First lady Jill Biden tested positive for COVID-19, the White House said in a statement Monday.

“Following the First Lady’s positive test for COVID-19, President Biden was administered a COVID test this evening. The President tested negative,” the statement said. “The President will test at a regular cadence this week and monitor for symptoms.”

President Joe Biden previously tested positive for COVID-19 on July 21, 2022, but only experienced “very mild symptoms,” the White House said at the time.

At the time, Biden was fully vaccinated, including two booster shots. He was given the anti-viral drug Paxlovid. 

Biden then tested positive again on July 30, 2022, just a week after his first bout of the coronavirus.
…

A longtime aide to President Joe Biden who is a senior adviser in Vice President Kamala Harris’ office is Biden’s choice to represent the United States at the United Nations agency devoted to education, science and culture.

The U.S. recently rejoined the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization after a five-year hiatus initiated by Biden’s immediate predecessor in the White House, Donald Trump.

The Democratic president’s choice to become the U.S. permanent representative to the Paris-based UNESCO, with the rank of ambassador, is longtime aide Courtney O’Donnell, according to a White House official, who spoke Monday on the condition of anonymity to discuss the nomination before a formal announcement.

O’Donnell currently wears two hats: She’s a senior adviser in Harris’ office and acting chief of staff for Harris’ husband, second gentleman Doug Emhoff, and lends her expertise to a range of national and global issues, including gender equity and countering prejudice against Jews, a top issue for Emhoff, who is Jewish.

O’Donnell also was communications director for Jill Biden when she was second lady during Joe Biden’s vice presidency in the Obama administration. O’Donnell helped Jill Biden raise awareness and support for U.S. military families and promote community colleges.

She has extensive experience in developing global partnerships, public affairs and strategic communications, having held senior roles in two presidential administrations, nonprofit and philanthropic organizations, national political campaigns and the private sector, according to her official bio.

O’Donnell most recently oversaw global partnerships at Airbnb.

Former White House chief of staff Ron Klain said O’Donnell is trusted by colleagues worldwide.

“This is a fantastic pick, and she will do a fantastic job at UNESCO,” he said in a statement.

Cathy Russell worked with O’Donnell in the second lady’s office and said she is skilled at developing global partnerships, creating social impact campaigns and providing strategic counsel on a range of issues.

“Everyone who knows Courtney knows she is committed to the value of global engagement and strengthening American leadership around the world,” Russell said.

The Senate must vote on O’Donnell’s nomination.

The first lady attended a ceremony in late July at UNESCO headquarters in Paris, where the U.S. flag was raised to mark Washington’s official reentry into the U.N. agency after the absence initiated by Trump, a Republican. She spoke about the importance of American leadership in preserving cultural heritage and empowering education and science across the globe.

The United States announced its intention to rejoin UNESCO in June, and the organization’s 193 member states voted in July to approve the U.S. reentry. The ceremony formally signified the U.S. becoming the 194th member — and flag proprietor — at the agency.

The U.S. decision to return was based mainly on concerns that China has filled a leadership gap since Washington withdrew, underscoring the broader geopolitical dynamics at play, particularly the growing influence of China in international institutions.

The U.S. exit from UNESCO in 2017 cited an alleged anti-Israel bias within the organization. The decision followed a 2011 move by UNESCO to include Palestine as a member state, which led the U.S. and Israel to cease financing the agency. The U.S. withdrawal became official in 2018.
…

Thousands of Burning Man attendees readied to make their “exodus” on Monday as the counter-culture arts festival in the Nevada desert ends in a sea of drying mud instead of a party around its flaming effigy namesake.

Rain over the weekend turned the once hard-packed ground to pudding. One person died at the event in the Black Rock Desert, authorities said on Sunday, providing few details. An investigation is underway.

Organizers posted online that they expected to formally allow vehicles to leave at noon Monday local time, but some attendees told Reuters that a steady stream of vehicles have left since predawn, many struggling through the slop.

The exit is via an unpaved five-mile (8-km) dirt road out to the nearest highway. Photos shared on online sites showed hefty recreational vehicles sunk up to the tire rims in mud, with some using boards under the wheels to help get traction.

The festival site is located about 15 miles from the nearest town and 110 miles north of Reno.

Organizers asked people who could, to delay leaving until Tuesday morning to reduce the traffic.

For days, some 70,000 people were ordered to stay put and conserve food and water as officials closed the roads and exits, ordering all vehicles to stay put.

But the National Weather Service forecasters said on Monday that the rain was over.

“Yep, the rain cleared out of there,” said Marc Chenard, a forecaster with the weather service’s Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland.

“It’ll be sunny today with temperatures in the 70s [Fahrenheit].”

The weather service said the general area received between three-quarters of an inch to 1½ inches (1.9-3.8 cm) of rain since late Friday.

Some of the festival-goers ignored the order to stay put over the weekend and attempted to walk or drive out to the highway.

Others partied on in the rain.

Videos posted to social media showed costumed revelers – including a few children – sliding through the sticky mess, most of them covered from head to toe in wet earth.

“When you get pushed to extremes, that’s when the most fun happens,” said Brian Fraoli, 45, a veteran “burner” who works in finance in New York.

Fraoli said he had tried to drag his luggage through the mud and escape, but gave up and decided to relax and enjoy the experience. “Overall it was an amazing week and next time we will be more prepared,” he said.

Every year Burning Man brings tens of thousands of people to the Nevada desert to dance, make art and enjoy being part of a self-sufficient, temporary community of like-minded spirits. This year’s version opened on Aug. 27 and was scheduled to run through Monday.

It originated in 1986 as a small gathering on a San Francisco beach and is now attended by celebrities and social media influencers. A regular ticket costs $575.

The festival typically has a penultimate night send-off with the burning of a giant wooden effigy of a man, along with a fireworks show. That has not taken place this year, although organizers said it may still happen on Monday evening.
…

The United States honored its nearly 160 million workers Monday, the annual Labor Day celebration that unofficially marks the end of summer and gives families a last chance for get-togethers with friends and relatives the day before the school year starts in some communities if it hasn’t already begun. 

The national holiday, officially proclaimed in 1894, was born as a tribute to American workers who often faced harsh conditions in the late 19th century – 12-hour days, seven days a week, with low pay for physically demanding work. Now, backyard barbecues, a few parades and a day of relaxation mark the holiday.  

While labor disputes over working conditions and pay are still common in the U.S., such as current labor negotiations over expiring contracts for 146,000 auto workers, many labor conflicts have evolved into disputes that fit the times, and they are not just about workers’ pay.  

Some businesses are feuding with their white-collar employees over whether they should be required to return full-time or at least part-time to their workplaces after they worked almost entirely from home for more than three years because of the coronavirus pandemic. Other disputes have emerged over the budding use of artificial intelligence, how it affects the work product and whether employees might lose their jobs because of the use of it. 

The unionized U.S. workforce has been declining for years, but still totals more than 14 million workers. Democrats rely on it for steady political support in elections, although a segment of more conservative workers in some factory towns has switched political allegiances to Republicans even as their union leaders still mostly support Democratic politicians.   

Democratic President Joe Biden, who often calls himself the most pro-union president in U.S. history, headed Monday to the eastern city of Philadelphia for its annual Tri-State Labor Day Parade. He spoke about the importance of unions in U.S. labor history and how the American economy, the world’s biggest, has recovered from the initial devastating effects of the pandemic. 

“This Labor Day we’re celebrating jobs, good-paying jobs; jobs you can raise a family on, union jobs,” Biden told the crowd.

National polling shows Biden, running for reelection in 2024, struggling to gain the confidence of voters for his handling of the economy. He has adopted the term “Bidenomics,” which critics intended as an epithet for his presidency, as a favorable campaign commendation. 

During Biden’s 2½ years in office, the economy has added more than 13 million new jobs, more than during any other presidency in the same time frame, although some were replacement slots to fill vacancies lost in the pandemic.  

Biden said Friday, “As we head into Labor Day, we ought to take a step back and take note of the fact that America is now in one of the strongest job-creating periods in our history.”  

The Labor Department reported Friday that employers added 187,000 jobs in August, less than in some prior months but still a healthy number in the face of rising interest rates imposed by the Federal Reserve, the country’s central bank. 

The U.S. unemployment rate rose from 3.5% to 3.8%, the highest level since February 2022 but still near a five-decade low. Economists, however, said the jobless rate was higher for an encouraging reason: Another 736,000 people began looking for work in August, a sign they felt they could find a job even if they did not immediately get hired.   

The Labor Department only counts people who are actively looking for a job as unemployed, so that accounted for the higher jobless rate.  

Biden has used executive declarations to promote worker union organizing, applauded unionization efforts at the giant shopping website Amazon and authorized federal funding to aid union members’ pensions. Last week, the Biden administration proposed a new rule that would make 3.6 million more U.S. workers eligible for overtime pay, the most generous such increase in decades.  

In campaign stops, Biden has praised union workers helping to build bridges and repair deteriorating infrastructure as part of the bipartisan $1.1 trillion public works package Congress passed in 2021. 

“Unions raise standards across the workforce and industries, pushing up wages and strengthening benefits for everyone,” Biden said Friday. “You’ve heard me say many times: Wall Street didn’t build America. The middle-class built America, and unions built the middle class.” 

Some of the information in this report came from The Associated Press.

The Labor Department only counts people who are actively looking for a job as unemployed, so that accounted for the higher jobless rate.

Biden has used executive declarations to promote worker union organizing, applauded unionization efforts at the giant shopping website Amazon and has authorized federal funding to aid union members’ pensions. Last week, the Biden administration proposed a new rule that would make 3.6 million more U.S. workers eligible for overtime pay, the most generous such increase in decades.

In campaign stops, Biden has praised union workers helping to build bridges and repair deteriorating infrastructure as part of the bipartisan $1.1 trillion public works package Congress passed in 2021.

“Unions raise standards across the workforce and industries, pushing up wages and strengthening benefits for everyone,” Biden said Friday. “You’ve heard me say many times: Wall Street didn’t build America. The middle-class built America, and unions built the middle class.”

Some of the information in this report came from The Associated Press.
…

Naval vessels from the Philippines and United States conducted a joint sail through parts of the South China Sea lying within the Southeast Asian nation’s exclusive economic zone, Manila’s military said on Monday.

It was the first time the Philippines and Washington have carried out a joint sail in waters west of Palawan island, the Armed Forces of the Philippines’ Western Command said.

The display of cooperation between the U.S. and Philippines comes at a time of heightened tension between Manila and Beijing, which claims much of the South China Sea.

The Philippine Navy’s guided-missile frigate BRP Jose Rizal and the US Navy Alrleigh Burke-class guided missile-destroyer USS Ralph Johnson participated in the joint sail, during which ships practice manoeuvring near other vessels. 

