RIYADMEDIA

PARIS — Fresh from commemorating the 80th anniversary of D-Day, French President Emmanuel Macron will host U.S. President Joe Biden on Saturday for a state visit marked by pomp and a parade as well as talks on trade, Israel and  Ukraine.

The two men, who share a warm relationship despite past tensions over a submarine deal with Australia, will participate in a welcoming ceremony with their wives at the iconic Arc de Triomphe and a parade down the Avenue des Champs-Elysees before holding a meeting about policy issues and then attending dinner.

Biden hosted Macron for a state visit at the White House in 2022.

“France is … our oldest and one of our deepest allies. And this will be an important moment to affirm that alliance and also look to the future and what we have to accomplish together,” U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters earlier this week.

Sullivan said talks between the two men would touch on Russia’s war with Ukraine, Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza, cooperation in the Indo-Pacific, and policy issues ranging from climate change to artificial intelligence to supply chains.

White House spokesperson John Kirby said the countries would announce a plan to work together on maritime law enforcement and the U.S. Coast Guard and French navy would discuss increased cooperation.

Biden and Macron are also expected to discuss strengthening NATO, and both have pledged their countries’ support for Ukraine, though they have not agreed yet on a plan to use frozen Russian assets to help Kiev. A U.S. Treasury official said on Tuesday the United States and its G7 partners were making progress on that.

Biden met with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Paris on Friday, apologizing for a months-long delay by the U.S. Congress in approving the latest package of aid, and Zelenskyy addressed France’s National Assembly.

During a speech at the American Cemetery in Normandy on Thursday, the anniversary of the allied assault against Nazi German occupiers on French beaches in World War II, Biden called on Western powers to stay the course with Ukraine.

Macron and Biden will also confer on the situation in the Middle East.

Biden has been a staunch supporter of Israel, which is pursuing Hamas after it attacked the country in October, but tens of thousands of Palestinian deaths have soured Biden’s left-leaning political base on Israel, hurting him as he runs against Republican Donald Trump for reelection in November.

Beyond Ukraine, trade issues between the two sides of the Atlantic are likely to loom large.

The U.S. Inflation Reduction Act, which Biden signed into law in August 2022, has incensed European officials; they see it as a protectionist move that siphons off investments from EU companies.

Macron said during his state visit to Washington in 2022 that the package of subsidies could “fragment the West” and weaken the post-COVID European recovery at a time Washington is seeking allies against China and both sides confront Russia.

He and European allies have won little concessions from Washington since, however, and French officials say their aim for this visit is still to try to “re-synchronize” the U.S. and EU economic agendas.
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NEW YORK — The mysterious death of a man in Mexico who had one kind of bird flu is unrelated to outbreaks of a different type at U.S. dairy farms, experts say.

Here’s a look at the case and the different types of bird flu.

What happened in the Mexico bird flu case? A 59-year-old man in Mexico who had been bedridden because of chronic health problems developed a fever, shortness of breath and diarrhea in April. He died a week later, and the World Health Organization this week reported it.

The WHO said it was the first time that version of bird flu — H5N2 — had been seen in a person.

What’s been happening in the U.S. with bird flu? A different version of bird flu — H5N1 — has been infecting poultry flocks over the last several years, leading to millions of birds being culled. It also has been spreading among all different kinds of animals around the world.

This year, that flu was detected in U.S. dairy farms. Dozens of herds have seen infections, most recently in Iowa and Minnesota.

The cow outbreak has been tied to three reported illnesses in farmworkers, one in Texas and two in Michigan. Each had only mild symptoms.

What do the letters and numbers mean in bird flu names? So-called influenza A viruses are the only viruses tied to human flu pandemics, so their appearance in animals and people is a concern. These viruses are divided into subtypes based on what kinds of proteins they have on their surface — hemagglutinin (H) and neuraminidase (N).

Scientists say there are 18 different “H” subtypes and 11 different “N” subtypes, and they appear in scores of combinations. H1N1 and H3N2 are common causes of seasonal flu among humans. There are many versions seen in animals as well.

H5N1, the version that has worried some U.S. scientists lately, historically has been seen mainly in birds, but has in recent years has spread to a wide variety of mammals.

