State prosecutors in the country of Georgia said Wednesday that they had initiated an investigation into Saturday’s parliamentary election amid claims that the vote was rigged.  

The Georgian Dream ruling party won the election with 54% of the vote, according to the electoral commission, a figure that would give the party a clear majority in Parliament.

The opposition alleged the election was rigged. Western countries and international observers also raised concerns, citing instances of voter intimidation, vote buying, double voting and violence.

The opposition took its protest to the streets of Tbilisi early this week in a rally condemning the results.

Prosecutors have summoned President Salome Zourabichvili, who is aligned with the pro-Western opposition, to testify, but she questioned why she should provide testimony about election rigging.

“It’s not up to the president to provide proof of election fraud,” she told reporters Wednesday. “Observers and everyday citizens have shown proofs of how massive the rigging of elections was.”

The investigative body, she said, “should have found the evidence itself.”

Zourabichvili charged in an interview with Reuters on Monday that Georgian Dream used a Russian methodology to falsify some election results.

Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze, a member of Georgian Dream, has called on  Zourabichvili to turn over any evidence of rigging to authorities. He said he believed she did not have such evidence.

Zourabichvili said the opposition was calling for an investigation “conducted by an international mission with the adequate mandate and qualification” to look into how the election was conducted. Until that can be done, she said, “this election cannot and will not have legitimacy or trust.” 

Some election observers have been cautious about labeling Georgia’s vote as rigged.  Some observers, including the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, admitted there were reports of voter irregularities, but the organization stopped short of labeling the election as rigged.

Russia has denied any interference in Georgia’s election.   

Georgia’s election came at a crucial moment for the former Soviet republic as it seeks to join the European Union. However, Georgian Dream is seen by many as more aligned with Russia than with the EU.
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U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and his South Korean counterpart Kim Yong-hyun exchanged views during talks on Wednesday on the approximately 10,000 North Korean forces now deployed to Russia to fight Ukraine. VOA Pentagon Correspondent Carla Babb has the story. Kim Lewis contributed.
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CHICAGO, ILLINOIS — H5N1 bird flu had been confirmed in a pig in a backyard farm in Oregon, the first detection of the virus in swine in the country, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said on Wednesday.

Pigs represent a particular concern for the spread of bird flu because they can become co-infected with bird and human viruses, which could swap genes to form a new, more dangerous virus that can more easily infect humans.

The USDA said there is no risk to the nation’s pork supply from the Oregon case and that the risk to the public from bird flu remains low.

Pigs were the source of the H1N1 flu pandemic in 2009-2010, and have been implicated as the source of others, said Richard Webby, a St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital virologist who studies flu in animals and birds for the World Health Organization.

The finding of the virus in a small farm makes the pig infection less of a concern than if it had been detected in a commercial pig farm, he said.

“I think it probably doesn’t increase the risk much, but surely, if this virus starts transmitting in pigs, that absolutely increases the risk,” he said.

The Oregon farm has been quarantined, and other animals there, including sheep and goats, are under surveillance, the USDA said.

Pigs and poultry on the farm were culled to prevent the spread of the virus and enable additional testing of the swine, the USDA said. Tests are still pending for two of the pigs, the agency said.

The swine case originated with wild birds and not from a poultry or dairy farm, a USDA spokesperson said. Wild bird migration has carried bird flu to poultry flocks and cattle herds.

The case was one factor that prompted the USDA to broaden its bird flu surveillance to include nationwide bulk milk testing, which the agency announced on Wednesday, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack told Reuters in an interview.

“While it’s a different variation of the virus and it is tied to wild birds, it is a factor to make sure that we understand and appreciate exactly where the virus is in dairy and in bovine,” he said.

The pigs on the Oregon farm were not intended for the commercial food supply, the USDA said.

The agency said that poultry and swine on the backyard farm shared water sources, housing and equipment, which have all served as pathways for transmitting the virus between animals in other states.

The detection is a warning for pig farmers to be on the lookout for further infections, said Marie Culhane, a professor of veterinary population medicine at the University of Minnesota who has researched flu viruses in swine.

“People need to start increasing their plans to deal with it if it should happen in another herd and another herd,” Culhane said. “Pigs are just really good at picking up influenza viruses.”

This year, 36 people have tested positive for bird flu as the virus has spread to nearly 400 dairy herds. All but one of the people were farm workers who had known contact with infected animals.

Since 2022, the virus has wiped out more than 100 million poultry birds in the nation’s worst-ever bird flu outbreak.
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WASHINGTON — Reports that billionaire Elon Musk has been talking on a consistent basis with Russian President Vladimir Putin are still reverberating among current and former U.S. officials, almost a week after news of the conversations first surfaced.

Musk, who owns electric car maker Tesla and the X social media platform, also owns SpaceX, a commercial spaceflight company that has numerous contracts with the U.S. government, doing work for the Department of Defense and U.S. space agency NASA.

Some of that work is so sensitive that the United States has given Musk high-level security clearances due to his knowledge of the programs, raising concerns among some that top secret U.S. information and capabilities could be at risk.

According to current and former U.S., European and Russian officials who spoke to The Wall Street Journal, such concerns may be warranted.

During one conversation, those officials said, Putin allegedly asked Musk not to activate Starlink, a SpaceX subsidiary that provides satellite internet services, over Taiwan as a favor to China.

“I think it should be investigated,” NASA administrator Bill Nelson told the Semafor World Economy Summit on Friday, a day after The Journal published its report.

“I don’t know that that story is true,” Nelson said, adding, if it is, “I think that would be concerning, particularly for NASA, for the Department of Defense, for some of the intelligence agencies.”

