Month: March 2023

A witness to the March 18 kidnapping of a Haitian American couple on a bus in Haiti has described the abduction to VOA in dramatic detail, explaining that the armed gang responsible first sought to extort money from all the passengers on the bus.

The couple, Abigail and Jean-Dickens Toussaint, are still missing, and family members in Florida say the kidnappers are demanding a ransom of $400,000 for their release.

The witness, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution from the gang, said he was riding on the same bus with the couple when members of the Grand Ravine/Ti Lapli gang boarded it outside the capital, Port-au-Prince.

He said the gang members demanded the driver hand over $1,000 for the bus to be allowed to continue its journey.

“When the driver reached Martissant [about 11 kilometers south of Port-au-Prince], he gave them $500 instead.” the witness said. “The men told him, ‘Hey, you know the price is $1,000 and you’re giving us just $500? Go park the bus.'”

He said two gang members then inspected the bus and saw suitcases, indicating travelers from abroad.

“They told the driver, ‘Now, you’re going to give us $1,000,’” the man recalled.

The eyewitness said the frightened passengers scrambled to come up with the sum the gang asked for. They collected $700 and handed it over to the gang members.

“They told us, ‘We asked you to give us $1,000, and you’re coming to us with just $700 now?’” the witness said.

The passengers returned to the bus and managed to collect an additional $300 among themselves.

“When the driver went back to give them [the gang members] the $1,000, they told him to keep the money and go back to the bus,” the witness said.

At that point, a black BMW sedan without a license plate drove up to the bus, and one of the men inside ordered the bus driver to follow them.

“If the driver had done what he was supposed to do [pay the $1,000 up front], this may not have happened,” the eyewitness told VOA.

U.S. State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel confirmed the kidnapping Thursday. Patel told reporters the State Department is in constant contact with Haitian authorities and will continue working with them to secure the couple’s release.

Nikesse Toussaint, a relative of the couple, told The Associated Press earlier this week that the gang is seeking $400,000. She said the FBI has been in contact with the family and told them they are working to secure the couple’s release.

President Joe Biden commented on Haiti’s gang situation during a recent visit to Canada.

The U.S. and Canada are working with the Haitian government and the international community to boost the Haitian National Police’s capacity to combat the gangs, Biden said during a joint press conference with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in Ottawa on March 24. He said a military force is “not off the table, but that is not in play at the moment.”

Haiti’s government has appealed multiple times for an international force to help combat the gangs. Although the idea has been discussed by the United Nations Security Council, the Organization of American States, and the Caribbean Community — CARICOM — no decision has been made.

News of the couple’s kidnapping spread quickly among the Haitian diaspora and has stoked fears inside the community about the uncontrolled gang violence that has terrorized Haitians inside and outside the country.

In New York’s Queens neighborhood, Haitians expressed trepidation about expressing their opinions about the kidnapped couple and gang violence for fear that it could have repercussions on their families in Haiti.

“I want to go to Haiti, but … it’s not safe, man,” Francisco Jean Pierre told VOA.

He said he has lived in the United States for 21 years and loves to travel to Haiti, but the rampant kidnappings and unrelenting violence scares him.

Carl, who declined to give his last name, criticized the gangs.

“No control, no compassion, not even for their own blood,” he said.

Marie Elvire Telfort Dorcil, who said she worries about family in Haiti, said what’s happening there also troubles Haitians living in the U.S.

“The situation affects me. When we hear what’s happening back home, it frustrates us a lot,” she said. “Not only does it make you cry, but it is also scary.”

She cited news about children being traumatized and women being raped.

A recent United Nations report estimates that gangs control 60% of Port-au-Prince. Haitians say the actual percentage is much higher. Between Feb. 27 and March 9, 187 people were killed and more than 150 others were injured as rival gangs battled for control of more territory. Thousands have been forced to flee their homes.

Haitian officials say 260 kidnappings have been reported since January 2023.

In Queens, Haitian American Yves Pierre was solemn.

“The country is upside down. It’s painful for the Haitian diaspora because we left our country, but we haven’t abandoned it,” he told VOA.

Malawi’s government has told refugees and asylum-seekers to relocate to the country’s lone refugee camp by April 15 or face forced eviction from their homes.

