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Only days into the Paris Olympics, France has already weathered attacks on its rail and internet service. But it’s also mounted a massive security umbrella that includes tens of thousands of police, gendarmes — and soldiers. Many troops now patrolling the streets of the French capital have done duty in foreign countries, as Lisa Bryant reports from Paris.
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NEW YORK — The director of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 vision for a complete overhaul of the federal government has stepped down, the conservative think tank confirmed Tuesday. 

Paul Dans’ exit comes after the project “completed exactly what it set out to do: bringing together over 110 leading conservative organizations to create a unified conservative vision, motivated to devolve power from the unelected administrative state, and returning it to the people,” Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts said in a statement. Roberts said the group is sticking to its original timeline. 

The news comes after Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has increasingly disavowed Project 2025 amid escalating attacks by Democrats, prompting speculation that Trump’s campaign forced the exit. 

Democrats for the past several months have made Project 2025 a key election-year cudgel, pointing to the ultraconservative policy blueprint as a glimpse into how extreme another Trump administration could be. 

The nearly 1,000-page handbook lays out sweeping changes in the federal government, including altering personnel rules to ensure government workers are more loyal to the president. 

Yet Trump has repeatedly disavowed the document, saying on social media he hasn’t read it and doesn’t know anything about it. At a rally in Michigan earlier this month, he said Project 2025 was written by people on the “severe right” and some of the things in it are “seriously extreme.” 

“President Trump’s campaign has been very clear for over a year that Project 2025 had nothing to do with the campaign, did not speak for the campaign, and should not be associated with the campaign or the President in any way,” Trump campaign advisers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita said in a statement. “Reports of Project 2025’s demise would be greatly welcomed and should serve as notice to anyone or any group trying to misrepresent their influence with President Trump and his campaign — it will not end well for you.” 

Trump campaign representatives did not respond to messages inquiring about whether the campaign asked or pushed for Dans to step down from the project. The Heritage Foundation said Dans left voluntarily, and it was not under pressure from the Trump campaign. Dans didn’t immediately respond to an emailed request for comment. 

But it was almost certain that Trump’s campaign forced the shakeup, said one former Heritage aide granted anonymity to discuss the situation. 

LaCivita had been aggressively monitoring the situation, the person said. It was clear that Project 2025 was becoming a liability for Trump and the party. 

For months Trump’s campaign had warned outside groups, and Heritage in particular, that they did not speak for the former president, even though the Project 2025 team was staffed with his former White House aides and advisers. 

In an interview from the Republican convention first published by Politico, LaCivita said Project 2025 was a problem because “the issues that are going to win us this campaign are not the issues that they want to talk about.” 

Many Trump allies and former top aides contributed to the project, including Dans, who was a personnel official for the Trump administration. Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign and top Democrats have repeatedly tied Trump to Project 2025 as they argue against a second term for the former president. 

The Harris campaign said Project 2025 remains linked to Trump’s agenda. 

“Hiding the 920-page blueprint from the American people doesn’t make it less real — in fact, it should make voters more concerned about what else Trump and his allies are hiding,” said Harris for President Campaign Manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez. 

Project 2025’s website will remain live, and the group will continue vetting resumes for its nearly 20,000-person database of potential government officials ready to execute the group’s vision for government, the Heritage Foundation said Tuesday. The group said Roberts will now run Project 2025 operations.
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An announcement that China’s car giant BYD will build a billion-dollar factory in Turkey marks a big turnaround in relations between the two countries. The move comes after years of tensions over Ankara’s support of Chinese minority Uyghurs. As Dorian Jones reports from Istanbul, the two countries are increasingly finding common ground not only economically but diplomatically.
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Washington — In the moments before NASA’s DART spacecraft slammed into the asteroid Dimorphos in a landmark planetary defense test in 2022, it took high-resolution images of this small celestial object and its larger companion Didymos. 

These images have enabled scientists to unravel the complicated history of these two rocky bodies located in the vicinity of Earth and gain insight into the formation of what are called binary asteroid systems — a primary asteroid with a secondary moonlet orbiting it. 

An analysis of the craters and surface strength on Didymos indicated it formed about 12.5 million years ago. A similar analysis indicated Dimorphos formed about 300,000 years ago. Didymos probably formed in our solar system’s main asteroid belt, between the planets Mars and Jupiter, and then was knocked into the inner solar system, the researchers said. 

An examination of the largest boulders on Didymos and Dimorphos gave clues about the origins of the two asteroids. 

