President-elect Donald Trump’s threats of mass deportations are harming the mental health of many immigrants, psychologists and organizations warn.
Click here for the full story in Spanish.
«Якщо ми зараз ведемо бої на території Курської області РФ, то при нашому відході ми переносимо ці дії вже на територію України Сумської області»
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U.S. President-elect Donald Trump made immigration a key focus of his 2024 presidential campaign. His incoming administration is planning stricter enforcement. VOA’s Immigration Correspondent Aline Barros explains what these policies might mean.
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Видання зазначає, що Київ міг сповільнити використання ракет, бо вже спочатку спрямував їх на російські об’єкти, які давно хотів уразити
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Rio de Janeiro, Brazil — Authorities in Brazil said Friday they are probing Chinese auto giant BYD and one of its contractors for suspected “trafficking” of Chinese workers building a factory in the South American country.
Federal prosecutors in Brazil are weighing possible criminal action after labor inspectors found 163 Chinese workers “in slave-like conditions” at the construction site in the northeast state of Bahia, a government statement said.
The workers, employed by BYD contractor Jinjiang Open Engineering, were viewed as “victims of international trafficking for the purpose of labor exploitation,” said the statement.
A Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman in Beijing, Mao Ning, said: “We have noted the relevant reports… and are currently verifying the situation.”
She added that Beijing “attaches great importance to protecting laborers’ legitimate rights and interests, and has always required Chinese enterprises to operate in line with the law and regulations.”
On Thursday, BYD and Jinjiang were quizzed by Brazilian government ministries, which said “the companies committed to collaborate in protecting the rescued workers.”
Allegations denied
Brazilian officials on Monday said it had found the labor violations at the site, which is being built to be BYD’s largest electric car plant outside of Asia.
Bahia’s regional ministry for works (MPT) ordered construction be suspended at part of the site.
Inspections carried out since November found “degrading working conditions” at the site, including beds in workers’ accommodation lacking mattresses, and one bathroom per 31 workers, an MPT statement said.
The workers, who spent long hours under Brazil’s sun, had “visible signs of skin damage,” the statement said.
The MPT added that it suspected “forced labor,” with workers’ passports confiscated and their employer “retaining 60 percent of their salary.”
After the allegations were made public, BYD’s Brazilian subsidiary said it had broken its contract with the Jinjiang subsidiary responsible for work on the site. It added that it had sent the 163 workers to stay in hotels.
Jinjiang on Thursday — in a statement issued before the online hearing with Brazilian authorities — denied the slavery allegation.
The company said the accusations “seriously damaged the dignity of Chinese people” and claimed it “made our staff feel seriously insulted and that their human rights have been violated.”
A Jinjiang representative told AFP on Friday that the company would hold a press conference in Brazil.
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Штаб повідомляє про бої на Курахівському напрямку, поблизу Петропавлівки, Слов’янки, Дачного та Курахового, 9 російських атак вже відбили
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Уряд виділив 7,5 мільярдів гривень для створення безпечних умов у закладах освіти та будівництва укриттів
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NEW YORK — Richard Parsons, one of corporate America’s most prominent Black executives who held top posts at Time Warner and Citigroup, died Thursday. He was 76.
Parsons, who died at his Manhattan home, was diagnosed with multiple myeloma in 2015 and cited “unanticipated complications” from the disease for cutting back on work a few years later.
The financial services company Lazard, where Parsons was a longtime board member, confirmed his death.
David Zaslav, the president and CEO of Time Warner successor Warner Bros. Discovery, remembered Parsons as a “great mentor and friend” and a “tough and brilliant negotiator, always looking to create something where both sides win.”
“All who got a chance to work with him and know him saw that unusual combination of great leadership with integrity and kindness,” Zaslav said, calling him “one of the great problem solvers this industry has ever seen.”
Parsons’ friend Ronald Lauder told The New York Times that the cause of death was cancer. Parsons stepped down on December 3 from the boards of Lazard and Lauder’s company, Estee Lauder, citing health reasons. He had been on Estee Lauder’s board for 25 years.
Parsons, a Brooklyn native who started college at 16, was named chairman of Citigroup in 2009, one month after leaving Time Warner Inc., where he helped restore the company’s stature following its much-maligned acquisition by internet provider America Online Inc.
He steered Citigroup back to profit after financial turmoil from the subprime mortgage crisis, which upended the economy in 2007 and 2008.
Parsons was named to the board of CBS in September 2018 but resigned a month later because of illness.
“Dick’s storied career embodied the finest traditions of American business leadership,” Lazard said in a statement. The company, where Parsons was a board member from 2012 until this month, praised his “unmistakable intelligence and his irresistible warmth.”
