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Washington — Beijing has adopted a conciliatory tone in its reporting on this week’s visit by White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan, emphasizing cooperation and open communication channels while claiming that Washington remains “incorrect” on its China policies.

Sullivan’s tightly scheduled three-day trip to Beijing ended Thursday after he met with Chinese officials, including the country’s top leader, Xi Jinping.

In a readout of Sullivan’s meeting with Wang Yi, China’s top diplomat, the Foreign Ministry of China on Wednesday called the conversation “candid, substantive and constructive,” a phrase that was echoed by a White House statement regarding the meeting.

Sullivan was the first White House national security adviser to visit China in eight years, a period that saw contacts between the countries grow increasingly contentious over issues that included military-to-military relations, cybersecurity, espionage and the war in Ukraine.

It was Sullivan’s fifth in-person meeting with Wang since May 2023. The two had previously held talks in Bangkok, Vienna, Washington and Malta. But Wednesday’s meeting marks the first time in this series of talks that Beijing included some of the U.S. side’s views in its readout.

“The U.S. and China will coexist peacefully on this planet for a long time,” Sullivan was quoted as saying in the Chinese readout. “The goal of U.S. policies is to find a way that allows for a sustainable development of the U.S.-China relations.”

According to Beijing’s readout, Sullivan defined the two countries’ ties as a mixture of cooperation and competition, a characterization that’s been the core principle of the Biden administration’s China strategy.

Some experts say the fact that China allowed space in its readout for U.S. talking points signals Beijing’s increased openness to working with Washington.

Dali Yang, a political science professor at the University of Chicago, told VOA Mandarin Service that China used to reject the Biden administration’s characterization of the U.S.-China relationship.

“But it looks like the China side is now relatively more accepting of the U.S. side’s view,” Yang said. “Or at least Beijing has accepted that this is the kind of U.S. position that China must deal with.”

After Wang, Sullivan met separately with Xi and senior military official Zhang Youxia. These meetings focused on topics that included Taiwan, the South China Sea, trade policies, U.S. sanctions on Chinese businesses and entities, conflicts in Gaza and the war in Ukraine.

The meetings appeared to be cordial. Photos and footage released by Chinese state media show Sullivan shaking hands with a smiling Xi and a smiling Zhang.

US ‘incorrect’ in Beijing’s narrative

Smiling faces and words of cooperation aside, however, Beijing continues to paint the U.S. as the one that needs to adjust its policies and move closer to Beijing’s positions on issues.

Xi told Sullivan the U.S. should “work with China in the same direction, view China and its development in a positive and rational light, see each other’s development as an opportunity rather than a challenge, and work with China to find a right way for two major countries to get along.”

Zhang urged the U.S. to “correct its strategic perceptions of China” and respect China’s “core interests” by halting arms sales to Taiwan and to “stop spreading false narratives on Taiwan.”

Prior to Sullivan’s arrival in Beijing, the Global Times, China’s state media outlet, published a commentary criticizing Washington’s “incorrect” understanding of China.

“The U.S. needs to fundamentally change its perception of China and its strategic positioning toward China,” according to the article.

The Global Times told Sullivan that “truly listening to and understanding Beijing’s words and making a proper contribution to establishing the correct understanding between China and the U.S. should be one of the standards to evaluate the success of his visit to China.”

China’s political commentators have gone even further, calling on Beijing to remain tough.

In a commentary, Shen Yi, an international relations professor at Fudan University in Shanghai who has a huge following on social media, wrote that the U.S. is in no position to make any demands toward China because of the domestic economic difficulties in which he contends Washington is trapped.

“China should be sufficiently confident that it’s the U.S. who needs help from China,” he wrote. “Under this new frame of understanding, we have reasons to believe that China does not need to compromise with the U.S.”

This kind of tough narrative, often pushed by Beijing and adopted by online commentators during the past decade, remains popular on social media. But Yang of the University of Chicago told VOA Mandarin Service that Beijing seems to be moving away from this kind of rhetoric.

“When China is facing a variety of challenges, and when the leaders of China have to maintain and manage China-U.S. relations, they have to think beyond just making tougher and tougher talks” and relying on this type of approach to be effective.

“The two sides actually have a lot of common interests,” he said.
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washington — The Biden administration is restarting an immigration program that allows migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to come to the United States, and it is including “additional vetting” of their U.S.-based financial sponsors following fraud concerns.

The Department of Homeland Security had suspended the program earlier this month to investigate the concerns but indicated that an internal review found no widespread fraud among sponsors.

“Together with our existing rigorous vetting of potential beneficiaries seeking to travel to the United States, these new procedures for supporters have strengthened the integrity of these processes and will help protect against exploitation of beneficiaries,” the agency said.

The program launched in January 2023 and is a major piece of the Biden administration’s immigration policies that create or expand pathways for legal entry while restricting asylum for those who cross the border illegally.

The policy is aimed at countries that send large numbers of people to the United States and generally refuse to accept those who are deported. It is paired with commitments from Mexico to take back people from those countries who cross the U.S. border illegally.

Under the program, the U.S. accepts up to 30,000 people a month from the four countries for two years and offers eligibility for work authorization. To qualify, migrants must have a financial sponsor in the U.S. who vouches for them and fly into an American airport at their own expense, rather than crossing at the southern border. Those acting as sponsors and the migrants hoping to come to America undergo vetting by Homeland Security.

Republicans have repeatedly criticized the program as an end-run around immigration laws. They immediately attacked the administration when the program was suspended early this month, pointing to it as further validation of their concerns about whether migrants were properly vetted.

The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement Thursday that the additional vetting would include more scrutiny of the financial records that U.S.-based sponsors are required to submit as well as their criminal backgrounds. Sponsors will be required to submit fingerprints, and the agency will bolster steps to identify sponsors who are fraudulent and when one files numerous applications.

