Author: Worldcrew

WASHINGTON — Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen argues that a fractured democracy can have destructive effects on the economy — an indirect jab at Donald Trump.

Yellen delivered an address Friday in Arizona, using economic data to paint a picture of how disregard for America’s democratic processes and institutions can cause economic stagnation for decades.

Yellen, taking a rare step toward to the political arena, never mentioned Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, by name in her speech for the McCain Institute’s Sedona Forum, but she hinted at the former president’s potential impact if he regains the White House.

Her remarks serve as a sort of warning for business leaders who may overlook Trump’s disregard for modern democratic norms because they prefer the former president’s vision of achieving growth by slashing taxes and stripping away regulations.

Yellen acknowledged that democracy “doesn’t seem like typical terrain for a treasury secretary,” but she added that “democracy is critical to building and sustaining a strong economy.”

“The argument made by authoritarians and their defenders that chipping away at democracy is a fair or even necessary trade for economic gains is deeply flawed,” she said. “Undercutting democracy undercuts a foundation of sustainable and inclusive growth.” She pointed to a study suggesting that democratization increases gross domestic product per capita by around 20% in the long run.

Yellen cited the insurrection on January 6, 2021, as a day when democracy came under threat as “rioters, spurred on by a lie, stormed the Capitol.” Trump, who made false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him, has been charged with conspiring to overturn the election, among four criminal cases he is facing. He denies any wrongdoing.

And though Yellen didn’t specifically cite Trump’s comments, he again undermined the tradition of a peaceful transfer of power this week when he refused to commit to accepting this year’s presidential results in an interview with the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.

Farther from home, Yellen cited other global threats to democracy such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Trump and those associated with him say they want to centralize the government’s powers within the Oval Office, such that he might subject people or companies that cross him to investigations, lawsuits and other penalties. That approach could undermine the rule of law that has enabled America’s market-based economy to thrive.

In her speech, Yellen pointed to China as a cautionary example and warned that its future growth is “far from certain.” She said the absence of some democratic pillars will “continue to pose challenges as China navigates the transition to an advanced economy.”

Yellen’s speech comes when there is speculation that if Trump regains the White House he may put political pressure on the Federal Reserve to lower its benchmark interest rate, which stands at a two-decade high of roughly 5.3%. Fed Chair Jerome Powell this week said gaining confidence to lower rates “will take longer than previously expected.”

“As chair of the Federal Reserve, I insisted on the Fed’s independence and transparency because I believe it matters for financial stability and economic growth,” Yellen said in her speech. “Recent research has been consistent with my belief: It has shown that greater central bank independence is associated with greater price stability, which contributes significantly to long-term growth.”

A representative from the Trump campaign did not respond to an Associated Press request for comment.

Other leading economists and academics are challenging the right’s claims to the mantles of economic growth and liberty.

The Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, a friend of Yellen’s, last month published a book entitled The Road to Freedom. Stiglitz, in an interview, said Trump has preyed on people’s economic insecurities after decades of inequality and the erosion of the middle class.

“The economic state is what creates the fertile field for these demagogues,” Stiglitz said. “If they were feeling their incomes were going up rather than down, I don’t think they would find Trump attractive.”

In a paper released this week, Vanessa Williamson, a senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, said that businesses should be more concerned about the rule of law and democratic values.

She argued that there need to be stronger nonpartisan business associations and that CEOs and executives need to be fully aware of how a move away from democracy could hurt their bottom lines.

There is “indisputable evidence of the economic costs of democratic decline,” she said. “These costs include stagnation, policy instability, cronyism, brain drain, and violence.”
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Washington — On Saturday, March 2, at 2:20 a.m., Serhii Gadarzhi woke up to a drone approaching his apartment building in Odesa, Ukraine. He heard an explosion just outside his windows and rushed to his 2-year-old daughter’s bedroom. She was there. He grabbed the child, wrapped her in a blanket and went to check on his wife and their 4-month-old son.

