Messi mania has descended on Florida with the arrival of Lionel Messi to play for local team Inter Miami. Many fans say they hope a player of his stature will signal a new era for U.S. soccer. Verónica Villafañe narrates this story from reporters Antoni Belchi and José Pernalete in Miami.
Camera: Antoni Belchi and José Pernalete
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The U.S. State Department added nearly 40 people from El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala and Nicaragua, including former presidents and judges, to a list published Wednesday of “corrupt and undemocratic actors.”

Two former Salvadoran presidents — Mauricio Funes, who served from 2009 to 2014, and his successor, Salvador Sanchez, whom Washington links to corruption, money laundering and embezzlement of public funds — were added to the list.

Funes and Sanchez, who both faced legal proceedings in El Salvador, now live in Nicaragua and cannot be extradited after receiving citizenship from the government of President Daniel Ortega.

“Corruption, a root cause of irregular migration, harms our national security,” said Brian Nichols, assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, as he presented the report.

Guatemalan targets include Fredy Orellana, the judge who ordered the suspension of an anti-graft party after its presidential candidate, Bernardo Arevalo, garnered enough votes to take part in an August 20 presidential runoff.

The so-called Engel list also features judges and prosecutors accused of persecuting journalists in Guatemala.

Meanwhile, Guatemala’s government rejected the accusations on Wednesday, labeling the report, “used by the United States to impose its jurisdiction on people abroad, as despicable.”

It includes ex-officials from the government of former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, who was extradited to the United States over drug trafficking links.

Politicians from Honduras’ opposition Liberal Party also appear, including Liberal leader Yani Rosenthal, previously convicted of money laundering in the United States. Rosenthal responded in a tweet that he “categorically rejects the unfounded accusations made in the list.”

The Nicaraguan section includes all of the country’s parliamentary leaders, barring its president, whom Washington has already sanctioned, and several judges and directors of Nicaragua’s money-laundering watchdog.
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Israel said that beginning on Thursday it will allow entry to all U.S. citizens, including Palestinian Americans living in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip, in a policy change it hopes will secure visa-free access for Israelis to the United States.

Washington has blocked Israel’s long-standing bid to join the U.S. Visa Waiver Program over differential treatment for some U.S. citizens, and officials said the U.S. will monitor the implementation of the changes over a six-week period.

An Israeli statement late on Wednesday quoted its national security adviser, Tzachi Hanegbi, as saying that U.S. Ambassador Thomas Nides and Israeli Ambassador Michael Herzog signed what the statement called a reciprocity agreement.

“The full implementation of the program will apply to any U.S. citizen, including those with dual citizenship, American residents of Judea and Samaria [the occupied West Bank] and American residents of the Gaza Strip,” the statement said.

U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said Washington expects the changes to “ensure equal treatment for all U.S. citizen travelers without regard to national origin, religion or ethnicity.”

The U.S. government would decide whether Israel should be admitted to the VWP by September 30, Miller said.

U.S. ties with its closest Middle East ally have been strained over policies toward the Palestinians of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hard-right government and its plan to overhaul the judiciary, which critics see as anti-democratic.

The VWP issue was raised when U.S. President Joe Biden hosted Israeli President Isaac Herzog in the White House on Tuesday, a source briefed on the meeting said.

Reuters first reported on the planned commitment early on Wednesday.

Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen said last month that the trial, which he called a pilot program, was planned for mid-July. Sources who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue also described it as a trial.

Under the trial, Palestinian Americans from the West Bank would be able to fly in and out of Israel’s Ben Gurion International Airport near Tel Aviv. Previously they would generally fly to neighboring Jordan, cross into the West Bank by land and face restrictions if seeking to enter Israel.

They would also be able to begin using new online Israeli forms to apply for entry to Israel at West Bank crossing points as U.S. tourists, the sources said.

A Biden administration official who briefed reporters said Palestinian Americans residing in the West Bank or Gaza crossing into Israel would receive entry permits that allowed them to enter for up to 90 days.

“We want to make sure that they are in compliance with our standards and our processes,” the official said of Israel, adding that Israelis would not have visa-free access to the United States during the six-week monitoring period.

The official declined to detail how Washington would monitor implementation, but sources said a State Department and Homeland Security Department delegation was to observe operations during the trial, with visits to Ben Gurion and to crossings between the West Bank and Israel.

The Arab American Institute Foundation puts the number of Americans of Palestinian descent at between 122,500 and 220,000. A U.S. official estimated that of that number, between 45,000 and 60,000 were residents of the West Bank.

An Israeli official gave lower figures, saying that out of 70,000 to 90,000 Palestinian Americans worldwide, about 15,000 to 20,000 were West Bank residents.
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Italy put 23 cities on red alert as it reckoned with another day of scorching temperatures Wednesday, with no sign of relief from the wave of extreme heat, wildfires and flooding that has wreaked havoc from the United States to China.

The heat wave has hit southern Europe during the peak summer tourist season, breaking records – including in Rome – and bringing warnings about an increased risk of deaths.

Wildfires burned for a third day west of the Greek capital, Athens, and firefighters raced to keep flames away from coastal refineries.

Fanned by erratic winds, the fires have gutted dozens of homes, forced hundreds of people to flee and blanketed the area in thick smoke. Temperatures could climb to 109 Fahrenheit on Thursday, forecasters said.

Extreme weather was also disrupting life for millions of Americans. A dangerous heat wave was holding an area stretching from Southern California to the Deep South in its grip, bringing the city of Phoenix its 20th straight day with temperatures of 110 degrees Fahrenheit or higher.

Meanwhile, Tropical Storm Calvin lashed Hawaii, raising the potential for flash flooding and dangerous surf on the Big Island.

In Texas, at least nine inmates in prisons without air conditioning have suffered fatal heart attacks during the extreme heat this summer, the Texas Tribune newspaper reported.

Another 14 have died of unknown causes during periods of extreme heat.

A Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesperson said preliminary findings of the deaths indicate that heat was not a factor in the fatalities. Nearly 70 of the 100 prisons in Texas are not fully air-conditioned.

Temperatures soar in China, Italy

In China, which was hosting U.S. climate envoy John Kerry for talks, tourists defied the heat to visit a giant thermometer showing surface temperatures of 80 Celsius (176 Fahrenheit).

In Beijing, which set a record as temperatures remained above 95 Fahrenheit for the 28th consecutive day, Kerry expressed hope that cooperation to combat global warming could redefine troubled ties between the two superpowers, both among the top polluters.

Temperatures remained high across much of Italy on Wednesday, where the health ministry said it would activate an information hotline and teams of mobile health workers visited the elderly in Rome.

“These people are afraid they won’t make it, they are afraid they can’t go out,” said Claudio Consoli, a doctor and director of a health unit.

Carmaker Stellantis said it was monitoring the situation at its Pomigliano plant near Naples on Wednesday, after temporarily halting work on one production line the day before when temperatures peaked.

Workers at battery-maker Magneti Marelli threatened an eight-hour strike at their central Italian plant in Sulmona. A joint statement by the unions said that “asphyxiating heat is putting at risk the lives of workers.”

While the heat wave appears to be subsiding in Spain, residents in Greece were left surveying the wreckage of their homes after the wildfires.

Scientists have long warned that climate change, caused by greenhouse gas emissions mainly from burning fossil fuels, will make heat waves more frequent, severe and deadly and have called on governments to drastically reduce emissions.

In Germany, the heat wave sparked a discussion on whether workplaces should introduce siestas for workers.

