Voice of America’s immigration news

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DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — Israeli airstrikes hit central and southern Gaza overnight into Saturday, killing at least 14 people as friends and family members of a Turkish-American activist killed by an Israeli soldier honored her in a funeral. The airstrikes in Gaza City hit one home housing 11 people, including three women and four children, and another strike hit a tent in Khan Younis with Palestinians displaced by the Israel-Hamas war, Gaza's Civil Defense said Saturday. They followed airstrikes earlier this week that hit a tent camp on Tuesday and a United Nations school sheltering displaced people on Wednesday. Polio vaccination campaign A campaign to inoculate children in Gaza against polio drew down, and the World Health Organization said about 559,000 people under the age of 10 — seven out of every eight children the campaign aimed to vaccinate — have recovered from their first dose. The second doses are expected to begin later this month as part of an effort in which the WHO said parties had already agreed to. "As we prepare for the next round in four weeks, we’re hopeful these pauses will hold, because this campaign has clearly shown the world what’s possible when peace is given a chance,” Richard Peeperkorn, WHO’s representative in Gaza and the West Bank, said in a statement on Saturday. Turkish-American activist buried In Turkey, activist Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, the 26-year-old from Seattle who held U.S. and Turkish citizenships, was laid to rest in her hometown of Didim on the Aegean Sea. The Israeli military has said that Eygi was likely shot “indirectly and unintentionally” by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank on September 6. Turkey announced it will conduct its own investigation into her death. An Israeli protester who witnessed the shooting said she was killed after a demonstration against Israeli settlements. “We are not going to leave our daughter’s blood on the ground, and we demand responsibility and accountability for this murder,” Numan Kurtulus, the speaker of Turkey's parliament, told mourners. Eygi's body had been earlier brought from a hospital to her family home and Didim's Central Mosque. Thousands of people bid her farewell in the town's streets, which were lined with Turkish flags. Her death was condemned by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken as the United States, Egypt and Qatar push for a cease-fire and the release of the remaining hostages held by Hamas. Talks have repeatedly bogged down as Israel and Hamas accuse each other of making new and unacceptable demands. The war began when Hamas-led fighters killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in an October 7 terror attack on southern Israel. They abducted 250 people and are still holding about 100 hostages after releasing most of the rest in exchange for Palestinians imprisoned by Israel during a weeklong cease-fire in November. About a third of the remaining hostages are believed to be dead. The United States, the U.K. and other Western countries designate Hamas as a terror group. The war has caused vast destruction and displaced roughly 90% of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million, often multiple times, and plunged the territory into a severe humanitarian crisis. Gaza’s Health Ministry says upwards of 41,000 Palestinians have been killed since the war began. The ministry does not distinguish between civilians and militants in its count, but says women and children make up just over half of the dead. Israel says it has killed more than 17,000 militants in the war.

MORONI, COMOROS — Comoros President Azali Assoumani is "out of danger" after he was injured on Friday in a knife attack by a 24-year-old police officer who was found dead in his cell a day later, officials said Saturday. The attack occurred around 2 p.m. Friday in Salimani Itsandra, a town just north of the capital, Moroni. "The president is doing well. He has no health problems; he is out of danger. A few stitches were given," Energy Minister Aboubacar Said Anli said at a press conference in Moroni on Saturday. Azali was attacked as he attended a funeral, according to the presidency. The motive for the attack has not yet been determined. The attacker, Ahmed Abdou, went on leave Wednesday before orchestrating the attack on Friday. Abdou was placed in a cell after he was taken into custody. However, "this Saturday morning, when investigators went to see him, they found him lying on the ground, his body was lifeless," Ali Mohamed Djounaid, Comoros' public prosecutor, said at a separate press conference. He added that an investigation was being conducted to determine the motive of the attack and the cause of his death. In May, Assoumani was sworn in for a fourth term in office following a tense January election, which his opponents claim was tainted by voter fraud. Officials deny the allegations.

