RIYADMEDIA

paris — A year ago, the head of the Paris Olympics boldly declared that France’s capital would be ” the safest place in the world ” when the Games open this Friday. Tony Estanguet’s confident forecast looks less far-fetched now with squadrons of police patrolling Paris’ streets, fighter jets and soldiers primed to scramble, and imposing metal-fence security barriers erected like an iron curtain on both sides of the River Seine that will star in the opening show.

France’s vast police and military operation is in large part because the July 26-August 11 Games face unprecedented security challenges. The city has repeatedly suffered deadly extremist attacks, and international tensions are high because of the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.

Rather than build an Olympic park with venues grouped together outside of the city center, like Rio de Janeiro in 2016 or London in 2012, Paris has chosen to host many of the events in the heart of the bustling capital of 2 million inhabitants, with others dotted around suburbs that house millions more. Putting temporary sports arenas in public spaces and the unprecedented choice to stage a river-borne opening ceremony stretching for kilometers along the Seine, makes safeguarding them more complex.

Olympic organizers also have cyberattack concerns, while rights campaigners and Games critics are worried about Paris’ use of AI-equipped surveillance technology and the broad scope and scale of Olympic security.

Paris, in short, has a lot riding on keeping 10,500 athletes and millions of visitors safe. Here’s how it aims to do it.

The security operation, by the numbers

A Games-time force of up to 45,000 police and gendarmes is also backed up by a 10,000-strong contingent of soldiers that has set up the largest military camp in Paris since World War II, from which soldiers should be able to reach any of the city’s Olympic venues within 30 minutes.

Armed military patrols aboard vehicles and on foot have become common in crowded places in France since gunmen and suicide bombers acting in the names of al-Qaida and the Islamic State group repeatedly struck Paris in 2015. They don’t have police powers of arrest but can tackle attackers and restrain them until police arrive. For visitors from countries where armed street patrols aren’t the norm, the sight of soldiers with assault rifles might be jarring, just as it was initially for people in France.

“At the beginning, it was very strange for them to see us and they were always avoiding our presence, making a detour,” said General Eric Chasboeuf, deputy commander of the counter-terror military force, called Sentinelle.

“Now, it’s in the landscape,” he said.

Rafale fighter jets, airspace-monitoring AWACS surveillance flights, Reaper surveillance drones, helicopters that can carry sharpshooters, and equipment to disable drones will police Paris skies, which will be closed during the opening ceremony by a no-fly zone extending for 150 kilometers (93.2 miles) around the capital. Cameras twinned with artificial intelligence software — authorized by a law that expands the state’s surveillance powers for the Games — will flag potential security risks, such as abandoned packages or crowd surges.

France is also getting help from more than 40 countries that, together, have sent at least 1,900 police reinforcements.

Trump assassination attempt highlights Olympic risks

Attacks by lone individuals are major concern, a risk driven home most recently to French officials by the assassination attempt against former U.S. President and current Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.

Some involved in the Olympic security operation were stunned that the gunman armed with an AR-style rifle got within range of the former president.

“No one can guarantee that there won’t be mistakes. There, however, it was quite glaring,” said General Philippe Pourque, who oversaw the construction of a temporary camp in southeast Paris housing 4,500 soldiers from the Sentinelle force.

In France, in the last 13 months alone, men acting alone have carried out knife attacks that targeted tourists in Paris, and children in a park in an Alpine town, among others. A man who stabbed a teacher to death at his former high school in northern France in October had been under surveillance by French security services for suspected Islamic radicalization.

With long and bitter experience of deadly extremist attacks, France has armed itself with a dense network of police units, intelligence services and investigators who specialize in fighting terrorism, and suspects in terrorism cases can be held longer for questioning.

Hundreds of thousands of background checks have scrutinized Olympic ticket-holders, workers and others involved in the Games and applicants for passes to enter Paris’ most tightly controlled security zone, along the Seine’s banks. The checks blocked more than 3,900 people from attending, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said. He said some were flagged for suspected Islamic radicalization, left- or right-wing political extremism, significant criminal records and other security concerns.

“We’re particularly attentive to Russian and Belorussian citizens,” Darmanin added, although he stopped short of linking exclusions to Russia’s war in Ukraine and Belarus’ role as an ally of Moscow.

Darmanin said 155 people considered to be “very dangerous” potential terror threats are also being kept away from the opening ceremony and the Games, with police searching their homes for weapons and computers in some cases.

He said intelligence services haven’t identified any proven terror plots against the Games “but we are being extremely attentive.”

