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rnment installed in July, according to parliamentary procedure.
Pita Limjaroenrat, who leads the left-leaning, progressive Move Forward Party, is the front-runner to become Thailand's next premier. He has been vocal about how he would shift Thailand's foreign policy direction, including its stance on Myanmar.
"A stable Myanmar is a boon to the entire region, but if Myanmar sneezes, Thailand gets sick as well," Pita told VOA's Thai Service during an interview in April.
Educated at Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Pita is known to have a natural affinity for the U.S.
Analysts, however, say the Thai politician has to walk a fine line to engage constructively with China, given its economic clout and growing influence in Thailand's foreign policy.
"Thailand might have to continue to bandwagon with China for its economic interests," although Thailand has reset its foreign policy to work with the U.S.-led Western countries, said Sophal.
Chambers said a Pita-led Thailand would distance itself from China, work closely with Washington, and cease cooperating with the Myanmar junta.
Jiha Ham and Christy Lee of VOA's Korean Service contributed to this report.
Voice of America
China Looms Large Over Thailand's Move to Reengage With Myanmar Junta
WASHINGTON - A recent attempt by Thailand to reengage with Myanmar's junta appears to be aimed at creating an alignment with China, a close ally of the military regime in Myanmar, analysts said.
On June 19, the outgoing Thai government of Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, a former general who seized power in a 2014 military coup, hosted informal talks for foreign ministers from member nations of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
Myanmar's foreign minister, Than Swe, appointed by the military junta that seized power in February 2021, was among those who attended. Top diplomats from some other countries in the 10-member regional bloc, such as Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia, did not.
In August 2022, foreign ministers from ASEAN member states had agreed to bar Myanmar's ruling generals from the group's meetings until they made progress on the so-called Five-Point Consensus reached in April 2021 to end the violence that engulfed Myanmar after the coup.
Protests, a civil disobedience movement and fighting continue in Myanmar.
As China is currently the second-largest aid provider to the Myanmar junta after Russia, Beijing may want the junta to restore order to stabilize the China-Myanmar border and the pipelines running through Myanmar into China, according to Paul Chambers, lecturer and special adviser on international affairs at Naresuan University in Thailand.
Thailand, which is close to China diplomatically and geographically, has sought to take a similar stance, said Chambers.
"[The] Prayut government would want to include China in any ASEAN negotiations concerning Myanmar," he said.
Sek Sophal, a researcher at the Center for Democracy Promotion at Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University in Japan, said Thailand's military-backed government sees China as a key player in the Myanmar issue.
The Thai government has continued to engage with Myanmar on a "business as usual" basis and has done "very little" to put pressure on the junta, Sophal said.
When asked by VOA about the informal talks hosted by Thailand, the Chinese Embassy in Washington said they were not aware of the matter and referred the question to the Chinese Embassy in Myanmar or Thailand instead and received no reply.
The United States called on Myanmar to comply with the Five-Point Consensus.
"As the secretary noted, Burma's military regime has repeatedly carried out horrific, and extensive violence against the people of Burma since the February 2021 military coup," a State Department spokesperson said last week in an email to VOA.
"We recognize and continue to welcome ASEAN's efforts to address the crisis in Burma. Given the regime's lack of progress on the Five-Point Consensus, we call on ASEAN members to hold Burma accountable for its actions," the spokesperson said.
The U.S. Treasury Department last week imposed sanctions on Myanmar's Defense Ministry and two state-owned banks, the Myanmar Foreign Trade Bank and the Myanmar Investment and Commercial Bank.
The measure freezes any assets of the sanctioned entities that are in the U.S. or controlled by a U.S. person. It also prohibits all transactions by U.S. persons or entities carried out within or transiting the U.S. that the targeted entities would benefit from.
Chambers said that the U.S. could use its sanctions against Myanmar's junta and work with its ASEAN opponents, such as Indonesia, to slow down Bangkok's current cooperation with the junta.
"The U.S. is aware that Thailand has, since at least 2013, followed a realist policy of hedging or 'creating balance' between Beijing and Washington," he said.
After more than nine years of China-leaning rule under Prayuth, a surprise win by the Move Forward Party in the May 14 elections means Thailand is slated to have a new gove[...]
Voice of America
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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.
Voice of America
Newcomers to Canada Struggle with Rental Housing Crisis
Canada is engaged in a losing race to keep up with an unprecedented level of demand for rental housing, leaving a record number of new immigrants to scramble for a place to live.
In several of the country's major cities, including Montreal, Vancouver and Halifax, vacancy rates stand at 1% or lower. In Toronto, the nation's largest city, the rate is only slightly better at 1.8%, with monthly rents averaging more than $2,260.
"When we say Canada has a housing crisis, we mean it," said Lisa Hayhurst, chair of the Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, chapter of social justice organization ACORN, in a statement emailed to VOA.
"Unaffordable housing has for years been a reality for low income renters. Now it is so bad that it is crippling for even some middle income renters. People on fixed incomes without subsidies are out of options.
"Seeing people living in tents is a common sight in parks across the country," Hayhurst continued. "New Canadians are quickly realizing that they can't afford an apartment on the low-wages they earn. Something has to give."
Canadian bank RBC predicts that the current unmet demand could quadruple by 2026, warning that there needs to be faster construction of rental housing. But it is not clear how that can be achieved.
The Financial Post newspaper reports that 2022 was a banner year for rental housing construction, with 70,000 units completed, "the highest rate of completion in almost a decade." But experts told the Post that annual construction will need to increase by 20% to avoid an even more serious shortage.
Among the groups most affected by the housing crisis are immigrants — often referred to as "new Canadians" or "newcomers" — who are being admitted to the country in record numbers, partly in response to a post-pandemic labor shortage.
The Canadian immigration department has set a target of admitting 465,000 permanent residents for this year, 485,000 in 2024, and 500,000 in 2025. Altogether that would boost the total population, now at 38.5 million, by almost 4%.
