Month: September 2023

US President Joe Biden sharpened his attacks against Donald Trump on Thursday, delivering a forceful assertion that the former president and Republican front-runner represents an existential threat to the country’s democratic values and institutions. White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara has this report.
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A U.S. civil rights agency sued Tesla on Thursday, claiming the maker of electric cars has tolerated severe harassment of Black employees at its flagship Fremont, California, assembly plant, in charges similar to cases brought by the state and by Tesla employees.  

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said in the lawsuit filed in federal court in California that from 2015 to the present, Black workers at the Tesla plant have routinely been subjected to racist slurs and graffiti, including swastikas and nooses. 

Tesla has failed to investigate complaints of racist conduct and has fired or otherwise retaliated against workers who reported harassment, the EEOC said in the lawsuit. 

The lawsuit adds federal charges to discrimination claims by the state of California and lawsuits by Tesla employees.  

It follows the breakdown of settlement talks with the EEOC after Tesla announced that the agency had formally raised its concerns last year. The EEOC routinely settles lawsuits with employers, and it is relatively rare for the agency’s cases to go to trial. 

Tesla faces several other race discrimination lawsuits that make similar claims, including a class action by workers at the Fremont plant and a lawsuit by a California civil rights agency. The company in those cases has said it does not tolerate discrimination and takes workers’ complaints seriously.  

Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

The EEOC in the lawsuit said it began investigating Tesla after the five-member commission’s chair, Charlotte Burrows, filed an internal complaint known as a charge against the company.  

After finding last year that there was “reasonable cause” to believe Tesla had violated the federal law banning workplace race discrimination, the agency tried and failed to enter into a settlement agreement with the company, according to the lawsuit.  

Burrows in a statement said that combating widespread workplace harassment is a key priority for the EEOC.  

“Every employee deserves to have their civil rights respected, and no worker should endure the kind of shameful racial bigotry our investigation revealed,” she said. 

The EEOC’s lawsuit seeks compensatory and punitive damages for an unspecified number of Black workers, along with an order requiring Tesla to overhaul its policies prohibiting discrimination and retaliation.  

Tesla is also seeking to fend off similar claims from the California Civil Rights Department, a state-level counterpart of the EEOC. The department alleges that Tesla discriminated against Black workers when making decisions about pay, promotions and work assignments.  

The department’s lawsuit alleges violations of California law, while the EEOC case involves similar federal laws.
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With congressional leaders gridlocked over the nation’s budget and the deadline to pass spending bills fast approaching, the federal government could shut down on October 1. And that can affect some immigration services and visa programs.

If the federal government closes, only essential personnel will be working. All other federal workers will not be allowed to work. So how will that affect immigration in the U.S.?

The main difference between the following agencies is that some are fee-funded and the others rely on congressional appropriations for funding.

“In addition to where the budget for these different agencies comes from, we also need to look at the plans that each agency has published for just this kind of scenario,” said Cesar Cuauhtemoc Garcia Hernandez, a professor at the Moritz College of Law at Ohio State University and an expert on migration studies.

USCIS

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, part of the Homeland Security Department, helps manage the country’s naturalization and immigration system. USCIS is mostly fee-funded and will continue to operate as usual because it does not depend on Congress to fund its services. However, some exceptions exist – for example, the E-Verify program and the EB5 investor program, which coordinate the departments of Labor and State.

“That said, while USCIS will keep looking, some [labor] applications cannot be filed unless they’re accompanied by a statement from the Department of Labor that there are not enough workers in the United States who fill certain jobs,” Garcia Hernandez said on social media.

Operations at the Labor Department in the Office of Foreign Labor Certification will close. So those waiting for decisions on their work permit applications will be affected by a shutdown.

“This aspect of the Labor Department’s work will likely close down in the event of a shutdown, and so that will affect the visa application and [other] things, even if slightly indirectly, because those [work] visa applications cannot be processed without that Labor Department certification,” he said.

CBP

At the U.S. borders with Mexico or Canada, ports of entry monitored by U.S. Customs and Border Protection will be open, and processing of passengers will continue. The processing of some applications filed at the border, however, may be affected.

