Author: PolitCens

U.S. egg prices are rising once more as a lingering outbreak of bird flu coincides with the high demand of the holiday baking season.

But prices are still far from the recent peak they reached almost two years ago. And the American Egg Board, a trade group, says egg shortages at grocery stores have been isolated and temporary so far.

“Those are being rapidly corrected, sometimes within a day,” said Emily Metz, the Egg Board’s president and chief executive officer.

The average price for a dozen eggs in U.S. cities was $3.37 in October, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That was down slightly from September, and down significantly from January 2023, when the average price soared to $4.82. But it was up 63% from October 2023, when a dozen eggs cost an average of $2.07.

Sometimes, supermarkets may be to blame for price spikes. During testimony in August in the Federal Trade Commission’s case seeking to block Kroger’s merger with Albertsons, Kroger’s senior director for pricing acknowledged that the company has raised the cost of milk and eggs beyond the levels of inflation.

But there are other factors behind the price increases. Metz said the egg industry sees its highest demand in November and December, for example.

“You can’t have your holiday baking, your pumpkin pie, your stuffing, without eggs,” she said.

Avian influenza is another big reason for the higher prices. The current bird flu outbreak that began in February 2022 has led to the slaughter of more than 111 million birds, mostly egg-laying chickens. Anytime the virus is found, every bird on a farm is killed to limit the spread of the disease.

More than 6 million birds have been slaughtered just this month because of bird flu. They were a relatively small part of the total U.S. egg-laying flock of 377 million chickens. Still, the flock is down about 3% over the past year, contributing to a 4% drop in egg production, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The latest wave of bird flu is scrambling supplies of cage-free eggs because California has been among the hardest hit states. California, Nevada, Washington and Oregon all require eggs sold in their states to be cage-free.

“We’re having to move eggs from other areas of the country that are producing cage-free to cover that low supply in those states, because those states only allow for cage-free eggs to be sold,” Metz said.

Cage-free requirements are set to go into effect in Arizona, Colorado and Michigan next year and in Rhode Island and Utah in 2030.

Demand for such specialty eggs may also be contributing to avian flu, which is spread through the droppings of wild birds as they migrate past farms. Allowing chickens to roam more freely puts them at greater risk, said Chad Hart, a professor and agricultural economist at Iowa State University.

“It’s really hard to control that interaction between domesticated birds and wild birds,” Hart said. “Some of those vectors have been opened up because we’re asking the egg industry to produce in ways that we didn’t ask them to before.”

Metz said climate change and extreme weather are also blowing some wild birds off course.

“We have birds that have been displaced by hurricanes, by wildfires, and those birds are now circulating in areas that they otherwise might not circulate or at times of the year that they otherwise may not be circulating,” she said. “And those are all new variables that our farmers are having to deal with.”

Hart said the egg industry is trying to rebuild the flock, but that also can limit supplies, since farmers have to hold back some eggs to hatch into new chickens.

Still, there is some good news on U.S. poultry farms. The price of chicken feed — which represents 70% of a farmer’s costs — has fallen significantly after doubling between 2020 and 2022, Hart said. 
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NORTH WILDWOOD, NEW JERSEY — A decade-long conflict over the condition of a New Jersey resort town’s beaches, involving tens of millions of dollars in litigation and fines, could come to an end soon.  

Patrick Rosenello, the mayor of North Wildwood, says his town has reached an agreement with the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection to drop claims on both sides and move forward with measures to widen beaches in the community, popular with tourists from the Philadelphia area.  

The agreement, which is up for a vote Tuesday by North Wildwood’s council, would resolve all outstanding disputes between the parties, the Republican mayor said. The tentative timing of the replenishment is sometime in 2025, he said.  

The agreement includes canceling the $12 million New Jersey has fined North Wildwood for unauthorized beach repairs that the state says could actually worsen erosion. It also calls for the city to drop a lawsuit against the state seeking reimbursement for the $30 million it has spent trucking in sand for emergency repairs to eroded sections of its beach over the past decade.   

“We agreed that we will concentrate on protecting our beaches instead of suing each other,” Rosenello said Wednesday.  

At the root of the dispute is the fact that North Wildwood is virtually the only Jersey Shore community that has yet to receive a full beach replenishment project from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Officials say difficulty in getting easements from affected property owners has contributed to the delay.  

Erosion had become so bad in parts of North Wildwood that protective sand dunes were obliterated, leaving homes and businesses vulnerable to flooding and wave damage in the event of a major storm, At one point in January, Rosenello posed for photos on the beach with what was left of a dune barely reaching his knees.  

The state Department of Transportation did an interim replenishment project last summer after Democratic Governor Phil Murphy called the erosion in North Wildwood “shocking.” Rosenello said that work has held up well in the ensuing months.  

The environmental department declined to comment on the proposed agreement. Rosenello predicted it will be approved by the council and signed and sent to the state Tuesday.  

In addition to ending the litigation, North Wildwood will contribute $1 million to the eventual cost of the federal beach replenishment project once it arrives in the city, and will pay $700,000 into a state water pollution control fund, the mayor said.  

The agreement also lays out a clear regulatory path for North Wildwood to obtain the environmental permits it needs to carry out other shore protection work including extension of a sea wall.  

