An antitrust advocate says Congress and the next president of the United States should address the issue.

Shein and Temu have spent billions of dollars on online American advertising with social media companies such as Meta, parent of Facebook and Instagram, and Google to promote cheap products in their online marketplaces. Items listed for sale include beauty products for young women and girls for as low as a penny, and kids’ clothing for less than $10, well below average American direct-to-consumer merchants’ prices such as those found at Amazon and other outlets.

But they mostly avoid U.S. import tariffs on Chinese goods because the threshold for assessing such taxes is $800 or more, according to a report from the U.S. House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party. Shein’s terms of service for U.S. consumers limit daily orders to $800.

“Chinese retailers appear to be avoiding tariffs by pricing individual units at absurdly low prices. Don’t get me wrong—low prices are the aim of a healthy, competitive market,” Robert H. Bork Jr., president of the Antitrust Education Project, told The Center Square. “But these prices are not the result of economic competition. They are the result of intentional economic warfare. As a result, they are exploiting our economy and effectively doing it tariff-free.”

This week, Commissioners Peter A. Feldman and Douglas Dziak of the Consumer Product Safety Commission issued a joint statement calling for the agency to investigate the two retailers after reading in media reports “that deadly baby and toddler products are easy to find on these platforms.”

In April, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., asked U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to investigate Shein and Temu and add them to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act list of violators, as The Center Square previously reported.

“It is past time for the Forced Labor Enforcement Task Force to begin adding entities to the UFLPA exporter list,” Rubio said. “Private firms and journalists have unearthed compelling evidence that both Shein and Temu are facilitating the entry of goods made with Uyghur forced labor.”

The two U.S. presidential candidates on the ballot in November — former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris — have said on the campaign trail they will be stricter with Chinese goods entering the country.

Bork said whoever wins the election should stick to their word.

“While inflation is hurting American companies like the Dollar Store, Chinese Communist Party-backed Shein and Temu enjoy state backing to dump cheap products on our market,” Bork said. “The next president and Congress must decide whether they actually want to enforce Chinese tariffs and close the Shein/Temu loophole, or if they want to keep the current policy of tariffs in name only.”

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — Pope Francis wrapped up his visit to Indonesia on Friday after celebrating Mass before an overflow crowd of 100,000, a final celebration before heading to Papua New Guinea for the second leg of his 11-day journey through Southeast Asia and Oceania.

The 87-year-old pope had no official events Friday beyond a farewell ceremony and the six-hour flight to Port Moresby, giving him something of a break after a packed three-day program in Jakarta.

The visit culminated with a jubilant Mass on Thursday afternoon before a crowd that filled two sports stadiums and an overflowed into a parking lot.

“Don’t tire of dreaming and of building a civilization of peace,” Francis urged them in an ad-libbed homily. “Be builders of hope. Be builders of peace.”

The Vatican had originally expected the Mass would draw some 60,000 people, and organizers predicted 80,000. But the Vatican spokesman quoted local organizers as saying more than 100,000 had attended.

“i feel very lucky compared to other people who can’t come here or even had the intention to come here,” said Vienna Frances Florensius Basol, who came with her husband and a group of 40 people from Sabah, Malaysia but couldn’t get into the stadium.

“Even though we are outside with other Indonesians, seeing the screen, I think I am lucky enough,” she said from a parking lot, where a giant TV screen was erected for anyone who didn’t have tickets for the service.

While in Indonesia, Francis sought to encourage the country’s 8.9 million Catholics, who make up just 3% of the population of 275 million, while also seeking to boost interfaith ties with the country boasting the world’s largest Muslim population.

In the highlight of the visit, Francis and the grand imam of Jakarta’s Istiqlal Mosque, Southeast Asia’s largest, signed a joint declaration pledging to work to end religiously inspired violence and protect the environment.

In Papua New Guinea, Francis’ agenda is aligned with more of his social justice priorities. The poor, strategically important South Pacific nation is home to more than 10 million people, most of whom are subsistence farmers.

Francis will be travelling to remote Vanimo to check in on some Catholic missionaries from his native Argentina who are trying to spread the Catholic faith to a largely tribal people who also practice pagan and Indigenous traditions.

