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 World Bank Warns of ‘Lost Decade’ Due to Slow Economic Growth

In a grim report issued last week, the World Bank warned of a slow-growth crisis in the global economy that could persist over the coming decade unless governments worldwide adopt what it calls “sustainable, growth-oriented policies.”

The World Bank report says that global growth in gross domestic product between 2022 and 2030 is on track to decline to about 2.2%, down one-third from the rate that applied between 2000 and 2010. Although the growth rate in developing economies will be higher, it will also likely decline by one-third, from 6% to 4%, according to the document titled “Failing Long-Term Growth Prospects.”

The report says that a number of factors are depressing long-term growth prospects, including an aging workforce, slower population growth and lower rates of productivity-enhancing investment. The negative effects are exacerbated by global shocks to the economy, including the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing war in Ukraine.

“A lost decade could be in the making for the global economy,” said Indermit Gill, the World Bank’s chief economist, in a release accompanying the report. “The ongoing decline in potential growth has serious implications for the world’s ability to tackle the expanding array of challenges unique to our times — stubborn poverty, diverging incomes, and climate change. But this decline is reversible. The global economy’s speed limit can be raised — through policies that incentivize work, increase productivity, and accelerate investment.”

Growth strategies

The World Bank report includes specific recommendations that, according to its own estimates, would boost the average predicted global economic growth rate to 2.9% from 2.2% through the remainder of the decade.

The report urges governments worldwide to lower inflation and assure stability in the financial sector. The report also recommends reducing sovereign debt levels, which would free up funds for investment in productivity-enhancing infrastructure.

Recommended infrastructure investments include upgraded transportations systems and environmentally sustainable improvements to agriculture, manufacturing, and land and water management systems.

The report also calls on countries to lower barriers to international trade, focus on ways to globalize service economy growth and increase labor force participation.

Social progress slowed

Macroeconomists generally agree with much of the World Bank’s assessment, saying that concerns about global growth have been on the rise for several years, and warn that the consequences of a sustained decline — especially in emerging economies — might be severe.

Liliana Rojas-Suarez, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development and director of its Latin American Initiative, told VOA that growth began to slow several years ago in Latin America.

“A period of high growth in Latin America occurred in 2000 to 2014,” she said. “That was a period when commodity prices were very high and the region was really growing. But the important thing is that social indicators improved dramatically. Poverty declined, income inequality improved, food security, educational health — name any indicators, they were all improving.”

Since then, she said, much of that progress has reversed.

“Growth is not the only thing,” she said. “You need many more things to actually improve poverty and inequality, but growth is an important component. After [2014], it stopped, and now the social indicators are reverting.”

Impacts unevenly distributed

In a news briefing last week, Adam Posen, president of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said the World Bank was correct to warn of a difficult period ahead but that the effects were not likely to be evenly distributed.

“If you look at the last couple years, not only was there surprising resilience in Europe, but a big surprise — a positive surprise — has been the sustained growth in India, Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia, as well as China, once you take out COVID. Indonesia plus India plus Brazil plus Mexico is an awful lot of human beings and an awful lot of global GDP.”

He said that all of those economies had weathered a year of Federal Reserve interest rate hikes without apparent damage to their own domestic currencies, and that most appear well-positioned to continue growing. However, he noted, the same thing cannot be said about many other regions of the globe.

“The World Bank, I think, is right to draw concern to the possibility of a lost decade in sub-Saharan Africa and Central America and South Asia,” Posen said. “An awful lot of human beings are at risk or are facing very grim situations. But from a global GDP outlook, or even a global population outlook, most of the major [emerging markets] along with most of the G20, essentially, are doing pretty well. I think it should be a concern for the poor people of the world but not for the world in general.”

New database

As part of the report, the World Bank announced that it is now using a new public database to assess global GDP growth, with data currently extending from 1981 to 2021. The database, according to the World Bank, is the first to track the way in which temporary economic disruptions, including “recessions and systemic banking crises,” affect economic growth over time.

The latter has particular relevance today, given the recent failures of several U.S. banks and the forced takeover of Swiss financial services giant Credit Suisse by UBS.

“Recessions tend to lower potential growth,” Franziska Ohnsorge, a lead author of the report and manager of the World Bank’s Prospects Group, said in a statement. “Systemic banking crises do greater immediate harm than recessions, but their impact tends to ease over time.”

Rojas-Suarez of the Center for Global Development praised the creation of the new database, saying that it “could be very useful, not only for future research but also for monitoring countries moving forward, and for international comparisons.”
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NASA Announces Diverse International Crew for First Moon Mission Since 1970s

Three U.S. astronauts and one Canadian astronaut are slated to make history in NASA’s upcoming Artemis II mission. VOA’s Kane Farabaugh has more on the diverse crew scheduled to make the first lunar journey since 1972. Camera: Adam Greenbaum
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Trump Heads to New York to Face Hush Money Criminal Case

Former U.S. President Donald Trump is flying from his Florida estate to New York, where he plans to spend Monday night at his Trump Tower residence and then turn himself in Tuesday to face a criminal indictment, the first ever filed against a current or former U.S. leader.

It is not known how Trump’s appearance at a state courthouse will play out. But his lawyers say he emphatically will not plead guilty to charges linked to his $130,000 hush money payment to a porn actress just ahead of his 2016 presidential election victory to silence her about her claim of an alleged tryst with him a decade earlier. Trump has long denied the claim.

When he is booked, Trump is likely to be fingerprinted like any criminal defendant, and his mugshot taken. But authorities say as a deference to his standing as a former president, he is unlikely to be handcuffed or paraded before photographers in a so-called “perp walk.”

But questions remain: Will the entirety of the indictment be read in open court? Will cameras — for still shots or television — be allowed in the courtroom, as media outlets are asking for? Will demonstrators, either those supporting Trump or angry at Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg for bringing the charges or expressing hope for a conviction, gather near the courthouse? If they materialize, will the protests be peaceful?

Trump already has criticized Bragg on social media for what he says is a political “witch hunt” against him. Trump has contended the judge “hates me,” after Merchan, in a separate case earlier this year, fined subsidiaries of The Trump Organization $1.6 million in a tax fraud scheme.

Before the indictment, Trump led national polls in surveys taken of Republican voters on their choice for the party’s presidential nomination. Whether news of the indictment changes that show of support is not known.

The former president is also facing other criminal investigations. They include federal probes of his efforts to upend his 2020 reelection loss to Democrat Joe Biden, including Trump’s role in encouraging supporters to try to block Congress from certifying Biden’s victory on January 6, 2021, and his retention of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida estate. He was required to turn over the material to the National Archives when he left office.

While the details of the New York hush money case remain undisclosed, the outcome of any trial could hinge on the intent behind the payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels. Michael Cohen, Trump’s long-time former lawyer and political fixer, used his own money to make the payment to her just ahead of the November 2016 election and was later reimbursed by Trump in installments, with Trump listing the payments on his corporate ledger as a business expense for Cohen’s legal fees.

On Sunday, Trump lawyer Joe Tacopina told CNN the payment to Daniels was a “personal expenditure, not a campaign expenditure.” The Wall Street Journal first reported the payment in early 2018.

U.S. legal analysts say prosecutors in the hush money case will face the difficult task of proving that the money paid to Daniels was a campaign contribution to help him win the presidency and not merely intended for personal reasons to hide an alleged marital infidelity.

Tacopina said he and other lawyers will develop Trump’s legal strategy to refute the charges once they see the indictment. In Sunday talk show interviews, he brushed aside as premature questions about whether he would ask for a venue change or file a motion to dismiss the case.

“We’re way too early to start deciding what motions we’re going to file or not file, and we do need to see the indictment and get to work,” he told ABC’s “This Week” show. “I mean, look, this is the beginning.”

But he added, “We’re ready for this fight. And I look forward to moving this thing along as quickly as possible to exonerate him.”
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Immigration Reform Remains Stalled Decade After Gang of 8’s Big Push

Ten years ago this month, Senator Chuck Schumer declared, “We all know that our immigration system is broken, and it’s time to get to work on fixing it.” Senator John McCain quoted Winston Churchill. But it was Lindsey Graham who offered the boldest prediction.

“I think 2013 is the year of immigration reform,” the South Carolina Republican said.