On several occasions, North Wildwood carried out emergency repairs, including construction of an earlier bulkhead without approval from the state. Shawn LaTourette, New Jersey’s environment protection commissioner, warned the town in 2023 that unauthorized work could have more serious consequences if it continues, including potential loss of future shore protection funding.
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U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has held multiple phone conversations with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban since winning the November 5 presidential election, according to sources who spoke to RFE/RL’s Hungarian Service.

Hungarian government sources said Trump has sought Orban’s opinion on ending the Ukraine war, which has continued to drag on since Russia’s full-scale invasion of its neighbor in February 2022.

On the campaign trail, Trump criticized the billions of dollars that the United States has poured into Ukraine since Russia launched its invasion.

He has also said he could end the war within 24 hours of retaking the White House, a statement that some have interpreted as meaning that Ukraine would have to surrender territory that Russia now occupies.

Orban, who has maintained friendly ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Trump, has been critical of EU aid for Ukraine and has obstructed the bloc’s sanctions regime against Moscow.

Preparations reportedly are under way for Orban to take a second crack at a peace mission in December to bookend Hungary’s rotating EU presidency after his first attempt in July when Budapest’s tenure started.

In a move criticized by several EU leaders, Orban traveled to Moscow to meet Putin in July after a trip to Kyiv with a mystery ceasefire proposal for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. He then traveled to China and finally the United States to meet Trump, who was then on the presidential campaign trail.

Details of a potential peace mission in December are not clear, but sources suggested to RFE/RL’s Hungarian Service that it may involve delivering Trump’s messages to Zelenskyy, Putin, and Chinese President Xi Jinping. 
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WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump said on Saturday he wanted former National Security official and loyalist Kash Patel to lead the FBI, signaling an intent to replace the bureau’s current director, Christopher Wray. 

Patel, who during Trump’s first term advised both the director of national intelligence and the secretary of defense, has previously called for stripping the FBI of its intelligence-gathering role and purging its ranks of any employee who refuses to support Trump’s agenda. 

“The biggest problem the FBI has had, has come out of its intel shops. I’d break that component out of it. I’d shut down the FBI Hoover building on day one and reopen it the next day as a museum of the deep state,” Patel said in a September interview on the conservative “Shawn Ryan Show.”

“And I’d take the 7,000 employees that work in that building and send them across America to chase down criminals. Go be cops. You’re cops. Go be cops.” 

With the nomination of Patel, Trump, a Republican, seems to be preparing to oust Wray, a Republican first appointed by Trump. Wray’s 10-year term at the FBI does not expire until 2027. 

Asked about Patel’s nomination, which will need Senate confirmation, an FBI spokesperson said on Saturday: “Every day, the men and women of the FBI continue to work to protect Americans from a growing array of threats. Director Wray’s focus remains on the men and women of the FBI, the people we do the work with, and the people we do the work for.” 

FBI directors by law are appointed to 10-year terms as a means of insulating the bureau from politics. 

Wray, whom Trump tapped after firing James Comey in 2017 for investigating his 2016 campaign, has been a frequent target of Trump supporters’ ire. 

During Wray’s tenure, the FBI carried out a court-approved search at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate to look for classified documents. He also has faced criticism for his oversight role of a directive by Attorney General Merrick Garland aimed at working to protect local school boards from violent threats and harassment. 

Special Counsel Jack Smith, who led the two federal prosecutions against Trump for his role in subverting the 2020 election and retaining classified documents, asked on November 25 the judges overseeing those cases to dismiss them before Trump takes office on January 20, citing a Justice Department policy of not prosecuting a sitting president. 

Wray had previously signaled no intention of stepping down early and was busy planning events well into his 2025 calendar, according to a person familiar with the matter.  

Patel, 44, previously worked as a federal public defender and a federal prosecutor. 

He was instrumental in working to lead House Republicans’ probe into the FBI’s 2016 investigation into contacts between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia during his time as an aide to former House Intelligence Committee Chair Devin Nunes. 

Later, during Trump’s first impeachment trial, ex-National Security Council official Fiona Hill told House investigators she was concerned Patel was secretly serving as a back channel between Trump and Ukraine without authorization. 

Patel denied those allegations. 

After Trump left office in January 2021, Patel was one of several people Trump designated as a representative for access to his presidential records. He was one of the few former Trump administration officials who claimed, without evidence, that Trump had declassified all of the records in question. 

He was later subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury in connection with the probe. 

Also Saturday, Trump named Chad Chronister, the sheriff of Hillsborough County, Florida, as his choice for administrator of the Drug Enforcement Agency. In that role, Chronister would work closely with Trump’s choice for attorney general, Pam Bondi. 

Bondi is from the Tampa area that Chronister serves.  

“As DEA Administrator, Chad will work with our great Attorney General, Pam Bondi, to secure the Border, stop the flow of Fentanyl, and other Illegal Drugs, across the Southern Border, and SAVE LIVES,” Trump wrote on his social-media platform Truth Social. 

Trump also named real estate mogul Charles Kushner to serve as U.S. ambassador to France. Kushner is the father of Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner. 

