A former senior UN aid official has condemned the bloodshed at the notorious US and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s aid food depots, describing the distribition system as having turned into a “catastrophe”.

The number of aid seekers killed continues to climb daily beyond 1000.

Martin Griffiths, director of Mediation Group International and the former Under Secretary General of the UN Humanitarian Affairs Office, said: “I think when many of us saw the first plans of the GHF to launch this operation in Gaza, we were immediately appalled by the way they were proposing to manage it.”

• READ MORE: US envoy visits Gaza as Israeli forces kill starving Palestinians
• NZ ‘lagging behind’ world by failing to recognise Palestinian statehood, says former PM Helen Clark
• What would New Zealand recognising Palestinian statehood mean?
• Other Israeli war on Gaza reports

“It was clearly militarised. They’d have their own security contractors,” he told Al Jazeera.

“They’d have [Israeli military] camps placed right beside them. We know now that they are, in fact, under instructions by [the Israeli military].

“All of this is a crime. All of this is a deep betrayal of humanitarian values.

“But what I at least did not sufficiently anticipate was the killing and was the absolutely critical result of this operation, this sole humanitarian operation allowed by Israel in Gaza,” Griffiths added.

“The 1000 killed are an incredible statistic. I had no idea it would go that high and it’s going on daily. It’s not stopping.

“I think it’s a catastrophe more than a disappointment,” he said. “I think it’s a great sin. I think it’s a great crime.”

However, he acknowledged it was still an “important form of witness”.

“I’m glad that they’re going,” Griffiths said.

“Maybe they will see things that are unexpected. I can’t imagine because we’ve seen so much. But I don’t see it leading to a major change.

“If I was one of the two million Gazans starving to death, this is a day I would like to go to an aid distribution point,” Griffiths added.

“There’s slightly less risk probably than any other day.”

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

In 2019, a group of law students at the University of the South Pacific, frustrated at the slow pace with which the world’s governments were moving to address the climate crisis, had an idea — they would take the world’s governments to court.

They arranged a meeting with government ministers in Vanuatu and convinced them to take a case to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the United Nations’ top court, where they would seek an opinion to clarify countries’ legal obligations under international law.

Six years after that idea was hatched in a classroom in Port Vila, the court will today (early Thursday morning NZT) deliver its verdict in the Dutch city of The Hague.

• READ MORE: Other climate crisis reports

If successful — and those involved are quietly confident they will be — it could have major ramifications for international law, how climate change disputes are litigated, and it could give small Pacific countries greater leverage in arguments around loss and damage.

Most significantly, the claimants argue, it could establish legal consequences for countries that have driven climate change and what they owe to people harmed.

“Six long years of campaigning have led us to this moment,” said Vishal Prasad, the president of Pacific Island Students Fighting Climate Change, the organisation formed out of those original students.

“For too long, international responses have fallen short. We expect a clear and authoritative declaration,” he said.

“[That] climate inaction is not just a failure of policy, but a breach of international law.”

More than 100 countries — including New Zealand, Australia and all the countries of the Pacific — have testified before the court, alongside civil society and intergovernmental organisations.

And now today they will gather in the brick palace that sits in ornate gardens in this canal-ringed city to hear if the judges of the world’s top court agree.

What is the case?
The ICJ adjudicates disputes between nations and issues advisory opinions on big international legal issues.

In this case, Vanuatu asked the UN General Assembly to request the judges to weigh what exactly international law requires states to do about climate change, and what the consequences should be for states that harm the climate through actions or omissions.

Over its deliberations, the court has heard from more than 100 countries and international organisations hoping to influence its opinion, the highest level of participation in the court’s history.

That has included the governments of low-lying islands and atolls in the Pacific, which say they are paying the steepest price for a crisis they had little role in creating.

These nations have long been frustrated with the current mechanisms for addressing climate change, like the UN COP conferences, and are hoping that, ultimately, the court will provide a yardstick by which to measure other countries’ actions.

“I choose my words carefully when I say that this may well be the most consequential case in the history of humanity,” Vanuatu’s Minister for Climate Change Ralph Regenvanu said in his statement to the court last year.

“Let us not allow future generations to look back and wonder why the cause of their doom was condoned.”

But major powers and emitters, like the United States and China, have argued in their testimonies that existing UN agreements, such as the Paris climate accord, are sufficient to address climate change.

“We expect this landmark climate ruling, grounded in binding international law, to reflect the critical legal flashpoints raised during the proceedings,” said Joie Chowdhury, a senior attorney at the US-based Centre for International Environmental Law (which has been involved with the case).

“Among them: whether States’ climate obligations are anchored in multiple legal sources, extending far beyond the Paris Agreement; whether there is a right to remedy for climate harm; and how human rights and the precautionary principle define States’ climate obligations.”

What could this mean?
Rulings from the ICJ are non-binding, and there are myriad cases of international law being flouted by countries the world over.

Still, the court’s opinion — if it falls in Vanuatu’s favour — could still have major ramifications, bolstering the case for linking human rights and climate change in legal proceedings — both international and domestic — and potentially opening the floodgates for climate litigation, where individuals, groups, Indigenous Peoples, and even countries, sue governments or private companies for climate harm.

An advisory opinion would also be a powerful precedent for legislators and judges to call on as they tackle questions related to the climate crisis, and give small countries a powerful cudgel in negotiations over future COP agreements and other climate mechanisms.

“This would empower vulnerable nations and communities to demand accountability, strengthen legal arguments and negotiations and litigation and push for policies that prioritise prevention and redress over delay and denial,” Prasad said.

In essence, those who have taken the case have asked the court to issue an opinion on whether governments have “legal obligations” to protect people from climate hazards, but also whether a failure to meet those obligations could bring “legal consequences”.

At the Peace Palace today, they will find out from the court’s 15 judges.

“[The advisory opinion] is not just a legal milestone, it is a defining moment in the global climate justice movement and a beacon of hope for present and future generations,” said Vanuatu Prime Minister Jotham Napat in a statement ahead of the decision.

“I am hopeful for a powerful opinion from the ICJ. It could set the world on a meaningful path to accountability and action.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

• Judge orders pause for Trump executive order ending birthright citizenship;
• Secretary of State Rubio describes Trump disappointment with Russia over Ukraine;
• Palestinians describe indiscriminate killings at aid distribution sites after Israel kicked UN aid program out of Gaza;
• US sanctions top UN human rights official on Occupied Palestinian Territory, UN calls it “dangerous precedent”;
• Conspiracy theories about Epstein sex trafficking come back to haunt Trump administration;
• Mahmoud Khalil files $20 million lawsuit after release from immigration jail, will share any settlement with other targeted activists

The post US sanctions top UN human rights official on Occupied Palestinian Territory; Judge pauses Trump order ending birthright citizenship – July 10, 2025 appeared first on KPFA.

This content originally appeared on KPFA - The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays and was authored by KPFA.

After citing Trump administration charges that Kilmar Abrego Garcia was a member of MS-13, Al Jazeera (6/6/25) included a response from his advocates: “His lawyers have denied that he was a gang member and said he had not been convicted of any crime.”

Kilmar Abrego Garcia was returned to the United States on June 6, after being wrongly deported to El Salvador almost three months earlier. Abrego Garcia had been detained in El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center since March 15, along with more than 250 other immigrants accused of belonging to the Latin American gangs Tren de Aragua and MS-13.

Abrego Garcia’s case drew particular media attention, due to the admission by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that his deportation and subsequent imprisonment were a result of an “administrative error.” For weeks, however, both the Trump administration and the Salvadoran government insisted they were powerless to return Abrego Garcia to the United States.

After months of protests from Abrego Garcia’s Maryland community and legal challenges from his lawyers, the father of three was finally returned to the US. But there was a caveat: He would face criminal charges related to an immigrant-smuggling operation that the Department of Justice alleges Abrego Garcia took part in as a member of MS-13.

Though there are plenty of reasons to cast doubt on the charges made against Abrego Garcia, in the seven articles published in the wake of his return, the New York Times (6/6/25, 6/6/25, 6/6/25, 6/8/25) and Wall Street Journal (6/6/25, 6/7/25, 6/8/25) present them mostly at face value. Given that the publications are the top two largest newspapers in America, their deficient coverage of one of the most important immigration cases of the second Trump administration is noteworthy.

Unreliable sources

The main New York Times story (6/6/25) on Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s return from El Salvador consists largely of Trump administration officials accusing him of crimes—with no quotes from Abrego Garcia’s lawyers contesting those charges. 

Only two of the articles (New York Times, 6/6/25; Wall Street Journal, 6/7/25) mentioned that the charges against Abrego Garcia stem from recent information supplied by jailhouse informants.  The articles failed to note that such testimony is notoriously unreliable, as documented by research, and frequently results in wrongful convictions.

Though there are six unnamed co-conspirators listed in the indictment, it appears as though the majority of the charges rely on the testimony of one or two of these individuals. Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, one of Abrego Garcia’s attorneys, told CNN’s Erin Burnett (6/6/25), “The very first question I’m going to be asking is, what were those two people offered to make up these really fantastic, hyperbolic allegations against Mr. Abrego Garcia?”

The DoJ’s stonewalling of Abrego Garcia’s lawyers in his civil case should raise further suspicion about why these jailhouse informants decided to come forward now, despite the DoJ’s allegation that Abrego Garcia has been involved with immigrant smuggling since 2016. None of the articles mention that Abrego Garcia had been attending yearly check-ins with ICE since 2019, and that these allegations had not come up during the six years that ICE had been monitoring him, nor were they mentioned during the trial that resulted in a judge granting him withholding of removal.

In their New York Times piece (6/6/25), reporters Devlin Barrett, Alan Feuer and Glenn Thrush dedicated two paragraphs to a 2022 traffic stop involving Abrego Garcia that the indictment cites as evidence of a smuggling operation, while curiously omitting the fact that he was not charged with a crime at the time of the incident.

None of the articles mentioned that Abrego Garcia had been in ICE detention for seven months in 2019, at the same time that the DoJ alleges he was leading an immigrant smuggling operation. Also missing in the Times and Journal’s coverage was the fact that the police officer who authored the 2019 report was later terminated for sharing “sensitive and confidential information about an ongoing police investigation with a commercial sex worker” (USA Today, 4/17/25).

 Sidelining advocates

The Wall Street Journal (6/6/25) published several paragraphs alleging crimes by Abrego Garcia with no rebuttal.

Two articles omitted comments from Abrego Garcia’s legal team altogether (New York Times 6/6/25; Wall Street Journal, 6/7/25). While the other articles do quote Abrego Garcia’s lawyers, they cited them only about his initial deportation and his return, but not about the criminal charges. Three articles (New York Times, 6/6/25, 6/6/25; Wall Street Journal, 6/6/25) include the same sole quote from Andrew Rossman, another one of Abrego Garcia’s lawyers:

Today’s action proves what we’ve known all along—that the administration had the ability to bring him back and just refused to do so…. It’s now up to our judicial system to see that Mr. Abrego Garcia receives the due process that the Constitution guarantees to all persons.

When given the chance to comment on the criminal allegations, Abrego Garcia’s lawyers have been clear that these charges are “preposterous.” Sandoval-Moshenberg told CBS affiliate WUSA9 (6/6/25), “What happened today is the exact opposite of due process, because due process means the opportunity to defend yourself before you’re punished, not afterwards.”

Another one of his lawyers, Chris Newman, who is also the legal director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, told WUSA9 (6/6/25) in the same conference:

This administration has shown amazing disregard for the Constitution, for due process and for basic decency. It is engaged in an unprecedented campaign of disinformation, defamation and cruelty directed at Kilmar’s family.

Another member of Abrego Garcia’s legal team, Brian Murray, told MSNBC’s Alex Witt (6/7/25), “Anyone who’s been looking at this case and has been watching this play out would agree this is a political and vindictive prosecution.”

In the days since Abrego Garcia’s release, his legal team has frequently made themselves available to media to speak about the criminal charges and ongoing constitutional issues surrounding his case. At a time when immigrants’ rights to free speech are under attack, the New York Times and Wall Street Journal chose to sideline the voices of their advocates.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Emma Llano.

After citing Trump administration charges that Kilmar Abrego Garcia was a member of MS-13, Al Jazeera (6/6/25) included a response from his advocates: “His lawyers have denied that he was a gang member and said he had not been convicted of any crime.”

Kilmar Abrego Garcia was returned to the United States on June 6, after being wrongly deported to El Salvador almost three months earlier. Abrego Garcia had been detained in El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center since March 15, along with more than 250 other immigrants accused of belonging to the Latin American gangs Tren de Aragua and MS-13.

Abrego Garcia’s case drew particular media attention, due to the admission by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that his deportation and subsequent imprisonment were a result of an “administrative error.” For weeks, however, both the Trump administration and the Salvadoran government insisted they were powerless to return Abrego Garcia to the United States.

After months of protests from Abrego Garcia’s Maryland community and legal challenges from his lawyers, the father of three was finally returned to the US. But there was a caveat: He would face criminal charges related to an immigrant-smuggling operation that the Department of Justice alleges Abrego Garcia took part in as a member of MS-13.

Though there are plenty of reasons to cast doubt on the charges made against Abrego Garcia, in the seven articles published in the wake of his return, the New York Times (6/6/25, 6/6/25, 6/6/25, 6/8/25) and Wall Street Journal (6/6/25, 6/7/25, 6/8/25) present them mostly at face value. Given that the publications are the top two largest newspapers in America, their deficient coverage of one of the most important immigration cases of the second Trump administration is noteworthy.

Unreliable sources

The main New York Times story (6/6/25) on Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s return from El Salvador consists largely of Trump administration officials accusing him of crimes—with no quotes from Abrego Garcia’s lawyers contesting those charges. 

Only two of the articles (New York Times, 6/6/25; Wall Street Journal, 6/7/25) mentioned that the charges against Abrego Garcia stem from recent information supplied by jailhouse informants.  The articles failed to note that such testimony is notoriously unreliable, as documented by research, and frequently results in wrongful convictions.

Though there are six unnamed co-conspirators listed in the indictment, it appears as though the majority of the charges rely on the testimony of one or two of these individuals. Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, one of Abrego Garcia’s attorneys, told CNN’s Erin Burnett (6/6/25), “The very first question I’m going to be asking is, what were those two people offered to make up these really fantastic, hyperbolic allegations against Mr. Abrego Garcia?”

The DoJ’s stonewalling of Abrego Garcia’s lawyers in his civil case should raise further suspicion about why these jailhouse informants decided to come forward now, despite the DoJ’s allegation that Abrego Garcia has been involved with immigrant smuggling since 2016. None of the articles mention that Abrego Garcia had been attending yearly check-ins with ICE since 2019, and that these allegations had not come up during the six years that ICE had been monitoring him, nor were they mentioned during the trial that resulted in a judge granting him withholding of removal.

In their New York Times piece (6/6/25), reporters Devlin Barrett, Alan Feuer and Glenn Thrush dedicated two paragraphs to a 2022 traffic stop involving Abrego Garcia that the indictment cites as evidence of a smuggling operation, while curiously omitting the fact that he was not charged with a crime at the time of the incident.

None of the articles mentioned that Abrego Garcia had been in ICE detention for seven months in 2019, at the same time that the DoJ alleges he was leading an immigrant smuggling operation. Also missing in the Times and Journal’s coverage was the fact that the police officer who authored the 2019 report was later terminated for sharing “sensitive and confidential information about an ongoing police investigation with a commercial sex worker” (USA Today, 4/17/25).

 Sidelining advocates

The Wall Street Journal (6/6/25) published several paragraphs alleging crimes by Abrego Garcia with no rebuttal.

Two articles omitted comments from Abrego Garcia’s legal team altogether (New York Times 6/6/25; Wall Street Journal, 6/7/25). While the other articles do quote Abrego Garcia’s lawyers, they cited them only about his initial deportation and his return, but not about the criminal charges. Three articles (New York Times, 6/6/25, 6/6/25; Wall Street Journal, 6/6/25) include the same sole quote from Andrew Rossman, another one of Abrego Garcia’s lawyers:

Today’s action proves what we’ve known all along—that the administration had the ability to bring him back and just refused to do so…. It’s now up to our judicial system to see that Mr. Abrego Garcia receives the due process that the Constitution guarantees to all persons.

When given the chance to comment on the criminal allegations, Abrego Garcia’s lawyers have been clear that these charges are “preposterous.” Sandoval-Moshenberg told CBS affiliate WUSA9 (6/6/25), “What happened today is the exact opposite of due process, because due process means the opportunity to defend yourself before you’re punished, not afterwards.”

Another one of his lawyers, Chris Newman, who is also the legal director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, told WUSA9 (6/6/25) in the same conference:

This administration has shown amazing disregard for the Constitution, for due process and for basic decency. It is engaged in an unprecedented campaign of disinformation, defamation and cruelty directed at Kilmar’s family.

Another member of Abrego Garcia’s legal team, Brian Murray, told MSNBC’s Alex Witt (6/7/25), “Anyone who’s been looking at this case and has been watching this play out would agree this is a political and vindictive prosecution.”

In the days since Abrego Garcia’s release, his legal team has frequently made themselves available to media to speak about the criminal charges and ongoing constitutional issues surrounding his case. At a time when immigrants’ rights to free speech are under attack, the New York Times and Wall Street Journal chose to sideline the voices of their advocates.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Emma Llano.

Information and images circulated on social media platform TikTok showed Col. To Long had been appointed as director of the ministry’s Department of External Security at a June 4 ceremony.

Experts said Long’s promotion is the latest in a series of appointments by Lam to consolidate power.

Lam’s own rise was “built on the strength of the police force,” making their support crucial as he seeks another term as general secretary of the Communist Party, Nguyen Van Dai, an experienced observer of Vietnamese politics, told Radio Free Asia.

State media has not announced Long’s appointment.

The Ministry of Public Security often eschews public announcements about promotions and appointments. Previously, Maj. Gen. Mai Hoang was appointed as director of the Ho Chi Minh City Police Department without any coverage in state media.

It’s also unusual for top figures in the Communist Party to disclose information about their family members. According to BBC Vietnamese, local news outlets have been instructed not to report on the developments in order to avoid drawing public attention.

Long, 43, maintains a low public profile. After several years of overseas study, he joined the ministry and in February was seen attending a Ministry of Public Security meeting on peacekeeping operations.

In June 2024, state media identified him as deputy chief of the Ministry’s Permanent Office for United Nations Peacekeeping.

A Hanoi-based analyst said authorities are wary of public discussion of the appointment as many members of the leadership come from the northern province of Hung Yen, the birthplace of To Lam. The analyst requested anonymity to comment on the sensitive topic.

To Lam, who became party chief in August 2024, began his career in public security in 1979 and rose to become the country’s top security official in 2016. Since assuming power, he has stacked the police apparatus with allies and people from Hung Yen.

Lam has elevated allies to key security positions, appointing Luong Tam Quang as minister of public security and Pham The Tung as head of the Investigative Security Agency. He has also installed new police chiefs in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam’s two largest cities. Several police generals from Hung Yen province have similarly been promoted to senior Communist Party roles.

These appointments come ahead of the ruling party’s National Congress in January 2026, where delegates will elect a new leadership team for the next five-year term.

Edited by Tenzin Pema.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Truong Son for RFA Vietnamese.

