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Julian Assange is due to plead guilty to violating U.S. espionage law. The European Union opens formal accession talks with Ukraine on Tuesday after Kyiv's decade-long effort to join the organization. We talk to Amy Verdun, a professor of Political Science at University of Victoria. The European Investment Bank intends to ramp up its investments in European defense such as drones and cyber security, aiming to inject 6 billion euros ($6.4 billion) into the sector. UN chief Antonio Guterres accuses Israel of spreading misinformation about him. And TV personality Rachael Ray is a US based chef, author and celebrity. But Ukrainians know her better thanks to her charity work to help the war-torn country.

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

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

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

washington — WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will plead guilty to a felony charge in a deal with the U.S. Justice Department that will free him from prison and resolve a long-running legal saga that spanned multiple continents and centered on the publication of a trove of classified documents, according to court papers filed late Monday.  Assange is scheduled to appear in the federal court in the Mariana Islands, a U.S. commonwealth in the Western Pacific, to plead guilty to an Espionage Act charge of conspiring to unlawfully obtain and disseminate classified national defense information, the Justice Department said in a letter filed in court.  The guilty plea, which a judge must approve, abruptly ends a criminal case of international intrigue and the U.S. government's yearslong pursuit of a publisher whose hugely popular secret-sharing website made him a cause celebre among many press freedom advocates who said he acted as a journalist to expose U.S. military wrongdoing. Investigators, by contrast, have repeatedly asserted that his actions broke laws meant to protect sensitive information and put the country's national security at risk.  He is expected to return to Australia after his plea and sentencing, which is scheduled for Wednesday morning, local time in Saipan, the largest island in the Mariana Islands. The hearing is taking place there because of Assange's opposition to traveling to the continental U.S., and because of the court's proximity to Australia.  Assange's U.S. attorney, Barry Pollack, did not immediately return messages seeking comment Monday.  The deal ensures that Assange will admit guilt while also sparing him from any additional prison time. He had spent years hiding out in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London after Swedish authorities sought his arrest on rape allegations before he was locked up in the United Kingdom.  Prosecutors have agreed to a sentence of the five years Assange has already spent in a high-security British prison while fighting to avoid extradition to the U.S. to face charges, a process that has played out in a series of hearings in London. Last month, he won the right to appeal an extradition order after his lawyers argued that the U.S. government provided "blatantly inadequate" assurances that he would have the same free-speech protections as an American citizen if extradited from Britain. Assange has been heralded by many around the world as a hero who brought to light military wrongdoing in Iraq and Afghanistan. Among the files published by WikiLeaks was a video of a 2007 Apache helicopter attack by American forces in Baghdad that killed 11 people, including two Reuters journalists.  But his reputation was also tarnished by rape allegations, which he has denied.  The Justice Department's indictment unsealed in 2019 accused Assange of encouraging and helping U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning steal diplomatic cables and military files that WikiLeaks published in 2010. Prosecutors had accused Assange of damaging national security by publishing documents that harmed the U.S. and its allies and aided its adversaries.  The case was lambasted by press advocates and Assange supporters. Federal prosecutors defended it as targeting conduct that went way beyond that of a journalist gathering information, amounting to an attempt to solicit, steal and indiscriminately publish classified government documents. It was brought even though the Obama administration Justice Department had passed on prosecuting him years earlier.  The plea agreement comes months after President Joe Biden said he was considering a request from Australia to drop the U.S. push to prosecute Assange.  Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison after being convicted of violating the Espionage Act and other offenses for leaking classified government and military documents to WikiLeaks. President Barack Obama commuted her sentence in 2017, allowing her release after about seven behind bars.  Assange made headlines in 2016 after his website published Democratic emails that prosecutors say were stolen by Russian intelligence operatives. He was never charged in special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation, but the inquiry laid bare in stark detail the role that the hacking operation played in interfering in that year's election on behalf of then-Republican candidate Donald Trump.  Justice Department officials mulled charges for Assange following the documents' 2010 publication, but were unsure a case would hold up in court and were concerned it could be hard to justify prosecuting him for acts similar to those of a conventional journalist.  The posture changed in the Trump administration, however, with former Attorney General Jeff Sessions in 2017 calling Assange's arrest a priority.  Assange's family and supporters have said his physical and mental health have suffered during more than a decade of legal battles, which includes seven years spent inside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.  Assange took refuge there in 2012 and was granted political asylum after courts in England ruled he should be extradited to Sweden as part of a rape investigation in the Scandinavian country. British police arrested him after Ecuador's government withdrew his asylum status in 2019, and then he was jailed for skipping bail when he first took shelter inside the embassy.  Although Sweden eventually dropped its sex crimes investigation because so much time had elapsed, Assange has remained in London's high-security Belmarsh Prison during the extradition battle with the U.S. 

