Mexico City — France has sent a group of special anti-riot police that’s been banned for 65 years to the French Caribbean island of Martinique, where protesters have gathered despite the government barring demonstrations in parts of the island. 

The force arrived this weekend after the local representative of France’s central government in its overseas territory said in a statement that protests were forbidden in the municipalities of Fort-de-France, Le Lamentin, Ducos and Le Robert until Monday. The government also issued a curfew. 

The restrictions came after violent protests broke out on the island last week over the high cost of living, with gunfire injuring at least six police officers and one civilian. Police launched tear gas and government officials said several stores were also looted. 

Officials said the bans were meant “to put an end to the violence and damage committed at gatherings, as well as to the numerous obstacles to daily life and freedom of movement that penalize the entire population, particularly at weekends.” 

But the measure was met by defiance by many on the island, with massive peaceful protests breaking out Saturday night. Videos from local media show crowds of thousands peacefully walking along highways overnight banging on drums and waiving flags. 

As protests wound on without violence, the force of French anti-riot police arrived on the island and were staying at a hotel in Fort-de-France on Sunday. It wasn’t immediately clear how many were sent. 

The elite riot police, known as the Companies for Republican Security, were banned in the French territory following bloody riots in December 1959. The unit had been accused of using disproportionate force against protesters, ending in the deaths of a number of young demonstrators. The force is rarely deployed in French territories in the Caribbean but was called on during riots and strikes in Guadeloupe in 2009. 

Martinique’s leaders requested the forces amid the recent protests in an historic shift for the island, and one met with a sharp rejection by some in the territory. 

Beatrice Bellay, a representative of the socialist party on the island, blasted the move, saying: “Martinique is not in a civil war, it is a social war.” She called for an “open and transparent dialogue” between protesters and the government. 

“This measure … only serves to aggravate tensions and distract attention from the legitimate demands of the people of Martinique,” she wrote in a statement Sunday. 
…

Sacramento, California — “Paper or plastic” will no longer be a choice at grocery store checkout lines in California under a new law signed Sunday by Gov. Gavin Newsom that bans all plastic shopping bags.

California had already banned thin plastic shopping bags at supermarkets and other stores, but shoppers could purchase bags made with a thicker plastic that purportedly made them reusable and recyclable.

The new measure, approved by state legislators last month, bans all plastic shopping bags starting in 2026. Consumers who don’t bring their own bags will now simply be asked if they want a paper bag.

State Sen. Catherine Blakespear, one of the bill’s supporters, said people were not reusing or recycling any plastic bags. She pointed to a state study that found that the amount of plastic shopping bags trashed per person grew from 3.6 kilograms per year in 2004 to 5 kilograms per year in 2021.

Blakespear, a Democrat from Encinitas, said the previous bag ban passed a decade ago didn’t reduce the overall use of plastic.

“We are literally choking our planet with plastic waste,” she said in February.

The environmental nonprofit Oceana applauded Newsom for signing the bill and “safeguarding California’s coastline, marine life, and communities from single-use plastic grocery bags.”

Christy Leavitt, Oceana’s plastics campaign director, said Sunday that the new ban on single-use plastic bags at grocery store checkouts “solidifies California as a leader in tackling the global plastic pollution crisis.”

Twelve states, including California, already have some type of statewide plastic bag ban in place, according to the environmental advocacy group Environment America Research & Policy Center. Hundreds of cities across 28 states also have their own plastic bag bans in place.

The California Legislature passed its statewide ban on plastic bags in 2014. The law was later affirmed by voters in a 2016 referendum.

The California Public Interest Research Group said Sunday that the new law finally meets the intent of the original bag ban.

“Plastic bags create pollution in our environment and break into microplastics that contaminate our drinking water and threaten our health,” said the group’s director Jenn Engstrom. “Californians voted to ban plastic grocery bags in our state almost a decade ago, but the law clearly needed a redo. With the governor’s signature, California has finally banned plastic bags in grocery checkout lanes once and for all.”

As San Francisco’s mayor in 2007, Newsom signed the nation’s first plastic bag ban.
…

Geneva — Switzerland, known for natural beauty like pristine lakes and majestic Alpine peaks, ranks among the world’s richest countries whose plant and animal life is under the greatest threat. Environmentalists were seeking better protections for the country’s biodiversity in a nationwide vote that culminated Sunday.

Final official results showed more than 63% of voters casting ballots had rejected the initiative that aimed to boost public funding to encourage farmers and others to set aside lands and waterways to let the wild develop more, and increase the total area allocated for green spaces that must remain untouched by human development.

The contest was decided by mail-in ballots followed by a morning of in-person voting Sunday.

Factors behind the weakening biodiversity in the country of rivers, lakes, valleys and mountains include intensified agriculture, soil alteration, a fragmentation of the landscape — such as the building of roads and housing that cut through wildlife habitats — and pollution and climate change, proponents of the measure said.

The federal government — parliament and the executive branch — opposed the plan, as did many rural voters and the country’s main right-wing party, according to polls. They called it too costly, saying 600 million Swiss francs (over $700 million) is already spent on biodiversity protection each year, and fear economic development will suffer.

Passage was estimated to cost at least another 400 million francs for national and local governments, the Federal Council estimates. The initiative would also, for example, prohibit the construction of new railway lines through protected dry meadows — even if such meadow is set aside and developed elsewhere, it says.

“Passage of the biodiversity initiative would severely limit (sustainable) energy and food production, restrict the use of forests and rural areas for tourism, and make construction more expensive,” argued the campaign for a “no” vote on its website. “YES to biodiversity, but NO to the extreme biodiversity initiative.”

Proponents, meanwhile, pointed to dwindling natural resources in Switzerland and threats to bees, frogs, birds, mosses and other wildlife. They argued that protected green spaces are “the main capital for tourism” and more of them would support local economies.

“Diversified nature guarantees air purity, drinkable water, pollination, fertility of the soil, and our food supply,” said a committee that backed the idea. “But in Switzerland, biodiversity is suffering. One-third of all our plant and animal species are threatened or have already disappeared.”

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a think tank that counts 38 mostly rich countries as members, has produced a comparative look at threats to plant and animal life. Switzerland ranks among the top four countries with the highest rates of threatened species in all eight categories of wildlife.

The voting was part of the latest Swiss referendums, which take place four times a year to give voters a direct say in policymaking in the country of around 9 million people. The only other nationwide issue up for consideration this time was a pension reform plan backed by the government.

More than two-thirds of voters turned down the pension reform plan, the final results showed.
…

Washington — Congressional leaders announced an agreement Sunday on a short-term spending bill that will fund federal agencies for about three months, averting a possible partial government shutdown when the new budget year begins Oct. 1 and pushing final decisions until after the November election.

Lawmakers have struggled to get to this point as the current budget year winds to a close at month’s end. At the urging of the most conservative members of his conference, House Speaker Mike Johnson had linked temporary funding with a mandate that would have compelled states to require proof of citizenship when people register to vote.

But Johnson could not get all Republicans on board even as the party’s presidential nominee, Donald Trump, insisted on that package. Trump said Republican lawmakers should not support a stop-gap measure without the voting requirement, but the bill went down to defeat anyway, with 14 Republicans opposing it.

