WASHINGTON — The United States on Tuesday imposed sanctions on Haiti’s former president, Michel Joseph Martelly, over drug trafficking, accusing him of playing a significant role in perpetuating the ongoing crisis in the country.

The U.S. Treasury Department in a statement said Martelly “abused his influence to facilitate the trafficking of dangerous drugs, including cocaine, destined for the United States.”

The department said he also worked with Haitian drug traffickers, sponsored multiple gangs and engaged in the laundering of illicit drug proceeds.

“Today’s action against Martelly emphasizes the significant and destabilizing role he and other corrupt political elites have played in perpetuating the ongoing crisis in Haiti,” Treasury’s Acting Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Bradley Smith said in the statement.

“The United States, along with our international partners, is committed to disrupting those who facilitate the drug trafficking, corruption and other illicit activities fueling the horrific gang violence and political instability.”

Tuesday’s action freezes any of Martelly’s U.S. assets and generally bars Americans from dealing with him.

Gang wars have displaced more than 578,000 Haitians, while nearly 5 million — almost half the population of 11.7 million — face acute hunger, with 1.6 million of those people at risk of starvation, the United Nations says.

Armed gangs have formed a broad alliance while carrying out widespread killings, ransom kidnappings and sexual violence.
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Southport, United Kingdom — King Charles III on Tuesday visited the town in northwest England where a devastating knife attack that killed three young girls sparked nationwide anti-immigration riots.

The 75-year-old monarch inspected a vast sea of floral tributes to the victims and will meet children who survived the attack in the seaside town of Southport.

Buckingham Palace said he wanted to thank “frontline emergency staff for their ongoing work serving local people.”

Charles was criticized by some, including historian Kate Williams, for not issuing a public statement on the riots. Although the monarch conveyed his condolences to the families of the three girls killed, he did not comment on the unrest until nearly two weeks later. Traditionally, the monarch does not comment on anything that could cause political controversy.

But in calls with Prime Minister Keir Starmer and police chiefs, the king later said he had been “greatly encouraged” by the reaction “that countered the aggression and criminality from a few with the compassion and resilience of the many.”

Footage showed the king waving to people as he walked through the town center.

He was later set to meet regional leaders, representatives from the emergency services and others. They will include local groups and faith leaders affected by the violent disorder that hit Southport the day after the July 29 mass stabbing.

Charles was also due to meet privately with some of those caught up in the knife attack, which claimed the lives of three girls, ages 6, 7 and 9, and injured 10 others, eight of them also children.

The meeting was to include some of the surviving children who were present at the community center, as well as their families.

The children were attending a dance class when an assailant entered the building and began attacking them.

Axel Rudakubana, who was 17 at the time, has been charged with murder and attempted murder over the stabbing spree. A motive for the atrocity has not been disclosed, but police have said it is not being treated as terrorism related.

More than a dozen English towns and cities saw unrest and riots in the week that followed the events in Southport.

Officials have blamed far-right elements for helping to stir up the disorder, which targeted mosques and hotels housing asylum seekers as well as police officers and other properties.

The authorities have cited misinformation spread online that Rudakubana was a Muslim asylum seeker for fueling the violence. He was actually born in Britain to parents who hail from Rwanda, an overwhelmingly Christian country.

In the immediate aftermath of the July 29 tragedy, Charles and Queen Camilla conveyed their condolences to the families of the three girls killed but did not comment on the near-daily riots for some time.

The king eventually praised British police and emergency services “for all they are doing to restore peace in those areas that have been affected by violent disorder.”

He hoped the “shared values of mutual respect and understanding will continue to strengthen and unite the nation,” a Buckingham Palace spokesperson had said.

The riots have led to more than a thousand arrests and hundreds of convictions, after Prime Minister Starmer vowed those who participated would be quickly called to account.
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Washington — Federal Reserve officials have said they’re increasingly confident that they’ve nearly tamed inflation. Now, it’s the health of the job market that’s starting to draw their concern.

With inflation cooling toward its 2% target, the pace of hiring slowing and the unemployment rate edging up, the Fed is poised to cut its benchmark interest rate next month from its 23-year high. How fast it may cut rates after that, though, will be determined mainly by whether employers keep hiring. A lower Fed benchmark rate would eventually lead to lower rates for auto loans, mortgages and other forms of consumer borrowing.

Chair Jerome Powell will likely provide some hints about how the Fed sees the economy and what its next steps may be in a high-profile speech Friday in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, at the Fed’s annual conference of central bankers. It’s a platform that Powell and his predecessors have often used to signal changes in their thinking or approach.

Powell will likely indicate that the Fed has grown more confident that inflation is headed back to the 2% target, which it has long said would be necessary before rate cuts would begin.

Economists generally agree that the Fed is getting closer to conquering high inflation, which brought financial pain to millions of households beginning three years ago as the economy rebounded from the pandemic recession. Few economists, though, think Powell or any other Fed official is prepared to declare “mission accomplished.”

“I don’t think that the Fed has to fear inflation,” said Tom Porcelli, U.S. chief economist at PGIM Fixed Income. “At this point, it’s right that the Fed is now more focused on labor versus inflation. Their policy is calibrated for inflation that is much higher than this.”