Israel has launched a large-scale military attack on Iran, killing top military officials, nuclear scientists and civilians in the deadliest attack on the country in decades. Iran has launched drones at Israel in response. The unprovoked attack, which Israel described as a “preemptive strike,” comes just days before scheduled nuclear talks between Iran and the United States. Iranian-born analyst Trita Parsi says the Trump administration appears to have been coordinating with Israel for “negotiating leverage” in an attempt to force Iran to “capitulate” on nuclear disarmament. Whether this gambit will succeed remains to be seen, though Parsi and Israeli journalist Gideon Levy say Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is betting it does not. Netanyahu has long indicated a willingness to wage war with Iran and likely hopes to draw the United States into a major regional conflict. “This was the project of his life,” says Levy.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

The United States has denounced sanctions by Britain and allies — including New Zealand and Australia — against Israeli far-right ministers, saying they should focus instead on the Palestinian armed group Hamas.

New Zealand has banned two Israeli politicians from travelling to the country because of comments about the war in Gaza that Foreign Minister Winston Peters says “actively undermine peace and security”.

New Zealand joins Australia, Canada, the UK and Norway in imposing the sanctions on Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.

• READ MORE: UK and allies to sanction far-right Israeli ministers Ben-Gvir, Smotrich
• Why Israel’s ‘humane’ propaganda is such a sinister facade
• Other Israeli war on Gaza reports

Peters said they were targeted towards two individuals, rather than the Israeli government.

“Our action today is not against the Israeli people, who suffered immeasurably on October 7 [2023] and who have continued to suffer through Hamas’ ongoing refusal to release all hostages.

“Nor is it designed to sanction the wider Israeli government.”

The two ministers were “using their leadership positions to actively undermine peace and security and remove prospects for a two-state solution”, Peters said.

‘Severely and deliberately undermined’ peace
“Ministers Smotrich and Ben-Gvir have severely and deliberately undermined that by personally advocating for the annexation of Palestinian land and the expansion of illegal settlements, while inciting violence and forced displacement.”

The sanctions were consistent with New Zealand’s approach to other foreign policy issues, he said.

“New Zealand has also targeted travel bans on politicians and military leaders advocating violence or undermining democracy in other countries in the past, including Russia, Belarus and Myanmar.”

New Zealand had been a long-standing supporter of a two-state solution, Peters said, which the international community was also overwhelmingly in favour of.

“New Zealand’s consistent and historic position has been that Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories are a violation of international law. Settlements and associated violence undermine the prospects for a viable two-state solution,” he said.

“The crisis in Gaza has made returning to a meaningful political process all the more urgent. New Zealand will continue to advocate for an end to the current conflict and an urgent restart of the Middle East Peace Process.”

‘Outrageous’, says Israel
Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said the move was “outrageous” and the government would hold a special meeting early next week to decide how to respond to the “unacceptable decision”.

His comments were made while attending the inauguration of a new Israeli settlement on Palestinian land.

Peters is currently in Europe for the sixth Pacific-France Summit hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron in Nice.

US State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce told reporters: “We find that extremely unhelpful. It will do nothing to get us closer to a ceasefire in Gaza.”

Britain, Canada, Norway, New Zealand and Australia “should focus on the real culprit, which is Hamas”, she said of the sanctions.

“We remain concerned about any step that would further isolate Israel from the international community.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

China announced Friday it was replacing its top official in Hong Kong who was regarded as a symbol of Beijing’s hardline approach toward the territory since 2019 pro-democracy protests.

China’s Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security said it was removing Zheng Yanxiong from several key positions including as director of the Liaison Office of the Central People’s Government in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.

Zheng was viewed as the Chinese Communist Party’s top envoy in Hong Kong and a key liaison with Hong Kong’s chief executive, John Lee, who was appointed by China’s State Council as the head of the Hong Kong government.

No reason was given Friday for removing Zheng and if he was being appointed to another position.

Zheng was dispatched by Beijing to Hong Kong in 2019 to oversee the crackdown on the protests, before his appointment in 2020 as the first head of the Office for Safeguarding National Security in Hong Kong. In 2023, he was promoted to director of the Liaison Office - the position he’s now vacating.

Throughout his tenure, he aggressively promoted the enforcement of Hong Kong’s National Security Law as Beijing looked to curtail the freedoms that had set the city apart from the mainland since the 1997 handover from British control. His tenure saw tighter controls over the press, academia, and civil society — drawing widespread international criticism.

In 2020, the U.S. Treasury Department imposed sanctions on Zheng under the Hong Kong Autonomy Act for undermining the city’s autonomy, banning him from entering the United States.

In 2023, Zheng took the unprecedented step of reviewing a Hong Kong police graduation ceremony, warning new officers of “hostile foreign forces” trying to make a comeback. Analysts said that was intended to assert Beijing’s firm control over security in the territory.

Friday’s announcement said China’s State Council has now appointed Zhou Ji to succeed Zheng as director of the Liaison Office and national security adviser in Hong Kong.

Zhou previously served as executive deputy director of the Hong Kong and Macao Work Office of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee and of the State Council’s Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office.

Edited by Mat Pennington.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Cantonese.

“The WHYNOT team’s bold effort to document this harrowing journey demonstrates the risks Chinese were willing to take to escape repression,” said RFA President Bay Fang. “Though this recognition comes as RFA stands on the brink of closure, the award recognizes WHYNOT’s journalistic excellence as we fight to continue our work.”

Zou Xian (走线) or “Walk the Line’’ became a viral term on Chinese social media term, as a surge of migrants fled the Peoples Republic of China amid strict pandemic policies, economic instability, and human rights abuses. It is estimated that more than 37,000 Chinese attempted this perilous trip in 2023.

Walk the Line, which was released on December 17, 2024, was WHYNOT’s first feature-length documentary. The global digital brand, which launched in 2021, garnered numerous top honors for its journalism and news design, including a 2023 National Murrow Award, a Telly, Society of News Design Award, and multiple awards from the New York Festivals. WHYNOT stopped production of new content on March 21 following the Trump administration’s suspension of funding. The documentary was aired on Taiwan public media with multiple screenings, including on Kinmen Island, which is just 6 miles (10km) from Mainland China.

At present, more than 90 percent of RFA’s staff and journalists, including the team behind this project, are on unpaid leave, as USAGM continues to withhold RFA’s Congressionally appropriated funding. On May 28, the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit allowed the preliminary injunction in Radio Free Asia v. United States to remain in place while the case proceeds. The ruling requires that USAGM must continue disbursing congressionally appropriated funds to RFA while the court considers the merits of the case.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA.

The topic took center stage during the foreign policy and national security portion of the debate, when Lee underscored the importance of dialogue and peaceful coexistence with Pyongyang. Stressing that South Korea’s defense budget is double that of the North’s, he argued for diplomacy.

However, his remarks provided an opening for conservative rival Kim Moon-soo of the People Power Party and centrist Lee Jun-seok of the New Reform Party, who launched coordinated attacks highlighting Lee’s alleged “North Korea risk.”

Kim accused Lee of being at the center of a scandal involving illegal funds sent to North Korea.

“Despite U.N. sanctions, the issue of illegal remittances to the North have surfaced. On May 9, president of the Korean American Association in Washington officially filed a complaint with the U.S. Treasury, State Department, and U.N. Security Council, accusing Lee of secretly transferring 10 billion South Korean won (US$8 million) to North Korea,” said Kim.

South Korean prosecutors allege that between 2019 and 2020, during his tenure as governor of Gyeonggi Province, Lee directed the Ssangbangwool Group to transfer US$8 million to North Korea, including US$5 million intended for a smart farm project and US$3 million to facilitate a prospective visit by Lee to Pyongyang.

Lee’s former deputy governor, Lee Hwa-young, was convicted and sentenced to nine-and-a-half years in prison for his involvement in the scheme, which encompassed bribery and unauthorized fund transfers to North Korea.

Lee denies any wrongdoing and says the charges are politically motivated.

He contends that the prosecution’s case lacks merit and is an attempt to undermine his political career. The case is ongoing.

“That money is now feeding the Kim family and returning to us as nuclear threats. I will pursue a transparent and upright inter-Korean relationship,” Kim said.

(Kim Min-hee/AFP)

Lee Jun-seok followed up by questioning Lee about his campaign pledge to relocate shipping giant HMM’s headquarters to the city of Busan.

When Lee identified HMM’s predecessor as Hyundai Merchant Marine, Lee Jun-seok pointedly noted that the company had once engaged in North Korean projects that cost it some $200 million – an affair that many would consider a major scandal today.

“Regardless of domestic court rulings, the Ssangbangwool remittance case could make Lee subject to U.S. sanctions. Even if he becomes president, U.S. immigration law Section 212 could bar his entry,” said Lee Jun-seok.

Lee pushed back during the debate.

“The cash transfer had nothing to do with me. There are even rumors the funds were used for gambling after stock manipulation investigations began. I believe the truth will be revealed,” he argued.

While the allegations dominated the evening, Lee found some support from Kwon Young-guk of the Democratic Labour Party. Kwon criticized North Korea’s psychological provocations along border areas and highlighted residents’ suffering.

“I completely sympathize. Taking a hardline stance alone isn’t the solution,” Lee said.

Lee previously said he believed the current strategy toward the North has tipped too far toward confrontation.

Relations between the two countries since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War have waxed and waned for decades between unremitting hostility and attempts at rapprochement.

While acknowledging the “hostile” nature of current inter-Korean relations, he argued in multiple media interviews that South Korea’s strong military and alliances – particularly with the U.S. and Japan – already provide sufficient deterrence.

Instead, he insisted on “communication and engagement” with the North, signaling a return to the approach of previous Democratic Party governments.

On broader foreign policy, the candidates diverged. Lee reiterated support for the U.S.-South Korea alliance but warned against unnecessary hostilities with China and Russia.

“We must not overlook the relationship between China and Russia, and there is no need to be unnecessarily hostile as we are now,” said Lee.

Critics of Lee have accused him of adopting a “subservient” stance toward China.

Lee stirred controversy during his 2022 campaign by saying: “Why do we care what happens to the Taiwan Strait? Shouldn’t we just take care of ourselves?”

He later clarified that his point was about diplomatic pragmatism and that South Korea should avoid worsening relations with China.

Kim called for strengthening nuclear deterrence under the U.S. alliance, while Lee Jun-seok proposed merging the Foreign and Unification Ministries and appointing a “Deputy Prime Minister for Security.”

Kwon Young-guk went further, vowing to “engineer the moment the U.S. and North Korea establish diplomatic relations.”

A Wednesday survey from Realmeter, a South Korean polling organization, showed support for Lee at 49.2%, followed by Kim with 36.8%. The margin of error was 3.1% points at a 95% confidence level. Lee Jun-seok was running third with 10.3% support.

The poll serves as the final indicator of voter sentiment because the publication of opinion polls will be banned from Wednesday under election law.

Edited by Mike Firn.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Taejun Kang for RFA.

Fiji lawyer Nazhat Shameem Khan has been elevated to the top prosecutorial position at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague.

The Office of the Prosecutor at ICC has announced that deputy prosecutors Nazhat Shameem Khan and Mame Mandiaye Niang have taken over leadership following chief prosecutor Karim AA Khan KC’s temporary leave of absence.

Khan stepped aside on May 16, 2025, pending the outcome of a UN Office of Internal Oversight Services investigation into alleged misconduct.

• READ MORE: ICC prosecutor to step aside until probe ends

The ICC states the deputy prosecutors will continue to rely on the support and collaboration of the Rome Statute community, and all partners, in carrying the office’s mandate forward.

In 2014, Nazhat Khan was appointed Fiji’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva and Vienna, and to Switzerland and took up the ICC post in 2021.

Pacific Media Watch notes that Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan had issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes in Gaza, and also against three Hamas leaders who have been killed in the war on Gaza. In contrast to most of the world’s condemnation and a majority of UN members, Fiji supports Israel and its main backer, United States, in the war.

Republished from The Fiji Times with permission.

Statement by the Presidency of the Assembly of States Parties regarding the situation of the Office of the Prosecutor #RomeStatute #ICC #ASP pic.twitter.com/Tq1eD5N36B

— Paivi Kaukoranta (@PASPKaukoranta) May 18, 2025

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

Familia Torres is already installing irrigation at its vineyards in Spain and California and is planting vines on land at higher altitudes as it tries to adapt to more extreme conditions.

“Irrigation is the future. We do not rely on the weather,” said its 83-year-old president, Miguel Torres. “I don’t know how long we can stay here making good wines, maybe 20 or 30 years, I don’t know. Climate change is changing all the circumstances.”

The family business has been making wine in Catalonia since 1870, but Torres said: “In 30 to 50 years’ time, maybe we have to stop viniculture here.

“Tourists are very important for Catalonia and we are very close to Barcelona. This area could be for activity for tourists but viniculture, I don’t think is going to be here.”

The group, which invests 11 percent of its profits every year to combatting and adapting to the climate crisis, may instead have to move at least some of its vineyards “more to the west because it is cooler and we have to have water.”

Read Next

Mango farms where? Climate change is scrambling where the world’s food is grown.

Ayurella Horn-Muller

Familia Torres has more than 1,000 hectares of vineyards in Catalonia, mainly in the Penedès region, as well as sites in other parts of Spain, Chile, and California.

It is now expanding to higher altitudes, producing grapes in Tremp, in the Catalan Pre-Pyrenees, at 950 meters, and acquiring plots in Benabarre, in the Aragonese Pyrenees, at 1,100 meters, where it is still too cold to grow vines. It is also using a variety of techniques to reduce or reuse water in its growing and processing practices.

That came after the family recorded a 1 degree Celsius rise in the average temperature in the Penedès region over the past 40 years. The change is causing the harvest to take place 10 days earlier than it did a few decades ago, while the family employs a variety of techniques to slow the ripening of the grapes to protect the right qualities for winemaking.

Torres’ comments come after a difficult few years for European vineyards. He said production was down as much as 50 percent in some of the winemaker’s regions in 2023 — “the worst year I have ever seen” — and still down on historic averages last year amid extreme heat and drought.

This year so far has been better — amid winter and spring rains and wider use of irrigation — but Torres said he was concerned that damper conditions bring the threat of mildew.

Read Next

Why chocolate is ridiculously expensive right now

Ayurella Horn-Muller

“In the future if we want to have more continuity in the harvest we have to stop the warming,” he said. “The warming is killing the trade.”

The additional costs of irrigation are eating into profits in a highly competitive market with potential threats from U.S. import tariffs on top of additional duties imposed on wine in the U.K. in recent years, as well as a new packaging tax that is particularly high for glass bottles and jars.

Torres said exports to the U.K. have fallen by as much as 10 percent and absorbing some of the cost increases has further knocked profits.

“We have no profit in exports to the U.K., that is the reality. Hundreds of thousands of English people come to Spain on holiday and know the brand. We have to keep it alive in the U.K.”

He said Torres was considering bottling some of its cheaper wines in the U.K. in order to reduce cost — as it is less costly to import in bulk in tankers.

“At least by next year we should be already importing that way in the U.K.,” Torres said. “British consumers are paying more for wine and there is not another possibility [to importing]. Production in the U.K. is very little.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Top winemaker ‘may have to leave its Spanish vineyards due to climate crisis’ on May 24, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Sarah Butler, The Guardian.

Familia Torres is already installing irrigation at its vineyards in Spain and California and is planting vines on land at higher altitudes as it tries to adapt to more extreme conditions.

“Irrigation is the future. We do not rely on the weather,” said its 83-year-old president, Miguel Torres. “I don’t know how long we can stay here making good wines, maybe 20 or 30 years, I don’t know. Climate change is changing all the circumstances.”

The family business has been making wine in Catalonia since 1870, but Torres said: “In 30 to 50 years’ time, maybe we have to stop viniculture here.

“Tourists are very important for Catalonia and we are very close to Barcelona. This area could be for activity for tourists but viniculture, I don’t think is going to be here.”

The group, which invests 11 percent of its profits every year to combatting and adapting to the climate crisis, may instead have to move at least some of its vineyards “more to the west because it is cooler and we have to have water.”

Read Next

Mango farms where? Climate change is scrambling where the world’s food is grown.

Ayurella Horn-Muller

Familia Torres has more than 1,000 hectares of vineyards in Catalonia, mainly in the Penedès region, as well as sites in other parts of Spain, Chile, and California.

It is now expanding to higher altitudes, producing grapes in Tremp, in the Catalan Pre-Pyrenees, at 950 meters, and acquiring plots in Benabarre, in the Aragonese Pyrenees, at 1,100 meters, where it is still too cold to grow vines. It is also using a variety of techniques to reduce or reuse water in its growing and processing practices.

That came after the family recorded a 1 degree Celsius rise in the average temperature in the Penedès region over the past 40 years. The change is causing the harvest to take place 10 days earlier than it did a few decades ago, while the family employs a variety of techniques to slow the ripening of the grapes to protect the right qualities for winemaking.

Torres’ comments come after a difficult few years for European vineyards. He said production was down as much as 50 percent in some of the winemaker’s regions in 2023 — “the worst year I have ever seen” — and still down on historic averages last year amid extreme heat and drought.

This year so far has been better — amid winter and spring rains and wider use of irrigation — but Torres said he was concerned that damper conditions bring the threat of mildew.

Read Next

Why chocolate is ridiculously expensive right now

Ayurella Horn-Muller

“In the future if we want to have more continuity in the harvest we have to stop the warming,” he said. “The warming is killing the trade.”

The additional costs of irrigation are eating into profits in a highly competitive market with potential threats from U.S. import tariffs on top of additional duties imposed on wine in the U.K. in recent years, as well as a new packaging tax that is particularly high for glass bottles and jars.

Torres said exports to the U.K. have fallen by as much as 10 percent and absorbing some of the cost increases has further knocked profits.

“We have no profit in exports to the U.K., that is the reality. Hundreds of thousands of English people come to Spain on holiday and know the brand. We have to keep it alive in the U.K.”

He said Torres was considering bottling some of its cheaper wines in the U.K. in order to reduce cost — as it is less costly to import in bulk in tankers.

“At least by next year we should be already importing that way in the U.K.,” Torres said. “British consumers are paying more for wine and there is not another possibility [to importing]. Production in the U.K. is very little.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Top winemaker ‘may have to leave its Spanish vineyards due to climate crisis’ on May 24, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Sarah Butler, The Guardian.

World Press Freedom Day is a poignant reminder that journalists and media workers are essential for a healthy, functioning society — including the Pacific.

Held annually on May 3, World Press Freedom Day prompts governments about the need to respect press freedom, while serving as a day of reflection among media professionals about issues of press freedom and professional ethics.

Just as importantly, World Press Freedom Day is a day of support for media which are targets for the restraint, or abolition, of press freedom.

• READ MORE: New deal for journalism – RSF’s 11 steps to ‘reconstruct’ global media
• Rabuka salutes Fiji media but warns against taking freedom for granted
• NZ fares well in latest RSF press freedom index as authoritarian regimes stifle Asia-Pacific media
• RSF 2025 World Press Freedom rankings
• RSF World Press Freedom Index 2025: economic fragility a leading threat to press freedom

It is also a day of remembrance for those journalists who lost their lives in the pursuit of a story.

According to Reporters Without Borders, the press freedom situation has worsened in the Asia-Pacific region, where 26 of the 32 countries and territories have seen their scores fall in the 2024 World Press Freedom Index.