DHS said an internal review found some cases of fraud, such as sponsors using fake Social Security numbers, but that the majority of cases it investigated had a reasonable explanation, such as a typo when a sponsor was submitting information online.

“Since the inception of the process, a very small number of supporters were found to have fraud or criminal issues warranting referral to law enforcement for investigation and/or appropriate action,” the agency said.

Homeland Security also said it had not found issues in vetting the migrants themselves, saying those who come to the U.S. under the program “have been thoroughly screened and vetted.”

When it announced the program’s suspension, Homeland Security didn’t say when processing stopped. But the news broke after the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a group that favors immigration restrictions, cited an internal agency report that raised questions about fraud.

Neither Homeland Security nor FAIR have provided that report. FAIR asserted that the report showed that 3,218 sponsors were responsible for more than 100,000 filings and that 24 of the top 1,000 Social Security numbers used by sponsors corresponded to dead people.

Arrests for illegal crossings have plummeted among the four nationalities. Cubans were arrested 5,065 times during the first half of the year, compared with more than 42,000 arrests in November 2022 alone. Haitians were arrested 304 times during the first six months of the year, compared with a peak of nearly 18,000 in September 2021.
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Washington — Vietnam’s minister of national defense, Phan Van Giang, is set to visit Washington next month for a high-level meeting with U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, U.S. and Vietnamese officials tell VOA.

The minister is expected to visit Washington from September 7-9 to strengthen defense cooperation between the two countries, according to a Vietnamese defense ministry official and a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the trip has not been officially announced. 

During the talks, the sides are expected to discuss a range of defense-related topics, including training initiatives and the lingering legacies of the Vietnam War. Giang is also expected to sign an agreement to purchase military equipment from the U.S., though Vietnamese officials said the details of the deal are still being work out.

The Vietnamese Embassy in Washington has yet to comment on the visit.

This meeting marks the first encounter between the defense chiefs of Vietnam and the U.S. since the two countries upgraded their bilateral relations to a Strategic Comprehensive Partnership a year ago, coinciding with U.S. President Joe Biden’s historic visit to Vietnam. It also signals a strengthening of military ties and could pave the way for further cooperation between the two nations in the future.

The expected visit follows the 13th Political, Security, and Defense Dialogue held in Hanoi on August 26, the first such dialogue since the relationship upgrade.

U.S. Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, Bonnie Jenkins, who led the U.S. delegation at the dialogue, emphasized the U.S. commitment to enhancing defense and security cooperation with Vietnam. This cooperation includes programs on military training, medicine, peacekeeping, counter-terrorism, and cybersecurity.

The last face-to-face meeting between Giang and Austin took place in November 2023, during an ASEAN defense ministers’ meeting in Jakarta. During that encounter, the two discussed measures to boost bilateral defense cooperation, with a particular focus on efforts to address war legacies and provide humanitarian assistance.

Topics covered included demining and the removal of unexploded ordnances, dioxin cleanup, and accounting for Missing in Action (MIA) soldiers.

Vietnam’s defense minister also extended an invitation to U.S. defense companies to participate in Vietnam’s second international defense exhibition, scheduled for late 2024.

This article originated in VOA’s Vietnamese Service; Carla Babb is VOA’s Pentagon  correspondent.
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London — Russia on Thursday warned France not to turn the investigation of Pavel Durov, the boss of Telegram, into a “political persecution” after the billionaire 39-year-old CEO was put under formal investigation relating to activities on his social media platform.

Moscow has implied there are political motivations behind the arrest of Durov, who was detained Saturday as he disembarked his private jet at Paris-Le Bourget airport, near the French capital.

“The main thing is for what is happening in France not to run into political persecution,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters Thursday. “Of course, we consider him a Russian citizen and, as much as possible, we will be ready to provide assistance. We will be watching what happens next,” Peskov said.

France strongly denies there are any political objectives behind his arrest and maintains the investigation is being conducted according to the rule of law.

Durov holds joint Russian, French and United Arab Emirates citizenship. He was released from police custody Wednesday evening on $5.6 million bail. He is banned from leaving France and must report to a police station twice a week.

TJ McIntyre, an associate professor at University College Dublin’s School of Law and an expert on technology law and cybercrime, said Durov faces a range of preliminary charges, “ranging from failure to take action on the sale of drugs on Telegram, failure to prevent the distribution of child sexual abuse material on Telegram, failure to provide information on users when requested as part of criminal investigations, going so far as to include accusations of money laundering.”

McIntyre added that it was unusual for the CEO of a social media website to be held liable for the content it hosts. “Now, he has, himself, been indicted, which takes the investigation to the next level.”

The preliminary charges, which were outlined Wednesday in a statement by Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau, also appear to concern allegations involving organized crime, including “complicity in the administration of an online platform to enable an illicit transaction.”

Speaking outside the courthouse in Paris on Wednesday, Pavel Durov’s lawyer rejected the allegations. “Firstly, Telegram complies in every respect with European digital regulations and is moderated to the same standards as other social networks,” lawyer David-Olivier Kaminski told reporters.

“I’d like to add that it’s totally absurd to think that the head of a social network could be involved in criminal acts that don’t concern him either directly or indirectly,” Kaminski said.

Durov founded Telegram a decade ago. After reportedly facing regulatory pressures in his native Russia, Durov chose Dubai as the company’s headquarters, gaining UAE citizenship in 2021. Local media report that he was given French citizenship later the same year. His wealth is estimated by Forbes at upwards of $15 billion.

While other social media platforms have frequently been accused of harboring illegal content, French investigators say Telegram repeatedly failed to engage with regulators or to comply with laws on moderation.

“They are widely perceived as being a scofflaw when it comes to taking down illegal content posted by users. And if that’s true, if they were notified of specific content by users that violated the law and they didn’t take it down, then they’ve forfeited immunity under the big EU law on this, the Digital Services Act,” said Daphne Keller, director of the Program on Platform Regulation at Stanford Law School’s Cyber Policy Center.

