BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA – The United States is warning mutineers who have seized control of Niger that U.S. support for the Western African nation will dry up unless President Mohamed Bazoum is released and returned to power.

The threat Saturday by Secretary of State Antony Blinken to pull hundreds of millions of dollars in aid followed Friday’s announcement by General Abdourahamane Tchiani, the head of the presidential guard, that he is Niger’s new leader.

“Let me be very, very clear,” Blinken said at a news conference in Brisbane, Australia, following consultations with his Australian counterpart.

“Our economic and security partnership with Niger, which is significant, hundreds of millions of dollars, depends on the continuation of the democratic governance and constitutional order that has been disrupted,” he said.

Just this past March, during a visit to Niger, Blinken announced the country would get part of a $150 million humanitarian aid package.

Niger has also benefited from hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of U.S. military aid and counterterrorism training and has been hosting about 1,100 U.S. troops.

White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said Friday the military takeover in Niger “may cause the United States to cease security and other cooperation with the government of Niger.”

Kirby said, though, that while the U.S. is “deeply concerned,” it was still holding out hope for a peaceful resolution.

“We believe that there is still a space for diplomacy here, and that that diplomacy is actively being pursued not just by the United States, but by our allies and partners and our African partners as well,” he said.

Already, however, the Nigerien mutineers have declared the government dissolved and suspended the country’s constitution. They previously closed the country’s borders and airspace and imposed a nationwide curfew.

Leaders of Niger’s army declared their support for Wednesday’s overthrow of Bazoum, who was democratically elected two years ago, defying international calls for his immediate release and appeals for the general to respect the rule of law and Niger’s democratic order.

Tchiani warned foreign governments not to intervene in Niger or try to extract Bazoum and his family, saying it would result in “the massacre of the Niger population and chaos.”

He added that soldiers ousted the president because of deteriorating security in the West African country, which is fighting an Islamist militant insurgency.

French President Emmanuel Macron spoke to Bazoum on Friday, French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna told Agence France-Presse. According to Colonna, Macron said Bazoum is “reachable” and “in good health.”

Reports say Bazoum is being held in the presidential palace.

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield also spoke with Bazoum and expressed Washington’s strong condemnation of any effort to seize power by force. Her spokesperson said in a statement Thursday that the “United States is steadfast in its support for Niger’s democracy and supports taking action at the U.N. Security Council to de-escalate the situation, prevent harm to civilians, and ensure constitutional order.”

In a message posted Thursday to the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, Bazoum said democracy would prevail in his country. “The hard-won gains will be safeguarded,” he said. “All Nigeriens who love democracy and freedom would want this.”

Diplomatic response

The West African regional bloc ECOWAS will hold a summit Sunday in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, on the situation.

The regional bloc has condemned the events in Niger and called on what it described as coup plotters to free the president “immediately and without any condition.”

Abdel Fatau Musah, commissioner for political affairs and security of ECOWAS, told VOA that “Bazoum remains the legitimate and legal president and must be reinstated as soon as possible.”

Kenyan President William Ruto said in a video message that the army takeover is “a serious setback” for Africa.

“The aspirations of the people of Niger for constitutional democracy were subverted by an unconstitutional change of government,” he said.

In Paris, the French presidency said Macron will chair a defense meeting Saturday on the situation. France, the former colonial power in Niger, has about 1,500 troops in the country.

Meanwhile, the U.N. Security Council met Friday behind closed doors to discuss the evolving situation. The U.N. representative for West Africa and the Sahel, Leonardo Santos Simão, briefed the council from Dakkar.

“All council members expressed their concern about the situation,” said British Deputy U.N. Ambassador James Kariuki after the meeting. His government holds the council’s rotating presidency this month. “All council members expressed the need to restore the constitutional democracy. All council members condemned the action. So we have a very strong sense that the council is united in seeking to condemn and act.”

The council is discussing a draft statement put forward by its three African members — Gabon, Ghana and Mozambique — that strongly condemns the unconstitutional change of government and expresses support for the efforts of ECOWAS, the African Union and the United Nations.

There are 4.3 million people who need humanitarian assistance in Niger. The U.N. said aid flights have been temporarily suspended because of the closure of the country’s airspace, but humanitarian assistance continues to be delivered.

