NEW YORK — Three years ago, Erin Decker was a middle school librarian in Kissimmee, Florida, increasingly frustrated by the state’s book bans and worried that she couldn’t make a difference remaining in her job.

So, she and fellow librarian Tania Galiñanes thought of a way to fight back.

“We just put our heads together and decided a bookstore would help make sure students could get to books that were being pulled from shelves,” says Decker, whose White Rose Books & More opened last fall in Kissimmee. The store is named for a resistance group in Nazi Germany and features a section — ringed by yellow “caution” tape — dedicated to such banned works as Maia Kabobe’s Gender Queer, Jonathan Evison’s Lawn Boy and John Green’s Looking for Alaska.

White Rose Books is part of the ever-expanding and diversifying world of independent bookstores. Even as industry sales were slow in 2023, membership in the American Booksellers Association continued its years-long revival. It now stands at 2,433, more than 200 over the previous year and nearly double since 2016. Around 190 more stores are in the process of opening over the next two years, according to the ABA.

“Our numbers are really strong, and we have a solid, diverse pipeline of new stores to come,” says Allison Hill, the book association’s CEO. She cites a range of reasons for people opening stores, from opposing bans to championing diversity to pursuing new careers after the pandemic.

“Some are opening to give back to their community. And some still just love books,” she said during a phone interview this week.

Recent members include everyone from the romance-oriented That’s What She Read in Mount Ayr, Iowa; to Seven Stories in Shawnee, Kansas, managed by 15-year-old Halley Vincent; to more than 20 Black-owned shops.

In Pasadena, California, Octavia’s Bookshelf is named for the late Black science fiction author Octavia Butler and bills itself as “a space to find community, enjoy a cup of coffee, read, relax, find unique and specially curated products from artisans from around the world and in our neighborhood.” Leah Johnson, author of the prize-winning young adult novel You Should See Me In a Crown, was troubled by the surge in book bans and by what she saw as a shortage of outlets for diverse voices. Last year, she founded Loudmouth Books, one of several independent sellers to open in Indianapolis.

“I’m not a person who dreamed of opening a bookstore. I didn’t want to be anybody’s boss,” Johnson says. “But I saw a need and I had to fill it.”

Most of the new businesses are traditional “brick and mortar” retailers. But a “bookstore” can also mean a “pop-up” business like Loc’d & Lit, which has a mission to bring “the joy of reading to the Bronx,” the New York City borough that had been viewed by the industry as a “desert” for its scarcity of bookstores. Other new stores are online only, among them the Be More Literature Children’s Bookshop and the used books seller Liberation Is Lit. Nick Pavlidis, a publisher, ghost writer and trainer of ghost writers, launched the online Beantown Books in 2023 and has since opened a small physical store in suburban Boston.

“My goal is to move into a larger space and create a friendly place for authors to host events,” he says, adding that he’d like to eventually own several stores.

Independent bookselling has never been dependably profitable, and Hill notes various concerns — rising costs, dwindling aid from the pandemic and the ongoing force of Amazon.com, which remains the industry’s dominate retailer even after the e-book market stalled a decade ago. Last month, the booksellers association filed a motion with the Federal Trade Commission, seeking to join the antitrust suit against Amazon that the FTC announced in 2023. The motion states in part that Amazon is able to offer prices “that ABA members cannot match except by forgoing a sustainable margin, or incurring a loss.”

Just opening a store requires initiative and a willingness to take risks. Decker says that she and Galiñanes had to use retirement money because lenders wouldn’t provide credit until they were actually in business. The owner of Octavia’s Bookshelf, Nikki High, is a former communications director for Trader Joe’s who relied on crowdfunding and her own savings to get her store started.

“Even with tons of planning, and asking questions and running numbers, it’s been very difficult,” High says. “I don’t know that I could have prepared myself for what a shrewd business person you have to be to making a living out of this.”

High cites a variety of challenges and adjustments — convincing customers they don’t have to order items from Amazon.com, supplementing sales by offering tote bags and journals and other non-book items. Knowing which books to stock has also proved an education.

“I would read a book and think it’s the best thing ever and order a bunch of copies, and everybody else is like, ‘No, I don’t want that book,'” she explains. “And when we started, I wanted to be everything for everybody. We had a ton of different categories. But I found out that short stories and poetry almost never sell for us. People want general fiction, bestsellers, children’s books. Classics sell very well, books by James Baldwin and Toni Morrison and bell hooks and June Jordan.”

“It’s incredibly important to listen to your customers.”
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detroit — Cars, trucks and SUVs in the U.S. keep getting older, hitting a record average age of 12.6 years in 2024 as people hang on to their vehicles largely because new ones cost so much. 

S&P Global Mobility, which tracks state vehicle registration data nationwide, said Wednesday that the average vehicle age grew about two months from last year’s record. 

But the growth in average age is starting to slow as new vehicle sales start to recover from pandemic-related shortages of parts, including computer chips. The average increased by three months in 2023. 

Still, with an average U.S. new-vehicle selling price of just over $45,000 last month, many can’t afford to buy new — even though prices are down more than $2,000 from the peak in December of 2022, according to J.D. Power. 