“The door was open. There was nothing behind it — just emptiness. My Anichka is gone. My boy Timosha is gone,” Gadarzhi relates on the Odesa Baptist YouTube channel.

Their bodies were found in the rubble after almost 24 hours of searching. All seven floors had collapsed on top of his wife and the baby sleeping on her chest, Gadarzhi said. That Russian attack with Iranian-made drones killed 12 people, including five children and seven adults.

“I want to say to Mr. James Michael Johnson: Dear brother, we have a war going on. A terrible war. And so many believers, brothers and sisters, are being killed. Little children are being killed. Help is very important to us. Especially military help because if there were a missile to shoot down that drone, the drone wouldn’t have flown in our house,” he says on the video.

Johnson, speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, had for months delayed bringing to the floor of the House a bill providing $61 billion in aid for Ukraine, including ammunition for its air defense systems. The bill was finally approved on April 20 despite resistance from some members of Johnson’s own Republican Party.

Just three days before the vote, Gadarzhi, a Ukrainian Baptist and son-in-law of a local Baptist pastor, told his story to Johnson in person. Gadarzhi told VOA that the speaker already knew about his family’s tragedy.

“One can see in his eyes that he was compassionate, that he wanted to support us and his response was very sincere,” he said.

That meeting followed eight months of behind-the-scenes efforts by Ukrainian Protestants and their allies in the United States to tell Republican members of Congress about the suffering of the faithful at the hands of the Russian forces in the occupied portions of Ukraine.

Steven Moore, an Oklahoma native, was behind some of these efforts. He worked as a chief of staff in the House of Representatives to a leading Republican member for seven years, after which he lived in Ukraine for a year.

When Russia invaded Ukraine, he was visiting his mother in Tulsa but was back in Ukraine on day five of the full-scale invasion. Moore founded the Ukraine Freedom Project NGO (UFP), which began delivering food and supplies to the front for the residents and Ukraine’s armed forces.

Through his work, he learned about abuses inflicted on Ukrainian civilians by the Russian occupying forces, but one story struck him. Victor, an Evangelical pastor from Lugansk, was evacuating a group of civilians, including a pregnant woman and a baby, when Russians stopped his car and took him to a basement.

“They tortured him for 25 days, including one day when they were torturing him with an electrical Taser. And a Russian Orthodox priest was standing over him, trying to cast demons out of him because he was an Evangelical Christian. It blew my mind,” Moore told VOA.

He shared this story with a friend, Karl Ahlgren, a fellow Oklahoman and former chief of staff of a Republican congressman.

“When the full-scale invasion started, Republicans in particular were pretty supportive of Ukraine, and then their support waned. We had to regroup and figure out what we could do to get the right message out to Republicans,” said Ahlgren, who joined UFP as a vice president for public policy.

Beginning in September 2023, Moore, Ahlgren and their Chief Operating Officer Anna Shvetsova met with about 100 members of Congress and their staff, telling them about the persecution of Ukrainian Protestants by Russians.

UFP conducted a survey that showed 70% of Evangelical Christians who vote Republican are more likely to support Ukraine if they learn about Russia torturing and murdering people of their faith, Moore said. They were surprised to discover that most members of Congress knew nothing about it.

“Of the people we met with, there were probably three or four who knew some of the things we were talking about,” Ahlgren said.

Moore said the group “had video of people talking about being tortured, and we would show these videos to members of Congress, to their staff, and they would tear up.”

Other organizations, including the advocacy group Razom for Ukraine, joined the effort.

“I’m an American Baptist. I was shocked, in particular, that so many Baptist churches in occupied Ukraine have been harassed,” said Melinda Haring, a senior adviser for Razom for Ukraine. “More than 26 pastors have been killed since the full-scale war, and 400 Baptist congregations have lost their premises or some of their property.”

She said that at the meetings with the members of Congress and their staffers, she and her colleagues provided statistics of damage caused by Russia to the Ukrainian Christians, told personal stories and prayed together.

