This story is part of an ongoing joint investigation between The Associated Press and the PBS series Frontline on the treatment of migrant children.

WASHINGTON — Dozens of families separated at the border as part of the Trump administration’s zero tolerance policy are preparing to sue the federal government, including several who say their young children were sexually, physically or emotionally abused in federally funded foster care.  
  
A review of 38 legal claims obtained by The Associated Press — some of which have never been made public — shows taxpayers could be on the hook for more than $200 million in damages. More than 3,000 migrant children were taken from their parents at the border in recent years and many more lawsuits are expected, potentially totaling in the billions.  
  
The families — some in the U.S., others already deported to Central America — are represented by grass-roots immigration clinics and nonprofit groups, along with some of the country’s most powerful law firms. They’re making claims under the Federal Tort Claims Act as a precursor to filing lawsuits. The FTCA allows individuals who suffer harm as a direct result of federal employees to sue the government.  
  
“It’s the tip of the iceberg,” said Erik Walsh, an attorney at Arnold & Porter, which has one of the world’s leading pro bono programs.  

18 claims so far by firm
  
The firm has so far filed 18 claims on behalf of nine families, totaling $54 million, and Walsh says dozens more are likely.   
  
The government has six months to settle FTCA claims from the time they’re filed. After that, the claimants are free to file federal lawsuits. 
 
The departments of Justice and Homeland Security, both named in the claims, did not respond to requests for comment.  
  

Health and Human Services, the agency responsible for the care of migrant children, said it couldn’t comment on pending litigation, but that it treats children with dignity and respect.   
  
Last year, HHS’s Office of Refugee Resettlement cared for nearly 50,000 children who crossed the border by themselves, as well as children who were separated from their families under the zero-tolerance policy.  
  
The agency housed them in foster programs, residential shelters and detention camps around the country, sometimes making daily placements of as many as 500 new arrivals, from babies to teens. 
 
The allegations of abuse and assaults in foster care raise fresh questions about the government’s efforts to place younger children with families in lieu of larger shelters and packed detention facilities.  

Emotional, physical harm
  
The legal claims, a recent federal court filing and HHS documents released by Congress earlier this year allege that children have suffered serious emotional trauma after being physically harmed or fondled by other children while in foster care.  
  
Six of the claims for damages involve children who were in foster care. And one recent court filing refers to a migrant child being abused in foster care.  
  
The records released by Congress show the Office of Refugee Resettlement referred at least seven foster care allegations of sexual abuse to the Justice Department in 2017 and 2018. Because some are anonymous to protect the children’s privacy, it’s unclear if some of the claims are duplicates.  
  
Justice has not responded to repeated queries about those cases from members of Congress.   
  
Three of the four incidents involving physical harm outlined in the FTCA claims occurred at Cayuga Centers in New York, the largest foster care placement for migrant children, housing up to 900 babies and children at a time.  
  
Cayuga Centers did not respond to requests for comment.  
  
One Guatemalan mother whose 5-year-old daughter was placed in Cayuga last year says her little girl still wakes up crying from what she endured at the foster home.  
  
“Now she’s scared each time we go out or when she sees a police car or someone in uniform,” said the mother, who has filed a $6 million claim. “She says `Mami, don’t let them separate us again.’ ”  
  
Families who spoke to the AP and Frontline did so on the condition of anonymity over fears about their safety.  

New York program
  
Another 5-year-old Guatemalan girl said a boy grabbed her chest and touched her inappropriately, both in her foster home and during daytime classes at a Safe Haven for Children New York foster program, according to a $3 million injury claim. The girl was moved to a new foster home but suffered verbal abuse from her foster parent’s mother, who called her names and locked her alone in rooms as punishment, according to the claim.   
  

A spokesman for Lutheran Social Services of New York, which oversees the Safe Haven foster program, declined to comment. 
 
Two claims blame the government for wrongful deaths: one, seeking $20 million, was filed by the wife of a Honduran father who killed himself in a padded cell after officers pulled his 3-year-old son from his arms.  
  
“The people making these policies intended this level of suffering, and that’s what’s unconscionable,” said John Escamilla, who is representing the man’s wife and two children.  
  
He said he planned to file a federal lawsuit stemming from his FTCA claim soon. 

