The Trump administration last month paused funding for the U.S. Agency for International Development amid reports that it may be put under State Department control as the president seeks to align it with his “America First” policy. Britain’s recent similar move to restructure its foreign aid could offer lessons for Washington. Henry Ridgwell reports from London.
…

Paris — U.S. Vice President JD Vance told Europeans on Tuesday their “massive” regulations on artificial intelligence could strangle the technology, and rejected content moderation as “authoritarian censorship.”

The mood on AI has shifted as the technology takes root, from one of concerns around safety to geopolitical competition, as countries jockey to nurture the next big AI giant.

Vance, setting out the Trump administration’s America First agenda, said the United States intended to remain the dominant force in AI and strongly opposed the European Union’s far tougher regulatory approach.

“We believe that excessive regulation of the AI sector could kill a transformative industry,” Vance told an AI summit of CEOs and heads of state in Paris.

“We feel very strongly that AI must remain free from ideological bias and that American AI will not be co-opted into a tool for authoritarian censorship,” he added.

Vance criticized the “massive regulations” created by the EU’s Digital Services Act, as well as Europe’s online privacy rules, known by the acronym GDPR, which he said meant endless legal compliance costs for smaller firms.

“Of course, we want to ensure the internet is a safe place, but it is one thing to prevent a predator from preying on a child on the internet, and it is something quite different to prevent a grown man or woman from accessing an opinion that the government thinks is misinformation,” he said.

European lawmakers last year approved the bloc’s AI Act, the world’s first comprehensive set of rules governing the technology.

Vance is leading the American delegation at the Paris summit.

Vance also appeared to take aim at China at a delicate moment for the U.S. technology sector.

Last month, Chinese startup DeepSeek freely distributed a powerful AI reasoning model that some said challenged U.S. technology leadership. It sent shares of American chip designer Nvidia down 17%.

“From CCTV to 5G equipment, we’re all familiar with cheap tech in the marketplace that’s been heavily subsidized and exported by authoritarian regimes,” Vance said.

But he said that “partnering with them means chaining your nation to an authoritarian master that seeks to infiltrate, dig in and seize your information infrastructure. Should a deal seem too good to be true? Just remember the old adage that we learned in Silicon Valley: if you aren’t paying for the product, you are the product.”

Vance did not mention DeepSeek by name. There has been no evidence of information being able to surreptitiously flow through the startup’s technology to China’s government, and the underlying code is freely available to use and view. However, some government organizations have reportedly banned DeepSeek’s use.

Speaking after Vance, French President Emmanuel Macron said that he was fully in favor of trimming red tape, but he stressed that regulation was still needed to ensure trust in AI, or people would end up rejecting it. “We need a trustworthy AI,” he said.

European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen also said the EU would cut red tape and invest more in AI.

In a bilateral meeting, Vance and von der Leyen were also likely to discuss Trump’s substantial increase of tariffs on steel.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was expected to address the summit on Tuesday. A consortium led by Musk said on Monday it had offered $97.4 billion to buy the nonprofit controlling OpenAI.

Altman promptly posted on X: “no thank you but we will buy twitter for $9.74 billion if you want.”

The technology world has closely watched whether the Trump administration will ease recent antitrust enforcement that had seen the U.S. sue or investigate the industry’s biggest players.

Vance said the U.S. would champion American AI — which big players develop — he also said: “Our laws will keep Big Tech, little tech, and all other developers on a level playing field.”
…

A wintry mess was bearing down on mid-Atlantic states Tuesday with forecasts of significant snow and ice accumulations prompting warnings of potential power outages.

The National Weather Service said travel would become treacherous Tuesday through early Wednesday in much of Virginia and West Virginia.

Virginia Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin on Monday declared a state of emergency ahead of the storm, allowing state agencies to assist local governments. Schools and government offices throughout Virginia were set to be closed Tuesday.

The heaviest snow, up to 25.4 centimeters, was forecast in portions of northern and central Virginia and eastern West Virginia. Ice accumulations could range from a glaze in Kentucky and West Virginia to 1.3 centimeters in the Roanoke Valley of southwest Virginia, the weather service said. Power outages and tree damage were likely in places with heavy ice buildups.

“Did you think winter was over? Think again!” the weather service’s office in Blacksburg, Virginia, said in a post on the social media platform X.

Appalachian Power, which serves 1 million customers in West Virginia, Virginia and Tennessee, said it has requested 700 additional workers from neighboring utilities to assist with problems by Tuesday morning.

In northern Virginia, the National Park Service closed a portion of the George Washington Memorial Parkway, a narrow highway that winds its way through woods along the Potomac River. The parkway connects multiple small national park sites and has historically been a trouble spot during winter storms for abandoned cars that created a slalom course for snowplows and other vehicles.

Winter storm warnings extended from Kentucky to southern New Jersey, and a flood watch was posted for a wide swath of Kentucky, Tennessee, southwest Virginia and northern Georgia. The snow-and-ice mix was expected to become all rain as temperatures climb by Wednesday afternoon.

A separate storm system is set to bring heavy snow from Kansas and Missouri to the Great Lakes on Wednesday, the weather service said.

Dangerous cold was forecast Tuesday from an Arctic air mass stretching from Portland, Oregon, to the Great Lakes.

The temperature was expected to bottom out Tuesday morning at minus 36 degrees Celsius in Butte, Montana, where over the past two winters at least five people died due to cold exposure, said Brayton Erickson, executive director of the Butte Rescue Mission. Advocates for the homeless in the city of about 35,000 planned to be out on the streets distributing sleeping bags, jackets, mittens and other cold weather gear to anyone who needs them, Erickson said.

“When it gets this cold, we kind of pull out all the stops,” he said. “Having all those resources available literally can save their life or keep them from frostbite.”

 
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U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday announced a 25% tariff on aluminum and steel tariffs that could hit Canada and Mexico, the top two exporters to the U.S., the hardest. Trump’s ongoing trade offensive also provoked chiding from the U.S.’ top competitor, China. VOA correspondent Anita Powell reports from the White House.
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FLAGSTAFF, ARIZONA — Scientists have long suspected that Mexican long-nosed bats migrate through southeastern Arizona, but without capturing and measuring the night-flying creatures, proof has been elusive. 

Researchers say they now have a way to tell the endangered species apart from other bats by analyzing saliva the nocturnal mammals leave behind when sipping nectar from plants and residential hummingbird feeders. 

Bat Conservation International, a nonprofit group working to end the extinction of bat species worldwide, teamed up with residents from southeastern Arizona, southwestern New Mexico and west Texas for the saliva-swabbing campaign. 

The samples of saliva left along potential migration routes were sent to a lab at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, where researchers looked for environmental DNA — or eDNA — to confirm that the bats cycle through Arizona and consider the region their part-time home. 

The Mexican long-nosed bat has been listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act since 1988, and is the only one in Arizona with that federal protection. It is an important species for pollinating cactus, agave and other desert plants. 

Officials from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Arizona Game and Fish Department announced the discovery in late January. While expanding Arizona’s list of bat species to 29 is exciting, wildlife managers say the use of this novel, noninvasive method to nail it down also deserves to be celebrated. 

“If we were trying to identify the species in the absence of eDNA, biologists could spend hours and hours trying to catch one of these bats, and even then, you’re not guaranteed to be successful,” said Angie McIntire, a bat specialist for the Arizona’s Game and Fish Department. “By sampling the environment, eDNA gives us an additional tool for our toolkit.” 

