U.S

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Sama Ebrahimi Bajgani and her fiance, Alireza Doroudi, had just spent an evening celebrating the Persian new year at the University of Alabama when seven armed immigration officers came to their apartment before dawn and arrested Doroudi.

In a moment, the young couple’s life was upended.

“I was living a normal life until that night. After that nothing is just normal,” Bajgani said.

Details about Doroudi’s detention spread through the small Iranian community in Tuscaloosa, where Bajgani and Doroudi are doctoral students. Other Iranian students say they have been informally advised by faculty to “lay low” and “be invisible” — instilling fear among a once vibrant cohort.

Doroudi is among students across the U.S. who have been detained in recent weeks as part of President Trump’s immigration crackdown. Bajgani said the couple does not know why Doroudi — who has no criminal record or public political views — faces deportation, adding that Trump’s recent visit to the school made her feel like the university was “ignorant of our crisis.”

One Iranian civil engineering student and close friend to Doroudi said he has lost more than 10 pounds due to stress and depression in the six weeks since Doroudi was detained.

“It’s like all of us are waiting for our turn. It could be every knock, every email could be deportation,” said the student, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of concerns about losing his legal status.

He now avoids unnecessary trips outside. When he was in a car crash last month, he begged the other driver not to call the police, even though he wasn’t at fault, because he didn’t want to draw attention to himself.

‘I stayed with their permission’

Bajgani said Doroudi, 32, is an ambitious mechanical engineering student from Shiraz, Iran.

He entered the United States legally in January 2023 on a student visa. Bajgani said he often worked 60-hour weeks while still making time to run errands for loved ones.

“If someone like him doesn’t get to the place he deserves, there is nothing called the American dream,” she said.

Doroudi’s visa was revoked in June 2023, but the embassy didn’t provide a reason and ignored his inquiries, Bajgani said. The university told him he could stay as long as he remained a student but that he would not be allowed to reenter the U.S. if he left, she said.

He was operating under that guidance when immigration officers came to the couple’s door in March.

The University of Alabama didn’t comment on Doroudi’s case, but said it offers resources to help immigrants on campus comply with federal law. It also offers guidance to students whose visas are revoked.

“Our international students are valued members of our campus community,” university spokesperson Monica Watts said in a statement.

Doroudi told Bajgani he spent three days in a county jail, sleeping on a tile floor and feeling panicked.

He is now in a Louisiana immigration detention facility more than 300 miles from Tuscaloosa while he awaits a deportation hearing scheduled for next week. At least one other high-profile international student is there.

“I didn’t deserve this. If they had just sent me a letter asking me to appear in court, I would’ve come, because I didn’t do anything illegal. I stayed with their permission,” Doroudi said in a letter he dictated to Bajgani over the phone to provide his perspective to others. “What was the reason for throwing me in jail?”

Trump’s immigration crackdown

More than 1,000 international students across the U.S. have had their visas or legal status revoked since late March, according to an Associated Press review of university statements and correspondence with school officials. They included some who protested Israel’s war in Gaza. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has since reversed those revocations, including those of four University of Alabama students.

“University staff closely monitors changes that could affect them and has communicated updates related to new protocols and procedures,” Watts said.

A Louisiana judge who denied Doroudi bond in mid-April said he didn’t sufficiently prove that he wasn’t a national security threat, Doroudi’s lawyer, David Rozas said. Rozas said he was “flabbergasted” because the government hasn’t presented evidence that Doroudi is a threat, though that is what the Department of Homeland Security has alleged.

A familiar sense of fear

International students make up more than 13% of the statewide University of Alabama graduate program, according to the school’s website. More than 100 Iranian students attend the university, according to an estimate from the Iranian Student Assn.

Every year, many gather for a picnic to celebrate Sizdah Bedar, the 13th day of the Persian new year, which begins with spring.

This year, the typically festive holiday “felt like a funeral service,” one Iranian doctoral student said. At one point, silence fell over the group as a police car passed.

“It’s becoming too hard to be living here, to be yourself and thrive,” said the student, who spoke on condition of anonymity because she fears retaliation.

She has criticized the Iranian regime since arriving in the United States more than five years ago, so she suspects she is no longer safe in her home country. Now, she has those same doubts in Alabama.

“All of a sudden it feels like we’re returning back to Iran again,” she said.

Riddle writes for the Associated Press.

May 12 (UPI) — California Gov. Gavin Newsom released guidelines for city leaders across his state to have homeless encampments removed on Monday.

The governor’s plan prohibits persistent camping in a single location, prohibits encampments that block sidewalks and requires local officials to provide notice and make every reasonable effort to identify and offer shelter before removing an encampment.

“There’s nothing compassionate about letting people die on the streets. Local leaders asked for resources — we delivered the largest state investment in history,” Newsom said in a statement. “They asked for legal clarity — the courts delivered. Now, we’re giving them a model they can put to work immediately, with urgency and with humanity, to resolve encampments and connect people to shelter, housing, and care. The time for inaction is over. There are no more excuses.”

Rollout of Newsom’s model to “resolve encampments” is partly backed by $3.3 billion in voter-approved funds. It follows a U.S. Supreme Court decision made last year in the case Grants Pass, Ore., vs. Johnson.