Still, how fast the Fed cuts rates in the coming months will depend on what the economic data shows. After the government reported this month that hiring in July was much less than expected and that the jobless rate reached 4.3%, the highest in three years, stock prices plunged for two days on fears that the U.S. might fall into a recession. Some economists began speculating about a half-point Fed rate cut in September and perhaps another identical cut in November.

But healthier economic reports last week, including another decline in inflation and a robust gain in retail sales, have largely dispelled those concerns. Wall Street traders now expect three quarter-point Fed cuts in September, November and December, though in December it’s nearly a coin-toss between a quarter- and a half-point cut. Mortgage rates have already started to decline in anticipation of a rate reduction.

A half-point Fed rate cut in September would become more likely if there were signs of a further slowdown in hiring, some officials have said. The next jobs report will be issued on Sept. 6, after the Jackson Hole conference but before the Fed’s next meeting in mid-September.

Raphael Bostic, president of the Fed’s Atlanta branch, said in an interview Monday with The Associated Press that “evidence of accelerating weakness in labor markets may warrant a more rapid move, either in terms of the increments of movement or the speed at which we try to get back” to a level of rates that no longer restricts the economy.

Even if hiring stays solid, the Fed is set to cut rates this year given the steady progress that’s been made on inflation, economists say. Last week, the government said consumer prices rose just 2.9% in July from a year ago, the smallest such increase in more than three years.

Bostic noted that the economy has changed from just a couple of months ago, when he was suggesting that a rate cut might not be necessary until the final three months of the year.

“I’ve got more confidence that we are likely to get to our target for inflation,” he said. “And we’ve seen labor markets weaken considerably relative to where they were” last year. “We might need to shift our policy stance sooner than I would have thought before.”

Both Bostic and Austan Goolsbee, president of the Fed’s Chicago branch, say that with inflation falling, inflation-adjusted interest rates — which are what many businesses and investors pay most attention to — are rising even as inflation has slowed. When the Fed first set its key rate at its current 5.3%, inflation — excluding volatile energy and food costs — was 4.7%. Now, it’s just 3.2%.

“Our policies are getting tighter with every moment in that type of situation,” Bostic said. “We have to be concerned” that rates are so high they could cause an economic slowdown.

Still, Bostic said that for now, the job market and the economy appear mostly healthy, and he still expects a “soft landing,” whereby inflation falls back to the Fed’s 2% target without a recession occurring.

With the economy’s outlook unclear and the Fed focusing heavily on what future data shows, there may be only so much Powell will be able to say Friday about the central bank’s next steps.

Given the Fed’s focus on how the economic data comes in, “it will be difficult for Powell to pre-commit to a particular trajectory at Jackson Hole,” Matthew Luzzetti, chief U.S. economist at Deutsche Bank, said in a research note.
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PALERMO, Sicily — Rescue teams in Sicily on Tuesday resumed a search for six missing people, including British tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch and his daughter, after a luxury yacht was struck by a violent storm and sank on Monday, killing at least one on board.

The British-flagged “Bayesian,” a 56-meter-long sailboat was carrying 22 people and was anchored just off the port of Porticello when it was hit by ferocious weather.

Jonathan Bloomer, chairman of Morgan Stanley International and Chris Morvillo, a lawyer at Clifford Chance who represented Lynch in a U.S. trial, were among the missing.

The wives of both men were also unaccounted for, said Salvatore Cocina, head of civil protection in Sicily.

“The fear is that the bodies got trapped inside the vessel,” he told Reuters.

Prosecutors in the nearby town of Termini Imerese have opened an investigation.

Specialist divers had reached the ship on Monday at a depth of some 50 meters, but access was limited due to objects in the way, the fire brigade said.

Fifteen people had escaped before the boat went down, including Lynch’s wife, Angela Bacares, who owned the boat, and a 1-year-old girl.

On Monday, rescue teams recovered the body of the yacht’s onboard chef, identified as Antiguan citizen Ricardo Thomas.

Storms and heavy rainfall have swept Italy in recent days, after weeks of scorching heat lifted the temperature of the Mediterranean sea to record levels, raising the risk of extreme weather conditions, experts said.

“The sea surface temperature around Sicily was around 30 degrees Celsius, which is almost 3 degrees more than normal. This creates an enormous source of energy that contributes to these storms,” said meteorologist Luca Mercalli.

“We can’t say that this is all due to global warming but we can say that it has an amplifying effect,” he told Reuters.

The British government’s Marine Accident Investigation Branch said four inspectors had been sent to Sicily to conduct a “preliminary assessment.”

One expert at the scene of the disaster who declined to be named said an early focus of the investigation would be whether the yacht’s crew had had time to close access hatches into the vessel before the storm struck.
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LEWISTON, Maine — After more than a dozen public meetings, scores of witnesses and thousands of pages of evidence, a special commission created to investigate the deadliest shooting in Maine history is ready to issue its final report on Tuesday.

The independent commission began its work a month after the Oct. 25 mass shooting by an Army reservist that killed 18 people at a bowling alley and a bar and grill in Lewiston. Over nine months, there has been emotional testimony from family members and survivors of the shooting, law enforcement officials and U.S. Army Reserves personnel, and others.

