Lebanese cheer as their dancers win America’s Got Talent

By KAREEM CHEHAYEB

1 of 4

This image released by NBC shows host Terry Crews, left in suit, with members of the female Lebanese dance troupe Mayyas after winning "America's Got Talent," Wednesday, Sept. 14, 2022. (Trae Patton/NBC via AP)


BEIRUT (AP) — The news of a Lebanese dance group winning the TV competition show America’s Got Talent brought a rare moment of joy on Thursday to many in this crisis-hit Mideast country.

Mayyas, an all-female dance troupe, dazzled the show’s judges and audience on the competition’s 17th season before winning $1 million and a headlining show at the Luxor Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. The group paid tribute to their native country during their performances and on social media in the buildup to the finale.

The victory is a major boost for any aspiring artist. But inside Lebanon, where the political leadership is scrambling to overcome years of economic and political turmoil, there was a high-profile rush to congratulate the dance troupe.

Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati and a handful of lawmakers congratulated Mayyas on social media, while President Michel Aoun’s office in a statement said the Lebanese head of state will award the dancers Order of Merit medallions upon their return home.

In their hypnotic winning performance in the finale, Mayyas dressed in gold-colored outfits, as they fluttered in sync on stage in a performance that brought together traditional belly-dancing and inspirations from India, the United States and the United Kingdom, where their choreographer attended years of dance workshops.

Holding white feathers, they formed a flowing snow-covered cedar tree, Lebanon’s national symbol, before they swayed together holding glowing balls like a moving constellation of stars.

Lebanese, who have been in the grip of the ongoing crises for years, found a rare moment of pride and joy in their country.

“I am among Lebanese citizens who over the past three years went through severe financial, psychological, and social crises,” Marie Ziyade, a fan of Mayyas, told The Associated Press. “I have always had hope in the people of my country, but Mayyas brought me joy.”

Lebanon’s crippling economic crisis has pushed three-quarters of its population into poverty, and resulted in a massive brain drain of young professionals leaving the country for better job opportunities abroad.

Nour Massalkhi is among a surging number of the country’s youth who left Lebanon for better jobs and lives. Since leaving in 2019 when the economy crumbled, she says she’s felt a sense of “anger and despair” watching her native country’s rapid decline from her new home in the United Arab Emirates.

But she says Mayyas’ journey to the top on America’s Got Talent is a “small glimmer of hope” that Lebanon needs.

“Their win was only one example of the hundred other artists, innovators, and entrepreneurs that continue to persevere abroad,” Massalkhi told the AP. “Everything from the music to the choreography and down to their outfits are curated with extreme precision and honors our Lebanese roots.”

The dance group’s victory was never going to stop Lebanon’s economy from spiraling or help break months of political deadlock and tensions that have followed decades of rampant corruption, nefarious financial mismanagement and sect-based power-sharing. But it may have brought a brief moment of hope for the troubled country.

“Mayyas is a group based on merit, that brings together women who have a passion for dance and are talented at it, and coordinate together to put out creative and stunning work,” Ziyade said. “I wish our government would appoint ministers and officials the same way … we could have fixed our devastated country.”

___

More at AP Entertainment: https://apnews.com/hub/entertainment

Griner, Whelan families to meet Biden amid US-Russia talks

By ERIC TUCKER

1 of 5

WNBA star and two-time Olympic gold medalist Brittney Griner is escorted from a court room ater a hearing, in Khimki just outside Moscow, Russia, Aug. 4, 2022. President Joe Biden plans to meet at the White House on Friday, Sept. 16, with family members of Griner and Michigan corporate security executive Paul Whelan, both of whom remain jailed in Russia, senior administration officials told The Associated Press. 

(AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden plans to meet at the White House on Friday with family members of WNBA star Brittney Griner and Michigan corporate security executive Paul Whelan, both of whom remain jailed in Russia, the White House announced Thursday.

“He wanted to let them know that they remain front of mind and that his team is working on this every day, on making sure that Brittney and Paul return home safely,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said at Thursday’s press briefing at the White House.

The separate meetings are to be the first in-person encounter between Biden and the families and are taking place amid sustained but so far unsuccessful efforts by the administration to secure the Americans’ release. The administration said in July that it had made a “substantial proposal” to get them home, but despite plans for the White House meetings, there is no sign a breakthrough is imminent.

“While I would love to say that the purpose of this meeting is to inform the families that the Russians have accepted our offer and we are bringing their loved ones home — that is not what we’re seeing in these negotiations at this time,” Jean-Pierre said.

She added: “The Russians should accept our offer. The Russians should accept our offer today.”

Griner has been held in Russia since February on drug-related charges. She was sentenced last month to nine years in prison after pleading guilty and has appealed the punishment. Whelan is serving a 16-year sentence on espionage-related charges that he and his family say are false. The U.S. government regards both as wrongfully detained, placing their cases with the office of its top hostage negotiator.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken took the unusual step of announcing two months ago that the administration had made a substantial proposal to Russia. Since then, U.S officials have continued to press that offer in hopes of getting serious negotiations underway, and have been following up through the same channel that produced an April prisoner swap that brought Marine veteran Trevor Reed home from Russia, said a senior administration official who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity in advance of Thursday’s formal announcement.

The negotiations, already strained because of tense relations between Washington and Moscow over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, have also been complicated by Russia’s apparent resistance to the proposal the Americans put on the table.

The Russians, who have indicated that they are open to negotiations but have chided the Americans to conduct them in private, have come back with suggestions that are not within the administration’s ability to deliver, said the administration official, declining to elaborate.

The administration has not provided specifics about its proposal, but a person familiar with the matter previously confirmed it had offered to release Viktor Bout, a convicted Russian arms dealer who is imprisoned in the U.S. and who has long been sought by Moscow. It is also possible that, in the interests of symmetry, Russia might insist on having two of its citizens released from prison.

Biden spoke by phone in July with Griner’s wife, Cherelle, and with Whelan’s sister, Elizabeth, but both families have also requested in-person meetings. On Friday, Biden plans to speak at the White House with Cherelle Griner and with the player’s agent in one meeting and with Elizabeth Whelan in the other, according to the official.

