SEATTLE — A strike at Boeing “could go on for a while” as workers are confident they can get bigger wage increases and an improved pension, union leader Jon Holden said in an interview with National Public Radio on Saturday.

More than 30,000 members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM), who produce Boeing’s top-selling 737 MAX and other jets in the Seattle and Portland, began a strike Friday after overwhelmingly voting down a new contract.

Boeing and union negotiators are to return to the bargaining table next week, in talks overseen by U.S. federal mediators, after more than 94% of workers voted to reject an initial contract offer that Holden had endorsed.

Holden said the priorities for his members were a bigger wage increase and the restoration of a defined-benefit pension scheme that the union lost during a previous round of negotiations with Boeing a decade ago.

“We have the most leverage and the most power at the most opportune time that we’ve ever had in our history, and our members are expecting us to use it,” Holden told NPR.

“I know that our members are confident. They’re standing shoulder to shoulder and they’re ready. So it (the strike) could go on for a while,” he said.

The initial deal included a 25% pay raise spread over four years and a commitment by Boeing to build its next commercial jet in the Seattle region, if the plane program is launched within the four-year period of the contract.

Union members, venting frustration at years of stagnant wages and rising living costs, said removal of a performance bonus in the Boeing offer would erode half of the headline salary increase.

Boeing’s stock fell 3.7% on Friday. It has tumbled almost 40% so far this year, slashing the company’s market value by roughly $58 billion.

A long strike could further damage Boeing’s finances, already groaning because of $60 billion in debt. A lengthy pause on plane production would also weigh on airlines that fly Boeing jets and suppliers that manufacture parts. 
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PRAGUE — The head of NATO’s military committee said Saturday that Ukraine has the solid legal and military right to strike deep inside Russia to gain combat advantage — reflecting the beliefs of several U.S. allies — even as the Biden administration balks at allowing Kyiv to do so using American-made weapons.

“Every nation that is attacked has the right to defend itself. And that right doesn’t stop at the border of your own nation,” said Admiral Rob Bauer, speaking at the close of the committee’s annual meeting, also attended by U.S. Gen. CQ Brown, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Bauer, of Netherlands, also added that nations have the sovereign right to put limits on the weapons they send to Ukraine. But, standing next to him at a news briefing, Lt. General Karel Řehka, chief of the General Staff of the Czech Armed Forces, made it clear his nation places no such weapons restrictions on Kyiv.

“We believe that the Ukrainians should decide themselves how to use it,” Řehka said.

Their comments came as U.S. President Joe Biden is weighing whether to allow Ukraine to use American-provided long-range weapons to hit deep into Russia. And they hint at the divisions over the issue.

Biden met with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Friday, after this week’s visit to Kyiv by their top diplomats, who came under fresh pressure to loosen weapons restrictions. U.S. officials familiar with discussions said they believed Starmer was seeking Biden’s approval to allow Ukraine to use British Storm Shadow missiles for expanded strikes in Russia.

Biden’s approval may be needed because Storm Shadow components are made in the U.S. The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share the status of private conversations, said they believed Biden would be amenable, but there has been no decision announced yet.

On Thursday Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that allowing long-range strikes “would mean that NATO countries, the United States and European countries, are at war with Russia.” His remarks were in line with the narrative the Kremlin has promoted since early in the war, accusing NATO countries of de-facto participation in the conflict and threatening a response.

Providing additional support and training for Ukraine was a key topic at the NATO chiefs’ meeting, but it wasn’t clear Saturday if the debate over the U.S. restrictions was discussed.

Many of the European nations have been vigorously supportive of Ukraine in part because they worry about being the next victim of an empowered Russia.

At the opening of the meeting, Czech Republic President Petr Pavel broadly urged the military chiefs gathered in the room to be “bold and open in articulating your assessments and recommendations. The rounder and the softer they are, the less they will be understood by the political level.”

The allies, he said, must “take the right steps and the right decisions to protect our countries and our way of life.”

The military leaders routinely develop plans and recommendations that are then sent to the civilian NATO defense secretaries for discussion and then on to the nations’ leaders in the alliance.

The U.S. allows Ukraine to use American-provided weapons in cross-border strikes to counter attacks by Russian forces. But it doesn’t allow Kyiv to fire long-range missiles, such as the ATACMS, deep into Russia. The U.S. has argued that Ukraine has drones that can strike far and should use ATACMS judiciously because they only have a limited number.

Ukraine has increased its pleas with Washington to lift the restrictions, particularly as winter looms and Kyiv worries about Russian gains during the colder months.

“You want to weaken the enemy that attacks you in order to not only fight the arrows that come your way, but also attack the archer that is, as we see, very often operating from Russia proper into Ukraine,” said Bauer. “So militarily, there’s a good reason to do that, to weaken the enemy, to weaken its logistic lines, fuel, ammunition that comes to the front. That is what you want to stop, if at all possible.”

Brown, for his part, told reporters traveling with him to the meeting that the U.S. policy on long-range weapons remains in place.

But, he added, “by the same token, what we want to do is — regardless of that policy — we want to continue to make Ukraine successful with the capabilities that have been provided” by the U.S. and other nations in the coalition, as well as the weapons Kyiv has been able to build itself.

“They’ve proven themselves fairly effective in building out uncrewed aerial vehicles, in building out drones,” Brown told reporters traveling with him to meetings in Europe.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has made similar points, arguing that one weapons system won’t determine success in the war.

“There are a number of things that go into the overall equation as to whether or not you know you want to provide one capability or another,” Austin said Friday. “There is no silver bullet when it comes to things like this.”

He also noted that Ukraine has already been able to strike inside Russia with its own internally produced systems, including drones. 
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Kyiv, Ukraine — U.S. President Joe Biden will use the remaining four months of his term “to put Ukraine in the best possible position to prevail,” a senior adviser said Saturday. 

Speaking remotely to a forum in Kyiv, Ukraine, Jake Sullivan, the U.S. national security adviser, also said Biden will meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in late September at the U.N. General Assembly in New York to discuss aid to Ukraine. 

“President Zelenskyy has said that ultimately this war has to end through negotiations, and we need them to be strong in those negotiations,” Sullivan said, adding Ukraine would decide when to enter talks with Russia. 

Biden will be replaced next January either by Vice President Kamala Harris, who has indicated she will continue his policies of backing Ukraine, or by former President Donald Trump, who would not say at a debate earlier this week whether he wanted Kyiv to win the war. 

The announcement of the upcoming Biden-Zelenskyy meeting came after Moscow and Kyiv earlier Saturday swapped 103 prisoners of war each in a UAE-brokered deal, and as Russian forces continue to gain ground in their grinding offensive in east Ukraine. 

Sullivan, in his comments by video link to the forum in Kyiv, said “difficult and complicated” logistics — rather than unwillingness — was delaying aid to Ukraine. 

“It’s not a matter of political will,” Sullivan said. “But given what Ukraine is up against, we’ve got to do more, and we’ve got to do better.” 
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Caracas, Venezuela — Three American citizens, two Spaniards and a Czech citizen have been detained in Venezuela on suspicion of plotting to destabilize the country through “violent actions,” the government said Saturday, adding that hundreds of weapons had been seized.  

Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello said that the five were held on suspicion of planning an attack on President Nicolas Maduro and his government.  

The arrests come amid heightened tensions between Venezuela and both the United States and Spain over Venezuela’s disputed July 28 presidential election, which the country’s opposition accuses Maduro of stealing.  

Maduro, a former bus driver, who succeeded iconic left-wing leader Hugo Chavez on his death in 2013, insists he won a third term but failed to release detailed voting tallies to back his claim.  

“We know that the United States government has links to this operation,” Cabello asserted.   

He said the two Spaniards were recently detained in Puerto Ayacucho in the southwest.  

He added that three Americans and a Czech national were also arrested and linked the alleged plot to intelligence agencies in the United States and Spain as well as to Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado.  

“They contacted French mercenaries, they contacted mercenaries from Eastern Europe, and they are in an operation to try to attack our country,” he said.  

He added that “more than 400 rifles were seized” and accused the detainees of plotting “terrorist acts.”  

The United States, Spain and Czech Republic had yet to react to the sensational claims, which come amid a deepening standoff between Maduro and Western powers.   

Maduro’s ‘dictatorship’ 

Tensions between Caracas and former colonial power Spain rose sharply after Venezuelan opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, 75, went into exile in Spain a week ago, after being threatened with arrest.  

Earlier this week Caracas recalled its ambassador to Madrid for consultations and summoned Spain’s envoy to Venezuela for talks after a Spanish minister accused Maduro of running a “dictatorship.”  

Venezuela was also angered by Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s decision to meet with Gonzalez Urrutia and warned Spain against any “interference” in its affairs.   

Caracas has additionally been engaged in a war of words with the United States, which recognized Gonzalez Urrutia as the winner of the election.   

Washington announced Thursday new sanctions against 16 Venezuelan officials, including some from the electoral authority, for impeding “a transparent electoral process” and not publishing accurate results.  

Venezuela denounced the measures as a “crime of aggression” and Maduro decorated four military officers among those targeted by the sanctions.   

Maduro’s claim to have won a third term in office sparked mass opposition protests, which claimed at least 27 lives and left 192 people wounded.   

