The United States has formally invited China’s newly reappointed foreign minister, Wang Yi, to Washington, State Department spokesperson Matt Miller said on Tuesday, after Wang’s predecessor was abruptly removed from his post by Beijing. 

China reappointed veteran diplomat Wang as foreign minister last week, replacing former rising star Qin Gang, who has not been seen for more than month — a mysterious absence after just seven months in the job that has raised questions about transparency. 

The ministry has only said Qin was off work for unspecified health reasons. 

The invitation was extended on Monday during a meeting at the State Department between U.S. Assistant Secretary for East Asia and Pacific Affairs Daniel Kritenbrink and Yang Tao, director-general of the Department of North American and Oceanian Affairs at China’s Foreign Ministry, Miller said in a news briefing. 

“In the meeting yesterday, we extended the invitation that had previously been made to Foreign Minister Qin Gang and made clear that invitation did transfer over,” Miller said. 

He did not say if the Chinese side had accepted the invitation but added that this was Washington’s expectation. 

“We certainly expect that it is something that they would accept and is a trip that we expect to happen, but we have not yet scheduled a date,” Miller said. 

The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment when asked about the invitation. 

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met Qin on June 18, on the first visit by America’s top diplomat to China in five years. The U.S. State Department said then they held “candid, substantive and constructive” talks, and Blinken invited Qin to Washington to continue discussions. 

Qin, 57, a former aide to President Xi Jinping and envoy to the United States, took over the ministry in December but has not been seen in public since June 25 when he met visiting diplomats in Beijing. 

The Foreign Ministry’s brief explanation that this was due to health reasons was later excised from official transcripts. 

Qin’s successor, Wang, 69, was also his predecessor, holding the post from 2013-2022 as ties frayed with rival superpower the United States to a point Beijing described as an all-time low. 

Blinken subsequently met Wang on the sidelines of a regional meeting in Jakarta in Qin’s absence.
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Since Russia invaded Ukraine, more than 17,000 Ukrainian refugees have moved to the Los Angeles area. Olena Kochetkova fled after a rocket strike killed her husband in their Mariupol bakery. For VOA, Svitlana Prystynska has the story of how one new business has helped other immigrants along the way.
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Zhang Chunxiao, the wife of Chinese rights lawyer Lu Siwei, is calling for the release of her husband, who was arrested in Laos Friday morning while boarding a train for Thailand. 

Zhang told VOA Mandarin on Monday that Lu had been transferred from a local Vientiane immigration office to Laos’ national immigration department. 

She said in Lu’s last message to her on Friday night, he said three police officers were with him to take him away, and he might not be able to message her again. 

Peter Dahlin, the founder of the nongovernmental organization, Safeguard Defenders, confirmed to VOA Mandarin in an email that Lu has been taken to the immigration department’s main office near the airport in Vientiane Monday morning, Laos time.  

“This shows that they are planning to process his deportation today, and one local source tells us Chinese embassy personnel are on-site as well. It may happen very soon, as it appears imminent unless pressure from other governments makes the Laotian government reconsider,” he said. 

“His deportation will make them violate both their legally binding commitment under the U.N. Convention Against Torture, but also the general principle of non-refoulment, that is, to not send people back if they stand a risk of torture or maltreatment,” he added. 

According to the Safeguard Defenders website, Lu held a valid visa for Laos when he crossed into the country earlier this month.  

“He planned to travel by train to Thailand along the route that starts at Thanaleng Station, southeast of the capital, Vientiane. The station is a short distance from the Thai-Laotian Friendship Bridge. Lu planned to fly from Thailand to the US to reunite with his wife and daughter” according to the site. 

Forced into car

Two friends from North America were with Lu in Laos.  

The trio had arrived at the station around 8:35 a.m. to buy tickets for the 10 a.m. train on July 28, when local police confiscated the passports of Lu and one of the others, according to the NGO’s website.  

Police returned and handcuffed Lu, the site said. One of Lu’s companions said that about 10 immigration police were involved in the incident that ended with Lu being forced into a car and taken away. 

“As in China, the railways have their own separate police force. It is unclear if Lu is now being held at a railway police detention centre or is already at the immigration detention centre at the airport,” according to the site. 

