The United States signed a trade agreement Thursday with Taiwan over opposition from China, which claims the self-ruled island democracy as part of its territory.

The two governments say the U.S.-Taiwan Initiative on 21st Century Trade will strengthen commercial relations by improving customs, investment and other regulation.

The measure was signed by employees of the unofficial entities that maintain relations between the United States and Taiwan, a center for high-tech industry. They have no formal diplomatic ties but maintain unofficial relations and have billions of dollars in annual trade.

The agreement is intended to “strengthen and deepen the economic and trade relationship,” the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative said in a statement. The deputy USTR, Sarah Bianchi, attended the signing.

The Chinese government accused Washington of violating agreements on Taiwan’s status and demanded the U.S. government stop official contact with the island’s elected government.

Taiwan and China split in 1949 after a civil war. The island never has been part of the People’s Republic of China, but the mainland’s ruling Communist Party says it is obligated to unite with China, by force if necessary.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s government has stepped up efforts to intimidate Taiwan by flying fighter jets and bombers near the island. American and European politicians have visited Taiwan in a show of support for its elected government.

“The United States should stop any form of official exchanges with Taiwan” and “refrain from sending wrong signals to the ‘Taiwan independence’ secessionist forces,” said a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson, Mao Ning.
…

The U.S. Senate voted Thursday night 63-36 in support of a measure that will allow the United States to continue to pay its bills. The U.S. had been on track to run out of cash in four days. The bipartisan legislation now goes to President Joe Biden for his signature.

“Tonight, senators from both parties voted to protect the hard-earned economic progress we have made and prevent a first –ever default by the United States,” Biden said in a statement.

The House of Representatives overwhelmingly voted Wednesday night, with wide support from Republican and Democratic lawmakers alike, to allow the government to continue to borrow more money over the next year-and-a-half to meet its financial obligations, exceeding the current $31.4 trillion debt limit.

The legislation does not set a new monetary cap, but the borrowing authority would extend to Jan. 2, 2025, two months past next year’s presidential election.

In addition, the legislation calls for maintaining most federal spending at the current level in the fiscal year starting in October, with a 1% increase in the following 12 months.

“The responsible thing for America is to pass it,” one Senate leader, Democrat Dick Durbin, had told reporters.

Both Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, supported suspension of the debt limit and called for swift passage of the legislation.

Schumer told the Senate, “Time is a luxury the Senate does not have if we want to prevent default. There is no good reason — none — to bring this process down to the wire. … I hope we see nothing even approaching brinksmanship. The country cannot afford that now.”

The House approved the legislation on a 314-117 vote despite objections by far-right Republican lawmakers who said it did not go far enough to cut spending and from Democratic progressives who said it trimmed too much.

Seventy-one lawmakers from the majority Republican party in the House voted against the bill, as did 46 Democrats.

In a statement following Wednesday’s vote, Biden celebrated the agreement as a “bipartisan compromise.”

“It protects key priorities and accomplishments from the past two years, including historic investments that are creating good jobs across the country,” Biden said. “And, it honors my commitment to safeguard Americans’ health care and protect Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid [pensions and health care insurance for older Americans and welfare payments for impoverished people]. It protects critical programs that millions of hardworking families, students, and veterans count on.”

Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who negotiated the deal with Biden, told reporters that getting the bill passed “wasn’t an easy fight.” He emphasized the budget savings and criticized Democrats who wanted to separate the debate about future government spending from the need to suspend the debt limit so current financial obligations could be met.

“We put the citizens of America first and we didn’t do it by taking the easy way,” McCarthy said. “We didn’t do it by the ways that people did in the past by just lifting [the debt ceiling]. We decided you had to spend less and we achieved that goal.”

McCarthy said he intends to follow Wednesday’s action with more efforts to cut federal spending.

The measure does not raise taxes, nor will it stop the national debt total from continuing to increase, perhaps by another $3 trillion or more over the next year-and-a-half until the next expiration of the debt limit.

Other pieces of the legislation include a reduction in the number of new agents hired by the country’s tax collection agency, a requirement that states return $30 billion in unspent coronavirus pandemic assistance to the federal government and extending from 50 to 54 the upper age bracket for those required to work in order to receive food aid.
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President Joe Biden spoke to graduates of the Air Force Academy at an uncertain time for global peace. VOA spoke to an alumnus of the institution who graduated at another uncertain time — the Vietnam era — about what it was like to be in that seat more than 50 years ago. Anita Powell reports.
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Justice Department prosecutors have obtained an audio recording of former President Donald Trump from a meeting held after he left office in which he talks about holding on to a classified Pentagon document related to a potential attack on Iran, according to media reports.

CNN, which first reported on the tape, said Trump suggested on the recording that he wanted to share information from the document with others but that he knew there were limitations about his ability to declassify records after he left office.

The comments on the recording, made in July 2021 at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, would seem to undercut the former president’s repeated claims that he declassified the documents he took with him from the White House to Mar-a-Lago, his Florida estate, after leaving office. The recording could also be key for prosecutors looking to prove Trump knew his ability to possess classified documents was limited.

A Trump spokesman said in a statement that the investigation was “meritless” and amounted to “continued interference in the presidential election.”

The recording has been provided to special counsel Jack Smith, whose team of prosecutors has spent months investigating the potential mishandling of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago and whether Trump or anyone else sought to criminally obstruct the probe. The investigation shows signs of being in its final stages, with prosecutors having interviewed a broad cross-section of witnesses before the grand jury.

A spokesman for the special counsel declined to comment. No one has been criminally charged.

The criminal investigation began last year after the National Archives and Records Administration alerted the FBI to the presence of classified documents in 15 boxes of records sent back, belatedly, from Mar-a-Lago by Trump and his representatives.

Investigators initially issued a subpoena for the remaining classified records, but after they received only about three dozen during a June 2022 visit to Mar-a-Lago, returned with a search warrant two months later and recovered about 100 more documents marked as classified.

Smith, the special counsel, is also investigating efforts by Trump and his allies to undo the results of the 2020 presidential election — the subject of a similar, ongoing inquiry by prosecutors in Atlanta. New York prosecutors charged Trump earlier this year with falsifying business records.

According to the CNN report, the recording was made during a gathering at Bedminster with aides to Trump and two people who were working on the autobiography of Trump’s former chief of staff, Mark Meadows.

It said Meadows’ autobiography includes a description of what appears to be the same meeting. A lawyer for Meadows declined to comment Wednesday when reached by The Associated Press.

CNN said witnesses including General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have been questioned about the episode. A spokesman for Milley declined to comment on reports that he had been interviewed.
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Meta on Wednesday threatened to block all news articles on Facebook and Instagram in California if state lawmakers move forward with a bill that would tax the tech company for news content.

The California Journalism Preservation Act would tax the advertising profits that platforms like Meta and Google make from distributing news articles. About 70% of the money collected would then go to support newsrooms around the state.

Meta has warned it will pull news links from Facebook and Instagram entirely if the bill is passed.

“If the Journalism Preservation Act passes, we will be forced to remove news from Facebook and Instagram, rather than pay into a slush fund that primarily benefits big, out-of-state media companies under the guise of aiding California publishers,” Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said in a statement on Wednesday.

