Month: April 2023

The United States called Saturday for China to stop harassing Philippine vessels in the South China Sea, pledging to stand with the Philippines at a time of simmering geopolitical tension.

“We call upon Beijing to desist from its provocative and unsafe conduct,” the U.S. State Department said in a statement.

The Philippines accused China’s coast guard of “aggressive tactics” Friday following an incident during a Philippine coast guard patrol close to the Philippines-held Second Thomas Shoal, a flashpoint for previous altercations located 105 nautical miles (195 km) off its coast.

The Second Thomas Shoal is home to a small military contingent aboard a rusty World War II-era U.S. ship that was intentionally grounded in 1999 to reinforce the Philippines’ territorial claims. In February, the Philippines said a Chinese ship had directed a “military-grade laser” at one of its resupply vessels.

China claims sovereignty over almost the entire South China Sea with a “nine-dash line” on maps that stretches more than 1,500 km off its mainland and cuts into the exclusive economic zones of Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Indonesia. An international arbitral ruling in 2016 dismissed that line as having no legal basis.

China’s foreign ministry said Friday the Philippine vessels had intruded into Chinese waters and made deliberate provocative moves.

The State Department said Washington “stands with our Philippine allies in upholding the rules-based international maritime order.”

Deaths of pregnant women in the United States fell in 2022, dropping significantly from a six-decade high during the pandemic, new data suggests.

More than 1,200 U.S. women died in 2021 during pregnancy or shortly after childbirth, according to a final tally released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2022, there were 733 maternal deaths, according to preliminary agency data, though the final number is likely to be higher.

Officials say the 2022 maternal death rate is on track to get close to pre-pandemic levels. But that’s not great: The rate before COVID-19 was the highest it had been in decades.

“From the worst to the near worst? I wouldn’t exactly call that an accomplishment,” said Omari Maynard, a New Yorker whose partner died after childbirth in 2019.

Experts blame COVID-19 

The CDC counts women who die while pregnant, during childbirth, and up to 42 days after birth. Excessive bleeding, blood vessel blockages, and infections are leading causes.

COVID-19 can be particularly dangerous to pregnant women, and experts believe it was the main reason for the 2021 spike. Burned-out physicians could have added to the risk by ignoring pregnant women’s worries, some advocates said.

In 2021, there were about 33 maternal deaths for every 100,000 live births. The last time the government recorded a rate that high was 1964.

What happened “isn’t that hard to explain,” said Eugene Declercq, a longtime maternal mortality researcher at Boston University. “The surge was COVID-related.”

Previous government analyses concluded that one quarter of maternal deaths in 2020 and 2021 were COVID-related — meaning that the entire increase in maternal deaths was due to coronavirus infections or the pandemic’s wider impact on health care. Pregnant women infected with the coronavirus were nearly eight times as likely to die as their uninfected peers, according to a recent study published by BMJ Global Health.

The bodies of pregnant women are already under strain, their heart forced to pump harder. Other health problems can make their condition more fragile. And then on top of that, “COVID is going to make all that much worse,” said Dr. Elizabeth Cherot, chief medical and health officer for the March of Dimes.

It didn’t help that vaccination rates among pregnant women were low in 2021 — particularly among Black women. Part of that was related to limited vaccine availability, and that the CDC did not fully recommend shots for pregnant women until August 2021.

“Initially, there was a lot of mistrust of the vaccine in Black communities,” said Samantha Griffin, who owns a doula service that mainly serves families of color in the Washington area.

But there’s more to it than that, she and others added. The 2021 maternal mortality rate for Black women was nearly three times higher than it was for white women. And the maternal death rate for Hispanic American women that year rose 54% compared with 2020, also surpassing the death rate for white moms.

More than a year into the pandemic, a lot of doctors and nurses were feeling burned out and they were getting less in-person time with patients.

Providers at the time “were needing to make snap decisions and maybe not listening to their patients as much,” Griffin said. “Women were saying that they thought something was wrong and they weren’t being heard.”