Carolyn Whitzman, a University of Ottawa professor who has studied the issue, said only single mothers with children are more likely than new migrants and refugees to end up in crisis-level housing need.
She told VOA that Canada is offering life in the biggest Canadian cities to migrants, including students whom the country needs to prop up its universities in the face of declining enrollment. But, she said, this is proving to be "a false promise."
An example of what many new Canadians are experiencing was described by Setareh, a single 41-year-old public relations professional who arrived in Toronto from Tehran a year and a half ago.
"Last August, I began searching for a one-bedroom apartment and encountered what I believe to be one of the most challenging periods in recent years, exacerbated by the ongoing pandemic," said Setareh, who asked for privacy reasons to be identified by only her first name.
"Numerous individuals outbid me on every apartment I considered. Furthermore, as a newcomer, I lacked a credit history, a vital requirement for landlords. Despite offering to pay six months' rent in advance, along with the last month, I found myself competing against a few individuals willing to pay an entire year's rent upfront. As you may know, newcomers often have limited budgets.
"I reached a point where I had to increase my budget, consider alternative locations, and lower my expectations," she said.
Shashank Mutalik, a 37-year-old marketing professional, encountered many of the same problems when seeking rental housing for his family of three in Vancouver.
"As newcomers you have no past landlord references in the country and with no one to vouch for you," Mutalik said.
"As a newcomer you aren't earning that well and the rent forces you to consume y[...]
Voice of America
First Smoke, Now Clouds of Bugs Invade New York City
By the time Martin DuPain got back home from a short walk Thursday afternoon, he was covered with a smattering of tiny flying critters. They were in his hair, on his shirt and in his nose.
When he sneezed, the bugs came flying out.
As if the smoke and haze sweeping in from wildfires in Canada weren't enough, New York City has been invaded in recent days with plumes of flying insects that have become both a nuisance and a source of fascination — what were they, where'd they come from and will they ever go away? Another unwanted Canadian export?
At first, DuPain, who lives in Queens, thought it might have been wind-driven ash, but he soon found out otherwise. Some were alive and flying. He quickly jumped in the shower.
The startling scene was nothing short of a “natural disaster," quipped a post on Twitter, which has been abuzz with reports of swarms in some neighborhoods, while others remain bug-free.
As they entered clouds of bugs, some people tried to wave them away. Others covered their mouths and noses. Others put on surgical masks before venturing outdoors.
Professor David Lohman, an entomologist at the City University of New York, hadn't seen any of the insects himself, but he concluded from photos and videos circulating on social media that they were winged aphids — not gnats, as amateur bugologists assumed.
Aphids are common all over the United States, even in New York City. They are small, pear-shaped insects that come in a variety of colors, from green, red and yellow to black, brown and gray.
While he is not an aphid expert — there are very few — Lohman said the swarms are unusual, given that aphids don't usually come out in New York City until after summer. He theorized that warm winter temps might have contributed by causing the bug's biological clock to go off-kilter.
On Friday, Lohman went in search of aphid experts who could chime in.
"Aphids fly at all times of the growing season," Natalie Hernandez, who specializes in aphids, wrote in an email to Lohman. “If a colony gets too large, too dense, it will produce winged morphs to disperse.”
The wildfires in Canada and extreme temperatures "could be messing with them too,” she added.
That theory sounded plausible to Andy Jensen, another aphid researcher.
“The smoke might be allowing aphids to remain abundant longer into summer than normal," Jensen said. "Many aphids slow down or stop reproduction in the heat of summer.”
Whatever the cause, the city’s Public Health Department said, there was nothing to be alarmed about.
“While this may be annoying, these insects do not present a known public health risk,” the department said in a statement Friday. “We are looking into these bugs and will share any important health information.”
The bug experts say the swarms shouldn't last much longer, which is a relief to Jeremy Cohen, who was riding his bike in Brooklyn when he felt as if he was being pelted by bits of hail.
At times, he steered his bicycle with one hand and used the other to cup his mouth and nose.
“I knew the air quality was bad so I just assumed it was debris from the wildfires just flying around — which I thought would have been crazy,” said Cohen, a professional photographer. “Then I slowly realized there was a swarm of bugs flying around.”
While some saw the insects as annoying, the presence of so many bugs delighted Lohman.
“The appearance of all these aphids signal something great: New York is organic!" he said. "If pesticide use was widespread, there wouldn't be this many aphids.”
Voice of America
The Past Lives on in Kashmir’s Last Traditional Oil Mill
For more than six decades, Ghulan Mohammad Wani guided oxen around a circular track, driving the wooden oil press that generations of his family have operated in the town of Pampore for more than 200 years.
At 82 years old, Wani has no known plans to retire. But whenever that day comes, it will bring the curtain down on the last manually operated seed oil mill in the Kashmir Valley and the age-old skills required to run it.
That day will mark more than a quaint historical milestone. For Ghulam’s loyal customers, it will mean the loss of a source of exceptional quality cooking oil, unmatched by commercially available alternatives.
The popularity of Wani’s product is such that customers leave their empty containers at the mill, often waiting patiently for weeks to have them filled with a few liters of oil. Other customers bring their own seeds to Wani, expecting a better quality of oil than they would get from a commercial miller.
Wani told VOA that his wooden oil press was constructed by his great grandfather more than 200 years ago and that he has been operating it with only “some minor repairs” since the early 1960s.
Remaining true to the practices he learned from his father, Wani crushes several kilos of mustard seeds with a spinning log beam while sitting cross-legged and putting pressure on the mortar with his aging body. The process takes a long time and a lot of patience, but Wani is determined to keep going as long as his health permits.
The health of his two well-trained oxen is also a concern. He alternates them every three hours to avoid overtiring them.
