The Supreme Court initially gave itself a deadline of Wednesday to decide whether women seeking access to a widely used abortion pill would face more restrictions while a court case plays out. But on the day of the highly anticipated decision the justices had only this to say: We need more time.

In a one-sentence order, the court said it now expects to act by Friday evening. There was no explanation of the reason for the delay.

The new abortion controversy comes less than a year after the Supreme Court’s conservative majority overturned Roe v. Wade and allowed more than a dozen states to effectively ban abortion outright.

The following is a look at the drug at issue in the new case, how the case got to the nation’s highest court and what the delay might say about what’s going on.

WHAT IS MIFEPRISTONE?

Mifepristone was approved for use by the Food and Drug Administration more than two decades ago. It has been used by more than 5 million women to safely end their pregnancies, and today more than half of women who end a pregnancy rely on the drug, the Justice Department said.

Over the years, the FDA has loosened restrictions on the drug’s use, extending from seven to 10 weeks of pregnancy when it can be used, reducing the dosage needed to safely end a pregnancy, eliminating the requirement to visit a doctor in person to get it and allowing pills to be obtained by mail. The FDA also approved a generic version of mifepristone that its manufacturer, Las Vegas-based GenBioPro, says makes up two-thirds of the domestic market.

Mifepristone is one of two pills used in medication abortions, along with misoprostol. Health care providers have said they could switch to misoprostol only if mifepristone is no longer available or is too hard to obtain. Misoprostol is somewhat less effective in ending pregnancies.

HOW DID THE CASE GET STARTED?

A lawsuit over mifepristone was filed in Amarillo, Texas, late last year. Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian legal group, represents the pill’s opponents, who say the FDA’s approval of mifepristone was flawed.

Why Amarillo? U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, who was nominated by then-President Donald Trump, is the sole district court judge there, ensuring that all cases filed in the west Texas city land in front of him. Since taking the bench, he has ruled against President Joe Biden’s administration on several other issues, including immigration and LGBTQ protections.

On April 7, Kacsmaryk issued a ruling that would revoke the FDA’s approval of mifepristone, but he put the decision on hold for a week to allow an appeal.

Complicating matters, however, on the same day Kacsmaryk issued his order, a court in Washington state issued a separate ruling in a lawsuit brought by liberal states seeking to preserve access to mifepristone. The Washington judge, Spokane-based Thomas O. Rice, whom then-President Barack Obama nominated, ordered the FDA not to do anything that might affect the availability of mifepristone in the suing states. The Biden administration has said it is impossible to follow both judges’ directives at the same time.

HOW DID THE CASE GET TO THE SUPREME COURT?

The Biden administration responded to Kacsmaryk’s ruling by asking the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to prevent it from taking effect for now. 

Last week, the appeals court narrowed Kacsmaryk’s ruling so that the initial approval of mifepristone in 2000 is not affected, for now. But it agreed with him that changes the FDA made to relax the rules for prescribing and dispensing the drug should be put on hold. Those rules included expanding when the drug could be taken and allowing for the drug’s delivery through the mail.

The appeals court acted by a 2-1 vote. The judges in the majority, Kurt Engelhardt and Andrew Oldham, are both Trump picks.

The Biden administration and the maker of mifepristone, New York-based Danco Laboratories, appealed to the Supreme Court, saying that allowing the appeals court’s restrictions to take effect would cause chaos. Facing a tight deadline, the Supreme Court gave itself some breathing room and issued an order suggesting it would act by Wednesday evening. That timeline was extended to Friday, the day the justices will hold a previously scheduled private conference.

The justices could talk about the issue further then. The additional time could also be part of an effort to craft an order that has broad support among the nine justices. Or one or more justices might be writing a separate opinion and asked for a couple of extra days.

WHAT COULD HAPPEN NEXT?

The Supreme Court’s delay suggests a maddening reality about an institution that ordinarily adheres to a schedule that hasn’t changed much in years: Even experts can be in the dark about when the court will decide things and how.

Cases are argued over seven months from October to April, and the most important decisions typically come right before the justices take a long summer break. The court does not say which cases it plans to hand down on a given day, and the court, in a search for consensus, will sometimes pass on the biggest issues it faces and decide a very small legal point.

But nowhere is the uncertainty as great as a separate category of cases that have come to be known as the shadow docket.

Apart from death row inmates seeking 11th-hour reprieves, shadow docket cases generally involve emergency appeals to the justices before lower courts have reached final decisions. That includes the mifepristone case.

When the justices consider this set of cases, they don’t usually have a deadline to act. A few years back, an order concerning an elections case in Texas came in the wee hours of a Saturday morning for no reason other than that’s when Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg finished work on her dissenting opinion.
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The yearslong fight by a Native American media outlet to have its editorial independence restored is the focus of a documentary that examines challenges for Indigenous journalists.

“Everyone says the same thing after watching the film: ‘I had no idea this was happening here in the U.S.,'” says Rebecca Landsberry-Baker, co-director of the documentary “Bad Press.”

