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Liv first met Bill in 2016 when she was a college student and $5,000 in debt from student loans.

Making rent was next to impossible, she said, but Bill helped her manage her expenses and finances better. They saw each other a few times a week, and soon Bill was paying Liv’s tuition and rent. He sent her on exotic trips to Europe and Thailand. They moved in together.

“He taught me how to do my taxes. He taught me how to get my own car insurance. He helped me pay back student loans,” Liv said. “He just taught me so much and he didn’t have to do any of it.

“I actually grew real feelings for him.”

“Actually” because Liv was 24 and Bill was 70 when they connected on SeekingArrangement, an online sugar-dating site that promotes itself as offering “upfront and honest arrangements with someone who will cater to your needs.” 

Typically, the arrangements are between young women (sugar babies) and older men (sugar daddies) with money. Sugar babies seek financial assistance in return for company. Most of the sources VOA Student Union interviewed said financial arrangements often, but not always, include sex in return.

“Join the more than 2.7 million students in the United States who have turned to SeekingArrangement and Sugar Daddies to avoid student debt and secure a better future,” according to their website. VOA Student Union made several attempts for comment from SeekingArrangement. 

Liv said she was seeking financial support for student debt and other expenses, and Bill was happy to help. 

“On that second date, he gave me $2,000…which paid for about four or five months of campus housing,” she said. 

Bill loved to treat Liv, she said, and sent her on international vacations. When they had been dating for nine months, Bill sent Liv on a vacation to Thailand. While there, she got a call that Bill had cancer that had metastasized. After she flew home, she slept by his hospital bedside almost every night. A month later, he died.

Bill bequeathed Liv more than $60,000 in an investment fund. 

“The money is definitely a big help for me. It helped me move out of the state, helped me get my own place, helped me get a new car,” she said. 

Exchanging companionship for financial support is not novel, but the internet has allowed people to connect more easily. That, combined with record-high tuition debt for many students — $37,000 on average or $1.6 trillion combined nationwide — has some students looking for alternative methods of debt relief. Some, like Liv, become sugar babies. 

She’s not alone. At Georgia State University in Atlanta — which registered the most sugar babies of all U.S. colleges, according to SeekingArrangement — more than 1,300 students signed up in 2018. Hundreds of students have signed up at schools in Florida, Alabama, New Jersey, California, Texas and Missouri. 

Is it all about sex?

Some women, like Liv, are well compensated in a mutual relationship. 

“Sometimes it’s not about sex,” Samantha, a college senior, explained. “Some men are just lonely. Some of them really are looking for someone to hang out with.”

But for others like Helene, the sugar daddies were domineering and violent. 

“It’s very rare for sugar babies to find a man that is not looking for sex,” Helene said. When one partner pays for everything, many men feel they are entitled to dominate the relationship.

“I knew that the only way for me to make money was to either sell drugs or get a sugar daddy,” she said. 

A 20-year-old international student in the United States, her visa does not allow her to work in the U.S. She says she doesn’t want to burden her family financially. Through SeekingArrangement, she met a 27-year-old man who at first seemed normal, but then became aggressive.

He asked Helene to do things outside their agreement. He told her he would send her $1,000 immediately to have sex with him. 

“I was stupid and scared, so I did what I had to do,” Helene said.

When she asked for payment, he taunted her and refused. As she tried to leave, he “took his T-shirt off, wrapped it around my head and tangled it around my neck. … I really thought he was going to keep me hostage.” 

Another man Helene met ignored sexual consent. After three months together, he became forceful and “stopped caring about what I thought was uncomfortable. … He would get rougher and more violent with me as if he liked it when I told him to stop.” 

Sugar daddies often expect babies to adopt submissive roles in exchange for the money and gifts they receive. 

“Some guys, they give you money and they think they have access to you 24/7, like you can never tell them no,” said Liv, who returned to sugaring after Bill died. 

Helene said her experiences “kind of ruined my relationship to sex. … I didn’t like to be touched … or hugged from behind … because of what my sugar daddies did to me.”

Still, she is not ready to abandon sugaring, she said. 

“It hasn’t changed my relationship to the sugar baby/sugar daddy world, because I need the money,” she said.

Men, too

Men are sugar babies, too. Antonio found his first sugar daddy when he was 18. 

