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Beijing — China on Thursday announced rare sanctions against two U.S. defense companies over what it said is their support for arms sales to Taiwan, the self-governing island democracy Beijing claims as its own territory to be recovered by force if necessary. The announcement freezes the assets of General Atomics Aeronautical Systems and General Dynamics Land Systems held within China. It also bars the companies' management from entering the country.  Filings show General Dynamics operates a half-dozen Gulfstream and jet aviation services operations in China, which remains heavily reliant on foreign aerospace technology even as it attempts to build its own presence in the field.  The company helps make the Abrams tank being purchased by Taiwan to replace outdated armor intended to deter or resist an invasion from China.  General Atomics produces the Predator and Reaper drones used by the U.S. military. Chinese authorities did not go into details on the company's alleged involvement with supplying arms to Taiwan.  Beijing has long threatened such sanctions, but has rarely issued them as its economy reels from the COVID-19 pandemic, high unemployment and a sharp decline in foreign investment.  "The continued U.S. arms sales to China's Taiwan region seriously violate the one-China principle and the provisions of the three China-U.S. joint communiqués, interfere in China's internal affairs, and undermine China's sovereignty and territorial integrity," China's Foreign Ministry said in a statement. It insists that the mainland and the island to which Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist forces fled amid civil war in 1949 remain part of a single Chinese nation.  Sanctions were leveled under Beijing's recently enacted Law of the People's Republic of China on Countering Foreign Sanctions.  General Dynamics fully owned entities are registered in Hong Kong, the southern Chinese semi-autonomous city over which Beijing has steadily been increasing its political and economic control to the point that it faces no vocal opposition and has seen its critics silenced, imprisoned or forced into exile.  Despite their lack of formal diplomatic ties — a concession Washington made to Beijing when they established relations in 1979 — the U.S. remains Taiwan's most important source of diplomatic support and supplier of military hardware from fighter jets to air defense systems.  Taiwan has also been investing heavily in its own defense industry, producing sophisticated missiles and submarines.  China had 14 warplanes and six navy ships operating around Taiwan on Wednesday and Thursday, with six of the aircraft crossing into Taiwan's air defense identification zone — a tactic to test Taiwan's defenses, wear down its capabilities and intimidate the population.  So far, that has had little effect, with the vast majority of the island's 23 million people opposing political unification with China.

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Rome — Nine people, including a baby, have died after their boat capsized while trying to cross the Mediterranean in stormy weather, and another 15 people are feared missing, Italy's coast guard said on Thursday. The Italian coast guard said it received a cooperation request from the Maltese search and rescue (SAR) authority after the boat capsized approximately 50 kilometers southeast of the island of Lampedusa on Wednesday. The coast guard said it dispatched its own patrol boat to the scene, which "rescued 22 survivors and recovered 9 deceased individuals, including a baby." The rescue operations "were particularly challenging due to adverse weather and sea conditions in the area with waves up to 2.50 meters," the coast guard said. The nationality of the boat's passengers was not known but Lampedusa, which sits in the Mediterranean between Tunisia, Malta and the larger Italian island of Sicily, is the first port of call for many migrants seeking to reach the European Union. "New terrible shipwreck near Lampedusa during a rescue operation," UNHCR Communication Officer Filippo Ungaro posted on X late on Wednesday. The survivors, taken to Lampedusa, were "in a state of hypothermia and shock," he added. An aircraft from the Italian coast guard was conducting aerial searches for the missing in the area of the shipwreck. In a separate operation, the Italian coast guard said it rescued 37 migrants "who were at the mercy of the waves aboard a small wooden boat about 7 meters long" off the coast of Lampedusa on Wednesday. 

