The commission that enforces rules for U.S. elections is not regulating AI-generated deepfakes in political advertising ahead of the 2024 presidential election. Deana Mitchell has the story.
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Actor Julian Sands, who starred in several Oscar-nominated films in the late 1980s and ’90s including “A Room with a View” and “Leaving Las Vegas,” was found dead on a Southern California mountain five months after he disappeared while hiking, authorities said Tuesday.

An investigation confirmed that it was Sands whose remains hikers found Saturday in wilderness near Mount Baldy, the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department said. The 65-year-old actor was an avid and experienced hiker who lived in Los Angeles and was reported missing January 13 after setting out on the peak that rises more than 3,048 meters east of the city. Crews aided by drones and helicopters had searched for him several times but were severely hampered by wintry conditions that lasted through spring. No sign of him was found until the civilian hikers came upon him.

The chances of Sands being discovered alive had long since diminished to nearly nothing, but the Sheriff’s Department, which conducted an official search the day before he was found, emphasized that the case remained active.

An autopsy has been conducted, but further test results are needed before the cause of death can be determined, authorities said.

Sands, who was born, raised and began acting in England, worked constantly in film and television, amassing more than 150 credits in a 40-year career. During a 10-year span from 1985 to 1995, he played major roles in a series of acclaimed films.

After studying at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London, Sands embarked on a career in stage and film, playing small parts in films including “Oxford Blues” and “The Killing Fields.” He landed the starring role of George Emerson, who falls in love with Helena Bonham Carter’s Lucy Honeychurch while on holiday in Tuscany in the 1985 British romance, “A Room with a View.”

The film from director James Ivory and producer Ismail Merchant won the British Academy of Film and Television Arts Award for best film, and was nominated for eight Oscars, winning three.

In the wake of its success, Sands moved to the United States to pursue a career in Hollywood.

He played the title role in the 1989 horror fantasy “Warlock” and its sequel. In the 1990 horror comedy “Arachnophobia,” with Jeff Daniels and John Goodman, Sands played an entomologist specializing in spiders.

The following year he appeared in director David Cronenberg’s surreal adaptation of the William Burroughs novel “Naked Lunch” in 1991. In 1993, Sands starred in the thriller “Boxing Helena.”

In 1995’s “Leaving Las Vegas,” Sands played an abusive Latvian pimp alongside Nicolas Cage and Elisabeth Shue. The film was nominated for four Oscars, with Cage winning best actor.

Sands touted his love of the outdoors in a 2020 interview with the Guardian, saying he was happiest when “close to a mountain summit on a glorious cold morning” and that his biggest dream was scaling “a remote peak in the high Himalayas, such as Makalu.”

The actor said in the interview that in the early 1990s, he was caught in an “atrocious” storm in the Andes and was lucky to survive when three others near his party didn’t.

After “Leaving Las Vegas,” the quality of the films Sands was cast in, and the size of his roles, began declining. He worked steadily, appearing in director Wim Wenders’ “The Million Dollar Hotel” and director Dario Argento’s “The Phantom of the Opera.”

Sands was born in Yorkshire, the middle child of five brothers raised by a single mother. He had three children of his own.

He had been married since 1990 to journalist Evgenia Citkowitz, with whom he had two adult daughters, Imogen Morley Sands and Natalya Morley Sands. His eldest child was son Henry Sands, whom he had with his first wife, journalist Sarah Harvey.

A few days before he was found, Sands’ family issued a statement saying, “We continue to hold Julian in our hearts with bright memories of him as a wonderful father, husband, explorer, lover of the natural world and the arts, and as an original and collaborative performer.”
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The United States is India’s largest trading partner, with trade between the two countries currently around $191 billion, in 2022. With the two forging a closer relationship, VOA’s Chris Casquejo looks at the prospects for boosting U.S.-India trade.
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The United States will this week announce actions to hold the Russian mercenary Wagner Group accountable, the U.S. State Department spokesperson said on Tuesday, for its activities in Africa and unrelated to its aborted mutiny in Russia.

Spokesperson Matt Miller did not detail at a daily press briefing what the planned U.S. action would be.

“These are actions that we are taking against Wagner not in relation to events that happened this weekend but for their prior activities,” Miller said, adding that those involved countries in Africa.

A clash between Moscow and Wagner was averted on Saturday after the heavily armed mercenaries withdrew from the southern Russian city of Rostov under a deal that halted their advance on the capital.

Russian President Vladimir Putin initially vowed to crush the mutiny, which was the biggest blow to his authority in 23 years, comparing it to the wartime turmoil that ushered in the revolution of 1917 and then a civil war, but hours later a deal was clinched to allow Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin and some of his fighters to go to Belarus.

Prigozhin “is in Belarus today,” Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko was quoted as saying by state news agency BELTA on Tuesday.

The Wagner militia forces have played an increasingly central role in the long-running internal conflicts of Mali and Central African Republic.

It has also been fighting in Ukraine following the Russian army’s invasion of its neighbor 16 months ago.
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In New York City’s Chinatown, creeping gentrification means some small businesses are thriving while others are struggling to regain their pre-pandemic footing. VOA’s Tina Trinh has our story. Camera: Tina Trinh, Mostafa Bassim, Alexander Barash 
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A new for-profit entity will oversee the commercial interests of the proposed merger between the U.S. and European men’s professional golf leagues and their Saudi-backed rival.   

The entity is part of the framework agreement between the PGA Tour and DP World Tour and LIV Golf signed on May 30 and announced on June 6.  The PGA Tour will control the entity, while Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, the financial backer of LIV Golf, will invest in a subsidiary that will boost the joint venture’s financial situation “through targeted mergers and acquisitions to globalize the sport.” 

The agreement also ended all lawsuits the PGA Tour and LIV Golf filed against each other during their bitter yearlong feud.   

The agreement was signed after several months of secret negotiations between PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan, DP World chief executive Keith Pelley, and PIV governor Yasir al-Rumayyan.  

Monahan was denounced as a hypocrite after criticizing several high-profile PGA Tour members who defected to the higher-paying LIV Golf. 

The deal intensified accusations that Saudi Arabia is investing in professional golf and other global sports as a means of glossing over its poor human rights record — especially the brutal 2018 murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul by a group of Saudi agents allegedly sent by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. 

The framework was part of several documents handed over to U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal, the chairman of the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, who has convened a hearing on July 11 about the agreement.   

The proposed merger is also under scrutiny by the U.S. Justice Department into whether it violates federal antitrust laws.   

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.  
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An audio recording obtained by news organizations reveals U.S. President Donald Trump discussing secret documents about a plan to attack Iran as he spoke to a writer after leaving office in 2021. 

Federal prosecutors cited parts of the conversation in an indictment last month on charges that he illegally retained classified government documents and then conspired to obstruct a federal investigation. 

CNN, The Washington Post and The New York Times released the audio clip Monday in which Trump references reports that Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley feared Trump would manufacture a conflict with Iran after losing the 2020 presidential election. 

“With Milley, let me see that, I”ll show you an example,” Trump says in the recording, which includes the sound of shuffling papers. “He said that I wanted to attack Iran.  Isn’t it amazing? I have a big pile of papers; this thing just came up.  Look, this was him, they presented me this. This is off the record, but they presented me this. This was him. This was the Defense Department and him.” 

“This totally wins my case, you know?” Trump says. “Except it is, like, highly confidential, secret. This is secret information.” 

Trump later says, “See, as president I could have declassified it, now I can’t.”  

The former president has said he had a “standing order” to declassify all documents taken from the Oval Office to the White House residence.  He pleaded not guilty in a June court appearance. 
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Scorching temperatures brought on by a “heat dome” have taxed the Texas power grid and threaten to bring record highs to the state before they are expected to expand to other parts of the U.S. during the coming week, putting even more people at risk. 

