Mohammad Siddiq Habibi crossed the U.S.-Mexico border illegally and now lives without documents, navigating life and work in the U.S. VOA’s Fahim Siddiqi has the story from San Diego, California, narrated by Bezhan Hamdard.
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Following a Georgia grand jury’s indictment of former U.S. President Donald Trump and 18 other people for alleged efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, Democratic leaders described the move as showing that no one is above the law while prominent Republicans said it was a politically motivated act against a candidate in the 2024 election.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said in a joint statement that Monday’s indictment and three prior ones show “a repeated pattern of criminal activity by the former president.”

“The actions taken by the Fulton County District Attorney, along with other state and federal prosecutors, reaffirms the shared belief that in America no one, not even the president, is above the law,” Schumer and Jeffries said.

Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said on X, formerly known as Twitter, that President Joe Biden “has weaponized government against his leading political opponent to interfere in the 2024 election” and accused Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis of “attacking President Trump and using it to fundraise her political career.”

Democratic Congresswoman Nikema Williams, whose district includes part of Fulton County, said that Trump tried to disenfranchise voters in Georgia because he did not like the result of losing a fair election in 2020.

“That was an assault on our democracy. But in Fulton County we apply the law equally to everyone–even failed former presidents,” Williams said on X.

Trump attorneys Drew Findling, Jennifer Litte and Marissa Goldberg, in a statement late Monday, called the indictment “undoubtedly as flawed and unconstitutional as this entire process has been.”

“This one-sided grand jury presentation relied on witnesses who harbor their own personal and political interests—some of whom ran campaigns touting their efforts against the accused and/or profited from book deals and employment opportunities as a result,” the Trump attorneys said.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who lost to Trump in the 2016 presidential election, said on MSNBC that having a former president accused of important crimes “is a terrible moment for our country.”

“The only satisfaction may be that the system is working, that all of the efforts by Donald Trump, his allies and his enablers to try to silence the truth, to try to undermine democracy, have been brought into the light, and justice is being pursued,” Clinton said.

Republican Congressman Jim Jordan said on X that Monday’s indictment “is just the latest political attack in the Democrats’ WITCH HUNT against President Trump.”

“He did nothing wrong!” Jordan said.
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In indicting former President Donald Trump and 18 others on racketeering charges, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis included a sweeping charge that she’s used frequently since taking over as the top prosecutor in Georgia’s largest county in early 2021.

For 2½ years, Willis has investigated Trump and his allies for allegedly meddling in the election by pressuring officials to “find” him the votes needed to win the state and naming a bogus slate of presidential electors.

As part of the investigation, prosecutors from Willis’ office looked into a possible violation of Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations statute as well as other crimes.

The law, known as RICO, is modeled after a federal statute by the same name that was enacted in 1970 to combat organized crime.

In the 1980s, former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, then the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, used RICO to prosecute several high-profile members of the New York Mafia.

But in recent decades, RICO statutes, both federal and state, have been applied more broadly to target gangs, corrupt politicians and white-collar criminals.

In 2013, Willis, then a top prosecutor in the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office, led a high-profile RICO indictment of dozens of Atlanta teachers and school administrators involved in manipulating student test scores. Under her watch as DA, the number of RICO cases filed by her office has soared.

Georgia’s RICO statute, enacted in 1980, makes it a crime to engage in a “pattern of racketeering activity” as part of an “enterprise.”

An “enterprise” is not limited to an organization and can extend to individuals participating in criminal schemes.

The “pattern of racketeering activity” is defined as criminal conduct arising from two or more criminal violations. More expansive than federal RICO, the Georgia statute lists more than 40 crimes that qualify.

In Trump’s case, this means that Georgia prosecutors must prove that the former president broke two or more of Georgia’s laws as part of a scheme to overturn the election results.

Accusing Trump and his 18 co-conspirators of participating in a “criminal enterprise,” the indictment lists nearly a dozen criminal violations, including false statements and writings, impersonating a public officer, filing false documents and influencing witnesses. In all, Trump was charged with 13 counts.

“They can try to make a case showing, for example, that Mr. Trump made false statements, making phone calls to Georgia officials, and that Mr. Giuliani allegedly made false statements by appearing before the Georgia Legislature,” according to Morgan Cloud, a law professor at Emory University in Georgia.

Racketeering charges are unlike ordinary conspiracy charges, which require proof of an explicit agreement among two or more people to commit a crime.

Anthony Michael Kreis, an assistant professor of law at Georgia State University, explained that a racketeering charge relies on a broader theory of criminality.

Citing the Georgia test score scandal, he said, “there was no agreement amongst all the people who were involved with the cheating scandal that they were trying to do something unlawful, but they were all advancing a broader criminal goal.”

“And so you could see how that theory of criminality could be imported in the 2020 election case,” Kreis said.

The stakes are high for anyone charged under Georgia’s RICO statute, because it carries stiff penalties. A defendant could face five to 20 years in prison if convicted of racketeering, compared with five years for making a false statement.

The threat of long prison terms in a racketeering case can induce lower-level participants to cooperate with prosecutors in exchange for lighter sentences.

But building and prosecuting a racketeering case is not easy. It requires proving a complex web of criminal activities that spanned a period of time and had a common purpose, Cloud said.  
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A grand jury in the U.S. state of Georgia has indicted former President Donald Trump and 18 others in connection with efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss.

The 13 charges unsealed against Trump late Monday include racketeering, violating his oath of office, conspiracies to commit forgery and file false documents, and other offenses.

Among those charged along with Trump were former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani and former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis told reporters that the defendants were part of a criminal enterprise in the county and elsewhere to “accomplish the illegal goal of allowing Donald J. Trump to seize the presidential term of office” that began in January 2021. 

The indictment details numerous allegations as part of that alleged effort, including making repeated claims of voter fraud to Georgia officials, attempting to persuade Georgia lawmakers to go against election results and appoint a slate of electoral college voters favorable to Trump, and stealing voting data. 

“All elections in our nation are administered by the states, which are given the responsibility of ensuring a fair process and an accurate counting of the votes,” Willis said. “The states’ role in this process is essential to the functioning of our democracy.”

Willis said the timing of the trial in the case is up to the discretion of the assigned judge, but that her office would propose the trial take place in the next six months.  She also said that while the grand jury issued arrest warrants for those charged, her office was allowing them to voluntarily surrender themselves by noon on August 25. 

The former president’s campaign did not wait for the charges to be unsealed before issuing a statement accusing Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis of being a “rabid partisan” and timing the investigation of Trump’s actions “to try and maximally interfere with the 2024 presidential race and damage the dominant Trump campaign.”

After a 2½-year investigation, Willis called witnesses before a grand jury in Atlanta earlier Monday to hear evidence of how Trump allegedly illegally attempted to upend his narrow loss to Democrat Joe Biden in Georgia, a pivotal battleground election state.

Willis told reporters her decisions are based on the facts and that the law is “completely non-partisan.”

“We look at the facts, we look at the law, and we bring charges,” Willis said. 

The indictment came after a 2½-year investigation that stemmed broadly from Trump’s taped phone call in early 2021 to Georgia election officials soliciting them to “find” him 11,780 votes, one more than President Joe Biden’s margin of victory in the pivotal battleground state. 

On his Truth Social media site Monday, Trump said, “Would someone please tell the Fulton County grand jury that I did not tamper with the election. The people that tampered with it were the ones that rigged it, and sadly, phoney [sic] Fani Willis, who has shockingly allowed Atlanta to become one of the most dangerous cities anywhere in the world, has no interest in seeing the massive amount of evidence available, or finding out who these people that committed this crime are.”

Georgia was one of several states where Trump narrowly lost and unsuccessfully sought to reverse the result, even as dozens of judges ruled against his election fraud claims.

To this day, he falsely contends that election irregularities cost him another term in the White House, while leading the contest among Republican voters for the party’s 2024 presidential nomination by a wide margin. 

Trump has also been indicted in two federal cases and one in New York state. 

Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith accused Trump in a four-count indictment of scheming with six unnamed co-conspirators to illegally upend his national reelection loss. 

Smith also accused Trump in Florida of illegally hoarding highly classified national security documents as he left the White House in early 2021. 

A New York state prosecutor indicted Trump on charges of altering business records to hide a hush money payment to a porn film star ahead of his successful 2016 run for the presidency. 

Trump has denied wrongdoing in all the cases. 

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters  
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Authorities say they rushed to arrest a 17-year-old boy, alleging he was preparing to build bombs and select targets after being in touch with an al-Qaida affiliate in Syria.

Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner announced the arrest Monday, calling details of the threat “deeply disturbing.”