Bipartisan negotiations began in earnest shortly after that, with leadership agreeing to extend funding into mid-December. That gives the current Congress the ability to fashion a full-year spending bill after the Nov. 5 election, rather than push that responsibility to the next Congress and president.

In a letter to Republican colleagues, Johnson said the budget measure would be “very narrow, bare-bones” and include “only the extensions that are absolutely necessary.”

“While this is not the solution any of us prefer, it is the most prudent path forward under the present circumstances,” Johnson wrote. “As history has taught and current polling affirms, shutting the government down less than 40 days from a fateful election would be an act of political malpractice.”

Rep. Tom Cole, the House Appropriations Committee chairman, had said on Friday that talks were going well.

“So far, nothing has come up that we can’t deal with,” said Cole, R-Okla. “Most people don’t want a government shutdown and they don’t want that to interfere with the election. So nobody is like, ‘I’ve got to have this or we’re walking.’ It’s just not that way.”

Johnson’s earlier effort had no chance in the Democratic-controlled Senate and was opposed by the White House, but it did give the speaker a chance to show Trump and conservatives within his conference that he fought for their request.

The final result — government funding effectively on autopilot — was what many had predicted. With the election just weeks away, few lawmakers in either party had any appetite for the brinksmanship that often leads to a shutdown.

Now a bipartisan majority is expected to push the short-term measure over the finish line. Temporary spending bills generally fund agencies at current levels, but some additional money was included to bolster the Secret Service, replenish a disaster relief fund and aid with the presidential transition, among other things.
…

Cognac, France — Frustrated cognac producers in southwestern France are growing increasingly anxious over the looming threat of Chinese tariffs on European brandy, a move industry representatives worry could force French liquor from the Chinese market.

Some 800 protesters riding on tractors and carrying signs gathered in France’s southwestern town of Cognac this week demanding a delay to an upcoming European Union vote to impose duties on Chinese electric vehicles.

This protest — the first since 1998 — comes after Beijing refused to rule out future tariffs following an anti-dumping investigation into brandy imported from the European Union.

The probe was launched months after the EU undertook an investigation into Chinese electric vehicle (EV) subsidies.

And with the EU set to vote next week on introducing tariffs on Chinese EVs, France’s brandy makers are worried about the consequences that vote could have on their livelihood.  

“The situation is urgent,” said Anthony Brun, the union head for Cognac’s brandy makers, adding that a decision to levy tariffs on Chinese EVs “will jeopardize the entire industry.”

Cognac’s interprofessional association BNIC said it was recently notified that China intends to impose tariffs of around 35% on European brandy, a move seen as targeting France.

This comes despite repeated assurances from Beijing it would not implement provisional tariffs after it found European brandy had been dumped into China, threatening the country’s domestic industry with “substantial damage.”  

“For a year now, we have been warning French and European authorities about this risk and the need to stop this downward spiral,” wrote Brun in a letter addressed to new French Prime Minister Michel Barnier about the tariff threat.

“We are the victims without being in any way responsible. … We have not been listened to,” Brun said, writing on behalf of the cognac union.

In May, French President Emmanuel Macron thanked his Chinese counterpart for not imposing customs duties on French cognac amid the probe, presenting Xi Jinping with bottles of the expensive drink.

But cooperating with Chinese authorities has produced “no results” and incurred millions in costs, said Florent Morillon, head of BNIC.

Tariffs could force French brandy to “disappear from the Chinese market,” which accounts for a quarter of exports, added Morillon.

The threat of losing the Chinese market could be existential for some brandy makers, who count on overseas consumers for up to 60% of their profits.

China imported more brandy than any other spirit in 2022, with most of it coming from France, according to a report by research group Daxue Consulting.

Cognac producers are calling on the EU to postpone its September 25 vote on imposing tariffs on EVs imported from China, fearing China will respond with customs duties on European brandy.

“We have no way out,” said Rodolphe Texier, a member of a farmers’ union in France’s western Charente region.

“If Europe doesn’t follow us, we’re dead,” said Texier, adding he is concerned about widespread repercussions throughout the industry which could impact everyone from distillers to barrel makers to truck drivers.

With more than 4,400 farms and some 85,000 jobs, France’s cognac industry is already in trouble after it saw a 22% drop in sales in 2023 and dramatically reduced new vine planting zones.

France’s brandy makers are not the only ones under pressure, as Beijing launched a probe into EU subsidiaries on some dairy products in August.

Even though a meeting is set “in principle” between BNIC and the prime minister’s office, Florent Morillon told AFP there is a feeling of being “taken hostage” by Paris and Brussels.

“The French and European authorities have decided to sacrifice us,” wrote union head Anthony Brun.

“Never mind our jobs, our weight in the local economy, our contribution to trade, and to France’s image,” he added.
…

Los Angeles — It’s a three-peat for “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.”

The Tim Burton legacy sequel to his 1988 horror comedy topped the North American box office charts for the third straight weekend with $26 million in ticket sales, according to studio estimates Sunday.

It edged out the animated new release “Transformers: One,” which brought in $25 million. The Optimus Prime origin story from Paramount Pictures features the voices of Chris Hemsworth, Brian Tyree Henry and Scarlett Johansson.

“Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” a Warner Bros. release with Michael Keaton and Winona Ryder returning as stars, has earned more than $226 million domestically in its three weeks after a monster opening of $110 million — the third best of the year — and a second weekend of $51.6 million.

Third place went to the James McAvoy horror “Speak No Evil,” which came in at $5.9 million in its second week for a total of $21.5 million.

On the whole, the box office was in a quiet phase that is expected to break when ” Joker: Folie à Deux ” dances its way onto the big screen on Oct. 4.

The year’s second-highest grosser ” Deadpool & Wolverine ” remained in the top 5 in its ninth weekend with another $3.9 million and a domestic total of $627 million. Only Pixar’s “Inside Out 2” has earned more.

The Demi Moore-starring, Coralie Fargeat-directed body horror “The Substance,” which made a splash at the Cannes Film Festival, brought in $3.1 million on limited screens in its first weekend for the sixth spot.

The Daily Wire movie “Am I Racist?” — in which conservative columnist Matt Walsh goes undercover as a “DEI trainee” — stayed in the top 10 after a fourth place finish last week, earning $2.9 million for seventh place and a two-week total of $9 million.

Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.

1. “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” $26 million.

2. “Transformers One,” $25 million.

3. “Speak No Evil,” $5.9 million.

4. “Never Let Go,” $4.5 million.

5. “Deadpool & Wolverine,” $3.9 million.

6. “The Substance,” $3.1 million.

7. “Am I Racist?” $2.5 million.

8. “Reagan,” $1.7 million.

9. “JUNG KOOK: I AM STILL,” $1.4 million.

10. “Alien Romulus,” $1.3 million.
    …

A business owner in Baltimore, Maryland, who was born in Kyiv has started a charity to help Ukrainian children affected by war.  Andriy Borys has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. VOA footage by Viacheslav Filiushkin.
…

SAN FRANCISCO — Sidewalks once teeming with tents, tarps and people passed out next to heaps of trash have largely disappeared from great swaths of San Francisco, a city widely known for its visible homeless population.