“Going forward, that heat is going to expand … north to Kansas City and the entire state of Oklahoma, into the Mississippi Valley … to the far western Florida Panhandle and parts of western Alabama,” while remaining over Texas, said Bob Oravec, lead forecaster with the National Weather Service. 

Record high temperatures around 43 degrees Celsius (110 degrees Fahrenheit) were forecast in parts of western Texas on Monday, and relief is not expected before the Fourth of July holiday, Oravec said. 

Cori Iadonisi, of Dallas, summed up the weather simply: “It’s just too hot here.” 

Iadonisi, 40, said she often urges local friends to visit her native Washington state to beat the heat in the summer. 

“You can’t go outside,” Iadonisi said of the hot months in Texas. “You can’t go for a walk.” 

What is a heat dome? 

A heat dome occurs when stationary high pressure with warm air combines with warmer than usual air in the Gulf of Mexico and heat from the sun that is nearly directly overhead, Texas State Climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon said. 

“By the time we get into the middle of summer, it’s hard to get the hot air aloft,” said Nielsen-Gammon, a professor at Texas A&M’s College of Atmospheric Sciences. “If it’s going to happen, this is the time of year it will.” 

Nielsen-Gammon said July and August don’t have as much sunlight because the sun is retreating from the summer solstice, which was Wednesday. 

“One thing that is a little unusual about this heat wave is we had a fairly wet April and May, and usually that extra moisture serves as an air conditioner,” Nielsen-Gammon said. “But the air aloft is so hot that it wasn’t able to prevent the heat wave from occurring and, in fact, added a bit to the humidity.” 

High heat continues this week after it prompted Texas’ power grid operator, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, to ask residents last week to voluntarily cut back on power usage because of anticipated record demand on the system. 

The National Integrated Heat Health Information System (NIHHIS) reports more than 46 million people from west Texas and southeastern New Mexico to the western Florida Panhandle are currently under heat alerts. The NIHHIS is a joint project of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. 

The heat comes after Sunday storms that killed three people and left more than 100,000 customers without electricity in both Arkansas and Tennessee and tens of thousands powerless in Georgia, Mississippi and Louisiana, according to poweroutage.us. 

Earlier this month, the most populous county in Oregon filed a $1.5 billion lawsuit against more than a dozen large fossil fuel companies to recover costs related to extreme weather events linked to climate change, including a deadly 2021 heat dome. 

Multnomah County, home to Portland and known for typically mild weather, alleges the combined carbon pollution the companies emitted was substantial in causing and exacerbating record-breaking temperatures in the Pacific Northwest that killed 69 people in that county. 

An attorney for Chevron Corp., Theodore J. Boutrous Jr., said in a statement that the lawsuit makes “novel, baseless claims.” 

What are the health threats? 

Extreme heat can be particularly dangerous to vulnerable populations such as children and the elderly, and outdoor workers need extra support. 

Symptoms of heat illness can include heavy sweating, nausea, dizziness and fainting. Some strategies to stay cool include drinking chilled fluids, applying a cloth soaked with cold water onto your skin, and spending time in air-conditioned environments. 

Cecilia Sorensen, a physician and associate professor of Environmental Health Sciences at Columbia University Medical Center, said heat-related conditions are becoming a growing public health concern because of the warming climate. 

“There’s huge issues going on in Texas right now around energy insecurity and the compounding climate crises we’re seeing,” Sorensen said. “This is also one of those examples where, if you are wealthy enough to be able to afford an air conditioner, you’re going to be safer, which is a huge climate health equity issue.” 

In Texas, the average daily high temperatures have increased by 2.4 degrees — 0.8 degrees per decade — since 1993, according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, amid concerns over human-caused climate change resulting in rising temperatures.
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The White House said Monday it was “too soon to tell” whether the dramatic events of this weekend in Russia will change the course of the conflict in Ukraine, or international relations in general. VOA’s Anita Powell reports from the White House.
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Black voters in the U.S. state of Alabama may have a bigger role in 2024 elections following a Supreme Court ruling that a Republican-drawn congressional map violated their rights to fair representation.

“The old congressional maps were undeniably unfair,” explained Collins Pettaway, a Black voter in Selma, Alabama, a city famous for its role in the fight for civil rights. 

“Every voter has a right to have their voice heard, and up until this decision by the Supreme Court, Black Alabamans didn’t have that,” he told VOA. “The old maps made us feel like our votes didn’t matter, but now we have a real chance to empower Black voters and increase our representation in the state.”

Each U.S. state is broken into congressional districts of relatively equal population size. Densely populated areas have smaller districts. Sparsely populated areas have larger districts. Based on changing demographics in census results each decade, states are required to consider redrawing districts to ensure that voters are represented fairly.

Critics of the Alabama map say the redistricting process has been unfair. For decades, only one of the state’s seven seats in the U.S. House of Representatives was in a district in which a majority of voters were Black. This even though more than 26% of Alabama’s voters are African American.

“It has made it nearly impossible for Black leaders to be elected to represent their communities, creating an even more prominent and intentional barrier to diversifying Alabama’s political leadership,” said DeJuana Thompson, president and CEO of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute.

“A participatory government is only possible when those making the laws, enforcing the laws, and subject to the laws have equity. We’re a little closer to that now and it’s going to ensure a more engaged and motivated electoral process. This ruling is a great thing for Alabama.” 

Surprise or expected?

For a Supreme Court with a conservative majority, the decision was largely unexpected, especially given recent rulings more aligned with priorities of the Republican Party.

“I was very surprised by the Court’s decision,” Jay Williams, a consultant for several top Republican politicians told VOA. “The Supreme Court has trended rightward on this issue, and I thought that would continue.

“Unfortunately, I think this decision is going to cause some real harm,” he continued. “It perpetuates a false notion that southern states are inherently racist in their decision making. It’s patently false and incredibly pretentious to promote this viewpoint.”

Past decision making in southern states led to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which ended many barriers to African American voters including poll taxes and literacy tests. New hurdles quickly took their place.

Cracking, then packing

“Southern states with a history of disenfranchising Black voters responded by drawing congressional districts in irregular shapes that managed to spread concentrations of urban Black voters across several different districts,” explains University of Georgia political scientist Charles Bullock.

“The result was that none of the districts were majority Black,” he added, “making it nearly impossible for voters of color to elect Black leaders.

This was known as “cracking” the Black vote.

The Supreme Court sought to stop that practice with its 1986 unanimous decision in the Thornburg v. Gingles ruling that states must add a majority-minority district if the minority population is sufficiently large and compact enough for a new district, if the minority population is sufficiently cohesive to vote as a bloc, and if the dissipated minority bloc’s political preference is frequently defeated by a bloc of majority voters.

The result was new majority-minority districts across the country, including one in Alabama.

“Now that ‘cracking’ was no longer possible, they switched to ‘packing,’” Bullock told VOA. “In other words, Republican-led legislatures would draw districts, again in irregular shapes, so that all of the Black voters were ‘packed’ into one district. That’s where we are today. They concede one district, but they make the minority vote negligible in all the others.”

Beyond Alabama

This month’s decision found cause for a second majority-minority Congressional district in Alabama to provide fair representation for Black residents there. Lawmakers in Montgomery now have until July 21 to redraw the congressional map to meet this requirement. As with many Supreme Court decisions, the impact stretches beyond any one state.

“Lawsuits have already been filed in Louisiana and Georgia, and I expect the same will soon happen in Texas, Florida, potentially New York, and maybe elsewhere,” Bullock said. “Some states, like the Carolinas, might not meet the requirements, but I think you could see enough seats change in 2024 to flip the House of Representatives to Democratic control if all else remains equal.”
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The United States is providing up to $500 million in additional military aid for Ukraine, three U.S. officials tell VOA, in a package that is expected to include 55 more Stryker and Bradley armored vehicles.

