ATHENS — Greek authorities have arrested a senior member of an international gang that smuggled Latin American fuel products for illegal sale around the world, raking in an estimated profit of more than $21 billion, police said on Saturday. 

The gang member, an Italian national for whom Interpol had issued an arrest warrant, was found in a southern Athens suburb on Friday, a police official told Reuters on condition of anonymity. 

The warrant had ordered the man’s arrest and his extradition to Venezuela to be tried for crimes that include the illegal transport and trade of resources of strategic importance, the official said. 

The gang stole the fuel products, which were loaded onto its oil tankers from ports in Latin America, and switched off tracking transponders to deceive shipping brokers, police said in a statement.

Police did not disclose the suspect’s name.
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BALTIMORE, MARYLAND — Teams of engineers are now focused on the formidable job of hauling the shattered remains of the Francis Scott Key Bridge out of Maryland’s Patapsco River, the first step toward reopening the Port of Baltimore and recovering the bodies of four workers who are still missing and presumed dead.

A massive cargo ship felled the span Tuesday after striking one of its main supports. Experts are trying to figure out how to “break that bridge up into the right-sized pieces that we can lift,” U.S. Coast Guard Rear Admiral Shannon Gilreath said Friday at a news conference.

The tools that are needed have been coming into place. They include seven floating cranes — one of which is one of the largest on the Eastern Seaboard, capable of lifting 1,000 tons — 10 tugboats, nine barges, eight salvage vessels and five Coast Guard boats.

“To go out there and see it up close, you realize just how daunting a task this is,” Governor Wes Moore said Friday afternoon as the massive crane loomed behind him.

“With a salvage operation this complex — and frankly with a salvation operation this unprecedented — you need to plan for every single moment,” Moore said.

Moore surveyed the scene and saw shipping containers ripped apart “like papier-mache.” The broken pieces of the bridge, including its steel trusses, weigh as much as 4,000 tons.

The wreckage has blocked ships from entering or leaving the vital port and also stymied the search for the missing workers.

“We have to bring a sense of closure to these families,” Moore said.

Moore also spoke of the disaster’s severe economic impact, saying, “What we’re talking about today is not just about Maryland’s economy; this is about the nation’s economy. The port handles more cars and more farm equipment than any other port in this country.”

Maryland’s Department of Transportation is already planning for rebuilding of the span and “considering innovative design, engineering and building methods so that we can quickly deliver this project,” Secretary Paul J. Wiedefeld said.

Adam Ortiz, the Environmental Protection Agency’s mid-Atlantic Regional Administrator, said there was no indication in the water of active releases from the ship or materials hazardous to human health.

Colonel Roland L. Butler Jr., superintendent of the Maryland State Police, said the Federal Aviation Administration has been asked to establish a flight restriction area that would begin 3 nautical miles in every direction from the bridge’s center span and extend upward to 1,500 feet.

Butler advised people to keep drones away and said law enforcement is poised to act on any violations of that airspace.

The victims, members of a crew fixing potholes on the span when it was destroyed, were from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, officials said. At least eight people initially went into the water when the ship struck the bridge column, and two of them were rescued.

Divers then recovered the bodies of two men from a pickup truck in the river, but the nature and placement of the debris has complicated efforts to find the other four workers, as have the murky water conditions.

“The divers can put their hands on that faceplate, and they can’t even see their hands,” said Donald Gibbons, an instructor with Eastern Atlantic States Carpenters Technical Centers. “So, we say zero visibility. It’s very similar to locking yourself in a dark closet on a dark night and really not being able to see anything.”

President Joe Biden’s administration has approved $60 million in immediate aid, and Biden has said the federal government will pay the full cost of rebuilding the bridge, which was completed in 1977 and carried Interstate 695.

Ship traffic at the Port of Baltimore remains suspended, but the Maryland Port Administration said in a statement Friday that trucks were still being processed at marine terminals.

Federal and state officials have said the collision and collapse appeared to be an accident that came after the ship lost power. Investigators are still trying to determine why.

The crash caused the bridge to break and fall into the water within seconds. Authorities had just enough time to stop vehicle traffic but were unable to alert the construction crew.

The cargo ship Dali, which is managed by Synergy Marine Group, had been headed from Baltimore to Sri Lanka. It is owned by Grace Ocean Private Ltd. and was chartered by Danish shipping giant Maersk.

The loss of a road that carried 30,000 vehicles a day and the port disruption will affect not only thousands of dockworkers and commuters, but also U.S. consumers, who are likely to feel the impact of shipping delays.

Scott Cowan, president of the International Longshoremen’s Association Local 333, said the union was scrambling to help its roughly 2,400 members whose jobs are at risk of drying up.

“If there’s no ships, there’s no work,” he said. “We’re doing everything we can.”
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BUON MA THUOT, Vietnam — Le Van Tam is no stranger to how the vagaries of global trade can determine the fortunes of small coffee farmers like him. 

He first planted coffee in a patch of land outside Buon Ma Thuot city in Vietnam’s Central Highland region in 1995. For years, his focus was on quantity, not quality. Tam used ample amounts of fertilizer and pesticides to boost his yields, and global prices determined how well he did. 

Then, in 2019, he teamed up with Le Dinh Tu of Aeroco Coffee, an organic exporter to Europe and the U.S., and adopted more sustainable methods, turning his coffee field into a a sun-dappled forest. The coffee grows side by side with tamarind trees that add nitrogen to the soil and provide support for black pepper vines. Grass helps keep the soil moist, and the mix of plants discourages pest outbreaks. The pepper also adds to Tam’s income. 

“The output hasn’t increased, but the product’s value has,” he said. 

In the 1990s, Tam was among thousands of Vietnamese farmers who planted more than a million hectares of coffee, mostly robusta, to take advantage of high global prices. By 2000, Vietnam had become the second-largest producer of coffee, which provides a tenth of its export income. 

Vietnam is hoping that farmers like Tam will benefit from a potential reordering of how coffee is traded due to more stringent European laws to stop deforestation. 

The European Deforestation Regulation or EUDR will outlaw sales of products like coffee beginning December 30, 2024, if companies can’t prove they are not linked with deforestation. The new rules’ scope is wide: They will apply to cocoa, coffee, soy, palm oil, wood, rubber and cattle. To sell those products in Europe, big companies will have to show they come from land where forests haven’t been cut since 2020. Smaller companies have until July 2025 to do so. 

Deforestation is the second-biggest source of carbon emissions after fossil fuels. Europe ranked second behind China in the amount of deforestation caused by its imports in 2017, according to a 2021 World Wildlife Fund report. If implemented well, the EUDR could help reduce this, especially if the more stringent standards for tracing where products come from become the “new normal,” Helen Bellfield, a policy director at Global Canopy, told The Associated Press in an interview. 

It’s not fail-safe. Companies can just sell products that don’t meet the new requirements elsewhere, without reducing deforestation. Thousands of small farmers unable to provide the potentially expensive data could be left out. Much depends on how countries and companies react to the new laws, Bellfield said. Countries must help smaller farmers by building national systems that ensure their exports are traceable. Otherwise, companies may just buy from very large farms that can prove they have complied. 

Already, orders for Ethiopian-grown coffee have fallen. And Peru lacks the capacity to provide information needed for coffee and cocoa grown in the Peruvian Amazon. 

This comes atop other challenges, which in Vietnam include worsening droughts and receding groundwater levels. 

“There will be winners and losers,” she said. 

Vietnam can’t afford to lose — Europe is the largest market for its coffee, constituting 40% of its coffee exports. Six weeks after the EUDR was approved, Vietnam’s agriculture ministry started working to prepare coffee growing-provinces for the shift. It has since rolled out a national plan that includes a database of where crops are grown and mechanisms to make this information traceable. 

The Southeast Asian nation has long promoted more sustainable farming methods, viewing laws like the EUDR as an “an inevitable change,” according to an August 2023 agriculture ministry communique. The EUDR could help accelerate such a transformation, according to Agriculture Minister Le Minh Hoang. 

Tam and Tu, his export partner, were quick to adapt. 

Even if the costs are higher, Tu said, they can get better prices for their high-quality coffee. 