The opposition published polling station-level results, which it said showed Gonzalez Urrutia winning by a landslide.  

About 2,400 people, including numerous teens, were arrested in the unrest. 

After Venezuela’s last election, in 2018, Maduro also claimed victory amid widespread accusations of fraud.  

With the support of the military and other institutions, he managed to cling to power despite international sanctions.   

Maduro’s tenure since 2013 has seen GDP drop 80% in a decade, prompting more than 7 million of the country’s 30 million citizens to migrate.  
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TOKYO — Japan and the United States should avoid confrontation about the steel industry and work together amid competition from China, the world’s top steelmaker, leading prime ministerial candidate Shinjiro Koizumi said Saturday.

Sources told Reuters Friday that a powerful U.S. national security panel reviewing Nippon Steel’s $14.9 billion bid for U.S. Steel faces a September 23 deadline to recommend whether the White House should block the deal.

Koizumi, Japan’s former environment minister, said at a debate Saturday that Japan and the U.S. should not confront each other when it comes to the steel industry but to face together the “shared challenge” coming from China’s steel industry.

“If China, producing cheap steel without renewable or clean energy, floods the global market, it will most adversely affect us, the democratic countries playing by fair market rules,” Koizumi said.

Nippon Steel’s key negotiator on the deal, Vice Chairman Takahiro Mori, said last month that his company and other Japanese steelmakers were urging Tokyo to consider curbing cheap steel imports coming from China to protect the local market.

On Sunday, Nippon Steel and U.S. Steel sent a letter to U.S. President Joe Biden about their deal, as Biden, Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump have all opposed the merger.

“We are also in the midst of elections, just like the U.S., and during elections, various ideas may arise. Overreacting to each of these would, in my view, call into question diplomatic judgment,” Koizumi said when asked about the deal.

Sanae Takaichi, Japan’s minister in charge of economic security and another prime ministerial candidate, also defended the deal during the same debate attended by eight other Liberal Democratic Party’s, or LDP, leadership contenders Saturday.

“It appears they are using CFIUS to frame this as an economic security issue,” she said,  referring to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. “However, Japan and the U.S. are allies, and the steel industry is about strengthening our combined resilience.”

The 43-year-old son of former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, the junior Koizumi, is seen as a leading contender in the September 27 race to pick the LDP’s new leader, who will become the next prime minister due to the party’s control of parliament.

Koizumi said Saturday that he would seek a dialog with the North Korean leadership to resolve the issue over the abduction of Japanese citizens kidnapped by North Korean agents in the 1970s and 1980s. The purported primary goal was to train North Korean agents to impersonate Japanese people.

“We want to explore new opportunities for dialog between people of the same generation, without being bound by conventional approaches, and without preconditions,” Koizumi said.

After admitting in 2002 that it had abducted 13 Japanese, North Korea apologized and allowed five to return home. It said eight others had died and denied that an additional four entered its territory. It promised to reinvestigate but has never announced the results.

Japan says North Korea has refused to send the others home because of concern that they might reveal inconvenient information about the country.
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WARSAW, Poland — Thousands of people attended an antigovernment rally organized by Poland’s nationalist conservative opposition party to boost support before next year’s presidential election.

Law and Justice leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski called on supporters to be active at social and political levels and to back the party’s candidate in next year’s presidential election. He hasn’t yet named the candidate.

Kaczynski also accused the pro-European Union government of acting against the nation’s interests and violating its laws and cited recently opened investigations into allegations of mismanagement and corruption of the Law and Justice government.

Up to 4,000 people with national white-and-red flags gathered for the rally held in windy weather outside the Justice Ministry in Warsaw, which has become a symbol of years of deep rifts between the backers of Kaczynski and Donald Tusk, now the prime minister and leader of the center-right Civic Platform party.

Law and Justice, which governed Poland for from 2015 until 2023, drew criticism from Brussels and Tusk alike for making changes to Poland’s judicial system that were deemed undemocratic.

Many in the nation of 38 million people were also tired of the aggressive and divisive language that Kaczynski, who dictated the government’s policies from the sidelines, used to energize support.

The party lost power in the 2023 election, but is still exerting control through President Andrzej Duda, who is allied with Law and Justice. Duda, whose second and last term runs out in August, has been blocking many of the government’s draft laws.
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DUBAI — Iran’s foreign minister said that Tehran was open to diplomacy to solve disputes but not “threats and pressure,” state media reported on Saturday, after the U.S. and three European powers imposed sanctions against the country’s aviation sector.

Abbas Araqchi’s comments come a day after the European Union’s chief diplomat said the bloc is considering new sanctions targeting Iran’s aviation sector, in reaction to reports Tehran supplied Russia with ballistic missiles in its war against Ukraine.

“Iran continues on its own path with strength, although we have always been open to talks to resolve disputes … but dialogue should be based on mutual respect, not on threats and pressure,” Araqchi said, according to the official news agency IRNA.

Araqchi said on Wednesday that Tehran had not delivered any ballistic missiles to Russia and that sanctions imposed on Iran by the United States and three European powers would not solve any problems between them.

The United States, Germany, Britain and France on Tuesday imposed new sanctions on Iran, including measures against its national airline, Iran Air.
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KYIV, Ukraine — U.S. historian and author Timothy Snyder led a charity run in Kyiv Saturday to raise awareness of the conditions under which Ukrainian prisoners of war are held in Russia as the conflict approaches a third winter.

The race came following a recent escalation in Russian missile and drone attacks, largely aimed at Ukraine’s electricity infrastructure.

People clapped and cheered after Snyder, a 55-year-old Yale University professor who has written extensively on eastern Europe and the global resurgence of authoritarian regimes and is much admired in Ukraine, addressed the nearly thousand runners. He then joined a workout and participated in the run.

“Thousands of Ukrainian civilians and soldiers are illegally held in captivity during an illegal war,” Snyder told The Associated Press just ahead of the run. “This race is about reminding everyone of that and expressing solidarity with Ukrainians and giving Ukrainians a chance to do something together.”

The 5K and 10-kilometer runs took place around a sprawling park in the Ukrainian capital created out of a renovated Soviet-era exhibition center.

The runners included members of the public, service people and veterans, as well as wives of the POWs. Among them was 27-year-old Anastasia Ofyl, whose husband Oleksandr was captured by the Russians. “We have to fight for him,” she said. “That’s why I’m running.”

Ukrainian soldiers often give harrowing accounts of their conditions in Russian captivity when they return home as part of regular prisoner exchanges.

In a report issued in July, a United Nations human rights agency said it “continued to document the widespread use of torture and ill-treatment, including sexual violence, against civilians and Ukrainian prisoners of war held by the Russian Federation.”

Snyder, who has organized fundraisers as part of the country’s war-relief effort, enjoys near-celebrity status in Ukraine. On Tuesday, he visited President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who thanked him for his charity work. The Ukrainian head of state also received former U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and the American actor Michael Douglas this week.

After Saturday’s race, Snyder was surrounded by admirers, many of whom waited in line for autographs and selfies. Some asked the historian to sign translated copies of his widely read books on Ukraine, “Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin” and “The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America.”

Saturday’s race was organized by the Kyiv School of Economics’ charity foundation which, according to its website, has been raising funds for charitable assistance for Ukrainians since the start of the Russian invasion.
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BUCHAREST, Romania — Five people in eastern Romania were found dead after torrential rainstorms dumped unprecedented rain, leaving hundreds stranded in flooded areas, emergency authorities said Saturday.

Rescue services scrambled to save people in the hard-hit eastern counties of Galati and Vaslui. The bodies of three elderly women and two men were found in the localities of Pechea, Draguseni, Costache Negri and Corod, the Department for Emergency Situations said.

Authorities later added that one of the victims had been dead for two days and “did not die due to the effects of the weather” but from other causes.

Emergency authorities released video footage showing teams of rescuers evacuating people using small lifeboats through muddy waters and carrying some elderly people to safety.

Some of the most significant flood damage was concentrated in Galati, where 5,000 households were affected. A Black Hawk helicopter was also deployed there to help with the search and rescue.

The storms battered 19 localities in eight counties in Romania, with strong winds downing dozens of trees that damaged cars and blocked roads and traffic. Authorities sent text message alerts to residents to warn them of adverse weather as emergency services rushed to remove floodwaters from homes.

By 1 p.m. Saturday, more than 250 people had been evacuated with the help of 700 Interior Ministry personnel deployed to affected communities, authorities said.

Romania’s environment minister, Mircea Fechet, told The Associated Press that in some of the badly flooded areas, more than 160 liters of rain fell per one square meter, which he said is a rare occurrence.

“What we are trying to do right now is save as many lives as possible,” said the minister, who was on his way to Galati to assess the situation.

Romanian President Klaus Iohannis offered his condolences to the victims’ families, writing on Facebook: “We must continue to strengthen our capacity to anticipate extreme weather phenomena.

“Severe floods that have affected a large part of the country have led to loss of lives and significant damage,” Iohannis said. “We are again dealing with the effects of climate change, which are increasingly present throughout the European continent, with dramatic consequences on people.”

Central Europe braces for intense flooding

The stormy weather comes as several central European nations anticipate severe flooding to hit the Czech Republic, Poland, Austria, Germany, Slovakia and Hungary over the weekend.

