U.S. President Joe Biden is in his ancestral home, Ireland, where he will spend the next two days meeting with leaders and family members. Earlier Wednesday in Northern Ireland, he urged that the collapsed power-sharing government be restored. White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara reports.
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The first three months of 2023 were the deadliest first quarter in six years for migrants crossing the central Mediterranean Sea in smugglers’ boats, the U.N. migration agency reported Wednesday, citing delays by nations in initiating rescues as a contributing factor.

The International Organization for Migration documented 441 migrant deaths along the dangerous sea route between northern Africa and Europe’s southern shores during January, February and March. In 2017, 742 known deaths were documented in the same period, while 446 were recorded in the first three months of 2015.

“The persisting humanitarian crisis in the central Mediterranean is intolerable,” IOM Director General Antonio Vitorino said of the figures the agency released in a report.

“With more than 20,000 deaths recorded on this route since 2014, I fear that these deaths have been normalized,” Vitorino said. “States must respond. Delays and gaps in state-led SAR [search-and-rescue areas] are costing human lives.”

While this year has started out on a distressing note, IOM tallied higher numbers of people dead or missing in the Mediterranean in six other quarters since 2017, with the most documented in the second quarter of 2018, at 1,430.

The true number of lives lost among migrants who set out on smugglers’ unseaworthy rubber dinghies or decrepit fishing boats is unknown because the bodies of people who perish at sea often are never recovered.

Many deaths only come to light when survivors recount that their vessel set out with more passengers than the number who ultimately make it to safety.

The International Organization for Migration said it also was investigating “several reports of invisible shipwrecks” — cases in which boats are reported missing, where there are no records of survivors, remains or search-and-rescue operations. It estimated that “the fates of more than 300 people aboard these vessels remain unclear.”

Without naming nations, the agency blasted policies aimed at complicating the work of rescue boats operated in the central Mediterranean by humanitarian organizations.

The report cited a March 25 incident in which members of the Libyan coast guard fired shots into the air as a charity rescue boat, Ocean Viking, was responding to a report of a rubber dinghy in distress.

“State efforts to save lives must include supporting the efforts of NGO actors to provide lifesaving assistance and ending the criminalization, obstruction of those efforts” by humanitarian groups, the IOM said.

The agency’s report said the deaths of at least 127 people so far this year came in six incidents in which “delays in state-led rescues in the central Mediterranean were a factor.” The report’s authors lamented the “complete absence of response” in a seventh situation, in which at least 73 migrants died.

The authors also cited a boat carrying 400 migrants that remained adrift between Malta and Italy for two days before the Italian Coast Guard came to its aid.

Italy’s governments have at times impounded charity-run boats for technical reasons or, as the country’s current right-wing government is doing now, required them to disembark their rescued passengers farther from the southernmost ports of the Mediterranean.

On Tuesday, Italy’s far-right premier, Giorgia Meloni, and her Cabinet declared a six-month state of emergency to cope with the country’s latest increase in migrant arrivals.

Among the goals of her coalition, which includes the stridently anti-migrant leader of the League Party, are efforts to step up repatriation of migrants who aren’t eligible for asylum. Many of the asylum-seekers who reach Italy are fleeing poverty, not war or persecution, and see their applications denied.

According to the Italian Interior Ministry, 31,192 migrants had arrived in Italy by sea this year as of Tuesday.

The figure didn’t include about 700 migrants crowded aboard a smuggler’s boat that apparently ran out of fuel and was towed Wednesday morning to a port in Sicily under an Italian coast guard escort.

Migrants aboard that vessel cheered and shouted, “Beautiful Italy,” when they reached Catania, Italian state TV reported.

Italy for years has sought to prod fellow European Union nations to take more of the rescued migrants who step ashore in Mediterranean countries, many with the aim of finding jobs or family members in northern Europe.

Under current EU rules, the country where asylum-seekers first arrive is responsible for them.

“The situation in the Mediterranean has been a humanitarian crisis for over a decade now,” IOM spokesperson Safa Msehli said Wednesday. “And the fact that deaths continue on its own is very alarming, but the fact that that’s increased is extremely alarming because it means that very little concrete action was taken to address the issue.”
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ChatGPT could return to Italy soon if its maker, OpenAI, complies with measures to satisfy regulators who had imposed a temporary ban on the artificial intelligence software over privacy worries.

The Italian data protection authority on Wednesday outlined a raft of requirements that OpenAI will have to satisfy by April 30 for the ban on AI chatbot to be lifted.

The watchdog last month ordered the company to temporarily stop processing Italian users’ personal information while it investigated a possible data breach. The authority said it didn’t want to hamper AI’s development but emphasized the importance of following the European Union’s strict data privacy rules.

OpenAI, which had responded by proposing remedies to ease the concerns, did not reply immediately to a request for comment Wednesday.

Concerns about boom grow

Concerns are growing about the artificial intelligence boom, with other countries, from France to Canada, investigating or looking closer at so-called generative AI technology like ChatGPT. The chatbot is “trained” on huge pools of data, including digital books and online writings, and able to generate text that mimics human writing styles.

