U.S. President Joe Biden is back in Washington after meeting on Saturday with Arab leaders in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where he laid out his vision for U.S. engagement in the Middle East to counter Iran and reasserted influence in the strategic competition against China and Russia. White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara traveled with the president, here’s her report from Jeddah.
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Month: July 2022
UN: Flooding Kills 12 People in Sudan’s Darfur Regions
Flash floods triggered by seasonal torrential rains in Sudan’s western Darfur region killed at least 12 people, including children, the U.N. and an aid group said Sunday.
Heavy rains started late Friday in the Kass locality in South Darfur province, according to the the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or OCHA.
Citing Sudan’s Humanitarian Aid Commission, OCHA said around 540 people were affected by the flooding, which also destroyed or damaged more than 100 houses in an area inhabited by displaced people.
Toby Harward, a coordinator with the U.N. refugee agency, reported the deaths. He posted footage on Twitter showing flooded areas and homes. He said the UNHCR and its partners were working to provide humanitarian aid to affected communities.
The General Coordination for Refugees and Displaced in Darfur, a local NGO, said the dead included a pregnant woman and two boys ages 2 and 8.
According to OCHA, at least 9,336 people have been affected by heavy rains and flooding the provinces of South Kordofan, South Darfur, White Nile and Kassala since the beginning of the rainy season in June.
Sudan’s rainy season usually lasts to September. Last year, flooding and heavy rains killed more than 80 people and inundated tens of thousands of houses across the country.
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Holocaust Survivors Mark 80 Years Since Mass Paris Roundup
Family by family, house by house, French police rounded up 13,000 people on two terrifying days in July 1942, dispatching them to Nazi death camps simply because they were Jewish. Eighty years later, France is honoring the victims, and trying to keep their memory alive.
For the dwindling number of survivors of France’s wartime crimes, commemoration ceremonies Sunday are especially important. At a time of rising antisemitism and far-right discourse sugarcoating France’s role in the Holocaust, they worry that history’s lessons are being forgotten.
A week of ceremonies marking 80 years since the Vel d’Hiv police roundup on July 16-17, 1942, culminates Sunday with an event led by President Emmanuel Macron.
The raids were among the most shameful acts undertaken by France during World War II, and among the darkest moments in its history.
Over those two days, police herded 13,152 people — including 4,115 children — into the Winter Velodrome of Paris, known as the Vel d’Hiv, before they were sent on to Nazi camps. It was the biggest such roundup in western Europe. The children were separated from their families; very few survived.
In public testimonies over the past week, survivor Rachel Jedinak described a middle-of-the-night knock on the door and being marched through the streets of Paris and herded into the velodrome, in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower.
She recalled her desperate mother shouting at police. Some neighbors informed on Jews; others wept as they watched them corralled like livestock.
Chantal Blaszka’s aunts and uncle were among the children rounded up: 6-year-old Simon, 9-year-old Berthe, 15-year-old Suzanne. Their names are now engraved on a monument in a garden where the velodrome once stood, along with some 4,000 other children targeted in the raids. Photos of the children hang from tree trunks, the result of years of painstaking research to identify and honor the long-anonymous victims.
Of the children deported from the Vel d’Hiv 80 years ago, only six survived.
“Can you imagine?” Blaszka asked, pointing at the names and shaking her head. “Can you imagine?”
Serge Klarsfeld, a renowned Nazi hunter whose father was deported to Auschwitz, spoke Saturday in the garden, calling it an “earth-shaking testimony to the horrors lived by Jewish families.”
He stressed the urgency of passing on living memory. “The youngest of us are in our 80s,” he said of the children of deportees.
The father of Micheline Tinader was among the 76,000 Jews deported from France under the collaborationist Vichy government. As a child, Tinader herself had to hide from Nazis.
She took part in a commemoration ceremony this week at the Shoah Memorial in the Paris suburb of Drancy and is part of an association based at the site that organizes educational trips to Auschwitz.
Drancy held a transit center that was central to French Jews’ deadly journey to Nazi camps. Some 63,000 people were held over the course of the war.
The Drancy Shoah memorial actively documents the Holocaust, especially for younger generations. This work is especially important at a time when Jewish communities are increasingly worried about rising antisemitism in Europe. France’s Interior Ministry has reported a rise in antisemitic acts in France over recent years and said that while racist and anti-religious acts overall are increasing, Jews are disproportionately targeted.
Anxiety has worsened for some since the far-right National Rally party made a surprising electoral breakthrough last month, winning a record 89 seats in France’s National Assembly.
Party co-founder Jean-Marie Le Pen has been convicted of racism and downplaying the Holocaust. His daughter Marine, who now leads the party, has distanced herself from her father’s positions, but the party’s past still raises concerns for many Jews.
During the campaign for this year’s French presidential election, far-right candidate and pundit Eric Zemmour propagated the false claim that Adolf Hitler’s Vichy collaborators safeguarded France’s Jews.
It took France’s leadership 50 years after World War II to officially acknowledge the state’s involvement in the Holocaust, when then-President Jacques Chirac apologized for the French authorities’ role in the Vel d’Hiv raids.
On Sunday, Macron is visiting a site in Pithiviers south of Paris where police sent families after the Vel d’Hiv roundup, before sending them on to camps.
“The policy, from 1942 onward, was to organize the murder of the Jews of Europe and therefore to organize the deportation of the Jews of France,” said Jacques Fredj, director of the Paris Shoah Memorial.
“Most of the time, the decisions were made by the Nazis and implemented by the French administration,” he said. “But the management was French. [French] Gendarmes or policemen were managing and supervising.”
your ad hereSudan Troops Deploy Ahead of Pro-Democracy Protests
Sudanese police and soldiers deployed in large numbers Sunday across the capital Khartoum, ahead of mass protests planned by pro-democracy groups against coup leader General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan.
Security forces erected roadblocks on bridges crossing the Nile river linking Khartoum to its suburbs, AFP reporters said.
Undeterred, protesters vowed to take to the streets in large numbers following a period of relative calm over the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha which ended early last week.
The demonstrators oppose Burhan’s October power-grab and are also highlighting heavy fighting in Sudan’s southern Blue Nile state, about 450 kilometers south of Khartoum.
Sudan’s latest coup derailed a transition to civilian rule, sparking near-weekly protests and a crackdown by security forces that has left at least 114 killed, according to pro-democracy medics.
Nine were killed on June 30, the medics said, when tens of thousands had gathered and their deaths reinvigorated the movement.
On July 4, Burhan vowed in a surprise move to make way for a civilian government.
But the country’s main civilian umbrella group rejected the move as a “ruse”. Protesters have continued to press the army chief to resign.
They accuse the military leadership now in power and the ex-rebel leaders who signed a 2020 peace deal of exacerbating ethnic tensions for personal gain.
In Blue Nile on Sunday, witnesses reported troops deployed in the town of Al-Roseires, after at least 33 people were killed and more than 100 wounded in violence between rival ethnic groups, according to the Health Ministry.
Guerrillas in Blue Nile battled former strongman president Omar al-Bashir during Sudan’s 1983-2005 civil war, picking up weapons again in 2011.
Bashir was ousted in 2019. The following year, the transitional administration reached a peace deal with key rebel groups, including from Blue Nile as well as the war-ravaged western Darfur region.
The current violence in Blue Nile is between two local groups, the Berti and the Hausa.
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Police: Nine Killed in Separate Shootings in South Africa
Police are on the hunt for suspects after nine people were fatally shot in separate shooting incidents in two provinces of South Africa on Saturday night, police said on Sunday.
The latest slew of shootings come on the heels of an uptick in violent deaths in a country with one of the world’s highest murder rates.
Four people were shot and two more were injured at the Thembelihle informal settlement in the Gauteng province. Preliminary investigation suggests that a group of men were playing dice at a street corner, at approximately 19:30 p.m. (1730 GMT) on Saturday, when they were attacked by unknown assailants who shot at them, the authorities said in statement.
“Four people were certified dead on the scene on Saturday while two people were taken to the nearest medical care center after sustaining gunshot wounds,” the police said.
In another separate incident also at Thembelihle, in the south of Johannesburg, a 36-year-old man who appeared to have been robbed of his belongings, including a cellphone and bicycle was found shot dead, they added.
Police said that the motive for the shootings cannot be confirmed at this stage.
Meanwhile in the Western Cape Province, police have launched an investigation into the circumstances of a triple murder last night in Khayelitsha township. A fourth one was an unrelated incident, Colonel Andrê Traut said.
On Friday, eight suspects linked to the “random” separate shooting and robbery incidents of six people on Thursday night at the Alexandra township in Johannesburg were arrested, officials said.
