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Nicosia, Cyprus — A U.S. charity said it was loading aid for Gaza onto a boat in Cyprus, the first shipment to the war-ravaged territory along a maritime corridor the EU Commission hopes will open this weekend.

The Spanish-flagged vessel Open Arms docked three weeks ago in the port of Larnaca in Cyprus, the closest European Union country to the Gaza Strip.

“World Central Kitchen teams are in Cyprus loading pallets of humanitarian aid onto a boat headed to northern Gaza,” the charity said Friday in a statement.

“We have been preparing for weeks alongside our trusted NGO partner Open Arms for the opening of a maritime aid corridor that would allow us to scale our efforts in the region,” it added.

The charity said it plans to tow a barge loaded with provisions for the people of Gaza, where dire humanitarian conditions more than five months into the Israel-Hamas war have led some countries to airdrop food and other assistance.

“The endeavor to establish a humanitarian maritime corridor in Gaza is making progress, and our tugboat stands prepared to embark at a moment’s notice, laden with tons of food, water, and vital supplies for Palestinian civilians,” Open Arms said on social media platform X.

In Larnaca, European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen had earlier expressed hope that a maritime corridor could open this Sunday, although details remained unclear.

She said a “pilot operation” would be launched on Friday, aided by the United Arab Emirates which secured “the first of many shipments of goods to the people of Gaza.”

There are no functioning ports in Gaza and officials did not say where the initial shipments would go, whether they would be subject to inspection by Israel, or who would distribute aid.

The Pentagon said Friday that a U.S. plan to establish a “temporary offshore maritime pier” in Gaza would take up to 60 days and would likely involve more than 1,000 American personnel.

The Gaza war was sparked by Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack on southern Israel which resulted in about 1,160 deaths, mostly civilians, Israeli figures show.

Vowing to destroy Hamas, Israel has responded with a relentless military offensive that the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said has killed at least 30,878 people, most of them women and children.

Israel, which withdrew from Gaza in 2005 but has maintained control over its airspace and territorial waters, said it “welcomes” the planned maritime corridor.
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Houston, Texas — The Republican National Committee voted Friday to install Donald Trump’s handpicked leadership team, completing his takeover of the national party as the former president closes in on a third straight presidential nomination.

Michael Whatley, a North Carolina Republican who has echoed Trump’s false theories of voter fraud, was elected the party’s new national chairman in a vote  in Houston, Texas. Lara Trump, the former president’s daughter-in-law, was voted in as co-chair.

Trump’s team is promising not to use the RNC to pay his mounting personal legal bills. But Trump and his lieutenants will have firm control of the party’s political and fundraising machinery with limited, if any, internal pushback.

“The RNC is going to be the vanguard of a movement that will work tirelessly every single day to elect our nominee, Donald J. Trump, as the 47th president of the United States,” Whatley told RNC members in a speech after being elected.

Whatley will carry the top title, replacing longtime chair Ronna McDaniel after she fell out of favor with key figures in the former president’s “Make America Great Again” movement. But he will be surrounded by people closer to Trump.

Lara Trump is expected to focus largely on fundraising and media appearances.

The functional head of the RNC will be Chris LaCivita, who will assume the committee’s chief of staff role while maintaining his job as one of the Trump campaign’s top two advisers.

With Trump’s blessing, LaCivita is promising to enact sweeping changes and staffing moves at every level of the RNC to ensure it runs seamlessly as an extension of the Trump campaign.

In an interview Thursday, LaCivita sought to tamp down concerns from some RNC members that the cash-strapped committee would help pay Trump’s legal bills. Trump faces four criminal indictments and a total of 91 counts as well as a $455 million civil fraud judgment, which he is appealing. His affiliated Save America political action committee has spent $76 million over the last two years on lawyers.

People speculating about the RNC paying for legal bills, LaCivita said, do so “purely on the basis of trying to hurt donors.” Trump’s legal bills are instead being covered largely by Save America, a separate political entity.

“The fact of the matter is not a penny of the RNC’s money, or for that matter, the campaign’s money, has gone or will go to pay legal fees,” he said.

The RNC was paying some of Trump’s legal bills for New York cases that started while he was president, The Washington Post reported, but McDaniel said in November 2022 that the RNC would stop paying once Trump became a candidate again and joined the 2024 presidential race.

