China revealed on Tuesday new details of sanctions it previously announced against two U.S. weapons manufacturers, including a ban on Chinese companies doing business with them.

China imposed trade and investment sanctions in February on Lockheed Martin and Raytheon Missiles & Defense, a division of Raytheon Technologies Corp., for supplying weapons to Taiwan, the self-governed island claimed by China.

China’s Ministry of Commerce said in a statement late Tuesday that the sanctions include a ban on exports and imports by the two companies from and to China “to prevent Chinese products from being used in their military business.”

It added that Chinese companies should “strengthen their due diligence and compliance system construction to verify transaction information” and should not knowingly conduct business with the two companies while importing, exporting or transporting products.

It wasn’t clear what immediate impact the penalties might have, but the restrictions on imports and exports could hurt the two companies. The United States bars most sales of weapons-related technology to China, but some military contractors also have civilian businesses in aerospace and other markets.

Last September, Raytheon Missiles and Defense was awarded a $412 million contract to upgrade Taiwanese military radar as part of a $1.1 billion package of U.S. arms sales to the island.

Taiwan buys most of its weapons from the U.S., which is its biggest unofficial ally. In recent years, China has frequently sent fighter jets and warships toward the island, surrounding it at different times in a campaign of military pressure and intimidation.

The sanctions also prohibit the senior executives of both companies from traveling to China or working there. They listed Lockheed Martin CEO James Donald Taiclet, COO Frank Andrew St. John and CFO Jesus Malave, and from Raytheon Missiles & Defense, President Wesley D. Kremer and Vice Presidents Agnes Soeder and Chander Nijhon.
…

Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt is calling for the resignation of four state officials after a local newspaper released a secret audio recording in which they appeared to discuss killing journalists and lynching Black people.

“I am both appalled and disheartened to hear of the horrid comments made by officials in McCurtain County,” Stitt said in a statement. “There is no place for such hateful rhetoric in the state of Oklahoma, especially by those that serve to represent the community through their respective office.”

Stitt has called for the immediate resignation of McCurtain County Sheriff Kevin Clardy, District 2 Commissioner Mark Jennings, Investigator Alicia Manning and Jail Administrator Larry Hendrix.

The recording was first detailed by the McCurtain Gazette-News after its publisher left a voice-activated recorder inside the room after a March 6 county commissioner’s meeting.

The journalist was cited in reports saying he did this because he believed the group was continuing to conduct county business after the meeting had ended, which is a violation of the state’s Open Meeting Act.

In the recording, the officials appear to discuss killing journalists and complain about no longer being able to lynch Black people.

“I know where two big deep holes are here if you ever need them,” Jennings said. “I’ve known two or three hit men. They’re very quiet guys,” Jennings later said in the conversation. “And would cut no [expletive] mercy.”

VOA could not independently verify the authenticity of the recording.

The McCurtain County sheriff department told VOA it had no comment.

In the recording, Jennings also appears to complain about not being able to hang Black people, saying, “They got more rights than we got.”

“It’s frightening any time we see those kinds of comments come to light. At the same time, this is just an occasion where they’ve come to light. I don’t think it’s the only time they occur,” said Ted Streuli, executive director of the investigative journalism nonprofit Oklahoma Watch. “It’s critical, in this situation and others, that the perpetrators be held to account.”

Oklahoma City’s KFOR-TV, Channel 4 reported that about 100 McCurtain County residents gathered outside the county commissioners’ office Monday morning to protest the officials’ comments.

At a March 6 commissioners’ meeting, Bruce Willingham, the publisher of the McCurtain Gazette-News, secretly recorded the officials allegedly discussing the killing and burying of reporters, including his son, Chris Willingham.

Earlier this year, Chris Willingham filed a defamation claim against the county and has written multiple stories examining the sheriff’s department’s conduct, according to an article published last weekend in the McCurtain Gazette-News.

Joey Senat, a journalism professor at Oklahoma State University, told the AP the recording would be legal under the state’s law if it were obtained in a place where the officials being recorded did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy.

“I talked on two different occasions to our attorneys to make sure I wasn’t doing anything illegal,” Bruce Willingham said.

The publisher told AP he believes the local officials were upset about critical stories the newspaper had recently published, including about the death of Bobby Barrick, an Oklahoma man who died at a hospital in March 2022 after McCurtain County deputies shot him with a stun gun.

The newspaper has filed a lawsuit against the sheriff’s office seeking body camera footage and other records related to Barrick’s death.

Mark Thomas, executive vice president of the Oklahoma Press Association, told The Journal Record, a daily Oklahoma newspaper, that these threats underscore how dangerous journalism can be.

“These are serious things that should not be ignored,” Thomas told The Journal Record. “Speaking truth to power has always been dangerous, and you have to always be prepared.”

This conversation comes amid an unusually deadly period for reporters in the United States.

Las Vegas investigative reporter Jeff German was stabbed to death outside his home last September. A former county official is on trial, accused of the killing of German in retaliation for critical coverage. And in February this year, Dylan Lyons, a journalist for Florida’s Spectrum News 13 station, was shot dead while on assignment.

The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker – a database of press freedom incidents in the United States – has also recorded more than 40 chilling statements made against journalists and news outlets since it started in 2017, including from state officials.o Streuli, the implications of this incident extend beyond McCurtain County.

“It’s incredibly disturbing to hear public officials fantasize about killing journalists, not to mention all the other abhorrent remarks they made,” the Freedom of the Press Foundation’s advocacy director, Seth Stern, told VOA. “Although their comments are extreme, they raise questions about how many other public officials across the United States hold similar contempt for the press and how those sentiments influence their actions and policies.”

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists has said it is “disgusted and disturbed” by the audio recordings.

“It is encouraging that authorities are looking into these recordings, and we hope their investigations are swift and transparent. Journalists should never face death threats over their work,” CPJ’s U.S. program coordinator, Katherine Jacobsen, said in a statement.

To Streuli, the implications of this incident extend beyond McCurtain County.

“The thing that bothers me the most about it is the press is the only industry protected by the Constitution,” Streuli said. “And when we see something like this, where we have employees of our government, who are sworn to uphold the Constitution, revealing such hatred toward the press for doing their jobs, I think what’s frightening about that goes well beyond the individual reporters involved.”

Some information in this report came from the AP.
…

Billionaire Elon Musk said on Monday he will launch an artificial intelligence (AI) platform that he calls “TruthGPT” to challenge the offerings from Microsoft and Google.

He criticized Microsoft-backed OpenAI, the firm behind chatbot sensation ChatGPT, of “training the AI to lie” and said OpenAI has now become a “closed source,” “for-profit” organization “closely allied with Microsoft.”

He also accused Larry Page, co-founder of Google, of not taking AI safety seriously.

“I’m going to start something which I call ‘TruthGPT’, or a maximum truth-seeking AI that tries to understand the nature of the universe,” Musk said in an interview with Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson aired on Monday.

He said TruthGPT “might be the best path to safety” that would be “unlikely to annihilate humans.”

“It’s simply starting late. But I will try to create a third option,” Musk said.

Musk, OpenAI, Microsoft and Page did not immediately respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.

Musk has been poaching AI researchers from Alphabet Inc’s Google to launch a startup to rival OpenAI, people familiar with the matter told Reuters.

Musk last month registered a firm named X.AI Corp, incorporated in Nevada, according to a state filing. The firm listed Musk as the sole director and Jared Birchall, the managing director of Musk’s family office, as a secretary.

‘Civilizational destruction’

The move came even after Musk and a group of artificial intelligence experts and industry executives called for a six-month pause in developing systems more powerful than OpenAI’s newly launched GPT-4, citing potential risks to society.

Musk also reiterated his warnings about AI during the interview with Carlson, saying “AI is more dangerous than, say, mismanaged aircraft design or production maintenance or bad car production” according to the excerpts.

“It has the potential of civilizational destruction,” he said.

He said, for example, that a super intelligent AI can write incredibly well and potentially manipulate public opinions.

He tweeted over the weekend that he had met with former U.S. President Barack Obama when he was president and told him that Washington needed to “encourage AI regulation.”

Musk co-founded OpenAI in 2015, but he stepped down from the company’s board in 2018. In 2019, he tweeted that he left OpenAI because he had to focus on Tesla and SpaceX.

He also tweeted at that time that other reasons for his departure from OpenAI were, “Tesla was competing for some of the same people as OpenAI & I didn’t agree with some of what OpenAI team wanted to do.”

Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, has also become CEO of Twitter, a social media platform he bought for $44 billion last year.

In the interview with Fox News, Musk said he recently valued Twitter at “less than half” of the acquisition price.

In January, Microsoft Corp announced a further multi-billion dollar investment in OpenAI, intensifying competition with rival Google and fueling the race to attract AI funding in Silicon Valley.
…

The share of Americans who volunteer their time to help charities build houses, serve food, do environmental cleanup, and much else has been on the decline nationwide but nowhere as sharply as in Florida, where only 16% of residents donate their free hours to local organizations, according to the latest available statistics.

