new orleans, louisiana — The sweet sensation of fried shrimp egg rolls dipped in duck sauce. Steam rising from dumplings stuffed with chicken, ginger and cabbage. Smells wafting from a plate of General Tso’s chicken on a bed of beef fried rice. 

These are just some of the dishes coming from the kitchen of Miss Shirley’s Chinese Restaurant on a packed Christmas Day in New Orleans, Louisiana. 

On a holiday when most restaurants are closed so customers and employees can celebrate with their families, many Chinese restaurants in America are gathering places for the country’s estimated 7.6 million Jews. 

“Outside of these walls, maybe people are relaxing with their families, but inside these walls, it’s a celebratory madhouse!” said Carling Lee, whose family owns Miss Shirley’s and has owned and operated Chinese restaurants in and around New Orleans for more than four decades. 

On Christmas and Christmas Eve, “we’re slammed from 11 a.m. until 9 p.m. with people ordering takeout or dining in with groups of five, 10, 15 or even more,” Lee continued. “It’s friends and family, and we’ve even sometimes gotten three rabbis in here at once! Everyone’s just looking for a way to enjoy the day off in their own special way.” 

The Chinese American Restaurant Association estimates there are more than 45,000 Chinese restaurants in the United States. For most that are open during the holidays, Christmas Day is the busiest of the year.  

And although most American Jews don’t know how this specific cuisine became so popular on Christmas, few doubt its ubiquity.  

“Whatever the reason, you can ask pretty much any American Jew what they did on Christmas and their answer will be some version of, ‘Ate Chinese food and went to the movies,'” said Sarah Wexler. “Even if they didn’t, they’ll still probably say it. It’s that ingrained in our culture!” 

The birth of a tradition 

Food writer Jennifer 8. Lee explored the question in her book “The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food.” 

“Between 1880 and 1924, you had an estimated 3 million Jews coming from Eastern Europe, and an amazing 75% of them resided in the Lower East Side neighborhood of Manhattan,” Lee told VOA. “It was a neighborhood that Chinese people already lived near and Chinese restaurants existed in, so you have these two massive immigrant groups living right beside each other.” 

Part of the Americanization process for those Jewish immigrants was going out to dinner. In the early 1900s, Lee said, Chinese restaurants were the place to go. 

“Chinese restaurants were being portrayed in paintings and movies in the 1920s and ’30s, and they were seen as sophisticated and cosmopolitan,” she told VOA. “So if you were trying to impress a girl, for example, you’d bring her to a neighborhood Chinese spot, and you would appear worldly.”  

Convenient, ‘easier to justify’

Rabbi Joshua Plaut is head of the Metropolitan Synagogue of New York and author of “A Kosher Christmas: ‘Tis the Season to be Jewish.” In addition to proximity and popularity, he says there are other reasons specific to Jewish immigrants that explain the popularity of Chinese food. 

“For one, Jews coming from Eastern Europe had fairly strict dietary restrictions and as they acclimated to eating out in America, many had to come to terms with leaving at least some of those restrictions behind,” Plaut said. 

“Chinese food felt a little easier to justify because it didn’t combine meat and dairy the way other common ethnic foods like Italian and Mexican do, and treif — which are non-kosher foods, like from pigs and shellfish — are more hidden in Chinese food,” he continued. “Those ingredients are chopped up or obscured in a dumpling so if you don’t see it, you can claim naivety. We call it ‘safe treif.'” 

Chinese restaurants were also open on Sundays. 

“Historically, a lot of businesses were closed on Sundays because of the Christian calendar,” Plaut told VOA, “but Jews were eager to enjoy the day. Chinese restaurants also had no reason to close, so Jewish families would go and enjoy dim sum. Similarly, when Jewish families were looking for someplace to eat on Christmas, Chinese restaurants were there for them again.” 

Hot food, warm welcome 

Another reason some Jews say they feel connected to Chinese eateries is because they lack much of the religious iconography present at other restaurants. 

“My family was always kind of uncomfortable around all the saints, crosses and crucifixions you find at Italian restaurants,” said Laurie Sklar, a music teacher in Mansfield, Massachusetts. “But Chinese restaurants have always felt so welcoming.” 

Sklar said she’s eaten Chinese food on Christmas Day for as long as she can remember, and that her parents did the same with their parents. 

“We were on a first-name basis with the owner of our local Chinese place,” she said. “He’d give us extra ice cream when we went. It felt like it was our special place, and to this day Chinese food feels as Jewish to me as matzo ball soup.” 

It’s a tradition that, after more than a century, continues to grow. 

“My 5-year-old son thinks Chinese food on Christmas is what we ‘do’ on Christmas, no different than fasting on Yom Kippur,” explained Joel Tietolman, who runs Mile End Delicatessen in New York City, which has been celebrating December 24 and 25 with a special Chinese menu for 13 years. “It’s truly become part of Jewish identity in North America.” 

Kung Pao on Christmas

Across the country in San Francisco, California, Lisa Geduldig has hosted the Kung Pao Kosher Comedy show during the Christmas holiday season since 1993. 

Thousands of guests attend the show over several nights at the Imperial Palace Restaurant, featuring a Chinese food banquet and Jewish comedians. 

“It’s a place for those who might feel ‘other’ during the Christmas season to gather together as a community and celebrate in a secular way,” Geduldig told VOA. “We’ve had Jewish guests who have been coming for decades, but we also have non-Jews who are looking for something fun to do and don’t want to be alone on Christmas.” 

