Hello and welcome to Background Briefing, available 24-7 at Background Briefing.org.

I'm Ian Masters, and today we'll look into a number of stories and issues in the news.

We'll begin with Ukraine's President Zelensky at the United Nations Security Council today

ahead of meetings with Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, who just yesterday blamed the U.S. for the war in Ukraine

and in his recent debate with Harris, twice refused to say whether he wants Ukraine to win.

We will discuss Zelensky's remark that, quote,

We are closer to peace than we think, and his victory plan with Simon Schuster,

a report of four-time magazine based in New York City by way of Moscow, Kiev and Berlin.

He has previously covered Russia and the former Soviet Union for Reuters, the Associated

Press, the Moscow Times and foreign policy, and he is the author of The Showman,

inside the invasion that shook the world and made a leader of Vladimir Zelensky.

Then we'll examine the possibility of Trump stealing the election by electronically rigging the votes

since Republicans already have the software for the election machines in Georgia and also

Arizona and Michigan.

Joining us is Philip Stark, distinguished professor in the Department of Statistics at the University of California, Berkeley.

He has developed methods for auditing elections now in law in more than 15 U.S. states

and has consulted for major corporations and for the U.S. Department of Justice,

the Federal Trade Commission, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the U.S. Census Bureau,

the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, among many others.

He's also testified to the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on the census

and the state of California Senate Committee on Elections and serves on the Board of Advisors

of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.

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