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The U.S. is expected to release a declassified intelligence report Friday that blames Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for the 2018 grisly murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was a U.S. resident with U.S. citizen children.  
 
Khashoggi, a columnist for The Washington Post, was lured to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul Oct. 2, 2018, and was killed by operatives linked to the crown prince. His body was dismembered, and his remains have never been found. Riyadh eventually admitted that Khashoggi was mistakenly killed in what it called a rogue operation but denied the crown prince’s involvement.  
 
The role of the crown prince, often referred to by his initials, MBS, in Khashoggi’s death has been the subject of media reports since late 2018.  
 
U.S. President Joe Biden talked with Saudi Arabia’s King Salman Thursday.  The White House said that during the call, Biden and Salman “discussed regional security, including the renewed diplomatic efforts led by the United Nations and the United States to end the war in Yemen, and the U.S. commitment to help Saudi Arabia defend its territory as it faces attacks from Iranian-aligned groups.”   
The White House readout of the call noted the recent release of several Saudi-American activists and Saudi women’s rights activist Loujain al-Hathloul from custody and affirmed the importance the U.S. places on universal human rights and the rule of law. It did not mention the report on Khashoggi.   
 
The Trump administration rejected demands by lawmakers to release a declassified version of the report as the White House prioritized arms sales to the kingdom and alliance with Riyadh amid rising U.S. tensions with Saudi Arabia’s regional rival, Iran.  
 
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On the eve of the seventh anniversary of the Russian invasion and seizure of Crimea, the United States and European Union have reaffirmed their positions that Crimea belongs to Ukraine.
 
“Russia’s invasion and seizure of Crimea” is “a brazen affront to the modern international order,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement. “We affirm this basic truth: Crimea is Ukraine,” Blinken said.
 
The U.S. “does not, and will never, recognize Russia’s purported annexation of Crimea,” the statement added.
 
The United States is repeating its call for Russia to immediately end its occupation of Crimea, to release all Ukrainian political prisoners, and return full control of the peninsula to Ukraine.  The U.S. is also calling on Russia to end its “aggression” in eastern Ukraine.
 Until Russia reverses its course regarding Ukraine and Crimea, U.S. sanctions on the country will remain in place, Blinken said.
 
In his capacity as the president of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas reiterated EU’s condemnation of the annexation of Crimea, which it says constitutes a violation of international law.
 
The Council reaffirms its “unequivocal and unwavering support for the independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine within its internationally recognised borders,” Maas said in a statement.  
    
The statement calls on Russia “to fully comply with international humanitarian law and international human rights standards, including by granting unimpeded access to regional and international human rights monitoring mechanisms, as well as non-governmental human rights organisations, to Crimea and Sevastopol.”
 
On February 27, 2014, masked Russian troops moved in and captured strategic locations in Crimea, as well as Crimean institutions, including the Supreme Council or Crimean Parliament. The council of ministers was dissolved and a new pro-Russian prime minister installed. 
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Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny has been sent to a prison outside Moscow to serve his sentence, his lawyer said Thursday, a move that came despite a demand by Europe’s top human rights court for his release.Navalny lawyer Vadim Kobzev did not immediately name the prison where Navalny was sent. Russian news reports have previously indicated that Navalny, who has been held in a maximum-security jail in Moscow, would likely be sent to a facility in western Russia.Navalny, 44, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s most vociferous foe, was arrested January 17 upon returning from Germany, where he spent five months recovering from a nerve-agent poisoning that he blames on the Kremlin. Russian authorities have rejected the accusation and accused Navalny of cooperating with Western intelligence agencies — claims he has ridiculed.Earlier this month, Navalny was sentenced to 2½ years in prison for violating the terms of his probation while convalescing in Germany. The sentence stems from a 2014 embezzlement conviction that Navalny has rejected as fabricated — and which the European Сourt of Human Rights (ECHR) has ruled to be unlawful.Large protestsNavalny’s arrest has fueled a wave of protests that have drawn tens of thousands to the streets across Russia. Authorities have detained about 11,000 people, many of whom were fined or given jail terms ranging from seven to 15 days.Russian officials have dismissed demands from the United States and the European Union to free Navalny and stop the crackdown on his supporters.Moscow also rejected the ECHR ruling that, citing risks to Navalny’s life in custody, ordered the Russian government to release him. The Russian government has rebuffed the court’s demand as unlawful and “inadmissible” meddling in Russia’s home affairs.Earlier this week, EU foreign ministers agreed to impose new sanctions against Russian officials linked to Navalny’s jailing.Since Navalny’s arrest, Russian officials and state news media have aggressively tried to discredit him, a change from the previous tactic of largely ignoring him.Possible ‘advocacy of hatred’Some of the criticism has emphasized anti-migrant views expressed years ago as he was rising to prominence.Amnesty International this week stripped Navalny of his designation as a “prisoner of conscience” because of those views. “Navalny had, in the past, made comments which may have amounted to advocacy of hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, violence or hostility,” the organization said in a statement Thursday.The statement denied the move was in response to external pressure, but news reports have suggested Amnesty International was targeted in a coordinated campaign to discredit him.”These were not independently acting activists … these were people who would like to defame Alexey as the most prominent opponent of Mr. Putin,” Vladimir Ashurkov, executive director of Navalny’s anti-corruption organization, said in a conference call Thursday.Amnesty International said rescinding the prisoner-of-conscience designation did not change its demand for Navalny to be freed.”There should be no confusion: Nothing Navalny has said in the past justifies his current detention, which is purely politically motivated. Navalny has been arbitrarily detained for exercising his right to freedom of expression, and for this reason, we continue to campaign for his immediate release,” the organization said. 
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The first asylum-seekers from a Mexican border camp that had become a symbol of Trump-era immigration restrictions entered the United States on Thursday under a new policy meant to end the hardships endured by migrants in dangerous border towns. The United Nation’s International Organization for Migration (IOM) said the initial group comprised 27 people who had been living in the makeshift camp in Matamoros opposite Brownsville, Texas. Some residents have lived there for more than a year under former President Donald Trump’s controversial Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) program requiring asylum-seekers to wait in Mexico for U.S. court hearings. The first group of 27 migrants leave their camp towards the Gateway International Bridge to be processed and seek asylum in the U.S., in Matamoros, Mexico, Feb. 25, 2021.A new process under President Joe Biden will gradually allow thousands of MPP asylum-seekers to await courts’ decisions within the United States. Some migrants last week were permitted to cross into San Ysidro, California. Francisco Gallardo, who runs a migrant shelter in Matamoros and provides humanitarian aid at the camp, welcomed the news that the process had begun in Matamoros, but said it should have come sooner. “It’s good that they are doing it, but unfortunately coming late,” he said. Freezing temperatures at the U.S.-Mexico border had made the Matamoros camp a priority, the Department of Homeland Security said on Wednesday. Migrants at the camp have struggled to ensure proper hygiene and to protect themselves from organized crime in a state that is one of the most violent in Mexico. “The camp was a space that had multiple risks for the migrants,” said Misael Hernandez, a researcher on migration issues at El Colegio de la Frontera Norte. Mexico’s migration institute did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 
 