Under Italy’s measures, OpenAI must post information on its website about how and why it processes the personal information of both users and non-users, as well as provide the option to correct or delete that data.

The company will have to rely on consent or “legitimate interest” to use personal data to train ChatGPT’s algorithms, the watchdog said.

Regulators question legal basis

The Italian regulators had questioned whether there’s a legal basis for OpenAI to collect massive amounts of data used to teach ChatGPT’s algorithms and raised concerns the system could sometimes generate false information about individuals.

San Francisco-based OpenAI also will have to carry out a publicity campaign by May 15 through radio and TV, newspapers and the internet to inform people about how it uses their personal data for training algorithms, Italy’s watchdog said.

There’s also a requirement to verify users’ ages and set up a system to filter out those who are under 13 and teens between 13 and 18 who don’t have parental consent.

“Only in that case will the Italian SA (supervisory authority) lift its order that placed a temporary limitation on the processing of Italian users’ data … so that ChatGPT will be available once again from Italy,” the watchdog said on its website.
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Buried in a field across the street from an apartment complex is Sergei Kotako. His neighbors say he was a good man, a retired electrician who helped care for elderly women in his building.

During two months of heavy battles here last summer, cluster bombs fell, and on one occasion, Kotako didn’t make it to a shelter in time. He was in his mid-60s.

Like most people we meet in Siversk, a small town only a few kilometers from the front lines of the Russia’s war in Ukraine, Angelina, a resident, does not want to share her last name. She says she didn’t know Kotako well before the war. But since Russia’s February 2022 invasion, everyone in town knows everyone.

“The war somehow …” she says, stopping short. She then motions with her hands the formation of a group. She pats a large imaginary dough ball into an invisible loaf of round bread.

“There’s not many of us left here,” she explains. “Before, there [were] 11 or 12,000 people here. Now, it’s only around 2,000. When the humanitarian aid comes, we all go to the same place to collect it.”

Around the corner, dusty aid vans come through, pausing to distribute food or water. Most shops are closed, and most people don’t have money. Even if they did, there’s no available running water, gas or electricity.

WATCH: In the Heart of Russia’s War in Ukraine

Front-line cemetery

Siversk has been a war zone since 2014, but most of the people who lived here didn’t flee until after Russia invaded last year.

Since then, gardens, fields and backyards have become makeshift graveyards. The local cemetery, residents say, is right up against the front line.

“It’s far too dangerous to go there,” says Galyna, 71. “It’s only 4 kilometers away, but you can’t even ask soldiers to go there for burials.”

On homemade crosses labeling the graves, the dates reveal the nature of the war. Many deaths occurred last summer, when Siversk was not just near the front line but a center of battle.

Others are more recent, like a 97-year-old woman buried by the entrance to an apartment building. She was a friend of Galyna and died last week. We found her daughter sitting on the building’s stoop.

She asked us not to take pictures of the freshly turned-up ground over her mother. The death was too recent, she says.

“We buried her with our neighbors’ help,” she says, declining to give her name. “Everyone uses their own shovel.”

In Pictures: Siversk, Ukraine Battleground Town

Wartime priorities

In Siversk, tanks and artillery are hidden behind apartment buildings. We are also told not to take pictures of weapons, in case it gives away their positions. The crash of fire going in and out of town is sometimes deafening.

In other parts of Ukraine, wartime has galvanized patriots, with many people supporting the idea of fighting until total victory or total defeat.

But here in the war zone among the pockets of people remaining, it is not unusual to find locals who identify with Russia. Most people we meet won’t declare support for either side publicly. They don’t know who will rule the area in the months and years to come.

Galyna, however, says openly that she doesn’t care who wins if they stop firing.

“I only want peace,” she says. “Only calmness.”

Oleksandr Babenko contributed to this report.
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More than two months after the February 6 earthquake in Turkey and Syria that killed more than 50,000 people, millions of survivors are still living in tents with little hope of returning home anytime soon.

As Turkey’s presidential election campaigns enter full swing ahead of the May 14 first-round vote, some survivors say they feel forgotten.

Yunus Emre Yildiz, his wife and their three children live in a tent on stony waste ground in their hometown of Hassa in Hatay province. On one side is a busy highway; on the other, the damaged apartment block where the family used to live.

The family has spent two months living outside in Turkey’s bitter late winter.

“Living in a tent is not like living in a house,” Yildiz told VOA. “There are difficulties living in a tent. There are stones on the ground, it is cold, it rains.”

Cracks are visible on the exterior of Yildiz’s home. But he said the damage isn’t sufficient to qualify his family for a place in a better-equipped camp for earthquake survivors, with improved accommodations, sanitation and social care.

Yildiz said fear keeps them from returning home.

“The night of the earthquake, the two children were in their room. The baby was in our room. I could not reach the two children to rescue them from their room because the tremors were pushing me away,” he said.

“They say that we should go and live in our house. But how can we do that? It is not easy for us,” Yildiz said.

Since the earthquake, the region has been hit by aftershocks. Many families say the children fear returning home.

