U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen met with China’s Ambassador to the United States Xie Fang on Monday, ahead of her travel this week to China as part of the Biden administration’s efforts to address strained relations between the two countries. 

“The frank and productive discussion supported ongoing efforts to maintain open lines of communication and responsibly manage the U.S.-China bilateral relationship,” the U.S. Treasury Department said in a statement. 

Managing relations, working on issues of mutual interest, and ensuring tensions do not turn into conflict have been the major themes of talks between senior officials in recent weeks, including U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s visit to Beijing last month. 

In Yellen’s talks with Xie, the Treasury Department said, Yellen “raised issues of concern while also conveying the importance of the two largest economies working together on global challenges, including on macroeconomic and financial issues.” 

Yellen is due to visit China July 6-9 for talks with senior officials. 

A senior Treasury Department official told reporters Sunday that the United States wants a healthy economic relationship with China and that halting trade and investment “would be destabilizing for both our countries and the global economy.”  

Officials also said Yellen plans to discuss U.S. concerns about a new Chinese counter-espionage law.  

Yellen addressed U.S.-China relations during an April speech at Johns Hopkins University, saying it would be healthy to have a relationship that fosters growth an innovation in both countries.    

“A growing China that plays by international rules is good for the United States and the world,” Yellen said. “Both countries can benefit from healthy competition in the economic sphere. But healthy economic competition — where both sides benefit — is only sustainable if that competition is fair.”  

Yellen also said that for the sake of global stability, the United States and China should cooperate “on the urgent global challenges of our day.”  

Some information for this story came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters .
…

U.S. President Joe Biden is celebrating the country’s Independence Day holiday with a series of events Tuesday at the White House. 

The president and first lady Jill Biden are holding an event with the National Education Association, and then hosting military families for a barbecue. 

Biden is scheduled to deliver remarks in the evening to commemorate the holiday with a crowd of military and veteran families along with caregivers at the White House. 

The White House event also will provide a prime viewing location for Washington’s fireworks show on the National Mall. 

The U.S. Capitol grounds will be the site of an annual Independence Day concert that is televised to the nation.  Performers this year include Chicago, Babyface, the National Symphony Orchestra and the U.S. Army Band. 

Washington is also hosting its traditional Independence Day parade down Constitution Avenue on Tuesday. 
…

Maternal deaths across the United States more than doubled over the course of two decades, and the tragedy unfolded unequally. 

Black mothers died at the nation’s highest rates, while the largest increases in deaths were found in American Indian and Native Alaskan mothers. Some states — and racial or ethnic groups within them – fared worse than others. 

The findings were laid out in a new study published Monday in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Researchers looked at maternal deaths between 1999 and 2019 — but not the pandemic spike — for every state and five racial and ethnic groups. 

“It’s a call to action to all of us to understand the root causes — to understand that some of it is about health care and access to health care, but a lot of it is about structural racism and the policies and procedures and things that we have in place that may keep people from being healthy,” said Dr. Allison Bryant, one of the study’s authors and a senior medical director for health equity at Mass General Brigham. 

Among wealthy nations, the U.S. has the highest rate of maternal mortality, which is defined as a death during pregnancy or up to a year afterward. Common causes include excessive bleeding, infection, heart disease, suicide and drug overdose. 

Bryant and her colleagues at Mass General Brigham and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington started with national vital statistics data on deaths and live births. They then used a modeling process to estimate maternal mortality out of every 100,000 live births. 

Overall, they found rampant, widening disparities. The study showed high rates of maternal mortality aren’t confined to the South but also extend to regions like the Midwest and states such as Wyoming and Montana, which had high rates for multiple racial and ethnic groups in 2019. 

Researchers also found dramatic jumps when they compared maternal mortality in the first decade of the study to the second and identified the five states with the largest increases between those decades. Those increases exceeded: 

— 162% for American Indian and Alaska Native mothers in Florida, Illinois, Kansas, Rhode Island and Wisconsin; 

— 135% for white mothers in Georgia, Indiana, Louisiana, Missouri and Tennessee; 

— 105% for Hispanic mothers in Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota and Tennessee; 

— 93% for Black mothers in Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, New Jersey and Texas; 

— 83% for Asian and Pacific Islander mothers in Georgia, Illinois, Kansas, Michigan and Missouri. 

“I hate to say it, but I was not surprised by the findings. We’ve certainly seen enough anecdotal evidence in a single state or a group of states to suggest that maternal mortality is rising,” said Dr. Karen Joynt Maddox, a health services and policy researcher at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis who wasn’t involved in the study. “It’s certainly alarming, and just more evidence we have got to figure out what’s going on and try to find ways to do something about this.” 

Maddox pointed to how, compared with other wealthy nations, the U.S. underinvests in things like social services, primary care and mental health. She also said Missouri hasn’t funded public health adequately, and during the years of the study hadn’t expanded Medicaid. They’ve since expanded Medicaid — and lawmakers passed a bill giving new mothers a full year of Medicaid health coverage. Last week, Missouri Gov. Mike Parson signed budget bills that included $4.4 million for a maternal mortality prevention plan. 

In neighboring Arkansas, Black women are twice as likely to have pregnancy-associated deaths as white women, according to a 2021 state report. 

Dr. William Greenfield, the medical director for family health at the Arkansas Department of Health, said the disparity is significant and has “persisted over time,” and that it’s hard to pinpoint exactly why there was an increase in the state’s maternal mortality rate for Black mothers. 

Rates among Black women have long been the worst in the nation, and the problem affects people of all socioeconomic backgrounds. For example, U.S. Olympic champion sprinter Tori Bowie, 32, died from complications of childbirth in May. 

The pandemic likely exacerbated all of the demographic and geographic trends, Bryant said, and “that’s absolutely an area for future study.” According to preliminary federal data, maternal mortality fell in 2022 after rising to a six-decade high in 2021 — a spike experts attributed mainly to COVID-19. Officials said the final 2022 rate is on track to get close to the pre-pandemic level, which was still the highest in decades. 

Bryant said it’s crucial to understand more about these disparities to help focus on community-based solutions and understand what resources are needed to tackle the problem. 

Arkansas already is using telemedicine and is working on several other ways to increase access to care, said Greenfield, who is also a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Arkansas Medical Center in Little Rock and was not involved in the study. 

The state also has a “perinatal quality collaborative,” a network to help health care providers understand best practices for things like reducing cesarean sections, managing complications with hypertensive disorders, and curbing injuries or severe complications related to childbirth. 

“Most of the deaths we reviewed and other places have reviewed … were preventable,” Greenfield said. 
…

The U.S. ambassador to Russia visited jailed Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich in Moscow on Monday, the newspaper reported. It was the second time the diplomat has seen him since his arrest three months ago on espionage charges that he denies. 

The newspaper did not provide details about Ambassador Lynne Tracy’s meeting with Gershkovich. She last saw him in April shortly after his March 29 arrest, when Russia accused him of trying to obtain military secrets while on a reporting trip to the Russian city of Yekaterinburg. 

A judge last month rejected an application for Gershkovich, 31, to be released from a Moscow prison while awaiting trial. Tracy has accused Russia of conducting “hostage diplomacy.” 

Over the years, Russia has agreed to high-profile prisoner exchanges with the United States, most recently last year when professional basketball star Brittney Griner, sentenced on a drug charge, was traded for convicted Russian arms trafficker Viktor Bout. 

