RIYADMEDIA

paris — After more than two months without a functioning government, France’s new cabinet got to work Monday. How long it will remain in office is unclear.

French politics have been in limbo since inconclusive snap legislative elections in late June and early July. The elections saw a leftist coalition win the most votes and the far-right National Rally emerging as the largest party. Only now, after the Paris Olympics, has a new center-right government been named, which doesn’t include either of these two blocs.

On national TV Sunday night, conservative Prime Minister Michel Barnier outlined some broad priorities. He called for controlling and limiting immigration, saying the number of migrants arriving in France had become unbearable.

His new interior minister, Bruno Retailleau, strongly advocates tighter migration controls.

Barnier also called for what he described as a “national effort,” including taxes on the rich to cut the country’s budget deficit, which is well over the European Union limit. But he said he would not touch social changes like gay marriage and a recent move to enshrine abortion freedoms in the French constitution.

Barnier’s new government is already feeling pressure. Thousands demonstrated in Paris even before his cabinet was named.

Far-left politician Jean-Luc Melenchon warned Barnier’s government had no future — a warning picked up by the far right. The left has vowed a no-confidence motion, but analysts say it isn’t likely to succeed.
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geneva — United Nations investigators are accusing the Belarusian government of Alexander Lukashenko of instilling “a pervasive climate of fear by quashing all avenues of dissent” by systematically oppressing its perceived political opponents.

“Measures of repression and intimidation aimed at suppressing dissent continue unabated in Belarus, particularly in the lead-up to the presidential election scheduled in 2025,” Karinna Moskalenko, chair of the Group of independent Experts told the U.N. human rights council Monday.

Moskalenko presented a searing account of widespread human rights violations, abuse, and horrific cases of cruelty and deprivation in this first oral update of the human rights situation in Belarus by the Expert Group, newly created by the council in March.

She read out a list of abuses committed in Belarus since May 2020, when nationwide protests erupted, following Lukashenko’s decision to seek another term as president.

Among those cited are arbitrary deprivation of the right to life and to liberty, torture and ill-treatment, including sexual and gender-based violence, denial of a fair trial, violations of the rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association.

“While sexual and gender-based violence is underreported, there is credible information some women and men in detention have been threatened with rape and subjected to forced nudity and cavity searches,” Moskalenko said.

“We continue to observe a misuse of national security and criminal laws to silence any dissent. Individuals perceived as political opponents continue to be charged and arrested under the criminal code, for exercising their legitimate rights to freedom of expression and association,” she said, adding that “free trial rights are systematically violated.”

The report notes that Belarusians forced into exile continue to be harassed by Lukashenko’s government, that their assets and properties are seized and relatives left behind are intimidated by the authorities.

The group of experts accused the government “for the near-total destruction of civic space and fundamental freedoms,” with most of the opposition either imprisoned or forced into exile since the 2020 elections … creating a chilling effect on any participation in activities “perceived as critical of the government.”

Lukashenko recently pardoned dozens of people who had been convicted for participating in the 2020 protests. While welcoming the announced release, Moskalenko noted that “they represent only a small fraction of those who have been arrested” and urged the government to promptly release “all those arbitrarily detained on politically motivated charges.”

Larysa Belskaya, Belarusia ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva was unimpressed by what she heard and told “the West,” which she claimed was behind the report, “to stop meddling in our domestic affairs.”

She said next year’s presidential election will be the domestic affair of a sovereign state.

“We do not need foreign approval or disapproval regarding the outcome of our peoples’ expression of their will,” she said. “Belarus, like the overwhelming majority of developing countries, does not accept interference in its domestic affairs or pressure or sanctions.”

This set off a spirited debate in the council with Western countries strongly condemning the persecution and intimidation of all segments of Belarusian society. They demanded an end to the government’s repressive policies and urged the immediate release of all political prisoners.

They denounced the Belarusian government’s support of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine and called for an end to its complicity in the illegal deportation of Ukranian children by Russia.

Michele Taylor, U.S. ambassador to the U.N. human rights council in Geneva, condemned the ongoing repression in Belarus “including the use of torture, arbitrary detention, intimidation, harassment of families of political prisoners and transnational repression of Belarusians.”

