An evacuation order following a brush fire that burned 4 hectares on Maui was lifted by emergency officials Saturday. 

The fire prompted Maui authorities to temporarily evacuate residents Saturday from a neighborhood of Lahaina, just a few kilometers from the site recently ravaged by blazes, before firefighters brought it under control. 

The Maui County Emergency Management Agency announced in a social media post that the evacuation ended at 5 p.m. local time and residents could return home. 

Firefighters doused flames from above using a helicopter and with hoses on the ground, said John Heggie, a spokesperson for Maui County’s Joint Information Center. 

Maui County said in an online post that the fire no longer posed an active threat but firefighters were working in the area and evacuees should stay clear until it was safe to return. 

The evacuation order had covered a small number of homes in the hills above Kaanapali resort hotels. It was not immediately clear how many people were affected. 

At least 115 people were killed and 2,000 structures destroyed when a wildfire tore through downtown Lahaina on Aug. 8. Minimal rains have pushed the area into drought. 

That fire was exacerbated by strong trade winds fueled in part by Hurricane Dora, which passed 800 kilometers (497 miles) to the south of Maui. 

The National Weather Service forecast breezes of 4.8 to 12 kph for Lahaina on Saturday afternoon. 
…

Three members of the U.S. Congress made a brief visit Sunday to opposition-held northwest Syria in what was the first known trip to the war-torn country by American lawmakers in six years.

U.S. Reps. Ben Cline of Virginia, French Hill of Arkansas and Scott Fitzgerald of Wisconsin, all Republicans, entered Syria from Turkey via the Bab al-Salama crossing in northern Aleppo province, according to two people familiar with the trip. They were not authorized to publicly discuss the trip and spoke on condition of anonymity after the U.S. delegation had left Syria.

Crossing into opposition-held Syria on what would be a roughly one-hour trip, the lawmakers were presented with flowers from students from Wisdom House. The facility is a school for orphans that is a project of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, a U.S.-based Syrian opposition organization that facilitated the lawmakers’ trip.

Hill has been among the most vocal supporters in Congress of the Syrian opposition and his Arkansas constituents have been donors to the school.

The lawmakers also met with opposition and humanitarian leaders, including Raed Saleh, head of the Syrian opposition’s White Helmets emergency rescue group. The organization of volunteer first responders became known internationally for extracting civilians from buildings bombed by allied Russian forces fighting on behalf Syrian President Bashar Assad.

The United Nations says 300,000 civilians have died in the first 10 years of conflict between Assad-allied forces and Syria’s opposition.

Saleh spoke with the lawmakers about the current political status of the conflict in Syria and on continuing humanitarian efforts for victims of a earthquake earlier this year in Turkey and Syria, the White Helmets said on X, the site formerly known as Twitter.

The last known trip by a U.S. lawmaker to Syria was in 2017, when Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., visited U.S. forces stationed in northeast Syria’s Kurdish region. McCain had previously visited Syria and met with armed opposition fighters.

Also in 2017, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, visited Damascus, the capital, and met with Assad, a decision that was widely criticized at the time.

Since the beginning of the 2011 uprising-turned-civil-war in Syria, the U.S. government has backed the opposition and has imposed sanctions on Assad’s government and associates over human rights concerns. Washington has conditioned restoring relations with Damascus on progress toward a political solution to the 12-year conflict.

Control of northwest Syria is largely split between the Turkish-backed opposition groups and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a group that was originally founded as an offshoot of al-Qaida and is designated as a terrorist organization by the United States. In recent years, the group’s leadership have attempted to publicly distance themselves from their al-Qaida origins.

The Turkish-backed opposition groups have regularly clashed with Kurdish forces based in northeast Syria, who are allies of the United States in the fight against the Islamic State.
…

Rajee Narinesingh faced struggles throughout her life as a transgender woman, from workplace discrimination to the lasting effects of black market injections that scarred her face and caused chronic infections.

In spite of the roadblocks, the 56-year-old Florida actress and activist has seen growing acceptance since she first came out decades ago.

“If you see older transgender people, it shows the younger community that it’s possible I can have a life. I can live to an older age,” she said. “So I think that’s a very important thing.”

Now, as a wave of state laws enacted this year limit transgender people’s rights, Narinesingh has new uncertainty about her own future as she ages.

“Every now and then I have this thought, like, oh my God, if I end up in a nursing home, how are they going to treat me?” Narinesingh said.

Most of the new state laws have focused attention on trans youth, with at least 22 states banning or restricting gender-affirming care for minors.

For many transgender seniors, it’s brought new fears to their plans for retirement and old age. They already face gaps in health care and nursing home facilities properly trained to meet their needs. That’s likely to be compounded by restrictions to transgender health care that have already blocked some adults’ access to treatments in Florida and sparked concerns the laws will expand to other states.

Transgender adults say they’re worried about finding welcoming spaces to live in their later years.

“I have friends that have retired and they’ve decided to move to retirement communities. And then, little by little, they’ve found that they’re not welcome there,” said Morgan Mayfaire, a transgender man and the executive director of TransSOCIAL, a Florida support and advocacy group.

Discrimination can range from being denied housing to being misgendered and struggling to get nursing homes to acknowledge their visitation rights.

“In order to be welcome there, they have to go into the closet and deny who they are,” Mayfaire said.

About 171,000 of the more than 1.3 million transgender adults in the United States are aged 65 and older, according to numbers compiled by the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.

The growing population has brought more services such as nursing homes and assisted living centers that are geared toward serving the LGBTQ community, although such facilities remain uncommon. They include Stonewall Gardens, a 24-apartment assisted living center that opened in Palm Springs, California, in 2015.

