President Joe Biden is expected to nominate a history-making Air Force fighter pilot with years of experience in shaping U.S. defenses to meet China’s rise to serve as the nation’s next top military officer, according to two U.S. officials familiar with the decision.

If confirmed by the Senate, Air Force General CQ Brown Jr. would replace the current chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army General Mark Milley, whose term ends in October.

Brown has long been considered a front-runner for the position and Biden is likely to announce his nomination shortly, according to the officials, who spoke Friday on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss sensitive matters.

While Brown would not be the first Black chairman — the late Army General Colin Powell was the first — it would be the first time that both the Pentagon’s top military and civilian positions were held by African Americans. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, the first Black Pentagon chief, has been in the job since the beginning of the administration.

Brown, 61, is a career F-16 fighter pilot with more than 3,000 flight hours and command experience at all levels. For the last year he’s been widely viewed as the front-runner to replace Milley, as the Pentagon shifts from preparing for the major land wars of the past to deterring a potential future conflict with Beijing.

That effort could depend heavily upon the military’s ability to rapidly meet China’s rise in cyberwar, space, nuclear weapons and hypersonics, all areas Brown has sharply focused on for the last several years as the Air Force’s top military leader, in order to modernize U.S. airpower for a 21st-century fight.

Notable firsts

Brown has broken barriers throughout his career. He served as the military’s first Black Pacific Air Forces commander, where he led the nation’s air strategy to counter China in the Indo-Pacific as Beijing rapidly militarized islands in the South China Sea and tested its bomber reach with flights near Guam.

Three years ago he became the first Black Air Force chief of staff, the service’s top military officer, which also made him the first African American to lead any of the military branches.

The Joint Chiefs chairman is the highest-ranking officer in the country and serves as the senior military adviser to the president, the defense secretary and the National Security Council. The chairman commands no troops and is not formally in the chain of command. But the chairman plays a critical role in all major military issues, from policy decisions to advice on major combat operations, and leads meetings with all the chiefs who lead the various armed services.

Arnold Punaro, a retired major general and former staff director for the Senate Armed Services Committee who has worked with many nominees through the confirmation process, said Brown has the credibility and experience to push the services onto a modern warfare footing.

“We have not yet made the needed adjustments to deal with the threat posed by China,” Punaro said in a statement, calling Brown the “perfect nominee” for this point in history.

As Air Force chief, Brown has pushed to modernize U.S. nuclear capabilities, including the soon-to-fly next-generation stealth bomber, and led the effort to shed aging warplanes so there’s funding to move forward with a new fleet of unmanned systems. He’s also supported the development of the U.S. Space Force, which received many of its first Guardians and capabilities from the Air Force.

Representative Mikie Sherrill, D-N.J., said that she hadn’t been formally told of the announcement but that Brown was a good choice.

“I do think it’s really important that the next person in charge have that [Indo-Pacific] experience,” Sherrill said. “I just think that’s so critical.”

Brown is private and deliberate and seen as a polar opposite to Milley, whose four-year tour has been tumultuous at times. Milley’s big personality and blunt talk may have helped propel him to the top job under former President Donald Trump, but that same outspokenness eventually infuriated Trump.

Milley’s past two years under Biden have been much calmer, and he has assumed a lower profile as well, as he has been consumed with U.S. efforts to provide military aid to Ukraine.

Brown is expected to maintain that lower profile.
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Foreign citizens and companies would need U.S. government approval to buy property within 160 kilometers of eight military bases, under a proposed rule change that follows a Chinese firm’s attempt to build a plant near an Air Force base in the U.S. state of North Dakota. 

The Treasury Department’s Office of Investment Security published its proposed rule Friday in the U.S. Federal Register. The rule would give expanded powers to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), which screens business deals between U.S. firms and foreign investors and can block sales or force the parties to change the terms of an agreement to protect national security. 

Controversy arose over plans by the Fufeng Group to build a $700 million wet corn milling plant about 19 kilometers from the Grand Forks Air Force Base, which houses air and space operations. 

As opposition to the project grew, North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum and U.S. Senators John Hoeven and Kevin Cramer, all Republicans, raised questions about the security risks and asked the federal government last July for an expedited review. 

CFIUS told Fufeng in September that it was reviewing the proposal and eventually concluded that it did not have jurisdiction to stop the investment. 

The plans were eventually dropped after the Air Force said the plant would pose a significant threat to national security. 

The new rule would affect Grand Forks and seven other bases, including three that are tied to the B-21 Raider, the nation’s future stealth bomber. The Pentagon has taken great pains to protect its new, most-advanced bomber from spying by China. The bomber will carry nuclear weapons and be able to fly manned and unmanned missions. 

Six bombers are in various stages of production at Air Force Plant 42, located in Palmdale, California, while the two other bases will serve as future homes for the 100-aircraft stealth bomber fleet: Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota and Dyess Air Force Base in Texas. 

Also on the list are Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio and Laughlin Air Force Base in Del Rio, Texas, both training bases. The others selected for greater protection are the Iowa National Guard Joint Force Headquarters in Des Moines, Iowa, and Luke Air Force Base in Glendale, Arizona. 

The locations were selected for a variety of reasons, including the sensitivity of either current or future missions that would be based there, if they were near special use airspace, where military operations would be conducted or whether they were near military training routes, said a defense official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters. 

CFIUS, a committee whose members come from the State, Justice, Energy and Commerce departments among others, already had the power to block property sales within 160 kilometers of other military bases under a 2018 law. 

Hoeven said the CFIUS process for reviewing proposed projects needed to be updated.

“Accordingly, China’s investments in the U.S. need to be carefully scrutinized, particularly for facilities like the Grand Forks Air Force Base, which is a key national security asset that serves as the lead for all Air Force Global Hawk intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance operations and has a growing role in U.S. space operations,” he said. 

In February, Andrew Hunter, an assistant secretary of the Air Force, said in a letter to North Dakota officials that the military considered the project a security risk but did not elaborate on the kinds of risks Fufeng’s project would pose.

The letter prompted Grand Forks officials, who had initially welcomed the milling plant as an economic boon for the region, to withdraw support by denying building permits and refusing to connect the 150-hectare site to public infrastructure.

Fufeng makes products for animal nutrition, the food and beverage industry, pharmaceuticals, health and wellness, oil and gas, and other industries. It’s a leading producer of xanthan gum. It denied that the plant would be used for espionage.

Lawmakers have also called for a review of foreign investments in agricultural lands. Earlier this year, Senators Jon Tester, a Democrat from Montana, and Mike Rounds, a Republican from South Dakota, introduced legislation aimed at preventing China, Russia, Iran and North Korea from acquiring U.S. farmland.

“Countries like China who want to undermine America’s status as the world’s leading economic superpower have no business owning property on our own soil — especially near our military bases,” Tester said in a statement Thursday. 
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The director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced Friday she is stepping down from that position effective June 30.

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, who along with Dr. Anthony Fauci, was one of the faces of U.S. President Joe Biden’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, reportedly announced she was stepping down at a CDC staff meeting. 

Biden confirmed the announcement in a statement Friday praising Walensky for saving lives through “her steadfast and unwavering focus on the health of every American.” Biden said Walensky, as CDC director, “led a complex organization on the front lines of a once-in-a-generation pandemic with honesty and integrity.”

Biden said she leaves the CDC “a stronger institution, better positioned to confront health threats and protect Americans. We have all benefited from her service.”

The Associated Press reports, citing CDC sources, that Walensky, in a resignation letter to Biden, expressed “mixed feelings” about the decision to leave and while she did not give a specific reason, said she felt the U.S. is at a moment of transition as emergency declarations come to an end.