It was not yet clear whether the suspects in the Alexandra shooting were in the same group that carried out all the killings.
Around 20,000 people are murdered in South Africa every year out of a population of about 60 million.
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Zelenskyy: Develop ‘Emotional Sovereignty’ over Disinformation
Russia launched a missile strike Sunday on the southern Ukranian city of Mykolaiv, which has been the target of several strikes in recent weeks.
The Associated Press reports that an “industrial and infrastructure facility” was the target.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in his daily address Saturday, urged Ukrainians to develop “a kind of emotional sovereignty” over the disinformation and propaganda that Russia and others have distributed in various media about Ukraine.
Zelenskyy said, “We do not depend on what the enemy constantly launches against you and me.”
He said the Ukrainian people must “have the power to consciously perceive any information, any messages, no matter who they come from … to see who needs them and for what.”
“Sometimes media weapons can do more than conventional weapons,” Zelenskyy said. “Ukrainian unity cannot be broken by lies or intimidation, fake information or conspiracy theories.”
Russian and Ukrainian forces exchanged artillery fire in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region Saturday. Earlier, Russian cruise missiles exploded across several Ukrainian cities and towns damaging residential buildings among others.
Workers cleaned the area within the central city of Dnipro, where officials reported three people were killed and 15 others were wounded in a missile strike, said Governor Valentyn Reznychenko on Telegram. Ukraine’s air force said it intercepted four additional missiles fired at the city.
In the northeast region around Ukraine’s second city of Kharkiv, Governor Oleg Synegubov said an overnight Russian missile attack killed three people in the town of Chuguiv.
In the central Ukrainian city of Vinnytsia, officials said the death toll rose to 24 from Russian strikes after a woman died of her injuries in a hospital Saturday. Ukraine said three children were among the dead.
The latest fighting comes as Russia’s defense minister directed his troops operating in Ukraine to “further intensify” their military operations. Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said the move was to prevent strikes on eastern Ukraine and other territories controlled by Russia in a statement posted on the ministry website.
The statement said Shoigu “gave the necessary instructions to further increase the actions of groups in all operational areas in order to exclude the possibility of the Kyiv regime launching massive rocket and artillery strikes on civilian infrastructure and residents of settlements in Donbas and other regions.”
In other developments, Ukraine’s atomic energy agency accused Russia of using Europe’s largest nuclear power plant to store weapons and shell the surrounding regions of Nikopol and Dnipro that were hit Saturday.
Petro Kotin, president of Ukrainian nuclear agency Energoatom, called the situation at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant “extremely tense” with up to 500 Russian soldiers controlling the plant.
The plant in southeast Ukraine has been under Russian control since the early weeks of Moscow’s invasion, though it is still operated by Ukrainian staff.
The reports came after U.S. officials unveiled photographic intelligence claiming Iran may be preparing to provide Russia with several hundred weapons-capable unmanned drones. The unmanned aerial drones could be used in the war in Ukraine.
U.S. and Ukrainian officials say U.S. rocket systems provided to Ukraine are having a large impact on the fight against Russia, helping Ukrainian forces hold off Russia’s military in the Donbas region.
It comes as thousands of people have fled the area since the start of the war in late February, with civilian areas coming under attack. Russia has denied targeting civilians in Ukraine.
U.S. President Joe Biden called Russia’s war in Ukraine, an example of “efforts to undermine the rules-based order.” Biden’s comments came during bilateral meetings with leaders in Saudi Arabia on Saturday.
Grain exports
Despite the fighting, both sides have indicated signs of progress toward an agreement to end a blockade of Ukrainian grain.
Turkey, which has been mediating the efforts, says a deal could be signed this week.
Russian Defense Ministry spokesperson Lt. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said a final document had been prepared and was set to be completed “in the nearest time” according to The Associated Press.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Wednesday there is “broad agreement” on a deal between Russia and Ukraine, with Turkey and the United Nations, to export millions of tons of Ukrainian grain stuck in silos since Russia’s invasion Feb. 24.
More than 20 million tons of Ukrainian grain are being stored in silos at the Black Sea port of Odesa, and dozens of ships have been stranded because of Russia’s blockade. Turkey said it has 20 merchant ships waiting in the region that could be quickly loaded and dispatched to world markets.
VOA National Security Correspondent Jeff Seldin contributed to this story. Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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German Climate Activists Aim to Stir Friction with Blockades
“It’s absolutely crazy to stick yourself to the road with superglue,” admits Lina Schinkoethe.
And yet, the 19-year-old recently landed in jail for doing just that, in protest at what she believes is the German government’s failure to act against climate change.
Schinkoethe is part of a group called Uprising of the Last Generation that claims the world has only a few years left to turn the wheel around and avoid catastrophic levels of global warming.
Like-minded activists elsewhere in Europe have interrupted major sporting events such as the Tour de France and the Formula One Grand Prix in Silverstone in recent weeks, while others glued themselves to the frame of a painting at London’s Royal Academy of Arts Tuesday. But Schinkoethe’s group has mainly targeted ordinary commuters in cities such as Berlin who, on any given day this summer, might find themselves in an hours-long tailback caused by a handful of activists gluing themselves to the asphalt.
Their actions have prompted outrage and threats from inconvenienced motorists. Tabloid media and some politicians have accused them of sowing chaos and harming ordinary folk just trying to go about their business. Some have branded them dangerous radicals.
Schinkoethe says the escalation in tactics is justified.
“If we wanted people to like us then we’d do something else but we’ve tried everything else,” she told The Associated Press. “We’ve asked nicely. We’ve demonstrated calmly.”
She recalls joining the Fridays for Future protests led by Swedish activist Greta Thunberg which saw hundreds of thousands of students worldwide skip school and rally for a better world.
“I really hoped something would change, that politicians would react and finally take us and the science of climate change seriously,” she said. “But we’re still heading for a world that’s 3 to 4 degrees Celsius (5.4 to 7.2 Fahrenheit) warmer.”
Such a rise in global temperatures is more than twice the 1.5-C (2.7-F) limit countries agreed to in the 2015 Paris climate accord. While progress has been made in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, experts agree the goal is still far out of reach.
Scientists agree that the world has no time to waste in cutting emissions, but have tried to counter ‘doomism’ by arguing that the world isn’t heading for one single cliff edge so much as a long, steep slope with several precipitous drops.
“Each tenth of a degree matters,” said Ricarda Winkelmann, a scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research near Berlin.
“If we really start acting now and reduce global greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050, chances are that we can limit some of the most severe climate impacts,” she said.
Such messages are lost on many of those caught up in the blockades.
At two protests witnessed by The AP in June and July, several truckers got out of their cabs to berate the activists. One physically hauled two protesters off the road.
Other drivers, some of whom weren’t affected by the blockade, also hurled abuse at the activists. A few expressed support for the climate cause but questioned the way the protests were conducted.
“They need to find a different way to do this than to block other people,” said one driver on his way to work, who would only give his name as Stefan.
Berlin’s mayor has called the street blockades “crimes,” while the city’s top security official is demanding that prosecutors and courts mete out swift convictions. So far, no cases have gone to trial.
Still, Schinkoethe believes she has no choice but to keep going.
“We need to generate friction, peaceful friction, so that there’s an honest debate and we can act accordingly,” she said.
That sentiment was echoed by Ernst Hoermann, a retired railway engineer and grandfather of eight who has been traveling to Berlin from Bavaria regularly to take part in the protests.
“We basically have to cause a nuisance until it hurts,” he said as a police officer tried to unstick him from the road with the help of cooking oil.
Similar protests have resulted in weeks-long prison sentences in Britain, where the government has sought court injunctions to preemptively stop road blockades by the group Insulate Britain.
Hoermann, 72, said he isn’t afraid of fines or the prospect of prison.
“Not compared to the fear I have for my children,” he said.
Last Generation has recently tried to focus attention on Germany’s plans to drill for oil and gas in the North Sea.
Despite having the most ambitious climate target of any major industrialized nation, Germany’s center-left government is scrambling like other European countries to replace its Russian energy imports and avoid painful fuel shortages in the coming years.
Schinkoethe says the number of people participating in the group’s actions has grown from 30 to 200 in six months, and argues that the blockades follow the tradition of civil disobedience seen during the U.S. civil rights movement and the fight for women’s suffrage.
“What we’re doing is illegal,” she said. “At the same time it’s legitimate.”
Manuel Ostermann, a senior member of one of Germany’s police unions, accused the group of committing crimes while portraying themselves as victims.
“Where the process of radicalization gets going, extremism isn’t far off,” he wrote on Twitter.
Members of Last Generation have tried to counter that, citing U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres who earlier this year said that “the truly dangerous radicals are the countries that are increasing the production of fossil fuels.”
