Haiti Prime Minister Ariel Henry announced his resignation Tuesday, the day after the United States pledged another $100 million to a United Nations-backed multinational security force intended to assist Haitian police in combating gangs, along with $33 million in humanitarian aid. VOA State Department Bureau Chief Nike Ching reports.
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washington — A re-elected U.S. President Donald Trump could well awaken the following day to a phone call inviting him to Pyongyang for a summit with Kim Jong Un, says a veteran of the two previous Trump-Kim summits in 2018 and 2019.
“If I were Kim Jong Un talking to my advisers in Pyongyang, I’d be thinking of whether I [should] call President-elect Trump the day after the election to congratulate him” and say, “Why don’t you come to Pyongyang? Let’s meet here,” says former Trump adviser John Bolton.
“And Trump might do it,” continued Bolton in an interview with VOA’s Korean Service on Friday.
Bolton served as national security adviser during the period in which Trump and Kim exchanged frequent letters and conducted summits in Singapore in June 2018 and Hanoi in February 2019, as well as an impromptu meeting at the inter-Korean border in June 2019.
The Hanoi summit broke down when Trump walked away from Kim’s offer to dismantle North Korea’s main nuclear plant at Yongbyon in exchange for sanctions relief, and Kim has refused to engage with the United States or South Korea since U.S.-North Korean talks broke down in Stockholm eight months later.
But Bolton said that does not rule out the possibility that Kim might try again, or that Trump might accept.
“The danger with another Trump administration is he prizes making deals more than the substance of the deals, which he often doesn’t understand in the international context,” said Bolton, who has frequently criticized the former president’s approach to foreign affairs since leaving his administration.
Gary Samore, former White House coordinator for arms control and weapons of mass destruction during the Obama administration, told VOA via phone on Friday, “Kim Jong Un may very well believe that if there’s another summit, he can persuade Trump to lift international economic sanctions” and “weaken the U.S.-ROK [South Korea] alliance as Trump did in the Singapore meeting.”
At a news conference following his 2018 summit with Kim in Singapore, Trump announced the U.S. would suspend military drills with South Korea, describing them as “very provocative” and “tremendously expensive.”
Joint exercises resumed, however, under Trump’s successor, President Joe Biden. The U.S. and South Korea are currently holding the annual Freedom Shield exercise. It began on March 4 and will continue through Thursday.
Harry Kazianis, a senior editor at the website 19FortyFive and president of the Rogue States Project, thinks another Trump-Kim summit would be unlikely.
“Right now, North Korea is likely getting billions of dollars a year from Russia to help Putin arm his military in the Ukraine war and likely little sanctions enforcement from China. If those conditions were to hold, Kim has very little to gain from dealing with Trump,” he said.
But, he told VOA via email on Friday, Kim might need to engage with the American leader again if Trump were to bring the war in Ukraine to an end and successfully pressure China to enforce sanctions.
Scott Snyder, director of the program on U.S.-Korea policy at the Council on Foreign Relations, said via email on Friday that Pyongyang has made clear it is not interested in talks.
For diplomacy to resume, he said “both sides would have to find a way of putting the Hanoi experience behind them and establishing a new modus vivendi and mutually beneficial rationales for pursuing a new relationship.”
Sangjin Cho contributed to this report.
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pentagon — The United States is providing a new round of military aid for Ukraine valued at up to $300 million, the first such announcement since late December, in what defense officials have called an “ad hoc” package made possible through U.S. Army procurement savings.
National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan announced the 55th presidential drawdown authority (PDA) package at the White House on Tuesday and said it would include artillery rounds and munitions for HIMARS, weapons desperately needed on the Ukrainian front lines where shortages abound.
The funding for this package came from savings garnered in “multiple contract actions over multiple months” where the Army was able to “buy things at a better price” than initially budgeted, according to senior defense officials who spoke to reporters on conditional of anonymity ahead of the White House announcement.
“This is a bit of an ad hoc or one-time shot. We don’t know if or when future savings will come in, and we certainly can’t count on this as a way of doing business,” one of the senior defense officials said.
In one example provided by the officials, the Army had initially estimated the cost of 25 mm rounds at $130 but was able to negotiate the price down to $93.
The savings were then placed back into the U.S. funding pot for Ukraine aid, a process that has happened several times but wasn’t considered as newsworthy during those times because the fund wasn’t “broke” before, according to defense officials.
$10 billion shortfall
The aid package comes despite a Pentagon funding shortfall of about $10 billion for U.S. military weapons needed to replace those already sent to Ukraine, a shortfall that requires additional money from Congress to fix, according to top defense officials.