Critics fear intrusive Olympic security will stay after Games

Campaigners for digital rights worry that Olympic surveillance cameras and AI systems could erode privacy and other freedoms, and zero in on people without fixed homes who spend a lot of time in public spaces.

Saccage 2024, a group that has campaigned for months against the Paris Games, took aim at the scope of the Olympic security, describing it as a “repressive arsenal” in a statement to The Associated Press.

“And this is not a French exception, far from it, but a systematic occurrence in host countries,” it said. “Is it reasonable to offer one month of ‘festivities’ to the most well-off tourists at the cost of a long-term securitization legacy for all residents of the city and the country?”
…

Warsaw, Poland — Belarus and Germany are holding “consultations” over the fate of a German man reportedly sentenced to death by a court in Minsk last month, Belarus’s foreign ministry said Saturday. 

Rico Krieger, 30, was convicted under six articles of Belarus’s criminal code including “terrorism” and “mercenary activity” at a secretive trial held at the end of June, according to Belarusian rights group Viasna. 

“Taking into account a request from the German Foreign Ministry, Belarus has proposed concrete solutions on the available options for developing the situation,” Belarusian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Anatoly Glaz said. 

“The foreign ministries of the two countries are holding consultations on this topic,” he added. 

Few details have been published about the case. 

Part of the court proceedings were held behind closed doors, the exact allegations against the man were not immediately clear and there has been little information in Belarusian state media about the trial. 

According to a LinkedIn profile that Viasna said belonged to Krieger, he worked as a medic for the German Red Cross and had previously been employed as an armed security officer for the U.S. Embassy in Berlin. 

A source at the German Foreign Ministry told AFP on Friday that it and the embassy in Minsk were “providing the person in question with consular services and are making intensive representations to the Belarusian authorities on his behalf.” 

The source added that “the death penalty is a cruel and inhuman form of punishment that Germany rejects under all circumstances.” 

Belarus is reported to have executed as many as 400 people since it gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, according to Amnesty International.  

But executions of foreign citizens are rare.  

The country is run as an authoritarian regime by long-time leader Alexander Lukashenko, who has detained thousands of dissidents and civic activists who oppose him. 
…

SHUSHA, Azerbaijan — Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev pledged Saturday to help France’s overseas territories secure independence, the latest in a series of incidents pitting his ex-Soviet state against Paris over long-running conflicts in the Caucasus region. 

Aliyev accuses France of interfering in its affairs over its contacts with Armenia, against which it has waged two wars in 30 years linked to disputes over Baku’s breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh. 

In recent months, Azerbaijani leaders have focused on France’s South Pacific territory of New Caledonia, gripped by weeks of violence over the objections of Indigenous Kanak activists to a contentious electoral reform. 

Aliyev made his latest comments at a media forum days before the opening of the Olympic Games in Paris and just after the staging in Baku of a congress bringing together pro-independence groups from New Caledonia and other French territories. 

“We will support you until you are free,” Aliyev told the forum, citing French territories that he said were still subject to colonialism. 

“Some countries are still suffering from this. The Comoros islands, Mayotte are still under colonial rule. It has been our duty to help these countries liberate themselves from this revolting remnant from the past.” 

Accusations of meddling

Earlier this week, an “initiative group” staged a congress in Baku attended by pro-independence groups from New Caledonia and other French territories, including Corsica and Caribbean and Pacific islands. 

French media accounts of the meeting said participants sharply criticized French authorities and an Azerbaijani delegation was invited to visit New Caledonia. 

France accused Azerbaijan in May of meddling and abetting unrest in New Caledonia by flooding social media with what it said were misleading photos and videos targeting French police. 

Azerbaijan has denied the allegations. 

Azerbaijani authorities accuse France of bias in favor of Armenia in efforts to achieve a peace treaty to end three decades of conflict and in signing defense contracts with authorities in Yerevan. Azerbaijan expelled two French diplomats last December. 
…

washington — The indictment of a former CIA analyst who allegedly worked for the South Korean government — and the abrupt resignation of the top U.S. envoy for North Korea — will not affect the coordination between Washington and Seoul in dealing with Pyongyang’s threats, said former U.S. officials who dealt extensively with relations between the United States and South Korea.

Sue Mi Terry, a former CIA analyst and prominent North Korea expert, has been indicted by a New York grand jury on charges of secretly working for the South Korean government, serving as a secret agent for South Korea’s main intelligence agency in exchange for luxury goods, expensive meals and $37,000 for a public policy program that she controlled, according to an indictment unsealed last week.

Damning indictment

Terry served in the U.S. government from 2001 to 2011, first as a CIA analyst and later as the deputy national intelligence officer for East Asia at the National Intelligence Council, before working for think tanks.