“I’m going to keep going until the government locks me and the other activists up for their peaceful protests, or gives in to our demands,” said Schinkoethe.
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Gabon’s Marauding Forest Elephants Test Public Patience with Green Agenda
Forest elephants are smaller than their cousins on the African savannah, but in Gabon their destructive raids of farmers’ fields are having an outsized impact on support for the government and its conservation agenda.
With over 10% of its land protected in national parks, Gabon has become the main stronghold in central Africa for critically endangered forest elephants, whose relative abundance and marauding habits are undermining efforts to protect them there, authorities and scientists warn.
The long-standing conflict has become markedly more acute in the past few years – 2021 saw the most widespread anti-elephant protests so far by farmers across Gabon, according to the environment ministry.
“Some people cannot farm anymore – the elephants are eating so much of their crops,” Environment Minister Lee White told Reuters. “It has become a political issue and is eroding support for conservation and for the president (and) government.”
Just outside the capital Libreville, splintered tree-trunks, trampled undergrowth and churned-up earth mark where an elephant strolled through the forest.
When they draw close to villages, these natural bulldozers can wipe out carefully tended crops in just a few hours.
“You can see how people get mad and sometimes kill the elephants,” said guide Djakel Matotsi as he followed the elephant tracks in Pongara National Park.
Up to 50 elephants are killed per year in revenge or self-defense, while around 10 people have been killed by elephants in the past 2-1/2 years, according to the environment ministry, which says there is not enough data to quantify long-term trends.
The raids are causing food prices to rise, spurring rural exodus and driving up perceptions that the authorities prioritize elephants’ interests while doing little to support the around third of Gabonese who live in poverty, said Oliwina Boudes, head of a female farmers’ association.
“All rural communities harbor this feeling,” she told Reuters.
Need for detente
The need for a detente is clear. Gabon is home to 95,000 or 60-70% of all African forest elephants, which are facing dramatic decline elsewhere, a study published in Global Ecology and Conservation in December showed. Managing these herds while promoting rural development in Gabon is of “critical importance to the species’ persistence,” it said.
After nationwide consultations in 2021, authorities are rolling out new initiatives this year to try to strike this balance.
To address the lack of data on elephant disturbances, the ministry has launched a database and app to track and verify complaints while for the first time, the government has set aside $4.5 million in this year’s budget to compensate farmers for trashed crops.
The government is also allowing charity Space for Giants (SfG) to trial elephant-repelling electric fences around fields, customized to simplify their installation and maintenance in tropical forest conditions.
The 57 single-strand fences set up so far have repelled all interactions with elephants, SfG said in June. It plans to install 500 by year-end if it can get the funding.
Even with the fences, the government will need to do more to help farmers cope with elephants as it pursues its ‘Green Gabon’ plan for sustainable development, said John Poulsen, elephant ecologist at Duke University, who is helping SfG assess the impact of the fence trial.
He said that the government could potentially deploy agents in the field to help keep troublesome elephants away from villages and provide training so communities can deal with problem animals better themselves.
“If they have that perception that elephants are that bad … it absolutely affects their outlook and willingness to work with the government and with other conservation efforts,” he said.
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Long Lines Are Back at US Food Banks as Inflation Hits High
Long lines are back at food banks around the U.S. as working Americans overwhelmed by inflation turn to handouts to help feed their families.
With gas prices soaring along with grocery costs, many people are seeking charitable food for the first time, and more are arriving on foot.
Inflation in the U.S. is at a 40-year high and gas prices have been surging since April 2020, with the average cost nationwide briefly hitting $5 a gallon in June. Rapidly rising rents and an end to federal COVID-19 relief have also taken a financial toll.
The food banks, which had started to see some relief as people returned to work after pandemic shutdowns, are struggling to meet the latest need even as federal programs provide less food to distribute, grocery store donations wane and cash gifts don’t go nearly as far.
Tomasina John was among hundreds of families lined up in several lanes of cars that went around the block one recent day outside St. Mary’s Food Bank in Phoenix. John said her family had never visited a food bank before because her husband had easily supported her and their four children with his construction work.
“But it’s really impossible to get by now without some help,” said John, who traveled with a neighbor to share gas costs as they idled under a scorching desert sun. “The prices are way too high.”
Jesus Pascual was also in the queue.
“It’s a real struggle,” said Pascual, a janitor who estimated he spends several hundred dollars a month on groceries for him, his wife and their five children aged 11 to 19.
The same scene is repeated across the nation, where food bank workers predict a rough summer keeping ahead of demand.
The surge in food prices comes after state governments ended COVID-19 disaster declarations that temporarily allowed increased benefits under SNAP, the federal food stamp program covering some 40 million Americans .
“It does not look like it’s going to get better overnight,” said Katie Fitzgerald, president and chief operating officer for the national food bank network Feeding America. “Demand is really making the supply challenges complex.”
Charitable food distribution has remained far above amounts given away before the coronavirus pandemic, even though demand tapered off somewhat late last year.
Feeding America officials say second quarter data won’t be ready until August, but they are hearing anecdotally from food banks nationwide that demand is soaring.
The Phoenix food bank’s main distribution center doled out food packages to 4,271 families during the third week in June, a 78% increase over the 2,396 families served during the same week last year, said St. Mary’s spokesman Jerry Brown.
More than 900 families line up at the distribution center every weekday for an emergency government food box stuffed with goods such as canned beans, peanut butter and rice, said Brown. St. Mary’s adds products purchased with cash donations, as well as food provided by local supermarkets like bread, carrots and pork chops for a combined package worth about $75.
Distribution by the Alameda County Community Food Bank in Northern California has ticked up since hitting a pandemic low at the beginning of this year, increasing from 890 households served on the third Friday in January to 1,410 households on the third Friday in June, said marketing director Michael Altfest.
At the Houston Food Bank, the largest food bank in the U.S. where food distribution levels earlier in the pandemic briefly peaked at a staggering 1 million pounds a day, an average of 610,000 pounds is now being given out daily.
That’s up from about 500,000 pounds a day before the pandemic, said spokeswoman Paula Murphy said.
Murphy said cash donations have not eased, but inflation ensures they don’t go as far.
Food bank executives said the sudden surge in demand caught them off guard.
“Last year, we had expected a decrease in demand for 2022 because the economy had been doing so well,” said Michael Flood, CEO for the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank. “This issue with inflation came on pretty suddenly.”
“A lot of these are people who are working and did OK during the pandemic and maybe even saw their wages go up,” said Flood. “But they have also seen food prices go up beyond their budgets.”
The Los Angeles bank gave away about 30 million pounds of food during the first three months of this year, slightly less than the previous quarter but still far more than the 22 million pounds given away during the first quarter of 2020.
Feeding America’s Fitzgerald is calling on USDA and Congress to find a way to restore hundreds of millions of dollars worth of commodities recently lost with the end of several temporary programs to provide food to people in need. USDA commodities, which generally can represent as much as 30% of the food the banks disperse, accounted for more than 40% of all food distributed in fiscal year 2021 by the Feeding America network.
“There is a critical need for the public sector to purchase more food now,” said Fitzgerald.
During the Trump administration, USDA bought several billions of dollars in pork, apples, dairy, potatoes and other products in a program that gave most of it to food banks. The “Food Purchase & Distribution Program” designed to help American farmers harmed by tariffs and other practices of U.S. trade partners has since ended. There was $1.2 billion authorized for the 2019 fiscal year and another $1.4 billion authorized for fiscal 2020.
Another temporary USDA “Farmers to Families” program that provided emergency relief provided more than 155 million food boxes for families in need across the U.S. during the height of the pandemic before ending May 31, 2021.
A USDA spokesperson noted the agency is using $400 million from the Build Back Better initiative to establish agreements with states, territories and tribal governments t o buy food from local, regional and underserved producers that can be given to food banks, schools and other feeding programs.
For now, there’s enough food, but there might not be in the future, said Michael G. Manning, president and CEO at Greater Baton Rouge Food Bank in Louisiana. He said high fuel costs also make it far more expensive to collect and distribute food.
The USDA’s Coronavirus Food Assistance Program, which included Farmers to Families, was “a boon” for the Alameda County Community Food Bank, providing 5 billion pounds of commodities over a single year, said spokesman Altfest.
“So losing that was a big hit,” he said.
Altfest said as many as 10% of the people now seeking food are first timers, and a growing number are showing up on foot rather than in cars to save gas.
“The food they get from us is helping them save already-stretched budgets for other expenses like gas, rent, diapers and baby formula,” he said.
Meanwhile, food purchases by the bank have jumped from a monthly average of $250,000 before the pandemic to as high as $1.5 million now because of food prices. Rocketing gasoline costs forced the bank to increase its fuel budget by 66%, Altfest said.