The high court ruled that Grants Pass did not violate the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution when it enacted penalties for camping on public property.

Citing this decision, Newsom’s plan calls on local governments to immediately “address dangerous and unhealthy encampments and connect people experiencing homelessness with shelter and services.”

The Public Policy Institute of California estimates that more than 187,000 people experienced homelessness in California last year, a state record. Two-thirds of unhoused Californians lived without any shelter, representing about half of the unsheltered population throughout the United States.

CHICAGO — Growing up in the Soviet Union, Pedro Spivakovsky-Gonzalez’s father and grandparents would listen to Voice of America with their ears pressed to the radio, trying to catch words through the government’s radio jamming.

The U.S.-funded news service was instrumental in helping them understand what was happening on the other side of the Iron Curtain, before they moved to the United States in the 1970s.

“It was a window into another world,” Spivakovsky-Gonzalez said. “They looked to it as a sort of a beacon of freedom. They were able to imagine a different world from the one they were living in.”

When Spivakovsky-Gonzalez and his family heard of President Trump’s attempts to dismantle the U.S. Agency for Global Media — which oversees VOA, Radio Free Europe and Radio Free Asia — he said it was a “gut punch.”

The first months of the second Trump administration have delivered blow after blow to American efforts to promote democracy abroad and pierce the information wall of authoritarian governments through programs that had been sustained over decades by presidents of both political parties.

The new administration has decimated the Agency for Global Media, restructured the State Department to eliminate a global democracy office and gutted the U.S. Agency for International Development, which just last year launched an initiative to try to halt the backsliding of democracy across the globe. In all, the moves represent a retrenchment from the U.S. role in spreading democracy beyond its borders.

Experts say the moves will create a vacuum for promoting freedom and representative government, and could accelerate what many see as antidemocratic trends around the world.

“The United States has historically been the leading power in spreading democracy globally. Despite different administrations, that has remained the case — until now,” said Staffan Lindberg, a political science professor at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden.

‘Pillar of American foreign policy’

David Salvo, managing director for the Alliance for Securing Democracy at the German Marshall Fund, said promoting democracy abroad has been “a pillar of American foreign policy in the last 50 years” as a means of ensuring more stable, peaceful relationships with other countries, reducing the threat of conflict and war, and fostering economic cooperation.

Yet among President Trump’s early actions was targeting democracy programs through the State Department and USAID, which had launched a new global democracy initiative at the end of the Biden administration. The Treasury Department halted funding to the National Endowment for Democracy, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in April he would shut a State Department office that had a mission to build “more democratic, secure, stable, and just societies.”

Funding cuts have hit the National Democratic Institute, the International Foundation for Electoral Systems and U.S. nonprofits that have worked for decades “to inject resources into environments so that civil society and democratic actors can try to effect change for the better,” including through bolstering unstable democracies against autocrats, Salvo said.

Whether global democracy programs are worth funding was central to a hearing Thursday by a U.S. House Foreign Affairs subcommittee, as Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-Fla.) repeatedly asked how to “ensure our return on investment is really high.”

About 1.2% of the federal budget went to foreign aid in the 2023 fiscal year, according to the Pew Research Center.

“I understand the committee is interested in how we can improve … and get back to basics,” Tom Malinowski, a former Democratic congressman from New Jersey and assistant secretary of State for democracy, human rights and labor under President Obama, told lawmakers. “The problem is the administration is eliminating the basics right now.”

Uzra Zeya, who leads the international nonprofit Human Rights First after serving in the Biden State Department, said it was “heartbreaking and alarming” to watch the U.S. essentially dismantle its democracy and human rights programs.

“The potential long-term impacts are devastating for U.S. national security and prosperity,” she said.

Diminishing the messaging pipelines

For more than 80 years, VOA and its related outlets have delivered news across the world, including to more than 427 million people every week in 49 languages, according to a 2024 internal report. The broadcaster began during World War II to provide Germans with news, even as Nazi officials attempted to jam its signals. The Soviet Union and China attempted to silence its broadcasts during the Cold War. Iranian and North Korean governments have also tried to block access to VOA for decades.

But the most successful attempt to silence VOA has been through its own government. It was in effect shut down in March through a Trump executive order.

Lisa Brakel, a 66-year-old retired librarian in Temperance, Mich., said VOA was a “mainstay” when she was a music teacher in Kuwait in the 1980s. She and her colleagues would listen together in the apartment complex where the American teachers were housed, to stay up to date with news from home.

When she learned the news about the VOA funding cuts, “I thought, ‘No, they can’t shut this down. Too many people depend on that,’” Brakel said. “As a librarian, any cuts to free access to information deeply concern me.”

Emboldening U.S. rivals

The broadcaster’s future remains in flux after a federal appellate court paused a ruling that would have reversed its dismantling. This was just a day after journalists were told they would soon return to work after being off the air for almost two months. Even if they are allowed back, it’s unclear that the mission would be the same.

Last week, the Trump administration agreed to use the feed of One American News, or OAN — a far-right, ardently pro-Trump media network known for propagating conspiracy theories — on VOA and other services.

