Voice of America’s immigration news

Yangon, Myanmar — A rocket attack by Myanmar anti-coup fighters killed four people and wounded 12, including cadets from the military's elite officer academy, junta officials said Monday. Myanmar's military authorities, who are struggling to maintain their grip on the country in the face of rising armed opposition, condemned the attack in the central town of Pyin Oo Lwin as targeting civilians. Myanmar is mired in conflict as the military, which seized power in a 2021 coup, battles multiple armed resistance groups across the country, suffering heavy losses in recent months. Fighters from a local "people's defence force" (PDF) — armed groups of pro-democracy civilians that have risen up to battle the army — "randomly shot" 11 rockets on Sunday evening, hitting a hospital, monastery and hotel, the junta said. The dead include two monks, it said. Pyin Oo Lwin, a former British hill station near the central city of Mandalay, is home to the Defence Services Academy — Myanmar's equivalent of West Point or Britain's Sandhurst. Junta spokesman Zaw Min Tun confirmed three cadets from the academy were wounded in the attack. A spokesman for Mandalay PDF said its fighters carried out the attack, saying they targeted only the academy. The military suffered a major blow last week when its forces were driven out of a major trade hub near the Thai border after days of clashes with an ethnic minority armed group and other anti-junta fighters. Authorities in Thailand have said they are preparing to accept up to 100,000 people displaced by the clashes. The military seized power from the civilian government of Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021 and its crackdown on resistance to its rule has killed more than 4,800 civilians, according to local monitoring group AAPP.

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.

MAE SOT, Thailand — A resistance group fighting Myanmar's military rule said on Sunday its fighters had repelled an attempt by junta troops to advance on the key town of Myawaddy along the Thai border that was seized by the rebels last week. Reinforcements of junta forces have been trying to advance on Myawaddy for days, but were pushed back in a battle about 40 kilometers away, a spokesperson for the Karen National Union (KNU), Saw Taw Nee, said in an interview. "It is not easy to come here. They face a lot of difficulty," he told Reuters, saying the KNU's forces had been "blocking and intercepting" the junta troops. The KNU information could not be independently confirmed. A spokesperson for the military junta that seized power from an elected government a 2021 did not answer calls from Reuters. The border town of Myawaddy, adjacent to Thailand, was wrested from military control by a coalition of anti-junta forces led by the KNU on Thursday. Fighting took place on Friday between the villages of Kawkareik and Kaw Nwet along the main Asian Highway 1 leading west from the Thai border, Saw Taw Nee said. The KNU spokesperson said information received from the front line put the junta's toll of deaths and injuries from the fighting at around 100. "We know that they suffered a loss of one armed carrier and a military truck," he said. Myanmar has been in turmoil since 2021, when the powerful military deposed an elected civilian government, triggering widespread protests it sought to crush with force. Simmering anger against the junta turned into a nationwide armed resistance movement that is now increasingly operating in coordination with established ethnic rebel groups to challenge the military across large parts of Myanmar. Saw Taw Nee said the resistance "will take time." "We need to have a kind of coordination with other groups… to defeat the military," he said. The KNU spokesperson said there were also challenges working in a broad anti-junta coalition. "We are still in the process of how to negotiate, how to come together and how to move forward among our Karen groups," he said, referring to members of the ethnic group residing primarily in Kayin State. Saw Taw Nee said the immediate concern for the KNU is the more than one million displaced people within its territories, and called on the international community, including neighboring Thailand, to provide support. "We really need to work together in the future more and more on this issue," he said. He urged Myanmar's junta to see their recent military setbacks as a sign that they should hand back power to the people. "Please don’t waste time any more," he said. "This is the time, and a good opportunity, to listen to people first."

