На цьому напрямку армія Росії «продовжує битися за маленькі населені пункти, в тому числі Новомихайлівку, Георгіївку та Урожайне»
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Illegal immigration is the top issue for many voters in this year’s U.S. presidential election. VOA’s Scott Stearns looks at how candidates Donald Trump and Joe Biden differ over what to do.
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Washington — The United States on Wednesday opposed a Palestinian push for full membership at the United Nations, with Washington saying it backed statehood but after negotiations with Israel.
“We support the establishment of an independent Palestinian state,” U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters.
“That is something that should be done through direct negotiations through the parties, something we are pursuing at this time, and not at the United Nations,” he said, without explicitly saying that the United States would veto the bid if it reached the Security Council.
Miller said that U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has been actively engaged in establishing “security guarantees” for Israel as part of the groundwork for a Palestinian state.
U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration has increasingly highlighted support for a Palestinian state, with a reformed Palestinian Authority in charge in the West Bank and Gaza, as it looks for a way to close the ongoing war in which its ally Israel is seeking to eliminate Hamas from the Gaza Strip.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has for decades resisted a Palestinian state and leads a far-right government with members hostile to the Palestinian Authority, which holds limited autonomy in sections of the West Bank.
Under longstanding legislation by the U.S. Congress, the United States is required to cut off funding to U.N. agencies that give full membership to a Palestinian state.
The law has been applied selectively. The United States cut off funding in 2011 and later withdrew from the U.N. cultural and scientific agency UNESCO, but Biden’s administration returned, saying it was better to be present.
Robert Wood, the U.S. deputy representative to the United Nations, said that recognition of a Palestinian state by the world body would mean “funding would be cut off to the U.N. system, so we’re bound by U.S. law.”
“Our hope is that they don’t pursue that, but that’s up to them,” Wood said of the Palestinians’ bid.
The Palestinian Authority has submitted a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres asking for the Security Council to reconsider a longstanding application for statehood in April.
Any request to become a U.N. member state must first be recommended by the Security Council, where Israel’s primary backer the United States as well as four other countries wield vetoes, and then endorsed by a two-thirds majority in the General Assembly.
Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas launched the statehood application in 2011. It was not considered by the Security Council, but the General Assembly the following year granted observer status to the “State of Palestine.”
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Тимчасові екзаменаційні центри створять у 57 містах 32 країн
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New Orleans — The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments this month about presidential immunity and whether former President Donald Trump can be tried on charges that he conspired to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
The high court’s decision will determine how some of the presumptive GOP nominee’s legal cases advance in an election year where he is facing 91 felony charges across four trials. They include the willful retention of national defense information in violation of the Espionage Act.
“Donald Trump is trying to show that a U.S. president is immune from criminal prosecution while acting in an official capacity,” University of Georgia political scientist Charles Bullock told VOA.
“But I think, at the heart of this matter, is just how broadly Trump and his lawyers define ‘official capacity,’” Bullock explained.
“They are defining it very broadly at the moment. Trump says a president should be completely immune while president, but the three-judge circuit panel that ruled against him posed the question: ‘Well, what if the president hired a hitman to take out one of their rivals? Is that in an official capacity, and are they immune from prosecution then, as well?’ I think we’d all say, of course not!”
Many Republicans continue to back Trump
This month’s case before the Supreme Court, which includes three Trump appointees, involves federal charges that Trump attempted to overturn the 2020 presidential election by spreading false information about voter fraud and by pressing Vice President Mike Pence to reject legitimate results when they were presented to Congress.
That congressional certification of electoral votes on January 6, 2021, was disrupted by Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol. For that attack, Trump is facing a charge of obstructing an official proceeding.
The former president argues he was acting in an official capacity at the time, and therefore cannot be charged. In its filing to the Supreme Court, Trump’s team wrote, “The president cannot function, and the presidency itself cannot retain its vital independence, if the president faces criminal prosecution for official acts once he leaves office.”