“There is no serious damage to our house. We sometimes go back, but we are scared when we go home,” said Ozer Guner, whose family occupies a nearby tent.

“We adults are somehow OK, but mentally, the children are suffering very badly. We cannot do anything about that. There are no social programs here for that. If they had entertainment activities or any social activity program, the children could handle it more easily,” Guner told VOA.

The Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency of Turkey says over 2 million earthquake survivors are living in tents. Some local media put the figure at over 2.5 million.

The Turkish government, along with the United Nations and other aid agencies, are still constructing more permanent camps. Ankara says it has given accommodation to over 2.1 million homeless survivors at 500 sites.

Johan Karlsson, managing director of the Better Shelter aid agency, which is providing 5,000 shelters in Turkey and Syria, said it is vital that survivors are given more permanent accommodations.

“People are sleeping in their cars, on the streets and under temporary rubble shelters. So, there is an acute need just to have a place to stay. But then you also have the entire psychosocial comfort of a shelter or home, somewhere where you can sort of close the door from the world outside,” Karlsson told The Associated Press.

Turkey is due to hold presidential elections beginning May 14. Some of the survivors say they feel forgotten.

“As you can see on TV, on the streets, in coffee houses, all they talk about is politics,” said Mustafa Ketti, whose family is living in a tent on the roadside in Hassa. “They forgot everything. They forgot the earthquake. They forgot those killed. They forgot the children’s schools. They forgot about education. They forgot about the health system. They just started to talk about politics,” he told VOA.

In its election manifesto, the ruling AK Party under incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has pledged to build 650,000 new homes in the region, with almost half completed within the next year.

Meanwhile, critics blame Erdogan’s government for lax building regulations, which they say contributed to the widespread destruction.

Memet Aksakal contributed to this report.
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Prince Harry will attend the coronation of his father, King Charles III, at Westminster Abbey on May 6, Buckingham Palace said Wednesday, ending months of speculation about his presence. 

Harry’s wife Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, will remain in California with the couple’s two children, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet, the palace said. The coronation date coincides with their eldest son’s birthday. 

Harry’s attendance comes despite the rift within the House of Windsor prompted by Harry’s decision to reveal family secrets in his bestselling book, “Spare.” 

The revelations included details of private conversations with his father — and his elder brother, Prince William.  

The disclosures fanned tensions between Harry and his family, which had become public when he and his wife moved to North America in 2020. 
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President Joe Biden headed Tuesday to Belfast, where leaders will discuss a 1998 peace agreement that ended over a quarter-century of sectarian conflict in British-held Northern Ireland between pro-British Unionists and nationalists who wanted to unite with independent Ireland. That deal is now complicated by the U.K.’s decision to leave the European Union. VOA’s Anita Powell examines what’s at stake.
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As U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken heads to Vietnam, he must negotiate a diplomatic struggle in which Vietnam and China are competing for the right to develop oil and gas reserves off Vietnam’s coast in the South China Sea.

Blinken’s visit follows a call between U.S. President Joe Biden and the chief of Vietnam’s ruling Communist Party, Nguyen Phu Trong, on March 29, when the two leaders agreed to expand the bilateral relationship.

This year marks the 10th anniversary of the U.S.-Vietnam Comprehensive Partnership. The two countries have been discussing how to advance their ties to the next level — a strategic partnership. Vietnam has comprehensive strategic partnerships with Moscow and Beijing.

The conflicting interests facing Hanoi — navigating a historically fraught relationship with China, bilateral ties with like-minded Russia, and warming relations with the U.S., an enemy defeated less than 50 years ago — may test Vietnam’s “three NO’s” foreign policy — no alignment with any countries against a third country, no military alliance with any country, no foreign military base in its territory.

Russia’s state-controlled oil company Zarubezhneft and gas giant Gazprom, working with a subsidiary of PetroVietnam, the country’s state-owned fossil fuel company, operate a gas field in Vietnam’s South China Sea exclusive economic zone (EEZ), according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a think tank in Washington.

Chinese coast guard ships have sailed into the areas operated by Russian firms in Vietnam’s EEZ about 40 times since January 2022, according to vessel-tracking data from Vietnamese research organization South China Sea Chronicle Initiative (SCSCI), an independent nonprofit, according to Reuters.

The most recent incident was on March 27, days after Russian President Vladimir and his counterpart Xi Jinping met to reaffirm their “no-limits friendship.” Moscow has become increasingly reliant on Beijing to break isolation and sanctions imposed by the West over its war in Ukraine.

Colin Koh, a research fellow of maritime security issues at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University, told VOA Vietnamese that he believes Putin brought up the incidents involving the Chinese coast guard vessels in the South China Sea to Xi because working with Vietnam on energy drilling is in Russia’s interest.

Koh expressed doubt that Moscow would give up its energy partnership with Vietnam, as Beijing wants. Hanoi is “by far [Russia’s] most steadfast, most longstanding friend in Southeast Asia,” he wrote in a March 29 email to VOA Vietnamese.

“Will Moscow want to risk pushing Hanoi to the embrace of the West? … And more broadly, does Russia really want to risk being seen as not only an unreliable partner by Vietnam, but also seen as playing second fiddle to China?” he said in the email.

