Month: September 2023

Bavaria’s Governor Leaves Deputy in Office Despite Furor Over Antisemitism Allegations

Posted on by SeeEU

The governor of the German state of Bavaria said Sunday that he will let his deputy stay in office despite a furor that started with allegations he was responsible for an antisemitic flyer when he was a high school student 35 years ago.

Governor Markus Soeder, a leading figure in Germany’s center-right opposition, said he had concluded that it would be “disproportionate” to fire Hubert Aiwanger, his deputy and coalition partner, but Aiwanger needs to rebuild confidence with the Jewish community and others.

Bavaria is holding a state election in just over a month. Soeder’s decision drew sharp criticism from political opponents and a cautious response from a Jewish leader.

On Aug. 25, the daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung reported that, when Aiwanger was a teenager, he was suspected of producing a typewritten flyer calling for entries to a competition titled “Who is the biggest traitor to the fatherland?”

It listed, among other things, a “1st prize: A free flight through the chimney at Auschwitz.”

Aiwanger, 52, said last weekend that one or more copies of the flyer were found in his school bag but denied that he wrote it. His older brother came forward to claim that he had written it.

Aiwanger has acknowledged making unspecified mistakes in his youth and offered an apology but also portrayed himself as the victim of a “witch hunt.” He stuck to that tone on Sunday, saying at a campaign appearance that his opponents had failed with a “smear campaign” meant to weaken his conservative party.

The deputy governor’s crisis management has drawn widespread criticism, including from Soeder.

On Tuesday, Soeder demanded that Aiwanger answer a detailed questionnaire, and his deputy delivered the answers Friday. Soeder said he had a long conversation with Aiwanger on Saturday evening.

Over the past week, there was a steady drip of further allegations about Aiwanger’s behavior in his youth, including claims that he gave the Hitler salute, imitated the Nazi dictator and had Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” in his school bag. Aiwanger described the latter as “nonsense,” said he didn’t remember ever giving the Hitler salute and did not rehearse Hitler’s speeches in front of the mirror.

On Thursday, Aiwanger said: “I deeply regret if I have hurt feelings by my behavior in relation to the pamphlet in question or further accusations against me from my youth. My sincere apologies go first and foremost to all the victims of the (Nazi) regime.”

Soeder told reporters in Munich that the apology was “overdue, but it was right and necessary.” He said that Aiwanger’s answers to his questions “weren’t all satisfactory,” but that he had distanced himself again from the flyer and given repeated assurances he didn’t write it.

“In the overall assessment — that there is no proof, that the matter is 35 years ago, and that nothing comparable has happened since — a dismissal would be disproportionate, from my point of view,” Soeder said.

But leaders of Bavaria’s governing coalition agreed “it is important that Hubert Aiwanger work on winning back lost trust,” and should hold talks with Jewish community leaders, Soeder added. He said that was discussed Sunday with Bavarian and German Jewish leaders.

One of them, Munich Jewish community leader Charlotte Knobloch, said in a statement that Aiwanger “must restore trust and make clear that his actions are democratically and legally steadfast.” She said recent days had been “an enormous strain.”

The allegations put Soeder, who is widely thought to have ambitions to challenge center-left Chancellor Olaf Scholz in the 2025 national election, in an awkward position.

Aiwanger leads the Free Voters, a party that is a conservative force in Bavaria but has no seats in Germany’s national parliament. He has been the state’s deputy governor and economy minister since 2018, when his party became the junior partner in a regional government under Bavaria’s long-dominant center-right Christian Social Union.

Soeder, the CSU leader, made clear again Sunday that he wants to continue the coalition with the Free Voters, a more or less like-minded party, after the Oct. 8 state election. He dismissed the idea of switching to a coalition with the environmentalist Greens.

German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser accused Soeder of putting political tactics first.

“Mr. Aiwanger has neither apologized convincingly nor been able to dispel the accusations convincingly,” she told the RND newspaper group. Instead, she said, he has styled himself as a victim “and doesn’t think for a second of those who still suffer massively from antisemitism.”

“That Mr. Soeder allows this damages the reputation of our country,” she added.
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From Strikes to New Union Contracts, Labor Day’s Organizing Roots Are Especially Strong This Year

Posted on by SeeUS

Labor Day is right around the corner, along with the big sales and barbecues that come with it. But the activist roots of the holiday are especially visible this year as unions challenge how workers are treated — from Hollywood to the auto production lines of Detroit.

The early-September tribute to workers has been an official holiday for almost 130 years — but an emboldened labor movement has created an environment closer to the era from which Labor Day was born. Like the late 1800s, workers are facing rapid economic transformation — and a growing gap in pay between themselves and new billionaire leaders of industry, mirroring the stark inequalities seen more than a century ago.

“There’s a lot of historical rhyming between the period of the origins of Labor Day and today,” Todd Vachon, an assistant professor in the Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations, told The Associated Press. “Then, they had the Carnegies and the Rockefellers. Today, we have the Musks and the Bezoses. … It’s a similar period of transition and change and also of resistance — of working people wanting to have some kind of dignity.”

Between writers and actors on strike, contentious contract negotiations that led up to a new labor deal for 340,000 unionized UPS workers and active picket lines across multiple industries, the labor in Labor Day is again at the forefront of the holiday arguably more than it has been in recent memory.

Here are some things to know about Labor Day this year.

When was the first Labor Day observed?

The origins of Labor Day date back to the late 19th century, when activists first sought to establish a day that would pay tribute to workers.

The first U.S. Labor Day celebration took place in New York City on Sept. 5, 1882. Some 10,000 workers marched in a parade organized by the Central Labor Union and the Knights of Labor.

A handful of cities and states began to adopt laws recognizing Labor Day in the years that followed, yet it took more than a decade before President Grover Cleveland signed a congressional act in 1894 establishing the first Monday of September as a legal holiday.

Canada’s Labour Day became official that same year, more than two decades after trade unions were legalized in the country.

The national holidays were established during a period of pivotal actions by organized labor. In the U.S., Vachon points to the Pullman Railroad Strike that began in May 1894, which effectively shut down rail traffic in much of the country.

“The federal government intervened to break the strike in a very violent way — that left more than a dozen workers dead,” Vachon says. Cleveland soon made Labor Day a national holiday in an attempt “to repair the trust of the workers.”

A broader push from organized labor had been in the works for some time. Workers demanded an 8-hour workday in 1886 during the deadly Haymarket Affair in Chicago, notes George Villanueva, an associate professor of communication and journalism at Texas A&M University. In commemoration of that clash, May Day was established as a larger international holiday, he said.

Part of the impetus in the U.S. to create a separate federal holiday was to shift attention away from May Day — which had been more closely linked with socialist and radical labor movements in other countries, Vachon said.

How has Labor Day evolved over the years?

The meaning of Labor Day has changed a lot since that first parade in New York City.

It’s become a long weekend for millions that come with big sales, end-of-summer celebrations and, of course, a last chance to dress in white fashionably. Whether celebrations remain faithful to the holiday’s origins depends where you live.

New York and Chicago, for example, hold parades for thousands of workers and their unions. Such festivities aren’t practiced as much in regions where unionization has historically been eroded, Vachon said, or didn’t take a strong hold in the first place.

When Labor Day became a federal holiday in 1894, unions in the U.S. were largely contested and courts would often rule strikes illegal, Vachon said, leading to violent disputes. It wasn’t until the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 that private sector employees were granted the right to join unions. Later into the 20th century, states also began passing legislation to allow unionization in the public sector — but even today, not all states allow collective bargaining for public workers.

Rates of organized labor have been on the decline nationally for decades. More than 35% of private sector workers had a union in 1953 compared with about 6% today. Political leanings in different regions has also played a big roll, with blue states tending to have higher unionization rates.

Hawaii and New York had the highest rates of union membership in 2022, respectively, followed by Washington, California and Rhode Island, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Nationwide, the number of both public and private sector workers belonging to unions actually grew by 273,000 thousand last year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics found. But the total workforce increased at an even faster rate — meaning the total percentage of those belonging to unions has fallen slightly. 

What labor actions are we seeing this year?

Despite this percentage dip, a reinvigorated labor movement is back in the national spotlight.

 

In Hollywood, screenwriters have been on strike for nearly four months — surpassing a 100-day work stoppage that ground many productions to a halt in 2007-2008. Negotiations are set to resume Friday. Actors joined the picket lines in July — as both unions seek better compensation and protections on the use of artificial intelligence.

Unionized workers at UPS threatened a mass walkout before approving a new contract last month that includes increased pay and safety protections for workers. A strike at UPS would have disrupted the supply chain nationwide. 

Last month, auto workers also overwhelmingly voted to give union leaders the authority to call strikes against Detroit car companies if a contract agreement isn’t reached by the Sept. 14 deadline. And flight attendants at American Airlines also voted to authorize a strike this week.

“I think there’s going to be definitely more attention given to labor this Labor Day than there may have been in many recent years,” Vachon said. Organizing around labor rights has “come back into the national attention. … And (workers) are standing up and fighting for it.” 
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Death Under Investigation at Burning Man as Flooding Strands Thousands at Nevada Festival Site 

Posted on by SeeUS

Authorities in Nevada were investigating a death at the site of the Burning Man festival where thousands of attendees remained stranded Saturday night as flooding from storms swept through the Nevada desert.

Organizers closed vehicular access to the counterculture festival and attendees trudged through mud, many barefoot or wearing plastic bags on their feet. The revelers were urged to shelter in place and conserve food, water and other supplies.

The Pershing County Sheriff’s Office said the death happened during the event but offered few details as the investigation continued, including the identity of the deceased person or the suspected cause of death, KNSD-TV reported.

Vehicle gates will not open for the remainder of the event, which began on Aug. 27 and was scheduled to end Monday, according to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, which oversees the Black Rock Desert where the festival is being held.

More than one-half inch of rain is believed to have fallen on Friday at the festival site, located about 110 miles (177 kilometers) north of Reno, the National Weather Service in Reno said. At least another quarter of an inch of rain is expected Sunday.

 

The Reno Gazette Journal reported organizers started rationing ice sales and that all vehicle traffic at the sprawling festival grounds had been stopped, leaving portable toilets unable to be serviced.

Officials haven’t yet said when the entrance is expected to be opened again, and it wasn’t immediately known when celebrants could leave the grounds.

The announcements came just before the culminating moment for the annual event — when a large wooden effigy was to be burned Saturday night.

Messages left Saturday afternoon by The Associated Press for both the Bureau of Land Management and the Pershing County Sheriff’s Office, the agencies that closed the entrance, weren’t immediately returned.

Many people played beer pong, danced and splashed in standing water, the Gazette Journal said. Mike Jed, a festivalgoer, and fellow campers made a bucket toilet so people didn’t have to trudge as often through the mud to reach the portable toilets.

“If it really turns into a disaster, well, no one is going to have sympathy for us,” Jed said. “I mean, it’s Burning Man.”
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Smugglers Steering Migrants Into Remote Arizona Desert, Posing New Border Patrol Challenges

Posted on by SeeUS

Border Patrol agents ordered the young Senegalese men to wait in the scant shade of desert scrub brush while they loaded a more vulnerable group of migrants — a family with three young children from India — into a white van for the short trip in triple-degree heat to a canopied field intake center.

