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Tehran, Iran — Iranian police announced Friday they arrested more than 250 people including three foreigners over promoting "satanism" west of the capital, Tehran, state media reported. "The Police Information Center announced the identification, dismantling, and widespread arrest of members of the satanist network," IRNA state news agency reported, citing a police statement. Police arrested "146 men and 115 women" who "were in an undesirable and obscene condition with emblems, signs, and symbols of satanism on their clothes, head, face, and hair," the statement said. "Three European citizens" were also arrested during the police operation in Shahryar city, west of Tehran, on Thursday night. "Symbols of satanism, alcoholic beverages and psychoactive substances along with 73 vehicles were seized" during the raid, police added in the statement. Raids on so-called "satanist" gatherings are not uncommon in the deeply conservative country, often targeting parties or concerts with alcohol consumption, which is largely banned in Iran. In July 2009, police arrested three people in the northwestern province of Ardebil over "Satan worship." In May of the same year, media in the Islamic Republic said 104 "Satan-worshippers" were arrested in a raid on a concert in the southern city of Shiraz where people were purportedly drinking alcohol and "sucking blood." In 2007, police arrested 230 people in a raid on an illegal rock concert in a garden near Tehran. Authorities in the Shiite Muslim-dominated country have in the past branded rock and heavy metal music concerts as satanist gatherings.

islamabad — Taliban authorities in Afghanistan said Friday that unknown assailants fatally shot three Western tourists and their local translator in the central city of Bamiyan.    The late-afternoon shooting in a busy central market also injured four people, including a foreigner, a spokesman for the Taliban-led Afghan Interior Ministry said. Abdul Mateen Qani shared the details on his official account on the social media platform X, but he did not disclose the foreigners' nationalities.     He said Taliban security forces' efforts to apprehend the attackers led to the arrests of four suspects linked to the assault.    No group immediately claimed responsibility for the deadly shooting.    “The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan strongly condemns this incident, expresses its sympathy to the families of the victims, and assures them that all the criminals involved will be found and brought to justice,” Qani said, using the official title of the Taliban government.     Area officials and residents were reported as saying that the foreign tourists came from Spain, Norway and Turkey, among other countries. However, the reports could not be verified from independent sources.  A spokesperson for foreign affairs and security policy of the European Union condemned the armed attack against the tourists visiting Bamiyan. “Our thoughts are with the families and loved ones of the victims who lost their lives and those injured in the attack,” Nabila Massrali said in a statement. “The United States is deeply saddened to hear about the shooting attack in Bamiyan, which killed and wounded Afghan civilians and foreign nationals,” Thomas West, the U.S. special envoy for Afghanistan, said on X. “Our thoughts are with those who lost their loved ones. Violence is not the answer.” Friday’s attack on foreign tourists was the first since the Taliban stormed back to power in Afghanistan in August 2021. Bamiyan, one of the poorest regions in impoverished Afghanistan, is a popular destination for foreign tourists because it contains Buddhist monastic ensembles and sanctuaries, according to the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. The scenic city was also the spot where the Taliban destroyed two large Buddha statues in March 2001 during their previous rule in Afghanistan. The group said the statues were blasphemous under Islam.   

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Iowa is following in the footsteps of Texas with a new law that would allow state officials to arrest, detain, and remove noncitizens who have reentered the United States after being deported—even if the person returned with permission from the federal government or later gained lawful immigration status. Just like Texas Senate Bill 4 (SB4), […]

The post Iowa’s Texas Copycat Immigration Law Challenged in Court appeared first on Immigration Impact.