Pentagon — The U.S. is expected to announce a new military aid package for Ukraine valued at up to $150 million as soon as Tuesday, two U.S. officials tell VOA. The package is being provided to Kyiv under the presidential drawdown authority (PDA), which pulls weapons, ammunition and equipment from U.S. military stockpiles to fulfill Ukraine’s short-term needs.  One of the officials — who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the package ahead of its planned announcement — said the latest round of aid would include munitions for HIMARS and other critical munitions. It does not include cluster munitions, according to the official. Asked whether the aid package includes long-range missiles known as ATACMS, the official replied, “For operational security reasons, we aren’t going into further details.” ATACMS have a range of up to 300 kilometers (about 185 miles) and nearly double the striking distance of Ukraine’s missiles.  When asked by VOA on June 12 if the United States had provided Ukraine with more ATACMS since mid-March, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General C.Q. Brown said, "We're working through the ATACMS piece, and we continue to provide that capability through our PDAs."  Russia has accused Ukraine of using some of the U.S.-provided ATACMS in deadly strikes this week inside Crimea, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014, and in Russia’s Belgorod region bordering Ukraine. Russia summoned the U.S. ambassador in Moscow on Monday to protest the use of the missiles. This week’s aid package for Kyiv will dip into the $61 billion in Ukraine funding signed into law by President Joe Biden in April. 

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.

FORT PIERCE, Florida — An attorney for Donald Trump told a federal judge on Monday that the criminal prosecution against the former president on charges he mishandled classified documents was unlawfully funded, as they made another attempt to get the charges thrown out of court.  Prosecutors told U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon that the funding mechanism for their office has been upheld in past cases, as they sought to work through a thicket of legal challenges that have delayed the trial indefinitely.  Trump has pleaded not guilty to charges that he illegally held on to sensitive national security papers after leaving office in 2021 and that he obstructed government efforts to retrieve them. The criminal case is one of four Trump has been facing as he seeks to unseat Democratic President Joe Biden in the November 5 election.  Cannon, a Trump appointee, set hearings on Friday and Monday in her Florida courtroom for Trump's lawyers to argue several motions making claims similar to those that have been rejected in other cases. On Friday, Trump attorneys urged her to find U.S. special counsel Jack Smith has too much independence - even though Trump has repeatedly blasted him as a puppet of Biden.  On Monday, Trump lawyer Emil Bove said the U.S. Justice Department should not be allowed to use a fund Congress set aside in the 1970s for independent politically sensitive investigations to pay for the documents probe.  "More oversight from Congress is required for the extraordinary things that are going on in these prosecutions," Bove said. Some Republicans in the House of Representatives have called for defunding Smith's office.  Special counsels have been appointed in Democratic- and Republican-led administrations alike to ensure an attorney can independently investigate and, if warranted, prosecute a case without any appearance of political influence.  U.S. prosecutor James Pearce told Cannon that the funding had been upheld in previous court cases that challenged other special prosecutors - including David Weiss, who recently won a criminal conviction of Biden's son, Hunter Biden.  Pearce said the Justice Department would fund Smith's office out of its regular budget if Cannon ruled that it cannot rely on the 1970s law.  Cannon has allowed a flurry of motions by Trump's legal team and has ruled in favor of the Republican presidential candidate on previous requests. It is unlikely the case will reach a jury before Trump and Biden face voters in the election.  Gag order request  Smith's team was due to ask Cannon later on Monday to bar Trump from making statements that pose a threat to law enforcement while he awaits trial.  Trump falsely claimed that a routine FBI use-of-force policy in effect during a 2022 search of his Florida resort authorized agents to attempt an assassination.  Prosecutors called the claim "deceptive and inflammatory" in a court filing and said it subjected agents to "unjustified and unacceptable risks."  Trump's lawyers say a gag order  would violate Trump's free-speech rights in the heat of the presidential campaign. They also argue that prosecutors have not presented evidence of threats against the FBI.  Cannon previously denied the request on procedural grounds after she ruled that prosecutors had not adequately consulted with Trump's lawyers before filing it.  Trump faces gag orders limiting his public statements in another federal case, also overseen by Smith, accusing him of attempting to overturn his defeat in the 2020 election, and a case in New York that led to his conviction in May for falsifying business records.  Trump has verbally attacked prosecutors, judges and witnesses in legal cases against him, contending that the U.S. justice system is being used to undermine his campaign.  Trump's criticism of the FBI search of his Mar-a-Lago social club intensified last month after the bureau's use-of-force policy was made public as part of a tranche of records related to the FBI operation.  The policy stipulated that the FBI could not use lethal force unless an agent or other person was at serious risk of death or serious injury. Trump was not present at the club at the time of the search.  Trump's baseless claim about an attempted assassination was included in campaign fundraising emails and was echoed by his allies in Congress. 

