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  • Biden and McCarthy lean on holdouts in both parties to pass debt ceiling deal | CNN Politics

    Biden and McCarthy lean on holdouts in both parties to pass debt ceiling deal | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Party leaders in Washington are waging an urgent campaign Monday to convince Democrats and Republicans to get behind compromise legislation that would avert a first-ever national default, with each side proclaiming victory following marathon talks.

    Prospects for passage of the bill, based on the agreement struck between President Joe Biden and Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, grew Sunday as many centrist Democrats fell in line and Republicans maintained confidence that they would be able to carry the support of the majority of their House conference in a pivotal vote expected Wednesday.

    In both parties’ sights are those in the political middle, who leaders are wagering will swallow some provisions they disagree with in order to suspend the federal borrowing limit through January 1, 2025 – after the next presidential election – and avoid default. The bill caps non-defense spending, temporarily expands work requirements for some food stamp recipients and claws back some Covid-19 relief funds.

    The release of the bill text Sunday evening amounted to a consequential moment for both Biden and McCarthy, whose political futures could hinge on their ability to pass the legislation while also selling it as a victory for their respective parties.

    Speaking from the White House on Sunday, Biden hailed the agreement as critical to preventing economic disaster.

    “It’s a really important step forward,” he said from the Roosevelt Room. “It takes the threat of catastrophic default off the table, protects our hard-earned economic recovery, and the agreement also represents a compromise – which means no one got everything they want, but that’s the responsibility of governing.”

    The president shrugged off concerns from some Democrats who worry he gave away too much in his negotiations with Republicans.

    “They’ll find I didn’t,” he said.

    In a private call Sunday with House Democrats, Biden’s briefers defended their dealmaking with McCarthy, going into detail about what they had prevented from being added to the bill, according to multiple sources. They argued they stopped Republicans from pushing even stiffer work requirements and beat back efforts to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act and gut and gut Biden’s signature 2021 infrastructure law.

    After those briefings, many Democrats signaled that they were willing to support the plan simply because there’s no other viable option to avoid default, lawmakers told CNN.

    “It’s not a victory, but it’s a lot better (than) what might have happened if there were default,” one Senate Democrat told CNN after an evening briefing.

    Members of two major centrist groups – the New Democrat Coalition and Problem Solvers Caucus – are expected to largely support the plan, according to multiple sources. That represents roughly 100 Democrats, which could be enough to offset the losses from members of the hard-right who are furious over McCarthy’s dealmaking.

    Several members of the hard-line House Freedom Caucus have already harshly criticized the plan, vowing to try blocking it from passage.

    McCarthy has insisted to House Republicans that Democrats “got nothing” in the negotiations, and he worked to amplify government spending caps and new work requirements for food stamps as critical wins long sought by the GOP.

    But like Biden, McCarthy acknowledged the agreement required concessions from both sides.

    “It doesn’t get everything everybody wanted,” McCarthy told reporters in the Capitol on Sunday. “But, in divided government, that’s where we end up. I think it’s a very positive bill.”

    For McCarthy, the first big test will come Tuesday in the House Rules Committee, a panel that must adopt a rule to allow the bill to be approved by a majority of the House. To win the speakership, McCarthy agreed to name three conservative hardliners – Reps. Ralph Norman of South Carolina, Chip Roy of Texas and Thomas Massie of Kentucky – to the committee, a major concession since usually the powerful panel is stacked with close allies of the leadership.

    Norman and Roy have emerged as sharp critics of the debt limit deal so far, while Massie was quiet while waiting for bill text to be released. If all three voted against the rule in committee, that would kill the bill – unless any Democrats vote to advance the rule.

    McCarthy’s allies sought to play down the conservative revolt.

    “When you’re saying that conservatives have concerns, it is really the most colorful conservatives,” Rep. Dusty Johnson said on “State of the Union.”

    Passing the bill through the House will not be the final step. The package must also clear the Senate, where any single senator could stall progress for several days. On Sunday, a handful of powerful Senate Republicans had raised concerns about the deal’s defense spending during a Senate GOP conference call, a source on the call said.

    But with the support of Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell and expected backing of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, several Senate sources say there is a high likelihood there’ll be 60 votes to break a filibuster attempt. The timing of the final votes in the Senate could slip into Friday or the weekend.

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  • A man told officers at the CIA headquarters gate, ‘I’m here and I have a gun,’ law enforcement source says | CNN

    A man told officers at the CIA headquarters gate, ‘I’m here and I have a gun,’ law enforcement source says | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A man now under arrest walked up to the CIA Headquarters’ gate Tuesday and allegedly said, “I’m here and I have a gun,” a law enforcement source told CNN.

    Uniformed federal officers turned him away and notified Fairfax County, Virginia, police of his description, the source said Wednesday.

    He later was arrested and charged with felony possession of a firearm on school property, police said. He was identified as Eric Sandow, 32, of Gainesville, Florida.

    Sandow said he was headed to the CIA and had an AK-47 and another weapon in his vehicle as he was arrested Tuesday at Dolley Madison Preschool in McLean, Virgnia, after he trespassed on school grounds around 11 a.m., police said.

    The preschool is less than 1.5 miles from CIA Headquarters and about a 10-minute drive to major Washington, DC, landmarks, including the National Mall.

    “He requested access to the (preschool) building facilities to use the restroom, which was denied by school staff,” Dolley Madison Preschool said in a statement Wednesday. “At no point did he gain physical entrance to the school building.”

    Fairfax County police were then called to the scene. “While speaking with him, he made statements he had weapons inside his car located on school property,” the police department said Wednesday in a statement.

    “Officers searched the car and found two weapons, an AK-47 and a pistol, along with magazines and ammunition.”

    Sandow was arraigned Wednesday morning in Fairfax County General District Court, a court official said.

    He was being held Wednesday without bond, police said. It was not immediately clear whether Sandow had legal representation.

    “It does not appear he was acting in conjunction with anyone else,” Fairfax County police said. “Sandow did not make any threats and the weapons never left the vehicle.”

    Sandow does not appear to have a lengthy criminal history, public records show. He was charged with misdemeanor domestic battery in 2014 and did not declare a political party with his voter registration.

    Law enforcement lauded an alert person who summoned them Tuesday to the day care.

    “We’re grateful to the community member who did the right thing and called us,” police said. “We’d like to remind our community to report suspicious activity as you never know what you may prevent by making that call.”

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  • The demographic makeup of the country’s voters continues to shift. That creates headwinds for Republicans | CNN Politics

    The demographic makeup of the country’s voters continues to shift. That creates headwinds for Republicans | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Demographic change continued to chip away at the cornerstone of the Republican electoral coalition in 2022, a new analysis of Census data has found.

    White voters without a four-year college degree, the indispensable core of the modern GOP coalition, declined in 2022 as a share of both actual and eligible voters, according to a study of Census results by Michael McDonald, a University of Florida political scientist who specializes in electoral turnout.

    McDonald’s finding, provided exclusively to CNN, shows that the 2022 election continued the long-term trend dating back at least to the 1970s of a sustained fall in the share of the votes cast by working-class White voters who once constituted the brawny backbone of the Democratic coalition, but have since become the absolute foundation of Republican campaign fortunes.

    As non-college Whites have receded in the electorate over that long arc, non-White adults and, to a somewhat lesser extent, Whites with at least a four-year college degree, have steadily increased their influence. “This is a trend that is baked into the demographic change of the country, so [it] is likely going to accelerate over the next ten years,” says McDonald, author of the recent book “From Pandemic to Insurrection: Voting in the 2020 Presidential Election.”

    From election to election, the impact of the changing composition of the voter pool is modest. The slow but steady decline of non-college Whites, now the GOP’s best group, did not stop Donald Trump from winning the presidency in 2016 – nor does it preclude him from winning it again in 2024. And, compared to their national numbers, these non-college voters remain a larger share of the electorate in many of the key states that will likely decide the 2024 presidential race (particularly Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin) and control of the Senate (including seats Democrats are defending in Montana, Ohio and West Virginia.)

    But even across those states, these voters are shrinking as a share of the electorate. And McDonald’s analysis of the 2022 results shows that the non-college White share of the total vote is highly likely to decline again in 2024, while the combined share of non-Whites and Whites with a college degree, groups much more favorable to Democrats, is virtually certain to increase. The political effect of this decline is analogous to turning up the resistance on a treadmill: as their best group shrinks, Republicans must run a little faster just to stay in place.

    Especially ominous for Republicans is that the share of the vote cast by these blue-collar Whites declined slightly in 2022 even though turnout among those voters was relatively strong, while minority turnout fell sharply, according to McDonald’s analysis. The reason for those seemingly incongruous trends is that even solid turnout among the non-college Whites could not offset the fact that they are continuing to shrink in the total pool of eligible voters, as American society grows better-educated and more racially diverse.

    Given that minority turnout fell off, the fact that the non-college White share of the total 2022 vote still slightly declined “has to be a huge cause for concern for Republicans at this point,” says Tom Bonier, chief executive of TargetSmart, a Democratic political targeting firm. If more of the growing pool of eligible minority voters turn out in 2024, he says, “it is not unreasonable to expect” that the non-college White voters so critical to GOP fortunes could experience an even “steeper decline” in their share of the total votes cast next year.

    That prospect remains a central concern for the dwindling band of anti-Trump Republicans who fear that the former president has dangerously narrowed the GOP’s appeal by identifying it so unreservedly with the cultural priorities and grievances of working-class White voters, many of them older and living outside of the nation’s largest and most economically productive metropolitan areas.

    McDonald’s “data support what is self-evident: that Trumpism peaked in 2016, and that it leads to a dead end,” says former US Rep. Carlos Curbelo, a Florida Republican. “We saw this in 2018 when Republicans lost the House; we saw it in 2020 when they lost the presidency and the Senate, and we saw it in last year when Republicans were supposed to have big gains in both chambers and [did not]. All of these failures can be attributed to Trumpism. These data just confirm what is visible to the naked eye.”

    Cornell Belcher, a Democratic pollster, says these slow but steady long-term changes in the electorate leave him convinced that the ceiling for Trump’s potential support in 2024 is no more than 46% of the vote. But Democrats, he believes, still face the risk that the clear majority in the electorate opposed to Trumpism will not turn out in sufficient numbers or splinter to third-party options if they do. Both dangers, he argues, are most pronounced for the diverse younger generations that have never found President Joe Biden very inspiring and have not received sufficient messaging and organizing attention from Democrats.

    The political impact of those younger voters, he warns, could be blunted by the proliferation of red state laws making it more difficult to vote and Democrats focusing too much “on chasing this mythical [White] swing voter that doesn’t look like that Millennial or Gen Z voter we are relying on.”

    Overall voter turnout in 2022 was high compared to almost all previous midterms, but below the peak reached in 2018, when a greater share of eligible voters turned out than in any midterm election since 1914, according to McDonald’s calculations.

    Turnout last year fell most sharply among minorities: while 43% of all eligible non-White voters showed up in 2018, that slipped to just 35% last year, McDonald calculates. Turnout among eligible college-educated White voters also dropped from an astronomical 74% in 2018 to just over 69% last year. White voters without a four-year college degree actually came closest to matching their elevated 2018 performance, slipping only slightly from just over 45% then to about 43% last year.

    But turnout is only one of the two factors that shape how large a share of actual voters each group comprises, which is the number that really matters in determining election outcomes. The other factor is how large a share of the pool of potential eligible voters each group represents. Turnout, in effect, is the numerator and the share of eligible voters the denominator that combined produce the share of the total vote each group casts during every election.

