The DC superhero film “Blue Beetle” led weekend ticket sales with a modest $25.4 million opening, according to studio estimates Sunday, dethroning “Barbie” from the top spot after a record-setting run that left movie theaters colored pink for a month.

The “Barbie” phenomenon is far from over. Greta Gerwig’s film, which earlier this week became the highest grossing Warner Bros. release ever domestically, nearly managed to stay No. 1 again with $21.5 million in its fifth weekend. It’s up to $567.3 million in North America and an eye-popping $1.28 billion globally.

The other half of “Barbenheimer” also continues to perform remarkably well for a movie so far into its run.

Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” took in $10.6 million in its fifth week. With a $285.2 million domestic total, “Oppenheimer” now owns the distinction of being the biggest box-office hit never to land No. 1 at the weekend box office. The previous record-holder for that unlikely stat is 2016’s “Sing,” which grossed $270.3 million in the shadow of “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” and “Hidden Figures.”

Universal Pictures’ “Oppenheimer” has done even better overseas. Its global gross stands at an estimated $717.8 million through Sunday.

“Blue Beetle,” starring Xolo Maridueña, came in on the lower side of expectations and notched one of the lower debuts for a DC Comics movie. Though earlier planned as a streaming-only release, Warner Bros. elected to put “Blue Beetle,” the first DC movie to star a Latino superhero, into theaters in the late summer, a typically quiet period at the box office.

The production price tag of about $105 million was lower for “Blue Beetle” than the average superhero film. It’s one of the last releases produced under an earlier regime at DC Studios, which James Gunn and Peter Safran took the reins of last year.

The film, directed by Ángel Manuel Soto and written by Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer, drew solid reviews – certainly better than the three previous DC releases this year (“The Flash,” “Black Adam” and “Shazam! Fury of the Gods”). “Blue Beetle” (76% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes) is the rare comic-book film to put a Hispanic cast front and center.

But it also faced some tough luck, and not just in the unexpected staying power of “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer.” Southern California was bracing Sunday for Hurricane Hilary — potentially dampening ticket sales in the region. (Los Angeles was still its top market.) And like recent releases, “Blue Beetle,” which added $18 million internationally, didn’t have its cast available to promote the movie due to the ongoing actors strike.

Universal’s raunchy R-rated canine comedy “Strays” showed even less bite. The film, with a voice cast including Will Ferrell and Jamie Foxx, landed in fifth place with $8.4 million. Comedies have generally struggled in theaters in recent years, but “Strays” had it particularly rough given that its starry cast was unavailable.

“Strays” was very narrowly bested by “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem.” The Paramount Pictures animated release earned $8.4 million in its third weekend, bringing its domestic total to $88.1 million.

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

1. “Blue Beetle,” $25.4 million.

2. “Barbie,” $21.5 million.

3. “Oppenheimer,” $10.6 million.

4. “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem,” $8.4 million.

5. “Strays,” $8.3 million.

6. “Meg 2: The Trench,” $6.7 million.

7. “Talk to Me,” $3.2 million.

8. “Haunted Mansion,” $3 million.

9. “Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One,” $2.7 million.

10. “The Last Voyage of the Demeter,” $2.5 million.
    …

The U.S. National Hurricane Center is warning that Tropical Storm Hilary could cause “catastrophic and life-threatening flooding” across Mexico’s Baja California peninsula and into the southwestern United States through Monday.

On Sunday morning, forecasters downgraded Hilary from a hurricane to a tropical storm. Later, they said, however, that Hilary still had sustained winds of 100 kilometers (65 miles) an hour and had made landfall over the Baja California peninsula, about 340 kilometers (215 miles) southeast of the major U.S. city of San Diego, California. 

Forecasters said the storm was moving quickly northwestward at more than 40 kilometers (25 miles) an hour and expected to accelerate to an even faster speed. The hurricane center said the storm would reach into the southern regions of California, the most populous U.S. state, by Sunday afternoon.

Tropical storms are common, annual occurrences on the eastern and southern shores of the U.S., but rare in the western states. The last one to strike California was in 1997.

Even as Hilary has weakened, Deanne Criswell, administrator of the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency, told CNN’s “State of the Union” show that residents in southern California should take it seriously. “Listen to local officials and make sure it doesn’t put them in harm’s way,” Criswell said.

Some of the flooding threats from Hilary extend into southwestern Arizona and southern Nevada and even further north in the coming days.

Meanwhile, the westernmost U.S. state, Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean, is coping with the aftermath of deadly wildfires two weeks ago that virtually destroyed the historic town of Lahaina on the island of Maui. The blazes have left at least 114 people dead and as many as 1,000 residents still unaccounted for.

President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden are scheduled to visit Maui Monday, accompanied by Criswell.

Criswell told CNN that 78% of Maui has now been searched for victims of the wildfires, the deadliest in the U.S. in more than 100 years. Despite the large number of Lahaina residents who are unaccounted for, she held out hope that “it could be they’re staying with friends or relatives.”

She told ABC’s “This Week” show that only 40 survivors of the wildfires remain in shelters, while others who escaped have been placed in hotels, motels and short-term rental facilities on Maui.

She said the task for government officials helping them is to ask, “What are their long-term plans?” She said the answers might be different for everyone.

Criswell said the Bidens will be able to “feel this devastation … and reassure the people of Maui that we are there for them.”

Some Maui survivors have expressed the fear that Lahaina will be rebuilt solely as a tourist mecca with large hotels and shopping catering to the wealthy, rather than as a community of Hawaiians that also is a tourist attraction.

Criswell said it was important for the Bidens and government officials to hear Maui residents and listen to “their version of how they want to rebuild.”
…

The United States, Japan and Australia are planning a joint navy drill in the South China Sea off the western Philippines this week to underscore their commitment to the rule of law in the region after a recent show of Chinese aggression in the disputed waters, Filipino security officials said Sunday.

On Aug. 5, Chinese coast guard ships used water cannons against Philippine vessels in the contested waterway where disputes have long been regarded as a potential flashpoint and have become a fault line in the rivalry between the U.S. and China in the region.

The drill will include three aircraft and helicopter carriers sailing together in a show of force and undertaking joint drills. Their commanders are set to meet with Filipino counterparts in Manila after the offshore drills, two Philippine security officials told The Associated Press.

Both spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not allowed to publicly discuss details of the planned drills.

The U.S. plans to deploy an aircraft carrier, the USS America, while Japan would send one of its biggest warships, the helicopter carrier JS Izumo. The Royal Australian Navy would send its HMAS Canberra, which also carries helicopters, one of the two officials said, adding that the joint drill was planned a few months ago.

The Philippines would not be part of this week’s drills due to military logistical limitations but is open to becoming a participant in the future, the official said.

The United States, Japan and Australia were among several countries that immediately expressed support for the Philippines and concern over the Chinese action following the tense stand-off earlier this month.

Philippine officials said six Chinese coast guard ships and two militia vessels blocked two Philippine navy-chartered civilian boats taking supplies to the Philippine forces stationed at the Second Thomas Shoal. One supply boat was hit with a powerful water cannon by the Chinese coast guard while the other managed to deliver food, water, fuel and other supplies to the Filipino forces guarding the shoal, the Philippine military said.

The Chinese coast guard acknowledged its ships used water cannons against the Philippine vessels, which it said strayed without permission into the shoal, which Beijing calls Ren’ai Jiao.

“In order to avoid direct blocking and collisions when repeated warnings were ineffective, water cannons were used as a warning. The on-site operation was professional and restrained, which is beyond reproach,” the Chinese coast guard said. “China will continue to take necessary measures to firmly safeguard its territorial sovereignty.”

The Philippine military said on Saturday that it would again attempt to deliver basic supplies to its forces in the Second Thomas Shoal, but didn’t provide further details.

The mission “to the shoal is a clear demonstration of our resolve to stand up against threats and coercion and our commitment in upholding the rule of law,” the Armed Forces of the Philippines said in a statement.

Following the incident, Washington renewed a warning that it is obliged to defend its longtime treaty ally if Philippine public vessels and forces come under armed attack, including in the South China Sea. 
…

Kim Cuevas-Reyes, a 38-year-old cellphone store owner, snuck into Lahaina last Friday to see the remnants of her home with her own eyes. She took backroads and walked. What she saw stunned her.

“When you step into the house, it’s like an inch or two of ash. There is nothing,” she said, adding that she hopes to stay and rebuild her home and destroyed business and is in touch with the insurance company.

More than 3,000 buildings in Lahaina were damaged by fire, smoke or both. Insured property losses alone already total some $3.2 billion, according to Karen Clark & Company, a prominent disaster and risk modeling firm.

With a housing crisis that has priced out many Native Hawaiians as well as families that have been there for decades, concerns are rising that the state could become the latest example of “climate gentrification,” when it becomes harder for local people to afford housing in safer areas after a climate-amped disaster.

It’s a term Jesse Keenan, an associate professor of sustainable real estate and urban planning at Tulane University School of Architecture, first started lecturing about in 2013 after he noticed changes in housing markets following extreme weather events.

Jennifer Gray Thompson is CEO of After the Fire USA, a wildfire recovery and resiliency organization in the western U.S., and worked for Sonoma County during the destructive Tubbs Fire in October 2017. Thompson said Maui is one of the “scariest opportunities for gentrification” that she’s seen because of “the very high land values and the intense level of trauma and the people who are unscrupulous who will come in to try to take advantage of that.”

Thompson predicted potential developers and investors will research who has mortgages and said Maui residents should expect cold calls. “You won’t be able to go to a grocery store without a flyer attached to your car,” she said.

Hawaii Gov. Josh Green said Wednesday his state attorney general will draft a moratorium on the sale of damaged properties in Lahaina, to protect local landowners from being “victimized” by opportunistic buyers as Maui rebuilds.

