Voice of America’s immigration news

CAPE CANAVERAL, FLORIDA — The Webb Space Telescope has discovered the earliest known merger of black holes. These two gigantic black holes and their galaxies consolidated just 740 million years after the universe-forming Big Bang. It's the most distant detection ever made of merging black holes, scientists reported Thursday. One black hole is 50 million times more massive than our sun. The other is thought to be similar in size, but is buried in dense gas, which makes it harder to measure. Until now, astronomers weren't sure how supermassive black holes got so big. The latest findings, published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, suggest mergers are how black holes can grow so rapidly — "even at cosmic dawn," said lead author Hannah Ubler of the University of Cambridge. "Massive black holes have been shaping the evolution of galaxies from the very beginning," Ubler said in a statement. Launched in 2021 as the eventual successor to NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, Webb is the biggest and most powerful observatory ever sent into space. A joint U.S.-European project, the infrared observatory surveys the universe from a location 1.6 million kilometers from Earth.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s naming of an economist as his new defense chief is a sign he is preparing for his costly war in Ukraine to go even longer, analysts say. Elizabeth Cherneff narrates this report from Ricardo Marquina.

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.

U.S. voters have several ways to cast their ballots in a presidential election, including by mail. Many Democrats have embraced mail-in voting, and now Republicans are being urged by party leaders, including former President Donald Trump, to use all voting options in the 2024 general election. VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias has the details. Salome Ramirez and Yeny Garcia of VOA’s Spanish Service contributed.

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.

A 2023 Transparency International report found that most African nations have shown little progress in the fight against government corruption. Civil society groups in Ghana, however, are taking up the challenge to expose corruption and push for action. Isaac Kaledzi has more from the capital, Accra.

YAOUNDE, CAMEROON — Chad's constitutional council was expected on Thursday to declare final results of the May 6 presidential election and name transitional president General Mahamat Idriss Deby as the winner. This despite calls for annulment of the polls due to what the opposition says was massive fraud. Analysts say uncertainty lies ahead as tensions remain high. Residents of N'djamena, say that since Wednesday night, there has been a massive deployment of troops on streets and what they call the capital city's strategic locations and neighborhoods considered to be opposition strongholds. Twenty-four-year-old Abdoul Koulemann is a student at the University of N'djamena. He spoke with VOA on Thursday morning via a messaging app. Koulemann says business has been at a standstill in N'djamena since Chad's constitutional council announced on Wednesday night that results of the central Africa states May 6 presidential elections are to be proclaimed on Thursday. Koulemann says the presence of heavily armed troops deployed by Chad's military government all over N'djamena scares civilians. He says streets are empty because civilians have decided to remain in their houses as tension is perceived in the city. Last week, Chad’s Elections Management Body, or ANGE, announced that Mahamat Deby had won the May 6 election with 61 percent of votes. Monday, several opposition candidates filed petitions with the constitutional council challenging the official results. They say there was massive electoral fraud, including the stuffing of ballot boxes and soldiers chasing opposition representatives from polling stations. Prime Minister Succes Masra, who finished second with 18 percent, says voters were intimidated and arrested. Deby calls the allegations unfounded. Deby earlier this week said he is now the president of all Chadians, including candidates who did not win the May 6 polls. He says he is now concentrating in respecting his electoral promises, especially bringing back peace to Chad. Opposition and civil society groups say they are also surprised over the council's announcement that it was ready to finalize the election results without ruling on the petitions. Electoral laws give the council until May 21 to rule on the petitions, according to the opposition. The council has already said that election-day incidents like fighting and the late arrival of ballot boxes to polling stations were not enough to influence the outcome of the vote. Beral Mbaikoubou is spokesperson for an opposition party, the Movement of Chad Patriots for the Republic, or MPTR. He says it is now evident that Chad may descend into violence and chaos after Thursday’s proclamation of definitive results by the constitutional council because Deby rigged elections by falsifying results sheets and intimidating civilians with his military. He says the results declared by ANGE and to be confirmed by Chad's constitutional council were prepared by Deby, who wants to confiscate power. Mbaikoubou said civilians should stay at home to avoid confrontations with the military, which he says was deployed by Deby to crack down on people protesting election results. Deby took power in April 2021 as leader of a transitional government after his father, Idriss Deby Itno, who had ruled Chad for more than three decades, died fighting northern rebels. Lydie Beassemda is the only female who contested the polls. Speaking on Chadian state TV Thursday, she said that by confiscating power, Deby is failing to show love for the country. She says Chad is becoming a Deby dynasty. She says her Party for Integral Democracy and Independence wants military leaders to note that Deby is not Chad's democratically elected president and civilians have so far decided not to violently protest against stolen victory because they want peace in the volatile nation. She says angry Chadians may react violently if government troops continue to provoke civilians whose victory is stolen. The Economic Community of Central African states, or CEEAC says Chadians should avoid chaos by protesting peacefully if they feel cheated in the elections.

