<![CDATA[WDIV ClickOnDetroit]]>https://www.clickondetroit.comMon, 11 Nov 2024 09:35:14 +0000en1hourly1<![CDATA[Clouds, breezy winds and colder temperatures move into Metro Detroit for Veterans Day]]>https://www.clickondetroit.com/weather/2024/11/11/clouds-breezy-winds-and-colder-temperatures-move-into-metro-detroit-for-veterans-day/https://www.clickondetroit.com/weather/2024/11/11/clouds-breezy-winds-and-colder-temperatures-move-into-metro-detroit-for-veterans-day/Mon, 11 Nov 2024 09:26:35 +0000MONDAY (VETERANS DAY): Partly cloudy skies, cooler temperatures. Breezy winds anticipated. High: 58. Winds: Southwest 10-20 MPH with gusts as 30 MPH.

MONDAY NIGHT: Mostly cloudy skies early, decreasing clouds after midnight. Colder temperatures and continued breezy. Low: 37. Winds: Northwest 10-20 MPH with gusts as high as 30 MPH.

TUESDAY: Mostly sunny skies. High: 50. Winds: East-Northeast 5-10 MPH.

TUESDAY NIGHT: Mainly clear skies. Low: 35. Winds: East 5-10 MPH.

After some of us saw some gusty showers with a few Severe Thunderstorm Warnings late on Sunday Night, we will dry things out for the start of the week and bring colder temperatures into the forecast as well.

Drier weather moves in for the start of next week on Monday, expect the clouds to stick around the entire day with cooler temperatures moving in as well. High temperature is heading into the upper 50s by Monday afternoon. The breezy winds will continue through the day on Monday, expect winds gusting as high as 30-35 MPH.

The clouds will continue to be in the forecast before we start to break up this cloud cover overnight tonight after midnight. Overnight lows colder tonight, we’ll drop into the upper 30s in the city, closer to the freezing mark outside the metro heading into Tuesday morning.

The dry weather sticks around, looking ahead into Tuesday thanks to high-pressure building into the region. Expect plenty of sunshine, but cooler temperatures were also stuck around throughout the day. High temperature is heading into low 50s by Tuesday afternoon.

Another round of rain moves into the region late Wednesday and into Thursday with another frontal boundary, swinging through the region. High temperatures remaining into the 50s Wednesday and Thursday, before drier works into the region by the end of the week on Friday with plenty of sunshine. High temperatures expected into the low 50s by Friday afternoon. More sunshine also sticks around into the first half of next weekend. High temperatures remaining into the 50s for the start of next weekend on Saturday.

Another chance of rain moves into the region with another frontal boundary by the time we get to the end of the weekend on Sunday. Expect clouds and a chance of rain showers for Sunday. High temperatures remaining in the upper 50s.

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<![CDATA[Help us name the new type of fish at the Auburn Hills aquarium]]>https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/local/2024/11/11/help-us-name-the-new-type-of-fish-at-an-oakland-county-aquarium/https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/local/2024/11/11/help-us-name-the-new-type-of-fish-at-an-oakland-county-aquarium/Mon, 11 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000We’ve got an exciting opportunity for Local 4 viewers: SEA LIFE aquarium in Auburn Hills just acquired a new type of fish, and you get to name it!

The guitarfish is 5 feet long and will eventually get to 8 feet when fully grown in 4-5 more years. The aquarium acquired her from its Minnesota branch. Now she just needs a name.

Visitors who see the guitarfish, or shovelnose ray, don’t know what it is. I think it looks like a mix between a shark and a stingray.

“Everyone‘s been really excited,” lead aquarist Amanda Arndt said. “A lot of people ask questions and don‘t know 100% know what she is because, as you said, it’s a very unique shape for an animal.”

Since the fish has a unique, flattened front side, and a shark-like backside, many people think it looks like a guitar or a shovel.

The one at SEA LIFE aquarium was born about four years ago in Minnesota. She was transferred to Detroit to live in a larger tank.

“They start out maybe about a foot long, so she‘s grown a decent amount, but it‘ll still probably take her 4-5 more years before she’s close to full size,” Arndt said.

Workers at SEA LIFE are keeping her on a strict diet to make sure she can live close to her longest-possible life span, which is around 30 years. Shrimp is among her favorite foods.

As they get to know her, workers are trying to come up with a name that best suits her. So far they’ve thought of three possible options: Dolly Parton, Dilly Smalls, and Greta.

“We try to be a little bit creative,” Arndt said. “Dolly Parton, obviously, musician, guitar fish, that’s kind of where the connection came from. Diggy is like a shovel. They can often call it shovel nose guitar fish. That’s kind of where that one came from. And then Greta is another musician. So they’re all kind of somewhat related.”

SEA LIFE is hoping to get two more recommendations from viewers before a final vote. Please submit your name recommendations in the form below!