The meetings are being done separately so as to ensure that each family has private time with the president. But the fact that they are happening on the same day shows the extent to which the two cases have become intertwined since the only deal that is presumably palatable to the U.S. is one that gets both Americans — a famous WNBA player and a Michigan man who until recently was little known to the public — home together at the same time,

In the past several months, representatives of both families have expressed frustration over what they perceived as a lack of aggressive action and coordination from the administration.

Cherelle Griner, for instance, told The Associated Press in an interview in June that she was dismayed after the failure of a phone call from her wife that was supposed to have been patched through by the American Embassy in Moscow left the couple unable to connect on their fourth anniversary.

Whelan’s relatives have sought to keep attention on his case, anxious that it has been overshadowed in the public eye by the focus on the far more prominent Griner — a two-time Olympic gold medalist and seven-time WNBA all-star. They also conveyed disappointment when Whelan, despite having been held in Russia since December 2018, was not included in a prisoner swap last April that brought home Reed.

Friday’s meetings were scheduled before news broke this week of an unconnected trip to Russia by Bill Richardson, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations who has been a veteran emissary in hostage and detainee cases. Administration officials reacted coolly to that trip, with State Department spokesman Ned Price saying Wednesday that dialogue with Russia outside the “established channel” risks hindering efforts to get Griner and Whelan home.

Administration officials say work on hostage and detainee cases persists regardless of whether a family receives a meeting with the president, though there is also no question such an encounter can help establish a meaningful connection.

Biden met in the Oval Office in March with Reed’s parents after the Texas couple stood with a large sign outside the White House calling for their son’s release. The following month, he returned home.

____

Follow Eric Tucker at http://www.twitter/com/etuckerAP

Cruel or harmless? Pastors mixed on GOP migrant transports

By PETER SMITH

A woman, who is part of a group of immigrants that had just arrived, holds a child as they are fed outside St. Andrews Episcopal Church, Wednesday Sept. 14, 2022, in Edgartown, Mass., on Martha's Vineyard. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Wednesday flew two planes of immigrants to Martha's Vineyard, escalating a tactic by Republican governors to draw attention to what they consider to be the Biden administration's failed border policies. (Ray Ewing/Vineyard Gazette via AP)

As Republican governors ramp up their high-profile transports of migrants to Democratic-run jurisdictions, the practice is getting a mixed reaction from Christian faith leaders — many of whom, especially evangelicals, have supported GOP candidates by large numbers in recent elections.

Some depict the actions as inhumanely exploiting vulnerable people for political ends, while others say it’s a harmless way of calling attention to the impact of immigration on states near the southern border.

“Playing political games scores points — and the hypocrisy of the current immigration system is easy to point out,” Ed Stetzer, a professor, dean and executive director of the Wheaton College Billy Graham Center in Illinois, said in a statement.

“However, it does not solve the actual problems. ... Let’s fix the system,” he added, “and stop turning people into pawns of political one-upmanship.”

But the Rev. Robert Jeffress, senior pastor at First Baptist Church of Dallas and a prominent supporter of former President Donald Trump, who imposed restrictive immigration policies during his term, backed the transports.

“Government officials who refuse to fulfill their biblical responsibility to protect our borders should be made to feel the effects of their lawless policies,” Jeffress said via email.

“Busing illegal migrants to Washington D.C. or Martha’s Vineyard is not exactly the same as sending them to Siberia,” he continued. “Most Americans would love the opportunity to visit either destination.”

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis flew immigrants on two planes to the upscale island of Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts on Wednesday, while Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has also dispatched migrants to cities with Democratic mayors. Most recently, on Thursday, two busloads from his state disembarked near Vice President Kamala Harris’ residence in Washington. Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey also has adopted the policy.

The Republican governors are trying to draw attention to what they contend is failed border policy under the Biden administration.

Brent Leatherwood, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s public policy agency, the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, said such actions “seem to be more about public relations.”

“We have called long for strengthened border protections and at the same time (for) folks who are coming into this country to be treated in a way that respects the imago dei (image of God),” he said.

Most Americans, including Southern Baptists, “want a solution to our broken immigration system,” Leatherwood added. “Let’s cut down on some of these actions and instead come to the table and figure out a solution that actually respects human dignity.”

Joshua Manning, pastor of the ethnically diverse Community Baptist Church in Noel, Missouri, a town of 1,800 with a large immigrant population, agreed that the transports are the wrong way to highlight a real problem.

“You shouldn’t be loading people up and treating them as political props — that’s dehumanizing,” Manning said.

He said, however, that immigration is a tricky subject. Places that have declared themselves in support of migrants and asylum seekers may not “see the difficulties of everything that’s associated with that,” he said.

In the mostly Latino neighborhood of Corona, in New York City’s Queens borough, the large congregation of Our Lady of Sorrows Catholic church held a special service Wednesday to pray for the immigrants. In an interview, their pastor, the Rev. Manuel Rodriguez, called the transports a “horrible crime.”

“All of us are horrified about the steady violation of human rights by Gov. DeSantis and other governors who are so inhumane and unethical to keep sending human beings to places where they weren’t even informed that they’d be sent,” Rodriguez said.

“You don’t use human beings who are fleeing their homelands in fear, because of violence, hunger, persecution, because of the threat of rape ... as tools, as objects to make political points,” he said.

Pastor-led group seeks missing migrants in border desert

By GIOVANNA DELL'ORTO

1 of 36

Óscar Andrade prays early, Sunday, Sept. 4, 2022 in the Ironwood Forest National Monument near Marana, Ariz., before searching for a missing Honduran migrant. The pastor heads a group, Capellanes del Desierto (Desert Chaplains), that provides recovery efforts for families of missing migrants. Andrade has received over 400 calls from families in Mexico and Central America whose relatives, sick, injured or exhausted, were left behind by smugglers in the borderlands. (AP Photo/Giovanna Dell'Orto)

IRONWOOD FOREST NATIONAL MONUMENT, Arizona (AP) — After strapping on knee-high snake guards and bowing his head to invoke God’s protection, Óscar Andrade marched off into a remote desert at dawn on a recent Sunday to look for a Honduran migrant. His family said he had gone missing in late July “between the two hills where the backpacks are.”