In the Czech Republic, river waters reached dangerous levels in dozens of areas across the country Saturday morning, flooding houses and roads in several towns and villages. Heavy rain and high winds left more than 63,000 households without power, the Czech power company CEZ said.

A hospital in the country’s second-largest city of Brno was forced to evacuate as dozens of citizens moved to safer grounds. Fallen trees and floodwaters caused a dozen railways across the country to also shutter.

In neighboring Austria, authorities declared 24 villages in the northeast Lower Austria province disaster zones Saturday afternoon and began evacuating residents from those areas.

“The coming hours will be the hours of truth for flood protection, for our emergency forces and numerous compatriots,” State Governor Johanna Mikl-Leitner said, adding that in one area, “we expect challenges of historical dimensions.”

The torrential downpours have also caused a sharp rise in water levels on the Danube River in Austria’s capital, Vienna, where special flood relief channels were built in the 1970s and ’80s and are likely to be tested over the weekend. The River Kamp, a tributary of the Danube, is also swelling due to the unprecedented weather.

Heavy rain also hit Moldova on Saturday, where emergency workers pumped floodwater from dozens of peoples’ homes in several localities, authorities said.

Meteorologists say a low-pressure system from northern Italy was predicted to dump much rain in most parts of the Czech Republic, including the capital and border regions with Austria and Germany in the south, and Poland in the north.

“We have to be ready for worst-case scenarios,” Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala said after the government’s central crisis committee met. “A tough weekend is ahead of us.”

In Poland, dozens of people were evacuated as a precautionary measure Saturday from two villages near the town of Nysa, in the Nysa River basin, after meteorologists warned of unprecedented rainfall, and water levels on some rivers in the area sharply rose, according to Interior Minister Tomasz Siemoniak.

“The worst is yet to come,” he warned.

Polish authorities appealed to residents Friday to stock up on food and to prepare for power outages by charging power banks.

The weather change arrived following a hot start to September in the region. Scientists have documented Earth’s hottest summer, breaking a record set just one year ago.

A hotter atmosphere, driven by human-caused climate change, can lead to more intense rainfall.
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NEW YORK — New York City lawmakers approved legislation Thursday to study the city’s significant role in slavery and consider reparations to descendants of enslaved people.

If signed into law, the package of bills passed by the City Council would follow in the footsteps of several other municipalities across the U.S. that have sought ways to address the country’s dark history, as well as a separate New York state commission that began working this year.

New York fully abolished slavery in 1827. But businesses, including the predecessors of some modern banks, continued to benefit financially from the slave trade — likely up until 1866. The lawmakers behind the proposals noted that the harms caused by the institution are still felt by Black Americans today.

“The reparations movement is often misunderstood as merely a call for compensation,” Council Member Farah Louis, a Democrat who sponsored one of the bills, told the City Council on Thursday. She explained that systemic forms of oppression are still impacting people through redlining, environmental racism and services in predominantly Black neighborhoods that are underfunded.

The bills still need to be signed by Democratic Mayor Eric Adams. City Hall signaled his support in a statement calling the legislation “another crucial step towards addressing systemic inequities, fostering reconciliation, and creating a more just and equitable future for all New Yorkers.”

The bills would direct the city’s Commission on Racial Equity to suggest remedies to the legacy of slavery, including reparations. It would also create a truth and reconciliation process to establish historical facts about slavery in the state.

One of the proposals would also require that the city install an informational sign on Wall Street in Manhattan to mark the site of New York’s first slave market, which operated between 1711 and 1762. A sign was placed nearby in 2015, but Public Advocate Jumaane D. Williams, a Democrat who sponsored the legislation, said its location is inaccurate.

The commission would work with the existing state commission, which is also considering the possibility of reparations. A report from the state panel, which held its first public meeting in late July, is expected in early 2025. The city effort wouldn’t need to produce recommendations until 2027.

The city’s commission was created out of a 2021 racial justice initiative during then-Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration, which also recommended the city track data on the cost of living and add a commitment to remedy “past and continuing harms” to the city charter’s preamble.

“Your call and your ancestors’ call for reparations had not gone unheard,” Linda Tigani, executive director of the racial equity commission, said at a news conference ahead of the council vote.

A financial impact analysis of the bills estimated that the studies would cost $2.5 million.

New York is the latest city to study reparations. Tulsa, Oklahoma, where a notorious massacre of Black residents took place in 1921, announced a similar commission last month.

Evanston, Illinois, became the first city to offer reparations to Black residents and their descendants in 2021, including distributing some payments of $25,000 in 2023, according to PBS. The eligibility was based on harm suffered as a result of the city’s discriminatory housing policies or practices.

San Francisco approved reparations in February, but the mayor later cut the funds, saying that reparations should instead be carried out by the federal government. California budgeted $12 million for a reparations program that included helping Black residents research their ancestry, but it was defeated in the state’s Legislature this month.
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LONDON — Prince Harry was always something different.

From the moment he first appeared in public, snuggled in Princess Diana’s arms outside the London hospital where he was born in 1984, Harry was the ginger-haired scamp who stuck his tongue out at photographers. He grew to be a boisterous adolescent who was roundly criticized for wearing a Nazi uniform to a costume party, and then a young man who gave up the trappings of royal life and moved to Southern California with his American wife.

Through it all, there was a sense that Harry was rebelling against an accident of birth that made him, in the harsh calculus of the House of Windsor, just “the spare.” As the second son of the man who is now King Charles III, he was raised as a prince but wouldn’t inherit the throne unless brother William came to harm.

Now the angry young man is turning 40, the halfway point in many lives, providing a chance to either dwell on the past or look forward to what might still be achieved.

For the past four years, Harry has focused mainly on the past, making millions of dollars by airing his grievances in a wildly successful memoir and a Netflix docu-series. But he faces the likelihood that the royal aura so critical to his image may be fading, said Sally Bedell Smith, author of “Charles: The Passions and Paradoxes of an Improbable Life.”

“He is at a sort of crossroads,’’ Smith told The Associated Press. “And he appears to be struggling with how he wants to proceed.’’

How did we get here?

It wasn’t always this way.

Six years ago, Harry and his wife were among the most popular royals, a glamorous young couple who reflected the multicultural face of modern Britain and were expected to help revitalize the monarchy.

Their wedding on May 19, 2018, united a grandson of Queen Elizabeth II with the former Meghan Markle, a biracial American actress who had starred for seven years in the U.S. television drama “Suits.” George Clooney, Serena Williams and Elton John attended their wedding at Windsor Castle, after which the couple were formally known as the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.

But the optimism quickly faded amid allegations that Britain’s tabloid media and even members of the royal household treated Meghan unfairly because of racism.

By January 2020, the pressures of life in the gilded cage had become too much, and the couple announced they were giving up royal duties and moving to America, where they hoped to become “financially independent.” They signed lucrative deals with Netflix and Spotify as they settled into the wealthy enclave of Montecito, near Santa Barbara, California.

Since then, Harry has missed few opportunities to bare his soul, most famously in his memoir, aptly titled “Spare.”

In the ghostwritten book, Harry recounted his grief at the death of Princess Diana, a fight with Prince William and his unease with life in the royal shadow of his elder brother. From accounts of cocaine use and losing his virginity to raw family rifts, the book was rife with damning allegations about the royal family.

Among the most toxic was Harry’s description of how some family members leaked unflattering information about other royals in exchange for positive coverage of themselves. The prince singled out his father’s second wife, Queen Camilla, accusing her of feeding private conversations to the media as she sought to rehabilitate an image tarnished by her role in the breakup of Charles’ marriage to Diana.

The allegations were so venomous that there is little chance of a return to public duty, Smith said.

“He criticized the royal family in such a powerful and damaging way. You can’t un-say those things,” she said. “And you can’t unsee things like Meghan in that Netflix series doing a mock curtsey. It’s such a demeaning gesture to the queen.’’

Harry, who agreed not to use the honorific HRH, or “his royal highness,” after he stepped away from front-line royal duties, is now fifth in line to the British throne, behind his brother and William’s three children.

While he grew up in a palace and is said to be in line to inherit millions of dollars on his 40th birthday from a trust set up by his great-grandmother, applied developmental psychologist Deborah Heiser thinks that, in many ways, Harry is just like the rest of us.

Like anyone turning 40, he is likely to have learned a few lessons and has a good idea of who his real friends are, and that will help him chart the next phase of his life, said Heiser, who writes a blog called “The Right Side of 40” for Psychology Today.

“He has had a very public display of what a lot of people have gone through,” Heiser said. “I mean, most people are not princes, but … they have all kinds of issues within their families. He’s not alone. That’s why he’s so relatable.’’

Harry’s next chapter

Of course, Harry’s story isn’t just about the drama within the House of Windsor.

If he wants to write a new chapter, Harry can build on his 10 years of service in the British Army. Before retiring as a captain in 2015, the prince earned his wings as a helicopter pilot, served two tours in Afghanistan and shed the hard-partying reputation of his youth.

Harry also won accolades for establishing the Invictus Games in 2014, a Paralympic-style competition to inspire and aid in the rehabilitation of sick and wounded servicemembers and veterans.