Laos maintains an extradition treaty with China but in the past “all known cases of Chinese nationals returned to China have been conducted under illegal or irregular operations … or by having the Laotian government order their deportation,” to China, according to Safeguard Defenders. 

VOA Mandarin contacted the Lao and Chinese embassies in Washington for comment. The Lao embassy did not respond. In an email, the Chinese embassy said “Unfortunately, we do not have anything to offer” on the reasons for Lu’s arrest or what’s going to happen to him next. 

The countries maintain a close relationship. 

On April 17, China’s Wang Yi, now the foreign minister, met with Saleumxay Kommasith, deputy prime minister and minister of foreign affairs of Laos.  

Wang said, “China and Laos are friendly neighbors linked by mountains and rivers. Bilateral relations have stood the test of changing international situation and even wars and are rock-solid and unshakable.”  

Saleumxay Kommasith said, “The Lao people wholeheartedly appreciate the strong support and selfless help of the CPC, the Chinese government and the Chinese people. Laos is ready to work with China to strengthen exchanges and cooperation.” 

Lawyer took on sensitive cases

Lu had a history of taking on sensitive cases and defending people seen as political targets by Chinese authorities. 

He represented 12 Hong Kong residents, the so-called Hong Kong 12, after they were intercepted at sea by Chinese authorities as they tried to flee to Taiwan on August 23, 2020

China revoked Lu’s license to practice law in January 2021. Two months later, he was banned from leaving China. 

Dahlin said Lu “will certainly be detained upon his return, possibly also for crossing the Chinese border illegally. Upon detention, his fate is, of course, sealed, and it’s unlikely that he will not be arrested, prosecuted, brought to trial and convicted.” 

Zhang said international society, including the U.N. and U.S., are pressuring Laos for Lu’s release. 

In a social media video, she said, “If repatriated to China, my husband will be tortured and detained. I plea to the Laotian government to allow him to be protected by the U.N. as an international refugee.” 

She hopes to reunite with Lu soon because their daughter hasn’t seen her father for almost two years. 

VOA contacted the State Department for updates on Lu’s case but didn’t get a response by the time of publication. 

Dahlin, of Safeguard Defenders, said, “The Laotian government must be made aware that blatant violation of international law, as this is, and doing the bidding of a foreign police state, that is, China, will come with consequences, and Lu, of course, must be released, and allowed to continue his travel, and ultimately, reunite with his wife and kid.” 
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U.S. President Joe Biden has selected Colorado Springs as the permanent location of the U.S. Space Command headquarters, the U.S. military said Monday, ending a long-running debate over potentially moving it to Republican-stronghold Alabama. 

The Pentagon said the decision by Biden, a Democrat, would ensure “peak readiness” of the command during a critical period. 

Experts have said keeping the base in Colorado Springs would avoid a lengthy transition period to Huntsville, Alabama, a spot favored by former Republican President Donald Trump, and which is known as “Rocket City” for its role in developing space rockets. 

“It will also enable the command to most effectively plan, execute and integrate military space power into multi-domain global operations in order to deter aggression and defend national interests,” the Pentagon said in a statement. 

Biden’s decision comes as a Republican senator from Alabama, Tommy Tuberville, is blocking hundreds of U.S. military appointments to protest the Pentagon’s policy of reimbursing costs for service members who travel to get an abortion. 

Biden last week criticized Tuberville for preventing many women and people of color from moving into more senior roles, some of them historic in nature. 

Those include Air Force General CQ Brown, the first Black person to lead any branch of the armed services, whom Biden has nominated to head the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Navy Admiral Lisa Franchetti, who would become the first woman to command the service and become a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. 
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President Joe Biden will travel to Arizona, New Mexico and Utah next week and is expected to talk about his administration’s efforts to combat climate change as the region endures a brutally hot summer with soaring temperatures, the White House said Monday.

Biden is expected to discuss the Inflation Reduction Act, America’s most significant response to climate change, and the push toward more clean energy manufacturing. The act aims to spur clean energy on a scale that will bend the arc of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.

July has been the hottest month ever recorded. Biden last week announced new steps to protect workers in extreme heat, including measures to improve weather forecasts and make drinking water more accessible.

