In the Dutch port city of Rotterdam, nine “water plazas” have been created that soak up excess rainfall while offering people a green space to meet and children to play.

The city is also planting gardens and putting solar panels on a growing area of its nearly 20 square kilometers (8 square miles) of flat roofs.

Paris, meanwhile, is redesigning and opening green schoolyards as cooler places for locals to escape extreme heat, while in New Zealand, Wellington is rolling out neighborhood water supplies to keep the taps on when an earthquake hits.

More than 70 cities that are part of the 100 Resilient Cities (100RC) network, set up in 2013, have crafted “resilience strategies” that include about 3,500 activities designed to combat shocks and stresses – everything from floods to an influx of refugees.

The United Nations estimates that by 2050 nearly 70% of the world’s population will live in cities, which are increasingly impacted by extreme weather and sea level rise, while producing about 75% of planet-warming emissions.

Michael Berkowitz, president of 100 Resilient Cities, told a gathering of the network’s cities in Rotterdam on Tuesday that efforts to build resilience had now become established as an approach to improving quality of life in cities.

Those efforts to keep people safe and well in the face of rising climate, economic and social pressures will continue, despite the closure this month of the organization that helped them craft those plans, officials said.

At the end of July, 100RC will shut its offices after the New York-based Rockefeller Foundation said in April it would no longer fund the body, having given about $176 million for its work.

That funding helped pay initial salaries for chief resilience officers in member cities, for example, though about 80% of the cities now have made the role a part of their staff, 100RC officials said.

The Rockefeller Foundation said on Monday it would provide an additional $8 million over 18 months to help 100RC cities and their chief resilience officers transition to a network they will lead themselves.

“Ultimately, we aim to ensure continued collaboration and sharing among cities to address some of their most pressing challenges,” Rockefeller Foundation President Rajiv Shah said in a statement.

Expansion Ahead?

Krishna Mohan Ramachandran, chief resilience officer for the Indian city of Chennai, which has just launched its resilience strategy, said he was relieved it would be able to carry on with planned projects.

Those include conserving scarce water, putting vegetable gardens in schools, and finding less risky but nearby locations for flood-threatened communities, among others.

Rotterdam chief resilience officer Arnoud Molenaar, who led colleagues in lobbying for extra funding from the Rockefeller Foundation, said resilience work had garnered more support and created more value in cities than was often appreciated.

The Rockefeller bridge grant meant the network would now have time to raise more money from donors and others to stand on its own, and expand partnerships with politicians, communities and businesses, Molenaar said.

Elizabeth Yee, who moved from 100RC to The Rockefeller Foundation to manage its climate and resilience work, said there was a “huge” amount of money looking for resilient urban infrastructure projects, but cities often struggled to meet investor requirements.

She said a key to finding funding was to design a bus rapid transit system or a clean power plant, for example, to also create local jobs and make communities more economically secure.

“I am hopeful that we can keep helping cities develop those projects and getting them ready for bigger, broader investment,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation on the sidelines of the conference in Rotterdam.

Cities in the 100RC network have so far raised $25 billion from their own budgets, businesses and other sources to put their resilience plans into practice, 100RC’s Berkowitz said.

In a decade’s time, he said, he hoped urban resilience – with its holistic approach to multiple, modern-day stresses – would have become “an absolutely essential part of city government.”

For now, as cities rapidly expand and climate threats grow, much more such work will be needed, he said.

“Even 100 cities is a ridiculously small number of cities, compared to the world’s 10,000 cities,” he said. “We need more effort if we’re going to really win the battle of the 21st century, which is going to be fought in cities.”

The organizers of the beleaguered Woodstock 50 festival said on Tuesday they still hoped to get a permit for the event due to take place next month despite being turned down at a second site.

Authorities in the town of Vernon in upstate New York turned down the organizers’ application to stage the three-day event, marking the 50th anniversary of the famed 1969 “peace and music” festival.

Oneida County Administrator Anthony Picente Jr. told Hollywood trade publication Variety that efforts to stage the festival at Vernon Downs for some 65,000 people at short notice had been “chaotic.” Picente said he thought the chances of it taking place were “highly unlikely.”

However, Woodstock 50 producers said they would appeal.

“With a venue chosen, financing assembled and many of the artists supporting Woodstock’s 50th Anniversary event, the organizers are hopeful that their appeal and reapplication” will prevail, the producers said in a statement.

Tickets have yet to go on sale.