White House — President Joe Biden continues his outreach effort among Black voters this week with a string of events to commemorate civil rights milestones and address the next generation of leaders. Ahead of the November presidential election, his campaign is aiming to address an apparent erosion of support among a group that historically backs Democratic Party candidates. On Friday, Biden delivered an address at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, where he targeted his likely opponent, presumptive Republican nominee former President Donald Trump. “My predecessor and his extreme MAGA friends are responsible for taking away our fundamental freedoms, from the freedom to vote to the freedom to choose,” Biden said, referring to Make America Great Again Trump supporters, and Republican efforts to restrict voting and abortion rights. The Trump campaign said their candidate is “surging with Black and Hispanic Americans” despite Biden’s “persistent gaslighting and the multimillion-dollar ad buys he is forced to make.” “Black and Hispanic voters, like all Americans, are worse-off now than they were under President Trump — by a lot — and every poll reflects that reality,” Trump campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement sent to VOA. “They have less money and higher prices for everything while being forced to live under a weak president who puts illegal immigrants’ interests ahead of theirs,” she said. Trump has been courting Black voters, including by using his legal troubles to appeal to them on the theme of unfair persecution by the criminal justice system. “I got indicted a second time and a third time and a fourth time, and a lot of people said that that’s why the Black people like me, because they have been hurt so badly and discriminated against, and they actually viewed me as I’m being discriminated against,” Trump said during a February speech at the Black Conservative Federation's annual gala, at which he received the "Champion of Black America" award. Targeting young Black voters Aiming to win over young Black voters, Biden met Friday with leaders of the Divine Nine, a group of historically Black sororities and fraternities, social organizations in colleges and universities. His engagements followed a private meeting Thursday with plaintiffs and family members from Brown vs. Board of Education, the landmark 1954 Supreme Court decision that found laws promoting segregation are unconstitutional. Biden is set to cap his outreach with a commencement address at Martin Luther King Jr.’s alma mater, the historically Black, all-male Morehouse College in Atlanta on Sunday. Biden will focus his remarks on the next generation of Black men, a group whose support for the president has been slipping. His speech comes in the wake of campus protests across the country, where young progressives voice their frustration with Biden’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war. Many of those protesting have linked Palestinian activism with other global injustices, including racism toward Black Americans. “Black people who are concerned about social justice in spaces that are not in the U.S. are similarly thinking about social justice in the U.S.,” said Dana Williams, dean of the Howard University Graduate School and part of the Howard Initiative on Public Opinion, the school’s research arm. “That kind of affinity towards justice, a pushback against oppression, an expectation for democracy to be enacted with fairness, and an anticipation for democracy to be enacted in earnest, I think are some of the things that link those causes,” she told VOA. Asked whether Biden is sympathetic to Black students who see a parallel of their experience of discrimination with that of Palestinians, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told VOA that Biden is “sympathetic to the fact that many communities are in pain.” “He knows that it is a difficult time, and he respects that,” she said during Friday’s briefing. Biden is set to end the weekend with an address at a dinner in Detroit for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), a leading civil rights organization, and a visit to a Black-owned small business in the city. The Biden campaign said the engagement was a signal of how the administration is working to earn the support of Black voters and addressing their key priorities. "We are not, and will not, parachute into these communities at the last minute, expecting their vote," Trey Baker, a senior adviser to the campaign, said in a statement. Polls slipping Black voters have long been the backbone of the Democratic Party and helped ensure Biden's win in 2020. Ahead of the November election, a Washington Post/Ipsos poll shows Biden continues to enjoy the support of the majority of the Black community. However, lower stated interest in voting relative to 2020 and a slightly narrower gap in standing present some warning signs for the Biden campaign. Only 62% of Black voters said that they are absolutely certain to vote this year, compared to 74% this time in 2020. Meanwhile, Black voter support in national and state polls for Trump has been “surprisingly robust,” according to research by the University of Virginia's Center for Politics. "Older Black voters have far fewer concerns with Biden. They remember the first Trump term, and it’s a pretty simple choice for them — Biden, of course,” said Larry Sabato, the center’s director. “It’s younger Blacks who were expecting more from Biden.” Many young Black voters are frustrated by what they see as Biden’s inaction on their top priorities and angered by his handling of the economy and the Israel-Hamas war. Sabato predicted that no more than 13% of Black Americans will end up voting for Trump. He said that for Blacks it is a choice between Biden and not voting. “Black turnout,” he added, “is key.”

