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

What Happens to Immigration if US Government Shuts Down?

With congressional leaders gridlocked over the nation’s budget and the deadline to pass spending bills fast approaching, the federal government could shut down on October 1. And that could affect some immigration services and visa programs. If the federal government closes, only essential personnel will be working. All other federal workers will not be allowed to work. So how will that affect immigration in the U.S.? VOA’s Immigration reporter Aline Barros.

Why Immigrants Are More Optimistic Than US-Born Americans

Despite any hardships they might face, immigrants in America are more optimistic than U.S.-born Americans, according to a new survey of 3,358 immigrant adults. “They said, ‘You know, I face challenges here in the U.S., but it’s far better than where I came from. And I have this belief that things will be better for my children,’” says Shannon Schumacher, a senior survey analyst at KFF, a nonprofit organization focused on health policy formerly known as the Kaiser Family Foundation. “Whether that’s their education, their safety, their economic opportunities — on a number of measures, they think that they’re better off and their children are better off.” Produced by Dora Mekouar.

After Lull, Asylum-Seekers Adapt to US Immigration Changes

A group of migrants from China surrendered to a Border Patrol agent in remote Southern California as gusts of wind drowned the hum of high-voltage power lines. They joined others from Ecuador, Brazil, Colombia and elsewhere in a desert campsite with shelters made from tree branches. The Associated Press reports.

Second Texas City at ‘Breaking Point’ as Migrants Flood Border, Mayor Says

The surge of migrants crossing the U.S. border from Mexico has pushed the city of El Paso, Texas, to “a breaking point,” with more than 2,000 people per day seeking asylum, exceeding shelter capacity and straining resources, its mayor said Saturday. “The city of El Paso only has so many resources and we have come to … a breaking point right now,” Mayor Oscar Leeser said. Reuters reports.

Eagle Pass, Texas, Sees Continuing Influx of Migrants

The Eagle Pass area in Texas continues to experience an influx of migrants — the majority from Venezuela, the largest displacement in the Western Hemisphere and the second-largest globally, trailing only behind the Syrian refugee crisis, per the U.N. refugee agency. U.S. border authorities said they are managing the situation, but the noticeable rise in migrant arrivals in Eagle Pass has strained local resources and overwhelmed already crowded facilities. VOA’s Immigration reporter Aline Barros.

VOA Day in Photos: Asylum-Seekers Journey through Mexico to Eagle Pass, Texas

Asylum-seekers waiting on the banks of the Rio Bravo River after crossing during their journey through Mexico to Eagle Pass, Texas, in Piedras Negras, Mexico, Sept. 26, 2023.

Immigration around the world

Illegal Migration to Greece Surges, Sparking Measures to Shield Borders

Thousands of migrants have made their way illegally into Greece from Turkey, using rickety rafts to cross the Aegean Sea, the narrow waterway between the two countries. United Nations data in September shows sea arrivals have already more than doubled the roughly 12,000 migrants who were caught trying to illegally enter Greece last year. Illegal entries along the land border and the massive Evros River, which snakes along the rugged frontiers of the two countries in the northeast, also count record increases of more than 65% in the last two months alone, police said. Produced by Anthee Carassava.

Australian Lawmakers Urge Outside Help for Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict Refugees

Seven Australian lawmakers have toured a refugee camp in Armenia, as thousands of ethnic Armenians flee their homes in Nagorno-Karabakh. Forces from Azerbaijan took control of the contested region last week. The delegation of Australian lawmakers visited Armenia this week and toured a camp for those fleeing the unrest. Produced by Phil Mercer.

Pakistani Vocational School Helps Afghan Women Refugees Build Businesses

In a small workshop in the bustling northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar, a dozen Afghan women sit watching a teacher show them how to make clothes on a sewing machine. Reuters reports.

Charity Urges Court to Force Australia to Repatriate Detainees in Syrian Refugee Camp

Australia’s decision not to repatriate more than 30 women and children from a detention camp in northeast Syria is facing a legal challenge. The women are the wives and widows of Islamic State fighters and have been held in custody for the past four years. Produced by Phil Mercer.

Medics: Hundreds Dead From Dengue Fever in War-Torn Sudan

Outbreaks of dengue fever and acute watery diarrhea have “killed hundreds” in war-torn Sudan, medics reported Monday, warning of “catastrophic spreads” that could overwhelm the country’s decimated health system. In a statement, the Sudanese doctors’ union warned that the health situation in the southeastern state of Gedaref, on the border with Ethiopia, “is deteriorating at a horrific rate,” with thousands infected with dengue fever. Produced by Agence France-Presse.

Violence, Human Rights Violations Risk Future Stability of Syria

United Nations investigators say that human rights violations and abuse in Syria are sowing the seeds for further violence and radicalization, despite diplomatic efforts to stabilize the situation in the country, including through its readmission to the League of Arab States. Lisa Schlein reports for VOA from Geneva.

Senior US Officials Travel to Armenia as Karabakh’s Armenians Start to Leave

Senior Biden administration officials arrived Monday in Armenia, a day after ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh began fleeing following Azerbaijan’s defeat of the breakaway region’s fighters in a conflict dating from the Soviet era. Reuters reports.