“The humanitarian response continues on the ground and has never stopped since the events occurred in Niger,” Jean-Noel Gentile, the World Food Program representative in Niger, told reporters on a video call Friday.

Events

The coup began Wednesday, when a group of soldiers from the presidential guard detained Bazoum at the presidential palace and later announced his ouster on state television.

In a statement on social media, the army said it had decided to back the coup to prevent “a deadly confrontation” that could lead to a “bloodbath” in Niger.

U.N. officials in the capital, Niamey, said the situation was calm Friday, after reports of looting and cars being set on fire the day before.

Bazoum’s government is a key Western ally in the fight against Islamist insurgents in Africa’s Sahel. Germany, Italy, France and the United States have troops in Niger on military training and counterinsurgency missions.

Russia has established a foothold in Niger’s neighbors through its Wagner mercenary group. Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin, who recently challenged Russian President Vladimir Putin, welcomed the military’s attempted takeover. In a voice message believed to be Prigozhin on the Telegram app, he hailed the coup attempt and offered the services of his mercenaries to help bring order.

Niger is one of the region’s most unstable countries. If successful, Wednesday’s coup would be the fifth military takeover since the country won independence from France in 1960.

VOA’s Carol Van Dam Falk, Margaret Besheer and French to Africa Service contributed to this report. Some information came from Agence France-Presse, The Associated Press and Reuters. 
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PHOENIX — By the time Aaliyah Ibarra started second grade, her family had moved five times in four years in search of stable housing. As she was about to start a new school, her mother, Bridget Ibarra, saw how much it was affecting her education.

At 8 years old, her daughter did not know the alphabet.

“She was in second grade and couldn’t tell me any of the letters. I would point them out and she didn’t know,” Bridget Ibarra said. “She would sing the song in order, but as soon as I mixed them up, she had no idea.”

“I just didn’t know what letters were which,” says Aaliyah, now 9. “I know them now.”

The family’s struggles coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic that forced Aaliyah to begin her school experience online. Unfamiliar with a computer, Aaliyah was regularly kicked out of the virtual classroom, her mother said. Teachers complained she was not looking at the screen and took too many breaks.

Zoom school was especially difficult for Aaliyah because she was homeless — and like thousands of students nationally, her school didn’t know.

Homeless students often fell through the cracks during the tumult of the pandemic, when many schools struggled to keep track of families with unstable housing. Not being identified as homeless meant students lost out on eligibility for crucial support such as transportation, free uniforms, laundry services and other help.

Years later, the effects have cascaded. As students nationwide have struggled to make up for missed learning, educators have lost critical time identifying who needs the most help. Schools are offering tutoring and counseling but now have limited time to spend federal pandemic relief money for homeless students, said Barbara Duffield, executive director of SchoolHouse Connection, a national homelessness organization.

“There is urgency because of the losses that have occurred over the pandemic — loss in learning, the gaps in attendance and the health crisis,” she said. Many education leaders, Duffield said, don’t even know about federal money earmarked for homeless students — and the programs expire next year.

The number of children identified as homeless by schools nationwide dropped by 21% from the 2018-19 school year to the 2020-21 school year, according to federal data. But the decrease, representing more than 288,000 students, likely includes many kids whose homelessness was unknown to schools. Federal counts of homeless people living on the street or in shelters also appeared to decrease in 2021 due to pandemic disruptions, but by 2022, those numbers shot up to the highest in a decade.

In Bridget Ibarra’s case, she chose not to tell the school her kids were homeless — and she says teachers, disconnected from students by a screen, never asked. She was worried if officials knew the family was staying in a shelter, and the school was obliged by law to provide transportation, the family would face pressure to enroll in a different school that was closer.

She knew how hard the disruptions were on her kids.

“I know they didn’t enjoy moving as often as we did. They would say things like, ‘We’re moving again? We just moved!'” Ibarra said.

“When I moved, I missed my friends and my teacher,” Aaliyah said.

The stigma and fear associated with homelessness also can lead families not to tell anyone they lack secure housing, Duffield said.

“If we don’t identify children proactively, we can’t ensure that they have everything they need to be successful in school and even go to school,” she said.