The region’s dictatorial governments have been tightening their hold over news and information with increasing vigour.

No country in the Asia-Pacific region is among the Index’s top 15 this year, with Aotearoa New Zealand falling six places to 19. [Editor’s note: these figures are outdated — from last year’s 2024 Index. Go to the 2025 index here).

Although experiencing challenges to the right to information, other regional democracies such as Timor-Leste (20th), Samoa (22nd) and Taiwan (27th) have also retained their roles as press freedom models.

Storytelling a vital art
Storytelling is inherent in Pacific peoples, and it is vital this art is nurtured, and our narrative is heard loud and clear — a priority goal for Pacific Cooperation Broadcasting Limited (PCBL) and Pasifika TV.

Chief executive officer of PCBL Natasha Meleisea says Pacific-led storytelling is critical to regional identity, but like all media around the world, it faces all sorts of challenges and issues.

“Some of those current concerns include the need for journalism to remain independent, as well as the constructive use of technology, notably AI and that it supports the truth and does not undermine it,” Meleisea said.

Forums such as the Pacific Media Summit are critical to addressing, and finding a collective response to the various challenges, she added.

At the biennial Pacific Media Summit, staged last year in Niue, the theme centred around Pacific media’s navigation of press freedom, AI and geopolitical interests, and the need to pave a resilient pathway forward.

Resilient media sector
Meleisea said some solutions to these issues were being implemented, to provide a resilient and sustainable media sector in the Pacific.

“It is a matter of getting creative, and looking at alternative platforms for content, as well as seeking international funding and building an infrastructure which supports these new goals,” she says.

“There is no doubt journalists and media workers are essential for a healthy, functioning society and when done right, journalism can hold those in power to account, amplify underrepresented stories, bolster democratic ideals, and spread crucial information to the public.

“With press freedom increasingly under threat, we must protect Pacific story sovereignty, and our voice at the table.”

Republished from Pasifika TV strategic communications.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

Image by Kelly Sikkema.

America desperately needs a united front to restrain the wrecking ball of the Trump regime. While outraged opposition has been visible and vocal, it remains a far cry from developing a capacity to protect what’s left of democracy in the United States.

With the administration in its fourth month, the magnitude of the damage underway is virtually impossible for any individual to fully grasp. But none of us need a complete picture to understand that the federal government is now in the clutches of massively cruel and antidemocratic forces that have no intention of letting go.

Donald Trump’s second presidential term has already given vast power to the most virulent aspects of the nation’s far-right political culture. Its flagrant goals include serving oligarchy, dismantling civil liberties, and wielding government as a weapon against academic freedom, civil rights, economic security, environmental protection, public health, workers’ rights, and so much more.

The nonstop Trumpist assaults mean that ongoing noncooperation and active resistance will be essential. This is no time for what Martin Luther King, Jr., called “the paralysis of analysis.” Yet the past hugely matters. Repetition compulsions within the Democratic Party, including among self-described liberals and progressives, unwittingly smoothed the path for Trump’s return to power. Many of the same patterns, with undue deference to party leaders and their narrow perspectives, are now hampering the potential to create real leverage against MAGA madness.

“Fiscal Conservatism and Social Liberalism”

Today, more than three decades after the “New Democrats” triumphed when Bill Clinton won the presidency in 1992, an observation by Washington Post economics reporter Hobart Rowen days after that victory is still worth pondering: “Fiscal conservatism and social liberalism proved to be an effective campaign formula.” While campaigning with a call for moderate public investment, Clinton offered enough assurances to business elites to gain much of their support. Once elected, he quickly filled his economic team with corporate lawyers, business-friendly politicians, lobbyists, and fixers on loan from Wall Street boardrooms.

That Democratic formula proved to be a winning one — for Republicans. Two years after Clinton became president, the GOP gained control of both the House and Senate. Republicans maintained a House majority for the next 12 years and a Senate majority for 10 of them.

A similar pattern set in after the next Democrat moved into the White House. Taking office in January 2009 amid the Great Recession, Barack Obama continued with predecessor George W. Bush’s “practice of bailing out the bankers while ignoring the anguish their toxic mortgage packages caused the rest of us,” as journalist Robert Scheer pointed out. By the time Obama was most of the way through his presidency, journalist David Dayen wrote, he had enabled “the dispossession of at least 5.2 million U.S. homeowner families, the explosion of inequality, and the largest ruination of middle-class wealth in nearly a century.”

Two years into Obama’s presidency, his party lost the House and didn’t regain it for eight years. When he won reelection in 2012, Republicans captured the Senate and kept control of it throughout his second term.

During Obama’s eight years as president, the Democrats also lost upward of 900 seats in state legislatures. Along the way, they lost control of 30 legislative chambers, while the Republican share of seats went from 44% to 56%. So GOP state legislators were well-positioned to gerrymander electoral districts to their liking after the 2020 census, making it possible for Republicans to just barely (but powerfully) gain and then retain their stranglehold on the House of Representatives after the 2022 and 2024 elections.

Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Kamala Harris in 2024 ran for president while sticking to updated versions of “fiscal conservatism, social liberalism,” festooning their campaigns with the usual trappings of ultra-mild populist rhetoric. Much of the media establishment approved, as they checked the standard Democratic boxes. But opting to avoid genuine progressive populism on the campaign trail meant enabling Trump to pose as a better choice for the economic interests of the working class.

Mutual Abandonment

The party’s orientation prevents its presidential nominees from making a credible pitch to be champions of working people. “It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them,” Senator Bernie Sanders tweeted immediately after the 2024 election. “While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change.”

But there’s little evidence that the party leadership wants significant change, beyond putting themselves back in power. Midway through April, the homepage of the Democratic Party seemed like a snapshot of an institution still disconnected from the angst and anger of the electorate. A pop-up that instantly obscured all else on the screen featured a drawing of a snarling Donald Trump next to the headline: “We’re SUING Trump over two illegal executive orders.” Underneath, the featured message proclaimed: “We’re rolling up our sleeves and organizing for a brighter, more equal future. Together, we will elect Democrats up and down the ballot.” A schedule of town halls in dozens of regions was nice enough, but a true sense of urgency, let alone emergency, was notably lacking.

Overall, the party seems stuck in the mud of the past, still largely mired in the Joe Biden era and wary of opening the door too wide for the more progressive grassroots base that provides millions of small donations and volunteers to get out the vote (as long as they’re genuinely inspired to do so). President Biden’s unspeakably tragic refusal to forego running for reelection until far too late was enabled by top-to-bottom party dynamics and a follow-the-leader conformity that are still all too real.

On no issue has the party leadership been more tone-deaf — with more disastrous electoral and policy results — than the war in Gaza. The refusal of all but a few members of Congress to push President Biden to stop massively arming the Israeli military for its slaughter there caused a steep erosion of support from the usual Democratic voters, as polling at the time and afterward indicated. The party’s moral collapse on Gaza helped to crater Kamala Harris’s vote totals among alienated voters reluctant to cast their ballots for what they saw as a war party, a perception especially acute among young people and notable among African Americans.

The Fact of Oligarchy

Pandering to potential big donors is apt to seem like just another day in elected office. A story about California Governor Gavin Newsom, often touted as a major Democratic contender for president in 2028, is in the category of “you can’t make this stuff up.” As reported by Politico this spring, he “is making sure California’s business elite can call him, maybe. Roughly 100 leaders of state-headquartered companies have received a curious package in recent months: a prepaid, inexpensive cell phone… programmed with Newsom’s digits and accompanied by notes from the governor himself. ‘If you ever need anything, I’m a phone call away,’ read one note to a prominent tech firm CEO, printed on an official letterhead, along with a hand-scrawled addendum urging the executive to reach out… It was Newsom’s idea, a representative said, and has already yielded some ‘valuable interactions.’”

If, however, you’re waiting for Newsom to send prepaid cell phones to activists working for social justice, telling them, “If you ever need anything, I’m a phone call away,” count on waiting forever.

The dominance of super-wealthy party patrons that Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have been railing against at “Fighting Oligarchy” rallies has been coalescing for a long time. “In the American republic,” wrote Walter Karp for Harper’s magazine shortly before his death in 1989, “the fact of oligarchy is the most dreaded knowledge of all, and our news keeps that knowledge from us.” Now, in the age of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg, the iron heel of mega-capital is at work swiftly crushing democratic structures, while top Democrats race to stay within shouting distance of the oligarchs.

A paradoxical challenge for the left is that it must take part in building a united front that includes anti-Trump corporatists and militarists, even while fighting against corporatism and militarism. What’s needed is not capitulation or ultra-leftism, but instead a dialectical approach that recognizes the twin imperatives of defeating an increasingly fascistic Republican Party while working to gain enough power to implement truly progressive agendas.

For those agendas, electoral campaigns and their candidates should be subsets of social movements, not the other way around. Still, here’s one crystal-clear lesson of history: it’s crucial who sits in the Oval Office and controls Congress. Now more than ever.

Fascism Would Stop Us All

A horrible reality of this moment: a fascist takeover of the government is within reach — and, if completed, any possibility of fulfilling a progressive agenda would go out the Overton window. The words of the young Black Panther Party leader Fred Hampton, murdered in 1969 by the Chicago police (colluding with the FBI), ring profoundly true today: “Nothing is more important than stopping fascism, because fascism will stop us all.”

But much of the 2025 Democratic Party leadership seems willing to once again pursue the tried-and-failed strategy of banking on Trump to undo himself. Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer, the party leaders in the House and Senate, have distinctly tilted in that direction, as if heeding strategist James Carville’s declaration that Democrats should not try to impede Trump’s rampage against the structures of democracy.

“With no clear leader to voice our opposition and no control in any branch of government, it’s time for Democrats to embark on the most daring political maneuver in the history of our party: roll over and play dead,” Carville wrote in late February. “Allow the Republicans to crumble beneath their own weight and make the American people miss us.” (Evidently impressed with his political acumen, the editors of the New York Times published the op-ed piece with that advice only four months after printing an op-ed he wrote in late October under this headline: “Three Reasons I’m Certain Kamala Harris Will Win.”)

As for the Democratic National Committee, it probably had nowhere to go but up in the wake of the chairmanship of Jaime Harrison, who for four years dutifully did President Biden’s bidding. Now, with no Democratic president, the new DNC chair, Ken Martin, has significant power to guide the direction of the party.

In early April, I informed Martin that my colleagues and I at RootsAction were planning a petition drive for the full DNC to hold an emergency meeting. “The value of such a meeting seems clear for many reasons,” I wrote, “including the polled low regard for the Democratic Party and the need to substantively dispel the wide perception that the party is failing to adequately respond to the current extraordinary perils.” Martin replied with a cordial text affirming that the schedule for the 448-member DNC to convene remains the same as usual — twice a year — with the next meeting set for August.

The petition, launched in mid-April (co-sponsored by RootsAction and Progressive Democrats of America), urged the DNC to “convene an emergency meeting of all its members — fully open to the public — as soon as possible… Business as usual must give way to truly bold action that mobilizes against the autocracy that Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and their cronies are further entrenching every day. The predatory, extreme, and dictatorial actions of the Trump administration call for an all-out commensurate response, which so far has been terribly lacking from the Democratic Party.”

No matter what, at this truly pivotal time, we must never give up.

As Stanley Kunitz wrote during the height of the Vietnam War:

In a murderous time
   the heart breaks and breaks
      and lives by breaking.

It is necessary to go
   through dark and deeper dark
      and not to turn.

While reasons for pessimism escalate, I often think of how on target my RootsAction colleague India Walton was in a meeting when she said, “The only hope is in the struggle.”

This piece first appeared on TomDispatch.

The post Top Democrats Have Been Enabling Trump appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Norman Solomon.

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The attacks on Judge John Barberis in the fall of 2016 appeared on his personal Facebook page. They impugned his ethics, criticized a recent ruling and branded him as a “politician” with the “LOWEST rating for a judge in Illinois.”

Barberis, a state court judge in an Illinois county across the Mississippi River from St. Louis, was presiding over a nasty legal battle for control over the Eagle Forum, the vaunted grassroots group founded by Phyllis Schlafly, matriarch of the anti-feminist movement. The case pitted Schlafly’s youngest daughter against three of her sons, almost like a Midwest version of the HBO program “Succession” (without the obscenities).

At the heart of the dispute — and the lead defendant in the case — was Ed Martin, a lawyer by training and a political operative by trade. In Missouri, where he was based, Martin was widely known as an irrepressible gadfly who trafficked in incendiary claims and trailed controversy wherever he went. Today, he’s the interim U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C., and one of the most prominent members of the Trump Justice Department.

In early 2015, Schlafly had selected Martin to succeed her as head of the Eagle Forum, a crowning moment in Martin’s career. Yet after just a year in charge, the group’s board fired Martin. Schlafly’s youngest daughter, Anne Schlafly Cori, and a majority of the Eagle Forum board filed a lawsuit to bar Martin from any association with the organization.

After Barberis dealt Martin a major setback in the case in October 2016, the attacks began. The Facebook user who posted them, Priscilla Gray, had worked in several roles for Schlafly but was not a party to the case, and her comments read like those of an aggrieved outsider.

Almost two years later, the truth emerged as Cori’s lawyers gathered evidence for her lawsuit: Behind the posts about the judge was none other than Martin.

ProPublica obtained previously unreported documents filed in the case that show Martin had bought a laptop for Gray and that she subsequently offered to “happily write something to attack this judge.” And when she did, Martin ghostwrote more posts for her to use and coached her on how to make her comments look more “organic.”

“That is not justice but a rigged system,” he urged her to write. “Shame on you and this broken legal system.”

“Call what he did unfair and rigged over and over,” Martin continued.

Martin even urged Gray to message the judge privately. “Go slow and steady,” he advised. “Make it organic.”

Gray appeared to take Martin’s advice. “Private messaging him that sweet line,” she wrote. It was not clear from the court record what, if anything, she wrote at that juncture.

Legal experts told ProPublica that Martin’s conduct in the Eagle Forum case was a clear violation of ethical norms and professional rules. Martin’s behavior, they said, was especially egregious because he was both a defendant in the case and a licensed attorney.

Martin appeared to be “deliberately interfering with a judicial proceeding with the intent to undermine the integrity of the outcome,” said Scott Cummings, a professor of legal ethics at UCLA School of Law. “That’s not OK.”

Martin did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Martin’s legal and political career is dotted with questions about his professional and ethical conduct. But for all his years in the spotlight, some of the most serious concerns about his conduct have remained in the shadows — buried in court filings, overlooked by the press or never reported at all.

His actions have led to more than $600,000 in legal settlements or judgments against Martin or his employers in a handful of cases. In the Eagle Forum lawsuit, another judge found him in civil contempt, citing his “willful disregard” of a court order, and a jury found him liable for defamation and false light against Cori.

Cori also tried to have Martin charged with criminal contempt for his role in orchestrating the posts about Barberis, but a judge declined to take up the request and said she could take the case to the county prosecutor. Cori said her attorney met with a detective; Martin was never charged.

Nonetheless, the emails unearthed by ProPublica were evidence that he had violated Missouri rules for lawyers, according to Kathleen Clark, a legal ethics expert and law professor at Washington University in St. Louis. She said lawyers are prohibited from trying to contact a judge outside of court in a case they are involved in, and they are barred from using a proxy to do something they are barred from doing themselves.

Such a track record might have derailed another lawyer’s career. Not so for Martin.

As a presidential candidate, Donald Trump vowed to use the Justice Department to reward his allies and seek retribution against his perceived enemies. Since taking office, Trump and his appointees have made good on those pledges, pardoning Jan. 6 rioters while targeting Democratic politicians, media critics and private law firms.

As one of its first personnel picks, the Trump administration chose Martin to be interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, one of the premier jobs for a federal prosecutor.

A wide array of former prosecutors, legal observers and others have raised questions about his qualifications for an office known for handling high-profile cases. Martin has no experience as a prosecutor. He has never taken a case to trial, according to his public disclosures. As the acting leader of the largest U.S. attorney’s office in the country, he directs the work of hundreds of lawyers who appear in court on a vast array of subjects, including legal disputes arising out of Congress, national security matters, public corruption and civil rights, as well as homicides, drug trafficking and many other local crimes.

Over the last four years, the office prosecuted more than 1,500 people as part of the massive investigation into the violence at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. While Trump has pardoned the Jan. 6 defendants, Martin has taken action against the prosecutors who brought those cases. In just three months, he has overseen the dismissal of outstanding Jan. 6-related cases, fired more than a dozen prosecutors and opened an investigation into the charging decisions made in those riot cases.

Martin has also investigated Democratic lawmakers and members of the Biden family; forced out the chief of the criminal division after she refused to initiate an investigation desired by Trump appointees citing a lack of evidence, according to her resignation letter; threatened Georgetown University’s law school over its diversity, equity and inclusion policies; and vowed to investigate threats against Department of Government Efficiency employees or “chase” people in the federal government "discovered to have broken the law or even acted simply unethically.”

Martin “has butchered the position, effectively destroying it as a vehicle by which to pursue justice and turning it into a political arm of the current administration,” says an open letter signed by more than 100 former prosecutors who worked in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia under Democratic and Republican presidents.

Already, Martin has been the subject of at least four disciplinary complaints with the D.C. and Missouri bars, of which one was dismissed and the other three appear to be pending. Two of the complaints came after he moved to dismiss charges against a Jan. 6 rioter whom he had previously represented and for whom he was still listed as counsel of record. (The first complaint was dismissed after the D.C. bar’s disciplinary panel concluded that Martin had dismissed the case as a result of Trump’s pardons and so did not violate any rules.) The third was filed in March by a group of Democratic lawmakers in the U.S. Senate. The fourth was submitted last week by a group of former Jan. 6 prosecutors and members of the conservative-leaning Society for the Rule of Law. It argues that Martin’s actions so far “threaten to undermine the integrity of the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the legal profession in the District of Columbia.” If Martin has responded to any of the complaints, those responses have not been made public.

Trump has nominated Martin to run the office permanently. Senate Democrats, meanwhile, have vowed to drag out Martin’s confirmation, demanding a hearing and setting up a fight over one of Trump’s most controversial nominees.

Martin stepped off the elevator into the newsroom of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch newspaper. He was angry at a reporter named Jo Mannies, one of the city’s top political journalists. At a conference table with Mannies and her senior editors, he accused Mannies of being unethical and pressed the paper’s leadership to spike her stories about him, according to interviews.

Mannies said later she believed he was trying to get her fired.

“He was attacking her,” said Pam Maples, who was managing editor at the time. “He was implying she had an ax to grind, that she wanted to get some big story and that she was not being ethical. And when that didn’t get traction, it was more like ‘this isn’t a story.’ It wasn’t that he said anything about a fact being inaccurate, or he wanted to retract a story; he wanted the reporting to stop.”

Mannies had been covering a scandal dubbed “Memogate” that started to unfold in 2007 while Martin was chief of staff to Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt. In that role, Martin was using his government email to undermine Democratic rivals and rally anti-abortion groups. But when reporters requested emails from Blunt’s staff, the governor’s office denied they existed. Media organizations joined a lawsuit to preserve the messages and recover them from backup tapes.