The Tucson-based Pentecostal pastor bushwhacked for three hours in heat that rose above 100 degrees (38 Celsius), detouring around a mountain lion, two rattlesnakes and at least one scorpion before taking a short break to call the aunt of another missing man. Andrade believed he found the young man’s skull the previous day.

“Much strength, my dear sister,” Andrade told her, while she repeated incredulously that the “guide” had assured her he left the young man with injured feet but alive. “Sometimes we don’t understand, but there is a reason that God allowed this. And if you need anything, we’re here.”

On the fourth search for that 25-year-old man from the Mexican state of Guerrero, the pastor and his Capellanes del Desierto (Desert Chaplains) rescue and recovery group had found his ID card in a wallet 40 feet (12 meters) away from a skull and other bones, picked clean by animals and the relentless sun in the Tohono O’odham Reservation.

Since March, Andrade has received more than 400 calls from families in Mexico and Central America whose relatives – sick, injured or exhausted – were left behind by smugglers in the borderlands.

Forensic experts estimate 80% of bodies in the desert are never found, identified or recovered. But those that are, added to massive casualties like 53 migrants trapped in an abandoned trailer in San Antonio, Texas, in June and nine migrants swept away in the Rio Grande this month, point to one of the deadliest seasons on record on the always dangerous southwest border.

Fragile economies pummeled by the pandemic in Latin America, ruthless trafficking networks that control virtually all illegal crossings, and shifting U.S. asylum policies that affect migrants of different nationality and family status in drastically different ways all contribute to the toll – as does the Southwest’s extreme heat.

Andrade, his group, and an Associated Press journalist accompanying them among towering saguaro cacti quickly came across evidence of distress on this popular smuggling route – abandoned backpacks, still full of clothes, coins and even deodorant, and half-full water jugs, several days’ walk from the closest towns.
“To be out in the desert is more difficult than to be in a church,” said the 44-year-old pastor and father of three teens, who sometimes join him and his wife, Lupita, on these missions. “Our commitment is firstly with God, and with the families.”

The group didn’t find the missing 45-year-old Honduran, but planned to look again; it usually takes several trips to locate remains in this desert.

It’s one of the deadliest corridors, according to aid groups and the U.S. Border Patrol, for migrants who, fearing being rejected under a pandemic provision called Title 42, try to evade authorities instead of turning themselves in right after crossing or applying for protection legally.

From staging camps guarded by cartel scouts in areas where the border has no fencing or bollard barriers, the migrants – usually men from Mexico and Central America – walk north for more than a week. They have to cross dozens of miles of desert mountains and dry washes before reaching major highways where smugglers’ vehicles will take them to destinations across the United States.

“Once a person told me, ‘How can I believe, look where my brother is, who always did praise and worship,’” Andrade recalled during the recent search. “For God, there are no mistakes. Yes, there are painful things, like the young man from yesterday, who died because of some blisters.”

Faith often motivates volunteer organizations providing aid along the border. The Capellanes, who search for the missing at least once a week in this rough desert, pray with the grieving families as they share updates and somber news.

Being a Christian ministry also reassures families, many of whom are targeted by fake ransom requests after they turn to social media looking for their missing relative. The aunt of the young man from Guerrero, who asked the AP not to use their names because his parents haven’t been told yet of Andrade’s discovery, said she had been targeted repeatedly.

To bring the comfort of God’s word is what motivated Elda Hawkins to be one of the first volunteers to join Andrade’s group, she said at a recent church meeting. A dozen members gathered in a small Tucson church to pray for the young man, receive CPR credentials, and discuss a fundraising food drive.

“We can be a light of hope, for those about to die or for their families,” Hawkins said.

Andrade’s group doesn’t charge families for the searches, though some contribute to the cost of gas for his truck ferrying the group down rough dirt roads to where they set out on foot. It also works closely with law enforcement, notifying the Border Patrol of every search and then local authorities if it finds human remains, as it has nearly 50 times.

Even then, the migrant’s body still has a long journey home. It takes time for authorities to retrieve the remains, which are then subject to forensic analysis to determine the cause of death. Often, that’s never established; in other cases, the cause is listed as “environmental,” especially heat stroke and dehydration, said Dr. Greg Hess, chief medical examiner for Pima County.

His office, covering migrant deaths also in two adjacent border counties in southern Arizona, received 30 migrant bodies found in July alone, about half of them dead less than three weeks, said Mike Kreyche of Humane Borders, an aid group that maps border deaths.

That puts 2022 on track to match the last two years, when cases were almost double other years in the last decade recorded by the office. Along the entire US-Mexican border, since last fall Customs and Border Protection agents stopped migrants for crossing the border illegally more than 1.8 million times, historically an extraordinarily high number. The agency recorded 557 Southwest border deaths the previous year, the highest since it began tracking them in 1998.

Given how quickly a body decomposes in the desert, unless it’s found within a day of dying, identification might require expensive and time-consuming DNA analysis, Hess said.

“The desert does a good job covering up crimes,” said Mirza Monterroso, a forensic scientist and missing migrant program director for the Colibrí Center, a Tucson-based group that works with the examiner’s office.

Her database has 4,000 missing migrants – 1,300 in Pima County alone – from reports from 14 countries and 43 U.S. states. She helps coordinate DNA analysis, costing more than $1,100 per body with a bulk discount.

Consulates help cover some of those expenses, as well as the nearly $4,000 it takes to repatriate the remains, which is what most families want, said Azhar Dabdoub, who manages a Tucson funeral home. It was arranging for flights of five migrants’ bodies to Guatemala and one to El Salvador last week.

“This is what forced migration looks like at the end,” he said, standing next to dozens of just-delivered caskets. They were customized with a small viewing window so families can see something of their relative, even if just a small belonging Dabdoub tapes to the glass.

As soon as the remains Andrade just found are recovered, Monterroso will start working on confirming if they are indeed the young Mexican man’s. That might take up to a year unless there’s a lucky break, like dental records.

