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DEAUVILLE/PARIS — Crowds cheered and applauded as U.S. veterans arrived at French airports ahead of ceremonies marking the 80th anniversary of D-Day, when more than 150,000 Allied soldiers landed in Normandy to drive out Nazi Germany forces.  

Many of those flying in over the weekend into Monday were older than 100, pushed on wheelchairs by relatives and aides.  

“It’s unreal. It’s unreal. Wow,” 107-year-old Reynolds Tomter said at Paris Charles-de-Gaulle airport as students waved U.S. and French flags and held up photos of the veterans.  

“It feels great … and I’m so thankful that I got the opportunity to be back out here, my son with me,” said 101-year-old Bill Wall, as his son, Ray, pushed him through arrivals.

“I lost some great friends. All of these people who are out there on their crosses and unmarked graves are the true heroes. It gives me a chance to pay tribute to them which they so need. It will bring back some memories of some great people,” he added.

After shaking hands with students, 95-year-old Dave Yoho said: “My heart is full. My heart is full.”  

In Deauville, Normandy, a specially chartered flight landed on Monday.  

Across Normandy, where beaches and fields still bear the scars of the fighting that erupted on June 6, 1944 and the weeks that followed, preparations were in full gear for official ceremonies. World leaders from U.S. President Joe Biden to German Chancellor Olaf Scholz will attend.  

Already, at the weekend, in Vierville-sur-Mer, a town just above Omaha Beach – one of the sectors where U.S. soldiers landed – a re-enactment camp was set up, giving visitors a chance to see what equipment the soldiers were using.  

People took rides in World War Two jeeps and armored vehicles.  

“It’s always very intense when we meet veterans, because they always have many stories to tell, and you still feel the emotion,” said Julie Boisard, who lives in Normandy and took part in the re-enactment.  

A handful of serving members of the Virginia National Guard 29th Infantry Division gazed out over the beach their elders stormed 80 years earlier.  

“It’s historic, it’s memorable … and it’s very emotional as well,” said U.S. serviceman Esaw Lee. “Those guys were so courageous and so mythical. They were legendary.”  

With war raging on Europe’s borders in 2024, this anniversary’s D-Day ceremony will carry special resonance.  

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy will be among the guests. Russia, which launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, touching off Europe’s biggest armed conflict since World War Two, was not invited to the D-Day events.  

The commemorations “remind us that we were occupied for four years and were liberated by the Americans,” said Marie-Therese Legallois, who was seven at the time of D-Day, and remembers it vividly.  

“But I always have a bit of sadness to see that the war continues, in Ukraine or elsewhere.”
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New York — The typical compensation package for chief executives who run companies in the S&P 500 jumped nearly 13% last year, easily surpassing the gains for workers at a time when inflation was putting considerable pressure on Americans’ budgets.

The median pay package for CEOs rose to $16.3 million, up 12.6%, according to data analyzed for The Associated Press by Equilar. Meanwhile, wages and benefits netted by private-sector workers rose 4.1% through 2023. At half the companies in this year’s pay survey, it would take the worker at the middle of the company’s pay scale almost 200 years to make what their CEO did.

CEOs got rewarded as the economy showed remarkable resilience, underpinning strong profits and boosting stock prices. After navigating the pandemic, companies faced challenges from persistent inflation and higher interest rates. About two dozen CEOs in the AP’s annual survey received a pay bump of 50% or more.

“In this post-pandemic market, the desire is for boards to reward and retain CEOs when they feel like they have a good leader in place,” said Kelly Malafis, founding partner of Compensation Advisory Partners in New York. “That all combined kind of leads to increased compensation.”

But Sarah Anderson, who directs the Global Economy Project at the progressive Institute for Policy Studies, believes the gap in earnings between top executives and workers plays into the overall dissatisfaction among Americans about the economy.

“Most of the focus here is on inflation, which people are really feeling, but they’re feeling the pain of inflation more because they’re not seeing their wages go up enough,” she said.

Many companies have heeded calls from shareholders to tie CEO compensation more closely to performance. As a result, a large proportion of pay packages consist of stock awards, which the CEO often can’t cash in for years, if at all, unless the company meets certain targets, typically a higher stock price or market value or improved operating profits. The median stock award rose almost 11% last year compared to a 2.7% increase in bonuses.

The AP’s CEO compensation study included pay data for 341 executives at S&P 500 companies who have served at least two full consecutive fiscal years at their companies, which filed proxy statements between Jan. 1 and April 30.

Top earners

Hock Tan, the CEO of Broadcom Inc., topped the AP survey with a pay package valued at about $162 million.

Broadcom granted Tan stock awards valued at $160.5 million on Oct. 31, 2022, for the company’s 2023 fiscal year. Tan was given the opportunity to earn up to 1 million shares starting in fiscal 2025, according to a securities filing, provided that Broadcom’s stock meets certain targets – and he remains CEO for five years.

At the time of the award, Broadcom’s stock was trading at $470. Tan would receive portions of the stock awards if the stock hit $825 and $950 and the the full award if the average closing price is at or above $1,125 for 20 consecutive days between October 2025 and October 2027. The targets seemed ambitious when set, but the stock has skyrocketed since, and reached an all-time closing high of $1,436.17 on May 28.

Like rival Nvidia Inc., Broadcom is riding the current artificial intelligence frenzy among tech companies. Its chips are used by businesses and public entities ranging from major banks, retailers, telecom operators and government bodies.

In granting the stock award, Broadcom noted that under Tan its market value has increased from $3.8 billion in 2009 to $645 billion (as of May 23) and that its total shareholder return during that time easily surpassed that of the S&P 500. It also said Tan will not receive additional stock awards during the remainder of the five-year period.

Other CEOs at the top of AP’s survey are William Lansing of Fair Isaac Corp, ($66.3 million); Tim Cook of Apple Inc. ($63.2 million); Hamid Moghadam of Prologis Inc. ($50.9 million); and Ted Sarandos, co-CEO of Netflix ($49.8 million).

At Apple, Cook’s compensation represented a 36% decline from the year prior. Cook requested a pay cut for 2023, in response to the vote at Apple’s 2022 annual meeting, where just 64% of shareholders approved of his pay package.

The survey’s methodology excluded CEOs such as Nikesh Arora at Palo Alto Networks ($151.4 million) and Christopher Winfrey at Charter Communications ($89 million).

Although securities filings show Elon Musk received no compensation as CEO of Tesla Inc., his pay is currently front and center at the electric car company. Musk is asking shareholders to restore a pay package that was struck down by a judge in Delaware, who said the approval process for the package was “deeply flawed.” The compensation, mostly stock awards valued at $2.3 billion when granted in 2018, is now estimated to be worth around $45 billion.

CEO pay vs workers

Workers across the country have been winning higher pay since the pandemic, with wages and benefits for private-sector employees rising 4.1% in 2023 after a 5.1% increase in 2022, according to the Labor Department.

Even with those gains, the gap between the person in the corner office and everyone else keeps getting wider. Half the CEOs in this year’s pay survey made at least 196 times what their median employee earned. That’s up from 185 times in last year’s survey.

The gap is particularly wide at companies where employees typically earn lower wages, such as retailers. At Ross Stores, for example, the company says its employee at the very middle of the pay scale was a part-time retail store associate who made $8,618. It would take 2,100 years earning that much to equal CEO Barbara Rentler’s compensation from 2023, valued at $18.1 million. A year earlier, it would have taken the median worker 1,137 years to match the CEO’s pay.