An attorney for the governor, Scott Eckersley, later said in a deposition that Martin tried to block the release of government emails and told employees to delete their messages. After Eckersley warned that doing so might violate state law, he was fired. He sued the state for wrongful termination and defamation and settled for $500,000. Martin resigned as chief of staff in 2007 after just over a year on the job, and Blunt’s office would eventually hand over 22 boxes of internal emails.

In a 2008 email to the Associated Press, Martin dismissed Eckersley’s lawsuit as a “desperate attempt” to revise his story after he was fired, citing Eckersley’s own testimony that not all emails are public records.

The Memogate incident was telling — and Martin’s efforts to have Mannies fired were never reported. “His claim was we were misrepresenting what the law was and what he was doing,” she told ProPublica. “I mean, he can get very hyper. He can get very emotional.”

When Martin launched a bid for Congress in 2010, he acted as if Memogate was ancient history. He made himself available to Mannies, she recalled, always taking her calls. Years later, he even appeared, lighthearted and bantering, on a St. Louis Public Radio podcast Mannies co-hosted. She said Martin could be outlandish and aggressive, but he could also be disarmingly passionate about whatever cause he was pursuing at the moment, often speaking in a frenetic rush. “He just wore people down with his enthusiasm,” she said.

Martin allowed a different St. Louis reporter to shadow him during his 2010 run for Congress. The reporter asked about the St. Louis election board, a dysfunctional organization that, by all accounts, Martin had helped turn around in the mid-2000s. Martin had fired an employee there named Jeanne Bergfeld, and she later sued for wrongful termination. The board settled the lawsuit.

As part of the settlement, Martin agreed not to talk about the case and the board paid Bergfeld $55,000. Martin and two others issued a letter saying she had been a “conscientious and dedicated professional.”

But talking to the reporter covering his campaign, Martin said Bergfeld enjoyed “not having to do anything” and “wasn’t interested in changing.” The day after the story was published, Bergfeld sued Martin again, this time for violating the settlement agreement. Martin denied making the comments, but the Riverfront Times released audio that proved he had.

Martin agreed to pay Bergfeld another $15,000 but delayed signing the settlement for a few months. The judge then ordered Martin to pay some of her legal costs, citing his “obstinacy.”

Martin lost his 2010 congressional bid. He ran for Missouri attorney general two years later and lost again. After his stint as chair of the Missouri Republican Party, he went to work as Schlafly’s right-hand man. Martin grew so attached to Schlafly that a lawyer for the Eagle Forum jokingly called him “Ed Martin Schlafly.”

As the 2016 presidential campaign ramped up, Martin supported Trump even though Eagle Forum board members, including Cori, supported Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas. At the time, Cori described Trump at the time as an “egomaniacal dictator.” (Today, she said she supports him.) Cori and other board members were stunned when Schlafly endorsed Trump, with Martin standing by her side.

A few weeks later, a majority of the Eagle Forum’s board voted to oust Martin as president; a lawsuit filed by the board cited mismanagement and poor leadership and described his tenure as “deplorable.” Martin has maintained that he was Schlafly’s “hand-picked successor” and has characterized his removal as a hostile takeover.

“Every day, they are diminishing the reputation and value of Phyllis,” he said in a 2017 statement. She died in September 2016.

Cori and the board’s lawsuit sought to enforce Martin’s removal and demand an accounting of the forum’s assets. That’s the case that wound up before Barberis.

On top of his efforts to direct Gray’s posts on Barberis’ Facebook page, Martin prepared a separate statement, according to previously unreported records from the case. The statement called Barberis’ ruling to remove him as Eagle Forum president “judicial activism at its worst” that “shows what happens when the law is undermined by judges who think they can do whatever they want.”

Martin emailed the statement, which said it was from “Bruce Schlafly, M.D.” — the name of one of Schlafly’s sons — to himself, then sent it to two of her other sons, John and Andy, court filings show. Martin said the statement was a “declaration of war” and urged the Schlaflys to “put something like this out to our biggest list.” (It’s unclear if the message was ever sent.) Bruce Schlafly did not respond to requests for comment.

In a 2019 sworn deposition, Cori’s lawyer asked Martin questions about the posts on Barberis’ Facebook page and the letter he drafted for Bruce Schlafly. Because of the possibility that he could be charged with criminal contempt of court, Martin declined to comment, on the advice of his own lawyer, though he acknowledged that lawyers are barred from communicating with judges outside of court or engaging in conduct meant to disrupt proceedings.

Andy Schlafly, a lawyer and former Eagle Forum board member who supported Martin in the leadership fight, said “no court has ever sanctioned Ed for his engagement of First Amendment advocacy” and likened the controversy to liberal attacks on conservative judges. He dismissed concerns about Martin directing Gray to contact the judge, saying she “speaks for herself” and had every right to voice her outrage. He compared Martin’s style — then and now — to Trump’s. He said he did not believe the email Martin drafted for his brother Bruce had ever been sent, but if it had been, it would have been no different from Trump posting on Truth Social, which he considered normal behavior in political battles.

“What would Trump do in that position?” Andy Schlafly said of Martin’s current role in Washington. “I would say Trump would be doing just what Ed’s doing. Elections do have consequences.”

Gray declined to comment. She was not part of the lawsuit.

When Cori’s lawyers uncovered the emails, they asked a new judge, David Dugan — who had taken over the case after Barberis was elected to a higher court — why Martin should not be held in criminal contempt for “an underhanded scheme” to “attack the integrity and authority” of the court with the Facebook comments about Barberis, according to court records.

Dugan declined to take up the criminal contempt motion. But he later found Martin and John Schlafly in civil contempt of court for having interfered with Eagle Forum after Barberis had removed them from the group. John Schlafly appealed the contempt finding and mostly lost. He did not respond to requests for comment. It’s unclear if Martin appealed.

Cori told ProPublica she also filed an ethics complaint against Martin with the Missouri Office of Chief Disciplinary Counsel, which investigates ethics complaints against lawyers. She said she was told her complaint would have to wait until her lawsuit concluded. The office said it could neither confirm nor deny it had received a complaint.

In 2022, when part of Cori’s lawsuit went to trial, a jury found Martin liable for defaming her and casting her in a false light — including by sharing a Facebook post suggesting that she should be charged with manslaughter for her mother’s death. It awarded her $57,000 in damages and also found Martin liable for $25,500 against another Eagle Forum board member.

Martin argued that the statute of limitations had expired on the defamation claims and that many of his statements were either true or vague hyperbole not subject to proof. He also claimed he could not be held liable because he didn’t write the offending post — he had merely shared something written by someone else.

In a post-trial motion, he also leaned into protections that make it harder for public figures to win defamation cases. Under that higher legal standard, it’s not enough for a plaintiff to show that a statement was false. Cori also had to prove that Martin knew it was false or acted with reckless disregard for the truth, and he said she didn’t prove it.

But while he’s wrapped himself in First Amendment protections when defending his own speech, he’s taken the opposite stance since being named interim U.S. attorney by Trump, threatening legal action against people when they criticize the administration.

For instance, after Rep. Robert Garcia called DOGE leader Elon Musk a “dick” and urged Democrats to “bring weapons” to a political fight, Martin sent Garcia a letter warning his comments could be seen as threats and demanding an explanation.

With the start of Trump’s first presidency, Martin and his family moved to the Northern Virginia suburbs near Washington, D.C. Martin had no formal role in the new administration, but he turned himself into one of the president’s most prolific and unfiltered surrogates.

CNN hired him in September 2017 to be a pro-Trump on-air commentator, only to fire him five months later after a string of controversial on-air remarks. He attacked a woman who had accused Alabama U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore of molesting her as a child, praised Trump for denigrating Sen. Elizabeth Warren as “Pocahontas,” and described some of his CNN co-panelists as “rabid feminists” and “Black racists.”

Unbowed, Martin went on to make more than 150 appearances on the Russia Today TV channel and Sputnik radio, both Russian state-owned media outlets, first reported by The Washington Post. On RT and Sputnik, Martin railed against the “Russia hoax,” criticized the DOJ investigation led by special counsel Robert Mueller and questioned American support for Ukraine after Russia’s invasion by saying the U.S. was “wasting money in Kiev for Zelensky and his corrupt guys.” The State Department would later say RT and Sputnik were “critical elements in Russia’s disinformation and propaganda ecosystem.” The Treasury Department sanctioned RT employees in 2024. The DOJ indicted two RT employees for conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to fail to register as foreign agents.

Martin’s flair for fealty set him apart even from fellow Trump supporters. He cheered the Maine Republican Party for considering whether to censure Sen. Susan Collins for her vote to convict Trump during the second impeachment trial. He singled out Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska in a radio segment titled “America Needs to Go on a RINO Hunt.” He accused Sen. John Cornyn of going “soft” on gun rights after Cornyn endorsed a bipartisan gun-safety law after the Uvalde, Texas, mass shooting that left 19 children and two teachers dead.

On Jan. 6, 2021, Martin joined the throngs of Trump supporters who marched in protest of the 2020 election outcome. He compared the scene that day to a Mardi Gras celebration and later said the prosecution of Jan. 6 defendants was “an op” orchestrated by former Rep. Liz Cheney and law enforcement agencies to “damage Trump and Trumpism.”

During an appearance on Russia Today, Martin said then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “weaponized” Congress’ response to the Jan. 6 riots by ramping up security on Capitol Hill, comparing her to the Nazis. “Not since the Reichstag fire that was engineered by the Nazis have we seen behavior like what Nancy Pelosi did,” he said.

As an attorney, he represented Jan. 6 defendants, helped raise money for their families and championed their cause. Last summer, Martin gave an award to a convicted Jan. 6 rioter named Timothy Hale-Cusanelli. According to court records, Hale-Cusanelli held “long-standing white supremacist and Nazi beliefs,” wore a “Hitler mustache” and allegedly told his co-workers that “Hitler should have finished the job.” (In court, Hale’s attorney said his client “makes no excuses for his derogatory language,” but the government’s description of him was “simply misleading.”)

After hugging and thanking Hale-Cusanelli at the ceremony, Martin told the audience that one of his goals was “to make sure that the world — and especially America — hears more from Tim Hale, because he’s extraordinary.”

In his three months as interim U.S. attorney for D.C., Martin has used his position to issue a series of threats. He’s vowed not to hire anyone affiliated with Georgetown Law unless the school drops any DEI policies. He vowed to Musk that he would “pursue any and all legal action against anyone who impedes your work or threatens your people.” He publicly told former special counsel Jack Smith and Smith’s lawyers to “[s]ave your receipts.” And in another open letter addressed to Musk and Musk’s deputy, Martin wrote that “if people are discovered to have broken the law or even acted simply unethically, we will investigate them and we will chase them to the end of the Earth to hold them accountable.”

More often than not, Martin’s threats have gone nowhere.

A month into the job, he announced “Operation Whirlwind,” an initiative to “hold accountable those who threaten” public officials, whether they’re DOGE workers or judges. One of the “most abhorrent examples” of such threats, he said, were Sen. Chuck Schumer’s 2020 remarks that conservative Supreme Court justices had “released the whirlwind” and would “pay the price” if they weakened abortion rights.

Even though Schumer walked back his incendiary comments the next day, Martin said he was investigating Schumer’s nearly 5-year-old remarks as part of Operation Whirlwind. Despite Martin’s bravado, the investigation went nowhere. No grand jury investigation was opened. No charges were filed. That the probe fizzled out came as little surprise. Legal experts said Schumer’s remarks, while ill advised, fell well short of criminal conduct.

In another instance, when one of Martin’s top deputies refused to open a criminal investigation into clean-energy grants issued by the Biden administration, Martin demanded the deputy’s resignation and advanced the investigation himself. When a subpoena arrived at one of the targeted environmental groups, Martin’s was the only name on it, according to documents obtained by ProPublica.

Kevin Flynn, a former federal prosecutor who served in the D.C. U.S. attorney’s office for 35 years, told ProPublica that he did not know of a single case in which the U.S. attorney was the sole authorizing official on a grand jury subpoena. Flynn said he could think of only two reasons why this could happen: The matter was of “such extraordinary sensitivity” that the office’s leader took exclusive control over it, or no other supervisor or line prosecutor was willing to sign off on the subpoena “out of concern that it wasn’t legally or ethically appropriate.”

And when the dispute between the environmental groups and the Justice Department reached a courtroom, federal Judge Tanya Chutkan asked a DOJ lawyer defending the administration’s actions for any evidence of possible crimes or violations — evidence, in other words, that could have justified the probe initiated by Martin. The DOJ lawyer said he had none. “You can’t even tell me what the evidence of malfeasance is,” Chutkan said. “There are still rules that even the government has to follow, last I checked.”

Martin’s tenure has caused so much consternation that in early April, Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., put a hold on Martin’s nomination. Typically, the Senate Judiciary Committee approves U.S. attorney picks by voice vote without a hearing. But in Martin’s case, all 10 Democrats on the committee have asked for a public hearing to debate the nomination, calling Martin “a nominee whose objectionable record merits heightened scrutiny by this Committee.”

Even the process of submitting the requisite paperwork for Senate confirmation has tripped him up. According to documents obtained by ProPublica, he has sent the Judiciary Committee three supplemental letters that correct omissions about his background. In an earlier submission, Martin did not disclose any of his appearances on Russian state-owned media. But just before The Washington Post reported that Martin had, in fact, made more than 150 such appearances, he sent yet another letter correcting his previous statements.

“I regret the errors and apologize for any inconvenience,” he wrote.

Sharon Lerner contributed reporting.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Jeremy Kohler and Andy Kroll.

The reduction in the number of provinces to 34 from 63 was approved on Monday by the Communist Party’s central committee. The same day, the Politburo, the party’s highest decision-making body, issued a directive for the appointment of new provincial leaders under the guidance of a close Lam ally.

Lam, who became secretary general of the Communist Party in August last year, faces a key hurdle in maintaining his position in Vietnam’s one-party state – he will surpass the age limit to remain in office.

To secure a full term, the party must either grant him an exemption or amend its charter, both of which can only be decided by a majority of delegates at the National Congress.

Rewriting the map of provinces will also serve to significantly reduce the number of delegates at the upcoming congress, from 1,500 previously, strengthening Lam’s ability to control the outcomes.

Since becoming leader, Lam has made several moves to consolidate power and shake up governance, an overhaul he says will make the economy more efficient.

Five of 21 state ministries were eliminated and some state and party offices and institutions were shuttered. The consolidation of provinces will be accompanied by a downsizing of lower level administrative divisions.

To bolster his high-level support, Lam has filled the ranks of the 18-member Politburo with allies from his long career as a top police official and from his native Hung Yen province, an hour south of the capital Hanoi.

Lam’s moves to consolidate power also come at a time when Vietnam’s export reliant economy faces an ever more difficult balancing act between China and the U.S.

President Donald Trump’s administration has threatened a 46% tariff on Vietnam’s exports, which would cause substantial pain for industries such as electronics and garment manufacturing that employ millions.

The U.S. says Vietnam has become a conduit for Chinese exporters seeking to avoid U.S. tariffs.

Edited by Stephen Wright and Taejun Kang.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Vietnamese.

The reduction in the number of provinces to 34 from 63 was approved on Monday by the Communist Party’s central committee. The same day, the Politburo, the party’s highest decision-making body, issued a directive for the appointment of new provincial leaders under the guidance of a close Lam ally.

Lam, who became secretary general of the Communist Party in August last year, faces a key hurdle in maintaining his position in Vietnam’s one-party state – he will surpass the age limit to remain in office.

To secure a full term, the party must either grant him an exemption or amend its charter, both of which can only be decided by a majority of delegates at the National Congress.

Rewriting the map of provinces will also serve to significantly reduce the number of delegates at the upcoming congress, from 1,500 previously, strengthening Lam’s ability to control the outcomes.

Since becoming leader, Lam has made several moves to consolidate power and shake up governance, an overhaul he says will make the economy more efficient.

Five of 21 state ministries were eliminated and some state and party offices and institutions were shuttered. The consolidation of provinces will be accompanied by a downsizing of lower level administrative divisions.

To bolster his high-level support, Lam has filled the ranks of the 18-member Politburo with allies from his long career as a top police official and from his native Hung Yen province, an hour south of the capital Hanoi.

Lam’s moves to consolidate power also come at a time when Vietnam’s export reliant economy faces an ever more difficult balancing act between China and the U.S.

President Donald Trump’s administration has threatened a 46% tariff on Vietnam’s exports, which would cause substantial pain for industries such as electronics and garment manufacturing that employ millions.

The U.S. says Vietnam has become a conduit for Chinese exporters seeking to avoid U.S. tariffs.

Edited by Stephen Wright and Taejun Kang.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Vietnamese.

Armitage, a former U.S. official under President George W. Bush, died of lung disease on April 13, aged 79. He had served several defense and foreign policy roles that helped shape U.S. defense and security policy in the Asia Pacific.

“A long-time advocate for peace in the Taiwan Strait and a staunch supporter of Taiwan’s democracy, Armitage was a key friend to Taiwan and made significant contributions to U.S.-Taiwan relations and Indo-Pacific security,” Taiwan’s foreign ministry said in a statement on Tuesday.

Taiwan faces growing military and diplomatic pressure from China, which claims the island as its territory and seeks to isolate it internationally. Armitage’s advocacy helped keep Taiwan on the global agenda, strengthened ties with key allies such as the U.S. and signaled international backing for Taiwan’s democracy and security amid rising cross-strait tensions.

Over the years, Armitage maintained close ties with leaders across Taiwan’s political spectrum. He attended the inaugurations of both President Tsai Ing-wen and President-elect Lai Ching-te, and also held direct conversations with former President Ma Ying-jeou of the Kuomintang.

His bipartisan diplomacy also helped ensure continued dialogue between Washington and Taipei, regardless of Taiwan’s domestic political shifts.

“Armitage had bipartisan friends in Washington, as well as bipartisan friends in Taipei,” wrote Alexander Huang, a former senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, in a tribute on Facebook.

Beyond Taiwan

Beyond his ties to Taiwan, Armitage left a significant imprint on U.S. policy across the Indo-Pacific.

A U.S. Navy veteran, Armitage served three combat tours during the Vietnam War, working closely with Vietnamese forces. In 1975, as Saigon fell, he helped evacuate over 30,000 South Vietnamese refugees and naval personnel, leading them by sea to the Philippines and negotiating their safe landing at Subic Bay.

As a senior U.S. official, Armitage was a key figure in shaping the modern U.S.-Japan alliance. He co-authored bipartisan policy reports that guided strategic cooperation, encouraged Japan’s expanded security role, and supported updates to joint defense guidelines.

In the Philippines, he played a central role in negotiating the future of U.S. military bases, a critical issue for U.S. strategy in Asia.

He also played a key role in Korea policy, working with South Korea’s Kim Dae-jung administration while expressing skepticism toward the “Sunshine Policy.” He urged caution in tying political fate to engagement with Pyongyang.

Known for a firm but flexible approach, Armitage advocated diplomacy with North Korea while preparing for containment if talks failed. His 1999 “Armitage Report” shaped U.S. strategy, warning that no option – negotiation, sanctions, or force – was without serious risk.

Edited by Taejun Kang and Stephen Wright.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Alan Lu for RFA.