“Both asteroids are aggregates of rocky fragments formed from the catastrophic destruction of a parent asteroid,” said astronomer Maurizio Pajola of the National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) in Italy, lead author of one of five studies on the asteroids published on Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications. 

“These large boulders could not have formed from impacts on the surfaces of Didymos and Dimorphos themselves, as such impacts would have disintegrated these bodies,” Pajola added. 

Didymos, which has a diameter of about a half mile (780 meters), is classified as a near-Earth asteroid. Dimorphos is roughly 560 feet (170 meters) wide. Both are “rubble pile” asteroids, composed of pieces of rocky debris that coalesced through the influence of gravity. 

“Their surface is covered with boulders. The largest on Dimorphos is the size of the school bus, while the largest on Didymos is big as soccer field,” said Olivier Barnouin, a planetary geologist and geophysicist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland and lead author of another of the studies. 

“There are cracks on the surface and the rocks of Dimorphos, while Didymos may have finer-grained soils at the equator, although it is difficult to be sure with the images we have. The surfaces of both asteroids are weak, much weaker than loose sand,” Barnouin added. 

The researchers concluded that Dimorphos is composed of material that flew off the equatorial region of Didymos due to the speed at which it was spinning. 

“In the case of Didymos, it is thought that in the past, it rotated faster around its axis due to the YORP effect (spin acceleration driven by the effect of sunlight on its uneven surface), and thus ejected the boulders from its equatorial region, forming Dimorphos,” Pajola added. 

Didymos currently spins at a rate of once every 2-1/4 hours. 

Few boulders were observed at the equatorial region of Didymos. 

“Its equator is much smoother, while mid-latitudes up to the poles are much rougher, with big boulders sitting on the surface,” Pajola said. 

The U.S. space agency’s DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) carried out a proof-of-principle mission, demonstrating that a spacecraft could apply kinetic force to change the path of a space object that otherwise might be on a collision course with Earth. Didymos and Dimorphos do not pose an actual threat to Earth. 

DART struck Dimorphos on Sept. 26, 2022, at about 14,000 miles per hour (22,530 kph) at a distance of roughly 6.8 million miles (11 million km) from Earth, and succeeded in modestly changing its path. The collision also slightly changed the shape of Dimorphos. 

The DART data has improved the understanding of binary asteroid systems. 

“Binary asteroid systems represent about 10-15% of the total number of asteroids that are in near-Earth space,” Barnouin said. “More generally, with every new observation of an asteroid or asteroid system, we learn more about how asteroids form and evolve. They are complex systems, but have some key similarities, especially when we consider the smaller — less than a kilometer (0.62 mile) — asteroids.”
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BILLINGS, Montana — At least 973 Native American children died in the U.S. government’s abusive boarding school system, according to the results of an investigation released Tuesday by officials who called on the government to apologize for the schools.

The investigation commissioned by Interior Secretary Deb Haaland found marked and unmarked graves at 65 of the more than 400 U.S. boarding schools that were established to forcibly assimilate Native American children into white society. The findings don’t specify how each child died, but the causes of death included sickness, accidents and abuse during a 150-year period that ended in 1969, officials said.

The findings follow a series of listening sessions across the United States over the past two years in which dozens of former students recounted the harsh and often degrading treatment they endured while separated from their families.

“The federal government — facilitated by the Department I lead — took deliberate and strategic actions through federal Indian boarding school policies to isolate children from their families, deny them their identities, and steal from them the languages, cultures and connections that are foundational to Native people,” Haaland, a member of the Laguna Pueblo tribe in New Mexico and the country’s first Native American Cabinet secretary, said in a news release Tuesday.

In an initial report released in 2022, officials estimated that more than 500 children died at the schools. The federal government passed laws and policies in 1819 to support the schools, the last of which were still operating in the 1960s.

The schools gave Native American children English names, put them through military drills and forced them to perform manual labor, such as farming, brickmaking and working on the railroad, officials said.

Former students shared tearful recollections of their experience during listening sessions in Oklahoma, South Dakota, Michigan, Arizona, Alaska and other states. They talked about being punished for speaking their native language, being locked in basements and having their hair cut to stamp out their identities. They were sometimes subjected to solitary confinement, beatings and the withholding of food. Many left the schools with only basic vocational skills that gave them few job prospects.

