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WASHINGTON — The U.S. prosecutor leading the case against Donald Trump for retaining classified documents after leaving office pushed back at a federal judge after she signaled she may accept the former president's claim that the records were his personal property.  U.S. Special Counsel Jack Smith said in a court filing late on Tuesday that his office would appeal any decision by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon that would instruct jurors in the case to consider what he called Trump's "fundamentally flawed legal premise."  Trump, the Republican candidate challenging Democratic President Joe Biden in the November 5 election, pleaded not guilty last year to a 40-count indictment accusing him of illegally keeping classified documents after leaving office in 2021 and obstructing federal government efforts to retrieve them.  Cannon, who was appointed to the bench by Trump, has signaled she is receptive to Trump's claim that he treated the documents as personal under a 1978 law called the Presidential Records Act that lets former presidents keep records that have no connection to their official responsibilities.  Prosecutors have said the documents relate to U.S. military and intelligence matters, including details about the American nuclear program, and could not be construed as personal.  The judge on March 18 directed the prosecution and defense to propose jury instructions based on two legal scenarios assuming Trump's argument would play a role at trial.   One scenario, in which neither the jury nor the judge could question Trump's contention that the records are personal, would essentially direct the jury to acquit Trump, according to prosecutors. They urged Cannon to quickly decide if jurors will be told that Trump's claim is relevant to the charges against him, arguing that the prosecution must have time "to consider appellate review."  Smith's filing said Cannon's order was based on a flawed legal premise and would "distort the trial."  This is one of four criminal cases that Trump faces. He has pleaded not guilty in all of them and has sought to cast them as politically motivated.  Trump's lawyers in a filing on Tuesday night reiterated their argument that what they call Trump's decision to treat the records as personal meant the charges should be tossed out before trial.  The Presidential Records Act was passed to give the U.S. government possession of official records from a president's administration. It lets former presidents keep certain records deemed personal that have no connection to their official responsibilities.  Trump has argued that his decision to take the material to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida showed he treated the records as his personal property. Prosecutors have argued that the records law cannot authorize a former president to keep classified information.   Trump faces charges that include violations of the Espionage Act, which criminalizes unauthorized possession of defense information, and conspiracy to obstruct justice.  A May 20 trial date scheduled in the case is widely expected to be postponed. 

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Harare, Zimbabwe — Zimbabwe appealed to the United Nations, aid agencies and individuals on Wednesday for $2 billion to avert food insecurity caused by an El Nino-induced drought. At the State House in Harare, President Emmerson Mnangagwa declared a nationwide state of disaster. He told reporters that Zimbabwe is expecting a harvest of 868,000 metric tons of grain this year — far short of expectations and about 680,000 tons less than the country needs. "Preliminary assessment shows that Zimbabwe requires in excess of $2 billion toward various interventions we envisage in the spectrum of our national response,” he said. Zimbabwe isn’t alone. Malawi and Zambia declared a state of disaster earlier this year due to the drought. Edward Kallon, U.N. resident and humanitarian coordinator in Zimbabwe, said the world body is monitoring the severe impact of the ongoing dry spell in southern Africa. He said the crisis has far-reaching consequences across various sectors, including food and nutrition security, health, water resources, education and jobs. So far, Kallon said, the U.N. has allocated $5 million from the Central Emergency Response Fund for needs such as water, hygiene, sanitation, food and medical response to a cholera outbreak. “The U.N. pledges its support to the government of Zimbabwe in mobilizing resources to tackle the El Nino-induced drought,” he said. “Efforts are underway to finalize a response plan.” Paul Zakariya, executive director of the Zimbabwe Farmers Union, said that while nothing can be done to stop climate change effects, irrigation farming is one of the methods that can be used to mitigate calamity. “Only depending on rain-fed agriculture, we will not go too far,” Zakariya said. The government should ensure that even farmers with small amounts of land can irrigate, he said. “With irrigation, our farmers are producing all year round,” he said. Zimbabwe, once the breadbasket of southern Africa, has largely depended on handouts from organizations such as the World Food Program and the U.S. Agency for International Development in the last 20-plus years. The government attributes the food shortages to recurring droughts. Critics attribute the problem to the confiscation of land from white commercial farmers who produced crops all year round. They were replaced with peasant farmers who let irrigation systems fall into disrepair and are reliant on rain to grow their crops. U.N. agencies said they will provide funding so Zimbabwe can revive the irrigation systems. Details are expected at a news conference on Thursday.