That’s a drop from the nearly 23% of residents who volunteered in 2017.

Florida’s volunteer rate slumped in large part because of the pandemic, which made it especially risky for older Americans — who are among the most loyal and regular part of the volunteer population in Florida and elsewhere — to interact in public settings.

The loss of those volunteers is painful for many nonprofits, which are stretched to provide needed services and programs because they face a tight job market for paid workers and increased demands for help.

“What’s happening now is actually the staff is wearing multiple hats, as many nonprofit staff members do, to make up for the gap of volunteers,” says Sabeen Perwaiz Syed, CEO of the Florida Nonprofit Alliance, which represents charitable organizations across the state.

Meanwhile, Wyoming was the only state in the country to chalk up an increase in volunteering. Nearly 40% of residents volunteer, according to the latest figures available, compared with slightly less than 33% in 2017. The growth is in part because its open spaces made it easier for volunteers to keep working safely during the pandemic, and now nonprofits are seeking to capitalize on people’s growing interest in giving their time.

Those figures are part of an AmeriCorps analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data for 2017, 2019, and 2021, the latest year available.

The challenge of finding ways to attract and keep volunteers is not a new issue facing nonprofits, although it has been worsened by the pandemic.

Nathan Dietz, a researcher at the University of Maryland’s Do Good Institute, says charities that didn’t focus on retaining volunteers during the pandemic may find it difficult to get them back.

“There were some organizations who, during the pandemic, they just said, ‘We don’t know how we’re going to do volunteer management or volunteer engagement, and we don’t really have time to figure it out because we have bigger problems,'” Dietz said. “When people disengage from that kind of regular activity, it’s hard to re-engage them even if you’re trying to actively do that.”

Wyoming, known for wide-open spaces, including Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks, had fewer restrictions and closings than many states throughout Covid-19. That kept more volunteer opportunities open and minimized disruptions to volunteers’ routines.

The Jackson Hole Wildlife Foundation, a conservation nonprofit near Grand Teton National Park, relies on volunteers to collect local wildlife data and remove fencing that’s harmful to animals. The organization says more people wanted to volunteer during the pandemic than in past years.

Steve Morriss, a longtime volunteer with the foundation and other local nonprofits, says volunteer work in the outdoors was especially appealing for retirees like him during the pandemic because it allowed them to socially distance but still interact with others and do good.

The Heart of Wyoming Habitat for Humanity chapter, which relies on volunteers to build homes in Natrona County, saw an uptick in volunteering interest after re-opening its construction sites during the pandemic. Companies that previously provided financial support, in particular, began to give their employees time off to volunteer at Habitat.

The Wyoming Community Development Authority, a housing lender, is one financial supporter whose employees spent two days last year working on a Habitat construction site.

“Now it was no longer enough to make a gift, which we very much appreciate,” says Tess Mittelstadt, the nonprofit’s executive director. “But they wanted to see what that gift meant, and they wanted to see what that meant for people in our community.”

Jody Shields of the Wyoming Nonprofit Network says since the pandemic, she’s noticed increased interest from companies looking for volunteer opportunities because they allow employees both to bond with one another and to support local causes.

Mittelstadt says the organization is seeking to keep volunteerism high by providing volunteers with information about the specific families they’re helping by building houses. Habitat also invites volunteers to events celebrating completed homes.

Data suggests all the effort is paying off. Volunteers spent 57% more hours building new homes during the nonprofit’s last fiscal year compared with the previous year, according to Mittelstadt.

“Everybody knows somebody in our community, and everybody’s willing to lend that helping hand,” she says.

Even as the pandemic has receded, volunteerism is not rebounding in Florida, says Perwaiz Syed of the Florida Nonprofit Alliance.

“Nonprofits have had a lot of volunteers stop,” she says. “They have not returned. Many of them are seniors. They’re putting their health first and have not re-engaged in person.”

A study of 2,300 nonprofits by the alliance found that 40% of nonprofits reported they needed more volunteers and 25% of nonprofit employees said they were feeling overworked as they took on tasks previously done by volunteers.

The Manatee Literacy Council, which provides adult literacy tutoring, employs three part-time staff members and has 60 volunteer tutors, mostly retirees, available year-round. It lost 75% of its volunteers during the height of the pandemic. The program was able to move some of its work online, but it still can’t meet demand. The center currently has a waiting list of 100 people in need of tutoring.

To recruit more volunteers, the group sends representatives to community events to talk about its work, says Michelle Deveaux McLean, the council’s CEO.

She also says she is working hard to keep volunteers returning by organizing monthly meet-ups and creating a supportive environment. It continues to be a struggle.

“I’m lucky if I have five volunteers every month. We’re just perpetually upside down,” McLean says.

Other Florida nonprofits are turning more to online volunteering and enlisting companies to urge employees to volunteer.

For instance, Office Depot, based in South Florida, includes volunteerism as part of its professional development for employees. Since 2017, the company has sent workers to help charities do landscaping, paint murals, prepare meals for youths in Florida, and more.

Even as nonprofits work on a variety of ways to try to expand the number of volunteers, doing so may take time.

“I do think that Florida’s numbers will increase over time as we stabilize a bit from the pandemic,” Perwaiz Syed says. “I don’t think you’re going to see us in the top 10 because that’s just not possible to go that far that quickly. But I do think it will increase a little bit.”
…

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has called the leaders of Sudan’s two warring factions and urged them to agree to a ceasefire as the death toll nears 200.

The U.S. State Department issued a statement late Monday saying Blinken had spoken separately with General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, commander of the country’s armed forces, and General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, the head of the Rapid Support Forces. He urged them to end the fighting to permit delivery of humanitarian assistance to those affected by the conflict and allow the reunification of Sudanese families.

The statement said Blinken urged Burhan and Dagalo to allow the international community in Khartoum “to make sure its presence is secure,” and stressed the responsibility of the two generals “to ensure the safety and wellbeing of civilians, diplomatic personnel, and humanitarian workers.”

Secretary Blinken’s call to the two Sudanese rivals was one of many from the international community urging peace in the north African country. A communique issued Tuesday from the G-7 foreign ministers’ meeting in Karuizawa, Japan condemned the fighting, which they said, “threatens the security and safety of Sudanese civilians and undermines efforts to restore Sudan’s democratic transition.”

“We urge the parties to end hostilities immediately without pre-conditions. We call on all actors to renounce violence, return to negotiations, and take active steps to reduce tensions and ensure the safety of all civilians, including diplomatic and humanitarian personnel,” the communique continued.

Both military factions fighting for control in Sudan claimed to have made gains Monday, as the death toll from the violence exceeded 180 amid calls from Washington, multiple international bodies and capitals around the world for an immediate cease-fire.

Residents in Khartoum reported hearing fighter jets and anti-aircraft fire after night fell Monday as the violence between Sudan’s military and a paramilitary force raged through a third day.

Volker Perthes, the United Nations special representative to Sudan, told reporters by video link from Khartoum Monday that at least 185 people had been killed and more than 1,800 wounded since fighting erupted Saturday.

The number of casualties from the fighting is likely to rise, with many of the wounded unable to reach hospitals for treatment. A Sudanese doctors’ group said the fighting had also “heavily damaged” multiple hospitals around the capital.

Large portions of the capital were without electricity and water. The violence also affected Khartoum’s adjoining sister cities of Omdurman and Bahri, with bridges linking the cities blocked by armored vehicles.

U.N. chief Antonio Guterres on Monday again condemned the outbreak of fighting and appealed to the leaders of Sudan’s military and the RSF paramilitary group “to immediately cease hostilities, restore calm and begin a dialogue to resolve the crisis.”

“I urge all those with influence over the situation to use it in the cause of peace,” he said, adding that “the humanitarian situation in Sudan was already precarious and is now catastrophic.”

The two military factions battling for control of Sudan had shared power during a shaky political transition. The clashes are part of a power struggle between General Burhan, who also heads the transitional council, and General Dagalo, also known as Hemedti, the deputy head of the transitional council.

John Kirby, coordinator for strategic communications at the National Security Council, told reporters on Monday that U.S. officials had “been in direct contact” with both generals “to urge them to end the hostilities immediately.” He added that U.S. officials were also working closely with the African Union, the Arab League and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, an East African bloc.

“We call for an immediate cease-fire, without conditions, between the Sudanese armed forces and the Rapid Support Forces,” he said. “As Secretary Blinken mentioned this morning, the fighting is killing civilians and threatens the Sudanese nation as well as stability in the region.”

But when asked by VOA what specific leverage the U.S. has to influence the warring parties, Kirby said, “I’m not going to speak to specific diplomatic leverage.”

He added that all U.S. personnel in the north African nation were accounted for and are sheltering in place. He said there are no plans to evacuate them at this time.

The RSF claimed Monday it had captured an airport and military bases. The military claimed it regained control of the main television station and said it was in control of its headquarters after brief fighting there.

The fighting in Khartoum has forced most people to stay inside. Offices, schools and gas stations are closed.