One official, who spoke to VOA on the condition of anonymity ahead of the package’s expected release Tuesday, said the latest aid also includes munitions for Patriot surface-to-air missile systems, along with more rockets for Ukraine’s High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS). 

Another official who spoke on the condition of anonymity told VOA the aid package would provide Ukraine with a large number of Bangalore torpedoes — explosive charges placed within connected tubes that can clear obstacles from a protected position. The charge can be used to create about a 4-meter-wide path through barbed wire, heavy underbrush or areas covered by mines.

The official said smaller numbers of Bangalore torpedoes have proven “extremely useful” for Ukraine to date.  

The chaos inside Russia over the weekend did not appear to lead to changes on the battlefield during that period. 

“Wagner [Group forces] may have moved, but the minefields and other obstacles didn’t,” the second official said.  

Once released, the latest aid package will mark the 41st authorized presidential drawdown of military equipment from Defense Department inventories since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.   

Moscow began a renewed offensive in Ukraine earlier this year that has stalled, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy recently confirmed that Kyiv’s massive counteroffensive was underway.   

Russian forces have spent months heavily fortifying their positions inside Ukraine, making Kyiv’s counteroffensive even more difficult to execute. 

“It’s harder to go on offense than it is to be on defense,” said Bradley Bowman, senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “[Ukrainians] have entrenched, dug-in Russian forces with minefields in front of them. That’s about as hard as it can get in warfare.” 
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A 23-year-old was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole after pleading guilty on Monday to murder and other crimes in a 2022 shooting that killed five people at a gay nightclub in Colorado Springs.

Anderson Lee Aldrich pleaded guilty to five first-degree murder counts and 46 attempted murder counts, part of an agreement reached with prosecutors that avoids what could have been a lengthy trial. Aldrich also pleaded no contest to two counts of bias-motivated crimes.

On Nov. 19, 2022, Aldrich, wearing body armor, opened fire at Club Q, an LGBTQ nightclub. Apart from those killed, nearly two dozen others were wounded by gunfire or otherwise injured before being stopped by “heroic” patrons. Aldrich, then 22, was charged with 323 criminal counts.

During the sentencing hearing immediately following the plea, family members of the victims and survivors of the shooting spoke tearfully about their loved ones and expressed fury at Aldrich for the attack.

“I will never get the chance to marry the love of my life,” said Kassandra Fierro, whose boyfriend, Raymond Green Vance, was among the dead. “I will never get to start a family with Raymond. I will never get to see, hear or feel Raymond ever again.”

Others, noting that Club Q had long been a “safe space” for LGBTQ residents, said the shooting had shattered their tight-knit community.

The shooting at Club Q was reminiscent of a massacre in 2016 when a gunman killed 49 people at the gay Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, before he was shot dead by police.

Colorado no longer has a death-penalty statute. However, Aldrich could face a death sentence in federal court if prosecutors decide to bring charges under the U.S. code, which still has capital punishment on its books for certain crimes.

Aldrich was formally charged last Dec. 6 and did not enter a plea at the time.

Those killed in the shooting were identified as Daniel Aston, 28; Kelly Loving, 40; Derrick Rump, 38; Ashley Paugh, 34; and Vance, 22.

Aldrich was known to law enforcement, having been arrested in June 2021. Aldrich’s mother had reported that Aldrich had threatened to detonate a bomb and harm her with multiple weapons, according to a press release from the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office. Aldrich’s mother declined to testify for the prosecution, and the case was dismissed.
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The Supreme Court on Monday lifted its hold on a Louisiana case that could force the state to redraw congressional districts to boost Black voting power. 

The order follows the court’s rejection earlier in June of a congressional redistricting map in Alabama and unfreezes the Louisiana case, which had been on hold pending the decision in Alabama. 

In both states, Black voters are a majority in just one congressional district. Lower courts had ruled that the maps raised concerns that Black voting power had been diluted, in violation of the landmark federal Voting Rights Act. 

About a third of Louisiana’s residents are Black. More than one in four Alabamians are Black. 

The justices put the Louisiana case on hold and allowed the state’s challenged map to be used in last year’s elections after they agreed to hear the Alabama case. 

The case had separately been appealed to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans. The justices said that appeal now could go forward in advance of next year’s congressional elections. 
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UNESCO member states meet later this week on the Biden administration’s bid to rejoin the Paris-based U.N. scientific and cultural body, a move that will inject hundreds of millions of welcome dollars into its coffers and give the United States a say in shaping programs ranging from climate change to education and artificial intelligence.

Few expect any surprises on the outcome of the deliberations, which will be held at an extraordinary UNESCO session Thursday and Friday. There have been no reports of serious objections by the agency’s 193 members, although China and Russia have offered some critical and cautionary remarks.

Yet even as many welcome Washington’s move to rejoin over concern that competitors like China are filling the void, some observers wonder how long that welcome will last. Next year’s U.S. presidential elections are looming, potentially ushering in another administration hostile to UNESCO’s policies and membership.

Still others suggest Israel, which similarly defunded and ultimately left the body, should follow Washington’s footsteps in returning.

UNESCO itself has given an enthusiastic thumbs up to the U.S. request to rejoin earlier this month. Secretary-General Audrey Azoulay — who has taken pains to erase perceptions UNESCO was biased against Israel and woo Washington back — called it “a historic moment.”

“The reason why the U.S. is coming back is a strong signal that UNESCO’s mandate is more relevant than ever,” said UNESCO’s New York office head, Eliot Minchenberg, in an interview, laying out a raft of UNESCO programs reflecting U.S. priorities including fighting antisemitism and Holocaust education.

“In the absence of the U.S., of course others have stepped up and helped, but it is definitely not the same as the U.S. presence and engagement — both financially, diplomatically and politically,” he added.

Also welcome are U.S. dues that once accounted for 22% of UNESCO’s budget. The Biden administration has proposed slowly paying off the $619 million in arrears, starting with $150 million in 2024 dues and back payments.

French baguettes and the Everglades

Located not far from the Eiffel Tower, the small agency — known officially as the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization —runs a raft of programs from promoting education and free press, to fighting against climate change and antisemitism.

Many know it best for helping to preserve and showcase the cultural and physical heritage of member states. French baguettes, Tunisian harissa, Finnish sauna culture and Colombian marimba music have all landed on UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list.

More than a thousand sites have also made UNESCO’s World Heritage List, including two dozen in the U.S., from the Statue of Liberty to the Everglades and Yellowstone national parks.

Even today, some U.S. universities and other private groups continue collaborating with UNESCO.

That includes the Massachusetts-based nonprofit Union of Concerned Scientists, whose deputy director for climate and energy programs, Adam Markham, says without membership the U.S. cannot weigh in on key discussions around climate change and World Heritage sites.

China

“You’re seeing China taking a lot of leadership roles,” said Markham, who can still participate in scientific meetings as a member of a nongovernmental organization. “I’m not saying that’s a good thing or a bad thing. It’s just changing the geopolitical relationships that the U.S. has with other UNESCO partners.”

The U.S. first quit UNESCO in 1984 under the Reagan administration, over corruption concerns and an allegedly pro-Soviet tilt. It rejoined under another Republican president, George W. Bush, then suspended dues under Democrat Barack Obama, when Palestine became a member.

In 2018, President Donald Trump pulled the U.S. out altogether over perceived anti-Israel bias and management issues, with Israel following suit.

Now, politics are again driving America’s return — this time, over concerns Beijing may otherwise have an outsized say in sensitive programs like artificial intelligence.

