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Yaounde, Cameroon — Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is expected in Chad's capital N'djamena Wednesday, continuing an African tour that has taken him to Guinea and Congo. Russian Defense Minister Yunus-bek Yevkurov has also been on the move in Africa, visiting Libya and Niger. The visits are seen by civil society and analysts as Russia's attempt to establish its troops in the Sahel region after military leaders seized power, sparking ideological differences over the presence of American and French troops in Mali, Burkina Faso, Guinea, Niger and Chad. Several hundred people gathered at the N'djamena International airport Wednesday to welcome Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. Chad’s government says it mobilized civilians to receive Lavrov because he is the first top foreign official to visit after the inauguration of Mahamat Idriss Deby as Chad's President and the formation of a new government to end a three-year transition in the central African state. Among those awaiting the Russian envoy is 38-year-old merchant Immaculate Djeida. Djeida said she expects Russia, one of the leading producers and exporters of wheat, to transfer technology and know-how to Chad, where civilians have enough land to produce wheat, rice, maize and beef but do not have enough food to eat. She said she expects Russia to assist Chad in developing a viable electricity network that can bring electrical power to 90 percent of Chad's citizens. Djeida spoke to VOA via a messaging app from N'djamena Wednesday. In a statement released Wednesday, Chad's government said Lavrov will discuss efficient methods to combat terrorism, and enhance military, diplomatic, economic and trade ties between Chad and Russia. The government said Lavrov will also discuss the security situation in the countries of the Sahel as well as the war in Sudan, which has displaced close to a million people across Sudan's border to Chad and Libya. Chad says Russia will support it in dealing with the humanitarian crisis caused by the war against Boko Haram terrorists that has killed more than 36,000 people and displaced 3 million according to the United Nations. Chad is fighting Boko Haram alongside troops from neighbors Cameroon, Chad and Niger. Lavrov is visiting Chad at a time when Russia is expanding its military presence in Sahel countries including Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso, Mauritania, Sudan and Chad. At the same time, Sahel countries are asking troops of their former colonial ruler, France to leave. Niger’s military rulers said in May of this year, high-level talks were held with U.S. military officials in Niamey to coordinate plans to also withdraw more than 900 American military forces before the end of 2024. Chad says most U.S. troops left its territory before the central African states' May 6 presidential elections. Mahamat Idriss Deby, the declared winner, told Chad state TV during his inauguration that cooperation with U.S. troops is under review, but gave no further details. U.S. troops have been stationed in Chad and Niger to help local militaries combat Islamist terrorists in Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso, Mauritania, Sudan and Chad. Yamingue Betinbaye is a political analyst at Chad’s Anthropology and Human Sciences Research Center. He spoke on Chads State TV Wednesday. Betinbaye said Russia has been successfully reinforcing its military presence in countries of the Sahel region since 2021, when the Mali army, led by Colonel Assimi Goïta, seized power from President Bah Ndaw. He said Niger, Chad, Burkina Faso and Mali that have military rulers are suspending military cooperation with France because Paris never succeeded in pushing back jihadist threats even with the one-time presence of 5,500 stationed French troops in the region. Betinbaye said anti-French sentiments increased in the Sahel when France supported Niger’s ousted President Mohamed Bazoum who was toppled by a popular military led by General Abdourahamane Tiani. He said the presence of France, a former colonial power in Central and West Africa and the Sahel, is largely seen as an exploitative and overbearing political influence. France has always said it is present in Africa to promote democracy, human rights, economic growth and fight increasing insecurity. Russia started deploying military equipment and trainers to Sahel countries when military leaders who seized power began forcing out French troops. Russia says the visits of the two officials will end with the signing of joint security agreements with Chad, Guinea, Congo, Libya and Niger. In January, Chad President Mahamat Idriss Deby met with the Russian leader Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin. Deby said among issues he discussed with Putin were the military, diplomatic and trade ties Chad needs to fasten its development and bring lasting peace to the country where armed gangs and jihadist are in running battles with government troops.