Katie Harbath, chief executive at the tech policy firm Anchor Change and a former director of public policy at Facebook, said this latest threat from Meta is “following a pattern.”

Meta previously pulled news from Facebook in 2021 in response to an Australian law that forced the platform to pay for news content. Meta reversed the ban a few days later once the government agreed to change elements of the law.

Tech giants are also threatening to pull news content in Canada if a similar measure is enacted there.

“This all feels like it’s sort of the dance that the platforms and regulators and the news organizations go through when these types of bills pop up,” Harbath added.

Media freedom groups see these sorts of threats as a danger to press freedom.

“Meta’s blackmail threats when confronted with the possibility of having to compensate news organizations for using their content have become all too common,” said Vincent Berthier, the head of the tech desk at Reporters Without Borders.

“Being one of the leading platforms means having the responsibility to defend everyone’s right to access information, not having the power to cut off people’s access to journalism if legislators don’t bend to its will,” he told VOA in a statement Thursday.

“Meta should stop trying to blackmail elected leaders and instead focus on showing that the company is compatible with democratic principles,” Berthier added.

Reporters Without Borders, or RSF, previously condemned Meta’s threat to block news content in Canada, saying in a March statement that the ultimatum “directly threatens the survival of Canadian media and, at the same time, access to news and information, one of the pillars of democracy.” 

“It is unacceptable to threaten journalism with banishment,” Berthier said in the statement. “Meta should seek to show that it is able to play a positive role in the fight against disinformation and for access to pluralistic information, rather than trying to influence public policies that might jeopardize its economic interests.”

In a statement Wednesday, the California Broadcasters Association, California News Publishers Association and News/Media Alliance criticized Meta’s latest ultimatum.

“Meta’s threat to take down news is undemocratic and unbecoming,” the statement said. “We have seen this in their playbook before and they have been publicly admonished in other countries for this behavior.”

The California bill is an attempt to support a news industry that has been floundering for years. Between 2008 and 2020, about 30,000 journalism jobs disappeared, according to the Pew Research Center, marking a 26% drop in newsroom employment.

“As news consumption has moved online, community news outlets have been downsized and closing at an alarming rate,” the California bill’s sponsor, Assemblywoman Buffy Wicks, said at a hearing on the bill in May.

“Every day, journalism plays an essential role in California and in local communities, and the ability of local news organizations to continue to provide the public with critical information about their communities and enabling publishers to receive fair market value for their content that is used by others will preserve and ensure the sustainability of local and diverse news outlets,” the bill says.

The Australian law generated nearly $150 million for news organizations, Columbia University’s Bill Grueskin found.

But Harbath said she’s skeptical that the California bill will be enough to help the news industry.

“I don’t know that these bills are going to necessarily achieve what people think they’re going to achieve,” she said. “I just don’t know if they’re really going to get as much money as they actually need by doing this.”

It’s important “to think creatively going forward about what these business models should look like,” Harbath added.
…

Amazon agreed Wednesday to pay a $25 million civil penalty to settle Federal Trade Commission allegations it violated a child privacy law and deceived parents by keeping for years kids’ voice and location data recorded by its popular Alexa voice assistant.

Separately, the company agreed to pay $5.8 million in customer refunds for alleged privacy violations involving its doorbell camera Ring.

The Alexa-related action orders Amazon to overhaul its data deletion practices and impose stricter, more transparent privacy measures. It also obliges the tech giant to delete certain data collected by its internet-connected digital assistant, which people use for everything from checking the weather to playing games and queueing up music.

“Amazon’s history of misleading parents, keeping children’s recordings indefinitely, and flouting parents’ deletion requests violated COPPA (the Child Online Privacy Protection Act) and sacrificed privacy for profits,” Samuel Levine, the FCT consumer protection chief, said in a statement. The 1998 law is designed to shield children from online harms.

FTC Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya said in a statement that “when parents asked Amazon to delete their kids’ Alexa voice data, the company did not delete all of it.”

The agency ordered the company to delete inactive child accounts as well as certain voice and geolocation data.

Amazon kept the kids’ data to refine its voice recognition algorithm, the artificial intelligence behind Alexa, which powers Echo and other smart speakers, Bedoya said. The FTC complaint sends a message to all tech companies who are “sprinting to do the same” amid fierce competition in developing AI datasets, he added.

“Nothing is more visceral to a parent than the sound of their child’s voice,” tweeted Bedoya, the father of two small children.

Amazon said last month that it has sold more than a half-billion Alexa-enabled devices globally and that use of the service increased 35% last year.

In the Ring case, the FTC says Amazon’s home security camera subsidiary let employees and contractors access consumers’ private videos and provided lax security practices that enabled hackers to take control of some accounts.

Amazon bought California-based Ring in 2018, and many of the violations alleged by the FTC predate the acquisition. Under the FTC’s order, Ring is required to pay $5.8 million that would be used for consumer refunds.

Amazon said it disagreed with the FTC’s claims on both Alexa and Ring and denied violating the law. But it said the settlements “put these matters behind us.”

“Our devices and services are built to protect customers’ privacy, and to provide customers with control over their experience,” the Seattle-based company said.

In addition to the fine in the Alexa case, the proposed order prohibits Amazon from using deleted geolocation and voice information to create or improve any data product. The order also requires Amazon to create a privacy program for its use of geolocation information.

The proposed orders must be approved by federal judges.

FTC commissioners had unanimously voted to file the charges against Amazon in both cases.
…

The United States on Thursday imposed sanctions on members and affiliates of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its external operations arm, the IRGC-Quds Force, whom Washington has accused of participating in terrorist plots targeting former U.S. government officials and Iranian dissidents, including journalists.  

The U.S. Treasury Department said the action targeted three Iran- and Turkey-based individuals, a company affiliated with the IRGC-QF, and two senior officials of the IRGC’s Intelligence Organization who have been involved in plotting external lethal operations against civilians, including journalists and activists.     

“The United States remains focused on disrupting plots by the IRGC and its [Quds] Force, both of which have engaged in numerous assassination attempts and other acts of violence and intimidation against those they deem enemies of the Iranian regime,” Brian E. Nelson, undersecretary of the Treasury for terrorism and financial intelligence, said in a statement.  

“We will continue to expose and disrupt these terrorist activities and efforts to silence opposing voices, particularly those who advocate for respect for the universal human rights and freedoms of the Iranian people,” Nelson said.  

This is the latest slate of U.S. sanctions against Iranian operatives accused of targeting U.S. officials and Iranian dissidents. In 2021, the Treasury Department sanctioned Iranian operatives for attempting to kidnap Iranian critic and VOA Persian host Masih Alinejad.  

Among those newly sanctioned was Mohammad Reza Ansari, a Quds Force member who the Treasury said has supported the IRGC-QF’s operations in Syria, and Iranian national Shahram Poursafi, who the Treasury said had planned and attempted to assassinate two former U.S. government officials. 

The Treasury also penalized Hossein Hafez Amini, a dual Iranian-Turkish national based in Turkey. The Treasury accused Amini of using his Turkey-based airline, Rey Havacilik Ithalat Ihracat Sanayi Ve, to assist the Quds Force’s covert operations, including kidnapping and assassination plots targeting Iranian dissidents in Turkey. The airline also was sanctioned. 