Members of Biden’s administration also are fanning out over the next few weeks around the anniversary of the landmark climate change and health care legislation to extol the administration’s successes as the Democratic president seeks reelection in 2024.

Vice President Kamala Harris heads to Wisconsin this week with Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo to talk about broadband infrastructure investments. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack goes to Oregon to highlight wildfire defense grants, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg will go to Illinois and Texas, and Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona heads to Maryland to talk about career and technical education programs.

The Inflation Reduction Act included roughly $375 billion over a decade to combat climate change and capped the cost of a month’s supply of insulin at $35 for older Americans and other Medicare beneficiaries. It also helps an estimated 13 million Americans pay for health care insurance by extending subsidies provided during the coronavirus pandemic.

The measure is paid for by new taxes on large companies and stepped-up IRS enforcement of wealthy individuals and entities, with additional funds going to reduce the federal deficit.
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Fourteen members of the U.S. Congress have written to the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations expressing concerns over reports of an alleged violent crackdown by the Bangladesh government on opposition parties and other dissidents ahead of general elections likely taking place in January.

In their letter to Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the congressmen and women called for the deployment of U.N. peacekeeping forces during the next general election in Bangladesh to ensure free and fair polls.

They also sought the immediate suspension of Bangladesh’s membership in the U.N. Human Rights Council until an “impartial and transparent” investigation into the government’s alleged crimes against political opponents and others, including journalists, is completed.

“Over the past 6 to 8 months, thousands of peaceful and courageous protesters have demonstrated in support of free and fair elections [in Bangladesh],” the letter stated, referring to the demonstrations by the opposition and pro-democracy activists.

“These demonstrations have often been met by violence, tear gas, and brutal assault by police, other state actors, and supporters of [Prime Minister Sheikh] Hasina.”

In the letter, the congress members also raised concerns about the coming elections, which Hasina and her ministers insist will be free and fair.

“Given its history of election fraud, violence, and intimidation; we are highly skeptical that the Hasina government will permit fair and transparent elections,” the congress members noted in the letter.

Allegations of rigging

The 2014 elections were boycotted by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party or BNP — the largest opposition party in the country. And, in 2018, the elections were marred by allegations of massive rigging by Hasina’s ruling Awami League [AL] party— a charge Hasina repeatedly denied.

France-based exiled Bangladeshi pro-democracy activist and popular YouTuber Pinaki Bhattacharya said that Hasina “appears incapable” of delivering a free and fair election.

“She made similar promises in 2018. But we ended up witnessing one of the most fraudulent elections in global history, with ballot boxes stuffed overnight on the eve of the election. She has structured her administration, the election commission, and the police force in such a way that they either actively engage in vote rigging or turn a blind eye when it occurs,” Bhattacharya told VOA.

“Sheikh Hasina has consistently dismissed any legitimate evidence from both national and international sources that indicates rampant election rigging. So, how can she claim to have the capacity or, the willingness to hold a free and fair election?”

Demands to ‘step aside’

For several months, the BNP and its allies have been staging a series of demonstrations demanding that Hasina step aside making way for a non-partisan caretaker government before the next general elections take place — a demand her government has rejected.

On Saturday (July 29), tens of thousands of BNP leaders and supporters staged sit-in protests on main roads in Dhaka demanding the resignation of Hasina.

As the protesters tried to resist by throwing stones, police at several locations fired rubber bullets, pellets and teargas at them. Visuals in local TV channels and newspapers showed AL supporters — carrying machetes and sticks — attack and chase away the BNP protesters, in the presence of police.

Scores of protesters, including senior BNP leaders such as Gayeshwar Chandra Roy, Abdus Salam Azad and Ishraq Hossain, were injured during Saturday’s protests. Some police officers were injured too, a police spokesperson said.

The BNP says several of its initially peaceful rallies on political and other issues were violently attacked by the police and AL activists in the past year and 19 of its activists have been killed.

Also in the past year, according to the BNP statistics, more than 25,000 of its leaders and activists have been arrested. The party says police arrested at least 600 BNP protesters in the past week.

