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Month: April 2024
North Korea fires missiles off east coast, South Korea, Japan say
Seoul, South Korea — North Korea fired “several” ballistic missiles on Monday toward the sea off its east coast, South Korea’s military said.
A Japanese government alert and its coast guard also said North Korea had fired what appeared to be a ballistic missile.
The projectile appeared to have landed outside Japan’s exclusive economic zone area, the NHK broadcaster said.
Japan’s NTV broadcaster said the projectile was a short-range ballistic missile, citing a Japanese government official.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said the North launched what it suspected to be several short-range ballistic missiles from near its capital, Pyongyang, without providing further details.
The reports of the launch came as South Korea said its top military officer, Admiral Kim Myung-soo, had hosted the commander of U.S. Space Command, General Stephen Whiting, on Monday to discuss the North’s reconnaissance satellite development and growing military cooperation between Pyongyang and Moscow.
After a summit between the two countries’ leaders in September, North Korea has been suspected of supplying arms and munitions to Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, although both deny that claim.
The North is believed to be preparing to launch another spy satellite, after successfully putting a reconnaissance satellite in orbit in November.
North Korea said last week that it had fired a strategic cruise missile to test a large warhead, and a new anti-aircraft missile.
Earlier in April, the North fired a new hypersonic missile as part of its development of solid-fueled missiles for all ranges of its arsenal.
The North has defied a ban by the United Nations Security Council on developing ballistic missiles, rejecting Council resolutions as infringing on its sovereign right to defend itself.
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OCHA seeks $413M for humanitarian crisis in northern Mozambique
Maputo, Mozambique — The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, known as OCHA, is seeking $413 million in emergency aid to support over 1 million people in northern Mozambique dealing with climate disasters and an insurgency concentrated in the province of Cabo Delgado.
OCHA Mozambique representative Paola Serrao Emerson told a media conference in Maputo on Friday that her organization’s efforts to deal with the souring humanitarian situation in the southern African nation face financial problems.
According to the U.N, a total of 2.3 million people need humanitarian assistance in the northern provinces of Cabo Delgado and Nampula, but her organization is operating under a tight budget.
“We are looking for $413 million for Cabo Delgado or war in Mozambique, and of that we have received just about $43 million or so, just over 11%, so we are woefully underfunded,” she said. “Normally at this time of the year we would at least 20 or more percent funding.”
According to Emerson, food insecurity compounds the vulnerability of the internally displaced people, host communities and returnees alike.
Mozambique is regularly exposed to cyclones, floods and droughts, damaging private and public infrastructure.
In 2023, Tropical Cyclone Freddy, a storm of record-breaking length, hit Mozambique’s northern region twice with destructive winds, extreme rainfall, and widespread flooding.
Droughts, which have become more frequent, are also a dire concern, as 80 percent of the population of more than 33 million depends on rain-fed agriculture.
“Humanitarian organizations, the U.N., national and international organizations are supporting people every day with food assistance, with health support, with child support assistance, with mental health psychiatric support amongst many others throughout Cabo Delgado,” she said. “However, the funding situation is difficult to provide comprehensive multi-sectoral support to all areas that are affected.”
The news comes at a time when terrorist attacks have increased in northern Mozambique. Last month, missionaries, priests and religious sisters were forced to flee from remote towns and villages to Pemba and other large cities, which are overwhelmed with displaced people as the insurgency in Cabo Delgado intensifies.
At the same time, troops from the Southern African Development Community, or SADC, have begun to draw down due to financial issues.
Defense Minister Cristovao Chume told state-run Radio Mozambique on Friday that the end of the mission cannot be seen as a rupture in cooperation with SADC.
He said the SADC military mission is leaving Mozambique because it fulfilled the objective for which it was created — to stabilize the north of Cabo Delgado and recover areas controlled by terrorists.
Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi says his country’s armed forces should take a more prominent role in counterterrorism operations, despite some challenges.
Since 2017, the insurgency in Cabo Delgado, waged by a group that claims affiliation with Islamic State, has terrorized civilians and caused interruption to several multi-billion-dollar oil and natural gas projects.
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Philippines, US launch annual joint military drills
Manila, Philippines — Thousands of Filipino and American troops will kick off joint military exercises in the Philippines on Monday, as Beijing’s growing assertiveness in the region raises fears of a conflict.
The annual drills — dubbed Balikatan, or “shoulder to shoulder” in Tagalog — will be concentrated in the northern and western parts of the archipelago nation, near the potential flashpoints of the South China Sea and Taiwan.
China claims almost the entire waterway, a key route for international trade, and also considers self-ruled Taiwan to be part of its territory.
In response to China’s growing influence, the United States has been bolstering alliances with countries in the Asia-Pacific region, including the Philippines.
Washington and Manila are treaty allies and have deepened their defense cooperation since Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos took office in 2022.
While the Philippines is poorly armed, its proximity to the South China Sea and Taiwan would make it a key partner for the United States in the event of a conflict with China.
“The purpose of armed forces, why we exist, is really to prepare for war,” Philippine Colonel Michael Logico told reporters ahead of the drills. “There’s no sugarcoating it … for us not to prepare, that’s a disservice to the country.”
The Philippine coast guard will join Balikatan for the first time, following several confrontations between its vessels and the China coast guard, which patrols reefs off the Philippines’ coast.
The joint drills involve a simulation of an armed recapture of an island in Palawan province, the nearest major Philippine landmass to the hotly disputed Spratly Islands in the South China Sea.
The same exercise will be held in the northern provinces of Cagayan and Batanes, both less than 300 km (180 miles) from Taiwan.
Like last year, there will be a sinking of a vessel off the northern province of Ilocos Norte.
Other training will concern information warfare, maritime security, and integrated air and missile defense.
