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Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador rallied thousands of supporters in the northern border city of Tijuana on Saturday, saying that a new immigration deal with the United States would protect the human rights of migrants and maintain friendly ties with U.S.

Lopez Obrador said he was reluctantly prepared to slap retaliatory tariffs on US goods if negotiators in Washington had failed to strike a deal.

“We celebrate the important agreement of yesterday because it was a very difficult situation, very awkward doing the same and applying tariffs to some products of the US, the same measures, commercial restrictions similar to the ones that would be imposed on Mexican exports,” he said.

Under the deal, Mexico agreed to the immediate expansion along the entire border of a program under which the U.S. returns asylum-seeking migrants to Mexico to await adjudication of their cases.

The program, commonly known as Remain in Mexico, has been operating since January in the border cities of Tijuana, Mexicali and Ciudad Juarez.

 Mexico will also reinforce its southern border with Guatemala with thousands of National Guard officers.

The deal, announced on Friday after three days of negotiations in Washington, averted President Donald Trump’s threatened imposition of 5% import tariffs on all Mexican goods starting on Monday, June 10.

“I am pleased to inform you that the United States of America has reached a signed agreement with Mexico. The Tariffs scheduled to be implemented by the U.S. on Monday, against Mexico, are hereby indefinitely suspended,” President Donald Trump said Friday on Twitter.

“Mexico, in turn, has agreed to take strong measures to stem the tide of Migration through Mexico, and to our Southern Border. This is being done to greatly reduce, or eliminate, Illegal Immigration coming from Mexico and into the United States,” Trump said.

 
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It’s a comedy night at Johns Hopkins University. Members of the university’s Stand-up Comedy Club are performing dialogues, cracking jokes, doing funny moves and face gestures. 

They might be a little bit nervous at the beginning, but the experience is invigorating. Their jokes bring lots of laughter to normally busy, often stressed-out, students. 

But comedy, as club member Ariella Shua says, is serious work. In their weekly meetings, students try out and rehearse the jokes they wrote over the week.

“Whoever is reading, we read all of the material, and then we would go joke by joke and see what works and what doesn’t,” she said. “So, it starts as an individual project for yourself and becomes a group effort.”

Since joining last year, Shua has become a better observer of what’s going around her. She doesn’t go anywhere without her notebook.

“It’s in my backpack all the time,” she explained. “Whenever I just have a thought in my head that seems like, ‘Oh, this is strange,’ or when I see something or overhear someone saying something in the library, I just write it down. Later, when I’m trying to write my own set, I go walk through that notebook to see if there is anything in there that I can use.” 

A funny break

Along with achieving academic excellence, universities across the United States encourage their students to explore their potential and develop interests beyond their major. Joining an on-campus club is a good way to do that. Whether they are cultural, social, political or recreational, these clubs give students a voice and a chance to hone various skills, from community engagement to being funny. That is what the Stand-up Comedy Club offers.

Club president Nicholas Scandura finds that writing is one of the many skills he has developed since joining the club.

“Writing jokes is really fun,” he said. “It takes a lot of critical thinking.”

The club gives its members a sense of community. When they meet, they share funny experiences, tell jokes and laugh.

“It’s just a nice, relaxing break,” Scandura said.

Over the past decade, stand-up comedy clubs have become common on college campuses in America. 

“Now that it’s become a popular pop culture, everyone wants to do it,” he said.

While students use the stand-up comedy format to express themselves and exercise their freedom of speech, they usually stay away from certain controversial topics.

“If you offend people, if you say something and people are going to hate you for saying it, why are you up saying it? Scandura said.

Funny in real life

Last year, sophomore Harry Kuperstein joined the club and discovered it was a natural fit for his personality. Observing ironies and funny aspects of different situations improved his perspective on life. Becoming an active member also helped him work on the future skills he will need as a neurosurgeon.

