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Russia blocks final document at nuclear treaty conference
Russia late Friday blocked agreement on the final document of a four-week review of the U.N. treaty considered the cornerstone of nuclear disarmament which criticized its military takeover of Europe’s largest nuclear plant soon after Russian troops invaded Ukraine, an act that has raised fears of a nuclear accident.
Igor Vishnevetsky, deputy director of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Non-Proliferation and Arms Control Department, told the delayed final meeting of the conference reviewing the 50-year-old Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty that “unfortunately there is no consensus on this document.” He insisted that many countries — not just Russia — didn’t agree with “a whole host of issues” in the 36-page last draft.
The document needed approval by all 191 countries that are parties to the treaty aimed at curbing the spread of nuclear weapons and ultimately achieving a world without them.
Argentine Ambassador Gustavo Zlauvinen, president of the conference, said the final draft represented his best efforts to address divergent views and the expectations of the parties “for a progressive outcome” at a moment in history where “our world is increasingly wracked by conflicts, and, most alarmingly, the ever growing prospect of the unthinkable nuclear war.”
But after Vishnevetsky spoke, Zlauvinen told delegates, “I see that at this point, the conference is not in a position to achieve agreement on its substantive work.”
The NPT review conference is supposed to be held every five years but was delayed because of the COVID-19 pandemic. This marked the second failure of its state parties to produce an outcome document. The last review conference in 2015 ended without an agreement because of serious differences over establishing a Middle East zone free of weapons of mass destruction.
Those differences haven’t gone away but are being discussed, and the draft outcome documents obtained by The Associated Press would have reaffirmed the importance of establishing a nuclear-free Mideast zone. So, this was not viewed as a major stumbling block this year.
The issue that changed the dynamics of the conference was Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which brought Russian President Vladimir Putin’s warning that Russia is a “potent” nuclear power and that any attempt to interfere would lead to “consequences you have never seen.” He also put Russia’s nuclear forces on high alert.
Putin has since rolled back, saying that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought,” a message reiterated by a senior Russian official on the opening day of the NPT conference on Aug. 2.
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But the Russian leader’s initial threat and the occupation of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in southeastern Ukraine as well as the takeover of the Chernobyl nuclear plant, scene of the world’s worst nuclear disaster in 1986, renewed global fears of another nuclear emergency.
Earlier this week, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Linda Thomas-Greenfield, told the Security Council that the Biden administration was seeking a consensus final document that strengthens the nuclear treaty and acknowledges “the manner in which Russia’s war and irresponsible actions in Ukraine seriously undermine the NPT’s main purpose.”
Russian Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia accused the United States and its allies at that council meeting of “politicizing the work on the final document, putting their geopolitical interests in punishing Russia above their collective needs in strengthening global security.”
“Against the backdrop of the actual sabotage by the collective West of the global security architecture, Russia continues to do everything possible to keep at least its key, vital elements afloat,” Nebenzia said.
The four references in the draft final document to the Zaporizhzhia plant, where Russia and Ukraine accuse each other of shelling, would have had the parties to the NPT express “grave concern for the military activities” at or near the facility and other nuclear plants.
It also would have recognized Ukraine’s loss of control and the International Atomic Energy Agency’s inability to ensure the plant’s nuclear material is safeguarded. It supported IAEA efforts to visit Zaporizhzhia to ensure there is no diversion of its nuclear materials. The agency’s director is hoping to organize in the coming day.
The draft expressed “grave concern” at the safety of Ukraine’s nuclear facilities, in particular Zaporizhzia, and stressed “the paramount importance of ensuring control by Ukraine’s competent authorities.”
FBI: Trump mixed top secret docs with magazines, other items
Fourteen of the 15 boxes recovered from former President Donald Trump’s Florida estate early this year contained classified documents, many of them top secret, mixed in with miscellaneous newspapers, magazines and personal correspondence, according to an FBI affidavit released Friday.
No space at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate was authorized for the storage of classified material, according to the court papers, which laid out the FBI’s rationale for searching the property this month, including “probable cause to believe that evidence of obstruction will be found.”
The 32-page affidavit — heavily redacted to protect the safety of witnesses and law enforcement officials and “the integrity of the ongoing investigation” — offers the most detailed description to date of the government records being stored at Mar-a-Lago long after Trump left the White House. It also reveals the gravity of the government’s concerns that the documents were there illegally.
