A U.S. landlord was charged with murder and hate crimes Sunday after allegedly stabbing a Muslim woman and 6-year-old boy dozens of times in an attack that police linked to the war between Israel and Hamas.

The child, who was stabbed 26 times, died at a hospital, but the 32-year-old woman, believed to be his mother, is expected to survive the “heinous” Saturday attack, according to a statement from the Will County sheriff’s office in Illinois.

Late Sunday, U.S. President Joe Biden said in a statement that he and his wife were shocked and sickened to learn of the murderous attack.

“This horrific act of hate has no place in America, and stands against our fundamental values: freedom from fear for how we pray, what we believe, and who we are. As Americans, we must come together and reject Islamophobia and all forms of bigotry and hatred.  I have said repeatedly that I will not be silent in the face of hate.  We must be unequivocal. There is no place in America for hate against anyone.”

The sheriff’s office did not give further details or the victims’ nationality, but the Chicago office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) described the child as Palestinian-American.

“Detectives were able to determine that both victims in this brutal attack were targeted by the suspect due to them being Muslim and the on-going Middle Eastern conflict involving Hamas and the Israelis,” said the statement, which located the killing about 64 kilometers west of Chicago.

Authorities said the woman managed to call 911 as she fought off the landlord, named by the sheriff’s office as 71-year-old Joseph Czuba.

“Deputies located two victims inside the residence in a bedroom. Both victims had multiple stab wounds to their chest, torso, and upper extremities,” the sheriff’s statement said.

A serrated military-style knife with a seven-inch blade was pulled from the boy’s abdomen during the autopsy, the statement said.

When police arrived, they found Czuba sitting on the ground near the driveway of the residence with a laceration on his forehead. He was taken to the hospital for treatment before being charged with murder, attempted murder, and two counts of hate crimes.

“He knocked on the door and attempted to choke her, and said, ‘you Muslims’ must die,” Ahmed Rehab, head of CAIR’s Chicago office, told reporters, citing text messages sent by the woman to the murdered boy’s father from her hospital bed.

The attack was “our worst nightmare,” CAIR said in a statement.

Israel declared war on Hamas Oct. 8, a day after waves of the militant group’s fighters broke through the heavily fortified border and shot, stabbed and burned to death more than 1,400 people, most of them civilians.

The subsequent relentless bombing by Israel has flattened neighborhoods and left at least 2,670 people dead in the Gaza Strip, the majority ordinary Palestinians.
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Movie theaters turned into concert venues this weekend as Swifties brought their dance moves and friendship bracelets to multiplexes across the country. The unparalleled enthusiasm helped propel “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” to a massive, first place debut between $95 million and $97 million in North America, AMC Theatres said Sunday. 

It’s easily the biggest opening for a concert film of all time, and, not accounting for inflation, has made more than the $73 million “Justin Bieber: Never Say Never” earned in 2011. In today’s dollars, that would be around $102 million. And if it comes in on the higher end of projections when totals are released Monday, it could be the biggest October opening ever. The one to beat is “Joker,” which launched to $96.2 million in 2019. 

A unique experiment in distribution, premium pricing, star power and loose movie theater etiquette—more dancing and shouting than a Star Wars premiere—have made it an undeniable hit. Compiled from Swift’s summer shows at Southern California’s SoFi Stadium, the film opened in 3,855 North American locations starting with “surprise” Thursday evening previews. Those showtimes helped boost its opening day sum to $39 million – the second biggest ever for October, behind “Joker’s” $39.3 million. 

Internationally, it’s estimated to have earned somewhere between $31 to $33 million, bringing its global total in the range of $126 million to $130 million. 

“This is a phenomenal number,” said Paul Dergarabedian, the senior media analyst for Comscore. “To have a blockbuster style opening weekend for a concert film is unprecedented.” 

Swift, who produced the film, went around the Hollywood studio system to distribute the film, making a deal directly with AMC, the largest exhibition company in the United States. With her 274 million Instagram followers, Swift hardly needed a traditional marketing campaign to get the word out. 

Beyoncé made a similar deal with the exhibitor for ” Renaissance: A Film By Beyoncé, ” which will open on Dec. 1. The two superstars posed together at the premiere of “The Eras Tour” earlier this week in Los Angeles. It was a needed injection of star power with Hollywood actors over 90 days into a strike that has left most red carpets void of glamourous talent and resulted in several high-profile films being pushed to next year. 

“The Eras Tour,” directed by Sam Wrench, is not just playing on AMC screens either. The company, based in Leawood, Kansas, worked with sub-distribution partners Variance Films, Trafalgar Releasing, Cinepolis and Cineplex to show the film in more than 8,500 movie theatres globally in 100 countries. 

The spotlight on Swift has been especially intense lately as a result of her relationship with Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce. The two made separate surprise appearances on “Saturday Night Live” this weekend and were also photographed holding hands in New York. 

It led to some hyperbolic projections going into the weekend, with some analysts predicting that “The Eras Tour” could make over $125 million. Dergarabedian said it’s common for outsized expectations to be attached to massive brands like Swift. There’s also no precedent for something like “The Eras Tour” and a celebrity of Swift’s stature. 

“The laws of gravity don’t apply to Taylor Swift,” Dergarabedian said. 