The number of people sleeping outdoors dropped to under 3,000 in January, the lowest the city has recorded in a decade, according to a federal count.

And that figure has likely dropped even lower since Mayor London Breed — a Democrat in a difficult reelection fight this November — started ramping up enforcement of anti-camping laws in August following a U.S. Supreme Court decision.

Homelessness in no way has gone away, and in fact grew 7%, to 8,300 in January, according to the same federal count.

But the problem is now notably out of the public eye, raising the question of where people have gone and whether the change marks a turning point in a crisis long associated with San Francisco.

“We’re seeing much cleaner sidewalks,” said Terry Asten Bennett, owner of Cliff’s Variety store in the city’s historically gay Castro neighborhood, adding that she hates to see homeless people shuffled around.

“But also, as a business owner, I need clean, inviting streets to encourage people to come and shop and visit our city,” she said.

Advocates for homeless people say encampment sweeps that force people off the streets are an easy way to hide homelessness from public view.

“Shelter should always be transitional,” said Lukas Illa, an organizer with San Francisco’s Coalition on Homelessness. “We shouldn’t have folks be in there as the long-lasting solution.”

Other California cities have also reported a drop in visible homelessness, thanks to improved outreach and more temporary housing. The beach city of Santa Cruz reported a 49% decline in people sleeping unsheltered this year, while Los Angeles recorded a 10% drop.

San Francisco has increased the number of shelter beds and permanent supportive housing units by more than 50% over the past six years. At the same time, city officials are on track to eclipse the nearly 500 sweeps conducted last year, with Breed prioritizing bus tickets out of the city for homeless people and authorizing police to do more to stamp out tents.

San Francisco police have issued at least 150 citations for illegal lodging since Aug. 1, surpassing the 60 citations over the entire previous three years. City crews also have removed more than 1,200 tents and structures.

Tracking homeless people is extremely difficult and where all the people once living on San Francisco’s streets have gone is impossible to know.

There are still people sleeping on sidewalks, some with just a blanket, and tents continue to crop up under freeway overpasses and more isolated corners of the city. But tents that once sprouted outside libraries and subway stations, and went on endlessly for blocks in the Mission, downtown and South of Market districts, are gone. Even the troubled Tenderloin district has seen progress.

Steven Burcell, who became homeless a year ago after a shoulder injury cost him his job, moved into one of 60 new, tiny cabins in May after the car he was living in caught fire.

Mission Cabins is a new type of emergency shelter that offers privacy and allows pets. But like all shelters, it has rules. No drugs, weapons or outside guests are allowed. Residents must consent to their rooms being searched.

“At the beginning, it was rough, you know, going in and just getting adjusted to being searched and having them look through your bags,” acknowledged Burcell, 51.

His tidy 65-square-foot (6-square-meter) room contains a twin bed, pairs of shoes lined by a door that locks and opens onto a sunny courtyard that, on a recent morning, was filled with the voices of children playing at the elementary school next door.

“To have your own space inside here and close the door, not sharing anything with anybody,” he said, “it’s huge.”

But Burcell opposes encampment sweeps. He said two friends rejected beds because they thought — inaccurately, he said — the shelter would be infested with rodents. That did not stop crews from taking their tent and everything inside it.

“Now they have nothing. They don’t have any shelter at all,” he said. “They just kind of wander around and take buses, like a lot of people do.”

Since 2018, San Francisco has added 1,800 emergency shelter beds and nearly 5,000 permanent supportive housing units, where people pay 30% of their income toward rent and the rest is subsidized, bringing the total to more than 4,200 beds and 14,000 units.

Breed, who first won office in June 2018, can claim credit for the expansion, although some plans were in place before she became mayor and her administration had huge financial help.

The money came from the federal government battling the pandemic and a California governor — and onetime San Francisco mayor — who made fighting homelessness and tent encampments his priority. Gov. Gavin Newsom has pumped at least $24 billion into the effort since taking office in 2019, including a program to turn hotels into housing.

San Francisco also benefited from a controversial 2018 wealth tax on the city’s tech titans that Breed opposed, saying companies would leave. There was no exodus and the pandemic overshadowed any fallout.

The funds have helped get people off the streets and tripled the annual budget of the San Francisco Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing from nearly $300 million in 2018 to $850 million this year.

But the department’s budget is expected to dip below $700 million next year, and that worries experts who say more is needed in a city where the median price of a home is $1.4 million.

“We still have a housing market that is way too expensive for way too many people. And as long as that continues to be the case, we’re going to see folks falling into homelessness,” said Alex Visotzky, a policy fellow with the National Alliance to End Homelessness.

Advocates for the homeless say that’s why city officials need to invest in more affordable housing.

One such place is 835 Turk Street, a former hotel the city purchased and reopened two years ago as supportive housing. It’s home to David Labogin, who lost his housing after his mother died.

“Of course, things could be a whole lot better,” he said, sitting on a single bed, “but from where I came from, I got no complaints.”

But housing takes longer to build, and converting old properties is not cheap. The city purchased 835 Turk for $25 million and spent $18 million — twice the estimated amount — rehabilitating it.

Until then, shelters are adapting, accommodating couples and people with pets.

It takes new residents about two weeks to adjust to the rules at Mission Cabins, said Steve Good, CEO of operator Five Keys. “A few rules to keep them safe is better than living on the street, where there aren’t any rules,” he said.

“Amen,” said Patrick Richardson, 54, who stopped by to watch as Good was interviewed. He was on his way to a two-year college in Oakland where he is studying to be an X-ray technician.

Richardson had been sleeping on couches and pavement when an outreach worker offered him a cabin.

His new home, he said, “rescued me.
…

Kharkiv, Ukraine — A Russian strike on a residential neighborhood in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv wounded 21 people including three minors, the regional governor said Sunday. 

Oleg Synegubov posted on Telegram that eight of the victims were hospitalized, two in critical condition, after the strike late Saturday, when dozens of people were asleep in the two multistory buildings that were hit. 

Russia has repeatedly targeted Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, near the Russian border in the country’s east that counted 1.4 million inhabitants before Moscow launched its war in February 2022. 

Rescue workers used torches to search through the rubble, while one girl shook with sobs and held fast to a corridor wall, too scared to descend the stairs, and calling for her mother, an AFP reporter saw at the scene. 

A rescuer took her by the hand, saying, “Everything is OK,” and guided her down to her mother, Oleksandra. 

“It has just blown up. It’s terrible in there, the place is a wreck,” she said. 

The city’s mayor, Igor Terekhov, said at the site that “As you can see, there are no military here.” 

“Every day and every night Kharkiv suffers the hits,” he said. 

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said the attack showed why his forces needed to use weapons supplied by Western allies to strike deeper into Russian territory, which, so far, they have refused. 

“We must reinforce our capabilities to better protect lives and ensure our security,” he said in a statement ahead of a U.S. trip this week, where he will address the U.N. General Assembly and hold talks in Washington.
…

BIRMINGHAM, Alabama — Four people have died and more than 20 were wounded in a shooting in a nightlife area in the U.S. state of Alabama, according to police and news reports.