“At the border, most CBP operations should run normally since most CBP employees will continue working, albeit without pay. That said, I would not be surprised if CBP shuts down or slows down the processing of some visas at border ports of entry – for example, a small number of visas for professionals that require in-person processing by CBP at ports of entry. To be clear, this is a small fraction of what CBP does at any port of entry,” Garcia Hernandez told VOA by email.

State Department

Visa and passport operations are fee-funded and usually not affected in a shutdown. Processing of nonessential visas, though, such as those that are recreational in nature, may slow or be suspended at U.S. embassies and consulates worldwide, which could result in visa interview backlogs.

ICE

During a shutdown, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers will still remove undocumented immigrants. But they’ll focus on those who are being held in immigration detention and have removal orders.

“It will be possible for [ICE] to remove people even during a shutdown, but there will likely be fewer removals because the immigration courts will be slowed down a lot. If judges don’t issue as many removal orders as they normally would, due to the fact that most immigration court staff isn’t working, then there will be fewer removal orders for [ICE] to execute,” Garcia Hernandez told VOA.

Immigration courts

Officials from the Executive Office for Immigration Review, a subagency within the Justice Department tasked with adjudicating immigration claims, also known as immigration courts, will work only on the cases of those in immigration detention.

The American Immigration Council reports that during previous shutdowns, courts have not accepted new filings, and “it remains to be seen whether EOIR will continue to accept filings through its electronic system, or ECAS, which did not exist during the previous shutdown.”

Immigration courts will postpone hearings on cases for those who are not detained.

“They will try to keep moving forward on cases involving people who are imprisoned by ICE. Meanwhile, those people whose cases will get canceled or these hearings will be canceled then rescheduled are likely to have to wait a very long time to get another court date,” Garcia Hernandez said on social media.

According to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, immigration courts across the country already are facing large backlogs.

The wait time for a hearing on an immigrant’s asylum claim is about five years or longer.

“While the Executive Office for Immigration Review has ramped up recruiting efforts to add new immigration judges, decades of underfunding have meant that it has been unable to make a dent in the backlog, which continues to climb. It has reached 2,620,591 at the end of August,” according to the TRAC website.

“So, the longer the shutdown lasts, the more we can expect it to affect the government’s duties,” Garcia Hernandez said.

Some Republicans in the House Freedom Caucus said they won’t support any spending bill without certain measures, including border wall construction, prolonged detention of asylum-seekers, and deportation of unaccompanied minors. And that is unlikely to win support in the Democratic-majority Senate.

Government funding is set to end on September 30 unless Congress acts.
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The United States on Thursday imposed sanctions on an ousted Sudanese politician and two companies, one of which is based in Russia, accusing them of intensifying instability and opposing democracy in the North African country.

These are the latest attempts by Washington to hold Islamist militants accountable for the war that broke out last April after Sudan’s army tried unsuccessfully to disband the Rapid Support Forces, or RSF, in a democratic transition of power. RSF is a paramilitary organization beholden to Omar al-Bashir, the long-reigning despot who was brought down in a popular revolt four years ago.

In Thursday’s announcement, U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken singled out Ali Karti, a one-time foreign minister who after al-Bashir fell from power rose in the ranks to Secretary General of the Sudanese Islamic Movement, an extremist outfit battling against the nation’s new democracy. Karti is a key player among those who were in Bashir’s inner party.

After a military coup in 2021 involving RSF, Karti’s Islamist party has reestablished some of its power.

Blinken also aimed sanctions at the Sudan-based GSK Advance Company and Aviatrade, a Russian weapons supplier. U.S. intelligence says Aviatrade has helped GSK provide military drones and training to RSF.

“We will continue to target actors perpetuating this conflict for personal gain,” Brian Nelson, the Treasury Department’s undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, said in a statement.

Some information for this report was provided by Reuters.

 
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Many thousands of international students come to study at American universities and colleges each year. VOA’s Laurel Bowman met four students who have just landed at campuses in the Washington area. Camera — Adam Greenbaum and Saqib Ul Islam.
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The U.S. government is facing a partial shutdown on Sunday as the Senate and House of Representatives remain at odds over the size of its budget for the next 12 months, continued aid for Ukraine to fight Russia, immigration controls at the U.S.-Mexican border and social welfare programs to help impoverished Americans.

The Democratic-controlled Senate is planning a procedural vote Thursday to advance a seven-week funding plan that would keep the government fully open through mid-November to give lawmakers more time to set spending levels through September 2024.

