Seoul, South Korea — Russian President Vladimir Putin is set to arrive Tuesday in North Korea, where he is expected to sign a treaty outlining Moscow’s expanded cooperation with Pyongyang, according to Russian state media.

Putin has decided to sign a comprehensive strategic partnership agreement with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un during his two-day visit, reported the Russian news agency TASS.

The report provided no details of the document, though earlier the agency quoted a Putin foreign policy aide as saying it would likely cover defense matters.

Earlier Tuesday, Putin vowed to work with North Korea to counter sanctions as both countries expand their “many-sided partnership,” according to a letter published in North Korean state media.

In the letter, Putin said the two countries would develop trade mechanisms “not controlled by the West” and would “jointly oppose illegitimate unilateral restrictions.”

Russia is a long-time supporter of North Korea. Though ties have sometimes been rocky, both countries recently found more reasons to work together, especially following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

U.S. officials say North Korea has provided Russia with 11,000 containers of munitions, as well as ballistic missiles, for use in the Ukraine battlefield. Both North Korea and Russia deny such weapons deals even though a growing number of independent observers have documented North Korean weapons being used against Ukrainian forces.

“Moscow and Pyongyang will likely continue to deny violations of international law but have notably shifted from hiding their illicit activities to flaunting their cooperation,” said Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul.

Defense ties

U.S. officials have expressed concerns that Russia may provide advanced weapons or other help related to North Korea’s nuclear program.

Such worries intensified last September when Kim inspected numerous advanced Russian weapons while touring several military sites in eastern Russia, including a modern space launch facility.

Though North Korea’s latest satellite launches showed signs of Russian assistance, analysts debate how far defense cooperation would go, noting that Russia does not often share its most advanced military technology.

“These states do not share durable alliance institutions and values; they are only weakly bound together by resistance to the enforcement of international laws and norms,” said Easley.

Treaty history

Analysts will closely parse the language of any new treaty signed by Putin and Kim.

Russia currently has comprehensive strategic partnerships with countries including Vietnam, Mongolia, and some Central Asian nations.

While such documents form the basis for Russia’s “highest type of interstate relations,” they do not amount to alliance treaties, observed former Russian diplomat Georgy Toloraya.

“I don’t think that this treaty would include a clause which directly calls for military assistance, but it will certainly give room to imagine a situation where this could be provided,” he said in an interview with VOA.

In 1961, North Korea and the Soviet Union signed a friendship and mutual assistance treaty that included a provision for automatic military intervention in emergencies.

That deal was abolished after the Soviet Union’s collapse. The two countries signed a new treaty in 2000, but it focused on economic rather than military matters.

According to Putin aide Yuri Ushakov, the treaty being negotiated by Kim and Putin would replace all other bilateral treaties.

Obstacles

If Putin’s letter is any indication, his visit will also likely focus on expanding economic ties, including by ramping up exchanges related to education, culture, and tourism.

However, this plan faces obstacles due to United Nations Security Council resolutions that prohibit a wide range of economic engagement with North Korea.

While Russia says it no longer supports U.N. sanctions on North Korea, it has not formally announced that it will stop observing them.

Instead, Russia may search for what it sees as loopholes that facilitate cooperation even in areas that are subject to U.N. sanctions, such as North Korean laborers earning income abroad.

For instance, North Korean IT specialists could work remotely from their home country without technically receiving income abroad, said Toloraya, a former member of the U.N. Panel of Experts, which was meant to monitor enforcement of the North Korea sanctions.

Russia earlier this year effectively abolished the U.N. panel – one of its boldest steps to unilaterally degrade the U.N. sanctions regime it once supported.

What North Korea wants

For Kim, Putin’s visit is meant to provide a boost in domestic legitimacy, especially amid North Korea’s increasingly public frictions with its main economic backer China, said Kim Gunn, who earlier this year stepped down as South Korea’s top nuclear envoy.

“North Koreans feel nervous about that, because their economy is 99% dependent on China,” said Kim, who is now a member of South Korea’s National Assembly. “Kim Jong Un’s answer is to say, ‘Don’t worry, we still have Russia.”

In the lawmaker’s view, Kim Jong Un also likely hopes that Putin’s visit will give him leverage with Chinese President Xi Jinping, creating a situation where both Russia and China vie for North Korea’s favor.

But, Kim Gunn added, the new Russia-North Korea relationship is likely a “marriage of convenience,” rather than a restoration of Soviet-era ties.

