Author: PolitCens

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WASHINGTON — Chrysler parent Stellantis said Saturday it is recalling 1.46 million vehicles worldwide due to a software malfunction in the anti-lock brake system that can increase the risk of a crash.

The recall includes nearly 1.23 million Ram 1500 trucks from the 2019 and 2021-2024 model years in the United States, as well as about 159,000 vehicles in Canada, 13,000 in Mexico and 61,000 outside North America.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said a software malfunction might result in the anti-lock brake system control module disabling the electronic stability control system.

The issue means the vehicles do not comply with a federal motor vehicle safety standard on electric stability control systems.

Stellantis said if the issue occurs, the ABS, ESC, adaptive cruise control and forward collision warning indicator lights will be illuminated at vehicle start up, indicating the systems are not working. Foundational braking would be working, it added.

The company said it is unaware of any related injuries or crashes.

Stellantis also said Saturday it is recalling about 33,000 Jeep Gladiator models from 2020-2024 and Jeep Wrangler vehicles from 2018-2024 due to a potential internal short circuit issue in the instrument panel cluster.
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Jerusalem — The family of a Turkish-American woman shot dead while demonstrating against Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank demanded an independent investigation into her death on Saturday, accusing the Israeli military of killing her “violently.”

Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, 26, was “shot in the head” while participating in a demonstration in Beita in the West Bank on Friday.

“Her presence in our lives was taken needlessly, unlawfully, and violently by the Israeli military,” Eygi’s family said in a statement.

“A U.S. citizen, Aysenur was peacefully standing for justice when she was killed by a bullet that video shows came from an Israeli military shooter.

“We call on President (Joe) Biden, Vice President (Kamala) Harris, and Secretary of State (Antony) Blinken to order an independent investigation into the unlawful killing of a U.S. citizen and to ensure full accountability for the guilty parties.”

The Israeli military said its forces “responded with fire toward a main instigator of violent activity who hurled rocks at the forces and posed a threat to them” during the protest.

Eygi was a member of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), a pro-Palestinian organization, and was in Beita on Friday for a weekly demonstration against Israeli settlements, according to ISM.

In recent years, pro-Palestinian demonstrators have frequently held weekly protests against the Eviatar settlement outpost overlooking Beita, which is backed by far-right Israeli ministers.

During Friday’s protest, Eygi was shot in the head, according to the U.N. rights office and Rafidia hospital where she was pronounced dead.

Turkey said she was killed by “Israeli occupation soldiers,” with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan condemning the Israeli action as “barbaric.”

Washington called it a “tragic” event and has pressed its close ally Israel to investigate.

But her family has demanded an independent probe.

“Given the circumstances of Aysenur’s killing, an Israeli investigation is not adequate,” her family said.

Her family said Eygi always advocated “an end to the violence against the people of Palestine.”

Israeli settlements in the West Bank, where about 490,000 people live, are illegal under international law.

Since Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel which triggered the war in Gaza, Israeli troops or settlers have killed more than 690 Palestinians in the West Bank, according to the Palestinian health ministry.

At least 23 Israelis, including security forces, have been killed in Palestinian attacks during the same period, according to Israeli officials.
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WASHINGTON — Boeing’s beleaguered Starliner made its long-awaited return to Earth on Saturday without the astronauts who rode it up to the International Space Station, after NASA ruled the trip back too risky.

After years of delays, Starliner launched in June for what was meant to be a roughly weeklong test mission — a final shakedown before it could be certified to rotate crew to and from the orbital laboratory.

But unexpected thruster malfunctions and helium leaks en route to the ISS derailed those plans, and NASA ultimately decided it was safer to bring crewmates Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams back on a rival SpaceX Crew Dragon — though they’ll have to wait until February 2025.

The gumdrop-shaped Boeing capsule touched down softly at the White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico, its descent slowed by parachutes and cushioned by airbags, having departed the ISS around six hours earlier.

As it streaked red-hot across the night sky, ground teams reported hearing sonic booms. The spacecraft endured temperatures of 1,650 degrees Celsius during atmospheric reentry.

NASA lavished praise on Boeing during a post-flight press conference where representatives from the company were conspicuously absent.

“It was a bullseye landing,” said Steve Stich, program manager for NASA’s commercial crew program. “The entry in particular has been darn near flawless.”

Still, he acknowledged that certain new issues had come to light, including the failure of a new thruster and the temporary loss of the guidance system.

He added it was too early to talk about whether Starliner’s next flight, scheduled for August next year, would be crewed, instead stressing NASA needed time to analyze the data they had gathered and assess what changes were required to both the design of the ship and the way it is flown.

Ahead of the return leg, Boeing carried out extensive ground testing to address the technical hitches encountered during Starliner’s ascent, then promised — both publicly and behind closed doors — that it could safely bring the astronauts home. In the end, NASA disagreed.

