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US authorities are conducting a large-scale study into the cause of the autism “epidemic,” Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Thursday.”We’ve launched a massive testing and research effort that’s going to involve hundreds of scientists from around the world,” Kennedy said at a televised cabinet meeting chaired by President Donald Trump. “By September we will know what has caused the autism epidemic. And we’ll be able to eliminate those exposures.”Kennedy, a vaccine skeptic, who has long promoted a debunked theory linking childhood vaccines to autism, said the prevalence of autism has jumped dramatically in recent decades.”The autism rates have gone — from our most recent numbers, we think are going to be about one in 31 from one in 10,000 when I was a kid,” he said, without offering more details or citing the source of the figures.The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) currently puts the rate of autism in children in the United States at one in 36, compared to earlier rates of 1 in 150.”That’s a horrible statistic and there’s got to be something artificial out there that’s doing this,” Trump commented.Autism is a developmental disability, whose symptoms can include delays in language, learning, and social or emotional skills.A 2022 review of autism prevalence worldwide pinned the rise on multiple factors, including “the increase in community awareness and public health response globally, progress in case identification and definition and an increase in community capacity.”There is also evidence linking advanced parental age to autism.

President Donald Trump claimed victory over Europe in the US tariffs war but acknowledged a “cost” to his surging trade offensive against superpower rival China as markets plunged again Thursday.Trump sought a victory lap at a White House cabinet meeting, saying the European Union had backed off from imposing retaliatory tariffs because of his tough stance on China.”They were very smart. They were ready to announce retaliation. And then they heard about what we did with respect to China… and they said, you know, ‘We’re going to hold back a little bit,'” he said.Trump acknowledged “a transition cost and transition problems,” but dismissed global market turmoil. “In the end it’s going to be a beautiful thing.”Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was upbeat, telling reporters that “I don’t see anything unusual today,” as he touted better than expected US inflation numbers and other economic indicators.But major indices spent the entire day in the red, with the broad-based S&P 500 finishing down 3.5 percent after soaring 9.5 percent on Wednesday.The Dow Jones Industrial Average shed 2.5 percent, while the tech-rich Nasdaq slumped 4.3 percent.Oil and the dollar also slid on fears of a global slowdown in economic activity, while safe-haven asset gold hit a new record.Thursday’s market losses followed giddy gains on Wednesday in the aftermath of a stunning Trump climbdown, where he maintained a 10 percent blanket tariff on most countries but paused plans for tariffs of 20 percent on the EU and even higher levies on multiple other trade partners.The dialing back of the planned global trade war left most of the focus on China, the world’s number two economy after the United States.The White House on Thursday clarified that levies on Chinese imports are now at a staggering total of 145 percent — not the previously reported 125 percent.This was because the latest tariff hike comes on top of a 20 percent tariff already imposed earlier. China has retaliated with levies of 84 percent on US imports.- Relief -Trump says he wants to use tariffs to reorder the world economy by forcing manufacturers to base themselves in the United States and for other countries to decrease barriers to US goods.Howard Lutnick, his commerce secretary, was bullish, posting on social media Thursday that “the Golden Age is coming. We are committed to protecting our interests, engaging in global negotiations and exploding our economy.”Amid questions over how far Trump is ready to push, the European Union welcomed the US president’s partial row-back on his original threat to impose 20 percent tariffs against the bloc.The 27-nation grouping responded with its own olive branch, suspending for 90 days tariffs on 20 billion euros’ ($22.4 billion) worth of US goods that had been greenlit in retaliation to duties on steel and aluminum.”We want to give negotiations a chance,” EU chief Ursula von der Leyen said in a statement.She warned, however, that “if negotiations are not satisfactory, our countermeasures will kick in” and that all options remain on the table.Trump likewise warned that the partial thaw could return to deep freeze after a 90-day truce period.”If we can’t make the deal we want to make… then we’d go back to where we were,” he said.Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney called Trump’s reversal a “welcome reprieve” and said Ottawa would begin negotiations with Washington on a new economic deal after elections on April 28.Vietnam said it had agreed with the United States to start trade talks, while Pakistan is sending a delegation to Washington.In its latest measure, Beijing announced it would reduce the number of Hollywood films imported, but said it remained ready for dialogue.”We hope the US will meet China halfway, and, based on the principles of mutual respect, peaceful coexistence and win-win cooperation, properly resolve differences through dialogue and consultation,” Commerce Ministry spokeswoman He Yongqian said.Trump brushed off Beijing’s clampdown on US films, saying, “I think I’ve heard of worse things.”burs-sms-tgb/md

Grief-stricken Dominicans on Thursday began holding funerals for loved ones who were among at least 220 people killed in a nightclub rooftop collapse, even as dozens remained unaccounted for.More than 300 rescuers, aided by sniffer dogs, have worked tirelessly since disaster struck early Tuesday to pull survivors from the rubble of the Jet Set club in the Dominican Republic’s capital Santo Domingo.Officials called off the search for live victims on Wednesday night, as efforts shifted to recovering bodies from the mounds of twisted steel, zinc and brick that remain of the structure.Local media had reported there were between 500 and 1,000 people at the club — which could hold 1,700 — for a concert by renowned merengue singer Rubby Perez, who was on stage when the roof came down. The 69-year-old died on site, but his daughter made it out alive.Juan Manuel Mendez, director of the Center for Emergency Operations, put the official death toll at 221 on Thursday, and said 189 people were pulled out of the debris alive.A consolidated report of victims will be published in the coming hours, Mendez told reporters, as the Dominican Republic observed three days of national mourning.”Our rescue team is already concluding the search operations,” he added.Health Minister Victor Atallah said earlier there could be more bodies under the rubble in the Caribbean nation’s worst tragedy in decades.”No one will be left unidentified. No one will be left without an answer,” he told reporters. “We are going to move every last stone that needs to be moved.”The Dominican presidency announced a commission of national and international experts will be set up to investigate the calamity.- ‘They are all dead’ -President Luis Abinader on Thursday attended a memorial for Perez at the National Theater, where family, friends and fans released white balloons as the hearse departed with his remains. “My soul is on the verge of exploding with love,” Perez’s daughter Zulinka chanted at the ceremony — a lyric from one of the many tunes her father had sung to her as a child.Perez’s coffin was surrounded by wreaths and topped with the artist’s signature hat and glasses.”Rubby is history, Rubby is a people’s artist, humble, who came out of poverty,” fan Alina Caminero, 56, told AFP outside the venue. His beloved songs include “Buscando Tus Besos” and “Volvere.”In the neighboring community of Haina, families held a collective ceremony for about 20 victims, their coffins lined up side-by-side on a basketball court.A provisional list of the deceased included a Haitian, an Italian, two French citizens and an American.Among the dead were the governor of the Monte Cristi province, Nelsy Cruz, as well as former Major League Baseball players Octavio Dotel and Tony Blanco.More than 500 people were injured.Families gathered at funeral homes Thursday to begin the mourning process, while others were still waiting at hospitals for news about missing loved ones.”This has been a very hard process, because yesterday we spent the day going from clinic to clinic, from hospital to hospital and also in front of the Jet Set, looking for our brothers with the hope of finding them alive,” 47-year-old Jose Santana, who lost four family members in the accident, told AFP at the morgue.”Unfortunately, this morning we were told that they are all dead.”A list of names of deceased people was put up on a tent erected near the morgue.”No pathology institute has the capacity to handle so many bodies so quickly,” said Atallah, adding that temporary centers will be set up to speed up identification processes.Aerial images of the site showed a scene resembling the aftermath of an earthquake, with a gaping hole where the roof of the club — a fixture of Santo Domingo’s nightlife for half a century — had been.A video posted on social media showed the venue suddenly plunged into darkness while Perez was singing, followed by crashing sounds and screams.

