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STATE DEPARTMENT — The United States has a treaty obligation to protect the Panama Canal if it comes under attack, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Thursday, amid confusion and what Panama has described as “lies” regarding whether U.S. Navy ships can transit the Panama Canal for free.

“I find it absurd that we would have to pay fees to transit a zone that we are obligated to protect in a time of conflict. Those are our expectations. … They were clearly understood in those conversations,” Rubio said during a press conference in Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic. He held talks with Panamanian President Jose Rauu Mulino in Panama City on Sunday.

Rubio was referring to a treaty signed by the U.S. and Panama in 1977.

The top U.S. diplomat told reporters that while he respects Panama’s democratically elected government and acknowledges that it has “a process of laws and procedures that it needs to follow,” the treaty obligation “would have to be enforced by the armed forces the United States, particularly the U.S. Navy.”

The U.S. intends to pursue an amicable resolution, Rubio said.

Mulino posted on X that he planned to speak with U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday afternoon.

On Wednesday, the U.S. State Department said, via a social media post on X, that U.S. government vessels can now transit the Panama Canal without incurring fees, saving the U.S. government millions of dollars annually.

But the Panama Canal Authority, an autonomous agency overseen by the Panamanian government, disputed the U.S. claim, saying that it has made no adjustments to these fees. It also expressed its willingness to engage in dialogue with relevant U.S. officials.

During his weekly press conference on Thursday, the Panamanian president denied his country had reached a deal allowing U.S. warships to transit the Panama Canal for free, saying he completely rejected the State Department’s statement.

Belt and Road Initiative

Meanwhile, Mulino told reporters that the Panamanian Embassy in Beijing had provided China with the required 90-day notice of its decision to exit the Belt and Road Initiative, also known as BRI.

He denied that the decision was made at Washington’s request, saying that he was taking time to assess Panama’s relationship with China and decide what would best serve his country’s interests.

“I don’t know what the incentive was for the person who signed that agreement with China,” Mulino said in Spanish, adding that he did not think the BRI had brought major benefits to his country.

Panama joined China’s BRI under former President Juan Carlos Varela. The agreement was signed in 2018, following Panama’s decision in 2017 to establish its diplomatic relations with China and sever ties with Taiwan.

Rubio has welcomed Panama’s decision not to renew its participation in China’s BRI.

China describes the BRI, which was launched in 2013 under President Xi Jinping, as a vast infrastructure initiative designed to connect multiple continents through land and maritime routes.

The United States has warned that the project is driven by China’s mission to manipulate and undermine the global rules-based trading system for its own benefit.

In Beijing, Chinese officials dismissed what they called the U.S.’s “irresponsible remarks on the Panama Canal issue” and accused Washington of intentionally distorting, attacking and mischaracterizing relevant cooperation.

“China firmly opposes it and made stern demarches to the U.S. side,” said Lin Jian, a spokesperson for China’s Foreign Ministry.

While in Santo Domingo, Rubio met with Dominican President Luis Abinader and Foreign Minister Roberto Alvarez.

The Dominican Republic is the final stop on Rubio’s five-nation tour across Central America and the Caribbean, which focuses on curbing illegal immigration, combating drug trafficking and countering China’s growing influence in the Western Hemisphere.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France Presse and Reuters.
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white house — The White House on Thursday said it was monitoring a complaint by China to the World Trade Organization that accuses the United States of making “unfounded and false allegations” about China’s role in the fentanyl trade to justify tariffs on Chinese products.

The complaint was made Wednesday, a day after President Donald Trump raised tariffs on Chinese goods by 10%. The White House said the new duties on Chinese goods were aimed at halting the flow of fentanyl opioids and their precursor chemicals.

China said it was imposing retaliatory tariffs on some American goods beginning February 10, including 15% duties on coal and natural gas imports and 10% on petroleum, agricultural equipment, high-emission vehicles and pickup trucks. The country also immediately implemented restrictions on the export of certain critical minerals and launched an antitrust investigation into American tech giant Google.

In the WTO filing, China said the U.S. tariff measures were “discriminatory and protectionist” and violated international trade rules. Beijing has requested a consultation with Washington.