Donovan Archambault, 85, of the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation in Montana, said he was sent away to boarding schools beginning at age 11 and was mistreated, forced to cut his hair and prevented from speaking his native language. He said he drank heavily before turning his life around more than two decades later, and never discussed his school days with his children until he wrote a book about the experience several years ago.

“An apology is needed. They should apologize,” Archambault told The Associated Press by phone Tuesday. “But there also needs to be a broader education about what happened to us. To me, it’s part of a forgotten history.”

The new report doesn’t specify who should issue the apology on behalf of the federal government, saying only that it should be issued through “appropriate means and officials to demonstrate that it is made on behalf of the people of the United States and be accompanied by bold and actionable policies.”

Interior Department officials also recommended that the government invest in programs that could help Native American communities heal from the traumas caused by boarding schools. That includes money for education, violence prevention and the revitalization of indigenous languages. Spending on those efforts should be on a scale proportional to the money spent on the schools, agency officials said.

The schools, similar institutions and related assimilation programs were funded by more than $23 billion in inflation-adjusted federal spending, officials determined. Religious and private institutions that ran many of the institutions received federal money as partners in the campaign to “civilize” Indigenous students, according to the new report.

By 1926, more than 80% of Indigenous school-age children — some 60,000 children — were attending boarding schools that were run either by the federal government or religious organizations, according to the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition.

Legislation pending before Congress would establish a Truth and Healing Commission to document and acknowledge past injustices related to boarding schools. The measure is sponsored in the Senate by Democrat Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and backed by Republican Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.
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Paris — A Russian sports event widely regarded as an attempt to rival the Paris Olympics is set to be postponed to next year, organizers said Tuesday.

The World Friendship Games had been due to take place in Russia in September but will now move back to unspecified dates in 2025, the International Friendship Association, a body set up to organize the games, said in a statement. It added the decision is subject to approval by the Russian government.

“The main reason for reconsidering the Games dates is the insufficient recovery time for top athletes participating in major international tournaments in the summer of 2024,” the statement said, without mentioning the Paris Olympics by name.

There would have been just over a month between the end of the Paris Olympics and the proposed start of the World Friendship Games.

The International Olympic Committee was strongly opposed to any rival event. It said in March the proposed Russian event was “a cynical attempt by the Russian Federation to politicize sport” and called on governments and sports bodies “to reject any participation in, and support of, any initiative that intends to fully politicize international sport.”

Moscow-based organizers had tried to attract athletes with prize money. A graphic on the event’s website indicates winners at the World Friendship Games would get $40,000, second-place athletes $25,000 and third-place competitors $17,000. The IOC doesn’t pay prize money for Olympians.

There are 15 Russian athletes competing at the Paris Olympics under the name of Individual Neutral Athletes without the national flag or anthem.

The IOC set up the neutral program as a pathway back to competition for athletes from Russia and its ally Belarus who do not have ties to the military or security services and who have not publicly supported Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Some Russian athletes were also invited by the IOC to the Paris Olympics but declined to compete.
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LONDON — A 9-year-old girl wounded in a stabbing attack at a Taylor Swift-themed dance and yoga class in northwestern England died Tuesday, bringing the death toll to three, as police questioned a 17-year-old suspect arrested minutes after the rampage.

The girl was identified as Alice Aguiar by Portuguese Secretary of State for Communities Jose Cesario. He said her family, who were originally from the Madeira region, were in a state of shock.

Merseyside Police said the other fatalities were girls ages 6 and 7.

Eight children and two adults remain hospitalized after the attack in Southport. Both adults and five of the children are in critical condition.

Swift said she was “completely in shock” and still taking in “the horror” of the event.

“These were just little kids at a dance class,” she wrote on Instagram. “I am at a complete loss for how to ever convey my sympathies to these families.”

A 17-year-old boy was arrested on suspicion of murder and attempted murder.

Local people left flowers and stuffed animals in tribute at a police cordon on the street lined with brick houses in the seaside resort near Liverpool — nicknamed “sunny Southport” — whose beach and pier attract vacationers from across northwest England.

Witnesses described scenes “from a horror movie” as bloodied children ran from the attack just before noon on Monday. The suspect was arrested soon after on suspicion of murder and attempted murder. Police said he was born in Cardiff, Wales, and had lived for years in a village about 5 kilometers (3 miles) from Southport. He has not yet been charged.

Police said detectives are not treating Monday’s attack as terror-related and they are not looking for any other suspects.

“We believe the adults who were injured were bravely trying to protect the children who were being attacked,” Merseyside Police Chief Constable Serena Kennedy said.

