Zimbabwe officials hope vaccinations will tame a cholera outbreak as citizens continue to drink unsafe water. As Columbus Mavhunga reports from Harare, authorities are urging people to practice good hygiene to contain the waterborne disease. Camera: Blessing Chigwenhembe
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Month: May 2023
UN Agencies Warn of Starvation Risk in Sudan, Haiti, Burkina Faso and Mali, Call for Urgent Aid
Two U.N. agencies warned Monday of rising food emergencies including starvation in Sudan due to the outbreak of war and in Haiti, Burkina Faso and Mali due to restricted movements of people and goods.
The four countries join Afghanistan, Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan and Yemen at the highest alert levels, with communities that are already facing or projected to face starvation or otherwise risk a slide “towards catastrophic conditions.”
The report by the World Food Program and the Food and Agriculture Organization calls for urgent attention to save both lives and jobs. Beyond the nine countries rating the highest level of concern, the agencies said 22 countries are identified as “hotspots’’ risking acute food insecurity.
“Business-as-usual pathways are no longer an option in today’s risk landscape if we want to achieve global food security for all, ensuring that no one is left behind.” said Qu Dongyu, FAO director-general.
He called for immediate action in the agricultural sector “to pull people back from the brink of hunger, help them rebuild their lives and provide long-term solution to address the root causes of food insecurities.”
The report cited a possible spillover of the conflict in Sudan, deepening economic crises in poor nations and rising fears that the El Nino climatic phenomenon forecast for mid-2023 could provoke climate extremes in vulnerable countries.
The report warns that 1 million people are expected to flee Sudan, while an additional 2.5 million inside Sudan face acute hunger in the coming months as supply routes through Port Sudan are disrupted by safety issues.
WFP Executive Director Cindy McCain warned of “catastrophic” consequences unless there is clear action to “help people adapt to a changing climate and ultimately prevent famine.”
“Not only are more people in more places around the world going hungry, but the severity of the hunger they face is worse than ever,” McCain said.
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At Least Three People Dead in Boat Accident in Northern Italy
At least three people died and one person is missing after a 16-meter tourist boat capsized and sank on Lake Maggiore in northern Italy Sunday evening.
Divers backed by a helicopter continued to search for the missing person.
An air ambulance, several emergency vehicles, and firefighters, as well as the Coast Guard and the police were involved in the rescue and search.
The National Fire and Rescue Service said 20 people managed to swim ashore or were rescued by other boats, and five of them were taken to area hospitals for medical attention.
Rescue efforts, however, were slowed by heavy rain and darkness, authorities said.
Italian media reported that the boat was carrying 24 people, including passengers and crew. The passengers were celebrating a birthday when a violent storm suddenly developed over the lake and strong winds overturned the boat. All the passengers ended up in the icy waters of Lake Maggiore.
Unconfirmed reports in local media said that the passengers were British, Italian, and Israeli nationals.
Lake Maggiore is located on the south side of the Alps on the border between Italy and Switzerland. It is a popular destination for tourists.
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Kosovo Serbs Gather to Take Over Municipality Buildings in the North
Ethnic Serbs in northern Kosovo on Monday tried to take over the local government buildings where Albanian mayors entered last week with the help of police.
Kosovar police and NATO-led Kosovo Force were seen protecting the municipality building in Zvecan, one of the four communes to hold snap elections last month that were largely boycotted by ethnic Serbs. Only ethnic Albanian or other smaller-minority representatives were elected in the mayoral posts and assemblies.
More than a dozen Serbs and five Kosovar police officers were injured in clashes last Friday, and Serbian troops on the border with Kosovo were put on high alert the same day.
Ethnic Serbs in northern Kosovo, who are a majority in that part of the country, tried to block recently elected ethnic Albanian officials from entering municipal buildings. Kosovo police fired tear gas to disperse the crowd and let the new officials into the offices.
The United States and the European Union condemned Kosovo’s government for using police to forcibly enter the municipal buildings.
On Sunday evening, France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, plus the United States and the European Union in Kosovo, again issued a statement saying they strongly caution “all parties against other threats or actions which could impact on a safe and secure environment, including freedom of movement, and that could inflame tensions or promote conflict.”
At a rally Friday evening in Belgrade with his supporters, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said “Serbia won’t sit idle the moment Serbs in northern Kosovo are attacked.”
However, any attempt by Serbia to send its troops over the border would mean a clash with NATO troops stationed there.
A 2013 Pristina-Belgrade agreement on forming the Serb association was later declared unconstitutional by Kosovo’s Constitutional Court, which said the plan wasn’t inclusive of other ethnicities and could entail the use of executive powers to impose laws.
The two sides have tentatively agreed to back an EU plan on how to proceed, but tensions still simmer.
The U.S. and the EU have stepped up efforts to help solve the Kosovo-Serbia dispute, fearing further instability in Europe as war rages in Ukraine. The EU has made it clear to both Serbia and Kosovo they must normalize relations to advance in their intentions to join the bloc.
The conflict in Kosovo erupted in 1998 when separatist ethnic Albanians rebelled against Serbia’s rule, and Serbia responded with a brutal crackdown. About 13,000 people, mostly ethnic Albanians, died. NATO’s military intervention in 1999 eventually forced Serbia to pull out of the territory. Washington and most EU countries have recognized Kosovo as an independent state, but Serbia, Russia and China have not.
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Migrants With Children Stuck at Poland’s Border Wall; Activists Say Belarus Won’t Let Them Turn Back
A group of some 30 migrants seeking asylum, including small children, has been stuck at Poland’s border wall with Belarus for three days, Polish human rights activists said Sunday.
Although the migrants were outside Poland’s border wall, activists from Grupa Granica (Border Group) said they were on Polish territory and Belarus was not allowing them to turn back.
“In Belarus, they are not safe,” activist Marta Staniszewska said.
“The Belarusian services, as this group has told us, threaten them that if they return, they will be beaten, or that they will kill them,” Staniszewska told The Associated Press.
The migrants say that several among them are sick, one girl has a toothache, and the children have mosquito bites, according to Staniszewska.
A representative of Poland’s ombudsman’s office visited and talked to the group on Sunday, but later told reporters that the decision about whether to allow them into the country belongs to the Polish Border Guard.
“If these persons are indeed within the jurisdiction of the (Polish) Border Guard and declare their willingness to apply for international protection, then …. such applications should be accepted,” Maciej Grzeskowiak said.
Last year, Poland put up almost 190 kilometers of tall metal wall intended to stop thousands of migrants from Asia and Africa entering the country from Belarus.