“We don’t foresee a likely alternative outside of the supplemental funding [bill] or having that money added into an appropriations bill in order to achieve the replenishment that we need,” Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks told reporters on Monday.
Pentagon officials expected to get the funding to replenish those stocks in a supplemental request from the Biden administration, which included billions of additional dollars in aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. However, Congress has yet to pass a supplemental aid bill because of arguments on spending and U.S. border security.
Because it has been 15 months since Congress last approved money to help Ukraine, defense officials say Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has expressed concerns about any future drawdowns.
The department still has about $4 billion in authority to send weapons to Ukraine, but there is no congressionally approved money left to replenish the Pentagon’s weapons stockpiles.
“We have the ability to move funds out of our stocks, but without the ability to replenish them, we are putting our own readiness at some risks,” according to one senior defense official.
The $10 billion shortfall is tied to the way the Pentagon has accounted for the aid sent to Ukraine. Last June, the Pentagon said it overestimated the value of weapons sent to Ukraine by about $6.2 billion over the past two years.
When calculating its aid package estimates, the Department of Defense was counting the cost incurred to replace the weapons given to Ukraine, while it said it should have been totaling the cost of the systems actually sent, officials told VOA at the time.
The error provided the Pentagon the legal cover needed to send more aid to Ukraine, but the problem remained that more funds would be needed to replenish U.S. military stockpiles with newer, costlier weapons.
Asked by VOA why the Pentagon was willing to use its savings to send more aid for Ukraine but was not willing to dip into this the $4 billion of remaining presidential drawdown authority, one of the senior defense officials told reporters that “the lack of clarity” from Congress on whether they will approve additional aid makes the Pentagon “very reluctant to dig the hole deeper.”
“In this case, we are not digging the hole deeper. We’re staying even, while recognizing that Ukraine is in a very tough spot this moment,” the defense official added.
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Місію здійснили представники ГУР МО України й дипломатичні працівники українських посольств в Ізраїлі та Єгипті
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Закон передбачає, що репродуктивні матеріали військового у разі загибелі будуть зберігатися безоплатно протягом трьох років
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«Чотирьох ключових фігурантів уже затримано. Серед них – один з очільників столичного храму УПЦ (МП)»
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WASHINGTON — Consumer prices in the United States picked up last month, a sign that inflation remains a persistent challenge for the Federal Reserve and for President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign, both of which are counting on a steady easing of price pressures this year.
Prices rose 0.4% from January to February, higher than the previous month’s figure of 0.3%, the Labor Department said Tuesday. Compared with a year earlier, consumer prices rose 3.2% last month, faster than January’s 3.1% annual pace.
Excluding volatile food and energy prices, so-called “core” prices also climbed 0.4% from January to February, matching the previous month’s increase and a faster pace than is consistent with the Fed’s 2% target. Core inflation is watched especially closely because it typically provides a better read of where inflation is likely headed.
Pricier gas pushed up overall inflation, with pump prices rising 3.8% just from January to February. Grocery prices, though, were unchanged last month and are up just 1% from a year earlier. The cost of clothing, used cars and rent also increased in February, raising the inflation figure.
Despite February’s elevated figures, most economists expect inflation to continue slowly declining this year. At the same time, the uptick last month may underscore the Fed’s cautious approach toward interest rate cuts.
Overall inflation has plummeted from a peak of 9.1% in June 2022, although it’s now easing more slowly than it did last spring and summer. The prices of some goods — from appliances to furniture to used cars — are falling after clogged supply chains during the pandemic sent prices soaring higher. There are more new cars on dealer lots and electronics on store shelves.
By contrast, prices for dental care, car repairs and other services are still rising faster than they did before the pandemic. Car insurance has shot higher, reflecting rising costs for repairs and replacement. And after having sharply raised pay for nurses and other in-demand staff, hospitals are passing their higher wage costs on to patients in the form of higher prices.
Voter perceptions of inflation are sure to occupy a central place in this year’s presidential election. Despite a healthy job market and a record-high stock market, polls show that many Americans blame Biden for the surge in consumer prices that began in 2021. Although inflationary pressures have significantly eased, average prices remain far above where they stood three years ago.
In his State of the Union speech last week, Biden highlighted steps he has taken to reduce costs, like capping the price of insulin for Medicare patients. The president also criticized many large companies for engaging in “price gouging” and so-called “shrinkflation,” in which a company shrinks the amount of product inside a package rather than raising the price.
