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Tehran, Iran — A former Iranian minister has been sentenced to three years in jail for corruption, state media reported on Wednesday, citing the judiciary, in a rare conviction of a senior government official. "Following a trial, former Agriculture Minister Javad Sadatinejad was sentenced to three years in prison," said Chief Justice Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei, as quoted by the official Iran newspaper. Sadatinejad was agriculture minister from August 2021 to April 2022, when he resigned after the case came to light. He had previously been a deputy for the central city of Kashan. The former minister had been prosecuted as part of a major corruption case linked to the import of livestock supplies into Iran, for which 10 people have already been convicted. He can appeal the ruling. The judiciary also said two former ministers had been summoned and 45 other people charged in another corruption case, worth $3.7 billion, involving one of Iran's biggest tea trading companies. In September 2020, a former high-ranking judicial official, Akbar Tabari, was sentenced to 31 years for corruption, one of the heaviest sentences handed down to a former official in the Islamic republic.

Pentagon — After nearly a two-week delay, U.S. and Nigerien officials are holding high-level follow-on meetings to coordinate the withdrawal of American troops from the country. Christopher Maier, assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict, and Lieutenant General Dagvin Anderson, joint staff director for joint force development, are meeting Wednesday and Thursday in Niamey with members of Niger’s new government, known as the National Council for Safeguarding the Homeland, or CNSP, two U.S. officials told VOA. The CNSP posted on the social platform X Wednesday that Maier and Anderson met Wednesday with Lieutenant General Salifou Mody, one of the military coup members who was named minister of national defense.  The CNSP noted that the meeting comes two months after Niger denounced its military basing agreements with the United States and aims to “ensure that this withdrawal takes place in the best possible conditions, guaranteeing order, security and compliance with set deadlines.” There are about 900 U.S. military personnel in Niger, including active duty, civilians and contractors, according to the U.S. officials, who spoke to VOA on condition of anonymity ahead of the conclusion of the talks. Most of the U.S. military personnel have stayed in the country past their deployment’s planned end dates, as details for their withdrawal are ironed out. “We're still in a bit of a holding pattern,” Pentagon deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh said last week. Counterterrorism in 'disarray' The U.S. has had two military bases — Air Base 101 in Niamey and Air Base 201 in Agadez —to monitor terror groups in the region. Officials say most U.S. forces are based in the latter, which cost the U.S. $110 million to build, and began drone operations in 2019. Niger’s natural resources have increased its importance to global powers, and Niger’s location had provided the U.S. with the ability to conduct counterterror operations throughout much of West Africa. “We're in a different position now, and we're going to continue to consult with the Nigeriens in terms of the orderly withdrawal of U.S. forces. We're going to continue to stay engaged with the partners in the region when it comes to terrorism and countering the terrorist threat,” Pentagon press secretary Major General Pat Ryder told reporters on Tuesday. Countries in the region, including Niger, Mali, Nigeria and Burkina Faso, have seen an expansive rise in jihadist movements.  According to the Global Terrorism Index, an annual report covering terrorist incidents worldwide, more than half of the deaths caused by terrorism last year were in the Sahel.  Niger’s neighbor, Burkina Faso, suffered the worst, with 1,907 fatalities from terrorism in 2023.  “These are some of the most dangerous areas in the world,” Bill Roggio, editor of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Long War Journal, told VOA. “These countries are in dire threat of being overrun by jihadist groups.” Now, Niger’s coup has put the West’s ability to monitor terrorists like the Islamic State and al-Qaida in the Sahel in “complete disarray,” according to Roggio.  The United States’ intelligence-gathering capacity was limited before, “but we're approaching the point where intelligence-gathering is practically at zero,” he said. A U.S. defense official told VOA that “basically every flight,” even intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance drone flights, must be approved by the junta.  “The beginning of April is when things started getting slower,” the official told VOA. The junta began delaying and canceling the types of U.S. military flights that had been quickly approved before then. Carla Martinez Machain, a political science professor at the University of Buffalo, believes the Pentagon will try to negotiate with Chad for a more significant American troop presence, as the U.S. struggles to find allies in what she called the “coup belt” — a reference to the recent coups in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger.  However, most U.S. forces have temporarily left from Chad for Germany in recent weeks, a move the Pentagon called a "temporary step" as part of an ongoing review of its security cooperation with Chad, which would resume after the country’s May 6 presidential election.  Only a small group of service members remain in Chad as part of a multinational task force, officials tell VOA. “Niger was somewhat of a rarity in the sense that it had one of the few democratically elected governments in the region, and also a democratically elected government that was friendly to the U.S. and willing to host a U.S. military presence,” Martinez Machain told VOA. “And so, finding a replacement for that for a military base is going to be somewhat difficult.”  Unless the U.S. can find another base to use in West Africa, counterterror drones will likely have to spend most of their fuel supply flying thousands of kilometers from U.S. bases in Italy or Djibouti, severely limiting their time over the targets and their ability to gather intelligence. “The beauty of having drones based in Niger was that they were in the thick of the fight. They were in the middle of where jihadist groups are operating. So, once you launch the drones, they're in the midst of it, and all of the flight time being used can be used to gather information,” Roggio said. Resupply concerns Amid the negotiations and flight cancellations, U.S. troops in Niger began raising concerns about their supply chain. Service members in Niamey told the office of Representative Matt Gaetz that blood for the blood bank, hygiene supplies, malaria pills and other medications were running low.  A U.S. defense official acknowledged to VOA that “they were concerned about medication levels.” The official also said that troops in Niamey had gone through April without a resupply flight but had received food and water supplies through ground-based transportation. A flight with medical supplies finally went from Agadez to Niamey last week, the defense official told VOA. Coup forced withdrawal Tensions between the U.S. and Niger began in 2023 when Niger’s military junta removed the democratically elected president from power.  After months of delay, the Biden administration formally declared in October that the military takeover in Niger was a coup, a determination that prevented Niger from receiving a significant amount of U.S. military and foreign assistance. In March, after tense meetings between U.S. representatives and the CNSP, the junta called the U.S. military presence “illegal” and announced it was ending an agreement that allowed American forces to be based in the country. During that meeting, the U.S. and Niger fundamentally disagreed about Niger’s desire to supply Iran with uranium and work more closely with Russian military forces. “They [Niger] saw this as kind of an imperialistic move, and this was seen negatively and was part of the reason why the U.S. was told to leave the country,” Martinez Machain said. Russia has made significant military inroads across the African continent, Martinez Machain added, because human rights violators are able to obtain military training, assistance and defense systems “without the conditions that the U.S. would attach them.” “Especially for nondemocratic countries, this can seem very appealing,” she said.

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NEW YORK — The number of fatal overdoses in the U.S. fell last year, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data posted Wednesday. Agency officials noted that the data is provisional and could change after more analysis, and that they still expect a drop when the final counts are in. It would be only the second annual decline since the current national drug death epidemic began more than three decades ago. Experts reacted cautiously. One described the decline as relatively small and said it should be thought of as part of a leveling off rather than a decrease. Another noted that the last time a decline occurred — in 2018 — drug deaths shot up in the years that followed. "Any decline is encouraging," said Brandon Marshall, a Brown University researcher who studies overdose trends. "But I think it's certainly premature to celebrate or to draw any large-scale conclusions about where we may be headed long term with this crisis." It's also too soon to know what spurred the decline, Marshall and other experts said. Explanations could include shifts in the drug supply, expansion of overdose prevention and addiction treatment, and the grim possibility that the epidemic has killed so many that now there are basically fewer people to