ANCIENT OLYMPIA, Greece — No one knows what music in ancient Greece sounded like or how dancers once moved. Every two years, a new interpretation of the ancient performance gets a global audience. It takes place in southern Greece at a site many still consider sacred: the birthplace of the Olympic Games. Forty-eight performers, chosen in part for their resemblance to youths in antiquity as seen in statues and other surviving artwork, will take part Tuesday in the flame-lighting ceremony for the Paris Olympics.  Details of the 30-minute performance are fine-tuned — and kept secret — right up until a public rehearsal Monday. The Associated Press got rare access to rehearsals that took place during weekends, mostly at an Olympic indoor cycling track in Athens.  As riders whiz around them on the banked cycling oval, the all-volunteer Olympic performers snatch poses from ancient vases. Sequences are repeated and re-repeated under the direction of the hyper-focused head choreographer Artemis Ignatiou. “In ancient times there was no Olympic flame ceremony,” Ignatiou said during a recent practice session. “My inspiration comes from temple pediments, from images on vases, because there is nothing that has been preserved — no movement, no dance — from antiquity,” she said. “So basically, what we are doing is joining up those images. Everything in between comes from us.” Ceremonies take place at Olympia every two years for the Winter and Summer Games, with the sun’s rays focused on the inside of a parabolic mirror to produce the Olympic flame and start the torch relay to the host city. Women dressed as priestesses are at the heart of the ceremony, first held for the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. Leading the group is an actress who performs the role of high priestess and makes a dramatic appeal to Apollo, the ancient god of the sun, for assistance moments before the torch is lit. Over the decades, new ingredients have been progressively added: music, choreography, new colors for the costumes, male performers known as “kouroi” and subtle style inclusions to give a nod to the culture of the Olympic host nation. Adding complexity also has introduced controversy, inevitably amplified by social media. Criticism this year has centered on the dresses and tunics to be worn by the performers, styled to resemble ancient Greek columns. Faultfinders have called it a rude departure from the ceremony’s customary elegance. Organizers hope the attire will create a more positive impression when witnessed at the ruins of ancient Olympia. Counting out the sequences, Ignatiou controls the music with taps on her cell phone while keeping track of the male dancers at the velodrome working on a stop motion-like routine and women who glide past them like a slowly uncoiling spring. Ignatiou has been involved with the ceremony for 36 years, as priestess, high priestess, assistant and then head choreographer since 2008. She takes in the criticism with composure. She’s still moved to tears when describing the flame lighting, but defers to her dancers to describe their experience of the five-month participation at practices. Most in their early twenties, the performers are selected from dance and drama academies with an eye on maintaining an athletic look and classic Greek aesthetic, the women with hair pulled back in neat double-braids. Christiana Katsimpraki, a 23-year-old drama school student who is taking part at Olympia for the first time, said she wants to repay the kindness shown to her by older performers. “Before I go to bed, when I close my eyes, I go through the whole choreography — a run through — to make sure I have all the steps memorized and that they’re in the right order,” she said. “It’s so that the next time I can come to the rehearsal, it all goes correctly and no one gets tired.” The ceremony is performed to sparse music, and final routine modifications are made at Olympia, in part to cope with the pockmarked and uneven ground at the site. Dancers describe the fun they have in messaging groups, the good-natured pranks played on newcomers and fun they have on the four-hour bus ride to the ancient site in southern Greece — but also the significance of the moment and the pull of the past. “I’m in awe that we’re going there and that I’m going to be part of this whole team,” 23-year-old performer Kallia Vouidaski said. “I’m going to have this entire experience that I watched when I was little on TV. I would say, ’Oh! How cool would it be if I could do this at some point.' And I did it.” The flame-lighting ceremony will start at 0830 GMT Tuesday. A separate flame-handover ceremony to the Paris 2024 organizing committee will be held in Athens on April 26. 

The United States and Israel say they achieved a “spectacular defeat” over an Iranian aerial attack that sent 300 munitions – more than 100 of them ballistic missiles – to Israel on Saturday. But as Sunday dawned in both places, a bigger question rose on the horizon: What happens next in this six-month conflict that threatens to envelop the Middle East? VOA White House correspondent Anita Powell reports from Washington.