That otherness is something both American Jews and Chinese Americans can relate to during the country’s biggest religious holiday. Hillary Saunders, an environmental scientist in Albany, California, admitted it was a familiar feeling for her as a child. 

“Growing up I felt very lonely on Christmas. I remember the constant Christmas music made me feel so isolated,” she said. “But knowing that Jews have this tradition, too, that you can go into a Chinese restaurant and find others doing the same thing — it’s comforting.” 

“For Jewish people, every holiday has a food associated with it,” Saunders said. “For me, Christmas tastes like Chinese food.” 
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san francisco, california — Google has agreed to settle a consumer privacy lawsuit seeking at least $5 billion in damages over allegations it tracked the data of users who thought they were browsing the internet privately. 

The object of the lawsuit was the “incognito mode” on Google’s Chrome browser that the plaintiffs said gave users a false sense that what they were surfing online was not being tracked by the Silicon Valley tech firm. 

But internal Google emails brought forward in the lawsuit demonstrated that users using incognito mode were being followed by the search and advertising behemoth for measuring web traffic and selling ads. 

In a court filing, the judge confirmed that lawyers for Google reached a preliminary agreement to settle the class action lawsuit, originally filed in 2020, which claimed that “millions of individuals” had likely been affected.  

Lawyers for the plaintiffs were seeking at least $5,000 for each user it said had been tracked by the firm’s Google Analytics or Ad Manager services even when in the private browsing mode and not logged into their Google account. 

This would have amounted to at least $5 billion, though the settlement amount will likely not reach that figure, and no amount was given for the preliminary settlement between the parties.  

Google and lawyers for the consumers did not respond to an AFP request for comment. 

The settlement came just weeks after Google was denied a request that the case be decided by a judge. A jury trial was set to begin next year. 

The lawsuit, filed in a California court, claimed Google’s practices had infringed on users’ privacy by intentionally deceiving them with the incognito option.  

The original complaint alleged that Google and its employees had been given the “power to learn intimate details about individuals’ lives, interests, and internet usage.” 

“Google has made itself an unaccountable trove of information so detailed and expansive that George Orwell could never have dreamed it,” it added.  

A formal settlement is expected for court approval by February 24, 2024. 

Class action lawsuits have become the main venue to challenge big tech companies on data privacy matters in the United States, which lacks a comprehensive law on the handling of personal data. 

In August, Google paid $23 million to settle a long-running case over giving third-parties access to user search data. 

In 2022, Facebook parent company Meta settled a similar case, agreeing to pay $725 million over the handling of user data. 
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WASHINGTON — For the second time this month, the Biden administration is bypassing Congress to approve an emergency weapons sale to Israel as Israel continues to prosecute its war against Hamas in Gaza under increasing international criticism.

The State Department said Friday that Secretary of State Antony Blinken has told Congress that he had made a second emergency determination covering a $147.5 million sale for equipment, including fuses, charges and primers, that is needed to make the 155 mm shells that Israel already purchased function.

“Given the urgency of Israel’s defensive needs, the secretary notified Congress that he had exercised his delegated authority to determine an emergency existed necessitating the immediate approval of the transfer,” the department said.

“The United States is committed to the security of Israel, and it is vital to U.S. national interests to ensure Israel is able to defend itself against the threats it faces,” it said.

The emergency determination means the purchase will bypass the congressional review requirement for foreign military sales. Such determinations are rare, but not unprecedented, when administrations see an urgent need for weapons to be delivered without waiting for lawmakers’ approval.

Blinken made a similar decision on December 9, to approve the sale to Israel of nearly 14,000 rounds of tank ammunition worth more than $106 million.

Both moves have come as President Joe Biden’s request for a nearly $106 billion aid package for Ukraine, Israel and other national security needs remains stalled in Congress, caught up in a debate over U.S. immigration policy and border security. Some Democratic lawmakers have spoken of making the proposed $14.3 billion in American assistance to its Mideast ally contingent on concrete steps by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to reduce civilian casualties in Gaza during the war with Hamas.

The State Department sought to counter potential criticism of the sale on human rights grounds by saying it was in constant touch with Israel to emphasize the importance of minimizing civilian casualties, which have soared since Israel began its response to the Hamas attacks in Israel on October 7.

“We continue to strongly emphasize to the government of Israel that they must not only comply with international humanitarian law, but also take every feasible step to prevent harm to civilians,” it said.

“Hamas hides behind civilians and has embedded itself among the civilian population, but that does not lessen Israel’s responsibility and strategic imperative to distinguish between civilians and Hamas terrorists as it conducts its military operations,” the department said. “This type of campaign can only be won by protecting civilians.”

Bypassing Congress with emergency determinations for arms sales is an unusual step that has in the past met resistance from lawmakers, who normally have a period of time to weigh in on proposed weapons transfers and, in some cases, block them.

In May 2019, then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made an emergency determination for an $8.1 billion sale of weapons to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Jordan after it became clear that the Trump administration would have trouble overcoming lawmakers’ concerns about the Saudi and UAE-led war in Yemen.

Pompeo came under heavy criticism for the move, which some believed may have violated the law because many of the weapons involved had yet to be built and could not be delivered urgently. But he was cleared of any wrongdoing after an internal investigation.