The European Union has accused authoritarian Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko of aiding illegal border crossings in retaliation for EU sanctions. Lukashenko denies encouraging migration to Europe.
Poland’s most powerful politician, the head of Poland’s right-wing ruling party, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, said recently that building the wall was a good decision. He said it was protecting Poland and the EU against hostile moves by Belarus and Russia.
Despite the wall, up to 150 migrants of various nationalities, often with Russian visas in their documents, try to cross illegally into Poland each day, according to the Border Guard.
On some occasions, such groups threw stones and sticks from behind the wall at the border guards, but then apparently moved away. It is not possible from Poland’s side to determine what happens to the groups.
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US Leaders Urge Lawmakers to Approve Debt Ceiling Deal
U.S. lawmakers are examining the details of an agreement to increase the country’s borrowing limit ahead of votes expected in the coming days, as both President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy urge them to approve it.
The proposal includes waiving the debt ceiling until January 2025 and a two-year budget deal that keeps federal spending flat in 2024 and increases it by 1% in 2025.
Among the other pieces of the compromise package are reducing some funding to hire new Internal Revenue Service agents, rescinding $30 billion in COVID-19 relief and ensuring people ages 49 to 54 meet work requirements in order to receive food aid.
Biden and McCarthy reached the agreement Sunday after weeks of negotiations with an early June deadline looming for the government running out of money to pay its bills.
“The agreement prevents the worst possible crisis, a default, for the first time in our nation’s history,” Biden said at the White House. It “takes the threat of a catastrophic default off the table.”
McCarthy, discussing the agreement at the Capitol, said, “At the end of the day, people can look together to be able to pass this.”
SEE ALSO: A related video by VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias
While the two leaders expressed support for the deal, progressive Democratic lawmakers from the party’s ideological left, and Republicans from the party’s right-wing immediately voiced opposition Sunday.
“The agreement represents a compromise, which means not everyone gets what they want. But that’s the responsibility of governing,” Biden said in a statement. He called the pact “an important step forward that reduces spending while protecting critical programs for working people and growing the economy for everyone.”
Earlier Sunday, McCarthy, on the “Fox News Sunday” show, said that from Republicans’ perspective, “There’s so much in this that is positive. It will not do everything for everyone, but this is a step in the right direction.”
The debt ceiling needs to be increased so the government can borrow more money, or the U.S. government will run out of cash to pay its existing bills June 5, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has warned Congress.
Yellen has said that without an increase in the debt ceiling or a suspension of the borrowing limit, interest on U.S. bonds held by foreign governments and individual American investors would be imperiled, as well as stipends for U.S. pensioners and salaries for government workers and contractors. Without enough tax receipts coming into U.S. coffers to pay its bills, the government would be forced to prioritize which payments to make.
Another part of the agreement would also speed up the approval process for new energy projects.
The pact also left in place Biden’s plan to write off up to $20,000 in student loan debts but says that loan recipients will have to start making loan payments that had been paused during the coronavirus pandemic. The provision would become moot if the Supreme Court overturns Biden’s authority to revoke the debt in a challenge to his action that it is expected to rule on by the end of June.
Democratic Representative Pramila Jayapal, the leader of the 102-member House progressive caucus, told CNN’s “State of the Union” show that Biden and Jeffries should worry about progressives’ support for passage of the debt ceiling increase.
Jayapal criticized expanding work requirements for food stamp recipients and said she did not know whether she would vote for the debt ceiling increase.
“I’m not a big fan of in-principle (agreements) frameworks,” she told CNN’s “State of the Union” show. “That’s always, you know, a problem if you can’t see the exact legislative text. And we’re all trying to wade through spin right now. But I think it’s going to come down to what the legislative text is.”
Among Republicans, Representative Bob Good wrote on Twitter, “No one claiming to be a conservative could justify a YES vote” on the package.
Another Republican critic of the deal, Representative Ralph Norman, tweeted, “This ‘deal’ is insanity.” He said a possible $4 trillion increase in the debt over the next two years “with virtually no cuts is not what we agreed to. Not gonna vote to bankrupt our country. The American people deserve better.”
Some information for this story came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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Belarus Official: West Left Us No Choice but to Deploy Nuclear Arms
Western countries left Belarus no choice but to deploy Russian tactical nuclear weapons and had better take heed not to “cross red lines” on key strategic issues, a senior Belarusian official was quoted as saying on Sunday.
Alexander Volfovich, state secretary of Belarus’ Security Council, said it was logical that the weapons were withdrawn after the 1991 Soviet collapse as the United States had provided security guarantees and imposed no sanctions.
“Today, everything has been torn down. All the promises made are gone forever,” the Belta news agency quoted Volfovich as telling an interviewer on state television.
Belarus, led by President Alexander Lukashenko since 1994, is Russia’s staunchest ally among ex-Soviet states and allowed its territory to be used to launch the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Russia moved ahead last week with a decision to deploy tactical nuclear weapons on Belarusian territory aimed at achieving specific gains on the battlefield.
Russia says its “special military operation” in Ukraine was aimed at countering what it says is a drive by the “collective west” to wage a proxy war and inflict a defeat on Moscow.
“The deployment of tactical nuclear weapons on the territory of Belarus is therefore one of the steps of strategic deterrence. If there remains any reason in the heads of Western politicians, of course, they will not cross this red line,” Volfovich said.
He said any resort to using “even tactical nuclear weapons will lead to irreversible consequences.”
Lukashenko last week said the weapons were already on the move, but it is not yet clear when they will be in place.
The United States has denounced the prospective deployment of nuclear weapons in Belarus but says its stance on the use of such weapons has not been altered.
Western sanctions were imposed on Belarus long before the invasion in connection with Lukashenko’s clampdown on human rights, particularly the repression of mass protests against what his opponents said was his rigged re-election in 2020.
After independence from Soviet rule, Belarus, Ukraine and Kazakhstan agreed to their weapons being removed and returned to Russia as part of international efforts to contain proliferation.
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Ukraine’s Kostyuk Booed at French Open, Refused Handshake With Belarus Player
Unable to sleep the night before her first-round match at the French Open against Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus, the Grand Slam tournament’s No. 2 seed, Marta Kostyuk of Ukraine checked her phone at 5 a.m. Sunday and saw disturbing news back home in Kyiv.
At least one person was killed when the capital of Kostyuk’s country was subjected to the largest drone attack by Russia since the start of its war, launched with an invasion assisted by Belarus in February 2022.
“It’s something I cannot describe, probably. I try to put my emotions aside any time I go out on court. I think I’m better than before, and I don’t think it affects me as much on a daily basis, but yeah, it’s just — I don’t know,” Kostyuk said, shaking her head. “There is not much to say, really. It’s just part of my life.”
