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ISLAMABAD — Taliban-ruled Afghanistan and neighboring Turkmenistan on Wednesday marked the resumption of work on a long-delayed gas pipeline designed to run through the two countries, Pakistan and India. The estimated $10 billion Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India, or TAPI, project is designed to annually transport up to 33 billion cubic meters of Turkmen natural gas from the southeastern Galkynysh field through the proposed 1,800-kilometer pipeline. Prime Minister Mohammad Hassan Akhund of the de facto Taliban government traveled to the Turkmen border region of Mary and joined top leaders of the host country to inaugurate construction of a vital section of the TAPI project. It is intended to link the city of Serhetabat in Turkmenistan to Herat in western Afghanistan. Turkmen President Serdar Berdimuhamedov joined and addressed the ceremony via video link. "This project will benefit not only the economies of the participating countries but also the entire region,” he said. Taliban authorities declared a public holiday in Herat, the capital of the province of the same name, to mark the occasion, with posters celebrating the TAPI project plastered across the border city. Initially signed in the early 1990s to provide natural gas to energy-deficient South Asia, the TAPI project has faced repeated delays due to years of Afghan hostilities, which ended in 2021 when the then-insurgent Taliban recaptured power as all U.S. and NATO forces exited the country. While Turkmen leaders Wednesday pledged to enhance bilateral ties between Ashgabat and Kabul and carry forward the TAPI project, experts remain skeptical that the gas pipeline will become operational soon. They cite funding issues, U.S.-led Western economic sanctions on Afghanistan and the international community’s refusal to recognize the Taliban as the legitimate government over restrictions on Afghan women’s rights. Islamabad’s persistent diplomatic and military tensions with New Delhi are also considered a significant obstacle to the materialization of the TAPI project. According to officials of the participating countries, Pakistan and India, each one plans to purchase 42% of the gas exports, and Afghanistan will receive the rest. Kabul will also earn around $500 million in transit fees annually. Pakistan’s relations with Afghanistan deteriorated after the Taliban takeover over terrorism concerns. Islamabad complains that Kabul shelters and facilitates fugitive anti-Pakistan militants to orchestrate cross-border terrorist attacks from Afghan sanctuaries, charges the Taliban reject.

WASHINGTON — U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson canceled a vote scheduled for Wednesday on his stopgap funding bill, saying more work is needed to build support for a measure, less than three weeks before a government shutdown deadline.  "No vote today, because we're in the consensus-building business here in Congress, with small majorities, and that's what you do," Johnson told reporters at the Capitol.  The vote had been set for later on Wednesday.  Johnson added that Republicans will be working through the weekend to find a bill that would gain enough votes for passage, now that his measure, opposed by President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats, has faltered.  House Republicans have attached a controversial provision requiring people to provide proof of citizenship to register to vote, a measure meant to force Democrats to take stances on the politically charged issue of non-citizen voting, which is already illegal in federal elections.  Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, who continues to falsely claim his 2020 loss was the result of fraud, has urged Republicans to pass the voting measure ahead of the November 5 election.  The federal government's fiscal year ends on September 30, when funding for many agencies expires. Without some sort of extension, federal programs not deemed essential would have to suspend many of their operations, forcing thousands of government workers to go on leave.  Success for the funding bill was not guaranteed in the chamber that Republicans control by a narrow 220-211 margin. Several House Republicans have said they would vote against the measure, citing spending concerns, and many members of the caucus generally oppose stopgap spending measures.  Two Republicans joined Democrats on Tuesday in voting against a procedural move to advance the bill.  Democrats broadly see the citizenship registration requirement as meant to undermine confidence in administering elections.  "We're watching a movie we've seen over and over again," said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on Tuesday. "House Republicans are trying to pass a bill so partisan that it even splits their own caucus. This proposal isn't even serious."  The White House on Monday said Biden would veto this funding package were it to pass, citing the “unrelated cynical” voting requirement. The administration also wants a temporary funding period shorter than six months, as well as more money for the Federal Emergency Management Agency to fix infrastructure damaged by natural disasters.  Lawmakers face an even more critical self-imposed deadline on January 1, before which they must act to raise or extend the nation's debt ceiling or risk defaulting on more than $35 trillion in federal government debt.

