Author: PolitCens

state department — The United States has pledged to continue providing Taiwan with equipment and services essential for maintaining a self-defense capability in line with the threats it faces. This statement came as an annual U.S.-Taiwan defense industry conference kicked off Sunday in Philadelphia.

In the lead-up to the event, the conference organizer — the U.S.-Taiwan Business Council (USTBC) — was targeted by a phishing cyberattack involving a forged registration form embedded with information-stealing malware.

Despite the hackers’ attempt, the council — a nonprofit trade association founded in 1976 to promote commerce between the U.S. and Taiwan — thwarted the attack. The identity of the attackers remains unknown.

“As the council has been targeted by similar attacks for more than 20 years, we realized quickly that the document was suspicious,” USTBC said in a statement. The statement added that the council submitted the document to an online virus scanner, confirmed it was malicious and deleted it.

This year’s U.S.-Taiwan Defense Industry Conference, which ends Tuesday, is the 23rd annual event in a series of conferences addressing U.S. defense cooperation with Taiwan.

“There will be considerable focus on how Taiwan’s efforts to deter a Chinese attack are progressing … and how U.S. industry should support the U.S. and Taiwan government policy,” said Rupert Hammond-Chambers, president of the U.S.-Taiwan Business Council.

“This is the most important annual gathering of U.S. industry and policymakers on U.S.-Taiwan defense relations,” he added.

Taiwan Relations Act

The State Department said that American officials’ participation in the annual conference aligns with long-standing U.S. policy.

Swift provision of equipment and services “is essential for Taiwan’s self-defense, and we will continue to work with industry to support that goal,” a State Department spokesperson told VOA.

“We continue to have an abiding interest in maintaining peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait. Our ‘One China’ policy has not changed and remains guided by the Taiwan Relations Act, three joint communiques and six assurances,” the spokesperson added.

The 1979 U.S.-China Joint Communique shifted diplomatic recognition from the Republic of China (ROC), Taiwan’s formal name, to the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

Relations between the U.S. and Taiwan have since been governed by the Taiwan Relations Act, passed by Congress in April 1979, under which the U.S. provides defense equipment to Taiwan.

The act states that “any effort to determine the future of Taiwan by other than peaceful means, including by boycotts or embargoes,” is a threat to the peace and security of the Western Pacific area and of “grave concern to the United States.”

For decades, the U.S. has been clear that its decision to establish diplomatic relations with China in 1979 rested on the expectation that “the future of Taiwan will be determined by peaceful means,” as stipulated in the Taiwan Relations Act.

China has objected to the Taiwan Relations Act — a U.S. public law — and deemed it invalid.

In 2022, the U.S. Congress authorized the president to direct the drawdown of up to $1 billion per fiscal year in Defense Department equipment and services for Taiwan. Since 2010, the State Department has authorized more than $38 billion in foreign military sales to Taiwan.

PRC sanctioned nine US firms

Since its establishment in 1949, the People’s Republic of China has never ruled Taiwan, but it views the democratically governed island as its own territory and has vowed to bring Taiwan under its control, even by force.

In recent years, the PRC has frequently sent military vessels near Taiwan and warplanes into its air defense identification zone to pressure the island to accept Chinese sovereignty.

Last week, China announced sanctions against nine American companies in response to U.S. defense equipment sales to Taiwan. Beijing’s latest action aims to exert additional pressure on Washington to halt its arms sales to the Taipei government.

The sanctions followed the U.S. approval of an estimated $228 million package of spare parts and other hardware for Taiwan’s aging air force.

In Beijing, officials asserted that U.S. weapons sales to Taiwan undermine China’s sovereignty and security interests.

“China urges the U.S. to earnestly abide by the one China principle and the three China-U.S. joint communiques and immediately stop the dangerous trend of arming Taiwan,” said Lin Jian, a spokesperson for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, during a recent briefing.

“We will take strong and resolute measures to firmly defend our national sovereignty, security and territorial integrity,” Lin added.

The United States does not subscribe to the PRC’s “one China principle,” the U.S. State Department said. “The PRC continues to publicly misrepresent U.S. policy.”

 
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washington — Violent crime in the United States is down for a second consecutive year, with law enforcement agencies reporting significant declines in murder and rapes, according to a just-released report from the FBI.

The FBI Crime in the Nation report released Monday found violent crime, overall, fell by 3% from 2022 to 2023, with murder and manslaughter rates dropping by 11.6% and rape down by more than 9%.