HONG KONG — Shares of Chinese property developers rallied on Thursday after a report that China was considering a plan for local governments across the country to buy millions of unsold homes from distressed companies to ease a protracted property crisis.  Hong Kong's Hang Seng Mainland Properties Index closed up 4.9% to the highest since November 24. The sub-index has gained around 30% since mid-April, when the market started speculation that more supportive measures would be rolled out to stabilize the ailing sector after months of disappointing home sales.  Defaulted private developer Fantasia and KWG Group jumped 63% and 40%, respectively, while state-backed Sino-Ocean Group surged 46%.  Hong Kong's markets were closed on Wednesday for a public holiday. They have been catching up to gains in mainland property shares since the previous day.  China's CSI 300 Real Estate index firmed 3.5% on Thursday, following a 2.2% rise on Wednesday.   Bloomberg News said on Wednesday the State Council was gathering feedback on the preliminary plan from various provinces and government bodies after a meeting of the ruling Communist Party leaders in late April called for efforts to clear mounting housing inventory.  Local state-owned enterprises would be asked to help purchase unsold homes from distressed developers at steep discounts using loans provided by state banks, according to the report, which added that many of these homes would be converted into affordable housing.  China's housing ministry, central bank, the National Financial Regulatory Administration and the Ministry of Natural Resources scheduled a news briefing Friday afternoon about the supporting policies to ensure housing delivery, according to a notice on Thursday.  Bloomberg News said in a separate report on Thursday that the State Council plans to hold a meeting with key officials from the housing ministry, financial regulators, local governments and state banks on Friday morning to discuss the property market, including a proposal to clear excess housing inventory.  Reuters could not independently verify the reports.   China's property sector slipped into a debt crisis in mid-2021. Since 2022, waves of policy measures have failed to turn around the sector, which represents about a fifth of the economy and remains a major drag on consumer spending and confidence.  Over the past years, some local governments already announced plans to buy unfinished or unsold homes from developers and turn them into social housing, but the scale has been small.  Authorities also in recent weeks ramped up policies intended to clear the stock of unsold housing. Large cities such as Beijing and Shenzhen have eased home purchase restrictions, with some allowing homebuyers to "swap" to a new home from an old one.  "We believe this could be a game changer in the sense that property sales may at least stabilize rather than turn worse," JPMorgan said in a report, referring to the reported plan in consideration.  The bank, however, added it is skeptical about whether the scale would be large enough to trigger a market recovery unless the funding would come from the central government.  Nomura said if local governments could acquire a meaningful volume of unsold homes from developers, it would help resolve the inventory issue and channel fund flows to the credit-trapped private companies, said Nomura.   This, in turn, would support construction activities and alleviate the sector's downward spiral, it said.  However, some have been concerned about the lack of housing demand in smaller cities, with worries surfacing that such a plan would further weigh on the financial health of local governments.   Local governments are already more than $9 trillion in debt and pose a major risk to China's economy and financial stability.  "It would only work in higher-tier cities but not lower-tier ones; where would the buyers come from?" said an analyst from another Asian bank, who declined to be named as he was not authorized to speak to the media. "Telling local governments in those cities to buy inventory would just burn their balance sheet." 