“It’s prohibitively high for a lot of households now,” said Todd Campau, aftermarket leader for S&P Global Mobility. “So I think consumers are being painted into the corner of having to keep the vehicle on the road longer.” 

Other factors include people waiting to see if they want to buy an electric vehicle or go with a gas-electric hybrid or a gasoline vehicle. Many, he said, are worried about the charging network being built up so they can travel without worrying about running out of battery power. Also, he said, vehicles are made better these days and simply are lasting a long time. 

New vehicle sales in the U.S. are starting to return to pre-pandemic levels, with prices and interest rates the big influencing factors rather than illness and supply-chain problems, Campau said. He said he expects sales to hit around 16 million this year, up from 15.6 million last year and 13.9 million in 2022. 

As more new vehicles are sold and replace aging vehicles in the nation’s fleet of 286 million passenger vehicles, the average age should stop growing and stabilize, Campau said. And unlike immediately after the pandemic, more lower-cost vehicles are being sold, which likely will bring down the average price, he said. 

People keeping vehicles longer is good news for the local auto repair shop. About 70% of vehicles on the road are six or more years old, he said, beyond manufacturer warranties. 

Those who are able to keep their rides for multiple years usually get the oil changed regularly and follow manufacturer maintenance schedules, Campau noted.
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NEW YORK — Richard M. Sherman, one half of the prolific, award-winning pair of brothers who helped form millions of childhoods by penning the instantly memorable songs for Mary Poppins, The Jungle Book and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang — as well as the most-played tune on Earth, It’s a Small World (After All) — has died. He was 95.

Sherman, together with his late brother Robert, won two Academy Awards for Walt Disney’s 1964 smash Mary Poppins — best score and best song, Chim Chim Cher-ee. They also picked up a Grammy for best movie or TV score. Robert Sherman died in London at age 86 in 2012.

The Walt Disney Co. announced that Sherman died Saturday in a Los Angeles hospital of an age-related illness.

“Generations of moviegoers and theme park guests have been introduced to the world of Disney through the Sherman brothers’ magnificent and timeless songs. Even today, the duo’s work remains the quintessential lyrical voice of Walt Disney,” the company said in a remembrance posted on its website.

Their hundreds of credits as joint lyricist and composer also include the films Winnie the Pooh, The Slipper and the Rose, Snoopy Come Home, Charlotte’s Web and The Magic of Lassie. Their Broadway musicals included 1974’s Over Here! and stagings of Mary Poppins and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang in the mid-2000s.

“Something good happens when we sit down together and work,” Richard Sherman told The Associated Press in a 2005 joint interview. “We’ve been doing it all our lives. Practically since college we’ve been working together.”

Their awards include 23 gold and platinum albums and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. They became the only Americans ever to win first prize at the Moscow Film Festival for Tom Sawyer in 1973 and were inducted into the Songwriters’ Hall of Fame in 2005.

President George W. Bush awarded them the National Medal of Arts in 2008, commended for music that “has helped bring joy to millions.”

Most of the songs the Shermans wrote — in addition to being catchy and playful — work on multiple levels for different ages, something they learned from Disney.

“He once told us, early on in our career, ‘Don’t insult the kid — don’t write down to the kid. And don’t write just for the adult.’ So we write for Grandpa and the 4-year-old — and everyone in between — and all see it on a different level,” Richard Sherman said.

The Shermans began a decade-long partnership with Disney during the 1960s after having written hit pop songs like Tall Paul for ex-Mouseketeer Annette Funicello and You’re Sixteen, later recorded by Ringo Starr.

They wrote more than 150 songs at Disney, including the soundtracks for such films as The Sword and the Stone, The Parent Trap, Bedknobs and Broomsticks, The Jungle Book, The Aristocrats and The Tigger Movie.

It’s a Small World — which accompanies visitors to Disney theme parks’ boat ride sung by animatronic dolls representing world cultures — is believed to be the most performed composition in the world. It first debuted at the 1964-65 New York World’s Fair pavilion ride.

The two brothers credited their father, composer Al Sherman, with challenging them to write songs and for their love of wordsmithing.

The Shermans teased songs out of each other, brainstorming titles and then trying to top each other with improvements. “Being brothers, we sort of short-cut each other,” Richard Sherman said. “We can almost look at each other and know, ‘Hey, you’re onto something, kiddo.'”

Away from the piano, the two raised families and pursued their own interests, yet still lived close to each other in Beverly Hills and continued working well into their 70s.

Richard Sherman is survived by his wife, Elizabeth, and their two children: Gregory and Victoria. He also is survived by a daughter, Lynda, from a previous marriage.
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NEW ORLEANS — First-of-its-kind legislation that classifies two abortion-inducing drugs as controlled and dangerous substances was signed into law Friday by Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry. 

The Republican governor announced his signing of the bill in Baton Rouge a day after it gained final legislative passage in the state Senate. 

The measure affects the drugs mifepristone and misoprostol, which are used in medication abortions, the most common method of abortion in the U.S. 

Opponents of the bill included many physicians who said the drugs have other critical reproductive health care uses, and that changing the classification could make it harder to prescribe the medications. 

