Advocacy groups in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) disrupted the US Department of Defense’s public meeting this week, which tackled proposed military training plans on Tinian, voicing strong opposition to further militarisation in the Marianas.

Members of the Marianas for Palestine, Prutehi Guahan and Commonwealth670 burst into the public hearing at the Crowne Plaza hotel in Garapan, chanting, “No build-up! No war!” and “Free, free, Palestine!”

As the chanting echoed throughout the venue on Wednesday, the DOD continued the proceedings to gather public input on its CNMI Joint Military Training proposal.

• READ MORE: Other protests for Palestine reports

The US plan includes live-fire ranges, a base camp, communications infrastructure, and a biosecurity facility. Officials said feedback from Tinian, Saipan and Rota communities would help shape the final environmental impact statement.

Salam Castro Younis, of Chamorro-Palestinian descent, linked the military expansion to global conflicts in Gaza and Iran.

“More militarisation isn’t the answer,” Younis said. “We don’t need to lose more land. Diplomacy and peace are the way forward – not more bombs.”

Saipan-born Chamorro activist Anufat Pangelinan echoed Younis’s sentiment, citing research connecting climate change and environmental degradation to global militarisation.

‘No part of a war’
“We don’t want to be part of a war we don’t support,” he said. “The Marianas shouldn’t be a tip of the spear – we should be a bridge for peace.”

The groups argue that CJMT could make Tinian a target, increasing regional hostility.

“We want to sustain ourselves without the looming threat of war,” Pangelinan added.

In response to public concerns from the 2015 draft EIS, the DOD scaled back its plans, reducing live-fire ranges from 14 to 2 and eliminating artillery, rocket and mortar exercises.

Mark Hashimoto, executive director of the US Marine Corps Forces Pacific, emphasised the importance of community input.

“The proposal includes live-fire ranges, a base camp, communications infrastructure and a biosecurity facility,” he said.

Hashimoto noted that military lease lands on Tinian could support quarterly exercises involving up to 1000 personnel.

Economic impact concerns
Tinian residents expressed concerns about economic impacts, job opportunities, noise, environmental effects and further strain on local infrastructure.

The DOD is expected to issue a Record of Decision by spring 2026, balancing public feedback with national security and environmental considerations.

In a joint statement earlier this week, the activist groups said the people of Guam and the CNMI were “burdened by processes not meant to serve their home’s interests”.

The groups were referring to public input requirements for military plans involving the use of Guam and CNMI lands and waters for war training and testing.

“As colonies of the United States, the Mariana Islands continue to be forced into conflicts not of our people’s making,” the statement read.

“ After decades of displacement and political disenfranchisement, our communities are now in subservient positions that force an obligation to extend our lands, airspace, and waters for use in America’s never-ending cycle of war.”

They also lamented the “intense environmental degradation” and “growing housing and food insecurity” resulting from military expansion.

“Like other Pacific Islanders, we are also overrepresented disproportionately in the military and in combat,” they said.

“Meanwhile, prices on imported food, fuel, and essential goods will continue to rise with inflation and war.”

Republished from Pacific Island Times.

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

Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka and Fiji’s coalition government are “detached from the values that Fijians hold dear”, says the NGO Coalition on Human Rights in Fiji (NGOCHR).

The rights coalition has expressed deep concern over Rabuka’s ongoing engagements with Indonesia.

“History will judge how we respond as Fijians to this moment. We must not stay silent when Pacific people are being occupied and killed,” said NGOCHR chair Shamima Ali.

• READ MORE: Indonesia’s Pacific manoeuvres – money, military and silencing West Papua
• AWPA calls on Albanese to raise West Papuan human rights with Prabowo
• Other West Papua reports

She said Rabuka was extended a grant of $12 million by Indonesia recently and received proposals for joint military training.

“Is Fiji’s continuing silence on West Papua yet another example of being muzzled by purse strings?”

“As members of the Melanesian and Pacific family, bound by shared ancestry and identity, the acceptance of financial and any other benefit from Indonesia—while remaining silent on the plight of West Papua—is a betrayal of our family member and of regional solidarity.”

“True leadership must be rooted in solidarity, justice, and accountability,” Ali said.

“It is imperative that Pacific leaders not only advocate for peace and cooperation in the region but also continue to hold Indonesia to account on ongoing human rights violations in West Papua.”

Republished from The Fiji Times with permission.

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

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

We are pleased to announce the journalists chosen as the 2025 cohort of the ProPublica Investigative Editor Training Program.

The program was established in 2023 to expand the ranks of editors with investigative experience in newsrooms across the country and help better reflect the nation as a whole. Nine journalists from across the country will join four ProPublica staffers for this year’s program.

This program is funded by the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation, which supports journalism, film and arts organizations whose work is dedicated to social justice and strengthening democracy.

Participants will undergo a five-day intensive editing boot camp in New York, with courses and panel discussions led by ProPublica’s senior editors. After the boot camp, participants will gather virtually every two months for continuing development seminars and be assigned a ProPublica senior editor as a mentor for advice on their work and careers.

“By providing investigative editing tools to journalists across the country, we aim to ensure that there will be more accountability reporting in more newsrooms across the country,” said Ginger Thompson, a managing editor at ProPublica. “It’s an effort we have long considered one of our highest priorities.”

Introducing the 2025 cohort of the ProPublica Investigative Editor Training Program:

Alejandra Cancino is a senior reporter at Injustice Watch, a Chicago-based nonprofit newsroom investigating the Cook County court system. Her award-winning investigations focus on the intersection of government and business, combining data with personal stories to expose systemic failures. Most recently, she co-authored a five-part narrative series that exposed how the judicial system favors landlords’ property rights over their tenants’ rights. The project was recognized with an Investigative Reporters and Editors Award. In 2022, Cancino spent a year editing and training emerging journalists at City Bureau, a nonprofit organization focused on Chicago’s marginalized communities. Previously, she covered manufacturing, economic development and labor as a business reporter at the Chicago Tribune. She is a 2025 recipient of Chicago’s Studs Terkel Award, which honors a journalist’s body of work. Cancino serves on the Investigative Reporters and Editors board and is a former president and board member of the Society of Professional Journalists’ Chicago Headline Club.

Daarel Burnette II is a senior editor at The Chronicle of Higher Education. Before joining the Chronicle in 2022, he served as an assistant managing editor and reporter for Education Week and the bureau chief of Chalkbeat Tennessee, a news organization based in Memphis. He has worked as an education reporter at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Minnesota Star Tribune, and the Louisville Courier Journal. He also worked as a general-assignment reporter at the Chicago Tribune. He received his undergraduate degree in print journalism from Hampton University and a master’s degree in politics and journalism from Columbia University.

Daphne Chen is the investigations editor at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and a former investigative data reporter for the news organization. In 2022, Chen was part of a reporting team that was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Public Service for a project that uncovered how electrical fires disproportionately endanger poor Black renters. Previously, she was a data reporter for USA Today, where she revealed that state officials repeatedly sent children to live with foster parents accused of abuse. She also spent a year as a reporting fellow in Cambodia.

Nic Garcia is The Texas Tribune’s regions editor, leading a team of reporters who live across the state and tell the story of Texas policy and politics from the ground up. In 2022, his team produced a series on Texas’ failing water infrastructure — especially in rural communities — that propelled a statewide investment in water. Garcia joined the Tribune after a year as politics editor at The Des Moines Register in Iowa. He also was a senior writer at The Dallas Morning News, where he was named journalist of the year and won a second place Headliner award for his COVID-19 coverage. A Colorado native, Garcia covered the Colorado legislature for The Denver Post. His analysis of lobbying records inspired changes to the state’s lobbying laws.

Nicole Lewis is the engagement editor for The Marshall Project, leading the organization’s strategic efforts to deepen reporting that reaches communities most affected by the criminal legal system. She previously served as a senior editor at Slate, where she led a team of writers covering the array of legal issues before the Supreme Court for the publication’s jurisprudence section. In 2020, she was the lead reporter on a first-of-its kind political survey of the incarcerated, which received an honorable mention for an Investigative Reporters and Editors Philip Meyer Award for the project’s pioneering use of social science research methods. Prior to The Marshall Project, Nicole reported for The Washington Post’s America desk and the Fact Checker. She is based in Brooklyn, New York.

Andrea Lopez-Villafaña is the managing editor at Voice of San Diego. She is also a co-host on the VOSD Podcast, the most popular local public affairs podcast in San Diego, and writes a weekly newsletter, Cup of Chisme. She previously worked as a reporter at The San Diego-Union Tribune, where she covered the city’s neighborhoods.

Jennifer Palmer is an investigative reporter at Oklahoma Watch. She has more than two decades of news reporting experience and her work has been recognized with awards in public service reporting and investigative reporting. She started her career covering police and courts at the Rio Grande Sun, a scrappy weekly in northern New Mexico, where her reporting led to the ouster of a prominent judge. Before joining Oklahoma Watch, she previously worked as a reporter at the Omaha World-Herald and The Oklahoman. She is a native of Norman, Oklahoma, and a graduate of the University of Oklahoma.

Chastity Pratt is the national education editor at The Washington Post. Prior to joining the Post in 2024, she was the education bureau chief at The Wall Street Journal, a fellow at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard and covered education at the Detroit Free Press, Newsday and The Oregonian. Over the years, she has helped train students and journalists for Harvard College, the Education Writers Association and Investigative Reporters and Editors.

Milton Valencia is The Boston Globe’s criminal justice editor in metro, overseeing coverage of crime, policing and public safety. He was previously deputy editor of the Globe’s inaugural Money, Power, Inequality team, which focuses on addressing the racial wealth gap across the region. Milton started as a reporter at the Globe in 2007. In that role, he reported from the Globe’s City Hall bureau, helping lead coverage of Boston’s historic 2021 race for mayor. In 2020, he was part of a Globe police accountability team that exposed corruption and mismanagement in the Boston Police Department. He also spent several years covering the federal justice system, including the death penalty trial of Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. He was part of the staff that won the Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the bombings. Milton began his career at local newspapers in Rhode Island and Massachusetts. He holds a degree in philosophy and public policy from the University of Massachusetts, Boston and lives south of Boston with his wife and their two children.

Additionally, four ProPublica staffers will join this year’s cohort. They are:

Peter DiCampo is a visuals editor at ProPublica, where he primarily works with local partner newsrooms across the country through the Local Reporting Network. His visual editing and art direction have been awarded by the National Press Photographers Association, the Society for News Design, The Society of Publication Designers and the Online Journalism Awards. Prior to joining ProPublica, he was NPR’s international visual editor. Before turning to editing, he worked for more than a decade as a freelance photojournalist, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa. He co-founded Everyday Africa, a collective of photographers using social media to broaden coverage of Africa beyond the headlines, and The Everyday Projects, a global community of photographers and a visual literacy nonprofit. He was a 2019 John S. Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University, and he is the recipient of grants and awards from the Brown Institute for Media Innovation, Code for Africa, the Magnum Foundation, the Open Society Foundations, Pictures of the Year International and the Pulitzer Center, among others.

Duaa Eldeib is an investigative reporter at ProPublica. She has examined failures that have led to a stillbirth crisis in the U.S., the ways in which insurance companies interfere with mental health treatment and the fatal consequences of delaying care during the pandemic. She was a reporter and producer on the documentary “Before a Breath.” Her reporting has sparked legislative hearings, spurred government reform and led to the exoneration of a mother who was wrongly convicted of murder, as well as the release of young men who were incarcerated as juveniles and later sent to adult prison for minor offenses. Before joining ProPublica, she worked at the Chicago Tribune, where she and two colleagues were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting. She was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in explanatory reporting twice — first in 2023 for her series on stillbirths and again in 2025 as part of the team covering access to mental health care.

Hannah Fresques is the deputy data editor at ProPublica. She has edited data-driven investigations on the aftermath of Texas’ abortion ban, high-interest tribal lending and a salmonella outbreak. She joined the organization in 2016, and her work as a reporter and editor has earned recognition from Investigative Reporters and Editors Philip Meyer Journalism Awards, as well as the Online News Association and Sigma Delta Chi Journalism awards. Before working in journalism, Fresques conducted evaluations of education policy for a nonprofit research organization. She holds a master’s degree in quantitative methods for social sciences from Columbia University.

Andrea Wise is the visual strategy editor at ProPublica, where she edits photography, illustration and other forms of visual journalism. She is also the co-founder of Diversify Photo, a nonprofit organization amplifying the voices of visual creatives from underrepresented groups in the global visual media landscape. She commissioned and led a yearlong photo essay that was awarded the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service as part of ProPublica’s reporting on the harmful consequences of state abortion bans and was also Pictures of the Year International’s Online Storytelling Project of the Year. That body of work was also recognized with a National Magazine Award for Public Interest, George Polk Award for Medical Reporting, Worth Bingham Prize for Investigative Journalism, and Taylor Family Award for Fairness in Journalism, among other honors. Her photo editing and art direction have also been recognized by Pictures of the Year, the National Press Photographers Association, the Society of Publication Designers, and the Society for News Design. She holds a bachelor’s with honors in studio arts from Trinity College and a master’s in photography from Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Talia Buford.

Officials from the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC) participated in Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s executive training programs in 2023 and 2024, according to research by the China-focused think tank Strategy Risks. The program, delivered in partnership with China’s National Healthcare Security Administration, focused on health insurance governance and public health policy. Strategy Risks’ findings were later reported by the Washington Free Beacon.

The U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned the XPCC in July 2020 under the Global Magnitsky Act, citing the organization’s central role in implementing mass surveillance, internment, and forced labor policies targeting Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities. The sanctions prohibit U.S. individuals and institutions from engaging in most forms of cooperation with the XPCC.

(China’s National Healthcare Security Administration)

“The XPCC is not a neutral administrative body—it is the paramilitary arm of the Chinese Communist Party,” Sabrina Sohail, director of advocacy and communications at Campaign for Uyghurs, told RFA. “By training its officials, Harvard risks legitimizing a system complicit in genocide.”

Sohail said that the XPCC is “complicit in forced sterilizations, organ harvesting, and unethical experiments on Uyghurs.”

“The institution’s link to XPCC officials after sanctions were imposed is not just ignorance of the U.S. law and policy; it is lending legitimacy to those responsible for mass internment, forced labor, and systemic human rights abuses,” she said.

The XPCC, also known as “Bingtuan,” operates as a quasi-military and economic body in Xinjiang. It oversees major agricultural and industrial sectors and maintains its own police force, courts, and media. U.S. officials have accused it of helping to administer detention facilities and forced labor programs central to China’s repression of Uyghurs.

The U.S. government has determined the abuses against the Uyghurs, a mostly Muslim group, amount to genocide. An estimated 1.8 million Uyghurs were interned in Xinjiang, in China’s far west, after 2017.

China denies allegations of rights abuses. Its Commerce Ministry describes XPCC as “a strategic force for national stability and border defense” that operates under “a unique management system that combines the functions of the Party, government, military, and enterprises.” It runs development zones, 16 listed companies, and more than 3,000 enterprises.

Henryk Szadziewski, director of research at the Uyghur Human Rights Project, said that U.S. institutions should understand the legal and ethical risks of working with sanctioned entities.

“The XPCC is under U.S. sanctions for atrocity crimes targeting Uyghurs,” he said. “It’s the responsibility of academic institutions in the U.S. - and elsewhere - to be aware of those sanctions and avoid any form of cooperation that could violate U.S. law or undermine human rights.”

(Strategy Risks)

Strategy Risks, which first reported the 2023 training, described the XPCC’s involvement as part of a broader pattern of Chinese state-linked entities seeking credibility through partnerships with Western academic institutions. Emma Barss, the group’s research director, said that American universities must take greater responsibility when it comes to foreign collaborations.

“Engagement with groups like the XPCC is not value-neutral,” Barss told RFA. “Universities need to recognize the role they play as institutions with strong cultural and political influence. They should be much more careful about the types of groups they engage with and thereby provide legitimacy to.”

Harvard did not respond to multiple requests for comment from RFA before publication. In a statement to the Free Beacon, a spokesperson from Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health said the training sessions were organized in cooperation with China’s National Healthcare Security Administration, or NHSA, and that the XPCC’s inclusion was managed by Chinese authorities.

“Each year, the NHSA invites the local officials who administer health insurance and elder care programs in each administrative region of China,” the spokesperson told the Free Beacon. “In Xinjiang, that often includes officials from the XPCC.”

The spokesperson also told the Free Beacon that the program aimed to “build capacity for public officials across China to create effective insurance programs with sustainable financial models.” The course was reportedly attended by 50 to 60 local officials from various provinces each year.

Language referencing XPCC’s participation in the inaugural 2019 training was included on a Harvard website but later removed. Harvard’s communications office told the Free Beacon this was part of a broad website overhaul that affected multiple departments.

The controversy comes as Harvard faces growing scrutiny over its ties to foreign governments, including China. Between 2019 and 2022, the university received nearly $70 million from Chinese sources, more than from any other country, according to U.S. Department of Education data cited by college newspaper The Harvard Crimson.

Harvard is facing pressure from the Trump administration, which is withholding some of its federal funding over alleged antisemitism on campus. The administration is also probing its foreign ties.

Critics of Trump, however, have lauded Harvard’s willingness to stand up for academic freedom as the administration seeks more influence over its operations.

Bill Ackman, a prominent Harvard donor, publicly commented on the XPCC reports on X (formerly Twitter), writing: “This is not a good look for @Harvard. Harvard should immediately address these accusations and provide transparency to prove they are not correct—or alternatively, explain how this was allowed to occur.”

Edited by Mat Pennington.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Shahrezad Ghayrat for RFA Uyghur.

The move is a bid to instill loyalty to the Chinese government from a young age -– an initiative that experts say highlight an escalation in Beijing’s assimilation policies aimed at erasing Tibetan identity.

State-run TV segments show Tibetan students marching in fatigues, raising the red Chinese flag and standing in formation while responding to commands from the instructors.

Other footage shows children diving under their desks for air raid drills and evacuating down stairs with notebooks held over their heads for protection against falling objects.

Military personnel are being deployed to schools in Lhasa, Chamdo, and Nagchu in the Tibet Autonomous Region, or TAR, Ngaba and Kyungchu counties in Sichuan province, Sangchu county in Gansu province as well as other regions in Qinghai province, the sources told RFA Tibetan.

There, they are tasked with providing "patriotic education" and preparing Tibetan children for future military service, the sources said.

Formerly an independent nation, Tibet was invaded and incorporated into China by force over 70 years ago. Ever since, Chinese authorities have maintained a tight grip on the region, restricting the Tibetan people’s peaceful expression of cultural and religious identity and use of the Tibetan language.

(Chinese state media)

“It’s no longer just about China swapping out Tibetan language in textbooks for Mandarin, the first source told Radio Free Asia, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.

“Now, they are sending military personnel and Chinese Communist Party cadres to schools across Tibet to provide ideological education to thoroughly change Tibetan children’s values, way of thinking, and overall mannerisms in order to build their loyalty to the party,” he said.

Instilling ‘correct values’ in children

In Nagchu, for example, 13 retired Han Chinese army veterans were installed as “on-campus instructors” at seven different schools, ranging from primary to middle school, to help instill “correct values” in children, local state-run media reported.

At least such two video reports showed that during such training periods, instructors blew whistles in the early mornings to wake up the children and instill army style culture in schools. TV footage also showed instructors dressed in fatigues inspecting bunk beds to see if the beds are made properly.

The new system seeks to “let national defense education take root from childhood” and to ready Tibetan children for future military service, in what authorities said creates a “new win-win situation for veterans’ services and youth ideological and political education,” state-run media reports said.

“Usually, the Chinese Ministry of Education creates a list of primary and secondary national defense education demonstration schools,” Anushka Saxena, a research analyst at Bengaluru, India-based Takshashila Institution, told Radio Free Asia.

“Such schools are those where the PLA feels it needs to inculcate a sense of unity” with the Communist Party’s cause, she said, referring to the People’s Liberation Army.

“Hence, schools in Tibet become an important target, given the need to assimilate and have younger generations feel a sense of loyalty to the country and the military,” she said.

Goal: Sinicization

Experts said the proliferation of uniformed military personnel in various local Tibetan primary and middle schools is a direct result of the recently amended National Defense Education Law, which was passed by the National People’s Congress Standing Committee, China’s top legislature, and came into effect in September 2024.

Under the amendments, branches of the People’s Liberation Army will be stationed in colleges, universities and high schools across the country to boost a nationwide program of approved military education and physical training to prepare young people for recruitment, state news agency Xinhua reported at the time.

“Together with other coercive means… this law is now being abused as an auxiliary tool to achieve the CCP’s – yet still elusive – goal of full Sinicization of Tibetans, by both militarizing and brainwashing the generation of young Tibetan who are coming of age in the current decade,” said Frank Lehberger, a Germany-based Sinologist and senior research fellow at Indian think tank Usanas Foundation, referring to the Chinese Communist Party.

China has long had a culture of military training in schools and universities, with Tibetan school children aged 8-16 forced to attend military training programs during vacation and Tibetan university students made to participate in military drills and training exercises.

But the “on-campus instructor” system is a first, experts say.

Chinese authorities chose Sernye district in Nagchu as the first pilot area in Tibet to implement the system, which they refer to as “...the innovative practice of integrating veterans’ management with school education.”

‘Reshaping children’s values and thought processes’

This, experts say, is in line with goals outlined in China’s government work report for 2025, in which Premier Li Qiang said the government will draw up and implement a three-year action plan to strengthen education by adopting “integrated reforms and new approaches” in the “political education curriculum at all levels, from elementary school to university.”

“These efforts at reshaping Tibetan children’s values and thought processes go beyond the classroom,” a second source from Tibet told RFA.

(Chinese state media)

“These party cadres with extensive military experience enter students’ dormitories even after school hours to enforce Han Chinese ideologies and teach their social norms and conducts,” he said. “This is aimed at deconstructing Tibetan children’s existing thought patterns and cultural practices, which they have learned from their parents and traditions.”

In Ngaba and Dzoge county in Sichuan province, for example, where Chinese authorities recently closed two monastic schools and forced young monks from these schools into state-administered boarding schools, sources say there is a greater emphasis on providing political education to Tibetan children.

The closure of the two schools in July 2024 affected about 1600 students who were then forced to enrol in state-run boarding schools.

“I’ve received essays written anonymously by Tibetan teachers from inside Tibet who have expressed their frustration at seeing the complete changes in school curriculum with heavy propaganda messages. This includes showing soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army in a heroic light,” said Tsewang Dorji, Research Fellow at the Tibet Policy Institute.

The “on-campus instructors” in Tibetan schools serve multiple roles, including as national defense education counselors, behavioral norms instructors, and ideological and political lecturers, local Chinese state media reported.

Some of the training they provide and activities they lead in the schools, include Chinese flag-raising march, singing of military songs before meals, and provision of political and ideological education, with an emphasis on stories that glorify the ‘Chinese nation’ and service to it, reports said.

“The PLA finds relevance in cultivating soldiers from Tibet given Tibetan’s natural and habitual adjustment with climates of high altitude. When it comes to cultivating professionals capable of conducting mountain warfare against adversaries like India, Tibetans can be an important asset for the PLA,” Saxena said.

Chinese state media also celebrated the success of the pilot project in Nagchu, saying more than 300 Tibetan students have applied to be “future military service volunteers.”

Translated by Tenzin Norzom. Edited by Tenzin Pema and Malcolm Foster.

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

The move is a bid to instill loyalty to the Chinese government from a young age -– an initiative that experts say highlight an escalation in Beijing’s assimilation policies aimed at erasing Tibetan identity.

State-run TV segments show Tibetan students marching in fatigues, raising the red Chinese flag and standing in formation while responding to commands from the instructors.

Other footage shows children diving under their desks for air raid drills and evacuating down stairs with notebooks held over their heads for protection against falling objects.

Military personnel are being deployed to schools in Lhasa, Chamdo, and Nagchu in the Tibet Autonomous Region, or TAR, Ngaba and Kyungchu counties in Sichuan province, Sangchu county in Gansu province as well as other regions in Qinghai province, the sources told RFA Tibetan.

There, they are tasked with providing "patriotic education" and preparing Tibetan children for future military service, the sources said.

Formerly an independent nation, Tibet was invaded and incorporated into China by force over 70 years ago. Ever since, Chinese authorities have maintained a tight grip on the region, restricting the Tibetan people’s peaceful expression of cultural and religious identity and use of the Tibetan language.

(Chinese state media)

“It’s no longer just about China swapping out Tibetan language in textbooks for Mandarin, the first source told Radio Free Asia, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.

“Now, they are sending military personnel and Chinese Communist Party cadres to schools across Tibet to provide ideological education to thoroughly change Tibetan children’s values, way of thinking, and overall mannerisms in order to build their loyalty to the party,” he said.

Instilling ‘correct values’ in children

In Nagchu, for example, 13 retired Han Chinese army veterans were installed as “on-campus instructors” at seven different schools, ranging from primary to middle school, to help instill “correct values” in children, local state-run media reported.

At least such two video reports showed that during such training periods, instructors blew whistles in the early mornings to wake up the children and instill army style culture in schools. TV footage also showed instructors dressed in fatigues inspecting bunk beds to see if the beds are made properly.

The new system seeks to “let national defense education take root from childhood” and to ready Tibetan children for future military service, in what authorities said creates a “new win-win situation for veterans’ services and youth ideological and political education,” state-run media reports said.

“Usually, the Chinese Ministry of Education creates a list of primary and secondary national defense education demonstration schools,” Anushka Saxena, a research analyst at Bengaluru, India-based Takshashila Institution, told Radio Free Asia.

“Such schools are those where the PLA feels it needs to inculcate a sense of unity” with the Communist Party’s cause, she said, referring to the People’s Liberation Army.

“Hence, schools in Tibet become an important target, given the need to assimilate and have younger generations feel a sense of loyalty to the country and the military,” she said.

Goal: Sinicization

Experts said the proliferation of uniformed military personnel in various local Tibetan primary and middle schools is a direct result of the recently amended National Defense Education Law, which was passed by the National People’s Congress Standing Committee, China’s top legislature, and came into effect in September 2024.

Under the amendments, branches of the People’s Liberation Army will be stationed in colleges, universities and high schools across the country to boost a nationwide program of approved military education and physical training to prepare young people for recruitment, state news agency Xinhua reported at the time.

“Together with other coercive means… this law is now being abused as an auxiliary tool to achieve the CCP’s – yet still elusive – goal of full Sinicization of Tibetans, by both militarizing and brainwashing the generation of young Tibetan who are coming of age in the current decade,” said Frank Lehberger, a Germany-based Sinologist and senior research fellow at Indian think tank Usanas Foundation, referring to the Chinese Communist Party.

China has long had a culture of military training in schools and universities, with Tibetan school children aged 8-16 forced to attend military training programs during vacation and Tibetan university students made to participate in military drills and training exercises.

But the “on-campus instructor” system is a first, experts say.

Chinese authorities chose Sernye district in Nagchu as the first pilot area in Tibet to implement the system, which they refer to as “...the innovative practice of integrating veterans’ management with school education.”

‘Reshaping children’s values and thought processes’

This, experts say, is in line with goals outlined in China’s government work report for 2025, in which Premier Li Qiang said the government will draw up and implement a three-year action plan to strengthen education by adopting “integrated reforms and new approaches” in the “political education curriculum at all levels, from elementary school to university.”

“These efforts at reshaping Tibetan children’s values and thought processes go beyond the classroom,” a second source from Tibet told RFA.

(Chinese state media)

“These party cadres with extensive military experience enter students’ dormitories even after school hours to enforce Han Chinese ideologies and teach their social norms and conducts,” he said. “This is aimed at deconstructing Tibetan children’s existing thought patterns and cultural practices, which they have learned from their parents and traditions.”

In Ngaba and Dzoge county in Sichuan province, for example, where Chinese authorities recently closed two monastic schools and forced young monks from these schools into state-administered boarding schools, sources say there is a greater emphasis on providing political education to Tibetan children.

The closure of the two schools in July 2024 affected about 1600 students who were then forced to enrol in state-run boarding schools.

“I’ve received essays written anonymously by Tibetan teachers from inside Tibet who have expressed their frustration at seeing the complete changes in school curriculum with heavy propaganda messages. This includes showing soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army in a heroic light,” said Tsewang Dorji, Research Fellow at the Tibet Policy Institute.

The “on-campus instructors” in Tibetan schools serve multiple roles, including as national defense education counselors, behavioral norms instructors, and ideological and political lecturers, local Chinese state media reported.

Some of the training they provide and activities they lead in the schools, include Chinese flag-raising march, singing of military songs before meals, and provision of political and ideological education, with an emphasis on stories that glorify the ‘Chinese nation’ and service to it, reports said.

“The PLA finds relevance in cultivating soldiers from Tibet given Tibetan’s natural and habitual adjustment with climates of high altitude. When it comes to cultivating professionals capable of conducting mountain warfare against adversaries like India, Tibetans can be an important asset for the PLA,” Saxena said.

Chinese state media also celebrated the success of the pilot project in Nagchu, saying more than 300 Tibetan students have applied to be “future military service volunteers.”

Translated by Tenzin Norzom. Edited by Tenzin Pema and Malcolm Foster.

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

But the claim is false. The video shows a promotional event for an online game, not the Taiwanese army.

The video was shared on Weibo and X on March 2.

“Are these really the female soldiers of Taiwan nowadays? Mini skirts, bras, high heels? … Are you sure they can actually fight in a war?” a X post reads in part.

The one-minute and 21-second video shows a group of women in army uniform participating in what appears to be a military drill.

(X and Weibo)

The claim began to circulate online amid speculation in the Taiwan media that women may be conscripted into the military to fill gaps in combat units. But Taiwan’s defense minister dismissed the speculation.

Taiwan’s armed forces saw a drop in the number of active-duty personnel to 152,885 in June 2024 from 164,884 in 202, with experts saying this is a problem for the island as it is facing mounting threats from one of the world’s largest militaries: China with more than 2 million active-duty personnel.

Higher wages and the recruitment of foreigners are among proposals being discussed to address the manpower shortage in the military.

But the claim made in the video is false.

A Google reverse image search revealed older versions of the same footage, where a distinctive bulletin board appears in the lower right corner around the 32-second mark, displaying the words “Giant Cannon Company.”

A keyword search for “Giant Cannon Company” found that it refers to a mobile game.

Further keyword searches found a promotional video of the game published on YouTube in April 2014.

Part of the video matches the video circulated among Chinese social media users.

“2014-04-10 Giant Cannon Company Launch Press Conference – Yao Yuan-hao + 50 Girls,” reads the caption of the video.

Yao is a Taiwanese actor, who is seen in the video leading a group of women.

(YouTube and Weibo)

Women volunteers do serve in the Taiwan military and AFCL has previously debunked similar claims that they were “overly sweet” and unfit for combat.

Translated by Shen Ke. Edited by Taejun Kang.

Asia Fact Check Lab (AFCL) was established to counter disinformation in today’s complex media environment. We publish fact-checks, media-watches and in-depth reports that aim to sharpen and deepen our readers’ understanding of current affairs and public issues. If you like our content, you can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and X.

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

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

For the third year, ProPublica will invite up to 10 news editors from media companies across the country to participate in a yearlong investigative editing training program, led by the newsroom’s award-winning staff.

Applications are now open for the ProPublica Investigative Editor Training Program. Submissions are due March 24 at 9 a.m. Eastern time.

As the nation’s premier nonprofit investigative newsroom, ProPublica is dedicated to journalism that changes laws and lives and to advancing the careers of the people who produce it. The goal of this program is to address our industry’s critical need to broaden the ranks of investigative editors. Building a pipeline of talent is a priority that serves us and our industry.

“A great investigative editor can be a force multiplier for change; they not only make stories better, but journalists better,” said Deputy Managing Editor Alexandra Zayas, an architect of the editor training program. “Unfortunately, it’s one of the most difficult jobs to break into. Many who have succeeded learned from other investigative editors, so we created this program to seed those opportunities. We’ve been amazed at how well it’s worked.”

This year’s program will begin in June 2025 with a weeklong boot camp in New York that will include courses and panel discussions on how to conceive of and produce investigative projects that expose harm and have impact. The editors will also get training in how to manage reporters who are working with data, documents and sensitive sources, including whistleblowers, agency insiders and people who have suffered trauma. The program also includes virtual continuing education sessions and support from a ProPublica mentor.

This program is funded by the generosity of the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation, which supports organizations in journalism, film and the arts whose work is dedicated to social justice and strengthening democracy.

The ProPublica Investigative Editor Training Program is designed to help expand the ranks of editors with investigative experience in newsrooms across the country, to help better reflect the nation as a whole.

The program kicks off with a five-day intensive editing boot camp in New York, which includes a series of courses and panel discussions led by ProPublica’s senior editors, veteran reporters and other newsroom leaders. The boot camp will include hands-on editing exercises and opportunities for participants to workshop projects underway in their own newsrooms.

Afterward, participants will gather virtually for seminars and career development discussions with their cohort and ProPublica journalists. Each of the participants will also be assigned a ProPublica senior editor as a mentor for advice on story and management challenges or on how to most effectively pursue their own professional aspirations.

• How to evaluate story ideas and determine the right scope, length and time for getting the work done.
• How to manage a reporter through a complicated accountability story and communicate feedback in ways that build trust and confidence.
• How to edit investigative drafts, spot holes in reporting logic, organize a narrative and guide the reporter through the fact-checking process.
• How to work collaboratively with research, data and multimedia teams to elevate an investigative project.

The five-day, all-expenses-paid boot camp will be held June 1 to June 5, 2025, in New York, with remote sessions via Google Meet throughout the year.

We are planning for the 2025 boot camp to be held in person and will not have a virtual option.

ProPublica will cover participants’ expenses for meals, travel and lodging during the boot camp.

Up to 10 journalists.

The program is open to all. The aim is to help broaden our industry’s investigative editing ranks to include journalists from a wide array of backgrounds. We encourage everyone to apply, including those from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds and rural news organizations, as well as women, people of color, veterans, LGBTQ+ people and people with disabilities. Past participants have come from a wide range of news outlets across the country.

The ideal participants will have:

• A minimum of five years of journalism experience, either as an editor or as a reporter primarily doing work with an investigative or accountability focus.
• A strong grasp of the basics of editing, storytelling, structure and framing.
• Experience managing a team of journalists or a complicated multipronged reporting project.
• An accountability mindset: You don’t have to have been on the investigative team, but we are looking for people with an eye for watchdog reporting and editing.

