Author: PolitCens

When it comes to military equipment being sent to Ukraine, big-ticket items like Patriot missiles and F-16 fighter jets come to mind. But for many Ukrainian soldiers, the U.S.-made 60-millimeter M224 mortars, also used by the U.S. Marine Corps, have been highly effective against Russian forces. Anna Kosstutschenko has the story. Video: Pavel Suhodolskiy
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berlin — U.S. President Joe Biden and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz will discuss increased reports of antisemitic acts in both countries over the last year as war has raged in the Middle East when they meet Friday in Berlin, a Biden administration official told reporters on the eve of Biden’s state visit to Germany.

“This is an area where the United States and Germany have worked very closely,” said the official, who was not named as a condition of the Wednesday night briefing.

The official added that while Biden is unlikely to hold a specific event centered on antisemitism during his one-day visit, the issue is “very important to President Biden, and one that he has, that we have, discussed with the German government over the years and continue to do so.”

The official did not give any more details on engagements or plans.

Watchdogs have sounded the alarm in both countries: According to a German government report, antisemitic incidents rose by about 83% last year. In the United States, the Anti-Defamation League has said that U.S. antisemitic incidents “skyrocketed” in the months after Hamas militants attacked Israel last October.

Biden has clearly tied the recent rise in anti-Jewish acts to a growing backlash over his staunch support of Israel.

In May, he spoke at the first Holocaust Remembrance Day since the start of the war on October 7, 2023. He warned of a “ferocious” rise in antisemitic incidents and said that, at the height of university protests, “Jewish students [were] blocked, harassed, attacked, while walking to class.”

He said protesters used “antisemitic posters, slogans calling for the annihilation of Israel, the world’s only Jewish state.”

Earlier this month, he spoke of his belief that “without an Israel, every Jew in the world’s security is less stable.”

He added, “It doesn’t mean that Jewish leadership doesn’t have to be more progressive than it is, but it does mean it has to exist, and that’s what worries me most about what’s going on now.”

Germany’s World War II history makes it particularly sensitive to this type of hatred, but critics say it has taken steps that stifle legitimate criticism.

In November, weeks into the Gaza conflict, a German museum canceled a show by a South African artist after she expressed support for the Palestinian cause. Candice Breitz, the artist, who is Jewish, called the act another example of “Germany’s increasingly entrenched habit of weaponizing false charges of antisemitism against intellectuals and cultural workers of various descriptions.”

In March, police canceled a conference of pro-Palestinian activists because a planned speaker had previously made antisemitic remarks. They blocked him from entering Germany and cut power to the Berlin building where conference participants had gathered to watch him on a livestream.

On the first anniversary of the war, Scholz warned against growing anti-Jewish sentiment and affirmed his support for Israel.

“We will never accept antisemitism and blind hatred of Israel. The Jewish people here in Germany have the full solidarity of our state,” he said.

A difficult definition

Key to managing antisemitism is the question of whether criticism of Israel is, by definition, antisemitic.

The Federal Association of Research and Information Centers for Antisemitism, Germany’s antisemitism watchdog, uses a working definition from the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, describing antisemitism as “a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews.” Although its definition of antisemitism does not mention Israel, many of its cited examples of antisemitism do.

The U.S. State Department also uses that definition, but when the White House produced its first strategy on antisemitism last year, before the start of the Gaza war, the strategy was not based solely on that definition.

One Jewish rights group that worked with the White House on the strategy said the decision to codify the definition of antisemitism “would only have made it harder to recognize and respond to antisemitic attacks in context” and “would have opened the door to infringement of First Amendment rights.”

That group, T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights, also opposed a proposed bill in Congress using the group’s definition, with CEO Rabbi Jill Jacobs saying in a statement: “The profoundly misguided Antisemitism Awareness Act does nothing to keep Jews safe, while also threatening the civil liberties fundamental to this country.”

Second gentleman Douglas Emhoff, who led the rollout of the White House strategy, said it is more important to look at what antisemitism does than what it is.

“At its core, antisemitism divides us, erodes our trust in government, institutions and one another,” he said. “It threatens our democracy while undermining our American values of freedom, community and decency. Antisemitism delivers simplistic, false and dangerous narratives that have led to extremists perpetrating deadly violence against Jews.”

History professor Jonathan Elukin of Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, said the definition of antisemitism has shifted over the centuries. He focuses on antisemitism in the medieval and early modern periods — before Israel was founded.

This iteration of antisemitism in the U.S., he told VOA, is “more associated with a kind of larger sense of an anti-Western, anti-modern kind of feeling, both on the far right and on the far left. They both seem to be converging in some ways on resentment, hatred, suspicion, anxiety about the Jews.”

As for the sentiment on the far right, he said, “I think it’s more a kind of tribal nostalgic sense that America is supposed to be or was thought to be kind of a Christian nation.”

He said the debate over definitions obscures a problem.