Every spring, Mexican long-nosed bats traverse a lengthy migratory path north from Mexico into the southwestern U.S., following the sweet nectar of their favorite blooming plants like breadcrumbs. They return along the same route in the fall. 

The bat conservation group recruited ordinary citizens for the mission, giving them kits to swab samples from bird feeders throughout the summer and fall. 

Inside the university lab, microbiology major Anna Riley extracted the DNA from hundreds of samples and ran them through machines that ultimately could detect the presence of bats. Part of the work involved a steady hand, with Riley using a syringe of sorts to transfer diluted DNA into tiny vials before popping them into a centrifuge. 

Sample after sample, vial after vial, the meticulous work took months. 

“There’s a big database that has DNA sequences of not every animal but most species, and so we could compare our DNA sequences we got from these samples to what’s in the database,” Riley said. “A little bit like a Google search — you’ve got your question, you’re asking Google, you plug it into the database, and it turns up you’ve got a bat, and you have this kind of bat.” 

Kristen Lear, of the conservation group, said the collection of eDNA has been used successfully for determining the presence of other kinds of wildlife in various environments, so the group proposed trying it with bats. 

“They do apparently leave behind a lot of spit on these plants and hummingbird feeders,” Lear said.
…

President Donald Trump’s point person for making rapid changes at U.S. governmental agencies is Elon Musk, the chief executive of carmaker Tesla and aerospace company SpaceX. Congressional Democrats say that the Trump-backed multibillionaire’s attempt to reduce federal government spending is wrong. Michelle Quinn looks at what Musk has been doing in Washington.
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ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A federal court on Sunday blocked the Trump administration from sending three Venezuelan immigrants held in New Mexico to Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba as part of the president’s immigration crackdown.

In a legal filing earlier in the day, lawyers for the men said the detainees “fit the profile of those the administration has prioritized for detention in Guantanamo, i.e. Venezuelan men detained in the El Paso area with (false) charges of connections with the Tren de Aragua gang.”

It asked a U.S. District Court in New Mexico for a temporary restraining order blocking their transfer, adding that “the mere uncertainty the government has created surrounding the availability of legal process and counsel access is sufficient to authorize the modest injunction.”

During a brief hearing, Judge Kenneth J. Gonzales granted the temporary order, which was opposed by the government, said Jessica Vosburgh, an attorney for the three men.

“It’s short term. This will get revisited and further fleshed out in the weeks to come,” Vosburgh told The Associated Press.

A message seeking comment was left for U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement.

The filing came as part of a lawsuit on behalf of the three men filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights, the American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico, and Las Americas Immigrant Advisory Center.

The Tren de Aragua gang originated in a lawless prison in the central Venezuelan state of Aragua more than a decade ago and has expanded in recent years as millions of desperate Venezuelans fled President President Nicolás Maduro ‘s rule and migrated to other parts of Latin America or the U.S.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said last week that flights of detainees had landed at Guantanamo. Immigrant rights groups sent a letter Friday demanding access to people who have been sent there, saying the base should not be used as a “legal black hole.”

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Wednesday that more than 8,000 people have been arrested in immigration enforcement actions since Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration.

Trump has vowed to deport millions of the estimated 11.7 million people in the U.S. illegally.
…

The Philadelphia Eagles dominated the Kansas City Chief in this year’s Super Bowl, defeating the reigning champions by a score of 40-22.

The Chiefs had been slightly favored to win the game, going into the American football showdown with hopes of winning their third consecutive National Football League title.

But the Eagles held the Chiefs scoreless until late in the third quarter. By that time, the Philadelphia team already had 34 points on the board at the Caesars Superdome in New Orleans.

Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts was named the game’s MVP.

President Donald Trump attended the matchup, the first sitting U.S. president to do so. Before the game, the president issued a press release stating that “football is America’s most popular sport—for good reason—it fosters a sense of national unity, bringing families, friends, and fans together and strengthening communities.”

“This annual tradition transcends our differences and personifies our shared patriotic values of family, faith, and freedom heroically defended by our military service members, law enforcement officers, and first responders,” he noted.

The Super Bowl was estimated to attract more than 120 million viewers, with 30-second advertisements costing a record $8 million. 

Before the kickoff, a ceremony honored those killed and wounded in a truck-ramming New Year’s Day terror attack in New Orleans on Bourbon Street, as well as first responders.
…

New York — They’re at the top of their sport. They run, weave and go airborne. And they went all out for this weekend’s championship.

Sorry — no, they’re not the Chiefs or the Eagles. They’re the agility dogs at the Westminster Kennel Club show, which began Saturday by showcasing agility and other dog sports.

Dog folk often call Westminster the Super Bowl of dog shows, and the comparison might be especially fitting this year. The United States’ most prestigious canine competition opened on the same weekend as pro football’s Super Bowl, which features the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles on Sunday. The rare coincidence comes after both competitions’ dates shifted in recent years.

“I always said I wanted people to call the Super Bowl ‘the Westminster of football,’ ” quipped dog expert David Frei, who has a foot in both worlds: He used to work in publicity for the Denver Broncos and the San Francisco 49ers.

The Westminster of football? Well, Westminster is 90 years older than the Super Bowl, after all.

And there have been some other connections between the gridiron and Westminster’s green carpet. Los Angeles Chargers defensive end Morgan Fox co-owns a French bulldog who came within a smushy-nose length of winning at Westminster in 2022 and was a finalist the following year. (Many other NFL players also have dogs for fun, if not for show, including Kansas City quarterback Patrick Mahomes.)

Whatever the analogy, being at Westminster was a triumph for Guster the rescue pug. He and owner Steve Martin took up agility after Guster started wagging his tail and tilting his head while they watched the Westminster agility contest on TV several years ago.

“We never thought we’d be here. And now we’re here,” Martin, of Austin, Texas, said Saturday.

A border collie named Vanish won the contest, which featured about 300 champion-level canines.

“She’s very intuitive, very natural — probably smarter than me,” handler Emily Klarman of Doylestown, Pennsylvania, told a Fox interviewer in the ring. While Klarman said the win initially left her speechless, Vanish had plenty to say, barking enthusiastically.

A special award for the best mixed-breed competitor went to Gable, handled by Kayla Feeney of Lima, New York.

Westminster added agility in 2014, marking the show’s first event with mixed-breed dogs since the 1800s. Last year saw the first mixed-breed agility winner, a border collie-papillon mix named Nimble, who competed again this year.

She’s an intentional blend of two top agility breeds. But the sport also draws rescue dogs such as an Australian cattle dog mix named Sawyer, or Soy Sauce for short.

His owner, Dr. Amy Ondeyka, has a complicated work schedule as a New Jersey emergency room doctor and EMS medical director. But she made time for agility after realizing she’d adopted a super-energetic dog who opens cabinets, unzips things and otherwise causes domestic mayhem when bored.

“He’s always exciting — he does ridiculous things,” Ondeyka said as he intermittently leaped into her arms during what was ostensibly down time between agility runs. “We have fun, regardless what happens.”

While some dogs do agility to burn off energy, the sport helps others come out of their shell. Tully, a lanky, shaggy, mostly Labradoodle mix, used to be “afraid of the world” but now is excited to go to agility classes and competitions, owner Carla Rash said.

Saturday’s competitors were a spectrum of dogdom, from a great Dane to a 7-pound (0.9-kilogramg) papillon, and they included such lesser-known breeds as a large Munsterlander and a Danish-Swedish farmdog.

They navigated jumps, tunnels, ramps and other obstacles as handlers gave hand and voice signals. The object is to be the fastest, without making mistakes.