‘She wasn’t being heard’

Maynard, who is 41 and lives in Brooklyn, said he and his partner experienced that in 2019.

Shamony Gibson, a healthy 30-year-old, was set to have their second child. The pregnancy was smooth until her contractions stopped progressing and she underwent a cesarean section.

The operation was more involved than expected but their son Khari was born in September. A few days later, Shamony began complaining of chest pains and shortness of breath, Maynard said. Doctors told her she just needed to relax and let her body rest from the pregnancy, he said.

More than a week after giving birth, her health worsened and she begged to go to the hospital. Then her heart stopped, and loved ones called for help. The initial focus for paramedics and firefighters was whether Gibson was taking illicit drugs, Maynard said, adding that she didn’t.

She was hospitalized and died the next day of a blood clot in the lungs. Her son was 13 days old.

“She wasn’t being heard at all,” said Maynard, an artist who now does speaking engagements as a maternal health advocate.

Former Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok is calling on the international community to keep pressure on the warring sides in the Sudan conflict. Hamdok says the kind of engagement that enabled evacuations of foreigners could help bring a lasting truce. He spoke during the 2023 Mo Ibrahim Governance weekend in Kenya.

Answering questions from Mo Ibrahim, the founder of the Ibrahim Foundation, Hamdok said a strong, unified approach by the international community would help end the military fighting in Sudan, which he terms senseless.

According to the former prime minister, it is crucial to put clearly defined roles upon the military, which he said must stay away from politics. 

Hamdok was ousted in an October 2021 coup and he contends the current configuration is not to be trusted.

This week, U.N. Sudan envoy Volker Perthes called on the rival military factions to fully adhere to the agreed upon cease-fire. He said Sudan military commander Gen. Abdel Fattah al Burhan and Rapid Support Forces leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo appear to be “closer to negotiations” than they have been,” though Burhan informed the media he “would not sit down at the same table as the leader of the ‘rebellion.’”

Both military factions have defended their stance. Sudan’s military maintains the deployment of RSF troops in parts of the country are unlawful. In a statement Saturday, Dagalo said the RSF remains committed to a cease-fire and is working to open corridors for Sudanese residents and non-residents.

Citizens complained on social media, though, that Dagalo’s Rapid Support Forces had raided their homes and stolen money, gold and other possessions. VOA could not independently confirm the claims. 

More than 500 people have been killed and upwards of 4,000 have been wounded, according to the United Nations, in the conflict between Sudan’s military and the country’s paramilitary force that is entering its third week.

Japan adopted a new five-year ocean policy on Friday that calls for stronger maritime security, including bolstering its coast guard’s capability and cooperation with the military as China grows increasingly assertive in regional seas. 

The new Basic Plan on Ocean Policy adopted by Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s Cabinet also says Japan must accelerate the development of autonomous underwater vehicles and remotely operated robots to strengthen its surveillance capability. 

It cited a list of threats: Chinese coast guard ships’ repeated intrusions into Japanese territorial waters, growing unauthorized maritime activity by “foreign survey boats” inside Japan’s exclusive economic zone, increasing joint military exercises by China and Russia, and North Korea’s repeated missile launches. 

“The situation in the ocean around Japan is increasingly tense,” Kishida said at a policy meeting Friday. “It’s time for us to unite our wisdom among the industry, academia and government for ocean policy reform — or ocean transformation.” 

He also noted the need to better use maritime resources to achieve carbon neutrality. 

The new ocean policy is in line with Japan’s new national security strategy that Kishida’s government adopted in December in a major break from the self-defense-only principle that the country has maintained under its postwar pacifist constitution. 

Doubling defense budget

The new strategy provides for the strengthening of Japan’s military power with a strike capability and double its defense budget within five years. The strategy also calls for closer cooperation between the military and the coast guard in any emergency over Taiwan or other possible conflicts. 

Chinese Ambassador to Japan Wu Jianghao urged Japan on Friday to stay away from the Taiwan issue, saying it is China’s core national interest and “a red line that should not be crossed.” 