Thompson said she supports that “wholeheartedly.” But she acknowledged some people won’t be able to afford to rebuild and will want to sell their land.

While one extreme weather event cannot be entirely blamed on climate change, experts say storms, fires and floods, which are becoming more damaging in a warming world, help make Hawaii one of the riskiest states in the country. Earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanoes, which are not related to climate change, also add to this risk.

According to an analysis of Federal Emergency Management Agency records by The Associated Press, there were as many federally declared disaster wildfires this month as in the 50 years between 1953 and 2003. Additionally, burned area in Hawaii increased more than fivefold since the 1980s, according to figures from the University of Hawaii Manoa.

Justin Tyndall, an assistant professor at the University of Hawaii Economic Research Organization, explained that Hawaii is the most expensive state to rent or own a home in the U.S. “by a considerable margin” with a median price single family home on Maui exceeding $1 million. “Even in the condominium market on Maui, the median price is close to $900,000, so there’s really no affordable options throughout all out of the state,” he explained.

Until now, when homeowners in Hawaii have considered climate change, Tyndall said, it’s been coastal erosion, sea level rise and hurricanes, mainly. “Wildfire was something that was on people’s radars. … But obviously the extensive damage, most people didn’t predict,” he said. Fire needs to be taken more seriously now, he said.

Maui has stringent affordable housing requirements for new multifamily construction, Tyndall said. But the practical effect has been that very little housing gets built. So new supply is low, both for affordable housing and rentals at market rate, “which just makes housing more expensive for everyone,” he said.

Tyndall said the Native Hawaiian community has been hit the hardest by the housing crisis and there has been a “huge exodus” due to this lack of affordable housing.

On Wednesday, the Indigenous-led NDN Collective issued a statement supporting community-led rebuilding for Lahaina, “in ways that center the values, ancestral connections to land and water, and Indigenous knowledge systems of the kānaka ʻōiwi, Native Hawaiian people.”

After using the term in lectures, Keenan went on to popularize the concept of climate gentrification as a lecturer at Harvard University in 2018 and published a study that focused on Miami, where Black communities have historically lived at higher elevations because the wealthy wanted to live close to the beach. Now that seas are rising and higher ground is becoming more valuable, that’s leading to disruption and displacement, Keenan said.

As with any gentrification, some people do see benefits.

“If you own a home, it’s great — the value of your home goes up. But if you’re a renter or a small business, your rent may go up to the extent that you become displaced over time,” Keenan said.

With wildfires, areas that don’t burn become more desirable, changing cost of living considerably. The 2018 Camp Fire in Paradise, California, was an example of this as people moved down into the Central Valley to Chico where there is far less risk of wildfire, Keenan added.

“It led to massive displacement; rental costs increased significantly, a really huge shift. Everything from the school district to their transit system,” he said.

Other examples are New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and various cities in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, where many people could not afford to come back.

“The rebuilding of these spaces look very different from the types of communities that were living there before and what made them unique and special to begin with,” said Santina Contreras, assistant professor at the University of Southern California’s Sol Price School of Public Policy.

With respect to Maui, Contreras said there are many reasons to be concerned about climate gentrification, given the island’s natural beauty, history of development, high tourism demand and opportunity to build new hotels.

Not everyone finds the concept useful, though.

Katharine Mach, professor at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science, cautioned against immediately labelling a situation climate gentrification, because that makes it difficult to tease out the other factors such as decades of discrimination, racism and land use changes.

Climate change is overlaid on top of inequities in how we manage flooding or rebuild after fire, she said. “You can call that climate gentrification, but you could also say it’s inequity in how we manage disasters in the United States.”
…

Hurricane Hilary roared toward Mexico’s Baja California peninsula late Saturday as a downgraded but still dangerous Category 1 hurricane likely to bring “catastrophic” flooding to the region and cross into the southwestern U.S. as a tropical storm.

The National Weather Center in Miami said in the most recent advisory at 9 p.m. that the maximum sustained wind speed is 145 kph and the storm was about 281 kilometers south of Punta Eugenia, Mexico, and 855 kilometers from San Diego, California.

Meteorologists warned that despite weakening, the storm remained treacherous.

One person drowned Saturday in the Mexican town of Santa Rosalia, on the peninsula’s eastern coast, when a vehicle was swept away in an overflowing stream. Rescue workers managed to save four other people, said Edith Aguilar Villavicencio, the mayor of Mulege township.

It was not immediately clear whether officials considered the fatality related to the hurricane, but video posted by local officials showed torrents of water coursing through the town’s streets.

Forecasters said the storm was still expected to enter the history books as the first tropical storm to hit Southern California in 84 years, bringing flash floods, mudslides, isolated tornadoes, high winds and power outages. The forecast prompted authorities to issue an evacuation advisory for Santa Catalina Island, urging residents and beachgoers to leave the tourist destination 37 kilometers off the coast. 

Elizabeth Adams, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service San Diego office, said rain could fall up to 7.62 centimeters an hour across Southern California’s mountains and deserts, from late Sunday morning into the afternoon. The intense rainfall during those hours could cause widespread and life-threatening flash floods.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom proclaimed a state of emergency, and officials had urged people to finish their preparations before sundown Saturday. It would be too late by Sunday, one expert said.

The hurricane is the latest major climate disaster to wreak havoc across the U.S., Canada and Mexico. Hawaii’s island of Maui is still reeling from last week’s blaze that killed over 100 people and ravaged the historic town of Lahaina, making it the deadliest U.S. wildfire in more than a century. In Canada, firefighters on Saturday continued to battle blazes during the nation’s worst fire season on record.

Hilary brought heavy rain and flooding to Mexico and the southwestern U.S. on Saturday, ahead of the storm’s expected Sunday border crossing. Forecasters warned it could dump up to 25 centimeters — a year’s worth of rain for some areas — in Southern California and southern Nevada.

“This does not lessen the threat, especially the flood threat,” Jamie Rhome, the U.S. National Hurricane Center’s deputy director, said during a Saturday briefing to announce the storm’s downgraded status. “Don’t let the weakening trend and the intensity lower your guard.” 

Meteorologists also expected the storm to churn up “life-threatening” surf and rip currents, including waves up to 12 meters high, along Mexico’s Pacific coast. Dozens sought refuge at storm shelters in the twin resorts of Los Cabos at the southern tip of the Baja peninsula, and firefighters rescued a family in San Jose del Cabo after the resort was hit by driving rain and wind.

In Tijuana, fire department head Rafael Carrillo voiced the fear at the back of everyone’s mind in the border city of 1.9 million people, particularly residents who live in homes on steep hillsides.

“If you hear noises, or the ground cracking, it is important for you to check it and get out as fast as possible, because the ground can weaken and your home could collapse,” Carrillo said.

Tijuana ordered all beaches closed Saturday, and set up a half dozen storm shelters at sports complexes and government offices.

Mexico’s navy evacuated 850 people from islands off the Baja coast, and deployed almost 3,000 troops for emergency operations. In La Paz, the picturesque capital of Baja California Sur state on the Sea of Cortez, police patrolled closed beaches to keep swimmers out of the whipped-up surf.

The U.S. hurricane center posted tropical storm and potential flood warnings for Southern California from the Pacific coast to interior mountains and deserts. The San Bernardino County sheriff issued evacuation warnings for several mountain and foothill communities ahead of the storm, while Orange County sent out its own alert for anyone living in a wildfire burn scar in the Santa Ana Mountains’ Silverado and Williams canyons.

Authorities in Los Angeles scrambled to get the homeless off the streets and into shelters, and officials ordered all state beaches in San Diego and Orange counties closed.

Across the region, municipalities ran out of free sandbags and grocery shelves emptied out as residents stockpiled supplies. The U.S. National Park Service closed California’s Joshua Tree National Park and Mojave National Preserve to keep visitors from becoming stranded amid flooding.

Major League Baseball rescheduled three Sunday games in Southern California, moving them to Saturday as part of split doubleheaders, and SpaceX delayed the launch of a satellite-carrying rocket from a base on California’s central coast until at least Monday.

The White House said President Joe Biden had been briefed on the latest preparedness plans ahead of the hurricane’s turn to the U.S. “I urge everyone, everyone in the path of this storm, to take precautions and listen to the guidance of state and local officials,” he said.

Hilary on Friday had rapidly grown into an exceedingly dangerous Category 4 major hurricane, with its top sustained winds peaking at 230 kph. Its winds dropped to 185 kph early Saturday as a Category 3 storm, before further weakening to 161 kph as a Category 2.

By late afternoon Saturday, it was centered 965 kilometers south-southeast of San Diego, California. Moving north-northwest at 28 kph, the storm was expected to turn more toward the north and pick up forward speed.

The hurricane was expected to brush past Punta Eugenia on the Pacific coast before making a nighttime landfall along a sparsely populated area of the peninsula about 330 kilometers south of the Pacific port city of Ensenada.
…

Hurricane Hilary roared toward Mexico’s Baja California peninsula late Saturday as a downgraded but still dangerous Category 2 hurricane that bringing heavy rain likely to mean “catastrophic” flooding to the region and cross into the Southwest U.S. as a tropical storm.

Meteorologists warned that despite the hurricane’s weakening, the storm’s speed had accelerated Saturday, and they urged people to finish their preparations by sundown. By Sunday, one expert said, it would be too late.

Forecasters said the storm is still expected to enter the history books as the first tropical storm to hit Southern California in 84 years, and bring along flash floods, mudslides, isolated tornadoes, high winds and widespread power outages.