At least four administrations have used the authority since 1979. President George H.W. Bush’s administration used it during the Gulf War to get arms quickly to Saudi Arabia.
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As the U.S. and Britain introduced travel bans over the past month on extremist Israeli settlers linked to attacks on Palestinians, VOA traveled to the West Bank to meet some of the settlers, who say they’re victims of biased media coverage. Henry Wilkins reports from Itamar.
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flagstaff, arizona — Kicking up a cloud of dust, the men riding bareback were in a rowdy scramble to be the first to lean down from atop their horses and grab hold of the chicken that was buried up to its neck in the ground.

The competition is rarely on display these days and most definitely not with a live chicken. And yet, it was this Navajo tradition and other horse-based contests in tribal communities that evolved into a modern-day sport that now fills arenas far and wide: rodeo.

With each competition, Native Americans have made them decidedly theirs — a shift from the Wild West shows and Fourth of July celebrations of centuries past that reinforced stereotypes. Rodeo has provided a stage for Native Americans, many of whom had nomadic lifestyles before the U.S. established reservations, to hone their skills and deepen their relationship with horses.

“It was really a way to bring something good out of a really tough situation and become successful economically and, of course, have some joy and celebration in the rodeo world,” said Jessica White Plume, who is Oglala Lakota and oversees a horse culture program for the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation in North Dakota.

The sport was born in the mastering of skills that came as horses transformed hunting, travel and welfare. Grandstands often play host to mini family reunions while Native cowboys and cowgirls show off their skills roping, riding and wrestling livestock.

One of those rising stars is Najiah Knight, a 17-year-old who is Paiute from the Klamath Tribes and trying to become the first female bull rider to compete on the Professional Bull Riders tour. Her upbringing in a small town, riding livestock is a familiar tale across Indian Country.

Growing up, Ed Holyan’s grandma would drop off him and his brother in Coyote Canyon — an isolated and rugged spot on the Navajo Nation — to tend sheep. When they got bored, they’d rope rocks, the Shetland pony and calves with small horns, he said.

“We’d seen my dad rodeo and my older brother rodeoed, so we knew we had the foundation,” said Holyan, the rodeo coach at Diné College in Tsaile, Arizona. “It was in our blood.”

For Kennard Real Bird, who rode saddle broncs for 16 years, horses provided freedom on the Crow reservation in Montana. The river where the Battle of Little Bighorn took place coursed through the land, prairie extended into pine trees and high buttes beckoned with even wider-ranging views.

The ranching life developed into a career as a stock contractor and a reluctant rodeo announcer who deals in observational comedy, including at the Sheridan, Wyoming, rodeo.

No event there is as big of a crowd pleaser than the Indian Relay Races held in July — a contest rooted in buffalo hunts on the Great Plains or raids of camps, depending on who you ask.

A team consists of someone to catch the incoming horse, two people to hold horses and a rider who speeds around the track bareback, twice switching to another horse.

“It’s the most fun you can have with your moccasins on,” Real Bird, 73, jokingly tells crowds.

Kidding aside, horsemanship is a celebrated part of tribes’ history.

On the Crow and Fort Berthold reservations, tribal members compete for the title of ultimate warrior by running, canoeing and bareback horse racing. Back on the Navajo Nation in the Four Corners region, rodeo is still called “ahoohai,” derived from the Navajo word for “chicken.”

The Nueta Hidatsa Sahnish College on the Fort Berthold reservation offers Great Plains horsemanship as a tract in its two-year equine studies program, the only such program at a tribal college or university.

Instructors highlight history like keeping prized horses in an earth lodge and the North Dakota Six Pack, a group of bronc and bull riders that included MHA Nation citizen Joe Chase, who shined on the rodeo circuit in the 1950s, said Lori Nelson, the college’s director of Agriculture and Land Grants.

The tribe recently purchased kid-safe mini bulls and has bucking horses to revive rodeo among the youth, said Jim Baker, who manages the tribe’s Healing Horse Ranch.

“That’s one of our goals to keep the horse culture alive among our people,” he said.

The largest stage for all-Native rodeo competitors is the Indian National Finals Rodeo held in Las Vegas. Tribal regalia, blessings bestowed by elders and flag songs that serve as tribes’ national anthems are as much staples as big buckles and cowboy hats.

Tydon Tsosie, of Crownpoint, New Mexico, restored the town’s moniker to “Navajo Nation Steer Wrestling Capital” when he won the open event there this year as a 17-year-old. In his family, rodeo runs through generations with songs, prayers and respect for horses.

Tsosie plans to continue the tradition, proudly proclaiming, “I see myself doing it for the rest of my life until I get old.”
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It has been more than three decades since the last U.S. military base was removed from the Philippines, but amid fears of an expansionist China, Manila is granting more U.S. military access to sites across the country. VOA’s Bill Gallo visited some of the sites and has this report. Camera: Ron Lopez
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LAHAINA, Hawaii — The restaurant where Katie Austin was a server burned in the wildfire that devastated Hawaii’s historic town of Lahaina this summer.

Two months later, as travelers began to trickle back to nearby beach resorts, she went to work at a different eatery. But she soon quit, worn down by constant questions from diners: Was she affected by the fire? Did she know anyone who died?

“You’re at work for eight hours and every 15 minutes you have a new stranger ask you about the most traumatic day of your life,” Austin said. “It was soul-sucking.”