Telegram made a point of refusing to comply with laws on content moderation, said McIntyre. “You have a lot of aggressive rhetoric from the owner saying in essence that this is a service which is dedicated to freedom of expression, [and] it will set out to refuse a lot of state requests. And that I think has come back to bite him now.”

Other social media platforms will be watching closely, according to Keller.

“I think we should assume that most ordinary big platforms, the Facebooks, the YouTubes, etc., are not endangered by this. They have massive teams operating content moderation systems and … removing illegal content if they’re notified about it. I don’t think they could be subject to charges like this.

“Now it may be that X, Elon Musk’s platform, actually has been dropping the ball on doing these things. Certainly, that’s something that EU Commissioner [for Internal Market and Services] Thierry Breton has alleged.”

Elon Musk, the owner of X — formerly Twitter — posted online in support of Durov this week, reposting comments he made in a March interview that moderation was “a propaganda word for censorship.”

Musk is likely worried about the implications of Durov’s arrest, said McIntyre.

“I think Mr. Musk shares a lot of his views with this particular defendant, and I think he would be rightly worried as to the implications of this for him and for his service in Europe in general. But it might not be as extreme a case as Telegram.

“Certainly, there are issues with Twitter [X] failing to respond to government requests, failing to take proper steps to moderate its content. And it’s not impossible that you’d see a similar action taken against him personally,” McIntyre told VOA.

Telegram has more than 900 million global users, including in Russia and Iran. It is widely used by the Russian and Ukrainian militaries in Moscow’s war on Ukraine. The platform does not use end-to-end encryption.

“To some extent, it gives this defendant a good deal of leverage — in that if he were to promise cooperation on some of these fronts, there would be a lot of very valuable information that he would have that could be made available to, for example, the French authorities. As a lawyer, I can only speak to the judicial procedure, but what happens behind the scenes may be as influential as the judicial procedure itself,” McIntyre said.

French President Emmanuel Macron wrote on X that the arrest of Durov was in no way a political decision. “France is deeply committed to freedom of expression and communication, to innovation, and to the spirit of entrepreneurship.”

Russia has in the past blocked access to Telegram after it refused to give state security services access to private conversations, and that move prompted large street protests in Moscow in 2018. Additionally, some Russian lawmakers are now accusing France of censorship.
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Austin, Texas — U.S. universities are welcoming international students as the academic year begins. But while the total number of foreign students is steadily growing, the top sending country, China, is showing signs of leveling out or shrinking.

Industry analysts say the negative trend is mainly due to higher costs amid China’s struggling economy, with a growing number of students going to less expensive countries like Australia and Britain, and tense ties between Washington and Beijing.

The number of foreign students studying in the U.S. in 2022-23 passed 1 million for the first time since the COVID pandemic, said Open Doors, an information resource on international students and scholars.

While the U.S. saw a nearly 12% total increase year-on-year for that period, the number of international students from China, its top source, fell by 0.2% to 289,526.

That’s 600 fewer students than the 2021-22 academic year, when their numbers dropped by nearly 9%. The COVID pandemic saw Chinese student numbers drop in 2020-21 by nearly 15%, in line with the world total drop.

While it’s not yet clear if the drop is a leveling out or a fluctuating decline, analysts say China’s struggling economy and the high cost of studying in the U.S. are the main reasons for the fall in student numbers.

Vincent Chen, a Chinese study abroad consultant based in Shanghai, said although most of his clients are still interested in studying in the U.S., there is a clear downward trend, while applicants for Anglophone universities in Australia and Britain have been increasing.

“If you just want to go abroad, a one-year master’s degree in the U.K. is much cheaper,” Chen said. “Many people can’t afford to study in the U.S., so they have to settle for the next best thing.”

Data from the nonprofit U.S. group College Board Research shows that in the 2023-24 academic year, the average tuition and fees for a U.S. private college four-year education increased 4% to $41,540 compared with the previous academic year.

The British Council said three to four years of undergraduate tuition in Britain starts as low as $15,000.

The number of Chinese students in Britain was 154,260 in 2022-23, according to the U.K. Higher Education Statistics Agency, HESA, up from 121,145 in the 2018/19 academic year.

Australia’s Home Affairs office said in the 2023-24 program year, China was the top source foreign country for new student visa grants at 43,389, up slightly (1.5%) from the previous year.

Chen said Chinese state media’s negative portrayal of the United States and concerns about discrimination have also contributed to the shift.

Bruce Zhang, a Chinese citizen who received his master’s degree in Europe after studying in China, told VOA Mandarin he had such an incident occur to him after he was admitted to a U.S. university’s Ph.D. program.

When he entered Boston’s Logan International Airport last year, Zhang said customs officers questioned him for more than an hour about his research, and if it had any links to the military, and took his computer and mobile phone for examination.

“Fortunately, I had heard that U.S. customs might be stringent in inspecting Chinese students, so I had relatively few study-related data and documents on my personal computer,” he said. 

Zhang was allowed to enter the U.S. for his studies in materials science, but the questioning left him so rattled that he has encouraged other Chinese to study elsewhere.

Cui Kai, a study abroad consultant in Massachusetts told VOA Mandarin that experiences like Zhang’s or worse happen for a reason.

“Students who were questioned or their visas were revoked at the customs are usually those who completed their undergraduate studies in China and come to the U.S. for a master’s or doctoral degree in a sensitive major,” said Cui.

Former President Donald Trump signed Proclamation 10043 in June 2020, prohibiting visas for any Chinese student who “has been employed by, studied at, or conducted research at or on behalf of, an entity in the PRC that implements or supports the PRC’s “military-civil fusion strategy.”

The U.S. says China has been using students and scholars to gain access to key technology and, under Proclamation 10043, revoked more than 1,000 visas issued to Chinese nationals and has denied thousands more.

