China’s nuclear arsenal is growing faster than expected, according to the latest unclassified Pentagon assessment, with a senior U.S. defense official warning the Chinese military is “on track to exceed previous projections.”

The U.S. Defense Department’s annual China Military Power Report, released Thursday, estimates the Chinese military had more than 500 operational nuclear warheads in its arsenal as of May and will have more than 1,000 warheads by 2030.

Last year’s report, issued in late November, estimated China had more than 400 warheads and was likely to have about 1,500 warheads in its nuclear stockpile by 2035.

U.S. officials said the new estimates are in line with their previous assessments while adding it is concerning that Beijing appears to have quickened the development of its nuclear arsenal.

“They’re expanding and investing in their land-, sea- and air-based nuclear delivery platforms, as well as the infrastructure that’s required to support this major expansion of their nuclear forces,” said a senior U.S. defense official who briefed reporters on the contents of the report on the condition of anonymity, under ground rules set by the Pentagon.

“We’re not trying to suggest a very large departure from where they looked to be headed in last year’s report, but we are suggesting that they’re on track to exceed those previous projections,” the official said.

“Certainly, it raises questions about what is their long-term intent here, and I think it reinforces the importance of pursuing some practical measures to try to reduce nuclear risks,” the official said.

US vs China’s nuclear infrastructure

The United States, by treaty, maintains 1,550 active warheads, but it is an aging arsenal with an aging infrastructure. Some of the U.S. warheads are 50 years old.

To keep up, the Pentagon plans to spend $750 billion over the next decade to update and replace almost every component of the U.S. arsenal.

China’s infrastructure, in contrast, is new and expanding.

The Pentagon report assesses China is expanding the number of its nuclear delivery platforms — to be able to launch nuclear warheads from land, sea and air — while also building more infrastructure to “support further expansion of its nuclear forces.”

In addition, the U.S. believes China has completed construction of its intercontinental ballistic missile silo fields, which contain at least 300 silos from which it could launch warheads. The U.S. further assesses that some of the silos have been loaded with missiles.

The U.S. has 450 silos, according to research by the Federation of American Scientists, with 400 of them loaded.

Hypersonics

The Pentagon report also echoes concerns about China’s already world-leading arsenal of hypersonic weapons.

The report warns new hypersonic weapons could soon replace some of Beijing’s older, short-range ballistic missiles, with their sights set on foreign military bases and fleets in the Western Pacific.

Unlike ballistic missiles, which fly at hypersonic speeds but travel along a set trajectory, hypersonic weapons are highly maneuverable despite flying at Mach 5, or five times the speed of sound.

China’s military is also developing its missile forces overall, according to the Pentagon’s report, and “may be exploring development of conventionally armed intercontinental range missiles systems.”

“Such capabilities would allow the PRC [Peoples’ Republic of China] to threaten conventional strikes against targets in the continental United States, Hawaii and Alaska,” the report said.

Beijing’s naval and aerial capabilities are also growing.

The China Military Power Report estimates Beijing’s navy now includes more than 370 ships and submarines, maintaining its position as the largest navy in the world. China’s aviation force is likewise thought to be the largest in the world and “is rapidly catching up to Western air forces” in terms of capability.

Communication issues

But it is not just China’s growing military that has U.S. officials worried. Beijing’s expanding arsenals and platforms have been accompanied by a more aggressive, and a sometimes coercive, military posture.

U.S. defense officials earlier warned of a sharp increase in risky Chinese military behavior, noting more than 180 incidents targeting U.S. assets in the Indo-Pacific since 2021, a number that jumps to 300 when U.S. allies and partners are included.

Making matter more tenuous, according to U.S. officials, is the Chinese military’s continued refusal to talk.

“We continue to believe that it’s extremely important for us to maintain open lines of military-to-military communications between the U.S. and the PRC across multiple levels, including the senior levels,” said the senior U.S. defense official.

“It’s been unfortunate when we haven’t been able to have those senior level engagements at the Shangri-La Dialogue, for instance, this year. The handshake was not a substitute for a more in-depth, substantive discussion,” the official said, noting the refusal of the Chinese defense chief, Gen. Li Shangfu, to talk with U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin at this year’s dialogue.

China shortcomings

Despite China’s growing military might, the latest Pentagon report does assess that Beijing itself believes it still faces some deficits as it tries to field a force capable of fighting and winning wars with other capable military powers, such as the U.S.

“They have made pretty considerable amount of progress,” the senior U.S. defense official told reporters. “At the same time, I think they still have a long way to go in terms of having the level of military capability that we judge that they think that they need to advance their global security and economic interests.”

Part of that comes from the fact that China’s military has not been tested in real combat in more than 40 years, since China’s 1979 conflict with Vietnam, nor has it been in a position to test whether it can deploy all aspects of its military might in a coordinated manner.

The senior defense official called the lack of combat experience, in particular, “one of the shortcomings that the PRC highlights in a lot of their own self assessments.”

“They try to address that, I think, by attempting to make their training and their exercises more realistic to more closely approximate what they refer to as a sort of real war or actual combat type conditions,” the official said, in response to a question from VOA. “And I think they try to address that, as well, by learning whatever lessons they can from other countries’ involvement and military conflicts.”

“They’re watching very closely how Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine is unfolding,” the official said.

Taiwan

The Pentagon report also highlights China’s increased military pressure against Taiwan.

