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FRANKFORT, Ky. — A judge in a rural Kentucky county was fatally shot in his courthouse chambers Thursday, and the local sheriff was charged with murder in the killing, police said.

The preliminary investigation indicates Letcher County Sheriff Shawn M. Stines shot District Judge Kevin Mullins multiple times following an argument inside the courthouse, according to Kentucky State Police. Mullins, who held the judgeship for 15 years, died at the scene, and Stines surrendered without incident.

The fatal shooting in Whitesburg sent shock waves through a tight-knit Appalachian town and county seat of government with about 1,700 residents located about 235 kilometers southeast of Lexington.

Lead county prosecutor Matt Butler described an outpouring of sympathy as he recused himself and his office from investigations in the shooting, citing social and family ties to Mullins.

“We all know each other here. … Anyone from Letcher County would tell you that Judge Mullins and I married sisters and that we have children who are first cousins but act like siblings,” Butler said in statement from his office. “For that reason, among others, I have already taken steps to recuse myself and my entire office.”

Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman said his office will collaborate with a commonwealth’s attorney in the region as special prosecutors in the criminal case.

“We will fully investigate and pursue justice,” Coleman said on social media.

Kentucky Supreme Court Chief Justice Laurance B. VanMeter said he was “shocked by this act of violence” and that the court system was “shaken by this news.”

Letcher County’s judge-executive signed an order closing on Friday the county courthouse where the shooting took place.

Mullins, 54, was hit multiple times in the shooting, Kentucky State Police said. Stines, 43, was charged with one count of first-degree murder. The investigation is continuing, police said.

It was unclear whether Stines had an attorney. Kentucky State Police referred inquiries about Stines’ legal representation Thursday to a spokesperson who did not immediately respond by email.

Responding to the shooting, Governor Andy Beshear said in a social media post: “There is far too much violence in this world, and I pray there is a path to a better tomorrow.”

Mullins served as a district judge in Letcher County since he was appointed by former Gov. Steve Beshear in 2009 and elected the following year.

Mullins was known for promoting substance abuse treatment for people involved in the justice system and helped hundreds of residents enter inpatient residential treatment, according to a program for a drug summit he spoke at in 2022. He also helped develop a program called Addiction Recovery Care to offer peer support services in the courthouse. The program was adopted in at least 50 counties in Kentucky.

Mullins also served as a founding member of the Responsive Effort to Support Treatment in Opioid Recovery Efforts Leadership Team.

After the shooting, several area schools were briefly placed on lockdown.
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In the U.S. presidential election, Republican candidates have spread false claims that migrants in the Midwest state of Ohio are eating residents’ pet cats and dogs. That has led to security threats and more divisions in an election where immigration is a central campaign theme. VOA Correspondent Scott Stearns has our story. Videographer: Obed Lamy
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RALEIGH, NORTH CAROLINA — North Carolina Republican gubernatorial nominee Mark Robinson vowed on Thursday to remain in the race despite a CNN report that he posted strongly worded racial and sexual comments on an online message board, saying he won’t be forced out by “salacious tabloid lies.”

Robinson, the sitting lieutenant governor who decisively won his GOP gubernatorial primary in March, has been trailing in several recent polls to Democratic nominee Josh Stein, the current attorney general.

“We are staying in this race. We are in it to win it,” Robinson said in a video posted Thursday on the social media platform X. “And we know that with your help, we will.”

Robinson referenced in the video a story that he said CNN was running, but he didn’t give details.

“Let me reassure you, the things that you will see in that story — those are not the words of Mark Robinson,” he said. “You know my words. You know my character.”

The CNN report describes a series of racial and sexual comments Robinson posted on the message board of a pornography website more than a decade ago.

CNN reported that Robinson, who would be North Carolina’s first Black governor, attacked civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. in searing terms and once referred to himself as a “black NAZI.”

CNN also reported that Robinson wrote of being aroused by a memory of “peeping” at women in gym showers when he was 14 along with an appreciation of transgender pornography. Robinson at one point referred to himself as a “perv,” according to CNN.

The Associated Press has not independently confirmed that Robinson wrote and posted the messages. CNN said it matched details of the account on the pornographic website forum to other online accounts held by Robinson by comparing usernames, a known email address and his full name.

