RIYADMEDIA

LONDON — Within hours of a stabbing attack in northwest England that killed three young girls and wounded several more children, a false name of a supposed suspect was circulating on social media. Hours after that, violent protesters were clashing with police outside a nearby mosque.

Police say the name was fake, as were rumors that the 17-year-old suspect was an asylum-seeker who had recently arrived in Britain. Detectives say the suspect charged Thursday with murder and attempted murder was born in the U.K., and British media including the BBC have reported that his parents are from Rwanda.

That information did little to slow the lightning spread of the false name or stop right-wing influencers pinning the blame on immigrants and Muslims.

“There’s a parallel universe where what was claimed by these rumors were the actual facts of the case,” said Sunder Katwala, director of British Future, a think tank that looks at issues including integration and national identity. “And that will be a difficult thing to manage.”

Local lawmaker Patrick Hurley said the result was “hundreds of people descending on the town, descending on Southport from outside of the area, intent on causing trouble — either because they believe what they’ve written, or because they are bad faith actors who wrote it in the first place, in the hope of causing community division.”

One of the first outlets to report the false name, Ali Al-Shakati, was Channel 3 Now, an account on the X social media platform that purports to be a news channel. A Facebook page of the same name says it is managed by people in Pakistan and the U.S. A related website on Wednesday showed a mix of possibly AI-generated news and entertainment stories, as well as an apology for “the misleading information” in its article on the Southport stabbings.

By the time the apology was posted, the incorrect identification had been repeated widely on social media.

“Some of the key actors are probably just generating traffic, possibly for monetization,” said Katwala. The misinformation was then spread further by “people committed to the U.K. domestic far right,” he said.

Governments around the world, including Britain’s, are struggling with how to curb toxic material online. U.K. Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said Tuesday that social media companies “need to take some responsibility” for the content on their sites.

Katwala said that social platforms such as Facebook and X worked to “de-amplify” false information in real time after mass shootings at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2019.

Since Elon Musk, a self-styled free-speech champion, bought X, it has gutted teams that once fought misinformation on the platform and restored the accounts of banned conspiracy theories and extremists.

Rumors have swirled in the relative silence of police over the attack. Merseyside Police issued a statement saying the reported name for the suspect was incorrect, but have provided little information about him other than his age and birthplace of Cardiff, Wales.

Under U.K. law, suspects are not publicly named until they have been charged and those under 18 are usually not named at all. That has been seized on by some activists to suggest the police are withholding information about the attacker.

Tommy Robinson, founder of the far-right English Defense League, accused police of “gaslighting” the public. Nigel Farage, a veteran anti-immigration politician who was elected to Parliament in this month’s general election, posted a video on X speculating “whether the truth is being withheld from us” about the attack.

Brendan Cox, whose lawmaker wife Jo Cox was murdered by a far-right attacker in 2016, said Farage’s comments showed he was “nothing better than a Tommy Robinson in a suit.”

“It is beyond the pale to use a moment like this to spread your narrative and to spread your hatred, and we saw the results on Southport’s streets last night,” Cox told the BBC.
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new york — Over 8 million people live in New York City and yet lasting romantic relationships can still seem hard to come by.

Because of this, many singles in the city have ditched swiping on dating apps for socializing in real life through in-person events such as running clubs, reading parties and singles meetups.

In the early 2010s, dating apps such as Tinder and Hinge became a prominent way to meet potential partners, and though they have produced countless successful love stories, many New York City singles are beginning to grow weary of them.

“I think there’s some disenchantment with dating apps overall. A feeling like they’re an option, but maybe not the best option,” said Kathryn Coduto, assistant professor of media science at Boston University and dating researcher. “An in-person meeting, a group maybe, where there’s similar interests, allows people to connect in person and have that initial conversation without the phone as an intermediary.”

Dating app fatigue paired with recent years of COVID-19 isolation has contributed to a recent upward trend of in-person social events. According to Eventbrite, in-person dating activities in the United States saw a 42% increase in attendance from 2022 to 2023.

Amber Soletti, founder of in-person singles dating event company Single and the City, has seen this trend, too, noting that her business is up 67% in event attendance from a year ago.

“People have this app fatigue, this swipe fatigue,” Soletti said. “They are ready to go back to in-person events and make authentic connections with people in real life.”

This is exactly the goal of the viral Lunge Run Club, a running club based in Manhattan targeted toward singles looking for love.

Founded earlier this year by Steve Cole and Rachael Lansing, the club meets every Wednesday in Manhattan for a 5-kilometer run followed by drinks at a bar. Lunge Run Club started with only 30 people and has since taken the city by storm, raking in hundreds of attendees each week.

The club encourages people to wear black if single and colors if taken, hoping to take some of the mystery and fear out of in-person dating events.

“People always use run clubs or recreational sports, anything like that, as a way to meet people,” Lansing said. “We kind of just took away that mask of, ‘I’m going and maybe I’ll meet someone’ and now it’s the intentional, ‘I’m showing up. I’m wearing all black. I’m saying I’m single. I’m looking to either meet some great friends or someone special.’”

Lunge Run Club is not alone in its mission, but rather a part of a movement of people seeking connection in one of the largest cities in the world. Soletti’s Single and the City hosts speed dating events and specialized singles mixers focused on shared interests, hobbies or even physical characteristics, such as height.

“Having something in common is a great starting point for a relationship, and that could be a friendship, but could also be a romantic relationship,” Coduto said. “That makes a lot of sense when you have something in common with someone, it gives you something to talk about.”

While Lunge Run Club and Single and the City are specifically marketed as dating scenes, other events are more broadly focused on facilitating community in general.

In June 2023, Ben Bradbury, Tom Worcester, Charlotte Jackson and John Lifrieri founded Reading Rhythms, “reading parties” during which people meet at various venues to read and socialize, helping people build community, friendships and possibly even more.

Bradbury explained how in-person interactions, such as those at Reading Rhythms, can facilitate connection in a way that cannot always be replicated online.

“Authentic connection, you can’t fake it when you’re in person. It’s either authentic or it’s not,” Bradbury said. “I think people are really enjoying that, that feeling of having people together and, also, just remembering what it’s like to connect in person. I think society is really wanting that right now.”

Despite not necessarily being advertised as a place to find romantic love, Reading Rhythms has seen an outpouring of support and engagement similar to Lunge Run Club and Single and the City’s events. Reading Rhythms has hosted over 120 parties with 7,500 readers looking for an in-person connection over a shared interest.

“It’s hard to feel someone’s energy when you just see them online. I think with this day and age of social media, and curating our online presence, you get one layer of who someone is,” said Nikki D’Ambrosio, host and longtime participant of Reading Rhythms. “What I love about Reading Rhythms is it’s not just, ‘Hi, my name is Nikki and this is what book I’m reading.’ It’s really going deeper.”

From running to reading to speed dating, people are yearning for in-person connection and New York City has countless opportunities to offer.
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Washington — The movement inside Russia of several high-profile political prisoners in recent days is fueling speculation that a prisoner swap with Western countries may be close.

Lawyers and relatives of at least eight individuals say they seem to have been moved from detention facilities across Russia. Those detained had been jailed for criticizing the Kremlin or spreading what Moscow views as false information about the Russian military.