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.

BATON ROUGE, Louisiana — Civil liberties groups filed a lawsuit Monday to block Louisiana's new law that requires the Ten Commandments to be displayed in every public school classroom, a measure they contend is unconstitutional.  Plaintiffs in the suit include parents of Louisiana public schoolchildren, represented by attorneys with the American Civil Liberties Union, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and the Freedom From Religion Foundation.  "This display sends a message to my children and other students that people of some religious denominations are superior to others," said the Rev. Jeff Simms, a Presbyterian pastor who is a plaintiff in the suit and father of three children in Louisiana public schools. "This is religious favoritism."  Under the legislation signed into law by Republican Gov. Jeff Landry last week, all public K-12 classrooms and state-funded universities will be required to display a poster-sized version of the Ten Commandments in "large, easily readable font" next year.  Opponents argue that the law is a violation of separation of church and state and that the display will isolate students, especially those who are not Christian. Proponents say the measure is not solely religious, but that it has historical significance. In the language of the law, the Ten Commandments are "foundational documents of our state and national government."  Plaintiff Joshua Herlands has two young children in New Orleans public schools who, like their father, are Jewish. There are multiple versions of the Ten Commandments, and Herlands said the specific version mandated for classroom walls does not align with the version from his faith. He worries the display will send a troubling message to his kids and others that "they may be lesser in the eyes of the government."  "Politicians have absolutely no business forcing their religious beliefs on my kids or any kids, or attempting to indoctrinate them with what they think is the right version of a particular piece of religious text," Herlands said.  The lawsuit filed Monday seeks a court declaration that the new law, referred to in the lawsuit as HB 71, violates First Amendment clauses forbidding government establishment of religion and guaranteeing religious liberty. It also seeks an order prohibiting the posting of the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms.  "The state's main interest in passing H.B. 71 was to impose religious beliefs on public-school children, regardless of the harm to students and families," the lawsuit says. "The law's primary sponsor and author, Representative Dodie Horton, proclaimed during debate over the bill that it 'seeks to have a display of God's law in the classroom for children to see what He says is right and what He says is wrong.'"  Defendants include state Superintendent of Education Cade Brumley, members of the state education board and some local school boards.  Landry and Louisiana Attorney General Elizabeth Murrill support the new law, and Murrill has said she is looking forward to defending it. She issued a statement saying she couldn't comment directly on the lawsuit because she had not yet seen it.  "It seems the ACLU only selectively cares about the First Amendment — it doesn't care when the Biden administration censors speech or arrests pro-life protesters, but apparently it will fight to prevent posters that discuss our own legal history," Murrill said in the emailed statement.  The Ten Commandments have long been at the center of lawsuits across the nation.  In 1980, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a similar Kentucky law violated the establishment clause of the U.S. Constitution, which says Congress can "make no law respecting an establishment of religion." The high court found that the law had no secular purpose but rather served a plainly religious purpose.  In a more recent ruling, the Supreme Court held in 2005 that such displays in a pair of Kentucky courthouses violated the Constitution. At the same time, the court upheld a Ten Commandments marker on the grounds of the Texas state Capitol in Austin. Those were 5-4 decisions, but the court's makeup has changed, with a 6-3 conservative majority now.  Other states, including Texas, Oklahoma and Utah, have attempted to pass requirements that the schools display the Ten Commandments. However, with threats of legal battles, none has the mandate in place except for Louisiana.  The posters in Louisiana, which will be paired with a four-paragraph "context statement" describing how the Ten Commandments "were a prominent part of public education for almost three centuries," must be in place in classrooms by the start of 2025.  The controversial law comes during a new era of conservative leadership in Louisiana under Landry, who replaced two-term Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards in January. The GOP holds a supermajority in the Legislature, and Republicans hold every statewide elected position, paving the way for lawmakers to push through a conservative agenda.  The case was allotted to U.S. District Judge John deGravelles, nominated to the federal bench by former President Barack Obama.