Supporters of the bill said it would protect expectant mothers from coerced abortions, though they cited only one example of that happening, in the state of Texas. 

The bill passed as abortion opponents await a final decision from the U.S. Supreme Court on an effort to restrict access to mifepristone. 

The new law will take effect October 1. 

The bill began as a measure to create the crime of “coerced criminal abortion by means of fraud.” An amendment adding the abortion drugs to the Schedule IV classification of Louisiana’s Uniform Controlled Dangerous Substances Law was pushed by Sen. Thomas Pressly, a Republican from Shreveport and the main sponsor of the bill. 

“Requiring an abortion inducing drug to be obtained with a prescription and criminalizing the use of an abortion drug on an unsuspecting mother is nothing short of common-sense,” Landry said in a statement. 

Current Louisiana law already requires a prescription for both drugs and makes it a crime to use them to induce an abortion, in most cases. The bill would make it harder to obtain the pills. Other Schedule IV drugs include the opioid tramadol and a group of depressants known as benzodiazepines. 

Knowingly possessing the drugs without a valid prescription would carry a punishment including hefty fines and jail time. Language in the bill appears to carve out protections for pregnant women who obtain the drug without a prescription for their own consumption. 

The classification would require doctors to have a specific license to prescribe the drugs, and the drugs would have to be stored in certain facilities that in some cases could end up being located far from rural clinics. 

In addition to inducing abortions, mifepristone and misoprostol have other common uses, such as treating miscarriages, inducing labor and stopping hemorrhaging. 

More than 200 doctors in the state signed a letter to lawmakers warning that the measure could produce a “barrier to physicians’ ease of prescribing appropriate treatment” and cause unnecessary fear and confusion among both patients and doctors. The physicians warn that any delay to obtaining the drugs could lead to worsening outcomes in a state that has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the country. 

Pressly said he pushed the legislation because of what happened to his sister Catherine Herring, of Texas. In 2022, Herring’s husband slipped her seven misoprostol pills in an effort to induce an abortion without her knowledge or consent. 
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ATLANTA — A record was broken ahead of the Memorial Day weekend for the number of airline travelers screened at U.S. airports, the Transportation Security Administration said Saturday. 

More than 2.9 million travelers were screened at U.S. airports on Friday, surpassing a previous record set last year on the Sunday after Thanksgiving, according to the transportation security agency. 

“Officers have set a new record for most travelers screened in a single day!” the TSA tweeted. “We recommend arriving early.” 

The third busiest day on record was set on Thursday when just under 2.9 million travelers were screened at U.S. airports. 

In Atlanta, the world’s busiest airport had its busiest day ever. Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport broke a traffic record on Thursday when 111,000 passengers, airlines crew and airport employees were screened at security checkpoints. The second busiest day followed on Friday when 109,960 people were screened, according to the TSA. 

With 104.6 million passengers, the Atlanta airport was the busiest in the world last year, according to Airports Council International. 

U.S. airlines expect to carry a record number of passengers this summer. Their trade group estimates that 271 million travelers will fly between June 1 and August 31, breaking the record of 255 million set last summer. 

AAA predicted this will be the busiest start-of-summer weekend in nearly 20 years, with 43.8 million people expected to roam at least 50 miles from home between Thursday and Monday — 38 million of them taking to the roads. 

The annual expression of wanderlust that accompanies the start of the summer travel season is happening at a time when Americans tell pollsters they are worried about the economy and the direction of the country. 

In what had long been celebrated every May 30 to honor America’s fallen soldiers, Memorial Day officially became a federal holiday in 1971, observed on the last Monday in May. 
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HONOLULU, HAWAII — A former CIA officer and contract linguist for the FBI accused of spying for China for at least a decade pleaded guilty Friday in a federal courtroom in Honolulu.

Alexander Yuk Ching Ma, 72, has been in custody since his arrest in August 2020. The U.S. Justice Department said in a court filing it amassed “a war chest of damning evidence” against him, including an hourlong video of Ma and an older relative — also a former CIA officer — providing classified information to intelligence officers with China’s Ministry of State Security in 2001.

The video shows Ma counting the $50,000 received from the Chinese agents for his service, prosecutors said.

During a sting operation, he accepted thousands of dollars in cash in exchange for past espionage activities, and he told an undercover FBI agent posing as a Chinese intelligence officer that he wanted to see the “motherland” succeed, prosecutors said.

The secrets he was accused of providing included information about CIA sources and assets, international operations, secure communication practices and operational tradecraft, the charging documents said.

As part of an agreement with prosecutors, Ma pleaded guilty to a count of conspiracy to gather or deliver national defense information to a foreign government. The deal calls for a 10-year sentence, but a judge will have the final say at Ma’s sentencing, which is scheduled for September 11. Without the deal, he faced life in prison.

Ma was born in Hong Kong, moved to Honolulu in 1968 and became a U.S. citizen in 1975. He joined the CIA in 1982, was assigned overseas the following year and resigned in 1989. He held a top-secret security clearance, according to court documents.