“Elements of, say, talking to patients as a doctor. I think that being good in scripting and just having jokes ready to go might help smooth these interactions and make you a better public speaker,” he said.

Fellow club member Alex Hecksher Gomes, a computer science major, credits the club for helping him develop his own style and discover the secrets of writing good comedy.

“Not always tell the truth. Sometimes, it’s funny to go after your imagination,” he said. “You kind of get stuck in doing it, if you just follow what actually happened. Also, don’t always go with your first idea. I definitely thought some things that I said were funny, and then looked back. And where I got to with the joke was a lot funnier than when I started.”

‘Tomato Show’

Despite the workshops, rewrites and run-throughs, some ideas just aren’t funny. 

Club member Benjamin Monteagudo said performing in front of a student audience doesn’t mean comedians won’t receive harsh criticism. Last year, they came up with an idea to keep the audience involved and get their feedback.

“We called it ‘Tomato Show,’ where if you were performing very badly on stage, we just let the audience throw tomatoes at us to kind of roll with the joke. So, we spent our entire budget on a big box of foam tomatoes. There were 200 to 300 of them. We gave them to the audience, and it was the best show ever. I think the audience was really engaged because of the tomatoes. And it helped us stay attentive and focused.”
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Online data is at risk. Hackers are getting smarter and companies across the globe are facing a shortage of trained professionals who can help protect their data. To fill this gap, the U.S. government is beefing up its efforts to recruit the next generation of cybersecurity professionals. VOA’s Sahar Majid has more.
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Rising trade tensions between the U.S. and China have sparked worries about the 17 exotic-sounding rare earth minerals needed for high-tech products like robotics, drones and electric cars. 

China recently raised tariffs to 25% on rare earth exports to the U.S. and has threatened to halt exports altogether after the Trump administration raised tariffs on Chinese products and blacklisted telecommunications giant Huawei.  

With names like europium, scandium and ytterbium, the bulk of rare earth minerals are extracted from mines in China, where lower wages and lax environmental standards make production cheaper and easier.  

But trade experts say no one should panic over China’s threats to stop exporting the elements to the U.S. 

There is a U.S. rare minerals mine in California. And Australia, Myanmar, Russia and India are also top producers of the somewhat obscure minerals. Vietnam and Brazil both have huge rare earth reserves.  

“The sky is not falling,” said Mary B. Teagarden, a China specialist, professor and associate dean at the Thunderbird School of Global Management in Phoenix. “There are alternatives.” 

Simon Lester, associate director of the center for trade policy studies at the Cato Institute think tank in Washington, agreed. “Over the short term, it could be a big disruption, but companies that want to stay in business will find a way,” he said.    

Although the U.S. is among the world’s top 10 countries for rare earths production, it’s also a major importer of the minerals, looking to China for 80% of what it buys from other countries, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. China last year produced 120,000 metric tons of rare earths, while the United States produced 15,000 metric tons.  

Mountain Pass Mine

The United States also depends on China to separate the minerals pulled from Mountain Pass Mine, the sole rare earths mine in the U.S., which was bought two years ago by the Chicago-based JHL Capital Group LLC .  

“We need to develop a U.S.-based supply chain so there is no possibility we can be threatened,” said Ryan S. Corbett, managing director of JHL Capital. 

The mine’s top products are neodymium and praseodymium, two elements that are used together to make the lightweight magnets that help power electric cars and wind turbines and are found in electronics such as laptop hard drives. 

Mountain Pass, located in San Bernardino County, Calif., was once the top supplier of the world’s rare earth minerals, but China began taking over the market in the 1990s and the U.S. mine stopped production in 2002.  

Mountain Pass later restarted production, only to close again amid a 2015 bankruptcy. Corbett said extraction resumed last year after JHL Capital purchased the site with QVT Financial LP of New York, which holds 30%, and Shenghe Resources Holding Co. Ltd. of China, a nonvoting shareholder with 9.9%.  