What is H5N2? H5N2 has long been seen in Mexican poultry, and farms vaccinate against it.

It’s also no stranger to the United States. An H5N2 outbreak hit a flock of 7,000 chickens in south-central Texas in 2004, the first time in two decades a dangerous-to-poultry avian flu appeared in the U.S.

H5N2 also was mainly responsible for a wave outbreaks at U.S. commercial poultry farms in 2014 and 2015.

How dangerous is H5N2? Over the years, H5N2 has teetered between being considered a mild threat to birds and a severe threat, but it hasn’t been considered much of a human threat at all.

A decade ago, researchers used mice and ferrets to study the strain afflicting U.S. poultry at the time, and concluded it was less likely to spread and less lethal than H5N1. Officials also said there was no evidence it was spreading among people.

Rare cases of animal infections are reported each year, so it’s not unexpected that a person was diagnosed with H5N2.

“If you’re a glass half full kind of person, you’d say, ‘This is the system doing exactly what it’s supposed to do: detecting and documenting these rare human infections, where years ago we were stumbling in the dark,'” said Matthew Ferrari, director of Penn State’s Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics.

Indeed, Mexico Health Secretary Jorge Alcocer said kidney and respiratory failure — not the virus — actually caused the man’s death.

Some experts said it is noteworthy that it’s not known how he caught the man caught H5N2.

“The fact there was no reported contact (with an infected bird) does raise the possibility that he was infected by someone else who visited him, but it’s premature to jump to those conclusions,” said Richard Webby, a flu researcher at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis.

What about other types of bird flu? At this point, H5N2 is still considered a minor threat compared to some of the other kinds of bird flu out there. Most human illnesses have been attributed to H7N9, H5N6 and H5N1 bird flu viruses.

From early 2013 through October 2017, five outbreaks of H7N9 were blamed for killing more than 600 people in China. And at least 18 people in China died during an outbreak of H5N6 in 2021, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

H5N1 was first identified in 1959, but didn’t really began to worry health officials until a Hong Kong outbreak in 1997 that involved severe human illnesses and deaths.

H5N1 cases have continued since then, the vast majority of them involving direct contact between people and infected animals. Globally, more than 460 human deaths have been identified since 2003, according to WHO statistics that suggest it can kill as many as half of the people reported to be infected.

Like other viruses, H5N1 as evolved over time, spawning newer versions of itself. In the last few years, the predominant version of the virus has spread quickly among a wide range of animals, but counts of human fatalities have slowed.
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seattle, washington — Retired Major General William Anders, the former Apollo 8 astronaut who took the iconic “Earthrise” photo showing the planet as a shadowed blue marble from space in 1968, was killed Friday when the plane he was piloting alone plummeted into the waters off the San Juan Islands in Washington state. He was 90. His son, Greg Anders, confirmed the death to The Associated Press.

“The family is devastated,” Greg Anders said. “He was a great pilot, and we will miss him terribly.”

Anders said the photo was his most significant contribution to the space program, given the ecological and philosophical impact it had, along with making sure the Apollo 8 command module and service module worked.

A report came in around 11:40 a.m. local time that an older-model plane had crashed into the water and had sunk near the north end of Jones Island, San Juan County Sheriff Eric Peter said.

Only the pilot was on board the Beech A45 airplane at the time, according to the Federal Aviation Association.

William Anders said in a 1997 NASA oral history interview that he didn’t think the Apollo 8 mission was risk-free but there were important national, patriotic and exploration reasons for going ahead.

He estimated there was about a one-in-three chance that the crew wouldn’t make it back and the same chance the mission would be a success and the same chance that the mission wouldn’t start to begin with. He said he suspected Christopher Columbus sailed with worse odds.

He recounted how the Earth looked fragile and seemingly physically insignificant yet was home.

“We’d been going backwards and upside down, didn’t really see the Earth or the sun, and when we rolled around and came around and saw the first Earthrise,” he said. “That certainly was, by far, the most impressive thing. To see this very delicate, colorful orb which to me looked like a Christmas tree ornament coming up over this very stark, ugly lunar landscape really contrasted.”