But House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, with a narrow Republican majority in his chamber, has already rejected putting the Senate plan to a House vote.

Instead, the House is continuing to vote on amendments for year-long appropriations bills for four government agencies that have little chance of Senate approval and, in any event, would not prevent a Saturday midnight shutdown of all-but-essential government operations.

Government agencies on Thursday morning began notifying their workers that a shutdown could be in the offing.

Senate Republican leader Mith McConnell warned lawmakers about the dire effects of shutting down part of the government, especially difficulties in controlling the influx of migrants at the country’s southern border with Mexico.

“Shutting down the government is not like pressing pause,” McConnell said. “It’s not an interlude that lets us pick up where we left off. It’s an actively harmful proposition. And instead of producing any meaningful policy outcomes, it would actually take the important progress being made on a number of key issues and drag it backward.”  

If a short-term funding deal cannot be reached, more than 4 million U.S. military service personnel and government workers would not be paid, although essential services, such as air traffic control outlets and official border entry points would still be staffed. Pensioners might not get their monthly government payments on time to pay bills and buy groceries, and national parks could be closed. 

Such shutdowns have occurred four times in the last decade in the U.S., but often have lasted just a day or two until lawmakers reach a compromise to fully restart government operations. But one shutdown that occurred during the administration of former President Donald Trump lasted 35 days as he unsuccessfully sought funding to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexican border.

As thousands of migrants are again walking daily across the southwestern U.S. border, immigration controls remain as one of the sticking points in setting the U.S. government spending levels and policies for the fiscal year that begins Sunday.

McCarthy reached a deal in May with President Joe Biden, a Democrat, on spending levels for fiscal 2024, but a small faction of far-right House Republicans rejected the deal and now is demanding further spending cuts.

The McCarthy-Biden deal called for $1.59 trillion in discretionary spending in fiscal 2024, but some of the right-wing members of the House Freedom Caucus are demanding another $120 billion in cuts and further border controls. The cuts would be a relatively small portion of the overall $6.4 trillion U.S. budget and would not affect pension payments or government-provided health insurance for older Americans.

Some of the most conservative lawmakers also want to sharply pare or end U.S. aid to Ukraine, even as more mainstream Republican lawmakers still staunchly support the Ukraine fight against Russia’s invasion as essential to U.S. national security and protection of NATO countries in Europe.

The Senate’s short-term spending plan through mid-November could possibly win passage in the House, but only with a mix of Republican and Democratic votes.

In politically contentious Washington, the hardline Republican lawmakers intent on cutting spending have threatened to try to oust McCarthy from his speakership if he tries to pass a spending bill with any Democratic votes.

Biden told a group of donors at a fundraiser in San Francisco on Wednesday, “I think that the speaker is making a choice between [retaining] the speakership and American interests.”

McCarthy suggested on Tuesday that a shutdown could be avoided if Biden would negotiate on border issues.

“Call us up, let’s sit down and get this done before the end of the day,” McCarthy said. But Trump, the leading 2024 Republican presidential candidate to run against Biden as he seeks reelection, has taken to social media to push his congressional allies toward a shutdown.
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Republican contenders to be the party’s nominee for U.S. president sparred for two hours in their second debate Wednesday night. With the first primary less than four months away, all the participants are trailing former president Donald Trump in the polls but remain hopeful of catching fire with voters. VOA’s Senior Washington Correspondent Carolyn Presutti was in California for the debate.
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An American soldier who illegally crossed into North Korea in July arrived back in the United States early Thursday, according to a U.S. defense official.

The official said Travis King landed in San Antonio, Texas.

A senior Biden administration official told reporters Wednesday that King was transferred out of the DPRK and crossed the border to China with the help of the government of Sweden. The official said the U.S. received him in China and transferred him home.

DPRK is an acronym for North Korea’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

“We thank the government of Sweden for its diplomatic role serving as the protecting power for the United States in the DPRK and the government of the People’s Republic of China for its assistance in facilitating the transit of Private King,” National security adviser Jake Sullivan said in a statement Wednesday.

Pentagon Press Secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder praised the “the hard work of personnel in the Army, United States Forces Korea, and across the Department of Defense to bring Private King home.”

There were no concessions given to North Korea for this exchange, a senior administration official told VOA during a briefing to reporters Wednesday.