But Moscow has said no exchange could take place in the Gershkovich case until a verdict on his charges has been reached. But no date has been set for a trial. 

Any prisoner swap is complicated by geopolitical considerations and who each country considers of equal value to trade. In addition, relations between the two countries are at a low point because of Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine and the U.S. extensive military support for Ukraine. 
…

The nephew of former U.S. President John F. Kennedy is running for president. Robert F. Kennedy Junior, whose father was slain during a White House bid in 1968, is considered a longshot for the Democratic nomination despite his family name and some favorable early polls. VOA’s Veronica Balderas reports.
…

The U.S. recommended Americans reconsider traveling to China because of arbitrary law enforcement and exit bans and the risk of wrongful detentions.

No specific cases were cited, but the advisory came after a 78-year-old U.S. citizen was sentenced to life in prison on spying charges in May.

It also followed the passage last week of a sweeping Foreign Relations Law that threatens countermeasures against those seen as harming China’s interests.

China also recently passed a broadly written counterespionage law that has sent a chill through the foreign business community, with offices being raided, as well as a law to sanction foreign critics.

“The People’s Republic of China (PRC) government arbitrarily enforces local laws, including issuing exit bans on U.S. citizens and citizens of other countries, without fair and transparent process under the law,” the U.S. advisory said.

“U.S. citizens traveling or residing in the PRC may be detained without access to U.S. consular services or information about their alleged crime,” it warned.

The advisory also said that Chinese authorities “appear to have broad discretion to deem a wide range of documents, data, statistics, or materials as state secrets and to detain and prosecute foreign nationals for alleged espionage.”

It listed a wide range of potential offenses from taking part in demonstrations to sending electronic messages critical of Chinese policies or even simply conducting research into areas deemed sensitive.

Exit bans could be used to compel individuals to participate in Chinese government investigations, pressure family members to return from abroad, resolve civil disputes in favor of Chinese citizens and “gain bargaining leverage over foreign governments,” the advisory said.

Similar advisories were issued for the semi-autonomous Chinese regions of Hong Kong and Macao. They were dated Friday and emailed to journalists on Monday.

The U.S. had issued similar advisories to its citizens in the past, but those in recent years had mainly warned of the dangers of being caught in strict and lengthy lockdowns while China closed its borders for three years under its draconian “zero-COVID” policy.

China generally responds angrily to what it considers U.S. efforts to impugn its authoritarian Communist Party-led system. It has issued its own travel advisories concerning the U.S., warning of the dangers of crime, anti-Asian discrimination and the high cost of emergency medical assistance.

China had no immediate response to the travel advisory on Monday.

Details of the accusations against the accused spy John Shing-Wan Leung are not available, given China’s authoritarian political system and the ruling Communist Party’s absolute control over legal matters. Leung, who also holds permanent residency in Hong Kong, was detained in the southeastern city of Suzhou on April 15, 2021 — a time when China had closed its borders and tightly restricted movement of people domestically to control the spread of COVID-19.

The warnings come as U.S.-China relations are at their lowest in years, over trade, technology, Taiwan and human rights, although the sides are taking some steps to improve the situation. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken made a long-delayed visit to Beijing last week and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is making a much-anticipated trip to Beijing this week. China also recently appointed a new ambassador to Washington, who presented his credentials in a meeting with President Joe Biden at the White House.

Other incidents, however, have also pointed to the testiness in the relationship. China formally protested last month after Biden called Chinese leader Xi Jinping a “dictator,” days after Blinken’s visit.

Biden brushed off the protest, saying his words would have no negative impact on U.S.-China relations and that he still expects to meet with Xi sometime soon. Biden has also drawn rebukes from Beijing by explicitly saying the U.S. would defend self-governing Taiwan if China, which claims the island as its own territory, were to attack it.

Biden said his blunt statements regarding China are “just not something I’m going to change very much.”

The administration is also under pressure from both parties to take a tough line on China, making it one of the few issues on which most Democrats and Republicans agree.

Along with several detained Americans, Two Chinese-Australians, Cheng Lei, who formerly worked for China’s state broadcaster, and writer Yang Jun, have been held since 2020 and 2019 respectively without word on their sentencing.

Perhaps the most notorious case of arbitrary detention involved two Canadians, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, who were detained in China in 2018, shortly after Canada arrested Meng Wanzhou, Huawei Technologies’ chief financial officer and the daughter of the tech powerhouse’s founder, on a U.S. extradition request.

They were charged with national security crimes that were never explained and released three years later after the U.S. settled fraud charges against Meng. Many countries labeled China’s action “hostage politics.”
…

A survey released Monday found that people in the United States and United Kingdom had the lowest level of confidence in their governments among leading industrial nations.

Gallup said in 2022, 31% of adults in the United States had confidence in their government, while the figure stood at 33% for the United Kingdom.

Germany was at the top of the list among the Group of Seven nations with 61% confidence.

The positions of the United States and the United Kingdom were far different in 2022 than they were in 2006, Gallup said.

In the same survey in 2006, the United States was on top with 56% of adults saying yes when asked if they had confidence in their government. For the United Kingdom, the number was 49%.

Germany was in last place in the 2006 survey. Between 2006 and 2022, the remaining G7 members – Japan, Italy, France and Canada – all saw their government confidence levels improve.

The 2022 figure is not an extreme outlier for the United States. The Gallup data showed only one year other than 2006 in which confidence in the government among American adults reached 50%, in 2009, with the second highest being 46% in 2020.

Domestic confidence in the U.S. government has seen several lows in recent years, including 31% in 2018, 30% in 2016, and 29% in 2013.
…

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is due to travel Thursday to China to meet with senior officials in the latest effort to address strained relations between the two countries. 

The Treasury Department said in a statement Sunday that Yellen’s visit would take place from July 6-9 and follows a directive from President Joe Biden to deepen communications on issues such as financial developments and the global macroeconomy.

“While in Beijing, Secretary Yellen will discuss with PRC officials the importance for our countries — as the world’s two largest economies — to responsibly manage our relationship, communicate directly about areas of concern, and work together to address global challenges,” the statement said. 

A senior Treasury Department official told reporters Sunday that the United States wants a healthy economic relationship with China and that halting trade and investment “would be destabilizing for both our countries and the global economy.” 

Yellen’s visit follows Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s trip to China last month in which he and President Xi Jinping agreed to stabilize U.S.-China relations and ensure that areas of disagreement do not turn into conflict. 

A senior treasury official said Yellen plans to discuss U.S. concerns about a new Chinese counter-espionage law. 

“We have concerns with the new measure, and how it might apply, that it could expand the scope of what is considered by the authorities in China to be espionage activity,” the official said, citing possible spillovers to the broader investment climate and the economic relationship. 

Yellen addressed U.S.-China relations during an April speech at Johns Hopkins University, saying it would be healthy to have a relationship that fosters growth an innovation in both countries. 

“A growing China that plays by international rules is good for the United States and the world,” Yellen said. “Both countries can benefit from healthy competition in the economic sphere. But healthy economic competition — where both sides benefit — is only sustainable if that competition is fair.” 

Yellen also said that for the sake of global stability, the United States and China should cooperate “on the urgent global challenges of our day.” 

