The White House said Sunday it plans to try this week to win congressional approval of a new weapons aid package for Ukraine and Israel that would total significantly more than $2 billion. 

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told CBS’s “Face the Nation” show that President Joe Biden will lobby Congress this week on the need for the package to be approved as Ukraine’s 20-month war with Russia slogs on with no end in sight and Israel appears set to launch a ground invasion of Gaza in response to the Oct. 7 shock attack on Israel by Hamas militants.

Biden also could lump in aid to support Taiwan and control migration at the southern U.S. border with Mexico in hopes of winning passage.

Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Sunday in Jerusalem after meeting with Israeli officials that the Senate would move quickly to approve more aid for Israel.

“We will work to move this aid through the Senate ASAP, and the Israeli leaders made it clear to us they need the aid quickly,” Schumer said.

He said among Israel’s requests are additional interceptors for its Iron Dome missile defense system, which has been operating nonstop shooting down Hamas rockets from Gaza, and precision munitions.

However, some U.S. Republican lawmakers, especially in the politically fractious House of Representatives, have turned against more U.S. aid to Ukraine.

That leaves the Biden administration with the hope of winning congressional approval of aid to Kyiv by linking it to assistance for Israel. In turn, some Republicans have already rejected combing the two aid packages, leaving overall prospects in doubt.

Approval of any aid package in the House is complicated by the current political chaos in the majority Republican caucus after Speaker Kevin McCarthy was ousted by a small faction of right-wing lawmakers nearly two weeks ago and Republicans have been unable to agree on a replacement. Without a speaker in the chamber, no action has been taken on any legislation.

The current front-runner for the speakership, Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, has won support from McCarthy and former President Donald Trump and in the caucus of House Republicans. Even so, he is well short of the 217-vote majority he would need when the full House votes.   

Some material in this report came from Reuters.
…

Attorney General Jeff Landry, a Republican backed by former President Donald Trump, has won the Louisiana governor’s race, holding off a crowded field of candidates.

The win is a major victory for the GOP as they reclaim the governor’s mansion for the first time in eight years. Landry will replace current Gov. John Bel Edwards, who was unable to seek reelection due to consecutive term limits. Edwards is the only Democratic governor in the Deep South.

“Today’s election says that our state is united,” Landry said during his victory speech Saturday night. “It’s a wake up call and it’s a message that everyone should hear loud and clear, that we the people in this state are going to expect more out of our government from here on out.”

By garnering more than half of the votes, Landry avoided an expected runoff under the state’s “jungle primary” system. The last time there wasn’t a gubernatorial runoff in Louisiana was in 2011 and 2007, when Bobby Jindal, a Republican, won the state’s top position.

The governor-elect, who celebrated with supporters during a watch party in Broussard, Louisiana, described the election as “historic.” 

Landry, 52, has raised the profile of attorney general since taking office in 2016. He has used his office to champion conservative policy positions. More recently, Landry has been in the spotlight over his involvement and staunch support of Louisiana laws that have drawn much debate, including banning gender-affirming medical care for transgender youths, the state’s near-total abortion ban that doesn’t have exceptions for cases of rape and incest, and a law restricting youths’ access to “sexually explicit material” in libraries, which opponents fear will target LGBTQ+ books.

Landry has repeatedly clashed with Edwards over matters in the state, including LGBTQ rights, state finances and the death penalty. However the Republican has also repeatedly put Louisiana in national fights, including over President Joe Biden’s policies that limit oil and gas production and COVID-19 vaccine mandates.

Landry spent two years on Capitol Hill, beginning in 2011, where he represented Louisiana’s 3rd U.S. Congressional District. Prior to his political career, Landry served 11 years in the Louisiana Army National Guard, was a local police officer, sheriff’s deputy and attorney.

During the gubernatorial election season, Landry had long been considered the early frontrunner, winning the endorsement of high profile Republicans — Trump and U.S. Rep Steve Scalise — and a controversial early endorsement from the state GOP. In addition, Landry has enjoyed a sizable fundraising advantage over the rest of the field throughout the race.

Landry has made clear that one of his top priorities as governor would be addressing crime in urban areas. The Republican has pushed a tough-on-crime rhetoric, calling for more “transparency” in the justice system and continuing to support capital punishment. Louisiana has the nation’s second-highest murder rate per capita.

Along the campaign trail, Landry faced political attacks from opponents on social media and in interviews, calling him a bully and making accusations of backroom deals to gain support. He also faced scrutiny for skipping all but one of the major-televised debates. 

Among other gubernatorial candidates on the ballot were GOP state Sen. Sharon Hewitt; Hunter Lundy, a Lake Charles-based attorney running as an independent; Republican state Treasurer John Schroder; Stephen Waguespack, the Republican former head of a powerful business group and former senior aide to then-Gov. Jindal; and Shawn Wilson, the former head of Louisiana’s Transportation and Development Department and sole major Democratic candidate.

Wilson, who was the runner-up, said during his concession speech that he had called Landry to congratulate him on his victory. The Democrat said during their phone call, he asked the governor-elect to keep Medicaid expansion, increase teacher pay and “educate our children the way they need to be educated.”

“The citizens of Louisiana spoke, or didn’t speak, and made a decision,” Wilson said.

Also on Saturday’s ballot were five other statewide contests and four ballot measures.

Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser won reelection Saturday night, but other races won’t be decided until November.

One closely watched race is for attorney general, which holds the highest legal authority in the state’s executive branch. Liz Baker Murrill, a Republican who currently works at the Attorney General’s Office and Lindsey Cheek, a Democrat and trial attorney, have advanced to a November runoff.

Also advancing to a runoff in the state treasurer race is John Fleming, Republican, and Dustin Granger, Democrat.

In the secretary of state race, First Assistant Secretary of State Nancy Landry, a Republican, and Gwen Collins-Greenup, a Democrat and attorney, will advance to a runoff. The winner in November will have the task of replacing Louisiana’s outdated voting machines, which do not produce the paper ballots critical to ensuring accurate election results.

There are hundreds of additional localized races, including all 39 Senate seats and 105 House seats, however a significant number of incumbents are running unopposed. 
…

Paul Lane uses his mouth, cheek and chin to push buttons and guide his virtual car around the Gran Turismo racetrack on the PlayStation 5. It’s how he’s been playing for the past 23 years, after a car accident left him unable to use his fingers.

Playing video games has long been a challenge for people with disabilities, chiefly because the standard controllers for the PlayStation, Xbox or Nintendo can be difficult, or even impossible, to maneuver for people with limited mobility. And losing the ability to play the games doesn’t just mean the loss of a favorite pastime, it can also exacerbate social isolation in a community already experiencing it at a far higher rate than the general population.

As part of the gaming industry’s efforts to address the problem, Sony has developed the Access controller for the PlayStation, working with input from Lane and other accessibility consultants. Its the latest addition to the accessible-controller market, whose contributors range from Microsoft to startups and even hobbyists with 3D printers.

“I was big into sports before my injury,” said Cesar Flores, 30, who uses a wheelchair since a car accident eight years ago and also consulted Sony on the controller. “I wrestled in high school, played football. I lifted a lot of weights, all these little things. And even though I can still train in certain ways, there are physical things that I can’t do anymore. And when I play video games, it reminds me that I’m still human. It reminds me that I’m still one of the guys.”

Putting the traditional controller aside, Lane, 52, switches to the Access. It’s a round, customizable gadget that can rest on a table or wheelchair tray and can be configured in myriad ways, depending on what the user needs. That includes switching buttons and thumbsticks, programming special controls and pairing two controllers to be used as one. Lane’s Gran Turismo car zooms around a digital track as he guides it with the back of his hand on the controller.

“I game kind of weird, so it’s comfortable for me to be able to use both of my hands when I game,” he said. “So I need to position the controllers away enough so that I can be able to to use them without clunking into each other. Being able to maneuver the controllers has been awesome, but also the fact that this controller can come out of the box and ready to work.”

Lane and other gamers have been working with Sony since 2018 to help design the Access controller. The idea was to create something that could be configured to work for people with a broad range of needs, rather than focusing on any particular disability.

“Show me a person with multiple sclerosis and I’ll show you a person who can be hard of hearing, I can show someone who has a visual impairment or a motor impairment,” said Mark Barlet, founder and executive director of the nonprofit AbleGamers. “So thinking on the label of a disability is not the approach to take. It’s about the experience that players need to bridge that gap between a game and a controller that’s not designed for their unique presentation in the world.”

Barlet said his organization, which helped both Sony and Microsoft with their accessible controllers, has been advocating for gamers with disabilities for nearly two decades. With the advent of social media, gamers themselves have been able to amplify the message and address creators directly in forums that did not exist before.

“The last five years I have seen the game accessibility movement go from indie studios working on some features to triple-A games being able to be played by people who identify as blind,” he said. “In five years, it’s been breathtaking.”

Microsoft, in a statement, said it was encouraged by the positive reaction to its Xbox Adaptive controller when it was released in 2018 and that it is “heartening to see others in the industry apply a similar approach to include more players in their work through a focus on accessibility.”