He blamed rising tensions around Taiwan on “foreign forces that are colluding with Taiwanese independence forces” and said their ultimate goal is to split self-governed Taiwan, which Beijing claims, from China. 

A change in the status quo would cause a “catastrophic outcome,” he said at a news conference. If Japan takes sides with independence forces, it would lead the Japanese people “into the fire,” he said. 

The ocean plan also says the capability of Japan’s coast guard, which has been on the front line of border disputes, needs to be improved. The coast guard frequently confronts Chinese coast guard vessels approaching Japanese-controlled disputed islands in the East China Sea, North Korean poachers and suspected spy boats, and Russian coast guard vessels near disputed northern islands. 

Japan’s coast guard is used for civilian policing at sea and not military combat, and the new plans calling for closer cooperation with the Self Defense Force have raised concerns about its role and safety in a possible conflict. 

The ocean plan also says Japan needs to be more aggressive about undersea surveys and using undersea resources for energy, calling for greater use of the exclusive economic zone outside territorial waters to build offshore wind-power generators. 

Japan has repeatedly protested Chinese research ships’ entry into Japanese waters or the exclusive economic zone just outside it for apparent surveys of undersea deposits and other marine resources.

The Taliban said Friday that their decision to bar local women from working for the United Nations was an “internal social matter of Afghanistan” that all countries should respect.

The statement came a day after the 15-member U.N. Security Council unanimously passed a resolution condemning the ban and demanding Taliban leaders swiftly end their restrictions on Afghan women’s access to education and work.

The resolution, co-sponsored by more than 90 countries, expressed “deep concern at the increasing erosion of respect for the human rights and fundamental freedoms” of Afghan women and girls by the Taliban.

“While taking note of the condemnation of the decision to restrict Afghan women from working with the U.N., we stress that … this is an internal social matter of Afghanistan that does not impact outside states,” the Taliban Foreign Ministry said Friday.

“We remain committed to ensuring all rights of Afghan women while emphasizing that diversity must be respected and not politicized,” the statement added. It hailed parts of Thursday’s U.N. resolution, including “the principle of Afghan-led and Afghan-owned right to self-determination.”

The Taliban insisted, however, the humanitarian crisis in war-ravaged Afghanistan “is man-made, driven by economic restrictions” on the country.

“The path to a post-conflict recovery requires the unconditional removal of U.N., multilateral, and unilateral sanctions and restrictions on the country, in addition to the provision of humanitarian and development assistance to the country,” the statement said.

Leader rejects easing restrictions

The Taliban reclaimed power in August 2021 from the then-internationally backed government in Kabul as the United States and NATO troops withdrew after almost two decades of involvement in the Afghan war.

The U.S. and other Western nations froze more than $9 billion in Afghan central bank foreign reserves after the Taliban takeover and imposed financial and banking sector sanctions on the country. Washington has since transferred a portion of the frozen resources held in the U.S. to a trust fund in Switzerland to be used strictly for Afghan relief efforts.

Hibatullah Akhundzada, the reclusive Taliban chief, has imposed his strict interpretation of Islamic law, or Sharia, to govern strife-torn impoverished Afghanistan. He has issued a series of edicts banning girls’ education beyond the sixth grade and barring most Afghan women from public life and work nationwide.

Akhundzada has rejected calls for easing restrictions on Afghan women, saying he would not allow foreign interference in his Islamic governance.

Last December, the male-only Taliban administration banned female employees of nongovernmental organizations from workplaces and extended it earlier this month to Afghan women working with the U.N.

‘Reinvigorate international engagement’

The U.N. resolution against Taliban bans on women came as U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres plans to host a closed-door meeting of special envoys on Afghanistan from several countries in Doha, Qatar, on Monday to discuss what should be done in the aftermath of the intensifying Taliban crackdown on women.

On Friday, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters in New York that Guterres “has not extended an invitation to the de facto (Taliban) authorities” to attend the two-day meeting in the Gulf state.