Her film follows Angel Ellis of Mvskoke Media as she works to overturn the tribal council’s repeal of a press freedom act that had enshrined her paper’s rights.

That paper — Mvskoke Media — serves the Muscogee (Creek) Nation in Okmulgee, Oklahoma.

Tribal nations each have their own laws, constitution and governance. But of the 574 federally recognized tribes, only five have laws protecting freedom of the press. Without those protections, the media outlets are at risk of censorship and intimidation.

When the Native American Journalists Association, or NAJA, surveyed 65 media workers in 2018, it found that journalists were being restricted when covering the news.

More than half of the respondents said tribal affairs had gone unreported because of censorship at least some of the time, and 46% reported intimidation and harassment. One-third said officials had to approve stories before publication all or most of the time.

As a reporter and the executive director of NAJA, the promotion of press freedom is a core focus for Landsberry-Baker.

She started work at Mvskoke Media — then known as the Muscogee Nation News —right out of journalism school. There, she says, she experienced firsthand the “censorship from tribal administrations.”

Press freedom “provides a mechanism for accountability” between tribal officials and citizens, Landsberry-Baker told VOA. “If you don’t have an independent media outlet that’s reporting on what’s happening, then you don’t have educated and informed citizens and thusly, informed voters.”

But media rights on tribal lands are further complicated by funding.

A 2018 report by the Indigenous Media Freedom Alliance found that 72% of Native American newspapers and radio stations were owned and controlled by tribal governments.

Less than half of 1% of media workers identify as Native American, according to 2019 data, the most recent available from the News Leaders Association, and mainstream media fall short in coverage of Indigenous issues. For some Native American communities, a tribal news outlet may be the only source of information about tribal affairs.

The Muscogee (Creek) Nation is in a minority of tribal outlets whose media rights are enshrined. In 2015, it passed legislation naming Mvskoke Media an independent news source. The law cited a need to have “news and activities reported objectively and without interference or bias.”

So when the Muscogee (Creek) Nation’s National Council in 2018 revoked that act in an emergency session, Landsberry-Baker decided she had to act.

“I knew this story can’t go untold in the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, and I have to do something about it, and I have to document it in some way,” Landsberry-Baker said. She placed a phone call to Joe Peeler, who signed on as co-director of a documentary and flew from Los Angeles to Oklahoma to begin filming.

Their film, “Bad Press,” zeroes in on proceedings in which at least one council member argued that the news published by Mvskoke Media wasn’t positive enough, therefore warranting the repeal.

Following the decision, a Muscogee (Creek) Nation official took editorial control of the paper, requiring all articles to be submitted for approval before publication.

David Hill, principal chief of Muscogee (Creek) Nation, did not respond to VOA’s request for comment.

In the months that followed, 10 of Mvskoke Media’s 16 employees quit.

Ellis was one of the few who stayed, saying she felt compelled to support her community and continue to tell its stories.

“Our community is one that’s been almost left out of the textbooks, the history books,” Ellis told VOA. “Many of the stories were not considered interesting to the mainstream. And I see our journalism that we’re doing as a way to compile it, to take that snapshot of us. … That way when people are looking back, they know how we got where we are.”

Ellis, who is now director of Mvskoke Media, started at the paper in 2008.

“It’s more than just a newsletter. It’s more than a newspaper. It’s more than a news program,” Ellis said. “It’s the combative weapon against erasure that we’re trying to achieve.”

Ellis, who in 2011 was dismissed from the paper over a dispute stemming from a front-page story about an official arrested for embezzlement, had returned to the media outlet in 2018, just three months before the act was repealed.

She says having the documentary camera crew follow her provided not only visibility but protection.

The crew also kept Ellis committed as the fight dragged on. Landsberry-Baker and her team ended up filming almost 500 hours of footage over a four-year period.

“I had no idea how the story would end, but I felt some responsibility to be able to document this important moment for my tribe and to see how things would play out good or bad,” Landsberry-Baker said.

As it turns out, things ended up working in favor of press freedom. In 2021, a constitutional amendment was placed on the midterm election ballot of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. A majority — 76.25% — voted in favor of press freedom.

“To see that citizen engagement, and to see them embracing this concept of news, good or bad, is our story, and we feel like it’s an important component to our sovereignty — was an overwhelming, uniting factor throughout the whole thing,” Ellis said.

The Muscogee (Creek) Nation also went on to elect a principal chief who had campaigned on a pro-media platform. Several other candidates who supported press freedom were elected to the National Council.

Landsberry-Baker says the documentary, which debuted in January at the Sundance Film Festival, is a culmination of her life’s work.

Since its release, journalists from tribes across the U.S. have told her that the film reflects their own struggles with press freedom.

