline, the Supreme Court gave itself some breathing room and issued an order suggesting it would act by Wednesday evening. That timeline was extended to Friday, the day the justices will hold a previously scheduled private conference.

The justices could talk about the issue further then. The additional time could also be part of an effort to craft an order that has broad support among the nine justices. Or one or more justices might be writing a separate opinion and asked for a couple of extra days.

WHAT COULD HAPPEN NEXT?

The Supreme Court’s delay suggests a maddening reality about an institution that ordinarily adheres to a schedule that hasn’t changed much in years: Even experts can be in the dark about when the court will decide things and how.

Cases are argued over seven months from October to April, and the most important decisions typically come right before the justices take a long summer break. The court does not say which cases it plans to hand down on a given day, and the court, in a search for consensus, will sometimes pass on the biggest issues it faces and decide a very small legal point.

But nowhere is the uncertainty as great as a separate category of cases that have come to be known as the shadow docket.

Apart from death row inmates seeking 11th-hour reprieves, shadow docket cases generally involve emergency appeals to the justices before lower courts have reached final decisions. That includes the mifepristone case.

When the justices consider this set of cases, they don’t usually have a deadline to act. A few years back, an order concerning an elections case in Texas came in the wee hours of a Saturday morning for no reason other than that’s when Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg finished work on her dissenting opinion.
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U.S. President Joe Biden welcomes Colombian President Gustavo Petro to the White House for talks Thursday that are expected to cover migration, climate change and efforts to counter drug trafficking. 

The meeting comes just over a week after the United States, Colombia and Panama announced an agreement on a two-month campaign to try to stop migrants from passing through the Darien Gap, a key route used by migrants traveling from South America to the southern U.S. border. 

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Biden and Petro would also discuss economic and security cooperation. 

Last week, Petro tweeted that this is a key time to reinforce the relationship and mutual cooperation between the two countries, not only in the fight against narcotics trafficking, but also in the protection of the Amazon, climate change and rural development. 
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The yearslong fight by a Native American media outlet to have its editorial independence restored is the focus of a documentary that examines challenges for Indigenous journalists.

“Everyone says the same thing after watching the film: ‘I had no idea this was happening here in the U.S.,'” says Rebecca Landsberry-Baker, co-director of the documentary “Bad Press.”

Her film follows Angel Ellis of Mvskoke Media as she works to overturn the tribal council’s repeal of a press freedom act that had enshrined her paper’s rights.

That paper — Mvskoke Media — serves the Muscogee (Creek) Nation in Okmulgee, Oklahoma.

Tribal nations each have their own laws, constitution and governance. But of the 574 federally recognized tribes, only five have laws protecting freedom of the press. Without those protections, the media outlets are at risk of censorship and intimidation.

When the Native American Journalists Association, or NAJA, surveyed 65 media workers in 2018, it found that journalists were being restricted when covering the news.

More than half of the respondents said tribal affairs had gone unreported because of censorship at least some of the time, and 46% reported intimidation and harassment. One-third said officials had to approve stories before publication all or most of the time.

As a reporter and the executive director of NAJA, the promotion of press freedom is a core focus for Landsberry-Baker.

She started work at Mvskoke Media — then known as the Muscogee Nation News —right out of journalism school. There, she says, she experienced firsthand the “censorship from tribal administrations.”

Press freedom “provides a mechanism for accountability” between tribal officials and citizens, Landsberry-Baker told VOA. “If you don’t have an independent media outlet that’s reporting on what’s happening, then you don’t have educated and informed citizens and thusly, informed voters.”

But media rights on tribal lands are further complicated by funding.

A 2018 report by the Indigenous Media Freedom Alliance found that 72% of Native American newspapers and radio stations were owned and controlled by tribal governments.

Less than half of 1% of media workers identify as Native American, according to 2019 data, the most recent available from the News Leaders Association, and mainstream media fall short in coverage of Indigenous issues. For some Native American communities, a tribal news outlet may be the only source of information about tribal affairs.

The Muscogee (Creek) Nation is in a minority of tribal outlets whose media rights are enshrined. In 2015, it passed legislation naming Mvskoke Media an independent news source. The law cited a need to have “news and activities reported objectively and without interference or bias.”