“Russia is not the former Soviet Union,” he said. “And Russia is at war in Ukraine – they are pouring all their energy into this war. There’s not so much room for Russia to do anything with North Korea.”
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The White House — President Joe Biden hosted NATO’s chief at the White House on Monday, less than a month before the newly enlarged security alliance convenes in Washington to tackle how allies will continue to support Ukraine as it battles Russia’s invasion.

The aim at the July summit, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said, is to “ensure predictable support to Ukraine for the long haul.”

But how to make that a solid and durable reality – amid the political baggage and diverse laws and systems of governance of all 32 NATO members – is likely to be a complex feat. Ukraine badly wants the one thing it most certainly won’t get at this three-day convening: to join.

Among the arguments against Ukraine’s NATO membership are that its fragile and developing institutions need more time to mature, and the fact that the nation is being currently invaded. The alliance’s most important tenet – Article 5 – says that an armed attack against one member is an attack on all. This has been invoked only once before, when members rushed to the U.S.’s defense after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Earlier Monday, VOA asked Stoltenberg how soon Ukraine would get its wish.

“It is difficult, of course, to invite Ukraine when there is a war going on,” he said. “On the other hand, it’s also hard to say that there is no way to do that as long as there is a conflict with Russia, because that (gives) Russia incentive to continue the conflict.

“So what we say is that we are going to move Ukraine closer by helping them to meet all NATO standards to be more and more interoperable with NATO by removing the requirements for Membership Action Plan, and also by deepening political cooperation in the NATO Ukraine Council, and then we will make a decision when the time is right,” Stoltenberg added.

And when pressed for when that time might be, he replied: “I don’t expect any dates. At the end of the day, this has to be negotiated among NATO allies and we are working on that language now. So that will be agreed when we meet in Washington in a few week’s time,” he said. “I expect that we will find an agreement on some language which sends a clear message about Ukraine’s membership perspectives and that Ukraine will become a member of the alliance.”

Biden, in welcoming Stoltenberg, hailed the 75th anniversary and touted what he cast as a victory: a “record number” of members, he said, are meeting NATO’s commitment to spend at least 2% of their GDP on defense.

“I think the lessons we’ve learned then, and about standing together to defend and deter aggression, have been consequential,” he said, seated beside Stoltenberg in the Oval Office. “And we’ve made NATO under your leadership larger, stronger and more united than it has ever been.”

Earlier Monday, Stoltenberg, the former Norwegian prime minister, said NATO allies have given “unprecedented” support to Ukraine. He estimates this will cost the alliance at least $45 billion per year going forward.

“At the (upcoming NATO) summit, I expect other leaders to agree for NATO to lead the coordination and provision of security assistance and training for Ukraine,” Stoltenberg said, speaking at the Wilson Center, a Washington think tank. “It is also why I proposed a long-term financial pledge with fresh funding every year. The more credible our long-term support, the quicker Moscow would realize it cannot wait us out and the sooner this war can end. It may seem like a paradox, but the path to peace is, therefore, more weapons for Ukraine.”

Analysts say these discussions set the stage for the major questions of the upcoming summit.

“The main issues, still, are what does the alliance say to Ukraine after pledges of support over the last few weeks? What is the nature of the NATO-Ukraine relationship going forward?” said Dan Hamilton, a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “NATO is taking over from the United States the military assistance and coordination of military training for Ukraine. That’s a major step that’s happening right now.”

Last week, Ukraine’s president praised a 10-year security agreement with the U.S., saying he believes it lays a path to NATO membership.

“The issue of NATO is covered through the text of the agreement,” said President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. “It states that America supports Ukraine’s future membership in NATO and recognizes that our security agreement is a bridge to Ukraine’s membership in NATO.”
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U.S. President Joe Biden hosted NATO’s chief on Monday, less than a month before the newly enlarged security alliance converges in Washington for its annual summit. At the White House, the two leaders spoke of how they will “ensure predictable support to Ukraine for the long haul.” VOA’s Anita Powell reports from the White House.
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washington — Washington and Seoul have expressed alarm about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s upcoming visit to Pyongyang, while Beijing says it has no intention of interfering with the cooperation between Russia and North Korea.

Putin will pay a state visit to North Korea on Tuesday and Wednesday, the North’s official KCNA news agency announced on Monday. His trip to Pyongyang will be followed by a two-day state visit to Vietnam, where discussions will touch on trade and economic cooperation, the Kremlin said Monday.

The South Korean Foreign Ministry said it opposes Moscow and Pyongyang deepening their military cooperation through Putin’s trip to the country.