Before the pandemic, Ibarra and her two children moved in with her brother in Phoenix because she was having trouble making ends meet. Then her brother died unexpectedly. At the time, Ibarra was pregnant with her third child and couldn’t afford the rent with what she earned working at a fast-food restaurant.

The family spent the next six months at Maggie’s Place, a shelter in North Phoenix that caters to pregnant women. The four of them, including Aaliyah’s infant brother, moved next to Homeward Bound, an apartment-like shelter for families, where they were living when the pandemic hit a few months before Aaliyah started kindergarten.

Aaliyah’s school, David Crockett Elementary, stuck with online learning her entire kindergarten year. Aaliyah and her older brother, joined by several other children, spent most of their school days on computers in a mixed-grade makeshift classroom at the shelter.

“It was like she wasn’t even in school,” Ibarra said. 

While the shelter helped the family meet their basic needs, Ibarra said she asked the school repeatedly for extra academic help for her daughter. She blamed the struggles partly on online learning, but she also felt the school was giving all their attention to Aaliyah’s older brother because he already was designated as a special education student with an individualized education program, or IEP.

The principal, Sean Hannafin, said school officials met frequently with the children’s mom. He said they offered the support they had available, but it was hard to determine online which students had needs that required intervention.

“The best thing we could do was take that data and flag them for when we returned in person, because you need a certain amount of time to observe a child in a classroom,” he said. “The online setting is not the place to observe.”

A federal law aimed at ensuring homeless students have equal access to education provides rights and services to children without a “fixed, regular and adequate nighttime residence.”

Many students aren’t identified as homeless when their parents or guardians enroll them. At school, teachers, cafeteria staff, aides or bus drivers often notice other students whose well-being may need looking into. Students may have unwashed clothes, or many late arrivals or absences.

But with children learning online, teachers and staff often didn’t see those things.

Overall, the drop in the student homelessness count began before the pandemic, but it was much steeper in the first full school year after COVID-19 hit. The percentage of enrolled students identified as homeless in the U.S. dropped from 2.7% in 2018-19 to 2.2% in 2020-21.

Over that timeframe, Arizona had one of the biggest drops in the number of students identified as homeless, from about 21,000 to nearly 14,000. But there were signs many families were in distress. KateLynn Dean, who works at Homeward Bound, said the shelter saw huge numbers of families dealing with homelessness for the first time during the pandemic.

Eventually, Bridget Ibarra had to enroll Aaliyah in a different school.

After getting kicked out of low-income housing last year when their property owner sold the building, the family lived with Ibarra’s mother before finding another low-income unit in Chandler, more than 32 kilometers east of Phoenix.

Once the family moved, enrolling in school was far from easy. Aaliyah missed the first three weeks of the school year last fall because of delays obtaining transcripts, and Ibarra insisted she not start the year without a plan to address her delays in reading and writing. Aaliyah spent that time playing and sitting around the house.

“Honestly, Aaliyah said she didn’t care how long, because she didn’t want to go to that school anyway,” her mother said. She said Aaliyah missed her friends and was tired of moving.

At Aaliyah’s new school, Frye Elementary, Principal Alexis Cruz Freeman saw for herself how hard it was to keep in touch with families when children were not in classrooms. Several students disappeared altogether. But she said families have started reengaging with school. The state of Arizona reported more than 22,000 students were identified as homeless in the last school year — twice as many as the year before.

Ibarra said she tried to shield as much discomfort about their living situation from her kids as possible. It worked. Aaliyah doesn’t remember much about the places they’ve stayed except the people that surrounded her family.

Aaliyah has gained ground academically at her new school, Cruz Freeman said. She still has trouble pronouncing and recognizing some words. But by the end of the school year, she was able to read a text and write four sentences based on its meaning. She is also performing at grade level in math.

The principal considers her a success story in part because of her mother’s support.

“She was an advocate for her children, which is all that we can ever ask for,” Cruz Freeman said.
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President Joe Biden on Friday for the first time publicly acknowledged his seventh grandchild, a 4-year-old girl fathered by his son Hunter with an Arkansas woman, Lunden Roberts, in 2018.

“Our son Hunter and Navy’s mother, Lunden, are working together to foster a relationship that is in the best interests of their daughter, preserving her privacy as much as possible going forward,” Biden said in a statement. It was his first acknowledgement of the child.