It would be a huge blow to Vietnam, especially in weapons procurement, if Moscow aligned with Beijing’s position in the South China Sea, according to Koh.

“Even though Vietnam has in recent years diversified beyond Russia for military technologies, the key ‘big ticket’ military equipment are still Russian in origin,” he said, listing an array of military hardware – main battle tanks, multirole combat aircraft, surface combatants, submarines and missile systems.

“Therefore, dissociating with Russia doesn’t serve Vietnam’s long-term interest, considering that fully replacing Russian systems in its arsenal will take a long time and is prohibitively costly,” said Koh.

Striking a balance

However, Hanoi should strike an equilibrium between Russia and the West and should not be seen by Moscow as leaning too much toward the West over the war in Ukraine, Koh said.

“It does help that its current position on the war in Ukraine has at least been accepted by Russia,” he said.

In the energy sector, Hanoi can look to Western companies to take over oil and gas projects in the South China Sea if Moscow withdraws, said Koh, who cautioned that any potential replacement must be willing to assume the risk of pressure from China.

In 2018, Spain’s Repsol suspended its energy prospecting off Vietnam in the South China Sea after Hanoi succumbed to a year of Chinese pressure, Reuters reported. The company may have lost up to $200 million, according to The Diplomat.

Ha Hoang Hop, Associate Senior Fellow of ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore and chairman of the VietKnow think tank in Hanoi, told VOA Vietnamese that Beijing could not force Moscow to withdraw from the energy partnership with Vietnam.

He noted that between 2017 and 2019, Bejing “piled pressure on Moscow” but Russia responded each time by making “it very clear that the projects were in the waters completely under Vietnam’s jurisdiction, so Beijing was not in a position to interfere,” he told VOA Vietnamese in a phone interview.

Hop said, “There’s no way Russia compromises its energy projects with Vietnam in the South China Sea despite Beijing’s pressure” given that the oil and gas projects there “are also Russian interests.”
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President Joe Biden often mentions his Irish roots. But this week’s visit to the Emerald Isle, where he has arrived, is no vacation, he said Tuesday.  

In response to a reporter’s question, Biden stressed the importance of a 1998 agreement that brought peace to the island after decades of sectarian strife between mostly Catholic nationalists, who wished to unite with neighboring Ireland, and mostly Protestant Unionists, who wished to remain within the United Kingdom. 

Biden’s top priority on this three-day visit — which will take him across the island, hitting the Northern Irish capital, Dublin, and his family’s ancestral home of Ballina — is to “make sure the Irish accords and the Windsor agreements stay in place,” he said. “Keep the peace, that’s the main thing.”  

That is a big lift. That peace has been tested by the U.K.’s 2016 Brexit vote to leave the European Union, taking Northern Ireland with it, and leaving the rest of the island in the EU.   

White House officials say Biden brings decades of knowledge to the task.  

“President Biden cares deeply about Northern Ireland and has a long history of supporting peace and prosperity there,” said John Kirby, coordinator for strategic communications at the National Security Council. “As a U.S. senator, Joe Biden was an advocate for how the United States can play a constructive role supporting peace.”

‘Hope for a new generation’

Analysts say there is bipartisan will in the U.S. to see the island succeed. They point to two ways the world’s wealthiest nation can encourage stability: with attention and with money.     

“There can be investments in the region. There can be special envoys that remain invested. And then, I think there also needs to be effort put into trust building,” Donatienne Ruy, who researches Brexit and European issues at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told VOA via Zoom. “After the Good Friday Agreement, we all kind of assumed the peace was done. Really, that was the moment to kick up the efforts in high gear.”   

The situation has degenerated since the Brexit vote, and the Windsor Framework that Biden described has not won support from Northern Ireland’s pro-U.K. political party. They have boycotted the government for more than a year, threatening the delicate power-sharing agreement formed after the 1998 peace accord.   

The leader of the independent Republic of Ireland explained what’s at stake.   

“We want to see the institutions of the Good Friday Agreement restored so they can provide hope for a new generation,” said Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, when he visited the White House in March to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with Biden. “And we’d like to see the people of Northern Ireland benefit from the rich economic opportunities available to them.”  

But peace is a process, Ruy says. So far, there has been encouraging progress.   

“The reason I’m still positive is we see the emergence and the increasing success of non-sectarian parties in the political sphere,” she said. “So, yes, we could be in a better place, but we really have made huge strides since 1998.”  

‘Son of Balllina’

For Biden, this visit holds personal history. Like most American families, the Bidens came from another continent. The village of Ballina was the start of their very American story.      

“The Irish left here during oppression and famine, went to Scranton and worked in the coal mines and on the railways, really difficult jobs, but with pride and enthusiasm for a better life. And they were able to provide that for their people,” Mark Duffy, Ballina Council Leader, said to Agence France-Presse. “And that has come full circle now with a son of Ballina, an ancestor of Ballina, becoming U.S. president and sitting in the Oval Office.”    