“A denial of criminal immunity would incapacitate every future president with de facto blackmail and extortion while in office,” the filing continues, “and condemn him to years of post-office trauma at the hands of political opponents.”
A Politico Magazine/Ipsos poll last month found that 70% of voters — including nearly half of Republicans — reject Trump’s argument that presidents should be immune from prosecution for crimes committed while in office.
Republican voter Jeff Williams from Valparaiso, Indiana, believes charges against Trump show he is being unfairly targeted by Democrats.
“It looks to me like these are all cases of Democrat-affiliated prosecutors in Democratic-leaning districts hoping for Democratic-slanted juries that will vote against Trump simply because they don’t like him,” Williams told VOA.
“Do I think a president should have total immunity from the law? No way,” Williams said. “But have I seen any evidence that suggests President Trump is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt? Absolutely not. This feels like a witch hunt.”
“Half of the country is going to have to justify voting for a criminal this year!”
“I can’t believe this is the situation we find ourselves in,” said Democratic voter Deborah Theobald of Woodstock, Georgia. “Half of the country is going to have to justify voting for a criminal this year!”
Fifty-five percent of Americans responding to a Reuters/Ipsos poll say they would not vote for Donald Trump if he was convicted of a felony by a jury, while 58% said they would not cast their ballot for the former president if he was currently serving time in prison.
“If a person has committed a crime while in office, and even a serious crime before office, then I think they should be prosecuted just as any other American would be,” said Rebecca Urrutia, a Connecticut mother who voted for Trump in both 2016 and 2020.
“Anyone who says that a president should have immunity from a prosecuted crime doesn’t stand for the Constitution or our country,” she said. “The president is a citizen and servant of our country, not a king or emperor, and if you break the law, I can’t vote for you.”
Impacting the coming election
It’s a turning point for the U.S. legal system and a pivotal political moment for Trump, says Robert Collins, a Dillard University professor of urban studies and public policy.
“Polling has shown that whether he is convicted or not has huge implications for the 2024 presidential election,” Collins told VOA. “But, outside of how these cases are ruled, the longer they go on, the more likely Trump avoids a guilty ruling in advance of Election Day.”
Independent voters are a pivotal group in swing states, with more than one-third telling a Politico Magazine/Ipsos poll that they are less likely to support Trump if he is convicted.
“But if a conviction doesn’t come in time for the election — or too close to the election for voters to change their mind — then Republican voters might stick with him,” Collins said. “And, if he wins the election, and is convicted afterwards, then he’ll make the case that as the sitting president, he’s able to pardon himself. It’s a dangerous situation.”
Melbourne, Florida voter Jillian Dani backed Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020 and says the results of his criminal cases will have a big impact on how she votes in November.
“On one hand, I wouldn’t vote for a felon,” Dani told VOA. “But on the other hand, I’m worried this is a witch hunt against someone the Democratic Party fears. I believe Clinton and Biden were criminals, too, but they weren’t convicted. If Trump isn’t convicted either, then why should he be treated differently?”
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WASHINGTON — The U.S. prosecutor leading the case against Donald Trump for retaining classified documents after leaving office pushed back at a federal judge after she signaled she may accept the former president’s claim that the records were his personal property.
U.S. Special Counsel Jack Smith said in a court filing late on Tuesday that his office would appeal any decision by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon that would instruct jurors in the case to consider what he called Trump’s “fundamentally flawed legal premise.”
Trump, the Republican candidate challenging Democratic President Joe Biden in the November 5 election, pleaded not guilty last year to a 40-count indictment accusing him of illegally keeping classified documents after leaving office in 2021 and obstructing federal government efforts to retrieve them.
Cannon, who was appointed to the bench by Trump, has signaled she is receptive to Trump’s claim that he treated the documents as personal under a 1978 law called the Presidential Records Act that lets former presidents keep records that have no connection to their official responsibilities.
Prosecutors have said the documents relate to U.S. military and intelligence matters, including details about the American nuclear program, and could not be construed as personal.