“We’re going to focus for the next several weeks for as long as it takes to get private King on good – on solid footing. And then we’ll address any administrative actions that may follow after the reintegration process,” the official said.

A statement Wednesday from a representative of Claudine Gates, King’s mother, said, “Ms. Gates will be forever grateful to the United States Army and all its interagency partners for a job well done.”

Earlier Wednesday, North Korea said it was expelling King after wrapping up its final investigation of him. He was taken by North Korean soldiers in July after dashing through the Koreas’ heavily militarized border.

King was facing pending administrative separation from the U.S. Army when he returned to his base in Fort Bliss, Texas, after spending time in a South Korean jail on assault charges. He was about to board a plane to the United States on July 17 when he snuck out of the airport and made it onto a civilian tour of the border complex between North and South Korea one day later.

King was taken by North Korean soldiers on duty at the Joint Security Area, KCNA reported, when the plain-clothed soldier “deliberately intruded into the area of the DPRK side between the room for the DPRK-U.S. military contacts and the restroom of security officers along the Military Demarcation Line.”

The North’s official news agency, KCNA, said Wednesday that King had harbored ill feelings over inhumane treatment and racial discrimination within the U.S. army. It added that North Korea’s interim findings were that King wanted refuge in North Korea or elsewhere because of that same reason.

The Military Demarcation Line is the official border separating the two Koreas, put in place by an armistice that paused the 1950-53 Korean War, which remains without a formal end and peace treaty.

VOA White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara and Eunice Kim in Seoul contributed to this report. 
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The Oversight and Accountability Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives is set to hold its first hearing Thursday in an impeachment inquiry against President Joe Biden.

The committee’s Republican leadership said the hearing will focus on constitutional and legal questions.  Committee Chairman Jim Comer said in a statement the body will “present evidence uncovered to date and hear from legal and financial experts about crimes the Bidens may have committed.”

Biden has denied any wrongdoing.  

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters earlier this month that the Republican impeachment push is a “baseless inquiry that the House Republicans can’t even really defend themselves.”

“The evidence does not exist, and this is a political stunt,” Jean-Pierre said.

Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy launched the impeachment inquiry this month with a focus on the foreign business dealings of Hunter Biden, the president’s son.  

Republicans allege that when Biden was vice president, Hunter Biden used the family name to advance his business with foreign clients.  Republicans also say the president himself profited from his son’s business.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters 
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The United States and Iran are denying reports that the two sides are engaged in secret negotiations following a prisoner exchange deal earlier this month that included the unlocking of billions of dollars of frozen Iranian funds.

There are no direct or indirect talks scheduled, including any involving Brett McGurk, White House coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa, a U.S. official told VOA on Wednesday. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss national security matters.

The Iranian Foreign Ministry on Tuesday dismissed a report by a U.K.-based media outlet that authorities in Tehran had granted its negotiators permission to enter direct talks with Washington to ease sanctions in return for Iran slowing down its uranium enrichment program.

“This type of news sensationalism and media games, which is often used to create a political atmosphere, lacks credibility,” the ministry said, as reported by Iranian state media.

However, Washington appears to be leaving open its door to negotiations.

“We have always said that we are open to diplomacy with Iran. I don’t want to get into what any such talks might or might not look like, but diplomacy, we believe, is the best path to preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said in response to VOA’s question on whether the U.S. would be willing to engage in direct talks with Iran.

There are a number of de-escalatory steps the U.S. wants Iran to take before talks, Miller added, including cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Meanwhile, Senator Ted Cruz, a Republican member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is demanding disciplinary action on current administration officials, including those linked to Robert Malley, President Joe Biden’s former special envoy to Iran.

“The Biden administration should immediately cease its secret diplomacy with Iran and its dismantling of sanctions, and any officials linked to these emails should immediately have their security clearances pulled until these allegations are fully resolved and accountability is imposed,” Cruz said in a statement Tuesday.

Cruz released his statement in reference to media reports that the U.S. officials developed ties with a network of academics and researchers aiming to influence policy on Iran a decade ago.

Cruz’s office did not respond to VOA’s request for evidence to back his claims of the administration’s “secret diplomacy.”

Malley has been on leave since June while his security clearance is under review amid an investigation into his handling of classified material.

