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washington — The U.S. says it has been trying to engage North Korea by sending messages repeatedly despite Pyongyang’s apparent lack of interest in dialogue and its escalation of threats in the region. “We have sent such messages in multiple ways – through third parties and directly, orally and in writing – and have included specific proposals on humanitarian cooperation and other topics for discussion,” a State Department spokesperson said. “We have also emphasized our willingness to discuss practical steps both sides could take to address the security situation in the region,” the spokesperson continued via email to VOA’s Korean Service on April 26. “To date, however, the DPRK has shown no indication it is interested in engaging. Instead, we have seen a marked increase in the scope and scale of DPRK provocations, which have only served to raise regional tensions and increase the risk of accidental or unintentional escalation,” the spokesperson added. North Korea’s official name is the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. North Korea has been conducting multiple missile and rocket tests, including what it said was its first nuclear counterattack drills using “super-large” artillery rockets carrying mock nuclear warheads on April 22. Pyongyang has also ramped up its cooperation with Russia, sending arms to support Moscow's fight against Ukraine. Russia has been shipping refined petroleum to North Korea above the limit of 500,000 barrels annually set by the U.N. Security Council, White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said Thursday. The North Korean mission to the U.N. did not respond to a VOA inquiry on its reaction to the U.S. description of its efforts made to resume talks. Dialogue between the two has been deadlocked since October 2019 when working-level talks failed to reconcile differences over denuclearization and sanctions relief that became apparent a few months earlier at a summit in Hanoi. Washington has maintained that it is open to renewed dialogue on Pyongyang’s nuclear program without preconditions. Former U.S. officials suggested that the Biden administration provided the unusually detailed account of its efforts to engage Pyongyang in response to criticisms saying it has not done enough. “The Biden team is quite sensitive to the attacks coming from 'liberals,' especially critics who claim the administration has not attached sufficient priority to North Korea and has not done enough to pursue diplomacy with Pyongyang,” said Evans Revere, a former State Department official with extensive experience negotiating with North Korea. Revere added that some of these critics are arguing that Washington needs to change its approach, offer concessions and engage in arms control and threat reduction talks with North Korea. He said this explains not only the administration’s detailed description of its efforts at talks but its willingness to discuss “interim steps” toward denuclearization. Two senior U.S. officials said in March that Washington is willing to consider such steps and discuss sanctions and confidence-building measures. Robert Rapson, who served as charge d’affaires and deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Seoul from 2018 to 2021, said the Biden administration may be trying to address China’s call for talks between Washington and Pyongyang. “It’s possible Beijing may have laid out a quid pro quo for any support with North Korea by calling on the U.S. to up its efforts to engage with Pyongyang – hence the statement” from the State Department, said Rapson. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said at a news conference in Beijing after talks with Chinese officials that he “encouraged” Beijing “to press Pyongyang to end its dangerous behavior and engage in dialogue.” Joseph DeTrani, who served as the special envoy for six-party denuclearization talks with North Korea from 2003 to 2006, said, “The Biden administration wants to make it clear, for the record and as we approach the November presidential election, that the administration was proactive in its policy toward North Korea and they did everything possible” to have Pyongyang “return to negotiations.”  

WASHINGTON — The Internal Revenue Service, the U.S. tax agency, said Thursday that it has taken steps to address a wide disparity in audit rates between Black taxpayers and other filers. And it said it is more closely examining the returns of larger numbers of wealthy people and major companies. "We are overhauling compliance efforts to advance our commitment to fair, equitable, and effective tax administration and hold ourselves accountable to taxpayers we serve," according to an annual update from the agency. A study from January 2023 involving university researchers and the Treasury Department found that IRS data-driven algorithms selected Black taxpayers for auditing at up to 4.7 times the rate of non-Black taxpayers. The study said the IRS disproportionately audited people who claim the Earned Income Tax Credit, which is aimed at low- to moderate-income workers and families: While Black taxpayers accounted for 21% of the claims for that tax break, they were the focus of 43% of the audits concerning the credit. "We have taken swift initial action to dramatically reduce the number of those audits. We have also made changes to the selection criteria for those audits," IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel said. Werfel, who was sworn in a little more than a year ago, has testified before Congress about the issue and last September he wrote to the Senate Finance Committee that the IRS would make changes. The discriminatory audits, he told reporters, "degrade trust in our tax system." Werfel and the IRS have tried over the past year to show how money from the Inflation Reduction Act, President Joe Biden's big climate, health and tax law, has helped to modernize the agency and improve taxpayer services. He also said that people making less than $400,000 per year would not be subject to more audits because of the new funding. Noting the promise to keep audit rates for people making $400,000 per year and less at 2018 levels, he said on Thursday that "we haven't in any way exceeded that rate." He added: "There is no new wave of audits coming for middle and low income" taxpayers — "that is not in our plans in any way, shape or form." The IRS is focusing the next year on using the funding boost to conduct higher rates of audits on suspected wealthy tax cheats after having collected hundreds of millions of back taxes this year. Ensuring that people pay their taxes is one of the tax collection agency's biggest challenges. The audit rate of millionaires fell by more than 70% from 2010 to 2019 and the rate on large corporations dropped by more than 50%. The IRS plans to raise audit rates on companies with assets of more than $250 million to 22.6% in 2026, from an 8.8% rate in the tax year 2019. It also plans to increase audit rates by tenfold on large complex partnerships with assets of more than $10 million. "While the IRS has accomplished a lot so far with IRA funding," he said, "we need to do much more to make improvements and transform the IRS for the benefit of taxpayers." 