Terry is a well-known North Korea expert with a prominent media presence. News of her indictment rattled North Korea experts in Seoul and Washington.

“At the direction of ROK government officials, Terry advocated ROK policy positions, including in published articles and during media appearances, disclosed nonpublic U.S. government information to ROK intelligence officers, and facilitated access for ROK government officials to U.S. government officials,” according to the indictment, which was released Wednesday. ROK refers to the Republic of Korea or South Korea.

Prosecutors say Terry never registered with the Justice Department as a foreign agent. She faces two counts, one for failing to register under the federal Foreign Agents Registration Act and the other for conspiring to violate it.

Abrupt resignation

The indictment of Terry followed the abrupt resignation earlier this month of Jung Pak, the U.S. senior official for North Korea, who oversaw North Korean affairs at the U.S. State Department.

A State Department spokesperson told VOA’s Korean Service via email on July 9 that Pak “stepped down from her duties as U.S. senior official for the DPRK and deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs on July 5.”

DPRK stands for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, North Korea’s official name.

The indictment and the resignation come as North Korea escalates tensions on the Korean Peninsula while Washington is enhancing security cooperation with Seoul.

U.S. President Joe Biden and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol met on July 11 on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Washington. They reaffirmed their commitments to the Washington Declaration, which is designed to reinforce U.S. extended deterrence to South Korea in response to North Korea’s advancing nuclear threats.

US-ROK ties

Some South Korean news media outlets raised concerns that the indictment of Terry could affect overall ties between the U.S. and South Korea.

Former U.S. officials say these are separate events that are unlikely to affect the joint efforts by the U.S. and South Korea in addressing the North Korean issues.

Susan Thornton, who served as acting assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs during the Trump administration, told VOA’s Korean Service via email Friday that she doesn’t believe there would be any disruption to the U.S.-South Korea bilateral coordination.

“Sue Mi Terry is not in the government and the position of DPRK special representative was created to focus on negotiations with North Korea, which do not appear likely any time soon,” Thornton said.

“The two governments currently have ample channels for regular coordination on DPRK threats through the Departments of State, Defense, U.S. forces in Korea and the National Security Council, among others,” she added.

“I will say that I foresee no reduction in cooperation and coordination between the U.S. and South Korea, especially in the combined military relationship,” said Harry Harris, former U.S. ambassador to South Korea during the Trump administration, in an email to VOA’s Korean Service on Friday.

Close coordination

The U.S. dismissed the concerns over the possible friction with one of its closest allies in the world.

“We will continue to consult closely with the Republic of Korea, Japan and other allies and partners about how to best engage the DPRK, deter aggression and coordinate international responses to the DPRK’s violations of multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions,” a State Department spokesperson told VOA’s Korean Service in a written statement Friday, referring to South Korea by its official name.

The spokesperson said that the vacancy of the U.S. official, who would solely cover the North Korean affairs, will not affect the U.S. policy toward North Korea.

“EAP Assistant Secretary Dan Kritenbrink is currently overseeing DPRK policy for the Department of State. Ambassador Julie Turner continues to serve as special envoy on North Korean Human Rights,” the spokesperson said. EAP is the State Department’s term for East Asian and Pacific affairs.

Seoul also stressed that South Korea and the U.S. are cooperating and maintaining close communication at various levels related to North Korea policy.

“The director of the Korean Peninsula Policy Bureau continues to serve as the special representative for North Korea and communicates closely with the U.S. counterpart, and the Director of Diplomatic Strategy and Intelligence Division is discussing issues that require high-level consultations,” a spokesperson for the South Korean foreign ministry told VOA’s Korean Service via email Friday.
…

NEW YORK — Donald Trump’s campaign released an update on the former president’s health on Saturday, one week after he survived an attempted assassination at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

The memo, from Texas Representative Ronny Jackson, who served as Trump’s White House physician, offers new details about the Republican GOP nominee’s injuries and the treatment he received in the immediate aftermath of the attack.

Jackson said Trump sustained a gunshot wound to the right ear from a high-powered rifle that came “less than a quarter of an inch from entering his head and struck the top of his right ear.”

The bullet track, he said, “produced a 2 cm wide wound that extended down to the cartilaginous surface of the ear. There was initially significant bleeding, followed by marked swelling of the entire upper ear.”

While the swelling has since resolved and the wound is beginning to heal properly, Jackson said Trump is experiencing intermittent bleeding, requiring the dressing that was on display at last week’s Republican National Convention.

“Given the broad and blunt nature of the wound itself, no sutures were required,” he wrote.