The Access controller will go on sale worldwide on Dec. 6 and cost $90 in the U.S.

Alvin Daniel, a senior technical program manager at PlayStation, said the device was designed with three principles in mind to make it “broadly applicable” to as many players as possible. First, the player does not have to hold the controller to use it. It can lay flat on a table, wheelchair tray or be mounted on a tripod, for instance. It was important for it to fit on a wheelchair tray, since once something falls off the tray, it might be impossible for the player to pick it up without help. It also had to be durable for this same reason — so it would survive being run over by a wheelchair, for example.

Second, it’s much easier to press the buttons than on a standard controller. It’s a kit, so it comes with button caps in different sizes, shapes and textures so people can experiment with reconfiguring it the way it works best for them. The third is the thumbsticks, which can also be configured depending on what works for the person using it.

Because it can be used with far less agility and strength than the standard PlayStation controller, the Access could also be a gamechanger for an emerging population: aging gamers suffering from arthritis and other limiting ailments.

“The last time I checked, the average age of a gamers was in their forties,” Daniel said. “And I have every expectation, speaking for myself, that they’ll want to continue to game, as I’ll want to continue to game, because it’s entertainment for us.”

After his accident, Lane stopped gaming for seven years. For someone who began playing video games as a young child on the Magnavox Odyssey — released in 1972 — “it was a void” in his life, he said.

Starting again, even with the limitations of a standard game controller, felt like being reunited with a “long-lost friend.”

“Just the the social impact of gaming really changed my life. It gave me a a brighter disposition,” Lane said. He noted the social isolation that often results when people who were once able-bodied become disabled.

“Everything changes,” he said. “And the more you take away from us, the more isolated we become. Having gaming and having an opportunity to game at a very high level, to be able to do it again, it is like a reunion, (like losing) a close companion and being able to reunite with that person again.”
…

For the unforeseeable future, Laila El-Haddad has one mission: to get the voices of her fellow Palestinians, along with their pleas for help, out to the rest of the world.

From her home office in Columbia, Maryland, El-Haddad frantically juggled phone calls this week from journalists seeking her expertise on Gaza and Palestinian Americans trying to get the attention of their local elected officials.

In between the calls, the 45-year-old mother and author checked WhatsApp, the global messaging application, for updates from her own family members in Gaza during their brief windows of electricity and internet access. Electricity was since cut off by Israel and internet outages have made it difficult for many to keep in touch.

“I’m just trying to stay sane by doing what I can to help,” El-Haddad said.

For many Palestinian Americans, there’s a sense of helplessness and hopelessness as they struggle to hear from loved ones in Gaza. Amid a fuel and water shortage, no electricity, and now a forced evacuation in the north, administering and sending aid to civilians in Gaza is near impossible.

Israel has bombarded Gaza with airstrikes for days and has threatened a ground invasion in response to Hamas’ attack on Israel that killed 1,300 last weekend. The Gaza Health Ministry said Saturday that over 1,900 people have been killed in the besieged territory in the last several days, including 724 children and 458 women. With a looming humanitarian crisis, that number is expected to rise.

But even before this week, getting to Gaza to visit family for Palestinian Americans was a lengthy, exhausting and difficult experience, and most people who live Gaza can never leave.

Mohammad AbuLughod, who lives in a suburb of Milwaukee, received fragmented updates from a cell phone his family in Gaza kept charged via a solar panel. His family shared those messages with The Associated Press:

An elder in the family died from an airstrike. They tried to seek shelter in a United Nations school, before deciding to stay home. Schools were damaged by airstrikes. Children died. Buildings have been reduced to rubble. They don’t know if the neighbors are alive. They are all gathered now, three generations, in one house. When the bombs come, they will die together. No one will have to live alone.

“I feel I am living in a nightmare,” one relative wrote in a message to the family.

AbuLughod is at a loss for what to do. “There’s no way to send support, we can’t send them money and money would probably be useless, because there’s nothing to buy,” he said.

Deanna Othman’s young nephew in Gaza messaged her on Instagram to say it may be the last time he’s able to talk to her.

“How do you reply to that?” Othman, who lives in a suburb of Chicago, said in an interview with the AP. “How can you say anything to comfort someone who is facing their own mortality?”

Haneen Okal, a Palestinian American living in New Jersey, is currently stuck in Gaza with her three young children. She’d gone to Gaza while pregnant, after nine years away to visit her family, and planned to travel back to New Jersey to deliver her baby. But after experiencing a medical emergency, she delivered her baby in Gaza in August, and has remained there since.

Minutes before she was set to leave Gaza through the Rafah crossing with Egypt earlier this week, Israeli airstrikes left the crossing inoperable. She and her children traveled back to the Rafah crossing on Saturday in the hopes that the U.S. government would allow for their safe evacuation. So far, she said, State Department officials have not told her if they will help her leave. Abdulla, Okal’s husband, is pleading with the U.S. government from New Jersey to bring his family home.

“There’s no place safe here in the Gaza Strip,” Haneen Okal said in a recorded video sent to the AP via WhatsApp. “My kids are feeling so scared. … Please help us get evacuated safely.”

With the Gaza Strip, a sliver of land only 40 kilometers long with 2.3 million people, essentially dark and the Israeli blockade making delivering humanitarian aid even more challenging, those who have family in Gaza are left watching from afar, feeling powerless as their families struggle to find safety.

“It’s just too traumatic for me right now to see American citizens who, even predating this, have the privilege and the access to my country that my husband, a Palestinian whose own parents and grandparents were forced to flee from their homes, doesn’t enjoy,” said El-Haddad, the author in Maryland.

Othman and her family traveled from the suburbs of Chicago to Gaza this summer — a process she described as mentally, physically and bureaucratically difficult. Othman’s extended family lives in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territory of the West Bank, but her husband’s family is in Gaza. If she wanted to visit her family in the West Bank, she’d have to go without her husband, who, like most people with a Gaza ID, cannot travel to the West Bank under the Israeli occupation.

“My family in the West Bank was only about 40 miles (64 kilometers) away from me when I was in Gaza,” Othman said. “But the amount of effort it would have taken to get to them just wouldn’t have worked.”

Several years ago, during more peaceful times, Nahed Elrayes and his father tried for days to enter Gaza from Tel Aviv to catch his terminally ill grandmother’s final moments.

“The Israelis simply would not let us enter Gaza,” he said. On the third day of trying, Elrayes’ grandmother passed away and the Israeli forces finally allowed them entry to attend the funeral services.

“I will never forget being with my father that day,” Elrayes said. “There is no respect for our humanity.”

The story of so many Palestinian Americans is one of longing, loss and a sense that their history is being erased. Many Palestinian families are shaped by the history of becoming refugees relatively recently. Gaza is, in part, so densely populated today because of the mass exodus of Palestinians from what is now Israel during the 1948 war surrounding its creation.

It’s the echoes of the 1948 Nakba, or “catastrophe” that haunt AbuLughod and his family — refugees originally from the Palestinian town Yaffa, now Jaffa, Israel — as they watch the scenes of mass evacuation playing out from Gaza this week. The fear is that Palestinians in Gaza, like those who were forced to leave their homes in 1948, will never be able to return. For so many Palestinians who have experienced the loss of their land and homes, identity is all they have left.

“What’s heaviest at the moment is that the world is going to watch a group of people be killed mercilessly and pushed out, in real time, and believe it to be right and OK and just,” said Amirah AbuLughod, Mohammad’s daughter.

To cope with the dire outlook, Hani Almadhoun said he and his fellow Palestinian American colleagues at UNRWA USA are pouring themselves into their work supporting the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, trying to provide aid to people on the ground in Gaza despite the challenges. Eleven UNRWA staff members were killed in airstrikes in Gaza this week.

“There are no heroes right now in Gaza. Everybody’s damaged. Everybody’s burying somebody,” Almadhoun said. “And I hope I am wrong, but this is going to go on for a long time. A lot more people will lose their lives and then nobody’s going to be held accountable.”
…

For 400 years, Indigenous North Americans flocked to a group of ceremonial sites in what is present-day Ohio to celebrate their culture and honor their dead. On Saturday, the sheer magnitude of the ancient Hopewell culture’s reach was lifted up as enticement to a new set of visitors from around the world.

“We stand upon the shoulders of geniuses, uncommon geniuses who have gone before us. That’s what we are here about today,” Chief Glenna Wallace, of the Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma, told a crowd gathered at the Hopewell Culture National Historical Park to dedicate eight sites there and elsewhere in southern Ohio that became UNESCO World Heritage sites last month.

She said the honor means that the world now knows of the genius of the Native Americans, whom the 84-year-old grew up seeing histories, textbooks and popular media call “savages.”

Wallace commended the innumerable tribal figures, government officials and local advocates who made the designation possible, including late author, teacher and local park ranger Bruce Lombardo, who once said, “If Julius Caesar had brought a delegation to North America, they would have gone to Chillicothe.”

“That means that this place was the center of North America, the center of culture, the center of happenings, the center for Native Americans, the center for religion, the center for spirituality, the center for love, the center for peace,” Wallace said. “Here, in Chillicothe. And that is what Chillicothe represents today.”

