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Правоохоронці зазначили, що 27 жовтня у телеграм-каналах опубліковано інформацію про вбивства російськими військами мирних жителів
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Since it started as a hashtag in 2012, GivingTuesday, the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, has become one of the biggest fundraising days of the year for nonprofits in the U.S.

In 2022 and 2023, GivingTuesday raised $3.1 billion for charitable organizations, according to estimates from GivingTuesday.

This year, GivingTuesday is on December 3.

How did GivingTuesday start?

The #GivingTuesday hashtag started as a project of the 92nd Street Y in New York in 2012 and became an independent organization in 2020. It’s grown into a worldwide network of local organizations that promote giving in their communities, often on different dates that have local relevance, such as holidays.

Now, GivingTuesday, the nonprofit, also convenes researchers working on topics about everyday giving. It collects data from a wide range of sources such as payment processors, crowdfunding sites, employee giving software and institutions that offer donor-advised funds, a kind of charitable-giving account.

What is the purpose of GivingTuesday?

The hashtag was started to promote generosity, and the nonprofit continues to promote giving in the broadest sense.

For nonprofits, the point of GivingTuesday is to raise money and engage their supporters. Many will be familiar with the barrage of email and mail appeals that coincide on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving. Essentially all major American nonprofits will organize fundraising campaigns, and many smaller, local groups also participate.

Nonprofits don’t have to be affiliated in any way with GivingTuesday, the organization, to run a fundraising campaign. They can just do it, although GivingTuesday does provide graphics and advice. In that way, it remains a grassroots effort with groups and donors participating however they like.

Has GivingTuesday been successful?

That depends on how success is measured, but it certainly has grown far beyond the initial effort to promote giving on social media. The day has become an enduring and well-known event that seeks to center charitable giving, volunteering and civic participation in the United States and around the world.

For years, GivingTuesday has been a major focus of fundraising for nonprofits, with many seeking to organize matching donations from major donors and leverage their networks of supporters to contribute. It is the beginning of the end-of-year fundraising rush, as nonprofits seek to reach their budget targets for the following year.

Donations on GivingTuesday in 2022 and 2023 reached $3.1 billion, an increase from $2.7 billion in 2021. While that’s a lot to raise in a single day, the trend last year was flat and with fewer donors giving, which the organization said is a worrying sign.
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Внаслідок атаки загинув 43-річний місцевий житель, який рухався мопедом населеним пунктом
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За минулу добу у Донецькій області поранень зазнали девʼять цивільних і четверо поліцейських
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Стрілки годинників були переведені на годину назад
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The divide between urban and rural voters is a key indicator in U.S. electoral politics. Cities favoring Democrats and rural areas favoring Republicans isn’t new. But since 2000, the gap has grown dramatically. What is behind this trend, and why is it so important? The answer is partly economic — but there are also complex cultural factors involved. Produced by Yass Monem and Nicky Woolf.
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An explanation of Temporary Protected Status, also known as TPS
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united nations — More than 600 million women and girls are now affected by war, a 50% increase from a decade ago, and they fear the world has forgotten them amid an escalating backlash against women’s rights and gender equality, top United Nations officials say. 

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a new report that amid record levels of armed conflict and violence, progress over the decades for women is vanishing and “generational gains in women’s rights hang in the balance around the world.” 

The U.N. chief was assessing the state of a Security Council resolution adopted on Oct. 31, 2000, that demanded equal participation for women in peace negotiations, a goal that remains as distant as gender equality. 

Guterres said current data and findings show that “the transformative potential of women’s leadership and inclusion in the pursuit of peace” is being undercut — with power and decision-making on peace and security matters overwhelmingly in the hands of men. 

“As long as oppressive patriarchal social structures and gender biases hold back half our societies, peace will remain elusive,” he warned. 

The report says the proportion of women killed in armed conflicts doubled in 2023 compared with a year earlier; U.N.-verified cases of conflict-related sexual violence were 50% higher; and the number of girls affected by grave violations in conflicts increased by 35%. 

