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SEATTLE — Every part of Barbara Peraza-Garcia and her family’s single-room apartment in Seattle has a double or even triple purpose.

The 17-square-meter room is filled with an air mattress where she, her partner and their children, ages 2 and 4, sleep. It’s also where they play or watch TV. At mealtimes, it becomes their dining room.

It’s a tight squeeze for the family of asylum seekers from Venezuela. But at $900 a month —more than $550 less than the average studio in Seattle — the micro-apartment with a bare-bones bathroom and shared kitchen was just within their budget and gave them a quick exit from their previous arrangement sleeping on the floor of a church.

“It’s warm. We can cook ourselves. We have a private bathroom. It’s quiet,” said Peraza-Garcia, whose family came to the U.S. to escape crime in Venezuela and so she could access vital medication to combat cysts on her kidney. “We can be here as a family now.”

Boarding houses that rented single rooms to low-income, blue-collar or temporary workers were prevalent across the U.S. in the early 1900s. Known as single room occupancy units, or SROs, they started to disappear in the postwar years amid urban renewal efforts and a focus on suburban single-family housing.

Now the concept is reappearing — with the trendy name of “micro-apartment” and aimed at a much broader array of residents — as cities buffeted by surging homelessness struggle to make housing more affordable.

“If you’re a single person and you want a low-cost place to live, that’s as cheap as you’re going to get without trying to find a subsidized apartment,” said Dan Bertolet, senior director of housing and urbanism for the non-profit research center Sightline Institute.

The Pacific Northwest is a leader in the resurgence of this form of affordable housing. Oregon last year passed a bill opening the door for micro-apartments and Washington state lawmakers this year did the same, starting to clear red tape that for years has limited construction of the tiny units, which are about a third the size of an average studio apartment.

The Washington bill, which was signed this week by Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee after receiving nearly unanimous support in the Legislature, would require most cities to allow micro-apartments in residential buildings with at least six units, according to the Department of Commerce. It takes effect in late 2025.

The legislation is an effort to counteract skyrocketing housing prices and, in the Seattle area, one of the nation’s highest rates of homelessness, as well as a critical housing shortage.

Extremely low-income renters — those below federal poverty guidelines or earning 30% of the area median income — face a shortage of 7.3 million affordable rental homes, according to a National Low Income Housing Coalition report published last week. Such households account for 11 million — or nearly one-quarter — of renters nationwide, the report said.

Rep. Mia Gregerson, who sponsored Washington’s bill, said she predicts the measure will lead to thousands of units being built in her state, providing unsubsidized affordable housing to everyone from young people getting their first apartment and elderly people downsizing to those coming out of physical or mental health treatment.

“Government can’t close that gap all by itself, it has to have for-profit, market-rate housing built all at the same time,” said Gregerson, a Democrat.

The U.S. lost hundreds of thousands of SROs in the last half of the 20th century as associations with poverty and substandard accommodation sparked restrictive zoning laws. Some cities outlawed their construction altogether — a loss some housing experts say helped contribute to the homelessness crisis.

Facing that crisis and a critical housing shortage, cities and states across the nation are now shifting their stance.

In December, as her state grappled with a massive influx of migrants, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul announced a $50 million program aimed at repairing and renovating 500 SROs across the state. New York City lost at least 70,000 such units between the early 20th century and 2014, according to a report from New York University’s Furman Center.

But there is concern that this type of affordable housing is not an ideal fit for an especially vulnerable group — families.

There are more than 3,800 unhoused families with children in the Seattle area, among the highest in the nation, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development 2023 one-night count.

Cities need to focus on building affordable housing that also includes larger units, such as studios and one-bedroom apartments, said Marisa Zapata, a land-use planning professor at Portland State University.

“My biggest concern is that we will see them as the solution and not do right by our community members by building the housing that people want,” she said of micro-apartments.

The bill passed by Oregon lawmakers last year requires local governments to allow single room occupancy units in areas zoned for residential use. The provision took effect January 1.

Central City Concern, a Portland-based homeless services nonprofit, leases more than 1,000 SRO units — both subsidized and not — to people who are considered extremely low income. It helps people struggling to access housing due to things like eviction histories and poor credit scores.

The units have a median rent of $550 a month, making them a “vital option” for people exiting homelessness or living on fixed incomes, such as those with disabilities, said Sarah Holland, senior director of supportive housing and employment. Over 80% of tenants were formerly homeless, she said, and some have been living in their units for 30 years.

“As costs continue to escalate in Portland, it gives them the chance to stay in their home,” she said.

Cheyenne Welbourne moved into one of the nonprofit’s micro-apartments in downtown Portland last March after years of living on the streets. The room, which has a curtained-off toilet and sink, is just big enough to fit a single bed, a chair and a TV. But to him, it’s a treasured home that he’s decorated with colorful lights, potted plants and action figures. He uses the small kitchenette, which features an induction cooktop, for making the tea he loves to drink.

“All I had was just me and my backpack, and that’s it,” he said. “I was just happy to be in here and that I didn’t have to spend another winter out there.”