Critics say the policy is costly to the U.S. and is encouraging Chinese students to look to European and other universities.

Adrianna Zhang contributed to this report.
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Baltic countries are moving to protect NATO’s eastern flank in the face of Russian aggression. The Baltic defense line — a new fortification system along their borders with Russia and Belarus — is meant to shield NATO allies from potential attacks. VOA’s Eastern Europe Bureau Chief Myroslava Gongadze reports from the Latvia-Russia border. VOA footage and editing by Daniil Batushchak.
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Berlin — Germany’s coalition government on Thursday agreed to tighten security and asylum policies following a deadly stabbing attack linked to the Islamic State militant group which has fueled far-right opposition and criticism of Berlin’s migration policies approach.

Three people were killed and eight wounded in the attack which took place during a festival in Solingen as the western city was marking 650 years. The incident has heightened political dispute over asylum and deportation rules ahead of next month’s state elections as the suspect was a failed asylum seeker from Syria.

The package introduces stricter gun regulations, including tighter ownership rules, a general ban on switchblades, and an absolute ban on knives at public events such as folk festivals, sporting events and trade fairs.

Federal law officers will be authorized to use Tasers, and background checks for weapon permits will include new federal agencies to prevent extremists from obtaining weapons.

Berlin will also tighten asylum and residency laws and procedures, including lowering the threshold for “severe deportation,” when the deportee has committed a crime involving a weapon or dangerous tool.

Criteria for excluding individuals from asylum or refugee status will be tightened, including harsher penalties for serious crimes, including for youth offenders.

Asylum seekers will be excluded from receiving benefits in Germany if they have claims in other European countries and refugees who travel to their home countries without compelling reasons risk losing their protection status, the document read.

This rule would not apply to Ukrainian refugees, it said.

The government will push for reforms to the Common European Asylum System, simplifying transfers and deportations, and will also seek to enable the deportation of individuals who have committed serious crimes or are considered terrorist threats to Afghanistan and Syria.

The package also outlines measures to combat “violent Islamism,” including giving law enforcement authorities permission to use biometric data from publicly accessible online sources for facial recognition to identify suspects.

The government will strengthen the domestic intelligence agency’s powers when it comes to financial investigations and continue to ban Islamist organizations, according to a government document outlining the measures.
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Washington — The U.S. economy expanded more than initially estimated in the second quarter this year, the Department of Commerce said Thursday, on stronger consumer spending than originally anticipated.

The world’s biggest economy grew at an annual rate of 3.0% in the April-to-June period, up from 2.8% according to an earlier estimate.

Analysts had expected no revision to the figure.

“The update primarily reflected an upward revision to consumer spending,” the Commerce Department said.

Unexpectedly robust consumption — even in the face of high interest rates — has helped to bolster the U.S. economy in recent times. But with households depleting pandemic-era savings, the anticipation was for consumption to pull back.

In the latest revision, the higher spending was partly offset by downward revisions in areas such as business investment, exports and government spending.

Imports, however, were revised higher.

The 3.0% figure for the second quarter this year was an uptick from 1.4% growth in the first quarter.

The Federal Reserve rapidly increased interest rates to tackle surging inflation in 2022. It is widely expected to make its first post-pandemic rate cut in September. This could provide a boost to the economy.
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Berlin — The suspects in the foiled plot to attack Taylor Swift concerts in Vienna earlier this month sought to kill “tens of thousands” of fans before the CIA discovered intelligence that disrupted the planning and led to arrests, the agency’s deputy director said.

The CIA notified Austrian authorities of the scheme, which allegedly included links to the Islamic State group. The intelligence and subsequent arrests ultimately led to the cancellation of three sold-out Eras Tour shows, devastating fans who had traveled across the globe to see Swift in concert.

CIA Deputy Director David Cohen addressed the failed plot during the annual Intelligence and National Security Summit, held this week in Maryland.

“They were plotting to kill a huge number — tens of thousands of people at this concert, including I am sure many Americans — and were quite advanced in this,” Cohen said Wednesday. “The Austrians were able to make those arrests because the agency and our partners in the intelligence community provided them information about what this ISIS-connected group was planning to do.”

Austrian officials said the main suspect, a 19-year-old Austrian man, was inspired by the Islamic State group. He allegedly planned to attack outside the stadium, where upwards of 30,000 fans were expected to gather, with knives or homemade explosives. Another 65,000 fans were likely to be inside the venue. Investigators discovered chemical substances and technical devices during a raid of the suspect’s home.

Austria’s interior minister, Gerhard Karner, previously said help from other intelligence agencies was needed because Austrian investigators, unlike some foreign services, can’t legally monitor text messages.

The 19-year-old’s lawyer has said the allegations were “overacting at its best,” and contended Austrian authorities were “presenting this exaggeratedly” in order to get new surveillance powers.

Swift broke her silence about the cancellations last week after her London shows had concluded.

“Having our Vienna shows cancelled was devastating,” she wrote in a statement posted to Instagram. “The reason for the cancellations filled me with a new sense of fear, and a tremendous amount of guilt because so many people had planned on coming to those shows.”

She thanked authorities — “thanks to them, we were grieving concerts and not lives,” she wrote — and said she waited to speak until the European leg of her Eras Tour concluded to prioritize safety.

“Let me be very clear: I am not going to speak about something publicly if I think doing so might provoke those who would want to harm the fans who come to my shows,” she wrote.

Concert organizer Barracuda Music said it canceled the three-night Vienna run that would have begun Aug. 8 because the arrests made in connection to the conspiracy were too close to showtime.

The main suspect and a 17-year-old were taken into custody on Aug. 6, the day before the cancellations were announced. A third suspect, 18, was arrested Aug. 8. Their names have not been released in line with Austrian privacy rules.