Despite the popularity of his oil, the process of producing it is much slower than that of machine presses. Wani is able to earn no more than 100 to 150 rupees ($1.22 to $1.83) a day, but he says he is committed to serving his community and resists the temptation to raise his prices.
Looking back, Wani recalls a time when his mill was more profitable. He saw his children married and was able to build a modest house. But today he is happy just to know he is preserving a dying custom.
Mustard oil is a very important part of Kashmiri cooking, rendering a unique heat, brightness and flavor to the food. It is no accident that his mill is located in Pampore, a town noted for its golden flowers and mustard blooms.
Wani’s home is known not only for his mustard oil but also for the soothing melodies of Kashmiri songs enjoyed by visitors like Adil Shabir Ashai, director of Marvel Technology Services and Information Systems, a Bahrain-based IT company with Kashmiri roots.
Stepping into Wani’s mud and wood house “becomes a source of spiritual rejuvenation, a reminder of the values that truly matter in life,” Ashai said in an interview.
Wani always has a smile on his face and sings Kashmiri folk songs. Every day at 9 a.m., he climbs the worn wooden stairs to the attic, where he sets up the mill and ties an ox to the wooden crank. Only time can tell how much longer that regimen will continue.
reated.
“People need to be prepared,” Kayise says, “for the kind of attitudinal change that you might find. People who maybe feel like Black people don’t belong on those campuses may now feel emboldened. They may no longer feel an obligation to lift a finger to facilitate any form of diversity, no need to diversify the staff, try to bring new voices onto the faculty. Like, you are free now to say what you feel.”
ike the ease with which they could get back to Pasadena on the weekends.
https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/ucla-students-aa-1.jpg?w=464&w=464 <figcaptionCourtesy of Rachel AladdinRachel Aladdin (right) and sister Rebekah Aladdin (left), at their graduation from UCLA in 2010.
Rebekah received an admissions letter from UCLA first. Rachel doesn’t think hers ever came, but she found out that she too had been admitted five stressful days later when a high school history teacher let her log into an admissions website in his classroom.
Rachel Aladdin was awarded a four-year scholarship from the Jackie Robinson Foundation, and by that summer she was on campus for the freshman summer program, an academic enrichment and social-adjustment program for students coming from underserved communities. Between that and freshman orientation, she thinks she met all of the Infamous 96. There were a number of athletes among them including the NBA player Russell Westbrook. The 96, and for that matter the limited number of Black students on campus, were generally close, and from this Aladdin drew a big circle of friends. It was, perhaps, the one upside of such a small group of Black freshmen. She grew up in a family where race was talked about, and while her hometown was diverse, there’s a fair bit of effective segregation, she says. So, being one of just 96 Black students admitted was upsetting but not surprising. What was hard was the day to day on campus once classes began.
Read More: The Supreme Court’s Decision on Affirmative Action Must Not Be the Final Word
“When you have the troubles of life on top of that, as a Black person from an underserved community,” Aladdin says, “and you now have this racial climate that you have been thrown into. It was crazy. I don’t know if some of my experience was projection because it was so top of mind. There are 96 Black freshmen here. And you felt alienated. You felt very different.”
When Matthews arrived on campus, he was, as he puts it, all of 5 ft. 3 in. Yet, non-Black people all over campus frequently asked him questions or mentioned things to him that seemed to hinge on the presumption that he was an athlete.
“I’ve since had a little growth spurt so I am now 5 ft. 7 in.,” he says. “But what I could not believe is that people, at this Division I school, seriously looked at me and made their assumptions. This was before we had or at least I knew of terms like microaggressions, pre-DEI and all of that.”
It often made Matthews, other members of the 96, and other Black students on campus feel as if they weren’t welcome.
“We really started talking about campus climate and safety and feeling psychologically safe and feeling that, ‘Do I belong here?’ thing,” Matthews says. “This was about like look, I’m on campus. I stick out like a sore thumb. I stay in my little small enclave and I go to class and that’s what I’m doing.”
Matthews didn’t feel welcome so he didn’t engage in many parts of campus life. He got in. He did what he could to make way for others. He went to class. He learned. He graduated. He got out. He’s accepted that not everyone actually grasps the difference between equality and actual equity, that people are sometimes rude intentionally and sometimes don’t know exactly how offensive they are. Sometimes they simply do not care.
For Aladdin, the climate on campus made her question everything. When someone would fail to move over to share the sidewalk, forcing her into the grass, she often wasn’t sure if they were just rude or they were racist. When someone failed to hold a building door despite her trailing only inches behind, when people didn’t thank her for holding the door for them or making room for them on a bench, she wasn’t sure.
“You often found yourself asking, how racist is this, really?” Aladdin says. “I think with time those thoughts subsided, but at first…I made sure I was aware of my surroundings because I didn’t know how weird things could get.”
When she walked across cam[...]
come students who often face transportation challenges, relatively small costs that they simply can’t cover for a textbook, or issues balancing work hours and school. Plus, the letters included the names of established professionals who were Black alumni.
Read More: The Ambitions of the Civil Rights Movement Went Far Beyond Affirmative Action
The school’s admissions officers also fanned out and engaged in more on-the-ground, in-person recruiting activity. Under the old way of operating, simple, relatively low-cost, human-to-human niceties like this didn’t happen often, Taylor says.
Still, by 2020, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, had found that the end of affirmative action in public college admissions had not only reduced overall Black and Latino student enrollment at California’s public universities but also done damage to these students’ college-graduation rates and wages earned after the college years. What’s more, the 2020 study, released by Berkeley’s Center for Studies in Higher Education, found that claims that affirmative action in college admissions had harmed white and Asian students did not bear out when researchers examined enrollment, graduation rates, and earnings before and after Proposition 209. Instead, the ban on affirmative action in college admissions had contributed to a sort of two-tier higher-education system where the state’s flagship schools – UCLA and Berkeley – are attended overwhelmingly by white and Asian students while the other schools in the system, many of which had low Black and Latino student enrollment before the change, saw some gains. Proposition 209 also deterred thousands of qualified students from these same groups from applying to any campus. Because fewer students of color enrolled in UC schools overall after Proposition 209 and the number enrolled in STEM programs, particularly among Latino students, also fell, the number of early-career Black, Latino, Native American, and Pacific Islander graduates earning over $100,000 dropped by at least 3%. The study provided the “first causal evidence that banning affirmative action exacerbates socioeconomic inequities.”