On Friday, that son of Ballina will speak before residents of this small town. But his words will be heard around the world.   
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Russia’s cyber operations against Ukraine may not have made as big an impact as some Western officials and cybersecurity experts first feared following the start of last year’s invasion, but top U.S. officials warn that is no reason to underestimate Moscow’s cyber exploits.

Instead, these officials caution Russia’s cyber warriors remain actively engaged in a cat-and-mouse game with Ukraine, while learning from each attack and preparing, possibly, to expand their operations beyond Ukraine’s borders.

“In cyber, I think people have underestimated really how much game they [Russia] brought, whether it be the Viasat hack to nine or 10 different families of brand-new, unique wiper viruses that have been thrown in that ecosystem,” said Rob Joyce, the National Security Agency’s director of cybersecurity, to an audience Tuesday at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

“There’s continued attacks on Ukrainian interests, whether it’s financial, government, personal, individual, business — just trying to be disruptive,” he added.

‘It’s a constant fight’

Joyce is not alone in his assessment of the ongoing dangers from Russia’s cyber operations.

“We haven’t seen really any slowdown,” a senior defense official told reporters on the condition of anonymity late last month during a briefing to the Defense Writers Group in Washington.

“It’s a constant fight between what the adversary [Russia] is trying to do and what the Ukrainian network defenders are trying to do,” the official said. “We see and have information shared with us about efforts to continue to compromise various Ukrainian networks from MoD [Ministry of Defense] to critical infrastructure.”

Weeks earlier, NSA Director General Paul Nakasone told lawmakers that Moscow’s cyber activities against Ukraine remain under intense scrutiny.

“By no means is this done,” he said.

Ukrainian officials have also voiced increased concern, noting the pace of Russian cyberattacks has been increasing, even as Moscow works to better coordinate cyber operations with conventional military strikes.

The NSA’s Joyce, on Tuesday, agreed Russia’s tradecraft appears to be improving.

“There’s creative things going on,” he told the audience at CSIS.

“We’re watching the Russian hackers log in to public-facing webcams to watch convoys and trains delivering aid,” Joyce said. “But they’re also hacking those webcams where … they’re looking out the coffee shop security camera and seeing the road they need to see.”

Joyce also warned that Russia’s cyber operations have also put U.S. companies in their crosshairs.

“Most of the pressure is at the defense industrial base and the logistical transport companies who are moving lethal aid [to Ukraine],” he said. “They are under daily pressure from the Russians.”

China cyber ops

Joyce also voiced concerns about China’s ever expanding cyber capabilities.

“Yes, there is an enormous amount of unsophisticated loud Chinese threat, but there are also elite units that have tools and tradecraft that is very sophisticated,” he said. “That’s the concern as they’re able to scale and use that elite set of concepts and tools in a much bigger piece.”

As for how that could play out should China decide to invade Taiwan, Joyce encouraged private sector companies to start preparing now.

“You don’t want to be starting that planning the week before an invasion when you’re starting to see the White House saying it’s coming,” he said.
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Russian lawmakers moved Tuesday to create an electronic military conscription system to try to thwart men from fleeing the country, as many did last year when they were called up to fight Moscow’s war in Ukraine.

The move was part of a push by Moscow to bolster its military forces in Ukraine during the second year of its war against its neighboring country, although government officials say they have no plans to force more men to fight in Ukraine through a new call-up.

Russia conscripted 300,000 men last year to fight in the war against Kyiv’s forces. But after learning of the draft, tens of thousands acted on short notice to flee their homeland before Russian authorities clamped down on the departures and street protests in multiple cities.

“We need to perfect and modernize the military call-up system,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a news briefing, in which he also recalled “problems” experienced last year with the mobilization campaign.

No-shows banned from travel abroad

Until now, draft notices had to be delivered in person. But recruiters sometimes struggled to deliver the papers or even to know if they had the right address for a draftee. Some would-be draftees managed to dodge the conscription orders by refusing to pick up the notices.

Under the new system, a summons would be sent electronically to a potential draftee’s personal account on the main government portal. The conscription notice would be considered delivered as soon as it has been sent, an effort to end the opportunity for men to flee.

Under the legislation, once the electronic summons is received, conscripts who fail to show up at the military enlistment office would be automatically banned from traveling abroad.

“The summons is considered received from the moment it is placed in the personal account of a person liable for military service,” Andrei Kartapolov, chairman of the Russian parliament’s defense committee, said in televised remarks.

Military service mandatory

The State Duma, Russia’s lower chamber, gave its backing to the necessary legislation in two separate votes. The bill next must be backed by senators and signed by President Vladimir Putin to become law.

Last year’s conscription order was the first military mobilization in Russia since World War II.

Military service for men between the ages of 18 and 27 is mandatory in Russia, with conscription carried out twice a year.

Some material in this report came from Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
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The Nur mountains loom over the Iskenderun railway station, an imposing reminder of the tectonic forces that devastated this corner of Turkey and Syria a little more than two months ago.

While regular rail service still rattles through the station, two of the tracks are occupied by sleeper cars. The wagons allude to adventure and escape but these night trains are going nowhere. The passengers are homeless, survivors of the February earthquake that left their houses or apartments damaged or destroyed.

