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Paris — French far-right leader Jordan Bardella said on Wednesday that he backed Ukraine's right to defend itself against Russia, but if elected prime minister he would not provide Kyiv with missiles that would allow it to strike Russia's territory.   He also said he would standby France's commitments to the NATO military alliance if he became prime minister.   Bardella's National Rally (RN) party leads opinion polls ahead of June 30 and July 7 snap parliamentary elections, which has led to questions over the foreign policy implications if they win enough seats to form a government.   "I wish for Ukraine to have at disposal the ammunition and equipment it needs to hold the front, but my red line will not change, which is sending equipment that could have consequences of escalation in eastern Europe," Bardella told reporters at the Eurosatory arms fair near Paris.   "And so I don't plan to send, especially, long-range missiles or other weapons that will allow Ukraine to strike the Russian territory. My position has not changed and will not change – it's about support for Ukraine and avoiding all risks of escalation in the region. And I think the risk of escalation is of course real."   Even if the RN was to run France's government, Emmanuel Macron would remain as president, and the head of France's army.   But the constitution also gives the prime minister a role in terms of defense, with the division of power not clear cut. Macron would lose control over the domestic agenda, including economic policy, security, immigration and finances, which would in turn impact other policies, such as aid to Ukraine, as he would need parliament's backing to finance any support as part of France's annual budget.  Bardella also said he would keep France's commitments towards its partners, including on increasing defense spending. "I don't plan to put into question the commitments made by France on the international level, because there's a stake regarding credibility towards our European partners as well as towards our NATO allies," he said. "And so I plan to pursue the efforts of rearmament of the country, both in terms of its defense capabilities, increasing the military budget through budgetary efforts put in place in past years, which we have supported," he added. 

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ROSWELL, N.M. — Cooler weather — and the chance of rain — could bring some relief this week to firefighters battling blazes in southern New Mexico that killed one person, damaged hundreds of structures and forced thousands to evacuate. Strong wind pushed the larger of two wildfires into the mountain village of Ruidoso, forcing residents to flee immediately with little notice. Weather patterns are expected to shift by Wednesday morning with moisture from a tropical wave in the Gulf of Mexico, said Joshua Schroeder of the National Weather Service in Albuquerque. “Today was really our last dry day,” he said late Tuesday. “Rains will then peak into Thursday and diminish by the weekend.” On the downside, he said, some shifts in wind were possible later Wednesday, and rain could lead to flash flooding in newly burned areas.  Ruidoso and much of the Southwest has been exceedingly dry and hot this spring. Those conditions, along with strong wind, whipped flames out of control Monday and Tuesday, rapidly advancing the South Fork Fire into the village. Along with homes and businesses, a regional medical center and the Ruidoso Downs horse track were evacuated. Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham's office confirmed one fatality as a result of the fire but said it had no further details. More than 500 structures have been destroyed or damaged, but it’s unclear how many were homes. A flyover to provide more accurate mapping and a better assessment of damage was planned overnight Tuesday, Lujan Grisham said. Ardis Holder left Ruidoso with her two young daughters, her gas tank nearly on empty and praying that they'd make it out safe. She was sure the house she rented in the village she grew up in is gone, based on the maps she's seen so far. “We were already seeing where all the fire hit, it's everywhere,” she said late Tuesday from a shelter in nearby Roswell. “If there's something standing, that's awesome. But, if not, we were prepared for the worst.” Lujan Grisham declared a county-wide state of emergency that extended to the neighboring Mescalero Apache Reservation where both fires started and deployed National Guard troops. The declaration unlocks additional funding and resources to manage the crisis. Nationwide, wildfires have scorched more than 3,280 square miles (8,495 square kilometers) this year — a figure higher than the 10-year averages, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. About 20 wildfires currently burning are considered large and uncontained, including blazes in California and Washington state. Lujan Grisham said the two southern New Mexico wildfires together have consumed more than 31 square miles (80 square kilometers). The exact causes of the blazes hasn't been determined, but the Southwest Coordination Center listed them as human-caused. “We are deploying every available resource to control these fires.” she said. While many older residents call Ruidoso home year-round, the population of around 7,000 people expands to about 25,000 during the warmer months, when New Mexicans and Texans from hotter climates seek the cool of the leafy aspen trees, hiking trails and a chance to go fishing.  