Corporate boards often feel pressure to keep upping the pay for well-performing CEOs out of fear that they’ll walk out the door and make more at a rival. They focus on paying compensation that is competitive within their industry or marketplace and not on the pay ratio, Malafis said. The better an executive performs, the more the board is willing to pay.

The disparity between what the chief executive makes and the workers earn wasn’t always so wide.

After World War II and up until the 1980s, CEOs of large publicly traded companies made about 40 to 50 times the average worker’s pay, said Brandon Rees, deputy director of corporations and capital markets for the AFL-CIO, which runs an Executive Paywatch website that tracks CEO pay.

“The [current] pay ratio signals a sort of a winner take all culture, that companies are treating their CEOs as, you know, as superstars as opposed to, team players,” Rees said.

Say on pay

Despite the criticism, shareholders tend to give overwhelming support to pay packages for company leaders. From 2019 to 2023, companies typically received just under 90% of the vote for their executive compensation plans, according to data from Equilar.

Shareholders do, however, occasionally reject a compensation plan, although the votes are non-binding. In 2023, shareholders at 13 companies in the S&P 500 gave the executive pay packages less than 50% support.

After its investors gave another resounding thumbs down to the pay packages for its top executives, Netflix met with many of its biggest shareholders last year to discuss their concerns. It also talked with major proxy-advisory firms, which are influential because they recommend how investors should vote at companies’ annual meetings.

Following the talks, Netflix announced several changes to redesign its pay policies. For one, it eliminated executives’ option to allocate their compensation between cash and options. It will no longer give out stock options, which can give executives a payday as long as the stock price stays above a certain level. Instead, the company will give restricted stock that executives can profit from only after a certain amount of time or after certain performance measures are met.

The changes will take effect in 2024. For last year, co-CEO Ted Sarandos received options valued at $28.3 million and a cash bonus of $16.5 million. Co-CEO Greg Peters received options valued at $22.7 million and a cash bonus of $13.9 million.

Anderson, of the Institute for Policy Studies, said Say on Pay votes are important because they “shine a spotlight on some of the most egregious cases of executive access, and it can lead to negotiations over pay and other issues that shareholders might want to raise with corporate leadership.”

“But I think the impact, certainly on the overall size of CEO packages has not had much effect in some cases,” she said.

Female CEOs

More women made the AP survey than in previous years, but their numbers in the corner office are still minuscule compared to their male counterparts. Of the 342 CEOs included in Equilar’s data, 25 were women.

Lisa Su, CEO and chair of the board of chip maker Advanced Micro Devices, was the highest paid female CEO in the AP survey for the fifth year in a row in fiscal 2023, bringing in compensation valued at $30.3 million — flat with her compensation package in 2022. Her overall rank rose to 21 from 25.

The other top paid female CEOs include Mary Barra of automaker General Motors ($27.8 million); Jane Fraser of banking giant Citigroup ($25.5 million); Kathy Warden of aerospace and defense company Northrop Grumman Corp. ($23.5 million); and Carol Tome of package deliverer UPS Inc. ($23.4 million).

The median pay package for female CEOs rose 21% to $17.6 million. That’s better than the men fared: Their median pay package rose 12.2% to $16.3 million.
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New York — The Washington Post said Sunday that its executive editor, Sally Buzbee, has stepped down after three years at the top of one of journalism’s most storied brands.

She will be replaced by Matt Murray, former editor in chief of The Wall Street Journal, through this fall’s presidential election. Following that, Robert Winnett, deputy editor of the Telegraph Media Group, will take over as editor as the newsroom restructures its operations.

No reason was given for Buzbee’s departure. She wasn’t quoted in the news release announcing that she was leaving and did not immediately return a message seeking comment.

The Post also announced that it was launching a new division in its newsroom dedicated to reaching audiences who want to pay for and consume news in a different way.

Buzbee, former top editor at The Associated Press, was selected as the Post’s top editor in May 2021. She replaced a renowned predecessor, Martin Baron, after the Post exploded in popularity during the Trump administration.

Buzbee was the first woman to serve as executive editor of The Washington Post. And like Jill Abramson, the first woman to be top editor at The New York Times, her tenure was short: Abramson had her job from 2011 to 2014.

It has been a miserable few years financially for the news industry, including for the Post. It has bled subscribers to the point where new publisher, Will Lewis, told employees last month that the newspaper lost $77 million last year.

“To speak candidly, we are in a hole, and have been for some time,” Lewis said, according to the Post.

Lewis was named late last year to replace Fred Ryan as Post publisher. He has worked at both The Wall Street Journal and The Telegraph in England, the places he turned to to find the new executives.

He’s talked about creating a multi-tier subscription plan for The Post, similar to that in place at Politico. In an email to employees late Sunday, Lewis said the new department will focus on more video storytelling, embrace artificial intelligence and flexible payment methods. It will begin this fall, he said.

In an earlier meeting, “we highlighted the need to move away from the traditional one-size-fits-all approach in the news media industry and focus on creating news for a broader range of readers and customers.”

It augurs a change to the traditional structure of the Post. In his memo, Lewis mentioned “three newsrooms.” Winnett will not take on the title of executive editor, but he will be responsible for the “core coverage areas” of politics, investigations, business, technology, sports and features. He has run The Telegraph’s news operations since 2013, the Post said.

Murray will take over as leader of the newly created department starting Nov. 6, the Post said. No one will have the title of executive editor: Murray, Winnett and David Shipley, the editorial page editor who will lead the “opinions newsroom,” will each report directly to Lewis, the Post said.

“By creating three strong journalism functions — core, service/social and opinions — we are taking a definitive step away from the ‘one size fits all’ approach and moving towards meeting our audiences where they are,” Lewis said.

The Post won three Pulitzer Prizes last month, including one in national reporting for a vivid series on the impact of the AR-15 rifle.

 
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SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — Puerto Rico Rep. Jesús Manuel Ortiz defeated Sen. Juan Zaragoza in a gubernatorial primary held Sunday by their Popular Democratic Party, which seeks a return to power in the upcoming general elections.

Zaragoza conceded defeat after obtaining 38% of the votes to his rival’s 62%, even though only a little more than 60% of the votes had been counted.

Meanwhile, Gov. Pedro Pierluisi was still locked in a battle against Puerto Rico congresswoman Jenniffer González in a primary held by the pro-statehood New Progressive Party. The two ran on the same ticket four years ago, but González announced her plan to challenge Pierluisi in early December.

All candidates face disgruntled voters on an island still struggling with chronic power outages and awaiting completion of reconstruction projects following Hurricane Maria, which hit as a Category 4 storm in September 2017.

Other ongoing complaints include the difficulty of obtaining business permits, a fractured education system and the lack of access to capital markets after the local government emerged two years ago from the biggest U.S. municipal bankruptcy in history after announcing in 2015 that it was unable to pay its more than $70 billion public debt load.

The debt was accumulated by governments that overspent, overestimated revenue and borrowed millions despite a ballooning debt.

Running alongside Pierluisi for the position of congressional representative was Puerto Rico Sen. William Villafañe, while senior U.S. naval military officer Elmer Román, a former secretary of state for Puerto Rico, sought the position under González.

Meanwhile, Puerto Rico Sen. Juan Zaragoza, who was highly lauded for his work as the island’s former treasury secretary, ran against Rep. Jesús Manuel Ortiz to be the main candidate for the Popular Democratic Party, which supports the island’s status quo as a U.S. territory.

Attorney Pablo José Hernández was running unopposed to be the party’s candidate for resident commissioner, the first person in 20 years to seek that nomination.

Voting centers closed Sunday evening, with political pundits warning that voter turnout appeared low and that electronic voting machines did not properly work in some towns, although it was too early to determine the magnitude of the problem.