The Ministry of Homeland Security said in a statement Thursday that the new deadline followed the expiration of the February 1 deadline the government set last year for about 8,000 refugees who had settled outside the Dzaleka refugee camp.

Ken Zikhale Ngoma, Malawi’s minister of homeland security, said the latest move was in line with Malawi’s encampment policy, which prohibits refugees from staying outside a refugee camp.

Ngoma said the Dzaleka camp in central Malawi has facilities that meet international standards for all refugees and asylum-seekers, including primary and secondary schools, a health center and a public market.

Raphael Ndabagha, a refugee from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, disputes that.

Ndabagha lived outside the Dzaleka camp before returning ahead of the February 1 deadline. “The advantage of living in the city, you have many more opportunities than the camp,” he said. “In the city, if you are a businessperson, you can open a shop and you are able to make a living, because you can make income, you can prosper.”

Ndabagha said that in the city, his three children were able to go to better schools than those in and around the refugee camp.

Kenyi Emanuel Lukajo, associate external relations and reporting officer for the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR in Malawi, told VOA on Friday that the agency would comment officially on the new deadline later.

However, the UNHCR had previously expressed concerns when the Malawi government issued the first relocation order in August 2022.

The refugee agency said in a statement that the relocation would result in extreme pressure on the camp’s already inadequate health services, water, shelter and sanitation.

But the Malawi government said in its new order that refugees were already given ample time to make necessary arrangements for the relocation.

It warned that those resisting the new deadline would be forcefully evicted from their homes.

Business operators in Malawi have long threatened to forcefully evict refugees from market areas, saying they are bringing unnecessary competition in terms of prices of goods.

Teneson Mulimbula, general secretary for an association of small-business operators in Malawi, said, “If you go to their shops you will find that there is stock, farm produce items like beans, rice, peas, which they receive at Dzaleka refugee camp. And just because they receive them freely, they start selling them at a lower price.”

But some refugee traders, who asked not to be named for fear of reprisals, denied that they were selling items from the refugee camp.

The government said state agencies such as the Malawi Police Service and the Department of Immigration and Citizenship Services would be involved in the relocation.

It added that any person or group found to be harassing refugees or asylum-seekers would be arrested.

Dzaleka is home to refugees and asylum-seekers from Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Rwanda and Somalia.

The camp was meant to accommodate about 10,000 refugees but now is home to more than 50,000.

Experts on nuclear security policy and weapons proliferation were contacted by suspected North Korean hackers posing as Voice of America journalists, according to a threat intelligence group, which says this is part of a recent pattern of impersonating reporters from major news organizations.

The online spies were attempting to gather intelligence about the stance of international officials toward the Pyongyang government of Kim Jong Un, according to a report issued by Mandiant, an American cybersecurity firm and subsidiary of Google.

It is the latest known attempt in recent months by the cyber-espionage group known as APT43, also referred to as “Kimsuky” or “Thallium,” posing as journalists and targeting government organizations in the United States and South Korea, as well as academics and think tank analysts.

At least seven journalists from five news organizations were impersonated by someone with APT43, Mandiant Senior Analyst Gary Freas told VOA on Wednesday.

“We have seen success in gathering sensitive information related to Korean Peninsula affairs,” such as targeted individuals answering questions about Western sentiment about North Korean activity, including nuclear proliferation and missile launches, Freas said.

In one email from Oct. 14, 2022, obtained by Mandiant, the sender, impersonating a VOA reporter, posed several questions related to North Korea’s missile and nuclear weapons testing programs, including: “Would Japan increase the defense budget and a more proactive defense policy?”

The recipient was asked to “send me your answers within 5 days.”

VOA “is aware that malevolent actors have attempted to impersonate our journalists in attempts to obtain information from third parties, including on nuclear proliferation issues,” said Nigel Gibbs, a VOA spokesperson. “It is something we are mindful of, and we take extra care to verify our identity and educate sources about potential impersonators.”

Mandiant said that in recent months it had been in contact with USAGM about the suspected North Korean operation impersonating VOA reporters.

