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WASHINGTON — Federal prosecutors sidestepped some Justice Department rules when they seized the phone records of reporters as part of media leak investigations during the Trump administration, according to a new watchdog report being released as the aggressive practice of hunting for journalists’ sources could again be resurrected. 

The report Tuesday from the Justice Department inspector general’s office also found that some congressional staffers had their records obtained by prosecutors by sheer virtue of the fact that they had accessed classified information despite that being part of their job responsibilities. 

Though the report chronicles Justice Department actions from several years ago, the issue has new resonance as President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for FBI director, Kash Patel, has spoken of his desire to “come after” members of the media “who lied about American citizens” and his belief that the federal government should be rid of “conspirators” against Trump. 

Those comments raise the possibility that the Justice Department under new leadership — Trump has picked former Florida attorney general Pam Bondi to serve as his attorney general — could undo a three-year-old policy that, with limited exceptions, prohibits prosecutors from secretly seizing reporters’ phone records during investigations into leaks of sensitive information. 

The action from Attorney General Merrick Garland in 2021 followed an uproar over revelations that the Justice Department during the Trump administration had obtained records belonging to journalists at The Washington Post, CNN and The New York Times as part of investigations into who had disclosed government secrets related to the investigation into Russian election interference and other national security matters. 

The inspector general found that the Justice Department didn’t follow certain department rules that had been implemented years earlier when seeking reporters’ records in 2020, including having a News Media Review Committee review the request, according to the report. The committee is meant to ensure that officials other than prosecutors, including the head of the department’s office of public affairs, are able to weigh in on such efforts. 

Then-Attorney General William Barr, who authorized obtaining the records from CNN, The New York Times and The Washington Post, did not expressly sign off on the use of non-disclosure agreements that were sought — as was required under department policy, according to the report. 

The Justice Department also seized data from the accounts of some Democratic members of Congress over leaks related to the Russia investigation, and sought records through Apple from then-White House counsel Don McGahn. 

The department went after records of two members of Congress and 43 congressional staffers, according to the report. The inspector general found no evidence of “retaliatory or political motivation by the career prosecutors” who initiated the requests. The staffers were considered suspects in most cases merely because of the close proximity between the time they accessed classified material as part of their job responsibilities and the publication of news articles containing secret information, according to the report. 

Garland’s new policy laid out several scenarios under which the Justice Department still could obtain reporters’ records, including if the reporters are suspected of working for agents of a foreign power or terrorist organizations, if they are under investigation for unrelated activities or if they obtained their information through criminal methods like breaking and entering. 

The Justice Department during both Democratic and Republican leadership has struggled with how to balance its determination to protect press freedom and its determination to safeguard national security secrets. 

President Barack Obama’s first attorney general, Eric Holder, announced revised guidelines for leak investigations after an outcry over actions seen as aggressively intrusive into press freedom, including the secret seizure of phone records of Associated Press reporters and editors. 

And Jeff Sessions, Trump’s first attorney general, announced in 2017 a leak crackdown following a series of disclosures during the investigation into Russian election interference.
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Через атаку РФ загинули троє людей
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«Ліквідація наслідків бойових дій на системі газорозподілу та відновлення газопостачання абонентам – неможливі»
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U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s promise to enforce mass deportations has raised alarm bells for immigrants in Florida. VOA Spanish’s José Pernalete says activists and field workers warn that crops could be affected if personnel shortages arise. 

See the full story here. 
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U.S. President Joe Biden on Monday presided over his final White House Tribal Nations Summit by reaching into the nation’s dark past and establishing a national monument to honor the suffering of thousands of Native children and their families in federal boarding schools in the 19th and 20th centuries. VOA White House correspondent Anita Powell reports from Washington.
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The fall of Damascus has raised concerns about what’s next for U.S. troops based in the war-torn country, who have been working with allies to keep Islamic State from resurging. VOA’s Carla Babb has more from the Pentagon.
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WASHINGTON — The brazen killing of UnitedHealthcare’s CEO was likely carried out with a ghost gun, one of the nearly untraceable weapons that can be made a home, police said Monday.