The center’s staff are required to go through sensitivity training to help make the center a more welcoming environment for residents, said interim executive director Lauren Kabakoff Vincent. The training is key for making a more accepting environment for transgender residents and making them feel more at home.

“Do you really want to be moving into a place where you have to explain yourself and have to go through it over and over?” Vincent said. “It’s exhausting, and so I think being able to be in a comfortable environment is important.”

SAGE, which advocates on behalf of LGBTQ seniors, offers training to nursing homes and other elder care providers. The group trained more than 46,000 staff at 576 organizations around the country in the most recent fiscal year. But the group said that represents just a fraction of the elder care facilities around the country.

“We have a long way to go in terms of getting to the point where nursing homes, assisted living and other long-term care providers are prepared for and ready to provide appropriate and welcoming care to trans elders,” said Michael Adams, SAGE’s CEO.

The gap concerns Tiffany Arieagus, 71, an acclaimed drag performer in south Florida who also works in social services for SunServe, an LGBTQ nonprofit.

“I just am going on my 71 years on this earth and walking in the civil rights march with my mother at age 6 and then marching for gay rights,” Arieagus said. “I’ve been blessed enough to see so many changes being made in the world. And then now I’m having to see these wonderful progressions going backwards.”

A handful of states, including Massachusetts and California, have in recent years enacted laws to ensure that LGBTQ seniors have equal access to programs for aging populations and requiring training on how to serve that community.

The push for restrictions on access to health care has brought uncertainty in other states. Florida’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors also includes restrictions that make it difficult, if not impossible, for many adults to get treatment.

SAGE has seen a spike in the number of calls to its hotline following the wave of anti-transgender laws, and Adams said about 40% of them have come from trans seniors primarily in conservative parts of the country worried about the new restrictions.

The limits have prompted some trans adults to leave the state for care, with some turning to crowdfunding appeals for help. But for many trans seniors, such a move isn’t as easy.

“You have the general fear, fear that is leading clinicians being concerned and perhaps stepping away from offering care, fear of trans elders of who is a safe clinician to go to,” said Dan Stewart, associate director of the Human Rights Campaign’s Aging Equality Project.

Florida’s law has already created obstacles for Andrea Montanez, LGBTQ immigration organizer at Hope CommUnity Center near Orlando, Florida. Montanez, 57, said her prescription for hormone therapy was initially denied after the restrictions were signed. Montanez, who has been speaking out at Florida Medical Board meetings about the impact of the new state law, said she’s worried about what it will be mean as she approaches retirement.

“I hope I have a happy retirement, but health care is a big problem,” said Montanez, who was eventually able to get her prescription filled.

For Tatiana Williams, 51, the restrictions are stirring painful memories of a time when she and other transgender people had to rely on dangerous and illegal sources for gender-affirming medical care. Now the executive director of the Transinclusive Group in Wilton Manors, Florida, Williams remembers being hospitalized for a collapsed lung after receiving black market silicone injections for her breasts.

“What we don’t want is the community resorting to going back to that,” Williams said.

Still, older transgender adults say they see hope in how their generation is working with younger trans people to speak out against the wave of the restrictions.

“The community’s going to take care of itself. It’s as simple as that. We’re going to find ways to take care of ourselves and we’re going to survive this,” Mayfaire of TransSOCIAL said. “And as far as trans youth panicking over this, look to your elders.”
…

Families were torn asunder. A community is reeling with grief. More than 100 people have perished and hundreds more remain missing after flames and smoke barreled from the hills and annihilated the historic town of Lahaina.

But even in places overwhelmed by despair and devastation, the Hawaiian spirit known as ohana endures.

In the Hawaiian lexicon, ohana is a sensibility, a way of thinking that means family, belonging, community and so much more — solace in a time of calamity. It is a unifying principle in an increasingly fragmented world. And in recent weeks, amid misfortune, the word has taken on profound importance in a place appealing for help.

“In times like this, ohana gets stronger,” says Dustin Kaleiopu, whose Maui roots date back to when monarchs ruled the islands.

The kanaka of Hawaii, the Native Hawaiians who inhabit the islands, value ohana, which extends beyond the familial ties of blood. It is a life nourished by kinship.

“In a small town like Lahaina, we all know each other. We’ve all grown up together,” says Kaleiopu, whose ohana came to his aid after he and his grandfather escaped the flames that turned their home into a mound of ash and charred debris. “It’s such a tight-knit community.”

Testing the bonds of ohana

Finding grace and solace can be almost unimaginable when the very world around you is burning. This is what Lahaina faces today.

Thousands of homes are gone. At least 115 people are confirmed dead. And by some counts, nearly 400 of Lahaina’s residents remain unaccounted for: fathers and mothers, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, young and old, friends and neighbors — all part of someone’s ohana.

“There’s plenty of families who’ve been displaced by the fire. So we’re going to take care of our community as much as possible. So in this sense, our community is the ohana,” says Kapali Keahi, whose family has lived on Maui for generations.

In the days, and now weeks, after the deadliest wildfire in the United States in more than a century, families who lost homes and possessions continue to depend on the generosity of relatives, friends and even strangers. Shipments of food, clothes and everyday necessities keep arriving from the state’s other islands, including Oahu, home to Honolulu.

Online fundraisers, many set up by displaced families, have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars, much of it from distant places. One relief fund has well surpassed $1.2 million, its 6,400 donors hailing from every part of the globe.

So much of Lahaina has been lost. Left behind are people in deep despair, said Kekai Keahi, another Lahaina resident. One thing, though, remained strong: a connecting strand.

