Indaba zesiNdebele Ekuseni - Voice of America
Indaba zesiNdebele Ekuseni - June 21, 2024
at 1900 UTC on the Voice of Hameri. This is Fiore News, I'm Michael Brown, Russian President Vladimir Putin left Vietnam early Friday by following his date visit to the Asian ally, part of a trip seen as a show of defiance to the West. The two countries signed multiple agreements on issues including energy, although none of the 11 packs were on the same level as the mutual defense agreement Russia signed with North Korea the day before. Russia's task news agency quoted Putin as saying the two countries shared an interest in "developing a reliable security architecture in the region." During a news conference, he accused the NATO military alliance of creating a security threat for Russia in Asia. The U.S. and its allies have criticized Putin's visit, saying he should not be given a stage on which to defend Russia's war in Ukraine. What is correspondent Kristi Kilburn reporting there, a U.S. military official said on Thursday the American-built peer in Gaza has unloaded aid again after breaking apart and rough seas. AP correspondent Haya Pangewani has the story. The official said the peer was reattached to Gaza's shoreline on Wednesday. The peer project has cost the U.S. at least $230 million and was meant to deliver humanitarian aid into Gaza via the UN's World Food Program. Aid groups have decried the peer as a distraction that took pressure off Israel to open more border crossings. Land-of-border crossings are far more productive at bringing aid into Gaza where Palestinians are facing widespread hunger. I'm Haya Pangewani. Russian President Putin said Thursday that South Korea would be making a big mistake if it decides to supply arms to Ukraine and that Moscow would respond to such a move in a way that would be painful to Seoul. For details on more news, we invite you to join us on our website, BOANews.com or the BOA mobile app. This is BOA News. Hundreds of demonstrators marched through cities across Kenya on Thursday to protest against government plans to raise $2.7 billion in additional taxes to reduce the budget deficit because the details on Russia's correspondent Olivia Chan. Prior police fired tear gas to disperse pockets of protesters in the capital Nairobi and blocked their path to parliament. Protesters say the tax rises will hurt the economy and raise the cost of living for Kenyans who are already struggling to make ends meet. A Kenyan parliamentary panel on Tuesday urged the government to scrap some new taxes proposed in its finance bill, including new ones on car ownership, bread, cooking oil and financial transactions. Demonstrators across Kenya called for lawmakers to drop the bill and waive placards with slogans like we say no to economic dictatorship. Reuters correspondent Olivia Chan, AP correspondent Norman Hall reports on the dismissal and jailing of a Russian defense official. According to Russian media reports, authorities have formally dismissed a deputy defense minister jailed on bribery charges and accused by Kremlin critics of living a lavish lifestyle, a court order that is pretrial detention be extended for three more months. Timor Ivanov is one of several senior military officers arrested on corruption charges in recent months. He was the closest associate of Sergei Shoigu, whom President Vladimir Putin replaced as defense minister last month, even off also faces sanctions by both the U.S. and the European Union. Norman Hall. When the African leaders in advocacy groups say Africa was unfairly locked out of access to COVID-19 treatment tools, vaccines and testing equipment, when the pandemic swept the globe starting in 2020. President Joe Biden's administration Thursday banning Russian base cybersecurity firm Caspersky from providing its popular anti-virus products to the U.S. over national security concerns according to the U.S. Commerce Department. The announcement came after a lengthy investigation found Caspersky's continued operations in the U.S. presented a national security risk due to the Russian government's offensive cyber capabilities and capacity to influence or direct Kapersky's operations. For more news, please join us at our website, BOANews.com. I'm Michael Brown, BOA News. South Korea says it will consider sending weapons to Ukraine after North Korea signs a new pact with Russia. The government of the Republic of Korea respond to whatever actions they may threaten our national security, resolution and disaster. Senator Donald Sutherland dies at the age of 88. And the first academic research facility dedicated to the study of coffee opens in the United States. Given how important coffee is to our culture, to our economy, to our society, coffee needs to act in the United States. Korea's Friday, June 21, and this is BOA's international edition. I'm Scott Walterman. South Korea says it will consider sending weapons to Ukraine after Russia and North Korea signed a new defense pact. South Korean Foreign Minister Chautéul. Russian President Vladimir Putin in Vietnam responded to the report that South Korean United States has been saying, "As for the supply of lethal weapons to the war zone in Ukraine, that would be a very big mistake." So let's find out more. Joining us now to talk about the changing dynamic in Asia is Greg Brzezinski, who works on U.S.