“This is not a political issue, it’s a family matter,” he said. “Jill and I only want what is best for all of our grandchildren, including Navy.”

Hunter Biden’s paternity was established by DNA testing after Roberts sued for child support, and the two parties recently resolved outstanding child support issues. The president’s son wrote about his encounter with Roberts in his 2021 memoir, saying it came while he was deep in addiction to alcohol and drugs, including crack cocaine.

“I had no recollection of our encounter,” he wrote. “That’s how little connection I had with anyone. I was a mess, but a mess I’ve taken responsibility for.”

The president, who has made a commitment to family central to his public persona, has faced increasing criticism from political rivals and pundits for failing to acknowledge the granddaughter. According to a person familiar with the matter, he was taking the cue from his son while the legal proceedings played out. The person spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private matters.

Biden’s statement was first reported by People magazine.
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Seven leading tech companies recently agreed to abide by a request from President Joe Biden to develop their artificial intelligence technologies in a safe and transparent way. But are their promises realistic? VOA’s Julie Taboh reports.
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Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Ukrainian doctors have been seeing more abdominal cavity wounds in military and civilian patients. Some U.S. doctors are stepping in to help their Ukrainian colleagues treat these wartime injuries. Anna Kosstutschenko has the story. Camera and edit: Pavel Suhodolskiy
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A 20-year-old, U.S.-funded AIDS relief program that is credited with saving tens of millions of lives around the world may not be reauthorized if conservative and anti-abortion activists are successful in a campaign against it.

The President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) was launched in 2003 by then-President George W. Bush, and since then it has channeled more than $110 billion in support for the fight against the AIDS epidemic in more than 50 countries around the world.

It has been particularly successful in Western and sub-Saharan Africa, where it helps provide antiretroviral medication to the more than 25 million people who are living with the disease.

The program received $6.9 billion in fiscal 2023. Through its history, the program has typically been reauthorized for five years at a time, in order to provide some certainty about the flow of relief dollars. It was last authorized in 2018. Advocates of the program are calling for a “clean” reauthorization that does not alter the program or introduce uncertainty about the flow of funds.

However, that reauthorization is now in doubt, as conservative lawmakers and activists have expressed concern that the program works with various organizations around the world that, in addition to combating AIDS, provide reproductive health services, including abortion.

‘Radical’ ideology

In a joint letter to key members of Congress this spring, dozens of anti-abortion groups urged lawmakers to reconsider their support for the program unless new rules are put in place that restrict the way it can spend federal funds.

“The American people do not support using taxpayer dollars to fund abortion at home or abroad,” the groups wrote. “For that reason, there exists long-standing precedent not to fund abortion, directly or indirectly, through U.S. foreign assistance. We are concerned that grants from the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) are used by nongovernmental organizations that promote abortions and push a radical gender ideology abroad.”

Failure to reauthorize the program would not necessarily kill it, because Congress could still appropriate money for it each year. But it would chip away at the administrative foundation of PEPFAR, leaving it less able to adapt to changing conditions in countries participating in the program, including changes in local laws that affect the provision of specific kinds of aid, and changes in the prevalence of the virus.

Pressuring lawmakers

Several influential conservative organizations, including the Heritage Foundation, Family Research Council and Susan B. Anthony (SBA) Pro-Life America, have said that they oppose a clean reauthorization of the program. They said they would add any vote that renewed the program without changes to their legislative scorecards.

Those scorecards, which track lawmakers’ adherence to the wishes of conservative activist organizations, are influential because a low score can leave a member of Congress open to a reelection challenge from a more conservative rival.

Autumn Christensen, vice president of public policy for SBA Pro-Life America, said in a statement emailed to VOA that her organization believes the Biden administration has “bowed to the pressures of the international abortion lobby and integrated broader sexual and reproductive services (which includes abortion) into their strategic plans.”

Christensen praised legislation proposed by Representative Mario Diaz-Balart, a Florida Republican, that would reauthorize PEPFAR for a single year and explicitly deny any funding to organizations that “promote or perform” abortions.

Mexico City policy

Those advocating for a clean reauthorization of PEPFAR point out that it is already illegal under U.S. law for foreign aid funds to be spent on the delivery of abortion services.

