By JOSH BOAK

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump sent out tariff letters to seven smaller U.S. trading partners on Wednesday with a pledge to announce import taxes on other countries later in the day.

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None of the countries targeted in the first batch of letters — the Philippines, Brunei, Moldova, Algeria, Libya, Iraq and Sri Lanka — is a major industrial rival to the United States. It’s a sign that a president who has openly expressed his love for the word “tariff” is still infatuated with the idea that taxing trade will create prosperity for America.

Most economic analyses say the tariffs will worsen inflationary pressures and subtract from economic growth, but Trump has used the taxes as a way to assert the diplomatic and financial power of the U.S. on both rivals and allies. His administration is promising that the taxes on imports will lower trade imbalances, offset some of the cost of the tax cuts he signed into law on Friday and cause factory jobs to return to the United States.

Trump, during a White House meeting with African leaders talked up trade as a diplomatic tool. Trade, he said, “seems to be a foundation” for him to settle disputes between India and Pakistan, as well as Kosovo and Serbia.

“You guys are going to fight, we’re not going to trade,” Trump said. “And we seem to be quite successful in doing that.”

On Monday, Trump placed a 35% tariff on Serbia, one of the countries he was using as an example of how fostering trade can lead to peace.

Officials for the European Union, a major trade partner and source of Trump’s ire on trade, said Tuesday that they are not expecting to receive a letter from Trump listing tariff rates. The Republican president started the process of announcing tariff rates on Monday by hitting two major U.S. trading partners, Japan and South Korea, with import taxes of 25%.

According to Trump’s letters, imports from Libya, Iraq, Algeria and Sri Lanka would be taxed at 30%, those from Moldova and Brunei at 25% and those from the Philippines at 20%. The tariffs would start Aug. 1.

The Census Bureau reported that last year U.S. ran a trade imbalance on goods of $1.4 billion with Algeria, $5.9 billion with Iraq, $900 million with Libya, $4.9 billion with the Philippines, $2.6 billion with Sri Lanka, $111 million with Brunei and $85 million with Moldova. The imbalance represents the difference between what the U.S. exported to those countries and what it imported.

Taken together, the trade imbalances with those seven countries are essentially a rounding error in a U.S. economy with a gross domestic product of $30 trillion.

The letters were posted on Truth Social after the expiration of a 90-day negotiating period with a baseline levy of 10%. Trump is giving countries more time to negotiate with his Aug. 1 deadline, but he has insisted there will be no extensions for the countries that receive letters.

Maros Sefcovic, the EU’s chief trade negotiator, told EU lawmakers in Strasbourg, France, on Wednesday that the EU had been spared the increased tariffs contained in the letters sent by Trump and that an extension of talks until Aug. 1 would provide “additional space to reach a satisfactory conclusion.”

Trump on April 2 proposed a 20% tariff for EU goods and then threatened to raise that to 50% after negotiations did not move as fast as he would have liked, only to return to the 10% baseline. The EU has 27 member states, including France, Germany, Italy and Spain.

The tariff letters are worded aggressively in Trump’s style of writing. He frames the tariffs as an invitation to “participate in the extraordinary Economy of the United States,” adding that the trade imbalances are a “major threat” to America’s economy and national security.

The president threatened additional tariffs on any country that attempts to retaliate. He said he chose to send the letters because it was too complicated for U.S. officials to negotiate with their counterparts in the countries with new tariffs. It can take years to broker trade accords.

Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba interpreted the Aug. 1 deadline as a delay to allow more time for negotiations, although he cautioned in remarks that the tariffs would hurt his nation’s domestic industries and employment.

Malaysia’s trade minister, Zafrul Aziz, said Wednesday that his country would not meet all of the U.S. requests after a Trump letter placed a 25% tariff on its goods. Aziz said U.S. officials are seeking changes in government procurement, halal certification, medical standards and digital taxes. Aziz he indicated those were red lines.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio is set to arrive Thursday in Malaysia’s capital of Kuala Lumpur.

Associated Press writers David McHugh in Frankfurt, Germany and Eileen Ng in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, contributed to this report.