So when the Muscogee (Creek) Nation’s National Council in 2018 revoked that act in an emergency session, Landsberry-Baker decided she had to act.

“I knew this story can’t go untold in the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, and I have to do something about it, and I have to document it in some way,” Landsberry-Baker said. She placed a phone call to Joe Peeler, who signed on as co-director of a documentary and flew from Los Angeles to Oklahoma to begin filming.

Their film, “Bad Press,” zeroes in on proceedings in which at least one council member argued that the news published by Mvskoke Media wasn’t positive enough, therefore warranting the repeal.

Following the decision, a Muscogee (Creek) Nation official took editorial control of the paper, requiring all articles to be submitted for approval before publication.

David Hill, principal chief of Muscogee (Creek) Nation, did not respond to VOA’s request for comment.

In the months that followed, 10 of Mvskoke Media’s 16 employees quit.

Ellis was one of the few who stayed, saying she felt compelled to support her community and continue to tell its stories.

“Our community is one that’s been almost left out of the textbooks, the history books,” Ellis told VOA. “Many of the stories were not considered interesting to the mainstream. And I see our journalism that we’re doing as a way to compile it, to take that snapshot of us. … That way when people are looking back, they know how we got where we are.”

Ellis, who is now director of Mvskoke Media, started at the paper in 2008.

“It’s more than just a newsletter. It’s more than a newspaper. It’s more than a news program,” Ellis said. “It’s the combative weapon against erasure that we’re trying to achieve.”

Ellis, who in 2011 was dismissed from the paper over a dispute stemming from a front-page story about an official arrested for embezzlement, had returned to the media outlet in 2018, just three months before the act was repealed.

She says having the documentary camera crew follow her provided not only visibility but protection.

The crew also kept Ellis committed as the fight dragged on. Landsberry-Baker and her team ended up filming almost 500 hours of footage over a four-year period.

“I had no idea how the story would end, but I felt some responsibility to be able to document this important moment for my tribe and to see how things would play out good or bad,” Landsberry-Baker said.

As it turns out, things ended up working in favor of press freedom. In 2021, a constitutional amendment was placed on the midterm election ballot of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. A majority — 76.25% — voted in favor of press freedom.

“To see that citizen engagement, and to see them embracing this concept of news, good or bad, is our story, and we feel like it’s an important component to our sovereignty — was an overwhelming, uniting factor throughout the whole thing,” Ellis said.

The Muscogee (Creek) Nation also went on to elect a principal chief who had campaigned on a pro-media platform. Several other candidates who supported press freedom were elected to the National Council.

Landsberry-Baker says the documentary, which debuted in January at the Sundance Film Festival, is a culmination of her life’s work.

Since its release, journalists from tribes across the U.S. have told her that the film reflects their own struggles with press freedom.

“Our ultimate impact goal is to see more tribes with free press protections at whatever level is comfortable for them,” she said. “And so I’m really hopeful that [the documentary] lays out one path and one way to do that.”
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Russia’s invading forces are deliberately using rape, torture and kidnapping to try to sow terror among civilians in Ukraine, the top prosecutor in Ukraine told U.S. lawmakers in graphic testimony Wednesday.

Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin said nearly 80,000 cases of war crimes have been registered in Ukraine since the war began in February 2022.

Focusing on just one area of the country that has felt the brunt of the war, Kostin described some of the discoveries made when the Ukrainian military liberated Kherson last November. He said about 20 torture chambers were found and more than 1,000 survivors have reported an array of abuses, including the use of electric shocks, waterboarding, being forced to strip naked and threats of mutilation and death.

Kostin said more than 60 cases of rape were documented in the Kherson region alone. In areas still controlled by Russian forces, residents, including children, are being forcefully relocated to other occupied territories or to Russia.

“Such evil cannot let be,” Kostin said.

He was asked about the motivations behind Russia’s tactics, but said he struggles to understand the brutality of the Russian forces in targeting civilians.

“The only possible explanation is that they just want to erase Ukraine and Ukrainians from the land,” Kostin said. “Maybe because they want to really kill all of us.”