Trump was initially treated by medical staff at Butler Memorial Hospital. According to Jackson, doctors “provided a thorough evaluation for additional injuries that included a CT of his head.”

Trump, he said, “will have further evaluations, including a comprehensive hearing exam, as needed. He will follow up with his primary care physician, as directed by the doctors that initially evaluated him,” he wrote.

“In summary, former President Trump is doing well, and he is recovering as expected from the gunshot wound sustained last Saturday afternoon,” he added.

The letter is the first official update about the former president’s condition since the night of the shooting.

Jackson, a staunch Trump supporter and Trump’s former doctor, said he met Trump in Bedminster, New Jersey, late Saturday after he returned from Pennsylvania.

He said he has been with Trump since that time, evaluating and treating his wound daily. That includes traveling with him Saturday to Michigan, where the former president held his first rally since the shooting, joined by his newly named running mate, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance.

It is unclear whether Jackson is still a licensed doctor. A spokesperson for the congressman did not immediately provide a response and Trump’s campaign did not immediately respond to questions.
…

VIENNA, Ohio — A plane trying to make an emergency landing at an airport in the U.S. state of Ohio crashed, killing all three people aboard, authorities said.

The Federal Aviation Administration said Saturday that the twin-engine Beechcraft 60 went down near the Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport in Ohio at about 6:45 p.m. Friday.

The Ohio State Highway Patrol post in Trumbull County, which was notified shortly after 7 p.m. Saturday, said the crash just north of the airport killed the pilot and two passengers. The families of the victims have been notified and names are to be released later, an official said.

Anthony Trevena, executive director of the Western Reserve Port Authority, told WKBN-TV that the crash came after an airplane not associated with the air reserve station at the airport came in for an unscheduled emergency landing. A mechanical failure is suspected, the station reported.

The National Transportation Safety Board will investigate, the FAA said in a statement.
…

TIRANA, Albania — A member of Albania’s ethnic Greek minority returned to prison Saturday after a five-day reprieve to attend the opening session of the European Parliament where he was elected to represent Greece’s ruling party.

Fredis Beleris, who holds dual Greek-Albanian citizenship, is serving a two-year prison sentence for vote-buying in municipal elections last year in Albania. He denies the charges, and Greece has described the case against him as being politically motivated.

“I am not sorry to go back to the cell,” said Beleris upon landing at Tirana International Airport.

The 51-year-old politician won the European Parliament after getting a place on Greece’s governing New Democracy party ticket in last month’s European elections. He received 238,801 votes, the fourth among the seven members elected for the party.

European Parliament members enjoy legal immunity from prosecution within the 27-state bloc, even for allegations relating to crimes committed prior to their election. But Albania is not an EU member yet.

Beleris was arrested two days before the May 14, 2023, municipal elections in Himara, with a large ethnic Greek minority in the town on the Albanian Riviera, 220 kilometers (140 miles) southwest of the capital Tirana. He was charged with offering about 40,000 Albanian leks ($390) to buy eight votes.

He won last year’s municipal election with a 19-vote lead, backed by the ethnic Greek minority party and others opposing Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama’s governing Socialists. But he never took office, being detained until his court conviction in March.

An appeals court upheld the ruling last month, and Albanian authorities stripped Beleris of his post as mayor of Himara, where a new election will be held August 4.
…

…

During the Republican National Convention, which ended Thursday, delegates approved a political platform that barely mentions abortion — a stark contrast to previous party positions. VOA’s chief national correspondent Steve Herman reports from the convention that this softer official stance on reproductive rights is aimed at making its candidate, Donald Trump, more appealing to undecided voters. VOA footage by Mary Cieslak.
…

Paris — Airlines were gradually coming back online Saturday after global carriers, banks and financial institutions were thrown into turmoil by one of the biggest IT crashes in recent years, caused by an update to an antivirus program.

Passenger crowds had swelled at airports Friday to wait for news as dozens of flights were canceled and operators struggled to keep services on track, after an update to a program operating on Microsoft Windows crashed systems worldwide.

Multiple U.S. airlines and airports across Asia said they were now resuming operations, with check-in services restored in Hong Kong, South Korea and Thailand, and mostly back to normal in India and Indonesia and at Singapore’s Changi Airport as of Saturday afternoon.

“The check-in systems have come back to normal [at Thailand’s five major airports]. There are no long queues at the airports as we experienced yesterday,” Airports of Thailand President Keerati Kitmanawat told reporters at Don Mueang airport in Bangkok.

Microsoft said the issue began at 1900 GMT on Thursday, affecting Windows users running the CrowdStrike Falcon cybersecurity software.