Russia and Musk deny frequent calls

Musk has previously denied frequent calls with Putin. In 2022, Musk said he had spoken to the Russian leader just once, but The Journal said there have been repeated conversations since then.

Musk has not commented or responded to the Journal article on X. Russia has also denied there have been frequent conversations between Putin and Musk.

The Pentagon has so far declined to refute or confirm the allegations.

“We have seen the reporting from The Wall Street Journal but cannot corroborate the veracity of those reports,” Defense Department spokesperson Sue Gough told VOA in an email late Friday.

“[We] would refer you to Mr. Musk to speak to his private communications,” Gough said, adding that, by law, the department does not comment on the details or status of anyone’s security clearance.

“We expect everyone who has been granted a security clearance, including contractors, to follow the prescribed procedures for reporting foreign contacts,” she said.

Former U.S. intelligence officials who spoke to VOA said the reported conversations, since confirmed by other U.S. news organizations citing their own confidential sources, raise significant questions.

“There is no doubt that Russia is cultivating many possible channels of influence in the United States and other Western countries,” said Paul Pillar, a former senior CIA officer who now teaches at Georgetown University.

“Russia would regard a wealthy and influential business mogul such as Musk as potentially a highly useful channel and thus a relationship worth nurturing,” he said.

Larry Pfeiffer, a former CIA chief of staff and former senior director of the White House Situation Room, is also wary.

“It does get the spider-sense tingling,” he told VOA.

“If the reports of Musk’s repeated conversations with Vladimir Putin are true, I would definitely have some concerns,” Pfeiffer said. “Russia under Putin will cultivate support wherever it can be bought, cajoled or coerced.

“Putin has equal opportunity security services that will take advantage of any opportunity to get foreign business leaders to influence their governments to align with Russian interests,” he said.

Concerns don’t equal wrongdoing

Former officials like Pillar and Pfeiffer, though, caution there is a difference between concerns and actual wrongdoing.

Other former officials note that even if Musk engaged in conversations that could make some in government uncomfortable, just having those conversations is not necessarily illegal.

“Americans are allowed to talk to essentially whomever they want,” said a former national security prosecutor, who spoke to VOA on the condition of anonymity. “There’s no inherent limitation.”

And in the case of a high-profile individual who oversees companies with global reach, conversations with foreign officials could be unavoidable.

“For a businessman, there may be commercially legitimate reasons to have those communications,” the former prosecutor said. “It’s when a businessman is having those communications, perhaps for political reasons or even proto-diplomatic reasons, that it gets probably more concerning from a counterintelligence perspective.”

There also may not be any legal issues with a potential failure by someone like Musk to voluntarily disclose conversations with foreign leaders. Hiding such conversations when asked about them, however, could wade into criminal territory.

Still, given the value the U.S. gets from Musk’s companies, U.S. officials may feel like they have little recourse.

“It is one of those unfair things in life that if the government has a unique need for you, you can get away with more and still get a security clearance,” the former prosecutor said. “Someone who has unique value is going to get more accommodation.”
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WASHINGTON — The United States on Wednesday imposed curbs on hundreds of targets in fresh action against Russia, taking aim at sanctions circumvention in a signal that the U.S. is committed to countering evasion.

The action, taken by the U.S. Treasury and State departments, imposed sanctions on nearly 400 entities and people from over a dozen countries, according to statements from the Treasury and State departments.

The action was the most concerted push so far against third-country evasion, a State Department official told Reuters. It included sanctions on dozens of Chinese, Hong Kong and Indian companies, the most from those countries to be hit in one package so far, according to the official.

Also hit with sanctions were targets in Russia, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Thailand, Malaysia, Switzerland and elsewhere.

The action comes as Washington has sought to curb Russia’s evasion of the sanctions imposed after its 2022 invasion of Ukraine, which has killed or wounded thousands and reduced cities to rubble.

The U.S. has repeatedly warned against supplying Russia with Common High Priority Items — advanced components that include microelectronics deemed by the U.S. and European Union as likely to be used for Russia’s war in Ukraine.

“This should send a serious message to both the governments and the private sectors of these countries that the U.S. government is committed to countering the evasion of our sanctions against Russia and to continue putting pressure on Russia to end its war in Ukraine,” the official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said.

The Treasury Department imposed sanctions on 274 targets, while the State Department designated more than 120. The U.S. Commerce Department added 40 companies and research institutions to a trade restriction list over their alleged support of the Russian military.

“The United States and our allies will continue to take decisive action across the globe to stop the flow of critical tools and technologies that Russia needs to wage its illegal and immoral war against Ukraine,” Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo said in the statement.

A senior administration official said Wednesday’s action was designed to signal the U.S. would act against Indian companies if progress were not made through communication.

“With India, we have been very direct and blunt with them about the concerns we have about what we see as sort of emerging trends in that country that we want to stop before they get too far down the road,” the official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said.

India-based Futrevo was among the companies targeted by the State Department, which accused it of being involved in the supply of high-priority items to the Russia-based manufacturer of Orlan drones.

The Treasury also targeted Shreya Life Sciences Private Limited, which it said since 2023 has sent hundreds of shipments of U.S.-trademarked technology to Russia, totaling tens of millions of dollars.

A second senior State Department official told Reuters on Tuesday that more than 70% of the high-priority goods getting to Russia was from China, more than an estimated $22 billion worth since the start of the war.

“That’s over 13 times the next largest supplier,” the official said, which as of the end of 2023 was Turkey.

Among those targeted Wednesday were Hong Kong and China-based companies involved in the shipment of tens of millions of dollars’ worth of high-priority items to Russia-based companies or end-users, the State and Treasury departments said.

