President Joe Biden received a warm welcome in India’s capital Friday upon his arrival for a summit of the leaders of the Group of 20 major and developing economies.

“I’m happy to be here,” he appeared to say as he stepped off Air Force One, while classical Indian dancers moved to a Hindi-laced hip hop track on the New Delhi tarmac.

Biden headed straight into a private one-on-one meeting with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Press were given limited access to the meeting, where the two reaffirmed, in a lengthy statement, “the close and enduring partnership between India and the United States.”

In the statement, the two leaders “called on their governments to continue the work of transforming the India-U.S. Strategic Partnership across all dimensions of our multifaceted global agenda, based on trust and mutual understanding.”

They also “re-emphasized that the shared values of freedom, democracy, human rights, inclusion, pluralism, and equal opportunities for all citizens are critical to the success our countries enjoy and that these values strengthen our relationship.”

On Saturday, Biden and other heads of state take part in the G20 summit, where they are expected to cover issues ranging from the war in Ukraine to climate change.

When asked by VOA what Indians expected from the historic summit, many were quick to say: results.

“I really wish that we have a takeaway from the G20,” said Sabina Samad, 40, a lifelong Delhi resident, who cited climate change among her concerns. “Maybe something good for humanity.”

“Are you optimistic or pessimistic?” VOA asked.

“Both,” she said.

Inderjit Singh runs a small electronics shop founded by his father in 1961.

“The most important thing, what I feel is, trade,” he told VOA. “On the economic front we should have very, very good relations. The trade should increase so there should be economic prosperity between all the G20 nations. And ease of travel of the people – people to people contact, that is very important.”

Some Delhi residents remarked on the tight security and the capital’s unusually quiet streets.

“I love the makeover that Delhi has got. I just wonder where the dogs and the beggars have gone, but I’m sure they’re in a great place,” said Ambika Anand, 42, a social-media influencer.

As for India being taken seriously on the world stage, some noted the need for greater alignment between Washington and New Delhi.

“I think U.S. is taking India very, very seriously,” said Singh, the shop owner. “Because at the moment, I think it is geopolitical also, they have not very good relations with China. … So the only option within South Asia is India. It’s a compulsion.”

Mohini Gujral is a retiree, born in 1949, the year India and Pakistan separated. She says she’s seen many changes in her lifetime.

“Now [the U.S. is] taking India seriously,” she said. “Before I don’t think we had so much of a say in the world. That’s what I feel.”

Top U.S. officials are also attending the G20, which they say is a key forum for developed and developing nations alike.

“I think it’s important to emphasize that the G20 is a prime contributor to the solution of global challenges,” said Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. “We see it as the premier organization that on a global basis is taking on critical challenges facing the global economy and particularly the ‘Global South.’”
…

The White House Situation Room — a space of great mystique and even greater secrecy — just got a $50 million facelift. 

Actually, “room” is a misnomer. It’s a 5,500-square-foot (511-square-meter), highly secure complex of conference rooms and offices on the ground floor of the West Wing. 

These are rooms where history happens, where the president meets with national security officials to discuss secret operations and sensitive government matters, speaks with foreign leaders and works through major national security crises. 

Where President Barack Obama and his team watched the raid that took down al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden in 2011. Where President Donald Trump monitored the 2019 operation that killed Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Where President Lyndon Johnson went over Vietnam War plans. 

The latest redo was no small update: The total gut renovation took a year to complete. 

The White House opened the classified space to a group of reporters this week for a rare visit to check out the new look. President Joe Biden got a tour on Tuesday and then received an intelligence briefing in the space, said Marc Gustafson, the Situation Room director. 

“He loved it, he thought the update was fantastic,” Gustafson said. 

“Folks, the newly renovated White House Situation Room is up and running,” Biden said in a post on X, formerly Twitter. “My thanks to everyone who worked on this incredible facility.”

The renovated space has a modern-but-vintage vibe. Old floors, furniture, computers and other tech were stripped out and replaced with pristine mahogany paneling from Maryland, stonework from a Virginia quarry, LED lights that can change colors and flat-screen panels. See-through glass offices fade to opaque with the press of a button. The whole space has that new car smell. 

But there are still plenty of landline phones: No cellphones are allowed in the secure space for security reasons. (There are cubbies to stow phones near a door leading outside, where a baggie with some cocaine was found earlier this year.) 

Access is tightly controlled and generally restricted to the president’s national security and military advisers. Anyone listening in on classified briefings needs clearance. Even the contractors working on the renovation had to get temporary security clearances. Illuminated signs flash green for declassified and red for classified. 

The hush-hush complex was created in 1961 by the Kennedy administration after the Bay of Pigs invasion. President John F. Kennedy believed there should be a dedicated crisis management center where officials could coordinate intelligence faster and better. 

That was an upgrade, to be sure. But it wasn’t exactly comfortable: Nixon administration national security adviser and then Secretary of State Henry Kissinger described the space as “uncomfortable, unaesthetic and essentially oppressive.” 

After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the White House did a significant Situation Room update, along with a broader upgrade to presidential communications on Air Force One and the presidential helicopter. Presidents used the complex for secure video conferences before such tech became more portable. The last renovation was in 2007. 