NEW YORK — The U.N. secretary-general said Wednesday that the world is “at a moment of truth” to reach targets in the 2015 Paris climate accord to limit global warming, as the planet has just experienced the 12 hottest consecutive months on record. “The truth is, almost ten years since the Paris Agreement was adopted, the target of limiting long-term global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius is hanging by a thread,” Antonio Guterres told an audience at New York’s American Museum of Natural History, where exhibits about extinct dinosaurs offered their own planetary warning. “The World Meteorological Organization reports today that there is an 80% chance the global annual average temperature will exceed the 1.5-degree limit in at least one of the next five years,” he said. “We are playing Russian roulette with our planet,” he warned in a special climate speech under the museum's famous blue whale, marking World Environment Day. The U.N. chief said the richest 1% of countries are emitting as much pollution as two-thirds of all humanity. He said the planet is emitting around 40 billion tons of carbon dioxide annually and will burn through its remaining “carbon budget” of around 200 billion tons well before 2030. Guterres also said global emissions need to fall 9% each year between now and 2030 in order to keep the 1.5 degree Celsius limit alive. Last year, they rose by 1%. The bill for the climate crisis will keep growing without meaningful action. “Even if emissions hit zero tomorrow, a recent study found that climate chaos will still cost at least $38 trillion a year by 2050,” Guterres said. Fossil fuels The climate crisis has been a signature issue of Guterres’ tenure since becoming the world’s top diplomat seven-and-a-half years ago. He has repeatedly called for the phasing out of coal and other fossil fuels in favor of cleaner renewable energies like wind and solar power — which already produce nearly a third of the world’s electricity. He raised the ante Wednesday, urging banks to stop financing oil, coal and gas and invest in renewables instead. He called on countries to ban advertising from fossil fuel producers and said news and technology platforms should stop taking their advertising. “I call on leaders in the fossil fuel industry to understand that if you are not in the fast lane to clean energy transformation, you are driving your business into a dead end — and taking us all with you,” the U.N. chief said, adding that the oil and gas industry invested only 2.5% of its total spending on clean energy in the last year. He urged public relations companies and lobbyists to stop enabling the industry’s “planetary destruction” and drop those clients. “Many in the fossil fuel industry have shamelessly greenwashed, even as they have sought to delay climate action — with lobbying, legal threats, and massive ad campaigns,” he said. Leveling the field The secretary-general reiterated his stance that those who have contributed the least to the climate crisis are suffering the most — mainly poorer nations in Africa and small island states. The G20 major economies produce 80% of the world’s emissions. “It is a disgrace that the most vulnerable are being left stranded, struggling desperately to deal with a climate crisis they did nothing to create,” he said. Guterres warned that the difference between 1.5 and 2 degrees could mean survival or extinction for some small island nations and coastal communities. “1.5 degrees is not a target. It is not a goal. It is a physical limit,” he said. Global warming is already hurting the planet’s oceans, their coral reefs and marine ecosystems, and melting sea ice. Across the globe, severe floods, droughts, heatwaves, wildfires, and other climate-related catastrophes are becoming all too frequent. The secretary-general said there must be more financing and technical support from richer countries to mitigate climate impacts and invest in renewables for lower income states. He also said a global early warning system must be in place by 2027, to protect everyone on Earth from hazardous weather, water or climate events. He urged citizens to continue to make their voices heard and said it is time for leaders to decide whose side they are on. “Now is the time to mobilize; now is the time to act; now is the time to deliver,” he said to a standing ovation. “This is our moment of truth.”