Files related to the assassinations of former US attorney general Robert F. Kennedy and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr will be released in the coming days, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said Thursday.President Donald Trump signed an executive order in January directing the unredacted release of the Kennedy and King records along with those concerning the assassination of president John F. Kennedy.In March, the National Archives released the final batch of files related to the November 1963 assassination of president Kennedy.Gabbard, speaking at a White House cabinet meeting, said the Robert F. Kennedy and King records were currently being scanned.”I’ve had over 100 people working around the clock to scan the paper around RFK, senator Robert F. Kennedy’s assassination, as well as Martin Luther King Jr’s assassination,” she said.”These have been sitting in boxes and storage for decades,” Gabbard said. “They have never been scanned or seen before. We’ll have those ready to release here within the next few days.” The National Archives has released millions of pages of records over the past decades relating to the assassination of president Kennedy, but thousands of documents had been held back at the request of the Central Intelligence Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation.The Warren Commission that investigated the shooting of the charismatic 46-year-old president determined that it was carried out by a former US Marine sharpshooter, Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone.But that formal conclusion has done little to quell speculation that a more sinister plot was behind Kennedy’s murder in Dallas, Texas, and the slow release of the government files added fuel to various conspiracy theories.Robert F. Kennedy, the slain president’s younger brother, was assassinated in California in June 1968 by Sirhan Sirhan, a Palestinian-Jordanian man, while campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination.King was assassinated in April 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee.James Earl Ray, a career criminal, pleaded guilty to King’s murder and was sentenced to 99 years in prison. He died in 1998.

The Republican-led US Congress adopted a budget Thursday that unlocks trillions of dollars for President Donald Trump’s agenda, jump-starting what Democrats say is a plan to dismantle social welfare in favor of tax cuts for the rich.House Speaker Mike Johnson said the blueprint freed up Republicans to deliver on promises Trump made in his election campaign for “historic” spending reductions and an extension of his expiring 2017 tax relief.”We will not waver in our commitment to delivering a bill that reduces spending, secures the border, keeps taxes low for families… and makes government work better for all Americans,” he said.The successful vote will be a relief to Trump, who was facing a rebellion from Republican fiscal hawks that exposed the limits of his iron grip and raised doubts over his party’s ability to coalesce around his agenda.He took to social media to congratulate lawmakers for laying the groundwork for what he said would be the “Largest Tax and Regulation Cuts ever even contemplated.”Adjusted for inflation, Trump’s 2017 tax relief bill was the fourth largest since 1940, according to PolitiFact, and seventh as a percentage of GDP.Democrats see the budget resolution as the opening salvo in Republican plans — spelled out in the conservative Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025” manifesto — to drastically rein in the federal bureaucracy. It will trigger a devastating downsizing of essential services, critics warn, compounding anger over the campaign by Trump’s tech billionaire advisor Elon Musk to slash federal agencies.The budget resolution raises the country’s borrowing limit by $5 trillion to cover a renewal of Trump’s expiring tax relief through 2034, which is expected to add at least the same amount to the country’s debt.- ‘Massive tax breaks’ -The budget blueprint, which narrowly passed the House after getting the green light Saturday in the Senate, sets targets for overall spending and mandates $4 billion in cuts.But Republican leaders are eyeing much more ambitious savings of $1.5 trillion, including $880 billion that opponents say would have to come mostly from the Medicaid health care program for low-income families. Democrats argue that Trump’s first-term tax giveaway disproportionately benefited wealthy individuals and corporations, and extending them would compound inequality.House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries blasted Republicans for what he called “the largest Medicaid cut in American history in order to pass massive tax breaks for your billionaire donors like Elon Musk.””House Republicans broke their promise to address the high cost of living and they lied about their intention to enact their extreme Project 2025 agenda,” he said in a letter to his members.”The harm being unleashed by Donald Trump and the (Republicans) is staggering.” The two sides of Congress were required to adopt identical versions of the budget before lawmakers can move on Trump’s domestic agenda, which adds beefed-up border security and boosted energy production to the tax relief.It advanced from the Senate with votes to spare but barely made it through the rubber-stamp vote in the House, put in jeopardy by a rank-and-file rebellion over the spending cuts.Right-wing fiscal hawks in the House were furious over what they saw as insufficient savings in the final version, after it was amended by the Senate.Johnson — backed by his Senate counterpart John Thune — vowed to pursue his much more ambitious $1.5 trillion spending cuts figure, and this public commitment appeared to have assuaged some on his back benches.