In the Al-Kalakla neighborhood south of Khartoum, the situation seemed to be relatively calm, as people ventured out to get basic supplies.

Wisal Mohammed, a mother of three, told VOA this is the first time in three days that she’s come out to get food for her children. She said she does not have electricity or water and that she would not be able to travel if there was an emergency.

Al Muiz Hassan, a grocer in the Abu Adam neighborhood south of Khartoum, told VOA he is worried about being robbed and has only partially opened his shop as a precaution.

“The fighting has affected all the shops, not only mine,” he said.

Residents of Khartoum said there has been no police presence on the city’s streets since the military clashes began.

The European Union said its envoy to Sudan was assaulted in his own residence on Monday, but it did not give further details.

Blinken confirmed that a U.S. diplomatic convoy came under fire Monday, adding that initial reports indicated the attack was by forces linked to the Rapid Support Forces.

Calls to end the fighting have come from around the world and within Africa, including the African Union, the Arab League and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD).

IGAD said Kenyan President William Ruto, South Sudanese President Salva Kiir and Djibouti President Omar Guelleh will go to Khartoum to broker an immediate cease-fire.

“President Salva Kiir has already been in touch with both General Burhan and General Hemedti to convey the message of the summit. … Now, preparations are on the way to undertake this mission,” Nuur Mohamud Sheekh, a spokesperson for IGAD’s executive secretary, told VOA.

Sudan’s two top generals, however, have yet to express a willingness to negotiate and each has demanded the other’s surrender.

Dagalo said Monday on Twitter that he was defending democracy in Sudan and called Burhan a “radical Islamist.” Dagalo’s forces emerged out of the notorious Janjaweed militias in Sudan’s Darfur region and have been accused of carrying out atrocities in the region.

The two generals are former allies who together orchestrated an October 2021 military coup that derailed a transition to civilian rule following the 2019 ouster of longtime leader Omar al-Bashir.

Tensions between the generals have been growing over disagreements about how the RSF should be integrated in the army and who should oversee that process. The restructuring of the military was part of an effort to restore the country to civilian rule and end the political crisis sparked by the 2021 military coup.

“It’s another example of the generals feeling threatened by a transition that might have diminished their powers, might have diminished the monopoly that they control,” said Jeffrey Feltman, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution and former special envoy to the Horn of Africa at the U.S. State Department.

“What we have now is a fight for power. It’s a lust for power — who is going to prevail among these two generals,” Feltman told VOA.

Pro-democracy activists have accused both generals of being involved in human rights abuses.

In addition to the fighting around Khartoum, violence has also broken out in Sudan’s western Darfur region, threatening to renew a decades-old conflict that killed hundreds of thousands of people.

The International Rescue Committee (IRC) announced Monday it has halted much of its operations in Sudan because of the fighting.

In a statement, IRC regional Vice President Kurt Tjossem said, “Conflict has disrupted humanitarian action where over a third of the population, an estimated 15 million people, including refugees, are experiencing acute food insecurity. Humanitarian actors have limited ability to enter and operate in areas with ongoing war.”

The World Food Program also suspended its operations in the country after the deaths of three of its staff members.

The African Union’s Peace and Security Council held an emergency meeting on Sunday in Nairobi to discuss the situation in Sudan. Participants appealed to the Sudanese military and RSF leaders to de-escalate conflict and restore stability.

Carol Van Dam Falk, Mariama Diallo, Margaret Besheer, Antia Powell and Nike Ching contributed to this report. Some information for this article came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
…

A very wet winter has left California’s reservoirs looking healthier than they have for years, as near-record rainfall put a big dent in a lengthy drought.   

A series of atmospheric rivers — high altitude ribbons of moisture — chugged into the western United States, dousing a landscape that had been baked dry by years of below-average rain.   

The state’s 40 million residents had chafed under repeated warnings to save water, with restrictions on irrigating gardens that left lawns dead or dying.   

Vegetation dried up, with hillsides a parched brown, and ripe for wildfires.   

Reservoirs held just a fraction of their capacity, with shorelines retreating to reveal dust, rocks and the remains of sunken boats.   

But then the winter of 2022-23 roared into action, and trillions of gallons of water fell from the skies.   

Rivers and creeks that had slowed to a trickle or even vanished entirely sprang to life.   

SEE ALSO: A related video by VOA’s Laurel Bowman:

Lake Tulare, in the Central Valley, which had dried up 80 years earlier, began to re-emerge, as all that rain had to find somewhere to go.   

Mountains were buried under hundreds of inches (many meters) of snow, and the state’s ski resorts began talking about a bumper season that could last all the way into July.   

Official statistics from the U.S. Drought Monitor released last week show around two-thirds of California is completely out of the drought.   

Less than 10% of the state is still technically in a drought, with the remainder classed as “abnormally dry.”

A year ago, the entire state was in a drought.   

California’s Department of Water Resources says major reservoirs are overtopping their average capacity.  

Lake Oroville, one of the most important bodies of water in the state, is now around 88% full, storing almost twice the amount of water as it did a year ago.   

AFP photographs show the once shriveled reservoir looking much closer to its original shoreline.   

Pictures taken almost exactly a year apart show a marked contrast — in April 2022, a puny stream trickles through a valley, but this year the valley is full of water.   

A photograph taken in September last year shows a boat ramp hanging uselessly, high above the water line, while the same boat ramp seen in a picture taken Sunday has water lapping halfway up.   

The Enterprise Bridge now spans a body of water, where last year its footings stood starkly in the dusty bank, with just a small creek passing underneath.  

Wet winters are not new in California, but scientists say human-cause climate change is exacerbating the so-called “weather whiplash” that sees very hot and dry periods give way to extremely soggy months.   

And water managers caution that while there is a lot of wet around at the moment, Californians cannot afford to waste water.   

Adel Hagekhalil of the Metropolitan Water District that serves Southern California told Spectrum News 1 that people should still conserve their supplies.   

“We need to save and build the savings… so when we have another dry year, and hot days and dry days, we can respond,” he said. 
…

More than half of North America’s bat species are likely to diminish significantly as climate change, disease and habitat loss take their toll, scientists warned Monday. 

A report by experts from the U.S., Canada and Mexico said 81 of the continent’s 154 known bat types “are at risk of severe population decline” in the next 15 years. 

The “state of the bats” report was published by the North American Bat Conservation Alliance, a consortium of government agencies and private organizations. 

“They need our help to survive,” said Winifred Frick, chief scientist at Bat Conservation International, one of the participating groups. “We face a biodiversity crisis globally and bats play a very important role in healthy ecosystems needed to protect our planet.” 

Bats give U.S. agriculture a $3.7 billion annual boost by gobbling crop-destroying insects, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Some are plant pollinators. Bats also serve as prey for other animals, including hawks, owls and weasels. 

Millions have died since 2006 from a fungal disease called white-nose syndrome, which attacks bats when hibernating and creates fuzzy spots on their muzzles and wings. It causes them to wake early from hibernation and sometimes fly outside. They can burn up winter fat stores and eventually starve. 

Eight U.S. bat species are listed as endangered, or on the brink of extinction. 

The federal Fish and Wildlife Service designated the northern long-eared bat as endangered last year and has proposed listing for the tricolored bat. The little brown bat is being evaluated for potential listing. White-nose syndrome is the primary killer for each of the species. 

More than 150 agencies, nonprofits and universities are collaborating in the fight against the disease, said Jeremy Coleman, a wildlife biologist who coordinates the service’s participation and a co-author of the report. 

Among methods under development are vaccines, anti-fungal sprays and ultraviolet light treatments for hibernation spots. 

“We have a number of tools that are showing great promise,” Coleman said. “There are very few precedents for managing a wildlife disease, particularly one so devastating and pervasive.” 

The report said the bats also are imperiled by forest fragmentation — logging and urban sprawl in Canada, wildfire suppression in the U.S. and livestock ranching in Mexico. Many bats live in older trees during summer. 

People sometimes disturb hibernating bats in winter by exploring caves and abandoned mines. 

Climate change is expected to intensify the challenges, causing more extreme storms and temperature swings. The report said 82% of the continent’s species are at risk from global warming’s effects. 

More than 1,500 bats were rescued in December after going into hypothermic shock during a sudden freeze in Houston, where they lost their grip and fell from roosting spots beneath bridges. 

Drought and increasingly arid conditions will leave bats with less drinking water, killing some and preventing others from reproducing, the report said. As surface waters dry up, there are fewer places to fly over in search of aquatic insects. 

Ironically, wind turbines — a leading source of renewable energy that can help slow climate change — pose another problem for bats. An estimated 500,000, representing 45 species, die each year in collisions with the structures, the report said. 

But those figures were based on 2021 calculations, said Frick, an associate research professor in ecology at the University of California at Santa Cruz in addition to her position with Bat Conservation International. So many turbines have been constructed since then that the latest estimate is 880,000 deaths. 

Her organization is collaborating with manufacturers and others in searching for solutions, including acoustic devices that would cause bats to steer clear of turbines. Reducing blade rotation speeds — particularly during fall mating season, when bats are particularly active — would help, Frick said. 

