Під покровом ночі: на Херсонщині працює артилерія морської піхоти

На півдні України тривають активні бойові дії. Артилеристи морської піхоти ВМС ЗСУ працюють на Херсонському напрямку із САУ 2С1 «Гвоздика» – це самохідна артилерійська установка радянського зразка.

Yellen Warns She’ll Confront China on Its Energy Subsidies

washington — U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said Wednesday that Chinese subsidies for clean energy industries create unfair competition that “hurts American firms and workers, as well as firms and workers around the world.”

Yellen said that during a visit she has scheduled to China, she intends to warn China its national underwriting for energy and other companies is creating oversupply and market distortion, among other problems.

“I intend to talk to the Chinese when I visit about overcapacity in some of these industries, and make sure that they understand the undesirable impact that this is having — flooding the market with cheap goods — on the United States, but also in many of our closest allies,” Yellen said in a speech in Norcross, Georgia.

Yellen said she believes those subsidies will enable China to flood the markets for solar panels, electric vehicle parts and lithium-ion batteries, thus distorting production in other economies and global prices.

“I will convey my belief that excess capacity poses risks not only to American workers and firms and to the global economy, but also productivity and growth in the Chinese economy, as China itself acknowledged in its National People’s Congress this month,” Yellen said. “And I will press my Chinese counterparts to take necessary steps to address this issue.”

Yellen is set for meetings in China in April, according to Politico. The Treasury has not yet confirmed her itinerary.

The secretary visited Georgia to see a newly reopened solar cell manufacturing plant, which according to the Treasury closed in 2017 because of competition from factories in China. It is reopening now, though, after tax credits in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act fueled increased anticipated demand for solar panels.

On Tuesday, China filed a complaint against the U.S. at the World Trade Organization, arguing the U.S.’s requirements for electric vehicle subsidies are discriminatory. Chinese officials did not comment on what prompted the decision.

Yellen said she hopes to have a “constructive” dialogue with Chinese officials about subsidies and oversupply issues. She said outreach to businesspeople and governments around the world had prompted her to issue this warning.

“These are concerns that I increasingly hear from government counterparts in industrialized countries and emerging markets, as well as from the business community globally,” Yellen said.

Some information for this report came from Reuters and The Associated Press. 

Trump Blasts Judge and His Daughter After Gag Order

NEW YORK — Donald Trump lashed out Wednesday at the New York judge who put him under a gag order ahead of his April 15 hush-money criminal trial, suggesting without evidence that the veteran jurist was kowtowing to his daughter’s interests as a Democratic political consultant. The former president objected in particular to what he said was her specious social media photo showing him behind bars. 

Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, posted on social media that the gag order issued Tuesday was “illegal, un-American, unConstitutional.” He said Judge Juan M. Merchan was “wrongfully attempting to deprive me of my First Amendment Right to speak out against the Weaponization of Law Enforcement” by Democratic rivals and urged him to step aside from the case. 

The gag order, which was requested by the prosecution, bars Trump from either making or directing other people to make public statements on his behalf about jurors and potential witnesses in the hush-money trial, such as his lawyer-turned-nemesis Michael Cohen and porn star Stormy Daniels. It also prohibits any statements meant to interfere with or harass the court’s staff, prosecution team or their families. 

It does not bar comments about Merchan or his family, nor does it prohibit criticism of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, the elected Democrat whose office is prosecuting Trump. 

Merchan’s daughter, whose firm has worked on campaigns for President Joe Biden and other Democrats, “makes money by working to ‘Get Trump'” and recently posted a fake photo on social media depicting her “obvious goal” of seeing him behind bars, Trump said. He argued those circumstances make it “completely impossible for me to get a fair trial.” 

Trump did not link to the purported photo, but an account appearing to belong to Loren Merchan on X, formerly known as Twitter, showed a photo illustration of an imprisoned Trump as its profile picture Wednesday morning. It was later changed. Loren Merchan’s consulting firm had linked to that same account in a previous social media post. 