There were multiple people shot in Birmingham, the Birmingham Police Department said in a social media post.

Birmingham Officer Truman Fitzgerald said the shooting, with up to 21 people wounded, happened shortly after 11 p.m., AL.COM reported.

Fitzgerald said there were “dozens of gunshot victims” and at least four had “life-threatening” injuries, AL.COM reported.

Birmingham Fire and Rescue Service pronounced the three victims dead on the scene and a fourth person was pronounced dead at University of Alabama at Birmingham Hospital, AL.COM reported.

Police said the victims found dead at the scene included two men and a woman, WBMA-TV reported.

Other victims were transported to hospitals in private vehicles, police told WBMA.

The Birmingham police did not immediately respond to an email from The Associated Press seeking additional information.

The Five Points South area of Birmingham has numerous entertainment venues, restaurants and bars and often is crowded on Saturday nights.

Police said there were no immediate arrests.

“We will do everything we possibly can to make sure we uncover, identify and hunt down whoever is responsible for preying on our people this morning,” Fitzgerald told WBMA. 
…

LOUISVILLE, Kentucky — On his first day of school at Newcomer Academy, Maikel Tejeda was whisked to the school library. The 7th grader didn’t know why.

He soon got the point: He was being given make-up vaccinations. Five of them.

“I don’t have a problem with that,” said the 12-year-old, who moved from Cuba early this year.

Across the library, a group of city, state and federal officials gathered to celebrate the school clinic, and the city. With U.S. childhood vaccination rates below their goals, Louisville and the state were being praised as success stories: Kentucky’s vaccination rate for kindergarteners rose 2 percentage points in the 2022-23 school year compared with the year before. The rate for Jefferson County — which is Louisville — was up 4 percentage points.

“Progress is success,” said Dr. Mandy Cohen, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

But that progress didn’t last. Kentucky’s school entry vaccination rate slipped last year. Jefferson County’s rate slid, too. And the rates for both the county and state remain well below the target thresholds.

It raises the question: If this is what success looks like, what does it say about the nation’s ability to stop imported infections from turning into community outbreaks?

Local officials believe they can get to herd immunity thresholds, but they acknowledge challenges that includes tight funding, misinformation and well-intended bureaucratic rules that can discourage doctors from giving kids shots.

“We’re closing the gap,” said Eva Stone, who has managed the county school system’s health services since 2018. “We’re not closing the gap very quickly.”

Falling vaccination rates

Public health experts focus on vaccination rates for kindergartners because schools can be cauldrons for germs and the launching pad for community outbreaks.

For years, those rates were high, thanks largely to mandates that required key vaccinations as a condition of school attendance.

But they have slid in recent years. When COVID-19 started hitting the U.S. hard in 2020, schools were closed, visits to pediatricians declined and vaccination record-keeping fell off. Meanwhile, more parents questioned routine childhood vaccinations that they used to automatically accept, an effect that experts attribute to misinformation and the political schism that emerged around COVID-19 vaccines.

A Gallup survey released last month found that 40% of Americans said it is extremely important for parents to have their children vaccinated, down from 58% in 2019. Meanwhile, a recent University of Pennsylvania survey of 1,500 people found that about 1 in 4 U.S. adults think the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine causes autism — despite no medical evidence for it.

All that has led more parents to seek exemptions to school entry vaccinations. The CDC has not yet reported national data for the 2023-24 school year, but the proportion of U.S. kindergartners exempted from school vaccination requirements the year before hit a record 3%.

Overall, 93% of kindergartners got their required shots for the 2022-23 school year. The rate was 95% in the years before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Officials worry slipping vaccination rates will lead to disease outbreaks.

The roughly 250 U.S. measles cases reported so far this year are the most since 2019, and Oregon is seeing its largest outbreak in more than 30 years.

Kentucky has been experiencing its worst outbreak of whooping cough — another vaccine-preventable disease — since 2017. Nationally, nearly 14,000 cases have been reported this year, the most since 2019.

Persuading parents

The whooping cough surge is a warning sign but also an opportunity, said Kim Tolley, a California-based historian who wrote a book last year on the vaccination of American schoolchildren. She called for a public relations campaign to “get everybody behind” improving immunizations.

Much of the discussion about raising vaccination rates centers on campaigns designed to educate parents about the importance of vaccinating children — especially those on the fence about getting shots for their kids.

But experts are still hashing out what kind of messaging work best: Is it better, for example, to say “vaccinate” or “immunize”?

A lot of the messaging is influenced by feedback from small focus groups. One takeaway is some people have less trust in health officials and even their own doctors than they once did. Another is that they strongly trust their own feelings about vaccines and what they’ve seen in Internet searches or heard from other sources.

“Their overconfidence is hard to shake. It’s hard to poke holes in it,” said Mike Perry, who ran focus groups on behalf of a group called the Public Health Communications Collaborative.

But many people seem more trusting of older vaccines. And they do seem to be at least curious about information they didn’t know, including the history of research behind vaccines and the dangers of the diseases they were created to fight, he said.

Improving access

Dolores Albarracin has studied vaccination improvement strategies in 17 countries, and repeatedly found that the most effective strategy is to make it easier for kids to get vaccinated.

“In practice, most people are not vaccinating simply because they don’t have money to take the bus” or have other troubles getting to appointments, said Albarracin, director of the communication science division within Penn’s Annenberg Public Policy Center.

That’s a problem in Louisville, where officials say few doctors were providing vaccinations to children enrolled in Medicaid and fewer still were providing shots to kids without any health insurance. An analysis a few years ago indicated 1 in 5 children — about 20,000 kids — were not current on their vaccinations, and most of them were poor, said Stone, the county school health manager.

A 30-year-old federal program called Vaccines for Children pays for vaccinations for children who Medicaid-eligible or lack the insurance to cover it.

But in a meeting with the CDC director last month, Louisville health officials lamented that most local doctors don’t participate in the program because of paperwork and other administrative headaches. And it can be tough for patients to get the time and transportation to get to those few dozen Louisville providers who do take part.

The school system has tried to fill the gap. In 2019, it applied to become a VFC provider, and gradually established vaccine clinics.

Last year, it held clinics at nearly all 160 schools, and it’s doing the same thing this year. The first was at Newcomer Academy, where many immigrant students behind on their vaccinations are started in the school system.

It’s been challenging, Stone said. Funding is very limited. There are bureaucratic obstacles, and a growing influx of children from other countries who need shots. It takes multiple trips to a doctor or clinic to complete some vaccine series. And then there’s the opposition — vaccination clinic announcements tend to draw hateful social media comments. 
…

berlin — The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) is predicted to come first in an election in Brandenburg on Sunday, seeking to build on gains in other eastern states this month and beat Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats in a traditional stronghold.

The AfD became the first far-right party to win a state election in Germany since World War II, in Thuringia, on September 1 and just missed first place in Saxony.

It is one of several far-right groups in Europe capitalizing on worries over an economic slowdown, immigration and the Ukraine war — concerns that are particularly strong in formerly Communist-run eastern Germany.

The party, which is unlikely to be able to govern because it is polling short of a majority and other parties would refuse to work with it, is also seeking to gain from discontent over infighting in Scholz’s three-party federal coalition.