That, then, is why Kostyuk has decided she will not exchange the usual post-match pleasantries with opponents from Russia or Belarus. And that is why she avoided a handshake — avoided any eye contact, even — after losing to Australian Open champion Sabalenka 6-3, 6-2 on Day 1 at Roland Garros.
What surprised the 20-year-old, 39th-ranked Kostyuk on Sunday was the reaction she received from the spectators in Court Philippe-Chatrier; They loudly booed and derisively whistled at her as she walked directly over to acknowledge the chair umpire instead of congratulating the winner after the lopsided result. The negative response grew louder as she gathered her belongings and walked off the court toward the locker room.
“I have to say,” Kostyuk said, “I didn’t expect it. … People should be, honestly, embarrassed.”
Kostyuk is based now in Monaco, and her mother and sister are there, too, but her father and grandfather are still in Kyiv. Perhaps the fans on hand at the clay-court event’s main stadium were unaware of the backstory and figured Kostyuk simply failed to follow usual tennis etiquette.
Initially, Sabalenka — who had approached the net as if anticipating some sort of exchange with Kostyuk — thought the noise was directed at her.
“At first, I thought they were booing me,” Sabalenka said. “I was a little confused, and I was, like, ‘OK, what should I do?’”
Sabalenka tried to ask the chair umpire what was going on. She looked up at her entourage in the stands, too. Then she realized that while she is aware Kostyuk and other Ukrainian tennis players have been declining to greet opponents from Russia or Belarus after a match, the spectators might not have known — and so responded in a way Sabalenka didn’t think was deserved.
“They saw it,” she surmised, “as disrespect (for) me.”
All in all, if the tennis itself was not particularly memorable, the whole scene, including the lack of the customary pre-match photo of the players following the coin toss, became the most noteworthy development on Day 1 in Paris.
Sabalenka called Sunday “emotionally tough” — because of mundane, tennis-related reasons, such as the nerves that come with a first-round match, but more significantly because of the unusual circumstances involving the war.
“You’re playing against (a) Ukrainian, and you never know what’s going to happen. You never know how people will — will they support you or not?” explained Sabalenka, who went down an early break and trailed 3-2 before reeling off six consecutive games with powerful first-strike hitting. “I was worried, like, people will be against me, and I don’t like to play when people (are) so much against me.”
A journalist from Ukraine asked Sabalenka what her message to the world is about the war, particularly in this context: She can overtake Iga Swiatek at No. 1 in the rankings based on results over the next two weeks and, therefore, serves as a role model.
“Nobody in this world, Russian athletes or Belarusian athletes, support the war. Nobody. How can we support the war? Nobody — normal people — will never support it. Why (do) we have to go loud and say that things? This is like: ‘One plus one (is) two.’ Of course, we don’t support war,” Sabalenka said. “If it could affect anyhow the war, if it could like stop it, we would do it. But unfortunately, it’s not in our hands.”
When a portion of those comments was read to Kostyuk by a reporter, she responded in calm, measured tones that she doesn’t get why Sabalenka does not come out and say that “she personally doesn’t support this war.”
Kostyuk also rejected the notion that players from Russia or Belarus could be in a tough spot upon returning to those countries if they were to speak out about what is happening in Ukraine.
“I don’t know why it’s a difficult situation,” Kostyuk said with a chuckle.
“I don’t know what other players are afraid of,” she said. “I go back to Ukraine, where I can die any second from drones or missiles or whatever it is.”
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Mogadishu Book Fair Drives Literary Revival
The Mogadishu Book Fair, an annual literary event that was launched in 2015, took place last week after a three-year break because of the COVID pandemic. The fair, meant to promote reading and Somali culture and heritage by bringing together literary creatives and young people, was held at the National Theatre of Somalia. Mohamed Sheikh Nor has more from Mogadishu.
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Mpox Is Down, But US Cities Could Be at Risk for Summertime Outbreaks
The mpox health emergency has ended, but U.S. health officials are aiming to prevent a repeat of last year’s outbreaks.
Mpox infections exploded early in the summer of 2022 in the wake of Pride gatherings. More than 30,000 U.S. cases were reported last year, most of them spread during sexual contact between gay and bisexual men. About 40 people died.
With Pride events planned across the country in the coming weeks, health officials and event organizers say they are optimistic that this year infections will be fewer and less severe. A bigger supply of vaccine, more people with immunity and readier access to a drug to treat mpox are among the reasons.
But they also worry that people may think of mpox as last year’s problem.
“Out of sight, out of mind,” said Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, who is advising the White House on its mpox response. “But we are beating the drum.”
Last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a health alert to U.S. doctors to watch for new cases. On Thursday, the agency published a modeling study that estimated the likelihood of mpox resurgence in 50 counties that have been the focus of a government campaign to control sexually transmitted diseases.
The study concluded that 10 of the counties had a 50% chance or higher of mpox outbreaks this year. The calculation was based largely on how many people were considered at high risk for infection and what fraction of them had some immunity through vaccination or previous infection.
At the top of the list are Jacksonville, Florida; Memphis, Tennessee; and Cincinnati — cities where 10% or fewer of the people at highest risk were estimated to have immunity. Another 25 counties have low or medium immunity levels that put them at a higher risk for outbreaks.
The study had a range of limitations, including that scientists don’t know how long immunity from vaccination or prior infections lasts.
So why do the study? To warn people, said Dr. Chris Braden, who heads the CDC’s mpox response.
“This is something that is important for jurisdictions to promote prevention of mpox, and for the population to take note — and take care of themselves. That’s why we’re doing this,” he said.
Officials are trying to bring a sense of urgency to a health threat that was seen as a burgeoning crisis last summer but faded away by the end of the year.
Formerly known as monkeypox, mpox is caused by a virus in the same family as the one that causes smallpox. It is endemic in parts of Africa, where people have been infected through bites from rodents or small animals but was not known to spread easily among people.
Cases began emerging in Europe and the U.S. about a year ago, mostly among men who have sex with men, and escalated in dozens of countries in June and July. The infections were rarely fatal, but many people suffered painful skin lesions for weeks.
Countries scrambled to find a vaccine or other countermeasures. In late July, the World Health Organization declared a health emergency. The U.S. followed with its own in early August.
But then cases began to fall, from an average of nearly 500 a day in August to fewer than 10 by late December. Experts attributed the decline to several factors, including government measures to overcome a vaccine shortage and efforts in the gay and bisexual community to spread warnings and limit sexual encounters.