At the same time, legal action by Belarus and Slovenia on foreign nationals has added to speculation in Western media that a multicountry swap, potentially involving Russia, the United States and Germany, may be in the works.

Among those detained in Russia whose location is currently unknown are former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan; British Russian activist and journalist Vladimir Kara-Murza, who contributes to The Washington Post; and Liliya Chanysheva, who worked closely with late opposition leader Alexey Navalny.

Whelan is serving a 16-year prison sentence on espionage charges that he denies. His lawyer told the Interfax news agency she cannot contact him, adding, “There are rumors of a possible exchange.”

The Post reported late Wednesday that prison officials had confirmed Kara-Murza had been moved from a prison colony but would not say where he was taken. The columnist is serving a 25-year prison sentence after being accused of treason because he criticized Russia’s war in Ukraine.

While some analysts believe the disappearances may be a sign of an imminent prisoner swap, others, like Russia expert Keir Giles, are more skeptical.

“We need to bear in mind that the people that we see reported are only the tip of the iceberg, and there are so many others that don’t get that worldwide media attention,” Giles, who works at the British think tank Chatham House, told VOA.

“To be disappeared within the system for a period of days or weeks or even longer is not that unusual,” Giles added. “It’s hard to tell what within the Russian prison system is deliberate cruelty and what is simply the result of inefficiency and incompetence, but the net effect, of course, on the victims is exactly the same.”

Navalny, for instance, was abruptly moved in secret from a prison in central Russia to one above the Arctic Circle in December 2023. The move took 20 days, Giles said. The opposition leader died at the prison in February.

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

Other political prisoners missing this past week include German Russian citizen Kevin Lik; opposition activist Ksenia Fadeeva; anti-war artist Sasha Skochilenko; and critical politician Ilya Yashin.

Their disappearances come on the heels of other developments.

In Belarus on Tuesday, President Alexander Lukashenko unexpectedly pardoned Rico Krieger, a German who had been sentenced to death on terrorism charges. Belarus and Russia are close allies.

And on Wednesday, a Slovenian court sentenced two Russians to time served for espionage and said they would be deported to Russia.

Sergei Davidis doesn’t think the timing can be a coincidence. He is the head of the Political Prisoners Support Program and a member of the board at the Russian human rights group Memorial.

Memorial’s cochair, Oleg Orlov, is among the political prisoners to recently vanish.

“It seems that there is no other reasonable explanation than expectations of some swap,” Davidis told VOA from the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius.

He added that Russian President Vladimir Putin would need to pardon those involved in any potential swap as a formality.

Putin has previously signaled he would be willing to trade Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich for a Russian man named Vadim Krasikov, who is serving a life sentence in Germany for killing a Chechen dissident in Berlin.

Gershkovich is one of two American journalists imprisoned in Russia. The other is Alsu Kurmasheva. Both were convicted in secret trials on July 19 on charges that are widely viewed as bogus.

Commenting on remarks made by Putin earlier this year about a possible swap for Gershkovich, Giles said, “It is not a process that is pretending particularly hard to be legitimate. It’s just a straightforward extortion.”

The United States and Russia have been engaging in prisoner swap negotiations for months.

“The United States continues to be focused on working around the clock to work to get our wrongfully detained American citizens home,” State Department deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel told VOA at a Wednesday press briefing.

When asked about any updates on a potential prisoner swap, Patel said he had no updates.

Prisoner swaps are typically cloaked in secrecy.

Although the U.S. government has previously faced criticism for exchanging legitimate Russian criminals for innocent Americans, hostage advocate Diane Foley maintained that it is Washington’s duty to do everything it can to protect its citizens.

“They need to have the moral clarity to recognize that their citizen’s life is their responsibility. It’s their responsibility to do all they can to prioritize that life,” Foley told VOA.

Foley founded the Foley Foundation after the abduction and killing in Syria of her son, American journalist James Foley, in 2014. She says the U.S. has made some improvements in assisting families, but the burden still largely falls on relatives whose loved ones are unjustly held abroad.

Since launching a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russia has cracked down hard on anything perceived as criticism of the Kremlin, leading to the arrests of scores of activists and journalists. In late 2023, rights group Memorial estimated there were nearly 1,000 political prisoners jailed in Russia.

Saqib Ul Islam contributed to this report.
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Pristina, Kosovo/Washington — Journalists and media advocates are concerned that a new law in Kosovo could give the government greater control.

The new law seeks to license online media, give the Independent Media Commission, or IMC, power to monitor news websites, and increase the number of politically appointed members of the body, which is responsible for the regulation, management and oversight of the broadcasting frequency spectrum in the Republic of Kosovo.

The law includes hefty fines for the media that violate the law, ranging from $215 to $43,000. However, the legislation does not provide details of how the fines will be applied, according to the Media Freedom Rapid Response, which monitors conditions for the media.

First adopted by the Kosovo government in December, the law passed earlier in July, despite criticism. Two opposition parties have said they will refer the case to the Constitutional court.

Among the concerns is the increase in IMC members, all of whom are political appointees. With the Vetevendosje party holding the majority, the expansion has led to concerns that the IMC could come under political influence.

The government has pushed back against criticism. It says that it is seeking only to reform the media landscape.

The chair of the parliamentary committee on media, Valon Ramadani, has previously said the law does not “infringe the independence of media” and described it as an effort to align the country’s media laws with the EU standards.

Critics however say the law could allow for government overreach and expand the authority and the control of the IMC.

The chair of Association of Journalists of Kosovo, Xhemalj Rexha, says the law threatens the plurality of the media in Kosovo.

“This ability to allow many voices to be heard, especially among the Albanian-language media, is an added value, and Kosovo should be proud of it,” Rexha said during an event in Kosovo titled “Regulation or a Threat to the Media Freedom.”

“This is an attempt, among other things, to discourage the media from doing their job through these fines.”

Ardita Zejnullahu from the Association of Independent Electronic Media of Kosovo, also spoke on the panel.

He said the fines and the planned expansion of the Independent Media Commission were the main challenges.

“For a cable operator, a fine of 40,000 euros is negligible. But for a radio, a television or web-based media, which also fall under the Commission’s jurisdiction according to this law, it means their closure,” said Zejnullahu.

“The law does not define the sanctions or the type of violations that will be sanctioned. There is no distinction made between administrative, ethical or technical violations, and they remain at the discretion of the members of the Commission to determine.”

A group of watchdogs, including the Media Freedom Rapid Response, released a statement citing “alarm” over the law.

“Critics have seen the proposed legislation as an attack on the media, expressing worries that the ruling party may use this law to censor them. Now, [with these] risks becoming a reality, with potentially dire consequences for media freedom and independence,” said the statement.

Kosovo ranks 75 out of 180 on the World Press Freedom Index. Reporters Without Borders, which compiles the index, says that while the country is doing well in some areas, journalists can still be the target of political attacks.
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No evidence has surfaced linking the West to attacks against Wagner, although Ukraine has indicated it provided support to Mali separatists battling Russian troops.
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columbia, south carolina — South Carolina can execute death row inmates by firing squad, lethal injection or the electric chair, the state’s high court ruled Wednesday, opening the door to restart executions after more than a decade.