U.S. military and intelligence agencies have publicly warned that China is readying its forces to be able to take Taiwan by force by as soon as 2025.

The report notes China’s military has “practiced elements of each of its military courses of action against Taiwan” during large-scale exercises in August 2022 an
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U.S. President Joe Biden is set to address the nation Thursday night and discuss the U.S. response to the recent Hamas attack on Israel as well as Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Biden visited Israel Wednesday, bringing a message of support to Israelis while also working to secure humanitarian aid for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

The U.S. announced $100 million in aid for Gaza and the West Bank, and the Biden administration is expected to propose $100 billion in supplemental assistance for Israel, Ukraine, Taiwan and security along the U.S.-Mexico border.

“My administration was in close touch with the leadership from the first moments of this attack,” Biden said Wednesday in Tel Aviv.  “We’re going to make sure we have what you have, what you need to protect your people, to defend your nation. For decades, we’ve ensured Israel’s qualitative military edge. And later this week, I’m going to ask the United States Congress for an unprecedented support package for Israel’s defense.”

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
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The U.S. House of Representatives is expected to reconvene Thursday and make another attempt to elect a speaker, after Republican congressman Jim Jordan, a staunch ally of former president Donald Trump, lost his second bid to claim the speaker’s gavel Wednesday.

Jordan, a nine-term lawmaker from the midwestern state of Ohio, won 199 votes in Wednesday’s vote, well short of the 217-vote majority he needs to be elected speaker.

Twenty-two of his Republican colleagues voted for other lawmakers in the contest, an increase of two from the first round of voting on Tuesday.

Jordan also trailed Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who won the votes of all 212 Democrats, although Jeffries is highly unlikely to become speaker of the chamber, in which Republicans have a slim majority.

Jordan has not dropped his effort to become speaker and told reporters he expects another vote in the House Thursday afternoon.

Supporters of Jordan have pressured opposing lawmakers on social media to fall in line and approve the Ohio representative as speaker. One Republican congresswoman, Mariannette Miller-Meeks of Iowa, reported receiving “credible death threats and a barrage of threatening calls” after she voted against Jordan in Wednesday’s vote.

Jordan later wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, that “no American should accost another for their beliefs.”

“We condemn all threats against our colleagues and it is imperative that we come together,” he added. “Stop. It’s abhorrent.”

Since Representative Kevin McCarthy’s ouster as speaker two weeks ago, the House has been rudderless and unable to consider any legislation, such as a spending measure to avert a partial government shutdown when current funding runs out on November 17, or a straightforward, bipartisan resolution to support Israel after the U.S. ally was attacked October 7 by Hamas militants.

Some lawmakers, including Republicans and more than a few opposition Democrats, have suggested granting temporary House Speaker Patrick McHenry additional power on a short-term basis to bring key legislation to the floor for full House votes.

Some Republicans have also raised the possibility of reinstating McCarthy, although he balked at having his name placed in nomination. He voted this week for Jordan.

Jeffries called on Republicans to reject the influence of hard-right extremists in their party and work toward a bipartisan governing coalition.

“There’s only two paths: either you’re going to continue to bend the knee to the most extreme members of your conference, who are not interested in governing, or you can partner with Democrats to do the business of the American people,” Jeffries said Tuesday.

Jordan, a divisive figure on Capitol Hill who frequently fires barbs at Democrats, could become the third candidate this month to fail to unite the Republican Party, after McCarthy and Representative Steve Scalise.

Scalise withdrew his name from contention after he outpolled Jordan among the Republican caucus but realized he could not get the required 217-vote majority in a full House vote.  With the party holding a very narrow majority in the full House, any Republican will need near-unanimous support from their own members to be elected speaker.

 
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One of US President Joe Biden’s goals in Israel Wednesday was to help resolve the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip. He visited Israel as Gaza reeled from an explosion at a hospital that killed an estimated 500 people. Linda Gradstein reports from Jerusalem.
Camera: Ricki Rosen    
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Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin places more than 2,000 military personnel on heightened alert this week with a prepare-to-deploy order. The Pentagon tells VOA that should the president activate the units, they will boost the U.S. military’s air defenses, medical and logistical capabilities, and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance abilities in the Middle East. VOA Pentagon correspondent Carla Babb reports.
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The suburban Chicago, Illinois, community of Plainfield mourns a 6-year-old Palestinian American boy who authorities say was stabbed to death by his landlord. His mother, also a victim of the attack, remains hospitalized. VOA’s Kane Farabaugh reports.
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Hamas blames Israel for Tuesday’s devastating explosion at a Gaza hospital. Israel, however, places the blame on the group Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which denies the accusation. In Lebanon, few doubt Israel’s responsibility and protesters have been expressing their rage at the U.S. Embassy, viewing the United States as Israel’s main backer. Jacob Russell reports from Beirut.
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US President Joe Biden is in Tel Aviv Wednesday, showing support for US ally Israel following the Oct. 7 attack by militant group Hamas that has escalated to an all-out war. Biden appeared to side with Israel, who denied responsibility for a massive explosion at a Gaza hospital that killed hundreds, ignited protests across the region, and scuttled Biden’s summit with regional leaders. White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara has this report.
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The chief suspect in Natalee Holloway’s 2005 disappearance in Aruba admitted he killed her and disposed of her remains, and has agreed to plead guilty to charges he tried to extort money from the teen’s mother years later, a U.S. judge said Wednesday,

The disclosure came during a plea and sentencing hearing for Joran van der Sloot, 36, in a federal courtroom in Alabama — just a few miles from the Birmingham suburb where Holloway used to live.