    As McDonald found, the long-term trends in the eligible voter pool – the denominator in our equation – continued unabated in 2022. Whites without a college degree fell to just over 41% of eligible potential voters. That was down 3.2 percentage points from their share of the eligible voter population in 2018 – which was itself down exactly 3.2 percentage points from their share in 2014. In turn, from 2014 to 2022, college-educated White voters slightly increased their share of the eligible voter pool and minorities significantly increased from 30.5% then to nearly 35% now.

    Netting together both the turnout results and these shifts in the eligible voter pool, McDonald found that working-class White voters in 2022 declined as a share overall, whether compared either to the last few midterm elections or the most recent presidential contests.

    In 2022, Whites without a college degree cast 38.3% of all votes, he found. That was down from 39.3% in 2018 and more than 43% in 2014, according to his calculations. That finding also represented a continued decline from just over 42% of the vote when Trump won the 2016 presidential election and 39.9% in 2020 – the first time non-college Whites had fallen below 40% of the total presidential electorate in Census figures.

    Whites with at least a four-year college degree were the big gainers in 2022: McDonald found they cast nearly 36% of all votes last year, compared to a little over-one-third in both 2018 and 2014 and a little less than that in the 2020 presidential year. Burdened by lower turnout, the non-White share of the total vote slipped to just over one-fourth, down slightly from 2018, but still higher than in the 2014 midterms. The minority share of the total vote was considerably larger in 2020, reaching nearly three-in-ten in Census figures.

    All of this extends very consistent long-term trends. Census data analyzed by the non-partisan States of Change project show that non-college Whites have fallen from around two-thirds of the total vote under Ronald Reagan, to about three-fifths under Bill Clinton, to less than half under Barack Obama, to the current level of just under two-fifths. Over those same decades, college-educated Whites have grown from about two-in-ten to three-in-ten voters, while minorities have increased from a little over one-in-ten then to nearly three-in-ten now.

    Other respected data sources differ on the share of the total vote comprised by these three big groups: the Pew Validated Voter study and the estimates by Catalist, a Democratic targeting firm, both put the share of the vote cast in 2020 by non-college Whites slightly higher, in the range of 42-44%.

    But both also show the same core pattern as the Census results do, with the share of the total vote cast by those non-college Whites declining by about two percentage points every four years. The Edison Research exit polls conducted for a consortium of media organizations, including CNN, changed its methodology in a way that makes long-term comparisons impossible. But, similarly to McDonald, the exits found the non-college White share of the total vote declining to 39% in 2022 from 41% in 2018, with minorities also slightly falling over that period, and college-educated Whites growing.

    The trend lines that McDonald documented for last year suggest it’s a reasonable prediction that non-college Whites will again decline as a share of total voters by two points over the period from 2020 to 2024. That would push their share of the national 2024 vote down to below 38%, with more minority voters likely filling most of that gap and the college-educated Whites growing more modestly to offset the rest.

    McDonald says the basic dynamic reconfiguring the voting pool is that many Baby Boomers and their elders are aging out of the electorate. That’s both because more of them are dying or they are reaching an advanced age where turnout tends to decline, either for infirmity or other obstacles. Those older generations are preponderantly White (about three-fourths of seniors are White), and fewer have college degrees, which were not as essential to economic success in those years, McDonald points out. Meanwhile, a larger share of young adults today hold four-year degrees, and the youngest generations aging into the electorate every two years are far more racially diverse. According to calculations by William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Metro think tank, young people of color now comprise almost exactly half of all Americans who turn 18 and age into the electorate each year.

    “We are right now at the teetering edge of the influence of the baby boomers,” says McDonald. “They are just starting to enter those twilight years in their turnout rates, while other [more diverse] groups are maturing. So we are right at that cusp – that critical point of where things are going to start changing.”

    The impact of these changes on the outcomes of elections, as McDonald says, is very incremental, “like the proverbial frog in the boiling water.” One way to understand that dynamic is to assume that Whites without a college degree on the one hand, and minorities and college-educated Whites on the other, all split their vote at roughly the same proportions as they have in recent elections. If the former group declines as a share of the electorate by two points from 2020-2024 and the latter groups increase by an equal amount, that change alone would enlarge Biden’s margin of victory in the two-party vote from 4.6 percentage points to 5.8, Bonier calculates. Republicans would need to increase their vote share with some or all of those groups just to get back to the deficit Trump faced in 2020 – much less to overcome it.

    Ruy Teixeira, a long-time Democratic electoral analyst who has become a staunch critic of his party, argues exactly that kind of shift in voting preferences could offset the change in the electorate’s composition – and create a real threat for Biden. Even though Biden is aggressively highlighting his efforts to create blue-collar jobs through “manufacturing and infrastructure projects that are starting to get off the ground,” Teixiera recently wrote, a “sharp swing against the incumbent administration by White working-class voters seems like a very real possibility.”

    Teixeira, now a nonresident senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, also maintains Democrats face the risk Republicans can extend the unexpected gains Trump registered in 2020 with non-White voters without a college degree, especially Hispanics.

    Curbelo, the former congressman, shares Teixeira’s belief that Democratic liberalism on some social issues like crime is creating an opening for Republicans to gain ground among culturally conservative Hispanics. “If they are not careful, they can jeopardize their potential gains from Republicans doubling down on Trumpism by alienating themselves from minority voters who may identify with some of the [Democrats’] economic policies but who do not necessarily identify with the party’s victimhood narrative about minorities,” Curbelo says.

    Still, Curbelo warns that Republicans are unlikely to achieve the gains possible with minority voters so long as they are stamped so decisively by Trump’s polarizing image. And polling has consistently found that while many non-college Hispanic voters hold more moderate views on social issues than college-educated White liberals, those minority voters are not nearly as conservative as core GOP groups, like blue-collar Whites or evangelical Christians.

    As Teixeira has forcefully argued in recent years, such demographic change doesn’t ensure doom for Republicans or success for Democrats. Among other things, that change is unevenly distributed around the country, and the small state bias of both the Electoral College and the two-senators-per-state rule magnifies the influence of sparsely populated interior states where these shifts have been felt much more lightly.

    Yet, even so, the long-term change in the electorate’s composition, along with the Democrats’ growing strength among white-collar suburban voters, largely explains why the party has won the popular vote in seven of the past eight presidential elections – something no party has done since the formation of the modern party system in 1828.

    And even though Whites without a college degree exceed their share of the national vote in the key Rust Belt battlegrounds of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, their share of the vote is shrinking along the same trajectory of about 2-3 points every four years in those states too, according to analysis by Frey. Meanwhile, in the Sun Belt battlegrounds of Georgia, Arizona and Nevada, more rapid growth in the minority population means that blue-collar Whites will likely comprise a smaller portion of the eligible voter pool than they do nationally.

    Trump, with the exception of his beachhead among blue-collar minorities, has now largely locked the GOP into a position of needing to squeeze bigger margins out of shrinking groups, particularly non-college Whites. It’s entirely possible that Trump or another Republican nominee can meet that test well enough to win back the White House in 2024, especially given the persistent public disenchantment with Biden’s performance. But McDonald’s 2022 data shows why relying on a coalition tilted so heavily toward those non-college Whites becomes just a little tougher for the GOP in each presidential race.

    While Trump or another Republican certainly can win in 2024, Bonier says, “he has reshaped the party in such a way that they have a very narrow path to victory.”

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  • Wagner boss denies Washington Post report he offered Russian intelligence to Kyiv in exchange for territory | CNN

    Wagner boss denies Washington Post report he offered Russian intelligence to Kyiv in exchange for territory | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Yevgeny Prigozhin has denied a report that he proposed sharing Russian intelligence with Kyiv in exchange for ceded territory around the besieged city of Bakhmut – a denial that came days after the Wagner chief issued a series of criticisms revealing deep fissures within Moscow over the war in Ukraine.

    The Washington Post article was based on a trove of highly classified US intelligence documents leaked on social media in April, which revealed the degree to which the US has penetrated Wagner and the Russian Ministry of Defense.

    The Post reported Sunday that Prigozhin offered to give the Ukrainian military information on Russian troop positions if Kyiv would pull back its forces from the area around Bakhmut, which remains a key battleground in the Kremlin’s attempted advance through eastern Ukraine.

    Prigozhin made the offer to Ukraine’s military intelligence directorate, known as HUR, in January, the Post alleged. It quoted one leaked document as stating that Prigozhin met HUR officers in an unspecified country in Africa.

    But the head of the Russian paramilitary group speculated the story could have been planted by his enemies, according to an audio message posted to his Telegram channel on Monday.

    “I can say with confidence, if we’re being serious, that I have not been in Africa at least since the beginning of the conflict, but in fact a few months before the start of the SMO (Special Military Operation),” Prigozhin said, referring to Moscow’s euphemism for the war in Ukraine.

    “Therefore, I simply could not meet with anyone there physically.”

    In his message, Prigozhin asked rhetorically, “Who is behind this? I think that either some journalists decided to hype, or comrades from Rublyovka have now decided to make up a beautiful, planted story.” Rublyovka is the name of an affluent neighborhood in Moscow along the Rublyovo-Uspenskoye highway, which is known for its luxurious residential estates and mansions for the Russian elite.

    Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists on Monday that he could not comment on the Washington Post report, other than to say, “It looks like another hoax.”

    Andriy Yusov, a representative of the Defense Intelligence of Ukraine, declined to comment when he was asked about the Post report on Ukrainian television on Monday, saying: “Who would benefit from discussing such initiatives now?”

    CNN reached out to Ukraine’s military intelligence directorate for comment. It said it had nothing to add to Yusov’s comments.

    Prigozhin’s audio message on Monday was the latest outburst from the Wagner head, who has launched a storm of criticism against the Kremlin in recent weeks, accusing it of negligence amid Moscow’s faltering invasion of Ukraine.

    Last week, he accused a Russian brigade of abandoning its position in frontline Bakhmut and allowing Ukraine to take territory, saying the 72nd brigade “just ran the hell out of there.”

    Bakhmut is the site of a months-long attack by Russian troops, including Wagner fighters, that has ravaged the embattled city and forced thousands of civilians to flee their homes. But Moscow has so far been unable to gain ground and instead sustained heavy losses, despite swarming the area with huge amounts of manpower.

    Soon after Prigozhin’s tirade, the Ukrainian commander of a battalion involved in the country’s attack on Russian positions near Bakhmut told CNN the first Russians to abandon the area were Wagner fighters, contradicting Prigozhin’s claims.

    Kyiv also said it was operating “effective counterattacks” in the Bakhmut area, matching remarks by Prigozhin that Kyiv had recaptured some territory.

    At the same time, Prigozhin criticized the Russian military’s focus on the Victory Day parade last week – marring an occasion that Russian President Vladimir Putin has previously used to show off Moscow’s unity and military might.

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  • Florida teacher says she is under investigation after showing 5th grade class Disney movie with gay character | CNN

    Florida teacher says she is under investigation after showing 5th grade class Disney movie with gay character | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A fifth-grade teacher said she is being investigated by the Florida Department of Education after she showed her students “Strange World,” a 2022 animated Disney movie featuring a character who is biracial and gay.

    Jenna Barbee is a teacher in Hernando County’s Winding Waters K-8 school. “I am the teacher that’s under investigation with the Florida Department of Education for indoctrination for showing a Disney movie,” Barbee said in a TikTok post over the weekend.

    In the post, Barbee explained she played the Disney movie to a class which was partially full after a day of standardized testing. She also said she had previously-signed permission slips from all the parents, allowing the students to watch a movie rated PG.

    According to Barbee, a parent then complained and reported her to the state Department of Education.

    The parent who reported her, who is also a member of the Hernando County School District Board, complained to the principal about the movie not being appropriate for students, according to Karen Jordan, spokesperson for Hernando County Schools. Jordan also provided CNN with a copy of the announcement from the school district to parents.

