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New Delhi — India and Iran have signed a 10-year contract to develop and operate the Iranian port of Chabahar, which New Delhi envisages as a strategic trade route to landlocked Central Asian republics, allowing it to bypass rival Pakistan. India said the deal has unlocked new avenues for trade. But the United States, whose ties with Iran have worsened, has warned of the potential risk of sanctions on anyone considering business deals with Tehran. Analysts in New Delhi say the threat of sanctions could dampen hopes of turning the port into a trading hub. The agreement was signed Monday in Iran’s Chabahar town by India’s Shipping Minister, Sarbananda Sonawal and Iran’s urban development minister Mehrdad Bazrpash. "Chabahar Port’s significance transcends its role as a mere conduit between India and Iran. it serves as a vital trade artery connecting India with Afghanistan and Central Asian countries,” Sonawal said after the signing. The agreement gives India 10-year access to use the port. "We are pleased with this agreement, and we have full trust in India," Iranian minister Bazrpash said. India began helping to develop Chabahar port by building new cargo berths and terminals in 2016 after Washington eased sanctions on Iran – they were reimposed by the Trump administration in 2018. After India and Iran signed the 10-year deal, U.S. State Department spokesperson, Vedant Patel, told reporters that U.S. sanctions on Iran remain in place, and that Washington will continue to enforce them. "Any entity, anyone considering business deals with Iran, they need to be aware of the potential risk that they are opening themselves up to and the potential risk of sanctions," he said. Chabahar is India’s first major overseas port venture and for New Delhi, it is an important part of its strategy to improve links with resource-rich Central Asian republics and Afghanistan, access to which has been hampered due to the decades long hostile relations between India and Pakistan. But Indian analysts say U.S. sanctions on Iran have long cast a shadow on the project and hampered New Delhi from realizing the port’s potential. While the Trump administration had exempted the Chabahar project due to the role India was playing in Afghanistan’s reconstruction, Washington's ties with Iran have again worsened due to Tehran’s support for Hamas since the Israel-Hamas war erupted last October. “Chabahar has long-term potential. But due to U.S. sanctions on Iran, it has not turned out to be the gamechanger that India had hoped because private Indian companies have been and will be reluctant to use the port,” according to Manoj Joshi, Distinguished Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi. “There has been no real sharp rise in India’s trade with Central Asia.” However, Indian stakes in Chabahar have strategic significance — they are part of India’s outreach to Iran. “Where India is concerned, good ties with Iran are a pushback against Pakistan, which has a land blockade where India is concerned,” said Joshi. Chabahar is also seen as a counter to China’s development of the Gwadar port in Pakistan. Located close to Iran’s southeastern border with Pakistan, the deep water Chabahar port is less than 100 kilometers from Gwadar. Beijing’s investments in ports and infrastructure in India’s neighborhood as part of its Belt and Road Initiative have raised concerns in New Delhi and prompted it to expand its maritime footprint. Indian officials expressed optimism about the ten-year deal that India and Iran have inked. "It will clear the pathway for bigger investments to be made in the port,” foreign minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar told reporters Monday. India will invest $120 million in infrastructure development and extend a $250 million line of credit to Iran. The "long-term contract symbolizes the enduring trust and effective partnership between India and Iran," Indian minister Sonawal said.

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Tbilisi, Georgia — Georgia was set to adopt a "foreign influence" bill on Tuesday despite mass protests against a law criticized for mirroring repressive Russian legislation. Thousands of Georgians, mainly youths, have rallied outside parliament for three straight nights and have promised to be back when MPs are due to arrive Tuesday to pass the contentious legislation. Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze vowed Monday to push it through in a third reading. "Tomorrow the parliament of Georgia will act on the will of the majority of the population and pass the law," he said. He warned that if authorities backed down, Georgia would lose its sovereignty and "easily share the fate of Ukraine", although it was not immediately clear what he meant by that. The bill requires non-governmental organizations and media outlets that receive more than 20% of their funding from abroad to register as bodies "pursuing the interests of a foreign power." Russia has used a similar law to crack down on dissent. Protesters are expected to stage fresh rallies Tuesday in the capital Tbilisi. "They will pass this law and we have to demonstrate our protest," said 57-year-old Levan Avalishvili, who left the parliament area before midnight on Monday, promising to be back the next day. Many fear violence, with tensions running high and police beating a group of protesters detained at dawn on Monday. The Caucasus country has witnessed more than a month of sweeping protests since the ruling Georgian Dream party re-introduced the bill in a shock move, a year after shelving due to a huge backlash. Opponents of the bill fear it will take Tbilisi off its track of joining the European Union and hugely erode democracy in the tiny country. They also accuse the ruling party of trying to move the Black Sea nation closer to Moscow. The ruling party, in power since 2012, has defended the law as necessary for the country's sovereignty. Its billionaire backer Bidzina Ivanishvili, who made his fortune in Russia, has accused NGOs of plotting a revolution and being foreign puppets. He has been accused of leaning towards Moscow and has not publicly condemned the Kremlin's invasion of Ukraine    