“So, let me get this straight,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, “the Judge’s daughter is allowed to post pictures of her ‘dream’ of putting me in jail … but I am not allowed to talk about the attacks against me, and the Lunatics trying to destroy my life and prevent me from winning the 2024 Presidential Election, which I am dominating? 

“Maybe the Judge is such a hater because his daughter makes money by working to ‘Get Trump’ and when he rules against me over and over again, he is making her company, and her, richer and richer,” Trump continued. “How can this be allowed?” 

Messages seeking comment were left with Merchan, his daughter and a spokesperson for New York’s state court system. Bragg’s office declined to comment. 

Trump’s three-part Truth Social post was his first reaction to the gag order. His focus on Merchan’s daughter and her ties to Democratic politics echoed his lawyers’ arguments last year when they urged the judge to exit the case. The judge had also made several small donations totaling $35 to Democratic causes during the 2020 campaign, including $15 to Biden. 

Merchan said then that a state court ethics panel found that Loren Merchan’s work had no bearing on his impartiality. The judge said in a ruling last September that he was certain of his “ability to be fair and impartial” and that Trump’s lawyers had “failed to demonstrate that there exists concrete, or even realistic, reasons for recusal to be appropriate, much less required on these grounds.” 

“The Judge has to recuse himself immediately, and right the wrong committed by not doing so last year,” Trump wrote Wednesday. “If the Biased and Conflicted Judge is allowed to stay on this Sham ‘Case,’ it will be another sad example of our Country becoming a Banana Republic, not the America we used to know and love.” 

In a recent interview, Merchan told The Associated Press, that he and his staff were working diligently to prepare for the historic first trial of a former president. 

“There’s no agenda here,” Merchan said. “We want to follow the law. We want justice to be done.” 

Trump’s hush-money case, set to be the first of his four criminal cases to go to trial, centers on allegations that he falsely logged payments to Cohen as legal fees in his company’s books when they were for Cohen’s work during the 2016 campaign covering up negative stories about Trump. That included $130,000 Cohen paid Daniels on Trump’s behalf so she wouldn’t publicize her claim of a sexual encounter with him years earlier. 

Trump pleaded not guilty last April to 34 counts of falsifying business records, a felony punishable by up to four years in prison, although there is no guarantee that a conviction would result in jail time. He denies having sex with Daniels, and his lawyers have said that the payments to Cohen were legitimate legal expenses, not part of any coverup. 

In issuing the gag order, Merchan cited Trump’s history of “threatening, inflammatory, denigrating” remarks about people involved in his legal cases. A violation could result in Trump being held in contempt of court, fined or even jailed. 

Although not covered by the restrictions, Merchan referenced Trump’s various comments about him as an example of his rhetoric. The gag order mirrors one imposed and largely upheld by a federal appeals court panel in Trump’s Washington election interference criminal case. 

Trump’s lawyers fought a gag order, warning it would amount to unconstitutional and unlawful prior restraint on his free speech rights. 

Merchan had long resisted imposing one, recognizing Trump’s “special” status as a former president and current candidate and not wanting to trample his ability to defend himself publicly. 

But, he said, as the trial nears, he found that his obligation to ensure the integrity of the case outweighs First Amendment concerns. He said Trump’s statements have induced fear and necessitated added security measures to protect his targets and investigate threats.

Теракт в Росії: чому Кремль шукає винних у Києві та Вашингтоні

Звинувачення зовнішніх сил у тому, що відбувається в Росії – від терактів до мирних протестів опозиції – для Путіна не є чимось новим. Але цього разу ставки можуть бути особливо високими

Racism, ‘Morbid Curiosity’ Drove US Museums to Collect Indigenous Remains

WASHINGTON — In December 1900, John Wesley Powell received “the most unusual Christmas present of any person in the United States, if not in the world,” reported the Chicago Tribune.

The gift for this first director of the Smithsonian Institution’s Bureau of Ethnology was a sealskin sack containing the mummified remains of an Alaska Native.

The sender was a government employee hired to hunt Indian “relics,” who said the remains had been difficult to acquire because “to come into the possession of a dead Indian is a great crime among the Indians.”