China’s request will kick-start a process within the WTO’s Appellate Body, which has the final say on dispute settlements. A White House official told VOA the administration was monitoring Beijing’s file but did not provide further details.

Analysts say Beijing’s move is largely performative and unlikely to yield much relief. The Appellate Body has been largely paralyzed following the first Trump administration’s 2019 move to block appointments of appellate judges over what it viewed as judicial overreach. The Biden administration continued the policy.

China recognizes the WTO is not going to put a lot of pressure on the United States because Washington is fully capable of blocking any legal process there, said Jeffrey Schott, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

“So instead, I think the Chinese reaction has been moderate in indicating that they will act tit for tat against U.S. trade,” he told VOA.

Schott added that there’s “a desire to keep things cool” and moderate the damage, just as what happened during the first Trump administration when a trade deal was agreed upon after initial retaliatory trade actions.

On the U.S. side, the 10% tariffs against China are much lower than the up to 60% that Trump promised during his presidential campaign, he said. 

Trump-Xi call

Trump imposed import duties on Beijing after delaying his actions to impose 25% tariffs on Mexico and Canada following conversations Monday with their leaders. Tariff critics are hoping that a conversation between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping could lead to similar results.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday that the call “is being scheduled and will happen very soon.”

However, Trump has dismissed the negative impact of China’s tariffs and said he was “in no rush” to speak with Xi.

“We’ll speak to him at the appropriate time,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Tuesday.

Unlike Trump’s deal with Mexico and Canada, an agreement with Beijing is unlikely to come quickly, considering strong bipartisan support for placing tariffs on China because of concern about the influx of illegal drugs and other national security concerns, said Rachel Ziemba, an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security.

“Even if they come up with some kind of agreement to settle this particular tariff or to remove the countertariffs, there will probably be more tariffs on China later in this administration,” she told VOA.

The U.S. Postal Service on Tuesday announced that it was suspending acceptance of inbound packages from China and Hong Kong, closing a loophole that Chinese garment and other consumer goods companies have used in the past. These companies, including Shein and Temu as well as Amazon vendors, bypassed existing U.S. tariffs by shipping to American customers directly from China.

On Wednesday, USPS reversed its decision, saying it would work with Customs and Border Protection on a way to collect the new tariffs. 

The Postal Service “will continue accepting all international inbound mail and packages from China and Hong Kong Posts,” it said. “The USPS and Customs and Border Protection are working closely together to implement an efficient collection mechanism for the new China tariffs to ensure the least disruption to package delivery.”

It is unclear how the fee will be collected in such direct transactions between Chinese sellers and American buyers.

Trump’s trade actions on China, Canada and Mexico, as well as his threat to impose duties on all foreign shipments into the country, including from European allies, have caused confusion and uncertainty across global trade. 

Businesses usually respond to trade uncertainty by holding off on investments or passing on increased costs to customers. But the damage goes beyond small and large businesses domestically and abroad, Ziemba said.

“If one of the U.S. goals is relying less on China and Chinese supply chains for critical minerals, for energy, for other things like that, then the uncertainty about whether there’s going to be tariffs and investment restrictions on its allies fly in the face of that goal,” she said. 
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In a joint effort to reinforce security on the border, authorities from Mexico and the United States have intensified joint operations in the area of Ciudad Juárez and El Paso.

Click here for the full story in Spanish.
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The new tariffs on Chinese imports, imposed by President Donald Trump this month, include a provision that will close a loophole that Chinese online retailers used for their U.S.-bound exports. The “de minimis” exemption that applies to packages worth less than $800 is commonly used by Chinese online retailers such as Shein and Temu to ship goods at a lower price directly to U.S. consumers.

Click here for the full story in Mandarin.
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WASHINGTON — A bipartisan duo in the U.S. House is proposing legislation to ban the Chinese artificial intelligence app DeepSeek from federal devices, similar to the policy already in place for the popular social media platform TikTok.