That year the system’s board of regents voted unanimously to support a repeal of Proposition 209. They also agreed to phase out requirements that applicants submit SAT and ACT scores, then by 2025 develop the system’s own standardized test. The state’s lawmakers put the question of repealing Proposition 209 on the November 2020 ballot. But California voters defeated it – with 57% voting to keep the ban on affirmative action in college admissions in place.
Beyond the enrollment figures and the graduation rates, there are the experiences of being a Black human being on a campus like UCLA’s. And to this day Kayise wonders if the Infamous 96 were a class asked to take on too much.
“They were so small,” he says. “They not only had to figure out how to thrive themselves in an environment where there were fewer of them to provide support to one another but they picked up the job of trying to help the next generation of high school students gain access and rebuild some of the programs and community-service projects, the [Black] fraternities and sororities that were suffering.”
In essence, as Black student enrollment slid to that low in 2006, some of the organizations, events, programs, and infrastructure that previous groups of Black students could rely upon for social, emotional, and academic support had shriveled or died. The Infamous 96 had to rebuild them and use them at the same time.
“Going to college is hard, it’s hard enough,” says Rachel Aladdin, another member of the Infamous 96. Like Matthews, she was a first-generation college student. She grew up in Pasadena, about 30 miles and an entire world northeast of UCLA’s campus outside Los Angeles. Aladdin and her identical twin sister, Rebekah, were raised by a single father, who was living with multiple sclerosis. So as they applied to college, they considered practical things, l[...]
dmissions system that depends on them alone disadvantages Black and Latino students, those who come from poor families, and those who are among the first in their families to go to college or trying to navigate the higher-ed system without some kind of experience or guide. Holistic admissions require a school to consider academic performance but also who a student is, what they have tried to learn or do inside and outside of school, what they have had to manage or opted to take on, the context in which they grew up, what interests and hobbies they have developed, how they have contributed to their communities and what all of this together suggests about a student’s potential to contribute to campus life and to the communities where they live after graduation. The concept came up during oral arguments at the Supreme Court last year, with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson probing why, if a university is evaluating an applicant holistically, race should not be considered while other factors, such as a family’s history with the school, could. “That seems to me to have the potential of causing more of an equal protection problem than it’s actually solving,” she said.
Holistic admissions acknowledge that there are multiple types of promise, intelligence, and ability, says Mandela Kayise, who in 2006 was the president of UCLA’s Black alumni association. He had arrived on campus as an undergraduate student in the late 1970s only to be forced out by economic challenges, returned in the 1980s to finish his degree, and joined the administration working in student advising and retention. Kayise also served as a faculty advisor to student groups when Prop 209 passed in 1996 and was doing similar work 10 years later when the Infamous 96 arrived. There were protests against Proposition 209 before and after it passed, he says. But it was when the Infamous 96 got there, human proof of exactly what the ban’s opponents had warned would happen, more of the campus, people connected to it, and Los Angeles civil rights organizations got involved. “It became ‘enough is enough,’” says Kayise, who is now the president and CEO of New World Education, a college-access, student-retention and leadership-development organization. For the Infamous 96, and some alumni, holistic admissions became a major focus of student activism and ultimately, a practice UCLA implemented in 2007 and the entire University of California system would follow in 2020.
In 2006, Peter Taylor, a Black UCLA alumni, became chair of the university’s task force on African American student recruitment, retention, and graduation. It included students, administrators, faculty, staff, and members of the municipal community. “One of the things we looked at was why UCLA’s African American [student] population had been shrinking,” says Taylor, a now retired investment banker who has also served as president of the UCLA board of directors, chair of the UCLA foundation board, and spent five years as the University of California system’s chief financial officer. At the time, the system consisted of 10 campuses and five medical centers with a $24 billion budget. “Prop. 209 was a big part of it, but part of it was that the admissions system needed to be transformed, a chance for students to make a holistic case for themselves. And we also raised a lot of money for African American students.”
Black student enrollment slowly began to grow again. Taylor knows that some people will say, “Oh, well, you were just giving them such great scholarships that of course they decided on UCLA,” or presume that race-based scholarships violate the law. But while the University of California could not operate a race-based scholarship, community foundations could and did. And, in most cases, the community-foundation scholarships amounted to a letter to Black students who had been admitted saying, “Congratulations and here is $1,000 to use toward your college costs.” It wasn’t much compared to the cost of college, but $1,000 can make a difference for very low-in[...]
didn’t look much like the people who live in the state. Black, Latino, Native American, and Pacific Islander students made up about 56% of the state’s high school graduates but just 37% of those enrolled in California’s public colleges and universities, University of California data indicates.
Read More: How the End of Affirmative Action Could Affect the College Admissions Progress
In the years since Proposition 209, at least 10 other states have gone the way of California, banning affirmative action in college admissions with two reversing course after courts struck down those policies. But now that the Supreme Court has ruled that race-conscious affirmative action in college admissions at both private and public universities is unconstitutional, the whole country will join them. And for a large segment of the population, that’s just fine – according to a recent Pew Research Center poll, only 33% approve of selective colleges considering race and ethnicity in admissions decisions.
“It’s interesting, the national discourse around affirmative action at the time,” Matthews says about his experiences at UCLA beginning in 2006, “it felt very clear. If you believed in social justice and understood equity and race — and we weren’t even using terms like equity – you would be OK with affirmative action, almost immediately. But affirmative action has evolved to something completely different. People will say, ‘Yeah, I believe in equity, but is affirmative action the way? Oh, I don’t support that.’”