The Treasury also sanctioned two individuals affiliated with the IRGC’s Intelligence Organization, including Rouhallah Bazghandi, former IRGC-IO counterespionage department chief, who the department said has been involved in planning and overseeing IRGC-IO operations in Iraq and Syria. Additionally, Bazghandi is accused of being involved in plots to assassinate journalists and Israeli nationals in Istanbul.  

Reza Seraj, foreign intelligence chief of the Intelligence Organization, was also sanctioned. 

All property of the five individuals and the company subject to U.S. jurisdiction is blocked as a result of these new sanctions.
…

White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters Wednesday that the reviving the 2015 Iran nuclear deal is not a current focus of the Biden administration. 

Kirby said the United States remains committed to ensuring Iran does not obtain nuclear weapons and that President Joe Biden “still believes that a diplomatic solution to that would be highly preferable.” 

But Kirby said Iran was not negotiating in good faith and has shown “no inclination to move in that direction.” 

The nuclear deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, limited Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. 

The United States withdrew from the agreement in 2018 due to what then-President Donald Trump said were terms too favorable to Iran. The Iranians reacted by stepping away from their commitments under the deal; employing more advanced centrifuges, enriching uranium to higher levels and keeping larger stockpiles of enriched uranium. 

Kirby said part of the lack of prioritizing the issue at the White House is “domestic strife” in Iran as well as Iran’s role in supporting Russia in its invasion of Ukraine. 
…

The effort to avoid a U.S. default shifts to the Senate after the House of Representatives approved a measure late Wednesday to suspend the country’s borrowing limit and cap some federal spending. 

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said they hope to get the bill approved in the Senate in the coming days and send it to President Joe Biden for his signature. 

The U.S. Treasury Department has warned it will run out of money to pay the nation’s bills as early as Monday if the debt limit is not raised. 

The measure passed in the House by a vote of 314-117 despite objections by Republicans who said it did not go far enough in cutting spending and by Democrats who said it cut too much. 

Seventy-one lawmakers from the majority Republican party voted against the bill, as did 46 Democrats. 

 In a statement following Wednesday’s vote, Biden celebrated the agreement as a “bipartisan compromise.” 

“It protects key priorities and accomplishments from the past two years, including historic investments that are creating good jobs across the country. And, it honors my commitment to safeguard Americans’ health care and protect Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. It protects critical programs that millions of hardworking families, students, and veterans count on.” 

McCarthy told reporters that getting the bill passed “wasn’t an easy fight.”  He emphasized the budget savings and criticized Democrats who want to separate the debate about spending from the task of suspending the debt limit. 

“We put the citizens of America first and we didn’t do it by taking the easy way,” McCarthy said. “We didn’t do it by the ways that people did in the past by just lifting it, we decided you had to spend less and we achieved that goal.”

McCarthy said he intends to follow Wednesday’s action with more efforts to cut federal spending. 

The bill now heading to the Senate includes waiving the existing borrowing limit until January 2025 and a two-year budget deal that keeps federal spending flat in 2024 and increases it by 1% in 2025. The measure does not raise taxes, nor will it stop the national debt total from continuing to increase, perhaps by another $3 trillion or more over the next year and a half.      

Other pieces of the legislation include a reduction in the number of new agents hired by the country’s tax collection agency, a requirement that states return $30 billion in unspent coronavirus pandemic assistance to the federal government and extending from 50 to 54 the upper age bracket for those required to work in order to receive food aid.      

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

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Thursday it was  “unfortunate” that China declined a request for Austin and his Chinese counterpart Li Shangfu to meet as both attend the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore.

Speaking alongside Japanese Defense Minister Yasukazu Hamada during a visit to Tokyo, Austin said he would welcome “any opportunity to engage with leadership” and that he believes defense departments should have open channels of communication.

Austin told reporters that countries with “significant capabilities” should talk to each other in order to manage crises and prevent situations from spiraling out of control.

The lack of a meeting between the U.S. and Chinese defense officials comes at a time of cool relations that has included the shooting down of a suspected Chinese spy balloon by the U.S., tensions about U.S. support for Taiwan, and what the United States called a Chinese fighter jet’s “unnecessarily aggressive” interception of a U.S. Air Force aircraft over the South China Sea this week.

Hamada told reporters that he and Austin agreed to closely cooperate on challenges posed by China and said it is important to keep a frank dialogue with the Chinese.

Hamada also said Japan and the United States would work closely with South Korea in a concerted effort against what he called North Korea’s provocative actions.

His comments came a day after the failure of a North Korea launch of a spy satellite. U.N. Security Council resolutions bar North Korea from using ballistic missile technology.

Austin called North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs “dangerous and destabilizing.” He said the United States will take all necessary measures to secure its homeland and defend its allies.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
…

Washington strongly condemned the attempted launch of North Korea’s first military spy satellite, a device that Pyongyang says it needs to monitor joint military exercises between the United States and South Korea.

“With each and every one of these launches, whether it fails or succeeds, Kim Jong Un and his scientists and engineers — they learn and they improve and they adapt,” John Kirby, National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications, said in a Wednesday briefing to reporters.

A statement published in North Korean state media said that during its Tuesday launch, the rocket lost thrust following the separation of its first and second stages. Pyongyang said it will attempt a second launch as soon as possible.

State-run media said the satellite is intended for surveillance of the joint exercises, citing a need to monitor the U.S. and its allies “in real time.”

However, the White House maintains that the failed launch involved technologies directly related to Pyongyang’s intercontinental ballistic missile program, which is banned by United Nations resolutions. Observers also say that the surveillance technology claimed by Pyongyang could potentially identify targets in the event of a war.

The Kim regime likely sees itself in a space race with its southern neighbor, given the demonstrated ability of South Korea’s indigenous Nuri rocket to deliver satellites into orbit, said Leif-Eric Easley, associate professor of international studies at Ewha Womans University in Seoul.

“Whether or not North Korea’s current satellite mission is a success, Pyongyang can be expected to issue political propaganda about its space capabilities, as well as diplomatic rhetoric aimed at driving a wedge between Seoul and Tokyo,” Easley told VOA.

Raised tensions

North Korean officials have accused Seoul and Washington of raising tensions with their scaled-up, joint-military live fire exercises and a multinational naval drill that includes Japan.

Earlier this month, on the sidelines of the Group of Seven advanced democracies’ summit in Hiroshima, Japan, U.S. President Joe Biden, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol pledged “new coordination in the face of the DPRK’s illicit nuclear and missile threats,” including plans to share real-time data on Pyongyang’s missile launches.

The trilateral cooperation pledge followed the so-called Washington Declaration between the U.S. and South Korea, agreed to in April as Biden hosted Yoon in a state visit. The deal allows for a more muscular U.S. presence in the region and grants Seoul a greater decision-making role in U.S. contingency planning in the event of a North Korean nuclear attack.

Joint exercises

Even before the U.S. formally expanded and strengthened its extended deterrence strategy — a term also known as the American nuclear umbrella — Washington and Seoul had significantly stepped up the frequency and scope of their joint military exercises since August 2022. The drills were postponed under U.S. President Donald Trump following his meeting with Kim in Singapore in 2018.