“This event aims to provide an opportunity for the Philippine Navy and the U.S. Indo-Pacific Navy to test and refine existing maritime doctrine,” the Western Command said in a statement.

Manila has repeatedly complained against what it described as China’s “aggressive” actions in the South China Sea, including the use of a water cannon by its coast guard against a Philippines vessel engaged in a resupply mission on Aug. 5.

China has built militarised, manmade islands in the South China Sea and its claim of historic sovereignty overlaps with the exclusive economic zones of the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Indonesia.

The Philippines won an international arbitration award against China in 2016, after a tribunal said Beijing’s sweeping claim to sovereignty over most of the South China Sea had no legal basis.
…

Four astronauts returned to Earth early Monday after a six-month stay at the International Space Station.

Their SpaceX capsule parachuted into the Atlantic off the Florida coast.

Returning were NASA astronauts Stephen Bowen and Warren “Woody” Hoburg, Russia’s Andrei Fedyaev and the United Arab Emirates’ Sultan al-Neyadi, the first person from the Arab world to spend an extended time in orbit.

Before departing the space station, they said they were craving hot showers, steaming cups of coffee and the ocean air since arriving in March. Their homecoming was delayed a day because of poor weather at the splashdown locations, but in the end, provided a spectacular middle-of-the-night show as the capsule streaked through the sky over Cape Canaveral toward a splashdown near Jacksonville.

The astronauts said it was incredible to be back. “You’ve got a roomful of happy people here,” SpaceX Mission Control radioed.

SpaceX launched their replacements over a week ago.

Another crew switch will occur later this month with the long-awaited homecoming of two Russians and one American who have been up there an entire year. Their stay was doubled after their Soyuz capsule leaked all of its coolant and a new craft had to be launched.

Between crew swaps, the space station is home to seven astronauts.
…

The third installment in the Denzel Washington-led “Equalizer” franchise topped the domestic box office this weekend with $34.5 million according to studio estimates Sunday. By the end of the Monday holiday, Sony expects that total will rise to $42 million.

Labor Day signals the end of Hollywood’s summer movie season, which will surpass $4 billion in ticket sales for the first time since the pandemic thanks in no small part to “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer,” which are still netting records even after seven weeks in theaters. This weekend, Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” officially became the biggest movie of 2023 with over $1.36 billion globally, surpassing “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” while Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” sailed past $850 million globally to become the No. 3 movie of the year and Nolan’s third highest grossing.

“The Equalizer 3” arrived at a fraught time for Hollywood, with actors seven weeks into a strike for fair contracts with major entertainment companies and movie theaters bracing for a somewhat depleted fall season as a result.

The ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike meant Washington was unable to stump for the movie, which was directed by his frequent collaborator Antoine Fuqua and brings his vigilante character Robert McCall to Italy’s Amalfi coast. While the lack of a major star on a promotional tour would normally be considered a liability for a film’s box office potential, “Equalizer 3” may be the rare exception that could withstand a rollout without Washington’s help simply because it’s a recognizable franchise.

“One of the biggest movie stars in the world took us out on a high note,” said Paul Dergarabedian, the senior media analyst for Comscore. “Studios often coast to Labor Day, but Sony was smart to choose this weekend to open ‘The Equalizer 3.'”

Sony opened the R-rated “Equalizer 3” in over 3,900 locations in North America, including on IMAX and premium large format screens, where it opened in line with the previous two films which both went on to make over $190 million globally. With co-financing from TSG and Eagle Pictures, the film carried a $70 million production price tag. The film received generally positive reviews from critics (76% on Rotten Tomatoes) and overwhelmingly positive reviews from audiences, who gave it an A on CinemaScore and a five-star PostTrak rating.

“It’s uncanny the consistency of the Equalizer franchise,” Dergarabedian said.

Overseas, it made $26.1 million, contributing to a $60.6 million global debut.

In second place, “Barbie” added $10.6 million over the weekend in the U.S. and Canada, pushing its domestic total to $609.5 million. Warner Bros.’ other main theatrical offering, “Blue Beetle” added $7.3 million to take third. The DC superhero film has grossed $56.6 million in three weekends in North America. Fourth place went to Sony’s “Gran Turismo: Based on a True Story,” which is projecting $6.6 million through Sunday, down 62% from its first-place opening weekend, and $8.5 million including Monday.

“Oppenheimer” landed in fifth place on the domestic charts with an estimated $5.5 million ($7.4 million including estimates for Monday) from 2,543 theaters. This brings its domestic total to $310.3 million and its global take to $851 million.

The Universal film opened in China on Wednesday, playing on 35,000 screens, where it is estimated to have made $30.3 million in its first five days. A significant portion of that ($9.3 million through Sunday) came from 736 IMAX screens.

IMAX CEO Rich Gelfond said in a statement that “Oppenheimer’s” China debut showed that “it’s nowhere near finished dazzling audiences worldwide.” Gelfond added that its success also offers “a powerful demonstration of our surging market share around the world.”

That the 18-week summer movie season hit $4 billion is significant for an industry still recovering from the pandemic and facing uncertainty in the fall if the actors and writers strikes continue. Before the pandemic, $4 billion summers had become the standard for the industry and generally accounted for at least 40% of the total box office for the year. Last summer netted out with $3.4 billion.

And this summer had its share of hits, flops and surprises, with “Barbenheimer” accounting for over $900 million of the $4 billion haul.

“The summer box office is vitally important and a strong indicator of the health of the industry,” Dergarabedian said. “Many were really skeptical that we could get to $4 billion. We’re hitting it literally in the final days of the summer. It’s a reminder that any hit or miss makes a profound impact on the bottom line.”

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

1. “The Equalizer 3,” $34.5 million.

2. “Barbie,” $10.6 million.

3. “Blue Beetle,” $7.3 million.

4. “Gran Turismo: Based on a True Story,” $6.6 million.

5. “Oppenheimer,” $5.5 million.

6. “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem,” $4.8 million.

7. “Bottoms,” $3 million.

8. “Meg 2: The Trench,” $2.9 million.

9. “Strays,” $2.5 million.

10. “Talk to Me,” $1.8 million.
    …

As the U.S. government built its latest stretch of border wall, Mexico made a statement of its own by laying remains of the Berlin Wall a few steps away.

The 3-ton pockmarked, gray concrete slab sits between a bullring, a lighthouse and the border wall, which extends into the Pacific Ocean.

“May this be a lesson to build a society that knocks down walls and builds bridges,” reads the inscription below the towering Cold War relic, attributed to Tijuana Mayor Montserrat Caballero and titled, “A World Without Walls.”

For Caballero, like many of Tijuana’s 2 million residents, the U.S. wall is personal and political, a part of the city’s fabric and a fact of life. She considers herself a migrant, having moved from Oaxaca in southern Mexico when she was 2 years old with her mother, who fled “the vicious cycle of poverty, physical abuse and illiteracy.”

The installation opened Aug. 13 at a ceremony with Caballero and Marcelo Ebrard, Mexico’s former foreign secretary who is now a leading presidential candidate.

Caballero, 41, is married to an Iranian man who became a U.S. citizen and lives in the United States. She and their 9-year-old son used to cross the border between Tijuana and San Diego.

Since June, Caballero has lived in a military barracks in Tijuana, saying she acted on credible threats against her brought to her attention by U.S. intelligence officials and a recommendation by Mexico’s federal government. Weeks earlier, her bodyguard survived an assassination attempt.

Caballero said that she doesn’t know who wants to kill her but suspects payback for having seized arms from violent criminals who plague her city. “Someone is probably upset with me,” she said in her spacious City Hall office.

Shards of the Berlin Wall scattered worldwide after it crumbled in 1989, with collectors putting them in hotels, schools, transit stations and parks. Marcos Cline, who makes commercials and other digital productions in Los Angeles, needed a home for his artifact and found an ally in Tijuana’s mayor.

“Why in Tijuana?” Caballero said. “How many families have shed blood, labor and their lives to get past the wall? The social and political conflict is different than the Berlin Wall, but it’s a wall at the end of the day. And a wall is always a sphinx that divides and bloodies nations.”

President Joe Biden issued an executive order his first day in office to halt wall construction, ending a signature effort by his predecessor, Donald Trump. But his administration has moved ahead with small, already-contracted projects, including replacing a two-layered wall in San Diego standing 5.5 meters (18 feet) high with one rising 9.1 meters (30 feet) and stretching 1 kilometer (0.6 mile) to the ocean.

The wall slices through Friendship Park, a cross-border site inaugurated by then-U.S. first lady Pat Nixon in 1971 to symbolize binational ties. For decades, families separated by immigration status met through barbed wire and, later, a chain-link fence. It is a cherished, festive destination for tourists and residents in Mexico.

At an arts festival in 2005, David “The Human Cannonball” Smith Jr. flashed his passport in Tijuana as he lowered himself into a barrel and was shot over the wall, landing on a net on the beach with U.S. border agents nearby. In 2019, artist Lizbeth De La Cruz Santana covered the Tijuana side of the wall with paintings of adults who moved to the U.S. illegally as young children and were deported. Visitors who held up their phones to bar codes were taken to a website that voiced their first-person narratives.

Cline said he was turned away at the White House when he tried delivering the Berlin Wall relic to Trump and then trucked it across the country to find a suitable home. He said the piece has found “its second life” at the Tijuana park alongside the colorful paintings on the border wall that express views on politics and immigration.

The U.S. government has gradually restricted park access from San Diego over the last 15 years in a state park that once allowed cross-border yoga classes, religious services and music festivals. After lengthy consideration, the Biden administration agreed to keep the wall at 5.5 meters (18 feet) for a small section where some access will be allowed.

Dan Watman of Friends of Friendship Park, which advocates for cross-border park access, said the 18.3-meter (60-foot) section that will remain at the lower height is only a token gesture. “The park on the Mexican side has become sort of a one-sided party,” he said.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection said that it anticipates replacing the “deteriorated” two-layer barrier by November and that the higher one under construction “will provide much needed improvements.”

The Berlin Wall installation has gotten rave reviews from visitors. Lydia Vanasse, who works in the financial sector in San Diego and lives in Tijuana, said the relic took her back to her 20s when the Soviet empire fell, and Germans were suddenly allowed to move freely.

“San Diego and Tijuana are sister cities,” she said. “The wall separates us, but we are united in many ways. It would be better if there wasn’t a wall.”
…

The United States will continue to sell semi-conductor computer chips to China but not its most powerful ones “that China wants for its military,” Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said Sunday.

The U.S. is “never going to sell our most powerful [artificial intelligence] chips” to China, Raimondo told CNN’s “State of the Union” show.

Raimondo, who met in Beijing recently with Chinese officials on a range of U.S.-Chinese business and trade issues, recapped her sometimes contentious discussions in a string of talk show interviews.

Raimondo said she told Chinese officials that she knew Beijing had hacked her email in advance of her late August trip.