“Joe Biden’s administration has realized that the empty chair policy is incompatible with the defense of the country’s interests and that its absence from this forum ends up serving those of its great rival, China,” wrote France’s Le Monde newspaper in an editorial — even as it warned against Washington’s “fickleness.”

“The succession of departures and returns can only raise questions about the durability of the…decision, less than two years before a presidential election that could bring the party of ultra-nationalist retreat back to the White House” it added, referring to the Trump administration.

Israel next?

China’s ambassador to UNESCO has indicated Beijing was ready to work with a newly rejoined Washington. But the state-backed China Daily was blunter.

“Whether the U.S. will play a positive role in the agency remains a conjecture,” it wrote in an editorial. “If… its return is just for regaining its own influence against that of China in the organization, the U.S. will likely just be a troublemaker.”

Russia’s foreign ministry said it, too, was willing to welcome back the U.S., but warned Washington needed to follow UNESCO’s rules and “should pay back its astronomical debt unconditionally and in full.”

In Israel, Michael Freund, a former communications advisor to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, cast the U.S. return as a “fiasco” and UNESCO “as an appalling club,” in an opinion in The Jerusalem Post.

But the newspaper’s own editorial suggested Israel might consider rejoining the agency — picking which programs to support while boycotting others — to counter Palestinian “disinformation.”

Mixed reactions over UNESCO have been sounding in the U.S. as well.

“Returning to UNESCO is a waste of time and money, and not an effective riposte to China,” John Bolton, a former national security advisor under President Trump, wrote in the New York Post. He called on Congress, with the House of Representatives now controlled by Republicans, to block UNESCO funding and said no current Republican presidential candidate appeared to support rejoining the agency.

But Markham, of the Union of Concerned Scientists, says he saw a different reaction when he spoke recently to a group of historic preservationists in New Jersey.

“The one thing they burst out spontaneously in applause was when I said the US had announced it was going back to UNESCO,” he said. “And I’m certain there were Republicans as well as Democrats in that audience.”
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The frantic search for a missing submersible craft in the North Atlantic Ocean came to an end Thursday following news of the craft’s destruction at sea. All five aboard the Titan died as they descended toward the shipwrecked remains of the Titanic. Now investigators want to know why. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi has the latest.
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When millionaire Steve Fossett’s plane went missing over the Nevada range in 2007, the swashbuckling adventurer had already been the subject of two prior emergency rescue operations thousands of kilometers apart.

And that prompted a prickly question: After a sweeping search for the wealthy risktaker ended, who should foot the bill?

In recent days, the massive hunt for a submersible vehicle lost during a north Atlantic descent to explore the wreckage of the Titanic has refocused attention on that conundrum. And with rescuers and the public fixated first on saving and then on mourning those aboard, it has again made for uneasy conversation.

“Five people have just lost their lives and to start talking about insurance, all the rescue efforts and the cost can seem pretty heartless — but the thing is, at the end of the day, there are costs,” said Arun Upneja, dean of Boston University’s School of Hospitality Administration and a researcher on tourism.

“There are many people who are going to say, ‘Why should the society spend money on the rescue effort if (these people) are wealthy enough to be able to … engage in these risky activities?’”

That question is gaining attention as very wealthy travelers in search of singular adventures spend big to scale peaks, sail across oceans and blast off for space.

The U.S. Coast Guard declined Friday to provide a cost estimate for its efforts to locate the Titan, the submersible investigators say imploded not far from the world’s most famous shipwreck. The five people lost included a billionaire British businessman and a father and son from one of Pakistan’s most prominent families. The operator charged passengers $250,000 each to participate in the voyage.

“We cannot attribute a monetary value to Search and Rescue cases, as the Coast Guard does not associate cost with saving a life,” the agency said.

While the Coast Guard’s cost for the mission is likely to run into the millions of dollars, it is generally prohibited by federal law from collecting reimbursement related to any search or rescue service, said Stephen Koerting, a U.S. attorney in Maine who specializes in maritime law.

But that does not resolve the larger issue of whether wealthy travelers or companies should bear responsibility to the public and governments for exposing themselves to such risk.

“This is one of the most difficult questions to attempt to find an answer for,” said Pete Sepp, president of the National Taxpayers Union, noting scrutiny of government-funded rescues dating back to British billionaire Richard Branson’s hot air balloon exploits in the 1990s.

“This should never be solely about government spending, or perhaps not even primarily about government spending, but you can’t help thinking about how the limited resources of rescuers can be utilized,” Sepp said.

The demand for those resources was spotlighted in 1998 when Fossett’s attempt to circle the globe in a hot air balloon ended with a plunge into the ocean 805 kilometers off Australia. The Royal Australian Air Force dispatched a Hercules C-130 transport aircraft to find him. A French military plane dropped a 15-man life raft to Fossett before he was picked up by a passing yacht.

Critics suggested Fossett should pay the bill. He rejected the idea.

Late that same year, the U.S. Coast Guard spent more than $130,000 to rescue Fossett and Branson after their hot air balloon dropped into the ocean off Hawaii. Branson said he would pay if the Coast Guard requested it, but the agency didn’t ask.

Nine years later, after Fossett’s plane vanished over Nevada during what should have been a short flight, the state National Guard launched a months-long search that turned up the wreckage of several other decades-old crashes without finding the millionaire.

The state said the mission had cost taxpayers $685,998, with $200,000 covered by a private contribution. But when the administration of Gov. Jim Gibbons announced that it would seek reimbursement for the rest, Fossett’s widow balked, noting she had spent $1 million on her own private search.

“We believe the search conducted by the state of Nevada is an expense of government in performance of government action,” a lawyer wrote on behalf of the Fossett estate.

Risky adventurism is hardly unique to wealthy people.

The pandemic drove a surge in visits to places like national parks, adding to the popularity of climbing, hiking and other outdoor activities. Meanwhile, the spread of cellphones and service has left many people feeling that if things go wrong, help is a call away.

Some places have laws commonly referred to as “stupid motorist laws,” in which drivers are forced to foot the emergency response bill when they ignore barricades on submerged roads. Arizona has such a law, and Volusia County in Florida, home to Daytona, enacted similar legislation this week. The idea of a similar “stupid hiker law” is a regularly debated item in Arizona as well, with so many unprepared people needing to be rescued in stifling triple-digit heat.

Most officials and volunteers who run search efforts are opposed to charging for help, said Butch Farabee, a former ranger who participated in hundreds of rescue operations at the Grand Canyon and other national parks and has written several books on the subject.

Searchers are concerned that if they did charge to rescue people “they won’t call for help as soon as they should and by the time they do it’s too late,” Farabee said.

The tradeoff is that some might take that vital aid for granted. Farabee recounts a call in the 1980s from a lawyer who underestimated the effort needed to hike out of the Grand Canyon. The man asked for a helicopter rescue, mentioning that he had an important meeting the following day. The ranger rejected that request.

But that is not an option when the lives of adventurers, some of them quite wealthy, are at extreme risk.

At Mount Everest, it can cost tens of thousands of dollars in permit and expedition fees to climb. A handful of people die or go missing while hiking the mountain every year — prompting emergency response from local officials.

While the government of Nepal requires that climbers have rescue insurance, the scope of rescue efforts can vary widely, with Upneja estimating that some could cost “multiple dozens of thousands of dollars.”

Nepal’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not respond to a message seeking comment.

On the high seas, wealthy yachtsmen seeking speed and distance records have also repeatedly required rescue when their voyages run astray.

When the yacht of Tony Bullimore, a British millionaire on a round-the-world journey, capsized 2,253 kilometers off the Australian coast in 1997 it seemed he might be done for. Clinging to the inside of the hull, he ran out of fresh water and was almost out of air.

When a rescue ship arrived, he swam desperately toward the surface.

