U.S. President Joe Biden signed an executive order Wednesday aimed at combating controversial LGBTQI+ bills that have been introduced in state legislatures across the country. Biden’s order comes as the administration celebrated Pride Month. White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara has this report
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Month: June 2022
In Ukraine, Mines Take Lives Even After Fighting Moves on
The truck driver had the radio on, his daughter’s stuffed toy keeping him company, and was bouncing his lumbering vehicle down one of the innumerable dirt tracks in Ukraine that are vital thoroughfares in the country’s vast agricultural heartlands.
Then the right rear wheel hit a Soviet-era TM-62 anti-tank mine. The explosion blew Vadym Schvydchenko and his daughter’s toy clean out of the cabin. The truck, and his livelihood, went up in flames.
Astoundingly, the 40-year-old escaped with just minor leg and head wounds. Others haven’t been so lucky. Russia’s war in Ukraine is spreading a deadly litter of mines, bombs and other explosives. They are killing civilians, disrupting planting, complicating the rebuilding of homes and villages, and will continue taking lives and limbs long after the fighting stops.
Often, blast victims are farmers and other rural workers with little choice but to use mined roads and plow mined fields, in a country relied on for grain and other crops that feed the world.
Schvydchenko said he’ll steer clear of dirt tracks for the foreseeable future, although they’re sometimes the only route to fields and rural settlements. Mushroom-picking in the woods has also lost its appeal to him.
“I’m afraid something like this can happen again,” he said.
Ukraine is now one of the most mined countries in Europe. The east of the country, fought over with Russia-backed separatists since 2014, was contaminated by mines even before the February 24 invasion multiplied the dangers there and elsewhere.
Ukraine’s State Emergency Service said last week that 300,000 square kilometers — the size of Arizona or Italy — need to be cleared. The ongoing fighting will only expand the area.
The war’s deadly remnants will “continue to be a hidden threat for many years to come,” said Mairi Cunningham, who leads clearance efforts in Ukraine for The Halo Trust, a de=mining NGO that got $4 million in U.S. government funding in May for its work in the country.
There’s no complete government count of mine deaths since the invasion, but every week authorities have reported cases of civilians killed and wounded. Cunningham said her group has counted 52 civilian deaths and 65 injuries since February and “that’s likely underreported.” The majority were from anti-tank mines, in agricultural areas, she said.
On a mobile app called “Demining Ukraine” that officials launched last month, people can send photos, video and the geolocation of explosive objects they come across, for subsequent removal. The app got more than 2,000 tip-offs in its first week.
The track where Schvydchenko had his brush with death is still used, despite now being marked with bright red warning signs bearing a white skull and crossbones. It scythes through corn fields on the outskirts of Makariv — a once comely town west of Kyiv that bears the battle scars of Russia’s failed assault on the capital in the war’s early weeks.
Even with the Russian soldiers gone, danger lurks in the surrounding poppy meadows, fields and woodlands. Deminers found another explosive charge — undetonated — just meters away from Schvydchenko’s blown-up truck. On another track outside the nearby village of Andriivka, three people were killed in March by a mine that ripped open their minivan, spewing its cargo of food jars and tin cans now rusting in the dirt.
In a field close by, a tractor driver was wounded in May by an anti-tank mine that hurled the wreckage onto another mine, which also detonated. Halo Trust workers are now methodically scouring that site — where Russian troops dug foxholes — for any other devices.
Cunningham said the chaotic way the battle for Kyiv unfolded complicates the task of finding mines. Russian forces thrust toward the capital but were repelled by Ukrainian defenders.
“Often it was Russians held an area, put some anti-vehicle mines nearby — a few in and around their position — and then left,” she said. “It’s scattered.”
Mines are still being laid on the battlefields, now concentrated to the east and south where Russia has focused its offensive since its soldiers withdrew from around Kyiv and the north, badly bloodied.
A Ukrainian unit that buried TM-62 mines on a forest track in the eastern Donbas region this week, in holes scooped out with spades, told The Associated Press that the aim was to prevent Russian troops from advancing toward their trenches.
Russian booby-trapping has sometimes had no clear military rhyme or reason, Ukrainian officials say. In towns around Kyiv, explosive experts found devices in unpredictable places.
When Tetiana Kutsenko, 71, got back her home near Makariv that Russian troops had occupied, she found bloodstains and an apparent bullet hole on the bathroom floor and tripwires in her back yard.
The thin strands of copper wire had been rigged to explosive detonators.
“I’m afraid to go to the woods now,” she said. “Now, I’m looking down every time I take a step.”
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Witnesses to Testify How Trump Implored Pence to Upend 2020 Election
The panel of lawmakers investigating the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol last year is set Thursday to hear testimony about how former President Donald Trump pressured then-Vice President Mike Pence to thwart Congress from certifying that Democrat Joe Biden had won the presidency.
Pence was presiding over Congress as lawmakers were in the initial stages of the state-by-state count of Electoral College votes to verify Biden’s victory when about 2,000 Trump supporters stormed the Capitol to disrupt the proceeding.
Trump, in private and publicly at a rally near the White House just before Congress convened, had implored Pence to reject the electoral count from states where Biden narrowly won and send the results back to the states where Republican-controlled legislatures could order another election or submit the names of Trump electors to replace those favoring Biden.
But Pence, a Trump loyalist during their four years in the White House, refused, saying his role was limited by the Constitution to simply open the envelopes containing the Electoral College vote counts from each state.
“I had no right to overturn the election,” Pence has since said, even though his role required him to also certify his own defeat to Democrat Kamala Harris, now the U.S. vice president.
With Pence announcing ahead of time that he would not accede to Trump’s demand, some of the rioters at the Capitol chanted “Hang Mike Pence!” as they stormed past security barriers, scuffling with police and ransacking congressional offices. Some erected gallows on the National Mall in sight of the Capitol.
Republican Representative Liz Cheney, the vocally anti-Trump vice chairperson of the House of Representatives panel investigating the insurrection, said last week that Trump, watching the mayhem unfold on television from the White House, told aides he agreed with the idea that Pence should be hanged.
“Maybe our supporters have the right idea,” he allegedly said. “Mike Pence deserves it.”
Cheney also said, “President Trump believed his supporters at the Capitol … and I quote, ‘Were doing what they should be doing.’”
“This is what he told his staff as they pleaded with him to call off the mob, to instruct his supporters to leave,” Cheney said.
The committee has not indicated who might testify to having heard Trump express approval for the idea of hanging Pence, or of the actions of the rioters. More than 800 of them have been arrested on charges ranging from trespassing and vandalizing the Capitol to attacking police. Some ringleaders have been charged with seditious conspiracy.
In the nearly year and a half since the attack on the Capitol, often viewed around the world as the symbol of American democracy, Trump’s ire at Pence has become well known.
But the committee hopes to show with testimony from Greg Jacob, Pence’s counsel, and retired appellate judge Michael Luttig, a Pence adviser, how the vice president came to decide that he could not legally do what Trump wanted.
In the hour before the start of the congressional proceedings on January 6, 2021, Trump was still publicly lobbying Pence.
