It started with an image of U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo on her China trip last month, reportedly taken on what the Chinese tech giant Huawei is touting as a breakthrough 5G mobile phone. Within days, fake ad campaigns on Chinese social media were depicting Raimondo as a Huawei brand ambassador promoting the phone.

The tongue-in-cheek doctored photos made such a splash that they appeared on the social media accounts of state media CCTV, giving them a degree of official approval.

VOA contacted the U.S. Department of Commerce for a reaction but didn’t receive a response by the time of publication.

Chinese nationalists spare no effort to tout the Huawei Mate 60 Pro — equipped with domestically made chips — as a breakthrough showing China’s 5G technological independence despite U.S. sanctions on exports of key components and technology. However, experts say the phone’s capability may be exaggerated.

A social media video posted by Chinese phone users shows that after the Huawei Mate 60 Pro is turned on and connected to the wireless network, it does not display the 4G or 5G signal indicator icon. But these reviewers say the download speed is on par with that of mainstream 5G phones.

A test done by Bloomberg also shows the phone’s bandwidth is similar to other 5G phones.

Richard Windsor, the founder and owner of the British research company Radio Free Mobile, told VOA a simple speed test is not good evidence that the phone is 5G capable.

“It is quite possible through a technique called carrier aggregation to get the kind of speed that was demonstrated,” Windsor said. “You can do that with 4G. … You will see the story on 5G is not [about] speed or throughput but latency efficiency and producing good reception at high frequencies. That’s what the 5G story is all about.”

Throughput and latency are ways to measure network performance. Latency refers to how quickly information moves across a network; throughput refers to the amount of information that moves in a certain time.

Huawei’s official website makes no mention of 5G technology, which also raised skepticism.

“If the new Huawei mobile phone was a 5G phone with an advanced Chinese chipset, Huawei and China would have told the whole world. Huawei and China are not humble people. They love to tell stories,” John Strand, CEO of Strand Consult, told VOA.

The research firm TechInsights took the Huawei phone apart and discovered a Kirin 9000 chip produced by Chinese chipmaker SMIC. The Kirin 9000-series chipsets support 5G connectivity.

While sanctions prevent SMIC from having access to the most cutting-edge extreme ultraviolet lithography tools used by other leading chipmakers — such as TSMC, Samsung and Intel — it could use some older equipment to make advanced chips.

However, experts suspect SMIC won’t be able to mass produce the Kirin 9000 chips on a profitable scale without more advanced tools.

“Being able to make a chip that works,” Windsor said, “and being able to make millions of chips at good yields that don’t bankrupt you in terms of costs are two very, very different things.”

VOA asked Huawei and SMIC for comment but didn’t receive a response by the time of publication.

Dan Hutcheson, vice chair of TechInsights, said in a press release that China’s production of the Kirin 9000 “shows the resilience of the country’s chip technological ability” while demonstrating the challenge faced by countries that seek to restrict China’s access to critical manufacturing technologies. “The result may likely be even greater restrictions than what exist today.”

U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan said during a White House press briefing Tuesday that the U.S. needs “more information about precisely its character and composition” to determine if parties bypassed American restrictions on semiconductor exports to create the new chip.

Rep. Michael McCaul, a Republican from the U.S. state of Texas, was quoted Wednesday saying he was concerned about the possibility of China trying to “get a monopoly” on the manufacture of less-advanced computer chips.

“We talk a lot about advanced semiconductor chips, but we also need to look at legacy,” he told Reuters, referring to older computer chip technology that does not fall under current export controls.
…

Former trade adviser Peter Navarro was found guilty Thursday of contempt of Congress for not complying with a subpoena from the House of Representatives committee that investigated the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Navarro, who promoted groundless claims of mass voter fraud in the 2020 election, refused to testify or turn over documents to the House panel that investigated the insurrection attempt, prompting a 12-member jury to find him guilty of two counts of contempt.

Both charges are punishable by up to one year in prison. A sentencing hearing was scheduled for January 12, 2024.

The verdict came after a one-day trial for Navarro, during which the defense did not present any evidence or call any witnesses.

Ahead of the trial, Navarro said he did not need to comply with the January 6 committee’s order because then-President Donald Trump had invoked executive privilege.

U.S District Judge Amit Mehta ruled that Navarro could not use the defense of executive privilege — which shields some executive branch records and communications from disclosure — because the former trade adviser did not present evidence that Trump formally invoked the doctrine.

“The day that Judge Mehta ruled that I could not use executive privilege as the defense in this case, the die was cast,” Navarro said outside the courthouse after the ruling. He will appeal the conviction.

Prosecutors said Navarro acted as if he were “above the law” when he defied a subpoena for documents and a deposition from the House committee.

“Peter Navarro made a choice,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Elizabeth Aloi said in her closing argument Thursday. “He chose not to comply with a congressional subpoena. Our government only works when people play by the rules. And it only works if they are held accountable when they do not.”

Navarro is the second former aide to the former president to be convicted for defying orders from the January 6 committee. Steve Bannon was convicted last year on two contempt counts, and his case is on appeal.

Trump, meanwhile, faces a federal indictment in Washington and a state indictment in Georgia over his efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat to President Joe Biden. Trump denies any wrongdoing.

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

A judge sentenced “That ’70s Show” show star Danny Masterson to 30 years to life in prison Thursday for raping two women, giving them some relief after they spoke in court about the decades of damage he inflicted.

“When you raped me, you stole from me,” said one woman who Masterson was convicted of raping in 2003. “That’s what rape is, a theft of the spirit.

“You are pathetic, disturbed and completely violent,” she said. “The world is better off with you in prison.”

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Charlaine F. Olmedo handed down the sentence to the 47-year-old Masterson after hearing statements from the women and pleas for fairness from defense attorneys.

The actor, who has been in custody since May, sat in court wearing a suit. Masterson watched the women without visible reaction as they spoke. He maintains his innocence, and his attorneys plan to appeal.

The other woman Masterson was found guilty of raping said he “has not shown an ounce of remorse for the pain he caused.” She told the judge, “I knew he belonged behind bars for the safety of all the women he came into contact with. I am so sorry, and I’m so upset. I wish I’d reported him sooner to the police.”

After an initial jury failed to reach verdicts on three counts of rape in December and a mistrial was declared, prosecutors retried Masterson on all three counts earlier this year.

Masterson waived his right to speak before he was sentenced and had no visible reaction after the judge’s decision, nor did the many family members sitting beside him. His wife, actor Bijou Phillips, was tearful earlier in the hearing.

At his second trial, the jury found Masterson guilty of two of three rape counts on May 31. Both attacks took place in Masterson’s Hollywood-area home in 2003, when he was at the height of his fame on the Fox network sitcom “That ’70s Show.”

They could not reach a verdict on the third count, an allegation that Masterson also raped a longtime girlfriend.

The judge sentenced the actor after rejecting a defense motion for a new trial that was argued earlier Thursday. The sentence was the maximum allowed by law. It means Masterson will be eligible for parole after serving 25½ years but can be held in prison for life.

“I know that you’re sitting here steadfast in your claims of innocence, and thus no doubt feeling victimized by a justice system that has failed you,” Olmedo told Masterson before handing down the sentence. “But Mr. Masterson, you are not the victim here. Your actions 20 years ago took away another person’s voice, and choice. One way or another you will have to come to terms with your prior actions, and their consequences.”

After the hearing, Masterson’s lawyer Shawn Holley said in a statement that “Mr. Masterson did not commit the crimes for which he was convicted.” She said a team of appellate lawyers has identified “a number of significant evidentiary and constitutional issues” with his convictions, which they are confident will be overturned.

Prosecutors alleged that Masterson used his prominence in the Church of Scientology — where all three women were also members at the time — to avoid consequences for decades after the attacks, and the women blamed the church for their hesitancy in going to police about Masterson.

At the sentencing hearing, one of the women, who like Masterson was born into the church, said she was shunned and ostracized for going to authorities in 2004.

“I lost everything. I lost my religion. I lost my ability to contact anyone I’d known or loved my entire life,” she said. “I didn’t exist outside the Scientology world. I had to start my life all over at 29. It seemed the world I knew didn’t want me to live.”

The church said in a statement after the trial that it has “no policy prohibiting or discouraging members from reporting criminal conduct of anyone — Scientologists or not — to law enforcement.” It has also denied ever harassing any of the women.

No charges came from the woman’s 2004 police report, but she returned to authorities when she learned they were investigating Masterson again in 2016. The other two women had waited more than 15 years before reporting him to anyone other than church officials.
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China is turning to artificial intelligence to rile up U.S. voters and stoke divisions ahead of the country’s 2024 presidential elections, according to a new report.

Threat analysts at Microsoft warned in a blog post Thursday that Beijing has developed a new artificial intelligence capability that can produce “eye-catching content” more likely to go viral compared to previous Chinese influence operations.

According to Microsoft, the six-month-long effort appears to use AI-generators, which are able to both produce visually stunning imagery and also to improve it over time.

“We have observed China-affiliated actors leveraging AI-generated visual media in a broad campaign that largely focuses on politically divisive topics, such as gun violence, and denigrating U.S. political figures and symbols,” Microsoft said.