kill. CDC Chief Medical Officer Dr. Debra Houry called the dip "heartening news" and praised efforts to reduce the tally, but she noted that "there are still families and friends losing their loved ones to drug overdoses at staggering numbers." About 107,500 people died of overdoses in the U.S. last year, including American citizens and noncitizens who were in the country at the time they died, the CDC estimated. That's down 3% from 2022, when there were an estimated 111,000 such deaths, the agency said. The drug overdose epidemic, which has killed more than 1 million people since 1999, has had many ripple effects. For example, a study published last week in JAMA Psychiatry estimated that more than 321,000 U.S. children lost a parent to a fatal drug overdose from 2011 to 2021. "These children need support" and are at a higher risk of mental health and drug use disorders themselves, said Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, which helped lead the study. "It's not just a loss of a person. It's also the implications that loss has for the family left behind." Prescription painkillers once drove the nation's overdose epidemic, but they were supplanted years ago by heroin and more recently by illegal fentanyl. The dangerously powerful opioid was developed to treat intense pain from ailments such as cancer but has increasingly been mixed with other drugs in the illicit drug supply. For years, fentanyl was frequently injected, but increasingly it's being smoked or mixed into counterfeit pills. A study published last week found that law enforcement seizures of pills containing fentanyl are rising dramatically, jumping from 44 million in 2022 to more than 115 million last year. It's possible that the seizures indicate that the overall supply of fentanyl-laced pills is growing fast, not necessarily that police are whittling down the illicit drug supply, said one of the paper's authors, Dr. Daniel Ciccarone of the University of California, San Francisco. He noted that the decline in overdoses was not uniform. All but two of the states in the eastern half of the U.S. saw declines, but most Western states saw increases. Alaska, Washington and Oregon each saw 27% increases. The reason? Many Eastern states have been dealing with fentanyl for about a decade, while it's reached Western states more recently, Ciccarone said. Nevertheless, some researchers say there are reasons to be optimistic. It's possible that smoking fentanyl is not as lethal as injecting it, but scientists are still exploring that question. Meanwhile, more money is becoming available to treat addiction and prevent overdoses, through government funding and legal settlements with drugmakers, wholesalers and pharmacies, Ciccarone noted. "My hope is 2023 is the beginning of a turning point," he said. 

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Guatemala City — A Guatemalan court on Wednesday granted a prominent journalist and corruption critic a conditional release in a case of alleged graft, though he must clear another legal hurdle before being freed from prison.  Jose Ruben Zamora has rejected money-laundering accusations against him as retaliation for his newspaper's reporting on alleged government corruption under former right-wing President Alejandro Giammattei.  A criminal court granted the 67-year-old home detention while awaiting a retrial on those charges, its president, Veronica Ruiz, announced.  The three judges decided there was no danger of Zamora fleeing or obstructing the investigation and criminal proceedings against him.  However, he will not be freed from the military barracks in Guatemala City until a separate obstruction-of-justice case against him is resolved.  Zamora told journalists after the ruling that he was waiting for a hearing date in that case, which he said he believed would be "dismissed and I can go home."  In October 2023, an appeals court overturned a six-year prison sentence for Zamora — founder of the now-shuttered El Periodico — and ordered a new trial.  A date has not yet been set.  Press freedom and rights groups have denounced his prosecution as a "witch hunt."   On Tuesday, Colombia's prestigious Gabo Foundation named Zamora the winner of its annual journalism award for his "tenacious and courageous professional work."  Jose Carlos Zamora, the journalist's son, told Agence France-Presse in an interview on Wednesday that his father had suffered "torture" in prison during Giammattei's government.  The younger Zamora, who now lives in Miami with his mother and brother, said his father saw prison "as part of his work" and that it "helped expose abuses of power in Guatemala."  Giammattei has been accused by rights groups of overseeing a crackdown on anti-graft prosecutors and journalists during his term, which ended in January.  He was replaced by President Bernardo Arevalo, an underdog anti-corruption campaigner who overcame attempts by the political establishment to block his inauguration.