“Does it even matter whether it fits some kind of arbitrary notion of antisemitism, which in itself is a very arbitrary and time-bound definition?” he asked.

But, he said, talking about the problem is a start.

“In the short term, obviously it requires education, activism, political leadership to draw the line at acceptable or what’s not acceptable expressions of anti-Jewish sentiment,” he said. “Both here and abroad.”

Kim Lewis contributed to this report.
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An independent panel formed to investigate the performance of the Secret Service after an assassination attempt in July against former President Donald Trump has called for extensive changes to the agency, including the installation of new leadership from the outside.

In a report issued Thursday morning, the panel praised the bravery of the individual agents who work to protect political figures in the United States. However, it blasted their leaders for creating an internal culture that has become “bureaucratic, complacent and static,” with the result that “the Secret Service does not perform at the elite levels needed to discharge its critical mission.”

Without “fundamental reform,” the panel warned, other attacks on the agency’s protectees “can and will happen again.”

In a statement, Secret Service Acting Director Ronald L. Rowe Jr. said, “We respect the work of the Independent Review Panel and will carefully examine the report and recommendations released today.”

He added that the agency has started making changes as a result of the attempted assassination.

“We have already significantly improved our readiness, operational and organizational communications and implemented enhanced protective operations for the former president and other protectees,” Rowe said.

Failure in Pennsylvania

President Joe Biden established the panel after a July 13 episode in Butler, Pennsylvania, in which a young man with a rifle was able to get within a few hundred meters of Trump while he was delivering a campaign speech. The would-be assassin fired several shots; Trump’s right ear was struck, but he was not seriously wounded. One bystander was killed, and two others were seriously wounded, before a Secret Service countersniper team killed the gunman.

In the aftermath of the incident, it became clear that there had been multiple failures leading up to the assassination attempt. The gunman was identified as a potential danger in advance of the shooting but was not prevented from accessing the roof of a building with a clear line of sight to the stage where Trump was speaking.

In the minutes leading up to the shooting, law enforcement officials in the crowd were made aware of the shooter’s presence, but because of poor coordination of communications, the information was not relayed to the members of Trump’s protective detail near the stage.

Panel’s recommendations

The panel’s findings include calls for specific changes to the way the Secret Service handles large events such as the Trump rally in Butler.

While the Secret Service has primary responsibility for the security of such events, it relies on other law enforcement agencies, including state and local police, for assistance. The report calls for having a unified command post at events like the Butler rally that would allow better communication among various agencies.

The report also calls for creating specific plans for dealing with all locations within 914 meters (1,000 yards) of an event that offer line-of-sight vision of the protectee, overhead surveillance of all outdoor events, improved communication systems and other changes.

Leadership change

In the wake of the Butler shooting, Kimberly Cheatle resigned as Secret Service director and was temporarily replaced by Rowe. However, the report issued Thursday calls for a much more extensive shakeup of the agency’s higher echelons.

Citing “an urgent need for fresh thinking informed by external experience and perspective,” the panel recommended that a new director, drawn from outside the Secret Service, be put in place and “be allowed to bring in the leadership team he or she thinks most fit.”

The new leadership would be charged with addressing multiple problems identified by the investigation, including “a troubling lack of critical thinking” within the agency and “corrosive cultural attitudes regarding resourcing and ‘doing more with less.’ ”

The report also urged a refocusing of the agency on its protective duties, to the point of potentially “shedding certain peripheral responsibilities,” including complex investigations into financial fraud and counterfeiting.

‘More with less’

Ronald Kessler, an author and journalist who has written two books about the Secret Service, told VOA that the panel correctly identified a number of problems with the agency. In particular, he cited the “do more with less” ethos, which he said has been present in the agency since it was folded into the Department of Homeland Security more than 20 years ago.

Kessler said it has become a point of pride in the agency that it operates on a shoestring rather than demanding more funding and resources.

“It’s a recipe for mediocrity and just the opposite of what anybody would want in any organization,” he said.

Within the agency, Kessler said, “the way to be promoted has been, ‘You don’t make waves, you don’t ask for more money, you don’t point out problems, you don’t expose the fact that the technical systems that are just basic don’t work.’ ”

Kessler praised the decision to seek outside leadership.

“In any organization, when it’s failing, you bring in outside people, whether it’s a private company or a government agency, and the people do respond,” he said.

Doubts about outside leadership

Paul Eckloff, a 23-year veteran of the agency who served as the assistant special agent in charge of the protection details of Presidents Barack Obama and Trump, said he doubted the wisdom of seeking outside leadership for an agency as unique as the Secret Service.

“The report is indicative of some fundamental misunderstandings of how the Secret Service operates, and these misunderstandings would be shared by any outside leader,” he told VOA.

