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Sundsvall,  Sweden — German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s short videos of his three-day trip to China this week proved popular in posts on Chinese-owned social media platform TikTok, which the European Union, Canada, Taiwan and the United States banned on official devices more than a year ago, citing security concerns. By Friday, one video showing highlights of Scholz’s trip had garnered 1.5 million views while another of him speaking about it on the plane home had 1.4 million views.  Scholz opened his TikTok account April 8 to attract youth, promising he wouldn’t post videos of himself dancing.  His most popular post so far, about his 40-year-old briefcase, was watched 3.6 million times.  Many commented, "This briefcase is older than me." Scholtz is one of several Western leaders to use TikTok, despite concerns that its parent company, ByteDance, could provide private user data to the Chinese government and could also be used to push a pro-Beijing agenda.   Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has 258,000 followers on TikTok, and Irish Prime Minister Simon Harris has 99,000 followers.  U.S. President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign team opened a TikTok account in February, despite Biden himself vowing to sign legislation expected to be voted on as early as Saturday to force ByteDance to divest in the U.S. or face a ban.  Former U.S. President Donald Trump, who unsuccessfully tried to ban TikTok in 2020, in March reversed his position and now appears to oppose a ban.  ByteDance denies it would provide user data to the Chinese government, despite reports indicating it could be at risk, and China has firmly opposed any forced sale. Kevin Morgan, TikTok's director of security and integrity in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, says more than 134 million people in 27 EU countries visit TikTok every month, including a third of EU lawmakers.  As the European Union’s June elections approach, more European politicians are using the popular platform favored by young people to attract votes.  Ola Patrik Bertil Moeller, a Swedish legislator with the Social Democratic Party who has 124,000 followers on TikTok, told VOA, "We as politicians participate in the conversation and spread accurate images and answer the questions that people have. If we're not there, other forces that don't want good will definitely be there." But other European politicians see TikTok as risky.   Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store on Monday expressed his uneasiness about social media platforms, including TikTok, being "used by various threat actors for several purposes, such as recruitment for espionage, influencing through disinformation and fake news, or mapping regime critics. This is disturbing." Konstantin von Notz, vice-chairman of the Green Parliamentary Group in the German legislature, told VOA, "While questions of security and the protection of personal data generally arise when using social networks, the issue is even more relevant for users of TikTok due to the company's proximity to the Chinese state."  Matthias C. Kettemann, an internet researcher at the Leibniz Institute for Media Research in Hamburg, Germany, told VOA, "Keeping data safe is a difficult task; given TikTok's ties to China doesn't make it easier."  But he emphasized, "TikTok is obliged to do these measures through the EU's GDPR [General Data Protection Regulation] anyway from a legal side." But analysts question whether ByteDance will obey European law if pressed by the Chinese state. Matthias Spielkamp, executive director AlgorithmWatch, told VOA, "Does TikTok have an incentive to comply with European law? Yes, there's an enormous amount of money on the line. Is it realistic that TikTok, being owned by a Chinese company, can resist requests for data by its Chinese parent? Hardly. How is this going to play out? No one knows right now." Adrianna Zhang contributed to this report.

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State Department — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is heading to China April 24 through 26 for talks with senior officials in Shanghai and Beijing. Blinken’s second trip to China comes as the United States warns it against enabling Russia in its war on Ukraine, with Chinese firms directly supplying critical components for Russia’s defense industrial base. Other pressing matters on the agenda include counternarcotics, bolstering military-to-military communication, establishing talks on artificial intelligence risks and safety, and exploring ways to strengthen people-to-people ties, according to the State Department. A senior State Department official said in a briefing Friday the U.S. is “realistic and clear eyed about the prospects of breakthroughs” on any of the issues on the agenda. Some analysts said they do not anticipate any major advances to emerge from the talks. China aiding Russia in Ukraine war In a joint statement this week, foreign ministers from the G7 leading industrialized nations urged China to stop transferring dual-use materials and weapons components that Russia is using to advance its military production. U.S. officials said those materials include significant quantities of microelectronics, unmanned aerial vehicles, cruise missile technology, and nitrocellulose, which Russia uses to make propellants for weapons. “China can’t have it both ways” -- helping Russia and keeping good relations with Europe, Blinken told reporters at a press conference in Capri, Italy, Friday. A senior State Department official told VOA during a virtual briefing Friday that the United States is “prepared to take steps” when necessary, against Chinese firms that “severely undermine security in both Ukraine and Europe.” The United States may sanction Chinese banks that facilitate the transfer of these materials, according to analysts. Washington has sanctioned Chinese individuals and companies that provide material support to Russia, and is enlisting European allies for similar measures. "In contrast to the United States, the European Union has not really sanctioned Chinese individuals or companies to the same degree," Kelly Grieco, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Stimson Center, told VOA. Grieco said the U.S. is working with other G7 members to garner more support from European nations to take similar actions. Beijing dismissed what Chinese officials labeled as Washington's attempt to “smear” or “attack the normal relations between China and Russia.”   