The National Transportation Safety Board and FAA are investigating the crash.
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President Joe Biden stressed the need for transatlantic unity during his speech at the monument overlooking the beach where, 80 years ago, Allied troops fought a battle that delivered a decisive blow to Nazi aggression. VOA White House Correspondent Anita Powell reports from Pointe du Hoc, France.
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White House — U.S. President Joe Biden is aiming to persuade leaders of the world’s seven richest economies on a plan that could potentially provide up to $50 billion in loans for Ukraine’s war effort by using interest from frozen Russian assets held in Western financial institutions.

The U.S. leader wants his G7 counterparts to endorse the plan at their upcoming summit in Apulia, Italy, set to kick off June 13. But before G7 partners can get on board, much of the scheme’s details must first be ironed out, a source familiar with Biden’s plan told VOA. If agreed upon, the loan could be disbursed as early as during the next few months.

Most of the approximately $280 billion Russian assets frozen by Western financial institutions following Moscow’s 2022 invasion are in Europe, the bulk of which are in Belgium, France and Germany.

In April, Biden signed legislation allowing Washington to seize the roughly $5 billion in Russian assets that had been immobilized in U.S. financial institutions.

Resisting pressure from the U.S. and Ukraine to seize the assets directly, EU officials in May agreed on a more restrained plan of using only the interest generated by these assets, an estimated $3 billion a year or more.

But the Biden administration is pushing for a more aggressive scheme. In simple terms, a loan of up to $50 billion will be issued up front to Ukraine by Western allies, which will be paid back using the assets’ interest income in the years to come.

If not the G7, the U.S. — possibly with other allies including Canada, the United Kingdom, Japan and the EU — would issue the loan jointly and be entitled to a share of interest generated by the assets, the source said.

Details of the plan are unclear as intensive diplomacy continues to work out the legal and technical requirements. But G7 finance ministers broadly agreed to support the principles of the plan during their meeting in May.

The group’s discussions have focused on what can be done to unlock the value of Russians’ frozen assets for the benefit of the Ukrainian people, said U.S. Treasury Deputy Secretary Wally Adeyemo.

“They talked through a number of options that will allow us to make sure that Ukraine has access to the money you need to not only invest in the economy but to invest in defense,” Adeyemo told VOA. “And my expectation is that as we get to the leaders meeting, those leaders are going to endorse some of those options.”

The push is driven in part by the situation in the battlefield, where Moscow’s forces have made strategic advances north and north-east of Kharkiv, the second biggest city in Ukraine. Russia has also intensified attacks along the eastern front.

American taxpayers’ reluctance to fund the war is another driving factor. Although the U.S. Congress in April agreed on a $61 billion aid package for Ukraine, Republican opposition had stalled its passage.

In his Friday meeting with Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Paris on the sidelines of D-Day celebrations in France, Biden apologized to the Ukrainian president for “those weeks of not knowing what was going to pan — in terms of funding,” blaming “very conservative members who were holding it up.” He pledged to continue to support Zelenskyy’s war efforts.

But as other G7 countries face the same war funding fatigue among their constituents, Biden began working with allies and partners to make Russia pay instead of burdening taxpayers, in a way that maintains unity without crossing any country’s red lines, the source said.

While there is an overall agreement to give Ukraine as much as possible, as early as possible, there are challenging legal and regulatory implications of lending based upon the anticipated returns on frozen assets, said Kristine Berzina, managing director of Geostrategy North at the German Marshall Fund think tank.

“How do you lend against the anticipated profits of the assets, how does that fit into the existing sanctions regime, and how long will those assets truly be frozen?” she pointed out to VOA as the key issues at stake. “How can you guarantee that the sanctions which freeze these assets do not get changed by the Europeans before that 50 billion is provided?”

Moscow has threatened retaliation. In May, President Vladimir Putin signed a decree that Russia will identify U.S. property, including securities, that could be used as compensation for losses sustained as a result of any seizure of frozen Russian assets in the U.S.

While some Western countries may be concerned by the threat, others are worried about the precedent of using frozen assets under international law.