Walensky wrote of her time at the CDC, “I have never been prouder of anything I have done in my professional career.” 

Walensky began her job at the CDC shortly after Biden took office in January 2021. She came to the position from Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, where she served as chief of the Infectious Diseases Division. She also was a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.  

Some information for this report was provided by The Associated Press. 
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American bars and restaurants gear up every year for Cinco de Mayo, offering special deals on Mexican food and alcoholic drinks for the May 5 holiday that is barely celebrated south of the border.

In the United States, the date is largely seen as a celebration of Mexican American culture stretching back to the 1800s in California.

Typical festivities include parades, street food, block parties, mariachi competitions and baile folklórico, or folkloric ballet, with whirling dancers wearing shiny ribbons and braids and bright, ruffled dresses.

For Americans with or without Mexican ancestry, the day has become an excuse to toss back tequila shots with salt and lime and gorge on tortilla chips smothered with melted orange cheddar that’s unfamiliar to most people in Mexico.

That’s brought some criticism of the holiday, especially as beer manufacturers and other marketers have capitalized on its festive nature and some revelers embrace offensive stereotypes, such as fake, droopy mustaches and gigantic straw sombreros.

This year’s celebrations

With May 5 falling at the end of the work week this year, festivities are kicking off Friday evening with happy hours and pub crawls in cities including Hollywood, featuring $4 beers and two-for-one margaritas, and a boozy party aboard a yacht on Chicago’s Lake Michigan with música norteño, or northern Mexico music, and ballads called corridos.

Celebrations are planned throughout the weekend, especially in places with large Mexican American populations, such as Los Angeles, Houston, New York, San Antonio and Washington, D.C.

A Sunday festival in downtown Phoenix will feature performers including Los Lonely Boys, who describe their music as “Texican rock,” as well as lucha libre, or wrestling matches with masked adversaries. A Cinco de Mayo parade will take place in Dallas on Saturday, while a Holy Guacamole Cinco de Mayo Run steps off that morning in Palisades Park in Santa Monica, California.

What it is

Cinco de Mayo marks the anniversary of the 1862 victory by Mexican troops over invading French forces at the Battle of Puebla.

The triumph over the better equipped and more numerous French troops was an enormous emotional boost for the Mexican soldiers led by General Ignacio Zaragoza.

Historical re-enactments and parades are held annually in the central Mexico city of Puebla to commemorate the inspirational victory over the Europeans, with participants dressed in historical French and Mexican army uniforms.

What it isn’t

Cinco de Mayo is not Mexican Independence Day, Mexico’s most important holiday.

Mexicans celebrate their country’s independence from Spain on the anniversary of the call to arms against the European country issued September 16, 1810, by the Reverend Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, a priest in Dolores, Mexico.

Mexico’s president reenacts el Grito de Independencia, or the Cry of Independence, most years on September 15 at about 11 p.m. from the balcony of the country’s National Palace, ringing the bell Hidalgo rang.

The commemoration typically ends with three cries of “¡Viva México!” above a colorful swirl of tens of thousands of people crowded into the Zócalo, or main plaza, in central Mexico City.
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The American Association of University Women estimates that about 28% of professionals in science, technology, engineering, and math, also called STEM, are women. But in one Native American community teachers are working to get girls involved in the sciences. VOA’s Virginia Gunawan reports from Tucson, Arizona. Camera: Rere Wahyudi, Supriyono
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America’s employers added a healthy 253,000 jobs in April, evidence of a labor market that still shows surprising resilience despite rising interest rates, chronically high inflation and a banking crisis that could weaken the economy.

The unemployment rate dipped to 3.4%, matching a 54-year low, the Labor Department said Friday. But the jobless rate fell in part because 43,000 people left the labor force, the first drop since November, and were no longer counted as unemployed.

In its report Friday, the government noted that while hiring was solid in April, it was much weaker in February and March than it had previously estimated. And hourly wages rose last month at the fastest pace since July, which may alarm the inflation fighters at the Federal Reserve.

April’s hiring gain compares with 165,000 in March and 248,000 in February and is still at a level considered vigorous by historical standards. The job market has remained durable despite the Fed’s aggressive campaign of interest rate hikes over the past year to fight inflation. Layoffs are still relatively low, job openings comparatively high.

Still, the ever-higher borrowing costs the Fed has engineered have weakened some key sectors of the economy, notably the housing market. But overall, the job market has remained stable. Fed Chair Jerome Powell himself sounded somewhat mystified this week by the job market’s durability. The central bank has expressed concern that a robust job market exerts upward pressure on wages — and prices. It hopes to achieve a so-called soft landing – cooling the economy and the labor market just enough to tame inflation yet not so much as to trigger a recession.

One way to do that, Powell has said, is for employers to post fewer job openings. And indeed, the government reported this week that job openings fell in March to 9.6 million — a still-high figure but down from a peak of 12 million in March 2022 and the fewest in nearly two years.

At the staffing firm Robert half, executive director Ryan Sutton said he still sees “pent-up demand” for workers.

Applicants, not employers, still enjoy the advantage, he said: To attract and keep workers, he said, businesses — especially small ones — must offer flexible hours and the chance to work from home when possible.

“Giving a little bit of schedule flexibility so that somebody might finish their work late or early so that they can take care of children and family and elderly parents — these are the things that the modern employee needs,” Sutton said. “To not offer those and to try to still have a 2019 business model of five days a week in an office — that’s going to put you at a disadvantage” in finding and retaining talent.

Powell has said he is optimistic that the nation can avoid a recession. Yet many economists are skeptical and have said they expect a downturn to begin sometime this year.

Still, steadily rising borrowing costs have inflicted some damage. Pounded by higher mortgage rates, sales of existing homes were down a sharp 22% in March from a year earlier. Investment in housing has cratered over the past year.

America’s factories are slumping, too. An index produced by the Institute for Supply Management, an organization of purchasing managers, has signaled a contraction in manufacturing for six straight months.

Even consumers, who drive about 70% of economic activity and who have been spending healthily since the pandemic recession ended three years ago, are showing signs of exhaustion: Retail sales fell in February and March after having begun the year with a bang.

The Fed’s rate hikes are hardly the economy’s only serious threat. Congressional Republicans are threatening to let the federal government default on its debt, by refusing to raise the limit on what it can borrow, if Democrats don’t accept sharp cuts in federal spending. A first-ever default on the federal debt would shatter the market for U.S. Treasurys — the world’s biggest — and possibly cause an international financial crisis.

The global backdrop already looks gloomier. The International Monetary Fund last month downgraded its forecast for worldwide growth, citing rising interest rates around the world, financial uncertainty and chronic inflation.

Since March, America’s financial system has been rattled by three of the four biggest bank failures in U.S. history. Worried that jittery depositors will withdraw their money, banks are likely to reduce lending to conserve cash. Multiplied across the banking industry, that trend could cause a credit crunch that would hobble the economy.
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A Republican megadonor paid two years of private school tuition for a child raised by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who did not disclose the payments, a lawyer who has represented Thomas and his wife acknowledged Thursday.

The revelation of tuition payments made by Dallas billionaire Harlan Crow is the latest example of Crow’s generosity to Thomas and his family that has raised questions about Thomas’ ethics and disclosure requirements more generally. The payments, along with the earlier examples of Crow’s financial ties to Thomas, were first reported by the nonprofit investigative journalism site ProPublica.

ProPublica reported Thursday that Crow paid tuition for Thomas’ great-nephew Mark Martin. Thomas and his wife, Virginia, raised Martin from the age of 6.