Harry and Meghan made headlines this year with their two international trips to promote mental health and internet safety. While some in British media criticized them for accepting royal treatment in Nigeria and Colombia, the couple said they visited at the invitation of local officials.

Will Charles see the grandkids?

The prospects of reconciliation are unclear, although Harry did race home to see his father after Charles’ cancer diagnosis. And in what may be seen as a tentative olive branch, the paperback edition of “Spare” slated for October has no additions — so nothing new to stir the pot.

But plainly at this point, Harry is thinking about his family in California. He told the BBC about the importance of his two young children, Archie and Lilibet.

“Being a dad is one of life’s greatest joys and has only made me more driven and more committed to making this world a better place,” the prince said in a statement released by his spokesperson.
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london — An animal rights group trying to get real fur out of the bearskin caps worn by King’s Guards at Buckingham Palace took aim Thursday at the cost of the ceremonial garb. 

The price of the caps soared 30% in a year to more than 2,000 pounds ($2,600) apiece for the hats made of black bear fur, the Ministry of Defense said in response to a freedom of information request by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. 

“Stop wasting taxpayer pounds on caps made from slaughtered wildlife and switch to faux fur today,” the group said in a statement. 

A luxury fake fur maker has offered to supply the army with free faux bear fur for 10 years, PETA said. 

Military willing to consider alternatives

The military said it was open to exploring alternatives if they pass muster in durability, water protection and appearance. But “no alternative has met all those criteria to date,” a ministry spokesperson said in a statement. 

The distinctive tall black hats, worn by guards in bright scarlet tunics, are seen by millions who watch the regular changing of the guard ceremony at the palace. They also appear at other royal events including the annual Trooping the Color ceremony honoring the monarch’s birthday in June.

The cost of the caps rose from 1,560 pounds ($2,035) each in 2022 to 2,040 pounds ($2,660) in 2023, the ministry said. More than 1 million pounds ($1.3 million) was spent on them in the past decade. 

The price went up because of a contract change for fur that comes from bears killed in licensed hunts in Canada, the military said.

PETA, which has been pushing for more than two decades to scrap the fur hats, said each cap requires one bear pelt. The group claimed that the defense department is propping up the “cruel” Canadian bear-hunting industry. 

The ministry denied that charge and said if it stopped buying the pelts, it would not reduce the numbers of bears being killed. 

Petition calls for fake fur

Parliament debated the issue in July 2022 after an online petition with more than 100,000 signatures called for using fake fur in the caps. 

“This hunting involves the violent killing of bears, with many bears being shot several times,” Martyn Day, then a Scottish National Party member of Parliament, said at the time. “It seems undeniable, therefore, that by continuing to purchase hats made from the fur of black bears the MOD is funding the suffering of bears in Canada by making the baiting and killing of those animals and the sale of their pelts a profitable pursuit for the hunters.” 

Day said a poll at the time found 75% of the U.K. population found real bearskins were a bad use of taxpayer money and supported replacing the hats. 

He noted that the late Queen Elizabeth II had ceased buying fur for her wardrobe. 

Earlier this year, Queen Camilla, wife of King Charles III, pledged to buy no more fur products. 
…

BANGUI, Central African Republic — Hours after Russian mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin rebelled against his country’s top military leaders, his private army’s biggest client in Africa panicked, turning for help to his foe in the West. 

Officials from Central African Republic, where some 1,500 of Prigozhin’s Wagner Group mercenaries were stationed, wrote a letter that day, requesting to “rapidly” arrange a meeting with a private U.S. security firm to discuss collaboration. 

Dated June 23, 2023, the day Prigozhin launched the armed rebellion, the letter sparked a series of meetings, culminating in a deal with the central African nation and Bancroft Global Development. That sparked backlash from Russian mercenaries, according to a dozen diplomats, locals, and analysts. 

The tensions in Central African Republic are a window into a larger battle playing out across the continent as Moscow and Washington vie for influence. 

The Russian mercenaries — using success in staving off rebels in this impoverished nation as a model for expansion — have long been accused by locals and rights groups of stripping natural resources such as minerals and timber and are linked to the torture and death of civilians. In the wake of Prigozhin’s rebellion and suspicious death in a plane crash, the Russians are recalibrating their Africa operations. The United States, which has been largely disengaged from the region for years, is attempting to maintain a presence and stymie Russian gains as it pushes African countries to distance themselves from the mercenaries. 

U.S. officials blame Russia for anti-American sentiment in the region and say they’re trying to shift the narrative. 

“If the U.S. can’t regain a foothold, it could give Russia greater economic and political leverage,” said Samuel Ramani of the Royal United Services Institute, a defense and security think tank. “If Russia loses Central African Republic, its flagship model on the continent, there could be a domino effect in other countries.” 

Russia’s influence 

In recent years, Russia has emerged as the security partner of choice for a growing number of governments in the region, displacing traditional allies such as France and the U.S. 

Moscow expanded its military cooperation by using mercenaries like Wagner, which since around 2017 has operated in at least half a dozen countries by protecting African leaders and in some cases helping fight rebels and extremists. 

They’re also plagued by their human rights record. Two years ago in Mali, Wagner and the army were accused of executing about 300 men — some suspected of being Islamist extremists, but most civilians — in what Human Rights Watch called the worst single atrocity reported in the country’s decade-long armed conflict. And in Central African Republic, mercenaries train the army on torture tactics, including how to tburn people alive, according to watchdog The Sentry. 

Central African Republic 

Central African Republic was one of the first places the mercenaries entered. The country has been in conflict since 2013, when predominantly Muslim rebels seized power and forced the president from office. Six of the 14 armed groups that signed a 2019 peace deal later left the agreement. Locals and the government credited Wagner with fighting back rebels who tried to overtake Bangui, the capital, in 2021. The Russians soon expanded to Burkina Faso and Niger, and have ambitions for further growth. 

Russia is refurbishing a military base some 80 kilometers from Bangui. Alexander Bikantov, Russia’s ambassador to Central African Republic, said the base will improve the country’s security. 

Fidele Gouandjika, adviser to President Faustin-Archange Touadera, said the base aims to have 10,000 fighters by 2030 to engage with more African nations. 

Touadera’s office didn’t reply to written requests for comment for this story. His adviser to the country’s spy agency declined to be interviewed. 

Pressure from United States 

The U.S. had been pushing Central African Republic to find an alternative to Wagner for years. A more assertive U.S. approach came as it faced new setbacks and tried to rework agreements in the region. Its troops left Chad and Niger, where they were no longer welcome. 

Still, the State Department said in a statement this year that it wasn’t involved in the decision to establish Bancroft Global Development’s presence in Central African Republic. 

But Washington could deny such contracts if it wanted, said Sean McFate, a former contractor in Africa and author of “The New Rules of War.” 

The U.S. has used private military companies to reduce American “boots on the ground” in Africa, McFate said, and companies like Bancroft have to play by Washington’s rules if they want future government work. 

In response to AP questions, the U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity said it uses private contractors in Africa to help countries operate more effectively, with U.S. government oversight to ensure accountability. The official said the State Department has overseen Bancroft’s work in Somalia but not Central African Republic or elsewhere. 

Bancroft’s background 

Washington-based Bancroft is a nonprofit working in nine countries — five in Africa. Its involvement in Central African Republic has been shrouded in secrecy since signs emerged of its presence last fall. 

During an AP visit months later, rumors swirled about Bancroft’s activities, fueling speculation the U.S was bringing its own Wagner to oust Russia. 

But according to Bancroft founder Michael Stock, the group entered at Bangui’s behest. 

Stock received the letter from the presidency within a day of Prigozhin’s mutiny, and the two signed a deal in September, he said. 

Fewer than 30 Bancroft personnel work there, Stock said, helping Central African Republic with intelligence systems, interagency cooperation and law enforcement. 

Bancroft has invested some $1.4 million there, Stock said. 

Much of Bancroft’s funding has come from U.S. and United Nations grants. From 2018 to 2020, it received more than $43 million from the U.S., according to audits required as part of tax forms. 

Amal Ali, a former U.S. intelligence analyst, is among critics who say that despite its yearslong presence in Somalia, Bancroft hasn’t contributed to any eradication of terrorism. 

Stock dismissed such comments as uninformed and said the Somali and U.S. governments “agree Bancroft has done a great deal to damaging illegal armed groups and developing the capacity of the government to perform its national defense functions professionally.” 

Backlash on the ground 

Rights groups say a lack of transparency about Bancroft’s operations has fostered an atmosphere of distrust in a country already rampant with armed actors. Wagner, a U.N. peacekeeping mission and Rwandan troops are all on the ground to try to quell violence. 

“Operating in a vague and nontransparent way in the Central African Republic only leads to suspicion,” said Lewis Mudge, of Human Rights Watch. 

Stock defended Bancroft’s work and policies. “It is perfectly normal for a government not to publicize how it is defending the people and the state,” he told AP. 

Unclear future 

As the U.S. and Russia jockey for power, African governments say they want to make their own choices. 

Central African Republic officials approached Bancroft, which shows that these governments haven’t become Russian puppets, said Jack Margolin, an expert on private military companies. 

But, he added, Russia’s reaction to Bancroft could hurt Moscow’s standing with other nations. 