The judge on March 18 directed the prosecution and defense to propose jury instructions based on two legal scenarios assuming Trump’s argument would play a role at trial.
One scenario, in which neither the jury nor the judge could question Trump’s contention that the records are personal, would essentially direct the jury to acquit Trump, according to prosecutors. They urged Cannon to quickly decide if jurors will be told that Trump’s claim is relevant to the charges against him, arguing that the prosecution must have time “to consider appellate review.”
Smith’s filing said Cannon’s order was based on a flawed legal premise and would “distort the trial.”
This is one of four criminal cases that Trump faces. He has pleaded not guilty in all of them and has sought to cast them as politically motivated.
Trump’s lawyers in a filing on Tuesday night reiterated their argument that what they call Trump’s decision to treat the records as personal meant the charges should be tossed out before trial.
The Presidential Records Act was passed to give the U.S. government possession of official records from a president’s administration. It lets former presidents keep certain records deemed personal that have no connection to their official responsibilities.
Trump has argued that his decision to take the material to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida showed he treated the records as his personal property. Prosecutors have argued that the records law cannot authorize a former president to keep classified information.
Trump faces charges that include violations of the Espionage Act, which criminalizes unauthorized possession of defense information, and conspiracy to obstruct justice.
A May 20 trial date scheduled in the case is widely expected to be postponed.
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Taipei, Taiwan — Specious theories designed to implicate Ukraine and the United States in connection with the late March terror attack in Russia are spreading on China’s state media outlets and on its heavily censored social media platform Weibo.
False claims that paint Kyiv and Washington as masterminds of the attack have fueled debate in Russia even after Islamic State-Khorasan — also known as IS, IS-K, ISIS and Daesh — claimed responsibility for killing at least 143 people and injuring nearly 200 at the Crocus City Hall music venue in suburban Moscow.
In China, an editorial in the state-run Global Times insinuated that “many observers linked the incident to the ‘hybrid war’ form of the Russia-Ukraine conflict.”
“Some Western thinkers have begun to speculate whether Washington had played a role in this terrorist attack,” it said without elaborating.
Without citing names or clear attribution, the Global Times repeated Russia’s false accusations that the U.S. failed to share “key intelligence” that could have helped Russian security services prevent the attack.
In fact, the U.S. warned the Russian authorities two weeks before the attack and shared appropriate intelligence, as it would do “for any other country,” John Kirby, White House national security communications adviser, told VOA.
“We provided useful, we believe, valuable information about what we thought was an imminent terrorist attack,” Kirby said. “We also warned Americans about staying away from public places like concert halls. So, we were very direct with our Russian counterparts appropriately to make sure that they had as much useful information as possible.”
Addressing a Russian intelligence agency board meeting three days before the attack, Russian President Vladimir Putin dismissed the U.S. warning as “outright blackmail” intended “to intimidate and destabilize our society.”
The Global Times also criticized Washington for being “slow to condemn the incident in a timely manner, which shocked the international community.”
In fact, the United States was among the first nations to condemn the Moscow attack, and on March 30, U.S. Ambassador to Russia Lynne Tracy placed flowers at the site.
With the Chinese Communist Party’s tight censorship of online content, contrarian views are quickly taken down, and the lack of independent media leave disinformation spread by state-controlled news outlets unchallenged.
Some, however, have voiced skepticism.
“I personally think it’s unlikely that the United States was behind this terrorist attack,” Jin Canrong, a scholar of international relations with an established “anti-American” reputation, wrote on Weibo.
The comments by Jin, who is a professor at the Renmin University of China, provoked heated reaction, with some Weibo users accusing him of being a U.S. sympathizer.
Since the attack, conspiracy theories echoing Russian propaganda have dominated the narrative on Weibo, typically boosted by anonymous pro-Russian and pro-Chinese influencers with millions of followers.