“He (Charles Kushner) is a tremendous business leader, philanthropist, & dealmaker, who will be a strong advocate representing our Country & its interests,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social announcing the pick. 
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WEST PALM BEACH, FLORIDA — President-elect Donald Trump threatened 100% tariffs Saturday against a bloc of nine nations if they act to undermine the U.S. dollar. 

His threat was directed at countries in the so-called BRICS alliance, which consists of Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates. 

Turkey, Azerbaijan and Malaysia have applied to become members of the alliance, and several other countries have expressed interest in joining. 

While the U.S. dollar is by far the most-used currency in global business and has survived past challenges to its preeminence, members of the alliance and other developing nations say they are fed up with America’s dominance of the global financial system. 

Trump, in a Truth Social post, said, “We require a commitment from these Countries that they will neither create a new BRICS Currency, nor back any other Currency to replace the mighty U.S. Dollar or, they will face 100% Tariffs, and should expect to say goodbye to selling into the wonderful U.S. Economy.” 

At a summit of BRICS nations in October, Russian President Vladimir Putin accused the U.S. of “weaponizing” the dollar and described it as a “big mistake.” 

“It’s not us who refuse to use the dollar,” Putin said at the time. “But if they don’t let us work, what can we do? We are forced to search for alternatives.” 

Russia has specifically pushed for the creation of a new payment system that would offer an alternative to the global bank messaging network, SWIFT, and allow Moscow to dodge Western sanctions and trade with partners. 

Trump said there is “no chance” BRICS will replace the U.S. dollar in global trade and any country that tries to make that happen “should wave goodbye to America.” 
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In India, there are expectations that strategic ties with the United States will deepen during President-elect Donald Trump’s second term. But New Delhi is bracing for pressure on trade ties with its biggest trading partner. From New Delhi, Anjana Pasricha reports.
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BUSAN, SOUTH KOREA — The world’s nations will wrap up negotiating a treaty this weekend to address the global plastic pollution crisis.

Their meeting is scheduled to conclude Sunday or early Monday in Busan, South Korea, where many environmental organizations have flocked to push for a treaty to address the volume of production and toxic chemicals used in plastic products.

Greenpeace said it escalated its pressure Saturday by sending four international activists to Daesan, South Korea, who boarded a tanker headed into port to load chemicals used to make plastics.

Graham Forbes, who leads the Greenpeace delegation in Busan, said the action is meant to remind world leaders they have a clear choice: Deliver a treaty that protects people and the planet, or side with industry and sacrifice the health of every living person and future generations.

Here’s what to know about plastics:

Every year, the world produces more than 400 million tons of new plastic.

The use of plastics has quadrupled over the past 30 years. Plastic is ubiquitous. And every day, the equivalent of 2,000 garbage trucks full of plastic are dumped into the world’s oceans, rivers and lakes, the U.N. said. Most nations agreed to make the first global, legally binding plastic pollution accord, including in the oceans, by the end of 2024.

Plastic production could climb about 70% by 2040 without policy changes.

The production and use of plastics globally is set to reach 736 million tons by 2040, according to the intergovernmental Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Panama is leading an effort to address the exponential growth of plastic production as part of the treaty, supported by more than 100 countries. There’s just too much plastic, said Juan Carlos Monterrey, head of Panama’s delegation.

“If we don’t have production in this treaty, it is not only going to be horribly sad, but the treaty may as well be called the greenwashing recycling treaty, not the plastics treaty,” he said in an interview. “Because the problem is not going to be fixed.”

China, the United States and Germany are the biggest plastics players.

China was by far the biggest exporter of plastic products in 2023, followed by Germany and the U.S., according to the Plastics Industry Association.

Together, the three nations account for 33% of the total global plastics trade, the association said.

The United States supports having an article in the treaty that addresses supply, or plastic production, a senior member of the U.S. delegation told The Associated Press Saturday.

Most plastic ends up as waste

Less than 10% of plastics are recycled. Most of the world’s plastic goes to landfills, pollutes the environment or is burned.

Sarah Dunlop, head of plastics and human health at the Minderoo Foundation, said chemicals are leaching out of plastics and “making us sick.”

The International Indigenous Peoples Forum on Plastics held an event about the impact of plastics Saturday on the sidelines of the talks. They want the treaty to fully recognize their rights and the universal human right to a healthy, clean, safe and sustainable environment.

Juan Mancias of the Carrizo/Comecrudo Nation in Texas spoke about feeling a spiritual connection to the land.

“Five hundred years ago, we had clean water, clean air, and there was no plastics,” he said. “What happened?”

Many plastics are used for packaging

About 40% of all plastics are used in packaging, according to the United Nations. This includes single-use plastic food and beverage containers — water bottles, takeout containers, coffee lids, straws and shopping bags — that often end up polluting the environment.

U.N. Environment Program Executive Director Inger Andersen told negotiators in Busan the treaty must tackle this problem.

“Are there specific plastic items that we can live without, those that so often leak into the environment? Are there alternatives to these items? This is an issue we must agree on,” she said.
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NEW YORK — Likely most people have seen iconic footage of the Beatles performing on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” But how many have seen Paul McCartney during that same U.S. trip feeding seagulls off his hotel balcony?

That moment — as well as George Harrison and John Lennon goofing around by exchanging their jackets — are part of the Disney+ documentary “Beatles ’64,” an intimate look at the English band’s first trip to America that uses rare and newly restored footage. It streams Friday.