Asked whether he stood by that decision, NASA’s Stich said: “It’s always hard to have that retrospective look. We made the decision to have an uncrewed flight based on what we knew at the time and based on our knowledge of the thrusters and based on the modeling that we had.”

History of setbacks

Even without crew aboard, the stakes were high for Boeing, a century-old aerospace giant.

With its reputation already battered by safety concerns surrounding its commercial jets, its long-term prospects for crewed space missions hung in the balance.

Shortly after undocking, Starliner executed a powerful “breakout burn” to swiftly clear it from the station and prevent any risk of collision — a maneuver that would have been unnecessary if crew were aboard to take manual control if needed.

Mission teams then conducted thorough checks of the thrusters required for the critical “deorbit burn” that guided the capsule onto its reentry path around 40 minutes before touchdown.

Though it was widely expected that Starliner would stick the landing, as it had on two previous uncrewed tests, Boeing’s program continues to languish behind schedule.

In 2014, NASA awarded both Boeing and SpaceX multibillion-dollar contracts to develop spacecraft to taxi astronauts to and from the ISS, after the end of the Space Shuttle program left the US space agency reliant on Russian rockets.

Although initially considered the underdog, Elon Musk’s SpaceX surged ahead of Boeing, and has successfully flown dozens of astronauts since 2020.

The Starliner program, meanwhile, has faced numerous setbacks — from a software glitch that prevented the capsule from rendezvousing with the ISS during its first uncrewed test flight in 2019, to the discovery of flammable tape in the cabin after its second test in 2022, to the current troubles.

With the ISS scheduled to be decommissioned in 2030, the longer Starliner takes to become fully operational, the less time it will have to prove its worth.
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washington — House Republicans unveiled on Friday their legislation to avoid a partial government shutdown at the end of the month and fund the government into late March, when a new president and Congress would make the final decision on agency spending and priorities for fiscal 2025.

Republicans also added a hot-button immigration issue to the measure by requiring states to obtain proof of citizenship, such as a birth certificate or passport, when someone registers to vote. Inclusion of the citizenship requirement is a nonstarter in the Senate, complicating prospects for the spending bill’s passage.

Lawmakers are returning to Washington next week following a traditional August recess spent mostly in their home states and districts. They are not close to completing work on the dozen annual appropriations bills that will fund the agencies during the next fiscal year, so they’ll need to approve a stopgap measure to prevent a shutdown when the new fiscal year begins October 1.

“Today, House Republicans are taking a critically important step to keep the federal government funded and to secure our federal election process,” Speaker Mike Johnson said in a statement. “Congress has a responsibility to do both, and we must ensure that only American citizens can decide American elections.”

Bipartisanship urged

But in a joint statement, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Appropriations Committee Chair Patty Murray said avoiding a shutdown requires bipartisanship, not a bill drawn up by one party.

“If Speaker Johnson drives House Republicans down this highly partisan path, the odds of a shutdown go way up, and Americans will know that the responsibility of a shutdown will be on the House Republicans’ hands,” Schumer and Murray said.

It is a crime under federal law for a noncitizen to vote, or even register to vote, in a federal election, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.

Johnson’s decision to add the proof of citizenship requirement to the spending measure comes after the House Freedom Caucus called for it in a position statement last month. The group of conservatives, banking on a win by Republican nominee Donald Trump, also urged that the measure fund the government into early next year so Republicans could get more of their priorities in legislation.

Some Republican leaders had wanted to pass the final spending bills by the end of this Congress so that the new president, whether it be Trump or Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, could focus more on getting staffed and pursuing their own top priorities rather than dealing with spending disagreements.

Republicans say requiring proof of citizenship would ensure American elections are only for American citizens, improving confidence in the nation’s federal election system. But opponents say the available evidence shows that noncitizen voting in federal elections is incredibly rare and such a requirement would disenfranchise millions of Americans who don’t have the necessary documents readily available when they want to register.

What remains to be seen is what happens if the bill passes the House this week and the Senate declines to take it up or votes it down.

The bill would fund agencies at current levels until March 28, though there’s also money to help cover additional security costs associated with Inauguration Day and $10 billion for the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s disaster relief fund.
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ASHEVILLE, north carolina — Seth Kaller, an appraiser and collector of historic documents, spreads a broad sheet of paper across a desk. It’s in good enough condition that he can handle it, carefully, with clean, bare hands. There are just a few creases and tiny discolorations, even though it’s just a few weeks shy of 237 years old and has spent who knows how long inside a filing cabinet in North Carolina. 

At the top of the first page are familiar words but in regular type instead of the sweeping Gothic script readers are accustomed to seeing: “WE the People.” 