An FBI SWAT team was sent to the teenager’s home in West Philadelphia Friday morning after investigators found evidence that he had access to firearms and had been purchasing materials, including chemical and wires, commonly used in making improvised explosive devices.

The suspect, who is not being named since he is currently charged as a juvenile, “presented a grave danger to everyone — himself, his family, the block where he lived and, frankly, people everywhere in Philadelphia and potentially people around the country,” Krasner told reporters in Philadelphia.

FBI Special Agent in Charge Jacqueline Maguire said the suspect first came to the attention of the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force as a result of his Instagram social media communications with Katibat al Tawhid wal Jihad (KTJ), an al-Qaida affiliate that operates out of parts of Syria.

Some of the messages indicated the suspect was interested in leaving the United States to join the terror group. But officials said other messages include instructions for how to make improvised explosive devices.

Maguire said concern rose quickly after surveillance teams saw the suspect purchase materials to make the bombs last week, including chemicals, wiring and devices that could be used as detonators.

Maguire said agents also found the suspect had access to “quite a significant number of firearms.”

In addition, work by other U.S. agencies found that there had been at least 14 international shipments of military and tactical gear to the suspect’s home.

“This was now a situation where we believed public safety was at risk,” Maguire said. “Knowing that he was purchasing these components, these materials, and knowing what he had accumulated … he could build a viable device.”

Maguire said it appears the suspect was in the early stages of choosing potential targets, and that some appeared to be outside of the Philadelphia region. But she also said that while the investigation is ongoing there is no longer a threat to the public.

Despite the concern, Maguire said the suspect “was cooperative” with the SWAT team sent to his residence to make the arrest.

For now, the state of Pennsylvania is charging him on counts related to weapons of mass destruction, criminal conspiracy, arson, causing or risking catastrophe and reckless endangerment, among others.

In addition to the alleged communication with KTJ, FBI agents also found the suspect posted images of a Chechnya-based terror group and the Islamic State terror group’s banner on a WhatsApp account.

The District Attorney’s office said given the seriousness of the charges, it is seeking to have the suspect tried as an adult.

Officials also said the suspect could face additional charges from the federal government.
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The U.S. wildfire in which almost 100 people have died in Hawaii is among the deadliest of the 21st century.

Here’s a look at some previous deadly wildfires globally:

Australia in 2009

In “Black Saturday” in Australia’s Victoria state, 173 people were killed, in Australia’s worst bushfire on February 7, 2009.

Whole towns and more than 2,000 homes were destroyed.

Greece in 2007 and 2018

In Greece’s worst-ever fire disaster, 103 people died when wildfires swept through homes and vehicles in the coastal town of Mati near Athens in July 2018, leaving only charred remains.

Most of the victims were trapped by the flames as they sat in traffic jams while trying to flee. Others drowned while trying to escape by sea.

In 2007, a 12-day inferno starting in late August killed at least 67 people and destroyed 800 homes across the southern Peloponnese peninsula.

The flames engulfed most of the region’s olive groves. The Aegean island of Evia was also badly affected.

In all 77 people died that summer due to the fires.

Algeria in 2021 and 2022

More than 90 people, including 33 soldiers, were killed in dozens of wildfires in Algeria in August 2021.

The government blamed arsonists and a blistering heatwave for the blazes, but experts also criticized authorities for failing to prepare for the annual wildfire season.

In August 2022, massive blazes killed 37 people over several days in northeastern El Tarf province, near the border with Tunisia.

More than 10,000 hectares (25,000 acres) went up in smoke in El Kala National Park, a UNESCO-listed heritage spot famous for its rich marine, dune, lake and forest ecosystems.

U.S. in 2018

On November 8, 2018, at dawn, California’s deadliest modern fire broke out in the town of Paradise, some 240 kilometers (149 miles) to the north of San Francisco, killing 85 people over more than two weeks.

Known as the Camp Fire, it burned more than 62,000 hectares (153,000 acres) of land and reduced more than 18,800 buildings to ashes.

An investigation found that high tension electricity wires sparked the fire.

The Camp Fire is likely the deadliest fire in the continental United States for a century; the Cloquet Fire in 1918 in the northern state of Minnesota killed around 1,000 people.

Portugal in 2017

The deadliest wildfires in Portuguese history broke out in the central Leiria region during a heatwave in June 2017 and burned through hills covered with pine and eucalyptus trees for five days.

Many of the 63 people who died became trapped in their cars while trying to escape.

In October, a new series of deadly fires broke out in northern Portugal, killing another 45 people as well as four in neighboring Spain. Those fires were chiefly blamed on arsonists.
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For the team aboard the Okeanos Explorer off the coast of Alaska, exploring the mounds and craters of the sea floor along the Aleutian Islands is a chance to surface new knowledge about life in some of the world’s deepest and most remote waters.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration research vessel is on a five-month mission aboard a reconfigured former Navy vessel run by civilians and members of the NOAA Corps. The ship, with a 48-member crew, is outfitted with technology and tools to peer deep into the ocean to gather data to share with onshore researchers in real time. The hope is that this data will then be used to drive future research.

“It’s so exciting to go down there and see that it’s actually teeming with life,” said expedition coordinator Shannon Hoy. “You would never know that unless we were able to go down there and explore.”

Using a variety of sonars and two remotely operated vehicles — Deep Discoverer and Serios — researchers aboard the ship are mapping and collecting samples from areas along the Aleutian Trench and the Gulf of Alaska. High-resolution cameras that can operate at depths of up to 6,000 meters (19,685 feet) allow researchers to document and immediately share their findings. The ship can also livestream dives to the public.

Many factors, such as depth, speed and sonar capability, influence how much sea floor can be mapped. In 2 to 4 weeks, the Okeanos Explorer can map as much as 50,000 square kilometers (31,069 square miles), Hoy said.

During these dives, Hoy said the team plans to investigate some of the area’s cold seep communities — places where gases from under the sea floor rise through cracks and where plants don’t rely on photosynthesis for food production. 

“We’re also going to be looking through the water column to see what interesting animals and fauna that we can see there,” she said. 

Kasey Cantwell, the ship’s operations chief, said the data will help researchers and the public better understand these remote stretches of ocean, including marine life and habitats in the area. That could inform management decisions in fisheries. Data could also help detect hazards and improve nautical charts.

“It’s really hard to care for things you don’t understand, to love things you don’t understand,” Cantwell said.

The deep ocean off Alaska’s Aleutian Islands is one of the least mapped places in the U.S., partly due to its remoteness. Modern mapping standards have covered just 34% of the sea floor around Alaska, which has one of the nation’s largest coastal ecosystems, and only a fraction of that has been seen, according to the expedition’s website.

Closing these gaps is a mission priority and will help meet a goal of mapping all the United States’ deep waters by 2030 and near-shore waters by 2040, according to Emily Crum, a communications specialist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

But the data collection process is laborious.

Thomas Morrow, a physical scientist on the ship, likened the effort to “walking the length of several city blocks in complete darkness with a tiny flashlight.”

Nevertheless, all these small looks add up to a better understanding of what lies in the deepest parts of the sea.

In the expedition’s first two months, researchers recorded methane seeps and saw a Brisingid sea star at a depth of 2,803 meters (9,200 feet) that had not been documented in the Aleutians before. At least two potential new species have also been discovered.

Earlier this year while on an expedition off the coast of Washington state, researchers aboard the ship documented a jellyfish floating in the deep, and soon had a call from an excited scientist who told them the jellyfish was behaving in ways not seen before.

“The feeling of wonder that sometimes happens in that control room is so palpable,” he said.  
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A Montana judge on Monday sided with young environmental activists who said state agencies were violating their constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment by permitting fossil fuel development without considering its effect on the climate.

The ruling in the first-of-its-kind trial in the U.S. adds to a small number of legal decisions around the world that have established a government duty to protect citizens from climate change.

District Court Judge Kathy Seeley found the policy the state uses in evaluating requests for fossil fuel permits — which does not allow agencies to evaluate the effects of greenhouse gas emissions — is unconstitutional.

Judge Seeley wrote in the ruling that “Montana’s emissions and climate change have been proven to be a substantial factor in causing climate impacts to Montana’s environment and harm and injury” to the youth.

However, it’s up to the state Legislature to determine how to bring the policy into compliance. That leaves slim chances for immediate change in a fossil fuel-friendly state where Republicans dominate the statehouse.

The attorney representing the youth, Julia Olson of Our Children’s Trust, an Oregon environmental group that has filed similar lawsuits in every state since 2011, celebrated the ruling.