“It would exacerbate problems within the rank and file, who believe that they are not well represented,” Eckloff said. “If the complaint about Secret Service leadership was that they were detached from the operators on the ground — [a job] they ostensibly have done before — imagine a leader who never held a post. How detached would they be?”

Eckloff also warned that requiring the agency to focus exclusively on its protective mission would be counterproductive. Serving on a protective detail is extremely intense work, he said, with agents often working weeks at a time without a day off.

For that reason, the agency tries to limit the time agents are assigned directly to a protective detail to periods of five to eight years, after which they rotate off and move into investigative work.

This leaves the agency with a deep pool of experienced agents who can be called upon to assist in protective details at times when the agency needs to surge its capacity, which occurs at least every four years during presidential elections.

The panel reviewed the attack from early August through early October. Members were Mark Filip, a former federal judge and former deputy attorney general; David Mitchell, a former superintendent of the Maryland State Police; Janet Napolitano, former secretary of homeland security; and Frances Townsend, a former homeland security adviser to President George W. Bush.
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washington — The United States on Thursday announced fresh sanctions targeting Chinese and Russian entities for their role in designing, building and shipping attack drones that have resulted in mass casualties in Ukraine.

The sanctions target two Chinese entities, Xiamen Limbach Aircraft Engine Co., Ltd., and Redlepus Vector Industry Shenzhen Co Ltd (Redlepus), Russian entity TSK Vektor and TSK Vektor’s General Director Artem Mikhailovich Yamshchikov.

A senior administration official told reporters Thursday that the entities were involved in developing the Russian Garpiya series long-range attack drones, producing them in China and shipping them directly to Russia.

“The Garpiya, designed and produced in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in collaboration with Russian defense firms, has been used to destroy critical infrastructure and has resulted in mass casualties,” the U.S. State Department said in a statement.

“Today’s action is part of our continued effort to disrupt attempts by PRC-based and Russia-based entities and individuals to support Russia’s acquisition of advanced weapons technology and components. We will continue to impose costs on those who provide support to Russia’s military-industrial base.”

The senior administration official said the U.S. has warned Beijing in the past about the network, contradicting Chinese statements that they are not aware of such networks.

Two Chinese firms are directly “involved in producing and shipping things that are unmistakably part of Russia’s war against Ukraine and are going unmistakably to an actor that the West has already identified and sanctioned as being part of the Russian military industrial base,” said the official.

Since 2022, the U.S. has sanctioned close to 100 entities based in China and Hong Kong. The majority of them are part of the supply chain of dual-use items – components or goods that can be converted by Russia into military items that are then being deployed against Ukraine.

However, Thursday’s sanctions were the first to hit Chinese entities “directly developing and producing complete weapons systems in partnership with Russian firms.”

Also Thursday, the U.K. announced its largest package of sanctions against Russia’s “shadow fleet of oil tankers” – ships that supposedly knowingly operate in defiance of Western sanctions.

London said 18 more shadow fleet ships will be barred from U.K. ports, bringing the total number of oil tankers sanctioned to 43.

Sanctions working

In response to VOA’s question, the official said that Western sanctions are working.

“This is having a direct impact on their economy. It’s having a direct impact on their ability to get war material. It’s having a direct impact on the quality of goods that they are achieving,” the official said.

A second senior administration official said Moscow is feeling “unprecedented external pressure” on its trade and investment projects with China. Growing trade ties between the two countries, though, indicate “they are continuing to innovate and circumvent which is why we are also moving out on sanctions and other tools.”

China says it is not providing weapons for Russia. Beijing maintains it handles its export of dual-use items in accordance with laws and applies strict controls on drone exports.

The sanctioned companies’ transactions are “incompatible” with Beijing’s statements, the second official said. “If China is serious about that commitment, we are asking them to take action to shut down this network.”

Beijing has said in the past it “firmly opposes unilateral sanctions and long-arm jurisdiction that have no basis in international law or authorization of the U.N. Security Council.”

Every month, Beijing exports to Russia more than $300 million of those so-called dual-use items that have both commercial and military applications, according to an analysis of Chinese customs data by the Carnegie Endowment think tank.

Ties have grown between Moscow and Beijing. On Wednesday, Chinese Premier Li Qiang and Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin announced plans for expanded cooperation during the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, or SCO, summit in Islamabad, Pakistan. The SCO was founded by Russia and China in 2001 to counter Western alliances.

VOA’s Paris Huang and Henry Ridgwell contributed to this story.
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WASHINGTON — An Alabama man was arrested on Thursday over criminal charges that he hacked the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s X account earlier this year, in an action that caused bitcoin’s value to spike, federal prosecutors announced. 

In January, a hacker posted false news about a widely anticipated announcement the SEC was expected to make about bitcoin, shocking the market and sending the cryptocurrency’s price spiking. The post on @SECGov said the securities regulator had approved exchange-traded funds to hold bitcoin. The SEC deleted the post shortly after it appeared. 