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washington — The co-founder of a local reporting initiative in California is being recognized for her work mentoring young reporters and improving community news. Tasneem Raja, who helped set up the Cityside Journalism Initiative in the San Francisco Bay Area, has a long career mentoring reporters and reaching groups typically under-covered by media outlets. The nonpartisan, nonprofit Cityside Journalism Initiative launched at a time when the news media industry was shedding jobs. Its mission statement: to create a newsroom that “amplifies community voices, shares the power of real information, and investigates systems, not just symptoms.” The organization is now running Berkeleyside, which was founded in 2009, and The Oaklandside, which launched in 2020. “We also try to go a step further and say, you know, ‘We're not just here in some cases, to report on what's going on. We're also here to help people,’” Raja told VOA. As editor-in-chief of The Oaklandside, Raja sees her role as creating opportunities for people who reflect the demographics and concerns of her outlet’s community. Those efforts led to her being given the 2024 Gwen Ifill Award. Presented by the International Women’s Media Foundation (IWMF) in memory of PBS journalist Ifill, the award honors the work each year of a female journalist of color. “What particularly struck us about Tasneem’s work is her dedication to creating spaces [and] making news by and about the communities on which they’re reporting,” said IWMF Executive Director Elisa Lees Munoz. “Local news is vital to covering underreported issues and marginalized populations; Tasneem’s career has been spent advancing that much needed coverage.” Another area that stood out in Raja’s career is her efforts to support new journalists. Her mentoring, Munoz told VOA, “builds a new generation of women of color in media and news leadership.” “Tasneem brings this mentality into her newsrooms as well, seeing the value of diverse perspectives and lived experiences to cultivate ‘green’ [inexperienced] employees into skilled journalists,” Munoz added. Among those efforts is Raja’s work to create a policy that allocates an annual stipend for each employee to use for professional development. “For me, it starts with creating a healthy newsroom that is going to empower people to do their best work, hiring great talents, creating a space where they feel supported and they have opportunities to learn and grow,” Raja said. “Gwen was somebody who was really ahead of the curve of that, really modeling what healthy, thoughtful, empowering inclusive mentorship was like.” That supportive process is also reflected in the Cityside Journalism Initiative’s work. During the pandemic, Cityside set up a hotline where reporters would answer questions and provide information. Actions like that, Raja said, underscore Cityside’s mission of not only reporting on the community but actively and tangibly helping it. “We want to be part of the solution. We can’t do everything, we aren’t setting out to do everything, but we are setting out to just talk to community members in Oakland, Berkeley and now Richmond,” said Raja, referring to a third media outlet they are setting up. Before moving to the Bay Area in 2019, Raja was co-founder of The Tyler Loop, a nonprofit news startup in eastern Texas. She has also worked for NPR’s “Code Switch,” focusing on stories on race, culture and identity in America and the nonprofit, politically progressive Mother Jones, where she led a data team that built a database of mass shootings in America. Alongside her work for Cityside, Raja is on the board of directors of The 19th, a nonprofit newsroom focused on women and the LGBTQ community. Similar to media outlets across the U.S., the Cityside Journalism Initiative is currently focused on elections. Oaklandside in particular is looking to engage with the community in its coverage. Among those they are keen to connect with, said Raja, are “casual” voters and those who are new to voting. “By starting with those conversations, we’re looking forward to building a solid foundation upon which we’re going to shape all our coverage,” said Raja. “Ultimately, we hope to be part of moving the needle in empowering more people to feel like they want to and can exercise that big civic right that we have.”

The first trucks of humanitarian aid have begun arriving in Gaza using a pier built by the U.S. military. Israel is heckled in the International Court of Justice and Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives are trying to force President Biden to send military aid to Israel. Ukraine’s defenses are strong, but thinly spread; Russia is making some advances in the East of Ukraine while shelling mercilessly. A look at the Putin and Xi summit in China and what it means. Plus, the U.S. military is making plans to leave Niger and a look at possible ethnic cleansing in Sudan.

