ALEXANDRIA, Va. — Twenty years ago this month, photos of abused prisoners and smiling U.S. soldiers guarding them at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison were released, shocking the world.

Now, three survivors of Abu Ghraib will finally get their day in U.S. court against the military contractor they hold responsible for their mistreatment.

The trial is scheduled to begin Monday in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, and it will be the first time that Abu Ghraib survivors are able to bring their claims of torture to a U.S. jury, said Baher Azmy, a lawyer with the Center for Constitutional Rights representing the plaintiffs.

The defendant in the civil suit, CACI, supplied the interrogators who worked at the prison. The Virginia-based contractor denies any wrongdoing and has emphasized throughout 16 years of litigation that its employees are not alleged to have inflicted any abuse on any of the plaintiffs in the case.

The plaintiffs, though, seek to hold CACI responsible for setting the conditions that resulted in the torture they endured, citing evidence in government investigations that CACI contractors instructed military police to “soften up” detainees for their interrogations.

Retired Army Gen. Antonio Taguba, who led an investigation into the Abu Ghraib scandal, is among those expected to testify. His inquiry concluded that at least one CACI interrogator should be held accountable for instructing military police to set conditions that amounted to physical abuse.

There is little dispute that the abuse was horrific. The photos released in 2004 showed naked prisoners stacked into pyramids or dragged by leashes. Some photos had a soldier smiling and giving a thumbs up while posing next to a corpse, or detainees being threatened with dogs, or hooded and attached to electrical wires.

The plaintiffs cannot be clearly identified in any of the infamous images, but their descriptions of mistreatment are unnerving.

Suhail Al Shimari has described sexual assaults and beatings during his two months at the prison. He was also electrically shocked and dragged around the prison by a rope tied around his neck. Former Al-Jazeera reporter Salah Al-Ejaili said he was subjected to stress positions that caused him to vomit black liquid. He was also deprived of sleep, forced to wear women’s underwear and threatened with dogs.

CACI, though, has said the U.S. military is the institution that bears responsibility for setting the conditions at Abu Ghraib and that its employees weren’t in a position to be giving orders to soldiers. In court papers, lawyers for the contractor group have said the “entire case is nothing more than an attempt to impose liability on CACI PT because its personnel worked in a war zone prison with a climate of activity that reeks of something foul. The law, however, does not recognize guilt by association with Abu Ghraib.”

The case has bounced through the courts since 2008, and CACI has tried roughly 20 times to have it tossed out of court. The U.S. Supreme Court in 2021 ultimately turned back CACI’s appeal efforts and sent the case back to district court for trial.

In one of CACI’s appeal arguments, the company contended that the U.S. enjoys sovereign immunity against the torture claims, and that CACI enjoys derivative immunity as a contractor doing the government’s bidding. But U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema, in a first-of-its kind ruling, determined that the U.S. government can’t claim immunity when it comes to allegations that violate established international norms, like torturing prisoners, so CACI as a result can’t claim any derivative immunity.

Jurors next week are also expected to hear testimony from some of the soldiers who were convicted in military court of directly inflicting the abuse. Ivan Frederick, a former staff sergeant who was sentenced to more than eight years of confinement after a court-martial conviction on charges including assault, indecent acts and dereliction of duty, has provided deposition testimony that is expected to be played for the jury because he has refused to attend the trial voluntarily. The two sides have differed on whether his testimony establishes that soldiers were working under the direction of CACI interrogators.

The U.S. government may present a wild card in the trial, which is scheduled to last two weeks. Both the plaintiffs and CACI have complained that their cases have been hampered by government assertions that some evidence, if made public, would divulge state secrets that would harm national security.

Government lawyers will be at the trial ready to object if witnesses stray into territory they deem to be a state secret, they said at a pretrial hearing April 5.

Judge Brinkema, who has overseen complex national security cases many times, warned the government that if it asserts such a privilege at trial, “it better be a genuine state secret.”

Jason Lynch, a government lawyer, assured her, “We’re trying to stay out of the way as much as we possibly can.”

Of the three plaintiffs, only Al-Ejaili, who now lives in Sweden, is expected to testify in person. The other two will testify remotely from Iraq. Brinkema has ruled that the reasons they were sent to Abu Ghraib are irrelevant and won’t be given to jurors. All three were released after periods of detention ranging from two months to a year without ever being charged with a crime, according to court papers.

“Even if they were terrorists, it doesn’t excuse the conduct that’s alleged here,” she said at the April 5 hearing.
…

…

As the Biden administration and the US Senate look to the US House to take up a bill for aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, experts say U.S. allies are not the only ones in need of the funding boost. As VOA Pentagon correspondent Carla Babb reports, some say the US defense industry desperately needs the boost as well.
Camera: Mary Cielak
…

President Joe Biden hosted Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. on Thursday, aiming to send a clear message to Beijing that it must stop behaving aggressively against its South China Sea neighbors. White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara reports.
…

…

indianapolis, indiana — Semiconductors, or microchips, are critical to almost everything electronic used in the modern world. In 1990, the United States produced about 40% of the world’s semiconductors. As manufacturing migrated to Asia, U.S. production fell to about 12%.  

“During COVID, we got a wake-up call. It was like [a] Sputnik moment,” explained Mark Lundstrom, an engineer who has worked with microchips much of his life. 

The 2020 global coronavirus pandemic slowed production in Asia, creating a ripple through the global supply chain and leading to shortages of everything from phones to vehicles. Lundstrom said increasing U.S. reliance on foreign chip manufacturers exposed a major weakness. 

“We know that AI is going to transform society in the next several years, it requires extremely powerful chips. The most powerful leading-edge chips.” 

