Month: March 2023

Kenyan Economists Say Newly-Arrived Ukrainian Wheat Could Ease Hunger

Posted on by SeeEU

Kenyan economists say newly-arrived wheat imports from Ukraine could help ease hunger in drought-stricken areas and bring down high food prices. Thirty thousand tons of wheat arrived in Kenya Monday under the U.N.-brokered Black Sea Grain Initiative, in which Russia agreed not to block Ukrainian grain shipments. But Russian President Vladimir Putin warned this week that Moscow could end the deal within 60 days.

The increased cost of cereal commodities such as wheat has left bakers like Harrison Kiai in the grip of higher wheat flour prices. Kiai said these days, his profits are insignificant.

“Prices of the baking items like flour, sugar, when you compare [them] to the last maybe two years, the cost was a bit down,” he said. “So, the challenges that we have right now to increase the cost, which maybe the customer is not comfortable with because when you go to the market, the things have shot up.”

Harrison believes that recent wheat imports from Ukraine will help ease soaring flour prices. 

The consignment, which is part of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s “Grain from Ukraine” humanitarian program, was shipped under the U.N.-brokered Black Sea Grain Initiative. 

“Our commitment to food security is in the fact, the ship is coming and it is not the first ship coming into Africa and not even the second,” said Andriy Pravednky Ukraine’s ambassador Kenya. “And we are planning more ships to come by the end of this year to deliver 5 million tons of grain to exclusively African countries. But we should realize that as result of Russian invasion, the crop in Ukraine went down.”

Ukrainian agricultural production and exports were severely disrupted by Russia’s invasion, and many African countries that rely heavily on Ukrainian grain and wheat have struggled with shortages of key goods and high food prices ever since.

The Black Sea Grain Initiative, agreed to last year, is meant to allow Ukrainian food exports to reach foreign markets. However, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned this week that Russia could withdraw from the agreement unless exports of its own agricultural products are facilitated. 

Prior to the invasion, Kenya imported 2.4 million tons of wheat from Ukraine each year.

Although the grain that arrived in Kenya could help ease hunger in drought-hit areas, economists say African governments must develop ways to reduce the reliance on such imports, like increasing local production.

Without that, says economist Silas Omenda, countries like Kenya are at the mercy of outside events. 

“We can do all these other things, but when it comes to our energy costs which is now a catalyst to value addition, it’s a nightmare,” said Omenda. “And also the reliance on fertilizer importation, it has also exposed us to adverse effects of inflation in the global market meaning that we don’t have control of what happens in Ukraine and Russia.”

The U.N. World Food Program says the disruption in food shipments from Ukraine and Russia has left some 345 million people facing food insecurity.
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Basketball Artists School Helps Youth Development in Namibia

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In Namibia, the German-supported Basketball Artists School (BAS) has been helping develop the sport while giving hope to at-risk youth. Beyond basketball, the program teaches life skills to disadvantaged youth and offers after-school meals. Vitalio Angula reports from Windhoek, Namibia. Camera: Dantagob Geingob
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Will Uganda’s Anti-Gay Bill Resonate Across Africa?

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Human rights activists say Uganda’s passage of an anti-homosexuality bill could be the impetus for similar far-reaching legislation across Africa as anti-gay sentiments grow.

More than 30 African states already have laws that ban same-sex relationships.

Ghana, for example, has recently introduced anti-LGBTQI bills before parliament in an attempt to criminalize consensual same-sex relationships.

On Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken “urged the Ugandan government to strongly consider [the impact of] the implementation of this legislation,” saying via Twitter that the bill “could reverse gains in the fight against HIV/AIDS.” 

 

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre called the bill “one of the most extreme LGBTQI+ laws in the world.” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby did not rule out U.S. sanctions against Uganda, saying, if enacted, the bill could force “repercussions that we would have to take, perhaps in an economic way.” 

Uganda’s just-passed Anti-Homosexuality Act is seen by human rights activists as a “revised and egregious” version of its 2014 Anti-Homosexuality Act, which was struck down by a court on procedural grounds.

The legislation, which President Yoweri Museveni has yet to sign into law, calls for lengthy prison sentences for people who identify as gay or are found to have promoted homosexuality. It establishes the death penalty for homosexual acts with minors, people with disabilities and several other groups. 

Negative and dehumanizing rhetoric against Uganda’s LGBTQI community heightened as legislators debated the bill — and Museveni described gay people as “deviants.” Some supporters of the bill said it would make Uganda comport with God’s wishes.

Robert Akoto Amoafo, advocacy manager at Pan Africa ILGA (International Lesbian, Gay, Trans and Intersex Association), told VOA from Accra that the passage of Uganda’s anti-homosexuality bill is “worrying and concerning” for the LGBTQI community across Africa.

“This bill takes the basic rights of individuals across Uganda away from them by forcing them to report people, and then also forcing them to out their family members or friends or colleagues based on perception,” he said, noting that “this is one thing that most of the time we lose sight of.”

He said the bill would deepen discrimination in a country where LGBTQI persons already face punishment for having “carnal knowledge against the order of nature.”

“People don’t want to be associated with [homosexuals] because of the possibility of being tagged a criminal for not reporting. So, this clearly shows that the bill has gone beyond a homosexual issue to that of a human rights discussion.”

On March 9, Human Rights Watch said the bill, if passed, “would violate multiple fundamental human rights.” 

Oryem Nyeko, a Uganda researcher at the international human rights organization, told VOA that he’s “disappointed” at the bill’s passage, describing it as “regressive.” 

Nyeko said there’s high possibility of the bill becoming the norm across the continent because “historically, when one African country puts in place a repressive policy, other countries replicate it.”

“Politicians are distracting from the contemporary issues that are facing ordinary Ugandans by picking the low-hanging fruit — which is this idea of homosexuality being the cause of sexual abuse of children,” he said.

“I definitely see other politicians and other public figures in other [African] countries using the same tactic,” he added. 

Some socially conservative groups applauded the Ugandan bill. 

Tony Perkins, president of Washington-based Family Research Council, tweeted Wednesday that “Gender/Sexual ideology is not enshrined in international human rights treaties.” He decried the Biden administration’s response to the bill, writing, “It is inappropriate and coercive to shame countries for their traditional values.” 