“Our ultimate impact goal is to see more tribes with free press protections at whatever level is comfortable for them,” she said. “And so I’m really hopeful that [the documentary] lays out one path and one way to do that.”
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A county commissioner in far southeast Oklahoma who was identified by a local newspaper as one of several officials caught on tape discussing killing reporters and lynching Black people has resigned from office, Governor Kevin Stitt’s office confirmed Wednesday.

Stitt spokesperson Carly Atchison said the office received a handwritten resignation letter from McCurtain County Commissioner Mark Jennings. In it, Jennings says he is resigning immediately and that he plans to release a formal statement “in the near future regarding the recent events in our county.”

The threatening comments by Jennings and officials with the McCurtain County Sheriff’s Office were obtained following a March 6 meeting and reported by the McCurtain Gazette-News earlier this week in its weekend edition. They have sparked outrage and protests in the city of Idabel, the county seat.

In a post on the sheriff’s office Facebook page on Tuesday, officials did not address the recorded discussion but claimed the recording was illegally obtained.

On Wednesday, the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation confirmed it has launched an investigation into the matter at the request of the governor.

The recorded conversation included Sheriff Kevin Clardy, sheriff’s Captain Alicia Manning, Jennings and Jail Administrator Larry Hendrix. During that conversation, Clardy, Manning and Jennings appear to discuss Bruce Willingham — the longtime publisher of the Gazette-News — and his son Chris Willingham, a reporter.

Jennings tells Clardy and Manning “I know where two deep holes are dug if you ever need them,” and the sheriff responds, “I’ve got an excavator.”

Jennings also says he’s known “two or three hit men” in Louisiana, adding “they’re very quiet guys.”

In the recording, Jennings also appears to complain about not being able to hang Black people, saying: “They got more rights than we got.”

The Associated Press is working to verify the authenticity of the recording. None of the four officials returned telephone calls or emails from The Associated Press seeking comment.

Bruce Willingham told the AP the recording was made when he left a voice-activated recorder inside the room after a county commissioner’s meeting because he suspected the group was continuing to conduct county business after the meeting had ended, in violation of the state’s Open Meeting Act.

Willingham said he twice spoke with his attorneys to be sure he was doing nothing illegal.

Joey Senat, a journalism professor at Oklahoma State University, said under Oklahoma law, the recording would be legal if it were obtained in a place where the officials being recorded did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy.

Bruce Willingham said he believes the local officials were upset about “stories we’ve run that cast the sheriff’s office in an unfavorable light,” including the death of Bobby Barrick — a Broken Bow, Oklahoma, man who died at a hospital in March 2022 after McCurtain County deputies shot him with a stun gun. The newspaper has filed a lawsuit against the sheriff’s office seeking body camera footage and other records connected to Barrick’s death.

Separately, Chris Willingham has filed a federal lawsuit against the sheriff’s office, Clardy, Manning and the Board of County Commissioners alleging Manning slandered him after he wrote an eight-part series of articles detailing problems inside the sheriff’s office. The lawsuit claims after the first few articles were published, Clardy and Manning began investigating which office employees were speaking to the newspaper and were attempting to get a search warrant for Willingham’s phone.

The lawsuit, which was filed on the same day the recording was made, alleges that after the series was published, Manning told a third party during a teleconference that Chris Willingham exchanged marijuana for sexually explicit images of children from a man who had been arrested on child sex abuse image charges.

“Manning made these (and other) false statements about Willingham in retaliation for articles he wrote about the (sheriff’s office) as a reporter for the McCurtain Gazette and to destroy his credibility as a reporter and journalist,” the lawsuit states.

On Tuesday, the Oklahoma Sheriff’s Association, a voluntary membership organization and not a regulatory agency, held an emergency meeting of its board. It voted unanimously to suspend Clardy, Manning and Hendrix from the association.
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The U.S. Justice Department is asking Congress for additional authority to funnel seized Russian assets to Ukraine.

In December, Congress authorized the Justice Department to transfer the proceeds of forfeited Russian assets to the State Department for Ukrainian reconstruction.

But the power applies only to assets seized in connection with violating U.S. sanctions under certain presidential executive orders. 

As a result, millions of dollars’ worth of Russian assets seized and forfeited in violation of U.S. export controls and other economic countermeasures cannot be transferred.

Now, the Justice Department is urging Congress to expand the range of seized assets that it can transfer for Ukrainian rebuilding. 

“We’re leaving money on the table if we don’t expand our ability to use the forfeited assets that we gain from enforcement of our export control violations and expanding the sanctions regimes that that transfer authority is applicable to,” Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday. “So I urge the Congress to give us the additional authority so we can make the oligarchs pay for rebuilding Ukraine as well.”

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Justice Department, led by Attorney General Merrick Garland, has cracked down on Russian oligarchs and investigated war crimes.

The law enforcement agency set up a task force shortly after the invasion to enforce sweeping U.S. sanctions and export controls. 

Task Force Kleptocapture has since seized more than $500 million in assets owned by Russian oligarchs and others who support Moscow and dodge U.S. sanctions, Monaco said.