“I hope Mike is going to do the right thing,” Trump told a rally of thousands of his supporters before urging them to head to the Capitol. “I hope so, because if Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election.”
“He has the absolute right to do it,” Trump erroneously claimed. “We’re supposed to protect our country, support our country, support our Constitution, and protect our Constitution. States want to revote. The states got defrauded.”
Thursday’s hearing is the third laying out how the insurrection occurred and Trump’s role in it by inviting his supporters to come to Washington and “fight like hell” to keep him in office.
On Monday, the House panel showed videotaped testimony from numerous White House and political aides saying they told Trump on election night to hold off on declaring victory, advice he ignored when he declared victory in the early hours of Nov. 4, 2020.
Former Attorney General William Barr and numerous aides have told the committee that in the weeks between the election and the insurrection, they told Trump his election fraud claims were baseless and that he had lost the election.
Barr said in taped testimony aired by the committee that many of Trump’s claims of voting irregularities were “completely bogus and silly.”
“Obviously, he lost the election,” Barr said. “There was zero base of evidence sufficient to overturn the election.”
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Wildlife Crossing Will Aid California’s Mountain Lions, Other Species
An ambitious project in California will create a wildlife bridge across a busy highway, providing a safe corridor for mountain lions and other species. As Mike O’Sullivan reports from Los Angeles, the effort aims to help animals hemmed in by growing cities. Camera: Roy Kim
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John Hinckley Jr. Freed From Court Oversight After Decades
John Hinckley Jr., who shot and wounded President Ronald Reagan in 1981, was freed from court oversight Wednesday, officially concluding decades of supervision by legal and mental health professionals.
“After 41 years 2 months and 15 days, FREEDOM AT LAST!!!,” he wrote on Twitter shortly after 12 p.m.
The lifting of all restrictions had been expected since late September. U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman in Washington said he’d free Hinckley on June 15 if he continued to remain mentally stable in the community in Virginia where he has lived since 2016.
Hinckley, who was acquitted by reason of insanity, spent the decades before that in a Washington mental hospital.
Freedom for Hinckley will include giving a concert — he plays guitar and sings — in Brooklyn, New York, that’s scheduled for July. He’s already gained nearly 30,000 followers on Twitter and YouTube in recent months as the judge loosened Hinckley’s restrictions before fully lifting all of them.
But the graying 67-year-old is far from being the household name that he became after shooting and wounding the 40th U.S. president — and several others — outside a Washington hotel. Today, historians say Hinckley is at best a question on a quiz show and someone who unintentionally helped build the Reagan legend and inspire a push for stricter gun control.
“If Hinckley had succeeded in killing Reagan, then he would have been a pivotal historical figure,” H.W. Brands, a historian and Reagan biographer, wrote in an email to The Associated Press. “As it is, he is a misguided soul whom history has already forgotten.”
Impact on Reagan legacy
Barbara Perry, a professor and director of presidential studies at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, said that Hinckley “would be maybe a ‘Jeopardy’ question.”
But his impact remains tangible in Reagan’s legacy.
“For the president himself to have been so seriously wounded, and to come back from that — that actually made Ronald Reagan the legend that he became … like the movie hero that he was,” Perry said.
Friedman, the federal judge overseeing Hinckley’s case, said on June 1 that Hinckley had shown no signs of active mental illness since the mid-1980s and had exhibited no violent behavior or interest in weapons.
“I am confident that Mr. Hinckley will do well in the years remaining to him,” the judge said during the hearing this month.
He noted that lawyers for the government and Hinckley had fought for years over whether Hinckley should be given increasing amounts of freedom.
“It took us a long time to get here,” he said, adding that there was now unanimous agreement: “This is the time to let John Hinckley move on with his life, so we will.”
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EU, Egypt, Israel Agree to Export Israeli Liquified Natural Gas to Europe
Egypt, Israel and the European Union signed a gas deal Wednesday in which Egypt will export Israeli liquified natural gas to Europe via two Egyptian LNG plants.
The memorandum of understanding was inked at the East Mediterranean Gas Forum in Cairo, expanding upon gas cooperation among the three partners.
Representatives of participants at the gas forum applauded announcement of the deal. Egypt is the only country in the gas forum to have plants that can produce liquified natural gas.
Egyptian political sociologist Said Sadek told VOA that the announcement of the deal formalized cooperation among the EU, Egypt and Israel that has been going on for several months.
“This is a memo of understanding between Egypt, Israel and the EU that they will increase the gas production from Israel and Egypt, will process it and make it liquified, and export it to the EU,” Sadek said. “Already this is going on. A lot of things have been going on in the last few months in the gas field between Egypt, Israel and the EU. Now, this is just to add more.”
Sadek also said the U.S. “is currently trying to negotiate a settlement to the maritime territorial dispute between Israel and Lebanon so that the gas in the disputed sector can be used as part of the current deal with the EU.”
Al Jazeera TV reported that Russia cut exports of its natural gas to Europe on Wednesday “as a sign of displeasure at the deal signed in Cairo.”
Paul Sullivan, a Washington-based energy analyst at the Atlantic Council, told VOA that “the deal between the EU, Egypt and Israel to export LNG to the EU is one way the European Union can continue to extract itself from” what he called “over-reliance on Russian gas,” and that this “could benefit both Egypt and Israel economically and strategically.”
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi told a joint press conference with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen that the agreement signed in Cairo was part of what he called “increasing cooperation between Egypt and the EU in numerous fields,” amid a difficult global political and economic period.
Sissi also thanked Egypt’s political partners, including the EU, for helping to “mitigate the effects of increasing food prices and the current crisis that is affecting many developing countries.”
Von der Leyen said during the press conference that the EU would contribute financially and technologically to help Egypt with food production.
“These investments will support food systems in your region and elsewhere so that we can together discuss how to develop solutions and technologies … modern technologies of precision farming … new crops adapted to climate change, because it is important for us that the production of food in the region is increased and the dependency on other regions is decreased,” she said.
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Cartier and Amazon Target Knock-offs in US Lawsuits
Amazon and Cartier joined forces Wednesday in U.S. court to accuse a social media influencer of working with Chinese firms to sell knock-offs of the luxury brand’s jewelry on the e-commerce giant’s site.
The online personality used sites like Instagram to pitch Cartier jewelry such as “Love bracelets” to followers and then provided links that led to counterfeit versions on Amazon, one of two lawsuits alleged.
The influencer appeared to be a woman in Handan, China, and the merchants involved in the “counterfeiting scheme” were traced to other Chinese cities, according to court documents.
“By using social media to promote counterfeit products, bad actors undermine trust and mislead customers,” Amazon associate general counsel Kebharu Smith said in a statement.
“We don’t just want to chase them away from Amazon — we want to stop them for good,” Smith added.
The Seattle-based e-commerce giant has booted vendors targeted in the suit from its platform and teamed with Cartier to urge a federal court to make them pay damages and legal costs for hawking knock-off jewelry there from June 2020 through June 2021.
The “sophisticated campaign” sought to avoid detection by having the social media influencer pitch jewelry as being Cartier, but the vendors made no mention of the luxury brand at their shops at Amazon, the lawsuit said.