All five justices agreed with at least part of the ruling. But two of the justices said they felt the firing squad was not a legal way to kill an inmate and one of them felt the electric chair is a cruel and unusual punishment.

The state allowing inmates to choose from the three execution methods is far from an effort to inflict pain but a sincere attempt at making the death penalty less inhumane, Justice John Few wrote in the majority opinion.

As many as eight inmates may be out of traditional appeals. It is unclear when executions could restart or whether lawyers for death row inmates can appeal the ruling.

Governor Henry McMaster said the justices interpreted the law correctly.

“This decision is another step in ensuring that lawful sentences can be duly enforced and the families and loved ones of the victims receive the closure and justice they have long awaited,” he said in a statement.

Lawyers for the death row inmates said they were reviewing the 94-page ruling before commenting.

South Carolina has executed 43 inmates since the death penalty was restarted in the U.S. in 1976. Nearly all inmates have chosen lethal injection since it became an option in 1995.

“Choice cannot be considered cruel because the condemned inmate may elect to have the State employ the method he and his lawyers believe will cause him the least pain,” Few wrote.

South Carolina hasn’t performed an execution since 2011. The state’s supplies of drugs for lethal injections expired and no pharmaceutical companies would sell more if they could be publicly identified.

Lawmakers authorized the state to create a firing squad in 2021 to give inmates a choice between it and the old electric chair. The inmates sued, saying either choice was cruel and unusual punishment prohibited by the Constitution.

In spring 2023, the Legislature passed a shield law to keep lethal injection drug suppliers secret and the state announced in September it had the sedative pentobarbital and changed the method of lethal injection execution from using three drugs to just one.

The Supreme Court allowed the inmates to add arguments that the shield law was too secret by not releasing the potency, purity and stabilization of lethal injection drugs.

South Carolina has 32 inmates on its death row. Four prisoners are suing, but four more have also run out of appeals, although two of them face a competency hearing before they could be executed, according to Justice 360, an advocacy group for inmates.

The state said in its argument before the state Supreme Court in February that lethal injection, electrocution and firing squad all fit existing death penalty protocols.

“Courts have never held the death has to be instantaneous or painless,” wrote Grayson Lambert, a lawyer for the governor’s office.

But lawyers for the inmates asked the justices to agree with Circuit Judge Jocelyn Newman, who stopped executions with the electric chair or firing squad.

She cited the inmates’ experts, who testified at a trial that prisoners would feel terrible pain whether their bodies were “cooking” by 2,000 volts of electricity in the chair, built in 1912, or if their hearts were stopped by bullets — assuming the three shooters were on target — from the yet-to-be used firing squad.

On the shield law, the attorneys for the inmates said they need to know if there is a regular supplier for the drug, which typically only has a shelf life of 45 days, and what guidelines are in place to test it and make sure it is what the seller claims.

Too weak a dose, and inmates may suffer without dying. Too strong, and the drug molecules can form tiny clumps that would cause intense pain when injected, according to court papers.

“No inmate in the country has ever been put to death with such little transparency about how he or she would be executed,” Justice 360 lawyer Lindsey Vann wrote.

Lawyers for the inmates did tell the justices in February that lethal injection appears to be legal when it follows proper protocols, with information about the drug given to the condemned in a manner that matches what other states and the federal government use.

South Carolina used to carry out an average of three executions a year and had more than 60 inmates on death row when the last execution was carried out in 2011. Since then, successful appeals and natural deaths have lowered the number to 32.

Prosecutors have sent only three new prisoners to death row in the past 13 years. Facing rising costs, the lack of lethal injection drugs and more vigorous defenses, they are choosing to accept guilty pleas and life in prison without parole.
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The United States said it was not involved in the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh in an overnight strike in Tehran. Haniyeh is the second Iran-backed militant group leader assassinated this week. White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara has the story.
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WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden is prodding Congress to help him do more to combat the scourge of fentanyl before he leaves office. 

The Democratic administration is making the new policy push as Republican former President Donald Trump steps up attacks against Vice President Kamala Harris, painting her as Biden’s feckless lieutenant in the battle to slow the illegal drugs and immigrants without authorization coming into the United States from Mexico. 

The White House on Wednesday announced a series of proposals from Biden aimed at curbing the ongoing drug epidemic. These include a push on Congress to pass legislation to establish a pill press and tableting machine registry and enhance penalties against convicted drug smugglers and traffickers of fentanyl. 

Biden also wants to tighten rules on importers shipping small packages into the United States, requiring shippers to provide additional information to Customs and Border Protection officials. The move is aimed at improving the detection of fentanyl precursor chemicals that frequently find their way into the United States in relatively low-value shipments that aren’t subject to customs and trade barriers. 

The president’s new efforts at combating fentanyl may also benefit Harris, the likely Democratic nominee, as Trump and his surrogates are trying to cast her as a central player in the Biden administration’s struggles at the U.S.-Mexico border throughout his term. 

“Still, far too many of our fellow Americans continue to lose loved ones to fentanyl,” Biden said in a statement. “This is a time to act. And this is a time to stand together — for all those we have lost, and for all the lives we can still save.” 

Biden said he will also sign a national security memorandum on Wednesday aimed at improving the sharing of information between law enforcement and federal agencies to improve understanding about the flows of production and smuggling of the synthetic opioid that has ravaged huge swaths of America. In the last five months, more than 442 million doses of fentanyl were seized at U.S. borders, according to the White House. 

The Trump campaign launched its first television ad of the general election cycle on Tuesday, dubbing Harris the “border czar” and blaming her for a surge in illegal crossings into the United States during the Biden administration. After displaying headlines about crime and drugs, the video brands Harris as “Failed. Weak. Dangerously liberal.” 

Border crossings hit record highs during the Biden administration but have dropped more recently. 

The Trump campaign has so far reserved $12.2 million in television and digital ads through the next two weeks, according to data from the media tracking firm AdImpact. 

Biden tasked Harris early in his administration with addressing the root causes of migration. Border crossings became a major political liability for Biden when they reached historic levels. Since June, when Biden announced significant restrictions on asylum applications at the border, arrests for illegal crossings have fallen. 

House Republicans passed a symbolic resolution last week criticizing Harris’ work on the border on behalf of the Biden administration. 

The White House reiterated its call on Congress to pass sweeping immigration legislation that includes funding for more border agents and drug detection machines at the border. GOP senators earlier this year scuttled months of negotiations with Democrats on legislation intended to cut back record numbers of illegal border crossings after Trump eviscerated the bipartisan proposal. 

The proposed pill-pressing registry floated by Biden aims to help law enforcement crackdown on drug traffickers who use pill presses to press fentanyl into pills. 

Authorities say most illicit fentanyl is produced clandestinely in Mexico, using chemical precursors from China. Synthetic opioids are the biggest killers in the deadliest drug crisis the U.S. has ever seen. In 2014, nearly 50,000 deaths in the U.S. were linked to drug overdoses of all kinds. By 2022, the total was more than 100,000, according to a tally by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More than two-thirds of those deaths — more than 200 per day — involved fentanyl or similar synthetic drugs. 