“Trust between our journalists and their sources is imperative,” USAGM Public Affairs Director Laurie Moy said. “USAGM goes to great lengths to protect the security and integrity of our network journalists’ communications tools. We employ a number of reputation management services, including identifying impersonations and fake social media accounts and ensuring that public-facing images are verified and associated with agency resources.”

Moy continued: “We also provide robust IT system security to support safety concerns for our journalists. USAGM provides encrypted equipment, ensures multifactor authentication for systems access, and routinely monitors for vulnerabilities and external threats.”

Fake emails, claiming to be from reporters of VOA’s Korean Service, have been frequently sent to academics, officials and others requesting comment. In some cases, recipients of those emails have contacted VOA’s Seoul bureau and were informed the queries were not authentic.

“Our team has been a target of various aggressive phishing attempts, including impersonation, over the past few years,” said Dong Hyuk Lee, VOA’s Korean Service chief. “A dozen reporters on my team, including me, were targeted. As far as I can remember, we notified the agency’s IT office or (USAGM) security, if needed, about every case.”

Earlier this month, Mandiant also revealed that the same hacking group distributed an attachment to an email that appeared to be from a recruiter for The New York Times.

There has been similar activity linked to Pyongyang in recent years, including a phishing scam targeting journalists in South Korea in which the sender posed as a scriptwriter for the Korean Broadcasting System seeking information about North Korea.

“State-sponsored hackers regularly target or pose as journalists,” Joseph Bodnar, a research analyst for the Alliance for Securing Democracy, told VOA. “Reporters have information and access that most people don’t have. Masquerading as a journalist can be an easy way for hackers to gain and exploit a target’s trust.”

Proofpoint, a cybersecurity firm, issued a report last year detailing efforts by state-sponsored hackers in North Korea, as well as China, Iran and Turkey, to spy on or impersonate mostly U.S.-based journalists.

“These hackers can be sloppy, sending messages with incorrect grammar or misspelled words,” Bodnar said. “Google searches could reveal that the reporter they’re posing as doesn’t exist or uses a different email address. There are basic cybersecurity practices that can help people defend against this threat.”

At the State Department on Wednesday, principal deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel said that while he couldn’t address the specific events involving the impersonation of New York Times and VOA personnel, “of course the DPRK is known for taking a number of destabilizing and malign steps. This is something we are being vigilant about.”

DPRK refers to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the official name of North Korea.

North Korea “often leverages nation-state malicious cyber actors to generate revenue for the regime while evading sanctions,” the U.S. Cyber National Mission Force’s Major Katrina Cheesman told VOA. “The DPRK cyber actors do this through a range of illicit means, such as cryptocurrency theft, money-laundering, ransomware and fraudulent activities of DPRK IT workers abroad.”

The Kimsuky APT group has most likely been operating since 2012, according to the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. It is primarily focused on carrying out financially motivated cybercrime to support the North Korean government, according to intelligence analysts.

During the coronavirus pandemic, attention shifted to pharmaceutical and other health-related companies. Other related activities APT43 is alleged to be involved with include registering web domains meant to look like legitimate websites, including one for Cornell University, an Ivy League school. The group has also used malicious apps to steal usernames and passwords and to generate cryptocurrency.

“APT43 is exceptionally good at convincing its targets,” Freas, the Mandiant analyst, said. “We’ve seen APT43 create email addresses that look similar to news reporters, or analysts at think tanks, and simultaneously spin up fake domains that also look similar to the real news outlet they are spoofing. They’ll add these to their email signatures so even if the victim grows suspicious and visits APT43’s hosted domain, it has the look and feel of a real news site.”

Authorities in Pakistan said Friday that a stampede at a free-food distribution center in the southern port city of Karachi had killed at least 11 people and injured five others.

Local police and rescue workers in the impoverished country’s largest city said the victims were mainly women and children.

The stampede occurred outside a Karachi factory where a distribution center for employees had been set up in connection with the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. Hundreds of people in the crowd, made up mostly of women, panicked and started pushing each other to collect food, with some falling into a nearby drain, witnesses and police said.

Friday’s incident brought the death toll from stampedes at private- and government-funded food aid centers to at least 22 in recent days as Pakistanis struggle with soaring costs of basic staples and food items.

The South Asian nation of about 232 million people is suffering through one of its worse economic crises in decades.

