Attorneys and volunteers with the Vermont Asylum Assistance Project used to go into Vermont's prisons and meet with every immigration detainee, using their phones and computers for language interpretation, according to Jill Martin Diaz, executive director of the organization.

But they say that access changed this fall after Jon Murad took over as interim commissioner of the Vermont Department of Corrections. Since then, attorneys with the organization said the department has made it harder to meet and work with their clients, citing language barriers and lack of meeting space.

Murad denies those claims and says he has merely enforced policies that predate his time as commissioner, cutting off practices that shouldn't have been allowed under his predecessor.

Federal immigration authorities use Vermont prisons to hold often more than a dozen immigration detainees at a time per a contract agreement with the federal government. Though detainees can be held in any Vermont prison, they're most commonly brought to two facilities: Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility in South Burlington and Northwest State Correctional Facility in St. Albans Town.

As President Donald Trump has ramped up his mass deportation campaign, federal immigration authorities often swiftly shuffle people they detain around the country. And the Vermont Asylum Assistance Project has been the main organization routinely providing legal services to all immigration detainees in Vermont.

"I think it's really important to capitalize on this opportunity that Vermont can be where we disrupt this arrest-to-deportation pipeline that is happening across this country," said Hillary Rich, an attorney at the Vermont chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.

The issue has raised the eyebrows of legislators focused on the state's prison system and prompted them to write the Corrections Department a memo directing its officials to develop a memorandum of understanding with the Vermont Asylum Assistance Project to guarantee cooperation between the organization and the department.

A defiant Nicolás Maduro declared himself “the president of my country” as he protested his capture and pleaded not guilty Monday to federal drug trafficking charges that the Trump administration used to justify removing him from power in Venezuela.

“I was captured,” Maduro said in Spanish as translated by a courtroom interpreter before being cut off by the judge. Asked later for his plea to the charges, he stated: “I am innocent. I am not guilty. I am a decent man, the constitutional president of my country.”

Maduro’s court appearance in Manhattan, his first since he and his wife, Cilia Flores, were seized from their Caracas home Saturday in a stunning middle-of-the-night military operation, kicked off the U.S. government’s most consequential prosecution in decades of a foreign head of state. She also pleaded not guilty.

The criminal case is unfolding against a broader diplomatic backdrop of an audacious U.S.-engineered regime change that President Donald Trump has said will enable his administration to “run” the South American country.

Maduro, 63, was brought to court under heavy security early Monday — flown by helicopter to Manhattan from Brooklyn, where he is jailed, and then driven to the courthouse in an armored vehicle. He and Flores were led into court just before noon. Both were in leg shackles and jail-issued garb, and both put on headsets to hear the English-language proceeding as it was translated into Spanish.

As Maduro left the courtroom, a man in the audience denounced him as an “illegitimate” president.

As a criminal defendant in the U.S. legal system, Maduro will have the same rights as any other person charged with a crime in the country — including the right to jury trial. But, given the circumstances of his arrest and the geopolitical stakes at play, he’ll also be nearly — but not quite — unique.

That was made clear from the outset as Maduro, who took copious notes throughout the proceedings and wished Happy New Year to reporters as he entered the courtroom, repeatedly pressed his case that he had been unlawfully abducted.

“I am here kidnapped since Jan. 3, Saturday,” Maduro said, standing and leaning his tall frame toward a tabletop microphone. “I was captured at my home in Caracas.”

U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein, a 92-year-old jurist who was appointed to the federal bench in 1998 by Bill Clinton, interrupted him, saying: “There will be a time and place to go into all of this.” Hellerstein added that Maduro’s lawyer could do so later.

“At this point in time, I only want to know one thing,” the judge said. “Are you Nicolás Maduro Moros?”

“I am Nicolás Maduro Moros,” the defendant responded.

Maduro’s lawyer, Barry Pollack, said he expects to contest the legality of his “military abduction.”

Pollack, a prominent Washington lawyer whose clients have included WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, said Maduro is “head of a sovereign state and is entitled to the privileges and immunities that go with that office.”

Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega unsuccessfully tried the same immunity defense after the U.S. captured him in a similar military invasion in 1990. But the U.S. doesn’t recognize Maduro as Venezuela’s legitimate head of state — particularly after a much-disputed 2024 reelection.

Flores, who identified herself to the judge as “first lady of the Republic of Venezuela,” had bandages on her forehead and right temple. Her lawyer, Mark Donnelly, said she suffered “significant injuries” during her capture.

A 25-page indictment accuses Maduro and others of working with drug cartels to facilitate the shipment of thousands of tons of cocaine into the U.S. They could face life in prison if convicted.