A ghost gun is a firearm without a serial number, and police believe the one used in last week’s shooting of Brian Thompson may have been made with a 3D printer. It was capable of firing 9 mm rounds. The man arrested in the crime, Luigi Mangione, also had a sound suppressor, or silencer, police said.

Ghost guns have increasingly turned up at crime scenes around the U.S. in recent years.

Here’s a look at the weapons and efforts to regulate them:

What are ghost guns?

The firearms are privately made and have no serial numbers.

Generally, firearms manufactured by licensed companies must have serial numbers — usually displayed on the frame of the gun — that allow officials to trace the gun back to the manufacturer, the firearms dealer and original purchaser.

Ghost guns, however, are made of parts that the owner can assemble together. The critical component in building an untraceable gun is what is known as the lower receiver. Some are sold in do-it-yourself kits, and the receivers are typically made from metal or polymer. They include semiautomatic handguns and rifles.

Are they legal?

It is legal in the U.S. to build a firearm for personal use. Until about two years ago, ghost gun kits were available online that allowed people to assemble the weapons at home without background checks or age verification.

As police found more ghost guns at crime scenes, the Biden administration moved to add age requirements and background checks in 2022.

Buying one now is more like purchasing a regular gun at a gun shop.

The number of ghost guns has since flattened out or declined in several major cities, including New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Baltimore, according to court documents.

But gun groups have challenged the regulation in court. The Supreme Court heard a case in October and seemed likely to uphold the regulation. It hasn’t yet handed down a ruling.

Where else have ghost guns been used?

The number of ghost guns recovered by law enforcement increased from 4,000 in 2018 to nearly 20,000 in 2021, according to Justice Department data. However, traditional guns are still used far more often in crimes.

Ghost guns really popped into the public consciousness in 2013 when John Zawahri opened fire on the campus of Santa Monica College in California, killing six people, including his father and brother. Zawahri, who was later shot and killed by police, had assembled an AR-15-style weapon after failing a background check at a gun dealer.

A gunman who killed his wife and four others in Northern California in 2017 built his own weapon to skirt a court order prohibiting him from owning firearms. In 2019, a teenager used a homemade handgun to fatally shoot two classmates and wound three others at a school in suburban Los Angeles.

A mass shooting carried out with an AR-15-style ghost gun left five people dead in Philadelphia in 2023. A ghost gun was also used in a shooting that critically wounded two kindergartners at a tiny religious school in Northern California last week, police said.
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Since winning the election, President-elect Donald Trump has begun a complex transition process involving a carefully selected team to ensure an orderly handover. Members of this group are tasked with assisting in making key appointments, identifying candidates for top Cabinet and federal agency positions and defining public policy priorities.

See the full story here.
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The Biden administration is shoring up its CHIPS Act funding agreements before President-elect Donald Trump takes office on January 20. Trump has previously disparaged the CHIPS Act and called for higher tariffs instead of subsidies to incentivize companies to build semiconductor factories. What would be the future of TSMC under the Trump administration?

See the full story here.
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Глобальна температура на поточний рік уже перевищує торішні показники. Це робить майже неминучим встановлення нового річного рекорду, вказано у звіті
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The results of the 2024 U.S. presidential election rattled the country and sent shockwaves across the world — or were cause for celebration, depending on who you ask. Is it any surprise then that the Merriam-Webster word of the year is “polarization”?

“Polarization means division, but it’s a very specific kind of division,” said Peter Sokolowski, Merriam-Webster’s editor at large, in an exclusive interview with The Associated Press ahead of Monday’s announcement. “Polarization means that we are tending toward the extremes rather than toward the center.”

The election was so divisive, many American voters went to the polls with a feeling that the opposing candidate was an existential threat to the nation. According to AP VoteCast, a survey of more than 120,000 voters, about 8 in 10 Kamala Harris voters were very or somewhat concerned that Donald Trump’s views — but not Harris’ — were too extreme, while about 7 in 10 Trump voters felt the same way about Harris — but not Trump.