A spokesperson of Dhaka Metropolitan Police did not respond to messages from VOA on WhatsApp related to the July 29 clashes with the BNP protesters. The Bangladesh Ministry of Home Affairs, which controls the police, has not responded to requests for comment either.

Taking to the streets

BNP Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir said Hasina, while she was in opposition, took to the streets demanding a neutral caretaker government.

“In 1996, the BNP-led government introduced the election-time caretaker government system to the constitution. In 2009, the Awami League-led government amended the constitution and scrapped the system and kept rigging the elections to stay in power. People have lost interest in such sham elections in the country and are staying away from casting their votes,” Alamgir told VOA. “We want people to cast their votes. For this, we have to change the system. There is no alternative but to reintroduce the election-time non-partisan caretaker government system.”

Since last year, the U.S. and other countries have urged the Hasina government to hold the next general election in a free and fair manner.
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The Teamsters said on Sunday that the union was served a notice that Yellow Corp. is ceasing operations and filing for bankruptcy. 

“Yellow has historically proven that it could not manage itself despite billions of dollars in worker concessions and hundreds of millions in bailout funding from the federal government,” Teamsters General President Sean M. O’Brien said in a statement. 

Yellow did not immediately respond to a Reuters’ request for comment. 

Earlier in the day, The Wall Street Journal reported about the closure of the trucking firm’s operations which cited notices sent to customers and employees. Last week, WSJ also reported that the company has laid off a large number of workers. 

Earlier this month Yellow averted a threatened strike by 22,000 Teamsters-represented workers, saying the company will pay the more than $50 million it owed in worker benefits and pension accruals. 

The company said on Thursday it is exploring opportunities to divest its third-party logistics company Yellow Logistics Inc. and is engaged with multiple interested parties. 

Its customers include large retailers like Walmart WMT.N and Home Depot, manufacturers and Uber Freight, some of which have paused cargo shipments to the company for fear those goods could be lost or stranded if the carrier went bankrupt. 

In 2020, the Donald Trump-led government rescued the company with a $700 million pandemic relief loan in exchange for a 30% stake. 
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A week later, the “Barbenheimer” boom has not abated. 

Seven days after Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” and Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” conspired to set box office records, the two films held unusually strongly in theaters. “Barbie” took in a massive $93 million in its second weekend, according to studio estimates Sunday. “Oppenheimer” stayed in second with a robust $46.2 million. Sales for the two movies dipped 43% and 44%, respectably — well shy of the usual week-two drops. 

“Barbenheimer” has proven to be not a one-weekend phenomenon but an ongoing box-office bonanza. The two movies combined have already surpassed $1 billion in worldwide ticket sales. Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for data firm Comscore, call it “a touchstone moment for movies, moviegoers and movie theaters.” 

“Having two movies from rival studios linked in this way and both boosting each other’s fortunes — both box-office wise and it terms of their profile — I don’t know if there’s a comp for this in the annals of box-office history,” said Dergarabedian. “There’s really no comparison for this.” 

Following its year-best $162 million opening, the pink-infused pop sensation of “Barbie” saw remarkably sustained business through the week and into the weekend. The film outpaced Nolan’s “The Dark Knight” to have the best first 11 days in theaters of any Warner Bros. release ever. 

“Barbie” has rapidly accumulated $351.4 million in U.S. and Canadian theaters, a rate that will soon make it the biggest box-office hit of the summer. Every day it’s played, “Barbie” has made at least $20 million. 

And the “Barbie” effect isn’t just in North America. The film made $122.2 million internationally over the weekend. Its global tally has reached $775 million. It’s the kind of business that astounds even veteran studio executives. 

“That’s a crazy number,” said Jeff Goldstein, distribution chief for Warner Bros. “There’s just a built-in audience that wants to be part of the zeitgeist of the moment. Wherever you go, people are wearing pink. Pink is taking over the world.” 

Amid the frenzy, “Barbie” is already attracting a lot of repeat moviegoers. Goldstein estimates that 12% of sales are people going back with friends or family to see it again. 

For a movie industry that has be trying to regain its pre-pandemic footing — and that now finds itself largely shuttered due to actors and screenwriters strikes — the sensations of “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” have showed what’s possible when everything lines up just right. 