    “Yesterday, the Disney movie ‘Strange World’ was shown in your child’s classroom,” the school district said. “While not the main plot of the movie, parts of the story involves a male character having and expressing feelings for another male character. In the future, this movie will not be shown. The school administration and the district’s Professional Standards Dept is currently reviewing the matter to see if further corrective action is required.”

    The complaint is part of Florida’s controversial legislation, signed last year by Gov. Ron DeSantis, banning certain instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity in the classroom. DeSantis and other supporters pushed the measure as a form of “parental rights,” while opponents said it tried to erase LGBTQ people from schools and dubbed the law “Don’t Say Gay.”

    The law initially banned instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity from kindergarten through third grade or in a way deemed not age-appropriate for all other grades, but it has since been expanded to limit such information all through high school. Teachers who violate the state policy can be suspended or have their teaching licenses revoked.

    Disney was among those who spoke out against the law last year, spurring DeSantis and Florida Republicans to retaliate against the entertainment company by targeting their control over the land in and around its theme parks.

    The animated film “Strange World,” released last year, told the story of a family of explorers and starred the voices of Jake Gyllenhaal, Dennis Quaid and Lucy Liu. The movie also featured Disney’s first-ever out-gay character, voiced by comedian Jaboukie Young-White.

    On May 9, Barbee addressed the school board members during public comment at a meeting. In attendance was the parent who had complained, school board member Shannon Rodriguez, she acknowledged during the meeting.

    “A school board member, an elected official of power, who was supposed to be nonpartisan, is allowed to present to the public that she is Christian and that God appointed her to the board. And yet it is indoctrinated that I showed a Disney movie. I’m a first-year teacher,” said Barbee.

    The teacher told district board members the movie was in no way sexual and was tied to the current lesson plan of the environment and ecosystems.

    Barbee claimed in the meeting Rodriguez “came to my school took me away from my students to tell me how bad and wrong I was.”

    At the end of the school board meeting, Rodriguez said she called the state department of education regarding the incident, which prompted the state investigation. She said her daughter is in Barbee’s class.

    She said at the district meeting Barbee broke school policy because she did not get the specific movie approved by school administration and said the teacher is “playing the victim.”

    “It is not a teacher’s job to impose their beliefs upon a child: religious, sexual orientation, gender identity, any of the above. But allowing movies such as this assist teachers in opening a door, and please hear me, they assist teachers in opening a door for conversations that have no place in our classrooms,” Rodriguez said.

    Rodriguez said “as a leader in this community, I’m not going to stand by and allow this minority to infiltrate our schools … God did put me here,” she said.

    CNN has reached out to Rodriguez and Hernando County School District and the Florida Department of Education for comment.

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  • China sentences elderly US citizen to life in prison on spying charges | CNN

    China sentences elderly US citizen to life in prison on spying charges | CNN

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    Hong Kong
    CNN
     — 

    A 78-year-old American citizen has been sentenced to life in prison by a Chinese court on spying charges.

    John Shing-Wan Leung, who is also a Hong Kong permanent resident, was convicted of espionage and given a life sentence Monday by the Intermediate People’s Court in the eastern city of Suzhou, according to a statement on the court’s social media account.

    Leung was detained on April 15, 2021 by state security authorities in Suzhou, Jiangsu province, according to the brief statement, which did not provide details on his charges.

    The court also confiscated personal property worth 500,000 yuan ($71,797), the statement added.

    Chinese authorities and state media have not previously disclosed any information on Leung’s detention or the court process that led to his conviction. In China, cases involving state security are usually handled behind closed doors.

    The US Embassy in Beijing said Monday it was aware of reports of Leung’s sentencing.

    “The Department of State has no greater priority than the safety and security of US citizens overseas. Due to privacy considerations, we have no further comment,” a spokesperson for the US Embassy said in a statement to CNN.

    The sentencing of Leung comes at a time when relations between Beijing and Washington are at their lowest point in half a century amid intensifying rivalry over trade, technology, geopolitics and military supremacy.

    It also comes as American and Chinese officials are resuming high-level engagements since a dispute over a suspected Chinese spy balloon shattered efforts to mend ties earlier this year.

    Leung is among a growing number of foreign nationals to have been ensnared in China’s widening crackdown on espionage under leader Xi Jinping.

    In March, Chinese authorities detained a Japanese employee of Astellas Pharma in Beijing on suspected espionage – the 17th Japanese national to have been detained in China since the counter-espionage law was introduced in 2014.

    In another high-profile case, two Canadians – former diplomat Michael Kovrig and businessman Michael Spavor – were detained by China for nearly three years.

    Their arrest on espionage charges in late 2018 came shortly after Canada arrested Chinese businesswoman and Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou on a US warrant related to the company’s business dealings in Iran.

    Beijing repeatedly denied that their cases were a political retaliation, but the two men were nonetheless released on the same day Meng was allowed by Canada to return to China.

    Last month, China passed a wide-ranging amendment to its already sweeping counter-espionage law, which will take effect from July 1.

    The new legislation expanded the definition of espionage from covering state secrets and intelligence to any “documents, data, materials or items related to national security and interests,” and to include cyberattacks against state organs or critical information infrastructure.

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  • Exclusive: Japan is in talks to open a NATO office as Ukraine war makes world less stable, foreign minister says | CNN

    Exclusive: Japan is in talks to open a NATO office as Ukraine war makes world less stable, foreign minister says | CNN

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    Tokyo
    CNN
     — 

    Japan is in talks to open a NATO liaison office, the first of its kind in Asia, the country’s foreign minister told CNN in an exclusive interview on Wednesday, saying Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has made the world less stable.

    “We are already in discussions, but no details (have been) finalized yet,” Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi said on Wednesday.

    Hayashi specifically cited Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year as an event with repercussions far beyond Europe’s borders that forced Japan to rethink regional security.

    “The reason why we are discussing about this is that since the aggression by Russia to Ukraine, the world (has) become more unstable,” he said.

    Ukrainians fleeing war find asylum in unexpected Asian country (June 2022)

    “Something happening in East Europe is not only confined to the issue in East Europe, and that affects directly the situation here in the Pacific. That’s why a cooperation between us in East Asia and NATO (is) becoming … increasingly important.”

    He added that Japan is not a treaty member of NATO, which stands for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization – but that the move sends a message the bloc’s Asia Pacific partners are “engaging in a very steady manner” with NATO.

    The opening of a NATO liaison office in Japan would mark a significant development for the Western alliance amid deepening geopolitical fault lines, and is likely to attract criticism from the Chinese government, which has previously warned against such a move.

    The Nikkei Asia first reported plans to open the office in Japan last Wednesday, citing unnamed Japanese and NATO officials.

    NATO has similar liaison offices in other places including Ukraine and Vienna. The liaison office in Japan will enable discussions with NATO’s security partners, such as South Korea, Australia and New Zealand, on geopolitical challenges, emerging and disruptive technologies, and cyber threats, Nikkei reported last week.

    In a statement to CNN last week, a NATO spokesperson said: “As to plans to open a liaison office in Japan, we won’t go into the details of ongoing deliberations among NATO allies.” She added that NATO and Japan “have a long-standing cooperation.”

    CNN reached out to NATO for comment on Wednesday after Hayashi’s remarks.

    Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sent shockwaves through Europe and drove non-aligned Finland and Sweden to abandon their neutrality and seek protection within NATO, with Finland formally joining the bloc last month.

    The war has also seen countries like Japan and South Korea draw closer to their Western partners, while presenting a united front against perceived threats closer to home.

    Speaking to CNN on Wednesday, Hayashi highlighted what he described as Japan’s “severe and complex” regional security environment, noting that in addition to increased Russian aggression, Tokyo is also contending with a nuclear-armed North Korea and a rising China.

    China has been growing its naval and air forces in areas near Japan while claiming the Senkaku Islands, an uninhabited Japanese-controlled chain in the East China Sea, as its sovereign territory. In the face of growing friction, Japan recently announced plans for its biggest military buildup since World War II.

    Tensions between Japan and Russia have also been increasing in recent months, fueled in part by Russian military drills in the waters between the two nations, and joint Chinese-Russian naval patrols in the western Pacific close to Japan.

    In April, Russian warships conducted anti-submarine exercises in the Sea of Japan, also known as the East Sea – and in March, Russian missile boats fired cruise missiles at a mock target in the same waters. And after Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida made a surprise visit to Ukraine in March, two Russian strategic bombers, capable of carrying nuclear weapons, flew over waters off the Japanese coast for more than seven hours, Reuters reported.

    Despite the growing regional tensions, Hayashi said the potential opening of the office was not aimed at specific countries. “This is not intended…to be sending a message,” said Hayashi.

    He added that Japan and other countries still need to cooperate with China on larger issues such as climate change and the Covid-19 pandemic, and that Tokyo wanted a “constructive and stable relationship” with Beijing.

    Members of the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force disembark from a V-22 Osprey aircraft during a live fire exercise in Gotemba, Japan, on May 28, 2022.

    China has previously warned against NATO expanding its reach into Asia and responded angrily to previous reports on the possible Japan office.

    “Asia is a promising land for cooperation and a hotbed for peaceful development. It should not be a platform for those who seek geopolitical fights,” said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning in a briefing last week. “NATO’s eastward push and interference in Asia Pacific matters will definitely undermine regional peace and stability.”

    Though Beijing has claimed impartiality in the Ukraine war and no advance knowledge of Russia’s intent, it has refused to condemn Moscow’s actions. Instead, it has parroted Kremlin lines blaming NATO for provoking the conflict – further fracturing relationships with both Europe and the US.

    And in March, senior Chinese Foreign Ministry officials and influential Communist Party publications accused the United States of seeking to build a NATO-like bloc in the Indo-Pacific, with one official warning of “unimaginable” consequences.

    On Wednesday, Hayashi played down concerns that opening a Tokyo NATO office could further inflame tensions, saying: “I don’t feel that’s the case.”

    The country has had a pacifist constitution since World War II – which he argued is reflected in this move.

    “We are not offending anyone, we’re defending ourselves from any kind of interference and concerns, and in some cases threats,” he said.

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  • Canada to expel Chinese diplomat following allegations of foreign influence | CNN

    Canada to expel Chinese diplomat following allegations of foreign influence | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Canada on Monday expelled a Chinese diplomat following allegations Beijing tried to intimidate a Canadian politician and interfere in the country’s elections, in a move that raises tensions between the two countries.

    Canada declared Toronto-based diplomat Zhao Wei “persona non grata,” its Foreign Minister Melanie Joly said in a statement Monday.

    “I have been clear: we will not tolerate any form of foreign interference in our internal affairs. Diplomats in Canada have been warned that if they engage in this type of behaviour, they will be sent home,” she said.

    The news follows mounting public pressure on the Canadian government to respond following revelations the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) found an accredited Chinese diplomat in the country had taken efforts toward targeting opposition lawmaker Michael Chong and relatives who may be China, after he sponsored a motion to condemn China’s treatment of its Uyghur Muslim minority group.

    The intelligence was first reported by Canadian newspaper the Globe and Mail earlier this month and comes amid public uproar over allegations that China attempted to meddle in Canada’s 2019 and 2021 elections.

    Beijing has repeatedly denied accusations of political interference in Canada. A statement from the Chinese Embassy in Canada on Monday following the expulsion announcement called the allegations “groundless” and warned of “consequences.”

    “China strongly condemns and firmly opposes it and has lodged a solemn representation with Canada. China will resolutely take countermeasures, and Canada will bear all the consequences arising therefrom,” the Chinese Embassy in Canada said in a statement.

    The statement added that the move “deliberately undermines China-Canada relations.”

    Those relations have already come under significant strain in recent years, in particular following Beijing’s detention of two Canadians in China in move widely seen as retaliation for Canada’s 2018 arrest of a Chinese businesswoman Meng Wanzhou.

