DruasiaAsia

Rubio and Lammy reaffirm US-UK partnership on Indo-Pacific security, China challenges

State Department — U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke with his British counterpart, Foreign Secretary David Lammy, on Monday to discuss a range of pressing global issues and joint initiatives aimed at promoting a free and open Indo-Pacific that is secure and stable.

“They affirmed the depth of the U.S.-UK Special Relationship and the crucial nature of our partnership in addressing issues like the conflict in the Middle East, Russia’s war against Ukraine, and China’s malign influence,” State Department Spokesperson Tammy Bruce said in a statement.

The U.K. government said that Lammy and Rubio look forward to meeting in person soon.

“They both welcomed the opportunity for the UK and the US to work together in alignment to address shared challenges including the situation in the Middle East, Russia’s illegal war in Ukraine, the challenges posed by China and the need for Indo-Pacific security,” the British statement read.

The call between Rubio and Lammy came amid a report by The Guardian that China’s Foreign Minister, Wang Yi, is expected to visit Britain next month for the first U.K.-China strategic dialogue since 2018.

In Beijing, Chinese officials did not confirm Wang’s plans to visit the U.K. but noted what they described as “sound and steady growth” in relations between the two countries.

“China and the U.K. are both permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and major economies in the world,” Mao Ning, spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, stated during a briefing on Monday. She added it is in the common interest of the two countries to enhance strategic communication and deepen political mutual trust.

Wang is expected to attend the Munich Security Conference between Feb. 14 and 16, making it likely that his visit to the U.K. will take place either before or after the event.

In the past, U.S. Secretaries of State have typically attended the high-profile annual gathering at the Munich Security Conference.

The State Department has not responded to VOA’s inquiry about whether Rubio plans to hold talks with Wang during the conference.

Last week, the State Department outlined U.S. policy toward China under President Donald Trump’s administration. 

“Strategic competition is the frame through which the United States views its relationship with the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The United States will address its relationship with the PRC from a position of strength in which we work closely with our allies and partners to defend our interests and values,” the State Department said on Jan. 20.
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DruasiaAsia

Afghan women take scholarship tests offered by Pakistan

WASHINGTON — It took Susan Salih about eight hours to travel from Kabul, Afghanistan, to Peshawar, Pakistan, to take a scholarship exam the Pakistani government offers to Afghan students.

Salih, 25, and a group of other young Afghan women who took the exam at the Institute of Management Sciences in Peshawar told VOA that despite being able to take the test online, they traveled, accompanied by family members, to sit for the exam in person “to not miss the opportunity.”

“I hope this will pay off at least for those girls who now have the chance [to pursue their higher education],” said Salih, who could not pursue her dream of a post-graduate degree in Afghanistan after the Taliban banned women from attending universities in 2022.

Pakistan’s Higher Education Commission said about 5,000 young women were among 21,000 applicants for the 2,000 scholarships announced for Afghan students.

These scholarships are part of the 4,500 Allama Muhammad Iqbal Scholarships for Afghan Students, the commission said.

The Pakistan government said the undergraduate and postgraduate scholarships are fully funded, covering tuition fees, hostel dues, and living, book and travel allowances.

Tests for the scholarships took place in-person and online on Saturday and Sunday in Peshawar and Quetta.

Muhammad Waqar Khan, senior project manager at the Higher Education Commission, said students will be “short-listed” for scholarships based on merit.

“After this [the tests], we will conduct interviews” with those students, Khan said.

Pakistani officials earlier told VOA on the condition of anonymity that the Taliban agreed to let female students pursue higher education in Pakistan, provided that their male guardians are granted visas to accompany them.

But the Taliban, who seized power of Afghanistan in 2021, denied Monday that they reached any “conditional agreement” regarding the scholarships.

The Taliban have “no agreement with Pakistan or any other country regarding scholarships for girls. … Such unfounded claims are propaganda by certain malicious groups against the Islamic Emirate,” said a statement posted on the Taliban’s Ministry of Higher Education website.

The Taliban banned women from traveling long distances without a chaperone, working with the government and nongovernment organizations, and going to public baths, beauty salons and public parks.

Pakistan’s Higher Education Commission said the scholarships aim to “strengthen [the] bilateral relationship” between the two countries.

Salih said these scholarships offer Afghan women hope.

“We want to be a beacon of hope for those still in Afghanistan,” said Salih, adding that “even in tough times and with many limitations, there is always hope and a path forward.”

Ayaz Gul contributed to this report.
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DruchinaChina

China’s DeepSeek AI rattles Wall Street, but questions remain

Chinese researchers backed by a Hangzhou-based hedge fund recently released a new version of a large language model (LLM) called DeepSeek-R1 that rivals the capabilities of the most advanced U.S.-built products but reportedly does so with fewer computing resources and at much lower cost.

High Flyer, the hedge fund that backs DeepSeek, said that the model nearly matches the performance of LLMs built by U.S. firms like OpenAI, Google and Meta, but does so using only about 2,000 older generation computer chips manufactured by U.S.-based industry leader Nvidia while costing only about $6 million worth of computing power to train.

By comparison, Meta’s AI system, Llama, uses about 16,000 chips, and reportedly costs Meta vastly more money to train.

Open-source model

The apparent advance in Chinese AI capabilities comes after years of efforts by the U.S. government to restrict China’s access to advanced semiconductors and the equipment used to manufacture them. Over the past two years, under President Joe Biden, the U.S. put multiple export control measures in place with the specific aim of throttling China’s progress on AI development.

DeepSeek appears to have innovated its way to some of its success, developing new and more efficient algorithms that allow the chips in the system to communicate with each other more effectively, thereby improving performance.

At least some of what DeepSeek R1’s developers did to improve its performance is visible to observers outside the company, because the model is open source, meaning that the algorithms it uses to answer queries are public.

Market reaction

The news about DeepSeek’s capabilities sparked a broad sell-off of technology stocks on U.S. markets on Monday, as investors began to question whether U.S. companies’ well-publicized plans to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in AI data centers and other infrastructure would preserve their dominance in the field. When the markets closed on Monday, the tech-heavy Nasdaq index was down by 3.1%, and Nvidia’s share price had plummeted by nearly 17%.

However, not all AI experts believe the markets’ reaction to the release of DeepSeek R1 is justified, or that the claims about the model’s development should be taken at face value.

Mel Morris, CEO of U.K.-based Corpora.ai, an AI research engine, told VOA that while DeepSeek is an impressive piece of technology, he believes the market reaction has been excessive and that more information is needed to accurately judge the impact DeepSeek will have on the AI market.