“You changed the course of our lives and you turned them upside down,” her mother Beth Holloway said in court, standing a few feet from van der Sloot. “You are a killer.”

Van der Sloot is not charged in Holloway’s death. The Dutch citizen was sentenced Wednesday to 20 years in prison for extortion and wire fraud, but as part of his plea agreement, that sentence will run concurrently with his sentence in Peru, where he’s serving a 28-year prison sentence for killing Stephany Flores in 2010.

U.S. Judge Anna Manasco said she considered van der Sloot’s confession to Holloway’s murder and the destruction of her remains as part of the sentencing decision.

“You have brutally murdered, in separate instances years apart, two young women who refused your sexual advances,” the judge said.

Holloway went missing during a high school graduation trip with classmates. She was last seen leaving a bar with van der Sloot. He was questioned in the disappearance but was never prosecuted. A judge declared Holloway dead, but her body has never been found.

Manasco said the plea deal required van der Sloot to provide all the information he knew about Natalie Holloway’s disappearance.

The case has captivated the public’s attention for nearly two decades, spawning extensive news coverage, books, movies and podcasts. A heavy media presence assembled outside the federal courthouse nearly three hours before the hearing.

Holloway’s family has long sought answers about her disappearance. Van der Sloot gave different accounts over the years of that night in Aruba. Federal investigators in the Alabama case said van der Sloot gave a false location of Holloway’s body during a recorded 2010 FBI sting that captured the extortion attempt.

Prosecutors in the Alabama case said van der Sloot asked for $250,000 from Beth Holloway to reveal the location of her daughter’s remains. Van der Sloot agreed to accept $25,000 to disclose the location, and asked for the other $225,000 once the remains were recovered, prosecutors said. Van der Sloot said Holloway was buried in the gravel under the foundation of a house, but later admitted that was untrue, FBI Agent William K. Bryan wrote in a 2010 sworn statement filed in the case.

Van der Sloot moved from Aruba to Peru before he could be arrested in the extortion case.

The government of Peru agreed to temporarily extradite van der Sloot so he could face trial on the extortion charge in the United States. U.S. authorities agreed to return him to Peruvian custody after his case is concluded, according to a resolution published in Peru’s federal register.

“The wheels of justice have finally begun to turn for our family,” Beth Holloway said in June after van der Sloot arrived in Alabama. “It has been a very long and painful journey.”
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Russia’s parliament moved swiftly to fulfill the wish of President Vladimir Putin by completing the passage of a bill that shifts Moscow’s legal stance on nuclear testing at a time of acute tension with the West.

The lower house, the State Duma, on Wednesday passed the second and third readings of a bill that revokes Russia’s ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, or CTBT. Both were passed unanimously by 415 votes to 0.

Putin urged the Duma on October 5 to make the change in order to “mirror” the position of the United States, which has signed but never ratified the 1996 treaty.

“We understand our responsibility to our citizens, we are protecting our country. What is happening in the world today is the exclusive fault of the United States,” parliament speaker Vyacheslav Volodin said.

Since he invaded Ukraine last year, Putin has repeatedly reminded the West of Russia’s nuclear might. On Wednesday state TV showed rare footage of him during a visit to Beijing being accompanied by naval officers carrying the so-called nuclear briefcase that can be used to order a nuclear strike.

Russia says it will not resume atomic testing unless Washington does, but arms control experts are concerned it may be inching towards a test that the West would perceive as a Russian nuclear escalation amid the Ukraine war.

They say a test by either Russia or the United States could prompt the other to do the same, and China, India and Pakistan might then follow, triggering a new global arms race. All are currently observing test moratoriums, and only North Korea has conducted a test involving a nuclear explosion this century.

Russia originally ratified the CTBT in 2000. While it is revoking that step, it has so far said it will remain a signatory to the treaty and continue to supply data to the global monitoring system which alerts the world to any nuclear test.

But when he introduced the bill on Tuesday, parliament speaker Volodin raised the possibility Moscow might withdraw altogether and said it would keep Washington guessing about its intentions.

“And what we will do next — whether we remain a party to the treaty or not — we will not tell them. We must think about global security, the safety of our citizens and act in their interests,” he said.

The law will now go to the upper house, and to Putin for signing.

Putin said earlier this month he was aware of calls for Russia to resume nuclear testing but was not ready to say whether Moscow should do so.

Back in February, he said Russia must “make everything ready” to conduct a test in case Washington did so. Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu visited Russia’s testing ground in the remote northern archipelago of Novaya Zemlya in August.

CNN published satellite images last month showing Russia, the United States and China have all built new facilities at their nuclear test sites in recent years.

Russia’s shift on the CTBT follows its suspension earlier this year of New START, the last remaining bilateral nuclear treaty with the United States, which limits the number of strategic warheads each side can deploy.

Experts at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute said both steps may be intended by Putin “to generate alarm and uncertainty among states supporting Ukraine in its defense against Russia’s illegal invasion.”

They said the CTBT move “weakens international stability and diminishes humanity’s prospects of avoiding a new nuclear arms race.”