“I just want a home, you know? A nice home, a decent home.”

Some experts hope the Pacific Northwest will inspire more states to take similar steps.

“The alternatives are … people being in shelters, people being on the street, people being doubled, tripled, quadrupled up,” said Vicki Been, faculty director at New York University’s Furman Center and a law professor.

For Peraza-Garcia’s family in Seattle, the tight squeeze is worth it to be in the same complex as their cousins and within walking distance of grocery stores, a park and preschools. They plan to spend the next year in the micro-apartment and then move to a bigger place if they can get good-paying jobs.

“We’re happy because we’re here in a quiet place where we can be together as a family,” she said.
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Antioch, California — In 1939, after attending the Golden Gate International Exposition in San Francisco, Alfred Chan and his friends were headed back home to the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

“They got really hungry and decided to stop halfway in Antioch for a meal,” his son Ron Chan said. But, the waitress refused to serve the young men or even talk to them. They left the establishment an hour later, hungry and humiliated.

Eighty-two years after that incident, Alfred Chan received an apology delivered in person by Antioch Mayor Lamar Thorpe in November 2022. Chan, a World War II veteran who served in the U.S. Navy and worked 38 years for the city of Oakland, died at age 98, about three months after hearing those words.

“It helped close a bad moment in my father’s life,” Ron Chan said, adding that it gave him peace to see his father’s closure as well. “An apology may be just words that may not be enough to resolve all issues from the past. But without that first step, we have no progress.”

In May 2021, Thorpe had issued a formal apology for Antioch’s mistreatment of early Chinese immigrants, including the torching of Chinatown and driving out its residents, which has been documented by local newspapers and historians. Thorpe’s actions led to major cities like San Jose, Los Angeles and San Francisco passing similar resolutions.

The 2021 apology has also led to local residents and historians delving deeper into the past and working to establish a Chinatown Historic District, complete with murals and museum exhibits highlighting the history and accomplishments of the community in Antioch.

Chinese laborers were among the early population in Antioch, which was named in 1851. They likely numbered just under 100, said Lucy Meinhardt, an Antioch Historical Society Museum board member. They worked in farms, canneries and mines. They helped build river levees and established a Chinatown where the city’s downtown now stands.

In the 19th century, Chinese people across California endured discrimination such as wage disparity, bans on property ownership and sundown laws that barred them from going outside after dark. Those working and living around Antioch were no different.

In 1871, a massive fire wiped out several blocks of Antioch’s Chinatown. The townspeople decided that a Chinese laundry needed to be torn down to stop the blaze. Then in 1876, local newspapers reported that another blaze was deliberately started to drive six Chinese women who were allegedly prostitutes out of their homes. A Buddhist/Tao temple also perished in the fire, Meinhardt said.

It’s become popular local lore that Antioch was a “sundown town” and Chinese residents used tunnels to skirt the rules. Meinhardt says there is no record of such a law “but it had to have been a practice if it existed. I still suspect it existed.”

Before getting involved with the Antioch Historical Society and becoming committee chair for its Chinese History Project, Hans Ho said he had no idea a Chinatown once existed there. Chinese people were undoubtedly treated as second-class citizens, said Ho, who emigrated from Hong Kong in the 1960s.

“Regardless of which narrative you believe in, it is still an atrocity because these people were expelled or persecuted without due process of law and their houses were burned down,” he said.

He was also one of the representatives from the Chinese American community to receive Thorpe’s apology, an act that moved him to tears.

“I was shamelessly crying,” said Ho, who became visibly choked up just recalling that moment. “It’s the most obvious means of reconciliation that I’ve ever encountered.”

Today, the city of more than 111,000 is 25% white while Asians make up 12%. Hispanic and Black residents are 35% and 20% of the population, respectively. Making progress on Asian American representation in public spaces remains an uphill struggle. Plans for a public memorial paying tribute to early Chinese settlers is at a standstill after a consultant recommended the city invest in more research.

Even creating a space for some materials related to Chinese residents at the Antioch Historical Society Museum has gotten pushback.

“(One board member) said that they wanted this to be an ‘American’ museum,” said Dwayne Eubanks, a past president of the historical society, who is African American. “I took umbrage to that.”

He held up a picture of his father in his Army uniform and told the man: “This is an American.”

On Saturday, Eubanks, Meinhardt and Ho all attended the May We Gather event in Antioch, which organizers described as the first national memorial service and pilgrimage in response to anti-Asian violence. Attendees, including the three local residents, walked meditatively with Buddhist monks, nuns and lay leaders, around the city block where Antioch’s Chinatown stood 150 years ago.

Ho said such events while educational, should guard against portraying communities of color as victims and instead spotlight stories of Asian American accomplishment in the face of stark adversity. Somewhat agreeing with his friend, Eubanks pointed out that “healing is a two-way street” and that those who hate must first understand and acknowledge what happened.

“And then they have the opportunity to accept the medicine because hate is a sickness,” he said. “We do not want this to happen to our grandkids. We don’t want history to repeat itself.”
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MONTREAL — American figure skating star Ilia Malinin is a world champion — and a world-record holder.

