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Effective June 14, 2024, we have updated the USCIS Policy Manual, Volume 5, Part D, to clarify how prospective adoptive parents can adopt a child under the Hague Adoption Convention.

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Russian President Vladimir Putin is set to visit North Korea – the latest sign of deepening ties between Moscow and Pyongyang. The visit could involve more than just handshakes, as VOA’s Bill Gallo reports from Seoul, South Korea

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SYDNEY — Chinese Premier Li Qiang will touch down in Australia Saturday, becoming the most senior Chinese visitor in over seven years. His arrival symbolizes the greatly improved relationship between Beijing and Canberra, following a turbulent patch that saw China impose tough trade restrictions on Australia. Li will land in the South Australian city of Adelaide, before heading to Canberra for a meeting with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. He will wrap up his trip with a visit to Perth. While trade ties will dominate much of the agenda, Australian analysts say they see the visit of China's second most powerful official as a crucial step on the return to more normal relations. "This visit signals that the bilateral relationship has reached a new settling point, after many, many years of a huge amount of sound and fury and drama and tension," Benjamin Herscovitch, a research fellow at the Australian National University, told VOA. "We're now reaching this new settling point of a rough, uneasy normalization of the relationship between Australia and China," Herscovitch said. The roots of the breakdown of relations between Canberra and Beijing can be traced to 2018, when Australia became the first country to ban Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei from its 5G network. Two years later, Albanese's predecessor, Scott Morrison, angered China when he led calls for an international investigation into the origins of COVID-19. As the relationship soured, China slapped a host of tariffs and restrictions on a variety of Australian goods and commodities including barley, wine and coal. The sanctions are estimated to have cost the Australian economy over $13 billion. "China's strategy did not just impose trade restrictions in the form of various different measures that were economically coercive, but also denied Canberra diplomatic access to Beijing," Herscovitch said. "This was essentially part of a punishment campaign for Australia," he added. Beijing was further irked by Australia's enhanced military ties with Western countries, including a new AUKUS security alliance which was announced with the United States and the United Kingdom in 2021. The partnership will allow Australia to acquire nuclear submarine capability, specifically to counter growing concerns over China's ambitions in the Indo-Pacific region. These tensions led to an almost total breakdown in diplomatic relations between Australia and China. The formation of a new Australian government in 2022 provided an opportunity for a fresh start, with Albanese keen to resume dialogue with Australia's biggest trading partner. His meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the G20 in Bali later that year, opened the door to the resumption of high-level talks, with Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong visiting Beijing just a month after that summit. Further progress was made when Albanese traveled to China last November, paving the way for the resumption of annual leaders' meetings. "It's a significant sign that the Australian government has reached its goal of 'stabilising' relations," Melissa Conley Tyler, an honorary fellow at the University of Melbourne's Asia Institute, said. "During this visit, messaging will be around Australia as a country that is 'friendly' to China - which makes a difference to officials, importers and parents choosing where their children will study," Tyler told VOA. Li's visit will take in three Australian states, providing plentiful opportunities for handshakes and photo opportunities, although analysts are less certain of more substantial results aside from diplomatic goodwill. "It is unlikely the visit will yield any major announcements – both sides have been careful to stress throughout these types of exchanges that dialogue is in itself the focus and the achievement," Elena Collinson, head of analysis for the Australia-China Relations Institute at the University of Technology Sydney, said. One area that could see a breakthrough is the removal of Chinese trade restrictions on Australian lobster. As relations improved under the Albanese administration, Beijing rolled back almost all of the trade barriers that had been erected against Australia, but a ban on live lobster imports remains. It is widely expected that this ban will be reversed, although the timing of any such announcement will be closely watched. "China will want to say that there has been a scientific, technical resolution of the issue, and therefore they can remove the trade restrictions," Herscovitch said. "But they wouldn't want it too closely associated with the premier's visit, even though everyone understands that it was a politically motivated trade restriction and so the removal of it is also politically motivated," Herscovitch added. Beijing's so-called 'panda diplomacy' will be on full display during the trip, with Li set to visit Adelaide Zoo to view Wang Wang and Fu Ni, two pandas that were loaned to Australia in 2009. The arrangement is set to expire at the end of this year, but it is hoped that Li could announce an extension of their stay in the southern hemisphere. The premier's trip to the mining hub of Western Australia will also boost hopes of further enhanced trade ties, with Li set to attend a roundtable event organized by the Business Council of Australia. Beijing still relies heavily on Australia for critical commodities including iron ore. While this visit should further stabilize a recovering diplomatic relationship, the Chinese premier has work to do to gain the support of the Australian public. Recent polling, partly conducted by the Australia-China Relations Institute, found a high level of anxiety over China's future ambitions. "Nearly three-quarters of Australians see China as a security threat, while half see military conflict with China within the next three years as a serious possibility," Collinson said. "While support for the economic dimension of the relationship remains, even this is starting to waver," Collinson added.