And the people will get a chance to bid for this copy of the U.S. Constitution — the only one of its type thought to be in private hands — at a sale by Brunk Auctions on September 28 in Asheville, North Carolina. 

The minimum bid for the auction of $1 million has already been made. There is no minimum price that must be reached. 

This copy was printed after the Constitutional Convention finished drafting the proposed framework of the nation’s government in 1787 and sent it to the Congress of the ineffective first American government under the Articles of Confederation, requesting that it be sent to the states to be ratified by the people.

Few copies remain 

It’s one of about 100 copies printed by the secretary of that Congress, Charles Thomson. Just eight are known to still exist and the other seven are publicly owned. 

Thomson likely signed two copies for each of the original 13 states, essentially certifying them. They were sent to special ratifying conventions, where representatives, all white and male, wrangled for months before accepting the structure of the U.S. government that continues today. 

“This is the point of connection between the government and the people. The Preamble — ‘we, the people’ — this is the moment the government is asking the people to empower them,” auctioneer Andrew Brunk said. 

What happened to the document up for auction between Thomson’s signature and 2022 isn’t known. 

Two years ago, a property was being cleared out in Edenton in eastern North Carolina that was once owned by Samuel Johnston. He was the governor of North Carolina from 1787 to 1789 and he oversaw the state convention during his last year in office that ratified the Constitution. 

The copy was found inside a squat, two-drawer metal filing cabinet with a can of stain on top, in a long-neglected room piled high with old chairs and a dusty bookcase, before the old Johnston house was preserved. The document was a broad sheet that could be folded one time like a book. 

“I get calls every week from people who think they have a Declaration of Independence or a Gettysburg Address and most of the time it is just a replica, but every so often something important gets found,” said Kaller, who appraises, buys and sells historic documents. 

“This is a whole other level of importance,” he added. 

Washington letter

Along with the Constitution on the broad sheet printed front and back is a letter from George Washington asking for ratification. He acknowledged there would have to be compromise and that rights the states enjoyed would have to be given up for the nation’s long-term health. 

“To secure all rights of independent sovereignty to each and yet provide for the interest and safety for all — individuals entering into society must give up a share of liberty to preserve the rest,” wrote the man who would become the first U.S. president. 

Brunk isn’t sure what the document might go for because there is so little to compare it to. The last time a copy of the Constitution like this sold, it went for $400 – in 1891. In 2021, Sotheby’s of New York sold one of only 14 remaining copies of the Constitution printed for the Continental Congress and delegates to the Constitutional Convention for $43.2 million, a record for a book or document. 

But that document was meant to be distributed to the Founding Fathers as delegates to the Constitutional Convention. The signed copy being sold later this month was one meant to be sent to leaders in every state so people all around the country could review and decide if that’s how they wanted to be governed, connecting the writers of the Constitution to the people in the states who would provide its power and legitimacy. 

The auction listing doesn’t identify the seller, saying it’s part of a collection that is in private hands. 

Other items up for auction in Asheville include a 1776 first draft of the Articles of Confederation and a 1788 Journal of the Convention of North Carolina at Hillsborough, where representatives spent two weeks debating if ratifying the Constitution would put too much power with the nation instead of the states.
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WASHINGTON — A Pakistani citizen living in Canada was arrested Wednesday and charged with planning an attack in New York City in support of the Islamic State group, the Department of Justice said Friday. 

Muhammad Shahzeb Khan, 20, is accused of plotting a mass shooting at a Jewish center in Brooklyn around October 7, 2024, nearly one year after Hamas’ attack that killed about 1,200 people in Israel. 

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said Khan, who is also known as Shahzeb Jadoon, aimed to kill “as many Jewish people as possible.”  

Khan attempted to travel from Canada to the United States, where he intended to use automatic and semiautomatic weapons to carry out the attack, according to the indictment. 

He was arrested in Canada, just 19 kilometers from the U.S. border. 

Khan told two undercover law enforcement officers of his plans to create “a real offline cell” of Islamic State supporters to carry out an attack, the indictment alleged.  

He instructed them to obtain AR-style assault rifles, ammunition and other materials to carry out the attacks, and he identified specific locations where the attacks would take place. 

Khan targeted New York City because it has “the largest Jewish population in America,” prosecutors said. 

“We are deeply grateful to our Canadian partners for their critical law enforcement actions in this matter. Jewish communities — like all communities in this country — should not have to fear that they will be targeted by a hate-fueled terrorist attack,” Garland said in a statement. 

Khan faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted.
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washington — Russia, Iran and China are ramping up efforts to impact the outcome of the U.S. presidential election and down-ballot races, targeting American voters with an expanding array of sophisticated influence operations.

The latest assessment from U.S. intelligence agencies, shared Friday, warns that Russia remains the preeminent threat, with Russian influence campaigns seeking to boost the chances of Republican presidential candidate and former U.S. President Donald Trump over Democratic candidate Vice President Kamala Harris.