Malinin put on a dominant display that included a jaw-dropping six quad jumps — including his patented quad axel — to snag the men’s singles crown Saturday night at the world championships.

After placing third in Thursday’s short program, the 19-year-old scored a world record 227.79 in the free program while skating to the Succession soundtrack to bring his total to 333.76 — more than 20 points than the rest of the field.

Malinin dropped to the ice in disbelief after presenting his routine to a rowdy Bell Centre crowd that cheered and clapped the whole way.

He dethroned two-time defending world champion Shoma Uno of Japan, who fell to fourth (280.85) after missing two quad jumps to start his program.

Yuma Kagiyama of Japan won silver (309.65) and Adam Siao Him Fa of France claimed bronze (284.39). Siao Him Fa climbed from 19th to third with an awe-inspiring display of his own, which included a backflip.

Earlier Saturday, 2022 Olympic champions Madison Chock and Evan Bates of the United States defended their ice dance world title with a season-best total score of 222.20.

Canada’s Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier won silver (219.68) and Italy’s Charlene Guignard and Marco Fabbri claimed bronze (216.52).

It’s Montreal’s first time hosting the event since 1932. The city was supposed to stage the 2020 championship but the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the competition.

Boston will hold the 2025 competition.
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washington — President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump won Louisiana’s primary on Saturday, collecting more delegates after they clinched their party nominations. 

Biden also appeared in Missouri’s Democratic primary, with results not expected to be reported until next week. 

None of the races were in suspense. Biden and Trump have beaten their major competitors. But the primary races are still closely watched by insiders for turnout and signs of protest voters. 

For Biden, some liberals are registering their anger with Israel’s war against Hamas following the militant group’s October 7 attack. More than 30,000 people, two-thirds of them women and children, have been reported killed by Gaza authorities since Israel launched its offensive. A protest movement launched by Arab American communities in Michigan has spread to several other states. 

Trump is his party’s dominant figure and has locked up a third straight Republican nomination. But he faces dissent from people worried about the immense legal jeopardy he faces or critical of his White House term, which ended shortly after the January 6 insurrection mounted by his supporters and fueled by his false theories of election fraud. 

Saturday’s primary was the Missouri Democratic Party’s first party-run presidential contest since a new law took effect in August 2022. Louisiana’s primaries, meanwhile, come almost four years after the state was the first to postpone its primaries due to the COVID-19 pandemic. 
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BRATISLAVA, Slovakia — A pro-Western career diplomat defeated a close ally of Slovakia’s populist Prime Minister Robert Fico in the first round of the presidential election Sunday to set up a runoff between the two to decide who will succeed Zuzana Caputova, the country’s first female president. 

Former Foreign Minister Ivan Korcok had 42.13% of the votes late Saturday, with nearly all polling stations counted by Slovakia’s Statistics Office. Peter Pellegrini was in second with 37.28%.

Because no candidate won an outright majority, a runoff will be held April 6 in this central European nation of 5.4 million people. 

A former justice minister and judge, Stefan Harabin, 66, who has openly sided with Russia in its war with Ukraine, was a distant third with 11.79%. 

In all, nine male candidates sought to become Slovakia’s sixth head of state since it gained independence in 1993 after Czechoslovakia split in two. 

Caputova, a staunch backer of neighboring Ukraine in its fight against Russia’s invasion, didn’t seek a second term in the largely ceremonial post. 

Korcok called the result “encouraging” and “promising,” but added that “we have to do more to win the runoff.” 

“I’m planning to approach all voters,” he said. 

Korcok also has served as Slovakia’s ambassador to the United States and Germany and firmly supports his country’s membership in the European Union and NATO. 

Pellegrini was considered a favorite in the race, and opinion polls suggested he would beat any candidate in the runoff. 

He congratulated Korcok on his victory in the first round and predicted a close contest in the runoff. 

“It will likely be a tight race,” Pellegrini said. 

A victory for Pellegrini, who currently serves as Parliament speaker, would cement Fico’s power by giving him and his allies control of strategic posts. 

Pellegrini, 48, who favors a strong role for the state, heads the left-wing Hlas (Voice) party that finished third in the September 30 parliamentary elections. His party joined a governing coalition with Fico’s leftist Smer (Direction) party and the ultranationalist Slovak National Party. 

The new government immediately halted arms deliveries to Ukraine. Thousands have repeatedly taken to the streets across Slovakia recently to rally against Fico’s pro-Russian and other policies, including plans to amend the penal code and take control of the public media. 

Critics worry Slovakia under Fico will abandon its pro-Western course and follow the direction of Hungary under populist Prime Minister Viktor Orban. 

Pellegrini said Saturday that Slovakia’s membership in the European Union and NATO hasn’t been questioned. 

“That we talk about a more sovereign voice of Slovakia or about a sovereign foreign policy … doesn’t necessarily mean that we change the basic direction of our foreign policy,” Pellegrini said. 
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beijing — Unable to buy a train ticket, or even see a doctor at a hospital, a Chinese pastor found that his even after release from prison, he is not quite free. 