CNN reported that details discussed by the account holder matched Robinson’s age, length of marriage and other biographical information. It also compared figures of speech that came up frequently in his public Twitter profile that appeared in discussions by the account on the pornographic website.

Media outlets already have reported about a 2021 speech by Robinson in a church in which he used the word “filth” when discussing gay and transgender people.

Robinson has a history of inflammatory comments that Stein has said made him too extreme to lead North Carolina, a state on the U.S. Atlantic coast. They already have contributed to the prospect that campaign struggles for Robinson would hurt former President Donald Trump’s bid to win the battleground state’s 16 electoral votes, and potential other GOP down-ballot candidates.

Recent polls of North Carolina voters show Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris locked in a close race. The same polls show Stein with a roughly 10-point lead over Robinson.

Stein and his allies have repeatedly cited a Facebook post from 2019 in which Robinson said abortion in America was about “killing the child because you weren’t responsible enough to keep your skirt down.”

The Stein campaign said in a statement after the report that “North Carolinians already know Mark Robinson is completely unfit to be Governor.”

State law says a gubernatorial nominee could withdraw as a candidate no later than the day before the first absentee ballots requested by military and overseas voters are distributed. That begins Friday, so the withdrawal deadline would be late Thursday. State Republican leaders could then pick a replacement.

Trump has frequently voiced his support for Robinson, who has been considered a rising star in his party, well-known for his fiery speeches and evocative rhetoric. Ahead of the March primary, Trump at a rally in Greensboro called Robinson “Martin Luther King on steroids” for his speaking ability.

Trump’s campaign appears to be distancing itself from Robinson in the wake of the report. In a statement to the AP, Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said the GOP nominee’s campaign “is focused on winning the White House and saving this country,” calling North Carolina “a vital part of that plan.”

Leavitt went on to contrast Trump’s economic record with that of Harris, not mentioning Robinson by name or answering questions as to whether he would appear with Trump at a Saturday campaign rally in Wilmington or had been invited to do so.

A spokesperson for Harris’ campaign, Ammar Moussa, said on social media platform X that “Donald Trump has a Mark Robinson problem” and reposted a photo of the two together.

The North Carolina Republican Party defended Robinson in a statement on X, saying that despite his denial of CNN’s report, it wouldn’t “stop the Left from trying to demonize him via personal attacks.” The party referred to economic and immigration policies as the predominant election issues North Carolinians will care more about instead.

“The Left needs this election to be a personality contest, not a policy contest because if voters focused on policy, Republicans win on Election Day,” the party said.

Scott Lassiter, a Republican state Senate candidate in a Raleigh-area swing district, did call on Robinson to “suspend his campaign to allow a quality candidate to finish this race.”

Ed Broyhill, a North Carolina member of the Republican National Committee, said he spoke to Robinson Thursday afternoon and still supports him as the nominee. In an interview, Broyhill suggested the online details may have been fabricated.

“It seems like a dirty trick to me,” Broyhill said.

On Capitol Hill, U.S. Representative Richard Hudson of North Carolina, chair of the House GOP’s campaign committee, told reporters the report’s findings were “concerning.” Robinson, he said, has some reassuring to do in the state.

Robinson, 56, was elected lieutenant governor in his first bid for public office in 2020. He tells a life story of childhood poverty, jobs that he blames the North American Free Trade Agreement for ending, and personal bankruptcy. His four-minute speech to the Greensboro City Council defending gun rights and lamenting the “demonizing” of police officers went viral — and led him to a National Rifle Association board position and popularity among conservative voters.
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The Ukrainian Cultural Center Toloka near Seattle, Washington, is home for ‘friends of Ukraine’ say its founders. Just over a year ago, it began offering a wide range of activities, including aid for refugees, language workshops, art classes, cultural events and more. Khrystyna Shevchenko has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. Camera: Dmytro Savchuk
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PENTAGON — On Sunday, U.S. Africa Command’s Major General Kenneth Ekman was one of the last two U.S. service members to leave Niger as part of America’s military withdrawal, following the country’s July 2023 coup. Per an agreement reached by the U.S. and Niger in May, the only American service members that remain in the country are those securing the U.S. Embassy in the capital, Niamey.

The general, who served as AFRICOM’s director of strategy, plans and programs before focusing solely on West Africa, spent the last few months methodically overseeing the withdrawal of about 1,100 American service members, along with U.S. weapons, drones and equipment that had been staged for years in two U.S. military bases in Niger. The task was completed on time and within the parameters set by the host nation, but the withdrawal has created a massive hole in the United States’ ability to monitor the growing violent extremist threat.