Buyers, however, were sent jewelry bearing Cartier trademarks, the companies alleged in court documents.
A second lawsuit accuses an Amazon store operating under the name “YFXF” last year of selling counterfeit Cartier goods, disguising jewelry as unbranded at the website but sending buyers knock-offs bearing the company’s trademark.
Those involved in the scheme “advertised their counterfeit products on third-party social media websites by using ‘hidden links’ to direct their followers to the counterfeit Cartier products, while disguising the products as non-branded in the listings in the Amazon Store,” the lawsuit said.
The companies said that Instagram direct messages and shared links were used to instruct social media followers about how to buy knock-offs at Amazon.
your ad hereRights Groups in Malawi Angered by Racist, Exploitative Videos
Rights groups in Malawi have urged authorities to quickly find and deport a Chinese man who was found to be making and selling exploitative videos of children. A BBC investigation found the man, Lu Ke, paid children to sing and speak Mandarin in disturbing videos that he sold online.
The BBC’s investigation found that Lu Ke was shooting hundreds of videos per day and selling them at up to $70 apiece to a Chinese website. The kids performing in the videos were paid about half a dollar each.
Lu Ke taught the children phrases in Mandarin in which they praised Chinese people, made fun of poverty, and chanted a racist epithet saying they are “a black monster” and that their “IQ is low.”
Sylvester Namiwa, executive director for the Center for Democracy and Economic Development Initiatives in Malawi, said these videos are an insult not only to Malawians but also to Black people across the globe.
“We have also extended our call to [the] Chinese embassy to make a public apology to all people of Malawi and the Black community in the world,” Namiwa said. “Failure to do so, we will be forced to mobilize Malawians to stage endless peaceful demonstrations.”
The Chinese embassy in Malawi has condemned the contents of the videos, saying it will work with the Malawian government to ensure the matter is properly addressed.
In the statement on its official social media platforms, the Chinese government further said it has noted the videos were shot in 2020 and that China has in recent years been cracking down on such unlawful online acts.
But Namiwa said the statement is distasteful.
“It is like they want to create an impression that since this thing was done in 2020, then there is no need to worry,” he said. “We are telling them if … it was filmed in 1906, we should have asked them to apologize no matter what. What we want is action, not the rhetoric.”
Comfort Mankhwazi, president of the University of Malawi Child Rights Legal Clinic under the Faculty of Law, said her organization will hold street protests next week and present a petition to the Chinese embassy in the capital Lilongwe.
“One of the things we are going to highlight is that money was made at the expense of these children’s humiliation and maybe for ignorance to what they were actually doing,” she said. “We think that it’s only fair if these children were compensated for that because in a sense, it’s them that earns that money.”
In the meantime, Mankhwazi is appealing to the governments of Malawi and China to help track down the culprit, who is believed to have left the country.
your ad hereUnder Military Rule, Violence Rises in Mali, Burkina Faso
Islamist militants launched an attack Saturday in the Seytenga commune in northern Burkina Faso, leaving at least 79 dead according to government reports.
The attack comes after months of increasing violence in both Mali and Burkina Faso, both countries currently under military rule. ACLED, the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, now puts Burkina Faso as the epicenter of the Sahel conflict.
Though violence has drastically increased in Burkina Faso, Mali too has seen an increase in violence in 2022 – particularly in the Menaka and Gao regions, where there have already been more civilians killed by Islamist groups in 2022 than in any previous year.
Abdoul Aziz Azeibou, a security consultant working in Burkina Faso, said via messaging app from Ouagadougou that these Islamist groups work across borders, and have put not just the Sahel at risk, but coastal West African countries. Benin and Togo suffered attacks by Islamist militants in April and May.
He says, if we want to fight against people who have erased borders, we have to also work in an integrated manner. If Mali takes care of itself, and Burkina Faso also tries to move forward in its own manner, as long as there is no synergy of action, the problem will just get worse.
Dan Eizenga is a research fellow at the Africa Center for Strategic Studies at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C. He says that in some way the Seytenga attack is characteristic of the violence that has plagued that region in recent years, but that the scale of civilian deaths sticks out.
“I think not only are we looking at a situation where the security situation in both countries is likely to continue to deteriorate, and possibly deteriorate at a much more rapid pace, that we can expect that these juntas will continue to make the claim that because of that deterioration they need to remain in power.”
Mali’s military government previously cited the country’s insecurity as a reason that elections could not be held in February of this year as originally promised. The army has launched a publicized military campaign against Islamists, the claims of which often conflict with local reports of the military killing civilians rather than Islamist extremists.
Mali was sanctioned by regional bloc ECOWAS over the elections delay in January, after they announced a new plan to hold elections in 2026. ECOWAS released a statement today condemning the Seytenga attack, and will be holding a meeting on the situations in Burkina Faso and Mali on July 3.
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US Places Sanctions on Men Tied to Russian Ultranationalist Group
The United States imposed sanctions Wednesday on two backers of an “ethnically motivated violent extremist group” called the Russian Imperial Movement, or RIM, one of whom visited the United States to make connections with far-right and white nationalist groups.
The U.S. Treasury Department named the two as Stanislav Shevchuk, a Europe-based representative of RIM, who traveled to the United States in 2017 seeking connections with “extremist” groups, and Alexander Zhuchkovsky, a Russia-based supporter of RIM, who has used his Russia-based social media platform to fundraise and recruit for the group.
Since 2014, Zhuchkovsky has raised more than $3.4 million to purchase weapons and military equipment for RIM and other pro-Russian fighters in the Donbas region in Ukraine and facilitated the travel of RIM fighters to the region, the Treasury said.
Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February, Zhuchkovsky has continued using his social media accounts and online payment methods to purchase military equipment and supplies for Russian fighters carrying out the invasion and fighting in the Donbas, it added.
“The Russian Imperial Movement has sought to raise and move funds using the international financial system with the intent of building a global network of violent groups that foster extremist views and subvert democratic processes,” Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Brian Nelson said in a statement.
The Treasury said it also imposed sanctions on Swede Anton Thulin for his pursuit of terrorist training even after serving his prison sentence for his 2017 attacks in Sweden, which it said showed he continues to be a terrorism threat.
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Ukrainian Orphan Finds New Home and Hope in America
Phil and Kristie Graves are a U.S.couple from Maryland and parents of three biological children and an adopted girl with special needs from Armenia. Recently, they decided to adopt a six-year-old girl with special needs from Ukraine. But that was before the Russian invasion. Anush Avetisyan has the story.
Videographer: Dmytri Shakhov
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Biden Tells Oil Refiners: Produce More Gas, Fewer Profits
President Joe Biden on Wednesday called on U.S. oil refiners to produce more gasoline and diesel, saying their profits have tripled during a time of war between Russia and Ukraine as Americans struggle with record high prices at the pump.
“The crunch that families are facing deserves immediate action,” Biden wrote in a letter to seven oil refiners. “Your companies need to work with my Administration to bring forward concrete, near-term solutions that address the crisis.”
Gas prices nationwide are averaging roughly $5 a gallon, an economic burden for many Americans and a political threat for the president’s fellow Democrats going into the midterm elections. Broader inflation began to rise last year as the U.S. economy recovered from the coronavirus pandemic, but it accelerated in recent months as energy and food prices climbed after Russia invaded Ukraine in February and disrupted global commodity markets.