The U.S. emergency ended in late January, and the WHO ended its declaration earlier this month.
Indeed, there is a lower sense of urgency about mpox than last year, said Dan Dimant, a spokesman for NYC Pride. The organization anticipates fewer messages about the threat at its events next month, though plans could change if the situation worsens.
There were long lines to get shots during the height of the crisis last year, but demand faded as cases declined. The government estimates that 1.7 million people — mostly men who have sex with men — are at high risk for mpox infection, but only about 400,000 have gotten the recommended two doses of the vaccine.
“We’re definitely not where we need to be,” Daskalakis said, during an interview last week at an STD conference in New Orleans.
Some see possible storm clouds on the horizon.
Cases emerged this year in some European countries and South Korea. On Thursday, U.K. officials said an uptick in mpox cases in London in the last month showed that the virus was not going away.
Nearly 30 people, many of them fully vaccinated, were infected in a recent Chicago outbreak. (As with COVID-19 and flu shot, vaccinated people can still get mpox, but they likely will have milder symptoms, officials say.)
Dr. Joseph Cherabie, associate medical director of the St. Louis County Sexual Health Clinic, said people from the area travel to Chicago for events, so outbreaks there can have ripple effects elsewhere.
“We are several weeks behind Chicago. Chicago is usually our bellwether,” Cherabie said.
Chicago health officials are taking steps to prevent further spread at an “International Mr. Leather” gathering this weekend.
Event organizers are prominently advising attendees to get vaccinated. Chicago health officials put together social media messages, including one depicting three candles and a leather paddle that reads: “Before you play with leather or wax get yourself the mpox vax.”
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NATO Chief Urges Kosovo to Ease Tensions With Serbia
NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg called on Kosovo to tone down tensions with Serbia on Sunday, two days after clashes between Kosovan police and protesters who are opposed to Albanian mayors taking office in ethnic Serbian areas.
Stoltenberg, the transatlantic military alliance’s Norwegian secretary-general, said he had spoken to European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell about Kosovo and that Pristina and Belgrade must engage in the EU-led dialog.
“Pristina must de-escalate & not take unilateral, destabilizing steps,” Stoltenberg said in a tweet.
Serbs, who form the majority of the population in Kosovo’s northern region, do not accept its 2008 declaration of independence from Serbia and still see Belgrade as their capital more than two decades after the war ended in 1999.
Ethnic Albanians make up more than 90% of the population in Kosovo as a whole.
Serbs refused to take part in local elections in April and Albanian candidates won all four municipalities with a 3.5% turnout.
Local Serbs, backed by Belgrade, said they will not accept the mayors and that they do not represent them.
On Friday, three out of four mayors were escorted into their offices by police, who were pelted with rocks and responded with tear gas and water cannons to disperse the protesters.
Heavily armed police in armored vehicles were still guarding the mayors’ offices on Sunday.
A joint statement from the embassies of the United States, Italy, France, Germany and Britain, known as the Quint group, and the EU office in Pristina warned Kosovo against any other measures to force access to the municipality buildings.
“We strongly caution all parties against other threats or actions which could impact on a safe and secure environment, including freedom of movement, and that could inflame tensions or promote conflict,” Quint and the EU said.
“New unilateral actions will negatively impact relations with the Quint countries and the EU.”
The United States, Britain and the EU are Kosovo’s main backers as the country is still not a United Nations member due to objections from Serbia, Russia, China and others.
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‘The Little Mermaid’ Makes Box Office Splash With $95.5 Million Opening
“The Little Mermaid ” made moviegoers want to be under the sea on Memorial Day weekend.
Disney’s live-action remake of its 1989 animated classic easily outswam the competition, bringing in $95.5 million on 4,320 screens in North America, according to studio estimates Sunday.
And Disney estimates the film starring Halle Bailey as the titular mermaid Ariel and Melissa McCarthy as her sea witch nemesis Ursula will reach $117.5 million by the time the holiday is over. It ranks as the fifth biggest Memorial Day weekend opening ever.
It displaces “Fast X” in the top spot. The 10th installment in the “Fast and Furious” franchise starring Vin Diesel lagged behind more recent releases in the series, bringing in $23 million domestically for a two-week total of $108 million for Universal Pictures.
In its fourth weekend, Disney and Marvel’s “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” made an estimated $20 million in North America to take third place. It’s now made $299 million domestically.
Fourth went to Universal’s “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” which keeps reaching new levels in its eighth weekend. Now available to rent on VOD, it still earned $6.3 million in theaters. Its cumulative total of $559 million makes Mario and Luigi the year’s biggest earners so far.
Comics couldn’t stand up to Ariel as the week’s other new releases sank.
“The Machine,” an action comedy starring stand-up comedian Bert Kreischer, finished fifth with $4.9 million domestically. And ” About My Father,” the broad comedy starring stand-up Sebastian Maniscalco and Robert De Niro, was sixth with $4.3 million.
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.
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“The Little Mermaid,” $95.5 million.
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“Fast X,” $23 million.
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“Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3,” $20 million.
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“The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” $6.3 million.
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“The Machine,” $4.9 million.
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“About My Father,” $4.3 million.
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“Kandahar,” $2.4 million.
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“You Hurt My Feelings,” 1.4 million.
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“Evil Dead Rise,” $1 million.
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“Book Club, The Next Chapter,” $920,000.
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Nearly a Decade On, Over 80 of Nigeria’s ‘Chibok Girls’ Still in Captivity
Nigeria’s military this month rescued three more schoolgirls abducted by the Islamist militant group Boko Haram more than nine years ago in northeastern Borno state. In that 2014 incident, Boko Haram raided a government secondary school in the town of Chibok and seized nearly three hundred schoolgirls. Many of the girls have been freed through negotiations, but scores more remain captive. From Abuja, Timothy Obiezu has this report, narrated by Vincent Makori.
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UK Health Minister Says Will Not Negotiate on Pay With Nurses’ Union
Britain’s health minister, Steve Barclay, said on Sunday that the government would not negotiate on pay with the nurses’ union, as the threat of further strikes looms.
The government’s offer, which includes a one-off payment equivalent to 2% of salaries in the 2022/23 financial year and a 5% pay raise for 2023/24, was rejected by the members of the Royal College of Nursing in April.
When asked by Sky News whether the government would resume talks with the union, Barclay said, “Not on the amount of pay.”
The union is already balloting its 300,000 members on further strike action over the next six months.
The union did not immediately respond to Reuters’ request for a comment on Barclay’s remarks on Sunday. It has said that the government must pay National Health Service staff “fairly.”