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After two years of discreet silence about his detention without charges in China, Irish businessman Richard O’Halloran finally spoke up this month. His youngest child was only 5 years old when he traveled to Shanghai in February 2019 on what he expected to be a short business trip, O’Halloran said in an interview with FILE – People hold signs calling for China to release Canadian detainees Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig, in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, March 6, 2019.While the case of the “two Michaels” has been widely publicized, O’Halloran’s ordeal was little known until he went public this past week. In the interview, the 45-year-old father of four said his anguish had reached the point that he asked the Chinese judge in charge of his case: “Do you expect that I tell my wife to get on with her life, and for my kids to try and forget about me? Is that what you’re trying to do?” O’Halloran, an executive with the Irish subsidiary of an aviation leasing company, traveled to China to help settle a commercial dispute that resulted in the arrest of his employer on charges of defrauding Chinese investors of some $70 million. While not charged with any crime, O’Halloran has been told he cannot leave China until the money is returned to the investors. The Chinese embassy in Dublin told RTE: “In any country, company representatives have the legal obligation to return the proceeds of crime flowing into the company and related yields to the victims.” The embassy added, “We fully understand Mr. O’Halloran’s family’s anxiety and hope they will advise Mr. O’Halloran to cooperate in a meaningful way with judicial authorities in Shanghai to ensure an early solution to the case.” But O’Halloran argued in his interview that the Chinese legal system is “fundamentally flawed.” “To expect somebody to sign documents in Chinese, to conduct an entire interview in Chinese, without legal representation, is just not correct in my view,” he said. FILE – Winston Lord, then-U.S. assistant secretary of state for East Asia, addresses a press conference in Honolulu, Jan. 25, 1996.The case has attracted the attention of some major China policy experts, including Winston Lord, a former U.S. ambassador to China and assistant secretary of state for East Asia. “I’ve been following the case closely for many months, it’s a very sad, frustrating and cruel case,” Lord said in a phone interview from his home in Manhattan. “This man is a businessman from Ireland, he went to the mainland to try to help the Chinese resolve a case against another Chinese, and he’s been kept in detention — not house arrest, but he can’t leave the country — for two years.”  Lord said China may be hurting its own economic interests by holding O’Halloran. “I already know people who don’t want to be stationed in China, whether it’s pollution, repression, or extreme measures like this,” he said. The detention has also been denounced on the floor of the Irish parliament, where Senator Michael McDowell insisted that “no Chinese citizen would be treated in this way in this country.”Watch: In the #Seanad today I highlighted the ongoing wrongful detention of Richard O’Halloran in China https://t.co/xs8h15ztJ5 via @YouTube— Michael McDowell (@SenatorMcDowell) February 15, 2021″Comparative size of our two countries doesn’t justify wolf diplomacy being deployed against Ireland to try and blackmail this man into doing something unlawful,” he said. McDowell cautioned the Irish government against falling into what he called the three stages of inaction — “the stage which was premature to do anything, the stage which was too sensitive, and the stage which was too late.” 
 
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Burn patients in Haiti who need specialized care had to be transferred, after gang violence erupted near the burn care hospital in Drouillard, a Port-au-Prince neighborhood.Doctors Without Borders / Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) says the violence is putting its patients at risk. 
 
“Severe burns require highly specialized care, and our Drouillard hospital is Haiti’s only specialized burn care center,” Dr. Alain Ngamba, MSF medical coordinator in Haiti, told VOA via email. “We are concerned about the consequences for patients who would otherwise have been admitted there.”  
 
MSF says the eruption of gunfire on February 23 sent staff members running for cover on hospital grounds. That’s when it was decided to relocate 21 patients to an MSF hospital in the Tabarre neighborhood of Haiti’s capital, once the shooting stopped. No staff or patients were injured during the violence, MSF told VOA.  
 Doctors Without Borders / Medecins Sans Frontieres burns hospital in Drouillard, Haiti. (Photo: Lunos Saint Brave/MSF)Outpatient services for burn patients had been transferred out of Drouillard since February 13, after a first wave of gang violence. For now, only the emergency department of the hospital is open, but it is functioning at a reduced capacity and limited to accepting only life-threatening cases, MSF says. 
 
“The situation around our hospital in Drouillard has deteriorated, for patients and for staff,” Aline Serin, MSF head of mission in Haiti, said in a statement. “Faced with the recurrence of this violence, we have decided to move patients from our burn center and outpatient services to our trauma hospital in Tabarre, in order to ensure the protection of staff, the safety of our patients and continuity of their care.”  
 
MSF’s Drouillard location employs about 250 staff — a mix of Haitian and international MSF employees. Originally set up as a trauma center in 2011 to treat victims of violence, road accidents or burns, the hospital shifted its focus to specialized burn care in 2014.  
 
After the COVID-19 pandemic hit Haiti in March 2020, the Drouillard hospital temporarily shifted to treating COVID-19 patients between May and August. After August, the hospital reshifted its focus to burn care.  
 
“We are still working to set up an operating theater in our Tabarre hospital for our existing burns patients,” Ngamba told VOA. “We already treat trauma patients at our Tabarre hospital, so this does not leave many more places for burns patients. Currently we do not have the capacity to admit new patients with severe burns.”  
 MSF staff transfer burn patients out of Drouillard hospital to Tabarre trauma center in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. (Photo: Avra Fialas/MSF)Gang violence has been a concern not only for Haitian authorities but also the international community, which raised the issue at a February 22 United Nations Security Council meeting.   
 