“They did hack me, which was unappreciated, to say the least,” she told NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

On CNN, she said, “They suggested that they didn’t know about it and they suggested that it wasn’t intentional. But I think it was important that I put it on the table and let them know and let them know that it’s hard to build trust when you have actions like that.”

Raimondo said she told Chinese officials they were making it more difficult for American companies to do business there.

“I was very clear with China that we need to — patience is wearing thin among American business,” Raimondo told CBS’s “Face the Nation” show. “They need and deserve a predictable environment and a level playing field. And hopefully China will heed that message so we can have a stable growing commercial relationship.”

While the United States and China maintain more than $700 billion in annual trade, escalating tensions in recent years have made it more challenging for U.S. firms to operate in China.

Raimondo said U.S. firms face unexplained large fines, raids on businesses and changes to a counterespionage law.

Raimondo said that as China’s economy has slowed in recent months, its government has “become more arbitrary in the way they administer regulations; the economy is quite challenged.”

“I brought up many of our grievances on behalf of our national security concerns, concerns of U.S. labor, concerns of U.S. business. Didn’t pull any punches,” she told NBC. “It’s a complicated relationship. There’s no doubt about it. We are in a fierce competition with China at every level.”

The United States and China are the world’s two biggest economies.

“All of that being said, we have to manage this competition,” she said. “Conflict is in no one’s interest. We need to manage the competition responsibly. That’s good for America. That’s good for the world.”

“And in that respect, I think our commercial relationship, which is very large and growing, and underpins hundreds of thousands of U.S. jobs, our commercial relationship, if stable, can be kind of a ballast for the entire relationship,” she said. “And anything we do that can create stability is, in fact, good for the American people.”

Chinese Premier Li Qiang told Raimondo during her trip that “sound economic relations and trade cooperation will not only be beneficial to our two countries, but to the whole world.”

As it stands now, the U.S. imports much of its semiconductor chips used in the manufacture of high-tech products from Taiwan, the self-governed territory that China considers a wayward province. Beijing has never ruled out the use of military force to take full control and Washington has been supplying Taiwan with military weaponry to defend itself against any prospect of an invasion.

Raimondo said the U.S. is on track by the end of the decade to “have a large, deep, best-in-the-world semiconductor ecosystem…. We already lead the world in design of semiconductors. You can see that with the AI chips. We lead the world in software.”

But she added, “We need to get back into the business of actually manufacturing leading-edge chips here and packaging leading edge chips here. And yes, we will, by the end of this decade, have regained prominence and have that deep ecosystem, including research and development, here in the U.S.”

Nike Ching contributed to this report. Some information was provided by Reuters.
…

As colleagues of Jeff German mark one year since the investigative reporter was found stabbed to death outside his Las Vegas home, they’re in a fight to protect his devices — and confidential sources — as police investigate his killing.

German, who reported for the Las Vegas Review-Journal, was found killed outside his Las Vegas home on September 3, 2022.

Since German’s death, the Review-Journal newsroom has been grappling with the loss of their colleague as they work to shield his devices, which police seized as part of their investigation. 

On Thursday, the press freedom group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) renewed calls for authorities to protect German’s anonymous sources while investigating his killing. 

“We implore the authorities to do all they can to bring Jeff German’s killer to justice, but endangering German’s journalistic sources in the course of this investigation will only compound the tragedy,” Clayton Weimers, executive director RSF’s U.S. bureau, said in a statement.

Four days after German was found dead, police arrested and charged former Clark County Public Administrator Robert Telles with the murder.

German previously reported on alleged mismanagement in Telles’ office, which contributed to Telles losing his reelection. German was working on a follow-up story at the time of his slaying.

Telles, who is representing himself, has pleaded not guilty. The trial is set to begin in November.

The Review-Journal and press freedom groups are concerned that German’s confidential sources are at risk of being exposed if police are allowed to have unrestricted access to his devices.

Another worry is that if police are given unfettered access, it could set a legal precedent permitting reporters’ private source material to be accessed after they are killed.

The Review-Journal wants independent third parties to review German’s devices first to make sure information related to confidential sources or sensitive unpublished information that is not related to German’s death aren’t turned over to the police.

Nevada has one of the country’s strongest shield laws, which protect reporters from being forced by the government to disclose information like the identities of sources.

“Authorities in this case must respect the confidentiality of German’s sources and privileged reporting materials,” RSF’s Weimers said in the statement. “If law enforcement or government officials were to review the full, unredacted contents of German’s devices, it would put confidential sources at risk and have a chilling effect on anyone else from speaking to reporters.”

The Nevada Supreme Court will decide on the matter in the coming months.

At the end of August, German was posthumously awarded the President’s Award from the National Press Club in Washington.

Lizzie Johnson, the Washington Post reporter who completed the story German was working on when he was killed, was also honored with the President’s Award.

 
…

Labor Day is right around the corner, along with the big sales and barbecues that come with it. But the activist roots of the holiday are especially visible this year as unions challenge how workers are treated — from Hollywood to the auto production lines of Detroit.

The early-September tribute to workers has been an official holiday for almost 130 years — but an emboldened labor movement has created an environment closer to the era from which Labor Day was born. Like the late 1800s, workers are facing rapid economic transformation — and a growing gap in pay between themselves and new billionaire leaders of industry, mirroring the stark inequalities seen more than a century ago.

“There’s a lot of historical rhyming between the period of the origins of Labor Day and today,” Todd Vachon, an assistant professor in the Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations, told The Associated Press. “Then, they had the Carnegies and the Rockefellers. Today, we have the Musks and the Bezoses. … It’s a similar period of transition and change and also of resistance — of working people wanting to have some kind of dignity.”

Between writers and actors on strike, contentious contract negotiations that led up to a new labor deal for 340,000 unionized UPS workers and active picket lines across multiple industries, the labor in Labor Day is again at the forefront of the holiday arguably more than it has been in recent memory.

Here are some things to know about Labor Day this year.

When was the first Labor Day observed?

The origins of Labor Day date back to the late 19th century, when activists first sought to establish a day that would pay tribute to workers.

The first U.S. Labor Day celebration took place in New York City on Sept. 5, 1882. Some 10,000 workers marched in a parade organized by the Central Labor Union and the Knights of Labor.

A handful of cities and states began to adopt laws recognizing Labor Day in the years that followed, yet it took more than a decade before President Grover Cleveland signed a congressional act in 1894 establishing the first Monday of September as a legal holiday.

Canada’s Labour Day became official that same year, more than two decades after trade unions were legalized in the country.

The national holidays were established during a period of pivotal actions by organized labor. In the U.S., Vachon points to the Pullman Railroad Strike that began in May 1894, which effectively shut down rail traffic in much of the country.

“The federal government intervened to break the strike in a very violent way — that left more than a dozen workers dead,” Vachon says. Cleveland soon made Labor Day a national holiday in an attempt “to repair the trust of the workers.”

A broader push from organized labor had been in the works for some time. Workers demanded an 8-hour workday in 1886 during the deadly Haymarket Affair in Chicago, notes George Villanueva, an associate professor of communication and journalism at Texas A&M University. In commemoration of that clash, May Day was established as a larger international holiday, he said.

Part of the impetus in the U.S. to create a separate federal holiday was to shift attention away from May Day — which had been more closely linked with socialist and radical labor movements in other countries, Vachon said.

How has Labor Day evolved over the years?

The meaning of Labor Day has changed a lot since that first parade in New York City.

It’s become a long weekend for millions that come with big sales, end-of-summer celebrations and, of course, a last chance to dress in white fashionably. Whether celebrations remain faithful to the holiday’s origins depends where you live.

New York and Chicago, for example, hold parades for thousands of workers and their unions. Such festivities aren’t practiced as much in regions where unionization has historically been eroded, Vachon said, or didn’t take a strong hold in the first place.

When Labor Day became a federal holiday in 1894, unions in the U.S. were largely contested and courts would often rule strikes illegal, Vachon said, leading to violent disputes. It wasn’t until the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 that private sector employees were granted the right to join unions. Later into the 20th century, states also began passing legislation to allow unionization in the public sector — but even today, not all states allow collective bargaining for public workers.

Rates of organized labor have been on the decline nationally for decades. More than 35% of private sector workers had a union in 1953 compared with about 6% today. Political leanings in different regions has also played a big roll, with blue states tending to have higher unionization rates.

Hawaii and New York had the highest rates of union membership in 2022, respectively, followed by Washington, California and Rhode Island, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Nationwide, the number of both public and private sector workers belonging to unions actually grew by 273,000 thousand last year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics found. But the total workforce increased at an even faster rate — meaning the total percentage of those belonging to unions has fallen slightly. 

What labor actions are we seeing this year?

Despite this percentage dip, a reinvigorated labor movement is back in the national spotlight.

In Hollywood, screenwriters have been on strike for nearly four months — surpassing a 100-day work stoppage that ground many productions to a halt in 2007-2008. Negotiations are set to resume Friday. Actors joined the picket lines in July — as both unions seek better compensation and protections on the use of artificial intelligence.

Unionized workers at UPS threatened a mass walkout before approving a new contract last month that includes increased pay and safety protections for workers. A strike at UPS would have disrupted the supply chain nationwide. 

Last month, auto workers also overwhelmingly voted to give union leaders the authority to call strikes against Detroit car companies if a contract agreement isn’t reached by the Sept. 14 deadline. And flight attendants at American Airlines also voted to authorize a strike this week.

“I think there’s going to be definitely more attention given to labor this Labor Day than there may have been in many recent years,” Vachon said. Organizing around labor rights has “come back into the national attention. … And (workers) are standing up and fighting for it.” 
…

Authorities in Nevada were investigating a death at the site of the Burning Man festival where thousands of attendees remained stranded Saturday night as flooding from storms swept through the Nevada desert.

Organizers closed vehicular access to the counterculture festival and attendees trudged through mud, many barefoot or wearing plastic bags on their feet. The revelers were urged to shelter in place and conserve food, water and other supplies.

The Pershing County Sheriff’s Office said the death happened during the event but offered few details as the investigation continued, including the identity of the deceased person or the suspected cause of death, KNSD-TV reported.

Vehicle gates will not open for the remainder of the event, which began on Aug. 27 and was scheduled to end Monday, according to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, which oversees the Black Rock Desert where the festival is being held.

More than one-half inch of rain is believed to have fallen on Friday at the festival site, located about 110 miles (177 kilometers) north of Reno, the National Weather Service in Reno said. At least another quarter of an inch of rain is expected Sunday.

The Reno Gazette Journal reported organizers started rationing ice sales and that all vehicle traffic at the sprawling festival grounds had been stopped, leaving portable toilets unable to be serviced.

Officials haven’t yet said when the entrance is expected to be opened again, and it wasn’t immediately known when celebrants could leave the grounds.

The announcements came just before the culminating moment for the annual event — when a large wooden effigy was to be burned Saturday night.