The Merriam-Webster entry for “polarization” reflects scientific and metaphorical definitions. It’s most commonly used to mean “causing strong disagreement between opposing factions or groupings.”

Merriam-Webster, which logs 100 million pageviews a month on its site, chooses its word of the year based on data, tracking a rise in search and usage.

Last year’s pick was “authentic.” This year’s comes as large swaths of the U.S. struggle to reach consensus on what is real.

“It’s always been important to me that the dictionary serve as a kind of neutral and objective arbiter of meaning for everybody,” Sokolowski said. “It’s a kind of backstop for meaning in an era of fake news, alternative facts, whatever you want to say about the value of a word’s meaning in the culture.”

It’s notable that “polarization” originated in the early 1800s — and not during the Renaissance, as did most words with Latin roots about science, Sokolowski said. He called it a “pretty young word,” in the scheme of the English language. “Polarized is a term that brings intensity to another word,” he continued, most frequently used in the U.S. to describe race relations, politics and ideology.

“The basic job of the dictionary is to tell the truth about words,” the Merriam-Webster editor continued. “We’ve had dictionaries of English for 420 years and it’s only been in the last 20 years or so that we’ve actually known which words people look up.”

“Polarization” extends beyond political connotations. It’s used to highlight fresh cracks and deep rifts alike in pop culture, tech trends and other industries.

All the scrutiny over Taylor Swift’s private jet usage? Polarizing. Beef between rappers Kendrick Lamar and Drake? Polarizing. The International Olympic Committee’s decision to strip American gymnast Jordan Chiles of her bronze medal after the Paris Games? You guessed it: polarizing.

Even lighthearted memes — like those making fun of Australian breakdancer Rachael “Raygun” Gunn’s performance — or the proliferation of look-alike contests, or who counts as a nepo baby proved polarizing.

Paradoxically though, people tend to see eye to eye on the word itself. Sokolowski cited its frequent use among people across the political spectrum, including commentators on Fox News, MSNBC and CNN.

“It’s used by both sides,” he said, “and in a little bit ironic twist to the word, it’s something that actually everyone agrees on.”

Rounding out Merriam-Webster’s top 10 words of 2024:

Demure

TikToker Jools Lebron’s 38-second video describing her workday makeup routine as “very demure, very mindful” lit up the summer with memes. The video has been viewed more than 50 million times, yielding “huge spikes” in lookups, Sokolowski said, and prompting many to learn it means reserved or modest.

Fortnight

Taylor Swift’s song “Fortnight,” featuring rapper Post Malone, undoubtedly spurred many searches for this word, which means two weeks. “Music can still send people to the dictionary,” Sokolowski said.

Totality

The solar eclipse in April inspired awe and much travel. There are tens of millions of people who live along a narrow stretch from Mexico’s Pacific coast to eastern Canada, otherwise known as the path of totality, where locals and travelers gazed skyward to see the moon fully blot out the sun. Generally, the word refers to a sum or aggregate amount — or wholeness.

Resonate

“Texts developed by AI have a disproportionate percentage of use of the word ‘resonate,'” Sokolowski said. This may be because the word, which means to affect or appeal to someone in a personal or emotional way, can add gravitas to writing. But, paradoxically, artificial intelligence “also betrays itself to be a robot because it’s using that word too much.”

Allision

The word was looked up 60 times more often than usual when, in March, a ship crashed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore. “When you have one moving object into a fixed object, that’s an allision, not a collision. You’re showing that one of the two objects struck was not, in fact, in motion,” Sokolowski said.

Weird

This summer on the TV news show “Morning Joe,” Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz called Republican leaders “weird.” It may have been what launched his national career, landing him as the Democratic vice presidential nominee. Though it’s a word that people typically misspell — is it “ei” or “ie”? — and search for that reason, its rise in use was notable, Sokolowski said.