    Beijing repeatedly denied that their cases were political retaliation, but the two men, former diplomat Michael Kovrig and businessman Michael Spavor, were released on the same day Meng was allowed by Canada to return to China in 2021.

    There have also been growing public concern about alleged Chinese interference within the country, including through the operation of overseas police stations and policing of speech in the country, which has a large community of people with Chinese heritage.

    Allegations of Chinese interference in Canadian politics have become a growing challenge for the government of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who earlier this year initiated an investigation to identify and combat foreign interference in Canada’s elections and its democracy.

    Trudeau has said intelligence services had failed to brief him about the alleged targeting of Chong. His Foreign Ministry summoned Chinese Ambassador to Canada Cong Peiwu last week after the media reporting on the intelligence emerged.

    Chong, who represents the Wellington-Halton Hills district in Ontario, had called for Zhao’s expulsion and criticized Trudeau’s government for being too slow to act.

    In a statement posted to Twitter on May 1, Chong said that he found out about the intelligence – which was referenced in a 2021 CSIS report – through the Globe and Mail report, despite having been briefed on general foreign interference threats by CSIS.

    “Like many Canadians, I have family abroad. The PRC’s (People’s Republic of China) targeting of family abroad to intimidate and coerce Canadians here at home is a serious, national threat,” Chong wrote in the statement, in which he says he has family in Hong Kong.

    Chong was among several political figures sanctioned by China in March 2021 in what Beijing called a response to American and Canadian sanctions against individuals and entities in its western region of Xinjiang “based on rumors and disinformation.”

    China has been accused of committing serious human rights violations that may amount to crimes against humanity in its treatment of Uyghur and other Muslim minorities in the region. Beijing denies the claims, and rights groups have documented its efforts to quash international focus on the situation there.

    In February 2021, Canada’s parliament passed its non-binding motion saying China’s treatment of Uyghurs in the Xinjiang region constitutes genocide.

    China has yet to specify what “countermeasures” it may take in response to Zhao’s expulsion, but these could include a tit-for-tat expulsion of a diplomat at Canada’s mission in China.

    Beijing is also widely seen to have a track record of using economic or trade-related measures to express displeasure with diplomatic partners.

    The expelled diplomat Zhao was listed in the Department of Global Affairs’ record of foreign diplomats as working in China’s Toronto consulate, the Globe and Mail reported earlier this month.

    His name was not visible in a CNN search of the directory of China’s foreign representatives Monday night.

    Prior to naming Zhao as “persona non grata” Monday, Foreign Affairs Minister Joly last week said Canada’s government needed to carefully weigh how China might react to a Canadian response.

    China would “of course” take action against Canada’s “economic interest, consumer interest and also diplomatic interests,” Joly told parliamentarians on Thursday, adding that, “I know that we are under pressure to go fast, (but) we need to make sure as well that we protect our democracy.”

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  • Turkey kills ISIS leader in Syria operation, Erdogan says | CNN

    Turkey kills ISIS leader in Syria operation, Erdogan says | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan claimed on Sunday that the country’s intelligence forces had killed the leader of ISIS in Syria as he vowed to continue the country’s fight against terrorism.

    In a broadcast, Erdogan said Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization had been tracking a man known as Abu al-Hussein al-Husseini Al-Qurshi “for a long time.”

    “This person was neutralized in the operation carried out by MIT (Turkish National Intelligence Organization) yesterday in Syria,” he said. “From now on, we will continue our fight without discrimination against terrorist organizations.”

    He added that Turkey’s fight against terrorism contributes to Europe’s security, claiming that Europe “is not aware of this or does not want to be aware of it.”

    Al-Qurshi was named ISIS leader after the death of his predecessor, Abu al-Hasan al-Hashmi al-Qurayshi, who was killed last October by the Free Syrian Army in Syria.

    Little was known about Al-Qurshi, but at the time of his appointment, ISIS described him as an “old fighter.”

    Erdogan’s announcement came after a recent absence from the public eye due to illness.

    Media reports had speculated that his health was deteriorating just two weeks before a crucial election.

    The speculation followed a televised interview on Tuesday, which was interrupted after Erdogan left his chair in the middle of a question, before returning to explain he had a “serious stomach flu.”

    Following Tuesday’s incident, Erdogan was advised by his doctors to rest at home and canceled a number of public events.

    On Thursday, the Turkish government rejected news reports about his health as “baseless claims.” He appeared on video link the same day for the inauguration of the Akkuya nuclear power plant.

    Erdogan made his return to public stage for the first time in three days on Saturday, at an aviation festival in Istanbul, where he rallied his supporters as he seeks to extend his 20-year stint in power.

    Turkey goes to the polls on May 14, just three months after a devastating earthquake and amid soaring inflation and a currency crisis that last year slashed nearly 30% off the lira’s value against the dollar.

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  • ‘We can’t get to your passport:’ People stranded in Sudan after Western diplomats flee without returning travel documents | CNN

    ‘We can’t get to your passport:’ People stranded in Sudan after Western diplomats flee without returning travel documents | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A growing number of people say they are stranded in Sudan because Western embassy workers fled the conflict-ridden country without returning passports that were surrendered during visa applications.

    Diplomats from at least three Western missions have been unable to grant access to travel documents belonging to Sudanese nationals, according to nine testimonies reviewed by CNN.

    Most Western embassies in Sudan were evacuated a week into the fighting, leaving many Sudanese visa applicants without their travel documents and in legal limbo.

    In some cases, embassy workers advised people to “apply for a new [Sudanese] passport” despite the violence grinding Sudanese government services to a halt, according to screenshots seen by CNN.

    In one case, a Swedish official suggested that the Sudanese visa applicant use a photocopy of his passport in lieu of his travel document.

    The Sudanese nationals who spoke to CNN accused the embassies of neglect, obstructing their legal passage out of the country, where the violence has claimed at least 512 lives.

    The Dutch foreign ministry confirmed to CNN that “a number of Sudanese passports” were left behind at the embassy after it closed “with immediate effect” due to the conflict.

    “A number of Sudanese passports were left behind at the Dutch embassy. These are passports of Sudanese passport holders who have applied for a short-stay Schengen visa or an MVV (provisional residence permit). The sudden outburst of fighting in the early morning of April 15, forced the Dutch embassy to close with immediate effect,” a spokesperson for the ministry said in a statement.

    “The diplomatic staff has since been evacuated and transferred to the Netherlands. Unfortunately, we have not been able to collect these passports due to the poor security situation. We understand that this has put the people involved in a difficult situation. We are actively investigating possibilities to provide individual support,” they added.

    The Italian foreign ministry told CNN it was aware of the problem, and will try to return passports to Sudanese nationals “as soon as possible.”

    “We are well aware of the problem. Keeping in touch with all concerned people and will do our outmost [sic], even under the current circumstances, to return the passports as soon as possible. We are taking care of Sudanese nationals who are in this situation with the same attention we are devoting to our evacuees. We are actively working to be able to respond quickly to the requests,” Niccolò Fontana, the head of communication for Italian Foreign Ministry, said to CNN.

    CNN also asked the Swedish foreign ministry for comment, but had not received a response by the time of publication.

    A spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross told CNN the aid organization does not issue emergency travel documents to Sudanese citizens trying to leave the country.

    “I can’t imagine, how incredibly difficult it must be for Sudanese people who want to leave the country, but can’t do so because they don’t have their documents. But unfortunately the ICRC cannot issue emergency travel documents for people to leave their own country,” they told CNN in a statement.

    Sporadic attacks have continued to flare in parts of the capital Khartoum, the epicenter of the power struggle between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), led by Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

    Civilian hopes of fleeing the danger through safe and legal routes are dwindling, as the clashes persist despite a ceasefire agreement between the Sudanese army and paramilitary forces.

    On Friday, RSF claimed it had secured all the roads into the capital and controlled 90% of what is Sudan’s most populous state.

    Meanwhile, SAF accused the paramilitary group of violating international humanitarian law and targeting retired military and police officers.

    “[The RSF] is committing crimes and terrorist practices that have nothing to do with the legacies of the Sudanese people,” the SAF said in a statement, vowing a harsh response.

    Since the conflict broke out, more than 50,000 people have fled Sudan to Chad, Egypt, South Sudan, and the Central African Republic, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said on Twitter on Friday.

    The number includes both Sudanese nationals and refugees who were forced to return to their countries, Grandi said, warning that the number will continue to rise until the violence stops.

    India’s Ministry of External Affairs said on Friday that it had evacuated “nearly 2,400” Indian citizens from Sudan since the start of the conflict. They were transported out by the Indian Navy and Air Forces in 13 batches.

    News of those stranded without passports comes amid a growing chorus of criticism against foreign governments and international aid organizations leading rescue operations to extract their own nationals, leaving locals to fend for themselves. Power, food and water shortages are rampant as the conflict devastates large parts of the country.

    Fatima – a pseudonym CNN is using for security reasons – said she is desperate to leave the country. Two people in her east Khartoum neighborhood were killed in the fighting. But her travel documents are locked in the Italian Embassy, where she said staff members denied her repeated pleas to retrieve her passport.

    “I’m still trying to communicate with them, trying to explain that this is a critical situation,” she said. “Of course no country will allow people to enter their lands without a valid passport.”

    Zara, another Sudanese woman caught up in the passport bind, said her family has refused to leave the country without her. CNN is using a pseudonym for security reasons. The evacuated Dutch Embassy – where she said her passport has been held for more than three weeks – has not responded to her attempts to contact them.

    Men walk past shells on the ground near damaged buildings in Khartoum North in Sudan on Thursday, where the violence has left some locals trapped inside their homes.

    “I am now an obstacle for my family since they cannot travel and leave me,” she told CNN.

    “Please help end this war. And please consider this passport issue. It might save lives. The house in front of us has been attacked.”

    In a social media exchange seen by CNN, between another visa applicant and the Dutch Embassy, the official Facebook page of the diplomatic mission declined a request to return a withheld passport.

    “We deeply regret the current situation you’re in,” the embassy replied to 35-year-old Sarah Abdalla. “We were forced to close the embassy and evacuate our staff. This unfortunately means we can’t get to your passport.”

    “We advise to apply [sic] for a new passport with your local authorities,” the embassy added.

    For many, that’s not possible. Sudanese government services have been largely suspended in Sudan due to the fighting.

    “I am in urgent need of my passport to leave to Egypt through the road,” Abdalla told CNN. “We are in an unsafe condition and suffering from lack of water in the taps now for 13 days.

    “We go out threatening our lives to fetch water and usually get salty water. I have four other colleagues [whose] passports [are] stuck and facing the same situation.”

    Nabta Seifelyazal Mohamed Ali, a 20-year-old Sudanese medical student at the University of Khartoum, said she urgently needs to obtain her passport from the Dutch Embassy so she can make the treacherous journey to Egypt with her family, including her mother, father, uncle, and her four siblings.

    In an email correspondence with the Dutch Embassy, seen by CNN, an embassy worker replied: “We understand your situation but it is not safe enough to reopen our services. We do not know how long this situation will last. If there are any updates we will inform you.”

    Ali said that the family needs to leave their home by Sunday because they are running out of medication for her sick uncle, who has a chronic kidney condition.

    Filmmaker Ahmad Mahmoud, 35, said the Swedish Embassy has held his passport since he applied for a visa to attend Sweden’s Malmo Arab Film Festival, which started on April 28.

    Christina Brooks, the head of migration at the Swedish Embassy in Khartoum, repeatedly told Mahmoud that personnel could not access his passport because they had evacuated the building, according to excerpts of phone messages seen by CNN.

    “Please please let me know when I can go to the embassy and take my passport. I need to be ready to leave the country. Our building is not safe anymore,” Mahmoud said in one excerpted message to Brooks.