China maintains it regulates the export of dual-use materials to Russia in accordance with laws.  The U.S. “should not harm the legitimate rights and interests of China and Chinese companies," Mao Ning, a spokeswoman for China's Foreign Affairs Ministry, said during a recent briefing. Taiwan Blinken’s visit to China is scheduled just weeks before the inauguration of Taiwan’s president-elect Lai Ching-te on May 20. The U.S. is sending an unofficial delegation to attend his inauguration, which includes former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and Laura Rosenberger, who chairs the American Institute in Taiwan.  Blinken will underscore America's enduring interest in preserving peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait.  “During this important and sensitive time leading up to the May 20 inauguration, all countries will contribute to peace and stability, avoid taking provocative actions that may raise tensions and demonstrate restraint. That will be our message going forward,” the senior State Department official said. Counternarcotics Fentanyl is the leading cause of death of Americans between the ages of 18 to 49. China remains the primary source of fentanyl-related substances trafficked through international mail and express consignment operations, serving as the main source for all fentanyl-related substances entering the United States, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. “It's in China's interest to cooperate in reducing and ending the flow of chemical precursors to the United States,” the State Department official said.  He added that the U.S. delegation traveling to China next week will “get down to detailed implementation” of the agreement reached in November 2023 to restart cooperation, particularly focusing on “concrete progress” between the law enforcement agencies of the two countries to curb the flow of these chemical precursors. Some analysts said the extent and durability of the cooperation is yet to be seen. “China sees counternarcotics and more broadly international law enforcement cooperation as strategic tools that it can leverage to achieve other objectives,” wrote Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow with the Brookings Institution. “Even though China’s current goal is to reduce tensions, China’s drug cooperation is vulnerable to new crises in the bilateral relationship,” she added. Blinken’s visit to China is the latest in a flurry of high-level diplomacy aimed at stabilizing China-U.S. relations.  It follows Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s recent trip to Guangzhou, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan’s meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Munich in February, and U.S. President Joe Biden’s talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Woodside, California, in November. China said it welcomes the top U.S. diplomat’s visit soon.

Washington — The U.S. House of Representatives on Saturday passed with bipartisan support a four-part, $95 billion foreign aid package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, putting the long-beleaguered legislation on track for enactment following a long, difficult path through Congress.  The legislation includes $60 billion for Kyiv’s ongoing war against Moscow’s invasion, as well as $26 billion for Israel and humanitarian aid for civilians in conflict zones, including Gaza, and $8 billion for the Indo-Pacific region. “Today, members of both parties in the House voted to advance our national security interests and send a clear message about the power of American leadership on the world stage. At this critical inflection point, they came together to answer history’s call, passing urgently-needed national security legislation that I have fought for months to secure,” President Joe Biden said in a statement Saturday. “I urge the Senate to quickly send this package to my desk so that I can sign it into law and we can quickly send weapons and equipment to Ukraine to meet their urgent battlefield needs,” he noted. House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana, structured the bills so that they can all be combined into one after each individual bill is approved, to prevent opposition to any one piece from derailing the entire deal. The Democratic-majority Senate is expected to take up the legislation as soon as Tuesday and then send it to President Joe Biden’s desk to be signed into law.  “The world is watching what the Congress does,” the White House said in a statement on Friday. “Passing this legislation would send a powerful message about the strength of American leadership at a pivotal moment. The administration urges both chambers of the Congress to quickly send this supplemental funding package to the president’s desk.” The bill imposing new limits on the social media platform TikTok was the first of the four measures to pass on Saturday, with a vote of 360-58. That measure requires Bytedance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company, to sell its stake within a year or face a ban in the United States. It would also allow the president to level new sanctions against Russia and Iran.  