A warmer, wetter climate is helping push dozens of Eastern U.S. trees to the north and, surprisingly, west, a new study finds.

The eastern white pine is going west, more than 80 miles (130 kilometers) since the early 1980s. The eastern cottonwood has been heading 77 miles north (124 kilometers), according to the research based on about three decades of forest data.

The northward shift to get to cooler weather was expected, but lead author Songlin Fei of Purdue University and several outside experts were surprised by the move to the west, which was larger and in a majority of the species.

New trees tend to sprout farther north and west while the trees that are farther south and east tend to die off, shifting the geographic center of where trees live. 

86 tree species

Detailed observations of 86 tree species showed, in general, the concentrations of eastern U.S. tree species have shifted more than 25 miles west (45 kilometers) and 20 miles (33 kilometers) north, the researchers reported in the journal Science Advances Wednesday.

One of the more striking examples is the scarlet oak, which in nearly three decades has moved more than 127 miles (205 kilometers) to the northwest from the Appalachians, he said. Now it’s reduced in the Southeast and more popular in the Midwest.

“This analysis provides solid evidence that changes are occurring,” former U.S. Forest Chief Michael Dombeck said in an email. “It’s critical that we not ignore what analyses like these and what science is telling us about what is happening in nature.”

Dryer South, wetter West

The westward movement helped point to climate change, especially wetter weather, as the biggest of many culprits behind the shift, Fei said. The researchers did factor in people cutting down trees and changes to what trees are planted and where, he said.

With the Southeast generally drying and the West getting wetter, that explanation makes some sense, but not completely, said Brent Sohngen at Ohio State University, who was not involved in the study.

“There is no doubt some signature of climate change,” he said in an email. But given the rapid rates of change reported, harvesting, forest fires and other disturbances, are probably still playing a more significant role than climate change, he wrote.
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NAACP President Cornell William Brooks will not be returning as the leader of the nation’s oldest civil rights organization after his contract expires this summer, officials said Friday. 

 

Brooks has been the NAACP’s leader since 2014 but will not be kept on past June 30, the end of his current term. NAACP Board Chairman Leon W. Russell and Vice Chair Derrick Johnson will lead the organization until a new president is selected. 

 

Russell and Johnson announced what they described as a “transformational, system-wide refresh and strategic re-envisioning” for the NAACP in a Friday evening conference call with reporters. 

 

“We understand and appreciate the historic model of protest, but at this point in time we believe as an organization we need to retool to become better advocates, better at educating the public, better at involving them in our operation” and better at legislation and litigation, Russell said. 

National search for leader

 

Russell, who was made the Baltimore-based organization’s board chairman in February, praised Brooks’ leadership and said the NAACP remained at the forefront of civil rights activism in the United States. 

 

“However, modern-day civil rights issues facing the NAACP, like education reform, voting rights and access to affordable health care, still persist and demand our continued action,” he said. 

 

A national search for a new leader was expected to begin this summer. 

 

In addition, the NAACP planned to embark on a “listening tour” this summer to solicit input on how the organization should reinvent itself. 

 

Brooks, the NAACP’s 18th national president, replaced interim leader Lorraine Miller. Miller had served in that position since Benjamin Jealous ended his five-year tenure in 2013. 

 

Brooks, a minister, is originally from Georgetown, South Carolina. It was not immediately known what his future plans were. 

Black Lives Matter

 

The NAACP found itself battling for attention from black youth with groups like Black Lives Matter, which rose to prominence behind street-level protests after the killings of African-American men and women by police, including 18-year-old Michael Brown at the hands of a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. 

 

Catherine Flowers, founder of the Alabama Center for Rural Enterprise, an organization that advocates for poor and black people living in rural areas, said she wasn’t surprised at the coming change. 

 

“I would like to see more of a grassroots effort” by the NAACP, she said. “Clearly, on a national level we’re at a crisis and it calls for a new kind of leadership.” 
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In the age of social media, people are having trouble differentiating what is news and what is not. VOA’s Jane Bojadzievski looks at the trend.
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About three million American university graduates will enter the job market this year. And with unemployment currently at a 10-year low, it’s a good time to be graduating, says Nicole Smith, chief economist at Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce (CEW).

“We are at one of the lowest unemployment rates we’ve had since May of 2007, so what that means for the graduating class of 2017 is that the likelihood of getting a job is really, really good,” she said.

The U.S. Labor Department says unemployment for those with a four-year bachelor’s degree or higher is 2.5 percent, compared to the overall jobless rate of 4.5 percent. For those with a high school diploma or less, the average unemployment rate is 6.8 percent.

Demand for graduates with associate, bachelor’s and master’s degrees is particularly strong in the STEM fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics, according to the latest survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers.

However, Smith says, a four-year degree is not necessary to compete in today’s economy.

“There are about 28 million jobs or so in the U.S. economy that are good-paying jobs; that are high-skilled jobs for people without a B.A,” she said.