The lessons of what happened in California are important to understand.
Back in 2006, it didn’t take long for Matthews to realize that what he’d hoped would be a fun school right there in his big-city hometown was also a swirling vortex of controversy.
“There was just a lot of outcry around how there were not even 100 Black students out of an entering class of 4,000. Then you peel that back a little bit further and there were even fewer Black men, young Black men coming into the university.”
What that ultimately set in motion for Matthews is something he’s still unpacking today.
“UCLA is not bashful about its student activism, taking very public stances on certain issues, having students agitate on certain issues,” says Matthews. “Because of that…when I got there, I always say the campus sort of descended upon me.”
It’s hard for him to remember now, but he thinks it was at events set up by the UCLA Afrikan Student Union for the incoming freshmen class in April of his senior year in high school that he learned how Black student enrollment, what people were already calling “the Infamous 96,” compared to previous years. A few months later, Matthews was on campus, a freshman, navigating his first steps into adulthood. On the first day of class, he was approached by a Black upperclassman with one of those “are you with us?” kind of conundrums.
“[He] came up to me and said, ‘Come with me and go to this protest,’” Matthews says.
Matthews felt torn. He knew he needed to go to class but also that the work of trying to raise questions and find solutions to the dearth of diversity on campus was very important.
He went to the protest, then to his later classes. But the people he connected with at that protest, the work he did with them, the work he did helping to recruit Black applicants in Los Angeles, and the work he did as the eventual Afrikan Student Union chairperson in coalition with Asian and Latino student groups familiarized him with a concept that is much talked about in college-admissions circles today.
Read More: Read Justice Sotomayor and Jackson’s Dissents in Affirmative Action Case
The concept is called holistic admissions. It requires or calls on schools to consider more than a student’s grades and ACT and SAT scores. Research has shown that these standardized tests do not accurately predict college performance but closely reflect the education and wealth of a student’s parents and a student’s access to test-prep tools. And an a[...]
TIME
The ‘Infamous 96’ Know Firsthand What Happens When Affirmative Action Is Banned
In 2006, Corey Matthews was the first person in his family to go to college.
The application and selection process was so foreign to him that community programs that illuminated his options and helped him apply to several schools were a godsend. But when he had to decide where to actually enroll, Matthews merged what he had been taught with a criteria straight out of the movies.
“I grew up in L.A. so I associate UCLA with sports, which I didn’t really have an interest in, but I did have an interest in big parties,” says Matthews, now 34 and a vice president of global philanthropy with JP Morgan Chase. Today, he helps to manage a grant portfolio in Los Angeles consistent with the company’s goals, the kind of multifactor strategy work that makes him chuckle about his 17-year-old logic and sigh when he thinks about just how significant that decision and, in many ways, his freshman class became.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]
What Matthew found on campus was something far different than a series of ragers interrupted by classes and coursework. In 2006, 10 years after California voters first banned race consideration in college admissions with Proposition 209, just 96 Black freshmen were admitted to UCLA, one of the state’s two flagship public universities. After a few more students were admitted during the appeals process, Matthews ultimately became one of just 100 Black freshmen out of 4,852 total. But the initial news of 96 Black students – a figure unseen at one of California’s most prestigious public universities since the early 1970s – situated a respected institution in one of America’s most diverse cities and a state often understood as a caricature land controlled by progressive policy and people as the place to watch for those on both sides of the affirmative-action debate. California had become the first state in the nation to ban affirmative action in admissions, to lean into a particular conception of American fairness and absolute meritocracy that those opposed to affirmative action say exists.
https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Matthews-Corey-headshot-ucla.jpg?w=560&w=560 <figcaptionCourtesy of Leroy HamiltonPortrait of Corey Matthews
Of course California has long been more complicated than those who consider the Golden State a byword for progressive excesses and accommodations. Its voters, after all, have sent Ronald Reagan, Dianne Feinstein, Maxine Waters, and Kevin McCarthy to Washington. Nearly 55% approved Proposition 209. And it has long been a kind of laboratory where new and sometimes long-sought-after policies get implemented and their effects often become clear.
When California eliminated affirmative action in college admissions, Black and Latino student enrollment in the University of California system declined, with the sharpest drops happening at the state’s flagship universities. A fraught, sometimes taxing on-campus atmosphere developed for the small number of Black and Latino students who did enroll, but it also breathed new life into a rich tradition of student activism. The change pulled students, alumni, and some faculty into a range of efforts to recruit, admit, and retain a larger number of Black and Latino students, producing notable but modest effects which, after the nadir of Black student enrollment became the subject of national headlines in 2006, slowly pushed back against the creep of Proposition 209-inspired thinking and practices at the states’ public colleges and universities.
But by 2016, two decades after California voters approved Proposition 209 and a decade after the push to counter its effects gained force, something else was also clear. Student enrollment in the University of California system, one of the most well-regarded in the nation (it includes seven schools considered so-called public Ivies) still[...]
Newsweek
Why the Body of Ana Walshe May Never Be Found
A criminal attorney spoke to Newsweek about the possibility of convicting Ana Walshe's husband even if a body isn't found.
SkySports | News
Wasteful England held by Portugal in World Cup warm-up
England hit the woodwork twice and wasted a series of good second-half chances as they drew their final World Cup warm-up on these shores 0-0 with Portugal at Stadium MK on Saturday.
Top Stories - Google News
Sources - Trail Blazers star Damian Lillard requests trade - ESPN - ESPN
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Voice of America
VOA Newscasts
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.
Voice of America
VOA Newscasts
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.
our settlement funds very, very quickly. What's more you get outpriced — decent apartments routinely get offered higher than asking rent, and you are left gasping trying to match the more established competition looking for rentals."
Mutalik told VOA that his family was rejected from all 35 apartments they have applied to so far and was lucky to find temporary housing while continuing the search.