On the other hand, Stanislav Kovpak, chief counselor at the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Department for Multilateral Human Rights Cooperation deplored “the double standards and biased approach in assessing the situation in Belarus.”

“At the same time, the role of the West is hushed up as is their significant support for the opposition who has emigrated,” he said, criticizing the use of illegal restrictive measures by Western countries against the Belarusian economy … “and the stirring up of anti-government feeling by Western-controlled, biased media.”

He rebuked the group of experts who “worked here in gross violation of the basic principles of impartiality that should underpin the human rights body.”

Addressing the council via videolink, exiled opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya said she was speaking for the more than 1,400 political prisoners who could not speak for themselves, along with the teachers, doctors and activists behind bars for “speaking the truth and dreaming of freedom.”

“Many of them are held in complete isolation, incommunicado … no letters, no phone calls, no contact with the outside world. My husband Syarhei has been cut off for over a year. I do not know if he is alive,” she said.

Syarhei Tsikhanouski was arrested and imprisoned in 2020 after announcing his plan to challenge Lukashenko for the presidency.
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washington — Violent crime in the United States is down for a second consecutive year, with law enforcement agencies reporting significant declines in murder and rapes, according to a just-released report from the FBI.

The FBI Crime in the Nation report released Monday found violent crime, overall, fell by 3% from 2022 to 2023, with murder and manslaughter rates dropping by 11.6% and rape down by more than 9%.

There were also smaller declines in the number of robberies and aggravated assaults.

Additionally, property crimes, which include burglary, fell by an estimated 2.4% year over year, though motor vehicle theft jumped by 12.6%.

FBI officials, briefing reporters on the report, described the drop in the number of murders as notable, saying the 11.6% decline is the largest recorded over the past 20 years.

Overall, the officials said the rate of all violent crimes in 2023 was 363.3 crimes per 100,000 inhabitants, down from a rate of 377.1 violent crimes per 100,000 inhabitants in 2022.

More than 16,000 U.S. state and local law enforcement agencies contributed data for the report, including all agencies serving cities with more than one million people.

The decrease in violent crimes across the U.S. continues a trend dating back to 2021, when crime rates fell after a spike in murders in 2020, during the coronavirus pandemic.

The violent crime rate also remains well below a peak in rates during the early 1990s.

Some crimes, though, have seen slight increases, including the number of aggravated assaults with knives, cutting instruments or other weapons.

The number of so-called “strong-arm” robberies – involving intimidation or a threat of the use of force – rose by 3.2%.

Assaults on police officers also jumped to a 10-year high according to the FBI report, including 60 officers murdered in the line of duty.

The number of hate crimes and victims of hate crimes also increased from 2022 to 2023, though FBI officials said the rise could have been impacted by an increase in the number of law enforcement agencies reporting hate crime data.

FBI officials declined to comment on whether the trends and the overall decrease in violent crime from 2022 to 2023 have extended into 2024. But a report issued by the non-partisan Council on Criminal Justice (CCJ) in July indicates the number of violent crimes continue to fall.

That study, based on monthly crime rates for dozens of major U.S. cities found murder rates fell by 13% in the first half of 2024 compared to the first six months of 2023. Assaults, assaults with guns and carjacking also fell.

But while the CCJ report called the overall trends encouraging, it noted, “many cities are still experiencing disturbingly high leve
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Washington — The U.S. Commerce Department on Monday proposed prohibiting key Chinese software and hardware in connected vehicles on American roads due to national security concerns — a move that would effectively bar nearly all Chinese cars from entering the U.S. market.

The planned regulation, first reported by Reuters, would also force American and other major automakers in the coming years to remove key Chinese software and hardware from vehicles in the United States.

The Biden administration has raised serious concerns about the collection of data by Chinese companies on U.S. drivers and infrastructure through connected vehicles as well as about potential foreign manipulation of vehicles connected to the internet and navigation systems. The White House ordered an investigation into the potential dangers in February.