Some 700 people are living on board the cramped wagons. Among them is Sevil Uygur, who is in her 70s.

“We have no houses. They are gone. They were leveled to the ground,” Uygur told VOA. “So we took shelter here with the children and we live here. They bring us food. The people here are not left hungry. But sleeping here is very problematic and difficult.”

Uygur’s young granddaughter, Burin, is desperate to return to normality. “I want to go to school but at the moment the situation does not allow. Of course, I want to go to school,” Burin said.

Sevil Uygur says a lack of money has made a bad situation worse. “If we could go to another place she could go to school. But we could not so we stayed here. Those who have money escaped and have gone to the other cities and their children go to school. But we cannot do it, so we sit here on the train,” she said.

Twenty-seven rail cars were set aside for earthquake survivors when VOA visited the station March 28. Twenty-two of them contained beds, which officials say were quickly taken by the first arrivals. The remaining five cars have no beds and people sleep in upright chairs.

Some of the trains’ residents, like Safiye Kolagasi, have homes that are still standing but are too dangerous to live in.

“Our house is a little damaged. If the authorities say that we can live in our house we would go today. We are waiting but we will stay here until they tell us it is safe to live there,” Kolagasi told VOA.

The rail cars are warmer and drier than a tent. But they are cramped, crowded and noisy, with little privacy. With hundreds of thousands of homes destroyed or damaged by the earthquake, it’s not clear when the homeless survivors will be able to move on.

Memet Aksakal contributed to this report.
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Around one-and-a-half million people in Turkey were made homeless by the February 6 earthquake, with many still lacking permanent shelter. In the city of Iskenderun – badly hit by the quake – local authorities are using every available space, as Henry Ridgwell reports. Videographer: Memet Aksakal
…

Rescuers were on Tuesday searching rubble in the French Mediterranean city of Marseille for two people still missing after a deadly building collapse two days before, as investigators began work to ascertain the cause of the blast that brought it down.   

They have so far recovered the remains of six people known to have been in the four-story apartment block when it was destroyed in the early hours of Sunday.   

The explosion shook the whole Camas neighborhood, a few hundred meters from Marseille’s historic old port.   

“The toll is unchanged and operations are continuing,” a fire service spokesman told AFP on the scene early on Tuesday.   

Five women and three men, most aged between 66 and 89 but including a couple aged 29 and 31, are known to have been in the building when it fell.   

“It would be a miracle to find any survivors but we have faith,” said a priest, Father Olivier, at a Monday prayer vigil in the nearby Saint Michel church.   

Police forensics experts are working to identify the bodies retrieved so far.   

But eyes are now turning to possible causes for the overnight blast, with many witnesses recalling smelling gas around the time of the explosion.   

As well as 22 forensics officers, 18 detectives are on the scene sifting for evidence. Authorities are yet to give any preferred theory of what happened.   

Meanwhile, around 200 people evacuated from the neighborhood face an uncertain wait before they are allowed to return to their homes.   

One building adjoining the fallen block largely collapsed a few hours later, while the structure on the other side was weakened and risks falling in turn.   

Other houses on the street may have suffered less visible damage, meaning they have to be torn down, Marseille’s deputy mayor for security, Yannick Ohanessian, said on Monday.   

Some residents were allowed to return briefly on Tuesday to recover vital items from their homes, given just a few minutes to choose between important papers, clothes, medicines or a bicycle for the daily commute.   

“The worst thing is not knowing how long it’s going to be. I’m most worried not to know where I’ll be living, whether I’ll need to find a new apartment,” said Alhil Villalba, 33.
…

A bipartisan group of more than 130 U.S. Congress members have signed a joint letter calling on the European Union to designate Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization. 

In the letter addressed to EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, the lawmakers said Iran is “a leading state sponsor of terror” and that for decades the IRGC “has freely and openly carried out plots targeting citizens in countries across the EU.” 

“We understand the legal complexities involved in designating the IRGC as a terrorist organization pursuant to EU law Common Position 931, and fully appreciate the need for this decision to be adjudicated by either a judicial or ‘equivalent competent authority,” the lawmakers said. “But given the growing threat Iran poses to EU member states and their citizens, we urge you to treat this issue with the utmost urgency.” 

The letter also cites a study by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point stating Iran “instigated at least 33 plots to surveil, abduct, or assassinate citizens in Europe” during the past five years. 

Borrell has said designating the IRGC as a terrorist group must first involve condemnation by a court in at least one EU member state. 

The United States declared the IRGC a terrorist group in 2019. 

Some information for this report came from Reuters. 
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U.S. President Joe Biden travels to both sides of the Irish border this week, taking part in commemorations to mark the 25th anniversary of Northern Ireland’s Good Friday peace accord as well as making a pilgrimage to the towns of his Irish ancestors.

Biden’s visit comes as the durability of the peace accord is being tested by political disagreements and occasional attacks carried out by dissidents. The latest violence came just Monday when masked youths pelted police vehicles with petrol bombs during a march in Londonderry.

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is set to greet Biden when he arrives Tuesday night in Belfast. The next day Biden will hold a bilateral meeting with Sunak before giving an address at Belfast’s Ulster University.