A 1973 provision of the Foreign Assistance Act, known as the Helms Amendment, reads, “[N]o foreign assistance funds may be used to pay for the performance of abortion as a method of family planning or to motivate or coerce any person to practice abortions.”

That language has, for generations, blocked direct funding of abortion with U.S. aid. However, it has not blocked U.S. aid programs from providing funds to organizations that provide access to abortions using funds from other sources.

Opponents of a clean PEPFAR reauthorization are demanding that stronger anti-abortion protections, such as the “Mexico City policy,” be incorporated into the program.

First adopted in 1983 by President Ronald Reagan’s administration, the policy bars U.S. aid from being disbursed to any organization that provides access to abortion services, even with non-U.S. money.

Since its original introduction, the Mexico City policy has been rescinded by every Democratic presidential administration upon taking office and has been reinstated by every Republican.

Former President Donald Trump not only reinstated the policy early in his presidency, but he strengthened it. By 2019, it was U.S. policy to refuse to provide funds to groups that even spoke in favor of abortion rights or supported other organizations that did.

President Joe Biden reversed Trump’s reinstatement of the policy when he took office in 2021.

Known impacts

Matthew Kavanagh is the director of the Global Health Policy and Politics Initiative at Georgetown Law School’s O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law. He told VOA that the impact of the Mexico City policy is already well-known to public health researchers.

“PEPFAR is one of the most successful and impactful global health programs in the world’s history,” Kavanagh said. But when the Trump administration reinstated the Mexico City policy, “quite a few organizations actually dropped out from being PEPFAR recipients,” he said.

Kavanagh said that many of the organizations that are most experienced at providing the kind of interventions that made PEPFAR successful are local family planning organizations that offer a range of services and counseling, often including abortion.

“Local family planning organizations were no longer allowed to provide HIV prevention programming and to receive PEPFAR funding, and that was a huge loss for the program,” he said.

He also warned against plans to reauthorize the program for just one year, saying that doing so would create damaging uncertainty for organizations serving desperate people.

“Organizations around the world are depending on this for lifesaving programs,” Kavanagh said. “People are not put on HIV treatment for one year, and then taken off. People are on HIV treatment for their lives, and we need to ensure that these programs don’t have to worry that they’re going to be shut down at the end of the year.” 
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CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA — Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Friday he was confident of securing bipartisan political support in the United States for a deal to provide his country with submarines powered by U.S. nuclear technology.

The so-called AUKUS partnership — an acronym for Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States — is being discussed by U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in meetings with Albanese and other Australian officials in Brisbane on Friday and Saturday.

Under the deal, Australia will buy three Virginia-class submarines from the United States and build five of a new AUKUS-class submarine in cooperation with Britain.

Australian media have focused on a letter signed by more than 20 Republican lawmakers to President Joe Biden that warned the deal would “unacceptably weaken the U.S. fleet” without a plan to boost U.S. submarine production.

Albanese said he remained “very confident” that the United States would deliver the three submarines.

Albanese said he had been reassured by discussions he had with Republicans and Democrats at a NATO summit in Lithuanian this month.

“What struck me was their unanimous support for AUKUS, their unanimous support for the relationship between the Australia and United States. It has never been stronger,” Albanese told reporters in Brisbane.

Austin and Blinken arrived in Brisbane late Thursday ahead of annual bilateral meetings with their Australian counterparts, Defense Minister Richard Marles and Foreign Minister Penny Wong.

Marles said the AUKUS program was “on track.”

“Congress can be a complicated place as legislation makes its way through it, but actually we’re encouraged by how quickly it is going through it and we are expecting that there will be lots of discussions on the way through,” Marles told Australian Broadcasting Corp.

“Fundamentally, we have reached an agreement with the Biden administration about how Australia acquires the nuclear-powered submarine capability and we’re proceeding along that path with pace,” he added.

Australia understood there was “pressure on the American industrial base” and would contribute to submarine production, Marles said. The AUKUS deal is forecast to cost Australia up to 368 billion Australian dollars ($246 billion) over 30 years.
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A Chinese man who allegedly cyberstalked and threatened a pro-democracy Chinese classmate appeared in Boston federal court for a pretrial hearing on Wednesday as part of the preparations for a trial scheduled to begin in January.