Supply chain issues are also a problem, requiring the food bank to become more aggressive with procurement.
“We used to reorder when our inventory dropped to three weeks’ worth, now we reorder up to six weeks out,” said Altfest.
He said the food bank has already ordered and paid for whole chickens, stuffing, cranberries and other holiday feast items it will distribute for Thanksgiving, the busiest time of the year.
At the Mexican American Opportunity Foundation in Montebello east of Los Angeles, workers say they are seeing many families along with older people like Diane Martinez, who lined up one recent morning on foot.
Some of the hundreds of mostly Spanish-speaking recipients had cars parked nearby. They carried cloth bags, cardboard boxes or shoved pushcarts to pick up their food packages from the distribution site the Los Angeles bank serves.
“The prices of food are so high and they’re going up higher every day,” said Martinez, who expressed gratitude for the bags of black beans, ground beef and other groceries. “I’m so glad that they’re able to help us.”
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Russia’s Information War Expands Through Eastern Europe
As bullets and bombs fall in Ukraine, Russia is waging an expanding information war throughout Eastern Europe, researchers and officials say, using fake accounts and propaganda to spread fears about refugees and rising fuel prices while calling the West an untrustworthy ally.
In Bulgaria, the Kremlin paid journalists, political analysts and other influential citizens 2,000 euros a month to post pro-Russian content online, a senior Bulgarian official revealed this month. Researchers also have uncovered sophisticated networks of fake accounts, bots and trolls in an escalating spread of disinformation and propaganda in the country.
Similar efforts are playing out in other nations in the region as Russia looks to shift the blame for its invasion of Ukraine, the ensuing refugee crisis and rising prices for food and fuel.
For Russia’s leaders, expansive propaganda and disinformation campaigns are a highly cost-effective alternative to traditional tools of war or diplomacy, according to Graham Brookie, senior director at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, which has been tracking Russian disinformation for years.
“Stirring up these reactions is the low-hanging fruit for Russian information operations,” Brookie said. “Their state media does audience analysis better than most of the media companies in the world. Where these narratives have succeeded are countries where there is more weaponization of domestic discourse or more polarized media markets.”
Bulgaria was long counted a stalwart Russian ally, though the country of 7 million residents has turned its attention westward in recent decades, joining NATO in 2004 and the European Union three years later.
When Bulgaria, Poland and other former Warsaw Pact nations sided with their NATO allies in support of Ukraine, Russia responded with a wave of disinformation and propaganda that sought to exploit public debates over globalization and westernization.
For Poland, that took the form of anti-Western propaganda and conspiracy theories. One, spread by a Russian-allied hacking group in an apparent effort to divide Ukraine and Poland, suggested that Polish gangs were harvesting the organs of Ukrainian refugees.
Russia’s onslaught comes as Eastern European governments, like others around the world, grapple with dissatisfaction and unrest caused by rising prices for fuel and food.
Bulgaria is in a particularly vulnerable position. Pro-Western Prime Minister Kiril Petkov lost a no confidence vote last month. Concerns about the economy and fuel prices only increased when Russia cut off Bulgaria’s supply of natural gas last spring. The upheaval prompted President Rumen Radev to say his country was entering a “political, economic and social crisis.”
The government’s relationship with Moscow is another complication. Bulgaria recently expelled 70 Russian diplomatic staffers over concerns about espionage, prompting the Kremlin to threaten to end diplomatic relations with it.
The same week, Russia’s embassy in Sofia posted a fundraising appeal urging Bulgarian citizens to donate their private funds to support the Russian army and its invasion of Ukraine.
Bulgaria’s government reacted angrily to Russia’s attempt to solicit donations for its war from a NATO country.
“This is scandalous,” tweeted Bozhidar Bozhanov, who served as minister of e-government in Petkov’s Cabinet. “It is not right to use the platform to finance the aggressor.”
The embassy also has spread debunked conspiracy theories claiming the U.S. runs secret biolabs in Ukraine. Embassies have become key to Russia’s disinformation campaigns, especially since many technology companies have begun restricting Russian state media since the invasion began.
Trolls and fake and anonymous accounts remain valued parts of the arsenal. Researchers at the Disinformation Situation Center identified anonymous accounts that spread pro-Russian content, as well as online harassment directed at Bulgarians who expressed support for Ukraine.
Some of the harassment seemed coordinated, based on the speed and similarities in the attacks, concluded the researchers at the DSC, a Europe-based nonprofit organization of disinformation researchers.
“This intimidation tactic is not a new one, but the war in Ukraine has brought part of the coordination efforts into the public space,” the DSC wrote.
Reflecting the difficulty of identifying the origin of disinformation, the DSC also identified a network of three anonymous Facebook accounts pushing pro-Russian talking points that researchers concluded could part of a Russian disinformation campaign.
Facebook said Friday it would take down the accounts, which appeared to violate some of the platform’s rules relating to multiple profiles. But the platform said it found nothing to suggest the accounts were part of a disinformation network. Instead, they were operated by a single Bulgarian user who liked to repost other people’s pro-Russian content.
Indeed, after a senior Bulgarian official revealed Russia’s scheme to pay certain journalists and political pundits 2,000 euros, or 4,000 Bulgarian leva, for posting friendly content, the author scoffed at the idea of taking the money.
“Thank you, Mr. Putin, for the gesture, but I do not need 4000 leva to like Russia,” they wrote. “I like her for free.”
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Cargo Plane Crashes in Greece; Explosions Keep Firefighters Away
A cargo aircraft Antonov An-12 crashed late Saturday near Paleochori Kavalas in northern Greece, the fire brigade said.
Eyewitnesses said the aircraft was on fire and that they had heard explosions, Athens News Agency reported.
A local man, Giorgos Archontopoulos, told state broadcaster ERT television he had thought something was wrong as soon as he heard the aircraft’s engine.
“At 22:45 I was surprised by the sound of the engine of the aircraft,” he said. “I went outside and saw the engine on fire.”
Local officials said seven fire engines had been deployed to the crash site but that they could not approach because of the ongoing explosions.
According to media reports, the cargo aircraft was traveling from Serbia to Jordan and had requested clearance to make an emergency landing at nearby Kavala airport but did not manage to reach it.
State-run broadcaster ERT television reported the aircraft was operated by Ukrainian cargo operator Meridan and, according to villagers, it was in flames before it crashed.
There is no official information about the number of people on board the aircraft, which was still burning, according to live footage broadcast on state television.
But ERT said the plane was carrying eight people and that its cargo “was dangerous.” Police were asking journalists at the scene to wear masks, the report added.
“You need to go away for your safety. There is information that the aircraft was carrying ammunition,” one firefighter told reporters at the scene.
“The aircraft crashed around 2 kilometers away from an inhabited area,” Filippos Anastasiadis, mayor of the nearby town of Paggaio, told Open TV.
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Mo Farah’s Story Draws Horror, Understanding in Somalia
Many Somalis are reacting with horror — and a sense of understanding — at British runner Mo Farah’s tale of being trafficked to Britain as a child and forced to look after other children.
Olympic champion Farah was born in present-day Somaliland, a territory by the Gulf of Aden that has asserted independence from the Horn of Africa nation of Somalia. In a BBC documentary aired earlier this week Farah revealed how as a boy of 8 or 9 he was separated from his family and trafficked from neighboring Djibouti to the U.K. under a new name under which he eventually ran for glory.
Here, in the Somali capital Mogadishu, those who have heard of Farah’s account express sadness for what he went through as a child forced to work in servitude. But they also point out that he was not alone in facing exploitation.
Conflict, climate change and economic collapse are displacing record numbers of people around the world, pushing more and more migrants into the hands of criminals who profit by smuggling them into Britain, the European Union and the U.S.
Somalis, like their neighbors in Ethiopia and Eritrea, are often among the desperate — people fleeing conflict and hunger in hopes of safety and a better life. Convinced they have little to lose, the young risk their lives on flimsy boats organized by human traffickers who get them across the English Channel to Britain.
Those who can afford it pay thousands of dollars to reach countries where they hope to find jobs and security. Others fall prey to criminals who force them into sex work, drug crimes and domestic servitude.
Wealthier countries lack robust policies to respond to this complicated situation. Britain has welcomed refugees from Ukraine, for example, while proposing to deport asylum seekers from other places to Rwanda. While Prime Minister Boris Johnson says the Rwanda plan will break the business model of criminals who smuggle people across the Channel in inflatable boats, immigrant activists are suing over a plan they describe as illegal and inhumane.