This news comes as the nation’s largest egg producer, Cal-Maine, reported soaring profits and record egg sales for the third quarter in a row earlier this week. In the first three quarters of FY 2025 alone, Cal-Maine made $1 billion in windfall profits — riding sky-high prices to widen its profit margin over last year’s. Meanwhile, Cal-Maine continues to grow its egg empire by acquiring smaller companies, including Fassio Egg Farms (1.2 million laying hens) in October 2023, and ISE America (4.7 million laying hens) in June 2024. The corporation produces one in five eggs eaten in America.

A recent report by the consumer advocacy group Food & Water Watch — “The Economic Cost of Food Monopolies: The Rotten Egg Oligarchy” — details how Cal-Maine has used the bird flu crisis to reap tremendous profits at consumer expense.

The U.S. Department of Justice opened an investigation into price-fixing by the nation’s largest egg corporations, including Cal-Maine, last month.

Food & Water Watch Research Director Amanda Starbuck issued the following statement:

“Egg prices are spiraling out of control, laying bare the cracks in our corporate food system. The industry is proving itself effective at extracting enormous profits out of American consumers. We are all paying for it — at the store, with food shortages, and with the growing threat of the next pandemic.

“Restoring sanity to the grocery aisle will require immediate action to transform our food system. To lower egg prices, the Trump Administration must take on the food monopolies, hasten and prioritize its investigation into corporate price fixing, and stop the spread of factory farms.”

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

Today’s review synthesizes the extensive scientific evidence showing that fossil fuels and the fossil fuel industry are fueling not only the climate crisis but also public health harms, environmental injustice, biodiversity loss, and the plastics and agrochemical pollution crises.

The review focuses on the United States as the world’s largest oil and gas producer and dominant contributor to these fossil fuel crises. It presents the solutions already available to phase out fossil fuel extraction and use and transition rapidly and fairly to affordable clean, renewable energy and materials across the economy.

“The science can’t be any clearer that fossil fuels are killing us,” said Shaye Wolf, Ph.D., climate science director at the Center for Biological Diversity and lead author of the report. “Oil, gas and coal will continue to condemn us to more deaths, wildlife extinctions and extreme weather disasters unless we make dirty fossil fuels a thing of the past. Clean, renewable energy is here, it’s affordable, and it will save millions of lives and trillions of dollars once we make it the centerpiece of our economy.”

The review highlights that fossil fuels account for about 90% of human-caused carbon dioxide emissions, heating the climate, acidifying oceans, and fueling unprecedented climate disasters. Air pollution from fossil fuel combustion is responsible for millions of premature deaths worldwide and hundreds of thousands of premature deaths in the United States every year. The climate crisis causes additional deaths and physical and mental health harms from escalating climate disasters, disease transmission, food insecurity, and displacement of people.

Based on their findings and decades of research, the authors urge governments to immediately stop fossil fuel expansion and phase out existing fossil fuel development to limit the damages from the climate crisis.

“Fossil fuel pollution impacts health at every stage of life, with elevated risks for conditions ranging from premature births to childhood leukemia and severe depression,” said co-author David J.X. González, Ph.D., an assistant professor of environmental health sciences at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health. “We’ve got to work fast to end fossil fuel operations near our homes, schools and hospitals and trade fossil fuel infrastructure for healthy, clean energy.”

While fossil fuels harm everyone, the review details disproportionate harms of fossil fuel extraction, processing and use on communities of color and low-income communities.

“Decades of discriminatory policies, such as redlining, have concentrated fossil fuel development in Black, Brown, Indigenous and poor white communities, resulting in devastating consequences,” said Robin Saha, Ph.D., an associate professor of environmental studies at the University of Montana. “For far too long, these fenceline communities have been treated as sacrifice zones by greedy, callous industries. The most polluted communities should be prioritized for clean energy investments and removal and cleanup of dirty fossil fuel infrastructure.”

Fossil-fuel-induced climate change and pollution are also accelerating extinction risk. Up to one-third of animals and plants could be lost forever in the next 50 years if fossil fuels go unchecked. To protect biodiversity, the review highlights the importance of siting renewable energy infrastructure in the built environment and increasing protections for ecosystems that provide vital carbon storage, among numerous other benefits.

The review further shows that the fossil fuel industry is increasing the production of plastics, creating pervasive pollution that contaminates the air, water, soil, food systems, wildlife and human bodies.

The review recommends ambitious targets to reduce primary plastics production and plastic chemicals of concern while incentivizing safe and sustainable plastics alternatives and nonplastic substitutes, as well as sustainable agricultural practices to limit fossil-fueled petrochemical pollution from pesticides and fertilizers.

The review also discusses a key barrier to transitioning from fossil fuels to clean energy: The fossil fuel industry’s decades-long, multibillion-dollar disinformation campaign to conceal the dangers of its products and block policies to phase out fossil fuels.

“The fossil fuel industry has spent decades misleading us about the harms of their products and working to prevent meaningful climate action,” said Naomi Oreskes, professor of the history of science at Harvard University. “Perversely, our governments continue to give out hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies to this damaging industry. It is past time that stops.”

The 11 coauthors are Shaye Wolf, Ph.D. (Center for Biological Diversity), Robert Bullard, Ph.D. (Texas Southern University), Jonathan J. Buonocore, Ph.D. (Boston University), Nathan Donley, Ph.D. (Center for Biological Diversity),Trisia Farrelly, Ph.D. (Cawthron Institute), John Fleming, Ph.D. (Center for Biological Diversity), David J.X. González, Ph.D. (University of California Berkeley), Naomi Oreskes, Ph.D. (Harvard University), William Ripple, Ph.D. (Oregon State University), Robin Saha, Ph.D. (University of Montana, Missoula), and Mary D. Willis, Ph.D. (Boston University).

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

“We have taken the difficult decision to temporarily withdraw our @Daily Monitor @ntvuganda journalists from covering the Kawempe North by-election for their safety because they are being targeted and attacked by armed soldiers and undercover security operatives,” Daniel Kalinaki, a general manager at Nation Media Group (NMG), East Africa’s largest independent media company, posted on the social media platform X on March 13.

Two Luganda-language broadcasters, Radio Simba and BBS Terefayina, followed suit, reacting to security agencies’ assault, harassment, and arrest of dozens of journalists reporting on the by-election in the capital Kampala.

In response to Pearl FM’s reports on vote-rigging allegations, the regulatory Uganda Communications Commission suspended the privately owned outlet on March 12 for airing “unsubstantiated statements that were sensational, alarmist, and capable of inciting violence.”

Uganda is due to hold general elections in January 2026, in which 80-year-old President Yoweri Museveni is expected to seek to extend his 38-year rule. Given the country’s history of electoral violence against journalists, events in Kawempe North have triggered anxiety about the 2026 poll.

‘Alarmingly dangerous’ election coverage

“Covering elections has always been an alarmingly dangerous task for Ugandan journalists,” said CPJ Africa Regional Director, Angela Quintal, in New York. “As the January 2026 elections approach, breaking free from this troubling history is essential for the integrity of the democratic process. Ugandan authorities must ensure that those who target journalists are held fully accountable.”

Kawempe North was won by a candidate from the opposition National Unity Platform (NUP), a party headed by Robert Kyagulanyi, commonly known as Bobi Wine. In Uganda’s last general election in 2021, at least 50 people died in protests over the pop star-turned-politician’s repeated arrest and Kyagulanyi was severely beaten. Museveni’s previous presidential challenger, Kizza Besigye, who lost to the former soldier four times, is facing the death sentence for treason.

In relation to the Kawempe North by-election, CPJ documented the following incidents:

●      On February 26, Joint Anti-Terrorism Task Force (JAT) officers assaulted Top TV reporter Ibrahim Miracle as he covered the arrest and assault of the NUP nominee. He sustained severe facial injuries.

●      NMG camera operator Stephen Kibwiika told CPJ that JAT officers beat him on March 3 with batons while he was reporting near the NUP headquarters despite wearing a “Press” vest. He said that he sustained ankle injuries and was unable to walk properly for several days.

●      NMG reporter Steven Mbidde told CPJ that on March 4 about eight officers restrained him and dragged him to the ground while he was live reporting the detention of NUP supporters.

●      On March 12, security officers struck Kibwiika on his head with a baton and kicked his groin while he covered allegations of ballot stuffing. Kibwiika told CPJ he was unable to walk, suffered intense headaches, and was hospitalized for three days.

On March 13:

●      Masked soldiers attacked state-owned New Vision newspaper reporter Ibrahim Ruhweza with batons and gun butts before briefly detaining him and his colleague Isaac Nuwagaba in an unmarked vehicle. Ruhweza told CPJ they were forced to delete their footage and photos.

●      Hasifah Nanvuma, a reporter with NMG’s Spark TV, told CPJ that several soldiers beat her on the back and arms while she was reporting from a polling station. At the time, she was wearing a “Press” vest.

●      Soldiers detained NMG’s photojournalist Abubaker Lubowa, camera operator Denis Kabugo, and reporter Raymond Tamale, in an unmarked vehicle for four hours. Lubowa told CPJ that they were blindfolded and beaten on their heads, arms, legs, and ribs. Lubowa told CPJ that the soldiers took their phones and watches and destroyed their cameras.

●      Privately owned NBS TV said security personnel assaulted and intimidated its photojournalist Francis Isano, camera operator Hassan Wasswa, and reporter Hakim Wampamba. Isano had to be carried into a hospital where he was admitted for several days.

●      Unknown assailants struck state-owned Uganda Broadcasting Corporation’s camera operator Jahiem Jamil Ssekajja with electrical wires while he was filming at a polling station. Ssekajja told CPJ he sustained welts on his body and developed a fever.

Acting military spokesperson Chris Magezi said in a statement that the armed forces were investigating reports of assaults and confiscation of journalists’ equipment.

In a March 27 statement to CPJ sent via messaging app, Magezi said a committee had been set up to investigate and make recommendations on “ways to harmonize and collaborate with media players better.”

Kampala Metropolitan Police spokesperson Patrick Onyango referred CPJ to national police spokesperson Rusoke Kituuma to request comment but he did not immediately answer CPJ’s calls.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

The court condemned Ukrainian authorities for failing to prevent a fiery 2014 massacre in which dozens of anti-Nazi activists were burned alive – but the judges’ political bias meant victims were implicitly blamed for their fate, and their families received a paltry 15,000 euro payout.

The European Court of Human Rights has found the Ukrainian government guilty of committing human rights violations during the May 2, 2014 Odessa massacre, in which dozens of Russian-speaking demonstrators were forced into the city’s Trade Unions House and burned alive by ultranationalist thugs.

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Citing the “relevant authorities’ failure to do everything that could reasonably be expected of them to prevent the violence in Odessa,” the court ruled unanimously that Ukraine violated Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees the right to life. The judges also condemned the Ukrainian government’s failure “to stop that violence after its outbreak, to ensure timely rescue measures for people trapped in the fire, and to institute and conduct an effective investigation into the events.”

42 people were killed as a result of the fire, a bloody bookend to the so-called “Maidan revolution” that saw Ukraine’s democratically-elected president deposed in a Western-backed coup in 2014. Ukrainian officials and legacy media outlets have consistently framed the deaths as a tragic accident, with some figures even blaming anti-Maidan protesters themselves for starting the blaze. That notion is thoroughly discredited by the verdict, which was delivered by a team of seven judges including a Ukrainian justice.

As dozens of anti-Maidan activists burned to death, the ECHR found deployment of fire engines to the site was “deliberately delayed for 40 minutes,” even though the local fire station was just one kilometer away.

In the end, the judicial body determined there was nothing which indicated Ukrainian authorities “had done everything that could reasonably be expected of them to avert” the violence. Officials in Kiev, they said, made “no efforts whatsoever” to prevent skirmishes between pro- and anti-Maidan activists that led to the deadly inferno, despite knowing in advance such clashes were likely to break out. Their “negligence… went beyond an error of judgment or carelessness.”

The case was brought by 25 people who lost family members in the Neo-Nazi arson attack and clashes that preceded it, and three who survived the fire with various injuries. Though the ECHR found Ukraine violated their human rights, the court demanded Ukraine pay them just 15,000 euros each in damages.

The ruling also stopped short of acknowledging the full reality of the Odessa slaughter, as it largely overlooked the role played by Western-supported neo-Nazi elements and their intimate ties to the sniper massacre in February 2014 in Maidan Square which has been conclusively determined to have been a false flag. In the judges’ decision, they downplayed or justified violence by the violent Ukrainian football fans and skinheads, charitably describing them as “pro-unity activists.”

Russians burned alive while Ukrainian officials looked away

Ukraine’s Maidan protests commenced in November 2013 after President Yanukovych declined to form a trade agreement with Europe and renewed dialogue with Russia, and tensions quickly began to escalate between Odessa’s sizable Russian-speaking population and Ukrainian nationalists. As the ECHR ruling noted, “while violent incidents had overall remained rare… the situation was volatile and implied a constant risk of escalation.” In March 2014, anti-Maidan activists set up a tent camp in Kulykove Pole Square, and began calling for a referendum on the establishment of an “Odessa Autonomous Republic.”

The next month, supporters of Odesa Chornomorets and Kharkiv Metalist football clubs announced a rally “For a United Ukraine” on May 2. According to the ECHR, that’s when “anti-Maidan posts began to appear on social media describing the event as a Nazi march and calling for people to prevent it.” Though the European court branded the description Russian “disinformation,” there’s extensive evidence that hooligans associated with both clubs had overt Neo-Nazi sympathies and associations, and well-established reputations for violence. The football clubs involved later went on to form the notorious Azov Battalion.

Fearing their tent encampment would be attacked, anti-Maidan activists resolved to disrupt the “pro-unity” march before it reached them. The ECHR revealed Ukraine’s security services and cybercrime unit had substantive intelligence indicating “violence, clashes and disorder” were certain on the day. However, authorities “ignored the available intelligence and the relevant warning signs,” and failed to take the “proper measures” to “stamp out any provocation.”

On May 2, 2014, anti-Nazi activists confronted the demonstrators as the march began, and violent clashes immediately erupted. At roughly 5:45 PM, in the precise manner of the Maidan Square sniper false flag massacre three months earlier, multiple anti-Maidan activists were fatally shot “by someone standing on a nearby balcony” using “a hunting gun,” the ruling states. Subsequently, “pro-unity protesters… gained the upper hand in the clashes,” and charged towards Kulykove Pole square.

Anti-Maidan activists took refuge in the Trade Unions House, a five-story building overlooking the square, while their ultranationalist adversaries “started setting fire to the tents,” according to the ruling. Gunfire and Molotov cocktails were exchanged by both sides, and before long, the building was ablaze. “Numerous calls” were made to the local fire brigade, including by police, “to no avail.” The court noted that the fire chief had “instructed his staff not to send any fire engines to Kulykove Pole without his explicit order,” so none were dispatched.

Many of those trapped in the building died when attempting to escape by jumping from its upper windows, and those that survived were treated to more ‘unity’ by the violent demonstrators outside. “Video footage shows pro-unity protesters attacking people who had jumped or had fallen,” the ECHR notes. It was not until 8:30 PM that firefighters finally entered the building and extinguished the blaze. Police then arrested 63 surviving activists they found remaining in the building or on the roof. Those detained weren’t released until two days later, when a several hundred-strong group of anti-Maidan protesters stormed the police station holding them.

The litany of security failures and industrial scale negligence by authorities that day was greatly aggravated by “local prosecutors, law enforcement, and military officers” not being “contactable for a large part or all of [the] time,” as they were coincidentally attending a meeting with Ukraine’s Deputy Prosecutor General. The ECHR “found the attitude and passivity of those officials inexplicable” – apparently unwilling to consider the obvious possibility that Ukrainian authorities purposefully made themselves incommunicado to ensure maximum mayhem and bloodshed, while insulating themselves from legal repercussions.

Because Ukrainian authorities “had not done everything they reasonably could to prevent the violence,” nor even “what could reasonably be expected of them to save people’s lives,” the ECHR found Kiev violated Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The Court also concluded authorities “failed to institute and conduct an effective investigation into the events in Odessa,” a violation of the “procedural aspect” of Article 2.

Anatomy of a Kiev coverup

Though left unstated, the ECHR’s appraisal of the Odessa massacre, and the officials who failed in their most basic duties points to a deliberate state-level coverup.

For example, no effort was made to seal off “affected areas of the city centre” in the event’s aftermath. Instead, “the first thing” local authorities did “was to send cleaning and maintenance services to those areas,” meaning invaluable evidence was almost inevitably eradicated.

Unsurprisingly, when on-site inspections were finally carried out two weeks later, the probes “produced no meaningful results,” the ECHR noted. The Trade Unions House likewise “remained freely accessible to the public for 17 days after the events,” giving malicious actors plentiful time to manipulate, remove, or plant incriminating evidence at the site. Meanwhile, “many of the suspects absconded,” the court noted. Several criminal investigations were opened, only to go nowhere, left to expire under Ukraine’s statute of limitations.

Other cases that reached trial “remained pending for years,” before being dropped, despite “extensive photographic and video evidence regarding both the clashes in the city centre and the fire,” from which culprits’ identities could be easily discerned. The ECHR expressed no confidence that Ukrainian authorities “made genuine efforts to identify all the perpetrators,” and several forensic reports weren’t released for many years, in breach of basic protocols. Elsewhere, the Court noted a criminal investigation of an individual suspected of having shot at anti-Maidan activists was inexplicably discontinued on four separate occasions, on identical grounds.

The court also noted “serious defects” in investigations into Ukrainian officials’ role in the massacre. Primarily, this took the form of “prohibitive delays” and “significant periods of unexplained inactivity and stagnation” in opening cases. For instance, “although it had never been disputed that the fire service regional head had been responsible for the delayed deployment of fire engines to Kulykove Pole,” it took nearly two years for the Ukrainian government to officially investigate.

Similarly, Odessa’s regional police chief not only failed to implement any “contingency plan in the event of mass disorder,” as required, but internal documents claiming that security measures had in fact been undertaken were found to have been forged. A criminal investigation into the chief took nearly a year to materialize, then remained pending “for about eight years,” when it was closed after the statute of limitations expired.

The Georgian connection

The notion that the incineration of anti-Maidan activists in May 2014 was an intentional and premeditated act of mass murder, conceived and directed by Kiev’s US-installed far-right government, was apparently not considered by the ECHR. But testimonies from a Ukrainian parliamentary commission which was instituted in the massacre’s immediate aftermath indicate the violence was not a freak twist of fate spontaneously produced by two hostile factions clashing in Odessa, as the ruling suggests.

That parliamentary commission found Ukrainian national and regional officials explicitly planned to use far-right activists drawn from the fascist Maidan Self-Defence to violently suppress Odessa’s would-be separatists, and disperse all those camped by the Trade Unions House. Moreover, the notorious ultra-nationalist Ukrainian politician Andriy Parubiy and 500 of its armed members of Maidan Self-Defense were dispatched to the city from Kiev on the eve of the massacre.

From 1998 – 2004, Parubiy served as founder and leader of Neo-Nazi paramilitary faction Patriot of Ukraine. He also headed Kiev’s National Security and Defence Council at the time of the Odessa massacre. Ukraine’s State Bureau of Investigations immediately began scrutinizing Parubiy’s role in the May 2014 events after he was replaced as lead parliamentary speaker, following the country’s 2019 general election. This probe has seemingly come to nothing since, although a year prior a Georgian militant testified to Israeli documentarians that he engaged in “provocations” in the Odessa massacre under the command of Parubiy, who told him to attack anti-Maidan activists and “burn everything.”

