It has been two years since the town of Siversk in Ukraine’s Donetsk region has enjoyed electricity, gas and sewage service. Once a bustling community of over 12,000 people, only about 800 remain today. Anna Kosstutschenko visited Siversk and talked to residents. Video editor: Pavel Suhodolskiy
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Washington — Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Charles Brown Jr. testified on Capitol Hill on Tuesday about the Pentagon’s $850 billion budget for 2025 as questions remained as to whether lawmakers will support current spending needs for Israel or Ukraine.

The Senate hearing was the first time lawmakers on both sides were able to question the Pentagon’s top civilian and military leadership on the administration’s Israel strategy following the country’s deadly strike on World Central Kitchen humanitarian aid workers in Gaza. It also follows continued desperate pleas by Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy that if the U.S. does not help soon, Kyiv will lose the war to Russia.

In their opening statements, both Austin and Brown emphasized that their 2025 budget is still shaped with the military’s long-term strategic goal in mind — to ready forces and weapons for a potential future conflict with China. About $100 billion of this year’s request is set aside for new space, nuclear weapons and cyber warfare systems the military says it must invest in now before Beijing’s capabilities surpass it.

But the conflicts in Ukraine and Israel are challenging a deeply-divided Congress and have resulted in months of delays in getting last year’s defense budget through, which was only passed by lawmakers a few weeks ago.

Austin’s opening remarks were temporarily interrupted by protesters lifting a Palestinian flag and shouting at him to stop sending weapons to Israel. “Stop the genocide,” they said, as they lifted their hands, stained in red, in the air.

The Pentagon scraped together about $300 million in ammunition to send to Kyiv in March but cannot send more without Congress’ support, and a separate $60 billion supplemental bill that would fund those efforts has been stalled for months.

“The price of U.S. leadership is real. But it is far lower than the price of U.S. abdication,” Austin told the senators.

If Kyiv falls, it could imperil Ukraine’s Baltic NATO member neighbors and potentially drag U.S. troops into a prolonged European war. If millions die in Gaza due to starvation, it could enrage Israel’s Arab neighbors and lead to a much wider, deadlier Middle East conflict — one that could also bring harm to U.S. troops and to U.S. relations in the region for decades.

The Pentagon has urged Congress to support new assistance for Ukraine for months, to no avail, and has tried to walk a perilous line between defending its ally Israel and maintaining ties with key regional Arab partners. Israel’s actions in Gaza have been used as a rallying cry by factions of Iranian-backed militant groups, including the Houthis in Yemen and Islamic Resistance groups across Iraq and Syria, to strike at U.S. interests. Three U.S. service members have already been killed as drone and missile attacks increased against U.S. bases in the region.

Six U.S. military ships with personnel and components to build a humanitarian aid pier are also still en route to Gaza but questions remain as to how food that arrives at the pier will be safely distributed inside the devastated territory.

Lawmakers are also seeing demands at home. For months, a handful of its far-right members have kept Congress from approving additional money or weapons for Ukraine until domestic needs like curbing the crush of migrants at the southern U.S. border are addressed. Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson is already facing a call to oust him as speaker by Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene because Johnson is trying to work out a compromise that would move the Ukraine aid forward.

On Israel, the World Central Kitchen strike led to a shift in tone from President Joe Biden on how Israel must protect civilian life in Gaza and drove dozens of House Democrats, including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, to call on Biden to halt weapons transfers to Israel.

Half the population of Gaza is starving and on the brink of famine due to Israel’s tight restrictions on allowing aid trucks through.
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Beijing — Chinese leader Xi Jinping met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov Tuesday in a sign of mutual support and shared opposition to Western democracies amid Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. 

“We would like to express our highest appreciation and admiration for the successes that you have achieved over the years and, above all, over the last decade under your leadership,” Lavrov told Xi, according to Russian media. 

“We are sincerely pleased with these successes, since these are the successes of friends, although not everyone in the world shares this attitude and are trying in every possible way to restrain the development of China — in fact just like the development of Russia,” Lavrov said. 

Russia’s growing economic and diplomatic isolation has made it increasingly reliant on China, its former rival for leadership of the Communist bloc during the Cold War. In past decades, the two have closely aligned their foreign policies, held joint military exercises and sought to rally non-aligned states in groupings such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. 

Lavrov held a news conference earlier Tuesday with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi at which they reaffirmed solidarity in international affairs. 

Lavrov said Russia and China oppose any international events that do not take Russia’s position into account. 