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.

BANGKOK — Southeast Asia is seeing a rise in online scam centers that are swindling billions of dollars from people, a new report finds. Transnational Crime in Southeast Asia, published in May by the United States Institute of Peace, outlines a growing threat it says criminal networks pose to global peace and security. Included in the report are findings about scam centers operating throughout the region, including in Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos, and the deep involvement of Chinese criminal networks. The USIP report was presented in Bangkok in June at an event held at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Thailand. "One of the big findings of the report is about how huge of a problem this is. We’re framing it as a global security crisis," Jason Tower, Myanmar country director at USIP, said. "There are three countries in particular in which it’s gotten to a point now where the Chinese-origin criminal groups are able to perpetrate industrial scale, online scamming forced labor: Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia. There are over 300,000 people involved in this horrific practice," he added. A total of 305,000 scammers in Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos account for $39 billion in stolen funds annually, out of a total of $63.9 billion worldwide, according to the report. Half a million people are working as scammers, the report estimates. The scammers, though, are often initially victims themselves. Many are lured into false business opportunities overseas and forced into scam compounds, often located in desolate rural areas, and are punished violently if they try to escape. Bridget Welsh, a Malaysia-based political analyst on Southeast Asia, spoke at the event and said artificial intelligence technology, lax financial regulations regarding cryptocurrency, money laundering and the gray areas between legal and illegal practices contribute to the problem. "In the last four years, the level of escalation of the criminal ecosystem is profound. There are a number of factors we need to look at. It’s not just the networks or just about China, it’s about local actors that have a symbiotic relationship. Southeast Asia for a long time has had a very dynamic illegal economy," she said. In recent years there has been a rise in scams around online gambling, cryptocurrency and financial investment. Often, the scams involve enticing victims to gradually invest in fake and fraudulent schemes over a period of time. The victims are targeted online to invest, gamble or deposit money into illegitimate schemes, not knowing they are being scammed. The ongoing conflict in Myanmar has resulted in some scam operations finding themselves a part of the battle. Scam compounds along Myanmar’s borders have been protected and run by affiliates of the military government in Myanmar, the USIP report said. The northern Myanmar town of Laukkai, in Shan State, is known as a scam center hotspot, with many Chinese gangs operating there, according to the report. Myanmar’s ruling junta – the State Administrative Council – did not comment on the USIP report and questions asked by VOA about the scam centers but did respond via email that there is use of digital currencies in the country. "It has come to our attention that illegal transactions involving digital currencies, including USDT [Tether, a cryptocurrency pegged to the U.S. dollar], are being conducted within the country. These activities are in violation of the Anti-Money Laundering Act and the Financial Institutions Act," it said, adding that those who violate the act "may be subject to imprisonment or fines, or both." VOA has contacted the governments of China and Cambodia by email and phone but has not received a reply. But with Myanmar resistance groups now reportedly in control of Laukkai, they have worked with Beijing to hand over cyber gang families. More than 40,000 Chinese nationals associated with cyber scams in Myanmar have reportedly been deported from Myanmar to China as of December. Chinese criminal networks collected $3.8 billion in illegal revenue from scams in 2023, with the help of at least 30,000 scammers. The USIP says within the past decade, the criminal networks operating in Southeast Asia have mostly emerged from China. "Many of these Chinese criminal origins became embedded in the [Southeast Asia] region. In the past five years, the forms of criminality have shifted from things that are more regional to global in Asia, and they’ve reached the point now where they can get much more involved in human trafficking and slavery, and quite sophisticated forms of scamming that are targeting a global audience," Tower said at the FCCT in Bangkok. At home, Beijing has tried to take a firm hand on scams. Online gambling is illegal in China and a telecom fraud law came into effect in December 2022 to try to combat the illegal schemes. "The report finds that [China] is one of the key victim countries," Tower said. "More and more people are falling prey to these investment scams." With cyber networks operating over multiple countries, all with different priorities and accountability, combating the scams is a challenge. Criminal networks in Cambodia have seen a $12.5 billion return in 2023 on their scamming operations, half of the country’s official gross domestic product. The USIP report says many of the scamming compounds in Cambodia are owned by local elites. "The significantly misaligned incentives in places like Cambodia, where there are powerful state actors who are building [scam] compounds, it is not in the incentives to local government officials to properly identify these victims. How do we prosecute this effectively when entire justice systems are run by people who run compounds who are financially benefiting from them?" asked Jacob Sims, a visiting expert at USIP. Chou Bun Eng, permanent vice chair of Cambodia’s National Committee for Counter Trafficking or NCCT, told the pro-government newspaper Khmer Times, that 80% of human trafficking cases they’ve investigated are "false." A coalition operation is required, Welsh said, as a one-country strategy won’t work. "Ordinary Southeast Asians are on the front line of having to deal with this. The trafficking numbers are high in terms of scams, but the scam victims are high. A lot can be done. It needs to be multifaceted, it can’t just be country specific, it needs to be dynamic, because the criminals are ahead of all of us," she said. Erin West, a deputy district attorney from California, suggested pressuring tech companies and governments to act. "The roots of the problem are the platforms enabling the scammers to meet their victims. What can be done about Meta, LinkedIn, Match.com — how do we apply pressure in a way to get them to root out the bad actors on their platforms? "Looking at sanctions is another way, and really elevating the conversation to the highest levels of governments and getting them to understand how massive this problem is," she said. 