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ANKARA, Turkey — Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Monday that more than 1,000 members of the militant Palestinian group Hamas were being treated in hospitals across Turkey as he reiterated his stance that it was a "resistance movement." A Turkish official later said Erdogan had "misspoke" and meant that Gazans more generally were being treated in Turkey. "If you call Hamas a 'terrorist organization,' this would sadden us," Erdogan said at a joint press conference with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis in Ankara after Mitsotakis had referred to Hamas as such. "We don't deem Hamas a terrorist organization... More than 1,000 members of Hamas are under treatment in hospitals across our country," Erdogan said. A Turkish official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, later said that Erdogan had meant to refer to Palestinians from Hamas-run Gaza in general, rather than Hamas members. "President Erdogan misspoke, he meant 1,000 Gazans are under treatment, not Hamas members," a Turkish official said. Reuters could not immediately determine the background of those being treated in Turkey, but in November Ankara said it was evacuating dozens of wounded or sick Gazans, mostly cancer patients, and their companions following Israel's offensive in Gaza.

ALMATY, KAZAKHSTAN — A court in Kazakhstan on Monday sentenced a former economy minister to 24 years in prison for the murder of his wife, in a case that led the patriarchal Central Asian nation to toughen its domestic abuse laws. Kuandyk Bishimbayev was found guilty of torture and murder in the November 2023 beating death of Saltanat Nukenova. The trial of Bishimbayev, which began in March, has been broadcast live. He will serve his sentence in a maximum-security prison. The former minister beat Nukenova in a family restaurant in the Kazakh capital, Astana, on Nov. 9. His cousin Bakhytzhan Bayzhanov was found guilty of helping him to cover up the murder and was sentenced to four years in prison. Both men have 15 days to appeal the ruling. “I hope this non-human would be given a life sentence,” Nukenova’s father, Amengeldy Nukenov, told journalists before the verdict was read. During the trial, thousands of people urged the authorities to adopt harsher penalties for domestic violence.  The 24-year-long sentence has taken the public, especially rights activists, aback. “Of course, we all expected a life sentence because the woman was killed deliberately with inconceivable violence,” Zhanar Sekerbayeva, cofounder of Kazakhstan’s LGBTQ women’s right group called, Feminita, told VOA after the verdict. Sekerbayeva said her group held a march Monday along Almaty streets to protest a lack of “the strictest punishment” for Bishimbayev. Bishimbayev served as an aide of the former president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, and as national economy minister until his arrest in 2017 for corruption crimes. In March 2018, Bishimbayev was sentenced to 10 years in prison but was released on parole in September 2019. The murder trial drew parallels to the “trial of the century” of former U.S. football star O.J. Simpson, who in the 1990s was charged with the murder of his former wife. He was acquitted in 1995 in Nicole Brown Simpson’s death. The Bishimbayev case brought attention to the wider topic of domestic violence in Kazakhstan and elsewhere in the region. During the case, Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev weighed in early and ordered the Interior Ministry to keep the case under special scrutiny. “Everyone should be equal before the law,” he said last November in reference to Nukenova’s death. “Justice in society is citizens’ solidarity for the sake of strengthening the rule of law. A just Kazakhstan is a country where law and order triumph.” Nukenova’s death highlighted the precarious position that victims of domestic violence can end up in and added urgency to the adoption of legislation against such abuse.  As a result, the Kazakh parliament adopted a new bill on domestic violence in April, which the president immediately signed into law. The country registers around 300 complaints about domestic violence every day, and at least 80 women die from domestic abuse every year, according to figures from Kazakh prosecutors.  But a 2018 study backed by U.N. Women found about 400 women die from domestic violence each year in Kazakhstan, although many cases go unreported. Last October, Culture and Information Minister Aida Balayeva said that “869 people had died as a result of domestic violence in the past 4.5 years,” without specifying gender or age. The new law offers better protections to victims of domestic violence, such as shifting the responsibility for the collection of evidence from the victims to the police. Police also now must register and investigate all domestic violence cases, even those not reported by a victim but by the media or on social media.  The New York-based group, Human Rights Watch, hailed the new law as an improvement, but said it “fails to explicitly make domestic violence a stand-alone offense in the criminal code or elsewhere.” 