In an exclusive interview at the Pentagon on Thursday, Ekman explained how the new U.S. footprint in West Africa is beginning to take shape to continue fighting a shared threat.

Below are highlights from his discussion with VOA Pentagon correspondent Carla Babb, edited for brevity and clarity:

VOA: On what Nigerians should expect in terms of a partnership with the US military:

Major General Kenneth Ekman: I think that remains to be seen. … I think the starting impetus will be reflecting on the 15 years of very mutually beneficial partnership that we had up to this point. We have shed blood together, right? We have pursued their most acute security threats together, and so you can’t erase that history … It would be really helpful if the Nigerians took the first step — they asked us to leave after all — their first step on what that government and the military that serves them would like next in a U.S. security partnership. And then it will be bounded. What I mean by that is, it’s going to take a while for it ever to be what it was on July 25, 2023, which was the day prior to the coup.

There are some obstacles–everything from the request that we withdraw, to our turnover of bases and facilities and equipment, to the fact that coup sanctions, Section 7008 sanctions, have been imposed against the junta. And so all of that combines to limit the “what next.”

We still have shared security objectives. How we will pursue them, either together or apart, as a consequence of the withdrawal remains to be seen, but we wanted to make sure we kept all options on the table.

VOA:  On repercussions concerning military partnerships and training exercises with countries who’ve undergone a coup:

Ekman: There are absolutely repercussions. Because when they’re omitted, they lose everything from the chance to interact in a region that’s becoming increasingly dis-integrated, right, to the chance to practice and practice at a high level within the context or the scenario of the exercise. So it is a net loss, right? It’s a net loss for the region, and it’s a loss for each of those individual countries as they are excluded.

VOA:  On increased U.S. military presence in other West African nations:

Ekman: What you’re talking about is that layer of forces, most of which came from Niger, that we reposition around the Sahel. If our presence in Niger allowed us to go inside out, relative to the Sahelian based VEO (violent extremist organization) threat, we now have to revert to going outside in … Countries like Cote d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast), Ghana, Benin, Chad, our access to them and the degree to which they want to partner with us will influence how we go outside in.

We’re at a different phase with each of those countries. What I mean is, each partner has their own unique security concerns. They also have their own respective tolerance and willingness to abide the presence of U.S. forces. So in some cases, we moved some forces well prior to the Niger coup, because that’s where the threat was going. We were invited early on, and whether it was a small SOF (special operations forces) team or an ISR (intelligence, reconnaissance and surveillance) platform, we moved them months ago.  The larger question is, and it’s a policy question, where, and if we establish significant presence of forces, probably on a partner base, serving alongside them, doing everything from command and control to projecting things like ISR and personnel recovery, to sustaining them and to medically treating them. That is something where we’re not there yet, and no agreements have been made.

There are some cases where, for now, we’re definitely not (establishing a significant force presence). So that’s true in Nigeria. We have a very clear message from them … Likewise in Ghana.

The ones where things are still kind of under consideration, Chad, Cote d’Ivoire, Benin, those were, what we want to do is, within the partners’ needs, support their partner-led, U.S.-enabled counter VEO ops.

VOA: On U.S. military movements, specifically, refurbishing an airfield in Benin to accommodate U.S. aircraft, sending special forces to Ivory Coast and bringing U.S. forces back to Chad:

Ekman: The most lethal violent extremist organization threat in the world resides in West Africa, and it resides in the Sahel. It’s also spreading. The primary direction of travel is to the southwest, so well-prior to the Niger coup we were already working with partners on what they needed with regards to U.S. presence and capabilities. In the Benin case, we started that a while ago. In the Cote d’Ivoire case, it’s been really post-coup (in Niger). So each of them is on their own timeline as we work with them… We did have some forces in Mali and Burkina Faso. We had special forces teams there as well. And given our current relationship, that’s just not something that we can do, and so we had some forces available who needed to move and there were requirements in other countries. The specifics beyond that kind of remain to be seen.

VOA: But the Cote d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast) case, the (U.S.) special forces were moved from Niger to there?

Ekman: That’s correct.