The U.S. also took actions on a variety of entities supporting Russia’s Arctic project, which is 60% owned by Russia’s Novatek and was to become Russia’s largest liquefied natural gas plant.

Novatek has been forced to scale back Arctic, which had been planned to reach an eventual output of 19.8 million metric tons per year, following a raft of U.S. sanctions starting in 2023 with additional measures in August and September.

But the U.S. held back from using an executive order signed by President Joe Biden last year that threatened penalties for financial institutions that help Russia circumvent sanctions. The senior administration official said banking sectors had taken notice of the authority and sort of moved into compliance.
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WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday allowed Virginia to resume its purge of voter registrations that the state says is aimed at stopping people who are not U.S. citizens from voting. 

The justices, over the dissents of the three liberal justices, granted an emergency appeal from Virginia’s Republican administration led by Gov. Glenn Youngkin. The court provided no rationale for its action, which is typical in emergency appeals. 

The justices acted on Virginia’s appeal after a federal judge found that the state illegally purged more than 1,600 voter registrations in the past two months. A federal appeals court had previously allowed the judge’s order to remain in effect. 

Such voting is rare in American elections, but the specter of immigrants voting illegally has been a main part of the political messaging this year from former President Donald Trump and other Republicans. 

Trump had criticized the earlier ruling, calling it “a totally unacceptable travesty” on social media. 

“Only U.S. Citizens should be allowed to vote,” Trump wrote. 

The Justice Department and a coalition of private groups sued the state earlier in October, arguing that Virginia election officials, acting on an executive order issued in August by Youngkin were striking names from voter rolls in violation of federal election law. 

The National Voter Registration Act requires a 90-day “quiet period” ahead of elections for the maintenance of voter rolls so that legitimate voters are not removed from the rolls by bureaucratic errors or last-minute mistakes that cannot be quickly corrected. 

Youngkin issued his order on Aug. 7, the 90th day before the election. It required daily checks of data from the state Department of Motor Vehicles against voter rolls to identify people who are not U.S. citizens. 

U.S. District Judge Patricia Giles said elections officials still could remove names on an individualized basis, but not through a systematic purge. Court records indicated that at least some of those whose registrations were removed are U.S. citizens. 

Giles had ordered the state to notify affected voters and local registrars by Wednesday that the registrations have been restored. 

Nearly 6 million Virginians are registered to vote. 

In a similar lawsuit in Alabama, a federal judge this month ordered the state to restore eligibility for more than 3,200 voters who had been deemed ineligible noncitizens. Testimony from state officials in that case showed that roughly 2,000 of the 3,251 voters who were made inactive were actually legally registered citizens.
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An Azerbaijani journalist with VOA’s sister outlet Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty on Wednesday marked five months since he was detained in Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku, on charges his employer rejects.

Farid Mehralizada, an economist and journalist for RFE/RL’s Azerbaijani Service, Radio Azadliq, was abducted in Baku by unidentified men on May 30 and has been in pretrial detention since June 1.

“Today marks five months since RFE/RL journalist and economist Farid Mehralizada was unjustly detained in Azerbaijan. We are deeply concerned by his continued imprisonment on false charges,” RFE/RL President Stephen Capus said in a statement Wednesday.

On June 1, a Baku court placed Mehralizada under pretrial detention for “conspiring to smuggle foreign currency” in connection with a case brought against the independent media outlet Abzas Media.

Then in August, authorities brought new charges against Mehralizada, accusing him of “illegal entrepreneurship, money laundering, tax evasion and document forgery.” He faces up to 12 years behind bars for all the charges against him.

RFE/RL has called for Mehralizada’s release.

“We call for his immediate release so he can return home to his wife and newborn daughter,” Capus said in the statement.

On the day of Mehralizada’s initial detention, authorities raided his home and seized a car, a computer and mobile phones, according to RFE/RL.

In September, Mehralizada’s pretrial detention was extended until mid-December.

The indictment, which doesn’t mention Radio Azadliq, also fails to establish a clear link between Mehralizada and Abzas Media. Meanwhile, Abzas Media has said Mehralizada’s involvement with the outlet was limited to offering expert commentary.

Abzas Media is one of the few remaining independent outlets in Azerbaijan. It is known for its coverage of corruption, including allegations linked to the country’s ruling family.

More than a dozen journalists are jailed in Azerbaijan on charges viewed as politically motivated, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, or CPJ. Several Abzas Media journalists are among those jailed.

Twenty-five civil society groups, including CPJ and Reporters Without Borders, have called for all the defendants in the Abzas Media case to be released.

Mehralizada’s jailing underscores the poor state of press freedom in Azerbaijan, where the government has long cracked down on criticism. On the 2024 Global Press Freedom Index, Azerbaijan ranks 164 out of 180 countries in terms of media freedom.

Azerbaijan’s Washington Embassy and Foreign Ministry did not immediately reply to VOA’s emails requesting comment for this story.

Azerbaijan’s government has targeted RFE/RL’s Azerbaijani Service for years.

Radio Azadliq was banned from broadcasting on FM frequencies in 2009, and its Baku bureau was raided and shut down in 2014. The service’s website was blocked three years later in 2017.

Former Bureau Chief Khadija Ismayilova was arrested and jailed for 18 months in 2014, and in 2021, Azerbaijani authorities used Pegasus spyware to target at least five Radio Azadliq journalists, according to RFE/RL.