People posted online tributes and messages of support for teacher Leanne Lucas, the organizer of the event, who was one of those attacked.

A group of Swift’s U.K. fans calling themselves “Swifties for Southport” launched an online fundraiser to help families of the victims. It raised over 100,000 pounds ($129,000) within 24 hours.

The rampage is the latest shocking attack in a country where a recent rise in knife crime has stoked anxieties and led to calls for the government to do more to clamp down on bladed weapons, which are by far the most used instruments in U.K. homicides.

Children ages 6 to 11

Witnesses described hearing screams and seeing children covered in blood emerging from the Hart Space, a community center that hosts events ranging from pregnancy workshops and meditation sessions to women’s boot camps.

The Swift-themed yoga and dance workshop was a summer vacation activity for children ages about 6 to 11.

“They were in the road, running from the nursery,” said Bare Varathan, who owns a shop nearby. “They had been stabbed, here, here, here, everywhere,” he said, indicating the neck, back and chest.

Richard Townes, a children’s entertainer from Southport, said parents in texting groups are terrified now to send their children to summer programs.

“I have a 5-year-old daughter who could have just as easily been at the class,” Townes said. “I feel helpless and like I can’t do anything.”

Official condolences

Prime Minister Keir Starmer called the attack “horrendous and deeply shocking.” King Charles III sent his “condolences, prayers and deepest sympathies” to those affected by the “utterly horrific incident.”

Prince William and his wife, Catherine, said that “as parents, we cannot begin to imagine what the families, friends and loved ones of those killed and injured in Southport today are going through.”

Colin Parry, who owns a nearby auto body shop, told The Guardian that the suspect arrived by taxi.

“He came down our driveway in a taxi and didn’t pay for the taxi, so I confronted him at that point,” Parry was quoted as saying. “He was quite aggressive, he said, ‘What are you gonna do about it?'”

Parry said most of the victims appeared to be young girls.

“The mothers are coming here now and screaming,” Parry said. “It is like a scene from a horror movie. … It’s like something from America, not like sunny Southport.”

Britain’s worst attack on children occurred in 1996, when 43-year-old Thomas Hamilton shot 16 kindergartners and their teacher dead in a school gymnasium in Dunblane, Scotland. The U.K. subsequently banned the private ownership of almost all handguns.

Mass shootings and killings with firearms are rare in Britain, where knives were used in about 40% of homicides in the year to March 2023.

Other mass stabbings

Although mass stabbings are also rare, several in recent years have generated fear and outrage and received a tremendous amount of attention.

In London in April, a man with a sword killed a 14-year-old boy walking to school and seriously injured four other people, including two police officers.

In Nottingham in central England in June 2022, a paranoid schizophrenic man fatally stabbed two college students walking home from celebrating the end of the school year and then killed a 65-year-old man, stole his van and used it to hit three pedestrians.

In Reading, west of London, in June 2020, a failed Libyan asylum seeker fatally stabbed three men and wounded three others.
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ISLAMABAD — The Taliban on Tuesday disavowed many Afghan diplomatic missions overseas, saying it will not honor passports, visas and other documents issued by diplomats associated with Afghanistan’s former Western-backed administration.

It’s the Taliban’s latest attempt to seize control of diplomatic missions since returning to power in 2021. Many Taliban leaders are under sanctions, and no country recognizes them as Afghanistan’s legitimate rulers.

The country’s seat at the United Nations is still held by the former government that was led by Ashraf Ghani, but the Taliban wants it.

In a statement posted to social media platform X, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that documents issued by missions in London, Berlin, Belgium, Bonn, Switzerland, Austria, France, Italy, Greece, Poland, Australia, Sweden, Canada and Norway are no longer accepted and that the ministry “bears no responsibility” for those documents.

The documents affected include passports, visa stickers, deeds and endorsements.

The ministry wrote that people in those countries will need to approach embassies and consulates controlled by the Taliban’s Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan government instead. “All Afghan nationals living abroad and foreigners can visit the IEA political and consular missions in other countries, other than the above-mentioned missions, to access consular services,” it said.

The Taliban did not immediately respond to questions.

One Afghan national living in London, Asad Mobariz, expressed disappointment and frustration with the decision. The master’s student called it unfair and impractical to expect Afghans in affected countries to travel abroad for consular services.

“This decision disregards our needs and places an undue burden on us,” he told The Associated Press. “These services are crucial for my ability to travel, work and maintain my legal status in the U.K.”