The film scored well with both critics and audiences, who gave it an A+ CinemaScore, a metric that typically signals a film will continue to do well after its first weekend. 

Elizabeth Frank, the executive vice president of worldwide programming and chief content officer for AMC Theatres, said in a statement that they are grateful to Taylor Swift. 

“Her spectacular performance delighted fans, who dressed up and danced through the film,” Frank said. “With tremendous recommendations and fans buying tickets to see this concert film several times, we anticipate ‘Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour’ concert film playing to big audiences for weeks to come.” 

The stadium tour, which continues internationally, famously crashed Ticketmaster’s site and re-sale prices became astronomical. Pollstar projects that it will earn some $1.4 billion. The concert film offered fans both better seats and a much more affordable way to see the show for the first or fifth time. Prices are higher than the national average, at $19.89, which references her birth year and 2014 album, and ran closer to $29 a pop for premium large format screens like IMAX. Even so, they are significantly less than seat at one of the stadium shows. 

Showtimes are also more limited than a standard Hollywood blockbuster, but AMC is guaranteeing at least four a day on Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays at all AMC locations in the U.S. Many locations also specified that there are no refunds or exchanges. And fans will have to wait a while for “The Eras Tour” to be available on streaming — part of the AMC deal was a 13-week exclusive theatrical run. 

Michael O’Leary, CEO of the National Association of Theater Owners said in a statement the moment was, “Another landmark weekend for cinemas.” 

“This year has been marked by unprecedented experiences for movie lovers in theaters across this nation,” O’Leary continued in a statement. “The ‘Eras Tour’ debut proves, yet again, that fans are eager to share other experiences in a communal way, with theater owners working creatively to build memorable moments in their cinemas.” 

O’Leary said that a survey of 6,000 people by his organization and The Cinema Foundation found that 72% want to see more concert films on the big screen. 

“The Eras Tour” accounted for over 70% of the total weekend box office grosses. “The Exorcist: Believer” placed a very distant second in its second weekend with $11 million, followed by the “Paw Patrol” movie in third with $7 million. Rounding out the top five was “Saw X” with $5.7 million and “The Creator” with $4.3 million. 

“This is great news for theaters,” Dergarabedian said. “‘The Eras Tour’ wasn’t even on our radar in mid-August. You take this out of the equation and it would have been a totally different weekend.” 

Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore. Final domestic figures will be released Monday. 

1. “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour,” $95 to $97 million. 

2. “The Exorcist: Believer,” $11 million. 

3. “Paw Patrol: The Mighty Movie,” $7 million. 

4. “Saw X,” $5.7 million. 

5. “The Creator,” $4.3 million. 

6. “A Haunting in Venice,” $2.1 million. 

7. “The Blind,” $2 million. 

8. “The Nun II,” $1.6 million. 

9. “The Equalizer 3,” $960,000. 

10. “Dumb Money,” $920,000. 
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The United States has renewed calls to ensure that innocent civilians fleeing the Israel-Hamas war are protected and have basic needs met. Separately, concerns about a wider regional conflict have led a U.S. senator to issue a strong warning to Iran and the Lebanon-based militia Hezbollah. VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias explains.
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Attorney General Jeff Landry, a Republican backed by former President Donald Trump, has won the Louisiana governor’s race, holding off a crowded field of candidates.

The win is a major victory for the GOP as they reclaim the governor’s mansion for the first time in eight years. Landry will replace current Gov. John Bel Edwards, who was unable to seek reelection due to consecutive term limits. Edwards is the only Democratic governor in the Deep South.

“Today’s election says that our state is united,” Landry said during his victory speech Saturday night. “It’s a wake up call and it’s a message that everyone should hear loud and clear, that we the people in this state are going to expect more out of our government from here on out.”

By garnering more than half of the votes, Landry avoided an expected runoff under the state’s “jungle primary” system. The last time there wasn’t a gubernatorial runoff in Louisiana was in 2011 and 2007, when Bobby Jindal, a Republican, won the state’s top position.

The governor-elect, who celebrated with supporters during a watch party in Broussard, Louisiana, described the election as “historic.” 

Landry, 52, has raised the profile of attorney general since taking office in 2016. He has used his office to champion conservative policy positions. More recently, Landry has been in the spotlight over his involvement and staunch support of Louisiana laws that have drawn much debate, including banning gender-affirming medical care for transgender youths, the state’s near-total abortion ban that doesn’t have exceptions for cases of rape and incest, and a law restricting youths’ access to “sexually explicit material” in libraries, which opponents fear will target LGBTQ+ books.

Landry has repeatedly clashed with Edwards over matters in the state, including LGBTQ rights, state finances and the death penalty. However the Republican has also repeatedly put Louisiana in national fights, including over President Joe Biden’s policies that limit oil and gas production and COVID-19 vaccine mandates.

Landry spent two years on Capitol Hill, beginning in 2011, where he represented Louisiana’s 3rd U.S. Congressional District. Prior to his political career, Landry served 11 years in the Louisiana Army National Guard, was a local police officer, sheriff’s deputy and attorney.

During the gubernatorial election season, Landry had long been considered the early frontrunner, winning the endorsement of high profile Republicans — Trump and U.S. Rep Steve Scalise — and a controversial early endorsement from the state GOP. In addition, Landry has enjoyed a sizable fundraising advantage over the rest of the field throughout the race.

