RIYADMEDIA

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ATHENS — Hundreds of firefighters struggled Saturday to contain wildfires fanned by gale force winds on two Greek islands and in other parts of Greece, as authorities warned many regions face a high risk of new blazes. 

More than 30 firefighters backed by two aircraft and five helicopters were battling a wildfire burning on the island of Andros in the Aegean, away from tourist resorts, where four communities were evacuated as a precaution. 

“More firefighters [are] expected on the island later in the day,” a fire services official told Reuters, adding there were no reports of damage or injuries. 

Wildfires are common in Greece, but they have become more devastating in recent years amid hotter and drier summers that scientists link to climate change. A wildfire near Athens last week forced dozens to flee their homes; authorities said they believed arson and hot, dry conditions were to blame. 

Meteorologists say the latest fires are the first time that the country has experienced “hot-dry-windy” conditions so early in the summer. 

“I can’t remember another year facing such conditions so early, in early and mid-June,” meteorologist Thodoris Giannaros told state TV. 

On Friday, a 55-year-old man died after being injured in a blaze in the region of Ilia on Greece’s Peloponnese peninsula, as several fires burned on Greece’s southern tip. 

Several hundred firefighters have been deployed to battle more than 70 forest fires across the country since Friday. High winds and hot temperatures will extend the risk into Sunday, the fire service said. 

Earlier Saturday, firefighters tamed a forest fire on the island of Salamina, in the Saronic Gulf west of Athens, and another about 30 kilometers (19 miles) east of the capital. 

After forest fires last year forced 19,000 people to flee the island of Rhodes and killed 20 in the northern mainland, Greece has scaled up its preparations this year by hiring more staff and stepping up training.
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Washington — The Biden administration will again allow Iran to run absentee voter stations on U.S. soil for next week’s Iranian presidential election, VOA has learned, prompting the Islamic republic’s critics to denounce the plan as absurd and shameful.

Iranian Foreign Ministry official Alireza Mahmoudi told state media on Sunday that Tehran is planning to set up more than 30 ballot stations across the United States for the June 28 vote to replace Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, who died in a helicopter crash last month.

Mahmoudi said ballot boxes for Iranian absentee voters would be set up at the Iranian Interests Section of the Pakistani embassy in Washington and in New York but did not identify other locations.

Iranian state media say the United States is home to the largest proportion of overseas-based Iranians at 30%. The U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey estimates there are about half a million people born in Iran or of Iranian origin in the U.S., while the Iranian American nonprofit group National Union for Democracy in Iran, or NUFDI, says it has a higher estimate of more than 1 million.

Canada and Turkey follow with 12% shares of the Iranian diaspora, according to Iranian state media. Mahmoudi said Iran is arranging absentee voting in other diaspora locations as well.

In a statement reported exclusively by VOA, the U.S. State Department said on Friday it has no expectation that Iran’s presidential election will be free or fair. The Islamic republic’s ruling clerics permit only loyalists of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to run for offices such as president and parliament, which are subservient to him on key policy issues.

Iran’s last parliamentary and presidential elections, in March and 2021, respectively, drew record-low official turnouts, with the lack of choices leaving much of the electorate disinterested.

Opponents of Iran’s clerical rulers at home and abroad repeatedly have called for boycotts of Iranian elections, which they view as shams, and they have done so again for the June 28 vote. They also have noted that the Islamic republic seeks legitimacy for its 45-year authoritarian rule by trying to boost turnout for such elections.

VOA asked the State Department how authorizing ballot stations in the U.S. for Iran, whose poor human rights record it has strongly criticized, is consistent with the U.S. view of Iranian elections as neither free nor fair.

A spokesperson responded by noting that Iran set up U.S.-based ballot stations for previous presidential elections, in 2021 and 2017, with approval from the Biden administration and its predecessor, the Trump administration, respectively.

“This is nothing new,” the spokesman said, in reference to the planned ballot stations for next week’s vote.

Richard Goldberg, a senior adviser to the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies, countered that permitting Iran to engage in another round of absentee balloting on U.S. soil is a “theater of the absurd.”

In a statement to VOA, Goldberg wrote: “How and why we would facilitate such a charade for a state sponsor of terrorism that is hunting Americans every day is beyond me.” He also questioned who would be operating Iran’s ballot stations in the U.S. and what relationship they have to the Iranian government.

VOA put those questions to Iran’s U.N. mission, which responded by saying it declines to comment because it “believes the issue is not of interest to an American audience.”

A day before Iran’s 2021 presidential election, the Iranian Interests Section in Washington published an online chart showing the addresses of ballot stations in 29 U.S. cities where Iranian citizens could vote. Besides the Interests Section, the other listed venues included 20 properties of U.S. and British hotel companies and eight Islamic centers. There was no indication of who operated the stations.

VOA contacted three hotels that hosted the 2021 ballot stations on Friday to ask if they were planning to host such stations again next week. Staff members who answered the phones at the Marriott Spring Hill Suites in Gaithersburg, Maryland, and at the Hilton Garden Inn Irvine-Orange County Airport in California said they had no record of such events on their schedules. A woman who answered the phone at the Comfort Inn Sandy Springs in Atlanta, Georgia, repeatedly hung up when asked if it is hosting an event next Friday.

Cameron Khansarinia, vice president of the Iranian American group NUFDI, told VOA that diaspora Iranians have a responsibility to protest the Islamic republic’s “shameful” absentee voter stations wherever they are set up.

In reference to those who operate and vote at the planned ballot stations, Khansarinia said, “While we should respect the physical safety of these individuals and U.S. law, they deserve to be publicly shamed for their absolutely amorality.”

VOA also asked the State Department whether U.S. authorities have granted licenses to businesses and nonprofit groups that plan to host the Iranian ballot stations to exempt them from U.S. sanctions that generally prohibit the provision of commercial services to Iran.

The spokesperson replied, “Foreign governments carrying out election-related activities in the U.S. must do so in a manner consistent with U.S. law and regulations.”

The Treasury Department did not respond to similar questions sent by VOA on Tuesday, regarding the granting of licenses for Iranian ballot stations.