Some information for this story came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
…

Thirty people were shot as a block party was winding down early Sunday in Baltimore, in the U.S. state of Maryland.  

Two of the victims — an 18-year-old woman and a 20-year-old man — died.  

While some of the remaining 28 were transported to hospitals, many of them walked to nearby hospitals. Most of the wounded are teenagers.  

Three of the wounded are in critical condition.  

Acting Police Commissioner Richard Worley said at least two people opened fire, but police are not sure if the shooters were targeting people or shooting indiscriminately.  

The Baltimore Sun newspaper reports the incident is “likely the largest shooting in Baltimore history.”  

Police began receiving calls about the shootings shortly after midnight Sunday.   

Hours earlier, Brooklyn Homes neighbors had come together for the block party where hot dogs and hamburgers were grilled and served, while children enjoyed getting their faces painted, and participated in other activities typical of a summer Saturday get together.  

In the evening, the shots rang out. Terry Brown, who lives nearby, told The Sun, “It was so many kids.  It was chaos.” 

Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott told CNN that the shooting highlights “the need to deal with access” to guns not only in Baltimore, but across the country.” 
…

As the nation prepares to celebrate 247 years of the country’s independence, smaller U.S. towns are marking holiday with their own traditions. VOA’s Saqib Ul Islam takes us to one small Virginia town that celebrated ahead of the July Fourth holiday.
…

The federal prosecutor leading the investigation of President Joe Biden’s son Hunter is pushing back against claims that he was blocked from pursuing criminal charges in Los Angeles and Washington and denies retaliating against an IRS official who disclosed details about the case. 

In a two-page letter to House Republicans on Friday, U.S. Attorney David Weiss in Delaware defended the lengthy investigation into Hunter Biden’s financial dealings that ended last month with a plea with the Justice Department that likely spares Biden from time behind bars. 

Weiss, who was named to that post by President Donald Trump and was kept on by the Biden administration, said in his letter that the department “did not retaliate” against Gary Shapley, an IRS agent who said the prosecutor helped block Shapley’s job promotion after the tax agency employee had reached out to congressional investigators about the Biden case. 

Shapley is one of two IRS employees interviewed by Republicans pursuing investigations into nearly every facet of the younger Biden’s business dealings. 

One of the investigating committees, the House Ways and Means Committee, voted to publicly disclose congressional testimony from the IRS employees shortly after the plea deal was announced June 20. 

The testimony from Shapley and an unidentified agent detailed what they called a pattern of “slow-walking investigative steps” and delaying enforcement actions in the months before the 2020 presidential election won by Democrat Joe Biden. 

It is unclear whether the conflict they describe amounts to internal disagreement about how to pursue the investigation or a pattern of interference and preferential treatment. Justice Department policy has long warned prosecutors to take care in charging cases with potential political overtones around the time of an election, to avoid influencing the outcome. 

Shapley also claimed that Weiss asked the Justice Department in March 2020 to be provided special counsel status in order to bring the tax cases in jurisdictions outside Delaware, including Washington, and California, but was denied. 

In response to that claim, the department said Weiss has “full authority over this matter, including responsibility for deciding where, when, and whether to file charges as he deems appropriate. He needs no further approval to do so.” 

In his letter, Weiss said he was assured by the department that if he sought to bring charges in a venue other than Delaware, he would be granted special status to do so. Generally, U.S. attorneys are limited to their own jurisdictions when bringing criminal charges. 

Biden, 53, reached an agreement with federal prosecutors to plead guilty to misdemeanor tax offenses. The plea deal would also avert prosecution on a felony charge of illegally possessing a firearm as a drug user, if Biden adheres to conditions agreed to in court. He will appear in a Delaware court later this month. 

Last week, leaders of the Republican-controlled House Judiciary, Oversight and Accountability, and Ways and Means committees asked in a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland for nine officials from the Justice Department and two from the FBI to address the IRS employees’ claims. 

Weiss said in his letter to Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, that he would be willing to discuss such topics with congressional officials, but reiterated the case is an active criminal investigation and there’s little else he can divulge at this time. 

Republicans have focused much attention on an unverified tip to the FBI that alleged a bribery scheme involving Joe Biden when he was vice president. The unsubstantiated claim, which first emerged in 2019, was that Biden pressured Ukraine to fire its top prosecutor to stop an investigation into Burisma, an oil-and-gas company where Hunter Biden was on the board. 

Meanwhile, Hunter Biden’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, called the investigations by Republicans across multiple congressional committees an “obsession.” 

“Since taking the majority in 2023, various leaders of the House and its committees have discarded the established protocols of Congress, rules of conduct, and even the law in what can only be called an obsession with attacking the Biden family,” he wrote. 
…

Cole Custer was hanging out in his pit box when he won the NASCAR Xfinity Series race Sunday. 

The whole moment was pretty strange. 

“It’s like how excited can you be, because it didn’t feel like we did anything today,” he said. 

Custer was declared the winner of the first Xfinity stop in downtown Chicago after persistent rain flooded the street course. 

The race started Saturday but was suspended after 25 laps because of a lightning strike in the area. NASCAR had planned to resume it Sunday morning, but it scuttled that idea because of the rain and the scheduled Cup Series race. 

“With standing water and flooding a significant issue at the racetrack and throughout the city, there was no option to return to racing prior to shifting to NASCAR Cup Series race operations,” NASCAR said in a statement. 

Returning on Monday “was an option we chose not to employ,” NASCAR said in its statement, citing its partnership with the city and the fact that nearly half of the Xfinity race had been completed. 

NASCAR also canceled concerts by Miranda Lambert and Charley Crockett because of flooding in Lower Hutchinson Field. 

The first Cup Series race on a street course is scheduled to begin at 4:05 p.m. 

Custer led each of the first 25 laps in his No. 00 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford before Saturday’s weather delay. John Hunter Nemechek was second, followed by Justin Allgaier, Brett Moffitt and Austin Hill. 

The race was supposed to be 55 laps and 121 miles (194 km). 

“Today, I mean we definitely wish we could have run all the laps. … We don’t want to win it this way,” Custer said. “But at the end of the day we have a really fast car. I think everybody knew that.” 

Custer earned his second Xfinity Series victory this season and No. 12 for his career. He also won on the road course at Portland International Raceway on June 3. 

“It’s definitely one of the weirdest wins (I’ve) ever been a part of, for sure,” he said. “But we’ll take it. I mean, you know, we’re racers and you take it as it comes. So we’re proud of it.” 
…

A soccer academy in Burtonsville, Maryland, founded by a Togolese immigrant is changing lives and training children to be stars on and off the pitch. VOA’s Arzouma Kompaore has the story.
…

U.S. President Joe Biden is leaving in a week on a five-day, three-nation trip to Europe, the White House said Sunday, with the key stop at the annual NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, where Western leaders plan to discuss their latest efforts to bolster Ukraine’s fight against Russia.

Biden is heading first to London next Sunday on the July 9-13 trip, where over two days he is planning to meet with King Charles and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak “to further strengthen the close relationship between our nations,” the White House said.

The U.S. leader then heads to Lithuania for two days of NATO meetings where leaders of the 31-nation Western military alliance will discuss the state of Ukraine’s counteroffensive to recapture territory in the southeastern part of the country that Russia took in the earliest stages of 16 months of fighting.