“All cooperation and exchanges between Russia and North Korea will need to abide by relevant U.N. Security Council resolutions and contribute toward the peace and stability of the Korean Peninsula,” a spokesperson told VOA’s Korean Service on Monday.

Putin’s visit to the country, the first in 24 years, comes amid increased military cooperation between Moscow and Pyongyang.

North Korea has transferred approximately 10,000 containers that could hold nearly 5 million artillery shells to Russia to fight against Ukraine, South Korean Defense Minister Shin Won-sik said in an interview with Bloomberg News on Friday.   

All arms exports and imports by North Korea are sanctioned by the U.N. Security Council.

Both Pyongyang and Moscow have denied any arms dealings between them.

Putin’s trip to Pyongyang is expected to increase military cooperation that officially kicked off when North Korean leader Kim Jong Un visited Russia in September 2023. Kim invited Putin to Pyongyang during his visit to Russia.

“We discourage any government from receiving President Putin,” a State Department spokesperson told VOA’s Korean Service on June 12.

“If he is able to travel freely, it could normalize Russia’s blatant violations of international law and inadvertently send the message that atrocities can be committed in Ukraine and elsewhere with impunity,” the spokesperson said.

Deepening cooperation between Russia and North Korea poses concern for the Korean Peninsula as well as for Ukraine as it defends its “freedom and independence against Russia’s brutal war,” the spokesperson added.

After the International Criminal Court in The Hague issued an arrest warrant for Putin in March 2023 for Russia’s alleged war crimes in Ukraine since its unprovoked invasion of the country in February 2022, Putin is limited in his international travels to allied countries.

Since his new presidential term began in May, Putin has visited Belarus, China and Uzbekistan.

In the meantime, Liu Pengyu, a spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, told VOA on Thursday that “China has no intention [of] interfer[ing] with the exchange and cooperation between two sovereign countries.”

He said, “Both DPRK and Russia are China’s friendly neighbors.” North Korea’s official name is the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

China and Russia, both veto-wielding permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, have supported North Korea at council meetings held in the past several years by opposing new U.S.-led resolutions condemning North Korea’s ballistic missile launches banned by the U.N.

In March, Moscow vetoed a resolution granting the annual extension of a U.N. panel of experts that monitors sanctions on North Korea while Beijing abstained.

Michael Kimmage, who served on the U.S. State Department’s Policy Planning staff on Russia and Ukraine from 2014 to 2016, said, “Putin wishes to forge a long-term relationship with North Korea, and this would be reflected” in his visit to Pyongyang.

“Not only does North Korea supply Russia with weaponry to use in its war against Ukraine, but a more radical North Korea will pin the resources of Russia’s archenemy, the United States, in East Asia, helping to create a third zone of difficulty for Washington, in addition to Europe and the Middle East,” Kimmage said.

Kimmage, currently the chair at Catholic University of America’s history department, added that Russia’s other partner, China, may not want Pyongyang to be more provocative and may not be pleased with deepening ties between Moscow and Pyongyang.

Earlier this month, Putin threatened to arm the West’s adversaries with long-range missiles that could target the West in response to NATO members, including the U.S., allowing Ukraine to use Western-supplied weapons to target inside Russia.

Evans Revere, a former U.S. State Department official with extensive experience negotiating with North Korea, said Putin’s meeting with Kim in Pyongyang “could reveal the details of Russian support for North Korea.”

“Pyongyang is reportedly interested in missile guidance, engine and fuel technologies, avionics upgrades for its aircraft and assistance with its nuclear program,” he said.

Revere added, “Russia has a significant strategic and tactical interest in complicating the security calculus of the United States and its allies in Northeast Asia. Putin’s visit will soon demonstrate how far Moscow is prepared to go in pursuing that interest.”

VOA’s Soyoung Ahn contributed to this report.
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The European Union granted official candidate status to Georgia last year, but analysts say that led by the country’s richest man, the government has turned toward Russia following the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Critics warn that Georgia’s democratic future is at stake in October’s elections. Henry Ridgwell reports from Tbilisi.
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Nearly 80 of the countries represented at the Ukraine peace summit agreed that territorial integrity and the principles of international law and the U.N. charter should be the basis for peace talks to end Russia’s war on Ukraine. Eastern Europe bureau chief Myroslava Gongadze has the story from Switzerland. VOA footage and editing by Daniil Batushchak.
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MOSCOW — Russia will hold the espionage trial of detained U.S. reporter Evan Gershkovich behind closed doors later this month, a court in the city of Yekaterinburg said on Monday.