Landry has made clear that one of his top priorities as governor would be addressing crime in urban areas. The Republican has pushed a tough-on-crime rhetoric, calling for more “transparency” in the justice system and continuing to support capital punishment. Louisiana has the nation’s second-highest murder rate per capita.

Along the campaign trail, Landry faced political attacks from opponents on social media and in interviews, calling him a bully and making accusations of backroom deals to gain support. He also faced scrutiny for skipping all but one of the major-televised debates. 

Among other gubernatorial candidates on the ballot were GOP state Sen. Sharon Hewitt; Hunter Lundy, a Lake Charles-based attorney running as an independent; Republican state Treasurer John Schroder; Stephen Waguespack, the Republican former head of a powerful business group and former senior aide to then-Gov. Jindal; and Shawn Wilson, the former head of Louisiana’s Transportation and Development Department and sole major Democratic candidate.

Wilson, who was the runner-up, said during his concession speech that he had called Landry to congratulate him on his victory. The Democrat said during their phone call, he asked the governor-elect to keep Medicaid expansion, increase teacher pay and “educate our children the way they need to be educated.”

“The citizens of Louisiana spoke, or didn’t speak, and made a decision,” Wilson said.

Also on Saturday’s ballot were five other statewide contests and four ballot measures.

Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser won reelection Saturday night, but other races won’t be decided until November.

One closely watched race is for attorney general, which holds the highest legal authority in the state’s executive branch. Liz Baker Murrill, a Republican who currently works at the Attorney General’s Office and Lindsey Cheek, a Democrat and trial attorney, have advanced to a November runoff.

Also advancing to a runoff in the state treasurer race is John Fleming, Republican, and Dustin Granger, Democrat.

In the secretary of state race, First Assistant Secretary of State Nancy Landry, a Republican, and Gwen Collins-Greenup, a Democrat and attorney, will advance to a runoff. The winner in November will have the task of replacing Louisiana’s outdated voting machines, which do not produce the paper ballots critical to ensuring accurate election results.

There are hundreds of additional localized races, including all 39 Senate seats and 105 House seats, however a significant number of incumbents are running unopposed. 
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For the unforeseeable future, Laila El-Haddad has one mission: to get the voices of her fellow Palestinians, along with their pleas for help, out to the rest of the world.

From her home office in Columbia, Maryland, El-Haddad frantically juggled phone calls this week from journalists seeking her expertise on Gaza and Palestinian Americans trying to get the attention of their local elected officials.

In between the calls, the 45-year-old mother and author checked WhatsApp, the global messaging application, for updates from her own family members in Gaza during their brief windows of electricity and internet access. Electricity was since cut off by Israel and internet outages have made it difficult for many to keep in touch.

“I’m just trying to stay sane by doing what I can to help,” El-Haddad said.

For many Palestinian Americans, there’s a sense of helplessness and hopelessness as they struggle to hear from loved ones in Gaza. Amid a fuel and water shortage, no electricity, and now a forced evacuation in the north, administering and sending aid to civilians in Gaza is near impossible.

Israel has bombarded Gaza with airstrikes for days and has threatened a ground invasion in response to Hamas’ attack on Israel that killed 1,300 last weekend. The Gaza Health Ministry said Saturday that over 1,900 people have been killed in the besieged territory in the last several days, including 724 children and 458 women. With a looming humanitarian crisis, that number is expected to rise.

But even before this week, getting to Gaza to visit family for Palestinian Americans was a lengthy, exhausting and difficult experience, and most people who live Gaza can never leave.

Mohammad AbuLughod, who lives in a suburb of Milwaukee, received fragmented updates from a cell phone his family in Gaza kept charged via a solar panel. His family shared those messages with The Associated Press:

An elder in the family died from an airstrike. They tried to seek shelter in a United Nations school, before deciding to stay home. Schools were damaged by airstrikes. Children died. Buildings have been reduced to rubble. They don’t know if the neighbors are alive. They are all gathered now, three generations, in one house. When the bombs come, they will die together. No one will have to live alone.

“I feel I am living in a nightmare,” one relative wrote in a message to the family.

AbuLughod is at a loss for what to do. “There’s no way to send support, we can’t send them money and money would probably be useless, because there’s nothing to buy,” he said.

Deanna Othman’s young nephew in Gaza messaged her on Instagram to say it may be the last time he’s able to talk to her.

“How do you reply to that?” Othman, who lives in a suburb of Chicago, said in an interview with the AP. “How can you say anything to comfort someone who is facing their own mortality?”

Haneen Okal, a Palestinian American living in New Jersey, is currently stuck in Gaza with her three young children. She’d gone to Gaza while pregnant, after nine years away to visit her family, and planned to travel back to New Jersey to deliver her baby. But after experiencing a medical emergency, she delivered her baby in Gaza in August, and has remained there since.

Minutes before she was set to leave Gaza through the Rafah crossing with Egypt earlier this week, Israeli airstrikes left the crossing inoperable. She and her children traveled back to the Rafah crossing on Saturday in the hopes that the U.S. government would allow for their safe evacuation. So far, she said, State Department officials have not told her if they will help her leave. Abdulla, Okal’s husband, is pleading with the U.S. government from New Jersey to bring his family home.