That militant was one of several Georgian fighters who has admitted they were personally responsible for the February 2014 Maidan Square false flag sniper massacre, under the command of ultranationalist Ukrainian figures like Parubiy, and Mikhael Saakashvili, the founder of infamous mercenary brigade Georgian Legion. The slaughter in Maidan brought about the end of Viktor Yanukovych’s government, and sent Ukraine hurtling towards war with Russia.

The Odessa massacre was another chapter in that morbid saga – and Europe’s foremost human rights court has now formally laid responsibility for the horror at Kiev’s feet.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by The Grayzone.

The Pacific’s peak diplomatic bodies have signalled they are ready to engage with Papua New Guinea’s Autonomous Government of Bougainville as mediation begins on the delayed ratification of its successful 2019 independence referendum.

PNG and Bougainville’s leaders met in the capital Port Moresby this week with a moderator to start negotiations on the implementation of the UN-supervised Bougainville Peace Agreement and referendum.

Ahead of the talks, ABG’s President Ishmael Toroama moved to sideline a key sticking point over PNG parliamentary ratification of the vote, with the announcement last week that Bougainville would unilaterally declare independence on September 1, 2027.

• READ MORE: PNG and Bougainville to hold more talks on independence issue
• Other Bougainville reports

The region’s two leading intergovernmental organisations — Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) and Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) — have traditionally deferred to member state PNG on discussion of Bougainville independence as an internal matter.

But as a declaration of nationhood becomes increasingly likely and near, there has been a subtle shift.

“It’s their [PNG’s] prerogative but if this matter were raised formally, even by Bougainville themselves, we can start discussion on that,” PIF Secretary-General Baron Waqa told a press briefing at its headquarters in Fiji on Monday.

“Whatever happens, I think the issue would have to be decided by our leaders later this year,” he said of the annual PIF meeting to be held in Solomon Islands in September.

Marked peace deal
The last time the Pacific’s leaders included discussion of Bougainville in their official communique was in 2004 to mark the disarmament of the island under the peace deal.

Waqa said Bougainville had made no formal approach to PIF — a grouping of 18 Pacific states and territories — but it was closely monitoring developments on what could eventually lead to the creation of a new member state.

In 2024, Toroama told BenarNews he would be seeking observer status at the subregional MSG — grouping PNG, Fiji, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and New Caledonia’s FLNKS — as Bougainville’s first diplomatic foray.

No application has been made yet but MSG acting Director-General Ilan Kiloe told BenarNews they were also keeping a close watch.

“Our rules and regulations require that we engage through PNG and we will take our cue from them,” Kiloe said, adding while the MSG respects the sovereignty of its members, “if requested, we will provide assistance” to Bougainville.

“The purpose and reason the MSG was established initially was to advance the collective interests of the Melanesian countries, in particular, to assist those yet to attain independence,” he said. “And to provide support towards their aim of becoming independent countries.”

The 2001 peace agreement ended more than a decade of bloody conflict  known as the Bougainville crisis, that resulted in the deaths of up to 15,000 people, and laid out a roadmap for disarmament and the referendum in 2019.

‘We need support’
Under the agreement, PNG retains responsibility for foreign affairs but allows for the ABG to engage externally for trade and with “regional organisations.”

“We need countries to support us, we need to talk to those countries [ahead of independence],” Toroama told BenarNews last September.

The referendum on independence was supported by 97.7 percent of Bougainvillians and the outcome was due to be ratified by PNG’s Parliament in 2020, but was deferred because of the covid-19 pandemic.

Discussions by the two parties since on whether a simple or two-thirds majority vote by parliamentarians was required has further delayed the process.

Toroama stood firm on the issue of ratification on the first day of discussions moderated by New Zealand’s Sir Jerry Mataparae, saying his people voted for independence and the talks were to define the “new relationship” between two independent states.

Last week, the 15 members of the Bougainville Leaders Independence Consultation Forum issued a statement declaring PNG had no authority to veto the referendum result and recommended September 1, 2027 as the declaration date.

“As far as I am concerned, the process of negotiating independence was concluded with the referendum,” Toroama said.

Implementation moderation
“My understanding is that this moderation is about reaching agreement on implementing the referendum result of independence.”

He told Marape “to take ownership and endorse independence in this 11th Parliament.”

PNG’s prime minister responded by praising the 25 years of peace “without a single bullet fired” but warned Bougainville was not ready for independence.

“Economic independence must precede political independence,” Marape said. “The long-term sustainability of Bougainville must be factored into these discussions.”

“About 95 percent of Bougainville’s budget is currently reliant on external support, including funding from the PNG government and international donors.”

Proposals to reopen Rio Tinto’s former Panguna gold and copper mine in Bougainville, that sparked its civil conflict, is a regular feature of debate about its economic future.

Marape also suggested people may be secretly harbouring weapons in breach of the peace agreement and called on the UN to clarify the outcome of the disarmament process it supervised.

“Headlines have come out that guns remain in Bougainville. United Nations, how come guns remain in Bougainville?” Marape asked on Monday.

“You need to tell me. This is something you know. I thought all guns were removed from Bougainville.”

PNG relies on aid
By comparison, PNG has heavily relied on foreign financial assistance since independence, currently receiving at about US$320 million (1.3 billion kina) a year in budgetary support from Australia, and suffers regular tribal violence and massacres involving firearms including assault rifles.

Bougainville Vice-President Patrick Nisira rejected Marape’s concerns about weapons, the Post-Courier newspaper reported.

“The usage of those guns, there is no evidence of that and if you look at the data on Bougainville where [there are] incidents of guns, it is actually very low,” he said.

Further talks are planned and are due to produce a report for the national Parliament by mid-2025, ahead of elections in Bougainville and PNG’s 50th anniversary celebrations in September.

Republished from BenarNews with permission.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

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On Feb. 20, nearly 7,000 probationary employees at the Internal Revenue Service began receiving an unsigned letter telling them that they had been fired for poor performance.

Trump administration lawyers insist that the IRS and other federal agencies have acted within their authority when they ordered waves of mass terminations since Trump took office. But according to previously unreported emails obtained by ProPublica, a top lawyer at the IRS warned administration officials that the performance-related language in his agency’s termination letter was “a false statement” that amounted to “fraud” if the agency kept the language in the letter.

The emails reveal that in the hours before the IRS sent out its Feb. 20 termination letter, a fierce dispute played out at the agency’s highest levels.

Joseph Rillotta, a senior IRS lawyer, wrote that “no one” at the IRS had taken into account the performance of the probationary workers set to be fired. Rillotta urged that the language be struck from the draft termination letter.

If the falsehood wasn’t removed, Rillotta said he would file a report with the inspector general for the IRS.

No one appeared to respond to Rillotta’s first email. In a follow-up email, he said he was “pleading with you to remove the clause,” adding: “It is not an immaterial false statement, because it is designed to improve the government’s posture in litigation (to the detriment of the employees that we are terminating today).”

Because it was not true, he wrote, “That renders it, as I see it, an anticipatory fraud on tribunals of jurisdiction over these employment actions.”

Rillotta was again ignored. The IRS sent out the Feb. 20 termination notice with the disputed language in it, according to copies received by fired workers who shared them with ProPublica. The notice said the decision to fire the workers had taken “into account your performance” as well as administration guidance and “current mission needs.”

In fact, many of the employees had received laudatory reviews with no hint of any concerns.

Soon afterward, the inspector general for the IRS took preliminary steps to look into the matter, according to a person familiar with the effort who wasn’t authorized to speak with reporters. This person said they told the investigator that they agreed with Rillotta that the performance rationale was false.

Michelle Bercovici, a lawyer who represents federal workers, told ProPublica that Rillotta’s ignored warnings should make it easier for plaintiffs to show that the mass firings were “arbitrary and capricious,” the legal standard needed to invalidate a federal agency’s action. She added that the emails could also help plaintiffs recover attorneys’ fees from the government.

“When an agency acts based on false information, not only does it set the action up for being overturned,” she said. “It also means the agency is not going to have many defenses to its actions and could be liable for fees.”

Spokespeople for the Treasury Department and IRS did not respond to requests for comment. An Office of Personnel Management spokesperson referred ProPublica to a revised memorandum stating that OPM “is not directing agencies to take any specific performance-based actions regarding probationary employees.”

The terminations at the tax agency were among the deep cuts to federal agencies by the Trump administration and its Department of Government Efficiency, led by the billionaire Trump adviser Elon Musk.

Multiple federal lawsuits are now challenging the Trump administration’s mass firings. Last week, two federal judges temporarily blocked the IRS and other firings, but the lawsuits continue.

The issue of whether the performance rationale was legitimate has been central to the suits. One suit, brought by a group of labor unions, advocacy groups and other parties in California federal court, alleges that OPM directed the probationary firings and so “perpetrated one of the most massive employment frauds in the history of this country, telling tens of thousands of workers that they are being fired for performance reasons, when they most certainly were not.”

In response, administration lawyers deniedthat OPM directed agencies to fire probationary workers based on performance or misconduct. Instead, the filing says, “OPM reminded agencies of the importance of the probationary period in evaluating applicants’ continued employment and directed agencies to identify all employees on probationary periods and promptly determine whether those employees should be retained at the agency.”

The plaintiffs later expanded that suit to include the Treasury Department, which oversees the IRS, as one of the defendants. In mid-March, Judge William Alsup issued a preliminary injunction in the case, saying the administration’s probationary firings were based on “a lie.” Alsup ordered several federal agencies, including the Treasury, to reinstate thousands of fired employees. The Trump administration has appealed Alsup’s ruling.

Another suit, filed in Maryland federal court by nearly two dozen Democratic state attorneys general, also claims that the IRS mass firings were unlawful and should be reversed. (In that case, administration lawyers asserted that the mass firings were lawful.)

Court filings in both cases have partially revealed how the administration chose to make the legally questionable decision to fire probationary workers en masse on performance grounds..

At the IRS, the plan to fire probationary employees began in early February, according to an affidavit filed in the Maryland case.

A high-ranking Treasury Department official instructed a senior IRS personnel employee named Traci DiMartini to identify all probationary IRS employees and fire them “based on performance,” according to an affidavit DiMartini later filed in court.

DiMartini had “never heard of mass probationary employee firings,” she stated in her affidavit.

When DiMartini asked the Treasury Department official why they were firing so many probationary employees, she was told that the order came from OPM, which was staffed by Trump appointees and members of DOGE.

In her affidavit, DiMartini confirmed what Rillotta wrote in his emails — that it was false to say probationary employees were fired for performance. DiMartini’s office “did not review or consider” any probationary employees’ job performance or conduct. Nor did the Treasury Department. “I know this because this fact was discussed openly in meetings,” DiMartini stated in her affidavit.

According to DiMartini’s affidavit, OPM drafted the IRS mass-termination letter. While Treasury officials made several changes to it, the IRS’s personnel office where DiMartini worked “was not permitted to make any changes to the letter,” DiMartini’s affidavit said.

DiMartini refused to sign the mass-termination letter, according to her affidavit. The then-acting commissioner of the IRS, Douglas O’Donnell, also refused to sign the letter.

When thousands of affected IRS employees finally received the letter, it arrived from a generic email account. No agency official’s name appeared anywhere in the document.

Do you have any information we should know about the IRS, DOGE or the Trump administration’s mass firings? Andy Kroll can be reached by email at andy.kroll@propublica.org and by Signal or WhatsApp at 202-215-6203.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Andy Kroll.

Photo: Indivisible.

A week ago Saturday Co-President Elon Musk took to his X platform to call out several groups staging protests against his Tesla dealerships for Musk’s Trump Administration role in slashing vital federal government functions. The Tesla Takedown movement has mounted hundreds of peaceful actions around the world. Among the groups he named were the Troublemakers, falsely claiming it is funded by ActBlue. The group has been staging protests at dealerships throughout the Seattle area, a major Tesla market, and had a key role in putting up the decentralized movement’s website, where people around the world can post upcoming actions.

I am a member of the Troublemakers, a Seattle-based group dedicated to nonviolent direct action, and was a part of our first action, one focused on forest preservation. “So Elon’s making us famous,” I thought, grimly amused but aware that being targeted in such a way could lead to consequences.

That happened quickly. The next day Musk took it to a new level, targeting Valerie Costa, a close friend and colleague with whom I have worked for years, first at 350 Seattle, and now at Troublemakers. “Costa is committing crimes,” he charged. Musk has a record of playing fast and loose with the facts, and this was another of his many lies. There have been incidents of vandalism against Tesla cars and dealerships. But Troublemakers is a strictly nonviolent group and does not endorse such actions.

The other day, Val told her story in The Guardian in a story entitled, “Elon Musk targeted me over Tesla protests. That proves our movement is working.” I’ll let Val take it from here:

“As a longtime local activist and organizer in Seattle, I’m accustomed to some conflict with powerful forces. The intention of the Tesla Takedown movement is to make a strong public stand against the tech oligarchy behind the Trump administration’s cruel and illegal actions, and to encourage Americans to sell their Teslas and dump the company’s stock. Protests like these – peaceful, locally organized, and spreading across the world – are at the heart of free speech in a democracy and a cornerstone of US political traditions. So it’s telling that the response from so-called ‘free speech absolutist’ Musk has been to single out individuals – and spread lies about us and our movement. The harassment that has followed his post has been frightening.

“It’s also proof that the Tesla Takedown campaign is working.”

Indeed, Tesla stock and sales are tanking. As of today the stock is a little under $240, half of what it was in the euphoria immediately after the election. J.P Morgan projects it to go down by half again, to $120. Meanwhile, Morgan auto analyst Ryan Brinkman last Wednesday cut his first quarter global sales estimate to 355,000, down from 440,000, and a deep plummet from 495,000 in 2024’s fourth quarter.

Clearly connecting those declines to Musk’s work with Trump and connections with Europe’s far right, Brinkman said, “We struggle to thing of anything analogous in the history of the automotive industry, in which a brand has lost so much value so quickly.”

Continuing to tell her story, Val wrote, “I am not the leader of Tesla Takedown. In fact, no one is.

“Here is the truth: Tesla Takedown is a completely decentralized movement with hundreds of protests taking place around the globe, drawing many thousands of people out of their homes and onto the public sidewalks to stand up for programs that support poor people, older people, veterans, the sick. Out of care and concern for others – a foreign concept to those currently in power – people are offering what they can to help. I’ve offered to schlep supplies, and helped someone find a bullhorn. The environmentally focused Seattle organization I’m a part of, Troublemakers, hosts a map where other people and groups can post the locations of forthcoming demonstrations. Troublemakers has about $3,500 in its bank accounts. All of this is a bare-bones, low-budget, people-powered movement – which is exactly why Musk is afraid of it, and casting about to find a villain.”

Val then hit the crux of the issue.

“If we can’t show our opposition to what the government is doing, we are living in a dictatorship. If we are criminalized for calling out the rich and powerful for their illegal actions, that is a dictatorship. I don’t want to live in a dictatorship.

“Make no mistake, it’s scary to be personally called out by the richest man in the world on the platform he owns. It’s scary to be targeted by a seemingly endless number of his devoted trolls and bots. To be doxxed, to have one’s life pored over and exposed, to be smeared, attacked and falsely accused. It’s scarier still when the FBI director gets tagged into the threads and asked to investigate. But I’m not backing down – and even if I did, it wouldn’t make a dent in this movement. Hundreds if not thousands of people have participated in the ways that I have.

“The truth is, the people are powerful. I’ve always believed that. And now we know that Elon Musk does too.”

Val also told her story on Democracy Now.

Val Costa has acknowledged how terrifying it is to be targeted by the world’s richest man (though he may be knocked off that perch soon). But, no surprise to me, she has continued to stand and speak out with courage. Val has been on many direct action frontlines, and is deeply committed to environmental and social justice in all its forms. Knowing Val, Musk’s attack has only made he more pissed off than she was before. Bravo Val!

We who work in movements have known the second Trump Administration would bring an elevated level of uncertainty and risk. But that isn’t stopping us. As Franklin Roosevelt said, “Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the assessment that something else is more important than fear.” With so much at stake now, there are obviously many things more important than fear. Relatedly, Nelson Mandela said, “I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.” Valerie Costa is setting an example of triumph for all of us. One which we will need in coming years as we fight for what is dear to us against oligarchic monstrosities like Elon Musk.

This first appeared in The Raven.

The post Stung by People Power Protests, Elon Musk Targets My Group and a Close Friend appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Patrick Mazza.

“Beacon Rock” in a lithograph from Frances Fuller Victor’s Eleven years in the Rocky Mountains and a life on the frontier (1877).

 

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The post A Hike to The Top of Beacon Rock appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Nathaniel St. Clair.

Image by Cole Keister.

The conversation on settler colonialism must not be limited to academic discussion. It is a political reality, clearly demonstrated in the everyday behavior of Israel.

Israel is not merely an expansionist regime historically; it remains actively so today. Additionally, the core of Israeli political discourse, both past and present, revolves around territorial expansion.

Frequently, we succumb to the trap of blaming such language on a specific set of right-wing and extremist politicians or on a particular US administration. The truth is vastly different: the Israeli Zionist political discourse, though it may change in style, remains fundamentally unchanged throughout time.

Zionist leaders have always associated the establishment and expansion of their state with the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians, later referred to in Zionist literature as the “transfer.”

Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern political Zionism, wrote in his diary about the ethnic cleansing of the Arab population from Palestine:

“We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country… Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly.”

It is unclear what happened to Herzl’s grand employment scheme aimed at “spiriting” the population of Palestine across the region. What we know is that the so-called “penniless population” resisted the Zionist project in numerous ways. Ultimately, the depopulation of Palestine occurred through force, culminating in the Nakba, the Catastrophe of 1948.

The discourse of the erasure of the Palestinian people has been the shared foundation among all Israeli officials and governments, though it has been expressed in different ways. It has always had a material component, manifesting in the slow but decisive takeover of Palestinian homes in the West Bank, the confiscation of farms, and the constant construction of “military zones.”

Despite Israeli claims, this “incremental genocide” is not directly linked to the nature and degree of Palestinian resistance. Jenin and Masafer Yatta illustrate this clearly.

Take, for example, the ongoing ethnic cleansing in the northern West Bank, which, according to UNRWA, is the worst since 1967. The displacement of tens of thousands of Palestinians has been justified by Israel as a military necessity due to the fierce resistance in that region, primarily Jenin, but other areas as well.

However, many parts of the West Bank, including the area of Masafer Yatta, have not been engaged in armed resistance. Yet, they have been primary targets for Israel’s colonial expansion.

In other words, Israeli colonialism is in no way linked to Palestinian resistance, action or inaction. This has remained true for decades.

Gaza is a stark example. While one of the most horrific genocides in recent history was being carried out, Israeli real estate developers, members of the Knesset (Parliament), and leaders of the illegal settlement movement were all meeting to discuss investment opportunities in a depopulated Gaza. The callous tycoons were busy promising villas on the beach for competitive prices while Palestinians starved to death, amid an ever-growing body count. Even fiction cannot be as cruel as this reality.

It is no wonder that the Americans joined in, as evidenced by equally ruthless comments made by Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of US President Donald Trump, and eventually by the President himself.

