Civilians in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum are caught in the middle of fighting between rival military factions. Sidahmed Ibraheem reports from Khartoum. Idrissa Fall and Carol Van Dam in Washington contributed to this report, narrated by Salem Solomon. Camera: Sidahmed Ibraheem.
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Month: April 2023
Europe Set to Curb Ukrainian Grain Imports After Farmers’ Protest
The European Union is reportedly preparing emergency curbs on Ukrainian food products. Some Eastern European states have imposed their own import bans in recent days, complaining that a glut of cheap Ukrainian produce is hitting their own farmers. Ukraine’s struggles to export grain following Russia’s February 2022 invasion have raised fears of a global shortage, as Henry Ridgwell reports.
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Europe Set to Curb Ukrainian Grain Deals After Farmers Protest
The European Union is reportedly preparing emergency curbs on Ukrainian food products after several member states bordering Ukraine imposed their own import bans in recent days, complaining that a glut of cheap produce is hitting their own farmers.
Following a virtual meeting with EU officials on Wednesday, Romanian Minister of Agriculture Petre Daea outlined the bloc’s plans.
“The [European] Commission is making available to the five countries [Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia] 100 million euros [$109.32 million] from its crisis reserve. … It provides for the activation of exceptional safeguarding mechanisms, which means stopping imports until June 5 for the following products: wheat, corn, sunflower seeds and rapeseed,” Daea told reporters.
He added that the deal would be made available only when member states had withdrawn their own unilateral import bans.
The EU has yet to confirm details of the planned support package.
Ukraine grain
Ukraine, the world’s fifth-biggest grain exporter, has struggled to ship agricultural produce from its Black Sea ports to world markets following Russia’s invasion last year.
The European Union ended quotas and tariffs on Ukrainian goods after the outbreak of the war to shore up the Ukrainian economy. Eastern European states claim this has led to cheap grain imports being dumped on their domestic markets.
In the past week, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Bulgaria have banned the import of Ukrainian grain and other products, in an apparent breach of EU trade law. Bulgarian Prime Minister Galab Donev said Wednesday that the measures were necessary.
“A significant amount of [Ukrainian] food has remained in the country and disrupted the main production and trade chains,” Donev told reporters. “If this trend persists and even increases, it is possible to reach extremely serious consequences for the Bulgarian business.”
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki outlined a $2.4 billion support package for farmers and said the European Union response had been inadequate.
“What the EU is offering us is offered with a delay; it is too little, a drop in the ocean of needs,” Morawiecki told a news conference Friday in Warsaw.
Protests
Farmers have staged protests in several countries bordering Ukraine, including Romania.
“Our fear is that this unfair competition coming from our colleagues in Ukraine cannot be borne by the Romanian farmers. We will witness a chain of bankruptcies of Romanian farmers,” warned Liliana Piron of the League of Romanian Agriculture Producers Associations at a protest in Bucharest earlier this month.
Brussels warned this week that the import bans violated EU law.
“Unilateral action is not possible under EU trade policy,” European Commission spokesperson Miriam Garcia Ferrer said Wednesday. Nevertheless, it appears the EU is preparing to approve emergency curbs on Ukrainian imports for certain countries.
Domestic politics
The dispute has taken many by surprise, said Ian Bond of the Centre for European Reform, an analyst group.
“In the case of Poland, what’s so strange is that this is so much at odds with the assistance that Poland has given Ukraine in other ways,” Bond told VOA.
“So, this is entirely driven by domestic political considerations to do with protests by Polish farmers, and the risk that government obviously feels that the farmers might defect and vote for some other party in the next elections,” Bond said.
Ukraine reaction
For Ukrainian farmers, the import bans add to the troubles caused by Russia’s invasion. Volodymyr Bondaruk, executive director of the Pearl of Podillia, a mixed dairy and arable farm near Ternopil in western Ukraine, said, “I would like farmers and the agricultural lobby in the Eastern [European] countries to understand that we face similar problems. We don’t ask for subsidies; we don’t want anything like that. Just help us to sell our goods,” Bondaruk told Reuters.
“We have leftovers from the 2022 harvest. In the previous years, we exported a lot of corn, wheat and other grains to the Middle East countries, African countries. But today because of the war, ports do not accept large amounts of goods,” he added.
Black Sea
The glut of Ukrainian grain in Europe is the result of reduced exports through the Black Sea since Russia’s invasion. A deal brokered by the United Nations and Turkey to reopen the shipping route, known as the Black Sea Grain Initiative, came into force last August. However, Russia is threatening to end the deal when it’s up for renewal next month.
The ban on imports of Ukrainian grain by some countries in Europe could play into Moscow’s hands, analyst Bond said.
“It seems to me that this increases the chances that Russia will see this as a pressure point and will try to use it as a way of saying, ‘Well, we’re not going to renew the grain deal unless you agree to completely unacceptable conditions.’”
While its domestic import ban remains in place, Poland resumed the transit of Ukrainian products across its territory on Friday.
The European Union said it planned to organize alternative transport, including convoys of trucks, trains and barges, to take grain from Ukraine’s land borders to ports where it could be shipped to the world market.
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To Understand China, Foreign Reporters Need Access, Journalists Say
Longtime New York Times China reporter Chris Buckley traveled to Wuhan, the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic, on the day the city went into lockdown. It was January 2020.
“In retrospect, it sounds crazy,” Buckley said. He went prepared with masks and a healthy sense of caution, but he never predicted that what he saw during those weeks would still grip the world three years later.
“It was a big story, and I like to cover big stories. It’s exciting. It’s fulfilling. And I hope it didn’t make me reckless,” Buckley told VOA. “I wanted to be part of what was going to be a big story.”
His visa was about to expire, and the Chinese government had already told him they wouldn’t renew it. That meant the start of the pandemic was among the last big stories Buckley was going to be able to report from inside China before he left that spring.
Beijing has expelled or declined to renew visas for several foreign correspondents in recent years. China in 2020 said it was responding to the previous U.S. administration decision to cap the number of visas for staff at state-run Chinese media and designate their outlets “foreign missions.”
When Buckley got off the train in Wuhan, he didn’t find any more security than normal — which made some parts of the assignment easier than he had expected.
“It was difficult reporting, but it wasn’t constrained by being followed or anything like that. It was constrained by people being worried [about the virus],” he told VOA from Taiwan, where he currently lives.
Buckley, who has covered China for over two decades, is among the correspondents whose stories from the 1940s to today make up a new book — Assignment China: An Oral History of American Journalists in the People’s Republic.
“If we want to understand China, we should care about who is reporting about China,” said Katherine Wilhelm, who reported in China for various outlets between 1987 and 2001 and is also featured in the book. “How do they experience the process of gathering information on a day-to-day basis? It helps to see how the sausage is made.”
Assignment China was written by CNN’s first Beijing bureau chief Mike Chinoy.
“The way in which journalists for the American media have covered China has had a huge impact in the way most Americans understand or misunderstand China,” Chinoy told VOA. “The American media organizations’ coverage of China has had a disproportionate impact in shaping perception of China all around the world.”
Chinoy wanted to help readers better understand what he sees as the “particular challenges of trying to cover a story as challenging and complicated and as hugely important as China is.”
That goal was important to Chinoy in light of tensions between Washington and Beijing.
Chinoy served as CNN’s Beijing bureau chief from 1987 to 1995. It was a period that “went from relatively relaxed to extremely repressive during and after Tiananmen Square, to becoming relatively relaxed again,” Chinoy said.
“On the night of the [Tiananmen Square] crackdown, my live reporting was all done on a telephone line that we kept open on the balcony of the Beijing Hotel because we didn’t have a cellphone,” Chinoy said. Following the 1989 crackdown was a period of intense restrictions that made it harder to report until 1992, he said.