The complex is staffed around the clock by military and civilian personnel who monitor breaking developments worldwide. 

It has a reception area with a U.S. seal in stonework. Behind that is the main conference room, known as the “JFK room.” To the right are a smaller conference room and two soundproof “breakout rooms.” To the left is the “watch floor,” a 24-7 operations center. 

“It’s a marriage of the traditional and the modern,” Gustafson said of the new space. 

Workers dug five feet underground to make more room and install cutting-edge technology allowing White House officials to bring together intelligence from different agencies with the push of a few buttons. 

“Now we have all the capabilities,” Gustafson said. 

For those in the know, referring to the “sit room” is out. It’s the “whizzer,” stemming from the complex’s acronym: WHSR. (Washington does love a good acronym.) 

Gustafson said the goal is to never need a complete renovation again. The new space was designed so panels can be removed and updated and new technology swapped in, usually with less space needs. A room once taken up by computer servers has become a smaller conference room. 

The JFK room has a long wooden table with six leather chairs on each side and one at the head for the president. Leather armchairs line the walls. A giant, high-tech screen runs the length of the back wall. A 2-foot (0.6-meter) seal is positioned at the president’s end of the room, larger than the old seal. 

There aren’t many photos of the Situation Room, but one of the most famous is the image of Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Vice President Biden and others watching the bin Laden operation. 

That took place around the corner from the JFK room in a smaller conference room that no longer exists. It’s been cut out entirely from the space and sent off to Obama’s presidential library, Gustafson said. In its place are two smaller rooms. 

Another item preserved for history is an old phone booth that stood in the complex. It was sent to storage for Biden’s eventual presidential library. Gustafson didn’t know if anything had been sent to Trump. 

Gustafson said staff members have to be ready to prepare rooms for classified briefings on a moment’s notice, and Biden has been known to pop in to meetings unexpectedly, particularly as Russia was invading Ukraine. 

While the area was closed for renovation, White House officials used other secure spots on the campus. Gustafson said the renovated Situation Room is having a soft opening of sorts: About 60% of the staff are back in the space with more coming every day. 

Gustafson said visitors previously remarked that the room didn’t reflect Hollywood’s grand imagining of the space. 

He said they now declare: “This looks like the movies.” 
…

A federal appeals court on Thursday allowed Texas’ floating barrier on a section of the Rio Grande to stay in place for now, a day after a judge called the buoys a threat to the safety of migrants and relations between the U.S. and Mexico.

The order by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals puts on hold a ruling that would have required Texas to move the wrecking-ball sized buoys on the river by next week.

The barrier is near the Texas border city of Eagle Pass, where Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has authorized a series of aggressive measures in the name of discouraging migrants from crossing into the U.S.

The stay granted by the New Orleans-based appeals court lets the barrier remain in the water while the legal challenge continues.

The lawsuit was brought by the Justice Department in a rare instance of President Joe Biden’s administration going to court to challenge Texas’ border policies.

On Wednesday, U.S District Judge David Ezra of Austin ordered Texas to move the roughly 305-meter barrier out of the middle of the Rio Grande and to the riverbank, calling it a “threat to human life” and an obstruction on the waterway. The Mexican government has also protested the barrier.

In seeking a swift order to allow the buoys to remain, Texas told the appeals court the buoys reroute migrants to ports of entry and that “no injury from them has been reported.” Last month, a body was found near the buoys, but Texas officials said preliminary information indicated the person drowned before coming near the barriers.

Texas installed the barrier by putting anchors in the riverbed. Eagle Pass is part of a Border Patrol sector that has seen the second-highest number of migrant crossings this fiscal year with about 270,000 encounters, though that is lower than at this time last year.

The Biden administration has said illegal border crossings declined after new immigration rules took effect in May as pandemic-related asylum restrictions expired.
…

It started with an image of U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo on her China trip last month, reportedly taken on what the Chinese tech giant Huawei is touting as a breakthrough 5G mobile phone. Within days, fake ad campaigns on Chinese social media were depicting Raimondo as a Huawei brand ambassador promoting the phone.

The tongue-in-cheek doctored photos made such a splash that they appeared on the social media accounts of state media CCTV, giving them a degree of official approval.

VOA contacted the U.S. Department of Commerce for a reaction but didn’t receive a response by the time of publication.

Chinese nationalists spare no effort to tout the Huawei Mate 60 Pro — equipped with domestically made chips — as a breakthrough showing China’s 5G technological independence despite U.S. sanctions on exports of key components and technology. However, experts say the phone’s capability may be exaggerated.

A social media video posted by Chinese phone users shows that after the Huawei Mate 60 Pro is turned on and connected to the wireless network, it does not display the 4G or 5G signal indicator icon. But these reviewers say the download speed is on par with that of mainstream 5G phones.

A test done by Bloomberg also shows the phone’s bandwidth is similar to other 5G phones.

Richard Windsor, the founder and owner of the British research company Radio Free Mobile, told VOA a simple speed test is not good evidence that the phone is 5G capable.