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HANOI, Vietnam — Real estate tycoon Truong My Lan was sentenced Thursday to death by a court in Ho Chi Minh city in southern Vietnam in the country's largest financial fraud case ever, state media Thanh Nien said. The 67-year-old chair of the real estate company Van Thinh Phat was accused of fraud amounting to $12.5 billion — nearly 3% of the country's 2022 GDP. She illegally controlled the Saigon Joint Stock Commercial Bank between 2012 and 2022 to siphon off these funds through thousands of ghost companies and by paying bribes to government officials. Lan's arrest in October 2022 was among the most high-profile in an ongoing anti-corruption drive in Vietnam that has intensified since 2022. The so-called Blazing Furnace campaign has touched the highest echelons of Vietnamese politics. Former President Vo Van Thuong resigned in March after being implicated in the campaign. But it's the scale of Lan's trial has shocked the nation. VTP was among Vietnam's richest real estate firms, with projects including luxury residential buildings, offices, hotels and shopping centers. Analysts said the scale of the scam raised questions about whether other banks or businesses had similarly erred, dampening Vietnam's economic outlook and making foreign investors jittery at a time when Vietnam has been trying to position itself as the ideal home for businesses trying to pivot their supply chains away from China. The real estate sector in Vietnam has been hit particularly hard: An estimated 1,300 property firms withdrew from the market in 2023, developers have been offering discounts and gold as gifts to attract buyers, and despite rent for shophouses falling by a third in Ho Chi Minh City, many in the city center are still empty, according to state media. In November, Communist Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong, Vietnam's top politician, said that the anti-corruption fight would "continue for the long term."

ISTANBUL — Turkish police have seized the third largest haul of cocaine in the country’s history, Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya announced Thursday, as groups monitoring organized crime warned that the country was becoming an entry point for drugs reaching Europe. Some 608 kilograms of cocaine, most of it in liquid form, were confiscated in an operation across three provinces, Yerlikaya posted on the social media platform X. Nearly 830 kilograms of precursor chemicals used to process the drug were also seized. Yerlikaya said the police operation targeted an international gang allegedly led by a Lebanese-Venezuelan national, who was among four foreign members of the "organized crime group" detained, along with nine Turks. "The amount of cocaine seized in the … operation was the third-largest amount of cocaine seized at one time in Turkey," the minister added. Groups monitoring organized crime say Turkey is growing as a transit hub for cocaine coming from South America to Europe as security at ports such as Rotterdam in the Netherlands becomes tighter. In a report dated October last year, the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime said a 44% rise in cocaine seizures in Turkey between 2021 and 2022 was not reflected in data on domestic consumption, "suggesting that the country is likely to serve as a drug corridor." Officials made Turkey's largest seizure — 1.1 tons of cocaine hidden in a consignment of bananas from Ecuador — at the Mediterranean port of Mersin in 2021. Since coming to office in June last year, Yerlikaya has overseen a clampdown on organized crime in Turkey to counter claims the country has become a haven for foreign gangsters. He regularly posts details of the latest police operation to target drug traffickers, fraudsters and other criminals. Thursday’s social media post included a video, overlaid with dramatic music, showing apparent surveillance footage, large plastic containers and a pressing machine. The operation was led by anti-narcotics officers based in Kocaeli, which lies southeast of Istanbul, but also included investigations in Tekirdag to Istanbul’s northwest and in the Mediterranean province of Antalya. The gang used vineyards in Tekirdag and Antalya to store chemicals and process the cocaine, which had been disguised in fertilizer, according to Yerlikaya. A shotgun was also recovered by police, he added. "We will not tolerate poison traffickers, organized crime groups and gangs, whether national or international," the minister wrote. 