In Uganda, many fear the challenges sexual minorities already face will worsen. Eric Ndwula, a 26-year-old LGBTQI activist, told Reuters that his landlord issued him an eviction notice this month after a video of him being identified as gay went viral.

“I have been in this house for over four years. And I have never — no neighbor here could come and say that ‘You have recruited my child into homosexuality.’ Or by the mere fact that they are looking at a homosexual, they have become homosexuals.”

Museveni has yet to sign the bill into law amid calls by the international community, including the United Nations, to reject it.

Nyeko said despite Museveni’s past rhetoric against the LGBTQI community, the Ugandan president has been a “relative ally” toward the community.

“Just two years ago, Museveni declined to sign the sexual offenses bill which had similar provisions but not as extensive as this one,” Nyeko said, adding that “his [Museveni’s] argument was that the penal code already provided for that.” 
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UN’s Guterres Brings Climate Warning to EU Summit

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U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres brought an urgent climate message to the European Union summit Thursday in Brussels, encouraging leaders of the bloc’s 27 member nations to take dramatic action.

Speaking to reporters alongside European Council President Charles Michel at EU headquarters, Guterres cited a report issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change earlier this week. 

That report called on nations to cut carbon emissions in half in the next 10 to 15 years if they want a chance at slowing global warming.

Guterres said dramatic action is needed because, “We are close to the tipping point that will make 1.5 degrees [Celsius] impossible to achieve,” referring to a target goal of limiting the global temperature increase established by the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate.

On the subject of climate, the EU’s ban on internal combustion engines by 2035 — initially approved last month by the European Parliament — was being discussed by leaders as they arrived at the summit. Germany has asked EU officials for an exception to the ban, allowing combustion engines that run on carbon-neutral synthetic “E” fuels.

Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer said he supports the German proposal and would like to see the issue on the agenda at the summit. Luxembourg’s prime minister, Xavier Bettel, on the other hand, said the issue was not intended to be discussed at this week’s meetings. 

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told the Reuters news agency his country and EU officials are in discussions on the issue and “everything is on the right track” to resolving it.

Guterres — a guest at the summit — is also expected to discuss renewal of the deal brokered by the U.N. and Turkey to allow grain shipments out of Ukraine ports otherwise sealed by a Russian blockade.

The EU leaders are also expected to get updates on the war in Ukraine from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy via video link. EU leaders are expected to endorse a deal aimed at sending one million rounds of artillery shells to Ukraine within the next 12 months.

Some information for this report was provided by the Associated Press, Reuters and AFP.
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US, Albania on ‘Hunt’ for Iranian Cyber Actors

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The decision to launch a series of cyberattacks that crippled Albanian government websites and temporarily shut down government services may be backfiring on the alleged perpetrator.

Albania blamed the attacks in July and September of last year on Iran, claiming the evidence pointing to Tehran was “irrefutable,” and ordered all Iranian officials out of the country.

Now, a U.S. cyber team sent to Albania to help the country recover and “hunt” for more dangers says the efforts have turned up “new data and information about the tools, techniques, and procedures of malicious cyber actors, attempting to disrupt government networks and systems.”

“The hunt forward operation resulted in incredibly valuable insights for both our allied partner and U.S. cyber defenses,” the Cyber National Mission Force’s Major Katrina Cheesman told VOA, adding information was shared not only with the Albanian government but also some private companies with critical roles in the digital infrastructure of both countries.

Officials declined to share additional details, citing operational security, other than to say the networks they examined were of “significance” to Washington.

“These hunts bring us closer to adversary activity to better understand and then defend ourselves,” the commander of U.S. Cyber National Mission Force, Major General William Hartman, said in a statement Thursday, following a visit to Albania.

“When we are invited to hunt on a partner nation’s networks, we are able to find an adversary’s insidious activity,” Hartman said. “We can then impose costs on our adversaries by exposing their tools, tactics and procedures, and improve the cybersecurity posture of our partners and allies.”

Iran has consistently denied responsibility for the cyberattacks against Albania, calling the allegation “baseless.”

Albania’s claims were backed by the United States, which described the Iranian actions in cyberspace as “counter to international norms.”

This past September, the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, CISA, and the FBI attributed the initial cyberattacks against Albania to Iranian state cyber actors calling themselves “HomeLand Justice.”

The joint advisory warned the group first gained access to Albania’s in May 2021 and maintained access to the Albanian networks for more than a year, stealing information, before launching the initial cyberattack in July 2022.

CISA and the FBI also concluded that Iran likely launched the second cyberattack in September 2022, using similar types of malware, in retaliation for Albania’s decision to attribute the first round of attacks to Tehran.

U.S. officials confirmed they had sent a team of experts to Albania shortly after the attacks, but information released Thursday sheds more light on the scope of the operation.

According to the U.S. officials, the so-called “hunt forward” team was deployed to Albania last September and worked alongside Albanian officials before returning home in late December.

Prior to the mission in Albania, other U.S. “hunt forward” teams had been deployed 43 times to 21 countries, including to Ukraine, Estonia, Lithuania, Montenegro and Croatia.

 

Albanian officials have indicated they hope to continue working with U.S. cyber teams to further strengthen Albania’s cyber defenses.

“The cooperation with U.S. Cyber Command was very effective,” said Mirlinda Karcanaj, the general director of Albania’s National Agency for Information Society, in a statement released by the U.S. 

“We hope that this cooperation will continue,” she added.
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Report: Antisemitic Incidents Soared to ‘Historic Levels’ in 2022

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Reported incidents of assault, vandalism and harassment targeting Jews in the United States rose to new “historic levels” last year, the Anti-Defamation League said on Thursday.

In its annual “Audit of Antisemitic Incidents,” the Jewish civil rights organization said it documented 3,697 such incidents in 2022, up 36% from 2021, and the highest level since the group started keeping records in 1979.

This was the third time in the past five years during which antisemitic incidents have set a record high, the ADL said.

The dramatic increase, the ADL said, was part of a five-year climb that has seen a doubling of antisemitic incidents since 2018, when a white supremacist killed 11 worshippers at a Pittsburgh synagogue in the deadliest attack on the American Jewish community in U.S. history.

ADL President Jonathan Greenblatt said while no single element accounted for last year’s surge in antisemitism, a number of contributing factors were at play.