“Too many corporations raise prices to pad their profits, charging more and more for less and less,” Biden said.
Fed Chair Jerome Powell signaled in congressional testimony last week that the central bank is getting closer to cutting rates. After meeting in January, Fed officials said in a statement that they needed “greater confidence” that inflation was steadily falling to their 2% target level. Since then, several of the Fed’s policymakers have said they believe prices will keep declining. One reason, they suggested, is that consumers are increasingly pushing back against higher prices by seeking out cheaper alternatives.
Most economists expect the Fed’s first rate cut to occur in June, although May is also possible. When the Fed cuts its benchmark rate, over time it reduces borrowing costs for mortgages, car loans, credit cards and business loans.
One factor that could keep inflation elevated is the still-healthy economy. Although most economists had expected a recession to occur last year, hiring and growth were strong and remain healthy. The economy expanded 2.5% last year and could grow at about the same pace in the first three months of this year, according to the Federal Reserve’s Atlanta branch.
Last week, the Labor Department said employers added a robust 275,000 jobs in February, the latest in a streak of solid hiring gains, and the unemployment rate stayed below 4% for the 25th straight month. That is the longest such streak since the 1960s.
Still, the unemployment rate rose from 3.7% to 3.9%, and wage growth slowed. Both trends could make the Fed feel more confident that the economy is cooling, which could help keep inflation falling and lead the central bank to begin cutting rates.
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«Таким чином, на 2024 рік в Україні є 10% тих, хто хотів би бачити російську мову або офіційною у своїй області, або взагалі другою державною»
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In its annual global threats assessment report Monday, the U.S. intelligence community told lawmakers that the war in Ukraine is at a turning point whose outcome will depend on American assistance. VOA’s congressional correspondent Katherine Gypson has more from the Senate, where lawmakers called on the House to take up the $95 billion foreign aid bill.
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«Все те, що використовується у військових цілях – так чи інакше, з ними трапляються такі інциденти»
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WASHINGTON — The frozen military conflict between Ukraine and Russia is starting to thaw and will likely tilt in Moscow’s favor if the United States fails to quickly come through with additional military aid, according to top U.S. intelligence officials, in a grim assessment delivered to U.S. lawmakers.
Monday’s warning comes nearly a month after the U.S. Senate voted in favor of a stand-alone foreign aid bill that would send $60 billion in aid to Ukraine as it tries to hold on to territorial gains more than two years after Russian forces invaded.
But the lawmakers in the House of Representatives have refused to bring the bill up for a vote, leaving other Western nations scrambling to provide Ukraine with enough weapons and ammunition to hold off a renewed Russian offensive.
The $60 billion “is absolutely critical to Ukraine’s defense right now,” Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told members of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
“Ukraine’s retreat from Avdiivka and their struggle to stave off further territorial losses in the past few weeks have exposed the erosion of Ukraine’s military capabilities with the declining availability of external military aid,” she said. “Without that assistance, it is hard to imagine how Ukraine will be able to maintain the extremely hard-fought advances it has made against the Russians.”
The director of the Central Intelligence Agency told lawmakers the war is at a crossroads, and that what happens next likely hinges on the provision of U.S. aid.
“The Ukrainians are not running out of courage and tenacity. They’re running out of ammunition,” said the CIA’s William Burns. “And we’re running out of time to help them.”
Both Haines and Burns reiterated previous assessments: that up until now, Ukraine’s military has inflicted serious damage on Russia’s forces.
U.S. officials believe at least 315,000 Russian troops have been killed or wounded, and that two-thirds of Russia’s prewar tank inventory has been destroyed. The Russian military, which had been undergoing a modernization program, has been set back years.
Russia’s invasion has also served to galvanize the West, with Sweden and Finland joining the NATO military alliance.
But Haines and Burns told lawmakers that none of those strategic defeats have managed to change the calculus of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“Putin continues to judge that time is on his side,” Haines said, cautioning that the Russian leader is as entrenched as ever.
“He continues to see NATO enlargement and Western support for Ukraine as reinforcing his long-held belief that the United States and Europe seek to restrict Russian power and undermine him,” she said, telling lawmakers that Putin’s response has been to push ahead with efforts to grow the Russian military, pouring more money into ammunition production and into the purchase of military supplies from Iran and North Korea.
U.S. intelligence officials also see signs Putin is continuing to move forward with plans to modernize and fortify Russia’s nuclear weapons arsenal, already thought to be the largest and most diverse in the world.
