The United States is helping Ukraine bolster its defense capabilities, announcing a $150 million security package less than a week before U.S. President Joe Biden is set to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in Geneva. The Pentagon unveiled the package, part of Washington’s ongoing Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, on Friday, saying it was able to proceed with the aid after confirming Kyiv had complied with necessary reforms. The package includes counter-artillery radars, counter-unmanned aerial systems, secure communications gear, electronic warfare equipment and military medical evacuation equipment. It also provides for training to help improve the safety and capacity at Ukrainian air force bases. The aid, part of $275 million in support for Ukraine, was approved as part of the Pentagon fiscal year 2021 budget. The first aid package, sent in March, included armed patrol boats, counter-artillery radars, and support for satellite imagery and analysis. JUST IN: Details on the new $125 million US assistance package “to help #Ukraine’s forces preserve the country’s territorial integrity, secure its borders, & improve interoperability w/@NATO” pic.twitter.com/Ml7nVp7ysb— Jeff Seldin (@jseldin) March 1, 2021Tensions between Ukraine, which has sought closer ties with the West, and Russia have been simmering for months following a massive buildup of Russian forces along the border and in occupied Crimea earlier this year. U.S. and Western officials described the Russian buildup, which involved more than 100,000 troops, as the biggest since the Kremlin seized Crimea from Kyiv in 2014. US, West Wary of Russian Claims That Military Buildup Near Ukraine Is OverPentagon says ‘it’s too soon to tell’ whether Moscow’s assurance can be taken at face value U.S. officials have said Biden intends to raise the issue of Ukraine when he meets with Putin on Wednesday in Geneva, describing Moscow’s behavior as aggressive. Biden Invites Ukrainian Leader to White House   Volodymyr Zelenskiy had implored the US president to meet him before next week’s Biden-Putin talks Russian officials insisted the buildup earlier this year was to support military exercises and that many of the forces massed near Ukraine have since pulled back. U.S. and NATO officials view the Russian claims with suspicion, with Washington promising continued support for Kyiv. “The United States has committed more than $2.5 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since 2014 and we’ll continue to strengthen our strategic defense partnership, including through the provision of defensive lethal assistance,” Pentagon press secretary John Kirby told reporters. 
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The New York Times won the Pulitzer Prize for public service Friday for its coverage of the coronavirus pandemic, while the Star Tribune of Minneapolis won the breaking news award for its reporting following the police killing of George Floyd.The Associated Press won two awards, sweeping the photography category, and the Pulitzer Prize Board awarded a special citation to the teen who filmed George’s killing, Darnella Frazier.There have been few years in journalism like 2020, when nearly everything that happened was touched by COVID-19.The announcement of the prizes itself was originally scheduled for April 19 but the Pulitzer board postponed it until June to give its 18 members a chance to debate the entries in person, instead of remotely.This was the second such ceremony to be pushed back amid the pandemic. Last year’s announcement was pushed back two weeks to give board members busy covering the pandemic more time to evaluate the finalists.The Pulitzer Prizes in journalism were first awarded in 1917 and are considered the field’s most prestigious honor in the United States.The awards luncheon traditionally held at Columbia University in May also was postponed.
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The legislature in the western U.S. state of Oregon Thursday voted 59-1 to remove a Republican lawmaker from office for his role in allowing right-wing protesters to breach the capitol during a demonstration against COVID-19 lockdowns in December.On the floor of the state House of Representatives late Thursday, Republicans voted with the majority Democrats to remove Representative Mike Nearman, with the unapologetic Nearman the only dissenting vote. He is the first legislator expelled from office in the state’s 162-year history.A special bipartisan committee appointed by Democratic House Speaker Tina Kotek to consider the expulsion had also voted earlier in the day for Nearman’s removal and sent the measure the full House for consideration.  Oregon State Police investigating the breach of the state capitol identified Nearman from a security video in which he can be seen leaving the capitol through a locked door near where protesters had gathered, allowing them to enter. The capitol was among the public buildings closed by the COVID-19 pandemic.Calls for Nearman’s resignation – many from his own party – began about a week ago after a second video surfaced showing Nearman advising potential protesters on how to get into the capitol and giving them his phone number.  In comments to Oregon media after the vote, Speaker Kotek said expelling Nearman “was the only reasonable path forward.”  She said, “The facts are clear that Mr. Nearman unapologetically coordinated and planned a breach of the Oregon State Capitol. His actions were blatant and deliberate, and he has shown no remorse for jeopardizing the safety of every person in the capitol that day.”Nearman, who argued he was only letting the public into a public building that should not have been closed, also faces two misdemeanor criminal charges and has said he will seek a trial by jury.
