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CANNES, France — While Donald Trump's hush money trial entered its sixth week in New York, an origin story for the Republican presidential candidate premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on Monday, unveiling a scathing portrait of the former president in the 1980s.  "The Apprentice," directed by the Iranian Danish filmmaker Ali Abbasi, stars Sebastian Stan as Trump. The central relationship of the movie is between Trump and Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong), the defense attorney who was chief counsel to Joseph McCarthy's 1950s Senate investigations.  Cohn is depicted as a longtime mentor to Trump, coaching him in the ruthlessness of New York City politics and business. Early on, Cohn aided the Trump Organization when it was being sued by the federal government for racial discrimination in housing.  "The Apprentice," which is labeled as inspired by true events, portrays Trump's dealings with Cohn as a Faustian bargain that guided his rise as a businessman and, later, as a politician. Stan's Trump is initially a more naive real-estate striver, soon transformed by Cohn's education.  The film notably contains a scene depicting Trump raping his wife, Ivana Trump (played by Maria Bakalova). In Ivana Trump's 1990 divorce deposition, she stated that Trump raped her. Trump denied the allegation and Ivana Trump later said she didn't mean it literally, but rather that she had felt violated.  That scene and others make "The Apprentice" a potentially explosive big-screen drama in the midst of the U.S. presidential election. The film is for sale in Cannes, so it doesn't yet have a release date.  Variety on Monday reported alleged behind-the-scenes drama surrounding "The Apprentice." Citing anonymous sources, the trade publication reported that billionaire Dan Snyder, the former owner of the Washington Commanders and an investor in "The Apprentice," has pressured the filmmakers to edit the film over its portrayal of Trump. Snyder previously donated to Trump's presidential campaign.  Neither representatives for the film nor Snyder could immediately be reached for comment.  In the press notes for the film, Abbasi, whose previous film "Holy Spider" depicts a female journalist investigating a serial killer in Iran, said he didn't set out to make "a History Channel episode."  "This is not a biopic of Donald Trump," said Abbasi. "We're not interested in every detail of his life going from A to Z. We're interested in telling a very specific story through his relationship with Roy and Roy's relationship with him."  Regardless of its political impact, "The Apprentice" is likely to be much discussed as a potential awards contender. The film, shot in a gritty 1980’s aesthetic, returns Strong to a New York landscape of money and power a year following the conclusion of HBO's "Succession." Strong, who's currently performing on Broadway in "An Enemy of the People," didn't attend the Cannes premiere Monday.  "The Apprentice" is playing in competition in Cannes, making it eligible for the festival's top award, the Palme d'Or. At Cannes, filmmakers and casts hold press conferences the day after a movie's premiere. "The Apprentice" press conference will be Tuesday.

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The U.S. government’s attempts to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange from Britain on charges of espionage took another legal twist Monday, as judges ruled that he must be given the right to a full appeal against the order — based on freedom of speech. Henry Ridgwell has more from London.