The most promising period for foreign reporters in China, according to Melissa Chan, was in the run-up to the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. Chan began reporting in China in 2006 and worked there as a correspondent for Al Jazeera until 2012, when she was expelled from the country.
She was the first foreign reporter to be told to leave the country in over a decade.
“It was pretty big news at the time,” Chan, now an independent journalist based in Berlin, told VOA. “Today, we’ve lost track of the number of reporters who’ve lost their credentials and have had to leave.”
China’s Washington embassy did not reply to VOA’s email requesting comment. A Foreign Ministry spokesperson, however, has previously dismissed claims of a closed media environment, saying, “as long as foreign journalists abide by the law and do reporting in compliance with the law and regulations, there is no need to worry.”
Even before Chan was forced to leave, the relative freedom that foreign journalists briefly enjoyed had begun to decline, she said.
During a 2011 reporting trip to the northwestern region of Xinjiang, where Beijing is accused of genocide against Uyghurs, Chan was tailed by two cars the entire time.
“It was becoming unbearable, particularly for TV crews,” she said.
Those difficulties strike at the heart of the book, Chinoy said, which is “the never-ending struggle between American journalists seeking to penetrate the veil of secrecy that has enshrouded China for so long, and get a better understanding of Chinese reality.”
For Wilhelm, who now leads the U.S.-Asia Law Institute at New York University’s law school, reporting in China gave a sense, “all day, every day, that you were swimming upstream, or swimming against the tide, trying to find out things in a system that really didn’t want you to find them out.”
Despite the barriers, which have multiplied in recent years, Buckley said that for media to cover the news on China effectively, they need to be inside China.
Reporting from the countryside is one of the things Buckley misses most about being based in China. But that’s become harder to do, he said.
“Ultimately it means people abroad don’t get that more textured sense about what life is like in China,” Buckley said. “And that’s a loss.”
In the short term, the Chinese government may be relieved to have fewer foreign journalists, especially from American outlets, said Buckley. But those potential benefits won’t last forever.
“Longer term, if readers, if audiences are deprived of a fuller understanding of what’s happening in China, that space where information can’t be shared is going to be filled with distortions and rumors and more misunderstandings,” he said.
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US-China Competition in Tech Expands to AI Regulations
Competition between the U.S. and China in artificial intelligence has expanded into a race to design and implement comprehensive AI regulations.
The efforts to come up with rules to ensure AI’s trustworthiness, safety and transparency come at a time when governments around the world are exploring the impact of the technology on national security and education.
ChatGPT, a chatbot that mimics human conversation, has received massive attention since its debut in November. Its ability to give sophisticated answers to complex questions with a language fluency comparable to that of humans has caught the world by surprise. Yet its many flaws, including its ostensibly coherent responses laden with misleading information and apparent bias, have prompted tech leaders in the U.S. to sound the alarm.
“What happens when something vastly smarter than the smartest person comes along in silicon form? It’s very difficult to predict what will happen in that circumstance,” said Tesla Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk in an interview with Fox News. He warned that artificial intelligence could lead to “civilization destruction” without regulations in place.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai echoed that sentiment. “Over time there has to be regulation. There have to be consequences for creating deep fake videos which cause harm to society,” Pichai said in an interview with CBS’s “60 Minutes” program.
Jessica Brandt, policy director for the Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technology Initiative at the Brookings Institution, told VOA Mandarin, “Business leaders understand that regulators will be watching this space closely, and they have an interest in shaping the approaches regulators will take.”
US grapples with regulations
AI regulation is still nascent in the U.S. Last year, the White House released voluntary guidance through a Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights to help ensure users’ rights are protected as technology companies design and develop AI systems.
At a meeting of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology this month, President Joe Biden expressed concern about the potential dangers associated with AI and underscored that companies had a responsibility to ensure their products were safe before making them public.
On April 11, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, a Commerce Department agency that advises the White House on telecommunications and information policy, began to seek comment and public input with the aim of crafting a report on AI accountability.
The U.S. government is trying to find the right balance to regulate the industry without stifling innovation “in part because the U.S. having innovative leadership globally is a selling point for the United States’ hard and soft power,” said Johanna Costigan, a junior fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis.
Brandt, with Brookings, said, “The challenge for liberal democracies is to ensure that AI is developed and deployed responsibly, while also supporting a vibrant innovation ecosystem that can attract talent and investment.”
Meanwhile, other Western countries have also started to work on regulating the emerging technology.
The U.K. government published its AI regulatory framework in March. Also last month, Italy temporarily blocked ChatGPT in the wake of a data breach, and the German commissioner for data protection said his country could follow suit.
The European Union stated it’s pushing for an AI strategy aimed at making Europe a world-class hub for AI that ensures AI is human-centric and trustworthy, and it hopes to lead the world in AI standards.
Cyber regulations in China
In contrast to the U.S., the Chinese government has already implemented regulations aimed at tech sectors related to AI. In the past few years, Beijing has introduced several major data protection laws to limit the power of tech companies and to protect consumers.
The Cybersecurity Law enacted in 2017 requires that data must be stored within China and operators must submit to government-conducted security checks. The Data Security Law enacted in 2021 sets a comprehensive legal framework for processing personal information when doing business in China. The Personal Information Protection Law established in the same year gives Chinese consumers the right to access, correct and delete their personal data gathered by businesses. Costigan, with the Asia Society, said these laws have laid the groundwork for future tech regulations.
In March 2022, China began to implement a regulation that governs the way technology companies can use recommendation algorithms. The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) now supervises the process of using big data to analyze user preferences and companies’ ability to push information to users.
On April 11, the CAC unveiled a draft for managing generative artificial intelligence services similar to ChatGPT, in an effort to mitigate the dangers of the new technology.
Costigan said the goal of the proposed generative AI regulation could be seen in Article 4 of the draft, which states that content generated by future AI products must reflect the country’s “core socialist values” and not encourage subversion of state power.
“Maintaining social stability is a key consideration,” she said. “The new draft regulation does some good and is unambiguously in line with [President] Xi Jinping’s desire to ensure that individuals, companies or organizations cannot use emerging AI applications to challenge his rule.”
Michael Caster, the Asia digital program manager at Article 19, a London-based rights organization, told VOA, “The language, especially at Article 4, is clearly about maintaining the state’s power of censorship and surveillance.
“All global policymakers should be clearly aware that while China may be attempting to set standards on emerging technology, their approach to legislation and regulation has always been to preserve the power of the party.”
The future of cyber regulations
As strategies for cyber and AI regulations evolve, how they develop may largely depend on each country’s way of governance and reasons for creating standards. Analysts say there will also be intrinsic hurdles linked to coming up with consensus.
“Ethical principles can be hard to implement consistently, since context matters and there are countless potential scenarios at play,” Brandt told VOA. “They can be hard to enforce, too. Who would take on that role? How? And of course, before you can implement or enforce a set of principles, you need broad agreement on what they are.”
Observers said the international community would face challenges as it creates standards aimed at making AI technology ethical and safe.
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Latest in Ukraine: Grain Exports Remain Landlocked as EU Bans Continue
New developments:
Kyiv acknowledges Russian advances in Bakhmut.
U.S. will be training Ukrainian soldiers on Abrams tanks, while Germany will build a tank repair hub in Poland.
Britain sanctions a Russian judge and four others linked to the arrest and alleged poisoning of Kremlin critic and activist Vladimir Kara-Murza, who was sentenced to 25 years for alleged treason and other offenses.
Four European Union member states have banned Ukraine’s food exports to protect their own markets. Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Bulgaria say that an influx of Ukrainian food imports is harming their own farmers, who can’t compete with Ukraine’s low prices. The Polish government approved $2.4 billion in aid for its agricultural sector, criticizing the European Commission on Friday for not doing enough to help resolve the problem.