“We can expect China to continue to hone this technology over time, though it remains to be seen how and when it will deploy it at scale,” it added.

China on Thursday dismissed Microsoft’s findings.

“In recent years, some western media and think tanks have accused China of using artificial intelligence to create fake social media accounts to spread so-called ‘pro-China’ information,” Chinese Embassy spokesperson Liu Pengyu told VOA in an email. “Such remarks are full of prejudice and malicious speculation against China, which China firmly opposes.”

According to Microsoft, Chinese government-linked actors appear to be disseminating the AI-generated images on social media while posing as U.S. voters from across the political spectrum. The focus has been on issues related to race, economic issues and ideology.

In one case, the Microsoft researchers pointed to an image of the Statue of Liberty altered to show Lady Liberty holding both her traditional torch and also what appears to be a machine gun.

The image is titled, “The Goddess of Violence,” with another line of text warning that democracy and freedom is “being thrown away.”

But the researchers say there are clear signs the image was produced using AI, including the presence of more than five fingers on one of the statue’s hands. 

In any case, the early evidence is that the efforts are working.

“This relatively high-quality visual content has already drawn higher levels of engagement from authentic social media users,” according to a Microsoft report issued along with the blog post.

“Users have more frequently reposted these visuals, despite common indicators of AI-generation,” the report added.

Additionally, the Microsoft report says China is having Chinese state media employees masquerade as “as independent social media influencers.”

These influencers, who appear across most Western social media sites, tend to push out both lifestyle content and also propaganda aimed at localized audiences.

Microsoft reports the influencers have so far built a following of at least 103 million people in 40 languages.
…

A wealthy Russian businessman with ties to the Kremlin was sentenced Thursday to nine years in prison for his role in a nearly $100 million stock market cheating scheme that relied on secret earnings information stolen through the hacking of U.S. computer networks.

Vladislav Klyushin, who ran a Moscow-based information technology company that did work for the highest levels of the Russian government, was convicted in February of charges that include wire fraud and securities fraud after a two-week trial in federal court in Boston.

Authorities say he personally pocketed more than $33 million in the scheme, which involved breaking into computer systems to steal earnings-related filings for hundreds of companies — including Microsoft and Tesla — and then using that insider information to make lucrative trades.

Klyushin, 42, has been jailed in the U.S. since his extradition in 2021, and the more than two years he’s been detained will be credited to his prison term. He was arrested in Switzerland after arriving on a private jet and just before he and his party were about to board a helicopter to whisk them to a nearby ski resort. After he completes his sentence, he’s expected to be deported to Russia.

Klyushin, who walked into the courtroom in handcuffs, sat at a table with his attorneys and listened to an interpreter through headphones as lawyers argued over the sentence. At the advice of his attorney, he declined to address the judge before she sentenced him.

Four alleged co-conspirators — including a Russian military intelligence officer who’s also been charged with meddling in the 2016 presidential election — remain at large, and even though prosecutors allege in a court filing that they’re still “likely sitting at their keyboards,” they acknowledge that the four will likely never be extradited to the United States to face charges.

Prosecutors had sought 14 years in prison, saying a stiff punishment was crucial to send a message to overseas cybercriminals. Assistant U.S. Attorney Seth Kosto told the judge that Klyushin has accepted no responsibility for his crimes and that once he serves his sentence, he’ll return to Russia, where he is a “powerful person” with “powerful friends in the highest echelons of Russian society.”

“Hackers will be watching this sentence to decide whether it’s worth engaging in this kind of conduct,” Kosto said.

Prosecutors say the hackers stole employees’ usernames and passwords for two U.S.-based vendors that publicly traded companies use to make filings through the Securities and Exchange Commission. They then broke into the vendors’ computer systems to get filings before they became public, prosecutors said.

Armed with insider information, they were able to cheat the stock market, buying shares of a company that was about to release positive financial results, and selling shares of a company that was about to post poor financial results, according to prosecutors. Many of the earnings reports were downloaded via a computer server in Boston, prosecutors said.

Klyushin denied involvement in the scheme. His attorney told jurors that he was financially successful long before he began trading stocks and that he continued trading in many of the same companies even after access to the alleged insider information was shut off because the hacks were discovered.

Defense attorney Maksim Nemtsev called prosecutors’ prison request “draconian,” adding that there is “no reason to think that he would risk the well-being of his family again by committing crimes.”

His lawyers asked the court for leniency, saying Klyushin had no prior criminal history and has already been seriously punished. He spent months in solitary confinement in Switzerland while awaiting extradition to the U.S., and his company has lost multimillion-dollar contracts, his attorneys wrote.

Klyushin owned a Moscow-based information technology company that purported to provide services to detect vulnerabilities in computer systems. It counted among its clients the administration of Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Ministry of Defense, according to prosecutors.

Klyushin’s close friend and an alleged co-conspirator in the case is military officer Ivan Ermakov, who was among 12 Russians charged in 2018 with hacking into key Democratic Party email accounts, including those belonging to Hilary Clinton’s presidential campaign chairman, John Podesta, the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Ermakov, who worked for Klyushin’s company, remains at large.

Prosecutors have not alleged that Klyushin was involved in the election interference.
…

The U.S. on Wednesday announced it was sending depleted uranium anti-tank rounds to Ukraine, following Britain’s lead in sending the controversial munitions to help Kyiv push through Russian lines in its grueling counteroffensive.

The 120 mm rounds will be used to arm the 31 M1A1 Abrams tanks the U.S. plans to deliver to Ukraine in the fall.

Such armor-piercing rounds were developed by the U.S. during the Cold War to destroy Soviet tanks, including the same T-72 tanks that Ukraine now faces in its counteroffensive.

Depleted uranium is a byproduct of the uranium enrichment process needed to create nuclear weapons. The rounds retain some radioactive properties, but they can’t generate a nuclear reaction like a nuclear weapon would, RAND nuclear expert and policy researcher Edward Geist said.

When Britain announced in March it was sending Ukraine the depleted uranium rounds, Russia falsely claimed they have nuclear components and warned that their use would open the door to further escalation. In the past, Russian President Vladimir Putin has suggested the war could escalate to nuclear weapons use.

A look at depleted uranium ammunition:

What is depleted uranium?

Depleted uranium is a byproduct of the process to create the rarer, enriched uranium used in nuclear fuel and weapons. Although far less powerful than enriched uranium and incapable of generating a nuclear reaction, depleted uranium is extremely dense — more dense than lead — a quality that makes it highly attractive as a projectile.

“It’s so dense and it’s got so much momentum that it just keeps going through the armor — and it heats it up so much that it catches on fire,” Geist said. 

When fired, a depleted uranium munition becomes “essentially an exotic metal dart fired at an extraordinarily high speed,” RAND senior defense analyst Scott Boston said.

In the 1970s, the U.S. Army began making armor-piercing rounds with depleted uranium and has since added it to composite tank armor to strengthen it. It also has added depleted uranium to the munitions fired by the Air Force’s A-10 close air support attack plane, known as the tank killer. The U.S. military is still developing depleted uranium munitions, notably the M829A4 armor-piercing round for the M1A2 Abrams main battle tank, Boston said.

What has Russia said?

In March, Putin warned that Moscow would “respond accordingly, given that the collective West is starting to use weapons with a ‘nuclear component.'” And Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the munitions were “a step toward accelerating escalation.”

Putin followed up several days later by saying Russia would respond to Britain’s move by stationing tactical nuclear weapons in neighboring Belarus. Putin and the Belarusian president said in July that Russia had already shipped some of the weapons.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the U.S. decision to supply depleted uranium ammunition to Ukraine was “very bad news.”

The U.S. announcement came late Wednesday during a visit to Kyiv by Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

The Pentagon has defended the use of the munitions. The U.S. military “has procured, stored, and used depleted uranium rounds for several decades, since these are a longstanding element of some conventional munitions,” Pentagon spokesman Marine Corps Lt. Col. Garron Garn said in a statement in March in response to a query from The Associated Press.

The rounds have “saved the lives of many service members in combat,” Garn said, adding that “other countries have long possessed depleted uranium rounds as well, including Russia.”

Garn would not discuss whether the M1A1 tanks being readied for Ukraine would contain depleted uranium armor modifications, citing operational security.

Not a bomb but still a risk

While depleted uranium munitions are not considered nuclear weapons, their emission of low levels of radiation has led the U.N. nuclear watchdog to urge caution when handling and warn of the possible dangers of exposure.

The handling of such ammunition “should be kept to a minimum and protective apparel (gloves) should be worn,” the International Atomic Energy Agency cautions, adding that “a public information campaign may, therefore, be required to ensure that people avoid handling the projectiles.

“This should form part of any risk assessment and such precautions should depend on the scope and number of ammunitions used in an area.”

The IAEA notes that depleted uranium is mainly a toxic chemical, as opposed to a radiation hazard. Particles in aerosols can be inhaled or ingested, and while most would be excreted again, some can enter the blood stream and cause kidney damage.

“High concentrations in the kidney can cause damage and, in extreme cases, renal failure,” the IAEA says.