There were also smaller declines in the number of robberies and aggravated assaults.

Additionally, property crimes, which include burglary, fell by an estimated 2.4% year over year, though motor vehicle theft jumped by 12.6%.

FBI officials, briefing reporters on the report, described the drop in the number of murders as notable, saying the 11.6% decline is the largest recorded over the past 20 years.

Overall, the officials said the rate of all violent crimes in 2023 was 363.3 crimes per 100,000 inhabitants, down from a rate of 377.1 violent crimes per 100,000 inhabitants in 2022.

More than 16,000 U.S. state and local law enforcement agencies contributed data for the report, including all agencies serving cities with more than one million people.

The decrease in violent crimes across the U.S. continues a trend dating back to 2021, when crime rates fell after a spike in murders in 2020, during the coronavirus pandemic.

The violent crime rate also remains well below a peak in rates during the early 1990s.

Some crimes, though, have seen slight increases, including the number of aggravated assaults with knives, cutting instruments or other weapons.

The number of so-called “strong-arm” robberies – involving intimidation or a threat of the use of force – rose by 3.2%.

Assaults on police officers also jumped to a 10-year high according to the FBI report, including 60 officers murdered in the line of duty.

The number of hate crimes and victims of hate crimes also increased from 2022 to 2023, though FBI officials said the rise could have been impacted by an increase in the number of law enforcement agencies reporting hate crime data.

FBI officials declined to comment on whether the trends and the overall decrease in violent crime from 2022 to 2023 have extended into 2024. But a report issued by the non-partisan Council on Criminal Justice (CCJ) in July indicates the number of violent crimes continue to fall.

That study, based on monthly crime rates for dozens of major U.S. cities found murder rates fell by 13% in the first half of 2024 compared to the first six months of 2023. Assaults, assaults with guns and carjacking also fell.

But while the CCJ report called the overall trends encouraging, it noted, “many cities are still experiencing disturbingly high leve
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Washington — The U.S. Commerce Department on Monday proposed prohibiting key Chinese software and hardware in connected vehicles on American roads due to national security concerns — a move that would effectively bar nearly all Chinese cars from entering the U.S. market.

The planned regulation, first reported by Reuters, would also force American and other major automakers in the coming years to remove key Chinese software and hardware from vehicles in the United States.

The Biden administration has raised serious concerns about the collection of data by Chinese companies on U.S. drivers and infrastructure through connected vehicles as well as about potential foreign manipulation of vehicles connected to the internet and navigation systems. The White House ordered an investigation into the potential dangers in February.

The prohibitions would prevent testing of self-driving cars on U.S. roads by Chinese automakers and extend to vehicle software and hardware produced by other U.S. foreign adversaries including Russia.

“When foreign adversaries build software to make a vehicle that means it can be used for surveillance, can be remotely controlled, which threatens the privacy and safety of Americans on the road,” Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo told a briefing.

“In an extreme situation, a foreign adversary could shut down or take control of all their vehicles operating in the United States all at the same time causing crashes, blocking roads.”

The move is a significant escalation in the United States’ ongoing restrictions on Chinese vehicles, software and components. Earlier this month, the Biden administration locked in steep tariff hikes on Chinese imports, including a 100% duty on electric vehicles as well as new hikes on EV batteries and key minerals.

There are relatively few Chinese-made cars or light-duty trucks imported into the United States. But Raimondo said the department is acting “before suppliers, automakers and car components linked to China or Russia become commonplace and widespread in the U.S. automotive sector… We’re not going to wait until our roads are filled with cars and the risk is extremely significant before we act.”

Nearly all newer cars and trucks are considered “connected” with onboard network hardware that allows internet access, allowing them to share data with devices both inside and outside the vehicle.

A senior administration official confirmed the proposal would effectively ban all existing Chinese light-duty cars and trucks from the U.S. market, but added it would allow Chinese automakers to seek “specific authorizations” for exemptions.

The United States has ample evidence of China prepositioning malware in critical American infrastructure, White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told the same briefing.

“With potentially millions of vehicles on the road, each with 10- to 15-year lifespans the risk of disruption and sabotage increases dramatically,” Sullivan said.

The Chinese Embassy in Washington last month criticized planned action to limit Chinese vehicle exports to the United States: “China urges the U.S. to earnestly abide by market principles and international trade rules, and create a level playing field for companies from all countries. China will firmly defend its lawful rights and interests.”

The proposal calls for making software prohibitions effective in the 2027 model year while the hardware ban would take effect in the 2030 model year or January 2029.