“Post-pandemic, there’s no ceiling and there’s no floor,” said Goldstein. “The movies that miss, really miss big time and the movies that work really work big time.” 

Universal Pictures’ “Oppenheimer,” meanwhile, is performing more like a superhero movie than a three-hour film about scientists talking. 

Nolan’s drama starring Cillian Murphy as atomic bomb physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer has accrued $174.1 million domestically thus far. With an additional $72.4 million in international cinemas, “Oppenheimer” has already surpassed $400 million globally. 

Showings in IMAX have typically been sold out. “Oppenheimer” has made $80 million worldwide on IMAX. The large-format exhibitor said Sunday that it will extend the film’s run through Aug. 13. 

The week’s top new release, Walt Disney Co.’s “Haunted Mansion,” an adaptation of the Disney theme park attraction, was easily overshadowed by the “Barbenheimer” blitz. The film, which cost about $150 million, debuted with $24 million domestically and $9 million in overseas sales. “Haunted Mansion,” directed by Justin Simien (“Dear White People,” “Bad Hair”) and starring an ensemble of LaKeith Stanfield, Tiffany Haddish, Owen Wilson, Danny DeVito and Rosario Dawson, struggled to overcome mediocre reviews. 

“Talk to Me,” the A24 supernatural horror film, fared better. It debuted with $10 million. The film, directed by Australian filmmakers Danny and Michael Philippou and starring Sophie Wilde, was a midnight premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January and received terrific reviews from critics (95% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes). It was made for a modest $4.5 million. 

While theaters being flush with moviegoers has been a huge boon to the film industry, it’s been tougher sledding for Tom Cruise, the so-called savior of the movies last summer with “Top Gun: Maverick.” “Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part I,” which debuted the week before the arrival of “Barbenheimer,” grossed $10.7 million in its third weekend. The film starring Cruise and directed by Christopher McQuarrie, has grossed $139.2 million domestically and $309.3 million oveseas. 

Instead, the sleeper hit “Sound of Freedom” has been the best performing non-“Barbenheimer” release in theaters. The Angel Studios’ release, which is counting crowdfunding pay-it-forward sales in its box office totals, made $12.4 million in its fourth weekend, bringing its haul thus far to nearly $150 million. 

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

1. “Barbie,” $93 million. 

2. “Opppenheimer,” $46.2 million. 

3. “Haunted Mansion,” $24.2 million. 

4. “Sound of Freedom,” $12.4 million. 

5. “Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One,” $10.7 million. 

6. “Talk to Me,” $10 million. 

7. “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” $4 million. 

8. “Elemental,” $3.4 million. 

9. “Insidious: The Red Door,” $3.2 million. 

10. “Rocky Aur Rani Ki Prem Kahani,” $1.6 million. 
    …

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is wrapping up a trip to the Indo-Pacific that included stops in Papua New Guinea and Australia.

A day after announcing the U.S. will be sending more troops and capabilities to Australia, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles flew on Austin’s jet from Brisbane to Townsville, to meet with troops taking part in Exercise Talisman Sabre.

Almost a dozen nations have joined the U.S. and Australia for these exercises. And Austin says there is hope that in the future, it will be even bigger.

“This is what we’re about. We’re about interoperability. We’re about working together. Promoting a common vision of a free and open Indo-Pacific,” said Austin.
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At the entrance to Missouri prisons, large signs plead for help: “NOW HIRING” … “GREAT PAY & BENEFITS.”

No experience is necessary. Anyone 18 and older can apply. Long hours are guaranteed.

Though the assertion of “great pay” for prison guards would have seemed dubious in the past, a series of state pay raises prompted by widespread vacancies has finally made a difference. The Missouri Department of Corrections set a record for new applicants last month.

“After we got our raise, we started seeing people come out of the woodwork, people that hadn’t worked in a while,” said Maj. Albin Narvaez, chief of custody at the Fulton Reception and Diagnostic Center, where new prisoners are housed and evaluated.

Public employers across the U.S. have faced similar struggles to fill jobs, leading to one of the largest surges in state government pay raises in 15 years. Many cities, counties and school districts also are hiking wages to try to retain and attract workers amid aggressive competition from private sector employers.

