CHICAGO — Before NASCAR raced in the Los Angeles Coliseum in 2022, Kevin Harvick thought it was going to be a disaster. It didn’t take very long for the event to win him over.

Heading into the Cup Series’ first street race, Harvick is keeping an open mind.

“Going through all these new types of events kind of changes your mindset to how you approach it,” he said, “because you see the enthusiasm, right, like you can feel it, you can see it.”

After months of hype and curiosity, the NASCAR Cup Series hits the streets of downtown Chicago on Sunday at the end of a big weekend for the sport that includes concerts and other entertainment.

The 12-turn, 2.2-mile course includes seven 90-degree turns. There are lots of ways to get into trouble, including manhole covers, and transitions from concrete to asphalt and back. Getting in and out of pit road in front of Buckingham Fountain could become an issue, and restarts also could be an adventure.

“It’s obviously narrow in sections. I think that’s going to be a hot topic of things to talk about,” said Chase Elliott, who is looking for his first win of the season. “I do think it’s going to be difficult to pass once everybody gets up to pace come race time. But I hope that we’re able to mix it up and do different things.”

As the drivers tested the course Saturday in practice and qualifying, and the Xfinity Series raced in The Loop 121, the noise from the stock-car engines rumbled past the skyscrapers around Grant Park. Smiling passersby on Michigan Avenue stopped and used their phones to record some of the action through a fence. Some spectators climbed on the roof covering a train station stairway to take a closer look.

The spectacle of racing in downtown Chicago was exactly what NASCAR was hoping to create when it agreed to a three-year contract with the city and announced the event a year ago.

“I think they told us that over 80% of the fans here this weekend will be people who have never watched a NASCAR race,” Harvick said. “If you’re gonna grow the sport, you’re gonna have to do stuff like this.”

The inaugural Cup Series street race returns NASCAR to a coveted market in its 75th season. It ran 19 Cup races at Chicagoland Speedway in Joliet, a 45-mile drive from downtown, but it pulled out four years ago.

NASCAR is hoping the change in location will help attract new fans, both in person and with the NBC broadcast. But moving downtown puts its drivers on a bumpy course with little room for error, and a crash in a narrow area could cause a pileup in a hurry.

“I think the biggest thing is just figuring out your braking marks and where you can go a little bit harder than other places, just because of the bumps and the different pavements and concrete,” Martin Truex Jr. said. “That’s the biggest thing.”

History

The Chicago Street Race is the 177th different track for the NASCAR Cup Series. It’s also NASCAR’s 100th race in Illinois.

It’s a return to downtown Chicago after the Cup Series stopped at Soldier Field in 1956. That race was won by Hall of Famer Fireball Roberts in a Pete DePaolo Ford.

Resetting

Truex is on top of the Cup Series standings with 576 points, followed by William Byron and Ross Chastain with 558 points apiece. Bell and Kyle Busch close out the top five.

The top 16 in the standings make the playoffs. Harvick, Brad Keselowski, Chris Buescher, Bubba Wallace and Daniel Suárez occupy the last five postseason spots at the moment, but they are all looking for their first win of the season.

Odds and ends

Kyle Larson is the 5-1 favorite, according to FanDuel Sportsbook, followed by Kyle Busch at 6-1 and Truex at 7-1. … Road course success could carry over to the street track in Chicago. Elliott is NASCAR’s active leader with seven career road course wins, followed by Truex with five. Tyler Reddick won at Austin and Truex finished first at Sonoma in the Cup Series’ two road course races so far this season. 
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It was a smell that invoked a memory. Both for Emily Kuchlbauer in North Carolina and Ryan Bomba in Chicago. It was smoke from wildfires, the odor of an increasingly hot and occasionally on-fire world. 

Kuchlbauer had flashbacks to the surprise of soot coating her car three years ago when she was a recent college graduate in San Diego. Bomba had deja vu from San Francisco, where the air was so thick with smoke people had to mask up. They figured they left wildfire worries behind in California, but a Canada that’s burning from sea to warming sea brought one of the more visceral effects of climate change home to places that once seemed immune. 

“It’s been very apocalyptic feeling, because in California the dialogue is like, ‘Oh, it’s normal. This is just what happens on the West Coast,’ but it’s very much not normal here,” Kuchlbauer said. 