The last working-level nuclear talks between U.S. and North Korean officials broke off in October 2019.

U.S. officials say they’re open to restart negotiations.

“We’ve been consistent since the beginning of this administration that we’re willing to sit down with the DPRK without preconditions to talk about the denuclearization of the peninsula,” Kirby said Wednesday.

Frank Aum, a senior expert on Northeast Asia at the U.S. Institute of Peace, said the administration needs to take more aggressive steps toward engaging Pyongyang, including by offering unilateral conciliatory gestures that may bring them to the negotiation table.

“If the focus is just on enhancing our own deterrence capabilities, then we’re not going to get anywhere,” Aum told VOA. “Because North Korea can misperceive that as … not just being about deterrence but being offensive, about being geared towards undermining or taking out the North Korean regime.”
…

Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is expected to launch a Republican presidential campaign next week in New Hampshire.

Christie, who also ran in 2016, is planning to make the announcement at a town hall Tuesday evening at Saint Anselm College’s New Hampshire Institute of Politics, according to a person familiar with his thinking who spoke on condition of anonymity to confirm Christie’s plans.

The timing, which was first reported by Axios, comes after several longtime Christie advisers started a super political action committee to support his expected candidacy.

The Associated Press had previously reported that Christie was expected to enter the race “imminently.”

Christie critical of Trump

Christie has cast himself as the only potential candidate willing to aggressively take on former President Donald Trump, the current front-runner for the nomination. Christie, a former federal prosecutor, was a longtime friend and adviser to Trump, but broke with Trump over his refusal to accept the results of the 2020 election. Christie has since emerged as a leading and vocal critic of the former president.

Christie, who is currently polling at the bottom of the pack, dropped out of the 2016 presidential race a day after finishing sixth in New Hampshire’s primary.

In addition to Trump, Christie would be joining a GOP field that includes Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, U.S. Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson, and biotech entrepreneur and “anti-woke” activist Vivek Ramaswamy.

North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum is expected to announce his candidacy on June 7, according to two GOP operatives. And former Vice President Mike Pence is also expected to launch a campaign soon.

‘I’m not a paid assassin’

Allies believe that Christie, who has been working as an ABC News analyst, has a unique ability to communicate. They say his candidacy could help prevent a repeat of 2016, when Trump’s rivals largely refrained from directly attacking the New York businessman, wrongly assuming he would implode on his own.

Christie has also said repeatedly that he will not run if he does not see a path to victory. “I’m not a paid assassin,” he recently told Politico.

While Christie is expected to spend much of his time in early-voting New Hampshire, as he did in 2016, advisers believe the path to the nomination runs through Trump, and they envision an unconventional, national campaign for Christie with a focus on garnering media attention and directly engaging with Trump.
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Former Vice President Mike Pence will officially launch his widely expected campaign for the 2024 Republican nomination for president in Iowa next week, adding another candidate to the growing Republican field and putting him in direct competition with his former boss. 

Pence will hold a kickoff event in Des Moines on June 7, his 64th birthday, according to two people familiar with his plans who spoke on condition of anonymity to share details ahead of the official announcement. He is also expected to release a video message as part of the launch. 

His team sees early voting Iowa as critical to his potential path to victory, and advisers say he plans to campaign aggressively for the conservative, evangelical Christian voters who make up a substantial portion of the state’s Republican electorate. Pence is an avowed social conservative and is staunchly opposed to abortion rights, favoring a national ban. 

The campaign is expected to lean heavily on town halls and retail stops aimed at showcasing Pence’s personality as he tries to emerge from former President Donald Trump’s shadow. 

Pence, who served in Congress and as Indiana’s governor before he was tapped as Trump’s running mate in 2016, had been an exceedingly loyal vice president until he broke with Trump over the 2020 election. 

Trump, desperate to overturn his loss and remain in power, had tried to convince Pence — and his supporters — that Pence could somehow reject voters’ will as he presided over the ceremonial counting of the Electoral College votes on January 6, 2021, even though the vice president has no such power. As the count was underway, a violent mob of Trump’s supporters stormed the building, smashing through windows, assailing police and sending Pence, his family and his staff racing for cover as members of the mob chanted, “Hang Mike Pence!” 

Pence has said Trump’s “reckless words” endangered his family and everyone else who was at the Capitol that day. He has said “history will hold Donald Trump accountable.” 

“For four years, we had a close working relationship. It did not end well,” Pence wrote in his book, So Help Me God. 

Pence has spent the 2-1/2 years since then strategically distancing himself from Trump as he has laid the groundwork for the campaign. While he consistently praises the record of the “Trump-Pence administration,” he has also stressed differences between the two men, on both policy and style. 

He has called on his party to move on from Trump’s election grievances and warned against the growing tide of populism in the Republican Party. He admonished “Putin apologists” unwilling to stand up to the Russian leader over his assault on Ukraine, distinguishing himself from Trump and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who is running a distant second to Trump in the polls. 

He has also argued in favor of changes to programs such as Social Security and Medicare — which both Trump and DeSantis have vowed not to touch — and criticized DeSantis for his escalating feud with Disney. 

Pence also testified last month before a federal grand jury investigating efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn the results of the 2020 election. 

Pence has spent months visiting early voting states, delivering policy speeches, speaking at churches and courting donors. 

The week will be a busy one for Republican announcements. Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is planning to launch his campaign Tuesday evening at a town hall event in New Hampshire, and North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum will announce his own bid on June 7 in Fargo. 
…

A top USAID official in Zimbabwe says the agency will continue providing aid to people of the southern African nation, despite Harare summoning the top U.S. diplomat in the country.

The government called in Elaine French, chargé d’affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Harare, on Tuesday to protest advertisements posted on social media urging citizens to vote and cast their ballots peacefully. A Zimbabwean official said the ads bordered on illegal activism. 

Ramses Gauthier, the chargé d’affaires at the U.S. Agency for International Development in Zimbabwe, said his organization will not stop aiding people in the country despite the government’s actions. 

“Our commitment is toward Zimbabwean people, and it’s a longstanding one,” Gauthier said. “We have been standing by the Zimbabwean people since 1980, and we have invested billions of dollars. We may have disagreements, but we are not enemies, and Zimbabwean people are our friends. So, whatever we do, we do it with a sentiment of friendship toward the Zimbabwean people. And disagreement or not, we will continue to stand by the Zimbabwean people.” 

Late Tuesday, Zimbabwe’s acting secretary for foreign affairs, Rofina Chikava, summoned French to protest several advertisements shared on social media this month by the U.S. Embassy.

Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesman Livit Mugejo singled out one Twitter message that said, “Register to vote and make sure your voice is heard.”

Mugejo said that in the meeting with French, Chikava expressed concern that the social media posts bordered “on activism and meddling in Zimbabwe’s internal affairs” and were unacceptable, as they deviated from conventional diplomatic norms. 

Meg Riggs, the spokeswoman for the U S. Embassy, defended the ads.

“We stand by our recent social media posts calling for peace during the election season. These neutral apolitical messages feature the work of Zimbabwean artists who wanted to engage their fellow youths on the importance of peace during an electoral process,” Riggs said. “Elections are a fundamental part of a functioning democracy. All Zimbabweans deserve this chance to choose their future safely.”