TAIPEI, TAIWAN — A court in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou on Friday sentenced Chinese independent journalist Huang Xueqin and labor rights activist Wang Jianbing to five years and three years and six months in jail respectively for "inciting subversion of state power." Huang said she would appeal the sentence in court, according to information shared by Free Huang Xueqin & Wang Jianbing, an online support group for the two. Chinese authorities have strictly controlled information on this case so the media and human rights organization rely on information shared by supporters to report on the verdict. Authorities, before the trial, set up metal barriers and deployed a huge police presence around the court to keep journalists and the public from entering the court, the group said. According to details of the verdict shared by the online support group, Huang will be in jail until September 18, 2026, while Wang will finish his sentence on March 18, 2025. Authorities confiscated several computers, mobile phones, and hard drives that belong to Huang and Wang. Some analysts say Friday’s verdict shows the Chinese government’s attempt to outlaw social activism by applying criminal charges with heavier penalties to activities that do not directly challenge government authority. "This case shows that Beijing now considers training in nonviolent protest as an act of subversion of state power, which is incredibly worrying," Sarah Brooks, Amnesty International’s China director, told VOA by phone. While China used to impose criminal charges with long sentences on human rights lawyers before 2020, Brooks said Beijing is now targeting lower-profile activists with similar charges. "Authorities used to target activists like Huang and Wang with charges like ‘picking quarrels and provoking trouble,’ [which carries a shorter prison sentence,] but now their activism could be viewed as national security crimes," she said. In response to human rights groups’ criticism, the Chinese Embassy in the Washington said China is a country of rule of law and the right to a fair trial is "well maintained" in the country. "Any attempt to smear China and interfere with China’s internal affairs in the name of human rights will not succeed," embassy spokesperson Liu Pengyu told VOA in a written response. Friday’s verdict comes nearly 1,000 days after Huang and Wang were imprisoned on the charges of inciting subversion of state power. It also follows repeated expressions of concern about Huang and Wang’s health condition by some of their friends. "Wang has a long history of depression while Huang suffered from weight loss, persistent back pain, and her menstruation had stopped," said a friend who requested anonymity due to fears of facing government retaliation. Since authorities have prevented their lawyers from sharing information about the case with the public, the anonymous friend told VOA there has been very little update about Huang and Wang’s health conditions in jail. In addition to shrouding the trial in secrecy, the friend, who is familiar with the case, said Guangzhou authorities tried to "justify" the charges they imposed on Huang and Wang by questioning 70 people connected to them. "During the first six months following their arrests, the police tried to fabricate evidence that could justify the charges they used against Huang and Wang by interrogating 70 people related to them," one activist with knowledge of the case, who requested anonymity due to fear of retribution, told VOA by phone. According to a copy of the official indictment shared by Huang and Wang’s supporters on X, formerly known as Twitter, Guangzhou authorities accused the two of publishing "seditious content" aimed at inciting subversion of state power on foreign social media platforms. They also claimed that Huang and Wang participated in and organized a series of "online courses" as well as private gatherings to "increase participants’ dissatisfaction" toward the Chinese government. Huang and Wang’s friend said Wang was hoping to reestablish social networks for activists focusing on different issues because the Chinese government intensified crackdowns on different sectors of China’s civil society since 2015, forcing many activists to become isolated. "Wang’s efforts increased the Chinese government’s concern that these social networks could create challenges to political stability in China," the friend told VOA, adding that Wang and Huang’s involvement in the labor rights movement and #MeToo movement made them the targets of Beijing’s crackdown. At the height of China’s #MeToo movement in 2018, Huang set up a social media platform for victims to report sexual harassment cases. She also released surveys concluding that sexual harassment was a serious problem at universities and workplaces. In October 2019, she was arrested and detained for several months after joining the protest in Hong Kong and shared her observations in an online article. For his part, Wang has been advocating for the rights of workers and those with disabilities since 2014. Some analysts say details of the case reflect the Chinese government’s efforts to crack down on private gatherings held by dissidents in recent years. Apart from Huang and Wang, Chinese human rights lawyers Ding Jiaxi and Xu Zhiyong were arrested and sentenced to more than 10 years in prison for organizing a private gathering for dissidents in the coastal city of Xiamen in December 2019. The Chinese government is trying to decimate any kind of civil society activities, including private gatherings at dissidents’ homes," Yaqiu Wang, research director for China, Hong Kong and Taiwan at Freedom House, told VOA by phone. In addition to collecting evidence to justify the charges against Huang and Wang, Brooks said the Chinese authorities are also trying to have a chilling effect on other activists by summoning them for questioning. "The government is warning these activists that they should be careful about who they decide to be friends with," she said, adding that the message will cause human rights activism to "break down." Huang and Wang’s friend said Chinese authorities’ intimidation campaign against other activists has deterred them from continuing their activism. "The whole civil society has become less organized and more vulnerable," he told VOA. Despite the Chinese government’s attempt to deter activism in civil society, Brooks said some activists are still trying to continue work in sectors such as women’s rights and human trafficking.