The seized assets include a $300 million super yacht owned by Russian billionaire Suleiman Kerimov, and a $90 million yacht belonging to Viktor Vekselberg, another Russian oligarch. 

The Justice Department is believed to have used its congressionally granted authority to transfer seized Russian funds only once. 

In February, Garland authorized the transfer of $5.4 million seized from a Denver-based bank account of sanctioned Russian oligarch Konstantin Malofeyev.

In the more than one year since Russia’s assault on Ukraine, the Justice Department has charged more than 30 individuals with sanctions evasion, export control violations, money laundering and other crimes, and arrested defendants in more than a half-dozen countries, Monaco said. 
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The U.S. State Department has established a special task force to deal with the crisis in Sudan, a spokesperson confirmed to VOA on Wednesday.

The spokesperson said the State Department has established a Sudan Military Conflict Task Force to oversee the Department’s planning, management and logistics related to events in Sudan.

The spokesperson told VOA: “The United States condemns in the strongest terms violence between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). The ongoing fighting between the SAF and RSF threatens the security and safety of Sudanese civilians and undermines efforts to restore Sudan’s democratic transition.”

Fighting in Khartoum broke out Saturday between members of the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, and has since spread further into the country, reportedly leaving hundreds of people dead and injured.

The leaders of the rival groups – SAF head General Abdel-Fattah Burhan and RSF chief General Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, popularly known as Hemedti – joined forces to mount a 2021 coup that returned the country to military rule.

The two men have since turned on each other, amid squabbles over power-sharing in the new government.

State Department officials told VOA late Tuesday they are unaware of the death or injury of any U.S. citizens in Sudan at this time.

The U.S. Embassy in Khartoum’s security alert of April 18 stated that because of the uncertain security situation in Khartoum and the closure of the airport, there are no plans for the U.S. government-coordinated evacuation of private U.S. citizens. It said travel alerts and Sudan’s Travel Advisory will be updated as the situation evolves.

The State Department said, “It is imperative that U.S. citizens in Sudan make their own arrangements to stay safe in these difficult circumstances.”

The State Department says the U.S. Embassy is continuing to closely monitor the situation in Khartoum and surrounding areas, where there is ongoing fighting, gunfire, and security force activity. It says U.S. citizens also are advised to remain sheltered in place; to attempt to stay at the lower levels of their location, remain away from windows, and attempt to keep away from the roadways; to monitor local media for updates; and to review State Department travel advisory for Sudan.

The State Department says Americans in Sudan should enroll in the Smart Traveler Enrollment Program (STEP) to receive security alerts and email if they need assistance.

All routine consular services at the U.S. Embassy Khartoum are suspended at this time given the unsafe environment. The Embassy is providing only emergency consular services as the security situation in Sudan permits. The State Department says it will always seek to provide consular services wherever possible but the perilous security situation in Khartoum severely impacts its ability to perform that work currently.

On Tuesday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, speaking from a meeting of foreign ministers of the Group of Seven in Japan, said he delivered a message to both of Sudan’s warring leaders.

“This morning, I made calls to Generals Burhan and Hemedti, urging them to agree to a 24-hour cease-fire to allow Sudanese to safely reunite with their families and to obtain desperately needed relief supplies,” he said.   

 

VOA White House Correspondent Anita Powell contributed to this story.
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The truth about American cities: Despite popular belief, they are much less violent than they were just a couple of years ago.

Violence has dropped across dozens of cities after a surge of shootings, murders and burglaries triggered by the 2020-2021 COVID-19 pandemic.

Consider New York, the nation’s largest city and something of a gauge for crime trends in other big cities.

The city witnessed a staggering 50% increase in homicides in 2020 and 2021. But last year, they fell by 11% to 433, and so far this year, they’ve dropped another 7% to 113, according to city police data.

Although the city’s murder rate remains above its pre-pandemic level, it is far lower than the early 1990s when it recorded more than 2,200 murder victims, said David Kennedy, a criminologist at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.

“The popular perception that New York City is distinctively dangerous is simply not correct,” Kennedy said in an interview. “It’s far safer than many, many, many other places in the United States.”

Yet most people don’t take a long view of crime trends, noted Eddie Garcia, chief of the Dallas Police Department and president of the Major Cities Chiefs Association. 

“They don’t care where we were 25 to 30 years ago,” Garcia said. “They care where we are today. And certainly, violence has been rising for the last three to five years.”

Tapping into that fear, House Republicans traveled to New York on Monday for a hearing focused on “violent crime and lawlessness in the city.”

Accusing Manhattan’s top prosecutor, Alvin Bragg, of letting criminals off the hook, Jim Jordan, the Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, cited 2022 data showing rising felony assaults, robberies, burglaries and auto thefts.

“Imagine that — you leave criminals on the street, you get more crime,” Jordan said.

Left unmentioned were homicides, which have fallen in New York over the past year, making it one of the safest big cities in the country.

“It is simply a fact that New York City is dramatically safer than it used to be,” Kennedy said.