The government has not settled any family separation cases in the administrative claims stage. But one federal lawsuit is currently in litigation in Massachusetts, and in February, a judge approved a $125,000 settlement for a Honduran mom and her son, then 6, who had been detained for four months and threatened with separation under the Obama administration.   
  
Aseem Mehta, a law student at the Jerome N. Frank Legal Services Organization at Yale Law School who worked on the case, said the settlement, the first of its kind, sends a clear message that such claims have legal standing.  

‘These claims are viable’
  
“Our case is a benchmark,” Mehta said. “The most important takeaway is these claims are viable, and courts will entertain them, and the Department of Homeland Security views them as meritorious; they don’t settle cases unless they think there’s liability they’re exposed to.”  
  
Janet Napolitano, who led Homeland Security from 2009 to 2013, said she recalled a number of tort claims were filed against the agency in her time but said family separations were rare. The Trump administration’s failure to swiftly reunify families and children may have left the agency open to lawsuits, she added.  
  
“There very well may be some vulnerability there,” said Napolitano, now the president of the University of California. 

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Two of President Donald Trump’s strongest allies in Congress pushed back Friday on his administration’s plans to slash some $4 billion in foreign aid that lawmakers have already approved.

In a letter, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Rep. Hal Rogers of Kentucky discouraged the president “in the strongest possible terms” from going ahead with the cuts to the State Department and United States Agency for International Development budget. The as-yet unsubmitted proposal is widely opposed by other Republicans and Democrats, but Graham and Rogers carry significant weight with the White House.

Graham is a frequent golfing partner of Trump’s and is chairman of the powerful Senate appropriations subcommittee that oversees State Department and USAID funding. Rogers is the top Republican on the corresponding subcommittee in the House. The top Republicans and Democrats on the House and Senate foreign affairs committees have also told the administration they oppose the cuts that are being planned under a procedure known as “rescission” and will take action to prevent them.

“We strongly urge you to reconsider this approach,” Graham and Rogers wrote. They said a cut to congressionally approved funding without serious consultation “only undermines our national security interests and emboldens our adversaries.”

The administration hasn’t yet formally announced that it will seek the cut, but the Office of Management and Budget, which last year unsuccessfully tried a similar move, has signaled it will try to return to the Treasury roughly $4 billion in unspent money appropriated for United Nations peacekeeping, development assistance, global health programs and military training.

Since taking office in 2017, the Trump administration has sought each year to slash foreign affairs funding by as much as 30% in budget proposals that have been soundly rejected by lawmakers from both parties in Congress.

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Tracking eye movement can reveal when a person recognizes another, even when they try to hide it, according to new research.

Attempts to conceal recognition made it easier to spot in the new study, which could be used in criminal investigations to gain information from uncooperative witnesses or suspects.

Lie-detector tests are used in such cases as criminal investigations and U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation interviews, but the results are notoriously unreliable. When asked questions critical to a criminal case, a racing heartbeat or sweaty palms might incriminate a nervous truth-teller, while a practiced liar may be able to control those signs and avoid suspicion.

A team led by Ailsa Millen, a psychology researcher at Britain’s University of Stirling, tested a different method to extract information: tracking the movement of people’s eyes as they look at photographs of faces. Instead of detecting the physical response to lying, which can be misleading, the researchers looked for the hidden information itself: the knowledge of a familiar face.

“Humans are experts at familiar face recognition. Recognition of a familiar face is fast and reflexive,” said Millen. 

Your eyes trace a familiar face differently than they do an unfamiliar one. When people look at unfamiliar faces, their eyes tend to dance from feature to feature, pausing frequently but briefly as they try to identify the unknown person. When gazing at familiar faces, people tend to linger on just a few features.

Seeking hidden recognition

The researchers wanted to know if people could control their eye movements when attempting to hide the fact that they recognized a familiar face — or if their eyes would give them away.

They showed 48 students pictures of strangers and familiar professors. They asked participants to try to appear honest while lying about recognizing familiar faces.

The researchers gave half the participants a method they thought might help them hide their recognition: pausing in the same places as they looked at each face, starting from the forehead, then stopping at each eye as they move from one ear to the other, then down to the nose, mouth and chin.