Diplomatic breakthrough

In a major diplomatic breakthrough earlier this month, U.S. and Iranian officials concluded a deal in which five Americans who had been imprisoned in Iran were freed in exchange for five Iranians accused of violating U.S. sanctions, and the unfreezing of $6 billion in Iranian oil revenue.

U.S. officials insist that negotiations on the swap were unrelated to efforts to revive the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the 2015 deal to curb Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief.

Then-President Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from the deal in 2018. A year later, Iran began ignoring limitations on its nuclear program while still maintaining that its nuclear program is for civilian, not military, purposes.

Many had hoped the prisoner exchange would pave the way to discussions on more substantive issues, and some observers believe that they have.

There are ongoing talks to de-escalate tensions, said Sina Azodi, a researcher of U.S.-Iran ties and a lecturer at the Elliott School of International Affairs at The George Washington University, quoting sources.

For the United States, Azodi told VOA, a key goal in these talks is to scale down Iran’s pace of uranium enrichment. Tehran announced in 2021 it was enriching uranium to 60%, which would shorten its so-called breakout time to build a nuclear weapon, which requires uranium that is enriched above 90%.

Low-level talks

Such talks could be happening indirectly at a lower-stakes level, not involving McGurk and his Iranian counterpart, Ali Bagheri-Kani, said Alex Vatanka, director of the Iran Program at the Middle East Institute.

“The fact that the authorities from Qatar and Oman are saying this and are talking about putting forward suggestions to push forward with nuclear talks, to me suggests that’s real,” Vatanka told VOA, referring to the two countries who acted as interlocutors in the prisoner swap deal.

Earlier this month, Reuters reported that Qatar held separate bilateral meetings with Washington and Tehran that touched on Iran’s nuclear program and U.S. concerns about Iranian drone transfers to Russia that are used to attack Ukraine.

Those concerns and others, including preventing Iranian attacks on Americans in the Middle East, have been transmitted, said Barbara Slavin, a distinguished fellow at the Stimson Center. But apart from conversations earlier this year between Malley and Saeed Iravani, Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations, communications have been indirect.

“I don’t see any interest on the part of Brett McGurk to meet with the Iranians right now,” Slavin told VOA.

Geopolitically, conditions are not conducive to a JCPOA revival. The deal was negotiated with the P5+1 countries of the U.N. Security Council — China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States.

On Wednesday, the Biden administration announced sanctions on a network of entities and individuals it said was facilitating shipments and financial transactions in support of Tehran’s procurement of a critical component used in Iran’s Shahed-136 drones the U.S. says are being used by Russia in Ukraine. 
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The U.S. Department of Justice and FBI are helping Ukrainian prosecutors investigate alleged Russian war crimes committed during the invasion of Ukraine.

The U.S. investigators are gathering evidence of illegal deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia, atrocities against civilians, and alleged crimes against humanity. They also are creating new practices in prosecuting crimes against the environment, cyberattacks, and illicit trafficking of cultural heritage as war crimes.

After Prosecutor General of Ukraine Andriy Kostin participated in U.N. General Assembly events and meetings at the U.S. State Department, FBI, Justice Department and Congress, he sat for an interview with VOA’s Ukrainian Service and discussed his team’s cooperation with the U.S.

Kostin said there is no international mechanism to help bring home children illegally deported to Russia. He argues that restoring justice for Ukrainian children can help children whose rights were violated in other wars and conflicts. He added that the international community should put more pressure on Russia to demand their return.

In May, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin for alleged responsibility for the unlawful deportation of children from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation, but the Kremlin has denied responsibility for war crimes.

The following interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

VOA: This is one of your multiple trips to the U.S. in the last year. Whom did you meet this time and what are the main results of these meetings?

Andriy Kostin, prosecutor general of Ukraine: My meetings with Attorney General Merrick Garland and his team — once again we have substantial support now from not only [the] war crimes accountability team of [the] Department of Justice, but also from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. We shared some cases with these two teams — some of them are world-known as a matter of Russian atrocities — and we are looking forward to [receiving] results from this cooperation.

So our work with the DOJ is very wide, substantial in not only for prosecuting war crimes, with our top priority cases like forced deportation of Ukrainian children, but also helping us to create practice in spheres which had never been prosecuted before in history.