The United States has deployed its Standard Missile-6 (SM-6) guided missiles to the Philippines for Balikatan, but Logico said the weapons would not be used in the drills.
China’s foreign ministry has accused the United States of “stoking military confrontation,” and warned the Philippines to “stop sliding down the wrong path.”
‘It matters for regional stability’
The exercises, which will run until May 10, will involve around 11,000 American and 5,000 Filipino troops, as well as Australian and French military personnel.
France will also deploy a warship that will take part in a joint exercise with Philippine and U.S. vessels.
Fourteen countries in Asia and Europe will join as observers.
For the first time, the drills will go beyond the Philippines’ territorial waters, which extend about 22 kilometers (13.6 miles) from its coastline, Logico said.
“Balikatan is more than an exercise; it’s a tangible demonstration of our shared commitment to each other,” Lieutenant General William Jurney, commander of U.S .Marine Corps Forces, Pacific, said in a statement.
“It matters for regional peace,” he said. “It matters for regional stability.”
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Mary J. Blige, Cher, Ozzy Osbourne, others picked for Rock Hall of Fame
new york — Mary J. Blige,Cher, Foreigner, A Tribe Called Quest, Kool & The Gang and Ozzy Osbourne have been inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, a class that also includes folk-rockers Dave Matthews Band and singer-guitarist Peter Frampton.
Alexis Korner, John Mayall and Big Mama Thornton earned the Musical Influence Award, while the late Jimmy Buffett, MC5, Dionne Warwick and Norman Whitfield will get the Musical Excellence Award. Pioneering music executive Suzanne de Passe won the Ahmet Ertegun Award.
“Rock ‘n’ roll is an ever-evolving amalgam of sounds that impacts culture and moves generations,” John Sykes, chairman of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation, said in a statement. “This diverse group of inductees each broke down musical barriers and influenced countless artists that followed in their footsteps.”
The induction ceremony will be held October 19 at the Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse in the city of Cleveland in the U.S. state of Ohio. It will stream live on Disney+ with an airing on ABC at a later date and available on Hulu the next day.
The music acts nominated this year but didn’t make the cut included Mariah Carey, Lenny Kravitz, the late Sinead O’Connor, soul-pop singer Sade, Britpoppers Oasis, hip-hop duo Eric B. & Rakim, and alt-rockers Jane’s Addiction.
There had been a starry push to get Foreigner — with the hits “Urgent” and Hot Blooded” — into the hall, with Mark Ronson, Jack Black, Slash, Dave Grohl and Paul McCartney all publicly backing the move. Ronson’s stepfather is Mick Jones, Foreigner’s founding member, songwriter and lead guitarist.
Osbourne, who led many parents in the 1980s to clutch their pearls with his devil imagery and sludgy music, goes in as a solo artist, having already been inducted into the hall with metal masters Black Sabbath.
Four of the eight nominees — Cher, Foreigner, Frampton and Kool & the Gang — were on the ballot for the first time.
Cher — the only artist to have a Number 1 song in each of the past six decades — and Blige, with eight multi-platinum albums and nine Grammy Awards, will help boost the number of women in the hall, which critics say is too low.
Artists must have released their first commercial recording at least 25 years before they’re eligible for induction.
Nominees were voted on by more than 1,000 artists, historians and music industry professionals. Fans voted online or in person at the museum, with the top five artists picked by the public making up a “fans’ ballot” that was tallied with the other professional ballots.
Last year, Missy Elliott, Willie Nelson, Sheryl Crow, Chaka Khan, “Soul Train” creator Don Cornelius, Kate Bush, and the late George Michael were some of the artists who got into the hall.
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US House approves aid to Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan
Lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives overwhelming passed a $95 billion foreign aid bill on Saturday. The measure now heads to the U.S. Senate, which is expected to take up a vote early this week. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi reports.
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Terry Anderson, US journalist held captive for nearly 7 years, dies
los angeles, california — Terry Anderson, the globe-trotting Associated Press correspondent who became one of America’s longest-held hostages after he was snatched from a street in war-torn Lebanon in 1985 and held for nearly seven years, has died at 76.
Anderson, who chronicled his abduction and torturous imprisonment by Islamic militants in his best-selling 1993 memoir “Den of Lions,” died Sunday at his home in Greenwood Lake, New York, said his daughter, Sulome Anderson.
The cause of death was unknown, though his daughter said Anderson recently had heart surgery.
“He never liked to be called a hero, but that’s what everyone persisted in calling him,” said Sulome Anderson. “I saw him a week ago and my partner asked him if he had anything on his bucket list, anything that he wanted to do. He said, ‘I’ve lived so much, and I’ve done so much. I’m content.'”
After returning to the United States in 1991, Anderson led a peripatetic life, giving public speeches, teaching journalism at several prominent universities and, at various times, operating a blues bar, Cajun restaurant, horse ranch and gourmet restaurant.
He also struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder, won millions of dollars in frozen Iranian assets after a federal court concluded that country played a role in his capture, then lost most of it to bad investments. He filed for bankruptcy in 2009.
Upon retiring from the University of Florida in 2015, Anderson settled on a small horse farm in a quiet, rural section of northern Virginia he had discovered while camping with friends.
“I live in the country and it’s reasonably good weather and quiet out here and a nice place, so I’m doing all right,” he said with a chuckle during a 2018 interview with The Associated Press.
In 1985 he became one of several Westerners abducted by members of the Shiite Muslim group Hezbollah during a time of war that had plunged Lebanon into chaos.
After his release, he returned to a hero’s welcome at AP’s New York headquarters.
As the AP’s chief Middle East correspondent, Anderson had been reporting for several years on the rising violence gripping Lebanon as the country fought a war with Israel, while Iran funded militant groups trying to topple its government.