Some efforts specifically targeted Johnson, a Southern Baptist from Louisiana.

“We sponsored a billboard with Mike Johnson’s favorite Bible verse,” Haring said. “It’s a passage from the Book of Esther. Esther is before her uncle Mordecai, and she’s afraid to see the king; if she goes and sees the king without his permission, she can be killed, and Mordecai says, ‘You were chosen for a time like this.’

“We learned that Mike Johnson believed he was chosen to be the speaker of the House for an important time. So, our billboard had a picture of a destroyed Baptist church in Berdiansk with that Bible quote.”

Razom placed six of the billboards in Louisiana, including one in front of Johnson’s Cypress Baptist Church in Shreveport.

Razom, UFP and other organizations cosponsored multiple trips by Ukrainian religious leaders to the United States and helped them to organize meetings with members of Congress.

In November, 18 religious leaders and members of the Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organizations visited the United States. In early February, dozens of representatives of Ukrainian churches attended Ukrainian Week in Washington, organized around the National Prayer Breakfast.

Then, four of them met with Johnson.

“The meeting with the speaker was very warm, and the conversation was constructive,” said Anatoliy Kozachok, the senior bishop of the Ukrainian Church of Christians of Evangelical Faith.

He said they handed Johnson two letters urging him to support Ukraine, one from all Ukrainian Christians and one from the Protestants. The speaker told them he and his colleagues were working hard to resolve the issue.

“We felt united as people with the same values. There was a desire to help and to find a solution to the issue of aid for Ukraine,” Kozachok told VOA.

Another meeting participant, Valeriy Antonyuk, head of the All-Ukrainian Union of Evangelical Christian Baptists, said the group discussed shared values with Johnson.

“We Baptists have always defended everyone’s right to practice their faith freely,” he told VOA.

The Ukrainian church leaders were far from the only ones bringing intense pressure on Johnson to defy much of his own party and allow the aid bill to come to a vote, and only Johnson knows how decisive their efforts were in his final decision.

But with Ukrainian forces losing ground and desperately short of ammunition, the bill sailed through Congress on a vote of 311 to 112 and was signed into law by President Joe Biden on April 24, clearing the way for the military assistance to begin flowing again.
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WASHINGTON — Democratic U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas and his wife were indicted on conspiracy and bribery charges and taken into custody Friday in connection with a U.S. Department of Justice probe into the couple’s ties to the former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan.

From 2014 to 2021, Cuellar, 68, and his wife allegedly accepted nearly $600,000 in bribes from an Azerbaijan-controlled energy company and a bank in Mexico, according to the indictment. In exchange, Cuellar is accused of agreeing to advance the interests of the country and the bank in the U.S., also according to the indictment.

Among other things, Cuellar agreed to influence legislation favorable to Azerbaijan and deliver a pro-Azerbaijan speech on the floor of the U.S. House, the indictment states.

The Department of Justice said the couple surrendered to authorities on Friday and were taken into custody. They made an initial appearance before a federal judge in Houston and were each released on $100,000 bond, the DOJ said.

The longtime congressman released a statement Friday saying he and his wife, Imelda Cuellar, 67, “are innocent of these allegations.”

Neither Cuellar nor his attorney immediately responded to calls seeking comment on the matter.

In addition to bribery and conspiracy, the couple face charges including wire fraud conspiracy, acting as agents of foreign principals and money laundering. If convicted, they face up to decades in prison and forfeiture of any property linked to proceeds from the alleged scheme.

The payments to the couple initially went through a Texas-based shell company owned by Imelda Cuellar and two of the couple’s children, according to the indictment. That company received payments from the Azerbaijan energy company of $25,000 per month under a contract, purportedly in exchange for unspecified strategic consulting and advising services.

“In reality, the contract was a sham used to disguise and legitimate the corrupt agreement between Henry Cuellar and the government of Azerbaijan,” the indictment states.