In Asia, dismantling Radio Free Asia would mean losing the world’s only independent Uyghur language news service, closing the Asia Fact Check Lab as it reports on misinformation from the Chinese Community Party, and curbing access to information in countries such as China, North Korea and Myanmar that lack free and independent media, the broadcaster’s president, Bay Fang, said in a statement.

“Their invaluable work is part of RFA’s responsibility to uphold the truth so that dictators and despots don’t have the last word,” Fang wrote in May in the New York Times.

Experts who monitor global democracy said the information gap created by the administration will embolden U.S. competitors such as Russia and China, which already are ramping up their efforts to shape public opinion.

Barbara Wejnert, a political sociologist at the University at Buffalo who studies global democracies, said diplomatic efforts through U.S. broadcasters and democracy nonprofits helped precipitate a “rapid increase in democratizing countries” in the late 20th century.

“Especially today when the truth is distorted and people don’t trust governments, spreading the notion of freedom and democracy through media is even more vital,” she said.

Fernando writes for the Associated Press.

May 12 (UPI) — The first set of 49 w\White South African “Afrikaners” granted refugee status by President Donald Trump will arrive Monday to the United States.

The group departed Johannesburg on Sunday night on a private flight paid for by the U.S. government.

They will arrive Monday in Washington at Dulles Airport before being expatriated to multiple states, including Texas, Minnesota, Nevada and Idaho, where they will be on a pathway to U.S. citizenship and eligible for government benefits.

Trump threatened in February to cut all U.S. funding to South Africa seemingly over its land expropriation law, which allows local, provincial and national authorities to confiscate land if it is in the public interest and in few specific cases without compensation.

The American president has claimed without evidence that South Africa is taking land from White Afrikaners, who Trump went on to claim were victims of “racial discrimination” and “large-scale killings” of White South African farmers.

“Your case manager will pick you up from the airport and take you to housing that they have arranged for you,” read a document in part for the arriving South Africans. “This housing may be temporary (like a hotel) while a local organization helps you identify more long-term housing,” it added.

According to the South African government, it has not expropriated any land.

On Monday, South Africa Foreign Minister Ronald Lamola said “there is no persecution of White Afrikaner South Africans,” adding how police reports debunked Trump’s false assertion.

The law states property cannot be expropriated arbitrarily and can only be seized if an agreement with the owner cannot be reached, subject to “just and equitable compensation” being paid.

Meanwhile, South Africa’s government said the Afrikaners, who are largely descended from Dutch settlers from the Netherlands in western Europe, wouldn’t be stopped from going, albeit under a false narrative.”

“You are expected to support yourself quickly in finding work,” U.S. immigration documents said. “Adults are expected to accept entry-level employment in fields like warehousing, manufacturing, and customer service. You can work toward higher-level employment over time,” they were informed.

Elon Musk, who was born in South Africa, has accused Ramaphosa’s government of “openly pushing for genocide of white people” despite any evidence.

In March, Secretary of State Marco Rubio expelled South Africa’s ambassador to the U.S. Ebrahim Rasool for “race-baiting” following remarks accusing the United States of engaging in “supremacist” policies domestically and globally as South Africa has joined other nations in accusing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of committing acts of genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

“There’s no legal or any factual basis for the executive order sanctioning this action,” Vincent Magwenya, a spokesman for South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, told NPR after learning of the granting of refugee status.

“None of the provisions of international law on the definition of refugees are applicable in this case,” he said, adding that South Africa’s sovereignty as a country was being “grossly undermined and violated” by the U.S. in a way that was “disturbing.”

According to the World Bank, inequality is among the world’s highest in South Africa which had segregationist policies via “apartheid” that only began to fully unravel in the early 1990s.

A 2017 land audit report found that White South Africans own 72% of all farm and agricultural land, while Black South Africans owned 15%.

As of 2022, White South Africans account for less than 8% of its population of more than 63 million.

Scores of South African civilians, meanwhile, took to social media to post comedic memes and videos expressing doubt over the plight of the Afrikaners, joking how they will miss “privileged lives, domestic workers and beach holidays.”

Max du Preez, a white Afrikaner author, told BBC that the claims of persecution of white South Africans were a “total absurdity” and “based on nothing.”

A U.S. government employee, while not authorized to speak to reporters, told NPR what they considered this was “immigration fraud” after the Trump administration effectively suspended America’s refugee admission program.

May 12 (UPI) — President Donald Trump‘s announcement that he wishes to place tariffs on internationally-produced films has people in the movie business worrying of another hurdle.

Trump announced his intention to implement 100% tariffs on foreign films on May 4 after meeting with actor Jon Voight. Trump has not shared details about how his tariff plan would work. Daniel Loria, senior vice president of The BoxOffice Company, told UPI the first and most difficult task will be defining what a foreign-made film is.

“Is a movie written in the U.S. for a U.S. studio, funded by a U.S. production company set in a foreign country that then comes back and does all the effects and post-production work and marketing here — because the story elements include a foreign angle, does that count as a foreign-made film?” Loria said.

“Ultimately determining what is and isn’t foreign produced, which is a difficult task to enact in a globalized economy and industry, is going to be essential to how film studios tackle this proposed era that is coming up.”