Mehralizada is one of four RFE/RL journalists currently jailed for their work. The others are Ihar Losik and Andrey Kuznechyk in Belarus, and Vladyslav Yesypenko in Russian-occupied Crimea. RFE/RL rejects the charges against all of them as false.
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Washington — The U.S. economy grew at a healthy 2.8% annual rate from July through September, with consumers helping drive growth despite the weight of still-high interest rates. 

Wednesday’s report from the Commerce Department said the gross domestic product — the economy’s total output of goods and services — did slow slightly from its 3% growth rate in the April-June quarter. But the latest figures still reflect surprising durability just as Americans assess the state of the economy in the final stretch of the presidential race. 

Consumer spending, which accounts for about 70% of U.S. economic activity, accelerated to a 3.7% annual pace last quarter, up from 2.8% in the April-June period. Exports also contributed to the third quarter’s growth, increasing at an 8.9% rate. 

On the other hand, growth in business investment slowed sharply on a drop in investment in housing and in nonresidential buildings such as offices and warehouses. But spending on equipment surged. 

The report is the first of three estimates the government will make of GDP growth for the third quarter of the year. The U.S. economy has continued to expand in the face of the much higher borrowing rates the Federal Reserve imposed in 2022 and 2023 in its drive to curb inflation. Despite widespread predictions that the economy would succumb to a recession, it has kept growing, with employers still hiring and consumers still spending. 

In a sign that the nation’s households, whose purchases drive most of the economy, will continue spending, the Conference Board said Tuesday that its consumer confidence index posted its biggest monthly gain since March 2021. The proportion of consumers who expect a recession in the next 12 months dropped to its lowest point since the board first posed that question in July 2022. 

At the same time, the nation’s once-sizzling job market has lost some momentum. On Tuesday, the government reported that the number of job openings in the United States fell in September to its lowest level since January 2021. And employers have added an average of 200,000 jobs a month so far this year — a healthy number but down from a record 604,000 in 2021 as the economy rebounded from the pandemic recession, 377,000 in 2022 and 251,000 in 2023. 

On Friday, the Labor Department is expected to report that the economy added 120,000 jobs in October. That gain, though, will probably have been significantly held down by the effects of Hurricanes Helene and Milton and by a strike at Boeing, the aviation giant, all of which temporarily knocked thousands of people off payrolls. 

Wednesday’s report contained some encouraging news on inflation. The Fed’s favored inflation gauge — called the personal consumption expenditures index, or PCE — rose at just a 1.5% annual pace last quarter, down from 2.5% in the second quarter and the lowest figure in more than four years. Excluding volatile food and energy prices, so-called core PCE inflation was 2.2%, down from 2.8% in the April-June quarter. 

Despite the continued progress on inflation, average prices still far exceed their pre-pandemic levels, which has exasperated many Americans and posed a challenge to Vice President Kamala Harris’ prospects in her race against former President Donald Trump. Most mainstream economists have suggested, though, that Trump’s policy proposals, unlike Harris’, would worsen inflation. 

At its most recent meeting last month, the Fed was satisfied enough with its progress against inflation — and concerned enough by the slowing job market — to slash its benchmark rate by a hefty half percentage point, its first and largest rate cut in more than four years. When it meets next week, the Fed is expected to announce another rate cut, this one by a more typical quarter-point. 

The central bank’s policymakers have also signaled that they expect to cut their key rate again at their final two meetings this year, in November and December. And they envision four more rate cuts in 2025 and two in 2026. The cumulative result of the Fed’s rate cuts, over time, will likely be lower borrowing rates for consumers and businesses. 
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BARCELONA, Spain — At least 51 people have died in Spain’s eastern region of Valencia after flash floods swept away cars, turned village streets into rivers and disrupted rail lines and highways in the worst natural disaster to hit the European nation in recent memory. 

Emergency services in the eastern region of Valencia confirmed the death toll on Wednesday. 

Rainstorms on Tuesday caused flooding in a wide swath of southern and eastern Spain. Floods of mud-colored water tumbled vehicles down streets at frightening speeds. Pieces of wood swirled with household articles. Police and rescue services used helicopters to lift people from their homes and cars. 

Authorities reported several missing people late Tuesday, but the following morning brought the shocking announcement of dozens found dead. 

Over 1,000 soldiers from Spain’s emergency response units were deployed to the devastated areas. 

“Yesterday was the worst day of my life,” Ricardo Gabaldón, the mayor of Utiel, a town in Valencia, told national broadcaster RTVE. He said several people were still missing in his town. 

“We were trapped like rats. Cars and trash containers were flowing down the streets. The water was rising to three meters,” he said. 

Spain has experienced similar autumn storms in recent years, but nothing compared to the devastation over the last two days. 

The death toll could easily rise with other regions yet to report victims and search efforts continuing in areas with difficult access. In the village of Letur in the neighboring Castilla La Mancha region, Mayor Sergio Marín Sánchez said six people were missing. 

A high-speed train with nearly 300 people on board derailed near Malaga, although rail authorities said no one was hurt. High-speed train service between Valencia city and Madrid was interrupted, as were several commuter lines. 

Valencian regional President Carlos Mazón urged people to stay at home so as not to complicate rescue efforts, with travel by road already difficult due to fallen trees and wrecked vehicles. 

“The neighborhood is destroyed, all the cars are on top of each other, it’s literally smashed up,” Christian Viena, a bar owner in the Valencian village of Barrio de la Torre, said by phone. “Everything is a total wreck. Everything is ready to be thrown away. The mud is almost 30 centimeters deep.” 

Spain’s central government set up a crisis committee to help coordinate rescue efforts. 

The rain had subsided in Valencia by late Wednesday morning. But more storms were forecast through Thursday, according to Spain’s national weather service. 