Today, Lundstrom is the acting dean of engineering at Purdue University in Lafayette, Indiana, a leader in cutting-edge semiconductor development, which has new importance amid the emerging field of artificial intelligence. 

“If we fall behind in AI, the consequences are enormous for the defense of our country, for our economic future,” Lundstrom told VOA. 

Amid the buzz of activity in a laboratory on Purdue’s campus, visitors can get a vision of what the future might look like in microchip technology. 

“The key metrics of the performance of the chips actually are the size of the transistors, the devices, which is the building block of the computer chips,” said Zhihong Chen, director of Purdue’s Birck Nanotechnology Center, where engineers work around the clock to push microchip technology into the future. 

“We are talking about a few atoms in each silicon transistor these days. And this is what this whole facility is about,” Chen said. “We are trying to make the next generation transistors better devices than current technologies. More powerful and more energy-efficient computer chips of the future.” 

Not just RVs anymore

Because of Purdue’s efforts, along with those on other university campuses in the state, Indiana believes it’s an attractive location for manufacturers looking to build new microchip facilities. 

“Purdue University alone, a top four-ranked engineering school, offers more engineers every year than the next top three,” said Eric Holcomb, Indiana’s Republican governor. “When you have access to that kind of talent, when you have access to the cost of doing business in the state of Indiana, that’s why people are increasingly saying, Indiana.” 

Holcomb is in the final year of his eight-year tenure in the state’s top position. He wants to transform Indiana beyond the recreational vehicle, or “RV capital” of the country.  

“We produce about plus-80% of all the RV production in North America in one state,” he told VOA. “We are not just living up to our reputation as being the number one manufacturing state per capita in America, but we are increasingly embracing the future of mobility in America.” 

Holcomb is spearheading an effort to make Indiana the next great technology center as the U.S. ramps up investment in domestic microchip development and manufacturing.  “If we want to compete globally, we have to get smarter and healthier and more equipped, and we have to continue to invest in our quality of place,” Holcomb told VOA in an interview. 

His vision is shared by other lawmakers, including U.S. Senator Todd Young of Indiana, who co-sponsored the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act, which commits more than $50 billion in federal funding for domestic microchip development. 

‘We are committed’

Indiana is now home to one of 31 designated U.S. technology and innovation hubs, helping it qualify for hundreds of millions of dollars in grants designed to attract technology-driven businesses. 

“The signal that it sends to the rest of the world [is] that we are in it, we are committed, and we are focused,” said Holcomb. “We understand that economic development, economic security and national security complement one another.” 

Indiana’s efforts are paying off. 

In April, South Korean microchip manufacturer SK Hynix announced it was planning to build a $4 billion facility near Purdue University that would produce next-generation, high-bandwidth memory, or HBM chips, critical for artificial intelligence applications.  

The facility, slated to start operating in 2028, could create more than 1,000 new jobs. While U.S. chip manufacturer SkyWater also plans to invest nearly $2 billion in Indiana’s new LEAP Innovation District near Purdue, the state recently lost bidding to host chipmaker Intel, which selected Ohio for two new factories. 

“Companies tend to like to go to locations where there is already that infrastructure, where that supply chain is in place,” Purdue’s Lundstrom said. “That’s a challenge for us, because this is a new industry for us. So, we have a chicken-and- egg problem that we have to address, and we are beginning to address that.” 

Lundstrom said the CHIPS and Science Act and the federal money that comes with it are helping Indiana ramp up to compete with other U.S. locations already known for microchip development, such as Silicon Valley in California and Arizona. 

What could help Indiana gain an edge is its natural resources — plenty of land and water, and regular weather patterns, all crucial for the sensitive processes needed to manufacture microchips at large manufacturing centers. 
…

washington — Months after Manila withdrew from China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) projects, Washington announced a set of infrastructure projects in the Philippines, the first under an initiative to accelerate investments in partner countries in the Indo-Pacific.

The infrastructure projects, known as PGI Luzon corridor, were announced by U.S. President Joe Biden as he hosted Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida at the White House on Thursday. 

“It means more jobs for people across the entire region,” Biden said. “It means more investment in sectors critical to our future clean energy, ports, railroads, agriculture and much more.” 

Marcos is seen as much closer to Washington than his predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte. Last year, he skipped a BRI summit in Beijing that marked the 10th anniversary of China’s $1 trillion international infrastructure-building program.

“We seek to identify ways of growing our economies and making them more resilient, climate-proofing our cities and our societies, sustaining our development progress,” he said at the trilateral summit. 

PGI is an initialism for Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment, an initiative that offers grants, federal financing and private sector investment to partner countries. It was launched in 2021 by the U.S. and G7 partners under the title “Build Back Better World” and billed as an alternative to China’s BRI.

PGI Luzon corridor

PGI Luzon corridor is the first project of its kind in the Indo-Pacific and will “connect Subic Bay, Clark, Manila and Batangas in the Philippines to accelerate coordinated investments in high-impact infrastructure projects, including ports, rail, clean energy, semiconductors, supply chains and other forms of connectivity in the Philippines,” a senior administration official said during a briefing on Wednesday. The official asked for anonymity in speaking to reporters.

The official did not provide more details on the project but noted “it will take some time” to secure investments. She highlighted a recent U.S. trade and investment mission to the Philippines that announced “more than $1 billion” in combined investments to promote the Philippines’ innovation economy, clean energy transition and supply chain resilience.

Rebecca Ray, senior researcher with the Global China Initiative at the Boston University Global Development Policy Center, said that PGI Luzon corridor could lead to “healthy competition among major sources of lending and investment globally.”

Those lending sources now recognize that developing countries “need support in overcoming hard infrastructure bottlenecks for industrialization,” she told VOA.