The young man’s aunt, who’s lived in the United States since she was 14, told the AP from her home in New York that she still hopes for a miracle. But if the remains are his, “we fought to the end to recover what little is left.”

“My nephew’s dream died at the border, but a person shouldn’t end up like this,” she said, her voice breaking. “They left him in the desert because he had injured his feet.”

A 38-year-old father of two from Mexico City nearly died the same way last week after he developed debilitating foot blisters near the Baboquivari Peak, just 14 miles (23 kilometers) north of the border in Pima County.

Without food for two days and now out of water, he called 911 and was helped down the mountain by Daniel Bolin, an agent with the Border Patrol’s search, trauma and rescue team who said this was his fifth rescue this year in the same spot. Bolin brought him Gatorade and water before walking him down the precipitous mountain ridge for an hour to an area reachable by all-terrain vehicle.

The agency performed 3,000 rescues in the Tucson sector alone over the last 12 months, and another 911 call came from the same mountain that afternoon.

About then, sitting in the back of a Border Patrol truck and facing almost certain expulsion to Mexico, the rescued man, who gave his name as Leonardo, said he lost his business during the pandemic and came to the United States to find the work he’s been unable to get for two years.

“But now I don’t think I’ll come back here. I’m too old to walk,” he said.

Asked about his future, he murmured “I don’t know” and burst into sobs, tears rolling down his sunburned face.

—-

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

Meet Little Amal: A puppet celebrating New York City’s roots

By MARK KENNEDY

1 of 10

Commuters and tourists gather around a large puppet named Little Amal as she walks around Grand Central Station in New York, Thursday, Sept. 15, 2022. New York City's latest celebrity visitor is stopping traffic even in this jaded, larger-than-life town. Little Amal, a 12-foot puppet of a 10-year-old Syrian refugee, is on a 17-day blitz through every corner of the Big Apple as part of a theater project hoping to raise awareness about immigration. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)


NEW YORK (AP) — New York City’s latest celebrity visitor is stopping traffic even in this jaded, larger-than-life town.

Little Amal, a 12-foot puppet of a 10-year-old Syrian refugee, is on a 17-day blitz through every corner of the Big Apple as part of a theater project hoping to raise awareness about immigration.

“When we talk about migration and refugees, we tend to forget that more than half of the people we’re talking about are children,” said playwright and director Amir Nizar Zuabi, the artistic director of Little Amal Walks NYC. “The reality is they’re children and all children are beautiful in their own special way. And I think that’s what Amal brings to the table.”

She will visit tourists meccas — Times Square, Grand Central Station, the American Museum of Natural History and Central Park, among them — and also communities far from the glitz of Manhattan, like Corona in the Queens borough and Bedford–Stuyvesant in Brooklyn.

“The role of the project is to talk about displacement, to talk about immigration, to talk about vulnerability in different contexts and, of course, each locality,” said Zuabi.

At each of the 55 planned stops, organizers have reached out to community artists and leaders to create a special event anchored by the place visited. So Amal will join kids her age to hear a reading of the inclusive picture book “Julián Is a Mermaid” at the Brooklyn Public Library. And when she goes to Harlem she will listen to a drum circle performed by students from the Harlem School of the Arts and be accompanied by a stilt walker from Kotchenga Dance Company.

Yazmany Arboleda, a Colombian American artist who is creative producer of the New York visit, calls it one of the largest scale theatrical experiences ever built in the city: “This is the biggest stage on Earth and it comes from all the pluralism, of all the stories, of all the people who live here.”

The puppet comes to the city after completing a 5,000-mile trek across Europe, from the Syrian-Turkish border to Manchester in northwest England. She has traveled through 12 countries — including greeting refuges from Ukraine at a Polish train station and stopping at refugee camps in Greece — and met with Pope Francis.

“New York is interesting because it is a city built from displacement, forced migration and migration. These are the elements that created the city. And the city looms tall and has a very, very interesting engine of creativity, of innovation, of audaciousness. So bringing this project here is very interesting for us,” said Zuabi.

During a recent rehearsal at the performing arts institution and project co-producer St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn, Zuabi stressed the core idea with his 10 puppeteers, four of which are needed to manipulate the puppet at any one time.

“She is a 10-year-old lost in the city. Whenever you are in doubt, go back to that,” he told them as they stretched in a circle. “She’s never safe in this city. If we understand that, I think we can make real magic.”

Some other stops for the puppet — designed and built by Handspring Puppet Company — include salsa dancing in Washington Heights, walking along the Coney Island boardwalk and listening to drummers in Jackson Heights. At Grand Central Station on Thursday, she loomed over admiring pedestrians, who gazed up and took pictures.

“We often focus on the plight of the immigrant or the refugee, and I think what this work does is really bring our attention to the promise and the beauty,” said Arboleda. “As she walks through New York, we’re all going to be learning along.”

One of Amal’s stops will be Liberty Island, where she’ll come face-to-toe with the Statue of Liberty, who welcomes the “huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”

“The core of this project is empathy, is to fight indifference, because indifference is like a stone. You can’t turn it. It’s what it is. The minute you start cracking indifference, something happens,” said Zuabi.

___

Mark Kennedy is at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits

House OKs bill to curb political interference with census

By MIKE SCHNEIDER and KEVIN FREKING

 A briefcase of a census taker is seen as she knocks on the door of a residence Aug. 11, 2020, in Winter Park, Fla. The House has passed legislation on a party-line vote that aims to make it harder for future presidents to interfere in the once-a-decade headcount that determines political power and federal funding. The bill is a Democrat-led response to the Trump's administration's failed efforts to place a citizenship question on the 2020 census. (AP Photo/John Raoux, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The House passed legislation Thursday intended to make it harder for future presidents to interfere with the once-a-decade census that determines political power and federal funding, a move that comes in response to the Trump’s administration’s failed effort to make a citizenship question part of the 2020 headcount.

The legislation was approved 220-208 with only Democratic lawmakers voting for it. The bill requires the Commerce secretary to certify to Congress that any new question sought on a future census be adequately studied and tested, and that the Government Accountability Office conduct a review of the certification.