“Ohana was never lost. It never left,” he said. “We will always come to each other’s aid.”

Keahi spoke as Hawaiian flags fluttered near the ocean and a Native Hawaiian group calling itself Na ‘Ohana o Lele — the ohana of Lahaina — gathered at a beachside park to speak on behalf of their community.

The message from the group was clear: There will be talk of rebuilding, yes, but families need time to grieve and begin healing first.

Many people from many places, united

The community of 13,000 people included immigrants from many parts of the world. Here, they find common ground.

No matter where they came from, no matter when they arrived, transplants are soon charmed by Hawaii’s culture, a melange of imported customs and traditions melded together by ways in existence long before the British imperialist and explorer Capt. James Cook came across the Hawaiian archipelago nearly 250 years ago while crossing the Pacific.

As they assimilate, newcomers pick up the oft-spoken vocabulary intrinsic to island life. “Mahalo” conveys gratitude, admiration and respect. “Aloha” is for hello and goodbye, or for love and affection — a word with the warmth of a hug and the beauty of a lei.

Then there is ohana. As the movie “Lilo & Stitch” defined it, “ohana means family, and family means nobody is left behind or forgotten.”

With so many dead or missing, a sentiment like that is ripe to resonate across a community coping with loss.

“It’s all about family out here,” says Mike Tomas, whose immediate family lost their home in the fire and are sheltering in the homes of friends and relatives. He had planned to move with his girlfriend to Texas sometime in the fall, but they will now depart much sooner.

“Nothing’s left here,” he says. Not even the clothes and belongings they had begun packing. But he knows he’ll be back.

“This has always been home,” he says. “This is where family is.”

Amber Bobin moved from Chicago to Maui nearly four years ago. She says she was drawn, in part, by the culture and strong bonds of community.

Earlier this week, she joined a small group to hang 115 crosses on fences erected along the road that cuts through Lahaina. That’s a single cross for each of the souls whose remains have been found. Bobin expected to hang more crosses in the coming days. The fence also was festooned with a collection of ribbons, one for every person still missing.

And if ohana is a way of life in good times, those crosses and ribbons help reveal what it is in tough ones: a mindset that ensures those who have been part of you remain so, even after they were torn away by forces no one imagined would be visited upon home.

“To be able to experience what ohana means, especially in tragedy,” she says, “has been significantly impactful.”
…

Martin Luther King III, along with his wife, Arndrea Waters King, and their 15-year-old daughter, Yolanda, have developed a set of traditions for this time of the year.

Each August, they rewatch the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s rapturous address to the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Even if the civil rights icon’s legacy is closer to the Kings than it is for most other families, they see march anniversaries as a teaching moment.

“We are like any other family, in the sense that we want to teach our daughter about this moment in history,” Arndrea said. “And then we also try to connect it with movements or people that are doing things in the present.”

This year, the Kings will join an expected crowd of tens of thousands of people gathering Saturday at the Lincoln Memorial in the U.S. capital to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the late reverend’s “I Have A Dream” speech.

The event is convened by the Kings’ Drum Major Institute and the National Action Network. A host of Black civil rights leaders and a multiracial, interfaith coalition of allies will rally attendees on the same spot where as many as 250,000 gathered in 1963 for what is still considered one of the greatest and most consequential racial justice and equality demonstrations in U.S. history.

On Friday, Martin Luther King III, who is the late civil rights icon’s eldest son, and his sister, Bernice King, visited their father’s monument in Washington.

“I see a man still standing in authority and saying, ‘We’ve still got to get this this right,’ ” Bernice said as she looked up at the granite statue.

The original march, which featured their father as a centerpiece, helped till the ground for passage of federal civil rights and voting rights legislation in the 1960s.

Organizers of this year’s commemoration hope to recapture the energy of the original March on Washington — especially in the face of eroded voting rights nationwide, the recent striking down of affirmative action in college admissions and abortion rights by the Supreme Court, and amid growing threats of political violence and hatred against people of color, Jews and the LGBTQ community.

“What we know is when people stand up, the difference can be made,” Martin Luther King III told The Associated Press in an interview ahead of Saturday. “This is not a traditional commemoration. This really is a rededication.”

The event kicks off with pre-program speeches and performances at 8 a.m. The main program begins at 11 a.m., followed by a march procession that will begin through the streets of Washington toward the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial.

Featured speakers include Ambassador Andrew Young, the close King adviser who helped organize the original march and who went on to serve as a congressman, U.N. ambassador and mayor of Atlanta. Leaders from the NAACP and the National Urban League are also expected to give remarks.

Several leaders from groups organizing the march met Friday with Attorney General Merrick Garland and Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the civil rights division, to discuss a range of issues, including voting rights, policing and redlining.

The gathering Saturday is a precursor to the actual anniversary of the Aug. 28, 1963, March on Washington. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris will observe the march anniversary on Monday by meeting with organizers of the 1963 gathering. All of King’s children have been invited to meet with Biden, White House officials said.

For the Rev. Al Sharpton, founder of the National Action Network, continuing to observe March on Washington anniversaries fulfills a promise he made to the late King family matriarch Coretta Scott King. Twenty-three years ago, she introduced Sharpton and Martin Luther King III at a 37th anniversary march and urged them to carry on the legacy.

“I never thought that 23 years later, Martin and I, with Arndrea, would be doing a march and we’d have less [civil rights protections] than we had in 2000,” Sharpton said.

“We’re fulfilling the assignment Mrs. King gave us,” he said. “We are having to march, saying we can’t go backwards, and we’ve got to go forward.”