Heartbroken Dominicans on Thursday began burying loved ones who were among more than 200 victims of a nightclub rooftop collapse, even as dozens of people remained unaccounted for.More than 300 rescuers, aided by sniffer dogs, had worked tirelessly since disaster struck early Tuesday to pull survivors from the rubble of the Jet Set club in the Dominican Republic’s capital Santo Domingo.They called off the search for live victims on Wednesday night, and shifted their efforts to recovering bodies from the mounds of twisted steel, zinc and brick that remain of the structure.Local media had reported there were between 500 and 1,000 people at the club — which could hold 1,700 — for a concert by renowned merengue singer Rubby Perez, who was on stage when the roof came down, and died on site. His daughter made it out alive.Juan Manuel Mendez, director of the Center for Emergency Operations, told reporters Thursday the official toll stood at 221. A total of 189 people were pulled out of the debris alive.A consolidated report of victims will be published in the coming hours, said Mendez.”Our rescue team is already concluding the search operations,” he added.Health Minister Victor Atallah said Thursday there might be more bodies under the rubble in the Caribbean nation’s worst tragedy in decades.”No one will be left unidentified. No one will be left without an answer,” he told reporters. “We are going to move every last stone that needs to be moved.”- ‘They are all dead’ -President Luis Abinader on Thursday attended a tribute to the singer Perez at the National Theater, which will be followed by a wake. Among the deceased are also the governor of the Monte Cristi province, Nelsy Cruz, as well as former Major League Baseball players Octavio Dotel and Tony Blanco.More than 500 people were injured.Families gathered at funeral homes Thursday to begin the mourning process, while others waited at hospitals desperate for news about loved ones still missing.”It has truly brought mourning to (the municipality of) Haina, it has brought mourning to our family, it has brought mourning to the country,” 47-year-old Jose Santana, who lost four family members in the accident, told AFP at the morgue.”This has been a very hard process, because yesterday we spent the day going from clinic to clinic, from hospital to hospital and also in front of the Jet Set, looking for our brothers with the hope of finding them alive,” he said.”Unfortunately, this morning we were told that they are all dead.”A list of names of deceased people was put up on a nearby tent full of victims’ loved ones.”No pathology institute has the capacity to handle so many bodies so quickly,” said Atallah, adding that temporary centers will be set up to speed up identification processes.The government said it will start an inquiry into the disaster as soon as the rescue operation is over.”It is not possible for us to be left with doubts,” said Atallah. “Every Dominican man, woman, or foreigner who was visiting will receive an answer.” – ‘I’ll be back’ -Aerial images of the site showed a scene resembling the aftermath of an earthquake, with a gaping hole where the roof of the club — a fixture of Santo Domingo’s nightlife for half a century — had been.A video posted on social media showed the venue suddenly plunged into darkness while Perez was singing, followed by crashing sounds and screams.Tributes to the singer, known for hits such as “Volvere” (I’ll be back) and “Enamorado de Ella” (In love with Her) poured in from across Latin America.The baseball world, meanwhile, mourned the death of Octavio Dotel, a 51-year-old baseball pitcher who won the World Series with the St Louis Cardinals in 2011, and Tony Blanco, 45, who also played in the United States.Abinader declared three days of national mourning.

A man convicted of the 2004 murder of an off-duty police officer is to be put to death by firing squad Friday in South Carolina, the second such execution in the US state this year.Mikal Mahdi, 42, is to be executed at 6:00 pm (2200 GMT) at a prison in state capital Columbia for the murder of James Myers.Myers, a 56-year-old police captain, was shot nine times after he found Mahdi hiding in a shed on his property. His body was then set on fire.Mahdi also pleaded guilty to murdering a convenience store clerk three days before he killed Myers.South Carolina gives Death Row inmates a choice between lethal injection, the electric chair or the firing squad. Mahdi chose the firing squad.The first execution by firing squad in the United States in 15 years was carried out in South Carolina on March 7, when a man convicted of murdering his ex-girlfriend’s parents was put to death.A three-person squad of Department of Corrections volunteers opens fire on the condemned man, who is restrained in a chair with a hood over his head 15 feet (five meters) away.Mahdi has requested clemency from Governor Henry McMaster but South Carolina’s Republican chief executive has not granted any previous clemency petitions.”Mr. Mahdi’s life is a tragic story of a child abandoned at every step,” his lawyers said in a statement.When Mahdi was four years old his mother fled her abusive husband and the boy was raised by his volatile mentally ill father, they said.”Between the ages of 14 and 21, Mikal spent over 80 percent of his life in prison and lived through 8,000 hours in solitary confinement,” his lawyers said.”Now 42, Mikal is deeply remorseful and a dramatically different person from the confused, angry, and