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PHOENIX — A judge has rejected a bid by Mark Meadows, a former chief of staff to President Donald Trump, to move his charges in Arizona’s fake elector case to federal court, marking the second time he has failed in trying to get his charges out of state court.

In a decision Monday, U.S. District Judge John Tuchi said Meadows missed a deadline for asking for his charges to be moved to federal court, didn’t offer a good reason for doing so and failed to show that the allegations against him related to his official duties as chief of staff to the president.

Meadows faces charges in Arizona and Georgia in what authorities allege was an illegal scheme to overturn the 2020 election results in Trump’s favor. He had unsuccessfully tried to move charges in the Georgia case last year. It’s unknown whether Meadows will appeal the decision. The Associated Press left phone and email messages for two of Meadows’ attorneys.

While not a fake elector in Arizona, prosecutors said Meadows, while chief of staff, worked with other Trump campaign members to submit names of fake electors from Arizona and other states to Congress in a bid to keep Trump in office despite his November 2020 defeat. Meadows has pleaded not guilty to the charges in Arizona and Georgia.

In 2020, Democrat Joe Biden won Arizona by 10,457 votes.

The decision sends Meadows’ case back down to Maricopa County Superior Court.

In both Arizona and Georgia, Meadows argued his charges should be moved to federal court because his actions were taken when he was a federal official working as Trump’s chief of staff and that he has immunity under the supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution, which says federal law trumps state law.

Arizona prosecutors said Meadows’ electioneering efforts weren’t part of his official duties at the White House.

Meadows last year tried to get his Georgia charges moved but his request was rejected by a judge whose ruling was later affirmed by an appeals court. Meadows has since asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review the ruling.

The Arizona indictment says Meadows confided to a White House staff member in early November 2020 that Trump had lost the election. Prosecutors say Meadows also had arranged meetings and calls with state officials to discuss the fake elector conspiracy.

Meadows and other defendants are seeking a dismissal of the Arizona case.

Meadows’ attorneys said nothing their client is alleged to have done in Arizona was criminal. They said the indictment consists of allegations that he received messages from people trying to get ideas in front of Trump — or “seeking to inform Mr. Meadows about the strategy and status of various legal efforts by the president’s campaign.”

In all, 18 Republicans were charged in late April in Arizona’s fake electors case. The defendants include 11 Republicans who had submitted a document falsely claiming Trump had won Arizona, another Trump aide and five lawyers connected to the former president.

In August, Trump’s campaign attorney Jenna Ellis, who worked closely with former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, signed a cooperation agreement with prosecutors that led to the dismissal of her charges. Republican activist Loraine Pellegrino became the first person to be convicted in the Arizona case when she pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge and was sentenced to probation.

The remaining defendants have pleaded not guilty to the forgery, fraud and conspiracy charges in Arizona.

Trump wasn’t charged in Arizona, but the indictment refers to him as an unindicted coconspirator.

The 11 people who were nominated to be Arizona’s Republican electors met in Phoenix on Dec. 14, 2020, to sign a certificate saying they were “duly elected and qualified” electors and claimed Trump had carried the state.

A one-minute video of the signing ceremony was posted on social media by the Arizona Republican Party at the time. The document was later sent to Congress and the National Archives, where it was ignored.

Prosecutors in Michigan, Nevada, Georgia and Wisconsin have also filed criminal charges related to the fake electors scheme.
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An apparent assassination attempt on Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump over the weekend raised new questions Monday about political violence in the United States. Democratic and Republican leaders called for more resources for the U.S. Secret Service. VOA’s congressional correspondent Katherine Gypson has more
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geneva — Seven candidates are competing for one of the biggest and best jobs in world sports that traditionally becomes available only every 12 years.

The International Olympic Committee announced on Monday which of its members in a most exclusive and discreet club have entered the race to be its next president. The election by secret ballot is in March.

The winner will replace Thomas Bach, a German lawyer who steps down in June upon reaching the maximum 12 years in office.

The 10th IOC president could be its first female leader, or its first from Africa or Asia. Or even its first from Britain.

They will take over a financially stable organization that demands deft skills in the challenging arenas of sports and real-world politics.

Who are the candidates?