Coming out of the march on Saturday, Sharpton said, he will lead a voting rights tour in the fall in states that are trying to erect barriers ahead of the 2024 presidential election. He also plans to meet with major Black entrepreneurs to create a fund to finance the fight against conservative attacks on diversity and inclusion initiatives.

Bernice King said she sympathized with those who have grown weary over the continued fight to preserve civil rights. But they need to remember her mother’s words, in addition to her father’s famous speech, she said.

“Mother said, struggle is a never-ending process,” said Bernice, who is CEO of the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change, which was founded by her mother after the civil rights icon’s assassination in 1968.

“Freedom is never really won — you earn it and win it in every generation. Vigilance is the answer,” she said. “We have to always remember, it’s difficult and dark right now, but a dawn is coming.”

Her father’s March on Washington remarks have resounded through decades of push and pull toward progress in civil and human rights. But dark moments followed his speech, too.

Two weeks later in 1963, four Black girls were killed in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, followed by the kidnapping and murder of three civil rights workers in Neshoba County, Mississippi, the following year. The tragedies spurred passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

And the voting rights marches from Montgomery to Selma, Alabama, in which marchers were brutally beaten while crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge in what became known as “Bloody Sunday,” forced Congress to adopt the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
…

The seasonal drink that made pumpkin spice a star is turning 20. And unlike the autumn days it celebrates, there seems to be no chill in customer demand. 

Starbucks’ Pumpkin Spice Latte goes on sale Thursday in the U.S. and Canada, as it does each year when the nights start getting longer and the fall winds gather. It’s the coffee giant’s most popular seasonal beverage, with hundreds of millions sold since its launch in 2003. And it has produced a huge — and growing — industry of imitators flecked with cinnamon, nutmeg and clove. 

In the year ending July 29, U.S. sales of pumpkin-flavored products reached $802.5 million, according to Nielsen. That’s up 42% from the same period in 2019. There are pumpkin spice Oreos, protein drinks, craft beers, cereals and even Spam. A search of “pumpkin spice” on Walmart’s website brings up more than 1,000 products. A thousand products that smell or taste like, well, pumpkin pie. 

For better — and, some might say, for worse — the phenomenon has moved beyond coffee shops and groceries and into the larger world. Great Wolf Lodge is featuring a Pumpkin Spice Suite at five of its resorts this fall, decked out with potpourri, pumpkin throw pillows and bottomless pumpkin spice lattes. 

It has also spawned a vocal group of detractors — and become an easy target for parodies. Comedian John Oliver once called pumpkin spice lattes “the coffee that tastes like a candle.” There’s a Facebook group called “I Hate Pumpkin Spice” and T-shirts with slogans like “Ain’t no pumpkin spice in my mug.” 

The haters, though, appear to be in the minority. Last year, Starbucks said sales of its pumpkin spice drinks — including newer offerings like Pumpkin Cream Cold Brew — were up 17% in the July-September period. And in a 2022 study of 20,000 Twitter and Instagram posts mentioning pumpkin spice, just 8% were negative, according to researchers at Montclair State University in New Jersey. 

Before the latte: what pumpkin spice was 

It wasn’t always this way. 

Canned pumpkin and pie spices were relegated to the baking aisle when Starbucks began experimenting with an autumn drink that would replicate the success of the Peppermint Mocha, which took the winter holidays by storm in 2002. Customer surveys suggested chocolate or caramel drinks, but Starbucks noticed that pumpkin scored high for “uniqueness.” That would turn out to be prescient. 

In the spring of 2003, a team gathered in a lab in Starbucks’ Seattle headquarters, bringing fall decorations to set the mood. They sipped espresso between bites of pumpkin pie, figuring out which spices most complemented the coffee. After three months, they offered taste tests; pumpkin spice beat out chocolate and caramel drinks. 

Starbucks tested the Pumpkin Spice Latte in 100 stores in Washington, D.C., and Vancouver, British Columbia, that fall. The company quickly realized it had a winner and rolled it out across the United States and Canada the following fall. And in 2015, a watershed: The company added real pumpkin to the recipe. 

These days, Starbucks’ Pumpkin Spice Latte has its own handle on X — formerly known as Twitter — with 82,000 followers, and a Facebook fan group called the Leaf Rakers Society with 43,000 members. And it has fans like Jon McBrine, who drinks black iced coffee for most of the year but eagerly awaits the latte’s return each fall. 

“I love the flavor and I love the subculture that has evolved from this huge marketing campaign,” says McBrine, a graphic designer and aspiring author who lives in the Dallas area. 

It’s hot through the end of October where he lives, so McBrine typically orders his with ice. But at least once a year, he gets a hot latte, savoring memories of the autumns of his childhood in Delaware. 

“It’s part of getting into the season,” he says. “It’s almost like a ritual, even if you’re just waiting in the drive-thru.” 

Pumpkin spice latte as sensory experience 

Jason Fischer, an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University who studies human perception through sight, sound and smell, says odor and flavor have a more direct route than other senses to the area of the brain that processes memories. 

That’s due to evolution; humans needed to remember which foods were safe to eat. But it means smells and memories are closely linked. 

Still, he said, people’s sense of smell can be malleable. In experiments, subjects have taken a sniff of something and described it in many different ways. But when they’re shown a label for that smell — say, “pumpkin spice” — their perceptions shift and their descriptions become more similar. 

“Odors and sights go with certain places, like the aroma of pine and the crunching of needles beneath your feet,” he says. “They’re associated with a certain kind of experience. And then marketing taps into that, and it’s a cue for a product.” 