Brian O’Toole, a former senior adviser in the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, or OFAC, told VOA it is a gray area.

O’Toole, a nonresident senior fellow at the Washington-based Atlantic Council, identified two U.S. regulations, OFAC’s General License E and the Code of Federal Regulations section 560.545, as potentially permitting election activity and democracy-building in Iran.

“Despite the Iranian government’s issues with elections, the U.S. has a clear interest in promoting democracy,” said O’Toole, who managed OFAC’s sanctions program during former President Barack Obama’s administration.

“What this administration probably would lean toward is the principle that people who are eligible to vote [in Iran’s election] should make the decision as to whether they should or should not,” he said.
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LAS VEGAS, NEW MEXICO — Heavy rain and flash flood warnings in the U.S. state of New Mexico prompted officials to order mandatory evacuations Saturday, with shelters set up for displaced residents.

The National Weather Service announced a flash flood emergency on Friday night through early Saturday. The impacted areas included the city of Las Vegas and communities near Albuquerque.

Up to 5 centimeters (2 inches) of rain had fallen by late Friday, with additional rainfall up to 3.8 centimeters (1.5 inches) expected overnight, the weather service said.

There was flash flooding with multiple road closures on the north and west sides of Las Vegas, the weather service said.

The Las Vegas municipal government announced mandatory evacuations of parts of the city in social media posts, warning residents to prepare for overnight stays. The city said it established shelters for residents on the west and east sides of the city.

The city government asked residents to limit nonessential water use, while also clarifying that online rumors suggesting the city’s dams had broken were false and that the dams “are currently intact.”

New Mexico also suffered devastating wildfires this week that killed at least two people and forced thousands to flee from the flames. The South Fork and Salt fires in south-central New Mexico destroyed or damaged an estimated 1,400 structures. FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell and New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham planned to tour the disaster area Saturday.
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Xichang, China — A French-Chinese satellite blasted off Saturday on a hunt for the mightiest explosions in the universe, in a notable example of cooperation between a Western power and the Asian giant.

Developed by engineers from both countries, the Space Variable Objects Monitor, or SVOM, will seek out gamma-ray bursts, the light from which has traveled billions of light years to reach Earth.

The 930-kilogram (2,050-pound) satellite carrying four instruments — two French, two Chinese — took off around 3 p.m. aboard a Chinese Long March 2-C rocket from a space base in Xichang, in the southwestern province of Sichuan, AFP journalists witnessed.

Gamma-ray bursts generally occur after the explosion of huge stars — those more than 20 times as big as the sun — or the fusion of compact stars.

The extremely bright cosmic beams can give off a blast of energy equivalent to over a billion billion suns.

Observing them is like “looking back in time, as the light from these objects takes a long time to reach us,” Ore Gottlieb, an astrophysicist at the Flatiron Institute’s Center for Astrophysics in New York, told AFP.

“Several mysteries”

The rays carry traces of the gas clouds and galaxies they pass through on their journey through space — valuable data for better understanding the history and evolution of the universe.

“SVOM has the potential to unravel several mysteries in the field of [gamma-ray bursts], including detecting the most distant GRBs in the universe, which correspond to the earliest GRBs,” Gottlieb said.

The most distant bursts identified to date were produced just 630 million years after the Big Bang — when the universe was in its infancy.

“We are … interested in gamma-ray bursts for their own sake, because they are very extreme cosmic explosions which allow us to better understand the death of certain stars,” said Frederic Daigne, an astrophysicist at the Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris.

“All of this data makes it possible to test the laws of physics with phenomena that are impossible to reproduce in the laboratory on Earth,” he said.

Once analyzed, the data could help to better understand the composition of space, the dynamics of gas clouds or other galaxies.

The project stems from a partnership between the French and Chinese space agencies, as well as other scientific and technical groups from both nations.

Space cooperation at this level between the West and China is uncommon, especially since the United States banned all collaboration between NASA and Beijing in 2011.

Race against time

“U.S. concerns on technology transfer have inhibited U.S. allies from collaborating with the Chinese very much, but it does happen occasionally,” said Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in the United States.

In 2018, China and France jointly launched CFOSAT, an oceanographic satellite mainly used in marine meteorology.

And several European countries have taken part in China’s Chang’e lunar exploration program.

So, while SVOM is “by no means unique,” it remains “significant” in the context of space collaboration between China and the West, said McDowell.

Once in orbit 625 kilometers (388 miles) above the Earth, the satellite will send its data back to observatories.

The main challenge is that gamma-ray bursts are extremely brief, leaving scientists in a race against time to gather information.

Once it detects a burst, SVOM will send an alert to a team on duty around the clock.

Within five minutes, they will have to rev up a network of telescopes on the ground that will align precisely with the axis of the burst’s source to make more detailed observations.
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KYIV, Ukraine — Russia launched a new barrage of missiles and drones in an overnight attack on Ukraine on Saturday, damaging energy facilities in the southeast and west of the country and injuring at least two energy workers, Ukrainian officials said.

Ukraine’s air defense shot down 12 of 16 missiles and all 13 drones launched by Russia in the second large strike this week, the air force said. The air alerts in Ukrainian regions lasted for several hours in the middle of the night.

National grid operator Ukrenergo said equipment at its facilities in Zaporizhzhia region in the southeast and Lviv region in the west were damaged by the strikes.

Two energy workers in the Zaporizhzhia region were wounded and taken to the hospital, it said.

Ivan Fedorov, Zaporizhzhia’s governor, said the fire broke out at an energy infrastructure facility in the region and further damage assessment was underway as repair brigades and emergency workers dealt with the attack.

“We can say for sure: the enemy will not stop. Ukraine needs air defense systems,” Fedorov said on the Telegram messaging app.

Moscow has said its air strikes against the Ukrainian energy infrastructure were in retaliation for Ukrainian drone attacks on the Russian territory.

Lviv regional Governor Maksym Kozytskyi said 67 firefighters and 12 special vehicles were involved in putting out the fire in his region on Ukraine’s Polish border. He said there were no casualties in the Lviv region.