The wage war comes as governments and taxpayers feel the consequences of empty positions.

In Kansas City, Missouri, a shortage of 911 operators doubled the average hold times for people calling in emergencies. In one Florida county, some schoolchildren frequently arrived late as a lack of bus drivers delayed routes. In Arkansas, abused and neglected kids remained longer in foster care because of a caseworker shortage. In various cities and states, vacancies on road crews meant cracks and potholes took longer to fix than many motorists might like.

“A lot of the jobs we’re talking about are hard jobs,” said Leslie Scott Parker, executive director of the National Association of State Personnel Executives.

Lingering vacancies “eventually affects service to the public or response times to needs,” she added.

Workforce shortages worsened across all sorts of jobs due to a wave of retirements and resignations that began during the pandemic. Many businesses, from restaurants to hospitals, responded nimbly with higher wages and incentives to attract employees. But governments by nature are slower to act, requiring pay raises to go through a legislative process that can take months to complete — and then can take months more to kick in.

Meanwhile, vacancies mounted.

In Georgia, state employee turnover hit a high of 25% in 2022. Thousands of workers left the Department of Corrections, pushing its vacancy rate to around 50%. The state began a series of pay raises. This year, all state employees and teachers got at least a $2,000 raise, with corrections officers getting $4,000 and state troopers $6,000.

The Georgia Department of Corrections used an ad agency to bolster recruitment and held an average of 125 job fairs a month. It’s starting to pay off. In the first week of July, the department received 318 correctional officer applications — nearly double the weekly norm, said department Public Affairs Director Joan Heath.

Almost 1 in 4 positions — more than 2,500 jobs — were empty in the Missouri Department of Corrections late last year, which was twice the pre-pandemic vacancy rate in 2019.

Missouri gave state workers a 7.5% pay raise in 2022. This spring, Gov. Mike Parson signed an emergency spending bill with an additional 8.7% raise, plus an extra $2 an hour for people working evening and night shifts at prisons, mental health facilities and other institutions. The vacancy rate for entry level corrections officers now is declining, and the average number of applications for all state positions is up 18% since the start of last year.

At the Fulton prison, where staff shortages have led to a standard 52-hour work week, newly hired employees can earn around $60,000 annually — an amount roughly equal to the state’s median household income. The prison also is proposing to provide free child care to correctional officers willing to work nights.

If prison staffing is too low, “it can get dangerous” for both inmates and guards, Narvaez said.

Public safety concerns also have arisen in Kansas City, where a country music fan attacked before a concert last month waited four minutes for a 911 call to be answered and an hour for an ambulance to arrive. About one-quarter of 911 call center positions are vacant — “a huge factor” in the longer wait times to answer calls, said Tamara Bazzle, assistant manager of the communications unit for the Kansas City Police Department.

In Biddeford, Maine, a 15-person roster of 911 dispatchers dipped to just eight employees in July as people quit a “pressure cooker job” for less stress or better pay elsewhere, Police Chief JoAnne Fisk said. The city is now offering fully certified dispatchers $41 an hour to help plug the gaps on a part-time basis — $10 an hour more than comparable new workers normally would earn.

This month, Biddeford also launched a $2,000 bonus for city employees who refer others who get jobs. That comes a year after Biddeford adopted a four-day work week with paid lunch periods to try to make jobs more appealing, said City Manager Jim Bennett.

To attract workers, other governments have dropped college degree requirements and spiced up drab job descriptions.

Nationally, the turnover rate in state and local governments is twice the average of the previous two decades, according federal labor statistics.

Uncompetitive wages were the most common reason for leaving cited in exit interviews, according to a survey of 249 state and local government human resource managers conducted by MissionSquare Research Institute, a Washington, D.C. -based nonprofit. The hardest positions to fill included police and corrections officers, doctors, nurses, engineers and jobs requiring commercial driver’s licenses.

Along Florida’s east coast, the Brevard County transit system and school district have been competing for bus drivers. On days when drivers are lacking, the transit system has cut the frequency of bus stops on some routes. The school system, meanwhile, has asked some bus drivers to run a second route after dropping children off at school, often resulting in the second busload arriving late.

