Los Angeles — The Godzilla-King Kong combo stomped on expectations as “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire” roared to an $80 million opening on 3,861 North American screens, according to Sunday studio estimates.

The monster mash-up from Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures starring Rebecca Hall and Brian Tyree Henry brought the second-highest opening in what has been a robust year, falling just short of the $81.5 million debut of “Dune: Part 2.”  Projections had put the opening weekend of “Godzilla x Kong: Frozen Empire” at closer to $50 million.

Last week’s No. 1 at the box office, “Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire,” was second with $15.7 million for a two-week total of $73.4 million.

“Dune: Part Two” stayed strong in its fifth week, falling in the third spot with an $11.1 million take and a domestic total of $252.4 million.

The last matchup of the two monsters from Warner Bros. and Legendary, 2021’s “Godzilla vs. Kong,” had a much smaller opening weekend of $48.5 million, but that was a huge number for a film slowed by the coronavirus pandemic and released simultaneously on HBO Max.

The newer film had the second biggest opening of the studios’ broader MonsterVerse franchise. “Godzilla” brought in $93.2 million in 2014.

Estimated ticket sales are for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters,  

according to Comscore. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.

1. “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire,” $80 million.

2. “Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire,” $15.7 million.

3. “Dune: Part Two,” $11.1 million.

4. “Kung Fu Panda 4,” $10.2. million.

5. “Immaculate,” $3.3 million.

6. “Arthur the King,” $2.4 million.

7. “Late Night With the Devil,” $2.2 million.

8. “Tillu Square,” $1.8 million.

9. “Crew,” $1.5 million.

10. “Imaginary,” $1.4 million.
    …

Baltimore, Maryland — The crumpled Baltimore bridge was being cut up in preparation for its removal, Maryland’s governor said Sunday, promising “progress” was being made after it was destroyed by an out-of-control ship.

Demolition crews using blow torches sliced through the top part of the Francis Scott Key Bridge, which collapsed when the Dali cargo vessel lost power and struck it on Tuesday, killing six people.

“Progress is beginning to happen despite the fact that it’s an incredibly complicated situation,” said Maryland Governor Wes Moore, adding that weather conditions and debris in the water meant divers were unable to assist with the recovery operation.

“We now do have cranes, the Chesapeake 1,000, which has a capacity of lifting a thousand pounds,” Moore told CNN on Sunday.

“[Workers have] begun to cut up the remnants of the bridge that we can then prepare for removal.”

Video footage shared Saturday by the Unified Command — the overall response team that includes the U.S. Coast Guard — showed sparks flying as crews suspended in cages cut through an upper section of the steel structure.

The Unified Command said the wreckage will lifted away and processed at a Baltimore shipping site before being taken to a disposal site.

Moore said the recovery would be a “long road,” adding: “This is a very complex operation, but movement is happening.”

The difficult conditions have hampered efforts to recover the bodies of the six road workers — all Latino immigrants — who died when the bridge collapsed, with just two bodies recovered so far.

Shipping in and out of Baltimore — one of the United States’ busiest ports — has been halted, with the waterway impassable due to the sprawling wreckage.

Moore told MSNBC on Sunday that his priorities were recovering the victims’ bodies before reopening the channel.

“It’s impacting the nation’s economy. It’s the largest port for new cars, heavy trucks, agricultural equipment. It’s impacting people all over the country,” he said.

The ship veered towards the bridge due to power trouble, with the pilot issuing a Mayday call that allowed some road traffic to be stopped just before the collision at 1:30am after which the structure collapsed in seconds.

“It takes a lot to make sure that it can be dismantled safely, to make sure that the vessel stays where it is supposed to be and doesn’t swing out into the channel,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg told “Face the Nation” on CBS.
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LIVERMORE, Calif. — Most fast food workers in California will be paid at least $20 an hour beginning Monday when a new law is scheduled to kick in giving more financial security to an historically low-paying profession while threatening to raise prices in a state already known for its high cost of living.

Democrats in the state Legislature passed the law last year in part as an acknowledgement that many of the more than 500,000 people who work in fast food restaurants are not teenagers earning some spending money, but adults working to support their families.

That includes immigrants like Ingrid Vilorio, who said she started working at a McDonald’s shortly after arriving in the United States in 2019. Fast food was her full-time job until last year. Now, she works about eight hours per week at a Jack in the Box while working other jobs.

“The $20 raise is great. I wish this would have come sooner,” Vilorio said through a translator. “Because I would not have been looking for so many other jobs in different places.”

The law was supported by the trade association representing fast food franchise owners. But since it passed, many franchise owners have bemoaned the impact the law is having on them, especially during California’s slowing economy.

Alex Johnson owns 10 Auntie Anne’s Pretzels and Cinnabon restaurants in the San Francisco Bay Area. He said sales have slowed in 2024, prompting him to lay off his office staff and rely on his parents to help with payroll and human resources.

Increasing his employees’ wages will cost Johnson about $470,000 each year. He will have to raise prices anywhere from 5% to 15% at his stores, and is no longer hiring or seeking to open new locations in California, he said.

“I try to do right by my employees. I pay them as much as I can. But this law is really hitting our operations hard,” Johnson said.

“I have to consider selling and even closing my business,” he said. “The profit margin has become too slim when you factor in all the other expenses that are also going up.”

Over the past decade, California has doubled its minimum wage for most workers to $16 per hour. A big concern over that time was whether the increase would cause some workers to lose their jobs as employers’ expenses increased.

Instead, data showed wages went up and employment did not fall, said Michael Reich, a labor economics professor at the University of California-Berkeley.

“I was surprised at how little, or how difficult it was to find disemployment effects. If anything, we find positive employment effects,” Reich said.

Plus, Reich said while the statewide minimum wage is $16 per hour, many of the state’s larger cities have their own minimum wage laws setting the rate higher than that. For many fast food restaurants, this means the jump to $20 per hour will be smaller.

The law reflected a carefully crafted compromise between the fast food industry and labor unions, which had been fighting over wages, benefits and legal liabilities for close to two years. The law originated during private negotiations between unions and the industry, including the unusual step of signing confidentiality agreements.

The law applies to restaurants offering limited or no table service and which are part of a national chain with at least 60 establishments nationwide. Restaurants operating inside a grocery establishment are exempt, as are restaurants producing and selling bread as a stand-alone menu item.

At first, it appeared the bread exemption applied to Panera Bread restaurants. Bloomberg News reported the change would benefit Greg Flynn, a wealthy campaign donor to Newsom. But the Newsom administration said the wage increase law does apply to Panera Bread because the restaurant does not make dough on-site. Also, Flynn has announced he would pay his workers at least $20 per hour.
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Washington/Los Angeles — A California college is seeking the return, “no questions asked,” of an iconic image of Chinese Communist Party founder Mao Zedong created by famed American artist Andy Warhol.

Two weeks ago, Orange Coast College discovered that one of Warhol’s signed silkscreen prints of Mao was missing from its vault. The portrait has an estimated value of $50,000.

Doug Bennett, executive director for college advancement at Orange Coast College, told VOA’s Mandarin Service that the print was purchased by a person close to the school from a gallery in Laguna Beach, California, in 1974 and donated to the school anonymously in September 2020.

But now, even before it was put on display, it’s gone missing.

Bennett said he hopes someone just took the print by mistake, adding that the college wouldn’t ask questions if it was returned.

“Someone perhaps took it and put it in their office or put it in their home and thought it was OK to do. Or maybe it was misplaced, but I don’t think it was like a ring of art thieves that stole it,” he said.

Warhol made the portraits of Mao in the 1970s after U.S. President Richard Nixon’s historic visit to China.

“When it [the portrait of Mao] first came out in the 1970s, it was very controversial, still maybe to some people,” Bennett said.

From 1972-73, Warhol used the image of Mao from the Little Red Book, widely circulated in China, as a template to create 199 richly colored Mao silkscreen works in five series.

The school immediately launched an internal investigation after discovering the print was missing on March 13. A week later, a report was made to the Costa Mesa Police Department in Orange County, where the school is located. The police are investigating.

“It’s a high priority for the police department, and two detectives are assigned to the case and are working on it,” Bennett said.

The Costa Mesa Police Department told VOA the investigation is ongoing but did not provide any new details.