    Brooks replied: “As mentioned, I’m deeply sorry to say that it is not possible.”

    In lieu of travel documents, she recommended he use a photocopy of his passport to exit Sudan and to “collect all other documents of identification” including his marriage certificate, the messages said.

    “At least it is good that you have a copy if you manage to get out without the actual passport,” said Brooks. “I hope that you and your family manage to get out and that you stay safe!”

    “I can’t leave with this,” Mahmoud said, attaching a picture of his faded photocopied passport.

    CNN asked Brooks for comment but had not received a response by the time of publication.

    When CNN last spoke to Mahmoud on Thursday, he and his wife were en route to the coastal city of Port Sudan on the Red Sea. They will contend with chaotic border crossings, where confused border guards have frequently been denying people passage out of the country, including some Sudanese-American dual nationals.

    “Not having my passport with me puts crazy, crazy stress on me because my wife is not going to accept leaving without me,” he told CNN.

    Mahmoud said he will attempt to “go to Ethiopia or Egypt from [Port Sudan]. It’s going to be a huge, huge problem that I have no idea how to deal with. I’m just hoping for an end to the war, I guess, so I can get a new passport.”

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  • US issuing new sanctions for Russia and Iran for holding Americans hostage | CNN Politics

    US issuing new sanctions for Russia and Iran for holding Americans hostage | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The US is imposing new sanctions on groups in Russia and Iran accused of taking Americans hostage as it works to prevent more captive-taking and potentially secure the release of citizens currently being detained.

    The move comes amid several high-profile cases of Americans being wrongfully detained. Evan Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter, and Paul Whelan, a former Marine, are being held in Russia on espionage charges they each vehemently deny.

    American citizens Siamak Namazi, Emad Shargi and Morad Tahbaz are all being held in Iran’s notorious Evin prison, where there have been reports of torture.

    The sanctions ordered up Thursday would punish organizations the US accuses of being responsible for holding hostage or wrongfully detaining Americans. In Iran, four individuals are also coming under new sanctions.

    The groups are Russia’s Federal Security Service and the Intelligence Organization of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

    Officials said the steps should act as a warning to those thinking of taking Americans hostage.

    “We are also showing that one cannot engage in this sort of awful behavior using human beings as pawns, as bargaining chips, without paying consequences and these are some of the consequences,” a senior administration official said.

    But questions remain about the real impact of these sanctions because many of the entities hit on Thursday were already sanctioned under different authorities by the US.

    On Thursday, Neda Sharghi, the sister of Emad Shargi, praised the White House for taking the action, but urged President Joe Biden to bring home those who are wrongfully detained.

    “Deterrent actions like this one are an important tool in our country’s efforts to stop countries from engaging in detentions with impunity,” she said. “But they are deterrents of future behavior and no deterrent is going to resolve the ongoing detention of Americans that is going on right now.”

    She also urged Biden to meet with the families of the three men held in Iran – a request that the families have made for months.

    “Regardless of how positive this action is, it does not absolve the president for refusing to meet with the families of the three Americans being held in Iran – collectively for a total of 18 years. We continue to plead with the White House to let us meet with our president,” Neda Sharghi said.

    Wednesday’s sanctions are the first actions taken in conjunction with an executive order signed by Biden nine months ago.

    The executive order seeks to punish organizations or criminals responsible for holding Americans captive.

    It draws heavily from an existing law – the Robert Levinson Hostage Recovery and Hostage-Taking Accountability Act – which laid out the criteria for who is considered wrongfully detained, expanded the tools to help free those US detainees and hostages, authorized sanctions and was meant to foster increased engagement with families. That law was named in honor of Robert Levinson, an American detained in Iran for decades and who is believed to have died there.

    Following Wednesday’s sanctions, Levinson’s family said in a statement that he “spent his life working for justice.”

    “As Americans continue to be targeted around the world, we hope today’s action serves as a warning that those looking to deprive innocent U.S. citizens of their freedom, just as he was, to use them as political pawns, will be held accountable for their abhorrent behavior,” he said.

    The executive order mandated a better flow of information to the families of Americans held hostage or detained overseas, and was signed the measure amid criticism from the family members of some hostages, who said the administration wasn’t being aggressive enough in securing their loved ones’ releases.

    Since then, the administration has secured the release of numerous Americans being held overseas, including American basketball player Brittney Griner from Russia and seven jailed Americans from Venezuela.

    But several high-profile cases remain unresolved. Officials said the sanctions issued Thursday were only a part of the overall strategy in preventing Americans from being taken hostage and in returning those currently in detention.

    “Sanctions are a piece of holding accountable bad actors for their role in perpetrating appalling activity in the world,” the official said, noting assets would be frozen and cut off from the global financial system.

    Officials said they consulted throughout the US government before deciding on the sanctions. They said they were confident the steps would not hamper current efforts to secure Americans’ releases.

    “From time to time diplomacy requires some consequences being introduced, negative consequences be introduced, toward bad actors, particularly in this area of detaining, wrongfully detaining, taking hostage Americans,” a second senior administration official said.

    In taking these actions the US government has to be careful not to put more barriers in the way of getting out Americans who remain wrongfully detained. Officials said it was possible the sanctions could be lifted if Americans held in Russia or Iran were released.

    “I don’t think we rule things out if they could be the difference between Americans being in detention, where they never should have been, versus home with their families,” the second official said.

    This story has been updated with additional developments.

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  • Chinese leader Xi Jinping speaks with Ukraine’s Zelensky for first time since Russia’s invasion | CNN

    Chinese leader Xi Jinping speaks with Ukraine’s Zelensky for first time since Russia’s invasion | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky spoke Wednesday with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, Moscow’s most important diplomatic partner, in the first phone call between the two leaders since the start of Russia’s invasion.

    “I had a long and meaningful phone call with Chinese President Xi Jinping. I believe that this call, as well as the appointment of Ukraine’s ambassador to China, will give a powerful impetus to the development of our bilateral relations,” Zelensky said.

    Andrii Yermak, head of the Ukrainian Presidential Office, described the phone call as “an important dialogue” in a Telegram post Wednesday.

    Chinese state broadcaster CCTV also reported the call, during which Xi confirmed that that an envoy would travel to Ukraine and other countries to help conduct “in-depth communication” with all parties for a political settlement of the Ukrainian crisis.

    In a briefing on Wednesday, China’s Foreign Ministry said its envoy to Ukraine will be Li Hui, Special Representative of the Chinese Government on Eurasian Affairs. Li is the former Chinese ambassador to Russia, who served in the post from 2009 to 2019.

    The ministry did not provide further details as to when Li would make the trip and which other countries he would be visiting.

    Beijing has refused to condemn Russia’s invasion or make any public call for Russia to withdraw its troops. Its officials have instead repeatedly said that the “legitimate” security concerns of all countries must be taken into account and accused NATO and the US of fueling the conflict.

    Despite its claims of neutrality and calls for peace talks, Beijing has offered Moscow much-needed diplomatic and economic support throughout the invasion.

    Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Wednesday that Moscow had taken notice of China’s willingness to facilitate negotiations with Ukraine following the phone call between Xi and Zelensky.  

    “We note the readiness of the Chinese side to make efforts to establish the negotiation process,” Zakharova said during a press conference on Wednesday.

    However, she said she also noted that under current conditions negotiations are unlikely and blamed Kyiv for rejecting Moscow’s initiatives.

    Wednesday’s phone call is the first time Xi has spoken to Zelensky since Russia invaded Ukraine in February last year. In comparison, Xi has spoken to Russian leader Vladimir Putin five times since the invasion – including a face-to-face at the Kremlin when the Chinese leader visited Moscow last month and another in-person meeting at a regional summit in Central Asia last September.

    Reports that discussions were underway between China and Ukraine to arrange a call for their leaders first surfaced in March, in the lead-up to Xi’s state visit to Russia.

    The reported efforts were widely seen by analysts at the time as part of China’s attempt to portray itself as a potential peacemaker in the conflict, in which it has claimed neutrality.

    But the call didn’t materialize for weeks after Xi and Putin met in Moscow and made a sweeping affirmation of their alignment across a host of issues – including their shared mistrust of the United States.

    Following a trip to Beijing, European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen told reporters earlier this month Xi reiterated his willingness to speak with Zelensky “when conditions and time are right.”

    Xi’s call with Zelensky comes days after China’s top diplomat in Paris sparked anger in Europe by questioning the sovereignty of former Soviet republics, in comments that could undermine China’s efforts to be seen as a potential mediator between Russia and Ukraine.

    The remarks by China’s ambassador to France Lu Shaye, who said during a television interview last weekend that former Soviet countries don’t have “effective status in international law,” have caused diplomatic consternation, especially in the Baltic states, with Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia summoning Chinese representatives to ask for clarification.

    Officials including from Ukraine, Moldova, France and the European Union also all hit back with criticisms of Lu’s comments.

    China later distanced itself from Lu’s comments saying he was expressing a personal opinion, not official policy.

    CNN asked Chinese Foreign Ministry official Yu Jun if the timing of the Xi-Zelensky phone call had anything to do with the backlash. “China has issued an authoritative response to the remarks made by the Chinese ambassador to France,” he said. “And I have been very clear on China’s position (on the Ukraine crisis).”

    The last publicly reported phone call between Xi and Zelensky was on January 4, 2022, weeks before the invasion, during which the two leaders exchanged congratulatory messages to celebrate the 30th anniversary of diplomatic bilateral ties.

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  • 3-day Sudan ceasefire announced by US Secretary of State | CNN Politics

    3-day Sudan ceasefire announced by US Secretary of State | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday announced that the warring factions in Sudan agreed to a a ceasefire, “starting at midnight on April 24, to last for 72 hours.”

    The agreement between the Sudanese Armed Forces, or SAF, and the Rapid Support Forces, or RSF, came “following intense negotiation over the past 48 hours,” Blinken said.

    “The United States urges the SAF and RSF to immediately and fully uphold the ceasefire,” Blinken said. “To support a durable end to the fighting, the United States will coordinate with regional and international partners, and Sudanese civilian stakeholders, to assist in the creation of a committee to oversee the negotiation, conclusion, and implementation of a permanent cessation of hostilities and humanitarian arrangements in Sudan.”

    In a written statement Monday, the RSF said it had agreed to the truce “in order to open humanitarian corridors, facilitate the movement of citizens and residents, enable them to fulfill their needs, reach hospitals and safe areas, and evacuate diplomatic missions.”

    Previously agreed ceasefires have broken down, although brief lulls in the fighting have allowed foreign civilians to evacuate Sudan to safety.

    If the new three-day cessation of fighting holds, it could create an opportunity to get much-needed critical resources like food and medical supplies to those in need.

    It could also allow for the safe passage of the “dozens” of Americans who Blinken said have expressed interest in leaving Sudan.

    Although a number of nations are evacuating their citizens, US officials have repeatedly said they do not plan to evacuate Americans from the country due to conditions on the ground.

    National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told CNN’s “This Morning” Monday the situation in Sudan “is not conducive and not safe to try to conduct some kind of a larger military evacuation of American citizens.”

    National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said Monday, however, that the US government is “actively facilitating the departure of American citizens who want to leave Sudan” through means like overland convoys.

    All US government employees were evacuated from Khartoum in a US military operation and the US embassy was “temporarily” closed this weekend after a week of heavy fighting between rival military factions which has left hundreds dead and thousands wounded.

    President Joe Biden has asked for “every conceivable option” to help Americans who remain in Sudan, Sullivan said.

    “Right now, we believe that the best way for us to help facilitate people’s departure is in fact to support this land evacuation route, as well as work with allies and partners who are working on their own evacuation plans as well,” he said at a White House briefing.