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On Thursday, before the opening Friday of the G-7 Summit in Britain, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced that the group is set to donate a billion COVID-19 vaccine doses to low- and middle-income countries.Johnson’s announcement came after U.S. President Joe Biden said earlier in the day that his administration is donating 500 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine, half of the G-7 vaccine trove.”We’re going to help lead the world out of this pandemic working alongside our global partners,” Biden said.Britain will donate 100 million shots.“As a result of the success of the U.K.’s vaccine program, we are now in a position to share some of our surplus doses with those who need them,” Johnson said. “In doing so, we will take a massive step towards beating this pandemic for good.”The U.S. shots will begin shipment in August “as quickly as they roll off the manufacturing line,” Biden said in Cornwall on Thursday, adding that 200 million doses will be delivered by the end of this year and 300 million in the first half of 2022.Biden said the donation will be made with no strings attached.“Our vaccine donations don’t include pressure for favors or potential concessions. We’re doing this to save lives, to end this pandemic,” he said.Albert Bourla, CEO of Pfizer, joined Biden for the announcement.“We are testing our vaccines response to newly arising variants,” Bourla said, noting that so far not a single variant has escaped the protection provided by the vaccine.With the pledge, the U.S. also aims to liberate itself from the uncomfortable reputation of being a vaccine hoarder.The move is a signal that the U.S. “isn’t as intensely parochial and inward focused,” said Leslie Vinjamuri, director of the U.S. and Americas program at Chatham House. That has been a deep concern globally, said Vinjamuri, during former President Donald Trump’s administration as well as in the early months of the Biden administration, when Washington was not sharing doses despite a massive oversupply.COVAXThe doses, delivered by the U.S. through COVAX, the United Nations vaccine-sharing mechanism, are in addition to the 80 million already committed by the U.S. to be delivered by the end of June. In addition, the U.S. has given $2 billion to COVAX.The U.S. initially pledged an additional $2 billion for COVAX but is now redirecting the money to help pay for the 500 million donated doses, which has an estimated cost of $3.5 billion.Humanitarian organizations applauded the move.Tom Hart, acting CEO at The ONE Campaign, an organization that works to end poverty and preventable diseases, said in a statement, “This action sends an incredibly powerful message about America’s commitment to helping the world fight this pandemic and the immense power of U.S. global leadership.”However, it is unclear just how much G-7 countries can help. The member countries are at different stages of vaccinating their own populations. Japan and Canada, which have vaccination rates of under 10%, are not in a position to be as generous.Aside from donating vaccines, the G-7 is also under pressure to waive vaccine patents. The U.S. has supported waiving intellectual property rights on vaccines, the so-called TRIPS waiver at the World Trade Organization. The European Union, however, is pushing for a different proposal, compulsory licensing to scale up vaccine production.White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told VOA that the different approaches will not be a point of contention at the G-7.“I anticipate convergence, because we’re all converging around the idea that we need to boost vaccine supply in a number of ways,” said Sullivan.The Biden administration knows that Europe will likely hold firm on not supporting the waiver, said Vinjamuri of Chatham House, adding that getting all members of the WTO to agree on a waiver is a long and challenging process, and it’s simply easier to donate vaccines rather than allow countries to produce them without fear of being sued.White House press secretary Jen Psaki told VOA the U.S. will continue WTO negotiations but would not provide details on whether Biden will put his diplomatic weight behind it at the G-7.Biden-Johnson summitPrior to his vaccine announcement, Biden met Thursday with Johnson, with whom he has had disagreements in the past. Biden had once called Johnson a clone of Trump.The leaders agreed on a new Atlantic Charter, modeled on statement made by then-British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and then-U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1941 to promote democracy and free trade, that was instrumental in shaping the world order after World War II.The 2021 Atlantic Charter underscores that, with similar values and combined strength, the two countries will work together to face the enormous challenges facing the planet – from COVID and climate change to maintaining global security.Biden, who is of Irish descent, is also concerned that Brexit could undermine the Good Friday Agreement, the 1998 deal facilitated by the United States that brought peace to Northern Ireland, which is part of the U.K.Under the Brexit deal, Northern Ireland remains party to the EU’s single market, yet is no longer part of the union, which means a customs border must be implemented. The Biden administration wants to ensure that nothing in Brexit could endanger prospects for peace.Biden’s support for the Good Friday Agreement is “rock-solid,” Sullivan told VOA.“That agreement must be protected, and any steps that imperil or undermine it will not be welcomed by the United States,” said Sullivan. He would not say whether Johnson is undermining the agreement.Despite these tensions, Biden is very committed to anchoring the G-7 in the U.S.-U.K. partnership, said Vinjamuri. “Really using America’s deep and historic relationship with Britain to affirm the values of democracy, of liberalism, of freedom.”Johnson’s government has just concluded an integrated review of its foreign policy strategy, which included a reaffirmation of the special relationship between the two allies.  