“There’s always an overreaction to things, and there is today, so let’s just step back and analyze what we’re seeing here,” Morris said. “Firstly, we have no real understanding of exactly what the cost was or the time scale involved in building this product. We just don’t know. … They claim that it’s significantly cheaper and more efficient, but we have no proof of that.”

Morris said that while DeepSeek’s performance may be comparable to that of OpenAI products, “I’ve not seen anything yet that convinces me that they’ve actually cracked the quantum step in the cost of operating these sorts of models.”

Doubts about origins

Lennart Heim, a data scientist with the RAND Corporation, told VOA that while it is plain that DeepSeek R1 benefits from innovative algorithms that boost its performance, he agreed that the general public actually knows relatively little about how the underlying technology was developed.

Heim said that it is unclear whether the $6 million training cost cited by High Flyer actually covers the whole of the company’s expenditures — including personnel, training data costs and other factors — or is just an estimate of what a final training “run” would have cost in terms of raw computing power. If the latter, Heim said, the figure is comparable to the costs incurred by better U.S. models.

He also questioned the assertion that DeepSeek was developed with only 2,000 chips. In a blog post written over the weekend, he noted that the company is believed to have existing operations with tens of thousands of Nvidia chips that could have been used to do the work necessary to develop a model that is capable of running on just 2,000.

“This extensive compute access was likely crucial for developing their efficiency techniques through trial and error and for serving their models to customers,” he wrote.

He also pointed out that the company’s decision to release version R1 of its LLM last week — on the heels of the inauguration of a new U.S. president — appeared political in nature. He said that it was “clearly intended to rattle the public’s confidence in the United States’ AI leadership during a pivotal moment in U.S. policy.”

Dean W. Ball, a research fellow at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center, was also cautious about declaring that DeepSeek R1 has somehow upended the AI landscape.

“I think Silicon Valley and Wall Street are overreacting to some extent,” he told VOA. “But at the end of the day, R1 means that the competition between the U.S. and China is likely to remain fierce, and that we need to take it seriously.”

Export control debate

The apparent success of DeepSeek has been used as evidence by some experts to suggest that the export controls put in place under the Biden administration may not have had the intended effects.

“At a minimum, this suggests that U.S. approaches to AI and export controls may not be as effective as proponents claim,” Paul Triolo, a partner with DGA-Albright Stonebridge Group, told VOA.

“The availability of very good but not cutting-edge GPUs — for example, that a company like DeepSeek can optimize for specific training and inference workloads — suggests that the focus of export controls on the most advanced hardware and models may be misplaced,” Triolo said. “That said, it remains unclear how DeepSeek will be able to keep pace with global leaders such as OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, Mistral, Meta and others that will continue to have access to the best hardware systems.”

Other experts, however, argued that export controls have simply not been in place long enough to show results.

Sam Bresnick, a research fellow at Georgetown’s University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology told VOA that it would be “very premature” to call the measures a failure.

“The CEO of DeepSeek has gone on record saying the biggest constraint they face is access to high-level compute resources,” Bresnick said. “If [DeepSeek] had as much compute at their fingertips as Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, etc, there would be a significant boost in their performance. So … I don’t think that DeepSeek is the smoking gun that some people are claiming it is [to show that export controls] do not work.”

Bresnick noted that the toughest export controls were imposed in only 2023, meaning that their effects may just be starting to be felt. He said that the real test of their effectiveness will be whether U.S. firms are able to continue to outpace China in coming years.
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DruasiaAsia

VOA Mandarin: Americans and Chinese are comparing living costs at Xiaohongshu

In mid-January, a wave of U.S. users migrated to China’s platform Xiaohongshu due to the TikTok ban, engaging in an unexpected “cost-of-living comparison” with Chinese users. Despite higher wages, many Americans found their living expenses made life harder than in China. However, analysts caution that such comparisons, while straightforward, may not align with more rigorous economic data.

Click here for the full report in Mandarin.
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DruamAmericas

VOA Spanish: US Embassy in Bogota is not processing visa applicants

Due to the dispute between the governments of Colombia and the United States, appointments for thousands of visa applicants at the US embassy in Bogota have been suspended. What is the situation and what response have visa applicants received? We report on it here.

Click her for the full story in Spanish.
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DruasiaAsia

Pakistani journalists fear amended cybercrime law will further curb freedoms

ISLAMABAD — Pakistan is pressing ahead with amendments to its digital crimes act to stem what it says is an influx of fake news. But media rights groups warn the changes, if passed, will suppress freedom of expression by exposing journalists and social media users to legal action.

New amendments to the Pakistan Electronic Crimes Act (2025), commonly known as PECA, call for a three-year prison term and a fine of over $7,000 for spreading fake and false information.

The amendments also broaden the definition of content that authorities can block and set up four new bodies to regulate online content.

The amended law now awaits passage in the Senate after its Standing Committee on Interior approved the amendments Monday. The National Assembly, the lower house of the country’s bicameral parliament, passed the amended bill last Thursday as opposition members and journalists walked out in protest.

“The fact that [the] interior ministry is involved in this clearly shows that this is being turned into a national security matter,” said Nayyar Ali, secretary of the National Press Club that represents journalists in Islamabad and neighboring Rawalpindi.

The law

Originally promulgated as Pakistan Electronic Crimes Act (2016), PECA, as it is commonly known, was meant to curb cybercrime, online harassment, and the spread of hateful content that could instigate violence.

Media and human rights groups call the law “draconian” and say successive governments have used it to muzzle dissent.

Press freedom groups have recorded more than 200 incidents of journalists and media persons investigated since PECA became law in 2017.

The latest changes to the law come just days before Pakistan marks a year since its elections last Feb. 8 were marred by allegations of widespread fraud.

Former Prime Minister Imran Khan, one of the most popular leaders, remains in jail and his party is deprived of its share of seats reserved for women and minorities.

However, his supporters continue to run a formidable online campaign when most TV channels avoid saying the leader’s name.

“State and private players have been able to tame mainstream media,” said journalist Arifa Noor about the decline in press freedom over the past several years. “It has pushed a considerable amount of the commentary and reporting onto social media, and this is why they now want to go after social media.

“They can’t tame it and they want to tame it,” she said.

Pakistan ranks a low 152 out of 180 countries on Reporters without Borders’ global press freedom index, where 1 shows the best media environment. Freedom House ranks it “not free” for internet freedoms.

Amendments

PECA (2025) as approved by the national assembly expands the definition of unlawful content to include information that is false, harmful, and damages the reputation of a person including members of the judiciary, armed forces, parliament or a provincial assembly.

It also broadens the definition of “person” to include state institutions and corporations.