We are now prosecuting crimes against [the] environment as war crimes, we’re approaching prosecuting cyberattacks as war crimes. And just now we have a very good meeting with a special team from [the] FBI about prosecuting cases on attacks on cultural heritage and illicit trafficking of cultural heritage as war crimes. So we are approaching new … dimensions of crimes committed by Russia in Ukraine and against Ukrainians.

[The] Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation and all state authorities are assisting us. Not only from the point of view of cooperation in specific cases, but also capacity building, also training of our prosecutors and investigators. Because we [are] approaching new avenues, we have no right to make a mistake. Creating new practice, we need to be sure that the results of our investigations would be credible on the international level and will be accepted by the international community as true, fair justice.

VOA: The Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union has issued this report that prosecutors and policemen, different law enforcement people, including in your office, are sometimes lacking skills or time, they have too much pressure on them, so there are some problems with the course of those investigations. How are those things addressed?

Kostin: First of all, it’s an unprecedented amount of war crimes. … We have registered [more than 108,000 registered incidents of possible war crimes by publication of the article] and … many war crimes are underreported because they are still being committed on the occupied territories.

I always tell my prosecutors and all law enforcement authorities that we need to ensure that the quality of your investigation and prosecution should be of a high standard. For us, it’s a standard of the International Criminal Court.

It is difficult to investigate, practically impossible to investigate, these number of crimes simultaneously. That’s why our main approach is, first of all, to make it a matter of strategic solutions.

And one of the elements of the strategy is combining cases. So, when we understand, for instance, that several missile and drone attacks were committed, for instance, by one unit of [the] Russian army, we can then try to combine these cases into a big one because in this case it will be easier for us to establish a chain of command.

One of the new directions of our efforts is civilian detainees. We all know the criminal cases on deportation of Ukrainian children where their parents are awaiting their children who are kidnapped to Russia. Civilian detainees are the same crime, but … it’s their children who are awaiting their parents who are illegally detained in Russia. And one of our messages during this visit and United Nations General Assembly side events and other events was to raise awareness of the international community. Because we are talking about thousands of people who are illegally detained. We need to return them home. … We have a lack of international mechanisms. We have some set of international legislation to protect Ukrainian children, but it’s not enough to return them back home at the moment.

As I mentioned at one side event of [the U.N. General Assembly], if the United Nations is so active in feeding children of other countries [with] Ukrainian grain, the United Nations should play, could play, a leading role in bringing Ukrainian children home from Russia using all the elements of communication and pressure over Russian authorities to bring our children back home. And this is important not only for Ukrainian children, it’s important for many other children in many other countries of the world where their rights are violated.

VOA: Do you feel that you are being heard on an international level and especially in the United States? What is being done right now?

Kostin: As I mentioned, we’ve been at this side event on deportation of Ukrainian children together with [Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court] Karim Khan. And I spoke after him, and I said we will do our job with Karim. We will deliver more results. But this is not enough to make [Russia] accountable for deportation.

For Ukrainian children, it doesn’t mean automatically that our children will be returned home. There is no mechanism which automatically returns children to Ukraine from Russia just because more and more criminal cases will be investigated and prosecuted against those who commit this crime.

Of course, we also will expand sanctions [on] those who are involved in Russia for this illegal activity. What is important for me is that all United States authorities are not only ready to support, they are really helping us, and this is important. I would be really glad to give more details, but when we see results, of course, we will speak about it.

This interview originated in VOA’s Ukrainian Service.
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In a grand farewell to its beloved giant pandas, Smithsonian’s National Zoo is hosting “Panda Palooza,” a celebration ending October 1. From their longtime Washington base, the pandas have brought joy to millions of visitors and generations of fans — and now they are being moved to China. Liliya Anisimova has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. Camera: Sergey Sokolov.
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TV’s late-night hosts planned to return to their evening sketches and monologues by next week, reinstating the flow of topical humor silenced for five months by the newly ended Hollywood’s writers strike.

Bill Maher led the charge back to work by announcing early Wednesday that his HBO show “Real Time with Bill Maher” would be back on the air Friday. By mid-morning, the hosts of NBC’s “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” and “Late Night with Seth Meyers,” ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” and “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” on CBS had announced they’d also return, all by Monday. “Last Week Tonight” with John Oliver was slated to return to the air Sunday.