The relationship between the union, which has staged multiple strikes that have disrupted patient care, and the government became strained in late April when the health department limited the length of a strike after legal action against the RCN.
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In Nigeria’s Hard-Hit North, Families Seek Justice as Armed Groups Seek Control
Christian Jonathan’s mother was holding the 9-month-old boy in her arms when she was shot dead during an attack on their village in northwestern Nigeria. The assailants cut off one of Christian’s fingers and abandoned him by the side of the road with a bullet wound in his tiny leg.
“They left him on the ground beside his mother’s body,” said Joshua Jonathan, Christian’s father. “They thought the boy was dead.”
The late-night attack in April in Runji in Kaduna State left 33 people dead, most of them burned alive or shot dead. Many more have been killed since in the continuing clashes between nomadic cattle herders and farming communities in northwest and central regions of the West African nation, including more than 100 this month in Plateau state.
The decades long violence is becoming deadlier, killing at least 2,600 people in 2021, according to the most recent data from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project. Once armed with sticks, the groups now fight with guns that have been smuggled into the country.
Both sides accuse the government of injustice and marginalization, but the clashes have also taken on a religious dimension, giving rise to militias that side with the herders, who are primarily Muslim, or the farmers from Christian communities.
The growing security crisis presents a huge challenge for Nigeria’s incoming president, Bola Tinubu, who rose to power in Nigeria — Africa’s largest economy and among its top oil producers — promising to improve the lives of affected communities and address the root causes of the crisis by providing jobs and ensuring justice. Tinubu’s inauguration is scheduled for Monday.
If the violence isn’t reined in, analysts say, it could further destabilize the country and drive more of its 216 million people into poverty. U.N. agencies say the violence affects mostly children, who are already threatened by malnutrition, and women, who are often abducted and forced into marriage.
The response of security forces can be slow and arrests are rare, prompting a growing number of communities to defend themselves when they come under siege.
“There is a substantial loss of confidence in the government as a protector of citizens,” said Nnamdi Obasi, the senior adviser for Nigeria at the International Crisis Group. Obasi warned that the failure of the incoming administration to speedily resolve the conflict would lead to “more people seeking their own self-defense, more proliferation of weapons, more criminal groups and a rise in organized armed groups.”
In Runji, an agrarian village, The Associated Press spoke to some survivors in hospital beds and others touring a mass grave and their razed houses. They said they were under attack for hours and that the gunmen fled long before security forces arrived.
Every household bears a scar.
Christopher Dauda’s family was trying to escape when the gunmen caught up with his wife and four children, killing all five. Danjuma Joshua’s two daughters were shot in the back while they tried to flee. In the home of Asabe Philip, who survived but has burns all over her body, the assailants burned five children alive as they cowered in one room.
Christian’s aunt has tried to fill the void left by the killing of his mother. His father said Christian cries a lot and barely sleeps, although his physical wounds are gradually healing.
“We try to manage with what we have left,” Joshua Jonathan said.
On the other side of the conflict, the herders say they are also under attack. They complain of cattle rustling and extrajudicial killings by local security groups working as community vigilantes.
Abdullahi Bello Bodejo, the president of the national herders’ association, denied that anyone in the group was responsible for the violence. Most of the herders belong to the Fulanis, an ethnic group.
“Fulanis are not the killers. Any person carrying out killings is not our member. Sometimes, when communities accuse us of killings, 75% is not true; they have their own crisis but always blame Fulanis,” said Bodejo.
Nigerian security forces say they have arrested dozens of gunmen and recovered their weapons. But the assailants are estimated to number in the thousands and can easily recruit new members, according to Abdulaziz Abdulaziz, a conflict researcher.
“There is a limit to the kinetic (military) operations, as it doesn’t address the socioeconomic issue that gave rise to banditry in the region in the first place,” said Oluwole Ojewale of the Africa-focused Institute for Security Studies. He said the incoming Tinubu administration must work with state governments to address unemployment, poverty and social injustice.
The recent violence has led to the formation of community, state and regional security outfits that experts say could create bigger problems for Nigeria’s security architecture if not properly monitored.
And their recruits are young.
Felix Sunday, a college student in Kaduna, said that he was 16 when he joined a local vigilante group in 2021, and that he struggles to combine the night watch with his studies.
Across much of West and Central Africa, porous national borders facilitate the smuggling of weapons. A survey-based report published in 2021 by the Geneva-based Small Arms Survey in collaboration with the Nigerian government found that at least 6 million firearms may have been in the hands of civilians in the country at the time.
The military and police have recovered hundreds of firearms in Nigeria in the last year, but weapons dealers elsewhere are exacerbating the problem.
“Things have gotten considerably worse. Some are large military weapons imported from other countries,” said Confidence MacHarry with the Lagos-based SBM Intelligence security firm.
With sophisticated weapons, the gunmen have launched daring attacks in areas with a heavy security presence, including a military base and an airport in Kaduna, indicating that the problem may be the motivation of the security forces themselves.
Survivors of the attack in Plateau told the AP that the police didn’t arrive until the next day, echoing comments from people living in Runji, which has a security checkpoint nearby.
“When we call the soldiers, it is after the attackers have left that the soldiers come. Even if we hear they (the attackers) are coming and we report to the government, they don’t take proactive action,” said Simon Njam, a vigilante leader near Runji who uses bows, arrows and locally-made guns to secure the area.
Part of the problem is that the security forces are disorganized and unprepared to respond to the attacks, according to Kabir Adamu, the founder of Beacon Consulting, a security firm based in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja.
“We don’t have a coordinated security sector that identifies and counters threats,” he said. “They need to work together to protect lives and currently, we are not seeing enough of that.”
The Nigerian military and police didn’t respond to written and phone inquiries seeking a response to the claims.
As more families mourn the loss of their loved ones, forced to replace farmland with graveyards, their priority is demanding justice.
“How can people just come and kill and nothing will happen?” asked Dauda in Runji, remembering his life with his wife and four children. “They cannot bring back my lost family, but the government can at least rebuild my home and ensure justice.”
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Amid Some Objections, Confidence on US Debt Ceiling Deal Grows
Republican and Democratic House leaders expressed optimism Sunday that they will get enough votes in favor of raising the debt ceiling. VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias has details on a deal that has in principle, been struck. Video editor: Marcus Harton.
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Former US Congresswoman Liz Cheney Urges Graduates Not to Compromise With the Truth
Former U.S. Congresswoman Liz Cheney implored new college graduates to not compromise when it comes to the truth, excoriating her House Republican colleagues for not doing enough to combat former President Donald Trump’s lies that the 2020 election was stolen.