Unlike an automotive manufacturer that imports tangible products into the United States, filmmaking is far more speculative. Films are less a good or product and more an experience, Loria said.

“You’re buying the experience,” he said. “Putting a tariff on movies would be very difficult to trickle down to the moviegoer. You have to think about movie-going as a service, not a good.”

The United States has not placed tariffs on films before. American films are not subject to tariffs in other countries when they hit their theaters either. Physical media such as DVDs and Blu-rays are subject to tariffs in some cases. Other countries, such as China, may require American films to be altered to meet content guidelines.

Hollywood is recognized as the epicenter of the film world but it has increasingly become a global industry. The highest-grossing film in the world this year is the Chinese animated film Ne Zha 2. As of Friday, it has earned more than double that of the second-place film, A Minecraft Movie, reaching $1.8 billion in the worldwide box office, according to Box Office Mojo.

Box office data combines the United States and Canada’s earnings — referred to as the domestic box office — in comparison to the worldwide box office. According to Loria’s data, the domestic box office represented 21% of global sales in 2021, 29% in 2022, 27% in 2023 and about 30% in 2024.

Loria noted that while box office earnings and publicly known production costs are often cited to gauge the success of a film, it is difficult to determine which films are profitable or how profitable the business is as a whole.

“A lot of Hollywood accountants would tell you no films make money,” Loria said.

Box office numbers suggest that the industry is still recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic halted productions around the world and closed theaters in the United States for more than a year. This came after a record year at the box office in 2019.

Shannon Cole is the executive director of the Vermillion Cultural Association based in Vermillion, S.D. The nonprofit organization leads art programming for the city and owns and operates the Coyote Twin Theater. It is the only theater within a 25-mile radius of the town and plays many of the biggest new releases.

Cole told UPI that the announcement of film tariffs combined with other Trump administration policies — specifically cuts to the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities — has her, other local arts leaders and local artists worried about how long they can continue doing their work.

“It means we’re looking at at least three more years of what’s already been a four-year downturn in the film industry,” Cole said. “Everyone is out of the habit of going to the movies. Now, you’re saying potentially movies could end up costing more because studios will charge theaters more to show movies?”

According to Cole, the Coyote Twin Theater’s audience was down by 40% from 2023 to 2024. The theater pays as much as 68% of ticket prices back to the studios for showing their movies, and for-profit theaters may pay more.

“2019 by far was the high watermark of the movie industry worldwide,” Cole said. “It was the best year on record for us. Everybody wants to get back to that.”

Jason Squire, professor emeritus at the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts and host of The Movie Business Podcast, told UPI that the business is largely far different than the perception of glitz and glamour that is often attached to it.

“It’s a gig economy,” Squire said. “It’s people who are, in general, highly accomplished craftspeople in very specialized crafts. Many of whom are struggling because of runaway production. Because of issues of crisis within the business and the transformation that’s going on.”

Part of that transformation is the decentralization of the industry. States like Georgia, New Jersey, New Mexico and Louisiana are drawing production away from California with enticing incentives. Production incentives are not unique to the United States though.

Toronto has been growing its film production market since the 1970s, spurred on by the Ontario Film and Television Tax Credit. This 35% refundable tax credit is offered to productions that meet several criteria, including spending at least 75% of their final costs in Ontario.

India and China have surpassed the United States in terms of the number of films they produce. India offers cash rebates for qualifying production expenses.

In response to Trump’s tariff announcement, California Gov. Gavin Newsom proposed a new $7.5 billion federal film tax credit to help bring productions back to California.

“California built the film industry — and we’re ready to bring even more jobs home,” Newsom wrote on X. “We’ve proven what strong state incentives can do. Now it’s time for a real federal partnership to Make America Film Again.”

Voight, one of three advisers to Trump on Hollywood, has also drawn up a “Make Hollywood Great Again” plan that proposes incentives for domestic film production, according to Deadline. His proposals are laden with several incentives for a majority of physical production to be done in the United States.

Voight also proposed a 120% tariff if a film “could have been produced in the U.S.” but was produced elsewhere and receives a production tax incentive.

“The idea of placing a tariff on overseas tax incentives or government subsidies or rebates would be onerous,” Squire said. “It would throw a wrench in the works of the business model and make it more expensive, which is the last thing you want. The key to producing movies is to make them at a price you believe the public will bear and make a little more than you spent in order to keep making movies.”

Cinema United, formerly the National Association of Theatre Owners, released a statement on Thursday in response to the Trump administration’s interest in reforming the film industry.

“It is important to recognize that theatrical exhibition is not a Hollywood industry, but a Main Street industry, and proposals that support and promote the hard work being done by theatre owners will have a positive and meaningful impact in communities across this nation,” Michael O’Leary, president and CEO of Cinema United, said in a statement.

“We are committed to working with the administration, Congress and all interested parties who recognize and share the goal of ensuring that our local theatres retain both their economic and cultural significance and we thank them for their leadership.”

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — As a trade war sparked by President Trump’s tariffs stokes worry and uncertainty in the global economy, Puerto Rico sees an opportunity.