“There’s no place safe here in the Gaza Strip,” Haneen Okal said in a recorded video sent to the AP via WhatsApp. “My kids are feeling so scared. … Please help us get evacuated safely.”

With the Gaza Strip, a sliver of land only 40 kilometers long with 2.3 million people, essentially dark and the Israeli blockade making delivering humanitarian aid even more challenging, those who have family in Gaza are left watching from afar, feeling powerless as their families struggle to find safety.

“It’s just too traumatic for me right now to see American citizens who, even predating this, have the privilege and the access to my country that my husband, a Palestinian whose own parents and grandparents were forced to flee from their homes, doesn’t enjoy,” said El-Haddad, the author in Maryland.

Othman and her family traveled from the suburbs of Chicago to Gaza this summer — a process she described as mentally, physically and bureaucratically difficult. Othman’s extended family lives in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territory of the West Bank, but her husband’s family is in Gaza. If she wanted to visit her family in the West Bank, she’d have to go without her husband, who, like most people with a Gaza ID, cannot travel to the West Bank under the Israeli occupation.

“My family in the West Bank was only about 40 miles (64 kilometers) away from me when I was in Gaza,” Othman said. “But the amount of effort it would have taken to get to them just wouldn’t have worked.”

Several years ago, during more peaceful times, Nahed Elrayes and his father tried for days to enter Gaza from Tel Aviv to catch his terminally ill grandmother’s final moments.

“The Israelis simply would not let us enter Gaza,” he said. On the third day of trying, Elrayes’ grandmother passed away and the Israeli forces finally allowed them entry to attend the funeral services.

“I will never forget being with my father that day,” Elrayes said. “There is no respect for our humanity.”

The story of so many Palestinian Americans is one of longing, loss and a sense that their history is being erased. Many Palestinian families are shaped by the history of becoming refugees relatively recently. Gaza is, in part, so densely populated today because of the mass exodus of Palestinians from what is now Israel during the 1948 war surrounding its creation.

It’s the echoes of the 1948 Nakba, or “catastrophe” that haunt AbuLughod and his family — refugees originally from the Palestinian town Yaffa, now Jaffa, Israel — as they watch the scenes of mass evacuation playing out from Gaza this week. The fear is that Palestinians in Gaza, like those who were forced to leave their homes in 1948, will never be able to return. For so many Palestinians who have experienced the loss of their land and homes, identity is all they have left.

“What’s heaviest at the moment is that the world is going to watch a group of people be killed mercilessly and pushed out, in real time, and believe it to be right and OK and just,” said Amirah AbuLughod, Mohammad’s daughter.

To cope with the dire outlook, Hani Almadhoun said he and his fellow Palestinian American colleagues at UNRWA USA are pouring themselves into their work supporting the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, trying to provide aid to people on the ground in Gaza despite the challenges. Eleven UNRWA staff members were killed in airstrikes in Gaza this week.

“There are no heroes right now in Gaza. Everybody’s damaged. Everybody’s burying somebody,” Almadhoun said. “And I hope I am wrong, but this is going to go on for a long time. A lot more people will lose their lives and then nobody’s going to be held accountable.”
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Piper Laurie, the strong-willed, Oscar-nominated actor who performed in acclaimed roles despite at one point abandoning acting altogether in search of a “more meaningful” life, died early Saturday at her home in Los Angeles. She was 91.

Laurie died of old age, her manager, Marion Rosenberg, told The Associated Press via email, adding that she was “a superb talent and a wonderful human being.”

Laurie arrived in Hollywood in 1949 as Rosetta Jacobs and was quickly given a contract with Universal-International, a new name that she hated and a string of starring roles with Ronald Reagan, Rock Hudson and Tony Curtis, among others.

She went on to receive Academy Award nominations for three distinct films: The 1961 poolroom drama “The Hustler”; the film version of Stephen King’s horror classic “Carrie,” in 1976; and the romantic drama “Children of a Lesser God,” in 1986. She also appeared in several acclaimed roles on television and the stage, including in David Lynch’s “Twin Peaks” in the 1990s as the villainous Catherine Martell.

Laurie made her debut at 17 in “Louisa,” playing Reagan’s daughter, then appeared opposite Francis the talking mule in “Francis Goes to the Races.” She made several films with Curtis, whom she once dated, including “The Prince Who Was a Thief,” “No Room for the Groom,” “Son of Ali Baba” and “Johnny Dark.”

Fed up, she walked out on her $2,000-a-week contract in 1955, vowing she wouldn’t work again unless offered a decent part.

She moved to New York, where she found the roles she was seeking in theater and live television drama.

Performances in “Days of Wine and Roses,” “The Deaf Heart” and “The Road That Led After” brought her Emmy nominations and paved the way for a return to films, including in an acclaimed role as Paul Newman’s troubled girlfriend in “The Hustler.”

For many years after, Laurie turned her back on acting. She married film critic Joseph Morgenstern, welcomed a daughter, Ann Grace, and moved to a farmhouse in Woodstock, New York. She said later that the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War had influenced her decision to make the change.

“I was disenchanted and looking for an existence more meaningful for me,” she recalled, adding the she never regretted the move.

“My life was full,” she said in 1990. “I always liked using my hands, and I always painted.”

