By MATTHEW LEE, Associated Press Diplomatic Writer

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and his Russian counterpart met Thursday in Malaysia as tensions between the countries rise over Moscow’s increasing attacks on Ukraine and whether Russia’s leader is serious about a peace deal.

Rubio and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov held talks in Kuala Lumpur on the sidelines of the annual Association of Southeast Asian Nations Regional Forum, which brings together 10 ASEAN members and their most important diplomatic partners including Russia, China, Japan, South Korea, European nations and the U.S.

The meeting lasted around 50 minutes. Rubio was seen winking at Lavrov afterward as reporters shouted questions, which they both ignored.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, front, arrives at Subang Air Base, outside of Kuala Lumpur Thursday, July 10, 2025. Rubio arrived in Malaysia to attend the ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ Meeting. (Mandel Ngan/Pool Photo via AP)

The meeting was their second encounter since Rubio took office, although they have spoken by phone several times. Their first meeting took place in February in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, as the Trump administration sought to test Russia and Ukraine on their willingness to make peace.

Thursday’s meeting occurred shortly after the U.S. resumed some shipments of defensive weapons to Ukraine following a pause, ostensibly for the Pentagon to review domestic munitions stocks, that was cheered in Moscow.

The resumption comes as Russia fires escalating air attacks on Ukraine and as U.S. President Donald Trump has become increasingly frustrated with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“Putin is not, he’s not treating human beings right,” Trump said during a Cabinet meeting Tuesday, explaining the pause’s reversal. “It’s killing too many people. So we’re sending some defensive weapons to Ukraine, and I’ve approved that.”

US diplomatic push could be overshadowed by tariff threats

Rubio was also seeing other foreign ministers, including many whose countries face tariffs set to be imposed Aug. 1. The tariff threat could overshadow the top diplomat’s first official trip to Asia, just as the U.S. seeks to boost relations with Indo-Pacific nations to counter China’s growing influence in the region.

Rubio sought to assuage concerns as he held group talks with ASEAN foreign ministers.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, second left, meets with Malaysia’s Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, right, at the prime minister’s office at Parliament as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Foreign Ministers’ Meeting takes place in Kuala Lumpur Thursday, July 10, 2025. (Mandel Ngan/Pool Photo via AP)

“The Indo Pacific, the region, remains a focal point of U.S. foreign policy,” he told them. “When I hear in the news that perhaps the United States or the world might be distracted by events in other parts of the planet, I would say distraction is impossible, because it is our strong view and the reality that this century and the story of next 50 years will largely be written here in this region.”

“These are relationships and partnerships that we intend to continue to build on without seeking the approval or the permission of any other actor in the region of the world,” Rubio said in an apparent reference to China.

Trump notified several countries on Monday and Wednesday that they will face higher tariffs if they don’t make trade deals with the U.S. Among them are eight of ASEAN’s 10 members.

U.S. State Department officials said tariffs and trade won’t be Rubio’s focus during the meetings, which Trump’s Republican administration hopes will prioritize maritime safety and security in the South China Sea, where China has become increasingly aggressive toward its small neighbors, as well as combating transnational crime.

But Rubio may be hard-pressed to avoid the tariff issue that has vexed some of Washington’s closest allies and partners in Asia, including Japan and South Korea and most members of ASEAN, which Trump says would face 25% tariffs if there is no deal.

Rubio also met with Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, who has warned global trade is being weaponized to coerce weaker nations. Anwar urged the bloc Wednesday to strengthen regional trade and reduce reliance on external powers.

Rubio’s “talking points on the China threat will not resonate with officials whose industries are being battered by 30-40% tariffs,” said Danny Russel, vice president of the Asia Society Policy Institute and a former assistant secretary of state for East Asia and the Pacific during the Obama administration.

When Anwar said “ASEAN will approach challenges ‘as a united bloc’ he wasn’t talking about Chinese coercion but about U.S. tariffs,” Russel noted.

Majority of ASEAN members face major tariff hikes

Among ASEAN states, Trump has announced tariffs on almost all of the bloc’s 10 members.