Hawaii’s governor and mayor invited tourists back to the west side of Maui months after the August 8 fire killed at least 100 people and destroyed more than 2,000 buildings. They wanted the economic boost tourists would bring, particularly heading into the year-end holidays.

But some residents are struggling with the return of an industry requiring workers to be attentive and hospitable even though they are trying to care for themselves after losing their loved ones, friends, homes and community.

Maui is a large island. Many parts, like the ritzy resorts in Wailea, 48 kilometers south of Lahaina — where the first season of the HBO hit The White Lotus was filmed — are eagerly welcoming travelers and their dollars.

Things are more complicated in west Maui. Lahaina is still a mess of charred rubble. Efforts to clean up toxic debris are painstakingly slow. It’s off-limits to everyone except residents.

Tensions are peaking over the lack of long-term, affordable housing for wildfire evacuees, many of whom work in tourism. Dozens have been camping out in protest around the clock on a popular tourist beach at Kaanapali, a few miles north of Lahaina. Last week, hundreds marched between two large hotels waving signs reading, “We need housing now!” and “Short-term rentals gotta go!”

Hotels at Kaanapali are still housing about 6,000 fire evacuees unable to find long-term shelter in Maui’s tight and expensive housing market. But some have started to bring back tourists, and owners of timeshare condos have returned. At a shopping mall, visitors stroll past shops and dine at open-air oceanfront restaurants.

Austin took a job at a restaurant in Kaanapali after the fire but quit after five weeks. It was a strain to serve mai tais to people staying in a hotel or vacation rental while her friends were leaving the island because they lacked housing, she said.

Servers and many others in the tourism industry often work for tips, which puts them in a difficult position when a customer prods them with questions they don’t want to answer. Even after Austin’s restaurant posted a sign asking customers to respect employees’ privacy, the queries continued.

“I started telling people, ‘Unless you’re a therapist, I don’t want to talk to you about it,'” she said.

Austin now plans to work for a nonprofit organization that advocates for housing.

Erin Kelley didn’t lose her home or workplace but has been laid off as a bartender at Sheraton Maui Resort since the fire. The hotel reopened to visitors in late December, but she doesn’t expect to get called back to work until business picks up.

She has mixed feelings. Workers should have a place to live before tourists are welcome in west Maui, she said, but residents are so dependent on the industry that many will remain jobless without those same visitors.

“I’m really sad for friends and empathetic towards their situation,” she said. “But we also need to make money.”

When she does return to work, Kelley said she won’t want to “talk about anything that happened for the past few months.”

More travel destinations will likely have to navigate these dilemmas as climate change increases the frequency and intensity of natural disasters.

There is no manual for doing so, said Chekitan Dev, a tourism professor at Cornell University. Handling disasters — natural and manmade — will have to be part of their business planning.

Andreas Neef, a development professor and tourism researcher at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, suggested one solution might be to promote organized “voluntourism.” Instead of sunbathing, tourists could visit part of west Maui that didn’t burn and enlist in an effort to help the community.

“Bringing tourists for relaxation back is just at this time a little bit unrealistic,” Neef said. “I couldn’t imagine relaxing in a place where you still feel the trauma that has affected the place overall.”

Many travelers have been canceling holiday trips to Maui out of respect, said Lisa Paulson, the executive director of the Maui Hotel and Lodging Association. Visitation is down about 20% from December of 2022, according to state data.

Cancellations are affecting hotels all over the island, not just in west Maui.

Paulson attributes some of this to confusing messages in national and social media about whether visitors should come. Many people don’t understand the island’s geography or that there are places people can visit outside west Maui, she said.

One way visitors can help is to remember they’re traveling to a place that recently experienced significant trauma, said Amory Mowrey, the executive director of Maui Recovery, a mental health and substance abuse residential treatment center.

“Am I being driven by compassion and empathy or am I just here to take, take, take?” he said.

That’s the approach honeymooners Jordan and Carter Prechel of Phoenix adopted. They kept their reservations in Kihei, about 40 kilometers south of Lahaina, vowing to be respectful and to support local businesses.

“Don’t bombard them with questions,” Jordan said recently while eating an afternoon snack in Kaanapali with her husband. “Be conscious of what they’ve gone through.”
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CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida — The U.S. military’s secretive X-37B robot spaceplane blasted off from Florida on Thursday night on its seventh mission, the first launched atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket capable of delivering it to a higher orbit than previous missions.

The Falcon Heavy, composed of three rocket cores strapped together, roared off its launch pad from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral in a spectacular nighttime liftoff carried live on a SpaceX webcast.

The launch followed more than two weeks of false starts and delays. Three earlier countdowns were aborted due to poor weather and unspecified technical issues, leading ground crews to roll the spacecraft back to its hangar before proceeding with Thursday’s fight.

It came two weeks after China launched its own robot spaceplane, known as the Shenlong, or “Divine Dragon,” on its third mission to orbit since 2020, adding a new twist to the growing U.S.-Sino rivalry in space.

The Pentagon has disclosed few details about the X-37B mission, which is conducted by the U.S. Space Force under the military’s National Security Space Launch program.

The Boeing-built vehicle, roughly the size of a small bus and resembling a miniature space shuttle, is built to deploy various payloads and conduct technology experiments on long-duration orbital flights. At the end of its mission, the craft descends back through the atmosphere to land on a runway much like an airplane.