“What the EU is offered with a delay, it is too little, a drop in the ocean of needs,” Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki told a news conference.
The European Commission has offered $110 million of aid for central European farmers, in addition to an earlier $61.5 million package. It has also said it will take emergency preventive measures for other products — like wheat, corn and sunflower seeds — but the central European states want this list to be broadened to include honey and some meats, Reuters reported.
Ukraine’s economy is heavily dependent upon agriculture, and the European ban will put a significant dent in its sales, Bloomberg reported, citing UkrAgroConsult.
Romania has for now decided not to participate in the ban, while allowing transit of Ukraine exports through its Black Sea port of Constanta.
Several central European countries became the gateway to a glut of Ukraine’s food exports after Ukrainian grain was stranded in Black Sea ports blockaded by Russia. The Black Sea Initiative brokered by the United Nations and Turkey has allowed safe transit of grain shipments through that corridor, though Russia is threatening not to renew after the deal expires on May 18.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Thursday that the renewal of the deal depended on whether the West would lift restrictions affecting Russia’s agricultural exports. The Kremlin said Friday that it was monitoring reports of a possible ban on Russian exports and that new Western sanctions would damage the global economy.
“We are aware that both the U.S. and the EU are actively considering new sanctions,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters. “We believe that both the current sanctions against the Russian Federation and the new additional steps that the U.S. and the EU may be thinking about now will, of course, also hit the global economy.”
Bakhmut fighting
Fighting in Bakhmut is raging and Kyiv said Friday that while Russian forces had made some advances in the eastern city, the situation was still in play. “The situation is tense, but under control,” Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
Malyar made the comments after Russia’s Defense Ministry said in a briefing Friday that assault troops were fighting in western parts of Bakhmut, the last part of the embattled Ukrainian city still held by Kyiv’s forces.
US tank training
The U.S. hosted a meeting Friday at Ramstein Air Base in Germany focused on air defense and ammunition in Ukraine. The United States said it would soon start training Ukrainian troops on driving Abrams tanks, while Germany announced that it was building a tank repair hub in Poland for tanks deployed in Ukraine.
During the meeting, allies also reassured Kyiv of their unconditional support and supported Ukraine’s bid to join NATO in the future.
Ukraine pressed its allies for long-range weapons, jets and ammunition ahead of a counteroffensive against Russian troops that is expected in the coming weeks or months.
NATO members Denmark and the Netherlands announced Thursday that they were partnering to buy and refurbish 14 Leopard 2-A4 tanks to send to Ukraine.
The Dutch and Danish defense ministries said the tanks would be ready for delivery to Ukrainian forces early next year. Denmark and the Netherlands will share the $180 million cost.
Belgorod blast
Late Thursday, Russian authorities reported an explosion in Belgorod, close to the border with Ukraine, saying it had left a crater 20 meters wide in the city center.
Neither the region’s governor nor the city’s mayor said what caused the explosion. A report from the Russian state news outlet Tass, however, cited Russia’s defense ministry as saying a Russian warplane was to blame.
“As a Sukhoi Su-34 air force plane was flying over the city of Belgorod, there was an accidental discharge of aviation ammunition,” Tass cited the Defense Ministry as saying.
The Belgorod region, including the city of the same name, has been frequently hit by shelling since Russia invaded Ukraine last year.
Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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UN Weekly Roundup: April 15-21, 2023
Editor’s note: Here is a fast take on what the international community has been up to this past week, as seen from the United Nations perch.
Violence erupts in Sudan, UN chief calls for truce
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for an immediate halt to fighting in Sudan on Thursday and appealed for a three-day cease-fire to mark the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan to enable trapped civilians to seek safety and supplies.
As of Friday, street battles were reportedly continuing. Guterres said a truce for Eid al-Fitr must be the first step to a permeant cease-fire and a return to the transition to civilian rule. Rival generals in a power struggle have unleashed fighting in the capital and across the country, which has killed more than 400 people so far, many of them civilians.
UN Chief Calls for Cease-Fire in Sudan to Mark End of Ramadan
UN complains to US over spying reports
The United Nations lodged a formal complaint Monday with the United States over reports that Washington spied on Secretary-General Guterres and other senior U.N. officials. The revelation came to light as part of a trove of classified military documents allegedly leaked online by a 21-year-old U.S. air national guardsman, who was arrested and charged last week. News outlets reported that the U.S. may have monitored Guterres’ private communications, including with Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed. The U.S. government has not commented on the substance of the leaked documents.
UN Expresses Concern to US Over Spying Reports
Talk of Taliban recognition draws condemnation
Remarks by U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed about possible future recognition of the Taliban drew criticism this week from U.S. officials as well as Afghan activists and politicians. Speaking at Princeton University, Mohammed said a meeting is being organized in Qatar in early May of special envoys on Afghanistan from different countries. “And out of that, we hope that we’ll find those baby steps to put us back on the pathway to recognition [of the Taliban], a principled recognition,” Mohammed said. “Is it possible? I don’t know. [But] that discussion has to happen. The Taliban clearly want recognition, and that’s the leverage we have.” The U.N. has rejected as “unlawful” the Taliban’s latest edict banning Afghan women from working for the international organization. It follows other restrictions on their education, work and movements.
Top UN Official Proposes Meeting to Discuss Recognition of Taliban
The U.N. quickly moved to clarify Mohammed’s remarks, saying the recognition issue was “clearly in the hands of the member states” and that she was reaffirming the need for an internationally coordinated approach. Mohammed has been outspoken on upholding the rights of Afghan women and girls and personally met with the Taliban’s supreme leader earlier this year.
US Rules Out Talks on Afghan Taliban Recognition at UN-Hosted Meeting
No consensus on UN Security Council on what to do about DPRK
A senior United Nations official warned Monday that North Korea is hitting “significant milestones” in its five-year military development plan, including its launch last week of a reported solid fuel intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). U.N. deputy political chief Khaled Khiari added that the lack of Security Council unity is not helping the situation, as North Korea is “unconstrained.” Russia and China have repeatedly blocked action on the council to address numerous ballistic missile launches.
As UN Security Council Dithers, North Korea Progresses on WMD
Decline in vaccination rates jeopardizes children’s health
The U.N. children’s fund, UNICEF, warns that many children are likely to die from vaccine-preventable diseases because of a decline in routine immunizations during the COVID-19 pandemic. The report also found that 67 million children, nearly half of them on the African continent, have missed out on one or more vaccinations due to disruptions in immunization services in the three years since the pandemic began.
UNICEF Warns Many Children in Danger of Dying from Preventable Diseases
In brief
— Despite a decrease in fighting in Yemen, the country’s health sector remains at risk of collapse, the World Health Organization warned Friday. Nearly half the country’s health facilities are closed or only partially functioning. The WHO says the health crisis is compounded by a rise in outbreaks of measles, diphtheria, dengue, cholera and polio. There are also 540,000 children under the age of five who are suffering severe acute malnutrition with a direct risk of death. The WHO has been supporting Yemen’s health sector but, due to a shortage of funds, has faced reductions affecting millions of people.
— There were three attacks on peacekeepers in Mali in the past week. Two Bangladeshi peacekeepers were injured when an IED targeted their logistics convoy Tuesday in the Mopti region. Days before that, two peacekeepers from Togo were injured when their convoy was also hit by an IED near Douentza. On Wednesday, the U.N. mission in Mali reported an explosion targeting an empty fuel tank belonging to a contractor. No injuries were reported. For the past nine years, MINUSMA has been the U.N.’s deadliest mission for peacekeepers. In 2022, 32 “blue helmets” were killed in deliberate attacks.