“We urgently need a thorough course correction so the country does not go to the dogs,” the AfD’s lead candidate in Brandenburg, Hans-Christoph Berndt, said at a campaign event earlier this month.

An AfD victory in the state election would be a particular embarrassment for the Social Democrats (SPD), which has won elections in Brandenburg and governed the state of 2.5 million people since reunification in 1990.

It would also raise further questions about the suitability of Scholz, the least popular German chancellor on record, to lead the party into next year’s election.

Brandenburg’s popular SPD premier Dietmar Woidke has mostly shunned campaigning with Scholz, who lives in the state’s capital, Potsdam. In an unusual move, Woidke has also criticized the behavior and policies of the ruling coalition.

Instead, he has sought to highlight economic success stories during the five years since the last state election such as the opening of a TeslaTSLA.O factory and Brandenburg airport — which serves Berlin and is now Germany’s third most important aviation hub.

Narrow the gap

In recent weeks, the SPD has managed to narrow the gap with the AfD, opinion polls have shown.

A poll published by pollster Forschungsgruppe Wahlen on Thursday put the AfD on 28% in Brandenburg with the SPD just one point behind on 27%, followed by the conservatives on 14% and the new leftist Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) on 13%.

“My greatest challenge in this legislative period … to not allow right-wing extremists to have anything to say in this country ever again,” Woidke said at a campaign event on Tuesday.

He has threatened to resign if his party comes in behind the AfD. AfD party leader Tino Chrupalla said Scholz should do the same.

“It is high time this government suffer the consequences after this state election,” Chrupalla said.

Both of Scholz’s junior coalition partners, the Free Democrats and the Greens, look set to struggle to win the 5% needed to enter the state parliament, polls show.

At a national level, the three parties in Scholz’s coalition are now collectively polling less than the opposition conservatives although political analysts say much could change before the federal election due in September 2025. 
…

…

WILMINGTON, DELAWARE/WASHINGTON — U.S. President Joe Biden on Saturday hosted the leaders of Australia, India and Japan at his private home in the U.S. state of Delaware for his final convening of the Quad, a strategic security grouping focused on the Indo-Pacific.

But it was Biden’s comments, unintentionally heard by the press, that illuminated the main topic at this unusually private meeting — and that topic was China.

Biden said his administration reads Beijing’s recent actions, including flexing its territorial muscles, as a “change in tactic, not a change in strategy.”

“We believe [Chinese President] Xi Jinping is looking to focus on domestic economic challenges and minimize the turbulence in China’s diplomatic relationships, and he’s also looking to buy himself some diplomatic space, in my view, to aggressively pursue China’s interests,” Biden told the other three leaders in what he said were prepared remarks.

“China continues to behave aggressively, testing this all across the region, and it’s true in the South China Sea, the East China Sea, South China, South Asia and the Taiwan Straits. It’s true across the scope of our relationship, including in economic and technology issues,” he added.

Beijing claims almost all of the South China Sea, including territory claimed by Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam. It also claims territories in the East China Sea contested by Japan and Taiwan. It views democratically governed Taiwan as part of China.

Publicly, Biden’s message was shorter, simpler – “The Quad is here to stay.”

Those six words were also the final sentence of a lengthy joint statement from Biden and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. The group issued their nearly 5,700-word missive after a day of meetings so cloistered that the president of the White House Correspondents’ Association called the lack of access “unacceptable.”

In their statement, the quartet announced moves they say will boost cooperation among the four democracies and address concerns beyond their borders in the massive region, home to more than half of the world’s population and two-thirds of its economy. While they used the word “China” sparingly – only three times, and all three times in reference to the South China Sea – they made very clear how their stance differs from Beijing’s.

“As four leading maritime democracies in the Indo-Pacific, we unequivocally stand for the maintenance of peace and stability across this dynamic region, as an indispensable element of global security and prosperity,” they said.

“We strongly oppose any destabilizing or unilateral actions that seek to change the status quo by force or coercion. We condemn recent illicit missile launches in the region that violate U.N. Security Council resolutions. We express serious concern over recent dangerous and aggressive actions in the maritime domain. We seek a region where no country dominates and no country is dominated — one where all countries are free from coercion and can exercise their agency to determine their futures.”

China has previously called out the Quad for its thinly veiled criticisms of China, with a Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesperson in July comparing the grouping to “exclusive clubs that undermine trust and cooperation among regional countries.”

Biden spoke briefly to tout the major steps, including one that aims to strengthen maritime security, and that will inevitably affect China’s maritime presence in others’ waters.

“We’re announcing a series of initiatives to deliver real, positive impact for the Indo-Pacific that includes providing new maritime technologies to our regional partners, so they know what’s happening in their waters, launching cooperation between coast guards for the first time, and expanding the Quad fellowship to include students from Southeast Asia,” Biden said.

That includes, the leaders’ statement said, a 2025 joint mission by the four nations’ coast guards. That step is also something that Japanese officials presented as a big summit takeaway when briefing reporters earlier in the day. Earlier in the week, when a top U.S. officials previewed the summit, he said the aim is to counter illegal fishing – adding, tellingly, that the vast majority of illegal fishing vessels are Chinese.

VOA asked the Japanese officials about a point of contention between Washington and Tokyo: Biden’s opposition, on national security grounds, to a proposed takeover of U.S. Steel by Nippon Steel. Biden administration officials appeared to play down the matter, noting that the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States recently extended its review into the deal, pushing any decision past November.

“The president will obviously allow that process to run its course because that’s what’s required from the law, and then we will see what happens,” Jake Sullivan, the White House national security adviser, told reporters Saturday.

The American steel company is headquartered in Pennsylvania, an electorally critical state in the fast-approaching U.S. presidential election.

VOA asked the Japanese government to share Toyko’s position on the politically sensitive merger. Japanese officials would not say whether Biden and Kishida even planned to speak on this topic in any of their meetings.

“As a government we refrain from commenting on that,” replied a Foreign Affairs Ministry official, who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity. The official quickly added that Japan is the No. 1 investor in the U.S., and that Tokyo hopes the countries’ cooperation will continue.

Australia’s leader said it matters that the four “like-minded countries,” all democracies, work together.

“We assert the view that national sovereignty is important, that security and stability is something that we strive for, as well as shared prosperity in our region,” Albanese said.

Analysts had predicted China discussion would dominate behind the scenes, but the leaders would refrain from publicly poking Beijing.

“That doesn’t show up in the readouts,” Rafiq Dossani, a longtime Asia scholar, told VOA ahead of the summit.

The four leaders began to meet yearly, in person, under Biden’s presidency. Much of their effort, said analyst Kathryn Paik of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, is directed at bread-and-butter governance issues such as health, infrastructure, maritime security and resources, and people-to-people ties.

“This is certainly not a Contain-China club,” she told VOA.

But, said Dossani, who is a senior economist at the Rand research corporation and a professor of policy analysis, there is room for the Quad to evolve.

“The question is as the competition, or the rivalry, between China and the U.S. evolves, how will that at that time affect the deliberations?” he said. “As the Chinese economy recovers and they become more assertive, then you’ll see a different context for the dialogue.”