MEXICO CITY — Mexico issued a tropical storm warning Saturday along the coast, from Altata to Huatabampito, and has discontinued all watches and warnings for Baja California Sur after rain from Storm Ileana pounded the resort-studded Los Cabos a day before. Ileana moved northward over the southern Gulf of California at 11 kph, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center. The storm was about 110 kilometers east of La Paz, Mexico, with maximum sustained winds of 65 kph, the center said. Tropical storm warnings have been issued for the coasts of northern Sinaloa and extreme southern Sonola. On Friday, a warning was in effect for portions of the Baja California Peninsula, including Cabo San Lucas and San Jose del Cabo. Juan Manuel Arce Ortega of Los Cabos Civil Protection said the municipalities of La Paz and Los Cabos were on red alert at the time and urged residents to avoid crossing rivers, streams and low areas where they can be swept away by water. All schools in Los Cabos were suspended Friday due to the storm. Oscar Cruces Rodriguez of Mexico’s federal Civil Protection said in a statement that residents should avoid leaving their homes until the storm passes and if residents are in an area at risk of flooding, to find temporary shelters. Authorities prepared 20 temporary shelters in San Jose del Cabo and Cabo San Lucas, according to Los Cabos Civil Protection. At the Hacienda Beach Club and Residences in Cabo San Lucas, valet worker Alan Galvan said the rain arrived late Thursday and has been constant. “The rain isn’t very strong right now, but the waves are choppy,” he said. “The guests are very calm and already came down for coffee,” Galvan said. “There’s some flights canceled, but everything is OK at the moment.” Galvan said they are awaiting further advisories from authorities. The rain remained consistent through Los Cabos Friday afternoon, with several roads flooded and some resorts stacking up sandbags on their perimeters. Some people were still walking around boat docks with their umbrellas. “The priority has to be safety, starting with the workers. We always have to check on our colleagues who live in risk areas,” said Lyzzette Liceaga, a tour operator at Los Cabos. “We give them the information shared by the authorities — firefighters in risk areas — so that they can go to the shelters, if necessary.”

Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

BUKWO, Uganda — Dozens of mourners in Uganda paid respects to Rebecca Cheptegei, the Olympic athlete who died last week in Kenya after her partner set her on fire. Local leaders and others gathered at the local administration hall Saturday as they awaited her burial at her ancestral home in a village near the Kenya border. Cheptegei died after her body suffered 80% burns in the attack by Dickson Ndiema, who doused her in gasoline at her home in western Kenya’s Trans-Nzoia County on September 3. Ndiema sustained 30% burns on his body and later died. According to a report filed by the local chief, they quarreled over a piece of land the athlete bought in Kenya. The horrific gasoline attack shocked many and strengthened calls for the protection of female runners facing exploitation and abuse in the East African country. Cheptegei’s body was returned to Uganda Friday in a somber procession following a street march by dozens of activists in the western Kenyan town of Eldoret who demanded an end to physical violence against female athletes. Cheptegei, who was 33, is the fourth female athlete to have been killed by her partner in Kenya in a pattern of gender-based violence in recent years. Kenya’s high rate of violence against women has prompted several marches this year. Ugandan officials have condemned the attack, demanding justice for Cheptegei. Janet Museveni, who serves as Uganda’s education and sports minister, described the attack as “deeply disturbing.” Don Rukare, chair of the National Council of Sports of Uganda, said in a statement on X that the attack was “a cowardly and senseless act that has led to the loss of a great athlete.” Four in 10 dating or married Kenyan women have experienced physical or sexual violence perpetrated by their current or most recent partner, according to the 2022 Kenya Demographic and Health Survey. Many Ugandan athletes train across the border in Kenya, an athletics powerhouse with better facilities. Some of the region’s best runners train together at a high-altitude center in Kenya’s west. Cheptegei competed in the women’s marathon at the Paris Olympics, finishing in 44th place, less than a month before the attack. She had represented Uganda at other competitions.

ISLAMABAD — A bomb explosion in Pakistan’s violence-hit southwestern Baluchistan province ripped through a police vehicle Saturday, killing at least two officers and wounding as many others. Abdul Hameed, an area police officer, told VOA by phone that the attack occurred on a main highway passing through Kuchlak near the provincial capital of Quetta. He said that a homemade bomb targeted a police mobile unit and that an investigation into the incident was underway. There were no immediate claims of responsibility for the deadly bombing in the natural resources-rich Pakistani province, where separatist ethnic Baluch groups routinely target security forces. Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif condemned Saturday’s attack on the police as a terrorist act, his office said in a statement in Islamabad. A daylong series of insurgent attacks rattled Baluchistan last month, killing more than 50 civilians and security personnel. The outlawed Baluch Liberation Army, the largest of all the separatist groups active in the province, claimed responsibility for orchestrating the violence, which targeted security installations and passenger vehicles. The BLA, designated as a global terrorist group by the United States, has lately intensified its attacks in Baluchistan. The province shares Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan and Iran and hosts major China-funded infrastructure projects.

Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

TEHRAN, Iran — Iran launched a satellite into space Saturday with a rocket built by the country's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, state-run media reported, the latest for a program the West fears helps Tehran advance its ballistic missile program. Iran described the launch as a success, which would be the second such launch to put a satellite into orbit with the rocket. There was no immediate independent confirmation of the launch's success, nor did Iranian authorities immediately provide footage or other details. The launch comes amid heightened tensions gripping the wider Middle East over the ongoing Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip, during which Tehran launched an unprecedented direct missile-and-drone attack on Israel. Meanwhile, Iran continues to enrich uranium to nearly weapons-grade levels, raising concerns among nonproliferation experts about Tehran's program. Iran identified the satellite-carrying rocket as the Qaem-100, which the Guard used in January for another successful launch. Qaem means "upright" in Iran's Farsi language. The solid-fuel rocket put the Chamran-1 satellite, weighing 60 kilograms, into a 550-kilometer orbit, state media reported. The U.S. State Department and the American military did not immediately respond to requests for comment over the Iranian launch. The United States had previously said Iran's satellite launches defy a U.N. Security Council resolution and called on Tehran to undertake no activity involving ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons. U.N. sanctions related to Iran's ballistic missile program expired last October. Under Iran's relatively moderate former President Hassan Rouhani, the Islamic Republic slowed its space program for fear of raising tensions with the West. Hard-line President Ebrahim Raisi, a protege of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who came to power in 2021, has pushed the program forward. Raisi died in a helicopter crash in May. It's unclear what Iran's new president, the reformist Masoud Pezeshkian, wants for the program as he was silent on the issue while campaigning. The U.S. intelligence community's worldwide threat assessment this year said Iran's development of satellite launch vehicles "would shorten the timeline" for Iran to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile because it uses similar technology. Intercontinental ballistic missiles can be used to deliver nuclear weapons. Iran is now producing uranium close to weapons-grade levels after the collapse of its nuclear deal with world powers. Tehran has enough enriched uranium for "several" nuclear weapons, if it chooses to produce them, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency repeatedly has warned. Iran has always denied seeking nuclear weapons and says its space program, like its nuclear activities, is for purely civilian purposes. However, U.S. intelligence agencies and the IAEA say Iran had an organized military nuclear program up until 2003. The launch also came ahead of the second anniversary of the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, which sparked nationwide protests against Iran's mandatory headscarf, or hijab, law and the country's Shiite theocracy. 

Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — On the streets of Iranian cities, it's becoming more common to see a woman passing by without a mandatory headscarf, or hijab, as the second anniversary of the death of Mahsa Amini and the mass protests it sparked approaches. There's no government official or study acknowledging the phenomenon, which began as Iran entered its hot summer months and power cuts in its overburdened electrical system became common. But across social media, videos of people filming neighborhood streets or just talking about a normal day in their life, women and girls can be seen walking past with their long hair out over their shoulders, particularly after sunset. This defiance comes despite what United Nations investigators describe as "expanded repressive measures and policies" by Iran's theocracy to punish them — though there's been no recent catalyzing event like Amini's death to galvanize demonstrators. The country's new reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian campaigned on a promise to halt the harassment of women by morality police. But the country's ultimate authority remains the 85-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who in the past said "unveiling is both religiously forbidden and politically forbidden." For some observant Muslim women, the head covering is a sign of piety before God and modesty in front of men outside their families. In Iran, the hijab — and the all-encompassing black chador worn by some — has long been a political symbol as well. "Meaningful institutional changes and accountability for gross human rights violations and crimes under international law, and crimes against humanity, remains elusive for victims and survivors, especially for women and children," warned a U.N. fact-finding mission on Iran on Friday. Amini, 22, died on September 16, 2022, in a hospital after her arrest by the country's morality police over not wearing her hijab to the liking of the authorities. The protests that followed Amini's death started first with the chant "Women, Life, Freedom." However, the protesters' cries soon grew into open calls of revolt against Khamenei. A monthslong security crackdown that followed killed more than 500 people and saw over 22,000 detained. Today, passersby on the streets of Tehran, whether its tony northern suburbs for the wealthy or the working-class neighborhoods of the capital's southern reaches, now routinely see women without the hijab. It particularly starts at dusk, though even during the daylight on weekends women can be seen with their hair uncovered at major parks. Online videos — specifically a sub-genre showing walking tours of city streets for those in rural areas or abroad who want to see life in the bustling neighborhoods of Tehran — include women without the hijab. Something that would have stopped a person in their tracks in the decades following the 1979 Islamic Revolution now goes unacknowledged. "My quasi-courage for not wearing scarves is a legacy of Mahsa Amini and we have to protect this as an achievement," said a 25-year-old student at Tehran Sharif University, who gave only her first name Azadeh out of fear of reprisal. "She could be at my current age if she did not pass away." The disobedience still comes with risk. Months after the protests halted, Iranian morality police returned to the streets. There have been scattered videos of women and young girls being roughed up by officers in the time since. In 2023, a teenage Iranian girl was injured in a mysterious incident on Tehran's Metro while not wearing a headscarf and later died in hospital. In July, activists say police opened fire on a woman fleeing a checkpoint in an attempt to avoid her car being impounded for her not wearing the hijab. Meanwhile, the government has targeted private businesses where women are seen without their headscarves. Surveillance cameras search for women uncovered in vehicles to fine and impound their cars. The government has gone as far as use aerial drones to monitor the 2024 Tehran International Book Fair and Kish Island for uncovered women, the U.N. said. Yet some feel the election of Pezeshkian in July, after a helicopter crash killed Iranian hard-line President Ebrahim Raisi in May, is helping ease tensions over the hijab. "I think the current peaceful environment is part of the status after Pezeshkian took office," said Hamid Zarrinjouei, a 38-year-old bookseller. "In some way, Pezeshkian could convince powerful people that more restrictions do not necessarily make women more faithful to the hijab." On Wednesday, Iran's Prosecutor General Mohammad Movahedi Azad warned security forces about starting physical altercations over the hijab. "We prosecuted violators, and we will," Movahedi Azad said, according to Iranian media. "Nobody has right to have improper attitude even though an individual commits an offense." While the government isn't directly addressing the increase in women not wearing hijabs, there are other signs of a recognition the political landscape has shifted. In August, authorities dismissed a university teacher a day after he appeared on state television and dismissively referred to Amini as having "croaked." Meanwhile, the pre-reform newspaper Ham Mihan reported in August on an unpublished survey conducted under the supervision of Iran's Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance that found the hijab had become one of the most important issues in the country — something it hadn't seen previously. "This issue has been on people's minds more than ever before," sociologist Simin Kazemi told the newspaper. 