The Rev. John Sanqiang Cao was arrested and sentenced to seven years in prison while coming back from a missionary trip in Myanmar. Now back in his hometown of Changsha in southern Hunan province, he is without any legal documentation in his country, unable to access even the most basic services without Chinese identification. 

“I told them I’m a second-(class) Chinese citizen, I cannot do this, I cannot do that,” Cao in an interview with The Associated Press. “I’m released, I’m a free citizen, why should there be so many restrictions upon me?” 

Cao, who was born and raised in Changsha, had dedicated his life to spreading Christianity in China, where the religion is strictly regulated. He had studied in the U.S., married an American woman and started a family, but said he felt a calling to go back to his home country and spread the faith. 

It’s a risky mission. Christianity in China is allowed only in state-sponsored churches, where the ruling Communist Party decides how Scripture should be interpreted. Anything else, including clandestine “house” churches and unofficial Bible schools, is considered illegal, though it was once tolerated by local officials. 

Cao was undeterred, citing the courage of Chinese Christians he had met who spent time in prison for their faith. During his years in China, he said he had set up some 50 Bible study schools across the country. 

In the years leading up to his arrest, he had started bringing Chinese missionaries to parts of northern Myanmar that had been impacted by the country’s civil war. They focused on relief work, campaigning against drug use, and setting up schools in areas bordering China. 

It was in coming back from one of these crossings that he was detained in 2017. He was sentenced to seven years on a charge of “organizing others to illegally cross the border,” which is usually reserved for human traffickers. 

His family and supporters advocated for Cao’s sentence to be reduced, but to no avail. Cao was a prisoner of conscience, according to the federal U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, which also called for his freedom. 

After completing his sentence, Cao is no longer behind bars. But he is facing another major obstacle. 

He said that police who came to his mother’s house in 2006 took away her “hukou” registration book, which had also included Cao. 

Every child born in China is registered in the hukou, which is an identification system through which social benefits are allocated by geography. Later in life, the hukou is needed to apply for a national ID card, which is used in everything from getting a phone number to public health insurance. 

According to Cao, police said they would help his mother update the hukou. It was only later that he found out in updating her registration that they removed his name. 

Cao never took American citizenship because of his calling, spending his time between the two countries. He had kept his U.S. permanent residency throughout this time, though he says that’s not accepted as an ID in China. 

He was traveling on his Chinese passport. Though he noted that he no longer had the hukou registration, he did not realize how serious the problem was until much later. 

In prison, his Chinese passport had expired, he said, and he could not renew it. 

Cao said he has been to the police station many times since his release and had even hired a lawyer. So far, he said police had not given him a satisfactory answer as to why his records no longer exist. 

A police officer at the Dingwangtai police station in Changsha, where Cao’s hukou registration is supposed to be, said he did not know how to address Cao’s claims. “Even if he went to prison, he should still have a hukou,” he told the AP. The officer refused to give his name because he wasn’t authorized to talk to the media. 

Cao’s two adult sons were able to visit him this month, spending two weeks with their father. Cao said he wants to join them and his wife in the U.S., though it’s unclear how he can do that. 

“I moved from a smaller prison … to come to a bigger prison,” he said. 
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washington — The number of arrests for illegally crossing the U.S. southern border with Mexico nudged upward February over the previous month. But at a time when immigration is increasingly a concern for voters, the numbers were still among the lowest of Joe Biden’s presidency. 

According to figures from Customs and Border Protection, Border Patrol agents made 140,644 arrests of people attempting to enter the country between the legal border crossing points during February. 

The figures are part of a range of data related to immigration, trade and fentanyl seizures that is released monthly by CBP. The immigration-related figures are a closely watched metric at a time of intense political scrutiny over who is entering the country and whether the Biden administration has a handle on the issue. 

Republicans have charged that Biden’s policies have encouraged migrants to attempt to come to the U.S. and that the border is out of control. The Biden administration counters that Republicans failed to work with Democrats to fund a key border security bill and argues that what is happening on the southern border is part of a worldwide phenomenon of more people fleeing their homes to seek safety. 

The numbers come after a December that saw the Border Patrol tally 249,785 arrests — a record that increased tensions over immigration — before the numbers plunged in January to 124,220. 

Officials have credited enforcement efforts by Mexico as well as seasonal fluctuations that affect when and where migrants attempt to cross the border for the drop from December to January and February. 

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said during a February 29 trip to Brownsville, Texas, with Biden that the “primary reason is the enhanced enforcement efforts on the part of the Mexican government.” But he said encounters remained up in Arizona in part because Sonora, which is the Mexican state directly south of Arizona, is difficult to patrol. 

In February, the Tucson sector in Arizona was by far the busiest region for migrant crossings between the ports of entry, followed by San Diego and El Paso, Texas. 

Separately, 42,100 migrants used an app called CBP One to schedule an appointment to present themselves at an official border crossing point to seek entry into the United States. 

The app has been a key part of the Biden administration’s efforts to reduce chaos at the border by encouraging migrants to wait for an appointment instead of wading through the river or trekking across the desert and seeking Border Patrol agents to turn themselves in. 