Police and the school are appealing for anyone with information to come forward.

Warhol, who is known as the godfather of the pop art movement, began using ubiquitous objects such as Campbell’s soup cans and Coca-Cola bottles as subjects for his creations in the 1960s, kicking off the movement.

A summary of the Mao portraits by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York says this about the series: “As interpreted by Warhol, these works, with their repeated image painted in flamboyant colors and with expressionistic marks, may suggest a parallel between political propaganda and capitalist advertising.”

In 1982, Warhol visited China and took a photo in front of the portrait of Mao in Tiananmen Square. Five years later, Warhol died.

In 2013, Warhol’s works toured China, but the Mao series was forced to be withdrawn. At the time, Chinese state media claimed that the Mao in the works “far exceeded the officially acceptable image.”

However, the Mao series has become one of Warhol’s most sought-after celebrity portraits by collectors. According to data from Sotheby’s auction house, in 2015, a Mao painting was sold for $47.5 million. In 2017, another painting of Mao was sold for $12.7 million.
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MEXICO CITY — Venezuelan migrants often have a quick answer when asked to name the most difficult stretch of their eight-country journey to the U.S. border, and it’s not the dayslong jungle trek through Colombia and Panama with its venomous vipers, giant spiders and scorpions. It’s Mexico.

“In the jungle, you have to prepare for animals. In Mexico, you have to prepare for humans,” Daniel Ventura, 37, said after three days walking through the Darien Gap and four months waiting in Mexico to enter the U.S. legally using the government’s online appointment system, called CBP One. He and his family of six were headed to Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin, where he has a relative.

Mexico’s crackdown on immigration in recent months — at the urging of the Biden administration — has hit Venezuelans especially hard. The development highlights how much the U.S. depends on Mexico to control migration, which has reached unprecedented levels and is a top issue for voters as President Joe Biden seeks reelection.

Arrests of migrants for illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border have dropped so this year after a record high in December. The biggest decline was among Venezuelans, whose arrests plummeted to 3,184 in February and 4,422 in January from 49,717 in December.

While two months do not make a trend and illegal crossings remain high by historical standards, Mexico’s strategy to keep migrants closer to its border with Guatemala than the U.S. is at least temporary relief for the Biden administration.

Large numbers of Venezuelans began reaching the U.S. in 2021, first by flying to Mexico and then on foot and by bus after Mexico imposed visa restrictions. In September, Venezuelans briefly replaced Mexicans as the largest nationality crossing the border.

Mexico’s efforts have included forcing migrants from trains, flying and busing them to the southern part of the country, and flying some home to Venezuela.

Last week, Mexico said it would give about $110 a month for six months to each Venezuelan it deports, hoping they won’t come back. Mexican President Andres Manuel López Obrador extended the offer Tuesday to Ecuadorians and Colombians.

“If you support people in their places of origin, the migratory flow reduces considerably, but that requires resources and that is what the United States government has not wanted to do,” said López Obrador, who is barred by term limits from running in June elections.

Migrants say they must pay corrupt officials at Mexico’s frequent government checkpoints to avoid being sent back to southern cities. Each setback is costly and frustrating.

“In the end, it is a business because wherever you get to, they want to take the last of what you have,” said Yessica Gutierrez, 30, who left Venezuela in January in a group of 15 family members that includes young children. They avoided some checkpoints by hiking through brush.

The group is now waiting in Mexico City to get an appointment so they can legally cross the U.S.-Mexico border. To use the CBP One app, applicants must be in central or northern Mexico. So Gutierrez’s group sleeps in two donated tents across the street from a migrant shelter and check the app daily.

More than 500,000 migrants have used the app to enter the U.S. at land crossings with Mexico since its introduction in January 2023. They can stay in the U.S. for two years under a presidential authority called parole, which entitles them to work.

“I would rather cross the jungle 10 times than pass through Mexico once,” said Jose Alberto Uzcategui, who left a construction job in the Venezuelan city of Trujillo with his wife and sons, ages 5 and 7, in a family group of 11. They are biding time in Mexico City until they have enough money for a phone so they can use CBP One.

Venezuelans account for the vast majority of 73,166 migrants who crossed the Darien Gap in January and February, which is on pace to pass last year’s record of more than 500,000, according to the Panamanian government, suggesting Venezuelans are still fleeing a country that has lost more than 7 million people amid political turmoil and economic decline. Mexican authorities stopped Venezuelan migrants more than 56,000 times in February, about twice as much as the previous two months, according to government figures.

“The underlying question here is: Where are the Venezuelans? They’re in Mexico, but where are they?” said Stephanie Brewer, who covers Mexico for the Washington Office on Latin America, a group that monitors human rights abuses.

Mexico deported only about 429 Venezuelans during the first two months of 2024, meaning nearly all are waiting in Mexico.

Many fear that venturing north of Mexico City will get them fleeced or returned to southern Mexico. The U.S. admits 1,450 people a day through CBP One with appointments that are granted two weeks out.

Even if they evade Mexican authorities, migrants feel threatened by gangs who kidnap, extort and commit other violent crimes.

“You have to go town by town because the cartels need to put food on their plates,” said Maria Victoria Colmenares, 27, who waited seven months in Mexico City for a CBP One appointment, supporting her family by working as a waitress while her husband worked at a car wash.

“It’s worth the wait because it brings a reward,” said Colmenares, who took a taxi from the Tijuana airport to the border crossing with San Diego, hours before her Tuesday appointment.

Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has touted his own efforts to explain the recent reduction in illegal crossings in his state, where at least 95% of Border Patrol arrests of Venezuelans occur. Those have included installing razor wire, putting a floating barrier in the Rio Grande and making plans to build a new base for members of the National Guard.

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has mostly credited Mexico for the drop in border arrests.

Some Venezuelans still come north despite the perils. 

Marbelis Torrealba, 35, arrived in Matamoros, across the border from Brownsville, Texas, with her sister and niece this week, carrying ashes of her daughter who drowned in a boat that capsized in Nicaragua. She said they were robbed by Mexican officials and gangs and returned several times to southern Mexico.

A shelter arranged for them to enter the U.S. legally on emergency humanitarian grounds, but she was prepared to cross illegally.

“I already experienced the worst: Seeing your child die in front of you and not being able to do anything.”
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DES MOINES, Iowa — The Powerball jackpot climbed to an estimated $975 million after no one matched the six numbers drawn Saturday night, continuing a nearly three-month stretch without a big winner.

The winning numbers drawn were: 12, 13, 33, 50, 52 and the red Powerball 23.

No one has won Powerball’s top prize since New Year’s Day when a ticket in Michigan hit for $842.4 million, bringing the number of consecutive drawings without a jackpot winner to 38. That winless streak nears the record of 41 consecutive drawings, set twice in 2022 and 2021.

The $975 million prize is for a sole winner who chooses an annuity paid over 30 years. A winner opting for cash would be paid $471.7 million. The prizes would be subject to federal taxes, and many states also tax lottery winnings.

As the prizes grow, the drawings attract more ticket sales and the jackpots subsequently become harder to hit. The game’s long odds for Saturday’s drawing were 1 in 292.2 million.

Powerball is played in 45 states plus Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
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baltimore, maryland — Teams of engineers are working Saturday on the intricate process of cutting and lifting the first section of twisted steel from the collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge in Maryland. 

The bridge crumpled into the Patapsco River on Tuesday after a massive cargo ship crashed into one of its main supports. 

Sparks could be seen flying from a section of bent and crumpled steel Saturday afternoon. The U.S. Coast Guard confirmed that work has started to remove a section of the toppled structure. 

Crews are carefully measuring and cutting the steel from the broken bridge before attaching straps so it can be lifted onto a barge and floated away, Coast Guard Rear Adm. Shannon Gilreath said Saturday. 

Seven floating cranes — including a massive one capable of lifting 1,000 tons — 10 tugboats, nine barges, eight salvage vessels and five Coast Guard boats are on site in the water southeast of Baltimore. 

Each movement affects what happens next and ultimately how long it will take to remove all the debris and reopen the ship channel and the blocked Port of Baltimore, Maryland Governor Wes Moore said. 

“I cannot stress enough how important today and the first movement of this bridge and of the wreckage is. This is going to be a remarkably complicated process,” Moore said. 