According to Feeding America, a U.S. network of food banks, Americans waste about 41 billion kilograms of food every year - about 145 billion meals. But some new high-tech ways make sure that food gets to people who need it. VOA’s Valdya Baraputri has more. Camera: Rendy Wicaksana, Nabila Ganinda, Naras Prameswari.

Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

London — Support for far-right figures among young voters appears to be growing in several European countries. Much of the focus is on Germany, where the Alternative for Germany party (AfD) is hoping to secure another victory in the upcoming Brandenburg state election in the east of the country on September 22.  AfD secured a resounding victory in the Thuringia state election earlier this month, winning 32.8% of the vote, well ahead of second-place Christian Democrats at 23.6%.  It was the first time the far right had won a state election since the end of World War II in 1945.  “More than a third of young people, almost 40% of 18- to 29-year-olds, [voted] for the AfD,” according to Ben Ansell, a professor at the University of Oxford and host of the podcast “What’s Wrong with Democracy?”  In contrast, only 1 in 5 voters over 70 years of age chose AfD.  The party is hoping young voters will propel it to victory in the upcoming Brandenburg state election.  “[Other parties] probably expected that the AfD is only a party for old people and that young people don't vote for the AfD. That is exactly wrong,” said AfD chairman in Brandenburg Hans-Christoph Berndt at a recent campaign event.  What’s driving the popularity of the far right among younger people? Immigration appears to be a key factor, said Ansell.  “In eastern Germany, [AfD] are just really popular,” he said. “It’s a part of the country that is poorer than the other parts, that is less ethnically diverse and therefore reacts more to the new diversity than Berlin does, or other parts of Germany.”  “Some people have argued that it's concerns about the war in Ukraine,” Ansell added. “Other people have argued that it's a response to COVID, or a response to the housing crisis … it's getting on the housing ladder and things like that, having the same quality of life they thought their elders had.”  The trend among young voters is not limited to Germany. In June’s European elections, France’s far-right National Rally was the most popular party among 18- to 34-year-olds, with 32% of the vote — much higher than over-65s.  National Rally’s 28-year-old president, Jordan Bardella, has 1.6 million followers on TikTok, a social media platform popular among young people.  “TikTok is short videos that aim to shock. The skill that populist parties have in making videos and finding political moments that are short, sharp and shocking — to get people excited about politics,” said Ansell.  Meanwhile, a recent study by El País newspaper suggested that a quarter of Spanish men aged between 18 to 26 — known as “Generation Z” — believe that in some circumstances, authoritarianism may be preferable to democracy. Among the so-called baby-boomer generation, aged 59 and over, the figure is less than 10%.   Preference for authoritarianism was also lower among female voters — a trend seen in other countries, said Ansell.  “It’s something that comes out actually most obviously in east Asia — that young men are reacting politically very differently to young women. In [South] Korea, that’s extremely stark, as young men have voted for explicitly anti-feminist movements. But you can see this huge gender gap among the under-30s opening up in all countries, including in the United States right now,” he said.  It remains to be seen whether such trends among young voters will be replicated in the United States in the presidential election on November 5. Recent polls suggest the Democrats’ Kamala Harris has increased support among younger voters compared to her Republican rival, Donald Trump.

Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

TRABUCO CANYON, California — Alex Luna, a 20-year-old missionary, saw the sky turn from a cherry red to black in about 90 minutes as an explosive wildfire raced toward the Southern California mountain community of Wrightwood and authorities implored residents to leave their belongings behind and get out of town.  "It was very, I would say, hellish-like," Luna said Tuesday night. "It was very just dark. Not a good place to be at that moment. ... Ash was falling from the sky like if it was snowing."  Luna was among those who heeded the evacuation order that was issued for the community of about 4,500 in the San Gabriel Mountains east of Los Angeles. The Bridge Fire, which had burned 189 square kilometers (73 square miles) as of late Tuesday with no containment, is one of three major wildfires burning in Southern California and endangering tens of thousands of homes and other structures.  The fires sprung to life during a triple-digit heat wave that finally broke Wednesday. The cooler temperatures brought the prospect of firefighters finally making headway against the flames.  Other major fires were burning across the West, including in Idaho, Oregon and Nevada, where about 20,000 people had to flee a blaze outside Reno.  In Northern California, a fire that started Sunday burned at least 30 homes and commercial buildings and destroyed 40 to 50 vehicles in Clearlake City, 175 kilometers (109 miles) north of San Francisco. Roughly 4,000 people were forced to evacuate.  California is only now heading into the teeth of the wildfire season but already has seen nearly three times as much acreage burn than during all of 2023.  Evacuation orders were expanded Tuesday night in Southern California as the fires grew and included parts of the popular ski town of Big Bear. Some 65,600 homes and buildings were under threat by the Line Fire, including those under mandatory evacuations and those under evacuation warnings, nearly double the number from the previous day.  The San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department announced Tuesday that a Norco man suspected of starting the Line Fire in Highland on September 5 had been arrested and charged with arson. He was held in lieu of $80,000 bail.  Residents along the southern edge of Big Bear Lake were told to leave the area, which is a popular destination for anglers, bikers and hikers. As of late Tuesday, the blaze had charred more than 140 square kilometers (54 square miles) of grass and brush with 14% containment, according to CalFire. It blanketed the area with a thick cloud of dark smoke.  The fire impacted key radio towers, including communication channels for those responding to the fire. Cooler weather could moderate fire activity toward the end of the week, CalFire said in an update. Public safety power shut-offs were anticipated in parts of the Big Bear and Bear Valley areas.  The acrid air prompted several districts in the area to close schools through the end of the week because of safety concerns. Three firefighters have been injured since the blaze was reported Thursday, state fire managers said.  For Wrightwood, a picturesque town 124 kilometers (77 miles) east of Los Angeles known for its 1930’s cabins. threatening wildfires have become a regular part of life. Authorities expressed frustration in 2016 when only half the residents heeded orders to leave.  Janice Quick, the president of the Wrightwood Chamber of Commerce, lives a few miles outside town. Late Tuesday afternoon she was eating lunch outside with friends and they were rained on by embers the size of her thumbnail that hit the table and made a clinking sound.  A friend texted to tell her that the friend's home had been consumed by fire, while another friend was watching through her ring camera as embers rained down on her home.  "I've never seen anything like this and I've been through fires before," said Quick, who has lived in Wrightwood for 45 years.  In neighboring Orange County, firefighters used bulldozers, helicopters and planes to control a rapidly spreading blaze called the Airport Fire that started Monday and spread to about 8 square kilometers (3 square miles) in only a few hours. The blaze was ignited by a spark from heavy equipment being used by public workers, officials said.  By Tuesday night, it had charred more than 78 square kilometers (30 square miles) and was heading over mountainous terrain into neighboring Riverside County with no containment, said Orange County Fire Authority Capt. Steve Concialdi. It burned some communications towers on top of a peak, though so far officials said they did not have reports of the damage disrupting police or fire communication signals in the area.  Concialdi said the fire was burning away from homes in Orange County, but there are 36 recreational cabins in the area. He said authorities don't yet know if the cabins were damaged or destroyed by the blaze.  Two firefighters who suffered heat-related injuries and a resident who suffered from smoke inhalation were treated at a hospital and released.  Sherri Fankhauser, her husband and her daughter set up lawn chairs and were watching helicopters make water drops on a flaming hillside a few hundred yards away from their Trabuco Canyon home on Tuesday.  They didn't evacuate even though their street had been under a mandatory evacuation order since Monday. A neighbor did help Fankhauser's 89-year-old mother-in-law evacuate, Fankhauser said. The flames died down last night but flared up again in the morning.  "You can see fire coming over the ridge now," Fankhauser said Tuesday afternoon. "It's getting a little scarier now."

