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Maria Kobets used to work in a museum in Ukraine’s northern Chernihiv region. But when her husband, Andriy, joined the armed forces, she took over his job as a blacksmith. Lesia Bakalets has more. Camera: Vladyslav Smilianets.

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.

GENEVA — The U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights accuses Russia of serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian laws in its war against Ukraine. A new report by the OHCHR warns Russia’s armed attack and occupation of Ukrainian territory will have long-lasting consequences for Ukraine and its population at a time when global attention on the critical situation appears to be waning. “Despite harrowing stories of human suffering unfolding every day in Ukraine, I fear that the world has grown numb to this crisis,” Volker Türk, U.N. high commissioner for human rights, said Tuesday. In a bleak assessment of the situation, Türk told the U.N. Human Rights Council, “It is now over two years since the Russian Federation launched its full-scale armed attack on the country. Two years of immense suffering, bloodshed, loss and grief. Countless families have been separated.” He noted more than 10,500 civilians have been reported killed and more than 20,000 injured. “The actual figures are likely significantly higher,” he said. The report, which covers the period from December 1, 2023, to February 29, says the war continues to cause devastating civilian harm in large-scale attacks through “missiles and loitering munitions launched by Russian armed forces across Ukraine.” It says this is causing a spike in civilian casualties, “reversing the otherwise general downward trend in civilian casualties throughout 2023.” This year marks 10 years since Russia illegally annexed the Crimean Peninsula, a period during which people in Crimea have been “charged and convicted … for acts that are not crimes under Ukrainian law,” according to the report. “Russian Federation citizenship has been broadly imposed,” Türk said. “Russian authorities have conscripted male residents of Crimea into the Russian armed forces, eventually forcing them to fight against their own country.” He said Ukrainian children have been deprived of an education in their own language and people have been denied the right to freely express their opinion. “The violations we documented in occupied Crimea foreshadowed what we now see evolving in Ukrainian territory occupied by the Russian Federation following its full-scale armed attack,” said the human rights commissioner. “In the last two years, Russian armed forces have committed widespread violations of international human rights and humanitarian law, including unlawful killings, torture, enforced disappearances and arbitrary detention,” he said, adding that these violations have occurred with impunity. “There has been nowhere to seek justice, nowhere to turn for an effective remedy,” he said. “The cumulative effect of these actions has been to create a pervasive climate of fear, which has allowed the Russian Federation to solidify its control.” In the reporting period, OHCHR officials interviewed 60 Ukrainian prisoners of war who recently had been released from Russian captivity during a POW exchange. They said the POWs provided credible, detailed accounts of having been tortured, subjected to beatings, electric shocks, threats of execution, sexual violence and other harsh treatment. The OHCHR recorded 12 cases of executions of at least 32 captured Ukrainian POWs. It has verified three of these incidents in which Russian service members executed seven Ukrainian service members. “In this same period, my office interviewed 44 Russian POWs in Ukrainian captivity,” said Türk. “While they did not complain about the treatment and conditions in established places of detention, several of them described instances of torture and ill-treatment in transit places after they were evacuated from the battlefield.” The high commissioner said the tragedy in Ukraine has gone on for too long and called on the Russian Federation to cease its armed attacks. “The violations of international humanitarian and human rights law by the Russian armed forces and administrative officials in occupied territory must stop at once,” he said. Russia boycotted the meeting and informed the council president that it “did not wish to take the floor as a concerned country.” Ukraine’s ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva had no such misgivings. Filipenko Yevheniia sharply criticized Russia and its “systematic deprivation of fundamental rights and freedoms in Crimea and occupied parts of Donbas and other Ukrainian territories.” “By inflicting significant demographic changes through forced displacement and deliberate replacement of the population, Russia is purposely altering the fabric of the society to cement its occupation in gross violation of international humanitarian law,” she said. “By torturing, arbitrarily detaining civilians, by abducting and indoctrinating Ukrainian children, Russia openly and shamefully commits war crimes and crimes against humanity.” The Ukrainian ambassador called on U.N. member states “to condemn Russian terrorist attacks” and to send a clear message to the Kremlin “that the international community is not turning a blind eye to the invasion of a sovereign state, the killing of civilians and the destruction of critical infrastructure.”