Russian officials have consistently denied committing war crimes in what it calls its special military operation in Ukraine.

The United States House Foreign Affairs Committee invited Kostin to testify. The chairman, Republican Representative Michael McCaul of Texas, believes that spotlighting the brutality of Russia’s actions will show lawmakers and voters why the U.S. is in the right in supporting Ukraine.

“This is happening right now. They are monsters and they need to be brought to justice,” McCaul said. “These are more than war crimes. These are more than crimes against humanity. What we are witnessing in Ukraine is genocide.”

McCaul also issued a challenge to fellow lawmakers, saying “history will judge us by what we do here and now.”

“No country can remain neutral in the face of such evil,” McCaul said.

US leader pushes to provide F-16 jets

Congress approved about $113 billion in economic, humanitarian and military spending in 2022 to assist Ukraine. President Joe Biden has repeatedly said the United States will help Ukraine “as long as it takes” to repel the Russian invasion, though support for that aid has softened, polling shows.

Congressional leaders anticipate that Ukraine will need billions of dollars in additional assistance in the months ahead.

Ukraine is preparing to launch a counteroffensive in an attempt to regain territory lost to Russian troops. McCaul said he would like to see the U.S. back Ukraine’s efforts to retake Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula that Russia seized in 2014, so it could negotiate for a cease-fire from a stronger position. He is pushing for the U.S. and its allies to provide Ukraine with long-distance artillery and F-16 fighter jets for the counteroffensive.

On Tuesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy tweeted that he spoke by telephone with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, a Republican from California, and thanked him for bipartisan support from Congress. Zelenskyy also outlined the “situation at the front” and Ukraine’s “urgent defense needs in armored vehicles, artillery, air defense & aircraft.”

The House committee also heard from a war crimes survivor, a 57-year-old woman, who said she was taken to a torture chamber for five days, beaten, forced to strip and endured threats of rape and murder. At one point, she was forced to dig her own grave. She said her house was looted. She has escaped, but other Ukrainians still experience such treatment in Russian-controlled territories, she said.

“These terrible crimes need to be stopped,” she told lawmakers. Her identity was not revealed out of concerns about retribution.

Prosecutor calls for reparations

Kostin said exposing atrocities is not enough.

“Only with discovering and determining truth, bringing perpetrators to responsibility and providing adequate reparations to victims and survivors, we can say justice has been done,” Kostin said.

The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant last month for Russian President Vladimir Putin for war crimes, accusing him of personal responsibility for the abductions of children from Ukraine. But the practical implications are limited as the chances of Putin facing trial at the court are highly unlikely because Moscow does not recognize the court’s jurisdiction or extradite its nationals.

McCaul told The Associated Press he will press for the U.S. Department of Justice and FBI agents to assist prosecutors in Ukraine, even as he doubts there will ever be a full reckoning for the war crimes.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen, how this is going to end,” McCaul said. “But at least there’ll be historical documentation about what they did, for generations to read about the atrocities.”
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A county commissioner in far southeast Oklahoma who was identified by a local newspaper as one of several officials caught on tape discussing killing reporters and lynching Black people has resigned from office, Governor Kevin Stitt’s office confirmed Wednesday.

Stitt spokesperson Carly Atchison said the office received a handwritten resignation letter from McCurtain County Commissioner Mark Jennings. In it, Jennings says he is resigning immediately and that he plans to release a formal statement “in the near future regarding the recent events in our county.”

The threatening comments by Jennings and officials with the McCurtain County Sheriff’s Office were obtained following a March 6 meeting and reported by the McCurtain Gazette-News earlier this week in its weekend edition. They have sparked outrage and protests in the city of Idabel, the county seat.

In a post on the sheriff’s office Facebook page on Tuesday, officials did not address the recorded discussion but claimed the recording was illegally obtained.

On Wednesday, the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation confirmed it has launched an investigation into the matter at the request of the governor.

The recorded conversation included Sheriff Kevin Clardy, sheriff’s Captain Alicia Manning, Jennings and Jail Administrator Larry Hendrix. During that conversation, Clardy, Manning and Jennings appear to discuss Bruce Willingham — the longtime publisher of the Gazette-News — and his son Chris Willingham, a reporter.