“We must choose the highest quality. Otherwise, we will always be laborers,” Tu said, while sipping a cup of his favorite coffee at his company’s coffee-processing factory adjoining Tam’s farm. This is where trucks laden with red coffee cherries, both robusta and arabica, arrive from other farms, where the pulp of the fruit is removed and beans of coffee are laid out on tables to dry in the sun. 

Tu already has certificates from international agencies for sustainability that will enable him to deal with the EUDR. Such certificates typically address the issue of deforestation, although some tweaks may be needed, said David Hadley, program director for regulatory impacts at the nonprofit group Preferred by Nature in Costa Rica. 

Ensuring that Vietnam’s roughly half a million small farmers, who produce about 85% of its coffee, are able to collect and provide data showing their farms did not cause deforestation remains a challenge. Some may struggle to use smartphones to collect geolocation coordinates. Small exporters need to set up systems to prevent other uncertified products from being mixed with coffee that meets EUDR requirements, said Loan Le of International Economics Consulting. 

Farmers also will need documents proving they have complied with national laws for land use, environmental protection and labor, Le said. Moreover, coffee’s long value chain — from producing beans to collecting them and processing them — requires digital systems to ensure records are error-free. 

Brazil, the world’s largest coffee producer, is better placed, said Bellfield of Global Canopy, since its coffee grows on plantations that far are away from forests and it has a relatively well-organized supply chain. Also, Brazilian-grown coffee is most likely to meet the EUDR requirements, according to a 2024 Brazilian study, because much of it is exported to the EU, Brazil has fewer small farmers, and about a third of its coffee-growing acreage already has some kind of sustainability certification. 

The EUDR has acknowledged concerns for less well prepared suppliers by giving them more time and said the European government will work with impacted countries to “enable the transition” while “paying particular attention” to the needs of small holders and Indigenous communities. A review in 2028 will also look at impacts on smallholders. 

“Despite this we still anticipate it being costly and difficult for small holder farming communities,” she said. 

In Peru, collecting information about hundreds of thousands of small farmers is difficult given the country’s weak institutions and the fact that most farmers lack land titles, according to a study of EUDR impacts by the Amazon Business Alliance, a joint-initiative by USAID, Canada and the nonprofit group Conservation International. 

Ethiopia, where coffee makes up about a third of total export earnings according to a U.S. Department of Agriculture report, has been slow to react. The national plan it rolled out in February 2024 fails to resolve the fundamental issue of how to gather required data from millions of small farmers and provide that information to buyers, said Gizat Worku, head of the Ethiopian Coffee Exporters Association. 

“That requires a huge amount of resources,” he said 

Gizat, who like many Ethiopians goes by his first name, said that orders are falling because of doubts about the country’s ability to comply with the EUDR. Some traders are contemplating switching to other markets, like the Middle East or China, where Ethiopian coffee is “booming,” he said. But switching markets isn’t easy. 

“These regulations are going to have a tremendous impact,” Gizat said.
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washington — President Joe Biden has steadily ramped up pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to allow more humanitarian aid and to rein in its offensive in the Gaza Strip. That includes increasingly public criticism of Israel and the recent U.S. abstention vote at the U.N. Security Council that allowed for a cease-fire resolution to pass.

However, Biden has stopped short of using what may be his strongest leverage — conditioning U.S. aid for Israel. The U.S. provides Israel with nearly $4 billion a year, most of it in the form of military assistance.

Lawmakers from his own party have voiced dissent. Both Senate and House Democrats have demanded that Biden comply with the Foreign Assistance Act and cut off military aid if Israel continues to block U.S. humanitarian aid to Gaza.

His constituents have signaled their outrage — hundreds of thousands voted “uncommitted” in Democratic primary elections in various states. The latest polls show 75% of Democrats now disapprove of Israel’s war conduct. Fifty-six percent of them say continuing to give military aid to Israel would make them less likely to support a presidential candidate.

Despite the political cost, Biden is steadfast in his support for Israel. Analysts say there are at least two factors that may be behind this: the president’s fear of the war widening beyond Gaza, and his own long-standing and deeply held views on the importance of the security of the state of Israel.

Self-proclaimed Zionist

Since Harry Truman in 1948 recognized Israel just minutes after its founding, all American presidents have supported Israel.

Biden stands out among them with his “extraordinary emotional commitment to the idea of Israel, the people of Israel, the security of Israel,” said Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and former U.S. negotiator in Middle East peace talks under both Democratic and Republican administrations.

On various occasions, Biden, who is of Irish Catholic descent, has proclaimed himself as a Zionist.

As such, aside from being “gut-loyal committed to Israel’s self-defense,” he also believes he can “moderate Israel’s behavior as a friend from the inside, rather than as an antagonist on the outside,” said Laura Blumenfeld, senior fellow at the Philip Merrill Center for Strategic Studies at Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies.

“It’s the international bear-hug theory of strategic squeezing,” she told VOA.

Biden has decades of personal relationship with Netanyahu, in 2010 calling him a “close, personal friend of over 33 years.” However, as Netanyahu continues to go against U.S. goals in Gaza, many are questioning whether Biden’s reliance on his relationship with the prime minister is helpful in finding an end to the war.

Biden and Netanyahu are “increasingly estranged,” Miller told VOA. As the rift between the two leaders deepens, Biden has even backed remarks by Chuck Schumer, Democratic Senate majority leader and the highest-ranking elected Jewish official in the U.S.

Schumer called Netanyahu an impediment to peace and urged Israelis to hold elections to replace him after the war.

However, Miller said Biden needs Netanyahu to secure the cease-fire deal and for his administration’s ambitious plans to create a “comprehensive integrated peace process” that centers on a two-state solution.

At a New York campaign event Thursday, Biden said Arab countries including Saudi Arabia were prepared to “fully recognize Israel” for such a deal.

Risk of widening war

Six months into the Israel-Hamas war, there is real potential for the war to widen in other areas of the Middle East, especially if Israel’s skirmishes with Hezbollah on the border with Lebanon escalate.

In this environment, “conditioning aid to Israel would delight Hezbollah, Iran and its other proxies,” said Blumenfeld. “Hamas wrote the script of October 7, and conditioning aid to Israel is written into the stage notes.”

The U.S. provides Israel with weapons systems and munitions for both deterrence and warfighting. Placing conditions for defensive systems – for example, the Iron Dome missile defense system – has serious risks, said Seth Jones, director of the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“Hezbollah has between 120,000 and 200,000 missiles and other stand-off systems that can target Israel and would likely overwhelm Israel’s air defense capabilities,” he told VOA.

However, Jones pointed out there’s less risk should Biden decide to condition aid on specific types of offensive weapons systems, such as small- and large-diameter bombs, bunker busters and a range of precision-guided munitions.

Under pressure from Democratic lawmakers, last month the White House mandated relevant U.S. government agencies to “obtain credible and reliable written assurances” from foreign governments that U.S. weapons are used in accordance with international and humanitarian law.

Israel has provided its assurances. Under the memorandum, the State Department has until early May to formally assess the assurances and report to Congress. If they were not found “credible and reliable,” Biden may have the option of suspending future U.S. arms transfers.

“While the U.S. is assessing the Israeli response, requests to condition military aid will be seen as premature,” said Nimrod Goren, senior fellow for Israeli affairs at the Middle East Institute.

Whether Biden conditions aid may also depend on what happens with Israeli plans for its ground invasion in Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah, where more than 1.4 million Palestinians seek safety. As long as Israel does not cross clear American red lines, Goren told VOA, the likelihood of Biden conditioning aid “seems low.”

Netanyahu insists that the goal of “total victory” against Hamas cannot be achieved without invading Rafah, where Israel says there are four Hamas battalions composed of thousands of fighters. The Biden administration is imploring Israel to find an alternative to “smashing into Rafah.”

Israeli and American officials are working to reschedule a meeting to discuss Rafah plans. No date has been set yet, but a senior administration official told VOA that they are hoping the talks will take place “as soon as next week.”
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london — British counterterrorism detectives are investigating after a journalist working for a Persian-language media organization was stabbed Friday in London amid fears he had been targeted because of his job, police said.