Messages left Saturday afternoon by The Associated Press for both the Bureau of Land Management and the Pershing County Sheriff’s Office, the agencies that closed the entrance, weren’t immediately returned.

Many people played beer pong, danced and splashed in standing water, the Gazette Journal said. Mike Jed, a festivalgoer, and fellow campers made a bucket toilet so people didn’t have to trudge as often through the mud to reach the portable toilets.

“If it really turns into a disaster, well, no one is going to have sympathy for us,” Jed said. “I mean, it’s Burning Man.”
…

Border Patrol agents ordered the young Senegalese men to wait in the scant shade of desert scrub brush while they loaded a more vulnerable group of migrants — a family with three young children from India — into a white van for the short trip in triple-degree heat to a canopied field intake center.

The migrants were among hundreds who have been trudging this summer in the scorching sun and through open storm gates in the border wall to U.S. soil, following a remote corridor in the sprawling Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument that’s among the most desolate and dangerous areas in the Arizona borderlands. Temperatures hit 47.7 degrees Celsius just as smugglers abruptly began steering migrants from Africa and Asia here to request asylum.

Suddenly, the Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector, which oversees the area, in July became the busiest sector along the U.S-Mexico border for the first time since 2008. It’s seen migrants from faraway countries like Pakistan, China and Mauritania, where social media is drawing young people to the new route to the border that begins in Nicaragua. There are large numbers from Ecuador, Bangladesh and Egypt, as well as more traditional border crossers from Mexico and Central America.

“Right now we are encountering people from all over the world,” said Border Patrol Deputy Chief Justin De La Torre, of the Tucson Sector. “It has been a real emergency here, a real trying situation.”

The patrol is calling on other agencies, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Transportation Security Administration, for help in getting migrants “out of the elements and into our processing centers as quickly as possible,” De La Torre said.

During a recent visit, Associated Press journalists saw close to 100 migrants arrive in just four hours at the border wall near Lukeville, Arizona, inside Organ Pipe, as temperatures hit 43.3 degrees Celsius. The next morning, several hundred more migrants lined up along the wall to turn themselves in.

“Welcome to America, that’s good person,” a young Senegalese man said in his limited English, beaming as he crunched across the desert floor after Tom Wingo, a humanitarian aid volunteer, gave him some water and snacks. “I am very, very happy for you.”

The storm gates in the towering steel wall have been open since mid-June because of rains during the monsoon season. Rushing water from heavy downpours can damage closed gates, the wall, a rocky border road, and flora and fauna. But migrants get in even when the gates are closed, sometimes by breaking locks or slipping through gaps in the wall.

Agents from the Border Patrol’s small Ajo Station a half hour’s drive north of the border encountered several large groups the first weekend of August, including one of 533 people from 17 countries in the area that includes the national monument, an expanse of rugged desert scattered with cactus, creosote and whip-like ocotillo. The Tucson Sector registered 39,215 arrests in July, up 60% from June. Officials attribute the sudden influx to false advertising by smugglers who tell migrants it’s easier to cross here and get released into the United States.

Migrants are taken first to the intake center, where agents collect people’s names, countries of origin and other information before they are moved to the Ajo Station some 48 kilometers up a two-lane state highway. 

Arrests for illegally crossing anywhere along the nearly 3,200-kilometer U.S.-Mexico border soared 33% from June to July, according to U.S. government figures, reversing a plunge after new asylum restrictions were introduced in May. President Joe Biden’s administration notes illegal crossings were still down 27% that month from July 2022 and credits the carrot-and-stick approach that expands legal pathways while punishing migrants who enter illegally.

De La Torre said most migrants in the area request asylum, something far from guaranteed with the recent restrictions.

The Ajo Station’s area of responsibility is currently the busiest inside the Tucson Sector, De La Torre said. It includes the border areas of Organ Pipe and the Cabeza Prieta Wildlife Refuge, isolated areas with rough roads and scarce water and shade. They include the Devil’s Highway region, where 14 border crossers in a group of 26 died in 2001 after smugglers abandoned them.

CBP rescues by air and land along the border are soaring this year, with 28,537 counted during the 10-month period ending July 31. That compares with 22,075 for the 12-month period ending Sept. 30, 2022, the agency said. There were 2,776 migrant rescues in July.

The rescues continued in August, including one especially busy day when a Black Hawk helicopter hoisted a 15-year-old Guatemalan boy from a remote southern Arizona mountain to safety. A short time later, the chopper rescued a Guatemalan man who called 911 from the vast Tohono O’odham Nation just east of Organ Pipe.

Some activists recently protested outside the Ajo Station, saying migrants kept in an outdoor enclosure there didn’t have enough shade. Patrol officials say that only adult men waiting to be transported to bigger facilities for processing are kept outside for a few hours, and under a large canopy with fans. Women, children and vulnerable people stay inside. The average wait time the facility is 15 hours.

The influx has also presented challenges for humanitarian groups.

Wingo, a retired schoolteacher working with Samaritanos Sin Fronteras, or Samaritans Without Borders, travels to the border several times a week to fill bright blue plastic barrels at six water stations. He and other volunteers distribute hats, bandanas, snacks and ice-cold bottled water to migrants they encounter.

“A lot of these people go out into the desert not knowing the trouble they are getting themselves into,” said Wingo.

During a recent border visit, Wingo handed bottled water to people from India waiting for help by the wall after a woman they were traveling twisted her ankle. He gave water and granola bars to a Guatemalan couple with three young children who were traveling with a Peruvian man.

Wingo said he pays especially close attention to those who may be more susceptible to the torrid heat, such as pregnant and nursing women and the elderly. He recently encountered an 89-year-old diabetic woman from India about to go into shock. When he called Border Patrol agents on that especially busy day, he said, they asked him to bring the woman himself to their intake center for medical care. The woman is recovering in a Phoenix hospital.

Many others don’t survive.

The remains of 43 suspected border crossers were found in southern Arizona in July, about half of them recently dead, according to the non-profit organization Human Borders, which works with the Pima County Medical Examiner’s Office to track and map the numbers.

They included two found in Organ Pipe: Hilda Veliz Maas de Mijangos, 36, from Guatemala City, dead about a day; and Ignacio Munoz Loza, 22, of the Mexican state of Jalisco, dead for about a week. Both succumbed to heat exposure.
…

The news lit up the world of weed: U.S. health regulators are suggesting that the federal government loosen restrictions on marijuana.

Specifically, the federal Health and Human Services Department has recommended taking marijuana out of a category of drugs deemed to have “no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.” The agency advised moving pot from that “Schedule I” group to the less tightly regulated “Schedule III.”

So what does that mean, and what are the implications? Read on.

First of all, what has actually changed? What happens next?

Technically, nothing yet. Any decision on reclassifying — or “rescheduling,” in government lingo — is up to the Drug Enforcement Administration, which says it will take up the issue. The review process is lengthy and involves taking public comment.

Still, the HHS recommendation is “paradigm-shifting, and it’s very exciting,” said Vince Sliwoski, a Portland, Oregon-based cannabis and psychedelics attorney who runs well-known legal blogs on those topics.

“I can’t emphasize enough how big of news it is,” he said.

It came after President Joe Biden asked both HHS and the attorney general, who oversees the DEA, last year to review how marijuana was classified. Schedule I put it on par, legally, with heroin, LSD, quaaludes and ecstasy, among others.

Biden, a Democrat, supports legalizing medical marijuana for use “where appropriate, consistent with medical and scientific evidence,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Thursday. “That is why it is important for this independent review to go through.”

So if marijuana gets reclassified, would it legalize recreational pot nationwide?

No. Schedule III drugs — which include ketamine, anabolic steroids and some acetaminophen-codeine combinations — are still controlled substances.

They’re subject to various rules that allow for some medical uses, and for federal criminal prosecution of anyone who traffics in the drugs without permission. (Even under marijuana’s current Schedule I status, federal prosecutions for simply possessing it are few: There were 145 federal sentencings in fiscal year 2021 for that crime, and as of 2022, no defendants were in prison for it.)

It’s unlikely that the medical marijuana programs now licensed in 38 states — to say nothing of the legal recreational pot markets in 23 states — would meet the production, record-keeping, prescribing and other requirements for Schedule III drugs.

But rescheduling in itself would have some impact, particularly on research and on pot business taxes.

What would this mean for research?

Because marijuana is on Schedule I, it’s been very difficult to conduct authorized clinical studies that involve administering the drug. That has created something of a Catch-22: calls for more research, but barriers to doing it. (Scientists sometimes rely instead on people’s own reports of their marijuana use.)

Schedule III drugs are easier to study.

In the meantime, a 2022 federal law aimed to ease marijuana research.

What about taxes (and banking)?

Under the federal tax code, businesses involved in “trafficking” in marijuana or any other Schedule I or II drug can’t deduct rent, payroll or various other expenses that other businesses can write off. (Yes, at least some cannabis businesses, particularly state-licensed ones, do pay taxes to the federal government, despite its prohibition on marijuana.) Industry groups say the tax rate often ends up at 70% or more.

The deduction rule doesn’t apply to Schedule III drugs, so the proposed change would cut pot companies’ taxes substantially.

They say it would treat them like other industries and help them compete against illegal competitors that are frustrating licensees and officials in places such as New York.

“You’re going to make these state-legal programs stronger,” says Adam Goers, an executive at medical and recreational pot giant Columbia Care. He co-chairs a coalition of corporate and other players that’s pushing for rescheduling.

Rescheduling wouldn’t directly affect another pot business problem: difficulty accessing banks, particularly for loans, because the federally regulated institutions are wary of the drug’s legal status. The industry has been looking instead to a measure called the SAFE Banking Act. It has repeatedly passed the House but stalled in the Senate.

Are there critics? What do they say?

Indeed, there are, including the national anti-legalization group Smart Approaches to Marijuana. President Kevin Sabet, a former Obama administration drug policy official, said the HHS recommendation “flies in the face of science, reeks of politics” and gives a regrettable nod to an industry “desperately looking for legitimacy.”

Some legalization advocates say rescheduling weed is too incremental. They want to keep focus on removing it completely from the controlled substances list, which doesn’t include such items as alcohol or tobacco (they’re regulated, but that’s not the same).

National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws Deputy Director Paul Armentano said that simply reclassifying marijuana would be “perpetuating the existing divide between state and federal marijuana policies.” Minority Cannabis Business Association President Kaliko Castille said rescheduling just “re-brands prohibition,” rather than giving an all-clear to state licensees and putting a definitive close to decades of arrests that disproportionately pulled in people of color.

“Schedule III is going to leave it in this kind of amorphous, mucky middle where people are not going to understand the danger of it still being federally illegal,” he said.
…

A group of friends and neighbors meets for a weekly meal, choosing from a special menu of nutritious foods paid for by social programs meant to keep older adults eating healthy.  