While many at the time spoke about the strangeness of US foreign policy, few mentioned that both countries are prime examples of settler colonialism. Unlike other settler colonial societies, both Israel and the US are still committed to the same project.

Trump’s desire to take over and rename the Gulf of Mexico, his ambition to occupy Greenland and claim it as American territory, and, of course, his comments about owning Gaza are all examples of settler colonial language and behavior.

The difference between Trump and previous presidents is that others used military power to expand US influence through war and hundreds of military bases worldwide without explicitly using expansionist language. Instead, they referenced the need to challenge the Soviet “red menace,” “restore democracy,” and launch a global “war on terror” as justifications for their actions. Trump, however, feels no need to mask his actions with false logic and outright lies. Brutal honesty is his brand, though in essence, he is no different than the rest.

Israel, on the other hand, rarely feels the need to explain itself to anyone. It remains a model of a ferocious, traditional colonial society that fears no accountability and has no regard for international law.

While the Israelis pushed to conquer and ethnically cleanse Gaza, they remained entrenched in southern Lebanon, insisting on remaining in five strategic areas, thus violating the ceasefire agreement with Lebanon, which was signed on November 27.

A perfect case in point was the immediate—and I mean immediate—expansion into southern Syria, the moment the Syrian regime collapsed on December 8.

As soon as the events in Syria opened up security margins, Israeli tanks rolled in, warplanes destroyed almost the entirety of the Syrian army, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu canceled the armistice agreement signed in 1974.

That expansion continued, though Syria represented no so-called security threat to Israel whatsoever. Israel is now in control of the Sheikh Mountain and Quneitra inside Syria.

The unquenchable appetite for land in Israel remains as strong as it was upon the formation of the Zionist movement and the takeover of the Palestinian homeland nearly eight decades ago.

This realization is crucial, and Arab countries, in particular, must understand this. Sacrificing Palestinians to the Israeli death machine with the flawed calculation that Israel’s ambitions are limited to Gaza and the West Bank is a fatal mistake.

Israel will not hesitate for a minute to militarily move into any Arab geographic space the moment it feels able to do so, and it will always find US support and European silence, regardless of how destructive its actions are.

Jordan, Egypt, and other Arab countries could find themselves facing the same predicament as Syria today: watching their territories being devoured while remaining powerless and without recourse.

This realization should also matter to those busy finding “solutions” to the Palestinian-Israeli “conflict,” which narrowly frame the problem to that of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.

Settler colonialism can never be resolved through creative solutions. A settler colonial state ceases to exist, and a settler colonial society ceases to function if territorial expansion is not a permanent state of affairs.

The only solution to this is that Israel’s settler colonialism must be challenged, curtailed, and ultimately defeated. It may be a difficult task, but it is an inescapable one.

The post From Gaza to Syria: The Unyielding Reality of Israeli Settler Colonialism appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Ramzy Baroud.

“Security officers brutally attacked journalist Ibrahim Miracle, leaving him with grave injuries, simply because he was doing his job,” said CPJ Africa Program Coordinator Muthoki Mumo, from Nairobi. “Ugandan authorities must break with the culture of violence against journalists by investigating those who carried out the assault and those who commanded the operation, ensuring accountability. Media must be able to cover political events without fear of violence.”

Miracle was covering the arrest and assault of an opposition party nominee in an upcoming parliamentary by-election in Kampala when a JAT officer grabbed his camera and ordered him to stop filming, according to the journalist and a statement from the media rights group Human Rights Network for Journalists – Uganda. Miracle said that when he protested, another JAT officer struck him in the face with a baton, knocking him into a ditch, where he hit his head.

The journalist sustained severe injuries to his face, including a crack to one of the bones surrounding his eye, and has experienced debilitating headaches, according to Livingstone Matovu, Top TV news editor, and Joseph Miracle Ssebyala, the journalist’s uncle, who spoke with CPJ. Ssebyala told CPJ that Miracle remained hospitalized as of March 4 and had undergone at least two surgeries.

On February 27, lawmakers raised concerns in parliament about the assault, and Uganda’s trade minister, David Bahati, said the government would investigate.

Kampala Metropolitan Police spokesperson Luke Owoyesigyire told CPJ by phone that the police were aware of the incident and waiting to record the victim’s statement. CPJ’s calls to military spokesperson Felix Kulayigye were unanswered.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

The Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, or CPPCC, the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s highest-ranking United Front organization, enlists carefully selected and loyal delegates from among celebrities, the private sector, ethnic minority communities and “people’s organizations” under the party umbrella — including the All-China Women’s Federation and the All-China Federation of Trade Unions.

It also hosts delegates from minority political parties, but only if they play a role that is narrowly defined and subservient to the ruling party.

The body, more colorful and visually diverse than the National People’s Congress that opens Wednesday, is portrayed by state media as proof of China’s consultative model of “whole process democracy,” as well as its inclusion of people from “all walks of life” in politics.

(Go Nakamura/Reuters)

The opening session plunged Beijing into strict traffic controls, with some roads closed to allow motorcades of limousines and official buses to approach the Great Hall of the People in time, with the general public warned not to try to drive in the area.

Police bomb disposal teams were out in force checking vehicles near the venue, according to news photos, while Beijing residents complained of city-wide congestion and security checkpoints.

“I was driving along the Second Ring Road today and came upon the delegates' motorcade,” Beijing resident Ye Jinghuan told RFA Mandarin. “The road wasn’t closed, but only one lane was left for ordinary vehicles [out of three].”

“Three groups of buses have passed by, and we’re now stuck on the viaduct, motionless,” she said from her vehicle. “We don’t know how far back this goes.”

“This was a drive that should have taken half an hour, but now I don’t know how long it will be,” Ye said.

Strict security checks

Meanwhile, any passengers entering Beijing are having their bags checked twice at railway stations, according to the X citizen journalist account “Teacher Li is not your teacher.”

The account posted video clips of security personnel at the Tengzhou High-speed Railway Station in the eastern province of Shandong checking every item of luggage belonging to Beijing-bound passengers, with people grumbling at the level of security.

Similar checks were conducted on luggage belonging to Beijing-bound passengers in the northeastern city of Shenyang, a separate video clip showed.

There are also security checkpoints on highways entering the capital, Shandong resident Zhou Gang told RFA Mandarin on Tuesday.

“There are police at every highway exit, and all cars entering Beijing are being checked,” Zhou said.

Additionally, police continued to detain anyone using the official complaints system, bussing them out of town and handing them over to “interceptors” from their hometowns.

“They’re detaining people on a daily basis,” a resident of Beijing’s Fangshan district, who gave only the surname Li for fear of reprisals, told RFA Mandarin. “There are police vehicles throughout the village and outside.”

“Petitioners are now basically being detained as soon as they are sent back home from Beijing,” she said. “Things are very bad.”

(Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)

Elsewhere in China, police are placing rights activists under house arrest until the CPPCC and the National People’s Congress, which starts Wednesday, are over.

“I can’t go anywhere right now,” Qingdao-based rights activist Zhu Le told RFA Mandarin. “The police told me that security for the parliamentary sessions will last until March 20, and I’m not allowed to leave my home before then.”

‘Just a formality’

Inside the Great Hall of the People, President Xi Jinping and other Chinese leaders attended the opening ceremony at 3 p.m., with Politburo Standing Committee member and CPPCC chairman Wang Huning delivering his annual work report to around 2,000 delegates.

Wang vowed to expand the Conference’s capacity to “bolster unity and friendship” and improve feedback and consultation.

“We need to improve the CPPCC consultation systems and mechanisms, and the mechanisms for adopting, implementing, and providing feedback on consultation outcomes,” Wang said.

While it does help to ensure loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party, the CPPCC isn’t widely expected to have much impact on policy.

(Andy Wong/AP)

A resident of Shanghai, who gave only the surname Wang for fear of reprisals, said the meetings were just there for show.

“These meetings are just a formality, with no substantive content now,” he said, citing the ending of three decades of press conferences once given by China’s premier at the National People’s Congress.

“The premier has stopped giving press conference, and they’ve also been canceled at the People’s Congress and municipal CPPCC in Shanghai too,” Wang said. “They hold their meetings and don’t want the people to get involved.”

“They don’t care about the same issues that the people care about,” he said.

Translated by Luisetta Mudie.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Qian Lang for RFA Mandarin.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

Earlier this year, the Air Force revealed that the general who oversaw its lobbying before Congress had inappropriate romantic relationships with five women, including three who worked on Capitol Hill.

Maj. Gen. Christopher Finerty’s colleagues told investigators the relationships were “highly inappropriate” as they could give the Air Force undue influence in Congress. “I honestly felt sick to my stomach,” one said, according to a report about the investigation, “because it just felt so sleazy.”

The Air Force inspector general’s report redacted the names of the women who worked on the Hill.

But one of the women whose relationship with Finerty was scrutinized by the inspector general was Sen. Joni Ernst, according to two sources with knowledge of the investigation. The Iowa Republican and combat veteran is one of the most influential voices on the Hill about the military, and she sits on the Senate’s Armed Services Committee, which oversees the Pentagon and plays a crucial role in setting its annual budget.

Three other sources told ProPublica that around 2019 Ernst had a previous romantic relationship with a legislative affairs official for a different branch of the military, the Navy.

Ernst and the officials were not married at the time and Senate rules do not bar lawmakers from entering into romantic relationships with lobbyists or other legislative advocates. But ethics experts say such relationships can create a conflict of interest, and other lawmakers have been criticized for such behavior in the past.

A former legislative affairs official for the military told ProPublica that people in that role aren’t officially “lobbyists but for all intent and purposes that’s their job. ... From an ethics standpoint, it’s severely problematic.” A former Air Force officer who worked for Finerty said the perception in the office was that his relationship with Ernst “absolutely gave the Air Force undue influence.”

Six sources who worked for the Air Force or in Congress told ProPublica that they had heard about a relationship between Ernst and Finerty and there had been concerns about it for years. The sources spoke on condition of anonymity because they did not have permission to speak publicly or feared for their jobs. One source said that they were told about the relationship by one of the two participants. Two sources said they heard from witnesses interviewed by the inspector general that Ernst was a focus of the investigation.

A spokesperson for Ernst would not address whether the senator had any relationships with military legislative liaisons but said the lawmaker maintained her independence: “The fake news media is clearly too busy gossiping to report the real news that Senator Ernst is focused on cutting waste at the Pentagon. Her votes and work in the Senate are guided by the voices of Iowans who elected her and her constitutional duty alone. Any insinuation otherwise by tabloid ‘journalism’ is a slanderous lie — full stop.”

Finerty’s lawyer also declined to say whether the general had a romantic relationship with Ernst while he was advocating for the Air Force in Congress. “The IG report found no evidence suggesting anything remotely approaching either conflict of interest or undue influence involving General Finerty and anyone on Capitol Hill. Further, the IG report found no law, rule, policy or guidance prohibited any of General Finerty’s relationships. Any suggestion to the contrary would be defamatory.” (The inspector general report said Finerty “wrongfully engaged in inappropriate relationships with multiple individuals” in violation of the code of military justice.) In his interview with the inspector general, according to the report, Finerty defended relationships between people in his office and “members on the Hill” — a term used to describe members of Congress.

The 41-page report documenting the inspector general’s investigation of Finerty was completed in September 2023 but was shared with Congress, and then the public, earlier this year in response to records requests. (The investigation summary, posted on the Air Force’s website, was reported first by Politico, without any mention of Ernst’s involvement.)

At the time of the report’s release to Congress in early January, Ernst’s influence over the Pentagon was on full display, as she sat at the center of one of the Trump administration’s most contentious confirmation battles. Ernst had made statements suggesting she had reservations about President Donald Trump’s nominee for defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, and though she had later made encouraging statements, she had refused to formally back him.

Serving in the Iowa Army National Guard during the Iraq War, Ernst is the Senate’s first female combat veteran and has pushed to reform the military’s handling of sexual assault cases. Hegseth faced scrutiny over past allegations of excessive drinking and sexual assault, which he denied, as well as criticism for comments he made against allowing women in combat. Then in mid-January, Ernst reversed course under pressure from Trump allies and formally endorsed Hegseth. Her backing was considered pivotal in reviving what had appeared to be a flailing nomination.

The report about Finerty is heavily redacted but provided the following details about the inspector general’s findings. Two of the five women worked for the Pentagon. They include a civilian employee who was married to another officer and an Air Force enlisted member significantly lower down the chain of command than Finerty. Finerty interacted with the three other women on Capitol Hill as part of his legislative affairs work, “mixing his professional and personal roles, thus creating the perception of a conflict of interest.” Finerty sexted two of those women in 2021. He sexted and had an “intimate relationship” with the third, though the report does not say exactly when.

The nature of his relationship with the women varied, from suggestive messages to graphic sexting and photos to physical sex, according to the report. Sources told ProPublica that the inspector general asked witnesses about Ernst, but because of the redactions in the report, it’s unclear which sections, if any, refer to the senator.

The report includes a stark example of Finerty’s legislative advocacy overlapping with his romantic relationship with one of the women on Capitol Hill.

In June 2021, Finerty texted the woman “I was distracted by you being distracted.” Then he sent her a list of “top 5 things to protect if possible,” including a particular fighter jet, radar technology and a system to improve interoperability across the military’s branches.

“What distraction?” the woman texted back. “If I was [redacted] would it be distracting?” She followed up with a series of what the inspector general report described as pornographic pictures.

Finerty told investigators that his romantic relationships with the women on Capitol Hill were proper because all participants were unmarried.

“Those weren’t Chris Finerty’s personal interest items. Those were the five things that were in the President’s Budget that we’re charged to go up there and ensure that we get across the finish line,” he said, according to the report. “I wasn’t saying hey, do me a personal favor and protect these five things. It was, these are the five things that the Air Force has in the President’s Budget that we’re trying to do that we need your help with.”

Many of Finerty’s colleagues who were also working in military legislative affairs took a more negative view. In interviews with investigators, they expressed concerns about the relationships leading to undue influence, other military branches perceiving the Air Force as getting preferential treatment, and other congressional offices worrying they were less likely to receive sensitive information.

The inspector general’s investigation found “several exchanges between Maj Gen Finerty and the women regarding legislative matters” but “no evidence of favors or exchanging of sensitive information by either party.”

Regarding one of the Hill relationships, a colleague of Finerty’s told investigators, “Was there a perception in my office that it was unethical? Yes.” The colleague reported it affected morale and people were “talking about it all the time.”

Another military legislative affairs official was more blunt, calling the relationships “totally unprofessional” because “I think it compromises the integrity of the entire Department of the Air Force.”

The inspector general concluded Finerty had violated the code of military justice, including “conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman” for his “inappropriate relationships” with all five women. As a result, Finerty was demoted to brigadier general. He retired from the Air Force in November.

Around the time Finerty was heading the legislative affairs office, from April 2019 to March 2023, Ernst publicly pushed for more money and championed projects for the Air Force on multiple occasions, including in at least one instance on a specific matter that Finerty was advocating for on the Hill.

In June 2021, she pushed for more Air Force funding from the Senate floor: “While the Biden budget promises a bureaucratic buildup at the IRS, his proposal is far less generous to our armed forces. The Air Force would suffer a substantial cut in its number of aircraft.”

In April 2022, she attacked then-President Joe Biden for a proposed budget that “shrinks the size of our Air Force.”

“With Putin and his cronies invading Ukraine, China testing hypersonic missiles and threatening Taiwan, Iran enriching uranium, and the Taliban back in control of Afghanistan, it’s as critical as ever that we provide for a strong national defense,” Ernst said in a statement.

Two months later, she pushed legislation to improve the Pentagon’s access to critical minerals, warning “the Air Force’s premier fighter jet, the F-22, is made with layers of titanium alloy, much of which is sourced from Russia and China.”

In November 2023, several months after Finerty left his post, she introduced a bill to allow the Pentagon to connect weapons and technology across the various branches of the government, a concept known as Joint All Domain Command and Control — which was on the list of top priorities he texted to one of the women on the Hill he was romantically involved with.

According to three sources, Ernst had an earlier romantic relationship around 2019 with an official from the Navy’s legislative affairs office. Ernst was on the armed services committee then as well. One source with knowledge of the situation said the relationship’s end created tension between Ernst’s office and the Navy legislative affairs office. Two sources said the Navy liaison was moved out of his post early. One of them said he was forced to depart his post earlier than expected because he had another romantic relationship with a Hill staffer and that Ernst was not cited by his boss when he was transferred. But the second source said senior officials were aware of the relationship with Ernst and that it played a role.

A Navy spokesperson declined to comment.

Ernst has once before been accused of being involved in a relationship that may have violated military rules. In a highly contentious divorce in 2019, her ex-husband alleged she admitted to an affair with one of her soldiers when she served as a company commander during the Iraq War. Ernst denied having an affair.

Other elected officials have drawn scrutiny for their relationships with lobbyists and others who advocate for their employers before Congress.

Former Missouri Sen. Roy Blunt married a lobbyist for tobacco giant Altria Group, but he pledged to recuse himself from any matters affecting the company. Former Pennsylvania Rep. Bill Shuster was criticized for dating an airline lobbyist while he chaired the House’s transportation committee, a relationship he said was proper because she was not lobbying his office. In 2018, the married state Senate majority leader in Iowa, which Ernst represents, resigned abruptly after video surfaced of him kissing a lobbyist for the Iowa League of Cities.

Virginia Canter, a former government ethics lawyer who served in administrations of both parties, said of the relationships with officials advocating before Ernst’s committee: “It kind of takes your breath away.”

The relationships, Canter said, make Ernst vulnerable to being extorted if people learned of them and could give someone undue influence over her.

“It draws into question every position she’s taken that would affect his office,” Canter said. “You’re expecting her to represent her constituents’ interests every time she supports a policy or votes. Once she has engaged in that kind of relationship, you have to call into question her impartiality.”

The military is particularly strict about romantic relationships, with rules against adultery, liaisons between employees of different rank, and various other types of relationships that could create ethical pitfalls.

One former high-ranking Pentagon official said he thought some of the rules may be antiquated and overly strict, but that a relationship between an officer handling legislative affairs and a senator created too severe a conflict.

“That seems way beyond inappropriate to me, somebody who’s there representing the U.S. military within the military chain of command with a U.S. senator on Armed Services, that makes it really bad.”

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Robert Faturechi.

Trump has vowed tariffs of “more than” 60% on Chinese imports, and earlier this month began with a 10% levy on all goods from China. That led Beijing to introduce a 15% retaliatory tariff on certain U.S. energy exports to China, leading to concerns about a renewed trade war.

A brief readout from the U.S. Treasury Department said that the “introductory call” between Bessent and Lifeng had largely focused on trade, with the American side raising concerns about the U.S. trade deficit with China, which has long been a bugbear of Trump.

Bessent “expressed serious concerns about the PRC’s counternarcotics efforts, economic imbalances, and unfair policies,” the readout said, using an acronym for the People’s Republic of China.

(Aaron Favila/AP)

The Treasury secretary “stressed the [Trump] Administration’s commitment to pursue trade and economic policies that protect the American economy, the American worker, and our national security,” but committed to communication with the Chinese side, it said.

According to the Chinese readout released by state news agency Xinhua, Lifeng meanwhile “expressed serious concerns over recent U.S. additional tariffs and other restrictive measures against China.”