Gershkovich, 32, was detained by the Federal Security Service on March 29, 2023, in a steak house in Yekaterinburg on charges of espionage that carry up to 20 years in prison.

Gershkovich, the first American journalist to be detained on spy charges in Russia since the Cold War over three decades ago, denies collecting secrets for the CIA.

The FSB, the main successor to the Soviet-era KGB, said that Gershkovich was collecting secrets about Uralvagonzavod, a powerful Russian defense enterprise that is one of the world’s biggest battle tank producers.

“According to the investigation authorities, the American journalist of The Wall Street Journal, Gershkovich, on the instructions of the CIA, in March 2023, collected secret information in the Sverdlovsk region about the activities of the defense enterprise JSC NPK Uralvagonzavod for the production and repair of military equipment,” the Sverdlovsk Regional Court said.

“The process will take place behind closed doors.”

The first hearing is scheduled for June 26, the court said.

Gershkovich’s arrest shocked many Western news organizations and there are now almost no U.S. reporters in Russia, which is ranked by the State Department as a hardship posting on par with Freetown, Mogadishu, Damascus and Kabul.

Russia has said Gershkovich was caught “red-handed.”

President Vladimir Putin has said there has been contact with Washington about potentially exchanging Gershkovich for someone jailed in the West, but that such negotiations should be held away from the media.

The White House has called the charges “ridiculous,” and President Joe Biden has said Gershkovich’s detention is “totally illegal.”

The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones say that Gershkovich was simply doing his job in Russia and deny the espionage charges. The Journal and Dow have repeatedly demanded that Russia release him, thus far to no avail.

Uralvagonzavod, based in Nizhny Tagil, sits at the heart of the Urals region, where Russia conducts some of its most secret weapons production and research. It is part of Rostec, Russia’s vast defense corporation run by Putin ally Sergei Chemezov.

A fluent Russian-speaker born to Soviet émigrés and raised in New Jersey, Gershkovich moved to Moscow in late 2017 to join the English-language Moscow Times, and subsequently worked for the French news agency Agence France-Presse.

Gershkovich has appealed against his detention several times, appearing in the glass cages used for suspects in Russian courts. All of the appeals have been rejected.
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PARIS — France on Monday began less than a fortnight of frenetic election campaigning for snap polls called by President Emmanuel Macron to combat the far right, with star footballer Kylian Mbappe warning the country was at a historic crossroads.

Candidates had until Sunday evening to register for the 577 seats in the lower house National Assembly ahead of the official start of campaigning from midnight for the June 30 first round. The decisive second round takes place on July 7.

The alliance led by centrist Macron, who called the snap polls some three years early after the far right trounced his party in EU Parliament elections, is still lagging way behind with little chance of winning an outright majority itself.

Many in France, including ex-leaders, remain baffled over why Macron took the risk of calling an election that could see the far-right National Rally (RN) leading the government and its leader Jordan Bardella, 28, as prime minister.

One of the most high-profile of the last candidates to register was Marie-Caroline Le Pen, the elder sister of the RN’s three-time presidential candidate Marine Le Pen, who will stand for the party in the central Sarthe region.

Her daughter Nolwenn Olivier is Bardella’s ex-partner.

Mbappe, representing France at the Euro 2024 tournament in Germany, said he was “against extremes and divisive ideas” and urged young people to vote at a “crucial moment” in French history.

The striker defended comments made on Saturday by his teammate Marcus Thuram, saying he “had not gone too far” in calling on the country “to fight every day to stop” the RN winning the elections.

“Today we can all see that extremists are very close to winning power and we have the opportunity to choose the future of our country,” Mbappe said.

France’s men’s football team has long been seen as a beacon for diversity in the country. The French Football Federation has urged against “any form of pressure and political use of the French team”.

Macron’s dissolving of parliament after the French far right’s victory in the EU vote has swiftly redrawn the lines of French politics.

A new left-wing alliance, the New Popular Front that takes in Socialists and hard-leftists, faced its first crisis over the weekend after some prominent MPs from the hard-left France Unbowed (LFI) party found they had not been put forward to stand again.

But Adrien Quatennens, a close ally of LFI figurehead Jean-Luc Melenchon, withdrew his candidacy which had sparked anger due to a conviction for domestic violence.

On the right, the decision of Eric Ciotti, the leader of the Republicans (LR), to seek an election pact with the RN provoked fury inside the party and a move by its leadership to dismiss him, which a Paris court blocked on Friday.