Critics worry this will muzzle dissent and open doors for the powerful military to target civilians.

Minister for Information for Punjab province Azma Bukhari rejected the concerns as “undue.”

“The [military] institution also belongs to this country,” he said. “If the institution has an objection over someone, should it not object [just] because it’s an institution?”

The amendments come as Pakistan’s military routinely faces criticism online for its role in civilian affairs as well as for its alleged interference in political affairs, which it denies. Faced often with smear campaigns, the military’s top brass has repeatedly called for a crackdown on “digital terrorism.”

“What we need is strong civil laws that treat defamation as a civil problem,” Noor said.

The amended law stipulates a punishment of up to three years in prison and a fine of more than $7,000 for intentionally disseminating information that a person knows or believes is “false or fake and likely to cause or create a sense of fear, panic or disorder or unrest in general public or society.”

“What is fake news? They don’t bother to define it,” Noor, the journalist, said. “They want to call everything that they don’t like fake news.”

Journalists’ bodies say the impact of the amended law will not be limited to social media content makers.

“All the media is digital now,” said Ali, secretary of the National Press Club, as mainstream media outlets and prominent journalists use social media to deliver information that can draw state backlash if delivered on TV channels.

New powers

The bill proposes creating a Digital Rights Protection Authority, a Social Media Complaint Council, a Social Media Protection Tribunal and a National Cyber Crime Investigation Authority.

Decisions made by the tribunal can only be challenged in the Supreme Court, bypassing the traditional appeals process that includes provincial high courts.

Punjab information minister Bukhari defended the amendment saying, “we are giving access to the highest forum in the country.” However, the Press Club’s Ali said most citizens do not have the financial means to approach the country’s top court through lawyers.

Bukhari, who has been a target of an AI-generated smear campaign, told VOA that Pakistan needs such a law.

“Those who deal in fake news should be fearful of this law,” she said. “Those who file with checks and balances should not worry.”

However, Noor said journalists are also caught in a bind when government officials give contradictory information that causes the spread of false information.

Rushed passage

Some journalists’ bodies have said they support government efforts to regulate digital spaces, however they are questioning the speedy passage of the amended law in the National Assembly and approval of amendments by the Senate committee.

Expressing concern over the chilling effects of the amendments, the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan as well as Amnesty International last week called on the government to consult journalist bodies before turning the bill into law.

In a statement Thursday, the Joint Action Committee, a coalition of major media bodies of the country “rejected any PECA amendments that are passed or approved without consultation with media bodies.”

The Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists has called for nationwide protests on Tuesday afternoon.
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DruafAfrica

Fight for control of major Congolese city ‘ongoing,’ says UN official

UNITED NATIONS — A senior U.N. official in the Democratic Republic of the Congo said Monday that fighting between Rwandan-backed rebels and the Congolese army for an important provincial capital in the country’s east is “not over yet,” despite claims by the rebels to have captured the city of Goma. 

“Fighting is still very much ongoing,” said Bruno Lemarquis, U.N. resident coordinator in the DRC. “It’s a very, very fluid situation. It’s a very dangerous situation.” 

He told reporters via a video call from DRC’s capital, Kinshasa, that “active zones of combat have spread to all quarters” of Goma in North Kivu province. Lemarquis said there have been severe disruptions to water, electricity, internet and phone service. Humanitarian warehouses have been looted. 

In early January, M23 rebels broke a ceasefire agreement, launching a large-scale offensive in the east with the support of the Rwandan army. The U.N. says the rebels have made significant territorial gains and are seeking to open a new front in neighboring South Kivu province. 

The United Nations Security Council, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and senior U.N. officials are calling for the M23 to immediately cease hostilities and withdraw from occupied territories. They have called for the withdrawal of Rwandan forces and a return to the Luanda process of mediation overseen by Angolan President Joao Lourenco. 

“On behalf of the humanitarian community, I call on all parties to agree on temporary humanitarian pauses in the most affected areas and establish humanitarian corridors to ensure humanitarian activities resume at scale. And more importantly, also to facilitate the safe evacuation of wounded individuals and civilians trapped in combat zones,” Lemarquis added. 

The United Nations announced Sunday a $17 million disbursement from its central emergency fund for urgent humanitarian needs in DRC. 

Lemarquis said nonessential U.N. staff, foreign and Congolese, are being temporarily evacuated from Goma to either Kinshasa or to a U.N. base in Entebbe in neighboring Uganda. 

The U.N. peacekeeping mission, known by its acronym MONUSCO, has also reinforced its positions to counter the rebels’ advance on Goma, deploying a quick reaction force, a rapid deployment battalion, a reserve battalion, a platoon of special forces and an artillery battery. 

“At this critical juncture now, the onus really is and has to be about bringing about an immediate cessation of hostilities,” U.N. peacekeeping chief Jean-Pierre Lacroix told reporters on the same video call, speaking from Damascus, Syria, where he is on a mission. 

“The fate of the millions of civilians living in Goma or having been displaced is really the priority, along with the safety and security of U.N. personnel,” he said. 

In the past few days, three U.N. peacekeepers have been killed and several injured in the conflict. 

Before the latest round of violence, eastern DRC was already mired in one of the largest and most protracted humanitarian crises in the world, with nearly 6.5 million people displaced due to efforts by armed groups to seize control of the country’s valuable mineral deposits.
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DruamAmericas

Trump’s sanctions could force Russia’s Putin to negotiating table, some experts say

WASHINGTON — On Jan. 22, Donald Trump — just two days after being inaugurated for his second term as U.S. president — again called on Russian President Vladimir Putin to negotiate an end to the “ridiculous” war with Ukraine, but this time he added a threat.

“If we don’t make a ‘deal,’ and soon, I have no other choice but to put high levels of Taxes, Tariffs, and Sanctions on anything being sold by Russia to the United States, and various other participating countries,” Trump wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social.

The following day, Trump told reporters that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had told him he’s ready to negotiate an end to the war. In an interview with Fox News aired that same day, Trump said Zelenskyy is “no angel” and “shouldn’t have allowed this war to happen.”

Does the new U.S. administration have sufficient economic leverage over Russia to force it to make peace, or at least talk about peace?

According to Konstantin Sonin, John Dewey distinguished service professor at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy and former vice rector of Moscow’s Higher School of Economics, the U.S. has economic leverage, but some of its levers are clearly weaker than others.

“Russia’s trade with the U.S. is very small — less than $3 billion a year,” he told Danila Galperovich of VOA’s Russian Service. “Accordingly, even if any opportunity for U.S. companies to trade with Russia is completely closed, the damage to Russia will be small. There is an opportunity to strengthen secondary sanctions — that is, additional pressure, first of all, on China, on India, on other countries, so that they more strictly comply with the primary sanctions.