The indictment also alleges an Azerbaijani diplomat referred to Henry Cuellar in text messages as “boss” and also that a member of Cuellar’s staff sent multiple emails to officials at the Department of State pressuring them to renew a U.S. passport for an Azerbaijani diplomat’s daughter.

Cuellar was at one time the co-chair of the Congressional Azerbaijan Caucus.

The FBI searched the congressman’s house in the border city of Laredo in 2022, and Cuellar’s attorney at that time said Cuellar was not the target of that investigation. That search was part of a broader investigation related to Azerbaijan that saw FBI agents serve a raft of subpoenas and conduct interviews in Washington and Texas, a person with direct knowledge of the probe previously told The Associated Press. 
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WASHINGTON — U.S. President Joe Biden has called for the release of all imprisoned journalists — including three American reporters — who have been jailed over their work, in a Friday statement commemorating World Press Freedom Day.

“Journalism should not be a crime anywhere on Earth,” Biden said in the statement. “On World Press Freedom Day, the United States calls for the immediate and unconditional release of all journalists who have been put behind bars for simply doing their jobs. And we call for the protection of journalists everywhere, including during military operations.”

At the end of 2023, 320 journalists were jailed for their work around the world, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

That total includes three American journalists: Evan Gershkovich and Alsu Kurmasheva in Russia, and Austin Tice in Syria.

Gershkovich, a Russian correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, has been jailed since March 2023 on espionage charges that he, his employer and the U.S. government vehemently deny. The State Department has also declared him wrongfully detained.

“We’re so proud of him. I can’t believe he’s holding up so well. And he works so, so hard to be able to keep his spirits up,” Gershkovich’s sister Danielle said at a Friday in Washington Friday commemorating World Press Freedom Day.

Danielle said her family manages to stay in touch with Evan through letters.

“I get a letter from him — it’s like Christmas morning. And I hear his voice in my head when I’m reading it. And it just feels like I get to chat to my brother. It’s a lifeline to my parents and I,” she said at the event, which was held at The Washington Post headquarters.

Since his jailing, Russian authorities have not publicly revealed any evidence to substantiate the spying accusations against Gershkovich, who was accredited by Russia’s Foreign Ministry to work in the country. The reporter will be held in pretrial detention until at least June.

Meanwhile, Kurmasheva, a Prague-based editor at VOA’s sister outlet Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, has been jailed for more than six months and is also set to be held in pretrial detention until at least June.

The dual U.S.-Russian national traveled to Russia in May 2023 for a family emergency. Her passports were confiscated when she tried to leave the country in June 2023. She was waiting for them to be returned when she was arrested in October 2023.

Kurmasheva stands accused of failing to self-register as a so-called “foreign agent” and spreading what Moscow views as false information about the Russia military. The journalist and her employer reject the charges against her.

“She’s the mom of two wonderful young women who had to grow up awfully quickly over the last six months that she’s been in prison,” RFE/RL President Stephen Capus said at the event.

In a prerecorded video message, Kurmasheva’s 15-year-old daughter Bibi called for her mother’s immediate release.

“My mom, Alsu, has been behind bars in Russia for six months now, because she is a journalist,” she said. “My sister and I are so proud of her, and we miss her so, so much. She needs to be freed immediately so she can come home to us. Free Alsu.”

Press freedom groups have criticized the State Department for not yet declaring Kurmasheva wrongfully detained, which would open additional resources to help secure her release.

Russia’s Washington embassy did not immediately reply to VOA’s email requesting comment.

This year’s World Press Freedom Day takes place against a backdrop that experts say is concerning for journalists around the world.

“Media freedom is under siege,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Friday in a statement. “Without facts, we cannot fight mis- and dis-information. Without accountability, we will not have strong policies in place. Without press freedom, we won’t have any freedom. A free press is not a choice, but a necessity.”

In particular, the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas has led to the deadliest period for journalists since the Committee to Protect Journalists, or CPJ, began gathering data in 1992. As of Friday, at least 97 journalists have been killed since the war began, including 92 Palestinians, two Israelis, and three Lebanese, according to CPJ.