“I tried to hang out where I knew men with money hung out, because I had no idea what I was doing,” he said. Like Liv and Helene, he needed money for college. His first sugar daddy paid Antonio’s tuition and gave him money for school books and shopping sprees. 

Antonio said he misses the perks of sugar dating. 

“I work two jobs now … I want to be able to afford the things I once had. I got accustomed to that lifestyle,” he added.

Samantha said she just wanted exciting experiences with a mature partner. “I don’t really have any real need for money. [It’s] not something that interests me.” 

She said she preferred the no-strings-attached nature of sugar dating. “[I wanted] something that wouldn’t be too normal, something that would be more casual … something that wouldn’t get boring.”

Social stigma

Many people see sugar dating as a form of prostitution, or sex work, which is defined as a consensual sexual encounter between two or more adults in exchange for payment. The legal status of sex work is debated all over the world. In the United States, public opinion on sex work appears to favor its criminalization. 

Sweta Patel, a criminal defense attorney in Washington, D.C., said that while there are similarities between sex work and sugar dating, the difference in a sugar relationship is sex and money may be one part of the relationship, but not all. 

Patel makes another distinction between sugar babies and sex workers.

“The sugar-daddy model is two consenting adults, while often in sex work, that is not always the case,” she said.

Patel said undercover law enforcement monitors websites like SeekingArrangement for relationships that cross into sex work. 

“I’m so naive, so I’ve never thought about that,” Helene said. 

Because of sex-trafficking and recently passed legislation to control it, such as the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) and Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA), many apps like SeekingArrangement closely monitor messaging. Last year, the popular online classified site Craigslist stopped offering personal ads because they were being used by sex traffickers. 

Free to make choices

Ultimately, say some sugar babies, they are adults engaging in adult relationships on their own terms.

“So many so-called romantic relationships are based on how much money or status or how good looking someone is,” Liv said. “How is that more honest?”

“You give your girlfriends and wives money and pay their bills. The one difference here is the age,” she said. “On the other hand, I would say this lifestyle is not for everyone, and not for everyone to approve of or understand. But it works for us and that’s all that matters.” 

Helene says the economics are the last word for her. 

“Most people think that sugar babies are too lazy to work and make money or (are) gold-diggers, but that’s not always the case,” Helene said. “If I wasn’t in this situation that I’m in, I would never do this. I don’t like giving my body to strangers I don’t know, but if that’s the way for me to get an income, then that’s what I’ll do.” 

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A regional Chinese diplomat has rebuked the United States for being “ignorant” about his country’s ongoing key economic contributions and cooperation with Afghanistan.

Arrangements are being worked out to enhance the cooperation with Kabul even under Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), Yao Jing, the Chinese ambassador to neighboring Pakistan told VOA.

He hailed Saturday’s successful Afghan presidential election, saying China hopes they will boost peace-building efforts in a country wrecked by years of conflicts.

“We hope that with the election in Afghanistan, with the peace development moving forward in Afghanistan, Afghans will finally achieve a peaceful period, achieve the stability,” said the Chinese diplomat, who served in Kabul prior to his posting in Islamabad.

China and US Clash Over ‘Belt and Road’ in Afghan Resolution

China insisting on including a reference to Beijing’s $1 trillion global building program in resolution on the UN political mission in Afghanistan

Earlier this month, U.S. officials and lawmakers during a congressional hearing in Washington sharply criticized China for its lack of economic assistance to Afghan rebuilding efforts.

“I think it’s fair to say that China has not contributed to the economic development of Afghanistan. We have not seen any substantial assistance from China,” Alice Wells, U.S. Acting Assistant Secretary for South and Central Asia, told lawmakers.

Wells, however, acknowledged that Beijing has worked with Washington on a way forward on peace as have other countries, including Russia and immediate neighbors of Afghanistan.

“She is a little ignorant about what China’s cooperation with Afghanistan is,” ambassador Yao said when asked to comment on the remarks made by Wells.

He recounted that Beijing late last year established a trade corridor with Kabul, which Afghan officials say have enabled local traders to directly export thousands of tons of pine nuts to the Chinese market annually, bringing much-needed dollars. Yao said a cargo train was also started in 2016 from eastern China to Afghanistan’s landlocked northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif.

China is also working on infrastructure projects, including the road linking Kabul to the eastern city of Jalalabad and the road between the central Afghan city of Bamiyan and Mazar-e-Sharif. Chinese companies, Yao, said are also helping in establishing transmission lines and other infrastructure being developed under the CASA-1000 electricity transmission project linking Central Asia to energy-starved South Asia nations through Afghanistan.