Among them: an increase in white supremacist propaganda activity, attacks on Orthodox Jews, a spike in bomb threats made to Jewish institutions and significant increases of anti-Jewish incidents in schools and on college campuses.

“This data confirms what Jewish communities across the country have felt and seen firsthand — and corresponds with the rise in antisemitic attitudes,” Greenblatt said in a statement. “From white nationalists to religious fanatics to radical anti-Zionists, Jewish people see a range of very real threats. It’s time to stop the surge of hate once and for all.”

The ADL audit documents three types of anti-Jewish incidents — assault, harassment, and vandalism — and the group said cases in all three categories rose last year.

There were 111 physical assaults directed at Jews, an increase of 26%. The violence targeted 139 victims, most of them visibly Orthodox Jews, and left one person dead. In October, a University of Arizona professor was shot and killed by a former student who believed the professor was Jewish.

Cases of harassment involving victims of antisemitic slurs, stereotypes or conspiracy theories jumped 29% to 2,298 incidents.

Acts of vandalism such as the destruction of property soared 51% to 1,288 incidents, with swastikas present in most cases.

In tracking anti-Jewish actions and statements, the ADL uses a definition of antisemitism adopted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, a Sweden-based non-profit organization.

According to the IHRA definition, antisemitism is “a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews.”

While the definition has been used by the U.S. Department of State, it is contested, with progressive Jewish groups saying that by equating criticism of Israel with antisemitism, it stifles free speech. 

The ADL says it doesn’t conflate criticism of the Jewish state or anti-Israeli activism with antisemitism.  

Its audit, however, includes cases where individuals have been harassed for their actual or perceived support of Israel or Zionism. 

The spike in antisemitic incidents came against the backdrop of rising religiously motivated hate crimes, according to Brian Levin, director of the California-based Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism.

“There has been an increase in recent years, not only in overall hate crime, but religion hate crime as well, and anti-Jewish hate on top of that,” Levin said in an interview.

“What the (ADL) report shows is that the crime data that we compile is really only the tip of the iceberg in how antisemitism is becoming more mainstream.”

According to the FBI’s most recent figures, hate crimes motivated by religious bias rose from 1,297 in 2016 to 1,590 in 2021, an increase of 22%.

In a forthcoming report, the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism says that “religion hate crime” in major U.S. cities rose 27% last year, with anti-Jewish incidents accounting for 78% of the total, followed by ant-Muslim cases with an 8% of the share.

Not every incident documented by the ADL rises to the level of a hate crime, which the FBI defines as a criminal offense motivated by animus against the victim’s race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender or gender identity.”

“Certainly vandalism, for the most part, would be criminal along with the assaults,” Levin said. “The big question is how much of the harassments are actually criminal.”

Whatever the case, the incidents show the growing mainstreaming of antisemitism, Levin said.

The recent rise in anti-Jewish hate has not been limited to the United States, researchers say.

A study by Tel Aviv University found that several countries with large Jewish populations – the U.S, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany and Australia – saw a “sharp rise” in antisemitic attacks in 2021.

The surge was fueled by “the radical populist right and the anti-Zionist radical left,” the report said.
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Nationwide Protests in France after Macron Doubles Down On Pension Bill

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French workers angry with a rise in the pension age blocked access to a terminal at Paris’ Roissy-Charles De Gaulle airport on Thursday as part of a nationwide day of protests, forcing some travelers to get there on foot.

Train services were disrupted and some schools shut while garbage piled up on the streets, and electricity output was cut as unions raised pressure on the government to withdraw the law which delays retirement by two years to 64.

Plumes of smoke were seen rising from burning piles of debris blocking traffic on a highway near Toulouse, in southwestern France, and wildcat strikes briefly blocked roads in other cities as well.

The spontaneous protest near Roissy’s terminal one would not impact flights, a spokesperson for Aeroports de Paris said.

Protest rallies were scheduled across the country later in the day, while protests also targeted oil depots and blocked an LNG terminal in the northern city of Dunkirk.

President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday said the legislation – which his government pushed through parliament without a vote last week – would come into force by year-end despite escalating anger across the country.

“The best response we can give the president is that there are millions of people on strike and in the streets,” said Philippe Martinez, who leads the hardline CGT union. 

Protests of the the policy changes, which also accelerate a planned increase of the number of years one must work to draw a full pension, have drawn huge crowds in rallies organized by unions since January.

Anger

Most protests have been peaceful, but anger has mounted since the government pushed the bill through parliament without a vote last week.

The past seven nights have seen spontaneous demonstrations in Paris and other cities with rubbish bins set ablaze and scuffles with police.

Laurent Berger, the head of France’s biggest union, the moderate CFDT, told BFM TV the government must withdraw the pension law. Macron’s comments “increased the anger,” he said.

The latest wave of protests represents the most serious challenge to the president’s authority since the “Yellow Vest” revolt four years ago. Polls show a wide majority of French opposed to the pension legislation as well as the government’s decision to push it through parliament without a vote.

“It’s a good thing that people are still mobilizing, and that people stand up for their beliefs,” 26-year-old engineer Jean Walter said at the Paris Saint-Lazare train station, where many trains were cancelled.

“I’m supporting the strike, even if it will take more time to go to work today.”

Labour Minister Olivier Dussopt said the government was not in denial about the tensions but wanted to move on.

“There is a disagreement that will persist on the retirement age. On the other hand, there are many subjects which make it possible to renew a dialogue,” he said, including how companies share their profits with workers.

“Things will be done gradually,” he said.
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Biden Embarks on First Presidential Visit to Canada 

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President Joe Biden has a number of critical issues to discuss with his Canadian counterpart when he makes his first presidential visit to Ottawa, the White House says. These include national security concerns, climate change, trade, migration, the conflict in Ukraine and unrest in Haiti.

Biden was set to leave Thursday for a one-night visit to Canada’s capital, where he will meet with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and address parliament on Friday. While there, Biden will discuss “taking concrete steps to increase defense spending, driving a global race to the top on clean energy, and building prosperous and inclusive economies,” said John Kirby, coordinator for strategic communications at the National Security Council.

Analysts say the gravity of those issues underscores the importance of the close relationship between Washington and Ottawa — the two nations share the world’s longest undefended land border — but also how unbalanced the relationship is.