No.

The application period opens Wednesday and closes March 24 at 9 a.m. Eastern time. You can apply via this link.

You can view playback of our informational webinar from 2024 here. The dates have changed, but the rest of the program information remains the same.

Send an email to Assistant Managing Editor Talia Buford at talent@propublica.org.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Talia Buford.

A New Zealand-based community education provider, Dark Times Academy, has had a US Embassy grant to deliver a course teaching Pacific Islands journalists about disinformation terminated after the new Trump administration took office.

The new US administration requested a list of course participants and to review the programme material amid controversy over a “freeze” on federal aid policies.

The course presentation team refused and the contract was terminated by “mutual agreement” — but the eight-week Pacific workshop is going ahead anyway from next week.

• READ MORE: New course planned to help Pacific media professionals counter disinformation
• US sponsorship of Pacific disinformation workshop ends after dispute
• NZ education provider has US Embassy grant terminated
• Explainer: what will the withdrawal of USAid mean for the Pacific?

“As far as I can tell, the current foreign policy priorities of the US government seem to involve terrorising the people of Gaza, annexing Canada, invading Greenland, and bullying Panama,” said Dark Times Academy co-founder Mandy Henk.

“We felt confident that a review of our materials would not find them to be aligned with those priorities.”

The course, called “A Bit Sus”, is an evidence-based peer-reviewed series of classes that teach key professions the skills needed to identify and counter disinformation and misinformation in their particular field.

The classes focus on “prebunking”, lateral reading, and how technology, including generative AI, influences disinformation.

Awarded competitive funds
Dark Times Academy was originally awarded the funds to run the programme through a public competitive grant offered by the US Embassy in New Zealand in 2023 under the previous US administration.

The US Embassy grant was focused on strengthening the capacity of Pacific media to identify and counter disinformation. While funded by the US, the course was to be a completely independent programme overseen by Dark Times Academy and its academic consultants.

Co-founder Henk was preparing to deliver the education programme to a group of Pacific Island journalists and media professionals, but received a request from the US Embassy in New Zealand to review the course materials to “ensure they are in line with US foreign policy priorities”.

Henk said she and the other course presenters refused to allow US government officials to review the course material for this purpose.

She said the US Embassy had also requested a “list of registered participants for the online classes,” which Dark Times Academy also declined to provide as compliance would have violated the New Zealand Privacy Act 2020.

Henk said the refusal to provide the course materials for review led immediately to further discussions with the US Embassy in New Zealand that ultimately resulted in the termination of the grant “by mutual agreement”.

However, she said Dark Times Academy would still go ahead with running the course for the Pacific Island journalists who had signed up so far, starting on February 26.

Continuing the programme
“The Dark Times Academy team fully intends to continue to bring the ‘A Bit Sus’ programme and other classes to the Pacific region and New Zealand, even without the support of the US government,” Henk said.

“As noted when we first announced this course, the Pacific Islands have experienced accelerated growth in digital connectivity over the past few years thanks to new submarine cable networks and satellite technology.

“Alongside this, the region has also seen a surge in harmful rumours and disinformation that is increasingly disrupting the ability to share accurate and truthful information across Pacific communities.

“This course will help participants from the media recognise common tactics used by disinformation agents and support them to deploy proven educational and communications techniques.

“By taking a skills-based approach to countering disinformation, our programme can help to spread the techniques needed to mitigate the risks posed by digital technologies,” Henk said.

Especially valuable for journalists
Dark Times Academy co-founder Byron Clark said the course would be especially valuable for journalists in the Pacific region given the recent shifts in global politics and the current state of the planet.

“We saw the devastating impacts of disinformation in the Pacific region during the measles outbreak in Samoa, for example,” said Clark, author of the best-selling book Fear: New Zealand’s Underworld of Hostile Extremists.

“With Pacific Island states bearing the brunt of climate change, as well as being caught between a geopolitical stoush between China and the West, a course like this one is timely.”

Henk said the “A Bit Sus” programme used a “high-touch teaching model” that combined the current best evidence on how to counter disinformation with a “learner-focused pedagogy that combines discussion, activities, and a project”.

Past classes led to the creation of the New Zealand version of the “Euphorigen Investigation” escape room, a board game, and a card game.

These materials remain in use across New Zealand schools and community learning centres.

• More information on Dark Times Academy or to register for this course.

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

A freelance journalist, Jean lacked financial support from the outlets he worked for to cover his steep medical bills. CPJ stepped in to cover the cost of the journalist’s hospital stay, surgery, a new glass eye and, eventually, glasses, so he could continue reporting.

Jean is one of more than 600 journalists who received a combined $1 million in financial grants in 2024 from CPJ’s Gene Roberts Emergency Fund. In addition to medical care, the funds can be used to cover costs associated with exile, legal fees, and basic living supplies in prison. Overall, CPJ drastically stepped up its assistance work last year, helping more than 3,000 journalists with financial grants, safety training, and other kinds of support amid rising threats to the media and declining press freedom.

Here are five other ways CPJ’s Emergencies department helped journalists in 2024:

——————

Supporting journalists in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon to cover and survive war

The Israel-Gaza war continues to be one of the deadliest conflicts for journalists since CPJ began keeping records in 1992. Israeli military operations have killed 152 journalists in Gaza and six in Lebanon; Hamas killed two Israeli journalists in its October 7, 2023 attack. As Israel conducts what rights groups call ethnic cleansing in northern Gaza, the country continues to forbid foreign journalists from accessing the territory without military accompaniment, leaving the coverage to the beleaguered local press.

In February, CPJ gave $300,000 to three organizations supporting Gaza’s journalists: the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate, Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism, and Filastiniyat. Through these grants, journalists were able to access food, basic necessities like blankets and tents for shelter, and journalistic equipment including cameras, phones, and laptops so they can continue to be the world’s eyes and ears on Gaza.

“We keep hitting what feels like rock bottom, only to discover even deeper levels of suffering and loss,” Hoda Osman, executive editor of Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism, told CPJ. “Yet Palestinian journalists persist. Their resilience cannot be overstated, and their work is essential—especially with foreign journalists barred from entering Gaza—but it is utterly unsustainable without continuous and significant support.”

As the war spread to Lebanon, CPJ provided grants to Lebanese freedom of expression groups the Maharat Foundation and the Samir Kassir Foundation to help journalists who were forced to flee their homes temporarily due to Israeli bombardment.

Providing resiliency and mental health workshops to journalists in Ukraine

Journalists living through and reporting on active conflict can face acute mental health challenges. Last year, CPJ partnered with Hannah Storm, a specialist in journalism safety and mental health and the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine to provide resiliency and mental health workshops for Ukrainian journalists experiencing anxiety and stress due to their coverage of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, now about to enter its fourth year.

In 2024, CPJ helped to host three online mental health workshops attended by 160 Ukrainian journalists, who learned how to prevent burnout when working in a war zone, how to remain calm while reporting during air raids and explosions, and how to work effectively under shelling.

“Despite the challenging and uncertain times they are living through, participants shared their insights and experiences, enabling a real sense of solidarity which I hope can be sustained,” Storm, the trainer, told CPJ.

Distributing VPNs to journalists covering civil unrest in Venezuela and Senegal

Journalists covering civil unrest around the globe in 2024 had to contend with threats to their physical safety and obstructions to their work, including internet shutdowns in countries with repressive regimes.

After Senegal postponed the February 2024 election, prompting mass protests in which more than two dozen journalists were attacked, Senegalese authorities censored news and information by shutting down mobile internet. In response, CPJ partnered with virtual private network (VPN) provider TunnelBear to distribute VPNs to 27 journalists reporting in and on Senegal, which helped them to continue working in the event of future online blocking.

Across the world in Venezuela, CPJ provided 25 journalists with VPNs to continue their coverage after authorities repeatedly imposed digital shutdowns as protests erupted over President Nicolás Maduro’s widely disputed claim to have won the country’s July 28 presidential election. Ongoing suppression by the Venezuelan government had far-reaching consequences throughout the rest of 2024; CPJ supported three Venezuelan journalists with exile support and trained 30 Venezuelan journalists on their digital, physical, and psychological safety in partnership with local network Reporte Ya.

“The use of a VPN is an essential tool for practicing journalism in Venezuela,” a Venezuelan journalist who received a VPN from CPJ said. “This is especially important in an environment where surveillance and censorship are constant concerns. By encrypting the connection, a VPN allows you to research and communicate with confidential sources with greater confidence.”

Helping U.S. journalists safely cover the 2024 election

Elections and times of political transition pose special risks to journalists. In a year that saw around half the world’s population go to the polls, the 2024 U.S. presidential election was no exception. Ahead of the election, CPJ trained more than 740 journalists reporting on the U.S. on physical and digital safety, and provided U.S.-based journalists with resiliency and know-your-rights advice through a summer webinar series with partner organizations.

Jon Laurence, Supervising Executive Producer at AJ+, told CPJ that the training was “invaluable.” “Many of our staff members who were deployed to cover the conventions were able to attend the training and felt much better resourced as a result.”  

Reporters covered the November 5 election against a backdrop of retaliatory violence, legal threats, police attacks, and the specter of the January 6, 2021 U.S. Capitol insurrection. To make sure that journalists were as prepared as possible, CPJ reissued its legal rights guide for U.S.-based journalists, and distributed an updated election safety kit.

Providing grants to incarcerated journalists around the globe

Last year, CPJ provided a record 53 journalists with prison support in the form of a financial grant to help them access basic necessities behind bars, like food, water, and hygiene products. The grant can also be used by family members or lawyers to visit the journalist in prison, and to provide much-needed connection and emotional support. Recipients included journalists jailed in Myanmar, Iran, Azerbaijan, and Cameroon. For the first time, CPJ was also able to provide support to almost every imprisoned journalist in Belarus. Families of the 23 journalists helped by this grant were able to give care packages, consisting of items like stationery and medicine, to their loved ones. Some of the Belarusian journalists CPJ helped have since been released, and CPJ will keep fighting – and supporting – the hundreds who remain behind bars for their work.

For more information about CPJ’s journalist safety and emergency assistance work, visit CPJ’s Journalist Safety and Emergencies page. If you’re a journalist in need of assistance, please email emergencies@cpj.org.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Lucy Westcott.

Satellite data from the Earth imaging company Planet Labs and analyzed by Radio Free Asia show that the two Chinese Type 056 missile corvettes, believed to be Aba (hull number 630) and Tianmen (hull number 631), were away from the new China-developed pier at Ream for four days between Dec. 18-21.

Before that, they were also absent for four days between Nov. 25-28, and Sept. 26-29.

Corvettes are small warships with displacement under 2,000 tons and often used for patrol.

“They typically do four to five day operations, but usually four, most surface surveillance and anti-submarine warfare sweeps,” said Carl Schuster, a retired U.S. Navy captain and former director of operations at the U.S. Pacific Command’s Joint Intelligence Center.

The Chinese ships’ absence from port “makes perfect sense,” according to Schuster, as the Cambodian military confirmed that Beijing would transfer two corvettes to Cambodia and train its personnel on how to operate them.

The Chinese navy has been training Cambodian naval personnel since December last year, when two vessels of the same class arrived in Ream for the first time, but the drills were carried out mostly at port before this current phase.

“Typical training activities with the Cambodians would be basic tactical maneuvering drills, weapons skills, signal drills and underway replenishment or material transfer drills,” said Schuster.

“These primarily are basic seamanship, technical proficiency, and naval formation, maneuvering and response drills, which also benefit the corvette crews training,” he added.

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On Dec. 20, when the Chinese ships were in the open sea, Cambodian and Vietnamese navies conducted a joint patrol along their “historical maritime border” but it is unclear whether the corvettes had any role in the exercise.

Sources told RFA that China was expected soon to hand over new facilities at the base, together with the pier and two warships, but the plan seems to be encountering delays, which are not unexpected in large military infrastructure projects.

Japanese access

Once the construction is completed, Cambodia will grant Japan access, veteran Cambodian leader Hun Sen told visiting Japanese national security chief Takeo Akiba in Phnom Penh last week.

Hun Sen said in a Facebook post that Japanese ships would be the first to be invited to the Ream naval base, which has been off-limits to foreign vessels, apart from the Chinese ones.

(Japan Maritime Self-defense Force)

The U.S. Navy’s USS Savannah was in Cambodia last week on a ties-mending trip but had to dock at the Sihanoukville Autonomous Port, 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) away, due to “ongoing construction and safety concerns” at Ream – the usual explanation provided by Cambodia.

A senior U.S. defense official told RFA that there are concerns “about the precedent of China establishing bases overseas” with Ream, even if the base is unlikely to boost China’s capabilities in the disputed South China Sea greatly.

The U.S. has long been concerned with the lack of transparency in the China-funded project.

(U.S. Indo-Pacific Command)

Commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command Adm. Samuel Paparo, during his brief visit to Cambodia on Dec. 18, reaffirmed U.S. respect for Cambodia’s sovereignty, including in its fostering of a relationship with China.

“We are taking a wait and see attitude towards the PRC’s relationship at the Ream naval base,” Paparo told a press briefing, referring to China by its official name, the People’s Republic of China.

“We’re not here to counter any other actor,” Paparo added.

Edited by Mike Firn.

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

Social cohesion is a national responsibility, and everyone, including the media, should support government’s efforts, according to Dr Shailendra Singh, associate professor in Pacific Journalism at the University of the South Pacific.

While the news media are often accused of exacerbating conflict by amplifying ethnic tensions through biased narratives, media could also assist social cohesion and unite people by promoting dialogue and mutual understanding, said Dr Singh.

He was the lead trainer at a two-day conflict-sensitive reporting workshop for journalists, student journalists, and civil society on reporting in ethically tense environments.

• READ MORE: The Pacific Media 2024 conference
• Other Fiji journalism education and training reports

The training, organised by Dialogue Fiji at the Suva Holiday Inn on November 12–13, included reporting techniques, understanding Fiji’s political and media landscape, and building trust with audiences.

Watchdog journalism
Dr Singh said media played an important public interest role as ‘society’s watchdog’. The two main strengths of Watchdog Journalism are that it seeks to promote greater accountability and transparency from those in power.

However, he cautioned reporters not to get too caught up in covering negative issues all the time. He said ideally, media should strive for a healthy mix of positive and what might be termed “negative” news.

Dr Singh’s doctoral thesis, from the University of Queensland, was on “Rethinking journalism for supporting social cohesion and democracy: case study of media performance in Fiji”.

He discussed the concepts of “media hyper-adversarialism” and “attack dog journalism”, which denote an increasingly aggressive form of political journalism, usually underpinned by commercial motives.

This trend was a concern even in developed Western countries, including Australia, where former Labour Minister Lindsay Tanner wrote a book about it: Sideshow, Dumbing Down Democracy.

Dr Singh said it had been pointed out that media hyper-adversarialism was even more dangerous in fragile, conflict-affected and vulnerable settings, as it harms fledgling democracies by nurturing intolerance and diminishing faith in democratically-elected leaders.

“Excessive criticism and emphasis on failure and wrongdoings will foster an attitude of distrust towards institutions and leaders,” he said.

Conflict-sensitive reporting
According to Dr Singh, examples around the world show that unrestrained reporting in conflict-prone zones could further escalate tensions and eventually result in violence.

The number one aim of conflict-sensitive reporting is to ensure that journalists, are aware of their national context, and shape their reporting accordingly, rather than apply the “watchdog” framework indiscriminately in all situations, because a “one-size-fits-all” approach could be risky and counterproductive.

Journalists who adopt the conflict-sensitive reporting approach in their coverage of national issues could become facilitators for peaceful solutions rather than a catalyst for conflict.

“The goal of a journalist within a conflict-prone environment should be to build an informed and engaged community by promoting understanding and reconciliation through contextualised coverage of complex issues,” he said.

A rethink was all the more necessary because of social media proliferation, and the spread of misinformation and hate speech on these platforms.

Challenges in maintaining transparency and accountability in journalism
According to Dr Singh, in many Pacific newsrooms today journalists who are at the forefront of reporting breaking news and complex issues are mostly young and relatively inexperienced.

He said the Pacific media sector suffered from a high turnover rate, with many journalists moving to the private sector, regional and international organisations, and government ministries after a brief stint in the mainstream.

“There is a lot of focus on alleged media bias,” said Dr Singh.

“However, young, inexperienced, and under-trained journalists can unknowingly inflame grievances and promote stereotypes by how they report contentious issues, even though their intentions are not malicious,” he said.

Dr Singh emphasised that in such cases, journalists often become a danger unto themselves because they provide governments with the justification or excuse for the need for stronger legislation to maintain communal harmony.

“As was the case in 2010 when the Media Industry Development Act was imposed in the name of professionalising standards,” said Dr Singh.

“However, it only led to a decline in standards because of the practice of self-censorship, as well as the victimisation of journalists.”

Legislation alone not the answer
Dr Singh added that legislation alone was not the answer since it did not address training and development, or the high rate of newsroom staff turnover.

He said the media were often attacked, but what was also needed was assistance, rather than criticism alone. This included training in specific areas, rather than assume that journalists are experts in every field.

Because Fiji is still a transitional democracy and given our ethnic diversity, Dr Singh believes that it makes for a strong case for conflict-sensitive reporting practices to mitigate against the risks of societal divisions.

“Because the media act as a bridge between people and institutions, it is essential that they work on building a relationship of trust by promoting peace and stability, while reporting critically when required.”

This article was first published by The Fiji Times on 24 November, 2024 and is being republished from USP Journalism’s Wansolwara and The Fiji Times under a collaborative agreement.

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

For the first time, North Korea is adding drone training to its annual civil defense military drills, but the lack of available drones means that the training will amount to reading about drones, not actually flying them, military sources in the country told Radio Free Asia.

The move shows the increased role that drones will have North Korea’s arsenal. Last month, supreme leader Kim Jong Un visited a test site for unmanned attack aircraft and said he wanted the country to begin mass producing “suicide” drones that explode when flown into targets.

The training in their use is now being extended to the thousands of ordinary citizens in North Korea’s civil defense forces, paramilitary units that defend cities and towns. Most members of civil defense forces are reservists who have previously served in the military, which is mandatory for all able-bodied men and women.

But the actual number of drones for such drills appears to be in short supply.

“There are no actual drones, so only theoretical training is being conducted,” a member of the civil defense force in the northern province of Ryanggang told RFA Korean on condition of anonymity for personal safety.

“However, from what I know, training drones will be supplied to each North Korean People’s Army brigade, city, county, and civil defense force within the next year,” he said.

He said the training amounted to explanations about the practical applications of drones on the battlefield, and instructions on how to use them.

RFA Korean interviewed two drone experts who said there was a strong possibility that North Korean troops sent to Russia could begin using drones supplied by Russia in the war with Ukraine.

Drone training for all soldiers

The winter training period for civil defense units calls up reserves in shifts from December to March for 15 days -- which many secretly regard as a nuisance.

A member of the military in the same province said that Kim Jong Un secretly ordered “all soldiers who fire guns” -- meaning those who can be deployed in combat roles -- to learn to use drones.

“People’s Army units have already been training to use military drones since ... last year, but now ... drone training will also be provided to civil defense force members ... starting in December,” he said on condition of anonymity to speak freely.

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“No matter how politically and ideologically armed an army is, it cannot win a modern war if it does not possess excellent military technology.”

North Korea is also looking for ways to improve its capacity to produce drones domestically, he said.

“This year, new drone technology courses were opened at Kim Jong Un National Defense University, Pyongyang University of Automation, and Kim Chaek Air Force University,” he said. “Drone pilot training is being conducted at Kim Il Sung Military University and Kang Kon Military Academy.”

All of those schools ramped up drone development research this year, he said. But development and production are not the same.

In North Korea, “there are so many cases of successful development but failed production, so it is difficult to determine when and to what extent military drones will actually be distributed.”

Translated by Leejin J. Chung. Edited by Eugene Whong.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Moon Sung Whui for RFA Korean.

Some police officers are unable to effectively investigate cases of gender-based violence, claims Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre coordinator Shamima Ali.

Ali said many officers lacked the training and knowledge to properly handle such cases, leading to significant challenges for victims seeking justice.

“There is a lack of training that used to happen in Fiji before 2006, and we are facing this as a huge challenge,” Ali said.

• READ MORE: Other Fiji crime reports

While speaking on issues of officers refusing to take statements of domestic violence victims, she said some officers refused to acknowledge cases of gender-based violence, despite the laws in place.

“There are some officers who do not respond to it, and at times, the justice system does not support the interests of women.”

She said if authorities did their job, men would be a bit more scared.

“There’s a reluctance to address domestic violence because of the patriarchal mindset, and this attitude often comes from within the force itself.”

In response, Police Commissioner Juki Fong Chew said the actions of a few were not representative of the way the organisation perceived cases of gender-based violence.

“We have disciplinary measures in place to deal with officers as claimed by Ms Ali, and we encourage the sharing of information so that the officers can be dealt with,” he said.

Fong Chew said these issues could be addressed promptly.

Republished from The Fiji Times with permission.

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

As CPJ’s October 2024 special report on press freedom in the U.S. determined, the safety of journalists is at risk throughout the country with members of the media facing violence, online harassment, legal challenges, and attacks by police.

The January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol highlights the potential for violence during mass gatherings, and the risks journalists face while covering them. Since the beginning of 2020, the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker has documented more than 800 attacks on journalists while covering such events. The possibility of similar press freedom violations in the wake of the 2024 U.S. presidential election remains a risk for journalists reporting the news.

In response, since the start of 2024, CPJ’s Emergencies Team has trained more than 700 journalists on how to stay safe while covering the upcoming U.S. presidential election. (See CPJ’s YouTube playlist for Election Safety Summer training videos, among the many journalist safety training sessions CPJ provided in 2024.)

Given the recent history of danger facing journalists covering political protests and unrest across the U.S., much of this training has been focused on how to safely report on — and during — protests. Digital safety, and how to protect yourself and your colleagues online, is another key training topic. The frequency and intensity of protests in the United States have escalated in recent years, creating a challenging environment for journalists.

Based on questions asked by journalists during this year’s safety training sessions, CPJ has outlined the key physical and digital safety issues journalists and their editors need to address to safely cover the upcoming U.S. election.

What should I wear to a protest, and what equipment should I take with me?

In general, best practices are as follows:

• Wear laced, solid but comfortable footwear that cannot slip off easily. Avoid easily flammable materials like nylon, and instead favor items like denim that are more flame-retardant.

• Avoid wearing colors or items of clothing that might resemble something worn by any belligerent actor at the protest. For example, do not wear black or camouflage colors or hoodies. Try not to wear lanyards or items that someone can use to hold onto you. Wear your backpack in front of you.  

• Determine whether it is a good idea, or legally required, to identify yourself as a member of the press. Always have press credentials close on hand if required.

• Always carry a mobile phone and a battery pack charger. Ensure that you have a few food supplies with you.

• Depending on the predicted severity of unrest, protective equipment such as ballistic glasses, helmets, and a small medical pack are often useful. Stab vests and respirators can protect you as well, but wearing them will raise your profile, and you should use them to exit a situation safely — not linger.

For more information, see CPJ’s guide on personal protective equipment (PPE).

What are the best practices for planning and preparing for unrest, and making sure my colleagues and I remain as safe as possible?

• Research the dynamic of the protest in advance and do a risk assessment to identify common threats and plan for worst-case scenarios.

• Work in a team where possible. If necessary, buddy up with other journalists to help each other.

• Plan your arrival, but most importantly, plan your departure from the protest. If it is a march or goes late into the night, you may find yourself in a remote or dangerous location.

• Do not take unnecessary valuables or equipment. It will make you an attractive target for thieves. 

• Upon arrival at a location, identify likely flashpoints and main escape routes. Also work out your closest medical evacuation point and a rendezvous location, if required.

• Communicate regularly with an editor, colleague, or another trusted individual about your activities.

• Identify any protest organizers or troublemakers. If you need to interview them, do not stay with them longer than necessary. Remember, the authorities may target them at some point, and you may get caught up in this action.

• Position yourself at the edge of the crowd, only going in for short periods before returning to a place of safety. If you are in the middle of the crowd, it may be hard to remove yourself should there be a stampede.

• Always observe the protestors and the police dynamic. If protestors are becoming more aggressive or police are donning protective equipment, this can indicate there is likely to be a flashpoint.

What crowd control techniques are used at protests, and what should I do if police conduct crowd dispersals?

• Police in the United States have used a range of less-lethal weapons for crowd control and crowd dispersal:

• If the police begin to use less-lethal weapons, they are clearly indicating they want the crowd to disperse. Failure to do so may lead to a more aggressive approach, such as baton charges or kettling. Kettling is a legal but controversial police tactic in which police surround protestors, not allowing them to disperse. Often they will arrest individuals within the kettle, including journalists. 

• Police authorities will often signal an escalation in activity by their demeanor, the donning of protective equipment, the formation or firming up of police lines, or by issuing verbal warnings to disperse.

• Dynamically assess the situation and decide whether the risk is acceptable to keep reporting or if it could be necessary to pull out to a safe distance. Understand that if you stay, you might be caught up in the police action or arrested in the kettle.

For more information, see CPJ’s videos covering how to respond if a demonstration escalates and how to deal with teargas being used.

What are journalists’ rights when covering a protest, or following an arrest?

Journalists have the right to cover protests, but arrests do occur and can be an intimidating experience.

If stopped, identify yourself as a journalist and, if possible, record the interaction. While police can search you and sometimes will search personal items, they generally need a warrant to access cell phones or other recording devices.

Key points:

• Legal rights: Journalists have the right to observe, photograph, and record public events under the First Amendment. This is no different to the rights afforded to any member of the public.

• Probable cause: Arrests must be based on breaking specific laws, for example, by trespassing or disobeying a valid police order to disperse. Journalists are often arrested in a kettle for not having complied with a police order to disperse. Arrests should not be retaliation for reporting.

• Protect your equipment: Ensure your attorney and editor are aware of your arrest, and, if possible, ask a colleague to take your belongings.

• Legal advice is crucial when facing arrest, so have your attorney’s contact information readily available. It may be sensible to write it on your forearm with a marker in case your belongings are seized. CPJ recommends journalists in the United States familiarize themselves with the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press’s (RCFP) legal hotline, and refer any legal incident to RCFP.

Learn more by reading CPJ’s guide to legal rights in the U.S.

What are the best practices to keep safe online?

Journalists covering protests are sometimes doxxed after the event, when people who attended the mass gathering post their private information online. Journalists who cover politics or other high-risk beats also risk being the target of online harassment and targeted harassment campaigns.

Before attending a protest or taking on a high-risk assignment, take the following steps:

• Look yourself up online using all search engines and remove or hide data you do not want in the public domain. Use advanced search methods known as Boolean search terms to get the best results. 

• Data that is best kept offline include your home address, personal contact details, such as a personal email address, and details about family members, including photos.

• Sign up to a service such as DeleteMe or Kanary to get your personal data taken down from data broker sites.

• Secure your online accounts with two-factor authentication, and a long password or passkey.

• Where possible, use Google Voice as your work phone number.

• Have a spare phone and SIM card in case your phone number is doxxed.

• Think about what you would do if you are doxxed. Questions to think about include where you would stay, who would go with you, and who you would tell.

For more information see CPJ’s resources on online abuse, and consult the Coalition Against Online Violence’s election resources.

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

Several accounts of new recruits fleeing from military training sites in central Magway and Bago regions show that the junta’s blanket conscription order continues to be hugely unpopular among Myanmar’s young people, several told Radio Free Asia.

In April, the junta began implementing a conscription law as a way of shoring up its dwindling ranks amid mounting losses to rebel groups.

Under the mandatory military service law, men aged 18 to 35 and women aged 18 to 27 must serve a minimum of two years in the military. Young people have been looking for ways to leave the country ever since.

Many new recruits have been sent for training after being detained at gunpoint by junta troops. Recruits face torture or execution if they are caught trying to escape.

A total of 11 new recruits in Magway region have run off from their training in recent weeks, according to escapees and those who helped them.

A young man from Magway’s Yenangyaung township told RFA that he was arrested at gunpoint by junta soldiers after he left his house on the morning of July 9. About 30 people were also detained in the township for military recruitment on the same day, he said, requesting anonymity for security purposes.

He said he was eventually sent to the No. 7 military training school in Taungdwingyi town, where he finally got the chance to escape in late August.

“On a day when it was raining heavily, we got an opportunity to run away as soon as we found a small exit that evening,” he said.

‘Training photos went viral’

Another escapee said recruits weren’t fed properly during the training course and were told by military officers that China has been supporting the anti-junta People’s Defense Forces, or PDFs.

“PDFs are receiving bribes from China for killing, they said. So, PDFs are doing such an anarchy. Actually, the junta is persuading the newly recruits to hate the PDFs,” the escapee said.

(Pyi Thu Sitt via Telegram)

In the neighboring Bago region, a young man who recently fled from military training told RFA that living under the junta had become unbearable.

“We made the decision with our own sense whether they are good or bad, who is good or bad,” he said. “We can’t die for them. So, we made the decision to run away.”

RFA was unable to contact Social Affairs Minister Myo Myint, the junta’s spokesman for Magway region, for comment on the recent escapes.

A young man from Bago’s Paungte township said he fled military service after he was sent to Shan state following a brief and insufficient training period. There were some 600 young people from the Bago region in his training cohort, he said.

“We were given just one day of training on how to set up the MA-1 gun,” he said. “We could fire only five shots in the training.”

Junta-backed media outlets frequently publish photos of new recruits and documentary videos from training courses.

“Our training photos went viral online,” the young man said.

Sent to the frontlines

No one from the Bago region has deserted from military training, according to Tin Oo, the junta’s economic affairs minister and spokesman for the region.

“Some people are dividing the government (junta regime) and the public by spreading rumors that young people are forcibly recruited,” he told RFA.

“There was also some news that the recruits have fled from the training,” he said. “Actually, these rumors are not true. We are managing the training course very flexibly and the recruits are also happy at the training.”

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There are at least 21,000 recruits in 23 military training schools across Myanmar, according to an Oct. 19 report from the Burmese Affairs and Conflict Studies Group, an independent research group,

The report included evidence that those who recently completed training courses were sent to frontlines in Shan and Rakhine states, where fighting has been fierce.

Some new recruits were killed during fighting for Lashio, which was captured by insurgents in August and has recently been the focus of a junta counteroffensive, the report said.

Translated by Aung Naing. Edited by Matt Reed.

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

Under the amendments, branches of the People's Liberation Army will be stationed in colleges, universities and high schools across the country to boost a nationwide program of approved military education and physical training to prepare young people for recruitment, state news agency Xinhua reported on Sept. 10.

"The second draft of the revised bill clarifies that ordinary colleges, universities and high schools should strengthen military skills training, hone students' willpower, enhance organizational discipline, and improve the level of military training," the agency said in a summary of the amendments.

China has long had a culture of military training in schools and universities, with military-style boot-camps for kids on vacation and 'defense education bases' catering to corporations and tour groups. The authorities in Hong Kong have also imposed such training on former young protesters, alongside "patriotic education."

People’s Armed Forces departments already exist at every level of government, in schools, universities and state-owned enterprises to strengthen ruling Chinese Communist Party, or CCP, control over local militias, guard weapons caches and find work for veterans.

After decades of relative invisibility throughout the post-Mao economic boom, they are once more mobilizing to build militias in big state-owned companies and consolidate party leadership over local military operations.

But analysts say the amendments, if adopted, will standardize these activities under guidelines laid down by the CCP's military arm, in a bid to create more potential recruits as part of preparations for war. While Chinese citizens have an obligation to serve in the People's Liberation Army on paper, this hasn't been implemented since the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949.

'Glorious' military service

Under the planned amendments, high schools will also be obliged to teach children about military service, and create an atmosphere in which military service is seen as "glorious," Xinhua said.

Primary and junior high schools are included in the plan, which calls on them to "combine classroom teaching with extracurricular activities," according to the China News Service.

"Students in colleges and high schools are required to offer compulsory basic military training, while junior high schools may also organize such activities," the report said.

According to a report in the Legal Daily newspaper, the amendments aim to build a nationwide program of military training that connects schools at all levels and of all types.

They also guarantee funding for these activities, which will include military camps and "national defense education bases," the paper said.

"They want students to know about national defense, an awareness of who the enemy is, at a much younger age," Shan-Son Kung, an associate researcher at Taiwan's Institute for National Defense and Security Research, told RFA Mandarin in a recent interview.

"[They also] want kids to get basic military training, which is being extended lower down the system, so as to universalize basic military knowledge," he said. "The aim is to step up preparations for a future war, so that there will be more conscripts available following the passing of the Mobilization Law."

The National Defense Mobilization Law of the People's Republic of China took effect on July 1, 2010, with the aim of setting up a nationwide structure for national defense mobilization.

Currently, the Chinese military mostly relies on recruitment, and most of the standing army are professional soldiers, Kung said.

"In the next few years, we could see growing tensions between China and the United States, and China may look to strengthen its economic and military mobilization as well as the frequency and scope of exercises sooner rather than later," Kung said. "They may be making advance preparations for a large-scale war."

'Educational brainwashing'

China already requires graduates in fluid mechanics, machinery, chemistry, missile technology, radar, science and engineering, weapons science and other technical disciplines to join the People's Liberation Army.

Taiwan-based Chinese dissident Gong Yujian said the Chinese Communist Party is aware that it may face great difficulty in recruiting young people to the military, given the shrinking of that age group due to the one-child policy, so it's stepping up pro-military propaganda while they're still young.

"They need to cultivate high school students to be loyal to the party and patriotic, and worship the People's Liberation Army," Gong said. "It's educational brainwashing."

"That way, they can join up after graduation and boost the People's Liberation Army's recruitment figures," he said.

Gong said he still has memories of some military training exercises from when he was in high school.

"When we were in school, we had seven days' military training, but it was just a formality," he said. "The local armed police force sent soldiers to our school to teach the students how to march, and how to fold a blanket."

"But we didn't even so much as touch a firearm," he said.

Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Roseanne Gerin.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Hsia Hsiao-hwa for RFA Mandarin.

Insurgents in western Myanmar have captured an important military training base after a month of fighting, the rebel army said in a statement, dealing what is likely to be a severe blow to the embattled military.

.Arakan Army troops seized the Central Naval Diving and Salvage Depot between Thandwe township’s Maung Shwe Lay and Kwin Waing village in Rakhine state on Thursday, said the ethnic minority insurgent force battling for self-determination. 