Washington — President Joe Biden has asserted executive privilege over audio of his interview with special counsel Robert Hur that's at the center a Republican effort to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress, the Justice Department told lawmakers on Thursday. It comes as the House Oversight and Accountability Committee and the Judiciary Committee are each expected to hold a hearing to recommend that the full House refer Garland to the Justice Department for the contempt charges over the department's refusal to hand over the audio. Garland advised Biden in a letter on Thursday that the audio falls within the scope of executive privilege. Garland told the Democratic president that the "committee's needs are plainly insufficient to outweigh the deleterious effects that the production of the recordings would have on the integrity and effectiveness of similar law enforcement investigations in the future." Assistant Attorney General Carlos Felipe Uriarte urged lawmakers not to proceed with the contempt effort to avoid "unnecessary and unwarranted conflict." "It is the longstanding position of the executive branch held by administrations of both parties that an official who asserts the president's claim of executive privilege cannot be held in contempt of Congress," Uriarte wrote. White House Counsel Ed Siskel wrote in a separate, scathing letter to Congress on Thursday that lawmakers' effort to obtain the recording was absent any legitimate purpose and lays bare their likely goal — "to chop them up, distort them, and use them for partisan political purposes." The White House memo is a tacit admission that there are moments from the interview it fears portray Biden in a negative light in an election year — and that could be exacerbated by the release, or selective release, of the audio. The transcript of the Hur interview showed Biden struggling to recall some dates and occasionally confusing some details — something longtime aides says he's done for years in both public and private — but otherwise showing deep recall in other areas. Biden and his aides are particularly sensitive to questions about his age. At 81, he's the oldest ever president, and he's seeking another four year term. Hur found some evidence that Biden had willfully retained classified information and disclosed it to a ghostwriter but concluded that it was insufficient for criminal charges.

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.

Copenhagen, Denmark — Fifteen EU states have demanded a further tightening of the bloc's asylum policy, making it easier to transfer undocumented migrants to third countries, including when they are rescued at sea. The demand, sent in a letter to the European Commission that AFP received on Thursday, comes less than a month before European Parliament elections, in which far-right anti-immigration parties are forecast to make gains. The letter asks the European Union's executive arm to "propose new ways and solutions to prevent irregular migration to Europe." The group includes Italy and Greece, which receive a substantial number of the people making the perilous journey across the Mediterranean Sea to reach the EU — many seeking to escape poverty, war or persecution, according to the International Organization for Migration. They want the EU to toughen up its recently adopted asylum pact, which introduces tighter controls on those seeking to enter the 27-nation bloc. That reform includes speedier vetting of people arriving without documents, new border detention centers and faster deportation for rejected asylum applicants. The 15 proposed in their letter the introduction of "mechanisms... aimed at detecting, intercepting — or in cases of distress, rescuing — migrants on the high seas and bringing them to a predetermined place of safety in a partner country outside the EU, where durable solutions for those migrants could be found." They said it should be easier to send asylum seekers to third countries while their requests for protection are assessed. They cited the example of a controversial deal that Italy has struck with non-EU Albania, under which Rome can send thousands of asylum seekers plucked from Italian waters to holding camps in the Balkan country until their cases are processed. The concept in EU asylum law of what constitutes "safe third countries" should be reassessed, they continued. Safe country debate EU law stipulates that people arriving in the bloc without documents can be sent to a third country, where they could have requested asylum — so long as that country is deemed safe and the applicant has a genuine link with it. That would exclude schemes like the divisive law passed by the UK, which has now left the EU, enabling London to refuse all irregular arrivals the right to request asylum and send them to Rwanda. Rights groups accuse the African country — ruled with an iron fist by President Paul Kagame since the end of the 1994 genocide that killed around 800,000 people — of cracking down on free speech and political opposition. The 15 nations said they wanted the EU to make deals with third countries along the main migration routes, citing the example of the arrangement it made with Turkey in 2016 to take in Syrian refugees from the war in their home country. The letter was signed by Austria, Bulgaria, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Estonia, Greece, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland and Romania. It was not signed by Hungary, whose Prime Minister Viktor Orban has resisted EU plans to share out responsibility across the bloc for hosting asylum seekers, or to contribute to the costs of that plan.