“As fires rage in the West, fueled by fossil fuel pollution, today’s ruling in Montana is a game-changer that marks a turning point in this generation’s efforts to save the planet from the devastating effects of human-caused climate chaos,” Olson said in a statement. “This is a huge win for Montana, for youth, for democracy, and for our climate. More rulings like this will certainly come.”

Emily Flower, spokeswoman for Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen, decried the ruling as “absurd,” criticized the judge and said the office planned to appeal.

“This ruling is absurd, but not surprising from a judge who let the plaintiffs’ attorneys put on a weeklong taxpayer-funded publicity stunt that was supposed to be a trial,” Flower said. “Montanans can’t be blamed for changing the climate — even the plaintiffs’ expert witnesses agreed that our state has no impact on the global climate. Their same legal theory has been thrown out of federal court and courts in more than a dozen states. It should have been here as well, but they found an ideological judge who bent over backward to allow the case to move forward and earn herself a spot in their next documentary.”

Attorneys for the 16 plaintiffs, ranging in age from 5 to 22, presented evidence during the two-week trial in June that increasing carbon dioxide emissions are driving hotter temperatures, more drought and wildfires and decreased snowpack. Those changes are harming the young people’s physical and mental health, according to experts brought in by the plaintiffs.

The state argued that even if Montana completely stopped producing C02, it would have no effect on a global scale because states and countries around the world contribute to the amount of C02 in the atmosphere.

A remedy has to offer relief, the state said, or it’s not a remedy at all.
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More than 30 news outlets and press freedom organizations have condemned a police raid on a Kansas newspaper.

A joint letter released Sunday said there appeared to be “no justification” for such an intrusive search at a U.S. media outlet.

Police in Marion County Friday seized devices and other material during a raid at the Marion County Record newspaper office and searched the home of the paper’s publisher.

In a report published by the Marion County Record, the newspaper said police seized computers, phones, a server and the personal cellphones of staff, based on a search warrant.

The home of publisher Eric Meyer was also searched, and police took computers, a phone and the home’s internet router. Meyer’s 98-year-old mother Joan Meyer, who was a co-owner of the Record and lived at the same address, collapsed and died Saturday, the Associated Press reported.

Eric Meyer has said he blames the stress of the home raid for his mother’s death.

A joint letter by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and 34 other news organizations to the Marion County police chief on Sunday questioned the legality of the raid.

The letter said that based on a copy of the search warrant, reporting and public statements by the police, “There appears to be no justification for the breadth and intrusiveness of the search.”

“Newsroom searches and seizures are among the most intrusive actions law enforcement can take with respect to the free press, and the most potentially suppressive of free speech by the press and the public,” the joint letter read.

Meyer was cited in his newspaper as saying he believes the raid was prompted by a story published last week about a restaurant owner.

Gideon Cody, the police chief, defended the raid Sunday in an email to the AP, saying that federal law usually requires a subpoena — not just a search warrant — to raid a newsroom, but that there is an exception “when there is reason to believe the journalist is taking part in the underlying wrongdoing.”

The email did not state what the alleged wrongdoing was.

Media watchdog Reporters Without Borders, or RSF, said in a statement Sunday that the detail in the search warrant “does not come close to justifying this sweeping infringement against a local newspaper.”

“News media cannot do their jobs if they have to fear a police raid every time they receive information from sources,” said Clayton Weimers, director of RSF’s U.S. Bureau.

Meyer said the newspaper plans to sue the police department and possibly others, calling the raid an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment’s free press guarantee.

Raids on U.S. newsrooms are rare. But data from the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker shows nine search warrants obtained to access journalists’ devices since the tracker first started documenting cases six years ago.

The tracker has documented 194 cases of subpoenas or warrants for journalist records or their confidential sources, over the same period.
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Authorities in the U.S. state of Hawaii say the number of confirmed dead from a wildfire on the island of Maui reached 96.

Maui County said late Sunday multiple fire crews are working to address any remaining flare-ups in the fire that began August 8. The fire, which devastated the Lahaina area, was estimated to have burned more than 850 hectares.

Hawaii Governor Josh Green said the death toll was expected the rise as search crews, including a federal urban search and rescue team, reached more parts of the community.

Green said the fire destroyed more than 2,700 structures in Lahaina.

The Pacific Disaster Center and Maui County Emergency Management Agency estimated 4,500 people were in need of shelter and that the estimated cost of rebuilding from the fire was more than $5.5 billion.

Some information for this story came from The Associated Press.
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Parishioners mourned the dead and prayed for the missing Sunday in Hawaii churches as communities began looking ahead to a long recovery from last week’s wildfire that demolished a historic Maui town and killed more than 90 people.

Maria Lanakila Church in Lahaina was spared from the flames that wiped out most of the surrounding community, but with search-and-recovery efforts ongoing, its members attended Mass about 10 miles up the road, with the Bishop of Honolulu, the Rev. Clarence “Larry” Silva, presiding.

Taufa Samisani said his uncle, aunt, cousin and the cousin’s 7-year-old son were found dead inside a burned car. Samisani’s wife, Katalina, said the family would draw comfort from Silva’s reference to the Bible story of how Jesus’ disciple Peter walked on water and was saved from drowning.

“If Peter can walk on water, yes we can. We will get to the shore,” she said, her voice quivering.

During the Mass, Silva read a message from Pope Francis, who said he was praying for those who lost loved ones, homes and livelihoods. He also conveyed prayers for first responders.

Silva later told The Associated Press that the community is worried about its children, who have witnessed tragedy and are anxious.

“The more they can be in a normal situation with their peers and learning and having fun, I think the better off they’ll be,” Silva said.

Meanwhile, Hawaii officials urged tourists to avoid traveling to Maui as many hotels prepared to house evacuees and first responders.

About 46,000 residents and visitors have flown out of Kahului Airport in West Maui since the devastation in Lahaina became clear Wednesday, according to the Hawaii Tourism Authority.

“In the weeks ahead, the collective resources and attention of the federal, state and county government, the West Maui community, and the travel industry must be focused on the recovery of residents who were forced to evacuate their homes and businesses,” the agency said in a statement late Saturday. Tourists are encouraged to visit Hawaii’s other islands.

Need for rentals

Gov. Josh Green said 500 hotels rooms will be made available for locals who have been displaced. An additional 500 rooms will be set aside for workers from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Some hotels will carry on with normal business to help preserve jobs and sustain the local economy, Green said.

The state wants to work with Airbnb to make sure that rental homes can be made available for locals. Green hopes that the company will be able to provide three- to nine-month rentals for those who have lost homes.

As the death toll around Lahaina climbed to 93, authorities warned that the effort to find and identify the dead was still in its early stages. The blaze is already the deadliest U.S. wildfire in more than a century.

Crews with cadaver dogs have covered just 3% of the search area, Maui Police Chief John Pelletier said Saturday.

Lylas Kanemoto is awaiting word about the fate of her cousin, Glen Yoshino.

“I’m afraid he is gone because we have not heard from him, and he would’ve found a way to contact family. We are hoping for the best, but preparing for the worst,” Kanemoto said Sunday. Family members will submit DNA to help identify any remains.

The family was grieving the death of four other relatives. The remains of Faaso and Malui Fonua Tone, their daughter, Salote Takafua, and her son, Tony Takafua, were found inside a charred car.

“At least we have closure for them, but the loss and heartbreak is unbearable for many,” Kanemoto said.

As many as 4,500 people are in need of shelter, county officials said on Facebook, citing figures from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Pacific Disaster Center.

Toxic debris in Lahaina

J.P. Mayoga, a cook at the Westin Maui in Kaanapali, is still making breakfast, lunch and dinner on a daily basis. But instead of serving hotel guests, he’s been feeding the roughly 200 hotel employees and their family members who have been living there since Tuesday’s fire devastated the Lahaina community just south of the resort.

His home and that of his father were spared. But his girlfriend, two young daughters, father and another local are all staying in a hotel room together, as it is safer than Lahaina, which is covered in toxic debris.

Maui water officials warned Lahaina and Kula residents not to drink running water, which may be contaminated even after boiling, and to only take short, lukewarm showers in well-ventilated rooms to avoid possible chemical vapor exposure.

“Everybody has their story, and everybody lost something. So everybody can be there for each other, and they understand what’s going on in each other’s lives,” he said of his co-workers at the hotel.

Maui Mayor Mitch Roth warned that the recovery effort will be a “marathon not a sprint.” In order to keep the effort “coordinated and thoughtful,” Roth urged Hawaii residents to contribute money to established nonprofits and hold off on donating physical items because there is not yet a reliable distribution system in place.

The latest death toll surpassed that of the 2018 Camp Fire in northern California, which left 85 dead and destroyed the town of Paradise.