Eric Council Jr., 25, of Athens, Alabama, was arrested on Thursday morning in connection with the hack, the U.S. Attorney’s office for the District of Columbia said in a statement on Thursday. 

The SEC did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Thursday’s arrest.  

The agency previously said it was the victim of “SIM swapping,” a technique used by fraudsters to seize control of telephone lines, when its account on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, was hacked earlier in January.
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The U.S. states of Florida, North Carolina and Georgia are dealing with the aftermath of two major hurricanes that killed hundreds of people and caused tens of billions of dollars in damage. With the presidential election less than a month away and the race extremely close, White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara looks at how the storms might affect voting in these states.
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An independent panel investigating the attempted assassination of Donald Trump at a Pennsylvania campaign rally faulted the Secret Service for poor communications that day and failing to secure the building where the gunman took his shots. The review also found more systemic issues at the agency such as a failure to understand the unique risks facing Trump and a culture of doing “more with less.” 

The 52-page report issued Thursday took the Secret Service to task for specific problems leading up to the July 13 rally in Butler as a well as deeper one within the agency’s culture. It recommended bringing in new, outside leadership and refocusing on its protective mission. 

“The Secret Service as an agency requires fundamental reform to carry out its mission,” the authors wrote Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas of the Homeland Security Department, the Secret Services’ parent agency, in a letter accompanying their report. “Without that reform, the Independent Review Panel believes another Butler can and will happen again.” 

One rallygoer was killed and two others wounded when Thomas Michael Crooks climbed onto the roof of a nearby building and opened fire as Trump spoke. The former president was wounded in the ear before being rushed off the stage by Secret Service agents. That shooting, along with another incident in Florida when Trump was golfing — a gunman there never got a line of site on the president or fired a shot — has led to a crisis in confidence in the agency. 

The report by a panel of four former law enforcement officials from national and state government follows investigations by members of Congress, the agency’s own investigators and by Homeland Security’s oversight body. 

A look at the report’s key findings and recommendations: 

Poor communications, no plan for key buildings 

The panel echoed previous reports that have zeroed in on the failure to secure the building near the rally that had a clear line of site to where Trump was speaking and the multiple communications problems that hindered the ability of the Secret Service and local and state law enforcement to talk to each other. 

“The failure to secure a complex of buildings, portions of which were within approximately 130 yards of the protectee and containing numerous positions carrying high-angle line of sight risk, represents a critical security failure,” the report said. 

The panel faulted the planning between Secret Service and the local law enforcement, and said the Secret Service failed to ask about what was being done to secure the building: “Relying on a general understanding that ‘the locals have that area covered’ is simply not good enough and, in fact, at Butler this attitude contributed to the security failure.” 

The panel also cited the fact that there were two separated command posts at the Butler rally: one with various local law enforcement and another with the Secret Service: “This created, at the highest level, a structural divide in the flow of communications.” 

There were other communications problems. 

The Secret Service had to switch radio channels because radio traffic of agents protecting first lady Jill Biden at an event in Pittsburgh was popping up on the channels of agents covering the Butler rally. 

The panel also noted that all the law enforcement personnel on the ground were using a “chaotic mixture” of radio, cell phone, text, and e-mail throughout the day to communicate. 

Also the panel said it was unclear who had ultimate command that day. 

Cultural issues within the agency 

The report delved into the agency’s culture and painted a picture of an agency struggling to think critically about how it carries out its mission, especially when it comes to protecting Trump. 

The panel said agency personnel operated under the assumption that they effectively had to “do more with less.” The report said the additional security measures taken to protect Trump after the Butler shooting should have been taken before. 

“To be clear, the Panel did not identify any nefarious or malicious intent behind this phenomenon, but rather an overreliance on assigning personnel based on categories (former, candidate, nominee) instead of an individualized assessment of risk,” the panel wrote. 

The panel also noted the “back-and-forth” between the Trump security detail and Secret Service headquarters regarding how many people were needed to protect him. 

The panel also faulted some of the senior-level staff who were involved in the rally for what they called a “lack of ownership.” In one example, the panel said a senior agent on site who was tasked with coordinating communications didn’t walk around the rally site ahead of timen and did not brief the state police counterpart before the rally about how communications would be managed. 

It cited the relative inexperience of two specific agents who played a role in security for the July 13 rally. One was the site agent from Trump’s detail whose job it was to coordinate with the Pittsburgh field office on security planning for the rally. The panel said the agent graduated from the Secret Service academy in 2020, and had only been on the Trump detail since 2023. Before the Butler rally the agent had only done “minimal previous site advance work or site security planning.” 

Another agent assigned to operate a drone detection system had only used the technology at two prior events. 

What did the panel recommend? 

Having a unified command post at all large events where Secret Service and other law enforcement representatives are all physically in the same place; overhead surveillance for all outdoor events; security plans must include a way to mitigate line of site concerns out to 1,000 yards and who’s in charge at the event; and more training on how to get protectees out of dangerous scenarios. 