But they added: “In this instance, it is difficult for the United States to go far in criticizing Putin’s announcement and Russia’s potential withdrawal from the CTBT since the USA has itself failed to ratify the treaty and become a party to it in the 27 years since first signing.”

Melissa Parke, executive director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, called Russia’s action irresponsible.

She said treaties like the CTBT “are critical to making sure nuclear testing, which has harmed people’s health and caused widespread radioactive contamination, is not resumed.”

Post-Soviet Russia has never carried out a nuclear test. The Soviet Union last tested in 1990 and the United States in 1992.
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A clinical trial is recruiting thousands of volunteers — including a large number of Black women who face disparities in breast cancer death rates — to try to find out.

People like Carole Stovall, a psychologist in Washington, D.C., have signed up for the study to help answer the question.

“We all need a mammogram anyway, so why not do it with a study that allows the scientists to understand more and move closer to finding better treatments and ways of maybe even preventing it?” Stovall said.

The underrepresentation of women and minorities in research is a long-simmering issue affecting health problems including Alzheimer’s disease, stroke and COVID-19. Trials without diversity lead to gaps in understanding of how new treatments work for all people.

“Until we get more Black women into clinical trials, we can’t change the science. And we need better science for Black bodies,” said Ricki Fairley, a breast cancer survivor and advocate who is working on the issue.

Black women are 40% more likely to die from breast cancer than white women and tend to be diagnosed younger. But it’s not clear whether 3D mammography is better for them, said Dr. Worta McCaskill-Stevens of the National Cancer Institute.

“Are there populations for whom this might be important to have early diagnosis?” asked McCaskill-Stevens. “Or is it harmful,” causing too many false alarms or unneeded follow-up tests and treatments?

McCaskill-Stevens, who is Black, leads NCI’s efforts to boost access to cancer research in minority and rural communities. She has joined the study herself.

The newer 3D technique has been around for a decade, but there’s never been conclusive evidence that it’s better than 2D at detecting advanced cancers. The screening technique combines multiple pictures of the breast taken from different angles to create a 3D-like image. Both 3D and 2D mammograms compress the breast and use low doses of radiation.

Prior studies suggest that 3D finds more cancers than 2D, but catching more cancers doesn’t necessarily mean more lives saved. Some cancers missed by standard screening may not progress or need treatment. Previous studies did not randomly assign patients to a screening method, the gold standard for research.

The notion “that if it’s new, it’s shiny, then it’s better,” isn’t necessarily true, McCaskill-Stevens said. “Until we have the evidence to support that, then we need well-designed randomized trials.”

The trial has enrolled nearly 93,000 women so far with a goal of 128,000. The NCI-funded study is now running in Canada, South Korea, Peru, Argentina, Italy and 32 U.S. states. A site in Thailand will soon begin enrolling patients.

“We added more international sites to enhance the trial’s diversity, particularly for Hispanic and Asian women,” said Dr. Etta Pisano, who leads the study.

Overall, 42% of participants are Hispanic. As recruiting continues, enrolling Black women and other women of color will “absolutely” continue as a priority, Pisano said.

Participants are randomly assigned to either 2D or 3D mammograms and are followed for several years. The number of advanced cancers detected by the two methods will be compared.

At the U.S. study sites, 21% of study participants are Black women — that’s higher than a typical cancer treatment study, in which 9% of participants are Black, McCaskill-Stevens said.

The University of North Carolina has signed up more Black women than any other study site. Nearly a quarter of the nearly 3,000 women enrolled at UNC’s two locations are Black.

“Women in North Carolina want to take part in something that’s bigger than them,” said Dr. Cherie Kuzmiak, who leads the UNC arm of the study. “They want this active role in helping determine the future of health care for women.”

In Washington, D.C., word of mouth has led to successful recruiting.

A chance encounter at her hair salon persuaded Stovall to join the research. While waiting for a hair appointment, she met Georgetown University cancer researcher Lucile Adams-Campbell. The two, both Black, started chatting.

“She explained how important it was to get women of color into the program,” said Stovall, who jumped at the chance to catch up on her mammograms after the COVID-19 pandemic delayed screening for her and thousands of others.

For Stovall, there was a personal reason to join the research. Her sister recently completed treatment for triple negative breast cancer, an aggressive type that affects Black women at higher rates than white women.

Women ages 45 to 74 without a personal history of breast cancer are eligible for the study, which launched in 2017. Many women also are providing blood and cheek swab samples for a database that will be mined for insights.

“It’s a dream that people had since the beginning of screening that we wouldn’t fit everybody into the same box,” Pisano said. The study’s findings could “reduce disparities if we’re successful, assuming people have access to care.”

Stovall, 72, had a brief scare when her mammogram, the traditional 2D type, showed something suspicious. A biopsy ruled out cancer.

“I was extremely relieved,” Stovall said. “Everybody I know has heard from me about the need for them to go get a mammogram.”
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The remains of at least 189 people have been removed from a Colorado funeral home, up from an initial estimate of about 115 when the decaying and improperly stored bodies were discovered two weeks ago, officials said Tuesday.

The remains were found by authorities responding to a report of an “abhorrent smell” inside a decrepit building at the Return to Nature Funeral Home in the small town of Penrose, about 160 kilometers (100 miles) south of Denver. All the remains were removed from the site as of Oct. 13, but officials said the numbers could change again as the identification process continues.