The migrants were among hundreds who have been trudging this summer in the scorching sun and through open storm gates in the border wall to U.S. soil, following a remote corridor in the sprawling Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument that’s among the most desolate and dangerous areas in the Arizona borderlands. Temperatures hit 47.7 degrees Celsius just as smugglers abruptly began steering migrants from Africa and Asia here to request asylum.

Suddenly, the Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector, which oversees the area, in July became the busiest sector along the U.S-Mexico border for the first time since 2008. It’s seen migrants from faraway countries like Pakistan, China and Mauritania, where social media is drawing young people to the new route to the border that begins in Nicaragua. There are large numbers from Ecuador, Bangladesh and Egypt, as well as more traditional border crossers from Mexico and Central America.

“Right now we are encountering people from all over the world,” said Border Patrol Deputy Chief Justin De La Torre, of the Tucson Sector. “It has been a real emergency here, a real trying situation.”

The patrol is calling on other agencies, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Transportation Security Administration, for help in getting migrants “out of the elements and into our processing centers as quickly as possible,” De La Torre said.

During a recent visit, Associated Press journalists saw close to 100 migrants arrive in just four hours at the border wall near Lukeville, Arizona, inside Organ Pipe, as temperatures hit 43.3 degrees Celsius. The next morning, several hundred more migrants lined up along the wall to turn themselves in.

“Welcome to America, that’s good person,” a young Senegalese man said in his limited English, beaming as he crunched across the desert floor after Tom Wingo, a humanitarian aid volunteer, gave him some water and snacks. “I am very, very happy for you.”

The storm gates in the towering steel wall have been open since mid-June because of rains during the monsoon season. Rushing water from heavy downpours can damage closed gates, the wall, a rocky border road, and flora and fauna. But migrants get in even when the gates are closed, sometimes by breaking locks or slipping through gaps in the wall.

Agents from the Border Patrol’s small Ajo Station a half hour’s drive north of the border encountered several large groups the first weekend of August, including one of 533 people from 17 countries in the area that includes the national monument, an expanse of rugged desert scattered with cactus, creosote and whip-like ocotillo. The Tucson Sector registered 39,215 arrests in July, up 60% from June. Officials attribute the sudden influx to false advertising by smugglers who tell migrants it’s easier to cross here and get released into the United States.

Migrants are taken first to the intake center, where agents collect people’s names, countries of origin and other information before they are moved to the Ajo Station some 48 kilometers up a two-lane state highway. 

Arrests for illegally crossing anywhere along the nearly 3,200-kilometer U.S.-Mexico border soared 33% from June to July, according to U.S. government figures, reversing a plunge after new asylum restrictions were introduced in May. President Joe Biden’s administration notes illegal crossings were still down 27% that month from July 2022 and credits the carrot-and-stick approach that expands legal pathways while punishing migrants who enter illegally.

De La Torre said most migrants in the area request asylum, something far from guaranteed with the recent restrictions.

The Ajo Station’s area of responsibility is currently the busiest inside the Tucson Sector, De La Torre said. It includes the border areas of Organ Pipe and the Cabeza Prieta Wildlife Refuge, isolated areas with rough roads and scarce water and shade. They include the Devil’s Highway region, where 14 border crossers in a group of 26 died in 2001 after smugglers abandoned them.

CBP rescues by air and land along the border are soaring this year, with 28,537 counted during the 10-month period ending July 31. That compares with 22,075 for the 12-month period ending Sept. 30, 2022, the agency said. There were 2,776 migrant rescues in July.

The rescues continued in August, including one especially busy day when a Black Hawk helicopter hoisted a 15-year-old Guatemalan boy from a remote southern Arizona mountain to safety. A short time later, the chopper rescued a Guatemalan man who called 911 from the vast Tohono O’odham Nation just east of Organ Pipe.

Some activists recently protested outside the Ajo Station, saying migrants kept in an outdoor enclosure there didn’t have enough shade. Patrol officials say that only adult men waiting to be transported to bigger facilities for processing are kept outside for a few hours, and under a large canopy with fans. Women, children and vulnerable people stay inside. The average wait time the facility is 15 hours.

The influx has also presented challenges for humanitarian groups.

Wingo, a retired schoolteacher working with Samaritanos Sin Fronteras, or Samaritans Without Borders, travels to the border several times a week to fill bright blue plastic barrels at six water stations. He and other volunteers distribute hats, bandanas, snacks and ice-cold bottled water to migrants they encounter.

“A lot of these people go out into the desert not knowing the trouble they are getting themselves into,” said Wingo.

During a recent border visit, Wingo handed bottled water to people from India waiting for help by the wall after a woman they were traveling twisted her ankle. He gave water and granola bars to a Guatemalan couple with three young children who were traveling with a Peruvian man.

Wingo said he pays especially close attention to those who may be more susceptible to the torrid heat, such as pregnant and nursing women and the elderly. He recently encountered an 89-year-old diabetic woman from India about to go into shock. When he called Border Patrol agents on that especially busy day, he said, they asked him to bring the woman himself to their intake center for medical care. The woman is recovering in a Phoenix hospital.

Many others don’t survive.

The remains of 43 suspected border crossers were found in southern Arizona in July, about half of them recently dead, according to the non-profit organization Human Borders, which works with the Pima County Medical Examiner’s Office to track and map the numbers.

They included two found in Organ Pipe: Hilda Veliz Maas de Mijangos, 36, from Guatemala City, dead about a day; and Ignacio Munoz Loza, 22, of the Mexican state of Jalisco, dead for about a week. Both succumbed to heat exposure.
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US Might Change How It Classifies Marijuana. Here’s What That Would Mean

Posted on by SeeUS

The news lit up the world of weed: U.S. health regulators are suggesting that the federal government loosen restrictions on marijuana.

Specifically, the federal Health and Human Services Department has recommended taking marijuana out of a category of drugs deemed to have “no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.” The agency advised moving pot from that “Schedule I” group to the less tightly regulated “Schedule III.”

So what does that mean, and what are the implications? Read on.

First of all, what has actually changed? What happens next?

Technically, nothing yet. Any decision on reclassifying — or “rescheduling,” in government lingo — is up to the Drug Enforcement Administration, which says it will take up the issue. The review process is lengthy and involves taking public comment.

Still, the HHS recommendation is “paradigm-shifting, and it’s very exciting,” said Vince Sliwoski, a Portland, Oregon-based cannabis and psychedelics attorney who runs well-known legal blogs on those topics.

“I can’t emphasize enough how big of news it is,” he said.

It came after President Joe Biden asked both HHS and the attorney general, who oversees the DEA, last year to review how marijuana was classified. Schedule I put it on par, legally, with heroin, LSD, quaaludes and ecstasy, among others.

Biden, a Democrat, supports legalizing medical marijuana for use “where appropriate, consistent with medical and scientific evidence,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Thursday. “That is why it is important for this independent review to go through.”

So if marijuana gets reclassified, would it legalize recreational pot nationwide?

No. Schedule III drugs — which include ketamine, anabolic steroids and some acetaminophen-codeine combinations — are still controlled substances.

They’re subject to various rules that allow for some medical uses, and for federal criminal prosecution of anyone who traffics in the drugs without permission. (Even under marijuana’s current Schedule I status, federal prosecutions for simply possessing it are few: There were 145 federal sentencings in fiscal year 2021 for that crime, and as of 2022, no defendants were in prison for it.)

It’s unlikely that the medical marijuana programs now licensed in 38 states — to say nothing of the legal recreational pot markets in 23 states — would meet the production, record-keeping, prescribing and other requirements for Schedule III drugs.

But rescheduling in itself would have some impact, particularly on research and on pot business taxes.

What would this mean for research?

Because marijuana is on Schedule I, it’s been very difficult to conduct authorized clinical studies that involve administering the drug. That has created something of a Catch-22: calls for more research, but barriers to doing it. (Scientists sometimes rely instead on people’s own reports of their marijuana use.)

Schedule III drugs are easier to study.

In the meantime, a 2022 federal law aimed to ease marijuana research.

What about taxes (and banking)?

Under the federal tax code, businesses involved in “trafficking” in marijuana or any other Schedule I or II drug can’t deduct rent, payroll or various other expenses that other businesses can write off. (Yes, at least some cannabis businesses, particularly state-licensed ones, do pay taxes to the federal government, despite its prohibition on marijuana.) Industry groups say the tax rate often ends up at 70% or more.

The deduction rule doesn’t apply to Schedule III drugs, so the proposed change would cut pot companies’ taxes substantially.

They say it would treat them like other industries and help them compete against illegal competitors that are frustrating licensees and officials in places such as New York.

“You’re going to make these state-legal programs stronger,” says Adam Goers, an executive at medical and recreational pot giant Columbia Care. He co-chairs a coalition of corporate and other players that’s pushing for rescheduling.

Rescheduling wouldn’t directly affect another pot business problem: difficulty accessing banks, particularly for loans, because the federally regulated institutions are wary of the drug’s legal status. The industry has been looking instead to a measure called the SAFE Banking Act. It has repeatedly passed the House but stalled in the Senate.

Are there critics? What do they say?

Indeed, there are, including the national anti-legalization group Smart Approaches to Marijuana. President Kevin Sabet, a former Obama administration drug policy official, said the HHS recommendation “flies in the face of science, reeks of politics” and gives a regrettable nod to an industry “desperately looking for legitimacy.”

Some legalization advocates say rescheduling weed is too incremental. They want to keep focus on removing it completely from the controlled substances list, which doesn’t include such items as alcohol or tobacco (they’re regulated, but that’s not the same).

National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws Deputy Director Paul Armentano said that simply reclassifying marijuana would be “perpetuating the existing divide between state and federal marijuana policies.” Minority Cannabis Business Association President Kaliko Castille said rescheduling just “re-brands prohibition,” rather than giving an all-clear to state licensees and putting a definitive close to decades of arrests that disproportionately pulled in people of color.

“Schedule III is going to leave it in this kind of amorphous, mucky middle where people are not going to understand the danger of it still being federally illegal,” he said.
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Ukraine Shoots Down 22 Drones Launched from Russia

Posted on by SeeEU

Ukraine shot down 22 of the 25 Iranian-made Shahed drones Russia launched into the southern Odesa region early Sunday, Ukraine’s Air Force posted on Telegram early Sunday.

Odesa houses ports that are vital for Ukraine’s grain shipments, following the collapse of U.N.-brokered deal that allowed Ukraine to ship its grain through the Black Sea.

It was not immediately clear whether one of the ports had been hit in the Russian attack on Ukraine.

There were no immediate comments from Russia.

One of Ukraine’s richest men was taken into custody Saturday on suspicion of fraud and money laundering.

Ihor Kolomoisky’s arrest comes as Kyiv is trying to show progress in its wartime crackdown on corruption.

A Ukrainian court set Kolomoisky’s bail at $14 million, but his defense lawyers said he would not post bail, broadcaster Radio Liberty reported; instead he will remain in custody for two months while he appeals the ruling, whose legality he questions.