The massive Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks — described as “part cathedral, part cemetery and part astronomical observatory” — comprise ancient sites spread across 150 kilometers south and east of Columbus, including one located on the grounds of a private golf course and country club. The designation puts the network of mounds and earthen structures in the same category as wonders of the world including Greece’s Acropolis, Peru’s Machu Picchu and the Great Wall of China.

The presence of materials such as obsidian, mica, seashells and shark teeth made clear to archaeologists that ceremonies held at the sites some 2,000 to 1,600 years ago attracted Indigenous peoples from across the continent.

The inscription ceremony took place against the backdrop of Mound City, a sacred gathering place and burial ground that sits just steps from the Scioto River. Four other sites within the historical park — Hopewell Mound Group, Seip Earthworks, Highbank Park Earthworks and Hopeton Earthworks — join Fort Ancient Earthworks & Nature Preserve in Oregonia and Great Circle Earthworks in Heath to comprise the network.

“My wish on this day is that the people who come here from all over the world, and from Ross County, all over Ohio, all the United States — wherever they come from — my wish is that they will be inspired, inspired by the genius that created these, and the perseverance and the long, long work that it took to create them,” Republican Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said. “They’re awe-inspiring.”

Nita Battise, tribal council vice chair of the Alabama-Coushatta Tribe of Texas, said she worked at the Hopewell historical park 36 years ago — when they had to beg people to come visit. She said many battles have been won since then.

“Now is the time, and to have our traditional, our ancestral sites acknowledged on a world scale is phenomenal,” she said. “We always have to remember where we came from, because if you don’t remember, it reminds you.”

Kathy Hoagland, whose family has lived in nearby Frankfort, Ohio, since the 1950s, said the local community “needs this,” too.

“We need it culturally, we need it economically, we need it socially,” she said. “We need it in every way.”

Hoagland said having the eyes of the world on them will help local residents “make friends with our past,” boost their businesses and smooth over political divisions.

“It’s here. You can’t take this away, and so, therefore, it draws us all together in a very unique way,” she said. “So, that’s the beauty of it. Everyone lays all of that aside, and we come together.”

National Park Service Director Chuck Sams, the first Native American to hold that job, said holding up the accomplishments of the ancient Hopewells for a world audience will “help us tell the world the whole story of America and the remarkable diversity of our cultural heritage.”
…

Piper Laurie, the strong-willed, Oscar-nominated actor who performed in acclaimed roles despite at one point abandoning acting altogether in search of a “more meaningful” life, died early Saturday at her home in Los Angeles. She was 91.

Laurie died of old age, her manager, Marion Rosenberg, told The Associated Press via email, adding that she was “a superb talent and a wonderful human being.”

Laurie arrived in Hollywood in 1949 as Rosetta Jacobs and was quickly given a contract with Universal-International, a new name that she hated and a string of starring roles with Ronald Reagan, Rock Hudson and Tony Curtis, among others.

She went on to receive Academy Award nominations for three distinct films: The 1961 poolroom drama “The Hustler”; the film version of Stephen King’s horror classic “Carrie,” in 1976; and the romantic drama “Children of a Lesser God,” in 1986. She also appeared in several acclaimed roles on television and the stage, including in David Lynch’s “Twin Peaks” in the 1990s as the villainous Catherine Martell.

Laurie made her debut at 17 in “Louisa,” playing Reagan’s daughter, then appeared opposite Francis the talking mule in “Francis Goes to the Races.” She made several films with Curtis, whom she once dated, including “The Prince Who Was a Thief,” “No Room for the Groom,” “Son of Ali Baba” and “Johnny Dark.”

Fed up, she walked out on her $2,000-a-week contract in 1955, vowing she wouldn’t work again unless offered a decent part.

She moved to New York, where she found the roles she was seeking in theater and live television drama.

Performances in “Days of Wine and Roses,” “The Deaf Heart” and “The Road That Led After” brought her Emmy nominations and paved the way for a return to films, including in an acclaimed role as Paul Newman’s troubled girlfriend in “The Hustler.”

For many years after, Laurie turned her back on acting. She married film critic Joseph Morgenstern, welcomed a daughter, Ann Grace, and moved to a farmhouse in Woodstock, New York. She said later that the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War had influenced her decision to make the change.

“I was disenchanted and looking for an existence more meaningful for me,” she recalled, adding the she never regretted the move.

“My life was full,” she said in 1990. “I always liked using my hands, and I always painted.”

Laurie also became noted as a baker, with her recipes appearing in The New York Times.

Her only performance during that time came when she joined a dozen musicians and actors in a tour of college campuses to support Sen. George McGovern’s 1972 presidential bid.

Laurie was finally ready to return to acting when director Brian De Palma called her about playing the deranged mother of Sissy Spacek in “Carrie.”

At first, she felt the script was junk, and then she decided she should play the role for laughs. Not until De Palma chided her for putting a comedic turn on a scene did she realize he meant the film to be a thriller.

“Carrie” became a box-office smash, launching a craze for movies about teenagers in jeopardy, and Spacek and Laurie were both nominated for Academy Awards.

Her desire to act rekindled, Laurie resumed a busy career that spanned decades. On television, she appeared in such series as “Matlock,” “Murder, She Wrote” and “Frasier” and played George Clooney’s mother on “ER.”
…

California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a new law Friday to make low-income Mexican residents living near the border eligible for in-state tuition rates at certain community colleges. 

The legislation applies to low-income Mexicans who live within 45 miles (72 kilometers) of the California-Mexico border and want to attend a participating community college in Southern California. It is a pilot program that will launch next year and run until 2029. 

Some people travel frequently between Mexico and California to work or visit family. The law will help make education more accessible for those residents and prepare them for jobs, Assemblymember David Alvarez, who authored the proposal, said at a Senate Education Committee hearing in June. 

“This pilot program can unlock a significant untapped resource to prepare a more diverse population among our workforce,” Alvarez said in a statement. 

Mark Sanchez, president of Southwestern College in Chula Vista, a California city about 7 miles (11 kilometers) from the border, said many students at the school split their time between the two countries. 

“Without this pilot, we risk everything in terms of loss of talent,” he said at the hearing. 

The new law will require community college boards to submit a report to lawmakers by 2028 to show the attendance rate and demographics of students who received in-state tuition rates under the program. 

A similar law passed in 2015 allows some Nevada residents living near the California border to attend Lake Tahoe Community College at in-state tuition rates. 
…

Editor’s note: Here is a look at immigration-related news around the U.S. this week. Questions? Tips? Comments? Email the VOA immigration team: ImmigrationUnit@voanews.com.

No Shade, No Water, Record Heat: More Migrants Die in US Desert

In the past 12 months through September, U.S. Customs and Border Protection logged 60 migrant deaths due to heat in the El Paso sector, triple the same period a year ago. The sector spans the Chihuahuan Desert through New Mexico and parts of Texas along 431 kilometers (268 miles) of the border. It has been the busiest area for migrant crossings into the U.S. southwest at a time when overall border apprehensions are on track to match or surpass record levels. Reuters reports.

New York Governor Backs Suspension of ‘Right to Shelter’ as Migrant Influx Strains City

New York Governor Kathy Hochul is supporting New York City’s effort to suspend a unique legal agreement that requires it to provide emergency housing to homeless people, as a large influx of migrants overwhelms the city’s shelter system. Hochul endorsed the city’s challenge to the requirement in a court filing this week, telling reporters Thursday that the mandate was never meant to apply to an international humanitarian crisis. Reported by The Associated Press.

VOA DAY IN PHOTOS: Refugee children play at the kindergarten in the first reception center for refugees in Giessen, Germany

Immigration Around the World

Decade-Old Syrian Refugee Camp Video Falsely Claimed to Be Recently Shot in Gaza

On October 11, verified X account Random Memes posted a video it claimed was filmed that day in Israeli-besieged Gaza. The post received some 269,000 views and nearly 10,000 reposts, quotes and likes. The claim that the video was recently filmed in Gaza is false. Reported by Polygraph.info.

Displaced Sudanese Face Protection Crisis as War Drags On

The U.N. refugee agency, UNHCR, warned Wednesday that the humanitarian emergency in Sudan triggered by two rival generals battling for control of the country has created a protection crisis inside Sudan and in neighboring asylum countries that risks destabilizing the region the longer the conflict goes on. Lisa Schlein reports for VOA from Geneva.

Chad’s President Says Refugees, Host Towns Need Help

Leaders in Chad say the central African nation is struggling to meet the humanitarian needs of 2 million foreign and displaced people seeking refuge there, many of them women and children fleeing violence and increasing hardship in neighboring Sudan. Moki Edwin Kindzeka reports for VOA from Cameroon.

World Food Program Urges Humanitarian Corridors for Gaza Strip

The World Food Program called Tuesday for the establishment of humanitarian corridors for the Gaza Strip and appealed for the safe passage of its staff and essential assistance. In a statement, the WFP said it has launched an emergency operation to provide food assistance to more than 800,000 people in Gaza and the West Bank who lack access to food, water and essential supplies. Reported by VOA’s U.N. correspondent Margaret Besheer.