Since then, Mountain Pass has focused on achieving greater autonomy with a $1.7 billion separation system set to go online late next year that would allow it to skip sending rare earths ore to China for that step. 

China could hurt itself in the long run by cutting off the U.S., specialists said.  

David Merriman, a rare earths analyst for Roskill commodity research in London, said that during a similar trade flap with China in 2011, Japan began looking to other countries, including Australia, for the minerals needed to manufacture electronics.   

Australian rare earths production giant Lynas Corp. Ltd. this month announced a proposed deal with Blue Line Corp. of Texas for a separation facility at an industrial site in Hondo, Texas.  

Other deposits

There may be other options, too. Deposits of rare earths have been detected in other U.S. states, including Wyoming and Alaska, as well in several remote areas of Canada. The Interior Department is calling for more prospecting and mining of “critical minerals,” including on public lands currently considered off-limits, and even in oceans. 

“We have to be more forward-thinking,” said Alexander Gysi, an assistant professor in geology and geological engineering at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden. “It would be better for the U.S. to have a greater range of sources for rare earths.”
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Congressional hearings on Robert Mueller’s report on the investigation into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election take place in coming days, amid mounting pressure to launch proceedings that could lead to the impeachment of President Donald Trump.

But Mueller, the special counsel who recently stepped down after completing the report, will not testify before the House Judiciary Committee, which is holding a hearing in Washington Monday entitled “Lessons from the Mueller Report: Presidential Obstruction and Other Crimes.”

The panel will, instead, hear testimony from former U.S. attorneys and other legal experts, including John Dean, the star witness in the early 1970s Watergate hearings and former White House counsel for then-President Richard Nixon. The committee says the witnesses will discuss the report’s evidence that Trump often tried to obstruct or limit the probe, which reinforced the U.S. intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia interfered in the election with the intent of helping Trump win the presidency.

On Wednesday, the House Intelligence Committee will also hold a “Lessons from the Mueller Report” hearing. It’s focus will be on the “counterintelligence implications” of Mueller’s findings, the committee said. Mueller, nor members of his team, will testify but the panel will hear from former top FBI officials Robert Anderson and Stephanie Douglas.

Both committees are chaired by Democrats, who represent a party that is divided over what to do with Mueller. He has refused to testify before Congress out of concern he may be exploited for political reasons. Most House Democrats believe Mueller is obligated to explain his findings to the public as the party considers issuing a subpoena to compel him to testify.

Efforts by the committees to get more information about Mueller’s findings have been largely obstructed by Trump’s claims of executive privilege and by ordering key witnesses to refuse to testify or submit documents.

Trump’s actions have prompted the most liberal members of the House to increase pressure on Speaker Nancy Pelosi to begin a process that could lead to impeaching the president. But Pelosi has dismissed that approach, preferring a slower, more methodical strategy that includes litigation.

 
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It was a bad day 70 million years ago for a triceratops dinosaur, whose remains are displayed beneath a fossilized Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton — posed as if it were still alive and ready for dinner.  

Huge dinosaurs and other ancient creatures like an elephant-sized ground sloth are part of a remarkable new fossils exhibition that opened June 8 at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington.

Instead of the typical static poses usually seen in museums, the new exhibition has positioned the animals so they look more real and animated — like a Dire Wolf that appears to be chasing prey.

“Did you know that all birds descended from dinosaurs?” said Matthew Carrano, the Curator of Dinosaurs.

”We now know dinosaurs were fast growing, and very lively animals,” Carrano said. “Many of the dinosaurs you see here didn’t necessarily live together.  Each species lasted a million years ago or so and then another species would appear.  So many different dinosaur ecosystems in the world, just like there’s many different ecosystems in the world today.”

Located in the large, newly restored fossil hall, the exhibition called Deep Time is all about ancient life on earth, and how its climate, ecosystems and geology evolved over 3.7 billion years.  It contains over 700 fossils, including plants, insects, reptiles, and mollusks going back billions of years.  