Adding to the chaos, the LR’s executive is now fielding a candidate to stand against Ciotti in his home region of Nice.
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Dubai, UAE — Iran called upon the Group of Seven leaders Sunday to distance itself from “destructive policies of the past,” the Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanaani said, referring to a G7 statement condemning Iran’s recent nuclear program escalation.

On Friday, the G7 warned Iran against advancing its nuclear enrichment program and said it would be ready to enforce new measures if Tehran were to transfer ballistic missiles to Russia.

“Any attempt to link the war in Ukraine to the bilateral cooperation between Iran and Russia is an act with only biased political goals,” Kanaani said, adding that some countries are “resorting to false claims to continue sanctions” against Iran.

Last week, the U.N. nuclear watchdog’s 35-nation Board of Governors passed a resolution calling on Iran to step up cooperation with the watchdog and reverse its recent barring of inspectors.

Iran responded by rapidly installing extra uranium-enriching centrifuges at its Fordow site and begun setting up others, according to an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report.

Kanaani added Tehran would continue its “constructive interaction and technical cooperation” with the IAEA but called its resolution “politically biased.”

Iran is now enriching uranium to up to 60% purity, close to the 90% required for weapons grade — and has enough material enriched to that level, if enriched further, for three nuclear weapons — according to an IAEA yardstick.
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Stockholm — A Swede freed in a prisoner swap with Iran, 33-year-old EU diplomat Johan Floderus, said in his first words since his release that he was “in seventh heaven”, in a video published Sunday.

In the video obtained by AFP from the Swedish government, Floderus can be heard speaking to Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson by satellite phone while on a flight home from Iran on Saturday.

“I’m in the sky and I feel emotionally like I’m in seventh heaven. I’ve been waiting for this for almost 800 days,” an audibly exhilarated Floderus told a smiling Kristersson.

“I’ve dreamt of this day so many times,” he said, adding: “It’s beginning to sink in that I’ve left Iran’s airspace and am on my way home.”

Floderus could later be seen hugging his family members at Stockholm’s Arlanda airport after he landed, in images released by the Swedish government.

Floderus was arrested in Iran as he was about to return home from a holiday in April 2022. He was accused of espionage, for which he risked a death sentence.

He and another Swedish national, Saeed Azizi, were released on Saturday in exchange for Hamid Noury, a 63-year-old Iranian former prisons official handed a life sentence in Sweden in 2022 for his role in mass killings in Iranian jails in 1988.

A Swedish court had convicted Noury of “grave breaches of international humanitarian law and murder”. He had said he was on leave during the period in question.

Swedish officials have defended their decision to issue a pardon for Noury, amid criticism from exiled Iranians in Sweden, among others.

“Under normal circumstances, Hamid Noury should have served his prison sentence,” Justice Minister Gunnar Strommer told reporters late Saturday.

“On the other hand, we had an exceptional situation, with two Swedish citizens detained in Iran on arbitrary grounds, with the risk of a death sentence in one of the cases.”

“This was a difficult decision, but one the government had to take,” Strommer said.

Another Swede, dual national and academic Ahmad Reza Jalali, has been on death row in Iran since 2017 after being convicted of espionage.

His wife has criticized the Swedish government for not including him in the prisoner swap.

Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billstrom said Stockholm had tried to secure his release, but Tehran refused to discuss his case as it does not recognize dual nationality.

“Unfortunately, Iran refuses to recognize him as a Swedish citizen,” Billstrom said.
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Berlin — German police said Sunday they shot and wounded a man who was threatening them with an axe and a firebomb in the northern city of Hamburg, hours before it hosted a match in the Euro 2024 soccer tournament. 

Police officers opened fire after the man refused to lay down the ax, hitting him in the leg, German news agency dpa reported, citing Hamburg police. German media published images of a person lying in the street surrounded by paramedics and police officers. 

The incident occurred in the downtown St. Pauli area of the northern port city, which was thronged with fans ahead of Sunday’s soccer match between the Netherlands and Poland. 

The police spokesman said there was no initial indication that the incident was related to the soccer game. 

German authorities have put police on high alert during the tournament, which began on Friday and runs through July 14, for fear of possible fan violence and terrorist attacks. 

On Friday, police shot to death an Afghan man after he fatally attacked a compatriot and later wounded three people watching the televised game between Germany and Scotland in a town in eastern Germany. Police said Sunday that the motive for that attack was still unclear. 
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London — The UK general election is being watched closely after stark warnings that rapid advancements in cyber-tech, particularly AI, and increasing friction between major nations threaten the integrity of 2024’s landmark votes.