Police said the man, in his 30s, was attacked and suffered an injury to his leg in the Friday afternoon incident in Wimbledon, southwest London.

Britain’s National Union of Journalists (NUJ) said the victim was prominent Britain-based Iranian journalist Pouria Zeraati, who hosts a show on the Persian-language television news network Iran International, which is critical of Iran’s government.

Police said his injuries were not believed to be life-threatening and he was in stable condition.

“This cowardly attack on Pouria is deeply shocking, and our thoughts are with him, his family and all of his colleagues at Iran International,” Michelle Stanistreet, the NUJ general secretary, said in a statement.

In January, Britain imposed sanctions on Iranian officials it said were involved in threats to kill journalists on British soil.

Those officials were members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Unit 840, which an investigation by ITV news in Britain said was involved in plots to assassinate two Iran International television presenters in the U.K.

“While we are keeping an open mind, given the occupation of the victim and our publicized concerns about the threat to employees of that organization, the investigation is being led by the Counter Terrorism Command,” Commander Dominic Murphy, the head of that unit, said.

“I must stress that, at this early stage of our investigation, we do not know the reason why this victim was attacked and there could be a number of explanations for this.”

There was no immediate response from Iranian officials to the report.

British police and security officials have increasingly warned about Iran’s growing use of criminal proxies to carry out attacks abroad.

They say there have been more than 15 direct threats to kill or kidnap dissidents or political opponents that were linked to the Iranian state apparatus over the past two years.

In December, an Austrian man was convicted of collecting information that could be used in a terrorist attack after he was accused of carrying out “hostile reconnaissance” on Iran International’s London headquarters.

“It is too early to know whether this violent assault is connected to the escalating intimidation and harassment by Iran, including the plot to assassinate journalists Fardad Farahzad and Sima Sabet in 2022,” Stanistreet said.

“However, this brutal stabbing will inevitably raise fears amongst the many journalists targeted at Iran International and the BBC Persian Service that they are not safe at home or going about their work.”
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baltimore — A crane that can lift 1,000 tons, described as one of the largest on the Eastern Seaboard, appeared near the site of a collapsed highway bridge in Baltimore as crews prepared Friday to begin clearing wreckage that has stymied the search for four workers missing and presumed dead and blocked ships from entering or leaving the city’s vital port.

Maryland Governor Wes Moore called the Francis Scott Key Bridge’s collapse after being struck by a freighter an “economic catastrophe” and described the challenges ahead for recovering the workers’ bodies and clearing tons of debris to reopen the Port of Baltimore.

“What we’re talking about today is not just about Maryland’s economy; this is about the nation’s economy,” Moore said at a news conference, the massive crane standing in the background. “The port handles more cars and more farm equipment than any other port in this country.”

Moore went to the scene Friday and said he saw shipping containers ripped apart “like papier-mache.” The broken pieces of the bridge weigh as much as 4,000 tons, Moore said, and teams will need to cut into the steel trusses before they can be lifted from the Patapsco River.

Equipment on hand will include seven floating cranes, 10 tugboats, nine barges, eight salvage vessels and five Coast Guard boats, Moore said. Much of it is coming from the Navy.

“To go out there and see it up close, you realize just how daunting a task this is. You realize how difficult the work is ahead of us,” Moore said. “With a salvage operation this complex — and frankly with a salvation operation this unprecedented — you need to plan for every single moment.”

Water conditions have prevented divers from entering the river, Moore said. When conditions change, they will resume efforts to recover the construction workers, who were repairing potholes on the bridge when it fell early Tuesday.

The Coast Guard is focused on removing what’s left of the bridge and the container ship that struck it in order to clear the port’s shipping lanes, Rear Admiral Shannon Gilreath said.

Teams of engineers from the Army Corps of Engineers, the Navy and the Coast Guard — along with some private-sector experts — are assessing how to “break that bridge up into the right-sized pieces that we can lift,” Gilreath said.

Maryland’s Department of Transportation is already focused on building a new bridge and is “considering innovative design, engineering and building methods so that we can quickly deliver this project,” Secretary Paul J. Wiedefeld said.

Adam Ortiz, the Environmental Protection Agency’s mid-Atlantic regional administrator, said there is no indication of active releases from the ship, nor of the presence in the water of materials hazardous to human health.

Colonel Roland L. Butler Jr., superintendent of the Maryland State Police, said the Federal Aviation Administration has been asked to establish a tactical flight restriction area that would begin 3 nautical miles in every direction from the center span of the bridge and extend upward to 1,500 feet.

Butler advised people to keep drones away from the area and said law enforcement is poised to act on any violations of that airspace.

The victims of the bridge collapse were from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, officials said. At least eight people initially went into the water when the ship struck the bridge column, and two of them were rescued.

Divers have recovered the bodies of two men from a pickup truck in the river, but the nature and placement of the debris has complicated efforts to find the other four workers.

“The divers can put their hands on that faceplate, and they can’t even see their hands,” said Donald Gibbons, an instructor with Eastern Atlantic States Carpenters Technical Centers. “So we say zero visibility. It’s very similar to locking yourself in a dark closet on a dark night and really not being able to see anything.”

President Joe Biden’s administration has approved $60 million in immediate aid, and Biden has said the federal government will pay the full cost of rebuilding the bridge, which carried Interstate 695.

Ship traffic at the Port of Baltimore remains suspended, but the Maryland Port Administration said in a statement Friday that trucks were still being processed at marine terminals.

The loss of a road that carried 30,000 vehicles a day and the port disruption will affect not only thousands of dockworkers and commuters, but also U.S. consumers, who are likely to feel the impact of shipping delays.

Scott Cowan, president of the International Longshoremen’s Association Local 333, said the union was scrambling to help its roughly 2,400 members whose jobs are at risk of drying up.

“If there’s no ships, there’s no work,” he said. “We’re doing everything we can.”
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washington — A new survey shows that nearly 70% of Muslims in the United States give zakat, or practice almsgiving, during Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting.

The survey, conducted by the Muslim Philanthropy Initiative at Indiana University, found that gender, age, race, income, marital status, religiosity and voter registration status were the factors that influenced Muslim Americans’ preferences for paying zakat during Ramadan.

“The importance of Ramadan to Muslims has long been discussed,” said Shariq Siddiqui, the lead researcher of the study and director of the Muslim Philanthropy Initiative at Indiana University.

He told VOA in an email that the survey indicates the importance of Ramadan for U.S. Muslims “when it comes to their charitable giving.”

While there is no specific requirement to pay zakat during Ramadan, many Muslims prefer to fulfill their obligation during the month as they believe that God will multiply the rewards for charity during the Muslim holy month of fasting.

Muslims believe that God revealed the Quran to Prophet Muhammad during Ramadan.

During the month, Muslims who have reached puberty and are physically capable fast from sunrise to sunset, which means abstaining from food and drink.

The survey also indicated that more than 45% of U.S. Muslims were giving zakat during the time of Hajj, the annual Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca.

Zakat is aimed at redistributing wealth and alleviating poverty within the Muslim community.

It is calculated usually at 2.5% of a Muslim’s accumulated wealth annually, including savings, investments, gold, silver and other assets beyond one’s basic needs.

According to the Muslim Philanthropy Initiative, Muslims in the U.S. paid an estimated $1.8 billion in zakat in 2021.

Nearly 3.5 million Muslims live in the U.S., which is 1.1% of the population in the nation.

Siddiqui told VOA that Muslim Americans give an estimated $4.3 billion in charity, including zakat, every year, and 85% of the money stays in the U.S., of which 50% goes to Muslim-led organizations and about 40% to non-Muslim groups.

He said, however, that the survey identifies some key demographics often overlooked by fundraisers.

According to the survey, married Muslims and Muslim women are more likely to pay zakat during Ramadan.

Muslims in their 30s and those with an annual income of $50,000 to $75,000 are leaning toward giving zakat during the month of fasting, the survey stated.

Religiosity was another factor influencing their decision to give zakat during Ramadan. Those who identified themselves as more religious tended to fulfill their zakat obligations during the month of Ramadan.