It has flown six previous missions since 2010, the first five of them carried to orbit by Atlas V rockets from United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin, and most recently, in May 2020, atop a Falcon 9 booster furnished by Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

Thursday’s mission marked the first launched aboard SpaceX’s more powerful Falcon Heavy rocket, capable of carrying payloads even heavier than the X-37B farther into space, possibly into geosynchronous orbit, more than 35,000 kilometers above the Earth.

The X-37B, also called the Orbital Test Vehicle, has previously been confined to flights in low-Earth orbit, at altitudes below 2,000 kilometers.

New orbital regimes

The Pentagon has not said how high the spaceplane will fly this time out. But in a statement last month, the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office said mission No. 7 would involve tests of “new orbital regimes, experimenting with future space domain awareness technologies.”

The X-37B also is carrying a NASA experiment to study how plant seeds are affected by prolonged exposure to the harsh environment of radiation in space. The ability to cultivate crops in space has major implications for keeping astronauts nourished during future long-term missions to the moon and Mars.

China’s equally secretive Shenlong was carried to space on December 14 by a Long March 2F rocket, a launch system less powerful than SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy and believed to be limited to delivering payloads to low-Earth orbit.

Still, Space Force General B. Chance Saltzman told reporters at an industry conference earlier this month he expected China to launch Shenlong around the same time as the X-37B flight in what he suggested was a competitive move.

“It’s no surprise that the Chinese are extremely interested in our spaceplane. We’re extremely interested in theirs,” Saltzman said, according to remarks published in Air & Space Forces Magazine, a U.S. aerospace journal.

“These are two of the most watched objects on orbit while they’re on orbit. It’s probably no coincidence that they’re trying to match us in timing and sequence of this,” he said.

The planned duration of the latest X-37B mission has not been made public, but it will presumably run until June 2026 or later, given the prevailing pattern of successively longer flights.

Its last mission remained in orbit for well over two years before a return landing in November 2022.
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Two Syrian immigrant brothers in California will share $1 million in 2024. It’s a bonus from the state lottery for selling the ticket that won the second-biggest Powerball jackpot ever. Genia Dulot has our winning story.
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WASHINGTON — An influx of Chinese investors in Vietnamese supporting industries could cause domestic businesses to suffer from the competition, the president of the Vietnam Association for Supporting Industries warned.

Phan Dang Tuat’s statement came a week after Vietnam and China agreed to expand their trade cooperation during Chinese President Xi Jinping’s mid-December visit, during which the two countries signed 36 cooperation documents. Vietnam and China pledged to strengthen their cooperation in economic zones, investment, trade and other areas, said a joint statement issued on December 13.

According to economic experts, the agreements will open opportunities for Vietnam to attract high-quality direct investment from China.

But Tuat said the wave of Chinese supporting-industry firms arriving in the Southeast Asian country is concerning.

Supporting industries supply raw materials and components to manufacturers.

Tuat voiced his concern at the Ministry of Industry and Trade’s year-end conference on December 20, questioning the rapid and large-scale entry of Chinese firms into the market, according VN Express International, a Vietnamese newspaper.

Chinese supporting industry companies are flocking to Vietnam, swiftly forming large-scale components and parts production chains to export to Europe and North America, Tuat said.

“This is a huge concern for domestic supporting industry enterprises,” Tuat said, according to VN Express International.

China-U.S. trade war

Since then-U.S. President Donald Trump launched a trade war with China in 2018, many Chinese products have been found to be disguised or labeled as “Made in Vietnam” to avoid U.S. tariffs on goods imported from China, according to reports by Reuters.

The trade war has also encouraged Chinese firms to move their production to other countries, including Vietnam, to bypass U.S. tariffs.

Meanwhile, Tuat told the ministry’s conference that because of a lack of economies of scale, Vietnam’s domestic firms are grappling with expensive capital and high manufacturing expenses, making it difficult to compete with Chinese firms, according to Vietnam-based Tuoi Tre.

Vietnamese companies in 2023 saw a 40% drop in revenue partly because of fewer orders from major markets, such as Europe, according to Tuat.

He also said that Vietnam’s unusually high lending rates have undermined the nation’s supporting industry enterprises, which number about 1,500 companies. (Whereas Vietnamese firms are required to borrow from Vietnamese banks at rates of 10% to 12%, foreign investors can borrow abroad at significantly lower rates, according to reports by Tuoi Tre.)

Ha Hoang Hop, an associate senior fellow at Singapore-based ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, told VOA: “This should serve as a wake-up call for Vietnam to speed up its supporting industries in order to catch up with Chinese competitors who are way ahead.”

There is reason for concern, Pham Chi Lan, former general secretary of Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry, told VOA.

“But we need to face that fact and learn from the lesson in the past where foreign investors chose Chinese suppliers instead of Vietnamese for their production in Vietnam,” he said.

Semiconductors a potential boon

The U.S.-China trade war has led semiconductor investors to shift their focus to Vietnam, a potential boon for the Southeast Asian nation, according to Hop and Lan.

“The U.S. has included Vietnam in its ‘friendshoring’ network, and Vietnam should make the most out of this,” said Hop, referring to the practice of focusing supply chain networks in countries regarded as U.S. political and economic allies.

Experts said Vietnam is well-positioned to draw U.S. investors seeking to de-risk supply chain investments in China.

“The competition between the U.S. and China is getting intense when the U.S. is banning the export of some equipment and technology to China, and this is a great opportunity for Vietnam to be able to secure some deals,” said Hop, referring to the U.S. export ban on chipmaking equipment and rare-earth technologies.