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Wilmington, United States — Jurors at Hunter Biden's trial heard testimony Wednesday from an FBI agent who investigated the U.S president's son for allegedly buying a handgun while using crack cocaine. On Tuesday the court heard that Hunter Biden — the first child of a sitting U.S. president to be prosecuted — was a heavy drug user and allegedly lied about this on the paperwork when purchasing the firearm. He is also on trial in federal court in Wilmington, Delaware — his family's political heartland — for illegal possession of the firearm, which he had for just 11 days in October 2018. FBI Special Agent Erika Jensen testified how investigators retrieved evidence, including photographs apparently showing drugs, from a now infamous abandoned laptop that has been at the heart of Republican efforts to discredit the Biden family. Hunter Biden's ex-wife, Kathleen Buhle, could take the stand after Jensen according to the outline of the case given by the prosecution on Tuesday. First Lady Jill Biden, was again in court Wednesday, as she has been for every day of the trial, while President Joe Biden has issued a statement saying he is "proud" of his son. The case has been a distraction for Biden's reelection campaign against Donald Trump. The president was in France on Wednesday to attend World War II D-Day commemorations and is in the midst of rolling out major initiatives on illegal migration into the United States and a proposed truce for Gaza. The trial comes just days after Trump was convicted in a New York court on business fraud charges. On Tuesday, the prosecutor in Wilmington played extracts from an audio version of Hunter Biden's memoir "Beautiful Things," recorded by Biden himself, in which he recalled his descent into addiction, when he would desperately seek out crack cocaine. "I cooked [crack] and smoked. I cooked and smoked," said the extract played to the court, taken from his audiobook. But Hunter Biden's lawyer said that he "was not using drugs when he bought that gun" and that it "was never loaded, never carried, never used" during the 11 days he owned it. Biden, a Yale-trained lawyer and lobbyist-turned-artist, has stated that he has been sober since 2019. The legal woes have reopened painful emotional wounds for the Biden family, stemming from his time as a drug addict and well before. His brother Beau died from cancer in 2015, and his sister Naomi died as an infant in a 1972 car crash that also killed their mother, Neilia, Joe Biden's first wife. Hunter and Beau were the only survivors of the accident. If found guilty, Hunter Biden could face 25 years in prison, although as a first-time offender, jail time is unlikely. The president's son has long been the target of hard-right Republicans trying to embarrass Joe Biden, and Trump allies have investigated him at length in Congress on allegations of corruption and influence-peddling. No charges have ever been brought. Hunter Biden's business dealings in China and Ukraine have also formed the basis for attempts by Republican lawmakers to initiate impeachment proceedings against his father. Those efforts too have gone nowhere. The White House said last year that there would be no presidential pardon for Hunter Biden in case of a conviction.

The Kakhovka Dam in southern Ukraine collapsed on June 6, 2023, flooding hundreds of square kilometers and damaging homes, infrastructure and the environment. Ukraine blames Russian forces, which occupied the dam. Russia denies the accusation. A year later, the impact of the collapse is ongoing. Lesia Bakalets has the story. Videographer: Vladyslav Smilianets

Brussels — McDonald's MCD.N does not have the right to use the term "Big Mac" for poultry products in Europe after not using it for them for five consecutive years, the region's second top court said on Wednesday, a partial win for Irish rival Supermac's in a long-running trademark dispute. The Luxembourg-based General Court's ruling centered on Supermac's attempt in 2017 to revoke McDonald's use of the name Big Mac, which the U.S. company had registered in 1996 for meat and poultry products and services rendered at restaurants. The European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) dismissed Supermac's application for revocation and confirmed McDonald's use of the term for meat and chicken sandwiches, prompting the Irish company to challenge the decision. Supermac's, which opened its first restaurants in Galway in 1978 and had sought to expand in the United Kingdom and Europe, sells beef and chicken burgers as well as fried chicken nuggets and sandwiches. The General Court rejected McDonald's arguments and partially annulled and altered EUIPO's decision. "McDonald's loses the EU trade mark Big Mac in respect of poultry products," judges ruled. "McDonald's has not proved genuine use within a continuous period of five years in the European Union in connection with certain goods and services." The U.S. fast-food chain said in an email it can still continue to use the Big Mac trademark, which it uses chiefly for a beef sandwich. Supermac's founder Pat McDonagh told Ireland's Newstalk Radio that the decision was "a big win for anyone with the surname Mac." "It does mean we can expand elsewhere with Supermac’s across the EU, so that is a big win for us today," he told the radio station. Trademark owners should pay attention to the ruling, said Pinsent Masons IP lawyer Matthew Harris. "This is a huge wakeup call and owners of well-known trademarks cannot simply rest on the premise 'it is obvious the public know the brand and we have been using it'," he said. "The case highlights that even global renowned brands are held to the same scrutiny when having to evidence genuine use of a trademark in a given territory." The ruling can be appealed to the Court of Justice of the European Union, Europe's highest. The case is T-58/23 Supermac's v EUIPO - McDonald's International Property (BIG MAC). 