“We urge Haitian authorities to redouble their efforts to investigate and prosecute violent crime,” said Ambassador Jeffrey DeLaurentis, the Acting Alternate Representative for Special Political Affairs at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations.  
 
France’s deputy permanent representative to the United Nations, Nathalie Broadhurst, also criticized Haiti’s government for lack of progress on curbing gang violence. 
 
“I ask this question straightforwardly: How is it possible today that Jimmy Cherizier [notorious Haitian gang leader] is still walking free?” Broadhurst said. “The fight against impunity must be the priority of the authorities.” 
 
Responding to the criticism, Haitian President Jovenel Moise cited progress in dismantling gangs and reducing violence in his speech to the U.N. Security Council. 
 
“Of 102 existing gangs, the government has dismantled 64 and is working to quickly to reestablish security,” he said. 
 
But as chronic insecurity continues in Port-au-Prince, MSF is calling for the respect of health facilities so that patients and staff can access them.  
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Months of lockdowns and pandemic restrictions are taking their toll on Europeans, with many chafing at the prolonged limitations on public life. With vaccine distribution now starting to pick up after a sluggish start in most countries, calls are mounting for an easing of restrictions.Britain is first up, with pressure building for easing after a blisteringly fast rollout of its inoculation program that’s already seen one in three adults in the country receive at least one vaccine dose.In a race against a faster-spreading variant of the virus, more than 18 million people in Britain have received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine, fueling demands for a speedy end to the country’s lockdown, the third since the pandemic emerged.The ruling Conservatives hope the success of the largest mass vaccination program in the country’s history will erase public memories of the missteps and reversals of last year, which saw ill-disguised clashes between the government, lawmakers and medical advisers. There were more than two dozen abrupt U-turns in policy.But a Conservative popularity bounce risks being lost amid squabbling about when and how quickly pandemic restrictions are lifted, according to lawmakers and analysts. Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced Monday that his government would take a “cautious” approach to easing a national lockdown, with restrictions lifted every few weeks so the impact can be judged.FILE – Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson holds a vial of Astra Zeneca coronavirus vaccine during a visit to a coronavirus vaccination center in Orpington, England, Feb. 15, 2021.The prime minister told lawmakers this week that England is going to start “reclaiming our freedoms” with the goal of removing all legal limits on people’s social contact set to end by June 21. His road map for relaxing the country’s lockdown will see schools reopen on March 8 and some outdoor restrictions lifted three weeks later.Hugs could be allowed in May, he said.For some, the planned relaxation is too fast; for others, too slow. And Johnson’s party is becoming restive. Influential Conservative lawmaker Steve Baker lamented the slow pace of relaxation, saying it “will be a hammer blow for aviation, for pubs, for restaurants, hotels, gyms and pools, the arts and the establishment.”Nearly 70,000 finesAnd many Britons are straining at the leash with breaches of pandemic restrictions rising steeply since last month. Police have handed out in the past year nearly 70,000 fines to people for breaking lockdown rules, according to government data, but of those, more than a third were issued since January 17 of this year.Elsewhere in Europe, relaxation seems a distant dream, but public impatience is mounting with the slow vaccination campaigns, which are likely to have electoral consequences.In the Czech Republic, where infections are surging, Prime Minister Andrej Babis has been criticized for sending inconsistent signals about when coronavirus measures will be lifted.FILE – A man wearing a face mask to guard against coronavirus transmission walks across the medieval Charles Bridge in Prague, Czech Republic, Feb. 25, 2021.The country’s parliament has moved to restrict Babis’ powers to tighten restrictions, and the opposition coalition now has overtaken the ruling party in the opinion polls, suggesting voters are losing faith in the government.Despite the fact that the country’s two-week infection rate is three times the EU average and its death rate of 174 people per million is among the worst in Europe, Babis’ government started to loosen a few pandemic restrictions, only to backtrack as health experts denounced the move.Rastislav Maďar, head of the University of Ostrava’s Institute of Epidemiology, told Politico EU, “Many people are fed up and tired of the political games, and now refuse to respect obligatory lockdown rules.”Some relaxationPartly as a result of public pressure, governments in Italy, the Netherlands and Denmark have all tweaked their restrictions to allow some letup on lockdowns.Starting March 1, high school children in Holland will have at least one day in the classroom. Hairdressers and other so-called contact professions can reopen on March 3. Teenagers and adults up to age 27 can play team sports outside. But a nighttime curfew, which triggered several days of riots when introduced, will remain.Denmark, which has been under a lockdown since December, is lifting some restrictions that will see the retail sector reopen. Older school students are expected to be allowed to return to classrooms in regions with low infection rates.FILE – Carabinieri officers patrol an access road to Bollate, in the outskirts of Milan, Italy, Feb. 18, 2021. Italy’s Lombardy region asked the national government Feb. 25 to send more vaccines north to help stem a surge of new COVID cases.And in Italy, high school students are now returning to class, the first time since October, and bars and restaurants in some regions are being allowed again to serve customers at tables and counters until dusk. But a nationwide nighttime curfew remains and travel among Italy’s 20 regions is restricted.In other European countries, lockdowns and severe restrictions are remaining. Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Germany and France aren’t ready for any serious easing. In Germany, the government is coming under increasing pressure to present the public with a road map out of the coronavirus crisis amid growing anger over the snail-paced vaccination campaign.’We envy you’Only 6% of Germans have received at least one shot so far, compared with about 33% of Britons. That huge disparity prompted Bild Zeitung, a major tabloid newspaper, to splash across its front page Wednesday: “Dear Britons, We envy you!” The paper went on to ask, “When will we be as far as the British are?”The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, has been rebuffing calls for a major relaxation of lockdown rules, saying there has to be a significant reduction in the incidence rate to under 35 per 100,000 first. It currently stands at about 60 per 100,000.At a Tuesday meeting with lawmakers from her ruling Christian Democratic party, Merkel said she understood “the valid desire for an opening up,” but that could be done safely only in “four stages of opening, without a yo-yo effect.”  
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Sweden’s national weather service, the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute (SMHI) Thursday reported a new national high temperature for February — 16.8 degrees Celsius.The SMHI confirmed the record on its Twitter account, attributing the high temperatures to the föhnvind, a warm, dry wind that traditionally comes out of the mountains.Record temperatures were also reported Thursday in Poland where Makow Podhalanski hit 21.7 degrees Celsius, and in Slovakia, where the southwestern city of Hurbanovo reported a high of 20.8 Celsius.Winter Weather Hits Parts of Europe, From Poland to Turkey Temperatures dropped to minus 28 degrees Celsius (minus 18 Fahrenheit) in some Polish areas overnight, the coldest night in 11 yearsThursday’s records come as western and central Europe is seeing something of a winter heat wave, with records falling earlier in the week in the Czech Republic, Austria, and in Germany, where on Monday, Hamburg hit 21.1 degrees Celsius — the warmest temperature recorded there in any winter month. Some of the records that fell this week had stood for more than a century.The heat wave comes two weeks after western and central Europe saw a frigid blast of winter, with heavy snowfalls in Britain, Germany and the Netherlands. Washington Post meteorologist Matthew Cappucci says the region has seen the wild swing in temperatures thanks to a seesaw effect in the jet stream that earlier in the month brought freezing air down from the pole, and this week brought warm air from the south, including dust from the Sahara Desert in Africa.
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Workers from Latin America are already among the lowest paid in Britain. Now, advocates say the pandemic has left nearly half of them without a job, creating what some are warning is a new migrant crisis in Europe.  For VOA, Joana Ramiro reports from London.
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The World Health Organization said Thursday that one in 10 COVID-19 patients experience persistent ill health 12 weeks after having had the virus and urged health authorities to take their situation seriously.
At a virtual news conference Thursday, WHO’s Europe division released a policy brief that documents how different countries in the region have responded to patients who suffer long-term COVID-19 symptoms.
WHO European director Hans Kluge said so-called “long COVID” can bring symptoms that include severe fatigue, chest pain, heart inflammation, headache, forgetfulness, depression, loss of smell, recurrent fever, diarrhea and ringing in the ears. 
 