Jerusalem — An Israeli court has confirmed and extended for 35 days the government's shutdown of Qatar-based television news channel Al Jazeera, the justice ministry said Friday. Al Jazeera, which broadcasts in Arabic and English, went off the air in Israel under an initial 45-day order early last month. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government has had a long-running feud with Al Jazeera that has worsened since the Gaza war began in October. "The Tel Aviv district court confirmed the communications minister's instructions to stop Al Jazeera channel broadcasts, close its bureaus in Israel, block access to its websites and seize the equipment," the justice ministry said. The order, issued Thursday after a prosecutor's request for its confirmation and extension, was for an additional 35 days, the ministry said on its website. The shutdown does not affect broadcasts from the Israeli-occupied West Bank or the Gaza Strip, from which Al Jazeera still covers Israel's war with Hamas Palestinian militants. Parliament passed a security law in April enabling it to ban foreign media broadcasts in Israel that undermine security. The government on May 5 approved a decision to ban Al Jazeera from broadcasting in Israel and to close its offices for 45 days. But on June 9 the supreme court, responding to petition from the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, referred the case to the Tel Aviv district court. The government then asked that court to confirm the ban for 45 days. The judge authorized a 35-day ban, citing legal flaws. Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi reacted in a statement, calling Al Jazeera "a mouthpiece for terrorism in the service of Hamas." "For absurd legal reasons, we are forced (to request) its closure in Israel every 45 days. We will continue to do whatever is necessary to cleanse the region of terrorism and incitement" to violence, he added. In January, Israel said an Al Jazeera staff journalist and a freelancer killed in an air strike in Gaza were "terror operatives." The following month, another journalist with the channel who was wounded in a separate strike was accused of being a "deputy company commander" with Hamas. Al Jazeera denied the allegations. Media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) had called for a reversal of the ban. The United Nations, United States and Germany also opposed it. Israel is ranked 101 out of 180 in the RSF 2024 World Press Freedom Index. The Tel Aviv court said freedom of expression "is particularly important in times of war. However, when there is a significant infringement upon the security of the state, priority is given to the latter consideration."