The Good Friday agreement — which the United States helped to broker on April 10, 1998 — largely ended decades of sectarian violence that had plagued Northern Ireland since the late 1960s and that had also brought intermittent attacks to mainland Britain. While there is still some sporadic violence in Northern Ireland, the accord allowed a generation of children to grow up in relative peace.

Despite the successes of the accord, it has been under increasing strain since Britain’s exit from the European Union and disagreements over post-Brexit trade rules. The Northern Ireland Assembly has been in limbo for more than a year after the main unionist party pulled out of the government to protest the new trade rules.

Sporadic violence by groups opposed to peace has also increased. Last month, Britain’s intelligence agency raised the threat level in Northern Ireland from “domestic terrorism” to “severe.”

When asked if it was wise for Biden to travel to Northern Ireland at this time, U.S. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters Monday, “We don’t ever talk about security requirements protecting the president, but the president is more than comfortable making this trip.”

During Biden’s visit to Northern Ireland, the White House said the president would mark the progress since the Good Friday peace accord and underscore the region’s economic potential.

On Wednesday, Biden will then travel south to Ireland to spend three days in his ancestral homeland.

He will visit the town of Ballina, in county Mayo, where one of his great-great grandfathers lived before leaving for the United States in the mid-1800s. Biden’s relatives remain in the area and Joe Blewitt, the president’s third cousin, told Agence France Presse that Biden’s visit is “a very proud day for our family and for Ireland.”

The 43-year-old plumber, who first met Biden when he came to town as vice president in 2016, was among Biden’s relatives invited to the White House for St. Patrick’s Day last month.

While in Ireland, Biden also plans to visit the Cooley Peninsula in County Louth, where another of his great-great-grandfathers lived before emigrating during years of famine in the middle of the 19th century.

“One in 10 Americans claim Irish ancestry and Irish Americans are proudly represented in every facet of American life,” Kirby told reporters Monday. He described Biden as “very much looking forward” to the trip.

In addition to honoring his ancestors in Ireland, Biden will meet with Irish President Michael Higgins, address a joint session of the Irish Parliament and attend a dinner at Dublin Castle.

Some information in this report came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
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Russian forces pressed attacks on front-line cities in eastern Ukraine on Monday, while Ukrainian officials played down a report that Kyiv is amending some plans for a counteroffensive due to a leak of classified U.S. documents.

The Russians were pounding Ukrainian positions around besieged Bakhmut in the eastern Donetsk region and other cities and towns with air strikes and artillery barrages, Kyiv said.

“The enemy switched to so-called scorched earth tactics from Syria. It is destroying buildings and positions with air strikes and artillery fire,” Colonel-General Oleksandr Syrskyi, commander of Ukraine’s ground forces, said of Bakhmut.

The small and now largely ruined city on the edge of a chunk of Russian-controlled territory in Donetsk has for months been the biggest battleground of the war.

The head of the Moscow-controlled part of Donetsk, Denis Pushilin, said Russian forces now held 75% of the city.

Moscow’s military was also targeting the city of Avdiivka.

“The Russians have turned Avdiivka into a total ruin,” said Pavlo Kyrylenko, Donetsk’s regional governor, describing an airstrike on Monday that destroyed a multistory building.

“In total, around 1,800 people remain in Avdiivka, all of whom risk their lives every day.”

In Chasiv Yar, the first major town to Bakhmut’s west, few buildings are left intact, and locals lining up to collect food and other aid do not even flinch at the sound of artillery.

“It used to be scarier but now we have got used to it,” said 50-year-old humanitarian volunteer Maksym. “You don’t even pay attention,” he added, his words nearly drowned out by the sound of explosions.

As the battles ground on, U.S. media outlet CNN reported that Ukraine was forced to amend some military plans ahead of its long-anticipated counteroffensive because of the leak of dozens of secret documents.

U.S. officials are trying to trace the source of the leak, reviewing how they share secrets internally and dealing with the diplomatic fallout.

The documents detail topics including information on the Ukraine conflict, in which Washington has supplied Kyiv with huge amounts of weapons and led international condemnation of Moscow’s invasion.

Asked about the report, Ukrainian presidential aide Mykhailo Podolyak said Kyiv’s strategic plans remained unchanged but that specific tactics were always subject to change.

The secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, Oleksiy Danilov, told Reuters: “The opinion of people who have nothing to do with this do not interest us. … The circle of people who possess information is extremely restricted.”

Some national security experts and U.S. officials have said they suspect the leaker could be American but have not ruled out pro-Russian actors.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov declined to comment on the leak but said: “There is in fact a tendency to always blame everything on Russia. It is, in general, a disease.”

A Ukrainian counteroffensive has long been expected after months of attritional warfare in the east.

A Russian winter offensive failed to make much progress, and its troops have been bogged down in a series of battles where advances have been incremental and come at a huge cost.

The Ukrainian defenders have also taken heavy casualties.

Syrskyi said Moscow was sending in special forces and airborne units to help their attack on Bakhmut as members of Russia’s private mercenary Wagner group, who have spearheaded the Bakhmut assault, were exhausted.

