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Paris — After the United States, France is now seeing spreading pro-Palestinian protests at universities, with students calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and ending support for Israel.

Palestinian flags were out in force during the annual Workers Day rally in Paris. Protesters like university student Zinedine Amiane are calling for an end to the war in Gaza — and for a change in French policy.

“We believe there’s a genocide happening and it cannot continue that way,” Amiane said in French. “France has to take its responsibility, which is to hold the voice for peace and try to obtain a cease-fire, to try to put pressure on Israel. …”

Amiane joined demonstrations this week at the Sorbonne University in Paris, where he studies. Police broke up the protests but has not stopped the protest movement from growing — and spreading to other universities in France.

Eleanore Schmitt, spokesperson for the Student’s Union (Union Etudiante), said the more the government tries to suppress the protest movement, the stronger it will get.

She and other students say they’ve been inspired by the pro-Palestinian protests in the United States, where students have launched sit-ins and hunger strikes against the war in Gaza. Hundreds have been arrested.

The war in Gaza is a particularly sensitive issue in France, which is home to Western Europe’s largest communities of Jews and Muslims.

The protests here began last week at Sciences Po, an elite Paris university where President Emmanuel Macron and his prime minister, Gabriel Attal, studied. The head of the Paris region suspended the university’s funding until calm and order were restored.

Far-left lawmakers have supported the protest movement, but conservatives and the government have criticized what they consider excessive behavior.

Prime Minister Attal said there was always room for debate. But in the case of Sciences Po, he said a minority of students blocking the university were imposing their views on the majority — inspired by an ideology he calls imported from across the Atlantic.
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WASHINGTON — The United States on Wednesday issued hundreds of fresh sanctions targeting Russia over the war in Ukraine in action that took aim at Moscow’s circumvention of Western measures, including through China. 

The U.S. Treasury Department imposed sanctions on nearly 200 targets, while the State Department designated more than 80. 

The U.S. imposed sanctions on 20 companies based in China and Hong Kong, following repeated warnings from Washington about China’s support for Russia’s military, including during recent trips by U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Secretary of State Antony Blinken to the country. 

China’s support for Russia is one of the many issues threatening to sour the recent improvement in relations between the world’s biggest economies. 

“Treasury has consistently warned that companies will face significant consequences for providing material support for Russia’s war, and the U.S. is imposing them today on almost 300 targets,” Yellen said in a statement. 

The United States and its allies have imposed sanctions on thousands of targets since Russia invaded neighboring Ukraine. The war has seen tens of thousands killed and cities destroyed. 

Washington has since sought to crack down on evasion of the Western measures, including by issuing sanctions on firms in China, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates. 

Technology and equipment

The Treasury’s action on Wednesday sanctioned nearly 60 targets located in Azerbaijan, Belgium, China, Russia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Slovakia it accused of enabling Russia to “acquire desperately needed technology and equipment from abroad.” 

The move included measures against a China-based company the Treasury said exported items to produce drones — such as propellers, engines and sensors — to a company in Russia. Other China and Hong Kong-based technology suppliers were also targeted. 

The State Department also imposed sanctions on four China-based companies it accused of supporting Russia’s defense industrial base, including by shipping critical items to entities under U.S. sanctions in Russia, as well as companies in Turkey, Kyrgyzstan and Malaysia that it accused of shipping high priority items to Russia. 

The Treasury also targeted Russia’s acquisition of explosive precursors needed by Russia to keep producing gunpowder, rocket propellants and other explosives, including through sanctions on two China-based suppliers sending the substances to Russia. 

The U.S. on Wednesday also accused Russia of violating a global ban on chemical weapons by repeatedly deploying the choking agent chloropicrin against Ukrainian troops and using riot control agents “as a method of warfare” in Ukraine. 

The State Department also expanded its targeting of Russia’s future ability to ship liquefied natural gas, or LNG, one of the country’s top exports.  

It designated two vessel operators involved in transporting technology, including gravity-based structure equipment, or concrete legs that support offshore platforms, for Russia’s Arctic LNG 2 project. 

Previous U.S. sanctions on Arctic LNG 2 last month forced Novatek, Russia’s largest LNG producer, to suspend production at the project, which suffered a shortage of tankers to ship the fuel.  

Also targeted were subsidiaries of Russia’s state nuclear power company, Rosatom, as well as 12 entities within the Sibanthracite group of companies, one of Russia’s largest producers of metallurgical coal, the State Department said. 

Washington also imposed sanctions on Russian air carrier Pobeda, a subsidiary of Russian airline Aeroflot.  

