Навесні 2014 року фігурант відмовився виконувати накази свого командування про передислокацію військової частини з Бахчисараю до Одеської області
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«Крім того, пошкоджено господарські приміщення, гаражі, склади одного з підприємств, АЗС»
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Indonesia’s Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto is set to be sworn in as the country’s next president in October, after having resoundingly won elections in February. VOA’s Virginia Gunawan reports on what this means for U.S. relations with Southeast Asia’s largest country. Ahadian Utama, Hafizh Sahadeva contributed to this report
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BRUSSELS — The European Union moved Wednesday to hike tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, escalating a trade dispute over Beijing’s subsidies for the exports that Brussels worries is hurting domestic automakers.
The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, said it would impose provisional tariffs that would result in Chinese automakers facing additional duties of as much as 38%, up from the current level of 10%.
The commission said it reached out to Chinese authorities to discuss the findings of its investigation into the subsidies and “explore possible ways to resolve the issues.”
“Should discussions with Chinese authorities not lead to an effective solution,” the new rates would take effect on a provisional basis by July 4, the commission said in a press release.
Electric cars are the latest flash point in a broader trade dispute over what Brussels says is China’s unfair state support for green tech exports that also include solar panels, batteries and wind turbines.
Imports of Chinese-made EVs to the European Union have skyrocketed in recent years. They include vehicles from Western brands that have auto plants in China, including Tesla and BMW.
But EU officials complain that Chinese automakers like BYD and SAIC are increasing market share and undercutting European car brands on price thanks to Beijing’s massive subsidies.
The commission said an investigation it opened last year into China’s EV subsidies found that China’s battery electric vehicle value chain “benefits from unfair subsidization, which is causing a threat of economic injury to EU BEV producers.”
The extra tariffs would vary by company. BYD would face an additional 17.4% charge. Geely, which owns Sweden’s Volvo, would be hit with a further 20%. For SAIC, it would be 38.1% extra.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian, speaking at a daily briefing, blasted the EU’s investigation as “typical protectionism” and said Beijing would “take all measures necessary to protect our legitimate rights and interests.”
U.S. President Joe Biden slapped major new tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, advanced batteries, solar cells, steel, aluminum and medical equipment last month. Biden said that Chinese government subsidies ensure the nation’s companies don’t have to turn a profit, giving them an unfair advantage in global trade.
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At the Group of Seven summit this week, U.S. President Joe Biden will seek agreement on using interest from frozen Russian assets to aid Ukraine’s war effort. He will also push for unity in tackling global challenges such as infrastructure funding, artificial intelligence, and Chinese overcapacity in green technologies. However, as White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara reports, a shift right in the European political landscape could complicate his plans.
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united nations — The United Nation’s secretary-general has included Israel’s military and Hamas on the annual blacklist of perpetrators who harm children.
“I am appalled by the dramatic increase and unprecedented scale and intensity of grave violations against children in the Gaza Strip, Israel and the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem,” Antonio Guterres said in the report, which was sent to U.N. Security Council members on Tuesday but has not yet been published.
The annual Children and Armed Conflict report names and shames those who recruit, kill, maim or abduct children, commit sexual violence against them, deny them humanitarian assistance, or attack schools and hospitals. Guterres’ special representative Virginia Gamba is mandated by the Security Council to work to prevent and end these violations.
In the report, obtained by VOA, the United Nations said it has verified 8,009 grave violations against Israeli and Palestinian children, but the process is ongoing and slow due to the conflict. Of them, 113 were against Israeli children, and the rest were against Palestinian children in Israel and the Palestinian territories.
The report says most child casualties in Gaza from October 7 to the end of last year were caused by “the use of explosive weapons in populated areas by Israeli armed and security forces.”
In addition to Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad was also listed. Both groups are listed for the first time, accused of killing, maiming and abducting children.
The report covers the period from January to December 2023. Hamas carried out its terror attack in Israel on October 7, 2023, triggering the war that is now in its ninth month. The report covers only the casualties reported or verified in 2023.
