Moldova’s Constitutional Court on Thursday validated the results of last month’s referendum, formally recognizing the country’s decision to join the European Union.

The “yes” result, however, was an incredibly close one, much closer than polls had predicted, and the road toward EU membership for Moldova is not expected to be smooth either.

Supporters of the measure attribute the much closer than expected result to Russian meddling in the run-up to the vote held on October 20, together with the presidential election.

Both campaigns were marred by massive Russian disinformation and an alleged vote-buying scheme said to have cost the Kremlin tens of millions of dollars.  Some have described an atmosphere of bitterness and division with unprecedented mud-slinging and “hate speech,” including ethnic slurs and fascist tropes, leaving the country, some would say, dangerously divided.

The top two presidential candidates, incumbent pro-Europe President Maia Sandu and pro-Kremlin former prosecutor general Alexandr Stoianoglo, face a run-off vote on Sunday.

“I hope that the pro-European forces, that Maia Sandu will win elections, but I am worried that this victory will be achieved with a small margin,” Ludmila Barba, host of Moldovan program The European Vector, told VOA.  “That was the case with the referendum. And this state of affairs means that this antagonism in society will remain.”

Moldova is a parliamentary republic and those elections will take place next year. Right now, the government is controlled by Sandu’s PAS party, but some predict it could lose control next year.

Analysts expect Moldova will remain a battleground for hearts, minds and political allegiances for some time to come and Moscow is no doubt poised to further exploit divisions. It has been throwing its weight around Moldova since the collapse of the USSR but has been honing its meddling technique since last year’s local elections.

“It was like a bootcamp for them [the Kremlin] for interference and then they scaled it,” Orysia Lutsevych, deputy director of the Russia and Eurasia Program at London’s Chatham House, told VOA. “They’ve seen what worked and that was vote-buying, trying to put eggs in different baskets … but underneath it all, having influence, having them on the payroll of Russia.”

The most audacious part of the scheme was the participation of fugitive Russia-based oligarch Ilan Shor, who was convicted in 2017 of banking fraud in Moldova. He is accused of buying off a network of up to 300,000 Moldovans, paying them to vote against Europe in last month’s referendum.

“They have been paid for their activity, from the equivalent of 50 euros a month and up.  It’s not big money, but when you take into account the complicated economic and social situation in Moldova, for people with a low income, these 50 euros are important,” Barba said.

President Sandu called out the scheme but was unable to stop it.

Moldovan runoff follows Georgia election

Moldova’s runoff comes on the heels of a hotly disputed victory for Georgia’s pro-Russian Georgian Dream party.

Georgia’s opposition-aligned president, Salome Zourabichvili, declared the results illegitimate, describing a “Russian Special Operation” to undermine the vote and she is fighting back, at this point, with uncertain effect.

The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE]) has noted voter intimidation, ballot stuffing and bribery in Georgia, but Moscow claims its hands are clean. Regardless of the ultimate outcome, the showing by the pro-Russian party is a dramatic turn for a country that had full-blown war with Russia in 2008.

“I would never have imagined Russia or a Russian agenda having such a strong comeback in Georgia. There was for a while so much open hatred toward Russia, that anything suspected to be related to Russia would immediately be rejected,” Lutsevych said.

“This is where Russians are smart in how they play the subversion game. They are not openly saying this is a Russian agenda.”

The recent passage in Georgia of a “Foreign Agent” law, an act clearly inspired by Moscow, got the EU to pause further discussion about bringing Georgia into the bloc.  And the conduct of last week’s elections was to be another “litmus test” for Brussels on Tbilisi’s readiness to join.

While there may be clever, forward-thinking manipulation on the part of Moscow, Barba says one cannot ignore the effect of the immediate raw rage coming from the Kremlin.

“This is the first election since the Russian aggression in Ukraine began. The situation is more complicated because Russia is furious that it didn’t manage to take Ukraine in three days and that makes it more aggressive,” she says.

“Since it was not able to clinch victory in Ukraine, it is going after smaller ones in Georgia and Moldova to prove or assert its status.”

For the people of Moldova, fear has become the main theme of the elections. Barba points out that the pro-Russian side has said that if Moldova stays close to Russia, “the country will be safe. That Ukraine has war because they went toward the EU.”

“That narrative is going around. And thepro-Europeans say if we end up with Russia, we will have war, we will be dragged in.  Both sides are trying to say that the other option could lead to war.”

According to Lutsevych, fear can ultimately drown out Sandu’s main message that Moldova can have a brighter future with Europe. And this is taking its toll on some young members of Sandu’s team.

“They don’t feel it’s a fair game. They don’t feel they can win against that. It’s so powerful. It’s hard to compete when someone like Russia fuels anger, fear, and you have to compete on a positive agenda.”

Still, getting into Europe is a fight in itself and Lutsevych praises Sandu for taking up that fight. And the nature of this election campaign, she concludes, has put Moldova more front and center on Europe’s agenda and perhaps put enhanced focus on what Russia is doing on the sidelines of the Ukraine war.
…

US and EU officials are calling for an investigation into recent elections in Georgia that resulted in the Pro-Russian Georgian Dream party winning a fourth term as the country’s ruling party. But that didn’t stop Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban from congratulating the party during a visit to the Georgian capital Tbilisi. Ani Chkhikvadze has the story.
…

WASHINGTON — America’s employers added 12,000 jobs in October, a total that economists say was held down by the effects of strikes and hurricanes that left many workers temporarily off payrolls. The report provided a somewhat blurry view of the job market at the end of a presidential race that has pivoted heavily on voters’ feelings about the economy.

Last month’s hiring gain was down significantly from the 223,000 jobs that were added in September. But economists have estimated that hurricanes Helene and Milton, combined with strikes at Boeing and elsewhere, had the effect of pushing down net job growth by tens of thousands of jobs in October.

Friday’s report from the Labor Department also showed that the unemployment rate remained at 4.1% last month. The low jobless rate suggests that the labor market is still fundamentally healthy, if not as robust as it was early this year. Combined with an inflation rate that has tumbled from its 2022 peak to near prepandemic levels, the overall economy appears to be on solid footing on the eve of Election Day.

The government did not estimate how many jobs were likely removed temporarily from payrolls last month. But economists have said they think the storms and strikes caused up to 100,000 jobs to be dropped. Reflecting the impact of the strikes, factories shed 46,000 positions in October.

Health care companies added 52,000 jobs in October, and state and local governments tacked on 39,000.

The employment report for October also revised down the government’s estimate of the job gains in August and September by a combined 112,000, indicating that the labor market wasn’t quite as robust then as initially thought.

“The big one-off shocks that struck the economy in October make it impossible to know whether the job market was changing direction in the month,’’ Bill Adams, chief economist at Comerica Bank, wrote in a commentary. “But the downward revisions to job growth through September show it was cooling before these shocks struck.’’

Still, economists have noted that the United States has the strongest of the world’s most advanced economies, one that has proved surprisingly durable despite the pressure of high interest rates. This week, for example, the government estimated that the economy expanded at a healthy 2.8% annual rate last quarter, with consumer spending — the heart of the economy — helping drive growth.

Yet as voters choose between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, large numbers of Americans have said they are unhappy with the state of the economy. Despite the plummeting of inflation, many people are exasperated by high prices, which surged during the recovery from the pandemic recession and remain about 20% higher on average than they were before inflation began accelerating in early 2021.