The U.S. Commerce Department has previously added more than 200 Boeing and Airbus airplanes operated by Russian airlines to an export control list as part of the Biden administration’s sanctions over the Russian invasion of Ukraine. 

Sanctions over Navanly

The State Department also targeted three people in connection with the death of late Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny, the best-known domestic critic of President Vladimir Putin. He died in February in a Russian Arctic prison.  

Russian authorities say he died of natural causes. His followers believe he was killed by the authorities, which the Kremlin denies. 

Wednesday’s action targeted the director of the correctional colony in Russia where Navalny was held for most of his imprisonment, as well as the head of the solitary confinement detachment and the head of the medical unit at the colony where he was imprisoned before his death. 

The officials oversaw the cells where Navalny was kept in solitary confinement, the walking yard where he allegedly collapsed and died and Navalny’s health, including in the immediate aftermath of his collapse, the State Department said. 
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SEOUL, South Korea — Workers, activists and others in Asian capitals and European cities took to the streets on Wednesday to mark May Day with protests over rising prices and government labor polices and calls for greater labor rights.

May Day, which falls on May 1, is observed in many countries to celebrate workers’ rights. May Day events have also given many an opportunity to air general economic grievances or political demands.

Police in Istanbul detained dozens of people who tried to reach the central Taksim Square in defiance of a government ban on marking Labor Day at the landmark location.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government has long declared Taksim off-limits for rallies and demonstrations on security grounds, but some political parties and trade unions have vowed to march to the square, which holds symbolic value for labor unions.

In 1977, unidentified gunmen opened fire on a May Day celebration at Taksim, causing a stampede and killing 34 people.

Wednesday, police erected barricades and sealed off all routes leading to the central Istanbul square. Public transport in the area was also restricted. Only a small group of trade union representatives was permitted to enter the square to lay a wreath at a monument in memory of victims of the 1977 incident.

Riot police apprehended some 30 members of the left-wing People’s Liberation Party who tried to break through the barriers.

In Indonesia, workers voiced anger at a new law they said violates their rights and hurts their welfare, and demanded protections for migrant workers abroad and a minimum wage raise.

About 50,000 workers from Jakarta’s satellite cities of Bogor, Depok, Tangerang and Bekasi were expected to join May Day marches in the capital, said Said Iqbal, the president of the Confederation of Indonesian Trade Unions.

They gathered amid a tight police presence near the National Monument park, waving the colorful flags of labor groups and chanting slogans against the Job Creation Law and loosened outsourcing rules during a march to Jakarta’s main sports stadium, Gelora Bung Karno.

“With the enactment of this law, our future is uncertain because many problems arise in wages, severance pay and the contract system,” said Isbandi Anggono, a protester.

Indonesia’s parliament last year ratified a government regulation that replaces a controversial law on job creation, but critics said it still benefits businesses. The law was intended to cut bureaucracy as part of President Joko Widodo’s efforts to attract more investment to the country, which is Southeast Asia’s largest economy.

In Seoul, the South Korean capital, thousands of protesters sang, waved flags and shouted pro-labor slogans at the start of their rally on Wednesday. Organizers said their rally was primarily meant to step up their criticism of what they call anti-labor policies pursued by the conservative government led by President Yoon Suk Yeol.

“In the past two years under the Yoon Suk Yeol government, the lives of our laborers have plunged into despair,” Yang Kyung-soo, leader of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, which organized the rally, said in a speech. “We can’t overlook the Yoon Suk Yeol government. We’ll bring them down from power for ourselves.”

KCTU union members decried Yoon’s December veto of a bill aimed at limiting companies’ rights to seek compensation for damages caused by strikes by labor unions. They also accuse Yoon’s government of handling the 2022 strikes by truckers too aggressively and insulting construction sector workers whom authorities believed were involved in alleged irregular activities.

Since taking office in 2022, Yoon has pushed for labor reforms to support economic growth and job creation. His government has vowed to sternly deal with illegal strikes and demand more transparent accounting records from labor unions.

“The remarkable growth of the Republic of Korea was thanks to the sweat and efforts of our workers. I thank our 28.4 million workers,” Yoon said in a May Day message posted on Facebook. “My government and I will protect the precious value of labor.”

Seoul rally participants later marched through downtown streets. Similar May Day rallies were held in more than 10 locations across South Korea on Wednesday. Police said they had mobilized thousands of officers to maintain order, but there were no immediate reports of violence.