Xiaolei Wu, 25, was a student at the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston at the time of the incidents, which occurred October 22-24. The FBI arrested him on December 14.  Wu, who is a citizen of the People’s Republic of China, has pleaded not guilty and has been free on bail.

Wu appeared in court with his lawyer, Jessica Hedges, on Wednesday. He sat quietly in the front row of the courtroom rather than in the dock because this was a pretrial hearing. Discussion focused on planning for the trial scheduled for January 22 that may take four to five days. Between now and the trial, each side will call witnesses or experts and conduct multiple pretrial meetings.

Hedges told VOA Mandarin she had no comment on the day’s proceedings.

Five-year term, fine possible

After Wu’s arrest in December on a single count of stalking, the U.S. Department of Justice indicted him in January on one count of cyberstalking and one count of interstate transmissions of threatening communications.

If found guilty, Wu could face up to five years in prison, three years of supervised release and a fine of up to $250,000.

According to Department of Justice charging documents, Wu is accused of sending messages via WeChat, email and Instagram to a classmate who had posted fliers on campus that read “Stand with Chinese People” and “We Want Freedom.”

He allegedly told the classmate, “Post more, I will chop your bastard hands off.”

Wu also allegedly told the classmate that he had informed the public security agency in China about his actions and that the agency would “greet” the classmate’s family there

In addition, charging documents alleged that Wu solicited others to find out where the classmate was living and publicly posted the classmate’s email address in the hopes that others would abuse the classmate online.

Berklee declined to share details about the incident with VOA Mandarin on Tuesday but said the school was taking the matter seriously and had taken appropriate steps.

The college president, Erica Muhl, resigned earlier this week after starting a leave of absence at the end of June. The school gave no reason for her departure. 

In May, Muhl met with Qin Gang, then China’s foreign minister, in Beijing. According to a Chinese government news release, Muhl said Berklee was willing to strengthen exchanges and cooperation with China and serve as a bridge and bond between the United States and China.

On Wednesday, the Chinese government announced the removal of Qin as its foreign minister. The press release, along with other information about Qin’s diplomatic activities as foreign minister, was purged from the official website of China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

At the end of last year, just a week before the FBI arrested Wu, Qin, the then-Chinese ambassador to the U.S., visited Berklee. A press release issued by the Chinese Embassy said that Qin “looks forward to Berklee College of Music playing a greater role … to bring more positive energy to Sino-US relations.”
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An effort by New York City officials to reduce congestion and auto emissions has created tension with their neighbors in New Jersey. Nina Vishneva has more on New York’s proposed congestion pricing in this story narrated by Anna Rice. VOA footage by Olga Terekhin and Vladimir Badikov .
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SYDNEY – U.S. and Australian foreign affairs and defense officials will meet this week in Brisbane for annual talks. The Australia-U.S. Ministerial Consultations, or AUSMIN 2023, being held Saturday are expected to discuss the sale of submarines as part of the AUKUS alliance, the conflict in Ukraine, and security in the Pacific.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin are due in Brisbane for talks with their Australian counterparts Saturday.

Blinken has been to New Zealand and Tonga this week as the U.S. intensifies diplomatic efforts to counter China’s ambitions in the Pacific region. Blinken told reporters Wednesday in Tonga that “as China’s engagement in the region has grown, there has been some, from our perspective, increasingly problematic behavior.”

Talks with Australian officials are expected to be wide-ranging. Analysts believe that even though Britain is not attending the Brisbane conference, the AUSMIN 2023 talks will likely focus on the AUKUS alliance, a security pact among the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom.

Announced in 2021, the AUKUS alliance plans to allow Australia to build a new multibillion-dollar fleet of nuclear-powered submarines with assistance from Washington and London.

However, a poll last month by the Lowy Institute, a Sydney-based research organization, found that only about a quarter of Australians support the submarine deal, which could cost Australia up to $244 billion.

Arthur Sinodinos, the former Australian ambassador to the United States, told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. On Thursday that the AUSMIN dialogue will cover many issues, including security and climate change.

“They begin with a framing of the issues in the region,” he said. “So, there will be discussions around what is happening in U.S.-China relations, for example. There has been more outreach to the Philippines, for example, by the US in recent times. They will go on to talk about the progress with AUKUS reviewing the progress of legislation in the U.S. Congress on this and also one of the innovations from last year’s AUSMIN was the addition of talks on climate.”