The updated count comes as families who did business with the funeral home grow increasingly concerned about what happened to their deceased loved ones. Local officials said they will begin notifying family members in the coming days as the remains are identified.

There is no timeline to complete the work, which began last week with help from an FBI team that gets deployed to mass casualty events like airline crashes. Fremont County Coroner Randy Keller said he wanted to provide accurate information to families “to prevent further victimization as they continue to grieve.”

Officials have not disclosed further details of what was found inside the funeral home, but Fremont Sheriff Allen Cooper described the scene as horrific.

Authorities entered the funeral home’s neglected building with a search warrant Oct. 4 and found the decomposing bodies. Neighbors said they had been noticing the smell for days.

The owners of the Return to Nature Funeral Home had missed tax payments in recent months, were evicted from one of their properties and were sued for unpaid bills by a crematory that quit doing business with them almost a year ago, according to public records and interviews with people who worked with them.

A day after the odor was reported, the director of the state office of Funeral Home and Crematory registration spoke on the phone with owner Jon Hallford. He tried to conceal the improper storage of corpses in Penrose, acknowledged having a “problem” at the site and claimed he practiced taxidermy there, according to an order from state officials dated Oct. 5.

Attempts to reach Hallford, his wife, Carie, and Return to Nature have been unsuccessful. Numerous text messages to the funeral home seeking comment have gone unanswered. No one answered the business phone or returned a voice message left Tuesday.

In the days after the discovery, law enforcement officials said the owners were cooperating as investigators sought to determine any criminal wrongdoing.

The company, which offered cremations and “green” burials without embalming fluids, kept doing business as its financial and legal problems mounted. Green burials are legal in Colorado, but any body not buried within 24 hours must be properly refrigerated.

As of last week, more than 120 families worried their relatives could be among the remains had contacted law enforcement about the case. It could take weeks to identify the remains found and could require taking fingerprints, finding medical or dental records, and DNA testing.

Authorities found the bodies inside a 230-square-meter (2,500-square-foot) building with the appearance and dimensions of a standard one-story home.

Colorado has some of the weakest oversight of funeral homes in the nation with no routine inspections or qualification requirements for funeral home operators.

There’s no indication state regulators visited the site or contacted Hallford until more than 10 months after the Penrose funeral home’s registration expired. State lawmakers gave regulators the authority to inspect funeral homes without the owners’ consent last year, but no additional money was provided for increased inspections.
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President Joe Biden heads to Tel Aviv to show solidarity with Israel, secure the safe passage of Americans trapped in Gaza and ease the plight of Palestinians under Israeli siege since the brazen attack by the militant group Hamas on Oct. 7. The trip is overshadowed by an attack on a hospital in Gaza, which led to the cancellation of Biden’s summit with regional leaders. White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara has this report.
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A former New York stockbroker who fled his job and family to fight alongside Islamic State militants in Syria, and then maintained his allegiance to the extremist group throughout his trial, was sentenced to life in prison on Tuesday.

Ruslan Maratovich Asainov, who served as a sniper and instructor for the Islamic militant group at the height of its power, sat grinning in the Brooklyn courtroom, flashing a thumbs-up and stroking his bushy beard as a judge read out the sentencing.

His court-appointed attorney, Susan Kellman, declined to ask for a lighter sentence, noting her client was not interested in distancing himself from the Islamic State fighters in exchange for leniency.

“It’s rare that I start my remarks at sentencing by saying I agree with the government,” Kellman said. “This is who he is. This is what he believes, fervently.”

Asainov, a 47-year-old U.S. citizen born in Kazakhstan, was living in Brooklyn in late 2013 when he abandoned his young daughter and wife to fight alongside the Islamic State group in Syria.

After receiving training as a sniper, he participated in pivotal battles that allowed the militant group to seize territory and establish its self-proclaimed caliphate based on a fundamentalist interpretation of Islamic law. He rose to a rank of “emir,” or chief, then taught more than 100 aspiring snipers, acting as a “force multiplier” for the Islamic State group’s “bloody, brutal campaign,” according to prosecutors.

Asainov told law enforcement officials that he did not recall how many people he had killed. But he spoke proudly of participating in the violent jihad, bragging that his students had taken enemy lives.

“He chose to embrace killing as both a means and an end,” Matthew Haggans, an assistant United States attorney, said during the sentencing. “He holds on to that foul cause today.”

Asainov did not participate in his own trial, refusing to stand for the judge or jury. Inside the Brooklyn jail cell, he hung a makeshift Islamic State flag above his desk and made calls to his mother on a recorded line describing his lack of repentance.

Asainov was convicted earlier this year of providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization and causing at least one death, among other charges. He is one of dozens of Americans — and thousands of foreign fighters worldwide — who have heeded the calls of the Islamic State militants to join the fighting in Iraq and Syria since 2011.

Mirsad Kandic, a Brooklyn resident who recruited Asainov and others to join the Islamic State group, was sentenced to life in prison this summer.

During Asainov’s trial, his ex-wife testified that he had once doted on their young daughter. But around 2009, she said, he became consumed by extremist interpretations of Islamic Law, quitting his job as a stock trader, throwing out his daughter’s toys and forbidding his wife from putting up a Christmas tree.

In late 2013, he boarded a one-way flight from New York to Istanbul, ultimately arriving in Syria with the help of Kandic. He maintained occasional contact with his wife, bragging about his connection to the “most atrocious terrorist organization in the world” and warning that he could have her executed.