“Dick was more than an iconic leader in Lazard’s history — he was a testament to how wisdom, warmth, and unwavering judgment could shape not just companies, but people’s lives,” the company said. “His legacy lives on in the countless leaders he counseled, the institutions he renewed, and the doors he opened for others.”
Parsons was known as a skilled negotiator, a diplomat and a crisis manager.
Although he was with Time Warner through its difficulties with AOL, he earned respect for the company and rebuilt its relations with Wall Street. He streamlined Time Warner’s structure, pared debt and sold Warner Music Group and a book publishing division.
He also fended off a challenge from activist investor Carl Icahn in 2006 to break up the company and helped Time Warner reach settlements with investors and regulators over questionable accounting practices at AOL.
Parsons joined Time Warner as president in 1995 after serving as chairman and chief executive of Dime Bancorp Inc., one of the largest U.S. thrift institutions.
In 2001, after AOL used its fortunes as the leading provider of internet access in the U.S. to buy Time Warner for $106 billion in stock, Parsons became co-chief operating officer with AOL executive Robert Pittman.
Parsons became CEO in 2002 and was named chairman the following year, replacing AOL founder Steve Case, who had also championed the combination.
The newly formed company’s internet division quickly became a drag on Time Warner. The promised synergies between traditional and new media never materialized. AOL began seeing a reduction in subscribers in 2002 as Americans replaced dial-up connections with broadband from cable TV and phone companies.
Parsons stepped down as CEO in 2007 and as chairman in 2008. A year later AOL split from Time Warner and began trading as a separate company.
A board member of Citigroup and its predecessor, Citibank, since 1996, Parsons was named chairman in 2009 at a time of turmoil for the financial institution. Citigroup had suffered five straight quarters of losses and received $45 billion in government aid. Its board had been criticized for allowing the bank to invest so heavily in the risky housing market.
Parsons, a Republican, previously worked as a lawyer for Nelson Rockefeller, a former Republican governor of New York, and in Gerald Ford’s White House. Those early stints gave him grounding in politics and negotiations. He also was an economic adviser on President Barack Obama’s transition team.
Parsons, whose love of jazz led to co-owning a Harlem jazz club, served as chairman of the Apollo Theater and the Jazz Foundation of America. He held positions on the boards of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, the American Museum of Natural History and the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
Parsons played basketball at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and received his law degree from Albany Law School in 1971. He is survived by his wife, Laura, and their family.
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The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Thursday its analysis of samples from the first severe case of bird flu in the country last week showed mutations not seen in samples from an infected backyard flock on the patient’s property.
The CDC said the patient’s sample showed mutations in the hemagglutinin (HA) gene, the part of the virus that plays a key role in it attaching to host cells.
The health body said the risk to the public from the outbreak has not changed and remains low.
Last week, the United States reported its first severe case of the virus, in a Louisiana resident above the age of 65, who was suffering from severe respiratory illness.
The patient was infected with the D1.1 genotype of the virus that was recently detected in wild birds and poultry in the United States, and not the B3.13 genotype detected in dairy cows, human cases and some poultry in multiple states.
The mutations seen in the patient are rare but have been reported in some cases in other countries and most often during severe infections. One of the mutations was also seen in another severe case from British Columbia, Canada.
No transmission from the patient in Louisiana to other persons has been identified, the CDC said.
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Двоє містян 27 і 55 років зазнали поранень, у них діагностували поранення кінцівок. Одного з поранених госпіталізували
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TAIPEI, TAIWAN — As the world prepares for U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s return to the White House, Taiwan finds itself sandwiched between Washington and Beijing as it grapples with uncertainties about the outlook of U.S.-Taiwan relations and growing military pressure from China.
Trump has already picked several politicians known for their hawkish stances on China as potential nominees for his Cabinet, including Marco Rubio and Mike Waltz, but analysts say the president-elect’s comments about Taiwan on the campaign trail and in recent interviews have not offered much clarity about how he might handle one of Washington’s most delicate relationships.
“We don’t know if [Trump] means it when he wants to return the United States to a more isolationist position,” said J. Michael Cole, a Taipei-based senior fellow with the Global Taiwan Institute.
During an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek in July, Trump said Taiwan should pay the United States for defense and compared U.S. military spending on Taiwan to an insurance policy.
“I know the people very well. Respect them greatly. They did take 100% of our chip business. I think Taiwan should pay us for defense,” he said.
In October, Trump pledged to impose additional tariffs on China if Beijing were to “go into Taiwan.”
“I would say: If you go into Taiwan, I’m sorry to do this, I’m going to tax you, at 150% to 200%,” the President-elect said during an interview with The Wall Street Journal.
In his first post-election interview with NBC News on Dec. 8, Trump didn’t publicly say whether the U.S. would militarily defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion.
“I’d prefer that they don’t do it,” Trump said, adding that he has a “very good relationship” with Chinese President Xi Jinping and that the two have been communicating since last month’s election.