The hurricane is the latest major climate disaster to wreak havoc across the U.S., Canada and Mexico. Hawaii’s island of Maui is still reeling from last week’s blaze that killed more than 100 people and scorched the historic town of Lahaina, making it the deadliest U.S. wildfire in more than a century. In Canada, firefighters on Saturday continued to battle blazes during the nation’s worst fire season on record.

Meanwhile, Hilary brought heavy rainfall and flooding to Mexico and the southwestern U.S. on Saturday, ahead of the storm’s expected Sunday border crossing. It’s expected to dump up to 25 centimeters — a year’s worth of rain for some areas — in southern California and southern Nevada.

“This does not lessen the threat, especially the flood threat,” said Jamie Rhome, the U.S. National Hurricane Center’s deputy director, during a Saturday briefing to announce the storm’s downgraded status. “Don’t let the weakening trend and the intensity lower your guard.”

Meteorologists also expect the storm to churn up life-threatening surf conditions and rip currents — including towering waves up to 12 meters high — along Mexico’s Pacific coast. Dozens sought refuge at storm shelters in the twin resorts of Los Cabos, at the southern tip of the Baja peninsula, and firefighters used an inflatable boat to rescue a family in San Jose del Cabo after the resort was hit by driving rain and wind.

In Tijuana, Rafael Carrillo voiced the fear in the back of everyone’s mind in the border city of 1.9 million, particularly residents who live in homes that cling precariously to steep hillsides.

“If you hear noises, or the ground cracking, it is important for you to check it and get out as fast as possible, because the ground can weaken and your home could collapse,” said Carrillo, head of the Tijuana fire department.

That city ordered all beaches closed Saturday and set up a half-dozen storm shelters at sports complexes and government offices.

Mexico’s navy evacuated 850 people from islands off the Baja coast and deployed almost 3,000 troops for emergency operations. In La Paz, the picturesque capital of Baja California Sur state on the Sea of Cortez, police patrolled closed beaches to keep swimmers out of the whipped-up surf.

In the U.S., the Miami-based hurricane center issued tropical storm and potential flood warnings for Southern California from the Pacific Coast to interior mountains and deserts. The San Bernardino County sheriff on Saturday issued evacuation warnings for several mountain and foothill communities ahead of the storm.

And an evacuation advisory for the tourist destination of Santa Catalina Island, 37 kilometers off the Southern California coast, urged residents and beachgoers to leave, while authorities in Los Angeles scrambled to get the homeless off the streets and into shelters.

The White House said President Joe Biden had been briefed on the latest preparedness plans ahead of the hurricane’s turn to the U.S. “I urge everyone, everyone in the path of this storm, to take precautions and listen to the guidance of state and local officials,” he said.
…

Business has vanished at Kingsley Odafe’s clothing shop in Nigeria’s capital, forcing him to lay off three employees. 

One culprit for his troubles stands out: The U.S. dollar’s strength against the Nigerian currency, the naira, has pushed the price of garments and other foreign goods beyond the reach of local consumers. A bag of imported clothes costs three times what it did two years ago. The price these days is running around 350,000 naira, or $450. 

“There are no sales anymore because people have to eat first before thinking of buying clothes,” Odafe said. 

Across the developing world, many countries are fed up with America’s dominance of the global financial system — especially the power of the dollar. They will air their grievances next week as the BRICS bloc of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa meet with other emerging market countries in Johannesburg, South Africa. 

But complaining about the dollar is easier than deposing the de facto world currency. 

The dollar is by far the most-used currency in global business and has shrugged off past challenges to its preeminence. 

Despite repeated talk of the BRICS countries rolling out their own currency, no concrete proposals have emerged in the run-up to the summit starting Tuesday. Emerging economies have, however, discussed expanding trade in their own currencies to reduce their reliance on the buck. 

At a meeting of BRICS foreign ministers in June, South Africa’s Naledi Pandor said the bloc’s New Development Bank will seek alternatives “to the current internationally traded currencies” — a euphemism for the dollar. Pandor was sitting alongside Russia’s Sergey Lavrov and China’s Ma Zhaoxu — representatives of two countries that are especially eager to weaken America’s international financial clout. 

BRICS dates to 2009 and the four rising economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China. South Africa joined in 2010, adding the “S” to the name. More than 20 countries — including Saudi Arabia, Iran and Venezuela — have expressed interest in joining BRICS. 

In 2015, the BRICS countries launched the New Development Bank — an alternative to the U.S. and European-dominated International Monetary Fund and World Bank. 

Critics in the developing world are especially uneasy about America’s willingness to use the dollar’s global influence to impose financial sanctions against adversaries — as it did to Russia after the invasion of Ukraine last year. 

They also complain that fluctuations in the dollar can destabilize their economies. A rising dollar, for instance, can cause chaos abroad by drawing investment out of other countries. It also increases the cost of repaying loans denominated in dollars and buying imported products, which are often priced in dollars. 

Kenyan President William Ruto has grumbled this year about Africa’s dependence on the dollar and the economic fallout from its ups and downs, while the Kenyan shilling plunges in value. He’s urged African leaders to join a fledgling pan-African payments system that uses local currencies in a push to encourage more trade. 

“How is U.S. dollars part of the trade between Djibouti and Kenya? Why?” he asked at a meeting, to applause. 

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has supported a common currency for commerce within the South American bloc Mercosur and for trade among BRICS nations. 

But if the dollar’s drawbacks are easily apparent, the alternatives to it are not. 

“At the end of the day, if you want to keep your reserve safe, you’ve got to put it in the dollar,” said Daniel Bradlow, a senior research fellow at the University of Pretoria and a lawyer specializing in international finance. “You’re going to need to borrow in dollars.  

As it stands, 96% of trade in the Americas from 1999 to 2019 was invoiced in dollars, 74% of trade in Asia and 79% everywhere else, outside of Europe, which has the euro, according to calculations by U.S. Federal Reserve researchers. 

Still, the dollar’s hold on global commerce has loosened somewhat in recent years as banks, businesses and investors have turned to the euro and China’s yuan. 

But 24 years after the euro was introduced, the world’s No. 2 currency does not rival the dollar for international gravitas: The dollar is used in three times as many foreign-exchange transactions as the euro, Harvard University economist Jeffrey Frankel said in a study last month. 

And the yuan is limited by Beijing’s refusal to let the currency trade freely in world markets. 

The dollar still has its supporters. In Argentina, Javier Milei, who emerged from primary voting Monday as the front-running presidential candidate in October’s general election, is calling for the dollar to replace the country’s embattled peso. 

In Zimbabwe, Lovemore Mutenha’s liquor store collapsed when hyperinflation hit in 2008. He only managed to resuscitate the business when the country abandoned the local currency for a basket of currencies dominated by the dollar. 

“The U.S. dollar has given us our life back. We can’t do without it,” Mutenha, 49, said in the working-class suburb of Warren Park near the capital, Harare. 

In 2019, the government reintroduced the Zimbabwean currency and banned foreign currencies in local transactions. 

But the revamped Zimbabwe dollar floundered. U.S. dollars kept trading in the black market, and the government lifted the ban. Now, 80% of transactions in the country are in U.S. dollars. 

Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube often pleads with people to embrace the local currency. 

But even government workers clamor to be paid in U.S. dollars, arguing that almost all service providers accept only the greenback. 

Prosper Chitambara, an economic analyst in Harare, said the U.S. dollar “has always had a stabilizing effect.” But Zimbabwe’s economy, which has little industry, low investment, few exports and high debts, can’t attract enough dollars to meet the needs of everyday commerce. 

It has led to a niche business on the streets of the capital: Vendors mend worn out or shredded $1 notes for a small fee. 
…

As unrelenting heat set in across Texas this summer, opponents of a sweeping new law targeting local regulations took to the airwaves and internet with an alarming message: outdoor workers would be banned from taking water breaks. 

Workers would die, experts and advocates said, with high temperatures topping 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius) and staying there for much of the past two months. 

But a closer look at the law, and the local ordinances requiring water breaks, reveals a more complicated picture. 

At least one political analyst said the dispute is less about worker protection and more about politics, as conservative Republicans and progressive Democrats battle for control of local governments. 

House Bill 2127, passed by the Republican-dominated Legislature in April and set to take effect Sept. 1, blocks local governments from enforcing legislation clashing with existing state law. Cities and counties would be required to demonstrate that their policies are in compliance. 

Proponents say it will help Texas to live up to its pro-business reputation by eliminating red tape created by a slew of ordinances that may differ city-by-city. 

“This legislation will streamline regulations so Texas job creators can have certainty,” said Republican state Sen. Brandon Creighton, a co-sponsor of the bill. 

Democrats, in contrast, have nicknamed the bill the “Death Star” for the breadth of its potential impact on a wide array of ordinances regulating natural resources, agriculture and labor. Houston and San Antonio are suing to block it. 

The law’s opponents have particularly homed in on the fact it does not expressly mandate water breaks for outside workers. That has struck a chord during a summer when the state and other areas of the U.S. are baking under historically high temperatures. 

“The water break narrative is … especially compelling as Texas experiences a heat wave,” said Mark Jones, of Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy. 

But, he added, there is no evidence that most employers don’t already provide water breaks, and it’s not clear cities with such regulations even enforce them. 

“The narrative that somehow the Republican Legislature is going to prohibit workers from being able to take water breaks is not accurate,” he said. 

David Chincanchan begs to differ. The policy director of the Workers Defense Project, a nonprofit statewide organization advocating for migrant workers’ rights, said Austin and Dallas have “clear enforcement mechanisms” and penalties for failing to meet water break requirements. 

Republican legislators intended specifically to eliminate water breaks, adding language to that effect to later versions of their bill, he said. 

“It can’t be called an unintentional consequence when they knew exactly what would happen and refused every opportunity to prevent it from happening,” Chincanchan said. 