Russian actors, led by networks created by the Kremlin-backed media outlet RT, “are supporting Moscow’s efforts to influence voter preferences in favor of the former president and diminish the prospects of the vice president,” a senior intelligence official told reporters, briefing on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information.

“RT has built and used networks of U.S. and other Western personalities to create and disseminate Russia-friendly narratives while trying to mask the content in authentic Americans’ free speech,” the official said.

And RT, the official added, is just part of a growing Kremlin-directed campaign that is looking to impact not just the race for the White House, but smaller elections across the United States, with an added emphasis on swing states.

“Russia’s influence apparatus is very large and it’s worth highlighting that they have other entities that are active,” the official said. “Russia is working up and down ballot races, as well as spreading divisive issues.”

Tracking the Russian influence efforts has become more difficult, with U.S. officials saying that there is a greater degree of sophistication and an increased emphasis on amplifying American voices with pro-Russian views rather than seeding social media with narratives crafted in the Kremlin.

“It’s not just about Russian bots and trolls and fake social media persona, although that’s part of it,” White House national security spokesperson John Kirby told VOA Friday.

“We’re not taking anything for granted,” he added. “There’s no question that [Russian President Vladimir] Putin has every intent to try to sow discord here in the United States, to try to pump disinformation and Russian propaganda through to the American people, through what he believes were our credible sources, be they online or on television and we have to take that seriously.”

The intelligence officials declined to share additional specifics about Russia’s network of influence operations. But indictments Wednesday from the U.S. Justice Department have shed some light on the scope of the Kremlin’s recent operations.

In one case, the U.S. charged two employees of RT with using fake personas and shell companies to funnel almost $10 million to Tenet Media, a Tennessee-based company producing videos and podcasts for a stable of conservative political influencers.

The aim, prosecutors said, was to produce and disseminate content promoting what Moscow viewed as pro-Russian policies.

In a separate action, the U.S. seized 32 internet domains linked to an operation directed by a key aide to Putin. The aim, U.S. officials said, was to mimic legitimate U.S. news sites to spread Russian-created propaganda.

RT publicly ridiculed the allegations while some of the influencers working with Tenet posted statements on the X social media platform saying they were unaware of the company’s links to Moscow.

As for the latest U.S. intelligence allegations, the Russian Embassy in Washington has yet to respond to VOA’s request for comments, though it has described previous accusations as “Russophobic.”

Requests for comment to the Trump and Harris campaigns have also, so far, gone unanswered.

But earlier U.S. intelligence assertions of Russian support for Trump have raised the ire of the Trump campaign, which has pointed to public statements by Russia’s Putin supporting Trump’s opponents.

“When President Trump was in the Oval Office, Russia and all of America’s adversaries were deterred, because they feared how the United States would respond,” national press secretary for the Trump campaign, Karoline Leavitt, told VOA in an email this past July.

U.S. intelligence officials, however, said it would be a mistake to put any faith in Putin’s words, including public comments Thursday expressing support for Harris.

The U.S. intelligence community “does not take Putin’s public statements as representative of Russia’s covert intentions,” the senior official said. “There are many examples over the past several years where Putin’s public statements do not align with Russian actions. For example, his comments that he would not invade Ukraine.”

Experts say Iran, China trying to influence results

U.S. intelligence agencies Friday emphasized Russia is not alone in its effort to shape the outcome of the U.S. elections in November, warning both Tehran and Beijing are sharpening their influence campaigns with just about 60 days until America voters go to the polls.

“Iran is making a greater effort than in the past to influence this year’s elections, even as its tactics and approaches are similar to prior cycles,” the intelligence official said, describing a “multi-pronged approach to stoke internal divisions and undermine voter confidence in the U.S. democratic system.

U.S. intelligence agencies previously assessed that Iran has focused part of its efforts on denigrating the Trump campaign, seeing his election as likely to worsen tensions between Tehran and Washington.

U.S. officials last month also blamed Iran for a hack-and-leak operation targeting the Trump campaign, though they said that Iran-linked actors have also sought to infiltrate the Harris campaign.

As for China, U.S. intelligence officials said it appears Beijing is still content to stay out of the U.S. presidential race, seeing little difference between Trump and Harris.

But there are indications China is accelerating its efforts to impact other political races.

U.S. intelligence “is aware of PRC [People’s Republic of China] attempts to influence U.S. down-ballot races by focusing on candidates it views as particularly threatening to core PRC security interests,” the official said.

“PRC online influence actors have also continued small scale efforts on social media to engage U.S. audiences on divisive political issues, including protests about the Israel-Gaza conflict and promote negative stories about both political parties,” the official added.

‘Malicious speculations against China’

The Chinese Embassy in Washington, Friday, rejected the U.S. intelligence assessment.