This is the first time either Israel or Hamas has been included on the report’s blacklist, despite the killing and maiming of hundreds of children in at least three previous wars in Gaza.
Israel’s armed and security forces are listed for the killing and maiming of children and for attacks on schools and hospitals.
“The inclusion of Israeli forces on the U.N.’s ‘list of shame’ is long overdue and reflects overwhelming evidence of grave violations against children,” Jo Becker, children’s rights advocacy director at Human Rights Watch, told VOA in an email.
Israeli officials have expressed outrage at being included on the list, which also includes the Taliban and terror groups al-Qaida and Islamic State.
A U.N. spokesperson said last week that Israel was notified of its inclusion “as a courtesy.” The country promptly sought to get ahead of the report’s publication, dismissing it as more anti-Israel action by the United Nations.
“Today, the U.N. added itself to the blacklist of history when it joined those who support the Hamas murderers,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Friday. “The IDF is the most moral army in the world. No delusional U.N. decision will change that.”
His United Nations ambassador went further, publishing the video of part of his phone call with Guterres’ chief of staff.
“I’m utterly shocked and disgusted by this shameful decision of the secretary-general,” Gilad Erdan said in the call on Friday, adding that it would reward Hamas and extend the war.
Russia makes blacklist again
Last year, Russia’s armed forces landed on the blacklist for their war in Ukraine. This year, they remained listed despite a significant drop in the number of violations attributed to them. The United Nations verified the killing of 80 children and the maiming of 339 others attributed to Russian forces and affiliated groups.
A senior U.N. official said a decrease was not enough. Russia must continue this trend for at least a year and also sign a joint action plan with Gamba’s office to be delisted.
No party previously on the list was delisted this year.
Both sides in Sudan conflict make list
The situation in Sudan, which devolved into brutal violence in April 2023 when two rival generals went to war in a power struggle that continues today, has seen the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces both land on this year’s blacklist.
The report found a dramatic increase in 2023 in the military recruitment and use of children in Sudan, as well as their killing, maiming and sexual abuse. Attacks on schools and hospitals were also reported.
“I urge all parties to take preventive and mitigating actions to avoid and minimize harm and better protect children, including to refrain from the use of explosive devices,” Guterres said in the report.
The 2023 report verified nearly 33,000 grave violations committed against the world’s children in several countries experiencing conflict — an increase of 21% over the previous year. There were 11,649 confirmed child killings and maimings. Recruitment is again on the rise, after trending downward for the past two years.
Grave violations were reported in countries including Afghanistan, Burkina Faso, Colombia, Congo, Myanmar, Somalia and Syria, among others.
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За даними командування, від початку доби на фронті зафіксували 87 бойових зіткнень
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«Під час відвідування їдальні примушували військовополонених навприсядки йти один за одним і били їх кийками по спині, шиї та руках»
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Los Angeles — The Rev. James Lawson Jr., an apostle of nonviolent protest who schooled activists to withstand brutal reactions from white authorities as the Civil Rights Movement gained traction, has died, his family said Monday. He was 95.
His family said Lawson died on Sunday after a short illness in Los Angeles, where he spent decades working as a pastor, labor movement organizer and university professor.
Lawson was a close adviser to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who called him “the leading theorist and strategist of nonviolence in the world.”
Lawson met King in 1957, after spending three years in India soaking up knowledge about Mohandas K. Gandhi’s independence movement. King would travel to India himself two years later, but at the time, he had only read about Gandhi in books.
The two Black pastors — both 28 years old — quickly bonded over their enthusiasm for the Indian leader’s ideas, and King urged Lawson to put them into action in the American South.
Lawson soon led workshops in church basements in Nashville, Tennessee, that prepared John Lewis, Diane Nash, Bernard Lafayette, Marion Barry, the Freedom Riders and many others to peacefully withstand vicious responses to their challenges of racist laws and policies.
Lawson’s lessons led Nashville to become the first major city in the South to desegregate its downtown, on May 10, 1960, after hundreds of well-organized students staged lunch-counter sit-ins and boycotts of discriminatory businesses.