SAO PAULO, Brazil — The death toll from heavy rains in Brazil's southernmost state of Rio Grande do Sul rose to 29, local authorities said Thursday evening, as the state government declared a state of public calamity to handle the dramatic situation. The storms, which have caused the greatest devastation in the state in recent years, also left 60 people missing and 10,242 displaced in 154 cities, according to Rio Grande do Sul's civil defense. "It's not just another critical case; it's the most critical that the state will probably have recorded in its history," state Governor Eduardo Leite said in a live broadcast on social media, adding that the situation is worse than last year's rains in the state. More than 300,000 people have also been left without electricity after a dam at a small hydroelectric power plant burst on Thursday, the state's main utilities company said. President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva flew over the affected areas and met with Leite in Santa Maria on Thursday for an emergency meeting. "I told the governor and my ministers that the federal government will make every effort. ... We will take care of this with great care and respect," Lula said during the meeting. In a video posted on social media, Leite called for coordination in the efforts to rescue people, asking for "full force" as he declared a state of public calamity citing the risk faced by the state as a result of climate events. Lula told Leite in a call late Wednesday that he would send as many men as necessary to help deal with the situation, the president's office said. Brazil has faced a recent spate of natural disasters. More than 50 people were killed in Sao Paulo state last year after massive downpours caused landslides and flooding. 

phoenix — Democratic Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs has relegated a Civil War-era ban on most abortions to the past by signing a bill Thursday to repeal it.  Hobbs said the move was just the beginning of a fight to protect reproductive health care in Arizona. The repeal of the 1864 law that the state Supreme Court recently reinstated won't take effect until 90 days after the legislative session ends, which typically happens in June or July.  Abortion rights advocates say they're hopeful a court will step in to prevent what could be a confusing landscape of access for girls and women across Arizona as laws are introduced and then reversed.  The effort to repeal the long-dormant law, which bans all abortions except those done to save a patient's life, won final legislative approval Wednesday in a 16-14 vote of the Senate, as two GOP lawmakers joined with Democrats.  Hobbs denounced "a ban that was passed by 27 men before Arizona was even a state, at a time when America was at war over the right to own slaves, a time before women could even vote."  "This ban needs to be repealed, I said it in 2022 when Roe was overturned, and I said it again and again as governor," Hobbs said during the bill signing.  In early April, Arizona's Supreme Court voted to restore the 1864 law that provides no exceptions for rape or incest and allows abortions only if the mother's life is in jeopardy. The majority opinion suggested doctors could be prosecuted and sentenced to up to five years in prison if convicted.  Democrats, who are the minority in the Legislature, struck back with the help of a handful of Republicans in the House and Senate to advance a repeal in a matter of weeks to Hobbs' desk.  A crowd of lawmakers — mostly women — joined in the signing ceremony with celebratory airs, including taking selfies and exchanging congratulations among Democrats.  The scene stood in sharp contrast to Wednesday's vote in the Senate that extended for hours as Republicans described their motivations in personal, emotional and even biblical terms — including graphic descriptions of abortion procedures and amplified audio recordings of a fetal heartbeat.  Meanwhile, across the country, an abortion rights initiative in South Dakota submitted far more signatures than required to make the ballot this fall. In Florida, a ban took effect against most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, before many people even know they are pregnant.  In Arizona, once the repeal takes effect in the fall, a 2002 statute banning abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy will become the state's prevailing abortion law.  Whether the 1864 law will be enforced in the coming months depends on who is asked. The anti-abortion-rights group defending the ban, Alliance Defending Freedom, maintains county prosecutors can begin enforcing it once the Supreme Court's decision becomes final, which hasn't yet occurred.  Planned Parenthood Arizona filed a motion Wednesday asking the court to prevent a pause in abortion services until the repeal takes effect. Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes has joined in that action.  The Supreme Court set deadlines next week for briefings on the motion.