• Prince Feisal al Hussein, an IOC member since 2010, on its executive board since 2019. Founder of the Generations for Peace sports charity. His older brother is King Abdullah II of Jordan.

• Sebastian Coe, IOC member since 2020. President of World Athletics since 2015. Olympic champion in men’s 1,500 meters in 1980 and 1984. Elected lawmaker in British Parliament from 1992 to 1997. Led the 2012 London Olympics organizing committee.

• Kirsty Coventry, IOC member since 2013, on executive board for a second time since 2023. Olympic champion in women’s 200-meter backstroke in 2004 and 2008. Appointed sports minister in Zimbabwe government since 2018. Chairs IOC panel overseeing the 2032 Brisbane Olympics.

• Johan Eliasch, IOC member since August. President of International Ski and Snowboard Federation since 2021. Owner of Head sports equipment brand, CEO until 2021. Swedish-British citizen.

• David Lappartient, IOC member since 2022. President of International Cycling Union since 2017. President of France’s Olympic committee and leader of French Alps bid that will host 2030 Winter Games. Chair of IOC esports panel that steered the Esports Olympic Games to Saudi Arabia.

• Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr., IOC member since 2001, vice president since 2022, and member of the executive board from 2012 to 2020. Founder of a Spain-based investment bank. Created Samaranch Foundation to promote the Olympics in China in honor of his father, who was IOC president from 1980 to 2001.

• Morinari Watanabe, IOC member since 2018. Japanese president of the International Gymnastics Federation since 2017.

When is the election and who votes?

The IOC election meeting is on March 18-21 at a resort hotel in Greece, near the site of Ancient Olympia.

Candidates and their compatriots cannot vote, leaving about 95 eligible to take part in March. Among them, members of European and Asian royal families, including the Emir of Qatar; diplomats and lawmakers, including a former president of Croatia, Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović; businesspeople, including Nita Ambani, whose husband is India’s richest man; leaders of sports bodies; current and former Olympic athletes.

What is the IOC president’s job?

It’s an executive role running a not-for-profit organization that employs hundreds of staff at a modern lakeside headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland.

The IOC earns several billion dollars in revenue every four years from selling broadcasting and sponsor rights for the Summer Games and Winter Games.

Most of the money is distributed to the Olympic family: organizers of upcoming Games, including youth editions, governing bodies of Olympic sports, more than 200 national Olympic bodies, scholarships for potential Olympic athletes and special projects.

The job ideally calls for a deep knowledge of managing sports, understanding athletes’ needs and political skills.

How long can IOC presidents stay in the job?

A maximum of 12 years, with a first term of eight years and the chance for one re-election for a further four.

However, the IOC has an age limit of 70 and complex rules around membership status. It means some of the seven candidates could have to seek a special exemption while in office to complete a full eight-year mandate.

What are the challenges and big decisions ahead?

• Picking a host for the 2036 Summer Games, with India and Qatar as strong contenders.

• Renewing the United States broadcast deal that has typically underwritten Olympic finances. Bach moved quickly in 2014 to renew NBC’s deal through 2032. The next deal starts with the 2034 Winter Games in Salt Lake City.

• Both decisions factor into wider questions in regard to drafting the global sports calendar. July-August has been the optimal Summer Games slot since 2004. But a 2036 Doha Olympics could not be held in those months, and where could Games be comfortably held after another decade of climate change?

• When and how can Russia be reintegrated fully into international sports with no end to its invasion of Ukraine in sight? Coe’s world track and field body currently excludes Russian athletes entirely.
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Germany began implementing checks on all its land borders Monday as the government tries to crack down on irregular migration. As Henry Ridgwell reports, many of Germany’s neighbors have criticized the plan, which they say undermines the core European Union principle of freedom of movement.
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DAKAR, Senegal — The withdrawal of U.S. troops from Niger is complete, an American official said Monday. 

A small number of military personnel assigned to guard the U.S. Embassy remain, Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh told reporters. 

Earlier this year, Niger’s ruling junta ended an agreement that allowed U.S. troops to operate in the West African country. A few months later, officials from both countries said in a joint statement that U.S. troops would complete their withdrawal by the middle of September. 