The Commerce Department is giving the public 30 days to comment on the proposal and hopes to finalize it by Jan. 20. The rules would apply to all on-road vehicles but exclude agricultural or mining vehicles not used on public roads.

The Alliance For Automotive Innovation, a group representing major automakers including General Motors, Toyota, Volkswagen and Hyundai, has warned that changing hardware and software would take time.

The group noted connected vehicle hardware and software are developed around the world, including China, but could not detail to what extent Chinese-made components are prevalent in U.S. models.
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Moscow — A Soyuz capsule carrying two Russians and one American from the International Space Station landed Monday in Kazakhstan, ending a record-breaking stay for the Russian pair.

The capsule landed on the Kazakh steppe about 3 1/2 hours after undocking from the ISS in an apparently trouble-free descent. In the last stage of the landing, it descended under a red-and-white parachute at about 7.2 meters per second (16 mph), with small rockets fired in the final seconds to cushion the touchdown.

The astronauts were extracted from the capsule and placed in nearby chairs to help them adjust to gravity, then given medical examinations in a nearby tent.

Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub returned after 374 days aboard the space station; on Friday they broke the record for the longest continuous stay there. Also in the capsule was American Tracy Dyson, who was in the space station for six months.

Eight astronauts remain in the space station, including Americans Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who have remained long past their scheduled return to Earth.

They arrived in June as the first crew of Boeing’s new Starliner capsule. But their trip was marred by thruster troubles and helium leaks, and the U.S. space agency NASA decided it was too risky to return them on Starliner.

The two astronauts are to ride home with SpaceX next year.
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Joe Biden makes his final presidential address before the United Nations General Assembly this week. But hanging over his head as he takes to the green marble podium for the last time, and as he meets separately with other leaders in New York: conflict in the Middle East – and how his actions have shaped it. VOA White House correspondent Anita Powell reports from New York.
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Sacramento, California — “Paper or plastic” will no longer be a choice at grocery store checkout lines in California under a new law signed Sunday by Gov. Gavin Newsom that bans all plastic shopping bags.

California had already banned thin plastic shopping bags at supermarkets and other stores, but shoppers could purchase bags made with a thicker plastic that purportedly made them reusable and recyclable.

The new measure, approved by state legislators last month, bans all plastic shopping bags starting in 2026. Consumers who don’t bring their own bags will now simply be asked if they want a paper bag.

State Sen. Catherine Blakespear, one of the bill’s supporters, said people were not reusing or recycling any plastic bags. She pointed to a state study that found that the amount of plastic shopping bags trashed per person grew from 3.6 kilograms per year in 2004 to 5 kilograms per year in 2021.

Blakespear, a Democrat from Encinitas, said the previous bag ban passed a decade ago didn’t reduce the overall use of plastic.

“We are literally choking our planet with plastic waste,” she said in February.

The environmental nonprofit Oceana applauded Newsom for signing the bill and “safeguarding California’s coastline, marine life, and communities from single-use plastic grocery bags.”

Christy Leavitt, Oceana’s plastics campaign director, said Sunday that the new ban on single-use plastic bags at grocery store checkouts “solidifies California as a leader in tackling the global plastic pollution crisis.”

Twelve states, including California, already have some type of statewide plastic bag ban in place, according to the environmental advocacy group Environment America Research & Policy Center. Hundreds of cities across 28 states also have their own plastic bag bans in place.

The California Legislature passed its statewide ban on plastic bags in 2014. The law was later affirmed by voters in a 2016 referendum.

The California Public Interest Research Group said Sunday that the new law finally meets the intent of the original bag ban.

“Plastic bags create pollution in our environment and break into microplastics that contaminate our drinking water and threaten our health,” said the group’s director Jenn Engstrom. “Californians voted to ban plastic grocery bags in our state almost a decade ago, but the law clearly needed a redo. With the governor’s signature, California has finally banned plastic bags in grocery checkout lanes once and for all.”

As San Francisco’s mayor in 2007, Newsom signed the nation’s first plastic bag ban.
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Washington — Congressional leaders announced an agreement Sunday on a short-term spending bill that will fund federal agencies for about three months, averting a possible partial government shutdown when the new budget year begins Oct. 1 and pushing final decisions until after the November election.

Lawmakers have struggled to get to this point as the current budget year winds to a close at month’s end. At the urging of the most conservative members of his conference, House Speaker Mike Johnson had linked temporary funding with a mandate that would have compelled states to require proof of citizenship when people register to vote.

