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TALLINN, Estonia — When Maksim Kolker’s phone rang at 6 a.m., and the voice on the other end said his father had been arrested, he thought it was a scam to extort money. A day earlier, he had taken his father, prominent Russian physicist Dmitry Kolker, to the hospital in his native Novosibirsk, when his advanced pancreatic cancer had suddenly worsened.

The phone kept ringing and Kolker kept hanging up until finally his father called to confirm the grim news. The elder Kolker had been charged with treason, the family later learned, a crime that is probed and prosecuted in absolute secrecy in Russia and punished with long prison terms.

Treason cases have been rare in Russia in the last 30 years, with a handful annually. But since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, they have skyrocketed, along with espionage prosecutions, ensnaring citizens and foreigners alike, regardless of their politics.

That has brought comparisons to the show trials under Soviet dictator Josef Stalin in the 1930s.

The more recent victims range from Kremlin critics and independent journalists to veteran scientists working with countries that Moscow considers friendly.

These cases stem from the crackdown on dissent that has reached unprecedented levels under President Vladimir Putin. They are investigated almost exclusively by the powerful Federal Security Service, or FSB, with specific charges and evidence not always revealed.

The accused are often held in strict isolation in Moscow’s notorious Lefortovo Prison, tried behind closed doors, and almost always convicted, with long prison sentences.

In 2022, Putin urged the security services to “harshly suppress the actions of foreign intelligence services, promptly identify traitors, spies and saboteurs.”

The First Department, a rights group that specializes in such prosecutions and takes its name from a division of the security service, counted over 100 known treason cases in 2023, lawyer Evgeny Smirnov told The Associated Press. He added there probably were another 100 that nobody knows about.

Treason cases began growing after 2014, when Russia illegally annexed Crimea from Ukraine, threw its weight behind a separatist insurgency in the eastern part of the country and fell out with the West for the first time since the Cold War.

Two years earlier, the legal definition of treason was expanded to include providing vaguely defined “assistance” to foreign countries or organizations, effectively exposing to prosecution anyone in contact with foreigners.

The move followed mass anti-government protests in 2011-12 in Moscow that officials claimed were instigated by the West. Those changes to the law were heavily criticized by rights advocates, including those in the Presidential Human Rights Council.

Faced with that criticism at the time, Putin promised to investigate the amended law and agreed “there shouldn’t be any broad interpretation of what high treason is.”

And yet, that’s exactly what began happening.

In 2015, authorities arrested Svetlana Davydova, a mother of seven in the western region of Smolensk, on treason charges in accordance with the new, expanded definition of the offense.

She was charged over contacting the Ukrainian Embassy in Moscow in 2014 to warn officials there that she thought Russia was sending troops into eastern Ukraine, where the separatist insurgency against Kyiv was unfolding.

The case drew national attention and public outrage. Russia at the time denied its troops were involved in eastern Ukraine, and many pointed out that the case against Davydova contradicted that narrative. The charges against her were eventually dropped.

That outcome was a rare exception to the multiplying treason and espionage cases in subsequent years that consistently ended in convictions and prison terms.

Paul Whelan, a United States corporate security executive who traveled to Moscow to attend a wedding, was arrested in 2018 and convicted of espionage two years later, and sentenced to 16 years in prison. He denied the charges.

Ivan Safronov, an adviser to the Roscosmos space agency and a former military affairs journalist, was convicted of treason in 2022 and sentenced to 22 years in prison. His prosecution was widely seen as retaliation for his reporting exposing military incidents and shady arms deals.

The FSB also went after scientists who study aerodynamics, hypersonics and other fields that could be used in weapons development.

Such arrests swelled after 2018, when Putin in his annual state-of-the-nation address touted new and unique hypersonic weapons that Russia was developing, according to Smirnov, the lawyer.

In his view, it was the security services’ way of showing the Kremlin that Russian scientific advances, especially those used to develop weapons, are so valuable that “all foreign intelligence services in the world are after it.”

Kolker, the son of the detained Novosibirsk physicist, said that when the FSB searched his father’s apartment, they looked for several presentations he had used in lectures given in China.  

The elder Kolker, who had studied light waves, gave presentations that were cleared for use abroad and were given inside Russia, and “any student could understand that he wasn’t revealing anything (secret) in them,” Maksim Kolker said. 

Nevertheless, FSB officers yanked the 54-year-old physicist from his hospital bed in 2022 and flew him to Moscow, to the Lefortovo Prison, his son said.

The ailing scientist called his family from the plane to say goodbye, knowing he was unlikely to survive prison, the son said. Within days, the family received a telegram informing them he had died in a hospital.

Other cases were similar. Valery Golubkin, a 71-year-old Moscow physicist specializing in aerodynamics, was convicted of treason in 2023. His state-run research institute was working on an international project of a hypersonic civilian aircraft, and he was asked by his employer to help with reports on the project.

Smirnov of the First Department group, which was involved in his defense, says the reports were vetted before they were sent abroad and didn’t contain state secrets.

Two other recent high-profile cases involved a prominent opposition politician and a journalist.

Vladimir Kara-Murza, a journalist who became an activist, was charged with treason in 2022 after giving speeches in the West that were critical of Russia. After surviving what he believed were attempts to poison him in 2015 and 2017, Kara-Murza was convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison, where his family fears for his deteriorating health.

The Wall Street Journal’s Evan Gershkovich was arrested in 2023 on espionage charges, the first American reporter detained on such charges since the Cold War. Gershkovich, who went on trial in June, denies the charges, and the U.S. government has declared him to be wrongfully detained.
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Washington — As federal investigators try to piece together a motive for 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, the man identified as the would-be assassin of former President Donald Trump, at least one former classmate is speaking out. 

Jason Kohler told reporters he attended high school with Crooks in Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, describing him as a loner and an outcast. 

“He was, like a kid that was always alone. He was always bullied,” Kohler told reporters Sunday. “He was bullied so much.” 

Crooks graduated from Bethel Park High School in 2022, according to a statement from the school district to a local media outlet. Local media reports show he was given a $500 award for math and science.