Kolomoisky was sanctioned by the U.S. in 2021 “due to his involvement in significant corruption.” The U.S. suspects that Kolomoisky and a partner laundered money through the United States, which Kolomoisky denies.

He supported then-candidate Volodymyr Zelenskyy during the 2019 presidential elections in Ukraine.

In his nightly video address Saturday, President Zelenskyy thanked “Ukrainian law enforcement officials for their resolve in bringing to a just outcome each and every one of the cases that have been hindered for decades.”

Zelenskyy has made it a priority to crush graft and illicit financial dealings among officials and well-connected businessmen. Kolomoisky, one of Ukraine’s billionaire oligarchs, is the most prominent figure to have become a target. Zelenskyy is moving to equate wartime corruption with treason.

The White House has noted the progress Ukraine has made in combatting graft and in safeguarding the autonomy of crucial government institutions.

In a meeting with a delegation of the heads of Ukrainian anti-corruption institutions Friday, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan underscored the vital importance of independent, impartial law enforcement and judicial institutions to any democratic society. He also reiterated Washington’s steadfast support for anti-corruption reforms in Ukraine and “for Ukraine’s brave defense of its democracy against Russian aggression.”

‘We are on the move’

Zelenskyy touted Ukraine’s steady advances against Russian forces Saturday and derided Western criticism of Ukraine’s grinding counteroffensive.

“Ukrainian forces are moving forward. Despite everything, and no matter what anyone says, we are advancing, and that is the most important thing. We are on the move,” Zelenskyy wrote on the Telegram messaging app.

His comments come amid U.S. concerns about the slow pace of the operation and Western reports questioning Ukrainian strategy in the three-month counteroffensive.

Ukrainian forces have retaken about a dozen villages but no major settlements. Their advances are being impeded by myriad Russian minefields and subsequent defensive lines.

John Kirby, National Security Council coordinator, told reporters Friday that Ukraine made “notable progress” in the southern Zaporizhzhia region, though he cautioned it “is not beyond the realm of the possible that Russia will react” to Ukraine’s push.

Ukrainian troops advance

In its daily battlefield update, the Ukrainian military reported no new breakthroughs but said its troops broke through Russia’s outer defense perimeter and continued to advance toward Melitopol, a major Russian-occupied urban center in the Zaporizhzhia region.

Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar acknowledged Friday that Kyiv’s troops, who have been trudging through heavily mined areas for almost three months, had now run into major defensive Russian fortifications.

“Where we have already moved to the next line … the enemy is much more fortified there and, in addition to the mining, we also see concrete fortifications, for example, under the main commanding heights, and our armed forces have to overcome a lot of obstacles in order to move forward,” she said.

Kirby noted that Ukrainians are aware there are tough battles ahead and added that detractors of the Ukrainian counteroffensive are not “helpful to the overarching effort to make sure that Ukraine can succeed, and they are.”

Russia says it thwarts attack

Russia said early Saturday it had thwarted a naval drone attack on a bridge that links the Russian mainland with the Crimean Peninsula.

In messages posted to Telegram, the Russian Defense Ministry said three semisubmersible unmanned boats, “sent by the Kyiv regime to carry out a terrorist attack on the Crimean bridge” were destroyed in the Black Sea — one late Friday and two early Saturday.

The bridge was built after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014. Completed in 2018, the bridge has been targeted throughout Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, including an attack in July that caused major damage to the bridge and killed two people.

Grain deal talks scheduled

Two cargo vessels have sailed from Ukraine’s Black Sea ports despite fears of Russian attacks, maritime officials said Saturday.

Ukraine’s infrastructure minister says the Anna-Theresa, a Liberian-flagged bulk carrier carrying 56,000 metric tons of pig iron, left the Ukrainian port of Yuzhny on Friday. A second vessel, the Ocean Courtesy, left the same port with 172,000 metric tons of iron ore concentrate.

The minister said the vessels sailed through a temporary corridor for civilian ships from Ukraine’s Black Sea ports to the Bosporus. The ships are using the interim corridor established by Ukraine’s government after Russia quit the Black Sea Grain Initiative, a wartime agreement aimed at ensuring safe grain exports from Ukraine.

On Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin is scheduled to hold talks with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the Black Sea resort of Sochi. According to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, the talks are part of an effort to revive the U.N.-brokered Black Sea grain deal.

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan met Friday with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu in Moscow to discuss grain exports ahead of the Erdogan-Putin meeting.

VOA U.N. Correspondent Margaret Besheer contributed to this story. Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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Russian Parents Send Children for Patriotic School Year

Posted on by SeeEU

Girls with big white hair bows and boys in blazers held hands as they lined up for their first day back to school in Moscow, with parents watching proudly and, for some including Sergei Angelov, anxiously.

Like children across Russia, Angelov’s 12-year-old daughter will study the country’s new militarized curriculum, amid Moscow’s grinding assault in Ukraine that has seen increasingly frequent strikes on the Russian capital.

“We are living in difficult times,” the 39-year-old driver said.  “All sorts of things are happening and can happen.”

Nineteen months after Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his troops in Ukraine, drones now hit Moscow almost daily.

The conflict has spilled to schools, with a new program designed to instill the Kremlin’s version of events in Ukraine to younger generations.

Since the beginning of the offensive Russia had already introduced patriotic lectures called “Important Conversations.”

For the start of the new school year, Putin taught the flagship lecture in front of 30 teenagers selected for their academic achievements.

“We were absolutely invincible” during World War II, Putin said, “and we are the same now.”

The Russian leader also opened a new school via video-call in the southeastern Ukrainian city of Mariupol, which was razed to the ground last spring before being seized by the Russian army.

Moscow-installed officials, who since the city’s capture have undertaken to erase Ukrainian symbols from public spaces, rolled out a long Russian flag across the center of the city.

‘Courage and heroism’

Russian children’s updated school program includes basic military training, reviving a Soviet-era subject that had long been abandoned.

Teachers are also to use a new history textbook praising the offensive, written under the curation of Putin’s hardliner ally Vladimir Medinsky.

More than 2,000 kilometers east in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg, local history teacher Tatiana Barabanova applauded the course book, whose cover features Putin’s flagship bridge linking annexed Crimea to Russia’s mainland.

“Young people are disorientated by various mass fakes slandering our country,” she said, using terms reminiscent of Putin’s speeches.

“In this new textbook, there are very clear examples of courage and heroism,” she said.

The book praises Russia’s assault on Ukraine and features sections explaining Moscow was “saving peace” in 2014 when it annexed Crimea.

Her colleague, first aid and sports teacher Yelena Sobachkina, meanwhile, showed off gas masks and plastic hands with fake wounds that will be used in the new primary military preparation courses.

“They will understand what military service is like,” Sobachkina said, adding it was aimed at 15- to 18-year -olds.

She said the school would also introduce the teens to “tactical training and theoretical training of combat drones.”

Sobachkina plans to bring soldiers from the Ukraine front to speak to her students.

‘Prepare the children’

Sergei Varalov welcomed the prospect of seeing his child getting more teaching on the conflict in Ukraine.

“The political situation is such that the whole world has collapsed on us,” the 55-year-old builder said.

He also expressed support for military trainings and increased patriotic education.

“We need to prepare (the children),” he said, while clarifying, “I am not saying that it should be like North Korea.”

Back in Moscow, 83-year-old Nina Ivanova, watched her grandson start his new job as a teacher.

The pensioner hoped the job would “relieve him from the army” in the event that Russia would introduce another mobilization.

In the crowd, painter Irina Dobrokhotova, just back from annexed-Crimea, was dropping her son Daniil to school.

“There are reasons for concerns … You just need to be prepared for anything and not be afraid,” Dobrokhotova said.

But she added: “Everyone is hoping for the best.”           
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Restaurant Programs Satisfy Older Adults’ Appetites for Food, Friendship

Posted on by SeeUS

A group of friends and neighbors meets for a weekly meal, choosing from a special menu of nutritious foods paid for by social programs meant to keep older adults eating healthy.  

They’re all over 60, and between enjoying butternut squash soup, sandwiches, oats and eggs, they chat and poke fun about families, politics, and the news of the day.  

But if you’re imagining people gathering for lunch in a senior center, think again. 

Long before COVID put a pause on social gatherings, some senior centers were losing their lunch appeal. Others didn’t reopen after the pandemic. 

Enter this elegant solution that’s gained popularity: Give some of the federal and state money set aside to feed seniors to struggling restaurants and have them provide balanced meals with more choices, flexible timing, and a judgment-free setting that can help seniors get together to chat and stem loneliness. 

“Isolation is the new pandemic,” said Jon Eriquezzo, president of Meals on Wheels of New Hampshire’s Hillsborough County, which runs one such program, in addition to delivering meals to homebound seniors and senior centers. “Knocking on doors and seeing somebody who’s homebound is helpful. But getting people out to do this — the mutual support — you can’t beat that.” 

Seniors are changing. They may still be working, taking care of grandchildren, and fitting in medical appointments, unable to show up at a set time for lunch or dinner. And after years of cooking for others, it’s nice to be able to sit at the restaurant and order a meal. 

Some restaurant programs target seniors in rural communities. Others benefit people with limited access to transportation. Some are geared toward minority communities. 

“Everybody does something a little bit different when they’re having a gap in services,” said Lisa LaBonte, a nutrition consultant based in Connecticut. 

Every day, 12,000 Americans turn 60

According to information compiled by Meals on Wheels America, one in four Americans is at least 60 years old, with 12,000 more turning 60 every day. Those on fixed incomes also are living longer with less money; one in two seniors living alone lacks the income to pay for basic needs. 

Debbie LaBarre looks forward to the weekly gathering with her pals at a bright, bustling restaurant a short drive from her New Hampshire apartment. The special menu at the White Birch Eatery in Goffstown lists the calories, carbohydrates and sodium content for the meals, which must meet a dietician-approved one-third of the USDA recommended daily requirements for adults under the federal Older Americans Act Nutrition Program.  

LaBarre and others sign up for the program and swipe credit- and keychain-style cards with QR codes for their allotted meals. There’s no charge for the meals, but donations are encouraged. 

From a nutrition standpoint, “we eat better in groups,” nutrition consultant Jean Lloyd said. “Studies are out there that we eat healthier surrounded with people who eat healthy. And older adults are a vulnerable population.” 

Lloyd cited one study from 2020 about the health impact of loneliness on seniors. Recently, the U.S. surgeon general noted that widespread loneliness in the U.S. poses health risks as deadly as smoking up to 15 cigarettes daily. 

The program focuses on goals of the wide-ranging Older Americans Act — to reduce hunger and food insecurity and promote the socialization, health and well-being of seniors. 

‘It keeps my staff here’

Back in the 1980s, the restaurant was considered a little-explored, unpopular option compared to the traditional meal gatherings at senior centers and church basements. As of early this year, there were at least 26 states where some restaurants and other food providers partnered locally with an area agency on aging or a nonprofit such as Meals on Wheels. 