At a two-day U.N. Security Council meeting on the topic that ended Friday, Sima Bahous, head of the U.N. agency promoting gender equality known as UN Women, also pointed to a lack of attention to women’s voices in the search for peace. 

She cited the fears of millions of women and girls in Afghanistan deprived of an education and a future; of displaced women in Gaza “waiting for death”; of women in Sudan who are victims of sexual violence; and of the vanishing hopes of women in Myanmar, Haiti, Congo, the Sahel region of Africa, South Sudan, Syria, Ukraine, Yemen and elsewhere. 

Bahous said the 612 million women and girls affected by war “wonder if the world has already forgotten them, if they have fallen from the agenda of an international community overwhelmed by crises of ever deeper frequency, severity and urgency.” 

The world needs to answer their fears with hope, she said, but the reality is grim: “One in two women and girls in conflict-affected settings are facing moderate to severe food insecurity, 61% of all maternal mortality is concentrated in 35 conflict-affected countries.” 

As for women’s participation in decision-making and politics in countries in conflict, Bahous said it’s stalled. 

“The percentage of women in peace negotiations has not improved over the last decade: under 10% on average in all processes, and under 20% in processes led or supported by the United Nations,” she said. 

U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed announced the launch of a “Common Pledge on Women’s Participation in Peace Processes,” and urged governments, regional organizations and others involved in mediation to join the U.N. in taking concrete steps toward that end. The commitments include appointing women as lead mediators and team members, promoting direct and meaningful participation of women in peace processes, consulting women leaders at all stages and embedding women with expertise “to foster gender-responsive peace processes and agreements,” she said. 

Many U.N. ambassadors who spoke at the council meeting focused on the lack of “political will” to promote women in the peace process. 

“We’ve seen how the lack of political will continues to stand in the way of the full implementation of the commitments entered into by member states,” Panama’s U.N. Ambassador Eloy Alfaro de Alba said Friday. 
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The Little Saigon district in California’s Orange County is home to a large concentration of Vietnamese people. In hopes of engaging these voters, candidates for public office are putting up signs and holding events. VOA’s Long Nguyen reports, Elizabeth Cherneff narrates. Camera: Vu Nguyen.
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Rome — A major Vatican meeting gathering clerics and laity across the globe to discuss the future of the Catholic Church closes this weekend, thwarting discussion of women becoming priests or deacons in the world’s largest Christian denomination.

But that didn’t stop a half-dozen Catholic women from “ordination” in a secret ceremony in Rome that was not authorized by the Vatican.

Jesuit Father Allan Deck, a professor at the Los Angeles-based Loyola Marymount University, told VOA that the Catholic Church under Pope Francis’ leadership recognizes the need for adaptability to realize its spiritual mission in the world at this time of significant change.

“Not the first time that the church in its 2,000-year history has experienced very significant shifts,” he said. “The church, in order to accomplish its mission, has to engage people, circumstances and times. And it has to be capable of development, while at the same time remaining faithful to its mission and to the revelation that has been communicated to it. This is hard. This is what’s happening.”

While Catholic women participated over the past month in what many consider the most significant Catholic gathering since the 1960s — called the “synod on synodality” — many of their number were let down by a Vatican decision to sideline talk of the ordination of female priests or deacons, instead referring the matter to a future study group.

Bridget Mary Meehan, an American co-founder of the Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests, told VOA that her organization has performed 270 ordinations of women in 14 countries since its creation in 2002.

“We wanted to share with Pope Francis that it is time to build a bridge between the international women priests’ movement and the Vatican,” she said. “We are on the same page as he is about a synodal church. We believe all are called, all are equal and all are co-responsible for the mission of the church — to be the face of Christ in the world in loving and compassionate service. One of these ways is ordained ministry.”

Advocates say women play a huge role in daily Catholic ministries — also called the diakonia — in education, pastoral care and hospitals worldwide. In some places, women are especially active because there are no priests, such as in the Amazon. But often their leadership is not recognized.