When Trump announced his plans to replace the party’s leadership, it raised fresh questions about whether the committee would pay his bills. Those questions intensified after Lara Trump said last month that she wasn’t familiar with the party’s rules about paying her father-in-law’s legal fees, but she thought the idea would get broad support among Republican voters.

Facing such mixed messages, some RNC members remain skeptical.

Republican committeeman Henry Barbour of Mississippi proposed a nonbinding resolution explicitly stating that RNC funds could not be used for Trump’s legal bills. Yet the resolution died when Barbour failed to earn the support of RNC members from at least 10 states.

“People I’ve talked to on the committee privately all agree that donor money needs to be devoted to winning elections, not legal fees,” said Republican committeeman John Hammond of Indiana.

The new leadership team is also expected to more fully embrace Trump’s focus on voter fraud and his debunked claims about the election he lost to President Joe Biden. Multiple court cases and Trump’s own Justice Department failed to reveal any evidence of significant voting irregularities.

Whatley, an attorney, has largely avoided using Trump’s characterization of Biden’s victory and said in one 2021 interview that Biden “absolutely” was legitimately elected and won the majority of the Electoral College votes. But he said in another interview in the weeks after the 2020 election that there was “massive fraud.” He has also made focusing on “election integrity” a top priority for his state party in the years since.

In a letter announcing her candidacy for co-chair, Lara Trump wrote to members of the committee telling them she intends to focus on battleground states, getting out the vote in close races and to comb through the RNC’s finances, including all of its contracts and agreements, and cut spending “that doesn’t directly go to winning elections.”

A key priority, she wrote, is working to ensure that the election is secure, something her father-in-law has made a chief focus.

“The goal on November 5 is to win, as my father-in-law says, ‘bigly,’ ” she said Friday.
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houston — A federal judge in Texas on Friday upheld a key piece of President Joe Biden’s immigration policy that allows a limited number of migrants from four countries to enter the U.S. on humanitarian grounds, dismissing a challenge from Republican-led states that said the program created an economic burden on them.

U.S. District Judge Drew B. Tipton ruled in favor of the humanitarian parole program that allows a total of 30,000 asylum-seekers into the U.S. each month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela combined.

Eliminating the program would undercut a broader policy that seeks to encourage migrants to use the Biden administration’s preferred pathways into the U.S. or face stiff consequences.

Texas and 20 other states that sued argued the program is forcing them to spend millions on health care, education and public safety for the migrants. An attorney working with the Texas attorney general’s office in the legal challenge said that the program “created a shadow immigration system.”

Advocates for the federal government countered that migrants admitted through the policy helped with a U.S. farm labor shortage.

An appeal appeared likely.

Esther Sung, an attorney for Justice Action Center, which represented seven people who were sponsoring migrants as part of the program, said she was looking forward to calling her clients to let them know of the court’s decision.

“It’s a popular program. People want to welcome other people to this country,” she said.

A message was left seeking comment from the Texas attorney general’s office.

During an August trial in Victoria, Texas, Tipton declined to issue any temporary order that would have halted the parole program nationwide. Tipton is an appointee of former President Donald Trump who ruled against the Biden administration in 2022 on an order that determined whom to prioritize for deportation.

Some states said the initiative has benefited them.

Tipton questioned how Texas could be claiming financial losses if data showed that the parole program actually reduced the number of migrants coming into the U.S.

Proponents of the policy also faced scrutiny from Tipton, who questioned whether living in poverty was enough for migrants to qualify. Elissa Fudim, a lawyer with the U.S. Department of Justice, responded: “I think probably not.”

Federal government attorneys and immigrant rights groups said that in many cases, Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans are also fleeing oppressive regimes, escalating violence and worsening political conditions that have endangered their lives.

The lawsuit did not challenge the use of humanitarian parole for tens of thousands of Ukrainians who came after Russia’s invasion.

The program’s supporters said each case is individually reviewed and some people who had made it to the final approval step after arriving in the U.S. have been rejected, though they did not provide the number of rejections that have occurred.

The lawsuit is among several legal challenges the Biden administration has faced over immigration policies.
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Sweden became the 32nd member of NATO Thursday, as alliance troops participated in the bloc’s Steadfast Defender exercise this week. This operation aims to foster compatibility and cooperation on the battlefield among member nations, enhancing the alliance’s capacity to counter provocative behavior from the Russian Federation. Eastern Europe chief Myroslava Gongadze reports from the training ground in Poland.
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WASHINGTON — The United States on Saturday marks its first U.S. Hostage and Wrongful Detainee Day to commemorate Americans being held abroad.