The Arakan Army, or AA, said the facility was the last naval base held by junta forces in Thandwe township, and it was defended on a “huge-scale” by the junta’s air force and navy as well as more than 1,200 soldiers, including many new graduates from the base.

“More than 400 junta soldiers were killed during our attack, and junta weapons, ammunition and equipment were seized,” the AA said in its statement. 

Radio Free Asia was not able to independently verify that toll and the junta's main spokesperson, Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun, did not respond to requests for comment. 

The AA posted pictures of its fighters standing by a diving boards at the training center.

The base is a major navy training facility and its loss will be of huge significance for the military, said Pe Than, a former member of parliament for the Arakan National Party, which in the past had affiliations with the AA.

“Losing such a base will affect training as well as fighting. They’ve destroyed the navy and weakened the army, like cutting a man off at the waist,” he said.

He said the Danyawaddy Naval Base in Kyaukpyu township, to the north of Thandwe, was the navy’s last facility in Rakhine state.

“The military is like a bird with one wing now,” he said.

The loss of the base will not only dent the junta’s morale and reputation but also bring in more resources for the AA through the control of goods coming through a nearby port, he said.

The AA said it expected junta retaliation against civilians in the area. Human rights investigators say junta forces have been increasingly attacking civilian targets as they lose ground to insurgent forces in different parts of the country. The military denies attacking civilians.

The Arakan Army, which launched a new offensive against the military in November, controls nine townships in Rakhine state and one in neighboring Chin state, and is battling to take full control of three other townships. 

Junta forces have launched crackdowns in the north of the state, near the Bangladesh border, and across the neighboring Ayeyarwady region after AA gains in the south of the state.

Translated by RFA Burmese. Edited by Kiana Duncan and Mike Firn.

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

On Wednesday, the pro-junta Pa-O National Army, or PNA, completed a military training program for the new recruits in southern Shan state.

The graduation ceremony, held in Naungtayar town, within the Pa-O Self-Administered Zone, was attended by the militia’s chief of staff, military regional commanders and officials from the Pa-O National Organization party.

The training was primarily aimed at supporting the military junta, which has suffered numerous battlefield setbacks in Shan state in recent months, according to a political analyst who requested anonymity for security reasons.

“The primary objective is to demonstrate strength and power,” the analyst told Radio Free Asia. “This display suggests that they will likely participate in conflicts in the border region, seemingly acting as a proxy for the military council.”

Founded in 1976, the Pa-O National Army, or PNA, signed a ceasefire agreement in 1991 with a previous military junta, the State Peace and Development Council.

It later transformed into a state-backed people’s militia force and merged with other Pa-O paramilitary groups in 2009. The following year, the area under its control was officially designated as the Pa’O Self-Administered Zone, or Special Region 6. 

The Pa-O people, the second largest ethnic group in Shan state, are split between pro- and anti-junta factions.

Earlier this year, a different militia – the Pa-O National Liberation Army, or PNLA – fought several battles against junta troops in southern Shan State and the PNA conducted counterattacks on behalf of the junta during this fighting.

The newly trained 10,000 troops are intended to protect the military junta, PNLA spokesperson Khun Rain Yan told RFA.

RFA attempted to contact Major Than Kywe, the spokesperson of the Pa-O National Organization, to inquire about the new trainees but received no response.

Translated by Kalyar Lwin. Edited by Matt Reed and Malcolm Foster.

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

As Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump tries to downplay his connection to the far-right policy agenda known as Project 2025, ProPublica and Documented have just published dozens of training videos by the group that show how the conservative movement is gearing up for the next Republican administration. It’s an effort led by the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank and other groups to remake the federal government, including by replacing civil servants with thousands of partisan political appointees who would help carry out the extreme policies envisioned by Project 2025. Many of the people who crafted the policy blueprint are former top Trump officials. The training videos include discussions about undoing climate policy, combatting diversity efforts, denying freedom of information requests and more.

“The first time that Trump … got elected, his operation was very unprepared. They did not have a bench of people ready. There was chaos, there was confusion, and that set back that administration for perhaps months, maybe even a year or two,” says ProPublica reporter Andy Kroll. “If he is elected again, that will not be the case.”

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

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

Project 2025, the controversial playbook and policy agenda for a right-wing presidential administration, has lost its director and faced scathing criticism from both Democratic groups and former President Donald Trump. But Project 2025’s plan to train an army of political appointees who could battle against the so-called deep state government bureaucracy on behalf of a future Trump administration remains on track.

One centerpiece of that program is dozens of never-before-published videos created for Project 2025’s Presidential Administration Academy. The vast majority of these videos — 23 in all, totaling more than 14 hours of content — were provided to ProPublica and Documented by a person who had access to them.

The Project 2025 videos coach future appointees on everything from the nuts and bolts of governing to how to outwit bureaucrats. There are strategies for avoiding embarrassing Freedom of Information Act disclosures and ensuring that conservative policies aren’t struck down by “left-wing judges.” Some of the content is routine advice that any incoming political appointee might be told. Other segments of the training offer guidance on radically changing how the federal government works and what it does.

In one video, Bethany Kozma, a conservative activist and former deputy chief of staff at the U.S. Agency for International Development in the Trump administration, downplays the seriousness of climate change and says the movement to combat it is really part of a ploy to “control people.”

“If the American people elect a conservative president, his administration will have to eradicate climate change references from absolutely everywhere,” Kozma says.

In the same video, Kozma calls the idea of gender fluidity “evil.” Another speaker, Katie Sullivan, who was an acting assistant attorney general at the Department of Justice under Trump, takes aim at executive actions by the administration of President Joe Biden that created gender adviser positions throughout the federal government. The goal, Biden wrote in one order, was to “advance equal rights and opportunities, regardless of gender or gender identity.”

Sullivan says, “That position has to be eradicated, as well as all the task forces, the removal of all the equity plans from all the websites, and a complete rework of the language in internal and external policy documents and grant applications.”

Trump has tried to distance himself from Project 2025, falsely saying that he knew nothing about it and had “no idea who is behind it.” In fact, he flew on a private jet with Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, which leads Project 2025. And in a 2022 speech at a Heritage Foundation event, Trump said, “This is a great group and they’re going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do and what your movement will do when the American people give us a colossal mandate to save America.”

A review of the training videos shows that 29 of the 36 speakers have worked for Trump in some capacity — on his 2016-17 transition team, in the administration or on his 2024 reelection campaign. The videos appear to have been recorded before the resignation two weeks ago of Paul Dans, the leader of the 2025 project, and they are referenced on the project’s website. The Heritage Foundation said in a statement at the time of Dans’ resignation that it would end Project 2025’s policy-related work, but that its “collective efforts to build a personnel apparatus for policymakers of all levels — federal, state, and local — will continue.”

The Heritage Foundation and most of the people who appear in the videos cited in this story did not respond to ProPublica’s repeated requests for comment. Karoline Leavitt, a spokesperson for the Trump campaign who features in one of the videos, said, “As our campaign leadership and President Trump have repeatedly stated, Agenda 47 is the only official policy agenda from our campaign.”

Project 2025’s 887-page “Mandate for Leadership” document lays out a vast array of policy and governance proposals, including eliminating the Department of Education, slashing Medicaid, reclassifying tens of thousands of career civil servants so they could be more easily fired and replaced, giving the president greater power to control the DOJ and further restricting abortion access.

Democrats and liberal groups have criticized the project’s policy agenda as “extreme” and “authoritarian” while pointing out the many connections between Trump and the hundreds of people who contributed to the project.

“Trump’s attempts to distance himself from Project 2025 have always been disingenuous,” said Noah Bookbinder, president of the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. “The discovery that the vast majority of speakers in Project 2025 training videos are alumni of the Trump administration or have other close ties to Trump’s political operation is unsurprising further evidence of the close connection there.”

Several speakers in the videos acknowledge that the Trump administration was slowed by staffing challenges and the inexperience of its political appointees, and they offer lessons learned from their stumbles. Some of the advice appears at odds with conservative dogma, including a suggestion that the next administration may need to expand key government agencies to achieve the larger goal of slashing federal regulations.

Rick Dearborn, who helped lead Trump’s 2016 transition team and later served in the Trump White House as deputy chief of staff, recalled in one video how “tough” it was to find people to fill all of the key positions in the early days of the administration.

The personnel part of Project 2025 is “so important to the next president,” Dearborn says. “Establishing all of this, providing the expertise, looking at a database of folks that can be part of the administration, talking to you like we are right now about what is a transition about, why do I want to be engaged in it, what would my role be — that’s a luxury that we didn’t have,” referring to a database of potential political appointees.

Dan Huff, a former legal adviser in the White House Presidential Personnel Office under Trump, says in another video that future appointees should be prepared to enact significant changes in American government and be ready to face blowback when they do.

“If you’re not on board with helping implement a dramatic course correction because you’re afraid it’ll damage your future employment prospects, it’ll harm you socially — look, I get it,” Huff says. “That’s a real danger. It’s a real thing. But please: Do us all a favor and sit this one out.”

The project’s experts outline regulatory and policy changes that future political appointees should prepare for in a Republican administration.

One video, titled “Hidden Meanings: The Monsters in the Attic,” is a 50-minute discussion of supposed left-wing code words and biased language that future appointees should be aware of and root out. In that video, Kozma says that U.S. intelligence agencies have named climate change as an increasingly dire threat to global stability, which, she says, illustrates how the issue “has infiltrated every part of the federal government.”

She then tells viewers that she sees climate change as merely a cover to engage in population control. “I think about the people who don’t want you to have children because of the” — here she makes air-quotes — “impact on the environment.” She adds, “This is part of their ultimate goal to control people.”

Later in the video, Katie Sullivan, the former acting assistant attorney general under Trump, advocates for removing so-called critical race theory from public education without saying how the federal government would accomplish that. (Elementary and secondary education curricula are typically set at the state and local level, not by the federal government.)

“The noxious tenets of critical race theory and gender ideology should be excised from curriculum in every single public school in this country,” Sullivan says. (Reached by phone, Sullivan told ProPublica to contact her press representative and hung up. A representative did not respond.)

In a different video, David Burton, an economic policy expert at the Heritage Foundation, discusses the importance of an obscure yet influential agency called the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. The Trump administration used OIRA to help roll back regulations on economic, fiscal and environmental issues. Under Biden, OIRA took a more aggressive stance in helping review and shape new regulations, which included efforts to combat housing discrimination, ban the sale of so-called ghost guns and set new renewable fuel targets.

Burton, in the Project 2025 video, urges future political appointees to work in OIRA and argues that the office should “increase its staffing levels considerably” in service of the conservative goal of reining in the so-called administrative state, namely the federal agencies that craft and issue new regulations.

“Fifty people are not enough to adequately police the regulatory actions of the entire federal government,” Burton says. “OIRA is one of the few government agencies that limits the regulatory ambitions of other agencies.” (Burton confirmed in a brief interview that he appeared in the video and endorsed expanding OIRA’s staffing levels.)

Expanding the federal workforce — even an office tasked with scrutinizing regulations — would seem to cut against the conservative movement’s long-standing goal of shrinking government. For anyone confused by Project 2025’s insistence that a conservative president should fill all appointee slots and potentially grow certain functions, Spencer Chretien, a former Trump White House aide who is now Project 2025’s associate director, addresses the tension in one video.

“Some on the right even say that we, because we believe in small government, should just lead by example and not fill certain political positions,” Chretien says. “I suggest that it would be almost impossible to bring any conservative change to America if the president did that.”

The speakers in the Project 2025 videos are careful not to explicitly side with Trump or talk about what a future Trump administration might do. They instead refer to a future “conservative president” or “conservative administration.”

But the links between the speakers in the videos and Trump are many. Most of those served Trump during his administration, working at the White House, the National Security Council, NASA, the Office of Management and Budget, USAID and the departments of Justice, Interior, State, Homeland Security, Transportation and Health and Human Services. Another speaker has worked in the Senate office of J.D. Vance, Trump’s 2024 running mate.

Sullivan, the former DOJ acting assistant attorney general in charge of the department’s Office of Justice Programs, which oversees billions in grant funding, appears in three different videos. Leavitt, who is in a training video titled “The Art of Professionalism,” worked in the White House press office during Trump’s first presidency and is now the national press secretary for his reelection campaign.

A consistent theme in the advice and testimonials offered by these Trump alums is that Project 2025 trainees should expect a hostile reception if they go to work in the federal government. Kozma, the former USAID deputy chief of staff, says in one video that “many” of her fellow Trump appointees experienced “persecution” during their time in government.

In a video titled “The Political Appointee’s Survival Guide,” Max Primorac, a former deputy administrator at USAID during the Trump administration, warns viewers that Washington is a place that “does not share your conservative values,” and that new hires will find that “there’s so much hostility to basic traditional values.”

In the same video, Kristen Eichamer, a former deputy press secretary at the Trump-era NASA, says that the media pushed false narratives about then-President Trump and people who worked in his administration. “Being defamed on Twitter is almost a badge of honor in the Trump administration,” she says.

The videos also offer less overtly political tutorials for future appointees, covering everything from how a regulation gets made to working with the media, the mechanics of a presidential transition process to obtaining a security clearance, and best practices for time management.

One recurring theme in the videos is how the next Republican administration can avoid the mistakes of the first Trump presidency. In one video, Roger Severino, the former director of the Office of Civil Rights in the Trump-era Department of Health and Human Services, explains that failure to meticulously follow federal procedure led to courts delaying or throwing out certain regulatory efforts on technical grounds.

Severino, who is also a longtime leader in the anti-abortion movement, goes on to walk viewers through the ins and outs of procedural law and says that they should prepare for “the left” to use every tool possible to derail the next conservative president. “This is a game of 3D chess,” Severino says. “You have to be always anticipating what the left is going to do to try to throw sand in the gears and trip you up and block your rule.” (In an email, Severino said he would forward ProPublica’s interview request to Heritage’s spokespeople, who did not respond.)

Operating under the assumption that some career employees might seek to thwart a future conservative president’s agenda, some of the advice pertains to how political appointees can avoid being derailed or bogged down by the government bureaucrats who work with them.

Sullivan urges viewers to “empower your political staff,” limit access to appointees’ calendars and leave out career staff from early meetings with more senior agency officials. “You are making it clear to career staff that your political appointees are in charge,” Sullivan says.

Other tips from the videos include scrubbing personal social media accounts of any content that’s “damaging, vulgar or contradict the policies you are there to implement” well before the new administration begins, as Kozma put it.

Alexei Woltornist, a former assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Homeland Security, encourages future appointees to bypass mainstream news outlets like The New York Times and The Washington Post. Instead, they should focus on conservative media outlets because those are the only outlets conservative voters trust.

“The American people who vote for a conservative presidential administration, they’re not reading The New York Times, they’re not reading The Washington Post,” Woltornist says. “To the contrary, if those outlets publish something, they’re going to assume it’s false. So the only way to reach them with any voice of credibility is through working with conservative media outlets.”

And in a video about oversight and investigations, a group of conservative investigators advise future appointees on how to avoid creating a paper trail of sensitive communications that could be obtained by congressional committees or outside groups under the Freedom of Information Act.

“If you need to resolve something, if you can do it, it’s probably better to walk down the hall, buttonhole a guy and say, ‘Hey, what are we going to do here?’ Talk through the decision,” says Tom Jones, a former Senate investigator who now runs the American Accountability Foundation.

Jones adds that it’s possible that agency lawyers could cite exemptions in the public-records law to prevent the release of certain documents. But appointees are best served, he argues, if they don’t put important communications in writing in the first place.

“You’re probably better off,” Jones says, “going down to the canteen, getting a cup of coffee, talking it through and making the decision, as opposed to sending him an email and creating a thread that Accountable.US or one of those other groups is going to come back and seek.”

Do you have any information about Project 2025 that we should know? Andy Kroll can be reached by email at andy.kroll@propublica.org and by Signal or WhatsApp at 202-215-6203.

Videos prepared by Lisa Riordan Seville and Chris Morran. Mariam Elba contributed research.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Andy Kroll, ProPublica, and Nick Surgey, Documented.

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

Project 2025, the controversial playbook and policy agenda for a right-wing presidential administration, has lost its director and faced scathing criticism from both Democratic groups and former President Donald Trump. But Project 2025’s plan to train an army of political appointees who could battle against the so-called deep state government bureaucracy on behalf of a future Trump administration remains on track.

One centerpiece of that program is dozens of never-before-published videos created for Project 2025’s Presidential Administration Academy. The vast majority of these videos — 23 in all, totaling more than 14 hours of content — were provided to ProPublica and Documented by a person who had access to them.

The Project 2025 videos coach future appointees on everything from the nuts and bolts of governing to how to outwit bureaucrats. There are strategies for avoiding embarrassing Freedom of Information Act disclosures and ensuring that conservative policies aren’t struck down by “left-wing judges.” Some of the content is routine advice that any incoming political appointee might be told. Other segments of the training offer guidance on radically changing how the federal government works and what it does.

In one video, Bethany Kozma, a conservative activist and former deputy chief of staff at the U.S. Agency for International Development in the Trump administration, downplays the seriousness of climate change and says the movement to combat it is really part of a ploy to “control people.”

“If the American people elect a conservative president, his administration will have to eradicate climate change references from absolutely everywhere,” Kozma says.

In the same video, Kozma calls the idea of gender fluidity “evil.” Another speaker, Katie Sullivan, who was an acting assistant attorney general at the Department of Justice under Trump, takes aim at executive actions by the administration of President Joe Biden that created gender adviser positions throughout the federal government. The goal, Biden wrote in one order, was to “advance equal rights and opportunities, regardless of gender or gender identity.”

Sullivan says, “That position has to be eradicated, as well as all the task forces, the removal of all the equity plans from all the websites, and a complete rework of the language in internal and external policy documents and grant applications.”

Trump has tried to distance himself from Project 2025, falsely saying that he knew nothing about it and had “no idea who is behind it.” In fact, he flew on a private jet with Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, which leads Project 2025. And in a 2022 speech at a Heritage Foundation event, Trump said, “This is a great group and they’re going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do and what your movement will do when the American people give us a colossal mandate to save America.”

A review of the training videos shows that 29 of the 36 speakers have worked for Trump in some capacity — on his 2016-17 transition team, in the administration or on his 2024 reelection campaign. The videos appear to have been recorded before the resignation two weeks ago of Paul Dans, the leader of the 2025 project, and they are referenced on the project’s website. The Heritage Foundation said in a statement at the time of Dans’ resignation that it would end Project 2025’s policy-related work, but that its “collective efforts to build a personnel apparatus for policymakers of all levels — federal, state, and local — will continue.”

The Heritage Foundation and most of the people who appear in the videos cited in this story did not respond to ProPublica’s repeated requests for comment. Karoline Leavitt, a spokesperson for the Trump campaign who features in one of the videos, said, “As our campaign leadership and President Trump have repeatedly stated, Agenda 47 is the only official policy agenda from our campaign.”

Project 2025’s 887-page “Mandate for Leadership” document lays out a vast array of policy and governance proposals, including eliminating the Department of Education, slashing Medicaid, reclassifying tens of thousands of career civil servants so they could be more easily fired and replaced, giving the president greater power to control the DOJ and further restricting abortion access.

Democrats and liberal groups have criticized the project’s policy agenda as “extreme” and “authoritarian” while pointing out the many connections between Trump and the hundreds of people who contributed to the project.

“Trump’s attempts to distance himself from Project 2025 have always been disingenuous,” said Noah Bookbinder, president of the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. “The discovery that the vast majority of speakers in Project 2025 training videos are alumni of the Trump administration or have other close ties to Trump’s political operation is unsurprising further evidence of the close connection there.”

Several speakers in the videos acknowledge that the Trump administration was slowed by staffing challenges and the inexperience of its political appointees, and they offer lessons learned from their stumbles. Some of the advice appears at odds with conservative dogma, including a suggestion that the next administration may need to expand key government agencies to achieve the larger goal of slashing federal regulations.

Rick Dearborn, who helped lead Trump’s 2016 transition team and later served in the Trump White House as deputy chief of staff, recalled in one video how “tough” it was to find people to fill all of the key positions in the early days of the administration.

The personnel part of Project 2025 is “so important to the next president,” Dearborn says. “Establishing all of this, providing the expertise, looking at a database of folks that can be part of the administration, talking to you like we are right now about what is a transition about, why do I want to be engaged in it, what would my role be — that’s a luxury that we didn’t have,” referring to a database of potential political appointees.

Dan Huff, a former legal adviser in the White House Presidential Personnel Office under Trump, says in another video that future appointees should be prepared to enact significant changes in American government and be ready to face blowback when they do.

“If you’re not on board with helping implement a dramatic course correction because you’re afraid it’ll damage your future employment prospects, it’ll harm you socially — look, I get it,” Huff says. “That’s a real danger. It’s a real thing. But please: Do us all a favor and sit this one out.”

The project’s experts outline regulatory and policy changes that future political appointees should prepare for in a Republican administration.

One video, titled “Hidden Meanings: The Monsters in the Attic,” is a 50-minute discussion of supposed left-wing code words and biased language that future appointees should be aware of and root out. In that video, Kozma says that U.S. intelligence agencies have named climate change as an increasingly dire threat to global stability, which, she says, illustrates how the issue “has infiltrated every part of the federal government.”

She then tells viewers that she sees climate change as merely a cover to engage in population control. “I think about the people who don’t want you to have children because of the” — here she makes air-quotes — “impact on the environment.” She adds, “This is part of their ultimate goal to control people.”

Later in the video, Katie Sullivan, the former acting assistant attorney general under Trump, advocates for removing so-called critical race theory from public education without saying how the federal government would accomplish that. (Elementary and secondary education curricula are typically set at the state and local level, not by the federal government.)

“The noxious tenets of critical race theory and gender ideology should be excised from curriculum in every single public school in this country,” Sullivan says. (Reached by phone, Sullivan told ProPublica to contact her press representative and hung up. A representative did not respond.)

In a different video, David Burton, an economic policy expert at the Heritage Foundation, discusses the importance of an obscure yet influential agency called the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. The Trump administration used OIRA to help roll back regulations on economic, fiscal and environmental issues. Under Biden, OIRA took a more aggressive stance in helping review and shape new regulations, which included efforts to combat housing discrimination, ban the sale of so-called ghost guns and set new renewable fuel targets.

Burton, in the Project 2025 video, urges future political appointees to work in OIRA and argues that the office should “increase its staffing levels considerably” in service of the conservative goal of reining in the so-called administrative state, namely the federal agencies that craft and issue new regulations.

“Fifty people are not enough to adequately police the regulatory actions of the entire federal government,” Burton says. “OIRA is one of the few government agencies that limits the regulatory ambitions of other agencies.” (Burton confirmed in a brief interview that he appeared in the video and endorsed expanding OIRA’s staffing levels.)

Expanding the federal workforce — even an office tasked with scrutinizing regulations — would seem to cut against the conservative movement’s long-standing goal of shrinking government. For anyone confused by Project 2025’s insistence that a conservative president should fill all appointee slots and potentially grow certain functions, Spencer Chretien, a former Trump White House aide who is now Project 2025’s associate director, addresses the tension in one video.

“Some on the right even say that we, because we believe in small government, should just lead by example and not fill certain political positions,” Chretien says. “I suggest that it would be almost impossible to bring any conservative change to America if the president did that.”

The speakers in the Project 2025 videos are careful not to explicitly side with Trump or talk about what a future Trump administration might do. They instead refer to a future “conservative president” or “conservative administration.”

But the links between the speakers in the videos and Trump are many. Most of those served Trump during his administration, working at the White House, the National Security Council, NASA, the Office of Management and Budget, USAID and the departments of Justice, Interior, State, Homeland Security, Transportation and Health and Human Services. Another speaker has worked in the Senate office of J.D. Vance, Trump’s 2024 running mate.

Sullivan, the former DOJ acting assistant attorney general in charge of the department’s Office of Justice Programs, which oversees billions in grant funding, appears in three different videos. Leavitt, who is in a training video titled “The Art of Professionalism,” worked in the White House press office during Trump’s first presidency and is now the national press secretary for his reelection campaign.

A consistent theme in the advice and testimonials offered by these Trump alums is that Project 2025 trainees should expect a hostile reception if they go to work in the federal government. Kozma, the former USAID deputy chief of staff, says in one video that “many” of her fellow Trump appointees experienced “persecution” during their time in government.

In a video titled “The Political Appointee’s Survival Guide,” Max Primorac, a former deputy administrator at USAID during the Trump administration, warns viewers that Washington is a place that “does not share your conservative values,” and that new hires will find that “there’s so much hostility to basic traditional values.”

In the same video, Kristen Eichamer, a former deputy press secretary at the Trump-era NASA, says that the media pushed false narratives about then-President Trump and people who worked in his administration. “Being defamed on Twitter is almost a badge of honor in the Trump administration,” she says.

The videos also offer less overtly political tutorials for future appointees, covering everything from how a regulation gets made to working with the media, the mechanics of a presidential transition process to obtaining a security clearance, and best practices for time management.

One recurring theme in the videos is how the next Republican administration can avoid the mistakes of the first Trump presidency. In one video, Roger Severino, the former director of the Office of Civil Rights in the Trump-era Department of Health and Human Services, explains that failure to meticulously follow federal procedure led to courts delaying or throwing out certain regulatory efforts on technical grounds.

Severino, who is also a longtime leader in the anti-abortion movement, goes on to walk viewers through the ins and outs of procedural law and says that they should prepare for “the left” to use every tool possible to derail the next conservative president. “This is a game of 3D chess,” Severino says. “You have to be always anticipating what the left is going to do to try to throw sand in the gears and trip you up and block your rule.” (In an email, Severino said he would forward ProPublica’s interview request to Heritage’s spokespeople, who did not respond.)

Operating under the assumption that some career employees might seek to thwart a future conservative president’s agenda, some of the advice pertains to how political appointees can avoid being derailed or bogged down by the government bureaucrats who work with them.

Sullivan urges viewers to “empower your political staff,” limit access to appointees’ calendars and leave out career staff from early meetings with more senior agency officials. “You are making it clear to career staff that your political appointees are in charge,” Sullivan says.

Other tips from the videos include scrubbing personal social media accounts of any content that’s “damaging, vulgar or contradict the policies you are there to implement” well before the new administration begins, as Kozma put it.

Alexei Woltornist, a former assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Homeland Security, encourages future appointees to bypass mainstream news outlets like The New York Times and The Washington Post. Instead, they should focus on conservative media outlets because those are the only outlets conservative voters trust.

“The American people who vote for a conservative presidential administration, they’re not reading The New York Times, they’re not reading The Washington Post,” Woltornist says. “To the contrary, if those outlets publish something, they’re going to assume it’s false. So the only way to reach them with any voice of credibility is through working with conservative media outlets.”

And in a video about oversight and investigations, a group of conservative investigators advise future appointees on how to avoid creating a paper trail of sensitive communications that could be obtained by congressional committees or outside groups under the Freedom of Information Act.

“If you need to resolve something, if you can do it, it’s probably better to walk down the hall, buttonhole a guy and say, ‘Hey, what are we going to do here?’ Talk through the decision,” says Tom Jones, a former Senate investigator who now runs the American Accountability Foundation.

Jones adds that it’s possible that agency lawyers could cite exemptions in the public-records law to prevent the release of certain documents. But appointees are best served, he argues, if they don’t put important communications in writing in the first place.

“You’re probably better off,” Jones says, “going down to the canteen, getting a cup of coffee, talking it through and making the decision, as opposed to sending him an email and creating a thread that Accountable.US or one of those other groups is going to come back and seek.”

Do you have any information about Project 2025 that we should know? Andy Kroll can be reached by email at andy.kroll@propublica.org and by Signal or WhatsApp at 202-215-6203.

Videos prepared by Lisa Riordan Seville and Chris Morran. Mariam Elba contributed research.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Andy Kroll, ProPublica, and Nick Surgey, Documented.

The Australian Associated Press (AAP) news agency has provided a vital training opportunity for journalists at the Vanuatu Daily Post.

Last week, 12 reporters participated in a training session held at the Daily Post where AAP offered free access to its website and platforms, marking a significant step in enhancing global news reporting.

AAP’s international development lead Delia Obst outlined the importance of this initiative.

• READ MORE: Other Pacific journalism training reports

“AAP is Australia’s independent national newswire service that provides trusted reporting, images, and video to hundreds of media outlets in Australia and internationally,” she said.

“On this trip, we are also training newsrooms in Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Fiji. We are in Vanuatu to train reporters from the Vanuatu Daily Post and Vanuatu Broadcasting and Television Corporation (VBTC) on how to access and use AAP’s content, which we hope will support their work and be a great source of regional news.

“This is part of the AAP Pacific News Initiative, which is funded by the Australian government and implemented by AAP.

“We are excited to build a partnership with Vanuatu’s only daily newspaper.”

Wider global coverage
The new access to AAP’s platforms is expected to benefit Daily Post, enabling coverage of press releases and events they cannot attend, such as government official visits abroad and sports events.

AAP’s website features allow users to select their interest topics or stories, providing real-time updates via email notifications whenever relevant news is published, this ensures that Daily Post reporters can stay updated on important stories and coverage.

Filing a query on the platform usually results in a response within approximately 15 minutes, provided AAP is covering the event and time zone differences are considered.

This quick response time is especially valuable for Daily Post‘s newsroom, which places high importance on timely and accurate news delivery.

Sports reporter Vourie Molivakoro expressed her gratitude for joining the AAP platform.

She is eager to use this platform to bring in-depth coverage and insightful reporting to her audience, highlighting the performances and stories of athletes on the global stage.

“With limited resources for obtaining news abroad, the Daily Post sports team can now obtain news and share it with its audiences across the country and region as a whole,” she said.

Clifton Kissel is a Vanuatu Daily Post reporter. Republished with permission.

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

U.S. companies and nationals will need to apply for a special license – with a “presumption of denial” – before doing any business with China’s Global Training Solutions and Smartech Future, South Africa’s Grace Air and the United Kingdom’s Livingston Aerospace.

The firms were blacklisted “because of their links to the Test Flying Academy of South Africa (TFASA) and the training of China’s military forces using Western … sources,” according to a U.S. Department of Commerce federal filing set to be published on Wednesday.

TFASA itself was added to the Commerce Ministry’s banned Entity List in June 2023 and is at the center of the former U.S. Marine and now Australian citizen Daniel Duggan’s high-profile extradition case. 

The United States has accused Duggan, who renounced his U.S. citizenship in 2016 and now has a family in Australia, of knowingly training Chinese military pilots at the South African school in 2012 in technical skills that included landing on aircraft carriers.

Duggan has denied the accusations and says he only thought he was training civilian Chinese pilots. His Australian family says the U.S. military is trying to make an example of him in order to warn other American ex-military members against training Chinese pilots.

In a memo last month, the U.S. military warned Western ex-military against lucrative job offers to train Chinese pilots, with recruitment by firms with ties to China’s People’s Liberation Army “not always obvious, as companies may not initially promote the PLA’s role.”

“Job locations may be in China, South Africa, or elsewhere, with lucrative contracts and the opportunity to fly exotic aircraft, with vague details on the ultimate customers,” the June 5 memo said.

Edited by Malcolm Foster.

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

This morning I did something I seldom do, I looked at the Twitter newsfeed.

Normally I take the approach of something that I’m not sure is an American urban legend, or genuinely something kids do over there. The infamous bag of dog poo on the front porch, set it on fire then ring the doorbell so the occupier will answer and seeing the flaming bag stamp it out.

In doing so they obviously disrupt the contents of the bag, quite forcefully, distributing it’s contents to the surprise, and annoyance, of said stamper.

• READ MORE: NZDF will train with Israeli Defence Force in 2 weeks time! Our mana will be stained with dishonour!
• Gaza ‘devastated’ as mediators review Hamas response to ceasefire proposal
• Other War on Gaza reports

So that’s normally what I do. Deposit a tweet on that platform, then duck for cover. In the scenario above the kid doesn’t hang around afterwards to see what the resident made of their prank.

I’m the same with Twitter. Get in, do what you’ve got to do, then get the heck out of there and enjoy the carnage from a distance.

But this morning I clicked on the Home button and the first tweet that came up in my feed was about an article in The Daily Blog:

Surely not?

I know our government hasn’t exactly been outspoken in condemning the massacre of Palestinians that has been taking place since last October — but we’re not going to take part in training exercises with them, are we? Surely not.

A massacre — not a rescue
A couple of days ago I was thinking about the situation in Gaza, and the recent so-called rescue of hostages that is being celebrated.

Look, I get it that every life is precious, that to the families of those hostages all that matters is getting them back alive. But four hostages freed and 274 Palestinians killed in the process — that isn’t a rescue — that’s a massacre.

Another one.

It reminds me of the “rescues” of the 1970s where they got the bad guys, but all the good guys ended up dead as well. According to some sources, and there are no really reliable sources here, the rescue also resulted in the deaths of three hostages.

While looking at reports on this training exercise, one statistic jumped out at me:

Israel has dropped more bombs on Gaza in eight months than were dropped on London, Hamburg and Dresden during the full six years of the Second World War. Israel is dropping these bombs on one of the most densely populated communities in the world.

It’s beyond comprehension. Think of how the Blitz in London is seared into our consciousness as being a terrible time — and how much worse this is.

Firestorm of destruction
As for Dresden, what a beautiful city. I remember when Fi and I were there back in 2001, arriving at the train station, walking along the river. Such a fabulous funky place. Going to museums — there was an incredible exhibition on Papua New Guinea when we were there, it seemed so incongruous to be on the other side of the world looking at exhibits of a Pacific people.

Most of all though I remember the rebuilt cathedral and the historical information about the bombing of that city at the end of the war. A firestorm of utter destruction. Painstakingly rebuilt, over decades, to its former beauty. Although you can still see the scars.

Nobody will be rebuilding Gaza into a beautiful place when this is done.

The best case for the Palestinians at this point would be some sort of peacekeeping force on the ground and then decades of rebuilding. Everything. Schools, hospitals, their entire infrastructure has been destroyed — in scenes that we associate with the most destructive war in human history.

And we’re going to take part in training exercises with the people who are causing all of that destruction, who are massacring tens of thousands of civilians as if their lives don’t matter. Surely not.

NZ ‘honour and mana stained’
From Martyn Bradbury’s article in The Daily Blog:

It is outrageous in the extreme that the NZ Defence Force will train with the Israeli Defence Force on June 26th as part of the US-led (RIMPAC) naval drills!