“There is also an opportunity to continue what [former U.S. President Joe] Biden did with sanctions against the Russian shadow tanker fleet,” Sonin added, referring to vessels that Russia uses to sell oil and evade Western sanctions.

“This requires great international cooperation, but, in principle, it can be done,” said Sonin.

Economist Vladislav Inozemtsev, a special adviser to the Russian Media Studies Project at MEMRI, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, and director of the Moscow-based Center for Post-Industrial Studies, also stressed the significance of secondary sanctions on countries that do business with Russia.

“Trump can somehow influence other countries so that they do not buy Russian products,” Inozemtsev told VOA. “For example, let’s say he can say that if India buys Russian oil, then the United States will impose 15% duties on all goods from India. This would have the most radical consequences. [I]f… countries trading with Russia are getting serious problems in the United States for all their products, then I think that this will be a very sobering moment. If it is possible to impose a virtually complete trade blockade through U.S. sanctions, then these will be devastating sanctions, of course.”

Sonin said that, over the longer term, deregulating oil production internationally would reduce world oil prices and thereby hinder Moscow’s ability to finance its military operations against Ukraine.

“Trump is famous for his good relations with Saudi Arabia, although they are unlikely to be so good that they will reduce oil prices at his request,” he said. “But nevertheless, it is possible to work towards lowering oil prices, which even without sanctions will reduce Russian income.”

Trump spoke with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in a Jan. 22 telephone call.

Still, Sonin said that economic levers, in and of themselves, cannot force Putin to do anything. “I would say that the most direct impact is still the supply of more powerful weapons to Ukraine. I do not know to what extent Trump wants to do this, but he mentioned it, and, in principle, it is possible to supply Ukraine with more powerful weapons in larger quantities.”

Inozemtsev, however, said that Putin, who has not previously changed his behavior in response to ultimatums, could do so this time.

“Trump is a person whose degree of radicalism and unpredictability corresponds to Putin’s,” he said. “Here, perhaps, it would be better for Putin to change his mind a bit. If Trump offers him: ‘Vladimir, let’s go, we’ll meet there, sit down at the negotiating table, bring your team, I’ll bring mine, and we’ll agree on something, we’ll discuss it for a day or two, but the issue needs to be resolved,’ I think Putin will go.”
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DruasiaAsia

Taliban caution US against bounty threats over alleged American detainees

ISLAMABAD — A diplomat from Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban cautioned the United States on Monday against threatening retaliatory measures in response to detentions of U.S. nationals in the country.

“Our policy is to reach a solution through peaceful means,” Suhail Shaheen, the Taliban ambassador to Qatar, told VOA in written remarks. 

He spoke two days after the new U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio threatened that Washington may place a “very big bounty” on Taliban leaders, suggesting they might hold more American hostages in the country than previously known. 

Last week, the de facto Afghan authorities released two Americans, Ryan Corbett and William McKenty, in exchange for a Taliban member serving a life sentence in a U.S. federal prison on drug and terrorism charges. The swap was negotiated by former President Joe Biden’s administration. 

“In the face of pressure and aggression, the jihad [holy war] of the Afghan nation in recent decades is a lesson that everyone should learn from,” Shaheen stated. 

The Taliban have not revealed how many foreigners are still in their custody in Afghanistan. However, relatives and U.S. officials report the detention of at least two additional Americans. They are George Glezmann, a former airline mechanic, and Mahmood Habibi, a naturalized American. 

“Just hearing the Taliban is holding more American hostages than has been reported,” Rubio wrote on social media platform X on Saturday. “If this is true, we will have to immediately place a VERY BIG bounty on their top leaders, maybe even bigger than the one we had on bin Laden.” 

The chief U.S. diplomat did not elaborate or specify the number of Americans being detained in Afghanistan. 

Washington offered a bounty of $25 million for information leading to the capture or killing of Osama bin Laden for planning the deadly Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks on the United States. Congress subsequently authorized the secretary of state to increase the bounty to a maximum of $50 million. 

U.S. forces searched for bin Laden in Afghanistan for years before finding his hideout and killing him in neighboring Pakistan in 2011. 

Meanwhile, a former Canadian soldier detained by the Taliban was freed Sunday after more than two months of imprisonment in a deal brokered by Qatar. 

“I just spoke with David Lavery upon his safe arrival in Qatar from Afghanistan. He is in good spirits,” Canadian foreign minister Melanie Joly announced on X. Joly credited the tiny Gulf nation’s prime minister and Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani with helping in Lavery’s release. 

“Thank you to my Qatari counterpart, @MBA_AlThani_, for helping facilitate the release of our Canadian citizen,” she wrote. 

The Taliban waged a lethal insurgency in Afghanistan that persisted for nearly two decades, ultimately regaining power in 2021, mere days before a hasty and chaotic withdrawal of all U.S.-led Western troops from the country along with thousands of Afghan allies. 

Taliban leaders have since imposed their strict interpretation of Islamic law, or Sharia, banning girls from attending school beyond the sixth grade, prohibiting most women from workplaces, and blocking women’s access to public life at large. 

The United Nations has designated the restrictions as “gender apartheid,” and the international community has refuted the Taliban’s request for legitimacy to their government due to their severe treatment of the female Afghan population. 

The restrictions stem from numerous decrees issued by the reclusive Taliban supreme leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada, from his base in the southern city of Kandahar, with his aides defending the government as in line with Sharia. 

Last week, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in The Hague announced that he had applied for arrest warrants for Akhundzada and Afghanistan’s chief justice, Abdul Hakim Haqqani, accusing them of persecuting women and girls. 

The Taliban rejected the allegations as baseless and condemned the arrest warrants for their leaders as “devoid of just legal basis, duplicitous in nature and politically motivated.”
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DruafAfrica

Relief group pulls workers out of DRC’s Goma as M23 rebels advance

Nairobi, Kenya — Amid fighting between M23 rebels and government forces in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, some organizations are relocating staff because they no longer feel safe. This comes after the reportedly Rwandan-backed rebels said over the weekend they had taken control of Goma, the biggest city in the region. 

Rose Tchwenko, the DRC’s country director for Mercy Corps, told VOA that since last week, the humanitarian group has closely monitored the situation as government forces and M23 clashed in and around Goma, a city of around 2 million people. 