A fossilized palm tree unearthed in the Arctic shows that area used to be tropical. A tiny ancestor of today’s horses lived 52 million years ago. There’s even some fossilized dinosaur feces.

While wandering through the variety of ecosystems, modern interactive exhibits allow visitors to learn more about the earth’s past, and a glass-walled lab where they can see fossils being prepared for scientific study.

But among these remains is an underlying message about the future and the importance of protecting the Earth.

“We explain and let you explore for yourself what the meaning is in something that might have happened 55 million years ago to tell us a lot about the impact we are having now, because it’s not just a past story it’s also our story right now,” explained Sioban Starrs, the exhibition project manager.  

The objects on display illustrate how much the Earth has changed, affected by shifts in the climate. Scientists say 66 million years ago, the impact of a huge asteroid transformed the environment so much the dinosaurs and most other forms of life couldn’t survive. But today the exhibition points out, humans are the culprit that are causing devastating environmental problems.

“It’s a scientific fact and there’s evidence showing that we are having an impact on this planet that’s unprecedented,” Starrs said. “It’s unprecedented in the scale, and in the rate, and it’s unprecedented that it’s one singular species causing all of these changes.”

“There’s lots of specific things you can do to ameliorate the impacts of climate change,” said Kirk Johnson, the head of the museum. “Decrease climate change and help preserve species and habitats. There’s a lot of things that are happening in the world today that don’t have to be happening.”

Starrs hopes the 5 million people visiting the exhibition each year will think about what they can do to help.

“I would really like to see people getting connected to this story of the impact that we’re having on the planet, and to really wake up and start making smart choices,” she said. “Start looking at the things that people are doing around the world to direct our planet toward a hopeful, positive future.”
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Estonia, Niger, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Tunisia and Vietnam were elected Friday to two-year terms on the U.N. Security Council.

The five will join the 15-nation body responsible for maintaining international peace and security on Jan. 1, 2020.

There is usually little suspense in the General Assembly for the vote, as regional groups typically pre-select a candidate from within their bloc to run uncontested. This year, Tunisia, Niger and Vietnam ran unopposed.

So did Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, until just hours before Friday morning’s vote, when El Salvador announced it would challenge the tiny island nation for the one open seat in the Latin American and Caribbean region.

Diplomats expressed surprise ahead of the vote as to why El Salvador would come in at the last minute, when the regional bloc had agreed in December to put up Saint Vincent as their candidate.

“You don’t do it like that,” one western diplomat said disapprovingly.

Most other countries appeared to agree, with El Salvador winning only six of the 193 votes cast.

Eastern Europe did run a contested race this year, endorsing two candidates, Estonia and Romania.

Estonia, which joined the U.N. in 1991 after the collapse of the Soviet Union, has never served on the Security Council. It beat four-time council veteran Romania after two rounds of ballots, exceeding the necessary two-thirds majority needed.

Member states cast secret ballots and candidates must win a two-thirds majority of votes to succeed, even if they are running uncontested. Candidate countries cap off their often years-long campaigns with parties in the lead-up to the vote.

Reaction

“I want to reiterate that Saint Vincent and the Grenadines views this as an historic occasion,” Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves told reporters after the election. “We are the smallest country ever to be elected as a non-permanent member of the Security Council.”

The island nation has a population of just 110,000.

Saint Vincent and the Grenadines has aligned with the Maduro regime in Venezuela.

“Non-interference, non-intervention, peaceful settlement of serious difficulties pertaining to governance,” the prime minister said when asked what his government’s policy is toward Venezuela.  

Vietnam had nearly unanimous support in the General Assembly, winning 192 of 193 votes.

“As Vietnam went through decades of war, we hope that we can bring to the council the experience of Vietnam, the country that has been able to rebuild after the war and deal with many other issues,” said the president’s special envoy Le Hoai Trung.