In the present, though, Biden sees this dialogue among the four leaders as important to his legacy, Paik said.

“It was a central piece to the Indo-Pacific strategy, and elevating the Quad to the leader level has been a significant piece of that strategy,” she said. “Just the fact that the Quad has met annually at the leader level every year of Biden’s administration is quite significant.”

VOA’s Celia Mendoza in Wilmington, Delaware, and Paris Huang and Kim Lewis, in Washington, contributed to this report. 
…

BALTIMORE — Federal agents on Saturday boarded a vessel managed by the same company that managed a cargo ship that caused a deadly bridge collapse in Baltimore, Maryland, the FBI confirmed.

In statements, spokespeople for the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Maryland confirmed that authorities boarded the Maersk Saltoro. The ship is managed by Synergy Marine Group.

“The Federal Bureau of Investigation, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Criminal Investigation Division and Coast Guard Investigative Services are present aboard the Maersk Saltoro conducting court authorized law enforcement activity,” statements from both the FBI and U.S. Attorney’s Office said Saturday morning.

Authorities did not offer further specifics. The Washington Post first reported on federal authorities boarding the ship.

The raid came several months after investigators conducted a similar search of the Dali, the cargo ship that crashed into the bridge.

In a lawsuit filed Wednesday, the U.S. Justice Department alleged that Dali owner Grace Ocean Private Ltd. and manager Synergy Marine, both of Singapore, recklessly cut corners and ignored known electrical problems on the vessel, which lost power multiple times minutes before it crashed into a support column on the Francis Scott Key Bridge in March.

The Justice Department said mechanical and electrical systems on the massive ship had been “jury-rigged” and improperly maintained, culminating in the power outages and a cascade of other failures that left its pilots and crew helpless in the face of looming disaster. The ship was leaving Baltimore for Sri Lanka when its steering failed because of the power loss.

Six members of a road work crew were killed when the bridge crumbled into the water. The collapse also snarled commercial shipping traffic through the Port of Baltimore for months before the channel was fully reopened in June.

The Justice Department is seeking to recover more than $100 million the government spent to clear the underwater debris and reopen the city’s port.

The companies filed a court petition days after the collapse seeking to limit their legal liability in what could become the most expensive marine casualty case in history.

Justice Department officials said there is no legal support for that bid to limit liability and pledged to vigorously contest it.

In its lawsuit, which also seeks punitive damages, the Justice Department argued that vessel owners and operators need to be “deterred from engaging in such reckless and exceedingly harmful behavior.”

That includes Grace Ocean and Synergy themselves because the Dali has a “sister ship,” authorities wrote in the claim.

The two companies “need to be deterred because they continue to operate their vessels, including a sister ship to the Dali, in U.S. waters and benefit economically from those activities,” the lawsuit says.

Darrell Wilson, a Grace Ocean spokesperson, confirmed that the FBI and Coast Guard boarded the Maersk Saltoro in the Port of Baltimore on Saturday morning. Wilson has previously said the owner and manager “look forward to our day in court to set the record straight.”

Like the Dali, the Singapore-flagged Saltoro was built by Hyundai in 2015.

According to the Justice Department lawsuit, major issues with the Dali’s electrical system might have resulted from excessive vibrations on the ship that can loosen wires and damage connections. A prior captain of the vessel had reported “heavy vibration” in his handover notes in May 2023, saying he had made similar reports to Synergy in the past, according to the complaint.

The lawsuit noted cracked equipment in the engine room and pieces of cargo shaken loose. The ship’s electrical equipment was in such bad condition that an independent agency stopped further electrical testing because of safety concerns, according to the lawsuit.

The ship had also experienced power outages while it was still docked in Baltimore. Those blackouts are considered “reportable marine casualties” that must be reported to the U.S. Coast Guard, which authorities say never happened.

The Dali, which was stuck amid the wreckage of the collapse for months before it could be extricated and refloated, departed Norfolk, Virginia, on Thursday afternoon en route to China on its first international voyage since the March 26 disaster.

Justice Department officials refused to answer questions Wednesday about whether a criminal investigation into the bridge collapse remains ongoing. FBI agents boarded the Dali in April.
…

london — The Chaser, a news website run by Hong Kong journalists in Britain, says Google informed the diaspora media outlet that its company email was being targeted by “government-backed attacks.”  

China is presumed to be behind the attacks, something Beijing denies. Analysts say the case highlights the growing difficulties Hong Kong journalists face both at home and overseas. 

On Tuesday, The Chaser published a report about the incident on its website, including a screenshot of the email from Google about the government-backed attack. The email listed the severity of the attack as high. 

According to Google, only 0.1% of users worldwide have been subjected to similar attacks. Google also pointed out that it cannot rule out that the warning may be a false alarm, but the company believes it has detected suspicious activities. 

These could include attempts to steal passwords or personal information through emails containing harmful attachments, harmful software download links or links to fake websites. 

VOA reached out to Google for more details on the attack but has yet to receive a response. 

‘There is no way out’

The Chaser said it immediately reviewed all online security measures after receiving the notice and has taken the necessary protective actions. 

The Chaser said in a statement, “At a time when Hong Kong’s press is mired in the White Terror, the invisible black hand has unscrupulously reached out to the diaspora media overseas. 

“Our team members are from Hong Kong and came to the UK three years ago, hoping to continue chasing news on free soil. In today’s turbulent world of press freedom in Hong Kong, there is no way out. Our team strongly condemns all threats to press freedom and pledges to remain at our posts.” 

VOA efforts to seek a response from China’s Embassy in Britain were unsuccessful, but the Chinese Embassy in Washington denied that China was involved in the cyberattack.  

“China firmly opposes and cracks down on all forms of cyberattacks in accordance with law. Without valid evidence, they jumped to an unwarranted conclusion and made groundless accusations against China,” the embassy said in an emailed statement Thursday. “It is extremely irresponsible and is a complete distortion of facts. China firmly opposes this.” 

Last month, The Chaser released an investigative report that said the Chinese Embassy in Britain had pressured Dragons Teaching, a British publishing house, in 2018 to remove the phrase “Republic of China” from chapters about Taiwan in Chinese textbooks. The Republic of China is Taiwan’s official name.  

Beijing is relentless in its global campaign to quash any recognition of the democratically ruled island — no matter how small.   

The publishing house eventually gave in to pressure from Beijing, according to the report from The Chaser. The textbooks are used in exams for secondary school courses in Britain. The Chinese Embassy in Britain has declined to comment on the incident and report, though other British media picked up the story. 

Journalists report harassment 

The cyberattack comes as journalists in Hong Kong are under increasing pressure. 

Last week, the Hong Kong Journalists Association said that from June to August of this year, dozens of journalists, their families, employers, landlords or neighbors were harassed and intimidated in different ways on the internet and in their daily lives, which was unprecedented. 

Benson Wong, a Hong Kong political scholar living in Britain, doesn’t believe the attacks on The Chaser and other Hong Kong journalists are purely coincidental, especially as China’s National Day is approaching. 

“From their point of view, it is understandable that the national security and intelligence units would do some things or do some ‘homework’ as part of their performance,” he said. 