“It’s a relationship that often does not get the attention and respect that it’s due,” said Earl Anthony Wayne, a public policy fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center and a former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, Argentina and Mexico.

Biden is only now visiting Ottawa as president, more than halfway through his term.

In Canada, “this is front-page news and has been for several weeks now — the expectation that President Biden would be coming to Canada,” said Louise Blais, Canada’s former ambassador to the United Nations.

“Whereas you compare that with the amount of coverage that the visit has received in the United States, it gives you a little bit of an idea of the asymmetrical aspect of the relationship. But that being said, it’s a warm and positive relationship,” she said.

Gordon Giffin, a former U.S. ambassador to Canada, remarked on the packed agenda for the short visit.

“I think President Biden’s visit must be three weeks, not two days, based on the menu of items that have been listed so far that, quote, ‘need to be addressed.’” 

Security

The White House said the key issue would be security — over North America’s skies through the joint North American Air Defense Command; in the Western Hemisphere amid instability in Haiti; and across the ocean in Europe and Asia.

On calls for a U.N. peacekeeping force in unstable Haiti, “I think that they will continue to talk about ways we can continue to support from a humanitarian assistance perspective, for the people of Haiti and Haitian national security forces,” Kirby said. “And as for a multinational force or anything like that, I, again, I don’t want to get ahead of the conversation here.”

Colin Robertson, a former Canadian diplomat and former head of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, said he expected Biden to emphasize security contributions.

“My guess is the president is going to push us hard on defense and security,” he said. “We’ve committed under NATO to spend 2% of GDP [gross domestic product] on defense. Canada’s only at 1.27%. And, yes, we’ve made some recent investments towards NATO modernization, but we’re going to be expected to do a lot more.

“Our armed forces strength is 50% across the services — navy, army, air force — below capacity. The United States would like us to take a lead in Haiti. We just simply haven’t got the capacity to do that. We are doing what we can in NATO, but NATO now is going to, I think, take a greater interest in the north because of pressures mostly from the Russians but also from the Chinese.”

Trade

The two nations are major trade partners, but Eric Farnsworth, vice president of the Americas Society/Council of the Americas, said Ottawa should seek closer ties, such as membership in the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity.

“It doesn’t make any sense for our top trade partner, our northern neighbor, not to be a party to this negotiation,” he said.

But, he added, movement in trade ties may take time.

“These issues aren’t new,” he said. “They’re not related to one U.S. administration or the other.”

The White House said the two leaders would also discuss clean energy, economic cooperation and more. Wayne said these deep and broad intersections are a key characteristic of this particular bilateral relationship.

“I often like to call it ‘intermestic,’ in that it’s international and domestic at the same time,” he said. “The issues are so important for both countries that they’re debated domestically, but yet, by definition, they’re international because it’s between two countries.”
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EU Leaders Expected to Approve Ukraine Ammunition Plan

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European Union leaders are expected to give their approval Thursday for a plan to speed ammunition deliveries to Ukrainian forces fighting a Russian invasion. 

The $2 billion plan was endorsed earlier this week by EU foreign and defense ministers. It calls for both sending ammunition from existing stocks and for EU countries to work together to place new orders for more rounds. 

Ukrainian leaders have told Western allies that Ukraine’s military has an urgent need for more ammunition, especially 155-millimeter shells. 

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is due to join the EU leaders for a lunch meeting Thursday, with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy scheduled to give a later video address. 

Thursday’s session comes a day after Ukrainian authorities said new Russian drone and missile attacks killed at least seven people in two cities. 

EU foreign policy chief Joseph Borrell used a Thursday tweet to highlight Russian President Vladimir Putin’s expression of support for a Chinese-drafted peace plan in Ukraine, placing Putin’s hosting of Chinese President Xi Jinping this week alongside the Russian attacks. 

“Ukraine has been attacked again by Russia with Iranian drones, targeting educational facilities & a missile attack on a residential building in Zaporizhzhia,” Borrell said. “Just when Putin expressed need for ‘peaceful settlement’ to President Xi, Russian again commits war crimes.” 

Putin on Tuesday praised Xi’s peace plan to end the Ukraine war, although it does not call for withdrawal of Russian troops as Zelenskyy has demanded before peace talks can start.     

The United States, Ukraine’s chief arms supplier, has rejected China’s peace plan because it would leave Russian territorial gains in eastern Ukraine in place.   

  

“A cease-fire right now, freezing the lines where they are, basically gives [Putin] the time and space he needs to try to re-equip, to re-man, to make up for that resource expenditure,” White House national security spokesman John Kirby said.      

Some material in this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters. 
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US Officials Welcome Start of Ramadan

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U.S. President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden said Wednesday the United States “reaffirms our support to Muslim communities suffering hardships and devastation” as they issued a message offering best wishes to Muslims in the U.S. and around the world at the start of the holy month of Ramadan. 

“We will continue to stand with the people of Turkiye and Syria — who have lost many loved ones during the recent devastating earthquakes — and with the people of Pakistan, who are rebuilding their lives following last summer’s floods,” the Bidens said in a written statement using the Turkish government’s preferred version of the country’s name. 

Their statement also said the United States and its partners stand in solidarity with Muslims who face continued oppression, including Uyghurs in China and Rohingya in Myanmar. 

“During this holy month, we also honor Muslim communities across our nation that have been part of the American story since our founding,” the Bidens said. “From science and technology, to arts and academia, to law and medicine, to business and government, and beyond — Muslim Americans continue to strengthen our nation’s diverse tapestry generation after generation.” 

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in his own statement marking the start of Ramadan that many U.S. embassies and consulates will host fast-breaking iftar meals “to share in the month’s beautiful traditions and demonstrate our commitment to promoting social cohesion, inclusion, and diversity within our communities.” 

“We express deep appreciation for our longstanding partnerships with diverse communities across the Muslim world and remain committed to promoting religious freedom for all, both at home and abroad,” Blinken said. 
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Court Orders Trump Lawyer to Provide Documents in Mar-a-Lago Case

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A federal appeals court in a sealed order Wednesday directed a lawyer for Donald Trump to turn over to prosecutors documents in the investigation into the former president’s retention of classified records at his Florida estate.