Chinese Dissident Receives Asylum in Canada After Fleeing China

A Chinese dissident who was stranded in the transit area of a Taiwanese airport has arrived in Canada after Ottawa granted him asylum — but some observers say his path to safety, including stops in Laos, Thailand and Taiwan, reflects the growing hardship that Chinese activists face when they try to leave China. William Yang reports from VOA from Taipei.

At Least 29 People Killed in Attack on Refugee Camp in Myanmar

At least 29 people are dead after an artillery strike on a camp housing internally displaced persons in northern Myanmar near the Chinese border, according to sources in the region. News outlets say the attack occurred late Monday night in the town of Laiza, which is controlled by the Kachin Independence Army, the military arm of an ethnic group that has been fighting the Myanmar army for greater autonomy for decades. Local media outlets reportedly showed images of several bodies laid out along the ground, as well as rescuers digging through rubble to recover more bodies. VOANEWS reports.

Aid Fatigue Growing as Refugee, Displacement Crisis Reaches New Heights

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has warned that aid fatigue is growing at a time when a record number of people are fleeing conflict, persecution, human rights violations, climate change and grinding poverty. Lisa Schlein reports for VOA from Geneva.

UK Supreme Court to Decide on Britain Asylum-Seekers’ Resettlement

The British government’s contentious policy to stem the flow of migrants faces one of its toughest challenges this week as the U.K. Supreme Court weighs whether it’s lawful to send asylum-seekers to Rwanda. The Associated Press reports.

EU Mediterranean Ministers Call for Migrant Repatriations, More Resources

Migration and interior ministers from five European Union countries most affected by migration across the Mediterranean — Cyprus, Greece, Italy, Malta and Spain — hailed a new EU pact on migration but said more resources were needed. The ministers from the Med 5 group, who met in Thessaloniki, Greece, October 6-7, took a hard line on returning migrants who have crossed into the bloc illegally to their countries of origin, arguing that if Europe does not tackle the problem decisively, more extreme voices will take over. The Associated Press reports.

UN Urges Halt to Pakistan’s Forcible Returns of Afghan Migrants

The United Nations agencies for migration and refugee protection last Saturday jointly appealed to Pakistan to suspend plans to deport undocumented Afghan immigrants, warning they could be at imminent risk back in Afghanistan. Ayaz Gul reports for VOA from Islamabad, Pakistan.

7 Die in Suspected Migrant Smuggling Crash in Germany

German officials said Friday that seven people died and several others were injured after a van, believed to have been driven by a suspected people-smuggler, overturned while trying to avoid being stopped by federal police. VOANEWS reports.

Thailand Pledges to Repatriate Its Nationals From Israel

The first groups of Thais who were evacuated from Israel following the onslaught by Hamas in southern Israel have landed in Bangkok. Fifteen Thais arrived Thursday at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi International Airport following the long flight from Tel Aviv. Throngs of reporters awaited them, along with government officials and anxious family members. Tommy Walker reports for VOA from Bangkok.

Activists Slam China After Alleged Forced Repatriation of North Koreans

Human rights activists are criticizing China after reports that Beijing forcibly returned more than 500 North Korean defectors. According to several South Korean rights groups that work with North Korean refugees, the defectors were sent across the China-North Korea border earlier this week, shortly after the end of the 2022 Asian Games held in Hangzhou, China. Reported by William Gallo, VOA Seoul bureau chief and regional correspondent.

News Brief

— USCIS clarifies changes to the EB-5 program in the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) made by the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act of 2022 (RIA), “specifically the required investment timeframe and how we treat investors who are associated with a terminated regional center.”
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Multiple countries around the world frequently take steps to repress the activities of their critics and dissidents based in the United States, a recent report from the Government Accountability Office found, calling into question the ability of law enforcement agencies to effectively curtail it.

The study defines the practice, known as “transnational repression,” or TNR, as “when governments, either directly or through others, reach across borders to silence dissent from diasporas and exiles, including journalists, human rights defenders, civil society activists and political opponents.”

The GAO report presents data collected by the Department of Homeland Security in 2022 that found that multiple countries — China, Iran, Russia, Rwanda, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — are “routine perpetrators” of transnational repression on U.S. soil or against U.S.-based persons.

Examples run the gamut from physical threats — including targeted assassination and abduction, to digital threats and harassment — to indirect threats of harm or imprisonment targeting friends and relatives who remain under these governments’ direct control.

While many of the activities constituting TNR are illegal, others exist in a legal gray area, making it difficult for authorities to document the full range and prevalence of the activity being directed at U.S. persons.

Multiple examples

The report cites a number of well-publicized incidents, including the assassination of U.S.-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi by agents of the Saudi Arabian government in Istanbul in 2018, and a violent attack by agents of the Turkish government on protesters in Washington in 2017.

The report also notes multiple examples that have received less media attention, including China’s jailing of dozens of family members of six U.S.-based Uyghur journalists and the Russian abduction of a U.S. citizen in Moscow and his rendition to Belarus.

The report also highlights the case of VOA journalist Masih Alinejad, who was targeted for abduction by agents of Iran in a plot broken up by the Department of Justice in 2021.

Experts said that while they were well aware of the existence of TNR activities in the U.S., some were nevertheless surprised by the report’s findings.

“I study foreign influence for a living, but I was still surprised by the extent of transnational repression in the U.S. that they documented,” said Ben Freeman, director of the Democratizing Foreign Policy program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. “It was a lot more broad-based than I thought.”

Freeman told VOA, “I think a lot of us are operating under what is apparently a flawed assumption that our government has all the tools it needs to push back on transnational repression, but the report very much makes clear that that’s not the case at all.”

Improvement needed

The GAO found that U.S. law enforcement agencies need to improve their ability to recognize when foreign governments are acting within the United States to suppress the activities of dissidents and other critics, and to develop a common understanding of what constitutes TNR and what legal remedies exist to combat it.

One difficulty is that when state and local law enforcement authorities are made aware of illegal activity related to TNR, they don’t always recognize the international dimensions of the case, and fail to report it to federal authorities. In other cases, the report said, many victims are so used to government repression in their home countries that they don’t bother to report it when it happens in the U.S.

The report recommends that major federal law enforcement agencies, including the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security work together to establish a common definition of TNR.

In addition, it recommends that the attorney general assess gaps in the ability of law enforcement to respond to TNR, and recommend legislation that might fill those gaps, if necessary.

The report asks the Department of State to spearhead an effort to collect information on incidents of TNR from multiple law enforcement agencies, and to take steps to enforce existing rules that forbid certain shipments of arms to countries known to engage in a pattern of TNR.

It notes that some of the nations recognized as frequent perpetrators of TNR, including Saudi Arabia and Egypt, are also among the largest beneficiaries of U.S. arms shipments.

Providing a ‘clear deterrent’

Experts told VOA that if Congress were to take steps to make transnational repression itself illegal in the U.S., it might change the calculus of some of the state actors that engage in it.

“I think it would be beneficial to make TNR illegal, because that provides a clear deterrent to the countries engaged in it,” said Colin P. Clarke, a senior research fellow at The Soufan Center, a New York-based think tank.

“The more extreme aspects of TNR are illegal, e.g. targeted killings, but for things like intimidation and harassment, it’s often allowed to fly below the radar, especially if there is no physical violence involved,” he said. “But I firmly believe that when countries like China, Iran and others believe they can get away with even minor transgressions, it will encourage them to go further. Give an inch, they take a mile.”

While law enforcement can do part of the job, Clarke said, the State Department also has a role to play.

“There is absolutely a diplomatic piece to this and it boils down to how countries want to spend their political capital,” he said. “In the past, TNR was something… left to DoJ as a criminal justice issue. But conveying concerns over TNR to other countries, and indeed working with both carrot and stick, should be something that countries strongly consider.” 
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On the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington this summer, a few Black queer advocates spoke passionately before the main program about the ongoing struggle for LGBTQ+ rights. As some of them got up to speak, the crowd was still noticeably small.

Hope Giselle, a speaker who is Black and trans, said she felt the event’s programming echoed the historical marginalization and erasure of Black queer activists in the Civil Rights Movement. However, she was buoyed by the fact that prominent speakers drew attention to recent efforts to turn back the clock on LGBTQ+ rights, like the attacks on gender-affirming care for minors.

And despite valid concerns around the visibility of Black queer advocates in activist movements, progress is being made in elected office. This month, Sen. Laphonza Butler made history as the first Black and openly lesbian senator in Congress, when California Governor Gavin Newsom appointed her to fill the seat held by the late Dianne Feinstein.

Rectifying the erasure of Black queer civil rights giants requires a full-throated acknowledgment of their legacies, and an increase of Black LGBTQ+ representation in advocacy and politics, several activists and lawmakers told The Associated Press.

“One of the things that I need for people to understand is that the Black queer community is still Black,” and face anti-Black racism as well as homophobia and transphobia, said Giselle, communications director for the GSA Network, a nonprofit that helps students form gay-straight alliance clubs in schools.