“It’s so fun to be the fly on the wall in those really intimate moments,” says Margaret Bodde, who produced alongside Martin Scorsese. “It’s just this incredible gift of time and technology to be able to see it now with the decades of time stripped away so that you really feel like you’re there.”

“Beatles ’64” leans into footage of the 14-day trip filmed by documentarians Albert and David Maysles, who left behind 11 hours of the Fab Four goofing around in New York’s Plaza hotel or traveling. It was restored by Park Road Post in New Zealand.

“It’s beautiful, although it’s black and white and it’s not widescreen,” says director David Tedeschi. “It’s like it was shot yesterday and it captures the youth of the four Beatles and the fans.”

The footage is augmented by interviews with the two surviving members of the band and people whose lives were impacted, including some of the women who as teens stood outside their hotel hoping to catch a glimpse of the Beatles.

“It was like a crazy love,” fan Vickie Brenna-Costa recalls in the documentary. “I can’t really understand it now. But then, it was natural.”

The film shows the four heartthrobs flirting and dancing at the Peppermint Lounge disco, Harrison noodling with a Woody Guthrie riff on his guitar and tells the story of Ronnie Spector sneaking the band out a hotel back exit and up to Harlem to eat barbeque.

The documentary coincides with the release of a box set of vinyl albums collecting the band’s seven U.S. albums released in ’64 and early ’65 — “Meet The Beatles!,” “The Beatles’ Second Album,” “A Hard Day’s Night” (the movie soundtrack), “Something New,” “The Beatles’ Story,” “Beatles ’65” and “The Early Beatles.” They had been out of print on vinyl since 1995.

The Beatles’ U.S. visit in 1964 also included concerts at Carnegie Hall, a gig at the Washington Coliseum in Washington, D.C., and a visit to Miami, where the band met Muhammad Ali. The documentary shows members of the band reading newspaper coverage of themselves.

Viewers may learn that the Beatles — now revered — were often met with ridicule or rudeness from the older generation. At the British Embassy in New York, the four were treated as lower class, while renowned broadcaster Eric Sevareid, doing a piece for CBS, compared the reaction to the Beatles to the German measles.

“You’re nothing but four Elvis Presleys,” one reporter told them during a press conference, to which the boys good-naturedly started gyrating as Ringo Starr screamed “It’s not true!”

“Why the establishment was against them is sort of a mystery to me,” says Tedeschi. “I think older people believed that music would go back to the big bands.”

Musicians like Sananda Maitreya, Ron Isley and Smokey Robinson also discuss the Fab Four and what they took from Black music. There also are interviews with residents of Harlem, critic Joe Queennan and filmmaker David Lynch, who saw the Beatles play the Washington Coliseum.

“Beatles ’64” tries to explain why young people were so besotted by John, Paul, George and Ringo. Their visit came just months after the assassination of President John. F. Kennedy and Tedeschi argues Beatlemania was a salve for a nation in mourning.

“Part of it is I think that the light was just off. They were depressed. Everything was dark. And ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ lit them up,” says Tedeschi.

As McCartney says in the documentary: “Maybe America needed something like the Beatles to lift it out of mourning and just sort of say ‘Life goes on.'”
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NEW YORK — As she anticipates her estranged uncle’s return to the White House, Mary Trump isn’t expecting any future book to catch on like such first-term tell-alls as Michael Wolff’s million-selling Fire and Fury or her own blockbuster, Too Much and Never Enough.

“What else is there to learn?” she says. “And for people who don’t know, the books have been written. It’s all really out in the open now.”

For publishers, Donald Trump’s presidential years were a time of extraordinary sales in political books, helped in part by Trump’s legal threats and angered tweets. According to Circana, which tracks around 85% of the hardcover and paperback market, the genre’s sales nearly doubled from 2015 to 2020, from around 5 million copies to around 10 million.

Besides books by Wolff and Trump, other bestsellers included former FBI Director James Comey’s A Higher Loyalty, former national security adviser John Bolton’s The Room Where it Happened and Bob Woodward’s Fear. Meanwhile, sales for dystopian fiction also jumped, led by Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, which was adapted into an award-winning Hulu series.

But interest has dropped back to 2015 levels since Trump left office, according to Circana, and publishers doubt it will again peak so highly. Readers not only showed little interest in books by or about President Joe Biden and his family — they even seemed less excited about Trump-related releases. Mary Trump’s Who Could Ever Love You and Woodward’s War were both popular this fall, but neither has matched the sales of their books written during the first Trump administration.

“We’ve been there many times, with all those books,” HarperCollins publisher Jonathan Burnham says of the various Trump tell-alls. He added that he still sees a market for at least some Trump books — perhaps analyzing the recent election — because “there’s a general, serious smart audience, not politically aligned in a hard way,” one that would welcome “an intelligent voice.”

“It’s like the reboot of any hit TV show,” says Eric Nelson, publisher and vice president of Broadside Books, a conservative imprint of HarperCollins that’s released books by Jared Kushner, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Trump Cabinet nominees Pete Hegseth and Sen. Marco Rubio. “You’re not hoping for ratings like last time, just better ratings than the boring show it’s replacing.”