The low-level radioactivity of a depleted uranium round “is a bug, not a feature” of the munition, Geist said, and if the U.S. military could find another material with the same density but without the radioactivity it would likely use that instead.

Depleted uranium munitions, as well as depleted uranium-enhanced armor, were used by U.S. tanks in the 1991 Gulf War against Iraq’s T-72 tanks and again in the invasion of Iraq in 2003, as well as in Serbia and in Kosovo.

U.S. troops have questioned whether some of the ailments they now face were caused by inhaling or being exposed to fragments after a munition was fired or their tanks were struck, damaging uranium-enhanced armor.

In a social media post on Telegram, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova slammed the U.S. decision to give Ukraine the munitions, writing, “What is this: a lie or stupidity?” She said an increase in cancer has been noted in places where ammunition with depleted uranium was used.
…

Concern for U.S. democracy amid deep national polarization has prompted the entities supporting 13 presidential libraries dating back to Herbert Hoover to call for a recommitment to the country’s bedrock principles, including the rule of law and respecting a diversity of beliefs.

The statement released Thursday, the first time the libraries have joined to make such a public declaration, said Americans have a strong interest in supporting democratic movements and human rights around the world because “free societies elsewhere contribute to our own security and prosperity here at home.”

“But that interest,” it said, “is undermined when others see our own house in disarray.”

The joint message from presidential centers, foundations and institutes emphasized the need for compassion, tolerance and pluralism while urging Americans to respect democratic institutions and uphold secure and accessible elections.

The statement noted that “debate and disagreement” are central to democracy but also alluded to the coarsening of dialogue in the public arena during an era when officials and their families are receiving death threats.

“Civility and respect in political discourse, whether in an election year or otherwise, are essential,” it said.

Most of the living former presidents have been sparing in giving their public opinions about the state of the nation as polls show that large swaths of Republicans still believe the lies perpetuated by former President Donald Trump and his allies that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. Trump, a Republican, also has lashed out at the justice system as he faces indictments in four criminal cases, including two related to his efforts to overturn the results of his reelection loss to Joe Biden, a Democrat.

Thursday’s statement stopped short of calling out individuals, but it still marked one of the most substantive acknowledgments that people associated with the nation’s former presidents are worried about the country’s trajectory.

“I think there’s great concern about the state of our democracy at this time,” said Mark Updegrove, CEO of the LBJ Foundation, which supports the LBJ Presidential Library in Austin, Texas. “We don’t have to go much farther than January 6 to realize that we are in a perilous state.”

Efforts to suppress or weaken voter turnout are of special interest to the LBJ Foundation, Updegrove said, given that President Lyndon Johnson considered his signing of the Voting Rights Act his “proudest legislative accomplishment.”

The bipartisan statement was signed by the Hoover Presidential Foundation, the Roosevelt Institute, the Truman Library Institute, the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, the LBJ Foundation, the Richard Nixon Foundation, the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation, the Carter Center, the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute, the George & Barbara Bush Foundation, the Clinton Foundation, the George W. Bush Presidential Center and the Obama Presidential Center. Those organizations all support presidential libraries created under the Presidential Library Act of 1955, along with the Eisenhower Foundation.

The Eisenhower Foundation chose not to sign, and it said in a statement emailed to The Associated Press: “The Eisenhower Foundation has respectfully declined to sign this statement. It would be the first common statement that the presidential centers and foundations have ever issued as a group, but we have had no collective discussion about it, only an invitation to sign.”

The foundation said each presidential entity had its own programs related to democracy.

The push for the joint statement was spearheaded by Daniel Kramer, executive director of the George W. Bush Institute. Kramer said the former president “did see and signed off on this statement.”

He said the effort was intended to send “a positive message reminding us of who we are and also reminding us that when we are in disarray, when we’re at loggerheads, people overseas are also looking at us and wondering what’s going on.” He also said it was necessary to remind Americans that their democracy cannot be taken for granted.

He said the Bush Institute has hosted several events on elections, including one as part of a joint initiative with the other groups called More Perfect that featured Bill Gates, a member of the board of supervisors in Arizona’s Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix. The county, its supervisors and its elections staff have been targeted repeatedly by election conspiracy theorists in recent years.

Gates and his family have been threatened by people who believe false allegations of election fraud.

“We wanted to remind people that those who oversee our elections are our fellow citizens,” Kramer said. “Some of them told stories that are almost heartbreaking about the threats they faced.”

He said he hoped the joint statement would generate wide support, but he added: “It’s hard to say whether it will or not in these polarized times.”

Melissa Giller, chief marketing officer at the Ronald Reagan Foundation and Institute, said the decision to sign on was a quick one. The foundation was approached shortly after it launched a new effort, its Center on Public Civility in Washington, D.C. She said the statement represents “everything our center will stand for.”

“We need to help put an end to the serious discord and division in our society,” Giller said in an emailed response. “America is experiencing a decline in trust, social cohesion, and personal interaction.”

Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser to former President Barack Obama who is now CEO of the Obama Foundation, said the former president supported the statement.

“This is a moment where we could all come together and show that democracy is not about partisan politics,” she said. “It’s about making our country strong, making our country more decent, more kind, more humane.”

Jarrett said one of the foundation’s priorities is trying to restore faith in the institutions that are the pillars of society. To do that has meant taking on disinformation and creating opportunity where “people believe that our democracy is on the up-and-up.”

She said Obama has led a democracy forum and is planning another later this year in Chicago.

“I think part of it is recognizing that we are very fragile right now,” Jarrett said, citing the fact that “we didn’t have a smooth orderly transition of power in the last election” along with people’s mistrust of the court system and elected officials.

“The wheels on our democracy bus,” she said, “feel a little wobbly right now.”
…

Russia is criticizing a new U.S. aid package for Ukraine that includes depleted uranium tank ammunition, saying the decision to send the rounds “is a clear sign of inhumanity.”

Russia’s embassy in Washington said on Telegram Wednesday that the United States is “deliberately transferring weapons with indiscriminate effects” and that it is fully aware of potential health and safety consequences from the ammunition.

The tank rounds could help Ukrainian forces destroy Russian tanks and have previously been provided to Ukraine by Britain.

Pentagon spokesperson Marine Corps Lt. Col. Garron Garn defended the use of the munitions in a statement to The Associated Press in March, saying the U.S. military “has procured, stored, and used depleted uranium rounds for several decades, since these are a longstanding element of some conventional munitions.”

Garn said Russia is among the countries that have long possessed depleted uranium rounds.

The U.N. Office for Disarmament Affairs says depleted uranium is the main byproduct of uranium enrichment, and that because of its high density it is used in munitions designed to penetrate armor plating.

The International Atomic Energy Agency said multiple evaluations of areas where depleted uranium munitions have been used “indicated that the existence of depleted uranium residues dispersed in the environment does not pose a radiological hazard to the population of the affected regions.”

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

Economic woes and depreciation of the yuan in China are affecting the lives of some Chinese immigrants thousands of miles away.

Zhai Li of Pasadena, California, has a consumer goods factory in China’s Xi’an, Shaanxi province, with her husband. Zhai and her son moved to Beijing so her son could attend elementary school there. She brought him back to the U.S. for middle school while her husband stayed in Xi’an to take care of the business.

“Usually, my husband sends us money for living expenses from China. We earn money in China and spend it here. I definitely don’t want the yuan to sag because my son’s tutoring fees and living expenses cost a lot every month,” Zhai said.

The Chinese yuan has slid to 7.3 to the U.S. dollar, a 10-month low and almost at the level of the 2008 global financial crisis, causing worry and uncertainty among some new Chinese immigrants living in the U.S.

“The factory at home can barely operate since the pandemic, which has greatly affected our income. I am really worried,” Zhai said.

She said that in the past, if people had a little extra money, they would want to spend it on more expensive things. Since the pandemic, people have run out of money. Many of them buy only what’s needed and not necessarily brand-name items, Zhai said.

“As the Chinese economy continues to deteriorate, the rate will likely exceed eight. Then, the yuan will become worthless like a piece of paper,” said Chinese immigrant Liu Pingfei, owner of a used-car dealership in Monterey Park, a Chinese enclave in the Los Angeles area.

Vicky Li, a businesswoman in Los Angeles, is more fortunate. She has stores in Los Angeles and Guangzhou specializing in dry goods.

“Usually, if business in China is good, I will exchange the yuan for U.S. dollars. If the business in the U.S. is better, I will exchange U.S. dollars for the yuan and then use it to purchase goods,” she said.

The weakness of the yuan “has little impact on me because my transactions are not very large, so it is still OK,” Li added.

Derek C. Tung has worked as a tax lawyer, accountant and financial planner in Los Angeles for 34 years. He works with many Chinese immigrant clients. He said the weak yuan would affect the middle class the most, and he expected the Chinese currency to continue to depreciate, chipping away at the purchasing power of people who depend on the yuan, such as Chinese students studying in the U.S.

“If you are not in the U.S. to invest but to study, and your parents are only working class, civil servants or ordinary workers in the private sector, with an annual income between 100,000 and 200,000 yuan ($13,666-$27,333), the weakness of the yuan will have a great impact on them,” Tung said.