Government officials in the U.S. territory are jumping on planes to try to persuade international companies to relocate their manufacturing plants to the island, where they would be exempt from tariffs.

Any relocation would be a boost to Puerto Rico’s shaky economy as the government emerges from a historic bankruptcy and continues to struggle with chronic power outages. The island also is bracing for potentially big cuts in federal funding under the Trump administration, with federal funds accounting for more than half of Puerto Rico’s budget.

“The tariff issue is a controversial one, but for Puerto Rico, it’s a great opportunity,” said Gov. Jenniffer González.

Manufacturing remains the island’s biggest industry, representing nearly half of its gross domestic product. But the government wants to recapture Puerto Rico’s heyday, when dozens of big-name companies, especially in the pharmaceutical sector, were based here and kept the economy humming.

So far, officials have identified between 75 and 100 companies that might consider relocating operations to Puerto Rico given the ongoing trade war, said Ella Woger-Nieves, chief executive of Invest Puerto Rico, a public-private partnership that promotes the island as a business and investment destination.

The companies identified work in sectors including aerospace, pharmaceuticals and medical devices.

Officials also have welcomed site selectors to Puerto Rico and organized tours to show them the island’s infrastructure and emphasize that tariffs wouldn’t apply here.

“This is the moment to plant those seeds,” Woger-Nieves said.

She said officials with Invest Puerto Rico and various government agencies are expected to make nearly 20 more trips this year in a bid to attract more manufacturing. The government praised an executive order that Trump signed May 5 that aims to reduce the time it takes to approve construction of pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities in the U.S.

From needlework to chemicals

In the mid-1900s, needlework was one of Puerto Rico’s largest industries, employing about 7,000 workers who labored on handkerchiefs, underwear, bedspreads and other items, according to a 1934 fair competition code signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Manufacturing later shifted to chemicals, clothes and electronics. By the late 1970s, a growing number of pharmaceutical companies began moving their operations to Puerto Rico, lured by a federal tax incentive created in 1976 to help boost the island’s economic growth. However, in 1996, the U.S. government began phasing out the incentive, which had exempted the subsidiaries of U.S. companies operating in Puerto Rico from federal taxes on local profits.

From 1995 to 2005, overall manufacturing employment fell by nearly 30%, but employment in the sectors of pharmaceuticals, medicines and chemicals increased by at least 10%, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Puerto Rico continues to lead U.S. exports of pharmaceutical and medicine manufacturing, representing nearly 20% of total U.S. exports in 2020, according to the bureau.

In 2024, the island exported nearly $25 billion worth of goods, including $11 billion in vaccines and certain cultures; $7 billion worth of packaged medicaments; $1 billion in hormones; $984 million in orthopedic items; and $625 million worth of medical instruments, according to the Observatory of Economic Complexity.

Sergio Marxuach, policy director and general counsel for the Center for a New Economy, a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank, said the push to attract more companies makes sense, especially recruiting those in the pharmaceutical and medical device sectors.

“If I were advising the government, begin there, because you already have a footprint,” he said.

Marxuach noted that outside of those areas, Puerto Rico could have an advantage when it comes to national defense and security contracts, including the manufacturing of drones or underwater surveillance systems.

“They need a place to manufacture in scale,” he said, adding that doing so in a U.S. jurisdiction is key.

Puerto Rico’s government also is meeting with university officials to potentially change curriculums if needed to ensure students are graduating with the skills required by companies.

The Achilles’ heel

Puerto Rico touts its U.S. jurisdiction, tax incentives and skilled workforce as reasons international companies should relocate to the island.

But it cannot escape its well-known energy problems.

Chronic power outages continue to plague Puerto Rico, with two island-wide blackouts occurring, on Dec. 31 and April 16.

Crews are still repairing the power grid after it was razed by Hurricane Maria in September 2017, a powerful Category 4 storm. But the grid was already fragile from lack of maintenance and investment for decades.

“Puerto Rico needs more reliable energy for the economic growth to improve,” said Robert F. Mujica, executive director of a federal control board that oversees the island’s finances.

Woger-Nieves, of Invest Puerto Rico, said that when officials meet with company leaders, they explain the state of the island’s energy infrastructure and offer alternatives including cogeneration and renewables.

“Power doesn’t have to necessarily be an impediment,” she said.

Marxuach, with the Center for a New Economy, said Puerto Rico’s energy system is costly and inefficient, and he noted that alternatives can be expensive.

“Puerto Rico has to address some issues that actually create additional costs for investors to come here,” he said.

One of those costs is that any goods sent to the U.S. from Puerto Rico must by law be sent aboard a U.S.-flagged vessel with a U.S. crew.

Other challenges remain.

Currently, the short-term reaction of many CEOs and companies “is basically to wait and see” how the tariff war plays out, Marxuach said.

Trump has said that he wants to keep some tariffs in place, but he also has mentioned efforts to reach deals with trading partners. His team said Trump is using “strategic uncertainty” to his advantage.

Another problem is that relocating operations takes years, not months, and foreign competitors also are vying for the attention of international companies.

“We’re competing with Vietnam, South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, that have very advanced manufacturing facilities already,” Marxuach said. “It’s not a slam dunk.”