They’re all over 60, and between enjoying butternut squash soup, sandwiches, oats and eggs, they chat and poke fun about families, politics, and the news of the day.  

But if you’re imagining people gathering for lunch in a senior center, think again. 

Long before COVID put a pause on social gatherings, some senior centers were losing their lunch appeal. Others didn’t reopen after the pandemic. 

Enter this elegant solution that’s gained popularity: Give some of the federal and state money set aside to feed seniors to struggling restaurants and have them provide balanced meals with more choices, flexible timing, and a judgment-free setting that can help seniors get together to chat and stem loneliness. 

“Isolation is the new pandemic,” said Jon Eriquezzo, president of Meals on Wheels of New Hampshire’s Hillsborough County, which runs one such program, in addition to delivering meals to homebound seniors and senior centers. “Knocking on doors and seeing somebody who’s homebound is helpful. But getting people out to do this — the mutual support — you can’t beat that.” 

Seniors are changing. They may still be working, taking care of grandchildren, and fitting in medical appointments, unable to show up at a set time for lunch or dinner. And after years of cooking for others, it’s nice to be able to sit at the restaurant and order a meal. 

Some restaurant programs target seniors in rural communities. Others benefit people with limited access to transportation. Some are geared toward minority communities. 

“Everybody does something a little bit different when they’re having a gap in services,” said Lisa LaBonte, a nutrition consultant based in Connecticut. 

Every day, 12,000 Americans turn 60

According to information compiled by Meals on Wheels America, one in four Americans is at least 60 years old, with 12,000 more turning 60 every day. Those on fixed incomes also are living longer with less money; one in two seniors living alone lacks the income to pay for basic needs. 

Debbie LaBarre looks forward to the weekly gathering with her pals at a bright, bustling restaurant a short drive from her New Hampshire apartment. The special menu at the White Birch Eatery in Goffstown lists the calories, carbohydrates and sodium content for the meals, which must meet a dietician-approved one-third of the USDA recommended daily requirements for adults under the federal Older Americans Act Nutrition Program.  

LaBarre and others sign up for the program and swipe credit- and keychain-style cards with QR codes for their allotted meals. There’s no charge for the meals, but donations are encouraged. 

From a nutrition standpoint, “we eat better in groups,” nutrition consultant Jean Lloyd said. “Studies are out there that we eat healthier surrounded with people who eat healthy. And older adults are a vulnerable population.” 

Lloyd cited one study from 2020 about the health impact of loneliness on seniors. Recently, the U.S. surgeon general noted that widespread loneliness in the U.S. poses health risks as deadly as smoking up to 15 cigarettes daily. 

The program focuses on goals of the wide-ranging Older Americans Act — to reduce hunger and food insecurity and promote the socialization, health and well-being of seniors. 

‘It keeps my staff here’

Back in the 1980s, the restaurant was considered a little-explored, unpopular option compared to the traditional meal gatherings at senior centers and church basements. As of early this year, there were at least 26 states where some restaurants and other food providers partnered locally with an area agency on aging or a nonprofit such as Meals on Wheels. 

“We get to see people and check in on them and they bring new friends, and we get to meet all new faces, sometimes,” said Cyndee Williams, owner of the White Birch Eatery, which opened in March 2020, right before the pandemic shut down everything. It restarted limited operations that summer. “And then, while we have a small profit margin, that helps us, too. It keeps my staff here and working.” 

Some programs offer grab-and-go options for seniors, grocery dining services, food trucks, hospital facilities, and catering at senior centers and other community locations in addition to or in place of in-house restaurant dining. 

The partnerships originate at the local level. The federal Administration for Community Living, which oversees the nutrition services program and provides grants for innovative projects, does not keep data on how many restaurants and people take part and overall costs. It is working on a research project to learn more about them. 

Federal funds are distributed to states based on a formula. States coordinate with local agencies on aging and related nonprofits to distribute funds, and states provide matching funds for some programs. Nonprofits also seek out grants and donations. 

Programs target services to people with the greatest economic or social need, such as low-income and minority populations, rural residents, and those with limited English proficiency. 

The programs have to adjust to costs of food and labor, which can be challenging. The restaurants are reimbursed, but the funding sources are limited, especially as COVID-related emergency money has come to an end. 

“For every meal we serve, we get $8.11,” Eriquezzo said. “The meal costs us $13. We suggest a $4 donation. Even if we get donations, we’re still short 80 cents.” 

Restaurants might need to adjust menus, perhaps by offering smaller portion sizes, lowering the maximum monthly meals to save money and more specifically target who is using the meal programs the most. 

Still, partnering with the restaurants costs less than contracting with a town hall or a church for the community dining option, said Janet Buls, nutrition director, Northeast Iowa Area Agency on Aging. 
…

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. 

TPS Extended for Six Countries; Advocates Urge Status for More

The Biden administration recently announced an extension and redesignation of the program that gives temporary protection from deportation for nationals of Sudan and Ukraine. Nationals of El Salvador, Honduras, Nepal and Nicaragua also have had their protection extended. Immigration reporter Aline Barros has the story. 

Report: 840,000 Afghans Applicants to US Resettlement Program Still in Afghanistan

More than 840,000 Afghans who applied for a resettlement program aimed at people who helped the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan are still there waiting, according to a report that lays out the challenges with a program intended to help America’s allies in the two-decade-long conflict. Reported by The Associated Press.

New York City Residents Protest Migrant Crisis

Nearly 60,000 asylum-seekers are in New York City’s care. Some of them have no choice but to sleep outside, and some residents don’t want them. Nina Vishneva has the story, narrated by Anna Rice.

Colorado Ukrainian Community Offers Job Fair for New Arrivals

A Ukrainian community group in the western U.S. state of Colorado organized a job fair for newly arrived war refugees. Svitlana Prystynska has our story from Denver. Camera: Volodymyr Petruniv. VOA’s Svitlana Prystynska reports.

Migrants Face Long Waits at New US Processing Centers in Latin America

The U.S. has opened new migrant processing centers in Latin America as part of the Biden administration’s strategy to prevent people from making the dangerous trek north to the U.S.-Mexico border. For VOA, Austin Landis visited the first one to open in Colombia.

US, Costa Rica Affirm Cooperation on Migration, Semiconductors

President Joe Biden met with Costa Rica’s leader Tuesday to talk about concerns near and far, including the toll that irregular migration is taking on the small Central American nation and the challenges posed by China’s increased global ambitions, which rely on semiconductors. VOA White House correspondent Anita Powell reports.

US Envoy Heading to Chad to See Situation of Sudanese Refugees

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield will head to the border of Chad and Sudan to meet on Tuesday with refugees from the war in Sudan and the humanitarians who are assisting them. VOA United Nation’s correspondent Margaret Besheer reports.

Immigration around the world

Niger Coup Puts Hundreds of Thousands of Migrants at Risk

The United Nations International Organization for Migration — the IOM — said Friday that border closures and airspace restrictions caused by the July 26 coup in Niger have disrupted migration patterns in the nation, putting hundreds of thousands of migrants and displaced persons at risk. VOA News reports.

Sudanese Refugees in Chad Share Stories of Atrocities in Darfur

In July, the International Criminal Court said it would investigate allegations of extrajudicial killings, the burning of homes and markets, and looting in Sudan’s Darfur region. In this report from Adre, Chad, near the border with Sudan, reporter Henry Wilkins meets a refugee and human rights activist recording the alleged atrocities and speaks to those who have escaped Darfur as Sudan’s war escalates. Henry Wilkins reports for VOA.

Niger Political Crisis Risks Humanitarian Crisis

With no political solution in sight, the United Nations refugee agency warns that Niger’s political crisis could rapidly deteriorate into a humanitarian crisis as attacks by non-state armed groups continue and sanctions imposed by the Economic Community of West African States on the country begin to bite. Lisa Schlein reports for VOA from Geneva.

Some Neighbors Reject Sudan Refugees as Numbers Hit 1 Million

The United Nations says 1 million people have fled Sudan, confounding expectations about the scale of the exodus triggered by the country’s war. While some neighboring states, such as Chad and South Sudan, welcome refugees, others, such as Egypt, are pushing them away. Henry Wilkins reports from Renk, South Sudan, and Adre, Chad.

News brief

The U.S. United States Customs and Border Protection reports 170,000 appointments processed at ports of entry in the U.S. Mexico border.
…

Billionaires, burner phones, alleged bribes: The impeachment trial of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is going to test the will of Republicans senators to oust not only one of their own, but a firebrand who has helped drive the state’s hard turn to the right for years. 

The historic proceedings set to start in the state Senate Tuesday are the most serious threat yet to one of Texas’ most powerful figures after nine years engulfed by criminal charges, scandal and accusations of corruption. If convicted, Paxton — just the third official in Texas’ nearly 200-year history to be impeached — could be removed from office. 

Witnesses called to testify could include Paxton and a woman with whom he has acknowledged having an extramarital affair. Members of the public hoping to watch from the gallery will have to line up for passes. And conservative activists have already bought up TV airtime and billboards, pressuring senators to acquit one of former President Donald Trump’s biggest defenders. 

“It’s a very serious event but it’s a big-time show,” said Bill Miller, a longtime Austin lobbyist and a friend of Paxton. “Any way you cut it, it’s going to have the attention of anyone and everyone.” 

Deepens division in party

The build-up to the trial has widened divisions among Texas Republicans that reflect the wider fissures roiling the party nationally heading into the 2024 election. 

At the fore of recent Texas policies are hardline measures to stop migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border, battles over what is taught in public schools, and restrictions on LGBTQ+ rights — many of which are championed loudest in the Senate, where Republicans hold a dominant 19-12 majority and have Paxton’s fate in their hands. 

The Senate has long been a welcoming place for Paxton. His wife, Angela, is a state senator, although she is barred from voting in the trial. Paxton also was a state senator before becoming attorney general in 2015 and still has entanglements in the chamber, including with Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, who will preside over the trial and loaned $125,000 to Paxton’s reelection campaign. 

If all 12 Democrats vote to convict Paxton, they would still need at least nine Republicans on their side. Or the Senate could vote by a simple majority to dismiss the charges altogether. It was a GOP-dominated House that decided by an overwhelming majority that Paxton should be impeached. 

“You’re seeing a fracture within the party right now,” said Matt Langston, a Republican political consultant in Texas. “This is going to impact the leadership and the party for a long time.” 

The trial also appears to have heightened Paxton’s legal risks. The case against him largely centers on his relationship with Nate Paul, an Austin real estate developer who was indicted this summer after being accused of making false statements to banks to secure $170 million in loans. 

Last month, federal prosecutors in Washington kicked a long-running investigation of Paxton into a higher gear when they began using a grand jury in San Antonio to examine his dealings with Paul, according to two people with knowledge of the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of secrecy rules around grand jury proceedings. The grand jury’s role was first reported by the Austin American-Statesman. 