AURORA, Colorado — She was eight months pregnant when she was forced to leave her Denver homeless shelter. It was November. Ivanni Herrera took her 4-year-old son, Dylan, by the hand and led him into the chilly night, dragging a suitcase containing donated clothes and blankets away from the Microtel Inn & Suites. It was one of 10 hotels where Denver has housed more than 30,000 migrants, many of them Venezuelan, over the last two years. First, they walked to Walmart. There, with money she and her husband earned begging on the street, they bought a tent. They chose for their new home a grassy median along a busy thoroughfare in Aurora, the next town over, a suburb known for its immigrant population. “We wanted to go somewhere where there were people,” Herrera, 28, said in Spanish. “It feels safer.” That night, temperatures dipped to 32 degrees. And as she wrapped her body around her son's, Ivanni Herrera cried. Over the past two years, a record number of Venezuelans have come to the United States seeking a better life. Instead, they’ve found themselves in communities roiling over how much to help the newcomers — or whether to help at all. Unable to legally work without filing expensive and complicated paperwork, some have found themselves sleeping on the streets — even those who are pregnant. Herrera had found inspiration for her journey to the U.S. on social media. On Facebook and TikTok, young, smiling Venezuelan migrants in nice clothes stood in front of new cars. Some 320,000 Venezuelans have tried to cross the U.S. border since October 2022, according to U.S. Border Patrol reports — more than in the previous nine years combined. Just weeks after arriving in Denver, Herrera began to wonder if the success she had seen was real. She was seeing doctors and social workers at a Denver hospital where she planned to give birth because they served everyone, even those without insurance. They were alarmed their pregnant patient was now sleeping outside in the cold. In Colorado's third-largest city, Aurora, officials have turned down requests to help migrants. In February, the City Council passed a resolution telling other cities and nonprofits not to bring migrants into the community because it “does not currently have the financial capacity to fund new services.” Yet still they come, because of its lower cost of living and Spanish-speaking community. Former President Donald Trump last week called attention to the city, suggesting a Venezuelan gang had taken over an apartment complex. Authorities say that hasn’t happened. The doctors urged Herrera to sleep at the hospital. It wouldn’t cost anything, they assured her, just as her birth would be covered by emergency Medicaid. Herrera refused. “How," she asked, "could I sleep in a warm place when my son is cold on the street?” Denver struggled to keep up with the rush of migrants, many arriving on buses chartered by Texas to draw attention to the impact of immigration. All told, Denver officials say they have helped some 42,700 migrants since last year, either by giving them shelter or a bus fare to another city. Initially, the city offered migrants with families six weeks in a hotel. But any migrants arriving since May have received only three days in a hotel. After that, some have found transportation to other cities, scrounged for a place to sleep or wandered into nearby towns like Aurora. Today, fewer migrants are coming to the Denver area. But Candice Marley, founder of a nonprofit called All Souls, still receives dozens of outreaches per week from social service agencies looking to help homeless migrants. All Souls had run encampments for migrants, but Denver shut them down because they lacked a permit. “It’s so frustrating that we can’t help them,” Marley said. “That leaves families camping on their own, unsupported, living in their cars. Kids can’t get into school. There’s no stability.” When Herrera started feeling labor pains in early December, she waited until she couldn’t bear the pain anymore and could feel the baby getting close. She called an ambulance. The paramedics didn’t speak Spanish but called an interpreter. They told Herrera they had to take her to the closest hospital, instead of the one in Denver, since her contractions were so close together. Her son was born healthy at 7 pounds, 8 ounces. She took him to the tent the next day. A few days later the whole family, including the baby, had contracted chicken pox. “The baby was in a bad state,” said Emily Rodriguez, a close friend living with her family in a tent next to Herrera’s. Herrera took him to the hospital, then returned to the tent before being offered a way out. An Aurora woman originally from Mexico invited the family to live with her — at first, for free. After a couple weeks, the family moved to a small room in the garage for $800 a month. To earn rent and pay expenses, Herrera and Rodriguez have cleaned homes, painted houses and shoveled snow while their children waited in a car by themselves. Finding regular work and actually getting paid for it has been difficult. While their husbands can get semi-regular work in construction, the women’s most consistent income comes from standing outside with their children and begging. On a good day, each earns about $50. Herrera and her husband recently became eligible to apply for work permits and legal residency for Venezuelans who arrived in the United States last year. But it will cost $800 each for a lawyer to file the paperwork, along with hundreds of dollars in government fees. They don't have the money. What's worse, they're deeply in debt. Despite what the hospital had said when she was pregnant, Herrera was never signed up for emergency Medicaid. She says she owes $18,000 for the ambulance ride and delivery of her baby. Now, she avoids going to the doctor or taking