Spain Turns to Tractors to Tackle Migrant Unemployment, Farm Labor Shortage

Spain’s agricultural sector is threatened by an aging population and a shortage of farm labor. Now a program in Catalonia is training migrants, largely from Africa, to operate tractors to help them gain meaningful employment. Elizabeth Cherneff narrates this report from Alfonso Beato in Barcelona. Videographer and Video Editor: Alfonso Beato.

News brief

— A government shutdown would affect the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s ability to respond to cyberattacks; protect and save lives on land, at sea, and in the air; secure the nation’s borders and critical infrastructure; deploy across the country to help Americans recover from disasters, among others.
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The U.S. West Coast produces over 90% of America’s wine, but the region is also prone to wildfires — a combustible combination that spelled disaster for the industry in 2020 and one that scientists are scrambling to neutralize.

Sample a good wine and you might get notes of oak or red fruit. But sip on wine made from grapes that were penetrated by smoke, and it could taste like someone dumped the contents of an ashtray into your glass.

Wine experts from three West Coast universities are working together to meet the threat, including developing spray coatings to protect grapes, pinpointing the elusive compounds that create that nasty ashy taste, and deploying smoke sensors to vineyards to better understand smoke behavior.

The U.S. government is funding their research with millions of dollars.

Wineries are also taking steps to protect their product and brand.

The risk to America’s premier wine-making regions — where wildfires caused billions of dollars in losses in 2020 — is growing, with climate change deepening drought and overgrown forests becoming tinderboxes.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, grapes are the highest-value crop in the United States, with 1 million acres (405,000 hectares) of grape-bearing land, 96% of it on the West Coast.

Winemakers around the world are already adapting to climate change, including by moving their vineyards to cooler zones and planting varieties that do better in drought and heat. Wildfires pose an additional and more immediate risk being tackled by scientists from Oregon State University, Washington State University and the University of California, Davis.

“What’s at stake is the ability to continue to make wine in areas where smoke exposures might be more common,” said Tom Collins, a wine scientist at Washington State University.

Researcher Cole Cerrato recently stood in Oregon State University’s vineyard, nestled below forested hills near the village of Alpine, as he turned on a fan to push smoke from a Weber grill through a dryer vent hose. The smoke emerged onto a row of grapes enclosed in a makeshift greenhouse made of taped-together plastic sheets.

Previously, grapes exposed to smoke in that setup were made into wine by Elizabeth Tomasino, an associate professor leading Oregon State’s efforts, and her researchers.

They found sulfur-containing compounds, thiophenols, in the smoke-impacted wine and determined they contributed to the ashy flavor, along with “volatile phenols,” which Australian researchers identified as factors more than a decade ago. Bush fires have long impacted Australia’s wine industry. Up in Washington state, Collins confirmed that the sulfur compounds were found in the wine that had been exposed to smoke in the Oregon vineyard but weren’t in samples that had no smoke exposure.

The scientists want to find out how thiophenols, which aren’t detectable in wildfire smoke, appear in smoke-impacted wine, and learn how to eliminate them.

“There’s still a lot of very interesting chemistry and very interesting research, to start looking more into these new compounds,” Cerrato said. “We just don’t have the answers yet.”

Wine made with tainted grapes can be so awful that it can’t be marketed. If it does go on shelves, a winemaker’s reputation could be ruined — a risk that few are willing to take.

When record wildfires in 2020 blanketed the West Coast in brown smoke, some California wineries refused to accept grapes unless they had been tested. But most growers couldn’t find places to analyze their grapes because the laboratories were overwhelmed.

The damage to the industry in California alone was $3.7 billion, according to an analysis that Jon Moramarco of the consulting firm bw166 conducted for industry groups. The losses stemmed mostly from wineries having to forego future wine sales.

“But really what drove it was, you know, a lot of the impact was in Napa [Valley], an area of some of the highest priced grapes, highest priced wines in the U.S.,” Moramarco said, adding that if a ton of cabernet sauvignon grapes is ruined, “you lose probably 720 bottles of wine. If it is worth $100 a bottle, it adds up very quickly.”

Between 165,000 to 325,000 tons of California wine grapes were left to wither on the vine in 2020 due to actual or perceived wildfire smoke exposure, said Natalie Collins, president of the California Association of Winegrape Growers.

She said she hasn’t heard of any growers quitting the business due to wildfire impacts, but, “Many of our members are having an extremely difficult time securing insurance due to the fire risk in their region, and if they are able to secure insurance, the rate is astronomically high.”

Some winemakers are trying techniques to reduce smoke impact, such as passing the wine through a membrane or treating it with carbon, but that can also rob a wine of its appealing nuances. Blending impacted grapes with other grapes is another option. Limiting skin contact by making rosé wine instead of red can lower the concentration of smoke flavor compounds.

Collins, over at Washington State University, has been experimenting with spraying fine-powdered kaolin or bentonite, which are clays, mixed with water onto wine grapes so it absorbs materials that are in smoke. The substance would then be washed off before harvest. Oregon State University is developing a spray-on coating.

Meanwhile, dozens of smoke sensors have been installed in vineyards in the three states, financed in part by a $7.65 million USDA grant.