Tunisian Foreign Minister Khemaies Jhinaoui said his nation would try to be a “bridge builder” on the council and contribute to trying to solve some of the most important peace and security issues.

Council dynamics

“With the election of Saint Vincent and Vietnam, the Security Council could tilt a little towards China and Russia next year,” said Richard Gowan, U.N. Director, International Crisis Group. “Saint Vincent has stuck with Maduro in Venezuela, and Vietnam hews to a pretty robust anti-Western line in U.N. debates.” 

Tunisia and Niger will represent Africa on the council. Gowan told VOA they could figure prominently if Libya and the Sahel continue atop the agenda.

“It will be hard to ignore their views on issues like the spillover of violence from Libya and the worsening security situation in Burkina Faso,” he said.

The five new council members will replace Cote d’Ivoire, Equatorial Guinea, Kuwait, Peru and Poland, whose terms end Dec. 31, 2019.

They will join the other non-permanent members — Belgium, the Dominican Republic, Germany, Indonesia, and South Africa — as well as the permanent five members — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States.
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Editor’s note: We want you to know what’s happening, why and how it could impact your life, family or business, so we created a weekly digest of the top original immigration, migration and refugee reporting from across VOA. Questions? Tips? Comments? Email the VOA immigration team: ImmigrationUnit@voanews.com.

Fleeing families 

The numbing numbers of families entering the U.S. without authorization through Mexico continued its months-long sharp uptick in May. U.S. border agents detained 132,887 adults and children last month — roughly 64% were traveling in a family group, and most were from Central America. The U.S. government opened tent shelters this week to house families being apprehended along the border while they are being processed.

Meanwhile, officials in Washington and Mexico City are attempting to negotiate migration protocols after Trump threatened the country’s southern neighbor with escalating tariffs set to start next week. 

African migrants on Mexico border

While the news of increasing family arrivals has dominated headlines in recent months, another jump in border crossings quietly surfaced in the last week: Border agents detained about 500 people from Central and Southern Africa in the last week — mostly Cameroonian, Angolan, and Congolese. While there are some unauthorized border crossers every year from African states, the sharp uptick is prompting charities along the border to scramble their resources, unaccustomed to the language needs in the detained groups. 

Death in detention — and out

A hospitalized trans woman died days after her release from U.S. immigration custody. In the days following, two more people in U.S. border custody died.

The journey to get to — and through — the U.S. border can be perilous, and every year hundreds of people die in the attempt, but is the U.S. government doing enough to care for those in detention? Even an internal assessment by government inspectors released this week questions whether enough is being done. 

From the Feds:

— A Florida man is facing federal charges over alleged threats against his Iraqi-American refugee neighbor — who is also a widow and mother of four. 

— The head of a Mexican religious group was arrested at a U.S. airport this week. Naasón Joaquín García, who heads La Luz Del Mundo, a Christian fundamentalist group, is accused along with several co-defendants of dozens of counts of human trafficking, production of child pornography, and forcible rape of a minor. 
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Two key U.S. legislators want answers from Boeing and federal regulators about why the company waited more than a year to disclose that a safety alert in its 737 Max plane wasn’t working properly. 

U.S. Reps. Peter DeFazio of Oregon and Rick Larsen of Washington sent letters to Boeing and the Federal Aviation Administration seeking details on what they knew when, and when airlines were told. 

The feature is designed to warn pilots when a sensor provides incorrect information about the pitch of the plane’s nose. 

Boeing admitted in May that within months of the plane’s 2017 debut, engineers realized that the sensor warning light worked only when paired with a separate, optional feature. 

The sensors malfunctioned during flights in Indonesia and Ethiopia. Both planes crashed, killing 346 people in all.
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After two days of intense criticism, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden reversed course Thursday and declared that he no longer supports a long-standing congressional ban on using federal health care money to pay for abortions.