— The new special representative of the secretary-general for Haiti, María Isabel Salvador, has arrived in Port-au-Prince, where she met Prime Minister Ariel Henry. She is scheduled to deliver her first briefing to the Security Council on April 26.
Good news
The International Committee of the Red Cross said Monday that the warring sides in Yemen released nearly a thousand detainees over four days. The development comes a month after an agreement between Saudi Arabia and Iran to restore ties. Saudi Arabia has backed Yemen’s internationally recognized government, while Iran supports the Houthi rebels who seized Yemen’s capital in 2014.
Nearly 1,000 Detainees Released in Yemen
What we are watching next week
As part of its Security Council presidency this month, Russia’s foreign minister will chair two meetings next week. On Monday, Sergey Lavrov will preside over a debate on “effective multilateralism through the defense of the principles of the U.N. Charter” and on Tuesday the regular debate on the Middle East. It will be his second visit to the U.N. since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022. His first was during the General Assembly high-level week in September, during which Lavrov said the Kremlin had “no choice” but to launch its “special military operation” in Ukraine. It also comes just weeks before the May 18 deadline Russia has set for the U.N. to meet its conditions to extend a deal that facilitates the exports through the Black Sea of Ukrainian grain and Russian grain and fertilizer. Moscow has complained for months that it is not benefiting from the 9-month-old deal. It will certainly be a focus of discussion between Lavrov and U.N. chief Guterres when they meet next week.
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US Targeting China, Artificial Intelligence Threats
U.S. homeland security officials are launching what they describe as two urgent initiatives to combat growing threats from China and expanding dangers from ever more capable, and potentially malicious, artificial intelligence.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced Friday that his department was starting a “90-day sprint” to confront more frequent and intense efforts by China to hurt the United States, while separately establishing an artificial intelligence task force.
“Beijing has the capability and the intent to undermine our interests at home and abroad and is leveraging every instrument of its national power to do so,” Mayorkas warned, addressing the threat from China during a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington.
The 90-day sprint will “assess how the threats posed by the PRC [People’s Republic of China] will evolve and how we can be best positioned to guard against future manifestations of this threat,” he said.
“One critical area we will assess, for example, involves the defense of our critical infrastructure against PRC or PRC-sponsored attacks designed to disrupt or degrade provision of national critical functions, sow discord and panic, and prevent mobilization of U.S. military capabilities,” Mayorkas added.
Other areas of focus for the sprint will include addressing ways to stop Chinese government exploitation of U.S. immigration and travel systems to spy on the U.S. government and private entities and to silence critics, and looking at ways to disrupt the global fentanyl supply chain.
AI dangers
Mayorkas also said the magnitude of the threat from artificial intelligence, appearing in a growing number of tools from major tech companies, was no less critical.
“We must address the many ways in which artificial intelligence will drastically alter the threat landscape and augment the arsenal of tools we possess to succeed in the face of these threats,” he said.
Mayorkas promised that the Department of Homeland Security “will lead in the responsible use of AI to secure the homeland and in defending against the malicious use of this transformational technology.”
The new task force is set to seek ways to use AI to protect U.S. supply chains and critical infrastructure, counter the flow of fentanyl, and help find and rescue victims of online child sexual exploitation.
The unveiling of the two initiatives came days after lawmakers grilled Mayorkas about what some described as a lackluster and derelict effort under his leadership to secure the U.S. border with Mexico.
“You have not secured our borders, Mr. Secretary, and I believe you’ve done so intentionally,” the chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, Republican Mark Green, told Mayorkas on Wednesday.
Another lawmaker, Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene, went as far as to accuse Mayorkas of lying, though her words were quickly removed from the record.
Mayorkas on Friday said it might be possible to use AI to help with border security, though how exactly it could be deployed for the task was not yet clear.
“We’re at a nascent stage of really deploying AI,” he said. “I think we’re now at the dawn of a new age.”
But Mayorkas cautioned that technologies like AI would do little to slow the number of migrants willing to embark on dangerous journeys to reach U.S. soil.
“Desperation is the greatest catalyst for the migration we are seeing,” he said.
FBI warning
The announcement of Homeland Security’s 90-day sprint to confront growing threats from Beijing followed a warning earlier this week from the FBI about the willingness of China to target dissidents and critics in the U.S.
and the arrests of two New York City residents for their involvement in a secret Chinese police station.
China has denied any wrongdoing.
“The Chinese government strictly abides by international law, and fully respects the law enforcement sovereignty of other countries,” Liu Pengyu, the spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, told VOA in an email earlier this week, accusing the U.S. of seeking “to smear China’s image.”
Top U.S. officials have said they are opening two investigations daily into Chinese economic espionage in the U.S.
“The Chinese government has stolen more of American’s personal and corporate data than that of every nation, big or small combined,” FBI Director Christopher Wray told an audience late last year.
More recently, Wray warned of Chinese’ advances in AI, saying he was “deeply concerned.”
Mayorkas voiced a similar sentiment, pointing to China’s use of investments and technology to establish footholds around the world.
“We are deeply concerned about PRC-owned and -operated infrastructure, elements of infrastructure, and what that control can mean, given that the operator and owner has adverse interests,” Mayorkas said Friday.
“Whether it’s investment in our ports, whether it is investment in partner nations, telecommunications channels and the like, it’s a myriad of threats,” he said.
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These Ukrainian Women Left Pre-War Lives Behind to Join Armed Forces
Ukrainian women from all walks of life have joined the armed forces to fight for their homes and country. Anna Kosstutschenko met with some near Bakhmut. Video: Pavel Suhodolskiy
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In Cameroon, Journalist Killings Cast Chill Over Investigative Reporting
Cameroonian journalists say they remain fearful more than three months after the abduction and killings of investigative journalist Martinez Zogo and radio presenter Jean-Jacques Ola Bebe.
Dieudonne Koutche was among several dozen civilians who who stopped by a memorial to the slain journalists at Amplitude FM radio in Yaounde on April 21, 2023.
He said he feels for journalists in Cameroon because it is a country where officials and business executives can decide one morning to abduct and kill a reporter.
Charges of torture and complicity in torture for the more than 20 people arrested in connection with Zogo’s killing are not convincing, Koutche added. The culprits should face more serious charges, he said.
Zogo was a radio host at Amplitude FM. The U.S.-based Committee to Protect Journalists reports that Zogo had been investigating allegations of corruption involving senior officials in the central African state.
His mutilated body was found on January 22 in Yaounde, five days after he was abducted.
Cameroonian President Paul Biya ordered an investigation into Zogo’s killing after a national and an international outcry.
Jean-Pierre Amougou Belinga, a prominent business leader with holdings in banking, finance, insurance and property, as well as the L’Anecdote company, which owns a daily newspaper and several pro-government TV and radio stations, was arrested.
Zogo had reported in one of his radio programs that many senior officials, including Belinga, wanted to kill him. But Zogo pledged to continue digging deep into corruption, which he said involved Belinga and many government ministers.
The police also arrested a former chief presidential security guard, senior police officers and a police chief in connection with Zogo’s killing.
Charly Tchouemou, editor-in-chief of Amplitude FM, said reporters are receiving threats, and the momentum to report graft is fading.
He said since Zogo was killed, some Amplitude FM journalists are scared of reporting corruption and social ills. Tchouemou said Amplitude FM reporters are particularly scared because they receive anonymous phone calls from suspected government officials, as well as supporters and business partners of Belinga. He said the callers threaten to kill journalists who continue to report that the business mogul may have masterminded Zogo’s killing.
A court in Yaounde has twice denied bail for Belinga.