    Blinken, who noted that the US does not have specific counts of how many Americans are in Sudan “because Americans are not required to register” with the US State Department, said the US has been in touch with American citizens on the ground to provide “consular services, other services, advice.”

    “We do know of course the number of Americans who have registered with us, and with whom we’re in very active touch, communication. Of those, I would say some dozens have expressed an interest in leaving,” Blinken said at a news conference at the State Department.

    “In just the last 36 hours since the embassy evacuation was completed, we’ve continued to be in close communication with US citizens and individuals affiliated with the US government to provide assistance and facilitate available departure routes for those seeking to move to safety via land, air and sea,” said Blinken, noting that included American citizens “traveling overland in the UN convoy from Khartoum to Port Sudan.”

    “We’re also deploying naval assets to Port Sudan in the Red Sea in case Americans who get out to Port Sudan want to be transported elsewhere or need any kind of care,” he added.

    Sullivan said the US has “deployed US intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets to support land evacuation routes, which Americans are using, and we’re moving naval assets within the region to provide support.”

    “American citizens have begun arriving in Port Sudan and we are helping to facilitate their onward travel,” he said.

    Officials told congressional staffers last week that there could be an estimated 16,000 American citizens in Sudan, most of whom are dual nationals.

    Both Blinken and Kirby echoed this on Monday and suggested that many of those dual nationals “don’t want to leave” the country.

    “We think the vast majority of these American citizens in Sudan, and they’re not all in Khartoum, are dual nationals – these are people who grew up in Sudan, who have families, their work, their businesses there, who don’t want to leave,” he said.

    In the days leading up to the evacuation, officials in Washington and the US Embassy in Khartoum repeatedly stressed that they did not envision carrying out a government-coordinated evacuation of American citizens due to the lack of an operational airport and the ongoing fighting on the ground.

    Still, there are worries about how to get Americans who wish to depart out of Sudan safely, especially now that the US does not have a diplomatic presence there. Although the US State Department warned US citizens against traveling to Sudan, some Americans with loved ones in the country suggested that the government had not done enough to advise Americans already in the country to leave.

    Some countries have already successfully carried out evacuations, including Spain, Jordan, Italy, France, Denmark and Germany, while the United Kingdom has evacuated embassy staff. Several of their convoys also carried citizens from other countries.

    Saudi Arabia evacuated 10 Saudi nationals and 189 foreigners including Americans from Sudan, the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced on Twitter Monday.

    More evacuations are still being planned or are underway for the countries like China and India.

    There is immense concern about the safety of those who still remain in the country, regardless of their nationality, given the ongoing violence and its impact on critical resources like food, water and medical care. Internet connectivity has also been unreliable, leaving family members and friends outside of Sudan to worry if their loved ones are safe.

    The US government typically does not facilitate evacuations for regular citizens, and the US withdrawal from Afghanistan presented a rare – and chaotic – exception to that norm. Although the Biden administration has sought to avoid comparisons to that event, “Kabul casts a very long shadow over Khartoum,” in the words of one former official.

    Rebecca Winter, whose sister and 18-month-old niece are in Sudan, told CNN that they are in an “awful holding pattern” because her sister “has been told by both the US embassy and the international school that she works for that she has to shelter in place, and that she should not accept any offers for private evacuation.”

    “So she is just stuck waiting right now in fear,” she said.

    Although the US State Department warned Americans against traveling to Sudan, Winter said that according to her sister, “US employees there were not asked to leave the country.”

    Fatima Elsheikh, whose two brothers are in Sudan, also pushed back on the claim that US citizens who were already on the ground were warned before the outbreak of violence.

    “It makes me upset, because there was no warning. I don’t, I think it’s being painted as a country that’s been war-torn for a while, which isn’t true. This is unprecedented, what’s happening,” she said.

    The State Department travel advisory for Sudan prior to the outbreak of violence did not specifically tell Americans already in the country to leave, but advised them to “have evacuation plans that do not rely on U.S. government assistance” and “have a personal emergency action plan that does not rely on U.S. government assistance.”

    Blinken said Monday that the effort to assist Americans will “be an ongoing process.” He said the US is looking at resuming its diplomatic presence in Sudan, including in Port Sudan, but “that’s going to be entirely dependent on the conditions in Sudan.”

    Kirby said Monday morning that the violence in Sudan “is increasing,” and urged Americans remaining in the country to shelter in place.

    “It’s more dangerous today than it was just yesterday, the day before, and so, the best advice we can give to those Americans who did not abide by our warnings to leave Sudan and not to travel to Sudan is to stay sheltered in place,” Kirby told CNN’s Don Lemon.

    Blinken said that “some of the convoys that have tried to move people out” of Khartoum “have encountered problems, including robbery, looting, that kind of thing,” but did not specify whether those convoys were carrying US citizens.

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  • Chinese ambassador sparks European outrage over suggestion former Soviet states don’t exist | CNN

    Chinese ambassador sparks European outrage over suggestion former Soviet states don’t exist | CNN

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    Hong Kong
    CNN
     — 

    European countries are demanding answers from Beijing after its top diplomat in Paris questioned the sovereignty of former Soviet republics, in comments that could undermine China’s efforts to be seen as a potential mediator between Russia and Ukraine.

    The remarks by China’s ambassador to France Lu Shaye, who said during a television interview that former Soviet countries don’t have “effective status in international law,” have caused diplomatic consternation, especially in the Baltic states.

    Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia would be summoning Chinese representatives to ask for clarification, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis confirmed on Monday.

    Officials including from Ukraine, Moldova, France and the European Union also all hit back with their own criticisms of Lu’s comments.

    Lu made the remarks in response to a question whether Crimea, which was illegally annexed by Russia in 2014, was part of Ukraine.

    “Even these ex-Soviet countries don’t have an effective status in international law because there was no international agreement to materialize their status as sovereign countries,” Lu said, after first noting that the question of Crimea “depends on how the problem is perceived” as the region was “at the beginning Russian” and then “offered to Ukraine during the Soviet era.”

    The remarks appeared to disavow the sovereignty of countries that became independent states and United Nations members after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 – and come amid Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine under leader Vladimir Putin’s vision the country should be part of Russia.

    China has so far refused to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or call for a withdrawal of its troops, instead urging restraint by “all parties” and accusing NATO of fueling the conflict. It has also continued to deepen diplomatic and economic ties with Moscow.

    EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell said that China will be discussed during a foreign ministers meeting on Monday.

    “We have been talking a lot about China (over) the last days, but we will have to continue discussing about China because it’s one of the most important issues for our foreign policy,” Borrell said.

    The EU foreign ministers will also raise the situation in Moldova and Georgia, as those countries “see the war (in Ukraine) very close, they feel the threat,” he added.

    Moldova is a small country on Ukraine’s southwestern border that has been caught in the crossfire of Russia’s invasion.

    Georgia, which shares a frontier with Russia further east, has also come under the spotlight, after protests erupted over a controversial foreign agents bill similar to one adopted in the Kremlin to crack down on political dissent.

    “For us Georgia is a very important country and remember that it has specific security issues because its territory is partially occupied by Russia,” Borrell said.

    On Sunday, he tweeted that the remarks by the Chinese ambassador were “unacceptable” and “the EU can only suppose these declarations do not represent China’s official policy.”

    France also responded Sunday, with its Foreign Ministry stating its “full solidarity” with all the allied countries affected and calling on China to clarify whether these comments reflect its position, according to Reuters.

    Several leaders in former Soviet states, including Ukraine, were quick to hit back following the interview, which aired Friday on French station LCI.

    Latvian Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkevics called for an “explanation from the Chinese side and complete retraction of this statement” in a post on Twitter Saturday.

    He pledged to raise the issue during a meeting of EU foreign ministers Monday, where relations with China are expected to be discussed.

    “We are surprised about Chinese (ambassador’s) statements questioning sovereignty of countries declaring independence in ’91. Mutual respect & (territorial) integrity have been key to Moldova-China ties,” the Moldovan ministry said on its official Twitter account.

    “Our expectations are that these declarations do not represent China’s official policy.”

    “It is strange to hear an absurd version of the ‘history of Crimea’ from a representative of a country that is scrupulous about its thousand-year history,” Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukraine’s Presidential Administration, also wrote on Twitter.

    “If you want to be a major political player, do not parrot the propaganda of Russian outsiders…”

    When asked about Lu’s remarks at a regular press briefing Monday, a spokesperson for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said China respects the “sovereign state status” of former Soviet Union countries.

    “After the Soviet Union dissolved, China was the one of the first countries to establish diplomatic ties with the countries concerned … China has always adhered to the principles of mutual request and equality in its development of amicable and cooperative bilateral relations,” spokesperson Mao Ning said, without directly directly addressing questions on Lu’s views.

    This is not the first time that Lu – a prominent voice among China’s so-called aggressive “wolf-warrior” diplomats – has sparked controversy for his views.

    “He’s been a well-known provocateur,” said Jean-Pierre Cabestan, a professor of political science at Hong Kong Baptist University.

    “But he’s a diplomat, he represents his government, so it reflects some thinking within China about the issue,” he said. adding, however, that it’s “not the time for China to put at risk its relationship” with France.

    The comments place Beijing under the spotlight at a particularly sensitive moment for its European diplomacy.

    Ties have soured as Europe has uneasily watched China’s tightening relationship with Russia and its refusal to condemn Putin’s invasion.

    Beijing in recent months has sought to mend its image, highlighting its stated neutrality in the conflict and desire to play a “constructive role” in dialogue and negotiation, further fueling debate in European capitals over how to calibrate its relationship with China, a key economic partner.

    That debate intensified this month following a visit to Beijing from French President Emmanuel Macron, who signed a raft of cooperation agreements with China during a trip he framed as an opportunity to start work with Beijing to push for peace in Ukraine.

    Voices in former Soviet states, where many remember being under Communist authoritarian rule, have been among those in Europe critical of such an approach.

    “If anyone is still wondering why the Baltic States don’t trust China to ‘broker peace in Ukraine,’ here’s a Chinese ambassador arguing that Crimea is Russian and our countries’ borders have no legal basis,” Lithuanian Foreign Minister Landsbergis wrote on Twitter Saturday following Lu’s interview.

    Moritz Rudolf, a fellow and research scholar at the Paul Tsai China Center of the Yale Law School in the US, said China had been “increasingly successful in being perceived as a responsible power that might play a constructive role in a peace process in Ukraine.”

    “It remains to be seen whether the leadership in Beijing realizes how damaging those words may turn out to be for its ambitions in Europe if the Foreign Ministry does not distance the (People’s Republic of China) from the words of Ambassador Lu,” he said.

    He added that China’s “official position and practice” contradict Lu’s comments, including as China had not recognized the sovereignty of Russia over Crimea or any territory it annexed since 2014.

    Others suggested Lu’s remarks may also shed light on Beijing’s real diplomatic priorities.

    For Russia, giving up control of Crimea is widely seen as a non-starter in any potential peace settlement on Ukraine. This means Beijing may have a hard time giving a straight answer on this question, according to Yun Sun, director of the China Program at the Washington-based think tank Stimson Center.

    “The question is impossible to answer for China. China’s relationship with Russia is where its influence comes from,” she said, adding that didn’t mean Lu could have given a “better answer.”

    “Between sabotaging China’s relationship with Russia and angering Europe, (Lu) chose the latter.”

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  • US evacuates American diplomatic personnel from Sudan | CNN Politics

    US evacuates American diplomatic personnel from Sudan | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    All US diplomats and their family members are safely on their way out of Sudan on US military aircraft, and the US embassy in Khartoum has also been closed with their departure, a US official told CNN.

    The decision to evacuate the American personnel comes after a week of heavy fighting between rival military factions – the Sudanese Armed Forces, or SAF, and the Rapid Support Forces, or RSF – which has left hundreds dead and thousands wounded.