YAOUNDE, CAMEROON — Troops from Chad and Cameroon have freed scores of civilians who were kidnapped for ransom or to fight with jihadist groups on both sides of the two central African states’ border. Military officials from both countries say the number of civilian kidnappings has increased along the border, with several hundred people still in captivity.  Cameroon’s military said Tuesday it received five civilians — a 54-year-old man and four people between 17 and 24 years old — from Chadian government troops.  The five men, who were escorted to the office of the governor of Cameroon's Far North region on Wednesday, were abducted this year from villages around Kousseri and Logone Birni, towns on the border with Chad, Cameroon government officials said.  Victor Boukar, one of the former hostages, said heavily armed men chained their legs every night and tied their hands with ropes during the day. He said they were tortured regularly and were given only one meal per day during their 70 days in captivity.  Boukar said captors regularly forced 35 captives, including seven women, to move to different localities on both sides of the Cameroon-Chad border to avoid government troops trying to rescue them.  Hostages whose families paid a ransom were abandoned in the bush, he said, adding that armed men have representatives who collect the ransom money in border towns and villages.  Last week, Chad said its troops launched attacks on border villages in Mayo Kebbi East and Mayo Kebbi West provinces where several hundred people were held hostage by armed gangs and jihadists. It said soldiers freed scores of civilians. Cameroonian nationals were returned to their home country, while Chadians were reunited with their families after receiving medical care.  Midjiyawa Bakari, governor of the Far North region, said Chad and Cameroon are reuniting to fight rebels and bring peace along their porous, 1,100-plus kilometer (680-mile) land border.  He said Cameroonian border troops will arrest or kill armed men and jihadists hiding in local towns and villages, and Cameroon is allowing Chadian troops to cross the border in hot pursuit of Boko Haram militants and armed gangs.  General Ahmat Kogri, a military adviser to Chad's transitional president Mahamat Idriss Deby, told Chad's state TV on Wednesday that Boko Haram militants have renewed attacks and abductions to acquire supplies, after their fire power was drastically reduced in battles with the Multinational Joint Task Force.  Kogri said forces fighting to restore peace have taken note that Boko Haram and its splinter jihadist groups are again attacking people and seizing goods. He said civilians should report all strangers in border towns and villages to government troops.  Boko Haram attacks began in Nigeria's Borno state in 2009 and spread to Cameroon, Chad and Niger.   The United Nations says the Islamist insurgency has left more than 37,000 people dead, mainly in Nigeria, and displaced more than 3 million.

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Helsinki — A 12-year-old suspected of shooting and killing a classmate and wounding two girls at a school in Finland said he had been motivated by bullying, police said Wednesday. Flags flew at half-staff as the northern European country observed a day of mourning a day after the boy opened fire in a classroom in Vantaa. "The suspect has told the police during interrogations that he has been the victim of bullying, and this information has also been confirmed in the police's preliminary investigation," police said in a statement. Police also said that the young suspect had been a student at the school only since the beginning of the year. They said their investigation showed that he had threatened other students on their way to the school. According to Finnish broadcaster MTV Uutiset, the boy wore a mask and noise-canceling headphones when he carried out the shooting. The child who was killed, a Finnish boy also age 12, died at the scene, and the suspect had already fled the school by the time police arrived. The police opened an investigation into murder and attempted murder but said the suspect has been handed over to social services as he could not be held in police custody because of his age. The revolver-like gun used in the shooting belonged to a close relative of the boy, they said.

An Indigenous graphic artist in the Southwest U.S. state of New Mexico is using a comic book to tell a story about same-sex love and identity on a Native American reservation. Gustavo Martínez Contreras has our story from Albuquerque.