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<![CDATA[Stock market today: Global stocks mixed after Wall Street closes its best week in a year]]>https://www.clickondetroit.com/business/2024/11/11/stock-market-today-asian-stocks-decline-as-china-stimulus-plan-disappoints-markets/https://www.clickondetroit.com/business/2024/11/11/stock-market-today-asian-stocks-decline-as-china-stimulus-plan-disappoints-markets/Mon, 11 Nov 2024 03:46:47 +0000European markets opened higher while Asian stocks fell on Monday following a record-setting day for U.S. stocks, as China’s stimulus package disappointed investor expectations.

Germany’s DAX gained 1.2% to 19,440.95. In Paris, the CAC 40 added 1.1% to 7,418.83. Britain’s FTSE 100 also rose 0.7%, to 8,129.57.

The futures for the S&P 500 were 0.3% higher and those for the Dow Jones Industrial Average were up 0.2%.

In Asia, China approved a 6 trillion yuan ($839 billion) plan during a meeting of its national legislature Friday. The long-anticipated stimulus is designed to help local governments refinance their mountains of debt in the latest push to rev up growth in the world’s second-largest economy.

“It’s not exactly the growth rocket many had hoped for. While it’s a substantial number, the stimulus is less about jump-starting economic growth and more about plugging holes in a struggling local government system,” Stephen Innes of SPI Asset Management said in a commentary.

Meanwhile, China’s inflation rate in October rose 0.3% year-on-year, according to the National Bureau of Statistics on Saturday, marking a slowdown from September’s 0.4% increase and dropping to its lowest level in four months.

The Hang Seng fell 1.5% to 20,426.93, and the Shanghai Composite picked up from the losses in morning trading and ended 0.5% higher to 3,470.07.

Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 hovered between gains and losses and closed less than 0.1% higher at 39,533.32. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 dipped 0.4% to 8,266.20. South Korea’s Kospi fell 1.2% to 2,531.66.

On Friday, the S&P 500 rose 0.4% to 5,995.54, its biggest weekly gain since early November 2023 and briefly crossed above the 6,000 level for the first time. The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 0.6% to 43,988.99, while the Nasdaq composite added 0.1% to 19,286.78.

In the bond market, longer-term Treasury yields eased.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury slipped to 4.30% Friday from 4.33% late Thursday. But it’s still well above where it was in mid-September, when it was close to 3.60%.

Treasury yields climbed in large part because the U.S. economy has remained much more resilient than feared. The hope is that it can continue to stay solid as the Federal Reserve continues to cut interest rates in order to keep the job market humming, now that it’s helped get inflation nearly down to its 2% target.

Some of the rise in yields has also been because of President-elect Donald Trump. He talks up tariffs and other policies that economists say could drive inflation and the U.S. government’s debt higher, along with the economy’s growth.

Traders have already begun paring forecasts for how many cuts to rates the Fed will deliver next year because of that. While lower rates can boost the economy, they can also give inflation more fuel.

In other dealings Monday, U.S. benchmark crude oil lost 8 cents to $70.30 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Brent crude, the international standard, gave up 20 cents, to $74.07 per barrel.

The dollar rose to 153.79 Japanese yen from 152.62 yen. The euro edged down to $1.0684 from $1.0723.

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<![CDATA[Japan's parliament reelects struggling leader Ishiba as prime minister]]>https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/world/2024/11/11/japans-parliament-reelects-struggling-leader-ishiba-as-prime-minister/https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/world/2024/11/11/japans-parliament-reelects-struggling-leader-ishiba-as-prime-minister/Mon, 11 Nov 2024 03:35:31 +0000Japan's parliament reelected Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba on Monday after his governing coalition suffered the worst election loss in more than a decade.

Ishiba’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party and its junior partner Komeito together lost their majority in the 465-seat Lower House, the more powerful of Japan’s two-house parliament, in the Oct. 27 election due to continued voter outrage over financial misconduct by his party and its lukewarm response.

A special parliamentary session convened Monday to pick a new leader in a vote required within 30 days of a general election. In the past, these votes did not attract as much attention because an LDP leader was virtually assured to be prime minister. Ishiba beat top opposition leader Yoshihiko Noda 221-160 in the first runoff in 30 years.

Most of his previous Cabinet members will be reappointed, but Ishiba will have to replace three who lost their seats or were affected by the election results.

Since the election loss, Ishiba has refused to step down, saying is willing to cooperate with additional coalition partners to boost stability and help him pursue his party’s policies. Noda, head of the centrist opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, has sought to form an opposition coalition — but so far unsuccessfully.

Ishiba will struggle in the coming months as he must gain consent from the opposition on policies including the budget and other legislation.

He is eyeing a rising smaller, conservative opposition, the Democratic Party for the People, whose seats quadrupled to 28 under its popular leader Yuichiro Tamaki.