Heat and floods in Asia

In South Korea, heavy rain has pummeled central and southern regions since last week. Fourteen deaths occurred in an underpass in the city of Cheongju, where more than a dozen vehicles were submerged on Saturday when a river levee collapsed. In the southeastern province of North Gyeongsang, 22 people died, many from landslides and swirling torrents.

In northern India, flash floods, landslides and accidents related to heavy rainfall have killed more than 100 people since the onset of the monsoon season on June 1, where rainfall is 41% above average.

The Yamuna River reached the compound walls of the Taj Mahal in Agra for the first time in 45 years, submerging several other historical monuments, and flooded parts of the Indian capital.

The Brahmaputra River, which runs through India’s Assam state, burst its banks this month, engulfing almost half of the Kaziranga National Park – home to the rare one-horned rhino – in waist-deep water.

A wall collapse from monsoon rains killed at least 11 construction workers in neighboring Pakistan.

Iraq’s southern Basra governorate, with a population of around 4 million, said government work would be suspended on Thursday as temperatures hit 122 Fahrenheit. In Iraq’s northern city of Mosul, farmers said crops were failing because of heat and drought.

The unprecedented temperatures have added new urgency for nations around the globe to tackle climate change. With the world’s two biggest economies at odds over issues ranging from trade to Taiwan, Kerry told Chinese Vice President Han Zheng on Wednesday that climate change must be handled separately from broader diplomatic issues.

“It is a universal threat to everybody on the planet and requires the largest nations in the world, the largest economies in the world, the largest emitters in the world, to come together in order to do work not just for ourselves, but for all mankind,” Kerry told Han.
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People who have a particular genetic variant are twice as likely to never feel sick when they contract COVID-19, researchers said Wednesday, offering the first potential explanation for the lucky group dubbed the “super dodgers.”

Those who have two copies of the variant are eight times more likely to never get any symptoms from COVID-19, according to the study in the journal Nature.

Previous research has suggested that at least 20% of the millions of infections during the pandemic were asymptomatic. To find out what could be behind these cases, researchers took advantage of a database of volunteer bone marrow donors in the United States.

The database included each person’s type of human leukocyte antigen (HLA), which are molecules on the surface of most cells in the body. The immune system uses HLA to see which cells belong in the body, and they are thought to play a key role in the response to viral infections.

Subjects self-reported symptoms

The researchers had nearly 30,000 people on the bone marrow registry self-report their COVID tests and symptoms on a mobile phone app.

More than 1,400 unvaccinated people tested positive for COVID between February 2020 and late April 2021, the study said. Out of that group, 136 saw no symptoms two weeks before and after testing positive. 

One in five of that group carried at least one copy of an HLA variant called HLA-B*15:01.

Those fortunate enough to have two copies of the gene, one from their mother and one from their father, were more than eight times more likely to be asymptomatic from COVID-91 than other people, the study said.

To find out why this was the case, the team carried out separate research looking at T cells, which protect the body from infections, in people who carried the variant. The researchers specifically looked at how T cells remembered viruses they had previously encountered.

This meant they were “armed and ready for attack when they encounter the same pathogen again,” said Jill Hollenbach of the University of California, San Francisco, who was the study’s lead researcher.

When people with the HLA variant were exposed to the coronavirus, their T cells were particularly primed for battle because they remembered similar cold viruses they had previously fended off.

Children often spared the worst

This theory — that recent exposure to colds and other coronaviruses could lead to fewer COVID symptoms — has previously been proposed to explain why children have often been spared the worst of COVID.

“Anyone that has ever been a parent knows that kids are snotty-nosed for five or six years, so I think that’s a really reasonable thing to speculate might be happening,” Hollenbach said.

She said the HLA variant was likely just one piece of the genetic puzzle behind asymptomatic COVID.

The researchers hope that studying the immune response to COVID could lead to new treatments or vaccines in the future. Hollenbach said one interesting idea was a vaccine that prevents COVID symptoms, as opposed to infection, which could potentially last longer than the currently available vaccines.

The researchers warned that most of the study’s participants were white, which could limit the findings for other groups, and that it covered an earlier period of the pandemic and did not include re-infections.
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U.S. climate envoy John Kerry said more work was needed to iron out agreements with China on major issues after three days of talks in Beijing aimed at rebuilding trust between the world’s two biggest greenhouse gas emitters. 

“We — our team and the United States administration — came to Beijing in order to unstick what has been stuck since almost last August,” Kerry told reporters late on Wednesday. 

Climate talks were suspended last year following the visit of U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan, an island over which China claims sovereignty. 

“This is our first in-person meeting since that time, and we’re here to break new ground,” Kerry told a briefing on Wednesday. 

Kerry said more meetings would be held between the two countries in the run-up to crucial COP28 talks in Dubai at the end of the year. 

Li Shuo, senior climate adviser with the environmental group Greenpeace in Beijing, said this week’s talks were “a complex rescue operation for the U.S.-China climate dialog” and said it could put relations on a “stronger footing.” 

“Further engagements should help unlock more ambition in reducing coal consumption, cutting methane emissions, and beating a path towards a stronger outcome at COP28,” he said.  

Kerry earlier told Chinese Vice-President Han Zheng that climate change was a “universal threat” that should be handled separately from broader diplomatic issues between China and the United States. 

Kerry told China’s vice president that limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius requires significant Chinese efforts to reduce carbon and non-carbon dioxide emissions, the U.S. State Department said after their meeting. 

“[Kerry] further stressed that limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius requires significant efforts by the PRC to reduce CO2 and non-CO2 emissions, such as methane, and to contribute to global efforts to eliminate illegal deforestation,” the State Department said. 

Acknowledging the diplomatic difficulties between the two sides in recent years, Kerry said climate should be treated as a “free-standing” challenge that requires the collective efforts of the world’s largest economies to resolve.  

“We have the ability to … make a difference with respect to climate,” he said at a meeting at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People, China’s sprawling parliament building. 

“We are only following the best science,” he told reporters. “There is no politics or ideology in what we are doing.” 

‘Positive signal’  

Kerry arrived in Beijing on Sunday as heat waves scorched parts of Europe, Asia and the United States, underscoring the need for governments to take drastic action to reduce carbon emissions, which contribute to global warming and extreme weather events. 

He has held meetings with China’s top diplomat Wang Yi and Premier Li Qiang as well as veteran climate envoy Xie Zhenhua in a bid to rebuild trust between the two sides ahead of the COP28 climate talks in Dubai.  

“If we can come together over these next months leading up to COP28, which will be the most important since Paris, we will have an opportunity to be able to make a profound difference on this issue,” he told Han.  

Han said the two countries had maintained close communication and dialog on climate since Kerry’s appointment as envoy, adding that a joint statement issued by the two sides has sent a “positive signal” to the world.  

Kerry told reporters earlier that his talks with Chinese officials this week have been constructive but complicated, with the two sides still dealing with political “externalities,” including Taiwan. 

“We’re just reconnecting,” he said. “We’re trying to re-establish the process we have worked on for years.” 

“We’re trying to carve out a very clear path to the COP to be able to cooperate and work as we have wanted to with all the externalities,” Kerry said.  

“The mood is very, very positive,” Kerry said ahead of Wednesday’s meetings. “We had a terrific dinner last night. We had a lot of back and forth. It’s really constructive. 

“We’re focused on the substance of what we can really work on and what we can make happen.”  
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NEW YORK — A federal judge on Wednesday rejected Donald Trump’s request for a new trial in a civil case brought by E. Jean Carroll, in which a jury found the former U.S. president liable for sexually abusing and defaming the writer and awarded her $5 million in damages.

In a 59-page decision, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan in Manhattan said the jury did not reach a “seriously erroneous result” and the May 9 verdict was not a “miscarriage of justice.”