The document makes clear how the haphazard retention of top secret government records, and the apparent failure to safeguard them despite months of entreaties from U.S. officials, has exposed Trump to fresh legal peril just as he lays the groundwork for another potential presidential run in 2024.
“The government is conducting a criminal investigation concerning the improper removal and storage of classified information in unauthorized spaces, as well as the unlawful concealment or removal of government records,” an FBI agent wrote on the first page of the affidavit.
Documents previously made public show that federal agents are investigating potential violations of multiple federal laws, including one that governs gathering, transmitting or losing defense information under the Espionage Act. The other statutes address the concealment, mutilation or removal of records and the destruction, alteration or falsification of records in federal investigations.
Trump has long insisted, despite clear evidence to the contrary, that he fully cooperated with government officials. And he has rallied Republicans behind him by painting the search as a politically motivated witch hunt intended to damage his reelection prospects. He repeated that refrain on his social media site Friday, saying he and his representatives had had a close working relationship with the FBI and “GAVE THEM MUCH.”
The affidavit does not provide new details about 11 sets of classified records recovered during the Aug. 8 search at Mar-a-Lago but instead concerns a separate batch of 15 boxes that the National Archives and Records Administration retrieved from the home in January. The Archives sent the matter to the Justice Department, indicating in its referral that a review showed “a lot” of classified materials, the affidavit says.
The affidavit made the case to a judge that a search of Mar-a-Lago was necessary due to the highly sensitive material found in those 15 boxes. Of 184 documents with classification markings, 25 were at the top secret level, the affidavit says. Some had special markings suggesting they included information from highly sensitive human sources or the collection of electronic “signals” authorized by a special intelligence court.
And some of those classified records were mixed with other documents, including newspapers, magazines and miscellaneous print-outs, the affidavit says, citing a letter from the Archives.
Douglas London, a former senior CIA officer and author of “The Recruiter,” said this showed Trump’s lack of respect for controls. “One of the rules of classified is you don’t mix classified and unclassified so there’s no mistakes or accidents,” he said.
The affidavit shows how agents were authorized to search a large swath of Mar-a-Lago, including Trump’s official post-presidential “45 Office,” storage rooms and all other areas in which boxes or documents could be stored. They did not propose searching areas of the property used or rented by Mar-a-Lago members, such as private guest suites.
The FBI submitted the affidavit, or sworn statement, to a judge so it could obtain the warrant to search Trump’s property. Affidavits typically contain vital information about an investigation, with agents spelling out the justification for why they want to search a particular location and why they believe they’re likely to find evidence of a potential crime there.
The documents routinely remain sealed during pending investigations. But in an acknowledgment of the extraordinary public interest in the investigation, U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart on Thursday ordered the department by Friday to make public a redacted version of the affidavit.
In a separate document unsealed Friday, Justice Department officials said it was necessary to redact some information to “protect the safety and privacy of a significant number of civilian witnesses, in addition to law enforcement personnel, as well as to protect the integrity of the ongoing investigation.”
The second half of the affidavit is almost entirely redacted, making it impossible to discern the scope of the investigation or where it might be headed. It does not reveal which individuals might be under investigation and it does not resolve core questions, such as why top secret documents were taken to Mar-a-Lago after the president’s term ended even though classified information requires special storage.
Trump’s Republican allies in Congress were largely silent Friday as the affidavit emerged, another sign of the GOP’s reluctance to publicly part ways with the former president, whose grip on the party remains strong during the midterm election season. Both parties have demanded more information about the search, with lawmakers seeking briefings from the Justice Department and FBI once Congress returns from summer recess.
Though Trump’s spokesman derided the investigation as “all politics,” the affidavit makes clear the FBI search was hardly the first time federal law enforcement had expressed concerns about the records. The Justice Department’s top counterintelligence official, for instance, visited Mar-a-Lago last spring to assess how the documents were being stored.
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The affidavit includes excerpts from a June 8 letter in which a Justice Department official reminded a Trump lawyer that Mar-a-Lago did not include a secure location authorized to hold classified records. The official requested that the room at the estate where the documents had been stored be secured, and that the boxes that were moved from the White House to Mar-a-Lago “be preserved in that room in their current condition until further notice.”
The back-and-forth culminated in the Aug. 8 search in which agents retrieved 11 sets of classified records.