The commission created by Gov. Janet Mills will hold a news conference to release the full report at Lewiston City Hall — less than 5 kilometers from the two sites where the shootings took place.

It’s unclear if the report will contain any surprises. An interim report released in March said law enforcement should have seized the shooter’s guns and put him in protective custody weeks before the shootings.

The commission’s public hearings revealed the swift response by police to the shootings, but also the ensuing chaos during the massive search for the gunman. Also revealed were missed opportunities to stop the shooter, 40-year-old Robert Card, an Army Reservist whose mental health was spiraling.

Card’s sister testified at a hearing, her hand resting on his military helmet as she spoke.

Kathleen Walker, whose husband Jason was killed while rushing at Card to try to stop him, also testified, and said: “The system failed, and we can’t allow this to happen again.”

Family members and fellow reservists said Card had exhibited delusional and paranoid behavior months before the shootings. He was hospitalized by the Army during training in July 2023, but a commanding officer acknowledged not checking to ensure compliance on follow-up care.

The starkest warning came in September when a fellow reservist texted an Army supervisor, saying, “I believe he’s going to snap and do a mass shooting.” Card was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound after a search that followed the shootings.

Army officials conducted their own investigation after the shootings that Lt. Gen. Jody Daniels, then the chief of the Army Reserves, said found “a series of failures by unit leadership.” Three Army Reserve officers were disciplined for dereliction of duty, according to the report, which noted communication failures within the chain of command and between military and civilian hospitals.

Maine’s legislature passed new guns laws for the state, which has a tradition of firearms ownership, in the wake of the shootings. A three-day waiting period for gun purchases went into effect earlier this month.

The Lewiston commission is chaired by Daniel Wathen, a former chief justice of Maine’s highest court. The seven-member commission also included two former federal prosecutors, two additional former judges, a psychiatrist and executive at a psychiatric hospital, and the state’s former chief forensic psychologist.
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CHICO, Calif. — California’s largest wildfire this year has been significantly tamed as the state’s initially fierce fire season has, at least temporarily, fallen into a relative calm.

The Park Fire was 53% contained Monday after scorching nearly 1,738 square kilometers in several northern counties, destroying 637 structures and damaging 49 as it became the state’s fourth-largest wildfire on record.

A large portion of the fire area has been in mop-up stages, which involves extinguishing smoldering material along containment lines, and residents of evacuated areas are returning home. Timber in its northeast corner continues to burn.

The fire is burning islands of vegetation within containment lines, the Cal Fire situation summary said.

The Park Fire was allegedly started by arson on July 24 in a wilderness park outside the Central Valley city of Chico. It spread northward with astonishing speed in withering conditions as it climbed the western slope of the Sierra Nevada.

July was marked by extraordinary heat in most of California, where back-to-back wet winters left the state flush with grasses and vegetation that dried and became ready to burn. Wildfires erupted up and down the state.

The first half of August has been warmer than average but not record-breaking, according to Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles.

“We’re still seeing pretty regular ignitions and we’re still seeing significant fire activity, but the pace has slowed and the degree of that activity, the intensity, rates of initial spread, are not as high as they were,” he said in an online briefing Friday.

“Nonetheless, vegetation remains drier than average in most places in California and will likely remain so nearly everywhere in California for the foreseeable future,” he said.

There are signs of a return of high heat in parts of the West by late August and early September, Swain said.

“I would expect to see another resurgence in wildfire activity then across a broad swath of the West, including California,” he said.
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Las Vegas — Hundreds of photos of a slain investigative journalist’s home and neighborhood were found on the cellphone and computer of a local Democratic politician accused of “lying in wait” and killing the reporter, who had written several articles critical of the official, a Nevada jury was told Monday.

Other photos taken from Robert Telles’ devices included an image of a single gray athletic shoe with a distinctive black pattern and a shot of Telles’ work computer at the Clark County Public Administrator and Guardian office with results of internet searches through a password-protected site that retrieved slain reporter Jeff German’s name, home address, vehicle registration and date of birth.

Prosecutor Christopher Hamner noted for jurors that photo was taken Aug. 23, 2022 — less than two weeks before German was slashed and stabbed to death in a side yard of his home.

“This image came out of Mr. Telles’ phone?” Hamner asked Matthew Hovanec, a Las Vegas digital forensics supervisor who testified Monday about “extracting” the data from Telles’ devices.

“It did,” Hovanec responded.

Detective Justine Gatus, the primary Las Vegas police homicide investigator of German’s death, was the main — and final — witness called Monday as prosecutors rested their case after four days of testimony from more than two dozen witnesses.

Telles has pleaded not guilty to murder and faces the possibility of life in prison if the jury finds him guilty. Prosecutors are not seeking the death penalty.

Telles insists he didn’t kill German and was framed for the crime. He intends to testify, defense lawyer Robert Draskovich said Monday, and is expected to take the witness stand to cap his own defense case, possibly Tuesday afternoon.

Gatus cited Las Vegas Review-Journal articles about Telles and the county office that German wrote, published in May and June 2022, about a county office in turmoil.

“They weren’t flattering,” the detective observed.

Social media posts by Telles at the same time derided German and the articles as false depictions of his efforts to fight corruption amid a political and social “old guard” real estate network.