“The instruments will be used to measure for smoke marker compounds,” said Anita Oberholster, leader of UC Davis’ efforts. She said such measurements are essential to develop mitigation strategies and determine smoke exposure risk.

Greg Jones, who runs his family’s Abacela winery in southern Oregon’s Umpqua Valley and is a director of the Oregon Wine Board, applauds the scientists’ efforts.

“This research has really gone a long way to help us try to find: Are there ways in which we can take fruit from the vineyard and quickly find out if it has the potential compounds that would lead to smoke-impacted wine?” Jones said.

Collins predicts success.

“I think it’s increasingly clear that we’re not likely to find a magic bullet,” he said. “But we will find a set of strategies.”
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Five years ago Monday, journalist Jamal Khashoggi was killed in Istanbul. U.S. intelligence has pointed to Saudi leadership as being responsible. Meanwhile, U.S.-Saudi ties continue to normalize, disappointing some press freedom and rule-of-law advocates. VOA’s Laurel Bowman reports.
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U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein died on Thursday night at 90, her family confirmed. She was the oldest member of Congress. 

Feinstein’s peers in the Senate say she will be remembered as a trailblazer and an exemplar of perseverance whose many firsts paved the way for generations of women to take charge in politics and society.

She was the first woman to serve as mayor of San Francisco and the first woman to be considered for a presidential ticket in 1984 — though Walter Mondale ultimately ran with Geraldine Ferraro.

Feinstein also was the first female front-runner for governor of California; the state’s first woman to win a seat in the Senate; the first woman to preside over a presidential inauguration; and the first woman to serve 30 years as a senator.

As a self-described centrist, Feinstein sometimes changed her views. Like many older politicians, she was once opposed to same-sex marriage, but reversed herself and became a staunch advocate of it in her later years.

One of her most memorable changes of heart, though, came in the fallout of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Feinstein voted for the Iraq war and was a proponent of many of President George W. Bush’s so-called war on terror policies, including brutal interrogations of suspected extremists, many of whom were transferred to the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.

But in 2007, Feinstein rallied to shut down Guantanamo, and, in 2014, as chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, made public a shocking report about the Central Intelligence Agency’s secret prisons across the globe, where extrajudicial torture was being used to extract information from suspected terrorists.

“I came to the conclusion that America’s greatness is being able to say we made a mistake, and we are going to correct it and go from there,” Feinstein said in 2014 after an hour-long speech denouncing the CIA’s interrogation program.

Opened doors for women

For decades, Feinstein built her reputation around open-mindedness and working across the aisle. But she wasn’t one to compromise her values, her colleagues say.

“She was smart. She was strong. She was compassionate, but maybe the trait that stood out most of all was her amazing integrity — her integrity was a diamond,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.

On Friday morning, a teary-eyed Schumer led a moment of silence on the Senate floor before delivering a eulogy.

“She gave a voice, a platform and a leader to women throughout the country for decades,” Schumer told his peers. “Dianne didn’t just push down doors that were closed for women, she held them open for generations of women after her, to follow her. Today, there are 25 women serving in this chamber, and every one of them will admit they stand on Dianne’s shoulders.”

Feinstein cast her final vote on Thursday, according to official roll call data. By Friday, her chair was empty, her desk draped in a black sheet with a large vase of white flowers on it.

“Dianne was a trailblazer, and her beloved home state of California, and our entire nation are better for her dogged advocacy,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said Friday.

Nearly called off career

For decades, Feinstein was a mainstay of California politics. But there was a point when she nearly called off her career as a public servant.

The year was 1978. After two failed bids for mayor and nearly a decade on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, Feinstein was unsure if politics was her calling. Then tragedy struck. A former supervisor shot dead San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk.

As board president, Feinstein announced their deaths and called for spiritual healing in one of her most famous speeches. Overnight, she became a national symbol of resilience and was appointed mayor, a post she held for nearly a decade before an unsuccessful bid for governor in 1990.

Two years after losing out, Feinstein ran for Senate and won. She would win five reelections, all by considerable margins.

Feinstein said that the horror of watching Milk die always stuck with her. She later recounted how she rushed to Milk’s office after hearing gunshots and attempted to locate a pulse. “My finger went into a bullet hole in his wrist,” she said. Feinstein went on to spearhead the first nationwide ban on assault weapons in 1994, which expired in 2004.

Throughout her career, Feinstein was a vocal critic of congressional inaction on gun control, particularly in recent years with nationwide upticks in school shootings. In the aftermath of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in Connecticut, she tried unsuccessfully to restore the ban.

Feinstein also pushed for abortion rights and rights for crime victims. In 2018, she referred then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh to federal investigators over Christine Blasey Ford’s accusation that he sexually assaulted her when the two were teenagers.

“I’ve lived a feminist life,” Feinstein once told a reporter.

In a tribute on Friday, U.S. Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi said “Dianne was a pioneering woman leader who served as San Francisco’s first female mayor with unmatched courage, poise and grace.”
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The United States struck security agreements this week with Pacific Island nations seen as a key part of U.S. plans to counter China’s territorial expansion. But after three years of negotiations, one of those Pacific nations — the Marshall Islands — still has not reached a deal with Washington.