Ma lived and worked in Shanghai, China, before returning to Hawaii in 2001. He was hired as a contract linguist in the FBI’s Honolulu field office in 2004, and prosecutors say that over the following six years, he regularly copied, photographed and stole classified documents. He often took them on trips to China, returning with thousands of dollars in cash and expensive gifts, such as a new set of golf clubs, prosecutors said.

In court Friday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Ken Sorenson revealed that Ma’s hiring as a part-time contract linguist was a “ruse” to monitor his contact with Chinese intelligence officers.

The FBI had been aware of Ma’s ties with the intelligence officers and “made the determination to notionally hire the defendant to work at an FBI off-site location in Honolulu,” the plea agreement said.

In 2006, while Ma was living in Hawaii, Chinese intelligence officers sent him photos of people they were interested in, Sorenson said, and Ma contacted the co-conspirator relative and persuaded him to reveal at least two of the identities.

Ma, in pleading guilty, said everything Sorenson described is true. Ma said he had signed nondisclosure agreements that he knew would be in effect even after leaving the CIA and that he knew the information he was providing to the Chinese intelligence officials could harm the United States or help a foreign nation.

In 2021, Ma’s former defense attorney told a judge Ma believed he was suffering from the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease and was having trouble remembering things.

A defense motion noted that Ma’s older brother developed Alzheimer’s 10 years prior and was completely disabled by the disease. The brother is referred to as the co-conspirator in the indictment against Ma, but prosecutors didn’t charge him because of his incompetency due to Alzheimer’s, the motion said.

The co-conspirator is now dead, Sorenson said in court Friday.

Last year a judge found Ma competent and to not be suffering from a major mental disease, disorder or defect.

Ma’s plea agreement with prosecutors also says he will “provide more detailed facts relating to this case during debriefings with Government representatives,” and submit to polygraph examinations.

“The defendant understands and agrees that his cooperation obligation represents a lifetime commitment by the defendant to the United States to cooperate as described in this agreement,” the court document said.
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If you ask the U.S. presidential candidates who’s the most religious, chances are both would say, “I am.” VOA’s senior Washington correspondent Carolyn Presutti looks at the attitudes and practices of President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump toward matters of faith.
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Washington — U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin will meet his Chinese counterpart, the Pentagon announced Friday, after Beijing carried out war games around Taiwan in a sign to the U.S.-backed democracy’s new leader.

The Pentagon said that Austin would meet Chinese Admiral Dong Jun when they attend the May 31-June 2 Shangri-La Dialogue, an annual gathering of defense officials around the world.

China this week encircled Taiwan with warships and fighter jets in a test of its ability to seize the island, which it claims. The drills followed the inauguration of President Lai Ching-te, who has vowed to safeguard self-ruling Taiwan’s democracy.

Austin’s meeting with Dong had been widely expected since they spoke by telephone in April, in what were the first substantive talks between the two powers’ defense chiefs in nearly 18 months.

President Joe Biden’s administration and China have been stepping up communication to ease friction, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken visiting Beijing and Shanghai last month.

But defense talks had lagged behind until Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed to a resumption of military dialogue during a summit with Biden in California in November.

Austin will also travel next week to Cambodia for talks with defense ministers of the Southeast Asian bloc ASEAN and end his trip in France, where he will join President Joe Biden in commemorations of the 80th anniversary of D-Day.

The trip was announced even though Austin late Friday handed over duties for about two-and-a-half hours to his deputy, Kathleen Hicks, due to his latest medical procedure.

Austin is a key figure in Western efforts to support Ukraine against a Russian offensive.

He “underwent a successful, elective, and minimally invasive follow-up non-surgical procedure” related to a previously reported bladder issue at the Walter Reed military hospital in Washington, Pentagon spokesman Major General Pat Ryder said.

During the procedure, Hicks served as acting secretary of defense, and Austin “resumed his functions and duties” as defense secretary later Friday evening and returned home, Ryder said.

The transparency comes after a furor when Austin vanished from public view for cancer treatment in December and again in January when he suffered complications.

A spotlight-shunning retired general, Austin, 70, said later that he was a “pretty private guy” and did not want to burden others with his problems.

But Biden’s Republican rivals went on the attack after it was revealed that Austin did not inform the chain of command.

Austin widely informed the government and public when he returned to the hospital in February for the bladder issue connected with Friday’s procedure.
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NORFOLK, Virginia — Memorial Day is supposed to be about mourning the nation’s fallen service members, but it’s come to anchor the unofficial start of summer and a long weekend of discounts on anything from mattresses to lawn mowers. 

But for people such as Manuel Castaneda Jr., the day is very personal. He lost his father, a U.S. Marine who served in Vietnam, in an accident in 1966 in California while his father was training other Marines. 

“It isn’t just the specials. It isn’t just the barbecue,” Castaneda told The Associated Press in a discussion about Memorial Day last year. 

Castaneda also served in the Marines and Army National Guard, from which he knew men who died in combat. But he tries not to judge others who spend the holiday differently: “How can I expect them to understand the depth of what I feel when they haven’t experienced anything like that?” 