Coto writes for the Associated Press.

May 12 (UPI) — The United States and China said Monday that they have reached an agreement to cut most of their tariffs for 90 days to allow more time for continued economic and trade discussions.

The countries announced the 90-day pause on the majority of their tariffs in a statement. Under the agreement, the United States will reduce its tariffs on Chinese goods from the current 145% to 30%, and China will reduce its tariffs on U.S. goods from 125% to 10%.

The agreement was reached during trade negotiations in Geneva, Switzerland, where U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Trade Representative Jamieson Greer met with their Chinese counterparts, including Vice Premier He Lifeng, over the weekend.

“We had very robust discussions. Both sides showed great respect,” Bessent told reporters in a press conference.

“Both countries represented their national interests very well. We concluded that we have shared interests and we both have an interest in balanced trade. The U.S. will continue moving towards that.”

According to the joint statement, Washington and Beijing agreed to “establish a mechanism to continue discussions about economic and trade relations.”

It stipulates that He will represent China in the discussions, and Bessent and Greer will represent the United States.

“These discussions may be conducted alternately in China and the United States, or a third country upon agreement of the Parties,” it said.

The breakthrough in the trade war was immediately felt by the markets, with the Nasdaq futures seeing a 3.37% gain, the S&P 500 futures climbing by 2.49% and the Dow going up 1.95% or 808 points.

President Donald Trump has long turned to tariffs as a tool to even out trade deficits, as a negotiation tactic and as an attempt to spur domestic manufacturing.

He initially announced a 10% tariff on Chinese goods that he then doubled on accusations that Beijing wasn’t doing enough to curb the flow of drugs — specifically fentanyl — into the United States. Further tariffs were then piled on China. In response, Beijing announced retaliatory tariffs of its own, sparking the trade war and sending concerns through global markets.

This is a developing story.

May 12 (UPI) — The Trump administration fired the United States’ top copyright official over the weekend, following the dismissal of the librarian of Congress late last week.

Rep. Joe Morelle, the ranking Democrat on the Committee on House Administration, confirmed in a statement that Shira Perlmutter was let go Saturday as the director of the U.S. Copyright Office and Register of Copyrights.

Politico was the first to report on Perlmutter’s firing.

“Donald Trump’s termination of Register of Copyrights Shira Perlmutter is a brazen, unprecedented power grab with no legal basis,” Morelle, D-N.Y., said.

“Register Perlmutter is a patriot, and her tenure has propelled the Copyright Office into the 21st century by comprehensively modernizing its operations and setting global standards on the intersection of AI and intellectual property.”

Perlmutter’s firing came two days after the administration fired Carla Hayden, the first woman and first Black person to serve as the librarian of Congress, who oversees the register of Copyrights.

A day before she was let go, Perlmutter’s office released a long-awaited report on the use of copyrighted works and artificial intelligence, an industry that Elon Musk, a financial backer of President Donald Trump’s and head of the Department of Government Efficiency, is highly involved in.

The report raises questions and concerns about the use of copyrighted material and intellectual property to train generative AI systems.

Last month, Jack Dorsey, a co-founder of the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, now X, called for the erasure of all intellectual property law, meaning removing protections such as patents and copyrights, from such works.

“I agree,” Musk, who bought Twitter and renamed it X, said in response.

Morelle, in his statement, said it was no coincidence that Perlmutter was fired “less than a day after she refused to rubber-stamp Elon Musk’s efforts to mine troves of copyrighted works to train AI models.”

Musk owns artificial intelligence company xAI.

The American Federation of Musicians expressed its appreciation to Perlmutter in a statement on Sunday, saying she had “served the American people with unrivaled expertise for decades.”

“Her unlawful firing will gravely harm the entire copyright community,” the world’s largest organization of professional musicians said. “She understood what we all know to be true: human creativity and authorship are the foundation of copyright law — and for that, it appears, she lost her job.”

Hayden appointed Perlmutter to the register of copyrights and director of the U.S. Copyright Office in October 2020, according to her official biography.

WASHINGTON — Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., whose new year will include presiding at a Senate impeachment trial of President Trump as well as leading the Supreme Court, called Tuesday for more focus on civic education at a time “when social media can instantly spread rumor and false information on a grand scale.”

In his year-end report on the judiciary, Roberts steered clear of politics, Trump and the looming impeachment trial, speaking instead about the importance of independent courts and citizens who understand democracy.

“Each generation has an obligation to pass on to the next, not only a fully functioning government responsive to the needs of the people, but the tools to understand and improve it,” he said. “I ask my judicial colleagues to continue their efforts to promote public confidence in the judiciary, both through their rulings and through civic outreach. We should celebrate our strong and independent judiciary, a key source of national unity and stability. But we should also remember that justice is not inevitable. We should reflect on our duty to judge without fear or favor, deciding each matter with humility, integrity and dispatch.”

This is not a new theme for the chief justice. Just over a year ago, Roberts issued an extraordinary statement in response to Trump’s tweeted critique of a judge as being an “Obama judge.”

“We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges,” Roberts said. “What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them.”

His devotion to nonpartisan judging will be put to a test in the next year. The Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether Democratic-controlled House committees and a New York prosecutor can subpoena Trump’s financial records, including his tax returns.