Regardless of scores, some dogs won cheers from spectators. There was a bichon frise with its tail dyed blue, a standard poodle that took a leisurely trot across an A-frame ramp, and a curly-coated mix that apparently had second thoughts about the weave poles, circled around and went through them again.

Westminster’s traditional, breed-by-breed judging happens Monday and Tuesday, capped by the coveted best in show prize Tuesday night.

That’s for purebreds only, but mixed-breed dogs also were eligible for Saturday’s obedience competition, an event that Westminster added in 2016. The top prize went to Willie, an Australian shepherd who also won in 2022 with handler Kathleen Keller of Flemington, New Jersey.

Steve Wesler sported a Philadelphia Eagles sweatshirt as he cheered on partner Jennifer Weinik and Cookie, her Belgian Malinois. They came away with a ribbon, which Wesler deemed more exciting than the Super Bowl — because he was confident the Eagles would prevail.

There are no cash prizes at Westminster, but the agility and obedience winners each get to direct a $5,000 donation to a training club or the American Kennel Club Humane Fund.

The show also featured Westminster’s first demonstration of flyball, a canine relay race that involves retrieving a ball.

“It’s a lot of organized chaos,” Hillary Brown said after competing with her Boston terrier, Paxil. His teammates on a York, Pennsylvania-based squad called Clean Break were a standard poodle, a border collie and a whippet-border collie mix.

“It’s a blast. The dogs love it,” Brown said.
…

New York — On a quiet winter weekend at the box office, DreamWorks Animation’s “Dog Man” chased its own tail, repeating as the top movie in theaters. 

The animated Universal Pictures release, adapted from Dav Pilkey’s popular graphic novel series, collected $13.7 million in ticket sales, according to studio estimates Sunday. Both new releases — the Ke Huy Quan action movie “Love Hurts” and the Valentine’s Day-themed slasher “Heart Eyes”— were left nipping at the heels of “Dog Man.” 

Hollywood often largely punts Super Bowl weekend to the small screen. Last year, Apple’s much-derided “Argylle” debuted on the same weekend. Instead, the movie industry spends more energy pitching its blockbusters in trailers for the huge football audience on TV. 

It wasn’t a banner weekend for “Dog Man.” It fell steeply, dropping 62% in it second weekend. But with a production budget of $40 million, “Dog Man” has already tallied $54.1 million domestically in two weeks. 

Coming in second was Spyglass Media Group’s “Heart Eyes,” released by Sony. The horror-rom-com mashup earned $8.5 million from 3,102 locations. Reviews have been good for the film, directed by Josh Ruben and starring Oliva Holt and Mason Gooding, though audiences were less impressed. Moviegoers gave it a “B-” CinemaScore. Spyglass made “Heart Eyes” for $18 million. 

“Love Hurts,” the action comedy from 87North Productions (“John Wick,” “The Fall Guy”), debuted with a paltry $5.8 million in 3,055 theaters. In his first big movie role since his Oscar-winning comeback in “Everything All at Once,” Ke Huy Quan stars as a mild-mannered realtor with a hitman past. Ariana DeBose co-stars. It, too, was modestly budgeted at $18 million. Audiences, however, mostly rejected the movie, giving “Love Hurts” a “C+” CinemaScore. 

Next weekend should bring Hollywood its biggest box-office weekend of the year with the release of Marvel’s “Captain America: Brave New World” and Sony’s “Paddington in Peru.” 

Final domestic figures will be released Monday. Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore: 

1. “Dog Man,” $13.7 million. 

2. “Heart Eyes,” $8.5 million. 

3. “Love Hurts,” $5.8 million. 

4. “Mufasa: The Lion King,” $3.9 million. 

5. “Companion,” $3 million. 

6. “One of Them Days,” $3 million. 

7. “Becoming Led Zeppelin,” $2.6 million. 

8. “Flight Risk,” $2.6 million. 

9. “Sonic the Hedgehog,” $1.8 million. 

10. “Moana 3,” $1.5 million.
    …

The Petersen family’s two-bedroom apartment in northern California is starting to feel small. 

Four-year-old Jerrik’s toy monster trucks are everywhere in the 1,100-square-foot unit in Campbell, just outside of San Jose. And it’s only a matter of time before 9-month-old Carolynn starts amassing more toys, adding to the disarray, said her mother, Jenn Petersen. 

The 42-year-old chiropractor had hoped she and her husband, Steve, a 39-year-old dental hygienist, would have bought a house by now. But when they can afford a bigger place, it will have to be another rental. Petersen has done the math: With mortgage rates and home prices stubbornly high, there’s no way the couple, who make about $270,000 a year and pay about $2,500 in monthly rent, can afford a home anywhere in their area. 

According to October data from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, a San Jose family with a median income of $156,700 would need to spend 80% of their income on housing — including an $8,600 monthly mortgage payment — to own a median-priced $1.54 million home. That’s far higher than the general rule of thumb that people should pay no more than 30% of their income on a mortgage or rent. 

Moving out of state is out of the question for the Petersens — they have strong family ties to the area and their income would plummet if they move to a lower cost-of-living area. “I’m not willing to give up my job and close connections with my family for a house,” Petersen said. 

The issue is widespread and near historic highs nationally: As of last fall, the median homeowner in the U.S. was paying 42% of their income on homeownership costs, according to the Atlanta Fed. Four years ago, that percentage was 28% and had not previously reached 38% since late 2007, just before the housing market crash. 

“The American dream, as our parents knew it, doesn’t exist anymore,” Petersen said. “The whole idea that you get a house after you graduate college, get a steady job and get married? I’ve done most of those milestones. But the homeownership part? That just doesn’t fit financially.” 

Supply lags demand

First-time homeowners are getting older. The same is true for an increasing number of American families. 

In 2024, the median first-time homebuyer was 38 years old, a jump from age 35 the previous year, according to a recent report by the National Association of Realtors. That’s significantly above historic norms, when median first-time buyers hovered between 30 and 32 years old from 1993 to 2018. 

The biggest driver of this trend, experts said, is simple: There are far too few houses on the market to match pent-up demand, driving prices past the point of affordability for many people who are relatively early in their careers. Coupled with high mortgage rates, many have concluded that renting is their only option. 

“Wage growth hasn’t kept up with the increase in home prices and interest rates,” said Domonic Purviance, who studies housing at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta in Atlanta, Georgia. “Even though people are making more money, home prices are increasing at a faster rate.” 

That gap has left many out of the housing market, which for generations has been a way for Americans to build equity and wealth that they can pass down or leverage to buy a larger home. It’s also led to widespread worries about housing in the United States. About 7 in 10 voters under age 45 said they were “very” concerned about the cost of housing in their community, according to AP VoteCast, a survey of more than 120,000 voters in the 2024 election. 

Is the dream going to fade? 

Brian McCabe, a sociology professor at Georgetown University, said he frequently tells his students that “there are few things that all Americans agree on, but one of them is that they’d rather own a home than rent.” 

McCabe said homeownership, especially as a wealth-building tool, is the right move for many, especially if the owner intends to be in one place for a long time. But he also said many are realizing that not owning a home has its advantages, too — it gives people more flexibility to move and allows them to live in exciting neighborhoods they would not be able to afford to buy property in. 

McCabe said millennials are getting married later, having children later, have a stronger desire to stay in cities and, especially due to remote work, value the flexibility of being able to move with ease — all of which he said could prompt an end to the notion that homeownership is the “apex of the American dream.” 

“The big question is whether we see the sheen of homeownership start to fade,” McCabe said. “It’s such an interesting cultural marker: Why is owning a home the pinnacle for so many people?” 