“It is quite possible through a technique called carrier aggregation to get the kind of speed that was demonstrated,” Windsor said. “You can do that with 4G. … You will see the story on 5G is not [about] speed or throughput but latency efficiency and producing good reception at high frequencies. That’s what the 5G story is all about.”

Throughput and latency are ways to measure network performance. Latency refers to how quickly information moves across a network; throughput refers to the amount of information that moves in a certain time.

Huawei’s official website makes no mention of 5G technology, which also raised skepticism.

“If the new Huawei mobile phone was a 5G phone with an advanced Chinese chipset, Huawei and China would have told the whole world. Huawei and China are not humble people. They love to tell stories,” John Strand, CEO of Strand Consult, told VOA.

The research firm TechInsights took the Huawei phone apart and discovered a Kirin 9000 chip produced by Chinese chipmaker SMIC. The Kirin 9000-series chipsets support 5G connectivity.

While sanctions prevent SMIC from having access to the most cutting-edge extreme ultraviolet lithography tools used by other leading chipmakers — such as TSMC, Samsung and Intel — it could use some older equipment to make advanced chips.

However, experts suspect SMIC won’t be able to mass produce the Kirin 9000 chips on a profitable scale without more advanced tools.

“Being able to make a chip that works,” Windsor said, “and being able to make millions of chips at good yields that don’t bankrupt you in terms of costs are two very, very different things.”

VOA asked Huawei and SMIC for comment but didn’t receive a response by the time of publication.

Dan Hutcheson, vice chair of TechInsights, said in a press release that China’s production of the Kirin 9000 “shows the resilience of the country’s chip technological ability” while demonstrating the challenge faced by countries that seek to restrict China’s access to critical manufacturing technologies. “The result may likely be even greater restrictions than what exist today.”

U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan said during a White House press briefing Tuesday that the U.S. needs “more information about precisely its character and composition” to determine if parties bypassed American restrictions on semiconductor exports to create the new chip.

Rep. Michael McCaul, a Republican from the U.S. state of Texas, was quoted Wednesday saying he was concerned about the possibility of China trying to “get a monopoly” on the manufacture of less-advanced computer chips.

“We talk a lot about advanced semiconductor chips, but we also need to look at legacy,” he told Reuters, referring to older computer chip technology that does not fall under current export controls.
…

A judge sentenced “That ’70s Show” show star Danny Masterson to 30 years to life in prison Thursday for raping two women, giving them some relief after they spoke in court about the decades of damage he inflicted.

“When you raped me, you stole from me,” said one woman who Masterson was convicted of raping in 2003. “That’s what rape is, a theft of the spirit.

“You are pathetic, disturbed and completely violent,” she said. “The world is better off with you in prison.”

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Charlaine F. Olmedo handed down the sentence to the 47-year-old Masterson after hearing statements from the women and pleas for fairness from defense attorneys.

The actor, who has been in custody since May, sat in court wearing a suit. Masterson watched the women without visible reaction as they spoke. He maintains his innocence, and his attorneys plan to appeal.

The other woman Masterson was found guilty of raping said he “has not shown an ounce of remorse for the pain he caused.” She told the judge, “I knew he belonged behind bars for the safety of all the women he came into contact with. I am so sorry, and I’m so upset. I wish I’d reported him sooner to the police.”

After an initial jury failed to reach verdicts on three counts of rape in December and a mistrial was declared, prosecutors retried Masterson on all three counts earlier this year.

Masterson waived his right to speak before he was sentenced and had no visible reaction after the judge’s decision, nor did the many family members sitting beside him. His wife, actor Bijou Phillips, was tearful earlier in the hearing.

At his second trial, the jury found Masterson guilty of two of three rape counts on May 31. Both attacks took place in Masterson’s Hollywood-area home in 2003, when he was at the height of his fame on the Fox network sitcom “That ’70s Show.”

They could not reach a verdict on the third count, an allegation that Masterson also raped a longtime girlfriend.

The judge sentenced the actor after rejecting a defense motion for a new trial that was argued earlier Thursday. The sentence was the maximum allowed by law. It means Masterson will be eligible for parole after serving 25½ years but can be held in prison for life.

“I know that you’re sitting here steadfast in your claims of innocence, and thus no doubt feeling victimized by a justice system that has failed you,” Olmedo told Masterson before handing down the sentence. “But Mr. Masterson, you are not the victim here. Your actions 20 years ago took away another person’s voice, and choice. One way or another you will have to come to terms with your prior actions, and their consequences.”

After the hearing, Masterson’s lawyer Shawn Holley said in a statement that “Mr. Masterson did not commit the crimes for which he was convicted.” She said a team of appellate lawyers has identified “a number of significant evidentiary and constitutional issues” with his convictions, which they are confident will be overturned.

Prosecutors alleged that Masterson used his prominence in the Church of Scientology — where all three women were also members at the time — to avoid consequences for decades after the attacks, and the women blamed the church for their hesitancy in going to police about Masterson.

At the sentencing hearing, one of the women, who like Masterson was born into the church, said she was shunned and ostracized for going to authorities in 2004.