Chained to wall, threatened with death
On March 16, 1985, a day off, he had taken a break to play tennis with former AP photographer Don Mell and was dropping Mell off at his home when gun-toting kidnappers dragged him from his car.
He was likely targeted, he said, because he was one of the few Westerners still in Lebanon and because his role as a journalist aroused suspicion among members of Hezbollah.
“Because in their terms, people who go around asking questions in awkward and dangerous places have to be spies,” he told the Virginia newspaper Orange County Review in 2018.
What followed was nearly seven years of brutality during which he was beaten, chained to a wall, threatened with death, often had guns held to his head and often was kept in solitary confinement.
Anderson was the longest held of several Western hostages Hezbollah abducted over the years, including Terry Waite, the former envoy to the Archbishop of Canterbury, who had arrived to try to negotiate his release.
By his and other hostages’ accounts, he was also their most hostile prisoner, constantly demanding better food and treatment, arguing religion and politics with his captors, and teaching other hostages sign language and where to hide messages so they could communicate privately.
He managed to retain a quick wit and biting sense of humor during his long ordeal. On his last day in Beirut, he called the leader of his kidnappers into his room to tell him he’d just heard an erroneous radio report saying he’d been freed and was in Syria.
“I said, ‘Mahmound, listen to this, I’m not here. I’m gone, babes. I’m on my way to Damascus.’ And we both laughed,” he told Giovanna DellOrto, author of “AP Foreign Correspondents in Action: World War II to the Present.”
He learned later his release was delayed when a third party who his kidnappers planned to turn him over to left for a tryst with the party’s mistress and they had to find someone else.
Trauma lasted for years
Anderson’s humor often hid the PTSD he acknowledged suffering for years afterward.
“The AP got a couple of British experts in hostage decompression, clinical psychiatrists, to counsel my wife and myself and they were very useful,” he said in 2018. “But one of the problems I had was I did not recognize sufficiently the damage that had been done.
“So, when people ask me, you know, ‘Are you over it?’ Well, I don’t know. No, not really. It’s there. I don’t think about it much these days, it’s not central to my life. But it’s there.”
At the time of his abduction, Anderson was engaged to be married and his future wife was six months pregnant with their daughter, Sulome.
The couple married soon after his release but divorced a few years later, and although they remained on friendly terms Anderson and his daughter were estranged for years.
“I love my dad very much. My dad has always loved me. I just didn’t know that because he wasn’t able to show it to me,” Sulome Anderson told the AP in 2017.
Father and daughter reconciled after the publication of her critically acclaimed 2017 book, “The Hostage’s Daughter,” in which she told of traveling to Lebanon to confront and eventually forgive one of her father’s kidnappers.
“I think she did some extraordinary things, went on a very difficult personal journey, but also accomplished a pretty important piece of journalism doing it,” Anderson said. “She’s now a better journalist than I ever was.”
Chose Marines over Michigan
Terry Alan Anderson was born Oct. 27, 1947. He spent his early childhood years in the small Lake Erie town of Vermilion, Ohio, where his father was a police officer.
After graduating from high school, he turned down a scholarship to the University of Michigan in favor of enlisting in the Marines, where he rose to the rank of staff sergeant while seeing combat during the Vietnam War.
After returning home, he enrolled at Iowa State University where he graduated with a double major in journalism and political science and soon after went to work for the AP. He reported from Kentucky, Japan and South Africa before arriving in Lebanon in 1982, just as the country was descending into chaos.
“Actually, it was the most fascinating job I’ve ever had in my life,” he told the Orange County Review. “It was intense. War’s going on — it was very dangerous in Beirut. Vicious civil war, and I lasted about three years before I got kidnapped.”
Anderson was married and divorced three times. In addition to his daughter, he is survived by another daughter, Gabrielle Anderson, from his first marriage.
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Ukraine’s salt mines become explorable in Minecraft game
A Ukrainian version of the Minecraft game features Canadian actress Katheryn Winnick, U.S. astronaut Scott Kelly, and other celebrities from around the globe. The new game, called Minesalt, is based on Ukraine’s famous Soledar salt mines. Anna Kosstutschenko reports. Camera: Pavel Suhodolskiy.
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Flooding expected in China’s Guangdong, threatening millions
BEIJING — Major rivers, waterways and reservoirs in China’s Guangdong province are threatening to unleash dangerous floods, forcing the government Sunday to enact emergency response plans to protect more than 127 million people.
Calling the situation “grim,” local weather officials said sections of rivers and tributaries at the Xijiang and Beijiang river basins are hitting water levels in a rare spike that only has a one-in-50 chance of happening in any given year, state broadcaster CCTV news said Sunday.
China’s water resource ministry issued an emergency advisory, CCTV reported.
Guangdong officials urged departments in all localities and municipalities to begin emergency planning to avert natural disasters and promptly disperse disaster relief funds and materials to ensure affected people have food, clothing, water and somewhere to stay.
The province, a major exporter and one of China’s main commercial and trading centers, has seen major downpours and strong winds for several days, in a weather pattern which has also affected other parts of China.
12 hours of rain
A 12-hour spell of heavy rain, starting from 8 p.m. (1200 GMT) Saturday, battered the central and northern parts of the province including the cities of Zhaoqing, Shaoguan, Qingyuan and Jiangmen, where rescue workers have been dispatched.
More than 45,000 people have been evacuated in Qingyuan, according to state media, and some power facilities in Zhaoqing were damaged, cutting power to some places.
Overall in Guangdong, 1.16 million households lost power due to the heavy rains, according to state-backed media.
About 1,103 schools in Zhaoqing, Shaoguan and Qingyuan will suspend classes Monday, Chinese state radio said.
“Please look at Zhaoqing’s Huaiji county, which has become a water town. The elderly and children at the countryside don’t know what to do with power outages and no signal,” said one user on the popular social media site Weibo.