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The effects of recent extreme weather in Southeast Asian countries are far-reaching, from school closures to drought and health advisories. While climate change is part of the problem, this year it was made worse by the cyclical weather pattern called El Nino. VOA’s Chris Casquejo explains.

Washington — Two figures dressed in black and with their faces covered are caught on security camera vandalizing the Media Development Foundation office in the Georgian capital Tbilisi.   The video, taken in the early hours of May 9, shows the individuals putting up posters that falsely claim the nongovernmental organization’s executive director, Tamar Kintsurashvili, is a foreign agent.   Kintsurashvili told VOA the attack didn’t come as a big surprise. The goal is “to present us as enemies of this country,” she said.  The vandalism came amid large-scale protests in Georgia over a “foreign agent” law that passed its third and final reading in parliament Tuesday.   WATCH: Georgia riled by new protests after parliament passes ‘foreign agent’ law If enacted, the law will require nonprofits and news outlets that receive more than 20% of their funding from abroad to register as “organizations pursuing the interests of a foreign power.” They would also be required to submit detailed annual financial accounts. Groups that don’t comply would face fines.   Kintsurashvili’s organization, the Media Development Foundation, receives some foreign funding to support its work. But, said Kintsurashvili, “Being labeled as foreign agent undermines trust in our activities.”   Last week, hundreds of critics of the law — including around 30 journalists who covered the protests — received threatening phone calls, according to media reports and watchdogs. Numerous offices faced similar vandalism to the Media Development Foundation, and at least six opposition politicians and activists were beaten. Kintsurashvili worries the harassment will become more common in Georgia now that the law’s enactment appears imminent.   “The purpose of this legislation is not transparency,” she said. “They want to silence unwanted voices, critical voices,” she continued, referring to the government.   Georgia’s Washington embassy did not respond to VOA’s email requesting comment. As of publication, a VOA request for comment sent Friday via the web portal for the prime minister, who is part of the ruling Georgian Dream party, has received no response.  President Salome Zourabichvili said she would veto the bill, but the Georgian Dream party — which reintroduced the law last month after protests prompted its withdrawal last year — controls a big enough majority to override her.  The law’s supporters say it will help bolster transparency and protect Georgian sovereignty. Its opponents say it will be used to silence and intimidate critics of the government.   “It’s not just about supporting Georgia. It’s about supporting democracy,” said Mamuka Andguladze, chair of the Media Advocacy Coalition group in Tbilisi.   Nika Gvaramia, a former journalist and the founder of the opposition Ahali political party, told VOA he believes Georgian Dream may use the foreign agent law to try to influence the October elections in its favor.   Others say the law could also harm Georgia’s bid to join the European Union, which the majority of Georgians support.    Dubbed the “Russian law” for its resemblance to a similar piece of legislation that the Kremlin has used for years to stamp out dissent, critics worry the law bodes poorly for Georgia’s democratic future and risks pushing Tbilisi squarely into Moscow’s hold.  “This law will be used to implement some Soviet-style repression in Georgia, and to target critical voices,” said Eto Buziashvili, a research associate at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab. Based in Tbilisi, Buziashvili researches propaganda from Russia and the South Caucasus region.   Buziashvili and other analysts have documented a barrage of Russian propaganda about the bill.   “We’re seeing a lot of other overlap between the government’s arguments about why the bill is needed and what is being said in Russian and pro-Russian sources,” Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator, told VOA.  One of the primary narratives is that the Tbilisi protests were organized by the West.  “The idea that the West is funding and coordinating these protests is something that’s being shared pretty explicitly by Russian channels,” said Kyle Walter, who heads global research at Logically, a British tech startup that fights disinformation.  Other propaganda narratives attempt to distance the Georgian law from its Russian counterpart by falsely claiming the Georgian one is similar to the U.S. Foreign Agents Registration Act. Another false narrative depicts the law as necessary to stop the West from coercing Georgia into going to war with Russia as a second front of the war in Ukraine.   Russia’s Washington embassy did not reply to VOA’s email requesting comment.   Many, if not all, of these narratives are not necessarily new, according to Walter and Buziashvili. But they do highlight the Kremlin’s apparent support for Georgia’s foreign agent law.  The narratives also underscore what’s at stake for a country that was once lauded as a bastion of democracy among former Soviet states but in recent years has found itself increasingly wobbling between the West and the Kremlin.   “It’s another stage of Russia’s conflict with the West more broadly,” Walter said.  Journalists and political leaders who spoke with VOA, however, said most Georgians can see through the propaganda.  “They recognize Russian propaganda very easily. For us, it’s at first sight,” said Eka Kvesitadze, a journalist at the pro-opposition Georgian broadcaster Mtavari Arkhi. 