Nestled within the Lincoln National Forest, Ruidoso boasts nearby amenities including a casino, golf course and ski resort operated by the Mescalero Apache Tribe. Horse races at the Ruidoso Downs also draw crowds as home to one of the sport’s richest quarter-horse competitions. Ruidoso residents fled Monday through traffic-clogged downtown streets some described as apocalyptic, with smoke darkening the evening sky, embers raining down and 100-foot (30-meter) flames in the distance climbing over a ridgeline. The evacuation order came so quickly that she Christy Hood and her husband Richard only had time to grab their two children and two dogs. Heavy traffic on the way out turned what should have been a 15-minute drive into a harrowing two-hour ordeal. “As we were leaving, there were flames in front of me and to the side of me,” said Hood, a real estate agent in Ruidoso. “And all the animals were just running — charging — trying to get out.” On social media posts, Ruidoso officials didn’t mince words: “GO NOW: Do not attempt to gather belongings or protect your home. Evacuate immediately.” As Jacquie and Ernie Escajeda left church Monday in Ruidoso, they saw smoke rise above a mountain behind their house. They kept a close eye on their cellphones and turned on the radio for updates. There was no “get ready,” nor “get set” — it was just “go,” Ernie Escajeda said. They grabbed legal documents and other belongings and left. On Tuesday, the couple got a call from friends who are on vacation in Utah but have a home in Ruidoso that they’ve been told was destroyed, Jacquie Escajeda said. “They lost their home,” she said. “There’s only one home standing in their whole little division that they live in, so there are a lot of structures lost. We have no idea if we’re going to have a home to go to.” Public Service Company of New Mexico shut off power to part of the village due to the fire. Lujan Grisham said cellphone service had been affected in some communities near the fire, and mobile cell towers were being set up to restore communications. Amid highway closures, many evacuees had little choice but to flee eastward and to the city of Roswell, 75 miles (121 kilometers) away, where hotels and shelters quickly filled. A rural gas station along the evacuation route was overrun with people and cars. 

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Seoul, South Korea — Russian President Vladimir Putin received a grandiose reception in Pyongyang on Wednesday, meeting North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and pledging closer cooperation as both countries confront the West.  Putin and Kim, who also signed a document upgrading ties, participated in a welcoming ceremony in the central Kim Il Sung Square, where buildings were draped in massive Russian and North Korean flags and portraits of the two leaders.  North Korean residents dressed in red, white, and blue shirts waved bright bouquets of flowers in unison as a brass band played patriotic songs. Putin and Kim also observed a North Korean honor guard before departing for negotiations, which included two hours of one-on-one talks, according to Russian media. At the outset of the negotiations, Putin thanked North Korea for its “consistent and unwavering support” for Russian policy, including in Ukraine, reported Russia’s Interfax news agency. Kim expressed his “full support and solidarity” for what he called Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine, according to Interfax. The North Korean leader also vowed to “unconditionally support” Russia’s policies, the agency added. Putin, who is making his first visit to North Korea in 24 years, invited Kim to Moscow, Russian state media reported. Russia and North Korea have long been close partners, but their cooperation has intensified following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. North Korea has supplied Russia with thousands of containers of munitions, including ballistic missiles, according to U.S. officials – an allegation denied by Pyongyang and Moscow. Close, but how close? According to Interfax, Putin and Kim signed a comprehensive strategic partnership treaty, formally upgrading ties. The treaty text has not been released. Though it is expected to fall short of a formal alliance agreement, Russian officials have said it will likely cover defense cooperation in some sense. Analysts debate how far North Korea-Russia military cooperation will go. Some say Kim and Putin may find more reasons to continue working together as each country’s relationship with the West deteriorates. But the two men will not restore Soviet-era ties, said Kim Gunn, a South Korean lawmaker who earlier this year stepped down as South Korea’s top nuclear envoy. “Russia is not the former Soviet Union,” he said. “And Russia is at war in Ukraine – they are pouring all their energy into this war. There’s not so much room for Russia to do anything with North Korea.” For now, Putin and Kim are presenting a united front, with Putin describing their collaboration on Wednesday as a fight against U.S. hegemony. An editorial Tuesday in the Rodong Sinmun, North Korea’s main newspaper, said the “people and military of both countries have the sacred duty, together, to safeguard their country’s sovereignty and dignity and guarantee the peace and security of the region.” Rachel Minyoung Lee, a North Korea watcher and senior fellow at