Cori Lausen, director of bat conservation with Wildlife Conservation Society Canada, who did not participate in compiling the report, said it provided a solid overview of North American bats’ plight. But some types it described as “apparently secure” based on their current status have grim prospects, she said. 

“The government process is a slow one, deciding when to list a species and when not to. If anything, this report is a little conservative,” Lausen said. “Many of these bats should not be listed as OK.” 
…

The United States, South Korea and Japan conducted a joint missile defense exercise Monday aimed at countering North Korea’s growing nuclear arsenal, as a top North Korean army official warned the U.S. that it risks “a clearer security crisis and insurmountable threats.”

Last week, North Korea conducted one of its most provocative weapons demonstrations in years by flight-testing for the first time an intercontinental ballistic missile powered by solid fuel. It is considered a more mobile, harder-to-detect weapon and could directly target the continental United States.

South Korea’s navy said Monday’s three-way drills took place in international waters off the country’s eastern coast and focused on mastering procedures for detecting, tracking and sharing information on incoming North Korean ballistic missiles. The one-day naval exercise involved an Aegis destroyer from each country.

“The drills’ goal is to improve our response capabilities against ballistic missiles and strengthen our ability to conduct joint operations as North Korea’s nuclear and missile threats continue to escalate,” Jang Do-young, a spokesperson for South Korea’s navy, said at a news briefing.

The United States and South Korea also launched separate bilateral drills Monday involving some 110 warplanes, including advanced F-35 fighter jets, that will continue through April 28.

The two sets of exercises could trigger a belligerent response from North Korea, which views the United States’ military drills with its Asian allies as invasion rehearsals. North Korea has used such drills as a pretext to accelerate its own weapons development, creating a tit-for-tat cycle that has raised tensions in recent months.

Later Monday, Ri Pyong Chol, a North Korean army marshal and close associate of leader Kim Jong Un, warned that the United States should “stop at once its political and military provocations getting on the nerves of [North Korea].”

“If the U.S. persists in the acts of endangering the security environment on the Korean Peninsula in disregard of the repeated warnings by [North Korea], the latter will take necessary actions to expose the former to a clearer security crisis and insurmountable threats,” Ri said in a statement carried by state media.

Without mentioning the drills that began Monday, Ri accused the U.S. and South Korea of having staged a series of large-scale joint military exercises simulating a preemptive nuclear strike and all-out war against North Korea. He also criticized the U.S. for calling for a meeting of the U.N. Security Council to discuss North Korea’s solid-fuel ICBM launch, saying his country was exercising its right to self-defense.

Security Council resolutions ban North Korea from engaging in any ballistic activities. But the council has failed to impose new sanctions on North Korea despite its series of ballistic missile tests since early last year because of the opposition of China and Russia, which are both veto-wielding members.

North Korea’s unprecedented run of weapons tests has so far involved more than 100 missiles of various ranges fired into the sea since the start of 2022 as it attempts to build a nuclear arsenal that could threaten its rival neighbors and the United States.

Experts say Kim wants to pressure the United States into accepting North Korea as a legitimate nuclear power and hopes to negotiate an easing of sanctions from a position of strength.

North Korea’s growing nuclear threat has also led South Korea and Japan to increase their security cooperation and mend ties that were strained by history and trade disputes. On Monday, South Korea and Japan held their first security meeting of senior diplomats and defense officials following a five-year hiatus. During the meeting, Seoul and Tokyo discussed North Korea’s nuclear program and trilateral cooperation with the United States, according to Seoul’s Defense Ministry.

Japan’s Joint Staff in a statement stressed the need to strengthen trilateral cooperation as the “security environment surrounding Japan increasingly becomes severe” because of North Korea’s missile activities.
…

The U.S. Justice Department says it has arrested two New York City residents and charged 44 Chinese security officers in connection with China’s efforts to target dissidents in the United States and around the world. 

Federal law enforcement officials announced the charges related to three separate “transnational repression” schemes at a news conference in New York City Monday.

In the first scheme, “Harry” Lu Jianwang and Chen Jinping – both residents of New York City – are accused of opening and operating an illegal overseas police station in lower Manhattan for China’s Ministry of Public Security. The ministry acts as China’s national police. 

The two men were arrested early Monday morning and scheduled to make their initial court appearances in the afternoon.

The existence of the police station, one of more than 100 China allegedly operates around the world, came to light last year, and FBI Director Christopher Wray vowed to put a stop to the illegal activity. 

The police station, which allegedly operated out of an office building in New York City’s Chinatown, closed in the fall of 2022 after those running it became aware of the FBI investigation, officials said. 

The two other criminal complaints unsealed Monday charge 44 defendants with various crimes related to efforts by the Chinese national police to harass Chinese nationals in New York City and elsewhere in the United Stations. 

The defendants include 40 MPS officers and two officials in the Cyberspace Administration of China, the Justice Department said.

According to the charging documents, the defendants used fake social media accounts to “harass and intimidate” overseas Chinese dissidents.  

In addition, they’re accused of “suppressing” the Chinese dissidents’ free speech on a U.S. technology platform. 

“These cases demonstrate the lengths the PRC government will go to [to] silence and harass U.S. persons who exercise their fundamental rights to speak out against PRC oppression, including by unlawfully exploiting a U.S.-based technology company,” Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen said in a statement. “These actions violate our laws and are an affront to our democratic values and basic human rights.”

All 44 defendants remain at large.
…

U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy pledged Monday that the narrow Republican majority in the House of Representatives will vote to raise the country’s debt ceiling to avert a default on the government’s financial obligations in the coming months, but will also stipulate that future spending increases be capped at 1%.

The White House strongly criticized the announcement.

McCarthy, in a speech at the New York Stock Exchange, called the country’s nearly $31.7 trillion debt a “ticking time bomb” and assailed Democratic President Joe Biden as “missing in action” in resolving the contentious issue before the government runs out of money to pay its bills, which could be as soon as June.

Any resulting default on the government’s financial obligations would be a U.S. first and could roil the world economy, plunge stock values and force widespread layoffs.

Biden and White House officials have called on Congress to approve a debt ceiling increase without conditions, as has often been done in the past, including during Republican administrations. But McCarthy said, “Since the president continues to hide, House Republicans will take action.”

McCarthy, who has had trouble in getting his 222-seat majority in the 435-member House to agree on a package of spending cuts to present to Biden, nonetheless told Wall Street leaders that the Republican caucus would pass legislation that would raise the debt ceiling for one year, pushing the issue next year into the midst of the 2024 presidential election campaign.

In addition, McCarthy said Republicans would roll back federal spending to fiscal 2022 levels and curb future spending boosts to no more than 1%. Republicans are also hoping to cut federal spending for social safety net programs for poorer Americans.

The White House, in a statement, said that McCarthy was breaking with the politically bipartisan norm in approving a debt ceiling increase without conditions, as happened twice during former President Donald Trump’s tenure. Biden has said he is willing to discuss future spending separately, aside from increasing the debt ceiling to authorize government borrowing to pay debts already incurred.

The White House said the Republican House leader “again failed to clearly outline what House Republicans are proposing and will vote on.” The White House contended Republicans would “increase costs for hard-working families, take food assistance and health care away from millions of Americans, and yet would enlarge the deficit when combined with House Republican proposals for tax giveaways skewed to the super-rich, special interests, and profitable companies.”

Biden and McCarthy met in early February about the debt ceiling but not since.
…

Elon Musk’s SpaceX on Monday called off a highly anticipated launch of its powerful new Starship rocket, delaying the first uncrewed test flight of the vehicle into space.

The two-stage rocketship, standing taller than the Statue of Liberty at 394 feet (120 m) high, originally was scheduled for blast-off from the SpaceX facility at Boca Chica, Texas, during a two-hour launch window that began at 8 a.m. EDT (1200 GMT).

But the California-based space company announced in a live webcast during the final minutes of the countdown that it was scrubbing the flight attempt for at least 48 hours, citing a pressurization issue in the lower-stage rocket booster.

Musk, the company’s billionaire founder and chief executive, told a private Twitter audience on Sunday night that the mission stood a better chance of being scrubbed than proceeding to launch on Monday.

Getting the vehicle to space for the first time would represent a key milestone in SpaceX’s ambition of sending humans back to the moon and ultimately to Mars – at least initially as part of NASA’s newly inaugurated human spaceflight program, Artemis.

A successful debut flight would also instantly rank the Starship system as the most powerful launch vehicle on Earth.

Both the lower-stage Super Heavy booster rocket and the upper-stage Starship cruise vessel it will carry to space are designed as reusable components, capable of flying back to Earth for soft landings – a maneuver that has become routine for SpaceX’s smaller Falcon 9 rocket.

But neither stage would be recovered for the expendable first test flight to space, expected to last no more than 90 minutes.

Prototypes of the Starship cruise vessel have made five sub-space flights up to 6 miles (10 km) above Earth in recent years, but the Super Heavy booster has never left the ground.