The U.S. handed over its last military bases in Niger to local authorities last month, but about two dozen American soldiers had remained in Niger, largely for administrative duties related to the withdrawal, Singh said. 

Niger’s ouster of American troops following a coup last year has broad ramifications for Washington because it’s forcing troops to abandon critical bases that were used for counterterrorism missions in the Sahel. groups linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group operate in the vast region south of the Sahara desert. 

One of those groups, Jama’a Nusrat ul-Islam wa al-Muslimin, known as JNIM, is active in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, and is looking to expand into Benin and Togo. 

Niger had been seen as one of the last nations in the restive region that Western nations could partner with to beat back growing jihadi insurgencies. The U.S. and France had more than 2,500 military personnel in the region until recently, and together with other European countries had invested hundreds of millions of dollars in military assistance and training. 

In recent months Niger has pulled away from its Western partners, turning instead to Russia for security. In April, Russian military trainers arrived in Niger to reinforce the country’s air defenses.
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America’s adversaries are ramping up efforts to impact the outcome of the U.S. presidential election and down-ballot races. VOA National Security Correspondent Jeff Seldin reports on the expanding array of sophisticated influence operations taking aim at U.S. voters
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NEW YORK — A Pakistani man with alleged ties to Iran pleaded not guilty on Monday to charges stemming from an alleged plot to assassinate an American politician in retaliation for the killing of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards top commander Qassem Soleimani. 

Asif Merchant, 46, entered his plea to one count of attempting to commit terrorism across national boundaries and one count of murder for hire at a hearing before U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert Levy in Brooklyn. 

The judge ordered that Merchant be detained pending trial. 

Federal prosecutors say Merchant spent time in Iran before traveling to the United States to recruit people for the plot. 

Merchant told a confidential informant he also planned to steal documents from one target and organize protests in the United States, prosecutors said. 

The defendant named Donald Trump as a potential target but had not conceived the scheme as a plan to assassinate the former president, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity. 

Court papers do not name the alleged targets, and no attacks were made. As president, Trump had in 2020 approved the drone strike on Soleimani. 

There are no suggestions that Merchant was tied to an apparent assassination attempt on Trump at his Florida golf course on Sunday, or a separate shooting of the Republican presidential candidate at a rally in Pennsylvania in July.  

Merchant was arrested in Texas on July 15. 

Iran’s mission to the United Nations said in August that the “modus operandi” described in Merchant’s court papers ran contrary to Tehran’s policy of “legally prosecuting the murder of General Soleimani.”
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Paris — Thousands of people protested sexual violence across France this past weekend, as two high-profile cases rock the country: one involving a woman who was allegedly drugged and raped by dozens of men for years; the other targeting a once-beloved French clergyman, who fought for the rights of the homeless.  

In French cities like Marseille and Nantes, both men and women took part in demonstrations calling for an end to sexual violence.  

They carried signs with messages like “No, to the culture of rape,” and “Gisele, we believe you” — in support of 72-year-old Gisele Pelicot.  

Pelicot’s former husband is on trial in the southern city of Avignon, accused of drugging her and recruiting dozens of men to rape her over nearly a decade.  

Speaking to reporters on Monday, Pelicot thanked the protesters and other supporters. They have given her force, she said, to fight for all those who are victims of sexual violence.  

The Avignon trial is only the latest of a raft of sexual violence accusations targeting famous French actors and other figures. 

Most recently, the spotlight has been on Abbe Pierre, once a crusader for the homeless. For years one of the most popular personalities in France, the priest died in 2007 at the age of 94. But in recent weeks, multiple allegations have surfaced that he sexually assaulted women in France and other countries over the decades. There are now efforts to strike his name from the charities he founded, as well as from parks and streets named after him.  

Speaking to reporters Friday, Pope Francis said Abbe Pierre did a lot of good, but was also a sinner — and such things must be spoken about, not hidden.  

The head of the French bishop’s association has since said that at least some French bishops had known about the cleric’s alleged abuses for decades. 
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WASHINGTON — The U.S. Treasury Department imposed on Monday sanctions on two Georgian government officials and two members of the country’s pro-Russian far-right movement who it said were involved in violent crackdowns on protests.  