All candidates faced disgruntled voters on an island still struggling with chronic power outages and high electric bills as it awaits completion of reconstruction projects following Hurricane Maria, which hit as a Category 4 storm in September 2017.

Power outages were reported at more than a dozen voting centers, including one where Ortiz arrived to cast his vote, forcing officials to revert to a manual process. Heavy rains also pelted parts of the island, with flood warnings issued for nearly a dozen towns and cities.

Power outages remain such a big concern that the State Commission of Elections rented more than a dozen generators and a private power company identified 81 alternate voting sites with guaranteed electricity.

“It’s been years since I last voted,” said Benito López, a 66-year-old retiree wearing a T-shirt that read, “The Island of Enchantment.” He planned to cast a vote for a candidate he would not reveal “to see if there’s any improvement and change.”

Other voter complaints include the difficulty of obtaining business permits, a fractured education system, and the island’s lack of access to capital markets after the local government emerged two years ago from the largest debt restructuring in U.S. history.

Meanwhile, more than $9 billion of debt owed by Puerto Rico’s power company, the largest of any government agency, remains unresolved. A federal judge overseeing a bankruptcy-like process has yet to rule on a restructuring plan following bitter negotiations between the government and bondholders.

“They have broken Puerto Rico,” said 79-year-old Cecilio Rodríguez of the current and previous administrations as he waited to cast his vote. “Economic development must be a priority.”

For other voters, stopping the exodus of doctors from Puerto Rico and improving the U.S. territory’s crumbling health system is a priority.

“The patients are the ones who have to stay here and endure this. It’s not fair,” said Dr. Alfredo Rivera Freytes, an anesthesiologist who left Puerto Rico for the U.S. Virgin Island of St. Thomas because of the ongoing problems with the local health system.

He returned two years ago with plans to retire but found himself working again because of the need for anesthesiologists in Puerto Rico.

Ahead of the primaries, Pierluisi has touted record tourist numbers, ongoing hurricane reconstruction and growing economic development among his successes as he seeks re-election. He has pledged to prioritize projects targeting children and the island’s growing elderly population, among other things.

An event marking the end of his campaign held a week before the primaries was headlined by former Gov. Ricardo Rosselló, who resigned in August 2019 following nearly two weeks of massive protests touched off by a leak of crude and insulting chat messages between him and his top advisers.

His opponent, González, did not hold a campaign closer. She has pledged to crack down on corruption, award more funds to agencies to help victims of violence amid a surge in killings of women, and stem an exodus of doctors and other medical workers to the U.S. mainland.

Meanwhile, Zaragoza has promised to prioritize climate change and renewable energy, decentralize the island’s education department and improve access to health. His opponent, Ortiz, has pledged to improve the licensing process to retain doctors, simplify the island’s tax system and revamp health care.

Puerto Rico’s next governor will have to work alongside a federal control board that oversees the island’s finances and was created after the government declared bankruptcy.

Ahead of Sunday’s primaries, more than 4,900 inmates voted in prisons across the U.S. territory. The State Commission of Elections also has received and counted more than 122,000 early ballots.
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McALLEN, TEXAS — At least two Texas border mayors are headed to Washington on Tuesday when President Joe Biden is expected to announce an executive order that will mark his latest and most aggressive plan to curtail the number of migrants allowed to seek asylum in the U.S.

Brownsville Mayor John Cowen and Edinburg Mayor Ramiro Garza both confirmed they were invited by the White House for an immigration announcement on Tuesday. Cowen told the Associated Press that he plans to attend, while Garza said he would have more details on Monday about his plans.

Notably, the Democratic mayor of Eagle Pass, the Texas-Mexico border town where the number of migrants led to a state-federal clash over border security, had not received an invitation as of Sunday. The mayor from McAllen said he was invited but could not attend because of a prior commitment.

A White House spokesman did not immediately return a request for comment on other mayors who were invited to the announcement.

The AP reported last week that the White House was finalizing an executive order that could shut off asylum requests and automatically deny entrance to migrants once the number of people encountered by U.S. border officials exceeded a new daily threshold.

The unilateral action is expected even as the number of border crossings at the southern U.S. border has declined since December, due in large part to Mexico’s escalated enforcement efforts. But Biden wants to head off any potential spike in crossings that could occur later in the year, as the fall election draws closer, when the weather cools and numbers tend to rise.

Immigration remains a concern for voters ahead of the November elections, with Republicans eager to punish Biden electorally over the issue. Democrats have responded that Republicans, at the behest of Donald Trump, killed a bipartisan border deal in Congress that would have led to the toughest legislative restrictions on asylum in years.

 
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New York — Marchers chanted for the release of hostages in Gaza on Sunday at a New York City parade for Israel that drew thousands of people under heightened security.

The parade was held almost eight months after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack in southern Israel that triggered the war in Gaza. Hamas militants killed around 1,200 people — mostly civilians — and abducted about 250. About 100 hostages remain in Gaza, along with the bodies of around 30 more.

Dubbed “Celebrate Israel,” the annual parade’s normally exuberant atmosphere was markedly toned down this year. People chanted “Bring them home now!” and waved Israeli flags as they marched up Fifth Avenue in Manhattan for what this year was called “Israel Day on Fifth.”

Crowds of spectators and hundreds of police officers lined the route, and steel barricades were installed along the sidewalk. One sign read: “From the river to the sea, Hamas will cease to be.”

“Especially this year, after Oct. 7, it’s especially important to have this show of unity,” said Rena Orman, a Bronx native who took part in the parade as part of Mothers Against College Antisemitism. “Everybody wants [the] hostages back. Everyone wants this to end. No one is cheering for this. Everyone wants peace.”

Mark Treyger, CEO of the Jewish Community Relations Council, said earlier this week that the event would focus on solidarity, strength and resilience.

“This is not a mood of confetti and music,” Treyger said. “This is more of a mood of unwavering, ironclad solidarity with hostages to bring them home, and also our unwavering love and pride in our Jewish identity.”

The parade, in its 59th year, kicked off late Sunday morning with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams among the elected officials attending.

“I think it’s important — especially with what’s going on in the Middle East, in Israel with the war going on — to show our support and to show that the hostages aren’t forgotten and the country itself is not forgotten,” said participant Michael Garber of New Jersey.

New York Police Department officials employed measures typically used for high-profile events such as New Year’s Eve and July 4. That included drones, K-9 units, bike patrols, fencing and barriers and designated entry points for spectators along the parade route. Backpacks, large bags and coolers were prohibited, and spectators had to pass through metal detectors.

Police did not report any parade-related arrests by late Sunday afternoon. The parade represents the first large-scale Jewish event in the city since the war started, although there have been roughly 2,800 protests in the city, with about 1,300 of them related to the conflict, the Democrat said.

Over 36,430 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza by Israel’s offensive, according to the Hamas-run, Gaza Health Ministry. Its count doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants. Israel blames Hamas for civilian deaths, accusing it of operating from dense residential areas.
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Atlanta, Georgia — Hilbert Margol says he didn’t look on himself as a hero when his U.S. Army artillery unit fought its way across Europe during World War II. But he will be feted in France as one of 60 American veterans of that conflict traveling to Normandy to mark the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings.

“I know my brother and I never looked at it as we were any kind of heroes, nothing like that,” Margol said recently of himself and his twin brother Howard, who served with him. “It was just our time. That we were asked to serve. And we did.”