The administration has also allowed 30,000 people a month into the country from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela using the administration’s humanitarian parole authority. The migrants must have a financial sponsor in the U.S. and fly into an American airport. According to the data released Friday, 386,000 people from those four countries have been admitted to the country since that program was announced in January 2023. 
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DES MOINES, Iowa — The Mega Millions jackpot climbed to an estimated $1.1 billion after no one matched the game’s six numbers Friday night, continuing a stretch of more than three months without a big winner. 

The numbers drawn were: 3, 8, 31, 35, 44, 16. 

The jackpot increased after a drawing for an estimated $977 million failed to produce a jackpot winner. 

No one has won the game’s jackpot since December 8, a string of 30 consecutive drawings without anyone taking home the top prize. That has enabled the jackpot to slowly grow, week after week. 

The $1.1 billion prize is for a sole winner who chooses to be paid through an annuity over 30 years. Winners almost always opt for a cash payment, which for the next drawing Tuesday night is an estimated $525.8 million. 

A lucky player winning the $1.1 billion jackpot would take home the eighth largest in U.S. lottery history. 

The other U.S. lottery game, Powerball, has grown to an annuity jackpot of $750 million and a cash payout of $357.3 million. The next Powerball drawing is scheduled to take place Saturday night. 
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ATHENS — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday that Cyprus should be a Turkish state.

Erdogan defended his country’s 1974 invasion of Cyprus, saying there would be no “Cyprus problem” had Turkish forces gone farther and taken over the entire state.

The remarks angered Greece, sparking fresh tension between the two age-old foes. The government in Athens slammed what it called the “provocative remarks.”

Officials in Athens attribute the outbursts to upcoming local elections in Turkey and efforts by Erdogan to spoil what opinion polls show as growing gains being made by his party’s main opponent in the key city of Istanbul.

There is no doubt, Greek Immigration Minister Dimitris Keridis said, that Erdogan will polarize voters as they head to the elections and that Erdogan is “bound to continue appealing to the hardline nationalist vote to support his key candidates.”

Erdogan’s remark came during an iftar dinner this week with top military commanders. Turkish media quoted him as saying that had Turkish troops pushed south, “there would be no more north and south, and Cyprus would be completely ours.”

The timing of Erdogan’s remarks comes as the United Nations is exploring new ways to jump-start peace talks on Cyprus, which after 50 years remains divided between a Turkish-Cypriot north and a Greek-Cypriot south. Since 1974, several efforts by the United Nations and the United States to reunite the island have failed.

However, attempts by Athens and Ankara in recent months to bridge long-standing differences and to ease tensions have given the U.N. new incentive to revisit the peace talks.

Constantinos Filis, director of the Institute of Global Affairs in Athens, said Erdogan’s remarks aim to set his country’s conditions.

“The immediate message he wants to send to the U.N. is that Turkey is a strong player, in control of developments on the ground, and that all efforts should be focused on it if the talks are to restart,” Fillis said.

Turkey has long supported the permanent partition of Cyprus, a solution that the U.N. and the global community have refused on grounds it would legalize the 1974 Turkish invasion of the island.

Whether Turkey’s uncompromising stance will scupper the U.N.’s latest peace efforts remains to be seen.

Greek government officials contacted by VOA say that nonetheless, the latest tiff with Turkey will not spoil plans by the prime minister to meet with Erdogan in high-level talks set to take place in May.
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new york — Former Vice President Mike Pence says he will not be backing Donald Trump in the 2024 election.

“It should come as no surprise that I will not be endorsing Donald Trump this year,” Pence said Friday in an interview with Fox News, weighing in for the first time since the former president became the presumptive GOP nominee. Pence ran against Trump for their party’s nomination but dropped his bid before voting began last year.

The decision makes Pence the latest in a series of senior Trump administration officials who have declined to endorse their former boss’s bid to return to the Oval Office. While Republican members of Congress and other GOP officials have largely rallied behind Trump, a vocal minority has continued to oppose his bid.

It also marks the end of a metamorphosis for Pence, who had long been seen as one of Trump’s most loyal defenders but broke with his two-time running mate by refusing to go along with Trump’s unconstitutional scheme to try to remain in power after losing the 2020 election.

When Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, trying to disrupt the certification of Joe Biden’s win, Pence was forced to flee to a Senate loading dock as rioters outside chanted, “Hang Mike Pence!”

To participate in the Republican primary debates, Pence was required to sign a pledge saying that he would support the party’s eventual nominee. And during the first debate in Milwaukee, Pence was among the candidates who raised their hands when asked whether they would support Trump even if he were convicted in one of his four criminal indictments.

But Pence had made clear he had come to harbor serious reservations about Trump’s actions and his policy stances.

“I believe anyone that puts themselves over the Constitution should never be president of the United States and anyone who asks someone else to put them over the Constitution should never be president of the United States again,” he said during his campaign launch speech.

As the campaign progressed, he raised alarms about the party’s resistance to sending aid to Ukraine and called on his fellow Republicans to reject what he called the “siren song of populism” espoused by Trump and his followers.