But Johnson could not get all Republicans on board even as the party’s presidential nominee, Donald Trump, insisted on that package. Trump said Republican lawmakers should not support a stop-gap measure without the voting requirement, but the bill went down to defeat anyway, with 14 Republicans opposing it.

Bipartisan negotiations began in earnest shortly after that, with leadership agreeing to extend funding into mid-December. That gives the current Congress the ability to fashion a full-year spending bill after the Nov. 5 election, rather than push that responsibility to the next Congress and president.

In a letter to Republican colleagues, Johnson said the budget measure would be “very narrow, bare-bones” and include “only the extensions that are absolutely necessary.”

“While this is not the solution any of us prefer, it is the most prudent path forward under the present circumstances,” Johnson wrote. “As history has taught and current polling affirms, shutting the government down less than 40 days from a fateful election would be an act of political malpractice.”

Rep. Tom Cole, the House Appropriations Committee chairman, had said on Friday that talks were going well.

“So far, nothing has come up that we can’t deal with,” said Cole, R-Okla. “Most people don’t want a government shutdown and they don’t want that to interfere with the election. So nobody is like, ‘I’ve got to have this or we’re walking.’ It’s just not that way.”

Johnson’s earlier effort had no chance in the Democratic-controlled Senate and was opposed by the White House, but it did give the speaker a chance to show Trump and conservatives within his conference that he fought for their request.

The final result — government funding effectively on autopilot — was what many had predicted. With the election just weeks away, few lawmakers in either party had any appetite for the brinksmanship that often leads to a shutdown.

Now a bipartisan majority is expected to push the short-term measure over the finish line. Temporary spending bills generally fund agencies at current levels, but some additional money was included to bolster the Secret Service, replenish a disaster relief fund and aid with the presidential transition, among other things.
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Scranton, Pennsylvania — Under extraordinarily tight security, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Sunday visited the Pennsylvania ammunition factory that is producing one of the most critically needed munitions for his country’s fight to fend off Russian ground forces.

His visit to the Scranton Army Ammunition Plant kicked off a busy week in the United States to shore up support for Ukraine in the war. He will speak at the U.N. General Assembly annual gathering in New York on Tuesday and Wednesday and then travel to Washington for talks on Thursday with President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.

As Zelenskyy’s large motorcade made its way to the ammunition plant on Sunday afternoon, a small contingent of supporters waving Ukrainian flags assembled nearby to show their appreciation for his visit to thank the workers.

The area around the ammunition plant had been sealed off since the morning, with municipal garbage trucks positioned across several roadblocks and a very heavy presence of city, regional and state police, including troopers on horseback.

The Scranton plant is one of the few facilities in the country to manufacture 155 mm artillery shells and has increased production over the past year.

The 155 mm shells are used in howitzer systems, which are towed large guns with long barrels that can fire at various angles. Howitzers can strike targets up to 24 kilometers to 32 kilometers away and are highly valued by ground forces to take out enemy targets from a protected distance.

Ukraine has already received more than 3 million of the 155 mm shells from the U.S.

“It’s unfortunate that we need a plant like this, but it’s here, and it’s here to protect the world,” said Vera Kowal Krewsun, a first-generation Ukrainian American who was among those who greeted Zelenskyy’s motorcade. “And I strongly feel that way.”

She said many of her friends’ parents have worked in the ammunition plant, and she called Zelenskyy’s visit “a wonderful thing.”

Laryssa Salak, 60, whose parents also immigrated from Ukraine, also said she was pleased Zelenskyy came to thank the workers. She said it upsets her that funding for Ukraine’s defense has divided Americans and that even some of her friends oppose the support, saying the money should go to help Americans instead.

“But they don’t understand that that money does not directly go to Ukraine, Salak said. “It goes to American factories that manufacture, like here, like the ammunition. So that money goes to American workers as well. And a lot of people don’t understand that.”

With the war now well into its third year, Zelenskyy has been pushing the U.S. for permission to use longer range missile systems to fire deeper inside of Russia.

So far he has not persuaded the Pentagon or White House to loosen those restrictions.

The Defense Department has emphasized that Ukraine can already hit Moscow with Ukrainian-produced drones, and there is hesitation on the strategic implications of a U.S.-made missile potentially striking the Russian capital.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned that Russia would be “at war” with the United States and its NATO allies if they allow Ukraine to use the long-range weapons.