With inflation having significantly cooled, the Fed is set to cut its benchmark interest rate next week for a second time and likely again in December. The Fed’s 11 rate hikes in 2022 and 2023 managed to help slow inflation without tipping the economy into a recession. A series of Fed rate cuts should lead, over time, to lower borrowing rates for consumers and businesses.

In the meantime, there have been signs of a slowdown in the job market. This week, the Labor Department reported that employers posted 7.4 million job openings in September. Although that is still more than employers posted on the eve of the 2020 pandemic, it amounted to the fewest openings since January 2021.

And 3.1 million Americans quit their jobs in September, the fewest in more than four years. A drop in quits tends to indicate that more workers are losing confidence in their ability to land a better job elsewhere.
…

The United States is watching growing cooperation between Russia and China in the Arctic closely and some of their recent military collaboration in the region sends “concerning signals”, the U.S. Arctic ambassador said.  

Russia and China have stepped up military cooperation in the Arctic while deepening overall ties in recent years that include China supplying Moscow with dual-use goods despite Western sanctions on Russia over the war in Ukraine. 

Russia and the United States are among eight countries with territory in the resource-rich Arctic. China calls itself a “near-Arctic” state and wants to create a “Polar Silk Road” in the Arctic, a new shipping route as the polar ice sheet recedes with rising temperatures.  

Michael Sfraga, the United States’ first ambassador-at-large for Arctic affairs, said the “frequency and the complexity” of recent military cooperation between Moscow and Beijing in the region sent “concerning signals”. 

“The fact that they are working together in the Arctic has our attention,” Sfraga, who was sworn in last month, told Reuters in a telephone interview from Alaska. “We are being both vigilant and diligent about this. We’re watching very closely this evolution of their activity.” 

“It raises our radar, literally and figuratively,” he added.

Sfraga cited a joint run by Russian and Chinese bomber planes off the coast of Alaska in July, and Chinese and Russian coast guard ships sailing together through the Bering Strait in October.  

He said these activities had been conducted in international waters, in line with international law, but the fact that the bombers flew off the coast of Alaska had raised concerns for U.S. security. 

“We do need to think about security, heighten our own alliances, our own mutual defences,” Sfraga said. “Alaska, the North American Arctic, is NATO’s western flank and so we need to think about the Arctic that way.” 

The activity was also a concern for U.S. allies as the Bering Strait and the Bering Sea give access to the North Pacific and South Pacific, he said. 

The Pentagon said in a report released in July that the growing alignment between Russia and China in the Arctic was “a concern”.  

China and Russia are trying to develop Arctic shipping routes as Moscow seeks to deliver more oil and gas to China amid Western sanctions. Beijing is seeking an alternative shipping route to reduce its dependence on the Strait of Malacca. 

The Arctic also holds fossil fuels and minerals beneath the land and the seabed that could become more accessible with global warming.  
…

Europe is bracing for former President Donald Trump’s potential return to power — even as his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, remains a mostly unknown quantity. Many Europeans believe much is at stake in the nail-biting U.S. elections: from NATO and the transatlantic alliance to Russia’s war on Ukraine, trade relations and the future of their own democracies. Lisa Bryant reports from Paris. 
…

Russia’s Defense Ministry said its defenses shot down 83 Ukrainian drones over six regions early on November 1.

“36 drones were shot down over the Kursk region, 20 over the Bryansk region, 12 over Crimea, eight over the Voronezh region, four over the Oryol region, and three over the Belgorod region,” the ministry said in a statement on its Telegram channel.

Separately, Aleksandr Bogomaz, the governor of Bryansk, said one person was wounded when a Ukrainian drone crashed into an apartment building in the city of Bryansk.

In the Stavropol region, a drone fell on an oil depot in the city of Svetlograd, regional Governor Vladimir Vladimirov said on Telegram. In Ukraine’s Black Sea port of Odesa, a Russian missile struck a fire station, wounding two firefighters, regional Governor Oleh Kiper reported.

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s air force said its defenses shot down 31 Russian drones and one missile.   
…

moscow — A Russian former employee of the U.S. Consulate in Russia’s Far Eastern city of Vladivostok has been sentenced to four years and 10 months in prison for “secret collaboration with a foreign state,” Russian agencies said Friday.

Robert Shonov worked for more than 25 years for the U.S. Consulate until 2021, when Moscow imposed restrictions on local staff working for foreign missions.

Afterward, he worked as a private contractor compiling news accounts from publicly accessible Russian media, according to the U.S. State Department.

He was arrested this year on suspicion of passing secret information about Russia’s war in Ukraine to the United States in exchange for money.

According to the judgment published on the website of Valdivostok’s Primorye court, $4,343 and an electronic device linked to the commission of the offense were seized.

In September 2023, Russia also expelled two U.S. diplomats it accused of acting as liaison agents for Shonov.

According to Washington, Shonov had only been hired by the U.S. Consulate to carry out routine monitoring of freely accessible Russian media.

In recent years, several U.S. citizens have been arrested and sentenced to long jail terms in Russia. Others are being held pending trial.

Washington, which supports Ukraine militarily and financially against Russia’s invasion, accuses Moscow of wanting to exchange them for Russians held in the United States.

The United States and Russia exchanged prisoners including The Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich in a landmark swap in August, but several U.S. nationals and dual nationals remain in detention in Russia. 
…

The Biden administration says it is looking into Iran’s apparent recent detention of an Iranian American dual national who is the only U.S. citizen publicly reported to have been jailed by the Islamic republic since a rare U.S.-Iran prisoner swap in September 2023.

Responding to a VOA inquiry last week the State Department said in a statement that it was “aware of reports that a dual U.S.-Iranian citizen has been arrested in Iran.”

The reports refer to Reza Valizadeh, a former journalist for VOA sister network Radio Farda who had left the Persian-language network in 2022. He flew to Tehran in February to visit his family after living in the West for 14 years, according to his last post on the X platform in August.

Iran views Radio Farda and other Western-based Persian media as hostile entities because they draw attention to public dissent and protests against the nation’s authoritarian Islamist rulers.

“We are working with our Swiss partners who serve as the protecting power for the United States in Iran to gather more information about this case,” a State Department spokesperson said.

“Iran routinely imprisons U.S. citizens and other countries’ citizens unjustly for political purposes. This practice is cruel and contrary to international law,” the spokesperson added.

An informed source inside Iran told VOA’s Persian Service that Valizadeh was arrested in Iran in late September on charges of collaborating with overseas-based Persian media. The source requested anonymity due to Iran’s repeated harassment of individuals who provide comments publicly to Western media.

The Iran-based human rights group Human Rights Activists in Iran (HRAI) and the U.S.-based media rights group Committee to Protect Journalists reported in mid-October that Valizadeh had been held in Tehran’s Evin prison without access to a lawyer since his arrest. The reports cited two sources: one close to Valizadeh’s family, and one who previously worked with Valizadeh.

Iran’s U.N. mission in New York acknowledged receiving a VOA request for comment about Valizadeh’s case last week but provided no response.

Skylar Thompson, HRAI’s Washington-based deputy director, said in a message to VOA that the State Department “must utilize all available diplomatic channels to investigate Valizadeh’s detention and ensure his immediate, unhindered access to legal counsel.”

In his last X post in August, Valizadeh wrote that he had returned to Iran in February after having only “half-completed” a negotiation with the intelligence arm of Iran’s top military force, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. He said he decided to return voluntarily, even without having received a prior written or verbal commitment that the IRGC would not impede his visit.

In Valizadeh’s previous X post, published in February upon arrival in Iran, he said Iranian intelligence agents had summoned and pressured his family members to persuade him to return.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has tried to persuade Iranians living abroad that they have nothing to fear by returning.