abused youth who committed the capital crimes.”There have been 11 executions in the United States so far this year. There were 25 last year.The vast majority of US executions since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976 have been performed using lethal injection.Alabama has carried out four executions using nitrogen gas, which has been denounced by United Nations experts as cruel and inhumane.The death penalty has been abolished in 23 of the 50 US states, while three others — California, Oregon and Pennsylvania — have moratoriums in place.President Donald Trump is a proponent of capital punishment and on his first day in office called for an expansion of its use “for the vilest crimes.”Attorney General Pam Bondi announced last week that federal prosecutors would seek the death penalty for Luigi Mangione, charged with the high-profile December 4 murder in New York of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

The Republican-led US House of Representatives passed a bill Thursday that would add proof-of-citizenship requirements to voter registration, in a vote designed to mobilize supporters concerned about election security that has little chance of becoming law.The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act is backed by President Donald Trump, who dominates the House Republicans and continues to claim falsely that he was cheated by voter fraud in the 2020 election.”This bill is very, very simple. It ensures that only American citizens can vote in our federal elections. It isn’t hard,” said Florida Republican Kat Cammack ahead of the bill’s passage.”Eighty-seven percent of Americans believe only Americans should vote in our elections.”  But it has little hope of making it through the Senate, where the 60-vote threshold for passing legislation means the 53-47 Republican majority requires cooperation from the opposition.With the campaign for 2026 midterm elections fast approaching, Democrats say the bill is merely an attempt to lend a patina of credibility to bogus claims of voter fraud. Worried about millions of eligible voters being blocked from voter rolls or otherwise deterred, the party opposes the SAVE Act, noting that noncitizen voting is already illegal and that it almost never happens.Trump — who has claimed for years that US elections are rife with illicit voting by foreigners — urged Republicans to shut down the government over the issue last year.But they rebuffed the president, removing the 2024 incarnation of the SAVE Act from a larger government funding bill.The legislation would require all Americans to prove their citizenship status by presenting documentation in person when registering to vote or updating their voter registration information. Opponents say more than 140 million American citizens do not possess a passport and as many as 69 million women who have taken their spouse’s name do not have a birth certificate matching their legal name.The Center for American Progress said the bill would prevent Americans from being able to register to vote by mail, end voter registration drives nationwide and eliminate online voter registration. The Brennan Center for Justice, a liberal public policy institute, says just 4.4 million voters registered at an elections or registrar’s office in the two years leading up to the 2022 midterms.”There’s a direct relationship between the ease of registration and the number of voters on the rolls,” the organization said in analysis of the SAVE Act.”Some American citizens — even those who can access citizenship documents — will not register, and will not turn out to vote, if they can’t register online or by mail.”

The US-China trade war intensified Thursday, sending the global economy into unknown territory and dampening relief after President Donald Trump’s earlier climbdown from a wider tariff onslaught against the rest of the world.The White House clarified that Trump’s big hike in tariffs on China announced 24 hours earlier had actually taken his total levies this year on imports from the world’s second biggest economy to a staggering total of 145 percent — not the previously reported 125 percent.This was because latest tariff hike comes on top of a 20 percent tariff already imposed earlier. China has retaliated with levies of 84 percent on US imports.The superpower confrontation threw a deep shadow over jubilation that Trump was retreating from threats to impose punishing tariffs on dozens of other countries — everywhere from European Union allies to Asian manufacturing hubs like Vietnam and even tiny, remote ocean islands.Trump maintained a blanket 10 percent tariff on most countries. However, his retreat from more damaging levies against European countries prompted the EU to pause plans for its own retaliation.Amid relief, Asian and European stock markets rocketed, with Tokyo closing 9.1 percent higher.But realization that Trump’s splashy about-face on Wednesday masked the reality of a surging trade war with China dampened spirits.The Dow Jones in New York fell more than three percent and the S&P dropped 4.5 percent in morning trading. Gold prices hit a record high as the US dollar crumbled.