In February, SpaceX did a test-firing of the booster, igniting 31 of its 33 Raptor engines for roughly 10 seconds with the rocket bolted in place vertically atop a platform.

The Federal Aviation Administration just last Friday granted a license for what would be the first test flight of the fully stacked rocket system, clearing a final regulatory hurdle for the long-awaited launch.

If all goes as planned for the next launch bid, all 33 Raptor engines will ignite simultaneously to loft the Starship on a flight that nearly completes a full orbit of the Earth before it re-enters the atmosphere and free-falls into the Pacific at supersonic speed about 60 miles (97 km) off the coast of the northern Hawaiian islands.

After separating from the Starship, the Super Heavy booster is expected to execute the beginnings of a controlled return flight before plunging into the Gulf of Mexico.

As designed, the Starship rocket is nearly two times more powerful than NASA’s own Space Launch System (SLS), which made its debut uncrewed flight to orbit in November, sending a NASA cruise vessel called Orion on a 10-day voyage around the moon and back.
…

A lot was happening in March 1965 in the bungalow in Selma, Alabama, that then-4-year-old Jawana Jackson called home, and much of it involved her “Uncle Martin.”

There were late-night visitors, phone calls and meetings at the house that was a safe haven for the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders as they planned the Selma to Montgomery marches calling for Black voting rights.

The role the Jackson House played was integral to the Civil Rights Movement, so Jackson contacted the The Henry Ford Museum near Detroit about a year ago to ask if it would take over the preservation of the Jackson House and its legacy.

“It became increasingly clearer to me that the house belonged to the world, and quite frankly, The Henry Ford was the place that I always felt in my heart that it needed to be,” she told The Associated Press last week from her home in Pensacola, Florida.

Starting this year, the Jackson House will be dismantled piece-by-piece and trucked the more than 800 miles (1,280 kilometers) north to Dearborn, Michigan, where it will eventually be open to the public as part of the history museum. The project is expected to take up to three years.

Owned by dentist Sullivan Jackson and his wife, Richie Jean, the 3,000-square-foot (28-square-meter) home was where King and others strategized the three marches against racist Jim Crow laws that prevented Black people from voting in the Deep South.

King was inside the home when President Lyndon Johnson announced a bill that would become the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

“There was a synergy going on in that house during those critical times,” Jawana Jackson said. “Whether that was when Uncle Martin was praying the morning of the Selma to Montgomery march or whether he was talking to President Johnson (by phone) in the little bedroom of that home, I always got a sense of energy and a sense of hope for the future.”

The house and artifacts, including King’s neckties and pajamas, and the chair where he sat while watching Johnson’s televised announcement, will be part of the acquisition by The Henry Ford. The purchase price is confidential.

Named after Ford Motor Co. founder and American industrialist Henry Ford, the museum sits on 250 acres (100 hectares) and also features Greenfield Village where more than 80 historic structures are displayed and maintained. The Jackson House will be rebuilt there, joining the courthouse where Abraham Lincoln first practiced law, the laboratory where Thomas Edison perfected the light bulb, and the home and workshop where Orville and Wilbur Wright invented their first airplane.

Also among the collection’s artifacts are the Montgomery city bus whose seat Rosa Parks refused to give up to a white man in 1955 and the chair that Lincoln was sitting on in 1865 when he was assassinated at Ford’s Theatre in Washington.

Visitors to Greenfield Village will be able to walk through the Jackson House, according to Patricia Mooradian, The Henry Ford’s president and chief executive.

“This house is the envelope, but the real importance is what happened inside,” Mooradian said. “We want people to immerse themselves in that history … to feel and experience what may have gone on in that home. What were the conversations? What were the decisions that were being made around the dining room table?”

Built in 1912, the home served as a guest house for Black authors W.E.B. Dubois and Booker T. Washington who held “fireside chats” regarding education, religion, the arts, community building and economic sustainability, according to the Alabama African American Civil Rights Heritage Sites Consortium.

It took on a greater importance following the fatal shooting of a young Black man, Jimmie Lee Jackson, by an Alabama trooper.

On March 7, 1965, weeks after that slaying, about 600 people participated in a peaceful protest. The late Georgia U.S. Rep. John Lewis was one of the leaders of the planned 54-mile (86-kilometer) march to the state Capitol, which was part of the larger effort to register Black voters. But police beat protesters as they tried to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma in what is now known as “Bloody Sunday.”

Television and newspaper reports seared images of that confrontation into the nation’s consciousness. Days later, King led what became known as the “Turnaround Tuesday” march, in which marchers approached police at the bridge and prayed before turning back.

Johnson introduced the Voting Rights Act of 1965 eight days after “Bloody Sunday.” On March 21, King began a third march, under federal protection, that grew to thousands of people by the time it arrived at the state Capitol. Five months later, Johnson signed the bill into law.

The Jackson House brings a new dimension to understanding the role Black Americans played in defeating Jim Crow, according to historian Gretchen Sullivan Sorin.

“The Jacksons are unsung heroes,” Sorin said. “Their generosity and courage shows us how we, as ordinary Americans, can stand up against injustice.”

Jackson said her parents felt the risks were worth taking.

“For them, it was all about the future for me and millions of other children that were going to grow up,” she said. “They felt that everyone deserved a peaceful and more democratic society to grow up in.”
…

The U.S. military said it likely killed a senior Islamic State leader in a helicopter raid Monday in northern Syria.

A U.S. Central Command statement did not identify the militant, nor give a precise location of the raid, but said “two other armed individuals were killed.”

CENTCOM added that no U.S. troops were hurt during the raid and that it assessed no civilians were hurt or killed.

The operation is the latest targeting Islamic State leaders in Syria.

Earlier this month, CENTCOM said U.S. forces captured an Islamic State operative in eastern Syria and an airstrike killed one of the group’s senior leaders.
…

The start of Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion defamation trial against Fox has been pushed back by a day, the judge said Sunday, with a source familiar with the matter saying the media giant was pursuing settlement talks. 

The source, who was not authorized to speak publicly, told Reuters that Fox was seeking a possible settlement. The Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal also reported that Fox was pursuing settlement talks, citing sources. 

Dominion is suing Fox Corp and Fox News in a defamation lawsuit over the network’s coverage of the 2020 U.S. presidential election. 

“The Court has decided to continue the start of the trial, including jury selection, until Tuesday, April 18, 2023 at 9:00 a.m. (1300 GMT),” Judge Eric Davis said in a statement, without providing a reason for the delay. “I will make such an announcement tomorrow at 9:00 a.m. in Courtroom 7E,” he added. 

Davis had said on Thursday he expected to conclude jury selection Monday and to proceed to opening statements. 

Dominion and Fox declined to comment on the delay. 

Davis Wednesday sanctioned Fox News, handing Dominion a fresh chance to gather evidence after Fox withheld records until the eve of the trial. 

The evidence includes recordings of Rudy Giuliani, former U.S. President Donald Trump’s lawyer, saying in pre-taped Fox appearances that he did not have any evidence to back up the false allegations of election rigging by Dominion in the 2020 race that are at the heart of the lawsuit. 

The recordings were made by a former Fox employee who is currently suing the network. 

Davis said he would also very likely tap an outside investigator to probe Fox’s late disclosure of the evidence and take whatever steps necessary to remedy the situation, which he described as troubling. 

Fox said in a statement on Wednesday that it “produced the supplemental information” to Dominion “when we first learned it.”  

Closely watched 

The trial is one of the most closely watched U.S. defamation cases in years, involving a leading cable news outlet with numerous conservative commentators. 

Murdoch is set to testify, along with a parade of Fox executives and on-air hosts, including Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Jeanine Pirro. 

The trial is considered a test of whether Fox’s coverage crossed the line between ethical journalism and the pursuit of ratings, as Dominion alleges and Fox denies. 

Dominion has accused Fox of ruining its reputation by airing baseless claims that its machines secretly changed votes in favor of Democrat Joe Biden, who defeated then-President Trump, a Republican, in the 2020 presidential election. 

Dominion is asking for $1.6 billion in damages, a figure Fox has said is unrealistic and based on flawed economic modeling. 

An expert report commissioned by Dominion attributed scores of lost contracts to Fox’s coverage, though much of the report remains under seal.   

Fox Corp reported nearly $14 billion in annual revenue last year. 

Dominion has said Fox’s conduct was damaging to American democracy and that the network must be held accountable, while Fox said on Friday that Dominion’s lawsuit was a threat to press freedom. 

“While Dominion has pushed irrelevant and misleading information to generate headlines, Fox News remains steadfast in protecting the rights of a free press,” Fox said in a statement. 

The primary question for jurors is whether Fox knowingly spread false information or recklessly disregarded the truth, the standard of “actual malice” that Dominion must show to prevail in a defamation case. 

Dominion says defamatory statements were aired on Fox shows including “Sunday Morning Futures,” “Lou Dobbs Tonight” and “Justice with Judge Jeanine.” 

Dominion alleges that Fox staff, ranging from members of the newsroom to the board of directors, knew the statements were false but continued to air them to avoid losing viewers to far-right outlets. 