the Washington-based Stimson Center, said that formulation was unusual for North Korean state media, an aberration that she said sends a “less than comforting message” about future military cooperation. “The agreement (or a treaty) North Korea and Russia sign during Putin’s visit, if made public, will hopefully bring clarity to this phrase,” she wrote in a blog post on 38 North, a North Korea-focused website. Sanctions evasion Tuesday, Putin vowed to work with North Korea to counter sanctions. In a letter published in North Korean state media, Putin said the two countries would develop trade mechanisms “not controlled by the West” and would “jointly oppose illegitimate unilateral restrictions.” Both countries are subject to a growing number of sanctions imposed by individual countries – Russia because of its invasion of Ukraine and North Korea because of its nuclear weapons program and other illicit activities, such as cybertheft. North Korea is also subject to a series of United Nations Security Council resolutions, which prohibit a wide range of economic activity with Pyongyang. Russia – a permanent, veto-wielding member of the U.N. Security Council – voted for the North Korea sanctions as recently as 2017. But it now opposes the sanctions and has taken steps to complicate their enforcement.   Many Russian analysts say Putin is reluctant to completely abandon U.N. sanctions on North Korea. Instead, he may search for what he sees as loopholes that facilitate cooperation even in areas that are subject to U.N. sanctions, such as North Korean laborers earning income abroad. For instance, North Korean IT specialists could work remotely from their home country without technically receiving income abroad, said Georgy Toloraya, a former member of the U.N. Panel of Experts, which was meant to monitor enforcement of the North Korea sanctions. Weapons cooperation Analysts are also watching Putin’s visit for any signs of additional defense cooperation. A key question among Western analysts is what Putin might offer North Korea in exchange for weapons allegedly used in the Ukraine war. U.S. officials have expressed concern that Russia may provide North Korea with advanced weapons or other assistance related to its nuclear program. Such cooperation represents “the greatest threat to U.S. national security since the Korean War,” said Victor Cha, the Korea Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. In a blog post, Cha said it is “highly unlikely that Kim would have feted Putin so lavishly only for the promise of food and fuel,” noting that Pyongyang seeks advanced weapons, including nuclear submarine and intercontinental ballistic missile technology. “This aspect of the relationship not only destabilizes security on the peninsula and in Asia; it also heightens the direct threat posed by North Korea to the [U.S.] homeland,” he said.

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KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — Fresh Malaysian durians will soon make their way to China as the two countries signed a slew of trade and economic deals Wednesday during a visit by Premier Li Qiang to celebrate a half-century of diplomatic relations. Li held private talks with Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim in the government administrative capital of Putrajaya before they met with their delegations. The two leaders witnessed the signing of various pacts, including a new five-year deal for economic and trade cooperation that officials said would bolster links between industries in priority sectors like high-level manufacturing and the digital economy. The sides also inked a protocol on measures that will allow Malaysia to export to China fresh durian, a spiky tropical fruit with a strong odor and known for its creamy pulp, Anwar’s office said. Exporting fresh durians to China will open a new market for Malaysia, which began selling durian pulp and paste to China in 2011 and frozen durian whole fruits in 2018. Malaysia’s frozen durian export value to China has surged from 170 million ringgit ($36 million) in 2018 to nearly 1.2 billion ringgit ($255 million) last year, it said. Li, the first Chinese premier to visit Malaysia since 2015, flew in for a three-day visit late Tuesday from Australia. Li, who was given a red-carpet welcome, said upon his arrival that the two nations' 50-year anniversary was a new starting point to deepen links and increase exchanges. "China is advancing Chinese modernization on all fronts through high-quality development. Malaysia, on its part, is promoting national development under the vision of Malaysia MADANI. China is ready to work with Malaysia," Li said in a statement published by the national Bernama news agency. Li, China’s No. 2 leader after President Xi Jinping, last week also became the first Chinese premier to visit New Zealand and then Australia in seven years. Other agreements signed aim to promote investment in the digital economy and green development, combat transnational crime, and boost housing and urban development, higher education, people-to-people exchanges in science and technology, tourism and cultural cooperation, Anwar's office said. Trade with China — Malaysia’s No. 1 trading partner since 2009 — made up 17% of Malaysia’s global trade, valued at $98.8 billion last year, Trade Minister Zafrul Aziz was quoted as saying by Bernama last week. While trade dominated the talks, Malaysia’s Foreign Minister Mohamad Hassan has said the prickly issue of territorial claims in the South China Sea was also likely to be raised. Vietnam, Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Taiwan all dispute Beijing’s claims to almost the entire South China Sea. But unlike the publicized clashes between the Philippines and China, Malaysia’s government prefers the diplomatic channel and rarely criticizes Beijing even though Chinese coast guard ships have sailed near Malaysia’s waters. This is partly to protect economic ties between the trade partners. “That is why we need to further build on this good cooperation we have established since 1974. The good ties we have enjoyed since will allow us to manage and resolve any issue amicably,” Mohamad Hassan was quoted as saying by The Star newspaper ahead of Li’s visit.  