Fallon, Meyers, Kimmel, Colbert and Oliver had spent the latter part of the strike teaming up for a popular podcast called “Strike Force Five” — named after their personal text chain and with all proceeds benefiting their out-of-work writers. On Instagram on Wednesday, they announced “their mission complete.”

The plans for some late-night shows were not immediately clear, like “Saturday Night Live” and Comedy Central’s “Daily Show,” which had been using guest hosts when the strike hit.

Scripted shows will take longer to return, with actors still on strike and no negotiations yet on the horizon.

On Tuesday night, board members from the writers union approved a contract agreement with studios, bringing the industry at least partly back from a historic halt in production that stretched nearly five months.

Maher had delayed returning to his talk show during the ongoing strike by writers and actors, a decision that followed similar pauses by “The Drew Barrymore Show,” “The Talk” and “The Jennifer Hudson Show.”

The three-year agreement with studios, producers and streaming services includes significant wins in the main areas that writers had fought for — compensation, length of employment, size of staffs and control of artificial intelligence — matching or nearly equaling what they had sought at the outset of the strike.

The union had sought minimum increases in pay and future residual earnings from shows and will get a raise of between 3.5% and 5% in those areas — more than the studios had initially offered.

The guild also negotiated new residual payments based on the popularity of streaming shows, where writers will get bonuses for being a part of the most popular shows on Netflix, Max and other services, a proposal that studios initially rejected. Many writers on picket lines had complained that they weren’t properly paid for helping create heavily watched properties.

On artificial intelligence, the writers got the regulation and control of the emerging technology they had sought. Under the contract, raw, AI-generated storylines will not be regarded as “literary material” — a term in their contracts for scripts and other story forms a screenwriter produces. This means they won’t be competing with computers for screen credits. Nor will AI-generated stories be considered “source” material, their contractual language for the novels, video games or other works that writers may adapt into scripts.

Writers have the right under the deal to use artificial intelligence in their process if the company they are working for agrees and other conditions are met. But companies cannot require a writer to use artificial intelligence. 
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U.S. Senator Bob Menendez pleaded not guilty on Wednesday to charges of taking bribes from three New Jersey businessman, as calls for his resignation from his fellow Democrats escalated.

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan last week accused Menendez, 69, and his wife of accepting gold bars and hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash in exchange for the senator using his influence to aid Egypt’s government and interfere with law enforcement investigations of the businessmen.

Menendez entered the plea at a hearing before U.S. Magistrate Judge Ona Wang in Manhattan.

His wife, Nadine Menendez, 56, and businessmen Jose Uribe, 56, and Fred Daibes, 66, also pleaded not guilty. A third businessman, Wael Hana, 40, pleaded not guilty on Tuesday.

Menendez, one of two senators representing New Jersey, stepped down from his role as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, as required under his party’s rules. But on Monday he said he would stay in the Senate and fight the charges.

More than half of all U.S. Democratic senators — including Cory Booker, the junior senator from New Jersey — have called on Menendez, a powerful voice on foreign policy who has at times bucked his own party, to resign since the charges were unveiled on Friday.

Democrats narrowly control the Senate with 51 seats, including three independents who normally vote with them, to the Republicans’ 49. Democratic New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy, who would appoint a temporary replacement should Menendez step aside, has also called for him to resign.

The indictment contained images of gold bars and cash that investigators seized from Menendez’s home. Prosecutors say Hana arranged meetings between the senator and Egyptian officials — who pressed him to sign off on military aid — and in return put his wife on the payroll of a company he controlled.

The probe marks the third time Menendez has been under investigation by federal prosecutors. He has never been convicted.
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The United States on Wednesday imposed sanctions on a network it said was helping procure sensitive parts for Iran’s drone program, and accused Tehran of supplying Russia with drones to support Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.  

The network has facilitated shipments and financial transactions in support of the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps’ (IRGC) procurement of a critical component used in Iran’s Shahed-136 drones, the Treasury Department said in a statement.  

The move is the latest in a series of recent sanctions on Iran. Wednesday’s action targets entities and individuals in Iran, China, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the department said.

“Iranian-made UAVs continue to be a key tool for Russia in its attacks in Ukraine, including those that terrorize Ukrainian citizens and attack its critical infrastructure,” Treasury official Brian Nelson said in a statement.
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