Large street protests erupted in Georgia over a “foreign agent” law, which the South Caucasus country’s parliament passed in May despite criticism, including from U.S. officials, that it was Kremlin-inspired and authoritarian. 

A Treasury statement said the financial sanctions on Monday targeted Georgia’s Chief of the Special Task Department Zviad Kharazishvili and his deputy, Mileri Lagazauri, who oversaw security forces who violently suppressed the spring protests. 

“The violence perpetuated by the Special Task Department included the brutal beatings of many attendees of the non-violent protests against the new foreign influence law, including Georgian citizens and opposition politicians,” the Treasury said. 

It added that Kharazishvili was personally involved in the physical and verbal abuse of protesters. 

Also targeted were Konstantine Morgoshia, founder of media company Alt-Info, and associated media personality Zurab Makharadze, Treasury said, accusing them of amplifying disinformation and spreading hate speech and threats. 

The dispute around the foreign agents law was seen as a test of whether Georgia, for three decades among the more pro-Western of the Soviet Union’s successor states, would maintain its Western orientation or move closer to Russia. 

The Georgian Dream party that controls parliament said the legislation was needed to ensure transparency in foreign funding of NGOs and protect the country’s sovereignty. 

Washington has long criticized the law and launched a review into bilateral cooperation with Georgia. 

The Biden administration has previously imposed visa bans on members of Georgian Dream, members of parliament, law enforcement and private citizens over the law and the protests. 
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Lausanne, Switzerland — World Athletics chief Sebastian Coe is the highest profile of the seven candidates to have declared on Monday their bid to succeed International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach.

Coe will face stiff opposition from, among others, Kirsty Coventry, bidding to become the first woman and African to head the IOC, and cycling boss David Lappartient.

The election will be at the IOC Session in Athens, which runs from March 18-21 next year.

Bach, 70, is standing down after serving 12 years. The German announced at the end of the Paris Games that he would not be seeking another term. 

The other four candidates include two from Asia  another continent never to have had an IOC president — Jordan’s Prince Faisal al-Hussein and gymnastics chief Morinari Watanabe.

Juan Antonio Samaranch Junior, whose father of the same name was IOC president from 1980-2001 and transformed it into a commercial powerhouse, and a surprise entrant, ski federation president Johan Eliasch, round up the candidates.

First up for the septet is presenting their respective programs to the IOC members at the turn of the year.

“The candidates will present their programs, in camera, to the full IOC membership on the occasion of a meeting to be held in Lausanne (Switzerland) in January 2025,” read a short IOC statement unveiling the candidates.

There will be a transition period post-election — not something Bach enjoyed when he succeeded Jacques Rogge in 2013  with the new president and his team assuming control in June.
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Donald Trump is safe after what officials say was the second, unsuccessful assassination attempt in two months. The FBI took the lead after Sunday’s shooting with the suspect in custody — and with Americans facing another dramatic event in what is already a high-stakes, high-drama election. VOA White House correspondent Anita Powell reports from Washington.
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LOS ANGELES — “Hacks” won the comedy series at Sunday’s Emmy Awards, topping “The Bear,” which took home several of the night’s honors.

“Shogun” won the best drama series win, collecting a whopping 18 Emmys for its first season, just one of several historic wins.

Hiroyuki Sanada won best actor in a drama for “Shogun” on Sunday night at the Emmy Awards, and Anna Sawai won best actress as they became the first two Japanese actors to win Emmys.

Their wins gave the FX series momentum going into one of the night’s top awards, where “Shogun” won best drama series.

“The Bear” came back for seconds in a big way at the ceremony four times including best actor, best supporting actor and best supporting actress in a comedy, while British upstart “Baby Reindeer” won four of its own, including best limited series.

The star of FX’s “The Bear” Jeremy Allen White won best actor in a comedy for the second straight year, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach repeated as best supporting actor.

A surprise came when Liza Colón-Zayas won best supporting actor over major competition.

“How could I have thought it would be possible to be in the presence of Meryl Streep and Carol Burnett,” Colón-Zayas said as tears welled in her eyes as she accepted the award on the stage of the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles.

She is the first Latina to win in the category.

“To all the Latinas who are looking at me,” she said, “keep believing and vote.”