Meeting with China

Meanwhile, administration officials and Chinese government officials are expected to meet Wednesday to discuss efforts to curb the flow of chemical precursors coming from China, according to a senior administration official. 

Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping announced at a November summit in California that Beijing had agreed to press its chemical companies to curtail shipments to Latin America and elsewhere of the materials used to produce fentanyl. China also agreed to a resumption of sharing information about suspected trafficking with an international database. 

But a special House committee focused on countering the Chinese government in April issued a report that China still is fueling the fentanyl crisis in the U.S. by directly subsidizing the manufacturing of materials that are used by traffickers to make the drug outside the country. 

The official, who spoke under the condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the White House, said China had taken “important steps,” but there is much more to do.
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London — Huw Edwards, the BBC’s former top news presenter, pleaded guilty Wednesday to three counts of making indecent images of children. 

The offenses he pleaded guilty to at Westminster Magistrates’ Court in central London during a 26-minute hearing involved images shared on WhatsApp between December 2020 and August 2021 by a man who had initially contacted Edwards via social media. 

Edwards, who was the lead anchor on the BBC’s nighttime news for two decades and led the public broadcaster’s coverage of the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II in 2022, has been remanded on bail until a pre-sentencing hearing on Sept. 16. He could face up to 10 years in prison, though the prosecution conceded that a suspended sentence may be appropriate. 

The court heard that Edwards, 62, was involved in an online chat with an adult man on the messaging service who sent him 377 sexual images, of which 41 were indecent images of children. 

The images that were sent included seven of what are known as “category A,” which are the most indecent. Of those, the estimated age of most of the children was between 13 and 15, but one was aged between 7 and 9. 

The court also heard that the unnamed male asked Edwards on Feb. 2, 2021 whether what he was sending was too young. Edwards told him not to send any underage images. Five more, though, were sent, and the exchange of pornographic images continued until April 2022. 

“Accessing indecent images of underage people perpetuates the sexual exploitation of children, which has deep, long-lasting trauma on these victims,” said Claire Brinton of the Crown Prosecution Service. 

Speaking in Edwards’ defense, his lawyer Philip Evans said there is “no suggestion” that his client had “in the traditional sense of the word, created any image of any sort.” 

Edwards, he added, “did not keep any images, did not send any to anyone else and did not and has not sought similar images from anywhere else.” He added that Edwards had “both mental and physical” health issues and that he is “not just of good character, but of exceptional character.” 

Prosecutor Ian Hope told the court that Edwards’ “genuine remorse” was one reason why a suspended sentence might be considered. Setting out the potential penalties under the law, he said that where there is the prospect of rehabilitation, a community order and sexual offender treatment program could be considered as alternatives to prison. 

A spokesperson for the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children said there should be “no doubt” about the seriousness of Edwards’ crimes. 

“It can be extremely traumatic for young people to know sexual images of themselves have been shared online,” the spokesperson said. “We also need to see online platforms do much more to identify and disrupt child abuse in private messaging services in order to safeguard young people.” 

Edwards, who was one of the BBC’s top earners, was suspended in July 2023 for separate claims made last year. He later resigned for health reasons. 
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Prague/Washington  — Portraits of Alsu Kurmasheva are scattered throughout the Prague apartment she shares with her husband and two daughters. But the journalist has not set foot here in more than a year.

Perhaps the most striking of the paintings, all of which were done by her husband, Pavel Butorin, is the one that remains unfinished, perched on an easel in the living room. Butorin started it after Kurmasheva, 47, was jailed in Russia in October 2023 on charges that are widely viewed as baseless and politically motivated.

Painting, Butorin says, is just one way he has tried to cope with his wife’s absence.

“Even to say, ‘We miss Alsu,’ doesn’t quite convey the emotion that we go through,” Butorin told VOA at the family’s home. “I get up, and the first thing in my head is Alsu. I’ve just been really unable to escape this.”

With their lives intertwined — from raising their daughters Bibi and Miriam, to working at the same news network — he is never far from reminders that his wife is 1,700 miles away, in a prison in the city of Kazan.

“In the evening, we sit at this table. We see an empty chair,” Butorin said, his eyes fixed on the seat at the large, wooden table, as if he were willing his wife to appear. “It signifies a broken family, a family torn apart by an unjust, merciless, heartless regime.”

When Butorin spoke with VOA in Prague in July, his wife — who has dual U.S.-Russian citizenship — was approaching nine months in custody. Less than one week later, on July 19, she was convicted behind closed doors of spreading what Moscow says is false information about its military and sentenced to six and a half years in prison.

On the same day, about 450 miles east, in the city of Yekaterinburg, Russia, a secret Russian court convicted American journalist Evan Gershkovich to 16 years behind bars.

The U.S. government has called for the immediate release of both journalists. Press freedom groups, meanwhile, have condemned the trials as shams and said the cases underscore how Moscow’s war in Ukraine means American journalists are at a heightened risk of being used as political pawns by the Kremlin.

Kurmasheva and Gershkovich count themselves among the 22 journalists jailed in Russia at the end of 2023, more than half of whom are foreign nationals, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry and embassy in Washington did not reply to VOA’s emails requesting comment for this story.

Despite the international condemnation, Butorin has largely shouldered the responsibility of advocating for Kurmasheva’s release by himself. For months, he has found himself balancing the roles of father, journalist and advocate as he shuttles between Prague and Washington.

Hostage experts say his experience is common for American families who have a loved one held hostage or unjustly detained.

A decade ago, Diane Foley was one of them as she tried to navigate complex bureaucracy and conflicting information when Islamic State militants kidnapped and later killed her son, American journalist James Foley, in 2014.

Her experience led her to establish the Foley Foundation, which supports families and advocates for Americans unjustly jailed abroad.

“A lot of families don’t have any idea how to contact media or get their story heard, how to contact their congressman, how to get their voices heard through the bureaucracy. So we seek to help them navigate that,” she told VOA during one of her regular trips to Washington.

The U.S. government has made progress in these policy areas, she says. But so much more still needs to be done.

A longtime journalist at the Tatar-Bashkir Service of VOA’s sister outlet Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, or RFE/RL, Kurmasheva had planned only a brief visit to Russia to care for her ailing mother.

Her desk at work remains relatively untouched. Business cards are still spread out on the table. And the calendar — still set to May 2023 — shows where she underlined in black ink the dates of the ill-fated trip.

In the weeks following Kurmasheva’s jailing, her colleague Ramazan Alpaut said he still turned around at his desk, half-expecting to see Kurmasheva sitting behind him.

“We miss her here as a person and as a colleague,” he told VOA.

Kurmasheva’s arrest came as a shock for the team, and a warning that travel to see family in Russia is no longer an option.

That fact, says Tatar-Bashkir Service chief Rim Gilfanov, crystallizes an already difficult reality for exiled Russians grappling with the fallout of the war in Ukraine.

But more immediately, he says, he just wants a key member of his team back.

“Alsu is our veteran journalist,” Gilfanov says. “The main quality that comes to my mind when I think of Alsu is constant eagerness and preparedness to help everyone.”