The ruling is a significant win for the U.S. Justice Department, which has focused for months not only on the classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago but also on why Trump and his representatives resisted demands to return them to the government. It suggests the court has sided with prosecutors who have argued behind closed doors that Trump was using his legal representation to further a crime.

The order was reflected in a brief online notice by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The case is sealed, and none of the parties in the dispute is mentioned by name.

But the details appear to correspond with a secret fight before a lower court judge over whether Trump lawyer M. Evan Corcoran could be forced to provide documents or give grand jury testimony in the Justice Department special counsel probe into whether Trump mishandled top-secret information at Mar-a-Lago.

Corcoran is regarded as relevant to the investigation in part because last year he drafted a statement to the Justice Department asserting that a “diligent search” for classified documents had been conducted at Mar-a-Lago in response to a subpoena. Weeks later, FBI agents searched the home with a warrant and found roughly 100 additional documents with classified markings.

Another Trump lawyer, Christina Bobb, told investigators last fall that Corcoran had drafted the letter and had asked her to sign it in her role as a designated custodian of Trump’s records.

A Justice Department investigation led by special counsel Jack Smith and his team of prosecutors is examining whether Trump or anyone in his orbit obstructed its efforts to recover all the classified documents — which included top-secret material — from his home. No charges have been filed.

Other legal threats

The inquiry is one of multiple legal threats Trump faces, including probes in Atlanta, Georgia, and Washington over his efforts to undo the election result and a grand jury investigation in New York over hush money payments. The New York case appears to be nearing completion and building toward an indictment.

Last week, Beryl Howell, the outgoing chief judge of the U.S. District Court, directed Corcoran to answer additional questions before the grand jury. He had appeared weeks earlier before the federal grand jury investigating the Mar-a-Lago matter but had invoked attorney-client privilege in declining to answer certain questions.

Though attorney-client privilege shields lawyers from being forced to share details of their conversations with clients before prosecutors, the Justice Department can get around that if it can convince a judge that a lawyer’s services were used in furtherance of a crime — a principle known in the law as the crime-fraud exception.

Howell ruled in the Justice Department’s favor shortly before stepping aside as chief judge Friday, according to a person familiar with the matter, who was not authorized to discuss a sealed proceeding and spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity. That ruling was subsequently appealed, and the court records show the dispute before the federal appeals panel concerned an order that was issued last Friday by Howell.

The three-judge panel that issued the decision included Cornelia Pillard, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, and J. Michelle Childs and Florence Pan, both appointees of President Joe Biden. The order came just hours after the court imposed tight deadlines on both sides to file written briefs making their case.

A lawyer for Corcoran did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment Wednesday, and a lawyer for Trump declined to comment on the sealed order.
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Judge to Rule on Pills to End Pregnancy

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A federal judge is expected to rule soon on the fate of a pill that leads to a medication abortion. The drug in question, mifepristone, has been on the market for 20 years, but opponents of abortion rights say it is unsafe. VOA’s Carolyn Presutti explains.
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Malawi President Seeks More Support for Cyclone Victims

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Malawi President Lazarus Chakwera is appealing for additional humanitarian assistance for thousands of Malawians displaced by Cyclone Freddy, which has killed more than 500 people in the country.

Chakwera made the urgent request to Malawi’s parliament on Wednesday, when he was presenting an assessment of the impact of the cyclone, which also hit Mozambique.

Though the country is receiving a lot of local and international assistance for the victims, he said, more aid is needed.

“So many have responded positively to our appeal, and I have personally committed to acknowledge every support, for the situation is so grave that we simply cannot take any contribution for granted,” he told lawmakers. “However, the supplies we are deploying are far from enough for the magnitude of the need.”

Malawi’s Disaster Management Affairs Department says there are more than 500,000 people who have been displaced living at 534 camps.

Chakwera told the lawmakers to bury their political differences and work together to address the devastation caused by the powerful storm.

“This is one of the darkest hours in the history of our nation,” he said. “And if we are to emerge in this dark hour and see the joy of a new dawn in the future, we must all roll up our sleeves and get to work. If we are going to see the light of a new dawn again, we must take the necessary steps now for safeguarding a brighter tomorrow for Malawians.”

Chakwera announced the government will soon introduce legislation aimed at helping to safeguard people from natural disasters.

Kondwani Nankhumwa, leader of opposition political parties in the Malawi Parliament, welcomed the plan to have legislation for disaster management and emphasized the government must deal with sanitation issues at evacuation camps to avoid the outbreak of diseases.

“Our water resources have been depleted, boreholes have been washed away, taps have been washed away,” said Nankhumwa. “Let me register a call that the government should look into this with other partners, because if we allow these people to continue drinking unprotected water from unprotected wells, then there will be an outbreak of other diseases in camp.”

Cyclone Freddy hit Malawi amid its deadliest cholera outbreak of the past two decades, which so far has killed at least 1,600 people.

The Malawi Health Ministry warned this week that the cyclone has increased the risk of the spread of other communicable diseases, such as typhoid and dysentery.
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US Judge Orders Iran, Intermediary Pay Out $1.68 Billion to Families in 1983 Beirut Bombing

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A federal judge in New York ordered Iran’s central bank and a European intermediary on Wednesday to pay out $1.68 billion to family members of troops killed in the 1983 car bombing of the U.S. Marine Corps barracks in Lebanon.

U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska said a 2019 federal law stripped Bank Markazi, the Iran central bank, of sovereign immunity from the lawsuit, which sought to enforce a judgment against Iran for providing material support to the attackers.

The lawsuit also names Luxembourg-based Clearstream Banking SA, which is holding the assets in a client account. Clearstream parent company Deutsche Boerse AG said on Wednesday that it is considering appealing against the decision.

Clearstream will “weigh all relevant interests and responsibilities” and comply with its legal and regulatory obligations in handling the funds, Deutsche Boerse said.

The exchange said that it does not view the ruling as increasing the risk from the lawsuit in a way that would require the companies to make financial provisions.

Attorneys for the parties did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The October 23, 1983, bombing at the Marine Corps barracks killed 241 U.S. service members.

Victims and their families won a $2.65 billion judgment against Iran in federal court in 2007 over the attack.

Six years later, they sought to seize bond proceeds allegedly owned by Bank Markazi and processed by Clearstream to partially satisfy the court judgment.