The Aug. 16-19 festival was originally due to take place at the Watkins Glen motor racing venue in upstate New York with a line-up including Jay-Z and Miley Cyrus.

Watkins Glen in June pulled out, throwing the festival into further uncertainty after the original investors withdrew their support, citing problems with permits and arranging security and sanitation.

Woodstock 50 announced in March that more than 80 musical acts, including 1969 festival veterans John Fogerty, Canned Heat and Santana, would take part. Some 100,000 fans, including campers, were originally expected to attend, but that number was later reduced to 60,000.

Mexico’s new Finance Minister Arturo Herrera said on Tuesday that he does not see an impending recession, despite a contraction in Latin America’s second-largest economy during the first quarter and analysts’ expectations of further weakness.

“I don’t see a recession around the corner … I see that there has been a slowdown on a global level but we are very, very far from thinking that we are close to a recession,” Herrera told reporters, in his first press conference since being named finance minister.

His predecessor Carlos Urzua resigned on Tuesday with a letter that shocked markets by citing “extremism” in economic policy, before President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador quickly named well-regarded deputy minister Herrera to replace him.

Herrera was asked about the risk that Mexico’s economy could slide into a technical recession, meaning two consecutive quarter of economic decline, when the statistics agency publishes gross domestic product data at the end of the month.

The economy shrank in the first quarter 2019, contracting 0.2% compared with the October-December period as services and industrial activity dipped. It was the first contraction since the second quarter of 2018.

“Mexico seems to be virtually in a recession. GDP growth in the fourth quarter last year was barely positive and the economy contracted in the first quarter this year. We estimate that GDP will also contract in the second quarter, putting Mexico in a technical recession,” Bank of America Merrill Lynch said in a recent note to clients.

Ratings agency Moody’s Investors Service has warned that unpredictable policymaking by the Mexican government and challenges facing debt-laden state oil firm Pemex are clouding the economic and fiscal outlook Mexico.

Herrera said the government’s fiscal priorities had not changed, underscoring the administration would prioritize macroeconomic stability, a responsibly manage the country’s public finances and target a primary surplus of 1% of GDP in 2019.

The House Judiciary Committee said Tuesday it was preparing subpoenas of President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and former attorney general Jeff Sessions as it probes Trump’s alleged obstruction of the Russia investigation.

The Democrat-led committee said it intends to authorize subpoenas of up to 12 current and former administration officials if they don’t readily agree to testify in its investigation.

The officials also include former national security advisor Mike Flynn, former White House chief of staff John Kelly, former deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein, and former White House deputy chief of staff Rick Dearborn.

Committee chairman Jerry Nadler said they wanted to question the individuals on Trump’s actions to interfere with Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russian election meddling investigation, as well as about the administration’s policy of separating families who arrive in the country as undocumented immigrants.

The committee wants to question them “as part of our ongoing investigation into obstruction, corruption and abuse of power by the president and his associates,” Nadler said in a statement.

The committee recently interviewed two top sources for Mueller’s investigation, former senior White House officials Hope Hicks and Annie Donaldson.

Both provided Mueller significant information supporting his depiction of a number of alleged acts of obstruction by Trump.

But in closed-door interviews with the committee, both refused to answer numerous questions on the same subject, saying the White House had directed them not to reply based on a claim of Executive Branch “confidentiality interests.”

 

Lying inside a scanner, the patient watched as pictures appeared one by one: A bicycle. A cupcake. Heroin. Outside, researchers tracked her brain’s reactions to the surprise sight of the drug she’d fought to kick.

Government scientists are starting to peek into the brains of people caught in the nation’s opioid epidemic, to see if medicines proven to treat addiction, like methadone, do more than ease the cravings and withdrawal. Do they also heal a brain damaged by addiction? And which one works best for which patient?

They’re fundamental questions considering that far too few of the 2 million opioid users who need anti-addiction medicine actually receive it.

One reason: “People say you’re just changing one drug for another,” said Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, who is leading that first-of-its-kind study.  “The brain responds differently to these medications than to heroin. It’s not the same.”

Science has made clear that three medicines — methadone, buprenorphine and extended-release naltrexone — can effectively treat what specialists prefer to call opioid use disorder. Patients who stick with methadone or buprenorphine in particular cut their chances of death in half, according to a report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine that explored how to overcome barriers to that care.

Opioid addiction changes the brain in ways that even when people quit can leave them vulnerable to relapse, changes that researchers believe lessen with long-term abstinence.