“I lost everything. I lost my religion. I lost my ability to contact anyone I’d known or loved my entire life,” she said. “I didn’t exist outside the Scientology world. I had to start my life all over at 29. It seemed the world I knew didn’t want me to live.”

The church said in a statement after the trial that it has “no policy prohibiting or discouraging members from reporting criminal conduct of anyone — Scientologists or not — to law enforcement.” It has also denied ever harassing any of the women.

No charges came from the woman’s 2004 police report, but she returned to authorities when she learned they were investigating Masterson again in 2016. The other two women had waited more than 15 years before reporting him to anyone other than church officials.
…

A wealthy Russian businessman with ties to the Kremlin was sentenced Thursday to nine years in prison for his role in a nearly $100 million stock market cheating scheme that relied on secret earnings information stolen through the hacking of U.S. computer networks.

Vladislav Klyushin, who ran a Moscow-based information technology company that did work for the highest levels of the Russian government, was convicted in February of charges that include wire fraud and securities fraud after a two-week trial in federal court in Boston.

Authorities say he personally pocketed more than $33 million in the scheme, which involved breaking into computer systems to steal earnings-related filings for hundreds of companies — including Microsoft and Tesla — and then using that insider information to make lucrative trades.

Klyushin, 42, has been jailed in the U.S. since his extradition in 2021, and the more than two years he’s been detained will be credited to his prison term. He was arrested in Switzerland after arriving on a private jet and just before he and his party were about to board a helicopter to whisk them to a nearby ski resort. After he completes his sentence, he’s expected to be deported to Russia.

Klyushin, who walked into the courtroom in handcuffs, sat at a table with his attorneys and listened to an interpreter through headphones as lawyers argued over the sentence. At the advice of his attorney, he declined to address the judge before she sentenced him.

Four alleged co-conspirators — including a Russian military intelligence officer who’s also been charged with meddling in the 2016 presidential election — remain at large, and even though prosecutors allege in a court filing that they’re still “likely sitting at their keyboards,” they acknowledge that the four will likely never be extradited to the United States to face charges.

Prosecutors had sought 14 years in prison, saying a stiff punishment was crucial to send a message to overseas cybercriminals. Assistant U.S. Attorney Seth Kosto told the judge that Klyushin has accepted no responsibility for his crimes and that once he serves his sentence, he’ll return to Russia, where he is a “powerful person” with “powerful friends in the highest echelons of Russian society.”

“Hackers will be watching this sentence to decide whether it’s worth engaging in this kind of conduct,” Kosto said.

Prosecutors say the hackers stole employees’ usernames and passwords for two U.S.-based vendors that publicly traded companies use to make filings through the Securities and Exchange Commission. They then broke into the vendors’ computer systems to get filings before they became public, prosecutors said.

Armed with insider information, they were able to cheat the stock market, buying shares of a company that was about to release positive financial results, and selling shares of a company that was about to post poor financial results, according to prosecutors. Many of the earnings reports were downloaded via a computer server in Boston, prosecutors said.

Klyushin denied involvement in the scheme. His attorney told jurors that he was financially successful long before he began trading stocks and that he continued trading in many of the same companies even after access to the alleged insider information was shut off because the hacks were discovered.

Defense attorney Maksim Nemtsev called prosecutors’ prison request “draconian,” adding that there is “no reason to think that he would risk the well-being of his family again by committing crimes.”

His lawyers asked the court for leniency, saying Klyushin had no prior criminal history and has already been seriously punished. He spent months in solitary confinement in Switzerland while awaiting extradition to the U.S., and his company has lost multimillion-dollar contracts, his attorneys wrote.

Klyushin owned a Moscow-based information technology company that purported to provide services to detect vulnerabilities in computer systems. It counted among its clients the administration of Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Ministry of Defense, according to prosecutors.

Klyushin’s close friend and an alleged co-conspirator in the case is military officer Ivan Ermakov, who was among 12 Russians charged in 2018 with hacking into key Democratic Party email accounts, including those belonging to Hilary Clinton’s presidential campaign chairman, John Podesta, the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Ermakov, who worked for Klyushin’s company, remains at large.

Prosecutors have not alleged that Klyushin was involved in the election interference.
…

Concern for U.S. democracy amid deep national polarization has prompted the entities supporting 13 presidential libraries dating back to Herbert Hoover to call for a recommitment to the country’s bedrock principles, including the rule of law and respecting a diversity of beliefs.

The statement released Thursday, the first time the libraries have joined to make such a public declaration, said Americans have a strong interest in supporting democratic movements and human rights around the world because “free societies elsewhere contribute to our own security and prosperity here at home.”

“But that interest,” it said, “is undermined when others see our own house in disarray.”

The joint message from presidential centers, foundations and institutes emphasized the need for compassion, tolerance and pluralism while urging Americans to respect democratic institutions and uphold secure and accessible elections.

The statement noted that “debate and disagreement” are central to democracy but also alluded to the coarsening of dialogue in the public arena during an era when officials and their families are receiving death threats.

“Civility and respect in political discourse, whether in an election year or otherwise, are essential,” it said.