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 — Fragile South Korea-Japan ties are being strained yet again after South Korean politicians accused Tokyo of inappropriately pressuring a South Korean company to sell its stake in Line, the do-it-all social media app that has come to dominate digital life in Japan. Line – which started as a messaging app but is now used for everything from bill-paying to video-sharing – is run by LY Corp., a Tokyo-based joint venture between South Korea’s tech giant Naver and Japan’s Softbank Group. Japanese regulators have urged LY to reduce its dependence on Naver after the South Korean company experienced a cyberattack that resulted in a massive leak of data, including the personal information of Line users. While the Japanese government’s recommendations to LY are not legally binding, analysts say such statements of “administrative guidance” carry significant weight in Japan’s business community. Naver itself has confirmed that it is considering “all possibilities,” including the sale of its stake in the company that controls LY. Although Japanese officials say their actions are driven by information security concerns, South Korean politicians and commentators contend the moves are, at the very least, interference in a South Korean company's foreign investment and, at worst, an infringement on South Korea’s digital sovereignty. The dispute heightens political pressure on South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, who has pursued closer ties with Japan, Korea's former colonial ruler, but whose conservative party suffered a crushing defeat in legislative elections last month. Yoon says closer cooperation with Japan is needed to deal with shared challenges, such as North Korea. But South Korea’s left-leaning opposition accuses Yoon of being too conciliatory, saying Japan should take further steps to make amends for its brutal 1910-1945 occupation of Korea. Fierce backlash Prominent South Korean politicians have pounced on the Line controversy to attack Yoon, framing it as another example of his "surrender diplomacy" and tying it to South Korea’s painful history with Japan. In a Facebook post, Lee Jae-myung, head of the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea, noted that the Japanese communication minister who issued the regulatory guidance is the descendant of a former top official who helped administer Japan’s colonial rule of Korea. "While Ito Hirobumi [the ex-Japanese resident-general of Korea] plundered our national territory, his descendants are pillaging our cyber territory,” Lee said. To protest what he says is Yoon’s weak response, Cho Kuk, a blunt-speaking former justice minister and head of the minor opposition Rebuilding Korea Party, last week visited a group of islands claimed by both South Korea and Japan. During a fiery speech, Cho accused the Yoon administration of “worshiping Japan” and said the South Korean president had allowed the country to once again become a Japanese colony. Cho’s visit to the islands, known as Dokdo in Korean and Takeshima in Japan, set off a tense exchange between Japanese and South Korean officials. After Japan’s foreign ministry lodged a formal protest saying the visit was “totally unacceptable,” South Korea’s foreign ministry dismissed the complaint and criticized Tokyo’s “unjust” claim over the islands. The South Korean presidential office has vowed to respond “firmly and strongly” to any unfair measures against Korean companies, but lamented that some politicians are using the dispute to stoke “anti-Japan sentiment that damages the national interest.” The Japanese embassy in Seoul did not respond to a request for comment. Trilateral meeting The dispute comes just ahead of an expected meeting later this month between senior leaders of South Korea, Japan, and China – the first such trilateral summit since 2019. The Korea-Japan tension may be well-timed for China, which has criticized the expanded cooperation between South Korea, Japan, and the United States. Analysts have said that China may use the meeting to drive a wedge between South Korea and Japan. But Jeffrey Robertson, a professor of diplomatic studies at Seoul’s Yonsei University, said China may conclude it has much to gain simply by re-establishing dialogue with Japan and South Korea — a meeting that excludes the United States. “I don't think China has to do anything to find cracks in the Japan-Korea relationship. I think those cracks are already present and pretty much filling up with water right now,” Robertson said. Muted reaction in Japan In Japan, the Line/Naver dispute has received relatively little attention, says Jeffrey J. Hall, a Japanese politics specialist at the Kanda University of International Studies. “A lot of news outlets probably wouldn't have even given it much attention if it wasn't for politicians visiting Takeshima/Dokdo,” Hall said. “In contrast, last year's massive leak of LINE users' personal information was treated as big news in Japan,” he added in a written exchange with VOA. Yoon has vowed to continue good relations with Japan, but analysts say anti-Japan forces are unlikely to disappear anytime soon. “Japan is getting a small taste of things to come if the opposition wins the next presidential election,” Hall said. Lee Juhyun contributed to this report.