“From Wednesday last week, with the fall of Minova, followed by the fall of Sake, which are key supply routes into Goma, the situation looked a little bit more dire with the imminent takeover or incursion into Goma itself by the rebel forces,” she said. “We made some decisions, first to move out non-essential staff, pull back our teams from the ground where it was no longer safe to continue to provide humanitarian services.”

But that changed quickly, as the situation grew more unstable in Goma, the capital of North Kivu province, which is on the border with Rwanda.

“On Sunday with the escalation of the conflict around Goma, we had to pull out even the senior team into Gisenyi (across the border in Rwanda) so that we can continue to operate and provide the necessary support to our teams across the country,” she said.

She told VOA the situation was dire.

“As of yesterday, we know that the airport in Goma is closed and under M23 control,” she said. “We have heard reports of sporadic fighting throughout the center of Goma city. Some of us on this side of the border could actually [hear] gunshots at some point during the night. We are aware of M23 presence in Goma but still uncertain of what the actual situation is.” 

As M23 rebels last week made advances into Goma, three U.N. peacekeepers died and seven South African soldiers and three from Malawi, serving in a separate Southern African Development Community mission, also were killed, according to U.N. and South African officials. 

At an emergency meeting on Sunday, the United Nations Security Council called for an end to the hostilities.

Bintou Keita, the head of the U.N. mission in Congo, addressed the Council via video link, painting a bleak picture.

“Roads are blocked and the airport can no longer be used for evacuation or humanitarian efforts,” he said. “M23 has declared the airspace over Goma closed. In other words, we are trapped.”

Jack Mongi, a Goma resident who sent VOA an audio message in French via WhatsApp, said that fighting was still going on around the airport.

“As I speak, you can hear gunshots, we are under our mattresses, under our beds and if you listen, you can hear the gunshots….”

The Congolese minister of foreign affairs told the U.N. Security Council that this is “a frontal assault, a declaration of war.” 

VOA reached out to the Rwandan government for comment but has not immediately heard back.

Many countries represented at the special Security Council meeting condemned the attacks, including the acting U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., Dorothy Shea, who called for a ceasefire.

“The United States will consider all the tools at its disposal in order to hold accountable those responsible for sustaining armed conflict, instability and insecurity,” she said.

In Nairobi, Kenya’s President William Ruto said he spoke to both Congolese and Rwanda presidents and called for an “immediate and unconditional cessation of hostilities.” 

Ruto, who’s also the chair of the East African Community, says he’ll be convening an extraordinary EAC summit in coming days to try to chart a way forward in this crisis.
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DruamAmericas

Executive orders: The presidential power

The U.S. government consists of three branches designed to keep each other in check, with Congress responsible for passing legislation. But presidents have some power to unilaterally direct government policy by using executive orders. 
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DruchinaChina

Tech stocks sink as Chinese competitor threatens to topple their AI domination 

New York — Wall Street is tumbling Monday on fears the big U.S. companies that have feasted on the artificial-intelligence frenzy are under threat from a competitor in China that can do similar things for much cheaper.

The S&P 500 was down 1.9% in early trading. Big Tech stocks that have been the market’s biggest stars took the heaviest losses, with Nvidia down 11.5%, and they dragged the Nasdaq composite down 3.2%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, which has less of an emphasis on tech, was holding up a bit better with a dip of 160 points, or 0.4%, as of 9:35 a.m. Eastern time.

The shock to financial markets came from China, where a company called DeepSeek said it had developed a large language model that can compete with U.S. giants but at a fraction of the cost. DeepSeek’s app had already hit the top of Apple’s App Store chart by early Monday morning, and analysts said such a feat would be particularly impressive given how the U.S. government has restricted Chinese access to top AI chips.

Skepticism, though, remains about how much DeepSeek’s announcement will ultimately shake the AI supply chain, from the chip makers making semiconductors to the utilities hoping to electrify vast data centers running those chips.

“It remains to be seen if DeepSeek found a way to work around these chip restrictions rules and what chips they ultimately used as there will be many skeptics around this issue given the information is coming from China,” according to Dan Ives, an analyst with Wedbush Securities.

DeepSeek’s disruption nevertheless rocked stock markets worldwide.

In Amsterdam, Dutch chip company ASML slid 8.9%. In Tokyo, Japan’s Softbank Group Corp. lost 8.3% and is nearly back to where it was before spurting on an announcement that it was joining a partnership trumpeted by the White House that would invest up to $500 billion in AI infrastructure.

And on Wall Street, shares of Constellation Energy sank 16.9%. The company has said it would restart the shuttered Three Mile Island nuclear power plant to supply power for Microsoft’s data centers.

All the worries sent a gauge of nervousness among investors holding U.S. stocks toward its biggest jump since August. They also sent investors toward bonds, which can be safer investments than any stock. The rush sent the yield of the 10-year Treasury down to 4.53% from 4.62% late Friday.

It’s a sharp turnaround for the AI winners, which had soared in recent years on hopes that all the investment pouring into the industry would lead to a possible remaking of the global economy.

Nvidia’s stock had soared from less than $20 to more than $140 in less than two years before Monday’s drop, for example.

Other Big Tech companies had also joined in the frenzy, and their stock prices had benefited too. It was just on Friday that Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg was saying he expects to invest up to $65 billion this year, while talking up a massive data center it would build in Manhattan.

In stock markets abroad, movements for indexes across Europe and Asia weren’t as forceful as for the big U.S. tech stocks. France’s CAC 40 fell 0.6%, and Germany’s DAX lost 0.8%.

In Asia, stocks edged 0.1% lower in Shanghai after a survey of manufacturers showed export orders in China dropping to a five-month low.

The Federal Reserve holds its latest policy meeting later this week. Traders don’t expect recent weak data to push the Fed to cut its main interest rate. They’re virtually certain the central bank will hold steady, according to data from CME Group.
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Chinese and Indian diplomats call for warmer relations but make no public mention of border dispute 

BEIJING — The top diplomats of China and India called for their nations to provide further mutual support but avoided publicly mentioning a long-standing border dispute in the Himalayas when they met Monday in Beijing. 

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told top Indian foreign affairs official Vikram Misri that the sides “should seize the opportunity, meet each other halfway, explore more substantive measures, and strive to understand, support and achieve each other, rather than be suspicious of, alienate and consume each other,” China’s official Xinhua News Agency reported. 

It cited Misri as saying the nuclear-armed Asian giants have “properly managed and resolved differences and promoted the restart of practical cooperation in various fields.” 

Ties have been stable since the leaders of the two countries met last year on the sidelines of a multinational summit in Russia. Days before that meeting, India announced the two sides had agreed to a pact on military patrols along their disputed border in the Himalayas after a spike in tensions that began with a deadly clash in 2020. That turned into a long-running standoff in the rugged mountainous area, where each side has stationed tens of thousands of military personnel backed by artillery, tanks and fighter jets. 