Jennings tells Clardy and Manning “I know where two deep holes are dug if you ever need them,” and the sheriff responds, “I’ve got an excavator.”

Jennings also says he’s known “two or three hit men” in Louisiana, adding “they’re very quiet guys.”

In the recording, Jennings also appears to complain about not being able to hang Black people, saying: “They got more rights than we got.”

The Associated Press is working to verify the authenticity of the recording. None of the four officials returned telephone calls or emails from The Associated Press seeking comment.

Bruce Willingham told the AP the recording was made when he left a voice-activated recorder inside the room after a county commissioner’s meeting because he suspected the group was continuing to conduct county business after the meeting had ended, in violation of the state’s Open Meeting Act.

Willingham said he twice spoke with his attorneys to be sure he was doing nothing illegal.

Joey Senat, a journalism professor at Oklahoma State University, said under Oklahoma law, the recording would be legal if it were obtained in a place where the officials being recorded did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy.

Bruce Willingham said he believes the local officials were upset about “stories we’ve run that cast the sheriff’s office in an unfavorable light,” including the death of Bobby Barrick — a Broken Bow, Oklahoma, man who died at a hospital in March 2022 after McCurtain County deputies shot him with a stun gun. The newspaper has filed a lawsuit against the sheriff’s office seeking body camera footage and other records connected to Barrick’s death.

Separately, Chris Willingham has filed a federal lawsuit against the sheriff’s office, Clardy, Manning and the Board of County Commissioners alleging Manning slandered him after he wrote an eight-part series of articles detailing problems inside the sheriff’s office. The lawsuit claims after the first few articles were published, Clardy and Manning began investigating which office employees were speaking to the newspaper and were attempting to get a search warrant for Willingham’s phone.

The lawsuit, which was filed on the same day the recording was made, alleges that after the series was published, Manning told a third party during a teleconference that Chris Willingham exchanged marijuana for sexually explicit images of children from a man who had been arrested on child sex abuse image charges.

“Manning made these (and other) false statements about Willingham in retaliation for articles he wrote about the (sheriff’s office) as a reporter for the McCurtain Gazette and to destroy his credibility as a reporter and journalist,” the lawsuit states.

On Tuesday, the Oklahoma Sheriff’s Association, a voluntary membership organization and not a regulatory agency, held an emergency meeting of its board. It voted unanimously to suspend Clardy, Manning and Hendrix from the association.
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Top White House officials such as Vice President Kamala Harris and first lady Jill Biden have crisscrossed the African continent this year to implement what President Joe Biden has described as partnerships between the United States and African countries. And a range of U.S. government officials — including lawmakers — have also traversed the continent, doing lower-profile work.

VOA White House correspondent Anita Powell sat down with Democratic Senator Chris Coons, a longtime and frequent visitor to Africa.

“This is a continent of incredible potential and opportunity,” Coons, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and its Africa subcommittee, told VOA. “If we can work in close partnership with young African nations to address climate change, food insecurity, human rights, sustainable development, urbanization — some of the key challenges of this century — we can solve those problems for the world.”

Coons also spoke about his upcoming participation in a classified Senate briefing over the recent leak of more than 100 classified documents by a member of the U.S. Air National Guard.

Those documents covered matters with global impact, like U.S. spying efforts around the world, assessments of the Russian and Ukrainian armed forces, and of China’s aerial capabilities and access around Taiwan, the democratic island that Beijing claims as its own.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

VOA: You recently accompanied the vice president on a multicountry Africa tour. What were the measurable, demonstrable outcomes of that and other high-profile U.S. visits to Africa this year?

Senator Chris Coons: The key goal here is to show up, is to engage, is to demonstrate that the United States is a trusted, valuable partner in public health, in economic development, in the transformation of the energy sector, in helping agriculture transform to combat food insecurity. The vice president, in the country that I traveled with her to — Ghana — focused on youth opportunity and entrepreneurship and creative enterprises, and the implementation of the Global Fragility Act.

She announced $100 million in investments to help stabilize Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire, Benin and Togo — countries that I’ve also been actively engaged in.