“We get to see people and check in on them and they bring new friends, and we get to meet all new faces, sometimes,” said Cyndee Williams, owner of the White Birch Eatery, which opened in March 2020, right before the pandemic shut down everything. It restarted limited operations that summer. “And then, while we have a small profit margin, that helps us, too. It keeps my staff here and working.” 

Some programs offer grab-and-go options for seniors, grocery dining services, food trucks, hospital facilities, and catering at senior centers and other community locations in addition to or in place of in-house restaurant dining. 

The partnerships originate at the local level. The federal Administration for Community Living, which oversees the nutrition services program and provides grants for innovative projects, does not keep data on how many restaurants and people take part and overall costs. It is working on a research project to learn more about them. 

Federal funds are distributed to states based on a formula. States coordinate with local agencies on aging and related nonprofits to distribute funds, and states provide matching funds for some programs. Nonprofits also seek out grants and donations. 

Programs target services to people with the greatest economic or social need, such as low-income and minority populations, rural residents, and those with limited English proficiency. 

The programs have to adjust to costs of food and labor, which can be challenging. The restaurants are reimbursed, but the funding sources are limited, especially as COVID-related emergency money has come to an end. 

“For every meal we serve, we get $8.11,” Eriquezzo said. “The meal costs us $13. We suggest a $4 donation. Even if we get donations, we’re still short 80 cents.” 

Restaurants might need to adjust menus, perhaps by offering smaller portion sizes, lowering the maximum monthly meals to save money and more specifically target who is using the meal programs the most. 

Still, partnering with the restaurants costs less than contracting with a town hall or a church for the community dining option, said Janet Buls, nutrition director, Northeast Iowa Area Agency on Aging. 
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VOA Immigration Weekly Recap, Aug. 27– Sept. 2

Posted on by SeeUS

Editor’s note: Here is a look at immigration-related news around the U.S. this week. Questions? Tips? Comments? Email the VOA immigration team: ImmigrationUnit@voanews.com. 

TPS Extended for Six Countries; Advocates Urge Status for More

The Biden administration recently announced an extension and redesignation of the program that gives temporary protection from deportation for nationals of Sudan and Ukraine. Nationals of El Salvador, Honduras, Nepal and Nicaragua also have had their protection extended. Immigration reporter Aline Barros has the story. 

Report: 840,000 Afghans Applicants to US Resettlement Program Still in Afghanistan

More than 840,000 Afghans who applied for a resettlement program aimed at people who helped the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan are still there waiting, according to a report that lays out the challenges with a program intended to help America’s allies in the two-decade-long conflict. Reported by The Associated Press.

New York City Residents Protest Migrant Crisis

Nearly 60,000 asylum-seekers are in New York City’s care. Some of them have no choice but to sleep outside, and some residents don’t want them. Nina Vishneva has the story, narrated by Anna Rice.

Colorado Ukrainian Community Offers Job Fair for New Arrivals

A Ukrainian community group in the western U.S. state of Colorado organized a job fair for newly arrived war refugees. Svitlana Prystynska has our story from Denver. Camera: Volodymyr Petruniv. VOA’s Svitlana Prystynska reports.

Migrants Face Long Waits at New US Processing Centers in Latin America

The U.S. has opened new migrant processing centers in Latin America as part of the Biden administration’s strategy to prevent people from making the dangerous trek north to the U.S.-Mexico border. For VOA, Austin Landis visited the first one to open in Colombia.

US, Costa Rica Affirm Cooperation on Migration, Semiconductors

President Joe Biden met with Costa Rica’s leader Tuesday to talk about concerns near and far, including the toll that irregular migration is taking on the small Central American nation and the challenges posed by China’s increased global ambitions, which rely on semiconductors. VOA White House correspondent Anita Powell reports.

US Envoy Heading to Chad to See Situation of Sudanese Refugees

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield will head to the border of Chad and Sudan to meet on Tuesday with refugees from the war in Sudan and the humanitarians who are assisting them. VOA United Nation’s correspondent Margaret Besheer reports.

Immigration around the world

Niger Coup Puts Hundreds of Thousands of Migrants at Risk

The United Nations International Organization for Migration — the IOM — said Friday that border closures and airspace restrictions caused by the July 26 coup in Niger have disrupted migration patterns in the nation, putting hundreds of thousands of migrants and displaced persons at risk. VOA News reports.

Sudanese Refugees in Chad Share Stories of Atrocities in Darfur

In July, the International Criminal Court said it would investigate allegations of extrajudicial killings, the burning of homes and markets, and looting in Sudan’s Darfur region. In this report from Adre, Chad, near the border with Sudan, reporter Henry Wilkins meets a refugee and human rights activist recording the alleged atrocities and speaks to those who have escaped Darfur as Sudan’s war escalates. Henry Wilkins reports for VOA.

Niger Political Crisis Risks Humanitarian Crisis

With no political solution in sight, the United Nations refugee agency warns that Niger’s political crisis could rapidly deteriorate into a humanitarian crisis as attacks by non-state armed groups continue and sanctions imposed by the Economic Community of West African States on the country begin to bite. Lisa Schlein reports for VOA from Geneva.

Some Neighbors Reject Sudan Refugees as Numbers Hit 1 Million

The United Nations says 1 million people have fled Sudan, confounding expectations about the scale of the exodus triggered by the country’s war. While some neighboring states, such as Chad and South Sudan, welcome refugees, others, such as Egypt, are pushing them away. Henry Wilkins reports from Renk, South Sudan, and Adre, Chad.

News brief

The U.S. United States Customs and Border Protection reports 170,000 appointments processed at ports of entry in the U.S. Mexico border.
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Texas AG’s Impeachment Trial Rests With Fellow Republicans

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Billionaires, burner phones, alleged bribes: The impeachment trial of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is going to test the will of Republicans senators to oust not only one of their own, but a firebrand who has helped drive the state’s hard turn to the right for years. 

The historic proceedings set to start in the state Senate Tuesday are the most serious threat yet to one of Texas’ most powerful figures after nine years engulfed by criminal charges, scandal and accusations of corruption. If convicted, Paxton — just the third official in Texas’ nearly 200-year history to be impeached — could be removed from office. 

Witnesses called to testify could include Paxton and a woman with whom he has acknowledged having an extramarital affair. Members of the public hoping to watch from the gallery will have to line up for passes. And conservative activists have already bought up TV airtime and billboards, pressuring senators to acquit one of former President Donald Trump’s biggest defenders. 

“It’s a very serious event but it’s a big-time show,” said Bill Miller, a longtime Austin lobbyist and a friend of Paxton. “Any way you cut it, it’s going to have the attention of anyone and everyone.” 

Deepens division in party

The build-up to the trial has widened divisions among Texas Republicans that reflect the wider fissures roiling the party nationally heading into the 2024 election. 

At the fore of recent Texas policies are hardline measures to stop migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border, battles over what is taught in public schools, and restrictions on LGBTQ+ rights — many of which are championed loudest in the Senate, where Republicans hold a dominant 19-12 majority and have Paxton’s fate in their hands. 

The Senate has long been a welcoming place for Paxton. His wife, Angela, is a state senator, although she is barred from voting in the trial. Paxton also was a state senator before becoming attorney general in 2015 and still has entanglements in the chamber, including with Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, who will preside over the trial and loaned $125,000 to Paxton’s reelection campaign. 

If all 12 Democrats vote to convict Paxton, they would still need at least nine Republicans on their side. Or the Senate could vote by a simple majority to dismiss the charges altogether. It was a GOP-dominated House that decided by an overwhelming majority that Paxton should be impeached. 

“You’re seeing a fracture within the party right now,” said Matt Langston, a Republican political consultant in Texas. “This is going to impact the leadership and the party for a long time.” 

The trial also appears to have heightened Paxton’s legal risks. The case against him largely centers on his relationship with Nate Paul, an Austin real estate developer who was indicted this summer after being accused of making false statements to banks to secure $170 million in loans. 

Last month, federal prosecutors in Washington kicked a long-running investigation of Paxton into a higher gear when they began using a grand jury in San Antonio to examine his dealings with Paul, according to two people with knowledge of the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of secrecy rules around grand jury proceedings. The grand jury’s role was first reported by the Austin American-Statesman. 

Chris Toth, the former executive director of the National Association of Attorneys General, said Paxton has for years weathered scandals unique among top state lawyers. He said the outcome of the trial will send a message about what is acceptable to elected officials across the country. 

Impeachment managers in the GOP-controlled Texas House filed nearly 4,000 pages of exhibits ahead of the trial, including accusations that Paxton hid the use of multiple cellphones and reveled in other perks of office. 

“There’s very much a vile and insidious level of influence that Ken Paxton exerts through continuing to get away with his conduct,” Toth said. 

Comparison to Trump

Part of Paxton’s political durability is his alignment with Trump, and this was never more apparent than when Paxton joined efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Like Trump, Paxton says he is a victim of politically motivated investigations. 

But James Dickey, a former chairman of the Republican Party of Texas, said the base of the GOP sees Paxton’s impeachment as different from legal troubles facing Trump. 

“Exclusively, the actions against President Trump are from Democrat elected officials and so it can’t avoid having more of a partisan tone,” he said. “Therefore, Republican voters have more concern and frustration with it.” 

Patrick, in a rare television interview last month, was explicit in what the trial is and is not. 

“It’s not a criminal trial. It’s not a civil trial,” he told Houston television station KRIV. “It’s a political trial.” 
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Pakistan Blames ‘Rushed’ US Troop Exit for Terror Resurgence

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Pakistan’s caretaker prime minister has stated that militant groups are carrying out frequent and more lethal attacks on his country’s security forces because they are using the military equipment left behind by the United States in Afghanistan. 

 

The assertions by Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar came as militant ambushes and raids against Pakistani military and police forces become daily occurrences, particularly in districts near or along the Afghan border.  

 The violence has killed hundreds of security forces — including more than 200 military officers and soldiers — in the first eight months of 2023. 

 

“The reason for the recent resurgence of terrorism being witnessed in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Baluchistan is, unfortunately, an outcome of the rushed military withdrawal by the U.S. and NATO allies,” Kakar said in comments aired Friday on state television. 

 

The prime minister referred to the two Pakistani provinces lining the country’s 2,600-kilometer border with Afghanistan. He spoke to local media representatives in Islamabad on a day when a suicide bomber struck a military convoy in the Bannu district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, killing nine soldiers and wounding several others. 

 

“The rushed withdrawal has had an impact not just on Pakistan but also on Central Asia, China, Iran, and the whole region,” Kakar said. 

‘They can now target my soldier’

 

Kakar stated that Pakistani leaders had long unsuccessfully persuaded the U.S. to stage a “responsible withdrawal” to ensure their war equipment was accounted for and beyond the reach of terrorist groups.  

 

Kakar claimed that anti-state groups such as the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, and ethnic Baluch insurgents committing terrorist acts in his country have now armed themselves with thermal weapons, assault rifles, night vision goggles, and other equipment that U.S. troops left. 

“This equipment has greatly enhanced the fighting capacity of terrorists and non-state actors in the region,” Kakar said. “Previously, they had minimal capacity, but they can now target my soldier even if he moves his finger.” 