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s government rolled out a free-flour distribution project at the start of Ramadan to help millions of low-income families offset the impact of record-breaking inflation. Official estimates suggest inflation is running above 40%, a five-decade high, with the price of flour skyrocketing more than 45% in the past year.

The government initiative has resulted in thousands of people crowding distribution centers. Families say a lack of proper arrangements to accommodate large crowds in some districts has triggered deadly stampedes over fears of not being able to get the free flour.

Authorities in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab provinces collectively reported 11 deaths as of Thursday. Thousands of bags of flour have also been looted from trucks and distribution points, according to officials.

The deadly rush underscored the desperation in the face of soaring costs, exacerbated by the falling rupee exchange rate and the removal of fuel subsidies. Government cuts were required for the International Monetary Fund to unlock the latest tranche of its financial support package.

Critics have slammed the government for launching the project without putting in place proper arrangements to ensure the safety of people.

The independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan blamed what it said was the mismanagement of the flour distribution center for the deadly stampedes.

In a statement Friday, the watchdog described the Karachi incident as particularly alarming and demanded the government immediately improve the distribution system across the country.

“This situation is adding insult to injury for marginalized people of Pakistan who are braving the economic injustice perpetrated by the elites who dominate the state,” the HRCP said.

Some information for this report came from Reuters.

New developments:

The EU may need to reintroduce tariffs on large, low-priced influx of Ukrainian grain, as a measure to safeguard prices and local output of EU farmers.
Any cease-fire in Russia’s war on Ukraine that would involve Russian forces remaining on Ukrainian territory is “totally inadmissible,” Mykhailo Podolyak, senior adviser to President Zelenskyy, said in a tweet.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg says Finland will formally join NATO “in the coming days.”
U.S. President Joe Biden called on Russia Friday to release detained Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, charged with spying by Moscow. “Let him go,” Biden said as he left the White House for a trip to storm-devastated Mississippi. The Journal said the detention of Gershkovich was based on false allegations.

Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko threatened Friday that Belarus also could host intercontinental nuclear missiles on its soil in addition to the tactical nuclear weapons Russia has decided to station in Belarus.

In an annual address to lawmakers and government officials, Lukashenko said Moscow’s nuclear arms would help protect Belarus, which Lukashenko claimed was under threat from the West.

“I am not trying to intimidate or blackmail anyone. I want to safeguard the Belarusian state and ensure peace for the Belarusian people,” said Lukashenko, suggesting he could use such nuclear weapons with Russia’s agreement if Belarus was threatened with destruction.

Intercontinental ballistic missiles on Belarusian soil can destroy whole cities from thousands of miles away.

Lukashenko said Belarus had enough conventional weapons to counter threats, “but if we see that behind [the threats] lies the destruction of our country, we will use everything we have.”

“If necessary, Putin and I will decide and bring in strategic weapons — if needed,” he noted.

Lukashenko did not present any proof of such a threat from the West, nor did he provide any indication there were plans to invade Belarus from neighboring Poland, a member of the U.S.-led Western NATO alliance.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy spoke at a ceremony in the town of Bucha near Kyiv to commemorate the anniversary of its liberation from Russia’s brutal occupation. Bucha stands as a symbol of atrocities committed by the Russian army since its full-scale invasion began in February 2022.

The Kremlin’s forces occupied Bucha weeks after they invaded Ukraine and stayed for about a month. Ukrainian troops retook the town and found horrific scenes. Hundreds of bodies were uncovered, including some children.

In a tweet, a tearful Zelenskyy said, “We will never forget the victims of this war and we will certainly bring all Russian murderers to justice.”

In his daily address Thursday, the Ukrainian leader commemorated Ukraine’s 400th day of resistance. “I want to thank everyone in the world who stands with Ukraine … who has the same strong conviction that we, Ukrainians, have … the conviction that the world should be based on rules, on civilized rules — on the rules of humanity, respect and peace. … We will not leave a single trace of Russia on our land,” he said.

Turkey’s parliament on Thursday ratified Finland’s bid to join NATO. Turkey’s parliament is the last to approve lifting the last hurdle of the Nordic country’s accession into the Western military alliance.