“We must assure them that if they return to Iran, we will not file a case against them. We will not harass them, and we will not prevent them from leaving,” Pezeshkian said in an August interview with state news agency ISNA.

Jason Brodsky, policy director of U.S. advocacy group United Against Nuclear Iran, told VOA that Valizadeh’s arrest should be a warning to Iranians with dual nationalities that Tehran’s assurances cannot be trusted.

“There have been cases over the years in which Iranians abroad will get authorization from one governmental entity in Iran to enter, and then a competing agency will scoop up this person and take him hostage,” Brodsky said.

Valizadeh was slated to go on trial before Revolutionary Court judge Abolghassem Salavati, according to sources cited by HRAI and Iranian freelance journalist Nejat Bahrami, who first reported Valizadeh’s arrest in a social media post on October 13. Salavati has been sanctioned by the U.S. government for harshly punishing Iranian citizens and dual nationals for exercising their freedoms of expression or assembly.

“It seems as though Valizadeh is wrongfully detained,” said Kylie Moore-Gilbert, an Australian political scientist who herself was detained in Iran from 2018 to 2020 on what Western nations said were bogus security charges.

In an email to VOA, Moore-Gilbert wrote that Valizadeh’s journalism “would certainly make him a person of interest to the IRGC.”

“The fact that he has been referred to the Revolutionary Court of Salavati is also telling, as this judge is favored by the IRGC for dealing with political cases including the wrongful detention of foreign and dual nationals,” she wrote.

Granting a wrongful detention designation to a U.S. national means U.S. Special Envoy for Hostage Affairs Roger Carstens is authorized to work with a coalition of government and private sector organizations to secure the detainee’s freedom.

Designations are granted if a review by the secretary of state concludes that the U.S. national’s case meets criteria defined in the Levinson Act of 2020.

Any of Valizadeh’s family members residing abroad or legal representatives should “immediately apply” to the U.S. secretary of state for a wrongful detention designation, Moore-Gilbert said. Valizadeh’s recent work as a journalist should make the process “relatively straightforward” in contrast to other cases, she added.

The State Department spokesperson who sent the statement to VOA said the agency “continuously monitors the circumstances surrounding the detentions of U.S. citizens overseas for indicators that the detentions may be wrongful.”

The Biden administration secured the release of five Iranian Americans whom it deemed wrongfully detained in Iran in a September 2023 deal in which five Iranians in the U.S. also won reprieves from detention and prosecution.

That deal is the only U.S.-Iran prisoner exchange of Biden’s term so far. It also involved the U.S. allowing $6 billion in Iranian funds frozen under U.S. sanctions in South Korean banks to be transferred to Qatar for Iran to use for humanitarian purchases. A U.S. Treasury Department spokesperson told U.S. media this month that the funds remain “immobilized” following Iran’s backing of the October 2023 Hamas terror attack on Israel.

“Valizadeh’s detention raises questions as to whether the Iranians are holding him hostage for an exchange involving the movement of those assets in Qatar or something even greater,” Brodsky said.

“Every time we do a deal like that, it emboldens the Iranians to take more hostages,” he added. “So we need a comprehensive strategy, working with our allies and partners, to employ common hostage-taking penalties against Iran involving sanctions and diplomatic isolation.”

This report was produced in collaboration with VOA’s Persian service. 
…

Lily Meskers faced an unexpected choice in the lead-up to the first major election she can vote in.

The 19-year-old University of Montana sprinter was among college athletes in the state who received an inquiry from Montana Together asking if she was interested in a name, image and likeness deal to support Sen. Jon Tester, a three-term Democrat seeking re-election. The group, which is not affiliated with the Tester campaign, offered from $400 to $2,400 to athletes willing to produce video endorsements.

Meskers, who is from Colorado but registered to vote in Montana, decided against the deal because she disagrees with Tester’s votes on legislation involving transgender athletes in sports.

“I was like, OK, I believe that this is a political move to try to gain back some voters that he might have lost,” Meskers said. “And me being a female student-athlete myself, I was not going to give my endorsement to someone who I felt didn’t have the same support for me.”

Professional athletes such as LeBron James, Colin Kaepernick and Stephen Curry have taken high-profile stances on hot-button topics and political campaigns in recent years, but college athletes are far less outspoken — even if money is available, according to experts in the NIL field. Being outwardly political can reflect on their school or endanger potential endorsement deals from brands that don’t want controversy. It can certainly establish a public image for an athlete — for better or for worse — or lead to tensions with teammates and coaches who might not feel the same way.

There are examples of political activism by college athletes: A Texas Tech kicker revealed his support for former President Donald Trump on a shirt under his uniform at a game last week and a handful of Nebraska athletes a few days ago teamed up in a campaign ad against an abortion measure on the Tuesday’s ballot.

Still, such steps are considered rare.

“It can be viewed as risky and there may be people telling them just don’t even take that chance because they haven’t made it yet,” said Lauren Walsh, who started a sports branding agency 15 years ago. She said there is often too much to lose for themselves, their handlers and in some cases, their families.

“And these individuals still have to figure out what they’re going to do with the rest of their lives, even those that do end up getting drafted,” she added.

College coaches are not always as reticent. Auburn men’s basketball coach Bruce Pearl has used social media to make it clear he does not support Kamala Harris, Trump’s Democratic opponent in next week’s presidential election. Oklahoma State football coach Mike Gundy once caused a stir with a star player for wearing a shirt promoting a far-right news outlet.

Blake Lawrence, co-founder of the NIL platform Opendorse, noted that this is the first presidential election in the NIL era, which began in July 2021. He said athletes are flocking to opportunities to help increase voter turnout in the 18-to-24 age demographic, adding that one of his company’s partners has had 86 athletes post social media messages encouraging turnout through the first half of the week. 

He said athletes are shying away from endorsing specific candidates or causes that are considered partisan.

“Student-athletes are, for the most part, still developing their confidence in endorsing any type of product or service,” he said. “So if they are hesitant to put their weight behind supporting a local restaurant or an e-commerce product, then they are certainly going to be hesitant to use their social channels in a political way.”

Giving athletes a voice

Many college athletes have opted to focus on drumming up turnout in a non-partisan manner or simply using their platforms to take stands that are not directly political in nature. Some of those efforts can be found in battleground states.

A progressive group called NextGen America said it had signed players in Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Virginia to encourage voting among young people. Another organization, The Team, said it prepped 27 college athletes in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Arizona and Michigan to lead volunteer voter participation opportunities for students. The organization also said it got more than 625 coaches to sign a nonpartisan pledge to get their athletes registered to vote.

The Team’s executive director is Joe Kennedy, a former coach who coordinated championship visits and other sporting events at the White House during President Barack Obama’s administration. In early October, it hosted a Zoom event during which panelists such as NCAA President Charlie Baker and WNBA players Nneka Ogwumike and Natasha Cloud gave college athletes advice about using their platforms on campus.

In its early days, The Team seized upon momentum from the record turnout seen in the 2020 election. The NCAA that year said Division I athletes could have Election Day off from practice and play to vote. Lisa Kay Solomon, founder of the All Vote No Play campaign, said even if the athletes don’t immediately take stands on controversial issues, it’s important for them to learn how.

“It is a lot to ask our young people to feel capable and confident on skills they’ve never had a chance to practice,” Solomon said. “We have to model what it means to practice taking risks, practice standing up for yourself, practice pausing to think about what are the values that you care about — not what social media is feeding into your brain, but what do you care about and how do you express that? And how do you do it in a way that honors the kind of future that you want to be a part of?”