islamabad — China on Wednesday hailed its "ironclad" relationship with Pakistan and vowed to further enhance economic and anti-terrorism security cooperation between the neighboring countries at a bilaterial strategic dialogue in Beijing. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi renewed the pledge at a news conference after hosting formal talks with his Pakistani counterpart, Ishaq Dar, who concurrently serves as deputy prime minister. Broadcast live by Pakistan's state-run TV, the media talk comes just weeks after a suicide car bombing in northwestern Pakistan killed five Chinese engineers who were working on a hydropower project. Their local driver also was killed. The Pakistani military said this month that its probe into the March 26 attack revealed that an Afghan national carried it out and terrorists based in Afghanistan had planned it. Wang stated that the Pakistani side promised to make every effort to arrest the perpetrators and bring them to justice. Chinese state media quoted him as expressing hope that Islamabad would ensure "the safety of Chinese personnel, projects, and institutions in Pakistan, and eliminate the worries of Chinese enterprises and personnel." Dar said that the dialogue with Wang also reviewed the Afghan situation, and both sides agreed that peace and stability in the war-ravaged neighboring country are crucial for regional development, connectivity, and prosperity. "We are concerned about the continued presence of terrorist entities operating in Afghanistan and call upon the Afghan interim government to take credible and verifiable actions against such elements using Afghan soil to threaten the peace and security of the neighboring countries," the Pakistani foreign minister said. Wang calls for 'united front' Islamabad maintains that the Pakistani Taliban, formally known as Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, was behind the car bombing and other attacks in the country, alleging that the terrorist outfit is being facilitated by Taliban authorities in Afghanistan. Afghanistan's ruling Taliban leaders reject allegations that Afghan soil was used in the attack against the Chinese workers. They reiterated that no one is permitted to threaten other countries, including Pakistan, from Afghanistan. Wang said, without mentioning Afghanistan, that Beijing "is willing to further deepen counter-terrorism security cooperation" with Islamabad. Without elaborating further, he called on the international community to "eradicate the breeding ground for terrorism" through a "united front" against the threat. The China-Pakistan dialogue comes one day after a new report warned that power vacuums in Afghanistan created in the wake of U.S.-led allied troop departures are fueling the resurgence of transnational terrorist groups, including TTP. "The post-U.S. withdrawal environment in Afghanistan offers terrorist groups a range of new opportunities for regrouping, plotting, and collaborating with one another," said the study conducted by the U.S. Institute for Peace, based in Washington. Beijing 'ready to work' Wang said Wednesday that Beijing is ready to work with Islamabad to advance the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor or CPEC. The Chinese-funded multibillion-dollar collaboration has built roads, highways, power plants, and ports as part of President Xi Jinping's global Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Dar insisted the decade-long CPEC undertaking "has transformed Pakistan's economic landscape by eliminating power outages and developing a robust infrastructure network, thus laying a strong foundation for Pakistan's future development." Pakistan's foreign minister noted that the two sides agreed to "further upgrade and expand" CPEC cooperation. In a recent speech in Islamabad, Chinese Ambassador Jiang Zaidong referred to CPEC as a pilot project of BRI and said it had brought more than $25 billion in direct investment, created 155,000 direct job opportunities, and built 510 kilometers (316.8 miles) of expressways, 8,000 megawatts of electricity, and 886 kilometers (550.5 miles) of core transmission grids to Pakistan. Some critics attribute cash-strapped Pakistan's deepening economic challenges to CPEC-related Chinese investments and loans. A $3 billion International Monetary Fund loan helped the South Asian nation narrowly avoid default on its foreign debt payments last year.

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Tehran, Iran — Iran's parliament approved changes to the working week for all government employees on Wednesday that would establish a 40-hour work week with a Friday-Saturday weekend. The legislation, which still requires a green light from constitutional watchdog the Guardian Council, would replace the existing 44-hour work week with a half-day Thursday and Friday — the Muslim day of prayer and rest — the only full day off. The change had been hotly debated, and 136 lawmakers voted in favor, with 66 against and three abstentions, the official IRNA news agency said. Economists had warned that the alternative of a Thursday-Friday weekend risked deepening Iran's isolation by limiting most international transactions to three days per week. But some clerics accused supporters of a Friday-Saturday weekend of taking their lead from the Judeo-Christian traditions of the Western world. However, lawmaker Mohsen Pirhadi told parliament Wednesday that leading Shiite cleric Ayatollah Javadi Amoli had raised no objection to Saturday as a weekend day.