her children because she’s afraid her large debt will jeopardize her chances of staying in the U.S. “I’m afraid they’re going to deport me,” she says. Herrera and Rodriguez now hold cardboard signs along a busy street in Denver and then knock on the doors of private homes, never returning to the same address. They type up their request for clothes, food or money on their phones and translate it to English using Google. They hand their phones to whoever answers the door. Herrera recently sent $500 to her sister to make the monthslong trip from Venezuela to Aurora with Herrera’s 8-year-old daughter. “I’ll have my family back together,” she says. And she believes her sister will be able to watch her kids so Herrera can look for work. The problem is, Herrera hasn’t told her family back in Venezuela how she spends her time. “They think I’m fixing up homes and selling chocolate and flowers,” she says. “I’m living a lie.” Finally, her sister and daughter are waiting across the border in Mexico. When we come to America, her sister asks, could we fly to Denver? The tickets are $600. Herrera has to come clean. Life is far more difficult than she has let on. She texts back: No.

SPRINGFIELD, Ohio — Many cities have been reshaped by immigrants in the last few years without attracting much notice. Not Springfield, Ohio. Its story of economic renewal and related growing pains has been thrust into the national conversation in a presidential election year — and maliciously distorted by false rumors that Haitian immigrants are eating their neighbors' pets. Donald Trump amplified those lies during Tuesday's nationally televised debate, exacerbating some residents' fears about growing divisiveness in the predominantly white, blue-collar city of about 60,000. At the city's Haitian Community Help and Support Center on Wednesday, Rose-Thamar Joseph said many of the roughly 15,000 immigrants who arrived in the past few years were drawn by good jobs and the city's relative affordability. But a rising sense of unease has crept in as longtime residents increasingly bristle at newcomers taking jobs at factories, driving up housing costs, worsening traffic and straining city services. "Some of them are talking about living in fear. Some of them are scared for their life," Joseph said. A "Welcome To Our City" sign hangs from a parking garage downtown, where a coffee shop, bakery and boutique line Springfield's main drag, North Fountain Street. A flag advertising "CultureFest," the city's annual celebration of unity through diversity, waves from a pole nearby. Melanie Flax Wilt, a Republican commissioner in the county where Springfield is located, said she has been pushing for community and political leaders to "stop feeding the fear." "After the election and everybody's done using Springfield, Ohio, as a talking point for immigration reform, we are going to be the ones here still living through the challenges and coming up with the solutions," she said. Ariel Dominique, executive director of the Haitian American Foundation for Democracy, said she laughed at first at the absurdity of the false claims. But seeing the comments repeated on national television by the former president was painful. "It is so unfair and unjust and completely contrary to what we have contributed to the world, what we have contributed to this nation for so long," Dominique said. The falsehoods about Springfield's Haitian immigrants were spread online by Trump's running mate, JD Vance, on the eve of Tuesday's debate between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. It's part of a timeworn American political tradition of casting immigrants as outsiders. "This is what's happening in our country. And it's a shame," Trump said at the debate after repeating the falsehoods. When challenged by ABC News moderator David Muir over the false claims, Trump held firm, saying "people on television" said their dogs were eaten, but he offered no evidence. Officials in Springfield have tried to tamp down the misinformation by saying there have been no credible or detailed reports of any pets being abducted or eaten. State leaders are trying to help address some of the real challenges facing the city. Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, said Tuesday he would add more law enforcement and health care resources to an aid package the state has already provided to Springfield. Many Haitians have come to the U.S. to flee poverty and violence. They have embraced President Joe Biden's new and expanded legal pathways to enter, and have shunned illegal crossings, accounting for only 92 border arrests out of more than 56,000 in July, the latest data available. The Biden administration recently announced an estimated 300,000 Haitians in the U.S. could remain in the country at least through February 2026, with eligibility for work authorization, under a law called Temporary Protected Status. The goal is to spare people from being deported to countries in turmoil. Springfield, about 72 kilometers from the state capital of Columbus, suffered a steep decline in its manufacturing sector toward the end of the last century, and its population shrank as a result. But its downtown has been revitalized in recent years as more Haitians arrived and helped meet the rising demand for labor as the economy emerged from the pandemic. Officials say Haitians now account for about 15% of the population. The city was shaken last year when a minivan slammed into a school bus, killing an 11-year-old boy. The driver was a Haitian man who recently settled in the area and was driving without a valid license. During a city commission meeting on Tuesday, the boy's parents condemned politicians' use of their son's death to stoke hatred. Last week, a post on the social media platform X shared what looked like a screengrab of