One Washington teacher’s attempt to help one student has turned into something much larger. VOA’s Philip Alexiou has this story of a chess academy for kids. (Camera and produced by: Philip Alexiou)

SEOUL/NEW DELHI — Samsung Electronics, the world's top maker of smartphones, TVs and memory chips, is cutting up to 30% of its overseas staff at some divisions, three sources with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters.  South Korea-based Samsung has instructed subsidiaries worldwide to reduce sales and marketing staff by about 15% and the administrative staff by up to 30%, two of the sources said.  The plan will be implemented by the end of this year and would impact jobs across the Americas, Europe, Asia and Africa, one person said. Six other people familiar with the matter also confirmed Samsung's planned global headcount reduction.  It is not clear how many people would be let go and which countries and business units would be most affected.  The sources declined to be named because the scope and details of the job cuts remained confidential.  In a statement, Samsung said workforce adjustments conducted at some overseas operations were routine, and aimed at improving efficiency. It said there are no specific targets for the plans, adding that they are not impacting its production staff.  Samsung employed a total of 267,800 people as of the end of 2023, and more than half, or 147,000 employees, are based overseas, according to its latest sustainability report.  Manufacturing and development accounted for most of those jobs and sales and marketing staff was around 25,100, while 27,800 people worked in other areas, the report said.  The "global mandate" on job cuts was sent about three weeks ago, and Samsung's India operation was already offering severance packages to some mid-level employees who have left in recent weeks, one of the direct sources said.  The total employees who may need to leave the India unit could reach 1,000, the person added. Samsung employs some 25,000 people in India.  In China, Samsung has notified its staff about the job cuts that are expected to affect about 30% of its employees at its sales operation, a South Korean newspaper reported this month.  Big challenges  The job cuts come as Samsung grapples with mounting pressure on its key units.  Its bread-and-butter chip business has been slower than its rivals in recovering from a severe downturn in the industry that drove its profit to a 15-year low last year.  In May, Samsung replaced the head of its semiconductor division in a bid to overcome a "chip crisis" as it seeks to catch up with smaller rival SK Hynix in supplying high-end memory chips used in artificial intelligence chipsets.  In the premium smartphone market, Samsung is facing stiff competition from Apple and China's Huawei, while it has long lagged behind TSMC in contract chip manufacturing. And in India, which earns Samsung around $12 billion in annual revenue, a strike over wages is disrupting production.  One of the sources familiar with the plans said the job cuts were being made in preparation for a slowdown in global demand for technology products as the global economy slows. Another source said Samsung is seeking to shore up its bottom line by saving costs.  It was not immediately clear if Samsung will also cut jobs in its headquarters in South Korea.  One of the sources said Samsung would find it difficult to lay off workers in South Korea because it was a politically sensitive issue. Conglomerate Samsung Group, of which the electronics giant is the crown jewel, is the country's biggest employer and plays a key role in its economy.  Job cuts could also stir labor unrest at home. A South Korean workers' union at Samsung Electronics recently went on strike for several days, demanding higher wages and benefits.  Shares in Samsung Electronics, South Korea's most valuable stock, are trading at their lowest level in 16 months on Wednesday, as some analysts cut their profit estimates for the company recently, citing a weak recovery in demand for smartphones and personal computers.