Biden will seek to allay those fears when he meets with G7 leaders next week. He faces many challenges, including the European Parliament this weekend, where hundreds of millions of voters from 27 nations could help decide on the continent’s struggle between unity and nationalism, as well as determine the fate of European support for Ukraine.

VOA’s Oksana Bedratenko contributed to this report.
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WASHINGTON — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will travel to the Middle East next week, the U.S. State Department said on Friday, as Washington tries to put pressure on Israel and Hamas to accept a cease-fire proposal that President Joe Biden laid out last week. 

In his eighth visit to the region since Hamas militants staged a terror attack in Israel on October 7, triggering the latest flare-up in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the top U.S. diplomat will visit Egypt, Israel, Jordan and Qatar and meet with their senior leaders. 

Blinken’s visit comes after Biden laid out a fresh cease-fire plan to end the 8-month-long war and at a time when tensions between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah have escalated in recent days, with both sides signaling a readiness for a bigger confrontation. 

“The Secretary will discuss how the ceasefire proposal would benefit both Israelis and Palestinians,” the State Department said in a statement. “He will underscore that it would alleviate suffering in Gaza, enable a massive surge in humanitarian assistance and allow Palestinians to return to their neighborhoods.” 

Talks mediated by Egypt, Qatar and others to arrange a cease-fire between Israel and the militant Hamas movement in the Gaza war have repeatedly stalled, with each side blaming the other for the lack of progress. 

The cease-fire, the State Department said, would also unlock the possibility of achieving calm along Israel’s northern border with Lebanon and set conditions for further integration between Israel and its Arab neighbors. 

“The Secretary will also continue to reiterate the need to prevent the conflict from escalating further,” it added. 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday that Israel was prepared for strong action in the north. He warned in December that Beirut would be turned “into Gaza” if Hezbollah started an all-out war. 

The Israel-Hamas war began when Hamas-led Palestinian fighters attacked southern Israel from Gaza, killing more than 1,200 people, and seizing more than 250 as hostages, according to Israeli tallies. 

Israel’s ground and air campaign in Gaza has left the territory in ruins, led to widespread starvation, and killed more than 36,000 people, according to Palestinian health authorities. 

While in Jordan, Blinken will attend a conference on humanitarian response to Gaza, the department said. 
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Taipei, Taiwan — China is pushing back against criticism by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy this week, denying claims it is pressuring countries not to attend next weekend’s peace conference in Switzerland and putting forward its own peace plan for the Ukraine war.   

After Zelenskyy accused China of “working hard” to prevent countries from participating in the summit at the Shangri-La Dialogue on June 2, Beijing denied the Ukrainian president’s allegation Monday, saying Beijing remains “firmly committed to promoting talks for peace” and hopes the summit would not be “used to create bloc confrontation.”  

“Not attending it does not mean not supporting peace,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning told reporters Monday.  

“China has never sat idly by or fueled the flames, still less profiteered from the conflict. Instead, we have worked relentlessly for a cease-fire, and this has been highly commended by various parties, including Russia and Ukraine,” she added.   

Apart from pushing back against Zelenskyy’s criticism, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi also put forward a Chinese peace plan Tuesday. 

“China believes that the world now needs to make more objective, balanced, positive, and constructive voices on the Ukraine crisis,” he told a joint press conference Tuesday with Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan.  

Wang pointed to “the six common understandings on political settlement of the Ukraine Crisis,” a document jointly issued by China and Brazil last month, as Beijing’s plan to facilitate the peace process for the Ukraine war.  

“In just one week, 45 countries from five continents have responded positively to the ‘six common understandings’ in different ways,” Wang said, noting that China will decide whether to join the “many summits” around the world independently. 

Some analysts say Beijing’s reluctance to join the Switzerland session, which Zelenskyy said during a press conference in Singapore will be attended by 106 countries and at least 70 heads of state, is an attempt to avoid being attacked during the conference for supporting Russia.  

“Beijing prefers to avoid this conference and instead, proposes its own vision to demonstrate that it is still committed to promoting peace,” Zhiqun Zhu, an expert on Chinese foreign policy at Bucknell University, told VOA in a written response.  

Other experts say Beijing also sees many Western countries that plan to attend the conference in Switzerland, including the United States, as lacking the sincerity to resolve the Ukraine war peacefully.   