a social media post apparently out of Springfield. The post claimed without evidence that the person's "neighbor's daughter's friend" saw a cat hanging from a tree to be butchered and eaten, outside a house where it claimed Haitians lived. It was accompanied by a photo of a Black man carrying what appeared to be a goose by its feet. On Monday, Vance posted on X: "Reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn't be in this country." The next day, he posted again, saying his office had received inquiries from Springfield residents who said "their neighbors' pets or local wildlife were abducted by Haitian migrants." Longtime Springfield resident Chris Hazel, who knows the park and neighborhood where the pet and goose abductions were purported to have happened, called the claims "preposterous." "It reminds me of when people used to accuse others and outsiders as cannibals. It's dehumanizing a community," he said of the accusations against the city's Haitian residents. Sophia Pierrilus, the daughter of a former Haitian diplomat who moved to the Ohio capital of Columbus 15 years ago and is now an immigrant advocate, agreed, calling it all political. "My view is that's their way to use Haitians as a scapegoat to bring some kind of chaos in America," she said. With its rising population of immigrants, Springfield is hardly an outlier. So far this decade, immigration has accounted for almost three-quarters of U.S. population growth, with 2.5 million immigrants arriving in the United States between 2020 and 2023, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Population growth is an important driver of economic growth. "The Haitian immigrants who started moving to Springfield the last few years are the reason why the economy and the labor force has been revitalized there," said Guerline Jozef, executive director of the Haitian Bridge Alliance, which provides legal and social services to immigrants across the U.S. Now, she said, Haitians in Springfield have told her that, out of fear, they are considering leaving the city.

CHURCHILL, Manitoba — Change has broken, remade and continues to reshape this remote town where tundra meets forest on the shore of Hudson Bay. The economic base collapsed when the military left town. Rail service and cargo ships — the lifeblood of supplies for a town not connected to the rest of the world by roads — blinked out. The weather is warming, signature animals are dwindling and even the ground is shifting. Through it all, Churchill has adapted. The town turned to tourism, luring people eager to see its plentiful polar bears. Leaders figured out ways to revitalize its port and railway. As climate change has edged into the picture, they've begun designing more flexible buildings and seeking to entice more varied visitors if, as scientists fear, shrinking sea ice crashes the bear population. Residents, government officials and experts say the town is a model for coping with dramatic shifts and attribute it to the rural mindset that focuses on fixing, not whining. Churchill sits about 1,700 kilometers north of Winnipeg. The town had thousands of people before the military base and a rocket research launch site shut down decades ago. Those sites fell into decay, and what had been a bustling port closed. Train service stopped for more than a year as weather shattered poorly maintained tracks. As the town dwindled, bears began coming to town more often, no longer frightened away by noise from the base and rocket launches and made desperate as climate change shrank the Hudson Bay ice they depend on as a base for hunting. A local mechanic built a fat-tired, souped-up recreational vehicle to see bears safely. Photos and documentaries attracted tourists, who spend $5,000 a visit on average and millions of dollars overall. Churchill now bills itself as the polar bear capital of the world, and though it has no stoplights, it features upscale restaurants and plenty of mom-and-pop hotels. If that comes to an end, Churchill hopes to be ready. The town is promoting tourism for beluga whales, although those too may be harmed as the entire Hudson Bay ecosystem, including the food the belugas eat, shifts to one usually seen further south. It's also highlighting visitors' prospects for seeing the northern lights, spotting birds they can't see at home, and even trying dogsledding. "In time you're going to lose bear season. And we know that. Anyway, it's just a matter of we're going to have to adapt to that change," said Mike Spence, mayor since 1995. "You can't stew over it. That's not going to get you any points." Spence grew up with the military installation "and all of a sudden it closes and then all of a sudden you get the tourists, the abundance of wildlife and the aurora. That's where you take advantage of it. You sort of tweak things and you improve life." The shuttered port and the damaged train tracks? The town took them over and got both running again. Ground sinking because the weather is getting rainier and permafrost is thawing? New buildings like the ones at Polar Bears International, a nonprofit conservation organization with headquarters in the city, have metal jacks that can be adjusted when a corner sinks nearly half a foot in five years. Lauren Sorkin, executive director of the Resilient Cities Network, said every city should have a plan to adapt to climate change's effect on economy and tourism. "Churchill is a standout example of a city that is planning ahead to protect communities and preserve our natural environment and its biodiversity," she said. Spence, who is Cree, grew up with no electricity or running water in "the flats" on the outskirts of town, which was run by a white minority. Churchill is about two-thirds Indigenous with Cree, Metis, Inuit and Dene. Spence recalls his father saying that if only