Trump sent tariff letters to two more ASEAN members Wednesday: Brunei, whose imports would be taxed at 25%, and the Philippines at 20%. Others hit this week include Cambodia at 36%, Indonesia at 32%, Laos at 40%, Malaysia at 25%, Myanmar at 40% and Thailand at 36%.

Vietnam recently agreed to a trade deal for a 20% tariffs on its imports, while Singapore still faces a 10% tariff that was imposed in April. The Trump administration has courted most Southeast Asian nations in a bid to blunt or at least temper China’s push to dominate the region.

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In Kuala Lumpur, Rubio also will likely come face-to-face with China’s foreign minister during his visit of about 36 hours.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi is a veteran of such gatherings and “fluent in ASEAN principles and conventions,” while Rubio “is a rookie trying to sell an ‘America First’ message to a deeply skeptical audience,” Russel noted.

Issues with China remain substantial, including trade, human rights, militarization of the South China Sea and China’s support for Russia in Ukraine.

U.S. officials continue to accuse China of resupplying and revamping Russia’s military industrial sector, allowing it to produce additional weapons that can be used to attack Ukraine.

Earlier on Thursday, Rubio signed a memorandum on civilian nuclear energy with Malaysia’s foreign minister, which will pave the way for negotiations on a more formal nuclear cooperation deal, known as a 123 agreement after the section of U.S. law allowing such programs.

Those agreements allow the U.S. government and U.S. companies to work with and invest in civilian energy nuclear programs in other countries under strict supervision.

Eileen Ng contributed to this report.

By MARIA CHENG, Associated Press Medical Writer

LONDON (AP) — Years of American-led investment into AIDS programs has reduced the number of people killed by the disease to the lowest levels seen in more than three decades, and provided life-saving medicines for some of the world’s most vulnerable.

But in the last six months, the sudden withdrawal of U.S. money has caused a “systemic shock,” U.N. officials warned, adding that if the funding isn’t replaced, it could lead to more than 4 million AIDS-related deaths and 6 million more HIV infections by 2029.

“The current wave of funding losses has already destabilized supply chains, led to the closure of health facilities, left thousands of health clinics without staff, set back prevention programs, disrupted HIV testing efforts and forced many community organizations to reduce or halt their HIV activities,” UNAIDS said in a report released Thursday.

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UNAIDS also said that it feared other major donors might also scale back their support, reversing decades of progress against AIDS worldwide — and that the strong multilateral cooperation is in jeopardy because of wars, geopolitical shifts and climate change.

The $4 billion that the United States pledged for the global HIV response for 2025 disappeared virtually overnight in January when U.S. President Donald Trump ordered that all foreign aid be suspended and later moved to shutter the U.S. AID agency.

Andrew Hill, an HIV expert at the University of Liverpool who is not connected to the United Nations, said that while Trump is entitled to spend U.S. money as he sees fit, “any responsible government would have given advance warning so countries could plan,” instead of stranding patients in Africa when clinics were closed overnight.

The U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, was launched in 2003 by U.S. President George W. Bush, the biggest-ever commitment by any country focused on a single disease.

UNAIDS called the program a “lifeline” for countries with high HIV rates, and said that it supported testing for 84.1 million people, treatment for 20.6 million, among other initiatives. According to data from Nigeria, PEPFAR also funded 99.9% of the country’s budget for medicines taken to prevent HIV.

In 2024, there were about 630,000 AIDS-related deaths worldwide, per a UNAIDS estimate — the figure has remained about the same since 2022 after peaking at about 2 million deaths in 2004.

Even before the U.S. funding cuts, progress against curbing HIV was uneven. UNAIDS said that half of all new infections are in sub-Saharan Africa.

Tom Ellman, of the charity Doctors Without Borders, said that while some poorer countries were now moving to fund more of their own HIV programs, it would be impossible to fill the gap left by the U.S.