Undeterred by the chilly morning weather, longtime Baltimore resident Randy Lichtenberg and others took cellphones photos or just quietly looked at the broken pieces of the bridge, which including its steel trusses, weigh as much as 4,000 tons. 

“I wouldn’t want to be in that water. It’s got to be cold. It’s a tough job,” said Lichtenberg from a spot on the river called Sparrows Point. 

The shock of waking up Tuesday morning to video of what he called an iconic part of the Baltimore skyline falling into the water has given way to sadness. 

“It never hits you that quickly. It’s just unbelievable,” Lichtenberg said. 

What’s next

One of the first goals for crews on the water is to get a smaller auxiliary ship channel open so tugboats and other small barges can move freely. Crews also want to stabilize the site so divers can continue a search for four missing workers who are presumed dead. 

Two workers were rescued from the water in the hours following the bridge collapse early Tuesday, and the bodies of two more were recovered from a pickup truck that fell and was submerged in the river. They had been filling potholes on the bridge and while police were able to stop vehicle traffic after the ship called in a mayday they could not get to the construction crew who were from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. 

The crew of the cargo ship Dali, which is managed by Synergy Marine Group, remains on board with the debris from the bridge around it. They are safe and are being interviewed. They are keeping the ship running as they will be needed to get it out of the channel once more debris has been removed. The vessel is owned by Grace Ocean Private Ltd. and was chartered by Danish shipping giant Maersk. 

The collision and collapse appeared to be an accident that came after the ship lost power. Federal and state investigators are still trying to determine why. 

Assuaging concern about possible pollution from the crash, Adam Ortiz, the Environmental Protection Agency’s mid-Atlantic Regional Administrator, said there was no indication in the water of active releases from the ship or materials hazardous to human health. 

Rebuilding bridge, economy

Officials are also trying to figure out how to handle the economic impact of a closed port and the severing of a major highway link. The bridge was completed in 1977 and carried Interstate 695 around southeast Baltimore. 

Maryland transportation officials are planning to rebuild the bridge, promising to consider innovative designs or building materials to hopefully shorten a project that could take years. 

President Joe Biden’s administration has approved $60 million in immediate aid and promised the federal government will pay the full cost to rebuild. 

Ship traffic at the Port of Baltimore remains suspended, but the Maryland Port Administration said trucks were still being processed at marine terminals. 

The loss of a road that carried 30,000 vehicles a day and the port disruption will affect not only thousands of dockworkers and commuters, but also U.S. consumers, who are likely to feel the impact of shipping delays. The port handles more cars and more farm equipment than any other U.S. facility. 
…

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BALTIMORE, MARYLAND — Teams of engineers are now focused on the formidable job of hauling the shattered remains of the Francis Scott Key Bridge out of Maryland’s Patapsco River, the first step toward reopening the Port of Baltimore and recovering the bodies of four workers who are still missing and presumed dead.

A massive cargo ship felled the span Tuesday after striking one of its main supports. Experts are trying to figure out how to “break that bridge up into the right-sized pieces that we can lift,” U.S. Coast Guard Rear Admiral Shannon Gilreath said Friday at a news conference.

The tools that are needed have been coming into place. They include seven floating cranes — one of which is one of the largest on the Eastern Seaboard, capable of lifting 1,000 tons — 10 tugboats, nine barges, eight salvage vessels and five Coast Guard boats.

“To go out there and see it up close, you realize just how daunting a task this is,” Governor Wes Moore said Friday afternoon as the massive crane loomed behind him.

“With a salvage operation this complex — and frankly with a salvation operation this unprecedented — you need to plan for every single moment,” Moore said.

Moore surveyed the scene and saw shipping containers ripped apart “like papier-mache.” The broken pieces of the bridge, including its steel trusses, weigh as much as 4,000 tons.

The wreckage has blocked ships from entering or leaving the vital port and also stymied the search for the missing workers.

“We have to bring a sense of closure to these families,” Moore said.

Moore also spoke of the disaster’s severe economic impact, saying, “What we’re talking about today is not just about Maryland’s economy; this is about the nation’s economy. The port handles more cars and more farm equipment than any other port in this country.”

Maryland’s Department of Transportation is already planning for rebuilding of the span and “considering innovative design, engineering and building methods so that we can quickly deliver this project,” Secretary Paul J. Wiedefeld said.

Adam Ortiz, the Environmental Protection Agency’s mid-Atlantic Regional Administrator, said there was no indication in the water of active releases from the ship or materials hazardous to human health.

Colonel Roland L. Butler Jr., superintendent of the Maryland State Police, said the Federal Aviation Administration has been asked to establish a flight restriction area that would begin 3 nautical miles in every direction from the bridge’s center span and extend upward to 1,500 feet.

Butler advised people to keep drones away and said law enforcement is poised to act on any violations of that airspace.

The victims, members of a crew fixing potholes on the span when it was destroyed, were from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, officials said. At least eight people initially went into the water when the ship struck the bridge column, and two of them were rescued.

Divers then recovered the bodies of two men from a pickup truck in the river, but the nature and placement of the debris has complicated efforts to find the other four workers, as have the murky water conditions.

“The divers can put their hands on that faceplate, and they can’t even see their hands,” said Donald Gibbons, an instructor with Eastern Atlantic States Carpenters Technical Centers. “So, we say zero visibility. It’s very similar to locking yourself in a dark closet on a dark night and really not being able to see anything.”

President Joe Biden’s administration has approved $60 million in immediate aid, and Biden has said the federal government will pay the full cost of rebuilding the bridge, which was completed in 1977 and carried Interstate 695.

Ship traffic at the Port of Baltimore remains suspended, but the Maryland Port Administration said in a statement Friday that trucks were still being processed at marine terminals.

Federal and state officials have said the collision and collapse appeared to be an accident that came after the ship lost power. Investigators are still trying to determine why.

The crash caused the bridge to break and fall into the water within seconds. Authorities had just enough time to stop vehicle traffic but were unable to alert the construction crew.

The cargo ship Dali, which is managed by Synergy Marine Group, had been headed from Baltimore to Sri Lanka. It is owned by Grace Ocean Private Ltd. and was chartered by Danish shipping giant Maersk.

The loss of a road that carried 30,000 vehicles a day and the port disruption will affect not only thousands of dockworkers and commuters, but also U.S. consumers, who are likely to feel the impact of shipping delays.

Scott Cowan, president of the International Longshoremen’s Association Local 333, said the union was scrambling to help its roughly 2,400 members whose jobs are at risk of drying up.

“If there’s no ships, there’s no work,” he said. “We’re doing everything we can.”
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washington — President Joe Biden has steadily ramped up pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to allow more humanitarian aid and to rein in its offensive in the Gaza Strip. That includes increasingly public criticism of Israel and the recent U.S. abstention vote at the U.N. Security Council that allowed for a cease-fire resolution to pass.

However, Biden has stopped short of using what may be his strongest leverage — conditioning U.S. aid for Israel. The U.S. provides Israel with nearly $4 billion a year, most of it in the form of military assistance.

Lawmakers from his own party have voiced dissent. Both Senate and House Democrats have demanded that Biden comply with the Foreign Assistance Act and cut off military aid if Israel continues to block U.S. humanitarian aid to Gaza.

His constituents have signaled their outrage — hundreds of thousands voted “uncommitted” in Democratic primary elections in various states. The latest polls show 75% of Democrats now disapprove of Israel’s war conduct. Fifty-six percent of them say continuing to give military aid to Israel would make them less likely to support a presidential candidate.

Despite the political cost, Biden is steadfast in his support for Israel. Analysts say there are at least two factors that may be behind this: the president’s fear of the war widening beyond Gaza, and his own long-standing and deeply held views on the importance of the security of the state of Israel.

Self-proclaimed Zionist

Since Harry Truman in 1948 recognized Israel just minutes after its founding, all American presidents have supported Israel.

Biden stands out among them with his “extraordinary emotional commitment to the idea of Israel, the people of Israel, the security of Israel,” said Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and former U.S. negotiator in Middle East peace talks under both Democratic and Republican administrations.

On various occasions, Biden, who is of Irish Catholic descent, has proclaimed himself as a Zionist.