Carroll had accused Trump of raping her in a Manhattan department store dressing room in the mid-1990s and then branding the incident a hoax in an October 2022 post on his Truth Social platform.

Trump had argued that awarding Carroll $2 million in compensatory damages for sexual assault was “excessive” because the jury found he had not raped her, while the award for defamation was based on “pure speculation.” 

Lawyers for Trump and Carroll did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
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China’s top diplomat said the United States needs the “diplomatic wisdom” embodied by Henry Kissinger during a visit with the former U.S secretary of state Wednesday in Beijing.

Wang Yi praised Kissinger’s role in normalizing bilateral relations between Beijing and Washington in the 1970s, describing the 100-year-old former diplomat as “an old friend” who “played an irreplaceable role in enhancing understanding between the two countries,” according to a statement issued by China’s foreign ministry.

Kissinger arrived Tuesday on a surprise visit to the Chinese capital and had talks with Defense Minister Li Shangfu. His visits to Beijing in 1971 while serving as national security advisor under then-President Richard Nixon paved the way for Nixon’s historic visit to the Communist-run nation the next year and the eventual normalizing of ties in 1979.

Wang said current U.S. policy towards China “needs Kissinger-style diplomatic wisdom and Nixon-style political courage.”

Relations between the U.S. and China have been strained in recent years over a growing number of issues, including Washington’s accusations of Beijing’s unfair trade and economic practices and violations of intellectual property rights, plus rising tensions over Taiwan, the self-ruled island China says is part of its territory.

Wang told Kissinger that it would be “impossible” to try and change China, and “even more impossible to encircle and contain” his country.

The U.S. has also accused China of human rights violations in the remote province of Xinjiang, as well as in Tibet and Hong Kong.

A spokesman for the U.S. State Department told reporters Tuesday that officials with the administration of President Joe Biden had known Kissinger was planning to travel to China, but was not acting on behalf of the U.S. government.
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An American soldier facing disciplinary action by the U.S. military is believed to be in North Korean custody after illegally crossing the border dividing the two Koreas at the Joint Security Area in Panmunjom Tuesday. 

“What we do know is that one of our service members who was on a tour, willfully and without authorization, crossed the Military Demarcation Line, or MDL. We believe he is in DPRK custody,” U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in a briefing Tuesday.  

“And so, we are closely monitoring and investigating the situation and working to notify the soldier’s next of kin,” he said. “I’m absolutely foremost concerned about the welfare of our troops. And so, we will remain focused on this.” 

The soldier, who the Army identified as Private Second Class Travis T. King, had been in a detention facility in South Korea for about a month and a half for disciplinary measures, a U.S. official told VOA, adding that he had been taken to the airport to return to the U.S. but never got on the plane. The Associated Press and Agence France-Presse, are reporting that King was recently released from a South Korean prison after serving time on assault charges. 

Another official told VOA that the soldier was supposed to be heading to the U.S. for pending administrative separation from the U.S. military. 

It is unclear how King got from the secure area of the airport to the border area. 

Officials say the soldier joined a tour of the Korean border village of Panmunjom, where he fled across the border. 

The United Nations Command, a multinational military force stationed at the border village to maintain the pause to the 1950’s Korean War, also said it is working with North Korea’s military to “resolve the incident.” 

The soldier in question suddenly crossed north of the MDL, the official border, at around 3:27 p.m. local time on Tuesday afternoon, according to South Korean daily The Chosun Ilbo, citing unnamed sources.  

No gunshots appeared to have been exchanged at the high-tension border town, where soldiers from the two Koreas in pre-COVID times stood guard around the clock, facing each other.  

The incident occurred as South Korea’s military remains on high alert for possible provocations from North Korea after a U.S. nuclear ballistic missile submarine arrived in port in the southern city of Busan on the same day.  

Arrival of the USS Kentucky, capable of launching Trident II ballistic missiles with a range of 12,000 kilometers, is a highly symbolic move that Washington will stand with South Korea in the event of a North Korean nuclear attack.  

It is the first visit of a U.S. nuclear submarine in decades, said the White House Indo-Pacific coordinator, Kurt Campbell, during a press conference in Seoul Tuesday. 

Campbell is leading a 30-person delegation to officially launch the Nuclear Consultative Group, or NCG, with Seoul. South Korea says the initiative will strengthen their alliance to one that is nuclear based. It is the realization of a commitment made by U.S. President Joe Biden and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol in April, as outlined in the Washington Declaration.    

A joint statement following the inaugural meeting of the NCG noted that any North Korean nuclear attack against the United States or its allies would “result in the end of that regime,” and that a nuclear attack against South Korea would “be met with a swift, overwhelming and decisive response.” 

VOA’s Korean Service contributed to this report. 
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The United States should exercise sound strategic judgment in dealing with China, China Defense Minister Li Shangfu said while meeting veteran U.S. diplomat Henry Kissinger in Beijing on Tuesday. 

China has been committed to building stable, predictable and constructive Sino-U.S. relations, and hopes the United States can work with it to promote the healthy development of relations between their two militaries, the defense ministry quoted Li as saying. 

Washington was aware of Kissinger’s travel to China, but he is a private citizen and was not acting on behalf of the U.S. government, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said.  

The meeting followed recent visits to China by senior U.S. officials, including U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, which aimed to smooth over tensions between the two superpowers. 

The talks took place as high-level defense dialog between China and the United States remains frozen and military deployments across East Asia intensify.  

Li’s meeting with Kissinger expounded on Sino-U.S. relations. He said, “some people on the U.S. side have failed to move in the same direction as the Chinese side, resulting in China-United States relations hovering at a low point since the establishment of diplomatic relations,” according to a statement from China’s Defense Ministry. 

“We have always been committed to building stable, predictable and constructive Sino-U.S. relations, and we hope that the U.S. will work with China to implement the consensus of the heads of State of the two countries and jointly promote the healthy and stable development of the relationship between the two militaries.” 

Kissinger said: “The United States and China should eliminate misunderstandings, coexist peacefully and avoid confrontation. History and practice have continually proved that neither the United States nor China can afford to treat the other as an adversary.” 

Kissinger, now age 100, served as U.S. secretary of state and national security adviser in the administrations of presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. He played a key diplomatic role in the normalization of relations between Washington and Beijing in the 1970s and has visited China and met Chinese officials regularly since leaving office. 

Chinese officials had informed Blinken during meetings in Beijing last month that Kissinger would be visiting, the State Department’s Miller told reporters at a regular press briefing. 

Kissinger might later brief U.S. officials on his meetings, as he has done in the past, the spokesperson said. 

“I will say he was there under his own volition, not acting on behalf of the United States government,” Miller said.
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President Joe Biden on Tuesday assured Israel’s president that the friendship between their countries is “just simply unbreakable,” amid Washington’s concerns over events in Israel, including the leadership’s push to amend the judicial system and recent settler violence in the West Bank.  

Those words came during President Isaac Herzog’s second visit to Biden’s White House, an honor not yet accorded to the nation’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who began his sixth term in December. 

“As I affirmed to Prime Minister Netanyahu yesterday, America’s commitment to Israel is firm,” Biden said. “And it is ironclad. And we’re committed, as well, to assure that Iran never acquires a nuclear weapon. So we’ve got a lot to talk about.”  

After the meeting, the White House said the two also discussed Tehran’s growing defense partnership with Moscow.    

Herzog also addressed Biden’s concerns over Netanyahu’s plan to overhaul the country’s judiciary, which has sparked 28 straight weeks of massive street protests by Israelis who say the plan pushes the nation toward autocracy.  