ORENBURG, Russia — The Russian city of Orenburg battled rising water levels on Thursday after major rivers across Russia and Kazakhstan burst their banks in the worst flooding seen in the areas in nearly a century. The deluge of meltwater has forced over 110,000 people from their homes in Russia's Ural Mountains, Siberia and Kazakhstan as major rivers such as the Ural, which flows through Kazakhstan into the Caspian, overwhelmed embankments. Residents in the city of Orenburg said the waters of the Ural rose very swiftly and to far beyond breaking point, forcing them to flee with just their children, pets and a few belongings. "It came very quickly at night," Taisiya, 71, told Reuters in Orenburg, a city of 550,000 about 1,200 km (750 miles) east of Moscow. "By the time I got ready, I couldn't get out." Whole areas of the city were underwater, and the Ural rose another 32 cm (13 inches) to 10.54 meters (34.6 feet), 124 cm (49 inches) above the level considered by local authorities as safe. Officials warned the river would rise further. The flooding has struck Russia's Urals and the northern Kazakhstan worst, though waters are also rising southern parts of Western Siberia, the largest hydrocarbon basin in the world, and in some places near the Volga, Europe's biggest river. Water levels were also rising in Siberia's Tomsk, which sits on the Tom River, a tributary of the Ob, and in Kurgan, which straddles the Tobol River. After the Ural burst through dam embankments in Orsk, upstream from Orenburg, on Friday, some residents expressed anger over how local officials had handled the situation, demanding greater compensation and begging for help from President Vladimir Putin. The Kremlin said Putin was being updated regularly on the situation but had no current plans to visit the area while emergency services tried to deal with rising waters. In Orenburg, some residents expressed disappointment that local officials had not done enough to prepare for the annual snow melt. "There is a lot of excitement, indignation and strong emotions that I understand and share," Orenburg Mayor Sergei Salmin said. "The issue of receiving compensation and the procedure for processing payments is one of the main ones." Snow melt Spring flooding is a usual part of life across Russia — which has an area equal to the United States and Australia combined — as the heavy winter snows melt, swelling some of the mighty rivers of Russia and Central Asia. This year, though, a combination of factors triggered unusually severe flooding, according to emergency workers. They said soil was waterlogged before winter and then frozen under deep snow falls, which melted very fast in rising spring temperatures and heavy rains. Climate researchers have long warned that rising temperatures could increase the incidence of extreme weather events, and that heavily forested Russia is of major importance in the global climate equation. In Kurgan, a region which straddles the Tobol river, water levels rose in Zverinogolovkoye beyond the critical 10 metre (33 foot) mark, said Governor Vadim Shumkov who was shown visiting evacuated families. Kazakhstan has been badly hit. The emergencies ministry said on Thursday morning that the number of evacuees stood at over 97,000, unchanged from Wednesday, and a state of emergency remained in effect in eight regions of the country. Emergency workers have removed 8.8 million cubic metres (310 million cubic feet) of water from flooded areas, the ministry said. The Kazakh government also said movement was restricted on hundreds of kilometers of roads in the Aktobe, Akmola, Atyrau, Kostanai, Mangistau and North Kazakhstan regions.

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KYIV, Ukraine — Ukraine’s parliament passed a law on Thursday that will govern how the country recruits new conscripts, following months of delay and after thousands of amendments were submitted to water down the initial draft. Lawmakers dragged their feet for months over the law, which is expected to be unpopular. The law was spurred by a request from the military command under former army Commander Valerii Zaluzhny, who said Ukraine needs up to 500,000 new recruits to boost army ranks. Exhausted soldiers, on the frontlines since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, had no means to rotate out for rest, while many thousands of Ukrainian men continue to evade the draft. The law brings into effect a host of changes to the current system by expanding the powers of Ukrainian authorities to issue draft notices using an electronic system. Incumbent army chief Oleksandr Syrskyi and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy have since revised that figure after conducting an audit, saying the number needed was not as high because soldiers can be rotated from the rear. Zaluzhny’s dismissal from his post was reportedly over the mobilization issue.

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.