By ILLIA NOVIKOV

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia fired more than 700 attack and decoy drones at Ukraine overnight, topping previous nightly barrages for the third time in two weeks, part of Moscow’s intensifying aerial and ground assault in the three-year war, Ukrainian officials said Wednesday.

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Russia has recently sought to overwhelm Ukraine’s air defenses by launching major attacks that include increasing numbers of decoy drones. The most recent one appeared aimed at disrupting Ukraine’s vital supply of Western weapons.

The city of Lutsk, home to airfields used by the Ukrainian army, was the hardest hit, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. It lies near the border with Poland in western Ukraine, a region that is a crucial hub for receiving foreign military aid.

The attack comes at a time of increased uncertainty over the supply of crucial American weapons and as U.S.-led peace efforts have stalled. Zelenskyy said that the Kremlin was “making a point” with it.

The Russian Defense Ministry said its forces took aim at Ukrainian air bases and that “all the designated targets have been hit.” Meanwhile, Ukraine fired drones into Russia overnight, killing three people in the Kursk border region, including a 5-year-old boy, the local governor said.

The Russian attack, which included 728 drones and 13 missiles, had the largest number of drones fired in a single night in the war. On Friday, Russia fired 550 drones, less than a week after it launched 477, both the largest at the time, officials said.

Beyond Lutsk, 10 regions were struck. One person was killed in the Khmelnytskyi region, and two wounded in the Kyiv region, officials said.

Poland, a member of NATO, scrambled its fighter jets and put its armed forces on the highest level of alert in response to the attack, the Polish Armed Forces Operational Command wrote in an X post.

Russia’s bigger army has also launched a new drive to punch through parts of the 620-mile front line, where short-handed Ukrainian forces are under heavy strain.

Trump says the US must send more weapons to Ukraine

U.S. President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he was “not happy” with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who hasn’t budged from his ceasefire and peace demands since Trump took office in January and began to push for a settlement.

Trump said Monday that the U.S. would have to send more weapons to Ukraine, just days after Washington paused critical weapons deliveries to Kyiv.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Trump “has quite a tough style in terms of the phrasing he uses,” adding that Moscow hopes to “continue our dialogue with Washington and our course aimed at repairing the badly damaged bilateral ties.”

Zelenskyy, meanwhile, urged Ukraine’s partners to impose stricter sanctions on Russian oil and those who help finance the Kremlin’s war by buying it.

“Everyone who wants peace must act,” Zelenskyy said. The Ukrainian leader met Pope Leo XIV on Wednesday during a visit to Italy ahead of an international conference on rebuilding Ukraine.

Both Russia and Ukraine look to build more drones

Ukraine’s air defenses shot down 296 drones and seven missiles during the overnight attack, while 415 more drones were lost from radars or jammed, an air force statement said.

Ukrainian interceptor drones, developed to counter the Shahed ones fired by Russia, are increasingly effective, Zelenskyy said, adding that domestic production of anti-aircraft drones is being scaled up in partnership with some Western countries.

Western military analysts say Russia is also boosting its drone manufacturing and could soon be capable of launching 1,000 a night at Ukraine.

“Russia continues to expand its domestic drone production capacity amid the ever-growing role of tactical drones in front-line combat operations and Russia’s increasingly large nightly long-range strike packages against Ukraine,” the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said late Tuesday.

Ukraine has also built up its own offensive drone threat, reaching deep into Russia with some long-range strikes.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said Wednesday that air defenses downed 86 Ukrainian drones over six Russian regions overnight, including the Moscow region.

Flights were temporarily suspended at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport and the international airport of Kaluga, south of Moscow.

The governor of Russia’s Kursk border region, Alexander Khinshtein, said a Ukrainian drone attack on the region’s capital city just before midnight killed three people and wounded seven others, including the 5-year-old boy who died on the way to a hospital.

Meanwhile, Europe’s top human rights court ruled Wednesday that Russia had violated international law during the war in Ukraine, the first time an international court has found Moscow responsible for human rights abuses since the full-scale invasion in 2022.

The court also ruled Russia was behind the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, the first time Moscow was named by an international court as being responsible for the 2014 tragedy that claimed 298 lives. Any decision is largely symbolic.

Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

After police found blood stains on the walls and floor of his apartment, a Columbia Heights man was charged with second-degree murder Wednesday in connection with the death of his 16-year-old son, Jordan “Manny” Collins Jr. His son’s body was found last month in a landfill.

The Anoka County attorney’s office charged Jordan Dupree Collins Sr., 38, with second-degree attempted murder with intent but not premeditated.

Jordan “Manny” Collins Jr. (Courtesy of the Anoka County Sheriff’s Office)

According to the criminal complaint, Collins Jr.’s mother filed a missing person report with the Columbia Heights Police Department on May 12. She told police that her son lived with his father in an apartment in Columbia Heights. She last heard from Collins Jr. about 4 a.m. May 8 when he reacted to a text message she sent him.

When police talked to Collins Sr. about the missing person report, he told law enforcement that his son left the apartment the afternoon of May 8 to take a bus to St. Paul to visit his grandmother and girlfriend.

Police learned later that Collins Jr. never arrived at his grandmother’s or girlfriend’s home.

Collins Jr.’s girlfriend told police she was on a video call with Collins Jr. until she fell asleep about 2:30 a.m. May 8. Collins Jr. was in his father’s apartment during the call. She said he didn’t seem upset and he didn’t tell her he was planning on visiting her.

Search finds blood, knives

Law enforcement executed a search warrant at Collins Sr.’s apartment May 15, according to the complaint. Police found items stained by blood in garbage bags in the living room closet. They also located butcher-style knives in a bedroom closet and a mattress on the bedroom floor with a piece of its underside missing. A piece of carpet and carpet padding were also missing underneath the mattress. None of these pieces were found in the apartment, according to police.

On May 17, analysis showed that the DNA from the blood stains in Collins Sr.’s apartment matched DNA taken from Collins Jr.’s personal items. Law enforcement conducted more tests in the apartment and found blood from Collins Jr. on the bedroom wall.

According to the complaint, video footage from May 13 showed a garbage truck emptying the contents of a large dumpster behind Collins Sr.’s apartment. This led police to believe the body of Collins Jr. went from the dumpster in Columbia Heights to the Elk River landfill.

Body found, father arrested

Law enforcement began searching the landfill June 4. Police used GPS data from the facility to find the area where contents from the Columbia Heights dumpster would be located.

The FBI brought in its Laboratory Evidence Response Team Unit and the Technical Hazardous Response Unit from Virginia to help in the investigation. A member of the search team discovered Collins Jr.’s body on June 28.

Jordan Dupree Collins Sr. (Courtesy of the Anoka County Sheriff’s Office)

Collins Sr. gave a voluntary statement to police Monday. He told them he cut the mattress and carpet sections to clean up his own blood. The blood near the mattress and carpet cuttings matched the DNA of Collins Jr., and no blood from Collins Sr. was found in the apartment.

Collins Sr. said he owned the knives found in the apartment and that he used them to butcher goats and sheep.

Investigators received preliminary autopsy results Monday. Result showed evidence of decapitation by knife and suggested the manner of death as homicide.

Collins Sr. was arrested Monday and made his first court appearance Wednesday.

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A recent report by the NYC Biodiversity Task Force says the city needs more funds to protect its increasingly at-risk fauna and flora.

Jamaica Bay in Queens is a critical habitat for birds, supporting some 325 species. (Photo by Adi Talwar)

Most people think of New York City as a concrete jungle where nature is hard to find. But a new report on the importance of protecting the Big Apple’s biodiversity begs to differ. 

The city is also a rich ecological hotspot that rare species like the Monarch Butterfly, the Atlantic Coast Leopard Frog, and the endangered Butternut tree call home, the report notes.

“We have a lot of nature here. It’s really important to highlight that because when we don’t, city officials undermine it,” said botanist Marielle Anzelone, lead author of the report and co-founder of the NYC Biodiversity Task Force, which published it.

Last month, budget negotiations came to a close with New York City setting aside only 0.6 percent of its $115.9 billion budget for the Parks Department, which is in charge of managing the city’s fauna and flora.