Meehan “ordained” six Catholic women from France, Spain and the United States on a barge on Rome’s Tiber River earlier this month to acknowledge their central role in ministry around the world.

“We did it because we felt that it’s time for us, after 22 years of serving the church in the diakonia ministry, to really share the good news that women are being ordained by Catholic communities who want to call them forward to ministry among them,” Meehan said.

“It’s like a renewal of ministry that is already in the midst of the Catholic Church. It’s already occurring,” she said.

Although Pope Francis has appointed more women to top jobs at the Vatican than any of his predecessors, he has ruled out female priests or deacons ministering in the Catholic Church.
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TAIPEI, TAIWAN — Kiribati President Taneti Maamau, who has led the Pacific Island nation to build closer ties with China in recent years, secured his third term in office on Saturday. He defeated two other candidates in an election closely monitored by countries around the world.

Maamau won about 55% of the vote, while his nearest challenger, Kaotitaaake Kokoria, won 42% of the vote, New Zealand’s High Commissioner in Kiribati said. Kiribati’s chief justice, Tetiro Semilota, declared Maamau the winner and congratulated him.

New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon became the first international leader to congratulate Maamau for his victory on Saturday. “We look forward to working with the Government of Kiribati to deliver on our shared priorities,” he wrote in a post on social media platform X.

Kiribati is one of the countries that relies heavily on foreign aid. The cost of living, rising sea level and relations with China were the main issues leading up to Friday’s presidential election.

Saturday’s outcome is viewed as the Kiribati voters’ endorsement of policies Maamau’s government has implemented over the last four years, including deepening the Pacific Island nation’s ties with China.

During the parliamentary election in August, the ruling Tobwaan Kiribati Party, or TKP, secured 33 out of 44 seats in the new parliament, and Maamau won his seat by winning close to 83% of the votes in his district.

“The TKP has a very healthy majority [in the parliament], and it sort of shows that the people of Kiribati want to see more of what has been happening [over the last few years],” said Henryk Szadziewski, an expert on Pacific-China relations at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

Since switching diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China in 2019, Kiribati has deepened its engagement with Beijing. The Maamau administration’s efforts to elevate security ties with the Chinese government have prompted concerns from partners such as Australia and the United States.

In 2021, China helped Kiribati revamp a World War II-era airstrip on the island of Kanton, which is less than 3,000 kilometers from Hawaii and Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands, where major U.S. military bases are located.

In February, Kiribati’s acting police commissioner, Eeri Aritiera, revealed that Chinese police would help Kiribati’s community policing program and IT department, raising concerns from the U.S. that the cooperation could negatively impact Kiribati’s sovereignty.

Some analysts say since China has ambitions to deepen its economic and security reach in the Pacific region, Australia and the United States are very concerned about any advancement in security relations between Beijing and Pacific Island countries.

“It’s unclear how the policing arrangement with Kiribati will evolve in Maamou’s next term, but it’s unlikely that Chinese engagement will cease or decrease,” said Meg Keen, a senior fellow at Lowy Institute in Australia.

Despite these concerns, Szadziewski said Kiribati’s efforts to build closer ties with China shouldn’t be viewed through a pure zero-sum lens. “The Kiribati economy is heavily reliant on tourism and fishing, and China has stepped up with infrastructure projects in that respect,” he told VOA by phone.

But China’s engagement with Kiribati hasn’t been “all benevolence,” Szadziewski said. “Kiribati has opened up its maritime domain for increased Chinese fishing, so there is something in it for China that’s economic,” he said.

During a reception celebrating the fifth anniversary of the restoration of diplomatic ties between China and Kiribati, the Chinese ambassador to Kiribati, Zhou Limin, said the relationship has further consolidated and vowed to strengthen synergy between the two countries in the future.

Under Maamau’s third term, Keen in Australia said, Kiribati will likely maintain its close relationship with China while also trying to seek assistance from other countries, such as Australia, to help improve the country’s infrastructure and climate resilience.