 

Washington and allied nations chaotically pulled out all their troops from Afghanistan in August 2021 after almost two decades of counterinsurgency operations. The then-Taliban insurgents retook control of the war-shattered country from a U.S.-backed Afghan government two weeks before the foreign troops withdrew. 

 

More than $7.1 billion in U.S.-funded military equipment was in the inventory of the former Afghan government when it collapsed in the face of insurgent Taliban nationwide attacks amid the foreign troop exit, the U.S. Defense Department estimated in a report released last year. 

 

“The U.S. military removed or destroyed nearly all major equipment used by U.S. troops in Afghanistan throughout the drawdown period in 2021,” the report said. It also says other equipment was disabled so that it could no longer be used. 

Terror activity increased, says Pakistan

 

Pakistan complains that terrorist activity has sharply risen since the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan two years ago.  

 

Islamabad says the power shift in Kabul has emboldened fugitive TTP leaders and other insurgent groups sheltering on Afghan soil to move with “greater freedom” to orchestrate cross-border attacks. 

 

Taliban authorities in Afghanistan have rejected allegations anyone is being allowed to use the country to threaten other nations, including Pakistan. They also deny charges that U.S. weapons seized by the Taliban have left the country.  

 

Earlier this year, an Israeli commander told Newsweek magazine on condition of anonymity that U.S. small arms capture in Afghanistan had ended up with Palestinian groups in the Gaza Strip. 

 

“The truth is that after the expulsion of the foreign forces [from Afghanistan] and full control of the Islamic Emirate, equipment, and vehicles are stored and saved in depots, and no one is allowed to smuggle or sell even a single weapon,” chief Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid wrote on X, formerly Twitter, last July. 

 

Mujahid responded to a report published by the Geneva-based independent Small Arms Survey warning that the TTP and other militants continue to have access to weapons of U.S.-trained and -equipped former Afghan security forces. 
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Five Killed in Attack in Burkina Faso

Posted on by SeeAF

Four Burkina Faso army auxiliaries and a Burkinabe policeman have been killed in an attack in the center of the country, the army announced Saturday. 

“Following an attack on Friday against a VDP position (Volunteers for the Defense of the Homeland, civilian auxiliaries to the army) in the vicinity of Silmiougou,” police units were deployed as reinforcements, the army general staff said in a press release. 

“One police officer and four VDPs unfortunately lost their lives during the fighting,” the statement continued, adding that their forces had killed “around 10 terrorists” and forced them to retreat. 

In mid-July, Burkina Faso’s transitional president, Captain Ibrahim Traore, who seized power in a September 2022 coup, deplored the “increasingly recurrent attacks against civilians,” saying the jihadis were displaying cowardice. 

The apparent motive for the country’s two coups in recent years was anger at failures to stem a jihadi insurgency since it spilled over from neighboring Mali in 2015. 

More than 16,000 civilians, troops and police have died in jihadi attacks, according to an NGO count, including more than 5,000 since the start of this year. 

More than 2 million people have also been displaced within Burkina Faso, making it one of the worst internal displacement crises in Africa. 

In a separate statement on Saturday, the Burkinabe army said that “more than 65 terrorists” had been killed in the west of the country between August 7 and September 1. 

“Large quantities of weapons, ammunition, foodstuffs, vehicles and communications equipment were recovered” at the same time from “dismantled terrorist bases,” it added. 
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Protests in Niger Call for French Forces to Leave After Coup

Posted on by SeeAF

Tens of thousands of protesters Saturday gathered outside a French military base in Niger’s capital Niamey demanding that its troops leave in the wake of a military coup that has widespread popular support but which Paris refuses to recognize. 

The July 26 coup — one of eight in West and Central Africa since 2020 — has sucked in global powers concerned about a shift to military rule across the region.  

Most impacted is France, whose influence over its former colonies has waned in West Africa in recent years just as popular vitriol has grown. Its forces have been kicked out of neighboring Mali and Burkina Faso since coups in those countries, reducing its role in a region-wide fight against deadly Islamist insurgencies. 

Anti-French sentiment has risen in Niger since the coup but soured further last week when France ignored the junta’s order for its ambassador, Sylvain Itte, to leave. Police have been instructed to expel him, the junta said.  

Outside the military base Saturday, protesters slit the throat of a goat dressed in French colors and carried coffins draped in French flags as a line of Nigerien soldiers looked on. Others carried signs calling for France to leave.  

Reuters reporters said it was the biggest gathering yet since the coup, suggesting that support for the junta — and derision of France — was not waning.  

“We are ready to sacrifice ourselves today, because we are proud,” said demonstrator Yacouba Issoufou. “They plundered our resources, and we became aware. So, they’re going to get out.” 

By early evening local time, there had been no apparent outbreaks of violence. 

France had cordial relations with ousted President Mohamed Bazoum and has about 1,500 troops stationed in Niger.  

On Friday, French President Emmanuel Macron said he spoke to Bazoum every day and that “the decisions we will take, whatever they may be, will be based upon exchanges with Bazoum.”  

Niger’s junta denounced the comments as divisive and served only to perpetrate France’s neo-colonial relationship.  

France is not the only country with concerns. West Africa’s regional bloc the Economic Community of West African States has slapped sanctions on Niger and threatened military action as a last resort. The United States and European powers also have troops stationed in the country.  

Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu, who holds ECOWAS’ revolving chairmanship, said last week that a nine-month transition back to civilian rule could satisfy regional powers.  

Niger’s junta had previously proposed a three-year timeline.  
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Zelenskyy Touts Ukrainian Counteroffensive: ‘We Are on the Move’

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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy touted Ukraine’s steady advances against Russian forces Saturday and derided Western criticism of Ukraine’s grinding counteroffensive.  

“Ukrainian forces are moving forward. Despite everything, and no matter what anyone says, we are advancing, and that is the most important thing. We are on the move,” Zelenskyy wrote on the Telegram messaging app. 

Zelenskyy’s comments come amid U.S. concerns about the slow pace of the operation and Western reports questioning Ukrainian strategy in the three-month counteroffensive.  

Ukrainian forces have retaken about a dozen villages but no major settlements. Their advances are being impeded by myriad Russian minefields and subsequent defensive lines. 

John Kirby, National Security Council spokesman, told reporters Friday that Ukraine made “notable progress” in the southern Zaporizhzhia region, though he cautioned it “is not beyond the realm of the possible that Russia will react” to Ukraine’s push.   

In its daily battlefield update, the Ukrainian military reported no new breakthroughs but said its troops broke through Russia’s outer defense perimeter and continued to advance toward Melitopol, a major Russian-occupied urban center in the Zaporizhzhia region. 

Ukraine’s military reported 45 combat clashes on the front lines since midday Friday and said fighting raged in the east where Ukrainian troops had repelled multiple Russian attacks. 

Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar acknowledged Friday that Kyiv’s troops, who have been trudging through heavily mined areas for almost three months, had now run into major defensive Russian fortifications.  

“Where we have already moved to the next line … the enemy is much more fortified there and, in addition to the mining, we also see concrete fortifications, for example, under the main commanding heights, and our armed forces have to overcome a lot of obstacles in order to move forward,” she said.  

Kirby noted that Ukrainians are aware there are tough battles ahead and added that detractors of the Ukrainian counteroffensive are not “helpful to the overarching effort to make sure that Ukraine can succeed, and they are.”  

There are fears the West’s support could begin to fade as colder and wetter weather sets in, slowing the pace on the battlefield later in the year. The West has poured billions of dollars to support the counteroffensive and Kyiv says it needs more. 

Kirby also said he could not confirm reports Friday that Russia’s nuclear-capable Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missiles had been put on combat duty.  

The Sarmat reportedly can carry up to 15 nuclear warheads. Known to NATO military allies by the codename “Satan,” the missile reportedly has a short initial launch phase, which gives little time for surveillance systems to track its takeoff. 

Weighing more than 200 tons, the Sarmat has a range of about 18,000 kilometers and was developed to replace Russia’s older generation of intercontinental ballistic missile that dates to the 1980s. 

Russia says it thwarts attack

Russia said early Saturday it thwarted a naval drone attack on a bridge that links the Russian mainland with the Crimean Peninsula.     

In messages posted to Telegram, the Russian Defense Ministry said three semisubmersible unmanned boats, “sent by the Kyiv regime to carry out a terrorist attack on the Crimean bridge” were destroyed in the Black Sea — one late Friday and two early Saturday.   

The bridge was built after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014. Completed in 2018, the bridge has been targeted throughout Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, including an attack in July that caused major damage to the bridge and killed two people.   

Ukraine claimed responsibility for the July strike but so far has not commented on Russia’s claim it prevented another attack.   

Ukraine’s anti-corruption efforts   

Ukrainian state security officials named Ukrainian tycoon Ihor Kolomoisky as a suspect in a fraud and money laundering case, the SBU security service said Saturday. 

Zelenskyy has made it a priority to crush graft and illicit financial dealings among officials and well-connected businessmen. Kolomoisky, one of Ukraine’s richest men, is the most prominent figure to have become a target. Zelenskyy is moving to equate wartime corruption with treason.  

U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan met Friday with a delegation of the heads of Ukrainian anti-corruption institutions, including the director of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine, Semen Kryvonos, Special Anti-Corruption Prosecutor Oleksandr Klymenko, and Vira Mykhailenko, the chief justice of the High Anti-Corruption Court, according to the White House.  

The officials discussed the progress Ukraine has made in combatting graft and in safeguarding the autonomy of crucial government institutions.   

Sullivan underscored the importance of independent, impartial law enforcement and judicial institutions to any democratic society. He also reiterated Washington’s steadfast support for anti-corruption reforms in Ukraine and “for Ukraine’s brave defense of its democracy against Russian aggression.” 

Efforts to revive grain deal

Two cargo vessels have sailed from Ukraine’s Black Sea ports despite fears of Russian attacks, maritime officials said Saturday.  

Ukraine’s infrastructure minister says the Anna-Theresa, a Liberian-flagged bulk carrier carrying 56,000 metric tons of pig iron, left the Ukrainian port of Yuzhny on Friday. A second vessel, the Ocean Courtesy, left the same port with 172,000 metric tons of iron ore concentrate.  

The minister said the vessels sailed through a temporary corridor for civilian ships from Ukraine’s Black Sea ports to the Bosporus. The ships are using the interim corridor established by Ukraine’s government after Russia quit the Black Sea Grain Initiative, a wartime agreement aimed at ensuring safe grain exports from Ukraine.  

On Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin is scheduled to hold talks with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the Black Sea resort of Sochi. According to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, the talks are part of an effort to revive the U.N.-brokered Black Sea grain deal.  

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan met with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu in Moscow on Friday to discuss grain exports ahead of the Erdogan-Putin meeting.  

For nearly a year, the initiative helped facilitate the export of nearly 33 million metric tons of grain and other foodstuffs from Ukraine via the Black Sea, helping to bring down global food prices, which spiked after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. Russia was also receiving help in facilitating its own grain and fertilizer exports.  