In a commencement speech at Colorado College, the Wyoming Republican repeated her fierce criticisms of Trump but steered clear of talking about his 2024 reelection campaign or her own political future.
Cheney, who graduated from Colorado College in 1988, recalled being a political science student walking into a campus building where a Bible verse was inscribed above the entrance that read, “Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.”
“After the 2020 election and the attack of January 6th, my fellow Republicans wanted me to lie. They wanted me to say the 2020 election was stolen, the attack of January 6th wasn’t a big deal, and Donald Trump wasn’t dangerous,” Cheney said Sunday in Colorado Springs, connecting her experiences as a student to her work in the U.S. House of Representatives. “I had to choose between lying and losing my position in House leadership.”
In three terms in office, Cheney rose to the No. 3 GOP leadership position in the House, a job she lost after voting to impeach Trump for the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol and then not relenting in her criticism of the former president.
Cheney’s speech touched on themes similar to those she has promoted since leaving office in January: addressing her work on the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol and standing up to the threat she believes Trump poses to democracy. She also encouraged more women to run for office and criticized one of the election-denying attorneys who worked for Trump after the 2020 election for recent remarks about college students voting.
“Cleta Mitchell, an election denier and adviser to former President Trump, told a gathering of Republicans recently that it is crucially important to make sure that college students don’t vote,” Cheney said. “Those who are trying to unravel the foundations of our republic, who are threatening the rule of law and the sanctity of our elections, know they can’t succeed if you vote.”
In an audio recording of Mitchell’s presentation from a recent Republican National Committee retreat, she warns of polling places on college campuses and the ease of voting as potential problems, The Washington Post reported.
Most students and parents in the audience applauded throughout Cheney’s remarks, yet some booed. Some students opposing the choice of Cheney as speaker turned their chairs away from the stage as she spoke.
Cheney’s busy speaking schedule and subject matter have fueled speculation about whether she may enter the 2024 GOP presidential primary since she left office. Candidates ranging from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley have calibrated their remarks about Trump, aiming to counter his attacks without alienating the supporters that won him the White House seven years ago.
Though some have offered measured criticisms, no declared or potential challenger has embraced anti-Trump messaging to the same extent as Cheney. She did not reference her plans on Sunday but has previously said she remains undecided about whether she wants to run for president.
Though she would face an uphill battle, Cheney’s fierce anti-Trump stance and her role as vice chairwoman of the House committee elevated her platform high enough to call on a national network of donors and Trump critics to support a White House run.
A super PAC organized to support of her candidacy has remained active, including purchasing attack ads on New Hampshire airwaves against Trump this month.
After leaving office and being replaced by a Trump-backed Republican who defeated her in last year’s primary, Cheney was appointed to a professorship at the University of Virginia and wrote “Oath and Honor,” a memoir scheduled to hit shelves in November.
Two of Cheney’s five children as well as her mother are also graduates of the liberal arts college.
Cheney’s speaking tour appears to be picking up. She is scheduled to appear Thursday at the Mackinac Policy Conference in Michigan.
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Italy PM: Good Ties With China Possible Without Belt and Road
Good relations with China are possible even without being part of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) deal, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said in an interview published Sunday, as her government weighs abandoning the project.
Italy is the only major Western country to have joined China’s BRI scheme, which envisions rebuilding the old Silk Road to connect China with Asia, Europe and beyond with large infrastructure spending.
In an interview with Il Messaggero daily, Meloni said it was too early to anticipate the outcome of Italy’s decision on whether to remain part of the project, which it signed up for in 2019, drawing criticism from Washington and Brussels.
“Our assessment is very delicate and touches upon many interests,” said Meloni. The pact expires in March 2024 and will be automatically renewed unless either side informs the other that they are pulling out, giving at least three months’ notice.
In an interview with Reuters last year, before she won power in a September election, Meloni made clear she disapproved of the 2019 move, saying she had “no political will … to favor Chinese expansion into Italy or Europe.”
Meloni noted that while Italy was the only one of the Group of Seven (G7) rich democracies to have signed the Belt and Road memorandum, it was not the European and Western country with the strongest economic and trade ties with China.
“This means it is possible to have good relations, also in important areas, with Beijing, without necessarily these being part of an overall strategic design,” she said.
Earlier this month a senior Italian government official told Reuters Italy was highly unlikely to renew the Belt and Road deal.
A first test of the right-wing government’s attitude toward China looms as Rome vets a shareholder pact at tire maker Pirelli’s, whose top investor is China’s Sinochem.
China is among the biggest markets for most countries in the G7 group, particularly for export-reliant economies such as Japan and Germany.
At a summit last weekend, G7 leaders pledged to “de-risk” without “decoupling” from China, an approach that reflected European and Japanese concerns about pushing Beijing too hard, officials and experts said.
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Venice Police Investigate Bright Green Liquid in Grand Canal
Police in Venice are investigating the source of a phosphorescent green liquid patch that appeared Sunday in the city’s famed Grand Canal.
The governor of the Veneto region, Luca Zaia, posted a photo of the green liquid that spread through the water near the arched Rialto Bridge. The patch was reported by residents.
Images on social media show a bright patch of green in the canal along an embankment lined with restaurants.
Zaia said that officials had requested that the police investigate to determine who was responsible. Environmental authorities were also testing the water.
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Nigeria’s Buhari Defends Election Outcome, Economic Record
Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari on Sunday defended his record on the economy and the outcome of a disputed presidential election, saying he was leaving a legacy of credible and fair votes, a day before he hands over power to his successor.
Buhari first came to office in 2015 after promising to reboot the economy and end corruption and insecurity, but many Nigerians say these issues have worsened under his watch.
Incoming President Bola Tinubu’s victory is being challenged by his two closest opposition rivals, and on Tuesday a tribunal will begin to hear the main arguments in the election petition.
Buhari, an ascetic 80-year-old retired general, said the February vote had helped entrench democracy in Africa’s most populous nation and that Tinubu, who ran on his ruling party’s ticket, was the best candidate to emerge from the election.
“I am leaving behind an electoral process which guarantees that votes count, results are credible, elections are fair and transparent and the influence of money in politics reduced to the barest minimum,” Buhari said in a farewell national broadcast.
Tinubu is inheriting anemic economic growth, record debt and shrinking oil output. Double-digit inflation, which has eroded savings and wages, is one of the biggest issues that will confront him when he is sworn into office.
But Buhari said his government had made some difficult choices to reset the economy, some of which “led to temporary pain and suffering for which I sincerely apologized to my fellow countrymen, but the measures were taken for the overall good of the country.”