NEW YORK — Car dealerships in North America continue to wrestle with major disruptions that started last week with cyberattacks on a software company used widely in the auto retail sales sector.  CDK Global, a company that provides software for thousands of auto dealers in the U.S. and Canada, was hit by back-to-back cyberattacks Wednesday. That led to an outage that has continued to impact operations.  For prospective car buyers, that has meant delays at dealerships or vehicle orders written up by hand. There's no immediate end in sight, with CDK saying it expects the restoration process to take "several days" to complete.  On Monday, Group 1 Automotive Inc., a $4 billion automotive retailer, said that it continued to use "alternative processes" to sell cars to its customers. Lithia Motors and AutoNation, two other dealership chains, also disclosed that they implemented workarounds to keep their operations going.  Here is what you need to know.  What is CDK Global?  CDK Global is a major player in the auto sales industry. The company, based just outside of Chicago in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, provides software technology to dealers that helps with day-to-day operations — like facilitating vehicle sales, financing, insurance and repairs.  CDK serves more than 15,000 retail locations across North America, according to the company.  What happened last week?  CDK experienced back-to-back cyberattacks on Wednesday. The company shut down all of its systems out of an abundance of caution, spokesperson Lisa Finney said last week.  "We have begun the restoration process," Finney said in an update over the weekend — noting that the company had launched an investigation into the "cyber incident" with third-party experts and notified law enforcement.  "Based on the information we have at this time, we anticipate that the process will take several days to complete, and in the interim we are continuing to actively engage with our customers and provide them with alternate ways to conduct business," she added.  In messages to its customers, the company has also warned of "bad actors" posing as members or affiliates of CDK to try to obtain system access by contacting customers. It urged them to be cautious of any attempted phishing.  The incident bore all the hallmarks of a ransomware attack, in which targets are asked to pay a ransom to access encrypted files. But CDK declined to comment directly — neither confirming or denying if it had received a ransom demand.  Are impacted dealerships still selling cars?  Several major auto companies — including Stellantis, Ford and BMW — confirmed to The Associated Press last week that the CDK outage had impacted some of their dealers, but that sales operations continue.  In light of the ongoing situation, a spokesperson for Stellantis said Friday that many dealerships had switched to manual processes to serve customers. That includes writing up orders by hand.  A Ford spokesperson added that the outage may cause "some delays and inconveniences at some dealers and for some customers." However, many Ford and Lincoln customers are still getting sales and service support through alternative routes being used at dealerships.  Group 1 Automotive Inc., which owns 202 automotive dealerships, 264 franchises, and 42 collision centers in the U.S. and the United Kingdom, said Monday that the incident has disrupted its business applications and processes in its U.S. operations that rely on CDK's dealers' systems. The company said that it took measures to protect and isolate its systems from CDK's platform.  All Group 1 U.S. dealerships will continue to conduct business using alternative processes until CDK's dealers' systems are available, the company said Monday. Group 1's dealerships in the U.K. don't use CDK's dealers' systems and are not impacted by the incident.  In regulatory filings, Lithia Motors and AutoNation disclosed that last week's incident at CDK had disrupted their operations as well.  Lithia said it activated cyber incident response procedures, which included "severing business service connections between the company's systems and CDK's." AutoNation said it also took steps to protect its systems and data — adding that all of its locations remain open "albeit with lower productivity," as many are served manually or through alternative processes.  With many details of the cyberattacks still unclear, customer privacy is also at top of mind — especially with little known about what information may have been compromised this week.  In a statement last week, Mike Stanton, president and CEO of the National Automobile Dealers Association, said "dealers are very committed to protecting their customer information" and were seeking updates from CDK to determine the scope of impact "so they can respond appropriately."  Cybersecurity experts have stressed that consumers connected to CDK (or a CDK-affilated dealership) should assume that their data may have been breached. Those impacted should monitor their credit — or even consider freezing their credit as an added layer of defense — and be wary of any suspicious phishing messages.

Russian missile attacks hit Ukraine's major cities, causing death, injury and infrastructure damage. The first EU portion of frozen Russian assets are expected to be delivered to Ukraine Monday. At least 20 people were killed, including civilians and police officers, when gunmen opened fire at two Orthodox churches, two synagogues, and a police station in separate attacks in Russia's North Caucasus region of Dagestan. EU leaders approve more sanctions against Russia. A Ukrainian teenager seeking safety through in music in the U.S. city of Chicago.