The decision would create immense hardship for the Afghan population in Europe and lead to increased financial strain and potential legal issues for those unable to access consular services locally, he said.

Another Afghan national, Adnan Najibi, who lives in Germany, said discrediting embassies was unlikely to benefit the Taliban.

“I live in a small town with a relatively low population; however, I still see that there are hundreds of Afghans living here,” Najibi said. “If someone previously obtained an Afghan passport, marriage certificate or any other document in a day, it may now take weeks or even longer.”

In March 2023, the Taliban said they were trying to take charge of more Afghan embassies abroad. Their chief spokesperson, Zabihullah Mujahid, said the administration had sent diplomats to at least 14 countries.

The new developments mean the closest available Afghan embassies for people in Europe are likely to be in Spain and the Netherlands. In October, those two countries said they were working with Taliban authorities in Kabul after the Taliban suspended consular services at the embassies in London and Vienna over their “lack of transparency and cooperation.”

Some countries retain an active diplomatic mission in Afghanistan, including Pakistan and China.

Michael Kugelman, director of the Wilson Center’s South Asia Institute, said the Taliban were confident and emboldened, buoyed by the informal recognition they have received from many countries.

They appeared to be working to force Afghans to engage with the Taliban instead of with diplomats loyal to the former administration, he said.

“It’s about giving the Taliban more diplomatic clout abroad and consigning the pre-Taliban holdouts to irrelevance. The fact that many of these missions aren’t very active anyway makes Taliban efforts easier to pull off. It’s like pushing on a door that’s already open,” Kugelman said.

The Taliban have received informal recognition through bilateral ties with countries such as Russia, China, Iran and Pakistan, including high-level meetings with those countries. This past month, the Taliban were the Afghan representatives at United Nations-hosted talks on Afghanistan in Doha, although the U.N. stressed that this did not amount to official recognition.

UN mission closed

Also on Tuesday, the U.N. mission in Afghanistan said local intelligence officials in May forcibly closed the office of a women-led nongovernmental group for allowing some of its female employees to physically report to work.

The NGO was allowed to reopen days later after signing a letter saying it would not allow women employees to come to the office, according to the mission’s latest report on human rights in Afghanistan. The report did not disclose the location for “protection reasons.”

Restrictions on women and girls are a major obstacle to the Taliban gaining official recognition as the country’s legitimate government. They have stopped female education beyond grade six and banned women from many jobs and most public spaces.

The Taliban were not immediately available for comment on the report.
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BEIJING — Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni came to China to boost co-operation with the world’s second-largest economy and reset trade ties, she said on Tuesday, during a visit to burnish relations after leaving the Belt and Road scheme.

Meloni, making her first visit to China as prime minister, which comes after Italy left Chinese President Xi Jinping’s flagship initiative last year, said the euro zone’s third-largest economy wanted to rebalance ties with Beijing.

“Today, Italian investment in China is about three times as much as Chinese investment in Italy,” Meloni told reporters. “We clearly want to work to remove obstacles for our products to access the Chinese market.”

Asked what the right-wing government she has led since 2022 hoped to gain from her visit, Meloni said Italy sought to “strengthen our co-operation with a view to … clearly rebalancing trade.”

Italy is of strategic importance to China as it has struck out on its own with Beijing before.

It could prove to be a moderating voice within the European Union, as the bloc’s 27 members weigh up backing the Commission over tariffs on Chinese electric cars.

EU members will vote in October whether to impose more tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles. Italy is one of the countries to have indicated it will back the motion.

In 2019, Italy became the only member of the Group of Seven industrialized democracies to join Xi’s Belt and Road infrastructure investment scheme that aims to resurrect the ancient Silk Road trade route, in a diplomatic coup for China.

Although Rome eventually exited the program under U.S. pressure last year, it signaled that it still desired to develop its trade ties with the $18.6 trillion economy.

Balanced trade and investment

Asked whether she had specifically discussed with Xi Chinese automakers opening factories in Italy during her Monday meeting, Meloni said “no” but added: “The issue of electric mobility is one of the topics included in our memorandum of industrial cooperation.”

Meloni on Monday told Xi that Italy plays an important role in China’s relations with the EU, which are currently dominated by talk of tariffs, but continued to say that she hoped for trade relations that are “as balanced as possible.”

“As I have said many times, we were the only nation among the great nations of Western Europe to be part of the Silk Road. But we were not the nation that had the best trade with China? Far from it,” Meloni told reporters on Tuesday, referring to the Belt and Road Initiative.