“On top of being Black and queer, we have to also then distinguish what it means to be queer in a world that thinks that queerness is adjacent to whiteness — and that queerness saves you from racism. It does not,” she said.

In an interview with the AP, Butler said she hopes that her appointment points toward progress in the larger cause of representation.

“It’s too early to tell. But what I know is that history will be recorded in our National Archives, the representation that I bring to the United States Senate,” she said last week. “I am not shy or bashful about who I am and who my family is. So, my hope is that I have lived out loud enough to overcome the tactics of today.”

“But we don’t know yet what the tactics of erasure are for tomorrow,” Butler said.

Butler is a bellwether of increased visibility of queer communities in politics in recent years. In fact Black LGBTQ+ political representation has grown by 186% since 2019, according to a 2023 report by the LGBTQ+ Victory Institute. That included the election of former Rep. Mondaire Jones and Rep. Ritchie Torres, both of New York, who were the first openly gay Black and Afro-Latino congressmen after the 2020 election, as well as former Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot.

These leaders stand on the shoulders of civil rights heroes such as Bayard Rustin, Pauli Murray, and Audre Lorde. In accounts of their contributions to the Civil Rights and feminist movements, their Blackness is typically amplified while their queer identities are often minimized or even erased, said David Johns, executive director of the National Black Justice Coalition, a LGBTQ+ civil rights group.

Rustin, who was an adviser to the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and a pivotal architect of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, is a glaring example. The march he helped lead tilled the ground for the passage of federal civil rights and voting rights legislation in the next few years.

But the fact that he was gay is often reduced to a footnote rather than treated as a key part of his involvement, Johns said.

“We need to teach our public school students history, herstory, our beautifully diverse ways of being, without censorship,” he said.

An upcoming biopic of Rustin’s life will undoubtedly help thrust the topic of Black LGBTQ+ political representation into the public conversation, said Shay Franco-Clausen, a city planning commissioner in Hayward, California.

“I didn’t even learn about those same leaders, Black leaders, Black queer leaders until I got to college,” she said.

The film, titled Rustin, debuts in select theaters Nov. 3 and on Netflix on Nov. 17.

Some believe the erasure of Black LGBTQ+ leaders stems from respectability politics, a strategy in some marginalized communities of ostracizing or punishing members who don’t assimilate into the dominant culture.

White supremacist ideology in Christianity, which has been used more broadly to justify racism and systemic oppression, has also promoted the erasure of Black queer history. The Black Christian church was integral to the success of the Civil Rights Movement, but it is also “theologically hostile” to LGBTQ+ communities, said Don Abram, executive director of Pride in the Pews.

“I think it’s the co-optation of religious practices by white supremacists to actually subjugate Black, queer, and trans folk,” Abram said. “They are largely using moralistic language, theological language, religious language to justify them oppressing queer and trans folk.”

Not all queer advocacy communities have been welcoming to Black LGBTQ+ voices. Minneapolis City Council President Andrea Jenkins said she is just as intentional in amplifying queer visibility in Black spaces as she is amplifying Blackness in majority white, queer spaces.

“We need to have more Black, queer, transgender, nonconforming identified people in these political spaces to aid and bridge those gaps,” Jenkins said. “It’s important to be able to create the kinds of awareness on both sides of the issue that can bring people together and that can ensure that we do have full participation from our community.”

Black LGBTQ+ leaders are also using their platforms to create awareness about groundbreaking historical figures, especially Rustin. Maryland Delegate Gabriel Acevero and several LGBTQ+ advocates fought to get the only elementary school in his district named after Rustin in 2018. He has also urged Congress to pass legislation to create a U.S. Postal Service stamp depicting Rustin.

“Black queer folks have contributed to so many movements that we do not get acknowledgment for,” Acevero said. “And this is why we should not only ensure that our elders get their flowers, but we should push to have their names and statues built … so that they are not forgotten.”
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Malawi launched its first-ever Centre for Artificial Intelligence and STEAM — Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics — Friday at the Malawi University of Science and Technology. Established with support from various U.S.-based universities, the center aims to provide solutions to the country’s innovation and technology needs.

The project’s leader, Zipangani Vokhiwa, a science professor at Mercer University in the U.S. and a Fulbright scholar, says the center will help promote the study and use of artificial intelligence, or AI, and STEAM for the socioeconomic development of Malawi and beyond.

“Economic development that we know cannot go without the modern scientific knowledge and aspect so the center will complement vision 2063 for Malawi as a country that needs to be moving together with the country developments in science,” Vokhiwa said. “Not to be left behind.”

Vokhiwa said the center, known by its acronym, CAIST, will offer educational, technical, policy, and strategy products and services in emerging technologies such as AI.

He said it will also offer machine learning, deep learning, data science, data analytics, internet of things and more that are based on humanistic STEAM education and research.

A consortium of various U.S. universities provided the center with pedagogical and technical support.

These include Baylor College of Medicine, Texas Tech University, Morehouse College, Colorado University, Georgia Southern University, Clemson University, New York University and Mercer University.

There are fears worldwide, however, that the introduction of AI will result in loss of jobs.

CBS news reported  that AI eliminated nearly 4,000 jobs in the U.S. in May.

But Vokhiwa said the advantages and disadvantages of AI are still debatable.

“As has been said by the experts, AI has both positive elements and negative elements,” he said. “But knowing fairly well that we cannot run away from digitization of what we do, AI will be needed, and Malawi does not need to lag behind.”

Vokhiwa said AI has helped create employment because it needs people to run the AI machines.

Malawi’s Minister of Education, Madalitso Kambauwa Wirima, officially opened the AI center at the Malawi University of Science and Technology.

She said the launch of the AI center has set the tone and laid the foundation for the country to explore the opportunities that come with new technologies.

However, she said, while AI has the potential to transform the country, there is also a need to address its downside.

“For this to happen, the government will be looking to CAIST for knowledge and expertise so that we can together facilitate the development of the necessary policy and regulatory frameworks governing responsible use of AI,” she said. “The earlier we do this the better, because AI is already here, and we are all using it. Some of us with enough knowledge, but many of us surely without full knowledge of it.”

Kambauwa Wirima said that whatever the case, AI is something that Malawi cannot avoid, mentioning that the intergovernmental Southern African Development Community is already addressing the issue.

“We adopted a decision to develop regional guidelines on the ethics of artificial intelligence to be domesticated and implemented by member states,” she said. “Therefore, Malawi cannot sit on the fence.”

Address Malata, the vice chancellor for Malawi University of Science and Technology, said the university is strategizing its operations to align them to various development agendas including Malawi 2063, Africa Agenda 2063 and the Sustainable Development Goals, so that whatever the center does, it should benefit everyone.
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Republicans nominated conservative Representative Jim Jordan by a vote of 124-81 Friday in a chaotic third day of attempting to elect a speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. As VOA’s Congressional Correspondent Katherine Gypson reports, Jordan needs substantially more support to win a full floor vote next week to become the person who will be second in the presidential line of succession.
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Pfizer slashed its full-year revenue forecast by 13% and said Friday it will cut $3.5 billion worth of jobs and expenses due to lower-than-expected sales of its COVID-19 vaccine and treatment.

Pfizer earned record revenue in 2021 and 2022, topping $100 billion last year, after developing its vaccine Comirnaty with German partner BioNTech SE and antiviral treatment Paxlovid on its own. Last year, revenue from those two products exceeded $56 billion.

But annual vaccination rates have dropped sharply since 2021 and demand for treatments has dipped as population-wide immunity has increased from vaccines and prior infections. Pfizer and rivals have begun selling an updated COVID vaccine for this fall.

“We remain proud that our scientific breakthroughs played a significant role in getting the global health crisis under control,” Pfizer CEO Albert Boura said in a statement. “As we gain additional clarity around vaccination and treatment rates for COVID, we will be better able to estimate the appropriate level of supply to meet demand.”

The drugmaker said it now expects 2023 revenue of between $58 billion and $61 billion, down from its prior forecast of $67 billion to $70 billion. It said the reduction was solely due to lowered expectations for its COVID-19 products.

Pfizer said it will take a noncash charge of $5.5 billion in the third quarter to write off $4.6 billion of Paxlovid and $900 million of inventory write-offs and other charges for the vaccine.

The cost-cutting program, which will target savings of at least $3.5 billion annually by the end of 2024, will include layoffs, the company said, without providing details on how many jobs will be cut or from what areas. One-time costs to achieve the savings are expected to be around $3 billion.

Shares of the New York-based company were down about 7% in extended trading.

Pfizer slashed its forecast for sales of its antiviral COVID treatment Paxlovid by about $7 billion, including a noncash $4.2 billion revenue reversal, as it agreed to allow the return of 7.9 million courses purchased by the U.S. government. It had previously expected Paxlovid revenue of about $8 billion for the year.

Pfizer said that under a deal with the U.S. government, a credit for the returned Paxlovid doses will underwrite a program to supply the drug free-of-charge to uninsured and underinsured Americans through 2028 and to patients insured under the government’s Medicare and Medicaid programs through the end of next year.

Pfizer will also provide the U.S. government 1 million courses of Paxlovid for the Strategic National Stockpile.