And there are signs that Russia is willing to take chances to gain an advantage.
“We remain concerned that Moscow will put at risk long-standing global norms against the use of asymmetric or strategically destabilizing weapons, including in space and in the cyber domain,” Haines said.
Some lawmakers echoed the concerns, urging colleagues to pass the legislation to get Ukraine the military supplies it needs.
“My fear is the decision thus far by the House of Representatives not to even take up legislation that would support Ukraine in the fight against Putin aggression has been one of the most short-sighted decisions on a national security issue that I can possibly imagine,” said Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner, a Democrat.
“The impact and long-term consequences of us abandoning Ukraine … it’s a 50-year mistake that would haunt this country,” added independent Senator Angus King.
And U.S. intelligence officials warned of a cascading global impact if the additional aid for Ukraine fails to materialize.
“The consequence of that will not just be for Ukraine or for European security but across the Indo-Pacific,” said the CIA’s Burns. “If we’re seen to be walking away from Ukraine, not only is that going to feed doubts amongst our allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific, it’s going to stoke the ambitions of the Chinese leadership in contingencies ranging from Taiwan to the South China Sea.”
The intelligence officials said while China remains wary, for now, it has been emboldened by Russia.
In particular, the intelligence officials said Russia was forced to grant China some long-sought concessions in exchange for support for Moscow’s war against Ukraine.
Iran and North Korea have likewise benefited, they said, warning the impact remains to be seen.
The changing dynamics have “the potential to undermine, among other things, long-held nonproliferation norms,” Haines said.
But she added that while Russia, China, Iran and North Korea are growing closer, the prospects for a true alliance are, for now, remote.
“Parochial interests, a desire to avoid entanglements, and weariness of harm and instability from each other’s actions will likely limit their cooperation … absent direct conflict between one of these countries and the United States,” Haines said.
Israel – Gaza
The U.S. intelligence officials also addressed concerns about the ongoing conflict in Gaza, where Israeli forces continue to pursue fighters of the Hamas terror group despite warnings from the United Nations and aid groups about the devastating impact on civilians.
“We’re going to continue to work hard at this — I don’t think anybody can guarantee success,” the CIA’s Burns told lawmakers when asked about ongoing efforts to get a temporary cease-fire.
Burn recently traveled to the Middle East to meet with officials from Israel, Egypt and Qatar.
He said the deal currently under consideration would provide for the return of about 40 Israeli hostages still held by Hamas, most of them wounded or ill women or older men, in exchange for a six-week-long cease-fire that would allow the U.S. and its allies to surge in desperately needed aid.
“I understand Israel’s need, and the president [Joe Biden] has emphasized this, to respond to the brutish attack that Israelis suffered on the 7th of October [by Hamas],” Burns told Republican Senator Tom Cotton.
“But I think we all also have to be mindful of the, you know, enormous toll that this has taken on innocent civilians in Gaza,” he added.
Gaza fallout
Haines further warned lawmakers that the crisis in Gaza has “galvanized violence by a range of actors,” and that it “is likely that the Gaza conflict will have a generational impact on terrorism.”
But Haines said for now, Iran and its Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah, appear reluctant to try to push too hard to manipulate the fighting for their benefit.
“We continue to assess that Hezbollah and Iran do not want to cause an escalation of the conflict that pulls us or them into a full-out war,” she said.
Still, Haines acknowledged other Iranian-linked groups, like the Houthis in Yemen, have become “aggressive actors,” launching dozens of attacks on international shipping.
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WASHINGTON — The United States must employ “all the tools at our disposal” to outcompete China, a top U.S. State Department official said on Monday, as the Biden administration unveiled its budget request for the 2025 fiscal year.
The request includes $4 billion over five years in mandatory funding for this purpose, including $2 billion to create a new international infrastructure fund to provide a credible, reliable alternative to Chinese infrastructure funding, Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources Rich Verma told a news briefing.
The other $2 billion was earmarked for “game-changing investments” to help Indo-Pacific countries push back against “predatory efforts,” he said, adding that those would include efforts to improve governance and the rule of law.
The State Department requested a separate $4 billion in discretionary funding to cover foreign assistance and diplomatic engagement in the region.
U.S. efforts to fund infrastructure in developing countries have long been dwarfed by China’s massive Belt and Road Initiative, a 10-year-old project to build infrastructure and energy networks connecting Asia with Africa and Europe through overland and maritime routes.
According to a report by U.S. researchers last November, Chinese financial institutions lent $1.34 trillion to developing countries from 2000 to 2021.