The U.S. and Japan will also provide funding for technology in the Philippines that will improve wireless communication throughout the region, the official said.

In addition, the official said, the Development Finance Corporation, a U.S. development bank that partners with the private sector, will open its first regional office in the Philippines.

If the U.S. can sustain its focus and investments, PGI will be quite beneficial to the Philippines, said Derek Grossman, a senior analyst at the Rand Corporation, an American global policy research group.

“That said, we have seen numerous funding battles to get funds passed through Congress on these types of programs,” he told VOA. “And thus, this essential part is hardly guaranteed.”

Manila out of BRI

As ties with Beijing become increasingly strained over territorial disputes in the South China Sea, Manila announced in November that it has given up on Chinese funding for three major transportation projects, expressing confidence in securing financial backing elsewhere.

Even so, Chinese investment in the Philippines does not appear to be waning, Ray said, citing Chinese firm Yadea’s 2023 announcement of a $1 billion investment in e-motorcycle manufacturing, the second-largest investment in the Philippines for the year.

The Biden administration said it mobilized billions of dollars of U.S. private sector investments in the Indo-Pacific, including from Vena Energy, a company developing 2.4GW of renewable-energy projects in the Philippines.
…

Washington — On a near daily basis, Scott Cullinane talks with members of Congress about Russia’s war in Ukraine. As a lobbyist for the nonprofit Razom, part of his job is to convince them of Ukraine’s need for greater U.S. support to survive.

But as lawmakers debated a $95 billion package that includes about $60 billion in aid for Ukraine, Cullinane noticed an increase in narratives alleging Ukrainian corruption. What stood out is that these were the same talking points promoted by Russian disinformation.

So, when The Washington Post published an investigation into an extensive and coordinated Russian campaign to influence U.S. public opinion to deny Ukraine the aid, Cullinane says he was not surprised.

“This problem has been festering and growing for years,” he told VOA. “I believe that Russia’s best chance for victory is not on the battlefield, but through information operations targeted on Western capitals, including Washington.”

The Post investigation is based on more than 100 documents collected by a European intelligence service.

The files exposed a Kremlin-linked campaign in which “political strategists and trolls have written thousands of fabricated news articles, social media posts and comments that promote American isolationism, stir fear over the United States’ border security and attempt to amplify U.S. economic and racial tensions,” the Post reported.

Social media

One of the main methods for spreading such disinformation is social media, according to Roman Osadchuk, a researcher at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab and an expert on propaganda and influence campaigns.

“The process begins with a Russian publication on a small website or social media account. This is then picked up by a small Russian Telegram channel, which is subsequently shared by a larger channel with more subscribers,” Osadchuk said.

From there, someone will translate the content into English and share it, for example, on X.

“This is how Russian disinformation can quickly spread within the English-speaking X community,” Osadchuk said.

In an article published April 8, The Washington Post cited Microsoft and the social media intelligence company Graphika as saying that some articles created within this operation could have been first published on sites known as doppelgangers.

Osadchuk told VOA that these are deceptive replicas of legitimate media websites. They feature fake articles and are often taken down, only to be replaced by clones with slightly different web addresses.

“Nobody would know about these sites’ existence unless they are promoted on social media platforms. However, as soon as they detect them, social media block them. So, Russians quickly replace banned sites with their clones,” he said.

Worldwide effect

In interviews with U.S. media, two influential Republicans said they believe the propaganda has influenced their base and some of their colleagues.

“It is absolutely true. We see, directly coming from Russia, attempts to mask communications that are anti-Ukraine and pro-Russia messages, some of which we even hear being uttered on the House floor,” House Intelligence Committee Chair Mike Turner said in an interview with CNN.

In an interview with the U.S. news website Puck, Michael McCaul, head of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said, “Russian propaganda has made its way into the U.S., unfortunately, and it’s infected a good chunk of my party’s base.”

Serhiy Kudelia, a political scientist at Baylor University, says the Kremlin messaging is effective because it plays on existing fears.

He says the disinformation seeks to reinforce already held beliefs such as the wastefulness of aid to Ukraine, or fuels existing anger and energizes opposition to sending assistance.

“When such alignment occurs, it is easier to push through disinformation and invented news stories that would be accepted as credible by a large number of people, including members of Congress, since they reinforce their prior beliefs,” Kudelia said.

“Once fabricated stories enter mainstream public debates, they become almost impossible to debunk or separate truth from lies,” he said.

The disinformation campaign is similar to ones seen in Europe. Both seek to decrease support for Ukraine, undermine public trust in their institutions and polarize society, says Jakub Kalenský, a senior analyst at Helsinki-based European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats.

Kalenský, who is deputy director of the center’s Hybrid Influence team, believes the Kremlin’s disinformation activities have a significant effect on politics worldwide.

“This is why Russia employs thousands of people for this activity. This is why they spend billions every year, because they see it works,” he said.

But Olga Belogolova, director of the Emerging Technologies Initiative at Johns Hopkins University, says that it is hard to know how effective these propaganda efforts are.

“Russian influence operations are not necessarily always designed to get people to believe anything in particular, but to get them to believe nothing at all,” she told VOA. Belogolova added that claims of the efforts being successful in swaying opinion “is not only irresponsible, it’s dangerous.”

Countermeasures needed

Last month, the U.S. Treasury Department issued sanctions on two people and two companies that it says are connected to a “foreign malign influence campaign.” They include Moscow-based Social Design Agency, its founder Ilya Gambashidze, Russia-based Group Structura LLC and its CEO Nikolai Tupikin.

The Social Design Agency and Gambashidze are believed to be involved in the campaign described in the Post article on April 8.

Kalenský advises governments on countering disinformation and says its success requires countermeasures.