Most of the living former presidents have been sparing in giving their public opinions about the state of the nation as polls show that large swaths of Republicans still believe the lies perpetuated by former President Donald Trump and his allies that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. Trump, a Republican, also has lashed out at the justice system as he faces indictments in four criminal cases, including two related to his efforts to overturn the results of his reelection loss to Joe Biden, a Democrat.

Thursday’s statement stopped short of calling out individuals, but it still marked one of the most substantive acknowledgments that people associated with the nation’s former presidents are worried about the country’s trajectory.

“I think there’s great concern about the state of our democracy at this time,” said Mark Updegrove, CEO of the LBJ Foundation, which supports the LBJ Presidential Library in Austin, Texas. “We don’t have to go much farther than January 6 to realize that we are in a perilous state.”

Efforts to suppress or weaken voter turnout are of special interest to the LBJ Foundation, Updegrove said, given that President Lyndon Johnson considered his signing of the Voting Rights Act his “proudest legislative accomplishment.”

The bipartisan statement was signed by the Hoover Presidential Foundation, the Roosevelt Institute, the Truman Library Institute, the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, the LBJ Foundation, the Richard Nixon Foundation, the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation, the Carter Center, the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute, the George & Barbara Bush Foundation, the Clinton Foundation, the George W. Bush Presidential Center and the Obama Presidential Center. Those organizations all support presidential libraries created under the Presidential Library Act of 1955, along with the Eisenhower Foundation.

The Eisenhower Foundation chose not to sign, and it said in a statement emailed to The Associated Press: “The Eisenhower Foundation has respectfully declined to sign this statement. It would be the first common statement that the presidential centers and foundations have ever issued as a group, but we have had no collective discussion about it, only an invitation to sign.”

The foundation said each presidential entity had its own programs related to democracy.

The push for the joint statement was spearheaded by Daniel Kramer, executive director of the George W. Bush Institute. Kramer said the former president “did see and signed off on this statement.”

He said the effort was intended to send “a positive message reminding us of who we are and also reminding us that when we are in disarray, when we’re at loggerheads, people overseas are also looking at us and wondering what’s going on.” He also said it was necessary to remind Americans that their democracy cannot be taken for granted.

He said the Bush Institute has hosted several events on elections, including one as part of a joint initiative with the other groups called More Perfect that featured Bill Gates, a member of the board of supervisors in Arizona’s Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix. The county, its supervisors and its elections staff have been targeted repeatedly by election conspiracy theorists in recent years.

Gates and his family have been threatened by people who believe false allegations of election fraud.

“We wanted to remind people that those who oversee our elections are our fellow citizens,” Kramer said. “Some of them told stories that are almost heartbreaking about the threats they faced.”

He said he hoped the joint statement would generate wide support, but he added: “It’s hard to say whether it will or not in these polarized times.”

Melissa Giller, chief marketing officer at the Ronald Reagan Foundation and Institute, said the decision to sign on was a quick one. The foundation was approached shortly after it launched a new effort, its Center on Public Civility in Washington, D.C. She said the statement represents “everything our center will stand for.”

“We need to help put an end to the serious discord and division in our society,” Giller said in an emailed response. “America is experiencing a decline in trust, social cohesion, and personal interaction.”

Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser to former President Barack Obama who is now CEO of the Obama Foundation, said the former president supported the statement.

“This is a moment where we could all come together and show that democracy is not about partisan politics,” she said. “It’s about making our country strong, making our country more decent, more kind, more humane.”

Jarrett said one of the foundation’s priorities is trying to restore faith in the institutions that are the pillars of society. To do that has meant taking on disinformation and creating opportunity where “people believe that our democracy is on the up-and-up.”

She said Obama has led a democracy forum and is planning another later this year in Chicago.

“I think part of it is recognizing that we are very fragile right now,” Jarrett said, citing the fact that “we didn’t have a smooth orderly transition of power in the last election” along with people’s mistrust of the court system and elected officials.

“The wheels on our democracy bus,” she said, “feel a little wobbly right now.”
…

Federal prosecutors plan to seek a grand jury indictment of President Joe Biden’s son Hunter before the end of the month, according to court documents filed Wednesday.

The filing came in a gun possession case in which Hunter Biden was accused of having a firearm while being a drug user, though prosecutors did not name exactly which charges they will seek. He has also been under investigation by federal prosecutors for his business dealings.

Prosecutors under U.S. Attorney for Delaware David Weiss, newly named a special counsel in the case, said they expect an indictment before Sept. 29.

Hunter Biden’s lawyers, though, argued that prosecutors are barred from filing additional charges under an agreement the two sides previously reached in the gun case. It contains an immunity clause against federal prosecutions for some other potential crimes. Defense attorney Abbe Lowell said Hunter Biden has kept to the terms of the deal, including regular visits by the probation office.

“We expect a fair resolution of the sprawling, five-year investigation into Mr. Biden that was based on the evidence and the law, not outside political pressure, and we’ll do what is necessary on behalf of Mr. Biden to achieve that,” he said in a statement.

Prosecutors have said that the gun agreement is dead along with the rest of the plea agreement that called for Hunter Biden to plead guilty to misdemeanor tax offenses. It fell apart after U.S. District Judge Maryellen Noreika raised questions about it during a court appearance in July.