Dujarric stressed that recognizing the Taliban would not be “an issue on the table.” He shared no further details about the event.

“As we’ve said, the purpose of the meeting is to reinvigorate international engagement around common objectives for a durable way forward on Afghanistan. To reach unity or commonality of a message — such as human rights — particularly on the issue of women and girls; inclusive governance, countering terrorism, drug trafficking,” Dujarric said.

Thursday’s U.N. resolution recognized and stressed the need to address “the dire economic and humanitarian situation” facing Afghanistan, including through efforts to restore the country’s banking and financial systems.

Afghanistan is the largest humanitarian emergency in the world. U.N. officials estimate 6 million people are one step from famine-like conditions, while more than 28 million more need assistance after years of war and natural disasters.

Margaret Besheer contributed to this report.

Iran’s top diplomat visited Lebanon’s border with Israel on Friday where he expressed support for the Lebanese militant Hezbollah group in its struggle against their common enemy: Israel. 

Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian began his visit to Lebanon on Wednesday, meeting top officials and expressing Tehran’s readiness to help build power stations to try to end the Mediterranean country’s prevailing electricity crisis. 

Lebanon is in the throes of the worst economic crisis in its modern history, rooted in decades of corruption and mismanagement by the small nation’s ruling class. The crisis erupted in October 2019 and has plunged three quarters of Lebanon’s 6 million people, including 1 million Syrian refugees, into poverty. 

Earlier this month, Israel launched rare airstrikes into southern Lebanon, hours after militants fired nearly three dozen rockets from there at Israel, wounding two people and causing some property damage. The Israeli military said at the time that it targeted installations of the Palestinian militant Hamas group in southern Lebanon. 

Iran is a main Hezbollah backer and has supplied the militant group over the past decades with weapons and funds. 

“We are here today … to declare again with a loud voice that we support the resistance in Lebanon against the Zionist entity,” Amirabdollahian told a gathering that included several Hezbollah legislators in the border village of Maroun al-Ras. 

Amirabdollahian’s visit to Lebanon is the first since Iran and Saudi Arabia reached an agreement in China last month to re-establish diplomatic relations and reopen embassies after seven years of tensions. 

Later Friday, the Iranian diplomat held a news conference at the Iranian Embassy. He said the Riyadh-Tehran agreement would have positive “effects in the region in general.” The two countries will reopen embassies in Tehran and Riyadh “within a few days,” he said, adding that he invited his Saudi counterpart to visit Iran and that the invitation was welcomed. 

In neighboring Syria, a pro-government newspaper reported that Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi would begin a two-day visit to Damascus next Wednesday, the first by an Iranian president to the Syrian capital since 2010. 

Iran has also been a main backer of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad since the uprising that turned into war began in Syria in March 2011, killing nearly half a million people. Tehran has sent Iran-backed fighters from around the Middle East to fight alongside Assad’s forces, helping tip the balance of power in his favor. 

The pro-government Al-Watan said Raisi would meet with Assad to boost “strategic cooperation” between the two allies. Several agreements and memorandums of understanding also are to be signed during the visit. 

Asked about Raisi’s upcoming visit to Damascus, Amirabdollahian said only that “a program and a plan for the visit in the near future” had been prepared, without offering a specific date. 

Some oil-rich Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia, have been slowly reconciling with Assad after supporting opposition fighters for years. 

New Developments:

Russia has initiated “draconian initiatives” to improve the discipline of its troops in Ukraine, according to the British defense ministry.
Pope Francis wrapped up a weekend visit to Hungary with a plea for Europe to welcome migrants and the poor, and for an end to Russia’s war in Ukraine.
“A free press is a pillar, maybe the pillar of a free society,” said U.S. President Joe Biden, as he called for the release of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, from Russian captivity.
A French artist dedicates a mural to an executed Ukrainian POW.

Russian attacks across Ukraine have killed at least 477 children wounded nearly 1,000 since Russia invaded more than a year ago, Ukraine‘s Prosecutor General’s Office said Sunday in a report posted on the messaging app Telegram.