As Earth’s climate continues to change from heat-trapping gases spewed into the air, ever fewer people are out of reach from the billowing and deadly fingers of wildfire smoke, scientists say. Already wildfires are consuming three times more of the United States and Canada each year than in the 1980s and studies predict fire and smoke to worsen. 

While many people exposed to bad air may be asking themselves if this is a “new normal,” several scientists told The Associated Press they specifically reject any such idea because the phrase makes it sound like the world has changed to a new and steady pattern of extreme events. 

“Is this a new normal? No, it’s a new abnormal,” University of Pennsylvania climate scientist Michael Mann said. “It continues to get worse. If we continue to warm the planet, we don’t settle into some new state. It’s an ever-moving baseline of worse and worse.” 

It’s so bad that perhaps the term “wildfire” also needs to be rethought, suggested Woodwell Climate Research Center senior scientist Jennifer Francis. 

“We can’t really call them wildfires anymore,” Francis said. “To some extent they’re just not, they’re not wild. They’re not natural anymore. We are just making them more likely. We’re making them more intense.” 

Several scientists told the AP that the problem of smoke and wildfires will progressively worsen until the world significantly reduces greenhouse gas emissions, which has not happened despite years of international negotiations and lofty goals. 

Fires in North America are generally getting worse, burning more land. Even before July, traditionally the busiest fire month for the country, Canada has set a record for most area burned with 81,409 square kilometers, which is nearly 15% higher than the old record. 

“A year like this could happen with or without climate change, but warming temperatures just made it a lot more probable,” said A. Park Williams, a UCLA bioclimatologist who studies fire and water. “We’re seeing, especially across the West, big increases in smoke exposure and reduction in air quality that are attributable to increase in fire activity.” 

Numerous studies have linked climate change to increases in North American fires because global warming is increasing extreme weather, especially drought and mostly in the West. 

As the atmosphere dries, it sucks moisture out of plants, creating more fuel that burns easier, faster and with greater intensity. Then you add more lightning strikes from more storms, some of which are dry lightning strikes, said Canadian fire scientist Mike Flannigan at Thompson Rivers University in British Columbia. Fire seasons are getting longer, starting earlier and lasting later because of warmer weather, he said. 

“We have to learn to live with fire and smoke, that’s the new reality,” Flannigan said. 

Ronak Bhatia, who moved from California to Illinois for college in 2018 and now lives in Chicago, said at first it seemed like a joke: wildfire smoke following him and his friends from the West Coast. But if it continues, it will no longer be as funny. 

“It makes you think about climate change and also how it essentially could affect, you know, anywhere,” Bhatia said. “It’s not just the California problem or Australia problem. It’s kind of an everywhere problem.” 

Wildfires in the U.S. on average now burn about 31,000 square kilometers yearly, about the size of Maryland. From 1983 to 1987, when the National Interagency Fire Center started keeping statistics, only about 8,546 square kilometers burned annually. 

During the past five years, including a record low 2020, Canada has averaged 31,803 square kilometers burned, which is three and a half times larger than the 1983 to 1987 average. 

The type of fires seen this year in western Canada are in amounts scientists and computer models predicted for the 2030s and 2040s. And eastern Canada, where it rains more often, wasn’t supposed to see occasional fire years like this until the mid 21st century, Flannigan said. 

If the Canadian east is burning, that means eventually, and probably sooner than researchers thought, eastern U.S. states will also, Flannigan said. He and Williams pointed to devastating fires in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, that killed 14 people in 2016 during a brief drought in the East. 

America burned much more in the past, but that’s because people didn’t try to stop fires and they were less of a threat. The West used to have larger and regular fires until the mid-19th century, with more land settlement and then the U.S. government trying to douse every fire after the great 1910 Yellowstone fire, Williams said. 

Since about the 1950s, America pretty much got wildfires down to a minimum, but that hasn’t been the case since about 2000. 

“The warmer the Arctic gets and the more snow and ice melt there — the Arctic is warming three times faster than the rest of Earth — the differences in the summer between Arctic and mid-latitudes get smaller. That allows the jet stream of air high above the ground to meander and get stuck, prolonging bouts of bad weather, Mann and Francis said. Other scientists say they are waiting for more evidence on the impact of bouts of stuck weather. 

A new study published on June 23 links a stuck weather pattern to reduced North American snow cover in the spring. 

For people exposed to nasty air from wildfire smoke, increasing threats to health are part of the new reality. 