‘It rained like a waterfall’
Raging flood waters swept one vehicle down a narrow street in Zhaoqing, a video released by Hongxing News showed.
“It rained like a waterfall for an hour and a half on the highway driving home last night,” said another Weibo user. “I couldn’t see the road at all.”
Authorities in Qingyuan and Shaoguan also suspended ships from traveling through several rivers, with maritime departments dispatching forces to be on duty and coordinate emergency tugboats and emergency rescue vessels.
Many hydrological stations in the province are exceeding water levels, weather officials warned, and in the provincial capital Guangzhou, a city of 18 million, reservoirs have reached flood limits, city officials announced Sunday.
Data showed 2,609 hydrological stations with daily rainfall greater than 50 mm (1.97 inches), accounting for about 59% of all observation stations. At 8 a.m. Sunday, 27 hydrological stations in Guangdong were on alert.
In neighboring Guangxi, west of Guangdong, violent hurricane-like winds whipped the region, destroying buildings, state media video footage showed. Some places have also experienced hailstones and major flooding, CCTV said.
In another video, rescuers could be seen trying to save an elderly person clinging to a tree half-submerged in flood waters.
As of 10:00 a.m. (0200 GMT), 65 landslides were recorded in the city of Hezhou located in Guangxi, state media reported.
Weather forecasters are expecting heavy rain through Monday in the Guangxi region, Guangdong, Fujian and Zhejiang provinces.
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‘Civil War’ continues box-office campaign at No. 1
New York — “Civil War,” Alex Garland’s ominous American dystopia, remained the top film in theaters in its second week of release, according to studio estimates Sunday.
The A24 election-year gamble, the indie studio’s biggest budgeted film yet, took in $11.1 million in ticket sales at 3,929 theaters over the weekend. The $50 million film, set in a near-future U.S. in which Texas and California have joined in rebellion against a fascist president, has grossed $44.9 million in two weeks.
Its provocative premise — and A24’s marketing, which included images of U.S. cities ravaged by war — helped keep “Civil War” top of mind for moviegoers.
But it was a painfully slow weekend in theaters — the kind sure to add to concern over what’s thus far been a down year for Hollywood at the box office.
Going into the weekend, Universal Pictures’ “Abigail,” a critically acclaimed R-rated horror film about the daughter of Dracula, had been expected to lead ticket sales. It came in second with $10.2 million in 3,384 theaters.
That was still a fair result for a film that cost a modest $28 million to make. “Abigail,” which remakes the 1936 monster film “Dracula’s Daughter,” is about a 12-year-old girl taken by kidnappers who soon realize they’ve made a poor choice of hostage. It’s directed by the duo Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett whose production company goes by the name Radio Silence.
More concerning was the overall tepid response for a handful of new wide releases — and the likelihood that there will be more similar weekends throughout 2024. Last year’s actors and writers’ strikes, which had a prolonged effect on the movie pipeline, exacerbated holes in Hollywood’s release schedule.
Horror films, in recent years among the most reliable cash cows in theaters, also haven’t thus far been doing the automatic business they previously did. According to David A. Gross, who runs the consulting firm Franchise Entertainment Research, horror releases accounted for $2 billion in worldwide sales in 2023.
Guy Ritchie’s “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare” debuted with $9 million in 2,845 theaters. In the based-on-a-true-story Lionsgate release, which reportedly cost $60 million to produce, Henry Cavill leads a World War II mission off the coast of West Africa.
Though Ritchie has been behind numerous box-office hits, including the live-action “Aladdin” and a pair of Sherlock Holmes films, his recent movies have struggled to find big audiences. The Lionsgate spy comedy “Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre” grossed $48 million against a $50 million budget, while MGM’s “The Covenant,” also released last year, made $21 million while costing $55 million to make.
A bright sign for “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare” — audiences liked it. The film earned an A-minus CinemaScore.
The anime “Spy x Family Code: White,” from Sony’s Crunchyroll, also struggled to stand out with audiences. Though the adaptation of the Tatsuya Endo manga TV series “Spy x Family” has already been a hit with international moviegoers, it debuted below expectations with $4.9 million in 2,009 U.S. theaters.
The mightiest film globally, though, continues to be “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire.” The Warner Bros. monster movie has for the past month led worldwide ticket sales. It added another $9.5 million domestically and $21.6 million internationally to bring its four-week global total to $485.2 million.
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.
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“Civil War,” $11.1 million.
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“Abigail,” $10.2 million.
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“Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire,” $9.5 million.
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“The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare,” $9 million.
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“Spy x Family Code: White,” $4.9 million.
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“Kung Fu Panda 4,” $4.6 million.
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“Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire,” $4.4 million.
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“Dune: Part Two,” $2.9 million.
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“Monkey Man,” $2.2 million.
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“The First Omen,” $1.7 million.
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Polish voters choose mayors in hundreds of cities in runoff election
WARSAW — Polish voters are casting ballots Sunday to choose mayors in hundreds of cities and towns where no candidate won outright in the first round of local election voting two weeks ago.
Mayors will be chosen in 748 places, including Krakow, Poznan, Rzeszow and Wroclaw. Those are places where no single candidate won at least 50% of the vote during the first round on April 7.
The local and regional elections are being viewed as a test for the pro-European Union government of Prime Minister Donald Tusk four months after it took power at the national level.
Tusk’s party did well in big cities including Warsaw, where his party’s candidate, Rafał Trzaskowski, easily won reelection as mayor two weeks ago.
However, Tusk failed to win a decisive victory overall. The main opposition party, Law and Justice, which held power at the national level from 2015-23, won a greater percentage of votes in the provincial assemblies.
Tusk’s socially liberal Civic Coalition has strong support in cities while the Law and Justice party has a stronger base in conservative rural areas, particularly in eastern Poland.