NATO countries, led by the United States, have sent billions of dollars of armaments to Ukraine, but Russian aerial bombardments have continued to kill dozens of Ukrainian civilians even as Kyiv’s forces have shot down hundreds of incoming missiles. The ones that have landed have proved devastating, killing people and destroying their residential buildings.

After the NATO summit, Biden is heading to Helsinki, the Finnish capital, to commemorate Finland recently joining the military alliance created in the aftermath of World War II, and to meet with Nordic leaders.

Biden did not attend Charles’s coronation in London in May, instead sending first lady Jill Biden to represent the U.S. Biden last month hosted Sunak at the White House.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg also met with Biden at the White House last month, where the two leaders pledged their continued support of Ukraine in its war against Russia.

“The NATO allies have never been more united. We both worked like hell to make sure that happened. And so far, so good,” Biden said as he sat alongside Stoltenberg.

Finland joined NATO in April, effectively doubling Russia’s border with the world’s biggest security alliance. Biden has characterized the strengthened NATO alliance as a sign of Moscow’s declining influence.

Sweden is also seeking entry into NATO, although alliance members Turkey and Hungary have yet to endorse the move. Biden is hosting Sweden’s prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, at the White House on Wednesday as a show of support for its bid for NATO membership.

Turkey President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said Sweden is too lax on terrorist groups and security threats, while Stoltenberg has said Sweden has met its obligations for NATO membership by toughening anti-terrorist laws and other measures. Hungary’s reasons for opposing Sweden have been less defined, complaining about Sweden’s criticism of democratic backsliding and the erosion of the rule of law.

All NATO nations have to ratify the entry of new member countries.

Some material in this report came from The Associated Press.
…

BALTIMORE — Two people were killed and 28 were wounded in a mass shooting in the U.S. state of Maryland, including three people who are in critical condition, police said.

Baltimore Police Department Acting Commissioner Richard Worley confirmed the number of dead and injured during a press conference at the scene.

The shooting took place in the 800 block of Gretna Avenue early Sunday morning.
…

The only break much of America can hope for soon from eye-watering, dangerous smoke from fire-struck Canada would be brief bouts of shirt-soaking, sweltering heat and humidity from a deadly, Southern heat wave, forecasters say.

And then the smoke will likely return to the Midwest and East.

Here’s why: Neither the 235 out-of-control Canadian wildfires nor the weather pattern that’s responsible for this mess of meteorological maladies are showing signs of relenting for the next week or longer, according to meteorologists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Weather Prediction Center.

First, the weather pattern made abnormally hot and dry conditions for Canada to burn at off-the-chart record levels. Then it created a setup where the only relief comes when low pressure systems roll through, which means areas on one side get smoky air from the north and the other gets sweltering air from the south.

Smoke or heat.

“Pick your poison,” said prediction center forecast operations chief Greg Carbin. “The conditions are not going to be very favorable.

“As long as those fires keep burning up there, that’s going to be a problem for us,” Carbin said. “As long as there’s something to burn, there will be smoke we have to deal with.”

Take St. Louis. The city had two days of unhealthy air Tuesday and Wednesday, but for Thursday “they’ll get an improvement of air quality with the very hot and humid heat,” said weather prediction center meteorologist Bryan Jackson. The forecast is for temperatures that feel like 42.8 degrees Celsius (109 degrees Fahrenheit) — with 38.3 degrees Celsius (101 degrees Fahrenheit) heat and stifling humidity.

On Wednesday, the low pressure system was parked over New England and because winds go counter-clockwise, areas to the west – such as Chicago and the Midwest – get smoky winds from the north, while areas east of the low pressure get southerly hot winds, Jackson said.

As that low pressure system moves on and another one travels over the central Great Plains and Lake Superior, the Midwest gets temporary relief, Jackson said. But when low pressure moves on, the smoke comes back.

“We have this, this carousel of air cruising around the Midwest, and every once in a while is bringing the smoke directly onto whatever city you live in,” said University of Chicago atmospheric scientist Liz Moyer. “And while the fires are ongoing, you can expect to see these periodic bad air days and the only relief is either when the fires go out or when the weather pattern dies.”

The weather pattern is “awfully unusual,” said NOAA’s Carbin who had to look back in records to 1980 to see anything even remotely similar. “What gets me is the persistence of this.”

Why is the weather pattern stuck? This seems to be happening more often — and some scientists suggest that human-caused climate change causes more situations where weather patterns stall. Moyer and Carbin said it’s too soon to tell if that’s the case.

But Carbin and Canadian fire scientist Mike Flannigan said there’s a clear climate signal in the Canadian fires. And they said those fires aren’t likely to die down anytime soon, with nothing in the forecast that looks likely to change.

Nearly every province in Canada has fires burning. A record 80,000 square kilometers (30,000 square miles) have burned, an area nearly as large as South Carolina, according to the Canadian government.

And fire season usually doesn’t really get going until July in Canada.

“It’s been a crazy, crazy year. It’s unusual to have the whole country on fire,” said Flannigan, a professor at Thompson Rivers University in British Columbia. “Usually, it’s regional … not the whole shebang at once.”

Hotter than normal and drier air made for ideal fire weather, Flannigan said. Warmer weather from climate change means the atmosphere sucks more moisture out of plants, making them more likely to catch fire, burn faster and hotter.

“Fires are all about extremes,” he said.

And where there’s fire, there’s smoke.

High heat and smoky conditions are stressors on the body and can present potential challenges to human health, said Ed Avol, a professor emeritus at the Keck School of Medicine at University of Southern California.

But Avol added that while the haze of wildfire smoke provides a visual cue to stay inside, there can be hidden dangers of breathing in harmful pollutants such as ozone even when the sky looks clear. He also noted there are air chemistry changes that can happen downwind of wildfire smoke, which may have additional and less well-understood impacts on the body.

It’s still only June. The seasonal forecast for the rest of the summer in Canada “is for hot and mostly dry” and that’s not good for dousing fires, Flannigan said. “It’s a crazy year and I’m not sure where it’s going to end.”
…

CHICAGO — Before NASCAR raced in the Los Angeles Coliseum in 2022, Kevin Harvick thought it was going to be a disaster. It didn’t take very long for the event to win him over.

Heading into the Cup Series’ first street race, Harvick is keeping an open mind.

“Going through all these new types of events kind of changes your mindset to how you approach it,” he said, “because you see the enthusiasm, right, like you can feel it, you can see it.”

After months of hype and curiosity, the NASCAR Cup Series hits the streets of downtown Chicago on Sunday at the end of a big weekend for the sport that includes concerts and other entertainment.

The 12-turn, 2.2-mile course includes seven 90-degree turns. There are lots of ways to get into trouble, including manhole covers, and transitions from concrete to asphalt and back. Getting in and out of pit road in front of Buckingham Fountain could become an issue, and restarts also could be an adventure.

“It’s obviously narrow in sections. I think that’s going to be a hot topic of things to talk about,” said Chase Elliott, who is looking for his first win of the season. “I do think it’s going to be difficult to pass once everybody gets up to pace come race time. But I hope that we’re able to mix it up and do different things.”

As the drivers tested the course Saturday in practice and qualifying, and the Xfinity Series raced in The Loop 121, the noise from the stock-car engines rumbled past the skyscrapers around Grant Park. Smiling passersby on Michigan Avenue stopped and used their phones to record some of the action through a fence. Some spectators climbed on the roof covering a train station stairway to take a closer look.