“All 30 NATO allies have now ratified the accession protocol,” Stoltenberg said Friday. “Finland will formally join our alliance in the coming days.” In a tweet following Turkey’s vote Thursday, Stoltenberg said Finland’s inclusion in the alliance “will make the whole NATO family stronger & safer.”

Finland and neighboring Sweden each dropped decades of nonalignment with their applications to join the military alliance after Russia invaded Ukraine last year.

Since their accession bids were ratified at a NATO summit in July, NATO member states have gone through their own processes of giving final approval for Finland and Sweden.

Hungary gave its approval to Finland on Monday, leaving only Turkey remaining in a process that must be unanimous among current NATO members.

Both Finland and Sweden saw their bids slowed as Turkey expressed concerns the countries were too lenient toward groups that Turkey considers terror organizations.

Representatives from the three countries met earlier this month to resolve their outstanding issues, but Turkey has yet to indicate it will ultimately support Sweden’s bid, nor has Hungary.

There is “an ample amount of grievances that need to be addressed” before Sweden’s bid to join NATO is ratified by Hungary, government spokesperson Zoltán Kovács said Wednesday.

Sweden and NATO leaders have said Sweden has carried out a series of reforms to overcome Turkey’s concerns. NATO Secretary-General Stoltenberg has repeatedly said he expected both Finland and Sweden will eventually become NATO members.

Some material in this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.

Give us 5 minutes, and we’ll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

Undersea cables that carry the bulk of intercontinental internet traffic are increasingly the focal point of geopolitical tensions involving China, according to experts.

Justin Sherman, a fellow at the Cyber Statecraft Initiative of the Atlantic Council, a Washington think tank, told Reuters, ”When we talk about U.S.-China tech competition, when we talk about espionage and the capture of data, submarine cables are involved in every aspect of those rising geopolitical tensions.”

The cables are a hot spot in China’s relations with Taiwan, a self-governing island that Beijing considers its own territory — a long-standing point of contention between the U.S. and China.

VOA Mandarin contacted the Chinese Embassy in Washington and the Foreign Ministry in Beijing asking for a comment but was told the Chinese government had no comment on undersea cables.

Last month, the cables were cut between Taiwan and the Matsu Islands, which are controlled by Taiwan but lie just off the coast of China. Taiwan’s government stopped short of accusing the Chinese government of cutting the cables on purpose, and the National Communications Commission said two ships severed the cables accidentally.

The cables have been cut 27 times during the past five years, according to data from Taiwan’s Chungwha Telecom quoted by The Associated Press.  Each cable is about as wide as a garden hose once the fiber-optic technology inside is wrapped with insulating materials so it can be laid on the seabed, where it is exposed to threats including earthquakes, typhoons, ships’ anchors and saboteurs.

Elisabeth Braw, a senior researcher at the American Enterprise Institute, speculated in a February 21 article in Foreign Policy magazine that the cut cables may be the result of targeted harassment of Taiwan by China.

She told VOA Mandarin that over the past few years, “Chinese fishing vessels and other commercial vessels have been harming the cables connecting the Matsu islands to Taiwan a disproportionate number of times. … And the challenge for Taiwan is that it’s not a military attack. 

“And China can say, ‘Oh, it was just commercial vessels,’ and they didn’t deliberately harm or cut the cables. And it’s impossible for Taiwan to prove that it was deliberate. And so it’s very hard to retaliate, and it’s also very hard to protect those cables. You can’t have your navy out 24 hours a day just sitting on top of the cables to make sure nobody harms or cuts them.” 

Military implications

The loss of the internet cables and the connectivity they provide has huge military implications, as Russia has shown by targeting internet infrastructure in its assault on Ukraine.

Joseph Hwang, an affiliate faculty member at George Mason University, told VOA Mandarin that fixing the cables severed last month would take time and money.

“Due to limited international funding, emergency repairs are expected to arrive on April 20 at the earliest,” he said. He estimated repairs would cost between $329,500 and $659,000 in U.S. dollars.

He suggested that Taiwan, U.S. and Asian allies should strengthen undersea infrastructure by investing in cable armor, deeper burial and decoy cables, and consider establishing legal frameworks that clearly explain the consequences of accidental or intentional underwater cable destruction.