Ambassador Yao noted that China and Afghanistan signed a memorandum of understanding on BRI cooperation, identifying several major projects of connectivity.

“But the only problem is that the security situation pose a little challenge. So, that is why China and Pakistan and all the regional countries, we are working so hard trying to support or facilitate peace in Afghanistan,” he said.  

For her part, Ambassador Wells told U.S. lawmakers that China’s BRI is a “slogan” and “not any reality” in Afghanistan. “They have just tried to lockdown lucrative mining contracts but not following through with investment or real resources,” she noted.

Wells said that Washington continues to warn its partners, including the Afghan government about “falling prey to predatory loans or loans that are designed to benefit only the Chinese State.”

U.S. officials are generally critical of BRI for “known problems with corruption, debt distress, environmental damage, and a lack of transparency.” The projects aims to link China by sea and land through an infrastructure network with southeast and central Asia, the Middle East, Europe and Africa.

But Yao rejected those concerns and cited the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a pilot project of BRI, which has brought around $20 billion in Chinese investment to Pakistan within the past six years. It has helped Islamabad build roads and power plants, helping the country overcome its crippling electricity shortages, improve its transportation network and operationalize the strategic deep-sea Gwadar port on the Arabian Sea.

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Pope Francis on Sunday decried “the culture of comfort” that leads to indifference in the face of a global migration and refugee crisis.

The pope who has made caring for migrants a hallmark of his papacy spoke during a Mass for the World Day for Migrants and Refugees.

“We cannot be indifferent to the tragedy of old and new forms of poverty, to the bleak isolation, contempt and discrimination experienced by those who do not belong to ‘our group,'” Francis said. “We cannot remain insensitive, our hearts deadened, before the misery of so many innocent people. We must not fail to weep. We must not fail to respond.”

The pontiff has often spoken of the need to be welcoming to migrants, traveling to the Italian island of Lampedusa in 2013 on his first trip as pope to comfort refugees. His message found political resistance in Italy’s previous populist government, during which the former hard-line interior minister, Matteo Salvini, campaigned to prevent the arrival in Italy of migrants rescued at sea by humanitarian groups.

During his homily Sunday, the pope also noted the weapons that fuel wars are often produced and sold in other regions “which are then unwilling to take in the refugees generated buy these conflicts.”

Many migrants and refugees from conflicts throughout the world attended the Mass in St. Peter’s Square, which closed with the unveiling of a bronze statue by Canadian artist Timothy Schmalz depicting migrants packed on a boat.

“This statue depicts a group of migrants from various cultures and over different historic periods. I wanted this artistic work here in St. Peter’s Square to remind everyone of the evangelical challenge of hospitality,” Francis said.

During the Mass, a multiethnic chorus sang and the incense burned came from a refugee camp in southern Ethiopia, where refugees are rekindling a 600-year-old tradition of collecting incense. The Vatican said the incense “reminds us that refugees can also thrive, not just survive.”

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his rival Benny Gantz traded blame Sunday over the failure so far of efforts to reach a unity government deal following deadlocked elections.
 
A new round of negotiations between Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud and Gantz’s centrist Blue and White broke down Sunday and the two sides appeared far from reaching a compromise.
 
Likud said Netanyahu would make a “last effort” to reach a deal before informing President Reuven Rivlin he is unable to form a government.
 
That would leave Rivlin to decide whether to ask Gantz to try to do so or call on parliament to agree on a candidate for prime minister by a vote of at least 61 out of 120 members.
 
Netanyahu “will make a last effort to realize the possibility of forming a government at this stage, before returning the mandate to the president,” Likud said in a statement.
 
It called the latest round of negotiations a “big disappointment.”
 
Blue and White accused Likud of “throwing around slogans with the sole aim of generating support in preparation for dragging Israel into another round of elections at the behest of Netanyahu.”
 
This month’s poll was the second this year, after Netanyahu failed to form a coalition following April polls.
 
Israel marks the two-day Rosh Hashanah holiday beginning Sunday night and serious negotiations are not expected during that time.
 
Likud wants to negotiate on the basis of a compromise set out by Rivlin to form a unity government, which takes into account the possibility of Netanyahu being indicted for corruption in the weeks ahead.
 