“Beijing thinks Western countries that are attending the summit are not sincerely pro-peace,” said Temur Umarov, a fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, adding that China says its vision for resolving the Ukraine conflict, which is through a peace process that should involve both Ukraine and Russia, is not compatible with that put forward by the West. 

“Beijing claims that the West is not sincere [about resolving the Ukraine War] and that there is a dual agenda in the West’s peace conference,” he told VOA by phone.   

Shift in Ukraine’s view of China   

While Beijing continues to portray itself as a neutral actor in the Ukraine war, Zelenskyy’s rare public criticism of China reflects a shift in Ukraine’s view of China. During a press conference at the Shangri-La Dialogue, Zelenskyy said it is unfortunate that China “is an instrument in the hands of [Russian President Vladimir] Putin.”   

Some analysts say Zelenskyy’s comments in Singapore show that Ukraine’s initial hope that China would be neutral in the war is diminishing.   

“One might say that there were some hopes in Kyiv’s leadership that Beijing would be neutral with regard to the war, [but] these hopes are now gone,” said Volodymyr Dubovyk, director of the Center for International Studies at the Odesa Mechnikov National University in Ukraine.  

While the shift in Zelenskyy’s tone toward China is notable, Dubovyk told VOA it is unclear whether this will have a lasting impact on Ukraine-China relations.  

“One might safely forecast that Beijing’s entanglement with Russia is only going to deepen, thus antagonizing Ukraine, yet China may still come [up] with a certain peace plan that would be less pro-Russian and more balanced,” he said.  

Following the spat between Beijing and Kyiv, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Sun Weidong and Ukrainian First Deputy Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha held political consultations in Beijing on Wednesday regarding the war and bilateral relations. 

While Sun reiterated Beijing’s commitment to advance exchanges with Kyiv, Sybiha urged China to take part in the summit, arguing that Beijing could “make a practical contribution to achieving a just and lasting peace in Ukraine.”   

Umarov said Ukraine hopes to secure China’s participation in the summit because of Beijing’s influence in the world and over Russia.  

“The way to legitimize the summit is to have as many participants as possible, [but] I doubt Beijing will change its position on the war in Ukraine,” he told VOA.   

As Zelenskyy keeps urging countries to join the session, Zhu said he thinks China’s absence would reduce the importance of the conference.  

“With the absence of Russia and China, the summit’s significance will be reduced,” he told VOA.   
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Paul Hughes, a former hockey coach from Canada, arrived in Kharkiv in March 2022. In the two years since, he and other volunteers — some local, some foreign — have been helping Ukrainians internally displaced by the war survive. Anna Kosstutschenko has his story. Videographer: Pavel Suhodolskiy.
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Immigrants make up almost 14% of US population
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ST. PETERSBURG, Russia — Cut off from the West, Russia is pitching its $2 trillion economy to giants like China and Saudi Arabia and longer-term prospects like Zimbabwe and Afghanistan at its premier investment forum in St. Petersburg, which was founded by the czars as a window to Europe.

The war in Ukraine has led to the biggest upheaval in Russia’s relations with the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, and Western sanctions have forced a once-in-a-century revolution in Russia’s economic relations.

Since Peter the Great laid the foundations of the modern Russian state and made St. Petersburg the capital in the early 18th century, Russia’s rulers have looked to the West as a source of technology, investment and ideas.

The 2022 invasion of Ukraine, though, has forced President Vladimir Putin to pivot towards Asia and the rest of the non-Western world amid what the Kremlin says amounts to an economic blockade by the United States and its European allies.

Western sanctions have not torpedoed Russia’s economy, however, and Moscow has nurtured ties with China, major regional powers in the Middle East and across Africa and Latin America.

It is less clear, though, how much cash these countries are prepared to invest in Russia’s economy, and at what price. No blockbuster deals have been announced so far.

But Russian officials say it is just beginning — and that relations with the West are ruined for a generation.

Bolivian President Luis Arce, who will join Putin at the main session of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, said he wanted to share the experience of Bolivia’s new economic model — with a big state — since 2006.

“We have our own economic model, which we have been implementing since 2006, and we want to share this experience,” Arce told Putin.

Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa is attending, as are 45 other foreign officials including the Saudi energy minister, Oman’s minister of trade and commerce, and a senior Taliban official.

Russian trade with Zimbabwe is tiny though — just $168 million in 2023 versus Russian-European Union trade of $300 billion in the year before Russia invaded Ukraine.

Gone from the forum are the Western investors and investment bankers who once flocked to secure a slice of Russia’s vast mineral wealth and one of Europe’s biggest consumer markets. Reuters saw no major Western companies at the forum.

Largely gone too are the 1990s oligarchs who made fortunes wheeling and dealing in the chaos of a collapsing superpower.

In Putin’s Russia the main arbiter is the state, controlled by the former Cold War spies and technocrats in his entourage.

Chinese dragon

State-controlled banks such as Sberbank, VTB and VEB have massive stands, as do Russian regions and ministries along with resource giants such as Gazprom Neft and Novatek.

In a sign of the times, Alfa Bank’s stand was a vast Chinese inflated dragon adorned with Chinese characters and an assertion that Alfa was “the best bank for business with China.”

Chinese luxury car brand Hongqi featured armored vehicles. A delegation from the Taliban, still officially banned in Russia, toured the stands. The Taliban originally drew members from fighters who, with U.S. support, repelled Soviet forces in the 1980s.

The theme of the forum is the statement: “The foundation of a multipolar world is the formation of new points of growth.”

While Russia’s economy has shown resilience in the face of stringent Western sanctions, prices are rising as defense spending balloons.

In dollar terms, the economy is about the same size it was a decade ago, and Putin is locked into an economic war with the West, whose financial might is at least 25 times bigger than Russia’s on a nominal GDP basis.

From many foreign attendees there was praise for Russia. “This year’s event has grown in size… There are a lot of opportunities,” Nebeolisa Anako, an official from Nigeria, told Reuters.

“The West may be actually isolating themselves as they are a minority in the world, although a very important part of the world. It is always better to cooperate with other parts of the world.”

Other officials from Africa and the Middle East echoed those words.

Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman met Putin’s energy point man, Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak, at the forum.

Novak said “friendly countries” took the vast majority of its oil exports and that about 70% of it was paid for in national currencies.

“We already supply 95% of oil and petroleum products to friendly countries this year in four months,” Novak said.
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PARIS — U.S. President Joe Biden will meet Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Paris on Friday with a package of $225 million in weapons on the sidelines of D-Day anniversary events.

It will be their first face-to-face talks since Zelenskyy visited Washington in December, when the two wrestled with Republican opposition to more Ukraine aid. They will meet again next week at a G7 summit in Italy, as rich nations discuss using Russian assets frozen after the Ukraine invasion to provide $50 billion for Ukraine.

Zelenskyy told Reuters last month that Western countries are taking too long to make decisions about aid.

Biden in remarks in Normandy, France, on Thursday drew a link between the World War Two battle against tyranny and Ukraine’s war with Russia, calling Russian President Vladimir Putin a “dictator.”

The $225 million in new weaponry includes artillery rounds and air defense interceptors, among other items, sources said.

Ukraine has struggled to defend the Kharkiv region after an offensive launched by Moscow on May 10 has overrun some villages.

Biden last week shifted his position and decided Ukraine could launch U.S.-supplied weapons at military targets inside Russia that are supporting the Kharkiv offensive.

The United States is trying to catch up with Ukraine’s weaponry needs, deputy national security adviser Jon Finer said in Washington on Thursday.

“If there were two things that we could provide an infinite number of to the Ukrainians to try to turn the tide in this war, it would be artillery munitions and air defense interceptors,” but the U.S. lacked supply, Finer told a forum by the Center for a New American Security.

Outside the physical battlefield, the Russia-Ukraine war is “also a competition that takes place in our factories, the factories in Europe, the factories in Ukraine,” he said.

Reaching consensus on the frozen assets has been complicated, Daleep Singh, deputy national security adviser for international economics, told the same group.