The second bill, which passed with a bipartisan majority of 385-34 votes, provided billions in aid to the Indo-Pacific region. The $8 billion bill is intended to counter China through investing in submarine infrastructure and helping Taiwan through military financing. The third to pass was a significant aid package — $60 billion — for Ukraine in its ongoing war against Russia. The bill passed with a vote of 311-112.  The bill has important implications not just for Ukraine but for all of Europe, according to Steven Moore, founder of the Ukraine Freedom Project, which delivers humanitarian and military aid to the front lines. “[Russian President] Vladimir Putin has made it clear that if he takes Ukraine, then NATO countries are next,” he told VOA. “This is not just about Ukraine. This is about standing up to a terrible human being who wants to subjugate the rest of Europe.” “This sends a message to [Russian President] Vladimir Putin, to Iran, to North Korea, and to China, that we are not abdicating our role as a leader in the world,” added Moore, who is based in Kyiv.  The bill’s passage in the House comes after a monthslong Republican effort to block additional aid to Ukraine.  “The Republican leadership, I think, delayed this unnecessarily,” Representative Adam Smith, a Democrat from Washington state, told VOA’s Ukrainian service on Saturday.  Smith said he expected the aid to be delivered to Ukraine “almost immediately” once the legislation is passed by the Senate and signed by President Biden.  The final measure to pass on Saturday was a $26 billion package for Israel, including $9.1 billion for humanitarian needs.   Biden reaffirmed support for the aid package earlier this week.  “Israel is facing unprecedented attacks from Iran, and Ukraine is facing continued bombardment from Russia that has intensified dramatically in the last month,” he said in a statement.  “The House must pass the package this week and the Senate should quickly follow,” Biden added. “I will sign this into law immediately to send a message to the world: We stand with our friends, and we won’t let Iran or Russia succeed.”  The weekend votes follow a rare show of bipartisanship on Friday, when a coalition of lawmakers in the House helped the foreign aid package clear a procedural hurdle to advance the four-part legislation. That Friday vote passed 316-94.  Johnson went ahead with the vote despite strong opposition from some factions of his party.  Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia threatened to try to force a vote to oust Johnson from the speakership if he went ahead with the Ukraine aid vote. Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky has also called for Johnson to resign. Still, other members of the Republican Party support Johnson and the aid package. “You’re never going to agree with every little aspect of legislation. There’s always going to be things you may quibble with, but the reality is that we need to get aid to our allies,” Representative Mike Lawler, a Republican from New York, told VOA’s Ukrainian Service.  “The time for debate and discussion over this has long passed, and the time for action is here,” he said.  VOA’s Kateryna Lisunova contributed to this report. Some information came from Reuters, the Associated Press and Agence France-Presse.

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DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — An Iranian attack on an Israeli desert air base last week as part of Tehran's unprecedented assault on the country damaged a taxiway, a satellite image analyzed by The Associated Press on Saturday shows. The overall damage done to Nevatim air base in southern Israel was minor despite Iran launching hundreds of drones, ballistic missiles and cruise missiles. Israeli air defenses and fighter jets, backed by the U.S., the United Kingdom and neighboring Jordan, shot down most of the incoming fire. But the Iranian attack last weekend showed Tehran's willingness to use its vast arsenal of ballistic missiles directly against Israel as tensions remain high across the wider Middle East over the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip. An apparent Israeli retaliatory attack Friday on Isfahan, Iran, and Tehran's low-key response to it suggest both countries want to dial back their long-running shadow war for now — though risks of a wider conflagration in the region remain. The Planet Labs PBC image, taken Friday for the AP, shows fresh blacktop across a taxiway near hangars at the southern part of Nevatim air base, about 65 kilometers (40 miles) south of Jerusalem. The daily newspaper Haaretz, which published lower-resolution images of the site Thursday, identified the hangars nearby as housing C-130 cargo aircraft flown by transport squadrons. The satellite image corresponds to footage earlier released by the Israeli military, which showed construction equipment working on the damaged taxiway. A hangar in the background of the video mirrors those seen nearby. Other images released by the Israeli military showed a crater in the sand and damage under what appeared to be a wall that it said came from the Iranian attack. The little visible damage seen at the air base in the satellite image directly contradicts Iran's efforts to portray the attack as a great victory to a public alienated by the Islamic Republic's cratering economy and its heavy-handed crackdowns on dissent in recent years. “This operation became a sign of the power of the Islamic Republic and its armed forces," Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said Friday. “It also showed the steely determination of our nation and our wise leader, the commander of all forces.” However, it does show Iran's arsenal can reach Israel, as the April 13 attack marked the first direct military assault on the country by a foreign nation since Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein launched Scud missiles at Israel in the 1991 Gulf War.