Washington — Former colleagues of exiled Uyghur journalist Kasim Kashgar have been imprisoned in China’s Xinjiang region, seemingly over their connection to the Washington-based reporter.  Those convicted are Mirkamil Ahmed, Semet Ababekri, Abdukadir Rozi, Mehmut Abdukeyum and Akber Osman. Each has been sentenced to at least seven years in prison, Kashgar said.  Kashgar, who reports for Voice of America, says he learned of the convictions from an acquaintance in May.  At VOA, Kashgar regularly covers Uyghur human rights issues. He believes his former colleagues — who worked with him at the language school he founded in Xinjiang’s capital Urumqi — were targeted due to their association with him.  “Their ‘mistake’ was their past proximity to someone now affiliated with a U.S. news agency covering Uyghur-related news,” Kashgar said.  It’s unclear when the convictions occurred, since the Chinese government rarely publicizes that kind of information. It’s also unclear what the exact charges are.  Kashgar said he learned from sources familiar with the cases that all five were accused of having been recruited by Kashgar to become members of the World Uyghur Congress, or WUC.  Headquartered in Munich, the WUC advocates for Uyghur human rights internationally. But Beijing views it as a separatist organization.  See also: Far from Xinjiang, Uyghurs keep their culture alive The Chinese government regularly uses bogus charges of separatism and terrorism as an excuse to target Uyghurs, according to human rights groups.  Kashgar said his contact with the WUC is limited to interviews as part of his VOA coverage.  In an emailed statement to VOA, the spokesperson at China’s Washington embassy said, “China is a country ruled by law” where all ethnic groups “enjoy equality.”  “Xinjiang’s judicial organs pursue social fairness and justice, which are the values of the rule of law,” the spokesperson said. The email went on to repeat the common government narrative that Beijing’s policies in the region are for counterterrorism purposes.  Some advocates say the recent convictions underscore the extent of arbitrary detentions in Xinjiang, which many Uyghurs prefer to call the Uyghur Region or East Turkestan.  “It demonstrates that, first of all, this kind of arbitrary detention, and also retaliation by association, has not stopped at all, despite the fact that the government is claiming otherwise,” Zumretay Arkin, the WUC’s spokesperson and advocacy manager, told VOA.  In the region, the Chinese government stands accused by foreign governments and human rights groups of committing genocide and crimes against humanity against the majority-Muslim Uyghur ethnic group. Beijing has long denied any wrongdoing in the region.  Kashgar fled Chinese surveillance and repression in his homeland in 2017 for the United States. He started work for VOA in 2019.  The journalist says he faced Beijing-backed harassment over his work in the form of transnational repression. Earlier this year, he learned from sources that the Chinese government had officially labeled him a “key person involved in terrorism.”  But verifying such information is difficult. Experts say Beijing intentionally makes it difficult to confirm such reports.  See also: From fear to freedom: A Uyghur's journey The situation involving his former colleagues extends back to March 2021, when Kashgar received a phone call from a childhood friend in Xinjiang.  After being jailed multiple times, the friend had been forced to become an informant for China’s Ministry of State Security intelligence agency, Kashgar said.  Now, the intelligence agency wanted Kashgar to spy for them, the friend said. Kashgar declined.  In the weeks that followed, Kashgar learned that five former employees had been disappeared by Chinese security officials.  Human rights groups estimate that around 1 million to 2 million Uyghurs have been held in the region’s mass internment centers.  Kashgar said he knows of at least seven other former employees arrested in Xinjiang, but it’s unclear whether any of them have been convicted.  This kind of story is common for Xinjiang, according to Arkin. To retaliate against vocal Uyghurs in the diaspora, the Chinese government has a pattern of targeting their family, friends and colleagues who still live in the region.  “This really has been, in my opinion, one of the most successful ways of silencing the diaspora,” Arkin said. “Because you’re facing this constant dilemma, because you’re putting the lives of your relatives, your family and friends at risk, you’re constantly wondering if your work is worth it.”  Arkin said she has heard of other cases of Uyghurs in Xinjiang being questioned over alleged links to the WUC. “It’s used as a tool of fear — inside, but also outside,” she said.  In the diaspora, it’s likely intended to make exiled Uyghurs too scared to be involved with groups like the WUC out of fear of potentially putting their loved ones in Xinjiang at risk, Arkin said.  Learning of his former colleagues’ convictions has taken a toll, Kashgar said.  “It was very difficult to go to sleep and concentrate, focus on anything. It still gives you a lot of stress. But I want to seek justice for them,” he said. “I don’t want to be feeling guilty. But at the same time, there’s some sort of that emotional side that hits me, because those former colleagues never, ever committed any sort of crime.”  A 2022 report by the United Nations Human Rights Office determined that the extent of arbitrary detention of Uyghurs in Xinjiang may constitute crimes against humanity.