The spectacle of racing in downtown Chicago was exactly what NASCAR was hoping to create when it agreed to a three-year contract with the city and announced the event a year ago.

“I think they told us that over 80% of the fans here this weekend will be people who have never watched a NASCAR race,” Harvick said. “If you’re gonna grow the sport, you’re gonna have to do stuff like this.”

The inaugural Cup Series street race returns NASCAR to a coveted market in its 75th season. It ran 19 Cup races at Chicagoland Speedway in Joliet, a 45-mile drive from downtown, but it pulled out four years ago.

NASCAR is hoping the change in location will help attract new fans, both in person and with the NBC broadcast. But moving downtown puts its drivers on a bumpy course with little room for error, and a crash in a narrow area could cause a pileup in a hurry.

“I think the biggest thing is just figuring out your braking marks and where you can go a little bit harder than other places, just because of the bumps and the different pavements and concrete,” Martin Truex Jr. said. “That’s the biggest thing.”

History

The Chicago Street Race is the 177th different track for the NASCAR Cup Series. It’s also NASCAR’s 100th race in Illinois.

It’s a return to downtown Chicago after the Cup Series stopped at Soldier Field in 1956. That race was won by Hall of Famer Fireball Roberts in a Pete DePaolo Ford.

Resetting

Truex is on top of the Cup Series standings with 576 points, followed by William Byron and Ross Chastain with 558 points apiece. Bell and Kyle Busch close out the top five.

The top 16 in the standings make the playoffs. Harvick, Brad Keselowski, Chris Buescher, Bubba Wallace and Daniel Suárez occupy the last five postseason spots at the moment, but they are all looking for their first win of the season.

Odds and ends

Kyle Larson is the 5-1 favorite, according to FanDuel Sportsbook, followed by Kyle Busch at 6-1 and Truex at 7-1. … Road course success could carry over to the street track in Chicago. Elliott is NASCAR’s active leader with seven career road course wins, followed by Truex with five. Tyler Reddick won at Austin and Truex finished first at Sonoma in the Cup Series’ two road course races so far this season. 
…

Dangerous heat levels kicked in again Saturday for much of the southern United States as temperatures throughout the weekend were expected to reach a scorching 37.6 degrees Celsius or higher in several states.

Excessive heat warnings were in place for Arizona’s largest metro area, where Phoenix and surrounding communities were flirting with highs of 46 degrees Celsius.

Meanwhile, Las Vegas in the southwestern state of Nevada, got its first taste of triple digits on Friday, and forecasters warned that warmer temperatures would be in store all weekend, ranging between 41 C and 49 C for much of the region. Clark County officials opened cooling centers for residents Saturday.

Some cities in the southern reaches of New Mexico also were seeing triple digits. While cloud cover from isolated storms might help cool things off in the afternoon, forecasters warned that the storms would bring lightning and erratic gusts but not much rain, leading to elevated fire danger.

Josh Weiss, a meteorologist with the Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland, said a ridge of high pressure that is expanding across the West and Southwest brings with it very warm to hot temperatures starting in California and expanding through the holiday and eventually into the Pacific Northwest by the middle of next week.

“We’re looking at temperatures that will be exceeding 100 degrees [37.6 C], maybe as high as 110 [43 C] in parts of California and in the desert Southwest through the weekend and maybe even exceeding 100 degrees as it gets toward Portland, Oregon, and into the 90s into Seattle by late next week,” Weiss said.

By midafternoon Saturday, the National Weather Service had issued heat advisories or excessive heat warnings in Oregon, California, Nevada, Arizona, Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee and Florida.

The Weather Service says extreme heat and humidity significantly increases the potential for heat-related illnesses like heat stroke.

In the Southern state of Louisiana, New Orleans EMS Chief Bill Salmeron said city residents and those in town for the Essence Festival of Culture should drink twice the amount of water they usually consume and avoid the sun when possible by wearing a hat and loose fitting or light-colored clothing. Several cooling centers also are open for those who might need to seek relief from the heat.

The National Weather Service in Memphis in Tennessee said large swaths of the mid-South could experience similar heat over the holiday. The heat index — which is what the temperature feels like to the human body when relative humidity is combined with temperature — was expected to soar to 41 C to 46 C.

Meanwhile, in the upper Midwest and mid-Atlantic regions, Weiss said some areas were under significant wind and hail advisories.

Widespread thunderstorms and hail touched down in the St. Louis region of Missouri on Friday, leaving damage across several communities, a local TV station reported. More than 100,000 residents in Missouri and Illinois had utility service knocked out as a result.

In north Mississippi, a similar storm pushed through Panola County early Saturday.

“It moved out of the area pretty quickly though, but more could form, bringing with it the potential for hail and damaging winds, later Saturday,” said National Weather Service meteorologist Andy Chiuppi. 

 
…

It was a smell that invoked a memory. Both for Emily Kuchlbauer in North Carolina and Ryan Bomba in Chicago. It was smoke from wildfires, the odor of an increasingly hot and occasionally on-fire world. 

Kuchlbauer had flashbacks to the surprise of soot coating her car three years ago when she was a recent college graduate in San Diego. Bomba had deja vu from San Francisco, where the air was so thick with smoke people had to mask up. They figured they left wildfire worries behind in California, but a Canada that’s burning from sea to warming sea brought one of the more visceral effects of climate change home to places that once seemed immune. 

“It’s been very apocalyptic feeling, because in California the dialogue is like, ‘Oh, it’s normal. This is just what happens on the West Coast,’ but it’s very much not normal here,” Kuchlbauer said. 

As Earth’s climate continues to change from heat-trapping gases spewed into the air, ever fewer people are out of reach from the billowing and deadly fingers of wildfire smoke, scientists say. Already wildfires are consuming three times more of the United States and Canada each year than in the 1980s and studies predict fire and smoke to worsen. 

While many people exposed to bad air may be asking themselves if this is a “new normal,” several scientists told The Associated Press they specifically reject any such idea because the phrase makes it sound like the world has changed to a new and steady pattern of extreme events. 

“Is this a new normal? No, it’s a new abnormal,” University of Pennsylvania climate scientist Michael Mann said. “It continues to get worse. If we continue to warm the planet, we don’t settle into some new state. It’s an ever-moving baseline of worse and worse.” 

It’s so bad that perhaps the term “wildfire” also needs to be rethought, suggested Woodwell Climate Research Center senior scientist Jennifer Francis. 

“We can’t really call them wildfires anymore,” Francis said. “To some extent they’re just not, they’re not wild. They’re not natural anymore. We are just making them more likely. We’re making them more intense.” 

Several scientists told the AP that the problem of smoke and wildfires will progressively worsen until the world significantly reduces greenhouse gas emissions, which has not happened despite years of international negotiations and lofty goals. 

Fires in North America are generally getting worse, burning more land. Even before July, traditionally the busiest fire month for the country, Canada has set a record for most area burned with 81,409 square kilometers, which is nearly 15% higher than the old record. 

“A year like this could happen with or without climate change, but warming temperatures just made it a lot more probable,” said A. Park Williams, a UCLA bioclimatologist who studies fire and water. “We’re seeing, especially across the West, big increases in smoke exposure and reduction in air quality that are attributable to increase in fire activity.” 