Presumed Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump says if elected he would restore a travel ban on some majority-Muslim countries on the first day of his new administration. VOA Correspondent Scott Stearns reports.

ALEXANDRIA, Virginia — A judge declared a mistrial Thursday after a jury said it was deadlocked in the trial of a military contractor accused of contributing to the abuse of detainees at the Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq two decades ago.  The mistrial came in the jury's eighth day of deliberations. The deliberations went far longer than the trial itself.  The eight-member civil jury in Alexandria deadlocked on accusations the civilian interrogators who were supplied to the U.S. Army at Abu Ghraib in 2003 and 2004 had conspired with soldiers there to abuse detainees as a means of "softening them up" for questioning.  The trial was the first time a U.S. jury heard claims brought by Abu Ghraib survivors in the 20 years since photos of detainee mistreatment — accompanied by smiling U.S. soldiers inflicting the abuse — shocked the world during the U.S. occupation of Iraq.  Reston, Virginia-based CACI had argued that it wasn't complicit in the detainees' abuse. It said that its employees had minimal interaction with the three plaintiffs in the case and that any liability for their mistreatment belonged to the government, not CACI.  Multiple jurors told The Associated Press that most of the jury sided with the plaintiffs, but they declined to give an exact numerical breakdown among the eight-member panel.  CACI, as one of its defenses, has argued it shouldn't be liable for any misdeeds by its employees if they were under the control and direction of the Army.  The plaintiffs' lawyers tried to bar CACI from making that argument at trial, but the jury was allowed to consider it.  Both sides argued about the scope of the doctrine. Fundamentally, though, if CACI could prove its interrogators were under the command and control of the Army at the time any misconduct occurred, then the jury was instructed to find in favor of CACI.  The issue of who controlled CACI interrogators occupied a significant portion of the trial. CACI officials testified that they basically turned over supervision of the interrogators to the Army.  Lawyers for the plaintiffs argued otherwise, and introduced evidence including CACI's contract with the Army, which required CACI to supervise its own employees. Jurors also saw a section of the Army Field Manual that pertains to contractors and states that "only contractors may supervise and give direction to their employees."  In their note explaining their deadlock, the jury said the Field Manual was one of the pieces of evidence over which they disagreed.  The jurors who spoke to AP said there was conflicting evidence in the case about whether CACI retained control of its employees while they were in Abu Ghraib.  The plaintiffs can seek a retrial.  Asked if they would do so, one of their lawyers, Baher Azmy with the Center for Constitutional Rights, said that "the current expectation is that we'll continue to fight."  The lawsuit was first filed in 2008 and was delayed by 15 years of legal wrangling and multiple attempts by CACI to have the case dismissed.  CACI's lawyers declined to comment as they left court. A company spokesperson did not respond to an email seeking comment.  While it took a monumental effort on the plaintiffs' part to get the case to trial, it's possible that a retrial might be easier to conduct than normal. Many of the witnesses testified through recorded depositions that could simply be replayed. The three plaintiffs, though, provided live testimony — one in person and the other two through video hookups from Iraq. 

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.