A member of the U.S. negotiating team blames the State Department’s legal team for the holdup, saying they object to how the agreement describes money for compensation from U.S. nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands some 60 years ago.

The agreement — known as the Compacts of Free Association — gives Washington exclusive access to large parts of the Pacific Ocean surrounding Micronesia, Palau and the Marshall Islands. Funding runs out on September 30.

“You would have to say that there was mission failure,” said Howard Hills in an exclusive interview with VOA.

Hills negotiated those compacts alongside presidential envoy Ambassador Joseph Yun but left his position September 7. Deals with Micronesia and Palau have been reached, while talks with the Marshall Islands have stalled.

In a speech before the United Nations General Assembly on September 20, President David Kabua laid out the Republic of the Marshall Island’s remaining demand.

“What the United States must realize is that Marshallese people require that the nuclear issue be addressed.”

Kabua was referring to the environmental and health impacts of the 67 atomic bomb tests conducted in the Marshall Islands between 1946 and 1958.

But Hills says the State Department won’t let Yun officially designate the funds as compensation for the effects of American nuclear tests in the Marshalls.

“If it were not for the State Department legal position, this could have been done in 2020. It could have been done in 2021. It could have been done in 2022,” he said.

The objections appear to relate in part to a 1986 agreement on compensation for nuclear testing, which said at the time that it covered all claims related to the issue.

“The Compact and the Section 177 Settlement Agreement, which entered into force in 1986, constitute the full settlement of all claims, past, present, and future, of the government, citizens and nationals of the Marshall Islands related to the Nuclear Testing Program,” says a State Department description of U.S. relations with the Marshall Islands.

But Hills calls that position “disproven” because the agreement also created a political framework, which has allowed the U.S. to continue providing assistance related to the nuclear program’s effects.

“Congress added additional authorities that we’ve spent an additional $200 million on nuclear in the last 20 years,” he said.

Yun told VOA in August, “I personally believe that we still have moral and political responsibilities and so we have made it clear that in some of the money [for the] Marshall Islands — some could be spent on development, health care, environment issues of the affected islands within Marshall Islands.”

In January, Yun signed a memorandum of understanding with the Marshall Islands providing $700 million for a trust fund that could be used for that purpose.

The State Department declined to comment on whether its legal position was the source of the breakdown in talks with the Marshallese or that the U.S. government has continued to compensate the Marshalls for the nuclear testing impact.

A department spokesperson told VOA that without new funding, Micronesia and the Marshall Islands “can use unspent funds” or their “Compact Trust Funds” to meet their budget needs. Palau still has another year of funding.

Critics of that position include some lawmakers in Congress.

“The State Department is firmly in control of this scenario,” said Representative Aumua Amata Radewagen in an interview with VOA.

Radewagen says she saw first-hand the devastating impact of nuclear testing on the Marshallese people. She spent part of her childhood in the Marshall Islands when her father was the head of government.

“I can remember one time when he had to deliver a young boy,” she said, “This boy had all kinds of cancer. He had to deliver this boy to his family. And things like that stick in my mind. I was a teenager then,” said Radewagen, who represents American Samoa.

In a letter to lawmakers last week, Radewagen warned that China is waiting for an opening to grow its Pacific presence.

“There’s another large country just sitting there, keeping their fingers crossed, hoping that this deal fails so that they can step right in,” she said.

Radewagen says the negotiators told her they aim to have a new deal in October. She says lawmakers are ready to fund the agreement, as soon as one is finally reached.
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China is pouring billions of dollars into efforts to reshape the global information environment and, eventually, bend the will of multiple nations to Beijing’s advantage, according to a new assessment from U.S. officials.

The report, released Thursday by the State Department’s Global Engagement Center, accuses the Chinese government of using a combination of tactics in a bid to create a world in which Beijing, either explicitly or implicitly, controls the flow of critical information.

China’s goal is to “construct an information ecosystem in which PRC propaganda and disinformation gain traction and become dominant,” the report states. “Unchecked, the PRC’s [People’s Republic of China’s] efforts will reshape the global information landscape, creating biases and gaps that could even lead nations to make decisions that subordinate their economic and security interests to Beijing’s.”

This is not the first time U.S. officials have warned of China’s attempts to seed the information environment to the detriment of the United States and its allies.

U.S. officials said during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic that China was making greater use of social media to spread disinformation about the origins of the virus.

Just a year later, in its annual threat assessment, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said Beijing would “continue its whole-of-government efforts to spread China’s influence … and foster new international norms that favor the authoritarian Chinese system.”

And U.S. officials have warned repeatedly about Chinese influence campaigns aimed at fostering doubts about U.S. elections, with some raising concerns about Chinese attempts to influence the outcomes

But the new State Department report contends what U.S. officials are seeing now is different, that China’s information manipulation efforts have matured beyond specific campaigns centered around a specific topic or event.

Instead, it argues that Beijing’s efforts have a grander ambition.

If successful, “Beijing would develop a surgical capability to shape the information particular groups and even individuals consume,” the report states. “In this possible future, the information available to publics, media, civil society, academia, and governments as they engage with the PRC would be distorted.”