He said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s “so-called peace formula” was “completely detached from any realities.” 

Zelensky has called for the withdrawal of Russian forces and the return of all occupied Ukrainian territory, but is heavily reliant on support from the U.S., where the Republican Party majority in the House of Representatives has been holding up a new military aid package. 

China and Russia are each others most important diplomatic partners, both holding permanent seats on the United Nations security council and working together to block initiatives by the U.S. and its allies to spread democratic values and human rights from Venezuela to Syria. 

While China has not provided direct military support for Russia, it has backed it diplomatically in blaming the West for provoking Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to launch the war and refrained from calling it an invasion in deference to the Kremlin. China has also said it isn’t providing Russia with arms or military assistance, although it has maintained robust economic connections with Moscow, alongside India and other countries. amid sanctions from Washington and its allies. 

At their joint news conference Wang repeated China’s calls for a ceasefire and “an end to the war soon.” 

“China supports the convening at an appropriate time of an international meeting that is recognized by both Russia and Ukraine, in which all parties can participate equally and discuss all peace solutions fairly,” Wang said. 

China’s peace proposal has found little traction, in part due to the country’s continuing support for Russia and lack of vision for what a future resolution would look like, particularly the fate of occupied Ukrainian territories and their residents. 

Wang also said Xi and Putin would continue to maintain close exchanges this year amid expectations of visits to each other’s capitals. 

“China and Russia have gone through ups and downs, and both sides have drawn lessons from historical experience and found a correct path to promote the healthy and stable development of bilateral relations,” Wang said. “Today’s good relations between China and Russia are hard-won and deserve to be cherished and carefully maintained by both sides.” 

Lavrov arrived in China on Monday, while Wang and other leading Chinese figures have recently visited Russia and maintained China’s line of largely backing Russia’s views on the cause of the conflict. 

China has at times taken an equally combative tone against the U.S. and its allies. China and Russia have held joint military drills, and are seen as seeking to supplant democracies with dictatorships in areas where they wield influence. China is involved in its own territorial disputes, particularly over the self-governing island of Taiwan and in the South China and East China Seas. 

Just weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine, Putin visited Beijing for the opening of the 2022 Winter Olympics and the sides signed a pact pledging a “no limits” relationship that has China supporting Russia’s line, even while formally urging peace talks. 

In a phone call last week with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, U.S. President Joseph Biden pressed China over its defense relationship with Russia, which is seeking to rebuild its industrial base as it continues its invasion of Ukraine. And he called on Beijing to wield its influence over North Korea to rein in the isolated and erratic nuclear power.
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ORSK — Flood sirens blared out in two Russian cities on Tuesday, warning thousands more people to evacuate immediately as two major rivers swelled to bursting point in some of the worst flooding in at least 70 years.

Swiftly melting snow across swathes of the Ural Mountains and Siberia has swelled some of the biggest rivers which surge across the wilds of Russia, with at least 10,500 homes recorded as flooded so far and many thousands more at risk.

The Ural River, Europe’s third largest which flows into the Caspian, burst through an embankment dam on Friday flooding the city of Orsk just south of the Ural Mountains. Downstream, water levels in Orenburg, a city of around 550,000, were rising.

Sirens in Kurgan, a city on the Tobol river, a tributary of the Irtysh, warned people to evacuate immediately and Governor Vadim Shumkov urged residents to take the warnings seriously.

“We understand you very well: It is hard to leave your possessions and move somewhere at the call of the local authorities,” Shumkov said, adding that those demanding to stay in their houses were foolish.

“It’s better that we laugh at the hydrologists together later and praise God for the miracle of our common salvation. But let’s do it alive.”

The peak is expected in Orenburg on Wednesday.

President Vladimir Putin has been monitoring the floods from Moscow but anger boiled over in Orsk when at least 100 Russians begged the Kremlin chief to help and chanted “shame on you” at local officials who they said had done too little.

With so much water flowing into rivers, emergencies were declared in Orenburg, Kurgan and Tyumen, a major oil producing region of Western Siberia – the largest hydrocarbon basin in the world.

In Kurgan, a region with around 800,000 residents, drone footage showed traditional Russian wooden houses and the golden kupolas of Russian Orthodox Churches stranded among a vast expanse of water.

In Zverinogolovskoye, a town in Kurgan region, the water levels of the Tobol rose 74 centimeters in just two hours. More than 19,000 people are risk in Kurgan, the TASS news agency reported.