“It’s a heated debate, but it’s also a virtue and a tribute to the greatness of Israeli democracy,” he said. “And let me reiterate, clear, crystal clear: Israeli democracy is sound, strong, is resilient. We are going through pains. We are going through heated debates. We are going through challenging moments. But I truly, truly believe and I will say to you, Mr. President, as I’ve said it as head of state to the people of Israel, we should always seek to find amicable consensus.”  

Millions of Americans with ties to Israel are watching.  

They include those who support conservative American politics and policies and tend to also support Netanyahu.  

But the majority of Jewish Americans lean left.  

And on Tuesday, as protests in Tel Aviv turned violent, a clutch of about a dozen protesters also stood outside the White House, bearing signs critical of Netanyahu. 

“We stand in solidarity with the protesters,” said Rabbi Jonah Pesner, director of the Religious Action Center of the largest Jewish denomination in the U.S., Reform Judaism. He spoke to VOA via Zoom from his office near Washington. 

“It is the best, greatest hope for Israel to continue to thrive as an inclusive democracy. There are so many issues at stake: everything from women’s rights to LGBTQIA equality, to the rights of different forms of Jewish expression, and frankly, other faith groups that would seek to have their rights protected in Israel,” he said. 

On recent violence in the West Bank, he said: “We need to end the violence. And this coalition government led by this prime minister and his incredibly problematic partners — Itamar Ben-Gvir, [Bezalel Yoel] Smotrich and the like, who have normalized violence by settlers and by vigilantes against Palestinians — is anti-Jewish, it’s inhuman, and it needs to end.” 

Other Jewish groups, like the more conservative American Israel Public Affairs Committee, disagree. In an email, AIPAC declined to give VOA an interview.  

That group blames Palestinian leaders for violence in the West Bank and seeks a more forceful response. 

“The United States must continue its efforts to persuade and enable the Palestinian Authority to act responsibly and regain control of the areas now controlled by Iranian-backed terror groups,” the group said in a recent memo.   

Some Republicans are demanding the Biden administration stay out of Israel’s affairs.   

“What this Biden administration has done, I think, has been disgraceful,” said Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who is running for president, at this week’s Christians United for Israel summit near Washington. “The way they treat a strong ally like Prime Minister Netanyahu has been disgraceful. What they’re trying to do, to shoehorn Israel into bad policies has been disgraceful. You have different things that go on in Israel, like with this judicial reform. Biden needs to butt out of that and let Israel govern itself.” 

The White House said this week that the two leaders — Biden and Netanyahu — will meet in coming months but did not say when or where. After leaving the White House, Herzog speaks before a joint session of Congress on Wednesday.   
…

Religious discrimination in India, the world’s largest democracy, has reached a “frightening” level, and some experts warn that the country must change its course or face targeted sanctions from the U.S. government.

“India has done better in the past and has to change course because the cycle of downward spiral in a country of that importance and the number of people who are involved. It is quite frightening,” Rabbi Abraham Cooper, chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, or USCIRF, told lawmakers on Tuesday.

“Religious discrimination should not be a matter of national pride,” he said.

The USCIRF has recommended that India, along with Afghanistan, Syria, Nigeria and Vietnam, be added to the U.S. government’s list of Countries of Particular Concern, or CPC, because of the worsening limits on religious freedom in these countries.

It also has called for targeted economic and travel sanctions against Indian government agencies and officials that are allegedly involved in violation of religious freedom.

The scathing criticism comes only weeks after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited the White House and addressed a joint session of Congress.

In 2005, the U.S. State Department revoked Modi’s tourist/business visa because of his alleged role in religious and communal violence in the Indian Gujarat state in 2002.

“So, we’re hoping that now that the trip has taken place and the victory lap has been earned and taken, there will be a serious review,” Cooper said.

Human rights groups have accused Modi’s government of fostering discriminatory religious nationalism targeting Muslim, Christian and Sikh religious minorities.

Amid recurrent incidents of religiously inspired violence, 12 out of 28 states in India have passed legislation criminalizing religious conversion.

Under review

Known for his disdain for news conferences, Modi nonetheless appeared at a joint news conference with President Joe Biden at the White House on June 22 where he was asked about discrimination against religious minorities by his government.

“I’m actually really surprised that people say so,” Modi responded, adding that India is governed under a constitutional democratic order.

“There’s absolutely no space for discrimination,” he emphasized.

Last year, the U.S. government did not list India as a country of particular concern despite a USCIRF recommendation to do so.

“We are beginning our process for determining [CPC] designations this year,” Rashad Hussain, ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom at the U.S. State Department, told the congressional hearing on Tuesday.

Hussain did not specifically say whether India would be designated a CPC this year.

The United States and India, both considering China as a strategic challenge, have expanded bilateral economic, military and political relations. With $120 billion in trade in 2022, the United States has become India’s largest trading partner.

Global concerns

U.S. lawmakers express concerns about the worsening state of religious freedom worldwide, ranging from China to Nicaragua.

“Today, I am more concerned than ever about the further deterioration of religious freedom,” said Representative Christopher Smith, pointing out that about half of the world’s population is unable to practice faith freely.

Some lawmakers accused China of committing “genocide” against religious minorities, particularly the Uyghur Muslims — allegations the Chinese government has repeatedly denied.

While lawmakers called on the State Department to hold the perpetrator regimes accountable, experts said the U.S. should adopt a holistic approach and avoid worsening the plight of vulnerable religious communities in different parts of the world.

“It’s critical [for] the U.S. to support vulnerable communities … Uyghurs in China, atheists in Pakistan and Baháʼís in Iran,” said Susan Hayward, associate director of religion and public life at Harvard Divinity School.

“U.S. advocacy for religious freedom must be conflict-sensitive, so as not to render already vulnerable communities more vulnerable nor exacerbate religious dimensions of conflict,” Hayward said.
…

A call for increased oversight of the billions of dollars in aid that the United States is sending to Ukraine faces an uncertain future as lawmakers in the Senate begin debate on a bill to fund the U.S. military for the coming year.

The demand, to establish a special inspector general for Ukraine assistance, is a key part of the $874.2 billion version of the bill passed by the House of Representatives this past Friday by a vote of 219-210, with its mainly Republican supporters insisting it is the only way to make sure U.S. assistance does not fall prey to corruption and incompetence.

“The American people, the taxpayers of this country, deserve to know where their money is going and how it is being spent,” Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene said last November, when she and other lawmakers started to build momentum for the creation of a special inspector general.

“The American people are not going to support this war without review, without asking tough questions,” said Republican Matt Gaetz, a member of the House Freedom Caucus.

With the support of Greene, Gaetz and others, language in the House version of the National Defense Authorization Act would require the departments of Defense and State to set up and staff an office dedicated to examining the more than $42 billion in security aid to Ukraine, as well as the approximately $25 billion in humanitarian and economic assistance.

Specifically, the provision would require the special inspector general to maintain staff in Ukraine and produce quarterly reports on the fate of U.S. aid, to some extent following the model set by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), which has been producing reports since October 2008.

“That actually worked,” Republican Representative Warren Davidson said of SIGAR during a March 2023 hearing on aid to Ukraine.

“We weren’t getting results until we did that,” he added, suggesting aid to Ukraine might benefit from similar oversight.

But there has been pushback from the Pentagon, the State Department and the White House.

The Defense Department Inspector General and the Government Accountability Office “are currently undertaking multiple investigations regarding every aspect of this assistance — from assessing the [Defense Department’s] processes for developing security assistance requirements to evaluating the end-use monitoring processes for delivered assistance — at the request of the Congress,” the White House said in a statement earlier this month.

There also seems to be little appetite in the Democrat-controlled Senate to add another layer of oversight.