The 100-year-old Margol, who lives in suburban Atlanta, is among the dwindling band of veterans of the conflict leaving Atlanta on Sunday on a chartered flight for Deauville, Normandy. The veterans will take part in parades, school visits and ceremonies — including the official June 6 commemoration of the landings by soldiers from across the United States, Britain, Canada and other Allied nations on five beaches.

Margol didn’t land at D-Day, but the Jacksonville, Florida, native was among those that liberated the Dachau Concentration Camp on April 29, 1945.

The trip also includes high school and college students selected to escort the veterans and learn about their experiences.

Charter flights also took veterans from Atlanta to France in 2022 and 2023.

Andy Negra of Helen, Georgia, came ashore with the 6th Armored Division at Utah Beach on July 18, 1944, about six weeks after D-Day. It’s his second trip back to France after also taking part in last year’s flight.

“Well to me, we fought for freedom, and we fought for peace, and we fought for a good life,” Negra, a native of Avella, Pennsylvania, said in a recent interview.

The trip is being organized by Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines, the Best Defense Foundation and the North American branch of French tire maker Michelin.

“It is our privilege to celebrate and honor these heroes by flying them directly to Normandy and recognizing their incredible sacrifices and contributions to the world,” Delta CEO Ed Bastian said in a statement.
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Former President Donald Trump weighed in Sunday on the possibility of being sentenced to jail next month after his conviction for falsifying business records. The ‘guilty’ verdict is already being used by both the Trump and Biden campaigns to fire up their respective supporters. But swaying undecided voters will be trickier, analysts say. Veronica Balderas Iglesias has the details.
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DUBAI — The next CEO of Boeing BA.N should have an understanding of what led to its current crisis and be prepared to look outside for examples of best industrial practices, the head of the International Air Transport Association said on Sunday.

U.S. planemaker Boeing is engulfed in a sprawling safety crisis, exacerbated by a January mid-air panel blowout on a near new 737 MAX plane. CEO Dave Calhoun is due to leave the company by the end of the year as part of a broader management shake-up, but Boeing has not yet named a replacement.

“It is not for me to say who should be running Boeing. But I think an understanding of what went wrong in the past, that’s very important,” IATA Director General Willie Walsh told Reuters TV at an airlines conference in Dubai, adding that Boeing was taking the right steps.

IATA represents more than 300 airlines or around 80% of global traffic.

“Our industry benefits from learning from mistakes, and sharing that learning with everybody,” he said, adding that this process should include “an acknowledgement of what went wrong, looking at best practice, looking at what others do.”

He said it was critical that the industry has a culture “where people feel secure in putting their hands up and saying things aren’t working the way they should do.”

Boeing is facing investigations by U.S. regulators, possible prosecution for past actions and slumping production of its strongest-selling jet, the 737 MAX.

‘Right steps’

Calhoun, a Boeing board member since 2009 and former GE executive, was brought in as CEO in 2020 to help turn the planemaker around following two fatal crashes involving the MAX, its strongest-selling jet.

But the planemaker has lost market share to competitor Airbus AIR.PA, with its stock losing nearly 32% of its value this year as MAX production plummeted this spring.

“The industry is frustrated by the problems as a result of the issues that Boeing have encountered. But personally, I’m pleased to see that they are taking the right steps,” Walsh said.

Delays in the delivery of new jets from both Boeing and Airbus are part of wider problems in the aerospace supply chain and aircraft maintenance industry complicating airline growth plans.

Walsh said supply chain problems are not easing as fast as airlines want and could last into 2025 or 2026.

“It’s probably a positive that it’s not getting worse, but I think it’s going to be a feature of the industry for a couple of years to come,” he said.

Earlier this year IATA brought together a number of airlines and manufacturers to discuss ways to ease the situation, Walsh said.

“We’re trying to ensure that there’s an open dialogue and honesty,” between them, he said.
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London — Halla Tomasdottir, a businesswoman and investor, has won Iceland’s presidential election, topping a crowded field of candidates in which the top three finishers were women, the country’s national broadcast service reported. 

Tomasdottir was elected to the largely ceremonial post with 34.3% of the vote, defeating former Prime Minister Katrin Jakobsdottir, with 25.2%, and Halla Hrund Logadottir, with 15.5%, RUV said Sunday. 

Tomasdottir, 55, campaigned as someone who was above party politics and could help open discussions on fundamental issues such as the effect of social media on the mental health of young people, Iceland’s development as a tourist destination and the role of artificial intelligence. 

She will replace President Gudni Th. Johannesson, who did not seek re-election after two four-year terms. Tomasdottir will take office on Aug. 1. 

Iceland, a Nordic island nation located in the North Atlantic, has about 384,000 people and a long tradition of electing women to high office. Vigdis Finbogadottir was the first democratically elected female president of any nation when she became Iceland’s head of state in 1980. 

The country has also seen two women serve as prime minister in recent years, providing stability during years of political turmoil. Johanna Sigurdardottir led the government from 2009-2013, after the global financial crisis ravaged Iceland’s economy. Jakobsdottir became prime minister in 2017, leading a broad coalition that ended the cycle of crises that had triggered three elections in four years. She resigned in April to run for president. 

Tomasdottir first rose to prominence during the financial crisis, when she was hailed as the co-founder of Audur Capital, one of the few Icelandic investment firms that survived the upheaval. She is currently on leave as chief executive of the B Team, a non-profit organization that works to promote workplace diversity and has offices in New York and London. 
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SINGAPORE — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Sunday urged countries to participate in the June 15-16 peace summit in Switzerland.

Zelenskyy, in his keynote speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, emphasized diplomacy’s role in maintaining Ukrainian efforts in the war with Russia, now in its third year.

“Not so long ago, it seemed that the world would always be fragmented, but we saw that most nations truly desire and are capable of cooperation, at least as far as collective security is concerned,” he told hundreds of foreign government officials and delegates at the regional security dialogue.

He stressed how support from countries around the world has helped Ukraine to maintain its defense capabilities amid aggressive attacks launched by Russia while rescuing some Ukrainian children who had been taken to Russia.

“Diplomacy does more when it truly aims to protect life, [and] together with partners, we are defending life and rules-based world order,” he said, adding that Ukraine’s experience has helped to restore “effective diplomacy,” which has led to the peace summit in Switzerland.

“We are moving into the Global Peace Summit so every leader and every country can show their commitment to peace,” he said, stressing that the global majority can ensure that “what is agreed upon is truly implemented” with their involvement in the summit.

While reiterating the importance for countries around the world to remain “united” and act in “complete harmony,” Zelenskyy also expressed his disappointment in some countries’ absence from the peace summit.

“We are disappointed that some world leaders have not yet confirmed their participation in the peace summit, [and] unfortunately, there are also attempts to disrupt the summit,” he said, adding that these attempts would deny the world the opportunity to “decide on war and peace.”

Zelenskyy’s remarks came as Ukraine continues to experience heavy Russian bombardment. Ukrainian officials told local media outlets that an overnight Russian attack involving 100 missiles and drones targeted the country’s power grid and injured at least 19 people across the country.

It also follows China’s decision to skip the peace summit. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning told reporters May 31 the summit has not met the conditions proposed by China, which is that both Russia and Ukraine should take part in the meeting.

“There is an apparent gap between the meeting’s arrangement and what China stands for as well as the universal expectation in the international community,” she said, adding that China has shared its concerns with relevant parties while vowing to keep promoting peace talks in its own way.

Several European leaders, including German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron, have expressed concerns in recent months about China’s support for Russia’s war efforts and urged Beijing to use its influence to facilitate a peace process.

Western countries have also repeatedly warned about China’s ongoing support for Russian war efforts against Ukraine. In May, the British defense minister said that intelligence showed evidence of Chinese lethal aid to Russia.