Netflix’s darkly quirky “Baby Reindeer” won best actor and best writing for the show’s creator and star Richard Gadd and best supporting actress for Jessica Gunning, who plays his tormentor.

Accepting the best limited series award, Gadd urged the makers of television to take chances.

“The only constant across any success in television is good storytelling,” he said. “Good storytelling that speaks to our times. So take risks, push boundaries. Explore the uncomfortable. Dare to fail in order to achieve.”

“Baby Reindeer” is based on a one man-stage show in which Gadd describes being sexually abused along with other emotional struggles.

Accepting that award, he said, “no matter how bad it gets, it always gets better.”

The Associated Press does not typically name people who say they have been sexually abused unless they come forward publicly as Gadd has.

Jodie Foster won her first Emmy to go with her two Oscars when she took best actress in a limited series for “True Detective: Night Country.”

The creator of “The Bear” was also a repeat winner. Christopher Storer took his second straight Emmy for directing, an award handed out by reunited “Happy Days” co-stars Ron Howard and Henry Winkler.

White said backstage that he was watching in the wings as Colón-Zayas won and “that was just the greatest.”

He also shouted out two acting wins the show had already scored at last weekend’s Creative Arts Emmy Awards, when Jamie Lee Curtis won best guest actress in a comedy for playing his mother, and Jon Bernthal won best guest actor for playing his big brother.

“The Bear” won six times including most of the top comedy categories at the strike-delayed Emmys in January.

While the third season of FX’s “The Bear” has already dropped, the trio won their second Emmys for its second, in which White’s chef Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto attempts to turn his family’s grungy Chicago sandwich shop into an elite restaurant. It could still win more Sunday night including best comedy series.

The father-son hosting duo of Eugene and Dan Levy in their monologue at the top of the show mocked the very dramatic “The Bear” being in the comedy category.

“In honor of ‘The Bear’ we will be making no jokes,” Eugene Levy said, to laughs.

Jean Smart won best actress in a comedy for “Hacks.” She has won for all three seasons of “Hacks,” and has six Emmys overall.

She beat nominees including Ayo Edebiri, who as co-star of “The Bear” moved from supporting actress, which she won in January, to lead actress.

Coming into the show the big story was “Shogun,” which had already taken the most Emmys for a show in a single season with 14 at the Creative Arts ceremony.

The FX series about lordly politicking in feudal Japan can still win best drama series.

If “Shogun” faces competition for the best drama prize, it could come for the sixth and final season of “The Crown,” the only show among the nominees that has won before in a category recently dominated by the retired “Succession.”

Elizabeth Debicki took best supporting actress in a drama for playing Princess Diana at the end of her life in the sixth and final season of the show.

“Playing this part, based on this unparalleled, incredible human being, has been my great privilege,” Debicki said. “It’s been a gift.”

Billy Crudup won best actor in a drama for “The Morning Show.”

Streep wasn’t the only Oscar winner trumped by a little-known name. Robert Downey Jr., the reigning best supporting actor winner for “Oppenheimer,” was considered the favorite to win best supporting actor in a limited series for “The Sympathizer,” but that award went to Lamorne Morris for “Fargo.”

“Robert Downey Jr. I have a poster of you in my house!” Morris said from the stage as he accepted his first Emmy.

Several awards were presented by themed teams from TV history, including sitcom dads George Lopez, Damon Wayans and Jesse Tyler Ferguson and TV moms Meredith Baxter, Connie Britton, and Susan Kelechi Watson.
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Washington — The FBI is investigating what it said was another assassination attempt on Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.

The incident occurred Sunday at the Trump International Golf Club West Palm Beach in Florida where Trump, the former president, was golfing.

Law enforcement officials said Secret Service saw a man with a rifle in the bushes and shot at the suspected assassin.

The suspect fled the bushes and was later apprehended on a highway, according to law enforcement.

Previous attempt on Trump

In July, Trump was shot by a gunman during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania in what the FBI said was an attempted assassination. The former president was wounded in the ear.

The Congressional Research Service says direct assaults against presidents, presidents-elect, and candidates have occurred on at least 15 separate occasions, with five resulting in death.

Below is a list of other previous attempts on the lives of American leaders, successful or not.

Assassinations

Four U.S. presidents were assassinated while in office.