CrowdStrike said it had rolled out a fix for the problem, and the company’s boss, George Kurtz, told U.S. news channel CNBC he wanted to “personally apologize to every organization, every group and every person who has been impacted.”

It also said it could take a few days to return to normal.

U.S. President Joe Biden’s team was talking to CrowdStrike and those affected by the glitch “and is standing by to provide assistance as needed,” the White House said in a statement.

“Our understanding is that flight operations have resumed across the country, although some congestion remains,” a senior US administration official said.

Other industries

Reports from the Netherlands and Britain suggested health services might have been affected by the disruption, meaning the full impact might not yet be known.

Media companies were also hit, with Britain’s Sky News saying the glitch had ended its Friday morning news broadcasts, and Australia’s ABC similarly reporting major difficulties.

By Saturday, services in Australia had mostly returned to normal, but Sydney Airport was still reporting flight delays.

Australian authorities warned of an increase in scam and phishing attempts following the outage, including people offering to help reboot computers and asking for personal information or credit card details.

Banks in Kenya and Ukraine reported issues with their digital services, while some mobile phone carriers were disrupted and customer services in a number of companies went down.

“The scale of this outage is unprecedented and will no doubt go down in history,” said Junade Ali of Britain’s Institution of Engineering and Technology, adding that the last incident approaching the same scale was in 2017.

Flight chaos

While some airports halted all flights, in others airline staff resorted to manual check-ins for passengers, leading to long lines and frustrated travelers.

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration initially ordered all flights grounded “regardless of destination,” although airlines later said they were reestablishing their services and working through the backlog.

India’s largest airline, Indigo, said operations had been “resolved,” in a statement posted on social media platform X.

“While the outage has been resolved and our systems are back online, we are diligently working to resume normal operations, and we expect this process to extend into the weekend,” the carrier said Saturday.

A passenger told AFP that the situation was returning to normal at Delhi Airport by midnight on Saturday with only slight delays in international flights.

Low-cost carrier AirAsia said it was still trying to get back online and had been “working around the clock toward recovering its departure control systems” after the global outage. It recommended passengers arrive early at airports and be ready for “manual check-in” at airline counters.

Chinese state media said Beijing’s airports had not been affected.

In Europe, major airports, including Berlin’s, which had suspended all flights earlier on Friday, said departures and arrivals were resuming.

‘Common cause’

Companies were left patching up their systems and trying to assess the damage, even as officials tried to tamp down panic by ruling out foul play.

CrowdStrike’s Kurtz said in a statement his teams were “fully mobilized” to help affected customers and “a fix has been deployed.”

But Oli Buckley, a professor at Britain’s Loughborough University, was one of many experts who questioned the ease of rolling out a proper fix.

“While experienced users can implement the workaround, expecting millions to do so is impractical,” he said.

Other experts said the incident should prompt a widespread reconsideration of how reliant societies are on a handful of tech companies for such an array of services.

“We need to be aware that such software can be a common cause of failure for multiple systems at the same time,” said John McDermid, a professor at York University in Britain.

He said infrastructure should be designed “to be resilient against such common cause problems.”
…

…

…

…

washington — Some top U.S. officials have sought to publicly reassure Ukraine of continued support from Washington, arguing that backing Kyiv in its fight against Russia is in America’s best interest.

The United States has provided Ukraine with almost $54 billion in military equipment and other security assistance since Russian forces invaded in February 2022, including a $225 million package earlier this month.

Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General CQ Brown on Friday called such help from the U.S. and other Western countries crucial, warning of dire consequences if that aid stopped flowing.

“If collectively we stop supporting Ukraine, [Russian President Vladimir] Putin wins,” Brown told an audience at the Aspen Security Forum in Aspen, Colorado.

“What that allows, it also emboldens others,” he said. “We have credibility that’s at stake associated with this. Not just the United States, but NATO, the West.

“If we just back away, that opens the door for [Chinese President] Xi Jinping and others that [have] wanted to do unprovoked aggression.”

Some U.S. politicians, however, argue that the current level of support for Ukraine is unsustainable. And they have been led, in part, by the Republican vice presidential nominee, Ohio Republican Senator J.D. Vance.

“There are a lot of bad guys all over the world, and I’m much more interested in some of the problems in East Asia right now than I am in Europe,” Vance told a major security conference in Munich earlier this year.

“Can we send the level of weaponry we’ve sent for the last 18 months?” Vance asked. “We simply cannot. No matter how many checks the U.S. Congress writes, we are limited there.”

The Republicans’ presidential nominee, former President Donald Trump, has also been critical at times of U.S. support for Ukraine, telling supporters during his nomination acceptance speech Thursday that the war “would never have happened if I was president.”