VOA: OK, and then the airfield (refurbishment) in Benin (to accommodate U.S. aircraft) was started a little prior, but then also worked on during.

Ekman: That’s it.

A consistent request that we receive from all partners is intel sharing, right? And so that’s something that we can offer uniquely… It is a common currency from which everyone benefits.

VOA: That has diminished.

Ekman: The region has become more opaque. Absolutely.

We did remove about 70 U.S. Special Forces personnel (from Chad) at the end of April. That was at their request. They asked us to leave. An election was coming and we obliged. That’s what partners do. Since then, they had a successful election on May 6. And so in the aftermath of that, they’ve started asking us, well, what can we do together?

Our goal is to do something less than we had there before. We had a headquarters there before, but we have reached an agreement on the return of a limited number of special forces personnel. It is a presidential decision. So these are big policy decisions. It was a presidential decision by President Deby, but the decision is made, and now we’re working through the specifics on how we return… His decision was conveyed to us in just recent weeks. Chad is really important because… it’s an outside-in strategy. And the direction of approach from Chad is immensely important. They’ve also been a significant contributor to Sahelian security.

VOA: On the effect that losing Niger has on region counterterrorism efforts:

Ekman: If there was one country that was most important on our ability to address Sahelian VEO problems or the Sahelian VEO challenge, it was Niger. So, for one, of Niger, I talked about it as a strategic setback, (but) the degree to which that setback endures ties to how we reposition and then what our partners want to do with us… That is a snapshot in time. All is not lost.

VOA: On concerns that Niger could fall to violent extremist organizations:

Ekman: Their risks have definitely gone up. Their ability to confront extremist organizations, intel sharing, partnership with our and other allied forces, it’s gotten worse. So they are a capable force… the degree to which they can handle the problem themselves remains to be seen. It is a fact that in Niger, violent extremist attacks have become more lethal. That’s a fact. Since the coup on July 26, 2023. They’ve got fewer resources and fewer partners.

VOA: Have you seen any evidence, or heard anything from your engagements about JNIM starting to collaborate with some of the ISIS elements (in West Africa)?

Ekman: I think that one varies. For what I can talk about in here, some cases they collaborate, some cases they compete, and that often manifest down to the local level.

VOA: On Russia’s military presence in Niger:

Ekman: In the Nigerian case, that presence is actually quite small. The Nigerians signed a memorandum of understanding with Russia related to security cooperation two governments ago. And so they fly Russian equipment. They drive Russian equipment. There’s nothing new there. The Russian trainers who showed up? Didn’t see much of them while we were there. And so, to date, Russian presence in Niger has been quite limited… We caution them of the malign impacts of partnering, particularly with Russian PMCs who have yet to help anybody from a security perspective. And then their methods are abhorrent to us, OK? And so that’s where we, we encourage them to draw the line.

VOA: On whether terrorists in the Sahel now have the capacity to try external operations:

Ekman: Given the lack of access that we have, given the lack of ISR, our ability to gage… the trend in their development of capability and will, it’s become more difficult.

Our access and our partnerships have diminished. It’s a tough operational problem.
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World leaders gather for their annual meetings at the United Nations starting Sunday, and the wars in Gaza, Sudan and Ukraine will be center stage. VOA U.N. Correspondent Margaret Besheer reports.
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With fewer than 50 days left in this year’s U.S. presidential race, candidates Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are campaigning in key swing states, each declaring to be the nominee with policies that can boost the economy. VOA Correspondent Scott Stearns reports.
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new york — Wall Street romped to records Thursday as jubilation swept markets worldwide one day after the U.S. Federal Reserve’s big cut to interest rates. 

The S&P 500 jumped 1.7% for one of its best days of the year and topped its last all-time high set in July. The Dow Jones Industrial Average leaped 522 points, or 1.3%, to beat its own record set on Monday, and the Nasdaq composite led the market with a 2.5% spurt. 

The rally was widespread, and Darden Restaurants, the company behind Olive Garden and Ruth’s Chris, led the way in the S&P 500 with a jump of 8.3%. It said sales trends have been improving since a sharp step down in July, and it announced a delivery partnership with Uber. 

Nvidia, meanwhile, barreled 4% higher and was one of the strongest forces lifting the S&P 500. Lower interest rates weaken criticism by a bit that its shares and those of other influential Big Tech companies look too expensive following the frenzy around artificial-intelligence technology. 