A measure introduced by Republican Senator Josh Hawley to create a special inspector general for Ukraine was defeated 68-26 in a vote this past March. Among those voting no were some prominent Republicans, including Senate Armed Services Committee ranking member Roger Wicker and Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chair Marco Rubio.

Some analysts have also raised doubts about the need for a special inspector general for Ukraine.

“There’s no question accountability is needed. However, I don’t think this inspector general is really the way to go,” said Elizabeth Hoffman, director of congressional and government affairs at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Hoffman echoed concerns that creating a new special inspector general for Ukraine would likely create redundancies. And she rejected comparisons to the special inspector general that was set up to oversee efforts in Afghanistan.

“The two situations are so, so different that I don’t think it’s a simple copy-paste solution,” she said. “Ukraine has, and had, a very robust civil society, a functioning government. … That wasn’t the case in Afghanistan.”

Hoffman also expressed concern that the additional oversight could have “a chilling effect.”

“[SIGAR] made people very risk averse,” she said, worrying that another special inspector general could bog down efforts to help Kyiv.

“It could make people unwilling to take calculated risks … to be creative with assistance and respond to the situation on the ground.”

“We are not going to relent. We are not going to back down. We are not going to give up on the cause that is righteous,” Republican Representative Scott Perry said this past Friday after passage of the House version of the bill. “We are going to use every single tool at our disposal to ensure that we change from crazy to normal.”

Katherine Gypson contributed to this report.
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Does generative artificial intelligence pose a risk to humanity that could lead to our extinction?

That was among the questions put to experts by the head of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission at a workshop hosted with the National Science Foundation.

FCC chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said she is more hopeful about artificial intelligence than pessimistic. “That might sound contrarian,” she said, given that so much of the news about AI is “dark,” raising questions such as, “How do we rein in this technology? What does it mean for the future of work when we have intelligent machines? What will it mean for democracy and elections?”

The discussion included participants from a range of industries including network operators and vendors, leading academics, federal agencies, and public interest representatives.  

“We are entering the AI revolution,” said National Science Foundation senior adviser John Chapin, who described this as a “once-in-a-generation change in technology capabilities” which “require rethinking the fundamental assumptions that underline our communications.” 

“It is vital that we bring expert understanding of the science of technology together with expert understanding of the user and regulatory issues.” 

Investing in AI 

FCC Commissioner Nathan Simington pointed out that while technology may sometimes give the appearance of arriving suddenly, in many cases it’s a product of a steady but unnoticed evolution decades in the making. He gave the example of ChatGPT as AI that landed seemingly overnight, with dramatic impact. 

“Where the United States has succeeded in technological development, it has done so through a mindful attempt to cultivate and potentiate innovation.”

Lisa Guess, senior vice president of Solutions Engineering at the firm Ericsson/Cradlepoint, expressed concern that her company’s employees could “cut and paste” code into the ChatGPT window to try to perfect it, thereby exposing the company’s intellectual property. ”There are many things that we all have to think through as we do this.” 

Other panelists agreed. “With the opportunity to use data comes the opportunity that the data can be corrupted,” said Ness Shroff, a professor at The Ohio State University who is also an expert on AI. He called for “appropriate guardrails” to prevent that corruption.

FCC Commissioner Geoffrey Starks said AI “has the potential to impact if not transform nearly every aspect of American life.” Because of that potential, everyone, especially in government, shoulders a responsibility to better understand AI’s risks and opportunities. “That is just good governance in this era of rapid technological change.”  

“Fundamental issues of equity are not a side salad here,” he said. “They have to be fundamental as we consider technological advancement. AI has raised the stakes of defending our networks” and ultimately “network security means national security.” 

Digital equity, robocalls 

Alisa Valentin, senior director of technology and telecommunications policy at the civil rights organization the National Urban League, voiced her concerns about the illegal and predatory nature of robocalls. “Even if we feel like we won’t fall victim to robocalls, we are concerned about our family members or friends who may not be as tech savvy,” knowing how robocalls “can turn people’s lives upside down.”

Valentin also emphasized the urgent need to close the digital divide “to make sure that every community can benefit from the digital economy not only as consumers but also as workers and business owners.” 

“Access to communication services is a civil right,” she said. “Equity has to be at the center of everything we do when having conversations about AI.” 

Global competition

FCC Commissioner Simington said global competitors are “really good, and we should assume that they are taking us seriously, so we should protect what is ours.” But regulations to protect the expropriation of American innovation should not go overboard.

“Let’s make sure we don’t give away the store, but let’s not do it by keeping the shelves empty.” 
…

The U.S.-led United Nations Command is trying to secure the release of an unidentified American soldier who entered North Korea from the South Korean side of a border village.

It’s not immediately clear what motivated the soldier to cross into North Korea during a time of high tensions as the pace of both the North’s weapons demonstrations and U.S.-South Korean joint military training have intensified in a cycle of tit-for-tat.

There have been cases of Americans crossing into North Korea over the past years, including a small number of U.S. soldiers. Some of the Americans who crossed were driven by evangelical zeal or simply attracted by the mystery of a severely cloistered police state fueled by anti-U.S. hatred.

Other Americans were detained after entering North Korea as tourists. In one tragic case, it ended in death.

Here’s a look at Americans who entered North Korea in the past years:

Charles Jenkins

Born in Rich Square, North Carolina, Charles Jenkins was one of the few Cold War-era U.S. soldiers who fled to North Korea while serving in the South.

Jenkins, then an Army sergeant, deserted his post in 1965 and fled across the Demilitarized Zone separating the two Koreas. North Korea treated Jenkins as a propaganda asset, showcasing him in leaflets and films.

In 1980, Jenkins married 21-year-old Hitomi Soga, a Japanese nursing student who had been abducted by North Korean agents in 1978.

Soga was allowed to return to Japan in 2002. In 2004, Jenkins was allowed to leave North Korea and rejoin his wife in Japan, where he surrendered to U.S. military authorities and faced charges that he abandoned his unit and defected to North Korea. He was dishonorably discharged and sentenced to 25 days in a U.S. military jail in Japan. He died in Japan in 2017.

Matthew Miller

In September 2014, then a 24-year-old from Bakersfield, California, Matthew Miller was sentenced to six years of hard labor by North Korea’s Supreme Court on charges that he illegally entered the country for spying purposes.

The court claimed that Miller tore up his tourist visa upon arriving at Pyongyang’s airport in April that year and admitted to a “wild ambition” of experiencing North Korean prison life so that he could secretly investigate the country’s human rights conditions.

North Korea’s initial announcement about Miller’s detainment that month came as then-President Barack Obama was traveling in South Korea on a state visit.

Miller was freed in November that same year along with another American, Kenneth Bae, a missionary and tour leader.

Weeks before his release, Miller talked with The Associated Press at a Pyongyang hotel where North Korean officials allowed him to call his family. Miller said he was digging in fields eight hours a day and being kept in isolation.

Kenneth Bae

Bae, a Korean-American missionary from Lynnwood, Washington, was arrested in November 2012 while leading a tour group in a special North Korean economic zone.

North Korea sentenced Bae to 15 years in prison for “hostile acts,” including smuggling in inflammatory literature and attempting to establish a base for anti-government activities at a hotel in a border town. Bae’s family said he suffered from chronic health issues, including back pain, diabetes, and heart and liver problems.

Bae returned to the United States in November 2014 following a secret mission by James Clapper, then-U.S. director of national intelligence who also secured Miller’s release.

Jeffrey Fowle

A month before Bae and Miller’s release, North Korea also freed Jeffrey Fowle, an Ohio municipal worker who was detained for six months for leaving a Bible in a nightclub in the city of Chongjin. Fowle’s release followed negotiations that involved retired diplomat and former Ohio Congressman Tony Hall.