Jones said the bill is more about politics than policies. He noted the loudest opposition has come from cities where progressive Democrats are in control and said the bill is designed to take autonomy from those cities. 

“This is part of the growing tension between the blue cities and counties in the major urban areas and the Republican-controlled state government,” he said. 

Leaders of the Texas AFL-CIO, a labor federation of 240,000 union members in the state, acknowledge most employers already provide more water breaks than what is required by ordinances in Dallas and Austin, according to spokesperson Ed Sills. He has not seen local enforcement of water breaks. 

But minimal standards are still important on “an issue of life or death,” Sills said. 

“If a law is on the books, it still influences behavior,” he said, adding that some of the other targeted ordinances deal with tenant rights, predatory lending and excessive noise. 

Workers Defense Project spokesperson Christine Bolaños agrees. She said employers in Texas cities with water break requirements often provide more breaks than those in cities without them. 

Bolaños, who has spoken with workers about their heat illnesses, added that Spanish-speaking and migrant construction workers can be especially vulnerable because language barriers may prevent them from fighting for their rights or joining a union that could protect them. As a result, she said, their experiences with heat illness are more likely to go undocumented. 

The absence of a specific regulation mandating rehydration work pauses wouldn’t mean all supervisors give fewer breaks, Bolaños said. 

“But it will be on a case-by-case basis and that floor of protection will no longer be in place,” Bolaños said. “Construction workers are now going to be left at the mercy of the level of morality of their employers.” 

Statistics show heat can kill. There have been at least 436 work-related deaths from environmental heat exposure in the U.S. from 2011-2021, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data. 

With legal challenges pending, the full effect of the bill is untested for now. 

That could take years, said Ryan Marquez, a clinical associate professor at the University of House Law Center. 

“This bill is broad,” Marquez said. “It’s hard to say exactly how far it will go.” 
…

Hurricane Hilary headed for Mexico’s Baja California on Saturday as the U.S. National Hurricane Center predicted “catastrophic and life-threatening flooding” for the peninsula and for the southwestern United States, where it was forecast to cross the border as a tropical storm on Sunday.

Officials as far north as Los Angeles scrambled to get the homeless off the streets, set up shelters and prepare for evacuations.

Hilary is expected to plow into Mexico’s Baja Peninsula on Saturday night and then surge northward and enter the history books as the first tropical storm to hit Southern California in 84 years.

The U.S. National Hurricane Center issued tropical storm and potential flood warnings for a wide swath of Southern California from the Pacific coast to interior mountains and deserts. Officials talked of evacuation plans for California’s Catalina Island.

“I don’t think any of us — I know me particularly — ever thought I’d be standing here talking about a hurricane or a tropical storm,” said Janice Hahn, chair of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.

After rapidly gaining power early Friday, Hilary slowed some later in the day but remained a major Category 3 hurricane early Saturday with maximum sustained winds of 205 kilometers per mile (127 miles per hour), down from 230 kph (143 mph).

Early on Saturday, the storm was centered about 375 kilometers (233 miles) west of the southern tip of the Baja peninsula. It was moving north-northwest at 26 kph (4 mph) and was expected to turn more toward the north and pick up speed.

The latest forecast track pointed to Hilary making landfall along a sparsely populated area of the Baja peninsula at a point about 330 kilometers (205 miles) south of the Pacific port city of Ensenada.

It is then expected to continue northward up the peninsula, raising fears that its heavy rains could cause dangerous flooding in the border city of Tijuana, where many homes in the city of 1.9 million cling precariously to steep hillsides.

Mayor Montserrat Caballero Ramirez said the city was setting up four shelters in high-risk zones and warning people in risky zones.

“We are a vulnerable city being on one of the most visited borders in the world and because of our landscape,” she said.

Concern was rising in the United States, too.

The National Park Service closed Joshua Tree National Park and Mojave National Preserve to keep people from becoming stranded amid flooding. Cities across the region, including in Arizona, were offering sandbags to safeguard properties against floodwaters. Major League Baseball rescheduled three Sunday games in Southern California, moving them to Saturday as part of split-doubleheaders.

Deputies with the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department took to the road to urge homeless people living in riverbeds to seek shelter. Authorities in the city were arranging food, cots and shelters for people who needed them.

SpaceX delayed the launch of a satellite-carrying rocket from a base on California’s central coast until at least Monday. The company said conditions in the Pacific could make it difficult for a ship to recover the rocket booster.

President Joe Biden said the Federal Emergency Management Agency had pre-positioned staff and supplies in the region.

“I urge everyone, everyone in the path of this storm, to take precautions and listen to the guidance of state and local officials,” Biden told reporters Friday at Camp David, where he was meeting with the leaders of Japan and South Korea.

Officials in Southern California were reinforcing sand berms, built to protect low-lying coastal communities against winter surf, like in Huntington Beach, which dubs itself as “Surf City USA.”

In nearby Newport Beach, Tanner Atkinson waited in a line of vehicles for free sandbags at a city distribution point.

“I mean a lot of people here are excited because the waves are gonna get pretty heavy,” Atkinson said. “But I mean, it’s gonna be some rain, so usually there’s some flooding and the landslides and things like that.”

Some schools in Cabo San Lucas were being prepared as temporary shelters, and in La Paz, the picturesque capital of Baja California Sur state on the Sea of Cortez, police patrolled closed beaches to keep swimmers out of the whipped-up surf. Schools were shut down in five municipalities.

It was increasingly likely that Hilary would reach California on Sunday while still at tropical storm strength, although widespread rain was expected to begin as early as Saturday, the National Weather Service’s San Diego office said.

Hurricane officials said the storm could bring heavy rainfall to the southwestern United States, dumping 8 to 15 centimeters (3 to 6 inches) in places, with isolated amounts of up to 25 centimeters (10 inches) in portions of southern California and southern Nevada.

“Two to three inches [5 to 7.6 centimeters] of rainfall in Southern California is unheard of” for this time of year, said Kristen Corbosiero, a University at Albany atmospheric scientist who specializes in Pacific hurricanes. “That’s a whole summer and fall amount of rain coming in probably six to 12 hours.”

The region could face once-in-a-century rains, and there is a good chance Nevada will break its rainfall record, said meteorologist Jeff Masters of Yale Climate Connections and a former government in-flight hurricane meteorologist.
…

Phil Durst recalled clawing at his face after a chemical from a commercial dishwashing machine squirted into his eyes, causing “the most indescribable pain I’ve ever felt — ever, ever, ever.”

His left eye bore the brunt of the 2017 work accident, which stole his vision, left him unable to tolerate light and triggered four to five cluster headaches a day.

Then he underwent an experimental procedure that aims to treat severe injuries in one eye with stem cells from the other.

“I went from completely blind with debilitating headaches and pondering if I could go another day — like really thinking I can’t do this anymore” — to seeing well enough to drive and emerging from dark places literally and figuratively, he said, choking up.

The 51-year-old from Homewood, Alabama, was one of four patients to get stem cell transplants as part of the first U.S. study to test the technique, which could someday help thousands. Although additional treatment is sometimes needed, experts say stem cell transplant offers hope to people with few if any other options.

Results of the early-stage research were published Friday in the journal Science Advances, and a larger study is now underway.

The procedure is designed to treat “limbal stem cell deficiency,” a corneal disorder that can occur after chemical burns and other eye injuries. Patients without limbal cells, which are essential for replenishing and maintaining the cornea’s outermost layer, can’t undergo corneal transplants that are commonly used to improve vision.

Dr. Ula Jurkunas, an ophthalmologist at Mass Eye and Ear in Boston who was the principal investigator for the study, said the experimental technique involves taking a small biopsy of stem cells from the healthy eye, then expanding and growing them on a graft in a lab at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston.

A couple of weeks later, they’re sent back to be transplanted into the injured eye. Durst was the first patient to undergo the procedure.

“The great part of it is that we’re using a patient’s own tissue,” not donor tissue the body might reject, Jurkunas said.

She said this method is better than a different procedure that takes a very large piece of stem cells from a healthy eye for use on an injured eye — but risks damaging the good eye.

Both of Durst’s eyes were hurt in the accident, which happened while the former chemical company manager was visiting a client having problems with the dishwashing machine. For six to eight months, his overall vision was so bad his wife or son had to lead him around. But his right eye was less injured than his left and could provide stem cells for the transplant.

Jurkunas, who is also affiliated with Harvard Medical School, said Durst’s 2018 surgery was the culmination of almost two decades of research, “so we felt immense happiness and excitement to finally do it.”

All patients in the study saw their cornea surfaces restored. Durst and another patient were then able to get transplants of artificial corneas, while two others reported much-improved vision with the stem cell transplant alone. A fifth patient didn’t get the procedure because the stem cells weren’t able to adequately expand.

At this point, Durst said, the vision in his right eye is nearly perfect but the vision in his left eye is blurry; he’s scheduled for a different procedure in September to address that.

Jurkunas estimates about 1,000 people in the United States per year could potentially benefit from this sort of stem cell transplant, which has also been studied in Japan.

“There’s definitely an unmet clinical need for this effort — there’s no question,” said Dr. Tueng Shen, an ophthalmology professor at the University of Washington who was not involved in the research. She added that doctors currently have no reliable source of cultivated limbal stem cells.

Researchers are finalizing the next phase of the clinical trial, which includes 15 patients. One is Nick Kharufeh, whose left eye was injured in 2020. He was watching fireworks being set off in the street when a spark hit his eyeball.

Kharufeh moved from California to Boston to take part in the study, and the 26-year-old real estate agent can see well enough to fly a small plane.

Although he’s given up on plans of becoming a commercial pilot, “I still fly whenever I get back to California. I love it,” he said. “I’m just really thankful that they gave me the opportunity to be part of the trial because it’s really helped me out.”
…

This year’s World Humanitarian Day is being commemorated at a time of increased risk for the thousands of aid workers who put their lives on the line every day to help millions of people affected by conflict and natural and human-made disasters.