In the days following Trump’s victory, The Handmaid’s Tale and George Orwell’s 1984 returned to bestseller lists, along with more contemporary works such as Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny, a 2017 bestseller that expanded upon a Facebook post Snyder wrote soon after Trump defeated Hillary Clinton. Books appealing to pro-Trump readers also surged, including those written by Cabinet picks — Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s The Real Anthony Fauci and Hegseth’s The War on Warriors — and Vice President-elect J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy, his 2016 memoir that’s sold hundreds of thousands of copies since Trump selected him as his running mate.

First lady Melania Trump’s memoir, Melania, came out in October and has been high on Amazon.com bestseller lists for weeks, even as critics found it contained little newsworthy information. According to Circana, it has sold more than 200,000 copies, a figure that does not include books sold directly through her website.

“The Melania book has done extraordinarily well, better than we thought,” says Barnes & Noble CEO James Daunt. “After Election Day, we sold everything we had of it.”

Conservative books have sold steadily over the years, and several publishers — most recently Hachette Book Group — have imprints dedicated to those readers. Publishers expect at least some critical books to reach bestseller lists — if only because of the tradition of the publishing market favoring the party out of power. But the nature of what those books would look like is uncertain. Perhaps a onetime insider will have a falling out with Trump and write a memoir, like Bolton or former Trump attorney Michael Cohen, or maybe some of his planned initiatives, whether mass deportation or the prosecution of his political foes, will lead to investigative works.

A new Fire and Fury is doubtful, with the originally only possible because Wolff enjoyed extraordinary access, spending months around Trump and his White House staff. Members of the president-elect’s current team have already issued a statement saying they have refused to speak with Wolff, calling the author a “known peddler of fake news who routinely concocts situations, conversations, and conclusions that never happened.”

A publicist for Wolff declined to comment.

Woodward, who interviewed Trump at length for the 2020 bestseller Rage, told The Associated Press that he had written so much about Trump and other presidents that he wasn’t sure what he’d take on next. He doesn’t rule out another Trump book, but that will depend in part on the president-elect, how “out of control he gets,” Woodward said, and how far he is able to go.

“He wants to be the imperial president, where he gets to decide everything and no one’s going to get in his way,” Woodward said. “He’s run into some brick walls in the past and there may be more brick walls. I don’t know what will happen. I’ll be watching and doing some reporting, but I’m still undecided.”

5 bestselling Trump-related books, per Circana

Too Much and Never Enough, by Mary Trump: 1,248,212 copies
Fire and Fury, by Michael Wolff: 936,116 copies
Fear, by Bob Woodward: 872,014 copies
The Room Where It Happened, by John Bolton: 676,010 copies
Rage, by Bob Woodward: 549,685 copies

These figures represent total sales provided by Circana, which tracks about 85% of the print market and does not include e-book or audiobook sales.
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Iran is likely high on the foreign policy agenda of the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump. The Islamic Republic has engaged in a major escalation of conflict with U.S. ally Israel while advancing its nuclear program to the point it could rapidly produce enough fissile material for a bomb. VOA’s Michael Lipin looks at what Trump and his prospective team members have said should be done about these threats.
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washington — This week’s rare prisoner swap between the United States and China saw each side claim victory and accuse the other of wrongfully detaining its citizens, while Beijing has kept quiet about the identities of the returned Chinese.

China confirmed the repatriation of at least three Chinese nationals convicted of espionage and other crimes in the U.S. Among them was an individual whom Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning, speaking at a regular briefing Thursday, described as “a fugitive who fled to the U.S. many years ago.”

Some media reports indicated four individuals were returned to China. Mao did not name those who were returned and did not confirm a prisoner swap, or the release of any Americans detained in China.

But media reports, including one from the Financial Times, cited unnamed U.S. government officials as saying three Americans were exchanged for three Chinese.

Released Chinese

Xu Yanjun 

Though U.S. officials have not confirmed their identities, NBC News cited unnamed U.S. officials as saying the prisoner swap included Xu Yanjun, a Chinese intelligence officer sentenced to 20 years in prison for attempting to steal aviation trade secrets from GE Aviation. Records from the Federal Bureau of Prisons show that Xu’s status is now listed as “not in federal custody.”

Ji Chaoqun 

NBC reported that those returned to China also included Ji Chaoqun, a naturalized U.S. citizen convicted in 2022 of providing classified defense information to Chinese intelligence.

Jin Shanlin 

The Financial Times on Thursday reported the third Chinese released was Jin Shanlin, a former doctoral student at Southern Methodist University in northern Texas, who was sentenced in 2021 for possessing and distributing child pornography, with his sentence set to end in 2027. Records from the Federal Bureau of Prisons also show Jin’s status as “not in federal custody.”

Jin’s case has sparked controversy because of his crime and his family’s alleged ties to the Chinese Communist Party. The FBI testified that his family had “important political connections,” The Dallas Morning News reported in 2022, raising questions about why he was chosen for the exchange over other Chinese nationals in U.S. custody. 

Released Americans

The White House National Security Council said Wednesday in a statement that it had secured the release of three Americans it said were “wrongfully detained” in China, though it did not confirm a prisoner swap. Their detentions had drawn international condemnation.