He said he believes the attack is meant to send a signal that Hong Kong journalists who make critical remarks about China cannot expect to be safe from interference or even attacks just because they move overseas. 

VOA reached out to Britain’s National Cyber Security Center for comment on the attack but has yet to receive a response. 

Adrianna Zhang contributed to this report.
…

moscow — Russia and China started naval exercises in the Sea of Japan on Saturday, Russian news agencies cited Russia’s Pacific Fleet as saying. 

“A joint detachment of warships of the Pacific Fleet and Chinese Navy set out from Vladivostok to conduct the joint Russian-Chinese “Beibu/Interaction – 2024″ naval exercise,” the RIA news agency quoted the Pacific Fleet as saying. 

The exercises will include anti-aircraft and anti-submarine weapons, RIA reported. 

Russia and China practiced missile and artillery firing this month as part of Ocean-2024 naval drills, which Russian President Vladimir Putin cast as a bid to counter the United States in the Pacific. 
…

washington — President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida discussed diplomacy with China and their shared concerns over “coercive and destabilizing activities” in the South China Sea during a meeting on Saturday at the Quad Leaders Summit in Wilmington, Delaware, the White House said. 

Biden and Kishida also reiterated their resolve to maintain peace across the Taiwan strait and commitment to developing and protecting technologies such as artificial intelligence and semiconductors, the White House said. 
…

WILMINGTON, Delaware — U.S. President Joe Biden is showcasing the Indo-Pacific partnership he has nurtured since taking office as he hosts the leaders of Australia, Japan and India in his hometown Saturday with an eye on his legacy as well. 

When Biden entered the White House, he looked to elevate the so-called Quad, which until then had only met at the foreign minister level, to a leader-level partnership as he tried to pivot U.S. foreign policy away from conflicts in the Middle East and toward threats and opportunities in the Indo-Pacific. This weekend’s summit is the fourth in-person and sixth overall gathering of the leaders since 2021. 

Biden put a personal touch on the engagement — potentially the last of the group before he leaves office on January 20 — by opening his home in Wilmington, Delaware, to each of the leaders and hosting a joint meeting and formal dinner at the high school he attended more than 60 years ago. 

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida came for the meetings before their appearances at the United Nations General Assembly in New York next week. 

“You guys have heard the president say many times that all politics is personal, all diplomacy is personal,” White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters as meetings were set to get underway. 

“And developing personal relationships has been core to his approach to foreign policy as president. So, opening his home to the leaders of India, Japan and Australia is a way of him showing, not just saying, but these leaders matter to him.” 

Biden welcomes Albanese to his home

On Friday afternoon, Biden welcomed Albanese to his home on a pond in a wooded area several miles west of downtown. Saturday’s agenda included hosting Kishida and Modi and bringing all the leaders together for talks at Archmere Academy in nearby Claymont. 

Sullivan described the vibe of the meeting with Albanese as “two guys — one at the other guy’s home — talking in broad strokes about where they see the state of the world.” He said Biden and Albanese also swapped stories about their political careers. 

Reporters and photographers were prohibited from covering Biden’s individual meetings with the leaders, and Biden does not plan to do a news conference — a question-and-answer appearance that is typical at such international summits. 

As part of the summit, the leaders were set to announce new initiatives to bolster maritime security in the region — with enhanced coast guard collaboration through the Pacific and Indian oceans — and improve cooperation on humanitarian response missions. The measures are meant to serve as a counterweight to an increasingly assertive China. 

Sullivan said he expected Biden and Modi would discuss Modi’s recent visits to Russia and Ukraine as well as economic and security concerns about China. Modi is the most prominent leader from a nation that maintains a neutral position on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. 

Sullivan said Biden would underscore “that countries like India should step up and support the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity” and that “every country, everywhere, should refrain from supplying inputs to Russia’s war machine.” 

Biden, Kishida say farewell

The gathering was also an opportunity for Biden and Japan’s Kishida to bid each other farewell. Biden and Kishida, who are both stepping away from office amid sliding public support, count the tightening of security and economic ties among the U.S., Japan and South Korea as one of their most significant accomplishments. The two leaders sat down for their wide-ranging, one-on-one conversation on Saturday morning. 

The improved relations between Japan and South Korea, two nations with a deep and complicated history that have struggled to stay on speaking terms, have come amid worrying developments in the Pacific, including strides made by North Korea in its nuclear program and increasing Chinese assertiveness. 

Biden commended Kishida for demonstrating “courage and conviction in strengthening ties” with South Korea, according to the White House. They also discussed China’s “coercive and destabilizing activities” in the Pacific, Russia’s war against Ukraine, and emerging technology issues. 

The U.S. and Japan are negotiating through a rare moment of tension in the relationship. Biden, as well as presidential candidates Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, have opposed a $15 billion bid by Japan’s Nippon Steel to take over American-owned U.S. Steel. 

Biden administration officials indicated this week that a U.S. government committee’s formal assessment of the proposed deal has yet to be submitted to the White House and may not come until after the November 5 election. 

Sullivan pushed back against speculation that the expected timing of the report could suggest Biden is having second thoughts about his opposition to the deal. 

The Biden administration promised that the leaders would issue a joint statement containing the strongest-ever language on China and North Korea to be agreed upon by the four countries. 

The White House said the leaders would also roll out an announcement related to Biden’s Cancer Moonshot Initiative, a long-running passion project of the president and his wife, Jill Biden, aimed at reducing cancer deaths. The Bidens’ son Beau died in 2015 at age 46 of brain cancer. 

White House officials said the leaders will unveil details about a new collaboration aimed at reducing cervical cancer in the Indo-Pacific. 

As Biden’s time in office draws down, the White House also was celebrating the bipartisan, bicameral formation of a “Quad Caucus” in Congress meant to ensure the longevity of the partnership regardless of the outcome of the November election. 
…

washington — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Sunday will visit the U.S. ammunition factory that is producing one of the most critically needed munitions for Ukraine’s fight to fend off Russian ground forces. 

Zelenskyy is expected to go to the Scranton Army Ammunition Plant in the state of Pennsylvania to kick off a busy week in the United States shoring up support for Ukraine in the war, according to two U.S. officials and a third familiar with Zelenskyy’s schedule who spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide details that were not yet public.

The Ukrainian leader also will address the United Nations General Assembly annual gathering in New York and travel to Washington for talks on Thursday with President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. 

The Scranton plant is one of the few facilities in the country to manufacture 155 mm artillery shells. They are used in howitzer systems, which are towed large guns with long barrels that can fire at various angles. Howitzers can strike targets up to 15- 20 miles (24-32 kilometers) away and are highly valued by ground forces to take out enemy targets from a protected distance. 

Ukraine has already received more than 3 million of the 155 mm shells from the U.S. 

Still pushing for permission

With the war now well into its third year, Zelenskyy has been pushing the U.S. for permission to use longer range missile systems to fire deeper inside of Russia. 

So far he has not persuaded the Pentagon or White House to loosen those restrictions. The Defense Department has emphasized that Ukraine can already hit Moscow with Ukrainian-produced drones, and there is hesitation on the strategic implications of a U.S.-made missile potentially striking the Russian capital. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned that Russia would be “at war” with the United States and its NATO allies if they allow Ukraine to use the long-range weapons. 