It also seeks to limit political influence by mandating that a U.S. Census Bureau director can be fired only in cases of neglect of duty or malfeasance in office. It vests the director with all technical, operational and statistical decisions and says a deputy director has to be a career staffer with experience in demographics, statistics or related fields.

“Partisan manipulation of the census is simply wrong,” said Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., who chairs the Committee on Oversight and Reform, which investigated the Trump administration’s efforts to add the citizenship question. “My bill would protect the census and ensure this cannot happen again regardless of which party is in power.”

Republicans unanimously opposed the bill, saying it places more power in the hands of unelected bureaucrats, reducing accountability.

Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., said that the changes are designed to make it easier for future census results to favor Democratic-leaning states over Republican-leaning states by making it harder to overrule the director even when the president or Congress is concerned about decisions they believe will yield an unfair or inaccurate count.

The bill faces an uphill climb in the evenly divided Senate given the party-line vote in the House. But Sen. Gary Peters, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said “clearly we will take a very serious look at it.”

The census determines how many congressional seats each state gets and the distribution of $1.5 trillion in federal spending each year. Its results are used for redrawing political districts. The 2020 census was one of the most challenging in recent memory because of the attempts at political interference, the COVID-19 pandemic and natural disasters.

In the years leading up to the 2020 census, the Trump administration unsuccessfully tried to add a citizenship question to the census questionnaire, a move that advocates feared would scare off Hispanics and immigrants from participating, whether they were in the country legally or not. The Supreme Court blocked the question.

The Trump administration also unsuccessfully tried to get the Census Bureau to exclude people in the country illegally from population figures used for divvying up congressional seats among the states, also called the apportionment numbers. The Trump administration tried to end data collection and processing earlier than the revised schedule put out by the Census Bureau in response to the pandemic, a move critics saw as an attempt by the administration to release the apportionment numbers while President Donald Trump was still in office.

The apportionment numbers were released in April 2021, four months after President Joe Biden took office and Trump left.

Critics claimed the citizenship question was inspired by a Republican redistricting expert who believed using citizen voting-age population instead of the total population for the purpose of redrawing of congressional and legislative districts could be advantageous to Republicans and non-Hispanic whites.

Even though many of the Trump administration’s political efforts failed, some advocates believe they did have an impact, with significantly larger undercounts of most racial and ethnic minorities in the 2020 census compared to the 2010 census.

The Black population in the 2020 census had a net undercount of 3.3%, while it was almost 5% for Hispanics and 5.6% for American Indians and Native Alaskans living on reservations. Those identifying as some other race had a net undercount of 4.3%.

With the legislation, “we are reaffirming our commitment that every person in every community is counted,” Rep. Judy Chu, D-Calif., and chair of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus.

Biden plans floating platforms to expand offshore wind power

By MATTHEW DALY and JENNIFER McDERMOTT

1 of 4

President Joe Biden shows a wind turbine size comparison chart during a meeting in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, June 23, 2022, with governors, labor leaders, and private companies launching the Federal-State Offshore Wind Implementation Partnership. The Biden administration says it will hold its first offshore wind auction next month. It's offering nearly 500,000 acres off the coast of New York and New Jersey for wind energy projects that could produce enough electricity to power nearly 2 million homes. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration on Thursday announced plans to develop floating platforms in the deep ocean for wind towers that could power millions of homes and vastly expand offshore wind in the United States.

The plan would target sites in the Pacific Ocean off the California and Oregon coasts, as well as in the Atlantic in the Gulf of Maine.

President Joe Biden hopes to deploy up to 15 gigawatts of electricity through floating sites by 2035, enough to power 5 million homes. The administration has previously set a goal of 30 GW of offshore wind by 2030 using traditional technology that secures wind turbines to the ocean floor.

There are only a handful of floating offshore platforms in the world — all in Europe — but officials said the technology is developing and could soon establish the United States as a global leader in offshore wind.

The push for offshore wind is part of Biden’s effort to promote clean energy and address global warming. Biden has pledged to cut greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030. A climate-and-tax bill he signed last month would spend about $375 billion over 10 years to boost electric vehicles, jump-start renewable energy such as solar and wind power and develop alternative energy sources like hydrogen.

“Today we’re launching efforts to seize a new opportunity — floating offshore wind — which will let us build in deep water areas where turbines can’t be secured directly to the sea floor, but where there are strong winds that we can now harness,″ White House climate adviser Gina McCarthy said at a news conference Thursday.

Deepwater areas in the Pacific especially have potential to vastly expand offshore wind energy in the U.S., McCarthy and other officials said.

McCarthy acknowledged that the floating technology is at an early stage. But she said “coordinated actions” by federal and state officials, working with the private sector, can position the U.S. “to lead the world on floating offshore wind and bring offshore wind jobs to more parts of our country, including the West Coast.″

Two pilot projects are planned off the north and central California coast, and a third is planned in southern Oregon, officials said.

Oregon Gov. Kate Brown said her state and California have some of the best wind resources in the world, but called floating platforms crucial to develop them due to the depth of the ocean floor along the West Coast.

Heather Zichal, CEO of the American Clean Power Association, an industry group, called the announcement a “game changer” that will spark investment in a new domestic supply chain and allow the U.S. to lead in this emerging technology. Along with incentives in the sweeping climate-and-tax bill, Zichal said she expects costs for offshore wind development to dramatically decrease, allowing deployment of clean energy at the scale needed to take action to address climate change.

The Energy Department announced nearly $50 million, including funding from the bipartisan infrastructure law Biden signed last year, for research, development and demonstration work to support floating offshore wind platforms. Officials aim to cut the cost of floating offshore wind energy 70% by 2035, to $45 per megawatt hour, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said.

“We think the private sector is going to quickly see the real opportunity here not only to triple the country’s accessible offshore wind resources but to make the U.S. a global leader in manufacturing and deploying offshore wind,″ she said.

Emerging technology for floating platforms “means there’s real opportunity for greater energy security,″ affordability “and course tens of thousands of good-paying in-demand jobs,″ such as electricians, engineers, ship builders and stevedores, Granholm said.