It wasn’t. And neither has any year since those “Gang of Eight” senators from both parties gathered in a Washington auditorium to offer hopeful pronouncements. In fact, today’s political landscape has shifted so dramatically that immigrant advocates and top architects of key policies over the years fear that any hope of an immigration overhaul seems further away than ever.

Many Republicans now see calling for zero tolerance on the border as a way to animate their base supporters. Democrats have spent the last decade vacillating between stiffer border restrictions and efforts to soften and humanize immigration policy — exposing deep rifts on how best to address broader problems.

“There are big questions about whether or not anything in the immigration family — anything at all — has the votes to pass,” said Cecilia Muñoz, who served as President Barack Obama’s top immigration adviser and was a senior member of Joe Biden’s transition team before he entered the White House.

The last extensive package came under President Ronald Reagan in 1986, and President George H.W. Bush signed a more limited effort four years later. That means federal agents guarding the border today with tools like drones and artificial intelligence are enforcing laws written back when cellphones and the internet were novelties.

Laying the problem bare in the deadliest of terms was a fire last month at a detention center on the Mexican side of the border that killed 39 migrants.

Congress came the closest to a breakthrough on immigration in 2013 with the Gang of Eight, which included Schumer, a New York Democrat who is now Senate majority leader, and Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida. Their proposal cleared the Senate that June and sought a pathway to citizenship for millions of people in the country illegally and expanded work visas while tightening border security and mandating that employers verify workers’ legal status.

Democrats cheered a modernized approach to immigration. Republicans were looking for goodwill within the Latino community after Obama enjoyed strong support from Hispanic voters while being reelected in 2012.

Prominent supporters of the proposal were as diverse as the powerful AFL-CIO labor union and the pro-business U.S. Chamber of Commerce. There was more momentum than there had been for large immigration changes that fizzled in 2006 and 2007 under President George W. Bush.

Still, Republican House Speaker John Boehner gauged support for the Gang of Eight bill in the GOP-controlled chamber in January 2014 and said too many lawmakers distrusted the Obama administration. By that summer, the bill was dead.

Obama then created a program protecting from deportation migrants brought illegally to the United States as children. The Supreme Court has previously upheld it, but the court’s relatively recent 6-3 conservative majority could pose long-term threats.

Years after the creation of Obama’s program, President Donald Trump called for walling off all of the nation’s 3,219-kilometer southern border, and his administration separated migrant children from their parents and made migrants wait in Mexico while seeking U.S. asylum.

Biden endorsed a sweeping immigration package on his Inauguration Day, but it went nowhere in Congress. His administration has since loosened some Trump immigration policies and tightened others, even as his party has seen Republican support rise among Hispanic voters.

Officials have continued to enforce Title 42 pandemic-era health restrictions that allowed for migrants seeking U.S. asylum to be quickly expelled, although they are set to expire May 11. The Biden White House is also considering placing migrant families in detention centers while they wait for their asylum cases, something the Obama and Trump administrations did.

Gil Kerlikowske, who was commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection under Obama, said, “A lot of things are coming together at once,” including Title 42 possibly ending, a spike in the number of South American migrants crossing through the treacherous rainforests of the Darian Gap between Colombia and Panama, and a 2024 presidential election ratcheting up the political pressure.

“Two-and-a-half years into the administration, there really hasn’t been any announcement of what is our immigration policy,” Kerlikowske said. “Getting laws passed is almost impossible. But what’s been the policy?”

The League of United Latin American Citizens is so desperate for meaningful progress that it has begun advocating for a full moratorium of up to six months on U.S. asylum as a way of calming things at the border. Its president, Domingo Garcia, said that migrants know they are processed and allowed to remain in the U.S. for years fighting for asylum in court, and that authorities need to “turn off the faucet” to help strained border cities.

“We need a total reset,” said Garcia, whose group is the nation’s oldest Latino civil rights organization. “I think that people on the far left are just as wrong as those who believe they should close the border and let no one in.”

Biden’s administration announced in early January that it would admit up to 30,000 people a month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela for two years with authorization to work and make it easier to apply online. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas argues that the new rules are designed to weaken cartels that help migrants cross into the U.S. illegally.

Mayorkas said recently that officials aim to create “lawful, safe and orderly pathways for people to reach the United States to claim asylum and to cut out the smuggling organizations.”

It appears to be working, for now. After federal authorities detained migrants more than 2.5 million times at the southern border in 2022 — including more than 250,000 in December, the highest monthly total on record — the number of encounters with migrants plummeted during the first two months of this year.

But fewer crossings have created a backlog of thousands of migrants hoping to seek U.S. asylum waiting on the Mexican side of the border. Last month’s fire at a Mexican government facility began amid a protest by migrants fearing deportation. Some of those being held said they’d been attempting to apply online when they were rounded up by Mexican authorities.

Meanwhile, warmer months often see major increases in the number of migrants at the U.S. border. And activists say that Biden has sent mixed signals by continuing to enforce Title 42 and considering reopening family detention centers — a possibility that even top Democrats are now decrying.

“We urge you to learn from the mistakes of your predecessors and abandon any plans to implement this failed policy,” Schumer and 17 other Senate Democrats recently wrote in a letter to Biden that called family detention policies “morally reprehensible and ineffective as an immigration management tool.”

Republicans have criticized Biden’s “border crisis” and, since Trump’s rise, made gains among voters in some heavily Latino areas. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, widely expected to be the leading alternative to Trump in next year’s Republican presidential primary, flew migrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts, arguing that Democrats around the country were ignoring the crush of migrants on the U.S.-Mexico border.

In Miami, Nery Lopez was among a group of activists who recently mobilized to oppose a state bill that would punish people who transport migrants in the country illegally. Now 27, she was brought to the U.S. as a 4-year-old from Mexico and is protected from deportation by the Obama-era program.

Lopez said advocates were counting on the Biden administration to counter Republicans’ hard-line immigration policies.

“People feel defeated. I feel defeated,” she said. “It’s like we are going into the same cycle.”
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NASA to Reveal Crew for 2024 Flight Around the Moon

NASA is to reveal the names on Monday of the astronauts — three Americans and a Canadian — who will fly around the Moon next year, a prelude to returning humans to the lunar surface for the first time in a half century.

The mission, Artemis II, is scheduled to take place in November 2024 with the four-person crew circling the Moon but not landing on it.

As part of the Artemis program, NASA aims to send astronauts to the Moon in 2025 — more than five decades after the historic Apollo missions ended in 1972.

Besides putting the first woman and first person of color on the Moon, the US space agency hopes to establish a lasting human presence on the lunar surface and eventually launch a voyage to Mars.

NASA administrator Bill Nelson said this week at a “What’s Next Summit” hosted by Axios that he expected a crewed mission to Mars by the year 2040.

The four members of the Artemis II crew will be announced at an event at 10:00 am (1500 GMT) at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

The 10-day Artemis II mission will test NASA’s powerful Space Launch System rocket as well as the life-support systems aboard the Orion spacecraft.

The first Artemis mission wrapped up in December with an uncrewed Orion capsule returning safely to Earth after a 25-day journey around the Moon.

During the trip around Earth’s orbiting satellite and back, Orion logged well over 1.6 million kilometers and went farther from Earth than any previous habitable spacecraft.

Nelson was also asked at the Axios summit whether NASA could stick to its timetable of landing astronauts on the south pole of the Moon in late 2025.

“Space is hard,” Nelson said. “You have to wait until you know that it’s as safe as possible, because you’re living right on the edge.

“So I’m not so concerned with the time,” he said. “We’re not going to launch until it’s right.”

Only 12 people — all of them white men — have set foot on the Moon.
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Trump to Deliver Remarks Tuesday Night After His Arraignment

Former President Donald Trump will deliver remarks Tuesday night in Florida after his scheduled arraignment in New York on charges related to hush money payments, his campaign announced Sunday.

Trump will hold the event at his Mar-a-Lago club after returning from Manhattan, where he is expected to voluntarily turn himself in. He is expected to be joined in Florida by supporters as he tries to project an image of strength and defiance and turn the charges into a political asset to boost his 2024 presidential campaign.

Trump is facing multiple charges of falsifying business records, including at least one felony offense, in the indictment handed up by a Manhattan grand jury last week, two people familiar with the matter have told The Associated Press. They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss information that is not yet public because the indictment remains under seal.