Anwar, who visited China twice last year, has sought to move closer to Beijing even while engaging the U.S. as a key ally. While speaking at a forum in Tokyo in May, Anwar stressed that Beijing is too close, too important and too strategic to ignore. Ahead of Li's visit, Anwar told Chinese media that Malaysia planned to join the BRICS bloc of developing economies but didn't give details. The plan was confirmed by Zafrul and Mohamad Hassan on Monday. The bloc's core members are Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, who seek a fairer world order currently dominated by Western nations. The bloc expanded with Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates invited to become members this year. Some 40 countries have also expressed interest. “Joining BRICS doesn't mean Malaysia will lose its strategic ambiguity between Beijing and Washington. It merely means an additional platform to give it a bigger voice as a middle power," said James Chin, professor of Asian studies at Australia’s University of Tasmania. Li is also scheduled to have an audience with King Sultan Ibrahim Iskandar. Malaysia's Foreign Ministry said Li and Anwar will also attend a groundbreaking ceremony at a construction site for the East Coast Rail Link, which connects Malaysia’s west coast to eastern rural states and is a key part of China’s Belt and Road infrastructure initiative. The project was suspended in 2018 after Malaysia’s long-ruling coalition was toppled in a historic general election over a massive corruption scandal. It was subsequently revived after the Chinese contractor agreed to cut the construction cost by one-third, and is now due to be completed by the end of 2026. The two leaders will also attend a dinner to celebrate the 50th anniversary of diplomatic relations. Both leaders will also meet the business community at a luncheon before Li heads home Thursday.

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SYDNEY — Senior Australian ministers are in Papua New Guinea to discuss security and development amid China’s growing ambitions in the region. The ministerial forum comes at a critical time with the Canberra government hoping to maintain its position as a dominant trade and security partner in the Pacific. Papua New Guinea is boosting trade ties with China and has had negotiations with Beijing over policing cooperation, which has caused alarm in Canberra and Washington, which struck a defense accord with Papua New Guinea last year.  Australia's high-level delegation to Papua New Guinea includes Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong, Defense Minister Richard Marles, and ministers for cyber security, agriculture and fisheries, trade and international development. They will join their counterparts for talks Wednesday on economic and security cooperation. Wong told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. that Canberra will pursue its own interests, while Beijing will do the same. “We do not expect China to stop being China. China will continue to assert its interests," she said. "How we deal with that is to assert ours and we do so both in the bilateral relationship but also in the way we engage in the region and the way we engage with other powers.” Meg Keen, director of the Pacific Islands Program at the Lowy Institute, a Sydney-based research organization, told VOA that both Canberra and Washington want to limit Beijing’s influence in Papua New Guinea. China has already sent police to neighboring Solomon Islands and Kiribati, insisting it has a plan to help Pacific Island countries maintain social order. Australia has, however, said that Beijing should have “no role” in policing the Pacific Islands, and that the Canberra government will train more local security forces to fill gaps. Keen said China has strategic ambitions in the Pacific region. “China is in a competition with Taiwan for recognition and since 2019 it has been able to win the support away from Taiwan of three countries in the region. That is significant. Kiribati is one of those," Keen said. "So, while these are small countries they have enormous ocean territories. They sit in a very strategic place between the United States, Australia and Asia.” This week, the Chinese Premier Li Qiang held talks with senior government officials in Australia. It was a further sign that bilateral relations, which have been strained over various geopolitical and trade disputes, are improving. However, differences between the two sides remain over human rights, the South China Sea, allegations of cyber espionage and, increasingly, over Beijing’s ambitions in the Pacific, a region Australia has traditionally considered to be its sphere of influence.