Wall Street’s gains followed rallies for markets across Europe and Asia after the Federal Reserve delivered the first cut to interest rates in more than four years late on Wednesday. 

It was a momentous move, closing the door on a run where the Fed kept its main interest rate at a two-decade high in hopes of slowing the U.S. economy enough to stamp out high inflation. Now that inflation has come down from its peak two summers ago, Chairman Jerome Powell said the Fed can focus more on keeping the job market solid and the economy out of a recession. 

Wall Street’s initial reaction to Wednesday’s cut was a yawn, after markets had run up for months on expectations for coming reductions to rates. Stocks ended up edging lower after swinging a few times. 

“Yet we come in today and have a reversal of the reversal,” said Jonathan Krinsky, chief market technician at BTIG. He said he did not anticipate such a big jump for stocks on Thursday. 

Some analysts said the market could be relieved that the Fed’s Powell was able to thread the needle in his press conference and suggest the deeper-than-usual cut was just a recalibration of policy and not an urgent move it had to take to prevent a recession. 

That bolstered hopes the Federal Reserve can successfully walk its tightrope and get inflation down to its 2% target without a recession. So too did a couple reports on the economy released Thursday. One showed fewer workers applied for unemployment benefits last week, another signal that layoffs across the country remain low. 

Lower interest rates help financial markets in two big ways. They ease the brakes off the economy by making it easier for U.S. households and businesses to borrow money. They also give a boost to prices of all kinds of investments, from gold to bonds to cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin rose above $63,000 Thursday, up from about $27,000 a year ago. 

An adage suggests investors should not “fight the Fed” and should instead ride the rising tide when the central bank is cutting interest rates. Wall Street was certainly doing that Thursday. But this economic cycle has thrown out conventional wisdom repeatedly after the COVID-19 pandemic created an instant recession that gave way to the worst inflation in generations. 

Wall Street is worried that inflation could remain tougher to fully subdue than in the past. And while lower rates can help goose the economy, they can also give inflation more fuel. 

The upcoming U.S. presidential election could also keep uncertainty reigning in the market. A fear is that both the Democrats and Republicans could push for policies that add to the U.S. government’s debt, which could keep upward pressure on interest rates regardless of the Fed’s moves. 

Indexes climbed even more across the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. They rose 2.3% in France, 2.1% in Japan and 2% in Hong Kong. 

The FTSE 100 added 0.9% in London after the Bank of England kept interest rates there on hold. The next big move for a central bank arrives Friday, when the Bank of Japan will announce its latest decision on interest rates. 
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«Перша українська школа» у Варшаві розпочала працювали на шостий тиждень повномасштабного вторгнення
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«Директива про тимчасовий захист є тимчасовим законодавством. Тому нам потрібно розглянути й інші форми дозволу на перебування» – Йоганссон
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WASHINGTON — U.S. President Joe Biden began touting the progress in bringing down inflation and boosting employment on Thursday, a day after the Federal Reserve’s interest rate cut, while vowing to keep working to lower costs for American families.

Biden will use an Economic Club of Washington event to summarize how well the U.S. responded to the COVID-19 pandemic and a surge in inflation after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, his chief of staff, Jeff Zients, told reporters.

Many economists had predicted a recession would be needed to lower inflation, but they were proven wrong as Biden’s policies aimed at expanding domestic manufacturing, investing in clean energy and other infrastructure, and capping drug costs for seniors helped create 16 million jobs and raised wages, he said.

Polls show Americans remain deeply worried about the economy and inflation, with Vice President Kamala Harris, who became the Democratic nominee when Biden bowed out of the race in July, and Republican former President Donald Trump essentially deadlocked less than seven weeks before the November 5 U.S. presidential election.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll released this week showed Trump had an advantage on the issue of inflation, which surged under Biden in 2021 and 2022. Some 43% of voters in the poll said Trump would be more likely to “lower prices for everyday things like groceries and gas,” compared with 36% who picked Harris. 

Biden and Harris are focused on continuing to lower costs and strengthen the economy, Zients said.

“The president knows this is no time for a victory lap, which is why he will talk about the work ahead … to make the economy stronger, create more jobs and, importantly, lower costs,” he told reporters.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, speaking on Wednesday after the U.S. central bank cut interest rates by half a percentage point, said that the economy remained strong but that policymakers wanted to stay ahead of and stave off any weakening in the job market.