Riggs added that the United States does not back any political candidate or party in Zimbabwe, but strongly supports a peaceful and transparent election process “that reflects the will of the people of Zimbabwe.”

Alexander Rusero, who heads the International Relations Studies Department at Africa University in Zimbabwe, said President Emmerson Mnangagwa was justified in summoning the U.S. diplomat.

“At times, the United States of America and its embassy, they should desist from acting as if they are political actors,” Rusero said. “There is need for rationality in handling Zimbabwe issues, because what the United States did in terms of that tweet, it’s outside the parameters of what diplomacy and diplomats should do.”

But Lovemore Madhuku, a law professor at the University of Zimbabwe, disagreed.

“The U.S. Embassy, whatever it is doing, cannot be said to be a serious interference with the electoral processes,” Madhuku said. “There is a lot of misunderstanding of the role of foreign embassies. If they encourage people to register to vote or encourage people to vote without saying, ‘Vote for so and so,’ it cannot be wrong.”

Madhuku said there is no reason Zimbabwe’s government should be uncomfortable with an open electoral playing field. 
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The U.S. House of Representatives is moving toward a Wednesday evening vote on legislation to suspend the government’s borrowing limit until early 2025, a Washington political showdown occurring just five days before the country could run out of money to pay its bills.

The measure suspending the government’s current $31.4 trillion debt ceiling is likely to be approved. But far-right Republican lawmakers are continuing to assail the deal negotiated by Democratic President Joe Biden and Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy for not cutting enough in future government spending, while some progressive Democrats say it trims too much.

The contentious fight over the legislation is also turning into a test of McCarthy’s hold on the top leadership post in the House, which he won in January after 15 rounds of voting and after he promised archconservatives a greater say in attempting to rein in government budgets. The U.S. chronically records annual trillion-dollar deficits, adding to the long-term debt total.

Under informal Republican rules managing the House with a narrow majority, McCarthy has pledged to not bring up legislation for a full House vote without the support of at least 111 members of his 222-member Republican caucus. He has said he expects at least 150 Republicans will support the debt ceiling suspension, but the figure is uncertain, with the most vocal Republicans in the far-right Freedom Caucus attacking McCarthy for supposedly caving to Biden in the negotiations.

If McCarthy were to lose 111 Republicans on the debt ceiling vote, at least 107 of the 213 House Democrats would need to support it for the legislation to pass and be sent to the Senate for consideration later in the week, and eventually Biden’s signature at the White House.

“House Democrats are going to make sure the country doesn’t default. Period. Full stop,” House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters early Wednesday.

One Freedom Caucus member, Representative Ken Buck, acknowledged to NBC News that the conservative lawmakers do not have enough votes to kill the legislation.

“The nation will not default,” Buck said.

But he and other Republicans have voiced skepticism about the legitimacy of Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s warning that the government will run out of money next Monday to meet all its financial obligations, including cash to pay interest on government bonds, pensions to older Americans and salaries to the military and government workers. 

The House Rules Committee sent the legislation to the full House on a 7-6 vote Tuesday night that showed some of that discontent, with two Republicans voting against advancing the bill.

The proposal before Congress includes waiving the existing borrowing limit until January 2025 and a two-year budget deal that keeps federal spending flat in 2024 and increases it by 1% in 2025. The measure does not raise taxes, nor will it stop the national debt total from continuing to increase, perhaps by another $3 trillion or more over the next year and a half.

Other pieces of the legislation include a reduction in the number of new agents hired by the country’s tax collection agency, a requirement that states return $30 billion in unspent coronavirus pandemic assistance to the federal government and extending from 50 to 54 the upper age bracket for those required to work in order to receive food aid.  

Some liberal Democratic lawmakers have objected to the deal, saying it cuts too much in social welfare spending or holds some programs at a flat spending level. Republicans say it allows for more spending than legislation they approved weeks ago calling for steeper cuts and a debt ceiling extension of less than a year totaling about $1.5 trillion.

Biden insisted on a new debt ceiling that extended beyond the November 2024 presidential election in which he is seeking a second four-year term, so the current contentious debate would not be repeated during the political campaign next year. 

One Republican critic of the debt ceiling legislation, Representative Dan Bishop, complained Tuesday about the length of the debt ceiling extension.

“It removes the issue from the national conversation during the presidential election to come,” Bishop said. “How could you more successfully kneecap any Republican [presidential candidate] than to take that issue out of his or her hands?”

Biden and McCarthy have both, respectively, been lobbying Democrats and Republicans to pass the measure.

“The agreement prevents the worst possible crisis — a default — for the first time in our nation’s history,” Biden said at the White House last weekend. It “takes the threat of a catastrophic default off the table.”    

“The agreement represents a compromise, which means not everyone gets what they want. But that’s the responsibility of governing,” Biden said in a statement.

McCarthy called the bill the “most conservative deal we’ve ever had.”
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The U.S. military says a Chinese fighter jet flew close to one of its reconnaissance aircraft during a patrol mission over the South China Sea last week.   

A statement by the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command says a Chinese J-16 fighter jet “flew directly in front of the nose” of the RC-135 plane “in an unnecessarily aggressive maneuver,” forcing the pilot to fly through the turbulence caused by the fighter jet. 

Video footage of the incident from the cockpit of the U.S. reconnaissance plane showed the plane shaking soon after the Chinese fighter jet flew across its flight path. 

The statement said the RC-135 reconnaissance plane was conducting “safe and routine operations over the South China Sea in international airspace, in accordance with international law.” 

Last week’s incident occurred six months after a similar incident in December, when the crew of another RC-135 plane was forced to take evasive maneuvers to avoid colliding with a Chinese fighter jet.  

The incidents come during a time of rising tensions between Beijing and Washington over a host of issues, including China’s aggressive expansion across the South China Sea and its increasing military and diplomatic pressure on self-ruled Taiwan, which it considers a breakaway province of China.  Along with the aerial reconnaissance missions, the U.S. has also sailed its naval warships through the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait under the concept of “freedom of navigation.” 

The Pentagon said that China has rejected an invitation for Defense Minister General Li Shangfu to meet with U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue regional security summit in Singapore this week. 

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse. 
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Aiming to secure support for Sweden’s bid to join NATO, U.S. President Joe Biden signaled a transactional approach in his engagement with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The newly reelected Turkish leader has been one of the most consequential yet complicated members of the transatlantic military alliance. White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara has this report. Contributor: Anita Powell
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Aiming to secure support for Sweden’s bid to join NATO, U.S. President Joe Biden signaled a transactional approach in his engagement with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The newly reelected Turkish leader has been one of the most consequential yet complicated members of the transatlantic military alliance.

Biden spoke with Erdogan on Monday to congratulate him on winning his third presidential term and said the two had discussed the issue of Sweden’s NATO accession and Turkey’s request to overhaul and expand its fleet of American-made F-16 fighter jets.

“He still wants to work on something on the F-16s. I told him we wanted a deal with Sweden, so let’s get that done. And so, we’ll be back in touch with one another,” Biden said, adding that they will talk more about it “next week.”

This is the first time Biden has linked the two issues together. Neither the White House nor the Turkish government mentioned the potential F-16 sale in their readout of the call.