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GENEVA — As U.N. agencies warn of a looming famine in Sudan, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights says U.N. human rights chief Volker Türk held separate phone calls with Sudan’s rival generals this week to try to deescalate the conflict.  “The high commissioner warned both commanders that fighting in el-Fasher, where more than 1.8 million residents and internally displaced people are encircled and at imminent risk of famine, would have a catastrophic impact on civilians, and would deepen intercommunal conflict with disastrous humanitarian consequences,” Ravina Shamdasani, spokesperson for the high commissioner, told journalists in Geneva Friday.  Since fighting for control of el-Fasher, the last stronghold of the Sudanese Armed Forces in western Darfur, dramatically escalated last week, the United Nations says at least 58 civilians have been killed and 213 injured.  Shamdasani said during separate telephone conversations Tuesday with Sudanese Armed Forces Commander Lieutenant-General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and Commander of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, Türk “appealed to both generals to put the interests of the people first.”  She said human rights chief Türk, who has been trying to have a conversation with the two competing leaders since August, expressed his “deep distress” at the situation in Sudan and urged them “to take specific concrete steps to cease hostilities.”  Shamdasani said the high commissioner told them “to resume peace negotiations, to ensure that people have access to adequate humanitarian assistance, to not block humanitarian assistance, and to ensure that their troops and their allied forces fully respect international humanitarian law and human rights law.”  She said the generals each acknowledged the importance of respecting international humanitarian law and that SAF Commander Burhan indicated that he would facilitate visas for more U.N. human rights staff.  “The visa issue is an important one,” she said, noting that her office currently has only one international staff member in Port Sudan.  “The high commissioner did ask for his designated expert to get access to Sudan as well as more of our staff to get access, and that was a positive outcome of the call,” she said, adding that “it is very important for us to be on the ground, to be able to cover such important crises more closely.”  Since war between the SAF and RSF erupted in mid-April 2023, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or OCHA, reports more than 15,500 people have been killed, some 33,000 others injured, and an estimated 6.8 million have been displaced within the country.  “In Sudan, half of the population, 25 million people, need humanitarian aid,” said Jens Laerke, OCHA spokesperson. “Famine is closing in. Diseases are closing in. The fighting is closing in on civilians, especially in Darfur.”  He said that the U.N. aims to reach and support 15 million of the worst-affected people, and that efforts to help so many citizens were under threat because the U.N.’s appeal for $2.7 billion was only 12% funded.  “This is not just an underfunded appeal; it is a catastrophically underfunded appeal,” he said. “People in Sudan are staring famine in the face.”  The World Health Organization warns famine is looming, especially in parts of Darfur and in the capital, Khartoum, with more than one-third of the population facing acute hunger.  “The number of under-5 children and pregnant and breastfeeding women suffering from acute malnutrition has increased by 22% from 3.9 million to 4.9 million people in 2024,” Dr. Shible Sahbani, the WHO representative in Sudan, said in Port Sudan Friday.  “The recent escalation of violence in Darfur, and particularly in el-Fasher, is alarming and causing more deaths and injuries among civilians as access to health facilities is hampered by the ensuing insecurity,” he said.  The WHO has recorded 62 verified attacks on health care. It says two-thirds of Sudan’s 18 states currently are experiencing multiple outbreaks of killer diseases.  It warns that disease outbreaks such as cholera, measles, dengue fever and malaria are spreading and likely to worsen during the upcoming rainy season “as people living in makeshift shelters will be more exposed to the elements” and access to those in desperate need becomes even more difficult.  “We stand ready to do more and utilize all available avenues to reach the most vulnerable populations across Sudan, but we need assurances of security for our staff and supplies,” Sahbani said, adding that “health cannot be ensured in the absence of peace.” 