Charles Tchoungang, who leads Belinga’s legal defense, said it is not proper for his client to be in jail while other suspects are free. He spoke to VOA by telephone Friday from Douala, Cameroon’s economic hub.
Tchoungang said he is surprised that Belinga was arrested, while some government ministers who are prime suspects are still free. He added that keeping Belinga detained does not answer the question as to who killed Zogo, because he is sure that the killers are high-profile government officials who are falsely accusing Belinga.
The government has yet to respond to Tchoungang’s allegations that senior government officials planned Zogo’s killing. The government, however, says it will investigate and punish all killers according to Cameroonian law.
Jean-Jacques Ola Bebe, another radio presenter, was found dead outside his home in the capital on February 2, allegedly gunned down by unknown assailants. The government has not commented on his killing.
Cameroonian journalists say the two deaths scare them, and they have reported threats to the police. The police told VOA that it had received complaints from reporters and that it is its duty to protect every civilian.
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Activists Welcome Ugandan President Calling for Review of Anti-Gay Bill
Human rights activists welcome the move by President Yoweri Museveni to return a draft of the anti-homosexuality bill to parliament for review, saying it provides them with more time to fight it.
On Thursday, Museveni, in a meeting with legislators of the ruling National Resistance Movement party, congratulated them upon passing the bill in March. But Museveni said that while he agrees with the bill, legislators need to make changes to not frighten someone who, in his words, needs rehabilitation and wants to come out.
The bill was widely condemned for what human rights activists have called some of the world’s harshest punishments against the gay community.
The bill mandates life in prison for anyone who engages in homosexual acts, up to 20 years for promoting homosexuality, and a three-year sentence for children convicted of homosexuality. Certain acts of gay sex could warrant the death penalty.
Speaking to VOA, the ruling party’s chief whip in parliament, Denis Hamson Obua, said parliament will examine the bill “in order for some proposed clauses to be reviewed, to be reinforced, to be strengthened. There is also the question of rehabilitation of the victims.”
“But we also agreed in principle that the proposed sentences in terms of punishment for promotion, recruitment and publicizing acts of homosexuality will be sustained,” he added.
The NRM caucus will likely decriminalize failure to report homosexuality. The current bill requires everyone to report a person known to be gay to police, but Museveni wants that provision removed.
Amnesty International continues to call on Museveni to veto the bill.
“It is sad that he did not veto the bill,” said Roland Ebole, Amnesty’s regional researcher. “But what we are actually saying, the provisions of the bill are very dangerous, the death sentence. Having sentences that go against the constitution. And really worried about the forced testing of persons because they are suspected of having committed aggravated homosexuality, and especially targeting HIV/AIDS community.”
Amnesty also argues that forced testing will increase stigma and reverse achievements against HIV and AIDS made by Uganda.
The United States pays for anti-retroviral drugs for hundreds of thousands of Ugandans each year. The country director for the U.S. Agency for International Development recently said the bill, if passed, would make it impossible for the agency to work in Uganda.
Joan Ameka, founder of the Rella Foundation, a group that provides shelter to queer women, said Museveni sending the bill back for review provides some hope.
“We could have a chance to have a conversation on how further do we protect queer persons in Uganda. Because the bill so far has caused a lot of damages, especially in the lowest communities that are offering support,” Ameka said.
Museveni has called for a meeting with the proposer of the bill, Justice Reform opposition party legislator Asuman Basalirwa, to agree on amendments to the bill before parliament considers it again.
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Russia’s Air Force Accidentally Bombs Own City of Belgorod
Russia’s military acknowledged that a bomb accidentally dropped by one of its warplanes caused a powerful blast in a Russian city not far from Ukraine’s border, injuring two and scaring local residents.
Belgorod, a city of 340,000 located about 40 kilometers (25 miles) east of the Russia-Ukraine border, has faced regular drone attacks during Russia’s current military operation in Ukraine. Russian authorities blamed the earlier strikes on the Ukrainian military, which refrained from directly claiming responsibility for the attacks.
The explosion late Thursday was far more powerful than anything Belgorod residents had experienced before. Witnesses reported a low hissing sound followed by a blast that made nearby apartment buildings tremble and shattered their windows.
It left a 20-meter (66-foot) -wide crater in the middle of a tree-lined avenue flanked by apartment blocks, damaged several cars and threw one vehicle onto a store roof. Two people were injured, and a third person was later hospitalized with hypertension, authorities said.
Immediately after the explosion, Russian commentators and military bloggers were abuzz with theories about what weapon Ukraine had used for the attack. Many of them called for strong retribution.
But about an hour later, the Russian Defense Ministry acknowledged that a weapon accidentally released by one of its own Su-34 bombers caused the blast. The ministry did not provide any further details, but military experts said the weapon likely was a powerful 500-kilogram (1,100-pound) bomb.
Military experts charged that the weapon appeared to have been set to explode with a small delay after impact that would allow it to hit underground facilities.
Belgorod Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov said local authorities decided to temporarily resettle residents of a nine-story apartment building while it was inspected to make sure it hadn’t suffered structural damage that rendered it unsafe to live in.
In an editorial gaffe, an anchor on Russian state television followed the news about the local authorities dealing with the explosion’s aftermath by declaring that “modern weapons allow Russian units to eliminate extremists in the area of the special military operation from a minimal distance.” The anchor looked visibly puzzled by the text that he had just read.
Russian commentators questioned why the warplane flew over Belgorod and urged the military to avoid such risky overflights in the future.
Some alleged that the bomb that was accidentally dropped on Belgorod could be one of a batch of modified munitions equipped with wings and GPS-guided targeting system that allows them to glide to targets dozens of kilometers (miles) away. The Russian air force has started using such gliding bombs only recently, and some experts say that they could be prone to glitches.
In October, a Russian warplane crashed next to a residential building in the port city of Yeysk on the Sea of Azov, killing 15 people. Yeysk hosts a big Russian air base with warplanes that fly missions over Ukraine.
Military experts have noted that as the number of Russian military flights have increased sharply during the fighting, so have crashes and misfires.
In another deadly incident in the Belgorod region, two volunteer soldiers fired at Russian troops at a military firing range, killing 11 and wounding 15 others before being shot dead.
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Germany’s Railway, Airline Workers Strike
Germany’s train system came to a standstill Friday when railway workers went on strike for eight hours.
EVG, the union representing the state-owned Deutsche Bahn workers, says its members need a raise to counter inflation.
Long distance and regional trains were affected by the strike, which lasted from 3 a.m. to 11 a.m.
The railway strike coincided with a walkout at four major German airports, affecting hundreds of flights. Reuters news agency reports 700 flights were canceled.
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Transgender Lawmaker Silenced by Montana House Speaker Until She Apologizes
Montana’s House speaker on Thursday refused to allow a transgender lawmaker to speak about bills on the House floor until she apologizes for saying lawmakers would have “blood on their hands” if they supported a bill to ban gender-affirming medical care for transgender youth, the lawmaker said.
Rep. Zooey Zephyr, who was deliberately misgendered by a conservative group of lawmakers demanding her censure after Tuesday’s comments, said she will not apologize, creating a standoff between the first-term state lawmaker and Republican legislative leaders.
Speaker Matt Regier refused to acknowledge Zephyr on Thursday when she wanted to comment on a bill seeking to put a binary definition of male and female into state code.
“It is up to me to maintain decorum here on the House floor, to protect the dignity and integrity,” Regier said Thursday. “And any representative that I don’t feel can do that will not be recognized.”
Regier said the decision came after “multiple discussions” with other lawmakers and that previously there have been similar problems.
Democrats objected to Regier’s decision, but the House Rules committee and the House upheld his decision on party-line votes.