The head of the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations, Alexander Kurenkov, flew to Orenburg region on Tuesday to monitor the situation after being tasked to do so by Putin, the ministry said.

Kurenkov will also visit the Kurgan and Tyumen regions in the Urals, the ministry added.

“Preventive measures are already being taken there, rescue teams have been strengthened, and the forces and means of the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations have been put on high alert,” the ministry said. 

Rising water was also forecast in Siberia’s Ishim river, a tributary of the Irtysh river, which along with its parent, the Ob, forms the world’s seventh longest river system.

It was not immediately clear why this year’s floods were so bad as the snow melt is an annual event in Russia. Scientists say climate change has made flooding more frequent worldwide. 
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WASHINGTON — For the 10th consecutive month, Earth in March set a new monthly record for global heat — with both air temperatures and the world’s oceans hitting an all-time high for the month, the European Union climate agency Copernicus said.

March 2024 averaged 14.14 degrees Celsius (57.9 degrees Fahrenheit), exceeding the previous record from 2016 by a tenth of a degree, according to Copernicus data. And it was 1.68 degrees C (3 degrees F) warmer than in the late 1800s, the base used for temperatures before the burning of fossil fuels began growing rapidly.

Since last June, the globe has broken heat records each month, with marine heat waves across large areas of the globe’s oceans contributing.

Scientists say the record-breaking heat during this time wasn’t entirely surprising due to a strong El Nino, a climatic condition that warms the central Pacific and changes global weather patterns.

“But its combination with the non-natural marine heat waves made these records so breathtaking,” said Woodwell Climate Research Center scientist Jennifer Francis.

With El Nino waning, the margins by which global average temperatures are surpassed each month should go down, Francis said.

Climate scientists attribute most of the record heat to human-caused climate change from carbon dioxide and methane emissions produced by the burning of coal, oil and natural gas.

“The trajectory will not change until concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere stop rising,” Francis said, “which means we must stop burning fossil fuels, stop deforestation, and grow our food more sustainably as quickly as possible.”

Until then, expect more broken records, she said.

Under the 2015 Paris Agreement, the world set a goal to keep warming at or below 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times. Copernicus’ temperature data is monthly and uses a slightly different measurement system than the Paris threshold, which is averaged over two or three decades.

Samantha Burgess, deputy director of Copernicus, said March’s record-breaking temperature wasn’t as exceptional as some other months in the past year that broke records by wider margins.

“We’ve had record-breaking months that have been even more unusual,” Burgess said, pointing to February 2024 and September 2023. But the “trajectory is not in the right direction,” she added.

The globe has now experienced 12 months with average monthly temperatures 1.58 degrees Celsius (2.8 degrees Fahrenheit) above the Paris threshold, according to Copernicus data.

In March, global sea surface temperature averaged 21.07 degrees Celsius (69.93 degrees Fahrenheit), the highest monthly value on record and slightly higher than what was recorded in February.

“We need more ambitious global action to ensure that we can get to net zero as soon as possible,” Burgess said.
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Copenhagen, Denmark — Sweden has expelled a Chinese journalist, saying the reporter was a threat to national security, Swedish media reported on Monday.

The journalist, an unnamed, 57-year-old woman, was arrested by the Swedish security service in October and expelled by the government in Stockholm last week, Swedish broadcaster SVT reported. She is banned from returning.

The woman arrived in the Scandinavian country some 20 years ago. She held a residence permit and was married to a Swedish man, with whom she has children, according to the broadcaster.

The woman has had contacts with the Chinese Embassy and with people in Sweden who are connected to the Chinese government, SVT said.

Her lawyer, Leutrim Kadriu, told SVT the woman doesn’t believe she poses a threat to Sweden.

“It is difficult for me to go into exact details given that much is shrouded in secrecy, as this is a national security matter,” Kadriu told the broadcaster.

In neighboring Norway, broadcaster NRK said the journalist had also reported from there, and from other Nordic countries including Denmark, Finland and Iceland.

Relations between Stockholm and Beijing have been tense for years.

In 2020, a court in eastern China sentenced Chinese-born Swedish national Gui Minhai to 10 years in prison for selling books that were critical of the ruling Communist Party. He was charged with “illegally providing intelligence overseas.”

China has rebuked Sweden’s demands for Gui’s release.

He first disappeared in 2015, when he was believed to have been abducted by Chinese agents from his seaside home in Thailand.

The case led to an investigation of Sweden’s ambassador to China over a meeting she arranged between Gui’s daughter and two Chinese businessmen whom the daughter said threatened her father. The ambassador, Anna Lindstedt, was eventually cleared.