The country, the South Pacific’s most populous after Australia, has more than 800 Indigenous languages and has been riven by tribal conflicts over land for centuries, with conflicts becoming more and more lethal in recent decades.

History’s first Latin American pope will likely refer to the need to find harmony among tribal groups while visiting, the Vatican said. Another possible theme is the country’s fragile ecosystem, its rich natural resources at risk of exploitation and the threat posed by climate change.

The Papua New Guinean government has blamed extraordinary rainfall for a massive landslide in May that buried a village in Enga province. The government said more than 2,000 people were killed, while the United Nations estimated the death toll at 670.

Francis becomes only the second pope to visit Papua New Guinea, after St. John Paul II touched down in 1984 during one of his lengthy, globetrotting voyages. Then, John Paul paid tribute to the Catholic missionaries who had already been trying for a century to bring the faith to the country.

Papua New Guinea, a Commonwealth nation that was a colony of nearby Australia until independence in 1975, is the second leg of Francis’ four-nation trip. In the longest and farthest voyage of his papacy, Francis will also visit East Timor and Singapore before returning to the Vatican on Sept. 13.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department has charged a Russian-born U.S. citizen and former adviser to Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign with working for a sanctioned Russian state television network and laundering the proceeds.

Indictments announced Thursday allege that Dimitri Simes and his wife received over $1 million dollars and a personal car and driver in exchange for work they did for Russia’s Channel One since June 2022. The network was sanctioned by the U.S. in 2022 over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Simes, 76, and his wife, Anastasia Simes, have a home in Huntly, Virginia, and are believed to be in Russia.

“These defendants allegedly violated sanctions that were put in place in response to Russia’s illegal aggression in Ukraine,” U.S. Attorney Matthew M. Graves said in a statement announcing the charges. “Such violations harm our national security interests — a fact that Dimitri Simes, with the deep experience he gained in national affairs after fleeing the Soviet Union and becoming a U.S. citizen, should have uniquely appreciated.”

The indictments come at a time of renewed concern about Russian efforts to meddle with the upcoming U.S. election using online disinformation and propaganda. On Wednesday federal authorities announced charges against two employees of the Russian media organization RT accused of covertly funding a Tennessee company that produced pro-Russian content.

Simes and the Washington think tank he led, the Center for the National Interest, figured prominently in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and potential ties to the Trump campaign.

The report chronicles interactions that the Soviet-born Simes, who immigrated to the U.S. in the 1970s, had with assorted figures in Trump’s orbit, including Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.

Before one such meeting, according to the Mueller report, Simes sent Kushner a letter detailing potential talking points for Trump about Russia and also passed along derogatory information about Bill Clinton that was then forwarded to other representatives of the campaign.

Simes’s think tank, which was founded by former President Richard Nixon, helped arrange a foreign policy speech at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington at which Simes introduced Trump, according to the report. Among those present was Sergei Kislyak, then the Russian ambassador to the U.S.

Simes was never charged with any crime in relation to the investigation.

After the report was released, Simes defended himself in an interview in The Washington Post: “I did not see anything in the Mueller report that in any way that would indicate any questionable activity on my part or on the center’s part.”

A second indictment alleges that Anastasia Simes, 55, received funds from sanctioned Russian businessman Alexander Udodov. Udodov was sanctioned last year for his support for the Russian government. He is the former brother-in-law of Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin and has been linked to business dealings with both of them. Udodov also has been investigated for money laundering.

It was not immediately clear if either defendant had a lawyer who could speak on their behalf. An attorney who previously represented Simes said he was no longer representing him. The Trump campaign did not immediately return a message seeking comment Thursday.

In an interview with The New York Times before the charges were announced, Simes, who appears regularly on Channel One, defended the work he was doing.

“I assumed that what I was saying on Russian TV would not be to the liking of the Biden administration, but I also assumed that as long as it was just my opinion and was presented as such, it was not something for which I could be prosecuted,” he told the newspaper.

Olympic runner Rebecca Cheptegei’s horrific death after being doused with petrol and set on fire by her boyfriend has again brought to the fore Kenya’s harrowing history of domestic violence against female athletes.