The shows in London, the next stop after Vienna, came on the heels of a stabbing at a Swift-themed dance class that left three little girls dead in the U.K. In a statement issued after the Southport attack, Swift said she was “just completely in shock” and “at a complete loss for how to ever convey my sympathies to these families.” News outlets reported that Swift met with some of the survivors backstage in London.

The Vienna plot also drew comparisons to a 2017 attack by a suicide bomber at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England, that killed 22 people. The bomb detonated at the end of Grande’s concert as thousands of young fans were leaving, becoming the deadliest extremist attack in the United Kingdom in recent years.

Cohen on Wednesday praised the CIA’s work in preventing the planned violence, saying that other counterterrorism “successes” in foiling plots typically go unheralded.

“I can tell you within my agency, and I’m sure in others, there were people who thought that was a really good day for Langley,” he said, referring to the CIA headquarters. “And not just the Swifties in my workforce.”

The record-smashing tour is on hiatus until the fall.
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LONDON — Britain has revived its attempt to give police wider powers to impose conditions on street protests, a decision that a civil rights group said showed a worrying disregard for the rule of law.

The group, Liberty, successfully challenged the changes to public order laws made by the country’s previous Conservative government. London’s High Court ruled in May that the government exceeded its powers by lowering the threshold for police to impose conditions.

The interior ministry’s appeal against the ruling was delayed in July – shortly after Labor won a parliamentary election – to allow for talks with Liberty about the change.

Britain’s new government this month decided to pursue the appeal which Liberty director Akiko Hart said was a disappointing decision.

A spokesperson for the interior ministry said all public order legislation had to be balanced against the fundamental right to protest.

“However, we disagree with the court’s ruling in this case and have appealed their decision,” the spokesperson said.

Liberty’s case focused on the Public Order Act, under which police can impose conditions on a protest which could cause “serious disruption to the life of the community.” The law was amended last year to allow police to impose conditions where a protest could cause “more than minor” disruption.

Liberty said the new powers gave police almost unlimited powers to shut down protests, citing the arrest in Britain of Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, who was later acquitted.

The High Court ruled the new powers were unlawful, but put the quashing of the new powers on hold pending appeal.
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Beijing — Top White House aide Jake Sullivan held talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday, after a senior military official warned the United States to stop “collusion” with Taiwan in a rare one-on-one meeting.

Sullivan, the first U.S national security adviser to visit China since 2016, stressed the importance of stability in the tense Taiwan Strait as he met with senior Chinese army chief Zhang Youxia at the Beijing headquarters of the Central Military Commission.

The White House adviser met Xi on Thursday afternoon, state media said, as he wrapped up three days of talks with Foreign Minister Wang Yi and other high-ranking officials.

Sullivan’s visit came as China became embroiled in security rows with U.S. allies Japan and the Philippines.

“It’s rare that we have the opportunity to have this kind of exchange,” Sullivan told Zhang in opening remarks.

The two officials agreed to hold a call between the two sides’ theatre commanders “in the near future,” a readout from the White House added.

Sullivan also raised the importance of “freedom of navigation” in the South China Sea, where China and the Philippines have clashed in recent months, and “stability” in the Taiwan Strait, Washington said.

Zhang, in turn, warned that the status of the self-ruled island was “the first red line that cannot be crossed in China-U.S. relations.”

“China has always been committed to maintaining peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait,” he said, according to a readout by Beijing’s defense ministry.

“But ‘Taiwan independence’ and peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait are incompatible,” he said.

“China demands that the U.S. halts military collusion with Taiwan, ceases arming Taiwan, and stops spreading false narratives related to Taiwan,” Zhang added.

He also asked Washington to “work with China to promote communication and exchanges between the two militaries and jointly shoulder the responsibilities of major powers.”

‘Destabilizing actions’

Thursday’s talks also saw Sullivan express “concerns about (Chinese) support for Russia’s defense industrial base,” the readout added — echoing long-standing U.S. claims that Beijing has rejected.

He also raised “the need to avoid miscalculation and escalation in cyber space, and ongoing efforts to reach a cease-fire and hostage deal in Gaza,” the White House said.

On Wednesday, Sullivan and Wang discussed plans for their leaders to talk in the coming weeks — and clashed over China’s increasingly assertive approach in disputed maritime regions.

Sullivan “reaffirmed the United States’ commitment to defending its Indo-Pacific allies,” the White House said.

He also “expressed concern about (China’s) destabilizing actions against lawful Philippine maritime operations” in the disputed South China Sea, it said.

Chinese state media reported that Wang issued his own warning to Washington.

“The United States must not use bilateral treaties as an excuse to undermine China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, nor should it support or condone the Philippines’ actions of infringement,” Wang told Sullivan, according to state broadcaster CCTV.

Wang and Sullivan previously met five times over the past year and a half — in Washington, Vienna, Malta and Bangkok, as well as alongside U.S. President Joe Biden and Xi in California last November.

During their latest encounter, they also discussed the tense issue of Taiwan, the self-ruled democratic island that China claims.

China has kept up its saber-rattling since the inauguration this year of President Lai Ching-te, whose party emphasizes Taiwan’s separate identity.
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FRANKFURT, Germany — Germany has told the Iranian head of the recently banned Islamic Center Hamburg (IZH) that he is being expelled from the country and has two weeks to leave, authorities in Hamburg said on Thursday.

The interior ministry of the German city state of Hamburg said in a statement that it had informed Mohammad Hadi Mofatteh that he has until Sept. 11 to leave or else be deported.

Mofatteh had been head of the IZH since summer 2018, the statement continued.

He did immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment sent via social media.

According to findings by Hamburg’s domestic intelligence agency, he was the official deputy of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in Germany as head of the IZH, until recently.

Bild newspaper and broadcaster NDR first reported on the expulsion orders.

Social media accounts associated with the IZH and its website have been taken down in Germany after the country banned the IZH and subsidiary organizations in July for “pursuing radical Islamist goals,” according to the federal interior ministry.