While North Korea officially guarantees freedom of religion, analysts and defectors describe the country as strictly anti-religious. The distribution of Bibles and secret prayer services can mean imprisonment or execution, defectors say.

In 2009, American missionary Robert Park walked into North Korea with a Bible in his hand to draw attention to North Korea’s human rights abuses. Park, who was deported from the North in February 2010, has said he was tortured by authorities.

Otto Warmbier

Otto Warmbier, a 22-year-old University of Virginia student, died in June 2017, shortly after he was flown home in a vegetative state after 17 months in North Korean captivity.

Warmbier was seized by North Korean authorities from a tour group in January 2016 and convicted on charges of trying to steal a propaganda poster and sentenced to 15 years of hard labor.

While not providing a clear reason for Warmbier’s brain damage, North Korea denied accusations by Warmbier’s family that he was tortured and maintained that it had provided him medical care with “all sincerity.” The North accused the United States of a smear campaign and claimed itself as the “biggest victim” in his death.

In 2022, a U.S. federal judge in New York ruled that Warmbier’s parents — Fred and Cindy Warmbier — should receive $240,300 seized from a North Korean bank account, which would be a partial payment toward the more than $501 million they were awarded in 2018 by a federal judge in Washington.
…

The White House on Tuesday along with companies such as Amazon.com Inc, Alphabet’s Google and Best Buy will announce an initiative that allows Americans to identify devices that are less vulnerable to cyberattacks.

A new certification and labeling program would raise the bar for cybersecurity across smart devices such as refrigerators, microwaves, televisions, climate control systems and fitness trackers, the White House said in a statement.

Retailers and manufacturers will apply a “U.S. Cyber Trust Mark” logo to their devices and the program will be up and running in 2024.

The initiative is designed to make sure “our networks and the use of them is more secure, because it is so important for economic and national security,” said a senior administration official, who did not wish to be named.

The Federal Communications Commission will seek public comment before rolling out the labeling program and register a national trademark with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the White House said.

Other retailers and manufacturers participating in the program include LG Electronics U.S.A., Logitech, Cisco Systems and Samsung.

In March, the White House launched its national cyber strategy that called on software makers and companies to take far greater responsibility to ensure that their systems cannot be hacked.

It also accelerated efforts by agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Defense Department to disrupt activities of hackers and ransomware groups around the world.

Last week, Microsoft and U.S. official said Chinese state-linked hackers secretly accessed email accounts at around 25 organizations, including at least two U.S. government agencies, since May.
…

U.S. lawmakers have introduced a new bill that would require the secretary of defense to develop a strategy for building “Rings of Fire” in the Indo-Pacific region to shrink the missile gap with China in concert with allies.

Republican Representatives Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin and Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa introduced the Rings of Fire Act of 2023 on Friday.

“China’s aggression is growing, and a strong deterrence strategy is needed to confront the Chinese Communist Party. As China’s rocket force has taken the lead in the Indo-Pacific, the shocking gap in America’s missile capabilities calls deterrence into question,” Ernst said.

“The Chinese Communist Party has spent years building a rocket force that can push American ships out of a fight and target American forces further out across the Indo-Pacific — reaching our own borders,” Gallagher said in a press release.

The bill includes a list of potential locations to place missile systems in the region, the designation of a specific commander tasked with overseeing the effort, and a list of allies with which Washington could develop a strategy, according to Gallagher’s office.

Geologically, the “ring of fire” refers to a 40,000-kilometer-long zone marked by earthquakes and volcanic eruptions extending in a horseshoe shape around the Pacific Ocean.

A report titled “Rings of Fire: A Conventional Missile Strategy for a Post-INF Treaty World,” released last August by the Washington-based think tank Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, says the most appropriate set of rings corresponds to the ranges of the existing classes of conventional missiles: short-, medium- and intermediate-range.

One of the report’s authors, Tyler Hacker, told VOA Mandarin via email on July 13 that a “rings of fire” strategy would optimally match different ground-based missile systems with potential operating locations, as it can “take advantage of the plethora of existing allied missile capabilities in the first island chain (inner ring) and maximize the utility of strategic geography in the middle and outer rings.”

The bill’s sponsors wrote in an op-ed for Fox News that “Japan and the Philippines could host shorter-range systems, while longer-range systems could be deployed to northern Australia, the Pacific Islands and Alaska.”

The op-ed also mentioned that according to a Pentagon report, China has deployed more than 1,250 ground-launched theater-range ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 km that can strike U.S. targets in the Indo-Pacific region.

When asked during a hearing before the Senate Armed Forces Committee on April 20 whether the U.S. deployed land-based theater missiles with the same range, Admiral John Aquilino, commander of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, said it did not. Asked if the U.S. is developing the missiles with a range at 3,000 to 5,000 kilometers, Aquilino responded it was not.

The commander of U.S. Strategic Command, Anthony Cotton, who oversees nuclear forces, told both House and Senate Armed Services committees on January 26 via letter that China has more land-based fixed and mobile Intercontinental ballistic missile launchers than the U.S.

Bryan Clark, director of the Center for Defense Concepts and Technology at the Hudson Institute, told VOA Mandarin via email on July 12 that the U.S. and allied forces will have far too few air defense missiles to counter China’s growing inventory of ballistic and cruise missiles.

According to research compiled by the Federation of American Scientists, China has had more than 450 launchers as of October 2022, while the U.S. Air Force has 400 silos with missiles and another 50 empty silos that could be loaded if necessary.

“As we see in Ukraine, missile defenses can be effective but are depleted quickly in even a relatively small conflict,” Clark said. “U.S. forces will have to withdraw to longer ranges from China to reduce the number of Chinese missiles they face and use long-range anti-ship missiles of their own to attack Chinese forces invading Taiwan. These longer-range U.S. anti-ship missiles are expensive and in limited supply. They are, therefore, likely to run out before even the initial fighting has subsided.”

Clark suggests a better approach “has been to prioritize shorter-range cruise missiles that can be carried by submarines or aircraft flying from U.S. carriers or land bases to attack Chinese ships and targets ashore. By using stealth aircraft or ships, these missiles can be launched closer to Chinese territory and, therefore, be smaller and less expensive. They can, therefore, be more numerous.”

Kyle Bass, the founder and chief investment officer of Hayman Capital Management, is on the China Center Advisory Board at the Hudson Institute. At a July 12 event there, “China Prepares for War: A Timeline,” he told VOA Mandarin he thinks the U.S. has the best submarine fleet in the world and doesn’t need to encircle China with conventional missiles.

“I don’t think encircling China with our missiles is necessarily even a good idea on the land base. But I do think that we have all the firepower we need at the moment. And I don’t think the basic missile counts matter,” Bass said.

He said the U.S. should cripple China economically by disconnecting it from SWIFT, the international financial transaction settlement system. That, he suggested, would quickly bring China’s economy to a halt.

He said the U.S. should get “Treasury and OFAC [the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control] to socialize the concept of pressing this economic nuclear button. But if we really want to be effective, we press that button.”

Clark believes the reliance of the “Rings of Fire” on expensive ballistic missiles and host nation basing makes it ill-suited as a primary strategy for countering China, as “U.S. allies may not want to host them, where they would be a clear provocation to China.”

He suggested the U.S. strategy should prioritize the use of expendable uncrewed air and surface vehicles. For example, he said, U.S. forces could field uncrewed surface vessels to Taiwan and the Southwest Islands of Japan, where they could be quickly employed as suicide boats or launch loitering munitions and small missiles against Chinese ships.