A chronically underfunded Parks Department—which has received between 0.5 and 0.6 percent of the city’s total budget for 30 years—and the lack of a citywide biodiversity protection plan puts the city’s natural wonders at risk, the report says.

The Big Apple has already lost 84 percent of its salt marshes and 99 percent of its freshwater wetlands and streams over the last 120 years, according to the report, thanks in large part to coastal fill and development.

“This makes the plants and animals that depend on these systems extraordinarily rare in the five boroughs,” the report notes. 

New York is located along the Atlantic Flyway, a major migratory path that hundreds of species of birds, bats, butterflies, and dragonflies pass through annually, relying on its green spaces and waterways to find shelter as they do.

They find solace in the mosaic of ecosystems that cover approximately 20,000 acres of land across the five boroughs from forests to grasslands, beaches, and freshwater wetlands.

Wetlands on Staten Island. (Photo by Adi Talwar)

New Yorkers might spot the American Beaver lurking in the Bronx River or come across 200 native kinds of bees buzzing through its skyscrapers.

Keeping the city’s biodiversity alive is important because thriving ecosystems guarantee cleaner air and water, cooler temperatures and prevent diseases. This is especially important in low-income communities, as the neighborhoods with the highest poverty rates in the five boroughs also have the highest asthma rates, according to the city’s Health Department. 

To keep this vast ecologically rich environment alive and thriving, the city needs to pour more resources and political willpower into protecting it, the NYC Biodiversity Task Force says. 

The city’s Parks Department, which manages 12,400 acres of parkland where ecologically significant fauna and flora thrive, has been chronically underfunded for decades.  

Back in the 1960s, Parks received 1.4 percent of the city’s budget, according to the non-profit New Yorkers for Parks. But after a fiscal crisis hit in the late 1970s, the agency’s budget was slashed to between 0.5 percent and 0.6 percent, where it remains today.

By comparison, other major U.S cities like Los Angeles, Chicago and Minneapolis, reportedly dedicate between 2 and 5 percent of their municipal budgets to parks. 

When Mayor Eric Adams campaigned for office he promised to dedicate 1 percent of the city’s total budget to parks, but has yet to make due on his pledge. 

Parks does plan to spend $10.4 billion on capital improvements over the next 10 years, which includes $891 million for land acquisition, tree planting, and green infrastructure, the mayor’s office noted in an email.

And in the most recent budget deal for fiscal year 2026, which elected officials finalized last month, $687.6 million was set aside for parks. That includes a $47 million bump than what City Hall initially intended to spend when funding negotiations first kicked off, the mayor’s office noted in an email. 

But the budget falls short of the $79.5 million environmental advocates said is needed to restore 795 vital staff positions that help take care of the city’s natural wonders.  

The final budget does guarantee $6.1 million to hire over 70 additional parks maintenance workers and lift a current hiring freeze for certain positions. 

Still, the new budget “only restores roughly one fourth of the positions, leaving the Parks Department down roughly 600 positions still,” according to the Play Fair for Parks Coalition. 

Central Park. (Daniel Avila/NYC Parks)

“We’ve made major investments to improve our parks and public amenities, including increasing the Parks budget and headcount to their highest level, as we aim to reach the 1 percent target,” a City Hall spokesperson said in an email.

But taking care of the city’s biodiversity shouldn’t fall on the shoulders of the Park’s Department alone, Anzelone says. 

“They are not able to do this work on their own. Nor should the topic of biodiversity be siloed into just the Parks Department. We need a citywide plan to protect our natural environment,” Anzelone said.

The city does have a biodiversity public awareness campaign and it leads the Forever Wild Program, which aims to protect ecologically significant habitats across the parks system. It also operates a Plant Ecology Center and Nursery that includes the largest municipal seed collection in the country, according to City Hall. 

While the administration has a plan to tackle climate change and build a more resilient city through its PlaNYC agenda, Anzelone says it lacks a comprehensive biodiversity blueprint to protect fauna and flora. 

“New York City is a climate leader. We want New York City to be a biodiversity leader too,” she added. 

To reach the reporter behind this story, contact Mariana@citylimits.org. To reach the editor, contact Jeanmarie@citylimits.org

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