The United Nations says humanitarian workers are in far greater danger today than 20 years ago, when the U.N.’s headquarters in the Canal Hotel in Baghdad, Iraq, was bombed. The attack killed 22 staffers, including Special Representative Sergio Vieira de Mello, and injuring some 150 others.

The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or OCHA, says so far this year, 62 humanitarian workers have been killed in crises around the world, a 40% increase from the same period in 2022. Another 84 aid workers have been wounded and 34 kidnapped.

“The statistics are grim,” said Ramesh Rajasingham, head of OCHA’s office in Geneva. “Every year, nearly six times more aid workers are killed in the line of duty than were killed in Baghdad on that dark day.”

“International law is clear,” he said. “Aid workers are not targets. Perpetrators must be held to account. Impunity for these crimes is a scar on our collective conscience.”

OCHA says the highest number of attacks against aid workers is in South Sudan, followed closely by Sudan. Aid worker casualties also have been recorded in the Central African Republic, Mali, Somalia and Ukraine.

World Humanitarian Day was established in response to the attack in Iraq 20 years ago on Aug. 19, 2003. Survivors and family members of victims, as well as U.N. senior officials, diplomats and members of the public, attended a ceremony Friday at U.N. headquarters in Geneva to pay tribute to the workers who have lost their lives in humanitarian service.

“Far from the spotlight and out of the headlines, humanitarians work around the clock to make our world a better place,” said U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

“Against incredible odds, often at great personal risk, they ease suffering in some of the most dangerous circumstances imaginable.”

Personal stories

Ahmad Fawzi, who acted as master of ceremonies at the event, was spokesman for Sergio Vieiro di Mello when the terrorist attack on the Canal Hotel in Baghdad occurred. He escaped death because he was away on mission. However, the scars remain to this day.

“It has been said time heals all wounds. I do not agree,” said Fawzi.

Quoting Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, who lost two of her children to assassins’ bullets, he said that while “the pain lessens, it is never gone.”

With his voice breaking, Fawzi shared a painful memory of accompanying the remains of his lifelong friend Nadia Younus, who was killed in the Baghdad terrorist attack, to her final resting place in Cairo.

“It seems like only yesterday that Nadia and I shared our last dinner together in Baghdad,” he said.

Another emotion-filled memory was conveyed by Mujahed Mohammed Hasan, a survivor of the Canal Hotel bombing. He said he was happily planning his wedding on the day he was injured. He recounted years of painful treatment, of shattered dreams, of fighting for survival.

He told the room full of dignitaries that the support of his family gave him the strength and empowered him “to stand before you now, proudly reflecting on a 20-year journey of my life that has changed me into an ambitious, happy, proud individual determined to make a difference in the lives of those in need.”

“My journey is ongoing, and I continue to heal and grow every single day as I choose not to be a victim,” he said.

The United Nations says 362 million people in the world need humanitarian assistance.

In the face of skyrocketing humanitarian needs and despite security and other challenges, OCHA has vowed that “the U.N. and its partners aim to help almost 250 million people in crises around the world — 10 times more than in 2003.”
…

The U.S. National Hurricane Center said Saturday that “catastrophic and life-threatening flooding” will likely strike Baja California and the Southwestern United States through Monday as Hurricane Hilary makes its moves.

Hurricane-force winds are expected Saturday night and Sunday morning along the west-central coast of the Baja California peninsula.

The storm is moving with maximum sustained winds of 130 mph.

A hurricane watch is in effect for the Baja California peninsula north of Cabo San Quintin to Ensenada.

Meanwhile, storm warnings are in effect for the Baja California peninsula from Punta Abreojos south, the entire east coast of the Baja California peninsula, the Baja California peninsula north of Cabo San Quint to the California-Mexico border, mainland Mexico north of Guaymas, the California-Mexico border to Point Mugu and Catalina Island.

A hurricane watch is usually issued 48 hours before the weather conditions are expected, while a hurricane warning is usually issued 36 hours ahead.
…

Russia launched an overnight drone attack on Ukraine, with 17 of the unmanned vehicles directed to locations in northern, central and western Ukraine, Ukraine’s air force said Saturday.

The Ukrainian air force said it was able to shoot down 15 of the 17 Iranian-made Shahed drones. It was not clear what happened to the two drones that were not shot down.

Ukraine meanwhile hailed a U.S. decision to allow allies Denmark and the Netherlands to send F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine.  

Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov called the development Friday “great news from our friends in the United States.”

It was not immediately clear when Ukraine might receive the jets, and Ukrainian pilots will need extensive training before they can fly them.

The fighter jets are not likely to affect the trajectory of the war anytime soon, according to U.S. officials.

Air Force General James Hecker told reporters at a virtual meeting with the Defense Writers Group on Friday that there are no prospects currently for either Ukraine or Russia to gain the upper hand in the air.

“I don’t think anyone’s going to get air superiority as long as the number of surface-to-air missiles stay high enough,” Hecker said, responding to a question from VOA.

Hecker, commander of U.S. Air Forces Europe and U.S. Air Forces Africa, did note that if Ukraine runs out of its integrated air and missile defense ammo, “then it becomes a problem.”

“Both Ukraine and Russia have very good integrated air and missile defense systems,” he said. “That alone is what has prevented [Russia or Ukraine] from getting air superiority.”

In a post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, Dutch Foreign Minister Wopke Hoekstra said: “We welcome Washington’s decision to pave the way for sending F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine.”

Camp David

At a trilateral summit Friday, the leaders of the United States, Japan and South Korea pledged to “stand with Ukraine against Russia’s unprovoked and brutal war of aggression.”

Meeting at the U.S. president retreat of Camp David, U.S. President Joe Biden, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol said their countries would continue to provide assistance to Ukraine.

They also pledged to continue their sanctions on Russia and to accelerate their countries’ “reduction of dependency on Russian energy.”

Kishida said “the free and open international order based on the rule of law is in crisis,” and pointed the blame at Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the continuing North Korean nuclear and missile threats, and a “unilateral attempt to change the status quo by force in the East and South China Seas” — referring lastly to China.

Ukraine grain

Romania’s Black Sea port of Constanta has emerged as the best shipping route for Ukraine’s grain exports since Russia left the U.N.-brokered Black Sea grain deal, leaving ships traveling the Black Sea corridor vulnerable to Russian attacks.

“We hope that over 60% of the total volume of Ukrainian grain exports will transit Romania,” Romanian Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu said after meeting Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal in Bucharest.

Constanta has been one of the best alternative seaports for Ukrainian grain shipping even before the Black Sea grain deal was canceled.

Ukraine exported 8.1 million metric tons of grain through Constanta in the first seven months of this year, and 8.6 million metric tons throughout 2022.

While Romania is looking at boosting the transit of Ukrainian grain through Constanta to international markets, it is also looking at ways to protect local farmers from a surge of Ukrainian grain that could depress local grain prices.

Protests from farmers in Romania and four other eastern EU countries prompted the EU to approve temporary trade restrictions of Ukrainian grain imports to the nations.

The import ban expires Sept. 15, and the five states have asked for it to be extended, at least until the end of the year.

Climbing casualties

The number of Ukrainian and Russian troops killed or wounded since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 is nearing 500,000, The New York Times reported Friday, citing unnamed U.S. officials.

The officials cautioned that casualty numbers are not accurate because Moscow is believed to routinely underreport its war dead and injured, and Kyiv does not provide official figures, the newspaper said.

However, the newspaper estimated that Russia’s military casualties are approaching 300,000, including as many as 120,000 deaths and 170,000 to 180,000 injuries. Ukrainian deaths were close to 70,000, with 100,000 to 120,000 wounded, it said.

The Times cited the officials as saying the casualty count had risen after Ukraine began its counterattack earlier this year.

The Ukrainian military on Thursday claimed gains in its counteroffensive against Russian forces on the southeastern front. Kyiv said its forces had liberated the village of Urozhaine, about 90 kilometers north of the Sea of Azov and about 100 kilometers west of Russian-held Donetsk city.

The advance is part of a drive toward the Sea of Azov and an effort to split Russia’s occupying forces in half.

However, Kyiv says its counteroffensive is advancing more slowly than it had hoped for because of vast Russian minefields and heavily fortified Russian defensive lines.

“Nothing ever goes as well as you would hope. They put mines everywhere. In a square meter, they’re [Ukrainian soldiers] finding five and six mines,” U.S. Air Force General James Hecker said Friday.

U.N. Correspondent Margaret Besheer and VOA National Security Correspondent Jeff Seldin contributed to this story. Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
…

The Chinese military launched drills around Taiwan on Saturday as a “stern warning” over what it called collusion between “separatists and foreign forces,” its defense ministry said, days after the island’s vice president stopped over in the United States.

Taiwanese Vice President William Lai’s recent trip to Paraguay to reinforce relations with his government’s last diplomatic partner in South America included stops in San Francisco and New York City. The mainland’s ruling Communist Party claims democratic Taiwan as part of its territory and says it has no right to conduct foreign relations.

A spokesperson for China’s Eastern Theater Command said in a brief statement that the military exercises involved the coordination of vessels and planes and their ability to seize control of air and sea spaces.

It was also testing the forces’ “actual combat capabilities,” Shi Yi said. The drills were a warning over provocations from pro-Taiwan independence forces and foreign forces, he added.

Taiwan’s defense ministry strongly condemned what it called “irrational, provocative moves” in a statement. It said it would deploy appropriate forces to respond to the drills and take action to “safeguard freedom and democracy.”

It said its military would stand ready in the face of the threats posted by the Chinese army, adding that its forces have “the ability, determination and confidence to safeguard national security.”