As such, aside from being “gut-loyal committed to Israel’s self-defense,” he also believes he can “moderate Israel’s behavior as a friend from the inside, rather than as an antagonist on the outside,” said Laura Blumenfeld, senior fellow at the Philip Merrill Center for Strategic Studies at Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies.

“It’s the international bear-hug theory of strategic squeezing,” she told VOA.

Biden has decades of personal relationship with Netanyahu, in 2010 calling him a “close, personal friend of over 33 years.” However, as Netanyahu continues to go against U.S. goals in Gaza, many are questioning whether Biden’s reliance on his relationship with the prime minister is helpful in finding an end to the war.

Biden and Netanyahu are “increasingly estranged,” Miller told VOA. As the rift between the two leaders deepens, Biden has even backed remarks by Chuck Schumer, Democratic Senate majority leader and the highest-ranking elected Jewish official in the U.S.

Schumer called Netanyahu an impediment to peace and urged Israelis to hold elections to replace him after the war.

However, Miller said Biden needs Netanyahu to secure the cease-fire deal and for his administration’s ambitious plans to create a “comprehensive integrated peace process” that centers on a two-state solution.

At a New York campaign event Thursday, Biden said Arab countries including Saudi Arabia were prepared to “fully recognize Israel” for such a deal.

Risk of widening war

Six months into the Israel-Hamas war, there is real potential for the war to widen in other areas of the Middle East, especially if Israel’s skirmishes with Hezbollah on the border with Lebanon escalate.

In this environment, “conditioning aid to Israel would delight Hezbollah, Iran and its other proxies,” said Blumenfeld. “Hamas wrote the script of October 7, and conditioning aid to Israel is written into the stage notes.”

The U.S. provides Israel with weapons systems and munitions for both deterrence and warfighting. Placing conditions for defensive systems – for example, the Iron Dome missile defense system – has serious risks, said Seth Jones, director of the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“Hezbollah has between 120,000 and 200,000 missiles and other stand-off systems that can target Israel and would likely overwhelm Israel’s air defense capabilities,” he told VOA.

However, Jones pointed out there’s less risk should Biden decide to condition aid on specific types of offensive weapons systems, such as small- and large-diameter bombs, bunker busters and a range of precision-guided munitions.

Under pressure from Democratic lawmakers, last month the White House mandated relevant U.S. government agencies to “obtain credible and reliable written assurances” from foreign governments that U.S. weapons are used in accordance with international and humanitarian law.

Israel has provided its assurances. Under the memorandum, the State Department has until early May to formally assess the assurances and report to Congress. If they were not found “credible and reliable,” Biden may have the option of suspending future U.S. arms transfers.

“While the U.S. is assessing the Israeli response, requests to condition military aid will be seen as premature,” said Nimrod Goren, senior fellow for Israeli affairs at the Middle East Institute.

Whether Biden conditions aid may also depend on what happens with Israeli plans for its ground invasion in Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah, where more than 1.4 million Palestinians seek safety. As long as Israel does not cross clear American red lines, Goren told VOA, the likelihood of Biden conditioning aid “seems low.”

Netanyahu insists that the goal of “total victory” against Hamas cannot be achieved without invading Rafah, where Israel says there are four Hamas battalions composed of thousands of fighters. The Biden administration is imploring Israel to find an alternative to “smashing into Rafah.”

Israeli and American officials are working to reschedule a meeting to discuss Rafah plans. No date has been set yet, but a senior administration official told VOA that they are hoping the talks will take place “as soon as next week.”
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baltimore — A crane that can lift 1,000 tons, described as one of the largest on the Eastern Seaboard, appeared near the site of a collapsed highway bridge in Baltimore as crews prepared Friday to begin clearing wreckage that has stymied the search for four workers missing and presumed dead and blocked ships from entering or leaving the city’s vital port.

Maryland Governor Wes Moore called the Francis Scott Key Bridge’s collapse after being struck by a freighter an “economic catastrophe” and described the challenges ahead for recovering the workers’ bodies and clearing tons of debris to reopen the Port of Baltimore.

“What we’re talking about today is not just about Maryland’s economy; this is about the nation’s economy,” Moore said at a news conference, the massive crane standing in the background. “The port handles more cars and more farm equipment than any other port in this country.”

Moore went to the scene Friday and said he saw shipping containers ripped apart “like papier-mache.” The broken pieces of the bridge weigh as much as 4,000 tons, Moore said, and teams will need to cut into the steel trusses before they can be lifted from the Patapsco River.

Equipment on hand will include seven floating cranes, 10 tugboats, nine barges, eight salvage vessels and five Coast Guard boats, Moore said. Much of it is coming from the Navy.

“To go out there and see it up close, you realize just how daunting a task this is. You realize how difficult the work is ahead of us,” Moore said. “With a salvage operation this complex — and frankly with a salvation operation this unprecedented — you need to plan for every single moment.”

Water conditions have prevented divers from entering the river, Moore said. When conditions change, they will resume efforts to recover the construction workers, who were repairing potholes on the bridge when it fell early Tuesday.

The Coast Guard is focused on removing what’s left of the bridge and the container ship that struck it in order to clear the port’s shipping lanes, Rear Admiral Shannon Gilreath said.

Teams of engineers from the Army Corps of Engineers, the Navy and the Coast Guard — along with some private-sector experts — are assessing how to “break that bridge up into the right-sized pieces that we can lift,” Gilreath said.

Maryland’s Department of Transportation is already focused on building a new bridge and is “considering innovative design, engineering and building methods so that we can quickly deliver this project,” Secretary Paul J. Wiedefeld said.

Adam Ortiz, the Environmental Protection Agency’s mid-Atlantic regional administrator, said there is no indication of active releases from the ship, nor of the presence in the water of materials hazardous to human health.

Colonel Roland L. Butler Jr., superintendent of the Maryland State Police, said the Federal Aviation Administration has been asked to establish a tactical flight restriction area that would begin 3 nautical miles in every direction from the center span of the bridge and extend upward to 1,500 feet.

Butler advised people to keep drones away from the area and said law enforcement is poised to act on any violations of that airspace.

The victims of the bridge collapse were from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, officials said. At least eight people initially went into the water when the ship struck the bridge column, and two of them were rescued.

Divers have recovered the bodies of two men from a pickup truck in the river, but the nature and placement of the debris has complicated efforts to find the other four workers.

“The divers can put their hands on that faceplate, and they can’t even see their hands,” said Donald Gibbons, an instructor with Eastern Atlantic States Carpenters Technical Centers. “So we say zero visibility. It’s very similar to locking yourself in a dark closet on a dark night and really not being able to see anything.”

President Joe Biden’s administration has approved $60 million in immediate aid, and Biden has said the federal government will pay the full cost of rebuilding the bridge, which carried Interstate 695.

Ship traffic at the Port of Baltimore remains suspended, but the Maryland Port Administration said in a statement Friday that trucks were still being processed at marine terminals.

The loss of a road that carried 30,000 vehicles a day and the port disruption will affect not only thousands of dockworkers and commuters, but also U.S. consumers, who are likely to feel the impact of shipping delays.

Scott Cowan, president of the International Longshoremen’s Association Local 333, said the union was scrambling to help its roughly 2,400 members whose jobs are at risk of drying up.

“If there’s no ships, there’s no work,” he said. “We’re doing everything we can.”
…

washington — A new survey shows that nearly 70% of Muslims in the United States give zakat, or practice almsgiving, during Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting.

The survey, conducted by the Muslim Philanthropy Initiative at Indiana University, found that gender, age, race, income, marital status, religiosity and voter registration status were the factors that influenced Muslim Americans’ preferences for paying zakat during Ramadan.

“The importance of Ramadan to Muslims has long been discussed,” said Shariq Siddiqui, the lead researcher of the study and director of the Muslim Philanthropy Initiative at Indiana University.

He told VOA in an email that the survey indicates the importance of Ramadan for U.S. Muslims “when it comes to their charitable giving.”

While there is no specific requirement to pay zakat during Ramadan, many Muslims prefer to fulfill their obligation during the month as they believe that God will multiply the rewards for charity during the Muslim holy month of fasting.

Muslims believe that God revealed the Quran to Prophet Muhammad during Ramadan.

During the month, Muslims who have reached puberty and are physically capable fast from sunrise to sunset, which means abstaining from food and drink.