Gatus testified that the gray sneaker with a Nike logo and four black marks on the sole was “identical” to one jurors saw earlier in neighbors’ security camera images of a figure wearing orange who slipped into a side yard of German’s home where German was later found dead on Labor Day weekend 2022.

Neither an orange shirt nor a murder weapon was entered as evidence in the case. But one of those shoes, cut to pieces and bearing spots of blood from an unidentified source, was found in plastic shopping bag in Telles’ home following his arrest.

German’s killing in September 2022, at age 69, made him the only reporter killed in the U.S. among 69 news media workers killed worldwide that year, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. German spent 44 years covering Las Vegas mobsters and public officials at the Las Vegas Sun and then at the rival Review-Journal.

About 10 of his family members and friends have attended each day of Telles’ trial but have not spoken publicly about the killing. They declined as a group on Monday to comment.

Jurors last week heard from forensic scientists who said Telles’ DNA was found beneath German’s fingernails and saw security video of the suspect driving through German’s neighborhood.
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BERLIN — Two German warships await orders from Berlin, their commander said, to determine whether next month they will be the first German naval vessels in decades to pass through the Taiwan Strait, drawing a rebuke from Beijing.

While the U.S. and other nations, including Canada, have sent warships through the narrow strait in recent weeks, it would be the German navy’s first passage through the strait since 2002.

China claims sovereignty over democratically governed Taiwan, and says it has jurisdiction over the nearly 180-km (110 miles) wide waterway that divides the two sides and is part of the South China Sea. Taiwan strongly objects to China’s sovereignty claims and says only the island’s people can decide their future.

The Taiwan Strait is a major trade route through which about half of global container ships pass, and both the United States and Taiwan say it’s an international waterway.

“The decision has not been taken yet,” the commander of the naval task group, Rear Admiral Axel Schulz, told Reuters in a telephone interview, adding the weather would play a role.

“We are showing our flag here to demonstrate that we stand by our partners and friends, our commitment to the rules-based order, the peaceful solution of territorial conflicts and free and secure shipping lanes.”

Asked about the German ships’ potential passage, China’s foreign ministry said Taiwan was an internal Chinese affair and the key to stability was opposing Taiwan’s independence.

“China has always been opposed to the undermining of China’s territorial sovereignty and security under the guise of freedom of navigation,” ministry spokesperson Mao Ning told reporters in Beijing.

Before their possible passage through the strait next month, the frigate Baden-Wuerttemberg and the replenishment ship Frankfurt am Main plan to call in Tokyo on Tuesday. They will also make stops in South Korea and the Philippines.

They will take part in exercises in the region with France, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, and the United States.

Over the last four years, Beijing’s military has increased its activities in the strait.

Expanding military presence

Sailings through the waterway by foreign warships, especially American, are regularly condemned by Beijing, which says such missions “undermine peace and stability” in the region.

Germany, for whom both China and Taiwan, with its huge chip industry, are major trade partners, has joined other Western nations in expanding its military presence in the region as their alarm has grown over Beijing’s territorial ambitions.

In 2021, a German warship sailed through the South China Sea, for the first time in almost 20 years.

Last month, the Luftwaffe deployed fighter jets to Japan for the first joint drills there.

Schulz said he was not planning for any specific security measures should the warships under his command cross the Taiwan Strait, calling it a “normal passage” similar to sailing through the English Channel or the North Sea.

However, he anticipated any passage would be closely monitored.

“I expect the Chinese navy and potentially the coastguard or maritime militia to escort us,” he said, describing this as common practice.
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Moscow — A Russian court rejected an appeal Monday by a U.S. soldier who has been jailed for three years and nine months for alleged death threats and theft.

Gordon Black was sentenced in June by a court in Russia’s Far Eastern city of Vladivostok, where he was arrested in May while visiting a Russian woman he met and dated while serving in South Korea.

The 34-year-old was detained after the woman, named by Russian media as Alexandra Vashuk, reported him to the police after an argument, saying he physically attacked her and stole about $110 from her.

Black pleaded “partially guilty” to theft and not guilty to threatening to kill Vashuk, saying she had started an argument after drinking.

Black appealed his sentence and Monday, the Primorye regional court rejected the appeal, saying in a statement that it decided “to leave the verdict in place” after examining the case.

The pair met in October 2022 on the dating app Tinder in South Korea and had dated there, Black said, before Vashuk then invited him to come to Vladivostok.

Black is one of several American citizens imprisoned in Russia.

Washington has accused Moscow of arresting its citizens on baseless charges to use them as bargaining chips to secure the release of Russians convicted abroad.

On August 1, Russia freed U.S. reporter Evan Gershkovich, former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan and 14 others in its biggest prisoner swap with the West since the Cold War.
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oxford, connecticut — Torrential rains turned streets into raging rivers in parts of Connecticut and New York’s Long Island, trapping people in cars and a restaurant, covering vehicles in mud, and sweeping two women to their deaths, authorities said.

Dramatic rescues unfolded as a foot (30 centimeters) of rain fell on some parts of western Connecticut late Sunday and early Monday, coming down so fast that it caught drivers unaware. Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont said more than 100 people were evacuated by search and rescue teams Sunday evening.