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GENEVA — Conflicts and violence have pushed the number of internally displaced people around the world to a record-breaking high of 75.9 million, with nearly half living in sub-Saharan Africa, according to a new report by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center.   The report finds conflicts in Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Palestinian territories accounted for nearly two-thirds of new displacements due to violence, which in total spanned 66 countries in 2023.   “Over the past two years, we have seen alarming new levels of people having to flee their homes due to conflict and violence, even in regions where the trend had been improving,” Alexandra Bilak, IDMC director said. In a statement to coincide with the publication of the report Tuesday, she said that the millions of people forced to flee in 2023 were just “the tip of the iceberg.” “Conflict, and the devastation it leaves behind, is keeping millions from rebuilding their lives, often for years on end,” she said. The report notes the number of internal displacements, that is the number of times people have been forced to move throughout the year to escape conflict within their country, has increased in the last couple of years. “While we hear a lot about refugees or asylum-seekers who cross the border, the majority of the displaced people actually stay within their country and they are internally displaced,” Christelle Cazabat, head of programs at IDMC, told journalists in Geneva Monday, in advance of the launch of the report. In its 2023 report on forcibly displaced populations, the U.N. refugee agency, UNHCR, reported that 62.5 million people had been internally displaced people at the end of 2022 compared to 36.4 million refugees who had fled conflict, violence and persecution that same year. According to the IDMC, new internal displacements last year were mostly due to the conflict in Ukraine, which started in 2022, as well as to the ongoing conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the eruption of war in mid-April 2023 in Sudan. The war in Sudan resulted in 6 million internal displacements last year, which was “more than its previous 14 years combined” and the second most ever recorded in one country during a single year after Ukraine’s 16.9 million in 2022, according to the report. “As you know, it is more than a year that this new wave of conflict erupted (in Sudan) and as of the end of last year, the figure was 9.1 million” displaced in total by the conflict, said Vicente Anzellini, IDMCs global and regional analysis manager and lead author of the report. “This figure is the highest that we have ever reported for any country, this 9.1 million internally displaced people.”   In the Gaza Strip, IDMC calculated 3.4 million displacements in the last three months of 2023, many of whom had been displaced multiple times during this period. It says this number represented 17% of total conflict displacements worldwide during the year, noting that a total of 1.7 million Palestinians were internally displaced in Gaza by the end of the year. The last quarter of 2023 is the period following the Hamas terrorists’ brutal attack on Israel on Oct. 7, eliciting a military response from Israel on the Palestinian enclave. “There are many other crises that are actually displacing even more people, but we hear a little bit less of them,” said Cazabat, noting that little is heard about the “acute humanitarian crisis in Sudan” though it has the highest number of people “living in internal displacement because of the conflict at the end of last year.”  In the past five years, the report finds the number of people living in internal displacement because of conflict and violence has increased by 22.6 million.   Sudan topped last year’s list of 66 countries with 9.1 million people displaced internally because of conflict, followed by Syria with more than 7 million, the DRC, Colombia and Yemen.   Besides the total of 68.3 million people who were displaced globally by conflict and violence in 2023, the report says 7.7 million were displaced by natural disasters, including floods, storms, earthquakes and wildfires. As in previous years, the report notes that floods and storms caused the most disaster displacement, including in southeastern Africa, where cyclone Freddy triggered 1.4 million movements across six countries and territories. The earthquakes that struck Turkey and Syria triggered 4.7 million displacements, one of the largest disaster displacement events since records began in 2008. Anzellini observed many countries that have experienced conflict displacement also have experienced disaster displacement. “In many situations, they are overlapping. This is the case in Sudan, in South Sudan, but also in Somalia, in the DRC, and other places,” he said. “So, you can imagine fleeing from violence to save your life and then having to escape to higher ground with whatever you can carry as the storm or a flood threatens to wash away your temporary shelter.”  He said that no country is immune to disaster displacement.   “Last year, we recorded disaster displacements in 148 countries and territories, and these include high-income countries such as Canada and New Zealand, which recorded their highest figures ever. “Climate change is making extreme weather events more frequent and more intense and that can lead to more displacement, but it does not have to,” he said, noting that climate change is one of many factors that contribute to displacement. “There are other economic, social and political factors that governments can address to actually minimize the impacts of displacement even in the face of climate change,” he said, including early warning systems and the evacuation of populations before a natural disaster is forecast to strike.

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Russia pummeled towns and villages in Ukraine's northeastern Kharkiv region on Monday, days after launching a surprise ground offensive over the border that has forced thousands to evacuate. Russia is becoming more aggressive in the Arctic in and around a remote Norwegian community. Polls closed in India for the fourth phase of its massive general elections on Monday after voters turned out to cast their ballots across several regions. And the release of a new AI model called GPT-4o, capable of realistic voice conversation and able to interact across text and vision is a big step forward in Artificial Intelligence.

Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

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Washington says it is working to resolve the many issues in the continuing conflict in Gaza as negotiations continue and Israel plans to launch a full-scale operation in the southern city of Rafah over U.S. objections. VOA’s Anita Powell reports from the White House.

Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.