Laurie also became noted as a baker, with her recipes appearing in The New York Times.

Her only performance during that time came when she joined a dozen musicians and actors in a tour of college campuses to support Sen. George McGovern’s 1972 presidential bid.

Laurie was finally ready to return to acting when director Brian De Palma called her about playing the deranged mother of Sissy Spacek in “Carrie.”

At first, she felt the script was junk, and then she decided she should play the role for laughs. Not until De Palma chided her for putting a comedic turn on a scene did she realize he meant the film to be a thriller.

“Carrie” became a box-office smash, launching a craze for movies about teenagers in jeopardy, and Spacek and Laurie were both nominated for Academy Awards.

Her desire to act rekindled, Laurie resumed a busy career that spanned decades. On television, she appeared in such series as “Matlock,” “Murder, She Wrote” and “Frasier” and played George Clooney’s mother on “ER.”
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Editor’s note: Here is a look at immigration-related news around the U.S. this week. Questions? Tips? Comments? Email the VOA immigration team: ImmigrationUnit@voanews.com.

No Shade, No Water, Record Heat: More Migrants Die in US Desert

In the past 12 months through September, U.S. Customs and Border Protection logged 60 migrant deaths due to heat in the El Paso sector, triple the same period a year ago. The sector spans the Chihuahuan Desert through New Mexico and parts of Texas along 431 kilometers (268 miles) of the border. It has been the busiest area for migrant crossings into the U.S. southwest at a time when overall border apprehensions are on track to match or surpass record levels. Reuters reports.

New York Governor Backs Suspension of ‘Right to Shelter’ as Migrant Influx Strains City

New York Governor Kathy Hochul is supporting New York City’s effort to suspend a unique legal agreement that requires it to provide emergency housing to homeless people, as a large influx of migrants overwhelms the city’s shelter system. Hochul endorsed the city’s challenge to the requirement in a court filing this week, telling reporters Thursday that the mandate was never meant to apply to an international humanitarian crisis. Reported by The Associated Press.

VOA DAY IN PHOTOS: Refugee children play at the kindergarten in the first reception center for refugees in Giessen, Germany

Immigration Around the World

Decade-Old Syrian Refugee Camp Video Falsely Claimed to Be Recently Shot in Gaza

On October 11, verified X account Random Memes posted a video it claimed was filmed that day in Israeli-besieged Gaza. The post received some 269,000 views and nearly 10,000 reposts, quotes and likes. The claim that the video was recently filmed in Gaza is false. Reported by Polygraph.info.

Displaced Sudanese Face Protection Crisis as War Drags On

The U.N. refugee agency, UNHCR, warned Wednesday that the humanitarian emergency in Sudan triggered by two rival generals battling for control of the country has created a protection crisis inside Sudan and in neighboring asylum countries that risks destabilizing the region the longer the conflict goes on. Lisa Schlein reports for VOA from Geneva.

Chad’s President Says Refugees, Host Towns Need Help

Leaders in Chad say the central African nation is struggling to meet the humanitarian needs of 2 million foreign and displaced people seeking refuge there, many of them women and children fleeing violence and increasing hardship in neighboring Sudan. Moki Edwin Kindzeka reports for VOA from Cameroon.

World Food Program Urges Humanitarian Corridors for Gaza Strip

The World Food Program called Tuesday for the establishment of humanitarian corridors for the Gaza Strip and appealed for the safe passage of its staff and essential assistance. In a statement, the WFP said it has launched an emergency operation to provide food assistance to more than 800,000 people in Gaza and the West Bank who lack access to food, water and essential supplies. Reported by VOA’s U.N. correspondent Margaret Besheer.

Chinese Dissident Receives Asylum in Canada After Fleeing China

A Chinese dissident who was stranded in the transit area of a Taiwanese airport has arrived in Canada after Ottawa granted him asylum — but some observers say his path to safety, including stops in Laos, Thailand and Taiwan, reflects the growing hardship that Chinese activists face when they try to leave China. William Yang reports from VOA from Taipei.

At Least 29 People Killed in Attack on Refugee Camp in Myanmar

At least 29 people are dead after an artillery strike on a camp housing internally displaced persons in northern Myanmar near the Chinese border, according to sources in the region. News outlets say the attack occurred late Monday night in the town of Laiza, which is controlled by the Kachin Independence Army, the military arm of an ethnic group that has been fighting the Myanmar army for greater autonomy for decades. Local media outlets reportedly showed images of several bodies laid out along the ground, as well as rescuers digging through rubble to recover more bodies. VOANEWS reports.

Aid Fatigue Growing as Refugee, Displacement Crisis Reaches New Heights

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has warned that aid fatigue is growing at a time when a record number of people are fleeing conflict, persecution, human rights violations, climate change and grinding poverty. Lisa Schlein reports for VOA from Geneva.

UK Supreme Court to Decide on Britain Asylum-Seekers’ Resettlement

The British government’s contentious policy to stem the flow of migrants faces one of its toughest challenges this week as the U.K. Supreme Court weighs whether it’s lawful to send asylum-seekers to Rwanda. The Associated Press reports.