Wildfires expose about 44 million people per year worldwide to unhealthy air, causing about 677,000 deaths annually with almost 39% of them children, according to a 2021 study out of the United Kingdom. 

One study that looked at a dozen years of wildfire smoke exposure in Washington state showed a 1% all-ages increase in the odds of non-traumatic death the same day as the smoke hit the area and 2% for the day after. Risk of respiratory deaths jumped 14% and even more, 35%, for adults ages 45 to 64. 

The tiny particles making up a main pollutant of wildfire smoke, called PM2.5, are just the right size to embed deep in the lungs and absorb into the blood. But while their size has garnered attention, their composition also matters, said Kris Ebi, a University of Washington climate and health scientist. 

“There is emerging evidence that the toxicity of wildfire smoke PM2.5 is more toxic than what comes out of tailpipes,” Ebi said. 
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If you logged onto social media over the past few months, you may have seen it – a video of the Russian Embassy on a gray, overcast day in Washington with the sounds of passing cars and buses in the background.

A man’s voice asks in English, “Do you want to change your future?” Russian subtitles appear on the bottom of the screen and the narrator makes note of the first anniversary of “Russia’s further invasion of Ukraine.”

As somber music begins to play, the camera pans to the left and takes the viewer down Wisconsin Avenue, to the Adams Morgan Metro station and on through Washington, ending at FBI headquarters, a few blocks from the White House.

“The FBI values you. The FBI can help you,” FBI Assistant Director Alan Koehler says as the video wraps up, Russian subtitles still appearing on the screen. “But only you have the power to take the first step.”

The video, put out by the FBI’s Washington Field Office, first appeared as a posting on the field office’s Twitter account on February 24. Another five versions started the same day as paid advertisements on Facebook and Instagram, costing the bureau an estimated $5,500 to $6,500.

That money may seem like a pittance for a government agency with an annual budget of more than $10 billion, but it was not the first nor the last time the FBI spent money to court Russian officials.

The video is part of an expansive, long-running campaign by the FBI to use social media advertisements to recruit disgruntled Russian officials stationed across the United States and beyond, in part to sniff out Americans who have betrayed their country in order to aid Moscow.

A VOA analysis finds the FBI has paid tens of thousands of dollars, at minimum, to multiple platforms for social media ads targeting Russian officials, with the pace of such ad buys increasing just before and then after Moscow launched its latest invasion of Ukraine.

Multiple former U.S. counterintelligence officials who spoke to VOA about the FBI’s efforts described the advertising as money well spent.

The FBI wants to find well-placed Russian officials who can “help identify where American spies may be,” said Douglas London, a three-decade veteran of the CIA’s Clandestine Service.

“It seeks Russian agents to catch and convict American spies and Russian illegals,” he told VOA, describing the mission as a part of the bureau’s DNA.

Another veteran CIA official, Jim Olson, agreed, telling VOA the goal of the FBI’s outreach to Russian officials is unmistakable.

“I call that hanging out the shingle,” said Olson, a former counterintelligence chief.

“For every American traitor, every American spy, there are members of that intelligence service who know the identity of that American or know enough about what the production is to give us a lead in doing the identification,” Olson said.

‘All available tools’

The FBI declined to comment directly on its decision to spend several thousand dollars to run the two-minute-long video as an ad on Facebook and Instagram, simply saying it “uses a variety of means” to gather intelligence.

“The FBI will evaluate all available tools to protect the national security interests of the United States,” the FBI’s Washington Field Office told VOA in an email. “And we will use all legal means available to locate individuals with information that can help protect the United States from threats to our national security.”

Some of the FBI’s earlier forays into social media advertising did get some public attention, first in October 2019 and then again in March of last year.

However, a review of publicly available data indicates the bureau’s use of social media for counterintelligence is more expansive than previously understood.

According to data in the Meta Ad Library, which contains information on Facebook and Instagram ads dating back to May 2018, the FBI and its field offices have so far spent just under $40,000 on ads targeting Russian speakers, generating as many as 6.9 million views.

While most of the ads targeted specific locations, like Washington and New York, some were seen much further afield, getting views across much of the United States and even in countries like Spain, Poland, Nigeria, France and Croatia.

It would also appear the FBI’s paid ads ran on platforms other than Meta.