New York’s fewer homicides reflects a national trend.

Consulting firm AH Datalytics reports a nearly 10% fall in homicides in more than 70 cities this year.

The list includes cities that have struggled with violent crime in recent years: Baltimore, Houston, Los Angeles and Philadelphia.

Even Chicago, the nation’s “murder capital” last year, has slashed homicides by 17% through April 9.

But some cities buck the trend. Homicides are up in 25 cities tracked by AH Datalytics, such as Washington, Dallas and Kansas City.

“There is no single story about all major U.S. cities,” Kennedy said. “Except in the broadest terms, individual cities are often on very separate tracks.”

Garcia acknowledged that gun crime remains a challenge in his city, where homicides have spiked by 20% this year after a decline in 2022.

But gun-related aggravated assault, a better gauge of violent crime, is down in Dallas, Garcia said.

“Although one life is too many — we don’t want to lose lives — what would worry me would be if our gun-related aggravated assaults were rising,” Garcia said in an interview with VOA.

Under Garcia, Dallas has launched a new, data-driven crime plan focused on reducing violent incidents.

The plan is paying dividends, he said.

“We’ve had the least amount of violent incidents in the city of Dallas, more than we’ve had in five years,” he said.

Why crime falls in one city but not another is often hard to pin down with precision. But over the long run, most cities converge on a national trend, said Richard Rosenfeld, an emeritus professor of criminology at the University of Missouri.

That has fueled hope among some criminologists that U.S. cities may have turned a corner and may resume a decades-long downtrend in crime rates.

But Rosenfeld cautioned that the country is not out of the woods yet. Most U.S. cities still have higher homicide rates than before the pandemic, he said.

The pandemic delivered a shock to homicide rates by changing conditions in every sector of society, he said.

“But the undoing of the conditions of the pandemic has taken a far longer period of time than the abrupt changes that occurred when the pandemic first took place,” Rosenfeld said.

Among other disruptions, the pandemic unleashed a wave of unemployment and record inflation that wreaked havoc on society.

“Assuming that those conditions continue to … moderate, we should not see big spikes and homicide in the immediate future,” Rosenfeld said.

But crime ravages poor, mostly Black neighborhoods. And even if the overall violent crime rates drop, it will mean nothing to the people most vulnerable: young Black men.

“And the focus should be on that reality and not trying to read tea leaves about what’s going to happen in the next six months,” Kennedy said.

Republicans meeting in Manhattan on Monday blasted the city’s top prosecutor, saying he was coddling criminals instead of protecting victims.

Garcia said he agreed that “the lack of accountability has played a role in violence in this country.”

“I can tell you there have been irresponsible decisions made by judges allowing individuals back out on the street after they’ve admitted gun crime,” Garcia said.

“We don’t get to say we’re serious about gun crime in this country when I have men and women who sacrificed their lives to take criminal elements off the street … only to see those individuals back out on the street in a matter of days or weeks,” he said.
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A leaked U.S. military assessment says the Chinese military may soon deploy a high-altitude spy drone that travels at least three times the speed of sound, the Washington Post reported late on Tuesday. 

The newspaper cited a secret document from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. 

The document, which Reuters could not confirm or verify independently, features satellite imagery dated August 9 that shows two WZ-8 rocket-propelled reconnaissance drones at an air base in eastern China, about 350 miles (560km) inland from Shanghai, according to the newspaper. 

The U.S. assessment said China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) had “almost certainly” established its first unmanned aerial vehicle unit at the base, which falls under the Eastern Theater Command, the branch of the Chinese military responsible for enforcing Chinese sovereignty claims over Taiwan, the newspaper reported. 

The U.S. Defense Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Chinese government could not immediately be reached for comment. 

The Washington Post said it obtained the assessment of the program from a trove of images of classified files posted on the Discord messaging app, allegedly by a member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, who was arrested last week. 

The FBI on Thursday arrested Jack Douglas Teixeira, a 21-year-old member of the U.S. Air National Guard, over the leaks online of classified documents that embarrassed Washington with allies around the world. 

The leaks first became widely known earlier this month, setting Washington on edge about the damage they may have caused. The episode embarrassed the U.S. by revealing its spying on allies and purported Ukrainian military vulnerabilities. 

Taiwan president Tsai Ing-wen’s recent meeting with U.S. House of Representative Kevin McCarthy had upset Beijing. China, which claims democratically ruled Taiwan is one of its provinces, says Taiwan is the single most important and sensitive issue in its relations with the United States. 

Taiwan’s government rejects Beijing’s sovereignty claims. 
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A Russian court has refused to release U.S. journalist Evan Gershkovich from jail while he awaits trial on accusations that he spied on Russia while on a reporting assignment last month. VOA’s Senior Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports.
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China revealed on Tuesday new details of sanctions it previously announced against two U.S. weapons manufacturers, including a ban on Chinese companies doing business with them.