Shut up and play?

Two years ago, Tennessee-Martin quarterback Dresser Winn said he would support a candidate in a local district attorney general race in what experts said was very likely the first political NIL deal by a college athlete.

There have been very few since.

The public criticism and fallout for athletes who speak out on politics or social issue can be sharp. Kaepernick, the Super Bowl-winning quarterback of the San Francisco 49ers, hasn’t played in an NFL game since January 2017, not long after he began kneeling during the national anthem at games.

Meskers, the Montana sprinter, said political endorsements through NIL deals could create problems for athletes and their schools.

“I just think that NIL is going to run into a lot of trouble and a lot of struggles if they continue to let athletes do political endorsements,” she said. “I just think it’s messy. But I stand by NIL as a whole. I think it’s really hard as a student athlete to create a financial income and support yourself.”

Walsh said it’s easier for wealthy and veteran stars like James and Ogwumike to take stands. James, the Los Angeles Lakers star, started More Than a Vote — an organization with a mission to “educate, energize and protect Black voters” — in 2020. He has passed the leadership to Ogwumike, who just finished her 13th year in the WNBA and also is the president of the Women’s National Basketball Players Association. More than a Vote is focused on women’s rights and reproductive freedom this year.

“They have very established brands,” Walsh said. “They know who they are and they know what their political stance is. They know that they have a really strong following that — there’s always going to be haters, but they’re also always going to have that strong following of people who listen to everything that they have to say.”

Andra Gillespie, an associate professor at Emory University who teaches African American politics, also said it is rare that a college athlete would make a significant impact with a political stand simply because they tend to have a more regional platform than national. Even celebrities like Taylor Swift and Eminem are better at increasing turnout than championing candidates.

“They are certainly very beneficial in helping to drive up turnout among their fans,” Gillespie said. “The data is less conclusive about whether or not they’re persuasive – are they the ones who are going to persuade you to vote for a particular candidate?”

Athletes as influencers

Still, campaigns know young voters are critical this election cycle, and athletes offer an effective and familiar voice to reach them.

Political and social topics are not often broached, but this week six Nebraska athletes — five softball players and a volleyball player — appeared in an ad paid for by the group Protect Women and Children involving two initiatives about abortion laws on Tuesday’s ballot.

The female athletes backed Initiative 434, which would amend the state constitution to prohibit abortions after the first trimester, with exceptions. Star softball player Jordy Bahl said on social media that the athletes were not paid.

A University of Montana spokesperson said two athletes initially agreed to take part in the NIL deal backing Tester. The school said one withdrew and the other declined to be interviewed.

For Meskers, deciding against the offer boiled down to Tester twice voting against proposals to bar federal funds from going to schools that allow transgender athletes to play women’s sports, a prominent GOP campaign topic. Tester’s campaign said the proposals were amendments to government spending packages, and he didn’t want to play a role in derailing them as government shutdowns loomed.

“As a former public school teacher and school board member, Jon Tester believes these decisions should be made at the local level,” a Tester spokesperson said. “He has never voted to allow men to compete against women.”

Meskers said she believes using influence as college athletes is good and she is in favor of NIL. She just doesn’t think the two should mix specifically for supporting candidates.

“I think especially as student athletes, we do have such a big voice and we do have a platform to use,” she said. “So I think if you’re encouraging people to do their civic duties and get up and go (vote), I think that’s a great thing.” 
…

Washington — As North Korean troops prepare to join Russian forces in the war on Ukraine, Kyiv is stepping up a psychological warfare campaign to target the North Korean soldiers, a high-ranking Ukraine official said.

The effort is liable to get a boost from a team of South Korean military observers that Seoul’s defense minister, Kim Yong-hyun, said this week will be going to Ukraine to watch and analyze the North Korean troops on the battlefield.

Last week, the Ukrainian military intelligence service-run project “I Want to Live” released a Korean-language video message on YouTube and X. The project also posted a Korean-language text message on Telegram.

The messages urged North Korean soldiers to surrender, arguing that they do not have to “meaninglessly die on the land of another country.” It also offered to provide food, shelters and medical services.

Andrii Kovalenko, the head of the Center for Combating Disinformation under Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, told VOA Ukrainian on Wednesday that “in the future, additional videos featuring North Koreans will be published.”

“The North Koreans will undergo training in modern warfare and then be used in actual combat,” Kovalenko said. “We (the Center for Combating Disinformation) are actively involved in identifying the individuals who have arrived and the units they are joining, as well as gathering evidence of their presence in Russia, their likely participation in combat against the Ukrainian army, and their presence in temporarily occupied areas of Ukraine.”

Influence campaign

Ukraine has been running similar psychological operations toward the Russian soldiers since the beginning of the Russian invasion, U.S. experts said.

“Ukraine has been doing that with the Russians early on in the war,” Bruce Bennett, a senior defense analyst at the RAND Corporation, told VOA Korean on the phone Thursday. “They got a lot of Russians to defect, and I suspect they will try to do the same things with the North Koreans.”

Bennett added that drones can also be used for sending messages in leaflets and in audio form to North Korean soldiers in the war zone.

David Maxwell, a former U.S. Special Forces colonel who served on the Combined Forces Command of the U.S and South Korea, said this could be “a great opportunity” to learn how to employ psychological tactics on North Korean forces in the time of war.

“Bombing and gunfire doesn’t happen 24/7,” he told VOA Korean by phone on Wednesday. “Military operations are also characterized by large amounts of boredom and inactivity, where soldiers are waiting for something to happen, and this is the time when loudspeakers and leaflets can really have an effect, because those messages give them something to think about.”

Earlier this week, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy agreed in a phone call “to intensify the intelligence and expertise exchange” and “to develop an action strategy and a list of countermeasures,” according to a statement released by the Ukrainian presidential office.

Some experts in South Korea said the team of South Korean military observers headed to Ukraine will likely include psychological warfare strategists who can offer advice to the Ukrainian officials.

Cho Han-bum, a senior research fellow at the state-run Korea Institute for National Unification, said psychological warfare could be a real threat to the North Korean army.

“In the case of North Korean soldiers, they now have been mobilized for a war without any justification,” he told VOA Korean by phone on Tuesday. “It is hardly likely that they have a strong will or high morale.”

South Korea’s role

Cho said the South Korean government can help Ukraine develop psychological tactics against North Korean soldiers, since the country “has the know-how of a long-term psychological war with North Korea.”

Ban Kil-joo is a senior research professor at Korea University’s Ilmin International Relations Institute. He told VOA Korean in a phone interview Tuesday that psychological warfare could help weaken the military cohesiveness between Russia and North Korea.

“The Ukrainians don’t know much about North Korea, don’t understand the North Korean culture, as we do,” Ban said. “We can provide indirect support in a more social sense, rather than military or operational support.”

Ban added that it is important for the South Korean team to be “well-integrated with the Ukrainian forces through its supporting role,” to achieve the desired political and operational effect of a psychological campaign.

Other experts, however, are not convinced that psychological warfare will be effective to persuade North Korean soldiers to surrender.

Mykola Polishchuk, a Ukrainian author who wrote the book Northern Korea in Simple Words, said Ukraine’s counterpropaganda will not work with North Korean soldiers.

“As for North Koreans, they are not particularly politicized,” Polishchuk told VOA Ukrainian. “These individuals have little interest in politics.”