The survey also indicated that more than 45% of U.S. Muslims were giving zakat during the time of Hajj, the annual Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca.

Zakat is aimed at redistributing wealth and alleviating poverty within the Muslim community.

It is calculated usually at 2.5% of a Muslim’s accumulated wealth annually, including savings, investments, gold, silver and other assets beyond one’s basic needs.

According to the Muslim Philanthropy Initiative, Muslims in the U.S. paid an estimated $1.8 billion in zakat in 2021.

Nearly 3.5 million Muslims live in the U.S., which is 1.1% of the population in the nation.

Siddiqui told VOA that Muslim Americans give an estimated $4.3 billion in charity, including zakat, every year, and 85% of the money stays in the U.S., of which 50% goes to Muslim-led organizations and about 40% to non-Muslim groups.

He said, however, that the survey identifies some key demographics often overlooked by fundraisers.

According to the survey, married Muslims and Muslim women are more likely to pay zakat during Ramadan.

Muslims in their 30s and those with an annual income of $50,000 to $75,000 are leaning toward giving zakat during the month of fasting, the survey stated.

Religiosity was another factor influencing their decision to give zakat during Ramadan. Those who identified themselves as more religious tended to fulfill their zakat obligations during the month of Ramadan.

The survey also indicated that Muslim Americans who were registered to vote, compared to those who were not registered, were more likely to pay their zakat during the holy month.

Sponsored by Islamic Relief USA, the survey was based on a nationally representative sample of 1,139 U.S.-based Muslim adults across the U.S.

VOA’s Masood Farivar contributed to this story.
…

washington — Donald Trump on Friday asked a Georgia appeals court to disqualify the district attorney prosecuting him for trying to overturn his 2020 election defeat in the state for a romantic relationship the prosecutor had with a former top deputy. 

The legal filing from the Republican presidential candidate and eight co-defendants asks the appeals court to reverse a judge’s ruling this month that allowed Fani Willis, the district attorney of Fulton County, to continue prosecuting the case.  

The appeal presents another opportunity for the former U.S. president to delay or derail one of the four criminal cases he faces. 

Fulton County Judge Scott McAfee was sharply critical in his ruling of the relationship between Willis and Nathan Wade, an outside lawyer contracted to help lead the prosecution. But he rejected claims from the defense that the romance posed a conflict of interest that would require Willis’ office to be removed from the case. 

Wade stepped aside from the case after the judge said he would need to withdraw for Willis and her office to continue. 

Trump defense attorney Steve Sadow said in a statement on Friday that McAfee should instead have dismissed the indictment outright and, “at a minimum,” disqualified Willis and her office from prosecuting the case. 

In a brief submitted to the court, Christopher Anulewicz, a lawyer representing co-defendant Robert Cheeley, argued that the failure to disqualify Willis and her office should be reversed because, if allowed to stand, “it would render each and every trial in this case a nullity.” 

The appeals court has 45 days to decide whether to take up the issue. McAfee gave Trump and the other defendants permission to immediately appeal his ruling but said he would continue moving the case toward trial during the appeal. 

If the court accepts the case, Trump could seek to pause the proceedings while the appeal plays out. A trial date has not yet been set. 

McAfee’s ruling came after a tumultuous period for Willis, who was grilled by defense lawyers in dramatic testimony about whether she improperly benefited from the relationship through vacations booked by Wade while he was being paid by her office. 

Trump’s lawyers also accused Willis of “stoking racial animus” in her response to the allegations and misleading the court on when the romantic relationship began. 

Willis denied receiving any improper benefit from the relationship, arguing that expenses were divided roughly evenly between her and Wade, and said the romance had no impact on the criminal case. 

Willis has cast the disqualification bid as an effort to distract from racketeering and other charges against Trump and 14 co-defendants who are accused of scheming to overturn Trump’s narrow defeat in Georgia in the 2020 election. Four others who had been co-defendants in the case have pleaded guilty in deals with the prosecutors.
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ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND — Rebuilding Baltimore’s collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge could take anywhere from 18 months to several years, experts say, while the cost could be at least $400 million — or more than twice that. 

It all depends on factors that are still mostly unknown. They range from the design of the new bridge to how swiftly government officials can navigate the bureaucracy of approving permits and awarding contracts. 

Realistically, the project could take five to seven years, according to Ben Schafer, an engineering professor at Johns Hopkins University. 

“The lead time on air conditioning equipment right now for a home renovation is like 16 months, right?” Schafer said. “So, it’s like you’re telling me they’re going to build a whole bridge in two years? I want it to be true, but I think empirically it doesn’t feel right to me.” 

Others are more optimistic about the potential timeline: Sameh Badie, an engineering professor at George Washington University, said the project could take as little as 18 months to two years. 

The Key Bridge collapsed Tuesday, killing six members of a crew that was working on the span, after the Dali cargo ship plowed into one its supports. Officials are scrambling to clean up and rebuild after the accident, which has shuttered the city’s busy port and a portion of the Baltimore beltway. 

The disaster is in some ways similar to the deadly collapse of Florida’s Sunshine Skyway Bridge, which was struck by a freighter in Tampa Bay in 1980. The new bridge took five years to build, was 19 months late and ran $20 million over budget when it opened in 1987. 

But experts say it’s better to look to more recent bridge disasters for a sense of how quickly reconstruction may happen. 

Jim Tymon, executive director of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, cited the case of the Interstate 35W bridge in Minnesota, which collapsed into the Mississippi River in 2007. The new span was up in less than 14 months. 

“It’s the best comparison that we have for a project like this,” Tymon said. “They did outstanding work in being able to get the approvals necessary to be able to rebuild that as quickly as possible.” 

Tymon expects various government agencies to work together to push through permits, environmental and otherwise. 

“It doesn’t mean that all of the right boxes won’t get checked — they will,” Tymon said. “It’ll just be done more efficiently because everybody will know that this has to get done as quickly as possible.” 

One looming issue is the source of funding. President Joe Biden has repeatedly said the federal government will pay for the new bridge, but that remains to be seen. 

“Hopefully, Congress will be able to come together to provide those resources as soon as possible so that that does not become a source of delay,” Tymon said. 

Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota helped to obtain funding quickly to rebuild the I-35W bridge in her state. But she said replacing the Baltimore span could be more complicated. 

She noted that the I-35W bridge, a federal interstate highway, was a much busier road with about 140,000 vehicle crossings a day, compared with about 31,000 for the Maryland bridge. 

“But where there’s a will there’s a way, and you can get the emergency funding,” Klobuchar said. “It’s happened all over the country when disasters hit. And the fact that this is such a major port also makes it deserving of making sure that this all gets taken care of.” 

Badie, of George Washington University, said the cost could be between $500 million and $1 billion, with the largest variable being the design. 

For example, a suspension bridge like San Francisco’s Golden Gate would cost more, while a cable-stayed span, like Florida’s Skyway Sunshine Bridge, which handles weight using cables and towers, would be less expensive. 

Whatever is built, steel is expensive these days and there is a backlog for I-beams, Badie said. Plus, the limited number of construction companies that can tackle such a project are already busy with other jobs. 

“A project like this is going to be expedited, so everything is going to cost a lot more,” Badie said. 

Hota GangaRao, a West Virginia University engineering professor, said the project could cost as little as $400 million. But that’s only if the old bridge’s pier foundations are used; designers may want to locate the new supports farther away from the shipping channels to avoid another collision. 

“That’s going to be more steel, more complicated construction and more checks and balances,” GangaRao said. “It all adds up.” 

Norma Jean Mattei, an emeritus engineering professor at the University of New Orleans, said replacing the Key Bridge likely will take several years. Even if it’s a priority, the process of designing the span, getting permits and hiring contractors takes a lot of time. Then you must build it. 

“It’s quite a process to actually get a bridge of this type into operation,” she said. 
…

LOS ANGELES — Louis Gossett Jr., the first Black man to win a supporting actor Oscar and an Emmy winner for his role in the seminal TV miniseries “Roots,” has died. He was 87. 

Gossett’s first cousin Neal L. Gossett told The Associated Press that the actor died Thursday night in Santa Monica, California. No cause of death was revealed. 

Gossett’s cousin remembered a man who walked with Nelson Mandela and who also was a great joke teller, a relative who faced and fought racism with dignity and humor. 