Tung said he expected fewer Chinese to be traveling to the U.S. and buying real estate for investment in the future. However, people will still invest on a smaller scale and purchase primary residences, he said.  

Adrianna Zhang contributed to this report.
…

Federal prosecutors plan to seek a grand jury indictment of President Joe Biden’s son Hunter before the end of the month, according to court documents filed Wednesday.

The filing came in a gun possession case in which Hunter Biden was accused of having a firearm while being a drug user, though prosecutors did not name exactly which charges they will seek. He has also been under investigation by federal prosecutors for his business dealings.

Prosecutors under U.S. Attorney for Delaware David Weiss, newly named a special counsel in the case, said they expect an indictment before Sept. 29.

Hunter Biden’s lawyers, though, argued that prosecutors are barred from filing additional charges under an agreement the two sides previously reached in the gun case. It contains an immunity clause against federal prosecutions for some other potential crimes. Defense attorney Abbe Lowell said Hunter Biden has kept to the terms of the deal, including regular visits by the probation office.

“We expect a fair resolution of the sprawling, five-year investigation into Mr. Biden that was based on the evidence and the law, not outside political pressure, and we’ll do what is necessary on behalf of Mr. Biden to achieve that,” he said in a statement.

Prosecutors have said that the gun agreement is dead along with the rest of the plea agreement that called for Hunter Biden to plead guilty to misdemeanor tax offenses. It fell apart after U.S. District Judge Maryellen Noreika raised questions about it during a court appearance in July.

The Justice Department did not have immediate comment.

News of a possible new indictment comes as House Republicans are preparing for a likely impeachment inquiry of President Biden over unsubstantiated claims that he played a role in his son’s foreign business affairs during his time as vice president.

“If you look at all the information we have been able to gather so far, it is a natural step forward that you would have to go to an impeachment inquiry,” House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., told Fox News recently.

The younger Biden has been the target of congressional investigations since Republicans gained control of the House in January, with lawmakers obtaining thousands of pages of financial records from various members of the Biden family through subpoenas to the Treasury Department and various financial institutions. Three powerful House committees are now pursuing several lines of inquiry related to the president and his son.

And while Republicans have sought to connect Hunter Biden’s financial affairs directly to his father, they have failed to produce evidence that the president directly participated in his son’s work, though he sometimes had dinner with Hunter Biden’s clients or said hello to them on calls.

In recent months, Republicans have also shifted their focus to delving into the Justice Department’s investigation of Hunter Biden after whistleblower testimony claimed he has received special treatment throughout the yearslong case.

Hunter Biden was charged in June with two misdemeanor crimes of failure to pay more than $100,000 in taxes from over $1.5 million in income in both 2017 and 2018. He had been expected to plead guilty in July, after he made an agreement with prosecutors, who were planning to recommend two years of probation. The case fell apart during the hearing after Noreika, who was appointed by President Donald Trump, raised multiple concerns about the specifics of the deal and her role in the proceedings.

If prosecutors file a new gun possession charge, it could run into court challenges. A federal appeals court in Louisiana ruled against the ban on gun possession by drug users last month, citing a 2022 gun ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court.

News of another indictment comes after U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland named Weiss a special counsel, giving him broad authority to investigate and report out his findings and intensifying the investigation into the president’s son ahead of the 2024 election.

The White House Counsel’s office referred questions to Hunter Biden’s personal attorneys. 
…

A chair with Myanmar’s flag was left empty as U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris spoke to Southeast Asian leaders during the U.S.-ASEAN summit hosted by outgoing chair Indonesia. VOA’s White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara is traveling with Harris and sends this report from Jakarta.
…

A U.S. federal judge ruled Wednesday that a jury in an upcoming civil defamation case against former President Donald Trump will have to decide only how much more he owes a longtime New York advice columnist because a jury already decided that he sexually abused her in a luxury department store dressing room in the 1990s.

Judge Lewis Kaplan in New York said the facts behind a federal jury’s decision earlier this year involving E. Jean Carroll’s assault claims against Trump will carry over to the scheduled January defamation case.

In the abuse case, the jury, while rejecting her rape claim against Trump, ordered him to pay Carroll $5 million for abusing and defaming her. Trump, now the leading Republican candidate for the party’s 2024 presidential nomination, has appealed the verdict and denies he attacked her.

After Carroll, a one-time college cheerleader and later an advice columnist for Elle magazine, first filed her lawsuit, the former U.S. leader claimed he didn’t know her and that in any event he wouldn’t have been attracted to her because she wasn’t “my type.”

A picture shown at the trial showed them chatting and socializing decades ago at a New York party.

The first trial concerned the sexual assault accusation itself, an incident that allegedly occurred after what Carroll, now 79, said was a chance encounter with Trump at the Bergdorf-Goodman department store in New York when he asked her to help him shop for a gift for a woman.

In Wednesday’s decision, Kaplan wrote, “The jury considered and decided issues that are common to both cases — including whether Mr. Trump falsely accused Ms. Carroll of fabricating her sexual assault charge and, if that were so, that he did it with knowledge that this accusation was false” or acted with reckless disregard for the truth.

“The truth or falsity of Mr. Trump’s 2019 statements therefore depends … on whether Ms. Carroll lied about Mr. Trump sexually assaulting her,” Kaplan said. “The jury’s finding that she did not therefore is binding in [the defamation] case and precludes Mr. Trump from contesting the falsity of his 2019 statements.”

Although Carroll’s suit was filed in 2019, the judge in June allowed her lawyers to add the statements Trump made against her at a CNN town hall political event that was broadcast the night after he lost the abuse case in May.

“This woman, I don’t know her. I never met her. I have no idea who she is,” Trump said. “She’s a whack job.”

Carroll lawyer Roberta Kaplan, who is not related to the judge, said Carroll looks forward to a trial “limited to damages for the original defamatory statements Donald Trump made.”

Trump lawyer Alina Habba said that his legal team is confident that the jury verdict will be overturned, which would moot the judge’s new decision.

The civil case is one of an array of court challenges Trump is facing in the coming months.

He has been charged in four criminal cases encompassing 91 charges, two involving attempts to overturn his 2020 reelection loss to Democrat Joe Biden, another for his handling of highly classified national security documents after he left office in 2021 and a fourth for allegedly falsifying business records to hide $130,000 in hush money payments to a porn film star ahead of his successful 2016 run for the White House.
…

Indonesian security officials on Wednesday attempted to block a White House pool reporter from covering the summit between the United States and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, in Jakarta.

Indonesian security officials surrounded Patsy Widakuswara, an Indonesian American and VOA’s White House bureau chief, who was acting as the pool reporter for U.S. print and radio media covering the event.

As the press pool was ushered out of a meeting between U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris and Indonesian President Joko Widodo, VOA’s Widakuswara called out two questions — to Harris about whether the U.S. is close to reaching a deal on Indonesian nickel, and, in Indonesian, to Widodo about whether he was disappointed that U.S. President Joe Biden was not present at the summit.

Indonesian officials then physically blocked Widakuswara, as officials from the vice president’s office tried to reason with the Indonesian authorities.

“It was tense, but I didn’t feel anxious or panicked or anything like that, because I knew that I was just doing my job,” Widakuswara told VOA. ”And I also knew that the VP’s office would stand by me. I just stood my ground.”

Outside, Widakuswara was surrounded by Indonesian security officials, who told her to leave because she shouted and that she was banned from entering any other events, the reporter said. She also described the incident in a series of posts on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.

“There are moments where shouting is just not appropriate. This was not one of them,” she said.

According to Widakuswara, one official said in Indonesian, “Until Armageddon comes, I will not allow her in.”

As a pool reporter, Widakuswara was among a limited number of journalists selected to cover the event and share their observations with the rest of the media corps who were not in attendance. Widakuswara said she was worried that if Indonesian officials did not budge, she would not be able to send pool reports to fellow reporters.

But U.S. officials came to Widakuswara’s defense.

“It is a source of pride for us as American diplomats and civil servants to stand up for the freedom of the press overseas, and as part of that, for access for the traveling White House press corps,” Dean Lieberman, deputy national security adviser to the vice president, told VOA in a statement.

U.S. officials continued to press the Indonesians to let Widakuswara in, saying Harris would not enter the summit room until the entire press pool, including Widakuswara, was allowed inside.

“That person is absolutely critical to be in there because they’re not just representing their own organization, they’re representing many news organizations,” Steve Herman, VOA’s chief national correspondent and former White House bureau chief, said about the role of pool reporters.

After Sung Kim, the U.S. ambassador to Indonesia, approached the brewing standoff, the Indonesian officials finally let Widakuswara into the room where the U.S.-ASEAN summit was taking place.

“Securing sufficient press access remains a top priority for the Vice President whenever and wherever we travel. We may not always answer shouted questions, but a free and independent press is a core tenet of our democracy, and we carry that with us wherever we go,” Lieberman added in the statement.

Josh Rogin, a columnist at The Washington Post, witnessed the incident, which he said wasn’t a good look for Jakarta.

“The entire point of the U.S.-ASEAN summit is to celebrate shared values, and if the host isn’t standing up for those values and representing those values, it kind of undermines the entire endeavor,” Rogin told VOA.