In 2018, a Swedish court found a man guilty of spying for China by gathering information on Tibetans who had fled to Sweden. Dorjee Gyantsan, a Tibetan who worked for a pro-Tibetan radio station, was found guilty of “gross illegal intelligence activity” and sentenced to 22 months in jail.
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Paris — French and British troops on Monday swapped roles to take part in the changing of the guard ceremonies outside the palaces of the other country’s head of state, in an unprecedented move to celebrate 120 years since the Entente Cordiale.

Signed in 1904, the Entente Cordiale accord cemented an improvement in relations after the Napoleonic Wars and is seen as the foundation of the two NATO members’ alliance to this day.

“Even after Brexit and with war back in Europe, “this entente cordiale is somehow the cornerstone… that allows us to maintain the bilateral relationship,” French President Emmanuel Macron said in a video address on X, formerly Twitter.

“Long live the entente cordiale and long live the Franco-British friendship,” he said, switching to English.

Macron and British ambassador to France Menna Rawlings on Monday morning watched British guards taking part in the changing of the guard outside his Elysee Palace.

French guards were to do the same in London outside Buckingham Palace, the official residence of King Charles III.

At the Elysee, 16 members of the Number 7 Company Coldstream Guards of the UK embassy, wearing their traditional bearskin hats, relieved French counterparts from the first infantry regiment.

The French army choir then sang the two national anthems — God Save the King and La Marseillaise.

‘More to defeat Russia’

British Foreign Minister David Cameron and his French counterpart, Stephane Sejourne, celebrated their countries’ “close friendship” in a joint op-ed published late on Sunday.

They said it was key at a time when NATO is mobilized to ensure Ukraine does not lose its fight to repel the Russian invasion.

“Britain and France, two founding members and Europe’s nuclear powers, have a responsibility in driving the alliance to deal with the challenges before it,” the diplomats wrote in Britain’s The Telegraph newspaper.

“We must do even more to ensure we defeat Russia. The world is watching –- and will judge us if we fail.”

A French presidential official said it was “the first time in the history of the Elysee” that foreign troops had been invited to participate in the military ritual.

At the end of 2023, Macron made the changing of the Republican Guard public again, on the first Tuesday of each month, although the ceremony is much less spectacular than its counterpart outside Buckingham Palace.

Two sections of the 1st and 2nd Infantry Regiment of France’s Republican Guard were to participate in the London ceremony alongside guards from F Company Scots Guards and other British forces, the French presidential official said.

It would be watched by the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh — Prince Edward and his wife Sophie — accompanied by the UK chief of the general staff, General Patrick Sanders, and French chief of the army staff Pierre Schill.

The event on the forecourt of Buckingham Palace was to mark the first time a country from outside the Commonwealth — which mostly includes English-speaking former British colonies and possessions — has taken part in the changing of the guard.

Tensions after Brexit

The signing of the Entente Cordiale on April 8, 1904, is widely seen as preparing the way for France and Britain joining forces against Germany in World War I.

While the accord is often used as shorthand to describe the Franco-British relationship, ties have been bedeviled by tensions in recent years, particularly since the United Kingdom left the European Union. 

Migration has been a particular sticking point, with London pressuring Paris to halt the flow of migrants across the Channel.

But a state visit by King Charles last autumn — one of his last big foreign engagements before his cancer diagnosis — was widely seen as a resounding success that showed the fundamental strength of the relationship. 
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Vatican City — The Vatican on Monday reaffirmed its opposition to sex changes, gender theory and surrogate parenthood, as well as abortion and euthanasia, four months after supporting blessings for same-sex couples. 

The Vatican’s doctrinal office (DDF) released the “Dignitas infinita” (Infinite dignity) declaration following fierce conservative pushback, especially in Africa, against its document on LGBT issues. 

There is no suggestion that the new text, which describes what the Church perceives as threats to human dignity, was prepared in direct response to the rows over same-sex blessings, as it has been five years in the making. But it has undergone extensive revisions over the period. 

Pope Francis approved it after requesting that it also mention “poverty, the situation of migrants, violence against women, human trafficking, war, and other themes,” the head of the DDF, Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernandez, said in a statement.  

The declaration said surrogate parenting violated the dignity of both the surrogate mother and the child, and recalled that Francis in January called it “despicable” and urged a global ban.  