“I was starting to look back over my life and was thinking, ‘Well, I’ve had a good life, I’ve done most of the things I had wanted to,” Bullimore said afterward. “If I was picking words to describe it, it would be a miracle, an absolute miracle.”

Australian officials, whose forces rescued a French yachtsman the same week, were more measured in their assessment.

“We have an international legal obligation,” Ian McLachlan, the defense minister said. “We have a moral obligation obviously to go and rescue people, whether in bushfires, cyclones or at sea.”

Less was said, however, about the Australian government’s request to restrict the routes of yacht races — in hopes of keeping sailors to areas where they might require less rescuing.
…

Evan Burroughs has spent eight years touting the virtues of an Oregon pilot program charging motorists by the distance their vehicle travels rather than the gas it guzzles, yet his own mother still hasn’t bought in.

Margaret Burroughs, 85, said she has no intention of inserting a tracking device on her Nissan Murano to record the miles she drives to get groceries or attend needlepoint meetings. She figures it’s far less hassle to just pay at the pump, as Americans have done for more than a century.

“It’s probably a good thing, but on top of everybody else’s stress today, it’s just one more thing,” she said of Oregon’s first-in-the-nation initiative, which is run by the state transportation department where her son serves as a survey analyst.

Burroughs’ reluctance exemplifies the myriad hurdles U.S. states face as they experiment with road usage charging programs aimed at one day replacing motor fuel taxes, which are generating less each year, in part due to fuel efficiency and the rise of electric cars.

The federal government is about to pilot its own such program, funded by $125 million from the infrastructure measure President Biden signed in November 2021.

So far, only three states — Oregon, Utah and Virginia — are generating revenue from road usage charges, despite the looming threat of an ever-widening gap between states’ gas tax proceeds and their transportation budgets. Hawaii will soon become the fourth. Without action, the gap could reach $67 billion by 2050 due to fuel efficiency alone, Boston-based CDM Smith estimates.

Many states have implemented stopgap measures, such as imposing additional taxes or registration fees on electric vehicles and, more recently, adding per-kilowatt-hour taxes to electricity accessed at public charging stations.

Last year, Colorado began adding a 27-cent tax to home deliveries from Amazon and other online retailers to help fund transportation projects. Some states also are testing electronic tolling systems.

But road usage charges — also known as mileage-based user fees, distance-based fees or vehicle-miles-traveled taxes — are attracting the bulk of the academic attention, research dollars and legislative activity.

Doug Shinkle, transportation program director at the nonpartisan National Conference of State Legislatures, predicts that after some 20 years of anticipation, more than a decade of pilot projects and years of voluntary participation, states will soon need to make the programs mandatory.

“The impetus at this point is less about collecting revenue than about establishing these systems, working out the kinks, getting the public comfortable with it, expanding awareness around it,” he said.

Electric car sales in the U.S. rose from just 0.1% of total car sales in 2011 to 4.6% in 2021, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. S&P Global Mobility forecasts they will make up 40% of the sales by 2030, while other projections are even rosier.

Patricia Hendren, executive director of the Eastern Transportation Coalition, said figuring out how to account for multistate trips is particularly important in the eastern U.S., where states are smaller and closer together than those in the West. Virginia’s program, launched in 2022, is already the largest in the nation and will provide valuable lessons, she said. 

Hendren’s organization, a 17-state partnership that researches transportation safety and technology innovations, participated in one of the earliest pilot projects and eight others since. The biggest hurdle, she said, is to inform the public about the diminishing returns from the gas tax that has long paid for roads.

“This is about the relationship between the people who are using our roads and bridges and how we’re paying for it,” Hendren said. “We’ve been doing it one way for 100 years, and that way is not going to work anymore.”

Eric Paul Dennis, a transportation analyst at the Citizens Research Council of Michigan, said the failure of states to convert years of research into even one fully functional, mandatory program by now raises questions about whether road usage charging can really work.

“There’s no program design that I have seen that I think can be implemented at scale in a way that is publicly acceptable,” he said. “That doesn’t mean that a program can’t be designed to do so, but I feel like if you can’t even conceive of the program architecture that seems like something that would work, you probably shouldn’t put too much faith in it.”

Indeed, a chicken-and-egg dispute over how to proceed in Washington state has stymied road usage charging efforts there.

Lawmakers passed a bill last month that would have begun early steps toward a program by allowing collection of motorists’ odometer readings on a voluntary basis. Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee vetoed the measure, though, arguing that Washington needs a program in place before starting to collect citizens’ personal data.

States also must grapple with the social and environmental implications of their plans for replacing the gas tax, said Asha Weinstein Agrawal, director of the National Transportation Finance Center at San Jose State University’s Mineta Transportation Institute.

The institute has conducted national surveys every year since 2010 and found growing support for mileage-based fees, special rates for low-income drivers and rates tied to how much pollution a vehicle generates, she said.

Weinstein Agrawal said public policy, and the way transportation is funded, often fails to reflect states’ growing emphasis on curbing carbon emissions as a way to deal with climate change.

“To switch over to a system that makes it cheaper to drive a gas guzzler and more expensive to drive a Prius,” she said, “seems both symbolically problematic and to be sending, in the most literal way, the wrong economic incentives to people.”

Evan Burroughs said his 85-year-old father, Hank, who drives an electric car, avoids paying significant vehicle registration fees by participating in Oregon’s program, while Burroughs himself has paid an extra dollar or two each month for his Subaru Outback.

“To me, that’s worth it to be part of the experiment,” he said, “and to know I’m paying my fair share for the roads.” 
…

A US aircraft carrier arrived in the central Vietnamese city of Danang on Sunday, weeks after Hanoi protested against Chinese vessels sailing in its waters.

The USS Ronald Reagan’s port call in Danang comes as the United States and Vietnam celebrate the 10th anniversary of their “comprehensive partnership.”

The aircraft carrier — part of the US 7th Fleet “supporting a free and open Indo-Pacific region” — arrived with two escort ships, the guided-missile cruisers USS Antietam and USS Robert Smalls, the American Embassy in Hanoi said.

U.S. Navy officials disembarked and shook hands with their Vietnamese military counterparts in a brief ceremony on Sunday afternoon.

“More than 5,000 sailors aboard USS Ronald Reagan are eager to visit Danang and experience Vietnamese culture,” USS Ronald Reagan’s commanding officer Captain Daryle Cardone said in a statement.

Vietnam and the U.S. share increasingly close trade links, as well as concerns over China’s growing strength in the region.

A Chinese survey vessel, multiple coast guard ships and fishing boats operated for several weeks in Vietnam’s exclusive economic zone in the South China Sea, prompting a demand that they leave from Vietnam’s foreign ministry.

The boats eventually departed in early June.

China claims most of the resource-rich waterway despite competing claims from other Southeast Asian nations including Vietnam, the Philippines and Malaysia.

“The visit gives that message that Vietnam is continuing to balance against China by improving its security relationship with the U.S., and with other outside powers,” Nguyen The Phuong, a PhD candidate in maritime security at the University of New South Wales Canberra, told AFP.

Bilateral ties

The U.S. aircraft carrier’s visit follows the arrival of Indian naval ships in Danang last month, as well as a port call by Japan’s largest warship in Cam Ranh, a city on the southeastern coast, earlier this week.

Pham Thu Hang, spokesperson for Vietnam’s foreign ministry, said earlier in the week that port calls were an “ordinary friendship exchange for peace, stability, and cooperation and development in the region and the world.”

Strong bilateral ties between the U.S. and Vietnam are key for Washington if it wants to remain the dominant power in the region, Phuong said.

“The US hopes that by sending one of their most formidable naval assets, they will have a trusted and reliable partner in Vietnam,” he said.

The US Secretary of State Antony Blinken made a quick visit to Hanoi in April and made it clear he wanted to upgrade diplomatic ties.