Kohler said he never had much interaction with Crooks, who would sit alone during lunch and often be targeted by other kids for the way he often wore hunting outfits or how he continued to wear a mask after COVID mask mandates ended. 

“You could look at him and you would be like, ‘Something’s a little off,’” Kohler added.  The description is just part of the picture that is starting to emerge of Crooks, who was shot and killed by U.S. Secret Service agents after climbing to the roof of a building and firing five to six shots at Trump during a campaign rally Saturday in nearby Butler, Pennsylvania. 

Law enforcement officials said Sunday they found bomb-making materials in Crooks’s car and home, and that the AR-style rifle he used in the shooting had been purchased by his father. 

The Wall Street Journal first reported on the discovery of the explosives. 

Crooks’s father, Matthew Crooks, told CNN late Sunday he was trying to find out “what the hell is going on” but would “wait until I talk to law enforcement” before saying anything more. 

Public records show Crooks had no prior convictions and was a registered Republican, like Trump. But other records indicate he made a $15 political donation in 2021 to a left-leaning group that supports Democratic candidates, on the day President Joe Biden was sworn into office.  

Discord, a social media platform popular with gamers, said Sunday it had discovered an account “that appears to be linked to” Crooks. 

“It was rarely utilized, has not been used in months,” a Discord spokesperson confirmed in a statement to VOA. “We have found no evidence that it was used to plan this incident, promote violence, or discuss his political views.” 

“Discord strongly condemns violence of any kind, including political violence, and we will continue to coordinate closely with law enforcement,” the spokesperson added.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon Sunday said it determined Crooks had no connection to the U.S. military.

“We’ve confirmed with each of the military service branches that there is no military service affiliation for the suspect with that name or date of birth in any branch, active or reserve component in their respective databases,” according to a statement from the Pentagon press secretary, Major General Pat Ryder.

Some information for this article came from The Associated Press and Reuters. 
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BEIJING — China and Russia’s naval forces kicked off a joint exercise Sunday at a military port in southern China, official news agency Xinhua reported, days after NATO allies called Beijing a “decisive enabler” of the war in Ukraine.

The Chinese defense ministry said in a statement that forces from both sides recently patrolled the western and northern Pacific Ocean and that the operation had nothing to do with international and regional situations and didn’t target any third party.

The exercise, which began in Guangdong province Sunday and is expected to last until mid-July, aimed to demonstrate the capabilities of the navies in addressing security threats and preserving peace and stability globally and regionally, state broadcaster CCTV reported Saturday, adding it would include anti-missile exercises, sea strikes and air defense.

Xinhua News Agency reported the Chinese and Russian naval forces carried out on-map military simulation and tactical coordination exercises after the opening ceremony in the city of Zhanjiang.

The joint drills came on the heels of China’s latest tensions with NATO allies last week.

The sternly worded final communiqué, approved by the 32 NATO members at their summit in Washington, made clear that China is becoming a focus of the military alliance, calling Beijing a “decisive enabler” of Russia’s war against Ukraine. The European and North American members and their partners in the Indo-Pacific increasingly see shared security concerns coming from Russia and its Asian supporters, especially China.

In response, China accused NATO of seeking security at the expense of others and told the alliance not to bring the same “chaos” to Asia. Its foreign ministry maintained that China has a fair and objective stance on the war in Ukraine.

Last week, a U.S. Coast Guard cutter on routine patrol in the Bering Sea also came across several Chinese military ships in international waters but within the U.S. exclusive economic zone, American officials said. Its crew detected three vessels approximately 124 miles (200 kilometers) north of the Amchitka Pass in the Aleutian Islands, which mark a separation and linkage between the North Pacific and the Bering Sea.

Later, a fourth ship was spotted approximately 84 miles (135 kilometers) north of the Amukta Pass.

The U.S. side said the Chinese naval vessels operated within international rules and norms.
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Paris — France celebrated military victories of the past at its annual Bastille Day parade Sunday, while its present political future appeared far from clear.

President Emmanuel Macron inspected French and allied units which took part in France’s World War II liberation 80 years ago.

And Paris welcomed the Olympic flame to the city, less than two weeks before it hosts the Summer Games.

But behind the pomp — itself in a reduced format while Olympic preparations blocked the traditional Champs Elysees route — France’s tense search for a government appeared to be at a stalemate.

All eyes were on the host, Macron, who last year cut a more impressive figure, hosting rising superpower India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi as they watched France’s military might roll down the Champs Elysees.

There was no international star guest this year, and there were no armored vehicles as a reduced number of troops marched down the less majestic Avenue Foch.

This month’s snap elections, called by Macron to clarify France’s direction after the far right sent shockwaves through the political establishment by coming first in EU polls, left the country without a parliamentary majority.

Government in limbo

Prime Minister Gabriel Attal is hanging on as caretaker head of government but the centrist has reportedly fallen out with Macron and is now focusing on his own future, taking charge of his reduced party in parliament.

Other figures are mobilizing with an eye on the 2027 presidential race, but there is little sign of a majority emerging from parliament, split between three camps.

With government in limbo and Macron barred by the constitution from calling fresh elections for at least 12 months, far-right figurehead Marine Le Pen is eyeing the 2027 campaign with relish.

Meanwhile, a rapidly cobbled-together left-wing alliance, the New Popular Front (NFP), now has the most MPs but no outright majority and no clear candidate for PM.

Firebrand hardliner Jean-Luc Melenchon and his France Unbowed (LFI) party have alienated many even on the left and would be rejected by the center and right.

But LFI represents a large chunk of the NFP and, along with some greens and communists, had been touting Huguette Bello, the 73-year-old former communist and president of the regional council on Reunion in the Indian Ocean, as premier.

But on Sunday she declined the role, saying that there was no consensus behind her candidacy, notably because of opposition from the center-left Socialist Party, and that she wanted the NFP to agree to another name quickly.

The European Union’s second largest economy, a nuclear-armed G7 power and permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, is thus rudderless, a troubling situation for markets and France’s allies alike.

Against this backdrop, the reduced and rerouted parade risked becoming a new symbol of drift, even with the addition of the arrival in Paris of the Olympic Torch, ahead of the July 26 to August 11 Games.