Bank Markazi has argued that the lawsuit was not allowed under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA), which generally shields foreign governments from liability in U.S. courts.

In January 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a lower court ruling in the families’ favor and ordered the case to be reconsidered in light of the new law, adopted a month earlier as part of the National Defense Authorization Act.

Preska said the 2019 law authorizes U.S. courts to allow the seizure of assets held outside the country to satisfy judgments against Iran in terrorism cases, “notwithstanding” other laws such as FSIA that would grant immunity.

A Luxembourg court in 2021 ordered Clearstream not to move the funds until a court in that country recognizes the U.S. ruling. Clearstream has appealed that decision.

The case is Peterson et al v. Islamic Republic of Iran et al, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 13-09195.
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Banking Worries Ripple Around the Globe

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Worries about recent bank failures and bailouts are rippling through the world economy, from New York to Beijing, and central bankers are working to calm depositors and financial markets. Mike O’Sullivan reports from California, where a major player in the tech industry, Silicon Valley Bank, collapsed earlier this month. Rob Garver contributed.
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China Watching World’s Response to War in Ukraine, Blinken Says

Posted on by SeeEU

China is very carefully watching how Washington and the world respond to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine but has not yet crossed the line of providing lethal aid to Moscow, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Wednesday.

Speaking on the heels of a visit to Moscow by Chinese President Xi Jinping, Blinken told a Senate hearing that if Russia was allowed to attack its neighbor with impunity, it would “open a Pandora’s box” for would-be aggressors and lead to a “world of conflict.”

“The stakes in Ukraine go well beyond Ukraine. … I think it has a profound impact in Asia, for example,” Blinken said, noting that Japan and South Korea had been major supporters of Ukraine in the conflict.

However, he said he did not believe that China has been providing lethal aid to Moscow.

“As we speak today, we have not seen them cross that line,” Blinken told a Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing, the first of four times he will testify to congressional committees this week.

Blinken testified later on Wednesday to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Russia’s invasion has led to debates over how the war will affect China’s military thinking regarding Taiwan, the self-governing island that Beijing sees as sovereign Chinese territory.

“I think if China’s looking at this — and they are looking at it very carefully — they will draw lessons for how the world comes together, or doesn’t, to stand up to this aggression,” Blinken said.

Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin greeted each another as “dear friend” when they met in the Kremlin and discussed China’s proposals for a resolution to the Ukraine conflict.

“They have a marriage of convenience — I’m not sure if it’s conviction. Russia is very much a junior partner in this relationship,” Blinken said.

He said China’s political and material support for Russia goes against Washington’s interests.

Blinken told lawmakers that the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development needs President Joe Biden’s entire budget request, an 11% increase from last year, to face threats posed by Russia and China.

“The post-Cold War world is over, and there is an intense competition under way to determine what comes next,” Blinken said.

The secretary of state urged every member of the International Criminal Court to comply with an arrest warrant issued for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The United States is not a party to the ICC.
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Report Finds 119,000 Hurt Worldwide by Riot-Control Weapons Since 2015

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More than 119,000 people have been injured by tear gas and other chemical irritants around the world since 2015 and about 2,000 suffered injuries from less lethal impact projectiles, according to a report released Wednesday.

The study by Physicians for Human Rights and the International Network of Civil Liberties Organizations, in collaboration with the Omega Research Foundation, took 2½ years to research. It provides a rare, partial count of casualties, compiled from medical literature, from these devices used by police around the world, including in Colombia, Chile, Hong Kong, Turkey and at Black Lives Matter protests in the United States.

Most of the data comes from cases in which a person came to an emergency room with injuries from crowd control weapons and the attending doctor or hospital staff made the effort to document it, said the report’s lead author, Rohini Haar, an emergency room physician and researcher at the University of California School of Public Health in Berkeley.

Crowd control tools become more powerful

The report on casualties from a largely unregulated industry cites an alarming evolution of crowd control devices into more powerful and indiscriminate designs and deployment, including dropping tear gas from drones.

It calls for bans on rubber bullets and on multiprojectile devices in all crowd control settings and tighter restrictions on weapons that may be used indiscriminately, such as tear gas, acoustic weapons and water cannons, which in some cases have been loaded with dyes and chemical irritants. Governments also should ensure these weapons are subject to rigorous independent testing, with testing, evaluation and approval involving law enforcement, technical specialists and health professionals, among others, the report said.

U.S. Senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon, said the report underscores serious issues.

“These troubling global numbers echo the concerns I raised locally when Donald Trump first dispatched armed troops to Portland in 2020 with no guidance on their use of chemical munitions near schools and against protesters when most were peacefully exercising their First Amendment rights,” Wyden said. “The report’s recommendations are very worthy of consideration by the Department of Homeland Security.”

Portland, Oregon, was an epicenter of racial justice protests after George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis police in May 2020. Police and protesters clashed, with officers firing tear gas, pepper spray and other devices, turning parts of the city into battle grounds.

Then-President Trump sent militarized federal agents to protect federal property and the violence escalated, with agents dousing the crowds with tear gas and other irritants. Bystanders and nearby residents choked on the fumes, their eyes watering and burning. Some protesters launched fireworks at agents and shined lasers in their eyes.

Portland Police Bureau spokesperson Terri Wallo Strauss noted that the department’s updated policy emphasizes “the goal of avoiding the use of force, when feasible.”

Devices can help restore order, say police

Police say crowd control devices are, if used properly, an effective tool for dispersing rioters.

“Rallies basically spin out of control when they’ve been hijacked by individuals that have come in with a nefarious purpose to create the riots, the looting, those type of things. And then, obviously, law enforcement has to come in and try their best to create a safe resolution and try to restore order,” Park City, Utah, Police Chief Wade Carpenter said during the height of the Black Lives Matter protests.

Carpenter is also an official with the International Association of Chiefs of Police, which has more than 32,000 members in more than 170 countries. The group declined to comment on the new report. But in 2019, it recommended guidelines on crowd management.

Pepper spray, or oleoresin capsicum, may be used against “specific individuals engaged in unlawful conduct or actively resisting arrest, or as necessary in a defensive capacity,” the guidelines state. It “shall not be used indiscriminately against groups of people where bystanders would be unreasonably affected, or against passively resistant individuals.”