‘Another tool to keep China down’

Chinese government officials declined to comment on details of the State Department report. But in an email to VOA, Chinese Embassy spokesperson Liu Pengyu called the report, “just another tool to keep China down and buttress American hegemony.”

“A quick look at its [the report’s] summary is enough to know what it is about: heightening ideological confrontation, spreading disinformation, and smearing China’s domestic and foreign policies,” Liu said. “We urge the U.S. to reflect on itself, stop framing China for the so-called ‘information manipulation.'”

The State Department report said its conclusions are based on publicly available information as well as “newly acquired government information.”

“As the PRC has grown more confident in its power, it appears to have calculated that it can more aggressively pursue its interests,” it says.

Specifically, the State Department report points to a multipronged approach combining its expansive state-run media, surveillance technologies, financial and political coercion and Chinese-language media.

The result is an information ecosystem in which bots and trolls, and even officials, amplify pro-Beijing voices while drowning out or suppressing opponents.

Yet the report cautions that China’s considerable efforts have struggled, so far, to achieve the desired impact in Western and Western-leaning nations.

“When targeting democratic countries, Beijing has encountered major setbacks, often due to pushback from local media and civil society,” the report states. “Although backed by unprecedented resources, the PRC’s propaganda and censorship have, to date, yielded mixed results.”

That assessment tracks with conclusions from Meta, the social media company behind Facebook and Instagram, which in August announced the takedown of a Chinese-linked disinformation operation known as Spamouflage.

Meta said that while Spamouflage was “the largest known cross-platform covert influence operation in the world,” Beijing got little bang for its buck.

“Despite the very large number of accounts and platforms it used, Spamouflage consistently struggled to reach beyond its own (fake) echo chamber,” Meta said. “Only a few instances have been reported when Spamouflage content on Twitter and YouTube was amplified by real-world influencers.”

‘Good wake-up call’

Some researchers say that Beijing has made some inroads in the West.

“China’s most successful influence efforts have always been smaller in scale and more targeted, like the effort to harass dissidents and critics,” Bret Schafer, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Alliance for Securing Democracy, told VOA via email.

Schafer further described Spamouflage as a “good wake-up call.”

“It reminded the world that China is investing time and resources to manipulate the information environment,” he said.

And there are indications that China has become more sophisticated.

A report earlier this month from Microsoft suggests that Chinese disinformation efforts successfully used artificial intelligence to produce “eye-catching content.”

“This relatively high-quality visual content has already drawn higher levels of engagement from authentic social media users,” Microsoft said in its report. “Users have more frequently reposted these visuals, despite common indicators of AI-generation.”

Such use of artificial intelligence has U.S. intelligence officials especially concerned.

“Russia, China, others are going to try to use this technology,” General Paul Nakasone told an audience at the National Press Club in Washington on Thursday, when asked about AI and the upcoming U.S. presidential election. Nakasone heads U.S. Cyber Command and the National Security Agency.

Others at the NSA see China gaining ground and influence, and preparing to wield that influence if necessary.

“They have growing leverage in the global social media environment,” said David Frederick, the NSA’s assistant deputy director for China, during a webinar earlier this month.”That could enable them to conduct very broad information operations at a very large scale in the case of conflict.”
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Iranian naval forces repeatedly aimed a laser at an American military helicopter during a routine flight in international airspace over the Persian Gulf, the U.S. military said Thursday. 

The helicopter — an AH-1Z Viper — is attached to a unit deployed on the USS Bataan amphibious assault ship, which was sent to the region as part of American efforts to deter seizures of commercial tanker ships by Tehran. 

Iranian “vessels shone a laser multiple times at the aircraft while in flight” on Wednesday, said a statement from Commander Rick Chernitzer, spokesman for U.S. Naval Forces Central Command.  

“These are not the actions of a professional maritime force. This unsafe, unprofessional and irresponsible behavior” by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps navy “risks U.S. and partner nation lives and needs to cease immediately,” Chernitzer added. 

The U.S. military says Iran has either seized or tried to take control of nearly 20 internationally flagged ships in the region over the past two years. 

There have been a series of such incidents since then-U.S. President Donald Trump pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal and reimposed crippling sanctions on the Islamic republic. 
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The United States on Thursday imposed sanctions on an ousted Sudanese politician and two companies, one of which is based in Russia, accusing them of intensifying instability and opposing democracy in the North African country.

These are the latest attempts by Washington to hold Islamist militants accountable for the war that broke out last April after Sudan’s army tried unsuccessfully to disband the Rapid Support Forces, or RSF, in a democratic transition of power. RSF is a paramilitary organization beholden to Omar al-Bashir, the long-reigning despot who was brought down in a popular revolt four years ago.

In Thursday’s announcement, U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken singled out Ali Karti, a one-time foreign minister who after al-Bashir fell from power rose in the ranks to Secretary General of the Sudanese Islamic Movement, an extremist outfit battling against the nation’s new democracy. Karti is a key player among those who were in Bashir’s inner party.

After a military coup in 2021 involving RSF, Karti’s Islamist party has reestablished some of its power.