These include strengthening detection and documentation of Russian disinformation campaigns, increasing awareness and resilience of audiences to the propaganda efforts, and preventing the aggressor from exploiting weaknesses of social media and societies.

“Finally, we need to impose higher costs on the information aggressors. So far, they are almost unopposed in conducting their aggression,” Kalenský said.

For Cullinane, the Russian disinformation campaign makes his job harder. He says the debate about the role the U.S. should play in the world appears to be shifting and invoking pre-World War II isolationism.

But he remains resolute. Part of his work is finding what resonates most with each lawmaker.

“Some offices focus very much on the human rights situation in Ukraine. Many members are very moved by the plight of religious communities in occupied territories of Ukraine and the persecution they face at the hands of the Russian military,” Cullinane said. “Other offices are very intrigued by the military reform and the military innovation brought about by an active war in Ukraine.”

The national security spending bill is currently awaiting approval in the House.

This story originated in VOA’s Ukraine Service.
…

In Telangana state, India, a man is desperately trying to get his brother back from the front lines in Ukraine after he was duped into working for Russia during its invasion of the country. Experts explain why Russia is using such subterfuge in its war effort. Henry Wilkins reports.
…

Reproductive rights are again at the forefront of the U.S. presidential campaign, as Republican candidate Donald Trump distances himself from an Arizona Supreme Court decision to ban most abortions in the state. VOA’s Scott Stearns has the story.
…

The Midwestern state of Indiana aspires to become the next great technology center as the United States ramps up investment in domestic microchip development and manufacturing. VOA’s Kane Farabaugh has more from Indianapolis. Videographer: Kane Farabaugh, Adam Greenbaum
…

London — The wife of Julian Assange said Thursday her husband’s legal case “could be moving in the right direction” after President Joe Biden confirmed the U.S. may drop charges against the imprisoned WikiLeaks founder.

It came as supporters in several cities rallied to demand the release of Assange, on the fifth anniversary of his incarceration in London’s high-security Belmarsh prison.

Biden said Wednesday that his administration is “considering” a request from Australia to drop the decade-long U.S. push to prosecute Assange for publishing a trove of classified American documents. The proposal would see Assange, an Australian citizen, return home rather than be sent to the U.S. to face espionage charges.

Officials have not provided more details, but Stella Assange said the comments are “a good sign.”

“It looks like things could be moving in the right direction,” she told the BBC, saying the indictment was “a Trump legacy and really Joe Biden should have dropped it from day one.”

Assange has been indicted on 17 espionage charges and one charge of computer misuse over his website’s publication of classified U.S. documents almost 15 years ago. American prosecutors allege that Assange, 52, encouraged and helped U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning steal diplomatic cables and military files that WikiLeaks published, putting lives at risk.

Australia argues there is a disconnect between the U.S. treatment of Assange and Manning. Then-U.S. President Barack Obama commuted Manning’s 35-year sentence to seven years, which allowed her release in 2017.

Assange’s supporters say he is a journalist protected by the First Amendment who exposed U.S. military wrongdoing in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Assange has been in prison since 2019 as he fought extradition, having spent seven years before that holed up in Ecuador’s London embassy to avoid being sent to Sweden over allegations of rape and sexual assault.

The relationship between Assange and his hosts eventually soured, and he was evicted from the embassy in April 2019. British police immediately arrested and imprisoned him in Belmarsh for breaching bail in 2012.

The U.K. government signed an extradition order in 2022, but a British court ruled last month that Assange can’t be sent to the United States unless U.S. authorities guarantee he won’t get the death penalty.

A further court hearing in the case is scheduled for May 20.

Assange was too ill to attend his most recent hearings. Stella Assange has said her husband’s health continues to deteriorate in prison and she fears he’ll die behind bars.
…

Washington — While the debates around the U.S. aid to Ukraine focus on military assistance, Kyiv is asking Washington for support in another crucial area — locating POWs and civilian hostages held in Russia and their rehabilitation after they return home. 

Ukraine has also called on the United States to introduce sanctions against those who abuse Ukrainian captives in Russian prisons.

Tеtiana, who asked her surname be kept confidential for her family’s safety, said her father, a civilian pensioner, was taken during the Russian occupation of his small Ukrainian village in April 2022.

She found out about his fate only after Ukrainian forces liberated the village. Later, she learned more from Ukrainian POWs who had shared jail cells with him before being released in prisoner swaps.

“They are given just enough food to keep them alive. … They are not allowed to sit. They constantly stand,” she told VOA. 

Tetiana said other treatment amounts to psychological torture.

“They may be told that they’re being taken for a [prisoner] exchange and then returned on the same day and told, ‘We wanted to exchange you, but Ukraine doesn’t want you back,’” she said.

Tetіana talked to VOA in March during visits to the U.S. Senate and State Department with other relatives of prisoners and representatives of the Ukrainian Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War (KSHPPV).  

Olha Pylypey, a member of the small delegation of relatives, told VOA about her brother, Yuliy Pylypey, a marine who fought in Mariupol. On April 12, 2022, he, along with other Ukrainian marines, was captured by the Russian forces at the Ilyich Iron and Steel Works plant. 

Released prisoners told her that her brother is jailed in Kursk, Russia. They also told Yuliy’s family that the administrators and guards of Russian prisons treat Ukrainian captives much worse than regular Russian inmates. 

“They line up [Ukrainian prisoners] and release aggressive dogs on them and don’t allow them to defend themselves,” Pylypey said. She is afraid Yuliy may have also been raped.

Officials at the U.N. Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, or HRMMU, interviewed and documented 60 Ukrainian servicemen recently released from captivity and found that most of them had experienced sexual violence.