It’s a question Petersen wrestles with because she knows any three-bedroom home she found in her area would leave her family “house poor.” 

“I used to subscribe to the idea that owning a house is just a natural milestone you have to reach,” she said. “At some point, though, what are you sacrificing by just owning a house and gaining equity? I want to be able to travel with my kids. I want to be able to sign them up for extracurriculars. How are we supposed to do that if we’re paying a mortgage that’s most of our take-home pay?” 

Petersen said she’ll “always hold out a little bit of hope” that homeownership will be in her family’s future. But if they find a townhouse to rent that has space for her kids and fits within their $3,600 monthly rental budget? 

“I’d take that,” she said. 

Cities offer support

Some cities are providing crucial aid to first-time homebuyers 

Lifelong Boston resident Julieta Lopez, 63, spent decades hoping to buy a home but watched as prices became increasingly out of reach. 

“The prices in Boston just got higher and higher and higher and higher,” said Lopez, who works for the city traffic department issuing tickets for parking violations. 

Two years ago, furious to learn that her subsidized apartment’s monthly rent was being hiked to $2,900, Lopez, who earns about $60,000 annually, took out her phone and began searching for government programs that help first-time homebuyers. She was determined to finally own her own place. 

Within months, she had succeeded. Lopez qualified to receive $50,000 from the local Massachusetts Affordable Homeownership Alliance nonprofit and another $50,000 from the city of Boston’s Office of Housing — funds that helped her with a down payment on the $430,000 two-bedroom condominium she shares with her 30-year-old son. She now pays about $2,160 a month on her mortgage.

Lopez knows she is lucky the city has placed such a focus on aiding first-time buyers like herself — Boston has poured more than $24 million into its homeownership assistance programs since Mayor Michelle Wu took office in 2021, helping nearly 700 residents get their first homes. 

But Lopez also feels proud to have her own place after years of working — doing jobs that included everything from telecommunications to health care to electronics. 

“I was determined to have my piece of the pie,” she said. “I felt I deserved that. I’ve always worked. Always. Nonstop.” 
…

TOKYO — Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba expressed optimism on Sunday that his country could avoid higher U.S. tariffs, saying President Donald Trump had recognized Japan’s huge investment in the U.S. and the American jobs that it creates.

At his first White House summit on Friday, Ishiba told public broadcaster NHK, he explained to Trump how many Japanese automakers were creating jobs in the United States.

The two did not specifically discuss auto tariffs, Ishiba said, although he said he did not know whether Japan would be subject to the reciprocal tariffs that Trump has said he plans to impose on imports.

Tokyo has so far escaped the trade war Trump unleashed in his first weeks in office. He has announced tariffs on goods from Canada, Mexico and China, although he postponed the 25% duties on his North American neighbors to allow for talks.

The escalating trade tensions since Trump returned to the White House on Jan. 20 threaten to rupture the global economy.

Ishiba said he believes Trump “recognized the fact Japan has been the world’s largest investor in the United States for five straight years and is therefore different from other countries.”

“Japan is creating many U.S. jobs. I believe (Washington) won’t go straight to the idea of higher tariffs,” he said.

Ishiba voiced optimism that Japan and the U.S. can avoid a tit-for-tat tariff war, stressing that tariffs should be put in place in a way that “benefits both sides.”

“Any action that exploits or excludes the other side won’t last,” Ishiba said. “The question is whether there is any problem between Japan and the United States that warrants imposing higher tariffs,” he added. 

Japan had the highest foreign direct investment in the United States in 2023 at $783.3 billion, followed by Canada and Germany, according to the most recent U.S. Commerce Department data.

Trump pressed Ishiba to close Japan’s $68.5 billion annual trade surplus with Washington but expressed optimism this could be done quickly, given a promise by Ishiba to bring Japanese investment in the U.S. to $1 trillion.

On Sunday, Ishiba identified liquefied natural gas, steel, AI and autos as areas that Japanese companies could invest in.

He also touched on Trump’s promise to look at Nippon Steel investing in U.S. Steel as opposed to buying the storied American company, a planned purchase opposed by Trump and blocked by his predecessor, Joe Biden.

“Investment is being made to ensure that it remains an American company. It will continue to operate under American management, with American employees,” Ishiba said. “The key point is how to ensure it remains an American company. From President Trump’s perspective, this is of utmost importance.”

On military spending, another area where Trump has pressed allies for increases, Ishiba said Japan would not increase its defense budget without first winning public backing.

“It is crucial to ensure that what is deemed necessary is something the taxpayers can understand and support,” he said. 
…

Ukrainians Yevhenia and Kostiantyn Mukhin fled Kherson in 2022 with nothing but a backpack. They made their way to Denver, Colorado, determined to rebuild their lives, but also to spread the joy of Ukrainian culture. Svitlana Prystynska reports the story narrated by Anna Rice.
…

CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA — Groups representing some of South Africa’s white minority responded Saturday to a plan by President Donald Trump to offer them refugee status and resettlement in the United States by saying: thanks, but no thanks.

The plan was detailed in an executive order Trump signed Friday that stopped all aid and financial assistance to South Africa as punishment for what the Trump administration said were “rights violations” by the government against some of its white citizens.

The Trump administration accused the South African government of allowing violent attacks on white Afrikaner farmers and introducing a land expropriation law that enables it to “seize ethnic minority Afrikaners’ agricultural property without compensation.”

The South African government has denied there are any concerted attacks on white farmers and has said that Trump’s description of the new land law is full of misinformation and distortions.

On Saturday, two of the most prominent groups representing Afrikaners said they would not be taking up Trump’s offer of resettlement in the U.S.

“Our members work here, and want to stay here, and they are going to stay here,” said Dirk Hermann, chief executive of the Afrikaner trade union Solidarity, which says it represents about 2 million people. “We are committed to build a future here. We are not going anywhere.”

At the same news conference, Kallie Kriel, the CEO of the Afrikaner lobby group AfriForum, said: “We have to state categorically: We don’t want to move elsewhere.”

Trump’s move to sanction South Africa, a key U.S. trading partner in Africa, came after he and his South African-born adviser Elon Musk accused its Black leadership of having an anti-white stance. But the portrayal of Afrikaners as a downtrodden group that needed to be saved would surprise most South Africans.

“It is ironic that the executive order makes provision for refugee status in the U.S. for a group in South Africa that remains amongst the most economically privileged,” South Africa’s Foreign Ministry said.

There was “a campaign of misinformation and propaganda” aimed at South Africa, the ministry said.

Whites in South Africa still generally have a much better standard of living than Blacks more than 30 years after the end of the apartheid system of white minority rule in 1994. Despite being a small minority, whites still own about 70% of South Africa’s private farmland. A study in 2021 by the South Africa Human Rights Commission said 1% of whites were living in poverty compared with 64% of Blacks.

Trump’s action against South Africa has given international attention to a sentiment among some white South Africans that they are being discriminated against as a form of payback for apartheid. The leaders of the apartheid government were Afrikaners.

Solidarity, AfriForum and others are strongly opposed to the new land expropriation law, saying it will target land owned by whites who have worked to develop that land for years. They also say an equally contentious language law that’s recently been passed seeks to remove or limit their Afrikaans language in schools, while they have often criticized South Africa’s affirmative action policies in business that promote the interests of Blacks as racist laws.

“This government is allowing a certain section of the population to be targeted,” said AfriForum’s Kriel, who thanked Trump for raising the case of Afrikaners.