The survey also indicated that Muslim Americans who were registered to vote, compared to those who were not registered, were more likely to pay their zakat during the holy month.

Sponsored by Islamic Relief USA, the survey was based on a nationally representative sample of 1,139 U.S.-based Muslim adults across the U.S.

VOA’s Masood Farivar contributed to this story.
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washington — Donald Trump on Friday asked a Georgia appeals court to disqualify the district attorney prosecuting him for trying to overturn his 2020 election defeat in the state for a romantic relationship the prosecutor had with a former top deputy. 

The legal filing from the Republican presidential candidate and eight co-defendants asks the appeals court to reverse a judge’s ruling this month that allowed Fani Willis, the district attorney of Fulton County, to continue prosecuting the case.  

The appeal presents another opportunity for the former U.S. president to delay or derail one of the four criminal cases he faces. 

Fulton County Judge Scott McAfee was sharply critical in his ruling of the relationship between Willis and Nathan Wade, an outside lawyer contracted to help lead the prosecution. But he rejected claims from the defense that the romance posed a conflict of interest that would require Willis’ office to be removed from the case. 

Wade stepped aside from the case after the judge said he would need to withdraw for Willis and her office to continue. 

Trump defense attorney Steve Sadow said in a statement on Friday that McAfee should instead have dismissed the indictment outright and, “at a minimum,” disqualified Willis and her office from prosecuting the case. 

In a brief submitted to the court, Christopher Anulewicz, a lawyer representing co-defendant Robert Cheeley, argued that the failure to disqualify Willis and her office should be reversed because, if allowed to stand, “it would render each and every trial in this case a nullity.” 

The appeals court has 45 days to decide whether to take up the issue. McAfee gave Trump and the other defendants permission to immediately appeal his ruling but said he would continue moving the case toward trial during the appeal. 

If the court accepts the case, Trump could seek to pause the proceedings while the appeal plays out. A trial date has not yet been set. 

McAfee’s ruling came after a tumultuous period for Willis, who was grilled by defense lawyers in dramatic testimony about whether she improperly benefited from the relationship through vacations booked by Wade while he was being paid by her office. 

Trump’s lawyers also accused Willis of “stoking racial animus” in her response to the allegations and misleading the court on when the romantic relationship began. 

Willis denied receiving any improper benefit from the relationship, arguing that expenses were divided roughly evenly between her and Wade, and said the romance had no impact on the criminal case. 

Willis has cast the disqualification bid as an effort to distract from racketeering and other charges against Trump and 14 co-defendants who are accused of scheming to overturn Trump’s narrow defeat in Georgia in the 2020 election. Four others who had been co-defendants in the case have pleaded guilty in deals with the prosecutors.
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MOSCOW — Russian prosecutors have asked the justice ministry to label Alla Pugacheva, the queen of Soviet pop music, as a “foreign agent,” the state RIA news agency reported. 

Pugacheva, 74, a Soviet and then post-Soviet icon, has criticized the war in Ukraine. 

She is one of Russia’s most famous people – known across generations for hits such as the 1982 song “Million Scarlet Roses” and the 1978 film “The Woman who Sings.” 

Pugacheva has in the past been feted by both President Vladimir Putin and his predecessor Boris Yeltsin. When Mikhail Gorbachev died in 2022, she praised the last Soviet leader for allowing freedom and rejecting violence.
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WASHINGTON — What is normally a time of celebration is turning to one of anxiety, as counterterrorism officials are on high alert for the Islamic State terror group to build on its deadly Moscow attack with new plots targeting Easter.

Already, some European countries have issued heightened threat alerts while increasing security. Italy, in particular, cites the approach of the Easter holiday as one reason for additional concern.

The latest propaganda from Islamic State, also known as IS or ISIS, has only served to reinforce such worries.

In a statement Thursday marking 10 years since IS first announced its now-defunct caliphate in Iraq and Syria, spokesperson Abu Huthaifa al-Ansar called on followers to target “crusaders,” especially in Europe and in the United States.

Even in its claim of responsibility for the attack near Moscow, the group’s Amaq news agency said its operatives have targeted a gathering of Christians. And this past January, IS claimed responsibility for an attack on a Catholic church in Istanbul that killed one person.

IS also has a history of attacking Christians celebrating Easter, notably claiming responsibility for Easter Sunday bombings in Sri Lanka in April 2019 that killed more than 300 people and wounded at least 500 more.

“Easter and/or Easter-related activities would absolutely be high on the hit list for a potential attack,” said Colin Clarke, director of research at the global intelligence firm the Soufan Group.

“ISIS is on a roll, and there could be a real push to sustain the momentum by launching another high-profile assault, especially on a symbolic target,” Clarke told VOA. “I’d also be concerned about Orthodox Easter the following weekend, and the logical place to look would be where ISIS has struck Christian targets before.”

‘Substantial’ threat risk

Other countries, while acknowledging the threat, say they have long been on high alert for such plots and that sounding additional alarms will do little good.

“The security authorities’ risk assessment of the Islamist threat in Germany has not yet changed as a result of the terrible attack in Moscow,” a German government spokesperson told VOA, speaking on the condition they not be named.

“It was already high before,” the official added, calling the Islamic State’s Afghan affiliate “currently the most aggressive” of the terror group’s branches while adding it “currently poses the greatest Islamist threat in Germany.”

Britain has taken a similar stance.

“The threat level to the U.K. from terrorism is already currently substantial, meaning an attack is likely,” a spokesperson told VOA, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “This assessment has not changed.”

In the United States, as well, nothing has changed.

Last May, U.S. officials warned the country was stuck in a “heightened threat environment.” In September 2023, the Department of Homeland Security’s annual threat assessment said the U.S. was at “high risk” for a terror attack, specifically pointing to the threat from the Islamic State’s Afghan affiliate, also known as IS-Khorasan, ISIS-K, or ISKP.

“We remain vigilant against the evolving threat posed by terrorist groups, including ISIS-K,” U.S. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters Thursday. “We have maintained an unwavering focus.”

US assessment

The Pentagon issued a similar assurance.

“The Department of Defense has not taken its eye off of ISIS,” press secretary Major General Pat Ryder said Thursday in response to a question from VOA.

Recent U.S. intelligence assessments have portrayed IS as a terror organization that may be at a turning point, underscoring what the intelligence community’s annual threat assessment, issued earlier this month, described as “cascading leadership losses in Iraq and Syria.”

But the same report warned that “regional affiliates will continue to expand.” And while the U.S. report cited a shift to Africa, U.S. and other current and former Western officials see IS leadership in Afghanistan as taking on a more prominent role.

“Most plots that we are aware of go back to ISIS-K,” a former senior Western counterterrorism official told VOA earlier this year.

There has been long-running concern about IS-Khorasan’s efforts to expand its sphere of influence beyond Afghanistan.

Some Western officials and regional observers warn that as far back as 2021, the IS Afghan affiliate was seeking to seed Central Asian states such as Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan with small but highly capable cells and networks that could serve as the basis for future attacks.

Aaron Zelin, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy who specializes in jihadism, said, “There was a large cohort of Central Asian foreign fighters that went to Syria last decade when IS was controlling territory there. So, those that survived were likely a backbone to this broader facilitation and plot/attack network.

“There was also a smaller cohort of Central Asians that joined up with ISKP in Afghanistan,” Zelin told VOA. “Then there are Central Asian migrant communities in Russia that IS can recruit from in the same way they do with Arab migrant populations in Western Europe.”

Focus on Central Asia

One humanitarian official in Central Asia, who asked that their name be withheld because of fears they could be targeted, told VOA that IS has managed to establish small, high-quality cells and networks across the region.

“The networks still exist, but they are not going to be recruiting more [big] numbers,” the official said, adding that there are signs that “the recruitment might happen more outside of Central Asia.”

“The vulnerabilities and push factors [that move someone to join IS] are a lot stronger in Russia, especially in light of the current situation in Russia toward migrants,” the official said, noting those same factors exist across many European countries that host Central Asian diaspora communities.

There are indications that IS-Khorasan has found ways to leverage other terror groups.