VOA: Let’s talk about Sudan. Yesterday, VOA talked to [former U.S. and U.N. diplomat] Jeffrey Feltman, who told us that the U.S. “got played” by both of the combatant leaders in Sudan. Is it time for Congress to break ties with the ruling military leadership in Sudan? Are you planning to author something on that?

Coons: This is something that had been feared for a number of weeks as relations between them got more and more tense. I have not given up hope that there is still a path towards an end to the violence, but we need to prepare for the very real possibility that Sudan is about to descend into all-out civil war. My concern is that this may quickly become a proxy war. I am talking with leadership here this week about our options for the path forward.

VOA: Kenyan media is reporting that you played a big role in bringing about an accord between President between President William Ruto and his nemesis, opposition leader Raila Odinga.

Can you take us into the room? What you did, what you promised? And is the U.S. seen as a capable negotiator, facilitator and guarantor in these sorts of disputes?

Coons: I had the opportunity to have, I hope, some positive and productive personal conversations with the deputy president, with the former prime minister and with the former president, to just help them hear each other and to act as an intermediary. I think central is the path forward for the [electoral commission]. That is critical to there being in the future free and fair elections in Kenya.

My core message, frankly, to everyone I met with was: The United States is not trying to push any specific outcome or alignment of this government. We’re simply trying to help you hear each other and recognize that democracy is fragile, is difficult, and requires there being space for a legitimate opposition to be heard, for complaints and concerns about the economy about the election to be heard, and for the duly elected president of the country to be able to lead the country forward.

VOA: What are your intentions and hopes for the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief [PEPFAR] and the African Growth and Opportunity Act [AGOA]? Is there bipartisan support for continuing both of them?

Coons: I had a chance a number of weeks ago to visit Botswana, South Africa, and Zambia to look at their PEPFAR programming, to look at the history and the future of PEPFAR. I think it can and should be reauthorized. And it will get a strong bipartisan vote to do so.

It is expensive, but it has a significant positive and sustained impact. I think it shows the world — but in particular, the countries that principally benefit in Africa — that the United States is capable of being a great partner over many years to persist in what is a really critical fight that helps the whole world, but that particularly helps those at the margins — the poorest women, children, those who are immunocompromised — to live good and full lives.

I was closely involved in the last reauthorization of AGOA. I’ve seen the positive impacts it has on the ground in a few countries, principally South Africa, Kenya, Ethiopia. It’s possible for many more countries to benefit from AGOA, to use it to export apparel or produce or manufacture products into the United States.

VOA: This intelligence leak has triggered a review of security protocols. You’re going into this classified briefing. What concerns and questions do you have?

Coons: This is a significant breach of American intelligence. And there’s clearly going to be accountability at the unit level, as well as for this individual who I expect will end up spending a significant amount of time in jail for these actions. If someone with this relatively junior rank and youth in our military can expose such significant secrets for such a callow and simple reason, it has to raise larger questions about the control that we’re exercising over the flow of intelligence products both within our military and across our government.

I’m expecting to hear what else has been learned about how this happened, what response there’s been and how we’re going to better manage intelligence information.

VOA: And are you concerned about tightening information and the implications of that as the U.S. continues to fund expensive and sensitive efforts like the war in Ukraine?

Coons: I am optimistic that we can show that the oversight that’s happening both remotely and now in person on the ground in Ukraine gives us confidence that the money we are sending is being well spent.

In my visit to Kyiv last fall with Senator [Rob] Portman, we spoke to our ambassador there, some of the accountability teams, the outside contractors that are providing insight into how our funds are being spent. And I’m so far optimistic that we’re going to be able to meet that mark of showing the American people that the money we’re investing in Ukraine’s defense in Ukraine, fighting the Russian occupiers, is money well spent.
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The 21-year-old member of the U.S. Air National Guard who is facing criminal charges for leaking top-secret military intelligence records to a group of friends on a gamer web site remained in jail on Wednesday as his detention hearing was delayed for two weeks.

The suspect, Jack Teixeira, was arrested last week by heavily armed FBI agents at his mother’s residence in Dighton, Massachusetts, and had been scheduled for the hearing in Boston on Wednesday.