“We’re waist-deep in the sausage-making of trying to strike a deal,” said Singh, who said he was heading back to Italy on Friday to continue the negotiations.
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Wars in the Middle East and Europe — and the U.S. rivalry with China — will remain key issues to U.S. diplomats no matter who wins the November presidential elections. White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara looks at the foreign policy priorities of the two candidates, Joe Biden and Donald Trump.
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A small number of U.S. World War II veterans, all in their late 90s and early 100s, returned to Normandy, France, 80 years after the largest invasion in history. VOA’s Kane Farabaugh reports.
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Washington — Steve Bannon, a longtime ally of former President Donald Trump, must report to prison by July 1 to serve his four-month sentence for defying a subpoena from the House committee that investigated the U.S. Capitol insurrection, a federal judge ruled Thursday.

U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols in Washington granted prosecutors’ request to make Bannon begin serving his prison term after a three-judge panel of a federal appeals court last month upheld his contempt of Congress conviction. But Nichols also made clear in his ruling that Bannon could seek a stay of his order, which could delay his surrender date.

Outside the courthouse, Bannon told reporters: “I’ve got great lawyers, and we’re going to go all the way to the Supreme Court if we have to.”

Nichols, who was nominated to the bench by Trump, a Republican, had initially allowed Bannon to remain free while he fought his conviction. But the panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit said all of Bannon’s challenges lack merit.

Bannon was convicted in 2022 of two counts of contempt of Congress: one for refusing to sit for a deposition with the Jan. 6 House Committee and the other for refusing to provide documents related to his involvement in Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 presidential election loss to Democrat Joe Biden.

Bannon’s lawyer at trial argued that the charges were politically motivated and that the former adviser didn’t ignore the subpoena but was still engaged in good-faith negotiations with the congressional committee when he was charged.

The defense has said Bannon had been acting on the advice of his attorney at the time, who told him that the subpoena was invalid because the committee would not allow a Trump lawyer in the room and that Bannon could not determine what documents or testimony he could provide because Trump has asserted executive privilege.

Defense lawyer David Schoen told the judge the defense had planned to ask the full U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court, if necessary, to review the matter. Schoen said it would be unfair to send Bannon to prison now because he would have already completed his sentence before those rulings could be handed down.

“That might serve a political agenda; but it would be a grave injustice,” Schoen wrote in court papers.

A second Trump aide, trade advisor Peter Navarro, was also convicted of contempt of Congress and reported to prison in March to serve his four-month sentence.

Navarro had maintained that he couldn’t cooperate with the committee because Trump had invoked executive privilege. But courts have rejected that argument, finding Navarro couldn’t prove Trump had actually invoked it.

The House Jan. 6 committee’s final report asserted that Trump criminally engaged in a “multi-part conspiracy” to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 election and failed to act to stop his supporters from attacking the Capitol, concluding an extraordinary 18-month investigation into the former president and the violent insurrection two years ago.
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Boca Chica, Texas — SpaceX’s mega Starship rocket completed its first full test flight Thursday, returning to Earth without exploding after blasting off from Texas. 

The previous three test flights ended in explosions of the rocket and the spacecraft. This time, both managed to splash down in a controlled fashion. 

The world’s largest and most powerful rocket — almost 121 meters tall — was empty as it soared above the Gulf of Mexico and headed east on a flight to the Indian Ocean. 

Minutes after Thursday morning’s liftoff, the first-stage booster separated from the spacecraft and splashed into the gulf precisely as planned, after firing its engines. 

An hour later, live views showed parts of the spacecraft breaking away during the intense heat of reentry, but it remained intact enough to transmit data all the way to its targeted splashdown site in the Indian Ocean. 

“And we have splashdown!” SpaceX launch commentator Kate Tice announced from Mission Control at company headquarters in California. 

It was a critical milestone in the company’s plan to eventually return Starship’s Super Heavy booster to its launch site for reuse. 

SpaceX came close to avoiding explosion in March, but lost contact with the spacecraft as it careened out of space and blew up short of its goal. The booster also ruptured in flight, a quarter-mile above the gulf. 

Last year’s two test flights ended in explosions shortly after blasting off from the southern tip of Texas near the Mexican border. The first one cratered the pad at Boca Chica Beach and hurled debris for thousands of feet (meters). 