At one point in the war, Ukraine was firing between 6,000 and 8,000 of the 155 mm shells per day. That rate started to deplete U.S. stockpiles and drew concern that the level on hand was not enough to sustain U.S. military needs if another major conventional war broke out, such as in a potential conflict over Taiwan.

In response the U.S. has invested in restarting production lines and is now manufacturing more than 40,000 155 mm rounds a month, with plans to hit 100,000 rounds a month.

Two of the Pentagon leaders who have pushed that increased production through — Doug Bush, assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology, and Bill LaPlante, the Pentagon’s top weapons buyer — were expected to join Zelenskyy at the plant, as was Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro.

The 155 mm rounds are just one of the scores of ammunition, missile, air defense and advanced weapons systems the U.S. has provided Ukraine — everything from small arms bullets to advanced F-16 fighter jets. The U.S. has been the largest donor to Ukraine, providing more than $56 billion of the more than $106 billion NATO and partner countries have collected to aid in its defense.

Even though Ukraine is not a member of NATO, commitment to its defense is seen by many of the European nations as a must to keep Putin from further military aggression that could threaten bordering NATO-member countries and result in a much larger conflict.
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A business owner in Baltimore, Maryland, who was born in Kyiv has started a charity to help Ukrainian children affected by war.  Andriy Borys has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. VOA footage by Viacheslav Filiushkin.
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U.S. lawmakers from both major political parties have called for cooling the nation’s heated political rhetoric six weeks before the November 5th presidential election. This follows a second apparent assassination attempt on former president Donald Trump. And his claims of immigrants eating people’s pets that has an Ohio Haitan community on edge. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi has the story.
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BIRMINGHAM, Alabama — Four people have died and more than 20 were wounded in a shooting in a nightlife area in the U.S. state of Alabama, according to police and news reports.

There were multiple people shot in Birmingham, the Birmingham Police Department said in a social media post.

Birmingham Officer Truman Fitzgerald said the shooting, with up to 21 people wounded, happened shortly after 11 p.m., AL.COM reported.

Fitzgerald said there were “dozens of gunshot victims” and at least four had “life-threatening” injuries, AL.COM reported.

Birmingham Fire and Rescue Service pronounced the three victims dead on the scene and a fourth person was pronounced dead at University of Alabama at Birmingham Hospital, AL.COM reported.

Police said the victims found dead at the scene included two men and a woman, WBMA-TV reported.

Other victims were transported to hospitals in private vehicles, police told WBMA.

The Birmingham police did not immediately respond to an email from The Associated Press seeking additional information.

The Five Points South area of Birmingham has numerous entertainment venues, restaurants and bars and often is crowded on Saturday nights.

Police said there were no immediate arrests.

“We will do everything we possibly can to make sure we uncover, identify and hunt down whoever is responsible for preying on our people this morning,” Fitzgerald told WBMA. 
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LOUISVILLE, Kentucky — On his first day of school at Newcomer Academy, Maikel Tejeda was whisked to the school library. The 7th grader didn’t know why.

He soon got the point: He was being given make-up vaccinations. Five of them.

“I don’t have a problem with that,” said the 12-year-old, who moved from Cuba early this year.

Across the library, a group of city, state and federal officials gathered to celebrate the school clinic, and the city. With U.S. childhood vaccination rates below their goals, Louisville and the state were being praised as success stories: Kentucky’s vaccination rate for kindergarteners rose 2 percentage points in the 2022-23 school year compared with the year before. The rate for Jefferson County — which is Louisville — was up 4 percentage points.

“Progress is success,” said Dr. Mandy Cohen, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

But that progress didn’t last. Kentucky’s school entry vaccination rate slipped last year. Jefferson County’s rate slid, too. And the rates for both the county and state remain well below the target thresholds.

It raises the question: If this is what success looks like, what does it say about the nation’s ability to stop imported infections from turning into community outbreaks?

Local officials believe they can get to herd immunity thresholds, but they acknowledge challenges that includes tight funding, misinformation and well-intended bureaucratic rules that can discourage doctors from giving kids shots.

“We’re closing the gap,” said Eva Stone, who has managed the county school system’s health services since 2018. “We’re not closing the gap very quickly.”

Falling vaccination rates

Public health experts focus on vaccination rates for kindergartners because schools can be cauldrons for germs and the launching pad for community outbreaks.

For years, those rates were high, thanks largely to mandates that required key vaccinations as a condition of school attendance.