Our military’s honour and mana is stained by rubbing shoulders with an Army that is currently accused of genocide and conducting a real time ethnic cleansing war crime.

It’s like playing paintball with the Russian Army while they are invading the Ukraine.

RIMPAC, the world’s largest international maritime warfare exercise, is held in Hawai’i every second year. The name indicates a focus on the Pacific Rim, although many countries attend.

In 2024 there will be ships and personnel attending from 29 countries. The usual suspects you’d expect in the region — like the US, the Aussies, Canada, and some of our Pacific neighbours. But also countries from further abroad like France and Germany. As well of course as the Royal NZ Navy and the Israeli Navy.

Which is pretty weird. I know Israel have to pretend they’re in Europe for things like sporting competitions or Eurovision, with their neighbours unwilling to include them. But what on earth does Israel have to do with the Pacific Rim?

Needless to say those who oppose events in Gaza are not overly excited about us working together with the military force that’s doing almost all of the killing.

“We are calling on our government to withdraw from the exercise because of Israel’s ongoing industrial-scale slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza”, said Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) national chair, John Minto.

“Why would we want to join with a lawless, rogue state which has demonstrated the complete suite of war crimes over the past eight months?”

Whatever you might think of John Minto, he has a point.

Trade and travel embargo
Personally I think we, and others, should be undertaking a complete trade and travel embargo with Israel until the killing stops. The least we can do is not rub shoulders with them as allies. That’s pretty repugnant. I can’t imagine many young Kiwis signed up to serve their country like that.

The PSNA press release said, “Taking part in a military event alongside Israel will leave an indelible stain on this country. It will be a powerful symbol of New Zealand complicity with Israeli war crimes. It’s not on!”

Aotearoa is not the only country in which such participation is being questioned. In Malaysia, for example, a group of NGOs are urging the government there to withdraw:

“On May 24, the ICJ explicitly called for a halt in Israel’s Rafah onslaught. The Israeli government and opposition leaders, in line with the behaviour of a rogue lawless state, have scornfully dismissed the ICJ ruling,” it said.

“The world should stop treating it like a normal, law-abiding state if it wants Israeli criminality in Gaza and the West Bank to stop.

“We reiterate our call on the Malaysian government to immediately withdraw from Rimpac 2024 to drive home that message,” it said.

What do you think about our country taking part in this event, alongside Israel Military Forces, at this time?

Complicit as allies
To me it feels that in doing so we are in a small way complicit. By coming together as allies, in our region of the world, we’re condoning their actions with our own.

Valerie Morse of Peace Action Wellington had the following to say about New Zealand’s involvement in the military exercises:

“The depth and breadth of suffering in Palestine is beyond imagination. The brutality of the Israeli military knows no boundaries. This is who [Prime Minister] Christopher Luxon and Defence Minister Judith Collins have signed the NZ military up to train alongside.

“New Zealand must immediately halt its participation in RIMPAC. The HMNZS Aotearoa must be re-routed back home to Taranaki.

“This is not the first time that Israel has been a participant in RIMPAC so it would not have been a surprise to the NZ government. It would have been quite easy to take the decision to stay out of RIMPAC given what is happening in Palestine. That Luxon and Collins have not done so shows that they lack even a basic moral compass.”

The world desperately needs strong moral leadership at this time, it needs countries to take a stand against Israel and speak up for what is right.

There’s only so much that a small country like ours can do, but we can hold our heads high and refuse to have anything to do with Israel until they stop the killing.

Is that so hard Mr Luxon?

Nick Rockel is a “Westie Leftie with five children, two dogs, and a wonderful wife”. He is the publisher of Nick’s Kōrero where this article was first published. It is republished here with permission. Read on to subscribe to Nick’s substack articles.

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

Reports of the forced recruitment come amid fresh calls from the international community to monitor the situation facing Rohingyas amid fears that attempts by the embattled military to incite tension between Muslim Rohingyas and ethnic Rakhine Buddhist communities in Rakhine state is succeeding.

The junta is desperate to recruit new soldiers as its ranks are depleted by battlefield losses and mass surrenders to rebel forces.

Rohingyas, persecuted for decades in Buddhist-majority Myanmar, are getting caught up in the war between the ethnic Arakan Army, or AA, and junta forces in Rakhine state, human rights workers say.

Both sides have pressed Rohingyas into their ranks and at the same time have accused Rohingyas of helping their rivals. Reports suggest that both the AA and junta forces have subjected members of the Muslim minority to violence.

Rohingya residents of Sittwe who, like others interviewed for this report, spoke on condition of anonymity due to security concerns, told RFA Burmese that junta troops on May 27 began ordering them to hand over around 30 people aged 18-30 each from more than 10 camps for the displaced in Sittwe – including Thet Kei Pyin, Ohn Taw Gyi, Bar Sar Ra, Dar Paing, and Thae Chaung.

"We were asked to give 35 people from our camp,” a Rohingya resident of the Thet Kei Pyin camp said Wednesday. “If we refuse to do so, they will not share [international] food supplies anymore. The junta is recruiting for the frontline.”

It was not immediately clear how many Rohingyas have been forcibly recruited from the camps.

Attempts by RFA to contact the United Nations Development Program, or UNDP, in Myanmar for a response to reports that the junta has threatened to withhold food aid for Rohingyas in Rakhine state went unanswered Wednesday.

The junta forcibly recruited around 1,000 Rohingyas for military service from camps for the displaced in Sittwe township in March and more than 300 from Rohingya villages last month, Rohingya residents told RFA, making this the third round of forced recruitment.

Now, men sleep outside

A Rohingya from Sittwe, who also declined to be named, said members of his community are no longer willing to sleep in their homes, for fear of being detained in the middle of the night.

"They [the junta troops] often come late at night and if they see young men at home, they will take them immediately,” he said. “It isn’t good for us to sleep at home anymore. Now, men sleep outside – away from their homes and in the fields.”

Previous military training for Rohingyas was conducted at the junta’s Sittwe-based Regional Command Headquarters for two weeks. After completing the training, the trainees received certificates before some were sent home and others were sent to the frontlines, Rohingyas said.

A resident of Sittwe told RFA that the junta, which is increasingly losing territory to the AA in northern Rakhine state, is recruiting Rohingyas to defend the capital.

"The junta seems to be preparing for a defensive war,” he said. “If they can’t stop [losing territory], the junta will try to hold power by creating racial and religious conflict between the Rakhine and Muslim communities."

The resident said that while the Rohingyas are unwilling to serve in the military, they have no choice. He urged senior Rohingya leaders to prevent the possibility of conflict between the state’s ethnic communities.

RFA attempted to reach junta spokesperson Major General Zaw Min Tun and Hla Thein, the junta’s spokesperson for Rakhine state, to inquire about the forced recruitment of Rohingyas, but was unable to contact them.                        

Military analysts say the junta has used Rohingyas who received military training during battles against the AA in Rakhine’s Maungdaw and Rathedaung townships.

In Sittwe and Kyaukphyu townships, which have so far been free of conflict, thousands of Rohingya have received military training, and analysts say they are likely to be deployed on the battlefield if fighting continues.

Call to monitor Rohingya situation

Amid reports of forced recruitment of the Rohingya, and of the military seeking to incite conflict between the Rakhine and Rohingya communities in Rakhine state, international organizations have called for a pause in fighting to allow for aid groups to enter the area and assess the situation on the ground.

Last week, in response to reports of renewed violence and property destruction in Buthidaung township resulting in the displacement of “potentially tens of thousands of civilians, mainly Rohingya,” the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, urged restraint among all parties in the region.

“With inter-communal tensions between ethnic Rakhine and Rohingya high – and being actively stoked by the military – this is a critical period when the risk of yet further atrocity crimes is particularly acute,” Türk said in a May 19 statement.

“While we seek to corroborate information indicating serious violations, I appeal directly to the Myanmar military and Arakan Army to pause the fighting, protect civilians, allow immediate and unhindered humanitarian access, and comply fully and unconditionally with international law,” he said.

According to satellite imagery and images circulating on social media, nearly the entire town of Buthidaung was burned to the ground after the AA attacked the area, prompting the withdrawal of junta troops. Some Rohingyas were reportedly prevented from escaping the fighting and killed by AA soldiers, U.N. officials said at a press conference on May 24.

James Rodehaver, head of the United Nations Human Rights’, or OHCHR, Myanmar team, recently highlighted the spread of misinformation and propaganda exacerbating tensions between the Rakhine and Rohingya communities. He noted that the AA has been disseminating “false information” about the Rohingya on the social media platform X, formerly called Twitter.

Military incitement succeeding

Jason Tower, the country director for the Burma program at the United States Institute of Peace, told RFA that the military's efforts to incite tension between the Rohingya and Rakhine communities is succeeding.

“For quite a few months now, there's been evidence that the Myanmar military has been spreading disinformation about the Arakan Army in the Rohingya community, as part of its efforts to forcibly conscript Rohingya,” he said. 

“There are many Rohingya that have been forcibly conscripted and … this month, when a number of military junta troops surrendered to the AA, there were quite a few Rohingya conscripts amongst them.”

Tower said that the military’s strategy is to “put pressure on the Arakan Army” by stoking tensions between the Rohingya and Rakhine communities.

“And to some extent, it seems like this is working out in the favor of the military junta, as you now do see that the Arakan Army is starting to succumb to some of this pressure," he said.

The AA’s reporting on events in northern Rakhine state is “extremely problematic,” Tower said, and “very derogatory towards Rohingya communities.”

“And this is actually worsening the problem, although perhaps the intention of the Arakan Army in putting out this messaging is to appeal to a population of [Rakhine] that have been manipulated by the Myanmar military regime,” he said.

Nonetheless, this in no way absolves the AA of its responsibility to protect civilians and the Rohingya population, Tower said.

“There is a need for the Arakan Army to be held accountable for what's happening here,” he added.

The AA, which in November ended a ceasefire that had been in place since the military’s February 2021 coup d’etat, announced on May 18 that it had captured all military camps in Buthidaung. The AA said it now occupies nine townships in Rakhine state, as well as Paletwa township in neighboring Chin state.

Tower said that while it “seems pretty clear” that the AA will ultimately expel the military from Rakhine state, the real test for the ethnic army is whether it will be able to adequately support displaced communities and begin governing the many territories under its control.

Attempts by RFA to contact the junta and the AA for comment on the situation in Buthidaung and allegations of violence against the Rohingya community went unanswered Wednesday.

Translated by Aung Naing and Kalyar Lwin. Edited by Joshua Lipes and Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Reported by Ye Kaung Myint Maung for RFA Burmese.

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The city of Uvalde, Texas, will overhaul police training and hiring policies as well as support more mental health services for survivors of the 2022 massacre at Robb Elementary School as part of a settlement with the families of 19 victims announced just two days before the second anniversary of the shooting.

Attorneys for the families said in a news conference this week that the city will also pay $2 million in restitution and help construct a permanent memorial.

The settlement is the first to be reached with families as lawsuits pile up against local and state officials and companies, including the manufacturer of the killer’s weapon, over the school shooting in which 19 children and two teachers died. Among the key failures that it seeks to address is providing sufficient training for law enforcement to respond to a mass shooting.

City officials did not respond to questions seeking more details about the settlement, which included anagreement to implement a new “fitness for duty” standard for local police officers in coordination with the Justice Department and committed to providing enhanced training for police. But they issued a statement saying they were thankful to have arrived at an agreement “that will allow us to remember the Robb Elementary tragedy while moving forward together as a community to bring healing and restoration to all those affected.”

Legal action could have bankrupted the city of Uvalde, which the families did not want, according to attorneys, who added that the details of the settlement, specifically those related to training, are still being finalized. A separate agreement is being negotiated with Uvalde County, which had 16 deputies responding, including the sheriff, according to attorneys.

Most civil settlements in mass shootings are with private companies and therefore tend to be confidential, so the public rarely learns what they entail, said Jaclyn Schildkraut, executive director of the Regional Gun Violence Research Consortium at the Rockefeller Institute of Government, a public policy think tank in Albany, New York.

While in some high-profile cases, the public may learn about the financial payoff, Schildkraut said that she has never heard of a legal settlement including a stipulation for more training. When there have been recommendations or changes related to training, as occurred after the 1999 Columbine school shooting, they tend to come from law enforcement or local, state or federal authorities. She said that the families agreeing to a settlement with such specific training stipulations in the Uvalde case demonstrates that “it was never about the money.”

“It was about accountability and making it better so that it doesn’t happen again,” said Schildkraut, who has studied mass shootings for 17 years. “And so I think in that respect, if that was their goal, to have their loved ones not have died in vain with no change, then that absolutely is a positive.”

Though hundreds of officers descended on the elementary school on May 24, 2022, none confronted the shooter for 77 minutes, wrongly treating the situation as one with a barricaded suspect instead of an active threat even as children and teachers pleaded with 911 dispatchers for help. They failed to follow multiple best practices taught as part of active shooter training, including setting up a clear command structure.

An investigation published in December by ProPublica, The Texas Tribune and FRONTLINE found that about 72% of the at least 116 state and local officers who arrived at the school before the gunman was killed had received some form of active shooter training during their careers. A majority, however, had only taken it once, which is not enough, according to law enforcement experts. Federal officials declined to provide their training records to the news organizations or to the Justice Department, which released a separate review a month later.

The news organizations analyzed training requirements across the country, which revealed that children are required to train more often for the possibility of a school shooting than law enforcement officers.

During a press conference in Uvalde, Josh Koskoff, the families’ attorney, said the state’s failure to prevent the deaths began long before the shooting occurred. He said Texas failed to provide small communities like Uvalde, a city of about 15,000 people, with enough resources to train their officers.

“You think the city of Uvalde has enough money, or training, or resources? You think they can hire the best of the best?” Koskoff said. “As far as the state of Texas is concerned, it sounds like their position is: ‘You’re on your own.’”

Attorneys said they are working with Uvalde families who plan to file additional lawsuits before the statute of limitations for such cases ends Friday. The lawyers announced the first of those suits on Wednesday.

The new federal lawsuit against the Texas Department of Public Safety, the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District, an energy management company and a telecommunications company seeks at least $500 million in damages on behalf of the families of 17 children who were killed and two who were injured.

The 98-page lawsuit claims that the failure of more than 90 DPS troopers to engage the shooter endangered children and cost lives, Koskoff and other attorneys argued in the lawsuit. It also names the former school district police chief, Pete Arredondo, the school’s principal, Mandy Gutierrez, a school resource officer, Adrian Gonzales, and Jesus R. Suarez Jr., a member of the school board and reserve officer for the Southwest Texas Junior College Police Department, citing their inaction. Reached on his cellphone, Suarez said he hadn’t seen the lawsuit and referred questions to his attorney, who did not respond to calls and emails. An attorney for Gutierrez and Gonzales also did not return calls and texts sent to his listed cell phone number. Arredondo could not be reached for comment, but his attorney has previously argued that he was being scapegoated.

The lawsuit argues that while the “craven actions” of the school district police are well known, “equally culpable actions” by DPS officers have been “shielded from public scrutiny.” It notes that DPS has fought the release of its officers’ body-camera footage, radio communications, officer interviews and other records. The Tribune, ProPublica and other media organizations are suing the agency for such records. A state district judge ruled last year that DPS should release those records, but the agency has appealed.

Spokespeople for DPS and the school district declined to comment on the lawsuit.

“For two long years, we have languished in pain and without any accountability from the law enforcement agencies and officers who allowed our families to be destroyed that day,” Veronica Luevanos, whose daughter Jailah and nephew Jayce were killed, said in a statement. Luevanos said that while the settlement with the city reflects a first good-faith effort to begin rebuilding trust, “it wasn’t just Uvalde officers who failed us that day.”

“Nearly 100 officers from the Texas Department of Public Safety have yet to face a shred of accountability for cowering in fear while my daughter and nephew bled to death in their classroom.”

Only about a dozen officers from the nearly two dozen agencies that responded to the shooting have been fired or suspended, or have retired as a result. At least five DPS officers were among them.

The lawsuit also names as defendants two companies: Massachusetts-based Schneider Electric USA Inc., which it claims manufactured or installed the door-locking mechanisms at Robb Elementary, arguing that the designs are “unreasonably dangerous” because they force teachers to step outside their classrooms to lock doors, and Motorola Solutions Inc., which designed or sold the radio communication used by police and medics at the scene. The devices are “defective and unreasonably dangerous” because they left some first responders without access to necessary communications, according to the lawsuit.

A spokesperson for Motorola did not respond to emailed questions about the lawsuit. A spokesperson for Schneider Electric USA Inc. wrote in an email that the company did not make the locks at Robb Elementary and said that its inclusion was an error. He noted the company had been dropped in a previous lawsuit for that reason and was in touch with attorneys for the families in the current filing. He said the company expects to be dropped from this case.

A spokesperson for the attorneys said that if Schneider Electric USA Inc. provides information confirming it did not make the locks, the company will be removed from the suit.

The settlement and lawsuit bring some needed accountability after an “unbearable two years,” said Javier Cazares, whose 9-year-old Jacklyn Cazares was killed in the shooting.

“There was an obvious system failure out there on May 24. The whole world saw that,” Cazares said. “The time has come to do the right thing.”

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by .

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We are pleased to announce the 10 journalists chosen as the 2024 cohort of the ProPublica Investigative Editor Training Program.

The ProPublica Investigative Editor Training Program was established in 2023 to expand the ranks of editors with investigative experience in newsrooms across the country, with a focus on journalists from underrepresented backgrounds.

This program is funded by the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation, which supports journalism, film and arts organizations whose work is dedicated to social justice and strengthening democracy.

Participants will undergo a five-day intensive editing boot camp in New York, with courses and panel discussions led by ProPublica’s senior editors. After the boot camp, participants will gather virtually every two months for continuing development seminars and be assigned a ProPublica senior editor as a mentor for advice on their work and careers.

This year, 115 people applied for the program.

“ProPublica is proud to continue this unique program, which aims to help diversify the industry by providing investigative editing training to journalists from underrepresented backgrounds,” said Stephen Engelberg, editor-in-chief of ProPublica.

We’re thrilled to introduce the 2024 cohort of the ProPublica Investigative Editor Training Program:

Rebekah Allen is the politics editor of The Texas Tribune, an award-winning nonprofit newsroom that focuses on policy and politics. She oversees a team based in Austin and Washington, D.C., that reports on government accountability and political influence. Previously, Rebekah was a state government reporter at The Dallas Morning News. Before that, she worked as an investigative reporter at The Advocate/Times Picayune in South Louisiana, where she was named Louisiana Reporter of the Year in 2018 by the Louisiana-Mississippi Associated Press and Media Editors Contest. She was in the inaugural cohort of ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network.

Liz Brazile is the deputy online managing editor at KUOW Public Radio in Seattle, where she helps oversee the newsroom’s daily web coverage and digital news strategy and edits stories across various beats. Liz joined KUOW in January 2020 as an online editor/producer, splitting her time between reporting and editing. Prior to that, Liz covered education for Crosscut/KCTS 9. She is also an alumna of YES! Magazine, WLWT-TV and The Cincinnati Herald. Liz is senior vice president on the board of the Seattle Association of Black Journalists.

Ana Campoy is an editor in The Washington Post’s climate team, where she oversees the Climate Solutions vertical and other climate reporters who focus on innovative storytelling. She started her journalism career at her hometown newspaper in Monterrey, Mexico, before covering the oil industry and national news for The Wall Street Journal. Her reporting portfolio ranged from complex data projects to quirky features on such topics as suburban feral pigs. Before arriving at the Post, Ana was an editor at Quartz, where she led a team of international reporters covering the inner workings of the global economy.

Leah Donnella is a senior editor on NPR’s award-winning Code Switch team, which reports on race, identity, politics and culture. In her role, Leah edits the Code Switch podcast and writes the weekly newsletter, which analyzes how race intersects with the biggest news stories around the country. She has worked on the Code Switch team since 2015, reporting on everything from Donald Trump’s entrance into presidential politics to the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder to how Jewish American identity has been reshaped since the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7. Before coming to NPR, Leah worked at WHYY in Philadelphia, where she supported the Public Media Commons, which trains young people who are interested in becoming journalists.

Subrina Hudson is the business editor at the Chicago Sun-Times, where she manages a team under the newly created Money desk that helps readers understand how business impacts their daily lives. Previously, she was the business editor at the Las Vegas Review-Journal after serving as the assistant business editor. She joined the Review-Journal as a retail reporter and expanded her coverage to include real estate and unemployment. She has also been a reporter at the Orange County Business Journal, The Real Deal and the Los Angeles Business Journal. She holds a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Southern California and a bachelor’s in journalism from Boston University.

Clarissa A. León serves as the deputy editor for Documented, New York's go-to source for immigration news. At Documented, she works on advancing newsroom operations and community engagement reporting. Previously, she held numerous positions as an editor, researcher, reporter and educator. Originally from Reno, Nevada, she is now based in New Jersey.

Asraa Mustufa is managing editor at The Examination, an investigative news outlet focused on global health. She was previously an editor at the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, where she worked on the award-winning Pandora Papers investigation and other global reporting collaborations. She’s also served as an editor, digital producer and social media specialist helping shape and promote investigative reporting and news products in Chicago on a range of topics including COVID-19 data, police misconduct, public school funding and local elections.

Soo Oh is an investigative editor at The Markup. Before joining The Markup, she was the data editor at Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting. She has reported stories, analyzed data, coded interactive visuals, and built internal tools at the Center for Investigative Reporting, The Wall Street Journal, Vox, the Los Angeles Times and The Chronicle of Higher Education. In 2018, she was a John S. Knight Fellow at Stanford University, where she researched how to better manage and support journalists with technical skills.

Maye Primera is the editorial director at El Tímpano, a civic media organization serving and covering the Bay Area’s Latino and Mayan immigrants. She has worked as a reporter and editor for more than 20 years, covering politics, immigration, borders, human rights, and violence in Latin America and the U.S. Her enterprise multimedia work has received a national News and Documentary Emmy Award, the Hillman Prize, the RFK Human Rights Award, two Edward R. Murrow Awards, two King of Spain Awards, and the Ortega and Gasset prize. Primera is an alumna of the executive program in news innovation and leadership at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism.

Naveena Sadasivam is an investigative journalist at Grist covering the oil and gas industry and climate change. She previously worked at the Texas Observer, Inside Climate News and ProPublica and has won accolades from the Society of Environmental Journalists, Society of Professional Journalists and Online News Association, among others. She is based in Oakland, California.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Talia Buford.

The accident was caused by mechanical failure during a training exercise in Mandalay region’s Meiktila city on Tuesday, the press release stated, adding that the pilot and trainee onboard were not injured during the crash. Meiktila is home to the junta’s Air Force Central Command.

Former junta air force sergeant Zayya told Radio Free Asia crashes have become more frequent because military aircraft are constantly in use by junta officials. 

“We have seen more aircraft crashes and the use of helicopters has increased,” said the man, who goes by one name. “Many of the aircraft that have come to us have weaknesses. Overuse of the aircraft will continue to happen.”

It’s important to check the condition of aircraft after each use, he added, but the junta can no longer do that because of the frequency they are being used in carrying out attacks all over the nation. According to a September report by the United Nations Commissioner for Human Rights, airstrike attacks increased in Myanmar by 324% between 2021 and 2023. 

On Feb. 29, a fighter jet crashed near Magway region’s Kyu Wun village in central Myanmar. Just weeks earlier, a military plane repatriating troops who fled to India skidded off the runway at Mizoram state’s Lengpui Airport.

These crashes were preceded by more infrequent crashes in earlier years of the coup. In November 2022, a training pilot plane crashed in Tanintharyi region’s Thayetchaung township.

In June 2021, a junta passenger plane crash killed 12 people at Pyinoolwin’s nearby Anisakhan Airport in Mandalay region. The dead included a monk, two army majors, a captain and a corporal.

According to data compiled by RFA, rebel armies in Kachin, Kayin and Karenni states, as well as guerilla armies, or People’s Defense Forces, claim to have shot down seven transport helicopters and fighter jets in the three years since the 2021 coup. Five additional junta aircraft have crashed due to technical or human error.

Translated by RFA Burmese. Edited by Kiana Duncan and Mike Firn.

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

Repeated cases of Indonesian military (TNI) soldiers torturing civilians in Papua have been evident, as seen in the viral video depicting the torture of civilians in the Puncak Regency allegedly done by soldiers of Raider 300/Brajawijaya Infantry Battalion.

There is a pressing need for stringent law enforcement and the evaluation of the deployment of TNI troops from outside Papua to the region.

Frits Ramandey, the head of the Papua Office of the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM Papua), said that since 2020, Komnas HAM Papua had handled several cases of alleged torture by TNI soldiers against civilians.

• READ MORE:  Amnesty urges review of Indonesian troops in Papua after torture video
• Australian group warns of new ‘arrests, torture’ in Papuan crackdown
• ‘Committed to human rights’, claims Indonesia over West Papua torture
• West Papuan wounds of suffering – diplomatic pressure on Indonesia needed urgently – Ronny Kareni
• Wenda condemns ‘sadistic brutality’ of Indonesian torture of Papuan – calls for UN action
• Other West Papua human rights reports

“This [case of torture against civilians] is not the first to occur in Papua,” said Ramandey said this week.

Ramandey cited the case of the torture and murder of Pastor Yeremia Zanambani in Intan Jaya Regency in September 2020.

He also mentioned cases of violence against people with disabilities in Merauke in July 2021.

Torture of children
In 2022, Komnas HAM Papua also dealt with cases of civilian torture in Mappi regency, as well as the torture of seven children in the Puncak regency.

In Mimika regency, four Nduga residents were murdered and mutilated, and three children were tortured in Keerom regency.

Ramandey said that the cases handled by Komnas HAM indicated that the torture experienced by civilians was extremely brutal, inhumane, and violated human rights.

According to Ramandey, similar methods of torture used by the military were employed during Indonesia’s New Order regime.

“They tend to repeatedly commit torture. [The modus operandi] used [is reminiscent of] the New Order regime, using drums, tying up individuals, rendering them helpless, allowing perpetrators to freely carry out torture,” he said.

Ramandey emphasised that such torture only perpetuated the cycle of violence in Papua.

Human rights training
He insisted that TNI soldiers deployed in Papua must receive proper training on human rights. Additionally, soldiers involved in torture cases must be prosecuted.

“Otherwise, the cycle of violence will continue because [the torture that occurs] will breed hatred, resentment, and anger,” said Ramandey.

Ramandey called for an evaluation of the deployment of TNI troops from outside Papua to the region.

According to Ramandey, TNI troops from outside Papua would be better placed under the control of the local Military Area Command (Kodam) instead of the current practice of under the Operational Control of the Joint Defence Region Command (Kogabwilhan) III.

He believed that the Papua conflict could only be resolved through peaceful dialogue. He urged the state to create space for such peaceful dialogue, including humanitarian dialogue advocated by Komnas HAM in 2023.

Repetition due to impunity
In a written statement last weekend, the director of Amnesty International Indonesia, Usman Hamid, said that the right of every individual to be free from torture was part of internationally recognised norms.

Usman said that Article 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and General Comment No. 20 on Article 7 of the ICCPR had affirmed that no one could be subjected to practices of torture/cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment under any circumstances.

“No one in this world, including in Papua, should be treated inhumanely and have their dignity degraded, let alone resulting in loss of life,” wrote Usman.

Usman criticised the practice of impunity towards suspected perpetrators of various past cases, which had led to repeated cases of torture of civilians by TNI soldiers.

“These actions keep repeating because there has been no punishment for members who have been proven to have committed crimes such as kidnapping, torture, and even loss of life,” he said.

According to Jubi’s records, TNI soldiers are suspected of repeatedly being involved in the torture of civilians in Papua.

On February 22, 2022, TNI soldiers allegedly assaulted seven children in Sinak District, Puncak Regency, after a soldier from 521/Dadaha Yodha Infantry Battalion 521, Second Pvt. Kristian Sandi Alviando, lost his SS2 weapon at PT Modern hangar, Tapulunik Sinak Airport.

The seven children subjected to torture were Deson Murib, Makilon Tabuni, Pingki Wanimbo, Waiten Murib, Aton Murib, Elison Murib, and Murtal Kulua. Makilon Tabuni later died.

Killed and mutilated
On August 22, 2022, a number of TNI soldiers allegedly killed and mutilated four residents of Nduga in Settlement Unit 1, Mimika Baru District, Mimika Regency.

The four victims of murder and mutilation were Arnold Lokbere, Irian Nirigi, Lemaniel Nirigi, and Atis Tini.

On August 28, 2022, soldiers from Raider 600/Modang Infantry Battalion allegedly apprehended and assaulted four intoxicated individuals in Mappi Regency, South Papua Province.

The four individuals arrested for drunkenness were Amsal Pius Yimsimem, Korbinus Yamin, Lodefius Tikamtahae, and Saferius Yame.

Komnas HAM Papua said that these four individuals also experienced abuse resulting in injuries all over their bodies.

On August 30, 2022, soldiers stationed at Bade Post, Edera District, Mappi Regency, allegedly committed assault resulting in the death of Bruno Amenim Kimko and severe injuries to Yohanis Kanggun.

A total of 18 soldiers from Raider 600/Modang Infantry Battalion were suspects in the case.

On October 27, 2022, three children in Keerom Regency, Rahmat Paisei, 15; Bastian Bate, 13; and Laurents Kaung, 11; were allegedly abused by TNI soldiers at a military post in Arso II District, Arso, Keerom Regency, Papua.

These three children were reportedly abused using chains, wire rolls, and hoses, requiring hospital treatment.

On February 22, 2023, TNI soldiers at Lantamal X1 Ilwayap Post allegedly assaulted Albertus Kaize and Daniel Kaize. Albertus Kaize died as a result.

Republished with permission from Jubi/West Papua Daily.

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

An Australian solidarity group for West Papua today warned of a fresh “heavy handed” Indonesia crackdown on Papuan villagers with more “arrests and torture”.

Joe Collins of the Australia West Papua Association (AWPA) gave the warning in the wake of the deployment of 30 elite rangers last week at the Ndeotadi 99 police post in Paniai district, Central Papua, following a deadly assault there by Papuan pro-independence resistance fighters.

Two Indonesian police officers were killed in the attack.

• READ MORE:  ‘Committed to human rights’, claims Indonesia over West Papua torture
• West Papuan wounds of suffering – diplomatic pressure on Indonesia needed urgently – Ronny Kareni
• Wenda condemns ‘sadistic brutality’ of Indonesian torture of Papuan – calls for UN action
• Other West Papua human rights reports

The AWPA warning also follows mounting outrage over a brutal video of an Indonesian Papuan man being tortured in a fuel drum that has gone viral.

Collins called on the federal government to “immediately condemn” the torture of West Papuans by the Australian-trained Indonesian security forces.

“If a security force sweep occurs in the region, we can expect the usual heavy-handed approach by the security forces,” Collins said in a statement.

“It’s not unusual for houses and food gardens to be destroyed during these operations, including the arrest and torture of Papuans.

“Local people usually flee their villages creating more IDP [internally displaced people]”.

60,000 plus IDPs
Human rights reports indicate there are more than 60,000 IDP in West Papua.

“The recent brutal torture of an indigenous Papuan man shows what can happen to West Papuans who fall foul of the Indonesian security forces,” Collins said.

“Anyone seeing this video which has gone viral must be shocked by the brutality of the military personal involved. 

The video clip was shot on 3 February 2024 during a security force raid in Puncak regency.

“The Australian government should immediately condemn the torture of West Papuans by the Indonesian security forces [which] Australia trains and holds exercises with.

“Do we have to remind the government of Article 7of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights? It states:

No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. In particular, no one shall be subjected without his free consent to medical or scientific experimentation.

“As more Papuans become aware of the horrific video, they may respond by holding rallies and protests leading to more crackdowns on peaceful demonstrators,” Collins said.

“Hopefully Jakarta will realise the video is being watched by civil society, the media and government officials around the world and will control its military in the territory.”

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

On Feb. 10, the junta imposed a military draft law – officially called the People’s Military Service Law – prompting civilians of fighting age to flee Myanmar’s cities. Many said they would rather leave the country or join anti-junta forces in remote border areas than serve in the military, which seized power in a 2021 coup d’etat.

The junta has sought to downplay the announcement, claiming that conscription won’t go into effect until April, but RFA has received several reports indicating that forced recruitment is already under way.

Two videos emerged on Facebook over the weekend showing junta troops training a group of people wearing full military uniforms in the use of firearms and around 30 armed people wearing fatigues inside of a military vehicle. They were posted to the site with a description that identifies the subjects as Rohingyas.

A third video, posted on March 7, shows junta Rakhine State Security and Border Affairs Minister Co. Kyaw Thura visiting a warehouse where hundreds of people, believed to be Rohingyas, are seated in military attire.

RFA was unable to independently verify the content of the videos.

Reports suggest the junta has been forcibly recruiting Rohingyas in Rakhine in recent weeks, and residents told RFA Burmese that the video shows members of the ethnic group receiving training at a site in the north of the state, although they were unable to provide an exact location.

They said that junta personnel have detained and enlisted around 700 Rohingyas for military training from the Rakhine townships of Buthidaung, Maungdaw and Kyaukphyu, as well as the capital Sittwe, since the Feb. 10 announcement, with the goal of forming a militia.

In Kyaukphyu, the training has progressed to using firearms, said a resident who, like others interviewed for this report, spoke to RFA on condition of anonymity due to security concerns.

“It is known that the current training phase involves firearms practice,” the resident said Monday. “Gunfire has been heard over the past two or three days, although the training regimen varies daily.”

Many of the detainees are living at Kyaukphyu’s Kyauk Ta Lone camp for internally displaced persons, or IDPs, where on Feb. 29 junta authorities forcibly gathered 107 mostly ethnic-Rohingya Muslims between the ages of 18 and 35 at the camp’s food warehouse, after collecting their personal information.

Former military captain Nyi Thuta, who now advises the armed resistance as part of the anti-junta Civil Disobedience Movement, questioned why the military regime is forcibly recruiting the Rohingya when it has refused to grant them citizenship.

"These people are being coerced and manipulated in various ways into fighting to the death for the junta, which is facing defeat in [the civil] war,” he said.

‘No way to escape’

Some 1 million Rohingya refugees have been living in Bangladesh since 2017, when they were driven out of Myanmar by a military clearance operation. Another 630,000 living within Myanmar are designated stateless by the United Nations, including those who languish in camps and are restricted from moving freely in Rakhine state.