“Almost every single one of the Ukrainian POWs we interviewed described how Russian servicepersons or officials tortured them during their captivity, using repeated beatings, electric shocks, threats of execution, prolonged stress positions and mock execution. Over half of them were subjected to sexual violence,” said Danielle Bell, who heads HRMMU.   

Russian officials deny accusations of mistreatment of Ukrainian prisoners. On November 30, 2023, Russian Commissioner for Human Rights Tatiana Moskalkova said she visited 119 Ukrainian POWs in Russian prisons and found the prisons adhered to international standards.

Andriy Kryvtsov, head of the Military Medics of Ukraine nongovernmental organization, helped find his sister-in-law, military medic Olena Kryvtsova, who was part of a prisoner swap after six months in Russian captivity.  

“They were tortured, beaten and used as punching bags,” Kryvtsov said. “Russian special forces trained on them. They beat them like meat. She lost a lot of weight. When she came home, she weighed 77 pounds.”

Along with other relatives of prisoners, Kryvtsov asked the U.S. and its partners for sanctions not only against the leadership of Russia but also against prison personnel.

“Putin is not personally torturing these people,” he said. 

Andriy Yusov, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s military intelligence and a member of the KSHPPV, told VOA that Ukrainian officials understand that the U.S. can’t force Russia to comply with the Geneva Convention treaties, which establish standards of humane treatment for people affected by armed conflicts, including POWs. 

But he said the U.S. can help by locating the whereabouts of Ukrainians in Russian prisons so they can be included on the prisoner exchange lists.

The Red Cross has confirmed the identities of 5,000 Ukrainians in Russian captivity. But tens of thousands of people, both civilians and prisoners of war, remain missing, Ukrainian officials say. 

Yusov also emphasized the importance of rehabilitating released prisoners and assisting their families. 

“Thousands of family members of our defenders who ended up in captivity, as well as thousands of Ukrainians who’ve returned from Russian captivity, need social, psychological and medical support, and all this is a subject for our cooperation with partners,” he told VOA.   

Russia does not differentiate between civilians and military captives, considering both to have been “detained for counteracting the SVO,” a Russian abbreviation for special military operation – Moscow’s official designation of its invasion of Ukraine – Ukrainian human rights lawyers told the BBC. 

Lawyers at the Center for Civil Liberties, the Ukrainian organization that received the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize, told the BBC that they believe there are about 2,000 Ukrainian civilian prisoners in Russia and the occupied territories.

According to a report by the U.N. Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine published in March, at least 32 Ukrainian servicemen were executed in Russian captivity between December 1, 2023, and February 29, 2024.
…

Washington — Strong growth in the United States has helped to lift the outlook for the world economy, but more needs to be done to stem a slide in productivity, the head of the IMF said Thursday. 

“Global growth is marginally stronger on account of robust activity in the United States and in many emerging markets economies,” International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva told reporters in prepared remarks. 

The U.S. economy grew by 2.5 percent last year, according to the U.S. Commerce Department, far outstripping most other advanced economies. 

“Robust household consumption and business investment, and an easing of supply chain problems helped,” Georgieva added. “And inflation is going down, somewhat faster than previously expected.” 

She spoke just a few days before the IMF-World Bank spring meetings of world financial leaders in Washington, one of two such gatherings hosted each year by the international financial institutions. 

Her remarks suggest the IMF now expects the world economy to grow faster than it predicted in January, when it forecast global growth to rise by 3.1 percent in 2024, and 3.2 percent in 2025. 

“It is tempting to breathe a sigh of relief. We have avoided a global recession and a period of stagflation — as some had predicted,” Georgieva said. “But there are still plenty of things to worry about.” 

Among the challenges, Georgieva mentioned rising geopolitical tension, which, she said, is increasing the risks of fragmentation of the global economy. 

She also highlighted the challenges of growing public debt and a “broad-based slowdown in productivity.” 

Because of this, the IMF expects growth to remain at just above 3 percent over the medium term — below its historical average. 

To help the global economy to heal and fix the productivity challenge, Georgieva laid out a series of steps to bring global inflation and public debt back down to sustainable levels, and also called for steps to eliminate “constraints to economic activity” and boost productivity. 

“In short, if there is a market failure that is being addressed — such as accelerating innovation to address the existential threat of climate change — there is a case for government intervention, including through industrial policy,” she said. 

“If there is no market failure, there is a need for caution,” she added. 
…

A volunteer fighter from western Ukraine who goes by call sign Grandfather, and his commander from Crimea, known as Mix, are fighting shoulder to shoulder in Donbas. Anna Kosstutschenko met with the two men on the front lines of the war with Russia. Camera and video editing by Pavel Suhodolskiy.
…

Beijing — China on Thursday announced rare sanctions against two U.S. defense companies over what it said is their support for arms sales to Taiwan, the self-governing island democracy Beijing claims as its own territory to be recovered by force if necessary.

The announcement freezes the assets of General Atomics Aeronautical Systems and General Dynamics Land Systems held within China. It also bars the companies’ management from entering the country. 

Filings show General Dynamics operates a half-dozen Gulfstream and jet aviation services operations in China, which remains heavily reliant on foreign aerospace technology even as it attempts to build its own presence in the field. 

The company helps make the Abrams tank being purchased by Taiwan to replace outdated armor intended to deter or resist an invasion from China. 

General Atomics produces the Predator and Reaper drones used by the U.S. military. Chinese authorities did not go into details on the company’s alleged involvement with supplying arms to Taiwan. 

Beijing has long threatened such sanctions, but has rarely issued them as its economy reels from the COVID-19 pandemic, high unemployment and a sharp decline in foreign investment. 