In an article in The Hill, Dan Blumenthal and Frederick W. Kagan, scholars at the American Enterprise Institute, said that if China invades Taiwan, “China can cut off lines of communication and interdict military and civilian supplies by air and sea, then Taiwan eventually would have to capitulate.” 

James Holmes, the J.C. Wylie chair of maritime strategy at the U.S. Naval War College, told VOA Mandarin it’s unsurprising that China would dive underwater to bring pressure on Taiwan and isolate the island from the world. He said the best pushback against such tactics is deterrence. 

“China’s and Russia’s undersea connections to the outside world are as vulnerable as anyone else’s, and Beijing and Moscow must know it,” he said. “So, we may be looking at another form of conventional, mutual assured destruction as gray-zone competition dives underwater.”

Gray-zone actions are those waged by one government to gain advantage over another in a way that does not provoke a conventional military response, according to a Center for Strategic and International Studies report.

US actions

In at least six private undersea cable deals over the past four years, the U.S. government has either intervened to keep HMN Tech, a subsidiary of the sanctioned Chinese firm Huawei, out of the undersea cable business in the Asia-Pacific region or it has forced the rerouting or abandonment of cables that would have directly linked U.S. and Chinese territories, according to Reuters.

As of early 2023, there were more than 550 active and planned submarine cables worldwide, according to TeleGeography, a telecommunications market research and consulting firm in Washington, which figures there are nearly 1.4 million kilometers of submarine cables in service globally.

Undersea cables carry over 99.4% of intercontinental internet traffic, Jayne Miller, spokesperson for TeleGeography, told VOA Mandarin via email. “Even with lots of satellite constellation launches, the capacity of a single submarine cable dwarfs that of many satellites combined,” she said.

“Cables can carry far more data at far less cost than satellites,” according to the TeleGeography website. U.S. government figures “indicate that satellites account for just 0.37% of all U.S. international capacity.”

The cables are laid between locations that need to communicate. A map of the world’s undersea cables shows almost two dozen cables connecting North America with Asia and fewer than 20 connecting Europe and North America. There are fewer than five cables connecting Africa and South America, and no cable connecting Australia and South America. 

Saudi Arabia has agreed to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization as a “dialogue partner,” state media reported Wednesday, the latest indication of closer political ties with China.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization was established in 2001 as a political, economic and security organization to rival Western institutions.

Besides China, its eight members include India, Pakistan and Russia, as well as four central Asian countries: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.

The Saudi Cabinet approved the decision at a meeting Tuesday chaired by King Salman, the official Saudi Press Agency reported.

The move would grant Riyadh “the status of a dialogue partner in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization,” it said.

Other countries with either observer or dialogue partner status include Egypt, Iran and Qatar.

Riyadh’s move to partner with the bloc comes less than three weeks after the unveiling of a landmark China-brokered reconciliation deal with Iran to restore full diplomatic relations that were severed seven years ago.

Long bitter rivals, Shiite-majority Iran and mainly Sunni Saudi Arabia have engaged in a series of proxy conflicts in the region, such as the protracted fighting in Yemen.

Riyadh has said that while it had engaged in previous rounds of bilateral talks with Tehran, the reconciliation process was jump-started by President Xi Jinping’s offer last year to serve as a bridge between the two Middle East heavyweights.

Xi’s role in the rapprochement raised eyebrows given Saudi Arabia’s traditionally close partnership with Washington, though that relationship has been under strain recently because of disputes over human rights and oil production.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Vedant Patel played down the impact of Saudi Arabia’s move, saying that it was long expected.

“Each country has its own relationships,” Patel said.

Xi, in a phone call on Tuesday with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, King Salman’s son and the Persian Gulf nation’s de facto ruler, lauded what he called the easing of tensions in the Middle East.

In his first comments on the matter to be made public since the Saudi-Iran deal was struck, Xi said the dialogue promoted by China would “play a major role in strengthening regional unity and cooperation.”

A look at the best news photos from around the world.

Russia launches a fresh barrage of missile strikes, exploding drones and bombs across Ukraine. Demands for the release of an American journalist arrested by Russia Thursday. Despite the challenges, Ukrainian women continue to produce their hand-knit collections for major designers.