The policy brief says available data shows about one in four people with COVID-19 show symptoms about a month after testing positive, while one in 10 experience symptoms after 12 weeks.
Kluge said, “The sufferers of post-COVID conditions need to be heard if we are to understand the long-term consequences and recovery from COVID-19.” He said it is important for policymakers to consider such long-term patients as part of the response to mitigate the impact of the pandemic.  
Kluge added long-term sufferers are a priority for the WHO and should be for every health authority.
Kluge also said there were fewer than one million new COVID-19 cases in Europe for the second consecutive week as transmission continues to slow. He said new cases have declined by almost half since the beginning of the year, which he credited to countries that have implemented new measures to slow transmission.
But Kluge warned that COVID-19 continues to spread at very high rates across Europe, with two variants of concern continuing to displace other variants.
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Venezuela’s currency, the bolivar, is worth almost nothing these days. That’s forced the country’s citizens to figure out new ways to put food on their tables. Adriana Nunez Rabascall reports this story narrated by Cristina Smit.
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A Serbian court has sentenced a former mayor to four years in prison for ordering an arson attack on the home of an investigative journalist.In a trial that lasted nearly two years, a court Tuesday found Dragoljub Simonovic guilty of ordering the December 2018 attack on Milan Jovanovic, a reporter for the news website Zig Info. Simonovic, a member of the ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), was mayor of Grocka, a municipality near the capital, Belgrade, at the time of the attack.”I hope that this verdict will be the harbinger of more media freedom in Serbia,” Jovanovic told reporters outside the court, adding that he was satisfied with the ruling.Jovanovic and his wife were at home at the time of the attack and had to escape through a window after Molotov cocktails were thrown through a window, according to reports at the time. The journalist suffered smoke inhalation, Milan Jovanovic in front of his burned home, in Belgrade, Serbia, December 2018.Jovanovic said he believed he was targeted for investigating cases of corruption and graft allegedly linked to the mayor.A man accused of carrying out the attack, Aleksandar Marinkovic, was sentenced in absentia by the court.The verdict was a rare case of justice being secured for journalists in a region where press freedoms are withering. Hostile rhetoric, sometimes from politicians, a lack of independence in media regulatory bodies, online attacks on journalists and weak mechanisms to support news associations are among the obstacles for media in the Balkans.Serbia’s ranking on the World Press Freedom Index has also worsened in the past four years, dropping three places in 2020, according to data compiled by media watchdog Reporters Without Borders. (RSF)Significant rulingInternational media rights groups welcomed Tuesday’s court ruling.Milan Jovanovic’s burned vehicle and garage, in Belgrade, Serbia, December 2018. (RFE/RL)The conviction of a mastermind was significant in the fight against impunity in attacks on the press, Pavol Szalai, head of the European Union and Balkans desk at RSF, told VOA Serbian.“The arson attack against the home of Milan Jovanovic is an emblematic case for press freedom not only in Serbia, but also in the whole Balkans,” Szalai said, adding that the region was “plagued by impunity” regarding crimes against the media.“When RSF Secretary General Christophe Deloire met the Serbian president in 2019, Aleksandar Vucic committed to healing this disease. Today’s verdict is the beginning of the healing process; it is the beginning of the end of impunity for crimes committed against journalists in Serbia,” Szalai said.Noting that Jovanovic and his wife could have been killed in the attack, the media watchdog representative said that RSF would monitor the appeal hearings closely, adding that it was “crucial” that the verdict be confirmed.“Europe is still traumatized by last year’s acquittal of the alleged mastermind of the assassination of Jan Kuciak in Slovakia. If the perpetrators of the attack against Milan Jovanovic are definitively condemned, it will be an important measure to protect the physical security journalists.” Szalai said.Marian Kocner, a powerful businessman in Slovakia, was acquitted last year of involvement in the 2018 slaying of investigative journalist Kuciak. He denied any role in the killing.Milan Jovanovic’s burned vehicle, in Belgrade, Serbia, December 2018. (RFE/RL)The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists also welcomed the sentencing.“The verdict is a strong signal from Serbian authorities that acts of violence against journalists will not remain unpunished,” Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator, said in a statement forwarded to VOA. “Fighting impunity for such acts is an important step toward preventing further attacks, and it is especially welcome in Serbia where threats, intimidation and acts of violence against journalists are not unprecedented.”Journalist safetySerbia is under pressure to improve press freedom and safety for journalists as part of its steps toward joining the European Union. In its 2020 country report, the European Commission said “cases of threats, intimidation and violence against journalists are still a source of serious concern” in Serbia.Szalai, from RSF, said the country needs to address several issues, including securing justice in crimes against the media and ending verbal assaults and threats, including those from state officials.”Perpetrators of crimes committed against journalists must be swiftly condemned, regardless if they are state officials or not,” Szalai said, adding, “The editorial independence of the public media must be granted, and economic and institutional pressures on the private media’s editorial independence must stop.”Szalai said that law enforcement should also investigate evidence of crime and corruption exposed by reporters. “All these changes would not only contribute to improving media freedom, but also accelerate Serbia’s integration to the EU,” he said.This story originated in VOA’s Serbian Service. Some information is from AFP.   
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After 3½ years of living inside a Missouri church to avoid deportation, Honduran immigrant Alex Garcia finally stepped outside Wednesday, following a promise from President Joe Biden’s administration to let him be.Garcia, a married father of five, was slated for removal from the U.S. in 2017, the first year of President Donald Trump’s administration. Days before he would have been deported, Christ Church United Church of Christ in the St. Louis suburb of Maplewood offered sanctuary.Sara John of the St. Louis Inter-Faith Committee on Latin America said Garcia’s decision to leave the church came after Immigration and Customs Enforcement declared that he was no longer a deportation priority, and that the agency would not pursue his detention or removal.Garcia, in a statement, said he was separated from living with his family for 1,252 days. A crowd of about 100 people cheered as he and his family left the church Wednesday.”We are not done yet,” Garcia said. “There is still so much work that has to be done and I look forward to being able to join you all out there in the community and continue to fight for my permanent protection.”In his first weeks as president, Biden has signed several executive orders on immigration issues that undo his predecessor’s policies, though several Republican members of Congress are pushing legal challenges.Myrna Orozco, organizing coordinator at Church World Service, said 33 immigrants remain inside churches across the U.S., a number that should continue to drop.”We expect it to change in the next couple of weeks as we get more clarity from ICE or [immigrants] get a decision on their cases,” Orozco said.Others emergeOthers who have emerged from sanctuary since Biden took office include Jose Chicas, a 55-year-old El Salvador native, who left a church-owned house in Durham, North Carolina, on January 22. Saheeda Nadeem, 65, of Pakistan, left a Kalamazoo, Michigan, church this month. Edith Espinal, a native of Mexico, left an Ohio church after more than three years.In Maplewood, Pastor Becky Turner said Garcia has become a valued part of the church family.”The hearts of all of us at Christ Church are overflowing today,” Turner said. “God has answered our prayers for Alex Garcia to live freely, without the threat of being separated from his family.”Garcia’s exit came just two days after U.S. Representative Cori Bush, a St. Louis Democrat, announced she was sponsoring a private bill seeking permanent residency for Garcia. Bush said Wednesday that she would still push the bill forward.”ICE has promised not to deport Alex, and we will stop at nothing to ensure that they keep their promise,” Bush said in a statement.Garcia fled extreme poverty and violence in Honduras, his advocates have said. After entering the U.S. in 2004, he hopped a train that he thought was headed for Houston, but instead ended up in Poplar Bluff, Missouri, a town of about 17,000 residents in the southeastern corner of the state.He landed a job and met his wife, Carly, a U.S. citizen, and for more than a decade they lived quietly with their blended family.In 2015, Garcia accompanied his sister to an immigration office for a check-in in Kansas City, Missouri, where officials realized Garcia was in the country illegally. He received two one-year reprieves during Barack Obama’s administration. 
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German customs authorities Wednesday announced the largest seizure of cocaine in European history, more than 23 tons discovered in two raids this month at ports in Hamburg, Germany and Antwerp, Belgium.German customs official Rene Matchke told reporters the 28-year-old owner of a Dutch import company was arrested Wednesday in the Netherlands, where police say both shipments were bound.  German officers had first discovered 16 tons of cocaine hidden in containers from Paraguay at the port of Hamburg February 12, following a tip from a Netherlands-based company. German and Dutch investigations led the officials Sunday to seize another 7.2 tons of cocaine at the port of Antwerp.German and Dutch police confirm the two shipments account for the largest amount of cocaine confiscated in a criminal investigation, and one of the top five in the world.  German customs officials say the investigation is ongoing and that they do not believe the man who was arrested acted alone. They say the drug haul would have been worth billions of dollars.
 