“There are other nations in Europe that have had a much higher volume of Chinese investment.”

 
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LOS ANGELES — A federal judge ordered Monday that the University of California, Los Angeles, craft a plan to protect Jewish students, months after pro-Palestinian protests broke out on campus.

Three Jewish students sued the university in June, alleging that they experienced discrimination on campus amid demonstrations against the Israel-Hamas war. Yitzchok Frankel, a UCLA law student who is Jewish, said in the lawsuit that he declined an invitation from the director of student life to help host a lunch gathering because he did not feel safe participating.

“Under ordinary circumstances, I would have leapt at the chance to participate in this event,” Frankel said. “My Jewish identity and religion are integral to who I am, and I believe it is important to mentor incoming students and encourage them to be proud of their Judaism, too.”

But Frankel argued UCLA was failing to foster a safe environment for Jewish students on campus.

UCLA spokesperson Mary Osako said the school is “committed to maintaining a safe and inclusive campus, holding those who engaged in violence accountable, and combatting antisemitism in all forms.”

“We have applied lessons learned from this spring’s protests and continue to work to foster a campus culture where everyone feels welcome and free from intimidation, discrimination and harassment,” Osako said in a statement.

The University was ordered to craft a proposed plan by next month.

The demonstrations at UCLA became part of a movement at campuses across the country against the Israel-Hamas war. At UCLA, law enforcement ordered in May that over a thousand protesters break up their encampment as tensions rose on campus. Counter-demonstrators had attacked the encampment overnight, and at least 15 protesters suffered injuries. In June, dozens of protesters on campus were arrested after they tried to set up a new encampment.
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MORAINE, Ohio — A Chinese automotive glass maker says it was not the target of a federal investigation that temporarily shut down production last week at its Ohio plant, the subject of the Oscar-winning Netflix film “American Factory.” 

The investigation was focused on money laundering, potential human smuggling, labor exploitation and financial crimes, Homeland Security agent Jared Murphey said Friday. 

Fuyao Glass America said authorities told it that a third-party employment company was at the center of the criminal investigation, according to a filing with the Shanghai Stock Exchange. 

Agents with the Department of Homeland Security, FBI and Internal Revenue Service, along with local authorities, carried out federal search warrants Friday at the Fuyao plant in Moraine and nearly 30 other locations in the Dayton area. 

“The company intends to cooperate fully with the investigation,” Lei Shi, Fuyao Glass America community relations manager, said in a statement to the Dayton Daily News. Messages seeking comment were left with the company on Monday. 

Production was stopped temporarily Friday, but operations resumed near the end of the day, the statement said. 

Fuyao took over a shuttered General Motors factory a decade ago and eventually hired more than 2,000 workers to make glass for the automotive industry. The company, which received millions in tax breaks and incentives from the state and local governments, has said the Ohio plant was the world’s largest auto glass production facility. 

In 2019, a production company backed by Barack and Michelle Obama released “American Factory.” The film, which won a 2020 Oscar for best feature-length documentary, looked at issues including the rights of workers, globalization and automation. 

Workers voted overwhelmingly against unionizing in 2017 after some employees complained about unsafe workplace conditions, arbitrary policies and unfair treatment on the job. Earlier that year, Fuyao agreed to pay a $100,000 penalty after the Occupational Safety and Health Administration cited the company for alleged violations involving machine safety, electrical hazards and a lack of personal protective gear.
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London police in April said they had charged two British men with aiding Russian intelligence following a suspected arson attack on a business with ties to Ukraine. This and other incidents have shaken Ukrainians who feel targeted in places where they have sought refuge. Henry Wilkins reports.
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New York — A former university professor in China went on trial on Monday in Brooklyn on charges he acted as a Chinese agent by monitoring U.S.-based activists opposed to Beijing’s Communist government at the direction of intelligence officials in China.

Federal prosecutors said Shujun Wang, a naturalized U.S. citizen, exploited his leadership role in New York communities supporting democracy in China to collect information on dissidents, and shared it with four officials in China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS), an intelligence service.

Wang, who emigrated to the United States in 1994, was arrested in March 2022. He pleaded not guilty to four counts including acting as a foreign agent without notifying the U.S. attorney general and lying to U.S. authorities. Prosecutors said Wang’s scheme ran from 2005 to 2022. 

The U.S. Department of Justice has in recent years cracked down on what it calls “transnational repression” by U.S. adversaries such as China and Iran.