The ministerial talks in Brisbane are also expected to cover the war in Ukraine. Australia is one of the biggest non-NATO contributors to Kyiv’s war effort.

Australia has had to juggle its international relations. Historically, it has close cultural and social ties to the United Kingdom. Australia was settled by the British in 1788 and is a former colony. Economically, Australia’s recent prosperity has relied heavily on China, its biggest trading partner.

But Australia’s formal military pact with the United States, which dates back to the early 1950s, is widely considered to be the cornerstone of its national security.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is expected to announce a state visit to Washington soon, possibly in November.
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WASHINGTON – U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s visit to Papua New Guinea will focus, in part, on detailed discussion establishing a U.S. military presence in the country, according to experts.

Underpinning the establishment of a U.S. military presence in PNG is the Defense Cooperation Agreement the two countries signed in May.

The Defense Cooperation Agreement “will form the foundational framework for the two countries to enhance bilateral security cooperation” and “improve the capacity of the Papua New Guinea Defense Force,” said a statement released by the Pentagon on Tuesday.

“This is a major step for both the United States and Papua New Guinea,” said Zack Cooper, former special assistant to the principal deputy undersecretary of defense for policy during the George W. Bush administration and now a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

“U.S. officials know that they need to have access to more facilities in the Indo-Pacific region, but most of that access has been limited to existing U.S. treaty allies and a limited set of long-standing partnerships. Papua New Guinea is the first major new access point for the United States in years,” Cooper told VOA Korean via email.

“Defense Secretary Austin’s trip is likely to focus on the details and implementation, as well as providing a visible indication of growing U.S.-PNG ties,” said Terence Roehrig, professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College.

“His visit will also likely seek to allay any concerns in Papua New Guinea that this will lead to a permanent U.S. base and somehow infringe on the country’s sovereignty, an important issue since the agreement has yet to be ratified in the PNG parliament,” he told VOA’s Korean Service via email.

The defense agreement will be released officially after the PNG parliament ratifies it as expected in August. It will allow the U.S. to station troops and vessels at six sites including Lombrum Naval Base on Manus Island, according to Agence France-Presse, which obtained a copy of the agreement.

“These six sites are useful for both air and naval forces, which are both critical in the large expanses across the Pacific,” said Cooper. “For Papua New Guinea, I think this will open up new possibilities in terms of not only security cooperation but also economic assistance. This trip will help solidify those arrangements.”

Experts said Austin’s visit featuring discussions with PNG Prime Minister James Marape and his top defense officials is important as the region has become another theater of U.S.-China rivalry.

Dennis Wilder, who served as the National Security Council director for China from 2004-05, told VOA’s Korean Service via email that Austin’s trip “demonstrates that the region is a priority and that the United States will make considerable efforts to counter China’s attempts to bring the region into its sphere of influence” while the security pact “strengthens the U.S. footprint in the western Pacific.”

Roehrig said the U.S. ties with PNG are important “to keep pace with Beijing’s presence in the South Pacific” and to “ensure regional access.”

Liu Pengyu, the spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, told VOA’s Korean Service via email Tuesday that China is “not opposed to countries’ efforts to grow ties with Papua New Guinea and other Pacific Island countries.”

“We always advocate,” he continued, that the international community to give “more attention and support” to island nations and that “the negotiation and signing of any cooperation document should help realize this goal.”

He added, however, that “we should be on alert particularly for geopolitical games under the pretext of cooperation” and that “any cooperation should not target at any third country.”

For China, the region is the so-called Air Silk Road, an important part of its Belt and Road Initiative that seeks to connect Asia and Central and South America through Pacific Island countries.

According to Bruce Bennett, a senior defense analyst at the RAND Corporation research center, in addition to the first island-chain, which includes Taiwan, the Philippines and Indonesia, China has been seeking to exert its dominance over the second island-chain comprising countries in the South Pacific such as Palau, Solomon Islands and PNG.

“China has this notion of the first island chain that they totally want to control, and a second island chain, which the Solomons could be part of, where it would establish pretty significant control,” said Bennett in a telephone interview. “The U.S. doesn’t want China to get there.”