CAPE TOWN, South Africa — An exhaustive rescue operation to find missing construction workers trapped in the rubble of a collapsed building in South Africa ended Friday after nearly two weeks, as authorities released a major revision of their figures and said they now believe that no one else is missing.  They confirmed that 33 workers died in the collapse of the five-story apartment building that was under construction in the city of George on South Africa’s south coast.  Authorities in the city had said that 19 workers were still unaccounted for and believed to be buried in the rubble of the unfinished building that came crashing down on May 6.  But as rescue crews and other personnel finished moving concrete and clearing the debris Friday, the city said it now believed that a total of 62 construction workers were at the site when the building collapsed, and not 81 as it previously announced. The conclusion came after more consultations with the building company, police and other new sources of information, the city said.  That meant that all workers were now accounted for: the 33 dead and 29 rescued, the city said. Of the dead, 27 were men and six were women, the city said.  The tragedy was one of South Africa's worst building collapses.  South African President Cyril Ramaphosa visited the collapsed building Thursday to show support for the victims' families, emergency workers and others who had been on the site for more than 250 hours, working night and day in shifts to try to locate and rescue survivors. Five of the victims were taken out of the building alive but later died in the hospital, authorities said. Ten people remain in the hospital.  More than 1,000 emergency responders, rescuers, volunteers and other personnel were part of the search efforts.  There were some remarkable stories of survival amid the thousands of tons of concrete that collapsed, including a man who was found alive after being trapped for six days without food and water. Rescuers said he had only minor injuries.  As the rescue operation ended and became a clean-up operation, the building will be handed over to the national department of employment and labor to conduct an investigation into the collapse, the city said. There will be several other investigations, including by police and the provincial Western Cape government.  "This was a devastating tragedy," said Western Cape Premier Alan Winde, the head of the provincial government. "We need to understand what happened and what steps need to be taken to ensure that we do whatever we can to hold those who need to be held to account.”  Many of the workers were foreign nationals from Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi. The construction contractors responsible for the building have come under scrutiny and the investigations will probe whether they adhered to safety standards. The building was due to be completed in July or August. 

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LONDON — Paul McCartney is a billionaire Beatle. According to figures released Friday, the former member of the Fab Four is the first British musician to be worth 1 billion pounds ($1.27 billion). The annual Sunday Times Rich List calculated that the wealth of the 81-year-old musician and his wife, Nancy Shevell, had grown by 50 million pounds since last year thanks to McCartney’s 2023 Got Back tour, the rising value of his back catalogue and Beyonce’s cover of the Beatles’ “Blackbird” on her “Cowboy Carter” album. A “final” Beatles song, “Now and Then,” was also released in November and topped music charts in the United States, the United Kingdom and other countries. Surviving Beatles McCartney and Ringo Starr completed a demo track recorded in 1977 by the late John Lennon, adding in a guitar recording by George Harrison, who died in 2001. The newspaper estimated 50 million pounds of the couple’s wealth is due to Shevell, daughter of the late U.S. trucking tycoon Mike Shevell. McCartney ranked 165th overall on the newspaper’s respected and widely perused list of the U.K.’s 350 richest people. The top spot went to Gopi Hinduja and his family, who own the banking, media and entertainment conglomerate Hinduja Group and are worth an estimated 37 billion pounds ($47 billion). Other entertainment figures on the list include “Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling, whose fortune is estimated at 945 million pounds ($1.2 billion), and singer Elton John, estimated to be worth 470 million pounds ($597 million). King Charles III ranked 258th with an estimated wealth of 610 million pounds ($775 million). The king’s fortune includes the large inherited private estates of Sandringham in England and Balmoral in Scotland. The total does not include items held in trust by the monarch for the nation, such as the Crown Jewels.