Rights campaigners say the junta is drafting Rohingya into military service to stoke ethnic tensions in Rakhine, while legal experts say the drive is unlawful, given that Myanmar has refused to recognize the Rohingya as one of the country’s ethnic groups and denied them citizenship for decades.

Myanmar’s military is desperate for new recruits after suffering devastating losses on the battlefield to the ethnic Arakan Army, or AA, in Rakhine state. Since November, when the AA ended a ceasefire that had been in place since the coup, the military has surrendered Pauktaw, Minbya, Mrauk-U, Kyauktaw, Myay Pon and Taung Pyo townships in the state, as well as Paletwa township in neighboring Chin state.

On Feb. 28, the pro-junta New Light of Myanmar claimed that Rohingya had not been recruited for military service because they aren’t citizens. Attempts by RFA to reach Hla Thein, the junta’s attorney general and spokesperson for Rakhine state, went unanswered Monday.

Nay San Lwin, a Rohingya activist, condemned the coercion of members of his ethnic group into military service as a “war crime.”

“They wield power and resort to coercion and arrests,” he said, adding that he believes the junta’s goal is to “obliterate the Rohingya community.” “I perceive this as part of a genocidal agenda."

Earlier this month, the shadow National Unity Government, or NUG – made up of former civilian leaders ousted in the coup – warned that Rohingya were being pressed into duty by the military “because there is no way to escape.”

Kachin youth fleeing recruitment

Meanwhile, residents of Kachin state said Monday that young people in the area are increasingly fleeing abroad or to areas controlled by the armed resistance to avoid military service. The draft law says males between the ages of 18 and 35 and females between 18 and 27 must serve in the military.

A draft-eligible resident of Kachin’s Myitkyina township said that he and others like him “no longer feel safe” in Myanmar.

“Since the conscription law was enacted, it has become quite difficult for us to realize our dreams,” he said. “It isn’t even safe to go out to a restaurant. We feel threatened daily.”

But even for those who have left the country, life can be difficult abroad.

A young Kachin named Ma La Bang who recently relocated to Thailand said he doesn’t have a visa to stay in the country legally, and told RFA that people like him worry about being forced to return home.

"Young people living in Thailand without any visa feel insecure, and it is also difficult for them to get jobs,” he said. “They are struggling to get a visa and any legal status for residency right now.”

La Sai, the chairman of the Kachin Refugee Committee in Malaysia, said that Kachin youths have been flooding the country since the enactment of the draft law. 

Two weeks after the junta activated the conscription law, the number of people entering Malaysia from Kachin state has more than doubled, he said. “This kind of migration is also taking place at [Myanmar’s] Thai and Indian borders.” 

‘Sacrificing their futures’

Win Naing, a member of parliament for Kachin’s Moe Kaung township for the deposed National League for Democracy, said the future of Myanmar’s youth is being lost because of the law.

"The conscription law … has directly interfered with the opportunities of young people for education and employment,” he said. “The youth are being made to sacrifice their futures.”

Junta spokesperson Major General Zaw Min Tun was quoted in pro-junta newspapers on Feb. 15 as saying that 50,000 soldiers will be recruited every year that the law is in effect. 

Based on Myanmar’s 2019 interim census, at least 13 million people are eligible for military service. Those who refuse face five years in prison.

Translated by Kalyar Lwin and Aung Naing. Edited by Joshua Lipes and Malcolm Foster.

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

The University of Fiji will be offering its journalism and media studies programme at its Samabula campus from this semester.

UniFiji vice-chancellor Professor Shaista Shameem said the programme started at the Saweni campus in Lautoka in 2022 with only five students and had been growing since then.

She said there would now be more students registering for the programme as it was positioned closer to the court and Parliament for better news coverage.

• READ MORE: Other journalism programme reports

Professor Shameem said the programme was drafted and written with the help of senior journalists and news media people in Fiji including Communications Fiji Limited chairman William Parkinson, Sitiveni Halofaki from Fiji TV, former Fiji Sun managing editor Nemani Delaibatiki, Matai Akauola, Anish Chand from The Fiji Times and Stanley Simpson of Mai TV.

The vice-chancellor said the programme was different from the other universities and student journalists were sent for training in newsrooms during their first year of study so that they could become well known with their bylines.

She said the university also has a newspaper, known as UniFiji Watch, and a radio station, Vox Populi, which had won an international award for college radio.

Industry teachers
The vice-chancellor said that most of the courses were taught by people in the journalism industry and veteran journalists, including Communications Fiji Limited news director Vijay Narayan, Vimal Madhavan and Matai Akoula.

She said the university also wanted to add film and a documentary course to the programme.

Head of department Dr Kamala Naiker said journalism students needed opportunities for innovation. The first lot of student journalists would be graduating next year.

Republished with permission.

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

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This article is produced in collaboration with The Texas Tribune and the PBS series FRONTLINE. Sign up for newsletters from The Texas Tribune and from FRONTLINE.

After a teenage gunman killed 10 people at Santa Fe High School in 2018, Texas lawmakers mandated that all school police officers receive training to better prepare them for the possibility of confronting a mass shooter. The law, which required that such training occur only once, didn’t apply to thousands of state and local law enforcement officers who did not work in schools.

Four years later, officers who descended on Uvalde’s Robb Elementary School, a vast majority of whom were not school police, repeatedly acted in ways that ran contrary to what active shooter training teaches, waiting 77 minutes to engage the gunman. An investigation published in December by ProPublica, The Texas Tribune and FRONTLINE revealed that about 30% of the 116 state and local officers who responded in May 2022 did not get active shooter training after graduating from police academies. Of those who had, many received such instruction only once in their careers, which at least eight police training experts say is not enough.

As part of the investigation, the news organizations conducted a nationwide analysis to examine active shooter training requirements and found critical gaps in preparedness between children and law enforcement. While at least 37 states require active shooter-related drills in schools, typically on a yearly basis, no states mandate such training for officers annually.

Instead, decisions about active shooter training are often left to individual school districts and law enforcement departments, creating a patchwork approach in which some proactively provide such instruction and others do not.

The month after the news organizations’ investigation was published, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland’s office released a scathing report that detailed a slew of failures during the Robb Elementary response. While visiting Uvalde, he told reporters that law enforcement agencies should immediately prioritize active shooter training.

The federal report recommended that officers receive eight hours of such instruction annually. Only Texas, however, comes close to meeting the Department of Justice’s suggested standards, according to the newsrooms’ nationwide analysis. Last year, the state mandated that all officers, not just school police, take 16 hours of active shooter training every two years.

About a dozen states also increased training requirements after the Uvalde shooting, but many continue to fall short of what police training experts say is needed.

The gaps in training requirements begin before officers’ first day on the job.

While police academies in nearly every state require some form of active shooter training, five states — California, Georgia, Ohio, Washington and Vermont — do not require it for all recruits. A spokesperson for the police standards agency in Washington did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for the Vermont police standards agency said the police academy curriculum is being reviewed but she could not comment on whether it will expand active shooter training to all officers. Officials with police standards agencies in the other three states said they are considering adding active shooter training to their police academy curriculum.

Once officers graduate from police academies, the lack of training requirements becomes more pronounced.

Only two states — Texas and Michigan — have laws that require active shooter training for all officers once on the job. While Texas requires recurring instruction, training in Michigan is given once after officers graduate from police academies. Some states mandate active shooter training one time in a particular year, leaving out officers who were not employed at the time. Other states require training only for school police, as Texas did before the Uvalde shooting, and only two of them — Illinois and Mississippi — require it more than once.

While a majority of states require frequent active shooter-related drills in schools, 13 don’t require such instruction. They include Colorado and Connecticut, which had two of the worst mass shootings in history: the 1999 Columbine school massacre and the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary. Spokespeople for the school safety departments in both states said districts are conducting drills despite the absence of a state mandate but did not provide records that confirm their assertions.

Active shooter training can be expensive, but state lawmakers should commit to providing the necessary instruction if they want law enforcement to be better prepared for a mass shooting, police training experts said. John Curnutt, assistant director at Texas State University’s Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training Center, said Uvalde is a “horrible example” of when training was needed but hadn’t been practiced enough.

“There’s a higher price that’s paid than the one that we probably could have paid upfront to get ready for it,” Curnutt said.

The table of information below is best viewed on our website.

About this Research

To confirm the most up-to-date active shooter training requirements for law enforcement and schools across the country as of 2023, we contacted education departments and law enforcement standards agencies in every state. We examined both state laws and regulations.

In our analysis of schools, we included all mandated lockdown and active shooter drills, though some education departments said other types of drills can help prepare students and staff as well. In addition to the 37 states that explicitly require active shooter-related drills, we noted several others that have laws mandating safety drills but allow districts to decide which types of drills to conduct. We did not include those in our total count because the options could range from active shooter drills to earthquake drills.

For law enforcement, we collected information about how many hours of active shooter training are required for recruits going through police academies and for officers once they are on the job. We also asked for statewide data showing how many officers had taken such courses, but few states could provide that information. While we included only states’ current training mandates, four states — Alabama, North Carolina, Maine and Pennsylvania — required officers to train in a particular year but then not again, meaning that only those who were employed at that time received the one-time instruction.

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Lexi Churchill and Lomi Kriel.

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For the second year, ProPublica will invite up to 10 news editors from media companies across the country to participate in a yearlong investigative editing training program, led by the newsroom’s award-winning staff.

Applications are now open for the ProPublica Investigative Editor Training Program. Submissions are due Monday, March 11.

As the nation’s premier nonprofit investigative newsroom, ProPublica is dedicated to journalism that changes laws and lives and to advancing the careers of the people who produce it. The goal of this program is to address our industry’s critical need to diversify the ranks of investigative editors. Building a pipeline of talent is a priority that serves us and our industry.

“ProPublica has made real strides since it was established 15 years ago in building an investigative newsroom, but it has struggled, like our competitors across the country, when it comes to finding journalists with the investigative chops to become editors,” said Ginger Thompson, chief of correspondents and an architect of the editor training program. “Rather than sitting around lamenting the problem, we decided to try to do something to fix it.”

When we announced this program last year, we were overwhelmed by the interest. We chose our inaugural cohort from a stacked field of 159 applicants who were eager to develop their skills as investigative editors.

Then we brought them to New York for an intensive weeklong boot camp featuring a curriculum developed by Thompson and Deputy Managing Editor Alexandra Zayas that breaks down how ProPublica crafts its investigations for maximum impact.

“When reading ProPublica stories, I often wondered how the reporter and editor even thought to do them,” said Brendan Klinkenberg, a member of the inaugural cohort and, now, senior editor at The New York Times. “And in our first course, I started to see in really clear terms how ProPublica thinks about investigations. It was a real curtain-peeled-back moment.”

In addition to the sessions, which focus on every aspect of editing from story selection and memos to managing the reporting and digging into the first draft, participants also get to learn from one another.

“Everyone was more open than I expected them to be,” said Lillian M. Ortiz, a member of the inaugural cohort and managing editor at Shelterforce. “I took a lot away from the training session that I’ve brought back to my newsroom. It was also eye-opening to hear about the similar challenges other editors are facing or have faced — especially in newsrooms that are much larger than mine.”

Tracy Jan, deputy health and science health editor at The Washington Post, said, “I left with not only inspiration but also concrete, practical steps I can take as an editor to help our team achieve ambitious, rewarding work.”

This year’s program will begin in June 2024 with a weeklong boot camp in New York that will include courses and panel discussions on how to conceive of and produce investigative projects that expose harm and have impact. The editors will also get training in how to manage reporters who are working with data, documents and sensitive sources, including whistleblowers, agency insiders and people who have suffered trauma. The program continues with a yearlong mentorship pairing and virtual continuing education sessions.

This program is funded through the generous support of the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation, which supports organizations in journalism, film and the arts whose work is dedicated to social justice and strengthening democracy.

The ProPublica Investigative Editor Training Program is designed to help expand the ranks of editors with investigative experience in more newsrooms across the country, with a focus on people from underrepresented backgrounds.

The program kicks off with a five-day intensive editing boot camp in New York, with courses and panel discussions led by ProPublica’s senior editors, veteran reporters and other newsroom leaders. The boot camp will include hands-on editing exercises and opportunities for participants to workshop projects underway in their own newsrooms.

Afterward, participants will gather virtually every two months for seminars and career development discussions with their cohort and ProPublica journalists. Each of the participants will also be assigned a ProPublica senior editor as a mentor for advice on story and management challenges or on how to most effectively pursue their own professional aspirations.

• How to evaluate story ideas and determine the right scope, length and time for getting the work done.
• How to manage a reporter through a complicated accountability story and communicate feedback in ways that build trust and confidence.
• How to edit investigative drafts, spot holes in reporting logic, organize a narrative and guide the reporter through the fact-checking process.
• How to work collaboratively with research, data and multimedia teams to elevate an investigative project.

The five-day, all-expenses-paid boot camp will be held June 2-6, 2024, in New York, with remote sessions via Zoom throughout the year.

We are planning for the 2024 boot camp to be held in person and will not have a virtual option.

ProPublica will cover participants’ expenses for meals, travel and lodging during the boot camp.

Up to 10 journalists.

ProPublica plans to offer this training in 2025 as well.

The program is open to all, but we especially encourage people from traditionally underrepresented communities to apply, including women, people of color, LGBTQ+ people and people with disabilities. As part of the application, participants will be asked how their inclusion in the program will help to diversify the editing ranks of investigative journalism.

The ideal participants will have:

• A minimum of five years of journalism experience, either as an editor or as a reporter primarily doing work with an investigative or accountability focus.
• A strong grasp of the basics of editing, storytelling, structure and framing.
• Experience managing a team of journalists or a complicated multipronged reporting project.
• An accountability mindset: You don’t have to have been on the investigative team, but we are looking for people with an eye for watchdog reporting and editing.

Our program is open to all, but our goal is to improve the diversity of investigative editors in the United States and we’ll focus participation accordingly.

The application period opens on Jan. 23, 2024, and closes on Monday, March 11, at 11:59 p.m. ET. You can apply via this link.

We’ll be hosting an informational webinar on Monday, Feb. 5, 2024. You can register and submit questions in advance here.

Send an email to Assistant Managing Editor Talia Buford at talent@propublica.org.

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Talia Buford.

This article is co-published with The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan local newsroom that informs and engages with Texans. Sign up for The Brief Weekly to get up to speed on their essential coverage of Texas issues.

UVALDE, Texas — Law enforcement agencies across the country should immediately prioritize active shooter training, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said Thursday as he released a scathing report about the handling of the 2022 massacre in Uvalde, Texas, in which lives could have been saved if training protocols had been followed.

The Justice Department’s long-anticipated report about the shooting found that “cascading failures of leadership, decision-making, tactics, policy and training” led to the bungled response, which Garland said should never have happened. Nineteen children and two teachers were killed on May 24, 2022.

“Had law enforcement agencies followed generally accepted practices in an active shooter situation and gone right after the shooter to stop him, lives would have been saved and people would have survived,” Garland said during a news conference on Thursday.

The report’s findings about the failure to follow protocol and the lack of sufficient training to prepare officers for a mass shooting largely mirrored the flaws revealed in a Texas Tribune, ProPublica and FRONTLINE investigation published last month that found that states require students and teachers to receive far more training to prepare them for a mass shooting than they require for the police. At least 37 states require schools to conduct active-shooter-related drills, nearly all on an annual basis. But Texas is the only state that mandates that all of its police officers complete repeated training, at least 16 hours every two years. That requirement was implemented after the Uvalde shooting.

Garland said the report was produced in an effort to offer lessons that would hopefully better prepare law enforcement across the country to respond to future mass shootings. It offered recommendations that included requiring all agencies in a region to train together and providing officers across the country with at least eight hours of active shooter training annually.

The vast majority of at least 380 officers from about two dozen local, state and federal agencies who responded to the school had never trained together, “contributing to difficulties in coordination and communication,” the report stated.

“Our children deserve better than to grow up in a country where an 18-year-old has easy access to a weapon that belongs on the battlefield, not in a classroom,” Garland said. “And communities across the country, and the law enforcement officers who protect them, deserve better than to be forced to respond to one horrific mass shooting after another. But that is the terrible reality that we face. And so it is the reality that every law enforcement agency in every community across the country must be prepared for.”

Mo Canady, executive director of the National Association of School Resource Officers, said in an interview that he appreciates the emphasis the Department of Justice placed on widespread active-shooter training. Still, Canady said he is frustrated that leaders have not already learned that “25-year-old lesson” after the shootings at Columbine High, Sandy Hook Elementary and Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

Since the 1999 Columbine shooting, law enforcement officers have been trained to prioritize stopping the shooter. The report stated that everything else, including officer safety, should be secondary, adding that efforts to engage the shooter “must be undertaken regardless of the equipment and personnel available.”

“We’ve got to understand what the priorities are and, quite frankly, I see there are not a lot of priorities greater than keeping students safe at school,” Canady said.

Kimberly Mata-Rubio, whose 10-year-old daughter Lexi was killed in the shooting, said she hopes the report’s findings lead to action, that “the failures end today and that local officials do what wasn’t done that day, do right by the victims and survivors of Robb Elementary: terminations, criminal prosecutions and that our state and federal government enacts sensible gun laws.”

Garland directed questions about whether any officers who responded to the shooting would be criminally charged to the local district attorney, saying that was not within the jurisdiction of the federal government. Uvalde District Attorney Christina Mitchell initially planned to present her case to a grand jury in late 2023 but later told the Associated Press that her investigation would continue into this year. Mitchell said in a statement Wednesday that her office “will continue our independent review for any potential criminal charges.”

The district attorney and the Texas Department of Public Safety have fought the release of records related to the shooting, prompting news organizations, including ProPublica and the Tribune, to sue. A Travis County district judge ruled in the newsrooms’ favor last month, but DPS appealed. The agency did not respond to requests for comment about the Justice Department’s report.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who initially praised the response and later said he was misled, released a statement thanking the Justice Department. He said the state has already adopted some of the recommended measures and would review others.

The report, which offers the most comprehensive account to date from authorities about the shooting, echoes many findings from a probe released by a state House committee two months after the shooting.

In presenting the new report’s findings, Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta criticized initial misinformation and conflicting accounts provided by officials, including Abbott and DPS.

The report noted that the “misguided and misleading narratives, leaks, and lack of communication about what happened on May 24 is unprecedented and has had an extensive, negative impact on the mental health and recovery of the family members and other victims, as well as the entire community of Uvalde.”

The previous mayor of Uvalde requested the federal review days after the shooting when it became clear that the response was flawed. The review was led in part by Sheriff John Mina of Orange County, Florida, who was the incident commander during the 2016 Pulse Nightclub massacre in Orlando.

An outside review of that incident found that Florida officers, who waited three hours to take down the shooter, mostly followed best practices, although it stated that the law enforcement agencies in Orlando should update their training and policies.

In multiple after-action reviews, including the Pulse report, authors opted not to criticize significant law enforcement delays during mass shootings, according to an analysis of more than three dozen of these reports by ProPublica, the Tribune and FRONTLINE.

The Uvalde report was far more critical, finding failures in leadership, command and coordination.

It stated that officers wrongly treated the situation as a barricaded suspect incident instead of one in which a shooter was an active threat to children and teachers. Officers should “never” treat an active shooter with access to victims as a barricaded suspect — especially in a school, where there is a “high probability” of potential victims and innocent civilians being present, the report stated.

Officers had multiple indicators that should have made it clear they were facing an active shooter, including 911 calls from children and teachers pleading for help, a dispatcher’s announcement minutes after officers arrived that students were likely in the classroom with the shooter, and an Uvalde school police officer announcing that his wife had called to tell him she had been shot, according to the report.

Gupta condemned the medical response, saying that after police breached the classroom and killed the gunman, dead victims were placed in ambulances while children with bullet wounds were put on school buses. Many of those findings were revealed in a 2022 investigation by the Tribune, ProPublica and The Washington Post that determined medical responders did not know who was in charge and that two students and a teacher who later died still had a pulse when they were rescued from the school.

In its blistering criticism of responding officers, the report said that supervisors from various law enforcement agencies “demonstrated no urgency” in taking control of the incident, which exacerbated communication problems and added to overall confusion.

Uvalde school district Police Chief Pete Arredondo, who was listed as the incident commander in the district’s active-shooter plan, had the “necessary authority, training and tools” to lead the response but did not provide “appropriate leadership, command and control,” the report found. Arredondo could not be reached for comment Thursday through his attorney. He has previously defended his actions and those of others involved in the response.

Beyond that, no leader from any of the other responding agencies “effectively questioned the decisions and lack of urgency” demonstrated by Arredondo and Uvalde Police Department Acting Chief Mariano Pargas, who both arrived at the school within minutes of the first round of gunfire. The report listed Uvalde County Sheriff Ruben Nolasco, Uvalde County Constables Emmanuel Zamora and Johnny Field, and an unidentified Texas Ranger as examples of such leaders.

“Responding officers here in Uvalde, who also lost loved ones and who still bear the emotional scars of that day, deserved the kind of leadership and training that would have prepared them to do the work that was required,” Garland said.

The report also found that key officers, including Pargas, had no active shooter or incident command training despite, in some instances, having decades of law enforcement experience. Nolasco, the sheriff, also had no active shooter training and “minimal” incident command training.

Law enforcement training academies must ensure that active shooter training instructs officers on how to distinguish between active threats and barricaded or hostage situations, the report said. Officers should be prepared to approach the threat using the tools they have with them, which are often standard firearms. They should not wait for specialized equipment or tactical teams if they know that people are injured, the report stated.

The Tribune reported early last year that some officers were afraid to confront the gunman because he had an AR-15 rifle.

“No law enforcement agency or community can assume that what happened here — or in Newtown or in Parkland or in Columbine — can’t happen in their community,” Gupta said. “That is our reality.”

Texas Tribune reporters William Melhado and Pooja Salhotra contributed reporting.

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by .

Live Briefing: Russia's Invasion Of Ukraine

RFE/RL's Live Briefing gives you all of the latest developments on Russia's full-scale invasion, Kyiv's counteroffensive, Western military aid, global reaction, and the plight of civilians. For all of RFE/RL's coverage of the war in Ukraine, click here.

Zelenskiy met with his Lithuanian counterpart Gitanas Nauseda on January 10 to discuss military aid, training, and joint demining efforts during the previously unannounced trip, which will also take him to Estonia and Latvia.

“We have proven that Russia can be stopped, that deterrence is possible,” he said after talks with Nauseda on what is the Ukrainian leader's first foreign trip of 2024.

"Today, Gitanas Nauseda and I focused on frontline developments. Weapons, equipment, personnel training, and Lithuania's leadership in the demining coalition are all sources of strength for us," Zelenskiy later wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

Lithuania has been a staunch ally of Ukraine since the start of Russia's unprovoked full-scale invasion, which will reach the two-year mark in February.

Nauseda said EU and NATO member Lithuania will continue to provide military, political, and economic support to Ukraine, and pointed to the Baltic country's approval last month of a 200-million-euro ($219 million) long-term military aid package for Ukraine.

Russia's invasion has turned Ukraine into one of the most mined countries in the world, generating one of the largest demining challenges since the end of World War II.

"Lithuania is forming a demining coalition to mobilize military support for Ukraine as efficiently and quickly as possible," Nauseda said.

"The Western world must understand that this is not just the struggle of Ukraine, it is the struggle of the whole of Europe and the democratic world for peace and freedom," Nauseda said.

Ukraine has pleaded with its allies to keep supplying it with weapons amid signs of donor fatigue in some countries.

There is continued disagreement between Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. Congress on continuing military aid for Kyiv, while a 50-billion-euro ($55 billion) aid package from the European Union remains blocked due to a Hungarian veto.

But a NATO allies meeting in Brussels on January 10 made it clear that they will continue to provide Ukraine with major military, economic, and humanitarian aid. NATO allies have outlined plans to provide "billions of euros of further capabilities" in 2024 to Ukraine, the alliance said in a statement.

Zelensky warned during the news conference with Nauseda that delays in Western aid to Kyiv would only embolden Moscow.

"He (Russian President Vladimir Putin) is not going to stop. He wants to occupy us completely," Zelenskiy said.

"And sometimes, the insecurity of partners regarding financial and military aid to Ukraine only increases Russia's courage and strength."

Since the start of the year, Ukraine has been subjected to several massive waves of Russian missile and drone strikes that have caused civilian deaths and material damage.

Zelenskiy said on January 10 that Ukraine badly needs advanced air defense systems.

"In recent days, Russia hit Ukraine with a total of 500 devices: we destroyed 70 percent of them," Zelenskiy said. "Air defense systems are the number one item that we lack."

Meanwhile, in Ukraine, an all-out air raid alert was declared on the morning of January 10, with authorities instructing citizens to take shelter due to an elevated danger of Russian missile strikes.

"Missile-strike danger throughout the territory of Ukraine! [Russian] MiG-31Ks taking off from Savasleika airfield [in Russia's Nizhny Novgorod region].

Don't ignore the air raid alert!' the Ukrainian Air Force said in its warning message on Telegram.

With reporting by AFP and Reuters

This content originally appeared on News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

"Japan is determined to support Ukraine so that peace can return to Ukraine," Japanese Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa said during a surprise visit to Kyiv, becoming the first official foreign visitor for 2024.

"I can feel how tense the situation in Ukraine is now," she told a news conference -- held in a shelter due to an air-raid alert in the capital at the time -- alongside her Ukrainian counterpart, Dmytro Kuleba.

"I once again strongly condemn Russia's missile and drone attacks, particularly on New Year's Day," she added, while also saying Japan would provide an additional $37 million to a NATO trust fund to help purchase drone-detection systems.

The Japanese diplomat also visited Bucha, the Kyiv suburb where Russian forces are blamed for a civilian massacre in 2022, stating she was "shocked" by what occurred there.

In a Telegram post, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal thanked "Japan for its comprehensive support, as well as significant humanitarian and financial assistance."

In particular, he cited Tokyo's "decision to allocate $1 billion for humanitarian projects and reconstruction with its readiness to increase this amount to $4.5 billion through the mechanisms of international institutions."

Live Briefing: Russia's Invasion Of Ukraine

RFE/RL's Live Briefing gives you all of the latest developments on Russia's full-scale invasion, Kyiv's counteroffensive, Western military aid, global reaction, and the plight of civilians. For all of RFE/RL's coverage of the war in Ukraine, click here.

Meanwhile, Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billstrom told a Stockholm defense conference that the main goal of the country’s foreign policy efforts in the coming years will be to support Kyiv.

“Sweden’s military, political, and economic support for Ukraine remains the Swedish government’s main foreign policy task in the coming years,” he posted on social media during the event.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, speaking via video link, told the conference that the battlefield in his country was currently stable but that he remained confident Russia could be defeated.

"Even Russia can be brought back within the framework of international law. Its aggression can be defeated," he said.

Ukraine’s much-anticipated counteroffensive last summer largely failed to shift the front line, giving confidence to the Kremlin’s forces, especially as further Western aid is in question.

Ukraine has pleaded with its Western allies to keep supplying it with air defense weapons, along with other weapons necessary to defeat the invasion that began in February 2022.

U.S. President Joe Biden has proposed a national-security spending bill that includes $61 billion in aid for Ukraine, but it has been blocked by Republican lawmakers who insist Biden and his fellow Democrats in Congress address border security.

Zelenskiy also urged fellow European nations to join Ukraine in developing joint weapons-production capabilities so that the continent is able to "preserve itself" in the face of any future crises.

"Two years of this war have proven that Europe needs its own sufficient arsenal for the defense of freedom, its own capabilities to ensure defense," he said.

Overnight, Ukrainian officials said Russia launched 28 drones and three cruise missiles, and 12 people were wounded by a drone attack in the central city of Dnipro.

Though smaller in scale than other recent assaults, the January 7 aerial attack was the latest indication that Russia has no intention of stopping its targeting of Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure, often far from the front lines.

In a post to Telegram, Ukraine’s air force claimed that air defenses destroyed 21 of the 28 drones, which mainly targeted locations in the south and east of Ukraine.

"The enemy is shifting the focus of attack to the frontline territories: the Kherson and Dnipropetrovsk regions were attacked by drones," air force spokesperson Yuriy Ihnat told Ukrainian TV.

Russia made no immediate comment on the attack.

In the southern city of Kherson, meanwhile, Russian shelling from across the Dnieper River left at least two people dead, officials said.

In the past few months, Ukrainian forces have moved across the Dnieper, setting up a small bridgehead in villages on the river's eastern banks, upriver from Kherson. The effort to establish a larger foothold there, however, has faltered, with Russian troops pinning the Ukrainians down, and keeping them from moving heavier equipment over.

Over the past two weeks, Russia has fired nearly 300 missiles and more than 200 drones at targets in Ukraine, as part of an effort to terrorize the civilian population and undermine morale. On December 29, more than 120 Russian missiles were launched at cities across Ukraine, killing at least 44 people, including 30 in Kyiv alone.

Ukraine’s air defenses have improved markedly since the months following Russia’s mass invasion in February 2022. At least five Western-supplied Patriot missile batteries, along with smaller systems like German-made Gepard and the French-manufactured SAMP/T, have also improved Ukraine’s ability to repel Russian drones and missiles.

Last week, U.S. officials said that Russia had begun using North Korean-supplied ballistic missiles as part of its aerial attacks on Ukrainian sites.

Inside Russia, authorities in Belgorod said dozens of residents have been evacuated to areas farther from the Ukrainian border.

“On behalf of regional Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov, we met the first Belgorod residents who decided to move to a safer place. More than 100 people were placed in our temporary accommodation centers,” Andrei Chesnokov, head of the Stary Oskol district, about 115 kilometers from Belgorod, wrote in Telegram post.

With reporting by RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service, Reuters, and AP

This content originally appeared on News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

Kazakh President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev has given a lengthy interview in which he discusses what he sees as the origins of the "Bloody January" protests of 2022 as well as the threat of dual power systems.

Speaking to the state-run Egemen Qazaqstan newspaper, which published the interview on January 3, Toqaev said the protests that began in the southwestern town Zhanaozen on January 2, 2022, following a sharp rise in fuel prices and which quickly spread to other cities, including Almaty, were instigated by an unidentified "rogue group."

Toqaev's shoot-to-kill order to quell the unrest led to the deaths of more than 230 protesters, and the Kazakh president has been criticized for not living up to his promise to the public to answer questions about the incident.

The Kazakh authorities have prosecuted several high-ranking officials on charges that they attempted to seize power during the protests, with some removed from office or sentenced to prison, and others acquitted.

Many were seen to be allies of Toqaev's predecessor, long-serving Kazakh leader Nursultan Nazarbaev.

When asked what caused the unrest, Toqaev initially cited "socio-economic problems accumulated over the years," which had led to stagnation and undermined faith in the government.

However, Toqaev then suggested that "some influential people" did not like the changes to the country's political scene after he was appointed as acting president by Nazarbaev in 2019 and later that year elected as president.

Toqaev said the unknown people perceived the change "as a threat" to the power structure after decades of rule by Nazarbaev, and then "decided to turn back the face of reform and destroy everything in order to return to the old situation that was convenient for them."

"This group of high-ranking officials had a huge influence on the power structures and the criminal world," Toqaev alleged. "That's why they decided to seize power by force."

Toqaev, citing investigations by the Prosecutor-General's Office, said the unidentified group began "preparations" about six months before the nationwide demonstrations in January 2022, when the government made what he called "an ill-conceived, illegal decision to sharply increase the price of liquefied gas."

From there, Toqaev alleged, "extremists, criminal groups, and religious extremists" worked together to stage a coup. When the protests broke out in January 2022, Toqaev claimed that 20,000 "terrorists" had entered the country.

Experts have widely dismissed suggestions of foreign involvement in the mass protests.

Aside from about 10 members of the fundamentalist Islamic group Yakyn Inkar -- which is considered a banned extremist group in Kazakhstan -- who were arrested in connection with the protests, no religious groups have been singled out for alleged involvement in the protests.

The goal of the alleged coup plotters, Toqaev said, was to set up a dual power structure that would compete with the government.

"I openly told Nazarbaev that the political arrogance of his close associates almost destroyed the country," Toqaev said, without expounding on who the associates might be.

Toqaev had not previously mentioned speaking with Nazarbaev about the mass protests.

Toqaev also suggested that Kazakhstan, which has come under criticism for its imprisonment of journalists and civil and political activists, does not have any political prisoners.

When asked about political prisoners, Toqaev said only that "our legislation does not contain a single decree, a single law, a single regulatory document that provides a basis for prosecuting citizens for their political views."

For there to be political persecution, according to Toqaev, there would need to be "censorship, special laws, and punitive bodies" in place.

Toqaev also appeared to subtly criticize Nazarbaev, who became head of Soviet Kazakhstan in 1990 and became Kazakhstan's first president after the country became independent in 1991.

Nazarbaev served as president until he resigned in 2019, although he held the title of "Leader of the Nation" from 2010 to 2020 and also served as chairman of the Security Council from 1991 to 2022. Nazarbaev has since been stripped of those roles and titles.

While discussing Nazarbaev, Toqaev said that "everyone knows his contribution to the formation of an independent state of Kazakhstan. He is a person who deserves a fair historical evaluation."

But the current Kazakh president also said that "there should be no senior or junior president in the country."

"Go away, don't beg!" Toqaev said. "Citizens who will be in charge of the country in the future should learn from this situation and stay away from such things and think only about the interests of the state and the prosperity of society."

This content originally appeared on News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

Cambodia’s minister of defense Tea Seiha said on his Facebook page last Sunday that he paid a visit to the base, currently under construction with help from Beijing, with his father and predecessor Tea Banh.

Tea Banh was awarded the prestigious title Samdech Pichey Sena – which roughly translates as “greatest, victorious commander” – in 2017 and still retains much influence over the military despite having ceded the post to his son.

The duo visited the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) naval ships “docked at the Ream sea port in preparation for training our Cambodian Navy crew,” reads the post, adding that they “inspected the infrastructure construction which is actively going according to the plan” and  that the base’s development “will take the navy's capability to a higher level.”

It is unclear how many PLA ships are in Ream and how long the training would last but in the accompanying photos at least two ships were visible.

Satellite images from the imaging company Planet Labs on Dec. 4 also show two vessels, likely corvettes or frigates, docking at the new pier in the base’s center-west. 

This indicates a further, deeper involvement by the PLA Navy in Cambodia.

Until now, there has been no known instance of foreign warships gaining access to the Ream naval base. Russian Navy’s anti-submarine destroyer Admiral Panteleyev while on a visit to Cambodia on Nov. 27 was docked at the Sihanoukville port some 20 kilometers (12 miles) away.