A Harvard-educated former Finance Ministry bureaucrat, Tamaki has proposed raising the basic tax-free income allowance and increasing take-home wages, ideas that attracted low-income earners and younger voters in the election. He only wants to cooperate with Ishiba’s party on policy — not as part of a coalition — since he wants to use his leverage to increase his party’s standing ahead of the next election.

Tamaki was recently stung by a magazine article exposing an extramarital affair, which he admitted to on Monday, adding to political uncertainty.

Ishiba’s government is preparing for his trip later this month to Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation and Group of 20 summits, as well as a possible meeting with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump on his way home.

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This story corrects the name of a summit meeting from ASEAN to Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation.

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<![CDATA[Remembering Armistice Day: Starmer joins Macron to celebrate Franco-British friendship in Paris]]>https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/world/2024/11/11/remembering-armistice-day-starmer-joins-macron-to-celebrate-franco-british-friendship-in-paris/https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/world/2024/11/11/remembering-armistice-day-starmer-joins-macron-to-celebrate-franco-british-friendship-in-paris/Mon, 11 Nov 2024 08:16:30 +0000British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is joining French President Emmanuel Macron at a Paris ceremony marking the 106th anniversary of the Armistice on Monday. It's a celebration of their countries' friendship, as nations across the world pay tribute to their fallen soldiers in World War I.

This is the first time a British leader has done so since Winston Churchill was hosted by Gen. Charles de Gaulle in 1944, Starmer's office said.

The Paris ceremony echoes Franco-British commemorations 80 years ago, when Allied troops liberated most of France's territory from Nazi occupation, Macron's office said.

This year also marks the 120th anniversary of the Entente Cordiale, the historic agreement between France and the United Kingdom.

On Monday morning, Starmer and Macron will first meet at the Elysee presidential palace, before heading toward the Champs-Elysees avenue to lay wreaths at the nearby statues of Georges Clemenceau, French prime minister at the time of the Armistice, and Churchill.

They will then lead the traditional ceremony at the Arc de Triomphe monument where they will relight the flame of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. The French Army Choir is to sing France’s national anthem, “La Marseillaise,” and the British anthem, “God Save the King.”

“I am honored to be in Paris to stand united with President Macron in tribute to the fallen of the First World War who made the ultimate sacrifice for the freedom we enjoy today,” Starmer said.

The prime minister also announced that the British government has earmarked more than 10 million pounds for next year’s 80th anniversary of the Allied victory in Europe and the subsequent defeat of Japan ending World War II.

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<![CDATA[Middle East latest: Israeli strike kills 3 people in central Gaza, Palestinian officials say]]>https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/world/2024/11/11/middle-east-latest-israeli-strike-kills-3-people-in-central-gaza-palestinian-officials-say/https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/world/2024/11/11/middle-east-latest-israeli-strike-kills-3-people-in-central-gaza-palestinian-officials-say/Mon, 11 Nov 2024 07:11:22 +0000Palestinian medical officials say an Israeli strike hit a tent sheltering a displaced family in the central Gaza Strip, killing at least three people, including the parents of twins.

The strike late Sunday in the urban Nuseirat refugee camp wounded the two children, aged 10, who were being treated for serious injuries at the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the nearby city of Deir al-Balah.

The details of the casualties were listed in hospital records and an Associated Press reporter saw two of the bodies.

The Israeli military says it only targets militants and accuses them of hiding among civilians.

Palestinians reported heavy bombing late Sunday in the western areas of Nuseirat camp, which dates back to the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation.

At least 24 people were wounded and taken to the Awda hospital in Nuseirat, said Mohamed Muhareb, head of the hospital’s ambulance service.

The Israel-Hamas war began after militants stormed into Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people — mostly civilians — and abducting 250 others. Israel’s military response in Gaza has killed more than 43,000 people, Palestinian health officials say. They do not distinguish between civilians and combatants, but say more than half of those killed were women and children.

Hezbollah began firing into Israel on Oct. 8, 2023, in solidarity with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Since the conflict erupted, more than 3,100 people have been killed and nearly 13,900 wounded in Lebanon, the health ministry reported.

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Here's the latest:

Yemen's Houti rebels say they launched a missile targeting Israel

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Yemen’s Houthi rebels on Monday claimed they launched a missile targeting Israel.

Houthi military spokesman Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree made the claim in a prerecorded video message, claiming that the rebels launched a Palestine-2 ballistic missile he described as a “hypersonic” toward a military base.

The Israeli military said it “intercepted one projectile that approached Israel from the direction of Yemen.” The Israelis also said the fire did not enter Israeli territory.

The Houthis have launched missiles and targeted ships through the Red Sea corridor over the ongoing Mideast wars. The rebels separately said sites in the country came under attack in likely U.S. airstrikes early Monday morning, something not immediately acknowledged by the Americans.

Senior UAE diplomat calls for de-escalation in Mideast wars

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — A senior diplomat for the United Arab Emirates called on the world to focus on the plight of civilians and de-escalate the ongoing Mideast wars.