The company expects the drug will become commercially available to people with private insurance on January 1.

Pfizer also cut full-year revenue expectations for the COVID vaccine by about $2 billion due to lower-than-expected vaccination rates.

Pfizer said its non-COVID products remain on track to achieve 6% to 8% revenue growth year over year in 2023.
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The Tohono O’odham Nation in the southern U.S. state of Arizona on Friday blasted the decision by the U.S. Attorney’s Office not to prosecute Border Patrol agents who shot and killed a member of the tribe after they were summoned by tribal police.

Body camera footage released in June by U.S. Customs and Border Protection shows that the agents who fatally shot Raymond Mattia were concerned the 58-year-old may have been carrying a handgun. But no firearm was found.

The tribe’s executive office called the decision not to file charges “a travesty of justice.”

“There are countless questions left unanswered by this decision. As a result, we cannot and will not accept the U.S. Attorney’s decision,” said a statement signed by Tohono O’odham Nation Chairman Verlon M. Jose and Vice Chairwoman Carla L. Johnson.

The statement said the tribe may request Congressional inquiries into Mattia’s death. Mattia was killed the night of May 18 outside a home in the reservation’s Menagers Dam community near the U.S.-Mexico border.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a statement this week that its employees met with Mattia’s family and their attorneys in Sells on September 19 to explain the decision.

“The agents’ use of force under the facts and circumstances presented in this case does not rise to the level of a federal criminal civil rights violation or a criminal violation assimilated under Arizona law,” the office concluded.

“We stand by our conclusion, and we hear the Chairman’s frustration,” the statement added.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection did not immediately respond Friday to emails requesting comment.

The shooting occurred after Border Patrol agents were called to the area by the Tohono O’odham Nation Police Department for help responding to a report of shots fired.

Body camera footage shows Mattia throwing a sheathed machete at the foot of a tribal officer and then holding out his arm. After Mattia was shot and on the ground, an agent declares: “He’s still got a gun in his hand.”

CBP said earlier that the three Border Patrol agents who opened fire and at least seven others at the scene were wearing body cameras and activated them during the shooting.

The Pima County Medical Examiner’s Office reported that Mattia had nine gunshot wounds.
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U.S. law enforcement agencies have escalated security measures to safeguard Jewish and Muslim communities ahead of global pro-Palestinian protests expected on Friday, but they urged members of the public to go about their daily routines.

Police in the two most populous U.S. cities — New York and Los Angeles — said they would step up patrols, especially around synagogues and Jewish community centers, although authorities insisted they were unaware of any specific or credible threats.

“There’s no reason to feel afraid. No one should feel they have to alter their normal lives,” New York Governor Kathy Hochul said at a news briefing on Thursday.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams said his office had directed police to “surge additional resources to schools and houses of worship to ensure they are safe and that our city remains a place of peace.”

Adams said extra police patrols were being deployed in Jewish and Muslim communities alike.

Heightened U.S. security concerns, particularly over a possible flare-up of antisemitic and Islamophobic violence, have followed an attack last Saturday by Hamas gunmen from the Gaza Strip on parts of southern Israel. In the deadliest Palestinian attack in Israel’s history, more than 1,300 Israelis were killed and scores were taken captive.

Heavy aerial bombardment of Gaza by Israeli armed forces in response has killed at least 1,799 people and 6,388 others wounded in the crowded Palestinian coastal enclave, according to health officials there.

Former Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal called for protests across the Muslim world on Friday in support of Palestinians.

Times Square protest expected

New York City officials said they were bracing for at least one major demonstration planned for Times Square on Friday.

“Every member of the New York Police Department will be ready and be in uniform tomorrow,” NYPD Chief of Patrol John Chell told reporters. “We will not tolerate any hate, any acts of disorder; it will be quelled quickly, and we will be ready.”

Hochul said New York state’s National Guard had already been ordered to patrol vital transportation hubs.

Across the country, the Los Angeles Police Department issued a statement saying its officers would assume a higher profile around Jewish and Muslim communities “during this unimaginable time.”

In Washington, police erected fencing around the Capitol complex overnight. Tourists were being directed away from the building and kept on the sidewalk.

A rally supporting Israel and the American Jewish community was scheduled to take place in Washington’s Freedom Plaza at 12:15 p.m. Organizers said on Facebook that they were not aware of any credible threats and planned to hold the rally.

“Hamas wants to strike fear in the hearts of Jews worldwide and prevent us from going about our daily lives. We believe canceling our rally would send the wrong message,” the organizers said in a statement.

The organizers, the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington and the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington, said they were in contact with U.S. Park Police, which patrols the plaza.

Just to the north of Washington in Four Corners, Maryland, Montgomery Blair High School was placed on lockdown and students were moved to a secure location after a bomb threat on Friday morning, police said on social media.

Federal law enforcement agencies were also on alert.

“The FBI is aware of open-source reports about calls for global action on Friday, October 13th, that may lead to demonstrations in communities throughout the United States,” the agency said in a statement. “The FBI encourages members of the public to remain vigilant.”

Arab Americans fear discrimination

At least one Arab American advocacy group pointed to a more hostile posture taken by U.S. law enforcement toward Muslim groups than Jews.

The Arab American Anti-Discrimination Committee said on Thursday that FBI agents had paid visits to a number of mosques in different states and individual U.S. residents with Palestinian roots, calling it a “troubling trend.”

“We have received multiple calls today regarding Palestinian nationals detained by ICE, and/or visited by the FBI,” said the organization’s national executive director, Abed Ayoub.

Rabbi Yoni Fein, who heads a large Jewish day school in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, the Brauser Maimonides Academy, said “higher alerts of operations are definitely in place” in anticipation of global protests on Friday.

He said the FBI, Department of Homeland Security and other federal authorities had held online security sessions with Jewish institutions around the country.

But Fein said the school was seeking to reassure students they are safe and to go about their lives.

Rather than give in to the heightened anxiety that Fein acknowledged was gripping the Jewish community, he said, the academy’s message to its students and their families was to reassure them that “their homes are safe, their schools are safe and that their trusted adults are keeping them safe.”

Biden administration officials anticipated potential threats and have been working with state and local officials on prevention and awareness measures for days, White House spokesman John Kirby said on Friday.

“We’re on this. We’re vigilant. We’re watching this very, very closely,” Kirby said on CNN.
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New York Gov. Kathy Hochul is supporting the city’s effort to suspend a unique legal agreement that requires it to provide emergency housing to homeless people, as a large influx of migrants overwhelms the city’s shelter system.

Hochul endorsed New York City’s challenge to the requirement in a court filing this week, telling reporters Thursday that the mandate was never meant to apply to an international humanitarian crisis.

The city has for months sought to roll back the so-called right to shelter rule following the arrival of more than 120,000 migrants since last year. Many of the migrants have arrived without housing or jobs, forcing the city to erect emergency shelters and provide various government services, with an estimated cost of $12 billion over the next few years.

The shelter requirement has been in place for more than four decades in New York City, following a legal agreement that required the city to provide temporary housing for every homeless person. No other big city in America has such a requirement.

“I don’t know how the right to shelter — dedicated to help those people, which I believe in, help families — can or should be interpreted to be an open invitation to 8 billion people who live on this planet, that if you show up in the streets of New York, that the city of New York has an obligation to provide you with a hotel room or shelter,” said Hochul, who is a Democrat.

Last week, New York City Mayor Eric Adams asked a court to allow it to suspend the mandate when there is a state of emergency in which the shelter population of single adults increases at a rapid rate. New York state on Wednesday filed a court document in support of the city’s request, calling it reasonable.

New York City has also tightened shelter rules by limiting adult migrants to just 30 days in city-run facilities amid overcrowding.

Dave Giffen, executive director of the Coalition for the Homeless, said the city’s request to suspend the mandate would have broad impact and could lead to large homeless encampments in New York.

“Make no mistake: If the mayor and governor get their way, they will be closing the door of the shelter system to thousands of people without homes, leaving them nowhere to sleep but the streets,” he said.
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Within the past year, young journalists have produced investigations that led to the resignation of Stanford University’s president, the firing of Northwestern University’s football coach, and a school shooting graphic so striking that it led a veteran newsman to say, “I’ve never seen a better front page.”

All while making sure to get their homework in on time.

A news industry that has been shedding jobs as long as they’ve been alive, and the risk of harassment when their work strikes nerves hasn’t dimmed the enthusiasm of many college students — often unpaid — who are keeping the flame alive with noteworthy journalism.

“At the end of the day, journalism is a public good, and it attracts people who want to do service for others,” said Theo Baker, a Stanford University sophomore whose stories about faulty scientific research prompted a university investigation and eventual resignation of Stanford’s president, Marc Tessier-Lavigne.

Baker’s work, as a freshman, earned him a George Polk Award in journalism, the first time Polk had ever honored work in an independent, student-run newspaper.

The Daily Northwestern’s explosive interview this summer with a former football player about alleged hazing was key to the firing of head coach Pat Fitzgerald, who is suing for wrongful termination. 