In Japan, more than 10,000 people gathered at Yoyogi park in downtown Tokyo for a May Day event, demanding salary increases that they said could sufficiently set off price increases. During the rally, Masako Obata, the leader of the left-leaning National Confederation of Trade Unions, said that dwindling wages have put many workers in Japan under severe living conditions and widened income disparities.

“On this May Day, we unite with our fellow workers around the world standing up for their rights,” she said, shouting “banzai!” or long life, to all workers.

In the Philippine capital, Manila, hundreds of workers and left-wing activists marched and held a rally in the scorching summer heat to demand wage increases and job security amid soaring food and oil prices.

Riot police stopped the protesting workers from getting close to the presidential palace. Waving red flags and holding up posters that read: “We work to live, not to die” and “Lower prices, increase salaries,” the protesters rallied in the street, where they chanted and delivered speeches about the difficulties faced by Filipino laborers.

Poor drivers joined the protest and called to end a government modernization program they fear would eventually lead to the removal of their dilapidated jeepneys, a main mode of public transport, from Manila’s streets.
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Washington — The United States and the European Union say they are keeping their eyes on Pyongyang and Tehran for any possible military cooperation between the two as Iran confirms a North Korean delegation’s visit to the country.

The U.S. “will use all available tools, including interdiction and sanctions, to address such activities,” a State Department spokesperson said in an email to VOA’s Korean Service on Friday.

An EU spokesperson on the same day told VOA Korean that it is also “following closely Iran-DPRK relations and their potential cooperation that could indeed be concerning on certain issues if it violates existing U.N. sanctions.”

North Korea’s official name is the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

Pyongyang announced through its state-run KCNA that it sent a delegation led by its External Economic Relations Minister Yun Jong Ho to Iran on April 23.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanaani said on Monday that a North Korean delegation visited Tehran last week to discuss bilateral trade, according to Reuters.

But Kanaani dismissed any suspected cooperation on their missile programs, saying it is a “biased speculation” based on “untrue” reports.

The U.S. has accused Pyongyang, Tehran and Beijing of supporting Russia’s war against Ukraine.

Tehran has also been involved in conflict with Israel.

Iran attacked Israel on April 13 with more than 300 missiles and drones and said the assault was in retaliation against an Israeli strike on an Iranian consular building in Damascus, Syria. Israel responded by launching a counterstrike into Iran on April 18.

“It certainly is possible and even probable” that Pyongyang and Tehran are cooperating militarily in the current Middle East conflict, just as they have done since the 1980s, said Robert Peters, a research fellow for nuclear deterrence and missile defense at the Heritage Foundation’s Allison Center for National Security.

Iran is motivated to acquire missiles from North Korea “given Iran’s current approach of laying a siege [around] Israel using missiles supplied to its proxies – Hezbollah, Hamas, and Houthis,” Peters said.

Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis are Iran-backed militant groups that base their operations in Lebanon, the Gaza Strip and Yemen, respectively.

Pyongyang’s arms sales to Tehran began in the 1980s during Iran’s war with Iraq. Their cooperation on missile programs continued since then and expanded.

In January 2016, the U.S. Treasury sanctioned Iranians for traveling to Pyongyang and collaborating on the development of North Korea’s 80-ton rocket booster. A few months later, North Korea said it had tested a new rocket engine that had a thrust of 80 tons and would be used in a new space launch vehicle.

North Korea has been accusing Israel of committing “terrorism” against Iran since the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by the Palestinian militant group Hamas.

In December, the Israel Defense Forces said North Korean weapons have been turning up in Gaza.

Bruce Bechtol, a former intelligence officer at the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency and now a professor at Angelo University in Texas, said arms transfers between Pyongyang and Tehran are “inevitable” regardless of any meeting between the two last week.

“Some of the weapons that North Korea has sent to Russia have gone to Iran first and then up to the Caspian Sea, and Russia has used those weapons in the Ukraine,” said Bechtol, the author of the book “North Korean Military Proliferation in the Middle East and Africa.”

He told VOA that Iran’s Emad medium-range ballistic missiles used in the attack against Israel earlier in the month were made based on the Shahab-3, which Iran first put into use in 2003. That, in turn, was developed from North Korean NoDong missiles that were sent to Tehran in the 1990s.

Bechtol said Iran’s Shahab-3 missiles were developed in a facility that North Korea built for Tehran in the early 2000s. He said Tehran is likely seeking to acquire Pyongyang’s Hwasong-15 intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Joeun Lee contributed to this report.
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KYIV, Ukraine — A 98-year-old woman in Ukraine who escaped Russian-occupied territory by walking almost 10 kilometers (6 miles) alone, wearing a pair of slippers and supported by a cane has been reunited with her family days after they were separated while fleeing to safety.