The bodies of two women who had been in separate cars were recovered Monday in Oxford, a town of 13,000 about 35 miles southwest of Hartford, officials said. Both were Oxford residents.

Firefighters were trying to get the first woman to safety when the flooded Little River swept her away, Oxford Fire Chief Scott Pelletier said at a news conference with other Connecticut officials. The second woman got out of her car and tried to cling to a sign, but “the racing water was too much” and swept her away, too, he said.

“This is a tragic and devastating day for Oxford,” the town’s first selectman, George Temple, said.

U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal added, “Who would have thought the Little River would turn into a gushing torrent of destruction, which is what happened.”

In nearby Southbury, Lucas Barber used wilderness first responder techniques he learned as a backpacker and rock climber to wade through chest-high water to save Patrick Jennings, who has a prosthetic leg, and Jennings’ dog from a car outside the Southbury Plaza mall.

Barber, 30, said he drove to higher ground and grabbed rope he keeps in his car for emergencies. Jennings’ car, he said, looked like it was “turning in the tide and seemed to be sinking.”

Barber said he first tried to throw his rope to Jennings but changed his approach when he was told Jennings had a prosthetic leg. Barber waded and swam to the car, which was filling with water, he said.

He saw Jennings’ golden retriever, Stanley, in the back, scared, and Jennings worried about leaving him behind.

“‘Your dog is coming with us, but also I need to get you out right now,'” Barber said he told Jennings.

Jennings took off his prosthetic leg, and Barber wrapped his rope around the man’s waist and chest. Barber tried tying the rope around the dog’s collar, but it came undone. Once he got Jennings to safety and others could tend to him, he went back for Stanley. Halfway back, Barber said, the dog got excited to see Jennings and swam the rest of the way to his owner.

Barber said he went back a third time to fetch Jennings’ prosthetic leg, which was bobbing next to his car.

In Oxford, rushing waters surrounded the Brookside Inn, trapping 18 people. Firefighters had to stretch a ladder across the floodwaters to reach them as cars and other large debris carried by the torrent smashed into the building, said Jeremy Rodorigo, a firefighter from neighboring Beacon Falls.

The storm system that hit Connecticut and then moved on to Long Island was separate from Hurricane Ernesto, which on Monday was over the open Atlantic Ocean but still expected to cause powerful swells, dangerous surf and rip currents along the U.S. East Coast.

William Syrett, a professor of meteorology and atmospheric science at Penn State University, referred to the Connecticut-New York system as “training thunderstorms.”

“It’s like each thunderstorm is a car on a train track, and so they just keep going over the same place,” he said. He cited “perfect conditions” for the storms, thanks to the amount of moisture in the air and a slow weather system.

The unusual part was the amount of rain that fell over several hours, Syrett said, not the thunderstorms themselves.

Ed Romaine, the executive of Long Island’s Suffolk County, said that hundreds of homes were affected by flooding and that mudslides covered the roofs of cars in some areas.

The storms canceled more than 450 flights at Newark Liberty, LaGuardia and John F. Kennedy airports, officials said.
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Washington — A Washington, D.C., councilmember known for promoting antisemitic conspiracy theories has been arrested on charges that he accepted over $150,000 in bribes in exchange for using his elected position to help companies with city contracts, according to court records unsealed on Monday.

Trayon White Sr., a Democrat who ran an unsuccessful mayoral campaign in 2022, was arrested on a federal bribery charge by the FBI on Sunday. He is expected to make his initial court appearance on Monday.

An FBI agent’s affidavit says White agreed in June to accept roughly $156,000 in kickbacks and cash payments in exchange for pressuring government agency employees to extend two companies’ contracts for violence intervention services. The contacts were worth over $5 million.

White, 40, also accepted a $20,000 bribe payment to help resolve a contract dispute for one of the companies by pressuring high-level district officials, the affidavit alleges.

An FBI informant who agreed to plead guilty to fraud and bribery charges reported giving White gifts including travel to the Dominican Republic and Las Vegas along with paying him bribes, the FBI said.

White, who has served on the D.C. council since 2017, represents a predominantly Black ward where the poverty rate is nearly twice as high as the overall district. He is running for re-election in November against a Republican challenger.

White’s chief of staff and communication director didn’t immediately respond to emails seeking comment.
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Rome — A luxury superyacht carrying foreign tourists capsized and sank off Sicily in bad weather early Monday. One body was found, six people remain missing and 15 people were rescued, including a 1-year-old girl, authorities said.

The sailboat had overturned sometime before 5 a.m. off the port of Porticello, near Palermo, where it was anchored. It had a crew of 10 people and 12 passengers that included British, American and Canadian citizens, the Italian coast guard said. Local media said a sudden fierce storm, including tornadoes over water known as waterspouts, had battered the area overnight but skies were clear and seas calm by Monday morning.

The 56-meter (184-foot) British-flagged Bayesian was known for its single 75-meter (246-feet) mast, one of the world’s tallest made of aluminum and which was lit up at night, just hours before it sank. Online charter sites list it for rent for up to 195,000 euros (about $215,000) a week.

One of the survivors, identified only as Charlotte, said she had momentarily lost hold of her 1-year-old daughter Sofia in the water, but then managed to hold her up over the waves until a lifeboat inflated and they were both pulled to safety, Italian news agency ANSA reported, quoting the mother.