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.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — South Florida researchers trying to prevent predatory fish from devouring laboratory-grown coral are grasping at biodegradable straws in an effort to restore what some call the rainforest of the sea. Scientists around the world have been working for years to address the decline of coral reef populations. Just last summer, reef rescue groups in South Florida and the Florida Keys were trying to save coral from rising ocean temperatures. Besides working to keep existing coral alive, researchers have also been growing new coral in labs and then placing them in the ocean. But protecting the underwater ecosystem that maintains more than 25% of all marine species is not easy. Even more challenging is making sure that coral grown in a laboratory and placed into the ocean doesn't become expensive fish food. Marine researcher Kyle Pisano said one problem is that predators like parrot fish attempt to bite and destroy the newly transplanted coral in areas like South Florida, leaving them with less than a 40% survival rate. With projects calling for thousands of coral to be planted over the next year and tens of thousands of coral to be planted over the next decade, the losses add up when coral pieces can cost more than $100 each. Pisano and his partner, Kirk Dotson, have developed the Coral Fort, claiming the small biodegradable cage that's made in part with drinking straws boosts the survival rate of transplanted coral to over 90%. "Parrot fish on the reef really, really enjoy biting a newly transplanted coral," Pisano said. "They treat it kind of like popcorn." Fortunately the fish eventually lose interest in the coral as it matures, but scientists need to protect the coral in the meantime. Stainless steel and PVC pipe barriers have been set up around transplanted coral in the past, but those barriers needed to be cleaned of algae growth and eventually removed. Pisano had the idea of creating a protective barrier that would eventually dissolve, eliminating the need to maintain or remove it. He began conducting offshore experiments with biodegradable coral cages as part of a master's degree program at Nova Southeastern University. He used a substance called polyhydroxyalkanoate, a biopolymer derived from the fermentation of canola oil. PHA biodegrades in ocean, leaving only water and carbon dioxide. His findings were published last year. The coral cage consists of a limestone disc surrounded by eight vertical phade brand drinking straws, made by Atlanta-based WinCup Inc. The device doesn't have a top, Pisano said, because the juvenile coral needs sunlight and the parrot fish don't generally want to position themselves facing downward to eat. Dotson, a retired aerospace engineer, met Pisano through his professor at Nova Southeastern, and the two formed Reef Fortify Inc. to further develop and market the patent-pending Coral Fort. The first batch of cages were priced at $12 each, but Pisano and Dotson believe that could change as production scales up. Early prototypes of the cage made from phade's standard drinking straws were able to protect the coral for about two months before dissolving in the ocean, but that wasn't quite long enough to outlast the interest of parrot fish. When Pisano and Dotson reached out to phade for help, the company assured them that it could make virtually any custom shape from its biodegradable PHA material. "But it's turning out that the boba straws, straight out of the box, work just fine," Dotson said. Boba straws are wider and thicker than normal drinking straws. They're used for a tea-based drink that includes tapioca balls at the bottom of the cup. For Pisano and Dotson, that extra thickness means the straws last just long enough to protect the growing coral before harmlessly disappearing. Reef Fortify is hoping to work with reef restoration projects all over the world. The Coral Forts already already being used by researchers at Nova Southeastern and the University of Miami, as well as Hawaii's Division of Aquatic Resources. Rich Karp, a coral researcher at the University of Miami, said they've been using the Coral Forts for about a month. He pointed out that doing any work underwater takes a great deal of time and effort, so having a protective cage that dissolves when it's no longer needed basically cuts their work in half. "Simply caging corals and then removing the cages later, that's two times the amount of work, two times the amount of bottom time," Karp said. "And it's not really scalable." Experts say coral reefs are a significant part of the oceanic ecosystem. They occupy less than 1% of the ocean worldwide but provide food and shelter to nearly 25 percent of sea life. Coral reefs also help to protect humans and their homes along the coastline from storm surges during hurricanes.

