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Hundreds of residents in southwestern Russia’s Ural region staged a rare protest Monday, demanding compensation for the flooding of their homes after a dam gave way because of rising floodwaters. The protest took place in the city of Orsk, located in the Orenburg region near the border with Kazakhstan. Chanting “Putin help us” and “shame,” the locals affected by the floods defied Russian laws that prohibit demonstrations without the permission of authorities. They gathered in front of the city’s administrative building Monday, demanding emergency assistance as the floods swallowed more than 10,000 homes. Denis Pasler, governor of the Orenburg region...

The Justice Department on Friday charged three Azerbaijani gangsters with plotting to murder a Brooklyn-based Iranian-American author and activist last year. The case stems from the July arrest of Khalid Mehdiyev, who was collared near Masih Alinejad’s home with an assault rifle after the beefy and bearded 24-year-old was filmed ringing Alinejad’s doorbell and lingering on her porch in a leafy part of the New York City borough. The other two men facing charges are 43-year-old Rafat “Rome” Amirov, a resident of Iran who was arrested on Jan. 26 in New York, and 38-year-old Polad “Haci Qaqa” Omarov, who was...

Ukrainian officials announced on Friday that they had exhumed more than 400 bodies at a mass burial site near Izium, Kharkiv region, from which Russian troops recently retreated after a Ukrainian counteroffensive. Many of those buried there, they said, apparently died a violent death — bodies were found with their hands tied behind their backs, ropes around their necks, broken bones and gunshot wounds; some men had their genitalia severed. VOA Eastern Europe Bureau chief Myroslava Gongadze visited the site.

The website of the Hudson Institute, http://www.hudson.org, a politically conservative, non-profit American think tank based in Washington, D.C. which was scheduled to host Wednesday, October 4, Guo Wengui, also known as Miles Kwok, China’s most famous billionaire businessman and whistleblower seeking political asylum in the United States, has been under attack today and is not functioning at this moment. Tomorrow’s Hudson Institute event with Guo Wengui was postponed. It is not clear whether the postponement was because of what is believed to be a cyber attack, but Guo Wengui will speak at the Hudson Institute, BBG Watch was told. Hudson...

Access to Western news outlets—including parts of Voice of America and the BBC—were blocked by Russia’s media watchdog on Friday. Moscow restricted several sites over “deliberate and systematic circulation of materials containing false information,” the media regulator Roskomnadzor said in a statement. Requests to block the news websites were made on February 24, the day Russia invaded Ukraine, Agence-France Presse reported. Since that date, Moscow has ordered media to refer to the war as a “special military operation.” The regulator has issued dozens of warnings to independent media, ordering them to remove content or risk being fined or blocked. The...

Republican Representative Michael McCaul called it a "disgrace" that the U.S. government failed to evacuate USAGM journalists from Afghanistan before officially ending military operations in the country. "It is absolutely disgraceful the U.S. State Department claimed they evacuated their local employees when in reality they abandoned hundreds of USAGM journalists and their families," McCaul, the House Foreign Affairs Committee ranking Republican, wrote in a statement Tuesday. The U.S. Agency for Global Media, or USAGM, is an independent federal agency that encompasses several news networks, including the Voice of America and Radio Azadi. In his statement, McCaul estimated that roughly 500...

Officials at the congressionally funded international broadcaster Voice of America quietly rehired an executive this week who had recently been put on administrative leave for misconduct and slated for firing over multiple whistleblower allegations of misconduct, fraud, and false education credentials, as well as a damning Office of Personnel and Management report. John Lippman, acting VOA director of programming, announced that former Persian Division Director Setareh Derakhshesh Sieg would return as special assistant to the director of programming and director of program review. Sieg’s return to the VOA comes shortly after she was placed on administrative leave at the beginning...

President Joe Biden's initial list of action items included sweeping changes to rid the federal government's international news organizations of top managers loyal to his predecessor....Within hours of being sworn in Wednesday, Biden forced out Michael Pack, the controversial head of the agency that oversees Voice of America and four other networks that broadcast news to millions of people abroad.Biden then removed VOA's director and deputy director on Thursday after both had their jobs only a few weeks.

On Joe Biden's first day in office, he got right to work. The press focused on Biden's 17 executive orders, from shutting down the Keystone XL pipeline, to ending border wall construction just as thousands of migrants in a pandemic are surging in. Biden did it for an aim that was clear enough -- to quickly undo the legacy and achievements of President Trump, and enact a sort of Obama restoration of the status quo.He also did something else that didn't get much press, for far muddier reasons: Mass firings at the Voice of America, a minor government agency that...