Over the past month, ProPublica has reported in other stories about luxury vacations paid for by Crow that the conservative justice took as well as Crow’s purchase of property from the Thomas family, neither of which were disclosed. Democrats have used the revelations to call for stronger ethics rules for the Supreme Court, and the Democrat-controlled Senate held a hearing on ethics issues this week. Republicans have defended Thomas.

According to the ProPublica story, Crow paid tuition for Martin at a military boarding school in Virginia, Randolph-Macon Academy, as well as Hidden Lake Academy in Georgia.

ProPublica said Thomas did not respond to questions. Crow’s office responded in a statement to questions but did not address a question about how much he paid in total for Martin’s tuition. He did say that Thomas had not requested the support for either school, ProPublica reported.

A Supreme Court spokesperson did not immediately respond to an email from The Associated Press about whether Thomas would have any response to the story. On Twitter, however, lawyer Mark Paoletta defended Thomas in an extended statement. Paoletta, a longtime friend of Thomas, called the story “another attempt to manufacture a scandal about Justice Thomas.”

Paoletta said in his statement that Crow had recommended that Thomas consider Randolph-Macon Academy, which Crow had attended, and had offered to pay for Martin’s first year there in 2006, a payment that went directly to the school. When the school recommended Martin spend a year at Hidden Lake Academy, Crow offered again to pay for that year, a payment that also went directly to the school, Paoletta said.

In response to the story, lawmakers in Congress were again divided by party.

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., who once clerked for Chief Justice John Roberts, said it was “just the latest installment of the left’s multi-decade campaign to target Justice Thomas.”

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said in a statement that with “every new revelation in this case, it becomes clearer that Harlan Crow has been subsidizing an extravagant lifestyle” that Thomas could not otherwise afford.

“This is a foul breach of ethics standards, which are already far too low when it comes to the Supreme Court,” Wyden said.

Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, urged Roberts to take note.

“I hope that Chief Justice Roberts reads this story this morning and understands something has to be done,” Durbin said. “The reputation of the Supreme Court is at stake here, the credibility of the court when it comes to its future decisions is at stake.”
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The White House says the United States was not involved in Wednesday’s drone attack on the Kremlin, after Russia claimed, without evidence, that the U.S. ordered the strike and Ukraine carried it out. VOA Senior Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports.
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White House Mulls AI Oversight, Protections with Industry Leaders
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A once-confident Vladimir Putin may finally be giving up on his designs to quickly subdue Kyiv and conquer Ukraine, according to the most recent assessment by U.S. intelligence officials.

U.S. intelligence agencies have previously argued the Russian president believes it is necessary for him to conquer Ukraine for him to fulfill his destiny.

But as the war drags into its second year, U.S. intelligence agencies believe the Russian leader has conceded, somewhat, to realities on the ground.

“We assess that Putin has probably scaled back his immediate ambitions, to consolidate control of the occupied territory in eastern and southern Ukraine and ensuring that Ukraine will never become a NATO ally,” Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee Thursday.

“Russian forces gained less territory in April than during any of the three previous months as they appeared to transition from offensive to defensive operations along the front lines,” Haines said.

“Russian forces are facing significant shortfalls in munitions and are under significant personnel constraints,” she added. “If Russia does not initiate a mandatory mobilization and secure substantial third-party ammunition supplies, beyond existing deliveries from Iran and others, it will be increasingly challenging for them to sustain even modest offensive operations.”

Haines, echoing a warning from her testimony before Congress in March, said Russia and Ukraine remained locked in a “brutally grinding war of attrition in which neither military has a definitive advantage.”

Ukraine, she said, remains reliant upon Western military aid to push back against Russia’s manpower advantage while the Kremlin is being forced to rely more heavily on asymmetric threats and tactics because of the degradation of its ground forces.

Russia’s ground forces are “relying on reserves and reserve equipment,” said Lieutenant General Scott Berrier, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency.

“It’s going to take them a while to build back,” he told lawmakers while testifying alongside Haines. “The estimates go from five to 10 years based on how sanctions affect them and their ability to put technology back into their force.”

Nuclear option

Berrier, however, warned that the degradation of Russia’s ground forces should not been seen as an indication of overall weakness.

“Even though their ground forces are degraded right now, they will quickly build those back,” he said, describing Moscow as “still an existential threat” because of its nuclear forces, which have not yet been tested.

But as for whether Putin might be inclined to use nuclear weapons to alter the course of the war in Ukraine, the U.S. intelligence leaders said, as of now, not so much.

“There are a number of scenarios we’ve thought through,” Berrier told lawmakers. “Right now, I’d say we think it’s unlikely.”

“From an IC [intelligence community] perspective, it’s very unlikely,” Haines added.

Kremlin drone attack

Like other senior U.S. officials, Haines and Berrier urged caution regarding Russia’s accusation that Ukraine launched a drone attack against the Kremlin this week as part of an attempt to assassinate Putin.

“You’ve seen the Ukrainian government deny having engaged in this and, at this stage, we don’t have information that would allow us to provide an independent assessment on this,” she said.

Haines said it is well known that Putin does not usually spend the night at the Kremlin, which casts some doubt on the Russian claim.

The DIA’s Berrier also said that the available photos suggested the attack was staged with drones that would need to have been controlled by someone on the ground, within sight of the Kremlin.

Russia, China

Both Haines and Berrier told lawmakers that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had bought Moscow and Beijing closer together.

“Since the invasion, that closeness has accelerated to some extent and, in part, this is due to the fact that Russia is increasingly beholden to and needs China,” Haines said.

“And China perceives Russia increasingly as a country that was already in the sort of little brother role, is often how it’s described, but nevertheless is now even more beholden and therefore they have greater leverage.”

Haines warned that this has led to greater cooperation between the two countries in the Arctic.

“Russia recognizes that they’re going to need China and their investment in order to get to some of the resources that they’re interested in in the Arctic,” she said. “And as a consequence, China sees an opportunity, and an increasing one in light of the current scenario.”

China, US

As relations between China and Russia deepen, ties between China and the United States have become “more challenging,” Haines said.

Chinese President Xi Jinping is growing ever more distrustful of the U.S., she said, reflecting a growing pessimism among Chinese officials who increasingly seek to portray Washington as the root of the world’s problems.

Still, Haines said U.S. intelligence analysts “continue to assess that Beijing wants to preserve stability and avoid triggering additional technology restrictions.”

Taiwan

U.S. intelligence agencies are also taking note of Xi’s rhetoric on Taiwan.

“We continue to assess that he [Xi] would prefer to achieve unification of Taiwan through peaceful means,” Haines told lawmakers. “But the reality is that he has directed his military to provide him with the military option.”

If and when Xi might decide to use force to take Taiwan is less clear.

“There are a number of dates out there that mean different things to different people,” Berrier testified. “Bottom line is he’s told his military to be ready. For what, we are not sure. When, we are not sure.”

Islamic State, Afghanistan

While much of the U.S. focus has shifted to great power competition with China and Russia, terrorist groups such as the Islamic State group (IS) and al-Qaida remain a concern.

But Haines suggested that one of IS’s key affiliates has suffered a significant setback.

In March, the commander of U.S. Central Command, General Michael Kurilla, told lawmakers that the IS affiliate in Afghanistan, known as IS-Khorasan or ISIS-K, could launch attacks against U.S. interests or Western allies in under six months.

Haines, however, told lawmakers there is reason to think that external attack capability has been degraded.

“There have been some developments we can talk about in closed session since that statement was made that I think could affect the timeline,” she said.

FISA

Haines also urged lawmakers, again, to renew authorities granted under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which expire this year.