“These rogue and unregulated technological advances pose an enormous threat to us all. They can be weaponized to discriminate, disinform and divide,” the head of Amnesty International Agnes Callamard said in April.

The UK election on July 4 — four months before the United States — will be seen as the “guinea pig” for election security, said Bruce Snell, cyber-security strategist at US firm Qwiet AI, which uses AI to prevent cyber-attacks.

While AI has grabbed most of the headlines, more traditional cyber-attacks remain a major threat.

“It’s misinformation, it’s disruption of parties, it’s leakage of data and attacking specific individuals,” said Ram Elboim, head of cyber-security firm Sygnia and a former senior operative at Israel’s 8200 cyber and intelligence unit.

State actors are expected to be the main threat, with the UK already issuing warnings about China and Russia.

“The main things are maybe to promote specific candidates or agendas,” said Elboim.

“The second is creating some kind of internal instability or chaos, something that will impact the public feeling.”

The UK has an advantage over the United States due to the short time period between announcing and holding the election, giving attackers little time to develop and execute plans, said Elboim.

It is also less vulnerable to attacks on election infrastructure as voting is not automated, he added.

Deepfakes

But hacking of institutions remains a threat, and the UK has already accused China of being behind an attack on the Electoral Commission. 

“You don’t have to disrupt the main voting system,” explained Elboim. “For example, if you disrupt a party, their computers or a third party that affects that party, that’s something that might have an impact.” 

Individuals are most at risk of being targeted, he added. Any embarrassing information could be used to blackmail candidates.

But it is more likely the attacker will simply leak information to shape public opinion or use the hacked account to impersonate the victim and spread misinformation.

Former Conservative party leader Iain Duncan Smith, a fierce Beijing critic, has already claimed that Chinese state actors have impersonated him online, sending fake emails to politicians around the world.

However, it is the increased scope for using AI to create and distribute misinformation that is the real unknown quantity in this year’s elections, said Snell.

The spread of “deepfakes” — fake videos, pictures or audio — is of prime concern.

“The levels of potential for fakery are just tremendous. It’s something that we definitely didn’t have in the last election,” said Snell, calling the UK a “guinea pig” for 2024’s votes.

He highlighted software that can recreate someone’s voice from a 30-second sample, and how that could be abused.

Labour’s health spokesman Wes Streeting has said he was a victim of deepfake audio, in which he appeared to insult a colleague.

Bot farms

Snell advised authorities to focus on a “shortcut” solution of “getting awareness out there, having people understand that this is the issue.”

Other software can be used to make fake pictures and videos, despite filters on many AI applications designed to prevent the depiction of real people.

“AI is, while very sophisticated, also extremely easy to fool” into creating images of real people, said Snell.

AI is also being used to create “bots”, which automatically flood social media with comments to shape public opinion.

“The bots used to be really easy to spot. You’d see things like the same message being repeated and parroted by multiple accounts,” said Snell.

“But with the sophistication of AI now… it’s very easy to generate a bot farm that can have 1,000 bots and every one have a varying style of communication,” he added.

While software already exists to check if videos and pictures have been generated using AI to a “high level of competency”, they are not yet used widely enough to curb the problem.

Snell believes that the AI industry and social media firms should therefore take responsibility for curbing misinformation “because we’re in a brave new world where the lawmakers have no idea what’s going on.”
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ALGIERS, Algeria — France has twice rejected visa applications from Nabil Tabarout, a 29-year-old web developer from Algeria who hopes this year to visit his sister there.

He’s among the many people navigating the often-arduous visa process throughout Africa, which faces higher visa rejection rates than anywhere else in the world when it comes to visiting Europe’s Schengen Area. Appointments are often difficult to secure. Applicants often must prove a minimum bank balance, substantiate the purpose of their visit and prove they plan to return home.

“That’s how it is. Every pleasure deserves pain,” said Tabarout, who has succeeded just once in obtaining a French visa.

Though much of Europe’s debate about migration centers on people who arrive without authorization, many more people choose to come by legal means. It’s painful, then, to discover that following the rules often fails.

The disproportionate rejection rates — 10% higher in Africa than the global average — hinder trade, business and educational partnerships at the expense of African economies, according to an April study from U.K.-based migration consultancy firm Henley & Partners.

The study called the practices discriminatory and urged Schengen countries to reform them.

Nowhere are applicants more rejected than in Algeria, where more than 392,000 applicants were rejected in 2022. The 45.8% rejection rate is followed by a 45.2% rejection rate in Guinea-Bissau and 45.1% in Nigeria.