Among other things, the indictment accuses Maduro and his wife of ordering kidnappings, beatings and murders of those who owed them drug money or undermined their drug trafficking operation. That included the killing of a local drug boss in Caracas, the indictment said.

Outside the courthouse, police separated those protesting the U.S. military action from pro-intervention demonstrators. Inside the courtroom, as the proceeding wrapped up and Maduro prepared to leave, 33-year-old Pedro Rojas stood up and began speaking forcefully at him in Spanish.

Rojas said later that he had been imprisoned by the Venezuelan regime. As deputy U.S. marshals led Maduro from the courtroom, the deposed leader looked directly at the man and shot back in Spanish: “I am a kidnapped president. I am a prisoner of war.”

Demands for Maduro’s return

Trump said Saturday the U.S. would “run” Venezuela temporarily and reiterated Sunday night that “we’re in charge,” telling reporters “we’re going to run it, fix it.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio tried to strike a more cautious tone, telling Sunday morning talk shows that the U.S. would not govern the country day-to-day other than enforcing an existing ” oil quarantine.”

Before his capture, Maduro and his allies claimed U.S. hostility was motivated by lust for Venezuela’s rich oil and mineral resources.

Trump has suggested that removing Maduro would enable more oil to flow out of Venezuela, but oil prices rose 1.7% on Monday. There are uncertainties about how fast oil production can be ramped up in Venezuela after years of neglect, as well as questions about governance and oversight of the sector.

Venezuela’s new interim leader, Delcy Rodríguez, has demanded that the U.S. return Maduro, who long denied any involvement in drug trafficking — although late Sunday she struck a more conciliatory tone in a social media post, inviting collaboration with Trump and “respectful relations” with the U.S.

A top European Union official on Monday warned the United States against interfering in Europe’s affairs and said only European citizens can decide which parties should govern them.

European Council President Antonio Costa’s remarks came in reaction to the Trump administration’s new national security strategy, which was published on Friday and paints European allies as weak while offering tacit support to far-right political parties.

It’s “good” that the strategy depicts European countries as an ally, but “allies don’t threaten to interfere in the domestic political choices of their allies,” Costa said.

“What we can’t accept is the threat of interference in European political life. The United States cannot replace European citizens in choosing what the good or the bad parties are,” he said in Paris at the Jacques Delors Institute, a think tank.

Fabian Zuleeg, chief executive at the European Policy Centre think tank, said that stridently nationalist parties in Europe will be emboldened by the strategy document and “will intensify efforts to hollow out the EU from within.”

“Pro-European liberal forces need to finally wake up: Trump’s America is not an ally but an adversary to Europe’s freedoms and fundamental values. His objective is to replace our democratic system with the illiberal populism now entrenched in the U.S.,” Zuleeg said.

The strategy was also critical of European free speech and migration policy. U.S. allies in Europe face the “prospect of civilizational erasure,” the document said, raising doubts about their long-term reliability as American partners.

But Costa, who chairs summits of the 27 national EU leaders, said Europe’s “history has taught us that you can’t have freedom of speech without freedom of information.”

The former Portuguese prime minister also warned “there will never be free speech if the freedom of information of citizens is sacrificed for the aims of the tech oligarchs in the United States.”

Speaking to reporters in Berlin, German government spokesperson Sebastian Hille underlined that “Europe and the U.S. are historically, economically and culturally linked, and remain close partners.”

“But we reject the partly critical tones against the EU,” he said. “Political freedoms, including the right to freedom of expression, belong to the fundamental values of the European Union. We view accusations regarding this more as ideology than strategy.”

The security strategy is the administration’s first since President Donald Trump returned to office in January. It breaks starkly from the course set by President Joe Biden’s Democratic administration, which sought to reinvigorate U.S. alliances.

It comes as the U.S. seeks an end to Russia’s nearly 4-year-old war in Ukraine, a goal that the national security strategy says is in America’s vital interests.

But the text makes clear that the U.S. wants to improve its relationship with Russia after years of Moscow being treated as a global pariah and ending the war is a core U.S. interest to “reestablish strategic stability with Russia.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said the document “absolutely corresponds to our vision.” Over the course of the war, Russia has worked to drive a wedge between NATO allies, particularly between the U.S. and Ukraine’s main backers in Europe.

“If we read closely the part about Ukraine, we can understand why Moscow shares this vision,” Costa said. “The objective in this strategy is not a fair and durable peace. It’s only (about) the end of hostilities, and the stability of relations with Russia.”

“Everyone wants stable relations with Russia,” he added, but “we can’t have stable relations with Russia when Russia remains a threat to our security.”