Maputo — Rwanda is deploying an additional 2,500 soldiers to help Mozambique fight resurgent attacks by Islamic State insurgents in the oil-rich Cabo Delgado province. Attacks have been on the rise in the area as a force known as SAMIM, deployed by the Southern African Development Community, prepares to withdraw. President Filipe Nyusi was quoted by state-run radio late Sunday as saying the troops are being deployed not because Mozambique cannot ensure its own defense, but because the country cannot fight terrorism alone. Nyusi, who is due to step down in January 2025 at the end of his second five-year term, said it is clear that Rwanda is cooperating with Mozambique, adding that his greatest pride would be to leave things well done to ensure continuity. He said more contingents are disembarking, not to exchange, but to add flow. And this is mainly because of the departure of SAMIM, and when it definitively leaves the hotspot area we will occupy it. Nyusi made the statement during a review of the visit he made to Rwanda’s capital last week. He was in Kigali to attend the Africa CEO forum, and he seized the opportunity to meet with his Rwandan counterpart, Paul Kagame, and the chief executive officer of French company TotalEnergies, Patrick Pouyanné. Cabo Delgado has been facing an armed insurgency since 2017 that has disrupted several multi-billion oil and natural gas projects. Three years ago, Rwanda deployed 1,000 soldiers to fight alongside Mozambique’s armed defense and was joined by SAMIM. The regional intervention force will completely withdraw in July, forcing the Mozambican Armed Defense Forces (FADM) to fill the security vacuum. TotalEnergies is building a plant near Palma for the production and export of natural gas, at the cost $20 billion, but the project has been suspended since 2021. Rwanda’s additional military support to Mozambique was welcomed by TotalEnergies chief Pouyanné, who said the natural gas project district will soon resume. He said, I believe we have progressed very positively with contractors, and from this point of view we are ready to resume. He said we are also working with all the credit agencies to resume the financing of the project and it’s progressing very well. ExxonMobil, with partner Eni, is also developing a liquified natural gas project in northern Mozambique and said last week it was "optimistic and looking forward" for the security situation to improve. SAMIM’s withdrawal from Mozambique, the result of financial difficulties, comes at a time when terrorist attacks have increased in Cabo Delgado. A week ago, Islamic State-backed insurgents ransacked the major town of Macomia in Cabo Delgado province following a dawn assault in which over 20 soldiers may have been killed, according to local media reports. A senior project leader for South Africa-based Institute of Justice and Reconciliation, Webster Zambara, said SADC should reconsider its withdrawal. “Actually it’s the first time in Southern Africa where we would have a troop from east Africa stationed in one country to fight a war that actually is affecting not only one country Mozambique, but others like Tanzania, also Malawi and probably the whole region, and the bigger picture is that terrorism issues tend to be very long if we are to look at al-Shabab in East Africa and also Boko Haram in West Africa, so we may actually need to see SADC revisiting its position on this,” said Zambara. Last month, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), issued an appeal for almost half a billion dollars in emergency aid to support affected and displaced Mozambicans in Cabo Delgado. The humanitarian crisis there has left 1.3 million people needing humanitarian aid.

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WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal by a Canadian-born former Guantanamo detainee who was seeking to wipe away his war crimes convictions, including for killing a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan. Omar Khadr had waived his right to appeal when he pleaded guilty in 2010 to charges that included murder. But his lawyers argued that a subsequent ruling by the federal appeals court in Washington called into question whether Khadr could have been charged with the crimes in the first place. A divided three-judge panel ruled that, despite the appellate ruling, Khadr gave up his right to appeal. Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Ketanji Brown Jackson did not take part in the Supreme Court's consideration of Khadr's appeal because both had dealt with the case while they served as appeals court judges. Jackson explained her recusal from Monday's order; Kavanaugh did not. Khadr had been sentenced to eight years in prison plus the time he already had spent in custody, including several years at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. But he was released in May 2015 pending his appeal of the guilty plea. A Canadian judge ruled in 2019 that his war crimes sentence had expired. Khadr was 15 when he was captured by U.S. troops following a firefight at a suspected al-Qaida compound in Afghanistan that resulted in the death of an American special forces medic, U.S. Army Sgt. First Class Christopher Speer. Khadr, who was suspected of throwing the grenade that killed Speer, was taken to Guantanamo and ultimately charged with war crimes by a military commission.