Olympic relay

No tanks took part, and only 4,000 foot soldiers marched, down from 6,500 last year. The military fly-past saw 45 airplanes and 22 helicopters soar over Paris.

Regiments honored on the parade included those from France’s allies and former French colonies that took part in the country’s 1944 World War II liberation.

The parade’s final section turned to the upcoming games.

Colonel Thibault Vallette of the elite Cadre Noir de Saumur cavalry school and 2016 equestrian gold medalist at the Rio Games rode the torch down the route before relay runners were to carry it around the capital.
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London — Carlos Alcaraz defeated Novak Djokovic 6-2, 6-2, 7-6 (4) in the Wimbledon men’s final Sunday to collect his fourth Grand Slam title at age 21.   

It was a rematch of last year’s championship match on the grass of the All England Club, which Alcaraz won in five sets.   

This one — played in front of a Centre Court crowd that included Kate, the Princess of Wales, in a rare public appearance since announcing she has cancer — was much easier for Alcaraz, at least until he stumbled while holding three match points as he served for the victory at 5-4 in the third set.   

Still, Alcaraz regrouped and eventually picked up a second major trophy in a row after last month’s triumph on the clay at the French Open.   

The Spaniard won his first Slam title at the 2022 U.S. Open as a teenager, and no man ever has collected more Slam hardware before turning 22 than he has.   

He improved to 4-0 in major finals.   

The 37-year-old Djokovic, wearing a gray sleeve on his surgically repaired right knee, was denied in his bid for an eighth Wimbledon title and record 25th major overall. He tore his meniscus at Roland Garros on June 3 and had an operation in Paris two days later.   

Less than six weeks later, Djokovic was hardly at his best on Sunday — and Alcaraz certainly had something to do with that. 
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HUDSON, N.Y. — Wooden pilings beneath Hudson-Athens Lighthouse are deteriorating, and the structure, built in the middle of the river when steamboats still plied the water, is beginning to shift. Cracks are apparent on the brick building and its granite foundation.

While there are other endangered lighthouses around the nation, the peril to this one 100 miles 161 (kilometers) north of New York City is so dire the National Trust for Historic Preservation placed Hudson-Athens on its 2024 list of the country’s 11 most endangered historic places. Advocates say that if action isn’t taken soon, yet another historic lighthouse could be lost in the coming years.

“All four corners will begin to come down, and then you’ll have a pile of rock in the middle. And ultimately it will topple into the river,” Van Calhoun of the Hudson-Athens Lighthouse Preservation Society said during a recent visit.

The society is trying to quickly raise money to place a submerged steel curtain around the lighthouse, an ambitious preservation project that could cost as much as $10 million. Their goal is to save a prominent symbol of the river’s centuries-long history as a busy waterway. While the Hudson River was once home to more than a dozen lighthouses, only seven still stand.

Elsewhere, there’s a similar story of lost history.

Across the United States, there were around 1,500 lighthouses at the beginning of the 20th century. Only about 800 of them remain, said U.S. Lighthouse Society executive director Jeff Gales. He said many of the structures deteriorated after they were automated, a process that became more common by the 1940s.

“Lighthouses were built to have human beings taking care of them,” Gales said. “And when you seal them up and take the human factor out, that’s when they really start falling into disrepair.”

The Hudson-Athens Lighthouse began operating in 1874 offshore from the city of Hudson and was eventually co-named for the village of Athens on the other side of the river. It was built to help keep boats from running aground on nearby mud flats, which were submerged at high tide.

“There were shipwrecks because they couldn’t see the sandbar. And so that’s why this lighthouse was put in the middle of the river, unlike most that are on the shoreline,” said preservation society president Kristin Gamble.

The lighthouse is still in use, though now with an automated LED beacon. The preservation society owns the building and maintains it as a museum.

The last full-time keeper, Emil Brunner, retired in 1949 when the lighthouse became automated. He lived there with his family for much of his tenure. One of his daughters recalled rowing to school and, in the winter, walking across the ice on a safe path marked by her father’s tobacco juice stains on the frozen surface. Brunner also is portrayed on a 1946 Saturday Evening Post cover painting rowing with a child, Christmas presents and a tree in tow, as his wife and other children await their arrival on the lighthouse landing.

Visitors who are ferried to the lighthouse today can explore the keeper’s quarters, which are modest but feature river views from every window. And they can climb up the tight spiral staircase to the tower to take in a unique panorama view of the river and the Catskill Mountains to the west.

Roof work on the lighthouse is underway this summer, but repairs to the building will ultimately mean little unless workers address damage to some of the 200 wood pilings packed in mud that hold the lighthouse above water. The support structure has weathered 150 years of currents and ice. But large commercial ships of the modern era — with their big propellors — introduce new problems.

“They create a turbulence that’s like being inside a washing machine. And that turbulence actually comes underneath and pulls — churns up — the soil underneath us and sucks it away,” Calhoun said. “In fact, there are boulders as big as your car that are 100 feet out in that river that used to be right next to us.”

The underwater agitation washes away mud around the pilings, leaving them exposed to water. And that accelerates decay of the wood. Engineers estimate the structure could begin to tilt in three to five years, which Gamble said would be “the beginning of the end.”

The proposed ring of corrugated steel would shield the structure from that turbulence. The 100-foot (31-meter) diameter circle, which would project above the water line, would be filled in and covered by a deck, enlarging the area around the lighthouse.

The preservation group is optimistic about getting federal money to help pay for the project. Both of New York’s U.S. senators, Democrats Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, support the effort, as does local Republican U.S. Rep. Marc Molinaro.

Though the project is pricey, Gamble said, it would not only save the lighthouse from being lost to time, but it would also protect the 19th-century beacon for generations to come.

“We need, basically, the 100-year fix,” she said.
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The U.S. Republican Party is expected to formally nominate Donald Trump for president this week, days after he survived an assassination attempt at a political rally. Already tight security is expected to be heightened in Milwaukee, which is hosting the Republican National Convention. VOA’s Jorge Agobian and William Gallo spoke with convention delegates and Milwaukee residents, who are concerned about the possibility of more unrest.
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NEW YORK — The nearly complete fossilized remains of a 161-million-year-old stegosaurus discovered in Colorado in 2022 will be auctioned by Sotheby’s in New York next week, auction house officials said.