Taiwan and China split in 1949 following a civil war that ended with the ruling Communist Party in control of the mainland. The self-ruled island has never been part of the People’s Republic of China, but Beijing sees Taiwan as a breakaway province to be retaken by force if necessary.

China’s official Xinhua news agency on Saturday reported that an unnamed official in China’s Taiwan Work Office strongly condemned what it called further collusion between Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party and the U.S. and said it was a “new provocative move.”

The official pointed to the stopovers in the U.S., an interview Lai gave to news outlet Bloomberg and his meeting with U.S. officials in Paraguay, the report said. The official said Lai had used “Taiwan independence” rhetoric in the interview.

The official also accused Lai of using his stopovers in the U.S. to sell out the interest of Taiwan to seek gains in the island’s election and described him as a “troublemaker who will push Taiwan to the dangerous brink of war,” the report added.

Lai is his party’s candidate for the 2024 presidential election in January.
…

Native Hawaiians and others from a Maui community devastated by ferocious fire said Friday they worry Hawaii’s governor is moving too quickly to rebuild what was lost while the grief is still raw. 

“The fire occurred only 10 days ago, and many people are still in shock and mourning,” said Tiare Lawrence, who grew up in Lahaina. She spoke during an emotional news conference organized by community activists who called on Governor Josh Green to give residents time to grieve, provide community leaders with recovery decision-making roles, and comply with open-records laws amid distrust in the government response to the disaster. 

The governor and his wife were scheduled to give a livestreamed address from Honolulu on Friday evening with updates on the response to the Maui wildfires that killed at least 111 people. Earlier this week, he said he would announce details of a moratorium on land transactions in Lahaina to prevent people from falling victim to land grabs. 

Since the flames consumed much of Lahaina, locals have feared a rebuilt town could become even more oriented toward wealthy visitors. 

Green has said Lahaina’s future will be determined by its people but didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the group’s concerns. 

“The governor should not rush to rebuild the community without first giving people time to heal, especially without including the community itself in the planning,” she said. “Fast-track development cannot come at the cost of community control.” 

More than a dozen of Lawrence’s uncles and cousins fled the fast-moving fire last week and went east to her Pukalani home. 

The coalition of activists, under the umbrella of a group calling itself “Na Ohana o Lele: Lahaina,” were especially concerned about the impact of development to the environment and noted how mismanagement of resources — particularly land and water — contributed to the quick spread of the fire. 

Normal life resumes elsewhere

While crews sifted through ashes and rubble in Lahaina, scenes of normalcy continued in other parts of Maui, even if the tragedy hung heavy over the island. 

Off the coast of Kihei Friday morning, a holiday marking Hawaii’s statehood, paddlers in outrigger canoes glided through Maalaea Bay about 20 miles (32 kilometers) south of Lahaina. Fishermen cast their lines from knee-deep water. And beachgoers strolled along the sand. 

The search for the missing moved beyond Lahaina to other communities that were destroyed. Teams had covered about 58% of the Lahaina area and the fire was 90% contained as of Thursday night, Maui County officials said. 

Six forensic anthropologists with the Department of Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency are assisting in gathering and identifying human remains, the Pentagon said in a statement Friday. The group is experienced in verifying DNA from long-lost service members, many of whom died as long ago as World War II. 

There was no word Friday on who would replace the Maui Emergency Management Agency administrator who abruptly resigned Thursday after defending a decision not to sound outdoor sirens during the fire. 

Herman Andaya had said this week that he had no regrets about not deploying the system because he feared it could have caused people to go toward the mountains or inland. 

“If that was the case, then they would have gone into the fire,” Andaya explained. He stepped down a day later. 

The decision to not use the sirens, coupled with water shortages that hampered firefighters and an escape route clogged with vehicles overrun by flames, has brought intense criticism from many residents following the deadliest wildfire in the United States in more than a century. 

The lack of sirens has emerged as a potential misstep, part of a series of communication issues that added to the chaos, according to reporting by The Associated Press. 

Hawaii Attorney General Anne Lopez said Thursday that an outside organization will conduct “an impartial, independent” review of the government’s response. 

Hotels will house evacuees

Corrine Hussey Nobriga said it was hard to lay blame for a tragedy that took everyone by surprise, even if some of her neighbors raised questions about the absence of sirens and inadequate evacuation routes. 

The fire moved quickly through her neighborhood, though her home was spared. 

“One minute we saw the fire over there,” she said, pointing toward faraway hills, “and the next minute it’s consuming all these houses.” 

Authorities hope to empty crowded, uncomfortable group shelters by early next week, said Brad Kieserman, vice president for disaster operations with the American Red Cross. Hotels also are available for eligible evacuees who have spent the last eight days sleeping in cars or camping in parking lots, he said. 

Contracts with the hotels will last for at least seven months but could easily be extended, he said. Service providers at the properties will offer meals, counseling, financial assistance and other disaster aid. 

The governor has said at least 1,000 hotel rooms will be set aside. In addition, Airbnb said its nonprofit wing will provide properties for 1,000 people. 
…

The U.S. Homeland Security Department announced Friday that it was extending its Temporary Protected Status for Ukrainian and Sudanese nationals through spring 2025 because of the humanitarian crises in these war-torn countries.

Homeland Security also announced measures that would allow more Ukrainian and Sudanese nationals in the U.S. to apply for the status, including students from these countries who are studying in the United States so they can maintain their student status, even if they take fewer courses to work more.

“Russia’s ongoing military invasion of Ukraine and the resulting humanitarian crisis requires that the United States continue to offer safety and protection to Ukrainians who may not be able to return to their country,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas wrote. “We will continue to offer our support to Ukrainian nationals through this temporary form of humanitarian relief.”

The extension, from October 20, 2023, through April 19, 2025, will benefit about 26,000 current Ukrainian nationals with TPS, and it makes an estimated 166,700 additional applicants eligible for the temporary status, the department said.

Ukraine grain

Romania’s Black Sea port of Constanta has emerged as the best shipping route for Ukraine’s grain exports since Russia left the U.N.-brokered Black Sea grain deal, leaving the Black Sea corridor unprotected from Russian attacks.

“We hope that over 60% of the total volume of Ukrainian grain exports will transit Romania,” Romanian Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu said after meeting Ukraine’s Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal in Bucharest.

Constanta was one of the best alternative seaports for Ukrainian grain shipping even before the Black Sea grain deal was canceled.

Ukraine exported 8.1 million metric tons of grain through Constanta in the first seven months of this year, and 8.6 million metric tons throughout 2022.

While Romania is looking at boosting the transit of Ukrainian grain through Constanta to international markets, it is also looking at ways to protect local farmers from a surge of Ukrainian grain that could depress local grain prices.

Protests from farmers in Romania and four other eastern European Union countries prompted the EU to approve temporary trade restrictions of Ukrainian grain imports there.  

The import ban expires September 15, and the five states have asked for it to be extended, at least until the end of the year.

Climbing casualties

The number of Ukrainian and Russian troops killed or wounded since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 is nearing 500,000, The New York Times reported Friday, citing unnamed U.S. officials.

The officials cautioned that casualty estimates were difficult because Moscow is believed to routinely underreport its war dead and injured and Kyiv does not provide official figures, the newspaper said.

However, the newspaper estimated that Russia’s military casualties were approaching 300,000, including as many as 120,000 deaths and 170,000 to 180,000 injuries. Ukrainian deaths were close to 70,000, with 100,000 to 120,000 wounded, it said. 

The Times cited the officials as saying the casualty count had risen since Ukraine began its counterattack earlier this year.

The Ukrainian military on Thursday claimed gains in its counteroffensive against Russian forces on the southeastern front. Kyiv said its forces had liberated the village of Urozhaine, about 90 kilometers north of the Sea of Azov and about 100 kilometers west of Russian-held Donetsk city. 

The advance is part of a drive toward the Sea of Azov and an effort to split Russia’s occupying forces in half.

However, Kyiv says its counteroffensive is advancing more slowly than it had hoped for because of vast Russian minefields and heavily fortified Russian defensive lines.

“Nothing ever goes as well as you would hope. They put mines everywhere. In a square meter, they’re [Ukrainian soldiers] finding five and six mines,” said General James B. Hecker, commander of U.S. Air Forces Europe and U.S. Air Forces Africa, speaking virtually Friday to the Defense Writers Group.

Meanwhile, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, along with its humanitarian partners, is mobilizing more assistance to people in the Kharkiv region in the east, where fighting has recently intensified.

This week, two interagency convoys delivered 75 tons of food, materials for emergency home repairs, hygiene kits and other essential household items to communities close to the front line. 

One of the convoys reached Kupiansk city with supplies for the surrounding areas. Civilians in this area have endured weeks of hostilities, with damage to houses and other civilian infrastructure and disruption of critical services. 

Humanitarians are also supporting people being evacuated by the authorities from front-line areas to Kharkiv city and other safer locations. 

F-16 fighter jets

The United States has given the nod to allies Denmark and the Netherlands to send F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine, according to officials. It was not immediately clear when Ukraine might receive the jets, and its pilots will need extensive training.

Hecker said there were no prospects currently for either Ukraine or Russia to gain the upper hand in the air.

“I don’t think anyone’s going to get air superiority as long as the number of surface-to-air missiles stays high enough,” Hecker said, responding to a question from VOA.

Hecker did note that if Ukraine ran out of its integrated air and missile defense ammo, “then it becomes a problem.”

“Both Ukraine and Russia have very good integrated air and missile defense systems,” he said. “That alone is what has prevented people [Russia or Ukraine] from getting air superiority.”

In a post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, Dutch Foreign Minister Wopke Hoekstra said:  “We welcome Washington’s decision to pave the way for sending F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine.”  