This is the third visit by a U.S. aircraft carrier to Vietnam after a historic port call by the USS Carl Vinson in 2018, the first time such a ship had arrived in the country since the end of the war.

The visit includes several cultural and community events, such as a U.S. Navy band concert, a visit to an orphanage and sports matches.

The USS Ronald Reagan has been based in Japan since 2015.
…

Zion Rose is well aware that the percentage of Black U.S. players in Major League Baseball has been on the decline for decades.

But the 18-year-old catcher from Chicago, still sweaty from a workout during MLB’s Draft Combine this week at Chase Field in Phoenix, said he’s got some news: That’s not going to be the case for long.

“You’ll see,” he said. “We’re starting to come through.”

Rose was one of more than 300 players of all backgrounds in Phoenix this week to take part in the combine, which featured workouts, interviews and games in an effort to showcase some of the game’s best amateur talent at the high school and college levels before July’s draft. MLB said that approximately 15% of the players in the showcase were Black.

The hope is that the next Aaron Judge, Mookie Betts or Andrew McCutchen will be in that bunch. Possibly several.

A recent study from The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at Central Florida found Black U.S. players represented just 6.2% of players on MLB opening day rosters, down from last year’s previous record low of 7.2%. Both figures are the lowest recorded in the study since it began in 1991, when 18% of players were Black. Last year’s World Series was the first since 1950 without a U.S.-born Black player.

There are tangible reasons to believe the percentage of Black players might be on the upswing soon.

Four of the first five players picked in last summer’s amateur draft were Black for the first time ever. Those four were among the hundreds who had participated in diversity initiatives such as the MLB Youth Academy, DREAM Series and the Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities (RBI) program. MLB has also pledged $150 million in a 10-year partnership with the Players Alliance. The nonprofit organization of current and former players works to increase Black involvement at all levels.

Many of those programs started several years ago, and the younger participants are starting to hit draft-eligible age.

Rose is among them. He said the diversity initiatives didn’t just provide exposure to scouts, but also opened a vital pipeline for minority players to connect, share experiences and see faces similar to their own. The catcher said that Black former MLB players and coaches were also in attendance at many of the tournaments, providing role models. He cited Reds pitcher Hunter Greene as a big influence.

“I met most of my best friends at those camps,” Rose said. “Just being able to see people your color playing the game, being able to relate to them, that’s been important.”

Homer Bush Jr. — whose dad played in the big leagues for seven seasons for the Blue Jays, Yankees and Marlins — said baseball is also doing a better job of being social media savvy. The outfielder just finished his junior season in college at Grand Canyon.

Bush said its important that baseball portrays itself as a fun sport. Baseball’s trend of elaborate celebrations for home runs and big hits — like Pittsburgh’s swashbuckling routine — is a good start.

He also said he believes having more Black players in the big leagues should create a snowball effect that brings more young minority players into the game.

“I could talk about it for hours,” Bush said. “But I feel like one of the biggest things is just representation. I had a dad who played in the big leagues, so I had someone to look up to and admire. But most guys — when you click on MLB Network or ESPN — there’s not a ton of Black baseball players.”

Of course, there are other variables to getting more minority players to the big leagues — mainly money and time.

Simply put, developing a big-league ballplayer is usually expensive. There’s the equipment, the costs of joining a travel team and the pricey individual instruction that is sometimes needed — expenses than can easily total thousands of dollars per year. There’s also the time commitment: weekends completely filled with two and sometimes three games each day.

“We took a lot of videos of other players for their parents who couldn’t make it,” said Shaun Rose, Zion’s dad.

Karin Rose, Zion’s mom, said she was fortunate that she has a job as a school nurse, which allowed her to travel with Zion during much of the summer baseball season while Shaun worked at his barber shop. Money wasn’t a huge problem, because both had good jobs and some family members chipped in.

Zion took the additional step of transferring from Brother Rice High School in Chicago to IMG Academy in Florida for his senior season, so he could take advantage of the facilities and year-round baseball weather. He’s ranked by MLB.com as the 144th best prospect in this year’s draft, projecting for roughly the fifth round, where the recommended signing bonus is around $400,000.

“We understood the sacrifice, but it was Zion’s will to be a great player that put us in this position,” Karin Rose said. “We’ve been really blessed with travel ball, lots of support from friends and family.”

Several Black former MLB players were in Phoenix to help with the combine, including Chris Young, who played in the big leagues for 13 seasons and was an All-Star with the Arizona Diamondbacks in 2010. He said the sport’s diversity inititaves are a good way to lessen the financial load, but it will never go away completely.

“I don’t think baseball is going to get any less expensive anytime soon,” the 39-year-old Young said. “It’s an expensive game. It was an expensive game even back when I was a kid.”

He also hopes that more Black athletes will choose baseball over football or basketball, sports that have claimed top baseball prospects in the past like Arizona Cardinals quarterback Kyler Murray. Another of this year’s top prospects — Duce Robinson — is trying to decide between pro baseball or playing tight end at USC.

“We have to make it worth their while,” Young said. “If you’re getting guys like that — I don’t want to overspeak — but you’re getting athletes like Mike Trout. Then it’s just up to each team’s player development.”
…

An elevated train clangs along tracks above Dr. Kwane Stewart as the veterinarian makes his way through a chain link gate to ask a man standing near a parked RV whether he might know of any street pets in need.

Michael Evans immediately goes for his 11-month-old pit bull, Bear, his beloved companion living beneath the rumbling San Francisco Bay Area commuter trains.

“Focus. Sit. That’s my boy,” Evans instructs the high-energy pup as he eagerly accepts Stewart’s offer.

A quick check of the dog reveals a moderate ear infection that could have made Bear so sick in a matter of weeks he might have required sedation. Instead, right there, Dr. Stewart applies a triple treatment drop of antibiotic, anti-fungal and steroids that should start the healing process.

“This is my son right here, my son. He’s my right-hand man,” an emotional Evans says of Bear, who shares the small RV in Oakland. “It’s a blessing, really.”

“The Street Vet,” as Stewart is known, has been supporting California’s homeless population and their pets for almost a decade, ever since he spontaneously helped a man with a flea-infested dog outside of a convenience store. Since then, Stewart regularly walks the heart of Los Angeles’ infamous Skid Row, giving him a glimpse into the state’s homelessness crisis — and how much they cherish and depend on their pets.

After treating Bear, Stewart hands Evans, a Louisiana transplant, a list of the medicine he provided along with contact information in case the dog needs further treatment. Stewart always promises to cover all expenses.

“It was a good catch,” Stewart said before heading out on his way to the next stop, in West Oakland.

California is home to nearly a third of the nation’s homeless population, according to federal data. About two-thirds of California’s homeless population is unsheltered, meaning they live outside, often packed into encampments in major cities and along roadways. Nationally, up to 10% of homeless people have pets, according to an estimate from the advocacy group Pets of the Homeless. Stewart believes that number is greater.

Homeless shelters often don’t allow pets, forcing people to make heart-wrenching decisions. Stewart sees it as his mission to help as many of them as he can.

A 52-year-old former college hurdler at New Mexico now living in San Diego, Stewart is a lifelong animal lover who grew up in Texas and New Mexico trying to save strays — or at least feed and care for them. He founded Project Street Vet, a nonprofit charity dedicated to helping homeless pets. Stewart funded the group himself for years, saving a chunk of his paycheck before later gaining sponsors and donors.

There’s plenty of heartbreak in Stewart’s work, too. He once performed emergency surgery on a pregnant chihuahua, and the two puppies didn’t make it. But more often than not these pet owners are beyond grateful for Stewart’s kindness. He guesses that maybe 1 in 25 times someone turns down his help.