Blinken also aimed sanctions at the Sudan-based GSK Advance Company and Aviatrade, a Russian weapons supplier. U.S. intelligence says Aviatrade has helped GSK provide military drones and training to RSF.

“We will continue to target actors perpetuating this conflict for personal gain,” Brian Nelson, the Treasury Department’s undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, said in a statement.

Some information for this report was provided by Reuters.

 
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The many ways in which money is exchanged for access to people with political power in Washington will be in focus beginning Thursday, when the Republican-led House of Representatives is set to begin an investigation into President Joe Biden.

The investigation, meant to seek evidence the president committed acts that might warrant impeaching him and removing him from office, will look closely at the activities of the president’s son, Hunter Biden.

The younger Biden has a long history of entering into lucrative business deals with foreign companies, appearing in a number of instances to have traded on his family’s name and his access to his father while earning millions of dollars in fees.

Hunter Biden’s business activities shine a light on a practice, common in Washington, of trading money for access. The capital is full of a small army of lobbyists and consultants who are often hired, at least in part, for their ability to get key figures in government to answer a phone call, take a meeting or appear at an event.

While viewed as unseemly by many, the money-for-access trade has long been a feature of political life in Washington and is legally distinct from, for example, the crime of bribery.

All too prevalent

“Unfortunately, paying for access is a phenomenon that has long been too prevalent in Washington and has become even more so in recent years as laws have loosened,” Noah Bookbinder, president of Washington-based Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, told VOA in an email.

“Lobbying is based around access, and recent Supreme Court decisions have provided other legal avenues for paying for access,” he said. “The court’s campaign finance decisions starting with Citizens United have allowed for vast amounts of undisclosed money to flow into politics, often with a heightened version of the expectation of access that traditionally accompanies large campaign contributions.”

The Supreme Court has set the bar high for convicting a politician of accepting bribes.

In 2014, former Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell was indicted and convicted on federal corruption charges. Prosecutors demonstrated that he and his wife had accepted $135,000 in gifts from businessman Jonnie Williams. They then showed that McDonnell subsequently set up meetings for Williams with state employees and arranged for him to meet with other government officials important to his company’s prospects.

The conviction was upheld by an appeals court. But in 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously overturned it, ruling that McDonnell’s actions did not rise to the level of “official acts.”

Writing for the court, Chief Justice John Roberts said, “There is no doubt that this case is distasteful; it may be worse than that. But our concern is not with tawdry tales of Ferraris, Rolexes and ball gowns. It is instead with the broader legal implications of the government’s boundless interpretation of the federal bribery statute.”

In the ruling, Roberts argued that if arranging meetings and doing other services for supporters and donors counts as bribery, “officials might wonder whether they could respond to even the most commonplace requests for assistance.”

“The court’s decision in the McDonnell case essentially allowed cash and gifts in exchange for access to officials, which is a particularly distressing development,” said Bookbinder.

Impeachment investigation

In the impeachment inquiry, House investigators, led by Representative James Comer, will be looking for evidence that President Biden, while serving as vice president from 2009 to 2017, took actions that benefited his son’s business associates in a way that violated the public trust.

Republicans, formally and informally, have been investigating Hunter Biden’s activities for years, dating to at least 2019, when his father announced his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination the following year. Those investigations picked up speed when the Republicans took control of the House in 2022.

To date, the inquiries have uncovered extensive foreign business dealings worth tens of millions of dollars by Hunter Biden and other members of the president’s family and their associates. They have also documented several occasions on which Hunter Biden was able to get clients into the same room with his father, or on phone calls with him.

They have presented no evidence, though, that as vice president, Joe Biden took any official actions intended to benefit those clients, or that he personally received any of the money his relatives were paid.

Article II, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution holds that federal officials, including presidents, “shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”

“To the extent that the House Republicans have managed to articulate any theory of why they think President Biden might be impeachable … it appears to be in the area of bribery,” Frank O. Bowman III, professor emeritus at the University of Missouri School of Law, told VOA.

However, while he said Hunter Biden’s behavior has been “disgraceful and somewhat shameless,” it doesn’t appear to rise to the level of bribery.

Bowman, author of the book High Crimes and Misdemeanors: A History of Impeachment for the Age of Trump, said that while it is clear that a politician who takes official actions in exchange for payments to a member of his family can be charged with bribery, there is so far no evidence that this is what happened in the case at hand.

A bribe, he said, first needs to include the demand for or promise of some sort of payment. “Then, critically, you have to establish that the person who either got it or demanded it did something or offered to do something in his or her official capacity in return for the receipt. And at this point, of course, the Republicans have gotten none of that.”

Political proceeding

It is important to note that impeachment hearings are not criminal trials, and the House of Representatives is not required to find that an official committed an actual crime to impeach that person. The phrase in the Constitution’s impeachment clause, “high crimes and misdemeanors,” has long been understood to encompass violations of the public trust that are not specifically criminal in nature.

“It’s quite clear that the Constitution’s authors designed it to cover executive actions that, on their face, may be the use of an authorized executive power, but are done for illicit purposes,” said Gary Schmitt, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

Schmitt told VOA, however, that past presidential impeachment investigations have historically been predicated on evidence that an impeachable act has been committed. In this case, he said, the investigation appears to be not in response to evidence of wrongdoing by President Biden, but rather a means of looking for such evidence in the first place.

