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Juba, South Sudan — In a significant policy reversal, the government of South Sudan has responded to a U.N. appeal and reversed its decision to impose taxes and fees on humanitarian services and products. However, Titus Osundina, the U.N. Development Program’s deputy resident representative for South Sudan, told VOA that questions remain because some private suppliers and companies that provide services to the U.N. may still be taxed. "We need to see how that clarifies,” Osundina said. South Sudan's finance minister explained in a press release that while U.N. humanitarian organizations and diplomatic missions are tax-exempt, companies contracted by the U.N. Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) are not exempt because they are "profit-making entities" and are subject to taxes under the agreement the mission originally signed with South Sudan. As South Sudan's largest humanitarian agency, the United Nations conducts crucial air drops, feeding more than 16,300 people monthly, especially in regions grappling with food insecurity, conflict and natural disasters.   With nearly half the country's population facing acute food shortages and the looming threat of floods, the U.N. stressed that new taxes would have added $339,000 to the UNMISS monthly operational costs, affecting food and humanitarian assistance operations.   No figures have been released about how much the new taxes will cost the U.N. contractors.  Timo Olkkonen, who heads up the European Union delegation to South Sudan, one of the major international donors to the African country, said agencies need ample time and resources to prepare and deliver relief assistance. “We encourage all the stakeholders to resolve this issue so that the fuel and other essential items will be coming here for the service of the South Sudanese, and so that the humanitarian community and the U.N. can continue with their lifesaving and peacekeeping work,” Olkkonen said. The U.N.'s role in ensuring stability in South Sudan ahead of the upcoming national election in December highlights the urgency of resolving this issue promptly.  

Analysts say Russia is adopting a so-called hybrid approach to growing its strategic influence in the Arctic, through research, increased maritime activities and tourism. For the inhabitants of one remote Norwegian community, the announcement of a new boat bringing tourists from Russia means more than just a few extra visitors. Henry Wilkins reports from Svalbard, Norway.

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BALTIMORE — Crews conducted a controlled demolition Monday to break down the largest remaining span of the collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore.  The explosives flashed orange and let off plumes of black smoke upon detonation, and the span crumpled into the water in seconds. The longest trusses toppled away from the grounded Dali container ship and slid off its bow, sending a wall of water splashing back toward the ship.  It marked a major step in freeing the ship, which has been stuck amid the wreckage since it lost power and crashed into one of the bridge's support columns shortly after leaving Baltimore on March 26. The demolished span came crashing down on the ship's bow and remained resting on its deck for the past six weeks.  The collapse killed six construction workers and halted most maritime traffic through Baltimore's busy port. The controlled demolition will allow the Dali to be refloated and restore traffic through the port as the cleanup enters its final stages.  Once the ship is removed, maritime traffic can begin returning to normal, which will provide relief for thousands of longshoremen, truckers and small business owners who have seen their jobs impacted by the closure.  Officials previously said the Dali's 21-member crew would shelter in place aboard the ship while the explosives were detonated.  In a videographic released this week, authorities said engineers were using precision cuts to control how the trusses break down. They said the method allows for "surgical precision" and is one of the safest and most efficient ways to remove steel under a high level of tension.  The next step is for hydraulic grabbers to lift the resulting sections of steel onto barges.  The Dali crew members haven't been allowed to leave the grounded vessel since the disaster. Officials said they've been busy maintaining the ship and assisting investigators. Of the crew members, 20 are from India and one is Sri Lankan.  The National Transportation Safety Board and the FBI are conducting investigations into the bridge collapse.  Danish shipping giant Maersk had chartered the Dali for a planned trip from Baltimore to Sri Lanka, but the ship didn't get far. Its crew sent a mayday call saying they had lost power and had no control of the steering system. Minutes later, the ship rammed into the bridge.  Officials have said the safety board investigation will focus on the ship's electrical system. 