This past May, at a town hall event sponsored by CNN, Trump said, if elected, he would end the fighting in one day.

Brown, the most senior U.S. military official, was cautious about such predictions when pressed at the Aspen conference.

“If he can get it done in 24 hours, that’d be great,” he said, while also rejecting arguments that the U.S. is incapable of providing Ukraine with continued military support.

“We have the capability to produce,” Brown said. “We have the capacity to do it. We’ve just got to make the commitment to do it.”

Other senior U.S. officials also pushed back against arguments that Washington’s European allies are not doing enough.

“The Europeans are doing a lot more than I think Americans give them credit for,” said White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan, speaking separately at the Aspen forum.

“When you calculate their contribution to Ukraine in terms of military assistance, economic assistance, humanitarian assistance and other forms, they [European allies] are combined doing considerably more than the United States,” he said, adding that the Ukrainian cause remains popular despite some vocal skeptics.

“Poll after poll shows the American people still care,” Sullivan said. “[They] still support funding Ukraine. Still support the notion that it is our duty-bound obligation to continue to help Ukraine fight for its freedom and its sovereignty and its territorial integrity.”

Some of those supporters, including both Democratic and Republican lawmakers, have urged the White House and President Joe Biden to be even more aggressive and loosen restrictions preventing Ukraine from using U.S.-made weapons systems to strike deep in Russian territory.

“As the war has evolved, our support has evolved, the capacities we provided have evolved, and the parameters under which we’ve provided them have evolved,” Sullivan said. “But thus far, [Biden’s] policy on long-range strikes in Russia has not changed.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called on Britain’s new prime minister, Keir Starmer, earlier Friday to help remove those types of restrictions instituted by the U.S. and other Western allies.

Addressing a meeting of the Cabinet at the official residence of the British prime minister, Zelenskyy said Ukraine has proved it can prevent Russian attempts to expand the war by hitting Russian military targets positioned not just along the border but deeper inside Russia.

In an interview with the BBC, British Defense Secretary John Healey was asked about the issue of Ukraine’s use of British-supplied weapons, and he said nothing precludes “them hitting targets in Russia, but that must be done by the Ukrainians. It must be done within the parameters and the bounds of international humanitarian law.”

Also Friday, Zelenskyy said that following a meeting with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk on Thursday, Ukraine received a “positive decision from the Polish government” that will allow Ukraine to receive U.S.-made F-16 fighter jets sooner.

He did not specify what the decision was in his statement, shared on the social media platform X, formerly Twitter. The Reuters news service said there was no immediate word from the Polish prime minister’s office on Zelenskyy’s comment.

VOA’s Jeff Custer contributed to this report. Some information came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
…

…

NEW YORK — A swath of Americans watching U.S. President Joe Biden is seeing something beyond debate-stage stumbles and prime-time miscues: themselves.

Debate about the 81-year-old Democrat’s fitness for another term is especially resonating with other older Americans who, like him, want to stay on the job.

“People were telling me I should retire, too,” says 89-year-old D’yan Forest, a New York comedian. “But you’ve got to keep working, no matter what.”

Forest has stumbled on an occasional joke and finds it more difficult to memorize her lines. But she’s busier than ever, drawing audiences and getting big laughs with bawdy jokes and ukulele-strummed songs. She dismisses Biden’s debate performance as a “blip” and grows angry that a single night would cause people to look past all the benefits age brings.

People 75 and older are the fastest-growing age group in the U.S. workforce. All told, about 1 in 5 Americans age 65 and older are employed, according to the Census Bureau.

Many older adults are wary of seeing a peer shoved aside because of his age and, like Forest, insist it should be up to each individual when they decide to exit the workplace.

“He has the experience,” she says. “He has judgment. He’s seen it all.”

Even among that growing population of older workers, though, some want Biden to give up.

“Forget it! The party’s over!” says Betty Ann Talomie, an 81-year-old from Seneca Falls, New York, who was born just a few weeks after the president. “Some people can’t face that it’s time.”

Talomie worked her last shift as a waitress in January. She still treasured regular customers, loved her co-workers and relished having something to occupy boring winter days. But she started feeling more tired at the end of her shift and knew the time had come.

“It’s like anything at this age: It’s twice as hard to do anything,” says Talomie.

She plans to vote for Donald Trump, as she did in 2020, but says he’s ready for retirement too.

“I think they should both sit in lounge chairs,” she says.

Biden insists he’s not stepping aside. Trump, 78, has escaped similar questioning about his age. If he is elected and serves a full term, he would eventually supplant Biden as the oldest president in U.S. history.