Farah, who represented Britain at three Summer Olympics in 2008, 2012 and 2016, is a rare success story. Many others trying to escape poverty, hunger and violence in countries such as Somalia don’t get so lucky — the reason many activists here say efforts must be put into supporting local governments to eradicate the many reasons people wish to go.
“It is certainly sad that Mo Farah had such a bad experience as a boy,” said Ahmed Dini, who runs the Mogadishu-based children’s rights group Peace-Line. “It has become evident that there are many contributing factors to child trafficking, such as poverty, a lack of adequate education, and insufficient security.”
Farah still has family members — including his mother and two brothers — living on a farm near Hargeisa, the Somaliland capital. He said in the BBC film that his father was killed during unrest when the boy was 4.
In the documentary, produced by the BBC and Red Bull Studios, Farah said that when he left Africa, he thought he was going to Europe to live with relatives and had a piece of paper with the contact details. But the woman he ended up with tore his papers and took him to an apartment in west London where he was forced to care for her children.
Farah said his fortunes in Britain changed when he was finally allowed to attend school. A teacher who was interviewed for the documentary recalled a 12-year-old boy who appeared “unkempt and uncared for,” was “emotionally and culturally alienated” and spoke little English.
Farah eventually told his story to a physical education instructor. The teacher contacted local officials, who arranged for a Somali family to take him in as a foster child. He soon blossomed on the track.
Anti-slavery advocates say Farah is the most prominent person to come forward as a victim of modern-day slavery, a crime that is often hidden because it occurs behind closed doors and inflicts such trauma on its victims.
Now that a man of such celebrity has spoken of his experience, there can no longer be any doubt about the horror of child servitude even among ordinary Somalis who otherwise would find his account “unusual,” said Bashir Abdi, an academic based in Mogadishu.
“Children consistently face abuses, but the story this renowned athlete revealed has captured the attention of many people, including Somalis,” he said. “We often hear of child exploitations, and I believe that significant (numbers of) Somali children go through domestic violence and abuses, but little is exposed to the public.”
Amina Ali, a stay-home mother of four in Mogadishu, told The Associated Press that it was tough for her to hear the story of a 9-year-old boy “so weak and helpless forced to clean house and change the diapers of other kids.”
“As a mother, I felt sadness for him once I have listened,” she said. “Praise be to Allah that he is no longer under those circumstances. However, he is now at some point where he can reveal his story and I wish those (who) committed that abuse to be brought before justice one day.”
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Hungarians Rally Against Orban’s Reforms, Skeptical of Change
Around 1,000 Hungarians demonstrated against Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government Saturday in the latest of a series of smaller demonstrations this week since his right-wing Fidesz party passed legislation sharply raising taxes on small firms.
Nationalist Orban is facing his toughest challenge yet since taking power in a 2010 landslide, with inflation at its highest in two decades, the country’s currency, the forint, plunging to record lows and European Union funds in limbo amid a dispute over democratic standards.
The blockade of a bridge in Budapest Tuesday failed to derail the approval of a government motion to increase the tax rate for hundreds of thousands of small firms, defying criticism from some business groups and opposition parties.
On Wednesday, Orban’s government also curtailed a cap on utility prices for higher-usage households, rolling back one of the 59-year-old premier’s signature policies in recent years because of a surge in electricity and gas prices amid the war in Ukraine.
“I have an acquaintance who only heats with electricity. His monthly power bill has been 30,000 forints ($75) so far, which is not a lot, but from now on he will be paying 153,000,” said Miklos Nyiri, a 70-year-old pensioner at the rally.
“He is a pensioner, so the pension will be eaten up by the power bill, and they will be left grazing in the field,” he said, adding however that the small-scale protest was unlikely to force Orban to change tack.
Saturday’s rally was called by small-town mayor Peter Marki-Zay, Orban’s independent challenger, whose opposition alliance suffered a crushing defeat in an April parliamentary election.
The low number of participants at the rally indicated that despite lurking discontent with Orban’s latest reforms to shore up Hungary’s state finances, anti-government sentiment was struggling to gain traction even in Budapest, where the opposition had its strongest showing in April.
Ildiko Hende, 52, who works as a cleaner in a bank, also lamented the low turnout at the rally.
“I have been working for more than 30 years, but what is going on in this country right now is hell incarnate,” she said.
Despite Orban capping the prices of fuel and some basic foods, inflation has surged to its highest in two decades, at 11.7% year-on-year in June, forcing the central bank into its steepest rate tightening cycle since the collapse of Communist rule.
Even so, the forint is skirting record lows versus the euro, feeding into inflationary pressures.
“I just want to be able to live a normal life, not having to pinch pennies at the end of every month,” Hende said. “Prices are just so high that it makes you go crazy. This is really not sustainable.”
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North Macedonia Parliament OKs Deal; EU Talks Start July 19
North Macedonia has approved a French proposal that opens the way for negotiations to join the European Union and overcome Bulgarian objections.
There were 68 votes in favor of the proposal in the 120-member chamber, with the leftist coalition, which has 61 seats, getting the backing of small ethnic Albanian parties. Opposition lawmakers left the chamber in protest, abstaining from the vote.
Protesters gathered again outside Parliament, as they have done every day for 10 days, but the protest ended peacefully.
Under the proposal, announced by French President Emmanuel Macron last month, North Macedonia would commit to changing its constitution to recognize a Bulgarian minority, protect minority rights and banish hate speech, as Bulgaria, an EU member since 2007, has demanded.
The deal would also unblock the start of negotiations for neighboring Albania, another EU hopeful.
Macron had stressed that the proposal doesn’t question the official existence of a Macedonian language, but he had noted that, like all deals, it “rests on compromises and on a balance.”
But revising the constitution may prove too high a hurdle, since that requires a two-thirds majority, or 80 votes. The main opposition party, the center-right VMRO-DPMNE, and its allies, as well as a small leftist party, with 46 seats among them, have declared they will never agree to change the constitution.
Talks start July 19
Later Saturday, after a Cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Dimitar Kovacevski announced that North Macedonia will start accession talks with EU July 19.
“With this, we conclude another objectively historical step for our country. We have a negotiating framework in which the Macedonian language and identity are protected,” he said.
The country’s ruling coalition has backed the proposal as a reasonable compromise that doesn’t endanger national interests or identity, while the opposition has denounced it a national betrayal that caves into Bulgaria’s questioning North Macedonia’s history, language, identity, culture and heritage.
The French proposal has also roiled Bulgaria, where Prime Minister Kiril Petkov has accepted it. His centrist government was toppled in a no-confidence vote June 22 when allies described Petkov’s willingness to lift the veto of North Macedonia into the EU as a “national betrayal.”
Deal welcomed
EU and U.S. leaders welcomed North Macedonia’s decision to back the deal.
Charles Michel, president of the European Council, called the parliament’s vote “a crucial step for North Macedonia and the EU. Our future is together, and we welcome you with open arms.”
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said, “this decision comes at a critical moment for North Macedonia, the Western Balkans, and Europe.”
“A European Union that includes all of the Western Balkans, including Albania and North Macedonia, will be stronger and more prosperous. Now is the time to build momentum,” Blinken said in a statement.
Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama also hailed North Macedonian parliament’s decision, which also opens the way for EU talks for his country too.
“This is not the end of the road but only the beginning of a new part of the road we want Albania to be in,” he said.
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Congo-Brazzaville Ruling Party Wins Parliamentary Vote
The Republic of Congo’s ruling party won a majority in last week’s parliamentary election, based on provisional results seen by AFP on Saturday as opposition groups alleged electoral fraud.
Congolese Territorial Administration Minister Guy Georges Mbaka announced the results of the July 10 poll on national television early Friday.
His ministry subsequently allowed journalists, including an AFP correspondent, to see the provisional results on Saturday.
According to these results, the Congolese Labour Party (PCT) won 103 out of 151 assembly seats.
The PCT is the party of President Denis Sassou Nguesso, a 78-year-old former paratrooper who first came to power in the central African nation in 1979.
Smaller parties allied with the PCT won 13 seats, according to the provisional results.
“The PCT won again because it is a unifying party that has no ethnic problems,” said party representative Serge Ikiemi.
Opposition groups in the Republic of Congo, which is also known as Congo-Brazzaville, denounced the results as fraudulent.
A civil-society group called “Let’s Turn the Page” said Friday the vote was marked by “cheating, fraud and scenes of open corruption.”
Independent candidate Vivien Manangou, who was defeated by a PCT member in a bid for an assembly seat, told AFP that “the results did not come from the ballot box at all.”
The country’s leading opposition party, the Pan-African Union for Social Democracy (UPADS) won four seats, according to the provisional results. UDH-Yuki, another opposition party, won two.
Two other small opposition parties boycotted last week’s vote over fears the election would be rigged.