During his keynote address Sunday, Chinese Defense Minister Dong Jun reiterated that China has not provided weapons to either party in the Ukraine war and strictly controls the export of dual-use items.

“We stand firmly on the side of peace and dialogue,” he said.

However, when asked to elaborate on China’s plan for the peace process in Ukraine during the Q&A session of his keynote speech, Dong skipped the question and used his time to repeat China’s objection to Taiwan’s efforts to seek independence.

Zelenskyy told a press conference that while the United States has confirmed its “high-level” participation in the peace summit and has been encouraging countries to attend, China has been asking countries “not to attend the summit.”

“These are two different approaches,” he said.

When asked what he hopes to achieve by coming to Singapore, Zelenskyy said he wants to secure more support from Asian countries and hopes to let Asian countries understand what is happening in Ukraine.

“We want Asia to be involved in the peace summit and if we see Asian leaders attend the peace summit, we will know that my trip has succeeded,” he said, adding that he has not had any interaction with the Chinese delegation.

While he said he does not expect Ukraine to receive defensive support from China, Zelenskyy said he hopes China will support Ukraine’s efforts to ensure nuclear and food security in the world.

“It’ll be great if China supports and helps to solve these two issues,” he told journalists.

Some analysts say Dong’s reluctance to elaborate on Beijing’s plan for peace processes in the war shows it does not consider part of its core interests.

“They don’t think it’s a good topic for them, so they are just not going to talk about it,” Ray Powell, a fellow at Stanford University’s Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation, told VOA on the sidelines of the Shangri-La meeting.

Powell said that while part of Zelenskyy’s goal may be trying to rally more countries to join the peace summit, he may have difficulty convincing some Indo-Pacific countries to become more involved in the Ukraine War.

“Some Indo-Pacific countries’ immediate concerns don’t go that far out so I think Zelenskyy may just be thinking about keeping certain countries that have been supportive of Ukraine’s cause at the United Nations close and try to make his case to those governments,” Powell said.

Zelenskyy said that by joining the event, countries can involve their people in global affairs and unite the world against one war.  
…

ALEXANDRIA, Virginia — On one side of the classroom, students circled teacher Maria Fletcher and practiced vowel sounds. In another corner, children read together from a book. Scattered elsewhere, students sat at laptop computers and got reading help from online tutors.

For the third graders at Mount Vernon Community School in Virginia, it was an ordinary school day. But educators were racing to get students learning more, faster, and to overcome setbacks that have persisted since schools closed for the COVID-19 pandemic four years ago.

America’s schools have started to make progress toward getting students back on track. But improvement has been slow and uneven across geography and economic status, with millions of students — often those from marginalized groups — making up little or no ground.

Nationally, students made up one-third of their pandemic losses in math during the past school year and one-quarter of the losses in reading, according to the Education Recovery Scorecard, an analysis of state and national test scores by researchers at Harvard and Stanford.

But in nine states, including Virginia, reading scores continued to fall during the 2022-23 school year after previous decreases during the pandemic.

Clouding the recovery is a looming financial crisis. States have used some money from the historic $190 billion in federal pandemic relief to help students catch up, but that money runs out later this year.

“The recovery is not finished, and it won’t be finished without state action,” said Thomas Kane, a Harvard economist behind the scorecard. “States need to start planning for what they’re going to do when the federal money runs out in September. And I think few states have actually started that discussion.”

Virginia lawmakers approved an extra $418 million last year to accelerate recovery. Massachusetts officials set aside $3.2 million to provide math tutoring for fourth and eighth grade students who are behind grade level, along with $8 million for literacy tutoring.

But among other states with lagging progress, few said they were changing their strategies or spending more to speed up improvement.

Virginia hired online tutoring companies and gave schools a “playbook” showing how to build effective tutoring programs. Lisa Coons, Virginia’s superintendent of public instruction, said last year’s state test scores were a wake-up call.

“We weren’t recovering as fast as we needed,” Coons said in an interview.

U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona has called for states to continue funding extra academic help for students as the federal money expires.

“We just can’t stop now,” he said at a May 30 conference for education journalists. “The states need to recognize these interventions work. Funding public education does make a difference.”

In Virginia, the Alexandria district received $2.3 million in additional state money to expand tutoring.

At Mount Vernon, where classes are taught in English and Spanish, students are divided into groups and rotate through stations customized to their skill level. Those who need the most help get online tutoring. In Fletcher’s classroom, a handful of students wore headsets and worked with tutors through Ignite Learning, one of the companies hired by the state.

With tutors in high demand, the online option has been a big help, Mount Vernon principal Jennifer Hamilton said.

“That’s something that we just could not provide here,” she said.

Ana Marisela Ventura Moreno said her 9-year-old daughter, Sabrina, benefited significantly from extra reading help last year during second grade, but she’s still catching up.

“She needs to get better. She’s not at the level she should be,” the mother said in Spanish. She noted the school did not offer the tutoring help this year, but she did not know why.

Alexandria education officials say students scoring below proficient or close to that cutoff receive high-intensity tutoring help and they have to prioritize students with the greatest needs. Alexandria trailed the state average on math and reading exams in 2023, but it’s slowly improving.

More worrying to officials are the gaps: Among poorer students at Mount Vernon, just 24% scored proficient in math and 28% hit the mark in reading. That’s far lower than the rates among wealthier students, and the divide is growing wider.

Failing to get students back on track could have serious consequences. The researchers at Harvard and Stanford found communities with higher test scores have higher incomes and lower rates of arrest and incarceration. If pandemic setbacks become permanent, it could follow students for life.

The Education Recovery Scorecard tracks about 30 states, all of which made at least some improvement in math from 2022 to 2023. The states whose reading scores fell in that span, in addition to Virginia, were Nevada, California, South Dakota, Wyoming, Indiana, Oklahoma, Connecticut and Washington.

Only a few states have rebounded to pre-pandemic testing levels. Alabama was the only state where math achievement increased past 2019 levels, while Illinois, Mississippi and Louisiana accomplished that in reading.

In Chicago Public Schools, the average reading score went up by the equivalent of 70% of a grade level from 2022 to 2023. Math gains were less dramatic, with students still behind almost half a grade level compared with 2019. Chicago officials credit the improvement to changes made possible with nearly $3 billion in federal relief.

The district trained hundreds of Chicago residents to work as tutors. Every school building got an interventionist, an educator who focuses on helping struggling students.

The district also used federal money for home visits and expanded arts education in an effort to reengage students.

“Academic recovery in isolation, just through ‘drill and kill,’ either tutoring or interventions, is not effective,” said Bogdana Chkoumbova, the district’s chief education officer. “Students need to feel engaged.”

At Wells Preparatory Elementary on the city’s South Side, just 3% of students met state reading standards in 2021. Last year, 30% hit the mark. Federal relief allowed the school to hire an interventionist for the first time, and teachers get paid to team up on recovery outside working hours.

In the classroom, the school put a sharper focus on collaboration. Along with academic setbacks, students came back from school closures with lower maturity levels, principal Vincent Izuegbu said. By building lessons around discussion, officials found students took more interest in learning.

“We do not let 10 minutes go by without a teacher giving students the opportunity to engage with the subject,” Izuegbu said. “That’s very, very important in terms of the growth that we’ve seen.”

Olorunkemi Atoyebi was an A student before the pandemic, but after spending fifth grade learning at home, she fell behind. During remote learning, she was nervous about stopping class to ask questions. Before long, math lessons stopped making sense.

When she returned to school, she struggled with multiplication and terms such as “dividend” and “divisor” confused her.