The report concluded that it was the only “Indian relic” of this kind at the Smithsonian and it was “beyond money value.”

As it turned out, it was not the museum’s only Alaskan mummy. In 1865, even before the U.S. purchased Alaska from Russia, Smithsonian naturalist William H. Dall was hired to accompany an expedition to study the potential for a telegraph route through Siberia to Europe. In his spare time, he looted graves in the Yukon and caves on several Aleutian Islands.

After the U.S. sealed the deal with Russia, the San Francisco-based Alaska Commercial Company won exclusive trading rights and established more than 90 trading posts in Alaska to meet the U.S. demand for ivory and furs.

It also instructed agents “to collect and preserve objects of interest in ethnology and natural history” and forward them to the Smithsonian. Ernest Henig looted 12 preserved bodies and a skull from a cave in the Aleutians in 1874. He donated two to California’s Academy of Science and sent the remainder to the Smithsonian.

More than 30 years after the passage of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act meant to return those remains, a ProPublica investigation last year estimated that more than 110,000 Native American, Native Hawaiian and Alaska Native ancestors remain in public collections across the U.S.

It is not known how many Indigenous remains are closeted in private or overseas collections.

“Museums collected massive numbers, perhaps even millions,” said anthropologist John Stephen “Chip” Colwell, who previously served as curator of anthropology at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. “Out of the 100 remains we [at the Denver museum] returned, I think only about five or seven individuals were actually even studied.”

So, what sparked this 19th-century frenzy for collecting human remains?

Reconciling science, religion

From the moment they first encountered Indigenous Americans, European thinkers struggled to understand who they were, where they came from, and whether they could be “civilized.”

The Christian bible taught them that all humans descended from Adam and that God created Adam in his own image. So why, Europeans wondered, did Native Americans, Africans and Asians look different?

Some Europeans theorized that all humans were created white, but dietary or environmental differences caused some of them to turn “brown, yellow, red or black.”

Other Europeans refused to accept that they shared a common ancestor with people of color and theorized that God created the races separately before he created Adam.

The birth of scientific racism

Presumptions that compulsory education and Christianization would force Native Americans to abandon their traditional cultures and become “civilized” into mainstream European-American culture proved untrue. So 19th-century scientists turned to advancements in medicine to “prove” the inferiority of Indigenous peoples.

“That’s when you see scientists like Samuel Morton, who invented a pseudoscience trying to place peoples within these social hierarchies based on their biology, and they needed bones to solidify those racial hierarchies,” said Colwell, who is editor-in-chief of the online magazine SAPIENS and author of “Plundered Skulls and Stolen Spirits: Inside the Fight to Reclaim Native America’s Culture.”

Morton was a Philadelphia physician who collected hundreds of human skulls of all races, mostly Native American, that were forwarded to him by physicians on the frontier. In his 1839 book “Crania Americana,” Morton classified human races based on skull measurements. Morton’s conclusions were used to support racist ideologies about the inferiority of non-white humans.

“They are not only averse to the restraints of education, but for the most part incapable of a continued process of reasoning on abstract subjects,” he wrote of Native Americans. “The structure of [the Native] mind appears to be different from that of the white man, nor can the two harmonise in their social relations except on the most limited scale.”

Despite Morton’s legacy as an early figure in scientific racism — ideologies that generate pseudo-scientific racist beliefs — his work earned him a reputation at the time as “a jewel of American science” and influenced the field of anthropology and public policy for decades.

In 1868, for example, the U.S. Surgeon General turned his attention away from the Civil War to the so-called “Indian wars” and instructed field surgeons to collect Native American skulls and weapons and send them to the Army Medical Museum in Washington “to aid in the progress of anthropological science.”

“For museums, especially the early years of collecting, it was a form of trophy keeping, a competition between museums,” Colwell told VOA. “And some of it was a competition between national governments to accumulate big collections to demonstrate their global and imperial aspirations.”

All the rest, he said, were fragments of morbid curiosity.