Robert Rapson, a former charge d’affaires and deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Seoul from 2018 to 2021, told VOA Korean that South Korea should carefully make a decision about whether to be engaged in Ukraine’s psychological warfare.

“If the ROK [Republic of Korea] does decide to deploy technical personnel to Ukraine to solely monitor and help advise the Ukraine military on matters related to North Korean troops deployed to the region, they would need to ensure they do not acquire, inadvertently or otherwise, status as combatants,” he said. “There are, of course, clear risks to ROK personnel whether they’re combatants or not.”

Since the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russia has deepened military ties with North Korea. North Korea has exported dozens of ballistic missiles and more than 18,000 containers of munitions and munitions-related material to Russia since the invasion, according to the U.S. State Department.

In June, the two countries signed a comprehensive strategic partnership agreement mandating immediate military assistance if either of them is attacked by a third country.

VOA Korean’s Kim Hyungjin contributed to this report.  
…

Bird flu has infected three more people from Washington state after they were exposed to poultry that tested positive for the virus, according to health authorities in Washington and in Oregon, where the human cases were identified. 

A total of 39 people have tested positive for bird flu in the U.S. this year, including nine from Washington, as the virus has infected poultry flocks and spread to more than 400 dairy herds, federal data show. All of the cases were farm workers who had known contact with infected animals, except for one person in Missouri. 

The people from Washington cleaned facilities at an infected chicken farm after birds were culled to contain the virus, the Washington State Department of Health said in an email on Thursday. 

Officials tested workers who had symptoms, including red eyes and respiratory issues, and those with potential exposure to the birds, the department said. People with symptoms were told to isolate and given antiviral treatment, it added. 

Oregon identified the three new cases after the people traveled to the state from Washington while infected, the Oregon Health Authority said in a Thursday statement. They have since returned to Washington, where public health staff are monitoring them, according to the statement. 

There have been no infections among people living in Oregon and there is no evidence of human-to-human transmission, the Oregon Health Authority said. It said the risk for infection to the general public remains low. 

Since 2022, the virus has wiped out more than 100 million poultry birds in the nation’s worst-ever bird flu outbreak. 

H5N1 bird flu was confirmed in a pig on 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. 
…

A shadowy Russian political operator with close ties to the notorious Wagner Group and its late founder Yevgeny Prigozhin is detained in Chad on unexplained charges, adding a fresh chapter to his long career of mystery and intrigue.  

Russian officials and state-controlled media maintain that Maxim Shugaley, who was detained on September 19 along with two other Russians, is an innocent sociologist who was in Chad to deliver humanitarian aid and participate in a pro-Russian event in the capital, N’Djamena.    

But years of reporting on his exploits in countries as far-flung as Afghanistan and Libya present a picture of a master propagandist who has worked behind the scenes to advance the Kremlin’s interests with some of the world’s least reputable regimes. 

Shugaley, president of the St. Petersburg-based Foundation for National Values Protection, or FNZC, was arrested at N’Djamena’s airport “without explanation,” according to an account this week in the Russian news agency RIA Novosty. 

The report quoted the press attache at Russia’s mission in Chad saying the three Russians are being well-treated and that she looks forward to their early release. But it offered no explanation of why they were detained and little on why they were there. 

However the Russian daily Kommersant and a Paris-based weekly Jeune Afrique reported in late September and early October that Chadian military intelligence was behind Shugaley’s arrest, and said he was accused of espionage and influence activities on behalf of the Wagner Group.   

Kommersant said Shugaley maintains his innocence and “had no knowledge of Wagner activities in N’Djamena” — this despite his reputed role in directing communications and hybrid warfare activities by the Kremlin-financed mercenary, which according to the U.S. State Department plotted to overthrow the government of Chad last year. 

The Russian newspaper cited people close to Shugaley as saying that the “sociologist’s mission” in Chad was “strictly humanitarian.” It added that a suitcase in his possession at the time of his arrest “was full of souvenirs and cookies to be handed over at the pro-Russian rally in N’Djamena.”

Citing a source familiar with the case, Central African Republic-based Corbeau news Centrafrique reported that Shugaley and his companions were arrested for trying to “infiltrate the Chadian security services.”  

Whatever the truth of those reports, they are not out of character with previous accounts of Shugaley’s career and his own postings on Telegram — the Wagner Group’s favored messaging app — where he runs his own channel with almost 18,000 subscribers. 

In 2019, the FNZC organization that Shugaley heads was sanctioned by the U.S. State Department for serving in a covert operation to manipulate African politics in favor of the Kremlin by “sponsoring phony election monitoring missions,” and promoting “disinformation operations.”   

The Wall Street Journal profiled Shugaley in 2021 as a “spy” and a “shadowy figure” pursuing the Kremlin’s strategic goals across Africa.   

His latest post on Telegram, dated August 23, laments the death of Prigozhin, killed in a suspicious helicopter crash a year earlier. Shugaley calls the Wagner founder a “Russian hero” who is “very much needed now in the Kursk Oblast.” The post coincided with Ukraine’s military intrusion into Russia’s Kursk region. 

In earlier posts dating back to May of this year, Shugaley reported he was in Chad to observe the presidential elections, which he describes as successful, “despite the U.S. destabilizing efforts.” 

In June, Shugaley said in a Telegram post that he was in Chad “for the second time in less than two months” to prepare the introduction of a Russian House in N’Djamena, which he said was a “natural development” given the Chadians “anti-French sentiments and mistrust of the U.S. actions in the region.” 

In April 2023, The Washington Post reported that leaked U.S. intelligence documents showed the Wagner Group was trying to recruit “Chadian rebels and establish a training site for 300 fighters in the neighboring Central African Republic as part of an evolving plot to topple the Chadian government.”  

The European Union sanctioned Shugaley in February 2023 for operating “as the public relations arm” of the Wagner Group. 

Shugaley’s role “includes directing propaganda and disinformation campaigns in favor of the Wagner Group, particularly to improve the reputation of Wagner and support its deployment, as well as interfering in a covert manner on behalf of the Wagner group in the various countries where the group is active,” the EU said.  

In May 2019, Shugaley and his interpreter Samer Sueifan were jailed for 18 months in Libya on charges of espionage and election interference.  

Libyan officials said the mission of the two was to “recruit Libyans to gather information and to train them on how to influence any future Libyan elections.”      

Shugaley credited Prigozhin for his freedom in interviews with Russian media and in social media posts, saying that under his order, Wagner troops stormed the prison in Tripoli in December 2020 to free him. Prigozhin later commissioned an action movie lauding Shugaley and Wagner. His company, Concord, paid a $250,000 bonus to Shugaley and Sueifan.    

Shugaley is a common figure in Central Africa Republic, a territory where Wagner mercenaries have been deeply embedded in the security system since 2018.  

In February, the U.S. State Department issued a report titled, “The Wagner Group Atrocities in Africa: Lies and Truth,” which documented violations committed by the group in CAR, Libya, Sudan, and Mali.      

The State Department said, “In CAR, Wagner forces used indiscriminate killing, abductions, and rape to gain control of a key mining area near the city of Bambari, with survivors describing the attacks in detail.”    

A BBC documentary in 2019 reported that “at least six candidates were offered money by Russians in the lead-up to the 2018 presidential elections in Madagascar.”   

The BBC reported that Shugaley was among those “offering money” to various actors to sway the votes in favor of a Kremlin-backed candidate.    

According to the Geneva-based Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, after the death of Prigozhin, Shugaley partnered with the notorious arms dealer Viktor Bout, who was released from a U.S. jail in 2022 in a prisoner swap for the American basketball star Brittney Griner.  