“Hate-filled testimony has no place on the House floor,” Republican Rep. Caleb Hinkle, a member of the Montana Freedom Caucus that demanded the censure, said in a statement.
Zephyr said she stands by what she said about the consequences of banning essential medical care for transgender youth.
“When there are bills targeting the LGBTQ community, I stand up to defend my community,” Zephyr said. “And I choose my words with clarity and precision, and I spoke to the real harms that these bills bring.”
Regier also declined to recognize Zephyr on Thursday when she rang in to speak about another bill, which was unrelated to LGBTQ+ issues and seeks to reimburse hotels that provide shelter to victims of human trafficking.
“The speaker is refusing to allow me to participate in debate until I retract or apologize for my statements made during floor debate,” Zephyr said.
The issue came to a head Tuesday when Zephyr, the first transgender woman to hold a position in the Montana legislature, referenced the floor session’s opening prayer when she told lawmakers if they supported the bill, “I hope the next time there’s an invocation when you bow your heads in prayer, you see the blood on your hands.”
She had made a similar comment when the bill was debated in the House for the first time.
House Majority Leader Sue Vinton rebuked Zephyr on Tuesday, calling her comments inappropriate, disrespectful and uncalled for.
Later, the Montana Freedom Caucus issued its censure demand in a letter that called for a “commitment to civil discourse” in the same sentence in which it deliberately misgendered Zephyr. The caucus also misgendered Zephyr in a Tweet while posting the letter online.
“It is disheartening that the Montana Freedom Caucus would stoop so low as to misgender me in their letter, further demonstrating their disregard for the dignity and humanity of transgender individuals,” Zephyr said in a statement Wednesday.
Zephyr also spoke emotionally and directly to transgender Montanans in February in opposing a bill to ban minors from attending drag shows.
“I have one request for you: Please stay alive,” Zephyr said then, assuring them she and others would keep fighting and challenge the bills in court.
The legislature has also passed a bill stating a student misgendering or deadnaming a fellow student is not illegal discrimination, unless it rises to the level of bullying.
At the end of Thursday’s House session, Democratic Rep. Marilyn Marler asked that the House majority allow Zephyr to speak on the floor going forward.
“This body is denying the representative … the chance to do her job,” Marler said.
Majority Leader Vinton, before moving for adjournment, said: “I will let the body know that the representative … has every opportunity to rectify the situation.”
The House meets again Friday afternoon.
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Minneapolis Mayor Signs Law Allowing Islamic Call Five Times a Day
Muslims in Minneapolis can now hear their call to prayer broadcast five times a day from mosques around the city, thanks to a new law. From Minneapolis, Mohamud Mascadde has the story, narrated by Salem Solomon.
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US Abrams Tanks Arriving in May for Ukraine Training in Germany
U.S.-made M1A1 Abrams tanks will arrive in Germany in May, and Ukrainians will start training on them soon after, according to senior military officials.
Thirty-one Abrams tanks will arrive at a base in Grafenwöhr, Germany next month so that Ukrainians can start a 10-week course on how to operate the tanks. Additional force-on-force training and maintenance courses will be held at either Grafenwöhr or another base in Hohenfels, Germany, the officials said.
The U.S.-led training will involve about 250 Ukrainians, and officials say 31 Abrams tanks will be delivered to Ukraine by the end of this year.
The news comes as U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin is hosting another meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group on Friday, where military leaders from more than 50 nations are focusing on the Ukrainian military’s armor, air defense and ammunition needs.
Austin is expected to announce that the Abrams will arrive in Germany in the coming weeks during a Friday press conference.
Speaking at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, where he first convened the group last April, Austin said the groups’ members had provided more than $55 billion in security assistance for Ukraine.
“More than a year later, Ukraine is still standing strong. Our support has not wavered, and I’m proud of the progress that we have made together,” he said.
In the past few months, members of the group have provided enough equipment and training to support nine additional armored brigades, according to Austin.
Abrams tanks, in particular, have been a long-awaited addition to the fight. The tank’s thick armor and 1,500-horsepower turbine engine make it much more advanced than the Soviet-era tanks Ukraine has been using since the war’s beginning.
The Biden administration announced in January that it would send a newer version of the Abrams tanks, known as M1A2, to Ukraine after they were procured and built, a process that could potentially take years.
In March, the administration pivoted to provide M1A1 Abrams tanks instead, in order to get the tanks “into the hands of the Ukrainians sooner rather than later,” Pentagon press secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said at the time.
The U.K. was the first to promise Western-style tanks for Ukraine, sending its Challenger 2 tanks to aid in the fight. After the U.S. Abrams announcement in January, Germany announced it would provide Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine and allow other allies with German tanks, such as Poland, to do the same.
Ukrainian Minister of Defense Oleksii Reznikov spoke to members of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group Friday in order to update leaders on the state of the battlefield and Ukraine’s most urgent military needs. Moscow began a renewed offensive in Ukraine earlier this year that has stalled, and Kyiv is preparing for a massive counteroffensive that is expected to begin in the coming days or weeks.
The U.S. has now provided more than $35 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion began in February 2022, which Austin called “an unprovoked and indefensible war of aggression.”
Some countries, including Estonia and Latvia, have donated more than 1% of their GDP to Ukraine’s defense.
Ahead of the meeting, Austin addressed the massive Pentagon leak of classified documents detailing sensitive intelligence on the war in Ukraine, Russian intelligence and intelligence gleaned from spying on allies.
Austin said he took the issue very seriously and would continue to work with “our deeply valued allies and partners.”
“I’ve been struck by your solidarity and your commitment to reject efforts to divide us. And we will not let anything fracture our unity,” he said.
The Ukraine Defense Contact Group has worked better than predicted in terms of maintaining supplies for Ukraine, showing Western resolve to face down Russian aggression and having “Ukraine’s back even without having forces on the battlefield,” according to Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
The U.S. and allies have vowed to support Ukraine in defending its sovereign territory for “as long as it takes,” which O’Hanlon says may extend through all of 2024.
“I’m afraid that’s a distinct possibility,” he said.
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Sudan’s RSF To Observe a 72-Hour Truce
Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces said Friday it has agreed to a 72-hour truce to begin at 6 a.m., designed to bring at least a temporary halt to the days of deadly fighting in the African country that has killed hundreds.
The RSF said in a statement, “The truce coincides with the blessed Eid al-Fitr … to open humanitarian corridors to evacuate citizens and give them the opportunity to greet their families.”
The Muslim holiday of Eid marks the end of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.
There has been no indication, however, from the rival Sudan Armed Forces about its intention to observe the truce.
On Thursday, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for an immediate halt to fighting and appealed for a three-day cease-fire to mark the end of Ramadan to enable trapped civilians to seek safety and supplies.
“This must be the first step in providing respite from the fighting and paving the way for a permanent cease-fire,” Guterres told reporters at U.N. headquarters in New York.
He had just met virtually with the heads of the African Union, Arab League and regional Intergovernmental Authority on Development bloc, IGAD, as well as representatives from other countries with influence. The session yielded no breakthroughs.
Guterres has been working the phones to achieve a deescalation since violence erupted last Saturday between former allies, now rivals, Army Commander General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, the commander of the RSF.
“The cessation of hostilities must be followed by serious dialogue allowing for the successful transition, starting with the appointment of a civilian government,” the U.N. chief said.
Humanitarian crisis
Guterres told reporters it is “virtually impossible” for aid workers to conduct operations in the current state of hostilities, and he demanded that fighters stop targeting humanitarians.
Three employees of the World Food Program were killed in crossfire at the start of the fighting in Darfur. Others have been harassed and intimidated. There have also been reports of sexual assaults on aid workers. Warehouses have been attacked, looted and seized. The WFP said 4,000 metric tons of food was stolen at one of its depots in Nyala, south Darfur.