Millen was surprised by how quickly the subjects reacted to both familiar and unfamiliar faces — glancing at just a few features before responding that they did or did not know the person — but the speed at which they reacted didn’t prevent the researchers from detecting their recognition of the familiar faces.

“Concealing markers for facial recognition in eye movements is difficult, especially if you know that person well,” said Millen. “The harder our participants tried to conceal recognition, the more apparent it was.”

In most cases, the participants who were given a hint as to how to hide their knowledge of the familiar person were unable to do so. Like those who were instructed to do their best to seem honest without other instructions, lingering too long on familiar facial features was a giveaway.

A better way to collect information

Millen hopes that her findings can someday be used in a law enforcement setting — not to assign guilt, but to collect information and filter out who is connected to whom in a criminal case.

“I think the work is pretty novel,” said Deborah Hannula, a psychology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee who was not involved in the research. “It’s incredibly important to detect whether someone knows something and isn’t willing to reveal that in cases that have high importance, like terrorist investigations.”

Hannula and Millen agree that while the technique is promising, it needs a stronger experimental base before it can be used in a law enforcement setting.

Millen noted that she and her collaborator explored only one method of hiding recognition, but many other methods could exist, some of which might be more effective. Additionally, it’s not yet clear what role the degree of familiarity plays. In order for the method to be applied to law enforcement scenarios, it needs to be effective for faces that are very familiar as well as only slightly familiar.

The research was published in the scientific journal Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications.

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Scary folk tales and urban legends have always captivated people’s imaginations, especially those of the young. Now, “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark,” a collection of short stories for children by author Alvin Schwartz and illustrator Stephen Gammell has been adapted by Oscar-winning producer Guillermo Del Toro and director André Øvredal. During its opening weekend, the movie grossed more than $20 million, proving again that teen horror flicks are a lucrative genre. Penelope Poulou has more.

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Women were an integral part of protests that led to the ouster of Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir and in demonstrations after his downfall. But many leaders now say they feel they have been locked out of political agreements and do not expect to be named to any positions in the regional council. In Khartoum, Esha Sarai and Naba Mohiedeen speak with female politicians and feminists who are pushing for more representation.
 

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The Trump administration is under renewed fire from environmentalists following its move earlier this week to weaken the Endangered Species Act. At the same time, more than two dozen states and cities as well as a coalition of health and environmental groups are suing the administration over its rollback of the Clean Power Plan, one of President Barack Obama’s signature regulations to reduce the nation’s carbon emissions. White House Correspondent Patsy Widakuswara has more.

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With the Philadelphia shooting suspect behind bars, U.S. President Donald Trump Thursday engaged in a blame game with city authorities. The president said the suspect, who has a criminal record, should not have been on the street. A U.S. attorney appointed by Trump blamed Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner for the shooting that left six officers wounded. But as VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports, the incident has helped put pressure on the administration to tackle long-avoided gun legislature.
 

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For most of his life as a Samburu warrior, Lesaiton Lengoloni thought nothing of hunting giraffes, the graceful giants so common a feature of the Kenyan plains where he roamed.

“There was no particular pride in killing a giraffe, not like a lion. … (But) a single giraffe could feed the village for more than a week,” the community elder told AFP, leaning on a walking stick and gazing out to the broad plateau of Laikipia.

But fewer amble across his path these days: In Kenya, as across Africa, populations of the world’s tallest mammals are quietly, yet sharply, in decline.

Population down sharply

Giraffe numbers across the continent fell 40 percent between 1985 and 2015, to just less than 100,000 animals, according to the best figures available to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

But unlike the clarion calls sounded over the catastrophic collapse of elephant, lion and rhino populations, less attention was paid to the giraffe’s private crisis.

“The giraffe is a big animal, and you can see it pretty easily in parks and reserves. This may have created a false impression that the species was doing well,” said Julian Fennessy, co-chair of the IUCN’s specialist group for giraffes and okapis.

The rate of decline is much higher in central and eastern regions, with poaching, habitat destruction and conflict the main drivers blamed for thinning herds of these gentle creatures.

Some subspecies nearly extinct

In Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia, reticulated giraffe numbers fell 60 percent in the roughly three decades to 2018, the IUCN says.