The cause of the wildfires is under investigation. The fires are Hawaii’s deadliest natural disaster in decades, surpassing a 1960 tsunami that killed 61 people. An even deadlier tsunami in 1946 killed more than 150 on the Big Island.

Fueled by a dry summer and strong winds from a passing hurricane, the flames on Maui raced through parched brush covering the island.

The most serious blaze swept into Lahaina on Tuesday and destroyed nearly every building in the town of 13,000, leaving a grid of gray rubble wedged between the blue ocean and lush green slopes.

Elsewhere on Maui, at least two other fires have been burning: in south Maui’s Kihei area and in the mountainous, inland communities known as Upcountry. No fatalities have been reported from those blazes.
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An American nurse who was released by kidnappers in Haiti last week says a Christian song called “See a Victory” became her battle cry after she and her young daughter were abducted.

Alix Dorsainvil and her child were freed Wednesday, nearly two weeks after they were snatched at gunpoint from the campus of a Christian-run school near Port-au-Prince.

El Roi Haiti, the Christian aid organization founded by Dorsainvil’s husband, said Thursday the pair were not harmed and are healthy. On Saturday, the group posted a message from Dorsainvil on its website.

“I am completely humbled by the outpouring of support and prayer for myself and my sweet baby both during and following our time in captivity,” said Dorsainvil, who is from New Hampshire. “God was so very present in the fire with us, and I pray that when I find the words to tell our story, that the mighty name of Jesus may be glorified, and many people will come to know his love.”

In her most difficult moments, Dorsainvil said she turned to “See a Victory” by the North Carolina-based Elevation Worship music collective.

“There’s a part that says, ‘You take what the enemy meant for evil, and you turn it for good,’” she said.

Gang warfare has increasingly plagued Haiti since the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moise. The killing worsened criminal control of Haiti and people are regularly killed, raped and held for ransom. A local nonprofit has documented 539 kidnappings since January, a significant rise over previous years.

It’s not clear whether a ransom was paid in Dorsainvil’s case. El Roi Haiti and U.S. officials have not provided further details, and Haiti’s National Police did not respond to requests for comment.
…

A small central Kansas police department is facing a firestorm of criticism after it raided the offices of a local newspaper and the home of its publisher and owner — a move deemed by several press freedom watchdogs as a blatant violation of the U.S. Constitution’s protection of a free press.

The Marion County Record said in its own published reports that police raided the newspaper’s office Friday, seizing the newspaper’s computers, phones and file server and the personal cellphones of staff, based on a search warrant. One Record reporter said one of her fingers was injured when Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody wrested her cellphone out of her hand, according to the report.

Police simultaneously raided the home of Eric Meyer, the newspaper’s publisher and co-owner, seizing computers, his cellphone and the home’s internet router, Meyer said. Meyer’s 98-year-old mother — Record co-owner Joan Meyer who lived in the home with her son — collapsed and died Saturday, Meyer said, blaming her death on the stress of the raid of her home.

Meyer said in his newspaper’s report that he believes the raid was prompted by a story published last week about a local restaurant owner, Kari Newell. Newell had police remove Meyer and a newspaper reporter from her restaurant early this month, who were there to cover a public reception for U.S. Rep. Jake LaTurner, a Republican representing the area. The police chief and other officials also attended and were acknowledged at the reception, and the Marion Police Department highlighted the event on its Facebook page.

The next week at a city council meeting, Newell publicly accused the newspaper of using illegal means to get information on a drunken driving conviction against her. The newspaper countered that it received that information unsolicited, which it sought to verify through public online records. It eventually decided not to run a story on Newell’s DUI, but it did run a story on the city council meeting, in which Newell confirmed the 2008 DUI conviction herself.

A two-page search warrant, signed by a local judge, lists Newell as the victim of alleged crimes by the newspaper. When the newspaper asked for a copy of the probable cause affidavit required by law to issue a search warrant, the district court issued a signed statement saying no such affidavit was on file, the Record reported.

Newell declined to comment Sunday, saying she was too busy to speak. She said she would call back later Sunday to answer questions.

Cody, the police chief, defended the raid Sunday, saying in an email to The Associated Press that while federal law usually requires a subpoena — not just a search warrant — to raid a newsroom, there is an exception “when there is reason to believe the journalist is taking part in the underlying wrongdoing.”

Cody did not give details about what that alleged wrongdoing entailed.

Cody, who was hired in late April as Marion’s police chief after serving 24 years in the Kansas City, Missouri, Police Department, did not respond to questions about whether police filed a probable cause affidavit for the search warrant. He also did not answer questions about how police believe Newell was victimized.

Meyer said the newspaper plans to sue the police department and possibly others, calling the raid an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment’s free press guarantee.

Press freedom and civil rights organizations agreed that the police, the local prosecutor’s office and the judge who signed off on the search warrant overstepped their authority. 

“It seems like one of the most aggressive police raids of a news organization or entity in quite some time,” said Sharon Brett, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas. The breadth of the raid and the aggressiveness in which it was carried out seems to be “quite an alarming abuse of authority from the local police department,” Brett said.

Seth Stern, director of advocacy for Freedom of the Press Foundation, said in a statement that the raid appeared to have violated federal law, the First Amendment, “and basic human decency.”

“This looks like the latest example of American law enforcement officers treating the press in a manner previously associated with authoritarian regimes,” Stern said. “The anti-press rhetoric that’s become so pervasive in this country has become more than just talk and is creating a dangerous environment for journalists trying to do their jobs.”
…

A Georgia prosecutor appears ready to lay her case against former President Donald Trump in front of a grand jury this week. Despite tight security measures, some officials are concerned that violence could accompany a potential fourth indictment of Trump over election interference. VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias reports.
…

The death toll from last week’s wildfires on the Hawaiian island of Maui has reached 93, making it the deadliest conflagration in modern U.S. history, and officials say they expect the count to continue to climb.

Maui Police Chief John Pelletier in the western-most U.S. state in the Pacific Ocean said two of the victims have been identified, but he did not release their names.

Identifying the fragile, burned remains has been difficult, Pelletier said Saturday. “We pick up the remains,” he said, “and they fall apart.”

Saturday was the first day that cadaver-sniffing dogs were used to help find more victims.

“The entire historic town of Lahaina burned to the ground,” Hawaii Senator Mazie Hirono told CNN’s “State of the Union” show Sunday. “We are in a period of shock and loss.”

But she said that some people feared missing have been found safe in emergency shelters.

“We know that recovery will be long,” she said. “That recovery will take years.”

Island residents have complained that 80 sirens across Maui designed to warn them of an emergency were never activated as the fire steadily spread last Wednesday. Hawaii Governor Josh Green has promised there will be an investigation into the island’s emergency response.

Hirono said, “I’m not going to make any excuses for this tragedy. I can’t even tell you how fast these flames spread.”

She said the immediate focus is “on rescue and [the] discovery of more bodies.”

 
…

The death toll from the fire on the Hawaiian island of Maui climbed to 93 late Saturday, and officials say they expect the count to continue to climb.  

Maui Police Chief John Pelletier said two of the victims have been identified but he did not release their names.  

Identifying the fragile, burned remains has been difficult, Pelletier said.  “We pick up the remains,” he said, “and they fall apart.” 

Saturday was the first day that cadaver-sniffing dogs were used.  

Lahaina, a historic, centuries-old resort town on the island was totally destroyed.  

Island residents have complained that the sirens designed to warn them of an emergency were never activated as the fire steadily spread. Hawaii Governor Josh Green has promised there will be an investigation into the island’s emergency response. 
…

China’s foreign ministry was quick to voice its opposition to a transit stop in the United States by Taiwan’s Vice President William Lai as he travels to Paraguay, warning Sunday that it could take “resolute and strong measures” in response to the visit.

In its Sunday statement, the Foreign Affairs Ministry said: “China deplores and strongly condemns the US decision to arrange the so-called stopover,” adding that Beijing firmly opposes “the US government having any form of official contact with the Taiwan region.”

Lai, the statement added, “clings stubbornly to the separatist position for ‘Taiwan independence,'” and that he is a “troublemaker through and through.”

Lai, a Harvard-educated doctor turned politician is the front-runner in Taiwan’s upcoming presidential elections. He has previously described himself as a “practical worker for Taiwan independence,” but on the campaign trail he has stressed that he is not seeking to change the current situation. He has also expressed willingness to be friends with China.

Before departing, Lai spoke to reporters but barely mentioned the United States. Arriving at his hotel in New York, he was greeted by dozens of supporters, who waved U.S. and Taiwan flags, as well as the green and white banner of his ruling Democratic Progressive Party. As the crowd shouted, “Go Taiwan!” “Go Vice President!” others waved flags that read “Keep Taiwan Free.” One supporter held a sign that said: “Against War on Taiwan.”