Chinese President Xi Jinping and India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi have since limited their joint public comments to pleasantries without openly discussing the border. India said the 2024 agreement would lead to the “disengagement” of troops at the Line of Actual Control, the long shared border in the Himalayas, although it’s unclear whether that meant the withdrawal of the tens of thousands of additional troops stationed along their disputed border in the Ladakh region. 

The Line of Actual Control separates Chinese and Indian-held territories from Ladakh in the west to India’s eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, which China claims in its entirety. India and China fought a deadly war over the border in 1962. 

Both India and China have withdrawn troops from face-off sites on the northern and southern banks of Pangong Tso, Gogra and Galwan Valley, but they maintain extra troops at Demchok and Depsang Plains. 

The army standoff damaged business ties between the two nations with halted investments from Chinese firms and major projects banned. India also banned Chinese-owned apps, including TikTok, which is operated by Chinese internet firm Bytedance. It cited privacy concerns that it said threatened India’s sovereignty and security. 

Chinese products are ubiquitous in India, from toys to smartphones to made-in-China Hindu idols. According to Indian government data, two-way trade has grown by the tens of billions in the past two decades, with the balance strongly favoring China, while China has drawn many Indian specialists and students, particularly in the medical field. 
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China captures scam center suspect with Thailand’s help

BEIJING — Police have detained a man suspected of involvement in the case of a Chinese actor who was duped into travelling to Thailand for a film job and then trafficked to Myanmar, China’s Public Security Ministry said.

The joint efforts of the ministry’s task force and the Chinese Embassy in Thailand, helped by Thai law enforcement, led to the arrest of a “major criminal suspect” on Saturday, the ministry said in a notice late on Sunday.

The ministry added that the suspect was surnamed Yan and returned to China on Saturday, but did not elaborate.

Wang Xing, a 22-year-old Chinese actor, traveled to Thailand early this month after receiving an unsolicited offer to join a film that was shooting in Thailand.

When Wang got to Bangkok, he was kidnapped, authorities said, and taken to an online scam compound, one of hundreds of thousands of people the United Nations says have been trapped into working for criminal networks running fraudulent telecommunications operations across the region.

Wang’s case drew national interest after his girlfriend began a social media campaign about his plight, and he was later freed by Thai police who found him in Myanmar.

The ministry said the police would step up their efforts to crack down on the scam centers, deepen international law enforcement cooperation, and coordinate with countries involved to detain the criminals and rescue Chinese citizens.

The scam compounds that have proliferated in Southeast Asia since the COVID-19 pandemic defraud people across the globe and generate billions of dollars every year for organized crime groups, many of Chinese origin.

Last week, officials from China, Myanmar and Thailand reached a consensus on eradicating the centers in Myanmar.

China and Thailand also agreed to set up a coordination center in Bangkok to investigate and combat the scam complexes that have mushroomed along Thai borders with Myanmar and Cambodia. The initiative is expected to start operations next month.
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China bans livestock product imports from numerous countries on disease worries

BEIJING — China has prohibited imports of sheep, goat, poultry and even-toed ungulates from African, Asian and European countries due to outbreaks of livestock diseases such as sheep pox, goat pox and foot-and-mouth-disease.

The ban, which also includes processed and unprocessed products, comes after the World Health Organization released information of disease outbreaks in various countries, according to a series of announcements by China’s General Administration of Customs dated Jan. 21.

The ban from the world’s largest meat importer affects Ghana, Somalia, Qatar, Congo (DRC), Nigeria, and Tanzania, Egypt, Bulgaria, East Timor and Eritrea.

China also said it has stopped imports of sheep, goat and related products from Palestine, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Nepal and Bangladesh due to sheep pox and goat pox outbreaks.

It also blocked the imports of even-toed ungulates and related products from Germany following an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, it said.
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Chiefs, Eagles reach Super Bowl

The Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles are set to face off in the National Football League’s Super Bowl, with the Chiefs looking to become the first team to win three consecutive championships and the Eagles trying to avenge their loss from two years ago.

The Chiefs reached the Feb. 9 championship game in New Orleans with a 32-29 win on Sunday night over the Buffalo Bills.

Kansas City’s star quarterback Patrick Mahomes ran for two touchdowns and threw for another score to reach his fifth Super Bowl in six years. That included the 2023 Super Bowl in which the Chiefs defeated the Eagles 38-35.

The Eagles earned their Super Bowl spot with a resounding 55-23 win Sunday over the Washington Commanders.

Philadelphia outscored Washington 21-0 in the game’s final quarter to secure the victory.

Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts ran for three touchdowns and added another through the air, while running back Saquon Barkley added three rushing touchdowns.

Oddsmakers made Kansas City the narrow early favorite for the game.

Some information for this story was provided by The Associated Press
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New Zealand loosens visitor visa rules to welcome digital nomads

WELLINGTON, New Zealand — New Zealand will introduce looser visa rules to allow holiday makers to work remotely while visiting the country, to boost its tourism sector and economy, it said on Monday.

Erica Stanford, Immigration Minister said in a statement that the visitor visa would change from Jan. 27 to allow people to work while traveling in the country.

“This is a brand-new market of tourist New Zealand can tap into. We want people to see our country as the ideal place to visit and work while they do it,” she said.

She added in a press conference following the announcement that she was unsure how many people would take up the opportunity, but digital nomad visas had been “extraordinarily popular” overseas and that New Zealand was targeting people who would like the opportunity to work and travel here.

“I expect in their time here that they will spend longer than they normally would, they will spend more because they’re here for longer, and the thing that we’re really hoping, is that they fall in love with the place,” she said.

New Zealand’s economy sank into a technical recession in the third quarter of 2024 and the government is looking for ways to boost growth. The tourism sector has not fully bounced back from the closure of borders during the COVID-19 pandemic with international visitors at around 86% of 2019 levels.

“The government’s ambition is that new visa rules will put New Zealand boldly on the map as a welcoming haven for the world’s talent,” said Nicola Willis, Minister of Economic Growth.

“We hope that in some cases, it will encourage those people and the firms they represent to consider doing more business with New Zealand in the future,” Willis added.
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Percival Everett’s ‘James’ awarded Carnegie Medal for fiction

NEW YORK — For author Percival Everett, libraries have long been a source of knowledge and discovery and pleasure, even of the forbidden kind.

“I remember making friends at age 13 with the librarian at the University of South Carolina, and she used to let me go through the stacks when I wasn’t supposed to,” Everett, who spent part of his childhood in Columbia, said during a telephone interview Sunday.