he spoke better English he could tell officials how to fix the town. "I think I'm doing that for him," Spence said. "You don't just say 'I got a problem.' You go there with the fix." You can't drive to Churchill. Food, people, cargo, everything gets there by rail, boats or plane. Rail is the cheapest, and most residents travel by taking the overnight train to Thompson, then driving south from there. Until a few years ago the train tracks, which had been leased to a private company, were not being maintained properly and the wet, stormy spring of 2017 created 22 washouts of the line between Churchill and points south, Spence said. The company couldn't afford to fix them. Big storms in Churchill are as much as 30% rainier than 80 years ago because of human-caused climate change, said Cornell University climate scientist Angie Pendergrass. "Service stopped dead" for 18 months, Spence said. "It was just devastating." Meanwhile, there weren't enough goods coming into the aging port. Spence said that shipping hub and rail lines needed to operate as an integrated system, and not be run by an absentee U.S. owner, so the town negotiated with the federal and provincial governments for local control and federal financial help. In 2018, Arctic Gateway Group, a partnership of 41 First Nations and northern communities, took ownership of the port and rail line. Rail service returned on Halloween that year. Manitoba officials said that in the last two years 610 kilometers of track have been upgraded and 10 bridges repaired. Shipping in the port has more than tripled since 2021, including the return of its first cruise ship in decade, they said. Earlier this year, officials announced another $60 million in port and rail funding. Local ownership is key in Churchill, said former Chamber of Commerce president Dave Daley, who left town in the 1980s but returned after five years because he and his wife missed it. Big hotel chains poked around once and said they could fix up the town's infrastructure and build something big. "We all stood and said 'no'," Daley said. "We're a tight-knit group. We have our different opinions and everything else but we know how we want Churchill to be." As Churchill evolves, its forgotten past has surfaced at times as tourists ask about residents and their history, said longtime resident Georgina Berg, who like Spence lived on the flats as a child. That past includes "not-so-happy stories" about forced relocation, missing women, poverty, subsistence hunting, being ignored, deaths and abuse, said Berg, who is Cree. Daley, a dogsled racer and president of Indigenous Tourism Manitoba, tells of how the Metis people were especially ignored, abused and punished, yet he ends the history lesson with an abrupt shift. "We can't change five minutes ago, but we can change five minutes from now," Daley said. "So that's what I teach my kids. You know it's nice to know the history and all the atrocities and everything that happened, but if we're going to get better from that we have to look forward and look five minutes from now and what we can do to change that." Meanwhile, Daley and Spence notice the changes in the weather — not only warmer, but they're getting thunder here, something once unimaginable. The Arctic is warming four times faster than the rest of the world. While Churchill isn't quite as bad off because it's south of the Arctic Circle, "it's something we take seriously," Spence said. "It's a matter of finding the right blend in how you adapt to climate change," Spence said. "And work with it."

RIO DE JANEIRO — Brazil formally received on Thursday the return from Denmark of an Indigenous cloak made with 4,000 red feathers of the scarlet ibis bird, a sacred mantle that was taken by Europeans during the 17th century colonial era. President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva attended the ceremony outside Brazil's National Museum in Rio de Janeiro, marking the importance that Brazil gives to the item's repatriation. The cloak, a feathered ceremonial cape used in religious rituals of the Tupinamba people of Bahia in northeastern Brazil, was removed during the Dutch occupation of the area. Its first mention comes in a Danish inventory in 1689, although it is thought to have been taken from Brazil some 50 years before. By the 21st century it was held in the ethnographic collection of Denmark's National Museum, the Nationalmuseet. In 2000, the museum lent the cloak out for an exhibition in Sao Paulo. A Tupinamba leader saw it there and demanded its return. Last year, after lengthy diplomatic negotiations, the Danish museum announced it would donate the cloak to Brazil's National Museum, and it was repatriated in July. Some 170 Tupinamba traveled from southern Bahia to Rio to celebrate its return. "It is crucial they return what isn't theirs and rightfully belongs to us. Our heritage strengthens our identity," said cacique, or chief, Jamopoty Tupinamba to Agencia Brasil on Wednesday. From the first Portuguese voyages to Brazil in the early 16th century, Indigenous cultural items were taken to Europe as evidence of the "discovery" of new territories and then entered museums or private collections. A fresco painted in 1674 on the ceiling of the Apollo Salon at the Palace of Versailles, the king's throne room, depicts newly found America as a woman wearing a Tupinamba cloak as if it were a headdress. According to cultural heritage activist Gliceria Tupinamba, there are another 10 such cloaks in Europe, held in museums and libraries in Italy, France, Belgium, Switzerland and Denmark, where the National Museum still has one large and three partial ones. "It took more than 20 years to get the cloak back. Its return is a symbol of the protection of our cultural and land rights that are under threat today in Brazil," she said.