Lawson’s particular contribution was to introduce Gandhian principles to people more familiar with biblical teachings, showing how direct action could expose the immorality and fragility of racist white power structures.
Gandhi said “that we persons have the power to resist the racism in our own lives and souls,” Lawson told the AP. “We have the power to make choices and to say no to that wrong. That’s also Jesus.”
Years later, in 1968, it was Lawson who organized the sanitation workers strike that fatefully drew King to Memphis. Lawson said he was at first paralyzed and forever saddened by King’s assassination.
“I thought I would not live beyond 40, myself,” Lawson said. “The imminence of death was a part of the discipline we lived with, but no one as much as King.”
Still, Lawson made it his life’s mission to preach the power of nonviolent direct action.
“I’m still anxious and frustrated,” Lawson said as he marked the 50th anniversary of King’s death with a march in Memphis. “The task is unfinished.”
Civil rights activist Diane Nash was a 21-year-old college student when she began attending Lawson’s Nashville workshops, which she called life-changing.
“His passing constitutes a very great loss,” Nash said. “He bears, I think, more responsibility than any other single person for the civil rights movement of Blacks being nonviolent in this country.”
James Morris Lawson Jr., was born on Sept. 22, 1928, the son and grandson of ministers, and grew up in Massillon, Ohio, where he became ordained himself as a high school senior.
He told The Tennessean that his commitment to nonviolence began in elementary school, when he told his mother that he had slapped a boy who had used a racial slur against him.
“What good did that do, Jimmy?” his mother asked.
That simple question forever changed his life, Lawson said. He became a pacifist, refusing to serve when drafted for the Korean War, and spent a year in prison as a conscientious objector. The Fellowship of Reconciliation, a pacifist group, sponsored his trip to India after he finished a sociology degree.
Gandhi had been assassinated by then, but Lawson met people who had worked with him and explained Gandhi’s concept of “satyagraha,” a relentless pursuit of Truth, which encouraged Indians to peacefully reject British rule. Lawson then saw how the Christian concept of turning the other cheek could be applied in collective actions to challenge morally indefensible laws.
Lawson was a divinity student at Oberlin College in Ohio when King spoke on campus about the Montgomery bus boycott. King told him, “You can’t wait, you need to come on South now,‘” Lawson recalled in an Associated Press interview.
Lawson soon enrolled in theology classes at Vanderbilt University, while leading younger activists through mock protests in which they practiced taking insults without reacting.
The technique swiftly proved its power at lunch counters and movie theaters in Nashville, where on May 10, 1960, businesses agreed to take down the “No Colored” signs that enforced white supremacy.
“It was the first major successful campaign to pull the signs down,” and it created a template for the sit-ins that began spreading across the South, Lawson said.
Lawson was called on to organize what became the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which sought to organize the spontaneous efforts of tens of thousands of students who began challenging Jim Crow laws across the South.
Angry segregationists got Lawson expelled from Vanderbilt, but he said he never harbored hard feelings about the university, where he returned as a distinguished visiting professor in 2006, and eventually donated a significant portion of his papers.
Lawson earned that theology degree at Boston University and became a Methodist pastor in Memphis, where his wife Dorothy Wood Lawson worked as an NAACP organizer. They moved several years later to Los Angeles, where Lawson led the Holman United Methodist Church and taught at California State University, Northridge and the University of California, Los Angeles. They raised three sons, John, Morris and Seth.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said Lawson taught Southern California activists and organizers “and helped shape the civil rights and labor movement locally just as he did nationally.”
“Today Los Angeles joins the state, country and world in mourning the loss of a civil rights leader whose critical leadership, teachings, and mentorship confronted and crippled centuries of systemic oppression, racism and injustice,” Bass said in a statement.
Lawson remained active into his 90s, urging younger generations to leverage their power.
Civil rights leader Rev. Al Sharpton, founder and president of the National Action Network, called Lawson “the ultimate preacher, prophet, and activist.”