1. Why is Memorial Day celebrated? 

It’s a day of reflection and remembrance of those who died while serving in the U.S. military, according to the Congressional Research Service. The holiday is observed in part by the National Moment of Remembrance, which encourages all Americans to pause at 3 p.m. for a moment of silence. 

1. What are the origins of Memorial Day? 

The holiday stems from the American Civil War, which killed more than 600,000 service members — both Union and Confederate — between 1861 and 1865. 

There’s little controversy over the first national observance of what was then called Decoration Day. It occurred May 30, 1868, after an organization of Union veterans called for decorating war graves with flowers, which were in bloom. 

The practice was already widespread on a local level. Waterloo, New York, began a formal observance on May 5, 1866, and was later proclaimed to be the holiday’s birthplace. 

Yet Boalsburg, Pennsylvania, traced its first observance to October 1864, according to the Library of Congress. And women in some Confederate states were decorating graves before the war’s end. 

David Blight, a Yale history professor, points to May 1, 1865, when as many as 10,000 people, many of them Black, held a parade, heard speeches and dedicated the graves of Union dead in Charleston, South Carolina. 

A total of 267 Union troops had died at a Confederate prison and were buried in a mass grave. After the war, members of Black churches buried them in individual graves. 

“What happened in Charleston does have the right to claim to be first, if that matters,” Blight told The Associated Press in 2011. 

In 2021, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel cited the story in a Memorial Day speech in Hudson, Ohio. The ceremony’s organizers turned off his microphone because they said it wasn’t relevant to honoring the city’s veterans. The event’s organizers later resigned. 

1. Has Memorial Day always been a source of contention? 

Someone has always lamented the holiday’s drift from its original meaning. 

As early as 1869, The New York Times wrote that the holiday could become “sacrilegious” and no longer “sacred” if it focuses more on pomp, dinners and oratory. 

In 1871, abolitionist Frederick Douglass feared Americans were forgetting the Civil War’s impetus — enslavement — when he gave a Decoration Day speech at Arlington National Cemetery. 

“We must never forget that the loyal soldiers who rest beneath this sod flung themselves between the nation and the nation’s destroyers,” Douglass said. 

His concerns were well-founded, said Ben Railton, a professor of English and American studies at Fitchburg State University in Massachusetts. Even though roughly 180,000 Black men served in the Union Army, the holiday in many communities would essentially become “white Memorial Day,” especially after the rise of the Jim Crow South, Railton told the AP in 2023. 

Meanwhile, how the day was spent — at least by the nation’s elected officials — could draw scrutiny for years after the Civil War. In the 1880s, then-President Grover Cleveland was said to have gone fishing — and “people were appalled,” Matthew Dennis, an emeritus history professor at the University of Oregon, told the AP last year. 

By 1911, the Indianapolis 500 held its inaugural race on May 30, drawing 85,000 spectators. A report from The Associated Press made no mention of the holiday — or any controversy. 

1. How has Memorial Day changed? 

Dennis said Memorial Day’s potency diminished somewhat with the addition of Armistice Day, which marked World War I’s end on Nov. 11, 1918. Armistice Day became a national holiday by 1938 and was renamed Veterans Day in 1954. 

An act of Congress changed Memorial Day from every May 30th to the last Monday in May in 1971. Dennis said the creation of the three-day weekend recognized that Memorial Day had long been transformed into a more generic remembrance of the dead, as well as a day of leisure. 

In 1972, Time magazine said the holiday had become “a three-day nationwide hootenanny that seems to have lost much of its original purpose.” 

1. Why is Memorial Day tied to sales and travel? 

Even in the 19th century, grave ceremonies were followed by leisure activities such as picnicking and foot races, Dennis said. 

The holiday also evolved alongside baseball and the automobile, the five-day work week and summer vacation, according to the 2002 book “A History of Memorial Day: Unity, Discord and the Pursuit of Happiness.” 

In the mid-20th century, a small number of businesses began to open defiantly on the holiday. 

Once the holiday moved to Monday, “the traditional barriers against doing business began to crumble,” authors Richard Harmond and Thomas Curran wrote. 

These days, Memorial Day sales and traveling are deeply woven into the nation’s muscle memory. 

Jason Redman, a retired Navy SEAL who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, told the AP last year that he honors the friends he’s lost. Thirty names are tattooed on his arm “for every guy that I personally knew that died.” 

He wants Americans to remember the fallen — but also to enjoy themselves, knowing lives were sacrificed to forge the holiday.
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white house — The Biden administration denounced an International Criminal Court announcement this week that it is pursuing arrest warrants for Israeli and Hamas leaders over alleged war crimes during Israel’s military campaign in Gaza and the militant group’s October 7 attack on Israel.  

“We made our position clear on the ICC,” President Joe Biden said Thursday. “We don’t recognize their jurisdiction, the way it’s been exercised, and it’s that simple. We don’t think there’s an equivalence between what Israel did and what Hamas did.” 

International law experts say that the relationship between the U.S. and ICC has never been simple. 

The ICC was established in 1998 by the Rome Statute and tasked with prosecuting individuals responsible for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. It was signed by the U.S. in December 2000, by U.S. lead negotiator David Scheffer. 