The panel said the agency also needs new, outside leadership and a renewed focus on its core protective mission while expressing skepticism that the agency should continue with the investigations it currently conducts. While the Secret Service is well known for what it does to protect presidents and other dignitaries, it also investigates financial crimes. 

“In the Panel’s opinion, it is simply unacceptable for the Service to have anything less than a paramount focus on its protective mission, particularly while that protective mission function is presently suboptimal,” the report said. 

The panel members were Mark Filip, deputy attorney general under President George W. Bush; David Mitchell, who served in numerous state and local law enforcement roles in Maryland and Delaware; Janet Napolitano, homeland security secretary under President Barack Obama; and Frances Fragos Townsend, Bush’s assistant for homeland security and counterterrorism. 
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LOS ANGELES — The Archdiocese of Los Angeles has agreed to pay $880 million to victims of clergy sexual abuse dating back decades, in what an attorney said was the largest single child sex abuse settlement with a Catholic archdiocese, it was announced Wednesday.

After the announcement of the agreement in principle, Archbishop José H. Gomez said in a statement, “I am sorry for every one of these incidents, from the bottom of my heart.”

“My hope is that this settlement will provide some measure of healing for what these men and women have suffered,” the archbishop added. “I believe that we have come to a resolution of these claims that will provide just compensation to the survivor-victims of these past abuses.”

Attorneys for 1,353 people who allege that they suffered horrific abuse at the hands of local Catholic priests reached the settlement after months of negotiations with the archdiocese, the Los Angeles Times reported.

The agreement caps a quarter-century of litigation against the most populous archdiocese in the United States.

Attorneys in the Plaintiffs’ Liaison Committee said in a joint statement, “While there is no amount of money that can replace what was taken from these 1,353 brave individuals who have suffered in silence for decades, there is justice in accountability.”

Under the settlement, the plaintiffs will engage in a process— that will not involve the archdiocese — to allocate the settlement amount among the participants.

The archdiocese has previously paid $740 million to victims in various settlements and had pledged to better protect its church members, so this settlement would put the total payout at more than $1.5 billion, the Times said.

Attorney Morgan Stewart, who led the negotiations, said in a statement that the settlement is the largest single child sex abuse settlement with a Catholic archdiocese.

“These survivors have suffered for decades in the aftermath of the abuse. Dozens of the survivors have died. They are aging, and many of those with knowledge of the abuse within the church are too. It was time to get this resolved,” Stewart told the Times.

The settlement will be funded by archdiocese investments, accumulated reserves, bank financing, and other assets. According to the archdiocese, certain religious orders and others named in the litigation will also cover some of the cost of the settlement, the Times said.
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U.S. forces carried out airstrikes Wednesday against Houthi militant weapons storage sites in Yemen, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said.

The strikes, conducted by B-2 bombers, targeted weapons the Houthis have used in a yearlong campaign of attacks against ships in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden that have disrupted major sea shipping routes.

“This was a unique demonstration of the United States’ ability to target facilities that our adversaries seek to keep out of reach, no matter how deeply buried underground, hardened, or fortified,” Austin said.

The Iran-backed Houthis have said their campaign of using boats, missiles and drones to target vessels is being done in solidarity with the Palestinians amid the war in Gaza.

The United States and Britain have conducted multiple strikes against the Houthis to try to protect the shipping lanes, while commercial companies have rerouted many ships to use the longer and more expensive route of going around the African continent.

“The Houthis’ illegal attacks continue to disrupt the free flow of international commerce, threaten environmental catastrophe, and put innocent civilian lives and U.S. and partner forces’ lives at risk,” Austin said.
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US President Joe Biden heads to Germany on Thursday, a week later than planned and on a compressed timeline after Hurricane Milton grounded him last week. Both he and Germany’s leader have been facing mounting pressure over their support for Ukraine — both having recently announced new security packages. VOA White House correspondent Anita Powell reports.
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washington — U.S. President Joe Biden joined former Democratic presidents and others to honor longtime human rights advocate and storied political family matriarch Ethel Kennedy at a memorial service in Washington on Wednesday after her death last week at age 96.

The widow of Robert F. Kennedy — a former U.S. attorney general and U.S. senator, who was assassinated while seeking the Democratic presidential nomination in 1968 — founded a human rights center to carry on her husband’s work.

She never remarried and went on to raise her 11 children, enduring a host of other family tragedies along the way, including separate plane crashes that killed her parents, brother and nephew, as well as the untimely deaths of several of her children, grandchildren and a great-grandchild.

She and her husband were devastated by the assassination of his brother, President John F. Kennedy, in Dallas in 1963.

Biden, a fellow Irish Catholic who has leaned on his faith amid his own losses, including the death of his son Beau, said the Democratic family matriarch was there for him at his time of tragedy. He said her husband had been one of his heroes.