FISA Section 702 allows U.S. intelligence agencies to gather electronic data of non-Americans without first obtaining warrants. But its use has been controversial because of repeated incidents in which officials have collected information on U.S. citizens.

FISA Section 702 “is utterly fundamental” to U.S. national security, Haines said. “Fifty-nine percent of every PDB, our president’s daily brief articles, are sourced to 702 information.”
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The U.S. State Department said peace talks between diplomats from Armenia and Azerbaijan held outside Washington since Sunday are expected to conclude Thursday. 

In a statement, the department said Secretary of State Antony Blinken will take part in a closing session of the bilateral talks between Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan and Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov shortly before 2 p.m. Washington time. 

The two sides have been meeting at a state department diplomatic facility in Arlington, Virginia. 

The talks were convened as tensions between the neighboring, former Soviet republics increased in recent months over Azerbaijan’s blockade of the Lachin Corridor, which is the only land route giving Armenia direct access to the contested region of Nagorno-Karabakh. 

In a telephone briefing, a senior State Department official, speaking on background, told reporters Monday the United States expects the talks to conclude with “commercial movement of goods” to start soon in the blocked Lachin Corridor. 

The official said, “About Lachin, we have been very clear throughout the last few months about the importance of ensuring the free movement of commercial and humanitarian traffic and people through the Lachin Corridor between Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh. We continue to engage in those discussions.” 

Early Monday, Blinken held separate meetings with the Armenian foreign minister and his Azerbaijani counterpart. 

Monday’s meetings occurred after Blinken’s call with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev on Sunday, when the top U.S. diplomat reiterated Washington’s call to reopen the land route “to commercial and private vehicles as soon as possible.” 

The State Department had voiced “deep concern” that Azerbaijan’s establishment of a checkpoint on the Lachin Corridor undermines efforts for peace talks. 

A representative from Armenia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Mirzoyan’s working visit to the United States is to discuss “the agreement on normalization of relations” with Azerbaijan. 

The two countries have had a decades-long conflict involving the Nagorno-Karabakh region, which is inside Azerbaijan but populated mainly by ethnic Armenians. 

The Lachin Corridor allows supplies from Armenia to reach the 120,000 ethnic Armenians in the mountainous enclave and has been policed by Russian peacekeepers since December 2020. 
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A federal jury in Washington has convicted the former leader of the far-right Proud Boys and three associates of seditious conspiracy for their role in the violent siege of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.  

Former Proud Boys chairman Enrique Tarrio and regional leaders Joe Biggs, Ethan Nordean and Zach Rehl also were found guilty Thursday of conspiring to obstruct Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s victory over Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election.  

But the jury failed to reach a verdict on both conspiracy charges against a fifth defendant in the case, Dominic Pezzola.   

Pezzola is a former Marine and boxer who joined the Proud Boys after the 2020 election but held no leadership position.  

The five defendants faced a total of nine charges related to the attack on the Capitol, including obstructing an official proceeding and conspiracy to prevent Congress and federal officers from discharging their duties. They were found guilty of most.    

Pezzola was also convicted of an additional charge of robbery for stealing a police officer’s riot shield to smash a Capitol window.   

The verdict marked a major victory for the U.S. Justice Department as it probes the deadly rampage that left five people dead, wounded more than 100 police officers and sparked one of the largest criminal investigations in U.S. history.   

Prosecutors faced a daunting challenge in the case: to build and prove a seditious conspiracy charge that is notoriously difficult to prosecute.  

Seditious conspiracy is a rare charge that dates to the early days of the American Civil War. The law defines seditious conspiracy as plotting to use force to overthrow the U.S. government, oppose its authority or “prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States.”

“This is a significant win for DOJ and lends further credence to Attorney General [Merrick] Garland’s commitment to following the facts of the case wherever they lead and to proceed in a deliberate fashion,” Jordan Strauss, a former Justice Department official who now works at the risk consultancy firm Kroll, told VOA.  

The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment.  

The verdict followed five days of jury deliberations and a complex trial that lasted four months and featured dozens of witnesses and numerous legal fights. 

The convictions marked the third time members of an extremist group involved in the attack of January 6 had been convicted of seditious conspiracy.   

In two earlier cases, juries convicted Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes and a top lieutenant of seditious conspiracy in November and found four other members of the anti-government militia guilty of the charge in January. They have yet to be sentenced. 

In all, 14 members of the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys have now been either convicted of or pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy, a charge that carries a sentence of up to 20 years in prison.  

The Proud Boys, a self-described group of Western chauvinists known for their anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant rhetoric, emerged during the 2016 presidential campaign and became among Trump’s most fervent supporters during the 2020 race. 

The group caught national attention when Trump declared during a September 2020 presidential debate: “Proud Boys, stand back and stand by!” 

After Trump lost the election and refused to admit defeat, he launched a relentless campaign of lawsuits to overturn the outcome.  

But as his legal efforts floundered, he rallied his supporters to come to Washington on January 6, the day Congress would confirm Biden’s win.  

In an infamous tweet repeatedly referenced during the trial, Trump wrote on December 19, 2020: “Be there, will be wild.”  

The Proud Boys took that as a call to arms, prosecutors alleged.   

To prepare for January 6, Tarrio assembled a group of comrades that he dubbed the “Ministry of Self Defense.” 

Under the guise of organizing protests, the group acted as “a violent gang that came together to use force against its enemies,” prosecutors said. 

Assistant U.S. Attorney Conor Mulroe said in his closing arguments that the Proud Boys saw themselves as a “fighting force” for Trump and were “ready to commit violence on his behalf” to overturn the election results.   

Defense lawyers countered that there was no evidence of a coordinated plan to attack the Capitol. They said the Proud Boys were so disorganized that they couldn’t plan a trip to McDonald’s. 

Prosecutors, the defense argued, failed to show any evidence of a conspiracy to use force against the government.   

The defense also tried to shift responsibility for the events of January 6 to Trump.  

Nayib Hassan, Tarrio’s lawyer, told the jury that his client was not in Washington on January 6 and that prosecutors were using him as “a scapegoat for Donald J. Trump and those in power.”  

In the end, however, the defense team “failed to generate reasonable doubt in the minds of the jurors,” Strauss of Kroll said.  

The unprecedented assault on the Capitol set off one of the largest and most complex criminal investigations in the Justice Department’s history. 

As part of the probe, the FBI has arrested more than 1,000 people and says it is seeking information about more than 260 others suspected of committing violence on the Capitol grounds.  

More than 500 defendants, including members of the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, have pleaded guilty to various federal charges, while dozens have been convicted at trial.  
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The U.S. Small Business Administration has named Abdirahman Kahin, a Somali American restaurant chain owner in Minneapolis, Minnesota, as the National Small Business Person of the Year for 2023. Mohamud Mascadde in Minneapolis and Abdulaziz Osman Washington have more in this report, narrated by Salem Solomon. Videographers: Abdulaziz Osman and Mohamud Mascadde
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Providing further proof that U.S. children suffered significant learning loss when schools were closed during the COVID-19 pandemic, the National Assessment Governing Board released a report Wednesday that showed test scores measuring achievement in U.S. history and civics fell significantly between 2018 and 2022.

The tests, part of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), commonly known as the “nation’s report card,” were given to hundreds of eighth-grade students across the country. Scores on the U.S. history assessment were the lowest recorded since 1994, while the scores on the civics test fell for the first time ever.

Only 13% of students tested in U.S. history were considered proficient, meaning that they had substantially mastered the material expected of them. That was 1 percentage point lower than in 2018. Another 46% tested at the NAEP “basic” level, meaning they had partial mastery of the material, down 4 percentage points. The remaining 40% of students tested did not meet the bar for basic knowledge, an increase of 6 percentage points.