China imposed trade and investment sanctions in February on Lockheed Martin and Raytheon Missiles & Defense, a division of Raytheon Technologies Corp., for supplying weapons to Taiwan, the self-governed island claimed by China.

China’s Ministry of Commerce said in a statement late Tuesday that the sanctions include a ban on exports and imports by the two companies from and to China “to prevent Chinese products from being used in their military business.”

It added that Chinese companies should “strengthen their due diligence and compliance system construction to verify transaction information” and should not knowingly conduct business with the two companies while importing, exporting or transporting products.

It wasn’t clear what immediate impact the penalties might have, but the restrictions on imports and exports could hurt the two companies. The United States bars most sales of weapons-related technology to China, but some military contractors also have civilian businesses in aerospace and other markets.

Last September, Raytheon Missiles and Defense was awarded a $412 million contract to upgrade Taiwanese military radar as part of a $1.1 billion package of U.S. arms sales to the island.

Taiwan buys most of its weapons from the U.S., which is its biggest unofficial ally. In recent years, China has frequently sent fighter jets and warships toward the island, surrounding it at different times in a campaign of military pressure and intimidation.

The sanctions also prohibit the senior executives of both companies from traveling to China or working there. They listed Lockheed Martin CEO James Donald Taiclet, COO Frank Andrew St. John and CFO Jesus Malave, and from Raytheon Missiles & Defense, President Wesley D. Kremer and Vice Presidents Agnes Soeder and Chander Nijhon.
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Billionaire Elon Musk said on Monday he will launch an artificial intelligence (AI) platform that he calls “TruthGPT” to challenge the offerings from Microsoft and Google.

He criticized Microsoft-backed OpenAI, the firm behind chatbot sensation ChatGPT, of “training the AI to lie” and said OpenAI has now become a “closed source,” “for-profit” organization “closely allied with Microsoft.”

He also accused Larry Page, co-founder of Google, of not taking AI safety seriously.

“I’m going to start something which I call ‘TruthGPT’, or a maximum truth-seeking AI that tries to understand the nature of the universe,” Musk said in an interview with Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson aired on Monday.

He said TruthGPT “might be the best path to safety” that would be “unlikely to annihilate humans.”

“It’s simply starting late. But I will try to create a third option,” Musk said.

Musk, OpenAI, Microsoft and Page did not immediately respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.

Musk has been poaching AI researchers from Alphabet Inc’s Google to launch a startup to rival OpenAI, people familiar with the matter told Reuters.

Musk last month registered a firm named X.AI Corp, incorporated in Nevada, according to a state filing. The firm listed Musk as the sole director and Jared Birchall, the managing director of Musk’s family office, as a secretary.

‘Civilizational destruction’

The move came even after Musk and a group of artificial intelligence experts and industry executives called for a six-month pause in developing systems more powerful than OpenAI’s newly launched GPT-4, citing potential risks to society.

Musk also reiterated his warnings about AI during the interview with Carlson, saying “AI is more dangerous than, say, mismanaged aircraft design or production maintenance or bad car production” according to the excerpts.

“It has the potential of civilizational destruction,” he said.

He said, for example, that a super intelligent AI can write incredibly well and potentially manipulate public opinions.

He tweeted over the weekend that he had met with former U.S. President Barack Obama when he was president and told him that Washington needed to “encourage AI regulation.”

Musk co-founded OpenAI in 2015, but he stepped down from the company’s board in 2018. In 2019, he tweeted that he left OpenAI because he had to focus on Tesla and SpaceX.

He also tweeted at that time that other reasons for his departure from OpenAI were, “Tesla was competing for some of the same people as OpenAI & I didn’t agree with some of what OpenAI team wanted to do.”

Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, has also become CEO of Twitter, a social media platform he bought for $44 billion last year.

In the interview with Fox News, Musk said he recently valued Twitter at “less than half” of the acquisition price.

In January, Microsoft Corp announced a further multi-billion dollar investment in OpenAI, intensifying competition with rival Google and fueling the race to attract AI funding in Silicon Valley.
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U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has called the leaders of Sudan’s two warring factions and urged them to agree to a ceasefire as the death toll nears 200.

The U.S. State Department issued a statement late Monday saying Blinken had spoken separately with General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, commander of the country’s armed forces, and General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, the head of the Rapid Support Forces. He urged them to end the fighting to permit delivery of humanitarian assistance to those affected by the conflict and allow the reunification of Sudanese families.

The statement said Blinken urged Burhan and Dagalo to allow the international community in Khartoum “to make sure its presence is secure,” and stressed the responsibility of the two generals “to ensure the safety and wellbeing of civilians, diplomatic personnel, and humanitarian workers.”

Secretary Blinken’s call to the two Sudanese rivals was one of many from the international community urging peace in the north African country. A communique issued Tuesday from the G-7 foreign ministers’ meeting in Karuizawa, Japan condemned the fighting, which they said, “threatens the security and safety of Sudanese civilians and undermines efforts to restore Sudan’s democratic transition.”