He was captured in 2019 by Syrian Democratic Forces during the Islamic State group’s last stand in a tiny Syrian village near the border with Iraq, then turned over to the United States.

In their sentencing memo, federal prosecutors said Asainov should face the maximum sentence of life imprisonment for both the nature of his crimes and the fact that he has not shown “an iota of remorse, doubt, or self-reflection on past mistakes.”

On Tuesday, Judge Nicholas Garaufis said he agreed with prosecutors.

“It’s hard for the court to have any understanding or sympathy for what we have seen in this trial,” he said.
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Despite efforts to consolidate Republican support, hardline conservative representative Jim Jordan has fallen short of the majority needed to secure the speaker of the House position.

In the House of Representatives Tuesday, Jordan received 200 votes, but 20 Republicans voted for other people. Democrats were united in support of their nominee, Hakeem Jeffries, who received 212 votes. The House then went into recess. A candidate needs 217 votes to become speaker of the 118th Congress.

Some Republicans have pointed out possible alternative candidates, including Representative Tom Cole and No. 3 House Republican Tom Emmer. Other Republicans have suggested that Speaker Pro Tempore Patrick McHenry receive a temporary extension of his powers, through the November 17 deadline for government funding.

Jordan, a divisive figure on Capitol Hill, could become the third candidate to fail to unite the Republican Party, which has left the chamber leaderless following the ousting of former speaker Kevin McCarthy two weeks ago. Congressman Steve Scalise withdrew his name from contention after failing to garner enough support among Republicans.

VOA congressional correspondent Katherine Gypson contributed to this report.
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Republican Jim Jordan is seeking the top leadership spot in the U.S. House of Representatives Tuesday. If successful, the 59-year-old, nine-term congressman’s accession to a place second in the presidential line of succession will mark a victory for one of the founding members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus.

In a letter last week to House colleagues announcing his candidacy for speaker of the House, Jordan outlined his values, writing, “Far-left progressive policies are destroying our communities, our security, and our future. We have soaring crime across the country. We have an administration with open-border policies that have caused chaos and left our country vulnerable.

“We’ve seen federal agencies turned on the American people silencing speech online, targeting parents at school board meetings, and flagging pro-life Catholics as potential threats and we’ve witnessed blatant double standards in federal law enforcement. We continue to spend too much money and Americans are suffering under President Biden’s economy.”

Although Jordan has never successfully sponsored a piece of legislation during his time in the U.S. Congress, he has built a reputation for pursuing investigations into Democrats as the current chairman of the powerful House Judiciary Committee and as the ranking member on the House Oversight Committee from 2019 to 2020. Jordan is also a prominent supporter of former President Donald Trump, signing on to lawsuits challenging the results of the 2020 presidential election.

A former college wrestling coach and Ohio state representative with a law degree, Jordan was elected to represent Ohio’s 4th congressional district in 2007. According to his congressional website, Jordan has also led the fight against tax increases throughout his career.

“He is a fiscal conservative who believes that families and taxpayers, rather than government, know best how to make decisions with their money,” his congressional biography says.

In January 2015, Jordan and eight other members of Congress founded the Freedom Caucus, a right-wing voting bloc within the Republican conference. The Freedom Caucus pushed for the removal of Speaker John Boehner from power in late 2015 and gradually became a more populist group supporting strict anti-immigration policies as Trump rose to power.

Boehner said of Jordan that he’d never met someone “who spent more time tearing things apart.”

According to the committee that was set up to investigate the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, Jordan played a key role in the effort to overturn the November 2020 presidential election results. The investigators, known collectively as the January 6 Committee, say Jordan participated in a December 21, 2020, meeting to pressure then-Vice President Mike Pence into using his ceremonial role to overturn the election. They also say he participated in phone calls and meetings throughout January 2021 to object to the election certification.

Jordan also called Trump twice on the day of the attack. Jordan is one of 139 House representatives who voted to overturn certifying the results of then-President-elect Joe Biden’s win on January 7, 2021, one day after Trump’s followers stormed the Capitol.

If Jordan wins the speakership by securing nearly every single Republican vote, he will be the leader of one-half of the nation’s legislative branch, a member of the so-called “Gang of Eight” in congressional leadership circles who receive higher-level briefings and will be a representative of the United States on a global scale.
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West African artist Amoaka Boafo has a new exhibit of portraits in the Western U.S. state of Colorado. VOA correspondent Scott Stearns has our story
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U.S. President Joe Biden will visit Israel Wednesday, as a humanitarian crisis grows in the Gaza Strip ahead of an expected ground invasion by Israeli forces. VOA’s Michael Brown reports.
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In the two weeks since former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was forced out of his job, the Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives has been unable to coalesce behind an alternative, leaving several simmering issues unaddressed by lawmakers.

In the interim, a new crisis has erupted in the Middle East, the war in Ukraine has seen a major new offensive by invading Russian troops, and the United States has crept steadily toward a spending deadline that could force a government shutdown in November.

Experts say there are few, if any, historical precedents for one-half of the U.S. Congress being leaderless during such a fraught period in history. Some have expressed concerns about the message it sends to the American public and the country’s allies and adversaries around the world.

Roots of the problem

McCarthy’s tenure as speaker began in January with a tortuous 15-vote marathon on the House floor that saw the California representative offer concessions to hard-line members on the party’s far right. That included a rule that allowed a single member of the body to force a vote of the full House on a motion to “vacate” the job of speaker.