Trump has denied any wrongdoing and has blasted the investigation as part of a yearslong “witch hunt” aimed at damaging his candidacy.

Trump aides and lawyers had been going back and forth over the wisdom of his appearing before reporters after the arraignment as they grasped the news of an indictment that caught many of them by surprise. Trump has been catapulted back into the headlines by the criminal charges and he relishes media attention, and while some of his lawyers would have preferred he stay silent, his campaign believes the development has energized his supporters.

Already, Trump’s campaign says it has raised more than $5 million and logged more than 16,000 volunteer signups since the indictment, which Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said were “key indicators that Americans from all backgrounds are sick and tired of the weaponization of the justice system against President Trump and his supporters.”

Trump was indicted Thursday by a grand jury in the case involving hush money paid during the 2016 presidential campaign to a porn actor who alleges Trump had an extramarital sexual encounter with her years earlier.

In television interviews Sunday, Trump lawyer Joe Tacopina said he would pore over the indictment once he receives it, then devise the next legal steps. He dismissed questions about whether he would ask for a venue change or file a motion to dismiss the case as premature, though it’s common for defense attorneys to do both.

“We’re way too early to start deciding what motions we’re going to file or not file, and we do need to see the indictment and get to work,” he told ABC’s “This Week.” “I mean, look, this is the beginning.”

The former president is expected to fly to New York midday Monday and stay at his Trump Tower in Manhattan overnight ahead of his planned arraignment Tuesday, according to two people familiar with his plans who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss Trump’s travel plans.

He is expected to report to the courthouse Tuesday morning, where he will fingerprinted and have a mug shot taken, like anyone else facing charges. Investigators will complete arrest paperwork and check to see if he has any outstanding criminal charges or warrants.

Once the booking is complete, Trump will appear before a judge for an afternoon arraignment. That will take place in the same Manhattan courtroom where his company was tried and convicted of tax fraud in December and where disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein’s rape trial took place.

But Tacopina said that most of what will happen Tuesday remains “up in the air,” given Trump’s unique status as a former president, “other the fact that we will very loudly and proudly say, ‘Not guilty.'”

“Obviously, this is different. This has never happened before. I have never had Secret Service involved in an arraignment before at 100 Centre Street,” he said on CNN’s “State of the Union,” using the courthouse’s street address. “Hopefully this will be as painless and classy as possible for a situation like this.”

The judge could at some point decide to bar anyone involved in the case from talking about it publicly, but that is unlikely to happen at Tuesday’s proceeding. A gag order generally is used as a way to avoid tainting potential jurors. But it’s often done at the request of the defendant, and in this case, Trump is the one talking

Officials from the Secret Service and the New York Police Department toured the courthouse and met about security plans on Friday.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., a key Trump ally, and the New York Young Republican Club, are planning a “peaceful protest” against Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg across the street from the courthouse on Tuesday afternoon.
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Twitter Pulls ‘Verified’ Check Mark From Main New York Times Account

Twitter has removed the verification check mark on the main account of The New York Times, one of CEO Elon Musk’s most despised news organizations.

The removal comes as many of Twitter’s high-profile users are bracing for the loss of the blue check marks that helped verify their identity and distinguish them from impostors on the social media platform.

Musk, who owns Twitter, set a deadline of Saturday for verified users to buy a premium Twitter subscription or lose the checks on their profiles. The Times said in a story Thursday that it would not pay Twitter for verification of its institutional accounts.

Early Sunday, Musk tweeted that the Times’ check mark would be removed. Later he posted disparaging remarks about the newspaper, which has aggressively reported on Twitter and on flaws with partially automated driving systems at Tesla, the electric car company, which he also runs.

Other Times accounts such as its business news and opinion pages still had either blue or gold check marks Sunday, as did multiple reporters for the news organization.

“We aren’t planning to pay the monthly fee for check mark status for our institutional Twitter accounts,” the Times said in a statement Sunday. “We also will not reimburse reporters for Twitter Blue for personal accounts, except in rare instances where this status would be essential for reporting purposes,” the newspaper said in a statement Sunday.

The Associated Press, which has said it also will not pay for the check marks, still had them on its accounts at midday Sunday.

Twitter did not answer emailed questions Sunday about the removal of The New York Times check mark.

The costs of keeping the check marks ranges from $8 a month for individual web users to a starting price of $1,000 monthly to verify an organization, plus $50 monthly for each affiliate or employee account. Twitter does not verify the individual accounts to ensure they are who they say they are, as was the case with the previous blue check doled out to public figures and others during the platform’s pre-Musk administration.

While the cost of Twitter Blue subscriptions might seem like nothing for Twitter’s most famous commentators, celebrity users from basketball star LeBron James to Star Trek’s William Shatner have balked at joining. Seinfeld actor Jason Alexander pledged to leave the platform if Musk takes his blue check away.

The White House is also passing on enrolling in premium accounts, according to a memo sent to staff. While Twitter has granted a free gray mark for President Joe Biden and members of his Cabinet, lower-level staff won’t get Twitter Blue benefits unless they pay for it themselves.

“If you see impersonations that you believe violate Twitter’s stated impersonation policies, alert Twitter using Twitter’s public impersonation portal,” said the staff memo from White House official Rob Flaherty.

Alexander, the actor, said there are bigger issues in the world but without the blue mark, “anyone can allege to be me” so if he loses it, he’s gone.

“Anyone appearing with it=an imposter. I tell you this while I’m still official,” he tweeted.

After buying Twitter for $44 billion in October, Musk has been trying to boost the struggling platform’s revenue by pushing more people to pay for a premium subscription. But his move also reflects his assertion that the blue verification marks have become an undeserved or “corrupt” status symbol for elite personalities, news reporters and others granted verification for free by Twitter’s previous leadership.

Along with shielding celebrities from impersonators, one of Twitter’s main reasons to mark profiles with a blue check mark starting about 14 years ago was to verify politicians, activists and people who suddenly find themselves in the news, as well as little-known journalists at small publications around the globe, as an extra tool to curb misinformation coming from accounts that are impersonating people. Most “legacy blue checks” are not household names and weren’t meant to be.

One of Musk’s first product moves after taking over Twitter was to launch a service granting blue checks to anyone willing to pay $8 a month. But it was quickly inundated by impostor accounts, including those impersonating Nintendo, pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly and Musk’s businesses Tesla and SpaceX, so Twitter had to temporarily suspend the service days after its launch.

The relaunched service costs $8 a month for web users and $11 a month for users of its iPhone or Android apps. Subscribers are supposed to see fewer ads, be able to post longer videos and have their tweets featured more prominently.
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Iran Warned Off US Navy Aircraft Close to Gulf of Oman: Iranian Media

The Iranian navy said it identified and warned off a U.S. reconnaissance plane near the Gulf of Oman Sunday, the semi-official Tasnim news agency reported.

“After the warning, the plane was prevented from entering the country’s skies without authorization,” said the report, identifying the plane as a U.S. Navy EP-3E.

While the opening line of the Tasnim report said the aircraft had crossed into Iranian airspace, the same report also said the aircraft had not entered Iranian skies and had left after the warning.

The U.S. Defense Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Iran has had similar confrontations with U.S. forces in the past. In 2019, Iran shot down a U.S. drone which it said was flying over southern Iran.

On Dec. 31, Iran said its military had launched a drone to warn off a reconnaissance plane trying to approach Iranian war games on the Gulf coast, without identifying the aircraft.

The United States has long deployed weaponry and troops in the oil-producing Gulf to provide security to its allies.

Long-strained relations between Iran and the United States have deteriorated further in the last year, as talks to revive the 2015 nuclear deal hit a deadlock and after Tehran unleashed a deadly crackdown on protesters.

U.S. sanctions have also targeted suppliers of Iranian drones which Washington said have been used to target civilian infrastructure in Ukraine during the conflict with Russia.

Iran has previously acknowledged sending drones to Russia but said they were sent before the invasion. Moscow has denied its forces used Iranian drones in Ukraine.
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Trump Lawyer Vows Vigorous Defense in Hush Money Criminal Case

The lawyer for former U.S. President Donald Trump pledged Sunday to mount a vigorous defense against allegations that he paid $130,000 in hush money to a porn star to boost his election chances in 2016 to keep her from talking about her claim that she had a one-night tryst with Trump a decade before.