On gender theory, the declaration said that “desiring a personal self-determination, as gender theory prescribes, apart from this fundamental truth that human life is a gift, amounts to a concession to the age-old temptation to make oneself God, entering into competition with the true God of love revealed to us in the Gospel.” 

Gender theory, often called gender ideology by its detractors, suggests that gender is more complex and fluid than the binary categories of male and female, and depends on more than visible sexual characteristics. 

On changes of gender, the declaration said that “any sex-change intervention, as a rule, risks threatening the unique dignity the person has received from the moment of conception.” 

It acknowledged that some people may undergo surgery to resolve “genital abnormalities”, but stressed that “such a medical procedure would not constitute a sex change in the sense intended here.” 

At the same time, the text also denounced as contrary to human dignity the fact that “in some places, not a few people are imprisoned, tortured, and even deprived of the good of life solely because of their sexual orientation.” 

Elsewhere, the declaration doubled down on the Vatican’s standing condemnation of abortion, euthanasia and the death penalty, quoting from Francis, his predecessors Benedict XVI and John Paul II and past Vatican documents.  

It also mentioned sexual abuse as a threat to human dignity — calling it “widespread in society”, including within the Catholic Church — as well as violence against women, cyberbullying and other forms of online abuse.
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London — Find a globe in your local library or classroom and try this: Close the eyes, spin it and drop a finger randomly on its curved, glossy surface.

You’re likely to pinpoint a spot in the water, which covers 71% of the planet. Maybe you’ll alight on a place you’ve never heard of — or a spot that no longer exists after a war or because of climate change. Perhaps you’ll feel inspired to find out who lives there and what it’s like. Trace the path of totality ahead of Monday’s solar eclipse. Look carefully, and you’ll find the cartouche — the globemaker’s signature — and the antipode (point diametrically opposed) of where you’re standing right now.

In the age of Google Earth, watches that triangulate and cars with built-in GPS, there’s something about a globe — a spherical representation of the world in miniature — that somehow endures.

London globemaker Peter Bellerby thinks the human yearning to “find our place in the cosmos” has helped globes survive their original purpose — navigation — and the internet. He says it’s part of the reason he went into debt making a globe for his father’s 80th birthday in 2008. The experience helped inspire his company, and 16 years later — is keeping his team of about two dozen artists, cartographers and woodworkers employed.

“You don’t go onto Google Earth to get inspired,” Bellerby says in his airy studio, surrounded by dozens of globes in various languages and states of completion. “A globe is very much something that connects you to the planet that we live on.”

Building a globe amid breakneck change?

Beyond the existential and historical appeal, earthly matters such as cost and geopolitics hover over globemaking. Bellerby says his company has experience with customs officials in regions with disputed borders such as India, China, North Africa and the Middle East.

And there is a real question about whether globes — especially handmade orbs — remain relevant as more than works of art and history for those who can afford them.

They are, after all, snapshots of the past — of the way their patrons and makers saw the world at a certain point in time. So, they’re inherently inaccurate representations of a planet in constant flux.

“Do globes play a relevant role in our time? If so, then in my opinion, this is due to their appearance as a three-dimensional body, the hard-to-control desire to turn them, and the attractiveness of their map image,” says Jan Mokre, vice president of the International Coronelli Society for the Study of Globes in Vienna.

Joshua Nall, Director of the Whipple Museum of the History of Science in Cambridge, says a globe remains a display of “the learning, the erudition, the political interests of its owner.”

How, and how much?

Bellerby’s globes aren’t cheap. They run from about 1,290 British pounds (about $1,900) for the smallest to six figures for the 50-inch Churchill model. He makes about 600 orbs a year of varying size, framing and ornamentation.

The imagery painted on the globes runs the gamut, from constellations to mountains and sea creatures. And here, The Associated Press can confirm, be dragons.

Who buys a globe these days?

 

Bellerby doesn’t name clients, but he says they come from more socioeconomic levels than you’d think — from families to businesses and heads of state. Private art collectors come calling. So do moviemakers.

Bellerby says in his book that the company made four globes for the 2011 movie, “Hugo.” One globe can be seen in the 2023 movie “Tetris,” including one, a freestanding straight-leg Galileo model, which features prominently in a scene.

‘A political minefield’

 

There is no international standard for a correctly drawn earth. Countries, like people, view the world differently, and some are highly sensitive about how their territory is depicted. To offend them with “incorrectly” drawn borders on a globe is to risk impoundment of the orbs at customs.

“Globemaking,” Bellerby writes, “is a political minefield.”