VOA’s United Nations Correspondent Margaret Besheer contributed to this story. Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.   
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Italy Says China Trade Deal Not Meeting Expectations

Posted on by SeeEU

A controversial investment deal with China has failed to meet Italy’s expectations, Rome’s top diplomat said Saturday ahead of a visit to Beijing, as speculation mounts that Italy will withdraw. 

In 2019, the highly indebted economy became the only nation from the G7 club of industrialized countries to take part in China’s Belt and Road Initiative. 

Chinese President Xi Jinping’s ambitious program, consisting of massive investments in infrastructure such as ports, railways and airports, aims to improve trade ties between Asia, Africa and Europe. 

Critics say the plan is a Trojan horse to increase Beijing’s influence. 

The deal is due to be renewed automatically in March 2024 unless Italy withdraws this year. 

“We want to continue to work closely with China, but we must also analyze exports; the Belt and Road Initiative has not produced the results we were hoping for,” Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani told an economic forum. 

Tajani said Italian exports to China in 2022 were worth 16.5 billion euros ($17.8 billion), whereas the figures for France and Germany were much higher at 23 billion and 107 billion euros respectively. 

Tajani will meet Chinese authorities during his trip to Beijing from Sunday to Tuesday and prepare a planned visit by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni that some experts believe will confirm Italy’s exit from the deal. 

The withdrawal “has likely already been agreed in principle with Chinese authorities,” Lorenzo Codogno, a former chief economist at the Italian treasury, said in a note. 

Meloni “will make the official announcement during her state visit to Beijing, expected by mid-October, as a sign of respect for China’s leadership,” but the Italian parliament will have the final say, he added. 

Meloni’s predecessor Mario Draghi froze the agreement and blocked large-scale Chinese investment in sectors deemed of strategic importance.  
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Bill Richardson, Former UN Ambassador Who Worked to Free Detained Americans, Dies

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Bill Richardson, a two-term Democratic governor of New Mexico and a U.S. ambassador to the United Nations who dedicated his post-political career to working to free Americans detained overseas, has died. He was 75.

The Richardson Center for Global Engagement, which he founded and led, said in a statement Saturday that he died in his sleep at his home in Chatham, Massachusetts.

“He lived his entire life in the service of others — including both his time in government and his subsequent career helping to free people held hostage or wrongfully detained abroad,” said Mickey Bergman, the center’s vice president. “There was no person that Governor Richardson would not speak with if it held the promise of returning a person to freedom. The world has lost a champion for those held unjustly abroad, and I have lost a mentor and a dear friend.”

Before his election in 2002 as governor, Richardson was U.N. ambassador and energy secretary under President Bill Clinton and served 14 years as a congressman representing northern New Mexico.

Richardson also traveled the globe as an unofficial diplomatic troubleshooter, negotiating the release of hostages and American servicemen from North Korea, Iraq, Cuba and Sudan. He bargained with a who’s who of America’s adversaries, including Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. It was a role that Richardson relished, once describing himself as “the informal undersecretary for thugs.”

Armed with a golden resume and wealth of experience in foreign and domestic affairs, Richardson ran for the 2008 Democratic nomination for president in hopes of becoming the nation’s first Hispanic president. He dropped out of the race after fourth-place finishes in the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary.

Richardson was the nation’s only Hispanic governor during his two terms. He described being governor as “the best job I ever had.”

“It’s the most fun. You can get the most done. You set the agenda,” Richardson said.

As governor, Richardson signed legislation in 2009 that repealed the death penalty. He called it the “most difficult decision in my political life” because he previously had supported capital punishment.

Other accomplishments as governor included $50,000-a-year minimum salaries for the most qualified teachers in New Mexico, an increase in the state minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.50 an hour, pre-kindergarten programs for 4-year-olds, renewable energy requirements for utilities and financing for large infrastructure projects, including a commercial spaceport in southern New Mexico and a $400 million commuter rail system.

Richardson continued his freelance diplomacy even while serving as governor. He had barely started his first term as governor when he met with two North Korean envoys in Santa Fe. He traveled to North Korea in 2007 to recover remains of American servicemen killed in the Korean War. In 2006, he persuaded Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir to free Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist Paul Salopek.

Richardson transformed the political landscape in New Mexico. He raised and spent record amounts on his campaigns. He brought Washington-style politics to an easygoing western state with a part-time Legislature.

Lawmakers, both Republicans and Democrats, complained that Richardson threatened retribution against those who opposed him. Democratic state Sen. Tim Jennings of Roswell once said Richardson was “beating people over the head” in his dealings with lobbyists on a health care issue. Richardson dismissed criticisms of his administrative style.

“Admittedly, I am aggressive. I use the bully pulpit of the governorship,” Richardson said. “But I don’t threaten retribution. They say I am a vindictive person. I just don’t believe that.”

Longtime friends and supporters attributed Richardson’s success partly to his relentlessness. Bob Gallagher, who headed the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association, said if Richardson wanted something done then “expect him to have a shotgun at the end of the hallway. Or a ramrod.”

After dropping out of the 2008 presidential race, Richardson endorsed Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton. That happened despite a long-standing friendship with the Clintons.

Obama later nominated Richardson as secretary of commerce, but Richardson withdrew in early 2009 because of a federal investigation into an alleged pay-to-play scheme involving his administration in New Mexico.

Months later, the federal investigation ended with no charges against Richardson and his former top aides. Richardson had a troubled tenure as energy secretary because of a scandal over missing computer equipment with nuclear weapons secrets at Los Alamos National Laboratory and the government’s investigation and prosecution of former nuclear weapons scientist Wen Ho Lee.

Richardson approved Lee’s firing at Los Alamos in 1999. Lee spent nine months in solitary confinement, charged with 59 counts of mishandling sensitive information. Lee later pleaded guilty to one count of mishandling computer files and was released with the apology of a federal judge.

William Blaine Richardson was born in Pasadena, California, but grew up in Mexico City with a Mexican mother and an American father who was a U.S. bank executive.

He attended prep school in Massachusetts and was a star baseball player. He later went to Tufts University and its graduate school in international relations, earning a master’s degree in international affairs.

Richardson moved to New Mexico in 1978 after working as a Capitol Hill staffer. He wanted to run for political office and said New Mexico, with its Hispanic roots, seemed like a good place. He campaigned for Congress just two years later — his only losing race.

In 1982, he won a new congressional seat from northern New Mexico that the state picked up in reapportionment. He resigned from Congress in 1997 to join the Clinton administration as U.N. ambassador and became secretary of energy in 1998, holding the post until the end of the Clinton presidency.
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With Hometown Dedication, Publisher Worked to Keep Paper a Community Affair

Posted on by SeeUS

Even on a blisteringly hot day in Marion, Kansas, Margaret Harris was not deterred from her task of tending to flowers memorializing her friend, Joan Meyer.

At 98 years old, Meyer was a stalwart in this small Midwestern town, where she was co-owner of the local newspaper, the Marion County Record. Her friend, Harris, has lived in the area for more than 80 years and says she knew Meyer for decades.

Meyer’s death one day after police raided the paper’s newsroom and her home was a shock both to Harris and the community of under 2,000 people.

Harris and Meyer had a long family connection: Their fathers fought together during World War I. Harris believes that Meyer was particularly upset about the raid on her home and paper because their fathers had risked their lives to defend their freedoms.

“So it means a lot to me to support Joan because of the war and our history together with our fathers,” Harris told VOA after taking care of the memorial outside the Marion County Record’s newsroom.

Harris, who ran a store in Marion for over two decades, used to advertise in the newspaper.

“I think it was very unfair to raid the paper and also Joan’s house,” she said. “When the police are raiding your house, who do you call?”

Police have defended the August 11 raid, saying it was over a complaint that a local restaurant owner had filed against the paper. And the publisher — who is also Joan Meyer’s son, Eric — has said he will pursue legal action.

VOA’s multiple attempts to reach local police for direct comment were unsuccessful.

Harris’ efforts underscore the broader support the Marion County Record team received locally and farther afield, in the form of letters and flowers, free food and thousands of new subscriptions.

Considering the crisis facing the local news industry across the United States, that support has been particularly welcome, said Eric Meyer.

While the raid highlights the challenges facing the local news industry in the United States, the legacy of Joan Meyer highlights why local news matters in the first place.

“She was a very generous and kind person, a very smiling and friendly person who loved to joke,” her son told VOA in the Record’s newsroom. “She had a very strong sense of morality and really loved the community, loved Marion, loved what she did.”

The Meyers loved Marion so much that when the longtime owners of the Record, the Hoch family, decided to sell it in 1998, the Meyers bought the paper to prevent a corporation from purchasing it.

“We said, well, we can’t see this group running this thing that my family has been involved with for 50 years,” Eric Meyer said.

Journalism has long been in the Meyer family’s blood. Joan’s husband, Bill, began working at the Record in 1948, and she joined him in the early 1960s.

Eric Meyer wrote for the paper in high school. He later worked for several years at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel before becoming a journalism professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and later returning to Marion to lead the paper.

The Meyer family’s purchase of the paper was a rarity at a time when local media are often bought up by large corporations in a process that can often result in cuts to staff or coverage.

The United States has lost more than one fourth of its newspapers since 2005 and is set to lose one third by 2025, according to a report by Northwestern University’s Medill Local News Initiative. Financial struggles are often to blame, and, in most cases, the papers were weekly community publications.

Meanwhile, statistics from the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker show that out of over 90 search-and-seizure instances involving journalists documented since 2017, nine have involved search warrants.

The raid “shows the importance of the local news organizations that are remaining in holding public officials accountable,” Tim Franklin, who leads the Northwestern University’s Medill Local News Initiative, told VOA.

In other cases, particularly in the Midwest, the death of a paper’s elderly publisher can sound the death knell of the paper itself if no one buys it, according to Teri Finneman, a journalism professor at the University of Kansas.

“How many more newspapers are we about to lose from people who can’t sell?” Finneman said. “There’s not nearly enough conversation about how many more are about to be lost.”

The role that local newspapers play in communities is on the mind of Tim Stauffer, president of the Kansas Press Association and managing editor of The Iola Register.

“We believe in what newspapers do for democracy — very strongly. We believe that sunlight is the best medicine,” Stauffer told VOA.

“But I also think it’s a secondary, deeper role that’s now coming more to the forefront about helping connect and build communities that frankly, in rural America, are confronting a lot of challenges,” he said.

Studies show that the fall of local news contributes to a rise in misinformation and polarization, an increase in government and local business corruption, and a decline in civic engagement.

For the Record’s staff the role as public watchdog is a responsibility they take great pride in as they cover everything from the city budget to a local celebrity in the form of a cat who hangs out around a hotel in town.

“We hold the feet of local people who are making decisions — that affect local people —to the fire,” reporter Phyllis Zorn told VOA. “And someone’s got to do it.”

That sentiment is also what drove Joan Meyer and her son Eric to keep the paper running.

Marion born and bred, Joan rarely left her hometown. She worked at a grocery store, hospital and an alfalfa mill, but the bulk of her life — nearly 60 years — was spent as a reporter, columnist, editor and associate publisher at the Record.

For decades, she wrote a column about local history called Memories. She continued to write it every week until last year, due to vision issues. But she would still sometimes write articles, with her son’s help.