“One of the wonderful things about libraries is that when you’re looking for one book, it’s surrounded by other books that may not be connected to it. That’s what you get (online) with links, but (in libraries) no one’s decided what the links are.”

Everett’s latest honor comes from the country’s public libraries. On Sunday, the American Library Association announced that Everett’s “James” was this year’s winner of the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, which includes a $5,000 cash award. Kevin Fedarko’s “A Walk in the Park: The True Story of a Spectacular Misadventure in the Grand Canyon” was chosen for nonfiction.

Everett’s acclaimed reworking of Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” from the perspective of Jim, Huck Finn’s enslaved companion, has already received the National Book Award and the Kirkus Prize and is a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle award. “James” has even topped The New York Times fiction hardcover list, a rare feat in recent years for a literary work that wasn’t a major book club pick or movie tie-in.

“Percival Everett has written a modern masterpiece, a beautiful and important work that offers a fresh perspective from the eyes of a classic character,” Allison Escoto, chair of the award’s selection committee, said in a statement. “Kevin Fedarko’s unforgettable journey through the otherworldly depths of the Grand Canyon shows us the triumphs and pitfalls of exploration and illuminates the many vital lessons we can all learn from our precious natural world.”

Fedarko is a former Time magazine correspondent whose work also has appeared in The New York Times and Esquire. A Pittsburgh native fascinated by distant places, Fedarko has a long history with libraries — Carnegie libraries. He remembers visiting two while growing up, notably one in the suburb of Oakmont near the hairdressing salon his parents ran. He would read biographies of historical figures from George Washington to Daniel Boone, and otherwise think of libraries as “important threads running through his life,” windows to a “wider world.”

Now a resident of Flagstaff, Arizona, Fedarko says that he relied in part on the library at the nearby Northern Arizona University campus for both “A Walk in the Park” and its predecessor, also about the Grand Canyon, “The Emerald Mile.”

“The library has an important and unique collection about the Grand Canyon, and it’s the backbone of the kind of history that helps form the framework of both books,” he says. “Neither of them could have been done without the library.”

Previous winners of the medals, established in 2012 with a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, includes Donna Tartt’s “The Goldfinch,” Colson Whitehead’s “The Underground Railroad” and Doris Kearns Goodwin’s “The Bully Pulpit.”

This year’s finalists besides “James” in the fiction category were Jiaming Tang’s “Cinema Love” and Kavin Akbar’s “Martyr!”

Adam Higginbotham’s “Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space” and Emily Nussbaum’s “Cue the Sun! The Invention of Reality TV” were the nonfiction runners-up.

All three fiction nominees were published by Penguin Random House and all three nonfiction finalists by Simon & Schuster.
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Sierra Leone investigating reports Dutch drug kingpin took refuge in country

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone — Sierra Leone’s information ministry said Sunday it was investigating media reports that European cocaine kingpin Jos Leijdekkers is in the country and benefiting from high-level protection there.

Two sources told Reuters on Friday that Leijdekkers, who was sentenced last June in absentia to 24 years in prison by a Dutch court for smuggling more than 7 tons of cocaine, had been in Sierra Leone since at least early 2023.

A spokesperson for the Dutch prosecutors’ office said in response to questions from Reuters about Leijdekkers’ whereabouts that he has been living in Sierra Leone for at least six months. Leijdekkers is on Europol’s list of most wanted fugitives.

In a statement, the Sierra Leonean ministry said the country’s police were ready to collaborate with the Dutch government, Interpol and other international law enforcement agencies about the case.

The statement said the country’s president “attended numerous family events during the festive season” and “has no knowledge about the identity and the issues detailed in the reports about the individual in question.”

Reuters was not able to reach Leijdekkers.

Videos and photos verified by Reuters of a church Mass in Sierra Leone on Jan. 1, 2025, show Leijdekkers, 33, sitting two rows behind Sierra Leone’s President Julius Maada Bio.

In the images, Leijdekkers was sitting next to a woman who three sources said was Bio’s daughter Agnes and who they said was married to Leijdekkers. Reuters could not confirm the relationship.

Bio’s daughter and the Dutch lawyer who last represented Leijdekkers in the Netherlands did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

Three sources told Reuters Leijdekkers was benefiting from high-level protection in Sierra Leone, which international law enforcement officials say is a transshipment point for large volumes of Latin American cocaine headed to Europe.

The Sierra Leonean information ministry said the government had not received any formal communication on Leijdekkers from any state or institution, and was resolute in ensuring the country would not become a haven for any organized crime.
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Canadian ex-soldier detained by Afghan Taliban freed

Doha, Qatar — A Canadian ex-soldier detained by the Taliban government in Afghanistan was freed Sunday after over two months of imprisonment in a deal brokered by Qatar, a source with knowledge of the release told AFP.

David Lavery was detained by Taliban authorities in Kabul in November 2024 and had made headlines three years earlier helping in the evacuation of Afghans during the withdrawal of U.S. and allied forces from the country.

“Lavery has been released from Afghanistan and is now in Doha, Qatar,” the source said on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the negotiations, adding his freedom “was secured following a request from the Canadian government to Qatar.”

“Qatari mediators coordinated with senior Canadian officials and utilized their contacts in Afghanistan to dispatch a medical team to Kabul to assess Lavery’s condition and provide care, while also facilitating contact between Lavery and his family,” the source said.

“Following a breakthrough in the talks, Mr. Lavery (is) in Doha now united with his family. He underwent a medical assessment upon his arrival,” the source added.

In 2021, Lavery helped an estimated 100 Afghans flee Kabul during the chaotic withdrawal of U.S. and allied forces.

He spent decades in the Canadian military and is said to have been a key member of its elite Joint Task Force 2 special operations unit.

More recently, Lavery has reportedly operated a private security firm in Kabul.

The former soldier’s release follows the liberation last week by the Taliban government of two U.S. citizens from prison in return for an Afghan fighter held in the United States, in another deal brokered by Qatar.

Ryan Corbett, who had been detained in 2022, and William McKenty were released in exchange for Khan Mohammed, who was convicted of narco-terrorism by a U.S. court.

The Afghan foreign ministry said Mohammed was “an Afghan fighter” who had been “imprisoned in America.”

Two other U.S. citizens are believed to remain in detention in Afghanistan, former airline mechanic George Glezmann and naturalized American Mahmood Habibi.