While higher learning can give new workers the upper hand, Smith says almost a third of students with bachelor’s degrees are under-unemployed.

“So we have to do this cakewalk, this tightrope walk, to understand exactly what the market demands,” she said.

Options without college degree

A survey of the hottest employment sectors in 2017 shows some of the fastest-growing fields don’t require a four-year degree, according to Bankrate.com senior analyst Mark Hamrick.

“You don’t have to have a college degree for some of those technical jobs, where, let’s say, a kind of therapy might be involved — physical or occupational therapy,” he said.

Health care and service-oriented jobs aimed at the needs of a graying population are bound to remain strong as baby boomers — those born between 1946 to 1964 — continue to retire. But, Hamrick says, some skills are harder to learn in school.

“One of the skills which has been in strong demand really involves people skills — closing the deal, sales … business strategy; charting the course for a viable enterprise, that’s something that’s needed,” he said.

What is clear is that jobs that fueled the economy three or four decades ago are not the same jobs driving the economy today. In the 1970s, manufacturing accounted for nearly two of every five jobs; today, those manufacturing jobs account for fewer than one in 10.   

“The types of manufacturing jobs that remain are jobs that are really high-skill, high-tech, high-demand manufacturing jobs. So those jobs require a lot more skills than their predecessors did,” Smith said.

Life-long learning key

Today’s job market also differs from the past because rapid technological and societal change demands a commitment to life-long learning, which means that getting a degree is just the beginning, according to Smith.  

“Each year, there’s a new … version of technology that we must use,” she said. “So what the students need to be aware of is that they will need to come back to re-up their certification, to re-up their skills.”

Participating in today’s economy also means older and newer workers must be willing to move where the jobs are. Demand for workers is greatest where local economies are dynamic and where populations are growing, says Bankrate.com’s Hamrick. That means the exodus toward bigger cities on the East and West coasts will continue. 

“That’s a process that’s accelerating,” Hamrick said. “It’s not slowing down, and so having the right skills, going where the jobs are located — those are the keys to obtaining and maintaining employment.”

The most recent jobs report shows the U.S. economy added 211,000 jobs in April, and unemployment fell to 4.4 percent. That’s a sharp contrast to the dark days that followed the 2008 financial crisis, when the U.S. economy was losing 800,000 jobs a month and unemployment peaked at 10 percent. 
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U.S. presidential trips are an opportunity to project power and burnish statesmanship. But they come with diplomatic dangers and potential pitfalls, too. For Donald Trump, several of those await in Jerusalem and Bethlehem

next week.

A nine-day tour taking in Saudi Arabia, Israel, the Palestinian territories, the Vatican and NATO would be a tall order for any president. But for Trump, under siege at home over questions about his administration’s links to Russia and his firing of FBI chief James Comey, it is a particularly demanding itinerary, especially for a first overseas venture.

During his campaign, Trump promised to be Israel’s “best friend” if elected, and signaled that it was okay for the Israeli government to go on building settlements on occupied land since he didn’t regard it as an obstacle to peace.

Since taking office, however, Trump has shifted tack, urging Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “hold back” on settlements, and praising Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas at a White House meeting this month, part of an effort to bring the sides together and launch another attempt at Middle East peace.

It looks unlikely Trump will manage to get Netanyahu and Abbas to shake hands during his 28-hour visit to the Holy Land, and the prospects of him setting a timetable for a resumption of peace talks also look dim. But that doesn’t mean other diplomatic traps aren’t lying in wait.

Perhaps the most sensitive is what Trump ends up saying — or not saying —  about a promise he made during the election campaign to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

No country in the world has its embassy to Israel in Jerusalem since the status of the city remains disputed in the eyes of the international community. While Israelis call Jerusalem their “indivisible capital,” Palestinians want the capital of any future state in the east of the city.

Only once Jerusalem’s final status is agreed via direct negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians are foreign countries likely to move their embassies to the city.

In the meantime, Trump has appointed as his envoy to Israel David Friedman, a devout Jew who insists the embassy must be moved and plans to work out of Jerusalem some days of the week.

Careful steps

When Friedman arrived in Israel this week, his first act was to visit Jerusalem’s Western Wall, the holiest place where Jews are permitted to pray, a symbolic departure from usual protocol.

Trump intends to visit the Western Wall too, something past presidents have not done because of the political sensitivities.

The Wall stands in the Old City in the east of Jerusalem, which Israel captured during the 1967 Middle East war. Officially, the United Nations, the United States and others consider the Old City and East Jerusalem occupied territory and do not recognize Israel’s claim to sovereignty over it.

As a result, the U.S. State Department turned down a request for Netanyahu to accompany Trump and his family when they visit the site on Monday. Instead, the president will be accompanied by the rabbi of the Western Wall.

“This is the most appropriate way to show the proper deference to such a significant holy site,” a State Department official said.