-Asian relations and East Asian international history at George Washington University. So let's start with the big picture here. Russia's sort of trying to realign the dynamic in Asia, first in North Korea, in Vietnam, South Korea then reacts to the pact with North Korea saying, "Well, maybe we'll send weapons to Ukraine," is how unusual is all of this? I think that it's a somewhat unusual move for South Korea to start intervening in an international conflict by sending weapons. I don't think that's something that South Korea has done very often, if at all, in the previous decades. So I think that the fact that they're willing to even consider doing this now really shows that the pact between Moscow and Pyongyang was perceived as being very threatening by the South Korean leadership. Now Putin tried to make the point that they have nothing to worry about saying it's only a mutual defense pact and that it would only be enacted if North Korea gets attacked. Right, and I've heard that justification coming from Putin, but I think South Korea is still concerned, in fact, that even if North Korea hasn't debated, it's always been threatening to and has continued to build up its weapons capacity. You can begin to understand why this is something that's worrisome to South Korea. I also think something that probably would worry that South Korean leadership is just the image of this. This image of sort of a replay of the Cold War, even in grander ways. I don't think Stalin or Khrushchev ever got, I don't think Stalin didn't even visit North Korea. Any Russian leader ever got quite the reception in North Korea that Putin's been given during the last few days, so just this very strong affirmation of friendship between Russia and North Korea is also very troubling to the South Koreans, I think. And you have to assume that North Korea is going to get something for what it's giving Russia beyond, I mean, so you know they need food and they need fuel, which Russia has both. But what they really want, I assume, is technology. Yes, and I think that South Korea's concern that the Russia will provide not only food and fuel, but also that it will provide new technologies, that it will help North Korea to further develop its weapons programs, and that it will be difficult to monitor this new partnership between Moscow and Pyongyang and actually see everything that they do. How much do you think this disrupts Russia-China relations? Because Russia is helping Vietnam take oil out of the China Sea, which China claims is their oil because they claim the South China Sea. It's kind of a dysfunctional, you've got four countries here, right? China, North Korea, Vietnam, and Russia, and they don't always align. That's absolutely true. I think it's a very interesting dynamic, and how China is seeing Putin's recent Asia trip is very interesting and probably conflicted in a number of ways. On the one hand, we've seen that Beijing's relationship with Moscow has actually improved in recent years, in part because there's been rising tensions between Beijing and Washington, and at the same time, Beijing has also been doing some of the same things that Moscow is doing. These have been North Korea. It's also slowly been improving its relationship with North Korea over the last few years. Vietnam is a little bit of a different story because there's territorial disputes between Vietnam and China, and because the Vietnamese to a much greater degree than they perhaps view Russia as a threat, have seen China as a threat. I think there's sort of a very complicated overall dynamic there. One interesting thing that I think I'll be looking out for is, even while there's some congruence in views between Russia, China, and North Korea now when it comes to the United States, there's also traditionally been some jockeying for influence in North Korea. So, I think what will be interesting now that Moscow and Pyongyang are moving so close together is does Beijing try to step in with its own additional offers of aid to North Korea to assure that, okay, the relationship between North Korea and Russia is going to improve, but they don't want North Korea to become so close with Russia that China is sort of left out of that. Thanks so much for the time. Okay, thank you. Greg Brzezinski at George Washington University. Norwegian defense manufacturer Komsberg-Grouppen has opened a new missile factory to meet surging demand for weapons from Western countries spooked by Russia's war in Ukraine and China's modernization of its armed forces, Norway deputy defense minister, and Marie Anarud. We have experienced a situation with growing demand for defense material and especially for missiles and ammunition over the past two and a half years after the outbreak of the full-scale war in Ukraine. We are in a situation where most Western countries have donated substantially from their own stocks and need to replenish. The plant will produce per year hundreds of missiles that are currently used by 14 countries, 11 of which are in NATO or the EU. The Biden Administration on Thursday announced plans to borrow the sale of anti-virus software in the United States made by Russia's Kaspersky Lab, citing the firm's large U.S. customers, including critical infrastructure providers and state and local governments. We're following these other stories from around the world. The IMF said on Thursday its executive board approved $786.2 million for Tanzania to help tackle climate change. At least 34 people have died in dozens hospitalized after drinking illegally brewed liquor, tainted with methanol in southern India. Slovakia's parliament approved the government's planned revamp and leadership change at public broadcaster RTVS on Thursday, overruling concerns that changes will bring the broadcaster under political control and harm media freedom. In our continuing coverage of the 2024 U.S. presidential election, motors are vulnerable to bad actors