On his social media feed on X, formerly Twitter, Lai wrote that he was happy to arrive in the Big Apple, and that he was “looking forward to seeing friends & attending transit programs in #New York.”

Analysts say that during Lai’s stopovers, Taipei and Washington will try to ensure that they do not further exacerbate U.S.-China tensions, but the visit comes as challenges to relations between the world’s two biggest economies continue to mount.

“Taiwan and the U.S. will try to make this trip meaningful for Lai but not in a way that pokes the bear,” Lev Nachman, a political scientist at National Chengchi University in Taiwan, told VOA.

Taiwanese presidential candidates have visited the U.S. during election campaigns in the past but experts say Lai’s role as Taiwan’s sitting vice president will make Washington handle his transit more carefully because it does not want to be perceived as endorsing Lai.

“The U.S. can neither treat Lai too well nor too badly, so letting him transit through New York and San Francisco is a compromise in my opinion,” Chen Fang-yu, a political scientist at Soochow University in Taiwan, told VOA.

Chen added that at a time when Washington hopes to have more military and diplomatic engagement with China, with Washington inviting Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi to visit Washington next month, it will try to make Lai’s stopovers “less formal” to avoid triggering any overreaction from Beijing.

“Diplomatically, the U.S. would like to avoid too many surprises,” he said.

Lai will be in New York for just about a day before heading on to Paraguay on Sunday. Taiwanese authorities have revealed few details of Lai’s itinerary, but sources with knowledge of the arrangement told VOA that he may hold events with the Taiwanese-American community.

After his arrival on Sunday, Laura Rosenberger, the chair of the American Institute in Taiwan – a U.S. government-run nonprofit that manages unofficial relations with Taiwan – confirmed on X that she would be meeting with Lai when he transits back through San Francisco Wednesday before returning to Taiwan.

Lai made similar transit stops in the U.S. in January 2022 as part of his trip to Honduras. During those stopovers, he conducted online meetings with former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senator Tammy Duckworth and met with members of the Taiwanese community. This time, it is unclear whether he will have such high-level discussions and how Beijing may respond to any of his activities.

Beijing’s response

China views Taiwan as an inseparable part of its territory and has long opposed high-level engagement between officials from Taiwan and other countries. Over the past year, China staged two large-scale military exercises around Taiwan in response to visits, once after Pelosi’s visited to Taipei last August and again in April when Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen met with U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in California.

Following Tsai’s stopover in California and meeting with McCarthy and other U.S. lawmakers, Beijing staged a multiday, blockade-style military exercise around Taiwan.

This time, experts think Beijing will launch a military response to Lai’s stopovers in the U.S., but the scale will depend on how “official-looking” his trip is. “This includes who he meets with, what he says, and how public those meetings are,” Amanda Hsiao, senior China analyst at the International Crisis Group, told VOA.

As Taiwan gears up for the presidential election, Hsiao said she thinks Beijing will try to moderate its response to Lai’s transit stops, as any reaction deemed too provocative could help increase Lai’s chance of winning the election. However, she added that Beijing also worries about sending the wrong signal if its responses are deemed too weak.

“They may respond with a small-scale military exercise, and it can simply be an increase in what they already do on an almost daily basis,” she said.

China has deployed 79 military aircraft and 23 naval vessels to areas near Taiwan since Sunday, according to Taiwan’s National Defense Ministry. Among them, 25 military craft have crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait or intruded Taiwan’s southwestern and southeastern air defense identification zone.

Making a good impression

For Lai, the trip is an opportunity to make a good impression and his positions both on relations with China and the U.S. clear.

Before departing for the trip, in an interview with Taiwanese broadcaster SETN, Lai emphasized that Taiwan is not a part of China, expressed his willingness to “be friends” with China, and highlighted the importance of Taiwan’s relationship with the U.S.

“Pushing away our best partner, the U.S., would be unwise,” he said.

Analysts say Lai has largely inherited the “four commitments” put forward by Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen in 2021, which focus on defending Taiwan’s democratic system, safeguarding Taiwan’s sovereignty, pushing back against pressure from China, and letting Taiwan’s people determine the island’s future.

“Tsai’s approach has earned international recognition so it’s a safe approach for Lai and the Democratic Progressive Party,” Chen from Soochow University told VOA.

Nachman from National Chengchi University said he thinks Lai should continue to try to make a good impression on the U.S. government.

“He needs to prove that he can be ‘Tsai Ing-wen 2.0’ and this trip is one of the big tests,” he told VOA.

Mandarin service reporter Yi-hua Lee and video journalist Ning Lu contributed to this report.
…

When in-person school resumed after pandemic closures, Rousmery Negrón and her 11-year-old son both noticed a change: School seemed less welcoming.

Parents were no longer allowed in the building without appointments, she said, and punishments were more severe. Everyone seemed less tolerant, more angry. Negrón’s son told her he overheard a teacher mocking his learning disabilities, calling him an ugly name.

Her son didn’t want to go to school anymore. And she didn’t feel he was safe there.

He would end up missing more than five months of sixth grade.

Across the country, students have been absent at record rates since schools reopened during the pandemic. More than a quarter of students missed at least 10% of the 2021-22 school year, making them chronically absent, according to the most recent data available. Before the pandemic, only 15% of students missed that much school.

All told, an estimated 6.5 million additional students became chronically absent, according to the data, which was compiled by Stanford University education professor Thomas Dee in partnership with The Associated Press. Taken together, the data from 40 states and Washington, D.C., provides the most comprehensive accounting of absenteeism nationwide. Absences were more prevalent among Latino, Black and low-income students, according to Dee’s analysis.

The absences come on top of time students missed during school closures and pandemic disruptions. They cost crucial classroom time as schools work to recover from massive learning setbacks.

Absent students miss out not only on instruction but also on all the other things schools provide — meals, counseling, socialization. In the end, students who are chronically absent — missing 18 or more days a year, in most places — are at higher risk of not learning to read and eventually dropping out.

“The long-term consequences of disengaging from school are devastating. And the pandemic has absolutely made things worse and for more students,” said Hedy Chang, executive director of Attendance Works, a nonprofit addressing chronic absenteeism.

In seven states, the rate of chronically absent kids doubled for the 2021-22 school year, from 2018-19, before the pandemic. Absences worsened in every state with available data — notably, the analysis found growth in chronic absenteeism did not correlate strongly with state COVID rates.

Kids are staying home for myriad reasons — finances, housing instability, illness, transportation issues, school staffing shortages, anxiety, depression, bullying and generally feeling unwelcome at school.

And the effects of online learning linger: School relationships have frayed, and after months at home, many parents and students don’t see the point of regular attendance.

“For almost two years, we told families that school can look different and that schoolwork could be accomplished in times outside of the traditional 8-to-3 day. Families got used to that,” said Elmer Roldan, of Communities in Schools of Los Angeles, which helps schools follow up with absent students.

When classrooms closed in March 2020, Negrón in some ways felt relieved her two sons were home in Springfield. Since the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, Negrón, who grew up in Puerto Rico, had become convinced mainland American schools were dangerous.

A year after in-person instruction resumed, she said, staff placed her son in a class for students with disabilities, citing hyperactive and distracted behavior. He felt unwelcome and unsafe. Now, it seemed to Negrón, there was danger inside school, too.

“He needs to learn,” said Negrón, a single mom who works as a cook at another school. “He’s very intelligent. But I’m not going to waste my time, my money on uniforms, for him to go to a school where he’s just going to fail.”

For people who’ve long studied chronic absenteeism, the post-COVID era feels different. Some of the things that prevent students from getting to school are consistent — illness, economic distress — but “something has changed,” said Todd Langager, who helps San Diego County schools address absenteeism. He sees students who already felt unseen, or without a caring adult at school, feel further disconnected.

Alaska led in absenteeism, with 48.6% of students missing significant amounts of school. Alaska Native students’ rate was higher, 56.5%.

Those students face poverty and a lack of mental health services, as well as a school calendar that isn’t aligned to traditional hunting and fishing activities, said Heather Powell, a teacher and Alaska Native. Many students are raised by grandparents who remember the government forcing Native children into boarding schools.

“Our families aren’t valuing education because it isn’t something that’s ever valued us,” Powell said.

In New York, Marisa Kosek said son James lost the relationships fostered at his school — and with them, his desire to attend class altogether. James, 12, has autism and struggled first with online learning and then with a hybrid model. During absences, he’d see his teachers in the neighborhood. They encouraged him to return, and he did.