Anwar Gargash’s remarks Monday, made at the Abu Dhabi Strategic Debate, followed the pattern of comments made by the UAE amid the Mideast wars. The UAE, a federation of seven sheikhdoms home to Dubai, diplomatically recognized Israel in 2020.

“The complexities of the region require a steady hand and a clear and consistent vision,” Gargash said. “The recent cycle of escalation between Israel and Iran cannot become a permanent feature of the strategic landscape of our region. This must be addressed through a political framework.”

He called for “pragmatism” and a “serious political horizon” to resolve the wider Israeli-Palestinian conflict and reach a two-state solution. He described the war in the Gaza Strip as being “driven by extremists on both sides, from the Israeli and Arab side.” Yet he also called the “systemic violence” faced by Palestinians in Gaza “criminal and unacceptable.”

He added: “At the present time, it is vital to identify that not all crises stem from the Palestinian issue, yet it undeniably remains central to the conflict in our region.”

The UAE has provided aid for both the Gaza Strip and Lebanon in the wars, while maintaining its diplomatic ties with Israel. The UAE has, however, strenuously criticized Israel’s conduct at times in public in the wars.

Gargash also offered criticism of governance in both the Palestinian territories and Lebanon.

“In both Palestine and Lebanon, a drastic reform is essential for the world to step in and provide considerable support,” Gargash said.

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For more Middle East news: https://apnews.com/hub/middle-east

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<![CDATA[UN climate talks to focus on money to help poor nations cut carbon pollution]]>https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/2024/11/11/un-climate-talks-to-focus-on-money-to-help-poor-nations-cut-carbon-pollution/https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/2024/11/11/un-climate-talks-to-focus-on-money-to-help-poor-nations-cut-carbon-pollution/Mon, 11 Nov 2024 05:03:04 +0000A complex international two-week-long game of climate change poker is convening. The stakes? Just the fate of an ever-warming world.

Curbing and coping with climate change's worsening heat, floods, droughts and storms will cost trillions of dollars and poor nations just don't have it, numerous reports and experts calculate. As United Nations climate negotiations started Monday in Baku, Azerbaijan, the chief issue is who must ante up to help poor nations and especially how much.

The numbers are enormous. The floor in negotiations is the $100 billion a year that poor nations — based on a categorization made in the 1990s — now get as part of a 2009 agreement that was barely met. Several experts and poorer nations say the need is $1 trillion a year or more.

“It's a game with high stakes,” said Climate Analytics CEO Bill Hare, a physicist. “Right now the fate of the planet depends very much on what we're able to pull off in the next five or 10 years.”

But this year's talks, known as COP29, won't be as high-profile as last year's, with 48 fewer heads of state scheduled to speak. The leaders of the top two carbon polluting countries — China and the United States — will be absent. But if money negotiations fail in Baku, it will handicap 2025’s make-or-break climate negotiations, experts say.

Not only is dealing with money always a touchy subject, but two of the rich countries that are expected to donate money to poor nations — the United States and Germany — are in the midst of dramatic government changes. Even though the United States delegation will be from Biden Administration, the reelection of Donald Trump, who downplays climate change and dislikes foreign aid, makes U.S. pledges unlikely to be fulfilled.

The overarching issue is climate finance. Without it, experts say the world can't get a handle on fighting warming, nor can most of the nations achieve their current carbon pollution-cutting goals or the new ones they will submit next year.

“If we don't solve the finance problem, then definitely we will not solve the climate problem,” said former Colombian deputy climate minister Pablo Vieira, who heads the support unit at NDC Partnership, which helps nations with emissions-cutting goals.

Nations can't cut carbon pollution if they can't afford to eliminate coal, oil and gas, Vieira and several other experts said. Poor nations are frustrated that they are being told to do more to fight climate change when they cannot afford it, he said. And the 47 poorest nations only created 4% of the heat-trapping gases in the air, according to the U.N.

About 77% of the heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere now comes from the G20 rich nations, many of whom are now cutting back on their pollution, something that is not happening in most poor nations or China.

“The countries that are rich today have become rich by polluting the Earth,” said Ani Dasgupta, president of World Resources Institute.

The money being discussed is for three things: Helping poor nations switch from dirty fossil fuels to clean energy; helping them adapt to the impacts of a warming world such as sea level rise and worsening storms; and compensating vulnerable poor nations for climate change damage.

“Should the global community fail to reach a (finance) goal, this is really just signing the death warrant of many developing countries," said Chukwumerije Okereke, director of the Center for Climate Change and Development in Nigeria.

Michael Wilkins, a business professor who heads Imperial College's Centre for Climate Finance and Investment in the U.K., said since 2022 total climate finance has been nearly $1.5 trillion. But only 3% of that is actually geared toward the least developed countries, he said.

“The Global South has been repeatedly let down by unmet pledges and commitments,” said Sunita Narain, director general of New Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment.