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Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed into law bills that impose fines for violating a controversial law on “foreign agents” as well as other legislation relating to protests, such as the financing of rallies and disobedience of law enforcement.
 
According to the laws, signed by Putin Feb. 24, releasing information about so-called “foreign agents” and their materials without also indicating their status could lead to fines of up to 2,500 rubles ($34) for individuals and up to 500,000 rubles ($6,720) for entities. The law applies regardless of whether the “foreign agent” in question is a mass media outlet or an individual.
 
The other laws signed by Putin the same day set fines for individuals found guilty of illegally financing a rally at up to 15,000 rubles ($200), while officials and organizations for such actions will be ordered to pay up to 30,000 rubles ($400) and 100,000 rubles ($1,345), respectively. Putin also signed a law that significantly increases fines for disobedience of police and security forces.
 
Russia’s “foreign agent” legislation was adopted in 2012 and has been modified repeatedly. It requires nongovernmental organizations that receive foreign assistance and that the government deems to be engaged in political activity to be registered, to identify themselves as “foreign agents,” and submit to audits.
 
Later modifications of the law targeted foreign-funded media, including RFE/RL’s Russian Service, six other RFE/RL Russian-language news services, as well as Current Time, the Russian-language network led by RFE/RL in cooperation with VOA.
 
At the end of 2020, the legislation was modified to allow the Russian government to include individuals, including foreign journalists, on its “foreign agents” list and to impose restrictions on them.
 