The term refers to the surveillance, intimidation and, in some cases, attempted repatriation or murder of activists against those governments.

Last year, a former New York City police sergeant was convicted of acting as an illegal Chinese agent by intimidating a U.S.-based fugitive to return to his homeland to face charges.

Wang, in his mid-70s, faces up to 25 years in prison if convicted. Jury selection began on Monday before U.S. Circuit Judge Denny Chin, who normally hears appeals, in Brooklyn federal court.

Prosecutors say MSS officials directed Wang to target Hong Kong pro-democracy activists, advocates for Taiwanese independence campaigners and Uyghur and Tibetan activists.

Defense lawyers said in a June 16 court filing that Wang communicated with Chinese officials to try to “infiltrate and subvert” China’s government by spreading Western political ideas.

“Unfortunately, FBI Agents misunderstood him and his role,” defense lawyer Kevin Tung wrote.

U.S. prosecutors also charged four Chinese intelligence officers who they say acted as Wang’s handlers. Those officers are at large and believed to be in China.
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To project influence, Moscow habitually goes beyond diplomacy, using malicious hybrid strategies and, in some instances, wars of aggression.
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Armenia’s military exercises with the United States in July and increased diplomatic contacts with Western Europe suggest Yerevan continues its efforts to pivot away from Moscow. As Dorian Jones reports from Istanbul, the success of those efforts depends largely on Armenia’s rival, Azerbaijan, and ongoing U.S.-backed peace efforts.
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Washington — President Joe Biden, who belatedly opted against seeking reelection, will pay a visit on Monday to the library of the last president to make the same difficult choice, more than a half-century ago.

Biden’s speech Monday at the LBJ Presidential Library in Austin, Texas, is designed to mark the 60th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act, enacted under President Lyndon Johnson. While there, he’ll call for changes to the Supreme Court that include term limits and an enforceable ethics code for justices, as well as a constitutional amendment that would limit presidential immunity.

But the visit has taken on very different symbolism in the two weeks it took to reschedule it after Biden had to cancel because he got COVID-19.

The speech, originally set for July 15, was once seen by the White House as an opportunity for Biden to try to make a case for salvaging his sinking presidential campaign — delivered in the home district of Representative Lloyd Doggett, the 15-term congressman who was the first Democratic lawmaker to publicly call for Biden to step aside.

Two weeks later, the political landscape has been reshaped. Biden is out of the race. Vice President Kamala Harris is the likely Democratic nominee. And the president is focused not on his next four years, but on the legacy of his single term and the future of democracy.

No American incumbent president has dropped out of the race as late in the process as did Biden. Johnson announced he would not seek reelection in March of 1968, at the height of the Vietnam War.

Biden has drawn a lot of comparisons to Johnson of late. Both men spoke to the nation from the Oval Office to lay out their decisions. Both faced pressure from within their own party to step aside, and both were ultimately praised for doing so.

But their reasons were very different. Johnson stepped away in the heat of the war and spoke at length about his need to focus on the conflict. Biden, 81, had every intention of running for reelection until his shaky June 27 debate performance ignited fears within his own party about his age and mental acuity, and whether he could beat Republican Donald Trump.

Biden has called Trump a serious threat to democracy, particularly after the ex-president’s efforts in 2020 to overturn the results of the election he lost and his continued lies about that loss. The president framed his decision to bow out of the race as motivated by the need to unite his party to protect democracy.

“I’ve decided the best way forward is to pass the torch to a new generation. That’s the best way to unite our nation,” Biden said in his Oval Office address. “Nothing, nothing can come in the way of saving our democracy. And that includes personal ambition.”

Biden decided to seek the presidency in 2020 after witnessing the violence at a 2017 “Unite The Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where torch-wielding white supremacists marched to protest the removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, chanting “You will not replace us!” and “Jews will not replace us!”

Biden said he was horrified by Trump’s response, particularly when the Republican told reporters that “you had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides.”

During his presidency, Biden has often put equity and civil rights at the forefront, including with his choice for vice president. Harris is the first woman, Black person and person of South Asian descent to have the job. She could also become the first woman elected to the presidency.

Biden’s administration has worked to combat racial discrimination in the real estate market, he pardoned thousands of people convicted on federal marijuana charges that have disproportionately affected people of color and provided federal funding to reconnect city neighborhoods that were racially segregated or divided by road projects, and also invested billions in historically Black colleges and universities. 