“Finance is really the key component that compels all types of climate action,” said Bahamian climate scientist Adelle Thomas, adaptation director at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “Without that finance, there's simply not much that developing countries in particular can do.”

It's an issue of both self-interest and justice, Thomas and others said. It's not charity to help poor nations decarbonize because rich nations benefit when all countries cut emissions. After all, a warming world hurts everyone.

Compensating for climate damage and helping nations prepare for future harm is a matter of justice, Thomas said. Even though they didn't create the problem, poor nations — especially small island nations — are particularly vulnerable to climate change's rising seas and extreme weather. Thomas mentioned how 2019's Hurricane Dorian smacked her grandparents home and “the only thing left standing was one toilet.”

The trillion-dollar figure on the table is about half of what the world spends annually on the military. Others say global fossil fuel subsidies could be redirected to climate finance; estimates of those subsidies range from the International Energy Agency’s $616 billion a year to the International Monetary Fund’s $7 trillion a year.

“When we need more for other things, including conflict, we seem to find it,” United Nations Environment Programme Executive Director Inger Andersen said. “Well, this is probably the largest conflict of all.”

A U.N. climate finance committee report looked at the need from 98 countries and estimated it as ranging from $455 billion to $584 billion per year.

The money isn't just direct government aid from one nation to another. Some of it comes from multinational development finance banks, like the World Bank. There's also private investment that will be considered a large chunk. Developing nations are seeking relief from their $29 trillion global debt.

Andersen said at least a sixfold increase in investment would be required to get on the path to limit future warming to just another two-tenths of a degree Celsius (0.4 degrees Fahrenheit) from now, which is the overarching goal the world adopted in 2015.

Andersen's agency calculated that with nations' current emissions-curbing targets, the difference between well-financed and current efforts translates to half a degree Celsius (0.9 degrees Fahrenheit) less future warming. Experts say stepped-up efforts that could reduce future warming even more also costs more.

Who will pay is another sticking point. Climate talks for decades have used 1992 standards to categorize two groups of nations, essentially rich and poor, deciding that rich nations like the U.S. are the ones to financially help poor ones. Financial circumstances have changed. China, the world’s top carbon polluter, has increased its per capita GDP by more than 30 times since then. But neither China nor some rich oil nations are obligated to help in climate finance.

Developed nations want those countries that couldn't afford to give before, but now can, included in the next round of donors. But those nations don't want those obligations, said E3G analyst Alden Meyer, a climate negotiations veteran.

“It’s a very fraught landscape to think about huge scale-up of existing climate finance,” Meyer said.

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Associated Press reporter Sibi Arasu contributed to this report from Bengaluru, India.

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Read more of AP’s climate coverage at http://www.apnews.com/climate-and-environment

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Follow Seth Borenstein on X at @borenbears

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The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

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<![CDATA[Round 2 in the Trump-vs-Mexico matchup looks ominous for Mexico]]>https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/world/2024/11/11/round-2-in-the-trump-vs-mexico-matchup-looks-ominous-for-mexico/https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/world/2024/11/11/round-2-in-the-trump-vs-mexico-matchup-looks-ominous-for-mexico/Mon, 11 Nov 2024 06:05:33 +0000Mexico is facing a second Donald Trump presidency, and few countries can match its experience as a target of Trump's rhetoric: There have been threats to close the border, impose tariffs and even send U.S. forces to fight Mexican drug cartels if the country doesn’t do more to stem the flow of migrants and drugs.

That’s not to mention what mass deportations of migrants who are in the U.S. illegally could do to remittances — the money sent home by migrants — that have become one of Mexico’s main sources of income.

But as much as this second round looks like the first round — when Mexico pacified Trump by quietly ceding to his immigration demands — circumstances have changed, and not necessarily for the better. Today, Mexico has in Claudia Sheinbaum a somewhat stern leftist ideologue as president, and Trump is not known for handling such relations well.

Back in 2019, Mexico’s then-President Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador was a charismatic, plain-spoken, folksy leader who seemed to understand Trump, because both had a transactional view of politics: You give me what I want, I’ll give you what you want. The two went on to form a chummy relationship.

But while López Obrador was forged in the give-and-take politics of the often-corrupt former ruling party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, Sheinbaum grew up in a family of leftist activists and got her political experience in radical university student movements.

“Claudia is more ideological than López Obrador, and so the problem is that I see her potentially responding to Trumpian policies, whether it’s, you know, organized crime or immigration or tariffs with a much more nationalistic, jingoistic view of the relationship,” said Arturo Sarukhan, Mexico’s former ambassador to the U.S. from 2007 to 2013.

Sheinbaum made a point of being one of the first world leaders to call Trump on Thursday to congratulate him after the election, but during the call Trump did two things that may say a lot about how things will go.

First, Sheinbaum said, Trump quickly brought up the border to remind her there were issues there. Then he asked Sheinbaum to send his greetings to López Obrador, with whom Trump said he had “a very good relationship.” That might suggest that Trump believes that López Obrador — the new president's political mentor — is still in charge, a view shared by some analysts.