EU Mediterranean Ministers Call for Migrant Repatriations, More Resources

Migration and interior ministers from five European Union countries most affected by migration across the Mediterranean — Cyprus, Greece, Italy, Malta and Spain — hailed a new EU pact on migration but said more resources were needed. The ministers from the Med 5 group, who met in Thessaloniki, Greece, October 6-7, took a hard line on returning migrants who have crossed into the bloc illegally to their countries of origin, arguing that if Europe does not tackle the problem decisively, more extreme voices will take over. The Associated Press reports.

UN Urges Halt to Pakistan’s Forcible Returns of Afghan Migrants

The United Nations agencies for migration and refugee protection last Saturday jointly appealed to Pakistan to suspend plans to deport undocumented Afghan immigrants, warning they could be at imminent risk back in Afghanistan. Ayaz Gul reports for VOA from Islamabad, Pakistan.

7 Die in Suspected Migrant Smuggling Crash in Germany

German officials said Friday that seven people died and several others were injured after a van, believed to have been driven by a suspected people-smuggler, overturned while trying to avoid being stopped by federal police. VOANEWS reports.

Thailand Pledges to Repatriate Its Nationals From Israel

The first groups of Thais who were evacuated from Israel following the onslaught by Hamas in southern Israel have landed in Bangkok. Fifteen Thais arrived Thursday at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi International Airport following the long flight from Tel Aviv. Throngs of reporters awaited them, along with government officials and anxious family members. Tommy Walker reports for VOA from Bangkok.

Activists Slam China After Alleged Forced Repatriation of North Koreans

Human rights activists are criticizing China after reports that Beijing forcibly returned more than 500 North Korean defectors. According to several South Korean rights groups that work with North Korean refugees, the defectors were sent across the China-North Korea border earlier this week, shortly after the end of the 2022 Asian Games held in Hangzhou, China. Reported by William Gallo, VOA Seoul bureau chief and regional correspondent.

News Brief

— USCIS clarifies changes to the EB-5 program in the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) made by the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act of 2022 (RIA), “specifically the required investment timeframe and how we treat investors who are associated with a terminated regional center.”
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On the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington this summer, a few Black queer advocates spoke passionately before the main program about the ongoing struggle for LGBTQ+ rights. As some of them got up to speak, the crowd was still noticeably small.

Hope Giselle, a speaker who is Black and trans, said she felt the event’s programming echoed the historical marginalization and erasure of Black queer activists in the Civil Rights Movement. However, she was buoyed by the fact that prominent speakers drew attention to recent efforts to turn back the clock on LGBTQ+ rights, like the attacks on gender-affirming care for minors.

And despite valid concerns around the visibility of Black queer advocates in activist movements, progress is being made in elected office. This month, Sen. Laphonza Butler made history as the first Black and openly lesbian senator in Congress, when California Governor Gavin Newsom appointed her to fill the seat held by the late Dianne Feinstein.

Rectifying the erasure of Black queer civil rights giants requires a full-throated acknowledgment of their legacies, and an increase of Black LGBTQ+ representation in advocacy and politics, several activists and lawmakers told The Associated Press.

“One of the things that I need for people to understand is that the Black queer community is still Black,” and face anti-Black racism as well as homophobia and transphobia, said Giselle, communications director for the GSA Network, a nonprofit that helps students form gay-straight alliance clubs in schools.

“On top of being Black and queer, we have to also then distinguish what it means to be queer in a world that thinks that queerness is adjacent to whiteness — and that queerness saves you from racism. It does not,” she said.

In an interview with the AP, Butler said she hopes that her appointment points toward progress in the larger cause of representation.

“It’s too early to tell. But what I know is that history will be recorded in our National Archives, the representation that I bring to the United States Senate,” she said last week. “I am not shy or bashful about who I am and who my family is. So, my hope is that I have lived out loud enough to overcome the tactics of today.”

“But we don’t know yet what the tactics of erasure are for tomorrow,” Butler said.

Butler is a bellwether of increased visibility of queer communities in politics in recent years. In fact Black LGBTQ+ political representation has grown by 186% since 2019, according to a 2023 report by the LGBTQ+ Victory Institute. That included the election of former Rep. Mondaire Jones and Rep. Ritchie Torres, both of New York, who were the first openly gay Black and Afro-Latino congressmen after the 2020 election, as well as former Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot.

These leaders stand on the shoulders of civil rights heroes such as Bayard Rustin, Pauli Murray, and Audre Lorde. In accounts of their contributions to the Civil Rights and feminist movements, their Blackness is typically amplified while their queer identities are often minimized or even erased, said David Johns, executive director of the National Black Justice Coalition, a LGBTQ+ civil rights group.

Rustin, who was an adviser to the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and a pivotal architect of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, is a glaring example. The march he helped lead tilled the ground for the passage of federal civil rights and voting rights legislation in the next few years.

But the fact that he was gay is often reduced to a footnote rather than treated as a key part of his involvement, Johns said.

“We need to teach our public school students history, herstory, our beautifully diverse ways of being, without censorship,” he said.

An upcoming biopic of Rustin’s life will undoubtedly help thrust the topic of Black LGBTQ+ political representation into the public conversation, said Shay Franco-Clausen, a city planning commissioner in Hayward, California.

“I didn’t even learn about those same leaders, Black leaders, Black queer leaders until I got to college,” she said.