The U.S., fearing that Americans would be vulnerable to prosecution abroad, never ratified the treaty. 

More than 120 countries have ratified it, making them member states. 

The ICC has jurisdiction over atrocity crimes committed by citizens of member states, or committed in member states, or in nonmember states that grant it jurisdiction. It also has jurisdiction over crimes committed in nonmember states that are referred to it by the U.N. Security Council. 

The U.S. maintains that the ICC has no jurisdiction over citizens of non-ICC states. Israel is not an ICC member; therefore, the Biden administration said, the court has no right to issue arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. 

Stephen Rademaker, former chief counsel of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and assistant secretary of state in the George W. Bush administration, agrees.

“The fundamental principle undergirding all treaty-based international law is the principle of consent,” he told VOA.  

Under the U.S. argument, which Scheffer calls the “immunity interpretation,” the same standards should apply to all non-ICC states.  

However, various U.S. administrations have supported some ICC investigations. 

The George W. Bush administration supported the ICC’s 2002 investigations into allegations of atrocities committed in the Darfur region of Sudan. The Obama administration supported the ICC’s case in Libya in 2011, which accused the government of Moammar Gadhafi of war crimes and crimes against humanity. 

Sudan and Libya were non-ICC states, but under the Rome Statute, the U.N. Security Council had the authority to refer those cases to the ICC for investigation, Rademaker said.

The ICC began its investigations of Russian officials for alleged atrocities in Ukraine in 2023, and of Israeli officials and Hamas leaders this month. Russia and Israel are non-ICC states, and neither investigation was authorized by the U.N. Security Council, Rademaker said.

“So the U.N. Charter cannot be cited as a basis of consent by them to action by the ICC,” he said.

However, while it rejected the ICC’s case against Israeli officials, the Biden administration supported the ICC’s investigations of Russian suspects. Biden has used the word “genocide” to describe Russian atrocities in Ukraine and has described Russian President Vladimir Putin as a war criminal who should be put on trial. 

When asked to explain the distinction, White House national security spokesman John Kirby said that Putin’s war aim was “to kill innocent Ukrainian people.”  

“He’s deliberately targeting civilian infrastructure with the aim of killing innocent civilians, and it’s just baked into his operational strategy,” Kirby told reporters Monday. “As we have said before, that is not what the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] is doing.” 

Hypocrisy alleged

Critics say this difference in the Biden administration’s posture amounts to hypocrisy.  

“There is an obvious inconsistency,” said Adil Haque, a law professor at Rutgers University who writes on international law and the ethics of armed combat. 

“It is hard to get around,” he told VOA. “And it’s easier to see when you contrast it with European countries which are allies of Israel but also parties to the ICC statute,” he said, referring to Germany, which said it would execute the arrest warrant on German soil despite disagreeing with the decision. 

While the contradiction is apparent under the Biden administration, selective U.S. engagement with the ICC began decades ago. 

In 2002, George W. Bush signed into law the American Servicemembers’ Protection Act, which authorizes the U.S. president to use “all means necessary and appropriate to bring about the release of any U.S. or allied personnel being detained or imprisoned by, on behalf of, or at the request of the International Criminal Court.”  

The Obama administration rejected the ICC’s preliminary examinations of the war in Afghanistan, including into alleged atrocity crimes committed by the Taliban, Islamic State group and U.S. coalition forces. It also opposed the court as it began pursuing war crimes charges against Israeli officials. 

While the Bush and Obama administrations would apply a case-by-case approach to the ICC, under the Trump administration, U.S. “hostility hit its apex,” said Kip Hale, an attorney specializing in atrocity crimes accountability. He said ICC investigations into Afghanistan and “Israel-Palestine” prompted the Trump administration to level sanctions against then-ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and one of her senior staff and to threaten other ICC staff and their families with visa bans and other punitive actions. 

In the case of investigating Russian atrocities in Ukraine, the Biden administration changed provisions under the American Servicemembers’ Protection Act and the Foreign Relations Authorization Act of 2001 to allow for information sharing, funding and other types of support for the ICC, Hale told VOA.  

“Unfortunately, the criteria is who are your allies and who are your rivals,” he said, adding that geopolitical expediency often dictates the behavior of all states, not just the U.S. 

ICC judges are now reviewing evidence presented by ICC prosecutor Karim Khan, who made the decision to pursue arrest warrants with the advice of a panel of international legal experts that included prominent human rights lawyer Amal Clooney. 

“We unanimously conclude that there are reasonable grounds to believe that Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif and Ismail Haniyeh have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity, including hostage-taking, murder and crimes of sexual violence,” Clooney said in a statement. 

“We unanimously conclude that there are reasonable grounds to believe that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity including starvation as a method of warfare, murder, persecution and extermination.” 

Netanyahu called the ICC’s move against him and his defense minister absurd and said that he rejected “with disgust” the comparison between Israel and Hamas. 

ICJ decision on Rafah 

On Friday, the United Nations’ top court, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), ordered Israel to immediately halt its military offensive in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, as part of proceedings against Israel brought by South Africa in December.  