And in the weeks ahead, Roberts will cross 1st Street on Capitol Hill and preside over a Senate impeachment trial of Trump.

The details and timing of the Senate trial await the return of lawmakers to Washington next week. The high court is due to hear arguments in the morning during the weeks of Jan. 13 and Jan. 21.

Roberts’ official title is chief justice of the United States, and as such he is the leader of the entire federal court system, not just the Supreme Court. In this year’s report, he described the importance of the “85 brilliant essays” that appeared in New York newspapers in 1787 and 1788 and became known as the Federalist Papers. They explained the “core principles of our constitutional democracy,” Roberts said.

Alexander Hamilton and James Madison wrote most of the essays, while John Jay, the nation’s first chief justice, contributed only five. “Perhaps if Jay had been more productive, America might have awarded him with a Broadway musical,” Roberts wrote, referring to hit musical “Hamilton.” But he was badly injured in what was dubbed “the Doctors’ Riot,” Roberts said.

It began with a rumor that medical students were robbing graves to practice surgery on cadavers, he said. An angry mob formed and stormed a New York hospital. Jay, who lived nearby, grabbed a sword and tried to defend the medical staff, but a rioter tossed a rock that struck him. He survived, but did not contribute further to the influential essays.

“It is sadly ironic that John Jay’s efforts to educate his fellow citizens about the framers’ plan of government fell victim to a rock thrown by a rioter motivated by a rumor.” The three authors “ultimately succeeded in convincing the public of the virtues of the principles embodied in the Constitution. Those principles leave no place for mob violence,” he wrote.

“But in the ensuing years, we have come to take democracy for granted, and civic education has fallen by the wayside. In our age, when social media can instantly spread rumor and false information on a grand scale, the public’s need to understand our government, and the protections it provides, is ever more vital.”

The court also announced that the chief justice’s mother, Rosemary A. Roberts, died Saturday surrounded by her family in Westminster, Md. She was 90.

May 12 (UPI) — U.S. President Donald Trump on Sunday night said he will sign an executive order to reduce drug prices in the United States by between 30% and 80% with the aim of equalizing global prices.

No details of the executive order, which Trump said he’d sign Monday morning, were released, and it was not immediately clear how exactly the order would work.

He made the announcement in a post to his Truth Social platform, calling the executive order “one of the most consequential … in our Country’s history.”

“Prescription Drug and Pharmaceutical prices will be REDUCED, almost immediately, by 30% to 80%. They will rise throughout the World in order to equalize and, for the first time in many years, bring FAIRNESS TO AMERICA!”

In the statement, Trump said he would be instituting a “MOST FAVORED NATION’S POLICY whereby the United States will pay the same price as the Nation that pays the lowest price.”

He said the executive order would be signed 9 a.m. EDT Monday at the White House.

Trump had tried during his first term to institute a Most Favored Nation policy via executive order to tie U.S. prescription drug prices for Medicare to the world’s cheapest price tags but was met with successful legal challenges from the pharmaceutical industry.

PhRMA, a pharmaceutical trade group, criticized the original version of the plan from Trump’s first term as “bad policy,” stating it will limit seniors’ access to existing medicine and hamper development of new drugs.

Dr. Houman David Hemmati, a California physician and critic of California’ s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, said the policy is “a strong step toward fairness” but does present risks.

On X, he said it could limit patient access to drugs in those countries where the drugs’ prices are cheapest, as drug makers might pull out of those markets. It could also affect development, especially of generic drugs, which could also be pulled from shelves.

“A generic priced very low abroad might disappear if the U.S. demands that price, impacting access to essentials like insulin,” he said, adding that countries reliant on low prices might face drug access issues, and the United States might see delays in new drug launches.

According to a January 2024 report from the Health and Human Services’ Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, the prices across all drugs in the United States were at least 2.78 times higher than in comparison countries and at least 3.22 times as high for brand drugs.

In his Sunday night statement, Trump said that with his new policy, “Our Country will finally be treated fairly and our citizens Healthcare Costs will be reduced by numbers never even thought of before.”

He said the United States will save trillions of dollars.

In April, Trump signed an executive order directing the Department of Health and Human Services to standardize Medicare payments to reduce the price of prescription drugs.

May 11 (UPI) — The United States was added to an international human rights watchlist on Sunday over Trump administration attacks targeting civic freedoms.

CIVICUS, an international human rights monitor, said it added the United States due to “the Trump administration’s assault on democratic norms and global cooperation.”

As reason, it listed President Donald Trump‘s “unprecedented executive orders designed to unravel democratic institutions, rule of law and global cooperation” as well as its slashing of federal funding for organizations supporting those in need, the dismantling of USAID and reversals on justice, inclusion and diversity.

It also highlighted the Trump administration’s crackdown on pro-Palestine protests through arbitrary arrests and student visa cancelations

“This is an unparalleled attack on the rule of law in the United States, not seen since the days of McCarthyism in the 20th century,” Mandeep Tiwana, interim co-secretary general of CIVICUS, said in a statement.