“This approach has worked for Ukraine against the Russian Navy in the Black Sea,” he said, “and in the constrained waters around Taiwan, it could be an effective counter to a Chinese invasion force.”

Adrianna Zhang contributed to this report.
…

A review of the status of a vanishing species of whale found that the mammal’s population is in worse shape than previously thought, federal ocean regulators said Monday.

The North Atlantic right whale numbers less than 350, and it has been declining in population for several years. The federal government declared the whale’s decline an “unusual mortality event,” which means an unexpected and significant die-off, in 2017.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released new data that 114 of the whales have been documented as dead, seriously injured or sub-lethally injured or sick — since the start of the mortality event. That is an increase of 16 whales since the previous estimate released earlier this year.

The agency recently completed a review of the whales using photographs from researchers and surveys to create the new estimate, said Andrea Gomez, a spokesperson for NOAA.

“Additional cases will continue to be reviewed, and animals will be added if appropriate, as more information is obtained,” Gomez said.

Thirty-six of the 114 whales included in the estimate had died, NOAA documents state. The agency cautioned that only about a third of right whale deaths are documented, so the total number of dead or injured animals could be much higher.

Right whales are found off the Atlantic coast of the U.S. They are vulnerable to collisions with large ships and entanglement in commercial fishing gear. The federal government has worked to craft stricter rules to protect the whales from both threats.

Commercial fishing and shipping interests have both vowed to fight stricter protections. A federal appeals court sided with fishermen last month after they filed a complaint that proposed new restrictions could put them out of business.

The new data illustrate how dire the situation is for the whales, said Sarah Sharp, an animal rescue veterinarian with International Fund for Animal Welfare. The number of injured animals is especially significant because injured whales are less likely to reproduce, Sharp said.

“If animals are putting energy into healing from a wound, they are not necessarily going to have those energy stores for other things,” Sharp said. “I think this just paints a much more accurate picture of the threats these whales are facing.”

The whales give birth off Florida and Georgia and feed off New England and Canada. They have been protected under the Endangered Species Act for decades, and federal authorities ruled in December that they must retain that protection.
…

The U.S. Senate will begin debate this week on a massive spending bill setting the spending priorities for the U.S. military for the coming year. Democrats and Republicans have already clashed in the House of Representatives over how much the legislation should include for aid to Ukraine, diversity initiatives and abortion. VOA’s Congressional Correspondent Katherine Gypson has more.
…

U.S. President Joe Biden on Monday invited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Washington for an official visit at a date to be determined, the prime minister’s office said.

The invitation was extended during a phone call between Biden and Netanyahu, a day ahead of a visit to Washington by Israeli President Isaac Herzog.

Netanyahu returned to power more than six months ago, but Biden had pointedly declined to issue an invitation until long after most Israeli prime ministers would have made the visit.

Amid escalating West Bank violence, the right-wing Israeli government’s actions authorizing settler outposts and inflammatory comments from a member of Netanyahu’s cabinet with responsibilities over Jewish settlements had drawn criticism from U.S. officials, including from Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin during a visit to Israel in March.

Netanyahu told Biden he would try to form “broad public consensus” on legislation in Israel that would strip its highest court of much of its powers, the statement said. The legislation has prompted anti-government protests in Israel for months.

The two leaders shared a “long and warm” conversation, the Israeli statement said, focused on curbing threats from Iran and its proxies and strengthening the alliance between the two countries.

The White House was expected to issue a statement later on the U.S. view of the phone call.
…

Mike Berent has spent more than 27 years rushing into burning houses in Detroit, pulling people to safety and ensuring his fellow firefighters get out alive.

But as the 52-year-old Detroit Fire Department lieutenant approaches mandatory retirement at age 60, he says one thing is clear: He will need to keep working to make ends meet.

“I’m trying to put as much money away as I can,” said Berent, who also works in sales. “A second job affords you to have a little bit of extra.”

Thousands of city employees and retirees lost big on July 18, 2013, when a state-appointed manager made Detroit the largest U.S. city to file for bankruptcy.

A decade later, the Motor City has risen from the ashes of insolvency, with balanced budgets, revenue increases and millions of dollars socked away. But Berent and others who spent years on Detroit’s payroll say they can’t help but feel left behind.

“You become a firefighter because that’s your passion and you’ll make a decent living. You would retire with a good pension,” said Berent, who told The Associated Press that his monthly pension payments will be more than $1,000 lower than expected due to the bankruptcy.

Berent’s city-funded health care also ends with retirement, five years before he’s eligible for Medicare.

“I don’t see us ever getting health care back,” he said. “It’s going to have to come out of our pensions.”

The architect of the bankruptcy filing was Kevyn Orr, a lawyer hired by then-Governor Rick Snyder in 2013 to fix Detroit’s budget deficit and its underfunded pensions, health care costs and bond payments.

Detroit exited bankruptcy in December 2014 with about $7 billion in debt restructured or wiped out and $1.7 billion set aside to improve city services. Businesses, foundations and the state donated more than $800 million to soften the pension cuts and preclude the sale of city-owned art.

The pension cuts were necessary, Orr insisted.

“I’ve read about the pain, the very real pain,” he told the AP. “But the alternatives of what was going to happen — just on the math — would have been significantly worse.”

In 2013, Detroit had some 21,000 retired workers who were owed benefits, with underfunded obligations of about $3.5 billion for pensions and $5.7 billion for retiree health coverage.

In the months before the bankruptcy, state-backed bond money helped the city meet payroll for its 10,000 employees.

“Those problems were well on their way years or decades before we got there,” Orr said.

Daniel Varner, the president and chief executive of Goodwill Industries of Greater Detroit, which provides on-the-job training and skilled labor to businesses, called the bankruptcy filing “heartbreaking.”

“In some ways, it represented the failure of all of us who had been working so hard to achieve the [city’s] renaissance,” Varner said. “On the flip side … maybe this is the fresh start? I think we’ve been making great progress.”

The city, which was subject to state oversight and a state-monitored spending plan for years after the bankruptcy filing, has reported nine consecutive years of balanced budgets and strong cash surpluses.

Mike Duggan was elected mayor and took office in 2014. Hoping to slow the exodus of people and businesses from Detroit — its population plummeted from about 1.8 million in 1950 to below 700,000 in 2013 — and increase the tax base, Duggan’s administration began pushing improvements to city services and quality of life.

More than 24,000 abandoned houses and other vacant structures were demolished, mostly using federal funds. Thousands more were renovated and put on the market to attract or keep families in Detroit.

“Very little of our recovery had anything to do with the bankruptcy,” Duggan said Tuesday, pointing to business developments and neighborhood improvement projects. “The economic development strategy is what’s driving it.”

Jay Aho and his wife, Tanya, have seen improvements in their eastside neighborhood. Along nearby Sylvester Street, about half a dozen vacant homes have been torn down and just one ramshackle house remains, with peeling siding, sagging roof and surrounded by waist-high weeds, trees and a thriving rose bush. Rabbits, deer and pheasants have started to appear in the grass and weed-filled vacant lots.

“We benefit from having lots of open space, beautiful surroundings,” said Jay Aho, 49.

Born in southwest Detroit, 32-year-old Arielle Kyer also sees improvements.

“There were no parks like what there are now,” she said at a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a new splash pad attended by Duggan. “Everything is different.”

Downtown, boutique hotels and upscale restaurants have sprung up, and a 685-foot (208-meter) skyscraper under construction is expected to host a hotel, a restaurant, shops, offices and residential units.

Corktown, a neighborhood just east of downtown, got a boost in 2018 when Ford Motor Co. bought and began renovating the hulking Michigan Central train station, which for years was a symbol of the city’s blight. The building will be part of a campus focusing on autonomous vehicles.