Israel doesn’t accept the ICJ’s jurisdiction and is unlikely to comply with the order. It maintains that its military campaign is a “defensive and just war” to eliminate Hamas and to secure the release of hostages and that it is “consistent with its moral values and in compliance with international law.” 

The ICJ was established by the U.N. Charter to settle disputes between states and advise the U.N. on legal matters. It does not have jurisdiction to try individuals. 

While the ICJ’s legal jurisdiction is separate from that of the ICC, Friday’s ICJ decision can impact the ICC’s proceedings, said Oona Hathaway, professor of international law at Yale Law School and member of the Advisory Committee on International Law for the Legal Adviser at the U.S. Department of State. 

“ICJ can’t enforce its orders, that’s true. But it doesn’t mean that there aren’t going to be consequences,” Hathaway told VOA. “If we see Israel refuse to abide by the decision of the International Court of Justice, you could very well see future charges in the International Criminal Court criminal charges,” she said.  

This could include the ICC prosecutor expanding his request for arrest warrants against Israeli leaders to include charges of genocide, she said. 

Hathaway added that other consequences might include states withdrawing their military, financial and diplomatic support for Israel’s war effort, which could further complicate the Biden administration’s effort to continue backing its ally.

Margaret Besheer and Natasha Mozgovaya contributed to this report.
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Indigenous fashion designers gathered in the American Southwest to celebrate couture and creativity at the first ever Native Fashion Week. Gustavo Martinez Contreras has our story from Santa Fe, New Mexico.
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Women’s soccer in the U.S. has been on the rise, bringing more girls than ever into the fold. Thai American Madison Casteen embraced soccer at a young age and aims to be one of the few Asian Americans to break into the professional leagues. Warangkana Chomchuen has the story, narrated by Neetikarn Kamlangwan.
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SEQUOIA NATIONAL PARK, California — High in the evergreen canopy of General Sherman, the world’s largest tree, researchers searched for evidence of an emerging threat to giant sequoias: bark beetles.

The climbers descended the towering 2,200-year-old tree with good news on Tuesday.

“The General Sherman tree is doing fine right now,” said Anthony Ambrose, executive director of the Ancient Forest Society, who led the expedition. “It seems to be a very healthy tree that’s able to fend off any beetle attack.”

It was the first time climbers had scaled the iconic 85-meter sequoia tree, which draws tourists from around the world to Sequoia National Park.

Giant sequoias, the Earth’s largest living things, have survived for thousands of years in California’s western Sierra Nevada range, the only place where the species is native.

But as the climate grows hotter and drier, giant sequoias previously thought to be almost indestructible are increasingly threatened by extreme heat, drought and wildfires.

In 2020 and 2021, record-setting wildfires killed as much as 20% of the world’s 75,000 mature sequoias, according to park officials.

“The most significant threat to giant sequoias is climate-driven wildfires,” said Ben Blom, director of stewardship and restoration at Save the Redwoods League. “But we certainly don’t want to be caught by surprise by a new threat, which is why we’re studying these beetles now.”

But researchers are growing more worried about bark beetles, which didn’t pose a serious threat in the past.

The beetles are native to California and have co-existed with sequoias for thousands of years. But only recently have they been able to kill the trees. Scientists say they recently discovered about 40 sequoia trees that have died from beetle infestations, mostly within the national parks.

“We’re documenting some trees that are actually dying from kind of a combination of drought and fire that have weakened them to a point where they’re not able to defend themselves from the beetle attack,” Ambrose said.

The beetles attack the trees from the canopy, boring into branches and working their way down the trunk. If left unchecked, the tiny beetles can kill a tree within six months.

That’s why park officials allowed Ambrose and his colleagues to climb General Sherman. They conducted the tree health inspection as journalists and visitors watched them pull themselves up ropes dangling from the canopy. They examined the branches and trunk, looking for the tiny holes that indicate beetle activity.

But it’s not possible to climb every sequoia tree to directly inspect the canopy in person. That’s why they’re also testing whether drones equipped with sensors and aided by satellite imagery can be used to monitor and detect beetle infestations on a larger scale within the forests.

Tuesday’s health inspection of General Sherman was organized by the Giant Sequoia Lands Coalition, a group of government agencies, Native tribes and environmental groups. They hope to establish a health monitoring program for the towering trees.

If they discover beetle infestations, officials say, they could try to combat the attacks by spraying water, removing branches or using chemical treatments.

Bark beetles have ravaged pine and fir forests throughout the Western United States in recent years, but they previously didn’t pose a threat to giant sequoias, which can live 3,000 years.

“They have really withstood insect attacks for a lot of years. So why now? Why are we seeing this change?” said Clay Jordan, superintendent for Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks. “There’s a lot that we need to learn in order to ensure good stewardship of these trees for a long time.”
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US President Joe Biden lavished Kenyan President William Ruto with more than just pomp and polish on his first state visit: On Thursday, Biden announced he would make the East African nation a major non-NATO ally – the first sub-Saharan nation to receive that status. The move signals the shifting of US security cooperation to East Africa right as US troops prepare to depart Niger. VOA’s Anita Powell reports from the White House.
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The U.S. assertion this week that Russia has launched a satellite capable of inspecting and destroying other satellites prompted a denial from the Kremlin and concern from U.S. lawmakers. VOA Congressional Correspondent Katherine Gypson reports. Camera: Saqib Ul Islam.
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Bangkok — Interviews have begun with Myanmar refugees living in Thailand who are eligible for a new resettlement program in the United States, the Thai government said.