“Never mind the awards, never mind the glitz and glamour, the Rolls-Royces and the big houses in Malibu. It’s about the humanity of the people that he stood for,” his cousin said. 

Louis Gossett always thought of his early career as a reverse Cinderella story, with success finding him from an early age and propelling him forward, toward his Academy Award for “An Officer and a Gentleman.” 

He earned his first acting credit in his Brooklyn high school’s production of “You Can’t Take It with You” while he was sidelined from the basketball team with an injury. 

“I was hooked — and so was my audience,” he wrote in his 2010 memoir “An Actor and a Gentleman.” 

His English teacher urged him to go into Manhattan to try out for “Take a Giant Step.” He got the part and made his Broadway debut in 1953 at age 16. 

“I knew too little to be nervous,” Gossett wrote. “In retrospect, I should have been scared to death as I walked onto that stage, but I wasn’t.” 

Gossett attended New York University on a basketball and drama scholarship. He was soon acting and singing on TV shows hosted by David Susskind, Ed Sullivan, Red Buttons, Merv Griffin, Jack Paar and Steve Allen. 

Gossett became friendly with James Dean and studied acting with Marilyn Monroe, Martin Landau and Steve McQueen at an offshoot of the Actors Studio taught by Frank Silvera. 

In 1959, Gossett received critical acclaim for his role in the Broadway production of “A Raisin in the Sun” along with Sidney Poitier, Ruby Dee and Diana Sands. 

He went on to become a star on Broadway, replacing Billy Daniels in “Golden Boy” with Sammy Davis Jr. in 1964. 

Gossett went to Hollywood for the first time in 1961 to make the film version of “A Raisin in the Sun.” He had bitter memories of that trip, staying in a cockroach-infested motel that was one of the few places to allow Black people. 

In 1968, he returned to Hollywood for a major role in “Companions in Nightmare,” NBC’s first made-for-TV movie that starred Melvyn Douglas, Anne Baxter and Patrick O’Neal. 

This time, Gossett was booked into the Beverly Hills Hotel and Universal Studios had rented him a convertible. Driving back to the hotel after picking up the car, he was stopped by a Los Angeles County sheriff’s officer who ordered him to turn down the radio and put up the car’s roof before letting him go. 

Within minutes, he was stopped by eight sheriff’s officers, who had him lean against the car and made him open the trunk while they called the car rental agency before letting him go. 

“Though I understood that I had no choice but to put up with this abuse, it was a terrible way to be treated, a humiliating way to feel,” Gossett wrote in his memoir. “I realized this was happening because I was Black and had been showing off with a fancy car — which, in their view, I had no right to be driving.” 

After dinner at the hotel, he went for a walk and was stopped a block away by a police officer, who told him he broke a law prohibiting walking around residential Beverly Hills after 9 p.m. Two other officers arrived and Gossett said he was chained to a tree and handcuffed for three hours. He was eventually freed when the original police car returned. 

“Now I had come face-to-face with racism, and it was an ugly sight,” he wrote. “But it was not going to destroy me.” 

In the late 1990s, Gossett said he was pulled over by police on the Pacific Coast Highway while driving his restored 1986 Rolls Royce Corniche II. The officer told him he looked like someone they were searching for, but the officer recognized Gossett and left. 

He founded the Eracism Foundation to help create a world where racism doesn’t exist. 

Gossett made a series of guest appearances on such shows as “Bonanza,” “The Rockford Files,” “The Mod Squad,” “McCloud” and a memorable turn with Richard Pryor on “The Partridge Family.” 

In August 1969, Gossett had been partying with members of the Mamas and the Papas when they were invited to actor Sharon Tate’s house. He headed home first to shower and change clothes. As he was getting ready to leave, he caught a news flash on TV about Tate’s murder. She and others were killed by Charles Manson’s associates that night. 

“There had to be a reason for my escaping this bullet,” he wrote. 

Louis Cameron Gossett was born on May 27, 1936, in the Coney Island section of Brooklyn, New York, to Louis Sr., a porter, and Hellen, a nurse. He later added Jr. to his name to honor his father. 

Gossett broke through on the small screen as Fiddler in the groundbreaking 1977 miniseries “Roots,” which depicted the atrocities of slavery on TV. The sprawling cast included Ben Vereen, LeVar Burton and John Amos. 

Gossett became the third Black Oscar nominee in the supporting actor category in 1983. He won for his performance as the intimidating Marine drill instructor in “An Officer and a Gentleman” opposite Richard Gere and Debra Winger. He also won a Golden Globe for the same role. 

“More than anything, it was a huge affirmation of my position as a Black actor,” he wrote in his memoir. 

“The Oscar gave me the ability of being able to choose good parts in movies like ‘Enemy Mine,’ ‘Sadat’ and ‘Iron Eagle,'” Gossett said in Dave Karger’s 2024 book “50 Oscar Nights.” 

He said his statue was in storage. 

“I’m going to donate it to a library so I don’t have to keep an eye on it,” he said in the book. “I need to be free of it.” 

Gossett appeared in such TV movies as “The Story of Satchel Paige,” “Backstairs at the White House, “The Josephine Baker Story,” for which he won another Golden Globe, and “Roots Revisited.” 

But he said winning an Oscar didn’t change the fact that all his roles were supporting ones. 

He played an obstinate patriarch in the 2023 remake of “The Color Purple.” 

Gossett struggled with alcohol and cocaine addiction for years after his Oscar win. He went to rehab, where he was diagnosed with toxic mold syndrome, which he attributed to his house in Malibu. 

In 2010, Gossett announced he had prostate cancer, which he said was caught in the early stages. In 2020, he was hospitalized with COVID-19. 

He also is survived by sons Satie, a producer-director from his second marriage, and Sharron, a chef whom he adopted after seeing the 7-year-old in a TV segment on children in desperate situations. His first cousin is actor Robert Gossett. 

Gossett’s first marriage to Hattie Glascoe was annulled. His second, to Christina Mangosing, ended in divorce in 1975 as did his third to actor Cyndi James-Reese in 1992.
…

WASHINGTON — Americans are more worried about legal immigrants committing crimes in the U.S. than they were a few years ago, a change driven largely by increased concern among Republicans, while Democrats continue to see a broad range of benefits from immigration, a new poll shows.

The poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that substantial shares of U.S. adults believe that immigrants contribute to the country’s economic growth and offer important contributions to American culture. But when it comes to legal immigrants, U.S. adults see fewer major benefits than they did in the past, and more major risks.

About 4 in 10 Americans say that when immigrants come to the U.S. legally, it’s a major benefit for American companies to get the expertise of skilled workers in fields like science and technology. A similar share (38%) also say that legal immigrants contribute a major benefit by enriching American culture and values.

Both those figures were down compared with 2017, when 59% of Americans said skilled immigrant workers who enter the country legally were a major benefit, and half said legal immigrants contribute a major benefit by enriching American culture.

Meanwhile, the share of Americans who say that there’s a major risk that legal immigrants will commit crimes in the U.S. has increased, going from 19% in 2017 to 32% in the new poll.

Republicans were more likely than Democrats to say that immigration is an important issue for them personally, and 41% now say it’s a major risk that legal immigrants will commit crimes in the U.S., up from 20% in 2017. Overall, Republicans are more likely to see major risks — and fewer benefits — from immigrants who enter the country legally and illegally, although they tend to be most concerned about people who come to the country illegally.

Bob Saunders is a 64-year-old independent from Voorhees, New Jersey. He disapproves of President Joe Biden’s performance when it comes to immigration and border security and is particularly worried about the number of immigrants coming to the southern border who are eventually released into the country. He stressed that there’s a difference between legal and illegal immigration. Saunders said it’s important to know the background of the immigrants coming to the U.S. and said legal immigration contributes to the economy. He also noted the immigrants in his own family.

“It’s not anti-immigration,” Saunders said. “It’s anti-illegal immigration.”

Many Republicans, 71%, say there’s a risk of people in the country illegally coming to the U.S. and committing crimes, although many studies have found immigrants are less drawn to violent crime than native-born citizens. Even more, 80%, think there’s a major risk that people in the country without permission will burden public service programs, while about 6 in 10 Republicans are concerned that there’s a major risk of them taking American jobs, that their population growth will weaken American identity or that they will vote illegally — although only a small number of noncitizen voters have been uncovered.