Other reporters turned to social media to voice their support for Widakuswara.

“It is a relief to see this current administration understanding and defending the pool reporting system, compared to some situations that occurred in previous administrations,” added Herman, a White House Correspondents’ Association member.

In a statement to VOA, Rosan Roeslani, Indonesian ambassador to the United States, said, “We regret the incident involving Ms. Patsy Widakuswara and understand the concerns raised, while emphasizing our commitment to press freedom.”

He added that the event in question was a photo spray, not a press conference, and that “shouting and loud voices raised security concerns.”

Widakuswara disputed this characterization. “There have been sprays of Widodo and Biden bilats where we were all shouting questions, and no one was reprimanded,” she said. “As American journalists, we have the right to question leaders when we see them.”

In his statement, Roeslani said, “We remain dedicated to upholding press freedom and will work on clarifying and adhering to event-specific protocols to prevent future misunderstandings or disruptions.”

Didier Saugy, executive director of the National Press Club in Washington, said the incident was unacceptable.

“Everybody should have the freedom to ask questions,” he told VOA.

In a statement to VOA, a U.S. State Department spokesperson said the agency is concerned by this incident and will contact the Indonesian government to address it.

“A free and independent press is a core institution of healthy democracies and is vital for ensuring electorates can make informed decisions and hold government officials accountable,” the spokesperson said. “The United States condemns threats, harassment, and violence targeting journalists and media workers.”

Indonesia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not immediately reply to VOA’s email requesting comment.

Widakuswara said she was grateful for the support of the vice president’s team and the U.S. Embassy staff.

Born and raised in Indonesia, Widakuswara got her start as a journalist in the Southeast Asian country.

Returning to her hometown on board Air Force Two with Harris to cover the summit “was a proud immigrant moment for me,” Widakuswara, who now has U.S. citizenship, told VOA. “I’m very proud of my Indonesian heritage.”

Out of 180 countries, Indonesia ranks 108 in terms of press freedom, according to Reporters Without Borders. Press freedom in the country has increasingly come under attack in recent years.

“While I am and will always be a proud Indonesian as much as I am a proud American, I know which tradition of freedom of the press I prefer,” Widakuswara wrote in a social media post.

The incident put a slight damper on the trip for Widakuswara, she told VOA.

“It does sadden me that this is the way that Indonesia treats its press,” she said. “And I also don’t like being the story. I don’t think any reporter likes being the story.”
…

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is in Kyiv on an unannounced two-day visit, his fourth to Ukraine since Russia invaded the country in February 2022.  

Blinken is expected to meet with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to hear their assessment of their needs for the ongoing counteroffensive against Russia and the coming winter.  

 “We’ve seen good progress on the counteroffensive (inaudible). We want to make sure that Ukraine has what it needs not only to succeed in the counteroffensive but has what it needs for the long term to make sure that it has a strong deterrent, strong defense capacity so that, in the future, aggressions like this don’t happen again,” Blinken said ahead of his talks Wednesday.

Blinken is likely to announce a new package of U.S. assistance worth more than $1 billion, a senior State Department official told reporters on the trip.

Several hours before his arrival, Russia carried out airstrikes on Kyiv and the southern region of Odesa. No casualties were reported in the capital city, but Ukrainian officials say a civilian was killed and port infrastructure damaged in the south.

The State Department says Blinken intends to demonstrate ironclad U.S. support for Ukraine, and to coordinate with leaders there ahead of the United Nations General Assembly in New York next week, where Washington will lead the push for continued support for Kyiv.

President Zelenskyy tweeted that he has been meeting with his top staff to make plans for winter, and in his words, “anything the terrorist Russian state might do.” 

Russia has accused the United States of prolonging the war by supporting Ukraine, amid reports that Moscow faces a serious shortage of weapons and ammunition.

A senior State Department official traveling with Blinken was asked by reporters about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s reported plans to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in the coming days in Vladivostok to ask for weapons and ammunition.   

The official told reporters: “It speaks to Russian desperation that they have to go scrounging for stuff in Pyongyang, you know, and that Putin has to fly half all the way  across his country to meet another autocrat.”

The State Department official compared that with the coalition that supports Ukraine, at some 50 countries around the world.
…

After a visit to a warehouse where Hawaiian Electric Company is housing power poles and electrical equipment that may be key to the investigation of last month’s devastating fires on Maui, lawyers for Lahaina residents and business owners told a court Tuesday that cable TV and telephone companies share responsibility for the disaster because they allegedly overloaded and destabilized some of the poles.

The lawyers said the cables were attached in a way that put too much tension on the poles, causing them to lean and break in the winds on Aug. 8 when flames burned down much of Lahaina, killing at least 115 people and destroying more than 2,000 structures.

LippSmith LLP has filed a proposed class action against Hawaii’s electric utility and Maui County in state court in Hawaii. Attorney Graham LippSmith is now asking the court to add multiple telecommunications companies and public and private landowners to the original suit.

“In a disaster of this magnitude, it takes some time for all the potentially responsible parties to come into focus and be brought into court. Our investigation thus far shows a constellation of many serious failures that together led to this horrible tragedy,” MaryBeth LippSmith, co-founder of the Hawaii- and California-based firm, said in an interview Tuesday.

Pacific Gas & Electric in California filed for bankruptcy in 2019 due to a succession of harrowing wildfires ignited by its long-neglected electrical grid in Northern California.

But LippSmith rejected the suggestion the firm is seeking extra defendants in the event that Hawaiian Electric declares bankruptcy. Rather it’s trying to get at the root of multiple failures in order to prevent this kind of tragedy in the future, she said. The lawsuit seeks damages and injunctive relief, including a court order to force the defendants to address fire risk.

When LippSmith’s team visited the warehouse, together with officials with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, they said they saw a pole that had snapped at the base and fallen to the ground, damaging the cross-arms of a neighboring pole.

Because sections of poles had been cut up, apparently with a chainsaw, they could not tell if one pole or several had snapped, and they said they were not allowed close enough to identify pole numbers.

The cables had also been stripped off the poles and Hawaiian Electric only brought its own equipment to the warehouse, they said. The sterile display bears little relation to the equipment after the fire, so the attorneys and their fire investigators viewed pre-fire photos of the poles. They said those showed no slack in the cable TV and telephone lines that ran between the poles, mid-height. That over-tensioning and the uneven distribution of weight caused the poles to lean downhill, they claim.

Charter Communications, which owns cable provider Spectrum, declined to comment.

The proposed amended complaint still holds the power utilities responsible for the wildfires. It accuses them of failing to shut off power preemptively despite exceptionally high winds and dry conditions, failing to replace old wooden poles too weak to withstand 105 mile per hours winds as required by a 2002 national standard, briefly recharging the lines on Aug. 8 in parts of Lahaina and blocking evacuation routes while crews serviced downed lines.

The complaint also seeks to hold other parties responsible. It says when old wooden power poles fell, they landed on highly flammable vegetation that had not been maintained by private and state landowners and both “ignited the fire and fueled its cataclysmic spread.” It says the county should have properly maintained vegetation, aggressively reduced nonnative plants, and sounded sirens to warn people of the approaching fire.

Hawaiian Electric acknowledged last week that its power lines started a fire on the morning of Aug. 8, but faulted county firefighters for declaring the blaze contained and then leaving the scene, only to have a second wildfire break out nearby and become the deadliest in the U.S. in more than a century.

Hawaiian Electric is a for-profit, investor-owned, publicly traded utility that serves 95% of Hawaii’s electric customers. It faces a spate of new lawsuits that seek to hold it responsible.

In response to a request for comment, a utility spokesperson said Tuesday the company doesn’t comment on pending litigation. The Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources, named as a defendant, said the same.

“We are awaiting guidance from our legal counsel before addressing,” a Maui County spokesperson said when asked for comment.

Maui County is blaming the utility for failing to shut off power. John Fiske, an attorney at a California firm that’s representing the county, has said the ultimate responsibility rests with Hawaiian Electric to properly keep up its equipment, and make sure lines are not live when they’re downed or could be downed.

 
…

President Joe Biden heads to the G20 summit in India with big goals and high hopes that the Group of 20 leading rich and developing nations can work together on major global issues, the White House said Tuesday – amid speculation over his health after first lady Jill Biden tested positive for COVID-19 the day before.

“He has no symptoms,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said, adding that Biden also tested negative on Tuesday morning and would be tested on a schedule determined by his doctor. She did not say, when asked, what the plan would be if he were to test positive before his Thursday departure for New Delhi.

National security adviser Jake Sullivan said the administration will be focused on issues like climate change, debt restructuring and the war in Ukraine. The gathering starts Saturday in the Indian capital.

“We hope this G20 summit will show that the world’s major economies can work together even in challenging times,” Sullivan said. “So as we head into New Delhi, our focus is going to be on delivering for developing countries, making progress on key priorities for the American people from climate to technology, and showing our commitment to the G20 as a forum that can actually – as I said before – deliver.”