Pumpkin spice doesn’t conjure happy memories for everyone. Kari-Jane Roze, who lives in Fredericton, Canada, loves many things about autumn, including back-to-school routines, changing leaves and hockey. But she’s not a fan of pumpkin pie or pumpkin bread — and she has a particular dislike for pumpkin spice lattes. 

“The artificial flavor is disgusting,” says Roze, who works at New Brunswick Community College. “The only thing I do not like about fall is seeing everyone obsess over PSLs. Makes me want to shut off social media for a month.” 

She won’t have to deal with those “PSLs” for long. The limited-time nature of the product is another thing that keeps customers hooked, marketing experts say. Last year, Starbucks’ holiday-themed drinks arrived on Nov. 3. And then, for devoted fans, the wait begins anew. 
…

U.S. President Joe Biden said Friday that he is planning to request more money from Congress to develop another new coronavirus vaccine, as scientists track new waves and hospitalizations rise, though not like before. 

Officials are already expecting updated COVID-19 vaccines that contain one version of the omicron strain, called XBB.1.5. It’s an important change from today’s combination shots, which mix the original coronavirus strain with last year’s most common omicron variants. But there will always be a need for updated vaccines as the virus continues to mutate. 

People should be able to start rolling up their sleeves next month for what officials hope is an annual fall COVID-19 shot. Pfizer, Moderna and smaller manufacturer Novavax all are brewing doses of the XBB update but the Food and Drug Administration will have to sign off on each, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention must then issue recommendations for their use. 

“I signed off this morning on a proposal we have to present to the Congress, a request for additional funding for a new vaccine that is necessary, that works,” Biden, who is vacationing in the Lake Tahoe area, told reporters on Friday. 

He added that it’s “tentatively” recommended “that everybody get it,” once the shots are ready. 

The White House’s $40 billion funding request to Congress on August 11 did not mention COVID-19. It included funding requests for Ukraine, to replenish U.S. federal disaster funds at home after a deadly climate season of heat and storms, and funds to bolster the enforcement at the Southern border with Mexico, including money to curb the flow of deadly fentanyl. Last fall, the administration asked for $9.25 billion in funding to combat the virus, but Congress refused the request. 

For the week ending July 29, COVID-19 hospital admissions were at 9,056. That’s an increase of about 12% from the previous week. But it’s a far cry from past peaks, like the 44,000 weekly hospital admissions in early January, the nearly 45,000 in late July 2022, or the 150,000 admissions during the omicron surge of January 2022. 
…

The United Auto Workers (UAW) union said Friday members voted overwhelmingly in favor of authorizing a strike at three Detroit automakers if agreement is not reached before the current four-year contract expires on September 14.

The authorization was approved by 97% of voting members at General Motors, Ford Motor and Stellantis, said UAW President Shawn Fain, who leads the union that represents about 150,000 workers.

Fain reiterated that the union did not plan to extend the deadline to get a new labor contract.

“The deadline is Sept. 14,” he said. “We have a lot of options that we are looking at but extension on the contract is not one of them.”

Separately, President Joe Biden, who met with Fain last month, told reporters in Nevada he is concerned about a potential UAW strike.

“I think that there should be a circumstance where jobs that are being displaced are replaced with new jobs” for UAW members “and the salaries should be commensurate.”

Some senators want national UAW agreements to cover jobs at battery joint ventures that currently pay less.

Fain said workers had made numerous concessions over the last two decades including giving up wage hikes, defined benefit pensions and post-retirement health care benefits.

“We’re fed up,” Fain said, listing a series of demands. “We’ve sat back for decades while these companies continue to just take and take and take from us.”

Fain has outlined an ambitious set of demands, including wage hikes of 46%, an end to the tiered wage system that pays new hires less than veterans, reinstating cost-of-living adjustments and restoring defined-benefit pension plans for new hires that the automakers ended in 2007. At Stellantis, just 30% of hourly U.S. workers are eligible for defined benefit pensions.

Fain said he expected the “Detroit Three,” as this cluster of automakers are known, to come to the bargaining table next week with counterproposals to the UAW demands. He said talks were “still going slow” after opening in July. Analysts estimate a more than 50% chance of a strike.

It was not clear how long it would take a strike to significantly reduce the Detroit Three’s inventories. Through July, Stellantis U.S. Ram, Jeep, Chrysler and Dodge each had more than 100 days of inventory but many specific popular models have less.

The vote does not guarantee a strike will be called, only that the union has the right to call a strike if there’s no agreement by September 14.

GM, Ford and Stellantis have said they want to reach a deal that is fair to workers but also gives the companies flexibility, as the industry shifts to electric models that have fewer parts and require less labor.

Ford shares were up 1%, while General Motors were unchanged in afternoon trade.
…

A camera clicks. In a fraction of a second, the shutter opens and then closes, freezing forever the image in front of it.

When the camera shutter blinked inside an Atlanta jail on Thursday, it both created and documented a tiny inflection point in American life. Captured for posterity, there was a former president of the United States, for the first time in history, under arrest and captured in the sort of frame more commonly associated with drug dealers or drunken drivers. The trappings of power gone, for that split second.

Left behind: an enduring image that will appear in history books long after Donald Trump is gone.

“It will be forever part of the iconography of being alive in this time,” said Marty Kaplan, a professor at the University of Southern California Annenberg School of Communications.

In the photo, Trump confronts the camera in front of a bland gray backdrop, his eyes meeting the lens in an intense glare. He’s wearing a blue suit, white shirt and red tie, his shoulders squared, his head tilted slightly toward the camera. The sheriff’s logo has been digitally added above his right shoulder.