Lawmakers Josh Gottheimer, a Democrat from New Jersey, and Darin LaHood, a Republican from Illinois, on Thursday introduced the “No DeepSeek on Government Devices Act,” which would ban federal employees from using the Chinese AI app on government-owned electronics. They cited the Chinese government’s ability to use the app for surveillance and misinformation as reasons to keep it away from federal networks.

“The Chinese Communist Party has made it abundantly clear that it will exploit any tool at its disposal to undermine our national security, spew harmful disinformation, and collect data on Americans,” Gottheimer said in a statement. “We simply can’t risk the CCP infiltrating the devices of our government officials and jeopardizing our national security.”

The proposal comes after the Chinese software company in January published an AI model that performed at a competitive level with models developed by American firms like OpenAI, Meta, Alphabet and others. DeepSeek purported to develop the model at a fraction of the cost of its American counterparts. The announcement raised alarm bells and prompted debates among policymakers and leading Silicon Valley financiers and technologists.

The churn over AI is coming at a moment of heightened competition between the U.S. and China in a range of areas, including technological innovation. The U.S. has levied tariffs on Chinese goods, restricted Chinese tech firms like Huawei from being used in government systems, and banned the export of state of the art microchips thought to be needed to develop the highest end AI models.

Last year, Congress and then-President Joe Biden approved a divestment of the popular social media platform TikTok from its Chinese parent company or face a ban across the U.S.; that policy is now on hold. President Donald Trump, who originally proposed a ban of the app in his first term, signed an executive order last month extending a window for a long-term solution before the legally required ban takes effect.

In 2023, Biden banned TikTok from federal-issued devices.

“The technology race with the Chinese Communist Party is not one the United States can afford to lose,” LaHood said in a statement. “This commonsense, bipartisan piece of legislation will ban the app from federal workers’ phones while closing backdoor operations the company seeks to exploit for access. It is critical that Congress safeguard Americans’ data and continue to ensure American leadership in AI.”

The bill would single out DeepSeek and any AI application developed by its parent company, the hedge fund High-Flyer, as subject to the ban. The legislation includes exceptions for national security and research purposes that would allow federal employers to study DeepSeek.

Some lawmakers wish to go further. A bill proposed last week by Senator Josh Hawley, a Republican from Missouri, would bar the import or export of any AI technology from China writ large, citing national security concerns.
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Кримчани будуть під арештом до 4 квітня 2025 року
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MANILA, PHILIPPINES — One U.S. service member and three defense contractors were killed Thursday when a plane contracted by the U.S. military crashed in a rice field in the southern Philippines, U.S. Indo-Pacific Command said.

The aircraft was conducting a routine mission “providing intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance support at the request of our Philippine allies,” the command said in a statement. It said the cause of the crash was under investigation.

The Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines also confirmed the crash of a light plane in Maguindanao del Sur province. It did not immediately provide other details.

The bodies of the four people were retrieved from the wreckage in Ampatuan town, said Ameer Jehad Tim Ambolodto, a safety officer of Maguindanao del Sur. Indo-Pacific Command said the names of the crew were being withheld pending family notifications.

Windy Beaty, a provincial disaster-mitigation officer, told The Associated Press that she received reports that residents saw smoke coming from the plane and heard an explosion before the aircraft plummeted to the ground less than a kilometer from a cluster of farmhouses.

Nobody was reported injured on or near the crash site, which was cordoned off by troops, Beaty said.

U.S. forces have been deployed in a Philippine military camp in the country’s south for decades to help provide advice and training to Filipino forces battling Muslim militants. The region is the homeland of minority Muslims in the largely Roman Catholic nation.
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«Викрито та припинено діяльність злочинної організації на чолі з медійно-відомим колишнім депутатом Київської міської ради»
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«Початком військової служби є день відправлення у військову частину з відповідного територіального центру комплектування»
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Російські загарбники двічі атакували позиції ЗСУ біля Білогорівки на Сіверському напрямку і 9 разів – на Торецькому, де точаться три зіткнення
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Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba will meet U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House on Friday. Japanese officials say they want to reaffirm the US-Japan alliance and build strong personal ties between Ishiba and Trump. VOA’s Bill Gallo reports from Seoul, South Korea.
Camera: Bill Gallo
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CIUDAD JUÁREZ, MEXICO — A line of Mexican National Guard and Army trucks rumbled along the border separating Ciudad Juárez and El Paso, Texas, on Wednesday, among the first of 10,000 troops Mexico has sent to its northern frontier following tariff threats by President Donald Trump. 