But when he moved to middle school in another neighborhood, he didn’t know anyone. He lost interest and missed more than 100 days of sixth grade. The next year, his mom pushed for him to repeat the grade — and he missed all but five days.

His mother, a high school teacher, enlisted help: relatives, therapists, New York’s crisis unit. But James just wanted to stay home. He’s anxious because he knows he’s behind, and he’s lost his stamina.

“Being around people all day in school and trying to act ‘normal’ is tiring,” said Kosek. She’s more hopeful now that James has been accepted to a private residential school that specializes in students with autism.

Some students had chronic absences because of medical and staffing issues. Juan Ballina, 17, has epilepsy; a trained staff member must be nearby to administer medication in case of a seizure. But post-COVID-19, many school nurses retired or sought better pay in hospitals, exacerbating a nationwide shortage.

Last year, Juan’s nurse was on medical leave. His school couldn’t find a substitute. He missed more than 90 days at his Chula Vista, California, high school.

“I was lonely,” Ballina said. “I missed my friends.”

Last month, school started again. So far, Juan’s been there, with his nurse. But his mom, Carmen Ballina, said the effects of his absence persist: “He used to read a lot more. I don’t think he’s motivated anymore.”

Another lasting effect from the pandemic: Educators and experts say some parents and students have been conditioned to stay home at the slightest sign of sickness.

Renee Slater’s daughter rarely missed school before the pandemic. But last school year, the straight-A middle schooler insisted on staying home 20 days, saying she just didn’t feel well.

“As they get older, you can’t physically pick them up into the car — you can only take away privileges, and that doesn’t always work,” said Slater, who teaches in the rural California district her daughter attends. “She doesn’t dislike school, it’s just a change in mindset.”

Most states have yet to release attendance data from 2022-23, the most recent school year. Based on the few that have shared figures, it seems the chronic-absence trend may have long legs. In Connecticut and Massachusetts, chronic absenteeism remained double its pre-pandemic rate.

In Negrón’s hometown of Springfield, 39% of students were chronically absent last school year, an improvement from 50% the year before. Rates are higher for students with disabilities.

While Negrón’s son was out of school, she said, she tried to stay on top of his learning. She picked up a weekly folder of worksheets and homework; he couldn’t finish because he didn’t know the material.

“He was struggling so much, and the situation was putting him in a down mood,” Negrón said.

Last year, she filed a complaint asking officials to give her son compensatory services and pay for him to attend a private special education school. The judge sided with the district.

Now, she’s eyeing the new year with dread. Her son doesn’t want to return. Negrón said she’ll consider it only if the district grants her request for him to study in a mainstream classroom with a personal aide. The district told AP it can’t comment on individual student cases due to privacy considerations.

Negrón wishes she could homeschool her sons, but she has to work and fears they’d suffer from isolation.

“If I had another option, I wouldn’t send them to school,” she said.
…

A raging wildfire that swept through a picturesque town on the Hawaiian island of Maui this week has killed at least 89 people, authorities said Saturday, making it the deadliest U.S. wildfire of the past century.

The newly released figure surpassed the toll of the 2018 Camp Fire in northern California, which left 85 dead and destroyed the town of Paradise. A century earlier, the 1918 Cloquet Fire broke out in drought-stricken northern Minnesota and raced through a number of rural communities, destroying thousands of homes and killing hundreds.

At least two other fires have been burning in Maui, with no fatalities reported thus far: in south Maui’s Kihei area and in the mountainous, inland communities known as Upcountry. A fourth broke out Friday evening in Kaanapali, a coastal community in West Maui north of Lahaina, but crews were able to extinguish it, authorities said.

The new death toll Saturday came as federal emergency workers with axes and cadaver dogs picked through the aftermath of the blaze, marking the ruins of homes with a bright orange X for an initial search and HR when they found human remains.

Dogs worked the rubble, and their occasional bark — used to alert their handlers to a possible corpse — echoed over the hot and colorless landscape.

The inferno that swept through the centuries-old town of Lahaina on Maui’s west coast four days earlier torched hundreds of homes and turned a lush, tropical area into a moonscape of ash. The state’s governor predicted more bodies will be found.

“It’s going to rise,” Gov. Josh Green remarked Saturday as he toured the devastation on historic Front Street. “It will certainly be the worst natural disaster that Hawaii ever faced. … We can only wait and support those who are living. Our focus now is to reunite people when we can and get them housing and get them health care, and then turn to rebuilding.”

Those who escaped counted their blessings, thankful to be alive as they mourned those who didn’t make it.

Retired fire captain Geoff Bogar and his friend of 35 years, Franklin Trejos, initially stayed behind to help others in Lahaina and save Bogar’s house. But as the flames moved closer and closer Tuesday afternoon, they knew they had to get out. Each escaped to his own car. When Bogar’s wouldn’t start, he broke through a window to get out, then crawled on the ground until a police patrol found him and brought him to a hospital.

Trejos wasn’t as lucky. When Bogar returned the next day, he found the bones of his 68-year-old friend in the back seat of his car, lying on top of the remains of the Bogars’ beloved 3-year-old golden retriever Sam, whom he had tried to protect.

Trejos, a native of Costa Rica, had lived for years with Bogar and his wife, Shannon Weber-Bogar, helping her with her seizures when her husband couldn’t. He filled their lives with love and laughter.

“God took a really good man,” Weber-Bogar said.

Bill Wyland, who lives on the island of Oahu but owns an art gallery on Lahaina’s historic Front Street, fled on his Harley Davidson, whipping the motorcycle onto empty sidewalks Tuesday to avoid traffic-jammed roads as embers burned the hair off the back of his neck. 

Riding in winds he estimated to be at least 112 kph, he passed a man on a bicycle who was pedaling for his life.

“It’s something you’d see in a Twilight Zone, horror movie or something,” Wyland said.

Wyland realized just how lucky he had been when he returned to downtown Lahaina on Thursday.

“It was devastating to see all the burned-out cars. There was nothing that was standing,” he said.

His gallery was destroyed, along with the works of 30 artists.

Emergency managers in Maui were searching for places to house people displaced from their homes. As many as 4,500 people are in need of shelter, county officials said on Facebook early Saturday, citing figures from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Pacific Disaster Center.

Flyovers by the Civil Air Patrol counted 1,692 structures destroyed — almost all of them residential. Nine boats sank in Lahaina Harbor, officials determined using sonar.

The wildfires are the state’s deadliest natural disaster in decades, surpassing a 1960 tsunami that killed 61 people. An even deadlier tsunami in 1946, which killed more than 150 on the Big Island, prompted development of a territory-wide emergency alert system with sirens that are tested monthly.

Hawaii emergency management records do not indicate the warning sirens sounded before fire hit the town. Officials sent alerts to mobile phones, televisions and radio stations, but widespread power and cellular outages may have limited their reach.

Fueled by a dry summer and strong winds from a passing hurricane, the wildfires on Maui raced through parched brush covering the island.

The most serious blaze swept into Lahaina on Tuesday and destroyed nearly every building in the town of 13,000, leaving a grid of gray rubble wedged between the blue ocean and lush green slopes.

Front Street, the heart of the historic downtown and Maui’s economic hub, was nearly empty of life Saturday morning. An Associated Press journalist encountered one barefoot resident carrying a laptop and a passport, who asked where the nearest shelter was. Another, riding a bicycle, took stock of the damage at the harbor, where he said his boat caught fire and sank.

Later in the day, search crews fanned out under the hot Maui sun in search of bodies, some with axes and tools to clear debris. Cadaver dogs took breaks in blue kiddie pools filled with water before going back to work. One dog searched a strip mall that was still standing, going business to business, while another walked down the street with its handler.

Maui water officials warned Lahaina and Kula residents not to drink running water, which may be contaminated even after boiling, and to only take short, lukewarm showers in well-ventilated rooms to avoid possible chemical vapor exposure.

The wildfire is already projected to be the second-costliest disaster in Hawaii history, behind only Hurricane Iniki in 1992, according to disaster and risk modeling firm Karen Clark & Company.

The danger on Maui was well known. Maui County’s hazard mitigation plan updated in 2020 identified Lahaina and other West Maui communities as having frequent wildfires and several buildings at risk. The report also noted West Maui had the island’s second-highest rate of households without a vehicle and the highest rate of non-English speakers.

“This may limit the population’s ability to receive, understand and take expedient action during hazard events,” the plan stated.

Maui’s firefighting efforts may have been hampered by limited staff and equipment.

Bobby Lee, president of the Hawaii Firefighters Association, said there are a maximum of 65 county firefighters working at any given time, who are responsible for three islands: Maui, Molokai and Lanai.

Riley Curran said he fled his Front Street home after climbing up a neighboring building to get a better look. He doubts county officials could have done more, given the speed of the onrushing flames.