AMBLETEUSE, France — The rising tide crept above their waists, soaking the babies they hugged tight. Around a dozen Kurds refused to leave the cold waters of the English Channel in a futile attempt to delay the inevitable: French police had just foiled their latest attempt to reach the United Kingdom by boat. The men, women and children were trapped again on the last frontier of their journey from Iraq and Iran. They hoped that a rubber dinghy would get them to better lives with housing, schooling and work. Now it disappeared on the horizon, only a few of its passengers aboard. On the beach of the quiet northern French town of Ambleteuse, police pleaded for the migrants to leave the 10-degree Celsius water, so cold it can kill within minutes. Do it for the children’s sake, they argued. “The boat is go!” an increasingly irritated officer shouted in French-accented English. “It’s over! It’s over!” The asylum-seekers finally emerged from the sea defeated, but there was no doubt that they would try to reach the U.K. again. They would not find the haven they needed in France, or elsewhere in the European Union. Europe's increasingly strict asylum rules, growing xenophobia and hostile treatment of migrants were pushing them north. While the U.K. government has been hostile, too, many migrants have family or friends in the U.K. and a perception they will have more opportunities there. EU rules stipulate that a person must apply for asylum in the first member state they land in. This has overwhelmed countries on the edge of the 27-nation bloc such as Italy, Greece and Spain. Some migrants don't even try for new lives in the EU anymore. They are flying to France from as far away as Vietnam to attempt the Channel crossing after failing to get permission to enter the U.K., which has stricter visa requirements. “No happy here,” said Adam, an Iraqi father of six who was among those caught on the beach in a recent May morning. He refused to provide his last name due to his uncertain legal status in France. He had failed to find schooling and housing for his children in France and had grown frustrated with the asylum office’s lack of answers about his case. He thought things would be better in the U.K., he said. While the number of people entering the EU without permission is nowhere near as high as during a 2015-2016 refugee crisis, far-right parties across Europe, including in France, have exploited migration to the continent and made big electoral wins in the most recent European Parliamentary elections. Their rhetoric, and the treatment already faced by many people on the French coast and elsewhere in the bloc, clash with the stated principles of solidarity, openness and respect for human dignity that underpin the democratic EU, human rights advocates note. In recent months, the normally quiet beaches around Dunkirk, Calais and Boulogne-Sur-Mer have become the stage of cat-and-mouse games — even violent clashes — between police and smugglers. Police have fired tear gas, pepper spray and rubber bullets. Smugglers have hurled stones. While boat crossings across the Channel represent only a tiny fraction of migration to the U.K., France agreed last year to hold migrants back in exchange for hundreds of millions of euros. It’s an agreement akin to deals made between the European Union and North African nations in recent years. And while many people have been stopped by police, they are not offered alternative solutions and are bound to try crossing again. About 10,500 people have reached England in small boats in the first five months of the year, some 37% more than the same time period last year, according to data published by the U.K.'s Home Office. The heightened border surveillance is increasing risks and ultimately leading to more deaths, closer to shore, said Salomé Bahri, a coordinator with the nongovernmental organization Utopia 56, which helps migrants stranded in France. At least 20 people have died so far this year trying to reach the U.K., according to Utopia 56. That's nearly as many as died in all of last year, according to statistics published by the International Organization of Migration. People are rushing to avoid being caught by authorities and there are more fatalities, Bahri said. In late April, five people died, including a 7-year-old girl who was crushed inside a rubber boat after more than 110 people boarded it frantically trying to escape police.