“The continued U.S. arms sales to China’s Taiwan region seriously violate the one-China principle and the provisions of the three China-U.S. joint communiqués, interfere in China’s internal affairs, and undermine China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” China’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement. It insists that the mainland and the island to which Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist forces fled amid civil war in 1949 remain part of a single Chinese nation. 

Sanctions were leveled under Beijing’s recently enacted Law of the People’s Republic of China on Countering Foreign Sanctions. 

General Dynamics fully owned entities are registered in Hong Kong, the southern Chinese semi-autonomous city over which Beijing has steadily been increasing its political and economic control to the point that it faces no vocal opposition and has seen its critics silenced, imprisoned or forced into exile. 

Despite their lack of formal diplomatic ties — a concession Washington made to Beijing when they established relations in 1979 — the U.S. remains Taiwan’s most important source of diplomatic support and supplier of military hardware from fighter jets to air defense systems. 

Taiwan has also been investing heavily in its own defense industry, producing sophisticated missiles and submarines. 

China had 14 warplanes and six navy ships operating around Taiwan on Wednesday and Thursday, with six of the aircraft crossing into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone — a tactic to test Taiwan’s defenses, wear down its capabilities and intimidate the population. 

So far, that has had little effect, with the vast majority of the island’s 23 million people opposing political unification with China.
…

Rome — Nine people, including a baby, have died after their boat capsized while trying to cross the Mediterranean in stormy weather, and another 15 people are feared missing, Italy’s coast guard said on Thursday.

The Italian coast guard said it received a cooperation request from the Maltese search and rescue (SAR) authority after the boat capsized approximately 50 kilometers southeast of the island of Lampedusa on Wednesday.

The coast guard said it dispatched its own patrol boat to the scene, which “rescued 22 survivors and recovered 9 deceased individuals, including a baby.”

The rescue operations “were particularly challenging due to adverse weather and sea conditions in the area with waves up to 2.50 meters,” the coast guard said.

The nationality of the boat’s passengers was not known but Lampedusa, which sits in the Mediterranean between Tunisia, Malta and the larger Italian island of Sicily, is the first port of call for many migrants seeking to reach the European Union.

“New terrible shipwreck near Lampedusa during a rescue operation,” UNHCR Communication Officer Filippo Ungaro posted on X late on Wednesday. The survivors, taken to Lampedusa, were “in a state of hypothermia and shock,” he added.

An aircraft from the Italian coast guard was conducting aerial searches for the missing in the area of the shipwreck.

In a separate operation, the Italian coast guard said it rescued 37 migrants “who were at the mercy of the waves aboard a small wooden boat about 7 meters long” off the coast of Lampedusa on Wednesday. 
…

ISTANBUL — Turkish police have seized the third largest haul of cocaine in the country’s history, Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya announced Thursday, as groups monitoring organized crime warned that the country was becoming an entry point for drugs reaching Europe.

Some 608 kilograms of cocaine, most of it in liquid form, were confiscated in an operation across three provinces, Yerlikaya posted on the social media platform X. Nearly 830 kilograms of precursor chemicals used to process the drug were also seized.

Yerlikaya said the police operation targeted an international gang allegedly led by a Lebanese-Venezuelan national, who was among four foreign members of the “organized crime group” detained, along with nine Turks.

“The amount of cocaine seized in the … operation was the third-largest amount of cocaine seized at one time in Turkey,” the minister added.

Groups monitoring organized crime say Turkey is growing as a transit hub for cocaine coming from South America to Europe as security at ports such as Rotterdam in the Netherlands becomes tighter.

In a report dated October last year, the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime said a 44% rise in cocaine seizures in Turkey between 2021 and 2022 was not reflected in data on domestic consumption, “suggesting that the country is likely to serve as a drug corridor.”

Officials made Turkey’s largest seizure — 1.1 tons of cocaine hidden in a consignment of bananas from Ecuador — at the Mediterranean port of Mersin in 2021.

Since coming to office in June last year, Yerlikaya has overseen a clampdown on organized crime in Turkey to counter claims the country has become a haven for foreign gangsters.

He regularly posts details of the latest police operation to target drug traffickers, fraudsters and other criminals.

Thursday’s social media post included a video, overlaid with dramatic music, showing apparent surveillance footage, large plastic containers and a pressing machine.

The operation was led by anti-narcotics officers based in Kocaeli, which lies southeast of Istanbul, but also included investigations in Tekirdag to Istanbul’s northwest and in the Mediterranean province of Antalya.

The gang used vineyards in Tekirdag and Antalya to store chemicals and process the cocaine, which had been disguised in fertilizer, according to Yerlikaya. A shotgun was also recovered by police, he added.

“We will not tolerate poison traffickers, organized crime groups and gangs, whether national or international,” the minister wrote. 
…

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — South Florida researchers trying to prevent predatory fish from devouring laboratory-grown coral are grasping at biodegradable straws in an effort to restore what some call the rainforest of the sea.

Scientists around the world have been working for years to address the decline of coral reef populations. Just last summer, reef rescue groups in South Florida and the Florida Keys were trying to save coral from rising ocean temperatures. Besides working to keep existing coral alive, researchers have also been growing new coral in labs and then placing them in the ocean.

But protecting the underwater ecosystem that maintains more than 25% of all marine species is not easy. Even more challenging is making sure that coral grown in a laboratory and placed into the ocean doesn’t become expensive fish food.

Marine researcher Kyle Pisano said one problem is that predators like parrot fish attempt to bite and destroy the newly transplanted coral in areas like South Florida, leaving them with less than a 40% survival rate. With projects calling for thousands of coral to be planted over the next year and tens of thousands of coral to be planted over the next decade, the losses add up when coral pieces can cost more than $100 each.

Pisano and his partner, Kirk Dotson, have developed the Coral Fort, claiming the small biodegradable cage that’s made in part with drinking straws boosts the survival rate of transplanted coral to over 90%.