U.S. administration officials have repeatedly rejected suggestions of a quid pro quo between the transatlantic military alliance’s expansion and a weapons sale.

“That’s not a condition,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre reiterated during her press briefing Tuesday. “President Biden has long been clear that he supports selling F-16s.”

On Tuesday, during a joint news conference with Sweden’s Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson in Lulea, Sweden, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that both issues “should go forward as quickly as possible.”

In response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Finland and Sweden applied for NATO membership in May 2022. The bids, which must be approved by all NATO members, were held up by objections from Turkey and Hungary though Finland’s bid was finally approved in April.

F-16s

Ankara has long sought to purchase 40 F-16 fighter jets made by U.S. company Lockheed Martin and nearly 80 modernization kits for its air force’s existing warplanes — a $20 billion transaction.

The F-16 jets make up the bulk of Turkey’s combat aircraft after the Trump administration in 2019 expelled Ankara from the fifth-generation F-35 fighter jet program over its decision to acquire Russian-made S-400 air defense systems.

The U.S. Congress, which has authority to block major weapons sales, objects to F-16 sales for reasons beyond NATO enlargement. It wants Ankara to ease tensions with Greece, refrain from invading northern Syria and enforce sanctions against Russia for its war on Ukraine.

In April, about two weeks after Turkey ratified its support for Finland joining NATO, Washington approved a $259 million sale of avionics software upgrades for Ankara’s current fleet of F-16 fighter aircraft. But Sweden’s bid is still held up because Ankara believes that Stockholm is harboring “terrorists” — militants from the banned Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which took up arms against the Turkish state in 1984.

Swedish lawmakers have passed legislation tightening the country’s anti-terrorism laws, a move expected to help persuade Turkey. U.S. and Swedish officials have expressed hope that Sweden’s membership will be confirmed by the time NATO leaders meet in Vilnius, Lithuania, in mid-July.

While Erdogan is likely to leverage his support for Sweden, he is also a pragmatist, said Asli Aydintaşbaş, a Turkish journalist and visiting fellow in the Center on the United States and Europe at Brookings.

“What we are going to see is a bit of a last-minute drama heading up to the Vilnius summit,” Aydıntaşbaş told VOA. “At the end, it’s possible that this will be resolved on the night of the summit.”

Fraught relations

F-16s aside, U.S.-Turkish ties will remain fraught, said James Jeffrey, a former U.S. ambassador to Turkey, who now chairs the Middle East program at the Wilson Center.

“It’s a complicated, transactional relationship,” Jeffrey told VOA. “It’s never 100% on our side. We’re hoping it won’t be more than 50% away from us, but a lot depends on the personal relationship between Biden and Erdogan. It’s been frosty; the call is a good first step.”

Solid ties with Ankara will be “dramatically strategic in terms of containing Russia,” as well as containing Iran and terrorist movements in the region — all key goals for Washington, Jeffrey added.

However, Erdogan’s friendly ties with Russian leader Vladimir Putin while NATO helps Ukraine to fend off a Russian invasion have made Western officials uneasy.

“We are not bound by the West’s sanctions,” Erdogan said in a CNN interview earlier this month. “We are a strong state, and we have a positive relationship with Russia.”

Ankara has calibrated its response to the war in Ukraine consistent with its own strategic interests, condemning the invasion and restricting Russian warships and military flights across its territory while refusing to join Western sanctions on Russia and expanding its trade ties with Moscow.

At the same time Erdogan has maintained good ties with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. His government has provided aid and drones to Ukraine and was instrumental in the U.N.-backed deal allowing Ukrainian grain ships access to global markets via the Black Sea.

S-400s

The Turkish decision to acquire S-400 air defense systems remains the thorniest issue for the U.S., said Howard Eissenstat, a nonresident scholar at the Middle East Institute.

“That one’s going to be really difficult to solve,” he told VOA.

Washington insists it won’t allow Ankara back into its F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program until Ankara abandons the Russian-made weapons. Earlier this month, Turkish media reported that Ankara rejected the Biden administration’s request for Turkey to send its S-400 air defense systems to Ukraine.

Next week, Biden will host British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen. The leaders are expected to discuss the issue of NATO enlargement, including how to get Ankara on board.

“Those are good interlocutors for the president,” Jeffrey said. “Those are people who understand the geostrategic situation in Europe.”

Anita Powell contributed to this report.
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A year after U.S. President Joe Biden first launched what’s known as the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, negotiations have yielded what Washington is calling a landmark agreement. VOA’s Chris Casquejo reports.
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The Pentagon says China has declined a request by the U.S. for a meeting between their defense chiefs at an annual security forum in Singapore this weekend.

Pentagon spokesman Brigadier General Pat Ryder said the U.S. in early May had offered for Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin to meet with the People’s Republic of China Minister of National Defense Li Shangfu, but that invitation was turned down this week.

Both defense leaders are slated to attend the annual Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, with Austin speaking on Saturday and his Chinese counterpart scheduled to speak on Sunday. The annual dialogue is an informal gathering of defense officials and analysts in Singapore that also creates opportunities for side meetings among defense leaders.

“The PRC’s concerning unwillingness to engage in meaningful military-to-military discussions will not diminish DoD’s commitment to seeking open lines of communication with the People’s Liberation Army [PLA] at multiple levels as part of responsibly managing the relationship,” Ryder said.

He added that open lines of communication are important “to ensure that competition does not veer into conflict.”

A senior defense official told VOA on Tuesday that since 2021, the PRC has declined or failed to respond to more than a dozen requests from the Department of Defense for key leader engagements, along with multiple requests for standing dialogues and nearly 10 working-level engagements.

“Frankly, it’s just the latest in a litany of excuses,” the senior defense official said.

China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning confirmed the two defense leaders will not meet this week, saying Tuesday at a news briefing that the U.S. should “earnestly respect China’s sovereignty and security interests and concerns … and create the necessary atmosphere and conditions for dialogue and communication between the two militaries.”

Li, who assumed his current post in March, has been under U.S. sanctions since 2018 over the purchase of combat aircraft and equipment from Russia’s main arms exporter, Rosoboronexport.

‘Unprofessional’ intercept

Meanwhile, the U.S. military said Tuesday a People’s Republic of China J-16 fighter pilot “performed an unnecessarily aggressive maneuver” during an intercept of a U.S. Air Force RC-135 aircraft.

The incident occurred Friday over international airspace above the South China Sea, according to a statement by U.S. Indo-Pacific Command.

“The PRC pilot flew directly in front of the nose of the RC-135, forcing the U.S. aircraft to fly through its wake turbulence. The RC-135 was conducting safe and routine operations over the South China Sea in international airspace, in accordance with international law,” Indo-PACOM said.

In the statement, Indo-PACOM called on all countries to use international airspace safely in accordance with international law, adding that the United States “will continue to fly, sail, and operate — safely and responsibly — wherever international law allows.”
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Disgraced Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes is in custody at a Texas prison where she could spend the next 11 years for overseeing a blood-testing hoax that became a parable about greed and hubris in Silicon Valley, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

Holmes, 39, on Tuesday entered a federal women’s prison camp located in Bryan, Texas — where the federal judge who sentenced Holmes in November recommended she be incarcerated. The minimum-security facility is about 152 kilometers (about 94 miles) northwest of Houston, where Holmes grew up aspiring to become a technology visionary along the lines of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.