    The US military deployed “additional capabilities” near Sudan in recent days to prepare for a potential evacuation of the US Embassy as American officials continued to monitor the volatile situation on the ground.

    US Secretary of State Antony Blinken had urged the heads of the warring parties to reach a ceasefire agreement for the Eid al-Fitr holiday, which would allow a potential window to evacuate US diplomats who had been sheltering in place since the violence broke out.

    Despite statements from both sides that they had agreed to such a ceasefire, fighting has continued.

    The SAF said in a statement earlier Saturday that its leader, Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, had “agreed to provide the necessary assistance” to facilitate the safe evacuation of foreign citizens from the country in response to “calls from a number of heads of states.”

    The RSF said in a statement posted overnight Khartoum time that they had coordinated with the US on the evacuation. CNN cannot corroborate the RSF’s claims that they helped with the evacuation.

    Although the US has evacuated its diplomats, on Friday State Department principal deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel said that “due to uncertain security situations in Khartoum and closure of the airport, Americans should have no expectation of a US government-coordinated evacuation at this time.”

    Patel said the State Department had been in touch with “several hundred American citizens who we understand to be in Sudan” to discuss “security precautions and other measures that they can take on their own.”

    The State Department does not keep official counts of US citizens in foreign countries and Americans are not required to register when they go abroad. Officials told staffers Wednesday that there could be an estimated 16,000 American citizens in Sudan, most of whom are dual nationals.

    This is a breaking story and will be updated.

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  • EXCLUSIVE: Hunter Biden lawyers to meet with Justice Department officials next week as scrutiny of investigation intensifies | CNN Politics

    EXCLUSIVE: Hunter Biden lawyers to meet with Justice Department officials next week as scrutiny of investigation intensifies | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Lawyers for Hunter Biden are scheduled to meet next week with US attorney David Weiss and at least one senior career official from Justice Department headquarters to discuss the long-running investigation into the president’s son, multiple sources familiar with the matter told CNN.

    The Hunter Biden legal team had reached out to Justice officials in recent weeks, asking for an update on the case. As is routine when lawyers request a status update, they were invited to meet next week, according to one source familiar with the meeting.

    Weiss, the US Attorney in Delaware who was appointed by former President Donald Trump, is overseeing an ongoing criminal case into President Joe Biden’s son.

    After prosecutors narrowed down the possible charges Hunter Biden could face last year, there haven’t been any public developments. According to sources familiar with the investigation, prosecutors are still weighing whether to bring two misdemeanor charges for failure to file taxes, one count of felony tax evasion related to the overreporting of expenses, and a false statement charge regarding a gun purchase.

    The Justice Department did not comment. A spokesperson for the US attorney’s office in Delaware declined to comment.

    Hunter Biden has not been charged with any crimes and has previously denied any wrongdoing.

    The scheduled meeting comes as the Hunter Biden legal probe is back in the spotlight after an IRS supervisory special agent reached out to Congress, claiming to have information about alleged mishandling and political interference in the case. While a letter from the agent’s lawyer to Congress does not name Hunter Biden, as that could be a violation of the tax code, a source familiar with the matter previously told CNN that the case is the one involving the president’s son.

    The agent is seeking whistleblower protections to share the information with Congress, according to a letter obtained by CNN.

    The special agent also claims to have information that contradicts Attorney General Merrick Garland’s testimony before Congress, the source familiar with the matter told CNN. “I have pledged not to interfere with that investigation, and I have carried through on my pledge,” Garland testified in March.

    The IRS agent worked on Hunter Biden’s criminal case and contends that the president’s son is being treated differently than other individuals would be in terms of violations of the tax code, sources familiar with the agent’s allegations said. The agent reported up the chain of command about his concerns of the treatment of Hunter Biden’s returns and tax filings, one of the sources added.

    Congressional committees are in active conversations about when and how to interview the whistleblower. The IRS agent’s team wants him to do one interview with the committees, and have Democrats and Republicans present for it, the source said.

    In recent months, as Republicans took control of the House and the federal case appeared to stall, Hunter Biden’s legal team decided to pursue a more aggressive and litigious approach to his defense, despite what one source described as objections from top White House advisers. For instance, one of Hunter Biden’s lawyers recently sued former Trump aide Garrett Ziegler, accusing him of harassment. Hunter Biden’s team also has accused in court a Delaware computer repair shop owner of trying to invade Hunter Biden’s privacy and wrongfully sharing his personal data for political purposes.

    CNN has reached out to Ziegler for comment.

    Sources close to Hunter Biden have attacked the IRS agent’s motives and note that even if the whistleblower has evidence of the investigation being mishandled, it would be about government conduct and not about Hunter Biden.

    The IRS agent’s allegations are primarily focused on improper politicization of the case at the Justice Department and FBI instead of at the Treasury Department or IRS, according to a source familiar with the matter.

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  • These Iranian activists fled for freedom. The regime still managed to find them | CNN

    These Iranian activists fled for freedom. The regime still managed to find them | CNN

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    Editor’s Note: A version of this story appears in CNN’s Meanwhile in the Middle East newsletter, a three-times-a-week look inside the region’s biggest stories. Sign up here.


    Paris
    CNN
     — 

    Iranian dissident Massi Kamari felt helpless when she found out about her elderly parents being harassed by the authorities back home.

    She called her mother’s phone in late December, but the person on the other end was a man whose voice she didn’t recognize.

    Her parents were inside the offices of Iran’s intelligence service in Tehran. And she was in the French capital, Paris, where she lives.

    Kamari knew that the government agents who had been intimidating her family for months wanted only one thing: to speak directly to her about her activism abroad.

    “I was thinking: ‘What can I do about this?’ So, I decided to try to record this phone call,” she recalled.

    In the recording of the phone call in late December that was obtained by CNN, Kamari can be heard arguing for almost 20 minutes with a man she believes is a member of Iran’s shadowy intelligence service.

    “Whatever actions you take against the Islamic Republic, there in France, is a crime,” the man is heard saying. “And your family will answer for it.”

    “Sir, my family is only responsible for its own actions,” she responds.

    “Listen,” he says. “Your mother will be taken to Evin Prison, at her age. Your sister and your father (will) also be taken to Evin prison too. They will be interrogated.”

    “Okay,” she answers calmly. “Take them for interrogation. They have done nothing wrong.”

    The 42-year-old is among many Iranians now living in the West who say that Tehran’s terrorizing repression is reaching beyond its borders, to faraway places previously assumed to be safe, in order to crush dissent.

    CNN’s request for comment to Iran’s authorities has gone unanswered.

    Last year, the country was rocked by a popular uprising that was first ignited in September by the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman who died in custody after being detained by the country’s morality police for allegedly wearing her headscarf improperly.

    Months on, the demonstrations have fizzled out amid a growing wave of repression.

    Through the end of January, hundreds of protesters have been killed, including at least 52 children, according to Human Rights Watch. At least four young men have been executed at the order of Iranian courts that the New York-based Center for Human Rights in Iran has called “lynching committees.”

    Dissidents abroad have played a key role in Iran’s protest movement, carrying stories of abuse and oppression from the streets of Iran to international news channels and the halls of foreign governments. That bridge to the outside world has been crucial for the protesters amid a near total shutdown of internet services in the country and tight regime control on local media.

    Successful lobbying campaigns are credited, in part, with ramped-up sanctions against the Tehran regime from Western governments and international organizations. In an unprecedented move, for example, United Nations member states removed Iran from a key UN women’s rights group in December – which was condemned by Iran.

    “Our efforts to promote and protect women’s rights are driven by our rich culture and well-established Constitution,” reads an Iranian government statement.

    “The Iranian women and girls are most informed, dynamic, educated and capable in our region and the world, have always strived for their progress and will continue to strive in the same direction despite continued US chronical hypocrisy.”

    The organizing power and political sway of the diaspora is exactly why Tehran is expanding the crackdown beyond its own borders, Nazila Golestan, an activist of three decades and co-founder of the opposition organization HamAva, told CNN.

    “They are the government. But we are the opposition, and we are numerous,” she explained. “We are everywhere, everywhere and with the internet we have a bridge from the people inside to the people outside.”

    Massi Kamari fled Iran for France about four years ago, fearing for her life due to her activism back home.

    “When I got here, I thought I can freely express my feelings now. I tried to be the voice of my (suffering) people in Iran,” she explained. “I tried to participate as much as I can in protests.”

    But as the protests started picking up steam late last year, she found herself being intimidated again. Her parents in Iran, she said, received repeated calls from the intelligence service for a summoning to their local headquarters.

    “I told them, please don’t answer these calls, and please don’t go there,” she said of her conversation with her parents at the time. “But unfortunately, because these threats got worse and worse and because my parents are older, I could not expect them to listen to me and not go. I understood they are under pressure, and it might happen.”

    And it did happen. On December 31, Kamari said she received the call from a man she believed to be a member of Iran’s intelligence service, who used her mother’s confiscated phone to reach her. He refused to identify himself, but he made his orders and threats clear.

    “It was so hard because I did not know how far these people will go,” she said of the call. “I felt because they were putting pressure on my family and I was not there, I had to respond strongly.”

    The organizing power and political sway of the diaspora is exactly why Tehran is expanding the crackdown beyond its own borders, Nazila Golestan, an activist of three decades and co-founder of the opposition organization HamAva, told CNN.

    For now, Kamari says her parents are safe, but she barely speaks to them as a precaution.

    Other Iranian exiles with loved ones still back home tell similar stories of their families being used as pawns by the Islamic Republic in order to silence them.

    According to a 2021 report by Freedom House, an advocacy group in Washington, DC, Iran engages in transnational repression using tactics including assassinations, detentions, digital intimidation, spyware, coercion by proxy, and mobility controls, among others. The report’s authors noted that these tools have been used against Iranians in at least nine countries in Europe, the Middle East, and North America.

    Forty-year-old Sahar Nasseri left Iran as a teenager to study in Sweden, where she now lives and continues to be an outspoken critic of the Islamic Republic. She says her family, too, is constantly harassed by Iran’s intelligence service.

    “They (the intelligence service) have created this distance between me and my family, which is mental torture,” she said through tears. “For every single thing I do, every time I appear on TV, every political act that me and my friends take, every time we speak with a government or a political representative, they call my parents.”

    Exiled Iranian dissidents say Western sanctions have not ended the campaign of repression and harassment they face for speaking out.

    Despite leaving their homeland for distant countries, many say that no place is beyond the regime’s reach. In January, the US Justice Department said it had uncovered a plot to assassinate prominent Iranian dissident Masih Alinejad near her home in Brooklyn, New York. It wasn’t the first time US authorities had foiled an alleged plot against Alinejad.

    “This is the second time in the past two years that this Office and our partners at the FBI have disrupted plots originating from within Iran to kidnap or kill this victim for the ‘crime’ of exercising the right to free speech,” the DOJ said in a statement on January 27.

    At least three men – the authorities believe are part of an Eastern European crime organization tied to Iran – have been indicted. One was charged with possessing a loaded AK-47 style rifle, found inside a suitcase in his vehicle.

    US prosecutors say that a 2021 kidnapping plot was organized by an Iranian intelligence official, an indictment alleged, but Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs denied any involvement, calling the accusation “baseless and ridiculous,” according to the semi-official news agency ISNA.

    Appearing on “CNN This Morning” in January, Alinejad vowed to continue her activism.

    “I’m not going to give up,” she said “What scares me (is) that this is happening right now in Iran. I mean these criminals were hired by the Islamic Republic. They were a part of a criminal organization from eastern Europe. So, you see the Islamic Republic itself is a criminal organization. And killing innocent protesters inside Iran, killing teenagers every single day.”