The Justice Department did not have immediate comment.

News of a possible new indictment comes as House Republicans are preparing for a likely impeachment inquiry of President Biden over unsubstantiated claims that he played a role in his son’s foreign business affairs during his time as vice president.

“If you look at all the information we have been able to gather so far, it is a natural step forward that you would have to go to an impeachment inquiry,” House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., told Fox News recently.

The younger Biden has been the target of congressional investigations since Republicans gained control of the House in January, with lawmakers obtaining thousands of pages of financial records from various members of the Biden family through subpoenas to the Treasury Department and various financial institutions. Three powerful House committees are now pursuing several lines of inquiry related to the president and his son.

And while Republicans have sought to connect Hunter Biden’s financial affairs directly to his father, they have failed to produce evidence that the president directly participated in his son’s work, though he sometimes had dinner with Hunter Biden’s clients or said hello to them on calls.

In recent months, Republicans have also shifted their focus to delving into the Justice Department’s investigation of Hunter Biden after whistleblower testimony claimed he has received special treatment throughout the yearslong case.

Hunter Biden was charged in June with two misdemeanor crimes of failure to pay more than $100,000 in taxes from over $1.5 million in income in both 2017 and 2018. He had been expected to plead guilty in July, after he made an agreement with prosecutors, who were planning to recommend two years of probation. The case fell apart during the hearing after Noreika, who was appointed by President Donald Trump, raised multiple concerns about the specifics of the deal and her role in the proceedings.

If prosecutors file a new gun possession charge, it could run into court challenges. A federal appeals court in Louisiana ruled against the ban on gun possession by drug users last month, citing a 2022 gun ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court.

News of another indictment comes after U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland named Weiss a special counsel, giving him broad authority to investigate and report out his findings and intensifying the investigation into the president’s son ahead of the 2024 election.

The White House Counsel’s office referred questions to Hunter Biden’s personal attorneys. 
…

A U.S. federal judge ruled Wednesday that a jury in an upcoming civil defamation case against former President Donald Trump will have to decide only how much more he owes a longtime New York advice columnist because a jury already decided that he sexually abused her in a luxury department store dressing room in the 1990s.

Judge Lewis Kaplan in New York said the facts behind a federal jury’s decision earlier this year involving E. Jean Carroll’s assault claims against Trump will carry over to the scheduled January defamation case.

In the abuse case, the jury, while rejecting her rape claim against Trump, ordered him to pay Carroll $5 million for abusing and defaming her. Trump, now the leading Republican candidate for the party’s 2024 presidential nomination, has appealed the verdict and denies he attacked her.

After Carroll, a one-time college cheerleader and later an advice columnist for Elle magazine, first filed her lawsuit, the former U.S. leader claimed he didn’t know her and that in any event he wouldn’t have been attracted to her because she wasn’t “my type.”

A picture shown at the trial showed them chatting and socializing decades ago at a New York party.

The first trial concerned the sexual assault accusation itself, an incident that allegedly occurred after what Carroll, now 79, said was a chance encounter with Trump at the Bergdorf-Goodman department store in New York when he asked her to help him shop for a gift for a woman.

In Wednesday’s decision, Kaplan wrote, “The jury considered and decided issues that are common to both cases — including whether Mr. Trump falsely accused Ms. Carroll of fabricating her sexual assault charge and, if that were so, that he did it with knowledge that this accusation was false” or acted with reckless disregard for the truth.

“The truth or falsity of Mr. Trump’s 2019 statements therefore depends … on whether Ms. Carroll lied about Mr. Trump sexually assaulting her,” Kaplan said. “The jury’s finding that she did not therefore is binding in [the defamation] case and precludes Mr. Trump from contesting the falsity of his 2019 statements.”

Although Carroll’s suit was filed in 2019, the judge in June allowed her lawyers to add the statements Trump made against her at a CNN town hall political event that was broadcast the night after he lost the abuse case in May.

“This woman, I don’t know her. I never met her. I have no idea who she is,” Trump said. “She’s a whack job.”

Carroll lawyer Roberta Kaplan, who is not related to the judge, said Carroll looks forward to a trial “limited to damages for the original defamatory statements Donald Trump made.”

Trump lawyer Alina Habba said that his legal team is confident that the jury verdict will be overturned, which would moot the judge’s new decision.

The civil case is one of an array of court challenges Trump is facing in the coming months.

He has been charged in four criminal cases encompassing 91 charges, two involving attempts to overturn his 2020 reelection loss to Democrat Joe Biden, another for his handling of highly classified national security documents after he left office in 2021 and a fourth for allegedly falsifying business records to hide $130,000 in hush money payments to a porn film star ahead of his successful 2016 run for the White House.
…

A chair with Myanmar’s flag was left empty as Vice President Kamala Harris spoke with Southeast Asian leaders during the U.S.-ASEAN, or Association of Southeast Asian Nations, summit in Jakarta hosted by outgoing chair Indonesia.

“The United States will continue to press the regime to end the horrific violence to release all those unjustly detained and to reestablish Myanmar’s path to inclusive democracy,” Harris said at the opening of the summit Wednesday.