“We urge the parties to end hostilities immediately without pre-conditions. We call on all actors to renounce violence, return to negotiations, and take active steps to reduce tensions and ensure the safety of all civilians, including diplomatic and humanitarian personnel,” the communique continued.

Both military factions fighting for control in Sudan claimed to have made gains Monday, as the death toll from the violence exceeded 180 amid calls from Washington, multiple international bodies and capitals around the world for an immediate cease-fire.

Residents in Khartoum reported hearing fighter jets and anti-aircraft fire after night fell Monday as the violence between Sudan’s military and a paramilitary force raged through a third day.

Volker Perthes, the United Nations special representative to Sudan, told reporters by video link from Khartoum Monday that at least 185 people had been killed and more than 1,800 wounded since fighting erupted Saturday.

The number of casualties from the fighting is likely to rise, with many of the wounded unable to reach hospitals for treatment. A Sudanese doctors’ group said the fighting had also “heavily damaged” multiple hospitals around the capital.

Large portions of the capital were without electricity and water. The violence also affected Khartoum’s adjoining sister cities of Omdurman and Bahri, with bridges linking the cities blocked by armored vehicles.

U.N. chief Antonio Guterres on Monday again condemned the outbreak of fighting and appealed to the leaders of Sudan’s military and the RSF paramilitary group “to immediately cease hostilities, restore calm and begin a dialogue to resolve the crisis.”

“I urge all those with influence over the situation to use it in the cause of peace,” he said, adding that “the humanitarian situation in Sudan was already precarious and is now catastrophic.”

The two military factions battling for control of Sudan had shared power during a shaky political transition. The clashes are part of a power struggle between General Burhan, who also heads the transitional council, and General Dagalo, also known as Hemedti, the deputy head of the transitional council.

John Kirby, coordinator for strategic communications at the National Security Council, told reporters on Monday that U.S. officials had “been in direct contact” with both generals “to urge them to end the hostilities immediately.” He added that U.S. officials were also working closely with the African Union, the Arab League and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, an East African bloc.

“We call for an immediate cease-fire, without conditions, between the Sudanese armed forces and the Rapid Support Forces,” he said. “As Secretary Blinken mentioned this morning, the fighting is killing civilians and threatens the Sudanese nation as well as stability in the region.”

But when asked by VOA what specific leverage the U.S. has to influence the warring parties, Kirby said, “I’m not going to speak to specific diplomatic leverage.”

He added that all U.S. personnel in the north African nation were accounted for and are sheltering in place. He said there are no plans to evacuate them at this time.

The RSF claimed Monday it had captured an airport and military bases. The military claimed it regained control of the main television station and said it was in control of its headquarters after brief fighting there.

The fighting in Khartoum has forced most people to stay inside. Offices, schools and gas stations are closed.

In the Al-Kalakla neighborhood south of Khartoum, the situation seemed to be relatively calm, as people ventured out to get basic supplies.

Wisal Mohammed, a mother of three, told VOA this is the first time in three days that she’s come out to get food for her children. She said she does not have electricity or water and that she would not be able to travel if there was an emergency.

Al Muiz Hassan, a grocer in the Abu Adam neighborhood south of Khartoum, told VOA he is worried about being robbed and has only partially opened his shop as a precaution.

“The fighting has affected all the shops, not only mine,” he said.

Residents of Khartoum said there has been no police presence on the city’s streets since the military clashes began.

The European Union said its envoy to Sudan was assaulted in his own residence on Monday, but it did not give further details.

Blinken confirmed that a U.S. diplomatic convoy came under fire Monday, adding that initial reports indicated the attack was by forces linked to the Rapid Support Forces.

Calls to end the fighting have come from around the world and within Africa, including the African Union, the Arab League and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD).

IGAD said Kenyan President William Ruto, South Sudanese President Salva Kiir and Djibouti President Omar Guelleh will go to Khartoum to broker an immediate cease-fire.

“President Salva Kiir has already been in touch with both General Burhan and General Hemedti to convey the message of the summit. … Now, preparations are on the way to undertake this mission,” Nuur Mohamud Sheekh, a spokesperson for IGAD’s executive secretary, told VOA.

Sudan’s two top generals, however, have yet to express a willingness to negotiate and each has demanded the other’s surrender.

Dagalo said Monday on Twitter that he was defending democracy in Sudan and called Burhan a “radical Islamist.” Dagalo’s forces emerged out of the notorious Janjaweed militias in Sudan’s Darfur region and have been accused of carrying out atrocities in the region.

The two generals are former allies who together orchestrated an October 2021 military coup that derailed a transition to civilian rule following the 2019 ouster of longtime leader Omar al-Bashir.

Tensions between the generals have been growing over disagreements about how the RSF should be integrated in the army and who should oversee that process. The restructuring of the military was part of an effort to restore the country to civilian rule and end the political crisis sparked by the 2021 military coup.