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GENEVA — Every year, many of the hundreds of thousands of refugees and migrants from sub-Saharan Africa seeking asylum or jobs in Europe are “at great risk of harm and death” because few protection services are available to help them on their perilous journey, according to a report issued by the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, Tuesday. “The absence of critical services is placing refugees and migrants at great risk of harm and death and is also triggering dangerous secondary onward movements,” Vincent Cochetel, UNHCR special envoy for the central Mediterranean situation told journalists at a briefing Tuesday in Geneva. “Some refugees and migrants underestimate the risks, while many fall victim to the narratives of smugglers and traffickers,” he said. The report highlights the horrors faced by refugees and migrants who risk their lives moving on dangerous routes stretching from the East and Horn of Africa and West Africa towards North Africa’s Atlantic coast, and across the Central Mediterranean Sea to Europe. The UNHCR reports refugees and migrants from about 20 different African countries “die while crossing the desert or near borders.” As well as Sub-Saharan Africans, it says an increasing number of people from countries in Asia and the Middle East, including Bangladesh, Pakistan, Egypt, and Syria are arriving in North Africa. The report says most of the refugees and migrants “suffer serious human rights violations en route” including ‘’sexual and gender-based violence, kidnappings for ransom, torture, and physical abuse.” “Protection services along the routes that can help mitigate the risks these people face — such as immediate humanitarian assistance, shelter for people who have been exposed to violence, and access to justice — are often not available,” Cochetel said. “In many countries, the services that were there in 2022-2023 are no longer there. This is the case, in particular, in Morocco, in Mauritania, in Sudan because of the conflict, in the northern part of Niger, in the southern part of Algeria. So, basically these are in key hubs, key crossing routes that are used by migrants and refugees,” he said. Aside from the conflict in Sudan, several other crises emerged in 2023 that forced people to flee their homes. “Regrettably, more emergencies cannot be ruled out in 2024,” authors of the report warn. “Neither can the human need of people to flee or abandon their homes to find safety and or better… basic life conditions for themselves and their families.” Cochetel observed that the lack of sustained funding threatens the limited services that currently are available, including search and rescue missions. “In the past, la gendarmerie nationale [the national military police] in Agadez, Niger, would pick up people who had been stranded or abandoned by smugglers and traffickers in the desert. But such rescue missions,” he said, “no longer occur along that route.” “The only country on the African continent where I know that this concept is implemented is in Djibouti,” Cochetel said. He said Djiboutian authorities are patrolling the land side of their coast “to see people that have been abandoned by smugglers in the desertic areas or people who have returned with the same smugglers from Yemen and who are dropped in the middle of nowhere,” adding that such search and rescue projects needed to be developed in partnership with local authorities in Nigeria, southern Morocco, Mauritania, and other desert regions. “We would need that to save more lives and bring back to safety people stranded or abandoned there,” Cochetel said. Since the publication of the previous report in July 2022, the UNHCR says an estimated 3,045 individuals have been reported dead or missing along the combined Central and Western Mediterranean and Northwest Africa Maritime routes. “However, the real figures could be significantly higher, as many incidents likely go undetected and remain unrecorded,” it said. While the report is meant to make governments aware of the shortcomings in support services, UNHCR’s Cochetel said it also is intended to provide useful information on the availability of services for refugees and migrants who are “lost, stranded, and abused along the routes.” For example, he said the report contains GPS coordinates and WhatsApp numbers that refugees and migrants can use to locate essential, possibly life-saving protective services.

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.