Andrew Mines, a program specialist at the United States Institute of Peace, said, “ISKP doesn’t just attract foreign recruits, it also cooperates with Central Asian-dominated groups like IMU [Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan] and … ETIM/TIP [Turkistan Islamic Party] to a more limited extent.”

Mines told VOA that IS-Khorasan has proven to be adept at maximizing its resources.

“ISKP has shown it is capable of receiving, training and deploying assets within and outside of Afghanistan, as well as using the ‘virtual planner’ and inspiration attack planning models.”

Current and former officials say it is those types of capabilities, combined with high-profile attacks, such as the one near Moscow and January’s double suicide bombing in Kerman, Iran, that make IS-Khorasan a formidable threat even as some data suggest the affiliate’s exploits in Afghanistan itself have been on the decline.

The IS-Khorasan attack in Russia, along with foiled plots in Germany late last year, both of which appear to have relied on ethnic Tajiks, could also be an indication that group’s efforts to build an extended network is coming to fruition.

“This could even be the first sort of real flowering of a developed ISIL-Khorasan capability,” according to Edmund Fitton-Brown, a former senior U.N. counterterrorism official, using another acronym for the IS Afghan affiliate.

And Fitton-Brown, now a senior adviser for the New York and Berlin-based Counter Extremism Project, worries IS leaders will want to capitalize on the momentum they likely see from this year’s successful terror attacks.

“They got that attention for Iran. They’ve got a lot more attention for doing it in Russia. And they would get even more attention if they could bring off something on this scale in Western Europe,” he told VOA.

“But whether they can bring it off is a question, because up to now there have been a lot of abortive attempts where they’ve had active terrorist plots in Western Europe, particularly in Germany, but they’ve been detected and prevented and disrupted,” Fitton-Brown said.
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ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND — Rebuilding Baltimore’s collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge could take anywhere from 18 months to several years, experts say, while the cost could be at least $400 million — or more than twice that. 

It all depends on factors that are still mostly unknown. They range from the design of the new bridge to how swiftly government officials can navigate the bureaucracy of approving permits and awarding contracts. 

Realistically, the project could take five to seven years, according to Ben Schafer, an engineering professor at Johns Hopkins University. 

“The lead time on air conditioning equipment right now for a home renovation is like 16 months, right?” Schafer said. “So, it’s like you’re telling me they’re going to build a whole bridge in two years? I want it to be true, but I think empirically it doesn’t feel right to me.” 

Others are more optimistic about the potential timeline: Sameh Badie, an engineering professor at George Washington University, said the project could take as little as 18 months to two years. 

The Key Bridge collapsed Tuesday, killing six members of a crew that was working on the span, after the Dali cargo ship plowed into one its supports. Officials are scrambling to clean up and rebuild after the accident, which has shuttered the city’s busy port and a portion of the Baltimore beltway. 

The disaster is in some ways similar to the deadly collapse of Florida’s Sunshine Skyway Bridge, which was struck by a freighter in Tampa Bay in 1980. The new bridge took five years to build, was 19 months late and ran $20 million over budget when it opened in 1987. 

But experts say it’s better to look to more recent bridge disasters for a sense of how quickly reconstruction may happen. 

Jim Tymon, executive director of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, cited the case of the Interstate 35W bridge in Minnesota, which collapsed into the Mississippi River in 2007. The new span was up in less than 14 months. 

“It’s the best comparison that we have for a project like this,” Tymon said. “They did outstanding work in being able to get the approvals necessary to be able to rebuild that as quickly as possible.” 

Tymon expects various government agencies to work together to push through permits, environmental and otherwise. 

“It doesn’t mean that all of the right boxes won’t get checked — they will,” Tymon said. “It’ll just be done more efficiently because everybody will know that this has to get done as quickly as possible.” 

One looming issue is the source of funding. President Joe Biden has repeatedly said the federal government will pay for the new bridge, but that remains to be seen. 

“Hopefully, Congress will be able to come together to provide those resources as soon as possible so that that does not become a source of delay,” Tymon said. 

Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota helped to obtain funding quickly to rebuild the I-35W bridge in her state. But she said replacing the Baltimore span could be more complicated. 

She noted that the I-35W bridge, a federal interstate highway, was a much busier road with about 140,000 vehicle crossings a day, compared with about 31,000 for the Maryland bridge. 

“But where there’s a will there’s a way, and you can get the emergency funding,” Klobuchar said. “It’s happened all over the country when disasters hit. And the fact that this is such a major port also makes it deserving of making sure that this all gets taken care of.” 

Badie, of George Washington University, said the cost could be between $500 million and $1 billion, with the largest variable being the design. 

For example, a suspension bridge like San Francisco’s Golden Gate would cost more, while a cable-stayed span, like Florida’s Skyway Sunshine Bridge, which handles weight using cables and towers, would be less expensive. 

Whatever is built, steel is expensive these days and there is a backlog for I-beams, Badie said. Plus, the limited number of construction companies that can tackle such a project are already busy with other jobs. 

“A project like this is going to be expedited, so everything is going to cost a lot more,” Badie said. 

Hota GangaRao, a West Virginia University engineering professor, said the project could cost as little as $400 million. But that’s only if the old bridge’s pier foundations are used; designers may want to locate the new supports farther away from the shipping channels to avoid another collision. 

“That’s going to be more steel, more complicated construction and more checks and balances,” GangaRao said. “It all adds up.” 

Norma Jean Mattei, an emeritus engineering professor at the University of New Orleans, said replacing the Key Bridge likely will take several years. Even if it’s a priority, the process of designing the span, getting permits and hiring contractors takes a lot of time. Then you must build it. 

“It’s quite a process to actually get a bridge of this type into operation,” she said. 
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LOS ANGELES — Louis Gossett Jr., the first Black man to win a supporting actor Oscar and an Emmy winner for his role in the seminal TV miniseries “Roots,” has died. He was 87. 

Gossett’s first cousin Neal L. Gossett told The Associated Press that the actor died Thursday night in Santa Monica, California. No cause of death was revealed. 

Gossett’s cousin remembered a man who walked with Nelson Mandela and who also was a great joke teller, a relative who faced and fought racism with dignity and humor. 

“Never mind the awards, never mind the glitz and glamour, the Rolls-Royces and the big houses in Malibu. It’s about the humanity of the people that he stood for,” his cousin said. 

Louis Gossett always thought of his early career as a reverse Cinderella story, with success finding him from an early age and propelling him forward, toward his Academy Award for “An Officer and a Gentleman.” 

He earned his first acting credit in his Brooklyn high school’s production of “You Can’t Take It with You” while he was sidelined from the basketball team with an injury. 

“I was hooked — and so was my audience,” he wrote in his 2010 memoir “An Actor and a Gentleman.” 

His English teacher urged him to go into Manhattan to try out for “Take a Giant Step.” He got the part and made his Broadway debut in 1953 at age 16. 

“I knew too little to be nervous,” Gossett wrote. “In retrospect, I should have been scared to death as I walked onto that stage, but I wasn’t.” 

Gossett attended New York University on a basketball and drama scholarship. He was soon acting and singing on TV shows hosted by David Susskind, Ed Sullivan, Red Buttons, Merv Griffin, Jack Paar and Steve Allen. 

Gossett became friendly with James Dean and studied acting with Marilyn Monroe, Martin Landau and Steve McQueen at an offshoot of the Actors Studio taught by Frank Silvera. 

In 1959, Gossett received critical acclaim for his role in the Broadway production of “A Raisin in the Sun” along with Sidney Poitier, Ruby Dee and Diana Sands. 

He went on to become a star on Broadway, replacing Billy Daniels in “Golden Boy” with Sammy Davis Jr. in 1964. 

Gossett went to Hollywood for the first time in 1961 to make the film version of “A Raisin in the Sun.” He had bitter memories of that trip, staying in a cockroach-infested motel that was one of the few places to allow Black people. 

In 1968, he returned to Hollywood for a major role in “Companions in Nightmare,” NBC’s first made-for-TV movie that starred Melvyn Douglas, Anne Baxter and Patrick O’Neal. 