In the election of the provincial assemblies, Law and Justice obtained 34.3% of the votes nationwide and Tusks’ Civic Coalition got 30.6%.
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Residents of 4 Serb-majority municipalities vote on Albanian mayors’ fates
PRISTINA, Kosovo — Residents of four Serb-majority municipalities are casting their votes Sunday on removing their ethnic Albanian mayors from office following last year’s mayoral elections, overwhelmingly boycotted by the Serb minority.
The referendum — supported by the West — is an attempt to diffuse tensions between Kosovo and its neighboring Serbia as both countries vie to join the European Union. However, Kosovo’s main ethnic Serb party, Srpska List which has close ties with Belgrade, has called to boycott Sunday’s poll.
Some 46,500 residents are expected to vote in 47 polling stations, and for the mayors to step down, a majority vote is needed.
In June, Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti offered to hold new elections in North Mitrovica, Zvecan, Leposavic and Zubin Potok if 20% of the electorate in the municipalities supported a petition for the polls. Residents voted in favor of the petition in January.
When Albanian mayors took up the offices last May, Kosovo Serbs clashed with security forces, including NATO-led KFOR peacekeepers, injuring 93 troops, while protesting the results.
Serbia has backed calls for the mayors to step down.
Kosovo was a former Serbian province until a 78-day NATO bombing campaign in 1999 ended a war between Serbian government forces and ethnic Albanian separatists in Kosovo, which left some 13,000 dead, mainly ethnic Albanians, and pushed Serbian forces out. Serbia doesn’t recognize Kosovo’s 2008 independence.
Tensions between the two countries remain high.
On Monday, Kosovo took another major step toward joining the Council of Europe — the continent’s foremost human rights body — amid Serbian opposition. The following day, Belgrade authorities stopped Kosovars trying to go home for nearly 20 hours at border checkpoints, saying it was for security reasons. Pristina accused Belgrade of “holding (Kosovars) hostage” for failing to block Kosovo’s Council of Europe membership. The U.S. and E.U denounced stalling free movement between the two countries.
Earlier this month, Kosovo announced its first nationwide census since 2011 which will include surveying the ethnic Serb minority in the north. The Srpska List party has denounced the census and called for a boycott, saying it was an attempt by Kurti’s government “to confirm his shameful success in expelling (some 250,000) Serbs,” in reference to the 1999 war.
Another point of contention was Pristina’s recent decision to ban ethnic Serbs from using the Serbian currency, the dinar, widely used in Kosovo’s Serbian-run institutions, including schools and hospitals.
The United States and the European Union are struggling to get the Pristina-Belgrade dialogue “back on track.” Talks between the two have stalled after a Kosovo police officer and three Serb gunmen were killed in a shootout after about 30 masked men opened fire on a police patrol near the Kosovo village of Banjska in September.
Brussels has warned both that refusal to compromise jeopardizes Serbia and Kosovo’s chances of joining the bloc. The 27-nation bloc is keen on maintaining the alignment of the Western Balkan countries — Serbia, Kosovo, Bosnia, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Albania — with the West as Russia’s war against Ukraine continues.
The six are at different stages of the accession process.
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Chinese FM visits Cambodia, Beijing’s closest Southeast Asian ally
PHNOM PENH — Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi arrived in Cambodia on Sunday for a three-day official visit to reaffirm ties with Beijing’s closest ally in Southeast Asia. His visit is the last stop on a three-nation regional swing that also took him to Indonesia and Papua New Guinea.
He is visiting amid foreign concerns about two big Chinese-funded projects in Cambodia — a planned canal and a naval base — that critics allege could aid Beijing’s strategic military interests in Southeast Asia.
China is Cambodia’s most important ally and benefactor, with strong influence in its economy. That is illustrated by numerous Chinese-funded projects — particularly infrastructure, including airports and roads, but also private projects such as hotels, casinos and property development. More than 40% of Cambodia’s $10 billion in foreign debt is owed to China.
Wang is scheduled to have separate meetings with Prime Minister Hun Manet and his father, Hun Sen, now serving as president of the Senate after serving for 38 years as Cambodia’s head of government until he stepped down last year to be succeeded by his son. Wang was also granted a royal audience with King Norodom Sihamoni.
Hun Manet has shown no sign of deviating from his father’s pro-Beijing foreign policy. In August 2023, Wang visited Cambodia just days after Hun Sen announced he would step down as prime minister in favor of his eldest son.
Beijing’s support allows Cambodia to disregard Western concerns about its poor record on human and political rights, and in turn Cambodia generally supports Beijing’s positions on foreign policy issues such as its territorial claims in the South China Sea.
Cambodia has recently reiterated its determination to go ahead with the Chinese-financed 180-kilometer (112-mile) long, $1.7 billion Funan Techo Canal project across four provinces in the southern part of the country to connect the capital, Phnom Penh, to the Gulf of Thailand.
The plan has raised concern from neighboring Vietnam, where some scholars speculated the 100-meter (330-foot) -wide and 5.4 meter (18-foot) -deep canal could make it easier for China to send military forces southward, close to Vietnam’s southern coast. There are often frosty relations between Vietnam and its massive northern neighbor China, which aggressively claims maritime territory claimed by Hanoi and in 1979 staged a brief invasion.
The United States has also weighed in on the project, appealing for transparency on the part of Cambodia’s government. Wesley Holzer, a U.S. Embassy spokesperson in Phnom Penh, was quoted as telling VOA that “the Cambodian people, along with people in neighboring countries and the broader region, would benefit from transparency on any major undertaking with potential implications for regional water management, agricultural sustainability, and security,”
Hun Manet, speaking Thursday to government officials and villagers in southern Takeo province, dismissed the Vietnamese concern and vowed to push forward with the project, which he said would provide a huge benefit to Cambodia.