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WASHINGTON — The most significant case in decades on homelessness has reached the Supreme Court as record numbers of people in America are without a permanent place to live. The justices on Monday will consider a challenge to rulings from a California-based appeals court that found punishing people for sleeping outside when shelter space is lacking amounts to unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment. A political cross section of officials in the West and California, home to nearly one-third of the nation's homeless population, argue those decisions have restricted them from “common sense” measures intended to keep homeless encampments from taking over public parks and sidewalks. Advocacy groups say the decisions provide essential legal protections, especially with an increasing number of people forced to sleep outdoors as the cost of housing soars. The case before the Supreme Court comes from Grants Pass, a small city nestled in the mountains of southern Oregon, where rents are rising and there is just one overnight shelter for adults. As a growing number of tents clustered in its parks, the city banned camping and set $295 fines for people sleeping there. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals largely blocked the camping ban under its finding that it is unconstitutional to punish people for sleeping outside when there is not adequate shelter space. Grants Pass appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing the ruling left it few good options. “It really has made it impossible for cities to address growing encampments, and they’re unsafe, unhealthy and problematic for everyone, especially those who are experiencing homelessness,” said lawyer Theane Evangelis, who is representing Grants Pass. The city is also challenging a 2018 decision, known as Martin v. Boise, that first barred camping bans when shelter space is lacking. It was issued by the San Francisco-based 9th Circuit and applies to the nine Western states in its jurisdiction. The Supreme Court declined to take up a different challenge to the ruling in 2019, before the solidification of its current conservative majority. If the decision is overturned, advocates say it would make it easier for cities to deal with homelessness by arresting and fining people rather than helping them get shelter and housing. “In Grants Pass and across America, homelessness has grown because more and more hardworking people struggle to pay rent, not because we lack ways to punish people sleeping outside," said Jesse Rabinowitz, campaign and communications director for the National Homeless Law Center. Local laws prohibiting sleeping in public spaces have increased at least 50% since 2006, he said. The case comes after homelessness in the United States grew by 12%, to its highest reported level as soaring rents and a decline in coronavirus pandemic assistance combined to put housing out of reach for more people, according to federal data. Four in 10 people experiencing homelessness sleep outside, a federal report found. More than 650,000 people are estimated to be homeless, the most since the country began using the yearly point-in-time survey in 2007. People of color, LGBTQ+ people and seniors are disproportionately affected, advocates said. Two of four states with the country's largest homeless populations, Washington and California, are in the West. Officials in cities such as Los Angeles and San Francisco say they do not want to punish people simply because they are forced to sleep outside, but that cities need the power to keep growing encampments in check. “I never want to criminalize homelessness, but I want to be able to encourage people to accept services and shelter,” said Thien Ho, the district attorney in Sacramento, California, where homelessness has risen sharply in recent years. San Francisco says it has been blocked from enforcing camping regulations because the city does not have enough shelter space for its full homeless population, something it estimates would cost $1.5 billion to provide. “These encampments frequently block sidewalks, prevent employees from cleaning public thoroughfares, and create health and safety risks for both the unhoused and the public at large,” lawyers for the city wrote. City workers have also encountered knives, drug dealing and belligerent people at encampments, they said. Several cities and Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom urged the high court to keep some legal protections in place while reining in “overreach” by lower courts. The Martin v. Boise ruling allows cities to regulate and “sweep” encampments, but not enforce total bans in communities without enough beds in shelters. The Justice Department also backed the idea that people shouldn’t be punished for sleeping outside when they have nowhere else to go, but said the Grants Pass ruling should be tossed out because 9th Circuit went awry by not defining what it means to be “involuntarily homeless." Evangelis, the lawyer for Grants Pass, argues that the Biden administration's position would not solve the problem for the Oregon city. “It would be impossible for cities to really address the homelessness crisis,” she said. Public encampments are not good places for people to live, said Ed Johnson, who represents people living outside in Grants Pass as director of litigation at the Oregon Law Center. But enforcement of camping bans often makes homelessness worse by requiring people to spend money on fines rather than housing or creating an arrest record that makes it harder to get an apartment. Public officials should focus instead on addressing shortages of affordable housing, so people have places to live, he said. “It’s frustrating when people who have all the power throw up their hands and say, ‘there’s nothing we can do,’” he said. “People have to go somewhere.” The Supreme Court is expected to rule by the end of June.

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BEIJING — China's foreign minister Wang Yi said Saturday the South Pacific region should not become an arena for major power rivalries and that its assistance to countries there is free of political conditions. The Pacific has become a source of intense competition for influence between Washington, which has traditionally viewed it as its backyard, and Beijing, which has targeted Taiwanese diplomatic allies there. Wang made the comments at a joint news conference with his Papua New Guinea counterpart during a visit to the country. "The South Pacific region should not become an arena for great powers to play games, and no country should treat the island countries as its own 'backyard' or engage in zero-sum games and exclusionary arrangements," Wang said. He said any attempt to provoke confrontation in the South Pacific region does not serve the needs of its people. "China's engagement and cooperation with the South Pacific island countries is dedicated to mutual support and assistance to achieve common development, without any geopolitical self-interest," Wang said. He added that China is willing to maintain high-level exchanges with Papua New Guinea and open negotiations for free trade agreements as soon as possible. State media Xinhua reported Wang saying that all parties should respect the choice of the people of the Solomon Islands and refrain from interfering in their internal affairs. The Solomon Islands' pro-China Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare has retained his seat in a national election, local media reported late Friday. Wednesday's election was the first since Sogavare struck a security pact with China in 2022 and drew the Pacific Islands nation closer to Beijing, in moves that concerned the U.S. and Australia because of the potential impact on regional security.