Since 2022, the county has twice raised bus driver wages to a current rate of $17.47 an hour. The school board recently countered with a $5 increase to a minimum $20 an hour for the upcoming school year. The goal is to hire enough drivers to regularly get kids to class on time, said school system communications director Russell Bruhn.

In Arkansas, the goal is to get foster kids into permanent homes in less than a year. But during the first three months of this year, the state met that target for just 32% of foster children — well below the national standard of over 40%. More than one-fifth of the roughly 1,400 positions in the Arkansas Division of Children and Family Services are vacant.

Many new employees leave in less than two years because of heavy caseloads and the “very difficult, emotionally tolling work,” Mischa Martin, the Department of Human Services’ deputy secretary of youth and families, told lawmakers last month.

“If we had a knowledgeable, experienced workforce,” she said, “they would be able to work cases in a better way to get kids home quicker.”
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U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Saturday pushed back against Australian demands for an end to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s prosecution, saying the Australian citizen was accused of “very serious criminal conduct” in publishing a trove of classified documents more than a decade ago. 

Australia’s center-left Labor Party government has been arguing since winning the elections last year that the United States should end its pursuit of the 52-year-old, who has spent four years in a British prison fighting extradition to the United States. 

Assange’s freedom is widely seen as a test of Australia’s leverage with President Joe Biden’s administration. 

Blinken confirmed on Saturday that Assange had been discussed in annual talks with Foreign Minister Penny Wong in Brisbane, Australia. 

“I understand the concerns and views of Australians. I think it’s very important that our friends here understand our concerns about this matter,” Blinken told reporters. 

“Mr. Assange was charged with very serious criminal conduct in the United States in connection with his alleged role in one of the largest compromises of classified information in the history of our country,” he added. 

Wong said Assange’s prosecution had “dragged for too long” and that Australia wanted the charges “brought to a conclusion.” 

Australia remains ambiguous about whether the United States should drop the prosecution or strike a plea bargain. 

Assange faces 17 charges of espionage and one charge of computer misuse over WikiLeaks’ publication of hundreds of thousands of classified diplomatic and military documents in 2010. 

American prosecutors allege he helped U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning steal classified diplomatic cables and military files that WikiLeaks later published, putting lives at risk. 

Australia argues there is a disconnect between the U.S. treatment of Assange and Manning. Then-U.S. President Barack Obama commuted Manning’s 35-year sentence to seven years, which allowed her release in 2017. 
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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — The cosmos is offering up a double feature in August: a pair of supermoons culminating in a rare blue moon.

Catch the first show Tuesday evening as the full moon rises in the southeast, appearing slightly brighter and bigger than normal. That’s because it will be closer than usual, just 357,530 kilometers (222,159 miles) away, thus the supermoon label.

The moon will be even closer the night of Aug. 30 — a scant 357,344 kilometers (222,043 miles) distant. Because it’s the second full moon in the same month, it will be what’s called a blue moon.

“Warm summer nights are the ideal time to watch the full moon rise in the eastern sky within minutes of sunset. And it happens twice in August,” said retired NASA astrophysicist Fred Espenak, dubbed Mr. Eclipse for his eclipse-chasing expertise.

The last time two full supermoons graced the sky in the same month was in 2018. It won’t happen again until 2037, according to Italian astronomer Gianluca Masi, founder of the Virtual Telescope Project.

Masi will provide a live webcast of Tuesday evening’s supermoon as it rises over the Coliseum in Rome.

“My plans are to capture the beauty of this … hopefully bringing the emotion of the show to our viewers,” Masi said in an email. “The supermoon offers us a great opportunity to look up and discover the sky.”

This year’s first supermoon was in July. The fourth and last will be in September. The two in August will be closer than either of those.

Provided clear skies, binoculars or backyard telescopes can enhance the experience, Espenak said, revealing such features as lunar maria — the dark plains formed by ancient volcanic lava flows — and rays emanating from lunar craters.

According to the Old Farmer’s Almanac, the August full moon is traditionally known as the sturgeon moon. That’s because of the abundance of that fish in the Great Lakes in August  hundreds of years ago.
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