Since March, Russian forces have intensified their bombardments of the Ukrainian power system, knocking out about half of the country’s available generating capacity and causing a severe energy crunch.

Despite warm summer weather, Ukrainian cities face scheduled energy cutoffs and the country’s electricity imports from its European neighbors are at record levels.
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SEOUL, South Korea — A nuclear-powered United States aircraft carrier arrived Saturday in South Korea for a three-way exercise stepping up their military training to cope with North Korean threats that escalated with its alignment with Russia.

The arrival of the USS Theodore Roosevelt strike group in Busan came a day after South Korea summoned the Russian ambassador to protest a pact reached between Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un this week that pledges mutual defense assistance in the event of war. South Korea says the deal poses a threat to its security and warned that it could consider sending arms to Ukraine to help fight off the Russian invasion as a response — a move that would surely ruin its relations with Moscow.

Following a meeting between their defense chiefs in Singapore earlier in June, the United States, South Korea and Japan announced Freedom Edge. The new multidomain exercise is aimed at sharpening the countries’ combined response in various areas of operation, including air, sea and cyberspace.

The Theodore Roosevelt strike group will participate in the exercise that is expected to start within June. South Korea’s military didn’t immediately confirm specific details of the training.

South Korea’s navy said in a statement that the arrival of the Theodore Roosevelt demonstrates the strong defense posture of the allies and “stern willingness to respond to advancing North Korean threats.” The carrier’s visit comes seven months after another U.S. aircraft carrier, the USS Carl Vinson, came to South Korea in a show of strength against the North.

The Theodore Roosevelt strike group also participated in a three-way exercise with South Korean and Japanese naval forces in April in the disputed East China Sea, where worries about China’s territorial claims are rising.

In the face of growing North Korean threats, the United States, South Korea and Japan have expanded their combined training and boosted the visibility of strategic U.S. military assets in the region, seeking to intimidate the North. The United States and South Korea have also been updating their nuclear deterrence strategies, with Seoul seeking stronger assurances that Washington would swiftly and decisively use its nuclear capabilities to defend its ally from a North Korean nuclear attack.
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PITTSBURGH — Last week in Parkland, Florida, wrecking equipment began demolishing the building at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School where a gunman’s rampage in 2018 ended with 17 people dead. As the rumble of destruction echoed, people in the community set to explaining exactly why ripping the building down was so meaningful — and so crucial.

From former student Bryan Lequerique: “It’s something that we all need. It’s time to bring an end to this very hurtful chapter in everyone’s lives.” And Eric Garner, a broadcasting and film teacher, said: “For 6½ years we have been looking at this monument to mass murder that has been on campus every day. … So coming down, that’s the monumental event.”

Parkland. Uvalde. Columbine. Sandy Hook. A supermarket in Buffalo. A church in South Carolina. A synagogue in Pittsburgh. A nightclub in Orlando, Florida. When violence comes to a public place, as it does all too often in our era, a delicate question lingers in the quiet afterward: What should be done with the buildings where blood was shed, where lives were upended, where loved ones were lost forever?

Which is the appropriate choice — the defiance of keeping them standing, or the deep comfort that can come with wiping them off the map? Is it best to keep pain right in front of us, or at a distance?

How different communities have approached the problem

This question has been answered differently over the years.

The most obvious example in recent history is the decision to preserve the concentration camps run by Nazi Germany during World War II where millions of Jews and others died — an approach consistent with the post-Holocaust mantras of “never forget” and “never again.” But that was an event of global significance, with meaning for both the descendants of survivors and the public at large.

For individual American communities, approaches have varied. Parkland and others chose demolition. In Pittsburgh, the Tree of Life synagogue, site of a 2018 shooting, was torn down to make way for a new sanctuary and memorial.

But the Tops Friendly Markets in Buffalo, New York, and the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, where racist mass shootings happened, both reopened. And Columbine High School still stands, though its library, where so much bloodshed occurred, was replaced after much impassioned debate. “Finding a balance between its function as a high school and the need for memorialization has been a long process,” former student Riley Burkhart wrote earlier this year in an essay.

What goes into these decisions? Not only emotion and heartbreak. Sometimes it’s simply a question of resources; not all school districts can afford to demolish and rebuild. Sometimes it’s about not wanting to give those who might support the shooter a place to focus their attention.

“Denying such opportunities for those who celebrate the persecution and deaths of those different from themselves is a perfectly sound reason to tear down buildings where mass killings occurred,” Daniel Fountain, a professor of history at Meredith College in North Carolina, said in a email.

Perhaps the most significant driving force, though, is the increasing discussion in recent years about the role of mental health.

“There are changing norms about things like trauma and closure that are at play that today encourage the notion of demolishing these spaces,” said Timothy Recuber, a sociologist at Smith College in Massachusetts and author of “Consuming Catastrophe: Mass Culture in America’s Decade of Disaster.”

For many years, he said, “the prevailing idea of how to get past a tragedy was to put your head down and push past it. Today, people are more likely to believe that having to return to the scene of the crime, so to speak, is liable to re-inflict harm.”

In Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill neighborhood, a fence masks the site where the Tree of Life synagogue stood until it was razed earlier this year, more than five years after a gunman killed 11 people in the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history.

David Michael Slater grew up across the street from the synagogue. He understands the ambivalence that can come with choosing whether to knock down.

“It’s easy to see why decision-makers might have chosen one path or the other. And to me, it seems presumptuous for anyone not part of, or directly affected by, the choice to quibble with it,” said Slater, who retired this month after 30 years of teaching middle and high school English. “That said, the decision to demolish such sites, when seen in the context of our escalating culture of erasure, should raise concern.”

The power of memory cuts both ways

From World War II to 9/11, the politics of American memory are powerful — and nowhere more intricate than in the case of mass shootings. The loss of loved ones, societal disagreements over gun laws and differing approaches to protecting children create a landscape where the smallest of issues can give rise to dozens of passionate and angry opinions.

To some, keeping a building standing is the ultimate defiance: You are not bowing to horror nor capitulating to those who caused it. You are choosing to continue in the face of unimaginable circumstances — a robust thread in the American narrative.