During his time in office, U.S. President Joe Biden has on multiple occasions said his administration would defend Taiwan if it was attacked.
Not panicking, but concerned
Some Taiwanese residents worry about what they describe as a lack of clarity from the Trump administration.
“I’m slightly concerned about how Trump’s return to the White House might affect relations between the U.S. and Taiwan because he always prioritizes U.S. interests, which makes it hard to predict how his administration might form their Taiwan policies,” Angel Chi, a 28-year-old medical worker, told VOA in a recent interview on the streets of Taipei.
Others say while Trump’s position on Taiwan seems uncertain, they do not think his administration will reduce support for Taipei.
“I still have faith in the U.S. democratic system because he can’t decide everything by himself,” Christine Chiu, a 42-year-old accountant, told VOA.
The strong bipartisan support for Taiwan in Congress and some potential Trump Cabinet members’ track records on foreign policy could prevent U.S.-Taiwan relations from undergoing major changes during Trump’s second term, experts said.
“I don’t think there is panic in Taipei because we dealt with this situation before and we have confidence in our congressional support in the U.S.,” said Lai I-Chung, president of The Prospect Foundation, a Taiwan-based think tank made up of academics and government officials.
“The mood [in Taiwan] is we will be careful and watchful about the development, but we are not panicking,” he told VOA in an interview in Taipei.
Taiwan-US relations
In recent weeks, Taiwan’s government has been reaching out to Republican congressional leaders and Trump’s transition team. Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te spoke with U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson on the phone during his first overseas trip to the Pacific region in early December. On that trip, Lai had stopovers in Hawaii and the U.S. territory of Guam.
Additionally, two senior national security officials from Taiwan traveled to the U.S. last week to meet members of Trump’s transition team, hoping to establish ties before next month’s inauguration, Reuters news agency reported last on Dec. 19.
Cole said there should be enough “institutional resistance” in the U.S. government to prevent longstanding policies toward Taiwan from being abruptly altered.
During a regular press conference on Dec. 6, China’s Foreign Ministry responded to a question on Lai’s stopover in Guam and Hawaii and said, “No one should underestimate the firm resolve, will and ability of the Chinese government and people to safeguard sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
China’s military pressure campaign
As Taiwan tries to deepen its engagement with U.S. officials and the incoming Trump administration, China has been increasing military pressure on the island throughout 2024.
Beijing has conducted two blockade-style military exercises around Taiwan since Lai took office in May.
Last week, Taiwan’s Defense Ministry said Beijing deployed the largest number of naval and coast guard vessels to regional waters in almost three decades.
Apart from military exercises, China has increased pressure on Taiwan through a range of what are called gray zone operations, measures that involve irregular tactics but stop short of combat.
China’s use of its coast guard to intimidate and test Taiwan is one example of those gray zone tactics.
Beijing has repeatedly sent coast guard vessels to patrol waters near Taiwan’s outlying Kinmen and Matsu islands since February. Kinmen and Matsu are closer to China than they are to the main island of Taiwan.
The Prospect Foundation’s Lai said China has some coast guard vessels that are similar in size to naval destroyers, making it harder for Taiwan’s coast guard to respond proportionately.
“It would be difficult for Taiwan to [deploy] naval vessels against the Chinese coast guard, and when Taiwan responds by deploying its coast guard forces, the vessels are smaller ships [while] the Chinese coast guard vessels are as big as navy ships,” he told VOA.
Countering China
To counter the growing military pressure and gray zone operations from Beijing, Taiwan has incorporated more unscripted, real-combat drills into its annual military exercises.
The island has also increased its defense budget in recent years, which is set to reach a new high of $19.74 billion dollars in 2025.
This year, Taiwan’s government also established a committee to help strengthen the island’s civil defense capabilities.
Cole said Taiwan still faces challenges in that regard.
“There is still quite a bit of resistance not only within the security apparatus and armed forces, which don’t like the idea of involving citizens in defense, the opposition parties have also sought to derail [relevant] plans and fundings,” he told VOA.
What may come next depends on Taiwan’s actions and Beijing’s assessment of Trump’s policies toward the island after he takes office in January.
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New York — As a Democrat who immersed himself in political news during the presidential campaign, Ziad Aunallah has much in common with many Americans since the election. He’s tuned out.
“People are mentally exhausted,” said Aunallah, 45, of San Diego. “Everyone knows what is coming and we are just taking some time off.”
Television ratings — and now a new poll — clearly illustrate the phenomenon. About two-thirds of American adults say they have recently felt the need to limit media consumption about politics and government because of overload, according to the survey from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
Smaller percentages of Americans are limiting their intake of news about overseas conflicts, the economy or climate change, the poll says. Politics stand out.