The dinosaur that Sotheby’s calls Apex stands 3.3 meters tall and measures 8.2 meters nose to tail, according to Cassandra Hatton, Sotheby’s global head of science and popular culture.

The stegosaurus, with its distinctive pointy dorsal plates, is one of the world’s most recognizable dinosaurs.

Apex, which Hatton called “a coloring book dinosaur,” was discovered in May 2022 on private land near the town of Dinosaur, Colorado. The excavation was completed in October 2023, Sotheby’s said.

Though experts believe stegosauruses used their fearsome tail spikes to fight, this specimen shows no signs of combat, Sotheby’s said. The fossil does show evidence of arthritis, suggesting that Apex lived to an advanced age.

Hatton said Apex was found “with the tail curled up underneath the body, which is a common death pose for animals.”

The dinosaur will be auctioned on July 17 as part of Sotheby’s “Geek Week” series.

Sotheby’s is estimating that it will sell for $4 million to $6 million, but that’s just an educated guess.

“This is an incredibly rare animal,” Hatton said. “A stegosaurus of this caliber has never sold at auction before, so we will find out what it is actually worth.”
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JERUSALEM — Israel’s national Holocaust museum opened a new conservation facility in Jerusalem on Monday that will preserve, restore and store its more than 45,000 artifacts and works of art in a vast new building, including five floors of underground storage.

Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, serves as both a museum and a research institution. It welcomes nearly a million visitors each year, leads the country’s annual Holocaust memorial day and hosts nearly all foreign dignitaries visiting Israel.

“Before we opened this building, it was very difficult to exhibit our treasures that were kept in our vaults. They were kind of secret,” said Yad Vashem chairman Dani Dayan. “Now there’s a state-of-the-art installation (that) will help us to exhibit them.”

The David and Fela Shapell Family Collections Center, located at the Yad Vashem museum in Jerusalem, will also provide organization and storage for the museum’s 225 million pages of documents and half a million photographs.

Dayan said the materials will now be kept in a facility that preserves them in optimal temperatures and conditions.

“Yad Vashem has the largest collections in the world of materials related to the Holocaust,” Dayan said. “We will make sure that these treasures are kept for eternity.”

The new facility includes advanced, high-tech labs for conservation, enabling experts to revisit some of the museum’s trickier items, such as a film canister that a family who fled Austria in 1939 brought with them. It was donated to the museum but arrived in an advanced state of decay.

“The film arrived in the worst state it could. It smelled really bad,” said Reut Ilan-Shafik, a photography conservator at Yad Vashem. Over the years, the film had congealed into a solid piece of plastic, making it impossible to be scanned.

Using organic solvents, conservators were able to restore some of the film’s flexibility, allowing them to carefully unravel pieces of it. Using a microscope, Ilan-Shafik was able to see a few frames in their entirety, including one showing a couple kissing on a bench in a park and other snapshots of Europe before World War II.

“It is unbelievable to know that the images of the film that we otherwise thought lost to time” have been recovered, said Orit Feldberg, granddaughter of Hans and Klara Lebel, the couple featured in the photo.

Feldberg’s mother donated the film canister, one of the few things the Lebels were able to take with them when they fled Austria.

“These photographs not only tell their unique story but also keep their memory vibrantly alive,” Feldberg said.

Conservation of items from the Holocaust is an expensive, painstaking process that has taken on greater importance as the number of survivors dwindles.

Last month, the Auschwitz Memorial announced it had finished a half-million-dollar project to conserve 3,000 of the 8,000 pairs of children’s shoes that are on display at the Nazi concentration camp in Poland.
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ANKARA — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Syrian President Bashar Assad have recently signaled that they are interested in restoring diplomatic ties that have been ruptured for more than a decade.

Erdogan has said that he hopes to arrange a meeting with Assad soon for the first time since the countries broke off relations in 2011 as mass anti-government protests and a brutal crackdown by security forces in Syria spiraled into a still-ongoing civil war.

Speaking at a NATO summit in Washington on Thursday, Erdogan said he had called on Assad two weeks ago to either come to Turkey for the meeting or to hold it in a third country, and that he had assigned Turkey’s foreign minister to follow up.

Turkey backed Syrian insurgent groups seeking to overthrow Assad and still maintains forces in the opposition-held northwest, a sore point for Damascus.

This is not the first time that there have been attempts to normalize relations between the two countries, but previous attempts failed to gain traction.

Here’s a look at what might happen this time around:

What happened at their last talks

Russia, which is one of the strongest backers of Assad’s government but also has close ties with Turkey, has been pushing for a return to diplomatic relations.

In December 2022, the Turkish, Syrian and Russian defense ministers held talks in Moscow, the first ministerial level meeting between rivals Turkey and Syria since 2011. Russia also brokered meetings between Syrian and Turkish officials last year.

However, the talks fizzled, and Syrian officials publicly continued to blast Turkey’s presence in northwest Syria. Assad said in an interview with Sky News Arabia last August that the objective of Erdogan’s overtures was “to legitimize the Turkish occupation in Syria.”

What’s different now

Russia appears to once again be promoting the talks, but this time around, Iraq — which shares a border with both Turkey and Syria — has also offered to mediate, as it previously did between regional arch-rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Aron Lund, a fellow with the Century International think tank, said Iraq may have taken the initiative as a way to deflect pressure from Turkey to crack down on the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, a Kurdish separatist group that has waged an insurgency against Turkey since the 1980s and has bases in northern Iraq.

By pushing rapprochement with Syria, Baghdad may be trying to “create some form of positive engagement with the Turks, kick the can down the road, and deflect the threat of an intervention,” Lund said.

The geopolitical situation in the region has also changed with the war in Gaza and fears of a wider regional conflict. Ozgur Unluhisarcikli, an analyst on Turkey and director of the German Marshall Fund in Ankara, said that both countries may be feeling insecure and seeking new alliances in the face of the war’s potential regional ripple effects.

What Turkey and Syria want

From Erdogan’s side, Unluhisarcikli said, the attempt to engage is likely driven in part by the increasing anti-Syrian sentiment in Turkey. Erdogan is likely hoping for a deal that could pave the way for the return of many of the 3.6 million Syrian refugees living in his country.