This time, Gossett was booked into the Beverly Hills Hotel and Universal Studios had rented him a convertible. Driving back to the hotel after picking up the car, he was stopped by a Los Angeles County sheriff’s officer who ordered him to turn down the radio and put up the car’s roof before letting him go. 

Within minutes, he was stopped by eight sheriff’s officers, who had him lean against the car and made him open the trunk while they called the car rental agency before letting him go. 

“Though I understood that I had no choice but to put up with this abuse, it was a terrible way to be treated, a humiliating way to feel,” Gossett wrote in his memoir. “I realized this was happening because I was Black and had been showing off with a fancy car — which, in their view, I had no right to be driving.” 

After dinner at the hotel, he went for a walk and was stopped a block away by a police officer, who told him he broke a law prohibiting walking around residential Beverly Hills after 9 p.m. Two other officers arrived and Gossett said he was chained to a tree and handcuffed for three hours. He was eventually freed when the original police car returned. 

“Now I had come face-to-face with racism, and it was an ugly sight,” he wrote. “But it was not going to destroy me.” 

In the late 1990s, Gossett said he was pulled over by police on the Pacific Coast Highway while driving his restored 1986 Rolls Royce Corniche II. The officer told him he looked like someone they were searching for, but the officer recognized Gossett and left. 

He founded the Eracism Foundation to help create a world where racism doesn’t exist. 

Gossett made a series of guest appearances on such shows as “Bonanza,” “The Rockford Files,” “The Mod Squad,” “McCloud” and a memorable turn with Richard Pryor on “The Partridge Family.” 

In August 1969, Gossett had been partying with members of the Mamas and the Papas when they were invited to actor Sharon Tate’s house. He headed home first to shower and change clothes. As he was getting ready to leave, he caught a news flash on TV about Tate’s murder. She and others were killed by Charles Manson’s associates that night. 

“There had to be a reason for my escaping this bullet,” he wrote. 

Louis Cameron Gossett was born on May 27, 1936, in the Coney Island section of Brooklyn, New York, to Louis Sr., a porter, and Hellen, a nurse. He later added Jr. to his name to honor his father. 

Gossett broke through on the small screen as Fiddler in the groundbreaking 1977 miniseries “Roots,” which depicted the atrocities of slavery on TV. The sprawling cast included Ben Vereen, LeVar Burton and John Amos. 

Gossett became the third Black Oscar nominee in the supporting actor category in 1983. He won for his performance as the intimidating Marine drill instructor in “An Officer and a Gentleman” opposite Richard Gere and Debra Winger. He also won a Golden Globe for the same role. 

“More than anything, it was a huge affirmation of my position as a Black actor,” he wrote in his memoir. 

“The Oscar gave me the ability of being able to choose good parts in movies like ‘Enemy Mine,’ ‘Sadat’ and ‘Iron Eagle,'” Gossett said in Dave Karger’s 2024 book “50 Oscar Nights.” 

He said his statue was in storage. 

“I’m going to donate it to a library so I don’t have to keep an eye on it,” he said in the book. “I need to be free of it.” 

Gossett appeared in such TV movies as “The Story of Satchel Paige,” “Backstairs at the White House, “The Josephine Baker Story,” for which he won another Golden Globe, and “Roots Revisited.” 

But he said winning an Oscar didn’t change the fact that all his roles were supporting ones. 

He played an obstinate patriarch in the 2023 remake of “The Color Purple.” 

Gossett struggled with alcohol and cocaine addiction for years after his Oscar win. He went to rehab, where he was diagnosed with toxic mold syndrome, which he attributed to his house in Malibu. 

In 2010, Gossett announced he had prostate cancer, which he said was caught in the early stages. In 2020, he was hospitalized with COVID-19. 

He also is survived by sons Satie, a producer-director from his second marriage, and Sharron, a chef whom he adopted after seeing the 7-year-old in a TV segment on children in desperate situations. His first cousin is actor Robert Gossett. 

Gossett’s first marriage to Hattie Glascoe was annulled. His second, to Christina Mangosing, ended in divorce in 1975 as did his third to actor Cyndi James-Reese in 1992.
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WASHINGTON — Americans are more worried about legal immigrants committing crimes in the U.S. than they were a few years ago, a change driven largely by increased concern among Republicans, while Democrats continue to see a broad range of benefits from immigration, a new poll shows.

The poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that substantial shares of U.S. adults believe that immigrants contribute to the country’s economic growth and offer important contributions to American culture. But when it comes to legal immigrants, U.S. adults see fewer major benefits than they did in the past, and more major risks.

About 4 in 10 Americans say that when immigrants come to the U.S. legally, it’s a major benefit for American companies to get the expertise of skilled workers in fields like science and technology. A similar share (38%) also say that legal immigrants contribute a major benefit by enriching American culture and values.

Both those figures were down compared with 2017, when 59% of Americans said skilled immigrant workers who enter the country legally were a major benefit, and half said legal immigrants contribute a major benefit by enriching American culture.

Meanwhile, the share of Americans who say that there’s a major risk that legal immigrants will commit crimes in the U.S. has increased, going from 19% in 2017 to 32% in the new poll.

Republicans were more likely than Democrats to say that immigration is an important issue for them personally, and 41% now say it’s a major risk that legal immigrants will commit crimes in the U.S., up from 20% in 2017. Overall, Republicans are more likely to see major risks — and fewer benefits — from immigrants who enter the country legally and illegally, although they tend to be most concerned about people who come to the country illegally.

Bob Saunders is a 64-year-old independent from Voorhees, New Jersey. He disapproves of President Joe Biden’s performance when it comes to immigration and border security and is particularly worried about the number of immigrants coming to the southern border who are eventually released into the country. He stressed that there’s a difference between legal and illegal immigration. Saunders said it’s important to know the background of the immigrants coming to the U.S. and said legal immigration contributes to the economy. He also noted the immigrants in his own family.

“It’s not anti-immigration,” Saunders said. “It’s anti-illegal immigration.”

Many Republicans, 71%, say there’s a risk of people in the country illegally coming to the U.S. and committing crimes, although many studies have found immigrants are less drawn to violent crime than native-born citizens. Even more, 80%, think there’s a major risk that people in the country without permission will burden public service programs, while about 6 in 10 Republicans are concerned that there’s a major risk of them taking American jobs, that their population growth will weaken American identity or that they will vote illegally — although only a small number of noncitizen voters have been uncovered.

Amber Pierce, a 43-year-old Republican from Milam, Texas, says she understands that a lot of migrants are seeking a better life for their children, but she’s also concerned migrants will become a drain on government services.

“I believe that a lot of them come over here and get free health care and take away from the people who have worked here and are citizens,” Pierce said. “They get a free ride. I don’t think that’s fair.”

Democrats, on the other hand, are more likely to see benefits from immigration, although the poll did find that only half of Democrats now think that legal immigrants are making important contributions to American companies, a decrease of more than 20 percentage points from 2017. But they’re more likely than Republicans to say that the ability of people to come from other places in the world to escape violence or find economic opportunities is extremely or very important to the U.S’s identity as a nation.

“People who are coming, are coming for good reason. It’s how many of us got here,” said Amy Wozniak, a Democrat from Greenwood, Indiana. Wozniak said previous waves of immigrants came from European countries. Now immigrants are coming from different countries but that doesn’t mean they’re not fleeing for justifiable reasons, she said: “They’re not all drugs and thugs.”

There’s also a divide among partisans about the value of diversity, with 83% of Democrats saying that the country’s diverse population makes it at least moderately stronger, compared with 43% of Republicans and Independents. Republicans are more likely than Democrats to say that a shared American culture and set of values is extremely or very important to the United States’ identity as a nation, although about half of Democrats also see this as important.

U.S. adults — and especially Republicans — are more likely to say that the country has been significantly changed by immigrants in the past five years than they are to say that immigrants have changed their own community or their state. About 3 in 10 U.S. adults say immigrants have had a major impact on their local community while about 6 in 10 say they’ve had a major impact on the country as a whole. The gap between perceptions of community impact and effects on the country as a whole is particularly wide among Republicans.