A run-off vote scheduled for July 24 will decide 27 unfilled assembly seats.
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Biden Ends Tour to Reassert US Influence in Middle East
U.S. President Joe Biden is heading back to Washington Saturday after meeting Arab leaders in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where he laid out his vision for U.S. engagement in the Middle East to counter Iran and reasserted influence in the strategic competition with China and Russia.
“The United States is invested in building a positive future in the region, a partnership with all of you,” Biden said in remarks at the GCC+3 Summit, a gathering of leaders from the Gulf Cooperation Council – Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates – plus Egypt, Iraq and Jordan.
“We will not walk away and leave a vacuum to be filled by China, Russia or Iran,” he said. “We will seek to build on this moment with active, principled American leadership.”
Biden laid out key principles of American engagement in the region, including strengthening partnerships and supporting defense capabilities of countries that “subscribe to the rules-based international order,” and deterring foreign and regional powers that seek to dominate through military action and jeopardize freedom of navigation.
He named Iran’s destabilizing activities in the region, Russia’s war in Ukraine, and China’s actions in the Indo-Pacific as examples of efforts to undermine the rules-based order.
Biden said Washington will also work to reduce tensions and end conflicts “wherever possible,” and support human rights and values outlined in the U.N. Charter.
“Supporting the rules-based order doesn’t mean we always have to agree on every issue,” Biden said. “But it does mean, we align around the core principles to allow us to work together on most pressing global challenges.”
Highlighting those global challenges, he announced $1 billion in food security assistance for the Middle East and North Africa. He welcomed the $3 billion pledge from Arab leaders for the global infrastructure and investment initiative that Washington is launching to counter China’s Belt and Road program.
Summit leaders also announced a deal to connect Iraq’s electric grid to the GCC’s grids through Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, thus reducing Baghdad’s dependence on Iran. They did not discuss increasing oil production to offset rising prices triggered by Russia’s war on Ukraine.
“It wasn’t really a subject for the summit,” said Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud to reporters. OPEC+ will do “what they believe is necessary to maintain balance in the markets,” he said.
The statement confirmed what U.S. officials have said – that no oil output announcements are expected until next month’s meetings of the 13 members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries plus 10 other oil producers, including Russia.
Tehran–Moscow
The administration warned of growing ties between Russia and Tehran, with National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan saying the U.S. has intelligence indicating the Iranian government is preparing to provide Russia with several hundred drones, or UAVs, including weapons-capable UAVs.
The White House released three photos of the Shahed-191 and Shahed-129 unmanned aerial vehicles capable of carrying precision-guided missiles.
“Russia is effectively making a bet on Iran,” said a senior official in a briefing to reporters Saturday. “We are making a bet on a more integrated, more stable, more peaceful, prosperous Middle East region.”
The war in Ukraine has led to a rapprochement between Russia, China, and Iran, said Bernard Haykel, director of Princeton University’s Institute for Transregional Study of the Contemporary Middle East.
“There’s a kind of an axis of countries that are coming closer,” he told VOA. “Drones is only one aspect of this closeness.”
The Saudis say they reject a zero-sum approach.
“The region has matured and that means we have developed strategic relationships with a number of partners,” said Faisal bin Farhan. He said while the summit clearly demonstrates that Washington remains the region’s main strategic partner, that doesn’t mean that countries cannot also “have strong partnerships and relations” with others.
Human rights
In his remarks, Biden said foundational freedoms are key to “who we are as Americans.”
He told the roomful of Arab men that the future belongs to countries where “women can exercise equal rights and contribute to building stronger economies, resilient societies, and more modern and capable militaries.”
Biden did not speak of the global struggle between autocracies and democracies – a theme many observers see as his foreign policy doctrine. But in a mild rebuke, he said the future belongs to countries “where citizens can question and criticize their leaders without fear of reprisal.”
That statement may not temper sharp criticism over Biden’s meeting and fist bump with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who, according to U.S. intelligence, was behind the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist, U.S. resident and a critic of the kingdom.
Biden said he raised Khashoggi’s murder at the top of his Friday meeting with the crown prince, often referred by his acronym MBS. Biden said MBS told him that he was not personally responsible for the murder.
CNN reported quoting an unnamed source that when confronted about Khashoggi, MBS reminded Biden of the abuse of prisoners by American forces at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison in 2004.
Some observers say Biden has no choice but engage with the Saudis, not just for energy and regional security, but also in its strategic competition with China and Russia.
The U.S.–Saudi reset will “reaffirm U.S. security assurances in exchange for expectations that the Kingdom will align itself with core U.S. interests when they are threatened by its global rivals,” said Dan Shapiro, former ambassador to Israel, now with the Atlantic Council. “Today, Ukraine; tomorrow, perhaps, Taiwan.”
Pivot back to the Middle East?
Earlier in his Middle East trip that began in Israel, Biden said Washington’s strategic pivot away from the Middle East had been a mistake.
His tour is designed to reassure Arab countries of American staying power as they seek greater security protection from Washington to manage Iran’s destabilizing activities. That includes in Yemen, where a proxy-war between Riyadh and Tehran that began in 2014 is held by a fragile truce.
“We further agreed to pursue a diplomatic process to achieve a wider settlement in Yemen,” Biden said in remarks following his meeting with MBS and his father, Saudi King Salman. “In this context, we discussed Saudi Arabia’s security needs to defend the Kingdom, given very real threats from Iran and Iran’s proxies.”
Administration officials declined to elaborate about which security assurances were agreed upon by Washington and Riyadh.
The Saudis are seeking a durable security partnership from Washington that will not be subject to partisan domestic swings,” said Sanam Vakil, deputy director at Chatham House’s Middle East North Africa Program, to VOA. “Only over time and with concessions regarding Saudi’s relationship with China can they secure the security guarantee they are looking for.”
Under the Trump administration, Washington significantly reduced the number of troops deployed in the region. Last year, the Biden administration reduced the number of U.S. antimissile systems in the Middle East as it focuses on challenges from China and Russia.
Integrated missile defense network
In remarks to Arab leaders, Biden did not mention Israel’s security or regional integration – themes his aides have said are the focus of the trip.
Officials have touted Biden’s tour as an opportunity to gain momentum toward creating a network of air and missile defense capabilities powered by American and Israeli technology to combat drone and missile attacks from Iran and its proxies.
“In our bilateral discussions with several nations, we believe, they believe, that there is a great advantage to try and see if we can’t network some of those capabilities together,” a senior administration official said in a briefing with reporters Saturday.
A significant step toward this decades-long goal happened last year, when the Pentagon transferred Israel from the U.S. European Command (EUCOM) to the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) that coordinates military operations and relations with partners in the Middle East. The realignment was aimed at strengthening deterrence against Iran as Arab countries normalized relations with Jerusalem under the Trump-era Abraham Accords.
Israel, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and parts of Iraq have come under drone or missile strikes claimed by or blamed on Iranian-backed militias. Other regional countries also rely on drones in conflict zones, including the Turks in the war between Azerbaijan and Armenia, and Israelis against Hezbollah in Lebanon.
The concept of regional missile defense coordination through CENTCOM is “supported in theory,” Vakil said, but in practice developing technology to align these systems will take time, trust and commitment.
The Saudi foreign minister said summit leaders did not discuss a GCC-Israeli defense alliance, and he noted that diplomacy is the best solution to Iran’s nuclear program.
“In the end, it’s up to Iran to decide if it wants the path of diplomacy or not,” he said. “We hope they do.”
Siamak Deghanpour, Kevin Nha contributed to this report.
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UNCTAD Calls on African Countries to Diversify Exports
A new United Nations report says African countries must diversify exports if they are to survive economic shocks.
A report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, UNCTAD, calls on African countries to broaden their exports beyond commodities if they are to escape poverty.
UNCTAD’s economic development in Africa report for 2022 says that global crises, including the COVID-19 pandemic and Ukraine war threaten African countries’ economies. It says millions of Africans already struggle to make a living in the middle of a rapidly rising food and energy crisis.
U.N. economists say Africa will not get out of its poverty trap if the continent remains dependent on exports of primary products, mainly in the agricultural, mining, and extractive industries. They note commodities still account for more than 60% of total merchandise exports in 45 of Africa’s 54 countries.
UNCTAD Secretary-General Rebeca Grynspan says 1 out of 2 Africans, more than 600 million people, are severely vulnerable to food, energy, and finance shocks. She says Africa must diversify its economy to become more resilient.
“The report makes clear the great potential for African countries to transform their economies through services, supporting the continent’s long-standing economic diversification goals, boosting productivity and development,” Grynspan said.