First designated last year by bipartisan House and Senate legislation, the day marks the anniversary of the kidnapping of Robert Levinson, a former FBI agent who was considered to be the longest-held American hostage in history.

The legislation also created an official flag as a symbol to recognize those Americans.

Currently 56 Americans are held hostage or wrongfully detained, according to the Foley Foundation. The nonprofit was set up in memory of American journalist James Foley, who was kidnapped and later killed by extremists in Syria.

The Bring Our Families Home campaign, James W. Foley Legacy Foundation, Richardson Center for Global Engagement and members of the Levinson family advocated for Congress to pass the legislation to broaden attention toward the issue.

“The establishment of this annual day of observance is an important symbolic milestone that not only recognizes the importance of the issue but will also encourage greater public awareness and understanding of this enduring national crisis,” Benjamin Gray of the Foley Foundation told VOA.

Senator Christopher Coons, a Delaware Democrat, and Senator Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, introduced the legislation days after the release of American basketball player Britany Griner from Russian custody in March 2023.

Among the Americans held overseas are two American journalists.

Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich has been imprisoned in Russia for nearly a year. Moscow accuses him of espionage, which the reporter and his newspaper deny.

The American-Russian journalist Alsu Kurmasheva has been in custody since October. Kurmasheva, an editor for VOA’s sister network Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, denies the charges against her, including failing to register as a foreign agent.

The Foley Foundation said in a statement to VOA: “We continue to advocate for the release of both journalists from captivity in Russia. We believe that both have been unjustly targeted by the Russian government for leverage against the United States. In the case of Alsu, we urge the U.S. government to declare her as wrongfully detained.”

President Joe Biden mentioned Gershkovich’s case during his State of the Union speech Thursday, saying that the U.S. “will work around the clock” to bring him home.

The reporter’s parents attended the annual address as guests of House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson.

The Bring Our Families Home campaign has expressed frustration with the administration and organized a sit-in Friday at the White House aiming to highlight what they called a “lack of substantive support and action” from Biden.

In a statement Friday, campaign spokesperson Jonathan Franks said: “While the hostage and wrongful detainee flag championed by the campaign is flown over the White House on a day that is supposed to spur action on their loved ones’ plights, families express their frustration and exhaustion in front of the closed doors of the White House.”
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New York — Former President Donald Trump has secured a bond sufficient to support an $83.3 million jury award granted to writer E. Jean Carroll during a January defamation trial stemming from rape claims she made against Trump, his lawyer said Friday as she notified the federal judge who oversaw the trial that an appeal was underway.

Attorney Alina Habba filed papers with the New York judge to show that Trump had secured a $91.6 million bond from the Federal Insurance Co. She simultaneously filed a notice of appeal to show Trump, the 2024 Republican presidential front-runner, is appealing the verdict to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The filings came a day after Judge Lewis A. Kaplan refused to delay a Monday deadline for posting a bond to ensure that Carroll can collect the $83.3 million if it remains intact following appeals.

The posting of the bond was a necessary step to delay payment of the award until the 2nd Circuit can rule.

Trump is facing financial pressure to set aside money to cover both the judgment in the Carroll case and an even bigger one in a lawsuit in which he was found liable for lying about his wealth in financial statements given to banks.

A New York judge recently refused to halt collection of a $454 million civil fraud penalty while Trump appeals. He now has until March 25 to either pay up or buy a bond covering the full amount. In the meantime, interest on the judgment continues to mount, adding roughly $112,000 each day.

Trump’s lawyers have asked for that judgment to be stayed on appeal, warning he might need to sell some properties to cover the penalty.

On Thursday, Kaplan wrote that any financial harm to Trump results from his slow response to the late-January verdict in the defamation case over statements he made about Carroll while he was president in 2019 after she claimed in a memoir that he raped her in spring 1996 in a midtown Manhattan luxury department store dressing room.

Trump vehemently denied the claims, saying that he didn’t know her and that the encounter at a Bergdorf Goodman store across the street from Trump Tower never took place.