Abraham Lincoln: Killed in 1865 by John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theater in Washington.

James Garfield: Shot in 1881 in Washington at a train station and died of his wounds two and a half months later.

William McKinley: Assassinated in 1901 by an anarchist in Buffalo, New York.

John F. Kennedy: Assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald in 1963 in Dallas, Texas, as the president rode in a motorcade.

Leaders who survived assassination attempts

Four presidents were wounded but survived assassination attempts, while in office or afterward.

Donald Trump: Trump had just started a campaign speech in Pennsylvania on July 13 when shots rang out. Trump was shot in the ear. He was rushed by security officials to a black SUV.

Ronald Reagan: He was shot in 1981 outside the Hilton Hotel in Washington. Reagan was wounded when one of the bullets ricocheted off a limousine and struck him under the left armpit.

Gerald Ford: Survived two attempts on his life in less than three weeks in 1975 without being hurt.

Theodore Roosevelt: He was shot in the chest in 1912 while campaigning for election in Milwaukee but insisted on delivering his speech to supporters before being taken to a hospital.

Assassination attempts on other US leaders

Robert F. Kennedy: A U.S. presidential candidate, and a U.S. senator, Kennedy was assassinated in 1968 by a gunman in the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.

Alabama Governor George C. Wallace: A candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, he was shot in 1972 and became paralyzed from the waist down.
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Kyiv, Ukraine — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy once again Sunday urged Western allies to permit Kyiv to strike military targets deep inside Russia, especially air bases, after a deadly attack on Kharkiv.  

“Only a systemic solution makes it possible to oppose this terror: the long-range solution to destroy Russian military aviation where it is based,” Zelenskyy said in his daily address.  

“We are waiting for appropriate decisions coming primarily from the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy.”  

Earlier, a guided Russian bomb struck a residential building in Kharkiv, the latest of a series of attacks on the northeastern city, starting a blaze which firefighters extinguished.  

Rescuers pulled out the dead body of an elderly woman from the rubble, Kharkiv Mayor Igor Terekhov said on Telegram, adding that 42 people were wounded.   

In his speech, Zelenskyy said Russia had also struck the Sumy and Donetsk regions Sunday with guided bombs.   

He said the Russian army carried out “at least 100 such air attacks” daily.

It is to prevent these sorts of attacks that Ukraine is asking for permission to strike military targets deep inside Russia from Western allies, who remain hesitant for fear of an escalation.  

Also Sunday, Russian shelling killed one person in the eastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk, local authorities said, as Moscow’s troops inched closer to the key logistics hub.  

More than 20,000 people — almost half of its population — have fled the city since August, while Russian strikes over the past two weeks have cut off water and electricity to many of its remaining residents.  

“Around 11 a.m. (0800 GMT), the enemy shelled the western part of the city… Unfortunately, one person died,” Pokrovsk’s military administration said on Telegram.  

Russia has been advancing toward Pokrovsk for months, getting to within 10 kilometers Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy once again Sunday urged Western allies to permit Kyiv to strike military targets deep inside Russia, especially air bases, after a deadly attack on Kharkiv.  

“Only a systemic solution makes it possible to oppose this terror: the long-range solution to destroy Russian military aviation where it is based,” Zelenskyy said in his daily address.

“We are waiting for appropriate decisions coming primarily from the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy.”  

Earlier, a guided Russian bomb struck a residential building in Kharkiv, the latest of a series of attacks on the northeastern city, starting a blaze which firefighters extinguished.  

Rescuers pulled out the dead body of an elderly woman from the rubble, Kharkiv Mayor Igor Terekhov said on Telegram, adding that 42 people were wounded.   

In his speech, Zelenskyy said Russia had also struck the Sumy and Donetsk regions Sunday with guided bombs.   

He said the Russian army carried out “at least 100 such air attacks” daily.

It is to prevent these sorts of attacks that Ukraine is asking for permission to strike military targets deep inside Russia from Western allies, who remain hesitant for fear of an escalation.  

Also Sunday, Russian shelling killed one person in the eastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk, local authorities said, as Moscow’s troops inched closer to the key logistics hub.  

More than 20,000 people — almost half of its population — have fled the city since August, while Russian strikes over the past two weeks have cut off water and electricity to many of its remaining residents.  

