Nation & World News – At a Glance – for Sunday, June 18, 2023

Consent decrees bring changes, and questions

Oversight of local law enforcement agencies in the form of consent decrees — legally binding, court-enforced agreements — is the federal government’s marquee method for overhauling the nation’s most troubled police departments. Critics and proponents acknowledge that consent decrees can be onerous. Still, by and large, experts say, consent decrees work, at least for as long as the oversight is in effect. They have a track record of reducing officers’ use of force and the number of complaints and lawsuits against them. How enduring their impact will be is harder to judge since many of the consent decrees of the past decade are still in force.

Biden has union leaders’ vote, now to win over membership

The public image of President Biden’s “Union Joe” persona rests largely on his longtime affiliations with labor unions representing police officers, firefighters and building-trade workers. But the modern labor movement that gathered Saturday in Philadelphia to endorse Biden’s 2024 reelection campaign is younger and more diverse, and has far more women than the union stereotype Biden has embraced during the decades he has spent building his political identity. While today’s labor movement is demographically more in line with the Democratic Party, increasing the share of young people and people of color means that union members may be less familiar with — and more skeptical about — Biden’s record.

I-95 in Philadelphia expected to reopen within Two weeks, governor says

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro said Saturday he was “confident” the portion of Interstate 95 in Philadelphia that collapsed last weekend will open within the next two weeks. “We are going to get traffic moving again,” Shapiro said on Twitter, crediting an “all hands on deck approach.” Initially, he had said he expected the repairs to take months. The crash last Sunday of a truck hauling gasoline led to a fire that left a section of the northbound side of the highway in ruins and the southbound section so badly damaged that it was demolished this past week. Local officials are working with the federal government to rebuild the roadway.

Black bear Kills Arizona man in rare attack

An Arizona man having a morning coffee was fatally attacked Friday by a male black bear that caught him unaware and dragged him down an embankment before a neighbor shot and killed it, officials said. A preliminary investigation by the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office determined that Steven Jackson, 66, of Tucson, had been sitting at a table on his property in the Groom Creek area south of Prescott where he was building a home, the office said in a statement. The bear attacked Jackson and dragged him about 75 feet down an embankment, according to officials. Jackson was dead when officials arrived.

Heart safety in testosterone therapy

The largest study ever done to evaluate the safety of hormone replacement for men has reassuring news for a limited group of patients whose bodies don’t produce enough testosterone, finding that the hormone does not increase heart attacks, strokes and cardiac deaths. The new results, which come from a large clinical trial, do not put all concerns to rest. But they appear to resolve decades of contradictory findings about the heart safety of testosterone treatment for men who have a medical condition called androgen deficiency, or hypogonadism. The authors emphasized that the results did not apply to the many men who are middle-aged and older who take testosterone at anti-aging centers.

Commuter blues in Branson, Missouri

By some estimates, close to 20% of the people living in Branson, Missouri — the ultraconservative tourist destination in the Ozarks — are homeless or staying in motels. They are workers and drifters, service industry strivers and worn-down honky-tonkers, some struggling with addiction, some raising children under trying circumstances. Much of the affordable housing that exists is a long way from the jobs on the strip. That leaves many of the workers who power Branson with a tough choice. They can live on the outskirts, with long commutes. Or they can live in town, in the motels. But even for motel dwellers, getting around can be difficult.

Uganda school attack leaves at least 37 dead

At least 37 people were killed — many of them students — and eight others were wounded when militants with an extremist group attacked a secondary school in western Uganda, authorities said Saturday, in one of the deadliest terrorist attacks in the East African nation in years. The group, known as the Allied Democratic Forces, attacked the school Friday night in Mpondwe, a town near the border with Congo, a police spokesperson said on Twitter. During the attack, a dormitory was burned, the spokesperson said. All eight who were wounded were hospitalized in critical condition, he added. Three people were rescued, but six students were abducted, a military spokesperson said

In Tunisia, hard-fought freedom is rapidly slipping away

Tunisia overthrew its longtime dictator in 2011, ushering in a decadelong experiment with democracy that many called the greatest achievement of the Arab Spring. But the years without autocracy have started to seem like a blip. President Kais Saied sidelined the North African country’s democratic institutions two years ago. More than 20 journalists now face prison time, and other Tunisians have been jailed for anti-government Facebook posts. The president’s crackdown on post-revolutionary gains has gone beyond free speech. But the gradual curbing of free speech stands out because, when asked to assess their revolution, Tunisians often say that freedom of expression was the only concrete achievement to come from it.

Russia, learning from costly mistakes, shifts battlefield tactics

Russia won ground early in its war with Ukraine with sheer firepower. In recent months, the Kremlin’s gains, especially in Bakhmut, have come in part because of a series of adaptations. As it begins its long-awaited counteroffensive, Ukraine is well armed, backed by American and European weaponry. But Moscow’s forces have improved their defenses, artillery coordination and air support, setting up a campaign that could look very different from the war’s early days. These improvements, Western officials say, will most likely make Russia a tougher opponent, particularly as it fights defensively, playing to its battlefield strengths. This defensive turn is a far cry from Russia’s initial plan for a full-scale invasion and Ukrainian defeat.

The Taliban runs on WhatsApp. There’s just one problem.

Across Afghanistan, as the Taliban have consolidated control and settled into governance, their administration has become more organized — with WhatsApp central to their official communications. But there’s a problem: WhatsApp routinely blocks accounts to comply with U.S. sanctions. In recent months, complaints from Taliban officials, police and soldiers of their WhatsApp accounts being banned or temporarily deactivated have become widespread, disruptions that have illuminated how the messaging platform has become a backbone of the Taliban’s nascent government. Despite the sanctions, however, many who have had their accounts shut down have found workarounds, buying new SIM cards and opening new accounts, and turned the ban more into a game of Whac-A-Mole.

Massive Canadian blazes test foreign firefighters

A group of 109 French firefighters arrived in northern Quebec about a week ago to assist nearly 1,000 Canadian firefighters and soldiers, the first foreign reinforcements to help the province tackle the extraordinary outbreak of forest fires that sent smoke across North America. Used to aggressively and quickly attacking much smaller wildfires in France, the French firefighters must adapt to a landspace whose scale has left them in awe: Quebec, a province three times the size of France, is ravaged by fires sometimes a hundred times as large as what they are used to confronting. There was a “fatalism” in fighting fires in Canada, said one French commander: Fighting them often meant letting them burn.

Three teams drop out of Tour de Suisse after cyclist’s death

The Tour de Suisse cycling race resumed its multistage competition Saturday, one day after a rider died from injuries he sustained in a crash during a high-speed mountain descent. Gino Mäder was a member of the Bahrain-Victorious team, which announced Saturday that it was withdrawing from the race. Tudor Pro and Intermarché-Circus-Wanty also said they were leaving. Race officials said late Friday that they had made the decision to continue the race in consultation with the family of Mäder, one of Switzerland’s best young riders. The Tour de Suisse is an important tuneup for next month’s Tour de France. Police are investigating the crash that killed Mäder. A four-stage women’s event began Saturday as planned.

By wire sources