The group said Shugaley assisted Bout in winning a seat in the regional assembly of the city of Ulyanovsk in September 2023 as part of an ultra-nationalist party.    

”In updates posted on the Telegram channel, Shugaley has reported on discussing plans with Bout to export military utility vehicles and aircraft to Africa,” the report said.  
…

Germany will close three Iranian consulates in response to Iran’s announcement of the execution of Jamshid Sharmahd, a German Iranian national and a U.S. resident, earlier this week.

“We have repeatedly and unequivocally made it clear to Tehran that the execution of a German citizen will have serious consequences,” German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said Thursday in announcing the closure of the consulates in Frankfurt, Munich and Hamburg.

Germany will allow Iran’s embassy in Berlin to remain open. And Germany will “continue to maintain our diplomatic channels and our embassy in Tehran,” Baerbock said.

“The fact that this assassination took place in the light of the latest developments in the Middle East shows that [Iran’s] dictatorial, unjust regime … does not act according to normal diplomatic logic,” she said. “It is not without reason that our diplomatic relations are already at an all-time low.”

Sharmahd, 69, was accused of a role in the deadly bombing of a mosque in Shiraz in 2008. He was convicted of the capital offense of “corruption on Earth,” a term Iranian authorities use to refer to a broad range of offenses, including those related to Islamic morals.

His family has denied the charges against him.

In an exclusive interview with VOA’s Persian Service, Sharmahd’s daughter Ghazaleh Sharmahd warned that her father’s execution on Monday would not silence the movement for justice.

“They made a huge mistake, thinking that by killing my father and the people of Iran, these movements would end. But they were wrong — killing only makes these movements stronger, more intense and more energized. … The Islamic Republic made a huge mistake,” she said.

Ghazaleh Sharmahd also said she is seeking the truth of her father’s death. She told VOA that the Islamic Republic informed the U.S. and Germany about her father’s death.

“They accept the words of terrorists and send me their condolences?” she said. “They have a duty to investigate what really happened.”

VOA’s Persian Service contributed to this report. Some information came from Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
…

Turkey is seeing a boom in winemaking, with hundreds of new producers emerging over the last few years. The trend runs counter the Islamist, conservative policies of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan that have included restrictions and taxes on alcohol. Dorian Jones reports from Manisa, Turkey.
…

Russia has fined Google an amount larger than the entire world’s gross domestic product over restricting Russian propaganda channels on YouTube.

Russian business newspaper RBC reported this week that legal claims brought by 17 Russian TV channels against Google in Russian courts, which have imposed compound fines on Google, had reached $20 decillion — an incomprehensible sum with 34 zeros.

By comparison, the International Monetary Fund estimates the world’s total gross domestic product to be $110 trillion. Google’s parent company Alphabet, meanwhile, has a market value of around $2 trillion.

On Thursday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov admitted to reporters that he “can’t even pronounce this figure right.” But he said the fine was “filled with symbolism.”

“Google should not restrict the activities of our broadcasters, and Google is doing this,” he said.

The Russian state-run outlet Tass reported this week that a Russian court had previously ordered Google to restore the blocked YouTube channels or face rising charges. The fine has grown so high because it doubles every week.

Earlier this year, Russia experienced a mass YouTube outage in August. The platform is considered one of the few remaining sites where audiences can access independent information in Russia, where Moscow blocks independent news sites and press freedom has all but disappeared.

Google did not immediately reply to VOA’s email requesting comment.

Some information in this report came from Reuters.
…

new york — A new U.N. report warned Thursday that conflict, climate and economic stress are driving severe hunger and in some cases famine conditions, in 22 countries and territories, with no likelihood for improvement in the next six months.

“So, you have conflict impacts, climate impacts in the same countries, as well as both the combination of the two turns into economic devastation for people,” Arif Husain, chief economist of the World Food Program, said of the main drivers of the hunger crises to reporters in a video briefing.

The situation is most severe in the Gaza Strip, Sudan, South Sudan, Haiti and Mali, where millions of people are in the highest levels of food insecurity, meaning famine, risk of famine or starvation are happening.

In Gaza, U.N. food agencies have been warning about the critical situation for months. It is fueled by the nearly 13-month war between Israel and Hamas, which has made it dangerous and difficult for humanitarians to get food and other assistance to about 2 million Palestinians trapped in the crossfire.

WFP’s Husain said 91% of Gazans are at crisis levels or worse for hunger, with about 345,000 of them in faminelike conditions.

“And the report says basically that there is a risk — there’s a persistent risk — of famine for the entire Gaza Strip,” Husain said.

The situation in Sudan is even worse because the numbers of people are dramatically higher.

“Time is running out to save lives,” Rein Paulsen, director of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Office of Emergencies and Resilience, told reporters of Sudan.

“People are facing total collapse of livelihoods and starvation in areas where conflict is hitting the hardest across the country, including in Darfur, in Jazira, in Khartoum and in Kordofan,” he said.

Paulsen noted that famine levels of food insecurity were reported two months ago in the Zamzam camp in North Darfur, where several hundred thousand internally displaced people are sheltering. Fighting has escalated in recent months in that region between the army and a rival paramilitary group.

“And those famine conditions are likely — highly likely — to persist unless something changes,” he said.

In the Western Hemisphere, Haiti is in the grip of a serious hunger crisis because of the rampant violence from armed gangs whose kidnappings, killings, rapes and looting have left Haitians in the capital and some outlying areas afraid to leave their homes.

Two million people do not have enough to eat, and about 6,000 of them are experiencing famine levels of food insecurity, Paulsen said.

“Immediate action is imperative to save lives, to prevent starvation, and to help vulnerable populations restore their livelihoods amidst unprecedented violence and displacement,” he added.

In Africa, Mali and South Sudan are also at the top of the list of hunger hot spots.

WFP’s Husain said about 2,500 people are at catastrophic or famine levels of hunger in Mali and another 121,000 are right behind them.

In South Sudan, affected by the war in Sudan and severe flooding, the number of people facing starvation and death was projected in the report to nearly double between April and July to 2.3 million, compared with the same period in 2023. Hunger is expected to worsen when the next lean season begins in May.

A step behind these most affected countries are those of “very high concern” for humanitarians, including Chad, Lebanon, Myanmar, Mozambique, Nigeria, Syria and Yemen.

“These are classified and categorized in this context where we have a high number of people facing particular acute food insecurity, and where we also see drivers that are expected to further intensify life-threatening conditions in the coming months,” Paulsen said.

Kenya, Lesotho, Namibia and Niger are new to the list of hunger hot spots this year, joining Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Malawi, Somalia, Zambia and Zimbabwe to round out the list.

WFP’s Husain said humanitarians need both resources and safe access to assist the millions of people in need to bring the high rates of hunger and malnutrition down. 
…

Tbilisi and Moscow have exchanged harsh rhetoric about the results of the October 26 parliamentary elections in Georgia that brought thousands to the streets protesting the victory of the ruling Georgian Dream party.

Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili, who is aligned with the pro-Western opposition, accused Russia of running a “special operation” to “falsify” the election results in favor of the ruling party, which is widely seen as increasingly pro-Kremlin and authoritarian.

In response, Russia denied involvement and framed the United States and European Union as destabilizing powers. In doing so, Moscow’s network of officials and state-owned outlets engaged in disinformation and conspiracy theories, going so far as to allege on a state-controlled news agency that the U.S. and Ukraine were secretly deploying snipers to shoot at protesters in Tbilisi to escalate the situation.