Nicholas Murphy, a 20-year-old second-year student at Georgetown University in Washington, was in his dorm room last March searching for news about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine when he saw an ad on YouTube, the video-sharing social media platform owned by Google.

“[It was] just text with a kind of a strange like background to it … all in Russian,” said Murphy, a Park City, Utah, native who does not speak Russian and who used a translator app to decipher the ad.

“At the time I didn’t know if it was coming from the Russian government, if it was coming from our government, if it was kind of propaganda, if it was fake,” Murphy told VOA. “It conjured up a lot of thoughts about Russian influence over Facebook ads in the [2016 U.S.] election.”

Murphy said he came across the ad another two to three times over the ensuing weeks. And, it turned out, he was not alone. A handful of other students were also starting to see some of the ads, including a couple of classmates in a Russian literature class.

Just how many ads the FBI paid to run on YouTube, or via Google, is unclear.

A search of Google’s recently launched Ad Transparency Center shows the FBI paid to run the Russian language version of its two-minute-long video most recently on April 28. But the database only shows information for the past 30 days and Google says it does not share information on advertiser spending.

It is also unclear whether the FBI paid to run any ads on Twitter in addition to pushing out information through its own Twitter accounts. Twitter responded to an email from VOA requesting information with its now standard poop emoji.

The FBI itself refused to provide details regarding the scope of its social media advertising efforts although the Washington Field Office did acknowledge to VOA via email that it uses “various social media platforms.”

The Washington Field Office also defended its use of social media advertising despite indications that the ads themselves, like the one seen by Georgetown University student Nicholas Murphy, do not always reach the intended audience.

“The FBI views these efforts as productive and cost effective,” the FBI’s Washington Field Office told VOA. The office declined to be more specific about whether any spies have been identified as a result of the ads.

“Russia has long been a counterintelligence threat to the U.S. and the FBI will continue to adapt our investigative and outreach techniques to counter that threat and others,” it said. “We will use all legal means available to locate individuals with information that can help protect the United States from threats to our national security.”

The Russian Embassy in Washington did not respond to calls or emails from VOA seeking comment about the FBI’s use of social media advertisements to target Russian officials in the U.S. But Russian Ambassador Anatoly Antonov did respond to a March 2022 article by The Washington Post about FBI efforts to send ads to cell phones outside the Russian Embassy in Washington.

“Attempts to sow confusion and organize desertion among the staff of @RusEmbUSA are ridiculous,” Antonov was quoted as saying in a tweet by the embassy’s Twitter account.

Some former U.S. counterintelligence officials, though, argue Russia has reason to be worried.

“I think people will come out of the woodwork,” said Olson, the former CIA counterintelligence chief.

FBI agents “see what we all see, and that is that there must be a subset of Russian intelligence officers, SVR officers, GRU officers, who are disillusioned by what’s going on,” he told VOA.

“I think some good Russians are embarrassed, shocked, ashamed of what Putin is doing in Ukraine, killing brother and sister Slavs. And I think that there will be people who would like to strike back against that.”

London, the longtime CIA Clandestine Services official and author of The Recruiter: Spying and the Lost Art of American Intelligence, likewise believes the FBI’s persistent efforts to reach disgruntled Russians on social media will pay off.

“Generally, the Russians who have worked with us have done so out of patriotism … they were upset with the government,” he said.

And the Russian officials that the FBI hopes to reach just need a bit of nudge.

“They’re aiming this at Russians who are already there mentally but just haven’t crossed,” London said, adding it is not a coincidence that many of the FBI ads show Russians exactly how to get in touch, whether via encrypted communication apps like Signal or by walking right up to the bureau’s front door.

“They’re not doing metaphors here,” he said. “They don’t want anything subject to interpretation.”

Even the language used by the FBI appears to be designed to build trust.

“It’s very much not native,” according to Bradley Gorski, with Georgetown University’s Department of Slavic Languages.

But given the overall quality of the language in the ads, Gorski said it is quite possible all of it is intentional.

“It might be a canny strategy on their part,” he said of the FBI. “If they are reaching out to Russian speakers and want to both communicate with them but let them know who is communicating with them is not a Russian speaker, but is a sort of American doing their best, then this kind of outreach with a little bit stilted, though correct, Russian might communicate that actually better than fully native sort of fluent speech.”