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Taipei, Taiwan — Specious theories designed to implicate Ukraine and the United States in connection with the late March terror attack in Russia are spreading on China’s state media outlets and on its heavily censored social media platform Weibo. False claims that paint Kyiv and Washington as masterminds of the attack have fueled debate in Russia even after Islamic State-Khorasan — also known as IS, IS-K, ISIS and Daesh — claimed responsibility for killing at least 143 people and injuring nearly 200 at the Crocus City Hall music venue in suburban Moscow. In China, an editorial in the state-run Global Times insinuated that “many observers linked the incident to the ‘hybrid war’ form of the Russia-Ukraine conflict.” “Some Western thinkers have begun to speculate whether Washington had played a role in this terrorist attack,” it said without elaborating. Without citing names or clear attribution, the Global Times repeated Russia’s false accusations that the U.S. failed to share “key intelligence” that could have helped Russian security services prevent the attack. In fact, the U.S. warned the Russian authorities two weeks before the attack and shared appropriate intelligence, as it would do “for any other country,” John Kirby, White House national security communications adviser, told VOA. “We provided useful, we believe, valuable information about what we thought was an imminent terrorist attack,” Kirby said. “We also warned Americans about staying away from public places like concert halls. So, we were very direct with our Russian counterparts appropriately to make sure that they had as much useful information as possible.” Addressing a Russian intelligence agency board meeting three days before the attack, Russian President Vladimir Putin dismissed the U.S. warning as “outright blackmail” intended “to intimidate and destabilize our society.” The Global Times also criticized Washington for being “slow to condemn the incident in a timely manner, which shocked the international community.” In fact, the United States was among the first nations to condemn the Moscow attack, and on March 30, U.S. Ambassador to Russia Lynne Tracy placed flowers at the site. With the Chinese Communist Party’s tight censorship of online content, contrarian views are quickly taken down, and the lack of independent media leave disinformation spread by state-controlled news outlets unchallenged. Some, however, have voiced skepticism. “I personally think it’s unlikely that the United States was behind this terrorist attack,” Jin Canrong, a scholar of international relations with an established “anti-American” reputation, wrote on Weibo. The comments by Jin, who is a professor at the Renmin University of China, provoked heated reaction, with some Weibo users accusing him of being a U.S. sympathizer. Since the attack, conspiracy theories echoing Russian propaganda have dominated the narrative on Weibo, typically boosted by anonymous pro-Russian and pro-Chinese influencers with millions of followers. Weibo influencer Drunk Rabbit posted to his nearly half a million followers: “It is no wonder that the Russian people do not believe that this was done by IS. They all firmly believe that Ukraine and its masters who are at war with Russia planned and carried out this atrocity.” To prove the point, the user posted two side-by-side video clips showing former U.S. Presidents Barak Obama and Donald Trump. Drunk Rabbit​’s caption read: “Obama: ‘We trained ISIS,’” and “Trump: ‘Obama was the founder of ISIS.’” “Both former presidents have confirmed that the United States is the creator of ISIS,” Drunk Rabbit continued. “Regarding the terrorist attack on the Moscow Concert Hall in Russia, what other evidence is needed?” The quotes by Obama and Trump, however, are taken out of context and, in the case of Obama’s remarks, twisted to mean the opposite of what he said. Trump’s claim has been debunked by fact-checkers and terrorism experts who traced Islamic State’s roots to 2002, six years before Obama was elected president, and Trump himself walked the remark back, calling it “sarcasm.” It is not out of character for the Chinese state and social media to echo Russian propaganda and disinformation, especially when it targets the United States.

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.

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.

Seoul, South Korea — South Korea is investigating a vessel that allegedly violated United Nations sanctions on North Korea, Seoul's foreign ministry said Wednesday, after it was reportedly seized over the weekend. The investigation comes after Moscow last week used its veto power to effectively end official UN monitoring of sanctions on North Korea amid a probe into alleged arms transfers between Moscow and Pyongyang. South Korean authorities seized the 3,000-ton cargo ship known as the DEYI on Saturday, which was not registered to a country, in waters off the country's south coast, Seoul's Yonhap news agency reported. It was held while reportedly "en route to Russia from the North via China," the agency report said, citing security sources. "Our government is conducting an investigation, based on close cooperation with the United States, regarding the ship's alleged violation of Security Council sanctions resolutions" against North Korea, Seoul's foreign ministry said in a statement. "As the investigation is currently ongoing, it is difficult to provide details," it added. Thirteen people were aboard the ship, including a Chinese captain and Chinese and Indonesian crew members, Yonhap reported. North Korea has been under mounting sanctions since 2006, put in place by the UN Security Council in response to its nuclear program. Since 2019, Russia and China, the North's traditional allies, have tried to persuade the Security Council to ease the sanctions, which have no expiration date. Pyongyang has moved to take advantage of gridlock at the United Nations, ramping up missile tests and weapons development and declaring itself an "irreversible" nuclear power in 2022. Russia's recent ending of the UN monitoring is a major win for North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, according to experts.

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.