HALIFAX. Canada — China’s effort to establish itself as a “near-Arctic power” have become increasingly confined to the territory of its close ally Russia as other nations lose interest in cooperating with Beijing, according to Canadian security experts.  The degree in which China poses a serious geopolitical threat in the Arctic region is debatable among experts.  Chinese efforts to establish research stations in up to half a dozen Arctic nations ground to a halt because of travel restrictions during the COVID pandemic. Mounting concerns over China’s human rights record and its aggressive actions elsewhere have made several of those countries reluctant to see operations resume, said experts.  “In many ways our fear of China and the Arctic dates back to five or six years ago when China’s power and influence seemed very much to be on the uptick in the region,” said Adam Lajeunesse, a professor focusing on Arctic issues at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, Nova Scotia. “Its political, economic and soft power influence in the Arctic outside of Russia has collapsed.  “Our fears of China are still lagging events. A lot from pre-COVID era when there was a lot of fears that China was going to dominate Arctic infrastructure. … That didn’t happen,” Lajeunesse said.   VOA reported in December 2022 that China had sent or announced plans to send several people to its two most important scientific outposts in Norway and Iceland after lengthy absences of Chinese scientists from both sites. But there were no signs of China trying to renew two other scientific projects in Sweden and Finland, where national organizations told VOA that Chinese activity was set to end or had ended.  An earlier plan to set up a research base in Denmark’s autonomous island of Greenland was shelved in the face of opposition in Copenhagen, according to Marc Lanteigne, a social studies professor at the Arctic University of Norway.  That has left Beijing — which has no direct access to Arctic waters — to focus its Arctic ambitions on Russia, with which it established a “no limits” partnership days before Russia’s unprovoked full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.  China’s interests in the region are believed to include fisheries, extraction of minerals and other resources, and a shorter sea route to Europe — all of which become more viable as the Arctic ice pack recedes in the face of climate change.  "China respects the sovereignty, sovereign rights and jurisdiction rights of Arctic countries," Liu Pengyu, spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, told VOA in an emailed statement. "Issues related to the Arctic not only affect Arctic countries but also have global significance."  "China will work with all parties in getting to know more about the Arctic, as well as in its protection, exploration and management, with the view of greater peace, stability and sustainable development in the region," Liu added.  Many experts are watching China’s arctic activities and national security professionals told VOA on the sidelines of an April 30 conference sponsored by the Canadian Military Intelligence Association there are still limits to how much cooperation China can expect from Russia.  “There is little doubt among Western nations that China will continue to seek research, infrastructure, and increased military engagement through direct and indirect means in support of its Belt and Road Initiatives,” said Al Dillon, co-founder and CEO of Sapper Labs, a company that supports the intelligence and cyber defense needs of Canada and other English-speaking countries.  “The collaboration with Russia is concerning in this regard, while Russia will surely want to retain its own sovereignty and independence in the Arctic. The extent of this collaboration remains to be seen; however, we can be assured it will occur.”  Artur Wilczynski, a former Canadian ambassador to Norway and retired senior official in several intelligence-related agencies, told VOA that Russia “was originally skeptical with non-Arctic state involvement in the region.”  “Given Western sanctions and the Russian need for investment, China may exert more pressure on Russia rather than other Arctic states,” Wilczynski said. “It may be easier for them to meet their Arctic interests through closer collaboration with Russia in the short term than try to address increasing Western skepticism of their engagement in either the North American or Western European Arctic.”  Despite the focus on Russia, Samuel Jardine, head of research at London Politica, said Beijing is interested in acquiring access to the Canadian Arctic — a goal that may have led to a scandal over Chinese interference in the past two Canadian elections.  “In effect Canada is a doorway for China to not being seen to be isolated merely in the ‘Russian Arctic’ and maintaining influence and access to the whole region,” Jardine told VOA in an email. “Something fundamental for a "Polar Great Power" which claims to be a "near-Arctic" state.”  Michel Lipin contributed to this article.