“There’s nothing we can do that will protect these countries from the sudden, vicious withdrawal of support from the U.S.,” said Ellman, director of Doctors Without Borders’ South Africa Medical Unit.

Experts also fear another loss: data. The U.S. paid for most HIV surveillance in African countries, including hospital, patient and electronic records, all of which has now abruptly ceased, according to Dr. Chris Beyrer, director of the Global Health Institute at Duke University.

“Without reliable data about how HIV is spreading, it will be incredibly hard to stop it,” he said.

The uncertainty comes as a twice-yearly injectable could end HIV, as studies published last year showed that the drug from pharmaceutical maker Gilead was 100% effective in preventing the virus.

At a launch event Thursday, South Africa’s health minister Aaron Motsoaledi said the country would “move mountains and rivers to make sure every adolescent girl who needs it will get it,” saying that the continent’s past dependence upon US aid was “scary.”

Last month, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the drug, called Yeztugo, a move that should have been a “threshold moment” for stopping the AIDS epidemic, said Peter Maybarduk of the advocacy group Public Citizen.

But activists like Maybarduk said Gilead’s pricing will put it out of reach of many countries that need it. Gilead has agreed to sell generic versions of the drug in 120 poor countries with high HIV rates but has excluded nearly all of Latin America, where rates are far lower but increasing.

“We could be ending AIDS,” Maybarduk said. “Instead, the U.S. is abandoning the fight.”

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP receives financial support for global health and development coverage in Africa from the Gates Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

By LORNE COOK, Associated Press

BRUSSELS (AP) — European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen comfortably survived a vote of no confidence on Thursday, as an overwhelming number of European Union lawmakers rejected a censure motion against her.

The motion contained a mix of allegations against von der Leyen, including text messaging privately with the chief executive of vaccine maker Pfizer during the COVID-19 pandemic, misuse of EU funds and interference in elections in Germany and Romania.

The motion was defeated in a 360-175 vote against it, with 18 lawmakers choosing to abstain during a plenary session at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France.

European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen delivers her speech during a statement on the preparation for the EU–China Summit, Tuesday, July 8, 2025 at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, eastern France. (AP Photo/Pascal Bastien)

Von der Leyen wasn’t present for the vote, but taking to social media, she posted: “As external forces seek to destabilize and divide us, it is our duty to respond in line with our values. Thank you, and long live Europe.”

The vote has been a lightning rod for criticism of Von der Leyen — who led the EU drive to find vaccines for around 450 million citizens during the pandemic — and her European People’s Party, or EPP, which is the largest political family in the assembly.

They’re accused of cozying up to the hard right to push through their agenda and sidestepping mainstream pro-European parties when it’s difficult or inconvenient to form a majority. The European Parliament shifted perceptibly to the political right after Europe-wide elections a year ago.

“We won’t vote with the far-right and we do not support this motion. This vote was little more than a far-right PR stunt from Putin-loving populists,” Greens group President Terry Reintke said in a statement after the poll, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

However, she added: “We are ready to build pro-European majorities, but we will not be played by the EPP in their desperate deregulation agenda and their desire to consistently form anti-European majorities with the far-right.”

Iratxe García Pérez, the leader of the No. 2 bloc in parliament, the Socialists and Democrats, said that “our vote doesn’t mean that we are not critical of the European Commission. The recent shifts by von der Leyen towards far-right pledges are a major cause for alarm.”

After voting against, Valerie Hayer, the leader of the pro-business Renew group, insisted in a social media post that von der Leyen must “take control of her political family to put an end to alliances with the far right.”

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The EPP has notably worked with the hard right to fix the agenda for hearing von der Leyen’s new commissioners when they were questioned for their suitability for their posts last year, and to reject an ethics body meant to combat corruption.

The censure motion, the first at the European Parliament in over a decade, was brought against the European Commission president by a group of hard-right lawmakers.

On the eve of the vote, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said on Facebook that it would “be the moment of truth: on one side the imperial elite in Brussels, on the other patriots and common sense. There is no getting out of it, it is essential to make a choice.”