Dominion also cites evidence that some hosts and producers thought the guests spreading the false statements, including former Trump attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, could not back up their allegations. 

Fox had argued that coverage of the vote-rigging claims was inherently newsworthy and protected by the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment guarantee of press freedom. 

Davis rejected that argument in a ruling last month on both parties’ competing motions for summary judgment. 

Fox has also said that Dominion cannot pin actual malice on the individuals whom Dominion says were responsible for the defamatory statements. 

Fox has said Dominion must prove that a “superior officer” at the network or its parent company “ordered, participated in, or ratified” wrongdoing. The network has argued that doubts about the claims among certain individuals cannot be attributed to the organization as a whole. 
…

The U.S. warship USS Milius sailed through the Taiwan Strait on Sunday, in what the U.S. Navy described on Monday as a “routine” transit, just days after China ended its latest war games around the island. 

China, which views Taiwan as its own territory, officially ended its three days of exercises around Taiwan last Monday where it practiced precision strikes and blockading the island. 

It staged the drills to express anger at Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen’s meeting with U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy, viewing it as an interference in China’s internal affairs and U.S. support for Taiwan’s separate identity from China. 

The U.S. Navy’s 7th Fleet said the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Milius conducted a “routine Taiwan Strait transit” through waters “where high-seas freedoms of navigation and overflight apply in accordance with international law.” 

The ship’s transit demonstrates the United States’ commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific, it added. 

The U.S. Navy sails warships through the strait around once a month, and also regularly conducts similar freedom of navigation missions in the disputed South China Sea. 

Last week, the USS Milius sailed near one of the most important man-made and Chinese controlled islands in the South China Sea, Mischief Reef. Beijing denounced it as illegal. 

China has continued its military activities around Taiwan since the drills ended, though on a reduced scale. 

On Monday morning, Taiwan’s defense ministry said it had spotted 18 Chinese military aircraft and four naval vessels operating around Taiwan in the previous 24-hour period. 

China has never renounced the use of force to bring democratically governed Taiwan under its control. 

Taiwan’s government rejects China’s territorial claims and says only the island’s people can decide their future. 
…

The final curtain came down Sunday on New York’s production of “The Phantom of the Opera,” ending Broadway’s longest-running show with thunderous standing ovations, champagne toasts and gold and silver confetti bursting from its famous chandelier. 

It was show No. 13,981 at the Majestic Theatre and it ended with a reprise of “The Music of the Night” performed by the current cast, previous actors in the show — including original star Sarah Brightman — and crew members in street clothes. 

Andrew Lloyd Webber took to the stage last in a black suit and black tie and dedicated the final show to his son, Nick, who died last month after a protracted battle with gastric cancer and pneumonia. He was 43. 

“When he was a little boy, he heard some of this music,” Lloyd Webber said. Brightman, holding his hand, agreed: “When Andrew was writing it, he was right there. So his son is with us. Nick, we love you very much.”  

Producer Cameron Mackintosh gave some in the crowd hope they would see the Phantom again, and perhaps sooner than they think. 

“The one question I keep getting asked again and again — will the Phantom return? Having been a producer for over 55 years, I’ve seen all the great musicals return, and ‘Phantom’ is one of the greatest,” he said. “So it’s only a matter of time.” 

The musical — a fixture on Broadway since opening on January 26, 1988 — has weathered recessions, war, terrorism and cultural shifts. But the prolonged pandemic may have been the last straw: It’s a costly musical to sustain, with elaborate sets and costumes as well as a large cast and orchestra. The curtain call Sunday showed how out of step “Phantom” is with the rest of Broadway but also how glorious a big, splashy musical can be.  

“If there ever was a bang, we’re going out with a bang. It’s going to be a great night,” said John Riddle just before dashing inside to play Raoul for the final time.  

Based on a novel by Gaston Leroux, “Phantom” tells the story of a deformed composer who haunts the Paris Opera House and falls madly in love with an innocent young soprano, Christine. Webber’s lavish songs include “Masquerade,” ″Angel of Music” and ″All I Ask of You.” 

In addition to Riddle, the New York production said goodbye with Emilie Kouatchou as Christine and Laird Mackintosh stepping in for Ben Crawford as the Phantom. Crawford was unable to sing because of a bacterial infection but was cheered at the curtain call, stepping to the side of the stage. The Phantom waved him over to stand beside him, Riddle and Kouatchou. 

There was a video presentation of many of the actors who had played key roles in the show over the years, and the orchestra seats were crowded with Christines, Raouls and Phantoms. The late director Hal Prince, choreographer Gillian Lynne and set and costume designer Maria Björnson were also honored. 

Lin-Manuel Miranda attended, as did Glenn Close, who performed in two separate Broadway productions of Lloyd Webber’s “Sunset Boulevard.” Free champagne was offered at intermission and flutes of it were handed out onstage at the curtain call. 

Riddle first saw “The Phantom of the Opera” in Toronto as a 4-year-old child. “It was the first musical I ever saw. I didn’t know what a musical was,” he said. “Now, 30-some odd years later, I’m closing the show on Broadway. So it’s incredible.”  

Kouatchou, who became the first Black woman in the role in New York, didn’t think the show would ever stop. “I was like, ‘OK, I’m going to do my run, ‘Phantom’ is going to continue on and they’ll be more Christines of color,’” she said. “But this is it.”  

The first production opened in London in 1986 and since then the show has been seen by more than 145 million people in 183 cities and performed in 17 languages over 70,000 performances. On Broadway alone, it has grossed more than $1.3 billion. 

When “Phantom” opened in New York, “Die Hard” was in movie theaters, Adele was born, and floppy discs were at the cutting edge of technology. A postage stamp cost 25 cents, and the year’s most popular songs were “Roll With It” by Steve Winwood, “Faith” by George Michael and Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up.” 

Critics were positive, with the New York Post calling it “a piece of impeccably crafted musical theater,” the Daily News describing it as “spectacular entertainment,” and The New York Times saying it “wants nothing more than to shower the audience with fantasy and fun.” 

Lloyd Webber’s other musicals include “Cats,” “Jesus Christ Superstar,” “Evita,” “Sunset Boulevard” and “School of Rock.” The closing of “Phantom” means the composer is left with one show on Broadway, the critically mauled “Bad Cinderella.” 

The closing of “Phantom,” originally scheduled for February, was pushed to mid-April after a flood of revived interest and ticket sales that pushed weekly grosses past $3 million. The closing means the longest-running show crown now goes to “Chicago,” which started in 1996. “The Lion King” is next, having begun performances in 1997.  

Broadway took a pounding during the pandemic, with all theaters closed for more than 18 months. Some of the most popular shows — “Hamilton,” “The Lion King” and “Wicked” — rebounded well, but other shows have struggled. 

Breaking even usually requires a steady stream of tourists, especially for “Phantom,” and visitors to the city haven’t returned to pre-pandemic levels. The pandemic also pushed up expenses for all shows, including routine COVID-19 testing and safety officers on staff. The Phantom became a poster boy for Broadway’s return — after all, he is partially masked. 

Fans can always catch the Phantom elsewhere. The flagship London production celebrated its 36th anniversary in October, and there are productions in Japan, Greece, Australia, Sweden, Italy, South Korea and the Czech Republic. One is about to open in Bucharest, and another will open in Vienna in 2024. 

Kouatchou, who walked the red carpet before the final show in a hot pink clinging gown with a sweetheart neckline and a cut out, said the bitterness was undercut by the big send-off. Most Broadway shows that close slink into the darkness uncelebrated. 

“It kind of sweetens it, right?” she said. “We get to celebrate at the end of this. We get to all come together and drink and laugh and talk about the show and all the highs and lows. It’s ending on a big note.” 
…

No one knows yet what the full repercussions might be from the recent leak of U.S. classified documents. Some analysts fear it could overshadow the security talks that top diplomats are holding in Japan about several world crises. Veronica Balderas Iglesias has the details. Video editor: Marcus Harton.
…

The oldest mosque in Michigan is celebrating its 85th year. Located in the city of Dearborn, the American Moslem Society Mosque, one of the oldest in the United States, provides its young generation with religious and recreational activities. VOA’s Rivan Dwiastono reports. Videographer: Alam Burhanan, Virginia Gunawan
…

Four people have been killed and multiple people injured during a shooting Saturday night in Dadeville, the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency said.

The Alabama Law Enforcement Agency said the shooting happened at about 10:30 p.m. There was no initial confirmation about what led to the shooting. It was not immediately known if a suspect was in custody.

Pastor Ben Hayes, who serves as the chaplain for the Dadeville Police Department and for the local high school football team, said most of the victims are teenagers because the shooting occurred at a birthday party for a 16-year-old. He said the shooting has rocked the small town where serious crime is rare.

“One of the young men that was killed was one of our star athletes and just a great guy. So I knew many of these students. Dadeville is a small town and this is going to affect everybody in this area,” Hayes said.

WRBL-TV reported that the shooting happened at a dance studio. The station showed images of crime scene tape around the Mahogany Masterpiece Dance Studio and neighboring buildings and a heavy police presence.