The document unsealed Friday also offer insight into arguments the Trump legal team is expected to make. It includes a letter from Trump lawyer M. Evan Corcoran in which he asserts that a president has “absolute authority” to declassify documents and that “presidential actions involving classified documents are not subject to criminal sanction.”
Mark Zaid, a longtime national security lawyer who has criticized Trump for his handling of classified information, said the letter was “blatantly wrong” to assert Trump could declassify “anything and everything.”
“There are some legal, technical defenses as to certain provisions of the espionage act whether it would apply to the president,” Zaid said. “But some of those provisions make no distinction that would raise a defense.”
In addition, the affidavit includes a footnote from the FBI agent who wrote it observing that one of the laws that may have been violated doesn’t even use the term “classified information” but instead criminalizes the unlawful retention of national defense information.
Official: 6 of 43 missing Mexican students given to army
Six of the 43 college students “disappeared” in 2014 were allegedly kept alive in a warehouse for days then turned over to the local army commander who ordered them killed, the Mexican government official leading a Truth Commission said Friday.
Interior Undersecretary Alejandro Encinas made the shocking revelation directly tying the military to one of Mexico’s worst human rights scandals, and it came with little fanfare as he made a lengthy defense of the commission’s report released a week earlier.
Last week, despite declaring the abductions and disappearances a “state crime” and saying that the army watched it happen without intervening, Encinas made no mention of six students being turned over to Col. José Rodríguez Pérez.
On Friday, Encinas said authorities were closely monitoring the students from the radical teachers’ college at Ayotzinapa from the time they left their campus through their abduction by local police in the town of Iguala that night. A soldier who had infiltrated the school was among the abducted students, and Encinas asserted the army did not follow its own protocols and try to rescue him.
“There is also information corroborated with emergency 089 telephone calls where allegedly six of the 43 disappeared students were held during several days and alive in what they call the old warehouse and from there were turned over to the colonel,” Encinas said. “Allegedly the six students were alive for as many as four days after the events and were killed and disappeared on orders of the colonel, allegedly the then Col. José Rodríguez Pérez.”
The defense department did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the allegations Friday.
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The role of the army in the students’ disappearance has long been a source of tension between the families and the government. From the beginning, there were questions about the military’s knowledge of what happened and its possible involvement. The students’ parents demanded for years that they be allowed to search the army base in Iguala. It was not until 2019 that they were given access along with Encinas and the Truth Commission.
The commission report says the army registered an anonymous emergency call on Sept. 30, 2014, four days after the students’ abduction. The caller reportedly said the students were being held in a large concrete warehouse in a location described as “Pueblo Viejo.” The caller proceeded to describe the location.
That entry was followed by several pages of redacted material, but that section of the report concluded with the following: “As can be seen, obvious collusion existed between agents of the Mexican state with the criminal group Guerreros Unidos that tolerated, allowed and participated in events of violence and disappearance of the students, as well as the government’s attempt to hide the truth about the events.”
Later, in a summary of how the commission’s report differed from the original investigation’s conclusions, there is mention of a colonel.
“On Sept. 30 ‘the colonel’ mentions that they will take care of cleaning everything up and that they had already taken charge of the six students who had remained alive,” the report said.
In a witness statement provided to federal investigators in December 2014, Capt. José Martínez Crespo, who was stationed at the base in Iguala, said the base commander for the 27th Infantry Battalion at the time was Col. José Rodriguez Pérez.
Through a driving rain later Friday, the families of the 43 missing students marched in Mexico City with a couple hundred other people as they have on the 26th of every month for years.
Parents carried posters of their children’s faces and rows of current students from the teachers’ college marched, shouted calls for justice and counted off to 43. Their signs proclaimed that the fight for justice continued and asserted: “It was the State.”
Clemente Rodríguez marched for his son Christian Alfonso Rodríguez Telumbre, who was a second student identified by a tiny burned bone fragment.
Rodríguez said the families had been told last week before the report was released about the coronel and the six students.
“It’s not by omission anymore. It’s that they participated,” he said of the military. “It was the state, the three levels of government participated.”
He said the families had not been told that any of the arrest orders announced last week for members of armed forces had been carried out yet.
On Sept. 26, 2014, local police took the students off buses they had commandeered in Iguala. The motive for the police action remains unclear eight years later. Their bodies have never been found, though fragments of burned bone have been matched to three of the students.