But they have slid in recent years. When COVID-19 started hitting the U.S. hard in 2020, schools were closed, visits to pediatricians declined and vaccination record-keeping fell off. Meanwhile, more parents questioned routine childhood vaccinations that they used to automatically accept, an effect that experts attribute to misinformation and the political schism that emerged around COVID-19 vaccines.

A Gallup survey released last month found that 40% of Americans said it is extremely important for parents to have their children vaccinated, down from 58% in 2019. Meanwhile, a recent University of Pennsylvania survey of 1,500 people found that about 1 in 4 U.S. adults think the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine causes autism — despite no medical evidence for it.

All that has led more parents to seek exemptions to school entry vaccinations. The CDC has not yet reported national data for the 2023-24 school year, but the proportion of U.S. kindergartners exempted from school vaccination requirements the year before hit a record 3%.

Overall, 93% of kindergartners got their required shots for the 2022-23 school year. The rate was 95% in the years before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Officials worry slipping vaccination rates will lead to disease outbreaks.

The roughly 250 U.S. measles cases reported so far this year are the most since 2019, and Oregon is seeing its largest outbreak in more than 30 years.

Kentucky has been experiencing its worst outbreak of whooping cough — another vaccine-preventable disease — since 2017. Nationally, nearly 14,000 cases have been reported this year, the most since 2019.

Persuading parents

The whooping cough surge is a warning sign but also an opportunity, said Kim Tolley, a California-based historian who wrote a book last year on the vaccination of American schoolchildren. She called for a public relations campaign to “get everybody behind” improving immunizations.

Much of the discussion about raising vaccination rates centers on campaigns designed to educate parents about the importance of vaccinating children — especially those on the fence about getting shots for their kids.

But experts are still hashing out what kind of messaging work best: Is it better, for example, to say “vaccinate” or “immunize”?

A lot of the messaging is influenced by feedback from small focus groups. One takeaway is some people have less trust in health officials and even their own doctors than they once did. Another is that they strongly trust their own feelings about vaccines and what they’ve seen in Internet searches or heard from other sources.

“Their overconfidence is hard to shake. It’s hard to poke holes in it,” said Mike Perry, who ran focus groups on behalf of a group called the Public Health Communications Collaborative.

But many people seem more trusting of older vaccines. And they do seem to be at least curious about information they didn’t know, including the history of research behind vaccines and the dangers of the diseases they were created to fight, he said.

Improving access

Dolores Albarracin has studied vaccination improvement strategies in 17 countries, and repeatedly found that the most effective strategy is to make it easier for kids to get vaccinated.

“In practice, most people are not vaccinating simply because they don’t have money to take the bus” or have other troubles getting to appointments, said Albarracin, director of the communication science division within Penn’s Annenberg Public Policy Center.

That’s a problem in Louisville, where officials say few doctors were providing vaccinations to children enrolled in Medicaid and fewer still were providing shots to kids without any health insurance. An analysis a few years ago indicated 1 in 5 children — about 20,000 kids — were not current on their vaccinations, and most of them were poor, said Stone, the county school health manager.

A 30-year-old federal program called Vaccines for Children pays for vaccinations for children who Medicaid-eligible or lack the insurance to cover it.

But in a meeting with the CDC director last month, Louisville health officials lamented that most local doctors don’t participate in the program because of paperwork and other administrative headaches. And it can be tough for patients to get the time and transportation to get to those few dozen Louisville providers who do take part.

The school system has tried to fill the gap. In 2019, it applied to become a VFC provider, and gradually established vaccine clinics.

Last year, it held clinics at nearly all 160 schools, and it’s doing the same thing this year. The first was at Newcomer Academy, where many immigrant students behind on their vaccinations are started in the school system.

It’s been challenging, Stone said. Funding is very limited. There are bureaucratic obstacles, and a growing influx of children from other countries who need shots. It takes multiple trips to a doctor or clinic to complete some vaccine series. And then there’s the opposition — vaccination clinic announcements tend to draw hateful social media comments. 
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BALTIMORE — Federal agents on Saturday boarded a vessel managed by the same company that managed a cargo ship that caused a deadly bridge collapse in Baltimore, Maryland, the FBI confirmed.

In statements, spokespeople for the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Maryland confirmed that authorities boarded the Maersk Saltoro. The ship is managed by Synergy Marine Group.

“The Federal Bureau of Investigation, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Criminal Investigation Division and Coast Guard Investigative Services are present aboard the Maersk Saltoro conducting court authorized law enforcement activity,” statements from both the FBI and U.S. Attorney’s Office said Saturday morning.