SpaceX upgraded the software and made some rocket-flyback changes to improve the odds. The Federal Aviation Administration signed off Tuesday on this fourth demo, saying all safety requirements had been met. 

Starship is designed to be fully reusable. That’s why SpaceX wants to control the booster’s entry into the gulf and the spacecraft’s descent into the Indian Ocean — it’s intended as practice for planned future landings. Nothing is being recovered from Thursday’s flight. 

NASA has ordered a pair of Starships for two moon-landing missions by astronauts, on tap for later this decade. Each moon crew will rely on NASA’s own rocket and capsule to leave Earth, but meet up with Starship in lunar orbit for the ride down to the surface. 

SpaceX already is selling tourist trips around the moon. The first private lunar customer, a Japanese tycoon, pulled out of the trip with his entourage last week, citing the oft-delayed schedule. 

SpaceX’s founder and CEO has grander plans: Musk envisions fleets of Starships launching people and the infrastructure necessary to build a city on Mars. 
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UTAH BEACH, France — As the sun sets on the D-Day generation, it will rise again Thursday over the Normandy beaches where the waves long ago washed away the blood and boot-steps of its soldiers, but where their exploits that helped end Adolf Hitler’s tyranny are being remembered by the next generations, seeing war again in Europe, in Ukraine.

Ever-dwindling numbers of World War II veterans who have pilgrimaged back to France, and Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine that has dashed hopes that lives and cities wouldn’t again be laid to waste in Europe, are making the always poignant anniversaries of the June 6, 1944, Allied landings even more so 80 years on.

As now-centenarian veterans revisit old memories and fallen comrades buried in Normandy graves, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s presence at D-Day commemorations with world leaders — including U.S. President Joe Biden — who are supporting his country’s fight against Russia’s invasion will inevitably fuse together World War II’s awful past with the fraught present on Thursday.

The break of dawn almost eight decades exactly after Allied troops waded ashore under hails of gunfire on five code-named beaches — Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword — will kick off a day of remembrance by Allied nations now standing together again behind Ukraine — and with World War II ally Russia not invited by host France. It cited Russia’s “war of aggression against Ukraine that has intensified in recent weeks” for the snub.

With the dead and wounded on both sides in Ukraine estimated in the hundreds of thousands, commemorations for the more than 4,400 Allied dead on D-Day and many tens of thousands more, including French civilians, killed in the ensuing Battle of Normandy are tinged with concerns that World War II lessons are being lost.

“There are things worth fighting for,” said World War II veteran Walter Stitt, who fought in tanks and turns 100 in July, as he visited Omaha Beach this week. “Although I wish there was another way to do it than to try to kill each other.”

“We’ll learn one of these days, but I won’t be around for that,” he said.

Conscious of the inevitability that major D-Day anniversaries will soon take place without World War II veterans, huge throngs of aficionados in uniforms and riding vehicles of the time, and tourists soaking up the spectacle, have flooded Normandy for the 80th anniversary.

The fair-like atmosphere fueled by World War II-era jeeps and trucks tearing down hedge-rowed lanes so deadly for Allied troops who fought dug-in German defenders, and of reenactors playing at war on sands where D-Day soldiers fell, leave open the question of what meaning anniversaries will have once the veterans are gone.

But at the 80th, they’re the VIPs of commemorations across the Normandy coast where the largest-ever land, sea and air armada punctured Hitler’s defenses in Western Europe and helped precipitate his downfall 11 months later.

Those who traveled to Normandy include women who were among the millions who built bombers, tanks and other weaponry and played other vital World War II roles that were long overshadowed by the combat exploits of men.

“We weren’t doing it for honors and awards. We were doing it to save our country. And we ended up helping save the world,” said 98-year-old Anna Mae Krier, who worked as a riveter building B-17 and B-29 bombers.

Feted wherever they go in wheelchairs and walking with canes, veterans are using their voices to repeat their message they hope will live eternal: Never forget.

“To know the amount of people who were killed here, just amazing,” 98-year-old Allan Chatwin, who served with the U.S. Navy in the Pacific, said as he visited Omaha, the deadliest of the Allied beaches on D-Day.

He quickly added: “I don’t know that amazing is the word.”
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