Volkow’s theory: Medication-based treatment will help those damaged neural networks start getting back to normal faster than going it alone. To prove it, she’ll need to compare brain scans from study participants like the woman who quit heroin thanks to methadone with active heroin users and people who are in earlier stages of treatment.

“Can we completely recover? I do not know that,” Volkow said. But with the medications, “you’re creating stability” in the brain, she said. And that helps recondition it to respond to everyday pleasures again. 
 
The challenge now is finding enough people willing, and healthy enough, to have their brains scanned for science at the same time they’re struggling to quit.

Addiction is a brain disease, “not a choice, not a personality flaw, not a moral failing,” said Dr. Jody Glance, an addiction specialist at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, who hopes NIDA’s brain scans will help overcome some of the barriers and improve the public health response to the opioid crisis. 
 
Not offering the medicines to someone who needs them “is like not offering insulin to someone with diabetes,” she said.

How opioids change the brain

When you sense something pleasurable — a special song, the touch of a loved one, a food like Volkow’s favorite chocolate — the brain releases a natural chemical called dopamine that essentially trains the body to remember, “I liked that, let’s do it again.” 
 
That’s the brain’s reward system, and opioids can hijack it by triggering a surge of dopamine larger than nature ever could. Repeated opioid use overloads circuits in multiple brain regions, including those involved with learning and memory, emotion, judgment and self-control. At the same time, the brain gradually releases less dopamine in response to other things the person once found pleasurable. Eventually they seek more of the drug not to get high, but to avoid constantly feeling low. 
 
Testing how addiction medicine helps

Volkow aims to test 80 people, a mix of untreated heroin users and patients using different medication-based treatments, inside brain scanners at the National Institutes of Health’s research hospital. Her team is measuring differences in the brain’s ability to release dopamine as treatment progresses, and how the functioning of other neural networks changes in response as study participants do various tasks.

For example, does a patient’s brain remain fixated on “cues” related to drug use — like seeing a picture of heroin — or start reacting again to normal stimuli like the sight of a cupcake?

Another test: Ask if a patient would take an offer of $50 now, or $100 if they could wait a week, checking how much motivation and self-control they can muster.

“You need to be able to inhibit the urge to get something” to recover, Volkow noted. “We take for granted that people think about the future. Not when you’re addicted.”

Like in any disease, each medication may work better in certain people — because not everyone’s brain circuitry reacts exactly the same way to opioid abuse — but that hasn’t been studied. Volkow suspects buprenorphine will improve mood and emotional responses to addiction better than methadone, for instance, because of subtle differences in how each medicine works. She especially wants to test people who relapse, to try to spot any treatment differences.

Methadone and buprenorphine are weak opioids, the reason for the misperception that they substitute one addiction for another. In slightly different ways, they stimulate the dopamine system more mildly than other opioids, leveling out the jolts so there’s no high and less craving. People may use them for years. Naltrexone, in contrast, blocks any opioid effects.

It’s a tough sell

Volkow’s team has screened more than 400 people who expressed interest in the study, but have found only about three dozen potential candidates who qualify, seven of whom have enrolled so far.

The main problem: Study participants must have no other health problem that might affect the brain’s chemistry or functioning. That rules out people who use medicines such as antidepressants, and those with a range of health conditions such as high blood pressure or diabetes.

Volkow said it’s worth the struggle to find such rare volunteers if before-and-after scans wind up showing truly different-looking brains as people get treated.

“You should be able to see it with your eyes, without having to be an expert,” she said.
 

Bahrain has recorded temperatures that make the month of June the hottest ever experienced in the Arab Gulf country in more than a century.

Summers in the Arabian Peninsula are consistently hot and humid, with people hunkering indoors for the better part of at least five months. The Bahrain News Agency’s report on Tuesday, however, shows temperatures are soaring even higher.

Bahrain’s Meteorological Directorate says the average temperature in June was 36.3 Celsius (97.3 Fahrenheit), about 3.9 degrees Celsius (7 degrees Fahrenheit) above the long-term normal for that month.

The report said June had the highest average temperatures for that month since 1902, with 20 days recording temperatures exceeding 40 Celsius (104 Fahrenheit). The hottest day clocked in at 45.3 Celsius (113 Fahrenheit). Humidity levels were on average about 40%.

Greece’s new Cabinet was sworn in Tuesday, two days after conservative party leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis won early elections on pledges to make the country more business-friendly, cut taxes and negotiate an easing of draconian budget conditions agreed as part of the country’s rescue program.