To others, the possibility of being retraumatized is central. Why, the thinking goes, should a building where people met violent ends continue to be a looming — literally — force in the lives of those who must go on?

It stands to reason, then, that a key factor in deciding the fates of such buildings coalesces around one question: Who is the audience?

“It’s not a simple choice of should we knock it down or renovate or let it be,” said Jennifer Talarico, a psychology professor at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania who studies how people form personal memories of public events.

“If we’re interested in the memories of the people who directly experienced the event, that physical space will serve as a specific and powerful reminder. But if we’re talking about remembering or commemorating an event for other people, those who did not experience it, that’s a slightly different calculus,” Talarico said. “Remembering and forgetting are both powerful forces.”

Ultimately, of course, there is a middle ground: eliminating the building itself but erecting a lasting memorial to those who were lost, as Uvalde and other communities have chosen. In that way, the virtues of mental health and memory can both be honored. Life can go on — not obliviously, but not impeded by a daily, visceral reminder of the heartbreak that once visited.

That approach sits well with Slater, who has contemplated such tragedies both from the standpoint of his hometown synagogue and the classrooms where he spent decades teaching and keeping kids safe.

“Like every problem in life that matters, simple answers are hard to come by,” Slater said. “If what replaces the Tree of Life, or Parkland, or the next defiled place of worship or learning or commerce, can be made to serve both as proof of our indomitable spirit and as memorialized evidence of what we strive to overcome, perhaps we can have the best of both worst worlds.”
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MADRID — A cruise ship rescued 68 migrants and found five bodies in a traditional fishing boat that was drifting off the Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean, Spain’s maritime rescue agency said Thursday.

It said an oil tanker traveling from northwestern Spain to Brazil spotted the drifting boat on Wednesday afternoon about 815 kilometers south of Tenerife, one of the seven islands in the Canaries archipelago.

Spanish authorities diverted the Insignia, a cruise ship, to rescue the migrants. The Insignia crew also recovered three of the five bodies on the fishing boat. The remains of two people were left at sea because of bad weather hampering their recovery.

The canoe-shaped boats, known as pirogues, are used by fishermen in Mauritania and Senegal.

It is unusual for cruise ships to make rescues of migrants on the Atlantic route, but the pirogue “was a long way out and they could be in danger,” said a maritime rescue’s spokesperson, speaking on condition of anonymity under departmental rules.

One of the passengers on the cruise ship, Steve Dilbeck from Huntington Beach, California, said they were not told about the dead.

“They did say the boat had been at sea for 20 days,” Dilbeck told The Associated Press in a text message. “We were diverted in the evening and took us two hours to reach them. They were brought on board and placed in the Insignia Lounge, which is where they have all their shows.”

“The area has been closed off to passengers. Told they had them remove their clothes and put on jumpsuits. Then they asked passengers if they had shoes and clothes they could donate, particularly for men. Their announcement said 62 were men, with the rest women and children,” he added.

The Marshall Islands-flagged Insignia had left Mindelo, a port city in Cape Verde, on Tuesday. Its operator, Miami-based Oceania Cruises, did not immediately comment on the rescue.

The Spanish rescue agency emailed a statement saying the Insignia is expected to arrive on Friday at the port of Santa Cruz, Tenerife.

The Canary Islands is a destination for boats packed with migrants departing from northwestern Africa on a perilous Atlantic route in search of a better life in Europe.

Spain’s Interior Ministry says a record 55,618 migrants arrived by boat — most of them in the Canary Islands — last year, almost double the number of the previous year. More than 23,000 have landed so far this year, the ministry said.

The Spanish nonprofit organization Caminando Fronteras (Walking Borders) says more than 5,000 migrants have died so far this year through May while trying to reach Spanish coasts, most of them on the Atlantic route. The figure for all 2023 was 6,600, more than double the number for 2022.
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washington — A new defense pact signed between Russia and North Korea this week publicly laid out Moscow’s willingness to engage in full-fledged military cooperation with Pyongyang, in contrast to their denials prior to the summit, analysts said.

Before Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Pyongyang for a summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Wednesday, it was already widely believed that Moscow was transferring military technology to Pyongyang for weapons upgrades.

In 2023, North Korea launched the solid-fuel Hwasong-18 missile for the first time. After analyzing the shape and color of the smoke at the tail of the missile, experts said these technologies appeared to have come from Russia.

At the same time, U.S. and other officials have accused North Korea of providing Russia with large quantities of conventional munitions for its war in Ukraine.

In September, Kim showed an interest in various military assets during his tour of Russia’s satellite launch site, fighter jet factory, and Pacific Fleet equipped with nuclear-capable bombers and hypersonic missiles.

Both Russia and North Korea denied any arms dealings between them prior to Putin’s visit to Pyongyang.

It is still uncertain exactly what types of military technology Moscow could provide Pyongyang.

But at the summit, Moscow made explicit its willingness to prop up Pyongyang’s military in return for continued flow of munitions to use against Ukraine, according to Bruce Bechtol Jr., a former intelligence officer at the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency and now a professor at Angelo State University in Texas.

In the Treaty of Comprehensive Strategic Partnership signed between Putin and Kim at their summit, the two agreed to set up “mechanisms” for undertaking “measures” for “strengthening the defense capabilities.”

They also agreed to develop and cooperate in the areas of science and technology, including space.

At a joint press conference following their summit, Putin said Moscow “does not rule out developing military and technical cooperation” with Pyongyang as agreed on in the pact in response to the U.S. and other NATO countries’ allowing weapons that they supplied to Ukraine being used against targets inside Russia.

Kim and Putin also agreed in the treaty to intervene militarily if either North Korea or Russia is invaded. But Bechtol said the most significant part of the treaty “is military cooperation.”

“We’re not going to invade North Korea. We’re not going to invade Russia. It’s all about the military cooperation, the arms deals” that have “no limits” and will be made in a “barter” form rather than in a “cash and carry” arrangement, he said.