Whether the FBI’s spending on social media advertisements is achieving the desired results is hard to gauge. Public metrics such those provided by social media companies like Meta can give a sense of how many people are seeing the ads, and where they are, but do not shed much light on who is ultimately interacting with the ads to the point of a response.

When pressed, FBI officials tell VOA only that the bureau views the ad campaigns as productive.

Others agree.

“Relative to the hardcore military aid the U.S. has provided, that’s a small chunk of change,” said Jason Blazakis, a senior research fellow at The Soufan Center, a global intelligence firm.

And Blazakis, who also directs the Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, thinks the FBI’s social media ads might be having an impact even if few Russian officials ever come forward with information.

“Part of it is also messaging to the broader Russian public,” he told VOA, pointing to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “There is this influence operational component to it, part of this PR [public relations] battle that is happening on the periphery of the conflict.”
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The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the federal government is not required to help the Navajo Nation Reservation supply Colorado River water to thousands of homes on its reservation. Matt Dibble has the story.
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WASHINGTON – There is still time to dissuade Beijing not to use force to reunify Taiwan with mainland China, according to America’s most senior military official.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, said Friday that despite well-publicized plans calling for the Chinese military to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027, there is no indication Chinese President Xi Jinping has made a decision one way or the other.

Speaking to an audience at the National Press Club in Washington, Milley said that gives the U.S. and other countries time to show Xi the use of force would be a bad idea.

“You want to make sure that every single day, President Xi wakes up and says, ‘Today is not that day,’ and that that decision never comes,” he said.

Milley’s comments are in line with analysis from top U.S. intelligence officials, who have argued for much of the past year that Xi would prefer a peaceful reunification with Taiwan.

Some officials and analysts, however, have expressed concern that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine would prompt Beijing to risk war over Taiwan, with others warning China is likely learning lessons from Russia’s failures.

Milley on Friday said that as long as the U.S. and its allies are able to maintain their shrinking military advantage over China — and upgrade and modernize where necessary — Beijing can be persuaded to keep its forces on its side of the Taiwan Strait.

“The faster we move out, the faster we can retain military superiority, then I believe the theory of the case is we are more likely than not to deter war from happening, and if war does happen, we will prevail,” Milley said.

He also pushed back against criticism of the current U.S. approach to China and Taiwan, saying the U.S. and its allies have the capacity to support Ukraine and Taiwan, even though some of the needs overlap when it comes to weapon systems and ammunition.

“It’s not … a zero-sum game. It’s not like that,” Milley said, adding, “There are other allies and partners out there [to help Taiwan]. It’s not just the United States.”

Tensions between the U.S. and Chinese militaries have been rising steadily, going back to February, when the Pentagon accused China of flying a high-altitude spy balloon over the United States. 

Chinese officials have insisted the device was a weather balloon, rejecting evidence from Washington that the equipment on board the balloon was meant for surveillance.

Complicating matters, Chinese military leaders have refused to speak with their U.S. counterparts.

Earlier this week, officials at the Chinese Embassy in Washington called on the U.S. to drop sanctions against China as a prerequisite for talks.

Pentagon officials Thursday rejected the demand.

U.S. officials have said they will continue to leave open the possibility for military-to-military talks, saying such communication is critical to prevent misunderstandings that could lead to conflict, something Milley alluded to Friday. 

“The geostrategic history of this century will likely be determined by the United States-China relationship,” he said, “and whether it remains in competition or tips into a great power war.”
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Getting into Midtown Manhattan is going to get expensive in the coming months when early next year a new congestion pricing plan takes effect and may have some commuters trading their cars for trains and buses. Aron Ranen has the story.
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Colleges across the country will be forced to stop considering race in admissions under Thursday’s Supreme Court ruling, ending affirmative action policies that date back decades.

Schools that have relied on race-conscious admissions policies to build diversity will have to rethink how they admit students. It’s expected to result in campuses that have more white and Asian American students and fewer Black and Hispanic students.

The impact of the decision will be felt most strongly at the nation’s most selective colleges, which have been more likely to consider race as one of many factors in admissions. But some less selective universities also consider race, and hundreds of colleges may need to adjust their admissions systems in response to the decision.

Colleges say they’re still analyzing the decision, but it’s sure to have a dramatic impact nationwide. Here’s what we know so far.

When will the ruling take effect?