After Prigozhin’s death, Russia moved quickly to take control of Wagner’s assets, and the defense ministry told countries where Wagner operated that it would take over. The country and its military intelligence arm have taken a more direct role in Africa operations, deploying more official detachments from its army. 

In Central African Republic, it’s unclear how much sway the Russian state has with the mercenaries, who are beloved by many. For most people here, there’s little interest in squabbles among foreign nations. 

“There are problems between the Americans and Russians, but that doesn’t matter to us,” said Jean Louis Yet, who works at Bangui’s market. “We are here working, trying our best to make a living. All we want is security.” 
…

SPRINGFIELD, Ohio — Many cities have been reshaped by immigrants in the last few years without attracting much notice. Not Springfield, Ohio.

Its story of economic renewal and related growing pains has been thrust into the national conversation in a presidential election year — and maliciously distorted by false rumors that Haitian immigrants are eating their neighbors’ pets. Donald Trump amplified those lies during Tuesday’s nationally televised debate, exacerbating some residents’ fears about growing divisiveness in the predominantly white, blue-collar city of about 60,000.

At the city’s Haitian Community Help and Support Center on Wednesday, Rose-Thamar Joseph said many of the roughly 15,000 immigrants who arrived in the past few years were drawn by good jobs and the city’s relative affordability. But a rising sense of unease has crept in as longtime residents increasingly bristle at newcomers taking jobs at factories, driving up housing costs, worsening traffic and straining city services.

“Some of them are talking about living in fear. Some of them are scared for their life,” Joseph said.

A “Welcome To Our City” sign hangs from a parking garage downtown, where a coffee shop, bakery and boutique line Springfield’s main drag, North Fountain Street. A flag advertising “CultureFest,” the city’s annual celebration of unity through diversity, waves from a pole nearby.

Melanie Flax Wilt, a Republican commissioner in the county where Springfield is located, said she has been pushing for community and political leaders to “stop feeding the fear.”

“After the election and everybody’s done using Springfield, Ohio, as a talking point for immigration reform, we are going to be the ones here still living through the challenges and coming up with the solutions,” she said.

Ariel Dominique, executive director of the Haitian American Foundation for Democracy, said she laughed at first at the absurdity of the false claims. But seeing the comments repeated on national television by the former president was painful.

“It is so unfair and unjust and completely contrary to what we have contributed to the world, what we have contributed to this nation for so long,” Dominique said.

The falsehoods about Springfield’s Haitian immigrants were spread online by Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, on the eve of Tuesday’s debate between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. It’s part of a timeworn American political tradition of casting immigrants as outsiders.

“This is what’s happening in our country. And it’s a shame,” Trump said at the debate after repeating the falsehoods. When challenged by ABC News moderator David Muir over the false claims, Trump held firm, saying “people on television” said their dogs were eaten, but he offered no evidence.

Officials in Springfield have tried to tamp down the misinformation by saying there have been no credible or detailed reports of any pets being abducted or eaten. State leaders are trying to help address some of the real challenges facing the city.

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, said Tuesday he would add more law enforcement and health care resources to an aid package the state has already provided to Springfield.

Many Haitians have come to the U.S. to flee poverty and violence. They have embraced President Joe Biden’s new and expanded legal pathways to enter, and have shunned illegal crossings, accounting for only 92 border arrests out of more than 56,000 in July, the latest data available.

The Biden administration recently announced an estimated 300,000 Haitians in the U.S. could remain in the country at least through February 2026, with eligibility for work authorization, under a law called Temporary Protected Status. The goal is to spare people from being deported to countries in turmoil.

Springfield, about 72 kilometers from the state capital of Columbus, suffered a steep decline in its manufacturing sector toward the end of the last century, and its population shrank as a result. But its downtown has been revitalized in recent years as more Haitians arrived and helped meet the rising demand for labor as the economy emerged from the pandemic. Officials say Haitians now account for about 15% of the population.

The city was shaken last year when a minivan slammed into a school bus, killing an 11-year-old boy. The driver was a Haitian man who recently settled in the area and was driving without a valid license. During a city commission meeting on Tuesday, the boy’s parents condemned politicians’ use of their son’s death to stoke hatred.

Last week, a post on the social media platform X shared what looked like a screengrab of a social media post apparently out of Springfield. The post claimed without evidence that the person’s “neighbor’s daughter’s friend” saw a cat hanging from a tree to be butchered and eaten, outside a house where it claimed Haitians lived. It was accompanied by a photo of a Black man carrying what appeared to be a goose by its feet.

On Monday, Vance posted on X: “Reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country.” The next day, he posted again, saying his office had received inquiries from Springfield residents who said “their neighbors’ pets or local wildlife were abducted by Haitian migrants.”

Longtime Springfield resident Chris Hazel, who knows the park and neighborhood where the pet and goose abductions were purported to have happened, called the claims “preposterous.”

“It reminds me of when people used to accuse others and outsiders as cannibals. It’s dehumanizing a community,” he said of the accusations against the city’s Haitian residents.

Sophia Pierrilus, the daughter of a former Haitian diplomat who moved to the Ohio capital of Columbus 15 years ago and is now an immigrant advocate, agreed, calling it all political.

“My view is that’s their way to use Haitians as a scapegoat to bring some kind of chaos in America,” she said.

With its rising population of immigrants, Springfield is hardly an outlier. So far this decade, immigration has accounted for almost three-quarters of U.S. population growth, with 2.5 million immigrants arriving in the United States between 2020 and 2023, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Population growth is an important driver of economic growth.

“The Haitian immigrants who started moving to Springfield the last few years are the reason why the economy and the labor force has been revitalized there,” said Guerline Jozef, executive director of the Haitian Bridge Alliance, which provides legal and social services to immigrants across the U.S.

Now, she said, Haitians in Springfield have told her that, out of fear, they are considering leaving the city.
…

AURORA, Colorado — She was eight months pregnant when she was forced to leave her Denver homeless shelter. It was November.

Ivanni Herrera took her 4-year-old son, Dylan, by the hand and led him into the chilly night, dragging a suitcase containing donated clothes and blankets away from the Microtel Inn & Suites. It was one of 10 hotels where Denver has housed more than 30,000 migrants, many of them Venezuelan, over the last two years.

First, they walked to Walmart. There, with money she and her husband earned begging on the street, they bought a tent.

They chose for their new home a grassy median along a busy thoroughfare in Aurora, the next town over, a suburb known for its immigrant population.

“We wanted to go somewhere where there were people,” Herrera, 28, said in Spanish. “It feels safer.”

That night, temperatures dipped to 32 degrees. And as she wrapped her body around her son’s, Ivanni Herrera cried.

Over the past two years, a record number of Venezuelans have come to the United States seeking a better life. Instead, they’ve found themselves in communities roiling over how much to help the newcomers — or whether to help at all.

Unable to legally work without filing expensive and complicated paperwork, some have found themselves sleeping on the streets — even those who are pregnant.

Herrera had found inspiration for her journey to the U.S. on social media. On Facebook and TikTok, young, smiling Venezuelan migrants in nice clothes stood in front of new cars. Some 320,000 Venezuelans have tried to cross the U.S. border since October 2022, according to U.S. Border Patrol reports — more than in the previous nine years combined.

Just weeks after arriving in Denver, Herrera began to wonder if the success she had seen was real.

She was seeing doctors and social workers at a Denver hospital where she planned to give birth because they served everyone, even those without insurance. They were alarmed their pregnant patient was now sleeping outside in the cold.

In Colorado’s third-largest city, Aurora, officials have turned down requests to help migrants. In February, the City Council passed a resolution telling other cities and nonprofits not to bring migrants into the community because it “does not currently have the financial capacity to fund new services.” Yet still they come, because of its lower cost of living and Spanish-speaking community.

Former President Donald Trump last week called attention to the city, suggesting a Venezuelan gang had taken over an apartment complex. Authorities say that hasn’t happened.

The doctors urged Herrera to sleep at the hospital. It wouldn’t cost anything, they assured her, just as her birth would be covered by emergency Medicaid.

Herrera refused.

“How,” she asked, “could I sleep in a warm place when my son is cold on the street?”

Denver struggled to keep up with the rush of migrants, many arriving on buses chartered by Texas to draw attention to the impact of immigration. All told, Denver officials say they have helped some 42,700 migrants since last year, either by giving them shelter or a bus fare to another city.

Initially, the city offered migrants with families six weeks in a hotel. But any migrants arriving since May have received only three days in a hotel. After that, some have found transportation to other cities, scrounged for a place to sleep or wandered into nearby towns like Aurora.

Today, fewer migrants are coming to the Denver area. But Candice Marley, founder of a nonprofit called All Souls, still receives dozens of outreaches per week from social service agencies looking to help homeless migrants. All Souls had run encampments for migrants, but Denver shut them down because they lacked a permit.

“It’s so frustrating that we can’t help them,” Marley said. “That leaves families camping on their own, unsupported, living in their cars. Kids can’t get into school. There’s no stability.”

When Herrera started feeling labor pains in early December, she waited until she couldn’t bear the pain anymore and could feel the baby getting close. She called an ambulance.

The paramedics didn’t speak Spanish but called an interpreter. They told Herrera they had to take her to the closest hospital, instead of the one in Denver, since her contractions were so close together.