BEIJING — Russia remained China's top oil supplier in March, data showed Saturday, as refiners snapped up stranded Sokol crude shipments.   China's imports from Russia, including supplies via pipelines and sea-borne shipments, jumped 12.5% on the year to 10.81 million metric tons, or 2.55 million barrels per day (bpd) last month, according to data from the General Administration of Customs.   That was quite close to the previous monthly record of 2.56 million bpd in June 2023.   Seven Russian tankers under sanctions offloaded Sokol cargoes in Chinese ports in March, as Russia worked to clear a glut of stranded supply in the wake of tightened U.S. sanctions.   More than 10 million barrels of the oil supplied by Sakhalin-1, a unit of Rosneft, had been floating in storage over the past three months amid payment difficulties and sanctions on shipping firms and vessels carrying the crude. Stockpiling of Russian crude for storage in strategic reserves by state-owned CNOOC (China National Offshore Oil Corporation) also boosted imports from Russia.   Data from consultancy Kpler, forecast sea-borne shipments from Russia hitting a record high of 1.82 million bpd, including 440,000 bpd of Sokol and 967,000 of ESPO (Eastern Siberia-Pacific Ocean) oil pipeline. Russia was China's top supplier throughout 2023, shipping 2.14 million bpd despite Western sanctions and a price cap following the Kremlin's 2022 invasion of Ukraine.   In coordination with other OPEC+ members, Russia opted to roll forward a voluntary reduction in crude oil output of 300,000 bpd into the first quarter of the year to support energy prices. Imports from Saudi Arabia, previously China's largest supplier, totaled 6.3 million tons in March, or 1.48 million bpd, down 29.3% on the same period last year.   Riyadh has said it would extend its voluntary cut of 1 million bpd through the end of June, leaving its output at around 9 million bpd.   The world's top exporter kept the March official selling price of its flagship Arab Light to Asia at $1.50 over the Oman/Dubai average as the Kingdom sought to secure market share.   January-March imports from Malaysia, a trans-shipment point for sanctioned cargoes from Iran and Venezuela, soared 39.2% on the year to 13.7 million tons, or 3.23 million bpd. The data showed 375,296 tons of imports from Venezuela, following a rare shipment of 352,455 tons of Venezuelan crude in February amid a temporary relaxation of U.S. sanctions on Caracas. Sanctions were re-imposed from Thursday after the U.S. said President Nicolas Maduro had failed to meet his election commitments. Customs recorded no imports from Iran. 

SEATTLE — Saturday marks marijuana culture’s high holiday, 4/20, when college students gather — at 4:20 p.m. — in clouds of smoke on campus quads and pot shops in legal-weed states thank their customers with discounts. This year’s edition provides an occasion for activists to reflect on how far their movement has come, with recreational pot now allowed in nearly half the states and the nation’s capital. Many states have instituted “social equity” measures to help communities of color, harmed the most by the drug war, reap financial benefits from legalization. And the White House has shown an openness to marijuana reform. Here’s a look at 4/20's history: WHY 4/20?   The origins of the date, and the term “420” generally, were long murky. Some claimed it referred to a police code for marijuana possession or that it derived from Bob Dylan’s “Rainy Day Women No. 12 & 35,” with its refrain of “Everybody must get stoned” — 420 being the product of 12 times 35. But the prevailing explanation is that it started in the 1970s with a group of bell-bottomed buddies from San Rafael High School, in California's Marin County north of San Francisco, who called themselves “the Waldos.” A friend’s brother was afraid of getting busted for a patch of cannabis he was growing in the woods at nearby Point Reyes, so he drew a map and gave the teens permission to harvest the crop, the story goes. During fall 1971, at 4:20 p.m., just after classes and football practice, the group would meet up at the school’s statue of chemist Louis Pasteur, smoke a joint and head out to search for the weed patch. They never did find it, but their private lexicon — “420 Louie” and later just “420” — would take on a life of its own. The Waldos saved postmarked letters and other artifacts from the 1970s referencing “420,” which they now keep in a bank vault, and when the Oxford English Dictionary added the term in 2017, it cited some of those documents as the earliest recorded uses. HOW DID 420 SPREAD? A brother of one of the Waldos was a close friend of Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh, as Lesh once confirmed in an interview with the Huffington Post, now HuffPost. The Waldos began hanging out in the band’s circle and the slang spread. Fast-forward to the early 1990s: Steve Bloom, a reporter for the cannabis magazine High Times, was at a Dead show when he was handed a flyer urging people to “meet at 4:20 on 4/20 for 420-ing in Marin County at the Bolinas Ridge sunset spot on Mt. Tamalpais.” High Times published it. “It’s a phenomenon,” one of the Waldos, Steve Capper, now 69, once told The Associated Press. “Most things die within a couple years, but this just goes on and on. It’s not like someday somebody’s going to say, ‘OK, cannabis New Year’s is on June 23rd now.’” While the Waldos came up with the term, the people who made the flier distributed at the Dead show — and effectively turned 4/20 into a holiday — remain unknown. HOW IS IT CELEBRATED? With weed, naturally. Some celebrations are bigger than others: The Mile High 420 Festival in Denver, for example, typically draws thousands and describes itself as the largest free 4/20 event in the world. Hippie Hill in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park has also attracted massive crowds, but the gathering was canceled this year, with organizers citing a lack of financial sponsorship and city budget cuts. College quads and statehouse lawns are also known for drawing 4/20 celebrations, with the University of Colorado Boulder historically among the largest, though not so much since administrators banned the annual smokeout over a decade ago. Some breweries make beers that are 420-themed, but not laced, including SweetWater Brewing in Atlanta, which is throwing a 420 music festival this weekend and whose founders went to the University of Colorado. Lagunitas Brewing in Petaluma, California, releases its “Waldos’ Special Ale” every year on 4/20 in partnership with the term’s coiners. That's where the Waldos will be this Saturday to sample the beer, for which they picked out “hops that smell and taste like the dankest marijuana,” one Waldo, Dave Reddix, said via email. 