UNCTAD says knowledge-intensive services, such as information and communication technology, or ICT, and financial services, could be a game-changer for Africa. However, they note the sector currently accounts for only 20% of the continent’s services exports.
Grynspan says traditional services, such as travel and transport, dominate, accounting for about two-thirds of the total services trade.
“The analysis we are sharing today provides convincing evidence that high-value services, especially high-intensity ones in ICT and finance, are often the missing links that explain why diversification has not been achieved in the continent,” Grynspan said.
Grynspan says economic diversification should be a priority in Africa. She says it is the only path to sustainable growth and to high-quality jobs for young people.
The UNCTAD report calls on African countries to implement policies to better link trade in high-value services with other sectors, especially manufacturing. It also calls for removal of protectionist measures that limit the development of high value-added services trade.
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Curfew Declared in Sudanese Towns After Deadly Clashes
Sudanese authorities have declared an overnight curfew in two towns in southeastern Blue Nile state, close to the border with Ethiopia, after several days of tribal clashes that they said had left 31 people dead and 39 injured.
Clashes spread in several towns from Wednesday after the killing of a farmer, before security forces made arrests and brought the situation under control, a statement from Blue Nile state’s regional government said.
The statement said 16 shops had been destroyed and a night curfew was declared in the towns of Damazin and Roseires.
There have been sporadic outbreaks of violence in several regions of Sudan, including eastern coastal regions and western Darfur, despite a nationwide peace deal signed by some rebel groups in 2020.
The most powerful faction of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North, a rebel group active in South Kordofan and Blue Nile states, did not sign the deal.
Sudan’s military seized power from a transitional, civilian-led government in October 2021, triggering mass anti-military protests that have continued for more than eight months.
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US Conducts Freedom of Navigation Operation in South China Sea
The U.S. Navy says it has asserted its “navigational rights and freedoms in the South China Sea” by sailing one of its destroyers near the disputed Spratly Islands.
The 7th Fleet said the freedom of navigation operation conducted Saturday by the USS Benfold upholds “the rights, freedoms, and lawful uses of the sea recognized in international law by challenging restrictions on innocent passage imposed by the People’s Republic of China, Vietnam and Taiwan. “
Several Asian nations also have declared overlapping claims to the South China Sea.
China says it does not halt the passage of ships and has accused the U.S. of stirring trouble with such claims.
Freedom of navigation is considered essential for modern commerce as it is the means of transportation of billions of goods.
The Navy said in a statement, “The United States upholds freedom of navigation for all nations as a principle.”
An international tribunal has invalidated China’s South China Sea claims, but that has not stopped China from producing artificial islands in the waterway, with some of the manmade landscape housing airports causing some international concerns about what China intends to do with the islands.
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January 6 Capitol Riot Committee Subpoenas Secret Service Over Missing Texts
The U.S. House committee investigating the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol said late Friday it had subpoenaed the Secret Service over questions surrounding missing text messages from the days surrounding the riot last year.
The inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Joseph Cuffari, told Congress earlier this week that his office has had trouble getting records of text messages from the Secret Service, the law enforcement agency that protects the president, from Jan. 5 and Jan. 6, 2021.
Representative Bennie Thompson, chairperson of the Jan. 6 committee, informed the agency’s director, James Murray, in a letter Friday of the subpoena compelling the Secret Service to hand over the missing texts by Tuesday.
“The Select Committee seeks the relevant text messages, as well as any after action reports that have been issued in any and all divisions of the USSS pertaining or relating in any way to the events of January 6, 2021,” the letter, posted to the committee’s website, said.
The messages could be important in the House of Representatives and Justice Department investigations into whether Donald Trump and his close advisers encouraged the deadly insurrection by the former president’s supporters, which aimed to prevent the certification of his Democratic rival Joe Biden as the winner of the November 2020 election.
Secret Service agents were with Trump during the day of the uprising, and were also with Vice President Mike Pence, who went into hiding at the Capitol after pro-Trump rioters called for him to be hanged.
On June 29 a former White House staffer told the House Jan. 6 investigation that Trump had attempted to force the Secret Service to take him to the Capitol to join his supporters on that day.
According to Secret Service spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi, agents’ phones were wiped as part of a planned replacement program that began before the DHS Office of the Inspector General (OIG) first asked for the data, six weeks after the insurrection.
“The Secret Service notified DHS OIG of the loss of certain phones’ data but confirmed to OIG that none of the texts it was seeking had been lost in the migration,” he said in a statement.
The Secret Service has been criticized for not adequately anticipating the threat of the violent action by armed Trump supporters on Jan. 6.
Trump had made a senior Secret Service official at the time, Tony Ornato, his personal deputy chief of staff.
Ornato has denied the account given to the Jan. 6 committee by former Trump aide Cassidy Hutchinson that Trump tried to force the Secret Service to drive him to the Capitol as his supporters massed at the building, the seat of the U.S. Legislature.
But other then-White House officials have backed Hutchinson’s story.
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Once a Horrific Slave Pen, Now a Museum on Enslavement and Freedom
Many people walk by the unassuming 19th-century white-brick row house in the historic area of Alexandria, Virginia, outside Washington, not realizing it was part of a horrible chapter in U.S. history.
A sign out front indicates it used to be the Franklin and Armfield Slave Office, one of the major centers of the U.S. domestic slave trade in the 19th century.
Today, it has become the Freedom House Museum, which looks at a brutal past but also on the accomplishments of African Americans in Virginia.
Beginning in 1828, two slave traders, Isaac Franklin and John Armfield, used the building and three adjoining lots as a holding pen or jail for thousands of enslaved Blacks.
The enslaved were brought to the pen from local plantations where they had picked tobacco until the soil became exhausted. Then they were either bought directly or remained at the jail until they were shipped south to Natchez, Mississippi, and New Orleans, Louisiana, where they were sold at even higher prices to pick cotton and harvest sugarcane.
The slave jail grew to become one of the largest slave-trading companies in the United States until 1836.
“One of the scary things is that they created this almost perfect model for trafficking human beings,” said Audrey Davis, the Freedom House Museum director who also heads Alexandria’s Black History Museum. “They would buy the enslaved people at a good price and bring them to Alexandria and then sell them again for more profit.”
The Freedom House Museum contains exhibits that show the atrociousness of slavery, but it also looks at the accomplishments of Black Americans in Alexandria. The museum recently reopened after being closed for renovations.
“The exhibitions talk about Alexandria’s role in the domestic slave trade, but also stress that African Americans are not defined by slavery,” Davis told VOA. “We have many years of perseverance from surviving enslavement and want to make sure that people are getting the full view of the African American experience in Alexandria.”
At the museum entrance, a sign explains, “This exhibit honors the memory of the enslaved people who created our nation.” And on an entryway wall, some of the names and ages are listed of the more than 8,500 enslaved people who went through the doors of the jail.
Treyvon Harris, 14, from Fort Washington, Maryland, scanned the names of the young and old, but stopped when he saw a 1-year-old child.
“That means a baby could be a slave for his whole life and even be taken away from his family,” he said in disbelief.
The slave pen took up an entire block and contained a kitchen, infirmary, dining area and outdoor courtyard for exercise. Since the traders knew healthier and better-looking enslaved people would bring higher prices, they were given a little more food. A tailor shop at the complex also provided new clothes for them to wear at the auction market.
“The U.S. had a large and growing population of enslaved labor,” explained Cassandra Newby-Alexander, a professor of Africa diaspora studies at Norfolk State University in Virginia. “The buying and selling was a big business that also fueled other industries, like steamships and schooners that transported enslaved people.”
Davis said the reaction to the slave pen in Alexandria was mixed at the time, with some people believing slavery was wrong and others accepting it as an important part of the economy.
“People in Alexandria certainly knew what was going on, even though there were high walls around it,” Davis said. “They would have seen the trafficking of human beings by the nearby Potomac River where the people were boarded on boats.”
Several domestic slave trading firms operated the pen until it was liberated in 1861 by anti-slavery Union troops during the U.S. Civil War. The pen was turned into a jail for Confederate soldiers and unruly Union troops.
Today, all that remains of the slave jail is the house. However, Davis said she doesn’t want Freedom House to be defined just by the period of enslavement.
“While we must understand what happened during slavery, it is not the only defining moment of the African American people,” Davis said. “African Americans have had amazing achievements that have helped our culture and society.”
An exhibit called “Determined: The 400-Year Struggle for Black Equality” shares inspiring stories of extraordinary individuals who struggled for equality.
In Alexandria, they included Albert Johnson, the first Black physician allowed to practice in the city, and Shirley Marshall-Lee, the first African American certified scuba diver.
Visitor Ingrid Schoenburg from Fairfax, Virginia, said, “What is so compelling is that the museum shows the power of the human spirit when faced with adversity.”