Cognitive

Whether the word was used to raise questions about President Joe Biden’s debate performance or Trump’s own age, it cropped up often. It refers to conscious intellectual activity — such as thinking, reasoning, or remembering.

Pander

Pander was used widely in political commentary, Sokolowski said. “Conservative news outlets accused Kamala Harris of pandering to different groups, especially young voters, Black voters, gun rights supporters.” Whereas Walz said Trump’s visit to a McDonald’s kitchen pandered to hourly wage workers. It means to say, do, or provide what someone — such as an audience — wants or demands even though it is not “good, proper, reasonable, etc.”

Democracy

In 2003, Merriam-Webster decided to make “democracy” its first word of the year. Since then, the word — which, of course, means a form of government in which the people elect representatives to make decisions, policies and laws — is consistently one of the dictionary’s most looked up. “There’s a poignancy to that, that people are checking up on it,” Sokolowski said. “Maybe the most hopeful thing that the curiosity of the public shows, is that they’re paying attention.”
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Both U.S. President Joe Biden and President-elect Donald Trump reacted Sunday to the collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria. Given its strategic interests in the Middle East, the U.S. is expected to keep a close eye on what lies ahead in Syria. VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias reports.
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Washington — Celebrities, cultural icons and a few surprise guests are gathering for the annual Kennedy Center Honors celebration Sunday evening in Washington. 

This year’s recipients of the lifetime achievement award for artistic accomplishment are director and filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola, the Grateful Dead, jazz trumpeter Arturo Sandoval, and singer-songwriter Bonnie Raitt. In addition, the venerable Harlem theater The Apollo, which has launched generations of Black artists, is being recognized. 

There will be personalized tributes with performances and testimonials from fellow artists during the gala at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Medallions were presented during the traditional Saturday night ceremony at the State Department. 

The tribute performances are often kept secret from the recipients themselves, most notably in 2018 when Cyndi Lauper flat out lied to her longtime friend Cher about being unable to attend. Lauper appeared on stage to perform Cher’s hit, “If I Could Turn Back Time.” 

Several of the latest honorees have themselves participated in past tributes to friends and colleagues at the Kennedy Center. 

Coppola spoke during fellow director Martin Scorsese’s induction in 2007. Sandoval performed in the tribute to his mentor, jazz trumpet legend Dizzy Gillespie. Raitt has taken part in tributes to Buddy Guy and Mavis Staples. Raitt even attended the Kennedy Center Honors in the 1970s when her father, Broadway performer John Raitt, was taking part in a tribute to composer Richard Rogers. 

The tribute to the Grateful Dead is expected to double as a memorial to the band’s founding bass player Phil Lesh, who died in October at age 84. 

This could also be the last Kennedy Center Honors ceremony without political intrigue for a while. 

During Republican Donald Trump’s first four years in office, Kennedy Center officials were forced to walk a public tightrope between the tradition of the president attending the ceremony and the open antipathy toward Trump from multiple honorees. In 2017, recipient Norman Lear threatened to boycott his own ceremony if Trump attended. Trump, who takes office in January, skipped the ceremony for the entirety of his first term. 

Democratic President Joe Biden is scheduled to host a reception for the honorees at the White House and plans to attend the Kennedy Center ceremony afterward. 

The show will air on CBS on Dec. 22. 
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U.S. President Joe Biden declared Sunday that the sudden demise of the Syrian government under Bashar Assad was a “fundamental act of justice,” but that it was “a moment of uncertainty” for the Mideast.

Biden, speaking at the White House, said the collapse of the decades-long iron rule by the Assad family was “the best opportunity in a generation for the Syrian people to forge their own destiny.”

Biden said that action by the U.S. and its allies over the last two years weakened Syria’s backers — Russia, Iran and Iran-supported Hezbollah militants in Lebanon — to the extent that “for the first time” they could no longer defend the Assad government.

“Our approach has shifted the balance of power in the Middle East,” Biden said, after a meeting with his national security advisers at the White House.

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump said Sunday that Assad had fled his country, which his family had ruled for decades, because close ally Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, “was not interested in protecting him any longer.”