Any arms exports or imports by North Korea would violate U.N. Security Council resolutions.

Putin trade proposal

In an article by Putin published by North Korea’s state-run newspaper Rodong Sinmun on Tuesday ahead of his arrival in Pyongyang, Putin said Russia and North Korea would develop a trade and payment system not controlled by the West. This would make it easier to circumvent international sanctions on both countries.

Joshua Stanton, a Washington-based attorney who helped draft the North Korea Sanctions and Policy Enforcement Act of 2016, said, “Russia and North Korea have been talking about setting up ruble-based and renminbi-based payment systems for at least a decade.”

He continued: “It never worked before. It would probably violate U.N. sanctions, and if our Treasury Department is willing to impose secondary sanctions on the banks that facilitate it, it will fail again.”

Moscow and Pyongyang are likely to exchange military hardware using railways rather than sea routes to avoid “any kind of interdiction,” said David Maxwell, vice president of the Center for Asia Pacific Strategy. He said the idea of interdiction could be discussed when Washington, Seoul and Tokyo meet on the sidelines of a NATO summit in July.

Putin said at a press conference in Pyongyang this week that Russian Railways will participate in the upgrade of the Khasan-Rajin railway crossing between the two countries.

‘High intensity of commitment’

Even without the treaty, military cooperation — including arms transfers from Russia to North Korea — was likely to have gone forward, according to Bechtol and other analysts.

“I frankly don’t think that the treaty makes a huge difference,” said Michael Kimmage, who from 2014 to 2016 served on the Secretary’s Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. State Department, where he held the Russia-Ukraine portfolio.

“It’s signaling a high intensity of commitment” and “a longevity of commitment,” which “in and of itself is quite significant,” but “I don’t think the treaty itself is that dramatic of a turning point,” he said.

Bruce Bennett, a senior defense analyst at the RAND Corporation, said, “It is hard to imagine this new agreement makes it easier for Russia to transfer military technologies to North Korea, given the transfers in recent years of Iskander missile technology, liquid oxygen and petroleum fuel for satellite launchers, repair of satellite launcher problems, GPS jammers, and 24 mm MRL precision guidance.”

He continued: “I think the bottom line is not the greater feasibility of weapons technology transfers but the Russian government’s greater political willingness to make the transfers.”

Putin’s outspoken willingness to cooperate militarily with Pyongyang has prompted deep concerns in both Seoul and Washington.

A senior South Korean presidential official said on Thursday that Seoul will now consider sending arms directly to Ukraine. Seoul has withheld providing lethal weapons to Ukraine since Russia invaded the country in February 2022.

A spokesperson for the South Korean foreign ministry told VOA’s Korean Service on Thursday that Seoul is “gravely concerned” about the treaty and the declaration of military technology cooperation “that outrightly violates U.N. Security Council resolutions.”

A State Department spokesperson told VOA Korean on Wednesday that “deepening cooperation between Russia and the DPRK is a trend that should be of great concern.” The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) is North Korea’s official name.

In contrast, Liu Pengyu, a spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, told VOA on Thursday that Moscow and Pyongyang have “a normal need for exchanges, cooperation and a closer relationship.”
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Miami, florida — Former President Donald Trump said in an interview posted Thursday he wants to give automatic green cards to foreign students who graduate from U.S. colleges, a sharp departure from the anti-immigrant rhetoric he typically uses on the campaign trail.

Trump was asked about plans for companies to be able to import the “best and brightest” in a podcast taped Wednesday with venture capitalists and tech investors called the “All-In.”

“What I want to do, and what I will do is, you graduate from a college, I think you should get automatically as part of your diploma a green card to be able to stay in this country. And that includes junior colleges, too, anybody graduates from a college. You go there for two years or four years,” he said, vowing to address this concern on day one if he is elected president in November.

Immigration has been Trump’s signature issue during his 2024 bid to return to the White House. His suggestion that he would offer green cards — documents that confer a pathway to U.S. citizenship — to potentially hundreds of thousands of foreign graduates would represent a sweeping expansion of America’s immigration system that sharply diverges from his most common messages on foreigners.

Trump often says during his rallies that immigrants who are in the country illegally endanger public safety and steal jobs and government resources. He once suggested that they are “poisoning the blood of our country.” He has promised to carry out the largest deportation operation in U.S. history if elected.

Trump and his allies often say they distinguish between people entering illegally versus legally. But during his administration, Trump also proposed curbs on legal immigration such as family-based visas and the visa lottery program.

Right after taking office in 2017, he issued his “Buy American and Hire American” executive order, directing Cabinet members to suggest reforms to ensure that business visas were awarded only to the highest-paid or most-skilled applicants to protect American workers.

He has previously said the H1-B program commonly used by companies to hire foreign workers temporarily — a program he has used in the past — was “very bad” and used by tech companies to get foreign workers for lower pay.

During the conversation with “All-In,” Trump blamed the coronavirus pandemic for being unable to implement these measures while he was president. He said he knew of stories of people who graduated from top colleges and want to stay in the U.S. but can’t secure visas to do so, forcing them to return to their native countries, specifically naming India and China. He said they go on and become multibillionaires, employing thousands of workers.

“You need a pool of people to work for your company,” Trump said. “And they have to be smart people. Not everybody can be less than smart. You need brilliant people.”

In a statement released hours after the podcast was posted, campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt said: “President Trump has outlined the most aggressive vetting process in U.S. history, to exclude all communists, radical Islamists, Hamas supporters, America haters and public charges. He believes, only after such vetting has taken place, we ought to keep the most skilled graduates who can make significant contributions to America. This would only apply to the most thoroughly vetted college graduates who would never undercut American wages or workers.”
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fort pierce, florida — Lawyers for Donald Trump argued Friday that the Justice Department prosecutor who charged the former president with hoarding classified documents at his Florida estate was illegally appointed and that the case should therefore be dismissed.

The challenge to the legality of special counsel Jack Smith’s appointment kicked off a three-day hearing that will further delay a criminal case that had been scheduled for trial last month but has been snarled by unresolved legal disputes. The motion questioning Smith’s selection by the Justice Department is one of multiple challenges to the indictment the defense has raised, so far unsuccessfully, in the year since the charges were brought.