“And we will continue to support ASEAN’s five-point consensus,” she added, referring to the group’s 2021 demands on the crisis triggered by the February 2021 military coup, which include immediate cessation of violence and constructive dialogue facilitated by ASEAN.

Last year, ASEAN agreed to bar Myanmar’s ruling generals from meetings until they make progress to address the crisis. An empty Myanmar chair has been held as a symbol to urge the country to return to democracy.

The group announced earlier this week they are barring Myanmar from its turn as chair in 2026, as they blame the ongoing bloodshed on the country’s junta. The Philippines will take ASEAN’s helm instead.

ASEAN’s statement demonstrates that the group is more united on Myanmar than some people thought, said Aaron Connelly, research fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

“It makes clear that the bloc blames the military for the violence, sustains a de facto suspension of the junta’s leaders from ASEAN meetings, and forces the junta to give up its turn chairing the organization until the violence stops,” he told VOA.

Myanmar’s turn at chairing ASEAN was last skipped in 2006 as the United States and European Union demanded that the military-ruled country move toward democracy and release pro-democracy campaigner Aung San Suu Kyi.

Enduring commitment

As some Republican presidential candidates’ display of isolationism toward regional conflicts triggers anxiety among some ASEAN members about U.S. staying power, Vice President Harris reaffirmed Washington’s “enduring commitment” to Southeast Asia and the Indo-Pacific.

“The defense and deterrence commitments of the United States and our security presence in the Indo-Pacific help protect our homeland and ensure regional stability,” she said. “It is therefore in our vital interest to promote a region that is open, interconnected, prosperous, secure and resilient.”

As part of the administration’s effort to ensure safe sea traffic, last month Washington signed a deal with the Pacific Island state of Palau that would allow U.S. Coast Guard ships to operate on that nation’s behalf in its exclusive economic zone without a Palauan officer present.

Harris also welcomed the presence of Timor-Leste in its capacity as ASEAN observer, and she pledged U.S. support for Timor-Leste’s ASEAN accession process.

Heightened tensions

Harris’ visit comes at a time of heightened tensions in the region, as China released a 2023 territorial map that has drawn the ire of India, Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaysia and the Philippines.

A White House official told VOA that throughout her engagements in Jakarta, the vice president will make clear that the U.S. rejects what the official described as China’s unlawful maritime claims and provocative actions.

“She will express continued support for ASEAN’s efforts to develop a code of conduct for the South China Sea, consistent with the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, and the rights of third parties,” the official said.

During the China-ASEAN summit held the same day, Chinese Premier Li Qiang appeared to try to calm ruffled feathers, saying it is important to avoid a “new Cold War” when dealing with conflicts and that countries need to “appropriately handle differences and disputes.”

In the same meeting, Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong stressed the need for Beijing and Washington to continue talking with each other and to strive for greater trust and cooperation. He warned that sharpened geopolitical rivalries could easily stoke existing flashpoints in the region, endangering ASEAN’s decades-long peace, prosperity and stability.

On Thursday, Harris will attend the East Asia Summit, which brings together ASEAN and its partners — the United States, China, Russia, Australia, India, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea. She will depart immediately after the summit and is scheduled to arrive in Washington on Friday, as President Joe Biden heads to the G20 summit in New Delhi, India.
…

After a visit to a warehouse where Hawaiian Electric Company is housing power poles and electrical equipment that may be key to the investigation of last month’s devastating fires on Maui, lawyers for Lahaina residents and business owners told a court Tuesday that cable TV and telephone companies share responsibility for the disaster because they allegedly overloaded and destabilized some of the poles.

The lawyers said the cables were attached in a way that put too much tension on the poles, causing them to lean and break in the winds on Aug. 8 when flames burned down much of Lahaina, killing at least 115 people and destroying more than 2,000 structures.

LippSmith LLP has filed a proposed class action against Hawaii’s electric utility and Maui County in state court in Hawaii. Attorney Graham LippSmith is now asking the court to add multiple telecommunications companies and public and private landowners to the original suit.

“In a disaster of this magnitude, it takes some time for all the potentially responsible parties to come into focus and be brought into court. Our investigation thus far shows a constellation of many serious failures that together led to this horrible tragedy,” MaryBeth LippSmith, co-founder of the Hawaii- and California-based firm, said in an interview Tuesday.

Pacific Gas & Electric in California filed for bankruptcy in 2019 due to a succession of harrowing wildfires ignited by its long-neglected electrical grid in Northern California.

But LippSmith rejected the suggestion the firm is seeking extra defendants in the event that Hawaiian Electric declares bankruptcy. Rather it’s trying to get at the root of multiple failures in order to prevent this kind of tragedy in the future, she said. The lawsuit seeks damages and injunctive relief, including a court order to force the defendants to address fire risk.

When LippSmith’s team visited the warehouse, together with officials with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, they said they saw a pole that had snapped at the base and fallen to the ground, damaging the cross-arms of a neighboring pole.

Because sections of poles had been cut up, apparently with a chainsaw, they could not tell if one pole or several had snapped, and they said they were not allowed close enough to identify pole numbers.