Pence declined to say for whom he would be voting — “I’m going to keep my vote to myself,” he said — but made clear it wouldn’t be Biden.

“I would never vote for Joe Biden,” he said. “I’m a Republican.”
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new york — Donald Trump’s New York hush-money criminal trial was delayed Friday until at least mid-April as the judge seeks answers about a last-minute evidence dump that the former president’s lawyers said has hampered their ability to prepare their defense. 

Manhattan Judge Juan Manuel Merchan agreed to a 30-day delay starting Friday and scheduled a hearing for March 25 after Trump’s lawyers complained that they only recently started receiving more than 100,000 pages of documents from a previous federal investigation into the matter. 

Merchan said he was holding the hearing to determine whether prosecutors should face sanctions or whether the case should be dismissed, as Trump’s lawyers have requested. 

The trial had been scheduled to start March 25. The delay means the trial would start no earlier than April 15. Prosecutors had said they wouldn’t object to a short delay. 

In a letter Friday, Merchan told Manhattan prosecutors and Trump’s defense team that he wanted to assess “who, if anyone, is at fault for the late production of the documents,” whether it hurt either side and whether any sanctions were warranted. 

The judge demanded a timeline of events detailing when the documents were requested and when they were turned over. He also wants all correspondence between the Manhattan district attorney’s office, which is prosecuting Trump, and the U.S. attorney’s office, which previously investigated the matter in 2018. 

The Manhattan district attorney’s office declined to comment. Trump lawyer Todd Blanche also declined to comment. 

Merchan’s decision upended what had been on track to be the first of Trump’s four criminal indictments to go to trial. Trump, the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee, has fought to delay all of his criminal cases, arguing that he shouldn’t be forced into a courtroom while he should be on the campaign trail. 

Trump’s lawyers wanted a 90-day delay, which would’ve pushed the start of the trial into the early summer, and asked Merchan to dismiss the case entirely. Prosecutors said they were OK with a 30-day adjournment “in an abundance of caution and to ensure that defendant has sufficient time to review the new materials.” 

The hush-money case centers on allegations that Trump falsified his company’s records to hide the true nature of payments to his attorney, Michael Cohen, who paid porn actor Stormy Daniels $130,000 during the 2016 presidential campaign to suppress her claims of having had an extramarital sexual encounter with Trump years earlier.
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tel aviv, israel — China conducted joint military drills this week with Russia and Iran in the Gulf of Oman, a critical water conduit near the entry to the Persian Gulf.

The five-day exercise, “Maritime Security Belt 2024,” involved both naval and aviation forces, with the primary objective of enhancing the security of maritime economic activities, according to Russia’s Ministry of Defense.

The drills may have been planned long in advance of the current Israel-Hamas war, but their implication and message to regional players and the West are highly significant, analysts say.

More than 20 ships, combat boats, support carriers and navy helicopters participated in the exercise.

Iran’s semiofficial Mehr News Agency reported that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) debuted new warships in the exercise, including the Shahid Soleimani corvette.

“That’s a game changer,” Wendell Minnick, an arms specialist and “China in Arms” podcaster,  told VOA.

“Pay close attention to anti-ship missiles on ships,” Minnick said. “The U.S. Navy has a real problem with these types of missiles.”

The IRGC-operated Shahid Soleimani corvette is equipped with long- and short-range anti-ship cruise missiles. It’s the first Iranian warship outfitted with advanced VLS, or Vertical Launching Systems, for firing surface-to-surface and surface-to-air missiles.

“This gives the U.S. Navy a nightmare scenario of being saturated by multidirectional vectors of attack that they cannot possibly defeat en masse,” Minnick said. “Like being attacked by bees or ants. Eventually they will get you.”

Rear Admiral Mohammad Nozari, the IRGC commander of Iran’s base at Chabahar on the Gulf of Oman, told the Mehr News Agency the drill’s chief objectives were consolidating regional security, promoting China-Russia-Iran cooperation, and safeguarding global peace and maritime security.

Analysts say Chinese, Russian and Iranian objectives go far beyond the IRGC top naval commander’s stated claims.

“The Chinese and the Russians are using this exercise as a variety of tools disposable to them to show their presence and to pressure the West,” said Meir Javedanfar, who teaches Iranian security studies at Reichman University, in Herzliya, Israel.

“The Chinese are saying these exercises are normal and have nothing to do with what’s happening in the Middle East,” Javedanfar said in an interview with VOA.

“Nevertheless, the fact that these exercises are taking place against the background of an unprecedented U.S. and Western naval presence in the Middle East shows that the rivalry between the China-Russia-Iran front against the Western front is now heating up, and the Middle East waters are playing an important part in this rivalry.”

The rivalry takes on heightened significance when weighed against the recent uptick in Chinese participation in regional drills.

In November, China collaborated with Pakistan in “Sea Guardian 3” joint naval exercises in the Arabian Sea. It was the biggest joint People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) and Pakistani Navy drill to date and included land and sea phases.