Last week, federal agents arrested former Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam, who oversaw the original investigation. On Wednesday, a judge ordered that he stand trial for forced disappearance, not reporting torture and official misconduct. Prosecutors allege Murillo Karam created a false narrative about what happened to the students to quickly appear to resolve the case.
Authorities also said last week that arrest warrants were issued for 20 soldiers and officers, five local officials, 33 local police officers and 11 state police officers as well as 14 gang members. Neither the army nor prosecutors have said how many of those suspects are in custody.
It was also not immediately clear if Rodríguez Pérez was among those sought.
Rodríguez, the student’s father, said Murillo Karam’s arrest was a positive step.
Murillo Karam “was the one who told us the soldiers couldn’t be touched,” Rodríguez said. “And now it’s being discovered that it was the state that participated.”
In a joint statement, the families said the Truth Commission’s confirmation that it was a “state crime” was significant after elements suggesting that over the years.
However, they said the report still did not satisfactorily answer their most important question.
“Mothers and fathers need indubitable scientific evidence as to the fate of our children,” the statement said. “We can’t go home with preliminary signs that don’t fully clear up where they are and what happened to them.”
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has given Mexico’s military enormous responsibility. The armed forces are not only at the center of his security strategy, but they have taken over administration of the seaports and been given responsibility for building a new airport for the capital and a tourist train on the Yucatan Peninsula.
The president has said often that the army and navy are the least corrupt institutions and have his confidence.
Philippine ferry carrying 82 people catches fire; 73 rescued
A Philippine ferry carrying 82 passengers and crew caught fire as it was approaching a port south of Manila on Friday, and at least 73 of those aboard have been rescued, including many who jumped into the water, the coast guard and survivors said.
Search and rescue efforts were continuing after nightfall for the passengers and crew of the M/V Asia Philippines, an inter-island cargo and passenger vessel which came from nearby Calapan city in Oriental Mindoro province, the coast guard said.
A 44-year-old woman who was among those rescued was taken to a hospital with unspecified injuries.
Video released by the coast guard showed flames and black smoke billowing from the ferry, which was near other ships more than a kilometer (about a mile) from the Batangas port’s anchorage area, coast guard officials said.
Read: Man opens fire on Philippine campus, killing 3 people
A ship helped coast guard vessels extinguish the fire, they said. The cause of the fire was not immediately clear.
Passenger Benedict Fernandez told DZMM radio that smoke and flames suddenly rose from the second deck as crew members were apparently trying to turn an engine on and off as the ferry approached the port. There was no immediate order to abandon ship, but when it became hard to see because of the smoke, he said he decided to jump into the water with his two children from the third deck, along with other passengers.
“I pushed my children off because if we didn't jump from the top, we would really get burned because the soles of our feet were already feeling the heat,” Fernandez said.
They were rescued from the water by another boat that approached the burning ship and then transferred to a tugboat, which brought them to port, he said.
The ferry, which was carrying 48 passengers, 34 crewmembers and 16 vehicles, can carry about 400 passengers, the coast guard said. In the past, there have been instances when ferries carried unlisted passengers in defiance of regulations.
Sea accidents are common in the Philippine archipelago because of frequent storms, badly maintained boats, overcrowding and spotty enforcement of safety regulations, especially in remote provinces.
In December 1987, the ferry Dona Paz sank after colliding with a fuel tanker, killing more than 4,300 people in the world’s worst peacetime maritime disaster.
Moderna sues Pfizer over patents behind COVID-19 vaccine
COVID-19 vaccine maker Moderna is suing Pfizer and the German drugmaker BioNTech, accusing its main competitors of copying Moderna’s technology in order to make their own vaccine.
Moderna said Friday that Pfizer and BioNTech’s vaccine Comirnaty infringes on patents Moderna filed several years ago protecting the technology behind its preventive shot, Spikevax. The company filed patent infringement lawsuits in both U.S. federal court and a German court.
Pfizer spokeswoman Pam Eisele said the company had not fully reviewed Moderna’s lawsuit, but the drugmaker was surprised by it, given that their vaccine is based on proprietary technology developed by both BioNTech and Pfizer.
She said in an email that the company would “vigorously defend” against any allegations in the case.
BioNTech did not immediately respond to a request from The Associated Press seeking comment.
Moderna and Pfizer’s two-shot vaccines both use mRNA technology to help patients fight the coronavirus.