Her killing follows the deaths of at least two other high-profile female runners in cases of domestic violence in the last three years in a region that has produced dozens of Olympic and world champions.

What happened to Cheptegei?

Cheptegei, who was from Uganda, died on Thursday at age 33. Police say Cheptegei’s boyfriend poured a can of petrol over her and set her on fire during a dispute on Sunday. She suffered 80% burns on her body and died in a hospital in the town of Eldoret four days later.

The boyfriend was also burned in the attack and is being treated at the same hospital. No criminal charges have yet been announced against him.

Cheptegei competed in the women’s marathon at the Paris Olympics less than a month ago, finishing in 44th place. She lived in western Kenya’s famous high-altitude training region that draws the best distance runners from across the world and had recently built a house there to be close to the training centers.

Agnes Tirop

The brutal slaying of Kenyan star runner Tirop in the same region in 2021 led to an outpouring of anger from fellow athletes and prompted the East African country’s athletics authorities to acknowledge the scourge of domestic abuse as a major problem.

Tirop was one of Kenya’s brightest talents when she was stabbed to death at her home in Iten, the other world-renowned distance-running training town in Kenya, alongside Eldoret. Her husband, who was on the run, was arrested days after the killing and has been charged with murder. His court case is still underway.

Like Cheptegei, the 25-year-old Tirop had just competed at an Olympics — the 2021 Tokyo Games — and had set a new world record in the 10-kilometer road race in another competition a month before she was killed. Her body was found with stab wounds to the stomach and neck, as well as blunt trauma injury to her head.

In the weeks after Tirop’s death, current and former male and female athletes, spoke out over what they said was a long-running problem of domestic abuse against female athletes in the region. Some marched through the streets of Iten to demand better protection for female athletes and stricter laws against abusers.

Other Kenyan athletes like Ruth Bosibori, a former African champion in the steeplechase, and Joan Chelimo, a marathon runner, said Tirop’s killing had emboldened them to talk about their own abusive relationships.

Both said they had escaped violent partners that made them fear for their lives.

Damaris Muthee

Just six months after Tirop, another runner was killed. Kenyan-born Muthee, who competed for Bahrain, was found dead in a house in Iten after being strangled. Her decomposing body had been there for days before it was found, authorities said at the time.

A male Ethiopian runner with whom she was in a relationship was charged with murder. Muthee, who was 28, had a young child from another relationship.

The cases of domestic abuse in Kenya’s running community are set against the country’s overriding high rates of violence against women, which has prompted marches by ordinary citizens in towns and cities this year.

Activists say successful female athletes may be especially vulnerable in instances when their partners want to control their money and assets in an impoverished region and the women refuse and push back.

Police said Cheptegei was killed in a dispute with her boyfriend over the land she had just built a house on.

Samuel Wanjiru

One of Kenya’s best male athletes also died in what authorities said was a domestic dispute in 2011. Wanjiru was 24 and at the time the reigning Olympic marathon champion. He fell to his death from a balcony at his home during an argument with his wife.

He had been arrested a year earlier and questioned by police for allegedly threatening to kill his wife with an assault rifle. He denied the allegations.

Although Kenyan authorities ruled Wanjiru died after falling or jumping from the balcony, his family claimed that he was killed.

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MEXICO CITY (AP) — A global human rights watchdog on Wednesday implicated Venezuelan security forces and pro-government armed groups in killings that occurred during the protests that followed the country’s disputed July presidential election.

Human Rights Watch, in a report detailing repressive measures the government unleashed after the vote, asserted that credible evidence gathered and analyzed by researchers, forensic pathologists and arms experts ties Venezuela’s national guard and national police to some of the 24 killings that took place as people protested the outcome of the election. The organization also concluded that violent gangs aligned with the ruling party also “appear to be responsible” in some of the deaths.

Twenty-three of those killed were protesters or bystanders and one was a member of the Bolivarian National Guard.

“The repression we are seeing in Venezuela is shockingly brutal,” Juanita Goebertus, the organization’s director for the Americas, said in a statement. “Concerned governments need to take urgent steps to ensure that people are able to peacefully protest and that their vote is respected.”