From the Syrian side, a return to relations with Turkey would be another step toward ending Assad’s political isolation in the region after more than a decade as a pariah due to his government’s brutal crackdown on protesters in 2011 and alleged war crimes afterward.

And despite their differences over Turkey’s presence in northwest Syria, Damascus and Ankara both have an interest in curtailing the autonomy of Kurdish groups in northeast Syria.

Turkey may be concerned that the security situation in northeast Syria could deteriorate in the event that the U.S. withdraws troops it currently has stationed there as part of a coalition against the Islamic State militant group, Unluhisarcikli said. That could require Turkey to “cooperate or at least coordinate with Syria, to manage the aftermath of the U.S. withdrawal,” he said.

Joseph Daher, a Swiss-Syrian researcher and visiting professor at the European University Institute in Florence, said the two governments likely hope for modest “economic gains” in a rapprochement. While trade never completely stopped, it currently goes through intermediaries, he said, while restoring diplomatic relations would allow official commerce to resume and make trade more fluid.

The prospects for an agreement

Analysts agreed that the talks are unlikely to bring about the full Turkish withdrawal from northwest Syria that Damascus has called for or any other major shift in conditions on the ground in the near term.

Although the two countries’ interests “actually overlap to a large degree,” Lund said, “there are also major disagreements” and “a lot of bad blood and bitterness” that could impede even “lower-level dealmaking.” Both Erdogan and Assad may also want to wait for the outcome of U.S. elections, which could determine the future American footprint in the region, before making a major deal, he said.

In the long run, Lund said, “The logic of the situation dictates Turkish-Syrian collaboration in some form. … They’re neighbors. They’re stuck with each other and the current stalemate does them no good.”

Unluhisarcikli agreed that a “grand bargain” is unlikely to come out of the present talks, but the increased dialogue could lead to “some confidence building measures,” he said.

Daher said the most probable outcome of the talks is some “security agreements” between the two sides, but not a full Turkish withdrawal from Syria in the short term, particularly since the Syrian government army is too weak to control northwest Syria by itself.

“On its own, it’s not able to take back the whole of the northwest — it needs to deal with Turkey,” he said.

How people in Turkey and Syria view a potential agreement

In Turkey and in government-controlled Syria, many view the prospects of a rapprochement positively. In northwest Syria, on the other hand, protests have broken out against the prospect of a normalization of relations between Ankara — which had previously positioned itself as a protector of the Syrian opposition — and Damascus.

Kurds in Syria have also viewed the potential rapprochement with apprehension. The Kurdish-led authority in northeast Syria said in a statement that the prospective reconciliation would be a “conspiracy against the Syrian people” and a “clear legitimization of the Turkish occupation” of previously Kurdish-majority areas that were seized by Turkish-backed forces. 
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President Joe Biden said Saturday that “everybody must condemn” the suspected assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, adding that he hoped to speak with his 2024 presidential rival soon.
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irvine, california — NATO and China’s efforts to deepen cooperation with like-minded countries in the Indo-Pacific and Europe are viewed by some analysts as part of the growing competition between major powers, especially between the United States and China.    

“[The latest development] is a standard major power competition,” said Ian Chong, a political scientist at the National University of Singapore.  

These efforts are aimed at “finding out where are their friends and who can support their efforts,” he said. “[But] it’s pretty clear that the competition between major powers is intensifying,” he told VOA by phone.    

During its annual summit in Washington, NATO announced it would launch four new joint projects with Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand. The projects will focus on deepening cooperation with the four Indo-Pacific countries on Ukraine, artificial intelligence, disinformation, and cybersecurity.

U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan said the goal is to “harness the unique strengths” of democracies to address shared global challenges. In response, the Chinese government accused NATO of “inciting bloc confrontation and hyping up regional tensions” by engaging with countries in the Indo-Pacific region.

Instead of expanding its footprint to the Indo-Pacific region through these joint projects, some experts say NATO is trying to involve more like-minded countries in the process of building up competencies in critical areas of competition.  

“These are core areas that will shape military and other forms of competition moving forward so NATO wants to establish more cooperation with like-minded democracies,” said Stephen Nagy, a regional security expert at the International Christian University in Japan.  

Since NATO has labeled China as “the decisive enabler” of Russia’s war against Ukraine, Nagy said the alliance is trying to show Beijing that it won’t back out of the global competition in key areas.    

“NATO is signaling to China that they can be part of the solution, or they would be part of the problem,” he told VOA by phone.    

In an interview with VOA’s Mandarin Service, Japan’s Foreign Press Secretary Maki Kobayashi said that while Tokyo has been working closely with NATO member states, these efforts shouldn’t be viewed as an attempt to establish a NATO in Asia.

China’s attempt to counter NATO  

While the U.S. and its NATO allies aimed to strengthen cooperation with Indo-Pacific countries through the summit in Washington, China is also beefing up military cooperation with Belarus and Russia.  

On Monday, China initiated an 11-day joint military exercise near the border of Poland with Belarus, the newest member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. While the Chinese Foreign Ministry insisted that the exercise wasn’t targeting any country, some analysts told VOA that the move is Beijing’s response to NATO’s growing interest in Asia.

In addition to the military exercise with Belarus in Europe, China also announced Friday a joint naval exercise with Russia in waters near the southern city of Zhanjiang.  

The Chinese defense ministry characterized the drills, which will take place near the disputed South China Sea, as attempts for Beijing and Moscow to demonstrate their resolve and capabilities to address “maritime security threats and preserving global and regional peace and stability.”  

Nagy in Japan said Beijing is trying to show its displeasure toward NATO’s efforts to strengthen ties with Indo-Pacific countries. 

“China is signaling to NATO member states that they can cause headaches for them in their region or regions that matter to them,” he told VOA.    

Apart from closely aligning the dates of the two military exercises with the NATO Summit, China also used last week’s SCO Summit in Kazakhstan to uphold its “no limits partnership” with Russia and promote the alternative world order that it has been championing in recent years.