The mRNA vaccines work by injecting a genetic code for the spike protein that coats the surface of the coronavirus. That code, the mRNA, is encased in a little ball of fat, and instructs the body’s cells to make some harmless spike copies that train the immune system to recognize the real virus.That approach is radically different than how vaccines have traditionally been made.
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Moderna said it started developing its mRNA technology platform in 2010, and that helped the company quickly produce its COVID-19 vaccine after the pandemic arrived in early 2020.
By the end of that year, U.S. regulators had cleared shots from both Pfizer and Moderna for use after clinical research showed that both were highly effective.
Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel said in a prepared statement that the vaccine developer pioneered that technology and invested billions of dollars in creating it.
The company said it believes its rivals’ vaccine infringes on patents Moderna filed between 2010 and 2016.
Moderna said it recognizes the importance of vaccine access and is not seeking to remove Comirnaty from the market. It also is not asking for an injunction to prevent future sales.
Moderna said in 2020 that it would not enforce its COVID-19 related patents while the pandemic continued. But the company said in March, with vaccine supplies improving globally, that it would update that pledge.
It said it still would not enforce its patients for vaccines used in low- and middle-income countries. But it expected companies like Pfizer and BioNTech to respect its intellectual property, and it would consider “a commercially reasonable license” in other markets if they requested one.
“Pfizer and BioNTech have failed to do so,” Moderna said in a statement.
Taiwan: China, Russia disrupting, threatening world order
Taiwan’s leader on Friday said China and Russia are “disrupting and threatening the world order” through Beijing’s recent large-scale military exercises near the island and Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
President Tsai Ing-wen was speaking during a meeting in Taipei with U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn, who is on the second visit by members of Congress since House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trip earlier this month. That visit prompted China to launch the exercises that saw it fire numerous missiles and send dozens of warplanes and ships to virtually surround the island, including across the center line in the Taiwan Strait that has long been a buffer between the sides.
China claims Taiwan as its own territory to be brought under its control by force if necessary. Beijing has also boosted relations with Russia and is seen as tacitly supporting its attack on Ukraine.
“These developments demonstrate how authoritarian countries are disrupting and threatening the world order,” Tsai said.
Blackburn, a Republican from Tennessee, reaffirmed shared values between the two governments and said she “looked forward to continuing to support Taiwan as they push forward as an independent nation.”
China sees high-level foreign visits to the island as interference in its affairs and de facto recognition of Taiwanese sovereignty. China’s recent military drills were seen by some as a rehearsal of future military action against the island, which U.S. military leaders say could come within the next few years.
Along with staging the exercises, China cut off contacts with the United States on vital issues — including military matters and crucial climate cooperation — raising concerns over a lasting, more aggressive approach by Beijing. It also called in U.S. Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns to formally complain. He later said China was overreacting in order to manufacture a crisis.
Due to the separation of powers in the U.S. government, the executive branch has no authority to prevent legislators from making such foreign visits and Taiwan benefits from strong bipartisan support in Washington. China, whose ruling Communist Party wields total control over the country's politics, refuses to acknowledge that fundamental principle.
U.S. State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel said members of Congress and elected officials “have gone to Taiwan for decades and will continue to do so," saying it was in line with U.S. policy to only maintain formal diplomatic ties with Beijing.
“We’re going to continue to take calm and resolute steps to uphold peace and stability in the region and to support Taiwan in line with our longstanding policy," Patel said at a briefing Thursday
Read: Indiana governor in Taiwan following high-profile US visits
Taiwanese Foreign Minister Joseph Wu told reporters Friday that “China’s motivation is to destroy the Taiwan Straits' status quo, and after this they want to cut down on Taiwan’s defensive space."
Taiwan is seeking stepped-up defense cooperation and additional weaponry from the U.S., along with closer economic ties.
In their meeting, Tsai and Blackburn underscored the importance of economic links, especially in the semiconductor sector, where Taiwan is a world leader and the U.S. is seeking greater investment at home.
Blackburn arrived in Taipei late Thursday after visiting Fiji, the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea as part of a U.S. push to “expand our diplomatic footprint in the area,” her office said in a statement.
“The Indo-Pacific region is the next frontier for the new axis of evil,” Blackburn, a supporter of former President Donald Trump, was quoted as saying. “We must stand against the Chinese Communist Party.”
China has been making inroads in the western Pacific, signing a broad security agreement with the Solomons that the U.S. and allies such as Australia see as an attempt to overthrow the traditional security order in the region.