While other students worked in groups, her math teacher took her aside for individual help. Atoyebi learned a rhyming song to help memorize multiplication tables. Over time, it began to click.

“They made me feel more confident in everything,” said Atoyebi, now 14. “My grades started going up. My scores started going up. Everything has felt like I understand it better.”
…

STOCKHOLM, Sweden — The teacher’s opening question to students in Stockholm is blunt: “Has joining NATO increased the threat to Sweden?”

Sweden became the Western military alliance’s 32nd member in March. The abrupt end to the Scandinavian country’s 200 years of neutrality following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and officials’ warnings about the Russian threat to Sweden itself, worry many. Teenagers are no exception.

Masai Björkwall helped design a national program to educate students on the history and geopolitics of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization after students at Viktor Rydberg Junior High School earlier this year anxiously asked if war might come to Sweden.

Their fears had been sparked by comments from the country’s top military commander and the civil defense minister that there was a risk of war and that Swedes must prepare. The statements spread quickly, and the national children’s help line reported an increase in questions about war.

Sweden’s last war ended in 1814.

“Of course we have to deal with the students’ worries about risk for conflict and war, and explain why we joined. We have had the policy of neutrality for so long, several hundred years,” Björkwall said. “So I have to teach about what has happened in the world, what has changed that made us change our policy.”

For teens unfamiliar with NATO, war and world politics, Björkwall’s new syllabus seeks to demystify topics his students see online.

One lesson included a discussion of the implications of NATO’s Article 5, the alliance’s collective defense clause under which an attack against one ally is considered an attack against all allies. The discussion stressed that the clause doesn’t lead to an automatic military response.

Student Linnea Ekman didn’t see any increased threat, pointing out that Article 5 does not require sending troops.

Another student, Edith Maxence, was concerned about the world becoming more divided as Sweden takes sides.

“I feel safe that Sweden is with NATO, but I feel unsafe that (…) it might start a war,” said the 14-year-old.

She isn’t alone. Children’s Rights in Society, which runs the national child help line, has seen increasing numbers of calls from children asking whether NATO membership increases the risk to Sweden.

Callers rarely asked about war before Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. But the secretary-general of BRIS, Magnus Jägerskog, said that nearly 20% of calls were about war in the week after military chief Micael Bydén and Civil Defense Minister Carl-Oskar Bohlin made their comments in January highlighting the risk.

Addressing such concerns is where the program Björkwall helped design comes in.

Together with UR, a publicly funded civic education agency that creates educational content for teachers and students, he and others produced a series of video programs on NATO along with teaching materials. Launched in March, these programs have now reached an estimated 100,000 Swedish children.

For his final-year students, Björkwall has a more challenging question: Should Sweden align with authoritarian countries? He uses as examples Turkey and Hungary — NATO allies that delayed Sweden’s membership for months after Nordic neighbor Finland had joined.

The class is divided, with nearly half of the students unsure.

“We found it hard to make one conclusion,” said 15-year-old Adam Sahlen but acknowledged that “the military gets stronger and better if we cooperate with others, especially Turkey for example.”

Björkwall said he’s careful to avoid advocating one position over another: “I want them to be mature, democratic citizens that can vote consciously later on.”
…

…

PARIS — Of all the decisions Paris Olympics organizers made about where to hold each sport, sending surfing competitions to the other side of the world — in the Pacific waters of Tahiti — provoked the strongest reactions. Tahitians and others railed against the building of a new viewing tower on Teahupo’o reef because of fears it would hurt marine life.

But organizers say it wasn’t just the world-class waves that lured them to the French territory 16,000 kilometers away. Paris Olympic officials had set an ambitious target of halving their overall carbon footprint compared with the 2012 London and 2016 Rio Games.

Tahiti’s surfing reef is too far offshore for fans to see the action clearly from the beach, so organizers say they calculated that most would watch on television instead of taking flights, a major source of carbon emissions.

And fewer spectators, they said, would require little new construction, another key emissions source.

“We actually did the math,” said Georgina Grenon, director of environmental excellence for the Paris Games. “There was less impact in Tahiti compared to other metropolitan areas.”

Tahiti’s selection provides a window into Games organizers’ approach to hitting their goal of reducing emissions, the driver of climate change. It also underscores an inherent tension in the drive for sustainability: There are tradeoffs, and reducing emissions doesn’t necessarily mean preserving the environment.

Organizers’ goal is to limit emissions to 1.58 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent for the July 26-August 11 Games and Paralympics that follow. That’s still a lot of pollution — equal to that of about 1.3 million economy passengers flying one way from New York to Paris on Boeing 787 jets, according to myclimate, a climate and sustainability consultancy.

It’s a lot less, however, than the footprint of previous Games.

Organizers say they’re thinking about the Games’ future, not just the planet’s. Fewer cities are volunteering to spend billions on infrastructure that sometimes falls into disuse. Paris and the next host, Los Angeles in 2028, were the only cities left in the race when picked in 2017. For organizers, hosting less-wasteful Games is key, along with including more inclusive, youth-oriented events such as skateboarding.

Paris is under additional pressure to be a sustainable model: The city hosted the 2015 U.N. climate talks that resulted in the Paris Agreement, the most significant international climate accord to date. Delegates agreed the world should limit average global temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius above that of the 1850s, and ideally cap it at 1.5 degrees — a goal looking increasingly unattainable.

Independent experts say Paris appears to be decarbonizing in the systematic ways businesses do: Calculate total emissions, then start cutting, including myriad small CO2 savings that add up significantly. Organizers targeted reductions across three categories: construction, transportation and operations.

“They seem to be taking a very thoughtful approach,” said Adam Braun of Clarasight, which builds carbon-planning software for companies. “They are trying to do something that is indicative of how many organizations will be holding themselves accountable.”

The biggest break from previous Games is in construction. Organizers say 95% of facilities are existing or will be temporary. Two new structures were deemed unavoidable: The Olympic Village, to house athletes and later become housing and office space, and the aquatics center in Paris’ disadvantaged northern suburbs.

Using wood, low-carbon cement, and salvaged materials helped reduce emissions by 30% compared with traditional methods, Grenon said.

Reductions in operations include food. The average meal in France — restaurant- or home-prepared — produces about 2 kilograms of CO2, said Philipp Würz, the Games’ catering head. Paris aims to halve that by sourcing 80% of ingredients locally, cutting transport emissions, and offering spectators 60% plant-based foods.

Winning minds as well as taste buds could take work. “Locally grown food, and supporting local farmers, are beautiful things,” tennis player Victoria Azarenka said. But “when people are doing these big gestures, I’m not fully convinced of the impact,” she added of Paris’ overall climate efforts.

Another emissions-savings source is energy. Energy will represent only 1% of emissions, organizers said. They intend to use 100% renewable power from wind and solar farms, plus solar panels on some venues.

Stadiums and temporary venues will get power from the grid instead of diesel generators, which produce much CO2. Giant electrical plugs at venues will remain post-Games, removing the need for generators at future events.

Reducing transportation-related emissions is arguably Paris’ biggest challenge. Tourism officials expect 15.3 million visitors for the Olympics and Paralympics, including 1.9 million from outside France, with at least 850,000 taking long-haul flights.

In Paris, there are low-carbon transport options — cycling routes, Metro trains, buses and other public transit — to all venues.

But the inability to control how people get to the Olympics, or any big event, raises questions about whether humanity can afford such get-togethers at the cost of further climate damage.

“Maybe things like the Olympics have to be reconsidered,” said Seth Warren Rose of the Eneref Institute, an advocacy and research group focused on sustainable development. “Having millions of people congregate in a single area is a very intensive thing.”