Cambodia’s strategic thinking

Radio Free Asia has reported on the rapid development of the Ream naval base over the past year.

One of the most striking features is the new deep-draft pier that could accommodate aircraft carriers including the PLA’s third carrier Fujian.

Cambodia has repeatedly denied that China is being given exclusive military access to the base, saying that would be in contradiction to the country’s constitution. If operating from the base, this would be China’s first naval staging facility in Southeast Asia and the second foreign base in the world after Djibouti.

Cambodian scholar Chansambath Bong, deputy director of the think tank Asian Vision Institute (AVI), wrote in a new article that “the debate on the re-development of the Ream Naval Base is dominated by Western media and analysts who view Cambodia predominantly through the lens of U.S.-China competition in Southeast Asia and who lack the background in Cambodia’s history and strategic thinking.”

In the article published by the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative (AMTI) Chansambath Bong argued that “the ongoing re-development of the Ream Naval Base is strategically vital for Cambodia’s maritime governance.”

“In Cambodia’s view, Ream’s re-development is overdue and within its constitution and rights as a sovereign state,” he added. “Cambodia has leveraged its external ties to address its self-defense and maritime security challenges.”

Community of Common Destiny

The visit of the PLA warships takes place as a Chinese top general pays a visit to Cambodia to promote the “ironclad” friendship between the two countries and two militaries, according to  China’s state-run Xinhua News Agency. .

On Monday Gen. He Weidong, vice chairman of China’s Central Military Commission, met with Cambodia’s leaders including Prime Minister Hun Manet and his father Hun Sen, president of the ruling Cambodian People’s Party.

He also held talks with Defense Minister Tea Seiha to exchange “views on bilateral relations, military cooperation, and international issues of common interest.”

“The two militaries have sustained high-level cooperation in the fields including high-level exchange, mechanism building, joint drills and exercises, and personnel training,” he was quoted as saying.

This year marks the 65th anniversary of China-Cambodia diplomatic relations and the Chinese general “expressed confidence” that Beijing and Cambodia will further strengthen the so-called “Cambodia-China Community of Common Destiny.”

“Community of Common Destiny” is a relatively new concept frequently used by Chinese leader Xi Jinping to describe China’s vision of international relations.

Edited by Taejun Kang and Mike Firn.

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

“The new geopolitical axis, consisting of Iran, the Kremlin, Pyongyang and Beijing, brings with it many new challenges, including sanctions targeting lawmakers who oppose authoritarian regimes, digital attacks on their online and mobile networks, and malicious intent on social platforms attack and damage,” said Lord David Alton who was among several British MPs who put forward the training proposal to the Speaker of the House of Lords and the Speaker of the House of Commons.

“It’s a combination of intimidation, silencing and coercion. Add to this the fact that agents from hostile countries such as China have been revealed to be operating within Parliament.”

The proposal, drafted by the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC), mandates that all lawmakers and personnel receive mandatory digital and operational security training on a regular basis, as well as the publication of a list of those who have failed to complete the training. 

IPAC is an international cross-party group of legislators working towards reform on how democratic countries approach China.

It also recommends that relevant departments provide basic network security tools, such as VPNs, password management tools and screen protectors; regularly issue warnings to MPs about new phishing, malicious applications and other network attacks; and establish mechanisms to allow MPs to report information leakage and other situations, and assist in subsequent crisis management.

The proposal came after the director of MI5 and other intelligence chiefs from the Five Eyes Alliance issued a public warning about China’s espionage practices. 

“I don’t think [British] MPs were very security conscious before because the foreign interference activities that have emerged in recent years are actually very new,” Glacier Kwong, head of Hong Kong security policy at IPAC, told RFA Cantonese. “I don’t think they have had much contact with Chinese or Russian interference in the past.”

She believes that as the U.K. general election approaches, foreign spies will become more active in their attempts to collect intelligence and influence policy formulation. And activities such as disinformation wars and flooding the social platforms of parliamentarians with spam messages will also become more prevalent, she said.

“As there are going to be new tactics, there are going to be more foreign interventions, and with the general election coming up, there are going to be more of these interventions, so the relevant departments are going to have to enhance their countermeasures,” Kwong added. 

Translated by RFA staff. Edited by Elaine Chan.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Amelia Loi for RFA Cantonese.

Junta soldiers recently trained about 40 people from eight villages from Thayarwady district in western Bago, according to a person in charge of a local anti-junta People’s Defense Force, or PDF. 

The junta has also been recruiting from some townships in eastern Bago, local residents told Radio Free Asia. 

Junta spokesman Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun told RFA in June 2022 that the military was organizing civilian militia groups and providing systematic training to protect villages in Bago, where intense fighting with anti-junta forces continues.

Nearly 100,000 residents of eastern Bago have been forced to flee their homes since the February 2021 military coup d’etat, according to the United Nations

The majority of the recent trainees are members of either the pro-junta Pyu Saw Htee militia or the Union Solidarity and Development Party, or USDP, which is also aligned with the military, residents said.

After one month of training, the military gives them weapons and assigns them watch duty near a local PDF, according to a Kyauktaga township resident who refused to be named for security reasons.

“The first batch completed the training just last month. I have heard that about 14 or 15 Pyu people left Kyauktaga for training last week,” he said, referring to Pyu Saw Htee members.

Most of the villages in Kyauktaga between the Sittaung River and the old Yangon-Mandalay highway are controlled by the joint forces of a regional PDF – that’s why the junta is organizing some towns into defensive positions, he said.

Training in Taungoo

Junta troops also began doing militia training in a field near the police station in Taungoo city in September, according to a local resident who refused to be named for security reasons.

Most of the trainees were members of the USDP, the resident said.

USDP spokesman Hla Thein said he was unaware of the recent training sessions.

“To be honest, I don’t know about this yet,” he said. “I think the locals are saying what they think and what it seems. But political parties like us are not legally allowed to get involved in the civilian militia.”

The PDF official in Thayarwady district urged the new militia trainees to consider joining anti-junta forces.

“I think it is time for them to come to their senses and join the people in the revolution,” he said. “Those who join the military junta or work with them are the enemies of the people. So I think they should avoid being in such a position.”

RFA telephoned Tin Oo, the junta’s economic minister and Bago region spokesman, regarding the militia recruitment, but he did not respond on Tuesday.

Translated by Myo Min Aung. Edited by Matt Reed.

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

Australia’s support for the Solomon Islands media sector is long-standing and is now providing support for the Solomon Islands Broadcasting Corporation (SIBC) to get ready for the 2023 Pacific Games in November.

ABC International Development (ABCID) has delivered more training to the SIBC earlier this month which focused on the use of mobile journalism (MoJo) kits.

More than half of the SIBC staff received training from Dave McMeekin, a leading content quality advisor from ABC News in Adelaide, on September 12-16.

• READ MORE: Other Pacific Games reports

The ABC recently distributed MoJo kits to all its locations in Australia so the SIBC staff are now using the best equipment available as preferred by journalists in Australia.

MoJo kits consist of an android phone, microphone, tripod, and other components that allow a single person to capture high-quality audio and video.

The content can be recorded on the phone for later use or sent back to a studio for immediate broadcast.

These kits are designed to be portable and operated by one person.

Setting up, maintenance
During the training sessions, conducted in small groups of four or five SIBC staff members, the focus was on setting up and maintaining the MoJo kits.

In addition, the training included techniques for visual storytelling, which makes it easier to capture short stories in the field.

Practical exercises were carried out on the streets of Honiara, including in the Central Market and the Art Gallery.

Last Saturday, SIBC journalists used the MoJo kits to report on the Solomon Airlines Peace Marathon — putting into practice the training and equipment they will use during the Pacific Games.

As part of the Australian project, managed by ABCID, SIBC will receive two MoJo kits.

SIBC also plans to purchase two additional kits, with one of them being stationed in Gizo.

These four kits will be used by SIBC reporters to file stories leading up to and during the Pacific Games.

The Pacific Games in the Solomon Islands runs from November 19 until December 2.

Republished with permission from SBM Online.

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

Keo Sovannrith said he gained admission to the National Institute of Physical Education last November despite standing 162 centimeters (5 foot 4 inches) tall, under the 165 centimeter (5 foot 5 inch) minimum requirement for applicants.

In December, shortly after participating in an entrance ceremony at a Phnom Penh stadium later used to host the 2023 Southeast Asian Games, he was removed from enrollment with no explanation, along with 11 other prospective students.

For the past several weeks, Keo Sovannrith and some friends had gone each Monday to protest in front of the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports, demanding he be readmitted to the teacher training program.

Last Monday, Aug. 21, police surrounded them and started beating them.

Video of the incident was posted on Facebook, which is enormously popular in Cambodia, and went viral.

Keo Sovannrith told RFA Khmer that police officers kicked him in the chest and knocked his friend Leap Prathna unconscious before bundling them into a car and taking them to the Daun Penh Police Station for questioning.

“[At the station] they asked me what I was doing and I explained [my protest], but they said they didn't understand,” he said. “Then they tried to make me sign a contract [to stop protesting] which I refused to do. They said if I do not sign it and if I protest again, they will arrest us.”

He and his friends were eventually released without signing the document, but said he is still in pain from the beating.

On Wednesday, he told RFA that ministry representatives invited him to “discuss his case” over the weekend.

‘Discrimination and partisanship’

Ouk Chhayavi, a member of the Cambodian Independent Teachers Association, said that authorities had violated the rights of Keo Sovannrith and others by attacking and detaining them during a peaceful protest.

He said the former students were right to protest as their removal had cost them time and money, and negatively impacted their mental health.

“This is discrimination and partisanship, with a total lack of transparency on how the decision was made,” he said.

Repeated attempts by RFA to contact the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports Spokesman Ros Sovacha have gone unanswered.

Keo Sovannrith said that the institute’s enrollment requirements are too opaque and randomly applied.

“The requirement for age is 17-25 years old, but some people were admitted who were 30 or 40,” he said. “I was called to apply and participated for a month, but then I was removed, while the people who are 30 or 40 years old are still allowed to train.”

He and others had been holding protests in front of the Ministry of Education each Monday for several weeks, calling for the ministry to clarify the reason for his removal, before they were confronted by police.

Earlier this week, the ministry issued a letter stating that the institute adheres to enrollment requirements that were made public prior to the selection of candidates for the stadium ceremony, without providing further information.

Last year, the Ministry of Education had invited members of the public to apply for 150 spots at the institute for either a two-year physical educator course or a four-year course for physical trainers.

According to the announcement, candidates must be between the ages of 17 and 25, hold a high school diploma or equivalent, not be currently employed by the government, must remain unmarried until the end of the training courses, and be in good health and shape based on a physical examination.

Female candidates must be at least 155 centimeters (5 foot 1 inches) tall and male applicants 165 centimeters, it says, adding that the height and age requirements will be waived for those who are “selected for the SEA Games and win a gold medal.”

Translated by Sok Ry Sum. Edited by Joshua Lipes and Malcolm Foster.

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

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Nick Turse.

On Sunday, July 30, about 20 members of the Taliban provincial police raided the office of Hamisha Bahar Radio and TV in Jalalabad city, in eastern Nangarhar province, after receiving information about a journalism training workshop attended by both male and female journalists from the broadcaster, according to news reports and a journalist familiar with the situation, who spoke to CPJ via messaging app on condition of anonymity, citing fear of reprisal. On Tuesday, armed members of the Taliban provincial police then shuttered the broadcaster’s operations and sealed its office, according to those sources.

“The Taliban must allow the broadcaster Hamisha Bahar Radio and TV to resume operations promptly and ensure its employees, including female journalists, are allowed unfettered access to professional training,” said Beh Lih Yi, CPJ’s Asia program coordinator. “It is appalling that the Taliban cracked down on a media outlet because of women’s participation at a journalism training session. Denying women of their rights has become the hallmark of the Taliban regime.”

Hamisha Bahar Radio and TV has 35 employees, including nine women, according to the journalist who spoke with CPJ. Under the Taliban, women face severe restrictions on education and employment, which the United Nations says have increased in recent months.

CPJ contacted Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid for comment via messaging app but received no response.

In August 2022, CPJ published a special report about the media crisis in Afghanistan showing a rapid deterioration in press freedom characterized by censorship, arrests, assaults, and restrictions on women journalists since the Taliban retook control of the country in 2021.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Arlene Getz/CPJ Editorial Director.

Research on climate crisis as the new target for disinformation peddlers, governance and the media, China’s growing communication influence, and journalism training strategies feature strongly in the latest Pacific Journalism Review.

Byron C. Clark, author of the recent controversial book Fear: New Zealand’s Hostile Underworld of Extremists, and Canterbury University postgraduate researcher Emanuel Stokes, have produced a case study about climate crisis as the new pandemic disinformation arena with the warning that “climate change or public health emergencies can be seized upon by alternative media and conspiracist influencers” to “elicit outrage and protest”.

The authors argue that journalists need a “high degree of journalistic ethics and professionalism to avoid amplifying hateful, dehumanising narratives”.

• READ MORE: Other PJR editions

PJR editor Dr Philip Cass adds an article unpacking the role of Pacific churches, both positive and negative, in public information activities during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Several articles deal with media freedom in the Pacific in the wake of the pandemic, including a four-country examination by some of the region’s leading journalists and facilitated by Dr Amanda Watson of Australian National University and associate professor Shailendra Singh of the University of the South Pacific.

They conclude that the pandemic “has been a stark reminder about the link between media freedom and the financial viability of media of organisations, especially in the Pacific”.

Dr Ann Auman, a specialist in crosscultural and global media ethics from the University of Hawai’i, analyses challenges facing the region through a workshop at the newly established Pacific Media Institute in Majuro, Marshall Islands.

Repeal of draconian Fiji law
The ousting of the Voreqe Bainimarama establishment that had been in power in Fiji in both military and “democratic” forms since the 2006 coup opened the door to greater media freedom and the repeal of the draconian Fiji Media Law. Two articles examine the implications of this change for the region.

An Indonesian researcher, Justito Adiprasetio of Universitas Padjadjaran, dissects the impact of Jakarta’s 2021 “terrorist” branding of the Free West Papua movement on six national online news media groups.

In Aotearoa New Zealand, media analyst Dr Gavin Ellis discusses “denying oxygen” to those who create propaganda for terrorists in the light of his recent research with Dr Denis Muller of Melbourne University and how Australia might benefit from New Zealand media initiatives, while RNZ executive editor Jeremy Rees reflects on a historical media industry view of training, drawing from Commonwealth Press Union reviews of the period 1979-2002.

Across the Tasman, Griffith University communication and journalism programme director Dr Kasun Ubayasiri presents a powerful human rights Photoessay documenting how the Meanjin (Brisbane) local community rallied around to secure the release of 120 medevaced refugee men locked up in an urban motel.

Monash University associate professor Johan Lidberg led a team partnering in International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) studies about “the world according to China”, the global media influence strategies of a superpower.

The Frontline section features founding editor Dr David Robie’s case study about the Pacific Media Centre which was originally published by Japan’s Okinawan Journal of Island Studies.

A strong Obituary section featuring two personalities involved in investigating the 1975 Balibo Five journalist assassination by Indonesian special forces in East Timor and a founder of the Pacific Media Centre plus nine Reviews round off the edition.

Pacific Journalism Review, founded at the University of Papua New Guinea, is now in its 29th year and is New Zealand’s oldest journalism research publication and the highest ranked communication journal in the country.

It is published by the Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN) Incorporated educational nonprofit.

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

Research on climate crisis as the new target for disinformation peddlers, governance and the media, China’s growing communication influence, and journalism training strategies feature strongly in the latest Pacific Journalism Review.

Byron C. Clark, author of the recent controversial book Fear: New Zealand’s Hostile Underworld of Extremists, and Canterbury University postgraduate researcher Emanuel Stokes, have produced a case study about climate crisis as the new pandemic disinformation arena with the warning that “climate change or public health emergencies can be seized upon by alternative media and conspiracist influencers” to “elicit outrage and protest”.

The authors argue that journalists need a “high degree of journalistic ethics and professionalism to avoid amplifying hateful, dehumanising narratives”.

• READ MORE: Other PJR editions

PJR editor Dr Philip Cass adds an article unpacking the role of Pacific churches, both positive and negative, in public information activities during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Several articles deal with media freedom in the Pacific in the wake of the pandemic, including a four-country examination by some of the region’s leading journalists and facilitated by Dr Amanda Watson of Australian National University and associate professor Shailendra Singh of the University of the South Pacific.

They conclude that the pandemic “has been a stark reminder about the link between media freedom and the financial viability of media of organisations, especially in the Pacific”.

Dr Ann Auman, a specialist in crosscultural and global media ethics from the University of Hawai’i, analyses challenges facing the region through a workshop at the newly established Pacific Media Institute in Majuro, Marshall Islands.

Repeal of draconian Fiji law
The ousting of the Voreqe Bainimarama establishment that had been in power in Fiji in both military and “democratic” forms since the 2006 coup opened the door to greater media freedom and the repeal of the draconian Fiji Media Law. Two articles examine the implications of this change for the region.

An Indonesian researcher, Justito Adiprasetio of Universitas Padjadjaran, dissects the impact of Jakarta’s 2021 “terrorist” branding of the Free West Papua movement on six national online news media groups.

In Aotearoa New Zealand, media analyst Dr Gavin Ellis discusses “denying oxygen” to those who create propaganda for terrorists in the light of his recent research with Dr Denis Muller of Melbourne University and how Australia might benefit from New Zealand media initiatives, while RNZ executive editor Jeremy Rees reflects on a historical media industry view of training, drawing from Commonwealth Press Union reviews of the period 1979-2002.

Across the Tasman, Griffith University communication and journalism programme director Dr Kasun Ubayasiri presents a powerful human rights Photoessay documenting how the Meanjin (Brisbane) local community rallied around to secure the release of 120 medevaced refugee men locked up in an urban motel.

Monash University associate professor Johan Lidberg led a team partnering in International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) studies about “the world according to China”, the global media influence strategies of a superpower.

The Frontline section features founding editor Dr David Robie’s case study about the Pacific Media Centre which was originally published by Japan’s Okinawan Journal of Island Studies.

A strong Obituary section featuring two personalities involved in investigating the 1975 Balibo Five journalist assassination by Indonesian special forces in East Timor and a founder of the Pacific Media Centre plus nine Reviews round off the edition.

Pacific Journalism Review, founded at the University of Papua New Guinea, is now in its 29th year and is New Zealand’s oldest journalism research publication and the highest ranked communication journal in the country.

It is published by the Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN) Incorporated educational nonprofit.

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

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A recently declassified intelligence community report on the origin of COVID-19 has taken a benign view of biosafety training that took place at a government lab in Wuhan, China, in November 2019, not long before the pandemic began there.

The safety training for staff at the Wuhan Institute of Virology was an aspect of an interim report by the Republican oversight staff of a Senate committee that last year concluded the pandemic was “more likely than not, the result of a research-related incident.” Last October, ProPublica and Vanity Fair delved into the inner workings of the team that produced that interim report and some outside experts’ views of its findings.

The intelligence report was issued in June in response to a law, passed unanimously, that required the director of national intelligence to declassify information regarding the origins of COVID-19. The report confirmed prior news accounts that the intelligence community is divided about the cause of the pandemic, but it did not provide specifics about how different agencies reached their conclusions. While some believe the virus likely first infected a human through a research-related accident, others say it’s more likely that the contagion naturally spilled over from animal to human. The report stated that “all agencies continue to assess that both a natural and laboratory-associated origin remain plausible.”

Last year’s report by the Republican oversight staff of the Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee pointed to a November 2019 safety training at the WIV, as well as patents and procurements, as evidence of biosafety-related problems at the lab complex around the time the virus emerged in Wuhan. On Nov. 19, 2019, a senior Chinese government safety official arrived at the WIV to discuss a “complex and grave situation currently facing [bio]security work,” the report said. On the same day that the official arrived, the WIV sought to procure a costly air incinerator. The following month, WIV researchers applied for a patent for an improved device to contain hazardous gases inside a biological chamber, like ones used to transport infected animals.

In contrast, the intelligence report said the November 2019 safety training appeared to be run-of-the-mill rather than a response to a biosecurity breach. “We do not know of a specific biosafety incident at the WIV that spurred the pandemic and the WIV’s biosafety training appears routine, rather than an emergency response by China’s leadership,” said the report, which was drafted by the national intelligence officer for weapons of mass destruction and proliferation and coordinated with the intelligence community. The intelligence community agencies agreed on the underlying facts in the report but drew different conclusions from that information, according to an official familiar with the report.

The intelligence report is brief and does not mention the incinerator or device patent. It said that WIV officials in mid-2019 were “evaluating and implementing biosafety improvements, training, and procurements” in the context of Chinese biosecurity legislation.

Some WIV scientists have genetically engineered coronaviruses, the report said, but the intelligence community has no information “indicating that any WIV genetic engineering work has involved SARS-CoV-2, a close progenitor, or a backbone virus that is closely-related enough to have been the source of the pandemic.”

At the same time, the intelligence report did point to biosafety concerns. “Some WIV researchers probably did not use adequate biosafety precautions at least some of the time prior to the pandemic in handling SARS-like coronaviruses, increasing the risk of accidental exposure to viruses,” the report said.

The intelligence report confirmed previous news reports that several WIV researchers became sick in fall 2019, though it stated this was not proof that the scientists were infected through their work. The intelligence community “continues to assess that this information neither supports nor refutes either hypothesis of the pandemic’s origins because the researchers’ symptoms could have been caused by a number of diseases and some of the symptoms were not consistent with COVID-19,” the report stated.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has a four-point rating system for biolabs based on the threats posed by the infectious organisms agents allowed there. Biosafety level 4, or BSL-4, labs are the most restrictive and designed to handle the most dangerous pathogens. According to the intelligence report, as of January 2019, WIV researchers were performing experiments with coronaviruses in BSL-2 labs, which have far fewer safeguards, despite knowing of “these virus’ ability to directly infect humans.”

“Separately, the WIV’s plan to conduct analysis of potential epidemic viruses from pangolin samples in fall 2019, suggests the researchers sought to isolate live viruses,” the intelligence report said.

While not revealing the evidence underlying its assessments, the report laid out the divisions within the intelligence community. The National Intelligence Council and “four other IC agencies” assess that the natural spillover of a virus from an infected animal is the most likely cause of the pandemic, according to the intelligence report. The report did not name the other four intelligence agencies.

Two federal intelligence agencies — the Department of Energy and the FBI — have landed on the other side of the bitter debate over the origins of the pandemic, assessing that a laboratory-associated incident is the most likely cause of the pandemic. The Wall Street Journal reported in February that the Department of Energy, which had previously been undecided about how the pandemic began, had come to support the lab-leak position with “low confidence” in response to new intelligence; the FBI reached its conclusion with “moderate confidence.” The intelligence report doesn’t mention the confidence levels of any agency.

While the Department of Energy and the FBI agree that the pandemic most likely resulted from a lab incident, the agencies reached the same conclusion for “different reasons,” according to the intelligence report. But the report didn’t say what those reasons were.

Although the March law required the director of national intelligence to declassify “any and all information” relating to potential links between the WIV and the origin of COVID-19, an annex to the report remains classified. According to the report, this was necessary “to protect sources and methods.”

Several Republicans were critical of the intelligence report and demanded more details.

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by ProPublica.

Robert Howey has worked at the Hanwha Qcells solar manufacturing plant in Dalton, Georgia since it opened in 2019. But like many of the factory’s other employees, he used to work in a completely different industry: carpet manufacturing. The Qcells plant is located in what Georgians affectionately call ​“the carpet capital of the world.”

For two years, Howey was a creeler, knotting together rolls of yarn, so that as one roll finished getting fed into the weaving machine, the next could seamlessly follow.

Before Howey started at Qcells, ​“I had no idea about solar,” he said. He was hired to be a ​“tabber operator” on the production line, where his role would be to watch over machines that solder silicon wafers together, an early stage in the making of a solar module. But he didn’t understand how his particular task fit into the overall process, which made him uncertain about how to do his job well. ​“I was really nervous about it,” he told Canary Media.

Georgia Quick Start, a state-funded workforce training program, gave him the guidance he needed. In a week of on-ramping, trainers walked him through all the steps of making a solar panel, instruction that gave him the confidence to start his new career. Quick Start, he said, was ​“a lifesaver.”

What is Georgia Quick Start?

Clean energy manufacturing in the U.S. is poised for explosive growth; the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 will infuse more than $47 billion in the buildout of clean energy technologies and spur an estimated 900,000 manufacturing jobs over the next decade. But for that ramp-up to be successful, hundreds of thousands of workers like Howey will need training and reskilling.

Georgia Quick Start, which provides customized job training for companies free of charge, has a track record of tackling that challenge — and could serve as a model for other states preparing their workers for jobs in clean energy manufacturing.

Quick Start was founded in 1967 with the goal of attracting manufacturers from northern Rust Belt states to Georgia in order to diversify the state’s agriculture-based economy, according to Rodger Brown, executive director of Quick Start. The program was designed to prepare a workforce accustomed to seasonally dependent, sunup-to-sundown farm labor to industry’s regimented 8-hour workdays.

Over the following decades, Quick Start steadily grew to serve a broad range of industries. By the 1980s, for example, the program was training workers for automobile manufacturer Ford Motor Company and aircraft companies Lockheed Corporation (now Lockheed Martin), Boeing and Gulfstream Aerospace Corporation. In the 1990s, it scaled up to serve the booming carpeting industry around Dalton, Georgia.

Today, Quick Start continues to train workers for jobs in these industries as well as for ones in the manufacturing of food, pharmaceuticals, medical devices, vinyl flooring — and, increasingly, clean energy technologies such as EVs, solar panels and batteries.

A division of the state’s technical college system, Quick Start has achieved national recognition for its effectiveness. A panel of experts surveyed by Area Development Magazine has named it the top state workforce development program in the country for nine years running.

Since its founding, the program has helped prepare more than 1.8 million Georgians for new jobs, according to Brown. Now, it’s applying much of that accumulated know-how to training workers entering the clean energy manufacturing workforce. Clean energy companies and their suppliers currently make up the majority of Quick Start’s clients, Brown said. And he expects that trend to continue, with companies bringing billions of dollars to the state and growing fast:

• Rivian is investing $5 billion in an EV plant in east Georgia with plans to hire 7,500 workers. 
• Hyundai Motor Group is investing $5.5 billion in an EV and battery plant and has plans to hire 8,100 employees.
• SK Battery America, which since 2019 has invested $2.6 billion in two Georgia manufacturing plants to provide lithium-ion batteries for EVs, including the Ford F-150 Lightning, has so far created 2,600 jobs and aims to add 400 more. 
• Qcells, the top supplier of U.S. solar panels, announced in January that it’s investing $2.5 billion to expand its operations and build its own solar panel supply chain — from ingots to modules — in Dalton and Cartersville, Georgia, creating 2,500 new jobs.

Cleantech companies are setting up shop in Georgia for many reasons — generous tax incentives and the fact that Georgia is a ​“right-to-work” state with legislation that weakens labor unions are certainly among them. But Quick Start is also a big part of the equation.

The program was a major factor for Qcells, said Lisa Nash, the company’s senior director of human resources. Quick Start developed training materials for the South Korean manufacturer’s first U.S. plant in Dalton, the one Howey was hired to work in, which meant ​“we didn’t have to invest the thousands of hours of making classroom and video training that was necessary to get this factory started,” Nash said. That was ​“a game-changer for us.”

Steven Jahng, director of external affairs of South Korea–based SK Battery America, echoed those sentiments in Site Selection​’s 2023 Workforce Guide: ​“The key incentive for SK Battery is the Georgia Quick Start program. They know exactly how to train the average person off the street.”

Retaining new workers

Like most advanced manufacturing facilities, factories that produce clean energy technologies are filled with powerful, highly automated machines and robots. Even a single wrong move, such as tripping a sensor that starts a machine whirring when it should stay off, could be dangerous.

In its weeklong Qcells training course and subsequent follow-up sessions, Quick Start teaches new hires how to stay safe, including requirements from the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration. That’s hugely important, said David Uribe, who started working as a Qcells equipment technician in February.

New employees could be straight out of high school or coming from service roles at McDonald’s or Walmart, said Uribe, who has been a mechanic for decades. ​“It’s a big difference working with machines that could potentially kill you.”

By acclimating people to this unfamiliar environment, Quick Start training actually helps retain new workers, said Howey, the former tabber operator who is now a training coordinator at Qcells. He estimates that he was seeing about four out of 10 newly hired Qcells employees who didn’t receive Quick Start guidance dropping out ​“because they were overwhelmed.”

But with Quick Start, only one or two out of 10 new hires quit — ​“if that,” Howey said.

A recipe for success

One reason Quick Start is so effective is because it tailors trainings to the needs of each company it works with, said Brown, the program’s executive director. To begin, it closely studies every detail of a company’s manufacturing process.

For example, to develop training for SK Battery, a team of instructors flew to South Korea in 2019 to observe the company’s facilities firsthand. ​“We took photographs and video, and took lots of notes and asked lots of questions,” Brown said. ​“It’s very rare to be allowed that kind of access.”

Based on that deep dive, Quick Start, which has 75 full-time staff members, designed a training program for the company’s U.S. operations within months. As soon as SK Battery had recruited employees, Quick Start was able to begin training them, covering core modules on safety and SK Battery’s process, as well as providing job-specific training. 

Quick Start’s trainees are able to gain direct, hands-on experience before they even step onto the factory floor. In 2019, the program opened a 50,000-square-foot facility in Savannah so that trainees can practice using advanced-manufacturing equipment, including automated robotics, sensors and programmable logic controllers, which are computer systems for industrial processes. 

As it trains clean-energy workers on its equipment, Quick Start has been able to draw from its decades of experience with other industries, Brown said.

For example, part of the lithium-ion battery production process involves slurries of graphite, cobalt, nickel and other metals, which are mixed in enormous vessels that are similar to those used in food manufacturing to mix milk, salt and sugar. Workers monitor and troubleshoot the vats in the same way, he said.

It’s not all technical training, though, Brown noted. Quick Start also develops trainees’ soft skills, offering programs in leadership training, data-driven process improvement methods (such as Six Sigma), and with Korean companies such as SK Battery and EV manufacturers Hyundai and Kia, ​“cross-cultural training, like different work and communication styles.”

Another factor in Quick Start’s success, according to Brown, is that it’s wholly state-funded. 

Federal dollars ​“come with a lot of reporting and strings and complexity,” he noted. Quick Start, by contrast, can adapt quickly to train workers however needed, he said.

“If you’re creating 1,000 jobs, we will train them until you have 1,000 people qualified and working in your plant — whether that means we only train a couple of hours and they go into the facility, or we do 60 hours,” Brown said. ​“As long as [a company is] creating net new jobs, we will be their training partner.”

Federal funding does have its advantages, of course: It sends ​“a lot of dollars to programs that are absolutely necessary,” said Cynthia Finley, vice president of workforce strategy and innovation at the Interstate Renewable Energy Council, which has developed trainings for a multitude of clean-energy jobs, including in solar and energy efficiency.

Federal funding opportunities can funnel much-needed money to underserved communities or groups, such as women or veterans. And because it requires quantitative benchmarks of success, Finley said, ​“You know you’re moving the needle.”

What’s clear is that Quick Start is able to grow rapidly to meet the demands of the clean energy boom. The program, which currently operates five training centers, is expanding the one for advanced manufacturing and is also designing three new facilities for clean energy manufacturers and suppliers.

One of those training centers will be a $70 million facility for Hyundai in Bryan County, where the EV manufacturer has committed to the single-largest economic development project in Georgia’s history. Hyundai broke ground on its new plant last October and is slated to open in January 2025, starting with a few hundred workers and, over the next several years, growing to more than 8,000.

Once its new center is ready, Quick Start plans to train about 300 to 400 new Hyundai hires a week, Brown said. When companies need to go fast, ​“we go fast.”

This story is part of Canary’s special series “Made in the USA: Ramping up clean energy manufacturing.” Read more.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline This Georgia program is training a huge cleantech manufacturing workforce on Jul 3, 2023.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Alison F. Takemura, Canary Media.

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Daniel Boguslaw.

At a training conducted by the U.N.’s Office on Drugs and Crime, Vientiane municipal workers learned how to recognize money laundering, audit the finances of state enterprises and inspect government concession projects.

Berlin-based Transparency International’s 2022 Corruption Perceptions Index ranked Laos 126 of 180 countries it evaluated in fighting corruption.

“Cooperation included officials from the state inspector general’s office and others from related outside sectors,” an official from the Office of Inspector General told Radio Free Asia. “This time we did the training in Vientiane. Later, we’ll have one for government officials in Savannakhet province.”

The government has promised in the past to address corrupt practices that have put off potential foreign investors from pumping money into much-needed infrastructure and development.

However, despite the enactment of an anti-corruption law that criminalizes the abuse of power, public sector fraud, embezzlement and bribery, Laos’ judiciary is weak and inefficient, and officials are rarely prosecuted.

One official who said he worked as an inspector in Vientiane for a decade told RFA last year that he and his colleagues review the finances of government offices and departments but not those of individual officials who are powerful members of the party and the government.

“Nobody would dare inspect them,” he said.

‘They do it in a group’

It could be very difficult to solve Laos’ corruption problem, even with stricter laws, a Laotian who asked to remain anonymous said to RFA this week. So far, no government officials have been sent to prison for corruption, he said.

“Laws are strict but enforcement is weak, and that’s not strong enough to solve the problem,” he said.

Over the last two or three years, some officials have been fired or moved to other positions – but that’s been the extent of the government crackdown, a former state employee told RFA. 

“There are many state employees who are corrupt,” he said. “Police, tax collectors, even employees of mineral companies. They do it in a group, with the involvement of high-ranking officials.”

A report last year from the country’s State Inspection Authority said the Lao government had lost US$767 million to corruption since 2016, with government development and investment projects – such as road and bridge construction – the leading source of the widespread graft.

At the time, nearly 3,700 members of the communist Lao People’s Revolutionary Party had been disciplined, with 2,019 expelled and 154 people charged, the report said.

Another report from the Asian Development Bank found that almost 70 percent of businesses that applied for registrations, licenses and permits in Laos paid bribes to government officials to get approval.

Translated by Sidney Khotpanya. Edited by Matt Reed.