Spain is still recovering from a severe drought earlier this year. Scientists say increased episodes of extreme weather are likely linked to climate change. 
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TBILISI, Georgia — For some Georgians who supported the ruling Georgian Dream party in Saturday’s disputed parliamentary election, the aspiration to go West toward the European Union had to be balanced by the brutal reality of the need to keep the peace with Russia.

The opposition and foreign observers had cast the election as a watershed moment that would decide if Georgia moves closer to Europe or leans back towards Russia amid the war in Ukraine.

The ruling party, which is seen as loyal to its billionaire founder Bidzina Ivanishvili, says it wants to one day join the EU but that it must also avoid confrontation with President Vladimir Putin’s Russia that could leave the South Caucasus republic devastated like Ukraine.

“We’ve had peace these 12 years in Georgia,” said Sergo, a resident of the capital Tbilisi who has voted for Georgian Dream in every election since the party rose to power in 2012.

Georgian Dream clinched 54% of the vote on Saturday, the electoral commission said, while opposition parties and the president claimed the election had been stolen and the West called for investigations into reports of voting irregularities.

Observer groups, including the 57-nation Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), said alleged violations, including ballot-stuffing, bribery, voter intimidation and violence, could have affected the election’s outcome.

The EU and the United States said there was not a level playing field but stopped short of saying the result was stolen by Georgian Dream. Russia accused the West of meddling.

Beyond the rhetoric, though, the result poses a challenge to Tbilisi’s ambitions to join the European Union, which polls show the overwhelming majority of Georgians support.

Brussels has effectively frozen Georgia’s EU accession application over concerns of democratic backsliding under Georgian Dream and what it casts is its pro-Russian rhetoric.

Georgian Dream backers say that while they want to join Europe, they don’t want to sacrifice Georgia’s traditional values of family and church.

EU aspirations?

For them, Georgian Dream’s party slogan, “Only with peace, dignity, and prosperity to Europe,” appeals.

Official results, which the opposition says are fraudulent, showed the party securing huge margins of up to 90% in rural areas, even as it underperformed in Tbilisi and other cities.

Ghia Abashidze, a political analyst close to Georgian Dream, attributed the party’s showing to its emphasis on keeping the peace and preserving traditional values.

The Georgian parliament passed a law this year curbing LGBT rights and Pride events have been attacked by violent mobs in years past. The topic remains sensitive in conservative Georgia, which is devoutly Orthodox Christian.

Abashidze said that Georgian Dream was still committed to EU integration, but found more to like in some of the bloc’s Eastern European members such as Hungary, whose premier Viktor Orban flew to Tbilisi on Monday and hailed the election as free.

He said Orban’s Hungary, which has also been accused of democratic backsliding, shared the Georgian ruling party’s core values of “family, traditions, statehood, sovereignty, peace.”

In Isani, a working-class Tbilisi neighborhood and one of the few in the capital where Georgian Dream received more votes than the four main opposition parties combined, Sergo, who did not want to give his last name, echoed the sentiment.

“We want to go to the European Union with our customs, our traditions, our mentality,” the 56-year-old said, passing freshly-baked bread to customers from his shop window. He said he believed LGBT people should receive medical treatment and go to church to become “normal people.”

Russia or EU?

By contrast, opposition supporters say the ruling party’s positions on foreign policy and social issues are incompatible with Europe’s, and keeping the peace with Russia depends on Georgia aligning with the West.

At a thousands-strong protest against the election results on Monday, Salome Gasviani said the opposition was fighting to preserve Georgia’s freedom and independence.

“We’re here to say out loud that Georgia is a very European country and our future is in the EU, in the West,” she said.

Russia, which ruled Georgia for about 200 years, won a brief war against the country in 2008, and memories of Russian tanks rolling towards Tbilisi are still fresh for many.

During the campaign, Georgian Dream played on fears of war, with posters showing devastated Ukrainian cities beside picturesque Georgian ones to illustrate the threat.

“The main thing is that we don’t have a war,” 69-year-old Otar Shaverdashvili, another Isani resident, said before the vote. “I remember the last war very well. No one wants another one.”

Kornely Kakachia, head of Georgian Institute of Politics think tank, said the opposition had struggled to allay fears that a change of government could risk Georgia being sucked into the Ukraine war.

“If someone asks you to choose between war and the European Union and you have this kind of choice, then of course people will choose the status quo,” he said.
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CAMP VERDE, Ariz. — U.S. forest managers have finalized a land exchange with the Yavapai-Apache Nation that has been decades in the making and will significantly expand the size of the tribe’s reservation in Arizona’s Verde Valley, tribal leaders announced Tuesday.

As part of the arrangement, six parcels of private land acquired over the years by the tribe will be traded to the U.S. Forest Service in exchange for the tribe gaining ownership of 12.95 square kilometers of national forest land that is part of the tribe’s ancestral homelands. The tribe will host a signing ceremony next week to celebrate the exchange, which was first proposed in 1996.

“This is a critical step in our history and vital to the nation’s cultural and economic recovery and future prosperity,” Yavapai-Apache Chairwoman Tanya Lewis said in a post on the tribe’s website.

Prescott National Forest Supervisor Sarah Clawson said in a statement that there had been many delays and changes to the proposal over the years, but the tribe and the Forest Service never lost sight of developing an agreement that would benefit both public and tribal lands.

The federal government has made strides over recent years to protect more lands held sacred by Native American tribes, to develop more arrangements for incorporating Indigenous knowledge into management of public lands and to streamline regulations for putting land into trust for tribes.