Life is tough for Nigerians, and a tangle of protectionist economic policies and foreign currency interventions have caused dollar shortages and spooked investors.
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Poachers Pluck South Africa’s ‘Succulent’ Plants for Chinese Market
South African customs officials recently became suspicious when they noticed that shipments of “Made in China” children’s toys were being sent, oddly, back to China.
On closer inspection, the packages did not contain toys at all but were filled with poached contraband.
Chinese criminal syndicates, often the very same ones that already have established smuggling routes in South Africa for illegal abalone or rhinoceros horns, have now moved on to trafficking in elephant’s foot.
But elephant’s foot is not what you think.
It is a type of succulent — unique plants with fleshy parts that retain water and grow in arid areas like South Africa’s vast Karoo — and its greyish wrinkled bulb bears a startling resemblance to a pachyderm’s pad.
It’s just one kind of succulent that’s being pulled out of the wilderness at what scientists say are alarming rates, and many of the rare plants — some of which are up to 100 years old and may only be found on a single rocky outcrop — are now nearing extinction.
Social media craze
The Succulent Karoo biome is a globally recognized biodiversity area that stretches all the way from Namibia right down into South Africa’s Western Cape province.
“We have incredibly special plants that occur nowhere else in the world, and it is part of South Africa’s heritage,” said Ismail Ebrahim, a scientist with the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI).
He said some species, particularly succulents like conophytums, are now “on the brink of extinction.”
Some 1.5 million South African succulents have been removed from the wild over the past three years, according to SANBI.
While succulents were always beloved by amateur botanists and collectors, they’ve gained a broader fan base since the pandemic, experts told VOA on a recent trip to the Little Karoo organized by WWF South Africa, which is coordinating efforts to combat the illegal trade.
With people in lockdown, isolated and unable to go out into nature, a trend for houseplants started on social media, with influencers — or “plantfluencers” — calling themselves plant moms and dads and extolling the virtues of ornamental houseplants.
“I would see the appeal of having something in my house because … they’re very unique,” said Emily Norma Kudze, senior scientific coordinator for the illegal succulent trade with SANBI. “Ornamental value is now becoming a thing. I think just because of how they grow has brought in the trendiness of having them in your homes.”
The number of plants confiscated by South African law enforcement has increased by more than 200 percent since 2018, with over 242,000 succulents seized last year alone, according to CapeNature, a government organization that looks after wilderness areas in the Western Cape.
The South African government has developed a national action plan to try and address the growing trade.
Smuggling syndicates
Paul Gildenhuys, a CapeNature enforcement specialist, has been involved with cracking down on smuggling syndicates.
The collecting and export of succulents without a permit is prohibited under South African law and those caught poaching them can face a fine or prison time, Gildenhuys said. The poaching of endangered flora carries the highest penalty, a 400,000 rand fine or 10 years jail.
More than 90 arrests were made last year according to CapeNature. Thanks to informants, the majority of people are caught in vehicles on the highway while transporting the plants.
But prosecutions often lead to relatively small fines and suspended sentences and those caught are usually on the lower rungs of the trafficking groups — locals working for international syndicates who go and dig up the plants.
Still, with high levels of unemployment and poverty in the area, succulent poaching can be an attractive option for South Africans despite the low amounts of money they make.
“The succulent Karoo is a very vast, very arid landscape and there are very limited economic opportunities,” said WWF-SA’s Katherine Forsythe. “[In] the illegal trade unfortunately, all of the benefit is going overseas, while people on the ground in South Africa aren’t receiving any benefit.”
The poached plants are sent to an address in China or Hong Kong — sometimes through Johannesburg’s busy O.R. Tambo Airport, but often simply through the mail or by courier, said Gildenhuys.
Officials VOA spoke to did not want to give exact monetary figures, to avoid encouraging the trade in succulents, but said the profits to be made by foreign-run smuggling syndicates were significant.
Carl Brown, another CapeNature enforcement officer, said while there’s some illegal trade of South African succulents to the U.S. and E.U., China dominates.
Of the almost 400,000 plants seized in the Western Cape between 2019 and 2022, 98.7% of all plants were destined for the Chinese market, according to CapeNature.
“Hundreds of thousands of succulents are going to China weekly,” he told VOA.
Brown said he thinks the demand in China is partially due to the growing urban middle class in the world’s second-largest economy.
“Now you have the average Chinese citizen with disposable income looking for things that they can decorate their house with, and if you’re living in a high-rise building, you only have a certain amount of space,” he said, adding that sometimes a houseplant is the only bit of green in a person’s home.
Chinese efforts to stop trade
Brown said buyers might not even be aware their plant was illegally pulled out of the ground in South Africa — and admitted the issue does not get people as worked up as something such as rhino poaching.
But he stressed that the trade is having devastating effects.
“A plant the size of my hand that’s being smuggled to China could be 150 years old, and that’s one of the plants that’s setting seeds to replace itself in the ecosystem that’s now been removed,” he said.
There are various pages on the internet that offer succulent plants for sale, such as eBay and Etsy, and Chinese social media, according to CapeNature.
Scientific books on succulent types have also been translated into Mandarin recently, so people know what they are looking for.
Asked by VOA what the country is doing to try to end the poaching, the Chinese Embassy in Pretoria replied by email saying South Africa and China have been cooperating on combating such crimes.
“Over the years, the law enforcement departments of the two countries have always maintained close cooperation in cracking down on crimes such as smuggling ivory, rhinoceros horns and rare plants. Our smooth cooperation has produced fruitful results, especially in intelligence sharing, evidence exchange and arresting suspects,” the embassy said.
Additionally, the embassy said, Chinese diplomatic missions in South Africa have repeatedly reminded Chinese citizens and tourists in South Africa to avoid picking wild plants at will.
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Seeking Asylum and Work, Migrants Bused Out of NYC Find Hostility
Before he left Mauritania, the West African nation of his birth, Mohamed thought of New York as a place of “open arms,” a refuge for immigrants fleeing dire circumstances.
Now that he’s here, seeking political asylum from a government he feared would kill him, he doesn’t feel welcome. The 19-year-old has become a pawn in an escalating stand-off between New York City and suburban and upstate communities, which are using lawsuits, emergency orders and political pressure to keep people like him out.
Mohamed is one of about 400 international migrants the city has been putting up in a small number of hotels in other parts of the state this month to relieve pressure on its overtaxed homeless shelter system.
Some of the relocated asylum seekers say they now regret leaving the city, pointing to a lack of job opportunities and resources to pursue their asylum cases, as well as a hostile reception.