Paris — He ran as the candidate with a platform of “rupture,” championing greater sovereignty for his homeland — including by leaving the CFA West African Franc currency union, created by France nearly a century ago. The shock victory of new Senegalese President Bassirou Diomaye Faye has been closely followed in Paris, as questions mount on what the results mean for France’s relations with its former West African colony. Will a Faye presidency stoke simmering anti-French sentiment, or the rising influence of other foreign powers? Will it further shrink France’s ebbing economic and military presence in West Africa — a region where Paris has already pulled its troops from coup-hit countries of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger? Or — as critics suggest — does it underscore, yet again, that France’s ties with its former colonies must be rethought and reset — a process, some add, which is already well under way? The election of anti-establishment Faye “has been a wake-up call to Western countries like France, which are now in competition with many other powers,” wrote France’s influential Le Monde newspaper. Today, Paris and others, “must learn from the consequences of the current African context, which has increasingly come to resemble a new phase in the long history of decolonization.” More win-win In both Paris and Dakar, the first official reactions were positive. President Emmanuel Macron’s office said the French leader called Faye and “warmly” congratulated him after his election, saying France wants to “continue and intensify” bilateral ties. Faye maintains Senegal will remain a “certain and trustworthy ally,” calling Dakar’s partnership with Paris “correct,” but something “which must be revisited.” “We need to win more from it,” Faye told France-Info radio in a recent interview, adding, “We’ve already said this for years, but we were unfortunately not listened to.” The relationship between France and its former colony — once its oldest in sub-Saharan Africa — has historically been close, despite the occasional bumpy ride. The country’s first president, writer and politician Léopold Sédar Senghor, studied in France. His second wife, Collette, was from Normandy. After leaving office, Senghor became the first Black member of the Academie Française — France’s celebrated literary body. Until recently, too, France was Senegal’s leading economic partner, and Macron forged a good relationship with Faye’s predecessor, Macky Sall. But like elsewhere in Francophone Africa, anti-French sentiment is rising, especially among the young. “France degage,” or “French out,” is a common slogan at demonstrations. On X, some rejoiced after reading fake news that Faye had asked France to leave the country. “Long live Senegal, free from France,” wrote one commentator. Faye’s influential opposition ally, Ousmane Sonko, counts among the critics of France's allegedly outsized influence in Senegal. While Sonko has softened his rhetoric in recent months, both men call for greater national sovereignty over resources like oil and fisheries. Not everyone is bashing France, however. In Paris, Senegalese trader Mamadou, who sells berets and Eiffel Tower keychains to tourists, is happy with the status quo. “We have a stable relationship,” said Mamadou of the two countries. “Our ties go back a long way.” Diminished presence While France is still a key investor in Senegal — with French bakeries like Paul and supermarket chain Auchan dotting the capital Dakar — its footprint has shrunk sharply in the decades following Senegal’s 1960 independence. Other countries have moved in. Beijing is now Dakar's top trading partner. A Saudi firm built the capital’s new airport — which a largely Turkish-controlled company now manages. US, British and Australian companies are involved in Senegal’s oil and gas extraction. European, Turkish and Chinese industrial vessels have sucked up the fish off its shores, pummeling its artisanal fishing industry and deepening hunger and migration. Meanwhile, non-francophone Nigeria, Angola and South Africa have become Paris’ leading trading partners in sub-Saharan Africa. “It’s easy to have a speech about Senegal’s ‘sovereignty,’ but it is difficult to take measures against a French presence that isn’t what it was at independence,” Denis Castaing, former head of France’s development agency in Senegal, wrote in France’s Opinion.fr website. Some commentators also doubt Faye will usher in major upheaval — at least not anytime soon. A Faye presidency would not be “a revolution which breaks everything in its path but a much more moderate stance,” Burkina Faso’s L’Observateur Paalga newspaper wrote in an editorial. Senegalese analyst Pape Ibrahim Kane similarly predicted it would take time for Faye, for example, to make good on promises to leave the CFA for a proposed West African currency called Eco. “Perhaps in a year, a year and a half, we’ll have more clarity,” he told France’s RFI broadcaster. But change could come more quickly on another front. Reports suggest Macron wants to further cut France’s already diminished military presence in West Africa, including in Senegal, where France has about 350 armed forces personnel. Calling on Paris to shutter its last two bases in Senegal might be an easy win for the new Faye government, Kane says. “From a symbolic point of view, I think it would show how [Dakar] is reassuming Senegalese sovereignty without many consequences,” said Senegalese analyst Kane. “The French themselves are already rethinking their military presence on the continent — so it could happen very quickly.”