Her son was born healthy at 7 pounds, 8 ounces. She took him to the tent the next day. A few days later the whole family, including the baby, had contracted chicken pox. “The baby was in a bad state,” said Emily Rodriguez, a close friend living with her family in a tent next to Herrera’s.

Herrera took him to the hospital, then returned to the tent before being offered a way out. An Aurora woman originally from Mexico invited the family to live with her — at first, for free. After a couple weeks, the family moved to a small room in the garage for $800 a month.

To earn rent and pay expenses, Herrera and Rodriguez have cleaned homes, painted houses and shoveled snow while their children waited in a car by themselves. Finding regular work and actually getting paid for it has been difficult. While their husbands can get semi-regular work in construction, the women’s most consistent income comes from standing outside with their children and begging. On a good day, each earns about $50.

Herrera and her husband recently became eligible to apply for work permits and legal residency for Venezuelans who arrived in the United States last year. But it will cost $800 each for a lawyer to file the paperwork, along with hundreds of dollars in government fees. They don’t have the money.

What’s worse, they’re deeply in debt. Despite what the hospital had said when she was pregnant, Herrera was never signed up for emergency Medicaid. She says she owes $18,000 for the ambulance ride and delivery of her baby. Now, she avoids going to the doctor or taking her children because she’s afraid her large debt will jeopardize her chances of staying in the U.S. “I’m afraid they’re going to deport me,” she says.

Herrera and Rodriguez now hold cardboard signs along a busy street in Denver and then knock on the doors of private homes, never returning to the same address. They type up their request for clothes, food or money on their phones and translate it to English using Google. They hand their phones to whoever answers the door.

Herrera recently sent $500 to her sister to make the monthslong trip from Venezuela to Aurora with Herrera’s 8-year-old daughter. “I’ll have my family back together,” she says. And she believes her sister will be able to watch her kids so Herrera can look for work.

The problem is, Herrera hasn’t told her family back in Venezuela how she spends her time. “They think I’m fixing up homes and selling chocolate and flowers,” she says. “I’m living a lie.”

Finally, her sister and daughter are waiting across the border in Mexico. When we come to America, her sister asks, could we fly to Denver? The tickets are $600.

Herrera has to come clean. Life is far more difficult than she has let on.

She texts back:

No.
…

TALLINN, Estonia — When school started this year for Mikalay in Belarus, the 15-year-old discovered that his teachers and administrators no longer called him by that name. Instead, they referred to him as Nikolai, its Russian equivalent.

What’s more, classes at his school — one of the country’s best — are now taught in Russian, not Belarusian, which he has spoken for most of his life.

Belarusians like Mikalay are experiencing a new wave of Russification as Moscow expands its economic, political and cultural dominance to overtake the identity of its neighbor.

It’s not the first time. Russia under the czars and in the era of the Soviet Union imposed its language, symbols and cultural institutions on Belarus. But with the demise of the USSR in 1991, the country began to assert its identity, and Belarusian briefly became the official language, with the white-red-white national flag replacing a version of the red hammer and sickle.

But all that changed in 1994, after Alexander Lukashenko, a former Soviet collective farm official, came to power. The authoritarian leader made Russian an official language, alongside Belarusian, and did away with the nationalist symbols.

Now, with Lukashenko in control of the country for over three decades, he has allowed Russia to dominate all aspects of life in Belarus, a country of 9.5 million people. Belarusian, which like Russian uses the Cyrillic alphabet, is hardly heard on the streets of Minsk and other large cities anymore.

Official business is conducted in Russian, which dominates the majority of the media. Lukashenko speaks only Russian, and government officials often don’t use their native tongue.

The country depends on Russian loans and cheap energy and has created a political and military alliance with Moscow, allowing President Vladimir Putin to deploy troops and missiles on its soil, which was used as a staging area for the war in Ukraine.

“I understand that our Belarus is occupied. … And who is the president there? Not Lukashenko. The president is Putin,” said Svetlana Alexievich, who won the 2015 Nobel Prize for literature and lives in Germany in effective exile. “The nation has been humiliated and it will be very difficult for Belarusians to recover from this.”

Belarusian cultural figures have been persecuted and hundreds of its nationalist organizations have been closed. Experts say Moscow is seeking to implement in Belarus what the Kremlin intended to do in neighboring Ukraine when the war there began in 2022.

“It is obvious that our children are being deliberately deprived of their native language, history and Belarusian identity, but parents have been strongly advised not to ask questions about Russification,” said Mikalay’s father, Anatoly, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition his last name not be used, for fear of retribution.

“We were informed about the synchronization of the curriculum with Russia this year and were shown a propaganda film about how the Ukrainian special services are allegedly recruiting our teenagers and forcing them to commit sabotage in Belarus,” he said.

Mikalay’s school was one of the few where paperwork and some courses were conducted in Belarusian. In recent years, however, dozens of teachers were fired and the Belarusian-language section of its website vanished.

Human rights advocate Ales Bialiatski, convicted in 2023 on charges stemming from his Nobel Peace Prize-winning work, demanded his trial be conducted in Belarusian. The court rejected it and sentenced him to 10 years.

Lukashenko derides his native language, saying “nothing great can be expressed in Belarusian. … There are only two great languages in the world: Russian and English.”

Speaking to Russian state media, Lukashenko recounted how Putin once thanked him for making Russian the dominant language in Belarus.

“I said, ‘Wait, what are you thanking me for? … The Russian language is my language, we were part of one empire, and we’re taking part in [helping] that language develop,'” Lukashenko said.

Belarus was part of the Russian empire for centuries and became one of 15 Soviet republics after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. Daily use of the Belarusian language decreased and continued only in the country’s west and north and in rural areas.

In 1994, about 40% of students were taught in Belarusian; it’s now down to under 9%.

Although Belarusian, like Russian, is an eastern Slavic language, its vocabulary is considerably different. In 1517, Belarusian publisher Francysk Skaryna was one of the first in Eastern Europe to translate the Bible into his native language.

Even speaking Belarusian is seen as a show of opposition to Lukashenko and a declaration of national identity. That played a key role in the mass protests after the disputed 2020 election gave the authoritarian leader a sixth term. In the harsh crackdown that followed, a half-million people fled the country.

“The Belarusian language is increasingly perceived as a sign of political disloyalty and is being abandoned in favor of Russian in the public administration, education, culture and the mass media, upon orders from the hierarchy or out of fear of discrimination,” said Anaïs Marin, the United Nations special rapporteur for human rights in Belarus.

At the same time, “more people want to speak Belarusian, which has become one of the symbols of freedom, but they’re afraid to do it in public,” said Alina Nahornaja, author of Language 404, a book about Belarusians who experienced discrimination for speaking their native language.

Like Ukraine, Belarusians had a desire for rapprochement with Europe that accompanied their nationalist sentiment, said Belarusian analyst Valery Karbalevich.

“But the Kremlin quickly realized the danger and began the process of creeping Russification in Belarus,” he added.

That prompted pro-Russian organizations, joint educational programs and cultural projects to spring up “like mushrooms after the rain — against the backdrop of harsh repressions against everything Belarusian,” Karbalevich said.

Censorship and bans affect not only contemporary Belarusian literature but also its classics. In 2023, the prosecutor’s office declared as extremist the 19th-century poems of Vincent Dunin-Martsinkyevich, who opposed the Russian Empire.

When the Kremlin began supporting Lukashenko against the anti-government protests in 2020, it ensured his loyalty and received carte blanche in Belarus.

“Today, Lukashenko is paying Putin with our sovereignty,” said exiled opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya. “Belarusian national identity, cultures and language are our strongest weapons against the Russian world and Russification.”

Four cities in Belarus now host a “Russia House” to promote its culture and influence, offering seminars, film clubs, exhibitions and competitions.

“The goal is to plant Russian narratives so that as many Belarusians as possible view Russian as their own,” said analyst Alexander Friedman. “The Kremlin spares no expense and acts on a grand scale, which could be especially effective and dangerous in a situation where Belarus has found itself in information isolation, and there is almost no one left inside the country to resist the Russian world.”

Almost the entire troupe of the Yanka Kupala Theater, the country’s oldest, fled Belarus amid the political crackdown. Its former director, Pavel Latushka, now an opposition figure abroad, said the new management couldn’t recruit enough new actors, and had to invite Russians, “but it turned out that no one knew the Belarusian language.”

“Putin published an article denying the existence of an independent Ukraine back in 2021, and even then we understood perfectly well that he was pursuing similar goals in Belarus,” Latushka said.

“The main course was supposed to be Ukraine,” he added, with a Russified Belarus “as a dessert.”
…

US President Joe Biden met with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer at the White House on Friday to discuss support for Ukraine amid a push by Kyiv for Western partners to lift restrictions on using their long-range missiles to attack targets deep inside Russian territory. White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara has this report.
…

washington — Recent moves by Pyongyang have focused attention on what will be one of the first major foreign policy challenges facing the next U.S. president: how to deal with North Korea’s rapidly developing nuclear threat.

In a set of rapid-fire developments on Friday:

— North Korean leader Kim Jong Un called for an “exponential increase” in the size of his nation’s nuclear arsenal, according to the state-run news agency KCNA. He made the same call in speeches on Tuesday and on the last day of 2022.