“Ethel was a hero in her own right,” Biden said in remarks at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle in Washington, just blocks from the White House.

Former Democratic presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, as well as former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and others, also reflected on her life.

The son of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., who was assassinated just two months before Robert Kennedy, noted the two families’ shared journey and understanding of sacrifice amid their work for social justice.

“Faith and history knitted us together. Respect and love has kept us together,” Martin Luther King III told the crowd.

The Kennedys were known for their parties and Wednesday’s service was no different, with scores of relatives filling the pews and high-profile attendees remembering the infectious spirit highlighted by her children and grandchildren.

“She was a spitfire,” Obama said. “As serious as Ethel was about righting wrongs, she never seemed to take herself too seriously.”

Other Democratic attendees included California Governor Gavin Newsom and former top U.S. diplomat and presidential candidate John Kerry. Country star Kenny Chesney sang “You Are My Sunshine” while Sting surprised guests with “Fragile” and Stevie Wonder with “Isn’t She Lovely.”

Over the decades, Kennedy took up many causes championed by her late husband, including fighting poverty, working for social justice and protecting the environment. Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2014. She died on October 10 from complications following a stroke, her family said.

Her daughter Kathleen Kennedy Townsend was Maryland’s lieutenant governor, while her son Joseph P. Kennedy II represented Massachusetts in the U.S. House of Representatives. Her grandson, former U.S. Representative Joseph P. Kennedy III, serves as special envoy to Northern Ireland.

Her son Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an anti-vaccine advocate and former independent presidential candidate, broke from his family’s long Democratic ties to endorse Donald Trump in November’s election.

Many members of the Kennedy clan have denounced his election politics and backed the Democratic ticket, now led by U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris after Biden stepped aside in July. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. attended Wednesday’s service alongside his family but made no remarks.
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washington — Recent arrests in the United States and in Europe have law enforcement and intelligence agencies on alert, bolstering concerns about a reinvigorated Islamic State terror group bent on lashing out against the West.

FBI officials Wednesday confirmed the bureau shared information with French authorities following last week’s arrest of 27-year-old Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi, an Afghan national in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, on charges connected to a mass shooting plot in the name of the Islamic State group, to coincide with the U.S. election in November.

That information led to the arrest of a 22-year-old Afghan national in the Haute-Garonne region of France, who French officials say is linked to Tawhedi.

That arrest followed the arrests of three other men in the same region, again carried out in coordination with the U.S.

French anti-terrorism prosecutors said Saturday that the suspects, all of whom are said to be followers of the Islamic State, appear to have been involved in a plan to carry out an attack on a football stadium or a shopping center.

“The recent arrests in France and by the FBI’s Oklahoma City field office demonstrate the importance of partnerships to detect and disrupt potential terrorist attacks,” the FBI said in a statement.

“The FBI’s top priority is preventing acts of terrorism, and we are committed to working with our partners both overseas and in the United States to uncover any plots and protect our communities from violence,” it said.

The arrests follow repeated warnings from Western counterterrorism officials that the Islamic State, also known as IS or ISIS, has set its sights on launching attacks against the U.S. and Europe. And many have raised specific concerns about the group’s Afghan affiliate, known as IS-Khorasan or ISIS-K.

IS-Khorasan “does have the intention to carry out external attacks, including external attacks inside the United States,” said U.S. Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen, speaking during a Washington Post webcast last month.

“We are very concerned about the capacity of ISIS-K to potentially move operatives into the United States,” he added.

Others have warned that IS, and IS-Khorasan, have each sought to expand recruiting efforts around the globe.

Some Western officials and regional observers have told VOA that as far back as 2021, the IS Afghan affiliate was seeking to seed Central Asian states such as Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan with small but highly capable cells and networks that could serve as the basis for future attacks.

Some also have warned that IS-Khorasan has since built on those efforts, increasingly trying to target Afghans and Central Asians living in the West.

“We’ve seen ISIS-K make a concerted effort to recruit from diaspora communities,” said Austin Doctor, the director of counterterrorism research initiatives at the National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology and Education Center, or NCITE, speaking with VOA last week following the Oklahoma City arrest.

“It will be another important factor to watch as more information becomes available.”

Information from Agence France-Presse was used in this article.
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With the U.S. presidential election just weeks away, border security remains a central issue. Reporting from Arizona, VOA immigration correspondent Aline Barros spoke with the U.S. Border Patrol and a migration expert for two views on what border security means. Video editor: Henry Hernandez
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washington — Fifteen days after turning 100, former U.S. president Jimmy Carter cast his ballot in the U.S. election on Wednesday, fulfilling an earlier declared wish to live long enough to vote for Kamala Harris.

The former Democratic leader “voted by mail,” according to the Carter Center, the nonprofit he founded after he left the White House in 1981 to pursue his vision of world diplomacy.