ISTANBUL — A fire at an Istanbul nightclub during renovations on Tuesday killed at least 29 people, officials and reports said. Several people, including managers of the club, were detained for questioning. At least one person was being treated at a hospital, the Istanbul governor's office said in a statement. The Masquerade nightclub, which was closed for renovations, was on the ground and basement floors of a 16-story residential building in the Besiktas district on the European side of the city bisected by the Bosphorus. The fire was extinguished. Gov. Davut Gul told reporters at the scene that the cause of the fire was under investigation and the victims were believed to be involved in the renovation work. Authorities detained five people for questioning, including managers of the club and one person in charge of the renovations, Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunc said. Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu said authorities were inspecting the entire building to assess its safety. Several firefighting and medical teams were dispatched to the scene, he said.

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.

Baltimore — A tugboat pushing a fuel barge was the first vessel to use an alternate channel to bypass the wreckage of Baltimore's collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge, which had blocked traffic along the vital port's main shipping channel. The barge supplying jet fuel to the Department of Defense left late Monday and was destined for Delaware's Dover Air Force Base, though officials have said the temporary channel is open primarily to vessels that are helping with the cleanup effort. Some barges and tugs that have been stuck in the Port of Baltimore since the collapse are also scheduled to pass through the channel.  Officials said they're working on a second channel on the southwest side of the main channel that will allow for deeper draft vessels, but they didn't say when that might open.  Gov. Wes Moore is set Tuesday to visit one of two centers that the Small Business Administration opened in the area to help companies get loans to assist them with losses caused by the disruption of the bridge collapse.  Crews are undertaking the complicated work of removing steel and concrete at the site of the bridge's deadly collapse after a container ship lost power and crashed into a supporting column. On Sunday, dive teams surveyed parts of the bridge and checked the ship, and workers in lifts used torches to cut above-water parts of the twisted steel superstructure.  Authorities believe six workers plunged to their deaths in the collapse, including two whose bodies were recovered last week. Two other workers survived.  Moore, a Democrat, said at a Monday afternoon news conference that his top priority is recovering the four remaining bodies, followed by reopening shipping channels. He said that he understands the urgency but that the risks are significant. Crews have described the mangled steel girders of the fallen bridge as "chaotic wreckage," he said.  "What we're finding is it is more complicated than we hoped for initially," said U.S. Coast Guard Rear Admiral Shannon Gilreath.  Meanwhile, the ship remains stationary, and its 21 crew members remain on board for now, officials said.  President Joe Biden is expected to visit the collapse site Friday to meet with state and local officials and get at federal response efforts.  The bridge fell as the cargo ship Dali lost power March 26 shortly after leaving Baltimore on its way to Sri Lanka. The ship issued a mayday alert, which allowed just enough time for police to stop traffic, but not enough to save a roadwork crew filling potholes on the bridge.  The Dali is managed by Synergy Marine Group and owned by Grace Ocean Private Ltd., both of Singapore. Danish shipping giant Maersk chartered the Dali.  Synergy and Grace Ocean filed a court petition Monday seeking to limit their legal liability, a routine but important procedure for cases litigated under U.S. maritime law. A federal court in Maryland will ultimately decide who is responsible and how much they owe.  The filing seeks to cap the companies' liability at roughly $43.6 million. It estimates that the vessel itself is valued at up to $90 million and was owed over $1.1 million in income from freight. The estimate also deducts two major expenses: at least $28 million in repair costs and at least $19.5 million in salvage costs.  Officials are trying to determine how to rebuild the major bridge, which was completed in 1977. It carried Interstate 695 around southeast Baltimore and became a symbol of the city's working-class roots and maritime culture.  Congress is expected to consider aid packages to help people who lose jobs or businesses because of the prolonged closure of the Port of Baltimore. The port handles more cars and farm equipment than any other U.S. facility.

In Dearborn, Michigan, a new Ford F-150 rolls off the line every 53 seconds

It’s been the best-selling vehicle in the United States for more than 40 years – and the best-selling truck for nearly 50 years. So, what makes the Ford F-150 truck the most popular vehicle in the country? VOA’s Dora Mekouar visited the Ford Motor Company plant in Dearborn, Michigan, to find out. Camera: Adam Greenbaum.

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.

Scientists in Alaska are developing a cloud-based approach to storing and analyzing data about volcanoes to increase the speed with which they can predict eruptions. Phil Dierking has our story in this week’s episode of LogOn.

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.