Yet in an interview with Israel Hayom, a pro-Netanyahu paper, Trump said his plans “could still change” and suggested he might ask Netanyahu to join him, a last-minute move that would please Netanyahu but anger the Palestinians.

On Tuesday, Trump is scheduled to visit Abbas for an hour in Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus, which lies a few kilometers south of Jerusalem in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

To get there, the president’s convoy will have to pass through Israel’s high-security checkpoint and towering concrete barriers that cut the West Bank off from Jerusalem.

Both Palestinians and Israelis will be on alert to see what language Trump uses when he meets Abbas. While the president hasn’t clearly backed a two-state solution — Israel and a Palestinian state — he is expected to voice support for Palestinian “self-determination,” a phrase that nods in the direction of an independent Palestinian state.

After negotiating that diplomatic minefield, Trump is scheduled to visit Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust Memorial. He has set aside 15 minutes for the visit, unlike previous presidents who spent an hour or more at the site.
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President Donald Trump is wasting no time trying to succeed where his predecessors have failed. He will visit Israel and the Palestinian territories on Monday and Tuesday of next week, hoping to revive peace talks that collapsed three years ago. His goal is what he calls “the ultimate deal” that would bring an elusive peace to the Holy Land.

Both sides are preparing to roll out the red carpet, Israel in Jerusalem and the Palestinians in the biblical West Bank town of Bethlehem which is under limited self-rule.

“The President will be warmly welcomed here as a great friend of Israel and as is customary for the leader of our greatest ally, the United States,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his Cabinet. “The president is seeking to examine ways of renewing the peace process with the Palestinians. I share in this desire as do the citizens of Israel. We want peace.”

Netanyahu says he is ready to resume negotiations without preconditions, but Abbas insists that there must be an end-game. “Our strategic and sole option is to achieve the two-state solution, the state of Palestine with East Jerusalem as its capital to live side by side in peace, safety and stability together with the state of Israel along the 1967 borders,” Abbas said at a White House meeting with Trump in early May.

That is a simple statement but it encapsulates the deeply complex issues of the conflict. While Netanyahu publicly endorses the idea of creating a Palestinian state, it’s well known that he doesn’t really like the idea for security reasons as well as Jewish historical and biblical ties to the disputed West Bank. He rejects the 1967 borders as indefensible and says that Israeli sovereignty over its “eternal capital” Jerusalem, including the Old City with its Jewish, Muslim and Christian holy places, is not negotiable.

Israel captured the Old City, the West Bank and Gaza Strip during the Six Day War in 1967 and it annexed East Jerusalem shortly afterward.

Highlighting the tightrope on which Trump will be walking is his planned visit to the Western Wall, the first by an American president to Judaism’s holiest site in the Old City.

When Netanyahu asked if he could accompany the president, a U.S. diplomat told the Israelis that the site is in the West Bank and is “not your territory.” Israeli officials were furious and demanded an explanation from the White House, which later clarified that the diplomat’s comments do not reflect official policy.

In addition to the charged question of the status of Jerusalem, the other so-called “final status” issues are just as thorny: Jewish settlements, Palestinian refugees and final borders. Trump is not intimidated by these obstacles that have blocked the efforts of the world’s top diplomats for decades. 

“We want to create peace between Israel and the Palestinians,” he said. “We will get it done…It is something that I think is frankly, maybe, not as difficult as people have thought over the years.”

Comments like that have many observers concluding that Trump, a businessman who sees himself as a dealmaker but has little experience in international diplomacy, is simply naïve.

“At the end of the day this is not a question of technique or process,” says Zalman Shoval, a former Israeli ambassador to the United States. “It’s a much deeper issue of two peoples who lay claim to the same small piece of land…So I don’t think it’s a question of being a business person or not being a business person, [but rather], one has to very thoroughly learn the deeper issues at hand.”

The Palestinians don’t know what to expect because Trump has not yet endorsed the bedrock of U.S. Middle East diplomacy since the Oslo (peace) Accords of 1993, namely, the two-state solution. “I’m looking at two-state and one-state, and I like the one that both parties like,” Trump said at a White House news conference with Netanyahu in February. “If Israel and the Palestinians are happy, I’m happy with the one they like the best.”

That stunned the Palestinians but delighted Netanyahu, who heads a right-wing coalition with pro-settler parties that strongly oppose a Palestinian state. Israeli nationalists say a Palestinian “terror” state already exists in the Gaza Strip, from where Israel evacuated all soldiers and settlers in a unilateral withdrawal in 2005. Two years later, the Islamic militant group Hamas seized control of the territory and has since fired thousands of rockets across the border at Israel.

But with “a new sheriff in town,” as Nikki Haley, the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., put it, both the Israelis and Palestinians want to give the new administration a chance. While the probability of the “ultimate deal” seems as slim as ever, Trump will begin with the more achievable first step that his predecessors took: trying to goad the parties back to the negotiating table.

 

 
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