“We must employ all the tools at our disposal to outcompete China, wherever possible,” Verma said, also referring to China by the initials of its official name, the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
He said the request for fiscal 2025 would allow the U.S. “to continue to invest in the foundations of our strength at home, align with like-minded partners to strengthen our shared interests and address the challenges posed by the PRC, and harness those assets to compete with the PRC and defend our interests.”
Verma said the infrastructure fund would support “transformative, quality and sustainable hard infrastructure projects.”
At the 2023 G20 Summit in India, U.S. officials said President Joe Biden and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi co-hosted a group of G20 leaders to accelerate investments in high-quality infrastructure projects and development of economic corridors through a Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment (PGI).
This came after the Group of Seven rich Western countries’ leaders pledged in 2022 to raise $600 billion in private and public funds over five years to finance needed infrastructure in developing countries and counter the Belt and Road project.
Overseas finance has won Beijing friends across the developing world, while drawing criticism from the West and in some recipient countries, including Sri Lanka and Zambia, that infrastructure projects it funded saddled them with debt they were unable to repay.
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new york — Donald Trump on Monday asked the New York judge overseeing his criminal case on charges stemming from hush money paid to a porn star to delay the trial until the U.S. Supreme Court finishes reviewing his claim of presidential immunity in a separate case.
The first-ever criminal trial of a former U.S. president is set to begin on March 25 in a New York state court in Manhattan.
Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsification of business records.
Prosecutors say he directed his former lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, to pay porn star Stormy Daniels $130,000 to keep quiet before the 2016 election about a sexual encounter she says they had a decade earlier, and then falsely recorded his reimbursement to Cohen as legal expenses.
Trump denies the encounter with Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford.
The move was the latest by Trump seeking to delay the four upcoming criminal trials he faces until closer to, or even after, his expected Nov. 5 election rematch with Democratic President Joe Biden.
The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments April 25, a month after the scheduled start of jury selection in Trump’s hush money case. It is the first of his four criminal cases slated to go to trial.
Trump has pleaded not guilty in all criminal cases, which he has termed “election interference.”
In their court filing on Monday, Trump’s lawyers said the outcome of the Supreme Court’s review was relevant to the hush money case because prosecutors were seeking to present evidence of statements Trump made while he was president.
Last month, prosecutors said they planned to introduce evidence of a “pressure campaign” by Trump in 2018 to ensure Cohen did not cooperate with a federal investigation into the payment to Daniels. Cohen pleaded guilty that year to violating campaign finance law.
In their court filing on Monday, Trump’s lawyers called prosecutors’ claim of a pressure campaign “fictitious.” They said Trump’s social media posts about Cohen were “official communications” about “matters of public concern” and thus immune from state prosecution.
“Without immunity from criminal prosecution based on official acts, the President’s political opponents will seek to influence and control his or her decisions via de facto extortion,” Trump’s lawyers wrote.
A spokesperson for the Manhattan district attorney’s office, which brought the charges, declined to comment.
Last year, Trump made a similar argument as part of an unsuccessful push to move the hush money case from state court to federal court. In denying Trump’s request in July 2023, U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein wrote that the payment to Daniels “was a purely personal item.”
“Hush money paid to an adult film star is not related to a President’s official acts,” Hellerstein wrote.
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WASHINGTON — Ex-Donald Trump adviser Peter Navarro has been ordered to report to prison this month, his lawyers said in a court filing, which could make him the first senior member of the former president’s administration to do so for efforts to overturn his 2020 defeat.
Navarro, who served as Trump’s trade adviser, is due on March 19 to begin his four-month sentence for defying a subpoena from the U.S. House of Representatives committee that investigated the January 6, 2021, Capitol attack, his lawyers revealed in a court filing late Sunday.
They are asking a federal appeals court in Washington to pause the sentence while Navarro appeals his conviction. His defense team indicated they would ask the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene if his request is denied.
Navarro, 74, was found guilty of contempt of Congress last September for refusing to turn over documents or sit for an interview with the Democratic-led House committee that investigated the Capitol riot, a failed attempt by Trump supporters to overturn Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election. He was sentenced in January.
Navarro, a China hawk who also advised Trump on the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, has claimed Trump invoked the legal doctrine of executive privilege, which shields some presidential records and communications from disclosure.
A federal judge found that Trump had not formerly invoked the privilege.
Steve Bannon, a one-time top strategist to Trump, was also sentenced to four months in prison for defying a subpoena from the January 6 panel, but a judge has allowed him to remain free while he appeals.
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