Russian officials have said that amending the “foreign agents law” to include mass media in 2017 was a “symmetrical response” to the U.S. requirement that Russia’s state-funded channel RT register under the U.S. Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).
 
U.S. officials have said the action is not symmetrical, arguing that the U.S. and Russian laws differ and that Russia uses its “foreign agent” legislation to silence dissent and discourage the free exchange of ideas.
 
The Russian state media monitor Roskomnadzor last year adopted rules requiring listed media to mark all written materials with a lengthy notice in large text, all radio materials with an audio statement, and all video materials with a 15-second text declaration.
 
The agency has prepared hundreds of complaints against RFE/RL’s news websites. When they go through the court system, the fines levied could reach nearly $1 million.
 
RFE/RL has called the fines “a state-sponsored campaign of coercion and intimidation,” while the U.S. State Department has described them as “intolerable.” Human Rights Watch has described the foreign agent legislation as “restrictive” and intended “to demonize independent groups.”
 
Since early in Putin’s presidency, the Kremlin has steadily tightened the screws on independent media. The country is ranked 149th out of 180 in the World Press Freedom Index produced by Reporters Without Borders.
 
 
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A federal judge late Tuesday indefinitely banned President Joe Biden’s administration from enforcing a 100-day moratorium on most deportations.  U.S. District Judge Drew Tipton issued a preliminary injunction sought by Texas, which argued the moratorium violated federal law and risked imposing additional costs on the state.Biden proposed the 100-day pause on deportations during his campaign as part of a larger review of immigration enforcement and an attempt to reverse the priorities of former President Donald Trump. Biden has proposed a sweeping immigration bill that would allow the legalization of an estimated 11 million people living in the U.S. illegally. He also has instituted other guidelines on whom immigration and border agents should target for enforcement.  Tipton, a Trump appointee, initially ruled on January 26 the moratorium violated federal law on administrative procedure and the U.S. failed to show why a deportation pause was justified. A temporary restraining order issued by the judge was set to expire Tuesday.  Tipton’s ruling did not require deportations to resume at their previous pace. Even without a moratorium, immigration agencies have wide latitude in enforcing removals and processing cases.  But in the days that followed his ruling, authorities deported 15 people to Jamaica and hundreds of others to Central America. The Biden administration also has continued expelling immigrants under a separate process begun by Trump officials, who invoked public-health law due to the coronavirus pandemic.  The legal fight over the deportation ban is an early sign of Republican opposition to Biden’s immigration priorities, just as Democrats and pro-immigrant legal groups fought Trump’s proposals. Almost four years before Tipton’s order, Trump signed a ban on travel from seven countries with predominantly Muslim populations that caused chaos at airports. Legal groups successfully sued to stop implementation of the ban.It was not immediately clear if the Biden administration will appeal Tipton’s latest ruling. The Justice Department did not seek a stay of Tipton’s earlier temporary restraining order. 
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Police stormed the party offices of Georgian opposition leader Nika Melia and detained him Tuesday, deepening a political crisis that prompted the prime minister to resign last week.
 
Melia’s supporters had barricaded themselves in the offices, using furniture to block the doors. Scores of police surged into the building during the early morning raid, including using firefighting ladders to gain access via the roof.  
 
Seventeen people were hurt in the scuffles between police and activists, the Interfax news agency reported. Some activists were coughing and suffered eye irritation after police sprayed gas towards them from hand-held canisters.
 
Melia, the United National Movement (UNM) party’s chairman in the South Caucasus country of 3.7 million people, has been accused of inciting violence at street protests in June 2019, a charge he dismisses as politically motivated.
 
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Washington was “deeply troubled” by Melia’s arrest, urging the Georgian government to avoid actions that could further escalate tensions. A State Department spokesman added that recent developments in the country were in contravention of its Euro-Atlantic aspirations.
 
A new prime minister, Irakli Garibashvili, was chosen by parliament late on Monday to replace Giorgi Gakharia, who resigned last week after a court ordered the detention of Melia, a move Gakharia said would cause political turmoil.
 
In a video posted on Facebook late on Tuesday, the new prime minister called for “all the political forces to which our country is dear to start a true dialogue.” 
Hundreds protest
 
Hundreds of people massed outside parliament to protest Melia’s detention and pitched two tents in the capital, Tbilisi. One protester held up a sign calling for a snap election, the government’s resignation and freedom for “political prisoners.” A UNM party member called for a large-scale protest march on Friday, the Rustavi 2 media outlet reported.
 
The Interior Ministry said it had no option but to use coercive measures at Melia’s party offices as activists had ignored numerous warnings not to obstruct their work.
 
“Polarizing rhetoric, force and aggression are not the solution to Georgia’s political differences,” Blinken said in a statement. “We call on all sides to avoid actions that could further escalate tensions and to engage in good faith negotiations to resolve the current political crisis,” he said.
 
The U.S. Embassy earlier expressed regret that its call for restraint and dialogue had been ignored.
 
Britain’s ambassador, Mark Clayton, urged restraint from all sides. The European Union’s ambassador called for efforts to find common ground.
 
“The logic of escalation is getting the upper hand. The political crisis is deepening,” the EU diplomat, Carl Hartzell, wrote on Twitter.
 
Zygimantas Pavilionis, a special envoy from the Lithuanian parliament who returned on Monday from a mediating mission to Georgia, said the authorities had been seeking support from Western diplomats for a crackdown.
 
“They were asking for green light from me, from the EU ambassador, from the American ambassador. I said, no way,” he said. “Now democracy is dying there.”
 
Last week, a court ordered Melia to be detained for allegedly failing to post bail. Gakharia abruptly resigned on Thursday, citing disagreement with his own team over the arrest order. The Interior Ministry initially held off on detaining Melia because of Gakharia’s resignation.
 
The new prime minister, Garibashvili, served as prime minister from 2013 to 2015. His candidacy was put forward by the ruling Georgian Dream party.
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A German court has convicted a former member of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s secret police of accessory to crimes against humanity for facilitating the torture of prisoners.
 
The court in Koblenz sentenced Eyad Al-Gharib to 4 1/2 years in prison.
 