The prohibitions would prevent testing of self-driving cars on U.S. roads by Chinese automakers and extend to vehicle software and hardware produced by other U.S. foreign adversaries including Russia.

“When foreign adversaries build software to make a vehicle that means it can be used for surveillance, can be remotely controlled, which threatens the privacy and safety of Americans on the road,” Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo told a briefing.

“In an extreme situation, a foreign adversary could shut down or take control of all their vehicles operating in the United States all at the same time causing crashes, blocking roads.”

The move is a significant escalation in the United States’ ongoing restrictions on Chinese vehicles, software and components. Earlier this month, the Biden administration locked in steep tariff hikes on Chinese imports, including a 100% duty on electric vehicles as well as new hikes on EV batteries and key minerals.

There are relatively few Chinese-made cars or light-duty trucks imported into the United States. But Raimondo said the department is acting “before suppliers, automakers and car components linked to China or Russia become commonplace and widespread in the U.S. automotive sector… We’re not going to wait until our roads are filled with cars and the risk is extremely significant before we act.”

Nearly all newer cars and trucks are considered “connected” with onboard network hardware that allows internet access, allowing them to share data with devices both inside and outside the vehicle.

A senior administration official confirmed the proposal would effectively ban all existing Chinese light-duty cars and trucks from the U.S. market, but added it would allow Chinese automakers to seek “specific authorizations” for exemptions.

The United States has ample evidence of China prepositioning malware in critical American infrastructure, White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told the same briefing.

“With potentially millions of vehicles on the road, each with 10- to 15-year lifespans the risk of disruption and sabotage increases dramatically,” Sullivan said.

The Chinese Embassy in Washington last month criticized planned action to limit Chinese vehicle exports to the United States: “China urges the U.S. to earnestly abide by market principles and international trade rules, and create a level playing field for companies from all countries. China will firmly defend its lawful rights and interests.”

The proposal calls for making software prohibitions effective in the 2027 model year while the hardware ban would take effect in the 2030 model year or January 2029.

The Commerce Department is giving the public 30 days to comment on the proposal and hopes to finalize it by Jan. 20. The rules would apply to all on-road vehicles but exclude agricultural or mining vehicles not used on public roads.

The Alliance For Automotive Innovation, a group representing major automakers including General Motors, Toyota, Volkswagen and Hyundai, has warned that changing hardware and software would take time.

The group noted connected vehicle hardware and software are developed around the world, including China, but could not detail to what extent Chinese-made components are prevalent in U.S. models.
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Moscow — A Soyuz capsule carrying two Russians and one American from the International Space Station landed Monday in Kazakhstan, ending a record-breaking stay for the Russian pair.

The capsule landed on the Kazakh steppe about 3 1/2 hours after undocking from the ISS in an apparently trouble-free descent. In the last stage of the landing, it descended under a red-and-white parachute at about 7.2 meters per second (16 mph), with small rockets fired in the final seconds to cushion the touchdown.

The astronauts were extracted from the capsule and placed in nearby chairs to help them adjust to gravity, then given medical examinations in a nearby tent.

Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub returned after 374 days aboard the space station; on Friday they broke the record for the longest continuous stay there. Also in the capsule was American Tracy Dyson, who was in the space station for six months.

Eight astronauts remain in the space station, including Americans Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who have remained long past their scheduled return to Earth.

They arrived in June as the first crew of Boeing’s new Starliner capsule. But their trip was marred by thruster troubles and helium leaks, and the U.S. space agency NASA decided it was too risky to return them on Starliner.

The two astronauts are to ride home with SpaceX next year.
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Brussels — The European Commission launched a challenge at the World Trade Organization (WTO) on Monday against China’s investigation into EU dairy products, initiated after the European Union placed import tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles. 

This is the first time the European Union has taken such action at the start of an investigation, rather than wait for it to result in trade measures against the bloc. 

“The EU’s action was prompted by an emerging pattern of China initiating trade defense measures, based on questionable allegations and insufficient evidence, within a short period of time,” the commission said. 

Proceedings at the WTO start with a mandatory period of 60 days for the parties to consult each other. The Commission said it would ask the WTO to set up an adjudicating panel if the consultations did not lead to a satisfactory solution. 