Trump’s comments on his social media platform came a day after he decried the possibility that the U.S. might intervene militarily in Syria to aid the rebels as they moved to oust Assad, declaring, “THIS IS NOT OUR FIGHT.”

The Biden administration had no intention of intervening, according to Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan.

The U.S has about 900 troops in Syria, including forces working with Kurdish allies in the opposition-held northeast to prevent any resurgence of the Islamic State group.

Biden said he intends for those troops to remain, adding that U.S. forces on Sunday conducted “dozens” of what he called “precision airstrikes” on Islamic State camps and operations in Syria.

Biden said the U.S. is “clear eyed” that ISIS will try to take advantage of the situation in Syria.

The Syrian opposition that brought down Assad is led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. The Biden administration has designated the group as a terrorist organization and says it has links to al-Qaida, although Hayat Tahrir al-Sham says it has since broken ties with al-Qaida.

“We will remain vigilant,” Biden said. “Make no mistake, some of the rebel groups that took down Assad have their own grim record of terrorism and human rights abuses.” He added that the groups are “saying the right things now.”

“But as they take on greater responsibility, we will assess not just their words, but their actions,” Biden said.

Trump, who takes office January 20, linked the upheaval in Syria and Russia’s war in Ukraine, noting that Assad’s allies in Moscow, as well as in Iran, the main sponsor of Hamas and Hezbollah, “are in a weakened state right now.”

Vice President-elect JD Vance, a veteran of the U.S.-led war in Iraq, wrote on his own social media Sunday to express skepticism about the insurgents.

“Many of ‘the rebels’ are a literal offshoot of ISIS. One can hope they’ve moderated. Time will tell,” he said.

With the collapse of the Assad regime, the family of missing U.S. journalist Austin Tice renewed calls to find him.

“To everyone in Syria that hears this, please remind people that we’re waiting for Austin,” Tice’s mother, Debra, said in comments that hostage advocacy groups spread on social media. “We know that when he comes out, he’s going to be fairly dazed & he’s going to need lots of care & direction. Direct him to his family please!”

Tice disappeared in 2012 outside Damascus.

“We’ve remained committed to returning him to his family,” Biden told reporters. “We believe he’s alive, we think we can get him back, but we have no direct evidence to that yet. And Assad should be held accountable.”

The president added: “We have to identify where he [Tice] is.”

Some material in this report came from The Associated Press. 
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The FBI is offering a 50-thousand-dollar reward for information that leads to the arrest of the assassin of a health-care CEO in New York City. Law enforcement took the unusual step of identifying a suspect without naming him as the search for the killer continues. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi has the story.
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KYIV — U.S. President-elect Donald Trump on Sunday called for an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine, shortly after a meeting in Paris with French and Ukrainian leaders, claiming Kyiv “would like to make a deal” to end the more than 1,000-day war. 

In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump claimed that Moscow and Kyiv have both lost hundreds of thousands of soldiers in a war that “should never have started.” 

“There should be an immediate ceasefire and negotiations should begin. Too many lives are being needlessly wasted, too many families destroyed,” he said, as he called on Russian President Vladimir Putin to act to bring the fighting to an end. 

Trump’s remarks came after a meeting Saturday with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, that Zelenskyy later described as “constructive”. 

Speaking to reporters later that day, Zelenskyy insisted that any peace deal “should be just” for Ukrainians, “so that Russia and Putin or any other aggressors will not have the opportunity to return.” 

In a separate social media update Sunday, Zelenskyy asserted that Kyiv has so far lost 43,000 soldiers since Moscow’s all-out invasion on Feb. 24, 2022, while a further 370,000 have been wounded. 

Both Russia and Ukraine have been reluctant to publish official casualty figures, but Western officials have said that the past few months of grinding positional warfare in eastern Ukraine have meant record losses for both sides, with tens of thousands killed and wounded each month. 
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«Наші люди ціною своїх життів захищають свій дім, і кожне життя наших воїнів і наших цивільних цінне для нас»
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