Pelosi was the highest-level member of the U.S. government to visit Taiwan in 25 years. China’s response was to announce six zones surrounding the island for military exercises that included firing missiles over the island, some of which landed in Japan’s exclusive economic zone.
Following Pelosi’s trip, a delegation of House and Senate members visited. This week, Indiana’s governor made a visit focused on business and academic cooperation. U.S politicians have called their visits a show of support for the island.
“I just landed in Taiwan to send a message to Beijing — we will not be bullied,” said Blackburn in a tweet early morning Friday. “The United States remains steadfast in preserving freedom around the globe, and will not tolerate efforts to undermine our nation and our allies.”
During her three-day visit, Blackburn is also due to meet with the head of Taiwan’s National Security Council.
Washington has no official diplomatic ties with Taipei in deference to China, but remains the island’s biggest security guarantor, with U.S. law requiring it ensure Taiwan has the means to defend itself and to regard threats to the island as matters of “grave concern.”
Taiwan and China split in 1949 after a civil war and have no official relations but are bound by billions of dollars of trade and investment.
China has increased its pressure on Taiwan since it elected independence-leaning Tsai as its president. When Tsai refused to endorse the concept of a single Chinese nation, China cut off contact with the Taiwanese government.
U.S. congressional visits to the island have stepped up in frequency in the past year.
On Thursday, the executive branch of Taiwan’s government laid out plans for a 12.9% increase in the Defense Ministry’s annual budget next year. The government is planning to spend an additional 47.5 billion New Taiwan dollars ($1.6 billion), for a total of 415.1 billion NTD ($13.8 billion) for the year.
The Defense Ministry said the increase is due to the “Chinese Communists’ continued expansion of targeted military activities in recent years, the normalization of their harassment of Taiwan’s nearby waters and airspace with warships and war planes.”
Also Thursday, the Defense Ministry said it tracked four Chinese naval ships and 15 warplanes in the region surrounding the island.
Nuclear treaty conference near end with Ukraine in spotlight
As 191 countries approach Friday’s end to a four-week conference to review the landmark U.N. treaty aimed at curbing the spread of nuclear weapons, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and takeover of Europe’s largest nuclear power plant and rivalries between the West and China were posing key obstacles to agreement on a final document.
Argentine Ambassador Gustavo Zlauvinen, president of the conference reviewing the 50-year-old Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which is considered the cornerstone of nuclear disarmament, circulated a 35-page draft final document on Thursday. After listening to objections from countries at a closed-door session, diplomats said he was planning to revise the document for a final closed-door discussion Friday morning, ahead of an open meeting in the afternoon to end the conference.
Any document must be approved by all parties to the treaty and it’s uncertain whether an agreement will be reached before the conference ends. There is a possibility that only a brief statement reaffirming support for the NPT might get unanimous support.
The NPT review conference is supposed to be held every five years but was delayed because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The last one in 2015 ended without an agreement because of serious differences over establishing a Middle East zone free of weapons of mass destruction.
Those differences haven’t gone away but are being discussed, and the draft final document obtained by The Associated Press would reaffirm the importance of establishing a nuclear-free Mideast zone. So this is not viewed as a major stumbling block this year.
The issue that has changed the dynamics of the conference is Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s warning that Russia is a “potent” nuclear power and any attempt to interfere would lead to “consequences you have never seen,” and his decision soon after to put Russia’s nuclear forces on high alert.
Putin has since rolled back, saying that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought,” a message reiterated by a senior Russian official on the opening day of the NPT conference on Aug. 2. In addition, Russia’s occupation of Europe’s biggest nuclear plant at Zaporizhzhia in southeastern Ukraine, where Moscow and Kyiv have accused each other of shelling, has raised fears of a nuclear disaster.
Earlier this week, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield told the Security Council that the Biden administration is seeking a consensus final document that strengthens the treaty and acknowledges “the manner in which Russia’s war and irresponsible actions in Ukraine seriously undermine the NPT’s main purpose.”
Read:Putin orders troop replenishment in face of Ukraine losses
Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia accused the United States and its allies at that council meeting of “politicizing the work on the final document, putting their geopolitical interests in punishing Russia above their collective needs in strengthening global security.”
“Against the backdrop of the actual sabotage by the collective West of the global security architecture, Russia continues to do everything possible to keep at least its key, vital elements afloat,” Nebenzia said.
