The U.N. Security Council is giving South Sudan one month to stop fighting and sign a peace deal or face an arms embargo and sanctions. The council passed a U.S.-sponsored resolution Thursday with the minimum nine votes needed for approval. Six members abstained. The resolution calls on Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to report back to the council on June 30.  If there is still fighting and no “viable political agreement,” the council will consider an arms embargo and sanctions against six top South Sudanese officials. Ethnic fighting has raged in South Sudan since 2013 between forces loyal to President Salva Kiir and those backing his former vice president, Riek Machar. Tens of thousands have been killed and more than a million civilians have fled their homes. U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley has called Kiir an “unfit partner” for peace. The relief group Doctors Without Borders reported Thursday on what it says …

China’s militarization of man-made islands in the South China Sea will not scare off the United States, which is promising to continue carrying out so-called freedom-of-navigation exercises despite the rising threat.  “I would just say that the United States military’s had a lot of experience in the Western Pacific taking down small islands,” Marine Lieutenant General Kenneth McKenzie, the director of the Joint Staff, said Thursday when asked whether the U.S. could blow apart any of the Chinese-made islands.  “We have a lot of experience in the Second World War taking down small islands that are isolated. So, that’s a core competency of the U.S. military,” McKenzie said, though he added China “shouldn’t read anything more into that than a simple statement of historical fact.”  The U.S. Navy has been carrying out a series of exercises aimed at challenging China’s claims that parts of the South China Sea are part …

The U.S. Justice Department’s National Security Division, created in response to the September 11, 2001, terror attacks, is increasingly focused on an emergent menace: cyberthreats posed by foreign countries, from Russia to China, the division head said Thursday. “In the past years, [the division’s mission] has come increasingly to include a focus on cyber as part of the threat posed by certain foreign nations,” said John Demers, assistant attorney general for national security, citing the prosecution in recent years of hackers acting on behalf of China, Russia, Iran and the Islamic State terror group. Over the past two years, U.S. law enforcement and intelligence officials have been sounding alarm bells about cyberthreats presented by a variety of foreign actors, from Russian government efforts to disrupt U.S. elections to Chinese companies trying to steal U.S. trade secrets. In a report released in February, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said the …

Reaction to U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to slap tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from American trading partners — including the European Union — came fast and furious, with threats of retaliation and warnings they risk sparking a trans-Atlantic trade war. European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said the European bloc would respond by imposing penalties of its own on American exports. “Today is a bad day for world trade,” said Cecilia Malmström, the European trade commissioner. EU officials previously informed the World Trade Organization of the bloc’s plan to levy duties on $7.2 billion worth of U.S. exports if the Trump administration proceeded with threats to impose a 25 percent tariff on steel imports and 10 percent on aluminum. Canadian and Mexican officials also threatened retaliatory responses but have as yet not indicated which U.S. products they will target. Both countries had hoped that the White House would continue …

U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday pardoned conservative commentator and filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza, who admitted he funded illegal campaign contributions in 2012 to help a Republican Senate candidate in New York. “He was treated very unfairly by our government!” Trump said in announcing the pardon, although D’Souza four years ago thanked a judge for “imposing a fair sentence” in the case, eight months in a community confinement center he could leave during the day to work and a $30,000 fine. Later, the White House said Trump felt that D’Souza had been “a victim of selective prosecution.” It said D’Souza was “fully worthy” of a pardon because he had “accepted responsibility for his actions, and also completed community service by teaching English to citizens and immigrants seeking citizenship.” In the last several years, the Indian-born D’Souza figured prominently in attacks on Trump’s predecessor, President Barack Obama, whom Trump also frequently vilifies. …

Zimbabwe’s President says the Trump administration is easing enforcement of sanctions on the southern African country. The president spoke Thursday in Gweru town, about 350 kilometers south of Harare, a day after setting July 30 as the date for the next election. In an hour-long speech Thursday to his ZANU-PF party supporters, President Emmerson Mnangagwa said relations with Western countries are warming up since he came to power last November, after his predecessor Robert Mugabe resigned under pressure from the military. He said the U.S. is overlooking sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe in the early 2000s following reports of human rights abuses and election rigging by the Mugabe regime. According to Mnangawa, the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act, known as ZIDERA, has been hurting the southern African country since it was passed nearly 20 years ago. He said in recent months, his administration has secured billions of dollars in commitments …

U.S. President Donald Trump has ramped up his campaign to discredit Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe in the eyes of the American people. Mueller has not responded to Trump’s attacks as he works to compile what is expected to be an exhaustive report on Russian election meddling, the actions of Trump’s inner circle, and whether the president obstructed justice. VOA’s Michael Bowman reports. …

Amid a flurry of rapidly evolving diplomatic activities aimed at reviving the summit between Washington and Pyongyang, experts contacted by VOA’s Korean Service say that completely denuclearizing North Korea probably is unachievable. “I think it is very difficult to know if these negotiations will lead to North Korea giving up its nuclear weapons,” said David Albright, a former U.N. nuclear inspector and nuclear proliferation analyst at the Institute for Science and International Security. “The problem is that North Korea entered into negotiations twice now where that was the goal but never really intended to accomplish that goal.” Last week, President Donald Trump canceled the summit in a letter addressed to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, citing Pyongyang’s “tremendous anger” and “open hostility” toward Washington. Then North Korea’s Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan, a longtime nuclear negotiator and senior diplomat, said in a statement carried by state media that the …

Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe drafted a memo on the circumstances leading up to the firing of his onetime boss, James Comey, a person familiar with the situation said Wednesday night. The person spoke on condition of anonymity to The Associated Press to discuss a secret document that has been turned over to special counsel Robert Mueller. His team is investigating whether the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia during the 2016 presidential election and whether the president sought to obstruct that inquiry through actions including the firing of Comey last May. The memo concerns a conversation that McCabe had with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein about Rosenstein’s preparations for Comey’s firing. Rosenstein played an important role in that episode, having authored a memo faulting Comey for his handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation that the White House held up as justification for President Donald Trump’s decision to fire …

President Donald Trump’s administration is planning to impose tariffs on European steel and aluminum imports after failing to win concessions from the European Union, a move that could provoke retaliatory tariffs and inflame trans-Atlantic trade tensions. The tariffs are likely to go into effect on the EU with an announcement by Friday’s deadline, according to two people familiar with the discussions. The administration’s plans could change if the two sides are able to reach a last-minute agreement, said the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. Trump announced in March the United States would slap a 25 percent tariff on imported steel and a 10 percent tariff on imported aluminum, citing national security interests. But he granted an exemption to the EU and other U.S. allies; that reprieve expires Friday. ​Europe bracing Europe has been bracing for the U.S. to place the restrictions even as top …

This year’s Scripps National Spelling Bee drew the largest number of competitors in its history, 516. But the field is far smaller, as only 41 spellers advance to the finals Thursday.  The finalists were announced Wednesday after two days of onstage spelling during which nearly 200 spellers were eliminated for getting words wrong. Scores on a written spelling and vocabulary test determined who advanced to the finals. “There were no perfect scores on the test,” spelling bee Executive Director Paige Kimble says, “We thought it was an easy test. We were wrong.” “They made it hard on purpose” said Jacob Williamson, a former competitor who is coaching five spellers this year.  But that didn’t seem to shake the confidence of those who have traversed the road before. “It was fine, actually. I didn’t expect it to be fine,” said Erin Howard, 13, of Huntsville, Alabama. “I think at worst I …

The two largest resort operators in Las Vegas would lose more than $10 million a day combined if housekeepers, cooks and others go on strike, a possibility starting Friday, the union representing thousands of casino workers said Wednesday. The Culinary Union detailed how it thinks a one-month strike would impact MGM Resorts International and Caesars Entertainment, which operate more than half the properties that would be affected if 50,000 workers walk off the job. Workers last week voted to authorize a strike as disputes over workplace training, wages and other issues have kept the union and casino operators from agreeing on new contracts. The union conceded that it is difficult to estimate how the strike at more than 30 casino-hotels would affect Las Vegas overall because the last citywide strike took place in 1984, when the city had 90,000 fewer hotel rooms and only about 12.8 million annual visitors. Last …

Fast-moving lava is flowing to another part of a rural Big Island district where Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano is erupting, officials said Wednesday in advising those residents to evacuate. Lava continues to advance toward subdivisions such as Vacationland were being advised to evacuate, the Hawaii County Civil Defense agency said.  “You are at risk of being isolated due to possible lava inundation,” the agency advised the public, referring to the area where two highways intersect. Lava crossed a highway that connects the commercial center with smaller towns and farms in the area, authorities said Tuesday. Hawaii County officials said lava destroyed the local electric utility’s equipment on the highway, which knocked out power to Vacationland and Kapoho Beach Lots neighborhoods toward the coast. Officials ordered about 2,000 residents of Leilani Estates neighborhood and nearby areas to evacuate when fissures began opening in the communities earlier this month. The Hawaiian Volcano Observatory …

A U.S. federal judge on Wednesday dismissed two lawsuits by Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab that sought to overturn bans on the use of the security software maker’s products in U.S. government networks. The company said it would seek to appeal the decision, which leaves in place prohibitions included in a funding bill passed by Congress and an order from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The bans were issued last year in response to allegations by U.S. officials that the company’s software could enable Russian espionage and threaten national security. “These actions were the product of unconstitutional agency and legislative processes and unfairly targeted the company without any meaningful fact finding,” Kaspersky said in a statement. U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly in Washington said Kaspersky had failed to show that Congress violated constitutional prohibitions on legislation that “determines guilt and inflicts punishment” without the protections of a judicial trial. She also …

Texas Governor Greg Abbott on Wednesday unveiled a slate of recommendations aimed at making “our schools and our state a safer place.” Abbott’s recommendations included creation of vestibules where school doors must be remotely unlocked before visitors can enter, installation of metal detectors and addition of alarms that would signal the presence of an active shooter. The proposals were part of a 43-page report that addressed ways to make schools and communities safer. Abbott unveiled the report a day after students returned to Santa Fe High School for the first time since a May 18 shooting that left eight students and two substitute teachers dead. Abbott also encouraged the legislature to consider adopting a “red flag” law that would allow family, law enforcement officials and others to file a petition to remove firearms from a potentially dangerous person. He also recommended expanding a program statewide that’s aimed at identifying students with …

Film producer Harvey Weinstein was indicted Wednesday on first- and third-degree rape and criminal sex act charges, furthering the first criminal case to arise from a slate of sexual misconduct allegations against the former movie mogul. Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. said the indictment brought Weinstein “another step closer to accountability.” The announcement came hours after Weinstein’s lawyers said he’d decline to testify before the grand jury because there wasn’t enough time to prepare him and “political pressure” made an indictment unavoidable. A statement issued through a Weinstein spokesman said the 66-year-old film producer, who has denied the allegations, learned of the specific charges and the accusers’ identities only after turning himself in Friday. With a deadline set for Wednesday afternoon to testify or not, his request for more time was denied, the statement said. “Finally, Mr. Weinstein’s attorneys noted that regardless of how compelling Mr. Weinstein’s personal testimony …