The government reported on Friday that consumer prices had jumped 8.6% from a year ago, the worst increase in more than 40 years.
The letter notes that gas prices were averaging $4.25 a gallon when oil was last near the current price of $120 a barrel in March. That 75-cent difference in average gas prices in a matter of just a few months reflects both a shortage of refinery capacity and profits that “are currently at their highest levels ever recorded,” the letter states.
As Biden sees it, refineries are capitalizing on the uncertainties caused by “a time of war.” His message that corporate greed is contributing to higher prices has been controversial among many economists, yet the claim may have some resonance with voters.
Some liberal lawmakers have proposed cracking down on corporate profits amid the higher inflation. Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent, in March proposed a 95% tax on profits in excess of companies’ pre-pandemic averages.
The president has harshly criticized what he views as profiteering amid a global crisis that could potentially push Europe and other parts of the world into a recession, saying after a speech Friday that ExxonMobil “made more money than God this year.” ExxonMobil responded by saying it has already informed the administration of its planned investments to increase oil production and refining capacity.
“There is no question that [Russian President] Vladimir Putin is principally responsible for the intense financial pain the American people and their families are bearing,” Biden’s letter says. “But amid a war that has raised gasoline prices more than $1.70 per gallon, historically high refinery profit margins are worsening that pain.”
The letter says the administration is ready to “use all reasonable and appropriate Federal Government tools and emergency authorities to increase refinery capacity and output in the near term, and to ensure that every region of this country is appropriately supplied.” It notes that Biden has already released oil from the U.S. strategic reserve and increased ethanol blending standards, though neither action put a lasting downward pressure on prices.
The president is sending the letter to Marathon Petroleum, Valero Energy, ExxonMobil, Phillips 66, Chevron, BP and Shell.
He also has directed Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm to convene an emergency meeting and consult with the National Petroleum Council, a federal advisory group that is drawn from the energy sector.
Biden is asking each company to explain to Granholm any drop in refining capacity since 2020, when the pandemic began. He also wants the companies to provide “any concrete ideas that would address the immediate inventory, price, and refining capacity issues in the coming months — including transportation measures to get refined product to market.”
There may be limits on how much more capacity can be added. The U.S. Energy Information Administration on Friday released estimates that “refinery utilization will reach a monthly average level of 96% twice this summer, near the upper limits of what refiners can consistently maintain.”
The letter says that roughly 3 million barrels a day of refining capacity around the world have gone offline since the pandemic began. In the U.S., refining capacity fell by more than 800,000 barrels a day in 2020.
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Worries Aside, Poll Finds Most US Journalists Wouldn’t Choose Different Job
Journalists face harassment, fight against misinformation and are keenly aware of the industry’s financial troubles and the dim view many Americans have of them.
Despite all that, most love their jobs and wouldn’t trade it for something else.
Those were among the findings in a survey of nearly 12,000 journalists conducted by the Pew Research Center and released on Tuesday.
“To me, that’s a fascinating juxtaposition,” said Amy Mitchell, director of journalism research at Pew. “They get it. They feel the struggle. They understand the public’s feelings toward them. But they love it. They’re proud of their work.”
More than three-quarters of the journalists (77%) said that if they had the chance to do it all again, they would pursue a career in the news business. Three-quarters of journalists over age 65 say the job has a positive impact on their emotional well-being, although these numbers get smaller for those who are younger.
When asked to describe their industry in a single word, 72% of journalists surveyed pick something negative — words like “struggling,” “chaos,” “partisan,” “difficult” and “stressful,” Pew said.
And when asked for one word that journalists think the general public would use to describe the news industry, only 3% could be characterized as positive. Words like “inaccurate,” “untrustworthy,” “biased” and “partisan” were used most often.
Years of attacks from former President Donald Trump and his allies have taken a toll.
Coupled with a companion poll of American adults in general, journalists have a more positive view of the job they do than people they are reporting for.
For instance, 67% of journalists believe they’re doing a very or somewhat good job of covering the most important stories, compared to 41% of the public. Most journalists (65%) said news organizations do a good job of reporting accurately, while only 35% of the public feels this way.
Pew found that 42% of the journalists said they had been harassed or threatened over the past year, mostly online. Sixteen percent of women said they’d been sexually harassed by someone outside their organization.
More than 9 in 10 journalists said they considered made up or false information to be a significant problem for society. A third of respondents said they come across falsehoods on a regular basis, Pew said.
For all the negativity, 70% of journalists pronounce themselves very or somewhat satisfied with their jobs, Pew said. Roughly the same number of people say they’re excited about their work.
By overwhelming numbers, Pew found journalists using social media like Twitter and Facebook to promote their work and to hunt down possible sources. However, two-thirds of journalists said social media has had a very or somewhat negative impact on the profession.
“People overall don’t trust [social media] a lot,” Mitchell said, “but the vast majority are using it.”
The number of people who face harassment or come across unreliable information online may explain the apparent contradiction, she said.
Fully three-quarters of the journalists feel it’s a major problem when people with the same opinions get their news from the same organizations, while 39% of the public sees it that way, Pew said.
Pew’s findings are based on a national, online survey of 11,889 journalists conducted between February 16 and March 17, with a margin of error of plus or minus 1%.
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Study: Facebook Fails to Catch East Africa Extremist Content
A new study has found that Facebook has failed to catch Islamic State group and al-Shabab extremist content in posts aimed at East Africa as the region remains under threat from violent attacks and Kenya prepares to vote in a closely contested national election.
An Associated Press series last year, drawing on leaked documents shared by a Facebook whistleblower, showed how the platform repeatedly failed to act on sensitive content including hate speech in many places around the world.
The new and unrelated two-year study by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue found Facebook posts that openly supported IS or the Somalia-based al-Shabab — even ones carrying al-Shabab branding and calling for violence in languages including Swahili, Somali and Arabic — were allowed to be widely shared.
The report expresses particular concern with narratives linked to the extremist groups that accuse Kenyan government officials and politicians of being enemies of Muslims, who make up a significant part of the East African nation’s population. The report notes that “xenophobia toward Somali communities in Kenya has long been rife.”
The al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab has been described as the deadliest extremist group in Africa, and it has carried out high-profile attacks in recent years in Kenya far from its base in neighboring Somalia. The new study found no evidence of Facebook posts that planned specific attacks, but its authors and Kenyan experts warn that allowing even general calls to violence is a threat to the closely contested August presidential election.
Already, concerns about hate speech around the vote, both online and off, are growing.
“They chip away at that trust in democratic institutions,” report researcher Moustafa Ayad told the AP of the extremist posts.
The Institute for Strategic Dialogue found 445 public profiles, some with duplicate accounts, sharing content linked to the two extremist groups and tagging more than 17,000 other accounts. Among the narratives shared were accusations that Kenya and the United States are enemies of Islam, and among the posted content was praise by al-Shabab’s official media arm for the killing of Kenyan soldiers.
Even when Facebook took down pages, they would quickly be reconstituted under different names, Ayad said, describing serious lapses by both artificial intelligence and human moderators.