НАТО робить «недостатньо для України», а РФ потрібно створити більше «стратегічних труднощів» – МЗС Швеції

За словами міністра закордонних справ Швеції, надання Україні більшої кількості військової техніки «не є питанням промислового потенціалу»

Вибитий зуб і прострелена нога: правозахисники розповіли, що коїли окупанти з ЛГБТ-людьми

Правозахисники зауважили, що провели попередні бесіди зі 107 представниками ЛГБТК-спільноти, які постраждали або стали свідками злочинів російських військових під час окупації Херсону

Стало відомо, скільки Україна може втратити від торговельного компромісу з ЄС

За оцінками Єврокомісії, озвучених на закритому засіданні послів ЄС, Україна втратить 86 мільйонів євро, якщо друге півріччя 2021-го братимуть також за основу розрахунків

Winless Lottery Streak Ends: Someone Wins $1.12B Mega Millions

DES MOINES, Iowa — Someone in New Jersey overcame the odds Tuesday night and won the $1.12 billion Mega Millions jackpot, breaking a winless streak that dated to last December.

The numbers drawn were: 7, 11, 22, 29, 38 and 4. The winning ticket was sold in New Jersey, according the the Mega Millions website.

Until the latest drawing, no one had matched all six numbers and won the Mega Millions jackpot since Dec. 8. That amounted to 30 straight drawings without a big winner.

It’s tough to win the Mega Millions jackpot because the odds are so long, at 1 in 302.6 million.

The prize is the eighth largest in U.S. lottery history.

The $1.12 billion jackpot is for a winner who is paid through an annuity, with an initial payment and then 29 annual payments. Most winners choose a cash payout, which would be $537.5 million.

The next big U.S. lottery drawing will be Wednesday night for an estimated $865 million Powerball jackpot. No one has won that prize since New Year’s Day, making for 36 drawings without a winner.

Mega Millions is played in 45 states plus Washington, D.C., and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Powerball also is played in those states as well as Washington, D.C., the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.

 

British Judges Want Guarantee Wikileaks’ Assange Won’t Face Death Penalty

Britain’s high court has ruled the United States must guarantee that Wikileaks founder Julian Assange will not get the death penalty if he is extradited to the U.S. on espionage charges. Assange’s lawyers are fighting to allow a full appeal against his extradition on accusations related to Wikileaks’ publishing of stolen military files. For VOA, Henry Ridgwell reports from London.

Top US Officials Warn Israel’s Gallant Against Invading Rafah

WASHINGTON — Top Biden administration officials urged Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant to abandon plans to invade the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where more than 1.4 million Palestinian civilians seek safety, as U.S.-Israel tensions brew over Israel’s conduct in its six-month-old war against Hamas.

In meetings Monday and Tuesday, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken reaffirmed U.S. support for Israel’s right to defend itself while reiterating opposition to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s planned ground offensive to target Hamas in Gaza’s southernmost city on the border with Egypt.

“Our goal [is] to help Israel find an alternative to a full-scale and perhaps premature military operation that could endanger the over 1 million civilians that are sheltering in Rafah,” a senior U.S. defense official told reporters Tuesday, briefing on the condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the Pentagon.

A major ground operation in Rafah would further jeopardize the welfare of Palestinian civilians, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said on Monday. He added that Blinken underscored to Gallant that “alternatives exist” that would both better ensure Israel’s security and protect Palestinian civilians.

Amid a looming famine in Gaza, Austin warned of the “humanitarian catastrophe” in the Palestinian enclave, describing civilian casualties as “far too high” and aid deliveries as “far too low.” His remarks echoed Blinken’s calls for Israel “to immediately surge and sustain” more aid.

The Netanyahu government has denied accusations by international aid agencies and the United Nations that Israel is blocking aid and provoking famine in Gaza as part of its strategy to root out Hamas.

Similar admonitions were likely being conveyed by White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan. In a sign of potentially complicated talks, Sullivan’s meeting with Gallant, originally scheduled for Monday, was extended an extra day. 

“They believed it was important to continue the conversation,” said White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.