The 35-page draft document has at least three specific references to the Zaporizhzhia plant, including expressing “grave concern” over its security, the military activities conducted at or near it, and the loss of control over the facility by Ukrainian authorities. The draft expresses support for efforts by the U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, to visit the plant and ensure the non-diversion of nuclear material.
Under the NPT’s provisions, the five original nuclear powers — the United States, China, Russia (then the Soviet Union), Britain and France — agreed to negotiate toward eliminating their arsenals someday and nations without nuclear weapons promised not to acquire nuclear weapons in exchange for a guarantee to be able to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.
India and Pakistan, which didn’t join the NPT, went on to get the bomb. So did North Korea, which ratified the pact but later announced it was withdrawing. Non-signatory Israel, which is believed to have a nuclear arsenal but neither confirms nor denies it, has been an obstacle in discussions of a Mideast zone free of weapons of mass destruction.
Nonetheless, the treaty has been credited with limiting the number of nuclear newcomers (U.S. President John F. Kennedy once foresaw as many as 20 nuclear-armed nations) as a framework for international cooperation on disarmament.
The draft final document would express deep concern “that the threat of nuclear weapons use today is higher than at any time since the heights of the Cold War and at the deteriorated international security environment.”
Diplomats and nuclear experts monitoring the closed-door negotiations have cited other differences that could block agreement on a final document.
These include China’s demands that it mention the U.S.-UK-Australia deal to provide Australia with a nuclear-powered submarine and nuclear-sharing in Europe, and demands by some countries strongly opposed to nuclear weapons for immediate nuclear disarmament to be included, which some Western countries call unrealistic.
Pakistan seeks international help for flood victims
Pakistani Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif asked Friday for international help battling deadly flood damage in the impoverished Islamic nation.
His request on Twitter came amid exceptionally heavy rain that continued lashing Pakistan, raising the overall death toll from mid-June to 937.
Sharif said he met with foreign diplomats in the capital, Islamabad, on damages caused by the floods.
“The ongoing rain spell has caused devastation across the country," he tweeted, thanking other countries and groups for their support. “Together we will build back better.”
The flooding from rains, melting glaciers and cloudbursts affected over 3 million people.
Read: 31 dead in India flash floods & landslides
Floods have damaged 170,000 homes, washed away roads and destroyed nearly 150 bridges, according to the National Disaster Management Authority. Although floodwater receded in some areas, the situation worsened in Sindh province, where rescue workers were using boats to evacuate marooned people. Thousands of flood-affected people were living in makeshift homes and tents.
The crisis forced Sharif's government to declare a state of emergency.
A United Nations statement on Thursday said it has allocated $ 3 million for U.N. aid agencies and its partners in Pakistan to respond to the floods. “This will be used for health, nutrition, food security, and water and sanitation services in flood-affected areas, focusing on the most vulnerable," it said.
Monsoon rains in Pakistan typically begin in July. But this year, heavy downpours started lashing the country in June, triggering floods. Scientists say climate change is a major factor behind the unusually severe weather, which has made life miserable for millions of people.
According to Climate Change Minister Sherry Rehman, right now the real challenge was saving lives and arranging tents and food for homeless people.
“This is a humanitarian disaster of epic proportions, thousands are without shelter, many are without food and people are stranded," Rehman said. "We need to ask not just the provinces and Islamabad, it is beyond the capacity of any one administration or government to rehabilitate and even manage the rescue and relief.”
India: Veteran politician Ghulam Nabi Azad quits Congress
In a big jolt to India's main opposition Congress party, veteran leader Ghulam Nabi Azad quit the grand old political outfit on Friday.
In his five-page resignation letter addressed to interim Congress president Sonia Gandhi,
Azad made a scathing attack on her son -- Rahul -- for his "childish behaviour", "glaring immaturity" and for running the party via a "coterie of inexperienced sycophants".
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Blaming Rahul for the Congress' defeat in the 2014 general election, the 73-year-old claimed that"the party has now reached a point of no return".
The former federal Minister also came down heavily on a "remote control model" in which important decisions in the party are taken by "Rahul Gandhi or rather worse his security guards and personal assistants".
Azad's abrupt exit comes at a time when the Congress is gearing up for the party's presidential poll and facing an existential crisis in the wake of the departure of several leaders in the past three years.