“It’s better in New York City,” Mohamed said. “There, no one cursed at you and said ‘go back to your country.'”
The Associated Press is withholding Mohamed’s full name at his request to protect the safety of his family in Mauritania. In his home country, Mohamed said he had joined a group of young people to decry the government’s corruption and human rights abuses, including allegations of ongoing slavery. Days later, he said a group of men threw him in an unmarked car, took him to a secret room, and beat him viciously for two days.
After a journey that took him across the U.S. border with Mexico, he landed in a shelter system in New York City he found frightening and overcrowded. In one Brooklyn shelter, a room with 40 beds, someone stole his few remaining possessions as he slept.
So when outreach workers offered him the chance to relocate earlier this month, promising more space and chances to work, Mohamed took it. He joined other asylum seekers at two hotels a few miles outside the small Hudson River Valley city of Newburgh, about two hours north of the city.
Republican county officials there have accused the city of dumping its problems on its neighbors, while insinuating that the new arrivals pose a danger.
Last week, Orange County Executive Steven Neuhaus won a temporary restraining order barring the city from sending additional migrants. More than two dozen other counties across New York state have declared emergencies in an attempt to block migrant arrivals, even in places where none are planned.
As far as 400 miles (644 kilometers) north of the city, Niagara County officials have warned of an imminent safety threat, vowing criminal penalties for hotels found to be housing asylum seekers.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat, says he will continue his efforts to disperse some of the more than 40,000 asylum seekers currently in the city’s care.
Meanwhile, some who joined the initial wave of relocations have since returned to New York City’s shelter system. Those who don’t have money for transportation, such as Mohamed, say they are stuck.
“It’s like the desert,” lamented Mohamed, who studied law and taught himself English in Mauritania. “There’s nothing here for us.”
Some asylum seekers described a sense of being lured upstate on false pretenses, saying outreach workers described local economies in need of off-the-books migrant labor. Instead they have suffered a stream of harassment.
“There are people driving by pretty constantly in big pickup trucks telling them to go back to their country,” said Amy Belsher, an attorney for the New York Civil Liberties Union, describing a phenomenon also witnessed by an AP journalist.
“It’s a completely predictable outcome of the local county executives jumping on the migrant ban bandwagon,” she added. The NYCLU has brought a lawsuit against Orange and Rockland counties alleging discrimination against migrants.
An attorney for Orange County, Richard Golden, said it was “utterly ridiculous” to accuse the county of fostering xenophobia. The county’s lawsuit against the city, he said, rests on a 2006 state administrative directive requiring municipalities to meet certain requirements before transferring homeless individuals.
Misinformation among local residents has not helped, including a false allegation that migrants displaced homeless veterans inside the hotels — a widely-circulated story that has fallen apart.
Peruvian Jhonny Neira offered a more mixed assessment of his time in Newburgh. The 39-year-old asylum seeker described a recent Sunday visit to a church where he felt welcomed by the congregation, even if he couldn’t understand the English sermon.
“I’m a respectful, hard-working person,” he said in Spanish. “I think after getting to know me, they would trust me.”
The number of U.S.-Mexico border crossings has declined since May 11, when the Biden administration put new rules in place intended to encourage migrants to apply for asylum online rather than enter the country illegally. But New York and other migrant destination cities are still dealing with thousands of people who entered the U.S. before the new rules.
The Crossroads Hotel in Newburgh is now home to men from South and Central America, Senegal, Egypt, Mauritania, and Russia. They speak in French and English and Spanish, as they kick a soccer ball in the hotel parking lot, beside a diner and a tangle of highways. A few yards away, a man who once worked as a barber in Venezuela offers haircuts for $5, as another sweeps up.
In order to gain asylum in the United States, they will have to prove they have a “well-founded fear of persecution” over their race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group.
Mohamed’s experience tracks with a report by the U.S. State Department, which found Mauritania has overseen an expanded crackdown on political dissidents since 2021 and cites allegations of torture in unofficial detention centers.
If his story passes a credibility check, it would likely constitute a legitimate asylum claim, according to Jaya Ramji-Nogales, an asylum law professor at Temple University. But getting to that stage will require navigating an immigration system under severe strain.
“It was always an under-resourced system but now it’s really at a breaking point,” Ramji-Nogales said. “There’s not the political will to put aside the money it needs to function.”
Mohamed said his goal is building his asylum case — something he’s come to believe is not possible in Newburgh. A few days ago, he missed a key immigration appointment after a car that was supposed to take him to the city never showed up.
“You can’t stay here just sleeping, eating, after that going back to sleeping,” he said. “If you make no progress in your case, they will send you back home. For me, that would be very bad.”
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Memorial Day Weekend Events in Washington Honor Soldiers’ Ultimate Sacrifice
Memorial Day is a U.S. holiday dedicated to those who died while serving in America’s wars. To commemorate the day, which falls on the last Monday in May, people flock to Washington to decorate the graves of fallen military service members, attend parades and visit national monuments. VOA’s Penelope Poulou has more.
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Russia Launches Largest Drone Attack on Ukraine’s Capital
Russia hit Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, overnight with the largest drone attack on the city since the start of the war. The attack came as Kyiv prepared to celebrate the anniversary of its founding on Sunday. Mayor Vitali Klitscho said one person was killed.
Ukraine’s air force said it downed more than 50 drones, but it was not immediately clear whether all the drones were over Kyiv or around the country.
“The history of Ukraine is a long-standing irritant for the insecure Russians,” Andriy Yermak, the head of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office, said.
“Today is another sanction day,” Zelenskyy said on Saturday. He said 220 companies and 51 individuals are being sanctioned, “most of them are Russian — who work for terror.”
“When Russia started this aggression, they looked at the world as if they were looking at themselves in a mirror,” he said. “They thought that supposedly everyone in the world was as cynical and despised people in the same way as the masters of Russia do. But the world is different — the world helps us protect life.”
Meanwhile, the British Defense Ministry said in its daily intelligence update that Russian-state backed media and business groups want the Economic Ministry to authorize a six-day workweek “in the face of the economic demands of the war, apparently without additional pay.”
The groups already have petitioned the Russian ministry for the longer work week, the British ministry posted on Twitter.
The update said Margarita Simonyan, described as a “leading Russian propagandist,” recently called for citizens to work for two extra hours in munitions factories every day, after their regular jobs.
These calls for a longer work week without additional pay “echoes a Soviet-style sense of societal compulsion,” the British update said, adding that the Russian “leadership highly likely identifies economic performance as a decisive factor in winning the war.”
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