 The new Cabinet relies heavily on experienced politicians who have served in previous governments, but also includes non-politician technocrats considered experts in their fields.
 

Mitsotakis appointed Christos Staikouras to the crucial post of finance minister. Staikouras is an economist and engineer who had served as deputy minister in a previous government.
 
The new foreign minister is Nikos Dendias, who held previous Cabinet positions in the ministries of development, defense and public order.
 
A former public order minister under a previous socialist government, Michalis Chrisohoidis, takes the reins of the ministry once again as one of Mitsotakis’ non-parliamentary appointees.
 
The new appointees headed to their ministries for official handovers after the swearing-in ceremony at the presidential mansion in central Athens.
 
Mitsotakis had barely announced his Cabinet selection Monday evening when Greece’s creditors bluntly rejected his calls to ease bailout conditions. Finance ministers from the 19 European Union countries that use the euro currency, who met in Brussels, insisted key targets must be adhered to.
 
“Commitments are commitments, and if we break them, credibility is the first thing to fall apart. That brings about a lack of confidence and investment,” Eurogroup president Mario Centeno said after the meeting.
 
Greece was dependent for years on successive international bailouts that provided rescue loans from other European Union countries and the International Monetary Fund in return for deep reforms to the country’s economy that included steep tax hikes and major spending cuts.
 
Unemployment and poverty levels soared in the country. Greece’s third and final international bailout ended last year, but the country’s economy is still under strict supervision by its creditors.

       

 

Federal officials are threatening to issue a $214,000 fine against a Guatemalan woman who has been living in a Charlottesville, Virginia, church for nearly a year.

Wesley Memorial United Methodist Church agreed to help protect Maria Chavalan Sut from deportation by allowing her to live in the church. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have said they generally avoid entering sensitive locations such as places of worship.

Chavalan Sut has been seeking asylum since she was threatened and her home was burned in 2015. She took refuge in the church after ICE said she would be deported following a missed court date.

The Daily Progress reports that she received a “Notice of Intent to Fine” from ICE last week.
 
Lead pastor Rev. Isaac Collins called the letter a “scare tactic.”  

 

Richard Branson’s space-tourism venture, Virgin Galactic, is planning to go public, creating the first publicly listed human spaceflight firm.

Virgin Galactic is merging with Social Capital Hedosophia, whose CEO, Chamath Palihapitiya, will become chairman of the combined entity. The value of the merger was put at $1.5 billion.

The company intends to offer “a unique, multi-day experience culminating in a personal spaceflight that includes out-of-seat gravity and views of Earth from space.”

Virgin Galactic has reservations from some 600 people in 60 countries, with $80 million in deposits and $120 million in potential revenue.

It says it has “overcome a substantial number of technical hurdles’” required to make the company viable.

It aims to complete the merger later this year before listing on the New York Stock Exchange.

Pushing back against criticisms of his administration’s rollbacks of environmental protections, U.S. President Donald Trump touted America’s “clean air and water” in a speech from the White House Monday. But experts and activists say Trump’s policies, including pulling out of the Paris Climate Accord, have undercut the country’s environmental record and leadership. White House Correspondent Patsy Widakuswara has this story.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, has condemned the conditions of detention in which refugees and migrants are being held on the southern border of the United States – calling them through a spokesperson “utterly appalling” and “inhumane.” However, the Trump administration maintains it has improved conditions by increasing the presence of medical providers in the detention centers.  Arash Arabasadi has more.

U.S. billionaire and registered sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was charged on Monday with running a network of underage girls for sex. Epstein pleaded ‘not guilty’ in a New York court. He has been convicted of sex crimes in the past, and in 2008, made a plea deal with prosecutors in Florida to get a lenient sentence. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports the financier was arrested Saturday evening upon return from France in his private jet.

Brazil’s far-right President Jair Bolsonaro is among the least popular since the country’s return to democracy three decades ago, but his rating in a poll released on Monday showed his numbers stabilizing.

The Datafolha polling institute found that 33% of respondents said Bolsonaro was doing a “great or good” job. That is technically tied with the 32% in an April Datafolha poll.

Those who think Bolsonaro is doing a “bad or awful” job rose to 33% from 30% in the April poll.

The latest polls show Bolsonaro technically tied with former President Fernando Henrique Cardoso as the leader with the least support at this point in his first term. Thirty-four percent of those asked by Datafolha in June 1995 thought Cardoso was doing “good or great.”

The poll of 2,086 people across Brazil on July 4-5 has a margin of error of 2 percentage points.