Some of the 18 others charged with him in Georgia smiled in their booking photos like they were posing for a yearbook. Not Trump. His defiance is palpable, as if he’s staring down a nemesis through the lens.

“It is not a comfortable feeling — especially when you’ve done nothing wrong,” he later told Fox News Digital about the moment.

Not like any other photograph

Trump facing charges is by now a familiar sight of 2023 to Americans who watched him stand before a judge in a New York courtroom or saw watercolor sketches from the inside of federal courthouses in Miami and Washington, where cameras aren’t allowed.

This is different.

As Anderson Cooper put it on CNN: “The former president of the United States has an inmate number.” P01135809, to be exact. But until he surrendered to face charges of trying to steal the 2020 election in Georgia, his fourth indictment this year, he avoided having to pose for the iconic booking photo like millions accused of crimes before him.

Never mind that Trump, like all Americans, is innocent until proven guilty in court; the mug shot, and all it connotes, packs an extra emotional and cultural punch.

A mug shot is a visceral representation of the criminal justice system, a symbol of lost freedom. It permanently memorializes one of the worst days of a person’s life, a moment not meant for a scrapbook. It must be particularly foreign to a man born into privilege, who famously loves to be in control, who is highly attentive to his image and who rose to be the most powerful figure in the world.

“‘Indictment’ is a sort of bloodless word. And words are pale compared to images,” said Kaplan, a former speechwriter for Vice President Walter Mondale and a Hollywood screenwriter. “A mug shot is a genre. Its frame is, ‘This is a deer caught in the headlights. This is the crook being nailed.’ It’s the walk of shame moment.”

Already leveraging the moment

Trump is unlikely to treat the mug shot as a moment of shame as he seeks a second term in the White House while fighting criminal charges in four jurisdictions. His campaign has reported a spike in contributions each time he’s been indicted.

And the imagery itself? Trump hasn’t shied away from it. In fact, his campaign concocted one long before it became real.

Months before he was photographed in Georgia on Thursday evening, his campaign used the prospect of a mug shot as a fundraising opportunity. For $36, anyone can buy a T-shirt with a fake booking photo of Trump and the words “not guilty.” Dozens of similar designs are available to purchase online, including many that appeal to Trump’s critics.

Now they have a real one to work with. Within minutes of the mug shot’s release, Trump’s campaign used it in a fundraising appeal on its website. “BREAKING NEWS: THE MUGSHOT IS HERE,” reads the subject line of the campaign’s latest fundraising email, which advertises a new T-shirt with the image. And this quote: “This mugshot will forever go down in history as a symbol of America’s defiance of tyranny.”

In a show of solidarity, U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene posted to X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, a photo of herself smiling broadly in front of a gray background, the sheriff’s logo in the top left corner to mimic the jail’s style — essentially her DIY mug. “I stand with President Trump against the commie DA Fani Willis,” she said, a swipe at the Fulton County, Georgia, district attorney who persuaded a grand jury to indict Trump.

Recent history is full of politicians seeking political dividends from their booking photos. They’ve offered large smiles or defiant smirks and tried to make the best of their predicament.

Yet this is one of just 45 presidents in all of U.S. history — not only someone who held the keys to the most powerful government in the world, but who held a position that for many these days, both at home and overseas, personifies the United States. To see that face looking at a camera whose lens he is not seeking out — that’s a potent moment.

“There’s a power to the still image, which is inarguable,” said Mitchell Stevens, a professor emeritus at New York University who has written a book about the place imagery holds in modern society and how it is supplanting the word.

“It kind of freezes a moment, and in this case it’s freezing an unhappy moment for Donald Trump,” Stevens said. “And it’s not something he can click away. It’s not something he can simply brush off. That moment is going to live on. And it’s entirely possible that it will end up as the image that history preserves of this man.”
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U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo will start a four-day visit to China this weekend. The announcement came shortly after the Biden administration issued an executive order restricting certain U.S. investments in China.  

The Department of Commerce said on Tuesday that Raimondo will visit Beijing and Shanghai from August 27 to 30 and meet with senior Chinese government officials and American business leaders. 

The trip is intended to deepen communication between the U.S. and China on issues relating to the U.S.-China commercial relationship, challenges faced by U.S. businesses, and areas for potential cooperation, according to a press release from the Commerce Department.   

Analysts said that as China’s economy may be in long-term trouble, Beijing hopes to use Raimondo’s visit to reverse the impression that China is no longer friendly to foreign companies. But the trip may not bring any breakthrough.  

Gary Clyde Hufbauer, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, told VOA that Beijing welcomes Raimondo’s visit because of her influence on several economic and trade issues that China cares about.  

“Secretary Raimondo is a pretty big player in all transactions involving either trade in goods or services, electronic services of various kinds, technology flows and investment flows in both directions,” Hufbauer said. 

“My guess is that the Chinese authorities will be interested and quiz her quite closely about what limits she sees on these restrictions that are being put in place, what kind of flows of goods, of technology, of investment are still permitted by the U.S., and what are basically either prohibited or very closely scrutinized.”  

Move seen as goodwill gesture

Earlier this month, U.S. President Joe Biden signed an executive order banning U.S. investments in sensitive technologies in China, aiming to restrict China’s ability to develop next-generation military and surveillance technologies.  

However, right after Raimondo’s trip was announced, the U.S. government unexpectedly removed 27 Chinese companies and institutions from the “Unverified List” of sanctioned commercial entities, which was widely seen as a goodwill gesture from Washington to Beijing. 

The 27 Chinese entities include lithium battery material maker Guangdong Guanghua Technology and sensor maker Nanjing Gaohua Technology.  