Defense lawyer Joe Tacopina told CNN’s “State of the Union” show that the payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels was a “personal expenditure, not a campaign expenditure.” Trump has long denied the porn star’s allegation they had an affair but acknowledged the payment to her just ahead of his defeat of Democrat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election.

Tacopina assailed New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg for getting a grand jury last Thursday to charge Trump in connection with the payment, saying that had Trump “not been running for president [in 2024], he would not have been indicted.”

“We will loudly and proudly say not guilty” when the former president is arraigned in the case in New York State Supreme Court on Tuesday, Tacopina said.

But the defense lawyer said he would not immediately ask that the case be dismissed. “No, that would be showmanship,” he said.

Tacopina, however, contended that “no law fits” the basic allegations in the case, and that the federal government decided to not bring charges against Trump, although Bragg, a state prosecutor, proceeded.

“A state prosecutor has somehow tried to make this a felony,” Tacopina said.

The defense lawyer criticized the state’s key witness in the case, Michael Cohen, Trump’s one-time personal attorney and political fixer. Tacopina called Cohen, who made the payment to the porn actress and then was reimbursed by Trump, “a pathological, convicted liar who is continually unable to tell the same story twice.”

Cohen was convicted of several offenses in connection with the payment to Daniels and served more than a year in prison.

Lanny Davis, Cohen’s lawyer, also spoke with CNN on Sunday.

Davis said Cohen, while pleading guilty in the case, “lied for Donald Trump for 10 years,” and has now provided prosecutors a vast set of documents showing how the payment to the porn actress played out with the consent of Trump and subsequent reimbursement of Cohen.

The payments to Cohen were listed on Trump company records as payment to Cohen for legal fees. But U.S. news accounts of the investigation say the payments were to keep Daniels’ allegations of the affair out of the news in the weeks before the 2016 election. The Wall Street Journal first broke news of the hush money payment in early 2018.

In the charging allegations against Cohen, the government stated that the payment to Daniels was at the direction of “Individual 1,” which the government acknowledged was Trump.

Trump is the first U.S. president, in office or after leaving the White House, to be criminally charged in an indictment. Officials familiar with the case say the grand jury is alleging more than 30 counts of criminal misconduct, but the indictment is under seal, not yet publicly disclosed, and won’t be divulged until Trump appears in court.

Trump, who lives much of the year at Mar-a-Lago, his oceanside retreat in Florida, is flying to New York on Monday and then, as he turns himself in at the courthouse on Tuesday, is likely to be fingerprinted and have his mugshot taken before appearing in court before Judge Juan Merchan.

Trump’s office says he is expected to deliver remarks at Mar-a-Lago late Tuesday.

Trump’s Secret Service detail, courthouse officials and New York City police have been meeting since the indictment was announced to plan for Trump’s appearance at the courthouse, which corridors he will walk through and what nearby streets will be blocked off and parking prohibited.

Trump, long accustomed to unleashing attacks on political foes, has criticized Bragg for bringing what he describes as a “witch hunt case,” and characterized the Black prosecutor as an “animal” and a “racist.” Even before his court appearance, Trump has also assailed the judge, misspelled his name in a social media post as “Marchan,” and claimed that he “hates me.”

Merchan earlier this year fined subsidiaries of Trump’s real estate empire, the Trump Organization, $1.6 million in connection with what prosecutors alleged was a 15-year tax fraud scheme to help the company evade a bigger tax bill and imprisoned Trump’s former chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, for five months.

After learning of his own indictment in the hush money case and that Merchan had been randomly assigned to oversee it, Trump claimed on his Truth Social site that the judge had “railroaded” Weisselberg to plead guilty in the case and had “treated my companies, which didn’t ‘plead,’ VICIOUSLY.”

Former New York District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. told NBC’s “Meet the Press” show, “I’ve got to say that I was disturbed to hear the former president speak in the way he spoke about the District Attorney Bragg, and even the trial court [judge] in the past week.”

“And I think if I were [Trump’s] lawyer, and believe me, no one has called up to ask for my advice,” Vance added, “I would be mindful of not committing some other criminal offense, like obstruction of governmental administration, which is interfering by threat or otherwise, the operation of government. And I think that could take what perhaps we think is not the strongest case, when you add a count like that, put it in front of a jury.”

Many Republican politicians have rallied behind Trump, not by discussing the specifics of the hush money payment to Daniels, but rather by taking aim at Bragg, a Democrat, for securing the indictment. Democrats have generally said that Trump is presumed innocent unless proven guilty and that he will have his day in court to answer the charges.

Trump is facing other serious criminal investigations related to his efforts to upend his 2020 reelection loss to Democrat Joe Biden, urging supporters in January 2021 to try to block Congress from certifying the Electoral College vote showing Biden had won and his retention of classified documents at his Florida estate even though he was required to turn them over to the National Archives when he left office two years ago.
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Experts: Trump Indictment Viewed Abroad as Test of US Democracy

With Donald Trump becoming the first former U.S. president to face criminal charges, VOA Senior Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports on the international reaction to his indictment and what it means for the credibility of the U.S. legal and political system
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Ex-Arkansas GOP Gov. Asa Hutchinson is Running for President

Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson says he’s running for president in 2024, offering himself as an alternative for Republicans ready to turn the party away from Donald Trump.

“I’m confident that people want leaders that want the best of the America, not those who appeal to their worst instincts,” Hutchinson told ABC’s “This Week” in an interview aired Sunday. He said he would make a formal announcement in April in Arkansas.

“I have made a decision and my decision is I’m going to run for president of United States,” Hutchinson said.

Hutchinson, 72, left office in January after eight years as governor. He has ramped up his criticism of the former president in recent months, calling another Trump presidential nomination the “worst scenario” for Republicans and saying it would likely benefit President Joe Biden’s chances in 2024.

In addition to Trump, Hutchinson joins a Republican field that also includes former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is expected to jump into the race in the summer, while U.S. Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo are among those considering bids.

Hutchinson, who was term-limited, has been a fixture in Arkansas politics since the 1980s, when the state was predominantly Democratic. A former congressman, he was one of the House managers prosecuting the impeachment case against President Bill Clinton.

Hutchinson served as President George W. Bush’s head of the Drug Enforcement Administration and was an undersecretary of the Department of Homeland Security.

As governor, Hutchinson championed a series of income tax cuts as the state’s budget surpluses grew. He signed several abortion restrictions into law, including a ban on the procedure that took effect when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade last year. Hutchinson, however, has said he regretted that the measure did not include exceptions for rape or incest.

Hutchinson earned the ire of Trump and social conservatives last year when he vetoed legislation banning gender-affirming medical care for children. Arkansas’ majority-Republican Legislature overrode Hutchinson’s veto and enacted the ban, which has been temporarily blocked by a federal judge.

Trump called Hutchinson a “RINO” — a Republican In Name Only — for the veto. Hutchinson’s successor, former White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, has said she would have signed the legislation.

Hutchinson, who signed other restrictions on transgender youth into law, said the Arkansas ban went too far and that he would have signed the measure if it had focused only on surgery.

Although he has supported Trump’s policies, Hutchinson has become increasingly critical of the former president’s rhetoric and lies about the 2020 presidential election. He said Trump’s call to terminate parts of the Constitution to overturn the election hurt the country.

Hutchinson also criticized Trump for meeting with white nationalist leader Nick Fuentes and the rapper Ye, who has praised Adolf Hitler and spewed antisemitic conspiracy theories. Hutchinson has contrasted that meeting to his own background as a U.S. attorney who prosecuted white supremacists in Arkansas in the 1980s.

An opponent of the federal health care law, Hutchinson after taking office supported keeping Arkansas’ version of Medicaid expansion. But he championed a work requirement for the law that was blocked by a federal judge.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Hutchinson tried to push back against misinformation about the virus with daily news conferences and a series of town halls he held around the state aimed at encouraging people to get vaccinated.

Hutchinson infuriated death penalty opponents in 2017 when he ordered eight executions over a two-week period, scheduling them before one of the state’s lethal injection drugs was set to expire. The state ultimately carried out four of the executions.

The former governor is known more for talking policy than for fiery speeches, often flanked by charts and graphs at his news conferences at the state Capitol. Instead of picking fights on Twitter, he tweets out Bible verses every Sunday morning.
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Donald Trump Isn’t First Ex-President to Face Legal Trouble

Donald Trump has made history so many times.