The Biden administration “is all-in on making floating offshore wind a real part of our of our energy mix and winning the global race to lead in this space,″ Granholm said. ”And that’s why we set this big, hairy audacious goal″ of 15 gigawatts of floating offshore wind by 2035.

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said her department has approved the nation’s first two major offshore wind projects in federal waters and has begun reviewing at least 10 more. An offshore wind lease sale off the New York and New Jersey coast set new records, she said, and a lease sale also was held in North Carolina. Seven lease sales for offshore wind projects are planned by 2025.

More than half of the nation’s offshore wind resources are in deep waters where traditional offshore wind foundations are not economically feasible, Haaland said, adding that “floating wind will help us reach areas once not attainable. And this is critical because floating wind will help us build on the administration’s goal of 30 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030.″

The world’s first floating wind farm has been operating off Scotland’s coast since 2017. Norway-based Equinor, which operates the 30-megawatt Hywind Scotland project, is currently building a huge, floating offshore wind farm off Norway to provide electricity for offshore oil and gas fields.

Lauren Shane, a spokeswoman for Equinor in the United States, said the company is upbeat about floating offshore wind and will evaluate possible opportunities in the U.S. “We’re excited about the development of offshore wind in the U.S.,″ she said.

Another offshore wind developer with projects in the United States, Denmark-based Ørsted, also applauded the administration’s efforts.

“The administration’s innovation priority is well-placed, and with the right investment and public-private partnerships,″ floating platforms “can expand deployment, drive down costs and bring more clean energy to millions of Americans,” said Bryan Stockton, head of regulatory affairs for Ørsted North America.

___

McDermott reported from Providence, Rhode Island.

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$T CONSPRIACI$T
Infowars sales spiked as Jones talked about Sandy Hook

By DAVE COLLINS and PAT EATON-ROBB

1 of 6

Brittany Paz, the corporate representative for InfoWars, is questioned by plaintiff's attorney Chris Mattei during the Alex Jones Sandy Hook defamation damages trial in Superior Court in Waterbury, Conn., on Thursday, Sept. 15, 2022. (H John Voorhees III/Hearst Connecticut Media via AP, Pool)


WATERBURY, Conn. (AP) — Infowars’ revenues and website viewership spiked as Alex Jones alleged on his show in 2014 that the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was a hoax, according to documents shown to a jury Thursday.

Jones and his Free Speech Systems company are on trial in Connecticut in a lawsuit brought by an FBI agent who responded to the shooting and relatives of eight of the 20 first graders and six educators killed in the December 2012 massacre in Newtown. They say Jones inflicted emotional and psychological harm on them, and they have been threatened and harassed by Jones’ followers.

Jones has already been found liable for spreading the myth that the shooting never happened and the six-member jury in Waterbury will be deciding how much he and his company should pay the plaintiffs in damages. The trial started Tuesday and is expected to last a month.

Christopher Mattei, a lawyer for the families, showed internal Infowars documents detailing the revenue and website-visit spikes around the time of an article on Sept. 24, 2014, on the Infowars website that said no one died at Sandy Hook and Jones discussing the article on his show the next day.

The families’ lawsuit claims that Jones trafficked in lies to increase his audience and sales of the nutritional supplements, clothing and other merchandise he sells on the Infowars website and hawks on his web show. Jones and guests on his show said the shooting was staged with crisis actors as part of gun control efforts.

The discussion of revenue and web viewership came Thursday as Mattei spent a second day questioning Brittany Paz, a Connecticut lawyer hired by Jones to testify about his companies’ operations.

Documents showed daily revenues to the Infowars online store increased from $48,000 on Sept. 24 to more than $230,000 on Sept. 25. Total user sessions on the Infowars website, meanwhile, increased from about 543,000 on Sept. 23 to about 1 million on Sept. 24, the documents showed.

Paz also was asked about Infowars videos that show Jones and guests using lies and misinformation to claiming the massacre was staged. She acknowledged that much of what was said was not true.

In the videos, Jones says the school shooting was a “giant hoax” and “the fakest thing since the $3 bill.” He said there were aerial images of student actors running in circles in and out of the school when the images actually were of a nearby firehouse where people gathered after the shooting. He also claimed CNN was using green screens in fake interviews with people in Sandy Hook.

Mattei later showed an email from a company executive showing internal conflict within Infowars about continuing to discuss conspiracy theories about the school shooting.

“The Sandy Hook stuff is killing us,” Infowars editor Paul Watson wrote, asking why the company was risking its reputation and audience by harassing the parents of dead children.

Last month, a jury in Texas awarded the parents of one of the slain Sandy Hook children nearly $50 million in a similar lawsuit against Jones and his company.

Paz acknowledged that Infowars broadcasted misinformation. She also acknowledged that Jones did not check the qualifications of a guest who appeared numerous times on his show—- a conspiracy theorist who claimed to be a school security expert who had investigating the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado — even as Jones boasted of his credentials and Infowars received emails questioning the guest’s credibility.

Paz testified that she believes Jones and his companies have made at least $100 million in the decade since the massacre and Jones is now worth millions of dollars. Website traffic data reports run by Infowars employees and presented at the trial also show that by 2016, his show aired on 150 affiliate radio stations, and the Infowars website got 40 million page views a month.

Mattei showed Paz internal Infowars emails between employees sharing Google Analytics data. Paz earlier testified that she was told by Infowars employees that they didn’t use Google Analytics regularly to track website viewing data. After showing her the emails, Mattei asked if it was still her testimony that Infowars didn’t regularly use Google Analytics.

“I don’t know at this point,” she said.

Jones now says he believes the shooting happened, but he insists his comments were protected by free speech rights, which he cannot argue at trial because he has already been found liable for damages.

The families say the emotional and psychological harm to them was profound and persistent. Relatives say they were subjected to social media harassment, death threats, strangers videotaping them and their children, and the surreal pain of being told that they were faking their loss.