Ford’s move has attracted other investment, according to Aaron Black, the general manager of the nearby $75 million Godfrey Hotel, which is scheduled to open this year and whose owners also are developing homes in the neighborhood.

“The [city’s] brand may have been dented,” Black said. “The brand may have been tarnished, but Detroit is head and shoulders above a lot of other competitive cities.”

Some warn against too much optimism.

Detroit’s two pension systems have been making monthly payments to retirees without any contributions from the city for the past decade. That is set to change next year when the city will be required to resume contributions from a city-created fund that now stands at about $470 million.

Detroit’s Chief Financial Officer Jay Rising says both pension systems are better funded than a decade ago. But Leonard Gilroy, senior managing director of the Washington-based Reason Foundation’s Pension Integrity Project, says his data shows the systems’ funding levels near where they were in 2013.

“It’s a big moment for the city that presents daunting future fiscal challenges to avoid further deterioration of the pensions,” Gilroy said. “They are getting the keys back to fund their pension system, which would be a huge responsibility if these plans were fully funded, and is that much more of a challenge given their fragile, underfunded state.”
…

Mikhail Nalivajko, a fighter with Ukraine’s Air Assault Forces, lost his right leg in an attack on his unit. His injuries defied treatment until a nonprofit brought him to the U.S. for medical care. Nina Vishneva has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. Camera: Vladimir Badikov, Natalia Latukhina.
…

Hollywood actors walked off the job Friday, striking for higher pay, an improved residuals policy and protections against the use of artificial intelligence. Hollywood writers have been on strike since May. Genia Dulot has the report.
…

Under the tall prairie grass outside this southwestern Minnesota town lies a precious seam of dark red pipestone that, for thousands of years, Native Americans have quarried and carved into pipes essential to prayer and communication with the Creator.

Only a dozen Dakota carvers remain in the predominantly agricultural area bordering South Dakota. While tensions have flared periodically over how broadly to produce and share the rare artifacts, many Dakota today are focusing on how to pass on to future generations a difficult skillset that’s inextricably linked to spiritual practice.

“I’d be very happy to teach anyone … and the Spirit will be with you if you’re meant to do that,” said Cindy Pederson, who started learning how to carve from her grandparents six decades ago.

Enrolled in the Sisseton-Wahpeton Dakota Nation, she regularly holds carving demonstrations at Pipestone National Monument, a small park that encompasses the quarries.

In the worldview of the Dakota peoples, sometimes referred to as Sioux, “the sacred is woven in” the land where the Creator placed them, said Iyekiyapiwin Darlene St. Clair, a professor at St. Cloud State University in central Minnesota.

But some places have a special relevance, because of events that occurred there, a sense of stronger spiritual power, or their importance in origin stories, she added.

These quarries of a unique variety of red pipestone check all three – starting with a history of enemy tribes laying down arms to allow for quarrying, with several stories warning that if fights broke out over the rare resource, it would make itself unavailable to all.

The colorful prayer ties and flags hung from trees alongside the trails that lead around the pink and red rocks testify to the continued sacredness of the space.

“It was always a place to go pray,” said Gabrielle Drapeau, a cultural resource specialist and park ranger at the monument who started coming here as a child.

From her elders in the Yankton Sioux Tribe of South Dakota, Drapeau grew up hearing one of many origin stories for the pipestone: In time immemorial, a great flood killed most people in the area, their blood seeping into the stone and turning it red. But the Creator came, pronounced it a place of peace, and smoked a pipe, adding this is how people could reach him.

“It’s like a tangible representation of how we can connect with Creator,” Drapeau said. “All people before you are represented in the stone itself. It’s not just willy-nilly stone.”

Pipes are widely used by Indigenous people across the Great Plains and beyond, either by spiritual leaders or individuals for personal prayer for healing and thanksgiving, as well as to mark rites of passage like vision quests and the solemnity of ceremonies and gatherings.

“Pipestone has a particular relationship to our spiritual practice – praying with pipes, we take very seriously,” St. Clair said.

The pipe itself is thought to become sacred when the pipestone bowl and the wooden stem are joined. The smoke, from tobacco or prairie plants, then carries the prayer from a person’s heart to the Creator.

Because of that crucial spiritual connection, only people enrolled in federally recognized tribes can obtain permits to quarry at the monument, some traveling from as far as Montana and Nebraska. Within tribes, there’s disagreement over whether pipes should be sold, especially to non-Natives, and the pipestone used to make other art objects like carved animal figures.

“Sacredness is going to be defined by you — that’s between you and the Creator,” said Travis Erickson, a fourth-generation carver who’s worked pipestone in the area for more than two decades and embraces a less restrictive view. “Everything on this Earth is spiritual.”

His first job in the quarries, at age 10, was to break through and remove the layers of harder-than-steel quartzite covering the pipestone seam – then about six feet down, now more than 18 feet into the quarry, so the process can take months. Only hand tools can be used to avoid damaging the pipestone.

Taken out in sheets only about a couple of inches thick, it is then carved using flint and files.

“The stone talks to me,” added Erickson, who has fashioned pipe bowls in different shapes, such as horses. “Most of those pipes showed what they wanted to be.”

Growing up in the 1960s, Erickson recalled making pipes as a family affair where the day often ended with a festive grilling. He taught his children, but laments that few younger people want to take up the arduous job.

So does Pederson, some of whose younger family members have shown interest, including a granddaughter who would hang out in her workshop starting when she was 3 and emerge “pink from head to toe” from the stone dust.

But they believe the tradition will continue as long as they can share it with Native youth who might have their first encounter with this deep history on field trips to the monument.

On a recent trip, Pederson’s brother, Mark Pederson, who also holds demonstrations at the visitor center, took several young visitors into the quarries and taught them how to swing sledgehammers — and many asked to return, she said.

Teaching the techniques of quarrying and carving is crucially important, and so is helping youth develop a relationship with the pipestone and its place in the Native worldview.

“We have to be concerned with that as Dakota people – all cultural messages young people get draw away from our traditional lifeways,” St. Clair said. “We need to hold on to the teachings, prayers, songs that make pipes be.”

From new exhibits to tailored school field trips, recent initiatives at the monument — undertaken in consultation between tribal leaders and the National Park Service — are trying to foster that awareness for Native youth.

“I remind them they have every right to come here and pray,” Drapeau said — a crucial point since many Native spiritual practices were systematically repressed for decades past 1937, when the monument was created to preserve the quarries from land encroachment.

Some areas of the park are open only for ceremonial use; the 75,000 yearly visitors are asked not to interfere with the quarriers.

“The National Park Service is the newcomer here — for 3,000 years, different tribal nations have come to quarry here and developed different protocols to protect the site,” said park superintendent Lauren Blacik.

One change brought through extensive consultations with tribal leaders is the park’s decision to no longer sell pipes at the visitor center, though other pipestone objects are — like small carved turtles or owls. Pipes are available at stores a few miles away in Pipestone’s downtown.

Tensions over the use of sacred pipes by non-Natives long predates the United States, when French and English explorers traded them, said Greg Gagnon, a scholar of Indian Studies and author of a textbook on Dakota culture.

“Nobody wants to have their world appropriated. The more you open it up, the more legitimate a fear of watering it down,” he said. But there’s also a danger in becoming entrenched in dogmatic ways of understanding traditions, Gagnon added.

For carvers like Pederson, good intentions and the Spirit at work in both those practicing the craft as well as those receiving the pipestone are reasons to be optimistic about the future.

“Grandma and Grandpa always said the stone takes care of itself, knows what’s in a person’s heart,” she said.
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