U.N. Correspondent Margaret Besheer and VOA National Security Correspondent Jeff Seldin contributed to this report. Some information came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.  
…

The World Health Organization and U.S. health authorities said Friday they are closely monitoring a new variant of COVID-19, although the potential impact of BA.2.86 is currently unknown.

The WHO classified the new variant as one under surveillance “due to the large number (more than 30) of spike gene mutations it carries,” it wrote in a bulletin about the pandemic late Thursday.

So far, the variant has been detected in Israel, Denmark and the United States.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control confirmed it is also closely monitoring the variant, in a message on the social platform X, formerly known as Twitter.

There are four known sequences of the variant, the WHO has said.

“The potential impact of the BA.2.86 mutations are presently unknown and undergoing careful assessment,” the WHO said.

Francois Balloux, professor of computational systems biology at University College London, said the attention attracted by the new variant was warranted.

“BA.2.86 is the most striking SARS-CoV-2 strain the world has witnessed since the emergence of Omicron,” he said in a comment published Friday, referring to the variant that exploded onto the global stage in the winter of 2022, causing a surge in COVID cases.

“Over the coming weeks we will see how well BA.2.86 will be faring relative to other Omicron subvariants,” he said.

He stressed, though, that even if BA.2.86 caused a major spike in infections, “we are not expecting to witness comparable levels of severe disease and death than we did earlier in the pandemic when the Alpha, Delta or Omicron variants spread.”

“Most people on earth have now been vaccinated and/or infected by the virus,” he said, pointing out that even if people were reinfected with the new variant, “immune memory will still allow their immune system to kick in and control the infection far more effectively.”

The WHO is currently monitoring upwards of 10 variants and their descent lineages.

Most countries that had established surveillance systems for the virus have since dismantled operations, determining it is no longer as severe and therefore could not justify the expense — a move the WHO has denounced, calling instead for stronger monitoring.

In the last reporting period between July 17 and Aug. 13, more than 1.4 million new cases of COVID-19 were detected and more than 2,300 deaths were reported, according to a WHO statement.

The case load represents a rise of 63% from the previous 28-day period, while deaths were down by 56%. 

As of Aug. 13, there were more than 769 million cases of COVID-19 confirmed and more than 6.9 million deaths worldwide, although the real toll is thought to be much higher because many cases went undetected.
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Human rights in North Korea and gang violence in Haiti. VOA correspondent Margaret Besheer has more on the top stories this week at the United Nations.
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Planning is underway for a possible U.S. military evacuation from Niger, even though a top U.S. general says any final decision is still “weeks away.”

The commander of U.S. Air Forces Europe and U.S. Air Forces Africa told reporters Friday his headquarters is preparing for a range of possible scenarios that could force some 1,100 U.S. troops to abandon two airbases that have been critical to U.S. counterterrorism efforts.

“We’ll be ready if something happens,” General James Hecker said during a virtual briefing with members of the Defense Writers Group.

“There’s a lot of hypotheticals we can come up with why and if we should evacuate,” he said. “We just have to be prepared for all of them … of course, we’re hoping we use none.”

U.S. officials have been warning for weeks that Washington could withdraw its support for Niger if military officials who deposed Nigerien President Mohamed Bazoum last month fail to return him to power.

But despite such threats, the U.S., has so far refused to call the situation in Niger a coup, a designation which could have far ranging impacts for the currently military partnership.

A coup designation “certainly changes what we’d be able to do in the region and how we’d be able to partner with the Nigerien military,” Pentagon deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh told reporters earlier this week.

“We’ve been very clear it certainly looks like an attempted coup,” she said, adding, “Niger is quite a critical partner to us in the region and so we are hopeful that we can resolve this in a diplomatic way.”

The U.S. currently has about 1,100 troops in Niger as part of a counterterrorism mission focused on al-Qaida and Islamic State affiliates in the region.

Most of the troops are located at two air bases, Air Base 201 in the Nigerien city of Agadez, on the edge of the Saharan desert, and Air Base 101 in the capital of Niamey.

Air Base 201, a $110 million, U.S.-built facility, has been especially pivotal for the counterterrorism mission, conducting drone flights with MQ-9 Reapers since 2019.

Hecker, on Friday, called the planning for a possible evacuation from the two bases prudent and precautionary, adding his teams have even considered scenarios in which they are called upon to evacuate civilians and even the U.S. embassy under duress.

Planning is also underway for possible alternative bases for U.S. air assets should they have to leave Niger.

“We will obviously look to some other allies in the west [of Africa] there that we could maybe partner up with and then move our assets there,” Hecker said.

“We’ve just started looking at that … where we would like the base to be,” he said in response to a question from VOA. “But more of that is going to be diplomatic through the State [Department] on where we decide to go.”

For now, though, Hecker said, there are few signs of tension between the Nigerien military and the U.S. troops on the ground.

“Right now, we’re not going anywhere,” he said. “Right now, there’s not a need to go anywhere.”

“That decision is not anywhere close to being made yet,” Hecker added. “We have weeks, if not much longer, before our civilian leadership is going to give an order.”
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The United States has given the nod to allies Denmark and the Netherlands to send F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine, according to officials. It was not immediately clear when Ukraine might receive the jets, which it has been seeking for a long time to counter Russia’s air superiority.

In a post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, Dutch Foreign Minister Wopke Hoekstra said: “We welcome Washington’s decision to pave the way for sending F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine.”

The U.S. must approve F-16 transactions because the jets are made in the United States. Despite the news, it was not immediately clear when Ukraine would receive the jets.  Pilots must undergo extensive training before Ukraine can receive the jets.

Earlier Friday, Ukraine attempted to launch a drone attack on Moscow, but Russian forces downed the unmanned aerial vehicle.

After Russia shot down the drone, debris from the attack fell on Moscow’s Expo Center, a massive exhibitions space, located less than 7 kilometers from the Kremlin.

Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said on Telegram that the wreckage from the drone fell near the Expo Center but “did not cause significant damage.”

The British Defense Ministry said Friday in its daily update on Ukraine that Russia has published a new Russian history textbook for schools “in the occupied regions of Ukraine and throughout the Russian Federation,” beginning in September.  The ministry posted on X, that “Russia’s aim is to create a pro-Kremlin information space in the occupied regions in order to erode Ukrainian national identity.”

Ukraine claimed Thursday that its counteroffensive had retaken parts of Russian-controlled land in the southeastern part of the country in a push beyond the newly liberated village of Urozhaine.

The advance is an attempted drive toward the Sea of Azov, an effort to split Russia’s occupying forces in half.

“In the direction south of Urozhaine, [Ukrainian troops] had success,” military spokesman Andriy Kovaliov said on national television. He gave no more details.

Urozhaine, in the eastern Donetsk region, was the first village Kyiv said it had retaken since July 27 in what has proved to be a difficult, grinding warfare in heavily mined Russian-controlled territory.

Urozhaine lies just over 90 kilometers north of the Sea of Azov and about 100 kilometers west of Russian-held Donetsk city.

Vladimir Rogov, a Russia-installed official in parts of Zaporizhzhia controlled by Moscow, said Urozhaine and the neighboring village of Staromaiorske were not under Ukrainian control.

Drone footage, however, of the intense fight for Urozhaine, has emerged in which dozens of Russian troops can be seen fleeing to the village’s south.

Russia controls nearly one-fifth of Ukraine, including the Crimean Peninsula it annexed in 2014, most of Luhansk region and large tracts of the Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions.

Kyiv says its counteroffensive is advancing more slowly than it had hoped for because of vast Russian minefields and heavily fortified Russian defensive lines.

Russian attacks on Ukrainian grain facilities

Ukrainian officials said Wednesday that Russia damaged grain infrastructure at a port in the Odesa region in southern Ukraine as part of an overnight drone attack.

Andriy Yermak, chief of staff for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said on Telegram that the attack targeted the port of Reni on the Danube River. 

Odesa Governor Oleh Kiper said on Telegram that the attack damaged warehouses and grain storage facilities at the port.

Kiper said there were no reported casualties from the attack, and that Ukraine’s air force had downed 11 Russian drones over Odesa. The Ukrainian military said its air defenses destroyed 13 drones overnight and that Russia had used Iranian-made Shahed drones to target Odesa and Mykolaiv.

Black Sea shipping

The Hong-Kong-flagged container ship Joseph Schulte left Ukraine’s port of Odesa on Wednesday.

Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov said the vessel was the first to set off down a temporary Black Sea corridor that Ukraine established for civilian ships following Russia’s withdrawal from the Black Sea Grain Initiative.

The Joseph Schulte was carrying 30,000 metric tons of cargo, Kubrakov said. The vessel had been stuck in Odesa since Russian launched its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Russia has not said whether it will respect Ukraine’s shipping corridor. On Sunday, a Russian patrol ship fired warning shots at a vessel after what Russia said was a failure by the captain to respond to a request for an inspection.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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Comic books can be a great way to help people work through emotional trauma. For VOA, Genia Dulot reports on comics that encourage children and adults to share their feelings and address issues of mental health
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Amid the lush greenery of Catoctin Mountain Park, the U.S. presidential retreat Camp David will once again be the setting of a historic milestone in international diplomacy — the cementing of a trilateral alliance between the U.S. and its two main Asian allies, Japan and South Korea, to strengthen deterrence against North Korea and China.

The goal of Friday’s summit, hosted by President Joe Biden, is “to lock in trilateral engagement,” including a pledge by Washington, Tokyo and Seoul to create a three-way hotline and consult with one another during a regional crisis, a senior administration official told reporters in a briefing Thursday. The official spoke under condition of anonymity, as is customary when discussing foreign policy and security issues.