Numerous studies have linked climate change to increases in North American fires because global warming is increasing extreme weather, especially drought and mostly in the West. 

As the atmosphere dries, it sucks moisture out of plants, creating more fuel that burns easier, faster and with greater intensity. Then you add more lightning strikes from more storms, some of which are dry lightning strikes, said Canadian fire scientist Mike Flannigan at Thompson Rivers University in British Columbia. Fire seasons are getting longer, starting earlier and lasting later because of warmer weather, he said. 

“We have to learn to live with fire and smoke, that’s the new reality,” Flannigan said. 

Ronak Bhatia, who moved from California to Illinois for college in 2018 and now lives in Chicago, said at first it seemed like a joke: wildfire smoke following him and his friends from the West Coast. But if it continues, it will no longer be as funny. 

“It makes you think about climate change and also how it essentially could affect, you know, anywhere,” Bhatia said. “It’s not just the California problem or Australia problem. It’s kind of an everywhere problem.” 

Wildfires in the U.S. on average now burn about 31,000 square kilometers yearly, about the size of Maryland. From 1983 to 1987, when the National Interagency Fire Center started keeping statistics, only about 8,546 square kilometers burned annually. 

During the past five years, including a record low 2020, Canada has averaged 31,803 square kilometers burned, which is three and a half times larger than the 1983 to 1987 average. 

The type of fires seen this year in western Canada are in amounts scientists and computer models predicted for the 2030s and 2040s. And eastern Canada, where it rains more often, wasn’t supposed to see occasional fire years like this until the mid 21st century, Flannigan said. 

If the Canadian east is burning, that means eventually, and probably sooner than researchers thought, eastern U.S. states will also, Flannigan said. He and Williams pointed to devastating fires in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, that killed 14 people in 2016 during a brief drought in the East. 

America burned much more in the past, but that’s because people didn’t try to stop fires and they were less of a threat. The West used to have larger and regular fires until the mid-19th century, with more land settlement and then the U.S. government trying to douse every fire after the great 1910 Yellowstone fire, Williams said. 

Since about the 1950s, America pretty much got wildfires down to a minimum, but that hasn’t been the case since about 2000. 

“The warmer the Arctic gets and the more snow and ice melt there — the Arctic is warming three times faster than the rest of Earth — the differences in the summer between Arctic and mid-latitudes get smaller. That allows the jet stream of air high above the ground to meander and get stuck, prolonging bouts of bad weather, Mann and Francis said. Other scientists say they are waiting for more evidence on the impact of bouts of stuck weather. 

A new study published on June 23 links a stuck weather pattern to reduced North American snow cover in the spring. 

For people exposed to nasty air from wildfire smoke, increasing threats to health are part of the new reality. 

Wildfires expose about 44 million people per year worldwide to unhealthy air, causing about 677,000 deaths annually with almost 39% of them children, according to a 2021 study out of the United Kingdom. 

One study that looked at a dozen years of wildfire smoke exposure in Washington state showed a 1% all-ages increase in the odds of non-traumatic death the same day as the smoke hit the area and 2% for the day after. Risk of respiratory deaths jumped 14% and even more, 35%, for adults ages 45 to 64. 

The tiny particles making up a main pollutant of wildfire smoke, called PM2.5, are just the right size to embed deep in the lungs and absorb into the blood. But while their size has garnered attention, their composition also matters, said Kris Ebi, a University of Washington climate and health scientist. 

“There is emerging evidence that the toxicity of wildfire smoke PM2.5 is more toxic than what comes out of tailpipes,” Ebi said. 
…

Need Plan B? Tap your credit card and enter B6. 

Since last November, a library at the University of Washington has featured a different kind of vending machine, one that’s become more popular on campuses around the country since the U.S. Supreme Court ended constitutional protections for abortion last year. It’s stocked with ibuprofen, pregnancy tests and the morning-after pill. 

With some states enacting abortion bans and others enshrining protections and expanding access to birth control, the machines are part of a push on college campuses to ensure emergency contraceptives are cheap, discreet and widely available. 

There are now 39 universities in 17 states with emergency contraceptive vending machines, and at least 20 more considering them, according to the American Society for Emergency Contraception. Some, such as the University of Tulsa in Oklahoma, are in states where abortion is largely banned. 

Over-the-counter purchase of Plan B and generic forms is legal in all 50 states. 

The 2022 ruling overturning Roe v. Wade “is putting people’s lives at stake, so it makes pregnancy prevention all the more urgent,” said Kelly Cleland, the ASEC’s executive director. “If you live in a state where you cannot get an abortion and you can’t get an abortion anywhere near you, the stakes are so much higher than they’ve ever been before.” 

Washington this year became first U.S. state to set aside money — $200,000 to fund $10,000 grants that colleges can obtain next year through an application process — to expand access to emergency contraceptives at public universities and technical colleges through the automatic dispensers. 

The University of Washington’s machine was installed after a student-led campaign. It offers boxes of generic Plan B for $12.60, about a quarter of what the name-brand versions sell for in stores, and more than 640 have been sold. 

The drug is even cheaper in some machines than it is in UW’s, as low as $7 per box. That’s because it is sold at just above wholesale cost, compared with pharmacy retail prices that might go up to $50. 

In Illinois and New York, lawmakers are developing legislation that would require at least one vending machine selling emergency contraceptives on state college campuses. 

In Connecticut, Yale had to drop plans to install an emergency contraceptive vending machine in 2019 after learning it would violate state law. 

But this year the state approved a measure allowing Plan B and other over-the-counter medications to be sold from vending machines on campuses and other locations. 

The machines can’t be placed in K-12 schools or exposed to the elements, and they must have temperature and humidity controls and include plans for power outages and expired items. 

“This just enables people to have better access and easier access,” said Rep. Nicole Klarides-Ditria, one of several Republicans in Connecticut’s Democratic-controlled General Assembly who supported the measure. “You may need Plan B, as we all know, in the middle of the night, and you won’t have access to a pharmacy until the morning.” 

Although the morning-after pill has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for over-the-counter sale, many stores and pharmacies keep it behind the counter or locked up, require identification for purchase and make the experience of purchasing it intimidating. 

“There is a stigma associated with getting access to these medications,” said Zoe Amaris, a University of Washington pharmacy student and board member of UW Pharmacists for Reproductive Education and Sexual Health. “Having a vending machine is so easy. You don’t need to go to a pharmacy. You don’t need to go through your health care provider.” 

Plan B is more effective the sooner it is taken, and vending machine access could be particularly crucial for victims of rape when pharmacies are closed. The anonymity the machines afford may also be important to some assault victims. 
…

If you logged onto social media over the past few months, you may have seen it – a video of the Russian Embassy on a gray, overcast day in Washington with the sounds of passing cars and buses in the background.

A man’s voice asks in English, “Do you want to change your future?” Russian subtitles appear on the bottom of the screen and the narrator makes note of the first anniversary of “Russia’s further invasion of Ukraine.”

As somber music begins to play, the camera pans to the left and takes the viewer down Wisconsin Avenue, to the Adams Morgan Metro station and on through Washington, ending at FBI headquarters, a few blocks from the White House.

“The FBI values you. The FBI can help you,” FBI Assistant Director Alan Koehler says as the video wraps up, Russian subtitles still appearing on the screen. “But only you have the power to take the first step.”