The Nubian giraffe meanwhile has suffered a tragic decline of 97 percent, pushing this rarer variety toward extinction. 

Further afield in Central Africa, the Kordofan giraffe, another of the multitude subspecies, has witnessed an 85 percent decrease.

In 2010, giraffes were a species of “least concern” on the IUCN red list. But six years later they leapt to “vulnerable,” one step down from critical, catching many by surprise.

“This is why for the giraffe we speak of the threat of a silent extinction,” said Jenna Stacy-Dawes, research coordinator at the San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research.

Mysterious, gentle giants

Despite this, an international effort underway to put giraffes squarely on the global conservation agenda has divided professional opinion.

Six African nations are pushing to regulate the international trade in giraffes under the U.N. Convention on Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), which meets from Aug. 17 to 28 in Geneva. 

Those advocating for the change, including Kenya, want the giraffe classified as “a species that, although not necessarily currently threatened with extinction, could become so if trade in their specimens were not closely controlled.”

Critics however say there is little evidence the international wildlife trade is responsible for dwindling giraffe numbers. A lack of reliable data has long hindered efforts to protect them.

“Compared to other charismatic species like elephants, lions and rhinos, we know very little about giraffes,” said Symon Masiaine, a coordinator in the Twiga Walinzi giraffe study and protection program, which began in Kenya in 2016. 

“Nowadays, we are still far behind, but we are making progress.”

A research afterthought

Almost nothing is reliably known about giraffe populations in Somalia, South Sudan and eastern parts of Democratic Republic of Congo, where collecting such information is perilously difficult.

But even research outside conflict zones has been patchy.

Arthur Muneza, from the Giraffe Preservation Foundation, said the first long-term study of giraffes was not carried out until 2004. Data on giraffes is often gathered as an afterthought by researchers focusing on other wildlife, he added.

“Without reliable data, it is more difficult to take appropriate conservation measures,” Muneza said.

It was not until 2018 that the IUCN had enough statistics to be able to differentiate the threat levels facing many giraffe subspecies.

The reticulated and Masai giraffes, for examples, were classified as “endangered” while the Nubian and Kordofan were “critically endangered.”

Trophy hunting

Under the proposal before CITES, the legal trade in giraffe parts, including those obtained by trophy hunters on Africa’s legal game reserves, would be globally regulated.

Member countries would be required to record the export of giraffe parts or artifacts, something only the United States currently does, and permits would be required for their trade.

But observers say the limited information available suggests most of this trade originates from places where giraffe numbers are actually rebounding, like South Africa and Namibia, where game hunting is legal.

Muneza says there isn’t a clear enough picture that the legal trade is linked to declining giraffe numbers.

“The first step should be to conduct a study to find out the extent of international trade and its influence on giraffe populations,” he said.

Those supporting the proposal before Geneva talk of a “precautionary principle” — doing something now before it is too late.

For Masiaine, the Kenyan giraffe researcher, any publicity is good publicity for these poorly understood long-necked herbivores.

“It means that people are talking about the giraffe,” he said. “And the species really needs that.”

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America’s top representative in Taiwan said Thursday that Washington expects the island to continue increasing its defense spending as Chinese security threats to the U.S. ally continue to grow.
 
W. Brent Christensen said the U.S. had “not only observed Taiwan’s enthusiasm to pursue necessary platforms to ensure its self-defense, but also its evolving tenacity to develop its own indigenous defense industry.”

That was a nod to President Tsai Ing-wen’s drive to develop domestic training jets, submarines and other weapons technology, supplementing arms bought from the U.S.

“These investments by Taiwan are commendable, as is Taiwan’s ongoing commitment to increase the defense budget annually to ensure that Taiwan’s spending is sufficient to provide for its own self-defense needs,” Christensen said in a speech. “And we anticipate that these figures will continue to grow commensurate with the threats Taiwan faces.”
 
Christensen is the director of the American Institute in Taiwan, which has served as the de facto U.S. Embassy in Taiwan since formal diplomatic relations were cut in 1979.
 
While China and Taiwan split during a civil war in 1949, Beijing still considers Taiwan Chinese territory and has increased its threats to annex the self-governing democracy by force if necessary.
 