China doesn’t recognize Taiwan as a country. Morocco doesn’t recognize Western Sahara. India’s northern border is disputed. Many Arab countries, such as Lebanon, don’t acknowledge Israel.

Bellerby says the company marks disputed borders as disputed: “We cannot change or rewrite history.”

Speaking of history, here’s the ‘earth apple’

Scientists since antiquity, famously Plato and Aristotle, posited that the earth is not flat but closer to a sphere. (More precisely, it’s a spheroid — bulging at the equator, squashed at the poles).

No one knows when the first terrestrial globe was created. But the oldest known surviving one dates to 1492. No one in Europe knew of the existence of North or South America at the time.

It’s called the “Erdapfel,” which translates to “earth apple” or “potato.” The orb was made by German navigator and geographer Martin Behaim, who was working for the king of Portugal, according to the Whipple Museum in Cambridge. It contained more than just the cartographical information then known, but also details such as commodities overseas, marketplaces and local trading protocols.

It’s also a record of a troubled time.

“The Behaim Globe is today a central document of the European world conquest and the Atlantic slave trade,” according to the German National Museum’s web page on the globe, exhibited there. In the 15th century, the museum notes, “Africa was not only to be circumnavigated in search of India, but also to be developed economically.

“The globe makes it clear how much the creation of our modern world was based on the violent appropriation of raw materials, the slave trade and plantation farming,” the museum notes, or “the first stage of European subjugation and division of the world.”

Twin globes for Churchill and Roosevelt during WWII

If you’ve got a globe of any sort, you’re in good company. During World War II, two in particular were commissioned for leaders on opposite sides of the Atlantic as symbols of power and partnership.

For Christmas in 1942, the United States delivered gigantic twin globes to American President Franklin Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. They were 50 inches in diameter and hundreds of pounds each, believed to be the largest and most accurate globes of the time.

It took more than 50 government geographers, cartographers, and draftsmen to compile the information to make the globe, constructed by the Weber Costello Company of Chicago Heights, Illinois.

The Roosevelt globe now sits at the Roosevelt Library in Hyde Park, N.Y., and Churchill’s globe is at Chartwell House, the Churchill family home in Kent, England, according to the U.S. Library of Congress.

In theory, the leaders could use the globes simultaneously to formulate war strategy. “In reality, however,” Bellerby writes, “the gift of the globes was a simple PR exercise, an important weapon in modern warfare.”
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London — The U.S., Britain and Australia are set to begin talks on bringing new members into their AUKUS security pact as Washington pushes for Japan to be involved as a deterrent against China, the Financial Times reported.

The countries’ defense ministers will announce discussions Monday on “Pillar Two” of the pact, which commits the members to jointly developing quantum computing, undersea, hypersonic, artificial intelligence and cyber technology, the newspaper reported Saturday, citing people familiar with the situation.

They are not considering expanding the first pillar, which is designed to deliver nuclear-powered attack submarines to Australia, the Financial Times said.

AUKUS, formed by the three countries in 2021, is part of their efforts to push back against China’s growing power in the Indo-Pacific region. China has called the AUKUS pact dangerous and warned it could spur a regional arms race.

U.S. President Joe Biden has sought to step up partnerships with U.S. allies in Asia, including Japan and the Philippines, amid China’s historic military build-up and its growing territorial assertiveness.

Rahm Emanuel, the U.S. ambassador in Tokyo, wrote in an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday that Japan was “about to become the first additional Pillar II partner.”

A senior U.S. administration official told Reuters on Wednesday that some sort of announcement could be expected in the coming week about Japan’s involvement but gave no details.

Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida will likely discuss expanding AUKUS to include Japan when the president hosts the prime minister in Washington on Wednesday, a source with knowledge of the talks said.

Australia, however, is wary of beginning new projects until more progress has been made on supplying Canberra with nuclear-powered submarines, said the source, who asked not to be identified because they are not authorized to speak to the media.

Obstacles for Japan

A spokesperson for the White House National Security Council and China’s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the FT report.

A Japanese foreign ministry spokesperson said the ministry could not immediately comment.

Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles has said they would “seek opportunities to engage close partners in AUKUS Pillar II” and any involvement of more countries would be decided and announced by the three partners, a spokesperson from his office said.

Britain’s defense ministry said it too would like to involve more allies in this work, subject to joint agreement.

While the U.S. is keen to see Japanese involvement in Pillar Two, officials and experts say obstacles remain, given a need for Japan to introduce better cyber defenses and stricter rules for guarding secrets.