4/20 has also become a big industry event, with vendors gathering to try each other's wares. THE POLITICS The number of states allowing recreational marijuana has grown to 24 after recent legalization campaigns succeeded in Ohio, Minnesota and Delaware. Fourteen more states allow it for medical purposes, including Kentucky, where medical marijuana legislation that passed last year will take effect in 2025. Additional states permit only products with low THC, marijuana's main psychoactive ingredient, for certain medical conditions. But marijuana is still illegal under federal law. It is listed with drugs such as heroin under Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act, meaning it has no federally accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse. The Biden administration, however, has taken some steps toward marijuana reform. The president has pardoned thousands of people who were convicted of “simple possession” on federal land and in the District of Columbia. The Department of Health and Human Services last year recommended to the Drug Enforcement Administration that marijuana be reclassified as Schedule III, which would affirm its medical use under federal law. According to a Gallup poll last fall, 70% of adults support legalization, the highest level yet recorded by the polling firm and more than double the roughly 30% who backed it in 2000. Vivian McPeak, who helped found Seattle's Hempfest more than three decades ago, reflected on the extent to which the marijuana industry has evolved during his lifetime. “It's surreal to drive by stores that are selling cannabis,” he said. “A lot of people laughed at us, saying, ‘This will never happen.’” WHAT DOES IT MEAN? McPeak described 4/20 these days as a “mixed bag.” Despite the legalization movement's progress, many smaller growers are struggling to compete against large producers, he said, and many Americans are still behind bars for weed convictions. “We can celebrate the victories that we've had, and we can also strategize and organize to further the cause,” he said. “Despite the kind of complacency that some people might feel, we still got work to do. We've got to keep burning that shoe leather until we get everybody out of jails and prisons.” For the Waldos, 4/20 signifies above all else a good time. “We’re not political. We’re jokesters,” Capper has said. “But there was a time that we can’t forget, when it was secret, furtive. ... The energy of the time was more charged, more exciting in a certain way. “I’m not saying that’s all good — it’s not good they were putting people in jail,” he continued. “You wouldn’t want to go back there.”

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The U.S. economy is always a major factor in the presidential campaign because the president plays a key role in setting and shaping trade and economic policies. VOA’s Senior Washington Correspondent Carolyn Presutti reports on how the economy is doing and the difference between how the two presidential contenders would handle it. Camera: Mike Burke

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.

BANGKOK — About 1,300 people have fled from eastern Myanmar into Thailand, officials said Saturday, as fresh fighting erupted at a border town that has recently been captured by ethnic guerillas. Fighters from the Karen ethnic minority last week captured the last of the Myanmar army’s outposts in and around Myawaddy, which is connected to Thailand by two bridges across the Moei River. The latest clashes were triggered in the morning when the Karen guerillas launched an attack against Myanmar troops who were hiding near the 2nd Thai-Myanmar Friendship Bridge, a major crossing point for trade with Thailand, said police chief Pittayakorn Phetcharat in Thailand's Mae Sot district. He estimated about 1,300 people fled into Thailand. Thai officials reported people had started crossing since Friday following clashes in several areas of Myawaddy. The fall of Myawaddy is a major setback for the military that seized power from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in 2021. Myanmar’s once-mighty armed forces have suffered a series of unprecedented defeats since last October, losing swathes of territory including border posts to both ethnic fighters, who have been fighting for greater autonomy for decades, and pro-democracy guerrilla units that took up arms after the military takeover. The clashes, involving drone attacks from the Karen forces and airstrikes by the Myanmar military, had subsided by noon Saturday compared to the morning, but Mae Sot police chief Pittayakorn Phetcharat said he could still hear sporadic gunshots. He said Thai authorities would move people fleeing into a safer area. Footage from the Thai border showed Thai soldiers maintaining guard near the bridge with sounds of explosions and gunshots in the background. People with children waded across the river with their belongings and were received by Thai officials on the riverbank. Several are seen taking shelter in buildings along the riverbank on the Myanmar side. Thailand’s Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin wrote on the social media platform X on Saturday that he was closely monitoring the situation at the border. “I do not desire to see any such clashes have any impact on the territorial integrity of Thailand and we are ready to protect our borders and the safety of our people. At the same time, we are also ready to provide humanitarian assistance, if necessary,” he wrote. In March, Thailand delivered its first batch of humanitarian assistance to Myanmar for about 20,000 displaced people. Nikorndej Balangura, a spokesman of the Foreign Affairs Ministry, told reporters on Friday that Thailand is currently working to expand its aid initiative.