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RUN TA EK, Cambodia — It's been more than a year since Yem Srey Pin moved with her family from the village where she was born on Cambodia's Angkor UNESCO World Heritage site to Run Ta Ek, a dusty new settlement about 25 kilometers away. Hers is one of about 5,000 families relocated from the sprawling archaeological site, one of Southeast Asia's top tourist draws, by Cambodian authorities in an ongoing program that Amnesty International has condemned as a "gross violation of international human rights law." Another 5,000 families are still due to be moved. The allegations have drawn strong expressions of concern from UNESCO and a spirited rebuttal from Cambodian authorities, who say they're doing nothing more than protecting the heritage land from illegal squatters. Yem Srey Pin's single-room home is a far cry better than the makeshift tent she lived in with her husband and five children when they first arrived, which did little to protect from the monsoon rains and blew down in the winds. And their 600-square-meter property is significantly bigger than the 90-square-meter plot they occupied illegally in the village of Khvean on the Angkor site. But the 35-year-old is also in debt from building the new house. Her husband finds less construction work nearby and his wages are lower, and there are no wild fruits or vegetables she can forage, nor rice paddies where she can collect crabs to sell at her mother's stand. "After more than a year here I haven't been able to save any money and I haven't earned anything," she said.  The Angkor site is one of the largest archaeological sites in the world, spread across some 400 square kilometers in northwestern Cambodia. It contains the ruins of Khmer Empire capitals from the 9th to 15th centuries, including the temple of Angkor Wat. When it was inscribed as a World Heritage Site in 1992, it was named a "living heritage site" whose local population observed ancestral traditions and cultural practices that have disappeared elsewhere. Still, UNESCO at the time noted that Angkor was under "dual pressures" from some 100,000 inhabitants in 112 historic settlements who "constantly try to expand their dwelling areas," and from encroachment from the nearby town of Siem Reap. Cambodia's answer was a plan to entice the 10,000 families illegally squatting in the area to resettle at Run Ta Ek and another site, as well as to encourage some from the 112 historic settlements to relocate as their families grow in size. "The number of people were on the rise, including those coming illegally," said Long Kosal, spokesperson for the Cambodian agency known as APSARA that's responsible for managing the Angkor site. "What we did was that we provided an option." Cambodia began moving people to Run Ta Ek in 2022, giving those who volunteered to leave their homes in the Angkor area plots of land, a two-month supply of canned food and rice, a tarp and 30 sheets of corrugated metal to use to build a home. Benefits also included a Poor Card, essentially a state welfare program giving them around 310,000 riel (about $75) monthly for 10 years. In a November report, Amnesty questioned how voluntary the relocations actually were, saying many people they interviewed were threatened or coerced into moving and that the relocations were more "forced evictions in disguise." The rights group cited a speech from former Prime Minister Hun Sen in which he said people "must either leave the Angkor site soon and receive some form of compensation or be evicted at a later time and receive nothing." Amnesty also noted Hun Sen's track record, saying that under his long-time rule Cambodian authorities had been responsible for several forced evictions elsewhere that it alleged "constituted gross violations of human rights." It said Run Ta Ek — with dirt roads, insufficient drainage, poor sanitation and other issues — did not fulfil international obligations under human rights treaties to provide people adequate housing. That has now changed: Homes with outhouses have been built, roads paved, and sewers installed. Primitive hand pumps made of blue PVC piping provide water, and electricity has been run in. There's a school, a health center, a temple; bus routes were added, and a market area was built but is not yet operating, Long Kosal said. But Amnesty maintains there are major concerns. Among other things, families have had to take on heavy debt to build even basic houses, and there is little work to be found, said Montse Ferrer, the head of Amnesty's research team investigating the Angkor Wat resettlements. "They had a clear source of income at the time — tourism — but also other sources of income linked to the location at Angkor," she said. "They are now at least 30 minutes away from the site and can no longer access these sources." Following Amnesty's scathing report, UNESCO moved up the timeline for Cambodia's submission of its own report on the state of conservation at the Angkor site, specifically asking for the allegations to be addressed. In that report, submitted to UNESCO in March, Cambodia said it had not violated any international laws with the relocations, saying it was only moving people involved in the "illegal occupation of heritage land" and that in Run Ta Ek many were now property owners for the first time in their lives. UNESCO said it would not comment on the situation until it has been able to analyze Cambodia's response. It referred The Associated Press to previous comments from Lazare Eloundou Assomo, director of the UNESCO World Heritage Center, who stressed the agency had "always categorically rejected the use of forced evictions as a tool for management of World Heritage listed sites." Yem Srey Pin said even though Run Ta Ek has slowly improved since she arrived in February 2023, and her new home will be paid off fairly soon, she'd rather return to her village if it were possible. But with almost all of the village's 400 families moving out, Yem Srey Pin says there's nothing left for her there. "I can't live in my old village alone," she said.

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