Today’s incoming high school seniors will be the first to see any change. Many of them will be applying for college over the next year as colleges remove race from admissions decisions. The process probably won’t look much different for students — maybe there will be another question or two about their life experiences — but behind the scenes, there could be big changes in the way colleges evaluate applications.

At Northeastern University, President Joseph E. Aoun said in a campus message the decision “will dramatically alter the use of race as a factor in college admissions.”

How many colleges consider race?

No one knows for sure. Colleges aren’t required to disclose whether they consider race, and the federal government doesn’t track it. A survey of about 200 colleges in 2019 found that roughly four in 10 colleges said race had at least limited influence in admissions decisions. The practice is most common at highly selective institutions, while many less selective schools don’t consider race.

Nine states have separately banned affirmative action at private universities, including California, Michigan, Florida and Washington.

In states that already banned affirmative action, colleges responded by recruiting more low-income students, hoping that wealth would act as a proxy for race. Some colleges also started “percentage” plans that offer admission to top students at every high school in their state. Such approaches have had mixed results. But expect to see more colleges trying alternate approaches.

How are colleges going to change admissions?

An alternate approach floated by some would put greater emphasis on students who overcome adversity. President Joe Biden endorsed that approach Thursday, saying adversity should be a “new standard” in college admissions, rewarding those who overcome challenges related to income, race or other factors.

The court’s decision appears to allow such an approach. The conservative majority wrote that “nothing prohibits universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected the applicant’s life,” as long as it’s tied to a particular quality the applicant brings to campus.

Applicants may see more colleges add questions about adversity or other life experiences. But the decision also warns about going too far, saying colleges can’t simply use essays to revive “the regime we hold unlawful today.”

What’s clear is that any direct consideration of race in admission decisions will have to end, meaning colleges will no longer be able to give an edge to underrepresented minorities simply because of their race.  

What does this mean for legacy admissions?

With affirmative action off the table, colleges face mounting pressure to end other admission practices that disproportionately benefit white and wealthy students. Chief among those are legacy preferences, the practice of giving an admission boost to the children of alumni.

Within hours of the decision, activists and some Democrats in Congress were urging colleges to abandon the policy. Biden took a shot at it too, saying he’s asking the Education Department to examine legacy preferences and other practices that “expand privilege instead of opportunity.” A small but notable group of colleges have dropped the practice in recent years, including Johns Hopkins University and Amherst College, but it continues at many others, including Harvard and other Ivy League schools.

What are colleges saying?   

Colleges across the country said they’re committed to campus diversity no matter what the court says. Campus leaders say they’re still sorting out how the decision will affect them, but many expressed optimism that they will legally find other ways to bring a diverse mix of students to campus.

Colleges are sending a welcoming message in hopes of avoiding the type of drop-off among Black and Hispanic students that have been seen in some states that outlawed affirmative action. 

Why were colleges considering race in the first place? 

In several decisions dating to the 1970s, the Supreme Court had upheld affirmative action in college admissions. Past rulings found that colleges have a compelling interest in promoting racial diversity because of the benefits it provides. They say it exposes students to differing viewpoints and helps prepare future leaders, among other benefits. Colleges say race has been a small factor, sometimes giving an edge to underrepresented students. Opponents dispute that notion, citing research finding a boost for Black applicants equivalent to 310 points on the SAT exam.

Thursday’s decision reversed course on the earlier decisions. The court found that while the benefits cited by universities are “commendable,” they don’t pass legal muster because they aren’t concrete enough to be measured and they don’t have a clear end goal. 
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Unaccompanied migrant children in U.S. shelters will now be allowed longer phone calls with loved ones. That’s because of a recent change in guidance announced by the U.S. agency that oversees the care and release of minors.

The updated guidance from the Office of Refugee Resettlement, that went into effect on Monday, allows minors to have at least 50-minute phone calls Monday through Friday with parents or other relatives anywhere in the U.S. or outside the country. That’s a change from the two 10-minute phone calls twice a week they were allowed to have.

Unaccompanied migrant minors remain in shelters and under the U.S. government’s custody until they’re released to their relatives or sponsors in the United States. Migrant children advocates called this a critical step for children’s safety and well-being.

“It’s something that children have repeatedly raised over time as a key issue in terms of conditions of custody,” Jane Liu, director of policy and litigation at Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights, told VOA. “We’ve been working with pediatric health experts to do advocacy around this issue. … And so anything to mitigate the harm of that detention is critical to their health and that’s why … we’ve been pushing really hard on this.”