The Yavapai-Apache Nation is made up of two distinct groups of people — the Wipuhk’a’bah and the Dil’zhe’e. Their homelands spanned more than 41,440 square kilometers of what is now central Arizona. After the discovery of gold in the 1860s near Prescott, the federal government carved out only a fraction to establish a reservation. The inhabitants eventually were forced from the land, and it wasn’t until the early 1900s that they were able to resettle a tiny portion of the area.

In the Verde Valley, the Yavapai-Apache Nation’s reservation lands are currently comprised of less than 7.77 square kilometers near Camp Verde. The small land base hasn’t been enough to develop economic opportunities or to meet housing needs, Lewis said, pointing to dozens of families who are on a waiting list for new homes.

Lewis said that in acknowledgment of the past removal of the Yavapai-Apache people from their homelands, the preamble to the tribal constitution recognizes that land acquisition is among the Yavapai-Apache Nation’s responsibilities.

Aside from growing the reservation, the exchange will bolster efforts by federal land managers to protect the headwaters of the Verde River and ensure the historic Yavapai Ranch is not sold for development. The agreement also will improve recreational access to portions of four national forests in Arizona.
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WASHINGTON — Powered by consumer spending, the U.S. economy likely kept expanding at a healthy pace from July through September despite the pressure of still-high interest rates.

The Commerce Department is expected to report Wednesday that the gross domestic product — the economy’s total output of goods and services — grew at a 2.6% annual pace last quarter, according to a survey of forecasters by the data firm FactSet. That would be down from a 3% annual rate in the April-June period. But it would still amount to a solid pace as Americans ponder the state of the economy in the final stretch of the presidential race.

Wednesday’s report is the first of three estimates the government will make of GDP growth for the third quarter of the year. The U.S. economy, the world’s biggest, has shown surprising resilience in the face of the much higher borrowing rates the Federal Reserve imposed in 2022 and 2023 in its drive to curb inflation. Despite widespread predictions that the economy would succumb to a recession, it has kept growing, with employers still hiring and consumers still spending.

In a sign that the nation’s households, whose purchases drive most of the economy, will continue spending, the Conference Board said Tuesday that its consumer confidence index posted its biggest monthly gain since March 2021. The proportion of consumers who expect a recession in the next 12 months dropped to its lowest point since the board first posed that question in July 2022.

At the same time, the nation’s once-sizzling job market has lost some momentum. On Tuesday, the government reported that the number of job openings in the United States fell in September to its lowest level since January 2021. And employers have added an average of 200,000 jobs a month so far this year — a healthy number but down from a record 604,000 in 2021 as the economy rebounded from the pandemic recession, 377,000 in 2022 and 251,000 in 2023.

On Friday, the Labor Department is expected to report that the economy added 120,000 jobs in October. That gain, though, will probably have been significantly held down by the effects of Hurricanes Helene and Milton and by a strike at Boeing, the aviation giant, all of which temporarily knocked thousands of people off payrolls.

At its most recent meeting last month, the Fed was satisfied enough with its progress against inflation — and concerned enough by the slowing job market — to slash its benchmark rate by a hefty half percentage point, its first and largest rate cut in more than four years. When it meets next week, the Fed is expected to announce another rate cut, this one by a more typical quarter-point.

The policymakers have also signaled that they expect to cut their key rate again at their final two meetings this year, in November and December. And they envision four more rate cuts in 2025 and two in 2026. The cumulative result of the Fed’s rate cuts, over time, will likely be lower borrowing rates for consumers and businesses.

Inflation, which reached a four-decade high of 9.1% in June 2022, has tumbled to 2.4%, barely above the Fed’s 2% target. But average prices still far exceed their pre-pandemic levels, which has exasperated many Americans and posed a challenge to Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential prospects in her race against former President Donald Trump.

Most mainstream economists have suggested, though, that Trump’s policy proposals, unlike Harris’, would worsen inflation.

 
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A significant fire remains ongoing at BAE Systems’ shipyard in Barrow-in-Furness, northwest England, that builds Britain’s new generation of nuclear submarines, but there was no nuclear risk from the incident, police said on Wednesday.

UK’s Cumbria police said in a statement that two people had been taken to a hospital after suffering from suspected smoke inhalation and that there were no other casualties.

The police said that everyone else had been evacuated from the Devonshire Dock Hall facility and accounted for.

BAE’s site in Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, manufactures Royal Navy’s Astute and Dreadnought submarines, according to BAE’s website.

The incident was reported at 12:44 am local time, police said.

BAE did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Police have advised residents nearby to remain indoors.
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The two candidates for U.S. president are making what they call their “closing arguments” to voters in this final week before the election. VOA’s Senior Washington Correspondent Carolyn Presutti brings us the sights and sounds from two rallies.
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WASHINGTON — As Ukraine braces to face North Korean troops who are believed to be in the Russian border region of Kursk, analysts say China should be concerned about stronger pressure and responses from NATO, which sees Beijing as an enabler of Pyongyang and a supporter of Russia’s war against Ukraine.

South Korea’s National Intelligence Agency said on Tuesday it has obtained information that North Korean troops are moving to the front lines of the war in Russia near Ukraine.  

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said Monday that North Korean military units have been deployed to Russia’s western border region of Kursk. He made the remark after a South Korean delegation briefed NATO, Australia, Japan and New Zealand on North Korea’s involvement in Russia’s war against Ukraine. 

Rutte continued that North Korea’s troop dispatch, in addition to shipments of ammunition and ballistic missiles, represents “a dangerous expansion of Russia’s war” that threatens both Indo-Pacific and Euro-Atlantic security.

In return for North Korean troops and weapons, Moscow is providing Pyongyang with “military technology and other support to circumvent international sanctions,” Rutte added.