“China has no intention and will not interfere in the U.S. election, and we hope that the U.S. side will not make an issue of China in the election,” spokesperson Liu Pengyu told VOA in an email.

Liu added that accusations Beijing is using social media to sway U.S. public opinion “are full of malicious speculations against China, which China firmly opposes.”

While U.S. intelligence officials have identified Russia, Iran and China, as the most prominent purveyors of disinformation, they are not alone.

Officials have said countries like Cuba are also engaging in influence operations, though at a much smaller scale.

And other countries are edging closer to crossing that line.

“We are seeing a number of countries considering activities that, at a minimum, test the boundaries of election influence,” according to the U.S. assessment. “Such activities include lobbying political figures to try to curry favor with them in the event they are elected to office.”

Misha Komadovsky contributed to this report.
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Winder, Georgia — The 14-year-old suspect in a shooting that killed four people at a Georgia high school and his father, who was arrested for allowing his son to have a weapon, will stay in custody after their lawyers decided not to seek bail Friday. 

Colt Gray, who has been charged with four counts of murder, is accused of using a semiautomatic assault-style rifle to kill two fellow students and two teachers Wednesday at Apalachee High School in Winder, outside Atlanta. His father, Colin Gray, faces related charges in the latest attempt by prosecutors to hold parents responsible for their children’s actions in school shootings. 

The two appeared in back-to-back hearings Friday morning with about 50 onlookers in the courtroom, where workers had set out boxes of tissue along the benches, in addition to members of the media and sheriff’s deputies. Some victims’ family members in the front row hugged each other and one woman clutched a stuffed animal. 

During his hearing, Colt Gray, wearing khaki pants and a green shirt, was advised of his rights as well as the charges and penalties he faced for the shooting at the school where he was a student. 

After the hearing, he was escorted out in shackles at the wrists and ankles. The judge then called the teen back to the courtroom to correct an earlier misstatement that his crimes could be punishable by death. Because he’s a juvenile, the maximum penalty he would face is life without parole. The judge also set another hearing for December 4.

Shortly afterward, Colin Gray was brought into court dressed in a gray-striped jail uniform. Colin Gray, 54, was charged Thursday in connection with the shooting and answered questions in a barely audible croak, giving his age and saying he finished 11th grade, earning a high school equivalency diploma. 

Colin Gray has been charged with involuntary manslaughter and second-degree murder related to the shooting, Georgia Bureau of Investigation Director Chris Hosey said. 

“His charges are directly connected with the actions of his son and allowing him to possess a weapon,” Hosey said. 

The charges come five months after Michigan parents Jennifer and James Crumbley were the first convicted in a U.S. mass school shooting. They were sentenced to at least 10 years in prison for not securing a firearm at home and acting indifferently to signs of their son’s deteriorating mental health before he killed four students in 2021. 

The Georgia shootings have also renewed debate about safe storage laws for guns and have parents wondering how to talk to their children about school shootings and trauma. 

The Barrow County hearings for the father and son came as police in the Atlanta suburb of Dunwoody said schools there and nationwide have received threats of violence since the Apalachee High School shooting, police said in a statement. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation also noted that numerous threats have been made to schools across the state this week. 

Before Colin Gray’s arrest was reported, the AP knocked on the door of a home listed as his address seeking comment about his son’s arrest. 

According to arrest warrants obtained by The Associated Press, Colt Gray is accused of using a “black semi-automatic AR-15 style rifle” to kill the two students and two teachers. Authorities have not offered any motive or explained how he obtained the gun or got it into the school. 

He was charged as an adult in the deaths of Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, both 14, Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Cristina Irimie, 53. Nine people were also hurt in Wednesday’s attack. 

A neighbor remembered Schermerhorn as inquisitive when he was a little boy. Aspinwall and Irimie were both math teachers, and Aspinwall also helped coach the school’s football team. Irimie, who immigrated from Romania, volunteered at a local church, where she taught dance. 

Colt Gray denied threatening to carry out a school shooting when authorities interviewed him last year about a menacing post on social media, according to a sheriff’s report obtained Thursday. Conflicting evidence on the post’s origin left investigators unable to arrest anyone, the report said. Jackson County Sheriff Janis Mangum said she reviewed the report from May 2023 and found nothing that would have justified bringing charges at the time. 

The attack was the latest among dozens of school shootings across the U.S. in recent years, including especially deadly ones in Newtown, Connecticut; Parkland, Florida; and Uvalde, Texas. The classroom killings have set off fervent debates about gun control but there has been little change to national gun laws. 