“It’s not that people didn’t try to do anything,” Curran said. “The fire went from zero to 100.”

Curran said he had seen horrendous wildfires growing up in California.

But, he added, “I’ve never seen one eat an entire town in four hours.”
…

The Pentagon is developing plans to restructure the National Guard in Washington, D.C., in a move to address problems highlighted by the chaotic response to the Jan. 6 riot and safety breaches during the 2020 protests over the murder of George Floyd, The Associated Press has learned.

The changes under discussion would transfer the District of Columbia’s aviation units, which came under sharp criticism during the protests when a helicopter flew dangerously low over a crowd. In exchange, the district would get more military police, which is often the city’s most significant need, as it grapples with crowd control and large public events.

Several current and former officials familiar with the talks spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. They said no final decisions have been made.

A key sticking point is who would be in control of the D.C. Guard — a politically divisive question that gets to the heart of what has been an ongoing, turbulent issue. Across the country, governors control their National Guard units and can make decisions on deploying them to local disasters and other needs. But D.C. is not a state, so the president is in charge but gives that authority to the defense secretary, who generally delegates it to the Army secretary.

According to officials, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is weighing two options: maintaining the current system or handing control to U.S. Northern Command, which is in charge of homeland defense.

Senior officials have argued in favor of Northern Command, which would take control out of the hands of political appointees in Washington who may be at odds with the D.C. government, and giving it to nonpartisan military commanders who already oversee homeland defense. Others, however, believe the decision-making should remain at the Pentagon, mirroring the civilian control that governors have on their troops.

The overall goal, officials said, is not to decrease the size of the district’s Guard, but reform it and ensure it has the units, equipment and training to do the missions it routinely faces. The proposal to shift the aviation forces is largely an Army decision. It would move the D.C. Air Guard wing and its aircraft to the Maryland Guard, and the Army aviation unit, with its helicopters, to Virginia’s Guard.

An Army official added that a review of the D.C. Guard examined its ability to provide rapid response, mission command and coordination with other forces when needed over the past four years. The review, which led to the recommendations, involved the District Guard and Army leaders.

D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser’s office did not respond to a request for comment Friday on the proposed changes.

But Bowser and other local officials have long claimed that the mayor’s office should have sole authority to deploy the local guard, arguing that the D.C. mayor has the responsibilities of any governor without the extra authorities or tools.

When faced with a potential security event, the mayor of D.C. must go to the Pentagon — usually the Army secretary — to request National Guard assistance. That was true during the violent protests in the city over the killing of George Floyd at the hands of a police officer in 2020, and later as an angry mob stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to overturn the election of Joe Biden as president.

As the Jan. 6 riot was unfolding, city leaders were making frantic calls to Army leaders, asking them to send Guard troops to the Capitol where police and security were being overrun. City leaders complained heatedly about delays in the response as the Pentagon considered Bowser’s National Guard request. City police ended up reinforcing the Capitol Police.

Army leaders, in response, said the district was demanding help but not providing the details and information necessary to determine what forces were needed and how they would be used.

Army officials were concerned about taking the Guard troops who were arrayed around the city doing traffic duty and sending them into a riot, because they were not prepared and didn’t have appropriate gear. And they criticized the city for repeatedly insisting it would not need security help when asked by federal authorities in the days leading up to Jan. 6.

The swirling confusion spurred congressional hearings and accusations that political considerations influenced the Trump administration’s response to the unrest in the Democratic-majority city. Defense officials rejected those charges and blamed the city.

Within the Pentagon, however, there are broader concerns that D.C. is too quick to seek National Guard troops to augment law enforcement shortfalls in the city that should be handled by police. In recent days, a city council member suggested the D.C. Guard might be needed to help battle spiking local crime.

The restructuring is an effort to smooth out the process and avoid communications problems if another crisis erupts. 
…

A Georgia prosecutor investigating whether former President Donald Trump and his allies illegally sought to overturn the state’s 2020 election results is expected to seek an indictment from a grand jury next week. 

Two witnesses who previously received subpoenas confirmed on Saturday that they have been told to appear before a grand jury in Atlanta on Tuesday, the clearest indication yet that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis will lay out her case to the jury after more than two years of investigating. 

Geoff Duncan, the state’s former lieutenant governor, told CNN that he had been asked to testify on Tuesday. 

“I’ll certainly answer whatever questions are put in front of me,” said Duncan, a Republican who has criticized Trump’s false conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. 

An independent journalist, George Chidi, said in a post on X, the site formerly known as Twitter, that he had also been instructed to appear on Tuesday. 

A spokesperson for Willis’ office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday. She has indicated she would seek charges by the end of next week, and security measures have visibly increased around the county courthouse in recent weeks. 

Already charged in Washington

If Trump is charged in Georgia, it would mark his fourth indictment in less than five months, and the second to arise from his efforts to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 victory. He was charged earlier this month in Washington federal court with orchestrating a multistate conspiracy to reverse the election results. 

Special Counsel Jack Smith, who brought the Washington case, has also charged Trump separately in Florida with illegally retaining classified documents after leaving office and with obstruction of justice. 

Trump calls investigation ‘witch hunt’

Manhattan prosecutors, meanwhile, indicted Trump this spring for falsifying business records to conceal hush money payments to a porn actress who says she had a sexual encounter with Trump years ago. 

Trump remains the front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, despite his legal woes. He has portrayed all of the investigations as part of a coordinated effort by Democrats to undermine his candidacy. 

In a post on his Truth Social site on Saturday, Trump again called the Georgia investigation a “witch hunt.” 

Willis is expected to charge multiple people, possibly by using the state’s broad racketeering statute. Her investigation began soon after Trump made a phone call to the state’s top election official, Republican Brad Raffensperger, and urged him to “find” enough votes to alter the outcome. 

In addition to efforts to pressure Georgia officials, Willis has examined a breach of election machines in a rural county and a plot to use fake electors in a bid to capture the state’s electoral votes for Trump rather than Biden. 

Chidi, the journalist, has written about happening upon a secret meeting of those electors at the state capitol in December 2020. 

Duncan, the former head of the state Senate, publicly criticized Republican lawmakers and Trump associates who pushed the false narrative that the election was tainted by fraud. 
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After Ohio voters repealed a law pushed by Republicans that would have limited unions’ collective bargaining rights in 2011, then-GOP Gov. John Kasich was contrite. 

“I’ve heard their voices, I understand their decision and, frankly, I respect what people have to say in an effort like this,” he told reporters after the defeat. 

The tone from Ohio Republicans was much different this past week after voters resoundingly rejected their attempt to impose hurdles on passing amendments to the state constitution — a proposal that would have made it much more difficult to pass an abortion rights measure in November. 

During an election night news conference, Republican Senate President Matt Huffman vowed to use the powers of his legislative supermajority to bring the issue back soon, variously blaming out-of-state dark money, unsupportive fellow Republicans, a lack of time and the issue’s complexity for its failure. 

He never mentioned respecting the will of the 57% of Ohio voters across both Democratic and Republican counties who voted “no” on the Republican proposal. 

The striking contrast illustrates an increasing antagonism among elected Republicans across the country toward the nation’s purest form of direct democracy — the citizen-initiated ballot measure — as it threatens their lock on power in states where they control the legislature. 

Historically, attempts to undercut the citizen ballot initiative process have come from both parties, said Daniel A. Smith, a political science professor at the University of Florida. 

“It has to do with which party is in monopolistic control of state legislatures and the governorship,” he said. “When you have that monopoly of power, you want to restrict the voice of a statewide electorate that might go against your efforts to control the process.” 

According to a recent report by the nonpartisan Fairness Project, Ohio and five other states where Republicans control the legislature — Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Missouri and North Dakota — have either passed, attempted to pass or are currently working to pass expanded supermajority requirements for voters to approve statewide ballot measures. 

At least six states, including Ohio, have sought to increase the number of counties where signatures must be gathered. 

The group found that at least six of the 24 states that allow ballot initiatives have prohibited out-of-state petition circulators and nine have prohibited paid circulators altogether, the group reports. 

Eighteen states have required circulators to swear oaths that they’ve seen every signature put to paper. Arkansas has imposed background checks on circulators. South Dakota has dictated such a large font size on petitions that it makes circulating them cumbersome. 

Sarah Walker, policy and legal advocacy director for the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, said Republicans in Ohio and elsewhere are restricting the ballot initiative process in an era of renewed populism that’s not going their way. She said conservatives had no interest in amending the ballot initiative process when they were winning campaigns in the 1990s and early 2000s. 