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amman, jordan — Despite the recent uptick in cross-border bombardments between Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah militia in Lebanon, analysts say both foes may not want it to escalate their conflict given the tremendous cost to both countries — both militarily, materially and economically. Tens of thousands of people on either side of the Lebanon-Israel border have been displaced as attacks, which began on October 8 between Israel and Hezbollah as part of Iran’s so-called “axis of resistance,” have intensified. Hezbollah has put pressure on Israel’s northern border as Israeli forces battle Hamas in the south. Analyst Nicholas Heras of the Washington-based New Lines Institute told VOA that despite Hezbollah and Israel stepping up their attacks in recent weeks, limits are maintained for now. Hezbollah, he said, is better armed than the Lebanese military. “On both sides of the border, civilian populations have been directly affected by this really tenuous escalation/de-escalation pattern between Israel, Hezbollah and Iran,” Heras said. “There is a sense from both sides of the border that there is unfinished business. There is recognition that something big could very well happen as a result of the atmosphere right now. Both sides have tremendous pause in doing that because it would be in many ways a cataclysmic conflict.” Lebanon is fragile. A crippling economic crisis has gripped the tiny Mediterranean nation since 2019, and it is strained further by hosting more than 1 million Syrian refugees. The United Nation’s World Food Program provides aid to more than 158,000 people in Lebanon who are affected by war, but warns that should conditions worsen, it cannot supply more. Lebanese authorities say there has been more than $1.5 billion in damages so far from cross-border hostilities. Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has warned that either a diplomatic agreement or a military solution was required for Israeli residents, who have fled the border region, to return home in the north. Lebanese authorities say more than 350 people have been killed in Israeli strikes since the beginning of hostilities October 8; the majority being militants, while some 73 civilians have been killed. Meanwhile, Israel says some 14 soldiers and 10 civilians have been killed in militant attacks. Lebanese analyst Dania Koleilat Khatib told VOA that the United States and France have tried diplomacy, urging Hezbollah to pull back from the border and see more international monitors posted. But Hezbollah has so far resisted, said Khatib, who is the president of the Research Center for Cooperation and Peace Building in Beirut. “Israel wants a strong guarantee, Khatib said. “They cannot re-run the risk of having something like October 7. Hezbollah is cornered. They don’t want war. If they are cornered, they will go to war. That’s why it’s the time for diplomacy. To find a buffer that will give assurances to both sides.” New Lines analyst Heras warns of the high stakes should war erupt. “The IDF — Israel Defense Forces — has made it very clear that in a future war, that it would be near total destruction anywhere in Lebanon that Hezbollah has a presence,” Heras said. Heras said Israel knows that Iran has armed Hezbollah with hundreds of thousands of weapons, including precision-guided missiles. He said the armaments could potentially wreak material and “economic catastrophic destruction inside Israel.” Hezbollah would not just allow the Israeli military to have freedom of movement inside Lebanon, he said, but the Iran-backed group would, in fact, try to bring the war into Israel itself. Other analysts say Hezbollah risks losing support if Lebanese civilians continue to suffer the attacks or if public confidence is undermined. Already, many Lebanese have expressed resentment over being dragged into a conflict with Israel.

YAOUNDE, CAMEROON — Opposition candidates in Chad who lost the recent presidential election have filed paperwork challenging President Mahamat Idriss Deby’s victory. The legal challenge comes as the media there appeal a decision barring them from reporting on election-related violence.  State television reported on Monday that the country's Constitutional Council received a petition from opposition candidate Succes Masra, calling for results of the May 6 vote to be annulled.  The central African state’s elections management body, or ANGE, declared Masra second with more than 18% of the votes cast. Deby, the transitional president, won more than 61% of the vote, exceeding the 50% mandate needed to avoid a runoff.   Deby’s victory follows the death of his father, Idriss Deby, in 2021 and completes the country’s three-year transition from military to civilian rule.  Masra and the Transformers party he leads allege massive electoral fraud, including the stuffing of ballot boxes and soldiers chasing opposition representatives from polling stations.  Masra alleges that soldiers carried ballot boxes to military barracks, where government troops counted and declared results, instead of ANGE. The Transformers say scores of opposition officials and hundreds of Masra supporters were arrested and detained by government troops.   Chad's military government says Deby won the election and some opposition parties want to create chaos by not respecting the vote. Deby calls the allegations unfounded.  Sitack Yombatina Beni, the Transformers’ vice president, spoke Monday with VOA via a messaging app from Chadian capital N'djamena.  Beni said Masra has asked civilians to maintain peace and avoid reacting violently to ongoing provocations from Deby's supporters. He said it is an open secret that rights and freedoms are abused in Chad, but that this time civilians, opposition and civil society are ready to fight back if the Constitutional Council fails to render justice and give back what he calls Masra's stolen victory.  Beni said peaceful demonstrations were held Friday, Saturday and Sunday in several areas, including N'djamena and Moundou, Chad's second-largest city.  Yacine Abdramane Sakine, another losing candidate, said he also filed a petition asking the Constitutional Council to order ANGE to do a public recount of the votes.    Evarist Ngarlem Tolde, a political affairs lecturer and researcher at the University of N’djamena in Chad, said the fact that Chad’s military leaders ordered government troops to undemocratically vote for Deby is an indication they are not ready to lose their grip on power. He added that it is surprising that Chad's elections management body published provisional results at 8 p.m. May 9 after it had announced at 2 p.m. that it was very difficult for the body to assemble result sheets from more than 26,000 polling stations.  Tolde said it will be very difficult for the Constitutional Council to cancel provisional results of the May 6 presidential elections declared by ANGE. Both institutions were formed by Deby.  ANGE says it is independent and that the results published are free, transparent, and credible, reflecting the verdict of the ballot.   Civil society and opposition groups say the troops deployed after the May 9 publication of partial results are still intimidating and arresting civilians, especially in N'djamena. They say the death toll from shooting since May 9 has increased to 30.  On Monday, Chad’s journalism union condemned a government order that stops the news media from reporting on post-election tensions and violence and orders news organizations to desist from giving casualty figures.  The Constitutional Council has until May 21 to rule on the petitions and proclaim definitive results. But Chad's transitional officials report that Deby already has been congratulated by Nigerian President Bola Tinubu, Guinea Bissau’s President Umaro Sissoco Embalo, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and Kenyan President William Ruto. 