It was the 30th mass killing in the U.S. this year, according to a database maintained by The Associated Press and USA Today in partnership with Northeastern University. At least 127 people have died in those killings, which are defined as events in which four or more people die within a 24-hour period, not including the killer — the same definition used by the FBI.
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The Midwestern state of Indiana is testing a segment of roadway designed to charge electric vehicle batteries. VOA’s Kane Farabaugh visited the site near Lafayette, Indiana, and reports on how the technology could transform driving.
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Washington — The U.S. Treasury and Internal Revenue Service said on Friday that they have recovered $1.3 billion in unpaid taxes from wealthy individuals under new enforcement initiatives funded by $60 billion in IRS modernization spending from the climate-focused Inflation Reduction Act.  

Why it’s important 

Republicans in Congress have long vowed to rescind the 10-year IRS funding passed in 2022, arguing that it would unfairly harass Americans on their taxes. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump vowed on Thursday to rescind all unspent funds from the Inflation Reduction Act, which include billions of dollars earmarked for the IRS.  

The IRS has planned to spend about $10.6 billion of those funds through end of the 2024 fiscal year, which concludes on Sept. 30, leaving nearly $50 billion that could be recouped. But budget forecasters say that doing so would increase the federal budget deficit by more than $100 billion over a decade because the agency would forego stepped-up enforcement.  

By the numbers  

The Treasury said that in the first six months of a new initiative to target 125,000 wealthy individuals who have not filed tax returns since 2017, it has collected $172 million from 21,000 non-filing taxpayers.  

Another initiative to target wealthy individuals with more than $1 million in income and $250,000 in unpaid, recognized tax debts has brought in $1.1 billion to Treasury coffers.   

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said the audit rate for millionaires fell by 80% due to budget cuts at the IRS.  

“During the previous [Trump] administration, as audit rates on high-income taxpayers fell, the share of audits on taxpayers with incomes under $200,000 increased,” Yellen said in remarks to be delivered at an IRS service center in Austin, Texas. “In 2019, the top one percent of Americans was estimated to owe over one-fifth of unpaid taxes, leaving ordinary Americans to shoulder the burden.” 
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Port-au-Prince, Haiti — During a trip to Haiti on Thursday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced $45 million in new humanitarian aid for the Caribbean nation, which has been wracked by violence for years.  

He also called for the renewal of the United Nations mandate for the Multinational Security Support, or MSS, mission to combat the armed gangs that dominate much of the capital.

“At this critical moment, you do need more funding. We do need more personnel to sustain and carry out the objectives of this mission,” Blinken told a news conference on a rare visit to Port-au-Prince.

The top U.S. diplomat said he plans to convene a ministerial meeting at the coming U.N. General Assembly to encourage greater international contributions to address Haiti’s security, economic, and humanitarian needs.

The MSS mandate is set to expire at the beginning of October.  U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration is reportedly exploring the possibility of changing the mission into a traditional U.N. peacekeeping operation, a move that would ease funding, provide more equipment and enable use of military forces rather than only police officers.

Blinken said that while the MSS mission itself needs to be renewed, it also needs to ensure that it is “reliable” and “sustainable.”

“A peacekeeping operation would be one such option.  I think there are others,” he told reporters on Thursday.

Blinken’s visit to Port-au-Prince underscores U.S. support for Haiti as the country grapples with gang violence.

On Thursday, Blinken met with Edgard Leblanc Fils from Haiti’s Transitional Presidential Council.

“Both concurred on the critical need to make timely advancements on election preparations,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said.

Apart from Fils, Blinken also held talks with Prime Minister Garry Conille, MSS head Godfrey Otunge and Normil Rameau, head of the Haitian National Police.

The United States and Canada are the top funders of the MSS in Haiti. The first-year estimated cost for the mission is $589 million. The U.S. has already provided $309 million — $200 million toward the MSS mission base and $109 million in financial support.

Gang-related violence and drug trafficking have fueled political instability and insecurity in Haiti, leading to unbearable conditions for Haitians.

At least 80% of Port-au-Prince is no longer under Haitian authorities’ control, with violence spreading to other parts of the country.

In the past year, displacement in Haiti has tripled as gang violence grips the Caribbean nation. The U.N. says at least 578,000 people have been displaced because of violence, including murders, kidnappings and rapes.

The situation is further exacerbated by widespread hunger, with nearly half the 11.7 million population facing acute food insecurity.

 After Haiti, Blinken arrived in Santo Domingo later Thursday.  His visit follows the start of Dominican Republic President Luis Abinader’s second term in mid-August.    

The Dominican Republic will host the 2025 Summit of the Americas, where Western Hemisphere leaders will address shared challenges and policy issues facing the region.  

VOA’s Liam Scott contributed to this report.  
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beijing — The Chinese government is ending its intercountry adoption program, and the United States is seeking clarification on how the decision will affect hundreds of American families with pending applications to adopt children from China.