The Columbia Daily Spectator in New York conducted a months-long probe that found toxic working conditions within the university’s public safety department. The Harvard Crimson tracked the money in an investigation into stolen funds at the Harvard Undergraduate Foreign Policy Initiative.

Students nationally are holding people in power accountable, said Jackie Alexander, incoming president of the College Media Association and director of student media at the University of Alabama-Birmingham.

“They are unafraid,” Alexander said. “They are digging deep. They are really living up to the values and principles of being journalists while also being full-time students.”

Charles Whitaker, dean of Northwestern’s Medill journalism school, admitted to being a little worried when he heard about the story that The Daily Northwestern was working on. Yet staff members were thorough and professional, taking care to corroborate the stories they heard, he said.

“I was incredibly proud of what the students did,” Whitaker said.

At Stanford, Baker’s story about Tessier-Levigne was only one aspect of the complex investigations he conducted about the world of academic research, winning him impressive acclaim.

Yet when you ask how his year has been, he says it’s been hell, adding an expletive for emphasis.

He’s been called out of class to learn of threatened legal action. Another nasty lawsuit threat came on the day after Christmas. Professors would pull him aside to say they were impressed by his work but were afraid to be seen in public with him. One memorable post on a campus social media discussion about him said, “journalists are a cancer on society.”

Baker said he was harassed — including angry, middle-of-the-night phone calls — although, incredibly, it wasn’t his first time. He said he was threatened even before college because he’s the son of two prominent journalists, Peter Baker of The New York Times and Susan Glasser of The New Yorker.

With growing reports of student journalists being doxxed, ostracized on campus and otherwise harassed, the College Media Association is looking into ways to help them, Alexander said.

“Being a journalist is like being under a microscope,” Baker said.

Like most of her fellow University of North Carolina students, Emmy Martin spent a few terrifying hours in lockdown on Aug. 28 after a graduate student shot and killed his faculty adviser in a campus building and was on the loose before being apprehended. She was in a library and, as editor in chief of The Daily Tar Heel, spent part of her time reporting.

Martin wondered, later that night, how to cover the story on the newspaper’s front page. She contemplated running a blank front page, or an all-black cover, until she scrolled through her text messages at 1 a.m.

It was a stream of texts wondering about her well-being, which she found out the next day was similar to what her friends received. She collected many of them, and decided to make the front page a block of messages that traveled from student to student:

“Are you safe? Where are you? Are you alone? Guys I’m so fucking scared. Hey — come on sweetheart — I need to hear from you. Can you hear any gunshots? Please stay safe. Barricade the door or if you think you can run and get to a place that can lock do so. My teacher is acting like nothing is happening and I’m lowkey freaking out…”

Even President Joe Biden later commented on the cover, a dramatic glimpse into the minds of Generation Lockdown. “I’ve never seen a better front page,” veteran editor and Columbia Journalism School professor Bill Grueskin said on social media. “And neither have you.”

“We didn’t create the cover to make a national statement,” Martin said. “We wanted to make a historical record of how everyone on the UNC campus felt that day.”

The experience, she said, “reminded me of how journalism matters in more ways than just getting information to the public.”

Also impressed was Raul Reis, dean of the Hussman journalism school at North Carolina. He’s sure to keep the achievement in mind when he’s recruiting prospective students in a tough marketplace.

“We have some very honest conversations with parents,” Reis said. “Even if their son or daughter wants to go into journalism, they are concerned that it’s a dying industry. I tell them it’s the opposite. It’s a thriving industry.”

There’s always a need for highly skilled individuals who are able to communicate, he said.

Almost in spite of the industry’s troubles, Whitaker said there’s been a strong interest in journalism schools over the past several years; many young people saw Trump-era attacks on the profession as a call to action. Students aren’t just interested in shining a light on problems, but in finding solutions.

Traffic to Medill’s website increased by 40% after The Daily Northwestern’s hazing articles. People wanted to know more about the school teaching the young journalists, Whitaker said.

“Good journalism programs need good student newspapers,” he said. “They really demonstrate the things that are being taught in the classroom in a practical way.”

With local news outlets suffering, college newspapers are also covering more than campuses. The Daily Tar Heel covers the surrounding town of Chapel Hill, too. The Columbia Daily Spectator reports on the Manhattan neighborhoods of Morningside Heights, West Harlem and the Upper West Side. The University of Texas at Austin supplies students to cover state government for news outlets across Texas.

“So many people think of student journalists as students first,” Martin said. “But in a lot of ways student journalists are just journalists. Just younger.” 
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Africa is the site of a new battle for influence as Washington ramps up efforts to build an alternative critical minerals supply chain to avoid reliance on China. Beijing dominates the processing of critical minerals such as cobalt, lithium and other resources from the continent that are needed for the transition to clean energy and electric vehicles.

But at the Green Energy Africa Summit this week in Cape Town, which was held on the sidelines of Africa Oil Week, few were willing to talk about it directly.

Asked whether the U.S. was playing catch-up with China, one of the panel’s speakers, Deputy Assistant Secretary in the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Energy Resources Kimberly Harrington, said simply that Washington was looking to “diversify.”

For his part, fellow panelist Chiza Charles Newton Chiumya, the African Union’s director for industry, minerals, entrepreneurship and tourism, told VOA he didn’t want to use the term “competing” to describe the relative approaches of the West and China but agreed there is “lots of interest” in Africa’s critical minerals.

The Chinese Embassy in Washington was also circumspect when asked whether it sees itself in competition with the U.S. for the natural resources.

“The tangible outcomes of China-Africa practical cooperation throughout the years are there for all to see,” spokesperson Liu Pengyu wrote in an emailed response.

“Supporting Africa’s development is the common responsibility of the international community. We welcome stronger interest and investment in Africa from all quarters to help increase the continent’s capability to achieve self-driven sustainable growth and move forward towards modernization and prosperity.”

Independent analysts, however, had a different take. The Chinese made it a “priority to corner the market for critical minerals about two decades ago and supported that strategy with massive public diplomacy and infrastructure investments into Africa — most of which [came] via long-term debt,” said Tony Carroll, adjunct professor in the African studies program at Johns Hopkins University, told VOA earlier this year.

“The West woke up to this strategy too late and have been scrambling ever since.”

Part of that response has been the Minerals Security Partnership set up by U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration last year as a way of diversifying supply chains. Partners include Australia, Canada, Finland, France, Japan, South Korea, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the European Union.

“We see anywhere from three to six times demand growth for critical minerals across the world. … So, I think our sense is that no single government, no single company, can create resilient supply chains,” said Harrington at the Green Energy Africa Summit.

“If the COVID-19 pandemic showed us anything…one of the primary things it showed us is that if we are too overly reliant on any one source in a supply chain … it creates vulnerabilities, and so I think our approach overall on this issue is to make sure that we have diversity,” she told VOA during a Q&A after the panel.  

“When it comes to China in general, our secretary of state has been crystal clear, we have areas in which we cooperate with China, we have areas in which we compete with China, and that’s not going to change,” she said. “This is a complex and consequential relationship and we see it as such.”

The view from Africa

While he didn’t want to use the word “competition” to describe the outside interest in Africa’s critical minerals, the AU’s Chiumya stressed during the panel discussion that Africa must benefit from its mineral wealth.

“This is not the first time that Africa is sitting at the frontier of having critical minerals. … In the past we have lost a chance,” he said, referring to the continent’s vast gold and diamond deposits. “This time around we want to do things different.”

“For a long time, our governments have not been able to effectively exploit the mineral wealth that is there and ended up effectively going into very bad deals” which have not contributed to the social and economic development of the African people, Chiumya added.

Democratic Republic of the Congo President Felix Tshisekedi has been among the African leaders demanding better terms from China for several years. His country produces some 70% of the world’s cobalt but remains one of the world’s least developed nations.

Tshisekedi complained in January that the Congolese people have not benefited from a $6.2 billion minerals-for-infrastructure contract with China that was signed by his predecessor.

Meanwhile in Zimbabwe, which has large lithium deposits, the government has imposed a ban on exports of raw lithium ore, insisting that it be processed at home. A Chinese company has since built a large lithium processing plant in the country.

U.S. critical mineral plans

Washington says environmental, social and governance standards are a key consideration for the U.S. when it comes to its dealings with the continent regarding critical minerals.

“We want to do our part to ramp up our efforts with like-minded partners in Africa to promote sustainable clean energy supply chains in mining,” said Harrington. She said it is also important to help countries “do some domestic processing and refining, because it’s really the value-added, that’s how you create jobs, that’s how you create local capacity.”

At the U.S.-Africa Summit in Washington in December, the DRC, the U.S. and Zambia — another major source of minerals — signed a memorandum of understanding to develop a supply chain for electric car batteries, in what was widely seen by analysts as a move to counter China.

Harrington said the MOU had “the overall goal of a lot of an EV (electric vehicle) battery being processed and refined locally,” even if some further refinement might need to be done in a third country. 