The hearing was intended to determine whether he should be detained while awaiting trial on two charges of copying and taking the classified documents off the Cape Cod air base where he worked and then sending them to his friends on the Discord social media site — possibly to impress them about his access to the sensitive material and to educate them about Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Investigators say they believe that Teixeira passed on the documents to his friends believing they would not be further disseminated. But one of his friends posted the material to a wider audience, and the documents quickly spread worldwide on social media sites.

The classified material, according to U.S. news accounts, disclosed U.S. spying on friends and foes across the globe, American assessments of the strength of Russian and Ukrainian military forces, and a belief that the Chinese air force holds a distinct aerial advantage over the military defense of Taiwan, the democratic island territory that Beijing claims is part of mainland China.

Authorities with information about the investigation have said that the young cadre of friends linked to Teixeira liked to play war games online and were intensely interested in weaponry and military gear.

Federal prosecutors in the case told U.S. Magistrate Judge David Hennessy they intended to seek Teixeira’s continued detention. However, about two hours before the hearing, Teixeira’s team of federal public defenders filed a request asking the judge to delay the detention hearing for two weeks because they needed “more time to address the issues presented by the government’s request for detention.” Hennessy agreed to the delay.

It was not clear whether Teixeira will opt to challenge the government’s detention request, but in the U.S., high-profile defendants are often jailed pending trial.

On Wednesday morning, Teixeira was brought to the courtroom in handcuffs and orange jail garb as he waived his right to a preliminary hearing. He said nothing beyond answering yes and no to questions about whether he understood his rights and the proceeding.

Authorities say the leaked documents at the center of the case constitute the most serious U.S. security breach since more than 700,000 documents, videos and diplomatic cables appeared on the WikiLeaks website in 2010. The Pentagon has called the leak from the Massachusetts air base in the northeastern U.S. a “deliberate, criminal act.”

A criminal complaint made public on Friday charges Teixeira with one count of violating the Espionage Act related to the unlawful copying and transmitting of sensitive defense material, and a second charge related to the unlawful removal of defense material to an unauthorized location.

Legal experts say that Teixeira could face more charges as additional evidence is presented over time to a grand jury.

Some material in this report came from Reuters.
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The United States on Wednesday announced $325 million in new military aid for Ukraine in a package that is expected to include more artillery rounds and rockets for the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS), as Ukraine continues to burn through artillery munitions at a high rate.

Defense officials who spoke to VOA ahead of the package’s release say the latest aid also includes TOW anti-tank guided missiles, anti-tank mines and AT-4 anti-armor weapons needed to push back Russian ground forces that have dug into occupied areas of Ukraine.

Wednesday’s aid package marks the 36th authorized presidential drawdown of military equipment from Defense Department inventories.

The aid comes as battle lines in Ukraine have become static, exposing the larger Russian power’s weaknesses and Ukraine stubbornly defending its territory, according to a senior U.S. official. The head of Ukraine’s ground forces said on Tuesday that Russia was increasing its use of heavy artillery and airstrikes in the battle for the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, even as Russia continued to sustain significant losses in the battle.

Moscow began a renewed offensive in Ukraine earlier this year that has stalled, and Kyiv is preparing for a massive counteroffensive that is expected to begin in the coming days or weeks.

“If and when Ukraine tries a spring offensive, and it’s sort of petered out, then maybe you’re at a point where there could be enough of a stalemate that we see somebody show interest in a cease-fire,” said Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

U.S. officials and analysts, including O’Hanlon, have warned the war could potentially drag into the U.S. Republican primary season and throughout next year. But O’Hanlon said he thinks U.S. and Western resolve over Ukraine will remain.

“I don’t see us deserting Ukraine. I think the West has made this a matter of high strategic and moral importance, and we will keep it that way,” he told VOA.

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley will travel to Germany later this week for another meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, which includes about 50 nations coordinating aid to help Kyiv fend off Russia’s invasion that began in February 2022. This week’s meeting at Ramstein Air Base marks one year since Austin first gathered the group.

O’Hanlon said the group has worked better than predicted in terms of maintaining supplies for Ukraine, showing Western resolve to face down Russian aggression and having “Ukraine’s back even without having forces on the battlefield.”