The ministry said the IZH, which includes one of the oldest mosques in Germany known for its turquoise exterior, had acted as a direct representative of Khamenei and sought to bring about an Islamic revolution in Germany.

Following the closure of the IZH, Iran summoned the German ambassador in Tehran.
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PARIS — French authorities handed preliminary charges to Telegram CEO Pavel Durov on Wednesday for allowing alleged criminal activity on his messaging app and barred him from leaving France pending further investigation.

Both free-speech advocates and authoritarian governments have spoken out in Durov’s defense since his weekend arrest. The case has also called attention to the challenges of policing illegal activity online, and to the Russian-born Durov’s own unusual biography and multiple passports.

Durov was detained on Saturday at Le Bourget airport outside Paris as part of a sweeping investigation opened earlier this year and released earlier Wednesday after four days of questioning. Investigative judges filed preliminary charges Wednesday night and ordered him to pay 5 million euros bail and to report to a police station twice a week, according to a statement from the Paris prosecutor’s office.

Allegations against Durov, who is also a French citizen, include that his platform is being used for child sexual abuse material and drug trafficking, and that Telegram refused to share information or documents with investigators when required by law.

The first preliminary charge against him was for ”complicity in managing an online platform to allow illicit transactions by an organized group,” a crime that can lead to sentences of up to 10 years in prison and 500,000 euro fine, the prosecutor’s office said.

Preliminary charges under French law mean magistrates have strong reason to believe a crime was committed but allow more time for further investigation.

David-Olivier Kaminski, a lawyer for Durov, was quoted by French media as saying “it’s totally absurd to think that the person in charge of a social network could be implicated in criminal acts that don’t concern him, directly or indirectly.”

Prosecutors said that Durov is, “at this stage, the only person implicated in this case.” They did not exclude the possibility that other people are being investigated but declined to comment on other possible arrest warrants. Any other arrest warrant would be revealed only if the target of such a warrant is detained and informed of their rights, prosecutors said in a statement to the AP.

French authorities opened a preliminary investigation in February in response to ”the near total absence of a response by Telegram to judicial requests” for data for pursuing suspects, notably those accused of crimes against children, the prosecutor’s office said.

Durov’s arrest in France has caused outrage in Russia, with some government officials calling it politically motivated and proof of the West’s double standard on freedom of speech. The outcry has raised eyebrows among Kremlin critics because in 2018, Russian authorities themselves tried to block the Telegram app but failed, withdrawing the ban in 2020.

In Iran, where Telegram is widely used despite being officially banned after years of protests challenging the country’s Shiite theocracy, Durov’s arrest in France prompted comments from the Islamic Republic’s supreme leader. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei weighed in with veiled praise for France for being “strict” against those who “violate your governance” of the internet.

French President Emmanuel Macron said Monday that Durov’s arrest wasn’t a political move but part of an independent investigation. Macron posted on X that his country “is deeply committed” to freedom of expression but “freedoms are upheld within a legal framework, both on social media and in real life, to protect citizens and respect their fundamental rights.”

In a statement posted on its platform after Durov’s arrest, Telegram said it abides by EU laws, and its moderation is “within industry standards and constantly improving.”

“Almost a billion users globally use Telegram as means of communication and as a source of vital information. We’re awaiting a prompt resolution of this situation,” it said.

In addition to Russia and France, Durov is also a citizen of the United Arab Emirates and the Caribbean island nation of St. Kitts and Nevis.

The UAE Foreign Ministry said Tuesday that it was “closely following the case” and had asked France to provide Durov “with all the necessary consular services in an urgent manner.”

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said he hoped that Durov “has all the necessary opportunities for his legal defense” and added that Moscow stands “ready to provide all necessary assistance and support” to the Telegram CEO as a Russian citizen.

“But the situation is complicated by the fact that he is also a citizen of France,” Peskov said.

Telegram was founded by Durov and his brother after he himself faced pressure from Russian authorities.

In 2013, he sold his stake in VKontakte, a popular Russian social networking site which he launched in 2006.

The company came under pressure during the Russian government’s crackdown following mass pro-democracy protests that rocked Moscow at the end of 2011 and 2012.

Durov had said authorities demanded that the site take down online communities of Russian opposition activists, and later that it hand over personal data of users who took part in the 2013-14 popular uprising in Ukraine, which eventually ousted a pro-Kremlin president.

Durov said in a recent interview that he had turned down these demands and left the country.

The demonstrations prompted Russian authorities to clamp down on the digital space, and Telegram and its pro-privacy stance offered a convenient way for Russians to communicate and share news.

Telegram also continues to be a popular source of news in Ukraine, where both media outlets and officials use it to share information on the war and deliver missile and air raid alerts.

Western governments have often criticized Telegram for a lack of content moderation.
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FRESNO, Calif. — The second elephant calf in two weeks has been born at a California zoo.

African elephant Amahle gave birth early Monday morning, according to the Fresno Chaffee Zoo. The event came 10 days after Amahle’s mother, Nolwazi, gave birth to another male calf.

The new additions are the first elephants born at the zoo, about 240 kilometers southeast of San Francisco, which has embarked on a program to breed elephants in the hope that they can be seen by zoogoers in years to come.

“To have two healthy calves is a historic milestone,” Jon Forrest Dohlin, the zoo’s chief executive, said in a statement Tuesday. “We cannot wait for the public to see the new additions to our herd and share in our excitement.”

The elephants and their calves will continue to be monitored behind the scenes for now, Dohlin said. While the zoo expanded its exhibit in anticipation of growing its herd, some animal activists have opposed the breeding program, saying elephants shouldn’t be in zoos because of their complex needs.

In 2022, the zoo brought in male elephant Mabu hoping he’d breed with the two females. The future of elephants — which have relatively few offspring and a 22-month gestation period — in zoos hinges largely on breeding.
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Washington — The 20-year-old gunman who tried to assassinate former President Donald Trump in July was dead set on carrying out an attack but appears to have seen the former U.S. leader and current Republican presidential candidate as a “target of opportunity.”