As difficult as it is for immigrants, native-born Canadians are also frustrated by the housing shortage and rising rents, a problem that has been years in the making, according to Kate Choi, a Western University professor who wrote about the rent crisis in the popular progressive publication The Conversation.
"There's quite a bit of work that suggests over the past few decades, the housing shortage has been partly generated by the fact that the supply of housing has not kept pace with the demand in housing and the growth of population, particularly metropolitan areas," Choi told VOA.
She noted the rapid growth in major population centers, "whether from internal migration of Canadians or international migrants."
"That usually has the benefit of filling a lot of the labor shortages that exist in different areas," she said. "But in places that there is a housing shortage, it is possible that you will have more people needing housing. The best way to mitigate is to take active steps to build more housing."
Whitzman outlined several policy changes that she believes could ease the crisis, including changes to tax laws that would incentivize property owners to build more housing rather than simply waiting for properties to appreciate in value.
She also called for various levels of government to make a major investment in social housing — a term that applies to a range of models involving some degree of public financing and management of rental properties.
"By social housing I mean housing outside the private market," Whitzman explained. "Public housing provided by provincial or municipal government, community housing by nonprofit organizations [including supportive housing], and co-operative housing are the three main categories. Of 650,000 social homes in Canada, 600,000 date from before 2000."
Voice of America
China Forex Regulator Pan Gongsheng Named Central Bank Party Boss
China's ruling Communist Party appointed central bank Deputy Governor Pan Gongsheng as the bank's party secretary Saturday, a move The Wall Street Journal said would be a prelude to becoming governor.
The party's Central Organization Department announced the decision at a meeting Saturday afternoon, the People's Bank of China (PBOC) said in a statement on its website.
The Journal reported hours earlier that Pan, chosen for his international background, would be named to the party post before being appointed by the government to head the PBOC.
The PBOC did not immediately respond to a Reuters fax seeking comment Saturday.
The appointment of Pan, who turns 60 this month, comes as expectations rise for the authorities to take steps to boost the world's second-largest economy, where slowdown is deepening and spreading as a burst of activity after strict COVID-19 controls fades.
The central bank said on Friday it would implement prudent monetary policy in a "precise and forceful manner" to support economic growth and employment.
Pan has deep experience with Chinese banks and policy. He has been the deputy governor of the PBOC since 2012, according to SAFE's website.
The current governor, Yi Gang, has been widely expected to retire since being left off the ruling Communist Party's Central Committee during the party's once-in-five-years congress in October.
Voice of America
Most Europeans See Russia as Adversary: New Poll
A big majority of Europeans now see Russia as an adversary following its invasion of Ukraine, according to a survey of 16-thousand people across 11 European Union member states. Europeans tend to have a more favorable opinion of China, as Henry Ridgwell reports from London.
Voice of America
Suspected Gunman in Texas Shooting That Killed 5, Indicted for Murder
A man accused of killing five neighbors in Texas after some of them complained that gunfire was keeping a baby awake was indicted Friday for capital murder of multiple persons, which allows prosecutors to seek the death penalty.
Prosecutors said they do not yet know whether they will seek the death penalty against Francisco Oropeza, 38, who is a Mexican national and had been deported multiple times in the years prior to the April attack outside Houston. He was already charged in May with five counts of murder.
“I think it’s a little too early for us to make that call,” San Jacinto County District Attorney Todd Dillon said.
Oropeza is scheduled to appear in court in August. Anthony Osso, his attorney, said his client will plead not guilty.
“We expected the capital indictment so there’s no surprise," Osso said. "We have been contacted by many people in support of Mr. Oropeza’s character. He was extremely well regarded in this neighborhood and often helped others with all types of tasks around their homes. He was a go-to kind of guy for help.”
Police say Oropeza stormed into his neighbor's house on April 28 after being asked by his neighbors to stop firing his AR-style rifle because a baby was trying to sleep. All five victims were from Honduras, including a 9-year-old boy. One neighbor who lived down the street from said that a few months before the shooting, Oropeza threatened to kill his dog after it got loose and chased the pit bull in his truck.
The shooting happened in the rural town of Cleveland, about 72 kilometers north of Houston. Police say Oropeza fled the neighborhood after the shooting, setting off a widening manhunt that came up empty for days despite more than 250 officers, drones and scent-tracking dogs searching and $80,000 in reward money being offered.
Oropeza was eventually arrested near Conroe, roughly 32 kilometers from the home where the shooting took place.
Oropeza's domestic partner and one of his friends have also been charged with hindering the apprehension or prosecution of a known felon.
pus or anywhere near the row of white fraternity houses, she felt particularly anxious about her safety. It wasn’t that she thought white frat guys were particularly dangerous. It was that she wasn’t sure anyone would care or respond if she became the victim of a crime and she worried about hate crime specifically. In class she was often the only Black person in the room and felt the need to represent Black people well. But unlike her classmates, most of whom had laptops and in some cases, multiple devices, she and her sister were sharing a desktop. She majored in world arts and cultures and found other students in the department, many of them wealthy and most of them white, a bit standoffish.
Aladdin, who since graduation has worked as an actress, model, songwriter, and screenwriter, has an ad-sales job at Disney and a BET Christmas movie on her resume, Merry Switchmas, featuring both her and her twin. But when she was a freshman, she had to deal with all of that on top of all the other changes that come with anyone’s adjustment to college.
“The emotional gymnastics of having to analyze it,” says Aladdin, who went home every weekend until her father died her senior year. “You have this dynamic that felt so uncomfortable, but then you also felt this responsibility to do something about it.”