Sarukhan said he believes the fact that Sheinbaum is a woman and is from Mexico will be "a very important challenge, an issue out there as both of them get going in their relationship.”

Not everything has changed for the worse: C ross-border trade has topped $800 billion per year and U.S. companies are more dependent than ever on Mexican plants.

But the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement, or USMCA, is coming up for review, and Mexico has made legal changes that Trump could seize on to demand a re-negotiation of parts of the deal.

Sheinbaum has suggested Mexico won't give in even if backed into a corner, saying “we obviously are going to address any problems that come up with dialogue, as a collaborative process, and if not, we are going to stand up, we are prepared to do that with great unity.”

Standing up hasn’t worked particularly well before. In 2018, Marcelo Ebrard was Mexico’s top diplomat; former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Ebrard basically bent to U.S. demands to keep asylum seekers in Mexico and accept migrants back even if they weren’t Mexicans.

Ebrard just asked that the deal not be made public to avoid embarrassing López Obrador, Pompeo wrote. (Ebrard later claimed he had avoided signing a much worse ‘safe third country’ agreement.)

Today, Ebrard is Mexico’s economy secretary, and would lead Mexico’s delegation in the scheduled 2026 review of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada free trade agreement, something that Trump has greeted with mirth ("I've never seen anybody fold like that," Trump once said of Ebrard.)

Ebrard on Thursday downplayed any risks this time around, saying e conomic ties between the two countries would keep Trump from closing borders or imposing tariffs.

“I am optimistic. Unlike other countries, we are the largest trading partner (of the U.S.), so, if you put up a tariff, that will have repercussions in the United States,” Ebrard said. “I’m not saying it is going to be easy, because it is not at all easy, but the relationship with President Trump will be good because, what unites us? These numbers, this gigantic economy.”

But some former diplomats say any argument that Mexico can avoid friction with the Trump administration is overconfident, and that 2025 is not necessarily going to be like 2019.

Martha Bárcena, Mexico’s ambassador to the U.S. from 2018 to 2021, said she doesn't think Trump would back away from campaign promises to deport migrants who are in the country illegally. She said Mexican officials who believe Trump might temper his “campaign promises because Mexican migrants are necessary for the U.S. economy” are being overly optimistic.

“Mexico is looking at it through the lens of economic logic. The logic that the Trump campaign applies on immigration is a logic of national security and cultural identity issues," Bárcena said.

Some of Trump's biggest policy concerns – restoring U.S. jobs and the increasing rivalry with China — also run through Mexico.

U.S. and foreign automakers have set up dozens of plants in Mexico, and some in the U.S. worry that Chinese companies could do the same to take advantage of existing trade rules to export Chinese cars or auto parts to the United States.

It doesn’t help that Sheinbaum has pushed through López Obrador’s policies aimed at eliminating independent regulatory and oversight bodies, and laws the U.S. government says could reduce the independence of the judiciary, both of which are required under the USMCA trade agreement.

“If they go ahead with the elimination of independent regulators and autonomous bodies, that’s going to be a further violation of the USMCA,” Sarukhan said. “And then that’s going to make things even worse. Obviously, the big piece is going to be China and the Chinese footprint in Mexico.”

That could lead Trump to demand the re-negotiation of all auto industry agreements under the trade pact.

As far as efforts to jointly combat the illegal drug trade — such cooperation fell to historic lows in 2019 and 2020 — there have been some modestly encouraging signs. Last week, Mexico announced the seizure in Tijuana of over 300,000 fentanyl pills after months when t he country’s entire seizures had amounted to as little as 50 grams — a couple of ounces — per week.

Sheinbaum, who took office on Oct. 1, also appears to be tacitly abandoning López Obrador’s strategy of not confronting drug cartels. But neither she nor her predecessor and political mentor could ever accept any Trump plan to send U.S. forces to operate independently on Mexican soil.

It remains to see how far Trump might go; he often makes only token gestures to carry through on threats. But Sarukhan noted, “I do think that he will talk loudly and carry a big stick.”

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<![CDATA[Trump announces Tom Homan, former director of immigration enforcement, will serve as 'border czar']]>https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/politics/2024/11/11/trump-announces-tom-homan-former-director-of-immigration-enforcement-will-serve-as-border-czar/https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/politics/2024/11/11/trump-announces-tom-homan-former-director-of-immigration-enforcement-will-serve-as-border-czar/Mon, 11 Nov 2024 04:44:20 +0000President-elect Donald Trump says that Tom Homan, his former acting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement director, will serve as “border czar” in his incoming administration.

“I am pleased to announce that the Former ICE Director, and stalwart on Border Control, Tom Homan, will be joining the Trump Administration, in charge of our Nation’s Borders," he wrote late Sunday on his Truth Social site.

Homan was widely expected to be offered a position related to the border and Trump’s pledge to launch the largest deportation operation in the country's history.