Mark Swidan

Swidan, a Texas businessman, was arrested in 2012 in Dongguan. Despite a lack of direct evidence — no drugs or incriminating records were ever found — he was sentenced to death for drug trafficking but granted a reprieve in 2019. His mother, Katherine Swidan, led a tireless campaign for his release. “I feared I would never see my son again,” she told VOA, recounting his years in a Guangdong prison marked by overcrowding, intense heat and deteriorating health.

Kai Li

Li, a Chinese American businessman, was arrested in 2016 in Shanghai on charges of stealing state secrets. His family has consistently denied the allegations, calling his 10-year sentence politically motivated. “We thank President [Joe] Biden for prioritizing my father’s case,” said his son, Harrison Li. “But we also urge the administration to stand firm against such detentions in the future.”

John Leung

Leung, 79, a Hong Kong-based American citizen, was arrested in 2021 on espionage charges. His case saw minimal public advocacy, and his family remained largely silent throughout his detention.

John Kamm, founder of the San Francisco-based rights group Dui Hua, meaning “dialogue” in Chinese, said his organization played a role in the prisoner swap in negotiations that took years to complete.

“We submitted 54 lists with Mark Swidan’s name to the Chinese government and received 10 responses,” Kamm told VOA Mandarin.  “The process was arduous but ultimately effective.”

A spokesperson for the National Security Council hailed the release of the three Americans as a significant diplomatic achievement for Biden, emphasizing that all Americans classified as “wrongfully detained Americans” in China have now been brought home.

While the move brought relief to the families of the freed Americans, it has sparked concerns about its implications for U.S.-China relations and the growing trend of “hostage diplomacy.”

Kamm cautioned against declaring the issue resolved. “There are at least 200 American citizens under coercive measures in China. Many face exit bans or detentions with little transparency,” he said.

Critics like Peter Humphrey, a former detainee in China and a nonresident associate at Harvard University’s Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, argue that no Americans held in China should be considered normal prisoners.  He noted to VOA Mandarin that China’s legal processes are fundamentally flawed, as prisoners do not have fair and transparent trials.

“They have never had a trial where they were able to defend themselves properly and freely. They were under tremendous pressure in detention cells, and that pressure amounts to torture,” Humphrey said.

Humphrey called this week’s prisoner swap “capitulation to hostage diplomacy” and warned it could incentivize Beijing to detain more Americans.

Diplomatic balancing act

The prisoner exchange occurred amid strained U.S.-China relations, with both nations navigating a complex mix of strategic competition and occasional cooperation, and just weeks before President-elect Donald Trump is to return to the White House promising to impose hefty tariffs on Beijing.

The U.S. on Wednesday lowered its travel advisory for China from Level 3 (“Reconsider Travel”) to Level 2 (“Exercise Increased Caution”), raising questions about the advisory’s role in the negotiations.

Kamm told VOA, “The lowering of the travel warning was part of the deal, as I understand it.”

Humphrey expressed concerns about the change in travel advisory. “China did not suddenly become safer for Americans, or any other foreigners actually, to travel to China,” he told VOA. “It has not become safer.”

Bo Gu contributed to this report.
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Cucumbers shipped to 13 U.S. states and five Canadian provinces have been recalled because of potential salmonella contamination, the Food and Drug Administration said this week.

SunFed Produce, based in Arizona, recalled the cucumbers sold between October 12 and November 26, the FDA said Thursday.

No illnesses were immediately reported. People who bought cucumbers during the window should check with the store where they purchased them to see if the produce is part of the recall. Wash items and surfaces that may have been in contact with the produce using hot, soapy water or a dishwasher.

Salmonella can cause symptoms that begin six hours to six days after ingesting the bacteria and include diarrhea, fever and stomach cramps. Most people recover without treatment within a week, but young children, people older than 65 and those with weakened immune systems can become seriously ill.

Earlier this summer, a separate salmonella outbreak in cucumbers sickened 450 people in the United States.
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In Southern California, what was once America’s second-largest landfill is on its way to becoming a recreational park. From Los Angeles, VOA’s Genia Dulot reports on its development in an urban environment with scare green spaces.
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NEW YORK — The holiday shopping season is about to reach full speed with Black Friday, which kicks off the post-Thanksgiving retail rush this week.

The annual sales event no longer creates the midnight mall crowds or doorbuster mayhem of recent decades, in large part due to the ease of online shopping and habits forged during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Hoping to entice equivocating consumers, retailers already have spent weeks bombarding customers with ads and early offers. Still, whether visiting stores or clicking on countless emails promising huge savings, tens of millions of U.S. shoppers are expected to spend money on Black Friday itself this year.

Industry forecasts estimate that 183.4 million people will shop in U.S. stores and online between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday, according to the National Retail Federation and consumer research firm Prosper Insights & Analytics. Of that number, 131.7 million are expected to shop on Black Friday.

At the same time, earlier and earlier Black Friday-like promotions, as well as the growing strength of other shopping events (hello, Cyber Monday), continue to change the holiday spending landscape.

Here’s what you need to know about Black Friday’s history and where things stand in 2024.

When is Black Friday in 2024?

Black Friday falls on the Friday after Thanksgiving each year, which is November 29 this year.

How old is Black Friday? Where does its name come from?