Rose said organizers’ efforts are laudable, but they should have gone further — reducing emissions beyond half and finding more ways to make sustainability a central fan experience.

Some critics have also questioned some sponsors. Air France, ports operator CMA CGM Group and metals giant ArcelorMittal are leaders in carbon-intensive industries. On their websites, all tout their Olympic sponsorship and sustainability efforts.

The Upright Project, a Finnish company that creates and analyzes data to evaluate companies’ impact on the world, looked at sponsors, assigning scores for positive and negative impacts on environment, health, jobs and other metrics.

On environment, sponsors’ emissions had an overall 10-fold negative impact.

“I do find the current sustainability discourse, where we effectively celebrate companies’ miniscule sustainability tweaks and greenwashing efforts like they actually make a difference to climate change, extremely harmful,” Upright Project’s Annu Nieminen said in a statement. “If the Paris 2024 sponsors are celebrated by the organizers for their ‘sustainability,’ that’s contributing to the same harmful discourse.”

In a statement, organizers said the Games presented “a unique opportunity to encourage partner businesses to adopt more responsible practices.”

For emissions it can’t cut, Paris plans to compensate – a practice called offsetting. Planting trees, for example, could help take CO2 out of the atmosphere that the Games put in. But offset markets aren’t well regulated, and investigations by news organizations have found some projects to be fraudulent while others miscalculated the quantity of emissions captured.

Organizers say they’ll continue to adapt sustainability plans as they go, including those in Tahiti. The metal judging tower, which replaced the aging wooden one Tahiti previously used to host surfing competitions, was scaled back in size in response to concerns about environmental harm, organizers say. Finished earlier this year, the tower will be dismantled after the Games. It will be erected and used again when Teahupo’o holds world surfing events.

Organizers say they expect about 1,300 people with Olympic accreditation on the island, including 500 flying in. That total, likely much smaller than if the competition took place off France’s coast, includes surfers, judges, journalists and Games workers.

“We say that sustainability is a collective sport,” Grenon said. “Will everything be perfect? No, right? We cannot say that. We’re still working very, very hard to go as far as we can.”
…

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida — Last-minute computer trouble nixed Saturday’s launch attempt for Boeing’s first astronaut flight, the latest in a string of delays over the years.

Two NASA astronauts were strapped in the company’s Starliner capsule when the countdown automatically was halted at 3 minutes and 50 seconds by the computer system that controls the final minutes before liftoff.

With only a split second to take off, there was no time to work the latest problem and the launch was called off.

Technicians raced to the pad to help astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams out of the capsule atop the fully fueled Atlas V rocket at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Within an hour of the launch abort, the hatch was reopened.

The team can’t get to the computers to troubleshoot the problem until the rocket is drained of all its fuel, said Tory Bruno, CEO for the rocket maker, United Launch Alliance.

Bruno said one of the three redundant computers located near the rocket at the pad was sluggish. All three must work properly to proceed with a launch, he said.

Depending on what needs to be fixed, the next launch attempt could be as early as Wednesday. If it doesn’t blast off this coming week, then that would be it until mid-June in order to move the rocket off the pad and replace batteries.

“This is the business that we’re in,” Boeing’s Mark Nappi said. “Everything’s got to work perfectly.”

It was the second launch attempt. The first try on May 6 was delayed for leak checks and rocket repairs.

NASA wants a backup to SpaceX, which has been flying astronauts since 2020.

Boeing should have launched its first crew around the same time as SpaceX, but its first test flight with no one on board in 2019 was plagued by severe software issues and never made it to the space station.

A redo in 2022 fared better, but parachute problems and flammable later caused more delays. A small helium leak in the capsule’s propulsion system last month came on top of a rocket valve issue.

More valve trouble cropped up two hours before Saturday’s planned liftoff, but the team used a backup circuit to get the ground-equipment valves working to top off the fuel for the rocket’s upper stage. Launch controllers were relieved to keep pushing ahead, but the computer system known as the ground launch sequencer ended the effort.

“Of course, this is emotionally disappointing,” NASA astronaut Mike Fincke, the backup pilot, said from neighboring Kennedy Space Center shortly after the countdown was halted.

But he said delays are part of spaceflight. “We’re going to have a great launch in our future.”
…

DENALI NATIONAL PARK AND PRESERVE, Alaska — A Malaysian climber likely died of exposure and altitude-related illness earlier this week after sheltering for days in a snow cave with minimal survival gear near the top of Denali, North America’s tallest mountain in Alaska, park officials said Saturday.

Zulkifli Bin Yusof, 36, likely died Wednesday in a 5,974-meter elevation cave in Denali National Park and Preserve, park spokesperson Paul Ollig said Saturday. The National Park Service recovered his body Friday night, Ollig said.

Yusof was part of a three-man climbing team, all of whom listed their address as the Alpine Club of Malaysia in Subang Jaya, Selangor, Malaysia, according to Ollig. Yusof’s two partners survived.

Park rangers first received an SOS message from the team at 1 a.m. Tuesday, indicating the climbers were hypothermic and unable to descend after reaching the Alaskan mountain’s 6,190-meter summit.

One of the men, a 48-year-old, was rescued Tuesday night after descending to a 5,243-meter-camp. He was described by the park as having severe frostbite and hypothermia.

Late Thursday, the park’s high-altitude helicopter pilot was able to drop a bag with survival gear near the snow cave and saw a climber waving at him, but strong winds prevented a rescue at that time, the park said.

The other climber, a 47-year-old, was rescued Friday morning after days of cloudy, windy conditions.

Two of the three men had previous experience on Denali, Ollig said. All three had previously climbed other high-elevation mountains, he said.

The climber rescued Friday was medevaced to an Anchorage hospital for additional care and “was in surprisingly strong condition, walking on his own even, considering what he endured,” Ollig previously said. The climber’s name and additional information about him and the other survivor would not be released by the park.

The other climber is also recovering at a hospital.
…

London’s Chinatown is at the beating heart of the capital’s entertainment district – with unique flavors that link back to Britain’s colonial history, as Henry Ridgwell reports
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SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador — In 2021, the Biden administration turned down a meeting request with El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, on a trip to Washington, snubbing the self-proclaimed “world’s coolest dictator” for fear a photo op would embolden his attempts to expand his power base. 

A little more than three years later, it’s the United States that’s courting Bukele. A high-level delegation led by U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, and senior White House and State Department officials, attended Bukele’s inauguration in San Salvador on Saturday to a second term. 

The visit caps a quiet, 180-degree shift in Washington’s policy toward the small Central American nation of 6 million that reflects how the Biden administration’s criticisms of Bukele’s strong-armed governing style have been overtaken by more urgent concerns tied to immigration — a key issue in this year’s U.S. presidential election. 

“They’ve realized what he’s been doing works,” Damian Merlo, an American adviser to Bukele who is registered to lobby on the Salvadoran government’s behalf, said in an interview from El Salvador. “If the U.S. is serious about wanting to address the root causes of migration, then Bukele is someone who has actually done it.” 

The 42-year-old Bukele, who was reelected with 85% of the vote, has been wildly popular at home for his frontal attack on powerful gangs, which has converted what was once the world’s murder capital into one of Latin America’s safest countries. The improvement in public security is credited with a more than 60% drop in migration from the Central American country to the U.S. since Bukele took office in 2019 — a stark contrast with a growing exodus of migrants from other parts of Latin America. 

“We conquered fear, and today are truly a free nation,” Bukele said in a speech Saturday to hundreds of supporters from the balcony of the National Palace after being sworn in for a second, five-year term. 