“Around 11 a.m. (0800 GMT), the enemy shelled the western part of the city… Unfortunately, one person died,” Pokrovsk’s military administration said on Telegram.  

Russia has been advancing toward Pokrovsk for months, getting to within 10 kilometers (6 miles) of its eastern outskirts, according to the local administration.   

The city lies on the intersection of rail and road routes that supply Ukrainian troops and towns across the eastern front line and has long been a target for Moscow’s army.  

Russian strikes damaged two overpasses in the city earlier this week, including one that connected Pokrovsk to the neighboring town of Myrnograd, local media reported.  

Other eastern cities such as Bakhmut and Mariupol suffered massive bombardment before falling to Russian forces. of its eastern outskirts, according to the local administration.   

The city lies on the intersection of rail and road routes that supply Ukrainian troops and towns across the eastern front line and has long been a target for Moscow’s army.  

Russian strikes damaged two overpasses in the city earlier this week, including one that connected Pokrovsk to the neighboring town of Myrnograd, local media reported.  

Other eastern cities such as Bakhmut and Mariupol suffered massive bombardment before falling to Russian forces.
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Rome — The Italian army will start guarding medical staff at a hospital in the southern Calabria region from Monday, after a string of violent attacks on doctors and nurses by enraged patients and relatives across Italy, according to local media reports. 

Prefect Paolo Giovanni Grieco has approved a plan to reinforce the surveillance services already operated by soldiers on sensitive targets in the Calabrian town of Vibo Valentia, including the hospital, the reports added. 

Recent attacks on health workers have been particularly frequent in southern Italy, prompting the doctors’ national guild to ask for the army to be deployed to ensure medical staff’s safety. 

The turning point was an assault at the Policlinico hospital in the southern city of Foggia in early September. A group of about 50 relatives and friends of a 23-year-old woman — who died during emergency surgery — turned their grief and rage into violence, attacking the hospital staff. 

Video footage, widely circulated on social media, showed doctors and nurses barricading in a room to escape the attack. Some of them were punched and injured. The director of the hospital threatened to close its emergency room after denouncing three similar attacks in less than a week. 

With over 16,000 reported cases of physical and verbal assaults in 2023 alone, Italian doctors and nurses have called for drastic measures. 

“We have never seen such levels of aggression in the past decade,” said Antonio De Palma, president of the Nursing Up union, stressing the urgent need for action. 

“We are now at a point where considering military protection in hospitals is no longer a far-fetched idea. We cannot wait any longer,” he added. 

The Italian Federation of Medical-Scientific Societies (FISM) has also proposed more severe measures for offenders, such as suspending access to free medical care for three years for anyone who assaults health care workers or damages hospital facilities. 

Understaffing and long waiting lists are the main reasons behind patients’ frustration with health workers. 

According to Italy’s largest union for doctors (ANAAO), nearly half of emergency medicine positions remained unfilled as of 2022. Doctors lament that Italy’s legislation has kept wages low, leading to overworked and burnout staff at hospitals. 

These problems have been further aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has pushed many health workers to leave Italy in search of better opportunities abroad. 

In 2023, Italy was short of about 30,000 doctors, and between 2010 and 2020, the country saw the closure of 111 hospitals and 113 emergency rooms, data from a specialized forum showed. 
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Madrid — The European Union’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, called Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s government “dictatorial” during an interview broadcast Sunday in Spain, echoing comments made by a Spanish minister that angered Caracas.

Venezuela on Thursday recalled its ambassador to Madrid for consultations and summoned Spain’s envoy to Caracas for talks after Spanish Defense Minister Margarita Robles referred to Maduro’s administration as a “dictatorship” and saluted “the Venezuelans who had to leave their country” because of his regime.

Asked about the row during an interview with private Spanish television channel Telecinco, Borrell said over 2,000 people had been “arbitrarily detained” since Venezuela’s disputed July 28 presidential election, which the Latin American country’s opposition accuses Maduro of stealing.

Political parties in Venezuela are “subjected to a thousand limitations on their activities” and the leader of the opposition, Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, “has had to flee” to Spain, he added.