Ten years ago, hundreds of schoolgirls were abducted in northern Nigeria by the Islamist terror group Boko Haram. Many escaped or gained freedom through negotiations, but the fate of 82 girls hangs on the hope of reviving a once-vibrant advocacy group. The “Bring Back Our Girls,” or BBOG, group dominated global headlines after the 2014 abduction. In the decade since the raid, mass abductions have become frequent, and activists have grown weary. Timothy Obiezu reports from Abuja.

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.

Tbilisi — Several hundred protesters gathered outside the Georgian parliament on Monday as ruling party legislators on the judicial committee looked set to advance a controversial bill on "foreign agents" criticized by Western countries. The ruling Georgian Dream party said earlier this month it would reintroduce legislation requiring organizations that accept funds from abroad to register as foreign agents or face fines, 13 months after protests forced it to shelve the plan. The bill has been criticized by European countries and the United States. The European Union, which gave Georgia candidate status in December, has said the move is incompatible with the bloc's values.  Georgian critics have labelled it "the Russian law," comparing it to similar legislation used by the Kremlin to crack down on dissent in Russia. Russia is widely unpopular in Georgia, due to Moscow's support for the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Russia defeated Georgia in a short war in 2008. Georgian Dream, which says it wants the country to join the EU and NATO even as it has deepened ties with Moscow, says the bill is necessary to combat what it calls "pseudo-liberal values" imposed by foreigners, and to promote transparency. Opposition parties and civil society organization have called for a mass protest outside parliament on Monday evening. Once approved by members of the legislature's legal affairs committee, which is controlled by Georgian Dream and its allies, the bill can proceed to a first reading in parliament. 

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.

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.

LAHORE, Pakistan — Pakistani authorities are investigating the shooting death of a man who had been acquitted of killing accused Indian spy Sarabjit Singh in a Lahore prison in 2013, a police official said Sunday. Pakistan has previously accused India’s intelligence agency of being involved in killings inside Pakistan, saying it had credible evidence linking two Indian agents to the deaths of two Pakistanis last year. The man who died in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore on Sunday was Amir Tamba. He was a suspect in the death of Sarabjit Singh, an Indian national who was convicted of spying in Pakistan and handed a death sentence in 1991. But Singh died in 2013 after inmates attacked him in a Lahore prison. His fate inflamed tensions between the two South Asian nuclear-armed rivals. Tamba and a second man went on trial for Singh’s death but were acquitted in 2018 due to lack of evidence. The deputy inspector general of police in Lahore, Ali Nasir Rizvi, said gunmen entered Tamba’s house and shot him. They fled the scene on a motorbike. Officials from Pakistan’s army and intelligence agency reached the site and removed Tamba’s body, taking it to the city's Combined Military Hospital. Rizvi said a case had been lodged against unidentified assailants but gave no further information about the case, including a possible motive for the attack. There was slow coverage of Tamba’s death in Pakistan's media. However, Indian outlets were quick to report on the shooting. There was no immediate comment from the Indian authorities. Singh was arrested in 1990 for his role in a series of bombings in Lahore and Faisalabad that killed 14 people. His family said he was innocent.