In civics, 20% of students tested qualified as proficient, and 48% had basic knowledge of the material — both down 1 percentage point from 2018. Another 31% failed to demonstrate even basic knowledge, an increase by 4 percentage points over 2018.

In both cases, declines in proficiency were concentrated among lower-performing students, while achievement among the top 25% of students was little changed.

Further breakdowns of the data indicated that declines were notably larger among racial minorities and lower-income students, indicating that the impact of the pandemic on educational achievement was not evenly distributed across the population.

Echoes of past warnings

The results issued Wednesday, like those of other NAEP assessments released last year, demonstrated that a decline in educational achievement was exacerbated by lengthy school closures during the pandemic.

In a statement, National Assessment Governing Board Chair Beverly Perdue, a former governor of North Carolina, said the results should be a call to action.

“The wake-up calls keep coming,” she said. “Education leaders and policy makers must create opportunities for students to gain the knowledge and skills they need to catch up and thrive. The students who took these tests are in high school today and will soon enter college and the workforce without the knowledge and skills they need to fully participate in civic life and our democracy.”

U.S. lags in education

Even before the pandemic took hold, experts were sounding alarms about the state of education in the U.S. In 2019, the year before pandemic-related shutdowns began, results of the Program for International Student Assessment, commonly known as PISA, showed U.S. students lagging behind their peers in East Asia and Europe.

The results ranked U.S. students 13th in reading, 18th in science, and 37th in mathematics when compared to a global sample of their peers.

Consistently at the top of each category were China, where only four mainland provinces participated, and Singapore. The U.S. consistently trailed its northerly neighbor, Canada, in all three categories. It also lagged the English-speaking United Kingdom and Australia in all categories except reading.

‘New human crisis’

The U.S. was not the only country where learning suffered because of the coronavirus pandemic. In January, the World Bank issued a report describing pandemic-related learning loss as a “mass casualty event” that, at one time or another, forced 1.4 billion students around the world to miss significant time in the classroom.

Stephen Heyneman, professor emeritus of international education policy at Vanderbilt University and the editor in chief of the International Journal of Educational Development, told VOA that the pandemic-related education crisis is “the worst we’ve had in my lifetime.”

In an editorial published in the May edition of the journal, an editorial board made up of nine researchers from universities worldwide assessed evidence of the pandemic’s impact on education and concluded that the world “is on the verge of a new human crisis.”

The researchers confirmed that in the relatively wealthy industrialized countries, known as the Global North, the poor felt pandemic-related educational impacts most deeply, while financially well-off families often could mitigate much of the impact on students.

The news was worse for the relatively poorer countries, often referred to as the Global South.

“In the Global South, the learning challenges have proved multi-dimensional and much harder to tackle, given the triple burden of schooling deprivation, learning inequality and learning poverty,” they found.

The disparities, first noted early in the pandemic, have continued, the researchers found. “The consensus view is that, despite many promising innovations, learning shortfalls have persisted or even increased, three years into the pandemic.”

Frustration

Asked how the U.S. had performed during the pandemic compared with other developed nations, Heyneman said that “comparison evidence, so far, is too little for me to make any generalizations.”

However, he said, he and his colleagues have noticed — and been frustrated by — a common practice that has been adopted by most public school systems around the world as they have reopened.

Rather than assessing where students had pandemic-related deficits and working to correct them before continuing on with standard curriculums, schools have consistently attempted to simply restart, placing students in the classes and grade levels that correspond to their ages rather than to their actual educational attainment.

“They have not tested the learning loss in any systematic way, and when they have tested, they often haven’t released the scores,” he said. “And whether or not they have tested, they have not treated the results as an emergency. That makes me furious.”
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The United States will allow Chinese airlines to increase U.S. passenger services to 12 weekly round trips, the Transportation Department (USDOT) said on Wednesday, equal to the number of flights Beijing has permitted for American carriers.

It is a boost from the eight weekly round-trip flights currently allowed by Chinese carriers and matches what Beijing has permitted for U.S. carriers, but a small fraction of the more than 150 round-trip flights allowed by each side before restrictions were imposed in early 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

USDOT’s order said its goal was “a gradual, broader reopening of the U.S.-China air services market.” China in March reopened its borders to foreign tourists for the first time in the three years after abandoning COVID-related border controls for its own citizens in January.

U.S. carriers American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, and United Airlines operate scheduled passenger services between the countries, as do Chinese operators Xiamen Airlines, Air China, China Southern Airlines and China Eastern Airlines.

USDOT noted American began operating two additional round-trip weekly flights to Shanghai from Texas in March after Chinese pandemic restrictions were dropped.

USDOT said in its order that Chinese restrictions on air travel “had, and continue to have, a devastating effect on the U.S.-China air transport market.”

U.S. airlines and other foreign carriers are barred from flying over Russia in retaliation for the United States banning Russia from flights over the U.S. in March 2022 after its invasion of Ukraine.

In February, two key senators issued a letter urging the Biden administration to halt Chinese airlines and other non-American carriers from flying over Russia on U.S. routes, which gives them an advantage in fuel burn and flying time.

Airlines for America, which represents major U.S. carriers, in February praised the senators’ letter, noting it underscored long-standing industry concerns regarding Russian overflights that had disadvantaged American passenger and cargo carriers. 
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A top House Republican subpoenaed FBI Director Chris Wray on Wednesday for what he claimed are bureau records related to President Joe Biden and his family, basing the demand on newly surfaced allegations he said an unnamed whistleblower made to Congress.

The White House said it was the latest example in the years-long series of “unfounded, unproven” political attacks against Biden by Republicans “floating anonymous innuendo.”

Kentucky Rep. James Comer, chairman of the House Oversight Committee and Accountability, is seeking a specific FBI form from June 2020 that is a report of conversations or interactions with a confidential source. Comer, in a letter to Wray with Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, said that “it has come to our attention” that the bureau has such a document that “describes an alleged criminal scheme” involving Biden and a foreign national “relating to the exchange of money for policy decisions” when Biden was vice president and includes “a precise description” about it.

The subpoena seeks all so-called FD-1023 forms and accompanying attachments and documents.

The lawmakers used the word “alleged” three times in the opening paragraph of the letter and offered no evidence of the veracity of the accusations or any details about what they contend are “highly credible unclassified whistleblower disclosures.”

Comer and Grassley said those “disclosures” demand further investigation, and they want to know whether the FBI investigated and, if so, what agents found.

To the White House, the subpoena is further evidence of how congressional Republicans long “have been lobbing unfounded, unproven, politically motivated attacks” against the Bidens “without offering evidence for their claims or evidence of decisions influenced by anything other than U.S. interests.”

A White House spokesperson, Ian Sams, said Biden “has offered an unprecedented level of transparency” about his personal finances with the public release of a total of 25 years of tax returns.

The FBI and Justice Department confirmed receiving the subpoena but declined to comment further. The president’s personal lawyers had no comment.

Republicans claim they have amassed evidence in recent years that raise questions about whether Biden and his family have used their public positions for private gain.

House Republicans have used the power of their new majority to aggressively investigate Joe Biden and Hunter Biden’s business dealings, including examining foreign payments and other aspects of the family’s finances. Comer has obtained thousands of pages of the Biden family’s financial records through subpoenas to the Treasury Department and various financial institutions since January.

Comer has not revealed much about the findings of his investigation so far. Most recently, Comer claimed one deal involving the Biden family resulted in a profit of over $1 million in more than 15 incremental payments from a Chinese company through a third party.

Both Comer and Grassley have accused both the FBI and Justice Department of stonewalling their investigations and politicizing the agency’s years-long investigation into Hunter Biden’s taxes.