WTO panels usually take more than a year to reach conclusions. 

China initiated its anti-subsidy investigation on Aug. 21, targeting EU liquid milk, cream with a fat content above 10% and various types of cheeses. 

The Commission said it was confident that EU dairy subsidy schemes are fully in line with international rules and not causing injury to China’s dairy sector.  

The EU imposed provisional duties in July on electric vehicles built in China and EU members are expected to vote soon on final tariffs, which would apply for five years. 

China also has ongoing anti-dumping investigations into EU brandy and pork. 

(Reuters reporting by Philip Blenkinsop and Bart Meijer; Editing by Alex Richardson and Tomasz Janowski) 
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BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Authorities have reported no immediate arrests after a weekend mass shooting killed four people and left 17 others injured in what police described as a targeted “hit” by multiple shooters who opened fire outside a popular Alabama nightspot.

The shooting late Saturday night in the popular Five Points South entertainment district of Birmingham, rocking an area of restaurants and bars that is often bustling on weekend nights. The mass shooting, one of several this year in the major city, unnerved residents and left officials at home and beyond pleading for help to both solve the crime and address the broader problem of gun violence.

“The priority is to find these shooters and get them off our streets,” Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin said a day after the shooting.

The mayor planned a morning news conference Monday to provide updates on the case.

The shooting occurred on the sidewalk and street outside Hush, a lounge in the entertainment district, where blood stains were still visible on the sidewalk outside the venue on Sunday morning.

Birmingham Police Chief Scott Thurmond said authorities believe the shooting targeted one of the people who was killed, possibly in a murder-for-hire. A vehicle pulled up and “multiple shooters” got out and began firing, then fled the scene, he said.

“We believe that there was a ‘hit,’ if you will, on that particular person,” Thurmond said.

Police said approximately 100 shell casings were recovered. Thurmond said law enforcement was working to determine what weapons were used, but they believe some of the gunfire was “fully automatic.” Investigators also were trying to determine whether anyone fired back, creating a crossfire.

In a statement late Sunday, police said the shooters are believed to have used “machine gun conversion devices” that make semi-automatic weapons fire more rapidly.

Some surviving victims critically injured

Officers found two men and a woman on a sidewalk with gunshot wounds and they were pronounced dead there. An additional male gunshot victim was pronounced dead at a hospital, according to police.

Police identified the three victims found on the sidewalk as Anitra Holloman, 21, of the Birmingham suburb of Bessemer, Tahj Booker, 27, of Birmingham, and Carlos McCain, 27, of Birmingham. The fourth victim pronounced dead at the hospital was pending identification.

By the early hours of Sunday, victims began showing up at hospitals and police subsequently identified 17 people with injuries, some of them life-threatening. Four of the surviving victims, in conditions ranging from good to critical, were being treated at the University of Alabama at Birmingham Hospital on Sunday afternoon, according to Alicia Rohan, a hospital spokeswoman.

Popular nightspot rocked by gunfire

The area of Birmingham where the gunfire erupted is popular with young adults because of its proximity to the University of Alabama at Birmingham and the plethora of nearby restaurants and bars.

The shooting was the 31st mass killing of 2024, of which 23 were shootings, according to James Alan Fox, a criminologist and professor at Northeastern University, who oversees a mass killings database maintained by The Associated Press and USA Today in partnership with the university.

Three of the nation’s 23 mass shootings this year were in Birmingham, including two earlier quadruple homicides.

Mayor pleads for a solution to gun violence

Woodfin expressed frustration at what he described as an epidemic of gun violence in America and the city.

“We find ourselves in 2024, where gun violence is at an epidemic level, an epidemic crisis in our country. And the city of Birmingham, unfortunately, finds itself at the tip of that spear,” he said.
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Joe Biden makes his final presidential address before the United Nations General Assembly this week. But hanging over his head as he takes to the green marble podium for the last time, and as he meets separately with other leaders in New York: conflict in the Middle East – and how his actions have shaped it. VOA White House correspondent Anita Powell reports from New York.
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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. 
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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. 
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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. 
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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. 
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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. 
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