While the SCO isn’t an alliance with a common goal, some experts say China will still try to use it as a platform to “build its own blocs” to counter NATO and dilute Western influence.    

“China is strengthening these arrangements through bilateral agreements and strategic partnership, which often include security,” Sari Arho Havren, an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, told VOA by phone.    

But since the SCO includes member states such as India, which is also part of the quadrilateral security dialogue with Australia, Japan, and the U.S., Nagy thinks New Delhi is unlikely to back any efforts to transform SCO into a counterweight of NATO.  

And while China might engage in some security cooperation with other authoritarian states like Russia or Iran — such as the joint military exercise the three countries conducted in March — Nagy said the differences in the three countries’ tolerance for risk and their visions for these partnerships will make it difficult for them to form a formal alliance. 

In his view, Russia has a higher tolerance for risk while China is concerned about how the war in Ukraine may affect stability around the world.  

“In the North Korea front, China is not happy about Putin’s recent trip to Pyongyang while Beijing wants a stable relationship with Iran, which adds limits to their cooperation,” Nagy told VOA. 

“The idea that these countries can converge to form an alliance to combat the so-called Western containment is not feasible, but they may align themselves so they can coordinate the supply of resources,” he added. 

Despite some limitations in reality, Arho Havren said China and NATO’s latest efforts to deepen partnerships show that a bloc competition may be emerging. 

“Both sides are more assertive and clear about their messaging and recent developments may accelerate this trend,” she told VOA.   
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WARSAW, Poland — A miner who was reported missing after an earthquake shook Poland’s Rydultowy coal mine has been found alive more than two days after the accident that killed one of his colleagues and injured another 17, local officials said Saturday. 

The miner has been airlifted to a hospital and the rescue operation has been closed, said Witold Gałązka of the coal mining group that operates the mine. 

Earlier, the office of the provincial governor of the Silesia coal mining region, in southern Poland, said that the miner was conscious and was being transported to the surface. 

“This is fantastic news,” provincial governor Marek Wojcik said on TVN24. 

The head of the Polish Coal Mining Group that operates the mine, Leszek Pietraszek, said that rescuers reached the 32-year-old miner around 2 p.m. Saturday. He was conscious and communicating but had some problems breathing. He received first aid from a doctor who also prepared him for transportation to the surface. 

Hundreds of rescuers took part in the operation and at times had to be withdrawn from the corridor when more tremors were threatened or because of dangerous methane gas levels. The rescuers had to dig through the rubble by hand to reach the miner, authorities said. 

Seventy-eight miners were in the area when a magnitude 3.1 tremor struck about 1,200 meters below the surface on Thursday afternoon. 

One miner, age 41, was killed and 17 were hospitalized with injuries. Thirteen of the injured have since been released from the hospital. 

The tremor caused a slide of rocks into the corridor at one spot, where the miner was found Saturday. 

The mining group has suffered several deadly accidents this year. In May, three miners died in a cave-in at the Myslowice-Wesola coal mine, and one was killed at the same mine in April. 

Two miners lost their lives in separate accidents in 2019 and 2020 in the Rydultowy mine, which was opened in 1792 and employs about 2,000 miners. 

Coal mining is considered hazardous in Poland, where some mines are prone to methane gas explosions or to cave-ins. Excavation in older mines goes deep into the ground in the search for coal, increasing the job’s hazards. The coal industry is among Poland’s key employers, providing some 75,000 jobs. 

Last year, 15 miners died in accidents. 
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MILWAUKEE, Wisconsin — Milwaukee loves its Miller Beer, Brewers baseball and “Bronze Fonz” statue.

The deepest blue city in swing state Wisconsin, Milwaukee also loves Democrats.

So, it can be hard for some to swallow that Milwaukee is playing host to former President Donald Trump and the Republican National Convention this coming week while rival Chicago, the larger city just 90 miles to the south, welcomes President Joe Biden and Democrats in August.

It didn’t help smooth things over with wary Democrats after Trump used the word “horrible” when talking about Milwaukee just a month before the convention that begins Monday.

Adding to the angst, Milwaukee was supposed to host the Democratic National Convention in 2020, but it didn’t happen because of COVID. Owners of local restaurants, bars and venues say the number of reservations that were promised during the RNC aren’t materializing. And protesters complained the city was trying to keep them too far away from the convention site to have an impact.

“I wish I was out of town for it,” Jake Schneider, 29, said as he passed by the city’s statue of Fonzie, the character played by Henry Winkler in the 1970s sitcom “Happy Days,” which was set in Milwaukee. “I’m not super happy that it’s the Republican Party coming to town.”

Schneider, who lives in an apartment downtown, said Trump “sabotaged himself” with his comments about Milwaukee.

“I hope he’s proven wrong and sees how wonderful of a city it is,” Schneider said.

Ryan Clancy, a self-described democratic socialist who is a state representative and serves on the Milwaukee County Board, puts it more bluntly: “It is shameful that we rolled out the red carpet for the RNC.”

Still, Democratic and Republican convention boosters point to the potential economic boon and chance to show off Milwaukee and Wisconsin during the convention that runs through Thursday.

“Folks are ready to have the convention and have it be successful and elevate Milwaukee to the next level,” said Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson, a Democrat. “Donald Trump, regardless of where it happens, is going to be the Republican nominee. So, it didn’t matter if it happened in Milwaukee. It didn’t matter if it happened in Mar-a-Lago.”

Milwaukee has been in the national spotlight more in recent years, following the Bucks winning the national NBA championship in 2021 and the airing this spring of the latest season of “Top Chef,” a reality TV show that was filmed in the city and featured a Milwaukee chef who made the finals.

And as Trump’s “horrible” comment showed, Milwaukee has also long been a target for conservative Republicans who have pointed to its crime, low-ranking schools and financial struggles as an example of poor Democratic leadership.

“I hope this convention shows off all the best things about Milwaukee,” said Wisconsin Republican Party Chairman Brian Schimming. “But it is a city, like many other Democrat-run cities, that has extraordinarily significant issues.”

Democrats picked Milwaukee for the party’s last convention, but the 2020 DNC became an online event because of the pandemic.

The city’s back-to-back selection by Democrats and Republicans speaks to the swing state’s importance.