There is some bipartisan agreement about how immigration at the border between the U.S. and Mexico should be addressed. The most popular option asked about is hiring more Border Patrol agents, which is supported by about 8 in 10 Republicans and about half of Democrats. Hiring more immigration judges and court personnel is also favored among majorities of both parties.

About half of Americans support reducing the number of immigrants who are allowed to seek asylum in the U.S. when they arrive at the border, but there’s a much bigger partisan divide there, with more Republicans than Democrats favoring this strategy. Building a wall — former President Donald Trump’s signature policy goal — is the least popular and most polarizing option of the four asked about. About 4 in 10 favor building a wall, including 77% of Republicans but just 12% of Democrats.

Donna Lyon is a Democratic-leaning independent from Cortland, New York. She believes a border wall would do little to stop migrants. But she supports hiring more Border Patrol agents and more immigration court judges to deal with the growing backlog of immigration court cases: “That would stop all the backup that we have.”

Congress just recently approved money to hire about 2,000 more Border Patrol agents but so far this year, there’s been no significant boost for funding for more immigration judges. Many on both sides of the aisle have said it takes much too long to decide asylum cases, meaning migrants stay in the country for years waiting for a decision, but the parties have failed to find consensus on how to address the issue.

The poll of 1,282 adults was conducted March 21-25, 2024, using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 3.8 percentage points.
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TOKYO — Oppenheimer finally premiered Friday in the nation where two cities were obliterated 79 years ago by the nuclear weapons invented by the American scientist who was the subject of the Oscar-winning film. Japanese filmgoers’ reactions understandably were mixed and highly emotional.

Toshiyuki Mimaki, who survived the bombing of Hiroshima when he was 3, said he has been fascinated by the story of J. Robert Oppenheimer, often called “the father of the atomic bomb” for leading the Manhattan Project.

“What were the Japanese thinking, carrying out the attack on Pearl Harbor, starting a war they could never hope to win?” he said, sadness in his voice, in a telephone interview with The Associated Press.

He is now chairperson of a group of bomb victims called the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organization and he saw Oppenheimer at a preview event. “During the whole movie, I was waiting and waiting for the Hiroshima bombing scene to come on, but it never did,” Mimaki said.

Oppenheimer does not directly depict what happened on the ground when the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, turning some 100,000 people instantly into ashes, and killed thousands more in the days that followed, mostly civilians.

The film instead focuses on Oppenheimer as a person and his internal conflicts.

The film’s release in Japan, more than eight months after it opened in the U.S., had been watched with trepidation because of the sensitivity of the subject matter.

Former Hiroshima Mayor Takashi Hiraoka, who spoke at a preview event for the film in the southwestern city, was more critical of what was omitted.

“From Hiroshima’s standpoint, the horror of nuclear weapons was not sufficiently depicted,” he was quoted as saying by Japanese media. “The film was made in a way to validate the conclusion that the atomic bomb was used to save the lives of Americans.”

Some moviegoers offered praise. One man emerging from a Tokyo theater Friday said the movie was great, stressing that the topic was of great interest to Japanese, although emotionally volatile as well. Another said he got choked up over the film’s scenes depicting Oppenheimer’s inner turmoil. Neither man would give his name to an Associated Press journalist.

In a sign of the historical controversy, a backlash flared last year over the “Barbenheimer” marketing phenomenon that merged pink-and-fun Barbie with seriously intense Oppenheimer. Warner Bros. Japan, which distributed Barbie in the country, apologized after some memes depicted the Mattel doll with atomic blast imagery.

Kazuhiro Maeshima, professor at Sophia University, who specializes in U.S. politics, called the film an expression of “an American conscience.”

Those who expect an anti-war movie may be disappointed. But the telling of Oppenheimer’s story in a Hollywood blockbuster would have been unthinkable several decades ago, when justification of nuclear weapons dominated American sentiments, Maeshima said.

“The work shows an America that has changed dramatically,” he said in a telephone interview.

Others suggested the world might be ready for a Japanese response to that story.

Takashi Yamazaki, director of Godzilla Minus One, which won the Oscar for visual effects and is a powerful statement on nuclear catastrophe in its own way, suggested he might be the man for that job.

“I feel there needs to an answer from Japan to Oppenheimer. Someday, I would like to make that movie,” he said in an online dialogue with Oppenheimer director Christopher Nolan.

Nolan heartily agreed.

Hiroyuki Shinju, a lawyer, noted Japan and Germany also carried out wartime atrocities, even as the nuclear threat grows around the world. Historians say Japan was also working on nuclear weapons during World War II and would have almost certainly used them against other nations, Shinju said.

“This movie can serve as the starting point for addressing the legitimacy of the use of nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as humanity’s, and Japan’s, reflections on nuclear weapons and war,” he wrote in his commentary on Oppenheimer published by the Tokyo Bar Association. 
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Secretary of State Antony Blinken plans to go to France and Belgium next week to try to build unity among allies in support of Ukraine in its war against Russia and of Israel in its war against Hamas. Analysts say he faces a tough task. VOA Senior Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports.
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washington — Millions of Turkish citizens will head to the polls Sunday to elect mayors and local administrators for their cities and districts.

The elections come less than a year after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan secured his term for another five years last May.

“Now we have 2024 ahead of us,” Erdogan said in his victory speech, adding, “Are you ready to win both Uskudar [a district in Istanbul where Erdogan’s personal residence is] and Istanbul in the local elections in 2024?”

Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) aims to win back key cities, including Turkey’s largest, Istanbul, and its capital, Ankara, which it lost to the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) in 2019 through its alliance with the nationalist IYI Party.

Istanbul race

Winning Istanbul and Ankara, two cities that account for a quarter of Turkey’s population, gave the CHP a key position in power for the past five years.

Some analysts observe that the Istanbul race will be one of the main contested races.

“This election largely revolves around Istanbul. In the presidential elections, [opposition alliance candidate] Kemal Kilicdaroglu received more votes than Erdogan in both rounds in Istanbul,” political scientist Ismet Akca told VOA.

Istanbul, with its 15 million population, is symbolically important for political parties. An old saying in Turkish politics – “Whoever wins Istanbul, wins Turkey” – was used by Erdogan a couple of times. Early in his career Erdogan was the city’s mayor, from 1994 to 1998.

The current Istanbul mayor and CHP candidate Ekrem Imamoglu was considered one of the possible vice presidents if the opposition alliance had won the May 2023 parliamentary and presidential elections.

However, after Erdogan’s victory in May 2023, the opposition alliance, headed by CHP and IYI, collapsed. The two parties are running their own candidates in the local elections.

Also, new political parties, including the center-right DEVA, the far-right Victory Party and the Islamist New Welfare Party, have emerged over the past five years, and they will compete in the Istanbul race with their own candidates.

In the 2019 election, the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP, which is using a new name, DEM Party) did not announce a candidate and supported the opposition alliance’s Imamoglu. However, this year, the DEM Party has campaigned for prominent Kurdish politician Meral Danis Bestas, its candidate for Istanbul.

Erdogan’s AKP selected Murat Kurum, 47, former minister of environment and urbanization, who was one of the leading figures in the government’s response to the February 2023 earthquakes that killed more than 50,000 people in southeastern Turkey.

Main opposition CHP has Imamoglu, 52, seeking a second term. Already one of the most prominent figures in Turkey’s opposition, he is expected to run for president in 2028 if he wins.

With the lack of a broader alliance and Kurdish votes, Imamoglu is facing a tough race against Kurum, as Erdogan and his Cabinet officials are quite active in his campaign.

Erdogan’s ‘last election’

During a meeting of the Turkish Youth Foundation on March 8, Erdogan, 70, asked for support in the local elections, saying, “This is a final for me; under the mandate given by the law, this is my last election.”

“The eyes of the entire Islamic world are on Turkey. What will happen in Turkey? What result will the AKP get in these elections?” the president continued.

Erdogan came to power in 2002 and served as prime minister until 2014, when he became the first president elected by the public. He was re-elected in June 2018 and May 2023.

The Turkish constitution, which was last amended in 2017, enables the president to serve only two terms of five years. However, according to Article 116, if the parliament decides to repeat the elections during the president’s second term, the president may run for election again.