Last month, an IRS special agent sought whistleblower protections from Congress to disclose a “failure to mitigate clear conflicts of interest in the ultimate disposition” of a criminal investigation related to the younger Biden’s taxes and whether he made a false statement in connection with a gun purchase.
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Two 10-year-olds are among 300 children who worked at McDonald’s restaurants illegally, a Labor Department investigation of franchisees in Kentucky found.

Agency investigators found the 10-year-olds received little or no pay at a McDonald’s in Louisville, the Labor Department said. The franchisee for the Louisville store was among three McDonald’s franchisees fined $212,000 in total by the department.

Louisville’s Bauer Food LLC, which operates 10 McDonald’s locations, employed 24 minors under the age of 16 to work more hours than legally permitted, the agency said. Among those were two 10-year-old children. The agency said the children sometimes worked as late as 2 a.m., but were not paid.

“Below the minimum age for employment, they prepared and distributed food orders, cleaned the store, worked at the drive-thru window and operated a register,” the Labor Department said Tuesday, adding that one child also was allowed to operate a deep fryer, which is prohibited task for workers under 16.

Franchise owner-operator Sean Bauer said the two 10-year-olds cited in the Labor Department’s statement were visiting their parent, a night manager, and weren’t employees.

“Any ‘work’ was done at the direction of — and in the presence of — the parent without authorization by franchisee organization management or leadership,” Bauer said Wednesday in a prepared statement, adding that they’ve since reiterated the child visitation policy to employees.

Federal child labor regulations put strict limits on the types of jobs children can perform and the hours they can work.

The Kentucky investigations are part of an ongoing effort by the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division to stop child labor abuses in the Southeast.

“Too often, employers fail to follow the child labor laws that protect young workers,” said division Director Karen Garnett-Civils. “Under no circumstances should there ever be a 10-year-old child working in a fast-food kitchen around hot grills, ovens and deep fryers.”

In addition, Walton-based Archways Richwood LLC and Louisville-based Bell Restaurant Group I LLC allowed minors ages 14 and 15 to work beyond allowable hours, the department said. Archway Richwood didn’t immediately return a call seeking comment and Brdancat Management Inc., which Bell Restaurant Group is part of, declined comment.

“These reports are unacceptable, deeply troubling and run afoul of the high expectations we have for the entire McDonald’s brand,” McDonald’s USA spokeswoman Tiffanie Boyd said. “We are committed to ensuring our franchisees have the resources they need to foster safe workplaces for all employees and maintain compliance with all labor laws.”
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U.S. Senate Democrats launched a renewed effort to stave off competition from China on Wednesday, planning legislation to boost the country’s ability to face up to the Asian powerhouse on issues from technology to security and threats to Taiwan.

After passing a sweeping bill last year to boost competition with Beijing in semiconductors and other technology, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer and Democratic committee leaders said they would write legislation they hoped to introduce in the next several months to limit the flow of technology to China, deter China from initiating a conflict with Taiwan and tighten rules to block U.S. capital from going to Chinese companies.

Schumer said the bill, dubbed China Competition 2.0, would broaden last year’s “Chips and Science” act.

“Today, we are announcing a new initiative, one that will build on this momentum and develop new and significant bipartisan legislation,” Schumer said at a press conference.

He said he hoped the bill would be bipartisan and said Republicans in the Senate had been supportive of some of the ideas proposed for the package. The measure will need Republican support to become law, as Republicans control the House of Representatives.

The desire for a hard line on China is one of the few bipartisan sentiments in the perennially divided U.S. Congress, and last year’s legislation passed with overwhelming support from both Democrats and Republicans.

However, John Thune, the Senate’s No. 2 Republican, said the new China initiative would have a hard time getting through Congress, given his party’s concerns about spending and the debt and the size of last year’s bill.

“It would be challenging, and partly because of spending and debt — concerns about too much spending and the impact it’s had on inflation, the way the deficits exploded and ballooned,” Thune said.

The bill signed into law by President Joe Biden last year authorized hundreds of billions of dollars to boost scientific research and subsidize domestic semiconductor manufacturers.

This year’s planned legislation would also seek funding for additional domestic investments in key technology areas and provide a better U.S. alternative to China’s Belt and Road global infrastructure initiative, an effort to counter Beijing’s international influence.

“We know that China uses its economic power like a bully,” Democratic Senator Chris Coons told the news conference.

Schumer said lawmakers would look at TikTok and other foreign-based apps while writing the China bill. TikTok, which is owned by Chinese tech company ByteDance, has been a subject of intense scrutiny in Washington and other Western capitals.

TikTok has been banned from government-issued phones in countries such as Canada and Australia over concerns about whether China can access user data or influence what people see. Some U.S. lawmakers have called for a nationwide ban.
…

The chief executive officer of the United States Agency for Global Media said Wednesday the agency she leads is playing a critical role globally in giving audiences access to credible and unbiased news countering media run by authoritarian regimes.

“We are at an inflection point,” Amanda Bennett said in prepared testimony for the Senate foreign relations subcommittee overseeing the State Department and other international activities.

“Authoritarian regimes are using malign influence, disinformation, propaganda and information manipulation to close the flow of information and undermine those seeking fact-based information about the world around them. The governments of the [People’s Republic of China], Iran and Russia often work together to amplify their malign influence,” she continued.

USAGM estimates that 394 million people access its programming each week. The federally funded agency overseen by the U.S. Congress comprises two federal entities — Voice of America and the Office of Cuba Broadcasting — and four nonprofits: Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, the Middle East Broadcasting Networks and the Open Technology Fund (OTF).

Bennett said USAGM was built for this moment with more than 4,000 media partners around the world countering the influence of state-run media.

According to USAGM, RFE and VOA programming was viewed 8 billion times in Russian and Ukrainian in the year since the Russian invasion, and 1 in 4 Iranian adults used OTF-supported circumvention tools to access information.

“This is the most important time for this agency since the Cold War, and perhaps since World War II,” said Bennett. “USAGM must be positioned to be consistently competitive in today’s dangerous world of information manipulation and heavy investment by authoritarian regimes and other bad actors.” 

Agency asks for $944 million

USAGM has requested $944 million for fiscal 2024, a $59 million increase over the current year. Some lawmakers have questioned whether the agency is making good use of taxpayer funding.

“We have a very open system,” Democratic Senator Ben Cardin said, comparing USAGM networks to state-funded media. “We guard very carefully the journalistic independence of your agency, and we will do that. But we as policymakers want to make sure that we’re placing our resources and priorities in those parts of the world where we are the most vulnerable.”

USAGM has undergone Senate-directed structural changes in recent years to address different priorities across the entities, technological hurdles, government bureaucracy and low funding in comparison to state-funded media in other countries.

Earlier this year, House Foreign Affairs chairman Michael McCaul expressed concern about hiring practices and possible censorship at Voice of America, writing in a letter to Bennett, “As a publicly funded media organization, it is imperative that USAGM and VOA comply with these strict requirements for both integrity and nonpartisanship, keeping USAGM leadership out of the editorial decision-making process.”

USAGM valued abroad

Public diplomacy experts told lawmakers that USAGM should not try to adopt every platform and every target given resourcing challenges.

“Washington should undertake concerted campaigns grounded in truthfulness to expose the failures and false promises of dictatorship,” said Jessica Brandt, policy director for the Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technology Initiative at the Brookings Institution. “It should also apply that information worldwide, not just because it’s consistent with democratic principles, but because it puts Russia and China in a defensive position.”

Brandt noted that overseas audiences value USAGM coverage for its truthfulness.