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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Gazans are heeding Israeli warnings and fleeing the city of Rafah as Israel’s actions continue to draw condemnation from the U.S. and are even playing an out-sized role in the upcoming presidential election. People have taken to the streets in Tbilisi, Georgia in bitter protests against a new law that many see as authoritarian, just as the country is seeking greater ties with the West. The Russian army continues to advance in Ukraine as a new defense minister is named. Plus, some analysis following the recent election in Chad.

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London — Britain's King Charles handed over a senior military role to his son Prince William at a ceremony Monday, marking a rare joint appearance for the pair as the king steps up his return to public duties after his cancer diagnosis. Charles presented William with the title of Colonel-in-Chief of the Army Air Corps, a position the 75-year-old monarch held for 32 years, in front of an Apache helicopter, and watched by service personnel at the Army Flying Museum in southern England. "He's a very good pilot indeed," Charles said of his son, a former helicopter search and rescue pilot for Britain's Royal Air Force. The visit was Charles' latest engagement since he returned to work at the end of April, almost three months after Buckingham Palace announced he was being treated for an unspecified type of cancer. William, 41, had also taken a break from official duties for several weeks in March and April this year, choosing to spend time with and care for his wife after she revealed she was undergoing preventative chemotherapy for cancer. He said on Friday she was "doing well." At the handover ceremony, Charles said he was saying goodbye with "sadness," but the Army Air Corps would go from "strength to strength" under his son. "Look after yourselves and I can't tell you how proud it has made me to have been involved with you all this time," Charles said. The title transfer was announced last August after Charles' accession to the throne. William spent time with the Corps, viewing training, equipment and hearing from soldiers later Monday.

Berlin — Burmese writer Ma Thida doesn’t like to think of herself as exiled. She left Myanmar in 2021, just a few months after the military seized power in a coup that overthrew the civilian-led government. And while Ma Thida says it would not be safe for her to return anytime soon, exile implies a permanence the writer isn’t quite comfortable with. “My aim is not to be exiled — just to keep away from the country. And as soon as I get a chance, I would definitely go back,” she said, speaking with VOA in Berlin, where she is currently living. Born and raised in Myanmar’s largest city, Yangon, Ma Thida studied medicine in the 1980s and became a physician. She worked as an aide and medic for pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and wrote her first novel in 1992. Titled “The Sunflower,” the book explored the population’s expectations of Suu Kyi, who at that time was under house arrest. But the book was banned shortly before being published in 1993, and Myanmar’s junta sentenced Ma Thida to 20 years in Insein Prison for “endangering public peace, having contact with illegal organizations, and distributing unlawful literature.” International pressure led to her early release in 1999. “The Sunflower” was finally published, and Ma Thida started writing again. Her latest book “A-Maze,” published in May, explores Myanmar’s struggle for democracy and the post-coup Spring Revolution. “I try to understand what’s going on right now and why it happened,” Ma Thida said. “So, this is my attempt to understand the whole situation, but at the same time, my attempt to convince the readers to understand what our struggle is.” Ma Thida, who is chair of the Writers in Prison Committee run by the free expression group PEN International, said her jailing in the 1990s made her realize it was too dangerous to stay in Myanmar following the 2021 coup. “A lot of writers were already at risk or were already being arrested,” she said, recalling how anxious she felt at Yangon Airport the day she left. Myanmar’s military, known as the Tatmadaw, has detained thousands of people, including journalists and writers. “They’re trying to silence all forms of dissent,” said Karin Deutsch Karlekar, a Myanmar expert at PEN America in New York. “Many people are still either underground and hiding within Myanmar, or in exile.” Some writers were among the prisoners released at the beginning of 2024 in an annual mass amnesty. But several remain behind bars. Their cases show that the military has not wavered on its aversion to free expression, Karlekar said. Karlekar cited the case of filmmaker Shin Daewe, who covered environmental issues and human rights. Authorities sentenced her to life in prison earlier this year for buying a drone. “Those sentences are really, really extreme and are a signal to anyone else in the writing and creative community that if they step out of line in any way, in terms of even just expressing criticism of the junta, that this is a possibility,” Karlekar said. Myanmar’s military did not reply to VOA’s request for comment. For now, Ma Thida is grateful to have the freedom and safety to continue her work. Her latest book, published in English, is primarily intended for an international audience. “Some people think this is just war — not the revolution, not the resistance,” she said about what she hopes readers take away from the book. “It’s more than that.” Despite her situation and the years already spent in prison, laughter is still instinctive for Ma Thida. She pokes fun at her own misfortunes, including her passport troubles. Myanmar’s embassy in Berlin has resisted renewing Ma Thida’s expired passport, which she believes is in retaliation for her writing. The embassy did not reply to VOA’s request for comment. Ma Thida has faced this problem before. After her release from prison in 1999, she was unable to obtain a passport for five years. “I have so many problems with passports,” she said, chuckling. Withholding travel documents from exiled dissidents is something PEN America is seeing more frequently as a method of control, Karlekar said. For now, the German government has given Ma Thida a passport reserved for people unable to obtain a passport from their home country. And while Berlin is safer for dissidents than Yangon these days, Myanmar will always be home for Ma Thida. “I look at my country as my own home because I got my education there. I got my understanding of life there. I got my belief in freedom there,” she said. “I always want to go back home.”