“Why are they not acting on rampant content put up by al-Shabab?” he asked. “You’d think that after 20 years of dealing with al-Qaida, they’d have a good understanding of the language they use, the symbolism.”
He said the authors have discussed their findings with Facebook and some of the accounts have been taken down. He said the authors also plan to share the findings with Kenya’s government.
Ayad said both civil society and government bodies such as Kenya’s national counterterrorism center should be aware of the problem and encourage Facebook to do more.
Asked for comment, Facebook requested a copy of the report before its publication, which was refused.
The company then responded with an emailed statement.
“We’ve already removed a number of these pages and profiles and will continue to investigate once we have access to the full findings,” Facebook wrote Tuesday, not giving any name, citing security concerns. “We don’t allow terrorist groups to use Facebook, and we remove content praising or supporting these organizations when we become aware of it. We have specialized teams — which include native Arabic, Somali and Swahili speakers — dedicated to this effort.”
Concerns about Facebook’s monitoring of content are global, say critics.
“As we have seen in India, the United States, the Philippines, Eastern Europe and elsewhere, the consequences of failing to moderate content posted by extremist groups and supporters can be deadly, and can push democracy past the brink,” the watchdog The Real Facebook Oversight Board said of the new report, adding that Kenya at the moment is a “microcosm of everything that’s wrong” with Facebook owner Meta.
“The question is, who should ask Facebook to step up and do its work?” asked Leah Kimathi, a Kenyan consultant in governance, peace and security, who suggested that government bodies, civil society and consumers all can play a role. “Facebook is a business. The least they can do is ensure that something they’re selling to us is not going to kill us.”
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Amid Rising Tension with Beijing, US Creates ‘China House’
Amid tensions in bilateral relations, the U.S. State Department is creating a new entity known as “China House” to better track what China is doing around the world.
At a just-concluded security conference in Singapore, Chinese Defense Minister Wei Fenghe said it’s up to the United States to improve bilateral relations
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin noted the “alarming” increase in unsafe and unprofessional encounters between Chinese planes and vessels and those of other countries.
The China House project reflects U.S. concern about what Secretary of State Antony Blinken described last month as Beijing’s emergence as “the most serious long-term challenge to the rules-based order.”
A State Department spokesperson declined to provide details about the status of China House, describing it as “a department-wide integrated team that will coordinate and implement our policy across issues and regions.”
“We will continue and accelerate efforts to integrate PRC expertise and resources in this new central policy coordination hub,” the spokesperson, who declined to be named, told VOA last week.
‘We are watching’
In an email to VOA Mandarin, Liu Pengyu, spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington, said, “The key for the China-U.S. relationship to walk out of the predicament is for the U.S. side to abandon its mania for zero-sum games, give up its obsession with encircling and containing China and stop undermining China-U.S. relations.
“We have noted that Secretary Blinken said in his speech that the U.S. is not looking for conflict or a new Cold War with China; it doesn’t seek to block China from its role as a major power, nor to stop China from growing its economy; and it wants to coexist peacefully with China. We are watching what the U.S. will do.”
Hu Xijin, the former editor-in-chief of the Global Times and an influential special commentator for the publication, downplayed the China House with a signed piece that boiled down to “so what?”
The new entity will track Beijing’s activities by adding 20 to 30 additional regional China “watch” officers, “a category of officials first created during the Trump administration to track Beijing’s activities around the world under the State Department’s regional bureaus,” according to an article published in Foreign Policy last September, before the China House initiative became official.
China House was officially announced on May 26 amid a U.S. ramp up in its diplomatic efforts to address growing rivalry with China.
Washington has been homing in on the small island nations in the Indo-Pacific and Asia Pacific since China launched a more aggressive diplomatic outreach in recent years.
In May, China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, completed a 10-day tour of eight nations in the South Pacific after signing a security agreement with the Solomon Islands in April.
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern urged U.S. President Joe Biden at a White House meeting on May 31 to engage more with Pacific Island states in response.
In Washington, local lore has long stated that nothing better indicates an issue’s importance than the creation of a new agency for it. Some former U.S. government officials and experts on Sino-U.S. relations say they believe that with the creation of the China House, the Biden administration is taking a stand on the future relationship with China.
Offering a perspective on that relationship is Douglas Paal, a non-resident scholar at the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
“I think the administration is trying to respond to public and internal assessments that China is our greatest challenge in the new era,” said Paal in a Skype interview with VOA Mandarin.
“And they want to show Congress, the public, that they’re effectively preparing and dealing with it by throwing resources, especially human resources, into the mix to show the world how to get the best outcome for the U.S. in its rising confrontation period of competition with China,” he added. Paal has also served as director of the American Institute in Taiwan, the de facto U.S. embassy there.
Zack Cooper, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, told VOA Mandarin in an email, “I think the administration is trying to show its seriousness on China.”
“I don’t think the new bureaucracies are going to make it more difficult to coordinate – they could make it easier,” said Cooper. “But it really depends on whether these teams have substantial increases in staff and resources. If so, they will more likely be an asset than an impediment, in my view.”
After the Biden administration came to power, the State Department provided Chinese translations of the administration’s policy statements, memoranda of meetings and important speeches on its website. In addition, the State Department designated staff to run its Chinese blog and write articles about all aspects of the United States.
“The obvious need for U.S. diplomacy to keep up with China’s emergence as a global power has broad bipartisan support,” Patrick Cronin, Asia-Pacific security chair at Hudson Institute, told VOA Mandarin. “The creation of China House, which represents a growing team of diplomatic professionals following China’s multi-faceted activities in all regions of the globe, will strengthen U.S. foreign policy in dealing with Chinese officials and international actors who must contend with Beijing’s policies.”
Miles Yu, a senior fellow and director of the China Center at Hudson Institute, told VOA Mandarin last September that, “This is a welcome initiative, and it is long overdue. This reflects the reality of China’s increased weight in America’s foreign policy.”
Dean Cheng, a senior research fellow from the conservative Heritage Foundation, says he thinks the U.S. needs a ring of China experts that extends beyond the State Department.
“What I would actually prefer to see if you’re going to establish a China House is a State Department that convenes a group of China experts that includes China experts from the Department of the Treasury, the Department of Commerce, OSTP (the Office of Science and Technology Policy), NASA, because China is a comprehensive power that poses a comprehensive challenge,” Cheng told VOA Mandarin.
“The State Department needs to think beyond diplomacy and summits and all that sort of thing, to also think about trade, to think about investment, to think about Chinese investment in the United States as well as Western investment in China,” he added. “It is vitally necessary to have that cross dialogue.”
Cheng says he thinks the Treasury and the Commerce departments should lead the effort in countering China.
“China is not at this point likely to go to war with the United States or even go to war leading to American intervention such as over Taiwan, but it is every day an economic competitor, financial competitor, technological competitor with the United States,” he said. “So it might do us a lot of good to have that be our leading edge in terms of how we think about countering China.”
Adrianna Zhang and Nike Ching contributed to this report.