united nations — Four hundred days. That's how long American journalist Evan Gershkovich has been held in a Russian prison. Russia's Federal Security Service detained him while he was on assignment for U.S. newspaper The Wall Street Journal in the city of Yekaterinburg and accused him of espionage. The newspaper and the U.S. government have denied the charges against the now 32-year-old reporter. U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said Thursday at a U.S.-hosted event on the eve of World Press Freedom Day that reporters are too often wrongfully detained for "simply telling the truth." "That was Evan's crime. Reporting the facts about Russia's illegal war in Ukraine," she said. Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in March 2022. Gershkovich was arrested a day after publishing a report on how the war had hurt Russia's economy. Thomas-Greenfield said the Biden administration will not rest until Gershkovich is reunited with his family. His parents and sister were present at the event. Mariana Katzarova, U.N. special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Russian Federation, told the gathering by video from Bulgaria that she is very concerned that Gershkovich has been held for over a year without a trial or evidence. "The arrest and detention of Evan raises serious concerns about his personal safety, as well as the safety of all foreign journalists conducting their legitimate business in Russia," she said. In October 2023, dual U.S.-Russian national Alsu Kurmasheva, 47, who works for VOA's sister outlet Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, was also arrested in Russia. She remains jailed on charges of failing to self-register as a so-called foreign agent and spreading what Moscow views as false information about the Russian military. If convicted, she could face up to 15 years in prison. Kurmasheva was in Russia to visit her elderly and ailing mother. Katzarova said Russia has one of the highest conviction rates in the world. "Once charged, the likelihood of being found guilty in the Russian court is very high," she said, "raising concerns about the fairness and independence of the judiciary in Russia and about the rights of the accused to a fair trial." David Rohde, an American journalist who was kidnapped by the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2008 but escaped after seven months in captivity, told the gathering that the source of attacks on journalists has shifted in the past several years. "There has been a dramatic change where the people detaining and in some places killing journalists has shifted from extremist groups and criminal groups to a large number of states," he said. "It has been more than a year now, and every day is a day too long," Danielle Gershkovich said of her brother's detention. "We need to do whatever it takes to bring him home now."

pentagon — U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin was in Hawaii on Thursday to meet with leaders from Australia, Japan and the Philippines amid increasing concerns about Chinese military aggression in the Pacific. Defense officials said the talks would continue the allies’ “historic progress” on cooperation in their defense industries and military activities, including air and missile defense. Bradley Bowman, senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, called the quadrilateral group an “anti-aggression coalition” whose efforts protect “many countries around the world who depend on the ability for commercial vessels to sail freely and unimpeded through the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea.” “The single biggest reason for what we're witnessing in Hawaii this week is the increasingly aggressive behavior of the People's Republic of China,” Bowman told VOA.  “I think Japan, Australia and the Philippines understand that investments in deterrence are far less costly than dealing with a war that could have been prevented, and they understand that deterrence will be much stronger and more effective if they work with the United States and they work with each other,” he said. Austin was to meet with Australian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defense Richard Marles on Thursday following Australia’s commitment last month to increase defense spending by 20% over the next decade. Austin also planned to meet with Japanese Minister of Defense Minoru Kihara. During an April state visit in Washington, U.S. President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced deepening military cooperation, including creation of a trilateral air defense architecture with Australia and trilateral exercises with the United Kingdom. Trilateral session The U.S., Japan and Australia were to convene a trilateral meeting following the bilateral talks, where a senior defense official said they were expected to sign a new trilateral agreement on strategic research and development. Austin then planned to host a quadrilateral meeting with Filipino Secretary of National Defense Gilberto Teodoro and their Japanese and Australian counterparts.  It will be the second such meeting of the four countries' defense ministers. A senior defense official, speaking to reporters ahead of the meeting, said talks would  focus on deterring actors from activities that could “undermine peace and stability in the region, whether it's in East Asia, the East China Sea, South China Sea or the Pacific Islands.” Tensions have risen between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea, with China’s coast guard using water cannons last month to threaten Filipino fishing ships. China has also used collision and ramming tactics, undersea barriers and a military-grade laser to stop Philippine resupply and patrol missions. Bowman said he expected Beijing to complain about the talks as an attempt to form a coalition like NATO in the Pacific. “I think as a general rule, the People's Republic of China wants to deal with everything in the region in a bilateral way that allows Beijing to take advantage of power asymmetries. … The bully on the playground ... doesn't want to deal with four or five kids at the same time,” he said. Last month, Austin spoke with Chinese Admiral Dong Jun in the first dialogue between the two countries’ defense chiefs in nearly 17 months. The Pentagon said Austin and his Chinese counterpart discussed “defense relations” and global security issues ranging from Russia’s unprovoked war in Ukraine to recent provocations from North Korea. A Pentagon press release said Austin stressed the importance of “respect for high seas freedom of navigation as guaranteed under international law, especially in the South China Sea.”  Beijing has asserted its desire to control access to the South China Sea and bring Taiwan under its control, by force if necessary. Biden has said U.S. troops will defend the democratically run island from attack.

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.

After weeks of pro-Palestinian protests escalating at universities across the U.S., President Joe Biden warned Thursday that order must prevail, even as he underscored that dissent is “essential for democracy.” White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara reports.

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.

As UNESCO marks World Press Freedom Day on May 3, we celebrate the dedication of journalists and independent media in delivering credible news to audiences in censored countries. This week on The Inside Story: World Press Freedom Day. #PressFreedom #TheInsideStory