“This morning, I grieve with the people of Dadeville and my fellow Alabamians. Violent crime has NO place in our state, and we are staying closely updated by law enforcement as details emerge,” Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey said in a statement posted on social media.

Dadeville, which has a population of about 3,200 people, is in east Alabama, about 57 miles (92 kilometers) northeast of Montgomery, Alabama.

 
…

Starting Monday in a courtroom in Delaware, Fox News executives and stars will have to answer for their role in spreading doubt about the 2020 presidential election and creating the gaping wound that remains in America’s democracy.

Jurors hearing the $1.6 billion lawsuit filed against Fox by Dominion Voting Systems must answer a specific question: Did Fox defame the voting machine company by airing bogus stories alleging that the election was rigged against then-President Donald Trump, even as many at the network privately doubted the false claims being pushed by Trump and his allies?

Yet the broader context looms large. The trial will test press freedom and the reputation of conservatives’ favorite news source. It will also illuminate the flow of misinformation that helped spark the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and continues to fuel Trump’s hopes to regain power in 2024.

Fox News stars Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity and founder Rupert Murdoch are among the people expected to testify over the next few weeks.

Barring a last-minute settlement, opening statements are scheduled for Monday. 

“This is Christmas Eve for defamation scholars,” said RonNell Andersen Jones, a University of Utah law professor.

If the trial were a sporting event, Fox News would be taking the field on a losing streak, with key players injured and having just alienated the referee. Pretrial court rulings and embarrassing revelations about its biggest names have Fox on its heels.

Court papers released over the past two months show Fox executives, producers and personalities privately disbelieved Trump’s claims of a fraudulent election. But Dominion says Fox News was afraid of alienating its audience with the truth, particularly after many viewers were angered by the network’s decision to declare Democrat Joe Biden the winner in Arizona on election night in November 2020.

Some rulings by the presiding judge, Eric Davis, have eased Dominion’s path. In a summary judgment, Davis said it was “CRYSTAL clear” that fraud allegations against the company were false. That means trial time won’t have to be spent disproving them at a time when millions of Republicans continue to doubt the 2020 results. 

Davis said it also is clear that Dominion’s reputation was damaged, but it will be up a jury to decide whether Fox acted with “actual malice” — the legal standard — and, if so, what that’s worth financially.

Fox witnesses will likely testify that they thought the allegations against Dominion were newsworthy, but Davis made it clear that’s not a defense against defamation — and he will make sure the jury knows that.

New York law protects news outlets from defamation for expressions of opinion. But Davis methodically went through 20 different times on Fox when allegations against Dominion were discussed, ruling that all of them were fully or partly considered statements of fact, and fair game for a potential libel finding.

“A lawsuit is a little bit like hitting a home run,” said Cary Coglianese, law professor at the University of Pennsylvania. “You have to go through all of the bases to get there.” The judge’s rulings “basically give Dominion a spot at third base, and all they have to do is come home to win it.”

Both Fox and Dominion are incorporated in Delaware, though Fox News is headquartered in New York and Dominion is based in Denver.

Fox angered Davis this past week when the judge said the network’s lawyers delayed producing evidence and were not forthcoming in revealing Murdoch’s role at Fox News.

It’s not clear whether that will affect the trial. But it’s generally not wise to have a judge wonder at the outset of a trial whether your side is telling the truth, particularly when truth is the central point of the case, Jones said.

The suit essentially comes down to whether Dominion can prove Fox acted with actual malice by putting something on the air knowing that it knew was false or acting with a “reckless disregard” for whether it was true.

Dominion can point to many examples where Fox figures didn’t believe the charges being made by Trump allies such as Sidney Powell and Rudolph Giuliani. But Fox says many of those disbelievers were not in a position to decide when to air those allegations.

“We think it’s essential for them to connect those dots,” Fox lawyer Erin Murphy said.

The jury will determine whether a powerful figure like Murdoch — who testified in a deposition that he didn’t believe the election-fraud charges — had the influence to keep the accusations off the air.

“Credibility is always important in any trial in any case. But it’s going to be really important in this case,” said Jane Kirtley, director of the Silha Center for the Study of Media Ethics and the Law at the University of Minnesota.

Kirtley is concerned that the suit may eventually advance to the U.S. Supreme Court, which could use it as a pretext to weaken the actual malice standard that was set in a 1964 decision in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan. That, she feels, would be disastrous for journalists.

Dominion’s lawsuit is being closely watched by another voting-technology company with a separate but similar case against Fox News. Florida-based Smartmatic has looked to some rulings and evidence in the Dominion case to try to enhance its own $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit in New York. The Smartmatic case isn’t yet ready for trial but has survived Fox News’ effort to get it tossed out.

Many experts are surprised Fox and Dominion have not reached an out-of-court settlement, though they can at any time. There’s presumably a wide financial gulf. In court papers, Fox contends the $1.6 billion damages claim is a wild overestimate.

Dominion’s motivation may also be to inflict maximum embarrassment on Fox with the peek into the network’s internal communications following the election. Text messages from January 2021 revealed Carlson telling a friend that he passionately hated Trump and couldn’t wait to move on.

Dominion may also seek an apology.

How Fox viewers are reacting is an open question. Fox has placed a near-total ban on discussing the lawsuit on its TV network or website.

“The real potential danger is if Fox viewers get the sense that they’ve been lied to. There’s a real downside there,” said Charlie Sykes, founder of the Bulwark website and an MSNBC contributor.

There’s little indication that the case has changed Fox’s editorial direction or cut into its viewership. Fox has embraced Trump once again in recent weeks following the former president’s indictment by a Manhattan grand jury, and Carlson presented an alternate history of Capitol riot, based on tapes given to him by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif.

Just because Fox hasn’t discussed the Dominion lawsuit on the air doesn’t mean its fans are unaware of it, said Tim Graham, director of media analysis at the conservative watchdog Media Research Center.

“There’s a certain amount of tribal reaction to this,” Graham said. “When all of the other networks are thrilling to revealing text messages and emails, they see this as the latest attempt by the liberal media to undermine Fox News. There’s going to be a rally-around-Rupert effect.”

The trial is expected to last into late May. 
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So much has been invested in clean energy that there can be no rolling back of moves to end carbon emissions, U.S. climate envoy John Kerry said Sunday.

Kerry noted that if countries deliver on promises to phase out polluting fossil fuels, the world can limit average global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit), better than the worst case scenarios.

“We’re in a very different place than where we were a year ago, let alone two and three years ago,” Kerry said in an interview with The Associated Press.

“But we’re not doing everything we said we’d do,” he said, after attending a meeting of energy and environment ministers of the Group of Seven wealthy nations. “A lot of countries need to step up including ours to reduce emissions faster, deploy renewables faster, bring new technologies online faster all of that has to happen.”

Kerry said the G-7 talks in northeastern Japan’s Sapporo were “really constructive” in yielding a show of unity for phasing out use of unabated fossil fuels that emit greenhouse gases.

A meeting Thursday of President Joe Biden’s Major Economies Forum, which includes leaders of 20 nations that account for more than three-quarters of global carbon emissions, offers another opportunity for committing resources to the goal of reaching zero emissions by 2050, Kerry said.

“The United States and all the developed world has the responsibility to help the developing world through this crisis,” he said. “Those countries will really determine what happens. If they will reduce, if they will take the lead, if they will start deploying the new technologies, if they will stop using unabated fossil fuels, we’ll up the chance of winning this battle.”

Kerry held out hope for cooperation with China on climate despite friction over Taiwan, human rights, technology and other issues, saying he had a “very good conversation” with his Chinese counterpart, Xie Zhenhua, just days earlier.

“We agreed that we need to get back together personally, visit and try to see what we can find to work on together to accelerate the process. Is that doable? I hope so,” Kerry said.

The Biden administration has moved aggressively to entice companies to invest in electric vehicles and other cleaner energy technologies. While the U.S. still lags some other countries in use of EVs, the market is changing as consumer preferences evolve and manufacturers invest billions.

No one person can roll back what’s happening in the climate sector, Kerry said, “because private companies have made major bets on the future and they’re not going to reverse them.”

One area where much more needs to be done is in climate financing, Kerry said, even though developed countries were close to their $100 billion goal in annual support for developing nations. In 2020, $83 billion was committed.

The annual meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund last week in Washington were a start, “but they’re not enough. They didn’t produce enough of a change, in our judgement, to really unleash the kind of finance support that’s necessary.

“Our hope … is that over the course over the next weeks and months more will be put on the table, more will be agreed upon and we can move faster,” he said.

The hope is to reform the structure of finance to get such multilateral development banks to lend more and at better rates.

“Anyone is going to look pretty critically at what’s going to happen with their money,” Kerry said, noting that “there’s a lot of money and it’s looking for these deals right now.”

The Inflation Reduction Act is a major step toward incentivizing climate-friendly investments, “sending a signal to the market place that there’s money to be made by transitioning and moving in the direction of clean energy technologies,” he said.