Stewart hollers “Hello?” outside tents, makeshift structures or campers. He can usually tell there’s a pet if he sees a dog bowl or animal toy. He purposely wears his navy scrub top with his name on it, so no one mistakes him for animal control or other authorities and feels threatened.

“People are reticent, they don’t always know why I’m coming up to them. If they’re going to you to beg or panhandle, it’s different but if you come up on them they don’t know if you’re law enforcement or you have an agenda,” he said, “so I do take it very slow and I’ll announce myself from afar.”

Approaching Misty Fancher to see if her pit bull, Addie – purchased at a nearby gas station for $200 — might need shots, Stewart offers, “Can she have treats so we can make friends?”

“Sometimes I pull over and just talk,” Stewart explained.

Addie is the first pet Fancher has had as an adult and provides the 42-year-old with some comfort that she is safe living in a relatively unstable neighborhood of Oakland.

“She’s a very good girl,” Fancher said. “She keeps a lot of trouble away. She protects me. She’ll bite someone if they act aggressive or anything toward me. She has before. But she just discourages them from even trying.”

Stewart notices a puncture on the dog’s paw to monitor and also gives her a rabies shot, writing out a certificate for Fancher to keep as proof her dog is vaccinated. He leaves her with tablets for de-worming, treatments for fleas and ticks and — as usual — his contact information.

A little while later, Stewart stops on the outskirts of a park nearby. He walks the perimeter and encounters an RV owned by Eric Clark, who has lived in the same downtown spot for seven years. He has a male bulldog, pregnant pit bull and another pregnant Doberman.

“It’s hard to get to the vet,” Clark said. “I appreciate you. They’re family.”

Stewart is happy he can make a small difference like this with a largely misunderstood community. He strives to treat every person on the streets with the same professionalism and care as he would a patient at his veterinary clinic. His mantra: no judgment, just help.

“They live in the shadows. They live amongst us but not with us,” he said. ” … It is really rewarding. It gets to you a little bit. When they tear up about the tough times they’ve had, you try to care for them, support them.”
…

Conservatives eager to counter America’s leading economic adversary have set their sights on a top trade priority for labor unions and progressives: cracking down on the deluge of duty-free packages coming in from China.

The changing political dynamic could have major ramifications for e-commerce businesses and consumers importing products from China valued at less than $800. It also could add to the growing tensions between the countries.

Under current U.S. law, most imports valued at less than $800 enter duty-free into the United States as long as they are packaged and addressed to individual buyers. It’s referred to as the de minimis rule. Efforts to lower the threshold amount or exclude certain countries altogether from duty-free treatment are set to become a major trade fight in this Congress.

“De minimis has become a proxy for all sorts of anxieties as it relates to China and other trade-related challenges,” said John Drake, a vice president at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, who argues that the current U.S. law should be preserved.

The rule speeds the pace of commerce and lowers costs for consumers. It also allows U.S. Customs and Border Protection to focus its resources on the bigger-ticket items that generate more tariff revenue for the federal government.

The volume of products coming into the U.S. that benefit from the de minimis rule has soared in recent years. Congress raised the U.S. government’s threshold for expedited, duty-free treatment from $200 to $800 in 2016.

The volume of such imports has since risen from about 220 million packages that year to 771 million in 2021 — with China accounting for about 60%, according to the government — and 685 million last year.

“I think everybody’s got to kind of wrap their head around what kind of mistake this was,” Robert Lighthizer, the U.S. trade representative during the Trump administration, told a House panel last month. “Nobody dreamt this would ever happen. Now we have packages coming in, 2 million packages a day, almost all from China. We have no idea what’s in them. We don’t really know what the value is.”

Lighthizer urged Congress to get rid of the de minimis rule altogether, or reduce it to a much lower amount, say $50 or $100. He said foreign companies are taking advantage of the threshold and “putting people out of work in stores, they’re putting people out of work in manufacturing.”

Last year, House Democrats pushed to prohibit Chinese-made goods from benefiting from the special treatment for lower-cost goods. That move was part of a larger measure that boosted investments in semiconductor manufacturing and research.

In the rush to get a bill passed before the 2022 elections, the Biden administration and Democratic leaders jettisoned provisions without bipartisan buy-in. The trade provision was opposed by important U.S. business groups and key Republican members of Congress, so it didn’t make the final bill.

Fast forward just a few months and it’s clear the political dynamic has shifted — and quickly.

In its first set of recommendations, a new House committee focused exclusively on China called for legislation that would reduce the threshold for duty-free shipments into the U.S. with a particular focus on “foreign adversaries, including the (People’s Republic of China.)”

The Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party said that exploiting the $800 threshold may be a major avenue through which Chinese companies selling directly to American consumers can circumvent U.S. law designed to prevent the sale of goods made with forced labor. The committee also said Customs and Border Protection “could not reasonably scrutinize” goods sent under the $800 threshold for forced labor concerns because of the sheer number of products coming in.

The committee is most concerned about retailers Temu and Shein, which ship directly to consumers in the U.S. In a report released Thursday, it said the two companies alone are likely responsible for more than 30% of all de minimis shipments entering the U.S. each day, or nearly 600,000 a day last year.

The committee also has competitiveness concerns. It points out that U.S. retailers such as Gap and H&M paid $700 million and $205 million in import duties, respectively, in 2022. In contrast, virtually all of the goods sold by Temu and Shein are shipped using the de minimis exception in which the importer pays no duty.

Committees with jurisdiction over trade are also signaling a new mindset. Last year, the top Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee, Texas Rep. Kevin Brady, since retired, warned against what he called “hasty changes in reasonable de minimis limits.”

But the Republican now leading the House Ways and Means Committee, Rep. Jason Smith of Missouri, said he wants to “have a lot of conversations” about the $800 threshold.

“Basically, when you’re looking at $800 or less, that’s a free-trade agreement with anyone. And you’re looking at millions of products that come in per day. We need to look at it,” Smith said.

Meanwhile, the Senate has some bills on the issue, which were just introduced this month.

One, from Sens. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, and Marco Rubio, R-Fla., would prevent the expedited, tariff-free treatment of imports from certain countries, most notably China and Russia.

The other, from Sens. Bill Cassidy, R-La., and Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., not only similarly targets China and Russia, but would affect other trade partners. It would do so by reducing the threshold for duty-free treatment to the amount that other nations use.

For example, if another country, say Belgium, which uses the European Union threshold of 150 euros, or about $165 currently, then the U.S. would reciprocate and use that same amount when determining whether goods coming in from Belgium get duty-free and expedited treatment.

Drake, of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said that cutting back the threshold not only would represent a big tax increase for many U.S. small businesses, but many would have to hire a customs broker to process their shipments.

“There’s a reason Congress raised the level back in 2016,” he said. “They knew in addition to it being a competitive advantage for the U.S. business community, they also recognized that collecting duties on these low-value shipments, you know, really wasn’t worth the trouble.”
…

A Colorado school is creating a “zen den” for troubled students. A soccer coach in Pittsburgh goes out of her way to relieve pressure on players. A Chicago community group equips a van for mobile mental health help, and a Los Angeles school trains students to counsel peers. 

Each effort to tackle youth mental health issues has been featured on a local CBS newscast recently, examples of a movement toward “solutions journalism.” 

The idea is that reporters need to be more than the bearer of bad news. 

“We want to look past the who, what, where and why to asking ‘how can we help?'” said Wendy McMahon, co-president of CBS News and the CBS Television Stations. “How can we help make our communities better places to live? That’s the aspiration.” 

CBS has trained news leaders in solutions journalism at the 14 local stations it owns, in big markets like New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, and opened an “innovation lab” for them to work together on stories. 

The network works with the Solutions Journalism Network, an organization formed in 2013 by two former New York Times reporters, David Bornstein and Tina Rosenberg, and entrepreneur Courtney Martin. The Times reporters wrote a column called “Fixes” that was often popular despite dealing with tough, dry subjects like foster care, homelessness or childhood trauma. 