China’s warships are stationed at a naval base in Djibouti near the Red Sea waters where Iranian-backed Houthis declaring solidarity with Palestinians in the Israel-Hamas conflict have since last year repeatedly fired drones and missiles at ships. China has not publicly condemned the attacks.

“If China really wanted the Houthis to stop these attacks against Western shipping, they could pressure the Iranians and the Iranians would listen, but they’re not doing this because they want to pressure Western economies and to show that they have influence in the region,” Javedanfar said.

“The drills play a part in the larger strategy led by China and Russia and Iran,” Javedanfar said.

Sophie Kobzantsev, a Russia analyst and research fellow at the Misgav Institute in Jerusalem, says the Gulf of Oman drill is part strategy, part message.

“From the beginning — the Russia-Ukraine war — Russia’s goal was to create a new world order in which it gets a role or a place as super world power,” Kobzantsev told VOA.

“Part of this concept of the new world order is to partially create a military balance vis-a-vis the West. The drill serves Russia — and Iran and China — in creating the image and the message to the West that there is a counterstrategic military coalition.”

Leading the Russian contingent was the missile cruiser Varyag from its Pacific Fleet, according to the Russian Ministry of Defense. Naval representatives from Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Oman, India and South Africa served as observers during the exercises.

The drills come just a week after NATO’s Nordic Response exercises, the most expansive NATO drills since the Cold War ended in 1991. Nordic Response incorporated military participation of NATO’s newest member states Sweden and Finland.

With an increased U.S. foothold in the Middle East due to its role in mediating the Israel-Gulf States Abraham Accords, pursuing the normalization of Israel-Saudi ties and now mediating between Israel and Hamas, the drill also takes on “countermessage” significance, said Kobzantsev.

The area where the joint drills are taking place is also significant.  An estimated 20% of globally traded oil moves through the narrow Strait of Hormuz passage linking the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman.

Since 2019 the Gulf of Oman has seen a series of ship seizures and attacks that the U.S. has blamed on Iran, although Tehran has denied any involvement.

“We actually see a kind of formation of the world that is reminding us of the Cold War and that there is a new clash between superpowers in this world,” said Kobzantsev. “The West vs. Russia, China and Iran.”

Marine Security Belt 2024 is the fourth joint China-Russia-Iran military exercise since 2019. 

Adrianna Zhang contributed to this report.
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united nations — Ukraine, joined Friday by more than 55 countries at the United Nations, condemned Russia’s attempts to organize elections on occupied Ukrainian land, saying they were not valid.

“We condemn in the strongest terms the Russian Federation’s illegitimate attempts to organize Russian presidential elections in temporarily occupied areas within the internationally recognized territory of Ukraine,” the group said in a statement read by Ukraine’s U.N. ambassador, Sergiy Kyslytsya, flanked by his counterparts.

“Holding elections in another U.N. member state’s territory without its consent is in manifest disregard for the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity,” he said. “Such elections have no validity under international law.”

Starting Friday and continuing through Sunday, Russians are casting votes in polls that international election observers have dismissed as having no chance of being free or fair and are designed to return President Vladimir Putin to power for another six years.

Ukraine, supported by council member Slovenia, requested that the U.N. Security Council meet Friday to discuss Russia’s holding of the vote in areas of Ukraine that Russian forces have seized and occupied, including Crimea and the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions.

“You convened an entire Security Council meeting to criticize Russia for Russia’s conduct of democratic elections on territories which administratively, politically and economically are part of our country — like it or not,” Russia Deputy Ambassador Dmitry Polyanskiy said.

Ukraine’s envoy dismissed the Russian election as a “travesty” and said residents in the occupied areas have been subject to broad intimidation by local authorities to participate in the “sham” election.

“Among them, threats against life, illegal detention, denial of access to health care and social services, threats of deportation and deprivation of property,” Kyslytsya said. “We should not forget that these actions take place at gunpoint.”

“Let’s call this what this is: It’s a blatant propaganda exercise, undertaken in the hopes of somehow strengthening Russia’s false claim to the parts of Ukraine it illegally invaded,” said U.S. envoy Linda Thomas-Greenfield.

U.N. political chief Rosemary DiCarlo said as the occupying power, Russia is obligated to uphold Ukrainian laws in the occupied territories. She said U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has condemned Russia’s intention to conduct presidential elections in these areas as “unacceptable.”
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BERLIN — Ukraine’s backers will use windfall profits on frozen Russian assets to finance arms purchases for Kyiv, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said following a meeting with his French and Polish counterparts aimed at showing unity after weeks of friction. 

At a joint news conference in Berlin, Scholz, French President Emmanuel Macron and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk reaffirmed their support for Ukraine, whose ammunition-starved troops face their toughest battles since the early days of Russia’s invasion two years ago. 

European support has become increasingly key as U.S. President Joe Biden has been unable to get a big Ukraine aid package through Congress and much of his foreign policy energy is focused on the war in Gaza. 

Scholz said the leaders had agreed on the need to procure more weapons for Ukraine on the global market and to boost the production of military gear, including through cooperation with partners in Ukraine. 

“We will use windfall profits from Russian assets frozen in Europe to financially support the purchase of weapons for Ukraine,” Scholz said as he listed European Union efforts to increase support for Ukraine. 

