Israeli police broke up a protest by ultra-Orthodox Jews who are fighting to remain exempt from military service.

STATE DEPARTMENT — With a science and technology agreement between the United States and People’s Republic of China due to expire Tuesday, the State Department said it is negotiating to "amend, extend, and strengthen protections within" the agreement but declined to specify if the U.S. would extend the deal. “We are not able to provide information at this time on specific U.S. negotiating positions or on whether the agreement will be extended past its current expiration date,” a State Department spokesperson told VOA. The Science and Technology Cooperation Agreement is a framework for U.S. governmental collaborations with China in science and technology.   U.S. officials have said the STA provides consistent standards for government-to-government scientific cooperation between the U.S. and China.   While the agreement supports scientific collaboration in areas that benefit the United States, U.S. officials acknowledge the challenges posed by China's national science and technology strategies and its domestic legal framework. Critics, including U.S. lawmakers, point out China’s restrictions on data and a lack of transparency in sharing scientific findings. Washington is also concerned about personal safety of American scientists who travel to China, as well as Beijing's potential military application of shared research. A report by Congressional Research Service said China’s cooperation under the agreement has not been consistent. For example, “China reportedly withheld avian influenza strains required for U.S. vaccines and in 2019, cut off U.S. access to coronavirus research, including U.S.-funded work at the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” said the CRS. Advocates for renewing the agreement want to maintain some level of official and unofficial contacts amid strained relationship between the two countries.   During a recent discussion hosted by the Washington-based Institute for China-America Studies (ICAS), panelists said the STA is “important symbolically” and gives confidence to researchers on both sides to deepen their engagement with counterparts. “In the event of the agreement’s non-renewal, the mutual confidence that sustains and underpins collaboration is bound to suffer,” said ICAS in its post-event summary. Dean Cheng, a senior advisor to the China program at the U.S. Institute of Peace, said the American system is far more open, so China will typically be able to gather information regardless of whether there is an agreement. “The STA is no guarantee that American scientists will, in fact, be able to access Chinese research, information, or scholars, whereas the Chinese side will use the STA as a means of establishing an even greater presence in the U.S.,” Cheng told VOA, adding the “strategic advantage” under the deal will likely be with the PRC. The STA was originally signed in 1979 by then-U.S. President Jimmy Carter and then-PRC leader Deng Xiaoping. Under the agreement, the two countries cooperate in fields including agriculture, energy, space, health, environment, earth sciences and engineering, as well as educational and scholarly exchanges. U.S.-China science and technology activity increased in November 2009 with new agreements on joint projects in electric vehicles, or EVs, renewable energy, and the creation of the U.S.-China Clean Energy Research Center, or CERC, a 10-year research effort between the U.S. Department of Energy and China’s Ministry of Science and Technology. The agreement has been renewed approximately every five years since its inception, with the most recent five-year extension occurring in 2018. Last August, it received a six-month extension as officials from the two countries undertook negotiations to amend and strengthen the terms.

Palestinian group yet to comment on proposed deal, but decries international failure to get humanitarian aid into Gaza.

The strike in Guinea's capital Conakry comes days after the military unexpectedly dissolved the transitional government.

As the war rages in Gaza, US President Joe Biden says he hopes a ceasefire can take effect by early next week.

Military says it destroyed vessels and missiles in Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen that were aimed at the Red Sea.

US president Joe Biden says he hopes a Gaza ceasefire deal can be agreed between Israel and Hamas by Monday.

Centre-right government says health agency set up to improve access for Maori people will be abolished by end of June.

Conservative justices express concerns about Florida and Texas laws that curb platforms' content moderation policies.

Biden's comments come as negotiations to end Israel's devastating war on Gaza appear to gather pace.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says web giants have failed to keep kids safe online.

SHANGHAI — Two prominent Chinese bloggers in exile said that police were investigating their millions of followers on international social media platforms, in an escalation of Beijing’s attempts to clamp down on critical speech even outside of the country’s borders. Former state broadcaster CCTV journalist Wang Zhi’an and artist-turned-dissident Li Ying, both Chinese citizens known for posting uncensored Chinese news, said in separate posts Sunday that police were interrogating people who followed them on social media, and urged followers to take precautions such as unfollowing their accounts, changing their usernames, avoiding Chinese-made phones and preparing to be questioned. Li Ying, known as Teacher Li, came to prominence as a source of news about the White Paper protests, a rare moment of anti-government protests in mainland China in 2022. Teacher Li's account on X, formerly known as Twitter, @whyyoutouzhele now posts news and videos submitted by users, which cover everything from local protests to viral videos of real-life incidents that are censored on the Chinese internet. In a post Sunday evening, Teacher Li suggested people unfollow his account. “Currently, the public security bureau is checking my 1.6 million followers and people in the comments, one by one.” Li shared screenshots of private messages he received from followers over the past few months, which claimed that police had interrogated individuals, and that one person had even lost their job. As of Monday afternoon, Li had dropped down to 1.4 million followers on X. International social media platforms like X and YouTube are blocked in China but can still be accessed with software that circumvents the country's censorship systems. Wang, who has a million subscribers on X and 1.2 million followers on YouTube, also told his fans to unsubscribe. Li, Wang and the Chinese foreign ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Over the past decade, Beijing has cracked down on dissent on Chinese social media, with thousands of censors employed both at private companies and with the Chinese state. Chinese users expressing critical opinions online have reported being called, harassed or interrogated by police, with some called in for questioning and ordered to take down certain posts or delete their accounts. In some cases, users have been detained, with some spending up to two weeks in jail and a small number sentenced to years in prison. More recently, Beijing has extended its reach to tracking non-Chinese platforms such as Facebook, Telegram and X. A recent leak of documents from I-Soon, a private contractor linked to China’s top policing agency and other parts of its government, described tools used by Chinese police to curb dissent on overseas social media, including one tool specifically created to surveil users on X. Hackers also created tools for police to hack email inboxes and unmask anonymous users of X, the documents show. Sometimes, officers sent requests to surveil specific individuals to I-Soon, the leak revealed. Li said he would not stop posting even if people unfollowed, but he urged his followers to take basic digital safety precautions. “I don't want your life to be impacted just because you wanted to understand the real news in China,” Li said, in an additional post. “You only want to understand what's happening, but the price is quite high  

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