- EU wants negotiations -Trump says he wants to use tariffs to reorder the world economy by forcing manufacturers to base themselves in the United States.Howard Lutnick, his commerce secretary, was bullish, posting on social media Thursday that “the Golden Age is coming. We are committed to protecting our interests, engaging in global negotiations and exploding our economy.”Amid questions over how far Trump is ready to push, the European Union welcomed the US president’s partial row-back on his original threat to impose 20 percent tariffs against the bloc.The 27-nation grouping responded with its own olive branch, suspending for 90 days tariffs on 20 billion euros’ worth of US goods that had been greenlit in retaliation to duties on steel and aluminum.”We want to give negotiations a chance,” EU chief Ursula von der Leyen said in a statement.She warned, however, that “if negotiations are not satisfactory, our countermeasures will kick in” and that all options remain on the table.Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney called Trump’s reversal a “welcome reprieve” and said Ottawa would begin negotiations with Washington on a new economic deal after elections on April 28.Vietnam said it had agreed with the United States to start trade talks, while Pakistan is sending a delegation to Washington.In its latest measure, Beijing announced it would reduce the number of Hollywood films imported, but said it remained ready for dialogue.”We hope the US will meet China halfway, and, based on the principles of mutual respect, peaceful coexistence and win-win cooperation, properly resolve differences through dialogue and consultation,” Commerce Ministry spokeswoman He Yongqian said.burs-sms/bgs

The United States on Thursday exchanged a sanctions-busting suspect for a ballet dancer held by Russia, the second swap under President Donald Trump as Moscow and Washington push to rebuild ties.Moscow released a Los Angeles-based ballet dancer convicted in Russia of “treason” over a one-time donation worth around $50 to a pro-Ukraine charity. Ksenia Karelina holds dual US-Russian nationality.Washington released Arthur Petrov, a Russian-German national accused of illegally exporting US-made electronics to manufacturers supplying the Russian military.The exchange took place at an airport in Abu Dhabi, where a dozen people wearing suits were present, video posted by Russia’s FSB security service showed.Trump has sought to reset ties with Moscow since taking office, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine three years ago plunged bilateral relations to their lowest point since the Cold War.”American Ksenia Karelina is on a plane back home to the United States,” US Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote on social media platform X.”She was wrongfully detained by Russia for over a year.” Trump will “continue to work for the release of ALL Americans,” Rubio added.The FSB video showed Petrov seated on a plane after he was freed, telling an unseen interviewer that he had not slept for two days but otherwise had no complaints.Petrov, arrested in Cyprus in 2023 and extradited to the United States, was facing 20 years in a US jail for violating export controls.- ‘Positive’ step -CIA Director John Ratcliffe was the key negotiator for the swap, working with Russian intelligence and foreign partners, the CIA said. Ratcliffe in a statement thanked the UAE “for enabling this exchange.””While we are disappointed that other Americans remain wrongfully detained in Russia, we see this exchange as a positive step and will continue to work for their release,” a CIA spokesperson said.Asked about the exchange in a daily briefing with reporters, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov declined to comment.Russian and US officials have held several meetings since Trump took office in January.As the prisoner swap took place, delegations from the two sides were holding talks in Istanbul on restoring embassy staffing levels after years of diplomat expulsions.The State Department said after the meeting that Washington renewed concern about rules that prohibit local staff from working for US missions in Russia.The two sides also moved to formalize an agreement on banking access for their diplomats, despite the US sanctions on Russia, the State Department said.- Prisoner swaps -Karelina, 33, was serving a 12-year prison sentence for having donated around $50 to a pro-Ukraine charity.She was arrested in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg in January 2024 while on a trip to visit her family and charged with “treason.”Russia’s Federal Security Service accused her of collecting funds for Ukraine’s army used to purchase “equipment, weapons and ammunition” — charges she denied. Her supporters say she had donated to a US-based organization that delivers humanitarian aid to Ukraine.Petrov was accused by US authorities of having illegally exported electronic components to Russia for military use, in violation of Washington’s sanctions against Moscow over the Ukraine war.In mid-February, following a call between Putin and Trump, Russia released Kalob Wayne Byers, a 28-year-old US citizen arrested at a Moscow airport for transporting cannabis gummy sweets.Washington and Moscow also exchanged US teacher Marc Fogel for Russian computer expert Alexander Vinnik in early February.The largest US-Russia prisoner exchange since the end of the Cold War took place on August 1, 2024. It involved the release of journalists, including WSJ reporter Evan Gershkovich, and dissidents held in Russia in exchange for alleged Russian spies held in the West.Several American citizens remain incarcerated in Russia. Washington has accused Moscow of using them as bargaining chips to secure the release of Russians held in the United States.burs-cad-sct/md