WASHINGTON — After its midnight deadline, the Senate voted early Saturday to reauthorize a key U.S. surveillance law after divisions over whether the FBI should be restricted from using the program to search for Americans’ data nearly forced the statute to lapse. The legislation approved 60-34 with bipartisan support would extend for two years the program known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. It now goes to President Joe Biden’s desk to become law. White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Biden "will swiftly sign the bill." “In the nick of time, we are reauthorizing FISA right before it expires at midnight,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said when voting on final passage began 15 minutes before the deadline. “All day long, we persisted, and we persisted in trying to reach a breakthrough and in the end, we have succeeded.” U.S. officials have said the surveillance tool, first authorized in 2008 and renewed several times since then, is crucial in disrupting terror attacks, cyber intrusions, and foreign espionage and has also produced intelligence that the U.S. has relied on for specific operations, such as the 2022 killing of al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahri. “If you miss a key piece of intelligence, you may miss some event overseas or put troops in harm’s way," Sen. Marco Rubio, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said. "You may miss a plot to harm the country here, domestically, or somewhere else. So, in this particular case, there’s real-life implications.” The proposal would renew the program, which permits the U.S. government to collect without a warrant the communications of non-Americans located outside the country to gather foreign intelligence. The reauthorization faced a long and bumpy road to final passage Friday after months of clashes between privacy advocates and national security hawks pushed consideration of the legislation to the brink of expiration. Though the spy program was technically set to expire at midnight, the Biden administration had said it expected its authority to collect intelligence to remain operational for at least another year, thanks to an opinion earlier this month from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which receives surveillance applications. Still, officials had said that court approval shouldn’t be a substitute for congressional authorization, especially since communications companies could cease cooperation with the government if the program is allowed to lapse. House before the law was set to expire, U.S. officials were already scrambling after two major U.S. communication providers said they would stop complying with orders through the surveillance program, according to a person familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private negotiations. Attorney General Merrick Garland praised the reauthorization and reiterated how “indispensable” the tool is to the Justice Department. “This reauthorization of Section 702 gives the United States the authority to continue to collect foreign intelligence information about non-U.S. persons located outside the United States, while at the same time codifying important reforms the Justice Department has adopted to ensure the protection of Americans’ privacy and civil liberties," Garland said in a statement Saturday. But despite the Biden administration's urging and classified briefings to senators this week on the crucial role they say the spy program plays in protecting national security, a group of progressive and conservative lawmakers who were agitating for further changes had refused to accept the version of the bill the House sent over last week. The lawmakers had demanded that Majority Leader Chuck Schumer allow votes on amendments to the legislation that would seek to address what they see as civil liberty loopholes in the bill. In the end, Schumer was able to cut a deal that would allow critics to receive floor votes on their amendments in exchange for speeding up the process for passage. The six amendments ultimately failed to garner the necessary support on the floor to be included in the final passage. One of the major changes detractors had proposed centered on restricting the FBI’s access to information about Americans through the program. Though the surveillance tool only targets non-Americans in other countries, it also collects communications of Americans when they are in contact with those targeted foreigners. Sen. Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat in the chamber, had been pushing a proposal that would require U.S. officials to get a warrant before accessing American communications. “If the government wants to spy on my private communications or the private communications of any American, they should be required to get approval from a judge, just as our Founding Fathers intended in writing the Constitution,” Durbin said. In the past year, U.S. officials have revealed a series of abuses and mistakes by FBI analysts in improperly querying the intelligence repository for information about Americans or others in the U.S., including a member of Congress and participants in the racial justice protests of 2020 and the January 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. But members on both the House and Senate intelligence committees as well as the Justice Department warned requiring a warrant would severely handicap officials from quickly responding to imminent national security threats. “I think that is a risk that we cannot afford to take with the vast array of challenges our nation faces around the world,” Democratic Sen. Mark Warner, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Friday.  