A jury last May awarded Carroll $5 million after concluding that Trump sexually abused Carroll in the 1996 encounter, though it rejected Carroll’s rape claims, as rape was defined by New York state law. A portion of the award also stemmed from the jury’s finding that Trump defamed Carroll with statements he made in October 2022.

The January trial pertained solely to statements Trump made in 2019 while he was president. Kaplan instructed the jury that it must accept the findings of the jury last May and was only deciding how much, if anything, Trump owed Carroll for his 2019 statements.

Trump did not attend the May trial, but he testified briefly and regularly sat with defense lawyers at the January trial, though his behavior, including disparaging comments that a lawyer for Carroll said were loud enough for jurors to hear, prompted Kaplan to threaten to banish him from the courtroom.
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A son of Korean immigrants last week became the interim chief of the Los Angeles Police Department. He is the first Asian American to hold this position. Genia Dulot has the story.
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A pair of American aviators are helping Ukrainian fighter jet and helicopter pilots get some vital equipment. The gear is being donated by American and European pilots. Mariia Prus has the story.
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US President Joe Biden used his third State of the Union speech Thursday evening to announce a dramatic measure to facilitate aid into Gaza, push funding for Ukraine’s war efforts and to warn the country of the threat posed by Donald Trump, his likely opponent in the November election. VOA’s White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara has this wrap-up of what may be the most consequential speech ahead of the president’s reelection bid.
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BEIJING — U.S. President Joe Biden on Thursday criticized China’s “unfair economic practices” and insisted he has done a better job standing up to Beijing than did former President Donald Trump, his rival in this year’s presidential election.

In his State of the Union address, Biden also touted other aspects of his China policy, including “standing up for peace and stability in the Taiwan Straits” and revitalizing “our partnerships and alliances in the Pacific.”

“I’ve made sure that the most advanced American technologies can’t be used in China … frankly for all his tough talk on China, it never occurred to my predecessor to do any of that,” Biden added.

Biden’s China comments, which made up only a brief part of his nationally televised speech, come a day after Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi escalated his country’s verbal attacks on the United States.

On the sidelines of an annual meeting of China’s National People’s Congress, Wang accused the United States of trying to contain China through sanctions, and insisted that Washington has “wrong perceptions” about Beijing.

“The means to suppress China are constantly updated, the list of unilateral sanctions is constantly extended, and the desire to inflict punishment on China has reached an unimaginable level,” said Wang during what appeared to be a tightly scripted interaction with local and foreign media.

Wang’s comments were a contrast from September, when Biden met Chinese President Xi Jinping in California. At that meeting, both sides agreed to restart dialogue and cooperate on several initiatives, including to counter the flow of fentanyl, a highly addictive synthetic opioid, into the United States.

While Wang acknowledged that “some progress” was made at what he called the “historic meeting,” he accused the United States of breaking some of its promises.

“If the United States always says one thing and does another, where will its credibility be as a major country? If the United States is nervous and anxious whenever it hears the word ‘China,’ where is the self-confidence of a major country?” Wang said.

Even as high-level talks resumed, the United States has expanded sanctions against China on a range of issues, from human rights abuses to its relations with Russia. U.S.-China ties are also strained over a wide range of other issues, including China’s behavior in disputed areas of the South China Sea, its military intimidation of Taiwan, and a growing U.S.-China technological competition.

Political cudgel

In his speech Thursday, Biden reiterated that he wants “competition with China, but not conflict,” while noting that the United States is “in a stronger position to win the competition for the 21st century against China or anyone else for that matter.”

“For years, I’ve heard many of my Republican and Democratic friends say that China is on the rise and America is falling behind. They’ve got it backwards … America is rising,” Biden said.

“We have the best economy in the world. And since I’ve come to office, our GDP is up. Our trade deficit with China is down to the lowest point in over a decade,” he added.

China is expected to get more public attention as the U.S. presidential election campaign intensifies. On Thursday, both Biden, a Democrat, and U.S. Senator Katie Britt, who delivered the Republican response, used China to attack their political opponents.

“The Chinese Communist Party is undercutting America’s workers. China is buying up our farmland, spying on our military installations, and spreading propaganda through the likes of TikTok,” Britt said, referring to the popular video-sharing social media app owned by a Chinese company.

“The CCP knows that if it conquers the minds of our next generation, it conquers America,” Britt said. “And what does President Biden do? He bans TikTok for government employees, but creates an account for his own campaign.”