The first president without government or military experience. The first to be impeached twice. The first to aggressively challenge the certification of his successor.

Now, he adds another: Even as he hopes to return to the White House in 2025, he is the first former president to be indicted.

The latest line crossed by Trump challenges again the aura of the American presidency, nurtured in the infallibility of George Washington but made human over and over, through scandals born of greed and the abuse of power, corruption and naivete, sex and lies about sex.

Trump is hardly the first president, in or out of office, to face legal trouble.

In 1974, Richard Nixon may well have avoided criminal charges on obstruction of justice or bribery, related to the Watergate scandal, only because President Gerald Ford pardoned him just weeks after Nixon resigned the presidency.

Bill Clinton’s law license in his native Arkansas was suspended for five years after he reached a deal with prosecutors in 2001, at the end of his second term, over allegations that he lied under oath about his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

Some historians wonder about President Warren Harding’s fate had he not died in office, in 1923. Numerous officials around him would be implicated in various crimes, including Interior Secretary Albert B. Fall, whose corrupt land dealings became known as the “Teapot Dome Scandal.”

“The walls were closing in on him,” presidential historian Douglas Brinkley said of Harding.

Trump’s indictment in New York reportedly is linked to how business records were mischaracterized in connection with paying porn actor Stormy Daniels $130,000 in 2016, shortly before Trump defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton for the presidency, to keep Daniels from going public about a sexual encounter she said she had with him years earlier. Trump denies having sex with her.

Trump also is being investigated for allegedly attempting to change the 2020 vote results in Georgia, a state he narrowly lost to Democrat Joe Biden, and for his role in the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, when Trump supporters attempted to stop the congressional certification of Biden as president. Trump has denied any wrongdoing and called the New York investigation “a witch hunt.”

While in office, Trump adopted the view of a Justice Department legal opinion that a president could not be indicted. Once a president leaves office, though, that protection falls away.

Most ex-presidents of the past half-century have led relatively uneventful public lives — creating foundations, delivering lucrative speeches, or in the case of Jimmy Carter, doing abundant charitable works. Nixon’s disgrace scarred him for years, though he eventually reemerged to talk about global affairs and counsel aspiring politicians and potential presidents, including Trump.

The immediate cause of Nixon’s resignation was the discovery of the “smoking gun” — Oval Office tape recordings, initiated by Nixon himself, that revealed he had ordered a cover-up of the 1972 break-in at Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington. By 1974, the scandal had expanded well beyond the initial crime. Many of Nixon’s top aides had stepped down and were eventually imprisoned. Nixon himself was a possible target of the Watergate special counsel.

“There were partisans in Congress and on the special counsel’s staff who would have liked to see Nixon indicted after the resignation — or at least believed that the pardon was premature,” says John A. Farrell, author of “Richard Nixon: The Life,” a prize-winning biography published in 2017. “But the special prosecutor, Leon Jaworski, had consistently chosen to deal with Nixon via the constitutional, impeachment process.”

Farrell notes that Ford’s pardon happened so soon after Nixon stepped down that Jaworski’s office didn’t have time to fully consider charges against Nixon. Ford himself would say that an “indictment, a trial, a conviction, and anything else that transpired” would have distracted the country from more immediate problems.

“This much can be said: Nixon himself was very worried about the possibility [of prosecution], to the point of ruining his health,” Farrell said, referring to Nixon’s battles with phlebitis, the inflammation of veins in the leg. “He mused aloud about how some of the great political writing in history had been crafted in jail cells. His very worried family reached out to the White House, alerting Ford’s aides of the ex-president’s deteriorating condition.”

The administrations of Nixon and Harding were among several defined by scandal, without the president being charged.

Ulysses Grant, the Union general and hero of the Civil War, was otherwise naive about those around him. Numerous members of his presidential administration were involved in financial wrongdoing, from extortion to market manipulation. Grant himself was caught for a more trivial offense. In 1872, during his first term, he was stopped twice for riding his carriage too fast.

“The second time Grant had to pay a $20 fine, but never spent a night in jail,” says historian Ron Chernow, whose Grant biography was published in 2017.

Tragedy may have spared one future president.

In the fall of 1963, Vice President Lyndon Johnson was out of favor in the Kennedy administration and in possible legal danger because his top aide, Bobby Baker, was under investigation for financial dealings and influence peddling. Johnson, with his own history of questionable finances, was denying any close ties to a man he had once claimed to love as a son.

By the morning of Nov. 22, 1963, Life magazine was planning a investigation and congressional hearings were just getting started. But within hours, Kennedy had been assassinated, Johnson sworn in as his successor and interest in the affairs of Baker had essentially ended.
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US Navy Deploys More Chaplains for Suicide Prevention

On Navy ships docked at this vast base, hundreds of sailors in below-deck mazes of windowless passageways perform intense, often monotonous manual labor. It’s necessary work before a ship deploys, but hard to adjust to for many already challenged by the stresses plaguing young adults nationwide.

Growing mental health distress in the ranks carries such grave implications that the U.S. chief of naval operations, Adm. Michael Gilday, answered “suicides” when asked earlier this year what in the security environment kept him up at night.

One recently embraced prevention strategy is to deploy chaplains as regular members of the crew on more ships. The goal is for the clergy to connect with sailors, believers and non-believers alike, in complete confidentiality.

“That makes us accessible as a relief valve,” said earlier this month Capt. David Thames, an Episcopal priest who’s responsible for chaplains for the Navy’s surface fleet in the Atlantic, covering dozens of ships from the East Coast to Bahrain.

The families of two young men who killed themselves in Norfolk said chaplains could be effective to facilitate access to mental health care. But they also insist on accountability and a chain of command committed to eliminating bullying and engaging younger generations.

“A chaplain could help, but it wouldn’t matter if you don’t empower them,” said Patrick Caserta, a former Navy recruiter whose son, Brandon, 21, killed himself in 2018.

Mental health problems, especially among enlisted men under 29, mirror concerns in schools and colleges, exacerbated by the isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic.

But chaplains, civilian counselors, families of suicide victims, and sailors from commodores to the newly enlisted say these struggles pose unique challenges and security implications in the military, where suicides took the lives of 519 service members in 2021, per the latest Department of Defense data.

“Mental health permeates every aspect of our operations,” Capt. Blair Guy, commodore for one of the destroyer squadrons based in Norfolk, said via email.

His squadron’s lead chaplain, Lt. Cmdr. Madison Carter, is working on recruiting three new chaplains, who are both naval officers and clergy from various denominations. The Baptist pastor said most of his talks with sailors involve not faith but life struggles that can make them feel unfulfilled and lose focus.

Sailors can carry the routine angst of young adults, from political polarization to breakups to broken homes, which some enlist to escape. Onboard, disconnected from their real and virtual networks — most communications are off-limits at sea for security — they lack the usual coping mechanisms, said Jochebed Swilley, a civilian social worker on the USS Bataan, an amphibious assault ship.

“Eighteen to 21-year-olds don’t know life without smartphones,” said Kayla Arestivo, a counselor and advocate whose nonprofit helps service members and veterans near Norfolk. “If you remove a sense of connection, mental health plummets.”

Chief Legalman Florian Morrison, who’s served on the Bataan for more than two years, said faith is what helped him “re-center” after losing three shipmates to suicide.

“It can be overwhelming… if you feel alone and you’ve nobody to reach out to,” Morrison said in the chapel set up in the ship’s bow. “A streamlined pathway to mental health would help.”

Even docked, ships are far from stress-free, as sailors constantly navigate steep ladderwells and pressurized, hulking doors under the glare of fluorescent lights and the constant hum of machinery.

Space is so tight and regimented that a challenge across the fleet is where to squeeze in offices for new chaplains, said Cmdr. Hunter Washburn, commanding officer of the destroyer USS Gravely.

A Navy chaplain’s role is akin to a life coach, helping young sailors find their footing as adults in an environment that looks far more different from the civilian world than it did in previous generations.

“A lot haven’t found that grounding yet. They’re looking,” said Lt. Greg Johnson, a Baptist chaplain who joined the Bataan in December.

Clergy need to engage with people of different or no faith who might be initially turned off by the cross or other religious symbols on their uniforms.