Analysts say the absence of two key leaders – Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping – will impact proceedings, especially around the biggest challenge facing its host, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

“The great drama of this summit in Delhi is whether or not the countries can get a fully consensus communique, which they did last year at the last (summit) in Bali, which included paragraphs in which Russia agreed, as the communique said, that it had committed aggression in Ukraine,” said professor John Kirton, who heads the G20 Research Group at the University of Toronto. He spoke to VOA on Zoom.

“Whether or not Mr. Modi can pull off a full consensus communique the way President Joko Widodo of Indonesia did last year, we’ll have to wait and see. But I think it’s good news that Putin yet again has decided to skip the summit, as he did Bali last year. And it even looks like Xi Jinping of China might not show up. That will make it a lot easier for all of the other countries to take action.”

Biden recently said he was “disappointed” that the powerful Chinese leader was not planning to attend.

Nevertheless, he said, “I’m going to get to see him.”

Sullivan, on Tuesday, did not say when such a meeting might happen.

And analysts say they hope that New Delhi and Beijing can see past their disagreement over a new Chinese map that India disputes.

“Geopolitical tensions were certainly there well before India’s G20 year,” said Stephanie Segal, a senior fellow of the economics program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “The fact that they are heightened, and that there’s a focus on them going into this leaders summit is not ideal. My hope and expectation would be again, the framing of this summit on economic issues, that they can manage to put the border dispute in a separate category.”

She said she hopes the delegations can see beyond their differences and focus on reforming multilateral institutions like the World Bank, a move analysts say would have wide-ranging effects.

“What those reforms, if they actually go through, would accomplish is putting a greater focus on what we call global public goods – so things like climate, pandemic preparedness, fragility, food insecurity,” she said. “And the reforms would allow these institutions including the World Bank to provide additional financing to both emerging market and low income countries and financing at far more preferential terms.”
…

Henry “Enrique” Tarrio, the former head of the far-right Proud Boys, was sentenced on Tuesday to 22 years in prison for his involvement in the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, the longest penalty imposed so far for the deadly riot.

Tarrio’s sentence, handed down by U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly in Washington came after four of his lieutenants last week received prison sentences of 10 to 18 years. The five were convicted in May of plotting the assault on the Capitol in order to block Congress from certifying the results of the 2020 presidential election and to keep then-President Donald Trump in power.

The attack injured nearly 140 police officers guarding the Capitol and was blamed for the deaths of five people. More than 1,100 Trump supporters have been charged in connection with the assault, with hundreds of others still being sought by the FBI.

Before Tuesday, the longest sentence imposed on a January 6 defendant was 18 years, which two people received: Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the Oath Keepers militia, in May, and Ethan Nordean, another Proud Boys leader, last week.

Although Tarrio was not at the Capitol during the bloody melee, prosecutors say he was the architect and “primary organizer” of the plot, directing the attack from outside Washington and later boasting about it.

“Make no mistake … we did this,” Tarrio wrote in an online message to a close-knit group of top Proud Boys leaders.

Tarrio and his four co-defendants – Nordean, Joe Biggs, Zachary Rehl and Dominic Pezzola – were tried together earlier this year for seditious conspiracy and other serious charges. All but Pezzola were found guilty of seditious conspiracy, a rare Civil War-era offense that carries a maximum of 20 years.

Last week, Nordean, Biggs and Rehl were sentenced to 18, 17 and 15 years, respectively, substantially less than what prosecutors were seeking. Pezzola, who dodged the seditious conspiracy charge but was convicted of other charges, received 10 years.

The Justice Department had recommended 33 years for Tarrio, saying the “naturally charismatic leader” and “savvy propagandist” had used his influence as chairman of the group “to organize and execute the conspiracy to forcibly stop the peaceful democratic transfer of power.”

“To Tarrio, January 6 was an act of revolution,” prosecutors wrote, seeking to add a “terrorism enhancement” to his sentence.

Seeking leniency, Tarrio’s lawyers denied he contacted or directed the Proud Boys on January 6. They also cited Rhodes’ 18-year sentence to argue for no more than 15 years.

In an emotional address to the court, Tarrio apologized to his family, law enforcement and lawmakers “for January 6,” saying there was “no place for political violence” in the country.

“I pray for unity for this entire country,” he said.

But Kelly, who presided over the Proud Boys trial and sentencing, wasn’t persuaded by Tarrio’s apology or effort to distance himself from the January 6 attack.

“I don’t have any indication that [Tarrio] is remorseful for the actual things he was convicted of, which is seditious conspiracy and a conspiracy to obstruct the election,” Kelly said before he sentenced Tarrio.

The attack of January 6, he said, disrupted the country’s long-standing tradition of the peaceful transfer of power.

What happened on January 6 “was extremely serious and a disgrace,” Kelly said, noting Tarrio’s leadership role in the plot.
…

Arms negotiations between Russia and North Korea are actively advancing, a U.S. official said on Tuesday and warned leader Kim Jong Un that his country would pay a price for supplying Russia with weapons to use in Ukraine.

Providing weapons to Russia “is not going to reflect well on North Korea, and they will pay a price for this in the international community,” U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters at the White House.

The Kremlin said earlier on Tuesday it had “nothing to say” about statements by U.S. officials that Kim planned to travel to Russia this month to meet President Vladimir Putin and discuss weapons supplies to Moscow.

Kim expects discussions about weapons to continue, Sullivan said, including at leader level and “perhaps even in person.”

“We have continued to squeeze Russia’s defense industrial base,” Sullivan said, and Moscow is now “looking to whatever source they can find” for goods like ammunition.

“We will continue to call on North Korea to abide by its public commitments not to supply weapons to Russia that will end up killing Ukrainians,” Sullivan said.

On Monday, U.S. National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said Kim and Putin could be planning to meet, and The New York Times cited unnamed U.S. and allied officials as saying Kim plans to travel to Russia as soon as next week to meet Putin. Asked if he could confirm the talks, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, “No, I can’t. There’s nothing to say.”

As Russia’s isolation over its war in Ukraine has grown, it has seen increasing value in North Korea, according to political analysts. For North Korea’s part, relations with Russia have not always been as warm as they were at the height of the Soviet Union, but now the country is reaping clear benefits from Moscow’s need for friends.

Moscow-Pyongyang defense cooperation

A North Korean Defense Ministry official in November said Pyongyang has “never had ‘arms dealings’ with Russia” and has “no plan to do so in the future.”

Moscow and Pyongyang have promised to boost defense cooperation.

Russia’s Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, who visited Pyongyang in July to attend weapons displays that included North Korea’s banned ballistic missiles, said on Monday the two countries are discussing the possibility of joint military exercises.

“Just as you can tell a person by their friends, you can tell a country by the company it keeps,” said Keir Giles, senior consulting fellow with Chatham House’s Russia and Eurasia program. “In Russia’s case, that company now consists largely of fellow rogue states.”

The trip would be Kim’s first visit abroad in more than four years, and the first since the coronavirus pandemic.

While he made more trips abroad than his father as leader, Kim’s travel is often shrouded in secrecy and heavy security. Unlike his father, who was said to be averse to flying, Kim has flown his personal Russian-made jet for some of his trips. But U.S. officials told The New York Times that he may take an armored train across the land border that North Korea shares with Russia.

Kim is likely to want to emphasize a sense of Russian backing, and may seek deals on arms sales, aid and sending laborers to Russia, said Andrei Lankov, a North Korea expert at Seoul’s Kookmin University.

The United States in August imposed sanctions on three entities it accused of being tied to arms deals between North Korea and Russia.

North Korea has conducted six nuclear tests since 2006 and had been testing various missiles over recent years.

Russia has joined China in opposing new sanctions on North Korea, blocking a U.S.-led push and publicly splitting the U.N. Security Council for the first time since it started punishing Pyongyang in 2006.
…

U.S. lawmakers face a lengthy list of priorities as they return to work in the nation’s capital this month after going into recess for the month of August. The U.S. Senate returns to work this week with renewed concerns about the health of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, while the U.S. House of Representatives comes back into session next week as Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy weighs an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden. 

Government funding 

With just 11 working days left until funding for the U.S. government runs out on September 30, U.S. lawmakers’ most urgent priority is to avoid a government shutdown. There’s almost no chance the Republican-majority House and Democratic-majority U.S. Senate can agree on a full year of funding in time, raising the likelihood lawmakers will pass a short-term solution known as a continuing resolution, or CR. 

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a letter to colleagues last Friday his chamber would be focused on passing a spending bill “preventing House Republican extremists from forcing a government shutdown.” 

Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy has already faced blowback from conservatives within his party this year for cutting a deal with the White House, agreeing to budget levels in return for preventing the U.S. from hitting the debt ceiling. He argues a CR will give Republicans more time to negotiate the spending cuts they hope to make. And some Republicans agree that shutting down the government is the wrong strategy to enact their demands. 

“When we shut down our government, we communicate to our adversaries that America is vulnerable and threaten the security of our nation,” Republican Rep. David Joyce, who oversees the Homeland Security Subcommittee of the House Committee on Appropriations, said in a statement. 

Continuing resolutions have increasingly become a normal course of action for the U.S. Congress in recent years. 