using artificial intelligence to create disinformation that benefits rival politicians or promotes the interests of foreign governments. Beoways Ivana Pidborska looks at the use of A.I. in election 2024 in this report narrated by Carolyn Prusudee. Artificial intelligence has already made an appearance in this election. As in this computer-generated photo of Donald Trump hugging infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci and this fake robocall of Joe Biden telling New Hampshire voters to skip their primary. "We'll need your help in electing Democrats up and down the ticket." The timing of electoral deepfakes is what makes them so dangerous, says media expert Elaine Kmark of the Brookings Institution. "Even 24 hours before the election, someone puts out a deep fake or a piece of disinformation. It's really difficult, it's really difficult to fight back. And that could, in a close election, it could make the difference between winning and losing." Rajul Gupta's firm Deep Media helps the Pentagon detect deepfakes, which he says are popular because they are inexpensive and easy to produce. "End-to-end, it takes about 15 minutes to create a deep fake. There are many free services online. If you want to pay for some of the better ones, a 30-second audio clip is maybe two cents." Bernie and free speech advocate Ari Cohen says the most sophisticated overseas operations aim to place a piece of political disinformation with influential Americans for them to pass on to others. The biggest U.S. tech firms and social media platforms have promised some voluntary self-regulation of AI and political campaigns, but no federal laws currently govern the practice. Attorney and free speech advocate Ari Cohen. "It's very, very difficult to regulate political speech in the United States. The first amendment protects that core political speech very strongly and for good reason. We don't want the government putting the hands of its finger on the scale of elections." Gupta says much of that difficulty lies in distinguishing between something that is false and something that is a characterization of an issue with which one might not agree. So how are we to know when something is a political deep fake? "And the audio quality is bad? That is a hint that it could be AI-generated." It might sound kind of silly or trivial, but actually just looking for those watermarks and being able to find those watermarks quickly in images, audio, and video can again filter out a lot. If you're on a video call with someone and you think they're a deep fake, ask them to spin around in their chair and if they don't, they might be a deep fake. Cohen says AI can be used for good in politics. It can allow candidates to reach diaspora communities in their own languages and it can give campaigns better insight into voter behavior so they can better tailor their messaging. For Ivana Pidburska in Washington, Carolyn Prasuti, VOA News. The UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR marked World Refugee Day on Thursday with an appeal to nations to keep their doors open to many people fleeing conflict and persecution and abuse. Lisa Schline reports for VOA from Geneva. A record 120 million people globally have been forcibly displaced, most are displaced inside their home countries, but some 43 million are refugees who have fled across borders in search of international protection. The UN Refugee Agency reports around 30 million internally displaced people, refugees and asylum seekers live in Africa, representing almost one-third of the world's refugee population. UNHCR spokesperson Baba Baloch tells VOA three-quarters of the world's refugees live in countries with low or modest incomes. This he says debunks the myth that most refugees want to get to rich countries in Europe or to the United States. They don't. Their Sudanese refugees are in South Sudan. Baloch says Africa is shown unbounded generosity and welcoming people in crisis, despite the many conflicts, pockets of displacement and widespread poverty on the continent. He says High Commissioner Felipe Ograndi is observing World Refugee Day in South Sudan to remind people everywhere of the consequences of war. He is going there to be with the community with already South Sudanese who have been displaced inside the country, who now are welcoming refugees and other South Sudanese. The UNHCR says no one wants to be a refugee, no one becomes a refugee by choice. In this World Refugee Day, the agency is urging nations around the world to show solidarity with refugees, to welcome them into their communities and help them restart their lives. Lisa Schline for VOA News, Geneva. One of the most difficult things for refugees after arriving in a new place is setting up a life there. That includes earning enough money to support themselves and their families in Peshawar Pakistan. Former school teacher Sarghona Hamadi is teaching young Afghan refugee women like her how to make fashion jewelry so they can do just that. Musaka Safi has the story narrated by Bezhan Hamdar. Afghan refugees at Huna Hamidi is giving lessons in the art of making fashion jewelry from her house in the Pakistani city of Peshawar. It's been a month and a half since I started teaching 15 young women. I teach them how to make earrings, bracelets, necklaces, anklets and other things. Most of Hamidi's students are happy for the opportunity to earn money. Her student Fatima goes by her first name. She says they meet from two to five in the afternoon and have learned a lot. She wants to learn the art further. We come here from two to five p.m. and have learned a lot. I want to learn the art further