The term “Black Friday” is several generations old, but it wasn’t always associated with the holiday retail frenzy that we know today. The gold market crash of September 1869, for example, was notably dubbed Black Friday.

The phrase’s use in relation to shopping the day after Thanksgiving, however, is most often traced to Philadelphia in the mid-20th century — when police and other city workers had to deal with large crowds that congregated before the annual Army-Navy football game and to take advantage of seasonal sales.

“That’s why the bus drivers and cab drivers call today ‘Black Friday.’ They think in terms of headaches it gives them,” a Gimbels department store sales manager told The Associated Press in 1975 while watching a police officer try to control jaywalkers the day after Thanksgiving.

Earlier references date back to the 1950s and 1960s.

Jie Zhang, a professor of marketing at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, points to a 1951 mention of “Black Friday” in a New York-based trade publication — which noted that many workers simply called in sick the day after Thanksgiving in hopes of having a long holiday weekend.

Starting in the 1980s, national retailers began claiming that Black Friday represented when they went from operating in the red to in the black thanks to holiday demand. But since many retail companies now operate in the black at various times of the year, this interpretation should be taken with a grain of salt, experts say.

How has Black Friday evolved?

In recent decades, Black Friday became infamous for floods of people in jam-packed stores. Endless lines of shoppers camped out at midnight in hopes of scoring deep discounts.

But online shopping has made it possible to make most, if not all, holiday purchases without ever stepping foot inside a store. And while foot traffic at malls and other shopping areas has bounced back since the start of the pandemic, e-commerce isn’t going away.

November sales at brick-and-mortar stores peaked more than 20 years ago. In 2003, for example, e-commerce accounted for 1.7% of total retail sales in the fourth quarter, according to Commerce Department data.

Unsurprisingly, online sales make up a much bigger slice of the pie today. For last year’s holiday season, e-commerce accounted for about 17.1% of all nonadjusted retail sales in the fourth quarter, Commerce Department data show. That’s up from 12.7% seen at the end of 2019.

Beyond the rise of online shopping, some big-ticket items that used to get shoppers in the door on the Black Friday — like a new TV — are significantly cheaper than they were decades ago, notes Jay Zagorsky, a clinical associate professor at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business.

“There is less need to stand in line at midnight when the items typically associated with doorbuster sales are now much cheaper,” Zagorsky told The Associated Press via email. He pointed to Bureau of Labor Statistics data that show the average price for a TV has fallen 75% since 2014.

While plenty of people will do most of their Black Friday shopping online, projections from the National Retail Federation and Prosper Insights indicated that most Black Friday shoppers (65%) still planned to shop in stores this year.

Black Friday ‘month’ and the rise of Cyber Monday

It’s no secret that Black Friday sales don’t last just 24 hours anymore. Emails promising holiday deals now start arriving before Halloween.

“Black Friday is no longer the start of the holiday shopping season. It has become the crescendo of the holiday shopping season” during what now feels like “Black Friday month,” Zhang said. Some retailers have updated their official marketing to refer to “Black Friday week.”

Retailers trying to get a head start on the competition and to manage shipping logistics helps explain the rush, Zhang said. Offering early holiday deals spreads out purchases, giving shippers more breathing room to complete orders. Zhang therefore doesn’t expect the five fewer days between Thanksgiving and Christmas this year to cause significant strain because retailers would have taken them into account.

Linking pre-Thanksgiving sales with Black Friday is also a marketing technique since it’s a name consumers recognize and associate with big, limited-time bargains, Zhang said.

Multiple post-Thanksgiving sales events keep shoppers enticed after Black Friday, including Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday, which the National Retail Federation’s online arm designated in 2005.

U.S. consumers spent a record $12.4 billion on Cyber Monday in 2023, and $15.7 million per minute during the day’s peak sales hour, according to Adobe Analytics. On Black Friday, they spent $9.8 billion online, Adobe Analytics said.

Enough people still enjoy shopping in person after Thanksgiving that the activity is unlikely to become extinct, Boston University’s Zagorsky said.

While Black Friday’s significance “is being slightly diminished” over time, the shopping event is still “a way to connect with others,” he said. “This social aspect is important and will not disappear, ensuring that Black Friday is still an important day for retailers.”
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WEST PALM BEACH, FLORIDA — At least five Democratic members of Congress from Connecticut were targeted by bomb threats on their homes Thursday, the lawmakers or their offices said.

Senator Chris Murphy and Representatives Jim Himes, Joe Courtney, John Larson and Jahana Hayes all reported being the subject of such threats. Police who responded said they found no evidence of explosives on the lawmakers’ properties.

There was no immediate word whether Representative Rosa DeLauro, the fifth Democratic House member from the state, and Connecticut’s other Democratic senator received threats.

The bomb threats against Democrats came a day after a number of President-elect Donald Trump’s Cabinet picks and appointees reported that they had received such threats, as well as “swatting attacks,” in which perpetrators initiate an emergency law enforcement response against a victim under false pretenses.

Murphy’s office said his Hartford home was the target of a bomb threat, “which appears to be part of a coordinated effort involving multiple members of Congress and public figures.” Hartford Police and U.S. Capitol Police determined there was no threat.