Wisconsin is one of a handful of battleground states likely to determine this year’s presidential race. It was one of the so-called “blue wall” states that Democrats once relied on, but Trump narrowly won in 2016, paving the way for his surprise victory. Biden flipped the state back in 2020, and both campaigns are targeting it heavily this year.

But there’s nothing swing about Milwaukee. It voted 79% for Biden in 2020. After his loss that year, Trump fought unsuccessfully to disqualify thousands of voters in Milwaukee, falsely portraying late-arriving returns driven by heavy absentee turnout as fraud.

Republicans say staging the convention in Milwaukee will energize their base. While the city itself is Democratic, the outlying suburbs are a battleground within a battleground state. Once deeply red, Democrats have made inroads since 2016 as suburban women, in particular, drift away from Trump and the conservative agenda.

Before the city was even chosen to host the convention, Clancy and other Democrats urged Milwaukee to drop out of the running, as Nashville did after Democrats there objected to hosting Republicans.

But by far the biggest kerfuffle came in June when Trump used the word “horrible” in talking about Milwaukee during a closed-door meeting with Republicans in Congress. While those in attendance disagreed over whether Trump was talking about crime, election concerns or something else, and he later said in a Wisconsin rally that he “loved” Milwaukee, for some Democrats it only reaffirmed earlier concerns about playing host to Republicans.

Mobcraft, a Milwaukee-based brewery, showed off the city’s Midwestern sense of humor and love of beer by releasing a “[not so] Horrible City IPA.”

As the convention nears, some local business owners are questioning estimates that the convention will bring in $200 million in revenue.

Only one of the six venues run by the Pabst Theater Group in Milwaukee is booked for the week of the convention, said Gary Witt, the group’s president and CEO. Witt said he will lose more than $100,000 by not having venues used, and he’s concerned about the impact the convention will have on other Milwaukee businesses.

“Once these people are all gone, we’re meaningless to them anyway,” Witt said of convention attendees.

Demonstrators are trying to spread counterprogramming throughout the week but have argued they’re being kept too far from the convention sites.

Omar Flores, chair of the March on the RNC Coalition, said he’s confident the protests will be peaceful and take advantage of the national platform they will have. He said the coalition had to fight to get a march route that will be in sight and sound of the convention, after Milwaukee’s Democratic leaders “completely sold us out, completely sold out the city and refused to listen to what any of the residents had to say.”
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NEW YORK — Dr. Ruth Westheimer, the diminutive sex therapist who became a pop icon, media star and best-selling author through her frank talk about once-taboo bedroom topics, has died. She was 96.

Westheimer died on Friday at her home in New York City, surrounded by her family, according to publicist and friend Pierre Lehu.

Westheimer never advocated risky sexual behavior. Instead, she encouraged an open dialogue on previously closeted issues that affected her audience of millions. Her one recurring theme was that there was nothing to be ashamed of.

“I still hold old-fashioned values, and I’m a bit of a square,” she told students at Michigan City High School in 2002. “Sex is a private art and a private matter. But still, it is a subject we must talk about.”

Westheimer’s giggly, German-accented voice, coupled with her 4-foot-7 frame, made her an unlikely looking — and sounding — outlet for “sexual literacy.” The contradiction was one of the keys to her success.

But it was her extensive knowledge and training, coupled with her humorous, nonjudgmental manner, that catapulted her local radio program, “Sexually Speaking,” into the national spotlight in the early 1980s. She had a nonjudgmental approach to what two consenting adults did in the privacy of their home.

Her radio success opened new doors, and in 1983 she wrote the first of more than 40 books: “Dr. Ruth’s Guide to Good Sex,” demystifying sex with rationality and humor. There was even a board game, Dr. Ruth’s Game of Good Sex.

She soon became a regular on the late-night television talk-show circuit, bringing her personality to the national stage. Her rise coincided with the early days of the AIDS epidemic, when frank sexual talk became a necessity.

“If we could bring about talking about sexual activity the way we talk about diet — the way we talk about food — without it having this kind of connotation that there’s something not right about it, then we would be a step further. But we have to do it with good taste,” she told Johnny Carson in 1982.

She normalized the use of words such as “penis” and “vagina” on radio and TV, aided by her Jewish grandmotherly accent, which The Wall Street Journal once said was “a cross between Henry Kissinger and Minnie Mouse.” People magazine included her in their list of “The Most Intriguing People of the Century.”

Westheimer defended abortion rights, suggested older people have sex after a good night’s sleep and was an outspoken advocate of condom use. She believed in monogamy.

In the 1980s, she stood up for gay men at the height of the AIDS epidemic and spoke out loudly for the LGBTQ community. She said she defended people deemed by some far-right Christians to be “subhuman” because of her own past.

Born Karola Ruth Siegel in Frankfurt, Germany, in 1928, she was an only child. At 10, she was sent by her parents to Switzerland to escape Kristallnacht — the Nazis’ 1938 pogrom that served as a precursor to the Holocaust. She never saw her parents again; Westheimer believed they were killed in the gas chambers at Auschwitz.

At the age of 16, she moved to Palestine and joined the Haganah, the underground movement for Israeli independence. She was trained as a sniper, although she said she never shot at anyone.

Her legs were severely wounded when a bomb exploded in her dormitory, killing many of her friends. She said it was only through the work of a “superb” surgeon that she could walk and ski again.

She married her first husband, an Israeli soldier, in 1950, and they moved to Paris as she pursued an education. Although not a high school graduate, Westheimer was accepted into the Sorbonne to study psychology after passing an entrance exam.

The marriage ended in 1955; the next year, Westheimer went to New York with her new boyfriend, a Frenchman who became her second husband and father to her daughter, Miriam.

In 1961, after a second divorce, she finally met her life partner: Manfred Westheimer, a fellow refugee from Nazi Germany. The couple was married and had a son, Joel. They remained wed for 36 years until “Fred” — as she called him — died of heart failure in 1997.

After receiving her doctorate in education from Columbia University, she went on to teach at Lehman College in the Bronx. While there she developed a specialty — instructing professors how to teach sex education. It would eventually become the core of her curriculum.