Thailand said it hopes the first group may get to move by the end of the year.

Some 90,000 refugees live in nine camps on the Thai side of the border to escape fighting between Myanmar’s military and ethnic minority rebel armies vying for autonomy. Some of the refugees were born in the camps, which started to form in the mid-1980s, and many have lived in them for decades.

Persistent fighting in Myanmar, amplified by a military coup in February 2021, has kept most from returning home.

Aiming to give the refugees a safe way out of the camps, Thailand, the United States and the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees announced the resettlement plan in May 2023.

One year on, Thailand’s Ministry of Interior says that the Thai government and UNHCR have finished checking the personal information of the refugees to verify their eligibility for the program. More than 80,000 refugees were deemed eligible, and nearly all of them told officials they wanted to resettle.

“After that, the U.S. team went to the first two camps for interviews, which have already been done,” Zcongklod Khawjang, an interior ministry official in charge of overseeing the resettlement program, told VOA this week.

The two camps — Ban Don Yang and Tham Hin — are among the smallest of nine and host about 8,750 refugees combined.

Zcongklod said the U.S. Embassy in Thailand has not told the Thai government when the authorized refugees would be resettled or when interviews in the other seven camps would begin. But he added that Thailand was expecting the “first batch” to move to the U.S. sometime this year.

Hayso Thako, a joint secretary with the Karen Refugee Committee, one of the charities working in the camps, said he received the same message from the UNHCR at a meeting in March.

“They said most probably the first group would be able to leave by the end, almost the end of this year,” he said.

The UNHCR declined to comment on when resettlement might begin and referred the question to the United States. The U.S. Embassy in Bangkok declined to provide a time frame.

“Resettlement operations are ongoing in cooperation with the UNHCR and the Royal Thai Government,” the U.S. Embassy told VOA by email, attributing the comment to “a U.S. official.”

The embassy also would not say how many of the 80,000-plus eligible refugees the U.S. was prepared to take in, either annually or in total. Zcongklod said the embassy has not provided the Thai government with those figures, either.

The Border Consortium, a network of charities that coordinate much of the international aid that reached the camps, said it has not been provided with official figures but said plans for the program appear to have been scaled down over time.

“Figures have changes. At the beginning, it was this number of people who could be resettled … and maybe now it could be a lower number of people who could be resettled,” Leon de Riedmatten, executive director of The Border Consortium, told VOA.

Even so, he said, “It’s important for the residents in the camps themselves that there is still the possibility of resettlement. I think this is the main message, even if it’s not going to be so many people who are going to be resettled to the United States.”

Thailand has denied the refugees a regular path to gaining permanent legal residence and keeps tight control over their movements in and out of the camps.

Myanmar’s 2021 coup brought the country’s brief experiment with democracy to a halt, plunging it into civil war and dashing hopes that the refugees could return safely anytime soon.

Hayso Thako and de Riedmatten said it would help if other countries committed to taking in some of the refugees.

Thailand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs told VOA it has encouraged more countries to join the resettlement program.

A previous program ended about five years ago after resettling thousands of refugees in the United States and a few other countries.

Without a clear idea of how many of the refugees the new program can handle, and no end in sight to the civil war raging in Myanmar, charities say the Thai government should also give the refugees the opportunity to settle permanently in Thailand.

“I think it’s key. It’s very, very important, because we cannot expect that all these refugees will be resettled. We cannot expect also that a large part of these refugees will return to Myanmar. So the ones, the majority, who will be left in the camps should have a better future,” de Riedmatten said.

Even after four decades, most of the camps still lack electricity and running water. Most homes are huts of bamboo and eucalyptus poles topped with thatched roofs.

The refugees are mostly barred from studying or working outside of the camps, have few job opportunities inside and receive an average of about $9 in food aid a month.

Some advocates say a growing sense of despair across the camps is causing a rise in domestic abuse, gang violence, drug use and suicide.

“Living in the camps is not easy,” Eh Nay Moo, 30, who fled Myanmar with his parents when he was three years old, told VOA.

“Here, we are just illegal people. … There is no freedom for us. Going here and there outside of the camp, we are not allowed,” he said from Mae La, the largest of the nine camps on the border.

Having spent almost his entire life in the camps, Eh Nay Moo said he cannot imagine returning to Myanmar but sees no real future for himself in the camps.

Eh Nay Moo said he has applied for the new resettlement program and is eagerly awaiting an interview.

“If I get a chance to move to the U.S. … I believe that I will get more opportunity or freedom to do and live my life as a human being,” he said.
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Fine dining in space — if you can stomach the price tag. Plus, a new understanding of the sun’s magnetic field, and Europe’s newest astronauts get their mission assignments. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi brings us The Week in Space
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