China’s Ministry of Commerce said on Tuesday that the move is beneficial to the resumption of normal trade between companies of the two countries and is in line with the common interests of both sides. 

Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, and Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry also visited China this year. These meetings could pave the way for Chinese President Xi Jinping to attend the APEC summit in the U.S. and meet with Biden this fall.  

‘Intense competition requires intense diplomacy’

National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said Raimondo’s trip is “an encapsulation of the approach that the Biden administration is taking, where we are engaged in an intense competition with the PRC, but intense competition requires intense diplomacy to manage that competition so that it doesn’t tip over into conflict.  

“Secretary Raimondo will carry with her the message that the United States is not seeking to decouple from China, but rather to de-risk, and that means protecting our national security and ensuring resilient supply chains alongside our allies and partners while we continue our economic relationship and our trade relationship,” Sullivan said in a press briefing this week.  

Raimondo is expected to meet Chinese Commerce Minister Wang Wentao, among other economic policymakers.  

Clark Packard, a research fellow at the Cato Institute, told VOA he expects Raimondo to bring up U.S. concerns about recent Chinese restrictions on the export of some critical minerals, seen as retaliation for the American measures. 

“I don’t know if that falls on deaf ears because China would argue, ‘We weren’t going to move forward with this, but this is in response to your export controls on semiconductors and advanced computing,'” said Packard. “I don’t know how well that will be received, but again, I think it’s positive that the two sides talk. My hope is it’s not just an airing of the grievances on both sides because, while I think it’s important to engage, you do want to see some movements.”  

Packard said he doesn’t expect Raimondo’s trip to make any substantive breakthroughs on key issues, partly because the Biden administration is “getting a lot of pressure from Congress to continue to ratchet up tensions.”  

“I think that there’s so much political pressure on the Biden administration to not appear weak on China, which is going to prevent any sort of massive thawing in the relationship even if both sides want that to happen economically,” he said.  

Sullivan said, “We are not sending Cabinet officials to China to change China, nor do we expect these conversations to change the United States; rather, we each have the opportunity through this high-level engagement to ensure that there is a basic, stable foundation in the relationship, even as we compete intensively in a number of domains.”   

Likely start of a working group

According to Bloomberg, citing people familiar with the planning, one likely deliverable from the trip is a working group between the commerce agencies of the two sides to discuss U.S. export controls aimed at preventing cutting-edge American technology from being used by China’s military.   

In a letter to Raimondo and Blinken last week, four U.S. Republican lawmakers said, “U.S. export control policy towards the [People’s Republic of China] should not be up for negotiation, period. Decisions on the nature and scope of U.S. export controls should be taken in Washington, not Beijing … 

“It is time for U.S. officials to accept that China has no intention of abandoning its policies that led to expanded U.S. export controls in the first place,” said the letter. “In this vein, we urge you, prior to your trip, to publicly clarify that U.S. export controls are non-negotiable and that the PRC should expect more, not less, U.S. export controls moving forward.” 

The letter was signed by Senator Bill Hagerty and Representatives Mike Gallagher, Michael McCaul and Young Kim. 

The trip also comes as the Chinese economy is grappling with stagnant growth, a real estate crisis, sluggish exports, high youth unemployment, and weak consumer confidence. Analysts believe the downturn in China’s economy gives Beijing more reasons to ease tensions with the U.S.  

“With Secretary Raimondo, one thing they might do is try to lay out how friendly China still is to foreign business, to foreign firms that want to invest in China in a lot of sectors, including household products, but also including things like technology products, Qualcomm, whatever Apple products in China and so on,” said Hufbauer.

“Chinese authorities want to try to combat the notion that they are very unfriendly to business and, in general, private business and foreign firms in particular,” he said. “And that would be a subject they would discuss with Raimondo, and they might come out with some kind of statement saying that China is open to business, and once firms have come, it’s going to reduce regulatory oversight.”          
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Maui County sued Hawaiian Electric Company on Thursday over the fires that devastated Lahaina, saying the utility negligently failed to shut off power despite exceptionally high winds and dry conditions.

Witness accounts and video indicated that sparks from power lines ignited fires as utility poles snapped in the winds, which were driven by a passing hurricane. The Aug. 8 fires killed at least 115 people and left an unknown number of others missing, making them the deadliest in the U.S. in more than a century.

Hawaii Electric said in a statement it is “very disappointed that Maui County chose this litigious path while the investigation is still unfolding.”

The lawsuit said the destruction could have been avoided and that the utility had a duty “to properly maintain and repair the electric transmission lines, and other equipment including utility poles associated with their transmission of electricity, and to keep vegetation properly trimmed and maintained so as to prevent contact with overhead power lines and other electric equipment.”

The utility knew that high winds “would topple power poles, knock down power lines, and ignite vegetation,” the lawsuit said. “Defendants also knew that if their overhead electrical equipment ignited a fire, it would spread at a critically rapid rate.”

A drought in the region had left plants, including invasive grasses, dangerously dry. As Hurricane Dora passed roughly 800 kilometers south of Hawaii, strong winds toppled at least 30 power poles in West Maui. Video shot by a Lahaina resident shows a downed power line setting dry grasses alight. Firefighters initially contained that fire, but then left to attend to other calls, and residents said the fire later reignited and raced toward downtown Lahaina.

With downed power lines, police or utility crews blocking some roads, traffic ground to a standstill along Lahaina’s Front Street. A number of residents jumped into the water off Maui as they tried to escape the flaming debris and overheated black smoke enveloping downtown.

Dozens of searchers in snorkel gear have been combing a 6.4-kilometer stretch of water this week for signs of anyone who might have perished. Crews are also painstakingly searching for remains among the ashes of destroyed businesses and multistory residential buildings.