“We’ve also been seeing more government shutdowns, more need to resort to temporary funding agreements, while they try and negotiate longer ones. So that’s where a lot of that dysfunction comes from. It’s Congress actually not carrying out the really basic responsibility of passing these bills,” said Michael Thorning, director of structural democracy at the Bipartisan Policy Center, in an interview with VOA.

Supplemental funding and defense spending

Just before leaving on recess, the U.S. Senate passed its version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), authorizing funding for the U.S. military. The Senate’s version of defense spending priorities differs significantly from the version passed in the House, where conservatives added restrictions on abortion for military service members and cuts to funding for transgender members of the military. Both chambers must agree on a new version to pass – a process known as reconciliation – to fund the U.S. military for the coming year.

U.S. lawmakers will also debate $40 billion in supplemental funding priorities unveiled by the Biden administration over the summer recess, including $21 billion in military and humanitarian aid for Ukraine and $12 billion in domestic disaster relief funding to address flooding in Vermont and hurricane relief in the southern United States.

Some conservative members of Congress have called for a decrease in U.S. funding for Ukraine’s war against the unprovoked Russian invasion, saying the funds do not have proper oversight and would be better used to address domestic economic concerns and funding for security at U.S. borders. But the majority of U.S. lawmakers say support for Ukraine is a crucial part of America’s national security strategy.

“They’re really having some tough negotiations and debates just within their own party,” Thorning told VOA about Republicans’ policy disagreements. “That’s really where the sticking point is. And I don’t know that it’s any sign of long-term dysfunction. I think it’s really just actually a function of a very slim majority in the House.”

Impeachment inquiry

Over the Congressional recess, McCarthy faced increasing pressure from former President Donald Trump and some of the more conservative members of the Republican party to pursue an impeachment of Biden.

“If you look at all the information we have been able to gather so far, it is a natural step forward that you would have to go to an impeachment inquiry,” the House speaker told Fox News Channel host Maria Bartiromo late last month. Multiple Republican-led House committees have pursued investigations into the Biden family’s foreign business dealings, his administration’s immigration policies and a probe into the disastrous evacuation of Afghanistan two years ago.

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul has led a series of hearings with administration officials examining the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. He has given the U.S. State Department until September 7 to provide transcribed interviews with nine of their current and former officials involved in the withdrawal or risk a subpoena. 

An impeachment inquiry is the first step in the process of removing a president from office. The U.S. House of Representatives would need to vote on and pass Articles of Impeachment to trigger a trial of the president in the U.S. Senate. Conservative Republicans so far have failed to marshal enough moderate Republican votes for passage. The House committees have not yet produced evidence that Biden meddled in the business dealings of his son or his son’s partners.

Health of leadership

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell experienced a second concerning health episode in public view last month, freezing for 30 seconds at a press conference. The 81-year-old lawmaker’s health has declined since he suffered a concussion earlier this year and reportedly began using a wheelchair in the halls of the U.S. Senate. A major proponent of U.S. aid to Ukraine, McConnell will be closely watched when he returns to Senate press conferences this week to see if he will continue to be a major player within the party.

Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein also continues her health struggles, after rebuffing calls for her to step down earlier this year when a serious case of shingles left her unable to serve on the influential Senate Judiciary Committee.  

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise announced over the summer recess that he has been diagnosed with blood cancer. Scalise – who made an impressive recovery after suffering gunshot wounds during a practice for the Congressional baseball game in 2017 – said the cancer appears “very treatable.”  
…

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell’s health episodes show “no evidence” of being a stroke or seizure disorder, the Capitol physician said in a letter on Tuesday, offering little further explanation for the apparent freeze-ups that have drawn concerns about the 81-year-old’s situation.

McConnell’s office released the letter from attending physician Brian P. Monahan as the Senate returns from an extended summer break and questions mount over the long-serving Republican leader’s health. The GOP leader froze up last week during a press conference in Kentucky, unable to respond to a question, the second such episode in a month.

“There is no evidence that you have a seizure disorder or that you experienced a stroke, TIA or movement disorder such as Parkinson’s disease,” Monahan wrote, using the acronym for a transient ischemic attack, a brief stroke.

The doctor said the assessments entailed several medical evaluations including a brain MRI imaging and “consultations with several neurologists for a comprehensive neurology assessment.” The evaluations come after McConnell fell and suffered a concussion earlier this year.

“There are no changes recommended in treatment protocols as you continue recovery from your March 2023 fall,” the doctor said.

After last week’s freeze-up, the attending physician to Congress cleared McConnell to continue with his planned schedule. McConnell arrived Tuesday at the Capitol office.

But the episodes have fueled quiet concern among Republican senators and intense speculation in Washington about McConnell’s ability to remain as leader. The long-serving senator fell and hit his head at a political dinner this year, suffering the concussion.

It all comes amid a swirl of health concerns in Washington, particularly as COVID-19 cases show signs of rising heading into fall. First lady Jill Biden tested positive for COVID-19 over the weekend, but President Joe Biden tested negative.

Nevertheless, many Republican allies have flocked to McConnell’s side, ensuring the famously guarded leader a well of support. Rivals have muted any calls for a direct challenge to McConnell’s leadership.

McConnell is expected to address the Senate as it opens for a flurry of fall activity, most notably the need for Congress to approve funding to prevent any interruption in federal operations by Sept. 30, which is the end of the fiscal year.

Some House Republicans are willing to shutdown the government at the end of the month if they are unable to enact steep spending restrictions they are fighting for that go beyond the agreement Biden reached with Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy earlier this summer.

In leading Senate Republicans, McConnell is viewed by the White House and Democrats as a potentially more pragmatic broker who is more interested in avoiding a messy government shutdown that could be politically damaging to the GOP.

McConnell has also made it a priority to ensure Ukraine continues to receive support from the U.S. as it battles Russia, with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy mounting a counter-offensive.

A $40 billion funding package for Ukraine and U.S. disaster relief for communities hit by fires, floods and other problems, including the fentanyl crisis, is being proposed by the White House, but it is being met with skepticism from some Republicans reluctant to help in the war effort.

McConnell’s health has visibly declined since the concussion in March, after which he took some weeks to recover. His speaking has been more halting, and he has walked more slowly and carefully.

First elected in 1984, he became the longest serving Senate party leader in January. The question posed before he froze up last week was about his own plans, and whether he would run for re-election in 2026.

McConnell had been home in Kentucky at the time keeping a robust political schedule, speaking frequently to the public and press. Before freezing up last week, McConnell had just given a 20-minute speech with no issues.

Similarly, when he froze up during a press conference at the Capitol last month, he took a short break in his office and then returned to microphones field about a half-dozen other questions and banter with the press.
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After months of struggling to find agreement on just about anything in a divided Congress, lawmakers are returning to Capitol Hill to try to avert a government shutdown, even as House Republicans consider whether to press forward with an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.

A short-term funding measure to keep government offices fully functioning will dominate the September agenda, along with emergency funding for Ukraine, federal disaster funds and the Republican-driven probe into Hunter Biden’s overseas business dealings.

Time is running short for Congress to act. The House is scheduled to meet for just 11 days before the government’s fiscal year ends on Sept. 30, leaving little room to maneuver. And the dealmaking will play out as two top Republicans, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, deal with health issues.

The president and congressional leaders, including Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, are focused on passage of a months-long funding measure, known as a continuing resolution, to keep government offices running while lawmakers iron out a budget. It’s a step Congress routinely takes to avoid stoppages, but McCarthy faces resistance from within his own Republican ranks, including from some hardline conservatives who openly embrace the idea of a government shutdown.

“Honestly, it’s a pretty big mess,” McConnell said at an event in Kentucky last week.

Here are the top issues as lawmakers return from the August break:

Keeping the government open

When Biden and McCarthy struck a deal to suspend the nation’s debt ceiling in June, it included provisions for topline spending numbers. But under pressure from the House Freedom Caucus, House Republicans have advanced spending bills that cut below that agreement.

Republicans have also tried to load their spending packages with conservative policy wins. For example, House Republicans added provisions blocking abortion coverage, transgender care and diversity initiatives to a July defense package, turning what has traditionally been a bipartisan effort into a sharply contested bill.

But Democrats control the Senate and are certain to reject most of the conservative proposals. Senators are crafting their spending bills on a bipartisan basis with an eye toward avoiding unrelated policy fights.

Top lawmakers in both chambers are now turning to a stopgap funding package, a typical strategy to give the lawmakers time to iron out a long-term agreement.

The House Freedom Caucus has already released a list of demands it wants included in the continuing resolution. But they amount to a right-wing wish list that would never fly in the Senate.

The conservative opposition means McCarthy will almost certainly have to win significant Democratic support to pass a funding bill — but such an approach risks a new round of conflict with the same conservatives who in the past have threatened to oust him from the speakership.

Democrats are already readying blame for the House GOP.

“The last thing the American people deserve is for extreme House members to trigger a government shutdown that hurts our economy, undermines our disaster preparedness, and forces our troops to work without guaranteed pay,” said White House spokesman Andrew Bates.

In a letter to his colleagues Friday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer wrote that the focus when the Senate returns Tuesday will be “funding the government and preventing House Republican extremists from forcing a government shutdown.”