“There’s no indication that the relationship with China will change under another term for Maamau, and he will be seeking a strong legacy in his final term by working with any development partner that can assist with his ambitious development goals,” Keen told VOA in a written response.

She added that most Pacific leaders don’t view maintaining relations with China or other democratic countries such as Australia as “an either/or choice.”

In response to China’s elevated relations with Kiribati, Australia and the United States have also stepped up efforts to deepen ties with the Pacific Islands nation.

In 2023, Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong announced that Canberra would “rapidly scale up” security and development with Kiribati during her visit to the country. In February, the U.S. Coast Guard conducted joint patrols with Kiribati in the country’s exclusive economic zone.

Despite these efforts, Szadziewski at the University of Hawaii said it’s important for democratic countries to understand the priorities of Pacific Island countries and try to engage with them on “equal footing.”

“Pacific Island states have heightened sensitivity about sovereignty, so they prefer to see exchanges with other states on an equal footing,” he told VOA, adding that democratic countries should ensure the priority of their engagement with Pacific Island countries is not solely about geopolitics.

“If China is your main concern and why you are in the region, that’s not going to be something of interest to the Pacific Island leaders,” Szadziewski said.

In addition to the presidential election in Kiribati, Palau is going to hold a general election on November 5, with the current president, Surangel Whipps Jr., running against former president Tommy Remengesau Jr. in a race that analysts say Beijing will be closely following.

Experts say competition for geopolitical influence between China and the U.S. as well as its allies will intensify as countries try to engage with winners emerging from these important elections in the Pacific region.

“Election periods will always heighten activities, and competition [between these countries] is only going to get more intense over the next couple of years,” Blake Johnson, a senior analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, told VOA by phone.
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Shells fell on the Alaska Native village as winter approached, and then sailors landed and burned what was left of homes, food caches and canoes. Conditions grew so dire in the following months that elders sacrificed their own lives to spare food for surviving children.

It was Oct. 26, 1882, in Angoon, a Tlingit village of about 420 people in the southeastern Alaska panhandle. Now, 142 years later, the perpetrator of the bombardment — the U.S. Navy — is set to say it is sorry.

Rear Adm. Mark Sucato, the commander of the Navy’s northwest region, will issue the apology during a ceremony on Saturday, the anniversary of the atrocity. While the rebuilt Angoon received $90,000 in a settlement with the Department of Interior in 1973, village leaders have for decades sought an apology as well, beginning each yearly remembrance by asking three times, “Is there anyone here from the Navy to apologize?”

“You can imagine the generations of people that have died since 1882 that have wondered what had happened, why it happened, and wanted an apology of some sort, because in our minds, we didn’t do anything wrong,” said Daniel Johnson Jr., a tribal head in Angoon.

The attack was one of a series of conflicts between the American military and Alaska Natives in the years after the U.S. bought the territory from Russia in 1867. The U.S. Navy issued an apology last month for destroying the nearby village of Kake in 1869, and the Army has indicated that it plans to apologize for shelling Wrangell, also in southeast Alaska, that year, though no date has been set.

The Navy acknowledges the actions it undertook or ordered in Angoon and Kake caused deaths, a loss of resources and multigenerational trauma, Navy civilian spokesperson Julianne Leinenveber said in an email.

“An apology is not only warranted, but long overdue,” she said.

Today, Angoon remains a quaint village of about 420 people, with colorful old homes and totem poles clustered on the west side of Admiralty Island, accessible by ferry or float plane, in the Tongass National Forest, the nation’s largest. The residents are vastly outnumbered by brown bears, and the village in recent years has strived to foster its ecotourism industry. Bald eagles and humpback whales abound, and the salmon and halibut fishing is excellent.

Accounts vary as to what prompted its destruction, but they generally begin with the accidental death of a Tlingit shaman, Tith Klane. Klane was killed when a harpoon gun exploded on a whaling ship owned by his employer, the North West Trading Co.

The Navy’s version says tribal members forced the vessel to shore, possibly took hostages and, in accordance with their customs, demanded 200 blankets in compensation.

