washington — The White House said Thursday that it is preparing a new proposal to Russia to secure the release of journalist Evan Gershkovich and another jailed American.

“We’re working hard to see what we can do to get another proposal that might be more successful,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters. The Kremlin rejected a previous proposal.

Wall Street Journal reporter Gershkovich has been imprisoned since March on espionage charges that he, his employer and the U.S. government vehemently deny. Gershkovich’s jailing underscores Moscow’s years-long crackdown on press freedom, experts say.

The other American is Paul Whelan, a former U.S. Marine who was arrested in Moscow in 2018 and is currently serving a 16-year sentence on spying charges that he and the U.S. government deny.

“We’re always heartened to see signs that the government is working on Evan and Paul’s release. We hope very much that those efforts will bear fruit soon,” Paul Beckett, an assistant editor at the Journal, told VOA. Beckett is leading the newspaper’s campaign to secure Gershkovich’s release.

The news from the White House came one day after Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Washington is “very actively working” on securing the release of Gershkovich and Whelan.

“With regard to Russia and Evan and Paul Whelan, all I can say is this: We are very actively working on it, and we will leave no stone unturned to see if we can’t find the right way to get them home, and to get them home as soon as possible,” Blinken said during a year-end news conference on Wednesday.

The State Department said earlier this month that Russia rejected a “substantial” proposal to free Gershkovich and Whelan.

Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Moscow wants “to reach an agreement” with Washington on the release of Gershkovich and Whelan.

“We want to reach an agreement, and these agreements must be mutually acceptable and must suit both sides. We have contacts with our American partners in this regard, and there is an ongoing dialogue,” Putin said in his first public remarks on Gershkovich.

The Journal reported in September that Moscow is seeking the return of Russian assassin Vadim Krasikov, currently jailed in Germany, possibly in exchange for Gershkovich and Whelan.

In announcing a prisoner exchange with Venezuela on Wednesday, U.S. President Joe Biden said in a statement that his administration will continue to prioritize freeing detained Americans.

“We also remain deeply focused on securing the release of the hostages in Gaza and wrongfully detained Americans around the world, including Evan Gershkovich and Paul Whelan,” Biden said in a statement.

The Poynter Institute on Thursday named Gershkovich its Media Person of the Year.

“Gershkovich represents the dangers of being a journalist, but also provides inspiration, showing there are those willing to dedicate their lives to shining a light on the truth for the entire world to see,” Poynter said in announcing the distinction.

Gershkovich is set to remain in pretrial detention until at least January 30 while he waits for a trial. He faces up to 20 years in prison.

Absent from these recent statements from top U.S. leaders about freeing Gershkovich and Whelan, however, was a mention of journalist Alsu Kurmasheva. The dual U.S.-Russian national has been jailed in Russia since October.

A Prague-based editor at VOA’s sister outlet Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Kurmasheva stands accused of failing to register as a foreign agent and spreading false information about the Russian military. Kurmasheva and her employer reject the charges, which carry a combined maximum sentence of 15 years.

Kurmasheva’s family and employer, as well as press freedom groups, have for weeks called on the U.S. State Department to declare her wrongfully detained, which would open up additional resources to help secure her release.

A State Department spokesperson previously told VOA that it “continuously reviews the circumstances surrounding the detentions of U.S. nationals overseas, including those in Russia, for indicators that they are wrongful.”

Both Gershkovich and Whelan have been declared wrongfully detained.

Kurmasheva traveled to Russia in May for a family emergency. When she tried to leave the country in June, her passports were confiscated and she was waiting for them to be returned when she was detained in October.

The Russian Embassy in Washington did not immediately reply to VOA’s email requesting comment.

Some information for this report came from Agence France-Presse.
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NEW YORK — Rudy Giuliani has filed for bankruptcy, days after being ordered to pay $148 million in a defamation lawsuit brought by two former election workers in Georgia who said his targeting of them led to death threats that made them fear for their lives.

In his filing Thursday, the former New York City mayor listed nearly $153 million in existing or potential debts, including close to a million dollars in tax liabilities, money he owes his lawyers and many millions of dollars in potential legal judgments in lawsuits against him. He estimated his assets to be between $1 million and $10 million.