The South African government says the laws that have been criticized are aimed at the incredibly difficult task of redressing the wrongs of colonialism and then nearly a half-century of apartheid, when Blacks were stripped of their land and almost all their rights.
…

NEW YORK — A violin made in 1714 by the legendary luthier Antonio Stradivari sold for $11.3 million at an auction in New York on Friday, short of estimates that would have made it the most expensive instrument ever sold. 

Sotheby’s auction house had estimated that the “Joachim-Ma Stradivarius” violin could sell for between $12 million and $18 million, with the higher end of the range potentially eclipsing the record-breaking $15.9 million someone paid for another Stradivari violin at auction more than a decade ago. 

The “Joachim-Ma Stradivarius” is regarded as one of Stradivari’s best works, built during his “Golden Period” at the height of his craftsmanship and acoustic mastery, according to the auction house. 

Adding to the intrigue, the violin is believed to have influenced legendary composer Johannes Brahms when he wrote the famed “Violin Concerto in D Major” and was actually played during the concerto’s 1879 premiere. 

“This extraordinary violin represents the pinnacle of craftsmanship and classical music history, its unparalleled sound and storied provenance captivating collectors and musicians alike,” Mari-Claudia Jimenez, chair at Sotheby’s. “The Joachim-Ma Stradivarius garnered global attention, achieving one of the highest prices ever for a musical instrument — an acknowledgment of its rarity and historical importance.” 

$2M increase in seconds

Bidding at Sotheby’s began at $8 million and within seconds shot up to $10 million, as auctioneer Phyllis Kao scanned the room, looking for someone to put up $10.5 million. 

“Am I selling? At $10 million,” she said, looking to potential bidders. 

The room was quiet. 

“Last chance, at $10 million,” she said. “I can sell, and I will, at $10 million, unless you go on.” 

“Sold. $10 million,” she said, banging a gavel. 

The final price includes auction house fees. 

Sale funds scholarships

The name of the instrument comes from two of its famous violin virtuoso owners, Joseph Joachim of Hungary and Si-Hon Ma of China. Ma’s estate gifted the violin to the New England Conservatory in Boston after his death. 

The conservatory will use the proceeds to fund student scholarships. 

“The sale is transformational for future students, and proceeds will establish the largest named endowed scholarship at New England Conservatory,” said Andrea Kalyn, president of New England Conservatory. “It has been an honor to have the Joachim-Ma Stradivari on campus, and we are eager to watch its legacy continue on the world stage.” 
…

The wreckage of a small commuter plane missing in Alaska has been found, Coast Guard officials said Friday.  All 10 people aboard the plane – nine passengers and a pilot – are dead, according to media reports.

Coast Guard spokesman Mike Salerno said rescuers saw the crash from their helicopter as they flew over the Cessna 208 Caravan’s last known location. Two rescue swimmers were lowered to investigate the scene, Salerno said.

Several groups were involved in the search for the plane, including the Alaska State Troopers the U.S. Coast Guard, Alaska Air National Guard, Alaska Army National Guard and local search teams.

Authorities said a Jayhawk helicopter was brought in Friday morning to help with the search.

The FBI provided technical assistance, including cellphone analysis to help locate the aircraft.

The Bering Air flight was traveling in western Alaska, just south of the Artic Circle, from Unalakleet to Nome. Alaska State Troopers said they were notified Thursday at 4 p.m. about the missing plane.

The U.S. Coast Guard said on X the flight’s last known position was 19 kilometers offshore.

Early Friday, the Nome fire department posted on X that it was conducting a ground search, but weather and visibility conditions were hampering the department’s air search. The department urged people not to form their own search parties because of hazardous weather conditions in the region, which is prone to sudden snow squalls and high winds.

Airplanes are often the only method of transportation between rural Alaskan villages.

Nome is well-known as the last stop in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.

This is the third major U.S. aviation incident in recent days. On Jan. 29, a commercial airliner and an Army helicopter collided near Reagan National Airport outside Washington. Two days later, a medical transport plane crashed into a Philadelphia neighborhood shortly after takeoff, killing six people onboard and another person on the street.

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

WASHINGTON — Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh instructed his Cabinet to prepare for a possible global trade war after U.S. President Donald Trump imposed tariffs of 10% on all Chinese products.

“Prepare for the possibility of a world trade war this year,” the prime minister said at a Cabinet meeting on Wednesday, according to the Dan Tri online newspaper.

Pham spoke after Trump announced a pause in his threatened tariffs against Mexico and Canada for 30 days.

Pham told the Cabinet that the situation in the world and the region was “developing very unpredictably, directly affecting our country, especially on exports, production and business, and the macro economy.”

He emphasized that if a global trade war were to occur, with countries imposing retaliatory tariffs on each other’s exports, it could disrupt supply chains and shrink the country’s export markets, posing significant risks to Vietnam’s economy.

Pham did not specifically mention Trump’s tariffs on products from China, a strategic trade partner and a neighboring country of Vietnam.

There are worries that Trump’s tariffs may cause rising product prices and reduced consumer purchasing power in Vietnam, a highly open economy that relies heavily on exports and foreign direct investment, with China as its leading trade partner.

Vietnamese businesses and consumers are bracing for U.S. tariffs on China to drive up the costs of some goods as the country imports machinery and electronic devices, such as computers and cellphones, from the U.S., with elements or pieces that originated from China.

The country will also likely have to cope with pressure from Beijing to import more Chinese products, analysts said.

“Vietnam may be under pressure to import more products from China as Chinese products are levied higher tariffs by the U.S.,” Nguyen Quang A, an economic political observer and businessman in Hanoi, told VOA this week.

Others predict that as American markets close to Chinese companies, they will increasingly turn to regional trading partners, like Vietnam.

In 2024, Vietnam’s exports to China totaled $61.2 billion. Meanwhile, imports from China surged to $144 billion, according to the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

With the United States, the situation is reversed, with Vietnam’s trade surplus in 2024 exceeding $123 billion, Reuters reported.

According to analysts, Hanoi’s pledges to import more from the U.S. as well as other offsetting measures could spare Vietnam from the Trump administration’s tariffs.

Nguyen noted a major hidden risk for Vietnam is that Chinese companies are setting up factories in Vietnam to import products for re-export, meaning they would repackage Chinese products with minimal labor by cheap Vietnamese workers and export them under the “Made in Vietnam” label to avoid tariffs.

“Chinese businesses [are] moving to Vietnam and are processing their imported materials from China and then labeling their products as ‘Made in Vietnam’ before exporting to the U.S. The U.S. will definitely examine this issue carefully,” Nguyen said.

Vietnam, which has long had geopolitical tensions with China, may face the risk of potential reprisal measures from China as Beijing said it would impose retaliatory tariffs on some U.S. goods as soon as next week.

However, Vietnam seemed to win big in Trump’s first-term trade war with China as the Southeast Asian country attracted manufacturers wanting to avoid Chinese tariffs.

If Trump’s tariffs are extended to Vietnam, the economic effects could ripple through trade balances, exchange rates, supply chains and foreign direct investment, said Vo Tri Thanh, former vice president at the Central Institute for Economic Management and a member of the National Financial and Monetary Policy Advisory Council, writing in Vietnam News.

The sweeping tariffs have triggered the phenomenon of goods being stockpiled in Vietnam and in the region to avoid tax hikes, driving up demand for container shipping and pushing freight costs to new highs.

Despite these pressures, Vietnam may find itself positioned to capitalize on global supply chain shifts, Nguyen Hong Dien, Vietnam’s minister of industry and trade, told Tuoi Tre Online, explaining that the country could attract more investment in high-value sectors.
…

WASHINGTON — A handful of key U.S. intelligence agencies have given most of their employees a chance to walk away, offering them the opportunity to take the deferred resignation option extended to the government’s civilian workforce.