Gas-rich Qatar hosted Taliban representatives during years of peace talks with the United States leading up to the 2021 withdrawal and in recent years has hosted rounds of Afghan dialogue which the Taliban authorities joined in June 2024.
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Border czar: Trump administration prioritizes undocumented migrants seen as security threats

President Donald Trump’s border czar said Sunday that the administration’s current priority is to deport undocumented immigrants who are deemed to pose security threats to the U.S. But he stressed that illegal immigration in general won’t be tolerated. VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias reports.
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UN chief calls for Rwandan forces to leave DR Congo

United Nations, United States — U.N. chief Antonio Guterres called Sunday on Rwandan forces to withdraw from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and halt support for fighters advancing on the key Congolese city of Goma. 

M23 fighters backed by several thousand Rwandan troops have been quickly advancing toward the city, which lies along DRC’s eastern border and is home to more than a million people. 

Several foreign peacekeepers have been killed in the mounting violence around Goma. 

“The Secretary-General is deeply concerned by the escalating violence” and “calls on the Rwanda Defense Forces to cease support to the M23 and withdraw from DRC territory,” said a statement from his spokesperson Stephane Dujarric. 

Guterres had previously referred to a U.N. experts’ report citing Kigali’s backing of the M23 but had not explicitly called on Rwanda to withdraw from DRC territory. 

In his statement Sunday, made after three U.N. peacekeepers in eastern DRC had been killed within 48 hours, Guterres emphasized that “attacks against United Nations personnel may constitute a war crime.” 

The U.N. in the meantime has begun to evacuate “non-essential” staff from the major city of Goma in eastern DRC, a United Nations source told AFP. 

During an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council session Sunday, permanent member states France, Britain and the United States called on Rwanda to pull its forces back. 

But others, including China and the African nations holding rotating council seats, did not specifically name Kigali. 

The Security Council as a whole has yet to accuse Rwanda of taking part directly in the conflict, simply underlining the importance of the DRC’s territorial integrity. 

But the French ambassador to the U.N., Nicolas de Riviere, indicated Sunday he was working on a Security Council statement that would “call a cat a cat,” a phrase essentially meaning to state directly what something is without sugarcoating it. 

He urged the Council to condemn what he said was a grave threat to regional peace and security. 

Congolese foreign minister Therese Kayikwamba Wagner went further, urging the Council to impose sweeping economic and political sanctions on Kigali. 

She accused Rwanda of having sent new troops into eastern DRC on Sunday, actions which she said amounted to a “declaration of war.” 

But Rwanda’s ambassador to the U.N., Ernest Rwamucyo, rejected the accusations, accusing Kinshasa of being responsible for the deteriorating situation and failing to make a “genuine commitment to peace.” 

He suggested that the U.N. peacekeepers in the DRC had joined a “coalition” seeking regime change in Rwanda. 

The fighting in the region has forced some 230,000 to flee their homes.  

Eastern DRC has vast mining resources and is a complex landscape of rival armed militias which has seen violence ebb and flow since the 1990s. 
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Islamist militants kill at least 20 Nigerian troops, security sources say

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria — Suspected Islamist fighters killed at least 20 Nigerian soldiers, including a commanding officer, after attacking an army base in a remote town in northeastern Borno state, security sources and residents said Sunday.

Boko Haram and Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) fighters have mainly operated in Borno, targeting security forces and civilians, in the process killing and displacing tens of thousands of people.

The latest assault happened Friday, when ISWAP members arrived on gun trucks and attacked the army’s 149 Battalion in Malam-Fatori town, gateway to the border with Niger, two soldiers and residents said.

One of the soldiers who survived the attack told Reuters by phone that troops were taken by surprise as the militants “rained bullets everywhere.”

“We tried so much to repel the attacks and after more than three hours of gun duel, they overpowered us, killing our commanding officer, a lieutenant colonel,” the soldier said, declining to be named because he is not authorized to speak to the media.

He said 20 soldiers died while several were injured.

A Nigerian army spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Residents who left the town said some of the militants were seen in Malam-Fatori as late as Saturday night.

Malakaka Bukar, a member of the local militia recruited to help the army, said the militants also burned buildings, forcing some residents to flee the town.

“They preached to some of the residents,” said Bukar.

Although weakened by military assaults and internal fighting over the years, Boko Haram and ISWAP have stepped up attacks in Borno since the turn of the year, killing dozens of farmers and fishermen in series of raids.
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Trump orders tariffs, visa restrictions on Colombia over rejection of deportation flights

Bogota, Colombia — U.S. President Donald Trump said Sunday that he was ordering tariffs, visa restrictions and other retaliatory measures to be taken against Colombia after its government rejected two flights carrying migrants.

Trump said the measures were necessary, because the decision of Colombian President Gustavo Petro “jeopardized” national security in the United States.

“These measures are just the beginning,” Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social. “We will not allow the Colombian Government to violate its legal obligations with regard to the acceptance and return of the Criminals they forced into the United States.”

Earlier Sunday, Petro said that his government won’t accept flights carrying migrants deported from the U.S. until the Trump administration creates a protocol that treats them with “dignity.” Petro made the announcement in two X posts, one of which included a news video of migrants reportedly deported to Brazil walking on a tarmac with restraints on their hands and feet.

“A migrant is not a criminal and must be treated with the dignity that a human being deserves,” Petro said. “That is why I returned the U.S. military planes that were carrying Colombian migrants.”

Colombia accepted 475 deportation flights from the United States from 2020 to 2024, fifth behind Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico and El Salvador, according to Witness at the Border, an advocacy group that tracks flight data. It accepted 124 deportation flights in 2024.

Last year, Colombia and other countries began accepting U.S.-funded deportation flights from Panama.

The U.S. government didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press regarding aircraft and protocols used in deportations to Colombia.

Petro, a former leftist guerrilla, added that his country would receive Colombians in “civilian airplanes” and “without treatment like criminals.”

As part of a flurry of actions to make good on U.S. President Donald Trump’s campaign promises to crack down on illegal immigration, his government is using active-duty military to help secure the border and carry out deportations.

Two Air Force C-17 cargo planes carrying migrants removed from the U.S. touched down early Friday in Guatemala. That same day, Honduras received two deportation flights carrying a total of 193 people.

In announcing what he called “urgent and decisive retaliatory measures,” Trump explained that he ordered “25% tariffs on all goods coming into the United States,” which would be raised to 50% in one week. He said he also ordered “A Travel Ban and immediate Visa Revocations” on Colombian government officials, allies and supporters.

“All Party Members, Family Members, and Supporters of the Colombian Government,” Trump wrote will be subject to “Visa Sanctions.” He didn’t say to which party he was referring to or provide any additional details on the visa and travel restrictions.

Trump added that all Colombians will face enhanced customs inspections.
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