Reuters could not verify the battlefield accounts.

Ukraine’s general staff said Russian forces had made unsuccessful advances on areas west of Bakhmut and that at least 10 towns and villages had come under Russian shelling, including Bakhmut and Chasiv Yar.

Donetsk is one of four provinces in eastern and southern Ukraine that Russia declared annexed last year and is seeking to fully occupy in what appears to be a shift in its war aims after failing to overrun the country after its February 2022 invasion.

Control of Bakhmut could allow Russia to directly target Ukrainian defensive lines in Chasiv Yar and open the way for its forces to advance on two bigger cities in the Donetsk region — Kramatorsk and Sloviansk.

While Ukraine has said it wants to inflict as many casualties as possible on the Russian forces as it prepares its own counteroffensive, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy last week said troops could be withdrawn if they risked being encircled.

In addition to shelling Avdiivka, Russian forces targeted the towns of Maryinka and Kranohorivka to its southwest as well as Vuhledar, a hilltop town further south subject to Russian attacks for several weeks, Ukraine’s general staff said.

Elsewhere, Russia’s defense ministry said its forces destroyed a depot with 70,000 tons of fuel near Zaporizhzhia, and Ukraine reported widespread Russian shelling in northern regions. Officials in the south said Russian aircraft had used guided bombs against towns in the Kherson region.

In a rare coordination between the warring parties, Russia and Ukraine carried out another prisoner swap, with 106 Russian captives freed in exchange for 100 Ukrainians.
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Russian opposition figure Vladimir Kara-Murza said on Monday he stood by all of his political statements, including against the Ukraine offensive, that led him to face 25 years in jail.

“I subscribe to every word that I have said, that I am incriminated for today,” Kara-Murza said, citing his fight against the Ukraine offensive and President Vladimir Putin.

“Not only do I not repent for any of it — I am proud of it,” he said in his last words to the court, which were published on journalist Alexei Venediktov’s Telegram channel.

Kara-Murza, 41, is accused of several charges including treason, spreading false information about the Russian army.

“I only blame myself for one thing,” Kara-Murza said. “I failed to convince enough of my compatriots and politicians in democratic countries of the danger that the current Kremlin regime poses for Russia and for the world.”

The Western-educated journalist was a close associate of opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, who was shot dead near the Kremlin in 2015.

“I’m proud of the fact that Boris Nemtsov brought me into politics. And I hope he’s not ashamed of me,” Kara-Murza said.

His high-profile trial is the latest in a string of cases against opposition voices in Russia in a crackdown that has intensified since Putin sent troops to Ukraine last year.

Prosecutors have called for 25 years against him.

The verdict is expected next Monday, but the politician said, “I know my sentence  … such is the price for non-silence in Russia now.”

Kara-Murza says he was poisoned twice — in 2015 and 2017 — because of his political activities, but he continued to spend long periods of time in Russia.

His condition has worsened in prison, his lawyer Vadim Prokhorov has said.

“I also know that the day will come when the darkness over our country will dissipate,” Kara-Murza also said.

“When the war will be called a war … when the ones who instigated and started this war will be the ones branded as criminals, and not people who tried to stop it.” 
…

Latest developments:

Two killed In Zaporizhzhia after a Russian airstrike hit a residential building in the southeastern Ukrainian city.
In his Easter Sunday message, Pope Francis invoked prayers for both the Ukrainian and Russian people. He also praised nations that help refugees.
Ukrainian photographer turns battle-ravaged bodies into works of art.

 

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said Monday his country needs security guarantees from Russia, according to state broadcaster BelTA.

The comments came as Lukashenko hosted Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.

According to BelTA, Lukashenko cited his talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin last week, saying the two leaders discussed the need for Russia to protect Belarus “as its own territory” if there were “aggression” toward Belarus.

Putin drew criticism last month when he announced Russia would deploy tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus.

Russian forces also used Belarus as a staging area to launch the full-scale invasion of Ukraine more than one year ago, after the two allies insisted they were holding only military drills with no plan for an attack on Ukraine.

Two Ukraine provinces — Kharkiv in the northeast and Zaporizhzhia in the southeast — were hit by Russian missiles, rockets and artillery fire over the weekend, the Ukrainian military reported Sunday.

Oleksandr Prokudin, Kherson region governor, said Russian warplanes struck two communities late Sunday, but he said there were no immediate reports of casualties, according to The Associated Press.

Kharkiv Governor Oleh Syniehubov said the shelling in Kupiansk, a town formerly held by Russian forces before Ukraine took control last September, killed two men Sunday.

Later Sunday, Syniehubov said on Telegram the city remained under attack, and Russian forces were targeting residential areas with rocket launchers, the AP reported.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy denounced the Russian airstrikes that coincided with the observance of Orthodox Palm Sunday. The majority of Ukraine’s 41 million people are Orthodox Christians who celebrate Easter on April 16.

“This is how the terrorist state marks Palm Sunday,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address. “This is how Russia places itself in even greater isolation from the world.”

Some material in this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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