The biggest debt is the $148 million he was ordered to pay a week ago for making false statements about the election workers in Georgia stemming from the 2020 presidential contest.

Ted Goodman, a political adviser and spokesperson for Giuliani, a one-time Republican presidential candidate and high-ranking Justice Department official, said in a statement that the filing “should be a surprise to no one.”

“No person could have reasonably believed that Mayor Giuliani would be able to pay such a high punitive amount,” Goodman said. He said the bankruptcy filing would give Giuliani “the opportunity and time to pursue an appeal, while providing transparency for his finances under the supervision of the bankruptcy court, to ensure all creditors are treated equally and fairly throughout the process.”

But declaring bankruptcy likely will not erase the $148 million in damages a jury awarded to the former Georgia election workers, Ruby Freeman and Wandrea “Shaye” Moss. Bankruptcy law does not allow for the dissolution of debts that come from a “willful and malicious injury” inflicted on someone else.

Last week’s jury verdict was the latest and costliest sign of Giuliani’s mounting financial strain, exacerbated by investigations, lawsuits, fines, sanctions and damages related to his work helping then-President Donald Trump try to overturn the 2020 election he lost to Democrat Joe Biden.

In September, Giuliani’s former lawyer Robert Costello sued him for about $1.4 million in unpaid legal bills, alleging that Giuliani breached his retainer agreement by failing to pay invoices in full and a timely fashion. Giuliani has asked a judge to dismiss the case, claiming he never received the invoices at issue. The case is pending.

Costello represented Giuliani from November 2019 to this past July in matters ranging from an investigation into his business dealings in Ukraine, which resulted in an FBI raid on his home and office in April 2021, to state and federal investigations of his work in the wake of Trump’s 2020 election loss.

In August, the IRS filed a $549,435 tax lien against Giuliani for the 2021 tax year.

Copies were filed in Palm Beach County, Florida, where he owns a condominium, and New York, under the name of his outside accounting firm, Mazars USA LLP. That’s the same firm that Trump used for years before it dropped him as a client amid questions about his financial statements.

Giuliani, still somewhat popular among conservatives in the city he once ran, hosts a daily radio show in his hometown on a station owned by a local Republican grocery store magnate. Giuliani also hosts a nightly streaming show watched by a few hundred people on social media, which he calls “America’s Mayor Live.”
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SANTA FE, N.M. — Like Christmas trees, Santa and reindeer, the poinsettia has long been a ubiquitous symbol of the holiday season in the U.S. and across Europe.

But now, nearly 200 years after the plant with the bright crimson leaves was introduced in the U.S., attention is once again turning to the poinsettia’s origins and the checkered history of its namesake, a slaveowner and lawmaker who played a part in the forced removal of Native Americans from their land. Some people would now rather call the plant by the name of its Indigenous origin in southern Mexico.

Some things to know:

Where did the name poinsettia come from?

The name comes from the amateur botanist and statesman Joel Roberts Poinsett, who happened upon the plant in 1828 during his tenure as the first U.S. minister to the newly independent Mexico.

Poinsett, who was interested in science as well as potential cash crops, sent clippings of the plant to his home in South Carolina and to a botanist in Philadelphia, who affixed the eponymous name to the plant in gratitude.

A life-size bronze statue of Poinsett still stands in his honor in downtown Greenville, South Carolina.

However, he was cast out of Mexico within a year of his discovery, having earned a local reputation for intrusive political maneuvering that extended to a network of secretive masonic lodges and schemes to contain British influence.

Is the ‘poinsettia’ name losing its luster?

As more people learn of its namesake’s complicated history, the name “poinsettia” has become less attractive in the United States.

Unvarnished published accounts reveal Poinsett as a disruptive advocate for business interests abroad, a slaveowner on a rice plantation in the U.S., and a secretary of war who helped oversee the forced removal of Native Americans, including the westward relocation of Cherokee populations to Oklahoma known as the “Trail of Tears.”