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Releases of leaked letters and secret recordings from within the Southern Baptist Convention intensified Thursday as critics sought to show top leaders were slow to address sexual abuse in the United States’ largest Protestant denomination and worried more about its reputation and donations than about victims.A former executive of the denomination’s ethics agency posted audio clips he clandestinely recorded in internal meetings to bolster claims that leaders of the SBC’s Executive Committee sought to slow or block policies responding to abuse by ministers and other church leaders, and that they tried to intimidate those seeking a more robust response.The committee members defended their actions, saying the recordings reflect the normal give-and-take of trying to develop the best policies.The timing comes less than a week before the SBC’s annual meeting, which is expected to draw its highest attendance in more than 25 years, amid tensions over abuse, race and other issues and growing calls for an independent investigation of the Executive Committee’s response.Phillip Bethancourt, a Texas pastor and former executive vice president of the denomination’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, posted the audio online in an open letter to Ronnie Floyd, president of the Executive Committee, and Mike Stone, then-chairman of the committee and now a candidate for convention president.”Southern Baptists deserve to hear you in your own words,” Bethancourt wrote.’What do I say?’One set of clips came from a meeting following a Caring Well conference on sexual abuse sponsored in 2019 by the ethics commission.In the recording, Floyd questions Russell Moore — who was president of the commission until his resignation last month — about one of the speakers, Rachael Denhollander, an attorney and prominent advocate for fellow abuse survivors.Denhollander had publicly criticized the Executive Committee for its handling of an abuse case. The denominational news agency, overseen by the Executive Committee, had reported on the case in a way that implied consent by the victim, who was then publicly vilified in social media. The agency later apologized.Floyd asks Moore in the recording: “What do I say … to the Executive Committee when Rachael’s come after them?”Moore replies, “We didn’t script anybody in terms of what they could say,” and says the best response is to “not do stupid stuff again.”In another recording, Floyd tells Moore he “wanted to preserve the base,” which Bethancourt interprets as putting a priority on maintaining funding from churches.Bethancourt also released audio from an earlier meeting showing resistance to the proposed creation of a credentials committee to investigate churches’ handling of abuse cases.In a statement Thursday, Floyd said he put his staff to work immediately after that meeting in laying the groundwork for the credentials committee before its approval by the full convention.”The convention was — and still is — divided over methods of response to sexual abuse,” he said. “However, the SBC is not divided on the priority of caring for abuse survivors and protecting the vulnerable in our churches.”He said his questioning about the Caring Well conference was to get answers he could provide to churches. “However, I apologize for any offense that may have resulted from my remarks,” he said.’Undiluted rage’Jennifer Lyell, whose case was cited in Denhollander’s criticism of the Executive Committee, disputed Floyd’s characterization, tweeting that he “was not a poor middleman” trying to get answers to others’ questions but rather “one of THEM” on the Executive Committee.”They weren’t attacked,” Lyell said. “They were exposed.”Stone told The Associated Press that as a survivor of sexual abuse himself, it’s “outrageous” to say he would block efforts to respond to such misconduct.He said his debates with Moore were over process and that he “felt that we did not have enough time to do this credentials committee properly” in 2019.Stone added that the SBC can’t dictate policies to its self-governing churches the way a hierarchical denomination can, and said a “heavy-handed” approach could prompt churches to leave the convention, with no improvement in children’s safety. He said he favored equipping and training churches to respond to abuse.The release of the recordings followed a series of leaks that have stoked debate in recent weeks among Southern Baptists, including lengthy letters Moore penned in 2020 and last month to denominational colleagues.In them he said he received “undiluted rage” from Executive Committee leaders as they debated how to respond to abuse, which Moore called a “crisis in the Southern Baptist Convention.”A 2019 investigation by the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News revealed that about 380 Southern Baptist church leaders and volunteers had faced allegations of sexual misconduct, involving several hundred victims. These and subsequent reports told of cases of offenders returning to ministry and even as victims were blamed.Those revelations galvanized efforts to do more. At its 2019 annual meeting, the SBC stated that congregations could be expelled for mishandling abuse cases and created the credentials committee to review such cases.Floyd said the Executive Committee is now talking with a “highly credible outside firm” to investigate its handling of the controversy.But two Southern Baptist pastors are preparing a competing proposal for next week’s annual meeting that would have the next SBC president create a task force to pick the investigator.Denhollander said the newly public recordings corroborate her own experiences in advocating for victims of abuse within the SBC, and that she has offered to help many times but her offers have been rejected.”Hopefully over the last two weeks, Southern Baptist messengers (voting representatives) have begun to ask very important questions,” she said. Among them is how church officials could “misreport a case of violent abuse as an affair and nobody would care? … Because they had done it in the past.”Denhollander said there will be two resolutions addressing abuse at the upcoming meeting and they are being carefully worded to take into account Southern Baptist theology and polity. And she disputed Stone’s contention that the SBC’s structure makes it difficult to take certain actions against sexual abuse.”It’s actually very easy to do in a way that is legally sound and respects Southern Baptist autonomy,” Denhollander said. 
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