“Since then, you’ve seen left-leaning organizations really developing their organizational skills and starting to win,” she said. “The reason given for restricting the ballot initiative is often to insulate the state from outside special interests. But if lawmakers are interested in limiting that, there are things they can do legislatively to restrict those groups, and I don’t see them having any interest in doing that.” 

Aggressive stances by Republican supermajorities at the Ohio Statehouse — including supporting one of the nation’s most stringent abortion bans, refusing to pass many of a GOP governor’s proposed gun control measures in the face of a deadly mass shooting, and repeatedly producing unconstitutional political maps — have motivated would-be reformers. 

That prompted an influential mix of Republican politicians, anti-abortion and gun rights organizations and business interests in the state to push forward with Tuesday’s failed amendment, which would have raised the threshold for passing future constitutional changes from a simple majority to a 60% supermajority. 

Another example is Missouri, where Republicans plan to try again to raise the threshold to amend that state’s constitution during the legislative session that begins in 2024 — after earlier efforts have failed. 

Those plans come in a state where state lawmakers refused to fund a Medicaid expansion approved by voters until forced to by a court order, and where voters enshrined marijuana in the constitution last fall after lawmakers failed to. An abortion rights question is headed to Missouri’s 2024 ballot. 

Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose is among Republicans in the state who cast Issue 1 as a fight against out-of-state special interests, although both sides of the campaign were heavily funded by such groups. 

He called the $20 million special election “only one battle in a long war.” 

“Unfortunately,” he said, “we were dramatically outspent by dark money billionaires from California to New York, and the giant ‘for sale’ sign still hangs on Ohio’s constitution,” said LaRose, who is running for U.S. Senate in 2024. 

Fairness Project Executive Director Kelly Hall said Ohio Republicans’ promise to come back with another attempt to restrict the initiative process “says more about representational democracy than it does about direct democracy.” 

She rejected the narrative that out-of-state special interests are using the avenue of direct democracy to force unpopular policies into state constitutions, arguing corporate influence is far greater on state lawmakers. 

“The least out-of-state venue is direct democracy, because then millions of Ohioans are participating, not just the several dozen who are receiving campaign contributions from corporate PACs, who are receiving perks and meetings and around-the-clock influence from corporate PACs,” she said. 

“Ballot measures enable issues that matter to working families to actually get on the agenda in a state, rather than the agenda being set by those who can afford lobbyists and campaign contributions.” 
…

Western-backed maritime forces in the Middle East on Saturday warned shippers traveling through the strategic Strait of Hormuz to stay as far away from Iranian territorial waters as possible to avoid being seized, a stark advisory amid heightened tensions between Iran and the United States.

A similar warning went out to shippers earlier this year ahead of Iran seizing two tankers traveling near the strait, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf, through which 20% of the world’s oil passes.

While Iran and the U.S. now near an apparent deal that would see billions of Iranian assets held in South Korea unfrozen in exchange for the release of five Iranian Americans detained in Tehran, the warning shows that the tensions remain high at sea.

Already, the U.S. is exploring plans to put armed troops on commercial ships in the strait to deter Iran amid a buildup of troops, ships and aircraft in the region.

U.S. Navy Cmdr. Timothy Hawkins, a spokesman for the Mideast-based 5th Fleet, acknowledged the warning had been given but declined to discuss specifics about it.

A U.S.-backed maritime group called the International Maritime Security Construct “is notifying regional mariners of appropriate precautions to minimize the risk of seizure based on current regional tensions, which we seek to de-escalate,” Hawkins said.

“Vessels are being advised to transit as far away from Iranian territorial waters as possible.”

Separately, a European Union-led maritime organization watching shipping in the strait has “warned of a possibility of an attack on a merchant vessel of unknown flag in the Strait of Hormuz in the next 12 to 72 hours,” said private intelligence firm Ambrey.

“Previously, after a similar warning was issued, a merchant vessel was seized by Iranian authorities under a false pretext,” the firm warned.

The EU-led mission, called the European Maritime Awareness in the Strait of Hormuz, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Iran through its state media did not acknowledge any new plans to interdict vessels in the strait. Iran’s mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Strait of Hormuz is in the territorial waters of Iran and Oman, which at its narrowest point is just 33 kilometers (20.5 miles) wide. The width of the shipping lane in either direction is only 3 kilometers (1.8 miles). Anything affecting it ripples through global energy markets, potentially raising the price of crude oil. That then trickles down to consumers through what they pay for gasoline and other oil products.

There has been a wave of attacks on ships attributed to Iran since 2019, following the Trump administration unilaterally withdrawing the United States from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and re-imposing crushing sanctions on Tehran.

Those assaults resumed in late April, when Iran seized a ship carrying oil for Chevron Corp. and another tanker called the Niovi in May.

The taking of the two tankers in under a week comes as the Marshall Island-flagged Suez Rajan sits off Houston, Texas, likely waiting to offload sanctioned Iranian oil apparently seized by the U.S.

Those seizures led the U.S. military to launch a major deployment in the region, including thousands of Marines and sailors on both the amphibious assault ship USS Bataan and the USS Carter Hall, a landing ship. Images released by the Navy showed the Bataan and Carter Hall in the Red Sea on Tuesday.
…

Leshia Wright heard the crackle of the fast-moving inferno closing in on her home in Lahaina and decided it was time to evacuate.

The 66-year-old grabbed her medication for a pulmonary disease and her passport and fled the subdivision in the historic Hawaii oceanside community just minutes before flames engulfed the neighborhood. Hours later, she called family members and told them she slept in her car. Then her phone went dead.

The next 40 hours were agony for her daughter in New York and sister in Arizona. But early Friday morning, Wright called back and told them she was OK.

“I’m obviously relieved beyond words that my mother is alive,” said Alexandra Wright, who added that her mother finally was able to charge her phone after reaching a friend’s undamaged house on a quarter-tank of gas.

The firestorm that killed dozens of people and leveled this historic town launched hundreds of people on a desperate search for their loved ones — many from thousands of miles away — and some are still searching. But amid the tragedy, glimmers of joy and relief broke through for the lucky ones as their mothers, brothers and fathers made it to safety and finally got in touch again.

Kathleen Llewellyn also worked the phones from thousands of miles away in Bardstown, Kentucky, to find her 71-year-old brother, Jim Caslin, who had lived in Lahaina for 45 years. Her many calls went straight to voicemail.

“He’s homeless; he lives in a van; he’s got leukemia; he’s got mobility issues and asthma and pulmonary issues,” she said.

Waiting and calling and waiting more, Llewellyn grew uneasy. Anxiety took hold and then turned to resignation as Llewellyn, a semi-retired attorney, tried to distract herself with work and weeding her garden.

She recalled thinking, “If this is his end, this is his end. I hope not. But there’s nothing I could do about it.” Then her phone rang. “I’m fine,” Caslin said. “I’m fine.”

Caslin told his sister he spent two days escaping the inferno with a friend in a journey that included bumper-to-bumper traffic, road closures, downed trees and power lines and a punctured tire. The pair nervously watched the gas needle drop before a gas station appeared and they pulled into the long line.

“I am a pretty controlled person, but I did have a good cry,” Llewellyn said.

Sherrie Esquivel was frantic to find her father, a retired mail carrier in Lahaina, but there was little she could do from her home in Dunn, North Carolina.

She put her 74-year-old father’s name on a missing person’s list with her phone number and waited.

“As the days were going on, I’m like, ‘There’s no way that he survived because … how have we not heard from him?’” she said. “I felt so helpless.”

Early Friday morning, she got a call from her father’s neighbor, who had tracked Thom Leonard down. He was safe at a shelter but lost everything in the fire, the friend told her.

It wasn’t until Esquivel read an Associated Press article that she learned exactly how her father survived the fire. He was interviewed Thursday at a shelter on Maui.

Leonard tried but couldn’t leave Lahaina in his Jeep, so he scrambled to the ocean and hid behind the seawall for hours, dodging hot ash and cinders blowing everywhere.

“When I heard that, I thought of him when he was in Vietnam, and I thought, ‘Oh, gosh, his PTSD must have kicked in and his survival instincts,’ ” she said.

Firefighters eventually escorted Leonard and others out of the burning city.

Esquivel assumes it’s the same seawall across the street from his home where they took family photos at sunset in January.

She hoped to speak to her father, whom she described as a “hippie” who refuses to buy a cellphone.

When they talk, the first words out of her mouth will be: “I love you, but I’m angry that you didn’t get a cellphone,’” Esquivel said.

Interviewed Friday at the same shelter, Leonard also began to tear up when he heard what his daughter wanted to tell him. “I’m quivering,” he said, adding that he loves her, too.

He said he had a flip phone but didn’t know how to use it.
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