Amber Pierce, a 43-year-old Republican from Milam, Texas, says she understands that a lot of migrants are seeking a better life for their children, but she’s also concerned migrants will become a drain on government services.

“I believe that a lot of them come over here and get free health care and take away from the people who have worked here and are citizens,” Pierce said. “They get a free ride. I don’t think that’s fair.”

Democrats, on the other hand, are more likely to see benefits from immigration, although the poll did find that only half of Democrats now think that legal immigrants are making important contributions to American companies, a decrease of more than 20 percentage points from 2017. But they’re more likely than Republicans to say that the ability of people to come from other places in the world to escape violence or find economic opportunities is extremely or very important to the U.S’s identity as a nation.

“People who are coming, are coming for good reason. It’s how many of us got here,” said Amy Wozniak, a Democrat from Greenwood, Indiana. Wozniak said previous waves of immigrants came from European countries. Now immigrants are coming from different countries but that doesn’t mean they’re not fleeing for justifiable reasons, she said: “They’re not all drugs and thugs.”

There’s also a divide among partisans about the value of diversity, with 83% of Democrats saying that the country’s diverse population makes it at least moderately stronger, compared with 43% of Republicans and Independents. Republicans are more likely than Democrats to say that a shared American culture and set of values is extremely or very important to the United States’ identity as a nation, although about half of Democrats also see this as important.

U.S. adults — and especially Republicans — are more likely to say that the country has been significantly changed by immigrants in the past five years than they are to say that immigrants have changed their own community or their state. About 3 in 10 U.S. adults say immigrants have had a major impact on their local community while about 6 in 10 say they’ve had a major impact on the country as a whole. The gap between perceptions of community impact and effects on the country as a whole is particularly wide among Republicans.

There is some bipartisan agreement about how immigration at the border between the U.S. and Mexico should be addressed. The most popular option asked about is hiring more Border Patrol agents, which is supported by about 8 in 10 Republicans and about half of Democrats. Hiring more immigration judges and court personnel is also favored among majorities of both parties.

About half of Americans support reducing the number of immigrants who are allowed to seek asylum in the U.S. when they arrive at the border, but there’s a much bigger partisan divide there, with more Republicans than Democrats favoring this strategy. Building a wall — former President Donald Trump’s signature policy goal — is the least popular and most polarizing option of the four asked about. About 4 in 10 favor building a wall, including 77% of Republicans but just 12% of Democrats.

Donna Lyon is a Democratic-leaning independent from Cortland, New York. She believes a border wall would do little to stop migrants. But she supports hiring more Border Patrol agents and more immigration court judges to deal with the growing backlog of immigration court cases: “That would stop all the backup that we have.”

Congress just recently approved money to hire about 2,000 more Border Patrol agents but so far this year, there’s been no significant boost for funding for more immigration judges. Many on both sides of the aisle have said it takes much too long to decide asylum cases, meaning migrants stay in the country for years waiting for a decision, but the parties have failed to find consensus on how to address the issue.

The poll of 1,282 adults was conducted March 21-25, 2024, using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 3.8 percentage points.
…

TOKYO — Oppenheimer finally premiered Friday in the nation where two cities were obliterated 79 years ago by the nuclear weapons invented by the American scientist who was the subject of the Oscar-winning film. Japanese filmgoers’ reactions understandably were mixed and highly emotional.

Toshiyuki Mimaki, who survived the bombing of Hiroshima when he was 3, said he has been fascinated by the story of J. Robert Oppenheimer, often called “the father of the atomic bomb” for leading the Manhattan Project.

“What were the Japanese thinking, carrying out the attack on Pearl Harbor, starting a war they could never hope to win?” he said, sadness in his voice, in a telephone interview with The Associated Press.

He is now chairperson of a group of bomb victims called the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organization and he saw Oppenheimer at a preview event. “During the whole movie, I was waiting and waiting for the Hiroshima bombing scene to come on, but it never did,” Mimaki said.

Oppenheimer does not directly depict what happened on the ground when the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, turning some 100,000 people instantly into ashes, and killed thousands more in the days that followed, mostly civilians.

The film instead focuses on Oppenheimer as a person and his internal conflicts.

The film’s release in Japan, more than eight months after it opened in the U.S., had been watched with trepidation because of the sensitivity of the subject matter.

Former Hiroshima Mayor Takashi Hiraoka, who spoke at a preview event for the film in the southwestern city, was more critical of what was omitted.

“From Hiroshima’s standpoint, the horror of nuclear weapons was not sufficiently depicted,” he was quoted as saying by Japanese media. “The film was made in a way to validate the conclusion that the atomic bomb was used to save the lives of Americans.”

Some moviegoers offered praise. One man emerging from a Tokyo theater Friday said the movie was great, stressing that the topic was of great interest to Japanese, although emotionally volatile as well. Another said he got choked up over the film’s scenes depicting Oppenheimer’s inner turmoil. Neither man would give his name to an Associated Press journalist.

In a sign of the historical controversy, a backlash flared last year over the “Barbenheimer” marketing phenomenon that merged pink-and-fun Barbie with seriously intense Oppenheimer. Warner Bros. Japan, which distributed Barbie in the country, apologized after some memes depicted the Mattel doll with atomic blast imagery.

Kazuhiro Maeshima, professor at Sophia University, who specializes in U.S. politics, called the film an expression of “an American conscience.”

Those who expect an anti-war movie may be disappointed. But the telling of Oppenheimer’s story in a Hollywood blockbuster would have been unthinkable several decades ago, when justification of nuclear weapons dominated American sentiments, Maeshima said.

“The work shows an America that has changed dramatically,” he said in a telephone interview.

Others suggested the world might be ready for a Japanese response to that story.

Takashi Yamazaki, director of Godzilla Minus One, which won the Oscar for visual effects and is a powerful statement on nuclear catastrophe in its own way, suggested he might be the man for that job.

“I feel there needs to an answer from Japan to Oppenheimer. Someday, I would like to make that movie,” he said in an online dialogue with Oppenheimer director Christopher Nolan.

Nolan heartily agreed.

Hiroyuki Shinju, a lawyer, noted Japan and Germany also carried out wartime atrocities, even as the nuclear threat grows around the world. Historians say Japan was also working on nuclear weapons during World War II and would have almost certainly used them against other nations, Shinju said.

“This movie can serve as the starting point for addressing the legitimacy of the use of nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as humanity’s, and Japan’s, reflections on nuclear weapons and war,” he wrote in his commentary on Oppenheimer published by the Tokyo Bar Association. 
…

Secretary of State Antony Blinken plans to go to France and Belgium next week to try to build unity among allies in support of Ukraine in its war against Russia and of Israel in its war against Hamas. Analysts say he faces a tough task. VOA Senior Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports.
…

MASSAPEQUA PARK, New York — Donald Trump attended Thursday’s wake of a New York City police officer gunned down in the line of duty and called for “law and order” as part of his attempt to show a contrast with President Joe Biden and focus on crime as part of his third White House campaign.

The visitation for Officer Jonathan Diller, who was fatally shot during a traffic stop on Monday, was held in suburban Massapequa on Long Island. Police said the 31-year-old Diller was shot below his bulletproof vest while approaching an illegally parked car in Queens.

Diller, who was married and had a 1-year-old son, was rushed to a hospital, where he died.

The visit by Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, came as Biden was also in New York for a previously scheduled fundraiser with former Democratic Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. Trump has accused Biden of lacking toughness, and his campaign sought to contrast his visit with Biden’s fundraiser.

Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung, in a post on X, noted Trump’s visit and said, “Meanwhile, the Three Stooges — Biden, Obama, and Clinton — will be at a glitzy fundraiser in the city with their elitist, out-of-touch celebrity benefactors.”

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Thursday that the president has spoken with New York City’s mayor, but she said she didn’t have any “private communications to share” when asked if Biden had spoken to the family of the officer who was killed. Jean-Pierre said the administration’s hearts go out to the officer’s family.

Speaking aboard Air Force One, she said Biden has supported law enforcement throughout his entire career and took a dig at Trump’s record.