Lan, who was an adviser to the late Vietnamese Prime Ministers Vo Van Kiet and Phan Van Khai, agreed with Hop.

“The U.S., Japan and European countries want Vietnam to be strong for their benefits instead of being weak and dependent on China,” Lan said.

Following an historic U.S.-Vietnam business summit in September that bolstered ties between the countries, Vietnam then elevated Japan into its circle of comprehensive strategic partners, on par with China, in November. Washington and Tokyo sought to upgrade ties with Hanoi to offset Beijing’s expansion of power in the region and reduce its dependence on Chinese supply chains, according to experts who spoke with VOA.

Announcing its new partnership with Vietnam, the U.S. State Department described it as a way “to explore opportunities to grow and diversify the global semiconductor ecosystem” that “will help create more resilient, secure and sustainable global semiconductor value chain.”

Vietnam is poised to expand into chip-designing and possibly chip-making as trade tensions between the United States and China create opportunities for the country, according to Lan and Hop.
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U.S. lawmakers broke for the holidays without reaching a deal on border security funding in return for Republican votes to send almost $60 billion in aid to Ukraine. As VOA’s Congressional Correspondent Katherine Gypson reports, negotiations are expected to continue into the new year.
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Women seeking abortions in the U.S. state of Texas face conflicting legal opinions about who qualifies for medical exceptions to abortion laws and some confusion about which clinics provide what services. After the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to overturn the landmark Roe vs. Wade ruling that guaranteed abortion rights, Texas enacted a near-total abortion ban. Deana Mitchell has our story from the Texas capital, Austin
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Syrian immigrant brothers in California will be sharing one million dollars in 2024. It’s a bonus from the state lottery for selling the ticket that won the second-biggest Powerball jackpot ever. Genia Dulot has our winning story.
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Yuma, Arizona — As the world pivots from planet-warming fossil fuels to renewable energy, a new pollution problem is rearing its head: What to do with old or worn-out solar panels? 

Thousands of photovoltaic slabs are being installed across the United States every day, particularly in the sunny west and south of the country, as states like California race to toward greener energy production. 

But with an expected lifespan of around 30 years, the first wave of solar installations is now coming to the end of its usefulness, sparking a rush to recycle things that might otherwise end up in the landfill. 

“What is about to happen is a tsunami of solar panels coming back into the supply chain,” said Adam Saghei, chief executive of Arizona-based We Recycle Solar. 

“One of the challenges with any industry is, there hasn’t been that much planning for a circular economy,” he said. “(Solar) is a sustainable form of energy; there needs to be a plan for the retirement of those assets.” 

Saghei’s plan involves, among other things, reusing panels. 

Up to 5% of panels either have a minor production defect or get damaged during transport or installation. 

These still-working panels can be refurbished and diverted to other markets, often abroad, Saghei said. 

But for the panels that no longer function, either because they’re decrepit, or because they were damaged beyond use during installation, or smashed by hailstones, there’s treasure to be found. 

“We’re doing what’s called urban mining,” Saghei said, referring to a process that took his engineers three years to perfect. 

That mining recovers silver, copper, aluminum, glass and silicone, all commodities that have a value on the open market. 

While the uses for the metals might be obvious, what to do with silicone and glass is less so, but nonetheless intriguing. 

“You can use it for sand traps on golf courses, you can refine it for sandblast mix, you can also use it for the stones or the glass mix that you get for outdoor fireplaces,” Saghei said. 

With the capacity to process up to 7,500 panels every day at the plant in Yuma, a surprisingly small amount goes to waste. 

“Depending on the make and model of the panels … we’re able to get up to 99 percent recovery rate,” he said. 

Logistics challenges

For Meng Tao, who specializes in sustainable energy infrastructure at Arizona State University, developing an efficient lifecycle for solar panels is a pressing issue. 

With the United States among the countries committed to weaning itself off of fossil fuels, solar panel installation looks set to increase and peak two decades from now. 

“Once it matures, then the annual installation and the decommissioning will be about the same,” he told AFP.  

“But for the next 20 years … at least for the next 10 years … we’ll just have more installations than retirements,” he said. 

The problem with recycling, he said, is not just that the value of recovered materials from panels can be relatively low, but also the logistics. 

With panels distributed to thousands of sometimes far-flung rooftops, it can cost a lot of money just to get them to a recycling center. 

And unlike some jurisdictions, the United States imposes the cost of removal and recycling on the end user, making it more attractive for households just to dump their old units at the local landfill. 

“There has to be some policy support” to plug the gap between what consumers will pay and the total lifecycle cost of the panels, Tao said. 

Growing market

For Saghei, as for any business leader, profitability is important. 

“You don’t see too many getting into the business because recycling has a cost. It’s not free. It’s labor intensive. It’s energy intensive,” he said. 

But he does see a way forward. 

Recovering materials from old solar panels that can be put back into new solar panels is — he is convinced — a winning proposition. 

“These are markets that are growing,” he said. 

“Right through this process we are able, once the industry scales to even larger figures, to put those raw commodities back into the supply chain,” he said. “What’s exciting is we’re at the forefront.” 
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The U.S. has a strong First Amendment foundation, but its limits were tested in 2023. The year saw raids, searches and subpoenas — often directed at local media — that some advocates have flagged as troublesome. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi has the story, for Liam Scott. VOA footage by Saqib Ul Islam and Afshean Hessam.
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DENVER — Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert announced Wednesday she is switching congressional districts, avoiding a likely rematch against a Democrat who has far outraised her and following an embarrassing moment of groping and vaping that shook even loyal supporters.