As she begins her sentence, Holmes is leaving behind two young children — a son born in July 2021 a few weeks before the start of her trial and a 3-month old daughter who was conceived after a jury convicted her on four felony counts of fraud and conspiracy in January 2022.

Holmes has been free on bail since then, most recently living in the San Diego, California, area with the children’s father, William “Billy” Evans. The couple met in 2017 around the same time Holmes was under investigation for the collapse of Theranos, a startup she founded after dropping out of Stanford University when she was just 19.

Build up to startup

While she was building up Theranos, Holmes grew closer to Ramesh, “Sunny” Balwani, who would become her romantic partner as well as an investor and fellow executive in the Palo Alto, California, company.

Together, Holmes and Balwani promised Theranos would revolutionize health care with a technology that could quickly scan for diseases and other problems with a few drops of blood taken with a finger prick.

The hype surrounding that purported breakthrough helped Theranos raise nearly $1 billion from enthralled investors, assemble an influential board of directors that include former Presidential cabinet members George Shultz, Henry Kissinger and James Mattis and turned Holmes into a Silicon Valley sensation with a fortune valued at $4.5 billion on paper in 2014.

But it all blew up after serious dangerous flaws in Theranos’ technology were exposed in a series of explosive articles in The Wall Street Journal that Holmes and Balwani tried to thwart. Holmes and Balwani, who had been secretly living together while running Theranos, broke up after the revelations in the Journal and the company collapsed. In 2018, the U.S. Justice Department charged both with a litany of white-collar crimes in a case aimed at putting a stop to the Silicon Valley practice of overselling the capabilities of a still-developing technology — a technique that became known as “fake it ’til you make it.”

Holmes admitted making mistakes at Theranos, but steadfastly denied committing crimes during seven often-fascinating days of testimony on the witness stand during her trial. At one point, she told the jury about being sexually and emotionally abused by Balwani while he controlled her in ways that she said clouded her thinking. Balwani’s attorney steadfastly denied Holmes allegations, which was one of the key reasons they were tried separately.

Balwani, 57, was convicted on 12 felony counts of fraud and conspiracy in a trial that began two months after Holmes’ ended. He is serving a nearly 13-year sentence in a Southern California prison.

Maintaining she was treated unfairly during the trial, Holmes sought to remain free while she appeals her conviction. But that bid was rejected by U.S. District Judge Edward Davila, who presided over her trial, and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, leaving her no other avenue left to follow but the one that will take her to prison nearly 20 years after she founded Theranos.

Attorneys representing Holmes did not immediately respond when contacted by The Associated Press for statement on Tuesday.

650 women on 37 acres

Federal Prison Camp Bryan, a minimum-security prison camp encompasses about 37 acres of land and houses about 650 women — including “Real Housewives of Salt Lake City” star Jennifer Shah, who was sentenced earlier this year to 6 1/2 years in prison for defrauding thousands of people in a yearslong telemarketing scam.

Most federal prison camps don’t even have fences and house those the Bureau of Prisons considers to be the lowest security risk. The prison camps also often have minimal staffing and many of the incarcerated people work at prison jobs.

According to a 2016 FPC Bryan inmate handbook, those in the Texas facility who are eligible to work can earn between 12 cents and $1.15 per hour in their job assignments, which include food service roles and factory employment operated by Federal Prison Industries.

Federal prison camps were originally designed with low security to make operations easier and allow inmates tasked with performing work at the prison, such as landscaping and maintenance, to avoid repeatedly checking in and out of a main prison facility. But the lax security opened a gateway for contraband, such as drugs, cellphones and weapons. The limited security also led to a number of escapes from prison camps.

In November, a man incarcerated at another federal prison camp in Arizona pulled out a smuggled gun in a visitation area and tried to shoot his wife in the head. The gun jammed and no one was injured. But the incident exposed major security flaws at the facility and the agency’s director ordered a review of security at all federal prison camps around the U.S.
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Former first lady Rosalynn Carter has dementia and remains at home, her family has announced.

Carter, 95, remains at home with former President Jimmy Carter, who has been at home receiving hospice care since early this year.

“She continues to live happily at home with her husband, enjoying spring in Plains and visits with loved ones,” the family said via The Carter Center, the global humanitarian organization the couple founded in 1982 after leaving the White House.

Married nearly 77 years, the Carter are the longest-married first couple in U.S. history.

The family noted in its statement that Rosalynn Carter spent her long public life advocating for individuals and families affected by mental illness and for those in caregiving relationships with loved ones.

“Mrs. Carter often noted that there are only four kinds of people in this world: those who have been caregivers; those who are currently caregivers, those who will be caregivers, and those who will need caregivers,” the statement reads. “The universality of caregiving is clear in our family, and we are experiencing the joy and the challenges of this journey. We do not expect to comment further and ask for understanding for our family and for everyone across the country serving in a caregiver role.”

The Carters have been visiting only with family and close friends in recent months, after the former president’s announcement that he would forgo further medical intervention after a series of short hospital stays.
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China’s foreign minister met Tesla Ltd. CEO Elon Musk on Tuesday and said strained U.S.-Chinese relations require “mutual respect,” while delivering a message of reassurance that foreign companies are welcome. 

U.S.-Chinese relations are especially tense after Washington shot down a Chinese balloon believed to be gathering intelligence and warned Beijing against supplying arms to Russia for its war against Ukraine. The Wall Street Journal reported China has rejected a request for its defense minister to meet the U.S. defense secretary when both are in Singapore this weekend. 

“We need to keep the steering wheel in the right direction of mutual respect, peaceful coexistence and win-win cooperation,” Qin Gang told Musk, according to a ministry statement. 

The two sides should “avoid ‘dangerous driving,’ ” Qin said. He gave no details of steps to improve relations. 

Musk’s visit comes at a time when the ruling Communist Party is trying to revive investor interest in China’s slowing economy. Foreign companies are uneasy following raids on consulting firms and given the strained Chinese relations with Washington. 

Qin said China will “unswervingly promote high-level opening up” and create a “market-oriented, law-based and internationalized business environment,” according to the statement. “China’s development is an opportunity for the world.” 

China’s electric vehicle market “has broad prospects for development,” the ministry quoted Qin as saying. China accounts for half of global electric vehicle sales and is the site of Tesla’s first factory outside the United States. 

Tesla opened the first wholly foreign-owned auto factory in China in 2019 after Beijing eased ownership restrictions to increase competition and speed up industry development. 

The Chinese statement cited Musk as saying Tesla was willing to expand its business in China and “opposes decoupling,” a reference to fears the world may split into multiple markets with incompatible products. 

Tesla didn’t respond to requests by email for information about Musk’s visit to China. 
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As the final pre-competition meeting of the Scripps National Spelling Bee’s word selection panel stretches into its seventh hour, the pronouncers no longer seem to care.

Before panelists can debate the words picked for the bee, they need to hear each word and its language of origin, part of speech, definition and exemplary sentence read aloud. Late in the meeting, lead pronouncer Jacques Bailly and his colleagues — so measured in their pacing and meticulous in their enunciation during the bee — rip through that chore as quickly as possible. No pauses. No apologies for flubs.