WASHINGTON — America's foreign adversaries will again seek to influence the upcoming U.S. elections, top security officials warned members of the Senate on Wednesday, harnessing the latest innovations in artificial intelligence to spread online disinformation, mislead voters and undermine trust in democracy. But the U.S. has greatly improved its ability to safeguard election security and identify and combat foreign disinformation campaigns since 2016, when Russia sought to influence the election, U.S. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines testified to the Senate Intelligence Committee. The latest warning from security officials came as advances in AI make it easier and cheaper than ever to create lifelike images, video and audio that can fool even the most discerning voter. Other tools of disinformation include state media, online influencers, and networks of fake accounts that can quickly amplify false and misleading content. Russia, China and Iran remain the main actors looking to interfere with the 2024 election, security officials said, but because of advances in technology, other nations or even domestic groups could try to mount their own sophisticated disinformation campaigns. Russia remains "the most active foreign threat to our elections," Haines said, using its state media and online influencers to try to erode trust in democratic institutions and U.S. support for Ukraine. In recent months, Russia has seized on America's debate over immigration, spreading posts that exaggerate the impact of migration in an apparent effort to stoke outrage among American voters. China did not directly try to influence the outcome of the 2020 presidential election, mostly because of concerns about blowback, Haines said. China's ties to TikTok were one of the things cited by members of Congress who recently voted to force TikTok's Beijing-based owner to sell the platform. "Needless to say, we will continue to monitor their activity," Haines said of China. Iran, meanwhile, has used social media platforms to issue threats and try to confuse voters, Haines said. She cited a 2020 episode in which U.S. officials accused Tehran of distributing false content and being behind a flurry of emails sent to Democratic voters in multiple battleground states that appeared to be aimed at intimidating them into voting for President Donald Trump. Wednesday's hearing on foreign threats to the election also covered the risk that an adversary could hack into state or local election systems, either to change the vote or to create the perception that the outcome can't be trusted. Jen Easterly, director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, said the federal government has worked closely with state and local election officials to ensure the 2024 election is the most secure ever. "Election infrastructure has never been more secure," Easterly said.

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Abuja, Nigeria — Nigeria's Federal Ministry of Women Affairs says it is investigating a plan by a lawmaker in central Niger state to marry off some 100 female orphans of unknown ages later this month. Speaker of the Niger State Assembly Abdulmalik Sarkin-Daji announced the mass wedding last week but called off the ceremony following widespread outrage. Minister of Women Affairs Uju Kennedy-Ohanenye, speaking to journalists in Abuja on Tuesday, condemned the plans. Kennedy-Ohanenye said she had petitioned the police and filed a lawsuit to stop the marriages pending an investigation to ascertain the age of the orphans and whether they consented to the marriages. "This is totally unacceptable by the Federal Ministry of Women Affairs and by the government” of Nigeria, she said. Last week, Sarkin-Daji announced his support for the mass wedding of the orphans, whose relatives were killed during attacks by armed bandits. He said it was part of his support to his constituents following an appeal for wedding funding by local traditional and religious leaders. The mass wedding had been scheduled for May 24. "That support I intend to give for the marriage of those orphans, I'm withdrawing it,” he said. “The parents can have the support [money], if they wish, let them go ahead and marry them off. As it is right now, I'm not threatened by the action of the minister." Despite national laws prohibiting it, forced or arranged marriage is a common phenomenon in Nigeria, especially among rural communities in the predominantly Muslim north, where religious and cultural norms such as polygamy favor the practice. Poor families often use forced marriage to ease financial pressure, and the European Union Agency for Asylum says girls who refuse could face repercussions such as neglect, ostracism, physical assault and rape. Raquel Kasham Daniel escaped being married off as a teenager when her father died and now runs a nonprofit helping children, especially less-privileged girls, get a formal education for free. She said the ability of women to avoid forced marriage in Nigeria depends on their income and education. "I was 16 when I lost my dad and I was almost married off, but then I ran away from home. And that gave me the opportunity to complete my education, and now I have a better life,” Daniel said. “So, the reason why I prioritize education is to make sure that other girls have access to quality schooling so that it will help them make informed decisions about their lives. Education not only increases our awareness as girls about our rights but also enhances our prospects for higher income earning,” she said. Thirty percent of girls in Nigeria are married before they turn 18, according to Girls Not Brides, a global network of more than 1,400 civil society groups working to end child marriage.