“I soon realized that while I knew enough about education, I did not really know enough about sex,” she wrote in her 1987 autobiography. Westheimer then decided take classes with the renowned sex therapist, Dr. Helen Singer Kaplan.

It was there that she had discovered her calling. Soon, as she once said in a typically folksy comment, she was dispensing sexual advice “like good chicken soup.”

In 1984, her radio program was nationally syndicated. A year later, she debuted in her own television program, “The Dr. Ruth Show,” which went on to win an Ace Award for excellence in cable television.

She also wrote a nationally syndicated advice column and later appeared in a line of videos produced by Playboy, preaching the virtues of open sexual discourse and good sex. She even had her own board game, “Dr. Ruth’s Game of Good Sex,” and a series of calendars.

Her rise was noteworthy for the culture of the time, in which then-President Ronald Reagan’s administration was hostile to Planned Parenthood and aligned with conservative voices.
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U.S. President Joe Biden’s halting performance at last month’s presidential debate triggered questions about the president’s age and ability to serve another four years. One group of voters that might empathize with the president’s plight are older people. Historically, people over 65 are the most reliable bloc of voters in presidential elections. VOA’s Dora Mekouar reports. VOA footage by Adam Greenbaum.
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Toronto, Canada — Canada says it is going shopping for 12 conventionally powered submarines capable of operating under the Arctic ice to enhance maritime security in a region that is fast gaining strategic significance in the face of climate change.

The purchase is expected to help ease mounting pressure on Ottawa — one of the lowest-spending NATO members — to meet the alliance’s commitment to spend 2% of GDP on defense.

“As the country with the longest coastline in the world, Canada needs a new fleet of submarines,” Canadian Defense Minister Bill Blair said in a statement Wednesday as NATO leaders were meeting in Washington.

The ministry said it has begun meeting with manufacturers and will formally invite bids for the sale in the fall.

“Canada’s key submarine capability requirements will be stealth, lethality, persistence and Arctic deployability — meaning that the submarine must have extended range and endurance,” the statement said.

“Canada’s new fleet will need to provide a unique combination of these requirements to ensure that Canada can detect, track, deter and, if necessary, defeat adversaries in all three of Canada’s oceans while contributing meaningfully alongside allies and enabling the government of Canada to deploy this fleet abroad in support of our partners and allies.”

A day later in Washington, Canada, the United States and Finland issued a joint statement announcing an agreement to build icebreakers for the Arctic region.

The pact calls for enhanced information sharing on polar icebreaker production, allowing for workers and experts from each country to train in shipyards across all three, and promoting to allies the purchase of polar icebreakers from American, Finnish or Canadian shipyards for their own needs, The Associated Press reported.

The AP quoted Daleep Singh, the White House deputy national security adviser for international economics, saying the agreement would demonstrate to Russia and China that the U.S. and allies will “doggedly pursue collaboration on industrial policy to increase our competitive edge.”

Singh noted that the U.S. has two icebreakers, and both are nearing the end of their usable life. Finland has 12 icebreakers and Canada has nine, while Russia has 36, according to U.S. Coast Guard data.

The same day in Washington, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that his government had signed “a trilateral letter of intent with Germany and Norway to establish a strategic partnership aimed at strengthening maritime security cooperation in the North Atlantic in support of NATO’s deterrence and defense.”

Trudeau also said for the first time that Canada expects to reach NATO’s 2% of GDP spending target by 2032. Canada also pledged $367 million in new military aid to Ukraine ahead of a meeting Wednesday between Trudeau and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

The commitments come in the face of mounting pressure for Canada to spend more on defense. A founding member of NATO, it is the alliance’s fifth-lowest spending member relative to GDP and until this week had pledged only to spend 1.76% of GDP by the 2029-30 budget year.

In a speech Monday, U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson called Canada’s level of defense spending “shameful.” Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell posted, “It’s time for our northern ally to invest seriously.”

NATO allies first agreed to the 2% defense spending threshold in 2006 and reaffirmed it in 2014 and 2023. This year, 23 of the 32 member states will meet or exceed that target.

Several nations have been stepping up their military and commercial capabilities in the Arctic as the receding ice pack makes navigation and petrochemical exploration in the Arctic Ocean more practicable. A sea route across Russia’s Arctic coastline promises to provide a shorter sea route between China and Europe.

Despite China’s distance from the Arctic Ocean, Beijing has dubbed itself a “near-Arctic country” to try to stake a bigger claim in the region.

VOA’s Zhang Zhenyu wrote this article and Adrianna Zhang contributed.
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SYDNEY — Russia has accused Australia of inciting “anti-Russian paranoia” for charging a Russian-born couple with espionage, the Australian Broadcasting Corp (ABC) reported Saturday.

The married couple, who hold Australian citizenship, were arrested on charges of working to access material related to Australia’s national security, though no significant compromise had been identified, the Australian Federal Police said on Friday.

The woman, 40, an information systems technician in the Australian Army, traveled to Russia and instructed her husband in Australia to log into her official account to access defense materials, police said.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, speaking to reporters on Friday, warned that “people will be held to account who interfere with our national interests and that’s precisely what these arrests represent.”

Russia’s embassy in the capital, Canberra, said a press conference by Australian authorities on Friday about the arrests “was clearly intended to launch another wave of anti-Russian paranoia in Australia,” the ABC said, citing an embassy statement.

The embassy requested written information from the Australian authorities on the couple’s situation and was considering “appropriate measures of consular assistance,” the ABC reported.

The embassy did not immediately respond to Reuters request for comment.

On Friday, Igor and Kira Korolev appeared in the magistrate’s court in Brisbane, court filings show, charged with one count each of preparing for an espionage offense, which carries a maximum penalty of 15 years in jail. The charges are the first under laws introduced in 2018.

They did not apply for bail and were remanded in custody until September 20 when they are next due to appear, media reported.

Australia, one of the largest non-NATO contributors to the West’s support for Ukraine since Russia’s 2022 invasion, announced a A$250 million ($170 million) military aid package for Kyiv on Thursday at a NATO summit in Washington.

Canberra has been supplying defense equipment to Kyiv, banned exports of aluminum ores to Russia and sanctioned more than 1,000 Russian individuals and entities.
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