The organization said it reached its conclusions regarding the killings based on interviews with witnesses, journalists and other sources; reviews of death certificates, videos, photographs; and analyses by forensic pathologists and arms experts.

Thousands of people, including minors, took to the streets across Venezuela hours after ruling party-loyal electoral authorities declared President Nicolás Maduro the winner of the election. The protests were largely peaceful, but demonstrators also toppled statues of Maduro’s predecessor, the late fiery leader Hugo Chávez, threw rocks at law enforcement officers and buildings, and burned police motorcycles and government propaganda.

Maduro and his ruling party allies, who controlled all aspects of government in the South American government, responded to the demonstrations with full force, carrying out arbitrary detentions, prosecutions as well as a campaign that encourages people to report relatives, neighbors and other acquaintances who participated in the protests or cast doubt on the results.

Among the killings detailed in the Human Rights Watch report is that of civil engineer and food truck worker Rancés Daniel Yzarra Bolívar. The organization said Yzarra Bolívar, 30, participated in the July 29 protests in the northern Venezuela city of Maracay.

A journalist told researchers the demonstration was initially peaceful, and a different witness reported protesters called for soldiers at a military compound to join them. A soldier instructed them to leave, and some did.

Researchers verified videos showing peaceful protesters as well as riot gear-clad National Guard officers arriving at the demonstration. Another video, which researchers geolocated to about 150 meters (490 feet) from the military facility, shows smoke near the compound and a person is heard saying it was 5:37 p.m. and officers were throwing tear gas to disperse demonstrators.

“At approximately 6 p.m., a bullet hit Yzarra Bolívar on the left side of his chest, a person close to him said,” according to the report. “Human Rights Watch analyzed and geolocated four videos showing Yzarra Bolívar injured and unconscious. In one verified video, taken by a journalist at 5:50 p.m. and posted 20 minutes later, two protesters are seen carrying Yzarra Bolívar to a location approximately 150 meters from the military compound. Other protesters are heard shouting ‘they killed him.’”

In the days after the election, Venezuelan security forces rounded up more than 2,000 people, including dozens of children, journalists, political leaders, campaign staffers and an attorney defending protesters. One local activist livestreamed her arrest by military intelligence officers as they broke into her home with a crowbar.

“Maduro and Attorney General Tarek Saab have said publicly that those arrested were responsible for violent events, terrorism, and other crimes,” Human Rights Watch said in the report. “However, Human Rights Watch repeatedly found cases of people arrested for just criticizing the government or participating in peaceful protests.”

The group said those arrested often have been kept incommunicado for weeks and most have been denied the right to hire a lawyer.

Unlike in previous presidential elections, the National Electoral Council did not release vote tallies backing Maduro’s claim to victory. But the main opposition coalition obtained vote tallies from more than 80% of the electronic voting machines used in the election and said its candidate, González, defeated Maduro by a 2-to-1 margin.

The lack of transparency over the results, coupled with widespread arrests that followed the anti-government protests, has drawn global condemnation against Maduro and his allies. The criticism grew Monday after a judge approved a prosecutor’s request for an arrest warrant for González.

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TAMPA, Fla. (AP) — Trial began Tuesday in Florida for four activists accused of illegally acting as Russian agents to help the Kremlin sow political discord and interfere in U.S. elections.

All four are or were affiliated with the African People’s Socialist Party and Uhuru Movement, which has locations in St. Petersburg, Florida, and St. Louis. Among those charged is Omali Yeshitela, the 82-year-old chairman of the U.S.-based organization focused on Black empowerment and the effort to obtain reparations for slavery and what it considers the past genocide of Africans.

In an opening statement, Yeshitela attorney Ade Griffin said the group shared many goals of a Russian organization called the Anti-Globalization Movement of Russia but was not acting under control of that nation’s government.

“Ladies and gentlemen, that simply is not true,” Griffin told a racially mixed jury. “This is a case about censorship.”

Yeshitela and two others face charges of conspiracy to defraud the U.S. and failing to register with the Justice Department as agents of a foreign government. The fourth defendant, who later founded a separate group in Atlanta called Black Hammer, faces only the conspiracy charge. They have all pleaded not guilty.