“What do you call all this? Of course, this is a dictatorial, authoritarian, dictatorial regime. But just saying so doesn’t solve anything. What we need to do is to try to solve it,” said Borrell, a former Spanish foreign minister.

“Sometimes resolving things requires a certain verbal restraint, but let us not fool ourselves about the nature of things. Venezuela has called elections, but it was not a democracy before and it is much less so after.”

Maduro, who succeeded iconic left-wing leader Hugo Chavez on his death in 2013, insists he won a third term but failed to release detailed voting tallies to back his claim.

The opposition published polling station-level results, which it said showed Gonzalez Urrutia winning by a landslide.

Maduro’s claim to have won a third term in office sparked mass opposition protests, which claimed at least 27 lives and left 192 people wounded. About 2,400 people, including numerous teens, were arrested in the unrest.

 
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Washington — The Federal Reserve is gearing up to announce its first interest rate cut for more than four years on Wednesday, with policymakers expected to debate how big a move to make less than two months before the U.S. presidential election.   

Senior officials at the U.S. central bank including Fed chair Jerome Powell have in recent weeks indicated that a rate cut is coming this month, as inflation eases toward the bank’s long-term target of two percent, and the labor market continues to cool.   

The Fed, which has a dual mandate from Congress to act independently to ensure both stable prices and maximum sustainable employment, has repeatedly stressed it will make its decision on rate cuts based solely on the economic data.  

But a cut on Wednesday could still cause headaches for Powell, as it would land shortly before the election, in which former Republican president Donald Trump is running against the current Democratic vice president, Kamala Harris. 

“As much as I think the Fed tries to say that they’re not a political animal, we are in a really wild cycle right now,” Alicia Modestino, an associate professor of economics at Northeastern University, told AFP.   

How big a cut? 

The debate among policymakers on Tuesday and Wednesday this week will likely center on whether to move by 25 or 50 basis points.   

However, a rate cut of any size would be the Fed’s first since March 2020, when it slashed rates to near-zero in order to support the US economy through the Covid-19 pandemic.  

The Fed started hiking rates in 2022 in response to a surge in inflation, fueled largely by a post-pandemic supply crunch and the war in Ukraine.   

It has held its key lending rate at a two-decade high of between 5.25 and 5.50 percent for the past 14 months, waiting for economic conditions to improve.   

Now, with inflation falling, the labor market cooling, and the US economy still growing, policymakers have decided that conditions are ripe for a cut.   

Policymakers are left with a choice: making a small 25 basis point cut to ease into things, or a more aggressive cut of 50 basis points, which would be helpful for the labor market but could also risk reigniting inflation.   

“I think that in advance of the November meeting, there’s not quite enough data to say we’re in jeopardy on the employment side,” said Modestino, who was previously a senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.    

Analysts see the smaller cut as a safe bet.   

“We expect the Fed to cut by 25bp [basis points],” economists at Bank of America wrote in a recent note to clients.   

“The Fed likes predictability,” Modestino from Northeastern said. “It’s good for markets, good for consumers, good for workers.”   

“So a 25 basis point cut now, followed up by another 25 basis point cut in November after the next round of economic data, offers a somewhat smoother glide path for the economy,” she added.    

How many cuts?  

While analysts overwhelmingly expect the Fed to start cutting in September, there is less clarity about what comes next.   

Economists at some banks, including Goldman Sachs, expect cuts totaling 75 basis points over the last three meetings of the year, while others see more aggressive cuts, like economists at Citi, who have 125 basis points of easing as their base case.   

“The continued softening of the labor market is likely to provoke larger-sized cuts if not at this FOMC meeting then in November and December,” the Citi economists wrote in a recent note to clients, referring to the rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC).   

The Fed will shed some light on the issue on Wednesday, when it publishes the updated economic forecasts of its 19-member FOMC — including their rate cut expectations.  

In June, FOMC members sharply reduced the number of cuts they had penciled in for this year from a median of three down to just one amid a small uptick in inflation.     

But as inflation has fallen and the labor market has weakened, expectations of more cuts have grown.  

Traders also see a greater-than 99 percent chance of at least four more cuts in 2025, which would bring the Fed’s key lending rate down to between 3.5 and 3.75 percent — 175 basis points below current levels. 
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