Lidia Stepanivna Lomikovska and her family decided to leave the front-line town of Ocheretyne, in the eastern Donetsk region, last week after Russian troops entered it and fighting intensified.

Russians have been advancing in the area, pounding Kyiv’s depleted, ammunition-deprived forces with artillery, drones and bombs.

“I woke up surrounded by shooting all around — so scary,” Lomikovska said in a video interview posted by the National Police of Donetsk region.

In the chaos of the departure, Lomikovska became separated from her son and two daughters-in-law, including one, Olha Lomikovska, injured by shrapnel days earlier. The younger family members took to backroads out, but Lydia wanted to stay on the main road.

With a cane in one hand and steadying herself with a splintered piece of wood in the other, she walked all day without food and water to reach Ukrainian lines.

Describing her journey, said she had fallen twice and was forced to stop to rest at some points, even sleeping along the way before waking up and continuing her journey.

“Once I lost balance and fell into weeds. I fell asleep … a little, and continued walking. And then, for the second time, again, I fell. But then I got up and thought to myself: “I need to keep walking, bit by bit,'” Lomikovska said.

Pavlo Diachenko, acting spokesman for the National Police of Ukraine in the Donetsk region, said Lomikovska was saved when Ukrainian soldiers spotted her walking along the road in the evening. They handed her over to the “White Angels,” a police group that evacuates citizens living on the front line, who then took her to a shelter for evacuees and contacted her relatives.

“I survived that war,” she said referring to World War II. “I had to go through this war too, and in the end, I am left with nothing.

“That war wasn’t like this one. I saw that war. Not a single house burned down. But now – everything is on fire,” she said to her rescuer.

In the latest twist to the story, the chief executive of one of Ukraine’s largest banks announced on his Telegram channel Tuesday that the bank would purchase a house for the pensioner.

“Monobank will buy Lydia Stepanivna a house, and she will surely live in it until the moment when this abomination disappears from our land,” Oleh Horokhovskyi said.
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The number of Russian soldiers killed in combat since the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine remains a secret that the Kremlin goes to great lengths to hide. However, open-source research has recently yielded figures that show Moscow’s losses have been heavy. Elizabeth Cherneff narrates this report by Ricardo Marquina.
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tbilsi, georgia — Georgian security forces used water cannon and tear gas against protesters outside parliament late on Tuesday, sharply escalating a crackdown after lawmakers debated a “foreign agents” bill, which is viewed by the opposition and Western nations as authoritarian and Russian-inspired.

Reuters eyewitnesses saw some police officers physically attack protesters, who threw eggs and bottles at them, before using tear gas and water cannon to force demonstrators from the area outside the Soviet-built parliament building.

Earlier, riot police used pepper spray and batons to clear some protesters who were trying to prevent lawmakers from leaving the back entrance of parliament. Some protesters shouted “Slaves” and “Russians” at police.

The bill has deepened divisions in the deeply polarized southern Caucasus country, setting the ruling Georgian Dream Party against a protest movement backed by opposition groups, civil society, celebrities and Georgia’s figurehead president.

Parliament, which is controlled by the Georgian Dream and its allies, is likely to approve the bill, which must pass two more readings before becoming law. Lawmakers ended Tuesday’s session without a vote, and the debate will resume on Wednesday.

The bill would require organizations receiving more than 20% of their funding from abroad to register as “foreign agents.”

Georgian critics have labeled the bill “the Russian law,” comparing it to Moscow’s “foreign agent” legislation, which has been used to crack down on dissent there.

Russia is disliked by many Georgians for its support of the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Georgia lost a brief war with Russia in 2008.

The United States, Britain and the European Union, which granted Georgia candidate status in December, have criticized the bill. EU officials have said it could halt Georgia’s progress toward integration with the bloc.

‘Prolonging the inevitable’

Tina Khidasheli, who served as Georgian defense minister in a Georgian Dream-led government in 2015-2016, attended Tuesday’s protest against her former government colleagues and said she expected the demonstrators to win eventually.

“The government is just prolonging the inevitable. We might have serious problems, but at the end of the day, the people will go home with victory,” she told Reuters.

Thousands of anti-government demonstrators have shut down Tbilisi’s central streets on a nightly basis since parliament approved the bill’s first reading on April 17.