U.S. lawmakers are making a renewed push to pass legislation that would effectively force Beijing-based ByteDance to sell TikTok within six months or face a U.S. ban. Some U.S. lawmakers warn ByteDance could pass private information about U.S. users to China’s Communist Party – an allegation rejected by the company’s CEO. Previous attempts to ban TikTok have been unsuccessful.

But despite recent developments, U.S.-China relations remain more stable than in past years, said Wang Huiyao, the founder and president of the Beijing-based Center for China and Globalization.

“We don’t want to see a downward spiral like we used to have. Because if that happens, that could be very dangerous for not only the U.S. and China, but for the world,” Wang told VOA during an interview at his office.

“I’m still cautiously optimistic,” Wang said. “Because people realize that [after] the last six, seven years, if the U.S. and China really get into a very ugly situation, then the whole world is finished.”
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Pentagon — As attacks by Iran-backed Houthis continue in the Red Sea, the commander in charge of U.S. military operations in the Middle East says the U.S. needs to stop Iran from providing the militants with weapons.

“The most important thing is to deny their ability to resupply from Iran. The Houthis are not building. They’re putting it all together and assembling, but they don’t create inertial navigation systems. They don’t create medium-range ballistic missile engines,” Gen. Erik Kurilla, the chief of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee on Wednesday.

The U.S. and British militaries have launched multiple combined operations against weapons facilities, radars and launch sites in Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen. The U.S. has also continued near-daily strikes to take out weapons that were prepared to launch and shoot down incoming Houthi weapons, including strikes late Wednesday against two Houthi drones.

An anti-ship ballistic missile launched earlier Wednesday from Houthi-controlled territory in Yemen killed three crew members of the Barbados-flagged, Liberian-owned bulk carrier True Confidence in the Gulf of Aden, CENTCOM said in a statement. It was the first fatal strike by Iran-backed Houthi militants since the onslaught on international shipping lanes began in mid-November.

More than a dozen commercial ships have been impacted by Houthi drones or missiles during that time. Those vessels have included an aid ship with grain bound for Yemen and at least one ship with cargo bound for Iran. One vessel carrying fertilizer, the MV Rubymar, sank over the weekend after is was damaged in a Houthi attack last month.

On Tuesday, the Houthis targeted the U.S. Navy destroyer USS Carney, which shot down bomb-carrying drones and one anti-ship ballistic missile, according to CENTCOM.

Some senators on Wednesday expressed a desire for more forceful action against Iran, the Houthis’ supplier of weapons, funding and intelligence needed to attack vessels.

“Why are we not sinking those Iranian ships if there’s an Iranian spy ship providing targeting information,” asked Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan of Alaska.

Gen. Kurilla said that deterring Iran requires a “whole of government” effort.

Last month, the United States carried out a cyberattack against two Iranian military ships. A U.S. official who spoke to VOA on condition of anonymity to discuss covert operations said the Iranian spy ship MV Behshad was one of the targeted ships. It had been collecting intelligence on vessels in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.

The Houthis have said their attacks against international shipping lanes are carried out in solidarity with Hamas.

Hamas terrorists launched a brutal attack that killed hundreds of Israelis on October 7. Israel responded with an operation to root out Hamas in the Gaza Strip, an ongoing operation that has killed thousands.

Close calls

Shortly after the attack, Iranian proxies in Iraq and Syria began a series of attacks against U.S. forces in the region. After more than 170 attacks that left dozens of service members injured, the militants flew a drone into Tower 22 air base in Jordan, killing three American service members and injuring dozens more.

Kurilla revealed on Thursday that U.S. forces had “several” close calls before the deadly Tower 22 attack, and that he had balanced the U.S. response options that he provided to the president against escalating the conflict.

Asked by Senator Roger Wicker, the ranking member on the Senate Armed Services Committee, whether the militias in Iraq and Syria could have killed U.S. troops prior to the deaths in Jordan with “a little bit of extra luck,” Kurilla replied, “That is correct.”

“There were several incidents where UAVs (unidentified aerial vehicles) coming into a base hit another object, got caught up in netting, or other incidents where had they hit the appropriate target that they were targeting, it would have injured or killed service members,” he said.