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

The University of the South Pacific’s regional journalism programme has penned three milestone Memorandums of Understanding that will usher in greater collaboration with media industry partners over student upskilling and training, joint workshops and seminars, and publication of the award-winning training newspaper Wansolwara.

Papua New Guinea’s National Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) and the Pacific Islands News Association (PINA) have formalised three-year MOU partnerships with the region’s longest running journalism programme at Laucala campus.

They were signed by NBC managing director Kora Nou and PINA managing editor Makereta Komai respectively.

• READ MORE: Other USP journalism education reports

The signing ceremony was witnessed by PNG’s Minister for Communication and Information Technology Timothy Masiu — a former journalist — and USP’s deputy vice-chancellor (regional campuses and global engagement) Dr Giulio Paunga.

“It is indeed history because we have never had such an MOU between this prestigious university and our National Broadcasting Corporation, which is a flagship of PNG,” said  Masiu.

“The intention of this MOU is basically threefold — student training, staff exchanges and joint workshops, seminars, research activities. We are really looking forward to this; very interesting times ahead for NBC and your university.”

To further strengthen the MOU, Masiu announced a F$10,000 funding support for the journalism programme through the PINA office. NBC’s managing director is also current chair of PINA.

Masiu as a journalist
Masiu also shared his excitement and delight at being part of the signing ceremony and reminisced about his time as a broadcaster for NBC, and later a journalist for The National daily newspaper in Port Moresby.

Dr Paunga said the university was also currently working closely with the PNG government and the progress of this collaboration demonstrated great things to come between the two countries, its people and future students.

USP Journalism programme coordinator Associate Professor Shailendra Singh said the programme was doing some good work in journalism in Fiji and the region. He commended Komai and Nou for their cooperation and vision over the MOU.

“The MOU we have signed is going to take the training and development of our journalists to another level,” he said.

“We have been training journalists for a long time. Under this MOU, we will be able to decide our own agenda when it comes to training and research, instead of everything being designed from someplace else and us merely implementing it.

“We know PNG will be sending students to study at USP. Talks are underway and if that happens then there will be greater collaboration and interaction between students coming from PNG.”

Dr Singh said USP had 12-member countries and PNG was set to become the 13th member if talks went according to plan.

Fiji Times partnership

Earlier, on May 3 — World Press Freedom Day — USP Journalism signed the first MOU with Fiji Times Limited. The partnership includes, among other supportive initiatives, the publication of Wansolwara, twice a year.

The first Wansolwara edition for 2023 was published in The Sunday Times last week and featured 32 pages of news, sports and special reports written and produced by USP journalism students across Fiji and the region.

Dr Singh said the partnership with Fiji Times Ltd was also a boost for the programme.

“This is a historic moment, not just for us but also for our students, as this will give them the exposure they need to contribute and improve the standard of journalism in our region,” he said.

“Fiji Times Ltd has been supportive of the USP Journalism Programme for many years, and this partnership will strengthen their commitment to promote a free and fair environment for journalists.”

Fiji Times Pte Ltd general manager Christine Lyons said the company would cover the printing of Wansolwara twice in the academic year. This amounted to one publication per semester.

“It will be circulated as an insert in The Fiji Times as part of its corporate social responsibility,” she said.

Fiji Times Ltd was represented by editor-in-chief Fred Wesley at the May MOU signing.

Viliame Tawanakoro is a final-year student journalist at USP’s Laucala Campus. He is also the 2023 student editor for Wansolwara, USP Journalism’s student training newspaper and online publication.

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

As the U.S. remains on track for a record number of mass killings in 2023, an FBI training video instructing people on how to survive a shooting has gone viral this week.

The video, which the FBI first shared on YouTube in September 2020, is making the rounds on Twitter and TikTok, with posters expressing a mix of incredulity and outrage at the state of U.S. gun control.

"TW: Violence. If you ever need to travel to Purgeland, United [States] of Idiocracy, follow [these] instructions," Rafael Contreras Rodríguez tweeted from Auckland, New Zealand Monday.

The video's message to anyone caught up in a mass shooting is there are three options: "Run, hide, or fight."

"In this FBI training video, customers at a bar are caught in an active shooter event," the FBI's description reads. "By employing the run, hide, and fight tactics, as well as knowing the basics of rendering first aid to others, they are prepared, empowered, and able to survive the attack."

The video includes tips such as, "Running makes you harder to hit... and improves your chances of survival," and, "If we control the weapon, we control the shooter."

"This has to be one of the most disturbing videos I have seen in recent years."

Ultimately, the FBI advises people to run for an exit if possible, hide if there is no safe escape route, and fight only as a last resort.

For those who do choose to fight, the FBI reminds viewers: "You're fighting for your life. Don't fight fair!"

While the video is more than two years old, it is sparking a new wave of reactions days after the second deadliest mass shooting in the U.S. this year. On Saturday, Mauricio Garcia opened fire with an AR-15-style gun on the Allen Premium Outlets mall in Allen, Texas, killing eight, as CNN reported.

"This has to be one of the most disturbing videos I have seen in recent years," Ephraim Gopin tweeted Tuesday. "I am without words. The craziest thing? It was made by THE FBI! The fact that they felt the need to get this out to the public is insane. Sad."

User Kat Abu shared the video under the two words, "broken country."

"I am from Australia—can someone please explain if this is parody or not?" Stu Mac responded.

"It's not," Abu tweeted back.

The video's recirculation comes as the U.S. is on track to reach a record number of mass killings in 2023. A mass killing is defined as an incident in which four or more people—excluding the perpetrator—are killed. According to Gun Violence Archive figures, the U.S. has seen 21 mass killings so far this year, a rate of more than one per week. If this rate continues,The Guardian reported, the country could see 60 by the end of the year.

Another database of mass killings from USA TODAY, Northeastern University, and The Associated Pressputs the number of mass killings for 2023 at 22, the most so early in the year since the database was launched in 2006.

A mass killing does not have to be carried out by guns, but this year, firearms were "almost exclusively" to blame, the APsaid.

This year has also seen a high number of public mass shootings, such as the bloodbath at the Texas mall. In a typical year, there will be six such massacres, but the Allen, Texas, shooting marked the sixth so far for 2023, Northeastern University professor James Alan Fox toldUSA TODAY.

"Those are the kinds of events that make headlines, scare people, and make them look around when they go into a supermarket or retail store," Fox said.

There have also been 208 mass shootings—an incident in which four or more people excluding the perpetrator are killed or injured by firearms—this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive. This is the highest for this point in the year since 2016.

California and Texas have witnessed the largest number of these shootings at 17 each. In Texas, which has the most registered guns of any state in the nation, Democratic politicians expressed frustration at gun laws that have only gotten laxer in the state.

"I'm just so tired and hurt and devastated by the continuing mass shootings in this state and in this nation… Eight innocent people are dead—dead by gunfire. Guns again," Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) said in a video shared on Twitter in response to Saturday's shooting. "Of course, I offer my prayers and concerns for those families who are struggling with the loss of their loved ones. But I also ask the question: 'When are we going to confront the real cause?' And that is a proliferation of guns, guns, guns."

Fox told USA TODAY that the number of mass killings in the U.S. began to rise in 2019, and he attributed their recent increase to an uptick in gun sales as well as the mental and financial strain of the coronavirus pandemic and political polarization. And he thinks these numbers are unlikely to decrease without a significant change.

"Will things go back to a more average level we saw a decade ago? Maybe," Fox said. "But given the condition of America and the weaponry that's available, I wouldn't bet on it."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Olivia Rosane.

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

We are excited to announce the names of the 11 distinguished journalists chosen to launch ProPublica’s new investigative editor training program.

The ProPublica Investigative Editor Training Program was established to expand the ranks of editors with investigative experience in newsrooms across the country, with a focus on journalists from underrepresented backgrounds.

This program is funded by the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation, which supports journalism, film and arts organizations whose work is dedicated to social justice and strengthening democracy.

Participants will undergo a five-day intensive editing boot camp in New York, with courses and panel discussions led by ProPublica’s senior editors. After the boot camp, participants will gather virtually every two months for continuing development seminars and be assigned a ProPublica senior editor as a mentor for advice on their work and careers.

We’re encouraged by the response we’ve received for this effort. All told, 159 people applied for 10 advertised slots for this year’s training. The applicants represented a broad array of news organizations across the country. And due to their impressive credentials, we added one more slot than we’d initially planned.

“This is an exciting moment for both ProPublica and the field of investigative journalism,’’ said Stephen Engelberg, editor-in-chief of ProPublica. “The breadth of our applicant pool demonstrates the deep interest in publications at every level in developing the skills that will give readers the in-depth reporting our democracy so desperately needs.’’

We’re thrilled to introduce the inaugural cohort of the ProPublica Investigative Editor Training Program:

Maha Ahmed is managing editor at Type Investigations, where she runs its fact-checking operation, develops newsroom processes and edits climate, labor,and other stories. Previously, she was Type's head of research. Ahmed also spent several years as a fact-checker, researcher, reporter or editor at a range of other newsrooms, including The Intercept, Mother Jones, In These Times, South Side Weekly and the Invisible Institute. She's spoken at IRE and NICAR, in journalism school classes and to other newsrooms about fact-checking and research methods. She is based in Brooklyn and was born in Houston.

Melissa Barragán Taboada is the editor of The Boston Globe’s Great Divide education team. She previously worked as a reporter and editor at the Austin American-Statesman, where she spearheaded the paper’s education coverage. Taboada also taught a "Reporting on Education" course at the School of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin, her alma mater.

Meghann D. Garcia is managing editor of the Uvalde Leader-News, which has won South Texas Press Association Sweepstakes honors six times over the last eight years. She joined the newspaper staff in 2008 as a production assistant and worked as a staff writer and assistant editor before taking on her present role in 2013. Garcia has won multiple regional and state press association awards for news and feature writing and page design. A lifelong resident of Uvalde County, she earned a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Texas at Austin in 2008 and an Associate of Arts from Southwest Texas Junior College in Uvalde in 2005.

Maia Hibbett is the managing editor at New York Focus, a statewide nonprofit investigative newsroom. She has written for The Nation and The Baffler, as well as for The Intercept, where she was previously an editor. She is interested in the way politics affect people across the world, particularly in the realm of contemporary imperialism and the military-industrial complex. Hibbett is from central Massachusetts and lives in Brooklyn.

Lori Higgins is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Detroit. She is an award-winning longtime education reporter, having worked for nearly two decades as a K-12 reporter for the Detroit Free Press. Prior to that, she covered education for the Green Bay Press Gazette and the Manhattan (Kansas) Mercury. At Chalkbeat, she supervises coverage of the Detroit Public Schools Community District, one of the most troubled in the nation, as well as state education policy issues and statewide trends in K-12 schools.

Tracy Jan is a deputy health and science editor at The Washington Post, where she collaborates with reporters who cover the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, medical misinformation, abortion, long COVID and other health accountability stories. She joined The Post in December 2016 to launch a beat on the intersection of race and the economy, producing work that delved deeply into reparations for slavery, systemic racism in America and the economic and health impact of the coronavirus pandemic on Black, Asian, Latino and immigrant communities. She was previously a reporter at The Boston Globe. She was a 2015 Knight-Wallace Fellow at the University of Michigan, as well as a Fulbright Fellow in Taiwan. Her work has been recognized by the George Polk Awards, the National Association of Black Journalists, the National Headliner Awards, the Online News Association and the Asian American Journalists Association.

Brendan Klinkenberg is an executive editor at Gimlet Media. He's edited stories about Harlem rappers, Russian hackers, art thieves, domestic terror cells and tech utopias gone awry. Prior to Gimlet, Brendan was an editor at Rolling Stone and Complex, and a reporter for BuzzFeed News (RIP) and Wired. He lives in Brooklyn.

Hayat Norimine is the accountability editor for the Idaho Statesman in Boise and oversees reporters who cover politics, education, the outdoors, criminal justice and investigations. She's the local editor on a 2023 ProPublica Local Reporting Network project examining Idaho's dilapidated school facilities. Before she became an editor, she covered state politics in Idaho and city halls in Dallas, Seattle and Southwest Washington. Hayat immigrated to the U.S. with her family at age 4 and grew up in Eastern Washington. She holds an English degree from the University of Washington and a master's in journalism from Northwestern University.

Lillian M. Ortiz is the managing editor at Shelterforce, a national nonprofit publication that aims to inform and hold accountable those working toward more just and equitable communities. Before joining Shelterforce, Lillian was editor of the Verona-Cedar Grove Times, an award-winning publication in New Jersey. Throughout her career, Lillian has earned dozens of honors for her reporting, layout and design and photography.

Dalila-Johari Paul is the national editor at Capital B, where she manages a growing team of reporters from across the country, covering politics, criminal justice, health and other beats. She previously worked at CNN Digital, where she led the race and equality team and, before that, was the overnight supervisor overseeing late night and early morning news coverage. She’s also held multiple editorial positions at the Guardian US, the Star-Ledger in New Jersey and the Hartford Courant in Connecticut.

Elaine Teng is a senior editor in ESPN's investigative and enterprise unit, where she works on breaking news, longform features and cross-platform projects. She was previously a writer and editor at ESPN The Magazine, where she covered soccer, Olympic sports, esports, tennis and action sports, and the managing editor of The New Republic. Her work has been recognized by the National Magazine Awards and anthologized in The Best American Sports Writing. A California native, she now fully embraces the New England seasons. In her free time, she sings in a choir, plays intense games of Settlers of Catan and tries to make the perfect mapo tofu.

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Talia Buford.

Tomoya Obokata, a Japanese who is the U.N.’s special rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery, and other U.N. experts that the programs are being used to undermine Tibetan religious, linguistic and cultural identity, and to monitor and politically indoctrinate Tibetans. 

In a release from the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights on April 27, Obokata and the others warned that the programs could lead to forced labor.

Hundreds of thousands of Tibetans have reportedly been “transferred” from their traditional rural lives to low-skilled and low-paid employment since 2015, according to the U.N. expert.

Obokata said he was waiting for a translation of a response from the Chinese government, which previously has said that participation in vocational training programs is voluntary. 

“But in practice, and according to the information that we receive from various sources, often times they [Tibetans] do not have any choice, so they have no choice but to accept it,” Obokata, a professor of international human rights law, told Radio Free Asia on April 28.

“I’m not saying that all instances are involuntary because there is no clear evidence to that regard. … But in a similar way as with the Xinjiang situation, certain indicators of forced labor may be present, so that’s why we are asking the government to provide a clarification and answer at this stage.”

After Chinese authorities began arbitrarily detaining Uyghurs in “re-education” camps in Xinjiang in 2017, some of the Uyghurs were subjected to forced labor and other rights abuses. The Chinese said the camps were vocational training centers meant to prevent religious extremism and terrorism in the restive region.

In a 20-page report issued in August 2022, Obokata said that Uyghur, Kazakh and other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang were being used as forced labor in sectors such as agriculture and manufacturing under two state-mandated systems where minorities are detained and subjected to work placements or where surplus rural laborers.

Moving rural workers

Similar measures exist in neighboring Tibet, where an extensive labor transfer program has shifted Tibetan farmers, herders and other rural workers into low-skilled and low-paid jobs, according to the report.

The Chinese government restricts Tibetans’ political activities and peaceful expression of cultural and religious identity as Buddhists. 

Tibetans frequently complain of discrimination and human rights abuses by Chinese authorities and policies they say are aimed at wiping out their national and cultural identity.

“Tibetans are being drawn away from sustainable livelihoods in which they have traditionally had a comparative advantage, such as wool and dairy production, and into low-paid, low-skilled work in manufacturing and construction,” the U.N. experts said in the news release.

They went on to say that Tibetans are transferred directly from training centers to new workplaces, though it’s unclear if they have consented to the jobs. But a lack of oversight makes it impossible to determine whether working conditions constitute forced labor, the experts said.

Obokata and the others raised concern that vocational training programs were “designed to promote a non-plural, mono-racial and mono-ethnic nation, in violation of the prohibition of racial discrimination under international human rights law.”  

They called on China to provide details about measures in place for Tibetans to opt out of vocational training and labor transfer programs, to monitor the working conditions of Tibetans in their new places of employment, and to ensure respect for Tibetan religious, linguistic and cultural identity.

The U.N. experts also submitted a letter to the Chinese government expressing concerns about the mostly Muslim Uyghur minority in Xinjiang. 

“We are seeing similar patterns in terms of the treatment, so that’s why we are raising our concern at this time for Tibetan people,” Obokata said. 

Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Tashi Wangchuk for RFA Tibetan.

In what was seen around the world as a "menacing" and "sinister" show of Russia's nuclear capabilities, thousands of Russian troops on Wednesday began exercises in Siberia with the nation's Yars intercontinental ballistic missile system.

"In total, more than 3,000 military personnel and about 300 pieces of equipment are involved in the exercises," Russia's Ministry of Defense said just over 13 months into Russian President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine.

The exercises come amid reporting that Putin is prepared for a war without "a foreseeable end," despite the human and economic toll, and after the Russian leader on Sunday revealed plans to station "tactical" nuclear weapons in Belarus, a move he compared to the United States' placing of such arms in allied European countries.

On Monday, the United States and allies on the United Nations Security Council rejected a Russia-led effort to launch a probe into the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines, and a U.S. State Department official said the Biden administration supports creating "an internationalized national court" to help Ukrainian prosecutors bring cases against Russian leaders related to the war.

In an annual report Tuesday, Amnesty International noted that "the West's robust response to Russia's aggression against Ukraine contrasts sharply with a deplorable lack of meaningful action on grave violations by some of their allies including Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt."

The Biden administration also informed Moscow on Monday that in response to Putin announcing last month that Russia "is suspending its participation" in New START, its last remaining nuclear arms treaty with the United States, Washington has cut off biannual updates about the U.S. nuclear stockpile but will keep sharing daily positioning information.

"There is no reason to believe that Russia will be swayed by this," Hans Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists toldThe Wall Street Journal Tuesday. "We are watching the gradual destruction of the last remaining nuclear arms limitation treaty."

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Wednesday that "all notifications, all kinds of notifications, all activities under the treaty, will be suspended and will not be conducted regardless of what position the U.S. may take."

Ryabkov also said that Putin's Belarus decision is the result of Ukraine's Western allies failing to heed "serious signals" from Moscow because of the "fundamental irresponsibility of Western elites before their people and international security."

"Now they will have to deal with changing realities," the minister added. "We hope that NATO officials will adequately assess the seriousness of the situation."

After months of delay, Hungary on Monday backed a bid by Finland—which borders Russia—to join NATO while continuing to stall on Sweden over "an ample amount of grievances that need to be addressed," according to a Hungarian government spokesperson.

In response to the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, both Scandinavian countries applied to join NATO last May, but their efforts have been blocked by Hungary and Turkey—which is expected to approve Finland's bid on Thursday.

Russia's ambassador to Sweden, Viktor Tatarintsev, said Tuesday that "if anyone still believes that this [NATO membership] in any way will somehow improve Europe's security, you can be sure that the new members of the hostile bloc will become a legitimate target for Russian retaliatory measures, including military ones."

Rather than becoming safer, Sweden would be "taking a step towards the abyss," Tatarintsev warned, noting that "after the accession of Finland and Sweden, the total length of the border between Russia and NATO will almost double."

Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billström responded Wednesday that "the Ministry for Foreign Affairs will summon the Russian ambassador to make a clear statement against this blatant attempt at influence."

"Sweden's security policy is determined by Sweden—no one else," Billström said.

Adding to regional security concerns on Wednesday, International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said during a trip to the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine that "it is obvious that military activity is increasing in this whole region, so every possible measure and precautions should be taken so that the plant is not attacked."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jessica Corbett.

In Atlanta, a judge has denied bond for 8 of the people indiscriminately arrested at a music festival against the proposed “Cop City” police training facility in the Weelaunee Forest. Jailed since March 5, they are charged with domestic terrorism based on scant evidence like muddy clothes or simply being in the area at the time of the festival. We’re joined by Micah Herskind, an Atlanta community organizer, who calls the charges “political prosecutions” and a blatant “attempt to repress this social movement that is trying to stop Cop City.”

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

China is covering more than half the cost of the quadrennial games that will be staged in the Solomon Islands capital Honiara. Several thousand athletes from two dozen Pacific island countries and territories are expected to compete in the events.

The training arrangements were formalized Monday after a meeting between Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare, Chinese Ambassador Li Ming and officials from the China International Development Cooperation agency. The two countries also signed a memorandum of understanding to deepen China’s broader development assistance. 

Reporters were allowed to take photos after the signing but not to ask questions. 

“During the brief courtesy visit, Solomon Islands and People’s Republic of China engaged in cordial, in-depth and rewarding communication that enhances SI-PRC cooperation,” Sogavare’s office said in a statement. 

When the 80 Solomon Islands athletes return from China they will be accompanied by nine Chinese coaches who will continue their training up until the games, according to information provided to BenarNews by Sogavare’s office. BenarNews is an online news service affiliated with Radio Free Asia.

The games are an example of Chinese largesse in the Pacific region, where Beijing and the United States are competing for influence. A U.S. delegation led by Kurt Campbell, the White House’s Indo-Pacific coordinator, is visiting Pacific island countries this week including the Solomon Islands on Tuesday.

The Solomon Islands is aiming to win 40 gold medals at the 2023 games, which would be a record haul for the country. It brought home four golds from the 2019 Pacific Games and frequently none at earlier games, which have been held every four years since the early 1960s.

At a one-year-to-go event in November last year, National Hosting Authority Chairman Jimmie Rogers bemoaned how neighboring countries with populations of little more than 10,000 people had outcompeted the Solomon Islands – the third most populous Pacific island nation – in past games.

China is contributing half of the approximate 1.85 billion Solomon Island dollars (U.S. $226 million) cost of the Pacific Games – which includes construction of the main stadium and other facilities – and the Solomon Islands government nearly one third. Australia, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and Japan also have made contributions.

Sogavare’s government switched its diplomatic recognition to Beijing from Taiwan in 2019. And in April last year, it signed a security pact with China that alarmed the United States and its allies. 

Some in the Solomon Islands, including opposition leader Matthew Wale, have criticized the focus on the games when the country is struggling with a lack of basic healthcare and infrastructure. 

Others say that in a country still predominantly rural, the games won’t have any impact outside Honiara and will reinforce the gap in development with other islands.

Tonga pulled out of hosting the 2019 Pacific Games after the government decided it was unaffordable for the island country of some 100,000 people.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Gina Maka’a for BenarNews.

China is covering more than half the cost of the quadrennial games that will be staged in the Solomon Islands capital Honiara. Several thousand athletes from two dozen Pacific island countries and territories are expected to compete in the events.

The training arrangements were formalized Monday after a meeting between Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare, Chinese Ambassador Li Ming and officials from the China International Development Cooperation agency. The two countries also signed a memorandum of understanding to deepen China’s broader development assistance. 

Reporters were allowed to take photos after the signing but not to ask questions. 

“During the brief courtesy visit, Solomon Islands and People’s Republic of China engaged in cordial, in-depth and rewarding communication that enhances SI-PRC cooperation,” Sogavare’s office said in a statement. 

When the 80 Solomon Islands athletes return from China they will be accompanied by nine Chinese coaches who will continue their training up until the games, according to information provided to BenarNews by Sogavare’s office. BenarNews is an online news service affiliated with Radio Free Asia.

The games are an example of Chinese largesse in the Pacific region, where Beijing and the United States are competing for influence. A U.S. delegation led by Kurt Campbell, the White House’s Indo-Pacific coordinator, is visiting Pacific island countries this week including the Solomon Islands on Tuesday.

The Solomon Islands is aiming to win 40 gold medals at the 2023 games, which would be a record haul for the country. It brought home four golds from the 2019 Pacific Games and frequently none at earlier games, which have been held every four years since the early 1960s.

At a one-year-to-go event in November last year, National Hosting Authority Chairman Jimmie Rogers bemoaned how neighboring countries with populations of little more than 10,000 people had outcompeted the Solomon Islands – the third most populous Pacific island nation – in past games.

China is contributing half of the approximate 1.85 billion Solomon Island dollars (U.S. $226 million) cost of the Pacific Games – which includes construction of the main stadium and other facilities – and the Solomon Islands government nearly one third. Australia, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and Japan also have made contributions.

Sogavare’s government switched its diplomatic recognition to Beijing from Taiwan in 2019. And in April last year, it signed a security pact with China that alarmed the United States and its allies. 

Some in the Solomon Islands, including opposition leader Matthew Wale, have criticized the focus on the games when the country is struggling with a lack of basic healthcare and infrastructure. 

Others say that in a country still predominantly rural, the games won’t have any impact outside Honiara and will reinforce the gap in development with other islands.

Tonga pulled out of hosting the 2019 Pacific Games after the government decided it was unaffordable for the island country of some 100,000 people.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Gina Maka’a for BenarNews.

China is covering more than half the cost of the quadrennial games that will be staged in the Solomon Islands capital Honiara. Several thousand athletes from two dozen Pacific island countries and territories are expected to compete in the events.

The training arrangements were formalized Monday after a meeting between Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare, Chinese Ambassador Li Ming and officials from the China International Development Cooperation agency. The two countries also signed a memorandum of understanding to deepen China’s broader development assistance. 

Reporters were allowed to take photos after the signing but not to ask questions. 

“During the brief courtesy visit, Solomon Islands and People’s Republic of China engaged in cordial, in-depth and rewarding communication that enhances SI-PRC cooperation,” Sogavare’s office said in a statement. 

When the 80 Solomon Islands athletes return from China they will be accompanied by nine Chinese coaches who will continue their training up until the games, according to information provided to BenarNews by Sogavare’s office. BenarNews is an online news service affiliated with Radio Free Asia.

The games are an example of Chinese largesse in the Pacific region, where Beijing and the United States are competing for influence. A U.S. delegation led by Kurt Campbell, the White House’s Indo-Pacific coordinator, is visiting Pacific island countries this week including the Solomon Islands on Tuesday.

The Solomon Islands is aiming to win 40 gold medals at the 2023 games, which would be a record haul for the country. It brought home four golds from the 2019 Pacific Games and frequently none at earlier games, which have been held every four years since the early 1960s.

At a one-year-to-go event in November last year, National Hosting Authority Chairman Jimmie Rogers bemoaned how neighboring countries with populations of little more than 10,000 people had outcompeted the Solomon Islands – the third most populous Pacific island nation – in past games.

China is contributing half of the approximate 1.85 billion Solomon Island dollars (U.S. $226 million) cost of the Pacific Games – which includes construction of the main stadium and other facilities – and the Solomon Islands government nearly one third. Australia, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and Japan also have made contributions.

Sogavare’s government switched its diplomatic recognition to Beijing from Taiwan in 2019. And in April last year, it signed a security pact with China that alarmed the United States and its allies. 

Some in the Solomon Islands, including opposition leader Matthew Wale, have criticized the focus on the games when the country is struggling with a lack of basic healthcare and infrastructure. 

Others say that in a country still predominantly rural, the games won’t have any impact outside Honiara and will reinforce the gap in development with other islands.

Tonga pulled out of hosting the 2019 Pacific Games after the government decided it was unaffordable for the island country of some 100,000 people.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Gina Maka’a for BenarNews.

China is covering more than half the cost of the quadrennial games that will be staged in the Solomon Islands capital Honiara. Several thousand athletes from two dozen Pacific island countries and territories are expected to compete in the events.

The training arrangements were formalized Monday after a meeting between Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare, Chinese Ambassador Li Ming and officials from the China International Development Cooperation agency. The two countries also signed a memorandum of understanding to deepen China’s broader development assistance. 

Reporters were allowed to take photos after the signing but not to ask questions. 

“During the brief courtesy visit, Solomon Islands and People’s Republic of China engaged in cordial, in-depth and rewarding communication that enhances SI-PRC cooperation,” Sogavare’s office said in a statement. 

When the 80 Solomon Islands athletes return from China they will be accompanied by nine Chinese coaches who will continue their training up until the games, according to information provided to BenarNews by Sogavare’s office. BenarNews is an online news service affiliated with Radio Free Asia.

The games are an example of Chinese largesse in the Pacific region, where Beijing and the United States are competing for influence. A U.S. delegation led by Kurt Campbell, the White House’s Indo-Pacific coordinator, is visiting Pacific island countries this week including the Solomon Islands on Tuesday.

The Solomon Islands is aiming to win 40 gold medals at the 2023 games, which would be a record haul for the country. It brought home four golds from the 2019 Pacific Games and frequently none at earlier games, which have been held every four years since the early 1960s.

At a one-year-to-go event in November last year, National Hosting Authority Chairman Jimmie Rogers bemoaned how neighboring countries with populations of little more than 10,000 people had outcompeted the Solomon Islands – the third most populous Pacific island nation – in past games.

China is contributing half of the approximate 1.85 billion Solomon Island dollars (U.S. $226 million) cost of the Pacific Games – which includes construction of the main stadium and other facilities – and the Solomon Islands government nearly one third. Australia, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and Japan also have made contributions.

Sogavare’s government switched its diplomatic recognition to Beijing from Taiwan in 2019. And in April last year, it signed a security pact with China that alarmed the United States and its allies. 

Some in the Solomon Islands, including opposition leader Matthew Wale, have criticized the focus on the games when the country is struggling with a lack of basic healthcare and infrastructure. 

Others say that in a country still predominantly rural, the games won’t have any impact outside Honiara and will reinforce the gap in development with other islands.

Tonga pulled out of hosting the 2019 Pacific Games after the government decided it was unaffordable for the island country of some 100,000 people.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Gina Maka’a for BenarNews.

Skyba, a photojournalist for Canada’s Globe and Mail newspaper, acknowledged that he is privileged to have these life-saving items while some freelancers struggle to survive sub-zero nights in frontline basements. But one year into Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, journalists can never be too prepared.

“Operating in Ukraine is about being absolutely autonomous, and it’s about being dependent on you, your crew, and everything that’s in your car, if you have one,” Skyba said. 

The war in Ukraine has taken an enormous toll on the country’s press corps. Since last February, 15 local and international journalists have been killed—13 in direct relation to their work—many have been injured, and countless others have faced mental health challenges. Yet for local journalists, the initial shock of the war — and the confusion over how to cover it safely — has given way to a growing sense of resilience among reporters as they have been forced to adapt to their new roles as full-time war correspondents. In interviews with CPJ, journalists said not only are they committed to continue covering the war, they are prepared for the challenges to come. And equipment is just one part of the story. 

‘A choice that Ukrainian journalists didn’t make’ 

While nearly eight million Ukrainians have fled the country since last February, according to U.N. figures, many of the country’s journalists chose to stay put and cover the conflict. In interviews, Ukrainian journalists remembered those first few weeks as shimmering with panic, a terrifying, chaotic time, when reporting was enveloped by the fog of war. Safety advisors who work with international news crews remember the general confusion, the fluidity of the situation, and the deficit of timely, reliable information when advising journalists’ movements as Russian troops encroached from multiple fronts. 

The brutal speed of the invasion meant the country’s press corps quickly became war correspondents, “a choice that Ukrainian journalists didn’t make,” Skyba told CPJ. Even journalists like Skyba, who had covered the events around the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea and fighting in the Donbas region were stunned by the invasion’s suddenness and scale. Few other stories mattered. 

“We had people who were sports journalists, culture journalists, who became war correspondents,” says Nataliya Gumenyuk, a Ukrainian journalist who co-founded Public Interest Journalism Lab, a group that researches and implements journalism best practices. “A new generation appeared largely because of the scale [of the war].”

Kristina Berdynskykh’s work “completely changed” following the invasion, she told CPJ. A longtime politics reporter for outlets including New Voice of Ukraine, she shifted to freelance work, telling the stories of ordinary people in wartime. It’s not lost on her that she’s also a civilian whose life changed dramatically. In last February and March, she spent 17 days in Kyiv’s Obolon metro station with her mother and a teenage relative. 

“At the beginning we didn’t understand sounds,” she said of the unfamiliar noises over the metro’s roof. “Is it air defense? Is it incoming? Is it outgoing? We didn’t used to live in a war. For us, everything was completely new.”

In the early days of the invasion, Ukrainian journalists and newsrooms desperately needed life-saving personal protective equipment like helmets and ballistic vests. But at that point, supply was so low that many were left in the lurch. Katerina Sergatskova, editor-in-chief of Ukrainian online news outlet Zaborona, gave local journalists six bulletproof vests stored in her newsroom before searching for equipment outside the country. She co-founded the 2402 Fund, an organization that provides safety equipment and training to journalists in Ukraine. CPJ has also assisted with such efforts, sending lifesaving medical supplies and individual first aid kits to Ukrainian journalists, as well as directing them to support from other press freedom groups. (CPJ deputy emergencies director Kerry Paterson is on 2402’s advisory board and CPJ’s delivery of the first aid kits was facilitated by the organization.)

Equipment can be prohibitively expensive, particularly for freelancers. Mykola Pastukh is a journalist who also provided support to foreign news crews after the war began. A former cinematographer, he had a car and camera equipment. “I decided it would be silly not to use it. I started shooting,” he told CPJ. But he couldn’t afford a helmet or a vest. After he was nearly injured in a bombing while reporting with a U.S. crew, he acquired a bulletproof vest from a soldier. (His arm was later partially paralyzed in a shelling attack during which he wore protective gear.)   

To help local journalists prepare, 2402 offers Hostile Environment First Aid Training (HEFAT), the same courses provided to many foreign correspondents heading to global hotspots. Skyba, who teaches risk assessment as part of 2402’s courses, underscores just how vital this information is for journalists – whether they are covering war or simply trying to survive. Berdynskykh told CPJ that the most dangerous moment she faced was not on a reporting trip but on a New Year’s Eve outing, when shelling rained down near her car. 

“There is no other option to survive,” Skyba said. “For the local journalists, risk-averse thinking is required all the time. Even taking the wrong street if you’re socializing with your friends can save your life. A rocket can land any second on the nearest building and you are done.”

Journalists adapt, while eyeing new threats

Ukrainian newsrooms have adapted their practices to wartime coverage. At Zaborona, journalists conduct risk assessments and have check-in calls when they are out reporting, and the publication provides the option of evacuation if the situation is deemed too dangerous. The outlet also offers psychological support. Reporting teams work in shifts: while one group is on the front line, another reports from a less dangerous location. No team is on the front line for more than a week to ensure everyone gets time to rest.