Coverage of calamity — shootings, fires, accidents — is such a staple that the phrase, “if it bleeds, it leads,” was popularized for local TV news. But that’s a downer at a time news outlets don’t need another excuse for consumers to leave. Research picks up on people who feel their community isn’t covered unless something bad happens, McMahon said. 

That’s why the CBS stations emphasize finding people and organizations trying to tackle problems. 

Among other stories that reflect that focus: training resource officers in Georgia to prevent the arrest of children in schools; efforts in New York, Denver and Sacramento to speed up the resolution of criminal cases; a California county’s solution to stop wage theft in restaurants; a new sea wall being constructed in New York to deal with climate change. 

Following the February train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, CBS stations looked into why safety recommendations for the airline and trucking industries haven’t been followed. 

“It differentiates us from our competition and serves our communities,” said Chad Cross, who runs the CBS innovation lab. 

When they began promoting the idea to industry audiences, Bornstein of the Solutions Journalism Network recalled that they often saw impassive faces and folded arms in front of them. 

Many journalists see themselves as investigators responsible for pointing out the ills of society, a job that’s become tougher than ever with financial troubles that have emptied newsrooms. Solutions were the province of others. If news is bad, so be it. 

“Covering death day after day does get depressing,” Matthew Ingram wrote in the Columbia Journalism Review. “But what is the alternative — to not report on what is happening because it makes people sad?” 

That explains residual disdain for efforts to promote “good news,” which had a burst of popularity during the pandemic. Actor John Krasinski started an uplifting YouTube channel, “Some Good News,” and musician David Byrne started his “Reasons to be Cheerful” website. 

Bornstein said solutions journalism is not “good news. It’s rigorous reporting that is examining how people are responding to problems.” 

McMahon views people who don’t see the importance of promoting solutions as cynical. 

“There are problem-solvers,” she said. “There are solution-seekers, throughout this country and in each and every one of our cities. These are people and groups with so much ingenuity and so much passion. Their passion is inspiring to us.” 

Some critics see the risk of journalists being seen as advocates if some “solutions” are getting more attention than others. Bornstein said if done right, solutions journalism is no more susceptible to bias than other forms of reporting. 

Tom Rosenstiel, journalism professor at the University of Maryland, said the Solutions Journalism Network has done a good job anticipating some of the concerns it faced, particularly the sense that it is encouraging puff pieces about organizations or community leaders. Making sure the stories are strong is an important part of CBS’ training, Cross said. 

It’s important that journalists are leading the effort, as opposed to those who don’t support journalism, Rosenstiel said. 

In the decade since the Solutions Journalism Network started, thousands of journalists and more than 600 news organizations have undergone training in its tenets, Bornstein said. On its website, it has collected more than 15,000 stories that fit the network’s criteria. 

Among the posted articles are one from New York magazine about “bystander intervention training” to halt crime, a piece on efforts to encouraged plant-based diets from Byrne’s website and a story from Christianity Today magazine about Christians and Muslims working together to translate stories from the Bible into certain African languages. 

The network has also named four college journalism programs as hubs of solution journalism, meaning it will be incorporated into teaching and research there. Participating programs are at the University of Georgia, Northwestern, Arizona State and Stony Brook in New York. 

If solutions journalism continues to grow, Rosenstiel said it can be an important tool in preventing people from avoiding the news because they find it too depressing. 

“We can’t just be the watchdog that barks,” he said. 
…

A bridge that crosses the Yellowstone River in Montana has collapsed, causing portions of a freight train that was traveling over it to plunge into the water below. 

There was no immediate word from authorities on whether anyone was injured. Officials at the Montana Rail Link could not be reached immediately Saturday for comment. 

Numerous tank cars were partially submerged in the river early Saturday and railroad crews were at the scene near the town of Columbus, about 64 kilometers west of Billings. An Associated Press reporter witnessed a yellow liquid pouring out of tank cars. 

The river was swollen by recent heavy rains although it is unclear whether that contributed to the bridge collapse. 

The Yellowstone saw record flooding in 2022 that caused extensive damage to Yellowstone National Park and adjacent towns in Montana. 

 
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Mother Mary Elizabeth Lange — a Black Catholic nun who founded the United States’ first African American religious congregation in Baltimore in 1829 — has advanced another step toward sainthood. 

Under a decree signed by Pope Francis on Thursday, Lange was recognized for her heroic virtue, and advanced in the cause of her beatification from being considered a servant of God to a “venerable servant.” The Catholic Church must now approve a miracle that is attributed to her, so she can be beatified. 

Lange grew up in a wealthy family of African origin but she left Cuba in the early 1800s for the U.S. due to racial discrimination, according to the Vatican’s saint-making office. After encountering more discrimination in the southern U.S., she moved with her family to Baltimore. Recognizing a need to provide education for Black children in the city, she started a school in 1828, decades before the Civil War and the abolition of slavery. 

In 1829, she founded the Oblate Sisters of Providence — the country’s first African American religious congregation. They were trailblazers for generations of Black Catholic nuns who persevered despite being overlooked or suppressed by those who resented or disrespected them. 

The Oblate Sisters continue to operate Baltimore’s Saint Frances Academy, which Lange founded. The coed school is the country’s oldest continually operating Black Catholic educational facility, with a mission prioritizing help for “the poor and the neglected.” 

“She lived her virtuous existence in a hostile social and ecclesial context, in which the preeminent opinion was in favor of slavery, personally suffering the situation of marginalization and poverty in which the African American population found itself,” the Vatican’s saint-making office wrote. 

Lange is among three Black nuns from the U.S. designated by Catholic officials as worthy of consideration for sainthood. The others are Henriette Delille, who founded the New Orleans-based Sisters of the Holy Family in 1842 because white sisterhoods in Louisiana refused to accept African Americans, and Sister Thea Bowman, a beloved educator, evangelist and singer active for many decades before her death in 1990. 

Pope Francis’s advancement of Lange’s sainthood cause “is a monumental step forward in the long fight for Black Catholic saints in the United States and for recognition for the nation’s long embattled African American Catholic community, especially nuns,” said Shannen Dee Williams, a history professor at the University of Dayton and author of ” Subversive Habits: Black Catholic Nuns in the Long African American Freedom Struggle.” 

Currently there are no recognized African American saints. Williams said Lange joins three other African American sainthood candidates who have been declared “venerable — Delille, Father Augustus Tolton and Pierre Toussaint. 

Williams said only one Black woman has been declared a saint in the modern era — St. Josephine Bakhita, a formerly enslaved Sudanese nun who made “the extraordinary journey from slavery under Islamic auspices to freedom in an Italian Catholic convent in the late 19th century.” 

“This is why Lange’s cause is so important and revolutionary,” Williams said via email. “There is absolutely no way to tell Lange’s story or the story of her order accurately or honestly without confronting the Catholic Church’s mostly unreconciled histories of colonialism, slavery, and segregation.” 

Williams said that unlike most of their counterparts in religious life, Lange and the Oblate Sisters of Providence were not segregationists, and never barred anyone from their ranks or institutions based on color or race. Instead, Williams said, Lange’s multiethnic and multilingual order preserved the vocations of hundreds of Black Catholic women and girls denied admission into white congregations in the United States, Canada, Latin America and the Caribbean. 

“Lange and her Oblate Sisters of Providence’s very existence embody the fundamental truth that Black history always has been Catholic history in the land area that became the United States.” Williams said, 

Their story “upends the enduring myth that slaveholding and segregationist Catholic priests and nuns were simply people ‘of their times.'” Williams said. “Mother Lange and the Oblate Sisters of Providence were also people of those times.” 
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