Prosecutors accused him of being part of a unit that arrested protesters and delivered them to a detention center where they were tortured.
 
The conviction marked the first time a court outside of Syria ruled in a case alleging members of Assad’s government committed crimes against humanity.   
 
The court is also holding a trial for a second person who is accused of directly committing crimes against humanity.  That trial is expected to last until late this year.
 
Prosecutors are invoking the principle of universal jurisdiction to bring charges of crimes against humanity in a German court.
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A federal judge has ordered the wife of Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman to remain temporarily jailed after she was arrested and accused of helping her husband run his multibillion-dollar cartel and plotting his audacious escape from a Mexican prison in 2015. Emma Coronel Aispuro, 31, appeared by video conference for an initial court appearance before a federal magistrate judge in Washington, D.C. The judge’s order came after Coronel’s attorney, Jeffrey Lichtman, said he would consent to her temporary detention after her arrest at Dulles International Airport in Virginia. U.S. Magistrate Judge Robin Meriweather explained the charges to Coronel, who spoke to the judge through a Spanish interpreter. She said prosecutors had provided sufficient reason to keep Coronel behind bars for now and noted that her attorney had consented to the temporary detention. Prosecutor Anthony Nardozzi said the U.S. government believed that Coronel should remain jailed, arguing that she “worked closely with the command-and-control structure” of the Sinaloa cartel, particularly with her husband. Nardozzi said she conspired to distribute large quantities of drugs, knowing that they would be illegally smuggled into the U.S.  Nardozzi said Coronel had access to criminal associates, including other members of the cartel, and “financial means to generate a serious risk of flight.” If convicted, she could face more than 10 years in prison. Her arrest was the latest twist in the bloody, multinational saga involving Guzman, the longtime head of the Sinaloa drug cartel. Guzman, whose two dramatic prison escapes in Mexico fed into a legend that he and his family were all but untouchable, was extradited to the United States in 2017 and is serving life in prison.This photo shows the shower area where authorities claim drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman slipped into a tunnel to escape from his prison cell at the Altiplano maximum security prison, in Almoloya, west of Mexico City, July 15, 2015.And now his wife, with whom he has two young daughters, has been charged with helping him run his criminal empire. In a single-count criminal complaint, Coronel was charged with conspiracy to distribute cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin and marijuana in the U.S. The Justice Department also accused her of helping her husband escape from a Mexican prison in 2015 and participating in the planning of a second prison escape before Guzman was extradited to the U.S.  As Mexico’s most powerful drug lord, Guzman ran a cartel responsible for smuggling mountains of cocaine and other drugs into the United States during his 25-year reign, prosecutors said in recent court papers. They also said his “army of sicarios,” or “hit men,” was under orders to kidnap, torture and kill anyone who got in his way. His prison breaks became the stuff of legend and raised serious questions about whether Mexico’s justice system was capable of holding him accountable. In one case, he escaped through an entry under the shower in his cell to a milelong (1.6-kilometer-long) lighted tunnel with a motorcycle on rails. The planning for the escape was extensive, prosecutors say, with his wife playing a key role.  Court papers charge that Coronel worked with Guzman’s sons and a witness, who is now cooperating with the U.S. government, to organize the construction of the underground tunnel that Guzman used to escape from the Altiplano prison to prevent his extradition to the U.S. The plot included purchasing a piece of land near the prison, firearms and an armored truck and smuggling him a GPS watch so they could “pinpoint his exact whereabouts so as to construct the tunnel with an entry point accessible to him,” the court papers say. Guzman was sentenced to life behind bars in 2019.  Coronel, who was a beauty queen in her teens, regularly attended Guzman’s trial, even when testimony implicated her in his prison breaks. The two, separated in age by more than 30 years, have been together since at least 2007, and their twin daughters were born in 2011.  Her father, Ines Coronel Barreras, was arrested in 2013 with one of his sons and several other men in a warehouse with hundreds of pounds of marijuana across the border from Douglas, Arizona. Months earlier, the U.S. Treasury had announced financial sanctions against her father for his alleged drug trafficking.  After Guzman was rearrested following his escape, Coronel lobbied the Mexican government to improve her husband’s prison conditions. And after he was convicted in 2019, she moved to launch a clothing line in his name. Mike Vigil, the Drug Enforcement Administration’s former chief of international operations, said Coronel “has been involved in the drug trade since she was a little girl. She knows the inner workings of the Sinaloa cartel.” He said she could be willing to cooperate. “She has a huge motivation, and that is her twins,” Vigil said. 
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Officials in Ecuador say order has been restored at prisons in three cities, where authorities said at least 75 inmates died in riots between rival gangs. President Lenín Moreno declared the national prison system in a state of emergency and ordered stepped-up security measures.    Officials say authorities, with the assistance of an additional 800 police officers, gained control of the fighting within the detention centers at Guayaquil, Cuenca and Latacunga. The president also ordered the Ministry of Defense to exercise strict gun, ammunition and explosives control in the surrounding areas of correctional facilities..  Edmundo Moncayo, the General Director of the National Service of Attention to People Deprived of Liberty (SNAI), said the inmate fights were set off when police carried out a search for weapons. Moncayo said some prison staff were injured in the riots but none died.   Moncayo also said the vast majority of the country’s prison population lives in the centers where the violence occurred. Among Ecuador’s roughly 38,000 inmates, confrontations among criminal groups often resulted in riots. In December, riots at several facilities left 11 people dead. 
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The number of people going hungry in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua has nearly quadrupled in the last two years, the United Nations said on Tuesday, as Central America has been battered by an economic crisis. New data released by the U.N.’s World Food Program showed nearly 8 million people across the four countries are experiencing hunger this year, up from 2.2 million in 2018. “The COVID-19-induced economic crisis had already put food on the market shelves out of reach for the most vulnerable people when the twin hurricanes Eta and Iota battered them further,” Miguel Barreto, WFP Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean, said in a statement.   He was referring to two hurricanes that hit Central America in November. “We’re eating the little food that people give to us,” said Marina Rosado, 70, who along with her son and grandchildren live along a boulevard in the Honduran city of Lima that was inundated by flooding last year. The storms that destroyed their home were the latest blow pushing the family further into hunger, Rosado said, after pandemic-related restrictions limited their ability to collect bottles and cans in the streets to sell to recycling companies.   The WFP also noted that 15% of those surveyed by the organization in January 2021 said that they were making concrete plans to migrate — nearly double the percentage in 2018. 