Under the initial rollout of the plan, aimed at drastically reducing the size of the U.S. government, military and security employees were exempt, due to the critical nature of their work in protecting the United States.

But over the past few days, at least five U.S. intelligence agencies have come forward, telling their workforces that they can choose to take the so-called “fork in the road” deal, allowing them to get paid until September while no longer working on a daily basis.

The list includes the CIA, the country’s premiere spy agency, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which is charged with overseeing all 18 U.S. intelligence agencies.

The National Security Agency, which specializes in electronic intelligence gathering, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and the National Reconnaissance Office also confirmed to VOA their participation in the downsizing program.

A CIA spokesperson, speaking on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss the initiative, said it was triggered by the agency’s newly confirmed director, John Ratcliffe, to be more responsive to President Donald Trump’s priorities.

“These moves are part of a holistic strategy to infuse the Agency with renewed energy, provide opportunities for rising leaders to emerge, and better position the CIA to deliver on its mission,” the spokesperson said in a statement.

The other intelligence agencies taking part in the deferred resignation program declined to explain why workers initially seen as critical to U.S. national security are now deemed as expendable. Nor did they answer questions about the impact potential resignations could have on their missions.

The White House National Security Council referred questions about the decision to make the intelligence agencies eligible for the program and the potential impact to the U.S. Office of Management and Budget. OMB has yet to respond to multiple requests for comment.

The move, though, has raised concern among some former intelligence officers and experts who fear the potential reductions could hamper the ability of U.S. intelligence agencies to gain information and insights that are vital to the security of the U.S. homeland.

Daniel Byman, director of the Warfare, Irregular Threats, and Terrorism Program at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the impact on the CIA could be significant.

“If many employees take the option, it risks reducing the tremendous expertise the CIA has built up on a variety of areas,” he told VOA.

“It takes years to develop the operational and analytic expertise to be a good intelligence officer, and losing this would be a significant blow to U.S. capabilities during a turbulent time in the world,” Byman said, noting that proposed job cuts at the FBI could boost U.S. adversaries that “try to exploit U.S. security vulnerabilities and influence U.S. public discourse.”

Senior Democratic lawmakers such as Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Mark Warner have likewise raised concerns — noting even Trump’s hiring freeze exempted national security jobs.

Others describe the push to get U.S. intelligence officials to quit as “crazy.”

“I think that’s a great way to send some of our best talent packing,” said Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi, the ranking member of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party.

“It’s a way to help our adversaries,” Krishnamoorthi told VOA. “I hope that they reconsider this nutty HR [human resources] move and instead try to attract the best and brightest in the intelligence community because we need them.”

But Republican Senator Thom Tillis called such fears “overblown.”

“Really, if people think that special operators and clandestine operators are suddenly going to take it, they don’t understand what’s trying to be happening here,” he told VOA. “What they’re trying to do is probably get less out of the head office and less out of administrative positions, so they can put more into the field.”

“The press is going for the worst-case scenario,” Tillis added. “Most of these people are at the end of their career anyway, and so you’re doing buyouts so that you can bring in new people and right-size.”

Other former officials see an upside to the inclusion of U.S. intelligence agencies in the deferred resignation program, casting it as a clear message to U.S. adversaries to beware.

“What this says to a country like Russia or China or others, [is] Trump is a very strong leader,” said former U.S. Ambassador to NATO Kurt Volker.

“This is something that they did not see with President [Joe] Biden, who is a weak leader in their eyes,” Volker told VOA. “In Trump, they see someone who is willing to go there. He is willing to break crockery. He’s willing to escalate. He’s willing to do what he wants in order to get his will accomplished. That sends a very strong message to adversaries.”

The deferred resignation program’s numerical impact on U.S. intelligence agencies remains unclear.

U.S. officials say that so far, 65,000 of the government’s approximately 2 million employees have chosen to accept the offer, although the number of intelligence agency employees is classified. The individual agencies are unlikely to release data.

The original deadline for government employees — including at the intelligence agencies — to accept the deferred resignation offer was Thursday, but a court order has delayed that until at least Monday.
…

Washington — U.S. employers added just 143,000 jobs last month, but the jobless rate slipped to 4% to start 2025 and the government revised November and December payrolls higher.

The first job report of Donald Trump’s second presidency suggested that he inherited a labor market that is solid but unspectacular. Economists had expected about 170,000 new jobs in January.

It’s a downshift from 2024 which averaged 186,000 new jobs a month, including a surge of 256,000 in December. The unemployment rate is expected to remain low at 4.1%.

The future is cloudier.

A federal judge on Thursday temporarily blocked President Donald Trump’s plan to push out federal workers by offering them financial incentives, yet a federal hiring freeze that Trump imposed January 20 is a “negative for employment growth,’’ Bradley Saunders, an economist at Capital Economics, wrote in a commentary last week.

The freeze came after the Labor Department collected the January jobs numbers, so any impact would be revealed in upcoming employment data.

Likewise, a cold snap that probably increased seasonal layoffs in the Midwest and Northeast occurred late in January and won’t register in government jobs data until the February numbers come out, Saunders wrote.

Economists are also worried about Trump’s threat to wage a trade war against other countries. He’s already imposed a 10% tax on imports from China.

Canada and Mexico — America’s two largest trading partners — remain in his crosshairs, although he gave them a 30-day reprieve from the 25% tariffs he was planning to sock them with on Tuesday, allowing time for negotiations. Trump says that America’s two neighbors and allies haven’t done enough to stem the flow of undocumented immigrants and fentanyl into the United States.

Trump is also ready to slap tariffs on the European Union; pointing to America’s deficit in the trade of goods with the EU, which came to $236 billion last year, he says that Europe treats U.S. exporters unfairly.

The tariffs, which are paid by U.S. importers who generally try to pass along the cost to customers, could rekindle inflation – which has fallen from the four-decade high it reached in mid-2022 but is still stuck above the Fed’s 2% target. If the tariffs push prices higher, the Fed may cancel or postpone the two interest-rate cuts it had forecast for this year. And that would be bad for economic growth and job creation.

The job market already has cooled from the red-hot days of 2021-2023. American payrolls increased by 2.2 million last year, down from 3 million in 2023, 4.5 million in 2022 and a record 7.2 million in 2021 as the economy roared back from COVID-19 lockdowns. The Labor Department also reports that employers are posting fewer jobs. Monthly job openings have tumbled from a record 12.2 million in March 2022, to 7.6 million in December – still a decent number by historical standards.

As the labor market cools, American workers are losing confidence in their ability to find better pay or working conditions by changing jobs. The number of people quitting has fallen from a record 4.5 million near the height of the hiring boom in April 2022, to December’s 3.2 million, which is below pre-pandemic levels.

Still, layoffs remain below pre-pandemic levels, creating an unusual situation: If you are employed, you probably enjoy job security. If you’re looking for one, things have gotten tougher.

The Labor Department also is expected to report annually released revisions Friday that will show job creation from April 2023 through March 2024 wasn’t as strong as originally reported.

A preliminary version of the revisions, released in August, showed that 818,000 fewer jobs were created over those 12 months – lowering average monthly hiring during that span from 242,000 to 174,000. Because they are not final, the August estimates have not yet been added to the official government payroll numbers. The revisions out Friday will become official and part of the historic data.
…

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration presented a plan Thursday to dramatically cut staffing worldwide for U.S. aid projects as part of its dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development, leaving fewer than 300 workers out of thousands.