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Allies to Discuss Ukraine’s Defense Needs
U.S. Defense Minister Lloyd Austin is leading a meeting of dozens of his counterparts from NATO member states and other parts of the world Wednesday to discuss their latest efforts to boost military aid to Ukraine in the face of the nearly four-month Russian invasion.
The talks are taking place on the sidelines of a NATO defense ministers meeting at NATO headquarters in Brussels.
A virtual meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group last month drew representatives from nearly 50 nations and pledges of new aid packages. Ukrainian officials continue to urge international partners to send more weapons, especially heavy artillery, in order to help Ukrainian forces, match up against Russia.
“The question is what do the Ukrainians need to continue the success they’ve already seen in slowing down and thwarting that Russian objective and that’ll be a major focus for the defense ministers,” a senior U.S. defense official said ahead of Wednesday’s meeting.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters Tuesday that Ukraine “should have more heavy weapons.” He said Ukraine’s forces “absolutely depend on that to be able to stand up against the brutal Russian invasion.”
‘Donbas is the key’
The talks come as Russian forces push to gain full control of the eastern industrial city of Sievierodonetsk, located in the Donbas region that Russia has declared to be its main focus of its operation in Ukraine.
“Hanging in there in Donbas is crucial,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a video message late Tuesday. “Donbas is the key to deciding who will dominate in the coming weeks.”
Russia now controls about 80% of Sievierodonetsk and has destroyed all three bridges leading out of it, Luhansk regional governor Serhiy Haidai said Tuesday.
With Russia’s destruction of bridges, Haidai acknowledged that a mass evacuation of civilians from Sievierodonetsk now is “simply not possible” because of Moscow’s relentless shelling and fighting in the city.
He said Ukrainian forces have been pushed to the outskirts of the city because of “the scorched earth method and heavy artillery the Russians are using.”
But Haidai told The Associated Press that Russian forces had not blocked off access to the city, leaving Ukraine with “an opportunity for the evacuation of the wounded, communication with the Ukrainian military and local residents.”
Population down to 12,000
About 12,000 of the city’s original population of 100,000 remain, with 500 civilians sheltering in the Azot chemical plant, which is being shelled by the Russians.
Russian Colonel-General Mikhail Mizintsev said a humanitarian corridor will be opened Wednesday to evacuate civilians from the chemical plant, but that they will be taken to the town of Svatovo, which is under control of Russian and separatist forces.
Slowly, but relentlessly, Russia appears to be gaining the upper hand in the fight for control of the Donbas region, which encompasses the Luhansk and Donetsk provinces of Ukraine that Russia recognizes as independent states.
Russia seized Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014, and Kyiv’s forces have been fighting pro-Russian separatists in the Donbas region since then.
Some material in this report came from Reuters, The Associated Press, and Agence France-Presse.
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UK Cancels First Flight to Deport Asylum Seekers to Rwanda
Britain has canceled its first deportation flight to Rwanda after a last-minute intervention by the European Court of Human Rights, which decided there was “a real risk of irreversible harm” to the asylum-seekers involved.
The flight had been scheduled to leave Tuesday evening, but lawyers for the asylum-seekers launched a flurry of case-by-case appeals seeking to block the deportation of everyone on the government’s list.
Foreign Secretary Liz Truss had said earlier in the day that the plane would take off no matter how many people were on board. But after the appeals, no one remained.
The decision to scrap the Tuesday flight caps three days of frantic court challenges as immigration rights advocates and labor unions sought to stop the deportations. The leaders of the Church of England joined the opposition, calling the government’s policy “immoral.”
Earlier in the day, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson had emphatically defended the plan. “We are going to get on and deliver” the plan, Johnson declared, arguing that the move was a legitimate way to protect lives and thwart the criminal gangs that smuggle migrants across the English Channel in small boats.
The prime minister announced an agreement with Rwanda in April in which people who entered Britain illegally would be deported to the East African country. In exchange for accepting them, Rwanda would receive millions of pounds (dollars) in development aid. The deportees would be allowed to apply for asylum in Rwanda, not Britain.
Opponents have argued that it is illegal and inhumane to send people thousands of miles to a country they don’t want to live in. Britain in recent years has seen an illegal influx of migrants from such places as Syria, Afghanistan, Iran, Sudan, Iraq and Yemen.
Activists have denounced the policy as an attack on the rights of refugees that most countries have recognized since the end of World War II.
Politicians in Denmark and Austria are considering similar proposals. Australia has operated an asylum-processing center in the Pacific Island nation of Nauru since 2012.
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Biden’s Mideast Trip Includes Direct Israel-Saudi Arabia Flight
Joe Biden plans to visit the Middle East in July, with stops in Israel, the West Bank and Saudi Arabia. It will be the first time an American president flies directly from Israel to an Arab state that doesn’t recognize the country. White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara reports.
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Thousands Flee as Jihadist Attacks Resume in Mozambique
At least seven people have died in recent jihadi-related violence in northern Mozambique, local sources said Tuesday, as the United Nations said 10,000 people had fled their homes.
Attacks occurred in gas-rich Cabo Delgado province, where jihadis launched a bloody insurgency in 2017, sparking a regional military mission last year that had restored a sense of security.
Four people were beheaded in the remote village of Natupile, terrified residents who fled the area told AFP.
“People from Natupile took photos, so we know it happened,” Antonio Kalimuka told AFP by telephone.
“I’ve already left with my family, but I haven’t harvested my fields yet. I’ll have to come back once it’s safe.”
Suspected jihadis last Wednesday killed two workers at an Australian-owned graphite mine, Triton Minerals, the company said.
“Two of our security/caretaker staff were fatally injured,” it said in a statement.
The following day, southern African regional military forces staged an attack on insurgents in a forest in Macomia district north of Pemba, the provincial capital.
“During the joint operation, terrorists were killed and other suffered severe injuries,” the mission said in a statement.
The military forces suffered one death and six injuries, it added.
The United Nations meanwhile estimated that 10,000 people had fled their homes over the last week.
The total number of displaced varies from month to month, but in May it was estimated at more than 730,000 by the U.N. refugee agency.
The United States on Tuesday announced aid worth $29.5 million for Mozambique through the U.N.’s World Food Program as diplomat Victoria Nuland visited the country.
“Displaced people were witness to killings, beheadings, rape, houses being burned, and abductions, and reported the kidnapping of several boys,” British charity Save the Children said in a statement.
More than 80% of those forced to flee their homes are women and children, it added.
More than 4,000 people have been killed in Mozambique since 2017, according to the conflict watchdog ACLED.
Some 3,100 troops from several African countries deployed in Cabo Delgado last June and retook control over much of the territory.
Diplomatic and humanitarian officials say the insurgents have since split into three groups.
One of them staged several attacks this month in Macomia, forcing aid groups to limit their operations.
The unrest has forced a halt to a $20-billion gas project by France’s TotalEnergies, an investment that had symbolized Mozambique’s dreams of using its mineral wealth to lift the nation from poverty.
your ad hereIn a Boost, McConnell Backs Senate Bipartisan Gun Deal
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell announced his support Tuesday for his chamber’s emerging bipartisan gun agreement, boosting momentum for modest but notable election-year action by Congress on an issue that’s deadlocked lawmakers for three decades.