On Monday, a government-organized rally in support of the bill was attended by tens of thousands of people, many of whom had been bussed in from provincial towns by the ruling party.

At that rally, former Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili, a billionaire who founded Georgian Dream, harshly criticized the West and hinted at a post-election crackdown on the opposition.

Ivanishvili told attendees that a “global party of war” had hijacked the EU and NATO and that it was bent on using those institutions to undermine Georgian sovereignty.

Ivanishvili, who says he wants Georgia to join the EU, said the foreign agent law would bolster national sovereignty, and he suggested that the country’s pro-Western opposition was controlled by foreign intelligence services via grants to NGOs.

He added that after elections due by October, Georgia’s opposition, which is dominated by the United National Movement Party of former President Mikheil Saakashvili, would face “the harsh political and legal judgment it deserves.”
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China’s share of the European electric vehicle market has doubled in less than two years, with Chinese automakers accounting for 20 percent of EVs sold in Europe last year. The trend is raising alarm among European carmakers, and they are considering pushing for new tariffs. Elizabeth Cherneff narrates this report from Alfonso Beato in Barcelona. VOA’s Ricardo Marquina contributed.
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LONDON — The Scottish government will face a no-confidence vote Wednesday, one it is expected to win after First Minister Humza Yousaf said he would resign.

Yousaf’s resignation Monday came just 13 months after he replaced Nicola Sturgeon as Scotland’s leader and sparks another leadership contest in the Scottish National Party.

The crisis in the SNP gives an opportunity for the U.K. opposition Labour Party to regain ground ahead of a national election expected this year.

The motion of no confidence in the government was submitted by Scottish Labour last week, after Yousaf said he was ending a coalition with the Scottish Green Party. Scottish parliament listings showed the vote was scheduled for Wednesday.

Facing a separate vote of no confidence in his own position as first minister, Yousaf said he would step down as Scotland’s leader, as opposition parties, including the Greens, lined up to vote against him. That vote now won’t take place.

However, Labour’s wider motion of no confidence in the whole government is set to be opposed by the Greens, meaning that it will likely fail and that the SNP will have chance to form a new minority government under another leader.

Former leader John Swinney has said he is considering standing, while Yousaf’s former leadership rival Kate Forbes is seen as a possible candidate.

If the Labour no confidence motion passes, it will result in the resignation of the government and likely Scottish elections thereafter.

Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar said it would be a democratic outrage for the SNP to choose another leader — and thus First Minister — without a parliamentary election.
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London — A smiling and healthy-looking King Charles returned to public duties on Tuesday for the first time since he was diagnosed with cancer in February, telling patients at a treatment center for the disease in London that he was “all right.” 

Buckingham Palace announced on Friday that doctors were sufficiently pleased with the 75-year-old king’s response to treatment for the unspecified form of cancer that he would be able to resume some public-facing engagements. 

The first of these saw the king and his wife Queen Camilla visit the University College Hospital Macmillan Cancer Centre where he looked cheerful, waving to those gathered outside on his arrival. 

“I’m all right, thank you,” Charles told one patient, while he said to another that he would be having treatment himself later. 

The visit also marked Charles becoming the new patron of the Cancer Research UK charity, and was designed to help raise awareness of the importance of early diagnosis of the disease. 

Charles’ health issues began in January when it was revealed that he would be admitted to hospital to have a corrective procedure for a benign enlarged prostate. 

The following month, the palace said tests had uncovered the presence of a “form of cancer,” but gave no further details beyond saying it did not involve his prostate. 

He has rested and undergone treatment since then, continuing with official state duties in private. He was well enough to greet well-wishers after an Easter church service at the end of March.

Although his diary will be carefully managed to minimize any risks to his health, the palace said he might attend some annual events such as the “Trooping the Colour” military parade in June, as well as commemorations to mark the 80th anniversary of the World War Two D-Day landings, also in June. 

The palace has confirmed Charles and Camilla will host a state visit by the Japanese Emperor Naruhito and his wife Empress Masako in late June. 

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s spokesman said the king’s return was “great news.” “We all continue to wish him a full and speedy recovery as he returns to public duty,” the spokesman told reporters. 

Charles’ illness came less than 18 months after he succeeded his mother Queen Elizabeth. His nephew Peter Phillips has said the monarch, who is known for his desire to keep busy, had found the limitation imposed by his treatment frustrating. 

Also absent has been Charles’ daughter-in-law Kate, wife of his son and heir Prince William, who is undergoing preventative chemotherapy after tests in the wake of major abdominal surgery revealed cancer had been present.
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