According to the Australian Institute of International Affairs, the first chain comprises the Kuril Islands, the main Japanese archipelago, Okinawa, the northern part of the Philippines archipelago, the Malay Peninsula and Taiwan. The second consists of the islands of Japan stretching to Guam and the islands of Micronesia.

China reached a security agreement with the Solomon Islands in April 2022. The security agreement allows China to send ships to the islands to “carry out logistical replacement” as well as military forces to “protect the safety of Chinese personnel and major projects.”

Cooper said: “China will probably step up efforts in Solomon Islands and other locations in response, so American leaders and their counterparts will want to watch closely to see what Beijing might do in the coming weeks and months.”
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The U.S. Federal Reserve raised a key interest rate by a quarter of a percentage point on Wednesday, citing still-elevated inflation as a rationale for what is now the highest U.S. central bank policy rate since 2007.

The hike, the Fed’s 11th in its last 12 meetings, set the federal funds rate – the benchmark rate on overnight loans that banks charge each other – in the 5.25%-5.50% range. That level was last seen just prior to the 2007 housing market crash, and it has not been consistently exceeded on an effective basis for about 22 years.

“The [Federal Open Market] Committee will continue to assess additional information and its implications for monetary policy,” the Fed said in language that was little changed from its June statement and left the central bank’s policy options open as it searches for a stopping point to the current tightening cycle.

As it stated in June, the Fed said it would watch incoming data and study the impact of its rate hikes on the economy “in determining the extent of additional policy firming that may be appropriate” to reach its 2% inflation target.

Though inflation data since the Fed’s June 13-14 meeting has been weaker than expected, policymakers have been reluctant to alter their hawkish stance until there is more progress in reducing price pressures.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell said any future policy decisions would be made on a meeting-by-meeting basis, and that in the current environment officials could provide only limited guidance about what’s next for monetary policy.

But he didn’t rule out action if it was deemed necessary.

“It is certainly possible that we would raise the funds rate again at the September meeting if the data warranted, and I would also say it’s possible that we would choose to hold steady at that meeting” if that was the right policy call, Powell said in a press conference after the release of the policy statement.

But Powell cautioned against expecting any near-term easing in rates. “We’ll be comfortable cutting rates when we’re comfortable cutting rates, and that won’t be this year,” Powell said.

Yields on both the two- and 10-year Treasury notes moved down modestly from levels right before the release of the Fed’s policy statement, while U.S. stocks ended mixed. Futures markets showed bets on the path of Fed rate increases over the remainder of the year were little changed, seeing small odds of a rise in September.

“The forward guidance remains unchanged as the committee leaves the door open to further rate hikes if inflation does not continue to trend lower,” said Kathy Bostjancic, chief economist at Nationwide. “Our view is the Fed is likely done with rate hikes for this cycle since continued easing of inflation will passively lead to tighter policy as the Fed holds the nominal fed funds rate steady into 2024.”

‘Moderate’ growth

Key measures of inflation remain more than double the Fed’s target, and the economy by many measures, including a low 3.6% unemployment rate, continues to outperform expectations given the rapid increase in interest rates.

Job gains remain “robust,” the Fed said, while it described the economy as growing at a “moderate” pace, a slight upgrade from the “modest” pace seen as of the June meeting. The U.S. government on Thursday is expected to report the economy grew at a 1.8% annual pace in the second quarter, according to economists polled by Reuters.

Powell said he’s still holding out hope the economy can achieve a “soft landing,” a scenario in which inflation falls, unemployment remains relatively low and a recession is avoided.

“My base case is we’ll be able to achieve inflation moving back down to our target without the kind of really significant downturn that results in high levels of job losses,” he said, while noting that outlook is “a long way from assured.” He also noted that Fed staff economists are no longer predicting a recession as they have at recent meetings.

With about eight weeks until the next Fed meeting, a longer than usual interlude, continued moderation in the pace of price increases could make this the last rate hike in a process that began with a cautious quarter-percentage-point increase in March 2022 before accelerating into the most rapid monetary tightening since the 1980s.

In the most recent economic projections from Fed policymakers, 12 of 18 officials expected at least one more quarter-percentage-point increase would be needed by the end of this year.
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