Authoritarian regimes have long targeted RFE/RL and its journalists. Russia has designated the outlet a foreign agent and an undesirable organization. And Kurmasheva is one of four of its journalists currently in prison, including two in Belarus and one in Russian-occupied Crimea.

“It’s a grim reality that starts to set in that we are targets,” RFE/RL president and CEO Stephen Capus told VOA. “They’re trying to make the pursuit of journalism a crime.”

“They are taking me to the investigative committee right now.”

Butorin was at work when he got this distressed voice message from his wife. It was October 18, 2023, and agents dressed in black and wearing balaclavas had arrived at the home of Kurmasheva’s mother to arrest the journalist.

The next time he heard his wife’s voice was in April 2024, when she spoke to reporters from a glass defendant’s box about the poor prison conditions she was experiencing.

“We love to hear her voice. But it’s also painful to see her in a glass cage,” Butorin said.

Butorin, director of Current Time TV, a Russian-language television and digital network led by RFE/RL in partnership with VOA, was at work when he listened to the message.

His office is now part shrine, filled with photos and posters and newspaper articles about his wife. On the whiteboard, Free Alsu magnets depict a cartoon of her face. Butorin drew the image for Kurmasheva’s Gmail profile picture, he said. Now it’s on magnets and buttons — like the one pinned to the lapel of his dark blue suit jacket this July afternoon.

In a corner, next to a Lego diorama of the set of the TV show “Seinfeld” — a series the family loves to watch — is a stack of copies of No to War. The book, which Kurmasheva helped edit, features stories of 40 Russians who opposed Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Pro-Russian media have reported that Kurmasheva’s arrest is linked to that book. But to date, authorities have failed to publicly provide evidence to substantiate its charges against her.

“It’s a harmless little book,” Butorin said. “It just reminds me how incredibly arbitrary this detention is.”

Butorin has spent an unknown number of hours thinking about his wife’s captors. Are they evil personified? Or, à la Hannah Arendt and the banality of evil, are they just bureaucrats “thoughtlessly” doing their jobs?

The answer likely lies somewhere in the middle, he recognizes, but Butorin still finds himself wondering whether the judges and prosecutors once listened to her deep voice on the radio, back when she hosted a show for audiences in Tatarstan.

Kurmasheva’s long absence has been marked by bittersweet birthdays and holidays, more media interviews than Butorin can count, and five trips to Washington to press lawmakers and U.S. government officials to do more for his wife.

In his office, just a few days before he departs for one of those trips, he admits that, like many journalists, he prefers to be behind the camera instead of being the story.

But that preference for privacy is no more.

“I fear if I don’t keep this story in the news, and if I don’t keep Alsu’s story alive, that U.S. policymakers, members of the administration, of any administration, will just start forgetting about her,” Butorin said. “I see a problem there.”

Butorin, who is also a U.S. citizen, is quick to voice appreciation for the support officials and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have offered. It turns out that press freedom is one of the few issues that Democrats and Republicans can agree on.

But the trips to the American capital are also stained with frustration.

Requests to meet with Secretary of State Antony Blinken have been denied, Butorin said. (Blinken also serves as an ex officio member of the board that oversees the entities under the U.S. Agency for Global Media, including RFE/RL and VOA.) To date, the highest-ranking official Butorin has met with is Assistant Secretary for Consular Affairs Rena Bitter.

Feeling optimistic can be difficult, Butorin said, when, in meeting after meeting, the same officials regurgitate the same talking points and offer little concrete information.

“Sometimes I walk out with a sense of desperation, and sometimes I find these meetings very unsatisfactory,” he says.

It’s a problem familiar to Diane Foley.

When Islamic State militants kidnapped her son in 2012, she says, the process was even more opaque.

“Our government doesn’t seem to trust these desperate families, who want their loved one back, with what information they have,” she said.

To Foley, “an undue burden” is still placed on families to fight for the U.S. government’s attention.

“It’s all on the family in the U.S. That hasn’t changed a whole lot,” she said. “It was all on me, all on our family, when Jim was taken — all on us to figure it out. And now it’s still all on the family.”

Foley and her foundation are helping Butorin navigate the process, including by working behind the scenes to push the State Department.

In that time, she has grown close to the couple’s daughters. “When I see Bibi and Miriam, God bless them. They shouldn’t, as teenagers, be dealing with this,” she said.

In late July, she and Butorin took part in a Foley Foundation event in the Capitol Building, to mark the release of its annual report on U.S. hostage policy. The foundation counts 46 Americans held hostage or unjustly detained around the world.

At the panel, Dustin Stewart, the deputy special presidential envoy for hostage affairs, spoke about the support the government offers.

Butorin rebutted that because Kurmasheva has not been declared wrongfully detained, his family is not receiving any of that support.

At the panel, Stewart told VOA, “On the process, I’ll just say, it’s ongoing.”

The designation opens up extra resources and support for families and commits the government to secure their release.

It is the biggest difference between the cases of Kurmasheva and Gershkovich, the other American journalist jailed in Russia. In the latter case, the United States declared The Wall Street Journal reporter wrongfully detained within two weeks of his arrest. Press freedom groups have criticized the State Department for not declaring Kurmasheva wrongfully detained, too.

When pressed as to if and when Kurmasheva will be designated, the State Department has on several occasions sent VOA identical or nearly identical statements that say the Department “continuously reviews the circumstances” of Americans detained overseas to determine if they are wrongful. Roger Carstens, the special presidential envoy for hostage affairs, has denied VOA’s multiple requests for an interview about Kurmasheva’s case.

To cope, Butorin says compartmentalizing has become a necessary strategy.

“It may come across as a little disingenuous, but you do have to treat all these little areas of your life as projects,” he said. Those “projects” range from calling on Blinken to declare his wife wrongfully detained to dealing with the “Kafkaesque bureaucracy” of the Czech postal system that prevents him from collecting his wife’s mail.

In public events and interviews, Butorin leans toward the stoic, which he notes is unlike Kurmasheva, who can go into a room and “walk away with five or 10 new friends.”

“Some people may think that I lack emotion,” Butorin said. “But it’s all a front. I’m hurting on the inside.”

It’s when Butorin is by himself that he says he feels the most pain. “When the girls go to bed, I usually go to bed soon, too,” Butorin said, “so I’m not left alone with my thoughts.”

And when he is with the couple’s daughters, there are glimpses of the joy and the humor the family still manages to share.

After an interview in Washington, Butorin excitedly showed videos from an Olivia Rodrigo concert he attended with his daughters. Nearby, Bibi, 16, and Miriam, 12, were writing postcards to friends in Prague. Butorin made fun of one of them for how she wrote the number seven.

“You cross your sevens? That’s un-American,” he said with a smirk, provoking laughter from both girls.

When Kurmasheva eventually returns, Butorin quipped that she will find their daughters taller than she is. “But more importantly, she will see very strong young women who have had to grow up really quickly,” he said.

Sometimes, when Butorin sees videos or photos of his wife in court, he finds himself wondering whether she’s still the same person. In any case, he and his daughters aren’t.

“It’s hurting my family a lot that my mom isn’t here with us,” Bibi said. “It’s been so long already, and we just don’t want to get used to our mom not being here, because we’re getting close to that, unfortunately.”