The policy also requires at least 45-minute calls on holidays, weekends, and the child’s birthday. Unlimited calls are expected to be available when children are in situations of emergency such as “grieving the loss of a loved one or experiencing a mental health crisis.”

There are almost 6,000 unaccompanied minors in U.S. custody, according to the latest daily report released by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Homeland Security.

In its daily report to the media, ORR and DHS repeatedly say that in more than 80% of cases, an unaccompanied minor has a family member in the United States; in nearly half of those instances, that family member is a parent or legal guardian.

“These children are reunited with their families who will care for them,” according to the daily report. “The children then go through immigration proceedings where they are able to present an application for asylum or other protection under the law.”

Importance of communication

Physicians for Human Rights sent ORR a letter in April 2022 recommending that children in its custody have at least 30 minutes of phone communication per day, video being preferable, and in-person contact visits when possible. For children without anyone to call, the physicians recommended support through other activities.

“The most powerful factor to foster child resilience and adaptive skills to overcome negative impacts from difficult situations is a secure relationship with a safe, stable, nurturing adult whose presence is continuous over time, whether it is the child’s parent or caregiver,” they wrote. “Emotionally attuned attachment promotes healthy brain growth, development of accurate mental maps of self and others, ability to trust, and protection from trauma.”

Although ORR did not say specifically what prompted its decision to allow for longer phone calls with loved ones, expanded communications had been advocated by a number of pediatric health experts aside from PHR, some of whom submitted an open letter to ORR officials in January.

In addition to government-run facilities, some unaccompanied minors are placed in foster care programs until they are released to relatives in the United States. ORR notes in its policy that “Care providers must exhaust all efforts to utilize video calls over audio-only calls, where the family, sponsor and/or other approved contacts have access to video calling technology.”

ORR guidance also prohibits providers from taking away or threatening to take away opportunities to communicate with approved family members or sponsors as a form of punishment.

Unaccompanied migrant minors arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border and crossing without authorization are first taken to a border patrol station. Many hope to reunite with parents who are already in the U.S. or have deliberately left their country due to crime, domestic abuse, gangs, or poverty.

Within 72 hours, however, they must be transferred to the custody of the ORR office under HHS and placed in facilities designed to accommodate the needs of children.

The Biden administration dealt with a record number of unaccompanied migrant minors arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border in fiscal 2022. According to the latest numbers, border patrol processed 9,943 minors in May. That number was 14,675 at the same time last year.

In May, the U.S. House passed a border security package that included extending the timeframe in which minors can be held in immigration facilities, limiting asylum and eliminating ORR’s program that offers legal representation to children in immigration court.

Democrats have said the proposed legislation does not resolve the challenges at the U.S.-Mexico border.

U.S. Representative Jody Chu, from California, said the bill would “decimate our asylum system and humanitarian protections, put more children and families in detention.”

House GOP leadership, however, said the proposal is the “strongest border security bill this country has ever seen.”

The bill, however, is unlikely to become law as the White House has already said it would veto it.
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The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Thursday against allowing race to be used as a factor in college and university admissions, ending a decades-long policy intended to improve diversity in American higher education. VOA’s Congressional Correspondent Katherine Gypson has more.
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FORT LAUDERDALE, FLORIDA — A Florida sheriff’s deputy was acquitted Thursday of felony child neglect and other charges for failing to act during the 2018 Parkland school massacre, concluding the first trial in U.S. history of a law enforcement officer for conduct during an on-campus shooting.

Former Broward County Deputy Scot Peterson wept as the verdicts were read. The jury had deliberated for 19 hours over four days.

The campus deputy at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, Peterson had been charged with failing to confront shooter Nikolas Cruz during his six-minute attack inside a three-story classroom building on Feb. 14, 2018, that left 17 dead.

He could have received nearly 100 years in prison, although a sentence even approaching that length would have been highly unlikely given the circumstances and his clean record. He also could have lost his $104,000 annual pension.

Prosecutors, during their two-week presentation, called to the witness stand students, teachers and law enforcement officers who testified about the horror they experienced and how they knew where Cruz was. Some said they knew for certain that the shots were coming from the 1200 building. Prosecutors also called a training supervisor who testified Peterson did not follow protocols for confronting an active shooter.