“In his senior years, I was privileged to spend time with him at his church in Los Angeles,” Sharpton said. “He would sit in his office and tell me inside stories of the battles of the 1950’s and 1960’s that he Dr. King and others engaged in. Lawson helped to change this nation — thank God the nation never changed him.”
Eulogizing the late Rep. John Lewis last year, he recalled how the young man he trained in Nashville grew lonely marches into multitudes, paving the way for major civil rights legislation.
“If we would honor and celebrate John Lewis’ life, let us then re-commit our souls, our hearts, our minds, our bodies and our strength to the continuing journey to dismantle the wrong in our midst,” Lawson said.
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WASHINGTON — A closely watched Alzheimer’s drug from Eli Lilly won the backing of federal health advisers Monday, setting the stage for the treatment’s expected approval for people with mild dementia caused by the brain-robbing disease.
Food and Drug Administration advisers voted unanimously that the drug’s ability to slow the disease outweighs its risks, including side effects like brain swelling and bleeding that will have to be monitored.
“I thought the evidence was very strong in the trial showing the effectiveness of the drug,” said panel member Dean Follmann, a National Institutes of Health statistician.
The FDA will make the final decision on approval later this year. If the agency agrees with the panel’s recommendation, the drug, donanemab, would only be the second Alzheimer’s drug cleared in the U.S. that’s been shown to convincingly slow cognitive decline and memory problems due to Alzheimer’s. The FDA approved a similar infused drug, Leqembi, from Japanese drugmaker Eisai last year.
The slowdown seen with both drugs amounts to several months and experts disagree on whether patients or their loved ones will be able to detect the difference.
But Lilly’s approach to studying its once-a-month treatment prompted questions from FDA reviewers.
Patients in the company’s study were grouped based on their levels of a brain protein,
called tau, that predicts severity of cognitive problems. That led the FDA to question whether patients might need to be screened via brain scans for tau before getting the drug. But most panelists thought there was enough evidence of the drug’s benefit to prescribe it broadly, without screening for the protein.
“Imposing a requirement for tau imaging is not necessary and would raise serious practical and access concerns to the treatment,” said Dr. Thomas Montine of Stanford University, who chaired the panel and summarized its opinion.
At a high level, Lilly’s results mirrored those of Leqembi, with both medications showing a modest slowing of cognitive problems in patients with early-stage Alzheimer’s. The Indianapolis-based company conducted a 1,700-patient study showing patients who received monthly IV infusions of its drug declined about 35% more slowly than those who got a placebo treatment.
The FDA had been widely expected to approve the drug in March. But instead, the agency said it would ask its panel of neurology experts to publicly review the company’s data, an unexpected delay that surprised analysts and investors.
Several unusual approaches in how Lilly tested its drug led to the meeting.
One change was measuring patients’ tau — and excluding patients with very low or no levels of the protein. But panelists said there was enough data from other measures to feel confident that nearly all patients could benefit from the drug, regardless of their levels.
In another key difference, Lilly studied taking patients off its drug when they reached very low levels of amyloid, a sticky brain plaque that’s a contributor to Alzheimer’s.
Lilly scientists suggested stopping treatment is a key advantage for its drug, which could reduce side effects and costs. But FDA staff said Lilly provided little data supporting the optimal time to stop or how quickly patients might need to restart treatment.
Despite those questions, many panelists thought the possibility of stopping doses held promise.
“It’s a huge cost savings for the society, we’re talking about expensive treatment, expensive surveillance,” said Dr. Tanya Simuni of Northwestern University. She and other experts said patients would need to be tracked and tested to see how they fare and whether they need to resume treatment.
The main safety issue with donanemab was brain swelling and bleeding, a problem common to all amyloid-targeting drugs. Most cases identified in Lilly’s trial were mild.
Three deaths in the donanemab study were linked to the drug, according to the FDA, all involving brain swelling or bleeding. One of the deaths was caused by a stroke, a life-threatening complication that occurs more frequently among Alzheimer’s patients.
The FDA’s panel agreed those risks could be addressed by warning labels and education for doctors and medical scans to identify patients at greater risk of stroke.