Three Russians, two of whom prosecutors say are Russian intelligence agents, are also charged in the case but have not been arrested.

Although there are some echoes of claims that Russia meddled in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, U.S. District Judge William Jung said those issues are not part of this case.

“This trial will not address Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election,” Jung said in an order dated Monday.

In his opening statement, Justice Department attorney Menno Goedman said the group’s members acted under Russian direction to stage protests in 2016 claiming Black people have been victims of genocide in the U.S. and took other actions for the following six years that would benefit Russia, including opposition to U.S. policy in the Ukraine war.

“This is about dividing Americans, dividing communities, turning neighbor against neighbor,” Goedman told jurors. “The defendants acted at the direction of the Russian government to sow division right here in the U.S.”

That included support for a St. Petersburg City Council candidate in 2019 that the Russians claimed to “supervise,” according to the criminal indictment. The candidate lost that race and has not been charged in the case.

Much of the alleged cooperation involved support for Russian’s invasion of Ukraine. In March 2022, Yeshitela held a news conference in which he said the “African People’s Socialist Party calls for unity with Russia in its defensive war in Ukraine against the world colonial powers.” He also called for the independence of the Russian-occupied Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine.

The defense attorneys, however, said despite their connections to the Russian organization, the actions taken by the African People’s Socialist Party and Uhuru Movement were aligned precisely with what they have advocated for more than 50 years. Yeshitela founded the organization in 1972 as a Black empowerment group opposed to vestiges of colonialism around the world.

“They shared some common beliefs,” said attorney Leonard Goodman, who represents defendant Penny Hess. “That makes them threatening.”

Yeshitela, Hess and fellow defendant Jesse Nevel face up to 15 years in prison if convicted of the conspiracy and foreign agent registration charge. The fourth defendant, Augustus Romain, could get a maximum of five years if convicted of the registration count.

The trial is expected to last up to four weeks.

A former New York state government official who worked for former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and current Gov. Kathy Hochul was charged Tuesday with acting as an undisclosed agent of the Chinese government, federal prosecutors revealed in a sprawling indictment.

Linda Sun, who held numerous posts in New York state government before rising to the rank of deputy chief of staff for Hochul, was arrested Tuesday morning along with her husband, Chris Hu, at their $3.5 million home on Long Island.

Prosecutors said Sun, at the request of Chinese officials, blocked representatives of the Taiwanese government from having access to the governor’s office, shaped New York governmental messaging to align with the priorities of the Chinese government and attempted to facilitate a trip to China for a high-level politician in New York, the indictment said. Hu is charged with money laundering conspiracy, conspiracy to commit bank fraud and misuse of means of identification.

In return, she and her husband received benefits including help for Hu’s China-based business activities and undisclosed tickets to performances by visiting Chinese orchestra and ballet groups, the indictment says. A Chinese government official’s personal chef prepared “Nanjing-style salted ducks” that were delivered to Sun’s parents’ home, it adds.

The couple then laundered the financial proceeds, using them to buy their property in Manhasset, a condominium in Hawaii for $1.9 million, and luxury cars including a 2024 Ferrari, the indictment says.

“As alleged, while appearing to serve the people of New York as Deputy Chief of Staff within the New York State Executive Chamber, the defendant and her husband actually worked to further the interests of the Chinese government and the CCP,” United States Attorney Breon Peace said. “The illicit scheme enriched the defendant’s family to the tune of millions of dollars.”

A lawyer for Sun, Seth DuCharme, did not immediately return an email seeking comment. Sun and Hu are expected to make an initial court appearance Tuesday afternoon, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn said.

The indictment outlines a series of exchanges Sun had with officials in the Chinese Consulate in New York in January 2021, when Cuomo was still governor and Hochul was lieutenant governor. Neither leader is named in the document, but are instead referred to as “Politician-1” and “Politician-2.”

After Chinese officials requested a Lunar New Year video from the governor, Sun said Hochul could probably do it and asked for “talking points of things you want her to mention.”

“Mostly holiday wishes and hope for friendship and cooperation / Nothing too political,” an official told her, according to the indictment.