    Nasseri and Kamari echo her determination. Three women across three different countries who have defied threats from the Islamic Republic to share their ordeal say efforts to silence them have only made their voices louder and more prominent.

    They say they are inspired by the anti-government demonstrations inside their country and by the courage of protesters there in the face of a brutal government crackdown.

    “There is nowhere you can be safe,” Kamari said from the site of an anti-Iranian regime protest overlooking the Eiffel Tower in Paris. “But even the week after I received the call (from Iranian intelligence officials), I was out doing my political work. I will not stop my activism because of threats.”

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  • Sudan’s paramilitary RSF announces 72-hour ceasefire ahead of Muslim holiday | CNN

    Sudan’s paramilitary RSF announces 72-hour ceasefire ahead of Muslim holiday | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    One of Sudan’s two warring factions has declared a 72-hour truce after nearly a week of fierce fighting, which has left more than 330 people dead and pushed tens of thousands of refugees to flee the country.

    The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) announced the ceasefire in a statement on Twitter early Friday morning local time. The ceasefire is due to begin at 6 a.m., the statement added.

    The ceasefire comes just ahead of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.

    “The truce coincides with the blessed Eid al-Fitr … to open humanitarian corridors to evacuate citizens and give them the opportunity to greet their families,” the RSF said.

    However it is not yet clear whether the announcement will bring fighting to a halt. The rival Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) have yet to comment on the announcement.

    World leaders and international organizations have been urging the RSF and SAF to strike a deal since clashes began on Saturday – but several temporary ceasefires have repeatedly broken down, with both sides trading blame for violating the terms.

    US Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke to the heads of both factions earlier this week, and again on Thursday to urge a ceasefire through at least the end of the Eid weekend.

    UN Secretary General António Guterres also called for a ceasefire on Thursday “for at least three days marking the Eid al Fitr celebrations to allow civilians trapped in conflict zones to escape and to seek medical treatment, food and other essential supplies.”

    The pleas for a ceasefire have grown more urgent in recent days as the death toll climbs. Most hospitals in the capital Khartoum are out of operation, with many having come under attack by shelling; meanwhile, those still operating are rapidly running out of supplies to treat survivors.

    Residents have been stranded at home and in shelters without food or water, surrounded by the threat of gunfire and artillery outside.

    The fighting could force millions into hunger, the World Food Program (WFP) warned on Thursday.

    “Record numbers of people were already facing hunger in Sudan before the conflict erupted on April 15,” it said in a statement, adding that the fighting was preventing the organization from delivering emergency food to civilians.

    The ceasefire could provide a crucial window not just for aid distribution and medical care – but for foreign governments to reach their citizens stranded in Sudan.

    The US Defense Department said on Thursday it was deploying “additional capabilities” nearby Sudan to secure the US Embassy in the country and assist with a potential evacuation, if the situation calls for it. It includes hundreds of Marines who are already in nearby Djibouti, a US defense official told CNN, with aircraft capable of bringing in ground units to secure an embassy.

    US President Joe Biden had “authorized the military to move forward with pre-positioning forces and to develop options in case – and I want to stress right now – in case there’s a need for an evacuation,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Thursday.

    Officials told staffers Wednesday that there are an estimated 16,000 American citizens in Sudan, most of whom are dual nationals. Roughly 500 had contacted the US Embassy since the outbreak of fighting, though only around 50 of those people had asked for help, according to the staffers.

    Some countries have already begun the evacuation process, with Japan announcing it would send its Self-Defense Forces to evacuate 60 Japanese nationals, including embassy staff, from Sudan.

    Sudan’s army also said Thursday that 177 Egyptian soldiers who had been trapped in the country were evacuated and safely returned to Egypt.

    Local residents, too, are fleeing the country in huge numbers. Eyewitnesses in Khartoum describe growing lines of people at bus stops, hoping to escape the fighting. And up to 20,000 refugees from Sudan’s Darfur region have fled to neighboring Chad in recent days, according to a statement from the UN Refugee Agency.

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  • Students trapped, hospitals shelled and diplomats assaulted as Sudan fighting intensifies | CNN

    Students trapped, hospitals shelled and diplomats assaulted as Sudan fighting intensifies | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    For more than three days, students at the University of Khartoum have been trapped inside campus buildings as artillery and gunfire rain down around them in Sudan’s capital.

    Fierce fighting between the country’s army and a paramilitary group has spread across the nation since erupting Saturday – but the university area is a particular hotspot due to its proximity to the General Command of the Armed Forces, with warplanes hovering overhead and nearby buildings destroyed by fire.

    “It is scary that our country will turn into a battlefield overnight,” said 23-year-old Al-Muzaffar Farouk, one of 89 students, faculty members and staff sheltering inside the university library.

    Food and water are running low, but leaving is not an option – one student has already been killed by gunfire outside. Khalid Abdulmun’em had been trying to run to the library from a nearby building when he was struck, said Farouk.

    The students retrieved his body and brought it inside “despite the bullets that were falling on us,” he added.

    The university confirmed Abdulmun’em’s death in a Facebook post, saying he had been shot in the campus’ surroundings. In a separate post on Monday, the university urged humanitarian organizations to help evacuate dozens of people stranded on campus.

    Khartoum has been wracked by violence and chaos in a bloody tussle for power between Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, Sudan’s military leader, and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, also known as Hemedti, head of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

    The two leaders have traded blame for instigating the fighting and breaking temporary ceasefires. Meanwhile, civilians are paying the price, with at least 180 people killed and 1,800 others injured, according to UN officials on Monday.

    “I can see outside smoke rising from buildings. And I can hear from my residence blasts, heavy gunfire from outside. The streets are totally empty,” said Red Cross staffer Germain Mwehu from Khartoum.

    “In the building where I stay, I saw families with children, children crying when there are airstrikes, children horrified,” Mwehu said, adding that people had little to no access to food or medicine given the fierce fighting outside.

    Children are among those killed; a 6-year-old child died on Monday after the RSF shelled a hospital in Khartoum and damaged a maternity ward. Medics were forced to evacuate, leaving patients behind – some just newborns in incubators.

    At least half a dozen hospitals have been struck by both warring sides, according to Sudan’s Doctors Trade Union.

    Even diplomats and humanitarian workers have been targeted.

    US Secretary of State Antony Blinken confirmed there was an attack on a US diplomatic convoy on Monday.

    “Yesterday, we had an American diplomatic convoy that was fired on. All of our people are safe, but this the action was reckless, it was irresponsible and, of course, unsafe,” Blinken said in a press conference on Tuesday.

    The European Union ambassador to Sudan was also assaulted in his residency on Monday, though he is now doing fine, according to a spokesperson for the EU’s top diplomat.

    And three workers from the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) were killed in the western region of Darfur, prompting the WFP to temporarily halt all services in the country.

    In statements early Tuesday morning, the two rival factions pointed fingers at each other.

    The RSF accused the army of conducting airstrikes on residential neighborhoods and of attacking the EU ambassador’s headquarters in Khartoum; meanwhile, the army accused the RSF of targeting the ambassador’s residency, and of targeting the WFP’s headquarters in Darfur.

    The UN and various foreign leaders have called for peace, with Blinken speaking separately with Burhan and Dagalo on Tuesday.

    Blinken “expressed his grave concern about the death and injury of so many Sudanese civilians,” and argued a ceasefire was necessary to deliver aid, reunify separated families, and ensure the safety of diplomatic and humanitarian staff, according to a readout from the US State Department.

    In his own statement, Dagalo said the RSF “will have another call” to continue dialogue. Burhan’s office also confirmed he had spoken with Blinken about the critical situation in Sudan.

    The foreign ministers of G7 nations, comprised of some of the world’s largest economies, urged the factions to “end hostilities immediately” in their joint statement from Japan on Tuesday.

    Volker Perthes, the UN Secretary General’s Special Representative for Sudan, said on Monday the organization has been trying to convince the two rival parties to “hold the fire” for a period of time, and asked them to protect embassies, UN offices, humanitarian and medical facilities.

    Both sides had agreed to a three-hour ceasefire on Sunday, and again on Monday, with fighting resuming afterward, Perthes said.

    But both Burhan and Dagalo have since accused the other of breaking that ceasefire.

    When CNN spoke to Burhan on Monday afternoon, the sound of gunshots rang out in the background despite the supposed ceasefire – and Burhan claimed Dagalo had violated it for the second day.

    A spokesperson for the RSF rebutted the accusation, claiming that they had been trying to abide by the ceasefire, but “they keep firing which leaves no choice” but for the RSF to “defend itself by firing back.”

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  • Australian businessman accused of supplying suspected Chinese spies with AUKUS information | CNN

    Australian businessman accused of supplying suspected Chinese spies with AUKUS information | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    An Australian man has been refused bail after being charged with a foreign interference offense for accepting cash from suspected Chinese intelligence agents, with a Sydney court saying his close ties to China made him a flight risk.

    Magistrate Michael Barko said Alexander Csergo was a “sophisticated, worldly businessperson” who had been on the radar of Australian intelligence for some time before his arrest on Friday.

    The prosecution had a strong case against Csergo, who had lived in China for decades, Barko said in refusing bail.

    Csergo is alleged to have arrived back in Australia this year with a “shopping list” of intelligence priorities he had been asked for by two people he had suspected since 2021 to be agents for China’s Ministry of State Security, the court heard.

    The pair, named in court only as “Ken” and “Evelyn,” first made contact with Csergo through LinkedIn.

    This shopping list had been discovered by Australian intelligence authorities three weeks after Csergo returned to Sydney, the court was told.

    Csergo had been allegedly asked to handwrite reports about Australia’s AUKUS defense technology partnership with the United States and Britain, the QUAD diplomatic partnership, iron ore and lithium mining, Barko said.

    A marketing executive, Csergo, 55, was arrested in the beachside suburb of Bondi on Friday.

    He is the second person charged under Australia’s foreign interference law, which criminalizes activity that helps a foreign power interfere with Australia’s sovereignty or national interest. It carries a maximum 15 year prison sentence.

    Csergo appeared in court via video link from Parklea Prison where he is being held as a high security prisoner. His mother and brother were in court.

    Csergo had told Australian intelligence agents in an interview that when he met Ken and Evelyn in Shanghai cafes and restaurants, the establishments had been empty and he suspected they had been cleared, Barko said.

    He developed a high level of anxiety and was in “survival mode,” he had told the Australian authorities.

    Csergo had exchanged around 3,300 WeChat messages with the pair, and had accepted cash payments in envelopes, Barko said.

    Barko raised concerns for Csergo’s safety, saying some people may not want him to give evidence against China.

    Csergo’s lawyer, Bernard Collaery, had sought bail, saying the reports Csergo had written were based on publicly sourced information and the case against his client was “shallow and unsubstantiated.”

    Prosecutor Conor McCraith disputed this, saying it was not all open source because he had engaged covertly with two others to prepare reports. He also said Csergo had not come to Australian authorities with his concerns about Ken and Evelyn, and had instead invited Ken to come to Australia.

    Collaery said making cash payments was a common business practice in China, and Csergo undertook the consulting work during the COVID-19 lockdown in Shanghai as a source of income.

    “Of course he believed Ken and Evelyn were keeping tabs on him. That’s how it works in China, he became very worried about it,” Collaery said.

    Csergo had worked in China since 2002 in data marketing, including for a major international advertising agency.

    Collaery said Csergo’s career had come “tumbling down” since his arrest and he had no intention to return to China and instead planned to pursue the Australian government for damages for ruining his career.

    Collaery told media outside the court the case was a “civil liberties” issue and raised concerns about the scope of the foreign interference law introduced in 2018.

    “If you work as a consultant in any foreign country… and you undertake consulting work that may relate to Australia’s foreign influences or national security… you can be guilty of foreign interference,” he told reporters.

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