The company declined to provide the blankets and ordered the Tlingits to return to work. Instead, in sorrow, they painted their faces with coal tar and tallow — something the company’s employees took as a precursor to an insurrection. The company’s superintendent then sought help from Naval Cmdr. E.C. Merriman, the top U.S. official in Alaska, saying a Tlingit uprising threatened the lives and property of white residents.

The Tlingit version contends the boat’s crew, which included Tlingit members, likely remained with the vessel out of respect, planning to attend the funeral, and that no hostages were taken. Johnson said the tribe never would have demanded compensation so soon after the death.

Merriman arrived on Oct. 25 and insisted the tribe provide 400 blankets by noon the next day as punishment for disobedience. When the Tlingits turned over just 81, Merriman attacked, destroying 12 clan houses, smaller homes, canoes and the village’s food stores.

Six children died in the attack, and “there’s untold numbers of elderly and infants who died that winter of both cold, exposure and hunger,” Johnson said.

Billy Jones, Tith Klane’s nephew, was 13 when Angoon was destroyed. Around 1950, he recorded two interviews, and his account was later included in a booklet prepared for the 100th anniversary of the bombing in 1982.

“They left us homeless on the beach,” Jones said.

Rosita Worl, the president of Sealaska Heritage Institute in Juneau, described how some elders that winter “walked into the forest” — meaning they died, sacrificing themselves so the younger people would have more food.

Even though the Navy’s written history conflicts with the Tlingit oral tradition, the Navy defers to the tribe’s account “out of respect for the long-lasting impacts these tragic incidents had on the affected clans,” said Leinenveber, the Navy spokesperson.

Tlingit leaders were so stunned when Navy officials told them, during a Zoom call in May, that the apology would finally be forthcoming that no one spoke for five minutes, Johnson said.

Eunice James, of Juneau, a descendant of Tith Klane, said she hopes the apology helps her family and the entire community heal. She expects his presence at the ceremony.

“Not only his spirit will be there, but the spirit of many of our ancestors, because we’ve lost so many,” she said.
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MIAMI, FLORIDA — The last Kmart on the U.S. mainland sits at the west end of a busy suburban Miami shopping center, quiet and largely ignored.

All around it are thriving chain stores attracting steady streams of customers in sectors where the former box-store chain was once a major player: Marshalls, Hobby Lobby, PetSmart and Dollar Tree.

But at this all-but-last outpost of a company once famed for its “Blue Light Specials,” only an occasional shopper pops in, mostly out of curiosity or nostalgia, then leaves after buying little or nothing.

“I hadn’t seen Kmart in so long,” said Juan de la Madriz, who came to the shopping center on a recent weekday to buy dog food at PetSmart. The architect spotted the Kmart and wondered if he could find a gift for his newborn grandson. He exited 10 minutes later having spent $23 on a stuffed dog and a wooden toy workbench.

“It will be sad if it closes,” he said about the store, “but everything now is on computers.”

The last full-size Kmart in the 50 states closed Sunday in Long Island, New York, making the Miami store — now a fraction of its former size — the last operating in the continental United States. At its peak 30 years ago, Kmart operated about 2,500 locations. Today, four others remain: three in the U.S. Virgin Islands and one in Guam. There is also a website.

Transformco, the Illinois-based holding company that owns Kmart and what’s left of another former retail behemoth, Sears, did not respond to email requests for comment or allow the store manager to speak. The company’s plans for the Miami location are unknown — but there is no indication it will close soon.

The last outpost

If the Miami Kmart were a brand-new mom-and-pop retailer, a shopper might think it could eventually thrive with advertising and a little luck. Kmart long had a reputation for clutter and mess, but this store is immaculate, and the merchandise is precisely stacked and displayed.

The size of a CVS or Walgreens drug store, the branch occupies what was its garden section during its big-box days. A couple years ago, an At Home department store took over the rest of the space.

“Get it all! Must Haves. Wish Fors. Friendly Faces,” the sign next to the door reads.