“I can’t remember an impeachment where [the House] began an impeachment inquiry without there being more direct evidence of potential wrongdoing,” Schmitt said. 
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An American soldier who illegally crossed into North Korea in July arrived back in the United States early Thursday, according to a U.S. defense official.

The official said Travis King landed in San Antonio, Texas.

A senior Biden administration official told reporters Wednesday that King was transferred out of the DPRK and crossed the border to China with the help of the government of Sweden. The official said the U.S. received him in China and transferred him home.

DPRK is an acronym for North Korea’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

“We thank the government of Sweden for its diplomatic role serving as the protecting power for the United States in the DPRK and the government of the People’s Republic of China for its assistance in facilitating the transit of Private King,” National security adviser Jake Sullivan said in a statement Wednesday.

Pentagon Press Secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder praised the “the hard work of personnel in the Army, United States Forces Korea, and across the Department of Defense to bring Private King home.”

There were no concessions given to North Korea for this exchange, a senior administration official told VOA during a briefing to reporters Wednesday.

“We’re going to focus for the next several weeks for as long as it takes to get private King on good – on solid footing. And then we’ll address any administrative actions that may follow after the reintegration process,” the official said.

A statement Wednesday from a representative of Claudine Gates, King’s mother, said, “Ms. Gates will be forever grateful to the United States Army and all its interagency partners for a job well done.”

Earlier Wednesday, North Korea said it was expelling King after wrapping up its final investigation of him. He was taken by North Korean soldiers in July after dashing through the Koreas’ heavily militarized border.

King was facing pending administrative separation from the U.S. Army when he returned to his base in Fort Bliss, Texas, after spending time in a South Korean jail on assault charges. He was about to board a plane to the United States on July 17 when he snuck out of the airport and made it onto a civilian tour of the border complex between North and South Korea one day later.

King was taken by North Korean soldiers on duty at the Joint Security Area, KCNA reported, when the plain-clothed soldier “deliberately intruded into the area of the DPRK side between the room for the DPRK-U.S. military contacts and the restroom of security officers along the Military Demarcation Line.”

The North’s official news agency, KCNA, said Wednesday that King had harbored ill feelings over inhumane treatment and racial discrimination within the U.S. army. It added that North Korea’s interim findings were that King wanted refuge in North Korea or elsewhere because of that same reason.

The Military Demarcation Line is the official border separating the two Koreas, put in place by an armistice that paused the 1950-53 Korean War, which remains without a formal end and peace treaty.

VOA White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara and Eunice Kim in Seoul contributed to this report. 
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The U.S. Department of Justice and FBI are helping Ukrainian prosecutors investigate alleged Russian war crimes committed during the invasion of Ukraine.

The U.S. investigators are gathering evidence of illegal deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia, atrocities against civilians, and alleged crimes against humanity. They also are creating new practices in prosecuting crimes against the environment, cyberattacks, and illicit trafficking of cultural heritage as war crimes.

After Prosecutor General of Ukraine Andriy Kostin participated in U.N. General Assembly events and meetings at the U.S. State Department, FBI, Justice Department and Congress, he sat for an interview with VOA’s Ukrainian Service and discussed his team’s cooperation with the U.S.

Kostin said there is no international mechanism to help bring home children illegally deported to Russia. He argues that restoring justice for Ukrainian children can help children whose rights were violated in other wars and conflicts. He added that the international community should put more pressure on Russia to demand their return.

In May, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin for alleged responsibility for the unlawful deportation of children from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation, but the Kremlin has denied responsibility for war crimes.

The following interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

VOA: This is one of your multiple trips to the U.S. in the last year. Whom did you meet this time and what are the main results of these meetings?

Andriy Kostin, prosecutor general of Ukraine: My meetings with Attorney General Merrick Garland and his team — once again we have substantial support now from not only [the] war crimes accountability team of [the] Department of Justice, but also from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. We shared some cases with these two teams — some of them are world-known as a matter of Russian atrocities — and we are looking forward to [receiving] results from this cooperation.

So our work with the DOJ is very wide, substantial in not only for prosecuting war crimes, with our top priority cases like forced deportation of Ukrainian children, but also helping us to create practice in spheres which had never been prosecuted before in history.

We are now prosecuting crimes against [the] environment as war crimes, we’re approaching prosecuting cyberattacks as war crimes. And just now we have a very good meeting with a special team from [the] FBI about prosecuting cases on attacks on cultural heritage and illicit trafficking of cultural heritage as war crimes. So we are approaching new … dimensions of crimes committed by Russia in Ukraine and against Ukrainians.

[The] Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation and all state authorities are assisting us. Not only from the point of view of cooperation in specific cases, but also capacity building, also training of our prosecutors and investigators. Because we [are] approaching new avenues, we have no right to make a mistake. Creating new practice, we need to be sure that the results of our investigations would be credible on the international level and will be accepted by the international community as true, fair justice.

VOA: The Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union has issued this report that prosecutors and policemen, different law enforcement people, including in your office, are sometimes lacking skills or time, they have too much pressure on them, so there are some problems with the course of those investigations. How are those things addressed?