“I want the people who can be uncomfortable and still be the bearers of God’s presence,” Carter said.

Sailors call them “deck-plating chaps” – chaplains striking up a conversation with their shipmates in the mess decks or during night watches, in addition to keeping an open-door policy at all hours.

Lt. Cmdr. Nathan Rice, a Pentecostal chaplain serving a destroyer squadron at Norfolk, estimates he did 7,000 hours of counseling over 12 years. Long lines of sailors waiting to talk often formed outside his door.

“They’re grinding on a ship or serving food on a mess line, that’s not what they expected. So we help to find their meaning and purpose,” Rice said. “When their life is not going the way they think it should be going, I’ll be blunt and ask, ‘Why haven’t you killed yourself?'”

Focusing on the answers – the “anchors” to the sailors’ will to survive – has helped Rice talk some down from the ledge, including a corpsman who, while discussing suicide dreams, suddenly cocked his weapon and told Rice, “I could do it right now.”

Lt. Cmdr. Ben Garrett has also diffused several suicide situations in the more than a decade he’s been a Catholic chaplain, for the past eight months on the Bataan, which when underway carries 1,000 sailors, 1,600 Marines and three other chaplains. But last fall, he officiated the memorial for a suicide victim.

“There were sailors in the rafters,” he recalled. “It affects the whole crew.”

Most profoundly, suicide impacts surviving families. Kody Decker was 22 and a new father when he killed himself at a maintenance facility in Norfolk, where he was transferred after struggling with depression on the Bataan, according to his father, Robert Decker.

He’s not sure if talking to a chaplain would have made a difference with Kody, though speedy implementation of the Brandon Act might have. The bill, named after the Casertas’ son, aims to improve the process for mental health evaluations for service members.

But Decker hasn’t given up on either the Navy or God.

“My whole fight is about not having other families like us,” he said as a tear rolled down his cheek. “I pray to God every night, for help, for healing, for strength. I’m not a quitter. But it’s hard.”
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Far-Right Influencer Convicted in Voter Suppression Scheme

A self-styled far-right propagandist from Florida was convicted Friday of charges alleging that he conspired to deprive individuals of their right to vote in the 2016 presidential election.

Douglass Mackey, 33, of West Palm Beach, Florida, was convicted in Brooklyn federal court before Judge Ann M. Donnelly after a one-week trial. On the internet, he was known as “Ricky Vaughn.”

In 2016, Mackey had about 58,000 Twitter followers and was ranked by the MIT Media Lab as the 107th-most important influencer of the then-upcoming presidential election, prosecutors said. He had described himself as an “American nationalist” who regularly retweeted Trump and promoted conspiracy theories about voter fraud by Democrats.

Mackey, who was arrested in January 2021, could face up to 10 years in prison. His sentencing is set for Aug. 16.

His lawyer, Andrew Frisch, said in an email that the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan will have multiple reasons to choose from to vacate the conviction.

“We are optimistic about our chances on appeal,” Frisch said.

U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said in a release that the jury rejected Mackey’s cynical attempt to use the First Amendment free speech protections to shield himself from criminal liability for a voter suppression scheme.

“Today’s verdict proves that the defendant’s fraudulent actions crossed a line into criminality,” he said.

The government alleged that from September 2016 to November 2016, Mackey conspired with several other internet influencers to spread fraudulent messages to Clinton supporters.

Prosecutors told jurors during the trial that Mackey urged supporters of then-Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to “vote” via text message or social media, knowing that those endorsements were not legally valid votes.

At about the same time, prosecutors said, he was sending tweets suggesting that it was important to limit “black turnout” at voting booths. One tweet he sent showed a photo of a Black woman with a Clinton campaign sign, encouraging people to “avoid the line” and “vote from home,” court papers said.

Using social media pitches, one image encouraging phony votes utilized a font similar to one used by the Clinton campaign in authentic ads, prosecutors said. Others tried to mimic Clinton’s ads in other ways, they added.

By Election Day in 2016, at least 4,900 unique telephone numbers texted “Hillary” or something similar to a text number that was spread by multiple deceptive campaign images tweeted by Mackey and co-conspirators, prosecutors said.

Twitter has said it worked closely with appropriate authorities on the issue.
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Harris Tours Zambian Farm with Climate Change in Mind

Vice President Kamala Harris on Saturday toured a farm outside Zambia’s capital that’s using new techniques and technology to boost its vegetable crop as she highlighted ways to secure food supplies in an age of climate change.

“It’s an example of what can be done around the world,” she said after walking past rows of peppers and inspecting a drip irrigation system.

Unlike in the United States, where conversations about climate change usually revolve around replacing fossil fuels with clean energy, the focus in Africa is on expanding access to food. Rising prices stemming from the Russian invasion of Ukraine have been damaging to poor countries, and global warming is expected to bring more challenges in the coming years.

Hunger can also create instability, leading to migration and conflict.

“The connection between these issues is quite clear,” Harris said.

She is pushing for $7 billion in private-sector investments, mostly to boost conservation and improve food production, to help Africa prepare for the effects of climate change. Her announcement about that goal came as she wrapped up her weeklong visit to Africa, which included earlier stops in Ghana and Tanzania. The trip was intended to advance U.S. efforts to make inroads in a part of the world where China’s influence runs deep.

It’s the biggest-ticket item that Harris has announced, but more work will be needed to follow through.

For example, African Parks, a nonprofit group, has committed to raise $1.25 billion over the next seven years in order to expand its conservation program. Another organization, One Acre Fund, plans to raise $100 million to plant 1 billion trees by the end of the decade.

The politics of climate change are complicated in Africa, which has contributed far less to overall greenhouse gas emissions than richer corners of the world such as the United States. According to the International Energy Agency, 43% of Africans didn’t have access to electricity in 2021, and recent outages have caused frustration.

In Ghana, Harris was questioned at a news conference about how the West can demand that Africa go green and forgo using its natural resources. She also was pressed on whether wealthy nations would supply $100 billion annually to help poor countries cope with climate change, a commitment made under the Paris climate accord.

Harris said it is “critically important that, as global leaders, we all speak truth about the disparities that exist in terms of cause and effect and that we address those disparities.” She said there were opportunities in the “clean energy economy” that could help generate growth in Africa.

As for the money, President Joe Biden has requested $11 billion in his proposed budget to meet its international commitments.

“We are waiting for Congress to do its work,” Harris said.
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Train Derailment in Minnesota Heightens Concerns Over Railroad Safety

The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating what caused a train to derail Thursday in Minnesota, forcing hundreds of residents to evacuate. Crews have started removing contaminated soil and damaged rail cars in the wake of the fiery derailment. No injuries have been reported.

Around 1 a.m. Thursday, 22 cars of a freight train derailed in the Midwest U.S. state of Minnesota near the town of Raymond. Ten of the tanker cars contained ethanol, a chemical that can be harmful to people. Four damaged cars containing ethanol erupted in flames and burned for several hours after the derailment. Environmental Protection Agency officials arrived at the scene by 6:30 a.m. and started monitoring the air for toxic chemicals.

The entire town of Raymond was evacuated in the night by first responders. Many residents were sent to a school and church in nearby Prinsburg. The evacuation order was lifted around noon.

The United States has been increasingly concerned about rail safety following the Norfolk Southern derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, in early February. Several thousand people had to evacuate after that derailment and are worried about lingering health issues after officials released and burned toxic chemicals to prevent an explosion. Officials have assured residents that no toxic chemicals were found in the air and water, but residents remain uneasy.

At a news conference Thursday, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and railroad officials said they aren’t especially concerned about groundwater contamination from the derailment there because a lot of the ethanol burned off and the ground remains frozen at this time of year.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration says pure ethanol is biodegradable and if spilled, it will break down into harmless substances.

“We will have our team here until this is cleaned up,” BNSF CEO Katie Farmer said at the news conference.

Major freight railroads have said they plan to add about 1,000 more trackside detectors nationwide to help spot equipment problems, but lawmakers have proposed additional reforms they want the railroads to make to prevent future derailments.

A group of Ohio representatives said at a news conference Thursday that the Minnesota derailment reinforces the need for reform.