China also is involved with another project causing foreign concern, its Ream Naval Base on the Gulf of Thailand, which the United States and some international security analysts say is destined to serve as a strategic outpost for Beijing’s navy.
The Ream base initially attracted attention in 2019 when The Wall Street Journal reported that an early draft of an agreement seen by U.S. officials would allow China 30 years’ use of the base, where it would be able to post military personnel, store weapons and berth warships.
Hun Sen in response repeatedly denied there was such an agreement, pointing out that Cambodia’s constitution does not allow foreign military bases to be established on its soil and declared that visiting ships from all nations are welcome.
The base is situated on the Gulf of Thailand, adjacent to the South China Sea, where China has aggressively asserted its claim to virtually the entire strategic waterway. The U.S. has refused to recognize China’s sweeping claims and routinely conducts military maneuvers there to reinforce its status as international waters.
On Dec. 7, two Chinese naval vessels became the first ships to dock at a new pier at the base, coinciding with an official visit to Cambodia by China’s top defense official.
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Mutiso Munyao gives Kenya another London Marathon win after tribute to Kiptum
London — Alexander Mutiso Munyao delivered another win for Kenya on a day the London Marathon remembered last year’s champion Kelvin Kiptum.
A race that started with a period of applause for Kiptum, who was killed in a car crash in Kenya in February, ended with his countryman and friend running alone down the final straight in front of Buckinhgam Palace to earn an impressive victory in his first major marathon.
Mutiso Munyao said he spoke to Kiptum after his win in London last year and that the world-record holder is always on his mind when he’s competing.
“He’s in my thoughts every time, because he was my great friend,” Mutiso Munyao said. “It was a good day for me.”
It was a Kenyan double on the day, with Olympic champion Peres Jepchirchir pulling away late to win the women’s race and cement her status as the favorite to defend her gold in Paris.
With around 400 meters (yards) to go to, Jepchirchir left world-record holder Tigst Assefa and two other rivals behind to sprint alone down the final stretch. She finished in 2 hours, 16 minutes, 16 seconds, with Assefa in second and Joyciline Jepkosgei in third.
Her time was more than 4 minutes slower than Assefa’s world record set in Berlin last year, but it was the fastest time ever in a women-only marathon, beating the mark of 2:17:01 set by Mary Keitany in London in 2017. The elite women’s field in London started about 30 minutes ahead of the elite men.
For Jepchirchir, though, the main goal was to show Kenya’s selectors for the Olympic team that she should be on the team again in Paris.
“So I was trying to work extra hard to (be able to) defend my title in the Olympics,” she said.
Mutiso Munyao denied 41-year-old Kenenisa Bekele a first London Marathon victory by pulling away from the Ethiopian great with about 3 kilometers to go Sunday for his biggest career win.
Mutiso Munyao and Bekele were in a two-way fight for the win until the Kenyan made his move as they ran along the River Thames, quickly building a six-second gap that only grew as he ran toward the finish.
“At 40 kilometers, when my friend Bekele was left (behind), I had confidence that I can win this race,” the 27-year-old Mutiso Munyao said.
He finished in 2 hours, 4 minutes, 1 second, with Bekele finishing 14 seconds behind. Emile Cairess of Britain was third, 2:45 back.
Bekele, the Ethiopian former Olympic 10,000 and 5,000-meter champion, was also the runner-up in London in 2017 but has never won the race.
Mutiso Munyao is relatively unknown in marathon circles and said he wasn’t sure whether this win would be enough to make Kenya’s Olympic team for Paris.
“I hope for the best,” he said. “If they select me I will go and work for it.”
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Hawaii lawmakers take aim at vacation rentals after wildfire amplifies housing crisis
HONOLULU — A single mother of two, Amy Chadwick spent years scrimping and saving to buy a house in the town of Lahaina on the Hawaiian island of Maui. But after a devastating fire leveled Lahaina in August and reduced Chadwick’s home to white dust, the cheapest rental she could find for her family and dogs cost $10,000 a month.
Chadwick, a fine-dining server, moved to Florida where she could stretch her homeowners insurance dollars. She’s worried Maui’s exorbitant rental prices, driven in part by vacation rentals that hog a limited housing supply, will hollow out her tight-knit town.
Most people in Lahaina work for hotels, restaurants and tour companies and can’t afford $5,000 to $10,000 a month in rent, she said.
“You’re pushing out an entire community of service industry people. So no one’s going to be able to support the tourism that you’re putting ahead of your community,” Chadwick said by phone from her new home in Satellite Beach on Florida’s Space Coast. “Nothing good is going to come of it unless they take a serious stance, putting their foot down and really regulating these short-term rentals.”
The August 8 wildfire killed 101 people and destroyed housing for 6,200 families, amplifying Maui’s already acute housing shortage and laying bare the enormous presence of vacation rentals in Lahaina. It reminded lawmakers that short-term rentals are an issue across Hawaii, prompting them to consider bills that would give counties the authority to phase them out.
Gov. Josh Green got so frustrated he blurted an expletive during a recent news conference.
“This fire uncovered a clear truth, which is we have too many short-term rentals owned by too many individuals on the mainland and it is b———t,” Green said. “And our people deserve housing, here.”
Vacation rentals are a popular alternative to hotels for those seeking kitchens, lower costs and opportunities to sample everyday island life. Supporters say they boost tourism, the state’s biggest employer. Critics revile them for inflating housing costs, upending neighborhoods and contributing to the forces pushing locals and Native Hawaiians to leave Hawaii for less expensive states.
This migration has become a major concern in Lahaina. The Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement, a nonprofit, estimates at least 1,500 households — or a quarter of those who lost their homes — have left since the August wildfire.