However, both Bessent and Lifeng “recognized the significance of bilateral economic and trade relations,” the Chinese readout said.

US State Department website changes

The video call came days after the U.S. State Department updated its bilateral relations “fact sheet” on China to add a series of grievances about Beijing, leading to a backlash from the Chinese government.

The Feb. 13 changes, which themselves came days after the State Department removed previously standard language about not supporting Taiwanese independence, signaled the Trump administration’s concerns about U.S.-China trade relations.

China is “one of the most restrictive investment climates in the world” the page on U.S.-China relations now reads, before pledging to carry out Trump’s “America First” approach to trade and diplomatic ties.

“In its bilateral economic relations with China, the United States will place U.S. interests and the American people first and work to end China’s abusive, unfair, and illegal economic practices,” it says.

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It also accuses Beijing of profiting off “unfair trade practices,” with the United States, including by “using forced labor and massive state subsidies, putting American businesses at a disadvantage, and making them complicit in China’s human rights abuses.”

The updated page notably also discarded the usual American diplomatic practice of referring to China’s government as “The People’s Republic of China,” or by the acronym “PRC,” rather than “China.”

“The United States is firmly committed to countering China’s licit and illicit efforts to obtain U.S. technologies to advance its military modernization,” the page says in one example passage.

‘China’ not ‘PRC’

The State Department did not respond directly to a request from Radio Free Asia to comment about the change in the name used for China’s government, but said the changes to the page in general were made to bring it in line with the priorities of the new Trump administration.

“The China fact sheet on state.gov was updated to reflect the current Administration’s policies and priorities as they relate to China and the U.S.-China relationship,” a State Department spokesperson said.

Speaking at a regular press briefing in Beijing on Thursday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said his government “strongly deplores and firmly opposes” the tone of the new page.

“The changes made by the U.S. State Department on its ‘U.S.-China Relations’ page and ‘U.S. Relations With China’ fact sheet misrepresent the facts, attack China’s foreign policy and peddle the so-called China-U.S. strategic competition,” Guo said.

Edited by Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Alex Willemyns.

France’s top diplomat in the Pacific region says talks around the “unfreezing” of New Caledonia’s highly controversial electoral roll are back on the table.

The French government intended to make a constitutional amendment that would lift restrictions prescribed under the Nouméa Accord, which disqualified around 20,000 French citizens who had not resided in the territory before 1998 from voting in the provincial elections.

The restrictions were viewed as a step to ensure indigenous Kanaks were not at risk of becoming a minority in their own country.

• ‘READ MORE: ‘France lost the plot’: Journalist David Robie on Kanaky/New Caledonia riots — David Robie
• Roch Wamytan: ‘New Caledonia is not France’
• ‘New Caledonia is France’: says French diplomat
• Other Kanaky New Caledonia reports

However, the Paris decision by Paris to move ahead with the changes last year triggered five months of civil unrest that has cost the New Caledonian economy more than 2.2 billion euros (NZ$4 billion).

The constitutional reforms were initially suspended in June, before the former Prime Minister Michel Barnier abandoned them.

However, this week, France’s Ambassador to the Pacific, Véronique Roger-Lacan, confirmed that the French Overseas Minister Manuel Valls is set to discuss the issue during next week’s high-level visit to Nouméa.

She said a date for the provincial elections, to be held at the end of this year, is also in the works.

Unfreezing of lists
“The provincial elections were due in December last year, and because there was discussion on the unfreezing of the electoral lists, the whole process was stopped,” Roger-Lacan said at a press briefing in Wellington.

“The discussion on the unfreezing of the electoral list for the provincial elections continues.”

She said in a normal democratic system, everyone who pays taxes has the right to vote.

“Because when you pay taxes to a government, you have the choice of the government [to whom] you give your money. [In New Caledonia] there is a discrepancy,” she said.

“This was one point of contention that led to the riots.”

She said the French constitution states that if any of its overseas territories want self-determination, “they can have it”.

Self-determination is defined by the United Nations as either independence, state association (as in the Cook Islands), or integration within an already independent country, which is the case in New Caledonia, she said.

Peaceful choice
“They can choose peacefully among those three solutions. But no riots, no insurrection.”

Roger-Lacan pointed out that there was a “strong split” within the pro-independence groups in New Caledonia.

She said there was a part of the pro-independence FLNKS (Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front) who realised that “this discussion on the unfreezing of the electoral list does not make sense”.

“They agree that the unfreezing of this electoral list is the way to go. What are the criteria for the deferring of this electoral listing are a case of discussion.”

Roger-Lacan added that the provincial elections must take place before Christmas Day.

“The question is: with what type of electoral list they will take place.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

“Justice must be served in journalists’ killings,” said CPJ Asia Program Coordinator Beh Lih Yi. “It is alarming Sri Lanka’s attorney general seeks to drop charges against three key suspects in journalist Lasantha Wickrematunge’s murder without any public explanation. President Anura Kumara Dissanayake must deliver on his pledge to bring attacks on the press to justice.”

On January 27, Sri Lankan attorney general Parinda Ranasinghe issued a letter stating that his office will not pursue further legal action against three suspects, including a former army intelligence officer and two police officials, in Wickrematunge’s death. [this link isn’t working for me]

Ranasinghe, previously appointed by President Ranil Wickremesinghe’s administration, directed the Criminal Investigation Department to report progress within 14 days after presenting the update to the magistrate court, which will decide on the attorney general’s recommendation.

The former army intelligence officer is out on bail following his 2016 arrest on allegations of abducting and threatening Wickrematunge’s driver, a key witness in the case. The two former police officials are out on bail following their 2018 arrests for allegedly concealing evidence in the murder.

In response to the letter, Sri Lankan media minister Nalinda Jayatissa said on Wednesday that the government will “study this matter” and “do justice by the citizens of this country.”

No one has been convicted for dozens of murders, enforced disappearances, and abductions of journalists during and in the aftermath of Sri Lanka’s 26-year civil war that ended in 2009. In January, CPJ joined 24 civil society partners in urging the recently elected government to ensure accountability for violence against the press.

Jayatissa did not immediately respond to CPJ’s text message requesting comment. CPJ also emailed the Dissanayake and Ranasinghe’s offices for comment but did not immediately receive any reply.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

We speak with Karla Gilbride, the former general counsel of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, who was fired by President Trump in late January along with two commissioners at the federal agency that enforces civil rights law in the workplace. The EEOC was created as part of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and is tasked with investigating discrimination based on race, ethnicity, sex and other characteristics, but the Trump administration is gutting the agency as part of its larger assault on DEI, or diversity, equity and inclusion. The EEOC says it will no longer focus on anti-trans discrimination and vows to uphold a binary view of sex and gender.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

According to Bild’s exclusive report “Arms dealer Nguyen T. is the best-guarded woman in Germany,” Nhan has been in a safe house at an undisclosed location under the strict protection of German security authorities.

“Her knowledge of secret arms deals makes her a target of foreign secret services,” the newspaper said.

In Vietnam, Nhan – former chairwoman of a trading company called AIC – is on a police wanted list after being accused of several instances of corruption and she was sentenced in absentia in 2023 to 30 years in prison for bid rigging and bribery.

(Vietnam News Agency)

However, her involvement in the murky world of international arms dealing and alleged connection with Vietnam’s incumbent prime minister is the real reason that she is at high risk of being abducted by Vietnamese agents, the German tabloid alleged.

In 2022, Vietnamese police issued an arrest warrant for Nhan for her involvement in a medical supplies provision contract.

Since then, Nhan has been prosecuted in five different corruption cases and convicted in four of them, all in absentia as she had already fled Vietnam, first to Japan, then the United Kingdom and Germany.

According to Bild, the former businesswoman arrived in Frankfurt in the summer of 2023 and turned herself in to German authorities. who moved her to a safe house that was once a brothel but redeveloped by the security service into “a fortress,” with cameras and armed guards.

The newspaper alleged that Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office had spent “millions of euros” on her hideout and protection. In return, Nhan is believed to have given German authorities information on arms deals between Russia, China and Vietnam, including details of weapon systems, supply chains, money flows and the participating companies.

Radio Free Asia was not able to contact relevant German authorities to ask about the case.

Extradition denied

Israeli media previously reported on Nhan’s role as an intermediary for arms procurement from Israel to Vietnam, including surface-to-air missiles, spy satellites, drones and other weapon systems.

There were also rumors of her involvement in negotiations between Vietnamese defense officials and their French partners, though RFA could not independently verify them.

In recent years, Hanoi has been seeking to diversify arms sources to reduce its reliance on Moscow, its traditional partner and main supplier of weapons.

Another German news outlet, Die Tageszeitung, or Taz, reported in August 2023 that Germany had rejected a Vietnamese extradition request for Nhan.

The German government also warned Vietnam of “serious diplomatic consequences” should it attempt to abduct her, saying that it “will not tolerate any foreign countries’ interferences in German territory,” it reported.

In 2017, Vietnamese agents kidnapped former oil executive Trinh Xuan Thanh in Berlin and his illegal rendition back to Vietnam caused a deep diplomatic rift between the countries. Germany expelled two Vietnamese diplomats and convicted two other people over the abduction.

Nhan’s case also shines a spotlight on Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh, who served as the Communist Party chief in Quang Ninh province from 2011 to 2015 when Nhan and her company were found guilty of rigging bidding procedures to win a contract to supply medical equipment to a hospital, causing damages worth US$2 million, the court in which she was sentenced in absentia to prison for 30 years was told at the time.

(Ilya Pitalev/BRICS-RUSSIA2024.RU/Reuters)

The conviction raised questions about connections between Chinh and the businesswoman.

As the political scene in Vietnam heats up ahead of an all-important Party Congress in early 2026, Nhan’s name could resurface in discussions of her former associates’ political ambitions.

Edited by Mike Firn.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Staff.

Trump’s return to power for a second term raises fundamental questions in Asia, in particular the extent he will follow through on his promise to ramp up tariffs and his commitment to the security of old allies in an increasingly dangerous world.

The Trump team invited Chinese President Xi Jinping to Washington for the inauguration, but Vice President Han Zheng is taking his place. Japan sent Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya, the first time its top diplomat will be at a ceremony normally attended by its ambassador.

Xi talked with Trump in a Friday phone call and stressed that their two countries were pursuing their dreams, with both committed to a better life for their people, China’s foreign ministry said.

“President Xi expressed his readiness to secure greater progress in China-U.S. relations from a new starting point,” it added in a statement on the talks.

“Given the extensive common interests and broad space of cooperation between the two countries, China and the United States can become partners and friends, contribute to each other’s success, and advance shared prosperity for the good of the two countries and the whole world,” the ministry cited Xi as saying

While Beijing is keen to engage with Trump and talk down his threats of 60% on Chinese goods, Trump’s pre-inauguration talk of taking control of Greenland and the Panama Canal has triggered a wave of speculation in Chinese social media that he may be willing to let China take control of democratically ruled Taiwan.

In Friday’s talk with Trump, Xi repeated that the Taiwan issue was “a red line that China cannot allow to be challenged,” according to state media.

(X: Chinese Ambassador Xie Feng)

China’s Vice President Han met U.S. Vice President-elect J.D. Vance and business leaders, including Tesla CEO Elon Musk, in Washington on Sunday with Han stressing “extensive common interests” despite “some disagreements and frictions,” the Chinese ministry said.

Old alliances

During his first term, Trump called for old allies Japan and South Korea to both pay more for the U.S. troops stationed in those countries, raising questions about the decades-old U.S. commitment to their security.

Both allies will be watching for signs the Trump administration will champion regional alliances, such as the trilateral agreement forged between the U.S., Japan and South Korea during the Biden administration, to counter the threat of China and North Korea.

Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi said the fact that Takeshi Iwaya would be his country’s first foreign minister to attend a U.S. presidential inauguration was a sign that the new Trump administration values its relationship with Japan.

“I would like to use this as an opportunity to firmly build a relationship of trust,” said Hayashi on Monday during a press conference. “The Japan-U.S. alliance will continue to be the cornerstone of our country’s foreign and security policy.”

He reiterated the need for an early Japan-US summit meeting.

Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba said on Sunday that he was coordinating a schedule for his first summit meeting with Trump, without mentioning a timeline.

“We must speak independently and embody the national interest in terms of what role Japan will play in foreign policy, including security, economy, and Ukraine,” he said.

Japanese media have reported that Ishiba and Trump were aiming to hold a summit in the first half of February.

Korean ‘turning point’?

South Korea’s ruling People’s Party of Korea expressed its hope that the alliance with the U.S. would grow even stronger under Trump.

“I hope that this will be a new turning point for strengthening the ROK-U.S. alliance and peace on the Korean peninsula,” Kwon Sung-dong, the floor leader of the National Assembly, said in a congratulatory message to Trump on Monday, referring to South Korea by its official name, the Republic of Korea.

During his first term, Trump held three rounds of talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. While he failed to achieve any progress in persuading Kim to abandon his nuclear program and missile programs, South Korea’s spy agencies have speculated that Trump could make a small step forward if he were to meet the Korean leader again.

RELATED STORIES

China’s exports spike ahead of Trump inauguration, tariff fears

Japan to raise South China Sea issue with new Trump administration

North Korea conducts missile tests days before Trump takes office

South Korea is also concerned about trade and the knock-on effect of Trump ramping up U.S. tariffs against China.

Policy Committee Chairman Kim Sang-hoon expressed concern about the impact of protectionist U.S. policies, such as the imposition of universal tariffs and reciprocal tariffs, on the domestic economy.

Kim cited research by the Korea Institute for International Economic Policy that South Korea’s domestic exports could decrease by up to 65 trillion South Korean won (US$45 billion) if universal tariffs and tariffs on China are imposed.

‘Adjustments’ expected

Singapore Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan acknowledged the global shift towards more protectionist and nationalistic policies, including the threat of tariffs and trade-restrictive measures by the Trump administration.

“We look forward to his inauguration and to the policies, and we will have to make the necessary adjustments even as he makes changes to his policies,” he said in an interview with Singapore media on Sunday.

He said ASEAN would have to “double down” on regional integration as well as connectivity, and make itself as competitive as possible as a trading partner and an investment destination.

“[ASEAN] cannot control the agendas of the superpowers, or indeed the larger powers, but we can, and we should focus on integrating ourselves, strengthening our economies, and our connectivity,” he said.

Balakrishnan recommended “long-term policies which are consistent, which are reliable, which are trustworthy, and to keep open engagements in an inclusive way with all the major powers – America, China, Europe, India and Japan.”

Edited by Mike Firn and Taejun Kang.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Staff.

Trump’s return to power for a second term raises fundamental questions in Asia, in particular the extent he will follow through on his promise to ramp up tariffs and his commitment to the security of old allies in an increasingly dangerous world.

The Trump team invited Chinese President Xi Jinping to Washington for the inauguration, but Vice President Han Zheng is taking his place. Japan sent Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya, the first time its top diplomat will be at a ceremony normally attended by its ambassador.

Xi talked with Trump in a Friday phone call and stressed that their two countries were pursuing their dreams, with both committed to a better life for their people, China’s foreign ministry said.

“President Xi expressed his readiness to secure greater progress in China-U.S. relations from a new starting point,” it added in a statement on the talks.

“Given the extensive common interests and broad space of cooperation between the two countries, China and the United States can become partners and friends, contribute to each other’s success, and advance shared prosperity for the good of the two countries and the whole world,” the ministry cited Xi as saying

While Beijing is keen to engage with Trump and talk down his threats of 60% on Chinese goods, Trump’s pre-inauguration talk of taking control of Greenland and the Panama Canal has triggered a wave of speculation in Chinese social media that he may be willing to let China take control of democratically ruled Taiwan.

In Friday’s talk with Trump, Xi repeated that the Taiwan issue was “a red line that China cannot allow to be challenged,” according to state media.

(X: Chinese Ambassador Xie Feng)

China’s Vice President Han met U.S. Vice President-elect J.D. Vance and business leaders, including Tesla CEO Elon Musk, in Washington on Sunday with Han stressing “extensive common interests” despite “some disagreements and frictions,” the Chinese ministry said.

Old alliances

During his first term, Trump called for old allies Japan and South Korea to both pay more for the U.S. troops stationed in those countries, raising questions about the decades-old U.S. commitment to their security.

Both allies will be watching for signs the Trump administration will champion regional alliances, such as the trilateral agreement forged between the U.S., Japan and South Korea during the Biden administration, to counter the threat of China and North Korea.

Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi said the fact that Takeshi Iwaya would be his country’s first foreign minister to attend a U.S. presidential inauguration was a sign that the new Trump administration values its relationship with Japan.

“I would like to use this as an opportunity to firmly build a relationship of trust,” said Hayashi on Monday during a press conference. “The Japan-U.S. alliance will continue to be the cornerstone of our country’s foreign and security policy.”

He reiterated the need for an early Japan-US summit meeting.

Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba said on Sunday that he was coordinating a schedule for his first summit meeting with Trump, without mentioning a timeline.

“We must speak independently and embody the national interest in terms of what role Japan will play in foreign policy, including security, economy, and Ukraine,” he said.

Japanese media have reported that Ishiba and Trump were aiming to hold a summit in the first half of February.

Korean ‘turning point’?

South Korea’s ruling People’s Party of Korea expressed its hope that the alliance with the U.S. would grow even stronger under Trump.

“I hope that this will be a new turning point for strengthening the ROK-U.S. alliance and peace on the Korean peninsula,” Kwon Sung-dong, the floor leader of the National Assembly, said in a congratulatory message to Trump on Monday, referring to South Korea by its official name, the Republic of Korea.

During his first term, Trump held three rounds of talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. While he failed to achieve any progress in persuading Kim to abandon his nuclear program and missile programs, South Korea’s spy agencies have speculated that Trump could make a small step forward if he were to meet the Korean leader again.

RELATED STORIES

China’s exports spike ahead of Trump inauguration, tariff fears

Japan to raise South China Sea issue with new Trump administration

North Korea conducts missile tests days before Trump takes office

South Korea is also concerned about trade and the knock-on effect of Trump ramping up U.S. tariffs against China.

Policy Committee Chairman Kim Sang-hoon expressed concern about the impact of protectionist U.S. policies, such as the imposition of universal tariffs and reciprocal tariffs, on the domestic economy.

Kim cited research by the Korea Institute for International Economic Policy that South Korea’s domestic exports could decrease by up to 65 trillion South Korean won (US$45 billion) if universal tariffs and tariffs on China are imposed.

‘Adjustments’ expected

Singapore Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan acknowledged the global shift towards more protectionist and nationalistic policies, including the threat of tariffs and trade-restrictive measures by the Trump administration.

“We look forward to his inauguration and to the policies, and we will have to make the necessary adjustments even as he makes changes to his policies,” he said in an interview with Singapore media on Sunday.

He said ASEAN would have to “double down” on regional integration as well as connectivity, and make itself as competitive as possible as a trading partner and an investment destination.

“[ASEAN] cannot control the agendas of the superpowers, or indeed the larger powers, but we can, and we should focus on integrating ourselves, strengthening our economies, and our connectivity,” he said.

Balakrishnan recommended “long-term policies which are consistent, which are reliable, which are trustworthy, and to keep open engagements in an inclusive way with all the major powers – America, China, Europe, India and Japan.”

Edited by Mike Firn and Taejun Kang.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Staff.