To her, the newspaper was an essential element of her hometown, which is a sentiment her son shares.

“She believed the sense of community was deteriorating” in Marion, Eric Meyer said. “The best way to encourage community is to let people know what’s happening.”
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Gabon Reopens Borders Three Days After Military Coup

Posted on by SeeAF

Gabon reopened its borders on Saturday, an army spokesman said, three days after closing them during a military coup in which President Ali Bongo was ousted.

Military officers led by General Brice Oligui Nguema seized power Wednesday, placed Bongo under house arrest and installed Nguema as head of state, ending the Bongo family’s 56-year hold on power.

The coup — the ninth in the continent in three years — has raised concerns about a contagion of military takeovers across the region that have erased democratic progress made in the last two decades.

Coup leaders have come under international pressure to restore civilian government but said Friday night that they would not rush to hold elections.

The land, sea and air borders were opened because the junta was “concerned with preserving respect for the rule of law, good relations with our neighbors and all states of the world” and wanted to keep its “international commitments,” the army spokesman said on national television.

Bongo was elected in 2009, taking over from his late father, Omar, who came to power in 1967. Opponents say the family did little to share Gabon’s oil and mining wealth.

The takeover in Gabon follows coups in Guinea, Chad and Niger, plus two each in Mali and Burkina Faso since 2020, worrying international powers with strategic interests at stake.
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More Cargo Ships From Ukraine Use Civilian Corridor Despite Russian Threats

Posted on by SeeEU

Two cargo vessels have left Ukraine despite Russian threats and are in the Black Sea, maritime officials said Saturday.

The Anna-Theresa, a Liberian-flagged bulk carrier holding 56,000 tons of pig iron, left the Ukrainian port of Yuzhny on Friday and is now close to Bulgarian territorial waters, said Ukrainian Infrastructure Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov.

A second vessel — the Ocean Courtesy, traveling under a Marshall Islands flag — left the same port on Friday with 172,000 tons of iron ore concentrate. That ship arrived at the Romanian Black Sea port of Constanta shortly before noon on Saturday, according to the global ship tracking website MarineTraffic. The website did not state whether the vessel is set to move on from the Romanian port.

The two vessels sailed through a temporary corridor for civilian ships from Ukraine’s Black Sea ports to the Bosporus, Kubrakov said on the social media site X, formerly known as Twitter. The corridor goes along the western shores of the Black Sea, avoiding international waters and instead using those controlled by NATO members Romania and Bulgaria.

On Saturday, authorities at the Bulgarian port of Varna did not confirm whether the Anna-Theresa will enter the port or continue to the Bosporus Strait.

The ships were the third and fourth vessels that used the interim corridor established by Ukraine’s government after Russia halted a wartime agreement aimed at ensuring safe grain exports from Ukraine. The vessels had been docked in Ukrainian Black Sea ports since before Russia’s full-scale invasion of its neighbor.

Their departure coincided with the official announcement of a meeting on Monday between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The high-level talks in Russia’s Black Sea resort of Sochi come just over six weeks after Moscow broke off a deal brokered by Ankara and the United Nations that allowed Ukrainian grain to reach world markets safely despite the 18-month war.
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Ukraine Names Powerful Businessman Suspect in Fraud Probe

Posted on by SeeEU

Ukrainian state security officials named powerful businessman Ihor Kolomoisky as a suspect in a fraud and money laundering case, the SBU security service said on Saturday.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has made cracking down on corruption a priority as Ukraine battles Russia’s 18-month-old invasion. Kolomoisky, one of Ukraine’s richest men, is the most prominent figure to have become a target.

Zelenskyy, who rose to prominence as a comedian and played the role of president on a show aired on a Kolomoisky-owned TV channel, has denied having personal ties to the businessman.

“It was established that during 2013-2020, Ihor Kolomoisky legalized more than half a billion hryvnias [$14 million] by withdrawing them abroad and using the infrastructure of the controlled banks,” the SBU said in a statement on the Telegram messaging app.

Kolomoisky could not be reached for comment.

The security service published pictures of a group of detectives at the door of his home, with Kolomoisky receiving and signing documents.

Kolomoisky is a former owner of leading Ukrainian bank PrivatBank, which was nationalized in late 2016 as part of a major clean-up of the country’s banking system.

Earlier this year security officials searched Kolomoisky’s home in connection with a separate investigation into embezzlement and tax evasion at the country’s two largest oil companies, which were partially owned by the businessman.

Kolomoisky owned an array of assets in the energy, banking and other sectors, including one of Ukraine’s most influential television channels.

The United States sanctioned Kolomoisky in 2021 “due to his involvement in significant corruption.” U.S. authorities have also alleged Kolomoisky and a business partner laundered stolen funds through the United States. Kolomoisky has denied any wrongdoing.
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In Japan’s Okinawa, Indo-Pacific Tensions Rekindle Pain of Past Conflict

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Gushiken Takamatsu balances his spectacles on the tip of his nose before switching on his headlight, revealing the blackened fragments on the floor of the cave. Using an old plasterer’s tool, he gently combs through the debris before picking out a jagged, triangular piece of bone.

“Zugaikotsu,” he says, in a gentle Okinawan accent. “Skull.” He points to the patterns created by blood vessels on the inside of the skull, clearly visible after nearly 80 years.

The 69-year-old speaks quietly to himself as he collects other pieces from the cave floor — fragments of finger bones and what appears to be a kneecap. “Is this dead person a soldier or a civilian?” he asks. “I think it was a flamethrower that did this. Everything is burned.”

The jungle caves of Okinawa hide the remains of thousands of civilians and soldiers, victims of the last major battle of World War II.

On April 1, 1945, American forces invaded the southern Japanese islands of Okinawa, triggering one of the bloodiest land battles of the Pacific. Takamatsu has spent decades searching for the remains of those who died. Now he fears Okinawa is once again caught in the crosshairs of potential conflict.

Cave diggers

For decades, the bones of the victims have lain undisturbed as Japan tried to forget its wartime past. That shames the nation, says Takamatsu. The Okinawan native founded Gamafuya, or “cave digger,” a small group of volunteers dedicated to finding the remains of wartime victims and reuniting them with their living descendants.

“I’m often asked why I started doing this,” Takamatsu says. “I was born in Naha city [the Okinawan capital], and there were many remains of people who died in the war around my house. It was the kind of place where you would still see skeletons wearing steel helmets when you went out to play in the mountains. When I was a child it was just scary. But as I got older and matured, I wondered why the victims of this war were still there.”

‘Never-ending’

Through 40 years of searching, Takamatsu has discovered the remains of over 700 people. The Japanese government does not provide financial help. Finally, in 2011, it agreed to offer DNA testing on the remains. However, the number of Japanese citizens registered on the database is small, while many relatives of the victims have likely already died.

“We are one or two volunteers,” Takamatsu tells VOA. “In reality, the government should be doing this. But even though we ask, they refuse. I want to show that if you look for the remains in this way, you can find them. This work isn’t finished yet.”

He gathers together the fragments he has found, before saying a short prayer — and promises that he will return to the cave to finish the search another day. “After about five hours, if I do more than that, I’ll get too tired. So I’ll do it next time,” he says. “This work is never-ending.”

Reunited

Hacking through the jungle, Takamatsu heads to another site where he has found human remains. He climbs over the jagged rocks and into a shaded ravine. At the base, several long bones are neatly aligned beneath the decaying leaves and soil. Other remains are concealed beneath large rocks that have cascaded down the ravine, possibly as a result of the ferocious battles that raged above 78 years ago.

Takamatsu measures a radius, or forearm bone, and determines that the remains belong to an adult male, before jotting his discovery in a battered field notebook. He will have to return with other volunteers to help shift the rocks and remove the other remains.

Takamatsu notifies the police of each of his finds. The bones are taken to a makeshift morgue at the local peace museum before being sent for DNA testing.

So far, Takamatsu has been able to identify four bodies and reunite the bones with their surviving relatives. All were from the Japanese mainland — soldiers sent to Okinawa to fight the American invasion.

The families “didn’t believe me at first,” Takamatsu says. “They were suspicious and thought it was a scam. But I understand how they felt. For 70 years they didn’t hear anything, and then they get a phone call to say their relative had been found. It was like their father was coming home. They were very happy.”

Battle of Okinawa

The American invasion of Okinawa triggered three months of ferocious fighting. Around 90,000 Japanese soldiers and 12,000 U.S. troops had been killed by the time American forces seized the capital, Naha, in early June 1945. The United States feared such losses would continue if its forces invaded the Japanese mainland. Those concerns partly led to the decision to drop nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki two months later. Japan surrendered on August 15, 1945.

The civilian toll in Okinawa was even higher, with an estimated 100,000 people killed — around a quarter of the prewar population of the islands.

The Japanese government told local inhabitants that they would be beaten and murdered by U.S. forces. Many hid in the island’s caves. Some committed suicide as the fighting approached.

“The inhabitants were not allowed to surrender. If you surrendered to the Americans and tried to walk out with your hands up, the Japanese would shoot you in the back,” Takamatsu tells VOA.

“They were told that no one would survive if captured by the U.S. military,” he says. “They said that women would be beaten and killed, while all the men would be lined up on the road and run over by tanks. So, the residents were very afraid of the American military. However, it wasn’t until after they became prisoners of war that they realized that wasn’t true. The U.S. military provided the residents with food and medical care.”

Allies

Fast forward to the present, and the United States and Japan are now close allies. Okinawa hosts almost 30,000 American troops, and it is among the most important U.S. military bases in the Pacific, seen by Washington as an increasingly vital deterrent amid growing Indo-Pacific tensions.

In the remote Henoko Bay on the east coast of the island, a new U.S. air base is being built. It’s hoped the new base will relieve pressure on existing facilities, especially the Futenma air base, which is located in a residential area north of Naha and has long created tensions with locals.

However, some of the earth used in the construction of the Henoko base is being excavated from the south of Okinawa — from battlegrounds where U.S. forces came ashore in 1945.

Local authorities insist the material is screened before it is dug up. Takamatsu says it likely contains the remains of Japanese and American soldiers. “This is blasphemy against the dead. I’m imploring them to stop doing it,” he says.

China tensions

Meanwhile, as regional tensions escalate with China over Taiwan, and with North Korea over its missile and nuclear weapons programs, there are growing fears that these heavily militarized islands could once again be caught in the crosshairs of a Pacific war.

“Missiles will fly to Okinawa again. If there is a war, this place will be attacked. That’s what bothers me the most,” Takamatsu tells VOA. “Let’s all stand together. Let’s eliminate war from the Earth. I believe that if we ordinary citizens join hands, we can do it.”

A solitary figure searching through the caves, Takamatsu is trying to heal the wounds of Okinawa’s past; to offer the victims dignity where the state has failed to intervene; to show respect for sacrifice where much of the nation would rather leave the remains to decay undisturbed, along with that troubled period of Japanese wartime history.