Masked and armed National Guard members picked through brush running along the border barrier on the outskirts of Ciudad Juárez, pulling out makeshift ladders and ropes tucked away in the trenches, and pulling them onto trucks. Patrols were also seen on other parts of the border near Tijuana. 

It comes after a turbulent week along the border after Trump announced he would delay imposing crippling tariffs on Mexico for at least a month. In exchange, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum promised she would send the country’s National Guard to reinforce the border and crack down on fentanyl smuggling. 

Trump has declared an emergency on the border despite migration levels and fentanyl overdoses significantly dipping over the past year. The U.S. said it would, in turn, do more to stop American guns from being trafficked into Mexico to fuel cartel violence, which has rippled to other parts of the country as criminal groups fight to control the lucrative migrant smuggling industry. 

On Tuesday, the first of those forces arrived in border cities, climbing out of government planes. Guard members in the Wednesday patrol confirmed that they were part of the new force. 

“There will be permanent surveillance on the border,” José Luis Santos Iza, one of the National Guard leaders heading off the deployment in the city, told media upon the arrival of the first set of soldiers. “This operation is primarily to prevent drug trafficking from Mexico to the United States, mainly fentanyl.” 

At least 1,650 troops were expected to be sent to Ciudad Juárez, according to government figures, making it one of the biggest receivers of border reinforcements in the country, second only to Tijuana, where 1,949 are slated to be sent. 

During U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s trip through Latin America — where migration was at the top of the agenda — the top American diplomat thanked the Mexican government for the forces, according to a statement by the Mexican government. 

The negotiation by Sheinbaum was viewed by observers as a bit of shrewd political maneuvering by the newly elected Mexican leader. Many had previously cast doubt that she’d be able to navigate Trump’s presidency as effectively as her predecessor and ally, former President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. 

 
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71% опитаних українців зберігають оптимізм щодо майбутнього України
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Графіки аварійних вимкнень світла ввели у Полтавській, Сумській, Дніпропетровській та Донецькій областях
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WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of State said on Wednesday American government vessels can now transit the Panama Canal without charge fees.

“The government of Panama has agreed to no longer charge fees for U.S. government vessels to transit the Panama Canal,” the department said in a post on X.

It said the agreement will save the U.S. government millions of dollars each year.

The Panama Canal Authority did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio met with Panama’s President Jose Raul Mulino on Sunday during a trip to Central America.

Panama has become a focal point of the Trump administration as President Donald Trump has accused the Central American country of charging excessive rates to use its passage.

“If the principles, both moral and legal, of this magnanimous gesture of giving are not followed, then we will demand that the Panama Canal be returned to us, in full, and without question,” Trump said last month.

Mulino has dismissed Trump’s threat that the U.S. retake control of the canal, which it largely built. The U.S. administered territory surrounding the passage for decades.

But the U.S. and Panama signed a pair of accords in 1977 that paved the way for the canal’s return to full Panamanian control. The United States handed it over in 1999 after a period of joint administration.
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President Donald Trump is reigniting a fierce debate: Should everyone born on U.S. soil automatically become a citizen? This question strikes at the heart of American identity, history and law. Trump signed an executive order last month seeking to end the right, but two federal judges have placed injunctions on the order, pausing it indefinitely. Here’s what you need to know about birthright citizenship.
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The U.S. state of Missouri is suing China over the coronavirus pandemic, accusing it of “unleashing COVID-19 on the world.” The lawsuit threatens to seize $25 billion in assets if Beijing refuses to pay damages. Although the state attorney general is confident in winning the case, legal experts said there are still hoops Missouri needs to jump through due to laws protecting foreign state assets in the U.S.

Click here for the full story in Mandarin.
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