Jones’ lawyer, Norman Pattis, said in his opening statement Tuesday that any damages should be minimal and claimed the families were exaggerating the harm they say they have suffered.

On his Infowars show Thursday, Jones once again called the proceedings in Connecticut “a show trial.”

The judge “now has to carry out this fraud,” he said. “But across the legal community, people are just saying, ’My God, this is something worthy of Venezuela. This is unbelievable.’”

___

Find AP’s full coverage of the Alex Jones trial at: https://apnews.com/hub/alex-jones

CLIMATE CRISIS
Warming, other factors worsened Pakistan floods, study finds

By SETH BORENSTEIN

1 of 4

A displaced family wades through a flooded area after heavy rainfall, in Jaffarabad, a district of Pakistan's southwestern Baluchistan province, Aug. 24, 2022. A new study says human-caused climate change juiced the rainfall that triggered Pakistan's floods by up to 50%. But the authors of the Thursday, Sept. 15, study say other societal issues that make the country vulnerable and put people in harm's way are probably the biggest factor in the ongoing humanitarian disaster. (AP Photo/Zahid Hussain, File)

Climate change likely juiced rainfall by up to 50% late last month in two southern Pakistan provinces, but global warming wasn’t the biggest cause of the country’s catastrophic flooding that has killed more than 1,500 people, a new scientific analysis finds.

Pakistan’s overall vulnerability, including people living in harm’s way, is the chief factor in the disaster that at one point submerged one-third of the country under water, but human-caused “climate change also plays a really important role here,” said study senior author Friederike Otto, a climate scientist at Imperial College of London.

There are many ingredients to the still ongoing humanitarian crisis — some meteorological, some economic, some societal, some historic and construction oriented. Add to that weather records that don’t go back far enough in time.

With such complications and limitations, the team of international scientists looking at the disaster couldn’t quantify how much climate change had increased the likelihood and frequency of the flooding, said authors of the study. It was released Thursday but not yet peer reviewed.

What happened “would have been a disastrously high rainfall event without climate change, but it’s worse because of climate change,” Otto said. “And especially in this highly vulnerable region, small changes matter a lot.”

But other human factors that put people in harm’s way and weren’t adequate to control the water were even bigger influences.

“This disaster was the result of vulnerability that was constructed over many, many years,” said study team member Ayesha Siddiqi of the University of Cambridge.

August rainfall in the Sindh and Balochistan provinces -- together nearly the size of Spain -- was eight and nearly seven times normal amounts, while the country as a whole had three-and-a-half times its normal rainfall, according to the report by World Weather Attribution, a collection of mostly volunteer scientists from around the world who do real-time studies of extreme weather to look for the fingerprints of climate change.

The team looked at just the two provinces over five days and saw an increase of up to 50% in the intensity of rainfall that was likely due to climate change. They also looked at the entire Indus region over two months and saw up to a 30% increase in rainfall there.

The scientists not only examined records of past rains, which only go back to 1961, but they used computer simulations to compare what happened last month to what would have happened in a world without heat-trapping gases from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas — and that difference is what they could attribute to climate change. This is a scientifically valid technique, according to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.

Study co-author Fahad Saeed, a climate scientist at Climate Analytics and the Center for Climate Change and Sustainable Development in Islamabad, Pakistan, said numerous factors made this monsoon season much wetter than normal, including a La Nina, the natural cooling of part of the Pacific that alters weather worldwide.

But other factors had the signature of climate change, Saeed said. A nasty heat wave in the region earlier in the summer -- which was made 30 times more likely because of climate change -- increased the differential between land and water temperatures. That differential determines how much moisture goes from the ocean to the monsoon and means more of it drops.

And climate change seemed to slightly change the jet stream, storm tracks and where low pressure sits, bringing more rainfall for southern provinces than they usually get, Saeed said.

“Pakistan has not contributed much in terms of causing global climate change, but sure is having to deal with a massive amount of climate change consequences,” said University of Michigan environment dean Jonathan Overpeck, who wasn’t part of the study.

Overpeck and three other outside climate scientists said the study makes sense and is nuanced properly to bring in all risk factors.

The nuances help “avoid overinterpretation,” said Stanford University climate scientist Chris Field. “But we also want to avoid missing the main message -- human-caused climate change is increasing the risks of extreme events around the world, including the devastating 2022 Pakistan flooding.”
___

Follow AP’s climate and environment coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment

___

Follow Seth Borenstein on Twitter at @borenbears

___

Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

U$A GIVES BACK STOLEN FUNDS
US sets up Afghan relief fund with frozen central bank money

WITH STRINGS

By FATIMA HUSSEIN

yesterday

FILE - President Joe Biden speaks about the end of the war in Afghanistan from the State Dining Room of the White House, Aug. 31, 2021, in Washington. The U.S. and Swiss governments and Afghan economics experts say they'll transfer $3.5 billion in frozen funds from Afghanistan’s central bank to use for the country’s people as hunger grips every province there. The Taliban government will not be a part of the new Afghan Fund, which will maintain its account with the Bank for International Settlements in Switzerland. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)


WASHINGTON (AP) — A year after the tumultuous U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Biden administration said Wednesday it will transfer $3.5 billion in frozen Afghan central bank funds to benefit the Afghan people, as hunger grips every province there.

Funds will be dispersed after trustees of the new Afghan Fund meet to determine a timetable. The trustees are two Afghan economists, a U.S. government representative and a Swiss government representative.

Notably, the Taliban government will not have access to the fund, which will be held at the Bank for International Settlements in Switzerland. The bank in a news release said its role is “limited to providing banking services to and executing the instructions of the Board of Trustees of the Fund without involvement in the Fund’s governance or decision making.”

In the interim, Afghanistan’s central bank, which in February had $7 billion in frozen funds, “must demonstrate that it has the expertise, capacity, and independence to responsibly perform the duties of a central bank,” the U.S. Treasury and State departments said in a joint statement. “Robust safeguards have been put in place to prevent the funds from being used for illicit activity.”

International funding to Afghanistan was suspended and billions of dollars of the country’s assets abroad, mostly in the United States, were frozen after the Taliban took control of the country in August 2021 following the U.S. military’s withdrawal.