Bolsonaro easily won last year’s election over leftist rival Fernando Haddad, who stepped in to take the top place on the Workers Party ticket after a graft conviction prevented imprisoned former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from running. Datafolha polls last year showed Lula far more popular than Bolsonaro – even after he had been imprisoned.

Lula’s conviction has come under scrutiny since the publication of leaked messages last month by news website The Intercept Brasil showed former federal judge and current Justice Minister Sergio Moro stepping over ethical, and possibly legal, lines by coaching the prosecution in Lula’s trial.

Moro, who presided over the case and found Lula guilty, has alternatively argued that the leaked messages show no improper behavior to questioning their authenticity, is facing withering criticism.

On Monday, Moro’s press office said he would take the week of July 15-19 off for “personal” reasons, and later added he was spending time with his family. Moro’s wife and children do not live with him in the capital. July is winter recess for schools in Brazil.

In August the Supreme Court is expected to weigh an appeal from Lula’s legal team, demanding his release from jail.

Lula has been convicted in a second graft trial and faces at least eight more.

Steve Herman contributed to this report.

WHITE HOUSE / CAPITOL HILL – When U.S. President Donald Trump delivered a speech on “America’s environmental leadership” from the East Room of the White House on Monday, his daughter Ivanka Trump was seated at the front row, where she watched with a beaming smile on her face.
 
But when Trump recounted how in 2017 he withdrew the United States from what he called “the unfair, ineffective and very, very expensive Paris Climate Accord”, the smile disappeared from Ivanka Trump’s face as she clapped politely but unenthusiastically.
 
Even before her father’s inauguration, Ivanka Trump had singled out environmental regulation as a primary policy focus. In December of 2016 during her father’s presidential transition, she brought former Vice President Al Gore, a leading environmental activist, to meet Trump to discuss climate change.
 
Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, have in the past donated or raised money for Democratic candidates and are often seen as championing issues traditionally considered liberal, including environmental protection and climate change mitigation. Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement is seen by some as a defeat for the first daughter and advisor to the president in her battle for clout in the White House.
 
But Monday’s speech may indicate that Ivanka Trump’s influence on this issue is growing, and environmental protection may end up becoming another item on her already extensive portfolio ranging from job creation, fighting human-trafficking, and empowering women around the world.

 Administration sources confirmed that Ivanka has encouraged the president to defend his administration’s record on the environment.

Growing international profile
 
The White House says that Ivanka plays a role in a number of areas, from pushing for tax cuts, improving access to STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) education, as well as developing a National Workforce Strategy to expand apprenticeships and skills training opportunities.
 
Responding to VOA’s question, on Friday President Trump said, “Ivanka has worked on almost 10 million jobs, training and going to companies and getting them to hire people.”
 
Internationally, Ivanka Trump has championed projects such as the Women’s Global Development and Prosperity Initiative. The effort is labeled as “the first whole-of-government approach” aimed at helping 50 million women across the developing world “achieve their economic potential” by 2025.
 
“I get the sense that there is buy-in to this,” said Judd Devermont, director of the Africa Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies who welcomes Ivanka’s clout with the president on this issue. “If it’s going to be an Ivanka project, well, she’s got a significant amount of influence. So I’m hopeful that she’ll be able to drive into something more sustainable,” he said.
 
But Ivanka Trump became the subject of criticism and ridicule after her prominent involvement during the president’s visit to Asia in June. Many questioned her qualifications and competence to be at such high-profile events including the G-20, where she was seen on stage with world leaders, as well as the president’s historic meeting with Kim Jong Un at the demilitarized zone between South and North Korea.
 
Anti-nepotism Act
 
Many assert the president is running the country like a family business and harming the country’s interest through nepotism, an accusation that began when he appointed Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, as advisers in 2017, testing the anti-nepotism act.
 
The law was passed in 1967, following President John F. Kennedy’s nomination of his brother Robert as attorney general. But when Trump took office, his administration circumvented the law with a Justice Department lawyer issuing an opinion saying the president has special hiring authority for White House positions exempt from the law.

Neither Ivanka Trump nor her husband Jared Kushner are paid advisors to the president. When asked about Ivanka’s role at the G-20, President Trump reiterated a line he has frequently said, “Ivanka and Jared work very hard and they sacrifice a lot to be doing this.”
 