Zourabichvili also told Reuters that Russian “methodology and the support of most probably Russian FSB [Federal Security Service] types is shown in this election.”

“The propaganda that was used ahead of the election … was a direct duplication, a copy-paste, of Russian clips and videos used at the time of [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s election,” said Zourabichvili, whose position as president is largely ceremonial.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied Russian interference in the election and accused Zourabichvili of “attempting to destabilize the situation.”

Peskov had earlier alleged it was the European countries that “tried to influence the outcome of this vote.”

Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev called Zourabichvili a “puppet president” who “refused to accept the election and went against the Constitution by calling for a coup.”

“The standard practice in such cases is removal from office and arrest,” Medvedev wrote on X.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova accused the U.S. of engaging in “neo-colonialism” after U.S. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller warned the Georgian government could face “consequences” if it did not “walk back its anti-democratic actions and return to its Euro-Atlantic path.”

Russian state media went further, spreading a conspiracy theory that the West was seeking to foment violence in Georgia.

“In their attempts to knock off balance the internal political situation in Georgia following the October 26 election and set off another color revolution, Westerners stop at nothing,” the Russian state-owned Sputnik news agency said, quoting unnamed “sources in the region.”

“Ukraine-trained snipers are arriving in the republic to organize provocations during mass protests,” Russia’s state-owned Tass news agency reported Monday, citing a “regional official familiar with the matter.”

The term “color revolution” was widely adopted after the 2004-05 Orange Revolution in Ukraine was sparked by a corruption-ridden presidential runoff that saw the pro-Russian candidate, Viktor Yanukovych, emerge victorious.

Russia typically uses the term when accusing the West of orchestrating movements to destabilize or overthrow Kremlin-preferred governments.

In the months leading up to Georgia’s parliamentary poll, Russian state media ran reports alleging the U.S. was seeking to foment a color revolution or “a Ukraine-style coup.”

In July, Russia’s state-run Sputnik news agency cited an anonymous Russian intelligence official who claimed U.S. authorities were planning a “sacred sacrifice” from among the protest participants.

The disinformation narrative in Sputnik’s report reflects a well-worn Kremlin conspiracy theory going back to the 2013-14 pro-Europe rallies in Ukraine, when the Russians claimed that American-trained Georgian “mercenaries” were responsible for shooting protesters in Kyiv during the 2014 demonstrations at the city’s Maidan Nezalezhnosti, widely known as the Maidan or Independence Square.

Russian state media and top officials, including Putin, falsely claimed that the U.S. organized protests in Ukraine to propagate a coup.

That narrative included a conspiracy theory that Victoria Nuland, an American diplomat and former assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, had ordered “American specialists” to lead the “snipers, who shot people at the Maidan.”

Amid ongoing protests in Georgia, the U.S. and the EU have joined calls from international and local observers to investigate alleged election-related violations.

On Thursday, Georgian authorities launched an investigation into election-fraud allegations.

The EU and U.S. have repeatedly warned Georgia about what they call its “democratic backsliding,” even freezing financial support to the country’s government, focusing instead on supporting civil society initiatives.

In June, Georgian Dream officials signed into law a bill that required nongovernmental agencies receiving at least 20% of their funding from abroad to label themselves as foreign agents “pursuing the interests of a foreign power.”

In response, Brussels paused Georgia’s accession process to the EU, saying the foreign agent law is incompatible with EU membership.

Georgia’s opposition has nicknamed Tbilisi’s new foreign agent law the “Russian law,” a reference to similar legislation enacted in Russia in 2012 that has been used to silence civil society and independent media.

The EU also warned it may freeze visa-free travel with Georgia if it finds the parliamentary poll neither free nor fair.
…

ISTANBUL — Hundreds gathered Thursday in Istanbul to protest the arrest and removal from office of a mayor from Turkey’s main opposition party for his alleged links to a banned Kurdish militant group.

Ahmet Ozer, mayor of Istanbul’s Esenyurt district and a member of the Republican People’s Party, or CHP, was detained on Wednesday by anti-terrorist police over his alleged connection to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK.

Turkey’s government on Thursday replaced Ozer with Istanbul’s deputy governor, a move the CHP’s leader, Ozgur Ozel and other politicians described as a “coup.”

The mayor’s arrest comes as Turkey is debating a tentative peace process to end a 40-year conflict between the PKK and the Turkish state that has led to tens of thousands of deaths.

Demonstrators filled a square in Esenyurt after the government banned a rally outside the municipality building. Some carried banners that read: “(We want) an elected mayor not an appointed mayor” and called for the resignation of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government.

“In our view, this (government), which acts against the law and violates the constitution, has carried out a political coup. We will never accept it,” said Tulay Hatimogullari, the leader of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party, whose supporters joined the rally in a show of solidarity.

Ozel, whose CHP made significant gains in local elections earlier this year, called for early elections.

Ozer, 64, is a former academic originally from Van in eastern Turkey. He was elected mayor of Esenyurt, a western suburb in Istanbul’s European side, in March local elections.

The Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office said an investigation found Ozer had maintained contacts with PKK figures for more than 10 years, according to the state-run Anadolu Agency.

Politicians and members of Turkey’s pro-Kurdish movement have frequently been targeted over alleged links to the PKK, which is considered a terror organization by Turkey, the U.S. and the European Union.

Legislators have been stripped of their parliamentary seats and mayors removed from office. Several lawmakers as well as thousands of party members have been jailed on terror-related charges since 2016.

Other opposition parties have been largely unscathed but the CHP metropolitan mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Imamoglu, is currently appealing a prison sentence and political ban imposed by a court in December 2022 for “insulting” members of Turkey’s election board in 2019.

Imamoglu accused Erdogan’s government of “plotting a dirty game” to snatch Esenyurt municipality away from the opposition “by declaring [Ozer] a terrorist for fictitious reasons.”
…

In New York City, a media outlet run by immigrants for immigrants uses messaging apps to engage with communities on elections, crime and local issues. Liam Scott and Cristina Caicedo Smit have the story, narrated by Caicedo Smit. Tina Trinh contributed.
…

RABAT, Morocco — A Moroccan economist known for his work defending human rights was detained after criticizing the government in remarks posted on social media during a visit by French President Emmanuel Macron to the North African kingdom. 

Prosecutors apprehended Fouad Abdelmoumni in Casablanca on Wednesday and announced he was under investigation on suspicion of disseminating false information and accusing others of crimes on social media, Morocco’s state news agency reported. If charged and convicted, he could face up to five years in prison under cybercrime statutes. 

“This arbitrary arrest is part of a series of harassments targeting Abdelmoumni, as a measure aimed at retaliating against his bold positions in expressing his opinions and defending human rights,” the Moroccan Association in Support of Political Prisoners said in a statement Wednesday. “This arrest represents a further escalation in the authorities’ policy of repression against human rights and political activists in the country.” 

Abdelmoumni, a former political prisoner, is the group’s coordinator. 

While Macron toured Rabat with Moroccan leaders including King Mohammed VI, the activist alleged in a post that Morocco was attempting to “blackmail” France using methods including espionage and withholding cooperation on managing illegal immigration. 

Abdelmoumni is yet to be officially arraigned. When he appears in court on Friday, he will likely be charged with crimes related to the post, one of his attorneys, Souad Brahma, said. 

In Morocco, authorities can hold people under investigation for 48 hours without charging them. 