For now, the number of confirmed dead stands at 115, a number that the county said is expected to rise.

Maui County on Thursday released eight additional names of people who have been identified, including a family of four whose remains were found in a burned car near their home: 7-year-old Tony Takafua; his mother, Salote Tone, 39; and his grandparents Faaoso Tone, 70, and Maluifonua Tone, 73.

The FBI and Maui County police are still trying to figure out how many others might be unaccounted for. The FBI said Tuesday there were 1,000 to 1,100 names on a tentative, unconfirmed list.

“Our primary focus in the wake of this unimaginable tragedy has been to do everything we can to support not just the people of Maui, but also Maui County,” Hawaiian Electric’s statement said.

Hawaiian Electric is a for-profit, investor-owned, publicly traded utility that serves 95% of Hawaii’s electric customers. It is also facing several lawsuits from Lahaina residents as well as one from some of its own investors, who accused it of fraud in a federal lawsuit Thursday, saying it failed to disclose that its wildfire prevention and safety measures were inadequate.

Maui County’s lawsuit notes other utilities, such as Southern California Edison Company, Pacific Gas & Electric, and San Diego Gas & Electric, have procedures for shutting off power during bad windstorms and said the “severe and catastrophic losses … could have easily been prevented” if Hawaiian Electric had a similar shutoff plan.

The county said it is seeking compensation for damage to public property and resources in Lahaina as well as nearby Kula.

Other utilities have been found liable for devastating fires recently.

In June, a jury in Oregon found the electric utility PacifiCorp responsible for causing devastating fires during Labor Day weekend in 2020, ordering the company to pay tens of millions of dollars to 17 homeowners who sued and finding it liable for broader damages that could push the total award into the billions.

Pacific Gas & Electric declared bankruptcy and pleaded guilty to 84 counts of manslaughter after its neglected equipment caused a fire in the Sierra Nevada foothills in 2018 that destroyed nearly 19,000 homes, businesses and other buildings and virtually razed the town of Paradise, California.
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The United States announced new sanctions Thursday against several Russian entities and individuals for their roles in the abduction and deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia and for human rights abuses against minors in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine.

“Children are literally being ripped from their homes. In the year 2023. By a country sitting in this very chamber. By a permanent member of this council,” Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said at a meeting of the U.N. Security Council. “This is straight out of a dystopian novel. But this is not fiction. Colleagues, this is not fiction. This is real life.”

She said the human rights violations are being orchestrated at all levels of the Russian government and noted that the International Criminal Court at The Hague has issued arrest warrants for President Vladimir Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, Russia’s presidential commissioner for children’s rights. Those warrants were issued on March 17, for their involvement in the alleged deportation and transfer of children from occupied areas of Ukraine to Russia.

At a meeting held on the 32nd anniversary of Ukraine’s independence from the former Soviet Union, focusing on the protection of children, Thomas-Greenfield said the United States would not stand by “as Russia carries out these war crimes and crimes against humanity.”

“And today, the United States is imposing sanctions on two entities and 11 individuals – including individuals who reportedly have facilitated the forcible transfer and deportation of Ukraine’s children to camps,” Thomas-Greenfield announced. “Additionally, we are taking steps to impose visa restrictions on three Russia-installed purported authorities for their involvement in human rights abuses of Ukrainian minors.”

Among the sanctioned individuals are the commissioners for children’s rights in several Russian regions, as well as a Russian government-owned “summer camp” and its director, located in Russia-occupied Crimea. Washington says the camp conducts “extensive ‘patriotic’ re-education programs” and prevents the children from returning to their families.

A human rights briefer from Ukraine told the council that according to the Ukrainian National Information Bureau, Russian agents have taken at least 19,546 children to 57 regions of Russia since February 2022, and only 386 have returned home. But Ukrainian officials say the real number could be much higher.

“After deportation to Russia or to the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine, our children are exposed to aggressive brainwashing aimed at changing their consciousness, erasing their Ukrainian identity and preparing obedient soldiers for the Russian army in the future,” Ukrainian Ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya told the council.

He thanked Washington for imposing sanctions on Russia and urged other countries to do the same.

The Russian envoy dismissed the accusations as lies.

“The lie about our alleged abductions of Ukrainian children, who we are actually saving,” Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said.

UN reporting

In its annual report on violations against children in conflict zones, the United Nations said in June it had verified the abduction of 91 children by Russian armed forces, all of whom were released. The U.N. also verified the transfer of 46 children to Russia from occupied areas of Ukraine, “including children forcibly separated from parents, children removed from schools and institutions without the consent of guardians, and a child who was given Russian citizenship.”

Verification is difficult and the U.N. has criticized Russia for its lack of cooperation and access. The secretary-general, Antonio Guterres, included Moscow in his annual blacklist of perpetrators of grave violations against children, citing the high number of attacks on schools and numbers of children killed and maimed by Russia’s military and affiliated armed groups.

“I am troubled by reports, some of which were verified by the United Nations, of children transferred to the Russian Federation from areas of Ukraine that, in part, are or have been under the temporary military control of the Russian Federation,” Guterres wrote in the report. “I urge the Russian Federation to ensure that no changes are made to the personal status of Ukrainian children, including their nationality.”

Russia is listed in Annex II, Section B of the report, which is for parties to conflicts that have put in place measures during the reporting period aimed at improving the protection of children. Ukraine’s ambassador criticized Moscow, however, for not implementing them.

On Friday, Kyiv signed its own action plan with the United Nations to strengthen the protection of children in Ukraine.
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