Despite the lack of formal diplomatic ties, U.S. law requires Washington to ensure Taiwan has the means to defend itself.
 
Since 2008, U.S. administrations have notified Congress of more than $24 billion in foreign military sales to Taiwan, including in the past two months the sale of 108 M1A2 Abrams tanks and 250 Stinger missiles, valued at $2.2 billion dollars, Christensen said.
 
The Trump administration alone has notified Congress of $4.4 billion in arms sales to Taiwan, he said.
 
China has responded furiously to all such sales and recently announced it would impose sanctions on any U.S. enterprises involved in such deals, saying they undermine China’s sovereignty and national security.

Tsai has adamantly rejected Chinese pressure to reunite Taiwan and China under the “one-country, two-systems” framework that governs Hong Kong. She and many Taiwanese have said that the people of the island stand with the young people of Hong Kong who are fighting for democratic freedoms in ongoing protests.

Tsai, who says she will seek a second four-year term next year, has said Taiwan was also stepping-up training as it prepared to transition to an all-volunteer force and has raised the defense budget for three consecutive years.
 
China’s spending on the People’s Liberation Army rose to 1.2 trillion yuan ($178 billion) this year, making it the second-largest defense budget behind the United States.

Beijing has cut contacts with Tsai’s government over Tsai’s refusal to endorse its claim that Taiwan is a part of China and sought to increase its international isolation by reducing its number of diplomatic allies to just 17.

It has also stepped up efforts at military intimidation, holding military exercises across the Taiwan Strait and circling the island with bombers and fighters in what are officially termed training missions.

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VOA contributor Greta Van Susteren interviews US National Security Advisor John Bolton.

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French President Emmanuel Macron is celebrating U.S. and African veterans as well as French resistance fighters who took part in crucial but often-overlooked World War II landings on the Riviera.
 
At a ceremony Thursday in the southern town of Saint-Raphael marking 75 years since the operation to wrest southern France from Nazi control, Macron said, “your commitment is our heritage against darkness and ignorance.”
 

He urged French mayors to name streets after African soldiers from then-French colonies brought in to fight. Ivory Coast President Alassane Ouattara and Guinea President Alpha Conde also took part in the ceremony.
 
Starting Aug. 15, 1944, some 350,000 U.S. and French troops landed on the Mediterranean coast for Operation Dragoon, which was intended to coincide with the D-Day invasion in Normandy in June but was delayed due to a lack of resources.

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Syrian forces gained more ground from insurgents in the country’s northwest on Thursday, edging closer to a major rebel-held town a day after militants shot down a government warplane in the area.

The government offensive, which intensified last week, has displaced nearly 100,000 people over the past four days, according to the Syrian Response Coordination Group, a relief group active in northwestern Syria.
 
Syrian troops have been on the offensive in Idlib and its surroundings, the last major rebel stronghold in Syria, since April 30. The region is home to some 3 million people, many of them displaced in other battles around the war-torn country.

The fighting over the past days has been concentrated on two fronts as government forces march toward the town of Khan Sheikhoun from the east and west. The latest offensive also aims to besiege rebel-held towns and villages in northern parts of Hama province, according to opposition activists.  
 
The town of Khan Sheikhoun is a stronghold of al-Qaida-linked Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the most powerful group in the rebel-held areas. The town was the scene of a chemical attack on April 4, 2017 that killed 89 people.

At the time, the United States, Britain and France pointed a finger at the Syrian government, saying their experts had found that nerve agents were used in the attack. Days later, the U.S. fired 59 U.S. Tomahawk missiles at the Shayrat Air Base in central Syria, saying the attack on Khan Sheikhoun was launched from the base.

The Syrian government and its Russian allies denied there was a chemical attack.

The government-controlled Syrian Central Military Media said Thursday that pro-government fighters captured three small villages, just west of Khan Sheikhoun.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitoring group, said the villages fell in the morning hours and that the town of Khan Sheikhoun is being bombarded relentlessly.

Syrian state media confirmed insurgents had downed the government plane on Wednesday. An al-Qaida-linked group has released a video of the pilot in which the handcuffed man identified himself as a lieutenant colonel in the Syrian air force.

In the video, the pilot says his fighter jet was shot down when he was carrying out a mission near Khan Sheikhoun.

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