Brahma said Abdelmoumni was arrested for expressing his opinion and called his detention a violation of his right to freedom of expression. She said she was denied a chance to visit him on Thursday despite receiving authorization from the court. Officials have not responded to allegations that the arrest was politically motivated. 

Macron throughout his visit referred to opening a new chapter in relations between France and Morocco after years of strain. 

The causes of friction included the 2021 “Pegasus Affair,” in which Amnesty International and the Paris-based nonprofit group Forbidden Stories published a report alleging that Moroccan authorities had used the Israeli software Pegasus to infiltrate the electronic devices of human rights activists including Abdelmoumni and politicians all the way up to Macron. 

Morocco strenuously denied the allegations and sued, claiming defamation. 

Abdelmoumni, 66, has been prominent in defending human rights since he was imprisoned and tortured alongside other left-wing activists during King Hassan II’s era of repression known as the “Years of Lead.” He has publicly supported pro-democracy efforts in the country, including during the Arab Spring and Morocco’s 2017 “Hirak” movement. 

After the investigation into Pegasus software, Abdelmoumni was among the activists profiled in a 2022 Human Rights Watch report on Morocco’s targeting of critics. 

The report said an anonymous person distributed a video of him and his then-partner-now-wife having sex, likely shot from a hidden camera inside his home’s air conditioner. In Morocco, non-marital sex is a crime and information about their relationship later appeared in pro-government media as part of an effort that Abdelmoumni said was designed to intimidate him. 

This week, he participated in a vigil demanding justice for a Moroccan nationalist who was “disappeared” in France in 1965, and appeared at a courthouse where Morocco’s ex-human rights minister was facing trial. He was going to a meeting of the Moroccan Association for the Support of Political Prisoners when he was apprehended. 

Macron’s political party helped push through a 2023 resolution in the European Union’s Parliament condemning human rights abuses in Morocco. But the two countries have recently deepened political and economic ties. This week, they announced economic agreements and lucrative contracts on projects ranging from transportation to desalination infrastructure, and Macron reiterated his support for Moroccan sovereignty over the disputed Western Sahara. 

During his three-day visit, Macron did not mention human rights in speeches at a business forum, to the country’s French community or at the country’s parliament.
…

LONDON — The European Union is investigating Chinese online retailer Temu over suspicions it’s failing to prevent the sale of illegal products, the 27-nation bloc’s executive arm said on Thursday.

The European Commission opened its investigation five months after adding Temu to the list of “very large online platforms” needing the strictest level of scrutiny under the bloc’s Digital Services Act. It’s a wide-ranging rulebook designed to clean up online platforms and keep internet users safe, with the threat of hefty fines.

Temu started entering Western markets only in the past two years and has grown in popularity by offering cheap goods — from clothing to home products — that are shipped from sellers in China. The company, owned by Pinduoduo Incorporated, a popular e-commerce site in China, now has 92 million users in the EU.

Temu said it “takes its obligations under the DSA seriously, continuously investing to strengthen our compliance system and safeguard consumer interests on our platform.”

“We will cooperate fully with regulators to support our shared goal of a safe, trusted marketplace for consumers,” the company said in a statement.

European Commission Executive Vice President Margrethe Vestager said in a press release that Brussels wants to make sure products sold on Temu’s platform “meet EU standards and do not harm consumers.”

EU enforcement will “guarantee a level playing field and that every platform, including Temu, fully respects the laws that keep our European market safe and fair for all,” she said.

The commission’s investigation will look into whether Temu’s systems are doing enough to crack down on “rogue traders” selling “noncompliant goods” amid concerns that they are able to swiftly reappear after being suspended. The commission didn’t single out specific illegal products that were being sold on the platform.

Regulators are also examining the risks from Temu’s “addictive design,” including “game-like” reward programs, and what the company is doing to mitigate those risks.

Also under investigation is Temu’s compliance with two other DSA requirements: giving researchers access to data and transparency on recommender systems. Companies must detail how they recommend content and products and give users at least one option to see recommendations that are not based on their personal profile and preferences.

Temu now has the chance to respond to the commission, which can decide to impose a fine or drop the case if the company makes changes or can prove that the suspicions aren’t valid.

Brussels has been cracking down on tech companies since the DSA took effect last year. It has also opened an investigation into another e-commerce platform, AliExpress, as well as social media sites such as X and Tiktok, which bowed to pressure after the commission demanded answers about a new rewards feature.

Temu has also faced scrutiny in the United States, where a congressional report last year accused the company of failing to prevent goods made by forced labor from being sold on its platform.
…

The Vatican tribunal said Wednesday it convicted a cardinal of aggravated fraud and other charges because of his “objectively inexplicable behavior” in paying a self-styled intelligence analyst over a half-million euros in Vatican money that she then spent on luxury items and vacations.

The city-state’s tribunal issued 816 pages of written motivations from its Dec. 16 verdicts in the Vatican’s “trial of the century.” The two-year trial of 10 people was borne out of the Holy See’s $380 million investment in a London property but grew to include a host of other financial dealings.

Cardinal Angelo Becciu, a once-powerful cardinal who was the No. 3, or “substitute,” in the Vatican’s secretariat of state, was the most prominent of the nine people convicted. He faces five and a half years in prison after being convicted of embezzlement, fraud and other charges.

He and the eight other defendants have announced appeals, as has the Vatican prosecutor. With the tribunal’s written explanations now filed — nearly a year after the convictions were handed down — both sides can elaborate the basis of their appeals.

The trial focused on the Vatican secretariat of state’s participation in a fund to develop a former Harrod’s warehouse into luxury apartments. Prosecutors alleged Vatican monsignors and brokers fleeced the Holy See of tens of millions of euros in fees and commissions and then extorted the Holy See for 15 million euros to cede control of the building.

Becciu was convicted of embezzlement stemming from the original Vatican investment of 200 million euros into the fund that invested in the London property. The tribunal determined that canon law prohibited using church assets in such a speculative investment.

Becciu was also convicted of aggravated fraud for his role in paying a self-proclaimed intelligence expert from his native Sardinia, Cecilia Marogna, 575,000 euros in Holy See money. He had said the payments were authorized by Pope Francis as ransom to free a Colombian nun held hostage by al-Qaida-linked militants in Mali.

The investigation showed, however, that Becciu essentially double-billed the Vatican, with the same amount of money being sent to a British security firm that actually has expertise in liberating hostages. The nun was subsequently freed, but there is no indication Marogna had anything to do with it, the tribunal noted.

The tribunal, headed by Judge Giuseppe Pignatone, said Becciu never provided a reasonable explanation for why he paid Marogna the same amount of money, or why he never asked her for any updates on her alleged efforts to liberate the nun.

Even when told by Vatican gendarmes that Marogna had instead spent the Vatican’s money on luxury vacations and purchases at Prada, Becciu didn’t file a complaint with prosecutors or keep his distance from Marogna. Instead, they continued to communicate via a family friend.

“An objectively inexplicable behavior, all the more for someone in a position of the defendant, a cardinal prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints and for seven years the substitute in the secretariat of state, who for a long period enjoyed the full trust of the pope,” the tribunal wrote. “A behavior, moreover, that the defendant has never explained in any way.”

Marogna, for her part, was tried in absentia and provided contradictory and inconclusive explanations in her written defense, the tribunal said. She too was convicted and sentenced to three years and nine months in prison.

The bulk of the written motivations were devoted to deciphering the complicated transactions at the heart of the London deal. The text also repeated the tribunal’s previous rejection of defense arguments that the trial itself was fundamentally unfair.
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