Election news on CNN and MSNBC was taking up too much of Sam Gude’s time before the election, said the 47-year-old electrician from Lincoln, Nebraska. “The last thing I want to watch right now is the interregnum,” said Gude, a Democrat and no fan of President-elect Donald Trump.
Poll finds more Democrats than Republicans stepping away from news
The poll, conducted in early December, found that about 7 in 10 Democrats say they are stepping back from political news. The percentage isn’t as high for Republicans, who have reason to celebrate Trump’s victory. Still, about 6 in 10 Republicans say they’ve felt the need to take some time off too, and the share for independents is similar.
The differences are far starker for the TV networks that have been consumed by political news.
After election night through Dec. 13, the prime-time viewership of MSNBC was an average of 620,000, down 54% from the pre-election audience this year, the Nielsen company said. For the same time comparison, CNN’s average of 405,000 viewers was down 45%.
At Fox News Channel, a favorite news network for Trump fans, the post-election average of 2.68 million viewers is up 13%, Nielsen said. Since the election, 72% of the people watching one of those three cable networks in the evening were watching Fox News, compared to 53% prior to election day.
A post-election slump for fans of the losing candidate is not a new trend for networks that have become heavily identified for a partisan audience. MSNBC had similar issues after Trump was elected in 2016. Same for Fox in 2020, although that was complicated by anger: many of its viewers were outraged then by the network’s crucial election night call of Arizona for the Democratic presidential candidate, Joe Biden, and sought alternatives.
MSNBC had its own anger issues after several “Morning Joe” viewers became upset that hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski visited Trump shortly after his victory last month. Yet while the show’s ratings are down 35% since Election Day, that’s a smaller drop than the network’s prime-time ratings.
CNN points out that while it has been suffering in the television ratings, its streaming and digital ratings have been consistent.
Will political interest rebound when Trump takes office?
MSNBC can take some solace in history. In previous years, network ratings bounce back when the depression after an election loss lifts. When a new administration takes office, people who oppose it are frequently looking for a gathering place.
“I’ll be tuning back in once the clown show starts,” Aunallah said. “You have no choice. Whether or not you want to hear it, it’s happening. If you care about your country, you have no choice but to pay attention.”
But the ride may not be smooth. MSNBC’s slide is steeper than it was in 2016; and there’s some question about whether Trump opponents will want to be as engaged as they were during his first term. People are also unplugging from cable television in rates that are only getting more rapid, although MSNBC believes it has bucked this trend eating away at audiences before.
The poll indicates that Americans want less talk about politics from public figures in general. After an election season where endorsements from celebrities like Taylor Swift made headlines, the survey found that Americans are more likely to disapprove than approve of celebrities, large companies and professional athletes speaking out about politics.
Still, Gude is among those discovering other ways to get news to which he does want to pay attention, including on YouTube.
MSNBC is also in the middle of some corporate upheaval that raises questions about potential changes. Parent company Comcast announced last month that the cable network is among some properties that will spin off into a new company, which will give MSNBC new corporate leadership and cut its ties to NBC News.
Advice for networks who want to see the viewers return
Some of the Americans who have turned away from political news lately also had some advice for getting them engaged again.
Gude said, for example, that MSNBC will always have a hard-core audience of Trump haters. But if the network wants to expand its audience, “then you have to talk about issues, and you have to stop talking about Trump.”
Kathleen Kendrick, a 36-year-old sales rep from Grand Junction, Colorado, who’s a registered independent voter, said she hears plenty of people loudly spouting off about their political opinions on the job. She wants more depth when she watches the news. Much of what she sees is one-sided and shallow, she said.
“You get a story but only part of a story,” Kendrick said. “It would be nice if you could get both sides, and more research.”
Aunallah, similarly, is looking for more depth and variety. He’s not interested “in watching the angry man on the corner yelling at me anymore,” he said.
“It’s kind of their own fault that I’m not watching,” he said. “I felt they spent all this time talking about the election. They made it so much of their focus that when the main event ends, why would people want to keep watching?”
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The promised effort by President-elect Donald Trump to remake the U.S. government is set to encompass one of the country’s premier law enforcement and intelligence agencies. VOA national security correspondent Jeff Seldin reports on Trump’s choice to lead and reform the FBI. Kim Lewis contributed.
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Відповідний запобіжний захід обрав Печерський районний суд міста Києва, повідомляє Державне бюро розслідувань
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За словами Святослава, УГКЦ має запевнення, що запрошення прийняте, але коли візит здійсниться, невідомо
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Раніше голова МВА повідомив, що літнє подружжя в Херсоні звернулося по допомогу після атаки з російського безпілотника
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«Вони мають зв’язок з зовнішнім світом, мають право надсилати листи, вибирати своїх представників для того, щоб вони зв’язувалися з адміністрацією»
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