“Parrot fish on the reef really, really enjoy biting a newly transplanted coral,” Pisano said. “They treat it kind of like popcorn.”

Fortunately the fish eventually lose interest in the coral as it matures, but scientists need to protect the coral in the meantime. Stainless steel and PVC pipe barriers have been set up around transplanted coral in the past, but those barriers needed to be cleaned of algae growth and eventually removed.

Pisano had the idea of creating a protective barrier that would eventually dissolve, eliminating the need to maintain or remove it. He began conducting offshore experiments with biodegradable coral cages as part of a master’s degree program at Nova Southeastern University. He used a substance called polyhydroxyalkanoate, a biopolymer derived from the fermentation of canola oil. PHA biodegrades in ocean, leaving only water and carbon dioxide. His findings were published last year.

The coral cage consists of a limestone disc surrounded by eight vertical phade brand drinking straws, made by Atlanta-based WinCup Inc. The device doesn’t have a top, Pisano said, because the juvenile coral needs sunlight and the parrot fish don’t generally want to position themselves facing downward to eat.

Dotson, a retired aerospace engineer, met Pisano through his professor at Nova Southeastern, and the two formed Reef Fortify Inc. to further develop and market the patent-pending Coral Fort. The first batch of cages were priced at $12 each, but Pisano and Dotson believe that could change as production scales up.

Early prototypes of the cage made from phade’s standard drinking straws were able to protect the coral for about two months before dissolving in the ocean, but that wasn’t quite long enough to outlast the interest of parrot fish. When Pisano and Dotson reached out to phade for help, the company assured them that it could make virtually any custom shape from its biodegradable PHA material.

“But it’s turning out that the boba straws, straight out of the box, work just fine,” Dotson said.

Boba straws are wider and thicker than normal drinking straws. They’re used for a tea-based drink that includes tapioca balls at the bottom of the cup. For Pisano and Dotson, that extra thickness means the straws last just long enough to protect the growing coral before harmlessly disappearing.

Reef Fortify is hoping to work with reef restoration projects all over the world. The Coral Forts already already being used by researchers at Nova Southeastern and the University of Miami, as well as Hawaii’s Division of Aquatic Resources.

Rich Karp, a coral researcher at the University of Miami, said they’ve been using the Coral Forts for about a month. He pointed out that doing any work underwater takes a great deal of time and effort, so having a protective cage that dissolves when it’s no longer needed basically cuts their work in half.

“Simply caging corals and then removing the cages later, that’s two times the amount of work, two times the amount of bottom time,” Karp said. “And it’s not really scalable.”

Experts say coral reefs are a significant part of the oceanic ecosystem. They occupy less than 1% of the ocean worldwide but provide food and shelter to nearly 25 percent of sea life. Coral reefs also help to protect humans and their homes along the coastline from storm surges during hurricanes.
…

…

The United States and Japan celebrated their decades-long alliance Wednesday night as President Joe Biden hosts Prime Minister Fumio Kishida at the White House for a state dinner. The Japanese leader’s visit marks a significant strengthening in defense and technology ties. White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara has this report.
…

For years, the U.S. state of Ohio was a solid indicator of American political opinion, choosing the winning presidential candidate in every election from 1964 to 2016. VOA Correspondent Scott Stearns reports that Ohio now appears more conservative, presenting a challenge for a Democratic Party trying to re-elect President Joe Biden and keep control of the U.S. Senate.
…

washington — U.S. House lawmakers rejected an attempt to reform a controversial foreign intelligence program Wednesday, the latest blow in Speaker Mike Johnson’s effort to lead a narrow Republican majority.

A renewal of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, failed to advance, 228-193, following a warning from former President Donald Trump on TruthSocial.

Trump said that FISA “was illegally used against me, and many others. They spied on my campaign!!” he wrote, using all capital letters.

A Justice Department investigation found in 2019 that surveillance of Trump campaign aide Carter Page continued for months after it should have ended.

The law — also referred to as Section 702 — allows U.S. intelligence agencies to collect data on foreigners overseas without obtaining a warrant. But it has received the most criticism for so-called “backdoor searches” that allow collection of U.S. citizens’ data. An attempted reform would have required the FBI to secure a warrant before collecting data.

“We’re enacting sweeping changes — 50 reforms, 56 to be exact — to the program that are in the base text that will stop the abuse of politicized FBI queries and prevent another Russia hoax debacle, among many other important reforms,” Johnson told reporters Wednesday morning. “No more of the intelligence community relying on fake news reports to order a FISA order, no more collusion.”

But Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene — who has filed a procedural motion to remove Johnson from the speakership — said those reforms were not enough.

“It’s like asking the deep state to hold itself accountable,” Greene told reporters Wednesday. “The FBI is abusing American people’s trust. The [Justice Department] has abused the American people’s trust. So, this doesn’t give me confidence that it will stop it.”

Nineteen House Republicans voted against the bill. Democrats said Wednesday that the proposed FISA reforms had not secured their votes.

“Whatever the vote count is, or whatever happens to that, it’s because the speaker has chosen not to advance this issue in a single standalone process. If he chooses to go a different route, then we’ll reassess,” Representative Pete Aguilar, chair of the House Democratic Caucus, said Wednesday morning.

An attempt to pass surveillance laws failed in December when House leadership pulled a vote amid internal Republican divisions.

Johnson argued to colleagues in a letter on Friday that the law would “establish new procedures to rein in the FBI, increase accountability at the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, or FISC, impose penalties for wrongdoing, and institute unprecedented transparency across the FISA process so we no longer have to wait years to uncover potential abuses.”

Christopher Wray, the director of the FBI, warned against some of the proposed changes in a speech Tuesday to the American Bar Association.