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white house — There are few things the presidential campaigns of Donald Trump and Joe Biden agree on. One is the presidential candidacy of activist-lawyer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Both the Biden and Trump camps see Kennedy as a potential spoiler in this November's election. About half of registered voters have told pollsters that if given the chance, they would replace both Biden and Trump on this year's ballot. "If you picture what this country is going to look like in November if either President Trump or President Biden won, the division is going to continue," Kennedy said at a California campaign event to introduce his running mate, 38-year-old attorney and philanthropist Nicole Shanahan. "The anger, the vitriol, the chaos, the polarization is going to worsen. The only way to end that is through my successful candidacy." Neither Kennedy nor Shanahan has ever held elective office. Kennedy's father was Robert F. Kennedy, a former U.S. attorney general and a senator, and a major contender in the 1968 Democratic Party presidential primary until he was assassinated. His uncle was President John F. Kennedy, slain while in office in 1963. "Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is not going to be the next president," predicts Georgetown University Associate Professor Hans Noel, echoing the consensus of his fellow political scientists. What worries the Biden and Trump campaigns is the possibility of Kennedy on the ballot in the half-dozen or so swing states where his mere thousands of votes could "change the outcome of that state. Then of course, that tips the direction of that state — if that state is large enough — and the ultimate election is fairly close, which is what we expect. Then, it could change the outcome of the race," Noel tells VOA. During a recent appearance on MSNBC, Kennedy declared "I'm going to be on the ballot in every state. I'll be on the ballot in every state by July." Kennedy's team declined VOA's request to make the candidate or a surrogate available to respond to questions, saying "the campaign has decided to only grant interviews to U.S press with targeted U.S. audiences at this time." The Kennedy clan "is not happy at all that he's running, and they've made a number of efforts to make that very clear," notes Noel. Biden, during a recent campaign appearance in the critical swing state of Pennsylvania, was surrounded by Kennedy family members, including the independent candidate's sister, Kerry Kennedy, who said "We want to make crystal clear our feeling that the best way forward for America is to reelect Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to four more years." Candidate Kennedy's beliefs about vaccines, the origins of COVD-19, and the assassinations of his father and uncle have attracted some supporters, including those who said they previously voted for Trump or Biden. In recent weeks, Kennedy attracted the most media attention not for his positions on any political issue but for a revelation from a 2012 deposition for a divorce. In it, he said cognitive issues that had harmed his earning potential could have been "caused by a worm that got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died." In a social media post after the brain worm wriggled into the headlines across the country, Kennedy quipped, "I offer to eat 5 more brain worms and still beat President Trump and President Biden in a debate." Political pundits are split on whether Kennedy poses more of a threat to Trump or Biden. "Kennedy is much more popular among Republicans than he is among Democrats right now. But that's probably mostly because he's a Democrat or former Democrat who says bad things about other Democrats," said Noel. "And, so, Republicans like to hear that, and they think that sounds interesting. But they're not going to vote for that over Donald Trump." The Republican National Committee, attempting to dissuade conservatives who oppose abortion from considering Kennedy as an alternative to Trump, stated, "There is exactly zero daylight between the abortion extremism of RFK Jr. and Crooked Joe Biden." The Democratic National Committee filed a complaint against Kennedy in February with the Federal Election Commission alleging a political action committee was illegally coordinating with the independent candidate's campaign to get him on additional state ballots. Biden's party also portrays Kennedy as a "spoiler for Donald Trump," according to Matt Corridoni, a DNC spokesperson. "RFK Jr.'s campaign isn't building a plan or a strategy to get 270 electoral votes. They're building one to help Trump return to the Oval Office," he says. The New York Times calls Kennedy the "X factor" in this year's presidential election, noting that the latest public opinion survey, organized by the newspaper The Philadelphia Inquirer and Siena College, shows him polling stronger than any third-party candidate in decades. The poll has Kennedy being supported by about 10% of registered voters in the battleground states, drawing equally from both Biden and Trump.