But the internet is full of instances in which pepper spray was used against non-resisting people, including against Tyre Nichols, who was beaten to death by Memphis police in January.

Tear gas “may be deployed defensively to prevent injury when lesser force options are either not available or would likely be ineffective,” the IACP guidance states. Projectiles that are supposed to hit a surface like a street before impacting a person “may be used in civil disturbances where life is in immediate jeopardy or the need to use the devices outweighs the potential risks involved.”

Direct-fired impact munitions, including beanbag rounds, “may be used during civil disturbances against specific individuals who are engaged in conduct that poses an immediate threat of death or serious injury,” the guidance says. Protesters have been blinded and suffered brain damage from beanbag rounds.

Claims against police

Numerous lawsuits have been filed over the use of force by police during protests.

In November, the city of Portland reached a $250,000 settlement with five demonstrators in a federal lawsuit over police use of tear gas and other crowd control devices during racial justice protests.

But last month, a federal judge threw out an excessive force claim against an unnamed federal agent who fired an impact munition at the forehead of protester Donavan La Bella, fracturing his skull, as he held up a music speaker during a racial justice demonstration in Portland in 2020. La Bella continues to struggle with a severe head injury.

Haar, who is a medical adviser for Physicians for Human Rights, said the number of injured is far greater than what she compiled from medical reports.

“Basically, we knew we’re capturing sort of the tip of the iceberg,” she said. “This is just a tiny fraction of what the world is experiencing on a daily basis. The vast majority of injuries — even significant severe injuries — go unreported.”
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Ukraine, IMF Agree on $15.6 Billion Loan Package

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Ukraine and the International Monetary Fund have agreed on a $15.6 billion loan package aimed at shoring up government finances severely strained by Russia’s invasion and leveraging more support by assuring other donors that Ukraine is pursuing strong economic policies and fighting corruption.

Ukraine’s finance ministry said Wednesday that the program will “help to mobilize financing from Ukraine’s international partners, as well as to maintain macro-financial stability and ensure the path to post-war reconstruction after Ukrainian victory in the war against the aggressor.”

The loan program will run for four years, with the first 12 to 18 months focusing on helping Ukraine close its massive budget deficit and easing the pressure to print money to use for spending, the IMF said in a statement Tuesday. Printing money to fund people’s pensions, state salaries and basic services can make things worse by fueling inflation and destabilizing the currency.

The remainder of the program will focus on supporting Ukraine’s bid for European Union membership and postwar reconstruction.

Deal still needs board approval

The IMF deal is expected to leverage even more money for Ukraine because it provides evidence to potential donor governments, including in the Group of Seven major democracies and the European Union, that Ukraine’s government is following sound economic policies.

The agreement, which still needs approval from the IMF’s executive board, “is expected to help mobilize large-scale concessional financing from Ukraine’s international donors and partners over the duration of the program,” Gavin Gray, the IMF’s mission chief for Ukraine, said in a statement.

The Washington-based IMF said Ukrainian authorities demonstrated their commitment to healthy economic policy and met all agreed-upon goals during a preliminary consultation. The loan program goes beyond previous IMF practice by lending to a country at war, under new rules that allowed assistance because of circumstances of “exceptionally high uncertainty.”

Ukraine massively increased military spending while the economy shrank by around 30% in 2022, hitting tax revenue.

The result was a huge budget deficit that has been covered by outside financing from the U.S., the EU and other allies. The aid has helped the country end its excessive reliance on money printed by the central bank and loaned to the government, an emergency step considered necessary early in the war but that could fuel inflation and send the currency plunging if prolonged.

IMF noted Ukraine’s progress

Before the war, Ukraine had made progress in reforming its banking system and making government contracts more transparent. But it still ranked 122 out of 180 countries on Transparency International’s corruption perceptions index.

Its prewar economy was characterized by political involvement from wealthy individuals known as oligarchs and by slow progress on improving the legal system perceived as too open to political influence.

The IMF, however, said that after the preliminary consultations, the government has “made progress in reforms to strengthen governance, anti-corruption and rule of law, and lay the foundations for postwar growth, although the agenda of reforms in these areas remains significant.”

Several senior officials, including deputy ministers and governors of front-line regions, were fired in January after allegations of corruption, some related to military spending, embarrassed the government. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was elected in 2019 on an anti-establishment, anti-corruption platform.
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Rights Experts: Violations in Ethiopia Must Be Investigated to Ensure Durable Peace

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U.N. human rights experts warn that peace in northern Ethiopia’s Tigray region will not last unless violations committed during more than two years of armed conflict are investigated and perpetrators held to account.

The three-member U.N. International Commission of Human Rights Experts on Ethiopia, which presented its latest report to the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva Tuesday, welcomed the November 2 peace agreement that ended hostilities between the Ethiopian government and Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front, or TPLF.

Since the peace agreement was signed, “the region has witnessed a significant and so far, sustained reduction in conflict,” said Mohamed Chande Othman, chair of the commission.

He said the two-year war adversely affected the lives of millions of people in the Tigray, Afar and Amhara regions of northern Ethiopia.

“We especially welcome commitments to human rights, protection of civilians, unhindered humanitarian access and accountability,” he said.

Despite these positive developments, Othman told the Human Rights Council the gravity and scale of violations committed in Ethiopia since the war’s outbreak in November 2020 must not be forgotten.

“Our 2022 September report found reasonable grounds to believe that all parties to the conflict had committed war crimes and violations and abuses of human rights since fighting erupted in November 2020,” he said.

This view was echoed Tuesday in the U.S. State Department’s annual report on human rights violations around the world. The Ethiopian government rejected the U.S. assertion that all sides in the two-year Tigray war committed war crimes, calling the statement “inflammatory.”

The U.N. commission has continued to investigate these allegations in addition to accusations of serious violations and abuses committed since the signing of the peace agreement.

The commission has documented serious offenses allegedly committed by all parties including Eritrean forces operating on Ethiopian territory, and forces from the Tigray, Afar, Amhara and Oromia regions.

They include attacks on civilians, sexual and gender-based violence, denial of humanitarian assistance, arbitrary detention, violations of children’s rights and hate speech.

The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reports conflict and displacement have left 9.4 million people across Tigray, Afar and Amhara in dire need of humanitarian aid. The World Food Program reports 5.5 million people in these regions are facing severe hunger.