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called last month for the EU to consider using such profits to “jointly purchase military equipment for Ukraine.” 

The Commission is expected to make a concrete proposal in the coming days. 

Some EU member countries such as Hungary have signaled reservations about the idea, according to diplomats in Brussels. But Scholz’s comments suggested he is confident that EU countries will ultimately approve the proposal. 

Scholz said the leaders also agreed on the need for the Ukraine Defense Contact group — a U.S.-led group of some 50 countries that provide military support to Ukraine — to set up a coalition to provide long-distance artillery to Kyiv. 

A proposal to set up a long-range missile coalition had already been agreed to in Paris on February 26. It was unclear whether Scholz’s comments referred to this or how Germany, which has opposed sending its long-range Taurus missiles to Ukraine, would participate. 

Defense ministers from the contact group are set to meet early next week at the Ramstein U.S. Air Base in Germany. 

Macron reiterated his warning that it was not just Ukrainian but European security at stake. 

“We will do everything as necessary for as long as needed so that Russia cannot win this war,” Macron said. “This determination is steadfast and implies our unity.” 

He added that the three leaders had agreed on the need to reinforce support for Moldova, which says Russia is trying to destabilize it through a “hybrid war.” 

He said the three leaders had agreed to never initiate an escalation with Russia, a possible way to downplay talk of sending Western ground troops to Ukraine, which has irked Germany. 

The meeting of the so-called Weimar triangle — Germany, France and Poland — came after weeks of tensions, in particular between Scholz and Macron, that had alarmed officials in Kyiv and across the continent. 

A hastily arranged summit in Paris last month had aimed to give fresh impetus to stagnating Western efforts to help Ukraine repel a full-scale Russian invasion that has entered its third year. 

Instead, Macron’s refusal to rule out deploying Western troops to Ukraine triggered a dressing down from Scholz. 

Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, told Reuters that “indecision and uncoordinated action” among Kyiv’s allies was leading to “grave consequences.” 

“Russia starts to get cocky and begins to believe that it can quantitatively squeeze Ukraine,” he said. “Ukraine, in turn, is experiencing a severe shortage of specific resources, primarily shells, and is partially losing the initiative.” 

Tusk said the meeting on Friday showed “that some malicious rumors that there are differences between European capitals are very exaggerated.” 

Tusk, who is seeking to revitalize the Weimar Triangle after eight years of nationalist rule in Warsaw, said Macron and Scholz had accepted his invitation to meet again in early summer to present their next joint plans. 
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BRUSSELS — The European Union’s executive arm Friday proposed sacrificing even more climate and environmental measures in the bloc’s latest set of concessions to farmers apparently bent on continuing disruptive tractor protests until the June EU elections.

Angering environmentalists across the 27 nations, the Commission proposed to further loosen rules imposed on agriculture that they said, not so long ago, were inherent parts of the bloc’s strategy to become climate neutral by 2050. That iconic challenge put the EU in the global vanguard of fighting climate change.

“The main goal of these legislative proposals is to further ease the administrative burden for EU farmers and give farmers and Member States greater flexibility for complying with certain environmental conditionalities,” said a statement from Ursula von der Leyen’s Commission.

Under the proposals, the conditions to move farming to become more climate friendly were weakened or cut in areas such as crop rotation, soil cover protection and tillage methods. And small farmers, representing some two-thirds of the workforce and the most active within the continentwide protest movement, will be exempt from some controls and penalties under the new rules.

Politically, the bloc has moved rightward over the past year and the plight of farmers has become a rallying cry for populists and conservatives who claim EU climate and farm policies are little more than bureaucratic bungling from elitist politicians who have lost any feeling for soil and land. The Christian Democratic European People’s Party of von der Leyen had been among the most vocal and powerful in defending the farmers’ cause.

Scientists and environmentalists from around the globe have insisted drastic measures are necessary to keep global warming from getting worse and have pointed out Europe as one of the places with the bleakest prospects.

The Commission’s proposals still need to be endorsed by the member states, but considering previous concessions, they stand a good chance of being accepted quickly, observers said.

Friday’s plans were the EU’s latest concessions in reaction to protests that have affected the daily lives of tens of millions of EU citizens and cost businesses tens of millions of euros due to transportation delays. Others have included shelving legislation on tighter pesticide rules and requirements to let some land lie fallow.

On top of the EU itself, member states have also caved in to several of the demands as the tractor protests shot up the political agenda. Complaints have centered on excessive bureaucracy, intrusive environmental rules and unfair competition from third countries, including Ukraine.

The Commission said that even though more-flexibile measures for farmers were now proposed, the overall EU climate goals remained valid.

“We are the first continent to have made a binding legal commitment to reach climate neutrality by 2050. Not only have we done that,” said Commission spokesperson Eric Mamer, “but we actually fixed a roadmap to 2030 with the legal act to ensure that we are on the right path to meet that objective.”

He insisted Friday’s proposals would not veer from that commitment, even though the fact that “we … adapt from time to time to changing circumstances is obvious.”
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