“Journalists are civilians, so they need to be protected as any civilian is during a war zone. They shouldn’t be targeted,” CPJ chief Jodie Ginsberg said at the event on Friday.

New York-based CPJ has accused Israel of targeting journalists, which the Israeli government has denied.

About half of the world’s population is set to vote in national elections in 2024, which has press freedom experts concerned about the safety of reporters and potentially harmful effects for press freedom.

“This year is going to be really indicative not just of the future of a free press, but the future of democracy, because how we treat our media in the run-up to these elections is a litmus test for how the other freedoms that we enjoy, and the other democratic rights we enjoy, are likely to be treated afterwards,” Ginsberg said.

Discussions about press freedom tend to center on the negative, but Clayton Weimers, the head of the U.S. office of Reporters Without Borders, or RSF, said it’s also important to recognize governments that are defending press freedom.

“World Press Freedom Day should be a celebration of the values of the free press,” Weimers said.

RSF on Friday released its annual press freedom index, which ranks 180 countries and territories in terms of media freedom. Norway and Denmark topped the list this year.

“There’s no freedom without press freedom,” Weimers said. “It’s the freedom on which all the others are based.”
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Defense ministers from the United States, Australia, Japan and the Philippines met for a second round of quadrilateral talks in less than a year this week amid further aggression from the Chinese military. VOA Pentagon correspondent Carla Babb reports on the allies’ growing military ties.
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WASHINGTON — The nation’s employers pulled back on their hiring in April but still added a decent 175,000 jobs in a sign that persistently high interest rates may be starting to slow the robust U.S. job market. 

Friday’s government report showed that last month’s hiring gain was down sharply from the blockbuster increase of 315,000 in March. And it was well below the 233,000 gain that economists had predicted for April. 

Yet the moderation in the pace of hiring, along with a slowdown last month in wage growth, will likely be welcomed by the Federal Reserve, which has kept interest rates at a two-decade high to fight persistently elevated inflation. Hourly wages rose a less-than-expected 0.2% from March and 3.9% from a year earlier, the smallest annual gain since June 2021. 

The Fed has been delaying any consideration of interest rate cuts until it gains more confidence that inflation is steadily slowing toward its target. Fed rate cuts would, over time, reduce the cost of mortgages, auto loans and other consumer and business borrowing. 

Stock futures jumped Friday after the jobs report was released on hopes that rate cuts might now be more likely sometime in the coming months. 

Even with the April hiring slowdown, last month’s job growth amounted to a solid increase, although it was the lowest monthly job growth since October. With the nation’s households continuing their steady spending, many employers have had to keep hiring to meet their customer demand. 

The unemployment rate ticked up 3.9% — the 27th straight month in which it has remained below 4%, the longest such streak since the 1960s. 

Last month’s hiring was led by health care companies, which added 56,000 jobs. Warehouse and transportation companies added 22,000 and retailers 20,000. 

The state of the economy is weighing on voters’ minds as the November presidential campaign intensifies. Despite the strength of the job market, Americans remain generally exasperated by high prices, and many of them assign blame to President Joe Biden. 

America’s job market has repeatedly proved more robust than almost anyone had predicted. When the Fed began aggressively raising rates two years ago to fight a punishing inflation surge, most economists expected the resulting jump in borrowing costs to cause a recession and drive unemployment to painfully high levels. 

The Fed raised its benchmark rate 11 times from March 2022 to July 2023, taking it to the highest level since 2001. Inflation did steadily cool as it was supposed to — from a year-over-year peak of 9.1% in June 2022 to 3.5% in March. 

Yet the resilient strength of the job market and the overall economy, fueled by steady consumer spending, has kept inflation persistently above the Fed’s 2% target. 