His efforts, he has said, are meant to push the country forward — and to guard against efforts to undermine the landmark legislation signed by Johnson in 1964, one of the most significant civil rights achievements in U.S. history.

The law made it illegal to discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. It was designed to end discrimination in school, work and public facilities, and barred unequal application of voter registration requirements.

Johnson signed the act five hours after Congress approved it, saying the nation was in a “time of testing” that “we must not fail.” He added: “Let us close the springs of racial poison. Let us pray for wise and understanding hearts. Let us lay aside irrelevant differences and make our nation whole.”

Eight years later, Johnson convened a civil rights symposium bringing together those who fought for civil rights to push for more progress. 

“The progress has been too small; we haven’t done nearly enough,” he said in 1972 during the symposium. “Until we overcome unequal history, we can’t overcome unequal opportunity … There is still work to be done, so let’s be on with it.”

Biden has said he is “determined to get as much done” as he can in his final six months in office, including signing major legislation expanding voting rights and a federal police bill named for George Floyd.

“I’ll keep defending our personal freedoms and our civil rights, from the right to vote to the right to choose,” Biden said from the Oval Office. “I’ll keep calling out hate and extremism, make it clear there is no place, no place in America for political violence or any violence ever, period.”

Later Monday, Biden will also travel to Houston to pay his respects to the late Representative Sheila Jackson Lee, who died July 19 at age 74. 
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washington — After President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential race and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to replace him as the Democratic nominee, Republicans quickly focused on Harris and her work on immigration issues, calling her a “border czar.”

Congressman Guy Reschenthaler, a Republican from Pennsylvania, said at a House Rules Committee hearing Tuesday that Biden appointed Harris as the border czar 64 days into his administration. The hearing focused on an emergency resolution addressing the “failures of the border czar position and its negative impact on our fellow citizens across the country.”

“With Harris at the helm, the Biden-Harris administration made good on their promise to systematically dismantle President [Donald] Trump’s secure border [policies],” Reschenthaler said.

But was Harris appointed as border czar?

Immigration experts say no.

Theresa Cardinal Brown, senior adviser on immigration and border policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center, said that early in the Biden administration, Harris was assigned the task of reducing migration to the U.S. southern border and collaborating with Central American nations to address the root causes of migration through diplomacy, development and investment.

“She was never named a border czar. In fact, the border was not her priority issue at all. The border was the responsibility of Homeland Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. She was never in charge of the border per se,” Brown said.

Brown said “czar” is not a recognized term under the U.S. legal system.

“But it has been adopted into American political discourse as, I’d say, a shorthand title for somebody who is given within a White House administration – within the executive branch – broad responsibility and authority to direct the administration across different Cabinet departments on a particular issue or policy,” Brown said.

Border politics

During the pandemic, the Trump administration virtually closed the border to migration, as officials implemented a health order that allowed for the rapid expulsion of migrants, effectively turning away most migrants without giving them a chance to seek asylum.

When President Biden took office in January 2021, expulsions continued, except for unaccompanied minors. Both Biden and Harris openly urged migrants not to come, but they did, presenting a political crisis for Biden at the beginning of his administration.

Biden soon asked Harris to spearhead a “root causes” strategy, banking heavily on using American investments to improve living conditions and discourage migrants from leaving three Central American nations where a significant number of migrants come from: Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala.

The Biden administration also reunited families separated under the Trump administration and expanded legal immigration pathways, including increasing refugee admissions and creating a humanitarian program for migrants from Central America, Venezuela and Haiti.

Although it is not known what Harris’ immigration policy will look like, immigration attorney Hector Quiroga said he thinks Harris will continue Biden’s policies, but he noted that Harris’ immigration message has changed.

“Her record is rather interesting because in the beginning, she was very much in the diplomatic kind of way. … With experience [in the vice president office], she has said, ‘Please don’t come’ to migrants,” he said, referring to Harris’ evolution to a stricter tone and tougher message.

Quiroga is referring to Harris’ 2021 trip to Guatemala to meet with former Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei and address the root causes of illegal migration. During her visit, she emphasized the Biden administration’s commitment to helping Guatemalans find “hope at home.”

And she issued a stern warning to potential migrants.

“I want to be clear to folks in this region who are thinking about making that dangerous trek to the United States-Mexico border,” Harris said. “Do not come. Do not come.”

The Biden administration has been highlighting progress at the border, noting that arrests for illegal crossings from Mexico dropped by 29% in June, marking the lowest number during Joe Biden’s presidency.
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