The video, put out by the FBI’s Washington Field Office, first appeared as a posting on the field office’s Twitter account on February 24. Another five versions started the same day as paid advertisements on Facebook and Instagram, costing the bureau an estimated $5,500 to $6,500.

That money may seem like a pittance for a government agency with an annual budget of more than $10 billion, but it was not the first nor the last time the FBI spent money to court Russian officials.

The video is part of an expansive, long-running campaign by the FBI to use social media advertisements to recruit disgruntled Russian officials stationed across the United States and beyond, in part to sniff out Americans who have betrayed their country in order to aid Moscow.

A VOA analysis finds the FBI has paid tens of thousands of dollars, at minimum, to multiple platforms for social media ads targeting Russian officials, with the pace of such ad buys increasing just before and then after Moscow launched its latest invasion of Ukraine.

Multiple former U.S. counterintelligence officials who spoke to VOA about the FBI’s efforts described the advertising as money well spent.

The FBI wants to find well-placed Russian officials who can “help identify where American spies may be,” said Douglas London, a three-decade veteran of the CIA’s Clandestine Service.

“It seeks Russian agents to catch and convict American spies and Russian illegals,” he told VOA, describing the mission as a part of the bureau’s DNA.

Another veteran CIA official, Jim Olson, agreed, telling VOA the goal of the FBI’s outreach to Russian officials is unmistakable.

“I call that hanging out the shingle,” said Olson, a former counterintelligence chief.

“For every American traitor, every American spy, there are members of that intelligence service who know the identity of that American or know enough about what the production is to give us a lead in doing the identification,” Olson said.

‘All available tools’

The FBI declined to comment directly on its decision to spend several thousand dollars to run the two-minute-long video as an ad on Facebook and Instagram, simply saying it “uses a variety of means” to gather intelligence.

“The FBI will evaluate all available tools to protect the national security interests of the United States,” the FBI’s Washington Field Office told VOA in an email. “And we will use all legal means available to locate individuals with information that can help protect the United States from threats to our national security.”

Some of the FBI’s earlier forays into social media advertising did get some public attention, first in October 2019 and then again in March of last year.

However, a review of publicly available data indicates the bureau’s use of social media for counterintelligence is more expansive than previously understood.

According to data in the Meta Ad Library, which contains information on Facebook and Instagram ads dating back to May 2018, the FBI and its field offices have so far spent just under $40,000 on ads targeting Russian speakers, generating as many as 6.9 million views.

While most of the ads targeted specific locations, like Washington and New York, some were seen much further afield, getting views across much of the United States and even in countries like Spain, Poland, Nigeria, France and Croatia.

It would also appear the FBI’s paid ads ran on platforms other than Meta.

Nicholas Murphy, a 20-year-old second-year student at Georgetown University in Washington, was in his dorm room last March searching for news about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine when he saw an ad on YouTube, the video-sharing social media platform owned by Google.

“[It was] just text with a kind of a strange like background to it … all in Russian,” said Murphy, a Park City, Utah, native who does not speak Russian and who used a translator app to decipher the ad.

“At the time I didn’t know if it was coming from the Russian government, if it was coming from our government, if it was kind of propaganda, if it was fake,” Murphy told VOA. “It conjured up a lot of thoughts about Russian influence over Facebook ads in the [2016 U.S.] election.”

Murphy said he came across the ad another two to three times over the ensuing weeks. And, it turned out, he was not alone. A handful of other students were also starting to see some of the ads, including a couple of classmates in a Russian literature class.

Just how many ads the FBI paid to run on YouTube, or via Google, is unclear.

A search of Google’s recently launched Ad Transparency Center shows the FBI paid to run the Russian language version of its two-minute-long video most recently on April 28. But the database only shows information for the past 30 days and Google says it does not share information on advertiser spending.

It is also unclear whether the FBI paid to run any ads on Twitter in addition to pushing out information through its own Twitter accounts. Twitter responded to an email from VOA requesting information with its now standard poop emoji.

The FBI itself refused to provide details regarding the scope of its social media advertising efforts although the Washington Field Office did acknowledge to VOA via email that it uses “various social media platforms.”

The Washington Field Office also defended its use of social media advertising despite indications that the ads themselves, like the one seen by Georgetown University student Nicholas Murphy, do not always reach the intended audience.

“The FBI views these efforts as productive and cost effective,” the FBI’s Washington Field Office told VOA. The office declined to be more specific about whether any spies have been identified as a result of the ads.

“Russia has long been a counterintelligence threat to the U.S. and the FBI will continue to adapt our investigative and outreach techniques to counter that threat and others,” it said. “We will use all legal means available to locate individuals with information that can help protect the United States from threats to our national security.”

The Russian Embassy in Washington did not respond to calls or emails from VOA seeking comment about the FBI’s use of social media advertisements to target Russian officials in the U.S. But Russian Ambassador Anatoly Antonov did respond to a March 2022 article by The Washington Post about FBI efforts to send ads to cell phones outside the Russian Embassy in Washington.

“Attempts to sow confusion and organize desertion among the staff of @RusEmbUSA are ridiculous,” Antonov was quoted as saying in a tweet by the embassy’s Twitter account.

Some former U.S. counterintelligence officials, though, argue Russia has reason to be worried.

“I think people will come out of the woodwork,” said Olson, the former CIA counterintelligence chief.

FBI agents “see what we all see, and that is that there must be a subset of Russian intelligence officers, SVR officers, GRU officers, who are disillusioned by what’s going on,” he told VOA.

“I think some good Russians are embarrassed, shocked, ashamed of what Putin is doing in Ukraine, killing brother and sister Slavs. And I think that there will be people who would like to strike back against that.”

London, the longtime CIA Clandestine Services official and author of The Recruiter: Spying and the Lost Art of American Intelligence, likewise believes the FBI’s persistent efforts to reach disgruntled Russians on social media will pay off.

“Generally, the Russians who have worked with us have done so out of patriotism … they were upset with the government,” he said.

And the Russian officials that the FBI hopes to reach just need a bit of nudge.

“They’re aiming this at Russians who are already there mentally but just haven’t crossed,” London said, adding it is not a coincidence that many of the FBI ads show Russians exactly how to get in touch, whether via encrypted communication apps like Signal or by walking right up to the bureau’s front door.

“They’re not doing metaphors here,” he said. “They don’t want anything subject to interpretation.”

Even the language used by the FBI appears to be designed to build trust.

“It’s very much not native,” according to Bradley Gorski, with Georgetown University’s Department of Slavic Languages.

But given the overall quality of the language in the ads, Gorski said it is quite possible all of it is intentional.

“It might be a canny strategy on their part,” he said of the FBI. “If they are reaching out to Russian speakers and want to both communicate with them but let them know who is communicating with them is not a Russian speaker, but is a sort of American doing their best, then this kind of outreach with a little bit stilted, though correct, Russian might communicate that actually better than fully native sort of fluent speech.”

Whether the FBI’s spending on social media advertisements is achieving the desired results is hard to gauge. Public metrics such those provided by social media companies like Meta can give a sense of how many people are seeing the ads, and where they are, but do not shed much light on who is ultimately interacting with the ads to the point of a response.

When pressed, FBI officials tell VOA only that the bureau views the ad campaigns as productive.

Others agree.