The blaze burned single family homes and apartments in and around downtown, which is the core of Lahaina’s residential housing. An analysis by the University of Hawaii Economic Research Organization found a relatively low 7.5% of units there were vacation rentals as of February 2023.
Lahaina neighborhoods spared by the fire have a much higher ratio of vacation rentals: About half the housing in Napili, about 11 kilometers north of the burn zone, is short-term rentals.
Napili is where Chadwick thought she found a place to buy when she first went house hunting in 2016. But a Canadian woman secured it with a cash offer and turned it into a vacation rental.
Also outside the burn zone are dozens of short-term rental condominium buildings erected decades ago on land zoned for apartments.
In 1992, Maui County explicitly allowed owners in these buildings to rent units for less than 180 days at a time even without short-term rental permits. Since November, activists have occupied the beach in front of Lahaina’s biggest hotels to push the mayor or governor to use their emergency powers to revoke this exemption.
Money is a powerful incentive for owners to rent to travelers: a 2016 report prepared for the state found a Honolulu vacation rental generates 3.5 times the revenue of a long-term rental.
State Rep. Luke Evslin, the Housing Committee chair, said Maui and Kauai counties have suffered net losses of residential housing in recent years thanks to a paucity of new construction and the conversion of so many homes to short-term rentals.
“Every alarm bell we have should be ringing when we’re literally going backwards in our goal to provide more housing in Hawaii,” he said.
In his own Kauai district, Evslin sees people leaving, becoming homeless or working three jobs to stay afloat.
The Democrat was one of 47 House members who co-sponsored one version of legislation that would allow short-term rentals to be phased out. One objective is to give counties more power after a U.S. judge in 2022 ruled Honolulu violated state law when it attempted to prohibit rentals for less than 90 days. Evslin said that decision left Hawaii’s counties with limited tools, such as property taxes, to control vacation rentals.
Lawmakers also considered trying to boost Hawaii’s housing supply by forcing counties to allow more houses to be built on individual lots. But they watered down the measure after local officials said they were already exploring the idea.
Short-term rental owners said a phase-out would violate their property rights and take their property without compensation, potentially pushing them into foreclosure. Some predicted legal challenges.
Alicia Humiston, president of the Rentals by Owner Awareness Association, said some areas in West Maui were designed for travelers and therefore lack schools and other infrastructure families need.
“This area in West Maui that is sort of like this resort apartment zone — that’s all north of Lahaina — it was never built to be local living,” Humiston said.
One housing advocate argues that just because a community allowed vacation rentals decades ago doesn’t mean it still needs to now.
“We are not living in the 1990s or in the 1970s,” said Sterling Higa, executive director of Housing Hawaii’s Future. Counties “should have the authority to look at existing laws and reform them as necessary to provide for the public good.”
Courtney Lazo, a real estate agent who is part of Lahaina Strong, the group occupying Kaanapali Beach, said tourists can stay in her hometown now but many locals can’t.
“How do you expect a community to recover and heal and move forward when the people who make Lahaina, Lahaina, aren’t even there anymore?” she said at a recent news conference as her voice quivered. “They’re moving away.”
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Once foreign aid bill signed, this is how US can rush weapons to Ukraine
WASHINGTON — The Pentagon could get weapons moving to Ukraine within days once Congress passes a long-delayed aid bill. That’s because it has a network of storage sites in the U.S. and Europe that hold the ammunition and air defense components that Kyiv desperately needs.
Moving fast is critical, CIA Director Bill Burns said this past week, warning that without additional aid from the U.S., Ukraine could lose the war to Russia by the end of this year.
“We would like very much to be able to rush the security assistance in the volumes we think they need to be able to be successful,” Pentagon press secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said.
The House approved $61 billion in funding for the war-torn country Saturday. It still needs to clear the Senate and President Joe Biden’s signature.
Once that happens, “we have a very robust logistics network that enables us to move material very quickly,” Ryder told reporters this past week. “We can move within days.”
Ready to go
The Pentagon has had supplies ready to go for months but hasn’t moved them because it is out of money. It has spent the funding Congress previously provided to support Ukraine, sending more than $44 billion worth of weapons, maintenance, training and spare parts since Russia’s February 2022 invasion.
By December, the Pentagon was $10 billion in the hole, because it is going to cost more now to replace the systems it sent to the battlefield in Ukraine.
As a result, the Pentagon’s frequent aid packages for Ukraine dried up because there had been no guarantee that Congress would pass the additional funding needed to replenish the weapons the U.S. has been sending to Ukraine.
The lag in weapons deliveries has forced Ukrainian troops to spend months rationing their dwindling supply of munitions.
How US can quickly move weapons
When an aid package for Ukraine is announced, the weapons are either provided through presidential drawdown authority, which allows the military to immediately pull from its stockpiles, or through security assistance, which funds longer-term contracts with the defense industry to obtain the systems.
The presidential drawdown authority, or PDA, as it’s known, has allowed the military to send billions of dollars’ worth of ammunition, air defense missile launchers, tanks, vehicles and other equipment to Ukraine.
“In the past, we’ve seen weapons transferred via presidential drawdown authority arrive within a matter of days,” said Brad Bowman, director at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies center on military and political power.
Those stocks are pulled from bases or storage facilities in the U.S. or from European sites where the U.S. has surged weapons to cut down on the amount of time it will take to deliver them once the funding is approved.
Storage in US
The military has massive weapons storage facilities in the U.S. for millions of rounds of munitions of all sizes that would be ready to use in case of war.
For example, the McAlester Army Ammunition Plant in Oklahoma sprawls across more than 16,000 hectares connected by rail and has a mission to surge as many as 435 shipping containers — each able to carry 15 tons worth of munitions — if ordered by the president.