Additionally, on the sidelines of last month’s G20 summit, the U.S. and E.U. pledged to develop the partially existing Lobito Corridor — a railway connecting the DRC’s cobalt belt to Zambia’s copper belt and on to Angola’s port of Lobito, from where it can be shipped to international markets.
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Republican Representative Steve Scalise dropped his bid to become speaker of the US House of Representatives late Thursday, after failing to secure enough votes to win election. VOA’s Congressional Correspondent Katherine Gypson has more on how the US Congress is unable to act on Ukraine and Israel until a new leader is chosen.
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U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is on a diplomatic push to help prevent a wider war in the Middle East, traveling to Israel, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Cindy Saine has the story.
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A possible visit to Vietnam by Chinese President Xi Jinping would be likely to test Hanoi’s balancing act between Beijing and Washington, analysts say.

Reuters reported last week that Vietnamese and Chinese officials are preparing for a possible meeting between Vietnamese Communist Party chief Nguyen Phu Trong and Xi in Hanoi at the end of October or early November.

The visit has not been announced by Beijing or Hanoi.

The Chinese Embassy in Washington declined a request for comment and deferred the question to the Foreign Ministry in Beijing. VOA Vietnamese called the ministry and left a voice mail but did not receive a response.  

If the visit takes place, the Vietnamese leader will have hosted the leaders of two superpowers in his country in less than two months.

Hanoi elevated its ties with Washington to a comprehensive strategic partnership, placing the U.S. on par with China in its diplomatic engagement, during U.S. President Joe Biden’s visit to Hanoi in early September.

Tricky balancing act

Analysts say Xi’s visit would be a litmus test for Hanoi’s so-called “bamboo policy” of balancing the interests of competing powers.

Le Hong Hiep, senior fellow at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore, told VOA Vietnamese this week that Beijing is not “comfortable” to see Vietnam upgrade relations with and becoming closer to the U.S.

“Xi’s possible visit is part of China’s efforts to at least maintain Vietnam’s balance in its foreign policy towards the U.S. and China, if not trying to pull Vietnam to China’s side,” Hiep said.

“Beijing sees the need and seeks to rebalance its influence, as well as reaffirm its status and influence following Hanoi’s upgradation of relations with Washington,” Hoang Viet, a lecturer at Ho Chi Minh City University of Law, told VOA Vietnamese.

According to the Reuters report, Hanoi and Beijing are discussing the text of a joint statement that would pair their nations in a “community of common destiny.”

Xi first proposed the concept of a “community of common destiny” in late 2012, based on a millennia-old Chinese vision of a world where people would live in perfect harmony and would be as dear to one another as family, according to a report from China’s official state media outlet, Xinhua.

Alexander Vuving, a professor at the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu, said Xi will push Vietnam to join China’s “community of common destiny” to try to build a coalition to counter Washington.

“If Vietnam agrees to join China’s ‘community of common destiny,’ this would be touted as an upgrade of the current ‘comprehensive strategic partnership of cooperation’ between China and Vietnam,” Vuving said in an email to VOA Vietnamese this week.

Joining the community would be an upgrade to Vietnam’s relationship with China, and “would be interpreted by China that Beijing is always closer, or ahead of, or above Washington in relations with Vietnam,” Vuving said.

Vietnam remains the only country in mainland Southeast Asia that has not joined China’s “community of common destiny,” according to Vuving.

Hiep said Vietnam will try to maintain its long-standing foreign policy of developing balanced relations with major powers and diversifying its foreign relations.

“China remains an important partner of Vietnam’s, economically, politically and strategically, but China is just one of the major powers with which Vietnam builds relations, and the development of Sino-Vietnamese relationship does not necessarily mean that Vietnam has to abandon or lower its relations with other partners, including the United States,” said Hiep.

Territorial dispute

Separate from striking a balance between Washington and Beijing, Vietnam has unresolved bilateral issues with China, according to analysts.

Nguyen Ngoc Truong, former president of the Center for Strategic Studies and International Development, a government-affiliated think tank in Hanoi, told VOA Vietnamese that Vietnam’s top concerns are “promoting economic and trade relations with China” and “ensuring a peaceful, stable and secure environment, including the South China Sea issue.”

Vietnam, with the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei, opposes China’s sweeping claims to much of the South China Sea. Since May 2014, when Beijing began building on the sea’s outcroppings it controlled, there have been frequent confrontations between Vietnamese and Chinese law enforcement ships in the disputed region.

The sea is believed to be rich in oil and gas resources and vital to international navigation, with nearly $3.4 trillion of trade passing through it each year.

Carl Thayer, professor emeritus at the University of New South Wales in Australia, said Trong is expected to raise the South China Sea issue during the meeting with Xi.

Seeking ways to “properly handle emerging incidents at sea and maintain security and stability at sea” will be on the agenda if the meeting occurs, according to Thayer.

As for Xi, he is likely to announce measures that China will take to increase the value of two-way trade by removing customs bottlenecks, allowing increased market access for Vietnamese agricultural products and an expansion of Vietnamese trade promotion offices in China, Thayer said.

Xi will also promote connectivity through aviation, land and railway transport, including the development of the Lao Cai-Haiphong railway, he added. The railway will be part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, according to reports on VietNamNet and Dan Tri news outlets.
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Recent polls show softening support for U.S. President Joe Biden and his 2024 reelection bid among Black and Hispanic voters. While analysts stress that the shifts aren’t extreme, in a close election they could be pivotal. The Biden campaign told VOA it’s not taking any votes for granted. Veronica Balderas Iglesias has the story.
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Lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives are set to meet Thursday as Republican Steve Scalise faces a test of whether he can get enough support from his party to become the next House speaker.

Republicans nominated Scalise in a closed-door vote Wednesday to be their choice to replace former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who was ousted last week.

He won the internal party ballot 113-99, beating out House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan.

The 58-year-old Scalise won the backing of Republicans with support primarily coming from long-time and establishment party members.

Scalise must now gain approval of the full House, where Republicans hold a slim 221-212 majority, meaning they will need to unite behind a candidate in order to reach the required simple majority threshold to elect a speaker.

It is not clear whether Jordan’s supporters will back Scalise, although both men stated that following the closed-door vote, they would support the Republican Party’s nominee.

McCarthy needed 15 rounds of voting to win in January as Democrats fully backed their candidate, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries. Some Republicans held out until McCarthy made certain concessions.

Among the concessions was allowing any single member to file a motion to vacate and force a vote on whether to remove the speaker. Republican Representative Matt Gaetz filed a motion after McCarthy relied on Democratic votes to avert a government shutdown.

This motion saw McCarthy become the first speaker to be formally voted out of his position.

The speaker vacancy has brought work in the House to a halt, with a mid-November deadline pending to finish work on multiple funding bills or else again face the prospect of a government shutdown. Aid for Ukraine is also waiting for approval. 

Additionally, the urgent need for a resolution based on the recent developments in Israel has prompted Republican lawmakers to reiterate the need to swiftly elect a new speaker, allowing the House to return to work.

“It’s really, really important that this Congress get back to work,” Scalise said. 

Some information for this story came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters. 
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Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on countries around the world to condemn the deadly surprise attacks by militant group Hamas, saying this is a moment for “moral clarity.”

Speaking to reporters in Tel Aviv on Thursday, Netanyahu thanked Blinken for coming to Israel in the middle of the crisis and for America’s support, while giving an emotional account of the attacks that have killed more than 1,000 Israelis.

“The burning of people alive, the beheadings, the kidnappings of a young boy not only kidnapped, molested, hurt, but the attack and the sickening display of celebrating these horrors, the celebration and glorification of evil. President Biden was absolutely correct in calling this sheer evil,” Netanyahu said.

Blinken, who arrived earlier in the day, began with a personal aside, saying he had come to Israel at this critical time as a Jew, and as a husband and a father. 

“You’ve heard the prime minister say this must be a moment for moral clarity.

The failure to unambiguously condemn terrorism puts at risk not only people in Israel, but people everywhere,” he said.

Blinken said the Hamas attacks affect the whole world. 

“Look at what just happened — individuals from 36 countries killed or missing in the aftermath of the heinous attacks. Europe, Asia, Africa the Americas — no region has escaped Hamas’ bloody reach,” Blinken said.

He added that 25 Americans have been killed in the attacks, and that number may well rise. He will hold talks in the region on how to win the release of an estimated 150 hostages held by Hamas.

Blinken’s visit to Israel is the first leg in what is expected to be a diplomatic push to several countries to prevent the violence from spilling over into other countries. He will head to Amman, Jordan, later Thursday to meet with Jordanian King Abdullah II. 

Blinken is also set to meet with both Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Abdullah in Jordan on Friday. A senior U.S. official said Blinken would also travel Friday to meet with officials in Qatar.

Plans are still in flux, but Blinken may also visit Saudi Arabia and other countries in the region. He is expected to hold talks on establishing a humanitarian corridor so that some 2 million Palestinian civilians trapped in Gaza can leave safely while Israel seeks to destroy Hamas’ operating capacity there.

“Israel has the right, indeed the obligation, to defend itself. How Israel does this, matters. We democracies distinguish ourselves from terrorists by placing value on human life. So, it is important to take every precaution. We mourn the loss of every life,” Blinken said alongside Netanyahu on Thursday.
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