Senior FBI officials shared the updated assessment of Thomas Matthew Crooks on Wednesday, saying the findings are based on almost 1,000 interviews and extensive analysis of his internet search activity and social media accounts.

“We saw through our analysis of all his — particularly his online searches — a sustained, detailed effort to plan an attack on some event,” FBI Special Agent-in-Charge Kevin Rojek told reporters during a phone briefing.

“He looked at any number of events or targets,” Rojek said, adding that when the Trump campaign announced the July 13 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, the shooter “became hyperfocused on that specific event.”

As for what motivated Crooks to carry out an attack in the first place, officials said that remains a mystery.

“At this time, the FBI has not identified a motive,” said Robert Wells, executive assistant director of the FBI’s National Security Branch.

Wells also said the FBI investigation has found no credible evidence to suggest that the shooter told anyone of his plans or that he had any help from any individuals or foreign governments.

“I want to be clear. We have not seen any indication to suggest Crooks was directed by a foreign entity to conduct the attack,” he said.

The FBI officials further rejected conspiracy theories that have been circulating on social media regarding a potential second shooter.

They said a forensic examination of the shooter’s gun, an AR-style rifle, conclusively linked the weapon to all eight shell casings found on the roof of the building where he carried out the attack.

The FBI officials said only two other shots were fired — one by a local law enforcement officer, and one by a U.S. Secret Service sniper — which hit the shooter in the head, killing him.

FBI investigators have been scouring Crooks’ internet searches and social media activity, and talking to anyone who knew him, ever since he climbed on a roof of a building overlooking the Trump campaign rally in rural, western Pennsylvania and began shooting, leaving Trump with a bloody ear and killing a rallygoer and injuring two others.

Last month, FBI Director Christopher Wray told lawmakers that Crooks appeared to have become fixated on high-profile public figures and that just a week before the attempted assassination, he searched for information on the 1963 killing of U.S. President John F. Kennedy by Lee Harvey Oswald.

“On July 6, he did a Google search for, quote, ‘How far away was Oswald from Kennedy?’” Wray said.

“That’s obviously significant in terms of his state of mind,” Wray added. “That is the same day that he registered for the Butler rally.”

FBI officials on Wednesday presented a more-detailed account of Crooks’ mindset and planning, saying the shooter appears to have started preparing to carry out an attack or shooting as far back as September 2023, using an online account to look at Trump’s campaign schedule.

Starting in April of this year, officials said, the shooter began researching campaign events for Trump and U.S. President Joe Biden.

“In the 30 days prior to the attack, the subject conducted more than 60 searches related to President Biden and former President Trump,” said the FBI’s Rojek, adding the shooter also looked up the dates and locations of the Republican and Democratic national conventions.

But Rojek said that Crooks’ focus on carrying out an attack appears to go back even further, and that he began researching how to make explosives in September 2019.

He said there is also no indication, so far, that Crooks was motivated by any political leanings.

“We’ve seen no definitive ideology associated with our subject either left leaning or right leaning,” Rojek said. “It’s really been a mixture, and something that we’re still attempting to analyze and draw conclusions on.”

It also appears Crooks was clear-headed and methodical in his attempt to kill Trump.  Lab tests showed no signs he was using alcohol or illicit drugs at the time of the attack, FBI officials said.
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Following more than nine months of unjust detention, American-Russian journalist Alsu Kurmasheva is adjusting to life in freedom with her family in Prague. While in Washington this week to receive an award, she tells VOA’s Liam Scott the fate of other political prisoners is on her mind. Camera: Cristina Caicedo Smit, Hoshang Fahim, Adam Greenbaum, Krystof Maixner, Martin Bubenik
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Washington — Russian opposition politician Ilya Ponomarev says he saw no reason to be suspicious when he received what appeared to be an email from former U.S. ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, a trusted contact with whom he communicates periodically.

“This letter was visually no different from his other letters. I believed that it was his letter because it was visually no different from his other letters,” Ponomarev told VOA Russian in a Zoom interview.

But this email from several months ago turned out to be one of numerous “phishing attacks” targeting U.S. diplomats and others that have been identified as the work of two cyber-espionage outfits linked to the Russian government. And the fact that it accurately mimicked McFaul’s previous messages indicated the attackers had already seen those earlier messages.

“The letter contained a reference to a report on Ukraine that McFaul supposedly intended to deliver in China, and also a request to check whether he had mixed something up,” Ponomarev said. McFaul did in fact deliver a lecture to Chinese students in April.

McFaul has confirmed to VOA that he was the target of a hacker attack but did not elaborate. The details of the attack were revealed in a recent joint report from the digital rights group Access Now and the Canadian research nonprofit Citizen Lab.

The report says the attacks were conducted between October 2022 and August 2024 by two “threat actors close to the Russian regime” known as ColdRiver and ColdWastrel.

According to The Washington Post, “multiple governments” have said that ColdRiver works for the Federal Security Service, or FSB, the successor agency to the Soviet KGB, while ColdWastrel is believed to be “working for another Russian agency.”

Among their targets were exiled Russian opposition figures, employees of U.S. think tanks, former U.S. ambassadors to Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, political figures and academics, employees of American and European non-profit organizations, and media organizations.

VOA has spoken with several of those named as victims, including former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine John Herbst, a Russian journalist and a Russian human rights activist, as well as Ponomarev and McFaul.

The goal of phishing attacks is to try to get a user to click on a malicious link or enter their data – login and password – on a fake website. If the attack is successful, hackers gain access to the victim’s confidential information, including correspondence, contact lists and, in some cases, financial information.

Hackers conducting phishing campaigns employ a technique called “social engineering,” which a leading American cyber security software and services company described as using “psychological manipulation” designed to trick users into divulging sensitive information.