The film, titled Rustin, debuts in select theaters Nov. 3 and on Netflix on Nov. 17.

Some believe the erasure of Black LGBTQ+ leaders stems from respectability politics, a strategy in some marginalized communities of ostracizing or punishing members who don’t assimilate into the dominant culture.

White supremacist ideology in Christianity, which has been used more broadly to justify racism and systemic oppression, has also promoted the erasure of Black queer history. The Black Christian church was integral to the success of the Civil Rights Movement, but it is also “theologically hostile” to LGBTQ+ communities, said Don Abram, executive director of Pride in the Pews.

“I think it’s the co-optation of religious practices by white supremacists to actually subjugate Black, queer, and trans folk,” Abram said. “They are largely using moralistic language, theological language, religious language to justify them oppressing queer and trans folk.”

Not all queer advocacy communities have been welcoming to Black LGBTQ+ voices. Minneapolis City Council President Andrea Jenkins said she is just as intentional in amplifying queer visibility in Black spaces as she is amplifying Blackness in majority white, queer spaces.

“We need to have more Black, queer, transgender, nonconforming identified people in these political spaces to aid and bridge those gaps,” Jenkins said. “It’s important to be able to create the kinds of awareness on both sides of the issue that can bring people together and that can ensure that we do have full participation from our community.”

Black LGBTQ+ leaders are also using their platforms to create awareness about groundbreaking historical figures, especially Rustin. Maryland Delegate Gabriel Acevero and several LGBTQ+ advocates fought to get the only elementary school in his district named after Rustin in 2018. He has also urged Congress to pass legislation to create a U.S. Postal Service stamp depicting Rustin.

“Black queer folks have contributed to so many movements that we do not get acknowledgment for,” Acevero said. “And this is why we should not only ensure that our elders get their flowers, but we should push to have their names and statues built … so that they are not forgotten.”
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Republicans nominated conservative Representative Jim Jordan by a vote of 124-81 Friday in a chaotic third day of attempting to elect a speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. As VOA’s Congressional Correspondent Katherine Gypson reports, Jordan needs substantially more support to win a full floor vote next week to become the person who will be second in the presidential line of succession.
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The Tohono O’odham Nation in the southern U.S. state of Arizona on Friday blasted the decision by the U.S. Attorney’s Office not to prosecute Border Patrol agents who shot and killed a member of the tribe after they were summoned by tribal police.

Body camera footage released in June by U.S. Customs and Border Protection shows that the agents who fatally shot Raymond Mattia were concerned the 58-year-old may have been carrying a handgun. But no firearm was found.

The tribe’s executive office called the decision not to file charges “a travesty of justice.”

“There are countless questions left unanswered by this decision. As a result, we cannot and will not accept the U.S. Attorney’s decision,” said a statement signed by Tohono O’odham Nation Chairman Verlon M. Jose and Vice Chairwoman Carla L. Johnson.

The statement said the tribe may request Congressional inquiries into Mattia’s death. Mattia was killed the night of May 18 outside a home in the reservation’s Menagers Dam community near the U.S.-Mexico border.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a statement this week that its employees met with Mattia’s family and their attorneys in Sells on September 19 to explain the decision.

“The agents’ use of force under the facts and circumstances presented in this case does not rise to the level of a federal criminal civil rights violation or a criminal violation assimilated under Arizona law,” the office concluded.

“We stand by our conclusion, and we hear the Chairman’s frustration,” the statement added.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection did not immediately respond Friday to emails requesting comment.

The shooting occurred after Border Patrol agents were called to the area by the Tohono O’odham Nation Police Department for help responding to a report of shots fired.

Body camera footage shows Mattia throwing a sheathed machete at the foot of a tribal officer and then holding out his arm. After Mattia was shot and on the ground, an agent declares: “He’s still got a gun in his hand.”

CBP said earlier that the three Border Patrol agents who opened fire and at least seven others at the scene were wearing body cameras and activated them during the shooting.

The Pima County Medical Examiner’s Office reported that Mattia had nine gunshot wounds.
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New York Gov. Kathy Hochul is supporting the city’s effort to suspend a unique legal agreement that requires it to provide emergency housing to homeless people, as a large influx of migrants overwhelms the city’s shelter system.

Hochul endorsed New York City’s challenge to the requirement in a court filing this week, telling reporters Thursday that the mandate was never meant to apply to an international humanitarian crisis.

The city has for months sought to roll back the so-called right to shelter rule following the arrival of more than 120,000 migrants since last year. Many of the migrants have arrived without housing or jobs, forcing the city to erect emergency shelters and provide various government services, with an estimated cost of $12 billion over the next few years.

The shelter requirement has been in place for more than four decades in New York City, following a legal agreement that required the city to provide temporary housing for every homeless person. No other big city in America has such a requirement.

“I don’t know how the right to shelter — dedicated to help those people, which I believe in, help families — can or should be interpreted to be an open invitation to 8 billion people who live on this planet, that if you show up in the streets of New York, that the city of New York has an obligation to provide you with a hotel room or shelter,” said Hochul, who is a Democrat.

Last week, New York City Mayor Eric Adams asked a court to allow it to suspend the mandate when there is a state of emergency in which the shelter population of single adults increases at a rapid rate. New York state on Wednesday filed a court document in support of the city’s request, calling it reasonable.