“There were no humanitarian services provided to Sudanese the last five days, simply because it’s not possible for any humanitarian workers to move outside of their home location or their compound,” the acting U.N. humanitarian and resident coordinator for Sudan, Abdou Dieng, told reporters by phone Thursday from the country.
He said the U.N. was hoping for a cease-fire to move staff in more dangerous areas to safer zones but said that what is safe one day may not be safe the next.
World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Thursday that more than 330 people have been killed in the fighting and around 3,200 wounded.
The U.N. has warned that Sudan’s health care system “could completely collapse.” Hospitals need more staff and supplies, including blood.
At least 20 hospitals already have closed, according to Sudan’s minister of health. At least nine in the capital, Khartoum, are closed, with the potential for a dozen more to soon close, according to the United Nations.
Officials say this is all tragic for a country where one-third of the population – or nearly 16 million people – needed humanitarian assistance before the latest violence.
The U.N. refugee agency, UNHCR, said Thursday that between 10,000 and 20,000 Sudanese have fled this week into neighboring Chad. The U.N.’s Dieng said his office has also received reports of people arriving in South Sudan and at the border area between Ethiopia and Eritrea.
Calls for dialogue
The fighting between the army and RSF broke out after months of rising tensions over the country’s political future and plans to integrate the RSF into the national army.
Calls to end the fighting have come from around the world and within Africa, including the African Union, the Arab League and IGAD.
The presidents of Kenya, South Sudan and Djibouti say they plan to travel to Sudan in the coming days to hold discussions with the leaders.
But Sudan’s two top generals have yet to express a willingness to negotiate, and each has demanded the other’s surrender.
The clashes are part of a power struggle between Burhan, who also heads Sudan’s ruling military council, and Dagalo, also known as Hemedti, the deputy head of the council. The two generals joined forces in October 2021 to overthrow the transitional government formed after the 2019 ouster of longtime autocratic leader Omar al-Bashir.
The restructuring of the military was part of an effort to restore the country to civilian rule and end the political crisis.
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Sudan’s Top General Says Military Committed to Civilian Rule
Sudan’s top general said Friday the military is committed to a transition to civilian rule, in his first speech since brutal fighting between his forces and the country’s powerful paramilitary began nearly a week ago.
In a video message released early Friday to mark the Muslim Eid al-Fitr holiday, army chief Gen. Abdel Fattah Burhan said: “We are confident that we will overcome this ordeal with our training, wisdom and strength, preserving the security and unity of the state, allowing us to be entrusted with the safe transition to civilian rule.”
The sounds of heavy fighting could be heard amid the call to prayer in the Sudanese capital, where mosques are expected to hold the morning services inside to protect worshippers.
The army chief’s statements came as his rivals claimed they would implement a three-day cease-fire for the holiday that marks the end of Ramadan, the holy month of fasting, based on “international and regional understandings.” There was no immediate response from Burhan to the cease-fire announcement.
Since he took control of the country in an October 2021 coup, Burhan and his rival, commander of Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, have repeatedly promised to shepherd the country toward civilian rule. However, both have failed to sign political agreements that would see their institutions lose power and open the way for democratic elections.
The video message was the first time Burhan has been seen since fighting engulfed the capital and other areas of the country. It wasn’t known when or where the video was made.
On Thursday, Sudan’s military ruled out negotiations with the rival Rapid Support Forces, saying it would only accept its surrender. The two sides continued to battle in central Khartoum, the capital, and other parts of the country, threatening to wreck international attempts to broker a longer cease-fire.
The military’s statement raised the likelihood of a renewed surge in the nearly weeklong violence that has killed hundreds and pushed Sudan’s population to the breaking point. Alarm has grown that the country’s medical system was on the verge of collapse, with many hospitals forced to shut down and others running out of supplies
“Ruin and destruction and the sound of bullets have left no place for the happiness everyone in our beloved country deserves,” Burhan said in the speech.
Both sides have a long history of human rights abuses. The RSF was born out of the Janjaweed militias, which were accused of widespread atrocities when the government deployed them to put down a rebellion in Sudan’s western Darfur region in the early 2000s.
The conflict has raised fears of a spillover from the strategically located nation to its African neighbors.
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US Prepares for Potential Evacuation of Embassy Staff in Sudan
The Pentagon is positioning military forces near Sudan to help evacuate U.S. Embassy personnel in Khartoum, if needed, amid the explosion of violence between the African country’s two warring factions. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and other leaders are pushing for a cease-fire until at least Sunday. VOA’s Senior Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports from the State Department.
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Russia’s War in Ukraine Exposes Risks Posed by Private Military Groups
They are called mercenaries or contractors or volunteers, and they fight on both sides in the war in Ukraine. But whether they are regarded as villains or heroes, their presence is having an unquestionable impact on the battlefield.
The dark side of the irregular fighting forces assisting and resisting Russia’s full-scale invasion was driven home this week when two ex-convicts told a human rights group they had deliberately killed Ukrainian children and civilians while serving as commanders in Russia’s paramilitary Wagner Group last year.
In videos posted online by Russia’s Gulagu.net, Azamat Uldarov and Alexey Savichev described their brutality in graphic detail.
“I wasn’t allowed to let anyone out alive, because my command was to kill anything in my way,” said Uldarov, describing how he fatally shot a 5- or 6-year-old girl.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the private military company whose convict-bolstered ranks have been instrumental in the months-long battle for Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, has denied those allegations and threatened retribution.
But Sean McFate, a former American officer and private military contractor who is now a professor at the National Defense University, said no one should be surprised to see atrocities committed by a military force staffed largely with convicts.
“When you are … opening 11 time zones of jails and dumping into Ukraine … you’re creating a labor pool of psychotic armed men who are running around Ukraine and that region and that doesn’t end well,” he said in an interview with VOA Ukrainian.
McFate added that the use of mercenaries often goes hand in hand with the arms trade and other illicit practices including human trafficking and narcotics.
Robert Young Pelton, a veteran war journalist who has covered more that four dozen conflicts around the world, argued in an interview that the Wagner Group has become an embarrassment not only to Russia’s regular forces but to their country as a whole.
“Russia has professional soldiers that have some of the finest spetsnaz, special operations people,” Pelton told VOA Ukrainian. But by unleashing the Wagner Group in Ukraine, Russia has created an especially dangerous precedent as they legally are “not answerable to anyone.”
“There’s no one going to investigate Wagner and judge them for being good or bad because they’re technically not a part of a state apparatus [or] any state-sanctioned organization,” said Pelton, whose reporting has taken him to Afghanistan, Chechnya and Liberia and brought him into contact with the Taliban and Blackwater security contractors in Iraq.
“We now have Russians murdering people inside Ukraine … and are not really held accountable, and yet they’ll integrate back into society inside Russia.”
On the other side of the paramilitary ledger, Ukraine is supported in its defense of its homeland by several outside groups, some playing a direct role in the fighting.
Among these are the American veteran-led donor-funded organization Project Dynamo that saves civilians from war zones in Ukraine and Afghanistan, and a now-disbanded international Mozart Group that was evacuating civilians and training Ukrainian soldiers.
Some of its former members reorganized under a new name, Sonata, and continue to operate in Ukraine more discreetly, coordinating both with Ukraine’s high-level military officers and battlefront units to understand operational issues and provide technical solutions.
Kyiv does not reveal the numbers but based on media estimates, roughly from 1,000 to 3,000 foreign volunteers are defending Ukraine now, most of them serving in three battalions of the International Legion of Territorial Defense of Ukraine, or the Ukrainian Foreign Legion.
The legion was formed shortly after Russia began its full-scale invasion in February 2022, when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called for the help of “every friend of Ukraine who wants to join Ukraine in defending the country.”