miami — The percentage of U.S. residents who were foreign-born last year grew to its highest level in more than a century, according to figures released Thursday from the most comprehensive survey of American life.  The share of people born outside the United States increased in 2023 to 14.3% from 13.9% in 2022, according to estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau's annual American Community Survey, which tracks commuting times, internet access, family life, income, education levels, disabilities, military service and employment, among other topics.  International migrants have become a primary driver of population growth this decade, increasing their share of the overall population as fewer children are being born in the U.S. compared with numbers from years past. The rate of the foreign-born population in the United States hasn't been this high since 1910, when it was 14.7%, driven by waves of people emigrating in search of a better life.  "We knew that here you can have savings, live well. Here you can have normal services such as water and electricity," said Luciana Bracho, who moved legally to Miami from Venezuela as part of a humanitarian parole program with her boyfriend, parents and brother in April 2023. "I like Miami and the opportunities that I have had."  In 2023, international migrants accounted for more than two-thirds of the population growth in the United States, and so far this decade they have made up almost three-quarters of U.S. growth.  The growth appears to have been driven by people coming from Latin America, whose share of the foreign-born population increased year-over-year to 51.2% from 50.3%, according to the estimates. Latin America was the only world region of origin to experience an increase among those U.S. residents born in another country, as the share of foreign-born residents from Europe and Asia dropped slightly.  Nicole Díaz, a Venezuelan opposition activist, left after receiving threats to her life and lived in Peru and Ecuador before moving to the Miami area legally in February 2023 with her husband and 9-year-old daughter. Díaz described herself as "100% happy" living in South Florida, where they pay $2,300 a month for a two-bedroom apartment.  "After being in different countries, working here is relaxed, despite the language," Díaz said. "But housing is very expensive, and we have been evaluating moving to another state because here all the salary goes for the rent."  Among the states with the largest year-over-year bumps in the foreign-born population was Delaware, going to 11.2% from 9.9%; Georgia, to 11.6% from 10.7%; and New Mexico, to 10.2% from 9.3% The share of the foreign-born population dropped slightly in Washington, D.C., Idaho, Iowa, Maine, Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota and Oregon.  The Census Bureau figures don't distinguish whether people are in the United States legally or illegally. Illegal immigration has become a top issue in the 2024 presidential race, even as illegal border crossings from Mexico plunged this summer after reaching a record last December.  The share of U.S. residents who identify as Hispanic, no matter what race, rose last year to 19.4% from 19.1% in the previous year, according to the survey. At the same time, those who identify as non-Hispanic white alone dropped from 57.7% to 57.1%. The share of U.S. residents who identify as Black alone dropped slightly, from 12.2% to 12.1%, and it increased slightly for those who identify as Asian alone from 5.9% to 6%.  Residents in the United States continued to get older, with the median age increasing from 39 in 2022 to 39.2 in 2023. The nation's aging is taking place as a majority of baby boomers have become senior citizens and millennials are entering middle age. While the share of children under age 18 remained steady at 21.7% year-over-year, the share of senior citizens age 65 and over increased to 17.7% from 17.3%.  Meanwhile, a post-pandemic bump in working from home continued its slide back to pre-COVID-19 times, as the share of employees working from home dropped last year to 13.8% from 15.2% in the previous year.  In 2021, the first full year after the pandemic's start, almost 18% of employees were working from home, up from 5.7% in 2019. But return-to-office mandates in the past two years have reversed that trend and caused commute times to bump up slightly last year, growing on average to 26.8 minutes from 26.4 minutes.  The survey also showed that the median cost of renting, plus utilities and related expenses, grew faster than median home values in 2023 for the first time in a decade. The 3.8% jump in rental costs was the largest annual increase since at least 2011. Despite the spike in rental costs, the share of renter income spent on rent and utilities remained unchanged at 31% in 2023, suggesting that incomes kept pace with rent hikes, the Census Bureau said.