Takamatsu’s painstaking work is also an act of protest against war — an appeal for peace — as the danger of conflict once again edges closer to these islands.
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Biden Heads to Florida to Survey Storm Damage; No DeSantis Meeting Set

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U.S. President Joe Biden heads to Florida on Saturday to survey damage caused by Hurricane Idalia and comfort people affected by the storm, but he will not be meeting Ron DeSantis, the state’s Republican governor and a potential presidential rival.

Biden, a Democrat, told reporters on Friday he would see the governor during the trip, but DeSantis’s spokesman Jeremy Redfern said later that no meeting was planned and that “the security preparations alone that would go into setting up such a meeting would shut down ongoing recovery efforts.”

DeSantis, 44, is running for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination to oust Biden from the White House but trails former President Donald Trump in polls. Biden, 80, is running for re-election.

Biden and DeSantis have spoken regularly through the week about the storm, which pummeled Florida’s Big Bend region with Category 3 winds of nearly 200 kph (125 mph). On Wednesday the president said politics had not crept into their conversations. “I think he trusts my judgment and my desire to help,” Biden said.

The White House said that Biden, who is traveling with his wife, Jill, informed DeSantis about the visit during a conversation on Thursday, and that the governor did not raise concerns then. 

“Their visit to Florida has been planned in close coordination with FEMA as well as state and local leaders to ensure there is no impact on response operations,” White House spokesperson Emilie Simons said, referring to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

DeSantis has been a sharp critic of Biden, and the two have clashed over COVID-19 vaccines, abortion and LGBTQ rights. But they met last year when Biden went to Florida to assess the devastation from Hurricane Ian. Biden said at the time that they had worked together “hand-in-glove.”

DeSantis may not want to be photographed with Biden overlooking storm damage now as the Republican presidential primary race intensifies. Although he trails Trump, DeSantis leads the other Republican candidates in the race.

Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who is also running for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, drew criticism for his praise of President Barack Obama in 2012 when the Democrat visited his state in the aftermath of superstorm Sandy.

Biden visited Hawaii last week in the aftermath of deadly fires there and said on Wednesday that no one could deny the climate crisis in light of the extreme weather. He is slated to travel to his home state of Delaware for the weekend after concluding the Florida trip.
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‘Margaritaville’ Singer Jimmy Buffett Dies At 76

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Singer-songwriter Jimmy Buffett, who popularized beach bum soft rock with the escapist Caribbean-flavored song Margaritaville and turned that celebration of loafing into an empire of restaurants, resorts and frozen concoctions, has died. He was 76.

“Jimmy passed away peacefully on the night of September 1st surrounded by his family, friends, music and dogs,” a statement posted to Buffett’s official website and social media pages said late Friday. “He lived his life like a song till the very last breath and will be missed beyond measure by so many.”

The statement did not say where Buffett died or give a cause of death. Illness had forced him to reschedule concerts in May and Buffett acknowledged in social media posts that he had been hospitalized but provided no specifics.

Margaritaville, released on Feb. 14, 1977, quickly took on a life of its own, becoming a state of mind for those “wastin’ away,” an excuse for a life of low-key fun and escapism for those “growing older, but not up.”

The song is the unhurried portrait of a loafer on his front porch, watching tourists sunbathe while a pot of shrimp is beginning to boil. The singer has a new tattoo, a likely hangover and regrets over a lost love. Somewhere there is a misplaced salt shaker.

“What seems like a simple ditty about getting blotto and mending a broken heart turns out to be a profound meditation on the often painful inertia of beach dwelling,” Spin magazine wrote in 2021. “The tourists come and go, one group indistinguishable from the other. Waves crest and break whether somebody is there to witness it or not. Everything that means anything has already happened and you’re not even sure when.”

The song — from the album Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes — spent 22 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and peaked at No. 8. The song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2016 for its cultural and historic significance, became a karaoke standard and helped brand Key West, Florida, as a distinct sound of music and a destination known the world over.

“There was no such place as Margaritaville,” Buffett told the Arizona Republic in 2021. “It was a made-up place in my mind, basically made up about my experiences in Key West and having to leave Key West and go on the road to work and then come back and spend time by the beach.”

The song soon inspired restaurants and resorts, turning Buffett’s alleged desire for the simplicity of island life into a multimillion brand. He landed at No. 13 in Forbes’ America’s Richest Celebrities in 2016 with a net worth of $550 million.

Music critics were never very kind to Buffett or his catalogue, including the sandy beach-side snack bar songs like Fins, Come Monday and Cheeseburgers in Paradise. But his legions of fans, called “Parrotheads,” regularly turned up for his concerts wearing toy parrots, cheeseburgers, sharks and flamingos on their heads, leis around their necks and loud Hawaiian shirts.

“It’s pure escapism is all it is,” he told the Republic. “I’m not the first one to do it, nor shall I probably be the last. But I think it’s really a part of the human condition that you’ve got to have some fun. You’ve got to get away from whatever you do to make a living or other parts of life that stress you out. I try to make it at least 50/50 fun to work and so far it’s worked out.”

His special Gulf Coast mix of country, pop, folk and rock added instruments and tonalities more commonly found in the Caribbean, like steel drums. It was a stew of steelpans, trombones and pedal steel guitar. Buffett’s incredible ear for hooks and light grooves were often overshadowed by his lyrics about fish tacos and sunsets.

Rolling Stone, in a review of Buffett’s 2020 album Life on the Flip Side, gave grudging props. “He continues mapping out his surfy, sandy corner of pop music utopia with the chill, friendly warmth of a multi-millionaire you wouldn’t mind sharing a tropically-themed 3 p.m. IPA with, especially if his gold card was on the bar when the last round came.”

Buffett’s evolving brand began in 1985 with the opening of a string of Margaritaville-themed stores and restaurants in Key West, followed in 1987 with the first Margaritaville Café nearby. Over the course of the next two decades, several more of each opened throughout Florida, New Orleans and California.

The brand has since expanded to dozens of categories, including resorts, apparel and footwear for men and women, a radio station, a beer brand, ice tea, tequila and rum, home décor, food items like salad dressing, Margaritaville Crunchy Pimento Cheese & Shrimp Bites and Margaritaville Cantina Style Medium Chunky Salsa, the Margaritaville at Sea cruise line and restaurants, including Margaritaville Restaurant, JWB Prime Steak and Seafood, 5 o’Clock Somewhere Bar & Grill and LandShark Bar & Grill.

There also was a Broadway-bound jukebox musical, Escape to Margaritaville, a romantic comedy in which a singer-bartender called Sully falls for the far more career-minded Rachel, who is vacationing with friends and hanging out at Margaritaville, the hotel bar where Sully works.

James William Buffett was born on Christmas day 1946 in Pascagoula, Mississippi, and raised in the port town of Mobile, Alabama. He graduated from the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and went from busking the streets of New Orleans to playing six nights a week at Bourbon Street clubs.

He released his first record, Down To Earth, in 1970 and issued seven more on a regular yearly clip, with his 1974 song Come Monday from his fourth studio album Living and Dying in ¾ Time, peaking at No. 30. Then came Margaritaville.

He performed on more than 50 studio and live albums, often accompanied by his Coral Reefer Band, and was constantly on tour. He earned two Grammy Award nominations, two Academy of Country Music Awards and a Country Music Association Award.

Buffett was actually in Austin, Texas, when the inspiration struck for Margaritaville. He and a friend had stopped for lunch at a Mexican restaurant before she dropped him at the airport for a flight home to Key West, so they got to drinking margaritas.

“And I kind of came up with that idea of this is just like Margarita-ville,” Buffett told the Republic. “She kind of laughed at that and put me on the plane. And I started working on it.”

He wrote some on the plane and finished it while driving down the Keys. “There was a wreck on the bridge,” he said. “And we got stopped for about an hour so I finished the song on the Seven Mile Bridge, which I thought was apropos.”

Buffett also was the author of numerous books including Where Is Joe Merchant? and A Pirate Looks at Fifty and added movies to his resume as co-producer and co-star of an adaptation of Carl Hiaasen’s novel Hoot.

Buffett is survived by his wife, Jane; daughters, Savannah and Sarah; and son, Cameron. 
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Artist Pays Tribute to Iranian Women Protesters     

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September 16 marks one year since Mahsa Amini died in the custody of Iran’s “morality” police. The 22-year-old Kurd was detained for allegedly violating the country’s Islamic dress code requiring that she cover her hair.

Amini’s death sparked months of nationwide protests.

Last November, Iranian officials acknowledged that more than 300 people died in those demonstrations. But human rights organizations say the death toll was much higher.

The Norway-based Iran Human Rights group and the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency issued a report in January that put the number of dead at more than 500.

Amnesty International says “thousands of people were arbitrarily detained and/or unfairly prosecuted solely for peacefully exercising their human rights.”

Those protests were the inspiration for Persian artist Kiana Honarmand’s exhibition “A Shadow in the Depth of Light,” which was showing at the VisArts Gallery in Rockville, Maryland.

“Just watching the violence was absolutely devastating to see so many people, including men, women, children, getting killed, and thousands arrested,” she told VOA.

Rising hands

Nearly 300 3D-printed hands made from red plastic polymer appear to rise from the gallery floor, each bearing the name of people killed in the protests.

“Each hand represents a human being who has sacrificed everything for the cause of justice, and for women’s rights, for human rights,” Honarmand said.

The installation, which has now closed, included long locks of synthetic hair, representing Iranian women who started cutting off their hair in protest of Amini’s death, which caught on with women around the world who began cutting their hair in solidarity.

The popular protest slogan “Woman, Life, Freedom” is printed in Persian across the exhibit’s windows.

“I just had to talk about this because it’s the largest and most significant feminist movement of our time and it’s not talked about as much as it needs to be,” Honarmand said.

“My first response seeing this exhibition was that the hands coming from the ground looked like a scene from a horror movie,” said Gabriel Soto, visitor services coordinator at the VisArts gallery. “It really reminded me of the living dead coming from the ground.”

“It’s a very horrifying thing to imagine that these hands represent people that have been murdered by the state of Iran for [supporting] women’s rights.”

Soto also says the exhibition served as a “wakeup call” to keep the media spotlight on the protests and the response from the Iranian state, “to make sure that people understand that this is still going on, the morality police are still operating, and women are still being brutalized in Iran.”

“What resonated for me here was seeing the ‘bloody’ hands and how much blood there is for Iranian women in their struggle for freedom,” said visitor Andrea Barron.

An advocacy and outreach program manager at the U-S based nonprofit group Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition, which works to end the practice of torture internationally, Barron says she was especially moved by the long strands of hair.

“That was such an important symbol in the recent protests of the women against the morality police after Mahsa was killed,” she said. “Even though these Iranian women are not in the news anymore, I think we need to keep thinking about them and their struggle for freedom.”

Simple acts of disobedience

Honarmand says it’s more important than ever to stand up for women’s rights everywhere, “including Iran, Afghanistan, in South America.”

“It’s been absolutely inspiring to watch what women in Iran are doing even now, every day, with the simple acts of disobedience, such as just going outside not wearing their compulsory hijabs. … They are very courageous, and I am just in awe of that.”

Going forward, Honarmand says she wants to keep making hands for every confirmed death of an Iranian protester.
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