Eight of the 15 people rescued and taken to shore at Porticello were hospitalized. One body was found near the wreck, but six others were unaccounted for, said Luca Cari, a spokesperson for the Italian fire rescue service.

Rescue crews located the vessel at a depth of 50 meters (163 feet) off Porticello and deep-water police divers were trying to access the hull, Cari said. The operations, which were visible from shore, involved helicopters and rescue boats from the coast guard, fire rescue and civil protection service.

Fisherman Francesco Cefalu said he had seen a flare from shore at around 4:30 a.m. and immediately set out to the site but by the time he got there, the Bayesian had already sunk, with only cushions, wood and other items from the superyacht floating in the water.

“But for the rest, we didn’t find anyone,” he said from the port hours later. He said that he immediately alerted the coast guard and stayed on site for three hours, but didn’t find any survivors. “I think they are inside, all the missing people.”

He said he had been up so early to check the weather to see if he could go fishing, and surmised that a sudden waterspout had struck the yacht.

“It could be that the mast broke, or the anchor at the prow pulled it, I don’t know,” he said.

The seven who weren’t rescued included one crew member and six passengers, the coast guard said.

The yacht, built in 2008 by the Italian firm Perini Navi, can accommodate 12 passengers in four double cabins, a triple and the master suite, plus crew accommodations, according to Charter World and Yacht Charters.

The vessel, which previously was named Salute when it flew under a Dutch flag, featured a sleek, minimalist interior of light wood with Japanese accents designed by the French designer Remi Tessier, according to descriptions and photos on the charter sites.
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Yearlong probe stops short of alleging any criminal wrongdoing by president
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Germany has issued an arrest warrant for a Ukrainian national in the explosions that damaged the Nord Stream gas pipelines that carry natural gas from Russia to Western Europe. At question is whether the Ukrainian government was involved in the 2022 attack, which many say contributed to a global spike in inflation. Elizabeth Cherneff narrates this report from Ricardo Marquina in Berlin.
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NEW YORK — In 1974, Harlem’s deserted streets and tumbledown tenements told the story of a neighborhood left behind. Decades of disinvestment had culminated in a mass exodus known as urban flight and residents watched as their wealthier, more educated counterparts left the New York City neighborhood in droves.

But the tide turned when Percy Sutton, then the Manhattan borough president and New York City’s highest-ranking Black elected official, launched a campaign to bring back vitality to the historically African American neighborhood that had been known as a global Black mecca of arts, culture and entrepreneurship.

It became known as Harlem Week and would go on to draw back those who had departed. On Sunday, organizers celebrated Harlem Week’s 50th anniversary after 18 days of free programming that showcased all the iconic neighborhood has to offer.

Harlem Week stands as “the constant line through the last 50 years of America’s most historic Black neighborhood,” said the Rev. Al Sharpton, whose National Action Network is headquartered in the neighborhood. “The dream of Percy Sutton and his peers in government, arts, the church and other elements of Harlem lives on, stronger than ever.”

In the 1970s, Harlem demanded more than an ordinary festival, if it wanted a resurrection. Those who remained in Harlem during urban flight — mostly low-income, Black families — would turn on their televisions to constant despair: crime reports, bleak statistics and reporters who called their home a “sinking ship.”

Sutton knew Harlem was due for a revitalizing, uplifting moment.

That summer, Sutton rallied religious, political, civic and artistic leaders that included Tito Puente, Max Roach, Maya Angelou, James Baldwin, Harry Belafonte, Sidney Poitier, Ruby Dee and Lloyd Williams. Together, they devised an event that would pivot the spotlight from Harlem’s troubles to its vibrant legacy: Harlem Day.

Radio disc jockeys Hal Jackson and Frankie Crocker produced a concert at the plaza of the Harlem State Office Building, while actor Ossie Davis cut a ribbon at 138th street and 7th Avenue, announcing the start of the “Second Harlem Renaissance.”

The ribbon-cutting ceremony renamed 7th Avenue to Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard, named for the first African American elected to Congress from New York, marking the first time a New York City street took the name of a person of color.

“About two or three weeks later, Percy Sutton called us all and said it was such a successful day,” said Lloyd Williams, one of Harlem Day’s co-founders and the current president of the Greater Harlem Chamber of Commerce. “It meant so much to the other cities that were being deserted in Detroit and Baltimore, Washington and Chicago, that they asked if we would do it again on an annual basis.”

They did, and Harlem Day evolved into Harlem Weekend and eventually Harlem Week, which, before the pandemic, expanded to a full month of programming.

“Only in Harlem could a week be more than seven days,” said Williams, whose family has lived in Harlem since 1919.

This year’s celebration featured entertainment, including a headlining set by hip-hop artist Fabolous, a tribute to Harry Belafonte and Broadway performances. Other concerts showcased jazz, reggae, R&B and gospel traditions nurtured in Harlem, alongside hundreds of food and merchandise vendors.

Organizers also included empowerment initiatives, such as financial literacy workshops and health screenings, at Harlem Health Village and the Children’s Festival. Every child who attended received a back-to-school backpack.