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The United States and Canada have agreed to “double down” on efforts “to achieve net zero emissions by 2050,” President Joe Biden announced on Tuesday, following his first bilateral meeting with a foreign leader since taking office last month.Due to coronavirus pandemic precautions, his discussion with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was virtual — with Biden in the White House in Washington, D.C., and the Canadian leader in Ottawa. Usually, Canada is a quick first stop abroad for any newly elected U.S. president, but COVID-19 turned the bilateral meeting into one with considerable social distancing.A screen shows US President Joe Biden and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (virtual) speak to the media after holding a virtual bilateral meeting in the East Room of the White House on Feb. 23, 2021.The two leaders, however, appeared mostly in sync even if they were 700 kilometers apart.Trudeau, whose image and voice were piped into the Oval Office, said that “U.S. leadership has been sorely missed over the past years,” specifically on addressing climate change — a criticism of former President Donald Trump’s four years in power when the United States pursued an “America First” agenda, neglecting alliances and multilateral relationships.“As we’re preparing the joint rollout and communique from this one, it’s nice when the Americans aren’t pulling out all references to climate change and, instead, adding them in,” Trudeau said.Biden told the Canadian leader during their virtual meeting that “the United States has no closer friend than Canada. That’s why you were my first call as president, my first bilateral meeting. … We’re all best served when the United States and Canada work together and lead together in close coordination on a whole range of issues.”Trump and Trudeau had a contentious relationship. When the prime minister complained to the president about tariffs slapped on Canadian steel and aluminum, ostensibly on grounds of U.S. national security, Trump called Trudeau “very dishonest and weak.” Trump even raised the War of 1812, asking Trudeau: “Didn’t you guys burn down the White House?” (They didn’t; Canada was still a British colony in 1814 when troops that had come from across the Atlantic burned it.)Despite the vastly improved relationship for the North American neighbors, there are unresolved disagreements.FILE – A depot used to store pipes for Transcanada Corp’s planned Keystone XL oil pipeline is seen in Gascoyne, North Dakota, Jan. 25, 2017.In a move that “disappointed” Trudeau, Biden recently blocked the $8 billion Keystone XL pipeline project to pump oil from Canada to the United States. He also signed a “Buy American” executive order that hurt Canada by redirecting more government purchasing to domestic manufacturers.White House spokesperson Jen Psaki said earlier Tuesday that no changes were anticipated in Biden’s position on the Keystone issue during the meeting.Neither leader made direct reference to the controversial pipeline during their public remarks on Tuesday.“Canadian energy workers power homes on both sides of the border,” said Trudeau after Biden delivered remarks. “It goes to show that we’re all better off for this partnership.”Trudeau also wants Canada to be allowed to buy COVID-19 vaccines for its struggling vaccination program from a Pfizer manufacturing facility in the U.S. state of Michigan.Trudeau first raised the issue during a phone conversation last month, Biden’s first with a foreign leader as president.Psaki on Tuesday called any such permission premature as “our focus right now is getting shots in arms at home.”Trudeau said he and Biden, in Tuesday’s discussions, had “discussed collaboration to beat COVID-19 — from keeping key supplies moving and supporting science and research to joint efforts through international institutions.”Trudeau also thanked Biden for his support to apply pressure on Beijing for the release of two Canadians — former diplomat Michael Kovrig and businessman Michael Spavor.FILE – Huawei Technologies Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou leaves her home to appear for a hearing in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, Sept. 30, 2019.The two men have been in detention in China since 2018 after Canada arrested on fraud charges Meng Wanzhou, a Chinese executive with Huawei Technologies. Meng is also the daughter of the telecommunications company’s founder.Washington has pursued Meng’s extradition and the case remains pending in Canadian courts.“Human beings are not bartering chips,” Biden declared. “You know, we’re going to work together until we get their safe return.”
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Three men suspected of having supplied the bomb which killed Maltese anti-corruption journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia in 2017 were arrested on Tuesday, police said. Their arrest came as a man accused of carrying out the killing agreed to a plea deal, accepting his responsibility for the assassination in return for a reduced, 15-year jail term instead of possible life behind bars. A legal source said Vince Muscat had provided police with vital information about the case, which has shone a spotlight on corruption in the European Union’s smallest country. Muscat and two other men were arrested in December 2017 and accused of having planned and executed the murder. Muscat’s alleged accomplices continue to plea not-guilty. The three men seized on Tuesday were named as Jamie Vella and brothers Adrian and Robert Agius. They and their lawyers were not immediately available for comment. A legal source said the three men were suspected of having provided the bomb and the SMS code needed to trigger it. Caruana Galizia was killed by a car bomb in October 2017. Police say the device was detonated remotely by Muscat and his friends as they watched her drive away from her house. FILE – Maltese businessman Yorgen Fenech, who was arrested in connection with an investigation into the murder of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, leaves the Courts of Justice in Valletta, Malta, Nov. 29, 2019.Multimillionaire businessman Yorgen Fenech, who had high-level political connections, is suspected of having masterminded the crime and has been accused of being an accomplice to murder. He has denied wrongdoing. The self-confessed middleman in the plot, Melvin Theuma, turned state evidence in 2019 in return for a pardon. Muscat’s request for a similar deal was denied last month. Instead, he accepted the plea deal, offering information about the Caruana Galizia case and about the unresolved 2015 murder of a local lawyer, which was not believed to be connected. Muscat is not related to Joseph Muscat, the former prime minister who was in office when Caruana Galizia was killed and resigned in December 2019 to “shoulder political responsibility.” Fenech was close friends with the former premier’s chief of staff Keith Schembri, who has denied any wrongdoing and any knowledge of the murder or its perpetrators.  
 
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The European Union has imposed sanctions on four Russian officials following the jailing of opposition leader Alexey Navalny. As Henry Ridgwell reports, supporters of Navalny want the EU to go much further — and sanction close allies of Russian President Vladimir Putin.Camera: Henry Ridgwell 
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