The unemployment rate, now at 4.2%, is more than half a percentage point higher than it was when the Fed began an aggressive rate-hike campaign in March of 2022.

National Economic Council Director Lael Brainard said the Fed’s rate cut sent a “clear signal that inflation has come back down,” noting that inflation was now at the same level seen in the month before the COVID-19 pandemic began.

Mortgage rate reductions that already have happened would save the average home buyer $5,000 a year, with savings to increase as the rates declined further, she said, adding that the cuts also would save the average new car buyer nearly $1,100 over the life of the loan.

But she said further work was needed to drive down housing costs, support child-care needs and sustain the gains achieved for working-class families.
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Меджліс: це пропозиція «поступитися Кримом»
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Washington — A hearing to seek the release of imprisoned Americans in Beijing highlighted reasons for the U.S. to expand its list of U.S. citizens wrongly detained in China to prioritize their return.

Members of Congress and witnesses argued at a congressional hearing this week that the U.S. government should expand the list of Americans that it designates as being “unjustly detained” in China.

“More Americans should be considered to be unjustly detained by the State Department,” Representative Chris Smith, the chair of the Congressional Executive Commission on China, said Wednesday in opening remarks at the CECC hearing.

China is known for a justice system lacking transparency and arbitrarily detaining foreigners as well as its own citizens.

The State Department officially had three Americans listed as unjustly detained in China including American Pastor David Lin, who has now been released by Beijing, the State Department announced on Sunday. 

The other two are Kai Li and Mark Swidan. Li, a businessman from Long Island, was detained by China in 2016 and sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2018 for espionage, which his family denies. Swiden, a Texas businessman, was detained in 2012 and convicted on drug-related charges in 2019. His supporters say there is evidence he was not in China at the time of the alleged offense.

Although estimates vary, human rights organizations assess that more U.S. citizens are wrongly detained in China. 

Dui Hua, a human rights group that advocates for clemency and better treatment of detainees in China, doubts about 200 Americans who are held under coercive measures in China and more than 30 who are barred from leaving the country.

The James W. Foley Legacy Foundation, a group that seeks to free Americans held captive abroad, estimates that 11 U.S. nationals are wrongfully detained in China, including those subject to exit bans.

In the opening statement of his testimony, Nelson Wells, the father of detained American citizen Nelson Wells, Jr., lamented that “Nelson is not considered a political prisoner or held unjust” by the State Department.

Later, he added, “We tried to get Nelson’s name included” in the list and expressed his hope that the hearing will pave the way.

Nelson Wells, Jr., from New Orleans, was arrested in 2014 in China and sentenced to life on drug-related charges, which his family denies. His term was reduced to 22 years in 2019, and he will remain in prison until 2041.

The U.S. determines whether its citizens are detained “unlawfully or wrongfully” by either “a foreign government or a non-governmental actor” based on criteria set by the Levinson Act signed into law in 2020.

Such criteria “can include, but is not limited to, a review of whether the individual is being detained to influence U.S. policy, whether there is a lack of due process or disparate sentencing for the individuals, and whether the person is being detained due to their U.S. connections, among other criteria,” said a spokesperson for the State Department in a statement to VOA Korean on Tuesday.

“The Secretary of State has ultimate authority to determine whether a case is a wrongful detention. This determination is discretionary, based on the totality of the circumstances, and grounded in the facts of the case. We do not discuss the wrongful detention determination process in public,” the spokesperson continued.

A spokesperson for the Foley Foundation told VOA that it believes 11 Americans currently detained in China meet “the criteria for wrongful detention, as specified in Levinson Act.”

Its report, published in July, says China “remains the leading country in wrongfully detaining U.S. nationals,” based on the data collected by the Foley Foundation in the period from 2022 to 2024.

Sophie Richardson, a visiting scholar at Stanford University’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, told VOA China’s practice of arbitrary detention is harmful to its culture and economy.

“It’s a big part of what is deterring people from going to the country,” including students who are interested in studying Chinese as well as business executives who are “concerned they might run afoul of certain kinds of data regulations and [be] arbitrarily detained,” said Richardson, a former China director at Human Rights Watch.

A record number of approximately 15,200 high-net worth individuals are expected to leave China in 2024, according to New World Wealth, a wealth intelligence firm, cited by the Henley Private Wealth Migration Report.