Harlem Week always has been a living tribute to Harlem’s history of greats, such as W.E.B. Du Bois, Langston Hughes, Augusta Savage and Aaron Douglas. It recognizes the Harlem Renaissance and Black Arts Movement and honors landmarks like the Apollo Theater and Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

Many historians consider the late 1960s and the 1970s to be Harlem’s darkest years.

The area had been battered by unrest, including a 1964 riot that killed an unarmed Black teenager, Malcolm X’s assassination in 1965 and the turmoil after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in 1968. Household incomes fell dramatically and infant mortality rates were high.

“The neighborhood was blighted,” recalled Malik Yoba, an actor born in the Bronx in 1967 who grew up in Harlem and spent days playing in the dirt of vacant lots. Yoba attended school in the Upper East Side with peers who had country homes upstate in the Hamptons.

“I didn’t understand why where we lived looked so dramatically different than where they lived,” he said. “I knew something was wrong.”

But Harlemites are creatives and entrepreneurs, visionaries and leaders. Where others saw decline, they saw opportunity, and the determination to match Harlem with its potential ran high.

Yoba, now 56, built a career as an actor showcasing Harlem to audiences across the nation. His experiences with housing inequality also fueled his passion for real estate.

Yoba combats the effects of redlining through his company Yoba Development, which provides young people of color access to the industry and has active projects in Baltimore and New York City.

“When you grow up in disenfranchised and divested communities, you can’t see the forest through the trees,” Yoba said. “You can grow up believing that walking by burnt-down buildings is your birthright, as opposed to understanding that building is a business.”

Hazel Dukes, 92, a prominent New York civil rights activist and Harlem resident of 30 years, has spent her life fighting discrimination in housing and education. She lived in the same Harlem building as Sutton and organized alongside him, later becoming a national president of the NAACP in 1989.

“I know what it feels to be denied,” said Dukes, who was born and raised in Montgomery, Alabama, and endured Jim Crow segregation. She moved to New York City with her parents in the 1950s.

Today, property in Harlem is coveted, driven by gentrification and its enduring cultural appeal.

“There was a waiting list, because everybody wanted to live in Harlem,” Dukes said. “People want to come to Harlem before they transition from this world.”
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Serhiy Danilets is one of the more than 100 thousand Ukrainian soldiers estimated to have been wounded in Russia’s war against Ukraine. But serious combat injuries haven’t stopped him and other fighters from enjoying life and, in some cases, making plans to head back to the front lines. Anna Kosstutschenko met with some of them in Kyiv
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CHICAGO — Thousands of activists are expected to converge on Chicago this week for the Democratic National Convention, hoping to call attention to abortion rights, economic injustice and the war in Gaza.

While Vice President Kamala Harris has energized crowds of supporters as she prepares to accept the Democratic nomination, progressive activists maintain their mission remains the same.

Activists say they learned lessons from last month’s Republican National Convention in Milwaukee and are predicting bigger crowds and more robust demonstrations in Chicago, a city with deep social activism roots.

Who is protesting?

Demonstrations are expected every day of the convention and, while their agendas vary, many activists agree an immediate cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war is the priority.

Things are set to kick off Sunday on the convention’s eve with an abortion rights march along Michigan Avenue.

Organizer Linda Loew said even though Democrats have pushed to safeguard reproductive rights at home, the issue is international. They will march in solidarity with people everywhere who struggle for the right to control what happens to their bodies, as well as to protest the money the U.S. spends to back wars that could be used for health care, she said.

“We believe that the billions of dollars that continue to flow to the state of Israel and the flow of weapons are having an inordinate and horrific impact, but in particular on women, children and the unborn,” she said. “All of these things are tied together.”

The largest group, the Coalition to March on the DNC, has planned demonstrations on the first and last days of the convention.

Organizers say they expect at least 20,000 activists, including students who protested the war on college campuses.

“The people with power are going to be there,” said Liz Rathburn, a University of Illinois Chicago student organizer. “People inside the United Center are the people who are going to be deciding our foreign policy in one way or another.”

Where are they protesting?

Activists sued the city earlier this year, saying restrictions over where they can demonstrate violate their constitutional rights.

Chicago leaders rejected their requests for permits to protest near United Center on the city’s West Side, where the convention is taking place, offering instead a lakefront park more than 5 kilometers away.

Later, the city agreed to allow demonstrations at a park and a march route closer to the United Center. A federal judge recently signed off on the group’s roughly 1.6-kilometer route.

Coalition to March on the DNC spokesman Hatem Abudayyeh said the group is pleased it won the right to protest closer to the convention, but he believes its preferred 3-kilometer march would be safer for larger crowds. The group is chartering buses for activists from about half a dozen states.

“We’re going forward, full speed ahead,” he said.

The city has designated a park about a block from United Center for a speakers’ stage. Those who sign up get 45 minutes.

The Philadelphia-based Poor People’s Army, which advocates for economic justice, plans to set up at Humboldt Park on the city’s Northwest Side and will feature events with third-party candidates Jill Stein and Cornel West, plus a march Monday to the United Center.

Some group members have spent the last few weeks marching the more than 130 kilometers from Milwaukee, where they protested during the Republican convention.