“In its coverage of the United States, VOA should not hesitate to present the American experience in its full complexity,” she testified. “It is a sign of strength, not weakness, for a government-funded entity to reckon honestly with its challenges. I think doing so may resonate with those who are struggling to nurture their own democracies.”
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A woman identified as the wife of a Texas man suspected of killing five of his neighbors was arrested Wednesday for allegedly helping the man elude capture for four days, authorities said, and a third person is expected to face similar charges.

Divimara Lamar Nava, 53, identified as the wife of suspect Francisco Oropeza, was in custody in connection with the Friday night shooting, according to Montgomery County Sheriff Rand Henderson.

Although Henderson identified Nava as Oropeza’s wife, jail records list her as not being legally married. The two share a home address, according to the records.

Nava had previously denied knowledge of Oropeza’s whereabouts, Henderson said, but authorities believe she hid him in the home near Conroe where he was arrested Tuesday.

Nava was arrested early Wednesday and was being held in the Montgomery County jail on a felony charge of hindering the apprehension or prosecution of a known felon, according to online jail records. The records do not list a bond for her and indicate she was arrested by state police at a home in Conroe.

Also, San Jacinto County District Attorney Todd Dillon said a friend of Oropeza’s, Domingo Castilla, was also arrested Tuesday in the neighborhood where the shooting took place. Castilla was taken in for marijuana possession, but authorities expect to also charge him with other crimes, including hindering Oropeza’s apprehension, Dillon said.

Found in a closet

A four-day manhunt for Oropeza ended Tuesday when authorities, acting on a tip, said they found the suspect hiding underneath a pile of laundry in the closet of a house.

At a news conference Wednesday morning in Coldspring, Tim Kean, chief deputy with the San Jacinto County Sheriff’s Office, said authorities spotted Oropeza, 38, on Monday afternoon in Montgomery County, prompting the lockdown of several schools.

“We did confirm that was him on foot, running but we lost track of him. That was not a false alarm. That was him,” Kean said outside the county jail.

The Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office had previously said reports of a possible sighting of Oropeza in the area was a false alarm.

Kean declined to comment on the tip that led authorities to the home where Oropeza was arrested as well as when he arrived or how he got there. Kean said the home had not been previously checked by authorities.

Kean said Oropeza only mildly resisted arrest and was not injured.

Kean said there have been several other arrests “but I can’t go into the details on that.”

Kean said the home where Oropeza was arrested has a personal connection to the suspect. He declined to provide more details but said there was no indication Oropeza was about to leave.

“I believe he thought he was in a safe spot,” Kean said.

Oropeza was expected to appear before a judge inside the San Jacinto County Jail on Wednesday and the judge would formally set his bond at $5 million, Kean said.

The home is near the community of Conroe, north of Houston and about 32 kilometers (20 miles) from his home in the rural town of Cleveland, where authorities say he shot his neighbors with an AR-style rifle shortly before midnight Friday.

Oropeza had been shooting rounds on his property and attacked his neighbors after they asked him to go farther away because the gunfire was keeping a baby awake, according to police.

The arrest ends what had become a widening dragnet that had grown to more than 250 people from multiple jurisdictions and had seen $80,000 in reward money offered. As recently as Tuesday morning, the FBI said that Oropeza “could be anywhere,” underlining how investigators for days struggled to get a sense of his whereabouts and candidly acknowledged they had no leads.

The tip that finally ended the chase came at 5:15 p.m., and a little more than an hour later, Oropeza was in custody, said FBI Assistant Special Agent in Charge Jimmy Paul. The alleged shooter is a Mexican national who has been deported four times between 2009 and 2016, according to U.S. immigration officials.

Connor Hagan, an FBI spokesman, said they would not disclose the identity of the person who called in the tip — one of more than 200 tips he says investigators received.

The hunt for the suspect

Authorities would not say where Oropeza had been since fleeing the scene in Cleveland, which authorities previously said was likely on foot.

Hagan said the three agencies that went in to arrest Oropeza were the U.S. Marshals, Texas Department of Public Safety, and U.S. Border Patrol’s BORTAC team.

Drones and scent-tracking dogs had been used during the widening manhunt, which included combing a heavily wooded forest a few miles from the scene. Republican Governor Greg Abbott offered a $50,000 reward as the search dragged late into the weekend, while others offered an additional $30,000 in reward money.

Capers said that prior to Friday’s shooting, deputies had been called to the suspect’s house at least one other time regarding shooting rounds in his yard.

All of the victims were from Honduras. Wilson Garcia, who survived the shooting, said friends and family in the home tried to hide and shield themselves and children after Oropeza walked up to the home and began firing, killing his wife first at the front door.

The victims were identified as Diana Velazquez Alvarado, 21; Julisa Molina Rivera, 31; Jose Jonathan Casarez, 18; Sonia Argentina Guzman, 25; and Daniel Enrique Laso, 9.

A government official in Honduras said the remains of four of the victims would be repatriated. Velasquez Alvarado will be buried in the United States at the request of her sister and her husband, said Wilson Paz, general director of Honduras’ migrant protection service.
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The fountain pen as a practical writing instrument has been declared obsolete numerous times. It was supposedly doomed by the innovations of the drip-free ballpoint pen and the typewriter, then the computer keyboard and now the ability to automatically render voices into text on cellphones.

But the 19th-century invention has defied total extinction and is even evolving.

In a warehouse in a gritty Philadelphia neighborhood, mechanical engineer Ian Schon is doing something no one else in America does: manufacturing writing implements with nibs — the business end of the fountain pen — handcrafted from titanium.

“The way we’re doing it is really what makes us separate from the other brands and other companies that have done this in the past, which is utilizing equipment in this workshop that’s traditionally designed for aerospace or medical manufacturing and repurposing it to create an innovative, unique experience that is just different,” Schon said.

Not only different in the 21st century, it is counterintuitive — with a risky investment in expensive equipment to make a pricey product for a niche market.

“A fountain pen is impractical. It can be messy. It’s not as good as a ballpoint pen. It’s expensive. So, it’s really in line with the culture of the pen user that it’s irrational and strange,” Schon said.

“The next wave of fountain pen collectors and users will be rebelling against technology,” he predicted. “They’ll hate how much time their parents spent on Facebook when they should have been out hiking in the woods. They’ll want to throw their cellphones into the sea.”

Schon, who also successfully tried his hand at watchmaking, is no Luddite. His company is a product of the digital age. The one-man startup was initially funded through Kickstarter in 2011, and the founder produces his own YouTube videos to explain his production process and promote the pens, which range in price between $125 and $400. He also manufactures a few models of ballpoint and rollerball pens for those who decline to dive into the retro era of refillable ink.

The metal nib makes the fountain pen distinct from all other writing instruments. It was an innovation for its time, allowing continuous writing without having to repeatedly dip the pen into ink. Early prototypes were around more than a thousand years ago; Leonardo da Vinci may have used a fountain pen he developed.

Investment analyst Tony Blair shows off his collection at Philadelphia’s 130-year-old Pen & Pencil Club, formed by the city’s journalists, who wielded fountain pens to conduct their interviews.

For Blair, the antiquated writing instrument endures as an antidote to the digital age.

“Any time you introduce input/output like you do with a computer, now there’s also these other distractions. You’ll get a pop-up, and I’ll lose my thread. Or if I type up something, am I going to remember it the same way? I think writing by hand helps you remember it,” said Blair, pulling out a fountain pen from a zip-up traveling case holding nearly two dozen of his favorite models.

Blair said his first fountain pen was a secondhand Pilot Metropolitan with a medium nib he purchased for $10.