Othman said independent investigations and accountability for grave violations are essential to ensure justice for survivors and “deter the commission of future violations and abuses.”

He noted that information for this report has been gathered from victims, survivors and witnesses remotely because the Ethiopian government has refused the commission’s investigation team access to the country.

“We strongly urge the government to reconsider its decision not to cooperate with the commission,” he said. “Under international law, the federal government has the primary responsibility to ensure accountability for crimes committed during the conflict.”

Tsegab Kebebew Daka, Ethiopian ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, cautioned the commission against using “inflammatory information,” which he said had the potential to undermine the peace agreement.

He said his government was firmly committed to investigating all cases of human rights violations and ensuring that victims received redress.

He noted that the peace agreement also provided transitional measures, “which include adopting transitional justice policy, to ensure accountability, truth-telling, redress for victims, healing and reconciliation.”

Daniel Bekele, chief commissioner of the National Human Rights Commission of Ethiopia, called on the U.N. council and international community to support the implementation of “a genuine human rights, victim-centered transitional justice policy for Ethiopia.”

He said the Ethiopian commission spoke to more than 700 victims of human rights violations who indicated that their primary needs were “to live without fear, to have peace and security and reparations to get their lives back.”

Steve Ratner, a member of the U.N. commission, said the panel would support whatever mechanism for transitional justice the Ethiopian people and government choose, provided it contained “accountability and justice for those who committed international crimes, truth and acknowledgement for the victims, remedies and redress for them and the establishment of mechanisms to ensure non-repetition of these abuses in the future.”
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Has Biden’s Green Record Been Tainted by Oil-Drilling Willow Project?

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The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says governments must do much more to move away from fossil fuels. The Biden administration has taken several steps to do so, but a recent decision to approve an oil-drilling project in Alaska has disappointed those who want the U.S. to swiftly cut greenhouse gas emissions. VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias explains
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Ethiopian Authorities Remove Terrorist Label from Tigrayan Party

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Ethiopian lawmakers voted in a special session Wednesday to remove the terrorist designation given to the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, or TPLF.

Lawmakers in the lower house approved the move by a majority vote. Out of 472 members, 61 voted against the move and five abstained.

The decision is the latest step in an African Union-brokered peace deal in November between Ethiopia’s federal government and the TPLF that ended a two-year civil war.

Ethiopia’s federal government labeled the TPLF a terrorist organization in May 2021, a few months before war broke out between forces loyal to each side.

The war left thousands of people dead and displaced millions more. 

The peace deal saw Tigrayan forces handing over heavy weapons to the federal government, which has in turn opened aid corridors and resumed essential services to the region. 

As part of the deal, an interim administration has been set up in the area until elections can be held. 

Getachew Reda, who was picked by the TPLF to lead the Interim Regional Administration, was one of scores of Tigrayan officials previously charged with terrorism under the designation.

Ethiopian media reports say those charges are also expected to be lifted. 

A TPLF spokesperson was not immediately available to comment.

Rights groups have accused all the warring sides, including Eritrean and regional Amhara forces, of committing war crimes during the conflict.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who was in Ethiopia in early March, on Monday condemned atrocities allegedly committed by all sides in the conflict and welcomed commitments to pursue transitional justice. 

The Ethiopian government rejected Blinken’s statement, saying it was inflammatory and untimely.  
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Latvia’s Russian Minority Struggles with a Changing World

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Latvia is the European Union country with the largest Russian minority, with ethnic Russians making up approximately 25% of its population. For them, the war in Ukraine has been a political and social earthquake. Marcus Harton narrates this report from Ricardo Marquina in the Latvian capital, Riga.

Camera: Ricardo Marquina
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Colorado Proposal Would Cut Public Records Costs for Media 

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As Colorado’s fall neared in 2021, reporter Jesse Paul wanted to peek behind the curtain of state prisons, submitting a request for documents regarding inmate deaths, injuries and staff violations — public records made available to ensure government transparency.

But then the bill arrived, and Paul, a reporter at The Colorado Sun, shot off a cheeky email to his editors: “You guys cool if I drop $245,000 on this?”

In a concession many journalists know well, Paul gutted his admittedly large request, leaving most of those government documents shrouded from the public’s sight.

Those types of financial barriers are partly why Colorado state lawmakers are considering legislation that would give the news media privileges when requesting public records, including lower fees and stricter deadlines for records custodians to produce documents.

But the draft legislation kicked off a hullaballoo on Twitter, with some concerned that favoring news media was unfair, while others found the mere idea of politicians defining who is and who isn’t a journalist unsettling.

Most states do not differentiate between the general public and media organizations, and the Colorado draft bill’s definition of the news media would effectively exclude news startups in their first year of operation — raising their public records costs.

The proposal comes as some states push in the opposite direction. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is seeking an agenda that may limit access to public records, and lawmakers across the country are trying to shield the disclosure of personal information for elected officials and public employees.

The Colorado proposal has yet to be introduced, and it could change as the final kinks get worked out, said Democratic state Senator Chris Hansen, the bill’s sponsor. Hansen, in defense of the definition, said burgeoning news groups would still be able to submit requests and the temporary higher cost wouldn’t be a “significant burden.”

Broadly, the proposal is considered a step in the right direction by media groups. It would require stricter retention of government email records, charge news media half the cost billed to the general public — roughly capped at $15 for every hour spent producing the records — and ensure certain reports from investigations into sexual harassment by elected officials be publicly available.

To Jeff Roberts, executive director of the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition and who has helped draft the bill, said the proposal isn’t perfect but will make a dent in the problem. A more robust solution, he said, would be better funding for governments to respond to records requests.

The cost of Paul’s quarter-million-dollar request still probably wouldn’t be addressed by this bill, Roberts noted. Those documents likely fall under a separate category for criminal records, and Roberts is still on a mission to address prohibitive costs.

“There doesn’t seem to be political will to just reduce the cost for everyone,” said Roberts.

Larry Ryckman, editor of The Colorado Sun, said that while he had misgivings about politicians defining what qualifies as news media, he was generally pleased with any expansion of public records access.

“A healthy democracy depends on a free press, that we will ask questions, that we will dig in, and that we will verify facts,” Ryckman said, “and we cannot hold government and government agencies and officials accountable without access to documents.”
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