U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell, an architect of U.S. Indo-Pacific policy, said Wednesday the U.S. was encouraging Japan to do more to protect intellectual property and hold officials accountable for secrets. “It’s fair to say that Japan has taken some of those steps, but not all of them,” he said.

The United States has long said that other countries in Europe and Asia are expected to join the second pillar of AUKUS.

The senior U.S. official said any decisions about who would be involved in Pillar Two would be made by the three AUKUS members, whose defense ministers had been considering the questions for many months, based on what countries could bring to the project.

Campbell said that other countries had expressed interest in participating in AUKUS.

“I think you’ll hear that we have something to say about that next week and there also will be further engagement among the three defense ministers of the United States, Australia, and Great Britain as they focus on this effort as well,” Campbell told the Center for a New American Security think tank.

Campbell also said Wednesday the AUKUS submarine project could help deter any Chinese move against Taiwan, the democratically governed island that Beijing claims as part of China.

Biden, Kishida and Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. are to hold a trilateral summit Thursday.
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Moscow — Flood waters were rising in two cities in Russia’s Ural mountains on Sunday after Europe’s third longest river burst through a dam, flooding at least 6,000 homes and forcing thousands of people to flee with just their pets and a few belongings. 

A string of Russian regions in the Ural Mountains and Siberia, alongside parts of neighboring Kazakhstan have been hit in recent days by some of the worst floods in decades. 

The Ural River, which rises in the Ural Mountains and flows into the Caspian Sea, swelled several meters in just hours on Friday due to melt water, bursting through a dam embankment in the city of Orsk, 1,800 km (1,100 miles) east of Moscow. 

More than 4,000 people were evacuated in Orsk as swathes of the city of 230,000 were flooded. Footage published by the Emergencies Ministry showed people wading through neck-high waters, rescuing stranded dogs and traveling along flooded roads in boats and canoes.  

President Vladimir Putin ordered Emergencies Minister Alexander Kurenkov to fly to the region. The Kremlin said on Sunday that flooding was now also inevitable in the Urals region of Kurgan and the Siberian region of Tyumen. 

Putin had spoken to the governors of the regions by telephone, the Kremlin said. 

The Orenburg region’s governor, Denis Pasler, said the floods were the worst to hit the region since records began. 

He said that flooding had been recorded along the entire course of the 2,400 km (1,500 mile) Ural River, which flows through Orenburg region and then through Kazakhstan into the Caspian Sea.  

Russian media cited Orenburg region authorities as estimating the cost of flood damage locally as around $227 million, and saying that flood waters would dissipate only after April 20. 

In Kazakhstan, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said on Saturday the floods were his country’s largest natural disaster in terms of scale and impact for 80 years. 

Flood warnings were issued in other Russian regions and Kurenkov said the situation could get worse very fast.  

“The water is coming, and in the coming days its level will only rise,” said Sergei Salmin, the mayor of Orenburg, a city of at least 550,000 people. “The flood situation remains critical.” 

Emergencies Minister Kurenkov said bottled water and mobile treatment plants were needed, while local health officials said vaccinations against Hepatitis A were being conducted in flooded areas.  

Local officials said the dam in Orsk was built for a water level of 5.5 meters (18 feet)yet the Ural River rose to 9.6 meters (31.5 feet). 

Federal investigators opened a criminal case for negligence and the violation of safety rules over the construction of the 2010 dam, which prosecutors said had not been maintained properly. 

The Orsk oil refinery suspended work on Sunday due to the flooding. Last year, the Orsk Refinery processed 4.5 million tons of oil.
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Moscow — Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov will visit China on Monday and Tuesday to discuss the war in Ukraine and the deepening partnership between Moscow and Beijing.

Talks between Lavrov and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who extended the invitation to the Russian minister, will include bilateral cooperation as well as “hot topics,” such as the crisis in Ukraine and the Asia-Pacific, the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

Reuters reported last month that Russian President Vladimir Putin will travel to China in May for talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping, in what could be the Kremlin chief’s first overseas trip of his new presidential term.

China and Russia declared a “no limits” partnership in February 2022 when Putin visited Beijing just days before he sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine, triggering the deadliest land war in Europe since World War II.

The United States casts China as its biggest competitor and Russia as its biggest nation-state threat, while U.S. President Joe Biden argues that this century will be defined by an existential contest between democracies and autocracies.