Chris Toth, the former executive director of the National Association of Attorneys General, said Paxton has for years weathered scandals unique among top state lawyers. He said the outcome of the trial will send a message about what is acceptable to elected officials across the country. 

Impeachment managers in the GOP-controlled Texas House filed nearly 4,000 pages of exhibits ahead of the trial, including accusations that Paxton hid the use of multiple cellphones and reveled in other perks of office. 

“There’s very much a vile and insidious level of influence that Ken Paxton exerts through continuing to get away with his conduct,” Toth said. 

Comparison to Trump

Part of Paxton’s political durability is his alignment with Trump, and this was never more apparent than when Paxton joined efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Like Trump, Paxton says he is a victim of politically motivated investigations. 

But James Dickey, a former chairman of the Republican Party of Texas, said the base of the GOP sees Paxton’s impeachment as different from legal troubles facing Trump. 

“Exclusively, the actions against President Trump are from Democrat elected officials and so it can’t avoid having more of a partisan tone,” he said. “Therefore, Republican voters have more concern and frustration with it.” 

Patrick, in a rare television interview last month, was explicit in what the trial is and is not. 

“It’s not a criminal trial. It’s not a civil trial,” he told Houston television station KRIV. “It’s a political trial.” 
…

Bill Richardson, a two-term Democratic governor of New Mexico and a U.S. ambassador to the United Nations who dedicated his post-political career to working to free Americans detained overseas, has died. He was 75.

The Richardson Center for Global Engagement, which he founded and led, said in a statement Saturday that he died in his sleep at his home in Chatham, Massachusetts.

“He lived his entire life in the service of others — including both his time in government and his subsequent career helping to free people held hostage or wrongfully detained abroad,” said Mickey Bergman, the center’s vice president. “There was no person that Governor Richardson would not speak with if it held the promise of returning a person to freedom. The world has lost a champion for those held unjustly abroad, and I have lost a mentor and a dear friend.”

Before his election in 2002 as governor, Richardson was U.N. ambassador and energy secretary under President Bill Clinton and served 14 years as a congressman representing northern New Mexico.

Richardson also traveled the globe as an unofficial diplomatic troubleshooter, negotiating the release of hostages and American servicemen from North Korea, Iraq, Cuba and Sudan. He bargained with a who’s who of America’s adversaries, including Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. It was a role that Richardson relished, once describing himself as “the informal undersecretary for thugs.”

Armed with a golden resume and wealth of experience in foreign and domestic affairs, Richardson ran for the 2008 Democratic nomination for president in hopes of becoming the nation’s first Hispanic president. He dropped out of the race after fourth-place finishes in the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary.

Richardson was the nation’s only Hispanic governor during his two terms. He described being governor as “the best job I ever had.”

“It’s the most fun. You can get the most done. You set the agenda,” Richardson said.

As governor, Richardson signed legislation in 2009 that repealed the death penalty. He called it the “most difficult decision in my political life” because he previously had supported capital punishment.

Other accomplishments as governor included $50,000-a-year minimum salaries for the most qualified teachers in New Mexico, an increase in the state minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.50 an hour, pre-kindergarten programs for 4-year-olds, renewable energy requirements for utilities and financing for large infrastructure projects, including a commercial spaceport in southern New Mexico and a $400 million commuter rail system.

Richardson continued his freelance diplomacy even while serving as governor. He had barely started his first term as governor when he met with two North Korean envoys in Santa Fe. He traveled to North Korea in 2007 to recover remains of American servicemen killed in the Korean War. In 2006, he persuaded Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir to free Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist Paul Salopek.

Richardson transformed the political landscape in New Mexico. He raised and spent record amounts on his campaigns. He brought Washington-style politics to an easygoing western state with a part-time Legislature.

Lawmakers, both Republicans and Democrats, complained that Richardson threatened retribution against those who opposed him. Democratic state Sen. Tim Jennings of Roswell once said Richardson was “beating people over the head” in his dealings with lobbyists on a health care issue. Richardson dismissed criticisms of his administrative style.

“Admittedly, I am aggressive. I use the bully pulpit of the governorship,” Richardson said. “But I don’t threaten retribution. They say I am a vindictive person. I just don’t believe that.”

Longtime friends and supporters attributed Richardson’s success partly to his relentlessness. Bob Gallagher, who headed the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association, said if Richardson wanted something done then “expect him to have a shotgun at the end of the hallway. Or a ramrod.”

After dropping out of the 2008 presidential race, Richardson endorsed Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton. That happened despite a long-standing friendship with the Clintons.

Obama later nominated Richardson as secretary of commerce, but Richardson withdrew in early 2009 because of a federal investigation into an alleged pay-to-play scheme involving his administration in New Mexico.

Months later, the federal investigation ended with no charges against Richardson and his former top aides. Richardson had a troubled tenure as energy secretary because of a scandal over missing computer equipment with nuclear weapons secrets at Los Alamos National Laboratory and the government’s investigation and prosecution of former nuclear weapons scientist Wen Ho Lee.

Richardson approved Lee’s firing at Los Alamos in 1999. Lee spent nine months in solitary confinement, charged with 59 counts of mishandling sensitive information. Lee later pleaded guilty to one count of mishandling computer files and was released with the apology of a federal judge.

William Blaine Richardson was born in Pasadena, California, but grew up in Mexico City with a Mexican mother and an American father who was a U.S. bank executive.

He attended prep school in Massachusetts and was a star baseball player. He later went to Tufts University and its graduate school in international relations, earning a master’s degree in international affairs.

Richardson moved to New Mexico in 1978 after working as a Capitol Hill staffer. He wanted to run for political office and said New Mexico, with its Hispanic roots, seemed like a good place. He campaigned for Congress just two years later — his only losing race.

In 1982, he won a new congressional seat from northern New Mexico that the state picked up in reapportionment. He resigned from Congress in 1997 to join the Clinton administration as U.N. ambassador and became secretary of energy in 1998, holding the post until the end of the Clinton presidency.
…

Even on a blisteringly hot day in Marion, Kansas, Margaret Harris was not deterred from her task of tending to flowers memorializing her friend, Joan Meyer.

At 98 years old, Meyer was a stalwart in this small Midwestern town, where she was co-owner of the local newspaper, the Marion County Record. Her friend, Harris, has lived in the area for more than 80 years and says she knew Meyer for decades.

Meyer’s death one day after police raided the paper’s newsroom and her home was a shock both to Harris and the community of under 2,000 people.

Harris and Meyer had a long family connection: Their fathers fought together during World War I. Harris believes that Meyer was particularly upset about the raid on her home and paper because their fathers had risked their lives to defend their freedoms.

“So it means a lot to me to support Joan because of the war and our history together with our fathers,” Harris told VOA after taking care of the memorial outside the Marion County Record’s newsroom.

Harris, who ran a store in Marion for over two decades, used to advertise in the newspaper.

“I think it was very unfair to raid the paper and also Joan’s house,” she said. “When the police are raiding your house, who do you call?”

Police have defended the August 11 raid, saying it was over a complaint that a local restaurant owner had filed against the paper. And the publisher — who is also Joan Meyer’s son, Eric — has said he will pursue legal action.

VOA’s multiple attempts to reach local police for direct comment were unsuccessful.

Harris’ efforts underscore the broader support the Marion County Record team received locally and farther afield, in the form of letters and flowers, free food and thousands of new subscriptions.

Considering the crisis facing the local news industry across the United States, that support has been particularly welcome, said Eric Meyer.

While the raid highlights the challenges facing the local news industry in the United States, the legacy of Joan Meyer highlights why local news matters in the first place.

“She was a very generous and kind person, a very smiling and friendly person who loved to joke,” her son told VOA in the Record’s newsroom. “She had a very strong sense of morality and really loved the community, loved Marion, loved what she did.”

The Meyers loved Marion so much that when the longtime owners of the Record, the Hoch family, decided to sell it in 1998, the Meyers bought the paper to prevent a corporation from purchasing it.

“We said, well, we can’t see this group running this thing that my family has been involved with for 50 years,” Eric Meyer said.

Journalism has long been in the Meyer family’s blood. Joan’s husband, Bill, began working at the Record in 1948, and she joined him in the early 1960s.

Eric Meyer wrote for the paper in high school. He later worked for several years at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel before becoming a journalism professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and later returning to Marion to lead the paper.

The Meyer family’s purchase of the paper was a rarity at a time when local media are often bought up by large corporations in a process that can often result in cuts to staff or coverage.

The United States has lost more than one fourth of its newspapers since 2005 and is set to lose one third by 2025, according to a report by Northwestern University’s Medill Local News Initiative. Financial struggles are often to blame, and, in most cases, the papers were weekly community publications.

Meanwhile, statistics from the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker show that out of over 90 search-and-seizure instances involving journalists documented since 2017, nine have involved search warrants.

The raid “shows the importance of the local news organizations that are remaining in holding public officials accountable,” Tim Franklin, who leads the Northwestern University’s Medill Local News Initiative, told VOA.

In other cases, particularly in the Midwest, the death of a paper’s elderly publisher can sound the death knell of the paper itself if no one buys it, according to Teri Finneman, a journalism professor at the University of Kansas.

“How many more newspapers are we about to lose from people who can’t sell?” Finneman said. “There’s not nearly enough conversation about how many more are about to be lost.”

The role that local newspapers play in communities is on the mind of Tim Stauffer, president of the Kansas Press Association and managing editor of The Iola Register.

“We believe in what newspapers do for democracy — very strongly. We believe that sunlight is the best medicine,” Stauffer told VOA.

“But I also think it’s a secondary, deeper role that’s now coming more to the forefront about helping connect and build communities that frankly, in rural America, are confronting a lot of challenges,” he said.

Studies show that the fall of local news contributes to a rise in misinformation and polarization, an increase in government and local business corruption, and a decline in civic engagement.

For the Record’s staff the role as public watchdog is a responsibility they take great pride in as they cover everything from the city budget to a local celebrity in the form of a cat who hangs out around a hotel in town.

“We hold the feet of local people who are making decisions — that affect local people —to the fire,” reporter Phyllis Zorn told VOA. “And someone’s got to do it.”

That sentiment is also what drove Joan Meyer and her son Eric to keep the paper running.

Marion born and bred, Joan rarely left her hometown. She worked at a grocery store, hospital and an alfalfa mill, but the bulk of her life — nearly 60 years — was spent as a reporter, columnist, editor and associate publisher at the Record.

For decades, she wrote a column about local history called Memories. She continued to write it every week until last year, due to vision issues. But she would still sometimes write articles, with her son’s help.

To her, the newspaper was an essential element of her hometown, which is a sentiment her son shares.

“She believed the sense of community was deteriorating” in Marion, Eric Meyer said. “The best way to encourage community is to let people know what’s happening.”
…

Gushiken Takamatsu balances his spectacles on the tip of his nose before switching on his headlight, revealing the blackened fragments on the floor of the cave. Using an old plasterer’s tool, he gently combs through the debris before picking out a jagged, triangular piece of bone.