Journalists living in exile in Kenya are finding support to continue working in their professions, thanks to a fellowship provided by media groups. From Nairobi, Victoria Amunga has more. Camera and video: Jimmy Makhulo

Baltimore — The container ship that caused the deadly collapse of Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge was refloated at high tide Monday and began slowly moving back to port, guided by several tugboats. Removing the Dali from the wreckage marked a significant step in ongoing cleanup and recovery efforts. Nearly two months have passed since the ship lost power and crashed into one of the bridge’s supporting columns, killing six construction workers and halting most maritime traffic through Baltimore’s busy port. The vessel appeared to start moving shortly after 6 a.m. It started and stopped a few times before slowly and steadily backing away from the collapse site, where it had been grounded since the March 26 disaster. Pieces of the bridge’s steel trusses still protruded from its damaged bow, which remained covered in mangled concrete from the collapsed roadway. With the hulking cargo ship finally removed from the mouth of Baltimore’s harbor, a newly opened void appeared in the city’s skyline. The altered waterscape also highlighted the progress made on the cleanup effort; crews have already removed hundreds of tons of mangled steel that once were visible jutting up from the water’s surface. The bodies of all six construction workers have been recovered from the underwater wreckage in recent weeks. All the victims were Latino immigrants who came to the U.S. for job opportunities. They were filling potholes on an overnight shift when the bridge was destroyed. Officials said the Dali would move at about 1 mph on the roughly 2.5-mile (4-kilometer) trip back to port, a fraction of the speed it was traveling when it lost power and brought down the bridge. The ship is expected to remain in the port for a several weeks and undergo temporary repairs before being moved to a shipyard for more substantial repairs. It will return to the same marine terminal it occupied before beginning its ill-fated voyage. Crews began preparing the ship to be refloated about 18 hours before it started moving Monday morning. That process included releasing anchors and pumping out over 1 million gallons of water that were keeping the ship grounded and stable during complex cleanup operations. Crews conducted a controlled demolition on May 13 to break down the largest remaining span of the collapsed bridge, which was draped across the Dali’s bow. Dive teams also completed inspections of the site to confirm there were no obstructions that would hinder the voyage. The Dali experienced two electrical blackouts about 10 hours before leaving the Port of Baltimore on its way to Sri Lanka, according to a preliminary report released last week by the National Transportation Safety Board. In response to those issues, the crew made changes to the ship’s electrical configuration, switching to a transformer and breaker system that had previously been out of use for several months, the report says. The Dali experienced two more blackouts as it was approaching the Key Bridge, causing it to lose propulsion and drift off course at the exact wrong moment. The two tugboats that helped guide the Dali out of the port had peeled off after it entered the main shipping channel. That was normal protocol, according to the report, but when the power went out, the tugs were too far away to help avert disaster. The FBI has also launched a criminal investigation into the circumstances leading up to the crash. The ship’s crew members haven’t been allowed to leave the vessel since the disaster. Officials said they’ve been busy maintaining the ship and assisting investigators. Of the crew members, 20 are from India and one is Sri Lankan. Officials have said they will be able to disembark once the Dali is docked in Baltimore. Officials plan to reopen the port’s 50-foot (15-meter) deep draft channel by the end of May. Until then, crews have established a temporary channel that’s slightly shallower.

Paris — Climate change played a key role in last year's record-low levels of Antarctic sea ice, a study published on Monday found, marking an abrupt shift from the growth seen in previous decades. Scientists from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) found that human-caused global warming resulted in a once-in-2,000-year low in ocean surface around the continent blanketed by ice. Compared to an average winter over the last several decades, the maximum extent of Antarctic sea covered by ice shrank by two million square kilometers — an area four times the size of France, the BAS said. "This is why we were so interested in studying what climate models can tell us about how often large, rapid losses like this are likely to happen," the study's lead author Rachel Diamond told AFP. Scientists, having analyzed 18 distinct climate models, found that climate change quadrupled the likelihood of such large and rapid melting events. Understanding the cause of sea ice melt is complex as there are many variables — from ocean water to air temperature to winds — that can effect it, scientists say. But determining the role of climate change is critical since ice formation has global impacts from ocean currents to sea-level rise. Sea ice, which forms from freezing salt water already in the ocean, has no discernible impact on sea levels. But when highly reflective snow and ice give way to dark blue ocean, the same amount of the Sun's energy that was bounced back into space is absorbed by water instead, accelerating the pace of global warming. Recovery unlikely Unlike the Arctic, where sea ice has been declining since satellite records began in the 1970s, the melt trend in Antarctica is a more recent phenomenon. Antarctic sea ice increased "slightly and steadily" from 1978 until 2015, according to the BAS. But 2017 brought a sharp decline, followed by several years of low ice levels. In the study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, BAS researchers also ran projections to see whether the ice would return. "It doesn't completely recover to original levels even after 20 years," Diamond told AFP. That means "the average Antarctic sea ice may still stay relatively low for decades to come", he added. "The impacts... would be profound, including on local and global weather and on unique Southern Ocean ecosystems — including whales and penguins," co-author Louise Sime said. Previous studies by the BAS have shown that the abnormal melt has led to the deaths of thousands of emperor penguin chicks. Reared on the ice sheets, they perished when they were plunged into the ocean before they had developed their waterproof feathers.