In a Facebook video Wednesday evening, Boebert announced she would enter the crowded Republican primary in retiring Rep. Ken Buck’s seat in the eastern side of the state, leaving the more competitive 3rd District seat she barely won last year — and which she was in peril of losing next year as some in her party have soured on her controversial style.

Boebert implied in the video that her departure from the district would help Republicans retain the seat, saying, “I will not allow dark money that is directed at destroying me personally to steal this seat. It’s not fair to the 3rd District and the conservatives there who have fought so hard for our victories.”

“The Aspen donors, George Soros and Hollywood actors that are trying to buy this seat, well they can go pound sand,” she said.

Boebert called it “a fresh start,” acknowledging the rough year following a divorce with her husband and video of her misbehaving with a date at a performance of the musical Beetlejuice in Denver. The scandal in September rocked some of her faithful supporters, who saw it as a transgression of conservative, Christian values and for which Boebert apologized at events throughout her district.

She already faced a primary challenge in her district, as well as a general election face-off with Democrat Adam Frisch, a former Aspen city council member who came within a few hundred votes of beating her in 2022. A rematch was expected, with Frisch raising at least $7.7 million to Boebert’s $2.4 million.

Instead, if Boebert wins the primary to succeed Buck she will run in the state’s most conservative district, which former President Donald Trump won by about 20 percentage points in 2020, in contrast to his margin of about 8 percentage points in her district. While it’s not required that a representative live in the congressional district they represent, only the state the district is in, Boebert said she would be moving — a shift from Colorado’s western Rocky Mountain peaks and high desert mesas to its eastern expanse of prairie grass and ranching enclaves.

In 2022, Frisch’s campaign found support in the conservative district from unaffiliated voters and Republicans who’d defected over Boebert’s brash, Trumpian style. In this election, Frisch’s campaign had revived the slogan “stop the circus” and framed Frisch as the “pro-normal” alternative to Boebert’s more partisan politics.

In a statement after Boebert’s announcement, Frisch said he’s prepared for whoever will be the Republican candidate.

“From Day 1 of this race, I have been squarely focused on defending rural Colorado’s way of life, and offering common sense solutions to the problems facing the families of Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District.” he said. “My focus will remain the same.”

The Republican primary candidate who has raised the second most behind Boebert in the 3rd District, Jeff Hurd, is a more traditional Republican candidate. Hurd has already garnered support from prominent Republicans in the district, first reported by VailDaily.

Boebert rocked the political world by notching a surprise primary win against the incumbent Republican congressman in the 3rd District in 2020 when she ran a gun-themed restaurant in the town of Rifle, Colorado. She then tried to enter the U.S. Capitol carrying a pistol and began to feud with prominent liberal Democrats like Rep. Ilhan Omar and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
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SAN JOSE, Calif. — Nicaraguan migrants sent relatives back home record remittances this year through November, data from the country’s central bank showed on Wednesday, fueled by massive waves of migration leaving the Central American nation in recent years.

In a statement, the bank noted a record haul of about $4.24 billion in remittances for the 11-month period, 47% more than the amount sent home during the same period last year.

The money sent home by Nicaraguan migrants represent a key lifeline for the economy during the latest year of President Daniel Ortega’s government, which has been marked by growing unemployment and poverty.

Propelled in large part by outflows of migrants seeking better economic prospects, primarily in the United States, as well as those who have fled since deadly anti-government protests broke out in 2018, Nicaragua has seen especially large displacements in recent years along with record remittances so far this year.

U.S.-bound Nicaraguan migration hit a record last year with 164,600 migrant encounters counted by the U.S. government, but during this year’s fiscal year, which ended in September, migrant encounters dipped to about 139,000.

Last year, Nicaraguan migration to all countries surpassed 300,000, while overall 1.5 million Nicaraguans now live outside their home country, or about 22% of the country’s population, according to U.N. data analyzed by Dialogo Interamericano researcher Manuel Orozco.

The 2023 remittances tallied by Nicaragua’s central bank showed that nearly 60% came from the senders in the United States and almost 20% from neighboring Costa Rica.
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MEXICO CITY — A top U.S. delegation is meeting with Mexico’s president Wednesday in what many see as an attempt to have Mexico do more to limit a surge of migrants reaching the U.S. southwestern border. 

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has said he’s willing to help, but he wants to see progress in U.S. relations with Cuba and Venezuela, two of the top sources of migrants, along with more development aid for the region. 

“We have always talked about addressing the causes [of migration]. The ideal thing is to help poor countries,” Lopez Obrador said before the meeting. 

Both sides in the talks face pressure to reach an agreement after past steps like limiting direct travel into Mexico or deporting some migrants failed to stop the influx. This month, as many as 10,000 migrants were arrested daily at the southwest U.S. border. 

The U.S. has struggled to process thousands of migrants at the border, and house them once they reach northern cities. Mexican industries were stung last week when the U.S. briefly closed two vital Texas railway crossings, arguing that border patrol agents had to be reassigned to deal with the surge. Another non-rail border crossing remained closed in Lukeville, Arizona, and operations were partially suspended in San Diego and Nogales, Arizona. 

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken left open the possibility that those crossings could be reopened if Mexico provides more help. 