The Ohio derailment sparked a bipartisan bill called the Rail Safety Act, which U.S. President Joe Biden supports, but the bill has yet to be passed by the Senate. The act would mean enhanced safety procedures for trains that carry hazardous materials, a two-person crew minimum and increased civil penalties over crashes.

Well-known food processing company ADM confirmed that the ethanol came from its corn processing facility in Marshall, Minnesota.

David Schneider is a lawyer who lives in Willmar, Minnesota, a town about 25 kilometers from the crash site. His family owns farms in and around Raymond. Upon hearing of the incident, he was worried the farms might be affected by the ethanol and corn syrup spillage. However, after learning more information, he says his fields are too far away from the derailment to be affected.

Schneider drove near the derailment around midday Thursday and could see smoke in the distance from the Raymond area. He said he has one friend that was evacuated.

“A lot of jobs depend on the production and transportation of ethanol, so I was relieved when I learned nobody was hurt,” he said. “But the economic consequences of this event may yet to be determined.”

Schneider emphasized that railroads are an important part of Minnesota’s history and economy.

“We in Western Minnesota were built by the railroads. Some of these towns are named after family members of the railroad… We are here because of the railroads.”

There were at least 1,164 train derailments across the U.S. last year, according to data from the Federal Railroad Administration. That means the country is averaging roughly three derailments per day.

“All it takes is one piece of worn-out equipment or broken equipment… Something comes loose, you can have a cascading effect,” Schneider said.

NTSB investigators are working to determine what caused the derailment, but it could be weeks before their findings are released.

Some information from this report came from The Associated Press.
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Tornadoes Kill at Least 11 Across US Midwest and South

Unrelenting tornadoes that tore through parts of the South and Midwest killed at least 11 people, shredded homes and shopping centers, and collapsed a theater roof during a heavy metal concert in Illinois.

Emergency responders across the region counted the dead and surveyed the damage Saturday morning after tornadoes touched down into the night, part of a sprawling storm system that also brought wildfires to the southern Plains and blizzard conditions to the Upper Midwest.

The dead included four in the small town of Wynne, Arkansas, Cross County Coroner Eli Long told KAIT-TV. Other deaths were reported in Alabama, Illinois, Indiana and the Little Rock area.

Wynne City Councilmember Lisa Powell Carter said the town about 50 miles (80 kilometers) west of Memphis, Tennessee, was without power and roads were full of debris.

“I’m in a panic trying to get home, but we can’t get home,” she said Friday night. “Wynne is so demolished… There’s houses destroyed, trees down on streets.”

The storms also killed three people in Sullivan County, Indiana, Emergency Management Director Jim Pirtle said in an email. Some residents were missing in the county seat of Sullivan, near the Illinois line about 150 kilometers southwest of Indianapolis.

At least one person was killed, and more than two dozen were hurt, some critically, in the Little Rock area, authorities said.

In Belvidere, Illinois, the roof of the Apollo Theatre collapsed during a tornado, killing one person and injuring 28, five severely. Calls began coming from the theater, about 110 kilometers northwest of Chicago, shortly before 8 p.m., police said. The venue’s Facebook page said the bands scheduled to perform were Morbid Angel, Crypta, Skeletal Remains and Revocation.

Belvidere Fire Chief Shawn Schadle said 260 people were in the venue. Responders also rescued someone from an elevator and had to deal with downed power lines outside the theater.

Belvidere Police Chief Shane Woody described the scene after the collapse as “chaos, absolute chaos.”

Gabrielle Lewellyn had just entered the theater when a portion of the ceiling collapsed.

“I was there within a minute before it came down,” she told WTVO-TV. “The winds, when I was walking up to the building, it went like from zero to a thousand within five seconds.”

Some people rushed to lift the collapsed portion of the ceiling and pull people out of the rubble, said Lewellyn, who wasn’t hurt.

“They dragged someone out from the rubble, and I sat with him, and I held his hand, and I was [telling him] ‘It’s going to be okay.’ I didn’t really know much else what to do.”

A tornado also killed a woman and critically injured three other people in Madison County, Alabama, emergency services worker Don Webster told WAFF-TV.

The tornado in Little Rock tore first through neighborhoods in the western part of the Arkansas capital and shredded a small shopping center that included a Kroger grocery store. It then crossed the Arkansas River into North Little Rock and surrounding cities, where widespread damage was reported to homes, businesses and vehicles.

Little Rock resident Niki Scott took cover in the bathroom after her husband called to warn her of a tornado. She could hear glass shattering and emerged to find that her house was one of the few on her street that didn’t have a tree on it.

“It’s just like everyone says. It got really quiet, then it got really loud,” Scott said afterward, as chainsaws roared and sirens blared.

In the evening, officials in Pulaski County announced a confirmed fatality in North Little Rock.

Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders activated 100 members of the National Guard to help local authorities respond throughout the state.

The unrelenting tornadoes continued to touch down in the region into the night.

The police department in Covington, Tennessee, said on Facebook that the west Tennessee city was impassable after power lines and trees fell on roads when the storm passed through Friday evening. Authorities in Tipton County, north of Memphis, said a tornado appeared to have touched down near the middle school in Covington and in other locations in the rural county.

Tipton County Sheriff Shannon Beasley said on Facebook that homes and structures were severely damaged.

Tornadoes also caused sporadic damage in eastern Iowa. One veered just west of Iowa City, home to the University of Iowa. Video from KCRG-TV showed toppled power poles and roofs ripped off an apartment building in the suburb of Coralville and significantly damaged homes in the city of Hills.

Nearly 90,000 customers in Arkansas lost power, according to poweroutage.us, which tracks outages. Outages were also reported in Iowa, Missouri, Tennessee, Wisconsin, Indiana and Texas.

In Illinois, Ben Wagner, chief radar operator for the Woodford County Emergency Management Agency, said hail broke windows on cars and buildings in the area of Roanoke, northeast of Peoria. More than 109,000 customers had lost power in the state as of Friday night.

There were more confirmed twisters in Iowa, wind-whipped grass fires in Oklahoma, and blizzard conditions in the Upper Midwest as the storm system threatened a broad swath of the country home to some 85 million people.

Fire crews battled several blazes near El Dorado, Kansas, and some residents were asked to evacuate, including about 250 elementary school children who were relocated to a high school.
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 Hoax Dupes US City, Points to Evolving Scam Risks

An elaborate hoax that duped the U.S. city of Newark, New Jersey, into signing a sister-city agreement with a nonexistent island nation is but one example of a profusion of scams and frauds in the internet age, with hucksters constantly inventing new ways to dupe, trick and swindle.

In a case that drew headlines and made Newark a laughingstock in some people’s eyes, the city signed a cultural partnership, known as a sister-city agreement, with a fake country called the United States of Kailasa, named after a mountain in the Himalayas. There was even a signing ceremony featuring Newark’s mayor and a supposed representative of Kailasa.

Newark officials were led to believe that Kailasa was a Hindu island-nation off the coast of Ecuador. According to Kailasa’s website, “It is a nation without borders created by dispossessed Hindus from around the world who lost the right to practice Hinduism authentically in their own countries.” Although Kailasa does not have a formal government, it is supposedly led by a self-styled guru named Nithyananda, who calls himself “the divine holiness and supreme pontiff of Hinduism,” and claims he founded the new country in 2019.

However, it is supposedly led by a self-styled guru named Nithyananda, who calls himself “the divine holiness and supreme pontiff of Hinduism,” and claims he founded the new country in 2019. He fled India in 2019 after being charged with rape and sexual assault, which he denies committing.

Admitting that Newark got conned, the city council rescinded the sister-city agreement just days after it was signed.

“Although this was a regrettable incident, the city of Newark remains committed to partnering with people from diverse cultures in order to enrich each other with connectivity, support and mutual respect,” the Newark City Hall said in a statement.

Newark may not have been the only U.S. city that got duped. According to Kailasa’s website, some 30 municipalities have signed cultural partnership agreements, a claim VOA could neither verify nor disprove.

Nithyananda has not made public appearances since 2019, although video of his sermons can be seen on social media. The self-proclaimed Hindu leader has an extensive website and Facebook page with a grandiose list of supposed accomplishments.

“He appears to be misrepresenting himself at the very least,” said V.S. Subrahmanian, a cybersecurity expert and computer science professor at Northwestern University near Chicago.