“She’s clearly taking the penalty for nepotism but not concerned about it,” said Shannon Bow O’Brien who teaches presidential studies at the University of Texas at Austin, referring to the consequences of the anti-nepotism law, which include termination or loss of salary. “If you’re willing to surrender your salary, or you’re rich enough to not need your salary, or the benefits of breaking the nepotism law are higher for your own personal business gains than your salary, then this is very problematic.
 
O’Brien raised the potential conflicts of interest with the president’s daughter having an outsized role in the administration. “Is she representing the best interests of the United States or is she representing the best interests of the family business, the Trump corporation, or herself?” she asked.
 
Grooming her for office?
 
Ivanka Trump’s increasing domestic portfolio is also creating speculation about what’s next.
 
“People are wondering whether this is a sign that maybe Ivanka is going to be a future political leader, that Trump is trying to groom her to be one,” said Zack Cooper of the American Enterprise Institute, adding that “you can certainly see that kind of path.”
 
Experts point out that Americans may be willing to accept families in government, but only if they are qualified. “I don’t believe America is very tolerant of having dynasties when the only thing they have going for them is their last names,” said O’Brien.
 
Trump himself has been against political dynasties in the past, including when he launched attacks against the Bushes and Clintons to win the White House.
 
Responding to VOA’s question about his intention for his daughter, Trump said “I’m not grooming her for office, no.”

People packed the decks of the Japanese whale-watching boat, screaming in joy as a pod of orcas put on a show: splashing tails at each other, rolling over, and leaping out of the water.

In Kushiro, just 160 kilometers south of Rausu, where the four dozen people laughed and cheered, boats were setting off on Japan’s first commercial whale hunt in 31 years.

Killed that day were two minke whales, which the boats in Rausu also search for glimpses of – a situation that whale-watching boat captain Masato Hasegawa confessed had him worried.

“They won’t come into this area – it’s a national park – or there’d be big trouble,” the 57-year-old former pollock fisherman said. “And the whales we saw today, the sperm whales and orcas, aren’t things they hunt.”

“But we also watch minkes,” he added. “If they take a lot in the (nearby) Sea of Okhotsk, we could well see a change, and that would be too bad for whale watching.”

Whale-watching is a growing business around Japan, with popular spots from the southern Okinawa islands up to Rausu, a fishing village on the island of Hokkaido, so far north that it’s closer to Russia than to Tokyo.

The number of whale watchers around Japan has more than doubled between 1998 and 2015, the latest year for which national data is available. One company in Okinawa had 18,000 customers between January and March this year.

In Rausu, 33,451 people packed tour boats last year for whale and bird watching, up 2,000 from 2017 and more than 9,000 higher than 2016. Many stay in local hotels, eat in local restaurants, and buy local products such as sea urchins and seaweed.

“Of the tourist boat business, 65 percent is whale watching,” said Ikuyo Wakabayashi, executive director of the Shiretoko Rausu Tourism Association, who says the numbers grow substantially each year.

“You don’t just see one type of whale here, you see lots of them,” she said. “Whale-watching is a huge tourist resource for Rausu and this will continue, I hope.”

Wakabayashi was drawn to Rausu by whale-watching; a native of the western city of Osaka, she fell in love with the area after three trips there to see orcas.

“I thought this was an incredible place,” she said. “Winters are tough, but it’s so beautiful.”

Hasegawa, who says he has a waiting list of customers in high season, has ordered a second boat.

“Right now, the lifestyle we have is good,” Hasegawa said. “Better than it would have been with fishing.”

Small Industry

The five whaling vessels moored at Kushiro port on Sunday, the night before the hunt resumed, were well-used and well-maintained. Crew members came and went, carrying groceries or towels, heading for a public bath.

Barely 300 people are directly involved with whaling around Japan, and though the government maintains whale meat is an important part of food culture, the amount consumed annually has fallen to only 0.1 percent of total meat consumption.

Yet Japan, under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe – himself from a whaling district – left the International Whaling Commission (IWC) and returned to commercial whaling on July 1.

Whaling advocates, such as Yoshifumi Kai, head of the Japan Small-type Whaling Association, celebrated the hunt.

“We endured for 31 years, but now it’s all worth it,” he said in Kushiro on Monday night after the first minkes were brought in to be butchered. “They’ll be whaling for a week here, we may have more.”

Everybody acknowledges that rebuilding demand could be tough after decades of whale being a pricey, hard-to-find food.

Consumption was widespread after World War II, when an impoverished Japan needed cheap protein, but fell off after the early 1960s as other meat grew cheaper.