Weibo influencer Drunk Rabbit posted to his nearly half a million followers: “It is no wonder that the Russian people do not believe that this was done by IS. They all firmly believe that Ukraine and its masters who are at war with Russia planned and carried out this atrocity.”
To prove the point, the user posted two side-by-side video clips showing former U.S. Presidents Barak Obama and Donald Trump.
Drunk Rabbit’s caption read: “Obama: ‘We trained ISIS,’” and “Trump: ‘Obama was the founder of ISIS.’”
“Both former presidents have confirmed that the United States is the creator of ISIS,” Drunk Rabbit continued. “Regarding the terrorist attack on the Moscow Concert Hall in Russia, what other evidence is needed?”
The quotes by Obama and Trump, however, are taken out of context and, in the case of Obama’s remarks, twisted to mean the opposite of what he said.
Trump’s claim has been debunked by fact-checkers and terrorism experts who traced Islamic State’s roots to 2002, six years before Obama was elected president, and Trump himself walked the remark back, calling it “sarcasm.”
It is not out of character for the Chinese state and social media to echo Russian propaganda and disinformation, especially when it targets the United States.
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За даними правоохоронців, колаборанти приєдналися до окупаційного «головного управління МВС РФ Херсонської області»
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Зеленський зауважив, що Росія на 1 червня 2024 року готується додатково мобілізувати 300 тисяч військових
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Чоловік «налякав мешканців сусідніх будинків, які вирішили, що відбувається черговий обстріл військовими збройних сил РФ»
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STATE DEPARTMENT — NATO foreign ministers meeting Wednesday in Brussels are expected to discuss a proposal to create a $100 billion fund for supporting Ukraine’s military.
The plan, put forward by NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, also includes making NATO more directly involved in coordinating military assistance being provided by member countries, a role that has been filled by a U.S.-led coalition of more than 50 countries.
A final decision on the proposal would not come until NATO heads of state meet at a summit in July.
Ahead of the Brussels talks, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken renewed calls for the U.S. Congress to release military aid for Ukraine.
“We are at a critical moment where it is absolutely essential to get Ukrainians what they continue to need to defend themselves, particularly when it comes to munitions and air defenses,” Blinken said Tuesday during a visit to a defense facility in Paris with French Defense Minister Sébastien Lecornu.
Congress is yet to approve the Biden administration’s supplementary budget request that would provide aid to resupply Ukraine’s armed forces and help the country fend off Russian offensives.
Biden has called on the Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives to approve the military and financial aid package. House Republicans have delayed action on it for months, prioritizing domestic issues.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has warned that Ukrainian forces will have to retreat “step by step, in small steps,” if Kyiv doesn’t receive the U.S. military aid.
French Foreign Minister Séjourné was in Beijing earlier this week. He said after a meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi that France expects China to convey “clear messages” to its close partner Russia regarding Moscow’s actions in Ukraine.
France and China have sought to strengthen ties in recent years. Chinese President Xi Jinping is planning a visit to France in May.
During meetings in Paris in February, Wang told French President Macron that Beijing appreciated his country’s “independent” stance. But Paris has also sought to press Beijing on its close ties with Moscow, which have only grown closer since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
U.S. and French officials said they are working closely to effectively prevent the transfer of weapons and materials to Russia from North Korea and China, which could fuel Moscow’s defense industrial base.
Some information for this report came from Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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«Травмовано місцевого жителя та його трирічну доньку»
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On a call Tuesday, President Joe Biden discussed with Chinese President Xi Jinping a range of high-level issues and reiterated his request that China not use web-based disinformation tools to interfere with the U.S. presidential election. The two leaders also discussed Taiwan – the island China claims – as it prepares to inaugurate a new leader next month. VOA’s Anita Powell reports from Washington.
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White House national security spokesman John Kirby says the U.S. was “outraged” over the Israeli airstrike that killed seven workers with a Washington-based charity, and he called on Israel to do more to ensure civilians and humanitarian aid workers are protected. VOA’s Senior Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports from the State Department.
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