Hayes said the Wolcott Police Department informed her Thursday morning that it had received “a threatening email stating a pipe bomb had been placed in the mailbox at my home.” State police, U.S. Capitol Police, and the House sergeant at arms were notified, Wolcott and state police responded, “and no bomb or explosive materials were discovered.”

Courtney’s Vernon home received a bomb threat while his wife and children were there, his office said.

Himes said he was told of the threat against his home during a Thanksgiving celebration with his family. The U.S. Capitol Police, and Greenwich and Stamford police departments responded.

Hines extended his family’s “utmost gratitude to our local law enforcement officers for their immediate action to ensure our safety.” Echoing other lawmakers who were threatened, he added: “There is no place for political violence in this country, and I hope that we may all continue through the holiday season with peace and civility.”

Larson said Thursday that East Hartford Police responded to a bomb threat against his home.

The threats follow an election season marked by violence. In July, a gunman opened fire at a Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, grazing his ear and killing one of his supporters. The Secret Service later thwarted a subsequent assassination attempt at Trump’s West Palm Beach, Florida, golf course when an agent spotted the barrel of a gun poking through a perimeter fence while Trump was golfing.

Among those who received threats Wednesday were New York Rep. Elise Stefanik, Trump’s pick to serve as the next ambassador to the United Nations; Matt Gaetz, Trump’s initial pick to serve as attorney general; Oregon Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer, whom Trump chose to lead the Department of Labor, and former New York congressman Lee Zeldin, who has been tapped to lead the Environmental Protection Agency. 
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LONDON — British and American authorities are investigating after several drones were spotted in recent days flying over four U.S. military bases in England. Britain has deployed dozens of troops around the bases amid concerns the overflights could be acts of deception or sabotage by an adversary such as Russia.

In a statement issued Wednesday, U.S. Air Forces in Europe said that “small unmanned aerial systems continue to be spotted in the vicinity of and over Royal Air Force Lakenheath, RAF Mildenhall, RAF Feltwell and RAF Fairford since Nov. 20.” It said the number of drones sighted has fluctuated and has ranged in size and configurations.

“To date, installation leaders have determined that none of the incursions impacted base residents, facilities or assets. The air force is taking all appropriate measures to safeguard the aforementioned installations and their residents,” the statement said.

RAF Lakenheath in the east of England is home to the U.S. Air Force 48th Fighter Wing, a cornerstone of its combat capability in Europe and home to several F-35 stealth fighter jets, among other aircraft. Four American B-52 strategic bombers are currently based at RAF Fairford in the west of the country.

The Pentagon said this week it is actively monitoring the situation. “The bottom line is it’s something that we’re going to take seriously. We’re continuing to look into it. But as of right now, [it] has not had any significant mission impact,” Pentagon spokesperson Major General Patrick Ryder told reporters Tuesday, adding that small drones have become “relatively common now across the landscape.”

Britain has deployed about 60 soldiers around the U.S. bases. British Defense Minister Maria Eagle said they are using “multilayered force protection measures.”

“We will be making sure that anybody that we manage to catch for engaging in this behavior is shown the full force of the law,” Eagle told lawmakers Wednesday.

The nature of the sightings suggests the drones are not being operated by hobbyists, said David Dunn, a professor of international politics at Britain’s University of Birmingham, who has written extensively on the dangers posed by drones.

“It’s particularly alarming in this context that actually talked about there [being] several different sizes of drones. It does seem to be a coordinated and planned activity. The most obvious thing is that these are disruptive practices and that they actually force the airfield to operate in a different way, to suspend air operations,” Dunn told VOA.

The drones can also be used for other purposes.

“They can gather intelligence on how many planes are operating, where they’re based, what the movements are. And, actually, they can also do that for individuals,” Dunn said.

Drones have been sighted above the U.S. base at RAF Feltwell, which primarily serves as living quarters for U.S. military personnel — a “particularly sinister” development, according to Dunn.

“Because in an age where you have highly sophisticated fifth-generation aircraft that operate stealthily and invisibly in the electronic spectrum when they’re flying — and are highly protected on the airbase in hardened aircraft shelters — the most vulnerable part of the overall system is actually the aircrew,” Dunn told VOA.

“And so, if you can identify where they live by following them home onto their married quarters, you can identify where you can actually break the weakest part of that chain,” he said.

The Times of London newspaper reported that authorities have not ruled out Russia as the culprit. Dunn said there’s evidence of Moscow seeking to step up hybrid attacks, meaning a nonmilitary form of warfare that can still be destructive.

“Whether that be the disruption of undersea cables or of incendiary parcels being sent to the city I live in, Birmingham — there was an incendiary parcel found in Birmingham airport. There’s another [example] of a warehouse being burned down, which stored material going to Ukraine. These things are typically, it seems, done at third party, whereby the Russian state, it seems, has employed criminals in the U,K.,” Dunn said.

The Russian Embassy in London had not responded to VOA requests for comment by the time of publication. Moscow has previously denied any involvement in hybrid attacks on the West.
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British and American authorities are investigating why several drones were flying over four U.S. air bases in England in recent days. As Henry Ridgwell reports, Britain has deployed dozens of troops around the bases amid concerns such drones could be used to disrupt operations or carry out acts of deception and sabotage.
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