The Kentucky Republican said he hoped an outline of the accord, released Sunday by 10 Democrats and 10 Republicans, would be translated into legislation and enacted. McConnell’s backing was the latest indication that last month’s gun massacres in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas, had reconfigured the political calculations for some in the GOP after years of steadfastly opposing even incremental tightening of firearms curbs.
“If this framework becomes the actual piece of legislation, it’s a step forward, a step forward on a bipartisan basis,” McConnell told reporters. He said the proposal “further demonstrates to the American people” that lawmakers can work together on significant issues “to make progress for the country.”
McConnell’s comments were striking, coming five months before midterm elections in which Republicans hope to win control of the Senate and seem likely to win a majority in the House. For years, GOP candidates could risk their careers by defying the views of the party’s loyal gun-owning and rural voters, who oppose moves seen as threatening their ownership and use of firearms.
McConnell seemed to suggest that backing this gun measure wouldn’t doom some Republicans’ prospects in November. While he said senators should take a position “based upon the views of their states,” he said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, a chief architect of the deal, presented GOP polling data at a closed-door senators’ lunch saying support among gun owners for the agreement’s provisions is “off the charts, overwhelming.”
The plan would for the first time make the juvenile records of gun buyers under age 21 part of required background checks. Money would be sent to states for mental health and school security programs and for incentives to enforce local “red flag” laws that let authorities win court approval to temporarily remove guns from people considered dangerous.
Senators and aides hope to translate their broad agreement into legislation in days, in hopes that Congress could approve it before leaving for its July 4 recess. Both sides acknowledge that is a difficult process that could encounter disputes and delays.
Some Republicans expressed unhappiness with the plan Tuesday, with much of the criticism aimed at its encouragement of “red flag” laws. Nineteen states mostly dominated by Democrats and the District of Columbia have them, but Republicans have blocked efforts in Congress to pass federal legislation on the subject.
“If we’re not going to pass a federal red flag law, and we shouldn’t, why would we incentivize states to do something that we think is a bad idea?” said Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D.
A final agreement on overall legislation would be expected to receive solid support from Democrats. But it would need at least 10 GOP votes to reach the Senate’s usual 60 vote threshold, and McConnell’s praise raised hopes that Republican backing would grow even beyond that.
Approval seems likely by the Democratic-run House, where Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has praised the measure as a first step toward strong restrictions in the future.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said he would schedule votes on the legislation as soon as it is ready. He contrasted recent days’ progress with Congress’ failure to act after a parade of mass shootings in recent decades.
“After Uvalde and Buffalo, perhaps this time could be different. To many senators on both sides, this debate certainly feels different,” Schumer said.
Congress’ last major gun measure was an assault weapons ban that took effect in 1994 but expired 10 years later.
your ad hereFDA Advisers Back Moderna’s COVID-19 Vaccine for Older Kids
A government advisory panel Tuesday endorsed a second brand of COVID-19 vaccine for school-age children and teens.
The Food and Drug Administration’s outside experts voted unanimously that Moderna’s vaccine is safe and effective enough to give to kids ages 6 to 17. If the FDA agrees, it would become the second option for those children, joining Pfizer’s vaccine.
The same FDA expert panel will meet Wednesday to consider tot-sized shots from Moderna and Pfizer for the littlest kids, those under 5.
Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine has long been available for adults in the U.S. and elsewhere, and more than three dozen countries offer it to older children. If the FDA authorizes Moderna’s vaccine for teens and younger children, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will next decide whether to formally recommend the shots.
The Massachusetts company is seeking clearance for two doses and plans to later offer a booster. Tuesday’s vote was only for two doses — full-strength for 12-17 and half-sized doses for those 6-11.
“The data do support that the benefits outweigh the risks for both of these doses, in both of these age groups,” said the CDC’s Dr. Melinda Wharton, a member of the panel.
“I believe that this will provide families an important option” and may be particularly important for families who live in areas where coronavirus spread is increasing, said another panel member, Dr. Ofer Levy of Boston Children’s Hospital.
The FDA held up Moderna’s teen vaccine for months while it investigated a rare side effect, heart inflammation. That’s mostly a risk for teen boys and young men, and also can occur with the Pfizer vaccine. Moderna got extra scrutiny because its shots are a far higher dose.
In their review, FDA scientists said there were no confirmed cases of heart inflammation in Moderna’s kid studies. But experts say the studies may have had too few participants for a rare side effect like that to appear.
“That clearly needs to be watched closely going forward as we expand the use of the vaccine,” said Dr. Mark Sawyer, a panel member from the University of California, San Diego’s medical school.
As for other side effects, FDA officials said nothing worrisome was reported — mainly sore arms, headache and fatigue.
The FDA analysis concluded that two doses of Moderna are effective in preventing symptomatic COVID-19 illness in teens and younger kids, with the levels of virus-fighting antibodies comparable to those developed in young adults.
Vaccine effectiveness was estimated at 93% for the teens, and 77% for the younger children, according to the FDA analysis. However, the research was done when earlier versions of the coronavirus were causing most U.S. infections, before more contagious versions emerged. It’s also based on a limited number of COVID-19 cases, making the estimates a bit rough.
A booster shot was added to the studies, and data is expected in about the next month, Moderna officials said. Booster shots are now recommended for children vaccinated with Pfizer’s shots, as well as for all adults.
How much demand there will be for even two Moderna shots isn’t clear. Teens became eligible a year ago for Pfizer’s vaccine, which uses the same technology, and only 60% have gotten two doses. Shots for younger kids started in November; about 29% have been fully vaccinated, according to the CDC.
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China Wins Battle of Perception Among Young Africans
If it’s a battle for hearts, minds – and wallets – then according to young Africans, China is outperforming the U.S. these days.
A new survey by Johannesburg-based think tank The Ichikowitz Family Foundation, found this week that the vast majority of African youth see China as the most influential foreign player on the continent.
By contrast, U.S. influence has dropped by 12% since 2020, according to the survey of more than 4,500 Africans 18 to 24 years old and living in 15 countries across Africa.
Seventy-seven percent of young Africans said China was the “foreign actor” with the greatest impact on the continent, while giving the U.S. an influence rating of just 67%. In a follow-up question on whether that influence was positive or negative, 76% said China’s was positive, while 72% said the same of the U.S.
The top reasons those surveyed say China’s influence is positive: affordable Chinese products, Beijing’s investments in infrastructure development on the continent and China’s creation of job opportunities in African countries.
“In the first edition of the pan-African youth survey we asked young Africans which country they believed had the biggest influence on the continent and at that point it was without any doubt the United States,” said Ivor Ichikowitz, who heads the foundation that carried out the research.
“This year, two years later, post-COVID, the picture is completely different … the most influential country in Africa at the moment is China.”
Ichikowitz told VOA there are a few reasons for this change.
“(Former President) Donald Trump resonated with African youth. He was seen as a powerful, charismatic leader … and as a consequence the United States topped the list of most influential countries in Africa,” he explained.
But mostly, he said, it’s down to investment.
“Young Africans are telling us that they are seeing tangible, visible and very impactful signs of the role that China has played in the development of Africa,” Ichikowitz said.