— State media released photos for the first time of the Nuclear Weapons Institute where North Korea processes uranium for the manufacture of nuclear weapons. The photos, which showed a sophisticated array of centrifuges, were made public as Kim toured the facility.

— North Korea announced that it had tested a new type of 600 mm multiple rocket launcher the previous day. South Korea said on Thursday that North Korea test-fired several short-range ballistic missiles into the waters off the eastern coast.

The developments came in the context of enhanced military cooperation between North Korea and Russia, which is believed to be helping Pyongyang to develop its weapons capabilities in exchange for munitions used in Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

“The threat from North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs has been growing steadily and virtually unchecked over the course of several U.S. administrations,” said Evans Revere, a former State Department official with extensive experience negotiating with North Korea.

“Whoever the next U.S. president is, she or he will face a more sophisticated and dangerous North Korean threat.”

Revere said in an interview that the winner of the U.S. election would have to find ways to weaken the link between Moscow and Pyongyang “and demonstrate to Beijing that its ‘partnership without limits’ with Russia is a dangerous and ill-advised path that will yield no benefits” for China.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping declared in May a “new era” in opposition to the U.S. and reaffirmed the “no limits” partnership that was first announced just days before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

While China has held back on providing Russia with arms for its war effort, the United States has accused it of delivering electronic components and other dual-use items that are keeping Moscow’s arms industry afloat.

Pyongyang, for its part, denies participating in any arms transfers to Russia, an act that would violate United Nations sanctions.

But a report this week by Conflict Armament Research, a U.K.-based group that tracks weapons in armed conflicts, said parts from four North Korean missiles have been found in Ukraine.

The missiles, examined by Kyiv, are either KN-23 or KN-24, known as Hwasong-11 short-range missile series, and thought to have been used in attacks in July and August, the report said.

Pyongyang-Moscow military ties have also been expanded to include tourism, trade, and economic and technical cooperation.

This makes the use of sanctions less effective as a policy tool to counter North Korea’s nuclear buildup, according to Gary Samore, former White House coordinator for arms control and weapons of mass destruction during the Obama administration.

“That’s not as much leverage now as it was before because of the Russian-North Korean relationship,” said Samore. “The U.S. doesn’t have very strong economic leverage that it can use with North Korea.”

With few obvious policy options available, the two presidential candidates – former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris – have largely confined themselves to criticizing each other’s approach without laying out any specific plans to roll back the North Korean threat.

At Tuesday night’s televised debate, Harris criticized Trump for exchanging “love letters with Kim Jong Un” during his presidency while Trump disapproved of the current administration’s handling of the issue, saying, “Look at what’s going on in North Korea.”

During his presidency, Trump held three summits with Kim but the diplomatic effort ultimately failed when Trump refused Kim’s demand for sanctions relief in exchange for a partial rollback of his nuclear program.

There have been no formal talks between the two countries since, although the Biden administration insists it is open to negotiations without preconditions, a policy that Harris could be expected to continue if elected.

The Biden administration also maintains that its goal remains the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, even as many experts suggest it is time to acknowledge that Pyongyang will not give up its weapons and say the international community should focus on containment.

Samore predicted that a Harris administration would continue to say that “as an ultimate objective … the U.S. seeks denuclearization in the long term.”

A second Trump administration, he theorized, may say “denuclearization is no longer possible” and “accept North Korea as a nuclear power.”

Robert Rapson, who served as charge d’affaires and deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Seoul from 2018 to 2021, said much would depend on how the winner of the election decides to work with regional allies South Korea and Japan.

“In the likely absence of any grand outreach towards Pyongyang, Harris will have to carefully manage the relationship with ally Seoul, with a focus for the foreseeable future on maintaining peace and stability on the peninsula,” he said.

He added that it was “uncertain at this moment” whether Trump would feel compelled to reach out to Kim and whether he would diminish the value of the alliances with South Korea and Japan.

Eunjung Cho contributed to this report.
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pentagon — The Pentagon says it has nearly $6 billion in funding for Ukraine left that could expire at the end of this month unless Congress or the State Department acts to extend the military’s authority to draw weapons from its stockpiles to send to Kyiv.

“We have $5.9 billion left in Ukraine Presidential Drawdown Authority, all but $100 million of which will expire at the end of the fiscal year,” Pentagon press secretary Major General Pat Ryder said Friday. “The department will continue to provide drawdown packages in the near future and is working with Congress to seek an extension of PDA [presidential drawdown] authorities beyond the end of the fiscal year.”

A defense official, who spoke to VOA on the condition of anonymity, said Congress’ monthslong deadlock in passing the supplemental funding bill for Ukraine was a “contributing factor” as to why billions of dollars for weapons remained unspent.

The money was expected to be allocated for Ukraine last year, but the U.S. House was unable to pass the $95 billion foreign aid package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan until late April of this year. Of that, about $61 billion was earmarked for Ukraine.

The official said the delay left the Pentagon with less time to identify and send military aid to Kyiv from its stockpiles. The nearly $6 billion left in funding amounts to less than 10% of the aid allocated in April to address the conflict in Ukraine.

Speaking in response to a VOA question earlier this month, deputy Pentagon press secretary Sabrina Singh said the Pentagon would “use everything we can that’s available to us to make sure that we are continuing to provide Ukraine what it needs, both in the short term and the long term.”

“We’re in this fight with Ukraine for the long haul,” she said.

Two ways to ensure access

There are two ways to make sure that access to the remaining funds will not expire at the beginning of October, Mykola Murskyj, director of advocacy for the NGO Razom for Ukraine, told VOA.

The first is that Congress has to approve it again. This requires lawmakers to pass a provision that would extend the authority to use the remaining amount in the next budget year.

House members from both sides of the aisle have expressed support for extending the authorities so that all the allocated funding for Kyiv can be used.

“If we need to extend it, we’ll extend it,” Representative Adam Smith, the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, told VOA.

Representative Mike Lawler, a Republican on the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, added that he would “push to get it done” if the funding was not all spent by the deadline.

The second way to ensure the military can access the remaining funds is for the State Department to notify Congress of its intent to use the funds, according to Murskyj. In this case, lawmakers will not need to vote on the extension, but formal notification must be issued by the secretary of state, as has been done in the past.

A State Department spokesperson would not comment on whether it would issue the extension, saying it would not discuss communications with lawmakers and their staffs, but would continue “to coordinate closely with Congress concerning the steadfast support that the United States, our allies and our partners worldwide are providing to help Ukraine defend itself against Russia’s premeditated, unprovoked and unjustified war.”

Murskyj told VOA his advocacy group was working with members of Congress to extend the funds.

“However, I am not going to put all of my eggs in that basket,” he said, because “it is very difficult to predict what Congress will do, and there’s always the potential for some kind of last-minute derailment.”

In a letter to the administration, members of pro-Ukrainian nongovernmental organizations said extending these funds “would send a powerful message to Ukraine, Russia and American voters that the administration wants Ukraine to win.”

Kateryna Lisunova of VOA’s Ukrainian Service contributed to this report.
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washington — The United States and some of its allies have launched a global campaign to undercut efforts by RT and other Russian state-backed media outlets, accusing them of operating on behalf of the Kremlin’s intelligence agencies.

The State Department on Friday announced sanctions against two people and three entities, including RT’s Moscow-based parent company, saying new intelligence leaves no doubt that they are no longer engaged in providing anything that resembles news and information.

RT’s parent company and its subsidiaries “are no longer merely fire hoses of Russian government propaganda and disinformation,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters at the State Department.

“They are engaged in covert influence activities aimed at undermining American elections and democracy, functioning like a de facto arm of Russia’s intelligence apparatus,” he said, adding the Russian operations also seek to “meddle in the sovereign affairs of countries around the world.”

Blinken and other U.S. officials declined to share details about the new intelligence, saying only that some of it comes from RT employees, and that it shows how the Russian-controlled television network is playing a key role in running cyber operations and even acquiring lethal weapons for Russian troops fighting in Ukraine.

RT quickly ridiculed the U.S. accusations both on social media and in a response to VOA.

“RT: Lives rent free in the State Department head,” the outlet posted on X. “We’re running out of popcorn, but we’ll be here live, laughing hard…”

In response to a query from VOA, RT pointed to comments by editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan on her Telegram channel.

“American intelligence services have uncovered that we are helping the front lines,” Simonyan wrote, according to a translation from Russian. “We’ve been doing this openly, you idiots. Should I send you a list of what we’ve bought and sent? We regularly publish this, just so you know.”

The Russian Embassy in Washington has not yet responded to a request from VOA for comment.

U.S. officials, though, said comments like the ones from RT’s Simonyan only give more weight to the allegations.

“They’ve admitted it,” said James Rubin, the special envoy for the State Department’s Global Engagement Center. “They have said they’re operating under direct instruction of [Russian President] Vladimir Putin. That’s what they say they’re doing.”

And the U.S. says the intelligence shows those Kremlin-assigned responsibilities go far beyond what could be considered normal broadcast operations, including oversight of a crowdsourcing campaign to provide Russian troops in Ukraine with sniper rifles, body armor, drones, night vision equipment and other weaponry.