The job market has been showing other signs of eventually slowing. This week, for example, the government reported that job openings fell in March to 8.5 million, the fewest in more than three years. Still, that is nevertheless a large number of vacancies: Before 2021, monthly job openings had never topped 8 million, a threshold they have now exceeded every month since March 2021. 

On a month-over-month basis, consumer inflation hasn’t declined since October. The 3.5% year-over-year inflation rate for March was still running well above the Fed’s 2% target. 
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Washington — U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said late Thursday he does not see signs that Hamas is going to attack U.S. forces who are building a pier off the coast of Gaza to deliver aid to the war-torn strip by sea.

“I don’t see any indications currently that there is an active intent to do that,” Austin told reporters at a press conference in Hawaii.

Austin stressed that the top commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, CENTCOM chief Gen. Erik Kurilla, has put several security measures in place to keep the troops who are building the pier and helping with aid distribution safe.

“Our allies are also providing security in that area as well, and so it’s going to require that we continue to coordinate with them very closely to ensure that if anything happens that, you know, our troops are protected,” Austin said.

The new port is just southwest of Gaza City. Last week a mortar attack targeted the port site but officials said no one was hurt.

“This is an accident, a very serious accident waiting to happen,” Bradley Bowman, the senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told VOA.

Bowman, who is also a U.S. Army veteran, said Thursday that efforts to feed those in desperate need are “laudable,” but security concerns since the inception of this U.S. mission appear to remain unanswered while some of the plans are still being developed.

“The kind of terrorists, the kind of person – I hesitate to use that term – that would … wage the October 7 terror attack, use human shields and hold innocent men, women and children as hostages, those are the very same people that will not hesitate to attack those trying to bring food and water to hungry and thirsty people,” Bowman said.

Crews from the USNS Roy P. Benavidez and several Army vessels started building the floating platform for the operation last week, according to a senior military official. Next will come construction of the causeway, which will be anchored to the shore by the Israel Defense Forces.

U.S. and Israeli officials have said they hope to complete construction and begin operations this month.

The senior military official told reporters the Pentagon expects deliveries to “begin at about 90 trucks a day … and then quickly increase to 150 trucks a day.”

Aid has been slow to get into Gaza because of long backups of vehicles at Israeli inspection points. The U.S. and other nations have been air-dropping food into Gaza, but each military plane only holds about one to three truckloads of food, a U.S. official told VOA.

Aid organizations have said several hundred truckloads of food are needed in Gaza each day.

Israel attacked Hamas in Gaza following Hamas’ October 7 terror attack on Israel, which killed 1,200 people and saw hundreds more taken hostage. In the nearly seven months since the attack, more than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, according to Gazan health officials.  
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WASHINGTON — Russian military personnel have entered an air base in Niger that is hosting U.S. troops, a senior U.S. defense official told Reuters, a move that follows a decision by Niger’s junta to expel U.S. forces.

The military officers ruling the West African nation have told the U.S. to withdraw its nearly 1,000 military personnel from the country, which until a coup last year had been a key partner for Washington’s fight against insurgents who have killed thousands of people and displaced millions more.

A senior U.S. defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Russian forces were not mingling with U.S. troops but were using a separate hangar at Airbase 101, which is next to Diori Hamani International Airport in Niamey, Niger’s capital.

The move by Russia’s military, which Reuters was the first to report, puts U.S. and Russian troops in close proximity at a time when the nations’ military and diplomatic rivalry is increasingly acrimonious over the conflict in Ukraine.

It also raises questions about the fate of U.S. installations in the country following a withdrawal. “(The situation) is not great but in the short-term manageable,” the official said.

Asked about the Reuters report, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin played down any risk to American troops or the chance that Russian troops might get close to U.S. military hardware.

“The Russians are in a separate compound and don’t have access to U.S. forces or access to our equipment,” Austin told a press conference in Honolulu.

“I’m always focused on the safety and protection of our troops … But right now, I don’t see a significant issue here in terms of our force protection.”