Fountain pens are meant to last a long time, another reason some prefer them over disposable ballpoints. Fountain pens can be customized with different colors of ink and types of nibs. But there are inconveniences.

“You have to refill it with ink. You are much more likely to spill ink on yourself or something else than you are with a standard disposable ballpoint,” Blair warned.

By the late 19th century, the Waterman and Parker brands were mass marketed in America. Fountain pens became more commonplace than dip pens around the time of the World War I, although early 20th-century schoolchildren were still learning how to write with the older implements. That explains why you may still come across an old school desk with a hole in it — for the inkwell.

By the 1960s, the ballpoint pen had become fashionable. Subsequent generations who did not get instruction in cursive script are likely to find the fountain pen as mysterious as the rotary dial phone or the film camera.

Liz Sieber is accustomed to encountering such curious novices. She is the owner of Philadelphia’s Omoi Zakka, a Japanese-themed stationery shop selling fountain pens, writing paper and ink.

“Some people really understand what the different nibs are about and the difference between a machine-aligned or a hand-aligned nib,” said Sieber, standing in front of a tray containing fountains pens and ink bottles for sale. “And then we also meet a lot of people who have never tried one before and are looking for something that’s not too expensive, easy to use, plays nice with a lot of different types of paper.”

Most modern nibs are made of steel, gold or iridium, and the fountain pen bodies are made of ebonite, stainless steel or sterling silver. A true fountain pen also has a self-contained reservoir for ink, loaded manually or with a cartridge insert.

Sieber is a fan of a Sailor brand pen from Japan that has a 14-karat gold nib.

“The art of that nib is that it’s gold, which is a very soft metal. So, as I hold it, it will become shaped uniquely to the way that I hold the pen,” she said.

More stores in Japan than in the United States carry Schon’s made-in-Philadelphia pens, thus creating a tiny entry on the export side of America’s trade deficit ledger.  

“I love that challenge. I love being the underdog,” said Schon.

That challenge is also writing a new page in the story of American entrepreneurship.
…

The Molotov Kitschen plus Cocktails, one of the first Ukrainian restaurants in Denver, Colorado, opened its doors in January. The venue’s owner is the grandson of Ukrainian immigrants, and every dish is a tribute to his family. Svitlana Prystynska has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. Camera: Volodumur Petryniv.
…

The United States and Mexico have reached agreement on a new plan to control the flow of illegal border crossings while also allowing migrants to enter the U.S. on humanitarian grounds. 

The plan was announced Tuesday after a meeting between Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and U.S. Homeland Security adviser Liz Sherwood-Randall in Mexico City. 

Under the plan, the United States will accept migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela as part of a humanitarian parole program, while Mexico has agreed to accept migrants from those four nations who entered the United States illegally.  

The U.S. will also accept about 100,000 people from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras under a family reunification program. 

The agreement comes ahead of the end of COVID-19 restrictions imposed by the administration of former President Donald Trump known as Title 42. The restrictions allowed U.S. officials to quickly expel tens of thousands of migrants for illegally entering the country.   

The Title 42 policy will officially end on May 11.  

In a related move, the administration of President Joe Biden has agreed to send an additional 1,500 active-duty military personnel to the southern U.S. border as local and state officials brace for a surge of migrants from Central and South America. 

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters. 
…

Hollywood writers picketing to preserve pay and job security outside major studios and streamers braced for a long fight at the outbreak of a strike that immediately forced late-night shows into hiatus, put other productions on pause and had the entire industry slowing its roll.  

The first Hollywood strike in 15 years commenced Tuesday as the 11,500 members of the Writers Guild of America stopped working when their contract expired.  

The union is seeking higher minimum pay, more writers per show and less exclusivity on single projects, among other demands — all conditions it says have been diminished in the content boom of the streaming era.  

“Everything’s changed, but the money has changed in the wrong direction,” said Kelly Galuska, 39, a writer for “The Bear” on FX and “Big Mouth” on Netflix, who picketed at Fox Studios in Los Angeles with her 3-week-old daughter. “It’s a turning point in the industry right now. And if we don’t get back to even, we never will.” 

The last Hollywood strike, from the same union in 2007 and 2008, took three months to resolve. With no talks or even plans to talk pending between the WGA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which represents studios and productions companies, there is no telling how long writers will have to go without pay, or how many major productions will be delayed, shortened or scrapped.  

“We’ll stay out as long as it takes,” Josh Gad, a writer for shows including “Central Park” and an actor in films including “Frozen,” said from the Fox picket line.  

The AMPTP said in a statement that it presented an offer with “generous increases in compensation for writers as well as improvements in streaming residuals” and was prepared to improve its offer “but was unwilling to do so because of the magnitude of other proposals still on the table that the guild continues to insist upon.” 

The writers were well aware that a stoppage was likely. Yet the breakoff of contractual talks hours before a deadline that negotiations in previous years have sailed past for hours or even days, and the sudden reality of a strike, left some surprised, some worried, some determined.  

“When I saw the refusals to counter and the refusing to even negotiate by the AMPTP, I was like on fire to get out here and stand up for what we deserve,” Jonterri Gadson, a writer whose credits include “A Black Lady Sketch Show,” said on a picket line at Amazon Studios as she held a sign that read, “I hate it here.”  

All of the top late-night shows, which are staffed by writers that pen monologues and jokes for their hosts, immediately went dark. NBC’s “The Tonight Show,” Comedy Central’s “Daily Show,” ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live,” CBS’ “The Late Show” and NBC’s “Late Night” all made plans for reruns through the week. 

NBC’s “Saturday Night Live,” which had been scheduled to air a new episode Saturday, will also go dark and air a rerun, and the two remaining episodes in the season are in jeopardy.  

The strike’s impact on scripted series and films will likely take longer to notice — though some shows, including Showtime’s “Yellowjackets,” have already paused production on forthcoming seasons.  

If a strike persisted through the summer, fall TV schedules could be upended. In the meantime, those with finished scripts are permitted to continue shooting.  

Union members also picketed in New York, where less known writers were joined by more prominent peers like playwright and screenwriter Tony Kushner (“The Fabelmans”) and “Dopesick” creator Danny Strong. 

Some actors including Rob Lowe joined the picket lines in support in Los Angeles. Many striking writers, like Gad, are hybrids who combine writing with other roles.  

Speaking from his acting side, Gad said of his fellow writers, “We are nothing without their words. We have nothing without them. And so it’s imperative that we resolve this in a way that benefits the brilliance that comes out of each of these people.” 

The other side of his hyphenated role could be in the same space soon, with many of the same issues at the center of negotiations for both the actors union SAG-AFTRA and the Directors Guild of America. Contracts for both expire in June.  

Streaming has exploded the number of series and films that are annually made, meaning more jobs for writers. But writers say they’ve been made to make less under shifting and insecure conditions that the WGA called “a gig economy inside a union workforce.” 

The union is seeking more compensation for writers up front, because many of the payments writers have historically profited from on the back end — like syndication and international licensing — have been largely phased out by the onset of streaming. 

Galuska said she is among the writers who have never seen those kind of once common benefits.  

“I’ve had the opportunity to write on great shows that are very, very popular and not really seen the compensation for that, unfortunately,” she said.  

The AMPTP said sticking points to a deal revolved around so-called mini-rooms — the guild is seeking a minimum number of scribes per writer room — and the duration of employment contracts.  

Writers are also seeking more regulation around the use of artificial intelligence, which the WGA’s writers say could give producers a shortcut to finishing their work.  

“The fact that the companies have refused to deal with us on that fact means that I’m even more scared about it today than I was a week ago. They obviously have a plan. The things they say no to, are the things they’re planning to do tomorrow.”  
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