“Zugaikotsu,” he says, in a gentle Okinawan accent. “Skull.” He points to the patterns created by blood vessels on the inside of the skull, clearly visible after nearly 80 years.

The 69-year-old speaks quietly to himself as he collects other pieces from the cave floor — fragments of finger bones and what appears to be a kneecap. “Is this dead person a soldier or a civilian?” he asks. “I think it was a flamethrower that did this. Everything is burned.”

The jungle caves of Okinawa hide the remains of thousands of civilians and soldiers, victims of the last major battle of World War II.

On April 1, 1945, American forces invaded the southern Japanese islands of Okinawa, triggering one of the bloodiest land battles of the Pacific. Takamatsu has spent decades searching for the remains of those who died. Now he fears Okinawa is once again caught in the crosshairs of potential conflict.

Cave diggers

For decades, the bones of the victims have lain undisturbed as Japan tried to forget its wartime past. That shames the nation, says Takamatsu. The Okinawan native founded Gamafuya, or “cave digger,” a small group of volunteers dedicated to finding the remains of wartime victims and reuniting them with their living descendants.

“I’m often asked why I started doing this,” Takamatsu says. “I was born in Naha city [the Okinawan capital], and there were many remains of people who died in the war around my house. It was the kind of place where you would still see skeletons wearing steel helmets when you went out to play in the mountains. When I was a child it was just scary. But as I got older and matured, I wondered why the victims of this war were still there.”

‘Never-ending’

Through 40 years of searching, Takamatsu has discovered the remains of over 700 people. The Japanese government does not provide financial help. Finally, in 2011, it agreed to offer DNA testing on the remains. However, the number of Japanese citizens registered on the database is small, while many relatives of the victims have likely already died.

“We are one or two volunteers,” Takamatsu tells VOA. “In reality, the government should be doing this. But even though we ask, they refuse. I want to show that if you look for the remains in this way, you can find them. This work isn’t finished yet.”

He gathers together the fragments he has found, before saying a short prayer — and promises that he will return to the cave to finish the search another day. “After about five hours, if I do more than that, I’ll get too tired. So I’ll do it next time,” he says. “This work is never-ending.”

Reunited

Hacking through the jungle, Takamatsu heads to another site where he has found human remains. He climbs over the jagged rocks and into a shaded ravine. At the base, several long bones are neatly aligned beneath the decaying leaves and soil. Other remains are concealed beneath large rocks that have cascaded down the ravine, possibly as a result of the ferocious battles that raged above 78 years ago.

Takamatsu measures a radius, or forearm bone, and determines that the remains belong to an adult male, before jotting his discovery in a battered field notebook. He will have to return with other volunteers to help shift the rocks and remove the other remains.

Takamatsu notifies the police of each of his finds. The bones are taken to a makeshift morgue at the local peace museum before being sent for DNA testing.

So far, Takamatsu has been able to identify four bodies and reunite the bones with their surviving relatives. All were from the Japanese mainland — soldiers sent to Okinawa to fight the American invasion.

The families “didn’t believe me at first,” Takamatsu says. “They were suspicious and thought it was a scam. But I understand how they felt. For 70 years they didn’t hear anything, and then they get a phone call to say their relative had been found. It was like their father was coming home. They were very happy.”

Battle of Okinawa

The American invasion of Okinawa triggered three months of ferocious fighting. Around 90,000 Japanese soldiers and 12,000 U.S. troops had been killed by the time American forces seized the capital, Naha, in early June 1945. The United States feared such losses would continue if its forces invaded the Japanese mainland. Those concerns partly led to the decision to drop nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki two months later. Japan surrendered on August 15, 1945.

The civilian toll in Okinawa was even higher, with an estimated 100,000 people killed — around a quarter of the prewar population of the islands.

The Japanese government told local inhabitants that they would be beaten and murdered by U.S. forces. Many hid in the island’s caves. Some committed suicide as the fighting approached.

“The inhabitants were not allowed to surrender. If you surrendered to the Americans and tried to walk out with your hands up, the Japanese would shoot you in the back,” Takamatsu tells VOA.

“They were told that no one would survive if captured by the U.S. military,” he says. “They said that women would be beaten and killed, while all the men would be lined up on the road and run over by tanks. So, the residents were very afraid of the American military. However, it wasn’t until after they became prisoners of war that they realized that wasn’t true. The U.S. military provided the residents with food and medical care.”

Allies

Fast forward to the present, and the United States and Japan are now close allies. Okinawa hosts almost 30,000 American troops, and it is among the most important U.S. military bases in the Pacific, seen by Washington as an increasingly vital deterrent amid growing Indo-Pacific tensions.

In the remote Henoko Bay on the east coast of the island, a new U.S. air base is being built. It’s hoped the new base will relieve pressure on existing facilities, especially the Futenma air base, which is located in a residential area north of Naha and has long created tensions with locals.

However, some of the earth used in the construction of the Henoko base is being excavated from the south of Okinawa — from battlegrounds where U.S. forces came ashore in 1945.

Local authorities insist the material is screened before it is dug up. Takamatsu says it likely contains the remains of Japanese and American soldiers. “This is blasphemy against the dead. I’m imploring them to stop doing it,” he says.

China tensions

Meanwhile, as regional tensions escalate with China over Taiwan, and with North Korea over its missile and nuclear weapons programs, there are growing fears that these heavily militarized islands could once again be caught in the crosshairs of a Pacific war.

“Missiles will fly to Okinawa again. If there is a war, this place will be attacked. That’s what bothers me the most,” Takamatsu tells VOA. “Let’s all stand together. Let’s eliminate war from the Earth. I believe that if we ordinary citizens join hands, we can do it.”

A solitary figure searching through the caves, Takamatsu is trying to heal the wounds of Okinawa’s past; to offer the victims dignity where the state has failed to intervene; to show respect for sacrifice where much of the nation would rather leave the remains to decay undisturbed, along with that troubled period of Japanese wartime history.

Takamatsu’s painstaking work is also an act of protest against war — an appeal for peace — as the danger of conflict once again edges closer to these islands.
…

U.S. President Joe Biden heads to Florida on Saturday to survey damage caused by Hurricane Idalia and comfort people affected by the storm, but he will not be meeting Ron DeSantis, the state’s Republican governor and a potential presidential rival.

Biden, a Democrat, told reporters on Friday he would see the governor during the trip, but DeSantis’s spokesman Jeremy Redfern said later that no meeting was planned and that “the security preparations alone that would go into setting up such a meeting would shut down ongoing recovery efforts.”

DeSantis, 44, is running for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination to oust Biden from the White House but trails former President Donald Trump in polls. Biden, 80, is running for re-election.

Biden and DeSantis have spoken regularly through the week about the storm, which pummeled Florida’s Big Bend region with Category 3 winds of nearly 200 kph (125 mph). On Wednesday the president said politics had not crept into their conversations. “I think he trusts my judgment and my desire to help,” Biden said.

The White House said that Biden, who is traveling with his wife, Jill, informed DeSantis about the visit during a conversation on Thursday, and that the governor did not raise concerns then. 

“Their visit to Florida has been planned in close coordination with FEMA as well as state and local leaders to ensure there is no impact on response operations,” White House spokesperson Emilie Simons said, referring to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

DeSantis has been a sharp critic of Biden, and the two have clashed over COVID-19 vaccines, abortion and LGBTQ rights. But they met last year when Biden went to Florida to assess the devastation from Hurricane Ian. Biden said at the time that they had worked together “hand-in-glove.”

DeSantis may not want to be photographed with Biden overlooking storm damage now as the Republican presidential primary race intensifies. Although he trails Trump, DeSantis leads the other Republican candidates in the race.

Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who is also running for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, drew criticism for his praise of President Barack Obama in 2012 when the Democrat visited his state in the aftermath of superstorm Sandy.

Biden visited Hawaii last week in the aftermath of deadly fires there and said on Wednesday that no one could deny the climate crisis in light of the extreme weather. He is slated to travel to his home state of Delaware for the weekend after concluding the Florida trip.
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Singer-songwriter Jimmy Buffett, who popularized beach bum soft rock with the escapist Caribbean-flavored song Margaritaville and turned that celebration of loafing into an empire of restaurants, resorts and frozen concoctions, has died. He was 76.

“Jimmy passed away peacefully on the night of September 1st surrounded by his family, friends, music and dogs,” a statement posted to Buffett’s official website and social media pages said late Friday. “He lived his life like a song till the very last breath and will be missed beyond measure by so many.”

The statement did not say where Buffett died or give a cause of death. Illness had forced him to reschedule concerts in May and Buffett acknowledged in social media posts that he had been hospitalized but provided no specifics.

Margaritaville, released on Feb. 14, 1977, quickly took on a life of its own, becoming a state of mind for those “wastin’ away,” an excuse for a life of low-key fun and escapism for those “growing older, but not up.”

The song is the unhurried portrait of a loafer on his front porch, watching tourists sunbathe while a pot of shrimp is beginning to boil. The singer has a new tattoo, a likely hangover and regrets over a lost love. Somewhere there is a misplaced salt shaker.

“What seems like a simple ditty about getting blotto and mending a broken heart turns out to be a profound meditation on the often painful inertia of beach dwelling,” Spin magazine wrote in 2021. “The tourists come and go, one group indistinguishable from the other. Waves crest and break whether somebody is there to witness it or not. Everything that means anything has already happened and you’re not even sure when.”

The song — from the album Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes — spent 22 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and peaked at No. 8. The song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2016 for its cultural and historic significance, became a karaoke standard and helped brand Key West, Florida, as a distinct sound of music and a destination known the world over.

“There was no such place as Margaritaville,” Buffett told the Arizona Republic in 2021. “It was a made-up place in my mind, basically made up about my experiences in Key West and having to leave Key West and go on the road to work and then come back and spend time by the beach.”

The song soon inspired restaurants and resorts, turning Buffett’s alleged desire for the simplicity of island life into a multimillion brand. He landed at No. 13 in Forbes’ America’s Richest Celebrities in 2016 with a net worth of $550 million.

Music critics were never very kind to Buffett or his catalogue, including the sandy beach-side snack bar songs like Fins, Come Monday and Cheeseburgers in Paradise. But his legions of fans, called “Parrotheads,” regularly turned up for his concerts wearing toy parrots, cheeseburgers, sharks and flamingos on their heads, leis around their necks and loud Hawaiian shirts.

“It’s pure escapism is all it is,” he told the Republic. “I’m not the first one to do it, nor shall I probably be the last. But I think it’s really a part of the human condition that you’ve got to have some fun. You’ve got to get away from whatever you do to make a living or other parts of life that stress you out. I try to make it at least 50/50 fun to work and so far it’s worked out.”