The centenarian — who left office under a cloud of unpopularity, but has seen his star rise ever since — took advantage of early voting in his home state of Georgia, where he is receiving hospice care.

Carter had told his family earlier this year that living long enough to vote for Harris and help defeat her Republican rival, Donald Trump, was more important to him than his centennial, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution newspaper.

He reached both milestones.

More than 420,000 people have cast their ballot since early voting began Tuesday in Georgia, according to Gabriel Sterling, a state election official who posted the figures at midday.

Election Day is November 5.

Carter, a one-term president, has been receiving end-of-life care in his hometown of Plains in Georgia since February last year.

He is the first former U.S. president to reach the century mark, another extraordinary milestone for the one-time peanut farmer who worked his way to the White House.
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Since the U.S. Supreme Court sent the issue of abortion back to the states in 2022, Democrats have mobilized to protect abortion rights while Republicans have worked to restrict the procedure on religious and moral grounds. The issue is motivating voters to go to the polls this election year. VOA Congressional Correspondent Katherine Gypson has more from Nevada. Videographer: Mary Cieslak
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The U.S. agency charged with protecting the life of the president of the United States and other high-ranking officials wants state and local law enforcement to do more to stop potential threats from escalating into violence.

And it is trying to show police agencies across the country exactly how to do it.

The U.S. Secret Service’s National Threat Assessment Center (NTAC) on Wednesday issued a new guide, encouraging law enforcement agencies to create specific units to address threatening behavior in cases where there are significant concerns, even though no laws have been broken.

The guide specifically calls for police agencies to set up what NTAC calls behavioral threat assessment units that can assess potential dangers and then provide resources to make sure individuals get help before they resort to violence.

“What our research has continuously found is that in many cases of mass violence or other forms of targeted violence, the attacker’s behavior was witnessed by community bystanders, some of whom sought to report their concerns to public safety officials,” said Lina Alathari, NTAC director, briefing reporters ahead of the guide’s release.

“Unfortunately, many communities lack the structured systems to receive, evaluate and respond to these reports in a way that would reduce the likelihood of a violent or tragic outcome,” she said.

NTAC’s plea for law enforcement agencies to find ways to be more proactive is not new.

A January 2023 report that analyzed 173 mass attacks carried out over a five-year period urged communities to make it easier for witnesses to report concerns and allow for earlier intervention from crisis counselors and social services.

But the latest guidance comes as national security officials are bracing for potential violence.

The Department of Homeland Security’s 2025 annual threat assessment, issued last month, warned, “The terrorism threat environment in the United States over the next year will remain high.

“The threat will continue to be characterized primarily by lone offenders or small cells motivated to violence by a combination of racial, religious, gender, or anti-government grievances; conspiracy theories; and personalized factors,” it added.

The Secret Service has itself responded to two unrelated attempts to assassinate former president and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, coming under criticism for its failure to prevent one of the would-be assassins from firing eight shots and injuring Trump before he was stopped. 

Investigators in that case have said the now dead 20-year-old gunman had spent months researching assassinations and saw the former president as a “target of opportunity.” 

The new guide, issued Wednesday, aims to show police agencies how to spot warning signs more quickly and find ways to intervene.

“We have seen historically that law enforcement in the United States may at times feel limited in what they can do when responding to reports of threats or other concerning behavior, particularly when that behavior does not involve criminal activity,” said NTAC Assistant Chief Steven Driscoll.

“This publication represents the most comprehensive guidance ever produced on how to adapt and operationalize the Secret Services Behavioral Threat Assessment model for use by state and local law enforcement agencies,” he said.

Some state law enforcement agencies have already adopted the Secret Service model.

North Carolina’s State Bureau of Investigation set up a behavioral analysis threat assessment unit following a 2018 shooting that killed 17 people in Parkland, Florida.

The unit works with other state agencies and the state’s university system to prevent potential attacks.

The state of Hawaii has likewise created a team to intervene in cases of potential violence. And there is a similar program in Washington, the U.S. capital.

“Behavioral threat assessment methodology has been proven effective in safeguarding community time and again,” Driscoll said. “Prevention happens successfully every day, and thankfully, these are stories that we never hear about, when everybody goes home safely.”

As an example, Driscoll pointed to a 2021 NTAC study that looked at 67 incidents in which attacks on schools were averted due to students and community members reporting warning signs so authorities could intervene before anyone got hurt.

Despite such successes, NTAC said it does not have any data on how many communities have behavioral threat assessment units. And officials worry that too many state and local law enforcement agencies lack access to programs that allow them to step in when a threat has been identified but no law has been broken.

Some federal funding, though, is available.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said it has awarded almost $90 million through its Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention Grant Program since 2020.

And NTAC’s Alathari said the specialized units can be effective, even when people and resources are scarce.