In India, 18 million first time voters in the country’s ongoing general elections include millions of college students. Anjana Pasricha speaks to some students in New Delhi and finds out that many support Prime Minister Narendra Modi, but they want more focus on issues like development and jobs and less on religious issues that have dominated the campaign so far.

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.

Noumea, France — Days of unrest in the Pacific archipelago of New Caledonia has left five dead and hundreds injured, prompting French authorities to declare a state of emergency. Here is what you need to know about the crisis: What's going on? Thousands of people have taken to the streets in three nights of protest, rioting and looting. Five people are dead, including two police officers. A state of emergency has been declared and the French military is being deployed to restore order and secure critical infrastructure like ports and airports. All commercial flights have been cancelled, leaving tourists stranded and desperately seeking ways to get home. Armored vehicles are now roving the streets of the capital. Protesters and fearful residents have established rival checkpoints and roadblocks. Police efforts to impose a nighttime curfew and ban alcohol sales have so far failed to quell the violence. Why did this happen? Since France took control of New Caledonia in mid-1800s, there has been a fraught relationship between indigenous Kanaks and white settlers. But this is the worst violence the islands have seen since the 1980s. The apparent trigger was the French government's efforts to change who can vote in New Caledonia elections. Paris lawmakers back a constitutional change giving residents of more than 10 years a vote in provincial elections, which would add 25,000 people to the lists. The islands' voter roll has been frozen since 1998, something that supporters of the change say is undemocratic and disenfranchises some citizens. "People who come from what is called the first nation feel they have more legitimacy than others, but those who have arrived because of life events feel it's their land too, and that they should be treated equally," Nicolas Metzdorf, a lawmaker from Macron's party who backs the change, told broadcaster France Inter Wednesday. The Kanak people fear expanding voter lists will benefit pro-France politicians and reduce their voice. "For separatists, the electoral roll has been the mother of all battles from the start," said Philippe Gomes, a former head of the territory's government who opposes independence. "They can't help but think that in the end, the French republic wants to dilute them yet again in their own country." Kanaks make up about 40 percent of New Caledonia's 270,000 population. Politics in the islands are tied up in an ongoing debate about New Caledonia's independence — which has been the subject of three referendums. The last referendum was held in 2021 and was deeply controversial. Many Kanaks boycotted the vote, which took place despite New Caledonia, and the world, being in the throes of the COVID pandemic. Kanak people want a new vote on the matter. Denise Fisher, a former Australian consul general in New Caledonia, told AFP that years of simmering tensions had now finally boiled over. "There has been serious violence over the last three days," she said. "To expect all the parties to sit around a table — after what has gone on — is a big ask," she said. What happens now? With armed police unable to restore order, France has called in the military. Paris has said it will establish an "air bridge" from France, to rapidly move in military and police reinforcements but also to bring in essential supplies for the population. The islands are heavily dependent on imports and some supplies are starting to run out. Nicole George, a visiting Australian academic, said shop shelves are bare, with some bakeries telling locals to reserve bread a day ahead. French President Emmanuel Macron offered to hold talks with New Caledonian lawmakers and called for a resumption of political dialogue. Macron offered to hold meetings with pro- and anti-independence parties before the voting reform was officially brought into force, an offer accepted by FLNKS — the Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front — a major pro-independence party. Pro- and anti-independence parties issued a joint statement calling for "calm and reason," adding that "we are destined to keep living together." But Fisher warned, "there is a lot more to overcome to get around the table." Fisher remains hopeful that a solution will be found, but she warned it would not be an easy process. "It will take time, it's not going to be soon, because... the wounds of the last three days are very deep," she said. What's the international response? Leaders of neighboring Pacific nations have come out in support of the Kanak people. The secretary general of the Pacific Islands Forum — a regional bloc — Henry Puna said while the violence was "unfortunate," it was expected. "That's something that we really need to talk about openly and honestly. What the causes of the problem are, and what the solutions be," he said. Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown added greater independence was needed for the Kanak people. "It is cause to recognize greater autonomy and greater independence from the people on those islands," he said. New Zealand's Foreign Minister Winston Peters has called for a "peaceful resolution." "The immediate priority must be for all sides to take steps to de-escalate the situation, so that there can be dialogue and calm."

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.