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phoenix — Rudy Giuliani, a former New York City mayor and Donald Trump attorney, was processed Monday in the criminal case over the effort to overturn Trump’s Arizona election loss to Joe Biden, the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office said.
The sheriff’s office provided a mug shot but no other details. The office of the clerk of the Superior Court for Maricopa County said Giuliani posted bond of $10,000 in cash.
“Mayor Rudy Giuliani — the most effective federal prosecutor in U.S. history — will be fully vindicated,” said his spokesperson, Ted Goodman. “This is yet another example of partisan actors weaponizing the criminal justice system to interfere with the 2024 presidential election through outlandish charges against President Trump and anyone willing to take on the permanent Washington political class.”
Giuliani pleaded not guilty in May to nine felony charges stemming from his alleged role in the fake electors effort. He is among 18 people indicted in the Arizona case, including Trump attorneys John Eastman, Christina Bobb and Jenna Ellis.
Former Trump presidential chief of staff Mark Meadows and Trump 2020 Election Day operations director Michael Roman pleaded not guilty Friday in Phoenix to nine felony charges for their alleged roles in the scheme.
The indictment alleges Meadows worked with other Trump campaign members to submit names of fake electors from Arizona and other states to Congress in a bid to keep Trump in office despite his November 2020 defeat.
Other states where criminal charges have been filed related to the fake electors scheme are Michigan, Nevada and Georgia.
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NEW YORK — Donald Trump ‘s mandatory presentencing interview Monday ended after less than a half-hour of routine and uneventful questions and answers, a person familiar with the matter told the Associated Press. The person was not authorized to speak publicly and did so on the condition of anonymity.
The former president was quizzed by a New York City probation officer for a report that will be compiled and presented to trial judge Juan M. Merchan prior to Trump’s July 11 sentencing in his hush money criminal case.
Merchan can use the report to help decide Trump’s punishment following his May 30 felony conviction for falsifying business records to cover up a potential sex scandal. The judge has discretion to impose a wide range of punishments, ranging from probation and community service to up to four years in prison.
Trump, who declined to testify at the trial, appeared for the probation interview Monday by video conference from his residence at the Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, with his lawyer Todd Blanche by his side. The arrangement garnered complaints of special treatment, but city officials contend that is not the case.
Typically, people convicted of crimes in New York must meet with probation officials face-to-face for their required presentence interviews and aren’t allowed to have their lawyers with them. After Blanche balked, Merchan granted him permission to sit in on Trump’s interview.
The city’s public defenders Monday criticized what they said were “special arrangements” for Trump and urged the probation department to “ensure that all New Yorkers, regardless of income, status, or class, receive the same presentencing opportunities.”
“All people convicted of crimes should be allowed counsel in their probation interview, not just billionaires,” four of the city’s public defender organizations said in a statement. “This is just another example of our two-tiered system of justice.”
“Pre-sentencing interviews with probation officers influence sentencing, and public defenders are deprived of joining their clients for these meetings. The option of joining these interviews virtually is typically not extended to the people we represent either,” said the statement from the Legal Aid Society, Bronx Defenders, New York County Defender Services and Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem.
A spokesperson for the city, which runs the probation department, said defendants have had the option of conducting their presentencing interviews by video since before the dawn of social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. A message seeking comment was left with a spokesperson for the state court system.
Presentence reports include a defendant’s personal history, criminal record and recommendations for sentencing. They also include information about employment and any obligations to help care for a family member. The interview is also a chance for a defendant to say why they think they deserve a lighter punishment.
Such reports are typically prepared by a probation officer, a social worker or a psychologist working for the probation department who interviews the defendant and possibly that person’s family and friends, as well as people affected by the crime.
Trump was convicted in May of 34 counts of falsifying business records arising from what prosecutors said was an attempt to hide a hush money payment to porn actor Stormy Daniels just before the 2016 presidential election. She claims she had a sexual encounter with Trump a decade earlier, which he denies.
Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, has vowed to appeal his conviction — though by law he must wait until after he is sentenced to do so. He says he is innocent of any crime and says the case was brought to hurt his chances to regain the White House.
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