Halloween and Christmas decorations line the entryway, next to the 30 shopping carts that no one is using. A robotic voice says “Welcome,” as does a cheery employee, one of three spotted in the store. A lone customer checks out the Halloween candy.

Straight ahead are a few dishwashers, refrigerators, washing machines and dryers: the appliance department. In the store’s main room, there is a large section of toiletries and diapers, a few hardware essentials and some cleaning and pet supplies. The toy department comprises a couple rows of dolls, action figures, games and squirt guns. Sun dresses, summer tops and sweatshirts make up the small clothing section. Oh, and there are snacks.

Also still present: a recorded voice intoning a once-familiar message over a loudspeaker.

“Attention Kmart shoppers,” it says, announcing that almost all items are on sale.

If there were only customers to hear it, like there used to be.

A fast rise and a slow death

Kmart was founded by the retailer S.S. Kresge Company in Michigan in 1962 and grew quickly, reaching 2,000 stores in 20 years. The company sold almost everything, from clothing to jewelry, TVs to dog food, appliances to toys to sporting goods. By the mid-1980s, it was the nation’s second-largest retailer behind Sears, and there were stores in Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

The roots of Kmart’s decline were laid during that decade when management bought Waldenbooks, Borders Books, Builders Square, Sports Authority and a stake in OfficeMax, thinking the company needed diversification. They were wrong. By the late 1990s, the company had sold those retailers yet still needed $5 billion in refinancing — the equivalent of $9 billion today.

In 2002, Kmart declared bankruptcy as Walmart and Target devoured its market share. Its website never took off, allowing Amazon to beat it in the e-commerce space. There were executive pay scandals, a purchase by a hedge fund manager who stripped it bare and a disastrous 2005 acquisition of Sears.

Mark Cohen, a former Sears Canada CEO and former director of retail studies at Columbia University’s graduate school of business, said Kmart would have thrived if not for the top executives who ran it into the ground. It could have been Walmart.

“It sold in its heyday things that people continue to buy in large quantities today,” Cohen said. “Kmart went down the drain because it was led by incompetent managers.”

Transformco bought Kmart and Sears out of another bankruptcy in 2019 for $5 billion — its critics say mostly for the stores’ real estate. There were 202 Kmarts remaining.

Over the past five years, the firm has kept closing Kmarts until all that’s left in the states is Miami Store #3074.

Nostalgia does not translate into sales

On the day that de la Madriz dropped in to buy his grandson’s gift, only a few customers trickled in and out of the store every hour.

College students Joey Fernandez and Wilfredo Huayhua spent five minutes inside before leaving empty-handed. They knew about the chain’s near-demise, spotted the store while in the shopping center and went in to reminisce. It seemed small, they said, compared to the Kmarts they remembered.

“We were bummed out — I spent a lot of my childhood at Kmart,” said Fernandez, 18. Still, he might be back — the store has good prices on the facial cleanser he uses.

Teacher Oliver Sequin had been entering Marshalls when he spotted the Kmart. That, too, triggered nostalgia but also reminded him he needed Band-Aids for his 5-year-old son. That was all he purchased.

“I remember when Kmarts were bigger,” Sequin said. “But, to be honest, I like this one better. It is clean and organized, not like they were.”
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A proposed multibillion-dollar missile defense system for Guam has been reduced to 16 sites on the island from the original 22, the U.S. Missile Defense Agency said in a draft environmental impact statement on Friday.

The project is designed to create “360 degree” protection for the U.S. Pacific territory from missile and air attacks of all kinds, the agency said. Plans include integrating Raytheon’s SM-6, SM-3 Block IIA, Lockheed Martin’s  THAAD, and the Patriot PAC-3, which uses components from both companies, over about 10 years.

The environmental impact study, which began last year and included a public comment period this year, proposes “deploying and operating and maintaining a combination of integrated components for air and missile defense positioned on 16 sites” on the island. The report does not say why the number of sites was reduced.

All of the remaining 16 sites are on U.S. military property.