“Japan has so much to eat now that food is thrown out, so we don’t expect demand for whale will rise that fast,” said Kazuo Yamamura, president of the Japan Whaling Association.

“But looking to the future, if you don’t eat whale, you forget that it’s a food,” he said. “If you eat it in school lunches, you’ll remember that, you’ll remember that it’s good.”

Pro-whaling lawmaker Kiyoshi Ejima said that subsidies were unlikely, but that the government should be careful not to let the industry founder. About 5.1 billion yen ($47.31 million) was budgeted for whaling in 2019.

“If we pull away our hands too soon, a lot of companies will fail,” he added.

The goal of selling whale throughout Japan may be impractical, said Joji Morishita, Japan’s former IWC commissioner.

“The alternative … is to just limit the supply of whale meat to some of the major places in Japan that have a good tradition of whale eating,” Morishita said, adding that the meat is difficult to thaw and cook.

In areas for which whaling is a tradition, this niche market could promote tourism, which Abe has made a pillar of his economic plan.

“Whale eating in a sense is ideal – it’s different, it’s well-known, and for better or worse, it’s very famous,” Morishita said. “Taking advantage of this IWC withdrawal, I think there are business chances that are viable.”

Whales Up Close

For Rausu, on Hokkaido’s remote Shiretoko Peninsula, the viable business is whale watching.

Foxes run through the streets of the city’s downtown, which clings to a narrow strip of land below mountains and faces the Nemuro Strait. Summer often brings thick fog, while winter storms can leave waist-high drifts.

Though fishing was long Rausu’s economic backbone, the industry has taken a hit from declining fish stocks, which locals blame on Russian trawlers and falling prices. The population has dropped by several hundred annually, slipping below 5,000 this year.

Hasegawa, a fourth-generation fisherman, began his tour boat business in 2006. Though the first few years were a struggle, he is now happy with his choice as Rausu’s reputation grows globally.

On a recent weekday, customers packed the parking lot at a wharf lined with squid-fishing boats, waiting to board Hasegawa’s boat and those of three other companies. Hasegawa’s customers came from all over Japan and several foreign countries.

“Today there were more (whale) jumps than usual; it was fantastic,” said Kiyoko Ogi, a 47-year-old Tokyo bus driver who’s been whale-watching in Rausu three times. “I’m really opposed to commercial whaling; seeing whales close is so exciting.”

Whale hunting was never big in Rausu, and though Hasegawa said there once was “trouble” with people hunting small Baird’s beaked whales nearby, those fishermen now stay far from the tours and will tell him where to find orcas and sperm whales.

But he’s dubious about whether demand for whale meat will ever pick up. Restaurants and hotels in Rausu avoid serving it.

“We get a lot of kids in summer vacations. If you tell them on the boat that ‘this is the whale we ate last night,’ they’d cry,” he said.

“If they serve whale, nobody from overseas will come, especially Europeans,” he added. “Given that the national government is trying to woo overseas tourists so much, its thinking (on whaling) seems a bit wrong.”

($1 = 107.7900 yen)

The African Continental Free Trade Area launched in Niger Sunday at the opening of the African Union Summit.  The agreement, signed by 54 of 55 African nations, will form the largest free trade area in the world.  But while there is much hope that pan-African trade will grow, structural weaknesses are expected to make it a slow process.  Anne Nzouankeu reports from Niamey, Niger; narration by Moki Edwin Kindzeka.

The race for the Democratic nomination for president has only recently begun, yet the first candidate has already dropped out of the contest.
 
Eric Swalwell, a U.S. congressman representing a district in California, announced Monday that he will not continue to seek the presidential nomination but will instead run for a fifth term in the U.S. House of Representatives.
 
“Today ends our presidential campaign, but it is the beginning of an opportunity in Congress,” he said during a news conference in his East Bay congressional district.
 
Swalwell was a long-shot candidate in a crowded field of more than 20 vying for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination and he had languished near the bottom of the polls since he entered the race in April.
 
The congressman tried to raise his profile at the June debate in Miami by forcefully calling on front-runner former Vice President Joe Biden to “pass the torch” to a younger generation. While the moment received media coverage following the debate, it failed to improve Swalwell’s poll numbers.
 
Swalwell, 38, was one of the younger candidates in the race, along with Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and Representative Tulsi Gabbard from Hawaii, both of whom are 37.
 
Swalwell has represented northern California in the U.S. Congress since 2012 and has used his seat on the House Intelligence Committee to become frequent cable-news guest talking about the investigation between the Trump campaign and Russia.
 