In the U.S., money will not be invested in new coal-fired power plants, because “there’s no such thing as clean coal,” Kerry said. “The marketplace is not supporting that. Investors are not supporting that.”

Some countries, including Japan, have balked at setting a clear timeline for phasing out coal-fired plants, citing energy security. And for some countries, it’s a valid concern, Kerry said, though he added, “I think energy security is being exaggerated in some cases.”

The greater imperative is to do whatever is possible to draw down carbon emissions, given the millions of people who die each year due to unclean air, extreme heat and other dire consequences of climate change.

“If we’re going to be responsible, we have to turn around and figure out how we are going to more rapidly terminate the emissions. We have to cut the emissions that are warming the planet and heading us inexorably toward several tipping points beyond which there is no reverse,” Kerry said.
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Pickleball is the fastest growing sport in the United States. It’s simple and can be played in small spaces so popular with all age groups. But not everyone loves it. Maxim Moskalkov reports.
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Cindy Powers was driven into bankruptcy by 19 life-saving abdominal operations. Medical debt started stacking up for Lindsey Vance after she crashed her skateboard and had to get nine stitches in her chin. And for Misty Castaneda, open heart surgery for a disease she’d had since birth saddled her with $200,000 in bills.

These are three of an estimated 100 million Americans who have amassed nearly $200 billion in collective medical debt — almost the size of Greece’s economy — according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Now lawmakers in at least a dozen states and the U.S. Congress have pushed legislation to curtail the financial burden that’s pushed many into untenable situations: forgoing needed care for fear of added debt, taking a second mortgage to pay for cancer treatment or slashing grocery budgets to keep up with payments.

Some of the bills would create medical debt relief programs or protect personal property from collections, while others would lower interest rates, keep medical debt from tanking credit scores or require greater transparency in the costs of care.

In Colorado, House lawmakers approved a measure Wednesday that would lower the maximum interest rate for medical debt to 3%, require greater transparency in costs of treatment and prohibit debt collection during an appeals process.

If it became law, Colorado would join Arizona in having one of the lowest medical debt interest rates in the country. North Carolina lawmakers have also started mulling a 5% interest ceiling.

But there are opponents. Colorado Republican state Sen. Janice Rich said she worried that the proposal could “constrain hospitals’ debt collecting ability and hurt their cash flow.”

For patients, medical debt has become a leading cause of personal bankruptcy, with an estimated $88 billion of that debt in collections nationwide, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Roughly 530,000 people reported falling into bankruptcy annually due partly to medical bills and time away from work, according to a 2019 study from the American Journal of Public Health.

Powers’ family ended up owing $250,000 for the 19 life-saving abdominal surgeries. They declared bankruptcy in 2009, then the bank foreclosed on their home.

“Only recently have we begun to pick up the pieces,” said James Powers, Cindy’s husband, during his February testimony in favor of Colorado’s bill.

In Pennsylvania and Arizona, lawmakers are considering medical debt relief programs that would use state funds to help eradicate debt for residents. A New Jersey proposal would use federal funds from the American Rescue Plan Act to achieve the same end.

Bills in Florida and Massachusetts would protect some personal property — such as a car that is needed for work — from medical debt collections and force providers to be more transparent about costs. Florida’s legislation received unanimous approval in House and Senate committees on its way to votes in both chambers.

In Colorado, New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Massachusetts and the U.S. Congress lawmakers are contemplating bills that would bar medical debt from being included on consumer reports, thereby protecting debtors’ credit scores.

Castaneda, who was born with a congenital heart defect, found herself $200,000 in debt when she was 23 and had to have surgery. The debt tanked her credit score and, she said, forced her to rely on her emotionally abusive husband’s credit.

For over a decade Castaneda wanted out of the relationship, but everything they owned was in her husband’s name, making it nearly impossible to break away. She finally divorced her husband in 2017.

“I’m trying to play catch-up for the last 20 years,” said Castaneda, 45, a hairstylist from Grand Junction on Colorado’s Western Slope.

Medical debt isn’t a strong indicator of people’s credit-worthiness, said Isabel Cruz, policy director at the Colorado Consumer Health Initiative.

While buying a car beyond your means or overspending on vacation can partly be chalked up to poor decision making, medical debt often comes from short, acute-care treatments that are unexpected — leaving patients with hefty bills that exceed their budgets.

For both Colorado bills — to limit interest rates and remove medical debt from consumer reports — a spokesperson for Democratic Gov. Jared Polis said the governor will “review these policies with a lens towards saving people money on health care.”

While neither bill garnered stiff political opposition, a spokesperson for the Colorado Hospital Association said the organization is working with sponsors to amend the interest rate bill “to align the legislation with the multitude of existing protections.”

The association did not provide further details.

To Vance, protecting her credit score early could have had a major impact. Vance’s medical debt began at age 19 from the skateboard crash, and then was compounded when she broke her arm soon after. Now 39, she has never been able to qualify for a credit card or car loan. Her in-laws cosigned for her Colorado apartment.

“My credit identity was medical debt,” she said, “and that set the tone for my life.”
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Editor’s note: Here is a look at immigration-related news around the U.S. this week. Questions? Tips? Comments? Email the VOA immigration team: ImmigrationUnit@voanews.com. 

Growing Number of Migrants from China Arriving at US-Mexico Border

According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, 4,366 migrants from China encountered Border Patrol officials after crossing the southern border without authorization from October 2022 to February 2023. That compares with the 421 migrants who were encountered during the same period in 2021 and 2022. VOA Mandarin Service’s Tracy Wen Liu and VOA’s immigration reporter Aline Barros have the story. 

UN Warns of Spike in Migrants Crossing the Darien Gap

Two United Nations agencies said Thursday that more than 100,000 migrants have made the treacherous journey through the Darien Gap between Panama and Colombia this year trying to reach the United States. The U.N. refugee agency and the International Organization for Migration said in a joint statement that the spike in numbers is a “worrying increase.” VOA News reports.  

US, Panama and Colombia Aim to Stop Darien Gap Migration

The United States, Panama and Colombia announced Tuesday that they will launch a 60-day campaign aimed at halting illegal migration through the treacherous Darien Gap, where the flow of migrants has multiplied this year. Details on how the governments will try to curb the flow of migrants that reached nearly 90,000 in just the first three months of this year through the dense, lawless jungle were not provided in the joint statement. The Associated Press reports.

US to Test Faster Asylum Screenings for Migrants Crossing Border Illegally

The Biden administration this week was to begin testing faster asylum screenings for migrants caught crossing the U.S.-Mexico border illegally, the Department of Homeland Security said on April 8, part of preparations for the end of COVID-19 border restrictions in May. Reuters reports.

Head of Mexico’s Immigration Agency Under Criminal Investigation

The office of Mexico’s attorney general says it has launched a criminal investigation into the head of the country’s immigration agency in connection with last month’s deadly fire at an immigrant detention facility. A statement released late Tuesday night said National Immigration Institute chief Francisco Garduno failed to take steps to prevent the fire at the agency’s facility in the city of Ciudad Juarez that killed 40 migrants on March 27. VOA News reports. 

US, Cuba to Hold Fresh Round of Migration Talks This Week

The United States and Cuba will hold another round of migration talks Wednesday, officials said, as the Biden administration braces for the end of COVID-era border restrictions that have blocked Cubans in recent months from crossing into the U.S. from Mexico. Reuters reports. 

Biden Seeks Expanded Health Insurance Access for DACA Participants

The Biden administration is seeking to allow immigrants illegally brought to the United States as children greater access to health insurance through federal programs, the White House said on Thursday. The proposal would allow participants in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program to access health insurance under Medicaid and Affordable Care Act exchanges, it said. Reuters reports.

VOA Day in Photos

Migrants are identified by Italian authorities as they disembark from a ship in the Sicilian port of Catania.

Immigration around the world

First Quarter Was Deadly for Migrants in Mediterranean, UN Says

The first three months of 2023 were the deadliest first quarter in six years for migrants crossing the central Mediterranean Sea in smugglers’ boats, the U.N. migration agency reported Wednesday, citing delays by nations in initiating rescues as a contributing factor. The Associated Press reports.

VOA60 Africa – Tunisia: Police destroy makeshift migrant camp outside U.N. human rights office

Asylum-seekers sift through the remains of a makeshift camp outside the U.N. human rights office in Tunis after police destroyed it Tuesday. Sub-Saharan migrants have been targeted since February, when President Kais Saied blamed them for the nation’s crimes.

VOA60 Africa – Mediterranean: Boat with 400 migrants in distress

German humanitarian organization Sea-Watch said its reconnaissance aircraft, Sea Bird 2, on Sunday filmed a boat in distress in the central Mediterranean with hundreds of people on board and the group has seen at least 19 boats in distress in recent days.

News Brief

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services updates its policy on how to handle documents for “persons eligible for and recipients of victim-based immigration relief, specifically Violence Against Women Act self-petitioners as well as those who are seeking or currently hold T or U nonimmigrant status (protected persons).”
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