The cables had also been stripped off the poles and Hawaiian Electric only brought its own equipment to the warehouse, they said. The sterile display bears little relation to the equipment after the fire, so the attorneys and their fire investigators viewed pre-fire photos of the poles. They said those showed no slack in the cable TV and telephone lines that ran between the poles, mid-height. That over-tensioning and the uneven distribution of weight caused the poles to lean downhill, they claim.

Charter Communications, which owns cable provider Spectrum, declined to comment.

The proposed amended complaint still holds the power utilities responsible for the wildfires. It accuses them of failing to shut off power preemptively despite exceptionally high winds and dry conditions, failing to replace old wooden poles too weak to withstand 105 mile per hours winds as required by a 2002 national standard, briefly recharging the lines on Aug. 8 in parts of Lahaina and blocking evacuation routes while crews serviced downed lines.

The complaint also seeks to hold other parties responsible. It says when old wooden power poles fell, they landed on highly flammable vegetation that had not been maintained by private and state landowners and both “ignited the fire and fueled its cataclysmic spread.” It says the county should have properly maintained vegetation, aggressively reduced nonnative plants, and sounded sirens to warn people of the approaching fire.

Hawaiian Electric acknowledged last week that its power lines started a fire on the morning of Aug. 8, but faulted county firefighters for declaring the blaze contained and then leaving the scene, only to have a second wildfire break out nearby and become the deadliest in the U.S. in more than a century.

Hawaiian Electric is a for-profit, investor-owned, publicly traded utility that serves 95% of Hawaii’s electric customers. It faces a spate of new lawsuits that seek to hold it responsible.

In response to a request for comment, a utility spokesperson said Tuesday the company doesn’t comment on pending litigation. The Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources, named as a defendant, said the same.

“We are awaiting guidance from our legal counsel before addressing,” a Maui County spokesperson said when asked for comment.

Maui County is blaming the utility for failing to shut off power. John Fiske, an attorney at a California firm that’s representing the county, has said the ultimate responsibility rests with Hawaiian Electric to properly keep up its equipment, and make sure lines are not live when they’re downed or could be downed.

 
…

Henry “Enrique” Tarrio, the former head of the far-right Proud Boys, was sentenced on Tuesday to 22 years in prison for his involvement in the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, the longest penalty imposed so far for the deadly riot.

Tarrio’s sentence, handed down by U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly in Washington came after four of his lieutenants last week received prison sentences of 10 to 18 years. The five were convicted in May of plotting the assault on the Capitol in order to block Congress from certifying the results of the 2020 presidential election and to keep then-President Donald Trump in power.

The attack injured nearly 140 police officers guarding the Capitol and was blamed for the deaths of five people. More than 1,100 Trump supporters have been charged in connection with the assault, with hundreds of others still being sought by the FBI.

Before Tuesday, the longest sentence imposed on a January 6 defendant was 18 years, which two people received: Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the Oath Keepers militia, in May, and Ethan Nordean, another Proud Boys leader, last week.

Although Tarrio was not at the Capitol during the bloody melee, prosecutors say he was the architect and “primary organizer” of the plot, directing the attack from outside Washington and later boasting about it.

“Make no mistake … we did this,” Tarrio wrote in an online message to a close-knit group of top Proud Boys leaders.

Tarrio and his four co-defendants – Nordean, Joe Biggs, Zachary Rehl and Dominic Pezzola – were tried together earlier this year for seditious conspiracy and other serious charges. All but Pezzola were found guilty of seditious conspiracy, a rare Civil War-era offense that carries a maximum of 20 years.

Last week, Nordean, Biggs and Rehl were sentenced to 18, 17 and 15 years, respectively, substantially less than what prosecutors were seeking. Pezzola, who dodged the seditious conspiracy charge but was convicted of other charges, received 10 years.

The Justice Department had recommended 33 years for Tarrio, saying the “naturally charismatic leader” and “savvy propagandist” had used his influence as chairman of the group “to organize and execute the conspiracy to forcibly stop the peaceful democratic transfer of power.”

“To Tarrio, January 6 was an act of revolution,” prosecutors wrote, seeking to add a “terrorism enhancement” to his sentence.

Seeking leniency, Tarrio’s lawyers denied he contacted or directed the Proud Boys on January 6. They also cited Rhodes’ 18-year sentence to argue for no more than 15 years.

In an emotional address to the court, Tarrio apologized to his family, law enforcement and lawmakers “for January 6,” saying there was “no place for political violence” in the country.

“I pray for unity for this entire country,” he said.

But Kelly, who presided over the Proud Boys trial and sentencing, wasn’t persuaded by Tarrio’s apology or effort to distance himself from the January 6 attack.

“I don’t have any indication that [Tarrio] is remorseful for the actual things he was convicted of, which is seditious conspiracy and a conspiracy to obstruct the election,” Kelly said before he sentenced Tarrio.

The attack of January 6, he said, disrupted the country’s long-standing tradition of the peaceful transfer of power.

What happened on January 6 “was extremely serious and a disgrace,” Kelly said, noting Tarrio’s leadership role in the plot.
…