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Kyiv, Ukraine — Kyiv and Moscow staged dozens of drone and missile attacks overnight, officials said Friday, leaving several wounded in Ukraine and damaging a fuel reservoir site in a Russian border region. The two sides have stepped up cross-border aerial assaults in recent weeks, with Kyiv targeting Russian energy facilities and Moscow launching retaliatory barrages. Russia said it had downed 87 Ukrainian drones, of which 70 had targeted the southern Rostov region that houses the headquarters of its military operation against Kyiv. The defense ministry said 70 drones were downed over Rostov, six each over Kursk and Voronezh, and two each over Volgograd and the Belgorod region bordering Ukraine. The attacks sparked power cuts in several areas of the Rostov region, its governor Vasily Golubev said on social media. In Voronezh, which borders Ukraine, a fuel reservoir was slightly damaged by falling debris, its regional governor Aleksander Gusev said. Kyiv meanwhile said Ukrainian air defense systems had downed 24 out of 31 Russian drones and missiles fired overnight. Six people were wounded in an attack on the front-line town of Selydove in the war-battered Donetsk region, its governor said. Three people were wounded in a drone attack in the eastern Sumy region and several homes were damaged in the neighboring Kharkiv region.

HARARE, ZIMBABWE — The U.N. says an estimated 60 million people in southern Africa are food insecure due to the El Nino-induced drought -- and the problem is not only in Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe, countries that have made international appeals for help. In a statement, the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization said Angola, eSwatini, Madagascar, Mozambique, and Tanzania are also being affected by the drought hitting southern Africa. Plaxedes Madzikatire, who lives about 100 kilometers south of Harare, is one of the millions struggling to cope with the drought. She is getting $65 a month from the World Food Program (WFP) which she is using to take care of her four children after her crops dried up and died. She said from the money, $25 is used to pay for food and $20 for school fees. She uses the remaining $20 to finance and upgrade her business of selling hoes and axes she makes from scrap metal. She’s hoping the WFP can extend its assistance by a few more months. WFP winds up assistance in Madzikatire’s area next month, but the organization hopes to restart soon -- and in the whole of Zimbabwe -- as the effects of the El Nino drought intensify. In a recent interview via Skype from Zambia’s capital Lusaka, WFP Executive Director Cindy McCain, who was visiting the region to assess the impact of drought, described it as a disaster. "These people have lost everything," she said. "They have no income. They have no way of surviving without assistance for the whole year because their next growing season will not be harvested until next May. These people depend on the stores they get from their crops, they didn’t get any this time." McCain said the recurrence of droughts due to climate change calls for greater investment into weather forecasts so people can be prepared for what is coming. And that’s not all, she said. Drought-resistant crops and good water-management practices can help, too. "We should treat and manage this drought crisis, the same way we would an emergency crisis in a war zone, let’s say," she said. "This is very serious and can devastate a country. So, it’s important that we can better use the tools we have and offer new science and technology to help farmers to be able to grow." Last month, at a virtual summit of SADC heads of state and government on the El Nino-induced humanitarian crisis, regional leaders appealed for $5.5 billion. The FAO says as El Nino's grip loosens, La Nina looms and the region should brace for new challenges, as that weather phenomenon usually leads to heavy rainfall and flooding, leading to crop damage and displacement of people.

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GENEVA — More than half of Gaza's agricultural land, crucial for feeding the war-ravaged territory's hungry population, has been degraded by conflict, satellite images analyzed by the United Nations show. The data reveals a rise in the destruction of orchards, field crops and vegetables in the Palestinian enclave, where hunger is widespread after eight months of Israeli bombardment. The World Health Organisation warned on Wednesday that many people in Gaza were facing "catastrophic hunger and famine-like conditions." Using satellite imagery taken between May 2017 and 2024, United Nations Satellite Centre (UNOSAT) and the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) found that 57% of Gaza's permanent crop fields and arable lands essential for food security had shown a significant decline in density and health. "In May 2024, crop health and density across the Gaza Strip showed a marked decline compared to the average of the previous seven seasons," UNOSAT said on Thursday. "This deterioration is attributed to conflict-related activities, including razing, heavy vehicle movement, bombing, and shelling." The decline, UNOSAT said, marked a 30% increase in damaged agricultural land since it published its last analysis in April. Israel's ground and air campaign was triggered when Hamas stormed southern Israel on October 7, killing around 1,200 people and seizing more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies. The offensive has killed more than 37,000 people in Gaza, according to health authorities in the Hamas-run enclave, and has caused mass destruction and cut off routes for aid. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Wednesday there were more than 8,000 children younger than 5 in Gaza who had been treated for acute malnutrition. As well as damage to crop fields and orchards, greenhouses across the Gaza Strip had also sustained significant damage, UNOSAT said. The Gaza Strip has an estimated 151 square kilometers of agricultural land, which makes up about 41% of the coastal enclave's territory, according to data from UNOSAT.