The facility is also a major storage site for one of the most used munitions on Ukraine’s battlefield, 155 mm howitzer rounds.
The demand by Ukraine for that particular shell has put pressure on U.S. stockpiles and pushed the military to see where else it could get them. As a result, tens of thousands of 155 mm rounds have been shipped back from South Korea to McAlester to be retrofitted for Ukraine.
Storage in Europe
According to a U.S. military official, the U.S. would be able to send certain munitions “almost immediately” to Ukraine because storehouses exist in Europe.
Among the weapons that could go very quickly are the 155 mm rounds and other artillery, along with some air defense munitions. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss preparations not yet made public.
A host of sites across Germany, Poland and other European allies also are helping Ukraine maintain and train on systems sent to the front. For example, Germany set up a maintenance hub for Kyiv’s Leopard 2 tank fleet in Poland, near the Ukrainian border.
The nearby maintenance hubs hasten the turnaround time to get needed repairs done on the Western systems.
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Corruption still seen as a concern in Vietnam despite death sentence
HO CHI MINH CITY, VIETNAM/WASHINGTON — While this month’s death sentence in a multibillion-dollar Vietnamese fraud case may show the power of Hanoi’s antigraft campaign, interviews in recent days showed continuing concerns over political impunity in Vietnam and vulnerability and corruption in the country’s poorly paid public sector.
Meanwhile, two of those interviewed expressed doubts the sentence would actually be carried out.
On April 11, Truong My Lan, the 68-year-old chairwoman of real-estate firm Van Thinh Phat Holdings Group was given the death sentence for embezzling $12.5 billion, leading to damages that have now reached $27 billion, as well as well as 20 years each for bribery and violating banking regulations. She was also ordered by the court to return $27 billion to Saigon Commercial Bank, or SCB, for taking out bad loans over 11 years.
In 2012, Lan merged three banks into SCB. Although Vietnamese law prohibits anyone from owning more than 5% of the shares of any bank, prosecutors said that through proxies and thousands of shell companies Lan indirectly owned 91.5% of SCB.
Nguyen Hong Hai, senior lecturer at VinUniversity in Hanoi, said Lan’s sentence shows the government’s effort to impart a public message.
“We have to put it in the context of the ongoing blazing furnace anticorruption campaign launched by the Party in 2016,” Hai told VOA on April 16.
“They want to send a clear message to the public that they really want to clean up society and they are determined to combat corruption.”
A 38-year-old bank clerk in Ho Chi Minh City struck a similar chord in an April 17 written message, telling VOA that the verdict helps to restore faith in financial institutions.
“Lan and her people have used the banking system to take the money for their own purposes,” he wrote in Vietnamese. “A quick verdict helped to gain back people’s trust.”
Corruption said likely widespread
However, Zachary Abuza, Southeast Asia expert and professor at the National War College in Washington, said corruption is likely widespread in Vietnam’s banking sector and despite the sentences meted out, high-level officials escaped implication.
The country’s Communist Party “definitely circled the wagons and made sure that some lower-level party officials and regulators were held responsible, but it didn’t go any higher,” he told VOA on April 12.
“It definitely should have gone higher,” he added.
During the trial, 85 individuals were punished in addition to Lan, with sentences ranging from probation to life imprisonment. Do Thi Nhan, the head banking inspector of the State Bank of Vietnam, was given a life sentence for accepting a $5.2 million bribe to cover up SCB’s wrongdoing.
Hai in Hanoi said authorities are likely implicated in Lan’s corrupt business practices and more officials may be revealed.
“In any corruption case, they are somehow involved with authorities and government officials particularly when it comes to a very huge corruption case like this one that involves real estate and the banking sector,” Hai said.
“Maybe more investigations will be conducted. … The authorities have not yet said that it’s the end of the case,” he said.
Systemic bribery
Part of the cycle of corruption that led to Lan’s scam is the low pay of public sector workers, making them vulnerable to bribery, said Nguyen Khac Giang, visiting fellow at Singapore’s ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute.
Giang told VOA on April 17 that the monthly salary for the government’s top role of general secretary is approximately $1,000, mid-level officials make about $400, and those entering the public sector out of college do not make enough to live without accepting bribes or taking on side jobs.
“People who just start working for the state, they get about $150 a month,” Giang said. “If you get this kind of salary you cannot survive in Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City.”
The government is trying to address the issue by increasing public sector salaries by 30% starting July this year. Although the move shows a “strong political will,” Giang said he worries it will not be enough to stop entrenched corruption with salaries starting at such a low level.
“We have 2.5 million bureaucrats,” he said. “There’s a lot of people on the state payroll and basically when you have too many people and a very small cake it is impossible to give everyone the share that they wish to have.”
Sentence may not be carried out
Meanwhile, it may be that Lan’s death sentence will not actually be carried out, even though its imposition signals a serious government attitude toward corruption.
Ha Huy Son, the director of the Ha Son Law Company in Hanoi told VOA April 11 that he expected appellate courts would commute Lan’s death sentence.
Lan’s death sentence “conveys the message that authorities are not lenient on economic crimes incurring consequential losses,” he said, adding that Vietnamese courts “have made it a norm” that if embezzlement case defendants compensate more than three-fourths of the losses incurred, their sentences will be commuted.
In addition, he said. It can take up to 20 years for a death sentence to be carried out, and Lan is almost 70.
Le Quoc Quan, a dissident and lawyer living in exile in the U.S. state of Virginia predicted to VOA April 11 that Lan would not be put to death, saying that while the death sentence is needed “to placate public sentiment, which is boiling over corruption,” it can “also serve as a bargaining chip to force Lan to compensate.”
“Truong My Lan being alive and well is good for recovering losses. Dead Truong My Lan serves nothing,” Quan said.
Le Nguyen of VOA’s Vietnamese Service reported from Washington.
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