Back in the family’s Prague apartment, the teenager alternates between talking about Taylor Swift and calling on Russian President Vladimir Putin to release her mother. On the wall opposite her, an abstract painting by her father depicts Kurmasheva pregnant with Bibi.

“At the dinner table, I always feel like there’s something missing because she’s not there. And it’s weird having to cook for one less person. And it’s weird being in the car with one less person. And it’s weird, because we were always a family of four. And now there’s one of us missing,” Bibi said.

Butorin doesn’t like to dwell on the past, and by that he primarily means Kurmasheva’s decision to travel to Russia in the first place. They were both well aware of the risks, he said.

She had traveled there without incident in 2022. But the day she left in 2023, he recalls Kurmasheva saying to him, “Tell me everything will be OK.”

Some days, Butorin wishes he hadn’t let her go. But then, Kurmasheva wouldn’t be Kurmasheva if she hadn’t gone.

“She is known as a selfless friend,” Butorin said. “That empathy and her responsibility as a devoted daughter, that was what really drove her to go to Russia.”

Bibi agreed. “She pays attention to every single person around her, and she’s really willing to give up so many things about her and her life to help others.”

As the family waits for any progress in her case, Butorin channels his wife’s unselfishness and his daughters’ resiliency.

“I don’t have the luxury of just falling apart. Honestly, that’s not an option for me,” Butorin said. “It’s just something that we have to live with. I think I’m a fairly unremarkable person. It’s just something that a father — any father — I think would do.”
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Only days into the Paris Olympics, France has already weathered attacks on its rail and internet service. But it’s also mounted a massive security umbrella that includes tens of thousands of police, gendarmes — and soldiers. Many troops now patrolling the streets of the French capital have done duty in foreign countries, as Lisa Bryant reports from Paris.
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NEW YORK — The director of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 vision for a complete overhaul of the federal government has stepped down, the conservative think tank confirmed Tuesday. 

Paul Dans’ exit comes after the project “completed exactly what it set out to do: bringing together over 110 leading conservative organizations to create a unified conservative vision, motivated to devolve power from the unelected administrative state, and returning it to the people,” Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts said in a statement. Roberts said the group is sticking to its original timeline. 

The news comes after Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has increasingly disavowed Project 2025 amid escalating attacks by Democrats, prompting speculation that Trump’s campaign forced the exit. 

Democrats for the past several months have made Project 2025 a key election-year cudgel, pointing to the ultraconservative policy blueprint as a glimpse into how extreme another Trump administration could be. 

The nearly 1,000-page handbook lays out sweeping changes in the federal government, including altering personnel rules to ensure government workers are more loyal to the president. 

Yet Trump has repeatedly disavowed the document, saying on social media he hasn’t read it and doesn’t know anything about it. At a rally in Michigan earlier this month, he said Project 2025 was written by people on the “severe right” and some of the things in it are “seriously extreme.” 

“President Trump’s campaign has been very clear for over a year that Project 2025 had nothing to do with the campaign, did not speak for the campaign, and should not be associated with the campaign or the President in any way,” Trump campaign advisers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita said in a statement. “Reports of Project 2025’s demise would be greatly welcomed and should serve as notice to anyone or any group trying to misrepresent their influence with President Trump and his campaign — it will not end well for you.” 

Trump campaign representatives did not respond to messages inquiring about whether the campaign asked or pushed for Dans to step down from the project. The Heritage Foundation said Dans left voluntarily, and it was not under pressure from the Trump campaign. Dans didn’t immediately respond to an emailed request for comment. 

But it was almost certain that Trump’s campaign forced the shakeup, said one former Heritage aide granted anonymity to discuss the situation. 

LaCivita had been aggressively monitoring the situation, the person said. It was clear that Project 2025 was becoming a liability for Trump and the party. 

For months Trump’s campaign had warned outside groups, and Heritage in particular, that they did not speak for the former president, even though the Project 2025 team was staffed with his former White House aides and advisers. 

In an interview from the Republican convention first published by Politico, LaCivita said Project 2025 was a problem because “the issues that are going to win us this campaign are not the issues that they want to talk about.” 

Many Trump allies and former top aides contributed to the project, including Dans, who was a personnel official for the Trump administration. Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign and top Democrats have repeatedly tied Trump to Project 2025 as they argue against a second term for the former president. 

The Harris campaign said Project 2025 remains linked to Trump’s agenda. 

“Hiding the 920-page blueprint from the American people doesn’t make it less real — in fact, it should make voters more concerned about what else Trump and his allies are hiding,” said Harris for President Campaign Manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez. 

Project 2025’s website will remain live, and the group will continue vetting resumes for its nearly 20,000-person database of potential government officials ready to execute the group’s vision for government, the Heritage Foundation said Tuesday. The group said Roberts will now run Project 2025 operations.
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An announcement that China’s car giant BYD will build a billion-dollar factory in Turkey marks a big turnaround in relations between the two countries. The move comes after years of tensions over Ankara’s support of Chinese minority Uyghurs. As Dorian Jones reports from Istanbul, the two countries are increasingly finding common ground not only economically but diplomatically.
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Washington — In the moments before NASA’s DART spacecraft slammed into the asteroid Dimorphos in a landmark planetary defense test in 2022, it took high-resolution images of this small celestial object and its larger companion Didymos. 

These images have enabled scientists to unravel the complicated history of these two rocky bodies located in the vicinity of Earth and gain insight into the formation of what are called binary asteroid systems — a primary asteroid with a secondary moonlet orbiting it. 

An analysis of the craters and surface strength on Didymos indicated it formed about 12.5 million years ago. A similar analysis indicated Dimorphos formed about 300,000 years ago. Didymos probably formed in our solar system’s main asteroid belt, between the planets Mars and Jupiter, and then was knocked into the inner solar system, the researchers said. 

An examination of the largest boulders on Didymos and Dimorphos gave clues about the origins of the two asteroids. 

“Both asteroids are aggregates of rocky fragments formed from the catastrophic destruction of a parent asteroid,” said astronomer Maurizio Pajola of the National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) in Italy, lead author of one of five studies on the asteroids published on Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications. 

“These large boulders could not have formed from impacts on the surfaces of Didymos and Dimorphos themselves, as such impacts would have disintegrated these bodies,” Pajola added. 

Didymos, which has a diameter of about a half mile (780 meters), is classified as a near-Earth asteroid. Dimorphos is roughly 560 feet (170 meters) wide. Both are “rubble pile” asteroids, composed of pieces of rocky debris that coalesced through the influence of gravity. 

“Their surface is covered with boulders. The largest on Dimorphos is the size of the school bus, while the largest on Didymos is big as soccer field,” said Olivier Barnouin, a planetary geologist and geophysicist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland and lead author of another of the studies. 

“There are cracks on the surface and the rocks of Dimorphos, while Didymos may have finer-grained soils at the equator, although it is difficult to be sure with the images we have. The surfaces of both asteroids are weak, much weaker than loose sand,” Barnouin added. 

The researchers concluded that Dimorphos is composed of material that flew off the equatorial region of Didymos due to the speed at which it was spinning. 