to start making jewelry at home and help my husband. Hamidi says that Afghan refugees, particularly women, do not have many opportunities to work in Pakistan. Five years ago she was a school teacher but she lost that job as Pakistan imposed restrictions on Afghan refugees. She says that despite being a college graduate she cannot find a job. I am educated and have a BA but I can't find a job. When they look at my documents and CV they say you have the education but when I show my card they tell me they can't give me a job. The United Nations says that around 3.1 million Afghan refugees live in Pakistan, 800,000 of whom hold Afghan citizen cards for Muska Safi in Peshawar, Pakistan, Bijan Hamdert, VIOE news. VIOE's international edition continues. I'm Scott Walterman. Happy Hunger Games! Donald Sutherland, one of Canada's most versatile and gifted actors who charmed in enthralled audiences in films like MASH and Clue, ordinary people and the Hunger Games has died at the age of 88. Sutherland began his career in the 1960s going on to captivate audiences across several generations. That's from the movie MASH about a medical unit in the Korean War. His big break came in 1967 when he joined the ensemble cast for the war film The Dirty Doesn't. He found a totally new audience playing President Snow in the Hunger Games. I thought this is a film that could change things that could maybe motivate or activate or catalyze young people who had been, by and large, politely dormant. Sutherland received an honorary Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2017, though he was considered among the best actors to never receive an Academy Award nomination for any of his roles. Start roasting and then this handle right here, you're going to push up and hold that there. The coffee center at the University of California's Davis campus is the first academic research facility dedicated to the study of coffee. Students roast and brew sample and scrutinized coffee is coursework toward chemical engineering degree. I first started with the coffee kinetics project, so we did stuff about the roast of the coffee beans, so we took samples every minute, we tested the water activity throughout the roast. The 7,000-foot facility was officially opened recently after a $6 million renovation. I'm proud that this is the nation's first academic facility dedicated to coffee, and so for many years coffee has been understudied given how important coffee is to our culture, to our economy, to our society. Coffee needs academic study. It needs an academic talent pipeline, we want to help elevate the world of coffee. Professors of food science, plant science, business, law, religious studies, and sociology lend their expertise to ongoing work at the center. This has been International Edition on the Voice of America. On behalf of everyone here at VOA, thank you so much for being with us. For pictures, stories, videos, and more, follow VOA News on your favorite social media platform through our apps from Apple and Google, and online at VOANews.com. In Washington, I'm Scott Woltzerman. Next, an editorial reflecting the views of the United States government. One of the nastier crimes that accompanies armed conflict is sexual violence, used as both spoils of war, and to humiliate and terrorize the enemy. Sexual violence has been a tactic of war since ancient times, said Vice President Kamala Harris. Throughout history, those who have waged war have specifically targeted and violated women and girls to exert dominance and power over their bodies, and to humiliate and terrorize and subdue entire populations, and sexual violence remains a gruesome part of modern conflict around the globe, she said. In Ukraine, Russian forces have raped women in occupied territories. In Iraq, when ISIS seized territory a decade ago, they forced women and girls into sexual slavery as they massacred thousands. In Sudan, the ongoing conflict includes paramilitary forces terrorizing women and girls through sexual violence. In Haiti, gangs have used sexual assault to rape and coerce communities into submission, and we've seen similar horrors in South Sudan, in Ethiopia, Central African Republic, and the DRC, and October 7th. Last year, Hamas committed horrific acts of sexual violence. In recent years, the international community has made great progress on recognizing that it is an attack on peace, stability, and human rights, said Vice President Harris. The United States has been proud to lead the way at the United Nations and around the world by providing rape kits and healthcare for survivors, training militaries and peacekeepers, she said. But that is not enough, because globally our system of accountability remains inadequate. Conflict-related sexual violence must be condemned unequivocally, wherever and whenever it occurs. And we must fortify systems to prioritize action. Systems that support survivors effectively collect evidence and promote investigation. It's one of the reasons why the Biden administration on June 17th launched the Dignity and Documentation Initiative, a program that will, among others, support UN efforts to end conflict-related sexual violence. For far too long, systems, whether they be law enforcement or judicial, have not sufficiently addressed conflict-related sexual violence. And for far too long, the consequences then stopped at mere condemnation rather than going to accountability. The bottom line is the use of sexual violence as a tactic of war is unconscionable. This advice President Harris and any failure to hold perpetrators accountable is a failure to live up to by all of us, our common humanity.