“Bottom line, a warrant requirement would be the equivalent of rebuilding the pre-9/11 intelligence ‘wall,’ ” he said in his prepared remarks. “As the threats to our homeland continue to evolve, the agility and effectiveness of 702 will be essential to the FBI’s ability — and really our mandate from the American people — to keep them safe for years to come.”

Unless Congress acts, authorization for the program expires on April 19.

Jeff Seldin contributed to this report.
…

the white house — Preparations take months. No detail is overlooked, for this is perhaps the most evolved form of diplomacy: the state dinner.

As first lady Jill Biden prepares Wednesday to host her fifth state dinner, for Japan’s leader, she made it clear that every aesthetic detail — from the crystal on the tables, to the food on the White House china, the decor in the State Dining Room, the music and the fashion — drips with diplomatic significance. This dinner, she said in her preview of the event, makes frequent reference to Washington’s famous cherry trees, a gift from Japan more than a century ago.

“As guests sit among the field of flowers, glass and silk butterflies from both our countries will dance over the tables, their graceful flight a reminder that as our nations navigate the winds of change, we do so together as partners in peace and prosperity,” she said.

The White House Historical Association lays out the high stakes, saying a state dinner “showcases global power and influence and sets the tone for the continuation of dialogue between the president and the visiting head of state.”

Roxanne Roberts, a style writer for The Washington Post who has covered state dinners for more than 30 years, likens the dinner to “the frosting on an already-baked cake.”

“The state dinner is the least important part of a state visit, but it’s the thing that gets the most attention,” she told VOA. “… And it sends a signal to not only the government of that country, but the people of that country that you’re important to us. We care about you.”

That’s reflected in the numbers. Records journalists requested from the State Department, which foots the bill, show that Obama-era dinners cost U.S. taxpayers more than $500,000 each. More recent dinner tabs have not been released.

The food!

Imagine, Roberts said, a lavish wedding.

“It’s as if,” she said, “There was a marriage between the two countries and this is the wedding reception.”

The most obvious manifestation of that is on the plate.

White House executive chef Cristeta Comerford said this menu took her “a couple of months” to design and field test. Over three courses, guests will take a tour through her Japan-influenced creations, starting with a nod to the beloved American twist on sushi, the California roll. Her version is rendered as a salad of house-cured salmon with avocado, grapefruit, watermelon radish, cucumber and shiso leaf fritters.

Beef has been a fixture of past Biden dinners – the exception, of course, being the menu for the 2023 state dinner for Indian leader Narendra Modi, a strict vegetarian. Guests at this dinner, accordingly, will move on to a dry-aged rib eye steak with blistered shishito pepper butter, a fricassee of fava beans, morels and cipollini mushrooms and a sesame oil sabayon.

And for dessert: a salted caramel pistachio cake with matcha tea ganache, cherry ice cream and a drizzle of raspberry coulis.

“We wanted to bring a little bit of the cherry blossoms that are here on the Tidal Basin right here to our dessert, in order for everyone to enjoy the cherry blossoms that we enjoy every year,” said White House executive pastry chef Susie Morrison.

The wines, as is now custom, will be American.

“The days when only French wines were served at state dinners are long gone,” Roberts said. “Primarily because there were a lot of American vineyards who basically said, ‘Whoa, what about us? We’re cool.'”

The fripperies!

A temporary water feature in the White House’s Cross Hall will feature live koi — “symbols of friendship, peace, luck and perseverance,” Biden said.

Paul Simon will perform for guests. And the first couples are exchanging gifts that include a three-legged black walnut table made by a Japanese-American-owned company, a set of records autographed by American singer Billy Joel, and, as a personal touch, “a framed painting of the Yoshino cherry tree that she planted with Mrs. Kishida on the South Lawn last spring.”

The fashion!

Japan’s first lady, Yuko Kishida, garnered rave reviews for her choice to don India’s most culturally and technically fraught of garments, the sari, by draping and meticulously pleating five meters of green Kanjeevaram silk around her body for a summit of global leaders last year in New Delhi.

As she landed in Washington for her first state visit on Tuesday — but her second trip to meet the Bidens — she greeted the couple in a flowing dress of autumn-toned watercolor florals. President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Fumio Kishida wore suits, while the U.S. first lady donned a black dress with a deep keyhole neckline and razor-sharp tailoring.

These decisions, Roberts said, are “more than just going off to the store and going, ‘Oh, that’s pretty. I think I’ll wear that.'”

And the pressure, she said, falls disproportionately on the leaders’ spouses, who are traditionally women.

“They’re ambassadors for the clothing that they wear, the look that they have,” she said. “And so all of those, all of those elements play into all of these choices. You know, the guys have it easy – just throw on the tuxedo.”

… And finally, the faux pas!

What could possibly go wrong?

Surprisingly, not a lot, Roberts said, adding, “The truth of the matter is that these state dinners tend to go off without a hitch, because the planning is done so well.”

But, she said, mistakes sometimes happen.

She described a long-ago dinner for Mexico’s leader that featured “an elaborate desert that had a guy with a sombrero sleeping as a decorative piece.”

“It was meant to be charming and kind of fun, and it just hit wrong,” she said.

Another memorable slip, she said, was at a 2009 state dinner for India, where two uninvited reality stars crashed the event.

“The fact that two people were able to get in who were not supposed to be there was, in fact, a scandal,” she said.

The East Wing, in its preview, chose to focus instead on the positive, with White House social secretary Carlos Elizondo homing in on the theme while raising the stakes of this impossibly complex event.

“That’s what we hope to capture,” he said. “…the magic of spring in our lasting friendship, each detail chosen to create a once-in-a-lifetime experience.”
…