The Nigerien and Russian embassies in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The U.S. and its allies have been forced to move troops out of a number of African countries following coups that brought to power groups eager to distance themselves from Western governments. In addition to the impending departure from Niger, U.S. troops have also left Chad in recent days, while French forces have been kicked out of Mali and Burkina Faso.

At the same time, Russia is seeking to strengthen relations with African nations, pitching Moscow as a friendly country with no colonial baggage in the continent.

Mali, for example, has in recent years become one of Russia’s closest African allies, with the Wagner Group mercenary force deploying there to fight jihadist insurgents.

Russia has described relations with the United States as “below zero” because of U.S. military and financial aid for Ukraine in its effort to defend against invading Russian forces.

The U.S. official said Nigerien authorities had told President Joe Biden’s administration that about 60 Russian military personnel would be in Niger, but the official could not verify that number.

After the coup, the U.S. military moved some of its forces in Niger from Airbase 101 to Airbase 201 in the city of Agadez.

It was not immediately clear what U.S. military equipment remained at Airbase 101.

The United States built Airbase 201 in central Niger at a cost of more than $100 million. Since 2018 it has been used to target Islamic State and al Qaeda affiliate Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal Muslimeen (JNIM) fighters with armed drones.

Washington is concerned about Islamic militants in the Sahel region, who may be able to expand without the presence of U.S. forces and intelligence capabilities.

Niger’s move to ask for the removal of U.S. troops came after a meeting in Niamey in mid-March, when senior U.S. officials raised concerns including the expected arrival of Russia forces and reports of Iran seeking raw materials in the country, including uranium.

While the U.S. message to Nigerien officials was not an ultimatum, the official said, it was made clear U.S. forces could not be on a base with Russian forces.

“They did not take that well,” the official said.

A two-star U.S. general has been sent to Niger to try to arrange a professional and responsible withdrawal.

While no decisions have been taken on the future of U.S. troops in Niger, the official said the plan was for them to return to U.S. Africa Command’s home bases, located in Germany.
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washington — The U.S. says it has been trying to engage North Korea by sending messages repeatedly despite Pyongyang’s apparent lack of interest in dialogue and its escalation of threats in the region.

“We have sent such messages in multiple ways – through third parties and directly, orally and in writing – and have included specific proposals on humanitarian cooperation and other topics for discussion,” a State Department spokesperson said.

“We have also emphasized our willingness to discuss practical steps both sides could take to address the security situation in the region,” the spokesperson continued via email to VOA’s Korean Service on April 26.

“To date, however, the DPRK has shown no indication it is interested in engaging. Instead, we have seen a marked increase in the scope and scale of DPRK provocations, which have only served to raise regional tensions and increase the risk of accidental or unintentional escalation,” the spokesperson added.

North Korea’s official name is the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

North Korea has been conducting multiple missile and rocket tests, including what it said was its first nuclear counterattack drills using “super-large” artillery rockets carrying mock nuclear warheads on April 22.

Pyongyang has also ramped up its cooperation with Russia, sending arms to support Moscow’s fight against Ukraine. Russia has been shipping refined petroleum to North Korea above the limit of 500,000 barrels annually set by the U.N. Security Council, White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said Thursday.

The North Korean mission to the U.N. did not respond to a VOA inquiry on its reaction to the U.S. description of its efforts made to resume talks.

Dialogue between the two has been deadlocked since October 2019 when working-level talks failed to reconcile differences over denuclearization and sanctions relief that became apparent a few months earlier at a summit in Hanoi.

Washington has maintained that it is open to renewed dialogue on Pyongyang’s nuclear program without preconditions.

Former U.S. officials suggested that the Biden administration provided the unusually detailed account of its efforts to engage Pyongyang in response to criticisms saying it has not done enough.

“The Biden team is quite sensitive to the attacks coming from ‘liberals,’ especially critics who claim the administration has not attached sufficient priority to North Korea and has not done enough to pursue diplomacy with Pyongyang,” said Evans Revere, a former State Department official with extensive experience negotiating with North Korea.