In the fall of 2021, UCLA championed the demographics of its new student body. It had required a lot of effort and spending on targeted recruitment and other activities that began after the year that brought in the Infamous 96. It still wasn’t much like the state’s population but had restored and surpassed the level of campus diversity in 1995 the year before Proposition 209 passed. In 1995 there were 790 Latino students on campus. In 2021 there were 1,185, according to the school’s data. There were 259 Black students enrolled at UCLA in 1995 and in 2021, 346. (Federal data puts percentages for Black and Latino students that year slightly lower than UCLA’s figures.) But even the University of California system itself argued last year that the loss of affirmative action had had a profound impact, writing in a brief to the Supreme Court that “[f]or nearly a quarter century, UC has made persistent, intensive efforts to improve the diversity of its student body through race-neutral programs, yet full realization of the educational benefits of diversity remains elusive.”
A public university system exists to educate, to prepare, to enable the intellectual and economic growth of a state, its people and the country around them. It exists to foster the development of leaders and innovations and meet social and economic needs. So, Taylor has also grown concerned about other after-effects of Proposition 209 and some phenomena which predate it but have grown more intense. Away from the California flagships, Black and Latino student enrollment has slowly climbed on campuses where these students were once scarce. He worries that public resources aren’t keeping pace. That’s true in other parts of the U.S. as well, where most students, and certainly the vast majority of students of color, attend open or nearly open enrollment schools as opposed to the elite institutions at the center of the affirmative-action debate. There, public funding cuts have shifted more costs onto students, including many low-income students.
UCLA, like every campus, always had people occupying every place on the continuum from anti-racist to open bigot, Kayise says. It always had people who hated affirmative action and took every chance they could get to “accuse” Black students of “taking” someone else’s slot. Both Matthews and Aladdin had a version of that very exchange, a decade after the affirmative-action ban. Kayise recalls a professor who kept a cartoon affixed to his office door that read “Affirmative Action lets them in. I kick them out.” So Kayise has a warning to a country that just followed California and banned race-based affirmative action: Watch the campus climate, the way all students are t[...]
uilding, and the town hall entrance was set alight in rioting this week.
“Young people break everything, but we are already poor, we have nothing,” he said, adding that “young people are afraid to die at the hands of police.”
France’s national soccer team — including international star Kylian Mbappe, an idol to many young people in the disadvantaged neighborhoods where the anger is rooted — pleaded for an end to the violence.
“Many of us are from working-class neighborhoods, we too share this feeling of pain and sadness” over the killing of Nahel, the players said in a statement.
Nahel’s mother, identified as Mounia M., told France 5 television that she was angry at the officer, but not at the police in general. “He saw a little Arab-looking kid, he wanted to take his life,” she said.
“A police officer cannot take his gun and fire at our children, take our children’s lives,” she said. The family has roots in Algeria.
Early Saturday, firefighters in Nanterre extinguished blazes set by protesters that left scorched remains of cars strewn across the streets. In the neighboring suburb Colombes, protesters overturned garbage bins and used them for makeshift barricades.
Looters during the evening broke into a gun shop and made off with weapons in the Mediterranean port city of Marseille, police said.
Buildings and businesses were also vandalized in the eastern city of Lyon, where a third of the roughly 30 arrests made were for theft, police said.
In the face of the escalating crisis that hundreds of arrests and massive police deployments have failed to quell, Macron held off on declaring a state of emergency, an option that was used in similar circumstances in 2005.
Instead, his government ratcheted up its law enforcement response, with the mass deployment of police officers, including some who were called back from vacation.
The rioting puts new pressure on Macron, who blamed social media for fueling violence.
Steinmeier’s office said the German president “has the fullest understanding in view of the situation in our neighboring country.”
Darmanin ordered a nationwide nighttime shutdown Friday of all public buses and trams, which have been among rioters’ targets. He also said he warned social networks not to allow themselves to be used as channels for calls to violence.
“They were very cooperative,” Darmanin said, adding that French authorities were providing the platforms with information in hopes of cooperation identifying people inciting violence.
The violence comes just over a year before Paris and other French cities are due to host Olympic athletes and millions of visitors for the summer Olympic Games, whose organizers were closely monitoring the situation as preparations for the competition continue.
The police officer accused of killing Nahel was given a preliminary charge of voluntary homicide. Preliminary charges mean investigating magistrates strongly suspect wrongdoing, but need to investigate more before sending a case to trial. Nanterre prosecutor Pascal Prache said that his initial investigation led him to conclude that the officer’s use of his weapon wasn’t legally justified.
Race was a taboo topic for decades in France, which is officially committed to a doctrine of colorblind universalism.
Thirteen people who didn’t comply with traffic stops were fatally shot by French police last year. This year, another three people, including Nahel, died under similar circumstances. The deaths have prompted demands for more accountability in France, which also saw racial justice protests after George Floyd’s killing by police in Minnesota.
TIME
France Arrests More than 1,300 People After Fourth Night of Rioting Over Teen’s Killing by Police
PARIS — Rioting and looting raged in cities around France for a fourth night despite a huge police deployment and 1,311 arrests, as family and friends prepared Saturday to bury the 17-year-old whose killing by police unleashed the unrest and forced the French president to cancel an important trip abroad.
France’s Interior Ministry announced the new figure for arrests around the country, where 45,000 police officers fanned out in a so-far unsuccessful bid to quell days of violence that was triggered after the teen’s death on Tuesday.
Despite an appeal to parents by President Emmanuel Macron to keep their children at home, street clashes between young protesters and police raged on. About 2,500 fires were set and stores were ransacked, according to authorities.
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The violence in France was taking a toll on Macron’s international commitments. German President Frank-Walter Steinmeir’s office said that Macron phoned on Saturday to request a postponement of what would have been the first state visit by a French president to Germany in 23 years. The trip, supposed to officially start on Monday, would have seen Macron travel to Berlin and two other German cities.
Macron’s office said he spoke with Steinmeier and, “given the internal security situation, the president (Macron) said he wishes to stay in France over the coming days.”