Michael Pack was fired by the Biden administration on Wednesday as head of the government agency overseeing federally funded international news outlets, including Voice of America. Pack, a pro-Trump documentary filmmaker, was confirmed as head of the U.S. Agency for Global Media in June, sparking an uproar from the organizations he was appointed to oversee. In a resignation letter, Pack called the move "a partisan act ...

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A federal judge ruled Friday that the head of the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), which oversees Voice of America (VOA) and other networks, unconstitutionally interfered with the news service when he went after its journalists for alleged bias against President Trump, NPR reports. Five suspended officials from the USAGM sued CEO Michael Pack in early October, accusing him of violating the "firewall" that protects international broadcasters from political interference. The officials alleged that Pack and others investigated and punished journalists for negative stories about the president, as well as stories about now President-elect Joe Biden and the racial...

Mr. Pack, as Director-Designate of the Voice of America, please figure out how to bypass Orwellian technological barriers and outreach the truth about the amazing, American experiment in bottom-to-top self-determination (against the top-down elitism of nearly all other political systems), to the Chinese people, despite the smothering brainwashing (apt in view of the Manchurian Candidate) to which they are subject. The most recent previous Voice of America Director, under "W" Bush 43, who actually directed the distribution to a world hungry for the truth, true information in America's interest, was the renowned author Robert R. Reilly. He later learned that...

The official Voice of America radio has fired two more reporters for their role in a broadcast interview with a dissident Chinese billionaire amid charges radio executives caved to Chinese government pressure in canceling the broadcast midstream. The Guo interview had been scheduled for three hours but was cut off after an hour and 19 minutes following protests from the Chinese Embassy in Washington to VOA and the State Department. The VOA did not respond to an email request for comment on the latest firings.

Arif Aslan, a correspondent for the Voice of America (VOA) Kurdish service, was arrested today in the eastern Turkish province of Van. He was following a democracy march started by the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP). Speaking to Gazete Duvar, Aslan’s lawyer, Cahit Durmaz, said he was arrested due to a previous conviction dating back to 2016-2017 and was expected to be released on parole after around two weeks in prison. Aslan was previously arrested on March 31, 2017, reportedly for photographing the barriers put in front of the municipal building in Van after the Turkish government appointed a caretaker...

Two senior executives at the US Congress-funded Voice of America resigned this week after a controversial ally of US President Donald Trump was confirmed as the new chief executive of the agency that oversees the media outlet, as well as Radio Free Asia and Voice of Europe. In another instance of Trump appointing a political loyalist for a nonpolitical job, the conservative activist and filmmaker Michael Pack was confirmed last week as the new head of the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM), an agency independent of the US government responsible for taxpayer-funded news outlets. This came after a partisan-split...

The Trump administration is seeking to implement a series of major reforms at Voice of America's Persian News Network, an effort that comes after years of complaints alleging the outlet has exhibited a pro-Iran bias in its reporting, senior U.S. officials told the Washington Free Beacon. VOA Persian, a taxpayer-funded news service that broadcasts in Farsi with the mission of countering the hardline Iranian regime's anti-U.S. propaganda, has long been a source of frustration for Iranian dissidents and anti-regime voices in Congress. Its broadcasts, critics allege, consistently portray Iran's government in a glowing light, undermining the outlet's mission of providing...

Voice of America (VOA) director Amanda Bennett and her deputy Sandra Sugawara jointly quit on Monday following sharp criticism from President Donald Trump and the confirmation of his ally, Michael Pack, as the new head of the organization which oversees the US media outlet. The state-funded broadcaster is directed at audiences outside the US and produces news in 47 languages. Bennett and Sugawara said Pack has the right to name his own team of leaders as he prepares to take the reins at the US Agency for Global Media. The two veteran journalists did not address the conflict with Trump,...

President Trump was happy as heck at the news that Michael Pack, his choice for new director at the Voice of America, finally got confirmed by the Senate. It came as a sort of miracle, given the hideous protracted battle from deep state's Obama holdovers desperate to keep him out. It even involved a last-ditch Kavanaugh-style underhanded bid to smear him as corrupt in order to delay his confirmation battle to eternity. It failed. And now what's probably the last solid Obama bastion of government has been toppled like a Saddam statue. *snip* (Tweet images at source) But if you...

President Trump was happy as heck at the news that Michael Pack, his choice for new director at the Voice of America, finally got confirmed by the Senate. It came as a sort of miracle, given the dirty, protracted battle from deep state's Obama holdovers to keep him out. It was so underhanded it involved a last-ditch Kavanaugh-style bid to smear Pack as corrupt if for nothing else to delay his Senate confirmation to eternity. It was deep state at its worst and it failed. Now, what's probably the last solid Obama bastion of deep-state government has toppled. Congratulations to Michael Pack! Nobody has any...