By the time of this gathering, two days before the bee, the word list is all but complete. Each word has been vetted by the panel and slotted into the appropriate round of the nearly century-old annual competition to identify the English language’s best speller.

For decades, the word panel’s work has been a closely guarded secret. This year, Scripps — a Cincinnati-based media company — granted The Associated Press exclusive access to the panelists and their pre-bee meeting, with the stipulation that The AP would not reveal words unless they were cut from the list.

They’re tough on words

The 21 panelists sit around a makeshift, rectangular conference table in a windowless room tucked inside the convention center outside Washington where the bee is staged every year. They are given printouts including words Nos. 770-1,110 — those used in the semifinal rounds and beyond — with instructions that those sheets of paper cannot leave the room.

Hearing the words aloud with the entire panel present — laptops open to Merriam-Webster’s Unabridged dictionary website — sometimes illuminates problems. That’s what happened late in Sunday’s meeting. Kavya Shivashankar, the 2009 champion, an obstetrician/gynecologist and a recent addition to the panel, chimed in with an objection.

The word gleyde (pronounced “glide”), which means a decrepit old horse and is only used in Britain, has a near-homonym — glyde — with a similar but not identical pronunciation and the same meaning. Shivashankar said the variant spelling makes the word too confusing, and the rest of the panel quickly agrees to spike gleyde altogether. It won’t be used.

“Nice word, but bye-bye,” pronouncer Kevin Moch said.

For the panelists, the meeting is the culmination of a yearlong process to assemble a word list that will challenge but not embarrass the 230 middle- and elementary-school-aged competitors — and preferably produce a champion within the two-hour broadcast window for Thursday night’s finals.

The panel’s work has changed over the decades. From 1961 to 1984, according to James Maguire’s book American Bee, creating the list was a one-man operation overseen by Jim Wagner, a Scripps Howard editorial promotions director, and then by Harvey Elentuck, a then-MIT student who approached Wagner about helping with the list in the mid-1970s.

The panel was created in 1985. The current collaborative approach didn’t take shape until the early ’90s. Bailly, the 1980 champion, joined in 1991.

“Harvey … made the whole list,” Bailly said. “I never met him. I was just told, ‘You’re the new Harvey.'”

It’s not just picking words

This year’s meeting includes five full-time bee staffers and 16 contract panelists. The positions are filled via word of mouth within the spelling community or recommendations from panelists. The group includes five former champions: Barrie Trinkle (1973), Bailly, George Thampy (2000), Sameer Mishra (2008) and Shivashankar.

Trinkle, who joined the panel in 1997, used to produce the majority of her submissions by reading periodicals like The New Yorker or The Economist.

“Our raison d’etre was to teach spellers a rich vocabulary that they could use in their daily lives. And as they got smarter and smarter, they got more in contact with each other and were studying off the same lists, it became harder to hold a bee with those same types of words,” Trinkle said.

Now, more often than not she goes directly to the source — Merriam-Webster’s Unabridged. Now online, that’s easier than it used to be.

“The dictionary is on the computer and is highly searchable in all kinds of ways — which the spellers know as well. If they want to find all the words that entered the language in the 1650s, they can do that, which is sometimes what I do,” Trinkle said. “The best words kind of happen to you as you’re scrolling around through the dictionary.”

Not everyone on the panel submits words. Some work to ensure that the definitions, parts of speech and other accompanying information are correct; others are tasked with ensuring that words of similar difficulty are asked at the right times in the competition; others focus on crafting the bee’s new multiple-choice vocabulary questions. Those who submit words, like Trinkle and Mishra, are given assignments throughout the year to come up with a certain number at a certain level of difficulty.

Mishra pulls his submissions from his own list, which he started when he was a 13-year-old speller. He gravitates toward “the harder end of the spectrum.”

“They are fun and challenging for me and they make me smile, and I know if I was a speller I would be intimidated by that word,” says the 28-year-old Mishra, who just finished his MBA at Harvard. “I have no fear about running out (of words), and I feel good about that.”

How the bee has evolved

The panel meets a few times a year, often virtually, to go over words, edit definitions and sentences, and weed out problems. The process seemed to go smoothly through the 2010s, even amid a proliferation of so-called “minor league” bees, many catering to offspring of highly educated, first-generation Indian immigrants — a group that has come to dominate the competition.

In 2019, a confluence of factors — among them, a wild-card program that allowed multiple spellers from competitive regions to reach nationals — produced an unusually deep field of spellers. Scripps had to use the toughest words on its list just to cull to a dozen finalists. The bee ended in an eight-way tie, and there was no shortage of critics.

Scripps, however, didn’t fundamentally change the way the word panel operates. It brought in younger panelists more attuned to the ways contemporary spellers study and prepare. And it made format changes designed to identify a sole champion. The wild-card program was scrapped, and Scripps added onstage vocabulary questions and a lightning-round tiebreaker.

The panel also began pulling words avoided in the past. Place names, trademarks, words with no language of origin: As long as a word isn’t archaic or obsolete, it’s fair game.

“They’ve started to understand they have to push further into the dictionary,” said Shourav Dasari, a 20-year-old former speller and a co-founder with his older sister Shobha of SpellPundit, which sells study guides and hosts a popular online bee. “Last year, we started seeing stuff like tribal names that are some of the hardest words in the dictionary.”

There’s a meticulousness to it all

Members of the panel insist they worry little about other bees or the proliferation of study materials and private coaches. But those coaches and entrepreneurs spend a lot of time thinking about the words Scripps is likely to use — often quite successfully.

Dasari says there are roughly 100,000 words in the dictionary that are appropriate for spelling bees. He pledges that 99% of the words on Scripps’ list are included in SpellPundit’s materials. Anyone who learns all those words is all but guaranteed to win, Dasari said— but no one has shown they can do it.

“I just don’t know when anybody would be able to completely master the unabridged dictionary,” Dasari said.

Since the bee resumed after its 2020 pandemic cancellation, the panel has been scrutinized largely for the vocabulary questions, which have added a capricious element, knocking out some of the most gifted spellers even if they don’t misspell a word. Last year’s champion, Harini Logan, was briefly ousted on a vocabulary word, “pullulation” — only to be reinstated minutes later after arguing that her answer could be construed as correct.

“That gave us a sense of how very, very careful we need to be in terms of crafting these questions,” said Ben Zimmer, the language columnist for The Wall Street Journal and a chief contributor of words for the vocabulary rounds.

Zimmer is also sensitive to the criticism that some vocabulary questions are evaluating the spellers’ cultural sophistication rather than their mastery of roots and language patterns. This year’s vocabulary questions contain more clues that will guide gifted spellers to the answers, he says.

There will always be complaints about the word list, but making the competition as fair as possible is the panel’s chief goal. Missing hyphens or incorrect capitalization, ambiguities about singular and plural nouns or transitive and intransitive verbs — no question is too insignificant.

“This is really problematic,” Trinkle said, pointing out a word that has a homonym with a similar definition.

Scripps editorial manager Maggie Lorenz agrees: “We’re going to bump that word entirely.”
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