“That’s not what a TV station normally does. That’s what … that’s what a military entity does,” Rubin said. RT is “a fully fledged member of the intelligence apparatus and operation of the Russian government on the war in Ukraine.”

The U.S. intelligence also points to Kremlin-directed RT operations in Argentina, Germany and the South Caucasus – some linked to a Russian military intelligence cyber team that has been embedded within the company.

U.S. officials also said evidence shows RT is “almost certainly” coordinating with traditional Russian intelligence services to meddle in next month’s presidential elections in Moldova.

“RT is going to be used to try to manipulate an election and, if they don’t win the election, manipulate a crowd to try to generate violence for the possibility of overthrowing [the government],” Rubin said.

U.S. officials also called out RT for covert influence operations in Latin America and Africa that have had serious consequences.

“One of the reasons why so much of the world has not been as fully supportive of Ukraine as you would think they would be — given that Russia has invaded Ukraine and violated rule number one of the international system — is because of the broad scope and reach of RT,” Rubin said.

The State Department said Friday that it had instructed its diplomats to share evidence about RT’s efforts with countries around the world.

“We urge every ally, every partner, to start by treating RT’s activities as they do other intelligence activities by Russia within their borders,” Blinken said.

Friday’s sanctions came a little more than a week after the U.S. took action against what it described as two Russian plots, one of them involving RT, aimed at undermining the U.S. presidential elections in November.

The U.S. Department of Justice announced the takedown of 32 fake websites designed by Russia to mimic legitimate news sites, to bombard U.S. voters with propaganda aimed at building support for Russia in its war against Ukraine and bolstering support for Republican presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump.

The U.S. also unsealed indictments against two RT employees, accusing them of funneling nearly $10 million to a U.S. company in Tennessee to promote and distribute English-language material favorable to the Russian government.
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Taipei, Taiwan — The United States and China are taking steps to resume top-level military-to-military communication, which analysts say is aimed at avoiding miscommunication and preventing tensions in the Indo-Pacific region from spiraling out of control.

The head of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, Admiral Sam Paparo, and the head of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Southern Theater Command, General Wu Yanan, held a video call Tuesday.

The Chinese defense ministry said the two commanders had an “in-depth exchange of views on issues of common concern” while Paparo urged the Chinese military “to reconsider its use of dangerous, coercive and potentially escalatory tactics in the South China Sea and beyond.”

On Thursday, the Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal reported that Wu is expected to attend a defense conference held by the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command in Hawaii next week, citing anonymous U.S. defense officials.

Meanwhile, Michael Chase, the U.S. assistant secretary of defense for China, Taiwan and Mongolia, is holding defense policy coordination talks with Chinese defense officials while attending the annual Xiangshan Security Dialogue held in Beijing.

The U.S. delegation led by Chase will “engage with regional allies and partners on the sidelines of the Xiangshan Forum to underscore the United States’ shared vision for the region ‘underpinned by a set of enduring beliefs,’” said the U.S. Department of Defense in a readout released Thursday.

The Biden administration has been working to restore communication between Chinese and American militaries since the U.S. president’s meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the APEC Summit in California last November.

It also follows the first meeting between U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan and China’s vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, Zhang Youxia, last month.

During that meeting, Zhang said maintaining military security is “in line with the common interests of both sides” and Sullivan highlighted the two nations’ shared responsibility to “prevent competition from veering into conflict or confrontation.”

Some analysts see a potential for further communication and engagement between the two militaries.

“I won’t rule out the possibilities that Beijing and Washington may look to establish a hotline between the two militaries, and whether that mechanism could be extended to the theater command level remains to be seen,” Lin Ying-Yu, a military expert at Tamkang University in Taiwan, told VOA by phone.

While the resumption of top-level communication allows Beijing and Washington to avoid miscalculations, other experts say it is unclear whether China and the U.S. can establish a more sustainable mechanism to cope with potential crises.

“While having contact and knowing your interlocutors are positive things during non-crisis times, the real test is whether these contacts can hold back any unintended escalation when incidents happen,” said Ian Chong, a political scientist at the National University of Singapore.

Chong said since theater commanders from the U.S. and China oversee implementing rather than formulating policies, it is unclear whether the latest development can become established protocols.

“If there’s a persistence of [maintaining military-to-military communication], then it would suggest that it has become a policy,” he told VOA by phone.

Tensions remain high over contentious issues

Tensions remain high between China and the U.S. over a range of issues, including the repeated collision between Chinese and Philippine vessels near disputed reefs in the South China Sea and Beijing’s increased maneuvers in waters and airspace near Taiwan and Japan.

During the Xiangshan Forum, Lieutenant General He Lei, the former vice president of the PLA Academy of Military Sciences, characterized the Philippines’ attempt to safeguard its territorial claims in the South China Sea as “a unilateral change of the status quo” while accusing the U.S. of undermining security across the Taiwan Strait by selling weapons to Taiwan.

“The Chinese people and the People’s Liberation Army will never allow any external forces to interfere in China’s internal affairs or invade China’s territory,” he told Chinese state broadcaster CGTN in an interview.

Some analysts say there are limits to what military-to-military communications can do to ease tensions over what are essentially political disagreements.

“The military tension is only a manifestation of their political differences over Taiwan and the South China Sea, so if their disagreements are not resolved, the military tension is very unlikely to see a permanent resolution,” Yun Sun, China program director at the Stimson Center in Washington, told VOA by phone.

With less than two months until the U.S. presidential election, Chong in Singapore said Beijing and Washington’s recent efforts may be an attempt to lay the foundation for bilateral military-to-military communication to be continued after the November election.

“On the Democrat side, if some of the current team stays [after November], perhaps we would see this momentum continue,” he told VOA.

“On the Republican side, things are a bit messier, because you have those who prefer the isolationist approach, those who advocate a containment approach in Asia, and people who talk about competing against China to win,” Chong added.

Sun said if Donald Trump wins the election in November, Beijing will expect instability in bilateral relations and be prepared for the military relationship to be affected.
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new york — Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, a powerful leader of Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel, pleaded not guilty Friday to U.S. narcotics trafficking charges in a case accusing him of engaging in murder plots, ordering torture and channeling tons of drugs into the United States.

Participating in a court hearing through a Spanish-language interpreter, Zambada gave yes-or-no answers to a magistrate’s standard questions about whether he understood various documents and procedures. Asked how he was feeling, he said, “Fine, fine.”

His lawyers entered the not guilty plea on his behalf.

Outside court, Zambada attorney Frank Perez said his client wasn’t contemplating making a deal with the government, and the attorney expects the case to go to trial.

“It’s a complex case,” he said.

Sought by American law enforcement for more than two decades, Zambada has been in U.S. custody since July 25, when he landed in a private plane at an airport outside El Paso, Texas, in the company of another fugitive cartel leader, Joaquin Guzman Lopez, according to federal authorities.

Zambada later said in a letter that he was kidnapped in Mexico and brought to the U.S. by Guzman Lopez, a son of imprisoned Sinaloa co-founder Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman.

Zambada’s lawyer did not elaborate on those claims Friday.

U.S. Magistrate Judge James Cho ordered Zambada detained until trial. His lawyers did not ask for bail, and U.S. prosecutors in Brooklyn asked the judge to detain him.

“He was one of the most, if not the most, powerful narcotics kingpins in the world,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Francisco Navarro said. “He co-founded the Sinaloa cartel and sat atop the narcotics trafficking world for decades.”

Zambada sat quietly as he listened to the interpreter. Leaving court after the brief hearing, he appeared to accept some help getting out of a chair, then walked out slowly but unaided.

The 76-year-old had used a wheelchair at a court appearance in Texas last month. But Perez said after court Friday that Zambada was healthy and “in good spirits.”

Sketch artists were in the small courtroom, but other journalists could observe only through closed-circuit video because of a shortage of seats.

In court and in a letter earlier to the judge, prosecutors said Zambada presided over a vast and violent operation, with an arsenal of military-grade weapons, a private security force that was almost like an army, and a corps of “sicarios,” or hitmen, who carried out assassinations, kidnappings and torture.

His bloody tenure included ordering the murder, just months ago, of his own nephew, the prosecutors said.

“A United States jail cell is the only thing that will prevent the defendant from committing further crimes,” Navarro said.

Zambada also pleaded not guilty to the charges at an earlier court appearance in Texas. His next court appearance is scheduled for October 31.

According to authorities, Zambada and “El Chapo” Guzman built the Sinaloa cartel from a regional syndicate into a huge manufacturer and smuggler of cocaine, heroin and other illicit drugs to the U.S. Zambada has been seen as the group’s strategist and dealmaker and a less flamboyant figure than Guzman.

Zambada had never been behind bars until his U.S. arrest in July.

His apprehension has touched off fighting in Mexico between rival factions in the Sinaloa cartel. Gunfights have killed several people.

Schools and businesses in Culiacan, the capital of Sinaloa, have closed amid the fighting. The battles are believed to be between factions loyal to Zambada and those led by other sons of “El Chapo” Guzman, who was convicted of drug and conspiracy charges and sentenced to life in prison in the U.S. in 2019.

It remains unclear why Guzman Lopez surrendered to U.S. authorities and brought Zambada with him. Guzman Lopez is awaiting trial on a separate drug trafficking indictment in Chicago, where he has pleaded not guilty.
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