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon heard hours of arguments Friday from lawyers for both sides, with Trump attorney Emil Bove asserting that the Justice Department risked creating a “shadow government” through the appointment of special counsels to prosecute select criminal cases. Prosecutors say there was nothing improper or unusual about Smith’s appointment, with James Pearce, a member of Smith’s team at one point saying: “We are in compliance. We have complied with all of the department’s policies.” 

Cannon did not immediately rule, but in an apparent sign that she was taking seriously the Trump team motion, she grilled Pearce on what oversight role Attorney General Merrick Garland — who appointed Smith — had in seeking the indictment.

Pearce said he was not in a position to answer the question but noted, “I don’t want to make it seem like I’m hiding something.”

Even as Smith’s team looks to press forward on a prosecution seen by many legal experts as the most straightforward and clear-cut of the four prosecutions against Trump, Friday’s arguments didn’t concern the allegations against the former president. They centered instead on arcane regulations governing the appointment of Justice Department special counsels like Smith, reflecting the judge’s continued willingness to entertain defense arguments that prosecutors say are frivolous and meritless, contributing to the delay of a trial date.

Arbiter’s review ordered

Cannon, a Trump appointee, had exasperated prosecutors even before the June 2023 indictment by granting a Trump request to have an independent arbiter review the classified documents taken from Mar-a-Lago — an order that was overturned by a unanimous federal appeals panel.

Since then, she has been intensely scrutinized over her handling of the case, including for taking months to issue rulings and for scheduling hearings on legally specious claims — all of which have combined to make a trial before the November presidential election a virtual impossibility. She was rebuked in March by prosecutors after she asked both sides to formulate jury instructions and to respond to a premise of the case that Smith’s team called “fundamentally flawed.”

The New York Times, citing two anonymous sources, reported Thursday that two judges — including the chief federal judge in the Southern District of Florida — urged Cannon to step aside from the case shortly after she was assigned to it.

The hearing is unfolding just weeks after Trump was convicted in a separate state case in New York of falsifying business records to cover up a hush money payment to a porn actor who has said she had sex with him. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court is poised to issue within days an opinion on whether Trump is immune from prosecution for acts he took in office or whether he can be prosecuted by Smith’s team on charges that he schemed to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

At issue in Friday’s hearing was a Trump team claim that Smith was illegally appointed in November 2022 by Garland because he was not first approved by Congress and because the special counsel office that he was assigned to lead was not also created by Congress.

Smith’s team has said Garland was fully empowered as the head of the Justice Department to make the appointment and to delegate prosecutorial decisions to him. They note that a similar argument failed in a challenge to the appointment of Robert Mueller, who was tapped as special counsel by the Trump administration Justice Department to investigate potential ties between Russia and Trump’s 2016 campaign.

On Monday, the two sides will again discuss matters related to Smith’s appointment, as well as a limited gag order that prosecutors have requested to bar Trump from comments they fear could endanger the safety of FBI agents and other law enforcement officials involved in the case.

The restrictions were sought after Trump falsely claimed the agents who searched his Mar-a-Lago estate for classified documents in August 2022 were prepared to kill him even though he was citing boilerplate language from standard FBI policy about use of force during the execution of search warrants. The FBI had intentionally selected a day for the search when it knew Trump and his family would be out of town, and the policy he was citing is meant to limit, rather than encourage, the use of force.

Trump’s lawyers have said any speech restrictions would infringe on his free-speech rights. Cannon initially rejected the prosecution’s request on technical grounds, saying Smith’s team had not sufficiently conferred with defense lawyers before seeking the restrictions. Prosecutors subsequently renewed the request.
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Georgians are preparing for elections this year amid fears in the West that the government is straying from the country’s ambition to join the European Union. The nation appears to be caught in a struggle to reconcile its turbulent past with its West-aligned future. Henry Ridgwell reports.
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Going into a third year of war, life without clean water has become routine for nearly half a million residents of Ukraine’s frontline city of Mykolaiv. At the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion, Russian forces destroyed the water distribution system. As Lesia Bakalets reports, the city has been looking for ways to restore it since then. Video: Vladyslav Smilianets
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Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, U.S. humanitarian group Project HOPE has provided aid to Ukrainian health clinics and residents of the country’s frontline towns and villages. Yaroslava Movchan has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. Videographer: Dmytro Hlushko.
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The Netherlands is investing more than 420 million dollars to build Swedish-designed combat vehicles for Ukraine. The Dutch expect to deliver the tanks by 2026, according to Defense News, to add to those already proving effective on the front lines. Anna Kosstutschenko has the story. Cameras and edit: Pavel Suhodolskiy
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HONG KONG — The United States and China resumed semi-official nuclear arms talks in March for the first time in five years, with Beijing’s representatives telling U.S. counterparts that they would not resort to atomic threats over Taiwan, according to two American delegates who attended.

The Chinese representatives offered reassurances after their U.S. interlocutors raised concerns that China might use, or threaten to use, nuclear weapons if it faced defeat in a conflict over Taiwan. Beijing views the democratically governed island as its territory, a claim rejected by the government in Taipei.

“They told the U.S. side that they were absolutely convinced that they are able to prevail in a conventional fight over Taiwan without using nuclear weapons,” said scholar David Santoro, the U.S. organizer of the Track Two talks, the details of which are being reported by Reuters for the first time.

Participants in Track Two talks are generally former officials and academics who can speak with authority on their government’s position, even if they are not directly involved with setting it. Government-to-government negotiations are known as Track One.  

Washington was represented by about half a dozen delegates, including former officials and scholars at the two-day discussions, which took place in a Shanghai hotel conference room.  

Beijing sent a delegation of scholars and analysts, which included several former People’s Liberation Army officers.

A State Department spokesperson said in response to Reuters’ questions that Track Two talks could be “beneficial.” The department did not participate in the March meeting though it was aware of it, the spokesperson said.  