The priorities during Friday’s meeting are expected to be ground-based air defenses, armor and artillery needs, according to a senior defense official.

“We think it will be a clear signal of not just unity — we continue to be as strong as we were a year ago — but also that that support is enduring going forward,” the official said, speaking to reporters on condition of anonymity ahead of the meeting.

Even with massive help from the group, Ukrainian forces have experienced munitions and weapons shortages on the battlefield. A leaked memo from the U.S. military shared concern that Ukraine could run out of Soviet-era air defenses as soon as May, leaving Ukraine more exposed to Russian air assaults.

Sweden and NATO

Austin arrived in Sweden on Tuesday for a visit meant to emphasize U.S. support for Sweden’s application for NATO membership, according to a senior defense official, who spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity. Sweden and Finland sought to join NATO in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year.

Finland was admitted as the 31st NATO member earlier this month, but Turkey and Hungary have so far withheld ratification of Sweden’s application over bilateral differences.

The senior U.S. official said Sweden’s ascension would enhance NATO’s defense capabilities in the Baltic Sea, where Russia has a “substantial presence.”

Austin will meet with Sweden’s defense minister on Wednesday and the prime minister on Thursday. He will also view some of Sweden’s advanced military capabilities during the visit.

Earlier this week, Sweden launched its largest military drills in the country in more than 25 years. The Aurora 23 military exercises include troops from the U.S., Britain, France, Germany and neighboring Nordic nations and will run through May 11.
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The U.S. State Department has established a special task force to deal with the crisis in Sudan, a spokesperson confirmed to VOA on Wednesday.

The spokesperson said the State Department has established a Sudan Military Conflict Task Force to oversee the Department’s planning, management and logistics related to events in Sudan.

The spokesperson told VOA: “The United States condemns in the strongest terms violence between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). The ongoing fighting between the SAF and RSF threatens the security and safety of Sudanese civilians and undermines efforts to restore Sudan’s democratic transition.”

Fighting in Khartoum broke out Saturday between members of the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, and has since spread further into the country, reportedly leaving hundreds of people dead and injured.

The leaders of the rival groups – SAF head General Abdel-Fattah Burhan and RSF chief General Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, popularly known as Hemedti – joined forces to mount a 2021 coup that returned the country to military rule.

The two men have since turned on each other, amid squabbles over power-sharing in the new government.

State Department officials told VOA late Tuesday they are unaware of the death or injury of any U.S. citizens in Sudan at this time.

The U.S. Embassy in Khartoum’s security alert of April 18 stated that because of the uncertain security situation in Khartoum and the closure of the airport, there are no plans for the U.S. government-coordinated evacuation of private U.S. citizens. It said travel alerts and Sudan’s Travel Advisory will be updated as the situation evolves.

The State Department said, “It is imperative that U.S. citizens in Sudan make their own arrangements to stay safe in these difficult circumstances.”

The State Department says the U.S. Embassy is continuing to closely monitor the situation in Khartoum and surrounding areas, where there is ongoing fighting, gunfire, and security force activity. It says U.S. citizens also are advised to remain sheltered in place; to attempt to stay at the lower levels of their location, remain away from windows, and attempt to keep away from the roadways; to monitor local media for updates; and to review State Department travel advisory for Sudan.

The State Department says Americans in Sudan should enroll in the Smart Traveler Enrollment Program (STEP) to receive security alerts and email if they need assistance.

All routine consular services at the U.S. Embassy Khartoum are suspended at this time given the unsafe environment. The Embassy is providing only emergency consular services as the security situation in Sudan permits. The State Department says it will always seek to provide consular services wherever possible but the perilous security situation in Khartoum severely impacts its ability to perform that work currently.

On Tuesday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, speaking from a meeting of foreign ministers of the Group of Seven in Japan, said he delivered a message to both of Sudan’s warring leaders.

“This morning, I made calls to Generals Burhan and Hemedti, urging them to agree to a 24-hour cease-fire to allow Sudanese to safely reunite with their families and to obtain desperately needed relief supplies,” he said.   

VOA White House Correspondent Anita Powell contributed to this story.
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