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SEATTLE — The U.S. government on Tuesday acknowledged, for the first time, the harmful role it has played over the past century in building and operating dams in the Pacific Northwest — dams that devastated Native American tribes by inundating their villages and decimating salmon runs while bringing electricity, irrigation and jobs to nearby communities. In a new report, the Biden administration said those cultural, spiritual and economic detriments continue to pain the tribes, which consider salmon part of their cultural and spiritual identity, as well as a crucial food source. The government downplayed or accepted the well-known risk to the fish in its drive for industrial development, converting the wealth of the tribes into the wealth of non-Native people, according to the report. "The government afforded little, if any, consideration to the devastation the dams would bring to Tribal communities, including to their cultures, sacred sites, economies, and homes,” the report said. It added: “Despite decades of efforts and an enormous amount of funding attempting to mitigate these impacts, salmon stocks remain threatened or endangered and continued operation of the dams perpetuates the myriad adverse effects.” The Interior Department's report comes amid a $1 billion effort announced earlier this year to restore the region’s salmon runs before more become extinct — and to better partner with the tribes on the actions necessary to make that happen. That includes increasing the production and storage of renewable energy to replace hydropower generation that would be lost if four dams on the lower Snake River are ever breached. Tribes, conservationists and even federal scientists say that would be the best hope for recovering the salmon, providing the fish with access to hundreds of miles of pristine habitat and spawning grounds in Idaho. “President Biden recognizes that to confront injustice, we must be honest about history – even when doing so is difficult,” said a statement from White House Council on Environmental Quality Chair Brenda Mallory and Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, the first Native American cabinet secretary. “In the Pacific Northwest, an open and candid conversation about the history and legacy of the federal government’s management of the Columbia River is long overdue.” Northwest Republicans in Congress and some business and utility groups oppose breaching the dams, saying it would jeopardize an important shipping route for farmers and throw off clean-energy goals. GOP Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, who represents eastern Washington, called Tuesday's report a “sham." “This bad faith report is just the latest in a long list of examples that prove the Biden administration’s goal has always been dam breaching," she said in a written statement. The document was a requirement of an agreement last year to halt decades of legal fights over the operation of the dams. It lays out how government and private interests in the early 20th century began walling off the tributaries of the Columbia River, the largest in the Northwest, to provide water for irrigation or flood control, compounding the damage that was already being caused to water quality and salmon runs by mining, logging and rapacious non-tribal salmon cannery operations. The report was accompanied by the announcement of a new task force to coordinate salmon recovery efforts across federal agencies. Tribal representatives said they were gratified with the administration’s formal, if long-belated, acknowledgment of how the U.S. government ignored their treaty-based fishing rights and their concerns about how the dams would affect their people. “The salmon themselves have been suffering the consequences since the dams first were put in,” said Shannon Wheeler, chairman of the Nez Perce Tribe. “The lack of salmon eventually starts affecting us, but they're the ones who have been suffering the longest. ... It feels like there's an opportunity to end the suffering.” Salmon are born in rivers and migrate far downstream to the ocean, where they spend their adult lives before returning to their natal rivers to spawn and die. Dams can disrupt that by cutting off access to upstream habitat and by slowing and warming water to the point that fish die. The Columbia River Basin, an area roughly the size of Texas, was once the world’s greatest salmon-producing river system, with as many as 16 million salmon and steelhead returning every year to spawn. Now, scientists say, about 2 million salmon and steelhead return to the Columbia and its tributaries each year, about two-thirds of them hatchery raised. The Shoshone-Bannock Tribe in southeastern Idaho said it once harvested enough salmon for each tribal member to have 700 pounds of fish in a year. Today, the average harvest yields barely 1 pound per tribal member. Of the 16 stocks of salmon and steelhead that once populated the river system, four are extinct and seven are listed under the Endangered Species Act. Another iconic but endangered Northwest species, a population of killer whales, also depend on the salmon. There has been growing recognition across the U.S. that the harms some dams cause to fish outweigh their usefulness. Dams on the Elwha River in Washington state and the Klamath River along the Oregon-California border have been or are being removed. The construction of the first dams on the main Columbia River, including the Grand Coulee and Bonneville dams in the 1930s, provided jobs to a country grappling with the Great Depression, as well as hydropower and navigation. As early as the late 1930s, tribes were warning that the salmon runs could disappear, with the fish no longer able to access spawning grounds upstream. The tribes — the Yakama Nation, Spokane Tribe, confederated tribes of the Colville and Umatilla reservations, Nez Perce, and others — continued to fight the construction and operation of the dams for generations. Tom Iverson, regional coordinator for Yakama Nation Fisheries, said that while the report was gratifying, it remains “hopes and promises” until funding for salmon restoration and renewable power projects comes through Congress. “With these agreements, there is hope," Iverson said. "We feel like this is a moment in time. If it doesn’t happen now, it will be too late.”

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.

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.

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.

Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived in North Korea for his first visit in 24 years and pledged strong support. We talk to Naoko Aoki, an associate political scientist at the RAND Corporation. June 19th is the U.S. holiday known as Juneteenth, which marks the day in 1865 when slavery ended in the former Confederate states of the American Civil War. U.S. lawmakers grilled Boeing's chief executive Tuesday about the company's plans to fix its manufacturing problems. Nvidia passes Microsoft to become the world’s most valuable company.