In addition to overseeing the southern and northern borders and “maritime, and aviation security,” Trump said Homan “will be in charge of all Deportation of Illegal Aliens back to their Country of Origin,” a central part of his agenda.

He says he had “no doubt” Homan “will do a fantastic, and long awaited for, job.”

Such a role does not require Senate confirmation.

In an interview on Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures,” Homan said the military would not be rounding up and arresting immigrants in the country illegally and that ICE would move to implement Trump's plans in a “humane manner.”

“It’s going to be a well-targeted, planned operation conducted by the men of ICE. The men and women of ICE do this daily. They’re good at it,” he said. “When we go out there, we’re going to know who we’re looking for. We most likely know where they’re going to be, and it’s going to be done in a humane manner."

Earlier this year at the National Conservatism Conference in Washington, Homan expressed frustration at the news coverage of a mass deportation operation.

“Wait until 2025,” he said, adding that, while he thinks the government needed to prioritize national security threats, “no one’s off the table. If you’re here illegally, you better be looking over your shoulder.”

He also said: “you’ve got my word. Trump comes back in January, I’ll be in his heels coming back, and I will run the biggest deportation operation this country’s ever seen.”

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Associated Press writer Adriana Gomez Licon in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, contributed to this report.

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<![CDATA[Traumatized by war, hundreds of Lebanon's children struggle with wounds both physical and emotional]]>https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/world/2024/11/11/traumatized-by-war-hundreds-of-lebanons-children-struggle-with-wounds-both-physical-and-emotional/https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/world/2024/11/11/traumatized-by-war-hundreds-of-lebanons-children-struggle-with-wounds-both-physical-and-emotional/Mon, 11 Nov 2024 05:08:06 +0000Curled up in his father ’s lap, clinging to his chest, Hussein Mikdad cried his heart out. The 4-year-old kicked his doctor with his intact foot and pushed him away with the arm that was not in a cast. “My Dad! My Dad!" Hussein said. "Make him leave me alone!” With eyes tearing up in relief and pain, the father reassured his son and pulled him closer.

Hussein and his father, Hassan, are the only survivors of their family after an Israeli airstrike last month on their Beirut neighborhood. The strike killed 18 people, including his mother, three siblings and six relatives.

“Can he now shower?” the father asked the doctor.

Ten days after surgery, doctors examining Hussein's wounds said the boy is healing properly. He has rods in his fractured right thigh and stitches that assembled his torn tendons back in place on the right arm. The pain has subsided, and Hussein should be able to walk again in two months — albeit with a lingering limp.

A prognosis for Hussein's invisible wounds is much harder to give. He is back in diapers and has begun wetting his bed. He hardly speaks and has not said a word about his mother, two sisters and brother.

“The trauma is not just on the muscular skeletal aspect. But he is also mentally hurt,” Imad Nahle, one of Hussein’s orthopedic surgeons, said.

Israel said, without elaborating, that the strike on the Mikdad neighborhood struck a Hezbollah target. In the war that has escalated since September, Israeli airstrikes have increasingly hit residential areas around Lebanon. Israel accuses the Lebanese militant group of hiding its capabilities and fighters among civilians. It vows to cripple Hezbollah, which began firing into northern Israel after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack triggered the war in Gaza.

But children have been caught in the midst.

With more strikes on homes and in residential areas, doctors are seeing more children affected by the violence. More than 100 children have been killed in Lebanon in the past six weeks and hundreds injured. And of the 14,000 wounded since last year, around 10% are children. Many have been left with severed limbs, burned bodies, and broken families — scars that could last for a lifetime.

Ghassan Abu Sittah, a renowned British-Palestinian surgeon who is also treating Hussein, sees that long road ahead. This is his worry: “It leaves us with a generation of physically wounded children, children who are psychologically and emotionally wounded."

‘What do they want from us?’

At the American University of Beirut Medical Center, which is receiving limited cases of war casualties, Nahle said he operated on five children in the past five weeks — up from no cases before. Most were referred from south and eastern Lebanon.

A few miles away, at the Lebanese Hospital Geitaoui, one of the country’s largest burns centers increased its capacity by nearly 180% since September so it could accommodate more war wounded, its medical director Naji Abirached said. About a fifth of the newly admitted patients are children.

In one of the burn center’s ICU units lies Ivana Skakye. She turned 2 in the hospital ward last week. Ivana has been healing from burns she sustained following an Israeli airstrike outside their home in southern Lebanon on Sept. 23. Israel launched hundreds of airstrikes that day in different parts of Lebanon, making it the deadliest day of the war so far. More than 500 people were killed.

Six weeks later, the tiny Ivana remains wrapped in white gauze from head to toe except her torso. She sustained third-degree burns over 40 percent of her body. Her hair and head, her left side all the way to her legs, both her arms and her chest were burned. Her family home was damaged, its ceiling set afire. The family’s valuables, packed in their car as they prepared to leave, were also torched. Ivana’s older sister, Rahaf, 7, has recovered faster from burns to her face and hands.