Authorities did not offer further specifics. The Washington Post first reported on federal authorities boarding the ship.

The raid came several months after investigators conducted a similar search of the Dali, the cargo ship that crashed into the bridge.

In a lawsuit filed Wednesday, the U.S. Justice Department alleged that Dali owner Grace Ocean Private Ltd. and manager Synergy Marine, both of Singapore, recklessly cut corners and ignored known electrical problems on the vessel, which lost power multiple times minutes before it crashed into a support column on the Francis Scott Key Bridge in March.

The Justice Department said mechanical and electrical systems on the massive ship had been “jury-rigged” and improperly maintained, culminating in the power outages and a cascade of other failures that left its pilots and crew helpless in the face of looming disaster. The ship was leaving Baltimore for Sri Lanka when its steering failed because of the power loss.

Six members of a road work crew were killed when the bridge crumbled into the water. The collapse also snarled commercial shipping traffic through the Port of Baltimore for months before the channel was fully reopened in June.

The Justice Department is seeking to recover more than $100 million the government spent to clear the underwater debris and reopen the city’s port.

The companies filed a court petition days after the collapse seeking to limit their legal liability in what could become the most expensive marine casualty case in history.

Justice Department officials said there is no legal support for that bid to limit liability and pledged to vigorously contest it.

In its lawsuit, which also seeks punitive damages, the Justice Department argued that vessel owners and operators need to be “deterred from engaging in such reckless and exceedingly harmful behavior.”

That includes Grace Ocean and Synergy themselves because the Dali has a “sister ship,” authorities wrote in the claim.

The two companies “need to be deterred because they continue to operate their vessels, including a sister ship to the Dali, in U.S. waters and benefit economically from those activities,” the lawsuit says.

Darrell Wilson, a Grace Ocean spokesperson, confirmed that the FBI and Coast Guard boarded the Maersk Saltoro in the Port of Baltimore on Saturday morning. Wilson has previously said the owner and manager “look forward to our day in court to set the record straight.”

Like the Dali, the Singapore-flagged Saltoro was built by Hyundai in 2015.

According to the Justice Department lawsuit, major issues with the Dali’s electrical system might have resulted from excessive vibrations on the ship that can loosen wires and damage connections. A prior captain of the vessel had reported “heavy vibration” in his handover notes in May 2023, saying he had made similar reports to Synergy in the past, according to the complaint.

The lawsuit noted cracked equipment in the engine room and pieces of cargo shaken loose. The ship’s electrical equipment was in such bad condition that an independent agency stopped further electrical testing because of safety concerns, according to the lawsuit.

The ship had also experienced power outages while it was still docked in Baltimore. Those blackouts are considered “reportable marine casualties” that must be reported to the U.S. Coast Guard, which authorities say never happened.

The Dali, which was stuck amid the wreckage of the collapse for months before it could be extricated and refloated, departed Norfolk, Virginia, on Thursday afternoon en route to China on its first international voyage since the March 26 disaster.

Justice Department officials refused to answer questions Wednesday about whether a criminal investigation into the bridge collapse remains ongoing. FBI agents boarded the Dali in April.
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WILMINGTON, DELAWARE/WASHINGTON — U.S. President Joe Biden on Saturday hosted the leaders of Australia, India and Japan at his private home in the U.S. state of Delaware for his final convening of the Quad, a strategic security grouping focused on the Indo-Pacific.

But it was Biden’s comments, unintentionally heard by the press, that illuminated the main topic at this unusually private meeting — and that topic was China.

Biden said his administration reads Beijing’s recent actions, including flexing its territorial muscles, as a “change in tactic, not a change in strategy.”

“We believe [Chinese President] Xi Jinping is looking to focus on domestic economic challenges and minimize the turbulence in China’s diplomatic relationships, and he’s also looking to buy himself some diplomatic space, in my view, to aggressively pursue China’s interests,” Biden told the other three leaders in what he said were prepared remarks.

“China continues to behave aggressively, testing this all across the region, and it’s true in the South China Sea, the East China Sea, South China, South Asia and the Taiwan Straits. It’s true across the scope of our relationship, including in economic and technology issues,” he added.

Beijing claims almost all of the South China Sea, including territory claimed by Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam. It also claims territories in the East China Sea contested by Japan and Taiwan. It views democratically governed Taiwan as part of China.

Publicly, Biden’s message was shorter, simpler – “The Quad is here to stay.”