Harrison Li, the son of Kai Li, said, “The Chinese government clearly wants more Americans to travel to China, but as long as our loved ones are being held, as long as there are so many people at risk, then that travel warning must be escalated.”

The State Department currently advises Americans to “reconsider” traveling to the country “due to the arbitrary enforcement of local laws,” including exit bans and wrongful detention. The next level of advisory would say “do not travel.”

Bob Fu, the founder and president of China Aid, a human rights group that advocates for religious freedom, told VOA that “increasing international isolation” felt by the Chinese Communist Party could have led it to the release of David Lin.  

He said the prospect for the release of other Americans would depend on “how much persistent pressure from the highest level of the U.S. government” is exerted on Beijing.

The State Department spokesperson told VOA Korean that the U.S. has raised the case of “other wrongfully detained Americans” in addition to David Lin and will “continue to push for the release of other Americans.”
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NEW YORK — Journalists at a news site that covers the Haitian community in the United States say they’ve been harassed and intimidated with racist messages for covering a fake story about immigrants eating the pets of people in an Ohio town.

One editor at the Haitian Times, a 25-year-old online publication, was “swatted” this week with police turning up at her home to investigate a false report of a gruesome crime. The news site canceled a community forum it had planned for Springfield, Ohio, and has shut down public comments on its stories about the issue because of threats and vile posts.

The Times, which had the Committee to Protect Journalists conduct safety training for its journalists in Haiti, has now asked for advice on how to protect staff in the United States, said Garry Pierre-Pierre, founder and publisher.

“We’ve never faced anything like this,” Pierre-Pierre said Wednesday.

Site says it isn’t backing down

The Times has debunked and aggressively covered the aftermath of the story about immigrants supposedly eating the dogs and cats of other Springfield residents, as it was spread by Ohio Sen. JD Vance, Donald Trump’s Republican running mate in the presidential election, and Trump himself in his debate with Democrat Kamala Harris.

Despite receiving hundreds of these messages, the site isn’t backing down, said Pierre-Pierre, a former reporter at The New York Times who echoed a mission statement from his old employer in making that promise.

“We do not want to hibernate,” he said. “We’re taking the precautions that are necessary. But our first duty is to tell the truth without fear or favor, and we have no fear.”

Pierre-Pierre, who emigrated to the United States in 1975, started the Haitian Times to cover issues involving first- and second-generation Haitians in the United States, along with reporting on what is happening in their ancestral home. It started as a print publication that went online only in 2012 and now averages 10,000 to 15,000 visitors a day, although its readership has expanded in recent weeks.

Macollvie Neel, the New York-based special projects editor, was the staff member who had police officers show up at her doorstep on Monday.

It was triggered when a Haitian advocacy group received an email about a crime at Neel’s address. They, in turn, notified police who showed up to investigate. Not only did the instigators know where Neel lived, they covered their tracks by funneling the report through another organization, she said.

Neel said she had a feeling something like this might happen, based on hateful messages she received. But it’s still intimidating, made more so because the police who responded were not aware of the concept of doxxing, or tracing people online for the purpose of harassment. She said police searched her home and left.

She was always aware that journalism, by its nature, can make people unhappy with you. This takes the threat to an entirely new level. Racist hate groups who are ready to seize on any issue are sophisticated and well-funded, she said.

“This is a new form of domestic terrorism,” she said, “and we have to treat it as such.”

‘It’s outrageous’

Katherine Jacobsen, the Committee to Protect Journalists’ U.S., Canada and Caribbean program coordinator, said it’s a particularly acute case of journalists being harassed in retaliation for their coverage of a story. “It’s outrageous,” she said. “We should not be having this conversation. Yet we are.”

Even before Springfield received national attention in recent weeks, the Haitian Times had been covering the influx of immigrants to the Midwest in search of jobs and a lower cost of living, Pierre-Pierre said. A story currently on its site about Springfield details how the furor “reflects America’s age-old battle with newcomers it desperately needs to survive.”

Another article on the site talks about the NAACP, Haitian American groups and other activists from across the country coming to the aid of Springfield residents caught in the middle of the story.

Similarly, the Times has heard from several other journalists — including from Pierre-Pierre’s old employer — who have offered support. “I’m deeply touched,” he said.
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