The three countries will commit that when faced with a regional contingency or threat they will immediately consult, share intelligence and align policy actions in tandem with one another, a second senior administration official said in the same briefing.

“What it seeks to acknowledge and build in its core is the fact that we do share a fundamentally interlinked security environment,” she said. “Something that poses a threat to any one of us fundamentally poses a threat to all of us.”

The second official insisted the pledge is not a formal military alliance or a collective defense commitment — as China and North Korea have called it. Pyongyang and Beijing have characterized the Camp David summit as Washington’s gambit to create a “mini-NATO” in Asia.

The duty to consult during crisis caps off a myriad of other trilateral defense cooperation pledges, including regular military exercises and ballistic missile drills, as well as new collaboration on economic security — strengthening semiconductor supply chains, cyber security and artificial intelligence. The three nations are also set to adopt the “Camp David Principles,” a series of values and norms on peace and prosperity within the Indo-Pacific region.

The deliverables of Friday’s summit are only possible after a détente in relations between South Korea and Japan, its former occupier, following months of diplomacy between the Yoon and Kishida governments to put aside their fraught history and mutual distrust to deal with more imminent mutual security challenges.

“Korea and Japan are now partners who share universal values and pursue common interests,” South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol said earlier this week in a speech marking the 78th anniversary of Korea’s liberation from Japan’s 35-year colonial rule that ended in 1945.

Hedge against reversal

Behind the U.S. push to institutionalize the engagement is the need to hedge against the risk of reversal if liked-minded leaders do not succeed Yoon or Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kushida or Biden.

With more than three years left in his term, Yoon is pushing hard right now also, said Karl Friedhoff, a fellow for Asia Studies at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. “By the time he is out of office, this meeting will be seen as a normal part of Korea-Japan relations,” he told VOA.

Focusing on deterrence on North Korea and China is a way to gain domestic political support in Seoul and Tokyo.

“These are politically acceptable, and indeed, necessary mechanisms that should not have a lot of political pushbacks,” said Shihoko Goto, acting director of the Asia program at the Woodrow Wilson Center. “Japan and Korea recognize that the Indo-Pacific landscape is very tumultuous.”

Administration officials would not clarify whether the three-way consultation in the event of a regional crisis would include a contingency in the Taiwan Strait.

While a coordinated response to an attack from Beijing may be something that Washington envisions in the long term, South Korea is not as aligned with the U.S. as Japan is when it comes to the China threat, said Jeffrey Hornung, a senior political scientist specializing in East Asian security at the RAND Corporation.

“Given that it’s been difficult for Japan and Korea to really cooperate on most things, I think start with their mutual concern, which is North Korea,” he told VOA. “And maybe in the future, branch that out once they work the kinks out of their cooperation.”

South Korea has already indicated willingness to broaden the trilateral response.

Kim Tae-hyo, Korea’s principal deputy national security adviser, told reporters in Seoul on Thursday that cooperation will evolve from focusing on the North Korean threat to a more comprehensive one aiming to build “freedom, peace and prosperity throughout the Indo-Pacific region.”

Future summits

The leaders will commit that “future leaders will meet on an annual basis” without allowing them to “backtrack from the commitments” made at Camp David, the first senior administration official said.

“What we are seeking to do is not just lock in Japan and South Korea, but lock in the United States, to make clear to everyone that we are here to stay in the Indo Pacific region,” he added.

Locking it in matters. There is concern that American pledges of cooperation could be undone should Donald Trump be elected again in 2024.

Under his “America First” doctrine during his presidency, Trump withdrew the U.S. from various international treaties and regional engagements. The former president is also remembered for his mercurial relationship with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, whom he once threatened with “fire and fury,” but later said he “fell in love” with. 
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Embattled developer China Evergrande Group has filed for bankruptcy protection in a U.S. court as part of one of the world’s biggest debt restructuring exercises, as anxiety grows over China’s worsening property crisis and a weakening economy.

Once China’s top-selling developer, Evergrande has become the poster child of the country’s unprecedented debt crisis in the property sector, which accounts for roughly a quarter of the economy, after facing a liquidity crunch in mid-2021.

The developer has sought protection under Chapter 15 of the U.S. bankruptcy code, which shields non-U.S. companies that are undergoing restructurings from creditors that hope to sue them or tie up assets in the United States.

The filing is procedural in nature, but the world’s most indebted property developer with more than $300 billion in liabilities has to do it as part of a restructuring process under U.S. law, two people familiar with the matter said.

The sources declined to be named due to the sensitivity of the matter.

Evergrande declined to comment.

Evergrande’s offshore debt restructuring involves a total of $31.7 billion, which include bonds, collaterals and repurchase obligations. It will meet with its creditors later this month on its restructuring proposal.

A string of Chinese property developers have defaulted on their offshore debt obligations since then, leaving unfinished homes, plunging sales and shattering investor confidence in a blow to the world’s second-largest economy.

The property sector crisis has also fanned contagion risk, which could have a destabilizing impact on an economy already weakened by tepid domestic consumption, faltering factory activity, rising unemployment and weak overseas demand.

A major Chinese asset manager missed repayment obligations on some investment products and warned of a liquidity crisis, while Country Garden, the country’s No. 1 private developer, has become the latest to flag a stifling cash crunch.

All of this comes at a time when property investment, home sales and new construction have contracted for more than a year.

Morgan Stanley this week followed some of the major global brokerages to cut China’s growth forecast for this year. It now sees China’s gross domestic product (GDP) growing 4.7% this year, down from an earlier forecast of 5%.

China is targeting 5% annual growth for this year, but an increasing number of economists are warning that it could miss the goal unless Beijing ramps up support measures to arrest the decline.

The China economic and property woes as well as the absence of concrete stimulus steps have sent a chill through global markets. Asian shares were headed for a weekly loss of 2.8%, the third straight week of declines. Chinese blue-chips on the CSI300 dropped 0.5% and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index slumped another 1.3%.

China is expected to cut lending benchmarks at a monthly fixing on Monday, with many analysts predicting a big reduction to the mortgage reference rate to revive credit demand and shore up the ailing property sector.

Debt restructuring

In response to the deepening property market crisis, the central bank reiterated it would adjust and optimize property policies, according to its second-quarter monetary policy implementation report published this week.

Since the sector’s debt upheaval unfolded in mid-2021, with Evergrande at the center of the turmoil, companies accounting for 40% of Chinese home sales have defaulted, most of them private property developers.

As developers scramble to ease investors’ concerns, Longfor Group, China’s second largest private developer, said on Friday it would speed up its “profit structure” in response to the changes of supply and demand in the real estate market.

Evergrande announced an offshore debt restructuring plan in March, expecting it to facilitate a gradual resumption of operations and generation of cash flow. It is now gathering creditor support to complete the process.

An affiliate of the developer, Tianji Holdings, also sought Chapter 15 protection on Thursday in Manhattan bankruptcy court.

In a filing in the Manhattan bankruptcy court, Evergrande said that it was seeking recognition of restructuring talks underway in Hong Kong, the Cayman Islands and the British Virgin Islands.

The company proposed scheduling a Chapter 15 recognition hearing for Sept. 20.

In June last year, another Chinese developer, Modern Land (China) Co. Ltd., which missed payments on its offshore bonds that were due in October 2021, had filed a petition for recognition under Chapter 15 of the bankruptcy code in New York.

Trading in China Evergrande shares has been suspended since March 2022. Shares of Evergrande Services plunged as much as 20% on Friday, while China Evergrande New Energy Vehicle Group lost as much as 17%.
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The U.S. government said Thursday that it was formally requesting a dispute settlement panel in its ongoing row with Mexico over Mexican  limits on genetically modified corn. 

Mexico’s Economy Department said it had received the notification and would defend its position. It said in a statement that “the measures under debate had no effect on trade,” and thus did not violate the United States-Mexico-Canada free trade agreement, known as USMCA. 

The U.S. Trade Representative’s Office objected to Mexico’s ban on GM corn for human consumption and its plans to eventually ban it as animal feed. 

The USTR said in a statement that “Mexico’s measures are not based on science and undermine the market access it agreed to provide in the USMCA.” 

The panel of experts will now be selected and will have about half a year to study the complaint and release its findings. Trade sanctions could follow if Mexico is found to have violated the trade agreement. 

The U.S. government said in June that talks with the Mexican government on the issue had failed to yield results. 

Mexico wants to ban biotech corn for human consumption and perhaps eventually ban it for animal feed as well, something that both of its northern partners say would damage trade and violate USMCA requirements that any health or safety standards be based on scientific evidence. 

Mexico is the leading importer of U.S. yellow corn, most of which is genetically modified. Almost all is fed to cattle, pigs and chickens in Mexico, because Mexico doesn’t grow enough feed corn. Corn for human consumption in Mexico is almost entirely domestically grown white corn, though corn meal chips or other processed products could potentially contain GM corn. 

Mexico argues biotech corn may have health effects, even when used as fodder, but hasn’t presented proof. 

Mexico had previously appeared eager to avoid a major showdown with the United States on the corn issue — but not eager enough to completely drop talk of any ban. 

In February, Mexico’s Economy Department issued new rules that dropped the date for substituting imports of GM feed corn. The new rules say Mexican authorities will carry out “the gradual substitution” of GM feed and milled corn but set no date for doing so and says potential health issues will be the subject of study by Mexican experts “with health authorities from other countries.” 

Under a previous version of the rules, some U.S. growers worried a GM feed corn ban could happen as soon as 2024 or 2025. 

While the date was dropped, the language remained in the rules about eventually substituting GM corn, something that could cause prices for meat to skyrocket in Mexico, where inflation is already high. 

U.S. farmers have worried about the potential loss of the single biggest export market for U.S. corn. Mexico has been importing GM feed corn from the U.S. for years, buying about $3 billion worth annually.
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