In a phone call with U.S. diplomats in China, Beijing said it “will not continue to process cases at any stage” other than those cases covered by an exception clause. The embassy is seeking clarification in writing from China’s Ministry of Civil Affairs, the U.S. State Department said Thursday. 

“We understand there are hundreds of families still pending completion of their adoption, and we sympathize with their situation,” the State Department said. 

At a daily briefing Thursday, Mao Ning, a spokeswoman for the Chinese foreign ministry, said China is no longer allowing foreign adoptions of the country’s children, with the only exception for blood relatives to adopt a child or a stepchild. 

She didn’t explain the decision other than to say that it was in line with the spirit of relevant international conventions. 

Many foreigners have adopted children from China over the decades, visiting the country to pick them up and then bringing them to new homes overseas. 

U.S. families have adopted 82,674 children from China, the most from any foreign country. 

China suspended international adoptions during the COVID-19 pandemic. The government later resumed adoptions for children who had received travel authorization before the suspension in 2020, the U.S. State Department said in its latest annual report on adoptions. 

A U.S. consulate issued 16 visas for adoptions from China from October 2022 through September 2023, the first in more than two years, the State Department report said. It wasn’t clear if any more visas had been issued since then. 

In January, Denmark’s only overseas adoption agency said it was winding down operations after concerns were raised about fabricated documents and procedures, and Norway’s top regulatory body recommended stopping overseas adoptions for two years pending an investigation into several cases. 

Beijing’s announcement also follows falling birth rates in the country. The number of newborn babies fell to 9.02 million in 2023, and the overall population declined for the second consecutive year. 
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Washington — The United States has charged five Russian intelligence officers and one Russian civilian in connection with a major cyberattack, described by U.S. prosecutors as the first shot in the Kremlin’s war against Ukraine.

The Justice Department unsealed the superseding indictment Thursday, accusing the Russians of carrying out the January 2022 “WhisperGate” malware attack that sought to debilitate Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure ahead of the Russian invasion the following month.

“The WhisperGate campaign included the targeting of civilian infrastructure and Ukrainian computer systems wholly unrelated to the military or national defense, that include government agencies responsible for emergency services in Ukraine, the judiciary, food safety and education, seeking to sap the morale of the Ukrainian public,” said U.S. Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen.

The attack “could be considered the first shot of the war,” said FBI Special Agent in Charge Bill DelBagno, speaking alongside Olsen during a news conference in Baltimore, Maryland.

DelBagno said the WhisperGate campaign also targeted the United States and dozens of NATO allies, going as far as to infiltrate a U.S. government agency based in Maryland while simultaneously accessing U.S. bank accounts.

“The FBI, along with our law enforcement partners and allies, will relentlessly hunt down and counter these threats,” he said. “This type of cyber warfare will not be tolerated. The scope of Russia’s crimes cannot be ignored.”

Thursday’s superseding indictment, the result of an FBI operation named “Toy Soldier,” builds on charges first filed in June against 22-year-old Russian Amin Stigal, a civilian accused of leveraging malware to aid Russian intelligence ahead of the invasion of Ukraine.

As part of the attack, Stigal and the agents with Unit 21955 of Russia’s Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff, or GRU, used the cyberinfrastructure of some U.S.-based companies to launch what first appeared to be ransomware attacks, but which were actually designed to wipe out critical data.

The new indictment names Stigal’s Russian GRU accomplices as Vladislav Borovkov, Denis Denisenko, Yuriy Denisov, Dmitriy Goloshubov and Nikolay Korchagin.

FBI officials said the GRU unit has also operated under the names Cadet Blizzard, Ember Bear and Dev-0586, carrying out cyberattacks on critical infrastructure across Europe, Central America and Asia.

In addition to the new charges, U.S. officials said they are offering a reward of up to $10 million for each of the Russians named in the criminal complaint.

The officials said they are also working with Interpol to serve notices that could help lead to the arrest of the six Russians.

“They are marked people,” Olsen said. “We know who they are. There’s a reward on their head, and we’re going to pursue them relentlessly.”

“The message is clear,” he said. “To the GRU, to the Russians, we are onto you.”

In addition to the charges, the FBI and its partners on Thursday issued a cybersecurity advisory telling organizations and companies to fix known vulnerabilities that could be exploited by the GRU’s Unit 21955.

The Russian Embassy in Washington has yet to respond to a VOA request for comment.

Meanwhile, some U.S. allies announced their own plans to crack down on Russian intelligence.

Estonia on Thursday announced it has attributed a 2020 cyberattack on three of its government ministries and is seeking the arrest of three members of the GRU’s Unit 21955.

“Russia’s aim was to damage national computer systems, obtain sensitive information and strike a blow against our sense of security,” Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna said in a statement.

“Estonia condemns any malign activity, including cyberactivity that threatens our institutions, our citizens and our security,” Tsahkna said.