Lakisha Jones from Houston, Texas, agreed.
“This place is a reminder of what our people went through,” said Jones, who is African American, “and how they persevered and continue to do so today.”
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Why People Worldwide Are Unhappier, More Stressed Than Ever
The world was sadder and more stressed out in 2021 than ever before, according to a recent Gallup poll, which found that four in 10 adults worldwide said they experienced a lot of worry or stress.
Experts say the most obvious culprit, the pandemic — and the isolation and uncertainty that came with it — is a factor but not entirely to blame.
Carol Graham, a Gallup senior scientist, says the culprit for declining mental health includes the economic uncertainty faced by low-skilled workers.
“There are some structural negative changes that make some people in particular more vulnerable. And in the end, mental health just reflects that,” says Graham, who is also a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a professor of public policy at the University of Maryland.
“For young people who do not have good higher levels of education, what they’re going to do in the future is very unknown. What their stability will be like, what their workforce participation will be like. … Rising levels of inequality between skilled and unskilled workers is another part of it, having to do with technology-driven growth.”
Gallup spoke to adults in 122 countries and areas for its latest Global Emotions Report. Afghanistan is the unhappiest country, with Afghans leading the world when it comes to negative experiences.
Overall, the survey results were not surprising to psychologist Josh Briley, a fellow at The American Institute of Stress.
“Things are moving faster. There’s so much information being thrown at us all the time,” he says. “And of course, media thrives on the bad stuff. So, we are constantly being bombarded with crisis after crisis in the news, on social media, on the radio and on our podcasts. And all that is drowning out the good things that are happening.”
Psychologist Mary Karapetian Alvord says being more connected online means people in one country can feel profoundly affected by what happens in another country, which wasn’t always the case in the past. For her U.S. clients, uncertainty is the biggest stressor.
“Uncertainty of life and how it’s going to impact them on a daily basis. Prices going up and gas going up. And then the supply chain issues that are impacting people in their daily lives,” Alvord says. “But I think the bigger issue is that uncertainty and so much suffering. Of course, the shootings have come up. A lot of people are really stressed out and feeling like, ‘Where is it safe?’”
There have been more than 300 shootings involving multiple victims in the United States so far in 2022.
Happiness worldwide has been trending downward for a decade, according to Gallup. All three psychologists who spoke with VOA point to social media and the flood of unfiltered information as contributors to declining mental health and happiness.
“We’ve seen this explosion worldwide, and I think that’s a big sort of tectonic shift in how humans interact and experience emotions and all sorts of things. And we’re seeing that there’s some real downsides to it,” Graham says.
Briley says part of the problem is that although people are more connected online, they’re often less connected in real life.
“The connection that we have with people, the physical connection has changed. We’re more connected than ever before with people all the way around the world, but we may not know our neighbors’ names anymore,” he says. “So, we don’t necessarily have that person where if my car breaks down, who do I call for a ride to work?”
More optimism, despite frowns
On the upside, the survey found that the percentage of people who reported laughing or smiling a lot was up two points in 2021, while the number of people who say they learned something interesting increased one point. Alvord says looking beyond the negative is critical to maintaining mental health.
“It’s important for people to also find moments of, if not joy, at least satisfaction in life,” she says. “I think sometimes we reach for happiness and that’s just not attainable … and so, our expectations need to be realistic.”
Minorities in the United States might already be doing that. The survey found that people from marginalized groups are among the most resilient.
“Their anxiety may have increased but their optimism, particularly for low-income African Americans, remains very high,” Graham says. “It was a finding I’ve seen for many years, but it surprised me that even during COVID, it held. I think that’s more due to the kind of community ties and other ties that minority communities have built, almost informal safety nets, that have been very protective many, many times in history.”
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US Withdraws From Peace Monitoring Groups in South Sudan
The United States has pulled out of the systems that monitor the peace process in South Sudan because of the country’s failure to meet reform milestones, the State Department said Friday.
South Sudan continues to face chronic instability even after rival leaders President Salva Kiir and Vice President Riek Machar agreed to form a unity government more than two years ago, following a conflict that left nearly 400,000 people dead from 2013 to 2018.
A transition period is set to end in February 2023, but many key provisions of the deal have not been met, including drafting a permanent constitution.
The United States cited that “lack of sustained progress” Friday as the reason for withdrawing from two peacekeeping organizations monitoring the impoverished country’s path to implement the transition: the Reconstituted Joint Monitoring and Evaluation Commission (RJMEC) and the Ceasefire and Transitional Security Arrangements Monitoring and Verification Mechanism (CTSAMVM).
“South Sudan’s leaders have not fully availed themselves of the support these monitoring mechanisms provide and have demonstrated a lack of political will necessary to implement critical reforms,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said in a statement.
The statement called out South Sudanese leaders’ failure to establish a “unified, professional military”; to protect civil society members and journalists; and to enact necessary financial reforms.
The United States will continue to provide about $1 billion in humanitarian and development aid and in support to the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS), among other financial backing, the statement said.
The U.N. peacekeeping mission, one of the world’s most expensive, was renewed for another year in March.
The U.N. has repeatedly criticized South Sudan’s leadership for its role in stoking violence, cracking down on political freedoms and plundering public coffers, and has accused the government of rights violations amounting to war crimes over deadly attacks in the southwest last year.
South Sudan, one of the poorest countries on the planet despite large oil reserves, has faced a decade of instability from war, natural disaster, hunger, interethnic fighting and political bickering since it gained independence in 2011.
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Ukraine’s Cultural Heritage Under Attack, Official Says
Ukraine’s deputy minister of culture said Friday that her country’s heritage is under attack by Russia and must be protected.
“The president of Russia, Mr. Putin, announced that Ukrainian culture and identity is a target of this war,” Kateryna Chueva, deputy minister of Culture and Information Policy of Ukraine, reminded an informal meeting of the U.N. Security Council.
She said the Russian bombs and missiles that have damaged and destroyed Ukrainian cities also have hit scores of important cultural sites.
The U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has verified damage to 163 cultural sites since Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion. They include religious sites, a dozen museums, 30 historic buildings, 17 monuments and seven libraries. More than half are in the Kharkiv and Donetsk regions. UNESCO says cultural sites in the capital, Kyiv, have also sustained considerable damage.
Chueva says the figure is much higher. She told the council her ministry has verified damage and destruction to at least 423 objects and institutions of cultural heritage.
Destruction of cultural heritage is a potential war crime and a violation of the 1954 Hague convention for the protection of cultural property in conflict, of which Russia is a signatory.
Chueva noted that destruction of cultural heritage is not limited to structures and objects.
“Every single person is a bearer of culture, of knowledge and traditions,” she said.
The director of UNESCO’s World Heritage Center, Lazare Eloundou Assomo, urged Russia to take precautions to protect cultural heritage sites. He said from Paris that the agency has also worked with Kyiv to take steps to clearly mark protected sites and is verifying reports of damage, including through satellite imagery.
“The verification on the ground will enable UNESCO to unveil the scale of damage to cultural sites, as well as to verify the impact of the war on movable cultural property and to prepare for future recovery,” he said.
UNESCO is also providing technical and financial support to the cultural sector and plans to help Ukraine train law enforcement officials in the prevention of trafficking of cultural heritage.
Russia’s representative at the meeting, Sergey Leonidchenko, denied that Moscow targets heritage sites and says coordinates are provided to their military in advance in order take precautions.
He accused Kyiv of targeting Russian culture and language even before the February invasion.
“Demolition of monuments to Russian writers, poets, musicians and World War II heroes, renaming streets devoted to them, confiscation of school textbooks, Russian language and Russian literature in general,” Leonidchenko said. He said the Kyiv regime wants to “rewire people” to forget who they are.
Several Ukrainian cities did rename some streets and squares associated with Russia following the invasion, and a Soviet-era monument symbolizing friendship between Russia and Ukraine was dismantled in Kyiv.
The U.S. representative said Moscow has been destroying parts of Ukraine’s heritage in an effort to rewrite history, dating back to its invasion of eastern Ukraine and the annexation of Crimea in 2014.
“This campaign has been in motion since 2014, when Russia began to remove artifacts, demolish grave sites, and shutter churches and other houses of worship in the Donbas region and Crimea,” Lisa Carty said. “Even before Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia reportedly illegally exported artifacts from Crimea, conducted unauthorized archaeological expeditions, demolished Muslim burial sites, and damaged cultural heritage sites.”
Ireland’s deputy ambassador underscored the importance of accountability.
“When protection cannot be insured, it is necessary to build an evidence base so that accountability can be pursued when conditions allow,” Cait Moran said.
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