In a new biography titled Flowers, Guns and Money, historian Lindsay Schakenbach Regele describes the cosmopolitan Poinsett as a political and economic pragmatist who conspired with a Chilean independence leader and colluded with British bankers in Mexico. Though he was a slaveowner, he opposed secession, and he didn’t live to see the Civil War.

Schakenbach Regele renders tough judgment on Poinsett’s treatment of and regard for Indigenous peoples.

“Because Poinsett belonged to learned societies, contributed to botanists’ collections, and purchased art from Europe, he could more readily justify the expulsion of Natives from their homes,” she writes.

A Christmas flower of many names

The cultivation of the plant dates back to the Aztec empire in Mexico 500 years ago.

Among Nahuatl-speaking communities of Mexico, the plant is known as the cuetlaxochitl (kwet-la-SHO-sheet), meaning “flower that withers.” It’s an apt description of the thin red leaves on wild varieties of the plant that grow to heights above 3 meters.

Year-end holiday markets in Latin America brim with the potted plant known in Spanish as the “flor de Nochebuena,” or “flower of Christmas Eve,” which is entwined with celebrations of the night before Christmas. The “Nochebuena” name is traced to early Franciscan friars who arrived from Spain in the 16th century. Spaniards once called it “scarlet cloth.”

Additional nicknames abound: “Santa Catarina” in Mexico, “estrella federal,” or “federal star” in Argentina and “penacho de Incan,” or “headdress” in Peru.

Ascribed in the 19th century, the Latin name, Euphorbia pulcherrima, means “the most beautiful” of a diverse genus with a milky sap of latex.

So what is its preferred name?

“Cuetaxochitl” is winning over some enthusiasts among Mexican youths, including the diaspora in the U.S., according to Elena Jackson Albarrán, a professor of Mexican history and global and intercultural studies at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.

“I’ve seen a trend towards people openly saying: ‘Don’t call this flower either poinsettia or Nochebuena. It’s cuetlaxochitl,'” said Jackson Albarrán. “There’s going to be a big cohort of people who are like, ‘Who cares?'”

Most ordinary people in Mexico never say “poinsettia” and don’t talk about Poinsett, according to Laura Trejo, a Mexican biologist who is leading studies on the genetic history of the U.S. poinsettia.

“I feel like it’s only the historians, the diplomats and, well, the politicians who know the history of Poinsett,” Trejo said.

The Mexican roots of U.S. poinsettias

Mexican biologists in recent years have traced the genetic stock of U.S. poinsettia plants to a wild variant in the Pacific coastal state of Guerrero, verifying lore about Poinsett’s pivotal encounter there. The scientists also are researching a rich, untapped diversity of other wild variants, in efforts that may help guard against the poaching of plants and theft of genetic information.

The flower still grows wild along Mexico’s Pacific Coast and parts of Central America as far as Costa Rica.

Trejo, of the National Council of Science and Technology in the central state of Tlaxcala, said some informal outdoor markets still sell the “sun cuetlaxochitl” that resemble wild varieties, alongside modern patented varieties.

In her field research travels, Trejo has found households that preserve ancient traditions associated with the flower.

“It’s clear to us that this plant, since the pre-Hispanic era, is a ceremonial plant, an offering, because it’s still in our culture, in the interior of the county, to cut the flowers and take them to the altars,” she said in Spanish. “And this is primarily associated with the maternal goddesses: with Coatlicue, Tonantzin and now with the Virgin Mary.”

A lasting figure in history

Regardless of his troubled history, Poinsett’s legacy as an explorer and collector continues to loom large: Some 1,800 meticulously tended poinsettias are delivered in November and December from greenhouses in Maryland to a long list of museums in Washington, D.C., affiliated with the Smithsonian Institution.

A “pink-champagne” cultivar adorns the National Portrait Gallery this year.

Poinsett’s name may also live on for his connection to other areas of U.S. culture. He advocated for the establishment of a national science museum, and in part due to his efforts, a fortune bequeathed by British scientist James Smithson was used to underwrite the creation of the Smithsonian Institution.
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