His special Gulf Coast mix of country, pop, folk and rock added instruments and tonalities more commonly found in the Caribbean, like steel drums. It was a stew of steelpans, trombones and pedal steel guitar. Buffett’s incredible ear for hooks and light grooves were often overshadowed by his lyrics about fish tacos and sunsets.

Rolling Stone, in a review of Buffett’s 2020 album Life on the Flip Side, gave grudging props. “He continues mapping out his surfy, sandy corner of pop music utopia with the chill, friendly warmth of a multi-millionaire you wouldn’t mind sharing a tropically-themed 3 p.m. IPA with, especially if his gold card was on the bar when the last round came.”

Buffett’s evolving brand began in 1985 with the opening of a string of Margaritaville-themed stores and restaurants in Key West, followed in 1987 with the first Margaritaville Café nearby. Over the course of the next two decades, several more of each opened throughout Florida, New Orleans and California.

The brand has since expanded to dozens of categories, including resorts, apparel and footwear for men and women, a radio station, a beer brand, ice tea, tequila and rum, home décor, food items like salad dressing, Margaritaville Crunchy Pimento Cheese & Shrimp Bites and Margaritaville Cantina Style Medium Chunky Salsa, the Margaritaville at Sea cruise line and restaurants, including Margaritaville Restaurant, JWB Prime Steak and Seafood, 5 o’Clock Somewhere Bar & Grill and LandShark Bar & Grill.

There also was a Broadway-bound jukebox musical, Escape to Margaritaville, a romantic comedy in which a singer-bartender called Sully falls for the far more career-minded Rachel, who is vacationing with friends and hanging out at Margaritaville, the hotel bar where Sully works.

James William Buffett was born on Christmas day 1946 in Pascagoula, Mississippi, and raised in the port town of Mobile, Alabama. He graduated from the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and went from busking the streets of New Orleans to playing six nights a week at Bourbon Street clubs.

He released his first record, Down To Earth, in 1970 and issued seven more on a regular yearly clip, with his 1974 song Come Monday from his fourth studio album Living and Dying in ¾ Time, peaking at No. 30. Then came Margaritaville.

He performed on more than 50 studio and live albums, often accompanied by his Coral Reefer Band, and was constantly on tour. He earned two Grammy Award nominations, two Academy of Country Music Awards and a Country Music Association Award.

Buffett was actually in Austin, Texas, when the inspiration struck for Margaritaville. He and a friend had stopped for lunch at a Mexican restaurant before she dropped him at the airport for a flight home to Key West, so they got to drinking margaritas.

“And I kind of came up with that idea of this is just like Margarita-ville,” Buffett told the Republic. “She kind of laughed at that and put me on the plane. And I started working on it.”

He wrote some on the plane and finished it while driving down the Keys. “There was a wreck on the bridge,” he said. “And we got stopped for about an hour so I finished the song on the Seven Mile Bridge, which I thought was apropos.”

Buffett also was the author of numerous books including Where Is Joe Merchant? and A Pirate Looks at Fifty and added movies to his resume as co-producer and co-star of an adaptation of Carl Hiaasen’s novel Hoot.

Buffett is survived by his wife, Jane; daughters, Savannah and Sarah; and son, Cameron. 
…

September 16 marks one year since Mahsa Amini died in the custody of Iran’s “morality” police. The 22-year-old Kurd was detained for allegedly violating the country’s Islamic dress code requiring that she cover her hair.

Amini’s death sparked months of nationwide protests.

Last November, Iranian officials acknowledged that more than 300 people died in those demonstrations. But human rights organizations say the death toll was much higher.

The Norway-based Iran Human Rights group and the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency issued a report in January that put the number of dead at more than 500.

Amnesty International says “thousands of people were arbitrarily detained and/or unfairly prosecuted solely for peacefully exercising their human rights.”

Those protests were the inspiration for Persian artist Kiana Honarmand’s exhibition “A Shadow in the Depth of Light,” which was showing at the VisArts Gallery in Rockville, Maryland.

“Just watching the violence was absolutely devastating to see so many people, including men, women, children, getting killed, and thousands arrested,” she told VOA.

Rising hands

Nearly 300 3D-printed hands made from red plastic polymer appear to rise from the gallery floor, each bearing the name of people killed in the protests.

“Each hand represents a human being who has sacrificed everything for the cause of justice, and for women’s rights, for human rights,” Honarmand said.

The installation, which has now closed, included long locks of synthetic hair, representing Iranian women who started cutting off their hair in protest of Amini’s death, which caught on with women around the world who began cutting their hair in solidarity.

The popular protest slogan “Woman, Life, Freedom” is printed in Persian across the exhibit’s windows.

“I just had to talk about this because it’s the largest and most significant feminist movement of our time and it’s not talked about as much as it needs to be,” Honarmand said.

“My first response seeing this exhibition was that the hands coming from the ground looked like a scene from a horror movie,” said Gabriel Soto, visitor services coordinator at the VisArts gallery. “It really reminded me of the living dead coming from the ground.”

“It’s a very horrifying thing to imagine that these hands represent people that have been murdered by the state of Iran for [supporting] women’s rights.”

Soto also says the exhibition served as a “wakeup call” to keep the media spotlight on the protests and the response from the Iranian state, “to make sure that people understand that this is still going on, the morality police are still operating, and women are still being brutalized in Iran.”

“What resonated for me here was seeing the ‘bloody’ hands and how much blood there is for Iranian women in their struggle for freedom,” said visitor Andrea Barron.

An advocacy and outreach program manager at the U-S based nonprofit group Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition, which works to end the practice of torture internationally, Barron says she was especially moved by the long strands of hair.

“That was such an important symbol in the recent protests of the women against the morality police after Mahsa was killed,” she said. “Even though these Iranian women are not in the news anymore, I think we need to keep thinking about them and their struggle for freedom.”

Simple acts of disobedience

Honarmand says it’s more important than ever to stand up for women’s rights everywhere, “including Iran, Afghanistan, in South America.”

“It’s been absolutely inspiring to watch what women in Iran are doing even now, every day, with the simple acts of disobedience, such as just going outside not wearing their compulsory hijabs. … They are very courageous, and I am just in awe of that.”

Going forward, Honarmand says she wants to keep making hands for every confirmed death of an Iranian protester.
…

On Friday, Texas became the most populous state with a ban in effect against gender-affirming care for minors.

The law was allowed to kick in after a court ruling Thursday, part of a flurry of action across the country on policies aimed at transgender people and their rights. A separate Texas ruling blocked a law that drag show performers feared would shut them down.

Here’s a look at the latest developments and what’s next.

Texas gender-affirming care ban takes effect

In its ruling Thursday, the Texas Supreme Court allowed a law banning gender-affirming care including puberty blockers, hormones and surgery for minors.

The ruling is not final, but allows enforcement of the law while courts determine whether it’s constitutional. The decision is also a reversal of a lower court from the week before, when a state judge had said the law should be put on hold while it’s sorted out.

Since 2021, 22 Republican-controlled states have passed laws restricting access to gender-affirming care for minors. At least 13 states, meanwhile, have adopted measures intended to protect access.

Several of the bans are so new that they haven’t taken effect yet. Missouri’s kicked in earlier this week. Enforcement of the laws in Arkansas, Georgia and Indiana are currently on hold.

There are legal challenges to the policies across the country, and there isn’t a clear pattern for how courts handle them. None have reached a final court decision.

Courts in three states hold hearings on care restrictions

Two court hearings on the matter Friday did not immediately change the status quo in three states but showed how thorny the legal issues can be.

In Florida, a judge declined to take steps to immediately ease access to gender-affirming treatment for children or adults. Both age groups were affected by a ban which, unlike other states, also has a provision that restricts access to care for adults. The ban on treatment was signed into law in May by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis.

District Judge Robert Hinkle said that he would consider changes for adult plaintiffs if he sees medical evidence on how going without treatments could be harmful.

He has a trial scheduled for February on the constitutionality of the Florida law.

But he noted that with similar cases moving through courts across the country, whatever he decides won’t be the final word.

Also Friday, a three-judge panel from the Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court heard arguments on whether states can ban puberty blockers and hormones for transgender minors in both Kentucky and Tennessee, as lawsuits challenging the statutes makes their way through the courts. The appellate judges did not make a ruling but noted that a key factor would be determining which side was being more compassionate.

Alaska moves to restrict sports participation for transgender girls

The Alaska state board of education on Thursday voted in favor of a policy that would keep transgender girls out of girls sports competitions.

The board’s action is a major step, but not the final one for the policy.

It’s up to Alaska Attorney General Treg Taylor to decide whether to implement it. The attorney general, like the school board, was appointed by Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy, who has called for such a ban.

At least 24 states have adopted laws restricting sports participation, including four where courts have put enforcement on hold.

Kansas no longer has to change birth certificates

A federal judge ruled Thursday that Kansas officials no longer have to change transgender people’s birth certificates to match their gender identities.

The ruling undoes a 2019 federal consent agreement that required the state to make the changes when asked. The reason for the change is a new state law that defines male and female as the sex assigned at birth.

The ruling puts Kansas among a small group of states, including Montana, Oklahoma and Tennessee, that bar such birth certificate changes. Under a separate legal filing from Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach in July, the state is among a few that do not allow people to change the sex on their driver’s licenses.

Texas law that drag performers feared is put on hold

Not all the latest developments are losses for transgender people.

A federal judge on Thursday temporarily blocked a new Texas law that drag show artists feared would be used to shut them down or put them in jail.

The law, which expands the definition of what’s considered an illegal public performance of sexual conduct in front of children, was scheduled to take effect on Friday.

But a group of LGBTQ+ rights advocate and drag performers sued to block it. U.S. District Judge David Hittner agreed with their contention that it likely violates the First Amendment and paused enforcement while he prepares a more permanent order in the case.

Judges have also blocked enforcement of bans on drag performances in Florida and Tennessee.

This week, advocates filed a lawsuit in Tennessee trying to stop a local prosecutor who said he intends to enforce the law there despite the federal court ruling. On Friday, a federal judge ruled that law enforcement officials cannot use the limits to interfere with a local Pride festival in Blount County this weekend.

Canada responds with a travel advisory

Canada this week updated its travel advisory to the U.S., alerting members of the LGBTQ+ community that some states have enacted laws that could affect them.

The advisory doesn’t single out states and it doesn’t go as far as telling Canadians not to travel to the neighboring nation. Instead, it tells them to check local laws.

Non-government groups have issued similar warnings. In June, the Human Rights Campaign, the largest U.S.-based group devoted to LGBTQ+ rights, declared a state of emergency for community members in the U.S.

And in May, the NAACP issued a travel advisory about Florida citing policies and laws including bans on gender-affirming care for minors, requirements that transgender people use school bathrooms that don’t match their gender, and restrictions on drag performances — although those were later put on hold.
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