Such discussions cannot replace formal negotiations “that require participants to speak authoritatively on issues that are often highly compartmentalized within (Chinese) government circles,” the spokesperson said.

Members of the Chinese delegation and Beijing’s defense ministry did not respond to requests for comment.  

The informal discussions between the nuclear-armed powers took place with the U.S. and China at odds over major economic and geopolitical issues, with leaders in Washington and Beijing accusing each other of dealing in bad faith.  

The two countries briefly resumed Track One talks over nuclear arms in November but those negotiations have since stalled, with a top U.S. official publicly expressing frustration at China’s responsiveness.

The Pentagon, which estimates that Beijing’s nuclear arsenal increased by more than 20% between 2021 and 2023, said in October that China “would also consider nuclear use to restore deterrence if a conventional military defeat in Taiwan” threatened CCP rule.

China has never renounced the use of force to bring Taiwan under its control and has over the past four years stepped up military activity around the island.  

The Track Two talks are part of a two-decade nuclear weapons and posture dialog that stalled after the Trump administration pulled funding in 2019.  

After the COVID-19 pandemic, semi-official discussions resumed on broader security and energy issues, but only the Shanghai meeting dealt in detail with nuclear weapons and posture.

Santoro, who runs the Hawaii-based Pacific Forum think-tank, described “frustrations” on both sides during the latest discussions but said the two delegations saw reason to continue talking. More discussions were being planned in 2025, he said.  

Nuclear policy analyst William Alberque of the Henry Stimson Centre think-tank, who was not involved in the March discussions, said the Track Two negotiations were useful at a time of glacial U.S.-Chinese relations.

“It’s important to continue talking with China with absolutely no expectations,” he said, when nuclear arms are at issue.

No first-use?

The U.S. Department of Defense estimated last year that Beijing has 500 operational nuclear warheads and will probably field more than 1,000 by 2030.  

That compares to 1,770 and 1,710 operational warheads deployed by the U.S. and Russia respectively. The Pentagon said that by 2030, much of Beijing’s weapons will likely be held at higher readiness levels.

Since 2020, China has also modernized its arsenal, starting production of its next-generation ballistic missile submarine, testing hypersonic glide vehicle warheads and conducting regular nuclear-armed sea patrols.

Weapons on land, in the air and at sea give China the “nuclear triad” – a hallmark of a major nuclear power.

A key point the U.S. side wanted to discuss, according to Santoro, was whether China still stood by its no-first-use and minimal deterrence policies, which date from the creation of its first nuclear bomb in the early 1960s.

Minimal deterrence refers to having just enough atomic weapons to dissuade adversaries.

China is also one of two nuclear powers – the other being India – to have pledged not to initiate a nuclear exchange. Chinese military analysts have speculated that the no-first-use policy is conditional – and that nuclear arms could be used against Taiwan’s allies – but it remains Beijing’s stated stance.  

Santoro said the Chinese delegates told U.S. representatives that Beijing maintained these policies and that “‘we are not interested in reaching nuclear parity with you, let alone superiority.'”  

“‘Nothing has changed, business as usual, you guys are exaggerating’,” Santoro said in summarizing Beijing’s position.

His description of the discussions was corroborated by fellow U.S. delegate Lyle Morris, a security scholar at the Asia Society Policy Institute.  

A report on the discussions is being prepared for the U.S. government but would not be made public, Santoro said.

‘Risk and Opacity’

Top U.S. arms control official Bonnie Jenkins told Congress in May that China had not responded to nuclear-weapons risk reduction proposals that Washington raised during last year’s formal talks.  

China has yet to agree to further government-to-government meetings.

Bejing’s “refusal to substantively engage” in discussions over its nuclear build-up raises questions around its “already ambiguous stated “no-first-use” policy and its nuclear doctrine more broadly,” the State Department spokesperson told Reuters.  

China’s Track Two delegation did not discuss specifics about Beijing’s modernization effort, Santoro and Morris said.

Alberque of the Henry Stimson Centre said that China relied heavily on “risk and opacity” to mitigate U.S. nuclear superiority and there was “no imperative” for Beijing to have constructive discussions.

China’s expanded arsenal – which includes anti-ship cruise missiles, bombers, intercontinental ballistic missiles and submarines – exceeded the needs of a state with a minimal deterrence and no-first-use policy, Alberque said.  

Chinese talking points revolved around the “survivability” of Beijing’s nuclear weapons if it suffered a first strike, said Morris.

The U.S. delegates said the Chinese described their efforts as a deterrence-based modernization program to cope with developments such as improved U.S. missile defenses, better surveillance capabilities, and strengthened alliances.

The U.S., Britain and Australia last year signed a deal to share nuclear submarine technology and develop a new class of boats, while Washington is now working with Seoul to coordinate responses to a potential atomic attack.

Washington’s policy on nuclear weapons includes the possibility of using them if deterrence fails, though the Pentagon says it would only consider that in extreme circumstances. It did not provide specifics.  

One Chinese delegate “pointed to studies that said Chinese nuclear weapons were still vulnerable to U.S. strikes – their second-strike capability was not enough,” said Morris.

 
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Gaborone, Botswana — Defense chiefs from 30 African countries will gather in Botswana next week for a two-day military conference to discuss the continent’s security and stability challenges. The meeting, organized by the United States Africa Command, or AFRICOM, will be the first to be held in Africa since the inaugural conference in 2017 

“The aim [is] to tackle the pressing security challenges on the African continent and to find ways to work together for a safer, more secure Africa,” said Lt. Commander Bobby Dixon, a spokesman at AFRICOM.  “From counterterrorism efforts to cyber threats and peacekeeping missions, this conference will cover it all. Experts and military leaders will share insights, strategies, and forge partnerships that will strengthen the collective defense capabilities for all of Africa. This is more than just a conference — it’s a significant step towards a unified approach in safeguarding the African continent.”

AFRICOM says the meeting will build on the success of previous conferences. Last year’s meeting held in Rome, Italy, attracted the highest turnout, with 43 countries in attendance.