“Poor and homeless people are being brutalized, with tents and encampments destroyed and bulldozed away, from San Francisco to Philadelphia to Gaza and the West Bank,” spokesperson Cheri Honkala said in a statement as the group reached Illinois. “These preventable human rights violations are being committed by Democratic and Republican leaders alike.”

How does a new nominee change things?

Many activists believe nothing much will change because Harris is part of the Biden administration.

“The demands haven’t changed. I haven’t seen any policy changes,” said Erica Bentley, an activist with Mamas Activating Movements for Abolition and Solidarity. “If you’re going to be here, you’re going to have to listen to what’s important to us.”

Pro-Palestinian protesters in Chicago have been highly visible, shutting down roads to the airport and staging sit-ins at congressional offices. Some are planning their own one-day convention Sunday with third-party candidates.

“Regardless of who the nominee is, we’re marching against the Democrats and their vicious policies that have allowed Israel to kill over 40,000 Palestinians in Gaza,” said Fayaani Aboma Mijana, an organizer with the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression.

It’s unclear if the convention will draw far-right extremists who ardently support former President Donald Trump.

Secret Service Deputy Special Agent in Charge Derek Mayer said last week there are no known specific security threats against the convention.

Is Chicago ready?

The convention will draw an estimated 50,000 people to the nation’s third-largest city, including delegates, activists and journalists.

The city says it has made necessary preparations with police and the Secret Service. Security will be tight, with street closures around the convention center.

To combat traffic concerns, city leaders are touting a new $80 million train station steps from the United Center. They also have tried to beautify the city with freshly planted flowers and new signs. City leaders also cleared a nearby homeless encampment.

Police have undergone training on constitutional policing, county courts say they are opening more space in anticipation of mass arrests and hospitals near the security zone are beefing up emergency preparedness.

Authorities and leaders in the state have said people who vandalize the city or are violent will be arrested.

“We’re going to make sure that people have their First Amendment rights protected, that they can do that in a safe way,” Mayor Brandon Johnson told The Associated Press in a recent interview.

But some have lingering safety concerns, worried that protests could become unpredictable or devolve into chaos.

Activist Hy Thurman protested and was arrested at the infamous 1968 convention. The 74-year-old now lives in Alabama but plans to come to Chicago to protest the war in Gaza.

“It’s extremely personal for me,” he said. “I see parallels.”

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker has said that he expects peaceful protests.

“We intend to protect the protesters’ First Amendment rights, and also the residents of the city of Chicago and the visitors to Chicago at the same time,” Pritzker told the AP in a recent interview.
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Lisbon — Hundreds of Portuguese firefighters scrambled Sunday to put out a wildfire sweeping parts of the Atlantic island of Madeira’s south coast, a popular tourist destination, with strong winds complicating efforts to tackle the blaze. 

The wildfire, which started Wednesday in a remote rural area of Ribeira Brava has spread to the neighboring municipality of Camara de Lobos, and now has three fronts, island authorities said. 

Nearly 200 firefighters, backed by 38 vehicles, are tackling the fire but high temperatures, low humidity and strong winds are complicating efforts to combat the flames. A helicopter also battled the blaze but had to stop operating as the night set in. 

“This fire, which is very dangerous, I have no doubt it was caused by arson in an inaccessible area where air support could not operate,” the president of the regional government of Madeira, Miguel Albuquerque, told reporters. 

No injuries or fatalities have been reported, but 160 people have been evacuated as a precaution, he said. 

The entire coastline of Madeira — an autonomous region of Portugal home to around 250,000 people — has been placed on orange alert, the second highest level, until Monday, due to high temperatures. 

According to weather agency IPMA, the temperature in Madeira reached 30 degrees Celsius (86°F) in the last few days. Strong winds that were fanning the flames led to dozens of canceled flights. 

Portugal sent a force of 76 firefighters from the mainland to Madeira on Saturday and the neighboring Azores archipelago was to send 15 firefighters Sunday evening. 
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U.S. diplomatic efforts to end the Israel-Hamas war are being boosted by a new visit from Secretary of State Antony Blinken to the Middle East. But even as hopes for a cease-fire are high, implementing it could prove challenging, analysts say. VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias has the details.
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Seoul, South Korea — North Korea condemned Ukraine’s incursion into Russia as an unforgivable act of terror backed by Washington and the West, adding it would always stand with Russia as it seeks to protect its sovereignty, state media said Sunday.

Ukraine’s drive into Russia is a product of the anti-Russia confrontational policy of the United States, which is pushing the situation to the brink of World War III, KCNA news agency said.

The U.S. handed “astronomical” sums of lethal weapons to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the report said.

“We strongly condemn the armed attack against the Russian territory by the Zelenskyy puppet regime under the control and support of the United States and the West as an unforgivable act of aggression and terror,” North Korea’s foreign ministry said in a statement, according to KCNA.

North Korea has dramatically upgraded its ties with Russia in the past year with two summit meetings by their leaders who pledged closer cooperation in all areas.

In June, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a pact in Pyongyang on a “comprehensive strategic partnership” that included a mutual defense agreement.

South Korea, Ukraine and the United States have accused North Korea of supplying artillery and missiles to Russia for use in its unprovoked war against Ukraine. North Korea and Russia have denied the allegations. 
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