New York City has also tightened shelter rules by limiting adult migrants to just 30 days in city-run facilities amid overcrowding.

Dave Giffen, executive director of the Coalition for the Homeless, said the city’s request to suspend the mandate would have broad impact and could lead to large homeless encampments in New York.

“Make no mistake: If the mayor and governor get their way, they will be closing the door of the shelter system to thousands of people without homes, leaving them nowhere to sleep but the streets,” he said.
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Africa is the site of a new battle for influence as Washington ramps up efforts to build an alternative critical minerals supply chain to avoid reliance on China. Beijing dominates the processing of critical minerals such as cobalt, lithium and other resources from the continent that are needed for the transition to clean energy and electric vehicles.

But at the Green Energy Africa Summit this week in Cape Town, which was held on the sidelines of Africa Oil Week, few were willing to talk about it directly.

Asked whether the U.S. was playing catch-up with China, one of the panel’s speakers, Deputy Assistant Secretary in the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Energy Resources Kimberly Harrington, said simply that Washington was looking to “diversify.”

For his part, fellow panelist Chiza Charles Newton Chiumya, the African Union’s director for industry, minerals, entrepreneurship and tourism, told VOA he didn’t want to use the term “competing” to describe the relative approaches of the West and China but agreed there is “lots of interest” in Africa’s critical minerals.

The Chinese Embassy in Washington was also circumspect when asked whether it sees itself in competition with the U.S. for the natural resources.

“The tangible outcomes of China-Africa practical cooperation throughout the years are there for all to see,” spokesperson Liu Pengyu wrote in an emailed response.

“Supporting Africa’s development is the common responsibility of the international community. We welcome stronger interest and investment in Africa from all quarters to help increase the continent’s capability to achieve self-driven sustainable growth and move forward towards modernization and prosperity.”

Independent analysts, however, had a different take. The Chinese made it a “priority to corner the market for critical minerals about two decades ago and supported that strategy with massive public diplomacy and infrastructure investments into Africa — most of which [came] via long-term debt,” said Tony Carroll, adjunct professor in the African studies program at Johns Hopkins University, told VOA earlier this year.

“The West woke up to this strategy too late and have been scrambling ever since.”

Part of that response has been the Minerals Security Partnership set up by U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration last year as a way of diversifying supply chains. Partners include Australia, Canada, Finland, France, Japan, South Korea, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the European Union.

“We see anywhere from three to six times demand growth for critical minerals across the world. … So, I think our sense is that no single government, no single company, can create resilient supply chains,” said Harrington at the Green Energy Africa Summit.

“If the COVID-19 pandemic showed us anything…one of the primary things it showed us is that if we are too overly reliant on any one source in a supply chain … it creates vulnerabilities, and so I think our approach overall on this issue is to make sure that we have diversity,” she told VOA during a Q&A after the panel.  

“When it comes to China in general, our secretary of state has been crystal clear, we have areas in which we cooperate with China, we have areas in which we compete with China, and that’s not going to change,” she said. “This is a complex and consequential relationship and we see it as such.”

The view from Africa

While he didn’t want to use the word “competition” to describe the outside interest in Africa’s critical minerals, the AU’s Chiumya stressed during the panel discussion that Africa must benefit from its mineral wealth.

“This is not the first time that Africa is sitting at the frontier of having critical minerals. … In the past we have lost a chance,” he said, referring to the continent’s vast gold and diamond deposits. “This time around we want to do things different.”

“For a long time, our governments have not been able to effectively exploit the mineral wealth that is there and ended up effectively going into very bad deals” which have not contributed to the social and economic development of the African people, Chiumya added.

Democratic Republic of the Congo President Felix Tshisekedi has been among the African leaders demanding better terms from China for several years. His country produces some 70% of the world’s cobalt but remains one of the world’s least developed nations.

Tshisekedi complained in January that the Congolese people have not benefited from a $6.2 billion minerals-for-infrastructure contract with China that was signed by his predecessor.

Meanwhile in Zimbabwe, which has large lithium deposits, the government has imposed a ban on exports of raw lithium ore, insisting that it be processed at home. A Chinese company has since built a large lithium processing plant in the country.

U.S. critical mineral plans

Washington says environmental, social and governance standards are a key consideration for the U.S. when it comes to its dealings with the continent regarding critical minerals.

“We want to do our part to ramp up our efforts with like-minded partners in Africa to promote sustainable clean energy supply chains in mining,” said Harrington. She said it is also important to help countries “do some domestic processing and refining, because it’s really the value-added, that’s how you create jobs, that’s how you create local capacity.”

At the U.S.-Africa Summit in Washington in December, the DRC, the U.S. and Zambia — another major source of minerals — signed a memorandum of understanding to develop a supply chain for electric car batteries, in what was widely seen by analysts as a move to counter China.

Harrington said the MOU had “the overall goal of a lot of an EV (electric vehicle) battery being processed and refined locally,” even if some further refinement might need to be done in a third country. 

Additionally, on the sidelines of last month’s G20 summit, the U.S. and E.U. pledged to develop the partially existing Lobito Corridor — a railway connecting the DRC’s cobalt belt to Zambia’s copper belt and on to Angola’s port of Lobito, from where it can be shipped to international markets.
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