“In the case of Didymos, it is thought that in the past, it rotated faster around its axis due to the YORP effect (spin acceleration driven by the effect of sunlight on its uneven surface), and thus ejected the boulders from its equatorial region, forming Dimorphos,” Pajola added. 

Didymos currently spins at a rate of once every 2-1/4 hours. 

Few boulders were observed at the equatorial region of Didymos. 

“Its equator is much smoother, while mid-latitudes up to the poles are much rougher, with big boulders sitting on the surface,” Pajola said. 

The U.S. space agency’s DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) carried out a proof-of-principle mission, demonstrating that a spacecraft could apply kinetic force to change the path of a space object that otherwise might be on a collision course with Earth. Didymos and Dimorphos do not pose an actual threat to Earth. 

DART struck Dimorphos on Sept. 26, 2022, at about 14,000 miles per hour (22,530 kph) at a distance of roughly 6.8 million miles (11 million km) from Earth, and succeeded in modestly changing its path. The collision also slightly changed the shape of Dimorphos. 

The DART data has improved the understanding of binary asteroid systems. 

“Binary asteroid systems represent about 10-15% of the total number of asteroids that are in near-Earth space,” Barnouin said. “More generally, with every new observation of an asteroid or asteroid system, we learn more about how asteroids form and evolve. They are complex systems, but have some key similarities, especially when we consider the smaller — less than a kilometer (0.62 mile) — asteroids.”
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BILLINGS, Montana — At least 973 Native American children died in the U.S. government’s abusive boarding school system, according to the results of an investigation released Tuesday by officials who called on the government to apologize for the schools.

The investigation commissioned by Interior Secretary Deb Haaland found marked and unmarked graves at 65 of the more than 400 U.S. boarding schools that were established to forcibly assimilate Native American children into white society. The findings don’t specify how each child died, but the causes of death included sickness, accidents and abuse during a 150-year period that ended in 1969, officials said.

The findings follow a series of listening sessions across the United States over the past two years in which dozens of former students recounted the harsh and often degrading treatment they endured while separated from their families.

“The federal government — facilitated by the Department I lead — took deliberate and strategic actions through federal Indian boarding school policies to isolate children from their families, deny them their identities, and steal from them the languages, cultures and connections that are foundational to Native people,” Haaland, a member of the Laguna Pueblo tribe in New Mexico and the country’s first Native American Cabinet secretary, said in a news release Tuesday.

In an initial report released in 2022, officials estimated that more than 500 children died at the schools. The federal government passed laws and policies in 1819 to support the schools, the last of which were still operating in the 1960s.

The schools gave Native American children English names, put them through military drills and forced them to perform manual labor, such as farming, brickmaking and working on the railroad, officials said.

Former students shared tearful recollections of their experience during listening sessions in Oklahoma, South Dakota, Michigan, Arizona, Alaska and other states. They talked about being punished for speaking their native language, being locked in basements and having their hair cut to stamp out their identities. They were sometimes subjected to solitary confinement, beatings and the withholding of food. Many left the schools with only basic vocational skills that gave them few job prospects.

Donovan Archambault, 85, of the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation in Montana, said he was sent away to boarding schools beginning at age 11 and was mistreated, forced to cut his hair and prevented from speaking his native language. He said he drank heavily before turning his life around more than two decades later, and never discussed his school days with his children until he wrote a book about the experience several years ago.

“An apology is needed. They should apologize,” Archambault told The Associated Press by phone Tuesday. “But there also needs to be a broader education about what happened to us. To me, it’s part of a forgotten history.”

The new report doesn’t specify who should issue the apology on behalf of the federal government, saying only that it should be issued through “appropriate means and officials to demonstrate that it is made on behalf of the people of the United States and be accompanied by bold and actionable policies.”

Interior Department officials also recommended that the government invest in programs that could help Native American communities heal from the traumas caused by boarding schools. That includes money for education, violence prevention and the revitalization of indigenous languages. Spending on those efforts should be on a scale proportional to the money spent on the schools, agency officials said.

The schools, similar institutions and related assimilation programs were funded by more than $23 billion in inflation-adjusted federal spending, officials determined. Religious and private institutions that ran many of the institutions received federal money as partners in the campaign to “civilize” Indigenous students, according to the new report.

By 1926, more than 80% of Indigenous school-age children — some 60,000 children — were attending boarding schools that were run either by the federal government or religious organizations, according to the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition.

Legislation pending before Congress would establish a Truth and Healing Commission to document and acknowledge past injustices related to boarding schools. The measure is sponsored in the Senate by Democrat Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and backed by Republican Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.
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Paris — A Russian sports event widely regarded as an attempt to rival the Paris Olympics is set to be postponed to next year, organizers said Tuesday.

The World Friendship Games had been due to take place in Russia in September but will now move back to unspecified dates in 2025, the International Friendship Association, a body set up to organize the games, said in a statement. It added the decision is subject to approval by the Russian government.

“The main reason for reconsidering the Games dates is the insufficient recovery time for top athletes participating in major international tournaments in the summer of 2024,” the statement said, without mentioning the Paris Olympics by name.

There would have been just over a month between the end of the Paris Olympics and the proposed start of the World Friendship Games.

The International Olympic Committee was strongly opposed to any rival event. It said in March the proposed Russian event was “a cynical attempt by the Russian Federation to politicize sport” and called on governments and sports bodies “to reject any participation in, and support of, any initiative that intends to fully politicize international sport.”

Moscow-based organizers had tried to attract athletes with prize money. A graphic on the event’s website indicates winners at the World Friendship Games would get $40,000, second-place athletes $25,000 and third-place competitors $17,000. The IOC doesn’t pay prize money for Olympians.

There are 15 Russian athletes competing at the Paris Olympics under the name of Individual Neutral Athletes without the national flag or anthem.

The IOC set up the neutral program as a pathway back to competition for athletes from Russia and its ally Belarus who do not have ties to the military or security services and who have not publicly supported Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Some Russian athletes were also invited by the IOC to the Paris Olympics but declined to compete.
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LONDON — A 9-year-old girl wounded in a stabbing attack at a Taylor Swift-themed dance and yoga class in northwestern England died Tuesday, bringing the death toll to three, as police questioned a 17-year-old suspect arrested minutes after the rampage.

The girl was identified as Alice Aguiar by Portuguese Secretary of State for Communities Jose Cesario. He said her family, who were originally from the Madeira region, were in a state of shock.

Merseyside Police said the other fatalities were girls ages 6 and 7.

Eight children and two adults remain hospitalized after the attack in Southport. Both adults and five of the children are in critical condition.

Swift said she was “completely in shock” and still taking in “the horror” of the event.

“These were just little kids at a dance class,” she wrote on Instagram. “I am at a complete loss for how to ever convey my sympathies to these families.”

A 17-year-old boy was arrested on suspicion of murder and attempted murder.

Local people left flowers and stuffed animals in tribute at a police cordon on the street lined with brick houses in the seaside resort near Liverpool — nicknamed “sunny Southport” — whose beach and pier attract vacationers from across northwest England.

Witnesses described scenes “from a horror movie” as bloodied children ran from the attack just before noon on Monday. The suspect was arrested soon after on suspicion of murder and attempted murder. Police said he was born in Cardiff, Wales, and had lived for years in a village about 5 kilometers (3 miles) from Southport. He has not yet been charged.