SYDNEY — The Solomon Islands holds a national election on Wednesday, the first since Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare signed a security pact with China that prompted concern from the United States and South Pacific neighbors. Sogavare has pledged closer ties with China, which has built infrastructure since Solomon Islands switched diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to Beijing in 2019, while opposition parties favor ties with Western aid donors including Australia, and pledge to fix a broken health system. The national election was delayed from 2023, after Sogavare said he wanted to focus on the Pacific Games, hosted in stadiums donated by China. Background Located 1,600 km (900 miles) northeast of Australia, Solomon Islands has a population of around 700,000 across an archipelago of six main islands: Choiseul, Guadalcanal, Makira, Malaita, New Georgia and Santa Isabel. Elections for the national parliament and provincial assemblies will be held on the same day. Polling booths open at 7 a.m. and close at 4 p.m. with an alcohol ban in place for a week. A campaigning blackout starts Tuesday. The 50 members of the national parliament are elected for a four-year term. The prime minister is selected after polling day by a vote of newly elected lawmakers, a process that can take several weeks. Who is running? Sogavare became prime minister at the 2019 election after being elected to his seat of East Choiseul as an independent candidate. This time, he is running as leader of the OUR (Ownership, Unity, Responsibility) party. He has been prime minister four times, but no Solomon Islands prime minister has been re-elected for consecutive terms. Historically, political party coalitions have been fluid. Independent candidates won 37% of the vote in 2019, more than the biggest party, the Solomon Islands Democratic Party on 14%. Prominent opposition party figures include: Peter Kenilorea Jr of the United Party, who wants the China security pact scrapped, and infrastructure help from Western countries favored. He is a former United Nations official and the son of Solomon Islands' first prime minister after independence from Britain. Matthew Wale of the Solomon Islands Democratic Party, and former prime minister Rick Hou of the Democratic Alliance Party, who have formed the CARE coalition, pledging to fix education and health, and a foreign policy that prioritizes Solomon Islands national interests. Former Malaita premier Daniel Suidani, who previously banned Chinese companies in the nation's biggest province, and is running for Malaita governor. His new party U4C (Umi For Change) will run candidates in the national election, including former government official Celsus Talifulu. There are 20 women running as candidates. Only two women were elected in the previous election. Security and other issues An election observer report in 2019 noted the traditional role of vote buying, saying "Devil's Night" cash handouts were likely driven underground by new laws banning it. Solomon Islands Electoral Commission advertising this month urged voters to "Keep your votes secret and say NO to vote buying and selling". This is the second election since the 2017 departure of the decade-long Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI), a multinational force of Australian, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and Fiji police. RAMSI was formed at the request of Solomon Islands government in 2003 to maintain civil order after inter-tribal violence. When anti-government riots broke out in the capital Honiara in November 2021, Sogavare asked Australian police to return to restore order. Six months later, Solomon Islands signed the security pact with China. Chinese police, and the Solomons International Assistance Force (comprised of Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and Fiji police and military) have a presence in Solomon Islands and operate separately, under the supervision of Royal Solomon Islands Police Force. Election observer groups from Australia, New Zealand, the Pacific, Japan, Europe and the U.S. will monitor voting and counting, with national and provincial polls held on the same day.

HONG KONG — China's top official on Hong Kong affairs said the city should focus on national security to protect development, in a speech coming weeks after the enactment of sweeping new security laws. "To move towards governance and prosperity, we need to tightly hold onto the bottom line of national security in order to safeguard the high quality development of Hong Kong," said the director of Beijing's Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, Xia Baolong, in a speech to mark an annual national security day. Hong Kong in March enacted a new national security law, also known as Article 23, that updates or introduces new laws to prohibit treason, sabotage, sedition, the theft of state secrets and espionage, with jail terms of up to life imprisonment. Xia, however, sought to emphasize that the law posed no threat to investors, at a time when the city has faced Western criticism of a protracted crackdown on dissent, and has struggled economically and financially. "For the general public of Hong Kong and foreign investors, this law is the protector of their rights, freedoms, property and investment," Xia said. "Investors from all over the world can come to Hong Kong to invest in new businesses bravely and without concerns," he added. "Hong Kong remains the best place in the world to do business and make money and achieve your dreams." Some foreign governments including the United States and Britain, however, have criticized the new law as fresh tool for authorities to clamp down on dissent. The legislation adds to another national security law China directly imposed on Hong Kong in 2020 in response to mass pro-democracy protests. Beijing, however, says the laws are necessary to safeguard the city's stability and prosperity. The U.S. Consulate General in Hong Kong said on Saturday that visitors to the city should "exercise increased caution" with the State Department updating its travel advisory given the new national security legislation. Canada also updated its advisory recently, saying people needed to "exercise a high degree of caution in Hong Kong due to the risk of arbitrary enforcement of local laws." The security laws have so far been used to jail scores of leading Hong Kong democrats including Joshua Wong, while liberal media outlets and civil society groups have been shut down. More than 290 people have been arrested under the Beijing imposed national security law so far. Of these, 174 people and five companies have been charged, including prominent China critic and businessman Jimmy Lai, who is currently on trial and could face life imprisonment.