The congressman said tackling gun violence and fixing the student debt crisis were two of the issues that compelled him to run for the presidential nomination.

Mexican officials using a large X-ray scanner at a checkpoint in the central state of Zacatecas found 51 Central American migrants in hidden compartments inside a truck.

Footage of the X-ray shows a ghost-like truck filled with the brightened silhouettes of the migrants, some sitting, others lying down along two levels in the crowded compartments.

The migrants from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Ecuador, 21 of whom were minors, are now in the custody of the country’s National Migration Institute (INM), government officials said in a statement late Sunday.

The migrants will be returned to their home countries, the statement said.

The apprehension comes weeks after the appointment of hard-charging former prisons chief Francisco Garduno as the new head of the INM. Under Garduno, the immigration authority has made a number of high-profile captures of migrants smuggled in vehicles.

The INM’s former chief official, an academic recognized for his work on immigration policy, left his position in mid-June amidst tensions over a June 7 deal with the United States under which Mexico averted tariffs threatened by U.S. President Donald Trump.

In return, Mexico promised to make palpable progress in reducing the number of mainly Central American migrants trying to cross the U.S. border illegally.

In another video of the X-ray-assisted detention released by Mexican authorities, an official approached the cargo vehicle at night to open the door to one of the crates. Sobs emerged from the otherwise-quiet container while he identified himself as a police officer and asked if the migrants were in good health.

The truck, the driver, and 225,000 Mexican pesos ($12,000) in cash found in the vehicle are now in police custody, and will be subject to investigation, INM said.

Mexico’s Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard said the attorney general has about 11 open investigations into migrant smugglers.

“It is our strategic objective to end the impunity for human traffickers,” Ebrard said, at a news conference Monday.

President Donald Trump’s New York state tax returns could be given to Congress under a new law in his home state.

The measure was signed into law Monday by Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

It directs state tax officials to share state returns of certain elected and appointed officials upon request from the chairpersons of one of three top congressional committees.

The new law could give Congress a way around the president’s refusal to release his returns, though it’s expected to face legal challenges.

Cuomo says the change ensures no one is above the law and noted the law was carefully tailored to protect the tax privacy of everyday New Yorkers.

It’s unclear when or even whether state tax officials can expect a request for the tax returns.

 

Charging that human rights advocates have deviated from their original purpose, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Monday named a staunch abortion opponent to lead a new panel to set the U.S. direction.

Pompeo, an evangelical Christian who often speaks of his faith, announced the creation of a State Department commission on “unalienable rights” to look at how the United States advocates human rights.

Quoting Czech anti-communist icon Vaclav Havel as saying that “words like rights can be used for good or evil,” Pompeo said that the panel will “revisit the most basic of questions – what does it mean to say, or claim, that something is in fact a human right?”

“It’s a sad commentary on our times that more than 70 years after the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, gross violations continue throughout the world, sometimes even in the name of human rights,” Pompeo said without elaborating.

“International institutions, designed and built to protect human rights, have drifted from their original mission as human rights claims have proliferated,” he said.

Pompeo named as head of the commission Mary Ann Glendon, a Harvard Law professor under whom he studied and who is one of the intellectual leaders of the anti-abortion movement.

President Donald Trump’s administration has downplayed human rights, using it as a cudgel against adversaries such as China, Iran and Cuba but treading lightly with U.S. allies such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

Some U.S. conservatives take issue with mainstream human rights groups, faulting their advocacy of issues such as women’s reproductive health, gay rights and income equality.

Conservative thinkers instead speak of God-given rights and “natural law,” a philosophy led by thinkers such as the late Germain Grisez who argued that contraceptives went against the “procreative good.”

Glendon represented the Vatican at the 1995 U.N. conference on women in Beijing – where then U.S. first lady Hillary Clinton, later secretary of state, gave a landmark speech in which she declared “women’s rights are human rights.”

Glendon criticized the conference’s push on sexual and reproductive health, warning of a “quick-fix approach to getting rid of poverty by getting rid of poor people.”

“Much of the foundation money that swirled around the Beijing process was aimed at forging a link between development aid and programs that pressure poor women into abortion, sterilization and use of risky contraceptive methods,” she later wrote in the conservative religious journal First Things.

Pompeo’s panel is not without diverse voices. It includes Katrina Lantos Swett, a Democrat who has worked to preserve the legacy of her father, late congressman Tom Lantos, an outspoken critic of oppressive regimes.