Herbst, who is currently director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center, told VOA that he has been facing attacks from Russian hackers for the past 10 years.

The Kremlin “didn’t like from the beginning what I was doing because I was pointing out that they’re conducting an illegal invasion of Ukraine, I guess going back to 2014,” he said.

Herbst said that Russian hackers target people who take a public position aimed at countering Moscow’s aggressive foreign policy: “So, it’s not surprising that people like Steve Pifer or Michael McFaul, or myself have received attention from the FSB, the GRU [Russian military intelligence] and others.”

Herbst added: “I don’t want to overstate the attention they give to us. You know, we are pretty much tertiary or even less than tertiary players on the international political scene, but they know they have such a massive security apparatus that they give some low-level guy the job of following people like me.”

“The stuff that linked me with Mike McFaul or Steve Pifer … was a fishing expedition, right? [To] see if they could get one of them to say something in confidence to me, which would be embarrassing.”

Steven Pifer did not respond to a VOA request for comment on the details of the hacker attack.

Ponomarev said that he responded to the fake McFaul email, but did not have time to download the malicious file attached to it since he was on a plane when he opened the email, and it was inconvenient to download the file from a phone.

“When I opened it on my computer, I noticed that the address he sent it to me from was not his usual Stanford University address, it was something completely different,” Ponomarev told VOA.

“Being an IT guy, I looked at the IP address of the file in the email and was convinced that it was phishing. After that, I passed the information on to the competent authorities so that they could look into the matter further.”

Ponomarev added that the fact the email ostensibly sent by McFaul came from a Proton service mailbox did not initially arouse any particular suspicions.

“I also have an address on Proton, for some kind of confidential correspondence,” he said, noting that attackers can forge addresses on Proton by changing one letter, so that visually it still looks like a regular mailing address.

“They use it because it’s completely anonymous,” Ponomarev added. “You can’t trace an IP address to Proton, so when you use Proton, it’s a dead end, you can’t excavate it any further.”

Polina Machold, publisher of Proekt, an independent Russian media outlet specializing in investigative journalism, told VOA that in the phishing attack targeting her, which took place last November, the hackers also employed social engineering and the Proton mail service.

“I received a letter from a ‘colleague’ from another media outlet, with whom we had previously done a joint project, asking to look at a new potential project or something like that,” Machold told VOA.

“We corresponded for some time, and when it came to opening the file, I discovered that something very suspicious was going on, because the link in the file supposedly led to Proton Drive, but the domain was something completely different.”

Machold said she called a colleague who confirmed that the attacker was pretending to be him. The information was passed on to Citizen Lab, which determined that hackers likely associated with the FSB were behind the attack.

Dmitry Zair-Bek, who heads First Department, a Russian rights group, said that a member of his group was among the first targets of a hacker attack “because we defend people in cases of treason and espionage.”

“One of our employees received an email from an address that mimicked the address of one of our partners,” he said. “The email contained a link that led to a phishing site.”

Zair-Bek added that the ColdWastrel group carried out the attack targeting First Department.

“They are the ‘C’ students of the hacker world,” Zair-Bek said of ColdWastrel. “The idea is the same as the ColdRiver group, they just paid less attention to some small details.

“The fact that they are ‘C’ students does not mean that they are less effective. They choose a person who from their point of view, on the one hand, has the largest amount of information that interests them and, on the other hand, is the most vulnerable.”

Even someone well-versed in digital security issues can fall for the bait of hackers, says Natalia Krapiva, an expert at Access Now, which co-authored the report on the Russian hacker attacks.

“The ColdRiver and ColdWastrel groups use quite sophisticated social engineering, a very good understanding of the context,” she told VOA.

“They know how the organization is structured in general, which people are responsible for finance, HR, politics, and so on. That is, they know which employee to send this [phishing] email to. They also understand with whom these organizations interact and on what issues.”

“We have seen examples of exploiting existing relationships between a Russian and an American human rights organization,” Krapiva added, noting that hackers knew that one of the organizations was waiting for a grant application and sent a malicious PDF file to the employee who was waiting for it.

This suggests that hackers already have a certain amount of information at the time they attempt to attack their victims, she said.
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WASHINGTON — Two men from Europe are charged in a plot to call in bogus reports of police emergencies to harass and threaten members of Congress, senior U.S. government officials and dozens of other people, according to an indictment unsealed on Wednesday. 

Thomasz Szabo, 26, of Romania and Nemanja Radovanovic, 21, of Serbia targeted at least 100 people with “swatting” calls to instigate an aggressive response by police officers at the victims’ homes, the federal indictment alleges. 

The calls also included threats to carry out mass shootings at New York City synagogues and to set off explosives at the U.S. Capitol and a university, the indictment said. A federal grand jury in Washington, D.C., handed up the indictment last Thursday. 

Online court records in Washington didn’t say if Szabo or Radovanovic have been arrested or if they are represented by attorneys. A court filing accompanying their indictment said investigators believed they were in separate foreign countries last week. A spokesperson for the office of Matthew Graves, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, declined to elaborate. 

Szabo and Radovanovic are both charged with conspiracy and more than two dozen counts of making threats. The plot spanned more than three years, from December 2020 through January 2024, according to prosecutors. 

“Swatting is not a victimless prank — it endangers real people, wastes precious police resources, and inflicts significant emotional trauma,” Graves said in a statement. 

Szabo organized and moderated chat groups to coordinate swatting attacks against 40 private citizens and 61 officials, including cabinet-level members of the federal government’s executive branch, the head of a federal law enforcement agency, a federal judge, current and former governors, and other state officials, the indictment said. 

In December 2023 and January 2024, Radovanovic allegedly called government agencies to falsely report killings and imminent suicides or kidnappings at the homes of U.S. senators, House members and elected state officials, according to the indictment. One of the calls led to a car crash involving injuries, the indictment alleges.
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