Kostin: First of all, it’s an unprecedented amount of war crimes. … We have registered [more than 108,000 registered incidents of possible war crimes by publication of the article] and … many war crimes are underreported because they are still being committed on the occupied territories.

I always tell my prosecutors and all law enforcement authorities that we need to ensure that the quality of your investigation and prosecution should be of a high standard. For us, it’s a standard of the International Criminal Court.

It is difficult to investigate, practically impossible to investigate, these number of crimes simultaneously. That’s why our main approach is, first of all, to make it a matter of strategic solutions.

And one of the elements of the strategy is combining cases. So, when we understand, for instance, that several missile and drone attacks were committed, for instance, by one unit of [the] Russian army, we can then try to combine these cases into a big one because in this case it will be easier for us to establish a chain of command.

One of the new directions of our efforts is civilian detainees. We all know the criminal cases on deportation of Ukrainian children where their parents are awaiting their children who are kidnapped to Russia. Civilian detainees are the same crime, but … it’s their children who are awaiting their parents who are illegally detained in Russia. And one of our messages during this visit and United Nations General Assembly side events and other events was to raise awareness of the international community. Because we are talking about thousands of people who are illegally detained. We need to return them home. … We have a lack of international mechanisms. We have some set of international legislation to protect Ukrainian children, but it’s not enough to return them back home at the moment.

As I mentioned at one side event of [the U.N. General Assembly], if the United Nations is so active in feeding children of other countries [with] Ukrainian grain, the United Nations should play, could play, a leading role in bringing Ukrainian children home from Russia using all the elements of communication and pressure over Russian authorities to bring our children back home. And this is important not only for Ukrainian children, it’s important for many other children in many other countries of the world where their rights are violated.

VOA: Do you feel that you are being heard on an international level and especially in the United States? What is being done right now?

Kostin: As I mentioned, we’ve been at this side event on deportation of Ukrainian children together with [Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court] Karim Khan. And I spoke after him, and I said we will do our job with Karim. We will deliver more results. But this is not enough to make [Russia] accountable for deportation.

For Ukrainian children, it doesn’t mean automatically that our children will be returned home. There is no mechanism which automatically returns children to Ukraine from Russia just because more and more criminal cases will be investigated and prosecuted against those who commit this crime.

Of course, we also will expand sanctions [on] those who are involved in Russia for this illegal activity. What is important for me is that all United States authorities are not only ready to support, they are really helping us, and this is important. I would be really glad to give more details, but when we see results, of course, we will speak about it.

This interview originated in VOA’s Ukrainian Service.
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TV’s late-night hosts planned to return to their evening sketches and monologues by next week, reinstating the flow of topical humor silenced for five months by the newly ended Hollywood’s writers strike.

Bill Maher led the charge back to work by announcing early Wednesday that his HBO show “Real Time with Bill Maher” would be back on the air Friday. By mid-morning, the hosts of NBC’s “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” and “Late Night with Seth Meyers,” ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” and “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” on CBS had announced they’d also return, all by Monday. “Last Week Tonight” with John Oliver was slated to return to the air Sunday.

Fallon, Meyers, Kimmel, Colbert and Oliver had spent the latter part of the strike teaming up for a popular podcast called “Strike Force Five” — named after their personal text chain and with all proceeds benefiting their out-of-work writers. On Instagram on Wednesday, they announced “their mission complete.”

The plans for some late-night shows were not immediately clear, like “Saturday Night Live” and Comedy Central’s “Daily Show,” which had been using guest hosts when the strike hit.

Scripted shows will take longer to return, with actors still on strike and no negotiations yet on the horizon.

On Tuesday night, board members from the writers union approved a contract agreement with studios, bringing the industry at least partly back from a historic halt in production that stretched nearly five months.

Maher had delayed returning to his talk show during the ongoing strike by writers and actors, a decision that followed similar pauses by “The Drew Barrymore Show,” “The Talk” and “The Jennifer Hudson Show.”

The three-year agreement with studios, producers and streaming services includes significant wins in the main areas that writers had fought for — compensation, length of employment, size of staffs and control of artificial intelligence — matching or nearly equaling what they had sought at the outset of the strike.

The union had sought minimum increases in pay and future residual earnings from shows and will get a raise of between 3.5% and 5% in those areas — more than the studios had initially offered.

The guild also negotiated new residual payments based on the popularity of streaming shows, where writers will get bonuses for being a part of the most popular shows on Netflix, Max and other services, a proposal that studios initially rejected. Many writers on picket lines had complained that they weren’t properly paid for helping create heavily watched properties.

On artificial intelligence, the writers got the regulation and control of the emerging technology they had sought. Under the contract, raw, AI-generated storylines will not be regarded as “literary material” — a term in their contracts for scripts and other story forms a screenwriter produces. This means they won’t be competing with computers for screen credits. Nor will AI-generated stories be considered “source” material, their contractual language for the novels, video games or other works that writers may adapt into scripts.

Writers have the right under the deal to use artificial intelligence in their process if the company they are working for agrees and other conditions are met. But companies cannot require a writer to use artificial intelligence. 
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