Only one in 25 applicants living in the United States were rejected.

While the study found that applicants from poorer countries experienced higher rejections in general, it noted that applicants from Turkey and India experienced fewer rejection than applicants from the majority of African countries.

The reasons for that anti-Africa bias could be political, according to the study’s author, Mehari Taddele Maru of the European University Institute’s Migration Policy Center. Visa rejections are used as a political tool by European governments, including France, to negotiate the deportation of those who migrate to Europe without proper authorization. North African governments have refused to provide consular documents for their citizens facing deportation.

In an interview, Maru said Algeria has continent-high rejection rates because its number of applicants outpaces those from other African countries for geographic, economic and historical reasons. Many Algerians apply for visas in France, where they speak the language and may have family ties. And North Africa’s proximity to Europe means flights are short and cheap compared to flights from sub-Saharan Africa, leading more people to apply, he said.

Beyond rejection rates, the difficulty of applying is also a policy choice by European governments, Maru said. “When we talk about increasing barriers for potential applicants, it’s not only the rate of rejections, it’s also the restrictions to apply.”

That means the challenges can be local too.

For Algerians like Tabarout, VFS Global is a new player in the visa application process. The subcontractor was hired by French consular authorities after years of criticism about the previous system being dominated by a so-called “visa mafia.”

Applicants previously faced challenges securing time slots, which are quickly reserved by third-party brokers and then resold to the public — similar to how scalpers have dominated concert platforms. Rumors swirled about intricate computer programs connecting to appointment platforms and gobbling up slots within moments.

“They’re a bunch of swindlers who’ve been at it for years, making fortunes on the backs of poor citizens by making them pay dearly to make an appointment to apply for a visa,” asserted Ali Challali, who recently helped his daughter submit a French student visa application.

Under the previous system, applicants told The Associated Press they had to pay 15,000 to 120,000 Algerian dinars (103 to 825 euros) just to get an appointment.

In Algeria, many decide to pursue opportunities in France after not finding adequate economic opportunities at home or seek residency after going to French universities on student visas. According to a 2023 report from France’s Directorate General for Foreign Nationals, 78% of Algerian students “say they have no intention of returning to Algeria” upon finishing their studies.

The visa issue has historically been a cause of political tensions between the countries. Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune is scheduled to visit France later this year.

“Everything that can contribute to increasing trade between France, Europe and Algeria must be facilitated in both directions,” French Ambassador Stephane Ramotet said at a recent economic conference in Algiers. “Algerians who want to go to France to develop a business must be able to benefit from all the facilities, particularly visas.”
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chicago, illinois — Vacationing in Chicago this week from Europe, Jelle den Burger and Nirusa Naguleswaran grabbed a bite at the Dog House Grill: a classic Italian beef sandwich for him, grilled cheese for her. 

Both think the way their genders lined up with their food choices was no coincidence. Women, said Naguleswaran, are simply more likely to ditch meat, and to care about how their diet affects the environment and other people. 

“I don’t want to put it in the wrong way, that male people feel attacked,” said Naguleswaran, of Netherlands, laughing. She said she used to love eating meat, but giving it up for climate reasons was more important to her. “We just have it in our nature to care about others.” 

Now, scientists can say more confidently than ever that gender and meat-eating preferences are linked. A paper out in Nature Scientific Reports this week shows that the difference is nearly universal across cultures — and that it’s even more pronounced in countries that are more developed. 

Researchers already knew men in some countries ate more meat than women did. And they knew that people in wealthier countries ate more meat overall. But the latest findings suggest that when men and women have the social and financial freedom to make choices about their diets, they diverge from each other even more, with men eating more meat and women eating less. 

That’s important because about 20% of planet-warming global greenhouse gas emissions come from animal-based food products, according to earlier research from the University of Illinois. The researchers behind the new report think their findings could fine-tune efforts to persuade people to eat less meat and dairy. 

“Anything that one could do to reduce meat consumption in men would have a greater impact, on average, than among women,” said Christopher Hopwood, a professor of psychology at the University of Zurich and one of the authors of the paper. The work drew on surveys funded by Mercy for Animals, a nonprofit dedicated to ending animal agriculture. Hopwood said he is not affiliated with the organization and is not an advocate. 

Researchers ask what thousands eat

The researchers asked over 28,000 people in 23 countries on four continents how much of various types of food they ate every day, then calculated the average land animal consumption by gender identity in each country. They used the United Nations Human Development Index, which measures health, education and standard of living, to rank how “developed” each country was, and also looked at the Global Gender Gap Index, a scale of gender equality published by the World Economic Forum. 