The project is crucial to the U.S. and its Indo-Pacific allies because it provides a logistical hub far from U.S. shores – Guam is closer to China than it is to Hawaii.

China’s massive conventional ballistic missile inventory includes the DF-26, with an estimated range of about 4,000 km (2,500 miles), which can also carry anti-ship and nuclear warheads. Newer weapons in development, such as the hypersonic glide vehicle DF-27, are drawing increased attention from U.S. military planners.

“It’s a forward operating base for long-range bombers, and a port for ships, so that navy ships can sally forth from there,” said Peter Layton, a defense and aviation expert at the Griffith Asia Institute in Australia. “Certainly places in Japan and the Philippines are a lot closer (to China)… but a lot more exposed.”

There will be public meetings in Guam next month to discuss Friday’s report, the agency statement said.
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Mexico city — The fate of Latin American economies, deeply reliant on remittances from the United States, hangs in the balance with the upcoming U.S. presidential elections, Fitch Ratings said on Friday.

Why it’s important

The potential disparity in immigration policies between the Republican and Democratic administrations could significantly affect Central American nations, which are heavily dependent on remittances from the U.S.

Key comment

“Central America is highly vulnerable to U.S. immigration policies, as remittances fund a large component of their economic activity,” said Fitch, a U.S.-based credit rating agency.

In countries like El Salvador and Nicaragua, remittances currently account for more than 30% of their gross domestic product, the ratings agency said, adding that Mexico is also one of the largest recipients of remittances globally, where inflows have steadily increased over the past decade to close to 3.5% of GDP, from 2%.

By the numbers

Remittances to Nicaragua have tripled in the past five years, while those to other countries, specifically El Salvador and Jamaica, have considerably slowed.

A study based on data from the U.S. Current Population Survey showed that a 1% increase in the country’s household earnings results in a 0.2% to 0.3% increase in remittances sent abroad.

Context

The U.S. elections could usher in changes in immigration policies, with Donald Trump’s campaign showing a willingness to restrict border crossings and increase deportations, while the potential Kamala Harris administration would aim to pass a bipartisan law to reform the asylum process and limit immigration parole.

Policy changes could significantly affect migrants and the Central American economies that are heavily dependent on the money they send back home from the United States.
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CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida — A NASA astronaut was taken to the hospital for an undisclosed medical issue after returning from a nearly eight-month space station stay extended by Boeing’s capsule trouble and Hurricane Milton, the space agency said Friday.

A SpaceX capsule carrying three Americans and one Russian parachuted before dawn into the Gulf of Mexico just off the Florida coast after undocking from the International Space Station at midweek. The capsule was hoisted onto the recovery ship where the four astronauts had routine medical checks.

Soon after splashdown, a NASA astronaut had a “medical issue” and the crew was flown to a hospital in Pensacola, Florida, for additional evaluation “out of an abundance of caution,” the space agency said in a statement.

The astronaut, who was not identified, was in stable condition and remained at the hospital as a “precautionary measure,” NASA said.

The space agency said it would not share details about the astronaut’s condition, citing patient privacy.

The other three astronauts were discharged and returned to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

It can take days or even weeks for astronauts to readjust to gravity after living in weightlessness for several months.

The astronauts should have been back two months ago. But their homecoming was stalled by problems with Boeing’s new Starliner astronaut capsule, which came back empty in September because of safety concerns. Then Hurricane Milton interfered, followed by another two weeks of high wind and rough seas.

SpaceX launched the four — NASA’s Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt and Jeanette Epps, and Russia’s Alexander Grebenkin — in March. Barratt, the only space veteran going into the mission, acknowledged the support teams back home that had “to replan, retool and kind of redo everything right along with us … and helped us to roll with all those punches.”

Their replacements are the two Starliner test pilots Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, whose own mission went from eight days to eight months, and two astronauts launched by SpaceX four weeks ago. Those four will remain up there until February.

The space station is now back to its normal crew size of seven — four Americans and three Russians — after months of overflow.
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