Antonov manipulated statistical data omitting key distinctions that point to Russia as the world’s largest sponsor of political cybercrime.

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New York — Jury selection began on Monday in the corruption trial of U.S. Senator Robert Menendez, a case that could affect the Democrat's political future and help determine which party controls the Senate next year. Menendez, 70, faces 16 criminal charges including bribery, fraud and acting as a foreign agent, and is being tried alongside two New Jersey businessmen in Manhattan federal court. The senator's wife, Nadine Menendez, has also been charged but will be tried separately. All four defendants have pleaded not guilty. U.S. District Judge Sidney Stein told prospective jurors that the trial could last six to seven weeks. Menendez, New Jersey's senior senator, is up for re-election in November and if exonerated hopes to run for a fourth full term as an independent. Recent polls show Menendez is deeply unpopular among New Jersey voters, and many Democratic senators including New Jersey's Cory Booker have called for him to resign. Democrats and independents who caucus with them hold a 51-49 Senate majority. Prosecutors said the Menendezes accepted cash, gold bars and a Mercedes-Benz convertible in exchange for the senator wielding his political influence in New Jersey and to help the governments of Egypt and Qatar.   The senator allegedly promised to help Egypt obtain arms sales and other military aid, and helped defendant Wael Hana, an Egyptian American businessman, obtain a lucrative monopoly on the certification of halal meat exports to Egypt. Prosecutors also said Menendez tried to help defendant Fred Daibes, a prominent New Jersey developer, obtain millions of dollars from a Qatari investment fund, and sought to disrupt a federal criminal case against Daibes in New Jersey. Much of the cash received by the Menendezes was stuffed inside clothing at their home, prosecutors said. Menendez and his wife also face obstruction of justice charges. The alleged crimes occurred between 2018 and 2023. A fifth defendant, Jose Uribe, pleaded guilty to bribery and fraud charges in March and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors. Nadine Menendez's trial is scheduled for July 8. Her case was separated after her lawyers said she developed a serious medical condition that required a lengthy recovery. Lawyers for Robert Menendez have suggested in court papers that if he testified he may try to blame his wife, disclosing marital communications that would "tend to exonerate" him but could incriminate her. His lawyers said Menendez could explain what they discussed during dinners with Egyptian officials and offer his wife's explanation for why Hana and Uribe "provided her certain monetary items." The defense team also wants a psychiatrist to testify that the senator routinely stored cash in his home because of a "fear of scarcity." Defense lawyers said Menendez did this as a "coping mechanism" after the Cuban government seized his family's assets before he was born, and his father died by suicide after his son stopped paying his gambling debts. Menendez's corruption trial is his second. In 2017, a New Jersey federal judge declared a mistrial after jurors deadlocked on whether Menendez broke the law by providing help to a wealthy ophthalmologist, Salomon Melgen, in exchange for lavish gifts and political contributions. Menendez became a senator in 2006. He had chaired the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee but stepped down last September after first being indicted. Several other current and former members of Congress also face federal criminal charges, including Representative Henry Cuellar, a Texas Democrat, and former representative George Santos, a New York Republican. While New Jersey's voting population leans Democratic, public support for Menendez collapsed following his indictment. Fewer than one in six voters polled in March by Monmouth University and Emerson College Polling/PIX11/The Hill said they approved of Menendez's job performance. Even fewer said they would vote for him as an independent. Several Senate seats held by Democrats or independents may be closely contested in November. A seat now held by West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin, who is not seeking reelection, is expected to turn Republican.