The World Bank says income and economic output in Afghanistan have dropped between 20% and 30%, imports have declined by roughly 40%, and 70% of Afghan households report they are unable to fully meet basic food or non-food needs.

In February, President Joe Biden issued an executive order that called for banks to provide $3.5 billion of the frozen money to a trust fund for distribution through humanitarian groups for Afghan relief and basic needs.

The other $3.5 billion will stay in the U.S. to finance payments from lawsuits by U.S. victims of terrorism that are still working their way through the courts, prompted by claims brought by family members of people killed on Sept 11, 2001.

“The Afghan Fund will help mitigate the economic challenges facing Afghanistan while protecting and preserving $3.5 billion in reserves from Da Afghanistan Bank (DAB), Afghanistan’s central bank, for the benefit of the people of Afghanistan,” Treasury Deputy Secretary Wally Adeyemo said.

He said the Taliban’s “repression and economic mismanagement” had exacerbated longstanding economic challenges for Afghanistan that had made the return of the funds untenable.

In a Tuesday letter to Afghanistan’s central bank, Adeyemo said until conditions for the central bank are met, their control of assets “would place them at unacceptable risk and jeopardize them as a source of support for the Afghan people.”

Shah Mehrabi, a Montgomery College economics professor, is one of the trustees of the new fund. He told The Associated Press that the money should be used primarily to maintain price stability in the country, rather than for humanitarian purposes.

“I think the purpose of board, as a member, is to address the liquidity and price stability issues in the country expeditiously, prior to a harsh winter,” he said. “There are ways we can provide relief so that Afghans are able to have food and energy and to perform their basic daily duties.”

Human Rights Watch said in August that Afghanistan’s humanitarian crisis cannot be effectively addressed unless the U.S. and other governments ease restrictions on the country’s banking sector to allow economic activity and humanitarian aid.

Nearly half the Afghan population — 18.9 million people — is estimated to be acutely food insecure between June and November 2022, the World Food Programme said. All 34 provinces in the country are facing some level of crisis or emergency levels of acute food insecurity.

Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman said the people of Afghanistan are facing humanitarian and economic crises born of “decades of conflict, severe drought, COVID-19, and endemic corruption.”

“Today, the United States and its partners take an important, concrete step forward in ensuring that additional resources can be brought to bear to reduce suffering and improve economic stability for the people of Afghanistan while continuing to hold the Taliban accountable,” Sherman said.

WikiLeaks founder’s family brings campaign to Mexico

By MARÍA VERZA

today

1 of 6

John Shipton Sr. and Gabriel Shipton the father and brother respectively of Julian Assange participate in an event sponsored by the Mexican ruling party Morena, at the Unión Telefónica headquarters, entitled "Freedom for Julian Asange: a global struggle," in Mexico City, Wednesday, Sept. 14, 2022. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)


MEXICO CITY (AP) — This week the objective was to insert mention of Julian Assange into a meeting between Mexico’s president and the United States’ top diplomat. Next week, it will be to have Australia’s prime minister bring it up with the U.S. president at Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral.

The efforts are part of the campaign by John Shipton, father of the WikiLeaks founder, to find allies and convince the U.S. to drop espionage charges against Assange, who remains in a British prison awaiting extradition to the U.S.

The journey by the septuagenarian Australian architect together with another son, Gabriel, brought them this week to Mexico. The country has become the family’s main ally in Latin America since President Andrés Manuel López Obrador offered Assange political asylum and called for the U.S. to allow him to seek refuge there.

“We call President López Obrador an ice-breaker,” because afterward the leaders of Chile, Colombia and Bolivia called for his release too, Gabriel Shipton said during the visit to Mexico. Among a packed scheduled of events, John Shipton received the key to the capital Wednesday on behalf of Assange, a ceremonial honor the city bestows on distinguished guests. The day before, he addressed Mexico’s Senate.

American prosecutors say Assange helped U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning steal classified diplomatic cables and military files that WikiLeaks later published, putting lives at risk. He faces 17 charges of espionage and one charge of computer misuse.

His defenders consider Assange a symbol of a free press and a fight for justice who exposed U.S. military wrongdoing in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Assange was arrested in London in 2010 at the request of Sweden pending a preliminary investigation into allegations of sexual assault, which he has denied. In 2012, he broke the conditions of his bail and sought refuge in Ecuador’s embassy where he stayed until being asked to leave in 2019. He was immediately arrested again.

When his father visited him in jail that year, Assange asked for help.

That led Shipton to launch his globetrotting campaign with Gabriel, trying to reach average people, because politicians want those people’s votes, he said.

They went from Australia to Europe, the United States and Mexico. Each politician’s statement in favor of Assange’s release, every headline, is oxygen for Assange, who has been held in a maximum security prison.

The effort has been all consuming, Shipton said in a Mexico City hotel, as he and Gabriel listed the day’s events, which included a protest at the U.S. embassy, a meeting with a government official, press interviews and phone calls, including one with Assange.

Those calls from prison cut after 10 minutes, said Shipton, who declined to say how often they speak or what they discuss. “I can’t report on conversations between father and son. This is not public,” he said.

Shipton was estranged from Assange until his 20s, according to a documentary called “Ithaka,” produced by Gabriel Shipton, which suggests a complicated relationship.

John Shipton smiled remembering Assange’s wedding in March to his lawyer Stella Moris, a day Shipton described as “like a flower in the desert.”

Uncomfortable with media, but conscious that he needs then, Shipton questions them constantly, telling them Assange’s case directly affects their ability to continue reporting freely.

His visit to Mexico will finish with his participation in Independence Day activities Thursday night and Friday. López Obrador invited Shipton to events with relatives of Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela and Ché Guevara, in what appeared to be an attempt to evoke emblematic figures of the 20th century.

The Shiptons plan to continue their efforts in Latin America next year, hoping that Brazil’s Luis Ignacio Lula da Silva returns to the presidency.

“You just take each moment as it comes and you do your very best you can, you don’t depend upon optimism, hope, you just do your work,” Shipton said, noting it’s a work that never ends.