“It’s possible Nithyananda has delusions of grandeur and wants people to admire him,” he told VOA. “When a lot of people look up to somebody, that person can take advantage of them in various ways.”

Subrahmanian added, “Organizations that show photos and videos of events they participated in can create an alternative reality other people may believe is real.”

While Newark’s experience was embarrassing for the city but ultimately caused no serious harm, the same cannot be said of many other scams. The internet, including social media, is giving scammers virtually limitless avenues to commit fraud.

“We’re seeing increasing phishing on emails and attachments that take them to sites that download malware on a computer,” Subrahmanian said, “and that means your passwords may be taken, including the one to your bank account.” He added, “another big risk is that they will lock your computer and demand a ransom.”

“The internet and the tools that come associated with it makes it easy to create false information,” said Cliff Lampe, professor of information at the University of Michigan’s School of Information. For example, “Someone may be able to hack an account, or create a false account, and pretend to be one of your network friends.”

Lampe said he is particularly concerned about one increasingly common scam.

“People who think they are doing legitimate business over Facebook messages,” he said. “A real friend never contacts you for money over Facebook Messenger.”

“Another I’ve seen recently is that you will get a text message saying a particular account has been closed and you need to contact us. That’s just an interim move for a scam and they’re trying to get money from you.” Lampe said.

Both Lampe and Subrahmanian say educating people about protecting themselves is key.

“Don’t do business over Facebook Messenger and text message. And don’t send gift cards to people you don’t know who say they have a family emergency because that’s sure to be a scam,” said Lampe.

Subrahmanian said, “If you see something that sounds incredible, be cautious and verify that it’s true so you don’t get duped.”
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New Orleans Embraces Its French Roots

“While [much of] the rest of the U.S. has its Anglo-Saxon heritage, New Orleans’ mother country is France – and that makes a big difference,” explained Alexandra Stafford, president of the Council of French Societies, an umbrella organization that promotes the many French nonprofit organizations in Louisiana’s most populous city.

“Our French connection brings a different flavor to our community,” she continued. “A different vocabulary, different traditions, different food and most importantly, a joie de vivre that other parts of America don’t have!”

That joie de vivre was on full display on March 25. The aroma of moules frites, crepes and raclette cheese with cornichons, as well as the longing lyrics of a French ballad all emanated from a side street. Children laughed and played while some ate colorful macarons, and a trio of women dressed as Marie Antoinette took a photo in front of an oversized sign that read, “Bonjour!”

One could be excused for thinking for a moment they were entering a Parisian street festival. In reality, this was taking place at Fête Française, the annual outdoor street fair hosted by Ecole Bilingue, one of a half-dozen French immersion schools in New Orleans.

Events like this make sense in a city originally called La Nouvelle-Orléans by its 18th century French founders. And though, according to a survey at the start of the current century, only about 1% of residents still speak French, this neighborhood festival serves as evidence that New Orleans continues to be influenced in countless ways by its Francophone past.

“Many residents can still recall a time when French was spoken widely in homes here,” Ecole Bilingue’s head of school, or chef d’établissement, Pierre-Loïc Denichou, told VOA. “Louisiana is a state whose identity relies on its historic ties to the French colonial period, and so our school and our festival are about embracing what makes living here unique from anywhere in the world.

“We are preserving a culture born from the influence of so many cultures,” he added, “an important one being that of the French.”

From croissants to street grids

On the other side of town, Dominique Rizzo and his small team prepare pastries in the morning at his shop, Celtica French Bakery. Rizzo said he moved to New Orleans from France decades ago to share his love for the food of his native country with his adopted hometown.

“I make my pastries with the kind of care and quality you’d find in France,” he explained. “The light and fluffy pastries, the flaky and buttery croissants, and the sweet and indulgent desserts — the French turned baking into an art, and I think people come to my Celtica to find a little corner of Paris in New Orleans.”

Food is one of the most celebrated examples of sustained French influence in New Orleans, but it’s far from the only example.

Joseph Mistrot is the former president of L’Union Française, a local nonprofit founded in 1872 to teach the French language and preserve Francophone culture. His great-grandfather emigrated to New Orleans from France in the late 19th century and his Cajun grandmother’s first language was French. Mistrot said Mardi Gras is another high-profile example of how historic Francophone influences endure in New Orleans today.

“Mardi Gras is our premier event of the year and is a direct reflection of our ties to France,” he said. “The season starts with a parade by the Krewe of Jeanne d’Arc, in honor of the French heroine and [an unofficial] patron saint of New Orleans. It ends with the Boeuf Gras, which is an old French tradition in which a cow was paraded through the street before being slaughtered for the final feast before Lent.”

“Today, in New Orleans, it’s not a real cow,” Mistrot was quick to add. “It’s made of paper-mache and part of a parade float, but it’s from the same tradition.”

French influence can even be seen in how the city was built.

Whereas most American cities have a street grid composed of perfect squares and right angles — Manhattan being a classic example — New Orleans, which was founded along the twisting, winding Mississippi River, benefits from a French-style street grid with an irregular geometry.

“French influence in New Orleans is traceable to the spring of 1682, when the French-Canadian explorer Robert La Salle first passed the future site of the city and claimed the entire Mississippi Valley for France,” explained Richard Campanella, an author and geographer with New Orleans’ Tulane University. “By the end of the 17th century, an outpost was established within that claim.”

As French surveyors laid out plantation parcels in the next decades, Campanella said, they had to be fair and give each landowner a piece of the fertile land beside the Mississippi River, as well as shipping access.

The solution was thin, “long-lot” plantations, known as the “arpent system.” As these lots were eventually divided up into neighborhoods in the 19th century, the street grid adhered to the earlier plantation boundaries. Some of today’s street names were derived from those plantations as well as the names of famous French historical figures and families.

“Look at any map or satellite image of New Orleans, and you will still readily see the imprint of this old, French surveying system from centuries ago.”

Francophone with local flair

In the centuries since New Orleans’ original settlement by the French, several elements of Francophone influence have waned. Fires in the city’s famous French Quarter destroyed much of its French architecture, which was replaced with a Spanish style after Spain took control of the city in the late 18th century.

The Louisiana Purchase of 1803 resulted in La Nouvelle-Orléans becoming part of the United States. As the Anglo “Américains” flooded into the new territory, the existing — and previously dominant — French Creole population slowly lost political control. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, French-owned businesses closed, and the French language largely disappeared from homes in the city, though it can still be found in more rural parts of Louisiana.

“After the Civil War, and the destruction of Louisiana’s economy in the years after, ties between New Orleans and France weakened considerably,” explained Thomas Klingler, director of linguistics in the French and Italian department at Tulane University.

But lovers of Francophone culture are adamant that many aspects of French influence have survived over the years and are readily apparent to the eyes – and the tastebuds.

French restaurants abound in New Orleans, but this is a different type of French from what you’ll find in Paris.

“New Orleans cuisine is unparalleled in the world, and like the residents who live here, our food is a mix of French, Spanish, African, Caribbean and more recently Vietnamese influences,” Ryan Pearson, executive chef at New Orleans restaurant Couvant, told VOA.

As Pearson prepares Couvant’s most popular entree, he highlights the push and pull between the city’s unique identity and how French culture plays a major role in shaping it.

“We wrap veal in brioche and layer in a chicken mousse, which is served with a sauce diable — and this is all very French,” he explained, carefully painting the plate with the sauce. “But at the same time, we are adding locally sourced ingredients like cauliflower and mushrooms because that’s something we’re committed to alongside the French technique of our cooking.”

Commitment to the future

It’s a metaphor for life in New Orleans. An American city with a historic but enduring French connection shaped by cultures from across the globe.

The importance of the relationship between Louisiana and France was on full display in the final weeks of 2022. On a three-day visit to the United States, French President Emmanuel Macron made a memorable stopover in the city.

“Everywhere you looked in the French Quarter, people were in the streets by the hundreds to greet him,” remembered Nathalie Beras, the Consul General of France in Louisiana.

She spoke of a speech the president gave, announcing a new program to support bilingualism and access to French language — not just in New Orleans, but across the United States.

“That he made that announcement here — it was a clear sign that the link between France and New Orleans is very strong,” she told VOA, “not only historically, but in the present and for the future.”

And that he was so well-received in this Francophone city?

“It’s a sign we share so much,” she added. “Perhaps most importantly, an appreciation for life.”
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