Those six words were also the final sentence of a lengthy joint statement from Biden and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. The group issued their nearly 5,700-word missive after a day of meetings so cloistered that the president of the White House Correspondents’ Association called the lack of access “unacceptable.”

In their statement, the quartet announced moves they say will boost cooperation among the four democracies and address concerns beyond their borders in the massive region, home to more than half of the world’s population and two-thirds of its economy. While they used the word “China” sparingly – only three times, and all three times in reference to the South China Sea – they made very clear how their stance differs from Beijing’s.

“As four leading maritime democracies in the Indo-Pacific, we unequivocally stand for the maintenance of peace and stability across this dynamic region, as an indispensable element of global security and prosperity,” they said.

“We strongly oppose any destabilizing or unilateral actions that seek to change the status quo by force or coercion. We condemn recent illicit missile launches in the region that violate U.N. Security Council resolutions. We express serious concern over recent dangerous and aggressive actions in the maritime domain. We seek a region where no country dominates and no country is dominated — one where all countries are free from coercion and can exercise their agency to determine their futures.”

China has previously called out the Quad for its thinly veiled criticisms of China, with a Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesperson in July comparing the grouping to “exclusive clubs that undermine trust and cooperation among regional countries.”

Biden spoke briefly to tout the major steps, including one that aims to strengthen maritime security, and that will inevitably affect China’s maritime presence in others’ waters.

“We’re announcing a series of initiatives to deliver real, positive impact for the Indo-Pacific that includes providing new maritime technologies to our regional partners, so they know what’s happening in their waters, launching cooperation between coast guards for the first time, and expanding the Quad fellowship to include students from Southeast Asia,” Biden said.

That includes, the leaders’ statement said, a 2025 joint mission by the four nations’ coast guards. That step is also something that Japanese officials presented as a big summit takeaway when briefing reporters earlier in the day. Earlier in the week, when a top U.S. officials previewed the summit, he said the aim is to counter illegal fishing – adding, tellingly, that the vast majority of illegal fishing vessels are Chinese.

VOA asked the Japanese officials about a point of contention between Washington and Tokyo: Biden’s opposition, on national security grounds, to a proposed takeover of U.S. Steel by Nippon Steel. Biden administration officials appeared to play down the matter, noting that the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States recently extended its review into the deal, pushing any decision past November.

“The president will obviously allow that process to run its course because that’s what’s required from the law, and then we will see what happens,” Jake Sullivan, the White House national security adviser, told reporters Saturday.

The American steel company is headquartered in Pennsylvania, an electorally critical state in the fast-approaching U.S. presidential election.

VOA asked the Japanese government to share Toyko’s position on the politically sensitive merger. Japanese officials would not say whether Biden and Kishida even planned to speak on this topic in any of their meetings.

“As a government we refrain from commenting on that,” replied a Foreign Affairs Ministry official, who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity. The official quickly added that Japan is the No. 1 investor in the U.S., and that Tokyo hopes the countries’ cooperation will continue.

Australia’s leader said it matters that the four “like-minded countries,” all democracies, work together.

“We assert the view that national sovereignty is important, that security and stability is something that we strive for, as well as shared prosperity in our region,” Albanese said.

Analysts had predicted China discussion would dominate behind the scenes, but the leaders would refrain from publicly poking Beijing.

“That doesn’t show up in the readouts,” Rafiq Dossani, a longtime Asia scholar, told VOA ahead of the summit.

The four leaders began to meet yearly, in person, under Biden’s presidency. Much of their effort, said analyst Kathryn Paik of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, is directed at bread-and-butter governance issues such as health, infrastructure, maritime security and resources, and people-to-people ties.

“This is certainly not a Contain-China club,” she told VOA.

But, said Dossani, who is a senior economist at the Rand research corporation and a professor of policy analysis, there is room for the Quad to evolve.

“The question is as the competition, or the rivalry, between China and the U.S. evolves, how will that at that time affect the deliberations?” he said. “As the Chinese economy recovers and they become more assertive, then you’ll see a different context for the dialogue.”

In the present, though, Biden sees this dialogue among the four leaders as important to his legacy, Paik said.

“It was a central piece to the Indo-Pacific strategy, and elevating the Quad to the leader level has been a significant piece of that strategy,” she said. “Just the fact that the Quad has met annually at the leader level every year of Biden’s administration is quite significant.”

VOA’s Celia Mendoza in Wilmington, Delaware, and Paris Huang and Kim Lewis, in Washington, contributed to this report. 
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