Top EU officials and intelligence officers have warned Russia could be in a position to launch an attack elsewhere in Europe in three to five years should it defeat Ukraine.

A bill that would allow judges to sentence women who get abortions to decades in prison and could restrict the use of IUDs and in vitro fertilization goes before a small group of South Carolina senators Tuesday.

This would be the first of at least a half-dozen legislative steps for the proposal that includes the strictest abortion prohibitions and punishments in the nation.

The subcommittee of the state Senate’s Medical Affairs Committee can change it Tuesday afternoon and even if it’s approved, its prospects are doubtful at best.

But even at this stage, the bill has gone further than any other such proposal across the U.S. since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, opening the door for states to implement abortion bans.

The proposal would ban all abortions unless the woman’s life is threatened. Current state law bans abortions after cardiac activity is detected, which is typically six week into a pregnancy, before many women know they are pregnant. Current law also allows abortions for rape and incest victims up to 12 weeks.

The proposal would also do things that aren’t being done in any other state. Women who get an abortion and anyone who helps them could face up to 30 years in prison. It appears to ban any contraception that prevents a fertilized egg from implanting, which would ban intrauterine devices and could limit in vitro fertilization.

Providing information about abortions would be illegal, leaving doctors worried they couldn’t suggest places where the procedure is legal.

Republican Sen. Richard Cash, who sponsors the bill and is one of the Senate’s most strident voices against abortion, will run Tuesday’s subcommittee. He acknowledged problems last month with potentially banning contraception and restricting the advice doctors can give to patients. But he has given no indication what changes he or the rest of the subcommittee might support. Six of the nine members are Republicans.

Abortion remains an unsettled issue in conservative states and how much more to restrict it is fracturing anti-abortion groups.
South Carolina Citizens for Life, one of the state’s largest and oldest opponents of abortion, issued a statement last month saying it can’t support Cash’s bill because women who get abortions are victims too and shouldn’t be punished.

On the other side, at least for this bill, are groups like Equal Protection South Carolina. “Abortion is murder and should be treated as such,” founder Mark Corral said.

After six months of development, WebPromo, a Korean community and blogging platform has officially launched its English-language version. Under the slogan “A Korean-American portal covering all U.S. regions,” WebPromo has evolved into a fully bilingual platform, setting a new milestone that bridges Korean content with America’s mainstream readership.

The highlight of this launch is WebPromo’s adoption of ChatGPT-powered translation technology through a direct API integration, marking a major leap beyond conventional machine translation. Unlike plug-in translators or low-quality automated tools, WebPromo’s system connects directly with ChatGPT’s advanced language-processing capabilities to produce fluent, emotionally engaging English versions of Korean blog posts.

Antonio Shin, CEO of WebPromo, explained, “This technology doesn’t just translate words?it reads the rhythm and emotion of the sentence. The AI monitors grammar accuracy, tonal naturalness, emotional depth, and even predicts how American readers will respond.” He added, “With this system, blogs originally written in Korean now sound as if they were crafted by a native English writer.”

By integrating AI translation at such a high level, WebPromo goes beyond simple language conversion to become a bridge of cultural communication. Through the AI’s nuanced adaptation, Korean-language content is reborn in a tone and emotion that resonate naturally with American audiences. The platform thus connects first-generation immigrants, second-generation Korean-Americans, and even non-Korean readers, opening a new paradigm for Korean-language blogs entering the U.S. market.

Members can write under pen names and build their own branded blogs reflecting their unique stories and styles. The magazine-like layout provides a sleek, comfortable visual experience. Users across all 50 states can share local Korean-town stories and write about immigration life, entrepreneurship, workplace culture, travel, essays, love stories, psychology, philosophy, IT trends, and more. With no topic restrictions, WebPromo encourages free, creative expression?positioning itself not just as a blogging site, but as a core ecosystem for individual creators.

The platform is also enhancing its recommendation algorithms and local curation system using data accumulated from community activity. Drawing inspiration from Reddit’s structure, WebPromo is developing its own AI-driven recommendation engine to refine user engagement and topic discovery.

“WebPromo values authenticity over fleeting trends,” said Shin. “We believe sincere, lasting stories move people’s hearts. With our AI translation technology, these voices of the Korean community can now be heard naturally within the American mainstream. We will continue to evolve as a platform where technology, humanity, and storytelling coexist in harmony.”

More than a Korean blogging site, WebPromo is emerging as a next-generation content hub for the AI era?a space where artificial intelligence and human creativity blend to amplify the Korean-American voice across the United States and beyond.