Thursday’s charges by the U.S. against Russian agents are the latest in a series of measures by Washington to crack down on what it describes as Moscow’s malign activity.

Earlier Thursday, the U.S. Justice Department charged a U.S. television presenter for Channel One Russia and his wife with sanctions evasion.

On Wednesday, the U.S. charged two Russian nationals employed by the Kremlin-backed RT media outlet with funneling almost $10 million to a U.S.-based media company to spread pro-Russian disinformation.

The Justice Department on Wednesday also announced the takedown of 32 internet domains linked to what officials described as a separate Russian operation aimed at influencing the U.S. presidential election.

VOA’s United Nations correspondent Margaret Besheer contributed to this report.
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London — The United States announced new sanctions Thursday on ships that transport Russian gas from Moscow’s Arctic LNG 2 terminal in Russia’s Murmansk region.

The measures target the owners of two LNG tankers, the New Energy and the Mulan. The U.S. State Department said the New Energy had used “deceptive shipping practices, including shutting off its automatic identification system, to load cargo from the U.S.-sanctioned Arctic LNG 2 project.”

It comes as a new analysis shows Russia appears to be struggling to find buyers for its liquefied natural gas, or LNG, from its flagship Arctic LNG 2 project amid tightening Western sanctions, forcing Moscow to store the gas in a huge container vessel in the Arctic Sea.

The Arctic LNG 2 project was meant to produce almost 19.8 million metric tonnes of LNG every year to sell primarily to Asian markets, potentially earning billions of dollars for Novatek, the private company that runs the project, and the Kremlin. 

Instead, Russia is struggling to sell the gas, according to analyst Tom Marzec-Manser, head of gas analytics at Independent Commodity Intelligence Services. He has been using satellite and ship-tracking data to monitor LNG vessels servicing the Arctic LNG 2 facility.

“So far, we’re aware of three cargoes that have been loaded from Arctic LNG 2 … and all of them really have not gone anywhere. In recent days, what we’ve seen is that two of them have had to offload their cargo onto this huge floating storage unit that Russia’s Novatek has had moored up near Murmansk for over a year and never used — it’s also under sanctions. They’re offloading these cargoes into the storage unit because they can’t find a buyer,” Marzec-Manser told VOA.

He said that storage unit, named the Saam, will rapidly fill up if Russia can’t find buyers, creating a bottleneck and potentially forcing Novatek to halt production.

Putin’s flagship

Arctic LNG 2 was a flagship development for Russian President Vladimir Putin, who pledged that it would one day help Russia to become the world’s biggest producer of LNG.

“Production of liquefied natural gas in the Russia Arctic zone will have increased three-fold by 2030, up to 64 million tons per year. … Of course, it will contribute significantly in the development of our northern regions and in the strengthening of Russian technological sovereignty,” Putin told delegates at the Eastern Economic Forum in the Russian city of Vladivostok in September 2023.

Earlier sanctions

That goal now seems unlikely. The West, led by the United States, imposed sanctions on Novatek and businesses linked to Arctic LNG 2 following Moscow’s February 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Crucially, according to Marzec-Manser, that included the vessels intended to transport the gas.

“So, there’s a whole fleet of cargo vessels that are sitting in shipyards in Asia, which are specifically designed to flow through the Arctic seas. They’re called ‘ice-class’ vessels, and they’ve not been able to sell them to Novatek because of these sanctions,” Marzec-Manser said.

“What Novatek then did was to say, ‘Right, what we’re going to try and do is buy really old LNG vessels, which aren’t designed for the Arctic waters, but we can at least shuttle them backwards and forwards during the summer months.’ But then the U.S. has sanctioned those vessels, as well,” he told VOA.

Kremlin response

Russia is looking for ways to circumvent the sanctions. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters in April that “attempts to squeeze Russia out of energy markets and switch to more expensive markets are continuing,” adding that Moscow “will look for ways to overcome these illegal obstacles, unfair competition and illegal actions.”

Analysts say Russia is assembling a so-called “dark fleet” of LNG vessels that are difficult to track.

“It’s a game of cat and mouse, and as we see, new vessels which are owned by unknown Middle Eastern entities entering Russian waters, it’s only then that you can properly join the dots to say, well, this is clearly being used to service some of these [LNG] projects, and it’s only then that the sanctions come in,” Marzec-Manser told VOA.

Novatek did not respond to VOA requests for comment.

Russia is still able to sell LNG and other hydrocarbon products from oil and gas fields that are not subject to Western sanctions. However, the state-owned gas giant Gazprom recorded a net loss of $6.9 billion in 2023 — its first annual loss in more than 20 years — as Moscow cut supplies to European customers following the invasion of Ukraine and the West’s imposition of sanctions.

The United States is now by far the world’s biggest supplier of LNG, with two-thirds of it exported to Europe.
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