Sullivan told reporters last week that President Joe Biden himself had warned Netanyahu an invasion in Rafah would be a mistake and urged him to have a “coherent and sustainable strategy” to defeat Hamas.

‘Don’t do it’

Netanyahu insists that the goal of “total victory” against Hamas cannot be achieved without going into Rafah, where Israel says there are four Hamas battalions composed of thousands of fighters.

Initially, the Biden administration said they would not support a Rafah offensive without sufficient protection of civilians.

Now, they’re telling Israel, “Don’t do it,” said Aaron David Miller, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and former U.S. negotiator in Middle East peace talks.

“It’s not now a question of making sure that the population is somehow safeguarded,” he told VOA. “They just don’t want the Israelis to do it.”

Despite the pressure piled on Gallant this week, the decision on Rafah would have to be taken by the Israeli War Cabinet, whose members in addition to Gallant include Netanyahu and Benny Gantz, former minister of defense and deputy prime minister, as well as two observers — opposition politician Gadi Eisenkot and Ron Dermer, Netanyahu’s close adviser.

Gallant’s meetings have been the main high-level consultation mechanism between the U.S. and its ally, as Netanyahu abruptly canceled plans for a visit by a separate Israeli delegation.

That was done in protest of Washington’s abstention at the U.N. that allowed the adoption of a Security Council resolution demanding an immediate cease-fire in Gaza and the release of hostages held by Hamas.

Netanyahu accused the U.S. of shifting from its prior position of conditioning the cease-fire call on the release of hostages, which the administration denies.

More weapons

Gallant, a security hawk who supports a ground operation in Rafah, had aimed to use his Washington visit to ramp up the transfer of American weapons. In remarks ahead of his meeting with Austin, he said he wants to “ensure Israel’s military edge and capabilities.”

Israel needs U.S. arms not only for the campaign in Gaza but also to prepare for further escalation in the north of the country with Hezbollah in Lebanon, said Brian Finucane, senior adviser for the U.S. Program at the International Crisis Group. Since the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks, the two sides have exchanged fire through thousands of rocket and missile launches.

“The U.S. has real leverage here,” Finucane told VOA. “The best-case scenario would be if the U.S. actually did use its abundant leverage, both unilaterally and multilaterally, to try to bring about a cease-fire.”

While Biden has begun using his diplomatic leverage by abstaining at the U.N., he is unlikely to condition or restrict military aid to Israel as he aims to keep the conflict from spreading.

“The last thing he should want to do is to send an unmistakable signal to Hezbollah and Iran that we’re not prepared to back the Israelis, if, in fact, there is an escalation in the Israeli northern border,” said Miller.

The most fundamental goal for Biden right now, he said, is reaching a deal in the cease-fire negotiations in Qatar. Hamas says it will release hostages only as part of a deal that would end the war, while Israel says it will discuss only a temporary pause.

US arms for Israel

The U.S. has committed to provide Israel with nearly $4 billion a year in aid through 2028, most of it in the form of military assistance. Approximately $3.3 billion per year is given under the Foreign Military Financing program, funds that Israel must use to purchase U.S. military equipment and services.

Since the Gaza war began, the administration has quietly delivered more than 100 separate foreign military sales to Israel. The arms transfers were processed without public debate because the administration broke up the sales packages in amounts below the threshold that requires them to notify Congress, according to a defense official who spoke to VOA on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive military matter.

Under pressure from Democratic lawmakers, last month the White House released a National Security Memorandum requiring the U.S. secretary of state to “obtain credible and reliable written assurances” from foreign governments that U.S. weapons are used in accordance with international and humanitarian law.

Gallant delivered Israel’s required written assurances ahead of the deadline on Sunday. Under the memorandum, the State Department has until early May to formally assess and report to Congress whether those assurances are “credible and reliable.” Without it, Biden has the option of suspending further U.S. arms transfers.

So far, Biden has not indicated any willingness to do so. In his call with Netanyahu last week, the president “didn’t make threats,” Sullivan said. “Each of them recognizes that we are at a critical moment in this conflict.”

Jeff Seldin contributed to this report.