“It’s another example of the generals feeling threatened by a transition that might have diminished their powers, might have diminished the monopoly that they control,” said Jeffrey Feltman, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution and former special envoy to the Horn of Africa at the U.S. State Department.

“What we have now is a fight for power. It’s a lust for power — who is going to prevail among these two generals,” Feltman told VOA.

Pro-democracy activists have accused both generals of being involved in human rights abuses.

In addition to the fighting around Khartoum, violence has also broken out in Sudan’s western Darfur region, threatening to renew a decades-old conflict that killed hundreds of thousands of people.

The International Rescue Committee (IRC) announced Monday it has halted much of its operations in Sudan because of the fighting.

In a statement, IRC regional Vice President Kurt Tjossem said, “Conflict has disrupted humanitarian action where over a third of the population, an estimated 15 million people, including refugees, are experiencing acute food insecurity. Humanitarian actors have limited ability to enter and operate in areas with ongoing war.”

The World Food Program also suspended its operations in the country after the deaths of three of its staff members.

The African Union’s Peace and Security Council held an emergency meeting on Sunday in Nairobi to discuss the situation in Sudan. Participants appealed to the Sudanese military and RSF leaders to de-escalate conflict and restore stability.

Carol Van Dam Falk, Mariama Diallo, Margaret Besheer, Antia Powell and Nike Ching contributed to this report. Some information for this article came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
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More than half of North America’s bat species are likely to diminish significantly as climate change, disease and habitat loss take their toll, scientists warned Monday. 

A report by experts from the U.S., Canada and Mexico said 81 of the continent’s 154 known bat types “are at risk of severe population decline” in the next 15 years. 

The “state of the bats” report was published by the North American Bat Conservation Alliance, a consortium of government agencies and private organizations. 

“They need our help to survive,” said Winifred Frick, chief scientist at Bat Conservation International, one of the participating groups. “We face a biodiversity crisis globally and bats play a very important role in healthy ecosystems needed to protect our planet.” 

Bats give U.S. agriculture a $3.7 billion annual boost by gobbling crop-destroying insects, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Some are plant pollinators. Bats also serve as prey for other animals, including hawks, owls and weasels. 

Millions have died since 2006 from a fungal disease called white-nose syndrome, which attacks bats when hibernating and creates fuzzy spots on their muzzles and wings. It causes them to wake early from hibernation and sometimes fly outside. They can burn up winter fat stores and eventually starve. 

Eight U.S. bat species are listed as endangered, or on the brink of extinction. 

The federal Fish and Wildlife Service designated the northern long-eared bat as endangered last year and has proposed listing for the tricolored bat. The little brown bat is being evaluated for potential listing. White-nose syndrome is the primary killer for each of the species. 

More than 150 agencies, nonprofits and universities are collaborating in the fight against the disease, said Jeremy Coleman, a wildlife biologist who coordinates the service’s participation and a co-author of the report. 

Among methods under development are vaccines, anti-fungal sprays and ultraviolet light treatments for hibernation spots. 

“We have a number of tools that are showing great promise,” Coleman said. “There are very few precedents for managing a wildlife disease, particularly one so devastating and pervasive.” 

The report said the bats also are imperiled by forest fragmentation — logging and urban sprawl in Canada, wildfire suppression in the U.S. and livestock ranching in Mexico. Many bats live in older trees during summer. 

People sometimes disturb hibernating bats in winter by exploring caves and abandoned mines. 

Climate change is expected to intensify the challenges, causing more extreme storms and temperature swings. The report said 82% of the continent’s species are at risk from global warming’s effects. 

More than 1,500 bats were rescued in December after going into hypothermic shock during a sudden freeze in Houston, where they lost their grip and fell from roosting spots beneath bridges. 

Drought and increasingly arid conditions will leave bats with less drinking water, killing some and preventing others from reproducing, the report said. As surface waters dry up, there are fewer places to fly over in search of aquatic insects. 

Ironically, wind turbines — a leading source of renewable energy that can help slow climate change — pose another problem for bats. An estimated 500,000, representing 45 species, die each year in collisions with the structures, the report said. 

But those figures were based on 2021 calculations, said Frick, an associate research professor in ecology at the University of California at Santa Cruz in addition to her position with Bat Conservation International. So many turbines have been constructed since then that the latest estimate is 880,000 deaths. 

Her organization is collaborating with manufacturers and others in searching for solutions, including acoustic devices that would cause bats to steer clear of turbines. Reducing blade rotation speeds — particularly during fall mating season, when bats are particularly active — would help, Frick said. 

Cori Lausen, director of bat conservation with Wildlife Conservation Society Canada, who did not participate in compiling the report, said it provided a solid overview of North American bats’ plight. But some types it described as “apparently secure” based on their current status have grim prospects, she said. 

“The government process is a slow one, deciding when to list a species and when not to. If anything, this report is a little conservative,” Lausen said. “Many of these bats should not be listed as OK.” 
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