Erdogan hinted in November 2023 that his party aimed to work on a new constitution. Political scientist Akca thinks Erdogan’s statement was meant to consolidate his party’s voters.

“Erdogan does not want to lose this election to Imamoglu for the second time. The latest elections reveal that the lower classes and young people dissatisfied with the AKP are looking for other options,” Akca told VOA. Many of those voters have shifted allegiance from AKP to the Islamist New Welfare Party.

“The president is trying to overcome this problem with his emphasis on the Islamist cause and his speech with a high emotional tone.”

Gonul Tol, director of the Middle East Institute’s Turkey program, said Erdogan is involved “as if he were the one on the ballot box.”

“So he is intervening in the electoral process so often and attacking the incumbent, CHP Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, almost on a daily basis. It sounds like this is turning into a referendum on Erdogan, which I personally believe is a bad strategy,” Tol said Thursday in a webinar.

Kurdish votes  

Several prominent Kurdish politicians, including Ahmet Turk, Leyla Zana and the imprisoned former HDP leader Selahattin Demirtas, have recently named Erdogan as one of the vital actors in the solution to the conflict with the Kurds.

“Our door is closed to terrorists and those who play a political game under the guidance of a terrorist organization,” Erdogan said Wednesday while campaigning in Diyarbakir.

Some analysts think that Erdogan ended the possibility of a peace process.

“Considering Erdogan’s speech, I do not expect anything like a new compromise, negotiation or a meeting between DEM Party and Erdogan,” Reha Ruhavioglu, director of the Diyarbakir-based Kurdish Studies Center, told VOA.

The Turkish government says the DEM Party has links with the PKK, which the United States, European Union and Ankara have designated as a terrorist group. The party denies this allegation.

In 2019, the then-HDP won 65 municipalities, but later, the mayors of at least 48 municipalities were sacked over terror accusations and placed under the control of government-appointed trustees.

This story originated in VOA’s Turkish Service. VOA Turkish’s Hilmi Hacaloglu and Mahmut Bozarslan contributed from Istanbul and Diyarbakir.
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MASSAPEQUA PARK, New York — Donald Trump attended Thursday’s wake of a New York City police officer gunned down in the line of duty and called for “law and order” as part of his attempt to show a contrast with President Joe Biden and focus on crime as part of his third White House campaign.

The visitation for Officer Jonathan Diller, who was fatally shot during a traffic stop on Monday, was held in suburban Massapequa on Long Island. Police said the 31-year-old Diller was shot below his bulletproof vest while approaching an illegally parked car in Queens.

Diller, who was married and had a 1-year-old son, was rushed to a hospital, where he died.

The visit by Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, came as Biden was also in New York for a previously scheduled fundraiser with former Democratic Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. Trump has accused Biden of lacking toughness, and his campaign sought to contrast his visit with Biden’s fundraiser.

Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung, in a post on X, noted Trump’s visit and said, “Meanwhile, the Three Stooges — Biden, Obama, and Clinton — will be at a glitzy fundraiser in the city with their elitist, out-of-touch celebrity benefactors.”

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Thursday that the president has spoken with New York City’s mayor, but she said she didn’t have any “private communications to share” when asked if Biden had spoken to the family of the officer who was killed. Jean-Pierre said the administration’s hearts go out to the officer’s family.

Speaking aboard Air Force One, she said Biden has supported law enforcement throughout his entire career and took a dig at Trump’s record.

“Violent crime surged under the previous administration,” Jean-Pierre said. “The Biden-[Vice President Kamala] Harris administration have done the polar opposite, taking decisive action from the very beginning to fund the police and achieving a historic reduction in crime.”

After visiting in the funeral home with Diller’s family, Trump spoke outside to news reporters with about a dozen local police officers, half in patrol uniforms, half in tactical gear, forming as a backdrop behind him.

“We have to get back to law and order. We have to do a lot of things differently. This is not working. This is happening too often,” Trump said.

He did not elaborate.

Mixed views on law enforcement

Trump has deplored crime in heavily Democratic cities, has called for shoplifters to be shot immediately, and wants to immunize police officers from lawsuits for potential misconduct. But he’s also demonized local prosecutors, the FBI and the Department of Justice over the criminal prosecutions he faces and the investigation while he was president into his first campaign’s interactions with Russia.

He has also embraced those imprisoned for their roles on the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, when a mob of his angry supporters overran police lines and Capitol and local police officers were attacked and beaten.

Massapequa and the surrounding South Shore towns have long been a popular destination for city police officers and firefighters looking to set down roots on Long Island. Though Democrats outnumber Republicans in New York, this area is a heavily Republican part of Long Island that Trump won in the 2020 presidential election.

On Thursday, prosecutors in Queens charged Diller’s alleged shooter, Guy Rivera, with first degree murder and other charges. Rivera, who was shot in the back when Diller’s partner returned fire, was arraigned from his hospital bed. Rivera’s lawyers at Legal Aid declined to comment, according to spokesman Redmond Haskins.

Biden has pledged that the federal government will work more closely with police to combat gun violence and crack down on illegal guns.

New FBI statistics released earlier this month showed that overall violent crime in the U.S. dropped again last year, continuing a downward trend after a pandemic-era spike. The FBI data found murders dropped 13% in the last three months of 2023 compared with the same period the year before, and violent crime overall was down 6%.

The FBI’s report was in line with the findings of the nonpartisan Council on Criminal Justice, which found that homicides were down an average of 10% from the year before in a survey of 32 cities, though it found violent crime still remained higher than before the coronavirus pandemic in many cities.
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washington — House Republicans on Thursday invited President Joe Biden to testify before Congress as part of their impeachment inquiry into him and his family’s business affairs. 

Representative James Comer, chair of the House Oversight Committee, sent a letter to the Democratic president, inviting him to sit for a public hearing to “explain, under oath,” what involvement he had in the Biden family businesses. 

“In light of the yawning gap between your public statements and the evidence assembled by the committee, as well as the White House’s obstruction, it is in the best interest of the American people for you to answer questions from members of Congress directly, and I hereby invite you to do so,” the Kentucky Republican wrote. 

While it is highly unlikely that Biden would agree to appear before lawmakers in such a setting, Comer pointed to previous examples of presidents’ testifying before Congress. 

“As you are aware, presidents before you have provided testimony to congressional committees, including President Ford’s testimony before the subcommittee on criminal justice of the House Judiciary Committee in 1974,” Comer wrote. 

The invitation comes as the monthslong inquiry into Biden is all but winding down as Republicans face the stark reality that it lacks the political appetite from within the conference to go forward with an actual impeachment. Nonetheless, leaders of the effort, including Comer, are facing growing political pressure to deliver something after months of work investigating the Biden family and its  international business transactions. 

The White House has repeatedly called the inquiry baseless, telling Republicans to “move on” and focus on “real issues” Americans want addressed. 

“This is a sad stunt at the end of a dead impeachment,” spokesman Ian Sams said in a social media post last week. “Call it a day, pal.” 

The committee has asserted that the Bidens traded on the family name, an alleged influence-peddling scheme in which Republicans are trying to link a handful of phone calls or dinner meetings between Joe Biden, when he was vice president or out of office, and his son Hunter Biden and Hunter’s business associates. 

But despite dedicating countless resources over the past year, interviewing dozens of witnesses, including Hunter and the president’s brother James, Republicans have yet to produce any evidence that shows Joe Biden was directly involved in or benefited from his family’s businesses while in public office. 

Democrats have remained unified against the inquiry, with Representative Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on Oversight, calling for his GOP counterpart to end the investigation absent any credible evidence. 

“The GOP impeachment inquiry has been a circus,” Oversight Democrats wrote on the social media platform X. “Time to fold up the tent.” 

Seeking testimony from the president could ultimately be the inquiry’s final act.  

Late last year, Republicans leading the investigation had privately discussed holding a vote on articles of impeachment in the new year, but growing criticism from within their party forced a shift in strategy. Now, Comer is eyeing potential criminal referrals of the family to the Justice Department, a move that will be largely symbolic and unlikely to be taken up by the department. 
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