Eli Trujillo, an 87-year-old barber in Cheyenne, Wyoming, sees age taking its toll on Biden, but he knows he doesn’t cut hair as fast as he used to or log as many hours either.

Who is he to judge when it comes to the president’s decision?

“If he feels he could still do it,” Trujillo says, “I don’t hold it against him.”

Older employees see rampant age discrimination in their workplaces, and for those who remain on the job, being asked about retirement plans is a constant aggravation.

“They look at me and say, ‘Why don’t you retire? You can take it easy,’” says Paul Durietz, a 76-year-old teacher in Gurnee, Illinois. “I just like teaching,” he tells them.

Durietz, who teaches seventh-grade social studies, may come home a little more tired than he used to, but he says working into later life is no longer a big deal.

Polls have shown older Americans are more likely than younger people to have a favorable view of Biden and are less likely to say he should withdraw to allow another candidate. But even among older people, Biden faces steep skepticism.

Six in 10 people over 70 favored Biden’s withdrawal from the race in a survey released Wednesday by the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Harriet Newman Cohen is one of them. Although she will vote for Biden if he remains, she finds his appearances painful to watch and fears he has lost all sense of self awareness.

“What’s happening now,” the 91-year-old attorney says, “is giving older age such a bad rap.”

Cohen says she hasn’t slowed at all and finds old age has brought her “more acuity, more keenness, more energy.” Even as she bristles at the idea of anyone suggesting she retire from the work she loves, she believes the time has come for Biden to step aside.

“I’ve just been so lucky,” Cohen says. “But the president has not been so lucky.”

Although many younger people can’t imagine working longer than they have to, older workers often say they can’t imagine themselves not remaining on the job.

Some who work into their 70s, 80s and beyond do so because their finances force them to, but many others do so out of preference. Polls consistently show job satisfaction grows with age and for those who love their work, deciding to quit is a tough decision.

Jim Oppegard, a 94-year-old school bus driver in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, is wrestling with whether to return to work next month as a new school year begins.

He loves the children and having extra cash to donate, and he continues to pass annual exams to make sure he’s up to the job. The Guinness World Records certified him earlier this year as the world’s oldest bus driver, an honor that made him reflect on his future.

He’s considered retiring before but has always gone back. This time might be different.

“There’s something to be said,” Oppegard says, “for going out on top.”
…

TALLINN, Estonia — For three decades, European leaders have come and gone by the dozens, but Alexander Lukashenko remains in absolute control of Belarus.

His longevity is due to a mixture of harshly silencing all dissent, reverting to Soviet-style economic controls and methods and cozying up to Russia, even as he sometimes flirted with the West.

Lukashenko, 69, was dubbed “Europe’s last dictator” early in his tenure, and he has lived up to that nickname.

On Saturday, he marks 30 years in power — one of the world’s longest-serving and most ruthless leaders.

As head of the country sandwiched between Russia, Ukraine and NATO members Poland, Lithuania and Latvia, Lukashenko was elected to his sixth term in office in 2020 in balloting widely seen at home and abroad as rigged.

Months of mass protests that followed were harshly suppressed in a violent crackdown that sent tens of thousands to jail amid allegations of beatings and torture. Many political opponents remain imprisoned or have fled the nation of 9.5 million.

But the strongman shrugged off Western sanctions and isolation that followed, and now he says he will run for a seventh five-year term next year.

Lukashenko owes his political longevity to a mixture of guile, brutality and staunch political and economic support from his main ally, Russia.

Most recently, in 2022 he allowed Moscow to use Belarusian territory to invade Ukraine and later agreed to host some of Russia’s tactical nuclear weapons.

“Lukashenko has turned Belarus into a fragment of the USSR, dangerous not only for its own citizens but also threatening its Western neighbors with nuclear weapons,” said independent political analyst Valery Karbalevich.

He described the Belarusian leader as “one of the most experienced post-Soviet politicians, who has learned to play both on the Kremlin’s mood and the fears of his own people.” 

In power since 1994

When the former state farm director was first elected in July 1994 just 2½ years after Belarus gained independence following the USSR’s collapse, he pledged to fight corruption and boost living standards that had plunged amid chaotic free-market reforms.

An admirer of the Soviet Union, Lukashenko pushed soon after his election for a referendum that abandoned the country’s new red-and-white national flag in favor of one similar to what Belarus had used as a Soviet republic.

He also quickly bolstered ties with Russia and pushed for forming a new union state in the apparent hope of becoming its head after a full merger — an ambition dashed by the 2000 election of Vladimir Putin to succeed the ailing Boris Yeltsin as Russian president.

