The Headlines - N.Y. Official Accused of Aiding China, and Zelensky Plans Cabinet Shake-Up

Starting point is 00:00:00 From The New York Times, it's The Headlines. I'm Tracey Mumford. Today's Wednesday, September 4th. Here's what we're covering. Linda, what do you have to say to the allegations? Federal prosecutors have indicted a former New York official they claim used her position to benefit China. Linda's son worked in state government for 14 years,

Starting point is 00:00:28 including for Governors Andrew Cuomo and Kathy Hochul. She was once Hochul's deputy chief of staff. But prosecutors allege that during her career, she was working as a Chinese agent. They say she influenced messaging, like making sure state officials didn't publicly mention the persecution of the Uyghurs, an ethnic group in China. They say she also provided unauthorized invitations to Chinese officials to make it easier for them to travel to the U.S. Many of the allegations center on China's disputed claim over Taiwan.

Starting point is 00:01:03 Sun allegedly kept Taiwanese officials from having access to the governor's office. For example, when Cuomo was invited by Taiwanese officials to a banquet, Sun did not forward the invite and told a Chinese government official that she, quote, blocked it, according to the indictment. In return, the FBI says her husband's businesses got millions of dollars, and the couple used the money to buy homes in Long Island and Hawaii, as well as a new Ferrari. The alleged benefits even included multiple deliveries of Nanjing-style salted ducks sent to Sun's parents. Sun faces 10 counts of visa fraud, money laundering, and other crimes. Her husband, Chris Hu, is also indicted for money laundering.

Starting point is 00:01:49 Both pleaded not guilty. The charges are the latest in the Justice Department's initiative to stop the Chinese government's attempts to secretly wield influence in the U.S. In the last year, authorities have pursued at least three other cases against people accused of spying or carrying out other acts on China's behalf, including running a secret police station in lower Manhattan that targeted Chinese dissidents. For Donald Trump, one of his efforts to avoid consequences for his conviction in the Hush Money case hit a wall yesterday. Trump was found guilty in May of 34 counts of falsifying records to cover up payments made to Stormy Daniels. It was a state criminal case prosecuted in New York, and Trump's legal team has been trying a long-shot effort to move it to federal court in hopes of

Starting point is 00:02:45 getting his verdict overturned. But a judge rejected that yesterday and turned down Trump's claim that the Supreme Court's ruling on presidential immunity applied to the case. The Supreme Court ruling gave former presidents some protection for official acts, but the judge wrote that, quote, hush money the case is scheduled for September 18th, though the original trial judge is currently weighing a request from Trump to delay it until after the election. Trump faces a potential sentence of probation, up to four years in prison. In Ukraine, President Vladimir Zelensky is shaking up his cabinet in the biggest change to his government since Russia invaded. Half a dozen senior officials have offered to resign, including the country's foreign minister. The shuffle comes at a challenging

Starting point is 00:03:45 moment for Ukraine. Russia has scaled up its missile and drone attacks in recent weeks. Yesterday, more than 50 people were killed in a strike on a military academy in the city of Poltava, one of the deadliest strikes of the war so far. When the strike occurred, many were in classes or were rushing to get to an air raid shelter and were caught in the open when the missiles arrived. Andrew Kramer covers Ukraine for The Times. When we heard the news of this strike, we drove out to Poltava, which is east of Kiev, and arrived late in the evening. There were floodlights and exhausted firefighters were pulling rubble from the building that had been hit and searching for victims of the attack. The work stopped every 15 minutes or so while they listened for any possible yells for help from survivors who might be under the rubble.

Starting point is 00:04:36 It's been a brutal week for Ukraine with large missile strikes. And this is all going on against a backdrop of a very precarious situation on the front line with Russia pushing forward in eastern Ukraine and Ukraine having captured land inside of Russia, fighting to hold on to it. So there's a sense that the war has become more active in the last month or so. In Gaza, the emergency effort to vaccinate children against polio is going better than expected, according to the World Health Organization. Since Sunday, more than 160,000 kids have been vaccinated, a significant portion of the 640,000 that health workers hope to eventually reach. The WHO has arranged for Israel and Hamas to pause fighting in certain areas at certain times of day to allow families to reach vaccination sites safely. The effort comes as there's been a surge in infectious diseases like polio in Gaza,

Starting point is 00:05:42 accelerated by the destruction of health care facilities and unsanitary conditions. And finally... So the teleoperator is laying down with a mouse. They're laying down those little breadcrumbs. In cities like San Francisco, Phoenix, and Las Vegas, so-called robot taxis have hit the streets in recent years. But Times tech reporter Cade Metz has found that the driverless cars aren't always as autonomous as they seem.

Starting point is 00:06:18 So they can lay down the breadcrumbs, but then there are other controls here,calate, go slow, pull over. Those are also buttons that the teleguide... Cade visited a command center in California run by the company Zoox, a self-driving car company owned by Amazon, where human operators stand by to remotely help robot taxis

Starting point is 00:06:40 get out of complex situations on the road. Let's say there's a construction zone that wasn't there the day before. Let's say an emergency vehicle like an ambulance or a fire truck approaches. The cars in those situations may not know what to do and in those cases, they send an alert to a remote technician who then see what the car is seeing through its sensors. These technicians can essentially guide the car, give it a new path to take around that fire truck or ambulance or construction zone. It's not something that the major car companies, including Waymo and Cruise, have been open about over the years. They gave the impression that these cars were completely autonomous. They gave that impression because it helped them raise the enormous amounts of money needed to build this technology. But now, as these cars are beginning to be

Starting point is 00:07:47 deployed, the companies are starting to describe this process in detail. Now, there are parts of this operation that the companies are still reluctant to talk about. We don't know how many people are employed in these command centers across all those companies. We don't know how many people are employed in these command centers across all those companies. We don't know how much money is spent on them. It's still an open question as to whether these robo-taxi services to be financially viable, you want to take the driver out of the car and take away the cost of that driver. But if that cost is then duplicated with other humans helping these cars, these types of services don't necessarily make financial sense. Those are the headlines. Today on The Daily, how the federal government is fighting to control the technology that keeps AI running. You can listen on the Times audio app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow.

The Headlines - N.Y. Official Accused of Aiding China, and Zelensky Plans Cabinet Shake-Up

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