In a written statement to VOA Ukrainian, the legion said that multiple foreigners in the regiment fought bravely and earned high praise from their comrades and commanders, as well as state honors. Some foreign nationals who as part of other battalions served in the weekslong siege at the Azovstal steel plant and in Mariupol also received state honors.
But not all of the foreigners who have flocked to Kyiv’s defense have served so honorably.
The New York Times has reported that some foreign volunteers ended up undermining the war effort, wasting money or even defecting to Russia. The Kyiv Independent has also reported on misconduct within the International Legion leadership that included physical abuse, threats and sending soldiers on reckless “suicidal” missions.
“The problem is, during the war you get what we call ‘the ash and trash,’ people who don’t know what else to do in their life,” McFate said.
“The good ones tend to leave because they don’t want to get killed with the bad ones. And what you are left with are a refuse from the other wars in Iraq, Afghanistan. And not all of them are bad, but this is a common problem of private warfare,” he said.
When asked how the Ukrainian Foreign Legion screens its volunteers, VOA Ukrainian was told that all the soldiers undergo an examination by recruiters, background checks by the government and training before being deployed to the battlefield.
But Pelton said that private contractors “always muddy the water” when brought into a war. “Within that very narrow segment of foreigners fighting in Ukraine, they’re more of a problem than a help because they bring international condemnation, confusion, and sort of a moral question to why these foreigners are here.”
Despite the moral and legal uncertainties, some experienced American warriors say they are still willing to fight for the right cause.
One of these is Dan Hampton, one of America’s most decorated combat pilots with 151 missions in F-16s. He is also the author of several books and the CEO of MVI International, a private military company based in the western U.S. state of Colorado.
“This is the pivotal issue of the Ukraine’s fight against Russia, this is a black and white conflict. … I’ll go myself, I’m – one, you can count me in,” Hampton said in an interview with VOA Ukrainian on March 9.
Hampton, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who received four Distinguished Flying Crosses with Valor and a Purple Heart, suggested that American contractors could help Ukraine with one of its most vexing problems — its need for an enhanced air combat capability.
Ukraine has for months appealed for the United States and its allies to provide the country with F-16 fighters, but the U.S. has so far refused, arguing that the planes are so complex that it would take months if not years for Ukrainian pilots to become proficient in them.
Hampton suggested that if F-16s were provided, experienced foreign pilots could fly them while Ukrainian pilots train or continue to fly their existing aircraft.
This article originated in VOA’s Ukrainian Service.
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Ugandan Leader Declines to Sign Anti-LGBTQ Bill
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni declined to sign a bill that would require the death penalty for homosexuality in some cases and sent it back to Parliament for “strengthening.”
Museveni’s decision was announced late Thursday after he met with lawmakers in his ruling National Resistance Movement party, almost all of whom supported the bill.
The meeting ended with a decision to return the bill to Parliament “with proposals for its improvement,” a statement said. It was not clear what the president’s recommendations were.
The Ugandan Parliament passed the bill on March 21, and the president must sign it for it to become law.
NRM chief whip Denis Hamson Obua said Thursday that Museveni would meet Tuesday with the Parliament’s legal and parliamentary affairs committee to draft amendments to the bill.
Homosexuality is illegal in Uganda — as it is in more than 30 of Africa’s 54 countries — under a colonial-era law criminalizing sex acts “against the order of nature.” The punishment is life imprisonment.
Museveni is a strong opponent of LGBTQ rights. Last month, he described gay people as “deviants.” However, he is under pressure from the international community to veto the bill. U.N. experts say the bill, if passed, would be “an egregious violation of human rights,” and the U.S. has warned of economic consequences if the legislation is enacted.
Last month, 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.”
The bill prescribes the death penalty for the offense of “aggravated homosexuality,” defined as sexual relations involving people infected with HIV as well as minors and other categories of vulnerable people. It also includes life imprisonment for “homosexuality.”
Jail terms of up to 20 years are proposed for those who advocate or promote LGBTQ rights.
Under the bill, a suspect convicted of “attempted aggravated homosexuality” can be jailed for 14 years, and the offense of “attempted homosexuality” is punishable by up to 10 years.
The bill has widespread support in Uganda, including among church leaders. It was introduced by a lawmaker who said his goal was to punish the “promotion, recruitment and funding” of LGBTQ activities in the country. Only two of 389 legislators present for the voting session opposed the bill.
Ignatius Annor of VOA’s English to Africa Service contributed to this report. Some information came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
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US Lawmakers Probe Causes of Chaotic Afghanistan Withdrawal
A Biden administration review said the chaotic August 2021 U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan was largely the result of policy decisions made by the Trump administration. VOA’s congressional correspondent Katherine Gypson spoke to House Foreign Affairs Committee members about next steps for oversight.
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Biden Announces More Funds to Fight Climate Change
President Joe Biden announced plans Thursday to increase U.S. funding to help developing countries fight climate change and curb deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest.
During a virtual meeting of the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate, Biden urged his counterparts to be ambitious in setting goals to reduce emissions and meet a target of limiting overall global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
“We’re at a moment of great peril but also great possibilities, serious possibilities. With the right commitment and follow-through from every nation … on this call, the goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees can stay within reach,” Biden said.
The countries that take part in the forum account for about 80% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions and global gross domestic product, according to the White House. Thursday’s meeting was the group’s fourth under Biden’s presidency.
Biden announced a U.S. contribution of $1 billion to the Green Climate Fund, which finances projects on clean energy and climate change resilience in developing countries, doubling the overall U.S. contribution.
“The impacts of climate change will be felt the most by those who have contributed the least to the problem, including developing nations,” Biden said. “As large economies and large emitters, we must step up and support these economies.”
Biden also announced plans to request $500 million over five years to contribute to the Amazon Fund, which works to combat deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, and related activities. A senior administration official said Biden’s team would have to work with Congress to secure that funding.
“Together, we have to make it clear that forests are more valuable conserved than cleared,” Biden said.
Brazil welcomed the pledge.
“It is obviously a great achievement, both for what it means to have the United States contributing to a fund like the Amazon Fund and for the volume of resources to be contributed,” Brazil’s Environment Minister Marina Silva said at a news conference.
Biden’s announcement comes during a week of tension between the U.S. and Brazil after the latter’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva called for Western powers to stop supplying arms to Ukraine and said Washington was encouraging the fighting between Ukraine and Russia. He later toned down his comments and condemned Russia’s violation of Ukraine’s territorial integrity.
Biden, who has made fighting climate change one of his top policy priorities, has set a goal of reducing U.S. emissions 50%-52% by 2030 compared with 2005 levels.
This month, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed sweeping emission cuts for new cars and trucks through 2032 in an effort to boost electric vehicles. Biden encouraged leaders from the group to join a collective effort to spur zero-emission vehicles and to reduce emissions from the shipping and power industries.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced a new European Union-led initiative to develop new global targets for energy efficiency and renewable energy alongside the International Energy Agency, in time for a global summit on climate change in November.
“These targets would complement other goals, such as the phaseout of unabated fossil fuels and the ambitious goals for zero-emission vehicles and ships,” she said at the meeting.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called on rich countries to reach net-zero emissions by 2040, a decade before the goal set in the Paris climate agreement, and developing countries to hit that milestone by 2050.
He also called for OECD countries to phase out coal by 2030 and 2040 in all other countries and end all licensing or funding — public and private — of new fossil fuel projects.
Developing countries have resisted setting specific timelines for these reductions.
The countries and entities that make up the Major Economies Forum: Argentina, Australia, Canada, Chile, China, Egypt, the European Commission, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, Nigeria, Norway, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Britain and Vietnam.
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