Islamabad — A senior Taliban leader in Afghanistan, wanted by the United States for terrorism, has concluded a rare visit to the United Arab Emirates, where he met with the host country's leadership, an Afghan official said Wednesday. Interior Minister Sirajuddin Haqqani traveled abroad for the first time since the Taliban took over the war-torn South Asian nation nearly three years ago. Reward for Justice, a U.S. Department of State program aimed at combating international terrorism, offers $10 million for information that will lead to Haqqani’s arrest. UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Yazed Al Nahyan received Haqqani in Abu Dhabi, the Emirati capital, on Tuesday. The state-run WAM news agency reported the meeting and included a picture of them shaking hands. “The two sides discussed strengthening the bonds of cooperation between the two countries and ways to enhance ties to serve mutual interests and contribute to regional stability,” WAM reported. It added that the discussions “focused on economic and development fields, as well as support for reconstruction and development in Afghanistan.” There was no immediate U.S. response to Haqqani’s visit and meeting with the UAE president.     Zabihullah Mujahid, the chief spokesman of the Taliban government in Kabul, also confirmed the meeting but shared no other details. He said the Taliban’s spy chief, Abdul Haq Wasiq, accompanied Haqqani in the talks. Wasiq was held for years in the U.S. military’s Guantanamo Bay detention center before being released with four other Taliban insurgents in 2014 in exchange for American soldier Bowe Bergdahl. The Haqqani network of militants led by the Afghan interior minister captured Bergdahl after he left his post in 2009. The network staged high-profile suicide and road bombings as well as guerrilla attacks on U.S.-led coalition forces during their nearly two-decades-long presence in Afghanistan until the then-insurgent Taliban returned to power in August 2021 as foreign militaries exited the country. The U.S. FBI’s list of most wanted men identifies Haqqani as a specially designated global terrorist who maintains close ties to al-Qaida. It says the militant leader is wanted for questioning in connection with the January 2008 attack on a Kabul hotel that killed six people, including an American citizen. While in Kabul, Haqqani regularly meets foreign diplomats and speaks in public. Regional diplomats say the interior minister meets visitors in secrecy and keeps changing venues, fearing a U.S. drone strike. Haqqani appeared on CNN in 2022 with a conciliatory message for Americans. “In the future, we would like to have good relations with the United States,” he told the U.S. media outlet. A U.S. drone strike in a posh neighborhood in the Afghan capital killed fugitive al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in 2022. U.S. officials said the slain terror leader was residing in a three-story safe house that was linked to Haqqani. The Taliban protested the strike, saying it was a breach of the 2020 Doha agreement they signed with Washington, which paved the way for the U.S. to withdraw from the longest U.S. war in history. The Taliban also pledged in line with the terms of the agreement not to harbor al-Qaida and other transnational militant groups seeking to attack America and its allies. No country has recognized the Taliban government, citing human rights concerns and bans on Afghan women’s access to education and work. While the U.S. and other Western nations moved their diplomatic missions out of Afghanistan, mostly to Qatar after the Taliban takeover, neighboring and regional countries, including China and Russia, have retained their diplomatic posts in Kabul and allowed Taliban envoys to run Afghan embassies. U.S. officials have since held several meetings with Taliban representatives in Qatar’s capital, Doha, but they have had no interaction with Haqqani. The UAE, Saudi Arabia, and neighboring Pakistan were the only countries that had recognized the previous Taliban government until it was ousted by the U.S.-led invasion for sheltering al-Qaida planners of the September 2001 terror strikes on America.   Haqqani’s visit to the UAE comes as the United Nations prepares to convene another international gathering in Doha of special envoys for Afghanistan later this month. The Doha meeting on June 30 aims to increase, facilitate, and coordinate the world’s engagement with the country facing one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world amid deepening economic and financial troubles stemming from the Taliban takeover. The Taliban were invited to two previous huddles but refused to join the Doha process of consultations. Kabul, however, has said it is conducting internal consultations after receiving a U.N. invitation to decide whether to attend the coming meeting.   De facto Afghan rulers had previously linked their participation to their acceptance as the sole official representatives of the country, meaning that Afghan civil society activists and members of opposition groups would not be present. The U.N. rejected those conditions, and it was not known if the world body would review its stance to ensure the Taliban’s participation. 