“Violent crime surged under the previous administration,” Jean-Pierre said. “The Biden-[Vice President Kamala] Harris administration have done the polar opposite, taking decisive action from the very beginning to fund the police and achieving a historic reduction in crime.”

After visiting in the funeral home with Diller’s family, Trump spoke outside to news reporters with about a dozen local police officers, half in patrol uniforms, half in tactical gear, forming as a backdrop behind him.

“We have to get back to law and order. We have to do a lot of things differently. This is not working. This is happening too often,” Trump said.

He did not elaborate.

Mixed views on law enforcement

Trump has deplored crime in heavily Democratic cities, has called for shoplifters to be shot immediately, and wants to immunize police officers from lawsuits for potential misconduct. But he’s also demonized local prosecutors, the FBI and the Department of Justice over the criminal prosecutions he faces and the investigation while he was president into his first campaign’s interactions with Russia.

He has also embraced those imprisoned for their roles on the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, when a mob of his angry supporters overran police lines and Capitol and local police officers were attacked and beaten.

Massapequa and the surrounding South Shore towns have long been a popular destination for city police officers and firefighters looking to set down roots on Long Island. Though Democrats outnumber Republicans in New York, this area is a heavily Republican part of Long Island that Trump won in the 2020 presidential election.

On Thursday, prosecutors in Queens charged Diller’s alleged shooter, Guy Rivera, with first degree murder and other charges. Rivera, who was shot in the back when Diller’s partner returned fire, was arraigned from his hospital bed. Rivera’s lawyers at Legal Aid declined to comment, according to spokesman Redmond Haskins.

Biden has pledged that the federal government will work more closely with police to combat gun violence and crack down on illegal guns.

New FBI statistics released earlier this month showed that overall violent crime in the U.S. dropped again last year, continuing a downward trend after a pandemic-era spike. The FBI data found murders dropped 13% in the last three months of 2023 compared with the same period the year before, and violent crime overall was down 6%.

The FBI’s report was in line with the findings of the nonpartisan Council on Criminal Justice, which found that homicides were down an average of 10% from the year before in a survey of 32 cities, though it found violent crime still remained higher than before the coronavirus pandemic in many cities.
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washington — House Republicans on Thursday invited President Joe Biden to testify before Congress as part of their impeachment inquiry into him and his family’s business affairs. 

Representative James Comer, chair of the House Oversight Committee, sent a letter to the Democratic president, inviting him to sit for a public hearing to “explain, under oath,” what involvement he had in the Biden family businesses. 

“In light of the yawning gap between your public statements and the evidence assembled by the committee, as well as the White House’s obstruction, it is in the best interest of the American people for you to answer questions from members of Congress directly, and I hereby invite you to do so,” the Kentucky Republican wrote. 

While it is highly unlikely that Biden would agree to appear before lawmakers in such a setting, Comer pointed to previous examples of presidents’ testifying before Congress. 

“As you are aware, presidents before you have provided testimony to congressional committees, including President Ford’s testimony before the subcommittee on criminal justice of the House Judiciary Committee in 1974,” Comer wrote. 

The invitation comes as the monthslong inquiry into Biden is all but winding down as Republicans face the stark reality that it lacks the political appetite from within the conference to go forward with an actual impeachment. Nonetheless, leaders of the effort, including Comer, are facing growing political pressure to deliver something after months of work investigating the Biden family and its  international business transactions. 

The White House has repeatedly called the inquiry baseless, telling Republicans to “move on” and focus on “real issues” Americans want addressed. 

“This is a sad stunt at the end of a dead impeachment,” spokesman Ian Sams said in a social media post last week. “Call it a day, pal.” 

The committee has asserted that the Bidens traded on the family name, an alleged influence-peddling scheme in which Republicans are trying to link a handful of phone calls or dinner meetings between Joe Biden, when he was vice president or out of office, and his son Hunter Biden and Hunter’s business associates. 

But despite dedicating countless resources over the past year, interviewing dozens of witnesses, including Hunter and the president’s brother James, Republicans have yet to produce any evidence that shows Joe Biden was directly involved in or benefited from his family’s businesses while in public office. 

Democrats have remained unified against the inquiry, with Representative Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on Oversight, calling for his GOP counterpart to end the investigation absent any credible evidence. 

“The GOP impeachment inquiry has been a circus,” Oversight Democrats wrote on the social media platform X. “Time to fold up the tent.” 

Seeking testimony from the president could ultimately be the inquiry’s final act.  

Late last year, Republicans leading the investigation had privately discussed holding a vote on articles of impeachment in the new year, but growing criticism from within their party forced a shift in strategy. Now, Comer is eyeing potential criminal referrals of the family to the Justice Department, a move that will be largely symbolic and unlikely to be taken up by the department. 
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white house — Duty to warn. It is the obligation that the United States says it takes upon itself if the intelligence community is able to identify an impending threat to a particular country.

The U.S. acted on this duty just two weeks before the deadly attack near Moscow claimed by Islamic State. U.S. officials had warned Russia that extremists had imminent plans for such an attack, but the Kremlin brushed off the warning as mere blackmail and efforts to destabilize Russian society. John Kirby, White House national security communications adviser, spoke to VOA about the terrorist attack.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

VOA: First of all, let’s jump into fresh accusations coming from Russia today. Russia’s FSB [intelligence] chief accused the U.K., the U.S. and Ukraine of being behind the Moscow attack on the concert hall. What’s your response to that?

Kirby: Nonsense.

VOA: The United States has exercised its duty to warn the Russian counterparts of an incoming threat. Why was it important for the American side to warn Russians given that they are waging the war against Ukraine and they turned into the world pariah?

Kirby: Because it was going to be innocent Russian people that were going to fall victim and in fact, did fall victim and we take our duty to warn very, very seriously. We have all kinds of problems with the way Mr. [Vladimir] Putin is leading and governing, if you want to call it that, and we certainly have significant concerns about the continued reckless and violent attacks on Ukrainian people and Ukrainian infrastructure.

But we don’t have a beef with the Russian people. And we had information that they were going to put Russian people, innocent Russians at risk from a terrorist threat. So you bet we informed Russian authorities as appropriate as we would do for any country.

VOA: I’m wondering what their response looked like. Was it a thank you note? Or did they say, “It’s nonsense, leave it to yourself?”

Kirby: I won’t characterize what the other side did with the information that we provided. We provided useful, we believe, valuable information about what we thought was an imminent terrorist attack. We also warned Americans about staying away from public places like concert halls. So we were very direct with our Russian counterparts appropriately to make sure that they had as much useful information as possible. What they did with it, or didn’t do with it, they’d have to speak to.

VOA: But can you confirm they received it?

Kirby: We know that they received the information and that they understood the information. Now what they did with it, again, is for them to speak to.

VOA: Who is responsible for this attack according to American intelligence? Is it ISIS? What was the motive behind the attack?

Kirby: ISIS is responsible for this attack.

VOA: ISIS-K?

Kirby: ISIS is responsible for this attack.

VOA: Do you know the motive here?

Kirby: ISIS claimed responsibility themselves. They all have the goals. Again, I’m not going to get into too much into intelligence matters. ISIS is responsible for this attack.

VOA: Moving on to Ukraine. What are the chances of Congress voting for the supplemental [budget to assist Ukraine] once legislators return from their break?

Kirby: Well, we hope that they will. I can’t predict what the House will do. It is going to be up to Speaker [Mike] Johnson and this is a moment for him to show some leadership. We know that if you were to put that on the floor it would get voted on resoundingly.

Ukraine and Ukrainian battlefield commanders would have the weapons and the capabilities that they need to better defend themselves, particularly in the East there in the Donbas where Russian forces continue to try to make progress pushing west out of Avdiivka. So it’s past time for us to be able to provide additional security assistance to Ukraine, it’s past time for that supplemental to get passed. And so we strongly urge Speaker Johnson to put it before a vote and let’s get moving.

VOA: Speaker Johnson, as reported by The Hill, may contemplate the possibility of providing Ukraine with a loan or another form of lend-lease arrangement to supply them with weapons, with the expectation of repayment. Would this administration be open to this option as an alternative to the supplemental?

Kirby: Our focus is on getting that supplemental passed. And as I’ve said before, and the speaker knows this, if he puts it on the floor, it’ll get approved. It has the votes. That’s the best way to support Ukraine.
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