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Azad served as the Minister of Parliamentary Affairs in Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's government until 27 October 2005, when he was appointed as the Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir.
He was awarded the Padma Bhushan, India's third highest civilian award, in 2022 by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government in the field of public affairs.
2 plead guilty in scheme to sell Biden's daughter's diary
Two Florida residents have pleaded guilty in a scheme to peddle a diary and other items stolen from President Joe Biden’s daughter to the conservative group Project Veritas for $40,000, prosecutors said Thursday.
Aimee Harris and Robert Kurlander “sought to profit from their theft of another person’s personal property,” Manhattan U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a statement.
Harris, a 40-year-old from Palm Beach, and Kurlander, 58, of nearby Jupiter, face the possibility of up to five years in prison. They pleaded guilty to conspiracy to transport stolen property across state lines.
Harris' lawyer, Sam Talkin, said she “has accepted responsibility for her conduct and looks forward to moving on with her life.” Kurlander’s lawyer, Florian Miedel, declined to comment.
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While authorities didn’t identify anyone in the case except the defendants, the details of the investigation have been public for months.
Ashley Biden, the president's daughter, was moving out of a friend's Delray Beach, Florida, home in spring 2020 when she stored the diary and other belongings there, prosecutors said in a court filing.
They said Harris then moved into the same room, found the items and got in touch with Kurlander, who enthused in a text message that he would help her make a “ton of money” from selling it, adding an expletive before “ton.”
The two initially aimed to sell some of the purloined property to then-President Donald Trump's campaign, but a representative turned them down and told them to take the material to the FBI, according to the court papers.
The campaign “can't use this,” Kurlander explained to Harris in a September 2020 text message, adding: “It has to be done a different way.”
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Their next stop was Project Veritas, which paid for the two to bring some of the material — including the diary and a digital device with family photos — to a New York luxury hotel, prosecutors said.
Project Veritas staffers met with Kurlander and Harris in New York and agreed to pay an initial $10,000, saying more money could come if they retrieved more of Ashley Biden’s items from the home, partly in order to authenticate the diary, according to the court filing.
Back in Florida, Kurlander texted Harris a blunt assessment of what would come of the exchange, prosecutors said.
“They are in a sketchy business and here they are taking what’s literally a stolen diary and info ... and trying to make a story that will ruin” Ashley Biden's life and possibly affect the impending presidential election, he wrote, according to the court papers. He added that the two needed “to tread even more carefully” and get “anything worthwhile” out of the Delray Beach house, according to the court papers.
Prosecutors said Kurlander and Harris took Ashley Biden's stored tax documents, clothes and luggage as Kurlander pressed Project Veritas in a message to commit to a bigger payout: “We are taking huge risks. This isn't fair.”
A Project Veritas staffer soon flew to Florida, the employee shipped the items to New York and the group paid Harris and Kurlander $20,000 apiece, prosecutors said.
Project Veritas identifies itself as a news organization. It is best known for conducting hidden camera stings that have embarrassed news outlets, labor organizations and Democratic politicians.
“Project Veritas’s news gathering was ethical and legal" in the diary affair, the group said in a statement Thursday. The organization said earlier that it turned the journal over to law enforcement after receiving it from “tipsters” who maintained that it had been abandoned in a room.
"A journalist’s lawful receipt of material later alleged to be stolen is routine, commonplace and protected by the First Amendment,” Project Veritas added Thursday.
Neither Project Veritas nor any staffers have been charged with a crime.
The FBI searched the group's New York offices and the homes of some of its employees as part of the investigation. A court in New York appointed a former federal judge to review material that was seized in those searches, so as to ensure that investigators couldn’t look at material protected by journalistic or attorney-client privileges.
Generally, media organizations aren’t culpable for receiving material that might have been stolen, if they weren’t involved in the theft. But there can be criminal liability for orchestrating theft and then knowingly paying for stolen material.
“There is no First Amendment protection for the theft and interstate transport of stolen property,” the U.S. attorney’s office wrote in a court filing last year.
O’Keefe has said that Project Veritas ultimately could not confirm that the diary belonged to Ashley Biden. The group did not publish information from it.
He added that there was “no doubt Project Veritas acted appropriately at each and every step.”
Ashley Biden, a 41-year-old social worker, is the daughter of the president and of first lady Jill Biden. His eldest daughter and his first wife were killed in a 1972 car accident.