“It is evident that Africa faces a series of challenges,” said Jakkie Cilliers, a political scientist at the Institute for Security Studies in Pretoria. “It is not always clear that the model that the U.S. presents is appropriate for Africa. In recent years, we have seen a variety of coups in Africa, sometimes executed by African forces that have been trained in the U.S., the U.K. and France. And it is also evident that a number of U.N. peacekeeping missions, such as that in the DR Congo and Mali, are withdrawing from Africa.

“On the other hand, the role of Russia and the so-called Africa Group [pls check the audio; it is usually called the Africa Corps] is expanding. So, it’s clear that Africa is facing a security challenge, and partners can and should do as much as possible to help.”

Cilliers added that there is a need for the Gaborone conference to come up with effective solutions to the continent’s security challenges. 

“Are we seeing a new model developing where African governments are considering alternative security arrangements, mostly by other African countries?” he said. “And of course, the role of private companies is also increasing. These events occur at a time of significant shifts in the global balance of power, and Africa again is an area of competition. One hopes all these issues will be discussed at the upcoming conference in Gaborone, and that real solutions will come to the fore.”

In March, following its Peace and Security Council meeting, the African Union expressed “deep concern” over the scourge of conflicts on the continent and their impact on socioeconomic development.
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SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea summoned the Russian ambassador to protest the country’s new defense pact with North Korea on Friday, as border tensions continued to rise with vague threats and brief, seemingly accidental incursions by North Korean troops.

Earlier Friday, the powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un issued a vague threat of retaliation after South Korean activists flew balloons carrying anti-Pyongyang propaganda leaflets across the border, and South Korea’s military said it had fired warning shots the previous day to repel North Korean soldiers who briefly crossed the rivals’ land border for the third time this month.

That came two days after Moscow and Pyongyang reached a pact vowing mutual defense assistance if either is attacked, and a day after Seoul responded by saying it would consider providing arms to Ukraine to fight Russia’s invasion.

South Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kim Hong Kyun summoned Russian Ambassador Georgy Zinoviev to protest the deal between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un and called for Moscow to immediately halt its alleged military cooperation with Pyongyang.

Kim, the South Korean diplomat, stressed that any cooperation that directly or indirectly helps the North build up its military capabilities would violate U.N. Security Council resolutions and pose a threat to the South’s security, and warned of consequences for Seoul’s relations with Moscow.

Zinoviev replied that he would convey Seoul’s concerns to his superiors in Moscow, the ministry said.

Leafletting campaigns by South Korean civilian activists in recent weeks have prompted a resumption of Cold War-style psychological warfare along the inter-Korean border.

The South Korean civilian activists, led by North Korean defector Park Sang-hak, said it sent 20 balloons carrying 300,000 propaganda leaflets, 5,000 USB sticks with South Korean pop songs and TV dramas, and 3,000 U.S. dollar bills from the South Korean border town of Paju on Thursday night.

Pyongyang resents such material and fears it could demoralize front-line troops and residents and eventually weaken Kim Jong Un’s grip on power, analysts say.

In a statement carried by North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency, Kim Yo Jong, one of her brother’s top foreign policy officials, called the activists “defector scum” and issued what appeared to be a threat of retaliation.

“When you do something you were clearly warned not to do, it’s only natural that you will find yourself dealing with something you didn’t have to,” she said, without specifying what the North would do.

After previous leafletting by South Korean activists, North Korea launched more than 1,000 balloons that dropped tons of trash in South Korea, smashing roof tiles and windows and causing other property damage. Kim Yo Jong previously hinted that balloons could become the North’s standard response to leafletting, saying that the North would respond by “scattering dozens of times more rubbish than is being scattered on us.”

In response, South Korea resumed anti-North Korea propaganda broadcasts with military loudspeakers installed at the border for the first time in years, to which Kim Yo Jong, in another state media statement, warned that Seoul was “creating a prelude to a very dangerous situation.”

Tensions between the Koreas are at their highest in years as Kim Jong Un accelerates his nuclear weapons and missile development and attempts to strengthen his regional footing by aligning with Russian President Vladimir Putin in a standoff against the U.S.-led West.

South Korea, a growing arms exporter with a well-equipped military backed by the United States, says it is considering upping support for Ukraine in response. Seoul has already provided humanitarian aid and other support while joining U.S.-led economic sanctions against Moscow. But it has not directly provided arms, citing a long-standing policy of not supplying weapons to countries actively engaged in conflict.

Putin told reporters in Hanoi, Vietnam, on Thursday that supplying weapons to Ukraine would be “a very big mistake,” and said South Korea “shouldn’t worry” about the agreement if it isn’t planning aggression against Pyongyang.

South Korea’s Foreign Ministry said Minister Cho Tae-yul on Friday held separate phone calls with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Japanese Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa to discuss the new pact. The diplomats agreed that the agreement poses a serious threat to peace and stability in the region and vowed to strengthen trilateral coordination to deal with the challenges posed by the alignment between Moscow and Pyongyang, Cho’s ministry said in a statement.

North Korea is extremely sensitive to criticism of Kim’s authoritarian rule and efforts to reach its people with foreign news and other media.

In 2015, when South Korea restarted loudspeaker broadcasts for the first time in 11 years, North Korea fired artillery rounds across the border, prompting South Korea to return fire, according to South Korean officials. No casualties were reported.

South Korea’s military said there are signs that North Korea was installing its own speakers at the border, although they weren’t yet working.

In the latest border incident, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said several North Korean soldiers engaged in unspecified construction work briefly crossed the military demarcation line that divides the two countries at around 11 a.m. Thursday.

The South Korean military broadcast a warning and fired warning shots, after which the North Korean soldiers retreated. The joint chiefs didn’t immediately release more details, including why it was releasing the information a day late.

South Korea’s military says believes recent border intrusions were not intentional, as the North Korean soldiers have not returned fire and retreated after the warning shots.

The South’s military has observed the North deploying large numbers of soldiers in frontline areas to build suspected anti-tank barriers, reinforce roads and plant mines in an apparent attempt to fortify their side of the border. Seoul believes the efforts are likely aimed at preventing North Korean civilians and soldiers from escaping to the South.  
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