BANGKOK — As rebel forces across Myanmar continue making major gains against the country’s military regime on the battlefield, resistance groups are working behind the scenes to plan for the government they want to take the junta’s place. It is not clear that the effort will succeed, and if it does not, some analysts fear a political vacuum if the junta-led government should fall. At a so-called People’s Assembly in January 2022, nearly a year after the military seized power, upwards of two dozen resistance groups endorsed a two-part charter laying out their vision for a new order that would loosely bind Myanmar’s states together as a democratic and federal — or “union” — government.   Since then, though, they have been struggling to agree on just what a federal union should look like and how to build it, analysts following the talks tell VOA.  “What has propelled them thus far is this least common denominator that everyone buys into: a federal democratic system,” Zachary Abuza, a professor at the National War College in Washington told VOA in recent days.  “But once you actually get down to brass tacks and try to define what that is, everyone all of a sudden gets cold feet and doesn’t want to attach their names. I think everyone is still kind of waiting this out, seeing what else they can get,” he said. Some of Myanmar’s states are home to large ethnic minority populations, which together account for roughly a third of the country’s 54 million people. Rebel armies among the minorities, dubbed ethnic armed organizations, or EAOs, have been fighting Myanmar’s ethnic Burman-dominated military for control of parts of those states for decades. They have been demanding a federal union that gives their states more autonomy for just as long. The new charter is a bid to answer their call, but it remains vague on how the federal and state governments would share power in a new Myanmar. The charter calls the states “the original owners of sovereignty” and says the union “shall consist of member states which have full rights to democracy, equality and self-determination.” It adds that the specific powers of the union and of the states “shall be determined,” without elaborating.  Where the power lies Among the EAOs, debate over the charter has mostly focused on how much power each state may want to grant the union or keep for itself, said Ying Lao of the Salween Institute for Public Policy, a Myanmar think tank. Another key player in the talks is the so-called National Unity Government, an alliance of civilian resistance groups including some of the mostly Burman lawmakers ousted by the 2021 coup. Disputes over the charter between the EAOs and NUG are deeper and “ideological,” Ying Lao said, about where political power in Myanmar actually lies. As the EAOs see it, she said, that power rests with the states, and the union “has only the powers that they are willing to share with the union. That’s the kind of federalism they are looking for. But for the Bamar [Burman] political elite, they claim that sovereignty rests with the country, which is the union of Burma, and that the states have the powers that the union is willing to share with them.” That dispute is echoed in the concerns some groups have with the charter’s second half, or Part 2, which lays out a rough roadmap for shifting to the full-fledged federal union envisioned in Part 1. It says the lawmakers ousted by the coup would serve as an interim legislature and sets no time limit.  Analysts tell VOA that minority groups say that hews too closely to the centralized, Burman-dominated government they have been struggling for decades to replace. When it came time to endorse that part of the charter at the 2022 People’s Congress, they said, some of the groups that endorsed Part 1 abstained. In the final days of a second People’s Congress held earlier this month for resistance groups to keep planning for a future government, the NUG and ousted lawmakers pulled out. They claimed the event had gotten out of hand and that the issues some of the groups were raising were out of bounds. The NUG includes ethnic minority officers and takes pains to stress its inclusive credentials. Ying Lao said its actions, however, are reinforcing the impression among some that Burman elites still dominate. Many minority groups feel a faction of the NUG “still has this Burma-centric, or what they call a chauvinistic mindset,” Kim Jolliffe, an independent Myanmar analyst and researcher, told VOA. “They support the [charter], but they don’t fully have trust in the process, that it’s really going to be implemented,” he said. Less talk, more action Many of Myanmar’s EAOs, including a few of the most powerful, are not even taking part in the charter talks, or are doing so only at arm’s length. Some are not waiting for the details to be worked out either, and they have started building whole new governments on their own in their home states. Armed and civilian ethnic Karenni groups in Kayah state were the first to declare an interim government replacing the military regime across their state in June. The Arakan Army EAO has been building its own government as well across the parts of Rakhine state it has battled to reclaim from the junta. Resistance groups elsewhere are following suit. “A lot of the [EAOs], they’re saying now, we’re not going to get bound up in any more debates about the [charter], we’re just going to build our states, and we’re going to come together and then we’ll decide what needs to be shared as a union of equals,” Jolliffe said. Working out the details “is going to be very messy,” Abuza said. He noted he also worries that both the EAOs and NUG, which has its own network of militias fighting the Myanmar military across the country, will want to concede less politically as they gain ground against the junta on the battlefield. The junta may still be far from defeat. It continues to hold Naypyitaw, the capital, and main cities, and has the edge in funds and firepower. But the military is widely loathed and overstretched and has now lost control of most of Myanmar’s borders. Should the junta lose or collapse before the EAOs and NUG work out their political differences, analysts like Abuza and Jolliffe say they worry about a federal power vacuum and the problems that could cause. Ying Lao is more sanguine. She says Myanmar has “never really existed” as a functioning union with a central government that meets the needs of its states, and it could continue to muddle along without one. “Not getting that functioning federal union anytime soon, for the people on the ground, the situation will only get worse and worse. But whether this country will remain intact, I’m sure it will,” she said. “But no one will have any real power in the country. … It’s going to be chaotic, for sure.” Ingyin Naing in Washington contributed to this report.