Revere added that some of these critics are arguing that Washington needs to change its approach, offer concessions and engage in arms control and threat reduction talks with North Korea. He said this explains not only the administration’s detailed description of its efforts at talks but its willingness to discuss “interim steps” toward denuclearization.

Two senior U.S. officials said in March that Washington is willing to consider such steps and discuss sanctions and confidence-building measures.

Robert Rapson, who served as charge d’affaires and deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Seoul from 2018 to 2021, said the Biden administration may be trying to address China’s call for talks between Washington and Pyongyang.

“It’s possible Beijing may have laid out a quid pro quo for any support with North Korea by calling on the U.S. to up its efforts to engage with Pyongyang – hence the statement” from the State Department, said Rapson.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said at a news conference in Beijing after talks with Chinese officials that he “encouraged” Beijing “to press Pyongyang to end its dangerous behavior and engage in dialogue.”

Joseph DeTrani, who served as the special envoy for six-party denuclearization talks with North Korea from 2003 to 2006, said, “The Biden administration wants to make it clear, for the record and as we approach the November presidential election, that the administration was proactive in its policy toward North Korea and they did everything possible” to have Pyongyang “return to negotiations.”

 
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WASHINGTON — The Internal Revenue Service, the U.S. tax agency, said Thursday that it has taken steps to address a wide disparity in audit rates between Black taxpayers and other filers. And it said it is more closely examining the returns of larger numbers of wealthy people and major companies.

“We are overhauling compliance efforts to advance our commitment to fair, equitable, and effective tax administration and hold ourselves accountable to taxpayers we serve,” according to an annual update from the agency.

A study from January 2023 involving university researchers and the Treasury Department found that IRS data-driven algorithms selected Black taxpayers for auditing at up to 4.7 times the rate of non-Black taxpayers. The study said the IRS disproportionately audited people who claim the Earned Income Tax Credit, which is aimed at low- to moderate-income workers and families: While Black taxpayers accounted for 21% of the claims for that tax break, they were the focus of 43% of the audits concerning the credit.

“We have taken swift initial action to dramatically reduce the number of those audits. We have also made changes to the selection criteria for those audits,” IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel said.

Werfel, who was sworn in a little more than a year ago, has testified before Congress about the issue and last September he wrote to the Senate Finance Committee that the IRS would make changes.

The discriminatory audits, he told reporters, “degrade trust in our tax system.”

Werfel and the IRS have tried over the past year to show how money from the Inflation Reduction Act, President Joe Biden’s big climate, health and tax law, has helped to modernize the agency and improve taxpayer services.

He also said that people making less than $400,000 per year would not be subject to more audits because of the new funding.

Noting the promise to keep audit rates for people making $400,000 per year and less at 2018 levels, he said on Thursday that “we haven’t in any way exceeded that rate.”

He added: “There is no new wave of audits coming for middle and low income” taxpayers — “that is not in our plans in any way, shape or form.”

The IRS is focusing the next year on using the funding boost to conduct higher rates of audits on suspected wealthy tax cheats after having collected hundreds of millions of back taxes this year.

Ensuring that people pay their taxes is one of the tax collection agency’s biggest challenges. The audit rate of millionaires fell by more than 70% from 2010 to 2019 and the rate on large corporations dropped by more than 50%.

The IRS plans to raise audit rates on companies with assets of more than $250 million to 22.6% in 2026, from an 8.8% rate in the tax year 2019. It also plans to increase audit rates by tenfold on large complex partnerships with assets of more than $10 million.

“While the IRS has accomplished a lot so far with IRA funding,” he said, “we need to do much more to make improvements and transform the IRS for the benefit of taxpayers.” 
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The number of Washington-based journalists covering the Capitol for local news outlets is dwindling. As the beat shrinks, so, too, does the ability of these regional reporters to hold elected officials to account, media advocates say. VOA’s Cristina Caicedo Smit and Liam Scott have the story, narrated by Caicedo Smit.
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