At one point in the war, Ukraine was firing between 6,000 and 8,000 of the 155 mm shells per day. That rate started to deplete U.S. stockpiles and drew concern that the level on hand was not enough to sustain U.S. military needs if another major conventional war broke out, such as a potential conflict over Taiwan. 

In response, the U.S. has invested in restarting production lines and is now manufacturing more than 40,000 155 mm rounds a month, with plans to hit 100,000 rounds a month. During his visit, Zelenskyy is expected meet and thank workers who have increased production of the 155 mm rounds over the past year. 

Two of the Pentagon leaders who have pushed that increased production through — Doug Bush, assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology, and Bill LaPlante, the Pentagon’s top weapons buyer — are also expected to join Zelenskyy at the plant, as is Josh Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania.

US largest donor of aid

The 155 mm rounds are among the scores of ammunition, missile, air defense and advanced weapons systems the U.S. has provided Ukraine — everything from small arms bullets to advanced F-16 fighter jets. The U.S. has been the largest donor to Ukraine, providing more than $56 billion of the more than $106 billion NATO and partner countries have collected to aid in its defense. 

Even though Ukraine is not a member of NATO, commitment to its defense is seen by many European nations as a must to keep Putin from further military aggression that could threaten bordering NATO-member countries and result in a much larger conflict. 
…

…

NEW YORK — Six years after a teenage Greta Thunberg walked out of school in a solitary climate protest outside of the Swedish parliament, people around a warming globe marched in youth-led protest, saying their voices are being heard but not sufficiently acted upon.

Emissions of heat-trapping gases and temperatures have been rising and oil and gas drilling has continued, even as the protests that kicked off major weeklong climate events in New York City have become annual events. This year, they come days before the United Nations convenes two special summits, one concentrating on sea level rise and the other on the future.

The young people who organized these marches with Fridays for Future said there is frustration with inaction but also hope. People marched in Berlin, Rio de Janeiro, New Delhi and elsewhere, but the focus often is in New York City because of Climate Week NYC. Diplomats, business leaders and activists are concentrating their discussions on the money end of fighting climate change — something not lost on protesters.

“We hope that the government and the financial sector make polluters pay for the damage that they have imposed on our environment,” said Uganda Fridays for Future founder Hilda Flavia Nakabuye, who was among a few hundred marching in New York Friday, a far cry from the tens of thousands that protested in a multigroup mega-rally in 2023.

The New York protest wants to take aim at “the pillars of fossil fuels” — companies that pollute, banks that fund them and leaders who are failing on climate, said Helen Mancini, an organizer and a senior at the city’s Stuyvesant High School.

“A lot of older people want to make sure the economy is intact, and that’s their main concern,” said Julia Demairo, a sophomore at Pace University. “I think worrying about the future and the environment is worrying about the economy.”

On a day that was at least 8 degrees warmer than average, protest signs included “This is not what we mean by Hot Girl Summer,” while others focused on the theme of fighting the coal, oil and gas industries: “Youth Didn’t Vote for Fossil Fuels,” “Don’t Be a Fossil Fool” and “Climate Crisis = Extermination By Capitalism.”

Nakabuye said she was in New York to represent Uganda “that is bearing the brunt of the climate crisis.”

“We feel like we are creating an impact in the community. However, we are not listened to enough; there is more that needs to be done, especially right now when the climate catastrophes are intensifying,” said Nakabuye. “We need to even raise our voices more to demand change and to demand that fuels should end.”

In the six years since Thunberg founded what became Fridays for Future, global carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels have increased by about 2.15%, according to Global Carbon Project, a group of scientists who monitor carbon pollution.

The growth of emissions has slowed compared with previous decades and experts anticipate peaking soon, but that’s a far cry from the 43% reduction that a U.N. report said is needed to keep temperature increases to an agreed-upon limit.

Since 2019, carbon dioxide emissions from coal have increased by nearly 900 million metric tons, while natural gas emissions have increased slightly and oil pollution has dropped a tiny amount, according to the International Energy Agency, or IEA. That growth has been driven by China, India and developing nations.

But emissions from advanced or industrialized economies have been falling and in 2023 were the lowest in more than 50 years, according to the IEA. Coal emissions in rich countries are down to levels seen around the year 1900, and the United Kingdom next month is set to shutter its last coal plant.

In the past five years, clean energy sources have grown twice as fast as fossil fuels, with solar and wind individually growing faster than fossil fuel-based electricity, according to the IEA. Developing countries — where more than 80% of the world population lives — say that they need financial help to curb their increasing use of fossil fuels.

Since 2018, the globe has warmed more than 0.29 degrees Celsius, with last year setting a record for the hottest year and this year poised to break that mark, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the European climate agency Copernicus.

“We’re making progress, even if it’s slow progress,” said 17-year-old Ashen Harper of Connecticut, a veteran protester turned organizer. “Our job right now is to accelerate that progress.”

In Berlin, hundreds of people took to the streets, although in fewer numbers than in previous years. Activists held up signs saying, “Save the Climate” and “Coal is Over!” as they watched a gig put on outside the German Chancellor’s Office. Protesters in London held up letters spelling out “Pay Up,” calling for the country to pay more to adapt to climate change and transition away from fossil fuels.
…

PRAGUE — Czechs went to the polls on Friday in a two-day vote for a third of the seats in Parliament’s upper house, which is the Senate, and to select their representatives in regional elections.

The elections took place as the Czech Republic was recovering from massive floods that hit Central Europe in recent days. The floods claimed at least 24 lives in the region, five of them in the Czech Republic.

State officials helped dozens of the hardest-hit towns organize the ballot in the northeast of the country, where schools and various other buildings that serve as polling stations were submerged and damaged.

Interior Ministry officials took over the organization of the vote in five towns where local authorities were preoccupied with cleanup and recovery efforts.

In some places, voting took place in tents, shipping containers or outside.

The current ruling five-party coalition led by Prime Minister Petr Fiala has a clear majority in the 81-seat Senate, where 27 seats are up for grabs in the two-round election. The runoffs take place next week.

Parliament’s lower house dominates the legislative process, but the Senate plays an important role in passing constitutional amendments and approving Constitutional Court judges.

In separate regional elections, a political movement led by former populist Prime Minister Andrej Babis is the favorite to win for the third straight time.

Babis’ ANO (YES), which is currently in opposition, is also favored to win the next general election, scheduled for next year.

The results of the elections will be known late Saturday.
…

Kyiv, Ukraine — An overnight Russian missile strike on the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih killed a 12-year-old boy and two elderly women, regional governor Serhiy Lysak said Saturday.

“Again, a terrifying enemy attack on Kryvyi Rih. In the middle of the night, when the city slept,” Lysak wrote on Telegram.

He said three more people were injured and were taken to a hospital with injuries of medium severity.

The two women killed by the attack were 75 and 79 years old. Lysak also said two buildings were destroyed and 20 more damaged.

Kryvyi Rih, a major steel-producing city, is near Russian-occupied territory. It is regularly hit by air strikes.
…