“Behavioral assessment units are able to vary in size,” she said in response to a question from VOA. “An agency with limited resources to establish this kind of unit could begin with just a single designated violence prevention officer who maintains the responsibility of gathering information, information to manage situations that might revolve around potential violence.”
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ATLANTA — A judge has blocked a new rule that requires Georgia Election Day ballots to be counted by hand after the close of voting. The ruling came a day after the same judge ruled that county election officials must certify election results by the deadline set in law.

The State Election Board last month passed the rule requiring that three poll workers each count the paper ballots — not votes — by hand after the polls close.

The county election board in Cobb County, in Atlanta’s suburbs, had filed a lawsuit seeking to have a judge declare that rule and five others recently passed by the state board invalid, saying they exceed the state board’s authority, weren’t adopted in compliance with the law and are unreasonable.

In a ruling late Tuesday, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney wrote, that the so-called hand count rule “is too much, too late” and blocked its enforcement while he considers the merits of the case.

McBurney on Monday had ruled in a separate case that “no election superintendent (or member of a board of elections and registration) may refuse to certify or abstain from certifying election results under any circumstance.” While they are entitled to inspect the conduct of an election and to review related documents, he wrote, “any delay in receiving such information is not a basis for refusing to certify the election results or abstaining from doing so.”

Georgia law says county election superintendents — generally multimember boards — “shall” certify election results by 5 p.m. on the Monday after an election, or the Tuesday if Monday is a holiday as it is this year.

The two rulings came as early in-person voting began Tuesday in Georgia.

They are victories for Democrats, liberal voting rights groups and some legal experts who have raised concerns that Donald Trump’s allies could refuse to certify the results if the former president loses to Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris in next month’s presidential election. They have also argued that new rules enacted by the Trump-endorsed majority on the State Election Board could be used to stop or delay certification and to undermine public confidence in the results.

In blocking the hand count rule, McBurney noted that there are no guidelines or training tools for its implementation and that the secretary of state had said the rule was passed too late for his office to provide meaningful training or support. The judge also wrote that no allowances have been made in county election budgets to provide for additional personnel or expenses associated with the rule.

“The administrative chaos that will — not may — ensue is entirely inconsistent with the obligations of our boards of elections (and the SEB) to ensure that our elections are fair legal, and orderly,” he wrote.

The state board may be right that the rule is smart policy, McBurney wrote, but the timing of its passage makes implementing it now “quite wrong.” He invoked the memory of the riot at the U.S. Capitol by people seeking to stop the certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s presidential victory on Jan. 6, 2021, writing, “Anything that adds uncertainty and disorder to the electoral process disserves the public.”

During a hearing earlier Tuesday, Robert Thomas, a lawyer for the State Election Board, argued that the process isn’t complicated and that estimates show that it would take extra minutes, not hours, to complete. He also said memory cards from the scanners, which are used to tally the votes, could be sent to the tabulation center while the hand count is happening so reporting of results wouldn’t be delayed.

State and national Democratic groups that had joined the suit on the side of the Cobb election board, along with the Harris campaign, celebrated McBurney’s ruling in a joint statement: “From the beginning, this rule was an effort to delay election results to sow doubt in the outcome, and our democracy is stronger thanks to this decision to block it.”

The certification ruling stemmed from a lawsuit filed by Julie Adams, a Republican member of the election board in Fulton County, which includes most of the city of Atlanta and is a Democratic stronghold. Adams sought a declaration that her duties as an election board member were discretionary and that she is entitled to “full access” to “election materials.”

Long an administrative task that attracted little attention, certification of election results has become politicized since Trump tried to overturn his loss to Democrat Joe Biden in the 2020 general election. Republicans in several swing states, including Adams, refused to certify results earlier this year and some have sued to keep from being forced to sign off on election results.

Adams’ suit, backed by the Trump-aligned America First Policy Institute, argued county election board members have the discretion to reject certification. In court earlier this month, her lawyers also argued county election officials could certify results without including certain ballots if they suspect problems.

Judge McBurney wrote that nothing in Georgia law gives county election officials the authority to determine that fraud has occurred or what should be done about it. Instead, he wrote, state law says a county election official’s “concerns about fraud or systemic error are to be noted and shared with the appropriate authorities but they are not a basis for a superintendent to decline to certify.”

The Democratic National Committee and Democratic Party of Georgia had joined the lawsuit as defendants with the support of Harris’ campaign. The campaign called the ruling a “major legal win.”

Adams said in a statement that McBurney’s ruling has made it clear that she and other county election officials “cannot be barred from access to elections in their counties.”

A flurry of election rules passed by the State Election Board since August has generated a crush of lawsuits. McBurney earlier this month heard a challenge to two rules having to do with certification brought by the state and national Democratic parties. Another Fulton County judge is set to hear arguments in two challenges to rules tomorrow — one brought by the Democratic groups and another filed by a group headed by a former Republican lawmaker. And separate challenges are also pending in at least two other counties.

 
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