“Albeit that there is significant criticism of Chinese investment in Africa, it’s very difficult for African governments not to value China because China is providing capital, providing expertise, providing markets at a time when Europe and the United States are not,” he added.
The African Union Commission reported more than 40% of the world’s youth is expected to reside in Africa in the next decade. The fact that China is helping to create a middle class on the continent means they will also help create one of the biggest consumer populations in the world, Ichikowtiz said.
However, the study also found some young Africans concerned over whether they are reaping enough of the benefits from China’s exploitation of their mineral wealth and natural resources.
Twenty-four percent of those interviewed said Chinese investments in their countries were a form of “economic colonialism,” with 36% of those surveyed saying the Chinese are exporting African resources without fair compensation. Yet other interviewees — 21% — said the Chinese showed a lack of respect for African values and traditions.
Among the countries surveyed was South Africa.
Woniso, a 23-year-old medical student at a busy sidewalk café in Johannesburg, told VOA she understood why China had come out on top. Chinese investment in Africa was significant, she noted.
However, she had some concerns about Chinese human rights abuses in Xinjiang and said she preferred Western-style democracy.
“Socially I’d probably put them (China) last because of like all the social injustices happening against the Muslim community,” said the student, who didn’t wish to give her last name.
Young South Africans, she said, are also “a very liberal sort of generation” and liked “the U.S. in terms of their liberal nature of doing things.”
However, when it comes to a Western style democracy, only 39% of the youth surveyed said it should be emulated. While the survey found African youth favoring democracy, more than half of those interviewed said a Western type of democracy “is not suitable” and African countries need a style of governance that fits them.
Chatting to a friend outside a mall a short distance away, Thandazani Nyathi, a businessman in his 30s, said he didn’t have a preference between the U.S. and China.
“They’re both looking to profit. I guess I would lean towards the country that wants to profit but on the most equitable terms,” he said.
“Which one am I particularly in favor of? The one that doesn’t come screw us,” he added, roaring with laughter.
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US Open Will Allow Russian, Belarusian Tennis Players
Citing “concern about holding individual athletes accountable for the actions and decisions of their governments,” the U.S. Tennis Association will let Russian and Belarusian tennis players participate in the U.S. Open later this summer.
Wimbledon will still maintain the ban on those athletes, which will include the world’s No. 1 player, Daniil Medvedev. Medvedev is the defending U.S. Open champion.
Wimbledon starts June 27 in England. The U.S. Open starts August 29 in New York.
Players from Russia and Belarus will participate under a neutral flag.
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, Russian athletes have been banned from competing in a variety of sports, including soccer’s World Cup qualifying playoffs.
Some information in this report comes from The Associated Press and Reuters.
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The ‘Rez Accent’: Native Americans Are Making English Their Own
In 1960, linguists predicted that compulsory education, mass media, foreign immigration and the “mobility of restless Americans” would ultimately standardize English, and in only a few generations, regional accents would disappear.
Today, some scholars such as University of Pennsylvania sociolinguist William Labov note that while some accents are fading, others are growing stronger.
One example, according to Kalina Newmark, is Native American English, more commonly referred to as the “rez accent,” found among many Indigenous communities in the United States and Canada. Rez is the shortened word for reservation.
Newmark, who is Dene and Metis from the Sahtu region of Canada’s Northwest Territories, attended Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, a school well-known for its diverse, Indigenous student body.
“I’m a Dene person, but I don’t speak Slavey, my heritage language,” she said. “My mom can understand and speak it, but she didn’t pass it on to us. She learned it from her great-grandmother. My grandmother chose not to pass along the language because she wanted to make it easier for her children when they went to school.”
At Dartmouth, Newmark met Indigenous students from across North America and noticed an interesting phenomenon: Despite their different linguistic backgrounds, their English shared some distinctive features, especially when gathering socially. She found this was the case even with students who had never learned their heritage languages.
When assigned a project studying a non-English language, she and fellow Dartmouth student Nacole Walker, a Lakota from the Standing Rock Reservation in North and South Dakota, decided to investigate the rez accent, which had never been studied before.
“There are other kind of studies around different groups, like African-American vernacular English or Chicano English, where linguists have noted similarities. We knew something unique was happening [with indigenous English] and wanted to narrow it down,” Walker said.
The Dartmouth team interviewed and recorded conversations with 75 people from tribes and Nations across North America. Their findings, “The Rez Accent Knows No Borders: Native American Ethnic Identity Expressed Through English Prosody,” appeared in the journal Language in Society in September 2016.
They found that Native American and Canadian First Nations communities speak different English dialects, but many share similar patterns of pitch, rhythm and intonation — features that linguists call prosody, the “music” of language. Even students who did not use the rez accent were familiar with it.
“The most important feature we found is the ‘contour pitch accent,’” said Dartmouth sociolinguist James Stanford, who mentored their study. “We called it the ‘Thomas’ feature.”
It refers to the character Thomas Builds-the-Fire, played by actor Evan Adams in the groundbreaking 1998 film Smoke Signals, the first commercial feature film to be written, directed and acted by Indigenous people. Thomas, an incessant storyteller living on the Coeur D’Alene Indian Reservation in Idaho, speaks in an exaggerated rez accent. His intonation rises and falls melodiously (see a clip from the film, below).
“Another feature [that] study participants identified as ethnically distinctive had to do with what we call mid- or high-rise terminals,” said Stanford.
In standard English, Stanford explained, speakers’ voices tend to drop in pitch at the end of a sentence. Many Indigenous speakers — like the character Thomas — end their sentences on a middle or high pitch.
“One other important feature that we noted was syllable timing — or rhythm,” Stanford said. “Each syllable takes up the same amount of time.”
These prosodic features can be heard in the three YouTube videos below.
‘Whispers’ of the ancestors
Though she doesn’t discredit the influence of individual heritage accents, Newmark believes the rez accent is rooted in intertribal contact that took place during the reservation era of the 1880s, when Native and First Nations children from diverse language backgrounds were forced into residential schools, or during the relocation era of the 1950s and 1960s, when the U.S. sought to move Native Americans to cities and terminate reservations.
Coming together in schools or urban communities, Native Americans were compelled to interact with one another in English.
“They were all learning English together,” said Newmark, “and making an English of their own.”
“What we are seeing is adaptation — and Native Americans have been specialists at adaptation forever,” said Twyla Baker, a citizen of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation (MHRA) and president of Nueta Hidatsa Sahnish College on the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota.
She pointed out that before contact with Europeans, tribes did not live in vacuums.
“We traveled. We engaged in trade. We intermarried. We built political alliances with other tribes,” Baker told VOA. “The ability to learn other languages was crucial, and it wasn’t uncommon for folks to speak four or five languages, as many Europeans do today.”
She is aware that some people, Native and non-, poke fun at the rez accent, or dismiss it as “improper English.”
“One of my big goals as an educator is to knock down this idea, which was imposed upon us that we should be ashamed of who we are, where we came from, how we speak English and how we present ourselves in a very Westernized society,” Baker said. “I would love for our young people to feel that they are accepted not just in the spaces that they occupy in Indian Country, but when they step off the reservation.”
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