“If I believe health care is a right, as I do, I can no longer support an amendment” that makes it harder for some women to access care, Biden said at a Democratic Party fundraiser in Atlanta.

The former vice president’s reversal on the Hyde Amendment came after rivals and women’s rights groups blasted him for affirming through campaign aides that he still supported the decades-old budget provision. The dynamics had been certain to flare again at Democrats’ first primary debate in three weeks.

Centrist risks

Biden didn’t mention this week’s attacks, saying his decision was about health care, not politics. Yet the circumstances highlight the risks for a 76-year-old former vice president who’s running as more of a centrist in a party where some skeptical activists openly question whether he can be the party standard-bearer in 2020.

And Biden’s explanation tacitly repeated his critics’ arguments that the Hyde Amendment is another abortion barrier that disproportionately affects poor women and women of color.

“I’ve been struggling with the problems that Hyde now presents,” Biden said, opening a speech dedicated mostly to voting rights and issues important to the black community.

“I want to be clear: I make no apologies for my last position. I make no apologies for what I’m about to say,” he explained, arguing that “circumstances have changed” with Republican-run states, including Georgia, where Biden spoke, adopting new, severe restrictions on abortion.

‘Middle ground’ on abortion

A Roman Catholic who has wrestled publicly with abortion policy for decades, Biden said he voted as a senator to support the Hyde Amendment because he believed that women would still have access to abortion even without Medicaid insurance and other federal health care grants and that abortion opponents shouldn’t be compelled to pay for the procedure. It was part of what Biden has described as a “middle ground” on abortion.

Now, he says, there are too many barriers that threaten that constitutional right, leaving some women with no reasonable options as long as Republicans keep pushing for an outright repeal of the Supreme Court’s 1973 decision that legalized abortion nationwide.

The former vice president said he arrived at the decision as part of developing an upcoming comprehensive health care proposal. He has declared his support for a Medicare-like public option as the next step toward universal coverage. He reasoned that his goal of universal coverage means women must have full and fair access to care, including abortion.

​Reversal praised

A Planned Parenthood representative applauded Biden’s reversal but noted that he has been lagging the women’s rights movement on the issue.

“Happy to see Joe Biden embrace what we have long known to be true: Hyde blocks people, particularly women of color and women with low incomes, from accessing safe, legal abortion care,” said Leana Wen of Planned Parenthood, the women’s health giant whose services include abortion and abortion referrals.

Other activists accepted credit for pushing Biden on the issue.

“We’re pleased that Joe Biden has joined the rest of the 2020 Democratic field in coalescing around the party’s core values — support for abortion rights, and the basic truth that reproductive freedom is fundamental to the pursuit of equality and economic security in this country,” said Ilyse Hogue, president of NARAL, a leading abortion-rights advocacy group.

Reaction on both sides

Repealing Hyde has become a defining standard for Democrats in recent years, making what was once a more common position among moderate Democrats more untenable, particularly given the dynamics of primary politics heading into 2020. At its 2016 convention, the party included a call for repealing Hyde in the Democratic platform, doing so at the urging of nominee Hillary Clinton.

At least one prominent Democratic woman remained unconvinced.

“I am not clear that Joe Biden believes unequivocally that every single woman has the right to make decisions about her body, regardless of her income or race,” said Democratic strategist Jess Morales Rocketto, who worked for Clinton in 2016. “It is imperative that the Democratic nominee believe that.”

Republicans pounced, framing Biden’s change in position as a gaffe.

“He’s just not very good at this. Joe Biden is an existential threat to Joe Biden,” said Tim Murtaugh, the communications director for President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign.

A senior Biden campaign official said some aides were surprised at the speed of the reversal, given Biden’s long history of explaining his abortion positions in terms of his faith. But aides realized that as the front-runner, the attacks weren’t going to let up, and his campaign reasoned that the fallout within the Democratic primary outweigh any long-term benefit of maintain his previous Hyde support.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal conversations.
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