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LONDON — British authorities and the country's public health service knowingly exposed tens of thousands of patients to deadly infections through contaminated blood and blood products, and hid the truth about the disaster for decades, an inquiry into the U.K.'s infected blood scandal found Monday. An estimated 3,000 people in the United Kingdom are believed to have died and many others were left with lifelong illnesses after receiving blood or blood products tainted with HIV or hepatitis in the 1970s to the early 1990s. The scandal is widely seen as the deadliest disaster in the history of Britain's state-run National Health Service since its inception in 1948. Former judge Brian Langstaff, who chaired the inquiry, slammed successive governments and medical professionals for "a catalogue of failures" and refusal to admit responsibility to save face and expense. He found that deliberate attempts were made to conceal the scandal, and there was evidence of government officials destroying documents. "This disaster was not an accident. The infections happened because those in authority — doctors, the blood services and successive governments — did not put patient safety first," he said. "The response of those in authority served to compound people's suffering." Campaigners have fought for decades to bring official failings to light and secure government compensation. The inquiry was finally approved in 2017, and over the past four years it reviewed evidence from more than 5,000 witnesses and more than 100,000 documents. Many of those affected were people with hemophilia, a condition affecting the blood's ability to clot. In the 1970s, patients were given a new treatment that the U.K. imported from the United States. Some of the plasma used to make the blood products was traced to high-risk donors, including prison inmates, who were paid to give blood samples. Because manufacturers of the treatment mixed plasma from thousands of donations, one infected donor would compromise the whole batch. The report said around 1,250 people with bleeding disorders, including 380 children, were infected with HIV -tainted blood products. Three-quarters of them have died. Up to 5,000 others who received the blood products developed chronic hepatitis C, a type of liver infection. Meanwhile an estimated 26,800 others were also infected with hepatitis C after receiving blood transfusions, often given in hospitals after childbirth, surgery or an accident, the report said. British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is expected to apologize later Monday, and authorities are expected to announce compensation of about 10 billion pounds ($12.7 billion) in all to victims. Details about that payment are not expected until Tuesday at the earliest. The report said many of the deaths and illnesses could have been avoided had the government taken steps to address the risks linked to blood transfusions or the use of blood products. Since the 1940s and the early 1980s it has been known that hepatitis and the cause of AIDS respectively could be transmitted this way, the inquiry said. Langstaff said that unlike a long list of developed countries, officials in the U.K. failed to ensure rigorous blood donor selection and screening of blood products. At one school attended by children with hemophilia, public health officials gave the children "multiple, riskier" treatments as part of research, the report said. He added that over the years authorities "compounded the agony by refusing to accept that wrong had been done," falsely telling patients they had received the best treatment available and that blood screening had been introduced at the earliest opportunity. When people were found to be infected, officials delayed informing them about what happened. Langstaff said that while each failure on its own was serious, taken "together they are a calamity." Andy Evans, of campaign group Tainted Blood, told reporters that he and others "felt like we were shouting into the wind during the last 40 years." "We have been gaslit for generations. This report today brings an end to that. It looks to the future as well and says this cannot continue," he said. Diana Johnson, a lawmaker who has long campaigned for the victims, said she hoped that those found responsible for the disaster will face justice — including prosecution — though the investigations have taken so long that some of the key players may well have died since. "There has to be accountability for the actions that were taken, even if it was 30, 40, 50 years ago," she said.