US President Joe Biden is in France to mark the 80th anniversary of the Normandy landing and to underscore the need for a strong transatlantic alliance in the face of Russian aggression. He’ll also take part in a formal state visit hosted by France’s president, and will meet face-to-face with Ukraine’s president, who has been invited to (somber ceremonies marking this decisive battle that led to the end of the World War II. VOA’s Anita Powell reports from Paris. Patsy Widakuswara contributed to this report

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Portsmouth, United Kingdom — King Charles III on Wednesday led commemorations to mark the 80th anniversary for the World War II D-Day landings, joining British veterans, other senior royals and political leaders. The 75-year-old monarch, who only recently resumed public engagements as he battles cancer, spoke at a remembrance event in Portsmouth, on England's south coast, organized by the Ministry of Defense. Allied troops began departing from the port city and other sites on the southern English coast on June 5, 1944, crossing the Channel and battling to land the next morning on beaches in northern France. "As we give thanks for all those who gave so much to win the victory whose fruits we still enjoy to this day, let us once again commit ourselves always to remember, cherish and honor those who served that day," Charles told the flag-waving audience. As head of state, Charles is commander-in-chief of Britain's armed forces and served himself in the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force. He and his wife Queen Camilla will be in France on Thursday for further commemorations. Senior royals, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and WWII veterans will join dozens of heads of state including US President Joe Biden, French leader Emmanuel Macron and other dignitaries at services across Normandy. It will be Charles's first overseas visit since his cancer diagnosis was announced in February. 'Lucky' Wednesday's UK commemorations, which included readings, music and reenactments from the period, also featured recollections from D-Day veterans, mainly in pre-recorded videos. However, Roy Hayward — who was aged 19 at the time — took to the stage to speak of his emotions eight decades on. "I always considered myself one of the lucky ones that survived, because so many of us didn't," said the veteran, who later in WWII lost both his legs below the knees to amputation. "I represent the men and women who put their lives on hold to go and fight for democracy and this country. "I'm here to honor their memory and their legacy, and to ensure that their story is never forgotten," Hayward added. Charles's elder son and heir Prince William — an RAF search and rescue pilot before becoming a full-time royal — also addressed the assembled dignitaries. "Today, we remember the bravery of those who crossed the sea to liberate Europe, those who waited for their safe return," he said after reading aloud an extract from a veteran's diary. The leaders of some of Britain's main political parties took a break from general election campaigning ahead of the country's July 4 poll. Sunak penned a message in the event program and read out a message that was delivered to all D-Day troops. Labour opposition leader Keir Starmer looked on from the audience. Just hours earlier, the political rivals were clashing fiercely in the first live TV debate of the election campaign.

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Brussels, Belgium — Voters in the European Union are set to elect lawmakers starting Thursday for the bloc's parliament, in a major democratic exercise that's also likely to be overshadowed by online disinformation. Experts have warned that artificial intelligence could supercharge the spread of fake news that could disrupt the election in the EU and many other countries this year. But the stakes are especially high in Europe, which has been confronting Russian propaganda efforts as Moscow's war with Ukraine drags on. Here's a closer look:  What's happening? Some 360 million people in 27 nations — from Portugal to Finland, Ireland to Cyprus — will choose 720 European Parliament lawmakers in an election that runs Thursday to Sunday. In the months leading up to the vote, experts have observed a surge in the quantity and quality of fake news and anti-EU disinformation being peddled in member countries. A big fear is that deceiving voters will be easier than ever, enabled by new AI tools that make it easy to create misleading or false content. Some of the malicious activity is domestic, some international. Russia is most widely blamed, and sometimes China, even though hard evidence directly attributing such attacks is difficult to pin down. “Russian state-sponsored campaigns to flood the EU information space with deceptive content is a threat to the way we have been used to conducting our democratic debates, especially in election times,” Josep Borrell, the EU's foreign policy chief, warned on Monday. He said Russia's "information manipulation" efforts are taking advantage of increasing use of social media penetration “and cheap AI-assisted operations." Bots are being used to push smear campaigns against European political leaders who are critical of Russian President Vladimir Putin, he said. Has any disinfo happened yet? There have been plenty of examples of election-related disinformation.  Two days before national elections in Spain last July, a fake website was registered that mirrored one run by authorities in the capital Madrid. It posted an article falsely warning of a possible attack on polling stations by the disbanded Basque militant separatist group ETA.   