Under Lukashenko, Belarus’ top security agency retained its fearsome Soviet-era name of the KGB. It also has been the only country in Europe to keep capital punishment, with executions carried out with a shot to the back of the head.

In 1999 and 2000, four prominent Lukashenko critics disappeared, and an investigation by the Council of Europe concluded they were kidnapped and killed by death squads linked to senior Belarusian officials. Belarusian authorities stonewalled European demands to track down and prosecute the suspected culprits.

“Lukashenko never bothered with his reputation,” said Anatoly Lebedko, leader of the now-outlawed United Civil Party of Belarus. “He relished in calling himself a dictator and bragged about being a pariah even when he was publicly accused of political killings and other crimes.”

Lukashenko initiated constitutional changes that put parliament under his control, removed term limits and extended his power in elections that the West didn’t recognize as free or fair. Protests following the votes were quickly broken up by police and organizers were jailed.

His Soviet-style centralized economy depended heavily on Russian subsidies.

“Instead of helping Belarus, cheap Russian oil and gas have become its curse, allowing Lukashenko to receive windfall profits from exporting oil products to Europe and freeze the situation in Belarus,” said Alexander Milinkevich, who challenged him in a 2006 election. “Opposition calls for reforms and movement toward the European Union literally drowned in the flood of Russian money.”

But even while relying on Moscow, Lukashenko repeatedly clashed with the Kremlin, accusing it of trying to strong-arm Belarus into surrendering control of its most prized economic assets and eventually abandoning its independence.

While maneuvering for more subsidies from Russia, he often tried to appease the West by occasionally easing repressions. Before the 2020 election, the U.S. and EU lifted some sanctions as Belarus freed political prisoners.

Turning point

The balancing act ended after the vote that sparked the largest protests ever seen in Belarus. In the subsequent crackdown, over 35,000 people were arrested, thousands were beaten in police custody, and hundreds of independent media outlets and nongovernmental organizations were closed and outlawed.

While Putin had been annoyed by Lukashenko’s past maneuvers, he saw the protests as a major threat to Moscow’s influence over its ally and moved quickly to shore up the Belarusian leader, who came under Western sanctions.

Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who challenged Lukashenko in that election and then fled the country to lead the opposition from exile, said the vote marked a watershed as it became clear that he had “lost support of the majority of the Belarusians.”

“Lukashenko has survived primarily thanks to Russia, which offered him information, financial and even military support at the peak of the protests,” she told The Associated Press. “The Kremlin’s intervention prevented a split in the Belarusian elites. Now Lukashenko is paying back that support with the country’s sovereignty.”

Belarus’ leading human rights group, Viasna, counts about 1,400 political prisoners in the country, including group founder and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ales Bialiatski, who has been held incommunicado like other opposition figures.

“Lukashenko has created a harsh personalist political regime in the center of Europe with thousands of political prisoners where civic institutions don’t function and time has turned back,” said Bialiatski’s wife, Natalia Pinchuk. “Torturous conditions in which Ales has been held are emblematic for thousands of Belarusian prisoners and Lukashenko’s path in politics.”

In one of the most vivid episodes of the crackdown, a commercial jet carrying a dissident journalist from Greece to Lithuania was forced to land in Minsk in May 2021 when it briefly crossed into Belarusian airspace in what the West condemned as air piracy. The journalist, Raman Pratasevich, was convicted of organizing protests and sentenced to eight years in prison. He later was pardoned and became a Lukashenko supporter.

The future for Lukashenko

The Belarusian leader is sometimes blustery and mercurial. He once praised Adolf Hitler for “raising Germany from ruins.”

Lukashenko shrugged off the COVID-19 pandemic as “psychosis” and advised people to “kill the virus with vodka,” go to saunas and work in the fields because “tractors will cure everybody!”

Amid the 2020 crackdown, Lukashenko declared that “sometimes we shouldn’t care about the laws and just take tough steps to stop some scum.”

He kept his youngest son, 19-year-old Nikolai, at his side at official events, fueling speculation that he could be nurturing him as a successor.

Lukashenko maintained a tough-guy image by playing hockey, skiing and doing other sports. After contracting COVID-19, he said he recovered quickly, thanks to physical activity.

But he’s become visibly less energetic in recent years amid rumors of health problems that he denied with his usual bravado.

“I’m not going to die,” he said last year. “You will have to tolerate me for quite a long time to go.”
…

…

Members of the Americas Partnership for Economic Prosperity met this week in Washington to establish concrete projects for economic development
…

…

…

…

…

U.S. President Joe Biden faces physical and political isolation as he deals with COVID and as more Democrats urge him to step aside as the party’s nominee. White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara reports.
…