He posted: “Madam President, the essence of leadership is responsibility. Time to go!” Von der Leyen’s commission has frequently clashed with Orbán over his staunchly nationalist government’s moves to roll back democracy. The European Commission has frozen Hungary’s access to billions of euros in EU funds.

Justin Spike contributed to this report from Budapest, Hungary.

Whether U.S. bombers recently “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear capability (President Donald Trump’s preferred wording) or “severely damaged” it (per the CIA) matters so much to Trump that he’s threatened to sue news outlets reporting the CIA’s terminology.

The common presidential desire to shape the narrative has been especially noticeable lately, especially with matters regarding tariff-induced inflation.

It may even be generating a particular form of presidentially corrected economic speech reminiscent of Jimmy Carter’s tenure.

In 1978, Carter, worried about America’s sagging economy, ordered cabinet members to refrain from alarming the country with the word “recession.” Minding his boss’ instruction but facing a direct question, economic advisor Fred Kahn famously responded, “We’re in danger of having the worst banana in 45 years.”

With U.S. first quarter GDP growth now charting -0.50% and more than one respected forecaster looking at paltry growth later this year, will we see officials dancing around the same word in the near future? Trump’s preference for political happy talk has already reframed conversations about his economic agenda.

Trump recently chastised Walmart executives when they announced that China tariffs would force the retailer to raise prices. He angrily called for Walmart to “eat” the tariffs and reminded them in less-than-gentle terms that he would be watching.

In another example, toymaker Mattel indicated that it too would be raising prices because of tariffs. Outraged, Trump threatened to impose a 100% tariff on its products, promising the firm “won’t sell one toy in the United States.”

Since then, business leaders have been avoiding speaking about the price increases and other disruptions that Americans are quite obviously experiencing due to White House tariffs. As Neil Saunders, director of Global Data Retail, warned: ”The White House has decided it should aim its tanks at companies that do speak out.”

So, when offering investor guidance, some retailers speak of “adjusting” prices, others address the elephant in the room “gently and sparingly,” and still others refer to their pricing policies with words like “surgical.”

Above all, linking price changes to tariffs is a no-no. Denise Dahlhoff, director of marketing and communications research at the Conference Board, advises executives to use more neutral terms like “sourcing cost” or “input cost” or “supply chain cost,” which “are not as incendiary as ‘tariff.”

After all, Trump is serious about language. In February, the White House banned an Associated Press reporter from press conferences and Air Force One over the news agency’s refusal to re-term the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America” in its influential style manual (at least until cries over First Amendment rights turned the tide).

Trump and Carter are hardly the first pair of presidents to pour rhetorical oil on troubled waters, but the historical results, as with today, are mixed at best.

In Harry Truman’s time, the Korean War became known as a “police action.” Somehow the phrase softened the perceived scale of the situation and suggested the conflict would end quickly. But mid-century Americans knew a war when they saw it. Losing political patience, voters turned away from Truman’s party and chose Dwight Eisenhower to bring the action to an end.

In later wars, mostly undeclared, political speech began to deny the use of the word “retreat” in favor of terms like “an orderly withdrawal of troops.” Observers may view Vietnam or Afghanistan as the former, but leaders prefer less dramatic and more positive language.

Perhaps the most audacious and enduring effort by a Western leader to alter political speech came in 1604 when newly installed King James I of England ordered 47 leading Biblical scholars to develop a new Bible translation. The resulting King James Authorized Version is thought to be one of the most beautifully written volumes of the age. By the king’s order, it also removed certain references to kings as tyrants which had been present in an earlier English Bible.

Kings, democratically elected presidents, and holders of lesser offices will always frame things as they see fit, especially if they feel that their power or wisdom is being questioned. We the people may sometimes respond pragmatically by altering our own language. These things can be weathered so long as Americans retain our reverence for freedom of speech. Otherwise, only the bravest will have the gumption to call a spade a spade.

Bruce Yandle is a distinguished adjunct fellow with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and former executive director of the Federal Trade Commission. He wrote this column for Tribune Content Agency.

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