Sun later told a different official that she had argued with Hochul’s speechwriter over the draft, because the speechwriter insisted on mentioning the “Uyghur situation” in China. She promised that she wouldn’t let that happen, and the final speech did not mention the Muslim ethnic minority, according to the indictment.

The FBI searched the couple’s $3.5 million home in Manhasset in late July but declined to release details at the time.

Sun worked in state government for about 15 years, holding jobs in Cuomo’s administration and eventually becoming Hochul’s deputy chief of staff, according to her LinkedIn profile. In November 2022, Sun took a job at the New York Department of Labor, as deputy commissioner for strategic business development, but she left that job months later in March 2023, the profile said.

In a statement, a spokesperson for Hochul’s office said the administration fired Sun after “discovering evidence of misconduct.”

“This individual was hired by the Executive Chamber more than a decade ago. We terminated her employment in March 2023 after discovering evidence of misconduct, immediately reported her actions to law enforcement and have assisted law enforcement throughout this process,” the statement reads.

A spokesman for Cuomo did not immediately return an emailed request for comment.

Sun and Hu live in a gated community on Long Island called Stone Hill. The couple purchased the house in 2021 but placed it in a trust earlier this year, records show.

POLTAVA, Ukraine (AP) — Two ballistic missiles blasted a military academy and nearby hospital Tuesday in Ukraine, killing more than 50 people and wounding more than 200 others, Ukrainian officials said, in one of the deadliest Russian strikes since the war began.

The missiles tore into the heart of the Poltava Military Institute of Communication’s main building, causing several stories to collapse. It didn’t take long for the smell of smoke and word of the deadly strike to spread through the central-eastern town.

“People found themselves under the rubble. Many were saved,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a video posted on his Telegram channel. He ordered an investigation.

Shattered bricks were visible inside the closed gates of the institution, which was off-limits to the media, and small pools of blood could be seen just outside hours later. Field communications trucks were parked along the perimeter. Roads were covered in glass from shattered apartment windows.

“I heard explosions … I was at home at that time. When I left the house, I realized that it was something evil and something bad,” said Yevheniy Zemskyy, who arrived to volunteer his help. “I was worried about the children, the residents of Poltava. That’s why we are here today to help our city in any way we can.”

By Tuesday evening, the death toll stood at 51, according to the general prosecutor’s office.

Filip Pronin, governor of the region that bears Poltava’s name, announced on Telegram that 219 people were wounded. Up to 18 people may be buried under the rubble, he said.

Ten apartment buildings were damaged, and more than 150 people donated blood, Pronin said.

He called it “a great tragedy” for the region and all of Ukraine, and announced three days of mourning starting Wednesday.

The academy trains officers in communications and electronics, honing some of the most valued skills in a war where both sides are fighting for control of the electronic battlefield.

“The enemy certainly must answer for all (its) crimes against humanity,” Pronin wrote on Telegram.

The Kremlin offered no immediate comment on the strike. It was not clear whether the dead and wounded were limited to Ukrainian military personnel, such as signal corps cadets, or if they included civilians.

Since it embarked on its full-scale invasion in early 2022, the Russian military has repeatedly used missiles to smash civilian targets, sometimes killing scores of people in a single attack.

Some of the deadliest such assaults included a 2022 airstrike on a theater in Mariupol that killed hundreds of civilians sheltering in the basement and a strike that same year on the train station in Kramatorsk that killed 61. Apartment buildings, markets and shopping centers have also been targeted.

Poltava is about 350 kilometers (200 miles) southeast of Kyiv, on the main highway and rail route between Kyiv and Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, which is close to the Russian border.

The attack happened as Ukrainian forces sought to carve out their holdings in Russia’s Kursk border region after a surprise incursion that began Aug. 6 and as the Russian army hacks its way deeper into eastern Ukraine.

The missiles hit shortly after an air-raid alert sounded, when many people were on their way to a bomb shelter, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said, describing the strike as “barbaric.”

Rescue crews and medics saved 25 people, including 11 who were dug out of the rubble, a Defense Ministry statement said.

The strike came on the day that Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Mongolia. There was no indication that his hosts would heed demands to arrest him on an international warrant for alleged war crimes.