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.

washington — The number of Americans studying in China has dropped dramatically in recent years from around 11,000 in 2019 to 800 this year, and the slump is so bad that some China scholars worry the United States could lose a generation of "China experts" as a result. David Moser, an American who has lived and worked in China for more than three decades and is the former academic director of China Educational Tours (CET) in Beijing, said that “I haven’t seen an American student in years.” CET, which was launched in 1982, is a Washington-based organization that recruits American students for short-term language and culture studies in China. Moser said that his position as academic director recently went away and that the organization continues to struggle to get more students to return to China. CET once carried out short-term study-abroad programs in several cities in China, including Beijing, Shanghai, Harbin and Hangzhou. Now, the program is only available in Beijing and Shanghai. Harbin's page on the website shows that programs are "suspended until spring 2025." "We have already lost a very crucial generation who would need to be continuing right now in China with studies or whatever,” Moser said, “so that 10 years from now, they would already be ... very experienced China hands [experts].” During the 2011-12 school year, the number of American students in China was around 15,000. Since then, with Xi Jinping’s rise as China’s leader and growing frictions between the two countries, the number has declined, dropping dramatically after the pandemic to about 200 at its lowest point. Loss of understanding Moser said the lack of talented people who understand China is undoubtedly a huge loss for the United States. "You really need people who understand the two academic systems, the two college systems, and the way these things work in order to not make a huge mistake,” he said. Compared with China, however, CET's projects in Taiwan are in full swing.   Moser said CET started its first summer study abroad program at National Taiwan University in 2022, which attracted more than 120 American students. He said a program was set up in Taiwan because too few American students wanted to go to China.  He said he believed that starting around 2008, when Beijing held its first Olympics, China’s pollution and human rights violations turned some American students away, and that the trend has not reversed.  China's strict lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic was also a crucial turning point. At that time, many foreigners, including American students, left China. After the Chinese government suddenly lifted the lockdown at the end of 2022, most foreigners did not immediately return.  China's increasingly aggressive posture on the international stage under Xi, and its hostile propaganda against the West at home, is likely to have prevented foreign talents from visiting China for cultural and business exchanges.   A revised counterespionage law that took effect on July 1, 2023, has also made many Americans hesitant to travel to China, let alone study there.  As U.S.-China relations deteriorate, official academic exchanges have also been coldly received. Former U.S. President Donald Trump suspended all Fulbright exchange programs to China and Hong Kong in July 2020.   After the counterespionage law negatively affected China, the Chinese government sought to extend goodwill at the level of people-to-people exchanges. Xi announced during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in San Francisco in November 2023, "In order to expand exchanges between the people of China and the United States, especially the younger generation, China is willing to invite 50,000 American young people to come to China for exchanges and studies in the next five years." High school students visit  In January 2024, more than 20 students from Muscatine High School in Iowa visited Beijing, Hebei and Shanghai. In March, 24 students from Lincoln High School and Steilacoom High School in Washington state also boarded a plane from San Francisco to Beijing.  Wenzhou University and Kean University in New Jersey signed an agreement to jointly establish Wenzhou-Kean University in May 2006. At the time, Xi was the party secretary of Zhejiang, home province of Wenzhou, and he attended the signing ceremony in 2006. In a letter to Kean's president on June 7, Xi encouraged universities in the two countries to strengthen exchanges and cooperation. However, three days later,  four American teachers who were giving short-term courses at Beihua University in Jilin, China, were stabbed by a Chinese man. Chinese officials quickly deleted the relevant content on social media, and a Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson called the incident an "accident" that would not affect relations between the two countries.   Meghan Burke, a former sociology professor at Illinois Wesleyan University, said that although the attack on American teachers was a shocking and unexpected incident, she still hoped that it would not affect Americans' confidence in studying and traveling in China.  "I think it's always been there, but I think with the pandemic, there was some really racially loaded misinformation and fears that I wouldn't be surprised if that came into play in some students' and some families' decisions about where they were willing to go abroad," she said.   Asked about the 800 American students in China today, Burke said that was a big regret for the United States.   "Language is key to understanding culture. So, any limitations on learning Mandarin or other Chinese languages only hold back our ability to have a broader and more complex intercultural understanding and international perspective that I think benefits everyone who is involved in those conversations," Burke said.  In contrast, 300,000 Chinese students are studying in the United States.   "Asymmetry is bad for China, but it's much worse for the United States because asymmetry is in one direction, which is towards us,” Moser said. “The Chinese have very good knowledge of the U.S., of its culture, of its government, everything." Adrianna Zhang contributed to this report.

As in many countries, job seekers in Ukraine who are in their 50s and 60s have a harder time than younger workers. One organization is trying to change that by taking advantage of Ukraine’s wartime labor shortage. For VOA, Lesia Bakalets reports from Kyiv. VOA footage by Vladyslav Smilianets.

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.