Peterson’s attorney, Mark Eiglarsh, during his two-day presentation, called several deputies who arrived during the shooting and students and teachers who testified they did not think the shots were coming from the 1200 building. Peterson, who did not testify, has said that because of echoes, he could not pinpoint the shooter’s location.

Eiglarsh also emphasized the failure of the sheriff’s radio system during the attack, which limited what Peterson heard from arriving deputies.

Security videos show that 36 seconds after Cruz’s attack began, Peterson left his office about 100 yards (92 meters) from the 1200 building and jumped into a cart with two unarmed civilian security guards. They arrived at the building a minute later.

Peterson got out of the cart near the east doorway to the first-floor hallway. Cruz was at the hallway’s opposite end, firing his AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle.

Peterson, who was not wearing a bullet-resistant vest, didn’t open the door. Instead, he took cover 75 feet (23 meters) away in the alcove of a neighboring building, his gun still drawn. He stayed there for 40 minutes, long after the shooting ended and other police officers had stormed the building.

Peterson spent nearly three decades working at schools, including nine years at Stoneman Douglas. He retired shortly after the shooting and was then fired retroactively.

Cruz, a 24-year-old former Stoneman Douglas, student was sentenced to life in prison for the shooting.
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ALBUQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO — A team of Italian researchers reached the edge of space Thursday morning, flying aboard Virgin Galactic’s rocket-powered plane as the company prepares for monthly commercial flights.

The flight launched from Spaceport America in the New Mexico desert, with two Italian Air Force officers and an engineer with the National Research Council of Italy focusing on a series of microgravity experiments during their few minutes of weightless.

One wore a special suit that measured biometric data and physiological responses while another conducted tests using sensors to track heart rate, brain function and other metrics while in microgravity. The third studied how certain liquids and solids mix in that very weak gravity.

Virgin Galactic livestreamed the flight on its website, showing the moment when the ship released from its carrier plane and the rocket was ignited. The entire trip took about 90 minutes, with the plane’s touchdown on the runway prompting cheers and claps by Virgin Galactic staff.

With the ship’s copilots, it marked the most Italians in space at the same time. Colonel Walter Villadei, a space engineer with the Italian Air Force, celebrated by unfolding an Italian flag while weightless.

Next up for Virgin Galactic will be the first of hundreds of ticket holders, many who have been waiting years for their chance at weightlessness and to see the curvature of the Earth. Those commercial flights are expected to begin in August and will be scheduled monthly, the space tourism company said.

Virgin Galactic has been working for years to send paying passengers on short space trips and in 2021 finally won the federal government’s approval. The company completed its final test fight in May.

The Italian research flight was initially scheduled for the fall of 2021 but Virgin Galactic at the time said it was forced to push back its timeline due to a potential defect in a component used in its flight control system. Then the company spent months upgrading its rocket ship before resuming testing in early 2023.

After reaching an altitude of nearly 15,000 meters, Virgin Galactic’s space plane is released from a carrier aircraft and drops for a moment before igniting its rocket motor. The rocket shuts off once it reaches space, leaving passengers weight before the ship then glides back to the runway at Spaceport America.

Virgin Galactic has sold about 800 tickets over the past decade, with the initial batch going for $200,000 each. Tickets now cost $450,000 per person.

The company said early fliers have already received their seat assignments.
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The Supreme Court on Thursday struck down affirmative action in college admissions, forcing institutions of higher education to look for new ways to achieve diverse student bodies.

The court’s conservative majority overturned admissions plans at Harvard and the University of North Carolina, the nation’s oldest private and public colleges, respectively.

Chief Justice John Roberts said that for too long universities have “concluded, wrongly, that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned but the color of their skin. Our constitutional history does not tolerate that choice.”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in dissent that the decision “rolls back decades of precedent and momentous progress.”

In a separate dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson — the court’s first Black female justice — called the decision “truly a tragedy for us all.”

The Supreme Court had twice upheld race-conscious college admissions programs in the past 20 years, including as recently as 2016.

But that was before the three appointees of former President Donald Trump joined the court. At arguments in late October, all six conservative justices expressed doubts about the practice, which had been upheld under Supreme Court decisions reaching back to 1978.

Lower courts also had upheld the programs at both UNC and Harvard, rejecting claims that the schools discriminated against white and Asian-American applicants.
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