They found that, with three exceptions — China, India and Indonesia — gender differences in meat consumption were higher in countries with higher development and gender equality scores. 

The large number and cultural diversity of people surveyed is “a real strength of this,” said Daniel Rosenfeld, a social psychologist at UCLA who studies eating behavior and moral psychology and was not involved in the study. 

The study did not answer the question of why men tend to eat more meat, but scientists have some theories. One is that evolutionarily, women may have been hormonally hardwired to avoid meat that could possibly have been contaminated, affecting pregnancy, whereas men may have sought out meat proteins given their history as hunters in some societies. 

But even the idea of men as hunters is intertwined with culture, Rosenfeld said. That’s a good example of another theory, which is that societal norms shape gender identity from an early age and thus how people decide to fill their plates. 

‘I’m going to eat more’

Rosenfeld, who said he stopped eating meat about 10 years ago, said his own experience hanging out in college “as a guy hanging out with other guy friends” illustrated the cultural pressure for men to eat meat. “If they’re all eating meats and I decide not to,” he said, “it can disrupt the natural flow of social situations.” 

The same cultural factors that shape gender influence how people respond to new information, said Carolyn Semmler, a professor of psychology at the University of Adelaide in Australia who also studies meat eating and social factors such as gender. Semmler was not involved in this study. In some of her past work, she’s studied cognitive dissonance around eating meat. 

In those cases, she said, women presented with information about poor animal welfare in the livestock industry were more likely to say they would reduce their meat consumption. But men tended to go the other direction, she said. 

“One participant said to me, ‘I think you guys are trying to get me to eat less meat, so I’m going to eat more,'” she said. 

Semmler said meat can be important to masculine identity, noting for example the popular notion of men at the grill. And she said presenting eating less meat as a moral cause can be a sensitive issue. Still, she said, people should be aware of how their food choices affect the planet. 

But she and Hopwood acknowledged how difficult it is to change behavior. 

“Men are a tough nut to crack,” Hopwood said. 

Jose Lopez, another diner at the Dog House Grill, said he thought men should eat less meat but said that in general he has observed otherwise. 

“We’re carnivores,” he said. “Men eat like savages.” 
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athens, greece — A missing Dutch tourist was found dead early Saturday on the eastern Greek island of Samos, local media reported, the latest in a string of recent cases in which tourists in the Greek islands have died or gone missing. Some, if not all, had set out on hikes in blistering hot temperatures. 

Dr. Michael Mosley, a noted British television anchor and author, was found dead last Sunday on the island of Symi. A coroner concluded Mosley had died the previous Wednesday, shortly after going for a hike over difficult, rocky terrain. 

Samos, like Symi, lies very close to the Turkish coast. 

The body of the 74-year-old Dutch tourist was found by a Fire Service drone lying face down in a ravine about 300 meters (330 yards) from the spot where he was last observed Sunday, walking with some difficulty in the blistering heat. 

Authorities were still searching for four people reported missing in the past few days. 

On Friday, two French tourists were reported missing on Sikinos, a relatively secluded Cyclades island in the Aegean Sea, with less than 400 permanent residents. 

The two women, aged 73 and 64, had left their respective hotels to meet. 

A 70-year-old American tourist was reported missing Thursday on the small island of Mathraki in Greece’s northwest extremity by his host, a Greek-American friend. The tourist had last been seen Tuesday at a cafe in the company of two female tourists who have since left the island. 

Mathraki, population 100, is a 3.9-square-kilometer (1.2-square-mile) heavily wooded island, west of the better-known island of Corfu. Strong winds had prevented police and the fire service from reaching the island to search for the missing person as of Saturday afternoon, media reported. 

On the island of Amorgos, authorities were still searching for a 59-year-old tourist reported missing since Tuesday, when he had gone on a solo hike in very hot conditions. 

U.S. media identified the missing tourist as retired Los Angeles County Deputy Sheriff Albert Calibet of Hermosa Beach, California. 

Amorgos, the easternmost of the Cyclades islands, is a rocky 122-square-kilometer (47-square-mile) island of less than 2,000 inhabitants. A couple of years ago the island had a record number of visitors, over 100,000. 

Some media commentary has focused on the need to inform tourists of the dangers of setting off on hikes in intense heat. 

Temperatures across Greece on Saturday were more than 10 degrees Celsius (18 Fahrenheit) lower than on Thursday, when they peaked at almost 45 C (113 F). They are expected to rise again from Sunday, although not to heat-wave levels.  
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