The U.S. estimates that North Korea sent about 10,000 soldiers to train in eastern Russia.   

North Korea said on Friday that “if there is such a thing” as North Korea troops in Russia, “it will be an act conforming with the regulation of international law.” 

Growing signs of strain

Analysts say North Korea’s commitment of troops to help Russia would further strain its relations with China, which undoubtedly will dislike the development that would lead to the strengthening of NATO’s ties with South Korea. 

“China should be concerned about NATO paying more attention to North Korea, especially since many NATO member countries see Beijing as Pyongyang’s enabler,” Ramon Pacheco Pardo, who was part of European Union delegations to previous talks with North Korea, South Korea, China and Japan, told VOA on Friday.

North Korea’s troop dispatch will lead NATO to focus further on Pyongyang’s cyber activities and nuclear and missile programs and proliferation, and this can have “a knock-on effect on China,” continued Pacheco Pardo, a professor of international relations at King’s College London.

“China can’t afford to sever ties with North Korea, due to its own security interests. So, Beijing has to endure North Korea siding with Russia and being labeled as part of an axis of authoritarian revisionist states, even if it doesn’t like this label,” he added.  

Earlier in October, NATO held talks with its Asian partners to enhance the security link between Europe and the Indo-Pacific, expressing concern over countries such as China and North Korea that can become “security spoilers” in their “backyard.”  

Bruce Bennett, a senior defense analyst at the RAND Corporation, told VOA on Friday that Beijing is uneasy about Moscow’s growing influence in the region through military cooperation with Pyongyang.

He said China tolerated North Korea’s sending munitions to Russia because it viewed that as having “a limited time frame,” but after North Korea’s troop deployment, Beijing is concerned about their long-term ties contributing to Moscow’s growth as a dominant power in East Asia, which threatens Beijing’s view of itself as playing that role.

Responding to VOA’s inquiry on the development of North Korea-Russia military cooperation, the Chinese Embassy in Washington on Tuesday sent a statement saying Beijing hopes “all parties will promote the de-escalation of the situation and strive for a political settlement.”

Keeping the status quo

Chinese President Xi Jinping, while attending the BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia, on October 23, said there is a need to stop “adding fuel to the fire” in the Ukraine crisis without mentioning specific countries.  

Beijing, seeing North Korea as a buffer zone between its mainland and U.S. forces stationed in South Korea, has long been Pyongyang’s main ally as the biggest trading partner. To prevent it from becoming unstable, China has maintained the economic lifeline of the regime that is heavily sanctioned and closed off from the global economy.  

But trouble in their bilateral ties seemed to begin when North Korean leader Kim Jong Un visited Russia last year and were exacerbated when Kim and Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a mutual defense treaty in Pyongyang this summer. 

The latest development in the deepening military relations between Pyongyang and Moscow could “complicate Beijing’s own plans to have it both ways in the Russia-Ukraine war,” according to Roy Kamphausen, a senior fellow for Chinese security at the National Bureau of Asian Research.

Kamphausen said on Friday that China wants to “support Russia enough” so Moscow “can win slowly” but “avoid too much blowback, especially economic sanctions on China itself.”

He added, “Escalation in the current conflict which comes from Asia itself might have the negative impact of putting more pressure on Beijing itself, just what it wants to avoid.”

The U.S. earlier this month sanctioned China-based companies for collaborating with Russia to produce drones for use against Ukraine.

Bruce Klingner, a senior research fellow for Northeast Asia at the Heritage Foundation, told VOA on Friday that “Beijing would see little benefit to establish a more formal trilateral alliance because being too closely linked to Russian and North Korean provocative behavior could trigger secondary sanctions against China.” 

China in 2023 was the largest trading partner for EU imports and third largest for EU exports.
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NEW YORK — A Kenyan man who plotted a 9/11-style attack on a U.S. building was training as a commercial pilot in the Philippines when his plans were interrupted, a federal prosecutor told a New York jury Tuesday.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Jon Bodansky told a federal jury in Manhattan that Cholo Abdi Abdullah plotted an attack for four years that he hoped to carry out on behalf of the terrorist organization al-Shabab.

He said Abdullah was almost finished with his two-year pilot training when he was arrested in July 2019 in the Philippines on local charges. He was transferred in December 2020 to U.S. law enforcement authorities, who charged him with terrorism-related crimes.

Abdullah underwent training in explosives and how to operate in secret and avoid detection before moving to the Philippines in 2017 to begin intensive training for a commercial pilot’s license, the prosecutor said.

Abdullah posed as an aspiring commercial pilot even though his true intention was to locate a building in the United States where he could carry out a suicide attack from the cockpit by slamming his plane into a building, Bodansky told the jury.

He said Abdullah was “planning for four years a 9/11-style attack” only to have it thwarted with his arrest.

The defendant, operating from a Nairobi hotel, used the internet to research how to breach a cockpit door and looked up a 2019 terrorist attack that killed some 21 people, Bodansky said. Among those killed in that attack was an American businessman who survived the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.

Prosecutors have said Abdullah also researched information “about the tallest building in a major U.S. city” before he was caught.

Abdullah, who is representing himself and once pleaded not guilty, declined to give an opening statement and did not actively participate in questioning witnesses Tuesday.

In court papers filed before the trial, prosecutors told the judge that they understood “through standby counsel that the defendant maintains his position that he ‘wants to merely sit passively during the trial, not oppose the prosecution and whatever the outcome, he would accept the outcome because he does not believe that this is a legitimate system.'”