Washington — Tax Day reveals a major split in how Joe Biden and Donald Trump would govern: The presidential candidates have conflicting ideas about how much to reveal about their own finances and the best ways to boost the economy through tax policy. Biden, the sitting Democratic president, plans to release his income tax returns on Monday, the IRS filing deadline. And on Tuesday, he is scheduled to deliver a speech in Scranton, Pennsylvania, about why the wealthy should pay more in taxes to reduce the federal deficit and help fund programs for the poor and middle class. Biden is proud to say that he was largely without money for much of his decades-long career in public service, unlike Trump, who inherited hundreds of millions of dollars from his father and used his billionaire status to launch a TV show and later a presidential campaign. “For 36 years, I was listed as the poorest man in Congress,” Biden told donors in California in February. “Not a joke.” In 2015, Trump declared as part of his candidacy, “I'm really rich.” The Republican former president has argued that voters have no need to see his tax data and that past financial disclosures are more than sufficient. He maintains that keeping taxes low for the wealthy will supercharge investment and lead to more jobs, while tax hikes would crush an economy still recovering from inflation that hit a four-decade peak in 2022. “Biden wants to give the IRS even more cash by proposing the largest tax hike on the American people in history when they are already being robbed by his record-high inflation crisis,” said Karoline Leavitt, press secretary for the Trump campaign. The split goes beyond an ideological difference to a very real challenge for whoever triumphs in the November election. At the end of 2025, many of the tax cuts that Trump signed into law in 2017 will expire — setting up an avalanche of choices about how much people across the income spectrum should pay as the national debt is expected to climb to unprecedented levels. Including interest costs, extending all the tax breaks could add another $3.8 trillion to the national debt through 2033, according to an analysis last year by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. Biden would like to keep the majority of the tax breaks, based on his pledge that no one earning less than $400,000 will have to pay more. But he released a budget proposal this year with tax increases on the wealthy and corporations that would raise $4.9 trillion in revenues and trim forecasted deficits by $3.2 trillion over 10 years. Still, he's telling voters that he's all for letting the Trump-era tax cuts lapse. “Does anyone here think the tax code is fair? Raise your hand,” Biden said Tuesday at a speech in Washington's Union Station to a crowd predisposed to dislike Trump's broad tax cuts that helped many in the middle class but disproportionately favored wealthier households. “It added more to the national debt than any presidential term in history," Biden continued. "And it’s due to expire next year. And guess what? I hope to be president because it expires — it’s going to stay expired.” Trump has called for higher tariffs on foreign-made goods, which are taxes that could hit consumers in the form of higher prices. But his campaign is committed to tax cuts while promising that a Trump presidency would reduce a national debt that has risen for decades, including during his Oval Office tenure. "When President Trump is back in the White House, he will advocate for more tax cuts for all Americans and reinvigorate America’s energy industry to bring down inflation, lower the cost of living, and pay down our debt,” Leavitt said. Most economists say Trump’s tax cuts could not generate enough growth to pay down the national debt. An analysis released Friday by Oxford Economics found that a “full-blown Trump” policy with tax cuts, higher tariffs and blocking immigration would slow growth and increase inflation. Among Biden's proposals is a “billionaire minimum income tax” that would apply a minimum rate of 25% on households with a net worth of at least $100 million. The tax would directly target billionaires such as Trump, who refused to release his personal taxes as presidents have traditionally done. But six years of his tax returns were released in 2022 by Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee. In 2018, Trump earned more than $24 million and paid about 4% of that in federal income taxes. The congressional panel also found that the IRS delayed legally mandated audits of Trump during his presidency, with the panel concluding the audit process was "dormant, at best." Biden has publicly released more than two decades of his tax returns. In 2022, he and his wife, Jill, made $579,514 and paid nearly 24% of that in federal income taxes, more than double the rate paid by Trump. Trump has maintained that his tax records are complicated because of his use of various tax credits and past business losses, which in some cases have allowed him to avoid taxes. He also previously declined to release his tax returns under the claim that the IRS was auditing him for pre-presidential filings. His finances recently received a boost from the stock market debut of Trump Media, which controls Trump's preferred social media outlet, Truth Social. Share prices initially surged, adding billions of dollars to Trump's net worth, but investors have since soured on the company and shares by Friday were down more than 50% from their peak. The former president is also on the hook for $542 million due to legal judgments in a civil fraud case and penalties owed to the writer E. Jean Carroll because of statements made by Trump that damaged her reputation after she accused him of sexual assault. In the civil fraud case, New York Judge Arthur Engoron looked at the financial records of the Trump Organization and concluded after looking at the inflated assets that “the frauds found here leap off the page and shock the conscience.”