It leaves McCarthy desperate to get the votes to keep government offices running and avoid the political blowback. As he tries to persuade Republicans to go along with a temporary fix, McCarthy has been arguing that a government shutdown would also halt Republican investigations into the Biden administration.

“If we shut down, all of government shuts it down — investigations and everything else — it hurts the American public,” the speaker said on Fox News last week.

Impeachment inquiry

Since they gained the House majority, Republicans have launched a series of investigations into the Biden administration, with an eye towards impeaching the president or his Cabinet officials. They have now zeroed in on the president’s son, Hunter Biden, and his overseas business dealings, including with Ukrainian gas company Burisma.

The inquiries have not produced evidence that President Biden took official action on behalf of his son or business partners, but McCarthy has called impeachment a “natural step forward” for the investigations.

An impeachment inquiry by the House would be a first step toward bringing articles of impeachment. It is not yet clear what that may look like, especially because the speaker does not appear to have the GOP votes lined up to support an impeachment inquiry.

Moderate Republicans have so far balked at sending the House on a full-fledged impeachment hunt.

But Donald Trump, running once again to challenge Biden, is prodding them to move ahead quickly.

“I don’t know how actually how a Republican could not do it,” Trump said in an interview on Real America’s Voice. “I think a Republican would be primaried and lose immediately, no matter what district you’re in.”

Ukraine and disaster funding

The White House has requested more than $40 billion in emergency funding, including $13 billion in military aid for Ukraine, $8 billion in humanitarian support for the nation and $12 billion to replenish U.S. federal disaster funds at home.

The request for the massive cash infusion comes as Kyiv launches a counteroffensive against the Russian invasion. But support for Ukraine is waning among Republicans, especially as Trump has repeatedly expressed skepticism of the war.

Nearly 70 Republicans voted for an unsuccessful effort to discontinue military aid to Ukraine in July, though strong support for the war effort remains among many members.

It is also not clear whether the White House’s supplemental request for U.S. disaster funding, which also includes funds to bolster enforcement and curb drug trafficking at the southern U.S. border, will be tied to the Ukraine funding or a continuing budget resolution. The disaster funding enjoys wide support in the House, but could be tripped up if packaged with other funding proposals.

Legislation on hold

The Senate is expected to spend most of September focused on funding the government and confirming Biden’s nominees, meaning that major policy legislation will have to wait. But Schumer outlined some priorities for the remaining months of the year in the letter to his colleagues.

Schumer said the Senate would work on legislation to lower the costs of drugs, address rail safety and provide disaster relief after floods in Vermont, fires in Hawaii and a hurricane in Florida.

Senators will also continue to examine whether legislation is needed to address artificial intelligence. Schumer has convened what he is calling an “AI insight forum” on Sept. 13 in the Senate with tech industry leaders, including Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, the CEO of X and Tesla, as well as former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates.

Health concerns

Senate Republicans will return next week to renewed questions about the health of their leader, McConnell.

McConnell, 81, faces questions about his ability to continue as the top Senate Republican after he has frozen up twice during news conferences in the last two months since falling and suffering a concussion in March. During the event in Kentucky last week, he fell silent for roughly 30 seconds as he answered a question from a reporter.

Dr. Brian Monahan, the Capitol’s attending physician, said Thursday that McConnell is cleared to work. But the question of whether McConnell — the longest-serving party leader in Senate history — can continue as Republican leader has sparked intense speculation about who will eventually replace him.

Meanwhile, the health of California Democrat Sen. Dianne Feinstein, 90, has visibly wavered in recent months after she was hospitalized for shingles earlier this year. She suffered a fall at her San Francisco home in August and visited the hospital for testing.

And in the House, Rep. Steve Scalise, the No. 2 Republican, disclosed last week that he has been diagnosed with a form of blood cancer known as multiple myeloma and is undergoing treatment.

Scalise, 57, said he will continue to serve and described the cancer as “very treatable.”
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When the NFL season kicks off this week, Kentucky residents and visitors — for the first time — will be able to legally place sports bets on something other than horse racing. When they do, some of that money will also fund the state’s first-ever program for people with gambling problems.

Since the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for legalized sports betting five years ago, nearly three-fourths of the states have moved swiftly to allow it. State funding for problem gambling services has not kept pace, although more states — like Kentucky — are requiring at least a portion of sports wagering revenues to go toward helping addicted gamblers.

“The funding is starting to flow, but the amount is still clearly inadequate in most states,” said Keith Whyte, executive director of the National Council on Problem Gambling. He added: “Most of these amounts are token.”

Legal sports betting operators took in $220 billion during the past five years, generating $3 billion in state and local taxes.

By contrast, states spent an average of 38 cents per capita on problem gambling services in the 2022 fiscal year, ranging from nothing in nine states to $10.6 million in Massachusetts, according to the Portland, Oregon-based consulting firm Problem Gambling Solutions Inc. That money, which came from all forms of gambling, went toward services such as telephone helplines, counseling and public awareness campaigns.

The federal government, which spends billions of dollars on substance abuse prevention and treatment, provides nothing for gambling problems.

Advocates in Kentucky, which has a rich horse racing history, had tried for decades to persuade lawmakers to fund services for people with gambling problems. There was no guarantee they would finally succeed when sports betting was proposed.

In fact, Republican state Rep. Michael Meredith did not originally include any funding for problem gambling in his legislation that legalized sports betting. Meredith told The Associated Press he would have preferred to first launch sports wagering, then come back in subsequent years with legislation earmarking problem-gambling funding from all types of betting, including horse racing.

But Meredith couldn’t rally enough support to pass the bill this year until a provision was added dedicating 2.5% of sports wagering taxes and licensing fees to a new problem gambling account, which also can be tapped for alcohol and drug addictions.

“We had folks that wanted to vote for sports wagering,” Meredith said. “But they were really reluctant to without some form of problem gambling money.”

Kentucky’s new fund is projected to receive about $575,000 in its first year.

That’s a decent start, but “we’ve only got five certified gambling counselors in the state right now, and we’re going to need probably five times that many to provide adequate geographic and demographic coverage,” said Michael R. Stone, executive director of the nonprofit Kentucky Council on Problem Gambling.

As of a year ago, 15 states and the District of Columbia had laws earmarking a portion of their sports betting revenues toward problem gambling services, but another 15 states did not. Since then, seven additional states have either launched sports betting or passed laws to do so, and all of those have required part of their sports betting revenues to go to problem gambling services, said Rachel Volberg, a research professor in the Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology at the University of Massachusetts-Amhurst.

Ohio, which launched sports betting on Jan. 1, requires 2% of the tax revenues to go to a “problem sports gaming fund.” The state law also requires all sports betting ads to include a phone number for a problem gambling helpline. Through the first seven months, calls to Ohio’s helpline were up about 150% compared to the same period a year ago.

The surge appears driven by a spike in sports betting marketing, though some callers had problems with other types of gambling or weren’t actually seeking help, said Derek Longmeier, executive director of the Problem Gambling Network of Ohio.

Research indicates that younger, higher educated men are among the most likely to bet on sports. Technology has raised the stakes for those with compulsive habits. In many states, people can now wager from anywhere with the tap of a smartphone app, 24 hours a day, betting not only on the winners of games but on a seemingly limitless series of events that occur during the games.

From a problem gambling standpoint, “I think it is more dangerous, because the accessibility is easier,” said Linda Graves, the recently retired executive director of the National Association of Administrators for Disordered Gambling Services.

Last month, attorneys general from several states gathered at a Connecticut casino for seminars focused on sports betting and online gaming. The widespread legalization of sports wagering has “added fuel” to a public health issue that “was already percolating under the surface,” problem gambling consultant Brianne Doura-Schawohl told the group.

Yet some governments have reduced funding for problem gambling services in recent years.

In May, the District of Columbia Council eliminated what had been an annual $200,000 allocation to the Department of Behavioral Health to prevent, treat and research gambling additions. Although the funding is required by a 2019 act that authorized sports wagering, the department apparently had not used the money. The department said support services for problem gamblers are available through other means.

In Mississippi, a long-standing $100,000 annual allotment to a compulsive gambling organization was eliminated in 2017 amid other state budget cuts. The next year, Mississippi launched sports betting in casinos and authorized a state lottery. Yet lawmakers continued to appropriate nothing for problem gambling until restoring $75,000 in the 2024 budget that began in July.

To remain afloat without state aid, the nonprofit Mississippi Council on Problem and Compulsive Gambling relied largely on donations from casinos. It dipped into reserves, cut in half the salaries of its two staff members, relocated to a smaller office, eliminated travel to conferences and suspended a program that provided several weeks of free counseling to people seeking to overcome gambling problems, said Executive Director Betty Greer.

Kansas also has a history of low funding for problem gambling. Although 2% of state-owned casino revenues are directed to an addictions services fund, only a fraction of that actually has gone to problem gambling. This past year, problem gambling services were allotted less than $60,000 while more than $7 million went to Medicaid mental health expenditures, substance abuse grants and other programs.

But that’s changing. The current Kansas budget allots more than $1 million for problem gambling efforts in response to sports betting. The state plans to study the prevalence of addiction because of sports betting and then use the findings to shape a statewide public awareness campaign.

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