“Restrictive orders, unjustifiable institutional cutbacks and intimidation tactics through threatening pronouncements by senior officials in the administration are creating an atmosphere to chill democratic dissent, a cherished American ideal.”

The United States being added to the watchlist comes as the Trump administration has come under mounting criticism over its attacks on American democratic institutions.

It has been accused of ignoring due process rights in arresting and shipping hundreds of migrants to a notorious mega prison in El Salvador and has been condemned for its repeated attacks of the judicial system — from calling for judges who rule against it to be impeached to arresting another on allegations of impeding an immigration-related arrest.

CIVICUS also highlight the Trump administration’s attacks on press freedom as reason for its inclusion the list.

It pointed to the White House now determining which media outlets have access to presidential briefings and banning reporters covering political sensitive topics as proof.

“The Trump administration seems hellbent on dismantling the system of checks and balances, which are the pillars of a democratic society,” Tiwana said.

May 11 (UPI) — The Qatari Royal Family has planned to gift a super luxury Boeing 747-8 jumbo jet to President Donald Trump to be used for Air Force One and for his own private use when his presidency ends, reports said Sunday.

News of the major gift was first reported by ABC News, citing anonymous sources, and later confirmed by The New York Times and NBC News. United Press International has reached out to Qatar’s Government Communications Office for confirmation.

The gift is expected to be formally announced when Trump visits Qatar next week, according to the reports. Trump toured the plane when it was parked at the West Palm Beach International Airport in February.

A Qatari representative, however, told Axios that while reports of Trump being gifted a jet were “inaccurate,” Qatar’s Ministry of Defense and the U.S. Department of Defense are discussing the possible temporary use of an aircraft as Air Force One.

If it is gifted, the jet could become the most valuable gift ever from a foreign government to the United States, ABC News reported. Its $400 million estimated price tag surpasses the estimated $250,000 cost of constructing the Statue of Liberty — which was gifted to the United States from France.

But the expected acceptance of the gift by Trump raises questions of its legality, raising the possibility that the president could face scrutiny for bribery or violating the emoluments clause of the U.S. Constitution.

The Emoluments Clause prohibits federal officials from accepting gifts, payments or other benefits from foreign governments without the consent of Congress but there is debate as to whether it applies to elected officials. According to Cornell’s Legal Information Institute, the interpretation of the clause has never been litigated before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Lawyers for the White House reportedly expect accepting the gift to draw scrutiny and have drafted an analysis for U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, which concludes that it is legal for the U.S. Defense Department to accept the gift and then to later hand it over to Trump’s presidential library for his private use when he leaves office.

The Trump administration is looking to the precedent set by the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in handling the ethical considerations of accepting a retired presidential aircraft.

The Reagan Library boasts a 90,000-square-foot exhibit hangar that permanently displays a Boeing VC-137C aircraft with the tail letters SAM 27000, which entered service as Air Force One under President Richard Nixon.

Though the plane was used by each president until George W. Bush, it is best known in relation to Reagan and was gifted to his library when it was decommissioned in 2001. Reagan died in 2004.

The difference between the use of the two gifts that could pose a challenge for Trump is that the Reagan Library immediately installed it for permanent display while Trump is reported to be planning to continue using it for personal travel.

Trump currently owns a Boeing 757 that dates to the early 1990s. The jet was originally operated by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen before Trump purchased it in 2011.

Two new Air Force One planes have been in the works since at least 2018 when the Air Force awarded a $3.9 billion contract for two modified Boeing 747-8 planes that were expected for delivery by 2024.

Trump told ABC News in 2019 that he wanted to change up the traditional baby blue and white pattern chosen by former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy in the 1960s to a new color scheme that resembled that of his private jet.

Boeing started modifying the first of the two aircraft in February 2020 and the second in June 2020. According to a 2022 report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office, the company had completed major structural modifications on the first aircraft and is now preparing it for wiring installations.

However, at the time, Boeing struggled to find workers to complete the modifications because of a “competitive labor market” and “lower-than-planned security clearance approval rates.” The Air Force later lowered security clearance standards to make it easier to find workers.

Last week, Defense One reported that Boeing has told the Air Force it can deliver the new jets by 2027 if the government loosens some requirements.

May 11 (UPI) — One person was killed and dozens more were injured Sunday in a collision between a tour bus and a stalled SUV on a Los Angeles County freeway, police said.

The tour bus was carrying 63 passengers when it collided with a disabled Nissan Pathfinder on State Route 60 near Hacienda Heights, an unincorporated area east of Los Angeles, according to a statement from the California Highway Patrol.

The Nissan erupted into flames after it was hit by the bus shortly after 5 a.m. EDT Sunday. The driver died at the scene, police said.

“As a result of the impact, the Nissan Pathfinder became fully engulfed in flames, trapping the occupant,” the CHP statement said.

The CHP statement said the bus was heading to Koreatown in downtown Los Angeles from Morongo Valley, about 110 miles east of the city when the collision occurred. The driver of the bus was identified as Sui Sheng Du.

Following the collision, the bus careened across multiple lanes of the freeway and crashed into a raised metal and wood guardrail on the shoulder of the highway.

Local media showed images and video of the crash. CHP said neither alcohol or drugs appeared to be a factor in the crash.