“Secretary Blinken will discuss unprecedented irregular migration in the Western Hemisphere and identify ways Mexico and the United States will address border security challenges, including actions to enable the reopening of key ports of entry across our shared border,” his office said. 

Mexico says it detected 680,000 migrants moving through the country in the first 11 months of 2023. 

Mexico has assigned over 32,000 military troops and National Guard officers — about 11% of its total forces — to enforce immigration laws, and the National Guard now detains far more migrants than criminals. 

But the shortcomings of that approach were on display Tuesday, when National Guard officers made no attempt to stop a caravan of about 6,000 migrants, many from Central America and Venezuela, from walking through Mexico’s main inland immigration inspection point in southern Chiapas state near the Guatemala border. 

In the past, Mexico has let such caravans go through, trusting that they would tire themselves out walking along the highway. 

By Wednesday, Lazara Padron Molina, 46, from Cuba was sick and exhausted. The caravan set out December 24 from the city of Tapachula and had walked about 45 miles (75 kilometers) through the heat to Escuintla in southern Chiapas state. 

“The route is too long to continue walking. Why don’t they just give us documents so that we could get a bus or a taxi?” Padron Molina said. “Look at my feet,” she said, showing blisters. “I can’t go on anymore.” 

But wearing the migrants out — by obliging Venezuelans and others to hike through the jungle-clad Darien Gap, or corralling migrants off passenger buses in Mexico — no longer appears to work. 

So many migrants have been hopping freight trains through Mexico that one of the country’s two major railroad companies suspended trains in September because of safety concerns. Police raids to pull migrants off railway cars — the kind of action Mexico took a decade ago — might be one thing the American delegation would like to see. 

A few blocks from Mexico City’s main plaza — where Blinken will meet with Lopez Obrador at the National Palace — migrants stayed at an improvised shelter at a church, gathering strength before continuing north. 

David Pena, his two daughters and his pregnant wife, Maryeris Zerpa, hoped to reach the United States before the child is born in about a month. 

“The goal is to cross over so the baby will be born there,” Pena said. But with no asylum appointment, he had no idea how the family will enter. 

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and homeland security adviser Liz Sherwood-Randall also are attending the meeting. 

The U.S. has shown that one country’s problems on the border quickly become both countries’ problems. The Texas railway closures put a chokehold on freight moving from Mexico to the U.S., as well as grain needed to feed Mexican livestock moving south. 

Lopez Obrador confirmed last week that U.S. officials want Mexico to do more to block migrants at its southern border with Guatemala, or make it more difficult to move across Mexico by train or in trucks or buses, a policy known as “contention.” 

But the president said that in exchange he wanted the United States to send more development aid to migrants’ home countries, and to reduce or eliminate sanctions against Cuba and Venezuela. 

“We are going to help, as we always do,” Lopez Obrador said. “Mexico is helping reach agreements with other countries, in this case Venezuela.” He said Mexico has proposed to President Joe Biden that a U.S.-Cuba bilateral dialogue be opened. 

In May, Mexico agreed to take in migrants from countries such as Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba who had been turned away by the U.S. for not following rules that provided new legal pathways to asylum and other forms of migration. 
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Every December 31, New Yorkers and tourists alike flock to the Big Apple’s Times Square for the New Year’s Eve celebration. Elena Wolf had a look at how the city prepares for the big event in this story narrated by Anna Rice. VOA footage by Max Avloshenko and Elena Matusovsky.
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As U.S. and Mexican officials were set to meet Wednesday to discuss immigration and other issues, thousands of migrants from Central and South America are making their way through Mexico in a caravan heading to the United States. Veronica Villafañe narrates this report by Javier Hegar in Mexico City. Camera: Juan Gallegos
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LANSING, Mich. — Michigan’s Supreme Court is keeping former President Donald Trump on the state’s primary election ballot.

The court said Wednesday it will not hear an appeal of a lower court’s ruling from groups seeking to keep Trump from appearing on the ballot.

The state’s high court said in an order that the application by parties to appeal a Dec. 14 Michigan appeals court judgment was considered, but denied “because we are not persuaded that the questions presented should be reviewed by this court.”

The ruling followed a Dec. 19 decision by a divided Colorado Supreme Court which found Trump ineligible to be president because of his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. That ruling was the first time in history that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment has been used to disqualify a presidential candidate.

The Michigan and Colorado cases are among dozens hoping to keep Trump’s name off state ballots. They all point to the so-called insurrection clause that prevents anyone from holding office who “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the Constitution.

Trump pressed two election officials in Michigan’s Wayne County not to certify 2020 vote totals, according to a recording of a post-election phone call disclosed in a Dec. 22 report by The Detroit News. The former president ‘s 2024 campaign has neither confirmed nor denied the recording’s legitimacy.

Attorneys for Free Speech for People, a liberal nonprofit group also involved in efforts to keep Trump’s name off the primary ballot in Minnesota, had asked Michigan’s Supreme Court to render its decision by Christmas Day.

The group argued that time was “of the essence” due to “the pressing need to finalize and print the ballots for the presidential primary election.”

Earlier this month, Michigan’s high court refused to immediately hear an appeal, saying the case should remain before the appeals court.

Free Speech for People had sued to force Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson to bar Trump from Michigan’s ballot. But a Michigan Court of Claims judge rejected their arguments, saying in November that it was the proper role of Congress to decide the question.
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