Fatima Zayoun, their mother, was in the kitchen when the explosion hit. Zayoun jumped up to grab the girls, who were playing on the terrace.

It was, Zayoun said, "as if something lifted me up so that I can grab my kids. I have no idea how I managed to pull them in and throw them out of the window. She spoke from the ICU burns unit. “They were not on fire, but they were burned. Black ash covered them. ... (Ivana) was without any hair. I told myself, `That is not her.'”

Now, Ivana's wound dressings are changed every two days. Her doctor, Ziad Sleiman, said she could be discharged in a few days. She’s back again to saying “Mama” and “Bye — shorthand for wanting to go out.

Like Hussein, though, Ivana has no home to return to. Her parents fear collective shelters could cause an infection to return.

After seeing her kids “sizzling on the floor,” Zayoun, 35, said that even if their home is repaired, she wouldn’t want to return. “I saw death with my own eyes,” she said.

Zayoun was 17 last time Israel and Hezbollah were at war, in 2006. Displaced with her family then, she said she almost enjoyed the experience, riding out of their village in a truck full of their belongings, mixing with new people, learning new things. They returned home when the war was over.

“But this war is hard. They are hitting everywhere,” she said. “What do they want from us? Do they want to hurt our children? We are not what they are looking for."

Attacks at home can be hard for kids to deal with

Abu Sittah, the reconstructive surgeon, said most of the children's injuries are from blasts or collapsing rubble. That attack on a space they expect to be inviolable can have lingering effects.

“Children feel safe at home," he said. "The injury makes them for the first time lose that sense of security — that their parents are keeping them safe, that their homes are invincible, and suddenly their homes become not so.”

One recent morning, children were playing in the courtyard of a vocational school-turned-shelter in Dekwaneh, north of Beirut, where nearly 3,000 people displaced from the south are now living. The parents were busy with an overflowing bathroom that serves one floor in a building that houses nearly 700 people.

Only playtime brings the children, from different villages in the south, together. They were divided in two teams, ages ranging between 6 and 12, competing to get the handkerchief first. A tiny girl hugged and held hands with strangers visiting the shelter. “I am from Lebanon. Don't tell anyone,” she whispered in their ears.

The game turned rowdy when two girls in their early teens got into a fist fight. Pushing and shoving began. Tears and tantrums followed. The tiny girl walked away in a daze.

Maria Elizabeth Haddad, manager of the psychosocial support programs in Beirut and neighboring areas for the U.S.-based International Medical Corps, said parents in shelters reported signs of increased anxiety, hostility and aggression among kids. They talk back to parents and ignore rules. Some have developed speech impediments and clinginess. One is showing early signs of psychosis.

“There are going to be residual symptoms when they grow up, especially related to attachment ties, to feeling of security,” Haddad said. “It is a generational trauma. We have experienced it before with our parents. ... They don’t have stability or search for (extra) stability. This is not going to be easy to overcome.”

New phases of life begin

Children represent more than a third of over 1 million people displaced by the war in Lebanon and following Israeli evacuation notices, according to U.N. and government estimates (more than 60,000 people have been displaced from northern Israel). That leaves hundreds of thousands in Lebanon without schooling, either because their schools were inaccessible or have been turned into shelters.

Hussein's father says he and his son must start together from scratch. With help from relatives, the two have found a temporary shelter in a home — and, for the father, a brief sense of relief. “I thank God he is not asking for or about his mother and his siblings,” said Hassan Mikdad, the 40-year-old father.

He has no explanation for his son, who watched their family die in their home. His two sisters — Celine, 10, and Cila, 14 — were pulled out of the rubble the following day. His mother, Mona, was pulled out three days later. She was locked in an embrace with her 6-year-old son, Ali.

The strike on Oct. 21 also caused damage across the street, to one of Beirut’s main public hospitals, breaking solar panels and windows in the pharmacy and the dialysis unit. The father survived because he had stepped out for coffee. He watched his building crumble in the late-night airstrike. He also lost his shop, his motorcycles and car — all the evidence of his 16 years of family life.

His friend, Hussein Hammoudeh, arrived on the scene to help sift through rubble. Hammoudeh spotted young Hussein Mikdad’s fingers in the darkness in an alley behind their home. At first he thought they were severed limbs — until he heard the boy’s screams. He dug out Hussein with glass lodged in his leg and a metal bar in his shoulder. Hammoudeh said he didn’t recognize the boy. He held the child's almost-severed wrist in place.

In the hospital now, Hussein Mikdad sipped a juice as he listened to his father and his friend. His father turned to him, asking if he wanted a Spider-Man toy — an effort to forestall a new outburst of tears. He said he buys Hussein a toy each day.

“What I am living through seems like a big lie. ...The mind can’t comprehend,” he said. “I thank God for the blessing that is Hussein.”

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