Given the importance of the French-German relationship on the European political scene, the scrapping of the official trip was a clear sign of the gravity of France’s unrest. This is the second time in months that French unrest hurt Macron diplomatically. King Charles III canceled his first foreign visit as U.K. monarch, initially planned for France, because of protests over Macron’s pension reform plans.
Rituals to bid farewell to the teen, identified only as Nahel, who was killed in the Paris suburb of Nanterre, began on Saturday with a viewing of the open coffin by family and friends.
Later, at the entrance to a cemetery on a quiet hill in Nanterre with central Paris in the distance, dozens of people from all walks of life stood along the road, waiting for the teen’s body to arrive. There was a woman with a baby stroller and men wearing sunglasses and murmuring. Many of the mourners were from the Muslim community.
As the number of arrests continued to mount, the government suggested the violence was beginning to lessen thanks to tougher security measures. Since the unrest began on Tuesday night, police have made a total of 2,400 arrests — more than half of those in the fourth night of violence.
Still, the damage was widespread, from Paris to Marseille and Lyon and even far away, in the French territories overseas, where a 54-year-old died after being hit by a stray bullet in French Guiana.
Hundreds of police and firefighters have been injured, including 79 overnight, but authorities haven’t released injury tallies for protesters.
The reaction to the killing was a potent reminder of the persistent poverty, discrimination, unemployment and other lack of opportunity in neighborhoods around France where many residents trace their roots to former French colonies — like where Nahel grew up.
“Nahel’s story is the lighter that ignited the gas. Hopeless young people were waiting for it. We lack housing and jobs, and when we have (jobs), our wages are too low,” said Samba Seck, a 39-year-old transportation worker in the Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois.
Clichy was the birthplace of weeks of riots in 2005 that shook France, prompted by the deaths of two teenagers electrocuted in a power substation while fleeing from police. One of the boys lived in the same housing project as Seck.
Like many Clichy residents, he lamented the violence targeting his town, where the remains of a burned car stands beneath his apartment b[...]
Airlines say the FAA was slow to approve standards for upgrading the radio altimeters and supply-chain problems have made it difficult for manufacturers to produce enough of the devices. Nicholas Calio, head of the Airlines for America, complained about a rush to modify planes “amid pressure from the telecommunications companies.”
Jason Ambrosi, a Delta pilot and president of the Air Line Pilots Association, accused the FCC of granting 5G licenses without consulting aviation interests, which he said “has left the safest aviation system in the world at increased risk.” But, he said, “Ultimately, we will be able to address the impacts of 5G.”
TIME
5G Wireless Signals Could Disrupt Flights Starting This Weekend
Airline passengers who have endured tens of thousands of weather-related flight delays this week could face a new source of disruptions starting Saturday, when wireless providers are expected to power up new 5G systems near major airports.
Aviation groups have warned for years that 5G signals could interfere with aircraft equipment, especially devices using radio waves to measure distance above the ground and which are critical when planes land in low visibility.
Predictions that interference would cause massive flight groundings failed to come true last year, when telecom companies began rolling out the new service. They then agreed to limit the power of the signals around busy airports, giving airlines an extra year to upgrade their planes.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]
The leader of the nation’s largest pilots’ union said crews will be able to handle the impact of 5G, but he criticized the way the wireless licenses were granted, saying it had added unnecessary risk to aviation.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg recently told airlines that flights could be disrupted because a small portion of the nation’s fleet has not been upgraded to protect against radio interference.
Most of the major U.S. airlines say they are ready. American, Southwest, Alaska, Frontier and United say all of their planes have height-measuring devices, called radio altimeters, that are protected against 5G interference.
The big exception is Delta Air Lines. Delta says it has 190 planes, which include most of its smaller ones, that still lack upgraded altimeters because its supplier has been unable to provide them fast enough.
The airline does not expect to cancel any flights because of the issue, Delta said Friday. The airline plans to route the 190 planes carefully to limit the risk of canceling flights or forcing planes to divert away from airports where visibility is low because of fog or low clouds.
The Delta planes that have not been retrofitted include several models of Airbus jets: all of its A220s, most of its A319s and A320s and some of its A321s. The airline’s Boeing jets have upgraded altimeters, as do all Delta Connection planes, which are operated by Endeavor Air, Republic Airways and SkyWest Airlines, the airline said.
JetBlue did not respond to requests for comment but told The Wall Street Journal it expected to retrofit 17 smaller Airbus jets by October, with possible “limited impact” some days in Boston.
Wireless carriers including Verizon and AT&T use a part of the radio spectrum called C-Band, which is close to frequencies used by radio altimeters, for their new 5G service. The Federal Communications Commission granted them licenses for the C-Band spectrum and dismissed any risk of interference, saying there was ample buffer between C-Band and altimeter frequencies.
When the Federal Aviation Administration sided with airlines and objected, the wireless companies pushed back the rollout of their new service. In a compromise brokered by the Biden administration, the wireless carriers then agreed not to power up 5G signals near about 50 busy airports. That postponement ends Saturday.
AT&T declined to comment. Verizon did not immediately respond to a question about its plans.
Buttigieg reminded the head of trade group Airlines for America about the deadline in a letter last week, warning that only planes with retrofitted altimeters would be allowed to land under low-visibility conditions. He said more than 80% of the U.S. fleet had been retrofitted, but a significant number of planes, including many operated by foreign airlines, have not been upgraded.
“This means on bad-weather, low-visibility days in particular, there could be increased delays and cancellations,” Buttigieg wrote. He said airlines with planes awaiting retrofitting should adjust their schedules to avoid stranding passengers.[...]
Newsweek
Kate Middleton's Wimbledon Fashion Highlights to Date
The Princess of Wales has attended the Wimbledon tennis championships over a number of years since her marriage to Prince William in 2011.
Newsweek
Should Some Dog Breeds Always Be Kept On a Leash?
Newsweek spoke to canine experts who explained the risks of keeping your dogs off their leash and more.