Representative Matt Gaetz invoked that rule on Oct. 3, and eight Republicans, as well as all House Democrats, voted in favor, ousting McCarthy from the job. The Republican advantage in the House is so slim that only about four of its members can break ranks if the Republicans are to maintain a majority on any given vote.

Since McCarthy’s ouster, Representative Patrick McHenry has been serving as acting speaker, a role that does not give him the authority to bring bills to the floor for a vote.

The Republican caucus is currently preparing to vote on the candidacy of far-right Representative Jim Jordan for speaker. The polarizing politician is a close ally of former President Donald Trump who, among other things, has supported the false claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.

No vote on Israel

On Oct. 7, the Hamas militant group launched a brutal assault on multiple communities across southern Israel, targeting and killing well over 1,400 people, including the elderly and young children. The group also took nearly 200 hostages into the Hamas-run Gaza Strip.

Under normal circumstances, the House most likely would have produced a joint resolution of support for the Israeli people and might also have taken steps to assure a flow of military and humanitarian aid to the Israeli government.

But without a speaker in place, the body has been unable to act on the crisis.

In an email exchange with VOA, William A. Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s governance studies program, said he has concerns about the message that a dysfunctional Congress delivers to the rest of the world.

“The continuing paralysis in the U.S. House of Representatives has prevented the passage of measures supporting Israel in its time of peril,” he wrote. “The inability of the U.S. government to act on this issue, aid to Ukraine, and a budget for the current fiscal year is weakening confidence in U.S. leadership around the world.”

Ukraine, government spending

The House has been similarly unable to act on a number of other high-profile issues.  President Joe Biden’s administration is seeking additional authority to provide Ukraine with the weapons and other assistance it needs to fight off Russia’s full-scale invasion of its country.

In the days since the House lost its speaker, Russia has mounted a fierce new assault on the town of Avdiivka, north of the city of Donetsk, part of Ukrainian territory that Russia claims to have annexed.

In an appearance on CBS News’s “60 Minutes” on Sunday, Biden renewed his request for Congress to act on aid for both Ukraine and Israel. However, a portion of the House Republican caucus, including speaker-designate Jordan, has been highly skeptical about providing more aid to Ukraine.

At the same time, the U.S. is approaching a deadline to pass multiple government spending bills. Failure to do so would result in a partial shutdown of the federal government next month.

The House and Senate agreed to a stop-gap spending measure in late September that postponed the date of a shutdown into November. However, in the past two weeks, with the House consumed by the task of choosing a new speaker, little apparent progress has been made, increasing the likelihood of a shutdown.

‘Rudderless?’

“Broadly speaking, there are few historical precedents for this,” Dan Mahaffee, senior vice president and director of policy for the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress, told VOA.

Mahaffee said the drama in the House is forcing Americans to ask themselves, “Is the institution rudderless?” An additional concern is what would happen if a more serious crisis befell the body.

“Heaven forbid we had an issue with the House where you had a speaker incapacitated or some harm came to them,” he said. “This demonstrates that it’s difficult to fill that [job] or to have an acting speaker do much in such an event.”

Lesson being learned

Tom Davis, a former Republican congressman who represented his Northern Virginia district in the House from 1995 to 2008, said what we are witnessing in the body today is a crop of relatively new legislators getting a lesson in how things work in Washington.

“When I was there, we had five- and six-seat majorities, and we operated just fine, because we recognized you had to operate as a team, and you had to compromise,” he told VOA.

Now, though, he said, “You have a new group of people in there that don’t know how government can work. They’re just sent there to say, ‘No,’ and stop the other guy.”

“So, it’s just got to work its way out,” he said. “It may take another week or so. Who knows? But they have to work that out within the caucus.”

Davis said that in the short term, the crisis is harming the “Republican brand.” In the longer term, however, he said that he doesn’t believe the current crisis will seriously hurt the party.

“The election’s a year from now, and once you nominate a presidential candidate, that generally tends to suck up all the oxygen in the room,” Davis said.
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With a vote set for Tuesday afternoon in the U.S. House of Representatives, the latest Republican candidate for House speaker, Jim Jordan, is making progress in flipping detractors in his efforts to shore up Republican support.

Jordan, a right-winged representative from Ohio, has gained the support of several more Republicans, but it is still unclear whether he will be able to get enough members of his party to back him in his quest for the speakership.

“I feel real good about the momentum we have,” Jordan told reporters outside his office Monday. “We’re going to elect a speaker tomorrow.”

Jordan, who is backed by former U.S. President Donald Trump, will meet with Republican colleagues Tuesday in another closed-door meeting in an attempt to fully unify his party behind his candidacy. Some Republicans have expressed concern that Jordan is too extreme for the position of Speaker of the House.

The House has been without a speaker for two weeks after Republicans ousted former speaker Kevin McCarthy.

Republicans first put forward Representative Steve Scalise as their candidate, though he was unable to secure enough Republican votes to reach a majority and overcome Democrats who were unified in support of their Democratic candidate, Hakeem Jeffries. Scalise later withdrew his name from consideration.

Jordan can afford only four Republican detractors in the vote. He needs 217 votes, or a majority of the chamber, which Republicans control by a slim 221-212 majority.