Most casualties were documented in the Donetsk and Kharkiv oblasts, where 452 and 275 children were either killed or wounded, respectively. The casualty rate among children is expected to be higher, the reports said, as the current count does not include data from Russian-occupied territories or where hostilities are ongoing.

Last month, the National Police of Ukraine said nearly 400 children are missing.  

Additionally, more than 19,000 children from Russian-occupied territories have been subjected to forced deportations to Russia. So far, Ukraine has been able to retrieve only 364 of them, according to Children of War, a Ukrainian national database.

On March 17, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, the Russian official overseeing the forced deportations of Ukrainian children to Russia.

Earlier this month at a Moscow news conference, Lvova-Belova rejected the ICC’s war crime charges as false, saying her commission acted on humanitarian grounds to protect the interests of children in an area where military action was taking place, according to the Reuters news agency.

The Kremlin has previously called the ICC’s actions as “outrageous and unacceptable.”

But many Ukrainian children who were returned to families and guardians tell a different story.

Earlier this month, Vitaly, a child from the Kherson region, told Reuters: “We were treated like animals. We were closed in a separate building.” He said he and other children were told their parents no longer wanted them.

 

Russian soldiers

Russia is taking “Draconian initiatives” to improve discipline among its troops, the British defense ministry said Sunday in its daily intelligence update on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Russian commanders in recent months “have likely started” punishing breaches in discipline by placing troop members in “Zindans,” which are makeshift holes in the ground covered by metal grills, the ministry tweeted.

The ministry said there have been “multiple” reports recently from Russians who said they were placed in Zindans for misdemeanors, including attempting to terminate their contracts and drunkenness.

The harsh measures began in the fall but became even harsher when Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov was placed in control of the operation in January, the ministry added.

Crimea attack

Meanwhile, Russia blamed Ukraine for a drone strike early Saturday that set fire to a fuel storage facility in the Russian-occupied Crimean port city of Sevastopol, Moscow-installed Governor Mikhail Razvozhaev said Saturday in a Telegram post, without providing evidence. The fire was extinguished hours later.

Razvozhaev said the fire would not affect fuel supplies in Sevastopol and that no one had been injured. He said another drone was downed and its wreckage found on the shore near the fuel terminal.

However, Ukrainian military intelligence spokesman Andriy Yusov said more than 10 tanks with a capacity of about 40,000 metric tons were destroyed. The tanks, he said, contained oil products intended for use by Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, RBC Ukraine reported.

Yusov did not say Ukraine was responsible for the attack. Instead, he said it was “God’s punishment” for the Russian strikes on Uman on Friday.

“This punishment will be long-lasting. In the near future, it is better for all residents of temporarily occupied Crimea not to be near military facilities and facilities that provide for the aggressor’s army,” RBC quoted Yusov as saying Ukraine does not have missiles that can reach targets as far away as Sevastopol, in the Crimea region, but it has been developing drones with longer ranges, according to Reuters.

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in an interview Saturday, “There will be a counterattack and I think it will succeed.”

Zelenskyy, speaking with Finnish, Swedish, Danish and Norwegian journalists, said, “I will not give details. Have we had enough armaments for that? I would say that we are on the way to the fact that we are.”

According to The Kyiv Independent online newspaper, the Ukrainian leader said the counteroffensive will happen with or without U.S. F-16 fighter jets.

“It would help a lot. … But we understand that we will not delay this, and we will start even before we have F-16s or something else,” he said.

Ukrainian officials have repeatedly asked for more fighter jets as their counteroffensive nears.  

In a tweet Thursday, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba wrote, “Giving Ukraine F-16s will deter Russia rather than ‘provoke’ it. Time to take this step.”

Some information for 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.

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The first international cargo shipment with medical supplies landed Sunday in Port Sudan. It’s a glimmer of hope in the country, where a conflict between the armed forces and a paramilitary group has put thousands of innocent civilians at risk, including children, who are already severely malnourished. VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias has the report. Video editor: Marcus Harton.