In Poland, two days before the October parliamentary election, police descended on a polling station in response to a bogus bomb threat. Social media accounts linked to what authorities call the Russian interference “infosphere” claimed a device had exploded. Just days before Slovakia’s parliamentary election in November, AI-generated audio recordings impersonated a candidate discussing plans to rig the election, leaving fact-checkers scrambling to debunk them as false as they spread across social media. Just last week, Poland’s national news agency carried a fake report saying that Prime Minister Donald Tusk was mobilizing 200,000 men starting on July 1, in an apparent hack that authorities blamed on Russia. The Polish News Agency “killed,” or removed, the report minutes later and issued a statement saying that it wasn’t the source. It's “really worrying, and a bit different than other efforts to create disinformation from alternative sources," said Alexandre Alaphilippe, executive director of EU DisinfoLab, a nonprofit group that researches disinformation. “It raises notably the question of cybersecurity of the news production, which should be considered as critical infrastructure.” What's the goal of disinformation? Experts and authorities said Russian disinformation is aimed at disrupting democracy, by deterring voters across the EU from heading to the ballot boxes. “Our democracy cannot be taken for granted, and the Kremlin will continue using disinformation, malign interference, corruption and any other dirty tricks from the authoritarian playbook to divide Europe,” European Commission Vice-President Vera Jourova warned the parliament in April. Tusk, meanwhile, called out Russia's “destabilization strategy on the eve of the European elections.” On a broader level, the goal of “disinformation campaigns is often not to disrupt elections," said Sophie Murphy Byrne, senior government affairs manager at Logically, an AI intelligence company. “It tends to be ongoing activity designed to appeal to conspiracy mindsets and erode societal trust," she told an online briefing last week. Narratives are also fabricated to fuel public discontent with Europe’s political elites, attempt to divide communities over issues like family values, gender or sexuality, sow doubts about climate change and chip away at Western support for Ukraine, EU experts and analysts say.  What has changed? Five years ago, when the last European Union election was held, most online disinformation was laboriously churned out by “troll farms” employing people working in shifts writing manipulative posts in sometimes clumsy English or repurposing old video footage. Fakes were easier to spot. Now, experts have been sounding that alarm about the rise of generative AI that they say threatens to supercharge the spread of election disinformation worldwide. Malicious actors can use the same technology that underpins easy-to-use platforms, like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, to create authentic-looking deepfake images, videos and audio. Anyone with a smartphone and a devious mind can potentially create false, but convincing, content aimed at fooling voters. “What is changing now is the scale that you can achieve as a propaganda actor,” said Salvatore Romano, head of research at AI Forensics, a nonprofit research group. Generative AI systems can now be used to automatically pump out realistic images and videos and push them out to social media users, he said. AI Forensics recently uncovered a network of pro-Russian pages that it said took advantage of Meta’s failure to moderate political advertising in the European Union. Fabricated content is now “indistinguishable” from the real thing, and takes disinformation watchers experts a lot longer to debunk, said Romano.  What are authorities doing about it? The EU is using a new law, the Digital Services Act, to fight back. The sweeping law requires platforms to curb the risk of spreading disinformation and can be used to hold them accountable under the threat of hefty fines. The bloc is using the law to demand information from Microsoft about risks posed by its Bing Copilot AI chatbot, including concerns about “automated manipulation of services that can mislead voters.” The DSA has also been used to investigate Facebook and Instagram owner Meta Platforms for not doing enough to protect users from disinformation campaigns. The EU has passed a wide-ranging artificial intelligence law, which includes a requirement for deepfakes to be labelled, but it won't arrive in time for the vote and will take effect over the next two years.  How are social media companies responding? Most tech companies have touted the measures they're taking to protect the European Union's “election integrity.” Meta Platforms — owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp — has said it will set up an election operations center to identify potential online threats. It also has thousands of content reviewers working in the EU’s 24 official languages and is tightening up policies on AI-generated content, including labeling and “downranking” AI-generated content that violates its standards. Nick Clegg, Meta's president of global affairs, has said there’s no sign that generative AI tools are being used on a systemic basis to disrupt elections. TikTok said it will set up fact-checking hubs in the video-sharing platform’s app. YouTube owner Google said it’s working with fact-checking groups and will use AI to “fight abuse at scale.” Elon Musk went the opposite way with his social media platform X, previously known as Twitter. “Oh you mean the ‘Election Integrity’ Team that was undermining election integrity? Yeah, they’re gone,” he said in a post in September.