With Democrats expected to unify around representative Jeffries again, Jordan is vowing to “bring all Republicans together” so the party can use its narrow majority to elect a speaker.

Republicans who ally with Trump, including Representative Matt Gaetz and Fox News anchor Sean Hannity, have been mounting pressure on Republicans to throw their support behind Jordan.

Though Jordan has been gaining support, the vote could see multiple rounds as some Republicans are still refusing to back the candidate.

Some information in this report came from The Associated Press.
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A settlement filed Monday in a long-running lawsuit over the Trump administration’s separation of parents and their children at the border bars the government from similar separations for eight years while also providing benefits like the ability for their parents to come to America and work, according to the Biden administration.

The settlement between the Biden administration and the American Civil Liberties Union, which has been representing families separated from their children, still has to be approved by the judge. But if finalized, it would make it much more difficult for any administration including former President Donald Trump, the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, to revive one of his most controversial tactics to halt immigration at the southern border if he wins next year’s election.

“It is our intent to do whatever we can to make sure that the cruelty of the past is not repeated in the future. We set forth procedures through this settlement agreement to advance that effort,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told The Associated Press.

The Trump administration separated thousands of children from their parents or guardians they were traveling with as it moved to criminally prosecute people for illegally crossing the southwestern border. Minors could not be held in criminal custody with their parents. They were transferred to the Department of Health and Human Services and then typically sent to live with a sponsor, often a relative or someone else with a family connection.

Faulty tracking systems by U.S. officials caused many to be apart for an extended time or never reunited with their parents. Facing strong opposition, Trump eventually reversed course in 2018, days before a judge put a halt to the practice after a lawsuit brought by the ACLU. During a CNN town hall earlier this year, Trump didn’t rule out once against separating families.

Lee Gelernt, lead counsel for the ACLU, praised the settlement.

“This settlement means that babies and toddlers will finally get to see their parents after years apart and that these suffering families will have an opportunity to seek lawful status. It also crucially bars an attempt by a future administration to reenact another family separation policy,” said Gelernt. “Nothing can make these families whole again but this is at least a start.”

President Joe Biden issued an executive order on his first day in office to reunite families. According to figures released by the Department of Homeland Security in February, 3,881 children were separated from their families from 2017 to 2021. About 74% of those have been reunited with their families: 2,176 before a Biden administration task force was created and 689 afterward.

Hundreds of families sued the federal government, seeking both monetary damages and policy changes.

This settlement filed in federal court in San Diego does not include monetary damages. But it does provide key benefits including authorization for parents of separated children to come to the U.S. under humanitarian parole for three years and work in the U.S. The families receive some help with housing and medical and behavioral health benefits designed to address some of the trauma associated with the separations.

Mayorkas described how he’d met with a woman who had been separated from her daughter and how after they had been reunited, her daughter still struggled with the experience.

“We need to help these families heal. And that is an obligation that we carry because of the pain that we inflicted upon them,” he said.

They’ll also get access to legal services which will be vital as they may file asylum applications to stay in the United States on a permanent basis. The settlement also waives the usual one-year timeline limiting when someone can apply for asylum, and the parents can apply even if they were previously denied, Gelernt said. A special team of supervisors will review their cases.

Some of these benefits were already available to families under a Biden-administration created task force designed to reunite separated families. But Gelernt said the settlement goes beyond the task force’s purview in key ways such as the asylum assistance. The settlement also bars future separations, which the task force did not, and Gelernt said a future administration could have disbanded the task force whereas the settlement is binding.

Under the settlement, it would still be possible to separate children at the border from their parents or guardians, but under limited scenarios, as has been the case for many years. They include if the child is being abused or the parent committed a much more serious crime than crossing the border illegally.

The settlement requires the government to keep detailed documentation when it does separate children from parents so as to avoid the chaos that erupted during the Trump-era family separations where parents and children could not be reunited.

At one point in 2021, the administration was negotiating a possible payout of hundreds of thousands of dollars to each parent and child who was separated. Word leaked on negotiations and produced a political backlash.

Now that the government and the ACLU have agreed on a settlement plan, the judge will hold a hearing to decide whether to accept it. Before that, people opposed to the settlement can raise objections to the judge.
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U.S. volunteer Shana Aufenkamp is busy round the clock – she brings animals that have been rescued from bombed Ukrainian cities to Washington, D.C. Some of the animals were left behind when their owners evacuated to safer places, and now the cats seek new loving families in America. Mariia Ulianovska has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. Camera: Oleksii Osyka
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Baseball and softball will be on the roster of the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.

They are part of a package of five sports that won the approval of the International Olympic Committee Monday during a meeting in Mumbai, India. The package had been proposed by officials in Los Angeles.

Additionally, viewers will get to see cricket and lacrosse, plus flag football and squash in the host city.

Flag football and squash are making their debut at the LA Games, while the other sports have made appearances at past Olympics.

Cricket was played at the Paris Games in 1900, while lacrosse was played in St. Louis in 1904 and London in 1908.

Spectators have enjoyed baseball and softball at several Olympics, most recently at the Tokyo Games in 2020.

IOC President Thomas Bach said the inclusion of the sports “will allow the Olympic Movement to engage with new athlete and fan communities in the U.S. and globally.”
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Since 2006, comic book fans have gathered at the legendary New York City Comic Con to dress up and shop. More recently, they have gathered to invest. Aron Ranen has the story from the Big Apple.
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