As the war drags on, new threats and complications have emerged. Journalists are reporting from areas containing unexploded ordnance (UXO). Attacks on the country’s energy infrastructure have forced the media to operate amid constant blackouts. Newsrooms are now competing with the military to purchase Starlink terminals—dishes that connect to Starlink satellites and provide internet service to remote areas—in order to keep their operations running, said Skyba. 

Ukraine’s journalists also face unique challenges to their mental health. Stories they have covered, including of alleged war crimes in Mariupol and Bucha, can exact a heavy psychological price. But unlike their foreign correspondent counterparts, they cannot go home to peaceful countries. Gumenyuk said that many colleagues’ lives have been utterly shattered by the war: she mentioned fellow reporters whose homes in Irpin and Chernihiv were bombed, who were detained reporting in eastern Ukraine, or who were internally displaced after fleeing Kherson.  

Many journalists said they deal with chronic stress. Yet they feel reluctant to take a break – for some, journalism is a way to serve their country, without carrying arms. (Other journalists did pick up arms, leaving the profession to fight in the war.) Several told CPJ that journalists live with the persistent feeling that they are not doing enough if they’re not reporting from the front lines, exposed to the maximum possible danger. All the stress creates fatigue, and fatigue can lead to mistakes, which only compounds the risk, said Skyba. 

Then there are the losses to war: friends, relatives, and colleagues killed. Speaking of this near-universal experience, Berdynskykh recalled the first person she knew personally who was killed: Maks Levin, the Ukrainian photojournalist who was found dead after going missing in the Kyiv region early in the war.

“I don’t know how we adapt, we just do,” Sergatskova said. “What is clear from this type of coverage is the mental health challenges now facing Ukrainian journalists. There is a huge need for Ukrainian-language psychologists who can work specifically with journalists, and who can understand the details of the profession.” 

Ukrainian journalists say they are prepared to cover this war for the long haul. International news outlets are, too: The New York Times and The Washington Post both opened new Kyiv bureaus last year, fortifying their presence for the foreseeable future. As the invasion’s first anniversary approaches, local journalists are concerned about what Sergatskova called “Ukraine fatigue,” the risk of the world’s attention turning elsewhere to the next conflict, the next scandal, the next story. 

Whatever happens next, Ukraine’s press corps will continue being the eyes and ears of their country, telling the story of the war that will no doubt change Ukraine for generations to come. And with the help and solidarity of their colleagues, the safety trainings, and the protective equipment, they will do so as safely as they can, for as long as it takes.

“I understand that the war keeps going, and maybe we’ll have a few years of war. I am pretty sure I will cover this war because I don’t have any choice,” says Berdynskykh. “I will live in Ukraine. I want to cover this war.”

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Lucy Westcott.

State media reported that a Sukhoi Su-22 fighter jet piloted by Capt. Tran Ngoc Duy crashed Jan. 31 while trying to land at Yen Bai, an airbase in the country’s north, following a training mission.

The crash was the third deadly warplane accident since 2016, and all three point to an over reliance on flight simulators, as pilots spend very little time in planes, Carl Thayer, a professor at the Australian Defence Academy, told RFA’s Vietnamese Service.

Vietnam’s air force has a fleet of 71 Soviet-era planes, many of which were acquired in the 1980s, he said.

“In 2019, U.S. defense officials serving in Hanoi reported that Vietnamese military officers had expressed their unhappiness with Russian equipment and services,” Thayer said.

The cause of the January crash is likely due to either faulty landing gear or pilot error, he said.

“According to one study, Vietnamese air force pilots use virtual flight rules or radar vector in perfect weather only and have no experience with adverse weather conditions,” he said.

Accident captured on video

State media reported that the Su-22 encountered a problem while landing and Duy was ordered to eject. He then tried to correct the problem manually but failed, and the plane crashed.

In a video about the accident filmed by a cell phone and posted on Facebook by one of the pilot’s relatives, when the Su-22 was about to land on the airstrip, it suddenly tilted and wobbled and a small flame started in the cockpit. Then, the pilot seat ejected but a parachute was not seen. 

Shortly after that, the plane crashed onto the runway, causing an explosion with a big column of smoke and fire.

Video vụ Su-22 rơi: Phi công đã phóng ghế bay và nhảy dù? #RFAVietnamese #SU22YenBai #Su22Vietnam #Vietnam #Vietnamairforce #Yenbai #PhicongTranNgocDuy pic.twitter.com/tSITeoW8Ne

— Đài Á Châu Tự Do (@DaiAChauTuDo) February 1, 2023

The Vietnamese Ministry of National Defence launched an investigation after the accident, but so far has not announced any findings. 

Capt. Tran Ngoc Duy was posthumously promoted to major. He had served 13 years in the air force and piloted many types of aircraft, logging 725 flight hours

Old aircraft

Prof. Zachary Abuza from the U.S. National War College said that Vietnam’s aging fleet was definitely a problem.

“The People’s Army Air Force has a lot of very old airframes, including the Su-22, and many are at the end of their lifecycle,” he said. “Another problem is that since the airframes, especially the newer ones like the Su-27, are very expensive, there is a reluctance to use them and train on them.”

Abuza said both factors work to create a vicious cycle. The lack of training on the expensive models results in more accidents when they are flown.

Pilot training these days is a rarity due to a lack of budget and fuel, said Nguyen Dinh Am, a journalist who once worked for the Vietnam Heritage tourist magazine.

“I live near Gia Lam Military Airport [in Hanoi] and I can easily hear an aircraft taking off, but these days I rarely hear airplane sounds,” he said. “Ancient aircraft, improper maintenance, and pilots with poor flying reflexes due to lack of practice could lead to mistakes and accidents.”

At the National Party Congress in early 2021, the government approved a major military modernization program that prioritized air force upgrades. 

Nguyen The Phoung,  a lecturer from the Faculty of International Relations, Ho Chi Minh City University of Economics and Finance, told RFA that upgrades were badly needed to protect Vietnam’s sovereignty.  

“The entire fleet of Vietnam’s fighter and fighter-bomber aircraft are of Soviet-Russian origin,” he said. “The procurement of fighter aircraft is a big investment. Besides purchasing equipment, training, maintenance, and suitability for combat requirements are also needed,” he said.

But because Russia is the supplier of Vietnam’s combat aircraft, rapid modernization is not feasible immediately because Moscow is fighting a war in Ukraine, he said. “Obviously, Vietnam cannot buy Russian weapons freely like it did in the past. It needs to take the international community’s reactions into account.”

Thayer said Vietnam was in “critical need” to modernize.

“In late-2020, Vietnam moved to restructure its logistics support services to improve maintenance, repair and overhaul of its legacy combat air fleet,” he said. “Special priority has been accorded to maintaining, repairing and overhauling Vietnam’s Su-30MK2 multi-role jet fighters.”

Both Thayer and Abuza said Vietnam was looking to purchase a fifth-generation fighter from Russia like the Su-30, -35, or -57, but Moscow has been capped on weapons exports after it annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014. The invasion of the country in 2022 further decreases the likelihood of such a transaction.

American shift?

In December, Reuters reported that U.S. defense companies had discussed supplying military gear, including helicopters and drones, to Vietnam in talks with top government officials, a new sign that Vietnam may reduce its reliance on Russian arms.

Thayer said that in late 2021, Vietnam placed an order for twelve T-6 jet trainers and Vietnamese pilots commenced participation in the U.S. Air Force Aviation Leadership Program in the United States, moves that may lay the foundation for the sale of the U.S.-made F-15E Strike Eagle to Vietnam by the end of this decade.

Hanoi also ordered six Boeing Insitu ScanEagle unmanned aerial vehicles for its Coast Guard under the U.S. Maritime Security Initiative in 2019, he said, and suggested that the war in Ukraine has raised the salience of drones and other UAVs in armed combat, meaning Vietnam would be a great market for U.S.-made weapons.

“There are two constraints on Vietnam’s purchases of non-Russian weaponry. The first is the legacy of dependency on Russia for spare parts, servicing, maintenance support and language. The second constraint is cost and time,” he said. “U.S. and European weapons are expensive and Vietnam would need to develop an appropriate logistics support network that would take considerable time to develop.”

But Abuza said there was no chance that Vietnam would buy American jets.

“I am paying close attention to the recently upgraded ties with South Korea, now a comprehensive strategic partner,” Abuza said.  “South Korea has been trying to sell its latest fighter overseas. It’s a lot more expensive than the Russian fighters, but still cheaper than American or European [ones].”

According to former military intelligence officer Vu Minh Tri, it is very difficult for Vietnam to import Western countries’ weapons due to its limited budget.

He said that Vietnam spends most of its defense budget on wages, food, and supplies, while the funding for weapons makes up only a small part.

Corruption and the lack of transparency are the biggest challenges the military faces, he said. 

“In general, Vietnam’s procurement of weapons and military equipment is not transparent,” Tri said. Vietnam’s “partners have told me that those assigned to purchase weapons always increase the purchasing prices to keep the difference. Western countries don’t accept this practice.”

In addition, Western countries do not trust Hanoi because Vietnam considers China a close ally, and Vietnam does not trust the United States and other Western countries, thinking they intend to topple the current regime, Tri said.

Translated by Anna Vu. Edited by Eugene Whong and Malcolm Foster.

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

We get an update on calls for an independent investigation into the Atlanta police killing of an activist during a violent raid Wednesday on a proposed $90 million training facility in a public forest, known by opponents to the facility as “Cop City.” Law enforcement officers — including a SWAT team — were violently evicting protesters who had occupied a wooded area outside the center when they shot and killed longtime activist Manuel Teran, who went by the name “Tortuguita.” Police claim they were fired on, though protesters dispute this account. We hear a statement from an Atlanta forest defender about what happened, and speak with Kamau Franklin, an anti-“Cop City” activist and the founder of the Atlanta organization Community Movement Builders.

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

We get an update on calls for an independent investigation into the Atlanta police killing of an activist during a violent raid Wednesday on a proposed $90 million training facility in a public forest, known by opponents to the facility as “Cop City.” Law enforcement officers — including a SWAT team — were violently evicting protesters who had occupied a wooded area outside the center when they shot and killed longtime activist Manuel Teran, who went by the name “Tortuguita.” Police claim they were fired on, though protesters dispute this account. We hear a statement from an Atlanta forest defender about what happened, and speak with Kamau Franklin, an anti-“Cop City” activist and the founder of the Atlanta organization Community Movement Builders.

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

President Édouard Fritch of French Polynesia says he wants to boost funds to study journalism in French Polynesia in a bid to help strengthen the media industry quality, reports RNZ Pacific.

According to the local Ministry of Education, the amount given for study grants will vary from US$536 to US$1341 per month, depending on the level of study.

Fritch told La Première television about the “growing threat of false information” and the importance of reliable news outlets.

“Those social media pages escape the realm of news outlets, they shy away from all verification and create confusion and worse, they act as the public’s spokesperson,” he said.

“That is why I think it is a must that the journalism sector must be supported by the country.”

Meanwhile, public broadcaster France Télévision — La Première — reports that its audience in French overseas territories grew in 2022 and now reaches 42 percent of the 889,000 audience at least once.

La Première in Tahiti heads the audience share with 36.5 percent. Figures for other territories are: French Guyana 33.4 percent, Mayotte 31.4 percent, New Caledonia 30.2 percent, Gaudeloupe 27.1 percent, Martinique 18.1 percent, and Réunion 14.5 percent.

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

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

Six people in Atlanta have been charged with domestic terrorism for taking part in protests against a massive new police training facility known as Cop City. The protesters were taking part in a months-long encampment in a forested area of Atlanta where the city wants to build a $90 million, 85-acre training center on the site of a former prison farm. Conservationists have long wanted to protect the area, the South River Forest, from future development. Protesters are also urging the city to invest in alternatives to more policing. “This is basically a boondoggle that’s been given to the police to make them feel better,” says Kamau Franklin, founder of Community Movement Builders, which is a part of a coalition trying to stop the construction of Cop City in Atlanta.

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

In an effort to address the critical need to diversify the ranks of investigative editors in newsrooms across the country, ProPublica announced Thursday the Investigative Editor Training Program. Funded by the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation, this one-year training program will support talented news editors in learning the craft of investigative editing from ProPublica’s prizewinning editors and staff.

Studies in recent years have shown that leadership in newsrooms around the country does not represent the diversity of the communities that they cover. That’s particularly acute in investigative news. Part of the reason for those low numbers is that journalists from diverse backgrounds have historically been passed over for opportunities to do investigative reporting and editing, which lessens their ability to pursue this specialty later in their careers. This program is aimed at bolstering that pipeline.

“ProPublica was founded to create journalism that spurs real-world change,” said Stephen Engelberg, ProPublica’s editor in chief. “We are incredibly excited to play a role in training the new, diverse generation of newsroom leaders. Behind almost every great story, there’s a great editor whose passion, patience and craft made all the difference. We look forward to expanding the pipeline of people who do that essential work.”

The program will launch in summer 2023 with a weeklong, all-expenses-paid boot camp in New York that will coach editors how to conceive of, produce and edit investigative projects that expose harm and create impact. The editors will learn how to guide reporters through complicated accountability stories, including challenges related to deciphering data, obtaining documents and engaging sources who have suffered trauma. Attendees will also learn how to work collaboratively with research, data and multimedia teams to elevate an investigative project and maximize impact potential.

After the boot camp, participants will gather virtually every two months until summer 2024 for seminars and career development discussions with their cohort and ProPublica journalists. Each participant will be assigned a ProPublica senior editor as a mentor for one-on-one consultation about ongoing stories, management challenges and how to most effectively pursue their own professional aspirations.

The program is open to all, but we especially encourage people from traditionally underrepresented communities to apply, including women, people of color, LGBTQ people and people with disabilities.

The ideal participants will have:

• A minimum of five years of journalism experience, either as an editor or as a reporter primarily doing work with an investigative or accountability focus.
• A strong grasp of the basics of editing, storytelling, structure and framing.
• Experience managing a team of journalists or a complicated multipronged reporting project.
• An accountability mindset and an eye for watchdog reporting and editing.

The application period will open on Wednesday, Feb. 1, 2023, and close on Monday, March 13, 2023. The cohort will be announced in April 2023. Here are more details for those interested in applying.

This program is funded through the generous support of the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation, which supports organizations advancing social justice by empowering world-changing work in investigative journalism, documentary film and arts and culture.

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by ProPublica.

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Beginning this summer, ProPublica will invite up to 10 news editors from media companies across the country to participate in a yearlong investigative editing training program, led by the newsroom’s award-winning staff.

As the nation’s premier nonprofit investigative newsroom, ProPublica is dedicated to journalism that changes laws and lives and to advancing the careers of the people who produce it. The goal of this program is to address our industry’s critical need to diversify the ranks of investigative editors. Building a pipeline of talent is a priority that serves us and our industry.

“ProPublica was founded to create journalism that spurs real-world change,” said Stephen Engelberg, ProPublica’s editor in chief. “We are incredibly excited to play a role in training the new, diverse generation of newsroom leaders. Behind almost every great story, there’s a great editor whose passion, patience and craft made all the difference. We look forward to expanding the pipeline of people who do that essential work.”

The program will begin in June 2023 with a weeklong boot camp in New York that will include courses and panel discussions on how to conceive of and produce investigative projects that expose harm and have impact. The editors will also get training in how to manage reporters who are working with data, documents and sensitive sources, including whistleblowers, agency insiders and people who have suffered trauma.

This program is funded through the generous support of the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation, which supports organizations — whether in journalism, film and the arts — whose work is dedicated to social justice and strengthening democracy.

The ProPublica Investigative Editor Training Program is designed to help expand the ranks of editors with investigative experience in more newsrooms across the country, with a focus on people from underrepresented backgrounds.

The program kicks off with a five-day intensive editing boot camp in New York, with courses and panel discussions led by ProPublica’s senior editors, veteran reporters and other newsroom leaders. The boot camp will include hands-on editing exercises and opportunities for participants to workshop projects underway in their own newsrooms.

Afterward, participants will gather virtually every two months for seminars and career development discussions with their cohort and ProPublica journalists. Each of the participants will also be assigned a ProPublica senior editor as a mentor for advice on story and management challenges or on how to most effectively pursue their own professional aspirations.

• How to evaluate story ideas and determine the right scope, length and time for getting it done.
• How to manage a reporter through a complicated accountability story and communicate feedback in ways that build trust and confidence.
• How to edit investigative drafts, spot holes in reporting logic, organize a narrative and guide the reporter through the fact-checking process.
• How to work collaboratively with research, data and multimedia teams to elevate an investigative project.

The five-day, all-expenses-paid boot camp will be held June 2023 in New York, with remote sessions via Zoom throughout the year.

We are planning for the boot camp to be held in person. If a participant cannot attend, we will consider remote alternatives.

ProPublica will cover participants’ expenses for meals, travel and lodging during the boot camp.

Up to 10 journalists.

ProPublica plans to offer this training in 2024 and 2025 as well.

The program is open to all, but we especially encourage people from traditionally underrepresented communities to apply, including women, people of color, LGBTQ people and people with disabilities.

The ideal participants will have:

• A minimum of five years of journalism experience, either as an editor or as a reporter primarily doing work with an investigative or accountability focus.
• A strong grasp of the basics of editing, storytelling, structure and framing.
• Experience managing a team of journalists or a complicated multipronged reporting project.
• An accountability mindset: You don’t have to have been on an investigative team, but we are looking for people with an eye for watchdog reporting and editing.

The Jonathan Logan Family Foundation is a philanthropic foundation that supports organizations — whether in journalism, film and the arts — whose work is dedicated to social justice and strengthening democracy.

The application period will open on Feb. 1, 2023. You can sign up for our Jobs newsletter to be notified when this opportunity becomes available.

Send an email to Talent Director Talia Buford at talent@propublica.org.

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Talia Buford.

After a few months of attending the course at the Maritime Training and Manpower Center, Dang Ngoc Thanh was told by teacher Nguyen Tan he would not be allowed to continue. He was given no official document stating the reason but he said he believed it was connected to his role in the 2018 demonstrations. 

The 30-month course Thanh had been attending trains sailors to crew international ships, “using their knowledge, talent and other capabilities to contribute to the development of Vietnam,” according to the University of Transport’s website. That role, and the university’s connections with the Transport Ministry, mean it is likely to refuse applicants who have a track record of protesting against the policies of the government and ruling Communist Party. However, Tranh told RFA Vietnamese he had already been attending the course for three months and the university knew his background when they accepted him.

“When I went to school, in the police file, it was recorded that I used to participate in printing and distributing leaflets protesting the leasing of special zones to China. The school kept that file and asked me if I was banned from leaving the country. I went to Cambodia to prove that I was not banned,” he told RFA on Sunday.

Thanh, 29, added that the school called the police in his home province of Tra Vinh to ask if he was politically active before accepting him on the course.

Thanh said he only distributed leaflets in 2018, and shared his frustrations on social media. He said the reason he was suspended from school may be because he participated in a demonstration in Ho Chi Minh City on June 10, 2018 to oppose the Bill on Special Economic Zones.

“I don't participate in any political activities, but once when the communist government of Vietnam was planning to lease special zones to a foreign country for 99 years, I printed a large number of leaflets saying ‘No 99-years lease to China’ and distributed them throughout Ho Chi Minh City. I was arrested and administratively fined.”

RFA called Thanh’s teacher Nguyen Tan and was told that when the school checked his background they found his resume was “incorrect and inappropriate” so they decided not to accept him as a student. When the reporter asked for more details Tan refused to give them over the phone and requested a personal meeting.

Thanh rejected his teacher’s explanation saying that, before he was accepted onto the course, he submitted all the notarized documents required by the center for the course.

RFA repeatedly called the director of the Marine Training and Manpower Center but no one answered. Reporters also emailed the center and the University of Transport but received no reply.

In mid-2018, the National Assembly of Vietnam intended to pass two bills on Special Economic Zones and Cybersecurity. Tens of thousands of people took to the streets of major cities and provinces to protest. Thousands of people were arrested and many detained for days, tortured and beaten. Authorities prosecuted and sentenced hundreds of protesters.

The rare protests were triggered by concerns that leases as long as 99 years could go to Chinese-owned and operated firms, rather than helping local companies. Anti-China sentiment was high due to clashes over fishing rights in the South China Sea, called the East Sea by Vietnam, and China’s takeovers of the Spratly and Paracel islands, also claimed by the Vietnamese. Protesters against the cybersecurity bill feared it could threaten freedom of expression and lead to arrests of democracy campaigners who expressed their views online.

Thanh said he was not arrested on the day of the protests but detained a few days later by the police of Tra Vinh Province and later arrested by the police of Binh Chanh district in Ho Chi Minh City. He said police beat him and held him for a day before fining him VND7.5 million (US$310) for “slandering the Binh Chanh district police” rather than for taking part in the protest.

Thanh said on Tuesday he had returned to his hometown to look for a job. He said he has no plans to apply for another course because he is concerned they won’t accept him.

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

After a few months of attending the course at the Maritime Training and Manpower Center, Dang Ngoc Thanh was told by teacher Nguyen Tan he would not be allowed to continue. He was given no official document stating the reason but he said he believed it was connected to his role in the 2018 demonstrations. 

The 30-month course Thanh had been attending trains sailors to crew international ships, “using their knowledge, talent and other capabilities to contribute to the development of Vietnam,” according to the University of Transport’s website. That role, and the university’s connections with the Transport Ministry, mean it is likely to refuse applicants who have a track record of protesting against the policies of the government and ruling Communist Party. However, Tranh told RFA Vietnamese he had already been attending the course for three months and the university knew his background when they accepted him.

“When I went to school, in the police file, it was recorded that I used to participate in printing and distributing leaflets protesting the leasing of special zones to China. The school kept that file and asked me if I was banned from leaving the country. I went to Cambodia to prove that I was not banned,” he told RFA on Sunday.

Thanh, 29, added that the school called the police in his home province of Tra Vinh to ask if he was politically active before accepting him on the course.

Thanh said he only distributed leaflets in 2018, and shared his frustrations on social media. He said the reason he was suspended from school may be because he participated in a demonstration in Ho Chi Minh City on June 10, 2018 to oppose the Bill on Special Economic Zones.

“I don't participate in any political activities, but once when the communist government of Vietnam was planning to lease special zones to a foreign country for 99 years, I printed a large number of leaflets saying ‘No 99-years lease to China’ and distributed them throughout Ho Chi Minh City. I was arrested and administratively fined.”

RFA called Thanh’s teacher Nguyen Tan and was told that when the school checked his background they found his resume was “incorrect and inappropriate” so they decided not to accept him as a student. When the reporter asked for more details Tan refused to give them over the phone and requested a personal meeting.

Thanh rejected his teacher’s explanation saying that, before he was accepted onto the course, he submitted all the notarized documents required by the center for the course.

RFA repeatedly called the director of the Marine Training and Manpower Center but no one answered. Reporters also emailed the center and the University of Transport but received no reply.

In mid-2018, the National Assembly of Vietnam intended to pass two bills on Special Economic Zones and Cybersecurity. Tens of thousands of people took to the streets of major cities and provinces to protest. Thousands of people were arrested and many detained for days, tortured and beaten. Authorities prosecuted and sentenced hundreds of protesters.

The rare protests were triggered by concerns that leases as long as 99 years could go to Chinese-owned and operated firms, rather than helping local companies. Anti-China sentiment was high due to clashes over fishing rights in the South China Sea, called the East Sea by Vietnam, and China’s takeovers of the Spratly and Paracel islands, also claimed by the Vietnamese. Protesters against the cybersecurity bill feared it could threaten freedom of expression and lead to arrests of democracy campaigners who expressed their views online.

Thanh said he was not arrested on the day of the protests but detained a few days later by the police of Tra Vinh Province and later arrested by the police of Binh Chanh district in Ho Chi Minh City. He said police beat him and held him for a day before fining him VND7.5 million (US$310) for “slandering the Binh Chanh district police” rather than for taking part in the protest.

Thanh said on Tuesday he had returned to his hometown to look for a job. He said he has no plans to apply for another course because he is concerned they won’t accept him.

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

Three years after the protest movement -- which began as a mass movement against extradition to mainland China and broadened to include demands for fully democratic elections and greater official accountability -- tens of thousands of people have been arrested, more than 1,000 of whom were minors, according to the latest government figures ending Aug. 31, 2022.

Security chief Chris Tang told lawmakers that 517 people under the age of 18 had been prosecuted in connection with the 2019 protests by that date, adding that youths judged to hold "extreme ideological views" had been sent for "re-education."

"At present, all young persons in custody are required to receive Chinese-style marching training," Tang told the Legislative Council on Oct. 26.

"The Correctional Services Department emphasizes strict discipline training for young persons in custody, hoping to make them understand the importance of discipline and abiding by the law," he said.

"Juvenile inmates trained under the Rehabilitation Centres Ordinance are ... subjected to strict disciplinary training and hard physical training, to enable them to understand the cost of crime, and to reflect on their own misdeeds," he said.

Inmates are also required to undergo patriotic education and activities to "enhance their national identity, to instill the correct values ... and to help them rediscover meaning in life," Tang said.

They also take classes in "moral and civic education" and "national security law education," programs that have been imposed on children and university students across Hong Kong since the National Security Law sparked a citywide crackdown on public dissent and political opposition from July 2020.

"The Correctional Services Department will assign a dedicated case manager to assess these persons in custody to identify the special rehabilitation needs of each person in custody, and match each person in custody according to the three principles of the above-mentioned rehabilitation program," Tang said.

Nationalistic education program

A nationalistic program of moral, civic and national education is replacing Liberal Studies in Hong Kong's primary and secondary schools, as well as in higher education, with schools required to promote the National Security Law to staff and students. 

The Liberal Studies critical thinking program, rolled out in Hong Kong schools in 2009, was blamed by Chinese officials and media for several mass protests in recent years, from the 2011 campaign against patriotic education by secondary school students, to the 2014 youth-led Umbrella movement, to the 2019 protests that began as a campaign against extradition to mainland China and broadened to include demands for fully democratic elections. 

In addition, some 10,000 young people in the youth branches of the police, correctional and rescue services will be targeted for a program aimed at "raising national security awareness," Tang told lawmakers, all of whom were elected under new rules in December 2021 banning pro-democracy candidates from running. 

U.S.-based activist Alex Chow, who chairs the Hong Kong Democracy Council, said the moves are similar to patriotic education programs and "re-education" programs imposed on more than a million incarcerated Uyghurs in Xinjiang since 2017.

"It's all about bringing that set of practices from mainland China into Hong Kong," Chow told RFA, adding that the "re-education" aspect of serving jail time is relatively new.

"Previously, political prisoners didn't have to go through that kind of brainwashing," he said. "I didn't, when I was in prison in 2017."

"[The right to hold] political ideas is a human right, and you can't force people to adopt your ideas, even if theirs are different from yours," he said.

Chow said the government is forcing young people into political rehabilitation because it has no other way to wield authority.

"It's all about showing who is in authority, that people have to do as they are told by the government," he said. "They want to correct the ideas of some people in custody."

Massive backlog of cases

Kevin Yam, former head of the Progressive Lawyers' Group, said there are currently huge delays in prosecutions due to a massive backlog of post-2019 cases, putting unnecessary pressure on people who have been arrested, but are still waiting for the authorities to make a decision on their case, or move it to trial.

"Of course this is unjust, because they will have to put so much on hold for several years, until they know what's going to happen to them," Yam told RFA. "For example, some people aren't allowed to go abroad, or others might want to find a job, but there's a case hanging over them."

"Even studying is much harder than it would have been -- the longer these delays last, the bigger the impact [on these young people]."

He called on the authorities to enact at least a partial amnesty, or to find non-criminal means of handling cases of young protesters, so they can carry on with their lives.

He said such a move would enable a sense of reconciliation between the government and the city's seven million residents, many of whom are leaving the city since the national security law took effect. 

Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Chen Zifei for RFA Cantonese.

In late July, Tahir Ashraf Bhatti, an Indian police official with a checkered history of alleged human rights abuses, tweeted a photo of himself in the U.S. He had come to Houston, according to the tweet, to attend an FBI training.

Back home, Bhatti, a top cop for criminal investigations in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir, ran a detention site where civilians have reportedly been interrogated and tortured for what they’ve posted on social media. Now he was sharing on Twitter a photo of himself standing in front of an unclassified FBI slide presentation titled “Operation Catch Me If You Can.”

“Continuous learning is the minimum requirement for success in any field,” he wrote in the tweet. A few days later, he posted a photo holding a souvenir FBI badge and wrote: “Appreciation is for now, gratitude is forever. Thank you @FBI.”

“There is an environment now where there is no space for protest.”

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This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Murtaza Hussain.

The New York City firehouse studio that housed Democracy Now! from 2001 to 2009 has reopened as a movie theater devoted to documentary films. The opening of Firehouse: DCTV’s Cinema for Documentary Film comes as Downtown Community Television celebrates 50 years of media activism and training. “We wanted to build something that really respected and paid tribute to documentaries,” says DCTV’s co-founder Jon Alpert, who says the theater is “completely interactive” and will “serve the community.” DCTV is also part of a broad alliance in the Chinatown neighborhood to stop the development of a new jail — a 300-foot-tall “jailscraper” — that Alpert says would likely be “the physical end” of DCTV. Alpert just won the News and Documentary Emmy Award for Outstanding Crime and Justice Documentary for the last part of his HBO trilogy, “Life of Crime: 1984-2020.”

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

Mortar demonstrations involving military forces from five nations have taken place in Fiji.

The tactical field training exercise called Exercise Cartwheel was a US and Fiji-led multinational exercise conducted in the Nausori Highlands.

It involved defence personnel from the Republic of Fiji Military Forces, United States Army Pacific, the New Zealand Defence Force, the British Army and the Australian Defence Force.

• READ MORE: Other reports on Pacific security

The exercise was designed to enhance capability in both urban and jungle environments.

Training also included demonstrations of sustained fire machine guns, section attacks and ambushes, reacting to enemy indirect firing, and ethical decision-making scenarios.

TVNZ reported Major Atonia Nagauna of the Fiji Infantry Regiment, Third Battalion, saying that Pacific nations faced challenges that require collective action.

“When I talk about threats, I talk about natural disasters, I talk about illegal fishing, I talk about other traditional non-state actors which try and destabilise this part of the world,” he said.

“We work together so we feel we are not alone and they also treat us as equal partners in this.”

The exercise brings together the same allies which fought side-by-side in Solomon Islands during World War II.

Developing long-standing relationships in the Pacific
The New Zealand Defence Force said a total of 55 combat soldiers from 1st (NZ) Brigade participated in the exercise.

A light infantry platoon from Delta Company, 2nd/1st Battalion, Royal New Zealand Infantry Regiment (RNZIR), also conducted reconnaissance operations, section and platoon harbours drills, survival and tracking training.

New Zealand’s Land Component Commander, Brigadier Hugh McAslan, said New Zealand had long-standing relationships with their military partners in the Pacific and valued opportunities to train alongside them.

“This exercise also provides opportunities for our people to immerse themselves in Fijian culture, build strong professional and personal relationships with our Pacific military whanau, as well as train in an environment that is different to New Zealand,” he said.

“We are taking every opportunity to learn from one another. In doing so, these skills and relationships, coupled with professionalism, set the conditions for a bright future for our region.”

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.

The University of the South Pacific’s Journalism Programme is open to strengthening engagement and partnership with the Australia Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) following the recent visit of senior ABC executives to Fiji.

Last week, ABC International Services head Claire Gorman, ABC International Development public affairs lead Jo Elsom, ABC Sport head Nick Morris and ABC Asia Pacific News managing editor Matt O’Sullivan met USP Journalism coordinator associate professor Shailendra Singh and staff to discuss ways ABC International Development (ABCID) and its regional media development programme (PACMAS) could assist the media in Fiji and journalism students at USP.

The discussions with the visiting ABC delegation focused on the possibility of content sharing, student professional attachments as well as priority areas for partnership such as youth, gender and regional cooperation to strengthen capacity-building and opportunity for growth.

USP Journalism students and staff have participated in a number of ABCID/PACMAS capacity-building workshops and training, including the Women Leaders Media Masterclass, Reporting the Story of Us: Media Masterclass, Factcheck webinar, Pacific Resilience Masterclass as well as a Training of Trainers short-course for Fiji journalists at the Fiji National University’s National Training Productivity Centre.

The ABC executives were also given a brief tour of the newly-refurbished USP Journalism facilities at Laucala campus.

Geraldine Panapasa is editor-in-chief of the University of the South Pacific’s award-winning journalism newspaper Wansolwara. Republished under a partnership between Asia Pacific Report and Wansolwara.

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

A founding father and former politician has urged young journalists to write more about Vanuatu’s history.

In a presentation to trainee journalists, Pastor Sethy John Regenvanu called on future writers to write more about people who have contributed to Vanuatu’s history and record their stories.

“I am one of the few leaders who is still around and we are sort of a rare commodity,’’ he said.

• READ MORE: Other Vanuatu journalism training reports

“I’m not going to be speaking to people all the time.

“You may say that you cannot find important books that pertain to us, then you have to ask why.

“I want you people to feel able to come and interview us who have lived in different stages of the country’s evolution and have had the experience of leading this country into independence — and interview us and write books about us.’’

The 78-year-old author elaborated on the writings that are important for people to read. He said they included significant stories that tell people about the happenings of Vanuatu.

His autobiography Laef Blong Mi
He opened his presentation by displaying some of his own published works, which included his autobiography Laef Blong Mi, written in 2004.

Pointing to his autobiography, he said not many writers had written about important people in Vanuatu’s history.

“Not many of us have got a life story — like I have here,’’ he said.

“It means that writers haven’t done important life experience stories which are a very important part of this history. They are the identity of this nation.’’

The retired leader said he believed stories or information were best relayed when written.

“What you hear through word of mouth, or other mediums, faces the potential risk of distortion, exaggeration, third parties — and in due course becomes untrustworthy, unreliable and forgotten,” he said.

Pastor Regenvanu encouraged future journalists to always be truthful reporters and have the credibility to help others.

He said it was important to be “inquisitive” and to “take life seriously” as the media could have both positive and negative impacts.

Republished from the Vanuatu Daily Post with permission.

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

Addressing the training development deficit in the Fiji media industry can stem journalist attrition and improve coverage of election reporting in the country, says University of the South Pacific journalism coordinator Dr Shailendra Singh.

Speaking during last week’s launch of the National Media Reporting of the 2018 Fijian General Elections study in Suva, Dr Singh said media watch groups regarded Fiji’s controversial media law as having a “chilling effect on journalism” and “fostered a culture of media self-censorship”.