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.

SYDNEY — Australian police said Monday they are investigating why a 40-year-old man with mental illness appeared to target women as he roamed a Sydney shopping mall with a large knife, killing six people and injuring a dozen more. Videos shared on social media showed unshaven itinerant Joel Cauchi pursuing mostly female victims as he rampaged through the vast, crowded Westfield shopping complex in Bondi Junction on Saturday afternoon. Five of the six victims killed were women, as were most of those wounded.  "The videos speak for themselves don't they, and that's certainly a line of inquiry for us," New South Wales police commissioner Karen Webb said. "That's obvious to me, it's obvious to detectives, that that seems to be an area of interest — that the offender had focused on women and avoided men," she told national broadcaster ABC. Webb stressed that police could not know what was in the mind of the attacker. "That's why it's important now that detectives spend so much time interviewing those who know him." Cauchi's Facebook profile said he came from Toowoomba, near Brisbane, and had attended a local high school and university. His parents say he had suffered from mental health issues since he was a teenager. 'Very traumatic' The last of Cauchi's six victims was identified Monday as Yixuan Cheng, a young Chinese woman who was a student at the University of Sydney. The other women killed were a designer, a volunteer surf lifesaver, the daughter of an entrepreneur, and a new mother whose wounded 9-month-old baby is in hospital. The mother, 38-year-old Ashlee Good, handed her bleeding baby girl to strangers in desperation before being rushed to hospital where she died of her injuries.  Her baby, named Harriet, is in a serious condition in a Sydney hospital but is expected to improve, health authorities said.  The only man killed was 30-year-old Pakistani Faraz Tahir, who had been working as a security guard when he was stabbed.  A total of eight people wounded in the assault remain in hospital, some in critical condition, after four were released in the past 24 hours, health authorities said. Cauchi's assault, which lasted about half an hour, was brought to an end when solo police inspector Amy Scott tracked him down and shot him dead.  Scott, hailed as a hero by police and political leaders, was spending time with her family to deal with the "very traumatic matter," the state police chief said. In a statement, Cauchi's parents offered thoughts for the victims and said their son's actions were "truly horrific." "We are still trying to comprehend what has happened." 'Doing her job' The parents also sent a message to the officer who killed their son. "She was only doing her job to protect others and we hope she is coping alright," they said. Cauchi is believed to have traveled to Sydney about a month ago and hired a small storage unit in the city, according to police. It contained personal belongings. He had been living in a vehicle and hostels, and was only in sporadic contact with his family via text messages, his parents said. A mound of flowers grew outside the Bondi shopping center as people paid their respects to the victims.  Flags across the country flew at half-mast in mourning.  The Sydney Opera House is to be lit up with black ribbon in the evening. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he had spoken to the families of some victims. "The gender break-down is of course concerning — each and every victim here is mourned," he told ABC radio, promising a "comprehensive" police investigation. Misinformation The prime minister also pointed the finger at people who spread false information about the attack. "What social media has done is make everyone a publisher and some mainstream media also spread some misinformation," he said. While some social media users falsely attributed the attack to terrorism, an Australian broadcaster had to apologize for wrongly identifying a 20-year-old student as the perpetrator. A public coronial inquiry will be held into the attack, New South Wales state premier Chris Minns told reporters. It will look into the police response and criminal investigation, but also the killer's past interactions with state health authorities, he said.