The State Department in 2008 designated al-Shabab, which means “the youth” in Arabic, as a foreign terrorist organization. The militant group is an al-Qaida affiliate that has fought to establish an Islamic state in Somalia based on Shariah law.

If convicted, Abdullah faces a mandatory minimum of 20 years in prison. His trial is expected to last three weeks.
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The outcome of the U.S. election and the possible changes in Washington’s foreign policy are of special significance to the 3 million American expatriates eligible to vote in next week’s U.S. presidential elections. In few places is that outcome more tangible than in Ukraine, where a few thousand Americans have, for various reasons, chosen to live after Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion. Lesia Bakalets speaks to several expatriates in Ukraine and sends this report from Kyiv.
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Every October, events are held worldwide to mark a Day of Remembrance for the victims of purges in the former Soviet Union. With growing restrictions on memorial ceremonies in Russia, opposition activists see events abroad as more crucial than ever. Natasha Mozgovaya has the story from Seattle.
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The U.S. Supreme Court denied a bid Tuesday by former independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be removed from the ballot in Wisconsin and Michigan for the Nov. 5 election. Kennedy has said he wants voters who would have backed him to cast ballots for the Republican nominee, former President Donald Trump. 

The court declined Kennedy’s emergency requests to order the Wisconsin Elections Commission and Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson to take him off the ballot in those states. Michigan and Wisconsin are among a handful of closely contested states expected to decide the outcome of the race between Trump and Democrat Kamala Harris.  

Conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch dissented from the decision concerning the Michigan ballot only. No other justice publicly dissented. 

Kennedy, an environmental lawyer and anti-vaccine activist known by his initials RFK Jr., has sought the Supreme Court’s intervention in his attempts to stay on the ballot in some states while dropping off others. In September, the Supreme Court rejected his bid to be restored to the ballot in New York. 

Kennedy suspended his campaign in August and endorsed the former president’s candidacy. Kennedy has urged his supporters everywhere to back Trump and has withdrawn from the ballot in a number of Republican-leaning states.  
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A U.S. judge on Tuesday dismissed a Republican lawsuit seeking to force election battleground state Pennsylvania to strengthen its procedures for verifying ballots submitted by military and overseas voters. 

Six Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives seeking reelection on November 5 had sued Pennsylvania’s top election officials on September 30. The Republicans had argued that the state was improperly exempting overseas voters from a requirement that their identity documents be verified, creating a vulnerability for fraudulent votes to be submitted. 

Pennsylvania is one of a handful of closely contested states that are expected to decide the outcome of the U.S. presidential race pitting Republican Donald Trump against Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris. 

U.S. District Judge Christopher Conner dismissed the case in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, deciding that the plaintiffs had waited too long to file their complaint given that Pennsylvania’s procedures had been in place for years.

The suit was one of dozens around the country in which Republicans have challenged voting procedures or sought to purge voter rolls in what they call a push to ensure that people do not vote illegally. That legal blitz has been faltering. In the past three weeks, Trump allies have been dealt at least 11 court losses. 

Conner also said Erick Kaardal, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, had not provided evidence that there had been foreign influence over Pennsylvania’s overseas ballots. The judge wrote that when he pressed Kaardal for such evidence during an October 18 hearing, the lawyer “effectively conceded that all he had was ‘concerns.'” 

“Plaintiffs cannot rely on phantom fears of foreign malfeasance to excuse their lack of diligence,” Conner wrote. 

“We don’t want votes from Iran or Russia or invalid votes counting,” Kaardal had told the hearing in Harrisburg federal court over a motion to dismiss the case filed by the Democratic National Committee and Pennsylvania’s top elections official. 

The Election Research Institute, a conservative group whose lawyer Karen DiSalvo brought the case alongside Kaardal, said the plaintiffs were disappointed by the dismissal and were considering options for appeal. 

Judges in the election battleground states of Michigan and North Carolina this month also rejected lawsuits filed by the Republican National Committee seeking to block votes from some Americans living overseas. 

In those cases, the Republicans argued the states improperly allowed U.S. citizens living abroad who had never lived in those states to vote there. 
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Madrid — Torrential rains caused by a cold front moving across southeastern Spain flooded roads and towns on Tuesday, prompting authorities in the worst-hit areas to advise citizens to stay at home and avoid all non-essential travel. 

Spain’s state weather agency AEMET declared a red alert in the eastern Valencia region and the second-highest level of alert in parts of Andalusia in the south, where a train derailed due to the heavy rainfall, although no one was injured. 

Footage showed firefighters rescuing trapped drivers amid heavy rain in the Valencian town of Alzira and flooded streets with stuck cars. 

Scientists say extreme weather events are becoming more frequent due to climate change. Meteorologists believe the warming of the Mediterranean, which increases water evaporation, plays a key role in making torrential rains more severe. 

AEMET expected Valencia to take the brunt of the storm, with forecasts of more than 90 mm of rain in less than one hour, or 180 mm in under 12 hours. 

Schools, courthouses and other essential services were suspended in Carlet and some other nearby towns in the Valencia region. 

Local emergency services requested the help of UME, a military unit specialized in rescue operations, in the area of Utiel-Requena, where farmers’ association ASAJA said the storm was causing significant damage to crops. 

The storm first struck Andalusia. In El Ejido, a Mediterranean city known for its sprawling greenhouses, a hailstorm broke hundreds of car windscreens, flooded the streets and damaged the mostly plastic greenhouse infrastructure. 

In Alora, also in Andalusia, the Guadalorce river overflowed and 14 people there had to be rescued by firefighters, authorities said. Alora topped AEMET’s ranking on Tuesday with 160 mm of rainfall.
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