Police said detectives are not treating Monday’s attack as terror-related and they are not looking for any other suspects.

“We believe the adults who were injured were bravely trying to protect the children who were being attacked,” Merseyside Police Chief Constable Serena Kennedy said.

People posted online tributes and messages of support for teacher Leanne Lucas, the organizer of the event, who was one of those attacked.

A group of Swift’s U.K. fans calling themselves “Swifties for Southport” launched an online fundraiser to help families of the victims. It raised over 100,000 pounds ($129,000) within 24 hours.

The rampage is the latest shocking attack in a country where a recent rise in knife crime has stoked anxieties and led to calls for the government to do more to clamp down on bladed weapons, which are by far the most used instruments in U.K. homicides.

Children ages 6 to 11

Witnesses described hearing screams and seeing children covered in blood emerging from the Hart Space, a community center that hosts events ranging from pregnancy workshops and meditation sessions to women’s boot camps.

The Swift-themed yoga and dance workshop was a summer vacation activity for children ages about 6 to 11.

“They were in the road, running from the nursery,” said Bare Varathan, who owns a shop nearby. “They had been stabbed, here, here, here, everywhere,” he said, indicating the neck, back and chest.

Richard Townes, a children’s entertainer from Southport, said parents in texting groups are terrified now to send their children to summer programs.

“I have a 5-year-old daughter who could have just as easily been at the class,” Townes said. “I feel helpless and like I can’t do anything.”

Official condolences

Prime Minister Keir Starmer called the attack “horrendous and deeply shocking.” King Charles III sent his “condolences, prayers and deepest sympathies” to those affected by the “utterly horrific incident.”

Prince William and his wife, Catherine, said that “as parents, we cannot begin to imagine what the families, friends and loved ones of those killed and injured in Southport today are going through.”

Colin Parry, who owns a nearby auto body shop, told The Guardian that the suspect arrived by taxi.

“He came down our driveway in a taxi and didn’t pay for the taxi, so I confronted him at that point,” Parry was quoted as saying. “He was quite aggressive, he said, ‘What are you gonna do about it?'”

Parry said most of the victims appeared to be young girls.

“The mothers are coming here now and screaming,” Parry said. “It is like a scene from a horror movie. … It’s like something from America, not like sunny Southport.”

Britain’s worst attack on children occurred in 1996, when 43-year-old Thomas Hamilton shot 16 kindergartners and their teacher dead in a school gymnasium in Dunblane, Scotland. The U.K. subsequently banned the private ownership of almost all handguns.

Mass shootings and killings with firearms are rare in Britain, where knives were used in about 40% of homicides in the year to March 2023.

Other mass stabbings

Although mass stabbings are also rare, several in recent years have generated fear and outrage and received a tremendous amount of attention.

In London in April, a man with a sword killed a 14-year-old boy walking to school and seriously injured four other people, including two police officers.

In Nottingham in central England in June 2022, a paranoid schizophrenic man fatally stabbed two college students walking home from celebrating the end of the school year and then killed a 65-year-old man, stole his van and used it to hit three pedestrians.

In Reading, west of London, in June 2020, a failed Libyan asylum seeker fatally stabbed three men and wounded three others.
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ISLAMABAD — The Taliban on Tuesday disavowed many Afghan diplomatic missions overseas, saying it will not honor passports, visas and other documents issued by diplomats associated with Afghanistan’s former Western-backed administration.

It’s the Taliban’s latest attempt to seize control of diplomatic missions since returning to power in 2021. Many Taliban leaders are under sanctions, and no country recognizes them as Afghanistan’s legitimate rulers.

The country’s seat at the United Nations is still held by the former government that was led by Ashraf Ghani, but the Taliban wants it.

In a statement posted to social media platform X, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that documents issued by missions in London, Berlin, Belgium, Bonn, Switzerland, Austria, France, Italy, Greece, Poland, Australia, Sweden, Canada and Norway are no longer accepted and that the ministry “bears no responsibility” for those documents.

The documents affected include passports, visa stickers, deeds and endorsements.

The ministry wrote that people in those countries will need to approach embassies and consulates controlled by the Taliban’s Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan government instead. “All Afghan nationals living abroad and foreigners can visit the IEA political and consular missions in other countries, other than the above-mentioned missions, to access consular services,” it said.

The Taliban did not immediately respond to questions.

One Afghan national living in London, Asad Mobariz, expressed disappointment and frustration with the decision. The master’s student called it unfair and impractical to expect Afghans in affected countries to travel abroad for consular services.

“This decision disregards our needs and places an undue burden on us,” he told The Associated Press. “These services are crucial for my ability to travel, work and maintain my legal status in the U.K.”

The decision would create immense hardship for the Afghan population in Europe and lead to increased financial strain and potential legal issues for those unable to access consular services locally, he said.

Another Afghan national, Adnan Najibi, who lives in Germany, said discrediting embassies was unlikely to benefit the Taliban.

“I live in a small town with a relatively low population; however, I still see that there are hundreds of Afghans living here,” Najibi said. “If someone previously obtained an Afghan passport, marriage certificate or any other document in a day, it may now take weeks or even longer.”

In March 2023, the Taliban said they were trying to take charge of more Afghan embassies abroad. Their chief spokesperson, Zabihullah Mujahid, said the administration had sent diplomats to at least 14 countries.

The new developments mean the closest available Afghan embassies for people in Europe are likely to be in Spain and the Netherlands. In October, those two countries said they were working with Taliban authorities in Kabul after the Taliban suspended consular services at the embassies in London and Vienna over their “lack of transparency and cooperation.”

Some countries retain an active diplomatic mission in Afghanistan, including Pakistan and China.

Michael Kugelman, director of the Wilson Center’s South Asia Institute, said the Taliban were confident and emboldened, buoyed by the informal recognition they have received from many countries.

They appeared to be working to force Afghans to engage with the Taliban instead of with diplomats loyal to the former administration, he said.

“It’s about giving the Taliban more diplomatic clout abroad and consigning the pre-Taliban holdouts to irrelevance. The fact that many of these missions aren’t very active anyway makes Taliban efforts easier to pull off. It’s like pushing on a door that’s already open,” Kugelman said.

The Taliban have received informal recognition through bilateral ties with countries such as Russia, China, Iran and Pakistan, including high-level meetings with those countries. This past month, the Taliban were the Afghan representatives at United Nations-hosted talks on Afghanistan in Doha, although the U.N. stressed that this did not amount to official recognition.

UN mission closed

Also on Tuesday, the U.N. mission in Afghanistan said local intelligence officials in May forcibly closed the office of a women-led nongovernmental group for allowing some of its female employees to physically report to work.

The NGO was allowed to reopen days later after signing a letter saying it would not allow women employees to come to the office, according to the mission’s latest report on human rights in Afghanistan. The report did not disclose the location for “protection reasons.”

Restrictions on women and girls are a major obstacle to the Taliban gaining official recognition as the country’s legitimate government. They have stopped female education beyond grade six and banned women from many jobs and most public spaces.

The Taliban were not immediately available for comment on the report.
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