Putin and Xi share a broad world view, which sees the West as decadent and in decline just as China challenges U.S. supremacy in everything from quantum computing and synthetic biology to espionage and hard military power.

China-Russian trade hit a record of $240.1 billion in 2023, up 26.3% from a year earlier, according to Chinese customs data.

Chinese shipments to Russia jumped 46.9% in 2023 while imports from Russia rose 13%.

China-United States trade fell 11.6% to $664.5 billion in 2023, according to the Chinese customs data.

One year into the Ukraine war, China in 2023 published a 12-point position paper on settling the Ukraine crisis. Russia has said China’s position is reasonable.

Switzerland in January agreed to hold a peace summit at the request of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who has put forward a peace formula that calls for a full Russian withdrawal from all territory controlled by Russian forces.

Reuters reported in February that Putin’s suggestion of a cease-fire in Ukraine to freeze the war was rejected by the United States after contacts between intermediaries.

Moscow says that Zelenskyy’s proposals amount to a ridiculous ultimatum and that the proposed meeting in Switzerland was being used by the West to try to garner support for Ukraine among the Global South.

Russia says that any peace in Ukraine would have to accept the reality of its control over just under one fifth of Ukraine and include a broader agreement on European security.

Ukraine says it will not rest until every last Russian soldier is ejected from its territory.
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UNITED NATIONS — The United States and its Western allies are feuding with Russia over its diamond production, but they joined forces Wednesday to keep supporting the Kimberley Process, which aims to eliminate the trade in “blood diamonds” that helped fuel devastating conflicts in Africa.

At a U.N. General Assembly meeting, its 193 member nations adopted a resolution by consensus recognizing that the Kimberley Process, which certifies rough diamond exports, “contributes to the prevention of conflicts fueled by diamonds” and helps the Security Council implement sanctions on the trade in conflict diamonds.

The Kimberley Process went into effect in 2003 in the aftermath of bloody civil wars in Angola, Sierra Leone and Liberia where diamonds were used by armed groups to fund the conflicts.

Zimbabwe’s U.N. Ambassador Albert Chimbindi, whose country chaired the Kimberley Process in 2023, said in introducing the resolution that it would renew the General Assembly’s “commitment to ensuring that diamonds remain a force for inclusive sustainable development instead of a driver of armed conflict.”

It was true in 2003 and “remains true now,” he said, that profits from the diamond trade can fuel conflicts, finance rebel movements aimed at undermining or overthrowing governments, and lead to the proliferation of illegal weapons.

The European Union’s Clayton Curran told the assembly after the vote that the Kimberley Process “is facing unprecedented challenges” and condemned “the aggression of one Kimberley Process participant against another” — Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. 

For the first time in its history, last November’s plenary meeting of Kimberley Process participants failed to produce a consensus communique because of serious differences between Russia and the West.

The key reason was a Ukrainian request, supported by the United States, Britain and others, to examine whether Russia’s diamond production is funding its war against Kyiv and the implications for the Kimberley Process which Russia and several allies strongly opposed.

Russia refused to support a communique that acknowledged Ukraine’s request. And before Wednesday’s vote, the deputy director of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s economic department, Alexander Repkin, accused Western countries of sabotaging international cooperation on diamonds for “their own geopolitical interests.”

Alluding to sanctions on Russian diamonds by the European Union, Repkin accused the West and its companies of trying to gain a hold over the global production and processing of diamonds.

He said “the further functioning of the Kimberley Process is at stake,” but Russia will do everything it can to support its work.

He noted that the plenary communique has served as the foundation for the General Assembly resolution on the role of conflict diamonds in fueling conflict but without one the resolution approved Wednesday “is largely technical in nature.”

The EU’s Curran urged reform of the process “to broaden the definition of `conflict diamonds’ to capture the evolving nature of conflicts and the realities on the ground.” He said the EU will also try again this year to discuss the issue of the negative impact of the illegal trade in diamonds on the environment.

Britain expressed regret at the failure to discuss the link between Russia’s rough diamond revenue and their invasion of Ukraine, and reiterated the need for a discussion to ensure that the Kimberley Process deals with issues related to delinking diamonds from conflict.

United Arab Emirates deputy ambassador Mohamed Abushahab said it’s more important than ever to strengthen the Kimberley Process, which his country is chairing this year.

The UAE has identified three ways: to establish a permanent secretariat which was approved at the end of March in Botswana’s capital, Gabarone, to complete a review and reform of the process by the end of the year, and to identify digital technologies that can strengthen the Kimberley Process, he said.
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