VOA previously reported on one of these incidents that occurred in late October. A drone crashed into a barracks housing U.S. services members but failed to detonate, likely saving several lives, according to defense officials.

Threat from Afghanistan

As a result of the attacks on U.S. service members in the region and international shipping lanes, Kurilla said that the U.S. has had to divert intelligence and reconnaissance assets from Afghanistan to Iraq, Syria and Yemen.

He warned that the risk of an attack by violent extremists in Afghanistan on American and Western interests abroad is increasing, saying that Islamic State-Khorasan Province affiliates in Afghanistan and Syria “retain the capability and will to attack U.S. and Western interests abroad in as little as six months and with little to no warning.”

The general said such an attack would be more likely in Europe, as it would take “substantially more resources” to hit the U.S. at home.

U.N. correspondent Margaret Besheer contributed to this report. 
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Sweden formally joined the NATO military alliance Thursday, a decision officials said was prompted by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The announcement came as the alliance was conducting large-scale exercises above the Arctic Circle as a show of force and unity. VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias reports.
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Imprisonment based on political dissent is especially difficult for women, says Nadya Tolokonnikova, a creator of Pussy Riot, and someone who spent 16 months in a Russian prison. The Russian diaspora in Los Angeles gathered to write letters of support to women incarcerated on political grounds in their homeland. VOA News reports from Los Angeles, California; Steve Baragona narrates.
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VIENNA — The United States on Thursday threatened future action against Iran at the International Atomic Energy Agency if Tehran keeps “stonewalling” the U.N. nuclear watchdog by denying it the cooperation and answers it seeks on issues that include long-unexplained uranium traces. 

At a quarterly meeting of the IAEA’s 35-nation Board of Governors, Washington again told Iran to cooperate with IAEA inspectors who for years have been seeking explanations from Tehran on the origin of uranium particles at undeclared sites. 

The United States has stopped short, for now, of seeking a resolution against Iran. Diplomats have cited the U.S. presidential election in November as a reason Washington has been reluctant to do that. Tehran bristles at such resolutions and often responds by stepping up its activities. 

“We believe we have come to the point that we and the broader international community must consider anew how to respond to Iran’s continued stonewalling,” the United States said in a statement to the board meeting. “We cannot allow Iran’s current pattern of behavior to continue.” 

It is now more than a year since the last board resolution against Iran, which ordered it to cooperate urgently with the investigation into the particles. Tehran dismissed the resolution as “political” and “anti-Iranian” even though only China and Russia opposed it. 

The United States and its three top European allies, Britain, France and Germany, again opted against seeking a resolution against Iran at this week’s meeting. But the United States said that if Iran did not provide the necessary cooperation soon, it would act. 

“It is our strongly held view that Iran’s continuing lack of credible cooperation provides grounds for pursuing further Board of Governors action, including the possibility of additional resolutions and consideration of whether Iran is once again in noncompliance with its safeguards obligations,” it said. 

In 2018, then-President Donald Trump pulled the United States out of a 2015 deal under which major powers lifted sanctions against Iran in exchange for restrictions on its nuclear activities. After sanctions were reimposed, Iran expanded those activities far beyond the deal’s limits. 

It is now enriching uranium to up to 60% purity, close to the roughly 90% that is weapons grade and far above the deal’s cap of 3.67%. Western powers say there is no credible civil explanation for enriching to that level, and the IAEA says no country has done so without producing a nuclear bomb. 

Iran says that its aims are entirely peaceful and that it has the right to enrich to high levels for civil purposes.  

The United States said Iran should provide the IAEA with cooperation including access “for the purposes of collecting environmental samples … and it must begin to do so now.”  

If it did not, it would ask IAEA chief Rafael Grossi to provide a “comprehensive report” on Iran’s nuclear activities more wide-ranging than his regular quarterly ones, it said. 

“Then, based on the content of that report, we will take appropriate action in support of the IAEA and the global nuclear nonproliferation regime,” it said. 
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Ukrainian officials say the Russian military patrol ship Sergey Kotov sank in the Black Sea after being targeted by Ukrainian-made sea drones. The reported hit is calling attention to drones as effective weapons to keep Russian forces from taking control of the Black Sea. VOA Eastern Europe Bureau Chief Myroslava Gongadze gained exclusive access to the development and testing site of this cutting-edge drone technology. VOA footage and video editing by Vladyslav Smilianets.
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