Zelenskyy repeated his appeal for Ukraine’s Western partners to ensure swift delivery of military aid. He has previously chided the U.S. and European countries for being slow to make good on their pledges of help.

He also wants them to ease restrictions on what Ukraine can target on Russian soil with the weapons they provide. Some countries fear that hitting Russia could escalate the war.

“Ukraine needs air defense systems and missiles now, not sitting in storage,” Zelenskyy wrote in English on Telegram.

“Long-range strikes that can protect us from Russian terror are needed now, not later. Every day of delay, unfortunately, means more lost lives,” he said.

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Novikov reported from Kyiv, Ukraine. Associated Press journalist Alex Babenko also contributed to this report.

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So far this year, ISIS has claimed responsibility for several deadly attacks in Turkey, Iran and Russia. Affiliated actors also carried out a stabbing attack in Germany and threatened a Taylor Swift concert in Austria.

“The threat continuum evolves on a daily basis, and our intelligence community is certainly doing the best they can with the resources available to them,” said James DeMeo, an adjunct faculty instructor at Tulane University.

The renewed ISIS threat, along with the emergence of other terrorist groups across the Middle East, is highlighting how the U.S. and its allies are struggling to fight them.

“It’s crowded the terrorism landscape, and now different groups are vying for that power and to be the next group that’s going to target the next biggest country, which puts the U.S. front and center,” said Sara Harmouch, a doctoral candidate at American University.

In July, the U.S. Central Command released a statement saying ISIS was responsible for 153 attacks in Iraq and Syria in the first half of 2024 and is on pace to more than double the total number of attacks it claimed in 2023.

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MEXICO CITY (AP) — Osiel Cárdenas Guillén, one of Mexico’s most-feared drug lords, has been released from a U.S. prison after serving most of a 25-year prison sentence, authorities confirmed Friday.

A U.S. Bureau of Prisons official said Cárdenas Guillén had been released from prison and was placed in the custody of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. That would normally suggest he would be deported back to Mexico.

A Mexican official who was not authorized to be quoted by name said Cárdenas Guillén faces two arrest warrants in Mexico, making it likely he would be detained upon arrival.

The former head of the Gulf cartel was known for his brutality. He created the most bloodthirsty gang of hitmen Mexico has ever known, the Zetas, which routinely slaughtered migrants and innocent people.

Cárdenas Guillén was sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2010 and ordered to forfeit tens of millions of dollars. It was not clear why he did not serve his full sentence, but he had been extradited to the U.S. in January 2007.

The 57-year-old native of the border city of Matamoros, Mexico, moved tons of cocaine and made millions of dollars through the Gulf cartel, based in the border cities of Reynosa and Matamoros.

He created the Zetas, a gang of former Mexican special forces soldiers who he recruited to become his private army and hit squad. They committed acts of terror that regularly involved slaughtering dozens of people, decapitating them or dumping heaps of hacked-up bodies on roadways.

The Zetas lived on long after Cárdenas Guillén was captured in 2003. By 2010, the Zetas had formed their own cartel, spreading terror-style attacks across Mexico as far south as Tabasco until their top leaders were killed or arrested in 2012-2013.

An offshoot of the Zetas, the Northeast cartel, continues to control the border city of Nuevo Laredo, across from Laredo, Texas.

But Cárdenas Guillén’s own gang, the Gulf cartel, has become hopelessly splintered after more than a decade of bloody infighting between factions with names like The Metros, The Cyclones, The Reds and The Scorpions.

Cárdenas Guillén’s own nickname was “El Mata Amigos,” or “The one who kills his friends.”

Cárdenas Guillén’s most brazen act was when he surrounded and stopped a vehicle carrying two U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents and one of their informants in 1999 in the border city of Matamoros, across from Brownsville, Texas.

His gunmen pointed their weapons at the agents and demanded they hand over the informant, who would almost certainly be tortured and killed. The agents toughed it out and refused, reminding him it would be a bad decision to kill employees of the DEA. Cárdenas Guillén eventually called off his gunmen, but not before reportedly saying “You gringos, this is my territory.”

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Alanna Durkin Richer contributed from Washington, D.C.

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