Late Thursday, federal workers associations filed suit asking a federal court to stop the shutdown, arguing that President Donald Trump lacks the authority to shut down an agency enshrined in congressional legislation.

Two current USAID employees and one former senior USAID official told The Associated Press of the administration’s plan, presented to remaining senior officials of the agency Thursday. They spoke on condition of anonymity due to a Trump administration order barring USAID staffers from talking to anyone outside their agency.

The plan would leave fewer than 300 staffers on the job out of what are currently 8,000 direct hires and contractors. They, along with an unknown number of 5,000 locally hired international staffers abroad, would run the few life-saving programs that the administration says it intends to keep going for the time being.

It was not immediately clear whether the reduction to 300 would be permanent or temporary, potentially allowing more workers to return after what the Trump administration says is a review of which aid and development programs it wants to resume.

The administration earlier this week gave almost all USAID staffers posted overseas 30 days, starting Friday, to return to the U.S., with the government paying for their travel and moving costs. Workers who choose to stay longer, unless they received a specific hardship waiver, might have to cover their own expenses, a notice on the USAID website said late Thursday.

Speaking to reporters Monday in El Salvador, Secretary of State Marco Rubio described the agency as historically “unresponsive” to Congress and the White House, even though the agency, he claimed, is supposed to take its direction from the State Department.

“USAID has a history of sort of ignoring that and deciding that there’s somehow a global charity separate from the national interest,” Rubio said. “These are taxpayer dollars, and we owe the American people assurances that every dollar we are spending abroad is being spent on something that furthers our national interest.”

Speaking in the Dominican Republic on Thursday, Rubio said the U.S. government will continue providing foreign aid.

“But it is going to be foreign aid that makes sense and is aligned with our national interest,” he told reporters.

The Trump administration and billionaire ally Elon Musk, who is running a budget-cutting Department of Government Efficiency, have targeted USAID hardest so far in an unprecedented challenge of the federal government and many of its programs.

Since Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration, a sweeping funding freeze has shut down most of the agency’s programs worldwide, and almost all of its workers have been placed on administrative leave or furloughed. Musk and Trump have spoken of eliminating USAID as an independent agency and moving surviving programs under the State Department.

Democratic lawmakers and others call the move illegal without congressional approval.

The same argument was made by the American Foreign Service Association and the American Federation of Government Employees in their lawsuit, which asks the federal court in Washington to compel the reopening of USAID’s buildings, return its staffers to work and restore funding.

Government officials “failed to acknowledge the catastrophic consequences of their actions, both as they pertain to American workers, the lives of millions around the world, and to U.S. national interests,” the suit says. 
…

STATE DEPARTMENT — The United States has a treaty obligation to protect the Panama Canal if it comes under attack, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Thursday, amid confusion and what Panama has described as “lies” regarding whether U.S. Navy ships can transit the Panama Canal for free.

“I find it absurd that we would have to pay fees to transit a zone that we are obligated to protect in a time of conflict. Those are our expectations. … They were clearly understood in those conversations,” Rubio said during a press conference in Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic. He held talks with Panamanian President Jose Rauu Mulino in Panama City on Sunday.

Rubio was referring to a treaty signed by the U.S. and Panama in 1977.

The top U.S. diplomat told reporters that while he respects Panama’s democratically elected government and acknowledges that it has “a process of laws and procedures that it needs to follow,” the treaty obligation “would have to be enforced by the armed forces the United States, particularly the U.S. Navy.”

The U.S. intends to pursue an amicable resolution, Rubio said.

Mulino posted on X that he planned to speak with U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday afternoon.

On Wednesday, the U.S. State Department said, via a social media post on X, that U.S. government vessels can now transit the Panama Canal without incurring fees, saving the U.S. government millions of dollars annually.

But the Panama Canal Authority, an autonomous agency overseen by the Panamanian government, disputed the U.S. claim, saying that it has made no adjustments to these fees. It also expressed its willingness to engage in dialogue with relevant U.S. officials.

During his weekly press conference on Thursday, the Panamanian president denied his country had reached a deal allowing U.S. warships to transit the Panama Canal for free, saying he completely rejected the State Department’s statement.

Belt and Road Initiative

Meanwhile, Mulino told reporters that the Panamanian Embassy in Beijing had provided China with the required 90-day notice of its decision to exit the Belt and Road Initiative, also known as BRI.

He denied that the decision was made at Washington’s request, saying that he was taking time to assess Panama’s relationship with China and decide what would best serve his country’s interests.

“I don’t know what the incentive was for the person who signed that agreement with China,” Mulino said in Spanish, adding that he did not think the BRI had brought major benefits to his country.

Panama joined China’s BRI under former President Juan Carlos Varela. The agreement was signed in 2018, following Panama’s decision in 2017 to establish its diplomatic relations with China and sever ties with Taiwan.

Rubio has welcomed Panama’s decision not to renew its participation in China’s BRI.

China describes the BRI, which was launched in 2013 under President Xi Jinping, as a vast infrastructure initiative designed to connect multiple continents through land and maritime routes.

The United States has warned that the project is driven by China’s mission to manipulate and undermine the global rules-based trading system for its own benefit.

In Beijing, Chinese officials dismissed what they called the U.S.’s “irresponsible remarks on the Panama Canal issue” and accused Washington of intentionally distorting, attacking and mischaracterizing relevant cooperation.

“China firmly opposes it and made stern demarches to the U.S. side,” said Lin Jian, a spokesperson for China’s Foreign Ministry.

While in Santo Domingo, Rubio met with Dominican President Luis Abinader and Foreign Minister Roberto Alvarez.

The Dominican Republic is the final stop on Rubio’s five-nation tour across Central America and the Caribbean, which focuses on curbing illegal immigration, combating drug trafficking and countering China’s growing influence in the Western Hemisphere.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France Presse and Reuters.
…

white house — The White House on Thursday said it was monitoring a complaint by China to the World Trade Organization that accuses the United States of making “unfounded and false allegations” about China’s role in the fentanyl trade to justify tariffs on Chinese products.

The complaint was made Wednesday, a day after President Donald Trump raised tariffs on Chinese goods by 10%. The White House said the new duties on Chinese goods were aimed at halting the flow of fentanyl opioids and their precursor chemicals.

China said it was imposing retaliatory tariffs on some American goods beginning February 10, including 15% duties on coal and natural gas imports and 10% on petroleum, agricultural equipment, high-emission vehicles and pickup trucks. The country also immediately implemented restrictions on the export of certain critical minerals and launched an antitrust investigation into American tech giant Google.

In the WTO filing, China said the U.S. tariff measures were “discriminatory and protectionist” and violated international trade rules. Beijing has requested a consultation with Washington.

China’s request will kick-start a process within the WTO’s Appellate Body, which has the final say on dispute settlements. A White House official told VOA the administration was monitoring Beijing’s file but did not provide further details.

Analysts say Beijing’s move is largely performative and unlikely to yield much relief. The Appellate Body has been largely paralyzed following the first Trump administration’s 2019 move to block appointments of appellate judges over what it viewed as judicial overreach. The Biden administration continued the policy.

China recognizes the WTO is not going to put a lot of pressure on the United States because Washington is fully capable of blocking any legal process there, said Jeffrey Schott, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

“So instead, I think the Chinese reaction has been moderate in indicating that they will act tit for tat against U.S. trade,” he told VOA.

Schott added that there’s “a desire to keep things cool” and moderate the damage, just as what happened during the first Trump administration when a trade deal was agreed upon after initial retaliatory trade actions.