“Relative to the hardcore military aid the U.S. has provided, that’s a small chunk of change,” said Jason Blazakis, a senior research fellow at The Soufan Center, a global intelligence firm.

And Blazakis, who also directs the Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, thinks the FBI’s social media ads might be having an impact even if few Russian officials ever come forward with information.

“Part of it is also messaging to the broader Russian public,” he told VOA, pointing to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “There is this influence operational component to it, part of this PR [public relations] battle that is happening on the periphery of the conflict.”
…

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court just finished issuing its biggest decisions of the term, killing President Joe Biden’s $400 billion plan to cancel or reduce federal student loan debts, ending affirmative action in higher education and issuing a major decision that impacts gay rights. The decisions over the past week cap off a term that began in October in which the justices also considered big issues involving voting rights and religion.The court will next meet in the fall to resume hearing cases.

Here are a number of things to know about the Supreme Court’s most recent term:

There were surprises

The court has a solid six-justice conservative majority but ultimately issued some decisions in which the most conservative position did not win. That surprised some court watchers.

In four major cases, conservative and liberal justices joined to reject the most aggressive legal arguments advanced by conservative state elected officials and advocacy groups. Those included decisions on voting, a Native American child welfare law and a Biden administration immigration policy.

On voting rights, for example, the justices rejected a Republican-led effort to weaken a landmark voting rights law. Instead, they ruled in favor of Black voters in Alabama in a congressional redistricting case. The state, where more than one in four voters is Black, will now have to redraw its congressional districts in a way that gives Black voters more power. The decision was 5-4 with Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh joining the court’s three liberals.

Separately, while the justices just last year overturned Roe v. Wade and allowed states to ban abortion, the court in April rejected a conservative-led effort to get a drug used in the most common method of abortion pulled from the market. The justices allowed the drug, mifepristone, to stay on the market for now while a lawsuit proceeds.

Conservatives still won, a lot

While there were surprises among the justices’ rulings, conservatives still won big. On affirmative action, they achieved a long-desired victory. While the court had narrowly upheld race-conscious college admissions programs in the past 20 years, including as recently as 2016, a conservative wing of the court strengthened by three appointees of former President Donald Trump struck down the practice 6-3.

Similarly, on student loans, the court split 6-3 along ideological lines to kill a signature Biden administration program. Other major rulings where the conservatives won included a 5-4 ruling that sharply limited the federal government’s authority to police water pollution.

Chief Justice John Roberts was in control

Chief Justice John Roberts led the court’s biggest rulings, writing the majority opinions on student loans, affirmative action and voting cases from North Carolina and Alabama. Last year, the five conservatives to Roberts’ right formed majorities to sometimes act more aggressively than the chief justice wanted, including overturning Roe v. Wade without his vote. Roberts’ more narrow position in the case would have instead cut back on abortion rights.

As chief, Roberts gets to decide who writes the majority opinion in cases where he’s in agreement. This time, he assigned those major opinions to himself, ensuring that his hand was steering the court.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson made her voice heard

The court’s newest justice also wound up being its most vocal. Jackson began her first term on the court in October, and it was clear early on that she would be an active participant in arguments. Over the course of the term’s 59 arguments, she spoke some 78,800 words, far more than the next most voluble justice, according to research by Adam Feldman and Jake Truscott.

Like her colleagues, Jackson wrote about a half a dozen majority opinions this term. Her first came in a dispute between states over unclaimed money while her most significant may have been a 7-2 ruling in which the court declined to broadly limit the right to sue government workers. She also authored a number of dissents, including one in the affirmative action in which Jackson, the court’s first Black woman, accused her colleagues in the majority of “let-them-eat-cake obliviousness.”

Justice Neil Gorsuch defended Native rights, again

Since joining the court in 2017 Justice Neil Gorsuch has emerged as a champion of Native rights, sometimes breaking with fellow conservatives on Native issues. In 2020, for example, he was the author of a 5-4 decision in which the court ruled that a large chunk of eastern Oklahoma remains an American Indian reservation.

This term, he wrote passionately in two Native rights cases. He dissented from a ruling against the Navajo Nation in a dispute involving water from the drought-stricken Colorado River. And while he was in the majority in the court’s case involving the Indian Child Welfare Act, he nonetheless wrote separately. The opinion ran 34 pages. Gorsuch wrote 38.

Ethics issues swirled around the court

High-profile issues weren’t the only reason the Supreme Court was in the news this term. A series of stories questioned the ethical practices of the justices, most notably of Justice Clarence Thomas but also Justice Samuel Alito. Investigative news site ProPublica detailed in a series of stores lavish trips and other gifts provided to Thomas by Republican megadonor Harlan Crow.

Both Thomas and Alito strenuously denied they had done anything wrong. But the stories led to calls from Democrats in Congress in particular for reforms and more transparency. Republicans made clear they oppose the effort. In May, Roberts said without offering specifics that there is more the court can do to “adhere to the highest standards” of ethical conduct. 
…

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the federal government is not required to help the Navajo Nation Reservation supply Colorado River water to thousands of homes on its reservation. Matt Dibble has the story.
…

WASHINGTON — The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization has agreed to readmit the United States as a member. 

UNESCO’s governing board voted 132-10 on Friday to accept the U.S. proposal to rejoin the Paris-based agency. America’s membership will become official once Secretary of State Antony Blinken or a designee formally accepts the invitation, according to Biden administration officials. 

Blinken said the vote would “restore U.S. leadership on a host of issues of importance and value to the American people.” 

“I am encouraged and grateful that today the membership accepted our proposal, which will allow the United States to take the next, formal steps toward fully rejoining the organization,” he said in a statement. 

Russian, Palestinian and North Korean representatives had held up consideration of the U.S. proposal on Thursday with hours of procedural delays. That session was adjourned because of fatigue on the part of UNESCO interpreters. 

In addition to Russia, North Korea and the Palestinians, those that voted against readmitting the U.S. were Belarus, China, Eritrea, Indonesia, Iran, Nicaragua and Syria. 

Organization’s roles

The Biden administration had announced in early June that it would apply to rejoin the organization mainly because it was concerned that China was filling a gap left by the U.S. absence from the body. The 193-member UNESCO plays a major role in setting international standards for artificial intelligence and technology education around the world. 

The Trump administration in 2017 announced that the U.S. would withdraw from UNESCO, citing anti-Israel bias. That decision took effect a year later. 

The U.S. and Israel stopped financing UNESCO after it voted to include Palestine as a member state in 2011. 

The Biden administration has requested $150 million for the 2024 budget to go toward UNESCO dues and arrears. The plan foresees similar requests for the ensuing years until the full debt of $619 million is paid off. 

That makes up a big chunk of UNESCO’s $534 million annual operating budget. Before leaving, the U.S. contributed 22% of the agency’s overall funding. 

Israel has long accused the United Nations of anti-Israel bias. In 2012, over Israeli objections, the state of Palestine was recognized as a nonmember observer state by the General Assembly. The Palestinians claim the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza Strip — territories captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war — for an independent state. Israel says the Palestinians’ efforts to win recognition at the U.N. are aimed at circumventing a negotiated settlement and meant to pressure Israel into concessions. 

The United States previously pulled out of UNESCO under the Reagan administration in 1984 because it viewed the agency as mismanaged, corrupt and used to advance Soviet interests. It rejoined in 2003 during former President George W. Bush’s presidency.
…