The proposal could see Netanyahu remain prime minister for now, but step aside if indicted.
 
Gantz would step in as acting premier under such a scenario.
 
Netanyahu also says he will not abandon the smaller right-wing and religious parties supporting him in parliament, giving him a total of 55 seats backing him for prime minister.
 
Blue and White says Gantz must be prime minister first under any rotation arrangement, since it finished with the most seats in September 17 elections.
 
Blue and White won 33 seats, just ahead of Likud’s 32, but neither have a clear path to a majority coalition.
 
Gantz has 54 parliament members backing him for prime minister, but 10 are from Arab parties who say they will not serve in the ex-military chief’s government.
 
Rivlin tasked Netanyahu with trying to form a government Wednesday and he has 28 days to do so, with a two-week extension possible.
 
The deadlocked vote has threatened Netanyahu’s reign as Israel’s longest-serving prime minister.
 
If another election is called due to the standoff, it would be Israel’s third in a year.
 

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The British-flagged oil tanker that was seized by Iran in July has docked in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates early Saturday, according to ship-tracking websites and pool reporters.

The Stena Impero, which had been held off Bandar Abbas for more than two months, started moving out of the Iranian port Friday and reached the coast off Dubai early Saturday.

The arrival was reported on several ship-tracking websites.

Erik Hanell, CEO of the company that owns the vessel, Stena Bulk, told the media earlier that the tanker’s crew are “safe and in high spirits” following their release from Iran.

He added that arrangements have been made for them to return to their families.

“The crew will have a period of time to be with their families following 10 weeks of detainment on the vessel. Full support will be offered to the crew and families in the coming weeks to assist with their recovery,” he said.

The company did not release the names of the crew.

Following the release of the vessel, British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said his country would cooperate with its overseas partners to protect shipping and uphold international laws.

“The Stena Impero was unlawfully seized by Iran. It is part of a pattern of attempts to disrupt freedom of navigation. We are working with our international partners to protect shipping and uphold the international rule of law,” Raab said.

Iranian authorities accused the Stena Impero and its crew of failing to observe international maritime law at the time of its seizure on July 19, two weeks after British forces near Gibraltar captured an Iranian oil tanker that has since been released and renamed the Adrian Darya 1.

The operator and owner of the 183-meter-long, 50,000-deadweight-ton Stena Impero vehemently denied Tehran’s accusations.

An Iranian government spokesman said Monday that, while the vessel was then free to go, he did not know the exact timing of when it would set sail.

There were 23 crew members of Indian, Russian, Latvian, and Filipino nationalities aboard the Stena Impero when it was seized in the Strait of Hormuz on July 19.

Seven of them were released in early September, while the others reportedly remained aboard the ship off Bandar Abbas.

The Gibraltar and Hormuz seizures came with tensions already ratcheted up by confrontations between Western and Iranian naval and commercial ships in the strategic Gulf region that is a conduit for around one-fifth of the world’s oil supplies.

U.S. President Donald Trump has launched a naval escort campaign to defend commercial shipping interests in the Gulf against harassment and illegal interference, with support from Australia, Britain, and other Western and Gulf states.

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Seemingly low voter turnout marked presidential elections in Afghanistan Saturday, even as security forces managed to maintain relative calm across the country, despite dire warnings from the Taliban.

At least four civilians and three security personnel were killed across the country and more than 50 civilians suffered injuries in election-related violence, mostly from small explosions. The figure is relatively small, keeping in mind past elections and the almost daily violence Afghanistan normally faces.  

“At the moment we don’t have the exact number of voter turnout. But we have created a safe environment. We do believe quite a wide range of our compatriots were present,” General Khoshal Sadat, the Afghan deputy interior minister, told VOA before polls closed.

Daryush Khan, who came to a Kabul polling center with his wife and two small children, one of them in his arms, said he was there to safeguard his kids’ future.

“We know there are a lot of problems in Afghanistan, including security. But it’s our civil duty to come out and vote and choose our destiny,” he said. His wife, Gaity, holding up the other crying child, said they could not let threats get in the way of choosing their future.  

The Taliban had threatened to attack any election related activity, block roads, and blow up communication towers, calling the elections a “fake process.”

Taliban threats, however, were not the only reason people decided to stay home. Many said they were disgruntled after five years of bad governance and false promises.