On the U.S. side, the 10% tariffs against China are much lower than the up to 60% that Trump promised during his presidential campaign, he said. 

Trump-Xi call

Trump imposed import duties on Beijing after delaying his actions to impose 25% tariffs on Mexico and Canada following conversations Monday with their leaders. Tariff critics are hoping that a conversation between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping could lead to similar results.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday that the call “is being scheduled and will happen very soon.”

However, Trump has dismissed the negative impact of China’s tariffs and said he was “in no rush” to speak with Xi.

“We’ll speak to him at the appropriate time,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Tuesday.

Unlike Trump’s deal with Mexico and Canada, an agreement with Beijing is unlikely to come quickly, considering strong bipartisan support for placing tariffs on China because of concern about the influx of illegal drugs and other national security concerns, said Rachel Ziemba, an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security.

“Even if they come up with some kind of agreement to settle this particular tariff or to remove the countertariffs, there will probably be more tariffs on China later in this administration,” she told VOA.

The U.S. Postal Service on Tuesday announced that it was suspending acceptance of inbound packages from China and Hong Kong, closing a loophole that Chinese garment and other consumer goods companies have used in the past. These companies, including Shein and Temu as well as Amazon vendors, bypassed existing U.S. tariffs by shipping to American customers directly from China.

On Wednesday, USPS reversed its decision, saying it would work with Customs and Border Protection on a way to collect the new tariffs. 

The Postal Service “will continue accepting all international inbound mail and packages from China and Hong Kong Posts,” it said. “The USPS and Customs and Border Protection are working closely together to implement an efficient collection mechanism for the new China tariffs to ensure the least disruption to package delivery.”

It is unclear how the fee will be collected in such direct transactions between Chinese sellers and American buyers.

Trump’s trade actions on China, Canada and Mexico, as well as his threat to impose duties on all foreign shipments into the country, including from European allies, have caused confusion and uncertainty across global trade. 

Businesses usually respond to trade uncertainty by holding off on investments or passing on increased costs to customers. But the damage goes beyond small and large businesses domestically and abroad, Ziemba said.

“If one of the U.S. goals is relying less on China and Chinese supply chains for critical minerals, for energy, for other things like that, then the uncertainty about whether there’s going to be tariffs and investment restrictions on its allies fly in the face of that goal,” she said. 
…

WASHINGTON — A bipartisan duo in the U.S. House is proposing legislation to ban the Chinese artificial intelligence app DeepSeek from federal devices, similar to the policy already in place for the popular social media platform TikTok.

Lawmakers Josh Gottheimer, a Democrat from New Jersey, and Darin LaHood, a Republican from Illinois, on Thursday introduced the “No DeepSeek on Government Devices Act,” which would ban federal employees from using the Chinese AI app on government-owned electronics. They cited the Chinese government’s ability to use the app for surveillance and misinformation as reasons to keep it away from federal networks.

“The Chinese Communist Party has made it abundantly clear that it will exploit any tool at its disposal to undermine our national security, spew harmful disinformation, and collect data on Americans,” Gottheimer said in a statement. “We simply can’t risk the CCP infiltrating the devices of our government officials and jeopardizing our national security.”

The proposal comes after the Chinese software company in January published an AI model that performed at a competitive level with models developed by American firms like OpenAI, Meta, Alphabet and others. DeepSeek purported to develop the model at a fraction of the cost of its American counterparts. The announcement raised alarm bells and prompted debates among policymakers and leading Silicon Valley financiers and technologists.

The churn over AI is coming at a moment of heightened competition between the U.S. and China in a range of areas, including technological innovation. The U.S. has levied tariffs on Chinese goods, restricted Chinese tech firms like Huawei from being used in government systems, and banned the export of state of the art microchips thought to be needed to develop the highest end AI models.

Last year, Congress and then-President Joe Biden approved a divestment of the popular social media platform TikTok from its Chinese parent company or face a ban across the U.S.; that policy is now on hold. President Donald Trump, who originally proposed a ban of the app in his first term, signed an executive order last month extending a window for a long-term solution before the legally required ban takes effect.

In 2023, Biden banned TikTok from federal-issued devices.

“The technology race with the Chinese Communist Party is not one the United States can afford to lose,” LaHood said in a statement. “This commonsense, bipartisan piece of legislation will ban the app from federal workers’ phones while closing backdoor operations the company seeks to exploit for access. It is critical that Congress safeguard Americans’ data and continue to ensure American leadership in AI.”

The bill would single out DeepSeek and any AI application developed by its parent company, the hedge fund High-Flyer, as subject to the ban. The legislation includes exceptions for national security and research purposes that would allow federal employers to study DeepSeek.

Some lawmakers wish to go further. A bill proposed last week by Senator Josh Hawley, a Republican from Missouri, would bar the import or export of any AI technology from China writ large, citing national security concerns.
…

WASHINGTON — U.S. President Donald Trump said Thursday that his relationship with religion had “changed” after a pair of failed assassination attempts last year, as he advocated at the National Prayer Breakfast at the Capitol for Americans to “bring God back into our lives.”

Trump joined a Washington tradition of more than 70 years that brings together a bipartisan group of lawmakers for fellowship. He was also to speak at a separate prayer breakfast at a Washington hotel sponsored by a private group.

“I really believe you can’t be happy without religion, without that belief,” Trump said. “Let’s bring religion back. Let’s bring God back into our lives.”

Trump reflected on having a bullet coming close to killing him at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, last year, telling lawmakers and attendees, “It changed something in me, I feel.”

He continued: “I feel even stronger. I believed in God, but I feel, I feel much more strongly about it. Something happened.”

He drew laughs when he expressed gratitude that the episode “didn’t affect my hair.” The president, who’s a nondenominational Christian, called religious liberty “part of the bedrock of American life” and called for protecting it with “absolute devotion.”

Trump and his administration have already clashed with religious leaders, including him disagreeing with the Reverend Mariann Budde’s sermon the day after his inauguration, when she called for mercy for members of the LGBTQ+ community and migrants who are in the country illegally.

Vice President JD Vance, who is Catholic, has sparred with top U.S. leaders of his own church over immigration issues. And many clergy members across the country are worried about the removal of churches from the sensitive-areas list, allowing federal officials to conduct immigration actions at places of worship.

The Republican president made waves at the final prayer breakfast during his first term. That year the gathering came the day after the Senate acquitted him in his first impeachment trial.

Trump in his remarks then threw not-so-subtle barbs at Democratic then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California, who publicly said she prayed for Trump, and Senator Mitt Romney of Utah, who had cited his faith in his decision to vote to convict Trump. “I don’t like people who use their faith as justification for doing what they know is wrong.”

Trump said then in his winding speech, in which he also held up two newspapers with banner headlines about his acquittal. “Nor do I like people who say, ‘I pray for you,’ when they know that that’s not so.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower was the first president to attend the prayer breakfast, in February 1953, and every president since has spoken at the gathering.

Democratic Senator Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire and Republican Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas are the honorary co-chairs of this year’s prayer breakfast.

In 2023, the National Prayer Breakfast split into two dueling events, the one on Capitol Hill largely attended by lawmakers and government officials and a larger private event for thousands at a hotel ballroom.

The split occurred when lawmakers sought to distance themselves from the private religious group that for decades had overseen the bigger event, due to questions about its organization and how it was funded. In 2023 and 2024, President Joe Biden, a Democrat, spoke at the Capitol Hill event, and his remarks were livestreamed to the other gathering.
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