Washington — When the U.S. announced the seizure of 32 internet domains tied to Russian efforts to ply American voters with disinformation ahead of November’s presidential election, prosecutors were quick to note the use of artificial intelligence, or AI. The Russian operation, known as Doppelganger, drove internet and social media users to the fake news using a variety of methods, the charging documents said, including advertisements that were “in some cases created using artificial intelligence.” AI tools were also used to “generate content, including images and videos, for use in negative advertisements about U.S. politicians,” the indictment added. And Russia is far from alone in turning to AI in the hopes of swaying U.S. voters. “The primary actors we've seen for election use of this are Iran and Russia, although as various private companies have noticed, China also has used artificial intelligence for spreading divisive narratives in the United States,” according to a senior intelligence official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss sensitive information. “What we've seen is artificial intelligence is used by foreign actors to make their content more quickly and convincingly tailor their synthetic content in both audio and video forms,” the official added.  But other U.S. officials say the use of AI to spread misinformation and disinformation in the lead-up to the U.S. election has so far failed to live up to some of the more dire warnings about how deepfakes and other AI-generated material could shake-up the American political landscape. “Generative AI is not going to fundamentally introduce new threats to this election cycle,” according to Cait Conley, senior adviser to the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the U.S. agency charged with overseeing election security. “What we're seeing is consistent with what we expected to see,” Conley told VOA. AI “is exacerbating existing threats, in both the cyber domain and the foreign malign influence operation-disinformation campaigns,” she said. But little of what has been put out to this point has shocked officials at CISA or the myriad state and local governments who run elections across the country. “This threat vector is not new to them,” Conley said. “And they have taken the measures to ensure they're prepared to respond effectively.”  As an example, Conley pointed to the rash of robocalls that targeted New Hampshire citizens ahead of the state’s first in the nation primary in January, using fake audio of U.S. President Joe Biden to tell people to stay home and “save your vote.” New Hampshire's attorney general quickly went public, calling the robocalls an apparent attempt to suppress votes and telling voters the incident was under investigation. This past May, prosecutors indicted a Louisiana political consultant in connection with the scheme. More recently, the alleged use of AI prompted a celebrity endorsement in the U.S. presidential race by pop star Taylor Swift. “Recently I was made aware that AI of ‘me’ falsely endorsing Donald Trump’s presidential run was posted to his site,” Swift wrote in an Instagram social media post late Tuesday.  “It brought me to the conclusion that I need to be very transparent about my actual plans for this election as a voter,” she wrote, adding, “I will be casting my vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.” But experts and analysts say for all the attention AI is getting, the use of such technology in attacks and other influence operations has been limited. “There's not a tremendous amount of it in the wild that's particularly successful right now, at least to my knowledge,” said Katie Gray, a senior partner at In-Q-Tel, the CIA's technology-focused, not-for-profit strategic investment firm. “Most attackers are not using the most sophisticated methods to penetrate systems,” she said on September 4 at a cybersecurity summit in Washington. Others suggest that at least for the moment, the fears surrounding AI have outpaced its usefulness by malicious actors. ‘We jump to the doomsday science fiction,” said Clint Watts, a former FBI special agent and counterterror consultant who heads up the Microsoft Threat Analysis Center (MTAC). “But instead, what we're seeing is the number one challenge to all of this right now is access, just getting to the [AI] tools and accessing them,” he said, speaking like Gray at the cybersecurity summit. Over the past 14 months, MTAC has logged hundreds of instances of AI use by China, Russia and Iran, Watts said. And analysts found that Moscow and Tehran, in particular, have struggled to get access to a fully AI toolbox. The Russians “need to use their own tools from the start, rather than Western tools, because they're afraid they'll get knocked off those systems,” Watts said. Iran is even further behind. “They've tried different tools,” Watts said. “They just can't get access to most of them for the most part.” U.S. adversaries also appear to be having difficulties with the underlying requirements to make AI effective. “To do scaled AI operations is not cheap,” Watts said. “Some of the infrastructure and the resources of it [AI], the models, the data it needs to be trained [on] – very challenging at the moment.” And Watts said until the products generated by AI get better, attempted deepfakes will likely have trouble resonating with the targeted audiences. “Audiences have been remarkably brilliant about detecting deepfakes in crowds. The more you watch somebody, the more you realize a fake isn't quite right,” according to Watts. “The Russian actors that we've seen, all of them have tried deepfakes and they've moved back to bread and butter, small video manipulations.”

Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.