Voting in Kabul, Afghanistan (B. Hamdard/VOA) video player.

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“In the last five years, the government didn’t deliver anything worthwhile. Especially, they didn’t do anything for women. The other candidates are also making empty promises. Nothing will change,” said Shabnam Yusufi of Kandahar, ahead of the polls.

A taxi driver in Kabul, Mohsin, said he would go to the polls only to cross out all the names.

The last presidential election was marred by allegations of fraud and the country became so divided that then-U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry had to step in and broker a power-sharing deal between the two leading candidates. The same two, incumbent President Ashraf Ghani and Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah, seemed to be leading in this year’s race as well.
 
Former warlord turned presidential candidate Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, said the elections were marked with “widespread fraud” and there would be no Kerry this time to save the day.

Hekmatyar, known as the “butcher of Kabul” for mercilessly shelling the Afghan capital in the 1990s, and accused of multiple other war crimes, came into the political fray when he accepted Ghani’s offer of a peace deal.  

Days before the election, he issued a veiled threat of violence if he suspected fraud in the polls.

“Don’t make us regret our return, don’t make us regret participating in the electoral process, don’t make us use other means. We can do it and we have the experience to be able to do it,” he said to his supporters at an election rally in Kabul earlier this week.

“Afghanistan is not in the 1990s. It has a professional, strong Afghan security force,” responded General Khoshal Sadat, the deputy interior minister in an interview with VOA. “We have grown up in chaos, so we know how to tackle chaos.”

Responding to allegations from multiple candidates, including Abdullah, of fraud or misuse of government resources, Ghani asked election authorities to take robust action.

“If any candidate has any evidence of fraud or corruption in this election, I request them to register their cases with the Electoral Complaints Commission. And I demand the commission to process their complaints,” Ghani said in a live TV address after the election in which he thanked security forces and the nation for a successful polling day.

Sporadic reports of voter registration problems trickled in throughout the day.

“This was a good chance for us to elect our president and choose our future. We have come from far away to vote and choose our upcoming president, but they (election authorities) are just playing with us,” said Abdul Wadood, an elderly man with a white beard who could not find his name on a voter list at a Kabul polling station.

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Joseph Wilson, the former ambassador who set off a political firestorm by disputing U.S. intelligence used to justify the 2003 Iraq invasion, died Friday, according to his ex-wife. He was 69. 
 
Wilson’s died of organ failure in Santa Fe, said his former wife, Valerie Plame, whose identity as a CIA operative was exposed days after Wilson’s criticism of U.S. intelligence that Saddam Hussein was attempting to purchase uranium. 
 
The leak of Plame’s covert identity was a scandal for the administration of President George W. Bush that led to the conviction of vice presidential aide Scooter B. Libby for lying to investigators and justice obstruction. 
 
President Donald Trump pardoned Libby in 2018. 
 
Plame, who is running as a Democrat for Congress — in part as a Trump adversary — called Wilson “a true American hero, a patriot, and had the heart of a lion.” Plame and Wilson moved to Santa Fe in 2007 to raise twin children and divorced in 2017. 
 
In 2002, Wilson traveled as a diplomat to the African country of Niger to investigate allegations that Hussein was attempting to purchase uranium, which could have been used to make nuclear weapons. 

Wife’s identity revealed

Plame’s identity with the CIA was revealed in a newspaper column days after Wilson alleged in an opinion piece in The New York Times that the Bush administration twisted prewar intelligence on Iraq to justify going to war. Wilson later accused administration officials and political operatives of putting his family at risk. 
 
A Connecticut native and graduate of the University of California-Santa Barbara, Wilson’s career with the Foreign Service included posts in a handful of African nations. 
 
He was the senior U.S. diplomat in Baghdad during the first Gulf War and was the last American official to meet with Saddam before Desert Storm. 
 
Wilson drew intense criticism from Republican lawmakers over his statements regarding Iraq in the lead-up to the U.S. invasion. A report by the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2004 pointed to inconsistences. 
 
Wilson dismissed those claims, later authoring the book “The Politics of Truth.” 
 
In a 2003 interview with PBS, he said that the post-9/11 security mission went astray with the full invasion of Iraq. 
 
“The national security objective for the United States was clear: It was disarmament of Saddam Hussein,” he said. “We should have pursued that objective. We did not need to engage in an invasion, conquest and occupation of Iraq in order to achieve that objective.” 

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