Cured of what he called the cancer of gang violence, he said that his next term would be devoted to strengthening El Salvador’s economy, vowing to apply the same independent, unconventional approach that has characterized his rule and won him admirers from conservatives throughout Latin America. 

“I’m not here to do what others think I should do. I’m here to do what’s best for our country,” he said. 

Until recently, Bukele’s crackdown on the gangs — as well as political opponents — had drawn fire from Washington. A state of emergency originally declared in 2022 and still in effect has been used to round up 78,175 suspected gang members in sweeps that rights groups say are often arbitrary, based on a person’s appearance or where they live. The government has had to release about 7,000 people because of a lack of evidence. 

After Biden took office, the U.S. sanctioned several of Bukele’s top aides on allegations of corruption and shifted foreign assistance from government agencies to civil society groups highly critical of Bukele. 

The about-face, observers say, started a little more than a year ago when Biden sent William Duncan, a career diplomat, to San Salvador as U.S. ambassador. Then, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Salvadoran Foreign Minister Alexandra Hill in Washington. Bukele, who in the past praised former U.S. President Donald Trump and cozied up to China, has also avoided direct confrontation. 

“Migration trumps everything else,” said Michael Shifter, a former president of Inter-American Dialogue in Washington. “The ideal Latin American partner would be effective in its security policy while respecting human rights norms and practices and cooperating with the U.S. on migration. But rarely do all these desirable things go together, which poses tough choices for U.S. policymakers.” 

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

But Ricardo Zúniga, a retired U.S. diplomat who handled migration talks with Central America in the early days of the Biden administration, said that Washington may come to regret its recent embrace of Bukele. 

“Bukele will be in power for many years to come, so you need to have a working relationship,” he said. “But you also have to be clear eyed. This is an authoritarian government ruled by a single party that is not sympathetic to U.S. strategic interests.” 
…

WASHINGTON — Congressional leaders have invited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to deliver an address the Capitol, a show of wartime support for the longtime ally despite mounting political divisions over Israel’s military assault on Gaza.

The invitation from House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, along with Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell and House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries, has been in the works for some time. No date for the speech was set.

Leaders said the invitation was extended to “highlight America’s solidarity with Israel.”

“We invite you to share the Israeli government’s vision for defending democracy, combatting terror and establishing a just and lasting peace in the region,” they wrote.

A speech by Netanyahu would almost certainly expose election-year divisions in the U.S., where a growing number of Democrats have turned away from the right-wing prime minister, while Republicans have embraced him.

Johnson first suggested inviting the Israeli leader, saying it would be “a great honor of mine” to invite him. That came soon after Schumer, who is the highest ranking Jewish elected official in the U.S., had delivered a stinging rebuke of Netanyahu. Schumer said in the speech that Netanyahu had “lost his way” amid the Israeli bombing campaign in Gaza.

Even so, Schumer had said he would join in the invitation because “our relationship with Israel is ironclad and transcends any one prime minister or president.”

The Israel-Hamas war, now in its seventh month after the October 7 terror attack by the Palestinian militant group, has caused widespread concerns in the U.S. and abroad over Israel’s conduct and the extensive civilian death toll.

As Israel pushes into Rafah in Gaza, the International Criminal Court has accused Netanyahu and his defense minister, along with three Hamas leaders, of war crimes — a largely symbolic act but one that further isolates the Israeli leader.

President Joe Biden in supporting Israel’s right to defend itself against Hamas lambasted the ICC’s case against Netanyahu, but he has nevertheless grown critical of Israel’s war plans and has pressed for assurances of humanitarian aid.

On Friday, Biden encouraged a three-phase deal proposed by Israel to Hamas militants that he says would lead to the release of the remaining hostages in Gaza and could end the war. He urged Israelis and Hamas to come to an agreement to release the remaining hostages for an extended cease-fire, arguing that Hamas is “no longer capable” of carrying out another large-scale attack on Israel as it did in October.

Biden called the proposal “a road map to an enduring cease-fire and the release of all hostages.”

It is unclear if Biden and Netanyahu would meet in Washington.

Spain, Norway and Ireland recently recognized a Palestinian state, a move that was condemned by Israel. Slovenia’s government also endorsed a motion to recognize a Palestinian state and asked the parliament to do the same.

Typically, a high-profile congressional invitation is issued jointly and in consultation with the White House. But in 2015, Netanyahu was invited to address Congress in a rebuff to then-President Barack Obama by a previous Republican speaker during disputes over Iran.

On Capitol Hill, the debates over the Israel-Hamas war have been pitched, heated and divisive, amplified during the college campus protests this spring, showing how the once ironclad support for Israel has weakened and splintered.

Republicans, including presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump, have been eager to display their support for Netanyahu and expose the Democratic divisions over Israel.

More recently, Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, became the highest ranking Republican elected official from the U.S. to deliver a speech before the Israeli parliament.
…

BUDAPEST, Hungary — A crowd of tens of thousands gathered in Hungary’s capital Saturday in a show of strength behind Prime Minister Viktor Orbán a week ahead of European Parliament elections, a contest he has cast as an existential turning point between peace in Europe and a world war.

The demonstration, dubbed by organizers as a “peace march,” brought Orbán’s supporters from all over Hungary and neighboring countries, who marched along the Danube River in Budapest from the city’s iconic Chain Bridge onto Margaret Island, waving flags and signs reading “No War.”

Orbán, whose 14 years in power make him the European Union’s longest serving leader, has focused his campaign for the June 9 ballot on the war in Ukraine, portraying his domestic and international opponents as warmongers who seek to involve Hungary directly in the conflict. Critics say his appeals for an immediate cease-fire in Ukraine would allow Russia to retain territories it has occupied and embolden it further.

On Saturday, he told supporters it was time for his party to “occupy Brussels” — the European Union’s de facto capital — and transform the continent’s approach to support for Ukraine as it fends off Russia’s invasion.

“We can only stay out of the war if Hungarian voters support the government,” he said during a speech on Margaret Island. “We must win the European elections in such a way that the Brussels bureaucrats in their fear will open the doors of the city to us and leave their offices in a hurry.”

Orbán and his Fidesz party have built a reputation as being among the friendliest in the EU to Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin. Hungary has refused to supply neighboring Ukraine with weapons to assist in its fight against Russia’s invasion and has threatened to derail EU financial aid to Kyiv and to block sanctions against Moscow.

His party appears set to gain the most seats in the EU legislature in next week’s election. But a series of scandals and a deep economic crisis has given room for one political newcomer, Péter Magyar, to seize on Orbán’s moment of weakness and build a major political movement in the last three months that looks poised to take a significant portion of votes.

Magyar, who has risen to prominence through publicly accusing Orbán’s party of corruption and turning Hungary’s media into a pro-government propaganda machine, has himself held numerous large protests and called for “the largest political demonstration in Hungary’s history” on the eve of the elections.

But the crowd in Budapest on Saturday showed that Orbán’s brand of right-wing populism — and threats that military support to Ukraine by the EU and United States is leading toward a new world war — still resonates among large parts of Hungarian society.

“I trust Viktor Orbán. Let our children have a livable country, not a bombed-out country,” said Budapest resident József Fehér at the demonstration. “The weapons that Europe has given to the Ukrainians could be turned back against us. And we don’t want that.”

Orbán has condemned his EU and NATO partners who assist Ukraine as being “pro-war,” and advocated for an election victory for former U.S. President Donald Trump.

In his speech, he said a Trump victory in November would lead to he and the U.S. administration forming a “transatlantic peace coalition” that could bring an end to the fighting in Ukraine.
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